#i think google sorts by the most searched

[mintaikk]

Okay what the fuck. Like actually, what the fuck. Why is that even a thing? Why are people searching that up?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s enshittification memos

[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:

The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.

https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/

"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."

And note that they're not talking about shared risk here – no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.

How did a company like Unity – which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them – turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.

When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.

People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/

Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.

It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.

Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.

Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.

It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d

Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.

Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.

Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do – a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic

After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf

The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."

OK.

But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever created…illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economics…[W]e can mostly ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."

It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."

"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."

And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."

In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses – like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones – with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars – enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year – to be the default search everywhere.

Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."

For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.

But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or – in the case of tech platforms – customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:

https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554

Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in – and then lock in – business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.

For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar – for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."

Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads – because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).

Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers – that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.

But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.

And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically – and often indelibly – to far-flung co-cabalists.

As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.

But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.

The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand," able to "ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."

What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users – it's a grift Google runs on everyone.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[kafus]

beginner’s guide to the indie web

“i miss the old internet” “we’ll never have websites like the ones from the 90s and early 2000s ever again” “i’m tired of social media but there’s nowhere to go”

HOLD ON!

personal websites and indie web development still very much exist! it may be out of the way to access and may not be the default internet experience anymore, but if you want to look and read through someone’s personally crafted site, or even make your own, you can still do it! here’s how:

use NEOCITIES! neocities has a built in search and browse tools to let you discover websites, and most importantly, lets you build your own website from scratch for free! (there are other ways to host websites for free, but neocities is a really good hub for beginners!)

need help getting started with coding your website? sadgrl online has a section on her website dedicated to providing resources for newbie webmasters!

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the core of what all websites are built on. many websites also use JS (JavaScript) to add interactive elements to their pages. w3schools is a useful directory of quick reference for pretty much every HTML/CSS/JS topic you can think of.

there is also this well written and lengthy guide on dragonfly cave that will put you step by step through the basics of HTML/CSS (what webpages are made from), if that’s your sort of thing!

stack overflow is every programmer’s hub for asking questions and getting help, so if you’re struggling with getting something to look how you want or can’t fix a bug, you may be able to get your answer here! you can even ask if no one’s asked the same question before.

websites like codepen and jsfiddle let you test HTML/CSS/JS in your browser as you tinker with small edits and bugfixing.

want to find indie websites outside the scope of neocities? use the search engine marginalia to find results you actually want that google won’t show you!

you can also use directory sites like yesterweb’s link section to find websites in all sorts of places.

if you are going to browse the indie web or make your own website, i also have some more personal tips as a webmaster myself (i am not an expert and i am just a small hobbyist, so take me with a grain of salt!)

if you are making your own site:

get expressive! truly make whatever you want! customize your corner of the internet to your heart’s content! you have left the constrains of social media where every page looks the same. you have no character limit, image limit, or design limit. want to make an entire page or even a whole website dedicated to your one niche interest that no one seems to be into but you? go for it! want to keep a public journal where you can express your thoughts without worry? do it! want to keep an art gallery that looks exactly how you want? heck yeah! you are free now! you will enjoy the indie web so much more if you actually use it for the things you can’t do on websites like twitter, instead of just using it as a carrd bio alternative or a place to dump nostalgic geocities gifs.

don’t overwhelm yourself! if you’ve never worked with HTML/CSS or JS before, it may look really intimidating. start slow, use some guides, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. even if your site doesn’t look how you want quite yet, be proud of your work! you’re learning a skill that most people don’t have or care to have, and that’s pretty cool.

keep a personal copy of your website downloaded to your computer and don’t just edit it on neocities (or your host of choice) and call it a day. if for some reason your host were to ever go down, you would lose all your hard work! and besides, by editing locally and offline, you can use editors like vscode (very robust) or notepad++ (on the simpler side), which have more features and is more intuitive than editing a site in-browser.

you can use ctrl+shift+i on most browsers to inspect the HTML/CSS and other components of the website you’re currently viewing. it’ll even notify you of errors! this is useful for bugfixing your own site if you have a problem, as well as looking at the code of sites you like and learning from it. don’t use this to steal other people’s code! it would be like art theft to just copy/paste an entire website layout. learn, don’t steal.

don’t hotlink images from other sites, unless the resource you’re taking from says it’s okay! it’s common courtesy to download images and host them on your own site instead of linking to someone else’s site to display them. by hotlinking, every time someone views your site, you’re taking up someone else’s bandwidth.

if you want to make your website easily editable in the future (or even for it to have multiple themes), you will find it useful to not use inline CSS (putting CSS in your HTML document, which holds your website’s content) and instead put it in a separate CSS file. this way, you can also use the same theme for multiple pages on your site by simply linking the CSS file to it. if this sounds overwhelming or foreign to you, don’t sweat it, but if you are interested in the difference between inline CSS and using separate stylesheets, w3schools has a useful, quick guide on the subject.

visit other people’s sites sometimes! you may gain new ideas or find links to more cool websites or resources just by browsing.

if you are browsing sites:

if the page you’re viewing has a guestbook or cbox and you enjoyed looking at the site, leave a comment! there is nothing better as a webmaster than for someone to take the time to even just say “love your site” in their guestbook.

that being said, if there’s something on a website you don’t like, simply move on to something else and don’t leave hate comments. this should be self explanatory, but it is really not the norm to start discourse in indie web spaces, and you will likely not even be responded to. it’s not worth it when you could be spending your time on stuff you love somewhere else.

take your time! indie web doesn’t prioritize fast content consumption the way social media does. you’ll get a lot more out of indie websites if you really read what’s in front of you, or take a little while to notice the details in someone’s art gallery instead of just moving on to the next thing. the person who put labor into presenting this information to you would also love to know that someone is truly looking and listening.

explore! by clicking links on a website, it’s easy to go down rabbitholes of more and more websites that you can get lost in for hours.

seeking out fansites or pages for the stuff you love is great and fulfilling, but reading someone’s site about a topic you’ve never even heard of before can be fun, too. i encourage you to branch out and really look for all the indie web has to offer.

i hope this post helps you get started with using and browsing the indie web! feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions or want any advice. <3

[neil-gaiman]

Hello Mr Neil Gaiman, I write to say you have ruined me; again. Four times in my life I have been utterly and hopelessly rotted and ruined and consumed by your work. First was when I was 4 and first watched Coraline, I didn't even know who you were and couldn't conceive it either way back then; but I remember watching the movie so much until the disc scratched, and making my mum buy me a coraline doll and lalaloopsy dolls that reminded me of it. Then when I was 12, when season one of good omens came out, and I immediately found out it was a book (WHAT?? IT'S A BOOK?? I NEED TO READ IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE-)(I read it), and it was all I could find myself speaking about for months. This year when season 2 came out, I was absolutely heartbroken, and this altered my brain in a way I had never even dreamed possible; everything clicked that the common denominator in making me go insane was *you*, so I followed you on tumblr and everywhere I could and I made it my life's mission to read more of your books. First, as soon as I could, I read The Neil Gaiman Reader in two days and it was SO GOOD (and returned it to the library as soon as I finished), and I knew instantly I had to get The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Only trouble is, where I live has basically no books, of anyone's, ever, so I searched probably five different bookshops until I found it and I immediately got it. I wasn't allowed to read it till Christmas though. Then Christmas day came, the day I had hyped up in my head for so long, simply because I got to read this book, so in one sitting on Christmas, I read the ocean at the end of the lane. I think I have found a new obsession to occupy my brain. How do you write all of these things? How do you inspire these feelings? I feel like you have a kind of magic to you. I have spent basically the whole day since googling everything I can about this novel (and hoping, wishing and praying that the play will return and come to Western Australia some day), but now I have the VERY URGENT request of answering my questions please please please pretty please. 1) What are some things you wish people knew about The Ocean At The End Of The Lane that they don't know already? 2)What are questions that you want people to ask about it, but haven't yet? 3) Where did you get all of the magic and emotion and EVERYTHING encapsulated those pages? - Yours sincerely, an extremely obsessed high school senior.

Dear E.O.H.S.S.

I'm really happy it had that effect on you. Now we both have to hope that the National Theatre adaptation of The Ocean at the End of the Lane gets revived and makes it to Australia, because most of your questions are sort of answered in the play.

[taesanluv3r]

studio sessions.

han taesan x reader

taesan n reader r both idols! refers to taesan by his real name (dongmin) in most of this, super cuteness TT lowercase intended, ignore any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors! enjoyy <3

wc: 3,561

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖

"and i guess...i guess i'm just...in love with you?"

"tsk...no, that's not it" yn ln groans as she leans her head onto her knee. "if you could look through my eyes, if you could listen to the beat of my heart...if we switched places for just a moment you'd see all the truth about you that i've kept within me..." the idol girl read out loud, her cursor skimming through the page of lyrics she had just typed out onto the otherwise empty google document that stood before her on the computer screen. "and you'd figure me out...you'd see what this is all about..." the words seem to naturally come out of her head, like she was born to create catchy rhymes out of thin air. "you'd see what a fool i am, all the stupid things i'd do...all the proof that...uh..." she pauses for a moment, repeating that last line once again in search for the final words of her new song. "all the proof that...ah! all the stupid things i'd do, all the proof that i'm so in love with you!" yn emphasizes the final line, excitedly clicking the keys on her mechanical keyboard. she nods once, reading through the whole page once more before hitting the save button atop the screen. "perfect"

the young k-pop idol girl smiles to herself, the lyrics she had just written rolling satisfyingly out of her tongue as she read them again and again for the hundredth time. see, yn wrote almost all of her own songs- hell! she wrote about 70% of her group's discography all together. she loved it. she loved the idea of putting her own thoughts and troubles into words, the idea of turning her mind into a collection of rhymes. even on her off days like this one, she'd lock herself up in a random studio at the KOZ floor of the HYBE building, spending hours in front of the screen just writing. however, there was one problem. as much as the girl loved to write lyrics, she had but a clue how to actually turn them into listenable tunes. so, most times out of ten, when the girl was running out of possible strumming patterns on her ukulele, she would need to seek some sort of help from her company seniors. more specifically, from the guy she wrote half her songs about. the guy she had known since they were trainees, the guy she had a crush on for as long as she knew. she had to seek help from the musical genius behind many of her unreleased tracks, from the one and only, han dongmin, famously known as taesan of boynextdoor.

yn picks up her phone, scrolling through a few notifications she hadn't read yet, replying to her members in their group-chat, and sending a selfie to her mom who was wondering what she'd been doing these days. then the girl scrolls some more, searching for one particular contact in the sea of kakaotalk chats that flooded her screen. an unconscious smile makes its way onto her lips as she finds what she had been looking for. 'dongminie' the contact name, paired with half his face in his profile were enough to send the girl's heart to do cartwheels in her chest. she clicks on it, waiting for half a second as their previous texts loaded onto the screen.

r u busy?

she watches as a little green dot appears almost instantly on the bottom corner of his profile, an indicator that he was online to read her texts.

dongminie not rnn just finished schedules why? miss me? hahahah

his last text causes the girl to roll her eyes. the smile still present on her face as her fingers move to type out a response.

pftt u wish i just wrote another song 🤗

yn blinks once, then twice, waiting for him to finish typing.

dongminie another one??!!??! u psycho...what are you? a rhyme machine or something?? let me guess...u need help composing it? 🥱

she giggles, he knows her too well.

pleaaaseeee? not like u have anything to do either and i think this one is gonna be rlly rlly good...trust me!!!!

yn's hand moves to her mouse, placing her phone on one side of the desk. she shuts down her computer, already knowing his answer despite not really looking at his response.

dongminie fine... but only bcs i hv nothing else to do n making music is just something i love too much to turn down 😼 just come here, i'm in the studio as usual

and with that the girl gets up, stretching her body out in the process as she gathers her things into her shoulder bag and walking out the door. it doesn't take long for her to reach his studio, smiling softly as she makes contact with the familiar grey wall that surrounded the whole of their company building. yn lifts a hand up to tap against the door, knocking politely before a voice from inside asked her to come in.

"hey" han taesan says, turning around in his office chair. his hair laid flat against his forehead, and he wore a simple white shirt paired with some vintage jeans, the long black coat stashed against the corner of the room where his bag was completing his usually chic outfit. it seems he had been working on something too, the music program still opened on the brightly lit monitor that sat on the large desk. the idol boy smiled at the girl, reaching over to the side to pull another chair for her to sit in beside him and inviting her over. "hey, what you up to?" yn asked, taking the seat and dropping her things on the floor beside her. "nothing much...just some song drafts for the comeback" he replied, cursor hovering over the save button. "and you? seriously? another song?" the boy exaggerated his words dramatically, laughing when she rolls her eyes and playfully hits his shoulder.

"whatever! i just felt like writing today, alright? besides...this one's gonna be a hit" yn says, nodding proudly as she did so. dongmin laughs again, "you say that every time...and most times you don't even end up releasing them!" his words sound tired, as if he were getting sick of helping her make all these songs and none of them actually going out to the world. however, that was far from the truth, the boy would never ever be sick of it. he'd tell her time and time again how he only did these things because of his sole love for musical production, and she'd just nod, going along with anything that would turn her words into tunes. she didn't know the full story, she'd never know that only half of what dongmin said was real, and that despite his fascination in the art, the only reason he did any of this was because he, too, was in love with the girl sitting in his studio beside him right now and he'd take up every opportunity to be with her amidst both their busy schedules.

"so what kind of song is it then?" the boy asks, opening up a new project on the computer before bending down to plug his mini keyboard into the socket. the girl giggles before she speaks, "you're not gonna believe this..." she prolongs, watching the way his features washed down into a monotone and bored expression. "really? do you write anything other than love songs?" she laughs again, "i'm afraid they're the only thing i can write, dongmin" he sighs, "i mean seriously...what loser has you writing all these lovey dovey songs?" his words cause a scoff to escape her mouth. "says you? mister i keep thinking about you, mister just you and me...please, if anything, you're more lovey-dovey than me!" yn's outburst makes his stomach turn, grinning sheepishly as he begins scrolling through the variety of digital instruments he had downloaded on the program. "shall we?" dongmin asks finally, everything prepared for their music-making session. yn nods excitedly, her smile matching his own.

"we shall"

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖

"that's so good oh my god...han dongmin, you musical genius" yn claps her hands together as the melody the two had just come up with came to an end. dongmin laughs, his hand slapping over his mouth as he did so; a habit of his that she found so cute. he moves the mouse so that the rows and rows of drum, bass, and other instrumentals on the screen became smaller and compressed into a single line of recordings. the song is smooth-sounding, the 808s and soft drums matching perfectly with the r&b rhythm they had decided on for the track. "now...vocals. it's time to put that pretty voice of yours to good use, yn" the boy says, grinning at her as he began to bend down to grab a mic and it's stand from the cupboard beneath the desk. she blushes slightly at his sudden compliment, giggling as she playfully rolls her eyes. "here" he says, handing her his pair of black headphones, asking her to put them on while he set up the mic for recording. yn nods, the headphones sliding down the sides of her face from how big they were compared to her head. he laughed, reaching over to adjust it to her size.

"is that fine?" he asked, eyes never leaving hers. "mhm" she hummed, face flushing, suddenly feeling shy from all the eye-contact. he must've noticed, a proud smirk making it's way onto his pink lips. "okay, tell me when you're ready" dongmin says, his finger grazing against the mouse as he prepared the program for recording. yn nods, pulling out the song lyrics that remained neatly typed out on the google doc she had opened on her phone. she took a deep breath in, adjusting the mic that sat on the table before her. then she takes one quick look at him, a look of determination on both their faces.

"okay, let's start"

the boy presses the space bar on his keyboard, a quiet metronome entering the girl's ears as the instrumental they had just composed started playing. she follows the count, nodding along to the sound and waiting for the fourth beat where she'd start singing. signaling for her to begin, the guy beside her nods his head and points his finger towards the screen at the same time, trying his best not to squeal like a little girl when her honey-like voice fills the otherwise silent atmosphere of the studio.

"i'd spend every free moment of my time sitting in a room with you, i would quit a job just in case you wanted me to. a thousand more rhymes i could write, hours and hours going into new songs. i begin to see you for all your rights, ignoring all your wrongs"

dongmin listened carefully to the lyrics, the way he always did, beginning to wonder again who she had in mind while writing such things. he watched the way her eyebrows knitted together as she hit a higher note, the way she bit her lips and narrowed her eyes as she played back the recording, listening to it again and again as she re-did each verse a dozen more times. yn felt his gaze on her, the same gaze she felt every time they had these studio sessions together. she'd turn to him annoyed, telling him she can't sing properly if he kept staring at her that way. then he'd laugh, teasing her about how red her cheeks got when she sang and the way her own lyrics had her smiling like an idiot.

"and you'd figure me out, you'd see what this is all about. you'd see what a fool i am, all the stupid things i'd do. all the proof that i only love when it's for you"

the finished demo comes to an end, yn and dongmin sharing a satisfied round of applause as he leans forward to hit pause on the keyboard. "another great song, as expected from us!" the idol girl cheers, patting herself on the shoulder in praise. "yeah, another great song that no one other than us will ever hear" the boy says, passing her a bottle of water. she rolls her eyes as she takes a sip, sighing before turning over to him. "wanna know why i never release these things?" his eyes widen and ears perk up, nodding slowly so as to ask her to continue. yn sighs once more, looking away from him this time as she plays with the hem of her t-shirt.

"it's cause of the lyrics. if i release these things, the fans will come up with all sorts of rumours about them. like who it's about, or why i'd write songs like that...and i don't know..." she trails off, leaning against the back-rest of the chair. "i guess i just don't want people to make it a big thing...you know?" he nods again, understanding where she was coming from. "yeah, i get it. i mean, every time my own unreleased stuff gets out, the fans come up with all sorts of ideas...so i get you" they share a mutual understanding, the girl smiles sweetly at the idea of how quickly they got each other; another thing about him she could write a billion songs about.

"i'd like to say i'm no better than those fans though..." dongmin begins, inflicting a curious look from yn. "what do you mean?" she asks, head tilted off slightly to the side as she looked at him. "i mean like...every time we have these sessions, i wonder who your songs are about too...if i think too much about it, i start to see why fans so quickly are able to come up with scenarios and rumours...it just comes out naturally, i guess" the girl laughs, stroking a hand through her hair. he mimics this, his own hand tucking the loose ends of his own hair behind his ear. "yeah, same goes for when i listen to your songs, i'd like to know what pretty girl has you so...romantic like that" yn smiles when he rolls his eyes, a comfortable silence mixing into the cool atmosphere inside of the sound-proof room.

"i think you'd have a field day if you ever found out about her..." the boy's voice trails off, his hands busy as he began to export the song they had just finished making a moment ago, watching as a grey box appears and starts glowing green as it slowly saved onto the device. "and why's that?" the girl asks, now leaning against her palm, her elbow propped up on the desk. "well...um...i'm not telling you- you'll laugh at me" his cheeks turned a pale shade of red, the same colour but darker sneaking onto the tips of his ears. in the moment the boy refused to look at her, finding the way her eyes stayed locked on him somewhat...pressuring.

"would you tell me about her if i told you about mine?"

the boy's eyes go big and he turns around to finally look at her again. he nods enthusiastically, excited that he was going to get an answer to all his queries at last. yn giggled at his expression, letting out a deep breath before speaking again. "well...he's a guy i've known for a while now. we used to see each other more often, but now both our schedules are just so busy we only seem to see each other on off days, or in passing at work" dongmin's eyebrows furrow as he racks his brain, trying to piece together all the information he was getting. "i've always liked him. i like how easy it is to be around him. i like how quickly we understand each other, how comfortable it is even when we don't talk...i like that he always helps me when i ask him to, how he makes me laugh and jokes around with me...and most of all..." she drags her words out, looking deep into his curious eyes as she muttered out the last of her sentence. "how easy it is to write songs about him...and he doesn't even know it- even if he's heard them all before"

the last few words were risky. anybody with a brain and some common sense would understand right away the boy she was going on and on about. there was no doubt in her mind that he'd figure it out too if she had given him enough time to digest all the things she just said. however, before he could do so, the girl interrupts every train of thought that went through his mind. "okay, that was my thing...your turn! you said you'd tell me about her if i told you about him, so..." she waves her hands around, signaling for him to start talking.

dongmin cleared his throat, straightening up his back before telling his own story. "this girl, i think almost all my songs are about her...well, at least all the songs i've written since i met her. i tell her about all my problems, and i try to help her with all of her own...uh..." he pauses for a moment and looks up at the ceiling, as if he were searching for what to say next. yn kept her gaze focused on him, patiently waiting for the boy to speak again. "she's really pretty- and smart too, and she can sing. she has the nicest voice, and she's passionate- maybe, the thing i love the most about her. how she loves doing what she likes to do, how her eyes are sharp as a hawk when she reviews her work, how her eyes disappear when she smiles when she's satisfied...how her hair falls over her face as she shows me a song she wrote on her ukulele...i could go on about her, hoping one day she'd realise"

the pair went quiet again, giving both the rookie idols time to reflect on what they just heard. it took them little to no time to figure things out, but they couldn't help the doubt that clouded over their minds. like the boy had said a couple of minutes ago, it was easy to come up with random ideas when the full story hasn't revealed itself yet.

"dongmin..." the girl began, grabbing his attention away from the loose thread of his shirt he was playing with. "huh?" the boy asked, watching the way her breathing got heavier like she had just gotten nervous about something. "if i tell you his name would you tell me hers?" he sat frozen in his seat for a second, a dilemma circling round and around in his brain. hesitantly, he nods. it's now or never. "i have a better idea, actually" he says, earning an interested hum from her. "we say their names at the same time, just so no one changes their answer- you know?" she nods, agreeing with his idea. "okay then, on the count of three..."

"one...two..." they share anxious looks. it was almost as though they knew what was about to happen, yet they needed it to come out of each others' mouth as confirmation. "three" she said, taking a deep breath before a single word escaped from both of their mouths.

"you"

within the split second after the word graced the very surface of their ear drums, the pair simultaneously released the breaths they didn't even realise they were holding. it was as though a weight had been lifted off of their shoulders, a wave of relief washing through the air surrounding them. the two idols didn't say another word, their glossy eyes staring deep into each other's as identical smiles made their way onto their lips.

"so that loser who made you write such lovey-dovey songs was me the whole time? you're telling me i helped you produce a dozen songs about myself?!" dongmin exclaimed, still in slight disbelief. yn giggled, nodding along. "mhm...and the pretty girl you write about is me! funny how that works out..." they shared another set of laughs, comfortably sitting beside each other in his studio the way they usually did. "so...now what? what changes between us?" the boy wonders, suddenly worried about what difference this new information could bring to their tight-knit relationship. the girl purses her lips, shaking her head softly as she began to speak again. "i don't know...i mean we obviously like each other...that doesn't change anything since we've always liked each other..." he agrees, the smile he had on before never leaving his bright face. "i guess we just keep going the way we always have...just that this time..." he trails off, stretching his arm out to grab her hands in his.

"this time we won't have to hide all our feelings in silly songs"

yn giggles when dongmin presses his lips against her hand, "when did you get so romantic?" he just smiles at her, noticing the way her eyes gleamed like they've never before, and the way her cheeks were naturally stained pink. he wonders for a moment if it were all because of him, he wondered how on earth he got lucky enough to know someone as perfect as her.

"i think the romantic-ness happened when i met you, yn"

the end.

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hehe <3 hope u guys enjoyed this 🙂‍↕️ this is one of the scenarios i alway think of before bed TT i love u han dongmin :( also the ending is up to interpretation!! u can say they start dating after this or maybe they stay the way they are knowing they love each other, or maybe they arent ready for a relationship yet! its all up to how u want it to be ♡ tysm for reading, reblogs n feedback r greatly appreciated! love, kona.

[vettelsdarling]

Darling, thank you for the AMAZING writing for my last request. <3 I am here with…HAMILTON! Here’s the prompt: 5+1: 5 times Lewis calls Y/N by a pet name and one time Y/N finds one for Lewis. I definitely think Lewis would shower his words of endearment and I am imagining a shy, blushing Y/N? Perhaps Y/N wants to find the perfect word/nickname to call her special person. Let your creativity run wild! I leave the rest up to you because I love your writings (obviously). Have fun!

𝐏𝐞𝐭 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬

Lissie note… I am so glad you like my stuff<3 Thank you for this request!!! I’ve never really written anything like it before, but it’s an interesting prompt and I’m willing to give it a try!

Things to note

This is set in the 2020 season

Lewis and reader have been dating for a year and a half before that

Reader is an accountant

Tiffany appreciation

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Tiniest bit of angst. Blink and you might miss it

Word Count: 4.2k+

Playlist recommendations: 𝐅𝐥𝐮𝐟𝐟💗, 𝐋𝐇𝟒𝟒

Taglist: @drugged-kitkat, @allwaysalleyway

You were walking home from your 9 to 5 job the day you met him. He’d been exploring the city he was to race in that coming weekend. With your face buried in your phone, aggressively replying to unanswered emails— you accidentally sealed your fate with the asphalt, tripping and falling onto the road. Luckily, it wasn’t an active one. He’d seen you scramble to scrape all your things together and rushed over to help you. Never had you seen such generosity from anyone before. You were used to people minding their own business if you fell or if you dropped something.

“You didn’t have to,” you’d said. He had a number of things in his arms that had spilled out of your bag… including feminine products. He hadn’t seemed to care though. He’d happily helped you load your things back to where they’d belonged.

“Of course I did.” You had managed to collect yourself before falling into conversation with him.

“You’re not from here, are you? I know most people in this town…” He was a new face. Not somebody who you’d seen before.

“Guilty as charged. I’m here for work.”

“What do you do?” It was forward and he had been taken aback but ultimately came up with something to string you along to.

“I’m an engineer… of sorts. You?” ‘Engineer’ made sense to you, as his style was very out there and the designer watches were more than your yearly salary.

“I’m just an accountant.” In stark contrast to him, you had on a white blouse and a grayscale checkered pencil skirt. Your ordinary uniform. Freedom was something you had to give up when you came in for work.

“I see… you work near here?” He had just been following you, not really paying any attention to where your feet had been taking you.

“Yeah, I do. About five minutes from here. Is your workplace near here or are you working from your house or hotel?” Your intention hadn’t been to pry, but the genuine curiosity drove you to ask him anyway.

“I guess it’s near? I can’t really say…  if I’m being honest.” That was obviously not the best answer. He had every opportunity to tell you a white lie, but he slipped up somehow. Did it even matter though? He wasn’t going to see you again… was he?

Days turned into weeks. He had given you his number after getting you home safely that day. You hadn’t been in contact with him until he finally sent you a simple text: “Hey, it’s Lewis.” It had sent you spiralling. You hadn’t been sure whether to pursue the connection or let it slip. For better or worse though, you had replied with a short quip. Not intricate enough to suggest something, but not doing a full swing in the other direction either.

It was, however, enough to spark something between the two of you. A blossoming bud that turned into a bountiful garden. That was you and Lewis Hamilton.

1. Trophy wife

The two of you had been dating for a few years. He eventually cracked, and told you about his actual job on the second date. Though his true identity was a Google search away, it came as a shock to you. Never had you ever believed him to be famous. He was so down-to-earth and humble.

Over the course of your years of dating, he had tried to make you quit your job. Mostly because he wanted to support you, but also because he wanted to spend more time with you. Every waking moment he wanted to spend in your presence. You refused and turned down every offer he gave you. Dating a celebrity was already more than enough for you to handle. You wanted normalcy in your life. Even if that came in the shape of hell sent bosses who cared very little about your well-being.

“You know I can cover you. If that won’t sell you, then Roscoe must. You could take care of him whilst I’m gone.” It was another day of his notorious begging for him to take care of you. It was a sweet sentiment, but even living with him was too much.

“I’m already taking care of him. Lewis, you can’t just make me a trophy wife. That’s not who I am. I want to work,” you said begrudgingly and seated yourself by the kitchen island.

“Trophy wife? Please. You will never be some sort of arm candy for me to show off. I love you. I just want you to take a rest, love.” Lewis decided to deploy a deadly weapon. The pet name. If there was one weakness you had— it was whenever he referred to you with a pet name. It made you all weak in the knees and your feet would feel like jelly. Forget about cloud nine, you were swimming in warmth.

“That’s not fair, Lew. You can’t just do that to me.” You scrunched your nose at him and checked your phone for incoming notifications from your workplace text chain. Or so you thought it looked like. In reality, you were hiding your face from him. It was redder than the apple in the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter.

“Hmm, you know, I’m not so sure what you mean by that, my love.” Oh, how you wished he would stop. It was hard to resist giving in. Especially when he paired it with such a precious smile. Who’d be able to peel their eyes from that?!

“Look, we aren’t talking about this right now. I’ll be on my way now,” you scoffed and left, leaving your lover with the last laugh. Once again, you let him have his victory.

2. Flatscreen

A few months passed before he tried his luck again. With a new offer. Lewis tried to reason with you, but just like always— you simply would not have it.

“No. Never in a million years,” you snapped and closed the fridge a little too aggressively, remembering to mutter a quiet “sorry”. The Brit even got up early that morning to make you breakfast in bed— just for good measure. If you were in a great mood, surely you’d be more agreeable. Yet… he was utterly wrong. You were headstrong and did not agree one bit.

“You need it, sweets.” Again with the pet names. That was the final nail in the coffin for his begging.

“You can’t just expect me to splurge on a flatscreen simply to watch you race on more pixels! I can watch you perfectly fine on our current TV, thank you very much.” You poured him a glass of orange juice and scooped some protein powder in it as well. He drank it all in one go.

“Splurge? You won’t need to. I’ll buy it for you, okay?” He crossed his arms confidently and made sure to smirk like he always did whenever he tried to prove something.

“Okay? What do you mean ‘okay’?! You will not buy me a brand new flatscreen, Lewis.” Your face was flushed and your frustration was only piling up.

“You can’t tempt me with those things you call me. That won’t work.” Who were you kidding? You lived for his little pet names and those brief moments he’d hold you in his arms while the two of you stared into the early morning view.

“Whatever you say, sugar.” Oh, how you wish you threw the juice in his face instead of offering it to him.

3. Restaurant

You were standing next to Tiffany in the Mercedes garage. Both of you were wearing large headphones whilst watching the screens showing your boyfriends. It was hard not to make noise whenever Lewis overtook someone, but you were just able to contain yourself.

Tiffany was surprisingly calm and collected, but wasn’t afraid to groan and sigh if Valterri slipped up. You weren’t the type to show much of anything unless it regarded Lewis. It was something that you’d grown up with. A habit of sorts.

“How long have you been with Lewis by now?” Tiffany asked with a slight tug of her lip.

“A few years now… I don’t think we’ll ever get tired of each other.” You said that as if he didn’t bug you with his endless blabbering about wanting to spoil you and give you every black card he owned. 

“That is just too sweet! I can only wish that Valterri and I will last as long. I certainly love him.” In a way, you envied her position. She was a professional athlete, much like her partner, whilst you were stuck counting numbers behind a desk all day. She was gorgeous too… it was as if a strike of adoration hit you whenever she passed you in the paddock.

“Yeah… Lewis is something else.” You watched him speed past the camera on the screen. A smile spread across your face, knowing he was doing his best.

Lewis managed to secure a pole position, giving you a kiss as he saw you in the crowd with all of the Mercedes crew. Your heart swelled at the amount of attention he gave you rather than his engineers. Especially knowing he was dead serious about his career and his coworkers.

The podium celebration was magnificent. He sprayed the champagne as if he’d won the lottery. Butterflies formed in your stomach at his pure glee. He was adorable.

There was an after-party, but Lewis had other plans in mind. He wanted to take you out for the night. Even though you didn’t mind partying, there was something in him that held him back from letting you do so. It felt morally wrong of him to drag you along to his work retreats.

“You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?” Your face was pressed up against the car window. His hand was on your thigh, gently caressing it. You could almost feel yourself dozing off.

“You’ll see when we get there, honey.” That one was fairly new. It felt more domestic too. That was probably why your cheeks were hotter than an iron.

“You’re crazy,” you said with a chuckle.

“Crazy about you.”

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll admit that was pretty lame.”

“Yeah, it was.” The two of you had a small laugh about it before turning some music on. The two of you had made a shared playlist. One that consisted mainly of your favourites. Since you had far too many, they outnumbered your boyfriend’s.

The ride was long, but the destination made it worth it. He’d driven you to a cliffside restaurant. It was quaint and cosy and had balcony seats. You could see the ocean and its waves cascading onto each other in a synchronized manner. It was beautiful. Lewis was a romantic. Not exactly what someone would expect at first glance, but he truly cared deeply for you and your needs. It was almost impossible to say no to him.

“Lewis… Thank you for this.”

“No, honey, thank you. I won today because you were here with me. It’s the first race you’ve come to in a while now.” The man was perfect.

“Yeah, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to attend that many. My job won’t allow me and—”

“Hey- no- none of that. Stop making yourself the guilty party here. You’re doing what you love and you should not be worrying about me. I see you whenever I’m home and that’s enough for me.” Your fingers interlocked with his as he leaned in to peck your lips. The support he gave you couldn’t amount to anything you’d ever received from anyone. Even your own family.

“Thank you.”

“Anything for you.”

4. Bath

You were dead. Completely drained from your job. It felt like your body was that of a gigantic slug. You couldn’t move a single limb. Your brain had already checked out, so you were pretty much stuck. Being too tired to move, you decided to take a rest on the couch that you’d collapsed onto upon entering your shared home.

Your boss was a nightmare. He overworked everyone to the bone, and if you happened to pass into overtime, he refused to pay you for your extra hours. Was it fair? No. Was there anything you could do about it? Also no. You had to endure him for as long as possible. At least until you could find yourself a different company to work at. Quitting had been on your mind for some time, but with Lewis travelling all the time— you felt that you couldn’t just stay home all day. You still wanted to occupy yourself with a job.

The faint sound of Roscoe’s pattering paws could be heard inching closer. You didn’t mind looking after him. He was the sweetest and didn’t require much of you.

“I’ll take you out in 5,” you mumbled somewhat incoherently to the dog. He had politely plopped himself in front of the couch, staring at you with those adorable eyes. Your hand reached out to scratch him, as it would give you more time to stall and relax.

The more you contemplated whether or not to quit, the more you started leaning towards a self-destructive mindset. You wanted to work. You had to. It didn’t feel right for you to leech off of your boyfriend. That was simply not an option for you.

“I’m home!” You heard a strong voice boom throughout the house. It was Lewis, who had been out for most of the day. He was usually stuck in a billion meetings and was often hard to reach. You didn’t care about that though. You were just proud of him for working so hard. It made you feel guilty for not working nearly as hard as him.

“Hey, there you are. You don’t look well, are you ill?” He crouched down next to Roscoe to meet your face. Your eyes were closed due to the weight of your eyelids, but you lightly shook your head.

“I’m just really tired. Sorry, I didn’t take Roscoe out for his evening walk… I’m a bad dog mum.” Lewis chuckled lightly at the term you used to describe yourself. ‘Dog mum’.

“No need to worry about that. Your well-being comes first. How about I draw you a bath? I’ll take Roscoe out whilst you soak up some relaxing aromas.” If there was a ‘Boyfriend of the Year’ award, surely Lewis would win. He cared about the little things. The things you hadn’t even thought about.

“Thanks, Lew… you’re too good to me.”

“Nonsense. You deserve to be treated like royalty.” He stroked your cheek, causing your lips to tug upwards.

“I’ve been thinking about quitting.” You announced it out of the blue, but Lewis seemed unphased. Your eyes finally had some strength to stay open, so you looked straight into his. A mix of elation and calmness. That was your Lewis.

“That’s great. You shouldn’t work with a boss who doesn’t appreciate your efforts. Trust me, I would know. I’m lucky to have Toto, but I can’t even imagine working with some of the other team principals.” You knew about Williams’ fall from grace after the daughter of the former team principal stepped in.

“I don’t know though… I don’t want to stay home all day long and do nothing. I have to work, you know?” You had to face the music. There was no way you could quit and still be able to work. Accounting wasn’t special in Monaco. You were likely not someone a lot of companies were looking for.

“It doesn’t matter to me. I can take care of you, angel.”He really deployed your kryptonite. The name made your heart flutter as if the two of you were back in your honeymoon phase. It wasn’t fair.

“That’s a dirty trick, Lew. I’m not going to quit until I find a job I can replace my current one with. I’m sorry. It may not matter to you, but it matters to me.” Lewis got up and stretched before walking towards one of the many bathrooms,

“I’ll prepare a bath for you.”

5. New job

It had been a few months since you last brought up your work situation to Lewis. You had decided to continue until you’d eventually short-circuit. All that mattered was that you were a working girlfriend instead of a stay-at-home one. You didn’t have anything against that lifestyle in particular. It just wasn’t for you.

This day was special. You were cooking a vegan curry when Lewis came out of the shower to help you chop vegetables. It was a celebratory dish, as you had just been fired. Apparently, you had been doing ‘the bare minimum’ and that simply wasn’t good enough. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been devastating to be fired, but you were elated. It sure as hell was better than quitting.

“What’s got you in such a giddy mood?” Lewis came up behind you and hugged your waist. Your body leaned into his and it was as if you were floating on clouds. Fluffy clouds of love.

“I was fired.” He pulled away from you and got the cutting board out.

“This is great news! We should eat out tomorrow to celebrate.” He started chopping up some potatoes to dump in the pot.

“I was thinking this could be a celebration. Just you, me, and Roscoe. We could throw on a good movie and all.” Lewis didn’t oppose that idea. He smiled and nodded, continuing his feat with the veggies.

Then it hit you. You’d be jobless. You hadn’t found a job to replace the old one with. A pang of guilt hit you like a freight train. You somehow managed to overlook the fact all day. Your breathing became hard and heavy. You had to take a break.

“Woah woah woah, what’s wrong?” You saw Lewis with the kitchen knife and apron. His image was getting blurry from tears you simply couldn’t hold back.

“I thought we were celebrating? What’s going on? Are you okay?” He put down the knife, undid his apron, and pulled you out of the kitchen. Luckily nothing was boiling. 

“I just… I’m jobless,” you sniffled through your tears. The salty liquid coated your lips, and you could taste the despair. You slowly sank down onto the floor with him following suit.

“Well, that was the point,” said Lewis. You found it oddly comforting, but guilt still clung to every part of you. Like poison, you didn’t have the antidote for.

“I don’t want to burden you like that.” You were able to speak clearer after Lewis rubbed your back for support.

“You could never be a burden to me, okay? You are the reason I’m still standing here today with win after win. You motivate me to keep being strong and keep aiming for higher heights. How could you ever be a burden to me?” His words were like a warm hug. Your tensed muscles relaxed a little bit.

“I don’t know… I’ve never not worked before. I don’t exactly come from wealth,” you sighed. As much as it was about burdening your boyfriend— it was about your own values. Coming from what most would consider ‘middle class’, you always had to work harder than your peers. Monaco didn’t have time to wait around for you, so you always tried so desperately to catch up. It felt embarrassing. Your home country was just as forward and busy. There was never time for you. Working hard was a lifestyle that you had to pull off.

“Do you think I came from wealth? I didn’t. I worked my ass off to get here, and now that I have the means to spoil you. I want you to feel that you can take a rest, okay?” His reasoning was flawed to you. There was something about it that just couldn’t sway you.

“Lewis, I can’t be your trophy wife. I can’t.” You shook your head and swallowed hard.

“You won’t be. Think of this as your new job. You’ll have the responsibility to take care of Roscoe and keep the house clean and habitable. Is that not considered work?” There was no other offer on the table and there was no other option. The only way for you was that.

“Basically a housewife.”

“Darling, please.” Your stomach did cartwheels and the butterflies tumbled around in there.

“It’s okay. I’ll just have to make do,” you sighed and rested your face in your hands.

“Hey, at least you’ll be able to come to more of my races— if not all.” Wow, what a consolation… but he wasn’t exactly wrong.

“You know what? I have to make a call. I’ll be right back.” Lewis got up and made his way to the guest room for privacy. Meanwhile, you stared into the white ceiling. You felt so tiny. As if you were just a small speck of dust. An inconvenience. Muffled sounds were coming from the room Lewis had gone into. You could tell that it was about his job. Something that you already missed. Your boss was terrible, but at least you had something to do every day. At least he let you have 10-minute lunch breaks. Which, in retrospect, was far from enough time.

It took a while, but Lewis finally came back. His face looked as if he couldn’t contain himself. He seemed excited?

“Guess what.” He crouched down to meet your eyes.

“What?”

“You have a job.” He smiled and reached for your hand, helping you stand by supporting your waist.

“No need to rub in my new position as a housewife. I get it, Lew.”

“No. I pulled a few strings, and you’re going to be in the accounting department on my team.” Your eyes flew open in shock.

“What? Wait what?!”

“You get to work from home too, so it’s sort of like a compromise. You’ll be able to come to my races and you’ll be working like any other person. Your pay is higher than your last job too.” It was all too much, but you couldn’t turn it down after he’d just done something so grand for you. It’d be rude.

“Lewis, I genuinely don’t even know what to say. I mean, this is just amazing.” Your tears were all dried up on your face, and your eyes were gorgeous from them.

“You didn’t have to do this for me, you know?”

“I’ve told you so many times now; that I would do anything for you, darling.” Lewis was truly out of this world. His generosity and humbleness were his character. That was him. That was all yours.

+1. Handsome

The time had come for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to commence. Lewis was in the running position to bring home yet another championship. He had been dominating all season, so there wasn’t really a question of whether or not he’d win. That fate was sealed. It was just a matter of if he could snatch the last win of the season. You certainly didn’t doubt his skills paired with his car. He was basically unstoppable.

“You did great in the qualifying sessions, I’m sure you’ll do great now. You’re starting from pole position. You’ve got this in the bag, I’d say so.” You smiled as he got into his race suit.

“I have no doubts. I’ve got my lucky charm with me.” He looked at you with a silly smile plastered onto his face. Cute.

“I believe in you, handsome,” you cooed and winked at him before walking away, leaving him with the effects of having been called a pet name, when he’s usually the one to get the fun out of you. He felt his chest tighten and tingle. Perhaps the race would be in his favour after that one.

You were seated next to Tiffany again. The two of you were too focused on the race to have an actual conversation. You were completely immersed in your boyfriend, hoping that he’d not only win but also stay safe. You were convinced he wouldn’t do anything reckless though. That wasn’t like him.

He didn’t win, but at the very least he scored a podium finish. You were still proud of him. He was the 2020 world champion.

The crowd surge towards the podium stand nearly crushed you several times, but you were able to get in front of everyone else to receive a heartwarming kiss from your lover.

“You did so well out there, baby, I’m so proud!” His heart nearly stopped when you called him that. You pulled him in for a hug, before letting the engineers embrace him. The smile on his face was immaculate, and you couldn’t wait for the ceremony where he’d rightfully receive his trophy. You had been to the same ceremony a year prior, but something felt much more special about this year. Both you and Lewis had grown so much over the span of it, it didn’t feel real, but at the same time— you couldn’t remember how it felt before.

Safe to say, you were definitely going to stick around for a long time. Losing his lucky charm would be detrimental after all.

𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻…

𝘾𝙝𝙚𝙘𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙪𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚!

𝙃𝙚𝙧𝙚’𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩

𝙃𝙚𝙧𝙚’𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩! (𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙤𝙣, 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨, 𝙙𝙢𝙨, 𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙨: 𝙒𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧(𝙨) 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙩𝙮𝙥𝙚(𝙨) 𝙤𝙛 𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣.)

[jewish-vents]

I was adopted by Jewish people and converted to Judaism when I was a teenager. The morality Judaism offers has guided me through navigating my personality disorder, my severe alexithymia, my impaired judgment and my bouts of irrational paranoia. My original family lost custody of me because they beat me senseless, starved me, burned me, broke my bones and actually killed my sister by beating her to death. My girlfriend, a goy, texted me images of alleged victims of the IDF that a single reverse Google image search would have showed her are victims of US military intervention in Syria. And she honestly said, "Sometimes I think it would be better if you hadn't been adopted so you weren't technically sort of part of Israel."

I've never been to Israel but I have been up all night and now, as the dawn breaks, I've come to the conclusion I need to cut her out of my life. My whole life I've struggled with outbursts of anger, it's a part of most Cluster B personality disorders. When she said that I wasn't angry. I felt hollowed out. It feels like she ripped the personhood out of me. Because if you care about a person's well-being, you would never, EVER look at them and go, "I think it would be better if you had stayed with literal child murderers rather than be Jewish, which I am going to conflate not just with Israel but with the image of the IDF spread online". I can't be angry because it's so cruel I can't wrap my mind around it. It seems unreal. I kept checking for hours, convinced I must be having a break from reality because of the stress. I kept thinking it must be a visual hallucination. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and this is going to be a very strange dream.

I know breaking up with her is going to hurt her very badly no matter how nicely I do it. We've been dating a very long time. But I want to have kids someday and I can't do it with a woman who would rather I be dead than be Jewish. I'm not a guy who does the whole "my partner's beliefs have to match mine" thing but I can't raise Jewish children with her. I can't even trust her to see me clearly.

It's taking everything in my power not to say anything to her until I can calm down enough to approach this from a stable place. In my entire life, I don't think a single thing someone has said has ever messed me up so profoundly in my life.

I'm sorry I'm rambling. I can feel that I'm all over the place. Feel free not to publish this if it's too long. I can't imagine how much stress running this blog is. You probably get a bunch of hate and garbage on top of the already hard job of reading everyone's pain. I hope you're taking care of yourself. Thank you for running this blog.

I'm so sorry for all of that. I think you're making the right decision to cut her out. It's very reasonable to worry about how she might treat any children you have in the future, but that was also an indefensibly cruel thing to say to you.

Breaking up might hurt her, but that isn't your fault. You need to take care of yourself. -🐞

[autolenaphilia]

The main reason to use Firefox and Linux and other free and open source software is that otherwise the big tech monopolies will fuck you as the customer over in search of profits. They will seek to control how you use their products and sell your data. When a company dominates the market, things can only get worse for ordinary people.

Like take Google Chrome for example, which together with its chromium reskins dominate the web browser market. Google makes a lot of money from ads, and consequently the company hates adblockers. They already are planning to move to manifest V3, which will nerf adblockers significantly. The manifest V3 compatible chrome version of Ublock Orgin is a "Lite" version for a reason. Ublock's Github page has an entire page explaining why the addon works best in Firefox.

And Google as we speak are trying to block adblockers from working on Youtube, If you want to continue blocking Youtube ads, and since Youtube ads make the site unuseable you ought to want that, it makes the most sense to not use a browser controlled by Google.

And there is no reason to think things won't get worse. There is for example nothing stopping Google from kicking adblockers off their add-on stores completely. They do regard it as basically piracy if the youtube pop-ups tell us anything, so updating the Chrome extensions terms of service to ban adblocking is a natural step. And so many people seem to think Chrome is the only browser that exists, so they are not going to switch to alternatives, or if they do, they will switch to another chrominum-based browser.

And again, they are fucking chromium itself for adblockers with Manifest V3, so only Firefox remains as a viable alternative. It's the only alternative to letting Google control the internet.

And Microsoft is the same thing. I posted before about their plans to move Windows increasingly into the cloud. This already exists for corporate customers, as Windows 365. And a version for ordinary users is probably not far off. It might not be the only version of Windows for awhile, the lack of solid internet access for a good part of the Earth's population will prevent it. But you'll probably see cheap very low-spec chromebookesque laptops running Windows for sale soon, that gets around Windows 11's obscene system requirements by their Windows being a cloud-based version.

And more and more of Windows will require Internet access or validation for DRM reasons if nothing else. Subscription fees instead of a one-time license are also likely. It will just be Windows moving in the direction Microsoft Office has already gone.

There is nothing preventing this, because again on the desktop/laptop market Windows is effectively a monopoly, or a duopoly with Apple. So there is no competition preventing Microsoft from exercising control over Windows users in the vein of Apple.

For example, Microsoft making Windows a walled garden by only permitting programs to be installed from the Microsoft Store probably isn't far off. This already exists for Win10 and 11, it's called S-mode. There seem to be more and more laptops being sold with Windows S-mode as the default.

Now it's not the only option, and you can turn it off with some tinkering, but there is really nothing stopping Microsoft from making it the only way of using Windows. And customers will probably accept it, because again the main competition is Apple where the walled garden has been the default for decades.

Customers have already accepted all sorts of bad things from Microsoft, because again Windows is a near-monopoly, and Apple and Google are even worse. That’s why there has been no major negative reaction to how Windows has increasingly spies on its users.

Another thing is how the system requirements for Windows seem to grow almost exponentially with each edition, making still perfectly useable computers unable to run the new edition. And Windows 11 is the worst yet. Like it's hard to get the numbers of how many computers running Win10 can't upgrade to Win11, but it's probably the majority of them, at least 55% or maybe even 75%. This has the effect of Windows users abandoning still perfectly useable hardware and buying new computers, creating more e-waste.

For Windows users, the alternative Windows gives them is to buy a new computer or get another operating system, and inertia pushes them towards buying another computer to keep using Windows. This is good for Windows and the hardware manufacturers selling computers with Windows 11 pre-installed, they get to profit off people buying Windows 11 keys and new computers, while the end-users have to pay, as does the environment. It’s planned obsolescence.

And it doesn’t have to be like that. Linux distros prove that you can have a modern operating system that has far lower hardware requirements. Even the most resource taxing Linux distros, like for example Ubuntu running the Gnome desktop, have far more modest system requirements than modern Windows. And you can always install lightweight Linux Distros that often have very low system requirements. One I have used is Antix. The ballooning Windows system requirements comes across as pure bloat on Microsoft’s part.

Now neither Linux or Firefox are perfect. Free and open source software don’t have a lot of the polish that comes with the proprietary products of major corporations. And being in competition with technology monopolies does have its drawbacks. The lacking website compatibility with Firefox and game compatibility with Linux are two obvious examples.

Yet Firefox and Linux have the capacity to grow, to become better. Being open source helps. Even if Firefox falls, developers can create a fork of it. If a Linux distro is not to your taste, there is usually another one. Whereas Windows and Chrome will only get worse as they will continue to abuse their monopolistic powers over the tech market.

[imdead770]

anything for Luke and a daughter of hecate, ANYTHING FOR THEM......

had to do my research for this one

for context Hecate is the goddess of witchcraft, magic, ghosts, stuff like that. There's probably more but that's what I got from my one minute google search

I kept this kind of fluffy because I wanted to switch it up, I hope that's okay! If you want smut feel free to request again 🩷

Enjoy!

Luke didn't known much about your mother, most people didn't. She was one of the smaller goddesses. Well, not small, she just wasn't as well known as Athena or Aphrodite. He had heard her name a few times around camp, not thinking much of it. He didn't pay much attention to the name until he realized your own name was associated with it. Whenever you came to camp, eventually getting claimed by Hecate, he started to do his research. He started listening if one of the counselors talked about her or reading more thoroughly if he saw her name in a book. He wanted to learn more about her for one reason; to get closer to you.

Once he learned more about her, he started seeing the resemblances between the two of you. Your long, silky dark hair was exactly how some book described your mother, as well as your overall beauty. If Hecate hadn't of claimed you, it probably would have been Aphrodite. It also made sense why you and some of the Hades' kids were close, you were all connected to the dead. Another thing that made you alike, you were magical. Something about you almost made him feel as if he was put under some sort of spell. Every time you walked into a room, smiling and laughing, it was as if you enchanted him. Every time he was the cause of your laughter, he would melt, almost as if you had cursed him to fall in love with you.

He didn't know how, but your godly parent eventually came up in a conversation. And God's had he prepared for this moment.

"Yeah, she can control ghosts and magic n' all that, right?"

All of that research was worth it. The way you looked at him, your face holding one of your signature, beautiful smiles.

"Yeah... she can. How'd you know that?"

"Uh... I dunno, I've just always found her interesting."

He managed to get out that excuse, you seemed to believe it. Your smile only grew, sending butterflies into his stomach again.

As the two of you kept talking, your mother fading away and the conversation becoming more natural, he was all smiles. He was smiling for a few reasons. One being that he was proud of himself for being productive and learning about your mother. The main reason, though, was you. How your lips moved when you talked, your sing-songy voice leaving them as you joked around with him. He hadn't realized he was starring until you pointed it out.

"Luke? Are you okay? You're like zoning out or something."

"Hm?"

He forced himself to look away from your gorgeous smile, meeting your eyes. They looked stunning. The light hit them perfectly, giving them a magical glow as if your mother was casting a spell from Olympus. As if she and Aphrodite were cursing him to fall head over heels in love and not have a single say in it. Once again he was zoning out, gazing into your eyes like a lovestruck fool. He could've mustered up another excuse if he kept his mouth shut. That only confirmed his theory of being cursed.

"You have really pretty eyes, yknow.."

Shit. He didn't even mean to say that, the words just left his lips. Your mother must've hated him. He wanted to go and dive off the dock and never come back up for air. He was about to go do so until you spoke again.

"Yeah..?"

Since he had been looking down like a flustered idiot, he hadn't noticed the way your smile grew after his words. He hadn't noticed the way your eyes lit up, nor the way you were blushing yourself. Not as badly as him, but you were still blushing.

"..Yeah."

He looked back up to meet your eyes again, finally noticing how your smile became a grin. He couldn't help but mimic the expression, it was infectious.

He didn't notice how you had scooted closer, bit he did notice how you leaned in. He noticed how your beautiful eyes softly closed, and he especially noticed how your lips met his. It all happened so fast, but Gods.. it was magical.

[chaostroberry1]

Haii can you do a hcs of the Greek brothers (Zeus included but it's fine if you don't want to) to their S/O who is a mortal from the modern era?? I rllyy like your writing especially the Apollo's one ^^

Ofc! I'm sorry for the long wait 🙇‍♀️ I've been eating and rotting in my bed for a while. I dont really know about what you are requesting, there's only very little description. So I'll try my best ^^

RoR Greek bros with modern mortal s/o

Zues

- Mf is old as hell, literally. He'd be asking you all sorts of crap and wonder about the technology you have. He already knows about it, but he does like to stare and wonder what you do all day in that little rectangular piece of technology.

- He also tries to find ways to make you immortal, cus duh, he really likes you. But I think he'd be interested in cute little farm games online when you show him the stuff that you can do on your phone.

- he asks you to buy him a gadget, which you do so. but man, he sucks ass at it. You find him trying to figure out how to use it. Holding it upside down, pressing on all sorts of buttons until you have to lend me some help.

- he's also fond of the slangs and way you talk. He often uses your words too. Like "Lmfao!" Or "LOL!!"

- he wants to learn more about modern society, and everything there is to learn about. Until he found out about google. Mf now keeps on asking the stupidest questions, and even calls his brother's on facetime, just to talk to them about the stupidest shit.

- he'd laugh so loud when it comes to you telling him jokes from your TikTok brainrots and all.

- you talk to him about all the newest things happening, and all. And drama. But I think he's more interested in learning new words.

Adamas

- yes he does use the slangs too. I bet he'd randomly gangsta talk outta nowhere and make the most out of pocket statements.

- give him some love, he's just having fun especially after all the stuff he went through.

- I know damn well he makes yo mama jokes, no matter how old that stuff be. He's older than you bro, he's been alive for a very long time. So you better teach him more to mama jokes.

- your fashion sense was interesting, he wanna dress cool too. So he's gonna force you to show him clothes that he'd like to wear, and he'd pick the edgiest ones. 😭

- he often gets annoyed at how you're always on your phone and not paying attention to him, which makes him wonder what's so good about it.

- you gave him a gadget, which he now likes to watch anime in, or sports probably. Basically anything interesting.

Hades

- he finds you very endearing, and loves you very much. He'd find a way to turn you immortal so that he can care for you forever.

- yes he installed wifi in his place so that you could stay happy, and do whatever the hell you do on your gadgets.

- Bet you bought a TV and watched anime there with him, or maybe TV series or shows. Could even be horror movies. He loves to cuddle up with you whenever you guys watch a horror movie, cus he knows that he'll be the one to protect you when you get scared or tired.

- when you gave him a gadget, he didn't know what to use it for, but you said that he could chat with other people no matter where they at. And even store photos of whatever he wanted.

- it truly amazed him how far humanity had evolved. Now he can just search up anything he had questions about, or facetime his brother's, or buy something for you.

- he likes to listen to songs he finds, and now he's never really bored like he used to be. Maybe gadgets weren't so bad. He knows how to limit himself, and that's why he tries to limit it fro you too. He doesn't want your eyes to hurt, and wants you to get rest.

- there's so many things he wants to learn from you. And how humans do their daily thing. It's amusing to watch.

Poseidon

- Bro he really loves you a lot, he just doesn't show it. But it definitely caught his attention seeing the odd way you talked or acted.

- when you introduced him to a gadget, he just shook it off, not wanting to get into pathetic little things like that, but you insisted. So now there he was.

- he really thought that humans were babied. The fact that they all gotten so lazy over the centuries gave him the ick.

- but he did find some helpful words to use whenever it came to describing stuff. But that's till doesn't help with anything. Like y'all have google, you don't need to waste your time studying when you can just do a quick search and boom, all the answers are there.

- you guys had online shopping, you didn't need to use your legs to do some work when you could just order online. And so much more. Humanity was babied. Everyone was pathetic in his eyes.

- but, you were an exception. Cus he liked you lots.

- I believe that over time, he'd catch himself talking like you, like "it gives me the ick." 💀

- he's such a bitch, but it's ok. Cus it's Poseidon.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello! This is kind of a weird ask, I'm sorry to bother you, but seeing as you're a very intelligent studied historian that I deeply respect, I was hoping you could offer some advice? Or like, things i could read? Lately, i feel like my critical thinking skills are emaciated and its scaring the shit out of me. I feel very slow and like I'm constantly missing important info in relation to news/history/social activism stuff. Thats so vague, sorry, but like any tips on how i can do better?

Aha, thank you. There was recently a good critical-thinking infograph on my dash, so obviously I thought I remembered who reblogged it and checked their blog, it wasn't them, thought it was someone else, checked their blog, it also wasn't them, and now I can't find it to link to. Alas. But I will try to sum up its main points and add a few of my own. I'm glad you're taking the initiative to work on this for yourself, and I will add that while it can seem difficult and overwhelming to sort through the mass of information, especially often-false, deliberately misleading, or otherwise bad information, there are a few tips to help you make some headway, and it's a skill that like any other skill, gets easier with practice. So yes.

The first and most general rule of thumb I would advise is the same thing that IT/computer people tell you about scam emails. If something is written in a way that induces urgency, panic, the feeling that you need to do something RIGHT NOW, or other guilt-tripping or anxiety-inducing language, it is -- to say the least -- questionable. This goes double if it's from anonymous unsourced accounts on social media, is topically or thematically related to a major crisis, or anything else. The intent is to create a panic response in you that overrides your critical faculties, your desire to do some basic Googling or double-checking or independent verification of its claims, and makes you think that you have to SHARE IT WITH EVERYONE NOW or you are personally and morally a bad person. Unfortunately, the world is complicated, issues and responses are complicated, and anyone insisting that there is Only One Solution and it's conveniently the one they're peddling should not be trusted. We used to laugh at parents and grandparents for naively forwarding or responding to obviously scam emails, but now young people are doing the exact same thing by blasting people with completely sourceless social media tweets, clips, and other manipulative BS that is intended to appeal to an emotional gut rather than an intellectual response. When you panic or feel negative emotions (anger, fear, grief, etc) you're more likely to act on something or share questionable information without thinking.

Likewise, you do have basic Internet literacy tools at your disposal. You can just throw a few keywords into Google or Wikipedia and see what comes up. Is any major news organization reporting on this? Is it obviously verifiable as a fake (see the disaster pictures of sharks swimming on highways that get shared after every hurricane)? Can you right-click, perform a reverse image search, and see if this is, for example, a picture from an unrelated war ten years ago instead of an up-to-date image of the current conflict? Especially with the ongoing Israel/Palestine imbroglio, we have people sharing propaganda (particularly Hamas propaganda) BY THE BUCKETLOAD and masquerading it as legitimate news organizations (tip: Quds News Network is literally the Hamas channel). This includes other scuzzy dirtbag-left websites like Grayzone and The Intercept, which often have implicit or explicit links to Russian-funded disinformation campaigns and other demoralizing or disrupting fake news that is deliberately designed to turn young left-leaning Westerners against the Democrats and other liberal political parties, which enables the electoral victory of the fascist far-right and feeds Putin's geopolitical and military aims. Likewise, half of our problems would be solved if tankies weren't so eager to gulp down and propagate anything "anti-Western" and thus amplify the Russian disinformation machine in a way even the Russians themselves sometimes struggle to do, but yeah. That relates to both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

Basically: TikTok, Twitter/X, Tumblr itself, and other platforms are absolutely RIFE with misinformation, and this is due partly to ownership (the Chinese government and Elon Fucking Musk have literally no goddamn reason whatsoever to build an unbiased algorithm, and have been repeatedly proven to be boosting bullshit that supports their particular worldviews) and partly due to the way in which the young Western left has paralyzed itself into hypocritical moral absolutes and pseudo-revolutionary ideology (which is only against the West itself and doesn't think that the rest of the world has agency to act or think for itself outside the West's influence, They Are Very Smart and Anti-Colonialist!) A lot of "information" in left-leaning social media spaces is therefore tainted by this perspective and often relies on flat-out, brazen, easily disprovable lies (like the popular Twitter account insisting that Biden could literally just overturn the Supreme Court if he really wanted to). Not all misinformation is that easy to spot, but with a severe lack of political, historical, civic, or social education (since it's become so polarized and school districts generally steer away from it or teach the watered-down version for fear of being attacked by Moms for Liberty or similar), it is quickly and easily passed along by people wanting trite and simplistic solutions for complex problems or who think the extent of social justice is posting the Right Opinions on social media.

As I said above, everything in the world is complicated and has multiple factors, different influences, possible solutions, involved actors, and external and internal causes. For the most part, if you're encountering anything that insists there's only one shiningly righteous answer (which conveniently is the one All Good and Moral People support!) and the other side is utterly and even demonically in the wrong, that is something that immediately needs a closer look and healthy skepticism. How was this situation created? Who has an interest in either maintaining the status quo, discouraging any change, or insisting that there's only one way to engage with/think about this issue? Who is being harmed and who is being helped by this rhetoric, including and especially when you yourself are encouraged to immediately spread it without criticism or cross-checking? Does it rely on obvious lies, ideological misinformation, or something designed to make you feel the aforementioned negative emotions? Is it independently corroborated? Where is it sourced from? When you put the author's name into Google, what comes up?

Also, I think it's important to add that as a result, it's simply not possible to distill complicated information into a few bite-sized and easily digestible social media chunks. If something is difficult to understand, that means you probably need to spend more time reading about it and encountering diverse perspectives, and that is research and work that has to take place primarily not on social media. You can ask for help and resources (such as you're doing right now, which I think is great!), but you can't use it as your chief or only source of information. You can and should obviously be aware of the limitations and biases of traditional media, but often that has turned into the conspiracy-theory "they never report on what's REALLY GOING ON, the only information you can trust is random anonymous social media accounts managed by God knows who." Traditional media, for better or worse, does have certain evidentiary standards, photographing, sourcing, and verifying requirements, and other ways to confirm that what they're writing about actually has some correspondence with reality. Yes, you need to be skeptical, but you can also trust that some of the initial legwork of verification has been done for you, and you can then move to more nuanced review, such as wording, presentation of perspective, who they're interviewing, any journalistic assumptions, any organizational shortcomings, etc.

Once again: there is a shit-ton of stuff out there, it is hard to instinctively know or understand how to engage with it, and it's okay if you don't automatically "get" everything you read. That's where the principle of actually taking the time to be informed comes in, and why you have to firmly divorce yourself from the notion that being socially aware or informed means just instantly posting or sharing on social media about the crisis of the week, especially if you didn't know anything about it beforehand and are just relying on the Leftist Groupthink to tell you how you should be reacting. Because things are complicated and dangerous, they take more effort to unpick than just instantly sharing a meme or random Twitter video or whatever. If you do in fact want to talk about these things constructively, and not just because you feel like you're peer-pressured into doing so and performing the Correct Opinions, then you will in fact need to spend non-social-media time and effort in learning about them.

If you're at a university, there are often subject catalogues, reference librarians, and other built-in tools that are there for you to use and which you SHOULD use (that's your tuition money, after all). That can help you identify trustworthy information sources and research best practices, and as you do that more often, it will help you have more of a feel for things when you encounter them in the wild. It's not easy at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes more so, and will make you more confident in your own judgments, beliefs, and values. That way when you encounter something that you KNOW is wrong, you won't be automatically pressured to share it just to fit in, because you will be able to tell yourself what the problems are.

Good luck!

[datesinredink]

could you possibly write headcanons you have of how the rise yanderes would like psychologically manipulate/punish their darling? i’m all for physical violence but what do they do to mess their darling up in the head?

ty very much for reading this if you do :)

THANK YOU SO MUCH RAGHHHHHH!!!!! Since this is such a fun question to answer im gonna order these from most to least awful. The ranking is just my opinion and i would LOVE to see what other people think jhwhnwiurfj i decided to chug a soda to write this and i think that was a great decision because i immediately came up with smth for donnie because of it.

I decided to search up some ACTUAL psychological torture methods that have been/are used in real life and let normal manipulation take more of a backseat so that this didn’t end up too repetitive- honestly would recommend researching it, it’s a fun topic.

Trigger warnings: Very unfun use of technology in your arm, Drugging, More drugging, Even more drugging, Withholding of food/water (+ a more mild example of doing so but it still happens), Mild descriptions of gore, Mentions of blood, general yandere stuff like kidnapping, and likely others- please ask me to tag anything else triggering, because unfortunately I am not perfect.

1- Donnie.

This might be surprising to some of you. Yes, Leo is the manipulator- he’s the face man, the people guy, but I think that in terms of sheer awfulness- Donnie is going to win here simply because of the potential with his tech.

He’s a genius with access to mystic powers who has incredible skill with both designing and creating various machines and gadgets. I think that he’d be very creative, just considering how much he thought to fit into just his bō staff.

My first thought was that he could come up with a small device (which might be able to double as a tracker) to embed under your skin that could move around. It would skitter up and down your arm like a beetle (likely your dominant arm, just to be worse) and be a nice cherry on top of anything else he could come up with.

To pair with that, he could force some type of hallucinogenic drug down your throat- after some googling, LSD would be a likely candidate. While apparently it usually only causes “pseudo-hallucinations” (where you know that they aren’t real, whereas true hallucinations would be where you think they are), true hallucinations can happen, and the pseudo-hallucinations combined with the environment alone would be enough to cause a panic attack. Not even to mention the kind of drugs that the mystic city might have. (edit: i just found out about datura??? GODDAMN THAT’S A STRONG DRUG.)

Also, I think that Donnie would actually take decent care of you prior to any sort of escape attempt or broken rule. He’d hate for you to waste away in a dark room for the rest of your now shared life, so he would take you outside to some private space for a set amount of time everyday while you’re chained to him and probably gagged so you don’t call for help- you need time in the sun and exercise, after all. That’s why I think he’d also stop doing that if you broke a rule. You don’t want to be anywhere near him, and he supposes that he’s fine with that- but if you really don’t want anything to do with Donnie anymore, then you’ll just have to deal with losing all the luxuries that came with him being so caring.

He’ll lower the temperature in your room and take the hoodie that he so graciously gave you and waltz on out. He still brings you food and water, but now it’s less frequent and more random since now he’s prioritizing his brilliant inventions. Sorry dear, but weren’t you the one who begged him to leave you alone? Now he is. What’s the problem?

2- Leo.

Even if you haven’t done anything wrong (yet), being kept in his room would probably be a nightmare. I feel in my adhd soul that he would NOT be good at keeping it clean. It’d be living in a constant mess, and as someone who has lived in a perpetually messy house, it will definitely take a toll on your mental health. Not to mention the additional noise from whatever he and his brothers are doing. You wouldn’t be allowed outside of it either, not for a while at least, so you’d never know what day or time it is.

Other than the already constant sensory of his room, I think that Leo would mainly use threats- of which he goes through with. Not against you, though, but against your family, (what’s left of) your friends, and any other loved ones you might have. He’ll drag their unconscious body into whatever room he’s keeping you in, and wait with you for them to wake up.

While you two are waiting, he’ll lay out everything he’s planning to do to them in awful detail- and lucky you, he even left out some things as a nice surprise!

You’ll be tied to a chair and forced to watch as their guts fall to the ground from the clean slice in their now empty abdomen while Leo picks up and talks about their functions one by one. You silently wish that you never told him that you admired his skills as the team medic.

When he’s finally done rambling about the various viscera laying on the cold floor, he’ll force you to help him clean up- “so that Raph doesn’t get mad about the mess”, as he says. He’ll hold you in his arms when the two of you are done, whispering in your ear about how sorry he is that he had to do that, but you really did force his hand, and you know that, right? If only you had listened…

When the list of people you can bring yourself to care about finally has 0 names, Leo starts to instead take things away from you. He starts small, gradually taking and taking like the parasite you’ve learned he is until all you have left are the clothes you wear and him. He’ll even deprive you of food and water for periods of time, and you can no longer tell if you wish he would shut up for once or if you’re grateful for at least anything to distract you from the constant pain in your empty stomach.

Mikey and Raph landed themselves towards the bottom because I think that they’re both more lenient with punishments (Raph would be afraid of hurting you beyond repair physically OR mentally and Mikey has generally been shown to be very patient and forgiving with people he cares about), but I also think that they might be more exhausting to be stuck with GENERALLY, wearing you down slowly in day-to-day life rather than harsh punishments for breaking whatever rules might be in place for you.

3- Raph.

Raph would try to instill learned helplessness into his darling, to make them understand why he always has to be so careful!

It’ll happen the next morning after a particularly bad argument between you two, and when he’s suddenly letting you handle sharp objects again- but oh no! For some reason you feel so sluggish and dizzy today that you messed up and sliced open your arm. It’s ok- Raph’s here for you! He’ll either patch up your arm himself or take you to Leo, and after it’s taken care of he’ll scold you and say that it’s fine, maybe he’ll give you another chance next week. And he keeps his word- once again, you’re allowed to try your hand at chopping some veggies with him or Mikey- and again, you feel dizzy and accidentally cut yourself.

This will happen many more times- or not, if you give in easily enough- at least until Raph finally decides that he just can’t keep doing this. He brought you to the lair to keep you away from harm, and despite it being to teach you a lesson, he just can’t bear to watch blood drip down your pretty skin.

So instead, he further seals you away- locking you in his room and wrapping one of his hoodies around your head. He’ll keep you like this until you finally learn.

He won’t starve you, at least. He’d hate to watch you waste away after everything, so you’ll be fine physically, but it’ll be hell to not be able to see or properly hear anything. It’ll also be more difficult to breathe properly through the fabric, so I wish you luck with that.

He’s infuriatingly nice throughout the whole thing. Of course he’s angry when you argue with him- when you hurl insults and and completely unfounded whining (yeah right) at him. Sometimes he hurriedly leaves the room so he doesn’t do anything he regrets- but when he comes back- despite your wishes that he wouldn’t- he just wraps that damned hoodie around your skull and chides you for your hostility, leaving you to wonder if this could really be better than death.

You feel insane rambling to his plushies, of which you now know the individual names of, but it’s an admittedly nice bit of company to have when your only other option is Raph. Honestly, you’d rather deal with Ms Cuddles by this point, and she even managed to wring a scream out of Donnie.

At least it’s something you can actually have even an ounce of fun doing that he won’t take away for being “too dangerous”. As long as you can tolerate his absolutely smitten behavior when he finds you talking to them.

Be careful about how loudly you complain, though- it might just land you being completely swaddled in blankets and left to go insane on his bed.

4-  Mikey.

I think that if you were to try and escape from Mikey, he’d conclude that his love simply needs to spend more time with him! Maybe if he shows them how wonderful life is with him, they’ll stop trying to run away!

Unfortunately, I doubt his sleep schedule is very consistent. He keeps you up late at night to try out new spraypaints, recipes, games, anything he can find to do with you will be done. You hardly get the chance to sleep well, and the peace you get in dreams is frequently interrupted.

When he does take a break, he insists on sleeping in the same bed, and it’s much harder to fall asleep with him staring holes into you, as though he were trying to memorize every single detail.

It takes a damn long time to get Mikey to knock it off, too. You have to guess that stubbornness runs in the family, if his brothers are anything to go by. Unfortunately, said brothers’ coddling of their youngest has resulted in quite the persistent guy, and you’re quickly losing the energy to refute him. You wonder how long you’ll need to sleep for the giant spider in the corner of your vision to go away.

When the box turtle finally does realize how much of a toll his shenanigans have taken on poor you, he decides that as the person responsible for you, it’s his job to make sure that you get plenty of rest- and if you refuse, Dr Delicate Touch and Dr Feelings are always here to make sure you’re convinced!

He does a sort of 180- where he once forced you to do everything, he now forces you to do nothing at all, even when your mind screams at you to get up and move. He’ll slip something he stole from the pharmacy into your food and carry your sleeping figure back to his room for your seemingly infinite nap.

In between consciousness, you’ve learned to just stay in bed, maybe draw or write something related to all the adventures you go on in dreamworld.

Fun fact, over sleeping has a couple negative side effects- it increases the risk of diabetes, obesity, headaches, back pain, depression (like you don’t have that already, being kidnapped and all), and heart disease! I wish you the best of luck.

When he finally believes your rest to be sufficient, everything will go back to normal. Except, of course, the lingering paranoia of when it’ll happen all over again will continue to haunt you.

Who knows, maybe he’ll continue drugging you just to keep you a little more complacent. Can’t have you running away all the time, right?

[celestie0]

hello, my lil smut for ch 10 enthusiasts!

i know most of you are here for porn without plot, with little to no care about the plot, but let me get something very straight to you: ellie has mentioned before that kickoff is a slow-burn, it’s in tags too (cue: go check them out).

you might be wondering what a slow burn is (i fully believe you have slow comprehension skills, it’s fine, i myself am dyslexic), but for your ease here’s a number of definitions of slow burn from google:

A slow burn is when the romantic attraction between characters builds slowly over the course of a novel or series.

— bookriot.com

If something is a slow burn, or if it happens on a slow burn, it develops slowly.

— collinsdictionary.com

The slow-burn genre in movies is typically characterized by deliberate pacing, restrained storytelling, and a gradual buildup of tension and suspense.

— collider.com

Slow burn love is a love that goes beyond the initial spark of attraction — it is, as the name suggests, a kind of love that requires time and attention, but that can also last.

— slice.ca

next time, i would suggest you all should use google to search for terms you do not understand the meaning of, or better yet when you do understand something (which i am sure you do), you must always consider it and the feelings of the writer before you send insensitive asks to them.

moving on, you all are in fact very horny and need to get laid instead of asking ellie or anyone to write you smut. ellie had specified multiple time that kickoff chapter 10 will not have any amount of smut in it. if you want to read smut jjk fandom is very horny there are at least 2000 smuts of gojo satoru on tumblr and ao3 alone, you should read those. very easy to find them.

anyways, here are the reasons why smut in chapter 10 of kickoff is bad idea:

reader is an introvert, she’s not weak, not insecure, she is an introvert. i am not saying introverts don’t hook up because they do so. but reader is not the kind to hook up the first chance she gets.

reader and gojo are not just two people who are lusting after one another, their feelings are both emotionally and sexually very strong for each other and they respect one another a little too much to jump in to fucking each other and ruining their relationship before it even begins. why will it be ruined? because they both have not bonded as much as you all would like to pretend they have.

it is one thing to have sex with a stranger or a friend you find attractive and not let it interfere with your relationship with a person than doing the same with someone you are interested in. when you like someone, there are emotions involved. there is a lot more that satoru and reader need to sort out before they should consider sex.

they want a long lasting relationship with each other, rushing into sex will hinder that, because when you rush into things you do not let them develop with the ease and smoothness that they would have had had unnecessary stress not influenced the they. for a relationship to be successful, the foundation needs to be strong. you do not build a foundation by fucking each other’s brains out but rather by doing other mature stuff like bonding through conversations and emotional and significant gestures.

remember when reader walked out of that washroom leaving satoru with blue balls? remember when satoru refused to touch her when reader when asked him to? yes, you are invalidating their entire personalities by asking them to fuck each other already.

they each have a personality, and neither falls in the bracket of fucking the person they want to spend their lives with without letting the relationship marinate enough to last.

they began fresh in chapter 9, where reader made it very clear that satoru needs to reassure her of his feelings. you are not reading the same fic that most readers are if you think they have been together for a long time now, because trust me the last 4 chapters have been anything but smooth sailing between them. if that is your definition of “been together for a long time”, maybe reconsider the relationships you have in your present lives because it requires revaluation.

when they established starting afresh, it meant they will rebuild their bond, which means that they will need to go back to square one and start to focus on one another in order to strengthen their bond and state their feelings in a more tangible manner.

when ellie wrote this fic, she created an outline of the plot, the events that would take place and their sequence; you expressing your disappointment will do nothing but demotivate her and it will definitely not make her write that smut for you.

this is ellie’s fic, and the plot in her fic does not allow her to write smut in chapter 10. done.

a bonus:

if you’re asking reader to make gojo jealous maybe consider the fact that they have indeed established semi-exclusivity, and in order to build the foundation of a relationship you need to act petty like pulling cheap stunts to make the other person jealous.

i need you to realise that kickoff is a rather realistic, non-toxic piece of fiction where two people who are into each other are not going to fuck before reassuring the other of their feelings.

wait patiently, and the good will come to you. if you can’t do so and would prefer to send ellie hate, send in passive aggressive messages to make her characters have sex, or give her backhanded compliments disguising your demand for the couple to fuck, you should:

use your creativity, your knowledge of english and write a smutty fic.

go ahead and read one of thousands of other gojo smut.

stay quiet and keep your opinion to yourself, kickoff is free for you. ellie is not your provider, she is sharing the fic with you. if you want her to do something that desperately, negotiate a commission.

anyways, kickoff has healed me.

some of you loudmouthed ones may not care about plot, just the smut, but most of us are here for the plot. we like the plot, we like knowing what’s going on in the lives of the characters. we enjoy their lives, we grieve their loses. let the experience be fun for us and ellie, and leave if you cannot behave in a civil manner.

the only things that’s acceptable of you readers are constructive criticism and love. if you don’t have either of it to give, kindly quieten yourself and close the tab. leaving the fic would be easier than being frustrated over it.

apologies for the mistakes, the ask was written and sent in absolute rage over a small fraction of you very insensitive people.

💌🫶🏼

flowie, i could cry. seriously idk how you manage to know my own story more than i do LOOOL but i swear every time that you reflect so deeply on kickoff, it has me in awe and in tears because i just feel so seen by you. and thank you SO much for standing up n making these points, because they are points that i've really wanted to make but was just too scared to, and i feel so safe to see that you've written this out for me in my defense 😭😭😭

those definitions of slow burn had me tearing up so bad idk why sdfkjdshfklj i think because they take slow burn as more than just "oh two characters wait long time to fuck" and make it into something more, and honestly even i needed to have that put into perspective for me! thank you so much :'')

your understanding for my characters 😭😭 i just i canttskfksjdf. i totally agree 100% w all your points, and they completely align w the creative direction i want to take w my story. i KNOW that sex can be spontaneous, and doesn't always need to be goody goody and within the confines of a relationship. i have enjoyed so many stories where sex is wild n toxic n crazy, because i just think it fits the VIBE of that specific story.

but i've tried to show time n time again w kickoff characters specifically that they aren't as inclined to act on their libidos, at least not when they truly care about someone else AND when they're trying to look out for themselves (like the examples you brought up, w reader putting her foot down during the bathroom sex scene. or when gojo refused to touch reader in the hotel room bc he knew that she would regret it in the morning)

i knowww that readers have different perspectives on these scenes, and i LOVE that. there's absolutely no right or wrong way to interpret a scene, because stories are inherently subjective and are meant to be enjoyed that way. i have interpreted scenes in my own favorite stories very differently from maybe what the author had in mind, or what other readers had in mind. but what i find really upsetting about people expecting me to include smut prematurely is that it makes me feel like you're not really reading my story for what is is, and rather you want me to make it into something that YOU want, disregarding all of my other attempts to really try n show my readers who these characters are. if reader was spontaneous or if gojo was careless, and these traits were shown in the story, then maybe i could understand certain expectations, but i've tried to put thought into showing their personalities, and for certain readers to entirely gloss over it and move straight to "SEXSEXSEX" is really disheartening, n yes demotivating for me as well.

there's a difference between "oh my god it would've been so hot if they fucked in that bathroom, but i guess it makes sense why they didn't...can't wait for them to slut each other out eventually tho!!" and sending me a direct ask that just says "i am so disappointed you're not gonna make them fuck in the next chapter, even though you've spent the past two months working on it and it's 80 pgs long and you haven't even released it yet but i'm still going to be passive aggressive n find fault w it because! me want sex!! me want sex!!"

i think deeply about my stories because they are personal to me. it's like journaling essentially LOL. i've mentioned before that kickoff is an ode to a painful situationship i had my first year of college, and i've also mentioned that reader is based off of a very close friend of mine who i love very dearly n i feel so bad that she doesn't believe in herself at times, and i wanted to show her how much i'm rooting for her through my story. i figured, well if i'm going to write a story, might as well share it w others and i'm a horny bitch so of fucking course there's gonna be smut.

like it's a win win situation for everyone i think?? i get to write what i want, i get to share what i want, n i get to entertain my lovely lil readers, n we all get to interact w eachother n make cute lil headcanons n talk about our days, n then we move on w our lives until next time?? why can't it just be like this, lol. i think if some people just really toned down their entitlement, then the writing community as a whole would thrive.

ANWYASY sorry flowie i didn't really direclty respond to your words, kinda went on a rant here, but tbh i think you said everything i wanted to say :'') so thanks bb <33 LOVE YOU SO MUCH

[yanderepuck]

@lulu-the-smol-floof and I spent like 2 hours talking about the religions the guys were, so we looked it all up just to be sure. There are so many more arguments happening

Napoleon: was baptized into the Catholic faith as a child, however, he never became engrossed in the faith

Mozart: Catholic (and fairly religious)

Leonardo: more than likely Catholic. He referred to God as a supreme being. Could also be called a spiritual metaphysician.

Vincent: Protestant (father was priest, also nearly was a priest)

Theo: Protestant (father was priest)

Arthur: Catholic turned atheist(after studying medicine) then got interested in the occult.

Isaac: Born into an Anglican family, by his thirties held a Christian faith. Saw worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin.

Jean: Catholic

Will: Protestant

Dazai: Christian but in the way that God is a punisher (in game possibly more Shinto since we see him in shrines)

Comte: He believes...in something

Sebastian: atheist but superstitious

Vlad: Eastern Roman Orthodox Catholic (going off Vlad in Impaler)

Faust: Protestant (was banned from churches tho)

Charles: Catholic

Drake: Protestant

Galileo: Roman Catholic (supported the church and hoped the church would support him, spoiler alert: they didn't)

~~

Fun lil thoughts now

Jean and Mozart are the only ones who go to church every Sunday.

Because here Leonardo is a pureblood, I think that maybe for a hot moment he was religious but very quickly turned his back on that.

Theo is SOOOOO mad that the three he hates the most are the only other Protestants. He's stuck with Will Faust and Drake.

Will actually grew up in the Church of England, which was possibly more Roman Catholic but when you look at his writing it reflects Protestant more.

Best part is that Faust is Protestant but Vlad has him working in a Catholic church. Vlad doesn't know the difference. Faust gives all his sermons in German and they aren't even sermons. He just bitches about this and gives out recipes, but Mozart is literally the only one who knows

Faust: I fucking hate this city. It's so dirty

Mozart: he's so right

Now bc they lean into Drake being more of a pirate, I don't think this man has much religion to him. He sticks to the pirate code. But I feel like if you showed him a sign of God he'd believe you.

Okay so Dazai. When we first talked about this we couldn't really find anything (I was honestly doing a quick Google search, not a deep dive), so we said he's probably Shinto, at least in game since we see him in shrines in some cgs. @tako-cafe informed me that he was first communist (when growing up) and then Christian, but int he way that God is here to punish/torture us bc humans themselves are sin and cannot escape it.

Arthur went atheist once he discovered science basically.

Isaac is actually right with the idolizing thing. It's actually blasphemous to have depictions of Jesus on a cross, or having a place dedicated to God. But that part sort of got lost bc obvs churches don't want you to know that. Also, he's just a god fearing man.

Isaac: going to church is a sin

Jean, across the room: ITS WHAT

That being said, Christmas Day, aka Isaac's birthday, Isaac and Arthur are the only ones at the mansion in the morning.

Dazai is going bc they have snacks. Sebastian is going because ..well.. we shouldn't trust them all to behave.

Back to Dazai. If we stick with him being Shinto, everyone in the mansion finds it weird as hell. Sebastian has to tell them that "no. This is actually the religion, not just weird things Dazai does"

Meanwhile Dazai is like "I need to go feed the frogs goldfish so that we have good weather"

Oh? Comte? Yeah. He believes. In what? He believes

Also, keep in mind that even tho that most of them are Catholic, they are all from different countries and time periods where being Catholic meant different things.

[violette-hue]

Summary: You get stuck in an elevator with the person you possibly hate the most. . . Ushijima Wakatoshi.

Trigger Warning: unprotected sex, trapped in an elevator, language (?), arrogance, smut without a plot, not proof read, **aged up character(s)**

Word Count: 1.7k

A/N: Found this bad boy from my old blog in my google drives. I hope you guys enjoy the bread *muah*

**minors. and ageless blogs do not interact**

Things literally could not have ended up worse. There you were, trapped in an elevator with the ultimate douche bag: Ushijima Wakatoshi. Why the hell did he have to be so blunt all the time? Or so cocky? Has this man never heard of being humble? 

You crossed your arms over your chest, leaning against the elevator wall far from said douche bag. You huffed in annoyance for the uptenth time, earning another pointed glare from Ushijima. 

“Huffing won’t make the elevator work, Y/N,” he stated matter of factly. 

You rolled your eyes. “It seems it won’t make you disappear either,” you retorted, a bit of bite to your tone. 

Ushijima stared down at you and you couldn’t quite pinpoint the look he was giving you. It seemed to be a mixture of annoyance and something else..? His features were hard, but his eyes were soft.

You tore your eyes away from him, not wanting to see him look down at you for god knows how long you’d be in this elevator. You pulled out your phone for some company, only to find zero bars. Great, just what you needed. Tense silence with a man you hated. 

You huffed again. How the hell had you gotten into this situation? Oh. That’s right. The both of you were on your way to a dinner party with the team. You weren’t the manager or anything, but you helped out a lot since your uncle was the coach. 

When you arrived in the parking garage, you opted to take the elevator up since you weren’t too keen on walking up stairs in heels. That’s when Ushijima showed up. He passed the elevator and had done a double take. You could tell he was debating on whether or not he should join you, and, before the doors could close, he stepped inside. 

You mentally cursed yourself for not pressing the closed door button as you adjusted your champagne slip dress. True, it was only a dinner, but your uncle had chosen one of the fanciest restaurants in town and the occasion was black tie. You assumed there would be some sort of after party once the dinner was over. 

You stole a glance at Ushijima, looking him up and down. You’d be lying if you said he didn’t look good in that suit. He looked very good. Instead of wearing a basic white button down with his suit, he wore a black turtleneck. You subconsciously bit your lip as your eyes trailed over his toned arms that were very noticeable in his dressing. Your eyes trailed up and met his gaze and you quickly looked away, red dusting your cheeks. You saw him smirk from your peripherals and you scowled. Of course he would be a douche about catching you checking him out. 

“Do I make you uncomfortable?” he asked after a moment of silence. 

“Yes,” you answered, not daring to look towards him. 

You heard him grunt and shuffle. “Why?” he questioned. You heard him step towards you and you tensed up. 

“You’re a douche bag. You only care about yourself and you think you’re so much better than others,” you answered. The more you spoke, the more angry you became. “You’re so cocky and rude and...and arrogant! And for what? You’d be a lot more attractive if you just were a bit more humble!” Your breathing was ragged, your chest heaving. You were fully looking at him now, your eyes boring into his olive orbs. 

You searched his face for any sort of emotion. He was frowning and his eyes were no longer soft. Instead, they were dark and roamed down your body. 

“Is that what you truly think of me?” he asked, the question coming out low and soft. 

“Yes,” you breathed, sticking out your chin. 

He shook his head. “I don't mean to be so arrogant. I know my talent and my worth, much like you, Y/N…” he trailed off. “Please forgive me if I’ve made myself unbearable.” 

You only just realized the lack of space between the two of you. Your chest was brushing against his with every breath you took and your faces were mere inches away from each other. You looked down to his lips, your mouth salivating at the thought of kissing him and having your way with him in this elevator. You snapped back to reality, shocked at your lewd thoughts. 

You pushed him away, growling softly. “Oh shut up! Don’t try and be nice now—god what the fuck is your problem?! You—you’re so—URGH!” 

You crossed your arms over your chest and shoved yourself in the corner of the elevator, breathing heavily. You were so worked up and you had no idea why. Why was he getting you so angry so easily? You dared take another glance at him and instantly regretted it. You were met with another smirk, this time wider. 

“I’m what?” Ushijima asked, stepping closer to you. 

You shook your head, a lump forming in your throat. You didn’t trust yourself to speak, least you say something you’d regret. You instinctively backed further into the corner, looking anywhere but him. You could feel him looming over you--his eyes boring down into you. You shifted your stance, feeling suddenly small and heated. Why...why were you so heated? 

“I’m. What?” he repeated, smirking a bit. He stepped even closer to you, tracing your jaw with a finger and tipping your chin up to look at him. “Look at me,” he ordered. 

Your eyes flicked up to him, his words making your core throb. You cursed yourself for deciding not to wear underwear, feeling your wetness drip down your thigh. You examined his features, your eyes tracing over his eyes, then his lips. You wanted to kiss him so bad...to feel his warmth on you and his cock in you. Subconsciously, you puffed your chest out to show off your cleavage. You noticed his eyes trail down to your chest, then trail back up, stopping at your lips. 

“Truly, you’re such an infuriating woman,” he admitted, cupping the back of your neck and placing his lips on yours before you could respond. 

You stood there, shocked, but quickly kissed him back. His hands trailed down to your waist, pulling your hips flush against his. You let out a small gasp as you felt his hardness against you, the movement of your lips allowing Ushijima to slip in his tongue. He pulled you closer, his large hands settling on your ass, the fabric of your dress barely guarding you from his warmth. Ushijima squeezed your ass, pulling you even closer. 

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful…” Ushijima murmured against your lips. 

Your eyes flickered up to his, your hands trailing down his chest and to his belt. He watched you fumble with the buckle and helped you pull his trousers down. His bulge seemed bigger now that he was only covered with his boxer briefs. You stroked his length through his boxers and palmed him, eliciting a soft groan from Ushijima. God, you really didn’t want to get dirty in an elevator, but at this point, your cunt was practically begging for it. 

Ushijima grabbed your wrist, pulling your hand away from his crotch and swiftly picking you up. He gripped your thighs and pinned you up against the elevator wall, his lips attaching to your neck. He sucked on the sensitive spot on your neck, earning a small moan from you. The position you were in caused your dress to hike up your thighs, your pretty pussy on display for Ushijima. He trailed his fingers down over your folds. 

“You’re so wet already,” he mumbled, pecking your lips. “All this for my cock?”

You huffed, your chest puffing out again. “Well what if it was?” you asked, pursing your lips. 

Ushijima let out a deep chuckle, pushing past your folds and softly circling over your clit. Your hips bucked up and you moaned, throwing your head back. His lips attached to your neck once more, adding a bit more pressure to your clit. 

“U-Ushijima, please…” you whined, rolling your hips up. “The elevators can be fixed at any--HAH!” You were interrupted by a loud moan as Ushijima eased his cock inside you. 

Ushijima was a tall man, his features larger than most, but you hadn’t expected his cock to be this big. As he pushed himself deeper inside you, you felt every inch of his cock stretch you out. You gripped his biceps, your nails digging into the fabric of his white pressed shirt. He thrust into you, picking up a hard pace. With each thrust, he buried himself deeper inside you until your clit met his pelvis each time. He was pounding into you, the lewd noises of your sopping cunt and his balls slapping against each other filling the room. 

Your puffy walls clenched around him as your orgasm built in your abdomen. If Ushijima kept up this pace, you’d surely come undone soon. He adjusted his stance, snapping his hips into you at a different angle and hitting your g-spot. You screamed out his name, nails raking down his arms. 

“F-Fuck, I’m close,” Ushijima breathed against your neck, thrusting into you harder. 

You bit his shoulder, a scream coming out of your lips as your walls fluttered around his cock. You desperately tried to hold on a bit longer, but the pressure in your abdomen was too much, causing you to squirt on his cock. Ushijima thrust a few more times, cuming inside you. He stilled his hips as he painted your walls white and breathed heavily. 

You tilt your head back against the cold metal wall, your legs trembling and your breathing labored. “Fuck,” you let out, chuckling. “The minute you pull out and set me on this floor, your cum is gonna drip down my leg…”

Ushijima let out a chuckle and pulled out. “I have a handkerchief in my pocket,” he said, adjusting his trousers and buckling his belt once more. 

You shifted, feeling his cum start to travel down your thigh and grabbed his handkerchief. You quickly cleaned yourself up and jolted as the elevator began to move once more. You looked at Ushijima, smiling as you watched him fix his tie. 

Maybe you didn’t hate him as much as you thought. 

[vodika-vibes]

Something Goes Bump In The Night

Summary: Months after you find Fives on Kamino, you and he start looking for answers as to why he's alive.

Pairing: Wraith! ARC Trooper Fives x F! Twi'lek Reader

Word Count: 3659

Prompts: Fixing each other's clothes, "Shut the kriff up and eat your shitty ration bar." and "You make me feel safe." "You really shouldn't"

Warnings: Violence, Fives attacks the reader without meaning to, the word sex is mentioned twice in regards to the reader doing Spoogle (space google) searches, Reader is described as a blue-skinned twi'lek with ear cones.

A/N: So, this story is brought to you by the many, many, many pictures I've seen of Fives with a y-incision. Also, I played around with wraiths a little bit. Because I wanted to.

In the months that Fives has been living on your ship with you, you’ve come to learn a few things about him. 

A, he’s something of a perfectionist. You’re much more of a “good enough” type of person, especially when planning jobs, but he gets all bent out of shape if you don’t have a whole plan from infiltration to escape.

Ironically, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with improvising if the plan goes wrong, which is more confusing to you than you’d like to admit.

B, he’s messy. Since he was a soldier, you thought he would be a neat freak. But he’s not. He’s careful about ensuring his mess doesn’t get in your way, but you’ll find his datapads and models strewn around your ship rather than consolidated in a single place.

C, he’s clingy.

Look, your ship is small. Tiny. Built for one person and an astromech, maybe. It’s certainly not built for an adult man who is built like a brick wall and another person (namely yourself).

So you quickly sussed out that you and Fives were going to have to share a bed. It was a little weird, that first night. You’ve never shared a bed with anyone before, after all. 

But the following morning you woke up with him curled around you, his arms tight around your waist. Like a giant, clingy blanket. And, despite what you said to him that morning, about him being clingy, you’ve grown to enjoy it.

Your family isn’t really the “touchy” type, and Fives curling around you every night is the closest you’ve had to a hug since you were a child.

Which…is depressing, if you think about it too hard.

So, you don’t.

There are other things you’ve noticed about Fives, things that you make note of in your tablet, but would never mention to him. He has moments of extreme violence, never directed towards you, but towards other people.

He’s fiercely protective of you, to the point of murder.

And he’s afraid.

He’s so, so afraid of finding out what the Kaminoans did to him. 

You rest your chin on the palm of your hand and watch Fives move around the kitchenette with an absent sort of interest. He’s always hungry, Fives. Most of your money is spent on making sure there’s enough food on the ship for him.

“You’re staring,” Fives notes as he sits at the bar across from you.

You shrug, unconcerned, “I’m thinking.”

“Oh, is that why I was smelling smoke?” He teases something unnatural and inhuman glittering in his eyes. It should scare you. It should. But this is Fives.

How could you be afraid of Fives?

“You know me,” You joke back, “My brain is just three tookas on a treadmill—”

He grins at you, a lopsided smile that’s actually insanely attractive. It’s really not fair. How dare the Kaminoans choose Jango Fett as a template and not some ugly bounty hunter?

Wait…you’re getting distracted.

It takes you a moment to put your train of thought back on track, “I’m thinking,” You say as you point your ration bar at Fives, “We should hit up Jedha.”

He pauses, his spoon halfway to his mouth, “Why?”

“They have a collection of weird shit. Maybe they know what’s going on with you.”

Fives lowers his spoon back to his bowl and taps the rim of his bowl thoughtfully, “Are you sure you want to steal from Jedha?”

“Steal?” You press your hand to your chest in mock offense, “Fives! I do not steal! I merely…borrow things.”

He points his spoon at you, “And tell me, moonbeam. Have you ever returned anything you’ve borrowed before.”

“I returned your shirt!”

“Yeah. Because we live together. And you kept the sweatshirt.”

“I look amazing in your clothes.”

“You’re a twi’lek, you’d look amazing in a paper bag.”

You point at him, “That is a harmful stereotype.”

“Uh-huh,” He actually takes a bite of his oatmeal, “Remind me, what did you do for a living before you decided to become a thief?”

“I am a recovery expert—”

He raises a single brow and you huff and cross your arms, “I may have, possibly, been an exotic dancer. At a club that only hired twi’leks.”

“Thank you for making my point for me.”

You narrow your eyes at him, “Anyway. I think Jedha will have some of the information we need. Or, if nothing else, they can point us in the right direction.”

“I thought you decided that I’m a zombie.” Fives asks.

“Well, I thought so. But I’ve been doing some research online—”

“Oh boy.”

You glare at him, “I’ve been doing research,” You repeat, “And aside from a, truely concerning, number of people who would be okay with fucking a zombie, I have determined that you can’t be a zombie. Because you’re too smart.”

“Can we rewind to the point where people want to fuck zombies?”

“No. We can’t.”

“Come on, moonbeam,” He grins at you, “What did you see?”

This time, you pout at him, “Shut the kriff up and eat your shitty ration bar.”

“I’m eating oatmeal,” He counters smugly.

You reach across the table to steal his bowl, only for him to smack your hand with his spoon, “Rude!”

“Make your own oatmeal! I’m not sharing.”

“I let you sleep in my bed!”

“Our bed Moonbeam.” He wraps an arm around his bowl protectively, “Anyway, you were saying about Jedha.”

You mournfully eye the ration bar in your hand, and then shove it to the side, “I think you’re a spirit of some kind.”

“I’m solid.”

“I don’t know, Fives. This is why we need help!”

He watches you steadily for a moment, and then shrugs lazily, “Alright. We go to Jedha. You want to go set the heading?”

“Yeah, yeah.” You spin on the chair and hop to your feet to head to the cockpit. Then you pause and step around the bar to wrap your arms around Fives from behind. You rest your chin on his shoulder for a moment, “We’ll figure it out, Fives. I promise.”

You see a small smile out of the corner of your eye, and his hand lightly presses against your cheek. I know. I trust you. You’ll figure this out. His touch seems to say, and you tighten your arms around him for a moment, before you release him. 

“Right. Jedha! Hopefully, the Empire hasn’t destroyed it yet. Or, if they did, they didn’t destroy the information.” You mumble to yourself as you leave the room.

Fives scowls as he looks around Jedha. They’re too late.

Nothing is left standing.

He glances at his moonbeam and feels the stirring of rage at the look on her face. She looks crushed.

He swallows the rage with difficulty, there’s no one here to lash out at. There’s no Empire here. No pirates. No Cartels. Just him and his moonbeam. A gentle breeze washes the scent of her over him, and it helps quell his anger enough that he’s able to speak.

“There might still be something left.” He offers.

She turns to look at him, her wide eyes glassy with tears, “How can you say that? There’s nothing left!” She gestures to what was once a bustling city at the foot of the temple. “They…destroyed everything.”

He’s going to kill the Emperor. And all of the Admirals. And probably everyone who’s ever worn an Imperial uniform.

How dare they make her cry.

Fives takes a deep breath and lightly sets his hand on her shoulder, “Don’t give up hope yet. We haven’t actually looked yet, have we?”

She sniffles and wipes her eyes, “Do you really think we’ll find something.”

“Well, if we don’t then all we lost is time.” Fives replies logically. He smiles at her when she turns to look at him, and gently adjusts her headwrap, pulling it down over her earcones. 

A tiny smile lifts her lips, and she presses her hands over his, “I suppose there’s no harm in looking.” She murmurs, she scans his face for a moment and then a small furrow appears on her brow, “I upset you. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, “Not your fault. I’m controlling it.” One of his hands falls so the backs of his fingers brush her cheek. “I suppose this ruins the plan we made.” He gestures to the ruins.

“Well…makes it moot, I suppose.” She replies as she tears her gaze from his face to scan the former city. “...do you think anyone got out alive?”

“I’m sure they did.” He lightly squeezes her shoulder one more time, “It looks like there’s a path through the ruins, shall we?”

“After you,”

He flashes a small smile and starts down the steps with his moonbeam hot on his heels. 

It takes time for them to work their way through the ruins. They have to backtrack several times after stumbling over roadblocks that Fives determines are too unsafe to climb over. 

Eventually, they make it to the former temple.

There are several openings and Fives checks all of them, before bringing her to one in the back, “According to the schematics, the archives used to be on this side of the temple.” He explains, “This opening should be the easiest way to get there.”

“Alright. Are you going first or do you want me to?” She asks.

Fives shoots her a look, “When have I ever let you go first?”

“Never, but there’s a first time for everything.” She grins at him, and he shakes his head before he smooths his hand over her head.

“I’ll go first, you can come after me when I tell you it’s safe.”

And that’s exactly what happens, Fives lowers himself down on the rope and makes sure that the area is safe, before shouting up that she can join him.

She descends the rope much faster than him. But then, his moonbeam is a thief, so she knows ropes a little better than he does. Fives makes sure that she’s secure on her feet before he looks around.

The Temple really is little more than a ruin.

Honestly, he doesn’t expect to find anything useful here, but he has to look. If only to keep her from feeling guilty.

“Alright. So the Archives were that way,” Fives nods at a collapsed hallway, “But I think if we go this way we’ll be able to find a way around.”

“Sounds like a plan,” She replies as she steps towards the opening in the wall that Fives indicated.

He stops her with a hand on her chest, “Why don’t I go first, see what I can see. Make sure that there’s actually a way through before we start poking around.”

“I can help, Fives.”

He chuckles and lightly kisses her forehead, “I know you can. But I’d like you to stay here. Maybe make a map?”

She blinks, “Oh! That’s a great idea!”

“I’m full of them.” He counters with a grin.

“You’re full of something, alright.” Fives’ grin widens. The fact that she’s sassing him means she’s slowly getting over seeing the aftermath of the massacre.

Good.

He hates it when she’s sad.

It should be illegal.

Fives waits until she pulls her headset out of her pocket and slips it under her head wrap, and he doesn’t move until he hears the familiar crackle of her comm coming to life in his ear.

“Alright, moonbeam. I’ll call out directions as I move.”

“And I’ll mark them on my tablet.” She finishes with an agreeable nod as she sits on a rock, “Just be careful. Just because nothing has killed you yet, doesn’t mean nothing will.”

“I’ll be careful. I promise.”

An hour later, his moonbeam’s comm crackles to life, “—Who are you?” And Fives’ blood runs cold. 

He never considered that someone else might still be in the temple. He never considered it, so he didn’t look. 

“Wait, what are you…Hey!” There’s a sharp squealing noise of her comm being destroyed.

And that’s the last thing that Fives remembers.

You try to back away from the men that are slowly circling you.

Try being the keyword here, as there are five of them and only one of you and they have you completely surrounded.

“Who are you?” One of them, the leader most likely, demands as he aims his blaster at you.

“Who are you?” You counter, pulling bravery from…somewhere.

“I asked you first.”

“I was here first.”

“Do you always talk back to people pointing blasters at you?” Another man asks.

“Yeah, Pretty much.” You swallow hard. Fives is coming. You know it. Maybe if you get these men to leave you won’t have to witness the massacre that is Fives lost in a rage. “You should probably go.”

“Is that right?” One of the men, holding a snipe rifle (which seems excessive to you) asks sarcastically.

“My partner—”

“So you are not alone.”

Fuck.

Kriff.

“It’s fine.” The last man says, “We still outnumber them.”

“True.” The first man stares at you through his helmet, “Wrecker, tie her up.”

“Got it, Hunter.”

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Wrecker? Hunter? Those are clone names.

That or really bad call signs.

“...you’re clones?” You yelp as you take a step back.

The men pause, and then helmets come off and they move so that you can see them properly.

“We might be clones,” One of the men, paler than the others with cybernetics on his head, says coldly, “But you’re a graverobber.”

You ignore his words, staring instead at the handprint on his chest plate. “You’re Echo.” You say numbly.

He falters, “How can you possibly know that?”

“Oh Force, you’re Echo.” You whisper. “You! You have to put the weapons down! You have to!” 

“Why should we do that?”

“Fives is going to kill you.” You say bluntly. Matter of factly. 

Echo’s face twists, “My brother is dead.”

“Yeah, he got better.” He doesn’t believe you, and slowly you take a step away from him when you hear, what sounds like, wailing. Goosebumps rise on your skin, and your lekku twist in discomfort. They can’t hear him.

They won’t hear him until it’s too late.

And Fives—

Dear Fives. Sweet Fives. Kind Fives.

He’ll never forgive himself if he kills his brothers.

And so, when the wall bursts open revealing Fives in a deadly rage, his form constrained by his armor, you know what you have to do.

He lunges at Echo, who is closest to you, and is the most obvious threat towards you. And you lunge forward as well, placing yourself between Echo and Fives.

“Fives! STOP!” You shout, spreading your arms wide to shield Echo as best as you can.

He can’t hear you. You know he can’t hear you.

But you have to try.

A strong hand wraps around your throat, and Fives slams you to the ground as if you weigh nothing. Pain blooms across your back and the back of your head.

Something sharp pierces both of your shoulders, and you bite your tongue to stifle your scream of pain. Though there’s no stopping the pained tears rolling down your face. 

You’ve always been a baby about pain, it’s fine.

Slowly, painfully, you reach up and pull Fives’ helmet off, allowing it to fall to the side. His eyes are blank, there’s no recognition in his gaze, and his teeth have grown to the fangs that always appear when he gets like this.

“Fives,” You speak his name calmly and clearly as you reach up and gently press your hands against his icy cheeks, “Fives. It’s just me. It’s just your moonbeam.”

Slowly the wailing subsides to a level that doesn’t make you want to claw your ear cones off, but his hand is still around your neck, and your vision is starting to spot. 

“Fives,” You repeat his name, “You need to let go.”

His grip tightens, and you gasp for breath. It’s getting hard to stay conscious. 

“Fives,” You rasp his name, “Safe. No danger.” Your hands are still pressed against his face, but you’re starting to lose consciousness. Force, you hope he doesn’t kill you. That will destroy him.

Just as you’re about to pass out from lack of oxygen, his grip around your throat loosens and you start coughing. There’s sharp pain as the nails in your shoulders retract, and Fives collapses on you, unconscious and human again.

You wrap your shaky arms around him, “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

“What the fuck?”

Suddenly you’re reminded that you’re not alone, and you blink, hazily, up at Echo. A stricken, horrified, looking Echo. “It’s fine.” You say, “Everything’s fine.” 

It’s a lie. A horrible, awful lie. 

But you have to believe it.

You have to.

Fives wakes up slowly.

His head hurts, his entire body hurts.

It takes a moment for him to remember that someone was threatening his moonbeam and his eyes snap open.

He’s about to sit up when a gentle hand cards through his hair, “Easy there, Fives.”

He blinks at her, twice, and then looks around. They’re on the ship?

“I thought…what happened to Jedha?”

“We’re still on Jedha, just back on the ship.” She says smoothly, though her voice sounds rough. She’s wearing one of her sweaters, though the shoulders look bulkier than normal.

He sits up, slowly wincing in pain. “What happened?”

She opens her mouth to say something and then hesitates. “Nothing important.” She finally says, and Fives knows that she’s lying to him.

Memories flash in front of his eyes, faster than he can keep track of.

But he sees her, tears streaming down her face, his hand around her throat. His name, calm and collected, falling from her lips. 

He reaches out with a shaking hand to lightly grab the collar of her sweater, and he tugs it down.

There, stark on her pale blue skin, wrapped around her throat is a hand-shaped bruise.

His hand.

“What did I do?”

“It was an accident.” She says lightly taking his hand in hers and allowing the material of her sweater to hide the injuries from him, “It was an accident and it wasn’t your fault.”

“I tried to kill you.”

“It was an accident,” She repeats.

“What else did I do?” He demands, “Tell me.”

“I have a few…minor stab wounds.” She says with a sigh.

“Minor? Or all the way through.”

“It’s not you’re fault.” She repeats, “Not any more than any other time. You can’t help what you are.”

“A monster?”

She moves so she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands moving to cup his face, “Fives, I’ve never thought that.”

“You should.”

She sighs and gently strokes his cheeks, “With help from my new friends, we managed to get into the archives, and I found a lead.”

He stares at her, “A lead?” Fives repeats, feeling as numb now as he did the day he woke up on Kamino.

“I think you’re a Wraith. Or a Wraith adjacent.” She explains, “We have to go to Zakuul to learn more.”

“Zakuul.” He feels like Echo, repeating everything that she’s saying. “You should leave me here. Where you’ll be safe.”

“No.” Her answer is immediate, “No. Fives, I’m not afraid of you.” She smiles at him and brushes a curl from his forehead, “You make me feel safe.”

“You really shouldn’t.”

She sighs and leans in to press her forehead against his, “If it helps, someone else will be traveling with us from now on.”

His gaze snaps to hers, and he feels the stirring of jealous possession burning in his gut.

“Don’t be like that,” She chides lightly, “You’ll like this one.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’m hurt, vod.” Fives jolts at the familiar voice and turns his gaze towards the doorway, where Echo is leaning against the frame. He has a small smile on his lips, though there’s something sad in his gaze.

“Echo?”

“Rex told me you died.”

“I saw you die.” Fives counters.

“Yeah well, looks like we both got better.” Echo jokes lightly, “I’m going to be hanging out with you two for a bit.”

“That’s…” Fives pauses, “Because I tried to kill her.”

“It was an accident.” She repeats, and Fives is sure that she’s going to say that a lot in the coming days.

“Because you’re my twin and something is wrong.” Echo walks over and lightly rubs Fives’ head, “Come on, did you think I wouldn’t help my little brother?”

“We were decanted at the same time.”

“And yet, Rex says I’m older.” Echo grins, “Now, baby brother,” He ignores Fives’ glare as if it’s not even there, “You need to rest.”

“Me? I’m fine.”

“Fives,” His moonbeam says his name in a sigh, and Fives frowns at her.

“I’m fine! You’re hurt.”

“You both need rest,” Echo announces, “I am going to do some research on where this Zakuul place is, and then we’re going to comm Rex for a bigger ship—”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

“It’s too small for three people. Hell, it’s too small for two people, and I refuse to share with the pair of you.” Echo says bluntly, “Anyway. You two rest, and I’ll handle everything for a bit.”

And then Echo is gone, allowing the door to snap shut behind him.

The bedroom is silent for a moment, and then Fives jolts when his moonbeam crawls over him and squishes herself between the bulkhead and himself, “There, now we can rest.”

“...you really don’t hate me?”

She releases an explosive sigh and pulls him down so she’s able to wrap herself around him, her head tucking under his chin, “How could I hate you? You’re Fives.”

And somehow, without her saying it, Fives hears exactly what she means.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

How could he not? He feels the same way.

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