#is this upload still going or do i need to try again entirely

[icewindandboringhorror]

this is not the exact one I watched but I saw one of these "dish scape" things at someone's house who actually has TV (like they pay for dish/cable instead of just watching stuff online) and I think they're meant to be relaxing atmospheric stuff that you mostly ignore, but I sat there for 35 minutes watching absolutely engrossed.. further proof that I genuinely think my brain is incapable of experiencing boredom lol..

[bigassmoonchild]

Ghost

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

Word Count: 3.1k

Summary: Simons body was back, but he wasn't really Simon. No, it was Ghost inhabiting the shell of Simons body, but even Ghost seemed to recognize you. Either way, there were days left of him being able to come back, and you didn't want to grieve your mate twice.

Content Tags: Angst, Hurt/No comfort, Medical Inaccuracies, Made Up Medical Shit ab Omegaverse, Not Quite Simon, Ghost and Simon are different people, Mentions of Violence, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha! Ghost, No Use of Y/N

A/N: I'm spoiling y'all again with more uploads <3. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Fun fact, these take me about two hours to write, but they're not beta-read or edited. As always, content is under the cut and my asks are open!!

Part 1 | Previous, Next | Headcannons, Masterlist

"What are some probable ways we bring people out of ferality?" You asked the squad standing around you. They were a few days out from graduating and at this point you were just filling time. None of them said anything, lookin around at each other. You sighed deeply.

Trip raised her hand and you stared at her. "Scents?" You blinked slowly, waiting for her to elaborate. "If we can get him a fresh scent of some packmate or a person he's especially close to then it can get him a focus point," she explained. You hummed.

Turning to look at the whiteboard you'd started with different plans to get Simon back, there were a few options you had. "The only problem with that, Trip, is that it could cause death," you whispered. The whiteboard had streaks where you'd erased and rewritten things.

Scent. Medications. Time. Death.

You sighed deeply, still thinking over anything else you could do. If you forced suppressants into his body, it would decrease the hormones in his body but the question was focusing on how to get them in him.

There weren't aerosol sedatives, he had ripped off the bindings that they had used to get him in the cell in the first place. 'What's wrong with him?' Price had asked. All you could do was shake your head, not legally able to explain anything. Fuck HIPAA.

Doctors, civilian doctors, had come in and started to try and take over. Even the doctors above you were fighting, because he wasn't a civilian. All they wanted was to use him and figure out how to bring a person out of ferality. Especially an Alpha.

"There are several ways we can fight ferality, but none of which have proven to do them well," you explained, looking around at everyone. There was nothing you could feasibly do, you knew. Similar to rabies, it wasn't something that anyone really came back from.

You sighed deeply. "Attempts have been made, but none of them came through. With too much time in ferality, a persons brain begins to shut down. We don't entirely know why, it hasn't been able to be studied, but there is very little we can do," you had to look away. "Either way, you work your hardest to ensure comfort," you had decided to add that at the end.

All you knew was that you needed to make sure he was comfortable. You knew your mate, you knew he deserved that at the very least. A knock on the conference door brought everyones attention as one of the civvy doctors walked in.

"You'll need to go in there," he told you. Shaking your head in confusion, you looked at him. "If he can recognize your scent, you'll be able to get sedatives in him. You'll be able to help us make him the first survivor," he whispered. Excusing yourself, the two of you moved quickly through the halls to make it to his cell area.

Standing in front of it, watching him stare at everyone through the balaclava, you felt your heart breaking. This wasn't Simon. It was Ghost. Blinking slowly, you listened to the hustle and bustle around you. It was like looking at him for the first time again. A man you didn't know, but was intrinsically connected to you.

With a deep sigh, you looked around at the doctors around you. "I may be his mate, but he won't recognize my scent," you whispered. "I'm pregnant, and we all know that changes someone scent," a few murmurs came from some of the doctors.

Looking away, you glanced at Ghost once more.

"I'll do it," you added.

They had you change into clothes he interacted with you the most in. So you wore your sleep clothes, just something you'd been wearing the night before. With the sedative slipped up your sleeve, the door outside the cell was unlocked.

"You know what to do," they told you. The plan wasn't all that concrete, just get in there and stab him. Very good plan, one of the best you'd ever seen. God, you wished Price had been allowed to format the whole thing. He might have a backup in case things went south.

Stepping through the now unlocked cell door, you took a quick glance back at the doors blocking your escape. Looking through the cell, Ghosts eyes were on you. Unblinking, the eyes you knew were gone. Blacked out, his pupil dilated so wide.

You didn't make eye contact with him other than the quick glance, keeping your head bowed down to try and remain as small as possible. If you weren't seen as a danger, he might not attack you. Might.

Movement brought your eyes up, seeing him standing to his full height and move to you. Slow but still graceful. You could see his face twitching, watched his chest heave with each breath he took. He was scenting you and you allowed it.

Closer, he grew closer and leaned his head close, you could hear the heaving pants as he drew your scent into him. Ghosts head dropped against your neck, pushing your head to force you to bare it to him. You could feel his nose nudging against you, feel his hands grasp at your arms and tug you closer.

You could almost feel tears filling your eyes, thinking back to the past two or so months filled with grief and eventual relief. A huffing grunt came from Ghost, almost displeasure at your scent changing. He tugged you with him, dragging you over to where he'd been sitting for the last few days.

Pushing you to sit, he stood over you. Your eyes opened, looking up at him and feeling the tears finally fall. A groaning whine came from him, his wide eyes glancing around to find something to cheer you up. You knew his thought process, you'd seen ferality in people before.

Only once had you seen it in him.

Ghost dropped next to you, tugging you into his lap and holding you close. He began huffing at your neck, pressing his scent out around you to try and soothe you. It seemed your scent was almost soothing him as well, allowing him a reprieve of the stress and fear over the last however long he'd been away.

God, how much you had missed this. The two of you didn't talk much, but you soaked this in as much as you could. His scent swirling around you, the feeling of his hands and arms wrapped tightly around you. You could feel yourself relaxing, felt the press of his head against yours.

Deep breaths brought his scent into you, albeit not being strong from where you were pressed into his chest. You could hear his heart thumping strongly against his chest, a true showing of his survival.

Pushing your hands to the back of his neck and shifting, just a little, you felt your throat choking around sobs. "'m so sorry," you whispered to him and he made another grunting whine at you.

You pressed the syringe in his neck and he jerked, but you were able to push the plunger all the way down. He whined against you, grabbing you tighter. Over the next few minutes, his grip slowly waned.

His body relaxed fully under you and you could feel the tears sliding down your cheeks begin to pick up. Stuffing your head into his neck, you inhaled deeply. Leather, tobacco and little hints of his own musk. God, you missed it, but the civilian doctors were flooding the room. Pulling you away and injecting him with different suppressants.

They dragged him away, forcing him out of your line of sight. You felt similar to how you'd initially felt when receiving his tags. Numb, like you were watching everything happening over a television.

Alpha is back.

You found Price waiting for you, just outside the medical center the doctors had dragged Ghost to. "How are you, Doc?" You fought the tears, feeling little hiccups coming from your chest.

"I don't know," you looked up at him. "I never thought I'd be able to see him again, but it's not him," you whispered. "That's not my Simon, that's Ghost,"

You knew when Ghost woke up, hearing the snarling roars coming from his chest. The suppressants hadn't worked, but he was still set to be pumped full of more in the next few days. The doctors found you sitting at the front desk, rubbing your face.

"Come with us," they said and dragged you to Ghosts room, where his snarls and roars quieted down to growls. As you sat beside him, placing your hands on whatever you could reach his growls quieted into little huffs and grunts.

You pressed yourself as close as they would allow you to him. "I missed you so much," you whispered and his head whipped around to look at you. His pupils were still so dilated, but you could make out his eye color just barely.

His eyes were always so pretty. You sighed and dropped your head to look down at the ground.

"It's been so long," you choked out. "So, so long," he looked at you, nearly blankly. God, you hoped that somewhere in that stupid head of his he could hear you. "Been almost two months, you wanna know something?" You asked, lifting your head to give him a weak smile.

All Ghost did was blink at you, slowly. Almost like he was listening, you noticed. His heartrate was dropping closer to normal rates, blood pressure dropping little by little as the minutes wore on.

"I'm pregnant," you gave a wet laugh. "I found out not too long after you left for your mission, and y'know what?" He didn't respond, but you could see the dilation of his eyes shifting just barely.

Looking away and swallowing thickly, all you could do was give little sobs.

"God, I missed you so much," you sobbed out. "When they gave me your dog tags that one morning, I didn't know what to think. I was so numb for so long but Price knocked sense into me," you choked another wet laugh. "Just like how he would do with you," you whispered.

"Pups," he whispered, staring at you. Your mouth gaped open, staring at him. His voice was rough, gravelly. It sounded like he either hadn't talked in months or had been screaming his voice out. "Pups," he whispered again, hand moving before getting caught by the handcuffs.

"Oh my god," you whispered. You lunged to get closer to him and heard scrambling at the door. People surrounded you and tugged you away, dragging you out of the door but you could hear it. His heartrate increased severely, and you could assume his blood pressure was skyrocketing again. "Stop!" You shouted, writhing against the people dragging you away.

There was a large snarl from Ghost, you could just see over everyone his writhing form as needles were stabbed into him. The door closed just as his head shot up and you could catch one last look of the fear filling his eyes. Hands tugged you away, pulling you from the area.

"No!" You still were screaming, not even realizing what you were doing. "Please, I need to be there!" You fought against the hands that pulled you further and further from the room.

"You can't," it was Price. "You can't be there, they need to be able to work on him without people in the way," he whispered to you.

"I was getting through to him, Price," he shook his head. "He spoke to me," you whispered, tugging him closer to you. "All he said was 'pups' before they dragged me out," Price looked away.

He sighed deeply. "We know," he said. "We were listening in, but you need to understand something," he made you look at him. "That isn't your mate anymore," he whispered. "He's been feral for too long,"

"No," you shook your head. "No, it's going to be okay," you whispered. "They still have a few days," you looked away. "They can't give up on him,"

Price looked away. "They're giving one more push of suppressants," he told you. "Giving them a few days, they're going to use you to help bring him out but if this doesn't work they'll need to keep him comfortable until the end," you couldn't look at him.

You weren't going to look at any of these people, how dare they give up on him so quickly? For minutes on end, you sat near Price, just waiting. For what, you didn't know, but Price wasn't allowing you to leave.

Minutes dragged into hours. Just like the hours that stole your last moments with Simon before he came back as Ghost. Minutes that you could've been in there with Ghost, comforting him as they did things to him.

He wouldn't know what was happening, his mind was too preoccupied with survival. You couldn't stop hearing his one word replaying in your mind, the recognition you now could see in his eyes. The door opened but you didn't look up, doctors came out slowly but surely.

Feet stopped in front of you, where you'd been staring at the ground. "Ma'am?" The voice whispered above you and you finally looked up. "You can go back in, now," he whispered. You knew that in the few lucid minutes a feral person had were the few minutes when more medicine should be pumped into them.

You had never expected the fear that would fill the lovers when this type of thing happened. When you were still training, you had never expected fear to be combined into others. You had no words for what you felt as you walked back in the room and saw Ghost snarl at you, his eyes no longer filled with recognition.

Sitting where you had been, you gazed over the Alpha. Blinking slowly, you moved your hands to where they had once been sitting, not so many hours ago.

"I miss you," you whispered to the Alpha. "God, I missed you so much," you could see his chest heaving with breaths, nearly see his mouth dropping open under the balaclava to allow more of your scent in. You sighed deeply.

Looking around you, the room was so bare. Something you would only use to describe hospital rooms. It hurt, knowing your Alpha was stuck here. Somewhere you weren't allowed to help.

"The rest of the pack have been helping me out, y'know," you smiled softly. Make this as normal as possible, you told yourself. "Soap's been joining me at my appointments," you looked down at Ghost. "Gaz has been making sure I take care of myself, and Price is doing his best to help during the night," you choked out a laugh.

You hear a soft little hum come from Ghost. His eyes were filling with recognition, little by little. Leaning towards him, you tried to catch his eye. They were dilating, his heartrate slowed.

He hummed again and you looked away. "I need you to come back, Simon," you whispered to him. You looked up at him, gazing over what you could see. His eyes, moving quickly around the room and grazing over you before moving away.

A deep sigh came from you and you sat there with him, watching the clock slowly tick as time carried on. Neither of you said anything and you watched as his eyes slowly drifted shut. You could feel the exhaustion slowly settling into your body, from the different emotions you'd been sent through over the last few days.

Standing up quietly, you let yourself out of the room. With one more look back, you watched the Alpha breathe slowly in his sleep. Closing the door behind you, you found Price.

Gesturing for him to follow you, the two of you slowly made your way to your office. When you unlocked the door, you sat yourself down in your chair and watched as Price closed the door behind him. He sat in front of you, lighting a cigar.

Quiet. For a few minutes, it was just quiet outside of the drag of his cigar and the soft breathing between the two of you. "He's home, Doc," he whispered. "Simons home,"

"It's not Simon," you looked at him. "That's Ghost. My Simon is not sitting in that bed, it may be his body but it's not him," you responded sharply. He looked away from you, sucking at his teeth. You blinked rapidly, trying to get the sleep out of them.

You sighed deeply, rubbing your hands over your face as you looked around the office. The one place where you and Simon had grown so close, the one place where the two of you had found peace.

"I've spent the last however many months grieving," you said. "I've grieved the life of my mate, and now he's back but it isn't him. That isn't my mate," you whispered, giving a short pause. "I can't grieve him again, Price, it'll destroy me," he reached over and rested his hand against yours.

He gave a little smile. "You won't have to grieve him again," he said. "The way he's progressing is making the doctors very happy," you gave a short laugh. "He could be the first case of survival through ferality, and you were the key to it," he told you.

For another few moments there was silence. Neither of you spoke, but you could see the pity in his eyes. Closing your eyes, you just breathed, still faintly able to smell Ghost albeit the scent becoming stale.

"I just need my Alpha," you whispered. "I need him back. I don't care if it means I fight an entire group of Doctors, they can't just kill him, Price," you opened your eyes and looked at him. "They can't just kill him," he didn't meet your eye.

"It's getting late," Price told you. "I think you need to go back to your room and sleep. Now," you didn't look at him, allowing him to guide you to your room. When you entered, he gave you a grim little smile before closing the door behind you.

Now that you were alone, you had no idea what to do. Your Alpha was just a few minutes walk away from you, but you wouldn't be able to enter that room again. They'd close down the medical center from visitors, even with your access as a doctor they wouldn't allow you to enter the room.

Crawling into your cold nest, you laid there. Shirt pressed to your face from where you could still faintly smell Ghost when he'd held you. Closing your eyes, you could almost feel his arms wrapping around you. You could almost smell him right there, right next to you.

And that's how you felt asleep, dreaming of your Alpha wrapping himself around you and making sure you knew everything would be okay. Even you didn't believe it.

Next

Taglist: (i did not realize that the tags didn’t work woospies)

@sae1kie @shinebright2000 @zechie-spams @itsmadamehydra @smiley-roos @enrapturedbythemoon @stargatenovus @cowboydisaster @404lunar @josieguts @actorryswife @the-queen-of-england183 @littlelovebug98 @cringeycookies @averytiredfanfictionwriter @kariiiel @caramlizedtomatoes

[poisonous-honey]

Soul Crushing Guilt

(This is a re-upload: Originally posted to UniverseUchu on December 2nd, 2022)

You've treated them all like toys. In your defence this was just another video game to you a couple of weeks ago, but they're actually real with thoughts and feelings of their own. You don't know how to feel.

Who’s Here! Venti

Contains: isekai reader, Self Aware Genshin (not the Cult SAGAU), Insecurities (reader), Hurt/Comfort I guess it’s called

Note: I will say this takes place in the middle of a story, but it works on its own and I really liked how this turned out. I do have more written, but it's incomprehensible (even after a whole year it's still incomprehensible lmao)

Sitting on the cliffside of Starsnatch is not where you intended to be at this time, but your soul crushing guilt and insecurities have led you here. You needed to be away from all the positivity from everyone in Mondstadt. Their kindness was only worsening your mood. Staring over the edge, lost deep inside your head, you almost miss the way the wind whirls around you before you hear the one person you wanted to avoid the most right now.

“There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Why’d you leave without saying anything? Everyone back at Mond is worried, you know.”

You don’t say anything in response and let Venti walk up and sit next to you. You both stay silent and watch the waves crash onto the beach. Venti occasionally takes glances in your direction, but for the most part his eyes are on the scenery. After a few minutes, he tries asking you again.

“I know you told us that we aren’t overwhelming you, but please, if we actually are-”

“That’s not the reason I left Venti.”

“Then what is it?”

Silence is all that greets him. “Please, we just want you to be comfortable with us. We can’t help if we don’t know.”

Hearing him say that only makes you feel more guilty. They’re all so nice to you, and for what? The pressure and the guilt keeps building and building the more you stay here. Everyone’s been so understanding and kind, but all you’ve done before is use them any which way. You’ve judged them for superficial reasons and have even gotten them killed on numerous occasions. Venti showing up and putting the blame on himself and the others like they’re the reason you left just adds onto your shame as tears start to escape your eyes.

Upon seeing your eyes water, Venti slightly panics. “W-Wait, why are you crying!? I’m sorry for whatever-”

“Venti please stop.”

You turn to look Venti in the eyes, and see the panic and worry etched onto his face. It only makes you feel worse.

“Venti… Why are you here? Why do you keep following me?’ You look away from him, trying to keep from balling on the spot. ‘Why are you so nice to me?”

Hearing this, Venti’s face slowly scrunches in confusion. “What do you mean? Of course, I’m going to be nice to you. Where is this coming from?”

“You were conscious the entire time I was playing. I used you all like you were dolls for my amusement. After I got you, didn’t you feel like I was holding you captive or-or like some sort of toy forced to do my bidding? I don’t understand why no one hates me! I feel so guilty of everything I’ve said and done, but everyone’s apologizing to me like they’re in the wrong, and I don’t get it! Especially you! As the God of Freedom, don’t you hate me for taking away your own freedom from you? I just don’t understand… So why…” Unable to continue, you look away as you try to wipe your eyes and wait for Venti to finally tell you he hates you. That he’s going to stop pretending and get up and leave you alone. In your mind you know he would never, that's not who he is, but fear and anxiety is irrational.

Your breath hitches as you feel his hands land on your cheeks and turn your head to look at him. Instead of the disgust or apathy your heart was expecting, Venti’s face is filled with sorrow.

“I can’t believe you would think so low of me.’ He looks downwards and wipes away a few tears with his thumbs before looking back at you with nothing but care. ‘I guess from your point of view that’s a reasonable assumption to make, but you seem to be forgetting one key detail.”

You stare at him as he proceeds to give you the smuggest look you’ve ever seen on him. “I came home extremely early on my banner, didn’t I?”

What he’s saying doesn’t make any sense to you. He’s already treating you extremely differently than you anticipated, and now his question is putting your already malfunctioning brain into overdrive. What did his banner have to do with anything?

“What? Venti I-I don’t understand. What are you trying to…’ Finally, it all starts to click into place as your eyes widen, and his stupid grin gets larger. ‘You… Did you influence the banner wishes???”

Venti laughs joyously as he lets go of your face. His eyes sparkle like he’s recounting the best moment of his life.

“Why yes, I did! I actually got in a lot of trouble for that! It's part of the reason you lost the next 50/50, but I couldn’t miss the chance to join your team. I refused to wait another second.”

“But why? I still don’t under-”

“I have the freedom to make my own choices, do I not? I wanted to join your team, so I did.”

His expression changes from smug to such a soft look. You have a hard time believing it is being directed at you.

“Why, yes, I may be the God of Freedom, but I’m also simply one of the many characters this game has to offer. I’m one of your many characters in particular. And out of such a colourful cast of individuals, I was your favourite. To be the reason someone even downloaded our game in the first place sends me over the moon. For everyone else, you still give their lives a purpose and have earned everyone’s respect. Sure, you might be a bit crass, but even when you were rude or made a mistake, you still treated everyone with more care than necessary. I especially could feel and hear the level of adoration you had for me through the screen. To me, there’s nothing I want more than to travel by your side for as long as you’ll have me.”

Such a heartwarming and earnest speech from Venti has your eyes start to water again. Not all of your insecurities and guilt have been lifted, you don’t think that kind of guilt will be something you can get rid of, but with Venti here…

“You’re allowed to stay for as long as you want.”

He cups your cheeks again while looking straight into your eyes.

“Then till death do we part, my dear player.”

You break down and cry as Venti pulls you in for a hug. With Venti by your side, you know he’ll help you through your guilt with as much care and love as you’ve given him.

[callme-holly]

Johnny Cade x Reader where they get into a little argument but they solve it all out at the end:)

'𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞' [𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐣𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 '𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭']

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 - This isn't perfect and I'm so sorry. I'm trying to be better with my uploading but I've got some much to do lmaooo. Anyways, as always, hope ya'll enjoy!!

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 - 1.1k words

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 - mild swearing !!

When you enter the Curtis home, the first thing you notice is Johnny curled up on the couch, knees tucked to his chest, his eyes dull and sad. His skin is noticeably paler than usual, his face is a patchwork of bruises and cuts, and he looks as if he hasn't slept for a while.  

He hardly reacts as you make your way around to the front of the couch, but it's clear from the way his eyes follow your movements that his attention has sharpened and that he’s acutely aware of your presence. You reach out a tentative hand with full intentions of running your fingers through his hair, only to see him tense and flinch at the movement. You withdraw almost instantly, freezing for a moment before lowering yourself onto the armrest beside him. 

“Johnny, is everything okay?” Your voice is quiet, almost as if you were addressing a wounded animal, which isn't very far off the truth when it comes to Johnny Cade. He's like a little puppy that has been kicked too many times; jumpy and skittish and so desperately broken down inside that sometimes you wonder how he can keep himself together at all. 

“Johnny?” You ask again, trying to get his attention this time.

What?” He mutters, his head still buried beneath his arms. He sounds exhausted; every syllable is a struggle. “What’d ya want?”

You hesitate for a moment, not entirely sure how to proceed. It’s clear he’s not too keen on the idea of talking to you, but if you don’t ask him soon, you might lose whatever chance you have of getting answers out of him altogether. “Is everything okay?” You try once more, and Johnny huffs out a breath, sounding even more defeated than before. 

“Fine,” He grits out between clenched teeth. “Everything's fine. Just go.” He lifts his head enough to glare at you, his expression unreadable underneath the dark bags covering his eyes. You fight the urge to brush the stray strands back from his face, because there's something about the look in his eyes that makes your stomach twist uncomfortably. But instead, you move from your spot on the arm rest to kneel by his head, your hand hovering on his shoulder. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” You reply calmly, not wanting to push him too hard. “Not until you talk to me. I need you to tell me what happened.”

Johnny lets out a strangled sound, a sort of choked groan, and rolls over onto his side, away from you. “It doesn't matter.” He mumbles the words so quietly that they're almost lost in the air around you. “Just leave.” There's an edge to his voice; the tautness in his muscles is giving away his growing frustration. He tries to hide it, but it bleeds out anyway, and he finally snaps when you make no move to go. 

He raises his head abruptly, pushing his weight into a sitting position before swinging his legs over the other side of the couch so that he’s facing you directly. “God, just stop! Stop treatin’ me like a baby all the damn time! I don’t need your help!” The outburst surprises you, and you blink at him in astonishment, watching with wide eyes as his face twists up in a grimace as though he could barely hold himself together anymore. It hurts to watch; you can feel your own emotions begin to twist in sympathy for him, and despite knowing better, you find yourself reaching towards him instinctively.

Before you can touch him, however, he jerks away as if burned. “Stop!” He cries hoarsely, his voice breaking with emotion. “Just get out of here and leave me alone!”

You sit frozen on the edge of the couch and let out a slow, shuddering sigh. “What is your issue?” You bite the words out between clenched teeth. “Why won't you let me help?”   

You know that you should probably leave now before things escalate further, but you're also not quite ready to give up and just leave things be. Instead, you force yourself to stay where you are, your eyes fixed on Johnny as the tears well up in his eyes.

His lips part to respond, but he doesn't say anything; he just swallows hard and averts his gaze. “Go,” he repeats hoarsely after a moment's hesitation, his voice thick and strained. A tear slides slowly down his cheek as he speaks. He swipes it away angrily. “Just… Go home. I don't need ya.”

Your anger fades. The sudden burst of hostility washes away the last of your patience, leaving you feeling drained and hollow. 

“That’s bullshit, Johnny Cade.” Your voice is soft, but it carries conviction. “You don’t mean that.” 

The words hang heavy between you for a moment before Johnny's shoulders slump, defeated. He turns away from you, pressing his hands against his temples and squeezing his eyes shut tight. You watch silently as he takes several shaky breaths, fighting back tears.

Johnny doesn’t cry often; you know that much, so to see him now reduced to such a pitiable mess breaks your heart.

Slowly and carefully, you reach for him one final time, placing a hand lightly on his back. He tenses again, and you retract your touch immediately, unsure of what to do. “Hey,” you say softly. “Johnny, talk to me.” You pause, swallowing heavily. “Please.” 

He shakes his head, the motion jerky and violent. You can hear his shallow breathing, which is ragged and painful, as he tries to stifle his sobbing. His body shudders slightly, and you have to suppress the impulse to pull him into your arms, to cradle his head gently between your palms, and to rub his back soothingly. 

“I'm sorry…” He chokes out eventually, turning back to you with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. “I didn't want to shout at you... But I just…” He lets out a breath, struggling visibly to regain some kind of composure. “Can we talk about this later?”

You consider for a second, then nod. “Okay, if that’s what you really want to do.” 

Johnny nods shortly, seeming to settle a little. He swipes at his cheeks roughly, scrubbing his hands harshly across his face to wipe away any evidence of tears or lingering distress. 

When he finally speaks, his voice is steadier, although his tone remains subdued, bordering on weary. “Can you just hold me for a bit?” He asks, avoiding your gaze as his cheeks flush red again, embarrassment making him unable to meet your gaze. “I know I yelled, but...” He trails off, and you nod, rising to your feet wordlessly to settle down beside him, allowing him to lay his head in your lap and resume his curled-up position. 

“Thanks.” He mumbles, words muffled into your leg. You run your fingers through his hair, smiling faintly when he nuzzles into your touch, clearly appreciative of the gesture. 

“Anytime.” You whisper back, and, in that moment, amidst the turmoil, you knew one thing for certain: you weren't leaving him alone, not now, not ever.

𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬!!

[transformers-earthspark]

Apologies for my recent radio silence. I've had a lot on my mind lately.

This post isn't Earthspark-related at all, but please read it.

I need to take a second on this blog to acknowledge some things going on in the world. I should not have stayed silent on this blog before, but I'm trying to fix that now.

Genocide in Palestine + how you can help Palestinians

You can buy e-sims for people in Gaza here. Anything helps.

Click here daily to help generate funds for Palestine. It's free and takes less than a minute.

Here's a list of where you can donate to help Palestine.

(If there's anything I should add to this section, please let me know.)

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The KOSA bill, what it's going to do if passed, and how you can help prevent it from taking effect

KOSA will essentially erase anonymity from the internet by requiring people to upload their government ID or other form of identification to any social media site, as well as restricting resources and information on LGBT rights, history, racism, and more. This bill will censor the entire internet and destroy privacy while violating First Amendment rights and potentially putting minors in danger.

This also could very well mean the end of Tumblr, and I'm not exaggerating here.

Tomorrow KOSA could be passed in Senate, and from there it will need to pass in the House of Representatives before being signed into law by the president. It's not doomsday yet, but it is a dangerous situation-- and here's what you can do.

StopKOSA.org provides you with a template email to send to your representatives. You can leave it how it is or edit it to say what you want, and then send it from their website.

The website also allows you to call your representatives and gives you a template of what to say.

BadInternetBills.org, run by the same people, takes action against KOSA as well as other bills like EARN IT. At the time of posting this, over 356,000 people have signed this petition.

Additionally there are several petitions on change.org to help stop KOSA. Here are a few of them.

STOP KOSA

STOP THE KOSA

Stop Kosa

Save Humanity, Oppose KOSA

STOP THE KOSA ACT

(Again, please let me know if there's anything I should add.)

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One last thing-- The evolution of AI images and video.

I don't really have anything good to say. AI is evolving fast and changing the world as we know it. We are adapting, but nobody knows how this really is going to end up.

A few quick points:

AI images are not art. That's all. AI "artists" who genuinely claim to have made something of their own just by typing a prompt into a generator will be blocked. (Which has been in my rules for a while, but I still think it needs to be said.)

I recommend Glaze for artists who don't want their art being scraped and used for data training. Especially with the recent rumors of an upcoming deal between Tumblr and Midjourney. There's also a similar program called Nightshade (haha, earthspark reference? anyone?🦉) that I haven't tested myself but have heard good things about.

-----

That's all, I suppose. Reblogs are good, if you don't mind.

Spread the word about KOSA. Contact your representatives. Sign the petitions.

Support Palestine if possible. Donate if you can. If you are unable to donate, make sure to do your daily clicks.

Stay safe and take care of yourselves. ❤️

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Derision

Well, here we are. This is the episode you've all been waiting for me to cover. The one people claim is the cream of the crop when it comes to badness, not just for the insane amount of retcons and cases of character assassination, but for how it retroactively makes one of the most criticized parts of the entire show worse by comparison. If you've seen the episode, you know what I'm talking about.

Let's get into the fourteenth episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Derision

We start off with Marinette waking up for the day before getting a call from Adrien, who gives one of the clunkiest pieces of exposition I've ever heard on this show, and that's saying something.

Adrien: I was just going to tell you how excited I am that we're meeting at the swimming pool later, and to wake you up just in case you were still sleeping.

Just as she hangs up, Marinette's hands start to tremble, having visions of a locker, hinting at some old memories resurfacing. Just to get this out of the way, but one thing I want to give this episode props for is the way these panic attacks are portrayed. The colors change, the environments warp around, and it gives off a very uneasy feeling. It kind of reminds me of this one episode of The Twilight Zone, “Little Girl Lost”, which used similar visuals to depict the otherworldly atmosphere of another dimension.

Marinette meets up with Adrien at the local pool, and has another panic attack. Kim and Ondine seem to notice this.

Kim: Woah, Adrien. That must've been some prank you pulled to make Marinette freak out like that. What did you do to her?

Ondine: It's not funny, Kim! Can't you see Marinette's not okay?

Kim: Oh, come on. She always reacts like that when someone pranks her.

Kim then proceeds to tell Adrien and Ondine (and by extension, the audience) about what he means. I'm going to talk a lot about this, so to make things easier for all of us, I'll give you the short version so you have an idea of what happened.

About a year before the events of “Origins”, we see Chloe was bullying Marinette even more than she did before then, constantly pulling sadistic pranks Megan from Drake & Josh would find to be overkill, while making her late to class. To make things worse, none of her teachers believed her and took Chloe's side all the time, giving her detention on the weekends. Mylene, Rose, and Juleka try to help Marinette, but apparently, Chloe orders them to not talk with her before saying that “she'll be there to make Marinette's life a nightmare”.

The only person with the common sense to help out Marinette is Socqueline, that girl from “Jubiliation”. Socqueline learns that Marinette has a crush on Kim, who is even more of a jerk than he was during the first half of Season 1, and when Marinette thinks about asking him out to the swimming pool after school, Socqueline advises Marinette to be careful. Sabrina tips off Chloe to Marinette's plan, so Chloe goes to give Kim advice to pull a prank on Marinette. At the pool, just as Marinette confesses her feelings to Kim, Kim gives her a box full of spiders, causing her to panic and fall backwards into the pool. Chloe films the thing with the intent to make it go viral, but Socqueline stops her plan before she can upload it. Kim doesn't seem to see what he did was wrong, seeing it as a harmless joke as Socqueline tells him to piss off.

It's here that Marinette determines that if she ever has feelings for a boy ever again, she'll need to be super prepared, explaining how much she knows about Adrien and his schedule in later episodes. Chloe then gets Socqueline expelled from school just a few weeks before the end of the school year. Marinette blames herself for what happened, but Socqueline tells her that sometimes, no matter how dire the odds seem, she needs to muster up the courage to fight the good fight.

Oh, and Marinette was almost akumatized by Monarch again, but it's really just an excuse to keep her away while Kim tells the story.

So... let's talk about this flashback. Clocking in at about ten minutes, almost half of the episode's runtime, this is easily the part everyone (myself included) seems to have problems with, for all kinds of reasons. Let's break down each and everything wrong with this flashback.

#1: The Portrayal of Chloe

Surprisingly, this is the least of my problems. Compared to Kim (who I'll get to later), Chloe is mostly in character with how she's usually portrayed by this point in the series. She's egotistical, she orders Sabrina around, she hates Marinette, and throws her father's name around over and over again like it's a boomerang. My feelings on the wasted opportunities with her character aside, this does make sense seeing how this takes place before Season 1.

But there's the problem. This takes place before Season 1, and Chloe does things she never did in Season 1, or any of the other seasons for that matter. She clearly has the teachers and principal doing what she wants, she can boss the other students around (which I'll also get to later), she pulls sadistic practical jokes on Marinette, and even uses her dad's name to get Socqueline expelled. In the show, she doesn't really do any of this. Sure, she can occasionally use her dad's influence to get what she wants (Lady Wifi, Rogercop, Frightningale, Determination), but it was never to this extent. While she also tried to act like she was better than the rest of her peers, barring Sabrina, nobody ever listened to her or took her seriously. Chloe also tended to focus on bullying Marinette, but she didn't do these kinds of practical jokes. Usually, it was either sabotage (Mr. Pigeon, Despair Bear, Gabriel Agreste) or just general name calling, and she picked on other students too (Dark Cupid, Reflekta, Antibug, Sole Crusher, Penalteam, Deflagration).

The point I'm trying to make is why the hell did Chloe stop acting this way? What caused her to stop being as bad as she is here? I get the whole point of this episode is to show how terrible Chloe is, but you're showing off all her bad moments in a flashback and never considering the other things she's done that would be just as effective. Wasn't the main idea behind Chloe's “damnation arc” that she started to change, but went back on her ways and became worse than before? If that's the case, I have to reiterate, why was she even worse in this flashback?

I also have an issue with making the cause of all of Marinette's trauma because of this prank by Chloe. Yes, the prank was terrible, and trust me this isn't me once again going “GRR! CHLOE STAN ANGRY BECAUSE RICH GIRL IS EVIL IN FLASHBACK!”. It's more along the lines of “Really? We're really doing this?”. While I'm glad that after Chloe's betrayal at the end of Season 3, the show is finally considering the idea of making her more than just comic relief as a villain, it feels like a case of too little, too late.

After so many years of making Chloe out to be harmless unless she screams her daddy's name, now you're treating her like a serious threat who traumatized Marinette for life? Chloe is the cause of Marinette's trauma? This is like if the person who killed Bruce Wayne's parents turned out to be a joke character like Egghead or Crazy Quilt. Just because a serious villain does something important to the story, it doesn't automatically make their prior unfunny antics go away.

But my main gripe with the portrayal of Chloe here is that this flashback fails to do something that still hasn't been done in almost five seasons and eight years: Explain just why Chloe hates Marinette so much. Chloe is unusually cruel here, and doesn't even have a reason to torture Marinette like this. Usually, Marinette gets in the way of what she wants, but here? Marinette doesn't do anything to warrant this level of dedication. You would think for a flashback sequence focusing on her and Marinette's history, they would actually explain why Chloe likes to single out Marinette, but they don't. The writers would rather take time out of the episode to remind the audience of why Chloe is the way she is, and why it isn't acceptable, than clarify what Chloe's deal with Marinette is.

Rose: She’s this way because her mother left her when she was young.

Mylene: So did mine, and you don't see me having fun bullying Marinette.

Gee, I wonder if Astruc himself had a part in writing that exchange or not.

If you're willing to acknowledge previous episodes while also discussing how poorly Chloe treats Marinette, it would help if you finally did something to inform the audience about why Chloe likes to torture Marinette in the first place. Did Marinette show Chloe up at a fashion show? Did Marinette impress Chloe's dad one time? Did Marinette just spill coffee on Chloe's shoes? I will take literally anything, no matter how stupid the explanation is, over getting nothing after eight years.

It's also pretty rich that that scene was trying to say that what happened to Chloe doesn't justify her actions when not only do we never get a scene like that pointing out how creepy Marinette obsesing over Adrien was, but later in the episode, Marinette specifically pins all the blame on Chloe in one line.

Marinette: Adrien! I know what's wrong with me! It's not my fault, and it's not your fault, either! It's all Chloe's fault!

So remember kids, just because bad things happen to you, it doesn't excuse your unflattering actions... except when it does, and in that case, it's all the fault of the person who wronged you in the first place.

#2: The Portrayal of Kim

I'll admit, I'm not really the biggest fan of Kim as a character. I don't hate him, but it feels like after Season 2, he just became that guy who really loves to swim, where even characters like Max, Marc, and Nathaniel had more depth to them. This episode however? Yeah, I couldn't stand Kim here.

Just like with Chloe, Kim is sort of in character as the same eccentric dude who has a habit of being insensitive and accidentally upsetting people (Animan, Syren), and I need to emphasize the “sort of”. Just like Chloe, this goes against his characterization in Season 1, where he was shown to be a bully like Chloe was (Lady Wifi, Timetagger, Origins) before later episodes made him a nicer person. However, unlike Chloe, the show sort of tries to retcon Kim's rude behavior to be more in line with his Season 5 self by portraying him as more of a bully who simply isn't aware of how harmful his jokes are, but it doesn't work because of how cruel he seems, and he doesn't have the excuse of knowing how terrible he is like Chloe does.

There's also how easily he goes along with Chloe's prank when she literally insults him and Marinette to his face.

Chloe: I heard Marinette asked you to go with her to the swimming pool.

Kim: Yeah, we’re going swimming together. Cool! 'Cause I love to swim!

Chloe: That’s not why she asked you, dummy!

Kim: It's not? Then, what are we going to do? Chloe: She wants to declare her feelings for you! Kim: For me? But why?

Chloe: Probably because she's utterly ridiculous, and so are you, which makes you two perfect for each other!

Kim: Oh? You think so?

There's not being aware of how insensitive of how you are to others, and then there's not being able to comprehend basic insults. Chloe doesn't even try to give Kim a backhanded compliment or secretly insult him (“You really like swimming, don't you? Good thing you can swim better than you do in class.”). She just calls him a dummy, and Kim still falls for her trick. If you want to have Kim fall for Chloe's plan, don't make her so obviously cruel. For God's sake, you're making the class in the Lila episodes look smart by comparison.

And even after retelling the story, Kim still thinks Chloe highly, not only saying how pretty she is right in front of his girlfriend, but he still thinks the joke was the funniest thing ever. After five seasons, Kim of all people should know about how mean Chloe is, given he was literally kidnapped and brainwashed into serving her while she sided with Hawkmoth (Miracle Queen).

The worst part is that Kim has nothing to do with this story at all. You could literally replace him with any other guy, even a nameless background character with no lines, and nothing would change. Hell, I'd argue it'd be even better as having Marinette be embarrassed in front of some rando would highlight the impact it had on her self-esteem when she tries to go after someone of a higher social class. It would also better justify the spider prank if someone else pulled it because “Darkblade” established that Kim was afraid of spiders.

And if you think I'm talking about Kim after this part, believe me, there's more to this schmuck than meets the eye.

#3: The Way Everyone Just... Lets This All Happen

Look, I get what the episode is trying to go for, narratively, and realistically. Sometimes, teachers and other authority figures just don't do their jobs when someone gets bullied. Hell, I was bullied for years by someone who liked to take advantage of my anger issues, and it wasn't until my last year of middle school that the faculty finally decided to do something about it. I also get that this entire flashback wouldn't happen if the teachers realized how cruel Chloe was and got her expelled. What I don't get is how the flashback portrays anyone who was there as unwilling to do anything to help.

First off, Marinette claims that the reason none of the teachers believed her was because they're all too afraid to stand up to Chloe, since she can call her dad and cost them their jobs, but that's far from the truth. The only time we see anyone actually being afraid of Chloe was when Mr. Damocles went back on refusing to expel Socqueline before Chloe threatened to call her dad and get him fired. Other than that, while we only see Ms. Mendeleiev and Mr. Damocles in this flashback, neither of them really show any signs of being afraid of Chloe. They just go along with what she says, and they don't even try to take Marinette's side. Just like Kim, this would be more understandable if these were different characters who were never shown to be this cruel to Marinette in earlier episodes.

Second, while I can sort of buy the teachers not caring about Marinette, the fact that her classmates don't do anything is another story. We saw Mylene, Rose, and Juleka trying to help Marinette, but right after they talk to her, Chloe just orders them to go away, and it's never explained why. Marinette said the teachers were afraid of Chloe, but does that mean the students are too? Again, later episodes would establish nobody takes Chloe seriously as a bully, so this part of the flashback makes no sense. What changed to make them stop being afraid of Chloe anyway? Once again, if these were a bunch of nameless characters who were more apathetic to Marinette's situation, that would make sense, retroactively showing how much Marinette's friends care for her. Instead, it's like that scene in RWBY where the main characters watch a student being bullied by a racist classmate, and all they do is say “Wow, racism really sucks, huh? Anyway, not our problem.”

Third, you're telling me that Marinette came up with multiple excuses not to go to school even with a few weeks left in the year, and Marinette's parents didn't see anything weird about it? They didn't think that something must be making Marinette want to do anything but go to school? I don't think they were even informed about the situation at school, unless you want to be generous and say they knew Marinette got detention. You can't even make the excuse that it would work if these were different characters, but these are Marinette's parents. You know, the same characters the show portrays as loving and affectionate to their daughter? You're telling me they didn't even think to look into the situation, much less talk to Marinette about school?

The problem with all the other characters in this flashback is in order to make what happens possible, they have to be as apathetic as possible. There's being unaware of a situation or being too afraid to stand up (which is unfortunately something that happens when people bullied sometimes), and then there's just not caring about the bully victim at all. It's ironic how even though a big part of the flashback was to show how awful Chloe was, it unintentionally make everyone else in Marinette's life seem just as cruel to let her suffer like that.

But I know what you're thinking. “What about Socqueline? She was there to help Marinette, so why didn't you mention her?” Well...

#4: Where the Hell Has Socqueline Been All This Time?

Like I mentioned in my “Jubilation” review, Socqueline is yet another unnecessary addition to the already overcrowded cast of characters in this show, and it seemed like this episode was meant to justify her inclusion, but it only raised more questions.

Just to remind you, this flashback establishes that Marinette was constantly bullied by Chloe until a nice girl in glasses stood up for her, and inspired Marinette to be more confident.

SOUND FAMILIAR?

Yeah, this flashback is pretty much the same as Marinette's arc in “Origins” was, only with Socqueline in Alya's place. We get it, writers, Season 1 was good. Constantly repeating stuff like what happened in “Mr. Pigeon 72” isn't going to win you any favors.

This really highlights how pointless of a character Socqueline is, as despite supposedly being a really important person in Marinette's life, Marinette herself never thought to tell anyone about her, and judging from how Marinette described her to Tikki in “Jubilation”, I don't think she even stayed in contact with Socqueline after she was expelled. It's not like left Paris afterwards. All we know is that she went to another school and got a job at a local arts and crafts store, so why did Marinette just stop talking with her? Even with Felix and Zoe, they had the excuse of being in different countries, but you can't say that with Socqueline.

Also, this was something I just realized, but if Mr. Damocles got her expelled, why the hell did Socqueline treat him like he was any other customer at her job, much less compliment him as a principal?

#5: The Handling of Trauma in General, and How This Impacts Marinette as a Character

Like pretty much every other serious issue it tries to tackle, Miraculous Ladybug has always had a poor understanding of mental health. When it comes to portraying characters who struggle with some form of grief of trauma, like Adrien, Felix, Chloe, Zoe, and even Marinette, the responses usually amount to some variation of “Grow a pair and get over it, you big baby!”.

With Felix, Chloe, and Marinette, even if their actions are partially motivated as a response to either losing a loved one, trying to emulate their neglectful parent, or as a defense mechanism to avoid repeating an already traumatic experience, they're all proven to be in the wrong, and it's not to teach a lesson about alternative coping mechanisms or support systems. The show just says that they're automatically wrong for what they do, what causes them to act the way they do is never acknowledged, and instead, we're supposed to just act like they're being jerks for no reason. Compare this to Adrien and Zoe, who both had rough lives losing their mother at a young age or living with an abusive mother respectively, and rather than go into detail how it affected them or how they managed to become decent human beings in spite of it, the show just says that they're nice people, so people like Felix, Chloe, and Marinette have no reason to be mean to others.

This is honestly why I feel like this episode's depiction of mental health and dealing with trauma falls flat. In case you didn't know, I asked my followers who had to deal with some form of trauma to share their experiences and how it compared to what Marinette went through in the episode. For the most part, the common consensus seems to be that while the symptoms of Marinette's trauma and her reactions to it are very believable, a lot of it is contradicted by previous episodes, and it seems like it was only there to do a story about dealing with trauma.

So many episodes across Seasons 1 through 4 show Marinette dealing with Kim and Chloe without really any issue, and she showed no problem with starting relationships with Luka and Cat Noir, to say nothing about Nathaniel's brief crush on her in “The Evillustrator”. If Marinette was so traumatized by this prank, why did she want to go swimming in episodes like “Gorizilla” and “Mr. Pigeon 72”? Why did she bother to help Kim confess to Chloe in “Dark Cupid”? Why did she team up with Chloe to sabotage Kagami in “Animaestro”? Why did she suggest Chloe could change for the better throughout Seasons 2 and 3? Why did she continue to let Chloe and Kim use the Bee and Monkey Miraculous respectively, even after they got them from outside sources? This flashback is desperately trying to tie previous events of the series together together, but it only works if you ignore all the times Marinette has interacted with Kim and Chloe without having a panic attack.

Then there's how the flashback tries to connect this to Marinette memorizing all of Adrien's schedule to make sure he won't hurt her, an obvious attempt to rebuff one of the biggest criticisms of her as a character. Here's why it doesn't work.

First off, the setup doesn't work because while Marinette vows to do a better job getting to know the next person she falls in love with and how, in her words mind you, “He isn't friends with Chloe”. Putting aside the kindness he's shown her in “Origins”, she kind of failed to really consider her choice to pursue him if he stayed friends with Chloe if we're going to believe Chloe traumatized Marinette so much.

It also doesn't really explain the more predatory actions Marinette has taken whenever another girl tries to get close to Adrien (The Bubbler, Volpina, Animaestro, Oni-Chan, Heart Hunter), or how she tries to rig up situations to get closer to him (The Gamer, Gigantitan, Backwarder, Party Crasher, Felix, Psycomedian, Glaciator 2, Simpleman). And that's not even getting into how obsessive she is with him in other areas, like repeatedly playing a commercial he was in (Gorizilla), making a bunch of presents for him in advance (Christmaster), trying to kiss a wax statue of him (The Puppeteer 2), sniffing his pillow (Cat Blanc), or all the other times she's creepily obsessed over him.

But of course, you've probably noticed that I've forgotten to mention one key thing about what this flashback means: You know how Marinette tends to act nervously and stumbles a lot around Adrien when she isn't meticulously documenting his schedule? Yeah, they were essentially panic attacks brought on by her PTSD, and the episode tries to act like Kim did to her wasn't funny afterwards. Here's the problem with this.

YOU MADE MARINETTE'S TRAUMA YOUR PRIMARY SOURCE OF COMEDY FOR THE PAST FIVE FUCKING SEASONS!

You do NOT have the right to act like what happened to Marinette was bad when you were constantly playing her anxiety up for laughs for almost EIGHT YEARS at this point!

In addition to all the other examples I mentioned, we had episodes like “Psycomedian”, which confirmed that the same behavior that this episode is trying to say is connected to her trauma was hilarious to Adrien, as well as “Backwarder”, which thrived on playing up Marinette's anxiety towards Adrien and was said to be one of the funniest episodes of the show to work on by Astruc himself.

THIS IS WHAT THOMAS ASTRUC ACTUALLY BELIEVES

#6: Why This Flashback Is Ultimately Pointless

But above all, the biggest problem I have with this flashback is because of how pointless it is. It's trying to better go into detail about why Marinette acts the way she does around Adrien, but did we really need to do that?

This flashback doesn't really reveal anything that we didn't know already. We know Marinette was bullied by Chloe, we know she was a lot more meek and needed others to stand up for her, and we definitely know that we're not supposed to like Chloe. Adding to my earlier point, if we actually got more insight into the origin of Chloe's obsession with Marinette, that would have at least made this flashback important to watch, but once again, despite being a flashback episode, we learn nothing about the characters that we don't already know.

But this flashback is also meant to explain why Marinette is so hesitant to embrace her new relationship with Adrien when we already got a reason for that last season. The first half of the season has made a big deal about how much her feelings for Adrien cost her the Miraculous, so why not focus on that? This flashback just feels like it's here to give more Marinette angst instead of focusing on the things they've already established. And that's not even getting into what she saw during “Cat Blanc”.

Why couldn't we just have a story about Marinette's own insecurities causing her to doubt she can make her relationship with Adrien work, seeing how poorly things ended with Luka? Have her worry that something could go wrong as a result of her need to overcompensate, or worry that Adrien could betray her. That way, you could have Adrien supporting Marinette in a way that reflects their partnership as Cat Noir and Ladybug respectively.

But no. Instead we have this flashback that's taken me about ten pages to fully dissect. And the worst part is that I still have the rest of the episode to talk about. God help me...

So after Adrien and Ondine explain how this prank could have done a lot of damage to Marinette's psyche, Kim decides to find Marinette, and apologize for being so—Ah, I'm just messing with you guys. After all, that would actually make Kim likable. So what does he say instead?

Kim: Come on! Loosen up, you guys! It's like you can't even speak your mind these days.

Ondine: That doesn't give you permission to hurt other people!

Kim: Whatever! I'm the way I am and I'm fine that way! It's not my fault you guys have no sense of humor!

Yep, rather than having Kim realize the error of his ways and maybe be akumatized out of guilt, Kim just whines about how everyone else is just a humorless pansy these days. The writers pretty much made Kim's motivation boil down to “It's just a prank, bro!”. Even Monarch seems to go along with this, as he refers to Kim as “A free spirit feeling unjustly rejected”, when this was right after he called Chloe the prettiest girl in front of his own girlfriend's face. So Monarch sends his Akuma to Kim's goggles, akumatizing him into Dark Humor. Yes, that's really the name they're going with.

Dark Humor is a pretty forgettable recolor of Dark Cupid. Other than inverting the red and black color scheme and giving him a targeting scope on his right eye, there's not much else to say other than the incredibly on the nose name they gave him. His powers are sort of like Dark Cupid's, only now, instead of turning people heartless, they now share his soulless brand of “humor”. At least, I think it is. His Alliance power is the Monkey Miraculous's Uproar, but it's not really clarified if he's only using Uproar arrows or not, judging from the use of the rubber ducky that we've seen King Monkey use before.

Marinette and Adrien transform into Ladybug and Cat Noir respectively, but once they meet up, we get the most controversial part of the episode that isn't connected to the flashback scene: Cat Noir gives Dark Humor the beatdown of his life and is about to Cataclysm him, for pulling a bad prank on Marinette a year ago. Yeah, a lot of people have pointed out that Adrien felt a lot of remorse for Cataclysming Monarch earlier in this season, yet here, Cat Noir looks like someone told him that Kim just shot the Pope. For God's sake, writers, you're five seasons in! How hard is it to determine whether or not you want your hero to be okay with killing people or not?

And of course, this bites him in the ass, as Dark Humor stabs Cat Noir with an arrow, not only changing his Cataclysm into something that creates a bunch of balls from his hand, but also making him just as insane as the rest of Dark Humor's victims. You know, I'm this close to starting a “Remember Season 1” counter, because this is just glorified fanservice.

Ladybug tries to summon her Lucky Charm, but is stopped by Dark Humor, so Ladybug transforms back into Marinette, transforms into Ladybug again, and summons her Lucky Charm for real this time, getting... a toilet. Of course, the only way to combat Dark Humor's bad jokes is by using even worse jokes! Genius! Ladybug places the toilet over Dark Humor's head and breaks it along with the goggles, freeing the Akuma.

Ladybug de-evilizes the Akuma, uses Miraculous Ladybug to fix the damage, gives Kim a useless Magical Charm, and Cat Noir apologizes for murdering Kim by saying his emotions got the better of him, which is like saying OJ Simpson and his wife had a minor disagreement.

Kim apologizes to Marinette for traumatizing her, and I guess that's enough for Ondine to forgive him for saying another girl is prettier than her.

After Marinette sort of explains what happened to Adrien, he goes over to tell Chloe to apologize, and we get... this scene.

Adrien: I know about everything that you did to Marinette last year, Chloe. You're going to go and apologize to her and prove to everyone that you can change. I'm sure she'll forgive you.

Chloe: (laughs) Forgive me? What do I care about her forgiveness? I couldn't care less about Dupain-Cheng's feelings! She and the likes of her only exist to suffer for my entertainment. Why bother having power if you can’t use it against those who don’t have any? You’re the one who’s getting things wrong, with your baker girl! You’re a prince! You belong with me, the princess! You’re in this world to shine! To make fun of all the losers who are only good enough to be used as doormats!

Adrien: You're nothing like a princess, Chloe. I supported you. I gave you multiple chances to become a better person. Everyone reached out to you, including Ladybug and Cat Noir when they gave you the Miraculous of the Bee again. But all you ever think about is yourself.

Chloe: And what else IS there to think about? Losers and nobodies? The little bees? The planet?

Adrien: We will never be friends again, Chloe. You and I are done.

Chloe: Traitor.

Okay, first off, “She and the likes of her only exist to suffer for my entertainment.”? That's the line you're going with? She sounds like a dark lord in an RPG game. How is this the closest thing we ever get to an explanation to why Chloe hates Marinette so much?

Second, ignoring the fact that we already had Chloe end her friendship with Adrien last season (Queen Banana), it's pretty weird that this is the breaking point in their friendship. Adrien doesn't mention all the other times she's bullied people or when she sided with Hawkmoth even when he brought up her time as Queen Bee. He saw her being mean to so many people over five seasons, yet only when he learns Chloe did something to his girlfriend that he decides to finally confront her. If we at least got a line where Adrien acknowledged that he essentially enabled Chloe for so long by thinking she could change, that would have at least sort of worked. Instead, he makes it about how she refused to change herself. Dude, you had the chance to stand up to her for years, and you even did so in one episode before you went back on it (Despair Bear). You have nobody to blame but yourself.

Finally, Chloe is pretty out of character here. She's way too calm about ending her friendship with Adrien compared to what happened in “Despair Bear” and “Queen Banana”. You'd think if the writers wanted this to be a big moment of catharsis for the audience, Chloe would at least beg Adrien to stay a little. But no, Chloe brushes it off when it could easily justify her getting worse in later episodes, and even Adrien doesn't even consider how much he thought Chloe's friendship meant to him. Because these writers are dedicated to making sure that any identifiable trait Chloe once had is removed so you have no choice but to hate her.

But hey, at least the episode's over. What did I think of it?

Yeah, it wasn't very good.

I just... what else do you even want me to say here? I spent about ten pages going over why the flashback sequence doesn't work, I've already ranted about Cat Noir trying to kill someone with his Cataclysm in previous episodes (Hack-San, Jubilation), and I think you all know what my feelings on the portrayal of Chloe and Kim are.

I guess I can answer one question you may have: Is this episode worse than either “Penalteam” or “Queen Banana”? Eh, not really. Let me explain.

The problems with “Queen Banana” and “Penalteam” went beyond the treatment of Chloe with the way the stories were handled, with “Queen Banana” being a cheap jab at critics and TV executives while propping up their new character Zoe, and “Penalteam” being an excuse to have a soccer episode while making Cat Noir look like a buffoon right before the finale. Most of the problems with this episode have more to do with how they affect the way we see previous episodes, and why some scenes that were already unfunny are even less funny now.

With this episode, you can at least tell there was some effort being made to tell a more serious story here that went into what made Marinette tick. Yeah, it and the themes of mental health and trauma were handled about as gracefully as a ballet dancer trying to get a bear trap off their leg, but there's at least an attempt here.

Of course, this episode is still awful. The conflict with Kim not getting how much of a jerk he was after a year was dumb (as was him being even more of a jerk as Dark Humor), the fact that Marinette's trauma seemed to come and go when the plot needed it to really showed off how forced it is, and it only ends with you having more questions about Marinette and Chloe's rivalry rather than answering them.

While I'm still not a fan of this episode, and would still place it in my top five least favorites, I don't think it's the absolute worst. Although it's still the worst one so far this season from a technical standpoint.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS...KIM

It says a lot when Cat Noir actually tried to murder someone in this episode, yet not only is he not even considered for the award this episode, the person he tried to kill ends up being the bigger idiot. Not only did he easily fall for Chloe's plan when she insulted him to his face, he failed to understand how it affected Marinette for a year, and when he was told about how bad it was, he refused to take responsibility for his actions, blamed it on other people not being able to take a joke, and only gave the smallest apology after he was almost killed for his attitude. It's honestly funny how he somehow comes across as more unlikable than Chloe, the character this episode was made to make you hate even more.

[lincolndjarin]

Best Kept Secret

chapter four : sarad'ika (RE-UPLOAD)

ao3 link ✿ series masterlist ✩ main masterlist ✧

pairing : bodyguard!Din Djarin x afab!princess!reader

rating : 18+ mdni

word count : 6.8k

summary : you finally get a chance to see the gardens

warnings, etc. : language, panic attacks, general kodo grossness

A/N : i had to change accounts so this is a re-upload of my ongoing fic bks!!

Sarad'ika. 

You won’t forget it this time, you can’t. So you write it in your book, just under Mando’s favorite color you write the two little words that have been keeping you up at night. Once you get that out of the way you’re left alone in the quiet, wide expanse of your room. You have about ten seconds of time alone with your thoughts before you get restless.

You need a change of scenery, and fast, because it’s taking every single ounce of restraint you have left to not stick your hand back up your dress, lock yourself in your room for the rest of the week, and think about that stupid, stupid dream. Opening the curtains you could see the sun starting to come up, so you pulled the rope that summons the girls because you desperately need a bath. You need to get rid of this dirty feeling that envelops you.

His phantom touch lingers on your skin. He had been so real, you swear you’ll have bruises on your waist when you undress.

Elaine and Lysa can’t get here fast enough, but when they do you’re already halfway out the door. 

“Fresher, bath, now.” You’re still rocking a thin sheen of sweat and your mouth is dry. Lysa doesn’t seem thrown by your tone but you have to shoot Elaine a pleading look to make sure she doesn’t ask. 

“Yes ma’am.” Elaine guides you into the fresher and quickly starts undoing your dress, while Lysa draws the bath. You know your entire body tenses up the moment she starts unlacing your bodice, thank the gods she doesn’t comment on it. You waste no time, the moment you’re free from your garments you step into the bath, you’re still not used to cold bathes like this, back on Hoth you’d pull from hot springs down in the planet's core to heat your water. But you couldn’t be more thankful for the cold now because it seems to be cooling the fire that lingers in your stomach. The girls retreat back to your chambers to prepare your outfit for the day.

“Not green.” You manage to squeak out as you sink lower into the bubbles. Watching them go. Alone with your thoughts again. Focus on something else. Don’t think about the Mandalorian. Think about how unnecessarily big this tub is. It’s less of a bathtub and more of a small pool honestly, you could swim laps in here. You float yourself over to the edge of the tub to find a washcloth, you need to scrub off any imaginary touches that might linger on your skin. You start at your shoulders, your mind manages to stay empty until you get to your chest. Then he’s there again, clear as day, so you try to think about something else, think about the least sexy thing you can, the first thing that comes to mind. 

Your husband. 

Yikes.

Surprisingly that works. You think about Kodo and the ache between your legs vanishes completely until you actually have to wash there. Gods, the last thing you need to do is start touching yourself here and now and have one of the girls walk in, so you make it quick, squeeze your eyes shut and shove the washcloth between your thighs and don’t think about him.

But you can’t get away from him, after a moment you open your eyes slowly and it’s like he’s right in front of you.

Fuck he’s actually right in front of you. The door to the fresher is wide open and it’s like he’s frozen in time, one hand on his blaster, the other on the door handle. His visor fixed on you. 

He lingers way too long, you both know it.

Finally, in sync you both seem to snap out of it. He immediately turns ninety degrees to stare at the wall. You know he’s apologizing but you can’t hear him over the ringing in your ears as you feel your face turning crimson. You’re doing everything in your power to cover yourself with the bubbles but you know he definitely saw something, for Makers sake he was ogling you for a second there. There is a beat where it’s silent, you’re staring at him and he’s staring at the wall and finally you find your voice.

“Get out!” You’re covering your chest with one hand as you point at the door with the other. It might be the first time you’ve ever seen him stumble, Elaine walks in as he’s rushing out, wordlessly brushing past her, her eyes go wide as she turns from him to you. Your head is in your hands now. “I think I’m done.” She wraps you in a towel as you stand. She’s grabbing another towel to dry your hair as she extends a hand to help you step out. Guiding you to a stool and sitting you down, humming softly as she pats your hair dry. So much for the cold helping, now it feels like your entire body is on fire. 

“He was just worried.” She says it matter of factly and you whip your head around to stare at her.

“What?” 

“He was worried about you. We were in the closet when he barged in, all he saw was your bedroom doors wide open, and an absence of you. By the time I stepped out into the hall he was throwing doors open.” She smirks as she turns you back around so she can finish drying you off. 

“He should have knocked…” You grumble as you cross your arms in front of your chest. 

“Go easy on him, it’s the first time in what? Three weeks? Four weeks? He’s never been in a situation where he’s shown up to retrieve you and you weren’t there, he probably thought you were spirited away in the few hours he wasn’t keeping an eye on you.” Once your hair is mostly dry she starts loosely braiding it. 

“I’m capable of surviving an hour without him.” You huff, you know she’s probably right. And there is a small part of you that kind of likes how much he seemingly cares. 

“You’re his responsibility. I think it’s sweet how he takes his job so seriously.” 

“Of course you think it’s sweet, he doesn’t follow you around like he’s your shadow.” You mumble but she laughs it off. 

“Come on, Lysa is probably alone with him right now and freaking out, so we better not keep her waiting.” She covers you with a robe and takes you by the arm, ushering you back to your chambers. 

You didn’t know it was possible to look ashamed through so many layers of metal and fabric, but there he is, standing outside your quarters like always except now he’s strung-out. You swear you catch his fingers clenching into a fist for a moment before brushing past him to get dressed, Elaine closing the door behind you before rushing over to Lysa. You’re standing in front of the mirror now and you can see them whispering to each other, you don’t bother trying to get involved when you see Lysa suppress a giggle. 

They dress you in a lightweight pink gown, you’re thankful that they seemed to pick up on your distaste for heavy makeup as they do it much more simply, and before you can stop them they’re leaving. And now you have to sit and stare at yourself in the vanity, putting off the inevitable. It was going to be hard enough facing him without the whole bath incident but now it feels a thousand times worse. But you can’t put this off forever so you might as well get over it. Gritting your teeth you open the door and step out, before you can even look at him he’s rambling.

“I’m so sorry, I thought something might have happened to you, I assumed the worst and it was stupid and I should have knocked but I was worried and I promise I didn’t see anything and-” He stares at the floor the entire time and his words are rushed and quiet. 

“Stop.” You cut him off. You had been prepared to let him grovel but the moment you heard how genuinely distressed he sounded you had decided to forgive him. You didn’t even know it was possible for him to sound so rattled, he’s acting like he saw a ghost.

“Stop?” He sounds like he’s got way more speech prepared and honestly, you don’t wanna hear it. 

“It’s fine. It was an honest mistake and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” He hesitates for a moment. “But I am sorry.”

“Stop it.” You glare at him but start walking in the opposite direction of the library. “But… if you’re really sorry I know how you can make it up to me.”

“Anything.” Well you were gonna ask him to take you to the gardens but if he was offering up anything. It’s almost like he can read your mind because he immediately shoots you a warning look. “Within reason.” Damn it. Gardens it is. 

“I believe you still have a promise to fulfill?” You stop at the fork in the hallway, no longer sure of where you’re going. It takes him a second to realize what you’re implying but after a moment he nods towards the right and walks slightly ahead of you instead of trailing behind. 

By the time you make it outside and to the forest trail neither of you have spoken. There’s still an oppressive tension looming over you both. You can’t look at him and seemingly he can’t look at you. 

Of course in your case it’s because last night he had stared in your own personal porno and in his case he just saw you naked and you just so happen to be married to the guy who pays his salary. 

Maker, is this even salvageable at this point? Do you want to salvage this? 

You have to. This is all you have. Even if you hate him, (although you’re not even sure if that’s still true) even if some small part of you is attracted to him, (you also aren’t sure that part is all that small anymore) even if he saw your tits this morning, (he definitely did.) He’s all you’ve got at this point. So yes, you want to salvage this. All you have to do is say something, if you say the right thing you can fix this whole mess. If you say the wrong thing he might never be able to look at you ever again but that has to be a risk you’re willing to take and your mind moves faster than your mouth as you blurt out what might be the dumbest thing you could possibly say right now.

“Are we friends?” Gods, are you a child? He doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t stop to look at you. His stride never wavers as he continues marching down the trail.

“I don’t have friends.” Well shit. Big surprise the guy who’s paid to spend time with you doesn't consider you a friend. “But, you are probably the closest thing I have to a friend. Even if you don’t have a choice in the matter of my presence.” He finally turns to look at you. Maker, he sounds genuine, why is your heart fluttering, he called you a friend, it doesn’t get less sexy than that. “Am I your friend?” Did his voice just crack? You’re imagining things. 

“Well, I talk to you more than anyone else, I spend more time with you than anyone else, so I suppose you’re also the closest thing I have to a friend.” You’re about to say something snarky to make your statement less mushy but you step out of the trees and your eyes go wide.

It’s nothing like they say it is in books. You’d always imagined a garden to be one big mass of the same shade of green but it’s so much more than that. There’s so many different greens, they all stick out, and there’s so many other colors, nothing back on Hoth that compared to this. You’d all but forgotten about Mando as you just gawked. It was massive, you could probably spend all day walking and never step on the same spot twice. There’s so much you don’t even know where to start. 

You didn’t even know real flowers could be that brightly colored. You’d only ever owned fake flowers growing up because nothing would grow in the cold, the sharp hues of your plastic lilies would look pathetic next to these. These were alive, they swayed in the wind. Bugs flew through the petals. Everything felt alive. Up until this point you had not found one part of this planet that you liked more than home, but this was better than anything you’d ever had a chance to see. 

“Does it live up to your expectations?” He’s next to you now, you don’t understand how he’s looking at you and not the field, you can’t tear your eyes off of it. You want to hug him. Well, no, that would be inappropriate, but you’re so thankful you almost don’t care. 

All things considered you probably shouldn’t even be alone with him at this point with your combined track record the only things that happen when you’re in the same vicinity are arguments. And now nudity. But you’re so happy you don’t give a shit. You’re so happy that when he holds his arm out to you, you take it without a second thought and let him lead the way. 

You wonder if you’ve been this happy since you arrived. Have you been happy at all since you found out you were promised to Kodo? You can’t recall. He’s very thorough, he makes sure you get to see everything, every flower, vine, leaf and root. Everytime he stops in front of something so you can get a good look he waits until you move first, to make sure you’ve had your fill of every single thing. When you ask him questions about the flora he seems almost embarrassed that he doesn’t have answers for you. It’s kind of cute. You don’t know how long you stay like that, arm in arm. You don’t even hear him when he finally speaks, you’re completely captivated by a butterfly.

“What?” It isn’t the usual tone you take with him, there’s a warmth to your tone that you typically reserved for people back home. 

“I asked if you wanted to play a game.” Well you certainly weren’t expecting that.

“What kind of game?” You can’t help but be skeptical, even though you don’t think he’d try and ruin your good mood and you want to trust him. This just seems out of character for him.

“Well, since we’re almost friends with each other, I thought we might get to know each other better. That’s what friends do, they know things about each other.” His voice is casual and he sounds almost relaxed. It suits him. And he’s right, friends should know each other. 

Friends are good. Friends are safe. Friends don’t have sex dreams about each other. You should be friends. That’s the safest thing to be, and it would be nice to have a friend. 

“So what… we just ask each other questions? That doesn’t sound like a game, it sounds like a conversation.”   

“Sounds like someones scared of losing.” He looks straight ahead as the two of you begin walking towards what appears to be a lake, there’s a gazebo next to it and a few other things you can’t make out in the distance. You can’t help but scoff.

“Fine. What are the rules?” 

“It’s simple, we ask each other questions but you can choose not to answer, you can pass. First person to pass on three questions loses.” Well this seems easy enough, and he’s so secretive you’ll win without a doubt. 

“Okay, but I get to go first.”

“Of course.” Is he smiling under the helmet? He probably has a nice smile. Is that something friends think about each other? Who cares, you can let this one thought slide, it's innocent enough. you hesitate for a moment, why not start simple. 

“Where are you from?”

“Pass.”

“You can’t be serious.” 

“Deadly serious.” His tone is still light so you know you haven’t struck a nerve. How odd. 

“Okay so wait, what do I get if I win? Since it’s obvious I’m going to.” That gets a genuine chuckle from him. It’s nice. It’s not as bassy as his voice is, but it’s still low, raspy and authentic. You want to hear it again. 

“What do you want?” 

For you to grope me in front of a mirror? 

Well friends don’t certainly ask friends for that. What did you want? 

“I want a question.”

“Well that just doesn’t make sense princess, we’re playing a question game.”

“No, the winner gets to ask the other person a question and they have to answer. No passing.” You know you have a smug look on your face, you already know what you’re going to ask. He thinks about it for a long time, long enough that you’re worried that he might say no.” 

“Okay. Deal. Where are you from?” You’ve reached the gazebo now and you both take a seat. You rest your arms on the railing so you can stare at the lake. 

“Hoth.”

“I didn’t know Hoth could sustain life.”

“We live underground, why did you take this job?” You kind of expect him to pass again but he answers without missing a beat.

“I needed the credits. This was the highest paying job.” 

“Why did you need money?” You pull your eyes away from the water to look at him, you’re kind of surprised to find his helmet already facing you and not the scenery, it’s gorgeous here. 

“It isn’t your turn.” He asks again before you can protest. “What’s your family like?” You consider passing but it could be worse. 

“I have eight siblings and I’m really close with them. Well I was. I never got that close with my parents, small colony royalty, they liked to act like they were above it all so in our colony of less than 500 people who had nothing to do, we had nannies.” You can’t help but roll your eyes at the memory. He nods slowly but doesn’t ask for a follow up so you just ask your next question. “Did you like being a bounty hunter?” 

“I don’t really feel anything towards it. It was work, I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it. I was just good at it.” He doesn’t even have his usual tone of arrogance, he says it like it’s a fact. “Did you choose to marry him?”

“Pass.” You respond way too quickly, and you know you’re practically giving him the answer by passing. But you don’t want to say it, don’t want him to feel sorry for you. “When do you eat and drink?” He chuckles again, Maker, you want to marry that laugh, you want to make love to that laugh, you want to bury yourself alive and die in that laugh. Nope, that’s not a normal thing friends think about each other you fucking weirdo.  

“When you aren’t looking.” 

“What? That doesn’t make any-”

“No follow up questions.”

You play for a long time, going back and forth until the sun is much lower in the sky. It’s exhilarating to have a real conversation go on this long, the two of you don’t even argue (for the most part.) He tells you so much about himself that you can hardly remember all of it, you keep a mental list of your favorite things. 

“Did you really read the Smitten Paladin?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a little straw in your helmet so you can drink stuff?”

“No.”

“Do you sweat a lot in all those layers?”

“Sometimes.” 

“Is your name really Mando? Cause that’s, like, super convenient if it is.”

“It’s not.”

“What is your name?”

“Pass.” 

“What color is your hair?”

“Brown.”

Now you’re tied, whoever passes next loses. You had passed earlier when he had asked if you wanted the rest of your books back. Cocky son of a bitch. When you had asked if he had read them all he responded with, “ Not yet.” You need to win. So you think long and hard until you come to a question you’re sure he won’t answer. 

“Where are your quarters?” You give him a satisfied smirk, let's see him worm his way out of this one. 

“Why do you want to know?” 

Yikes. He’s got you there. Do friends usually ask friends where they sleep? Doesn’t matter, you’re so close to the win that you just deflect. 

“Are you gonna pass?” 

He takes a minute. A long minute, just staring at the lake, and you’re ready to accept the win when he points out past the water.

“There’s a cabin just on the edge of the pond. I live there.”

You’re so shocked he actually answered that you don’t even care that he didn’t pass, you squint and sure enough there it is, you’re surprised you didn’t see it before but it blends in so well with the trees. There’s a small cabin by the edge of the water. You have a million follow up questions but of course he cuts you off before you can ask any of them.

“What did you mean when you said I was your least favorite?”

Shit. You can’t believe he remembers that. Gods you don’t want to lose, and you can’t bring yourself to lie because you would always know your win wasn’t real and there’s no satisfaction in that. So you sigh.

“My first couple of days here I was very bored so I made a list of my favorite people here.” You can feel your face getting hot. He must be getting used to seeing you get red like this, it practically happens hourly at this point. “You used to be on the bottom of the list but now you aren’t.” 

“Where am I now?” There is no hurt in his voice, just speculation. He’s leaning closer to you now. You can’t help but close your eyes and just enjoy his smell for a fleeting moment. Smoke, metal, and fresh linen. That last one is a bit shocking, he must have other flight suits that all look the same. 

“No follow up questions.” You smirk. “How did you know I left my room that one night I snuck out to the library if you live across the lake?” 

“Pass.” You don’t even get to enjoy the win because you’re a little disappointed that you don’t get to know the answer. “You win princess.” He stands and holds out his arm again and you quickly take it as you start walking back in the direction of the trail. When had it gotten so dark? The sun was nearly set and you’d hardly even noticed. You’d spent the whole day out here. 

You want to ask your question immediately but the moment you open your mouth he speaks. 

“We should do this more often.” He sounds so carefree, it catches you off guard

“The game?”

“No, but we can do that as well if you’d like, but I meant getting out of the castle.” Honestly the thought of being out more often thrills you, you just aren’t sure what the rules for that are since you married into the royal family.

“I would love to get out to the garden more often.” You whisper it, almost just to yourself. 

“Not just the garden. Have you ever seen the rest of this planet?”

“No.” You haven’t even been off of the royal grounds. 

“Okay, new deal. On the first day of the week we go somewhere, even if it is just the gardens.” Your heart skips a beat. He has a day now, just like Kodo, Mando has his own day. You wish you could keep the dopey grin off your face. 

“Deal.”

You don’t speak until you're back inside the castle, you don’t even speak when you walk through the halls, you’ve finally found a comfortable silence with each other. You do of course unlink your arms, you don’t know why you both feel the need to pull away at the same time. After all you’re just friends, but you do anyway. Now you’re at the door to your chambers and Leo is waiting for you, impatiently tapping his foot. 

“You didn’t attend any of your meals.” His voice is short, clearly upset with you. You give him an apologetic look, and you are hungry. 

“Sorry… I guess I just lost track of time, if you bring dinner to my chambers I’ll eat now.” Normally you’d just go to the dining hall but you want one more moment alone with Mando. Leo eyes the two of you but takes his leave.

“As you wish, ma’am.” As he begins walking away you turn back to your steel companion. 

“You owe me one more question.” You grin up at him. You wish you could see if he was smiling too. 

“Ask away, princess.” He puts his hands on his hips as the helmet turns down towards you. 

“What does sarad'ika mean?” You say a silent prayer that this doesn’t ruin the perfect day you’ve had. He doesn’t respond or move for quite some time. Your stomach is in knots and you start mentally cursing yourself out for bringing this up again. But he clears his throat and when he does speak it’s so unexpectedly gentle you almost take a step back.

“In Mando’a, sarad means flower, or bloom, and ika means little.” 

Little flower. 

He had called you little flower. 

You don’t think friends call each other little flower. 

You honestly aren’t sure what to say so you just sort of nod, but you don’t want him to feel like he upset you so when you open the door to your room you turn back towards him one last time. 

“Thank you Mando. I had a really nice day.”

“Good night princess.”

“Good night.” You close the door. 

You wish he had called you sarad'ika again. ✩

The next three cycles are the best you’ve had so far. 

You don’t talk about your question and honestly that’s fine because you still aren’t sure how you feel about it. But being friends with Mando is nice, once you convince him that you aren’t going to bolt the second he looks away you actually get him to read a few books, you’re surprised he never picked something up until now considering how much time you two actually spend in the library. You stick with your fiction novels and are surprised to find how much he enjoys history books. He's a fast reader and matches your pace of a book or two a day. 

But it’s the fifth cycle of the week. Which means you’re dolled up in blue and you have dinner with your husband tonight. You haven’t seen Kodo since your last dinner when he humiliated you so you aren’t exactly excited. Something tells you Mando isn’t all that thrilled either, he’s quiet today. He’s always quiet until you get him going but you aren’t feeling chatty today so neither is he. You both read in silence for as long as you can until finally you can’t put it off any longer and you loudly slam your book shut and stand. 

“We should probably get going.” You smooth out the wrinkles in your dress from sitting so long. He doesn’t speak, only nodding as he stands, setting his book down on top of yours. You begrudgingly make your way down the hall and are thrown off by the amount of noise coming from the dining hall, when Mando opens the large doors for you you’re shocked to see nearly a dozen men eating, Kodo is seated at his typical spot, the head of the table and he stands as he sees you. 

“Wife! So good of you to join us! I thought I’d invite some of my brothers and cousins to dine with us tonight.” He’s just as drunk if not drunker than he was last time and much to your discomfort the rest of the men don’t seem much different. Taking a nervous step inwards Mando starts to close the doors once the two of you are inside. “One moment Mandalorian, you won’t be needed tonight. Afterall, it’s just family.” There’s suddenly ice in your veins. You spent so much time trying to get rid of him you hadn’t thought about what would happen when he wasn’t there to protect you.

“I’ve sworn myself to her, I’ll stay” A chill runs up your spine. You’d gotten so used to his voice being lighthearted and gentle that it sends a jolt through you to hear him speaking so sternly. You don’t recognize the tone, even from your first few days with him. More importantly, when the hell did he swear himself to you? Was that a part of the job Kodo was paying him to do? It seems a bit severe for a bodyguard gig. 

Kodo doesn’t seem in the slightest affected by the inflection of his voice even though the other men in the room look wary.

“I insist, Mandalorian. Take the night off.” He holds his cup towards the two of you before he sits back down and starts rambling to the men, seemingly picking up where he left off on some sort of hunting story. You turn, your eyes wide with worry towards Mando, you want to beg him to stay, you want you grab him by the shoulders and plead with him to not leave you alone but you know that he can’t. Even if he wanted to. It’s not like he can fight every royal family member, all the staff, and the half dozen battle droids that trailed behind Kodo. He turns to leave and you turn back towards the table but before he opens the door you hear him whisper just loud enough so only you can hear it. 

“I’ll be right outside. Nothing’s gonna happen to you.” And then he’s gone, the doors close with a loud thunk and you pull up a chair. 

Surprisingly Mando’s promise helps you relax, you sip your wine and you don’t have too bad of a time. It’s a miracle that the presence of all of Kodo’s relatives is a bit of a blessing. Sure, the room being full of men originally was absolutely terrifying but they keep his attention off of you and you quickly realize that they’re too scared to even look at you, you don’t understand that bit for a while until in an instant it clicks. 

You’re Kodo’s. 

He calls you wife because that’s all you are. You belong to him, therefore it would be an insult to Kodo to leer at you. As disheartening as that is, it's a bit of a relief and you’re able to enjoy most of your dinner until the servants come around and take your plates, which is a welcome sight because it means you can leave. Funnily enough you miss Mando standing behind your shoulder. You feel almost empty without him looming although you suppose you’re bound to feel that way after spending four full weeks by each other's sides. You’re eager to get back to him, to feel the safety of his presence and you’re about to stand up and leave when Kodo’s voice fills the room, commanding the attention of everyone present. 

“Isn’t she just a gem?” In the blink of an eye everyone's heads are turned towards you. “Such a pretty little thing,” His grin is viscous and the way he says it makes your skin crawl. “aren’t you princess?” You hate the way it sounds coming from his mouth, and not in the same way you “hate” it when Mando says it. You detest the way Kodo says it.

But he’s so drunk a small wind could knock him over. You can handle this. If you can tease a Mandalorian you can subdue a douche bag prince.

“Thank you, my prince.” You bite back the venom that inevitably tries to seep out. 

“Don’t you all think she’s lovely?” Once everyone's eyes are on you, you feel less confident. You wish he would just go back to calling you bland as the men nod and hum in agreement. You feel sick. It’s like having dinner with a dozen Kodo’s, they all have the same dull blonde hair and unpleasant voices. You’re preparing to leave again when what you assume is a cousin speaks up. He looks like he has a few years on Kodo and you know that the prince is the eldest of his brothers. 

“When do you plan on getting her pregnant?” 

You want to throw up. You can’t stand the way they talk about you like you aren’t even there. 

Kodo’s grin widens.

“I think we’ll wait. My father is still young and if her looks are her only redeeming quality, I'd like to keep them intact for as long as possible.” The table erupts in laughter and you think about throwing your wine glass at him. Would that be considered treason? You don’t know so you just tune them out, you know they’re still talking about you, they do for a while.

So you drink your wine and stare straight ahead. Now that Kodo has seemingly given them permission to speak of you they don’t stop. Every once in a while you’ll catch a sentence or two and you have to swallow down the bile that threatens to erupt from your throat. They’re shameless, and they’re vulgar. The only thing that keeps you seated is that you know that none of them will lay a hand on you. It’s the only perk to being seen as nothing more than an extension of your husband. They won’t touch you because you’re his. You have a hard time finding comfort in that fact. 

After what feels like an hour you stand up, your chair screeching loudly against the wood.

“I’m rather tired. I think I shall retire to my chambers.” You don’t bother hiding the repulsion from your voice but Kodo only smiles and nods as you turn to leave. 

“Goodnight, wife.”

“Goodnight, husband. ”

You don’t turn back around until you’re out of the room. 

You let out a sigh of relief once the doors are closed and immediately look for Mando, you don’t see him at first and a wave of betrayal washes over you. Did he leave? He had promised to stay. Could you even be mad at him for leaving? Kodo offered him the night off, he hasn’t had so much as an hour off since he started. You think back to what he had said weeks ago.

“You’re a full time job, sarad'ika.” 

You hadn’t even thought of how draining that must be until now. 

But he had promised. 

Stop being a cry baby, don’t act like some heartbroken little girl, you’re being overdramatic. 

You only get a few steps away from the dining hall when you almost trip over something and when you look down he’s there. He had been so still you’d missed him entirely. He’s too still. He should have said something by now, or gotten up. There’s a sinking feeling in your stomach as you look around. Kodo dismissed all the guards on this floor except for the several repurposed battle droids in the dining hall that served as his personal guard, there’s no one here to help you as you kneel down directly in front of him. His back is against the wall and his knees are bent, hands folded in front of him.

“...Mando?” you say it as delicately as you can manage, leaning your head forward so you’re in his direct line of sight. “Mando are you alright?” Is he shaking? “Mando, I need you to talk to me.” You can hear the anxiety in your own voice, echoing through the silent hallway. He doesn’t move so you just say fuck it and crawl between his legs so you can rest your ear against his chest, it isn’t easy with the chestplate but you settle in just above it. 

Maker, his heart is racing.

You pull back and stare into the helmet. The concern is apparent in your expression as you place both hands on the sides of his helmet as you would when holding someone's face. His chest is rising and falling too fast.

“Can you breathe Mando? I need you to talk to me, can you breathe through the helmet?”

Fuck you can’t tell. You lean in closer, resting your temple against the Beskar until you can hear his breaths. The modulator isn’t even picking them up, you’re hearing them through the steel.

It sounds like he’s hyperventilating. 

“It’s me Mando. I need you to tell me you're okay or I’m going to have to take your helmet off to make sure you can breathe.” Gods, you don’t want to have to do this. You whisper your own name a few times to him. “It’s me Mando, I’m right here.” You’re about to do it, you don’t know what other options you have so you squeeze your eyes shut tight and grip the steel of his helmet and take in a deep breath, in the beat of silence before you can bring yourself to do it you hear the modulator crackle.

“Are you hurt? It’s like he’s just waking up as his hands fly to your hips, holding onto you like he can’t even believe you’re real. The modulator barely picks up his murmur. But you drop your hands down and rest them on his shoulders as you sigh in relief. Thank the stars.

“No, I’m okay.” 

He’s nearly incoherent as he speaks softly and quickly you barely catch most of it, the modulator doesn’t pick up the majority of it so you have to listen closely to hear his voice through the helmet, he’s still struggling to catch his breath.

“I didn’t know what to do… never felt so useless… never frozen up before… could hear everything… to rip his tongue out… talked about you like that… if any of them had touched… would have broken down that damn door … wouldn’t care about the stupid droids…”

All animosity you had ever felt towards the man in front of you vanished, even if temporary. Because that’s all he was right now. He wasn’t the Mandalorian, right now he was only a man. 

“I’ve never… don’t understand what… wanted to stay… what if you… too many droids…” You press your forehead against his helmet to try and hear better and you finally manage to put together a couple sentences. “I couldn’t just go in, because if I got hurt, who would look after you? I can’t protect you from a jail cell, I’ve never had to worry about that before…”

You can’t take the way his voice shakes so you hold his helmet in your hands again and tilt it upwards to meet your gaze.

“Hey… I am okay.” You enunciate each word as you stare into the strip of black. “Nothing happened, I am unharmed.” You take his hand in yours and bring it up to your face so it cradles your cheek. “See? I’m okay, nothing happened to me. And if something was going to happen to me you would stop it. Okay?”

You sit like that for several minutes. Knelt between his legs, rubbing your thumb gently against the helmet as his unmoving hand rests on your face. 

It takes him a while but his breathing finally seems to level out. When he speaks again he’s loud enough for the modulator to pick up and it’s jarring how normal he suddenly sounds. 

“It’s late, you should be in bed.” 

“Okay.” You’re just happy he’s okay.

Although now you feel a bit self conscious about the position the two of you are in. But it’s like he reads your mind as he puts his hands on your waist and easily lifts you as he gets to his feet. You don’t have a chance to say anything before he’s already walking. You just follow, and when you arrive he opens the door to your chambers for you. 

You want so desperately to speak. You want to comfort him, you want to say anything to let him know that you’re okay, that he’s okay, but he speaks first. 

“Good night princess.” He says it with a finality that lets you know that there will be no further discussion on what just happened. That tomorrow you will act as if this never happened. But you don’t want that.

“Good night, Mando.” 

He waits for you to close the door, you wait for him to walk away. But neither of those things happen. So instead, because the two of you are just friends, you open the door a little wider. 

“Do you wanna come in?”

I am no longer doing taglists so follow @lincolndjarinnotifs and turn on notifications to be notified when new chapters are posted !!

[atthebell]

how to clip (redneck ash atthebell edition aka not the most efficient necessarily)

my best methods for clipping & posting to tumblr

tl;dr use clipr for downloading clips from twitch, other methods vary by mileage

Clip on Twitch & Download using Clipr

IMO, this is the best method for posting clips. Twitch clips don't always display properly on Firefox, and it also means that if the clip ceases to exist on Twitch for whatever reason, it's still uploaded to Tumblr. You can also guarantee the quality you're downloading in, which is usually 1080p unless the streamer has for some reason lowered their stream quality (happens by accident sometimes).

Downsides: 1) You have to be able to download the clip to your computer, and doesn't work on mobile. Well, it could, but it would be way more difficult and I don't know why you would do that to yourself. 2) If the moment you want to clip is longer than 60 seconds, you have to use another method. Twitch only lets you clip something that long. I bemoan this fact every day.

Screen capture on your computer

The pros of this method are that you aren't limited to 60 seconds, and if you're trying to clip something from a YouTube video, it's easier than trying to download a YouTube clip (have never been able to successfully do this myself) or downloading the entire video and then editing it down to the moment you want to clip.

The cons are that you have to make sure you're not screen capturing sensitive shit from your own computer, and you have to turn off all other audio and make sure your volume levels & video quality are at appropriate levels (aka don't have your volume super low, don't have the video on 480p if possible). If you're clipping off YouTube, you have to deal with having the channel's watermark in the corner, but otherwise it's great for when you want to just clip something from Twitch but it's longer than 60 seconds.

How to do this (on Windows):

Remember to put your computer on DND (Discord as well) and put the video on highest quality and decent volume levels. Press Windows key + G (if that's your configuration) and select "Start Recording" on the capture window. Remember to give time for the scrub bar and shit from YouTube or Twitch (or whatever) to go away, so go back a little bit before where you want the clip to start. Record until you've got what you want, then open it in whatever video editing software pleases you. You can find the recording in Captures on your computer (usually in some folder chain in Users) or by just pressing Windows key + G again, it'll let you open the recording in file location. I use Microsoft Clipchamp to edit because Windows Media Player crashes my computer and I'm not going to pay for nice editing software rn. Anyway, edit out the bits with you moving your mouse around and the video player UI and get it to whatever length you like. Save or redownload to your computer, upload to Tumblr.

Downloading off Twitter

Use twittervideodownloader or twdown. Copy the video address from the video and paste it, then download in whatever quality you'd like. Please attribute said clips, particularly if they went through the trouble of adding subtitles or you're using their translation (or just to let people know where they came from-- i.e. is this from a cc's own IG story, or is it a random fan recording them; the latter means you maybe shouldn't be reposting this video). Translation itself is often a thankless project so it's very appreciated to acknowledge translators. Also if someone else went through the trouble of clipping something, it's just nice to acknowledge them for it. Preferably include a link to the original tweet. This method is best for just needing stuff off Twitter, for IG stories that someone else already screen captured, or if the only clip you can find is on Twitter and the original vod/video is gone for whatever reason.

Extra fun tips:

If you are a frequent clipper, get in the habit of naming your files! If you're keeping them all on your computer, for organization's sake, it will save you SO much time and energy if you just have names on your files. It doesn't have to be anything crazy formal; for example, my format is just "oct 12 cellbit scared by sign tts;" date followed by a very short description.

Similar to the above, it also helps to include some amount of context to clips when you're posting them, particularly if you're not liveblogging. Sometimes people rb clips onto my dash and start freaking out about some kind of lore going on and it's like dude this clip is from two months ago, calm down. Please turn on timestamps also for the love of fuck.

You can download videos straight off Tumblr! If someone else already posted a clip you like and want to have on your computer, you can download it off the dash or off their blog and just have it, no extension or screen capture or website needed. One of the very cool things about this website!

Related, if you really want to find a clip that you know was already posted to Tumblr by someone else, use people's archives. They're also one of the actually functional parts of this website. You can filter by post type, month, and tags, which can usually get you closer to finding what you're looking for than searching will.

RoyalArchivist tends to post and reblog a lot of clips, so they're a good resource alongside myself, pix pixiecaps, and jay cellgatinbo, all of whom clip like maniacs. I also just reblog a lot of things and have a pretty extensive tagging system. RA also has a timestamp archive for QSMP with notes about lore and things-- please check that out if you're interested in helping document events or looking to find a certain moment.

MCYT Archive Project has public vods spreadsheets for QSMP as well as other MCYT projects that are incredibly extensive, so if you're looking for a moment and you remember the date, you should be able to find the vod on the sheet. You can also use the vod archives in junction with wiki articles to figure out exactly or approximately when something happened (the QSMP Miraheze wiki includes citations in their articles, which is a massive help for this kind of thing).

Finally, I am a lunatic who figured this all out through trial and error. There are probably other, somewhat more efficient methods, like I said at the start. If you know of any, please (politely) add onto the post.

[teecupangel]

Desmond being bored and deciding to make a retelling of his ancestors for shaun or historians of the assassin's. Except he 'accidentally' makes it public and it goes viral, given that sometimes its Desmond and other times its his ancestors from the bleeding effect

The Assassins desperately needed a win.

After the Great Purge, the Assassins were left imprison in a sinking ship.

William Miles and Gavin Banks tried their best to protect and hide what was left but it was a losing battle.

It made people desperate.

Desperate enough to place their fate in Desmond Miles.

Desmond Miles, the runaway son of William Miles.

Desmond Miles, the descendant to Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and Ezio Auditore.

The golden boy of the Assassins.

He didn’t really care much about him.

Rebecca Crane was his tech support so he never even met the great Desmond Miles.

He was stuck here, in the basement of a loud club in Berlin, doing his job as one of the contact persons of Erudito.

Most of the time, he just helped Erudito fuck Abstergo’s shit up.

Or try to anyway.

Abstergo does have one of the most impressive security system money can buy.

They were slowly chipping on it though.

Most of Erudito were still trying to throw rocks at the digital bullet proof system Abstergo has while he and the best of Erudito hack into another company who uses the same system to find its weaknesses that they can use against Abstergo.

They were so close to a break through.

And he may have drunk 6 or 7 energy drinks for the last 62 hours so he actually thought he was hallucinating for a moment when he clicked the link one of the Erudito hackers he was working with had spent with the message “dude, isn’t he one of yours? O.o”.

It was a youtube video.

Of Desmond Miles…

In that motherfucking (should certainly be) secret hideout in Italy.

With that motherfucking statue of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad behind him, completely clear on view.

“So you wanted to know what Ezio was doing while he was looking for Cesare Borgia, right, Shaun? You went out and I know I’ll be back in the Animus by the time you get here so I’m recording this so you can watch it while I’m stuck in the Animus.”

“So… Cesare left Roma after he failed to kill Ezio and got sent to Castel Sant’Angelo.”

He blinked.

Was…

Was Desmond Miles giving a history lesson???

Oh, fuck, he was.

And he just namedropped Machiavelli and Leonardo as Ezio’s companions who were also looking for where Cesare was transferred after he escaped and got captured again in Firenze.

And…

He had started to speak in Italian.

Not only that…

His entire demeanor, even the way he sat had changed.

He had only heard about it.

The Bleeding Effect.

Desmond Miles was bleeding as Ezio Auditore in a fucking video in the internet.

His second phone began to rang and he prayed to every holy and demonic being that it wasn’t William Miles.

No matter what William Miles say, he cannot just scrub that video from the internet.

It was obvious (6 millions views! What the fuck!!!) that someone out there had already downloaded this video and taking it down would just spark more controversy.

He looked at the number and knew exactly who was calling him.

He accepted the call and said immediately, “What the fuck, Crane. Why did Miles upload a video to fucking Youtube?!”

Rebecca groaned and he could hear Lucy Stillman and Shaun Hastings shouting in the background, most probably ripping Desmond Miles a new one.

“The phone he used to record it automatically uploads to Youtube.”

He blinked.

“That is bullshit.”

“It’s true! It’s one of Lucy’s burner phones and she didn’t even change the settings at all! It defaulted to that kind of setting!”

“No phone has an automatic upload to Youtube and you know it.”

“I know but this one does! It’s so weird! It’s like… something weird is going on here!”

“I’d believe it more if you said Miles wanted to publish it as unlisted but fucked up.”

Rebecca groaned once more.

A phone that automatically uploads to Youtube.

That was such bullshit.

.

.

(Rebecca is telling the truth. The phone is a weird one and Lucy can’t even remember where she got it. Almost like… it was always there. Dun dun dun)

[anonimusunnoaniswriting]

OfficeColleague!Suguru Geto x Reader

Angel Of Small Death

⚠️𝐌𝐃𝐍𝐈. 𝟏𝟖+ 𝐀𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘⚠️

🎀𝐀𝐠𝐞less and blank blogs will be 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝🎀

Pairing: OfficeColleague!Suguru Geto x Reader

Genre: Smut, Porn with plot.

Word Count: 2463

Warnings: PWP, reader is a big woman, female bodied reader, no protection, pussy eating, good ol' sex, colleagues

Summary: Geto Suguru is the bane of your existence. You hate him. He hates you. The entire office is convinced you’re going to kill each other someday. But damn if it doesn’t feel good when he fucks you senseless.

A/N: This is a collab with @ominouslywritinginmyhead. We've been cooking it for a while and it's gonna be slow but it's one of the most delicious things Saber has thought of that I know. Banner and dividers are mine.

Chapter 1

yuunicorn1010 uploaded a story to Instagram.

The first thing any viewer would see was Yuuji trying very hard not to laugh. As a fresh graduate, he’d assumed office work would be the most mind-numbing activity in the world, but Jujutsu Inc. had proved him wrong within weeks. 

Without a word, Yuuji switched the camera to reveal the messy and noisy twelfth-floor office he’d been working in since April. In the foreground was his favourite senpai Nanami, determinedly staring at his laptop and pretending that he couldn’t hear the showdown going on right behind him.

“—two-faced thieving snake, I know you stole my clients!”

“I did not steal them; I simply suggested that they might benefit more from a more, shall we say, experienced team.”

“Experienced, my ass. You couldn’t even move two steps forward with that last file!”

“And why do you think that happened? Because you interfered and had half my team on leave!”

“That wasn’t my fault; the company requires us to take our paid holidays within two years of getting them — if your team is too overworked to take any vacation days, that’s on you.”

“You think you’re so superior, don’t you? If you actually looked in the mirror for once in your life, you’d see that you’re nothing but a sneaky backstabber who should be fired by now.”

“Oh, I should be fired? Well, if I am, I’ll be sure to tell HR about your little mind games and how you had those poor interns crying—”

In the background, one would be able to hear Yuuji’s uncontrollable giggling combined with Gojo-senpai calling out to the other employees: “They’re at it again! I think Suguru’s going to win this time~”

In full view of the camera, the two team leaders stormed out of the office, leaving through different doors. Just before Yuuji turned the camera off, Gojo-senpai began to laugh like a hyena. “If anyone’s brave enough to stop them, I’ll treat you lot to drinks tonight!”

Suguru smirked. Trust Satoru to find that entertaining. Apparently, his plan of treating the office to drinks wasn’t the only one going around: according to Shoko, the entire office had a betting pool on what could happen in each of these little…arguments. They weren’t stupid enough to do it to his face — or yours, for that matter. But it was quite obvious now what that stray 1000 yen bill on Satoru’s desk yesterday afternoon had been for. 

Not that anyone was going to win by very much, especially since they had no idea what went on behind the scenes. And quite frankly, Suguru didn’t want them to know.

The two of you were lucky that the janitor had called in sick this morning, and that nobody had come looking for the mop.

“Haa—dammit, Suguru, why’d you roll your sleeves up like—like that—you can’t do this to me—shit—”

“You…really need to stop accusing me like this, angel; I’ve done nothing.” He could still feel the sting on his lower lip, where you’d sunk your teeth in, sucking on it to soothe the pain. He could still feel his fingers digging into your plush thighs before his hand slipped under your pretty black skirt, the other hand trailing up your back. Most of all, he could still smell your perfume lingering on his clothes. Sitting in his office, the shades drawn, Suguru closed his eyes. If he thought about it hard enough, he could still feel your touch, too.

You had dragged the charming Geto Suguru into the janitor’s closet after your meeting where it was revealed that a pretty important client of yours had been smoothly swiped by none other than him. Not only did he have the audacity to smile and wink at you while detailing how his team would be proceeding with the client, but the man also knowingly leaned back crossing his bare sinewy arms in front of you — something he knew to be your weakness. 

“You know how much this turns me on, you bastard. Stop acting innocent; it doesn't suit you,” you’d spat, before grabbing the very hands you lusted after and placing them over your breasts. Suguru had complied with your silent plea, kneading at the soft flesh, while you moaned into his mouth. His knee had been pressed against your crotch and you rubbed against it like a cat in heat. 

But when he’d dipped his hand to slip under the waistband of your panties, you’d stopped him, “We can’t. Not here.” He’d given you his best puppy eyes and a pout that only made your heart race – just one time wouldn’t hurt, would it?

“We’ll meet tonight, after Gojo’s drinks,” you’d promised. Fuck, he missed you already. How has it only been two hours?  Two hours since he had you in his arms. Two more hours before you could leave work, and then God only knew how long it would be before the evening drinks would wind down…well, knowing Shoko and Satoru, far too long. If Suguru had his way, he’d have cleared a meeting room on the spot and taken you on the table itself—fine, maybe that was too much. But he definitely could just skip drinks and take you home. 

However, you probably wouldn’t be too keen on that. You’d made it clear at the beginning of this—whatever this was—that for it to work, the two of you would have to keep up appearances in public. There was nothing sanitary or respectable; after all, it was just sex. Rough, lust-driven sex. Nothing mattered to the two of you beyond your bodies and the stress relief you got from making each other feel good. But Suguru would be lying if he said it was still the same for him. 

He’ll never forget how it all started.  The two of you, thoroughly intoxicated in a bar one evening after work, much like what tonight promised to be. Your peers – long gone, either to the dance floor or slumped over at your booth. Left to your own devices, he had ended up beside you. In your haze you’d rested your head against his chest, remarking how incredibly muscular it felt. He had chuckled lazily, saying, “Well at least I know all those days at the gym are paying off – although for whom…” 

Hearing him trail off, you’d raised your head to look at him and he’d felt his slacks tighten seeing your eyes – wide and doe-like – as you remarked, “You’re single? I’d never have thought! You’re like, pretty physically gifted; if not mentally.” 

 He’d bristled and shot back, “Well, what about you? I heard you crying about being dumped the other day by the coffee machine.” 

“He wanted me to quit after getting married. It was an ultimatum. And we’d only been dating a few weeks.” You rolled your eyes. 

Suguru had grimaced at that. “Yeah, all that education and time you spent building your career, only to turn into a pretty little housewife who pops out babies? No thanks. What a waste.” 

Something had flashed in your eyes as he said that. The feeling of being understood, Suguru would later realise, was a powerful aphrodisiac. You’d sat up straight and grabbed his hand.

“I’m drunk, but I’m in control of my senses enough to know that, Geto Suguru, I kind of want to fuck you right now.” 

Suguru responded, “Well then, angel, that makes two of us.” From there it had been a whirlwind. You’d paid your tabs at the bar, texted your friends that you were leaving so they wouldn’t worry, and then instead of getting a taxi home, you’d hopped on Geto’s motorbike and sped off to a love hotel. Probably a stupid idea given the circumstances, but you both made it in one piece.

Despite the buzz in his body that was most certainly not from booze, he’d paid for the room and held your hand all the way up the elevator ride, desperate to touch you, yet concerned that you might not like the public display. But once you were in the room…it was all over. And not just for you.

His lips crashed into yours, rough and thirsty, drinking you in like a man lost in a desert who had suddenly happened upon an oasis. Fuck, you really were a good kisser, drawing him in deeper and deeper with your lips and tongue. Your hands were tangled in his hair, freeing it from the tight bun he sported to the office, while he tugged at your blouse, so neatly tucked into the waistband of your formal skirt. 

He’d paused for a moment to appreciate you once your skirt and blouse were off. “Damn!” he’d exclaimed with a low whistle, eyes roaming up and down your figure and resting briefly at your breasts clad in that pretty pink bra. How cute. The lace and little bow in the middle only made things better.

You’d blushed, but chalked it up to being the effect of the alcohol; thankfully, you didn’t have to think about it for too long, because Geto had dived between your legs and was already sloppily leaving kisses along your inner thigh. Your skin was so soft, and he swore he heard you giggle from how ticklish his lips felt.

Geto remembered how tight his own slacks had become, his shirt only half unbuttoned because he’d stopped you, wanting to prep you before he did anything else, desperation making him neglect his needs. He peeled your underwear off, flung it behind him, and attacked your clit. The small bud under his tongue was slurped into his mouth and gently pulled at between his lips, all while his fingers pleaded for an entrance into your hole. You hadn’t been able to stop yourself from clamping your thighs around his head, feeling the pressure building in your lower abdomen. His tongue worked wonders for you, licking up thick flat stripes. Something you couldn’t help but note your ex hadn’t bothered to do. 

Geto Suguru loved eating pussy. This was evident. 

He’d lost himself in the taste of your cunt face buried and mind far, far away till he’d felt you tugging at his hair, legs trembling around his head and you gasping “Stop, Suguru, stop!”

When he’d resurfaced, you’d fallen back onto the plush tacky red blanket, panting like you’d run a mile. Only then had he realised that you’d cum onto his face and were incredibly overstimulated. But you’d only taken a moment to gather yourself before sinking to your knees in front of him and finally freeing his cock, looking up at him with those infernal doe eyes. Your hand eagerly wrapped around it as you took his tip in your mouth, testing the waters with little kitten licks. You were determined to show him as good of a time as he’d shown you. 

So you started slow, getting a feel for his thickness and length, before gradually upping your game. It was only a matter of time before you managed to unravel your co-worker completely, and it was the gentle squeeze to his full, aching balls that made Suguru cum in your mouth with a guttural moan. You’d made a show of it, swallowing his cum down your throat and licking any spillage off your finger. 

Suguru’s eyes had darkened at that, and he’d almost ordered you to “get on the bed, I’m going to fuck you now.” You’d complied with a squeak of excitement and laid on your back, watching Suguru first yank off his work pants, then tear off his shirt, and finally climb over you while pulling down his boxers and throwing them halfway across the room. He’d reached out and opened a drawer to find himself a condom, and when he rolled it over his still-hard cock, he’d moaned — your eyes glazed over on hearing such an enthralling sound. You’d spread your pussy lips for him, glistening with your release, and Suguru had gently pushed himself into you, slowly, keeping his eyes on your face to make sure that you didn’t feel any discomfort. His gaze was calculating and contemplative, easy to see despite the low light of the room. You ran your hands through his gorgeous locks again, drowning in his touch. It was only when he bottomed out – his last few centimetres thrust in – that your mouth fell open in a silent scream. 

“Fuck. Your cunt feels amazing, angel.” The little lube on the condom, combined with your own slick, was enough for you to take all of Suguru, but it was still a tight squeeze. Definitely one of the bigger men you’d been with. 

The way you were stretched around him squeezing him tight, Suguru was loath to restrain himself, but he wanted this to feel good, for him as well as you. So he went slow and your hips bucked with each thrust, desperate to feel more of him. Soft pleas fell from your lips, “please…fa-faster…harder…f-fuck…more…please…Su-Suguru,” but he continued his pace. Only when you’d cupped his face in your hands, pulling him down for a kiss, and whispered to him, “Suguru, if you don’t move now I’m going to fucking bite you” did he chuckle, but started to pump in and out of your pussy faster and harder. 

“Is that a promise, angel?” he’d teased, and you’d hated the way your pussy clenched at his words. Unfortunately, Suguru seemed to like it.

His hips slapped against your ass with each hard thrust, and soon he was spilling for a second time that night, condom catching his release inside you. He’d pulled out and collapsed beside you, rubbing your clit with his right hand while his left arm encircled you, pulling you in for a rough kiss. The release you found from his fingers had you clinging to him desperately, moaning his name and maybe a few swear words. You wanted more. You needed more. 

You were sweaty and messy after all that, so he’d actually lifted you up and taken you to the adjoining bath, where you both soaked in the warm bubbly water for a while (once again, something your ex never gave a shit about, based on what Suguru had overheard at the coffee machine) before you had decided it was time to call it a night. Although your corporate nemesis assured you the room had been paid for till morning, you had mentioned that staying would have been crossing some boundary and had even denied his offer to drop you home on his bike. 

“You shouldn’t be riding,” you’d said, “We drank quite a bit…I’ll take a cab home, you can have the room for the night.” 

And with that, you were gone. Only the scent of your perfume and your combined sex lingered…

A/N: Hello! Thanks so much for reading. This was an idea that @ominouslywritinginmyhead came up with and hit me with so we decided why not write a Collab fic on it. We've pored over it and had several revisions and finally here it is! A small thank you to her for being a galaxy brain and dreaming up such delicious ideas. Also btw apparently in French they call an orgasm a small death so that's where that's at.

As always hearts and reblogs are much appreciated and comments will earn you kissies

[13leaguestories]

May 2024 Monthly Forecast

I wrote 2025 twice. Bro, am I that over 2024? It's like 2020 happened and it just has not gotten any better.

I'm attacking this with the same energy as I did the patreon forecast. With my eye twitching, stomach growling, and the overwhelming need to grab my blanket and question why anyone ever decides to leave bed.

Alright, moving on. Fuck! My eye is really tweakin' right now.

Superstition

Don't copy and paste what you said on Patreon over here, be spontaneous.

Let's see. The entire *stares off into distance to try and focus* ... ... ... epi ... I'm writing what my brain is going through, you're welcome. I'm not about that "just get to the point" bullshit. We don't do that here. Still trying to come up with that word ... um ... season. There we go. The entire season won't be uploaded until it's complete BUT I will be updating the actual Superstition S1 link that can be found on itch.io as otherwise I have to make an entire link just for testing and no. So, if you want to help out or just read the updates cos of impatience then there you go.

The Prologue + Episode One will be out this week with hopefully Episode 2 close behind.

Throne of Ashes

I worked on ... is this text bigger than it should be or am I really in need of sleep ... Um, I worked on Nour a bit as well as Ozara. You'll be seeing the demo updated this month, period. Again, that update will be Nour's tweaked and either Ozara won't be changed because Patreon voted against it or it will literally be a different story cos Patreon okayed the story shift. I like to run a democracy, until it makes me mad and then it turns into a dictatorship.

These M&M's are my dinner. I am not a healthy person. Fuck I didn't even drink water today but had like two giant cups of sweet tea ... this is why my eye is messing with me. Too much sugar. Omfg, it really is too much sugar ... oops.

Sea of Stars

Nothing to report.

Riders of Abauruth

Nothing to report.

[mikhailwrites]

Waiting for Connection 12 / Ghost x Soap

Ghost is retired and plays milsim videogame. Soap is still in the force and sometimes plays that same videogame...

Sorry, I forgot to upload it here, too! On the other hand, that means less waiting time for another chapter for you!

Previous chapter | AO3

Ghost returns home, but it’s different now. Too quiet.  Too barren. He’s never noticed before. Didn’t have any point of reference. He does now. Stripey brushes against Simon’s legs, and the man bends down to scratch the cat behind the ear. “You liked him, mate?”

“Meow!”

Ghost has no idea what that means. Simply takes it as ‘yes’ and smiles.

He takes out his phone, an old, cheap thing he barely ever uses. Hits the redial. There’s only a handful of numbers on the phone, even less so in the call history.

He hears the phone ring, and then there’s a click. “Simon?” It sounds a little confused, which is hardly surprising. Ghost is very much not the bloke that would simply call to ask how’s life.

“Gaz… What am I doing?” Simon crosses the room slowly, sinking on the futon he hasn’t yet bothered to magick back into the sofa.

“Have I ever seemed clairvoyant to you, mate?” Gaz chuckles. There’s some rustling in the background. Presumably, Gaz is moving into some more private space.

Ghost chuckles back. “Guess not.”

“Guess again,” Gaz deadpans, “how were the pints with MacTavish yesterday?”

“What? How the fuck…?” Ghost frowns, not even trying to hide his surprise.

“I can’t answer that question,” Kyle utters the line that all SAS know better than their own names. Burned on the back of their minds, etched in their muscles. Tattooed with invisible ink all over their bodies.

It’s an answer and not an answer at the same time. With a single line, Kyle has confirmed that he’s close to Soap without betraying anything. His commanding officer, most likely, and isn’t that hilarious?

“It was fine. I’ve let him crash at my place,” Simon volunteers a bit of intel in exchange.

“Really? Just like that? Back when you still served, nobody except Price even knew where you were living.”

“I didn’t want any bloody Christmas cards,” Simon tries to deflect with a joke.

Gaz lets it go. It’s an ancient history by now, and there are more pressing matters he’s interested in, anyway. “I hope you haven’t crashed him on the first date; that would be ruthless even for you,” Kyle’s smirk can be heard in his voice, but there’s an underlying tone of seriousness, too.

Ghost groans, frustrated. With himself, mostly. “No, of course not. I’m not an idiot. But…”

“But you thought about it, haven’t you?”

That man knows him way too well. Dangerously so. Of course, he thought about it. The face, the body, the way John moved, self-assured, a little cocky, not bothering to conceal what he is. And then the talking, the flirting. Especially the flirting. Without that, Simon would’ve been fine. Mates. Friends. Whatever. Simple, safe. Well, think again. Fuck! “Yeah, I did. And I feel like a bloody cradle-snatcher for it.”

Gaz snorts. “He ain’t that young, and you ain’t that old, Ghost. You know what he does for a living and how it is, so I’m gonna save my breath and spare you the lectures. Have fun, Simon.”

As if he needs the lectures. “That’s all?”

“Does it even matter what I say, Ghost? It’s not life or death business. You’re both adults, if not entirely reasonable. As long as your thing doesn’t fuck up my thing, we’re good.”

“You didn’t really help me, you know,” Simon notes bemusedly.

“If you wanted a voice of reason, I’m afraid you didn’t call the right number. I guess Laswell’s would be what, two numbers down?”

“One.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Thank you, Kyle,” Simon sighs.

“Anytime, mate. And show the kid some neat tricks while you’re at it, will you?”

“I have no idea what kept Price from strangling you,” Simon huffs a laugh.

“My charming personality, obviously,” there are some muffled voices in the background then. “Gotta run, duty calls and all that. Just… enjoy the life a little, old man.”

“Is that an order?”

“Might as well make it one. Cheers, Ghost.”

Ghost lets himself fall back, sprawling on the futon. Stripey is with him and subsequently on him the next second, stepping on Simon’s chest before he lies down. Kyle was right. If Ghost wanted a voice of reason, Gaz wasn’t exactly the right person to call.

So, if he’s read the situation right, and would like to take it further, what would the next step be?

[yellowbunnydreams]

The Blood Runs Thicker (part 9) ~vampire!William Afton x F! Reader~

~Surprise double upload! Because I can and I am a cruel, cruel writer~

Tag-List; @ruh--roh-raggy @randymeeksisafinalgirl @sleepy---head @robin-the-enby @hungrhay @likoplays @slxsher-whxre @nicolezghostz @spiderlilytengu

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* Want more or something different? *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

CW:Minors DNI, (18+ ONLY), Female Reader, legal age gap (Reader- 20's, William - 50's), graphic acts of violence, biting, knife-play, blood, blood-drinking/licking, mention of dead children, anaemia. A lot of sexual tension...like a lot. Possessive behaviour. The suit stays ON

The water pounded against William's chest as he laid his head back against the tiles. His chest heaved slightly with each breath as he tried to let himself even out after preparing lunch for you. It'd been adorable almost, how you'd curled up under the covers again so quickly and needed to be shaken awake. The way your eyes lit up as you saw some of the snacks and drinks you'd brought on the tray along with a more healthy lunch than whatever Michael had fed you for breakfast.

Thinking of Michael had William's fists clenching, pounding them against his thigh lightly as his jaw twitched and his lip curled up in a snarl. But he'd dealt with Michael, for now at least. And he tried to make himself relax and turn off his senses, eyes closed and feeling the coldness of the tile seeping into his skin, focusing on the hot water and trying not to let his aching body take over his mind again as he thought of you curled up in his bed.

You on the other hand, had just finished cleaning up after lunch. Wiping your hands on your jeans and listening to the house for a moment, you wondered where William had disappeared to, having looked inside the fridge and noticing that the shoe-box of his demented capri-suns was restocked, one sat on the shelf in plain view, like he'd thought about taking it but then had become distracted.

Picking it up, you tucked it under your arm. Unsure what you planned on doing with it, but wondering if perhaps you could take another shower despite taking on earlier in the day. You felt dirty, used. Somewhat glad that William had avoided answering any curiosities you may have had as to where his son had gone to, even though there was still some tiny quiet part of your mind that wondered whether he was alive or more dead than he previously was.

Heading back upstairs, you sighed as the cold packet under your arm made you feel cold again. Still not entirely sure what you planned on doing with it if you didn't find William, but carrying it with you anyway.

Your thoughts wandered back to them being curled in bed, his warmth against your front and the feeling of his large hands against your back. How peaceful he had looked when you were sure he was asleep, the way his glasses dug into his nose when he'd fallen asleep. Your cheeks heated up as you recalled the way his legs had looked, the way he so gracefully moved around the bed and even his briefly flustered face when you'd thrown the pillow at him in embarrassment. Smiling to yourself as you were lost in thought, not hearing anything as you pushed open the bathroom door.

You blinked as you opened the door and were faced with a wall of hot air, confused as you stood there blinking. Suddenly aware that you could hear the water running and turning your head towards the tub, cheeks heating up and almost tripping over your feet as you spotted William with his head pressed back against the tile. Seemingly not having spotted you yet as you turned to leave quickly. Glad you couldn't see more than his head and a bit of his shoulder from behind the curtain.

"You could have asked nicely if you wanted to join me, rather than barge in." He murmured, making you squeak and freeze as you silently cursed yourself for forgetting how sensitive his hearing seemed to be.

"I-I um.. sorry, I'll just go. I didn't mean to intrude." Voice wavering as you headed for the door, William's arm shooting out in the small space and holding the door closed as he lazily opened his eyes and glanced at you. Smirk spreading across his face as he saw how flustered you were.

"You'll only waste the hot water, get in, bunny. I'll even close my eyes for you." Your head snapped towards him as he made a show of moving his thick, muscular arm and placing his hand over his closed eyes. Moving so that he was fully behind the curtain once again. Torn between disobeying him and potentially making the predator angry, or obeying and praying that you didn't see anything nor that he would see anything either.

Stripping down quickly, you placed your clothes in a pile with his and opened the curtain at the opposite end of the tub, eyes squeezed so tightly closed it made your head hurt, hand reaching in blindly as you tried to step in. Foot giving out on the slick tub for a moment before a large hand whipped out and caught your upper arm, making you yelp as he righted you and made sure you were upright. Loosening his grip once he was sure you were securely in the tub, keeping yourself facing the wall and all too aware of the looming presence behind you. Too short for where he'd set the shower to actually get wet, but you daren't step back in case you ran into all too bare flesh.

William opened his eyes, having to as he heard you slipping as you entered the tub. His eyes instinctually raked down the curve of your spine, feeling his lip curl into a snarl as he saw the marks on your shoulder from where Mike had bitten you. Feeding you his blood had certainly made it almost guaranteed that there would be no scar from it, although it also appeared you wouldn't scar from anything he'd done to you either. A small flare of disappointment running through him as he found himself wishing one of his marks had remained against your pretty skin.

He could always make more, when you were stronger again.

Ignoring you for a moment, he grabbed his shampoo and began to wash his hair. Brushing against your back slightly and feeling how you tensed as he had to lean forwards slightly to wash it out. Glad that the water around you helped to dampen your smell, taking a deep breath anyway in case he could catch some of the intoxicating scent, frowning as he couldn't. Frown turning into a scowl as he noticed you keeping a distance, staring at a singular spot on the wall like your life depended on it.

"Are you all shy now bunny?" He teased, reaching forwards and grabbing your arms, making you gasp as he pulled you back into his body. Feeling his broad chest against your back, the way the hair felt against your back and the curve of your spine seemed to fit perfectly against his stomach. Cheeking burning and body shaking as you held your hands up, gripping onto your shoulders and thighs pressing together as you tried to protect your modesty.

But the water was warm, and it washed off some of the grossness that Mike had left behind. Feeling William shift against your back and lean in, breathing over your ear as he chuckled.

"Now this, this is naked, bunny." Referring to your accusation earlier, only making your cheeks burn harder and the blush spread down your neck and onto your chest. Swallowing hard as you tried to not create a mental image of what William Afton looked like against your back, how muscular his body was, how it felt like muscle designed for function over form, or let your mind wander to the trail of hair you had caught a glimpse of before.

Shaking your head, you curled in on yourself more, making Afton laugh before he straightened up. Hearing a bottle click above your head before you gasped, cold being poured onto your head as you recognised the smell of your shampoo, his thick fingers tangling into your hair and massaging it into your scalp. Your tense shoulders relaxing after a moment as a soft groan of appreciation fell from your lips.

"You're still a bastard."

"We went over my legitimacy earlier, bunny. I didn't realise you'd quite gotten that stupid." He chuckled, especially as you started to move your hand backwards as if to slap him before realising that he was very naked too, and watching as your cheeks flushed at the realisation your hand could land somewhere very different than its target.

"How anybody put up with you long enough to produce a child, I'll never know." you scoffed, feeling him pause before that low chuckle reached your ears again, dark and sending shivers down your spine as he spoke lowly and slowly.

"Oh I had three." Leaning in closely and whispering into your ear to see how you reacted, watching your expressions carefully as he almost growled out the words. "Maybe if you turned around, you'd have one of the reasons why about level with your stomach."

Your cheeks flushed something horrid, a tiny squeak escaping your lips as even your chest started burning up. Heart pounding as you turned your head slightly and found him incredibly close to yours. Watching him grin wickedly as he was able to drink in your flustered apperance.

"You're disgusting."

"I'm actually quite clean thank you, as proven by me being in the shower." That sarcastic grin still on his face as he refused to move from how close he was to you. Glad there was little space between your hips as he was sure he would have perhaps been a little bolder had you been pressed up against him so wholely.

"You said you're already dead. So as far as I know, dead guys don't get hard." You fake pouted, trying to recover some of your sarcasm as he had thrown you so completely by forcing such a close situation. Watching William's expression open up and his eyes widen, mouth opening in slight shock before he snapped back to his usual frown, lip curling up in a snarl before he spoke in that growling tone again.

"There are more ways than using my cock to fuck you, bunny. I was an engineer, I'm quite good with my fingers...or I could always taste you in a different way." Pushing out his long tongue and licking your cheek for emphasis and making you flinch away slightly, chuckling at how your face flushed, though something about you smelt slightly different as he did it. Making him raise any eyebrow curiously as to what had changed, eyes flickering to your lips as he remained close, watching how they trembled with your breath. "How does that sound, little bunny?"

"Like....m-my worst nightmare." You managed to swallow through your words, earning another chuckle as he could so clearly see the lies in your words, standing back to his full height before his large, rough hand moved up to your shoulders, touching and feeling the skin there and how it was feeling as it healed up. Feeling your body trembling and shaking as he almost massaged you, enjoying teasing you and playing the game of cat and mouse you had unofficially established together.

The prize was your body...although William wanted it in a much different way this time.

He quickly finished up and allowed you to wash yourself, stepping out confidently and unashamed. Your eyes naturally following the movement initially, flustering yourself all the more as you caught a glimpse of his back, broad and scarred. The way the muscles moved under his pale skin making your chest tighten before you managed to snap your attention back to the task in hand. Hoping he would leave the bathroom quickly so you could dry off in peace at least.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, Afton stood infront of the mirror, a soft sigh coming from his lips as seemingly the empty bathroom stared back at him. It was still such a naturally movement after all these years to look there, as if he could see his face staring back at him. Running his hand over his growing beard, he wondered if he should attempt to shave, wincing as he thought back to the last time he'd done so and how he'd sliced open a good chunk of his face because he couldn't see. It wasn't like he could go to a barber's either.

Stepping out of the shower, you turned off the water and grabbed the nearest towel, wrapping it tightly around your body as you gazed at Afton. Chest tightening as you realised he was only in a towel, staring into the mirror with disdain and a little defeat. You looked into the glassy surface and your eyes widened slightly as you saw that there really was no reflection for him, his eyes searching it like he might find himself if he looked hard enough. The way his hand scrubbed at his face telling you that something was bothering him.

Despite the fact you wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, you padded softly over to him. Carefully manoeuvring so that you could jump up on the counter and keep your modesty, his grey eyes flickering to you, eyebrow raised as he realised you were voluntarily seating yourself near him.

"What do you want, brat?"

"Do you...Would you like me to help?" You asked, taking a pause between words as you tried to figure out how best to approach it without sounding condescending. William paused at your question, frowning before you remembered that you'd brought in a blood bag, picking it up off of the counter and wiggling it like you might do so to bait on a hook. "I brought snacks if that helps?"

His lips twitched and threatened to curl into a smile before he regained control again, shrugging his broad shoulders and opening a drawer on the counter, pulling out a straight-razor and some shaving cream, handing both to you.

"Don't try and slit my throat." Growling as he positioned himself so that you had him between your knees, watching as you put some shaving cream on your hands and gently spread it on one side of his face. Wanting to divide and conquer the task at hand. You carefully picked up the razor and placed your hands on his face, running the blade against his skin loosely, trying not to shave too close to the skin in case you cut him.

Silence settled between you, your hands trembling softly and lips parted slightly in concentration as the blade moved over his face. Washing it regularly to check on the cut and how it was progressing. It was a lot slower than when he'd been able to do it for himself, but he felt himself relaxing slightly under the careful touches. Eyes closing and allowing you to turn his head back and forth to get the best shave. There was something theraputic about it for the both of you, and incredibly trusting to allow knives near either, but it didn't cross either mind on how easily you could attack him and escape in that moment.

After a while, you grabbed a hand cloth and wiped down his face, frowning as you realised you had been a little too careful and left stubble across his face rather than a clean shave. Afton opening his eyes again and rubbing his hand over his face, smiling as he realised you'd left a bit of stubble.

"I'd almost say you prefered me like this." He teased, and you smacked him lightly, rolling your eyes and gasping as he caught your wrist in his hand, holding it close as he allowed himself a genuine smile in front of you. "Thank you, bunny."

"I can't imagine how..frustrating...it must be, to not see yourself." You murmured, earning a hum in reply as he shuffled, placing his free hand down by your hip as he leaned in, studying your face as he continued to smile, almost warmly.

"Oh it is incredibly... That's why I like watching your expressions so much, I get to see it. It's the thing that unless you look in a mirror, you can't see.. like me." his voice was soft, almost purring as he seemed to think for a moment, his lips ghosting yours and making your chest tighten, breathing becoming difficult as his lips softly hovered just above yours. Your breath becoming his and his becoming yours for a brief moment before he pulled away. Grinning widely as he watched your expression, the conflicted desperation for closeness, the nervousness as he moved back from you, allowing your wrist to fall back into your lap.

"I'll leave you pyjamas on the bed, and grab you some snacks. It's been a very long day for you, for both of us." Walking out of the room and closing the door behind him, padding towards his bedroom as he left you on the counter, shaking and breathless from a kiss that never came.

And you weren't sure why you had wanted it so much, but you swore to yourself as you tried to gather your thoughts regarding the predator you seemed to have developed some form of crush on.

[slvtforyumi]

group chat boys while you’re on your period headcanons. <re upload>.

————————————

some things have been changed or added considering my writing has changed a bit since i last wrote this.

————————————

isaac-

he’s the biggest softie with you.

he’ll immediately recognise that something is wrong when you begin to act a little different.

has prepared himself for your eventual mood swings.

he makes sure to keep you on bed rest even if you insist that you’re fine.

he goes out of his way and will literally drop everything to go and get you something you need, craving something? he’s already going to the store, need a hug? he’s on his way.

he read somewhere online that having sex on your period can help reduce the pain of cramps.

so he takes that to his advantage a bit and uses it as an excuse to still be able to fuck you.

nick-

he is the biggest sweetheart ever.

stays in bed with you the majority of the time, just cuddles you and massages you wherever it hurts.

he stocks up on snacks and stuff you crave for times like this.

he puts up with all your mood swings, when your angry he stands and listens but then when you switch to crying, he’s immediately got his arms wrapped around you comforting you.

just like isaac he isn’t put off by the idea of having sex with you while period.

he just becomes wayyy more gentle with you than he normally would be.

tanner-

he’s not the best at knowing what to do while you’re on your period.

he doesn’t really know how to handle your mood swings so when you start to become a little cranky he’ll keep his distance from you.

he’s a little afraid he might upset you more than you already are.

but then again he always manages to cheer you up when you’re having your little moments.

he’s always holding you close to him in the day and at night he practically wraps himself around you like a teddy bear.

he wouldn’t be obliged to having sex with you he just wouldn’t be up for it all the time.

yumi-

he would honestly be hopeless at the start.

he would be panicking so much and would probably end up making you feel so much worse than you already were.

he’d then get around the idea of it and would calm himself down and realise that it’s not too big of a deal.

i’d you had asked him to go to the store for you to get some pads he’d respond with “fuck no dude i’m not going down the pussy pad isle”.

he’d fill up a hot water bottle for you and place it wherever it hurts.

and he’d still try and succeed at making you laugh but would also make you feel like strangling him half the time too.

he isn’t entirely put off the idea of having sex with you, he’d honestly just much prefer to finger you instead.

larry -

honestly he’d be a little underprepared when you first told him you had come on and wouldn’t exactly know what to do.

but after some intense google research he soon gets the hang of it.

would probably threaten to beat up your uterus for hurting you so much.

he would go out and buy you loads of snacks tho.

but would probably end up eating half of them on his way home to you.

in some sick way he kind of enjoys you being on your period, just because he likes being able to stay in bed with you all day, watching trash tv while watching junk food.

he would probably ask you to go down on him even if you feel like you’re going to die.

[konveeart]

I am not gonna name names (coughs @swollenbabyfat coughs) but my brain has been picked over and over again, and I succumbed to my need of going back to my roots and drawing Eevee!

I made these during the week before the last of October. The idea was to turn them into bookmarks which would reveal a "secret puzzle" on the back if all four were collected :)

Under the cut trivia, hehe~

The images uploaded are purposefully low-res.jpeg files. The idea was to imitate the nearly-lost-media file that's been distorted from the older internet days (around 2008), as a "tribute" to baby-old me learning internet surfing and being starry eyed at pictures with eevees and anime girls.

Before I drew these there was one night I lost sleep on, trying to find a specific eevee picture I was obsessed with back in the day. It was made by a user named "Rikoula", depicting a shiny eevee crying. It was my absolute favorite picture of eevee, and my entire purpose of getting better at art back in the day and for many years later, was to reach this level. Sadly, even after ending up watching eevee-tributes on YT (while not being able to find anything on the internet Archive, pinterest and the rest) up until 2012, I did not manage to find the picture. I hope one day I will.

I had the entire timelapse of these nearly ready. Sadly, as I saved the first part to be uploaded, I deleted the second believing it was the one "without music". I even double-checked the title and said "yep, 100% sure", even though later, before shutting down my computer I thought "hmm, maybe I should check what's inside the trash before I empty it". <<<<< idiot didn't do it :'(

I played tetris on how to arrange them and still can't decide so I settled with the order of the pokédex for this post. The original order I sketched them is like the tags.

[cheapsugar]

ONE SHOT 01. vil x idia title: konami romance contains: fluff, playing video games summary: idia's playing his favorite mmorpg. vil decides he wants to try too. note: very clearly came up with a little... parody? of ffxiv here. but, please know i know nothing about that game so i took creative liberties! i hope you like it! this will be uploaded to ao3 as well.

Despite his ever busy schedule, Vil always made sure to dedicate at least one day nearly entirely to Idia every week. A sort of arrangement that Vil was quite surprised to hear Idia have some reservations about. The "loner otaku" didn't want to be so alone after all. Having someone else to care for, for what must've felt like the first time in so long, Idia had found himself really wanting to just... be around Vil.

It was incredibly sweet, Vil had to admit. And he did feel bad about having to squeeze time between the school week to see him, resulting in maybe two? Three hours a few days a week? It's something they're still both working on.

So, it's quite a surprise when Vil finds himself just... sitting on Idia's bed. Alone. He's flipping idly through a magazine filled with anime and manga news, all in a language he can't understand, keeping himself mildly busy as Idia begged to just play a little bit of Last Fantasies XIV. He had gone on about some sort of event going on... "raids" was a word used a few times, "limited edition armor"...?

He wasn't really sure. But what he was sure of was that he was unequivocally bored. Vil contemplated demanding Idia turn the game off, but... he knew he couldn't do it. Looking at his flame haired boyfriend, there was just so much sadness in his life... in the way he moved... Vil found it increasingly difficult to snuff out his happiness.

Fine. He's gone soft, but only for Idia. Something he does his best to hide when he's around others. But, in the privacy of Idia's room, Vil doesn't feel the need to put up a front.

At the end of the day, he just wanted to keep that genuine smile going for as long as he could. That's what he gets, he supposed, for playing the hero.

Eh, this wasn't a bad "consequence". If it even was one.

Closing the magazine, he turns until he's resting on his knees in the other's direction. "Idia." Vil called out, but his dear boyfriend had his headphones on. With a sigh, he calls out again. "Idia!"

"H-Huh?!" Idia pulls one side of his headphone away from his ear, eyes wide as he looks over at Vil.

"You know, it's incredibly rude to have your boyfriend over and then proceed to ignore him!" Vil starts. And this seems to make Idia cower just a bit in his seat, an apologetic look on his face.

"Ah, S-Sorry..." He pulls his headphones down to hang around his neck. "It's just this event is loaded with quality loot! I mean, my character is already pretty OP but it never hurts to add more stats, hehehe."

Idia sits up straighter, excitement leaking through his voice. "Usually, I hate playing with newbies, but this time I'm joining every open party I find! And if they're too slow to find the chests in time, that's on them! I'm teaching them a valuable lesson about the MMORPG world!"

All of that flew right over Vil's head, but he finds himself smiling somewhat anyways. He could tell that Idia wasn't being the nicest player around, but he wasn't going to chastise him for that. It was just a game, after all. And, anyways, shouldn't one do everything they can to better themselves?

Vil looks at the holographic screen, seeing Idia's character obediently standing there. He can also see people whizzing by to and fro, chat bubbles on the edge of the screen and the clearing they all seemed to be in.

"I'd like to try." Vil says, looking back at Idia. But he was surprised with what he was met with. "What's with that face?!"

"That face" was Idia staring at Vil, controller gripped tightly as Idia's eyes widen. His mouth was agape... Vil wasn't sure if he was breathing...?

"You..." Idia sounded almost breathless. "...You want to try out the game with me?"

"Yes...?"

There's more silence between them as Idia clearly takes time to process this. "...Seriously?"

Vil doesn't even have the ability to feel annoyed, Idia's reaction was quite humorous. A bit of a laugh leaves him as he moves to stand up, making his way to Idia. "Yes, Idia! Seriously!"

And that seemed to do the trick! Idia starts shuffling in his seat, finally fixing his god awful hunched posture as he reached a hand to his headphones to turn off the Bluetooth function. And just like that, Vil can hear the audio of the game fill up the room. He continues to watch as Idia finally seems to settle. Surprisingly, blue tips turn a soft pink as Idia clearly seems to be mulling something over.

Timidly, and after a swallow, a hand motions to the spot between his legs. "You um... you can sit here. The chair's pretty roomy so..." The sentence trails off.

Vil smiles, bending over to give Idia a quick kiss on the cheek. This makes the pink tips that much more brighter. Good, that's what he wanted.

Carefully, Vil takes the spot Idia offered and settles back into his boyfriend. He wasn't the type to admit it, but, he likes being held. And Idia seemed to like doing the holding. Vil takes a moment to admire the way the blues and pinks of Idia's hair seem to engulf him as well. It was gorgeous, Vil never shied away from reminding Idia of that. Fingers reach for a strand, twirling it momentarily, before he felt Idia's nose brush up against the side of his face.

"Mm, I can get used to this." Vil speaks. He feels Idia nod. Idia brings the controller over and in front of Vil, motioning for Vil to take a hold of it. When he does, Idia places his hands over his.

"So, this is Last Fantasies XIV. TLDR: you wake up in Lindow, one of the three villages that take up the continent of Erostey. The last thing you remember is fighting a hooded figure. Currently, we still don't know who these hooded figures are. The developers update the game about every few months and with each update we get more and more of the story." Idia starts, before using his thumb to make Vil move the character over to a large sign post.

"For the time being, you need money and XP. So you join the Explorers Guild and start to do things like Quests, Raids and Tasks. Quests pertain to things that effect the story of the game, Raids are basically for grinding and Tasks help you gain coin. This sign post is basically how you trigger them."

Vil nods, eyebrows furrowing a bit. "Okay..." He says. "So... I'm assuming these hooded figures are the bad guys?"

"Yeah. At least, that's what the forums think." Idia uses his fingers to move Vil around again, taking him towards the village square. "They attack you and your party randomly during Raids. Noobs go down pretty quickly because of them. But I can handle a whole group of them all by myself." Idia's unique, conceited laugh bubbles out again.

Prior to getting with Idia, If you had told Vil that one day he would find someone bragging about their little virtual character in a game attractive, he wouldn't have believed you. But things are different now. He adored when Idia oozed confidence. And it helped that his snarky comments weren't directed at him half as much as they used to be.

"Oh! Uh, sorry, you... do you want to create your own character? We'll have to make you a new account—"

"Wait." Vil started, looking over his shoulder at Idia the best he could. "You made this character?"

"Um, yes...? You usually do for MMORPGs." A small breath of a laugh. "How could I expect a normie like you to know that..."

Vil lets that one slide. For now, at least. Idia knew for every "normie" he threw at Vil, Vil adds another "face mask night" in the proverbial jar.

"Can I see them more up close?"

He suddenly feels Idia tense up behind him. "Uh..." Another nervous noise. Which... actually isn't something that's too out of the ordinary for Idia. But, the context of the situation did raise a bit of questions in Vil. "Don't you want to just get in to playing? My character is pretty strong, so it should be easy for you."

"Okay? But, I want to get a look first." Vil turns his head back towards the screen, stepping the character more into the open. "I haven't played many video games, but creating a character has always been my favorite part. I want to see what you did."

Now, if he remembered correctly, he believed... yes the right analog stick moves the camera around! And now to zoom in all he needed to do was tip it forward and... oh!

What stood in front of him was a beautiful elven-like man. Blonde shoulder length hair framed a sharp face, features carefully placed and entirely modelesque. Piercing violet eyes looked back at him, the color much more vibrant against the soft purple eye shadow and sharp liner. Lips were delicately painted with a dark lipstick, his neutral face alone could strike down anyone.

Vil blinked as he realized he was looking at... himself?!

His lips were already starting to quirk up. "Idia... is this supposed to be..."

He didn't even have to finish his sentence as pink suddenly engulfed him. Idia's hands retract to cover his face, a groan escaping him. "Y-You weren't supposed to see that...!"

The smile finally graces Vil's face before a light laugh escapes. "Are you embarrassed? There's hardly any reason to be." He turns, sitting sideways on his lap to get a look at him. "This is very flattering. And... Seven, really really endearing."

Slender fingers separate as topaz colored eyes are seen between them. "Y-You're just saying that! It's... it's totally creepy!"

"Oh, come now! What did I say about putting words in my mouth?" He leans over, kissing the back of Idia's hand. He's met with Idia's surprised gaze. "I meant what I said. I am sincerely flattered."

Idia slowly lowers his hands, the pout still on his face as his cheeks and hair remained a soft pink. Like this, Vil takes the opportunity to lean over to give him a proper kiss. Quick but sweet.

"How did you do it?" Vil asks.

This somehow seems to fluster Idia all over again, who reaches over to pull his hood over his head. Thankfully, not enough to hide his face completely.

"...U-Using the... the selfies you sent me." He says, voice shaky and small. "It took me about an hour. I um, have a folder of your selfies on the cloud, so I was basically looking through them all..."

Vil's eyes light up. "You have a folder of my selfies?" That's... ugh, can Idia get any more... cute?! He made him feel like a silly little middle school boy, warm fluttery insides and happy heart skips.

He's already reaching over for Idia's secondary holographic screen, having gotten comfortable with understanding how to maneuver it. Of course, only at a basic level. The right level to know how to look through files.

"V-Vil!? Hey! W-What are you doing?" Idia's already attempting to take control of the screen himself.

"I'm looking for this folder, of course! Now, do you have it saved under my name? Or have you decided to use a pet name for it instead?" Vil asks, letting out a small laugh when Idia finally manages to swat the screen away from Vil.

"T-That isn't—Didn't you want to try my game?!" Idia's tone is nearly desperate, but Vil can see a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. "Let's focus on that!"

Well... Vil supposed he had to accept defeat, didn't he? For now, at least. "Okay, fine, fine." He shuffles until they're back to their previous position. This time, Vil takes one of Idia's hands and attempts to guide it over so Idia could be holding him. Thankfully, Idia got the message loud and clear, as he wraps both arms around Vil's middle.

He drops his forehead onto Vil's shoulder, letting out a slow breath. Vil could see his hair steadily going back to normal.

"You're going to be the death of me one day...!" Idia says.

"But what a lovely way to go, isn't it?"

He could hear the smile in Idia's tone as he says, "if the Seven decide to be in my favor for once."

Vil hums before holding the control better in his hand, thumb on the right analog stick as he attempts to put the camera where it was before. "Okay. What do I do now?"