#it makes the ‘easy way out’ a more viable option for one day in the future if things go really sideways and I can’t see the point anymore

[tteokdoroki]

✩࿐TRACK 01: RIGHT HERE. katsuki bakugou (2K)

about. leaving katsuki bakugou was the hardest thing you’ve ever done. pretending that you no longer love him every time he calls is even harder.

warnings. minors and ageless blogs do not interact! sfw, slight angst, fluff, hurt-comfort, happy ending, break ups, mentions of harassment, exes to lovers, pro hero + fem!reader, pro hero!bakugou.

things to note. yay !! the first fic of the series !! idk im really excited about these and they were super fun to write. i hope you guys enjoy <3 - masterlist / series masterlist / playlist ✩

leaving katsuki was probably the hardest thing you’ve had to do in all your years of living. 

being one another’s first loves, you feel like you owe a piece of yourself to him. the relationship that you founded together leaving high school had taught you so much, about yourself, about him and about how the world worked. it was comfortable with katsuki, he knew you liked the back of his own hands — what made you smile the way he liked, what made you laughed in the way that made his stomach twist with a joyous emotion he didn’t even know he was capable of, what made you squirm and what made you pissed off, too. 

and as you navigated the challenges of adulthood, grew into your lives and yourself — stretched the skin around your bones to spread your wings you realised that overtime, katsuki made you sadder than he made you happier. you made him feel angrier than he made you feel calm.

neither of you were prepared to let go, holding onto frayed ends of a love that had built up your confidence and set you on the course for the rest of your lives. but to say it ended on good terms would be a lie too. you needed an out and took the first one you saw, a friend on the other side of the country was starting an agency on their own and needed a partner. you knew it would hurt bakugou more than anything, so perhaps, that’s why you did it. 

you left in the middle of the night to fulfill the dream you and the blonde had come up with together — with someone else. 

of course, leaving him behind wasn’t easy and it still isn’t. cutting katsuki completely out of your life wasn’t a viable option and at least not for long, three months after your big move he came across your agency on the news following a huge rescue and shift in the hero rankings. katsuki was proud of you, he missed you, dialled up your agency to tell you himself and for some reason you found yourself clinging onto his every word not knowing that he felt the same.

you couldn’t forget about him, your golden boy and his golden smile that made heat spread through all four chambers of your heart and blood rush through your ears to the point where you were dizzy. bakugou was your day and he was your night, each of you taking turns returning from patrolling shifts that ran late for two semi-pro heroes like you — practically running into one another’s arms.

in another universe, it would still be that way for the both of you — but katsuki was bad for you, and you inevitably worse for him. even if you’d found new soil to settle your roots in, you secretly hoped that bakugou would come find you in every single timeline, every single world either of you existed in. 

maybe that’s why you kept in touch despite the dates you went on to get over him. maybe that’s why emails turned to texts and texts turned to phone calls that centred around reminiscing the past — the songs that you shared and the plans that you made. together. 

“how’s that boyfriend of yours?” bakugou grunts absentmindedly, the gruffness of his voice evened out by the static on his end of the phone. from the corner of your eye, you watch on the screen  as he slips through your old kitchen easily — knowing where everything is, knowing that he used to pin you up against those counters, knowing that he used to corner you while making coffee and...

you shake your head, popping it into view so that the blonde can see you roll your eyes in mock annoyance. “he’s not my boyfriend… just a friend from work.” you still have no idea why you lie to bakugou like that, actively pretending that your dating life isn’t flourishing. you tell yourself that it has nothing to do with the fact that you still want him. even though it never works out when you lead each other back into bed whenever you get the chance. “what are you making?” you ask, to distract yourself. 

“he likes you though.” katsuki returns from the fridge and steps into frame to show you the pack of tofu you know that he likes to cook with. you could have probably found it in your local convenience store with your eyes closed at this point. but you didn’t want him to know that you still remembered all of the little things about him. his likes, dislikes, hopes and dreams. “s’that tofu recipe fuyumi gave me back in high school. the one that makes ya—“ 

“the one that makes me shit my guts out, yeah. thanks for the reminder, bakugou.” you huff, glaring at the phone and wander into your own kitchen, subconsciously. probably to feel a little closer to your ex. “he doesn’t like me. how would you even know that?” 

“hah? bakugou? what happened to katsuki?” 

“don’t change the subject.” 

the swell of bakugou’s lush lips press into a thin line and you can just about make out his pout as you set the phone down to make yourself a fucking drink because you really can’t do this. you hate that you still seek him out in your darkest hours, when you’re alone in this city and it feels like the world is slowly turning against you. 

you’d turned off your television hours ago to avoid hearing the news. deleted the social media apps off your phone, too. called bakugou to fill the silence of your home with something soft, familiar like the deep depths of his voice. he provides a distraction that the chaos in your brain recognises, watching katsuki cook in that same old flat you rented right after going pro soothes the tensions in your body. 

his tatted arm with the sleeve flexes as he skilfully wields the sharpest knife from the set you gifted him on his twenty first. his crystallised ruby eyes squint and his nose scrunches in that adorable way as he reads the cooking instructions on the tofu even though you know that bakugou knows how to prepare it off by heart. 

all of these little things about katsuki make you feel at ease even though you’re worlds apart and taking your lives into different directions. 

“what happened today wasn’t your fault,” his timbre voice was over the line, grasping at the straws of your attention. you hadn’t realised you’d been zoning out when katsuki snaps his fingers at you. “quit that. ‘m talkin’ to you.”

“don’t snap at me, i’m not your dog.”

katsuki looks like he’s about to make a comment, but refrains when you scowl at him over the FaceTime call. “yeah but you weren’t listening to me, i know why you called me. saw it on the fuckin’ news, but i wanted you to hear from the resident fuck up that this’ll all blow over. the media is just shit.” 

even through bakugou’s brashness he still helps you lick at your wounds like you’re still his. “i hope so,” you sigh quietly and pick up your phone so that you can get a closer look at his expression, concern etched into his features. “being a pro hero decking a fan in the face doesn’t exactly instil confidence.” 

“he was a creep who’s been stalkin’ you for months. he fuckin’ deserved it. if you hadn’t,—“

“dynamight would’ve, my hero.” even though your tone is sarcastic, bakugou can tell that you’re thankful, that you mean it. he never liked that you were always one to suffer quietly, let the world walk all over you as if you weren’t worth standing tall and being proud of yourself. in some ways, the blonde wanted to be your hero — not the world’s. he wanted to stick up for you where you couldn’t even if he was defending you from yourself. 

you hated him for it, he loved you through it. perhaps that’s why your relationship was always falling from grace.

bakugou knows that you’re struggling to keep it all together, lock up all your troubles and throwing away the key with the hopes of never seeing them again. he knows that you carry that weight and that you’ll collapse if there isn’t someone to help you bear the burden. 

so he tentatively reaches out, metaphorically crosses that line you’d drawn after ending things, because you’re in need. “yanno, if you need me, i’m right here.” 

it’s like his words have snapped you back into reality, and you shoot him a look over the call. “katsuki, you shouldn’t say that.” 

“why not?” he quips — you almost miss it over the sound of his food sizzling as he begins to cook.

“we’re not together anymore… we’re broken up. it’s weird.” 

“it’s not weird to look out for friends.” bakugou snarls gruffly, though he’s all bite and no bark — mostly embarrassed by your rejection. “you think just ‘cause ‘m not callin’ you mine and giving you head every night anymore, i don’t wanna be here for you?” but of course he still finds a way to make the conversation go lewd, to fluster you. “i told you that wouldn’t change. broken up or not...what? what’s with that face. don’t make that face, sweetness.”

a hand comes up to mindlessly touch at your face and brush over your lips, you don’t even realise that you're pouting. 

“katsuki i’m serious.” you say, whining like a child. 

“and so am i.” your ex mumbles right back and you can see his tongue running over his teeth from behind his plump lips — just barely holding back a cocky smirk. 

“you’ll only make this harder.” 

“we’ve never been easy.”

“we’re supposed to be moving on from each other.” 

“you’re the one who called me, sweetness.” 

“that doesn’t mean—“ 

“you miss me.” bakugou has always been brutally honest but that doesn’t mean you’re prepared for him to hit you with the truth. it’s like a punch to the gut that makes the world start spinning and your heart stop beating. you do miss him, you always will — he’s all you’ve ever known even if it’s been years since you last embraced his love. what you have now has teetered on the blurred line of friendship and love, it’s far from normalcy. but tonight you feel like letting yourself fall a little harder, return to your old ways. “s’okay. i miss you too.” 

static echoes between your phones during the call, breaking the pocket of silence yourself and katsuki find yourself basking in. 

“you mean it?” you question the blonde tenderly. the world has been so tough on you lately, you’re not sure if you could handle bakugou breaking your heart again. or you breaking his. “you’re not just…playing with me like you used to.” 

“i’m being serious, sweetness.” you can tell that he means it, genuinity etched into his voice as it reverberates through your kitchen. “i’m by your side through everythin’, thick ‘n thin just like i promised.”

“yeah well so am i.” you mock his little quip from earlier and it makes him smile — brightly, the corners of his lips just touching his ears and the red in his eyes shimmering with a familiar affection you truly have missed so much. promises were easily broken, but bakugou’s made good on every one that he’s ever made for you. including this. “katsuki…” 

he tests the waters, dipping into your old routine with an air of hope about things. “yeah, baby?”

“will you come see me?” you bleat, picking up the phone as if it’ll bring you any closer to him. “i need you.” 

“if you need me, i’ll be there.” bakugou whispers without missing another beat. 

he doesn’t care what he has to do, what either of you have been through — you called because you needed him, because the world had put you on your knees and you were losing yourself in the mess of it all. 

katsuki bakugou books the next flight out to see you, intending to keep his promise to you.

no matter what, for you, he’ll always be right here. 

꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2023. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

[copperbadge]

Well, Still Salty.

I was cranky yesterday and I thought a good night's sleep would provide some adjustment in perspective, but unfortunately "spending yesterday not on tumblr" also offered perspective and got there first.

Up front: feel free to comment or reblog on this post (replies may be heavily delayed) but if you feel the urge to Like, I'm going to ask you to take one more step and go to https://www.tumblr.com/support, select "feedback" as the category, and enter a line or two about the new dash. It can be as simple as "Your new dash design is difficult to use and is driving people off the site". I'm not asking everyone to do it, but if you're going to Like this post, that would be a helpful action in addition. You can delete any response they send; no reason to expose yourself to the unique combination of incompetence and condescension with which they handle feedback generally.

Also up front: yeah, if I find somewhere else to go and go there, I will certainly let you guys know beforehand, I'm not going to just evaporate. I'll be broadcasting about Tumblr's replacement on Tumblr very heavily. But I can't deny that it is now an active goal of mine to find a viable replacement for this site. (More on this in a moment.) You will always be able to find me on AO3 as copperbadge, or via copperbadge@gmail.com. (More on this in a moment also.)

This kind of thing is why I refuse to fuck with staff now or ever; I don't trust them and I never will. Watching @wip respond to almost every complaint or suggestion with "but that would be really hard" is telling. Whoever is pushing blocks around at Tumblr wants a lucrative site that's easy to code, but lucrative is hostile to community and code is difficult by nature, and when the architecture of the meeting hall is hostile and cheap, people don't stick around.

I've been watching the site as every change made it incrementally worse, from a buggy post window that doesn't allow ease of editing to the new dash (which is the reason I'm writing this in a text window off Tumblr). I genuinely do not think I can use desktop Tumblr like this unless I can install something that will put it back the way it was, and roughly 40% of the content you guys get HAS to come through desktop. It's impossible to do on a phone or so time-consuming it's not worth it. I cannot code Radio Free Monday on a phone; it's a struggle to code it on a single-monitor laptop (I usually write it on my work computer, where I have two monitors). Even writing image IDs on the phone is difficult and something I rarely do. Tumblr is becoming an actively difficult place for me to make content, introducing friction left and right.

But where does one go? I've tried other platforms and they're either worse to use or they don't have the constituency. The problem with a lot of discourse around internet addiction is that it often points out how glued people are to their phones without asking what it is they're doing on those phones. I'm not addicted to social media; I don't doomscroll, I don't care what celebrities have to say, I don't find 140 characters useful or interesting, I don’t find most “funny” videos very interesting. I create a lot of original content for public consumption, significantly more than many social media users, and if that becomes difficult, then the site suffers more than I do. But it's undeniable that social media, and this social media in specific, is where my people are, and yeah, I like seeing you all every day. It makes it difficult to leave even when Tumblr is the best of a bad set of options.

It seems like a lot of the internet, lately, is the best of a bad set of options.

All that said, Tumblr forced a sudden, unwanted, and unchangeable reskin on me a day after I listened to a two-hour podcast about addiction while working on building a newsletter system for my author site. I spent the evening before this happened in contemplation of my relationship to social media and to my readership and how I might alter it to my benefit regardless of whether that's also to Tumblr's detriment. Their poor timing, I suppose. A lot of the theories advanced on the podcast were, to put it kindly, bunk, but one of the suggestions for people questioning their relationship to an activity was a dopamine fast -- removing something in your life that gives you quick but unsustained dopamine hits, so that you can take some time to level out and examine your behaviors. On the one hand, that's not at all how dopamine works; from the jump it's a bad theory. But on the other, pulling back from something you think may be causing you difficulty is generally speaking a good tactic.

Removing myself from Tumblr yesterday was an active process: because I have ADHD and often will forget something exists if I don't systematize my engagement with it, Tumblr is normally pinned to my browser, with the app on my phone's top screen. Removing the app and closing the window meant that while I occasionally reached for Tumblr, it was less frequently than I expected, and the lack of access reminded me why I wasn't there. I missed you guys, but I didn't miss getting distracted from work by my dash, or the pressure to respond to the volume of communication I receive through the site daily. I don't think my use of tumblr as my sole social media has been unhealthy, per se, but certainly yesterday felt both quieter and calmer after I walked away.

But that's a temporary relief, because you are my community, and not only do I not want to leave my community, it's a resource for me. One of the reasons I do things like Radio Free Monday and the weekly Hug on Saturdays is that I try to make sure that resource is reciprocal. Leadership involves service. Leaving would be easy in the short term, but in the long term, leaving my community without having another place to meet it, or another community to go to, would be harmful to both of us. I'm already someone who isolates, and while I have a strong brickspace circle of friends, they fulfill sometimes different needs.

Though I do appreciate the wild vote of confidence from the comments to my last post telling me people would come with me where I went. That means a lot to me. I will attempt to make it either unnecessary or as painless as possible. Just know, I see your faith and friendship and I appreciate it.

Sometimes at my old job I'd be in very tumultuous meetings where a lot was discussed and not much agreed on, and the most useful thing to me was always to say, "What are our next steps? What would you like me to do because of this meeting?" So what are next steps, all this being the case?

First, I'm going to be off Tumblr, mostly, for another couple of days, because clearly I need the break and a few days won't matter too much. Again, I will be back either to continue on the site or to let you guys know, at length and volume, where I'm headed. The former is much more likely.

Second, I'm going to be actively looking for both a widget I can install to reset the dash (recommendations welcome, I currently don't even use xkit) and a wholly new platform that's a realistically viable alternative. Even if the dash gets reset, the shitty post editor is here for good. Attempts to source alternative platforms in the past have taught me that it needs to have a mobile-friendly site or an app, a similar structure to tumblr, and a reasonable chance of actually attracting users. That's a heavy venn diagram unlikely to be fulfilled anytime soon, but I'm now invested in finding it, instead of just passively waiting for it to happen to me (as Tumblr did when it pulled me off LJ).

Third, I do have an email newsletter in the works! I'm just wrestling currently with setting up how people sign up for it. This wasn't meant to be "my main broadcast platform"; it's meant to be a once-monthly email to share book news, targeted at people who aren't on socials or who just really love content from me, I guess. :D The plan was for me to assure Tumblr users that it was not extra content, just select content repackaged into a digest. But it will be one way to ensure that if I'm moving around outside of Tumblr, you'll know about it. I hope to have a link to a signup page soon. (I'm....dealing with some code issues.)

Fourth, I'm going to be combing through the last ten years I've spent here and pulling anything I think is of value into an archive. For now everything will remain here as well, and I'll let you guys know if I think that's going to change, but it's clear that this space is moving only one direction, towards a place I can't exist, and when/if it crumbles I want to have already evacuated what's important.

So there you go. I'll possibly be posting sporadically (the Saturday Hugs are queued six months in advance so that'll happen) but if nothing else and if not sooner, I'll be back full-time next week starting with Radio Free Monday. I appreciate your patience and your kindness in the meantime!

[thedaythatwas]

How to be Alone

Summary: Goro Akechi has 30 days to vacate his apartment. If only moving on were half as easy as moving out.

CW: alcohol, emetophobia, run-of-the-mill violent thoughts from Akechi, and more repression than you could possibly fathom

This is just a little snippet of a post-canon Akechi character study I've been working on! I want to share it here on tumblr as a standalone oneshot. Please don't expect any tension to be resolved <333 because that's not happening here <333

Big thank you to my lovely betas, lambsear (ao3), @cardiganbear, and @cloudysonder. Another massive thanks to @chaoticconstellation – thank you for all of the inspo and motivation (and for making me aware that apartments that evil-looking exist!)

House Hunting (or, I'm not hung up on you anymore, but here's why I hung up)

Shopping for apartments online was hell.

Akechi was no stranger to feelings of mind-numbing rage. Even so, there was something about the website he was using to search for a new living space that made him particularly angry, even by his own standards. His cursor drifted across its screen, its interface lagged, and despite his perfect internet connection, it seemed as though every thirty seconds the damn thing refreshed itself. 

Akechi wasn’t sure where exactly he was looking to live; his requirements for a new place were the vague but apt key terms, ‘Tokyo,’ ‘cheap,’ and ‘studio.’ Unfortunately, his criteria seemed to be mutually exclusive. A room of his own would cost an arm and a leg; a room with a roommate or two would take a doable (albeit still exorbitant) chunk from his savings. It was tragic, really, that Akechi would be at risk of causing grievous bodily harm to himself and others if he were forced to share a living space. Forking over cash he didn’t have was quite literally his only option. 

Akechi might have been able to search out some middle ground between striking gold beneath the streets of Kichijoji and committing another homicide if he had the luxury of time to plan his move. He had always been scrappy, even if he was seldom lucky. 

Time, however, was something that Akechi didn’t have. That, of course, had to do with the circumstances that had pushed him to bearing the indignities of online apartment hunting in the first place.

On February 3rd, Akechi had woken up in his bed. This was strange for a number of reasons. One: he didn’t make a habit of waking up when his bedside clock brightly proclaimed it to be 8:37pm. 

Two: Goro Akechi was supposed to be dead. 

And, joy of all joys, he was not. Upon registering this unfortunate new development in the saga of misfortunes that was his existence, Akechi had rolled over, buried his head in his pillow, and screamed. When soreness in his throat informed him that screaming was no longer a viable way to spend his time, he had walked to his near-empty kitchen and grabbed the frilly bottle of expensive single malt scotch that Shido had given him the day he had reported to his office to confirm Wakaba Ishikki’s death.

Akechi had been saving the bottle for the day he won.

Well. Cheers to that one. 

He had sat down on the linoleum tile floor and taken a large swig out of the bottle. Presumably, he’d repeated the act a number of times, because the next morning he’d woken up in his bed – again, ironically, with no memory of how he’d arrived there – and promptly thrown up on himself. 

He’d tossed his unlucky shirt in the garbage, along with the bottle he’d found lying knocked over and bone dry on the kitchen floor. He really had always hated it.

After spending several days lying in his bed, only leaving it to periodically feed himself one of the instant ramen packets he stockpiled in the one cabinet in his kitchen he actively used, Akechi had washed his sheets and moved on.

What else could he do?

He had contacted Sae Niijima first, because while he had been spending several days laying horizontal in a dark room, adding an abstract collage of broth splatters to his sweatpants and trying to convince himself that any of his recent decisions actually mattered, Akira Kurusu was probably behind bars giving testimony that would damn Shido and potentially put himself away for good in the process. 

And like hell was he going to let Joker one-up him by rotting away in jail while Akechi – clearly, the most deserving party in this scenario on both counts – walked free.

As soon as he’d heard the click of his phone connecting to Sae’s, Akechi had come in guns blazing announcing his intent to march down to the police station and confess to everything he’d done. He would gladly go down with Shido’s ship if it meant he could anchor him well and truly to rock bottom. 

The elder Niijima sister had rolled shockingly well with Akechi’s punches. After expressing mild surprise that he was alive, Sae had efficiently talked him off his ledge.

“Do you want Shido to be locked away for life? If your answer is yes, I suggest you stay well away from my case. I have a strategy, and it will be much less effective if I have to account for the testimony of a magical teenage assassin confessing to cognitively killing some of Japan’s most powerful men just as they’ve begun to take me seriously.” 

Akechi had never answered her question, because Akechi didn’t want Shido to be locked away. Not like this, anyway. What he had wanted hadn’t involved Kurusu, and yet, here Kurusu was in the center of it all, robbing Akechi of his chance to make Shido’s fall really hurt. 

Still, Akechi had come to terms with the fact that what he wanted and what he would get were two very different things in regards to the fate of Masayoshi Shido, and to this brave new world where Akechi was meant to be long dead. 

What he had done was take a deep breath, swallow down his very reasonable retorts – he had at least five – and ask about Kurusu. 

His inquiry was fruitful, if aggravating. Akechi hadn’t been naive enough to expect that any update on Kurusu wouldn’t be aggravating. 

Per Sae, it wouldn’t be long until Kurusu was released from juvenile detention (implied: so long as Akechi didn’t butt in). Apparently, his extended posse had banded together, and Sae doubted it would be more than a few weeks before he was out. He was actually on track to have his criminal record completely overturned.

Kurusu was relying on the power of friendship to not only avoid a life sentence, but to completely exonerate himself from the year he had spent galavanting around the Metaverse, stealing hearts and minds and Akechi’s life’s work, too. One might say that Akechi was less than enthused. Mostly, because he was near certain that using the force of true love to outrun his mistakes would actually work for Kurusu, because he was Kurusu, and of fucking course it could.

He hadn’t told Sae as much, but he sensed she’d intuited his frustration from his chorus of ‘...I see,’ ‘...I see,’ ‘...I see,’  through the phone, each repetition darker than the last. 

With that sorted, Akechi had told Sae in no uncertain terms that she was not to tell Kurusu or any of the other Phantom Thieves that he was alive under any circumstances. She said that she would respect his wishes. She hadn’t asked any follow up questions. It was a refreshing change of pace from the back and forth that talking to the rest of Kurusu’s loyal followers always seemed to entail.

Then again, this was Sae. She had been a fixture in his life long before she had become a mainstay in Kurusu’s.

That little detail out of the way, Akechi had been prepared to hang up. Before he could, Sae had invited him to coffee. Bewildered, Akechi had accepted.

“You are aware, I presume, that I’ve killed more people than the number of cases you’ve litigated over the course of your entire career, aren’t you?” Akechi had said as soon as he had slid into the stiffly upholstered booth across from Sae at the too cold, overly gray café where they had agreed to meet the following day. “Including among them Wakaba Isshiki and Kunikazu Okumura.”

Sae had pulled her credit card out of her sleek handbag and rapped it on the table between them.

“I am. Could you give me your order Akechi-kun? Drinks are on me today.”

Akechi had ordered a black drip coffee – far from the best he’d ever had – and the two of them had talked about his future, not his past. 

Sae told Akechi that she would be willing to hire him as a personal assistant. She couldn’t swing him a position interning in the public prosecutor’s office; it went without saying that Akechi ought to stay as far away as possible from any branch of law enforcement for the foreseeable future. Sure, very few people recognized him nowadays – the demiurge had fallen and taken Shido’s influence with it, and Akechi had been out of the public eye for a sufficient number of news cycles for even his most avid fans to lose interest – but it seemed unwise to tempt fate. 

They both knew that most of Shido’s conspiracy was still at large. As repentant as their former leader was, his sentiments were not widely shared. Shido had done more damage than a single change of heart could fix. 

All this to say, Akechi would be keeping a low profile. Not that he would have acted otherwise, regardless of who might want him imprisoned, or who might want him dead.

Akechi was, quite frankly, tired.

His employment would hinge on agreeing to take his high school equivalency and college entrance exams before the next university matriculation cycle. Akechi had, more or less, finished his final year of high school. Unfortunately, the less in that statement meant that he had never actually graduated. Still, he could easily pass a high school equivalency exam – an inconvenience, but a bureaucratic necessity, and hardly an insurmountable one. Before his life had gone to shit, he had been on track to get top marks on his entrance exams. It wouldn’t be difficult to keep himself versed in the material he needed to know in order to pass with flying colors.

He didn’t have strong feelings for or against Sae’s vision for his future. Akechi had been slated to die long before he had shot shut the bulkhead door on his father’s ship. He had gone to cram school because it was what the detective prince was supposed to do, and he had excelled at it because the world had told him that he couldn’t. He wasn’t like Makoto Niijima, with her good marks and bright future. 

Sae would pay him for doing this, though. More, she had that earnest look in her eyes behind the stoic contours of her face that suggested she really thought she was doing what was best for him. 

Akechi had agreed to her terms. 

Besides, he’d always been told that college wasn’t in the cards for him. The idea of proving those people wrong lit something up inside him that he hadn’t realized had been smothered until then.

Akechi would work for Sae on weekdays and study on weekends. She would check in with him once a week to confirm that he was indeed making progress on his personal studies and to assign him new memos and forms to copy edit. So long as he was on track, she would pay him another week.

It had all sounded so easy. Too easy. Akechi needed to ask.

“Why?”

Sae had taken a long sip of her cappuccino. “Why what?” 

“You know what.” Akechi had crossed his arms, his mouth drawn in a hard line, “Why this?”

Sae had set her cup down onto her saucer without so much as an audible clink. “Is it really so difficult to believe that I’d want to help you?”

“You pity me.” He’d said it like a fact, because it was a fact, and he didn’t take kindly to it. 

Sae hadn’t looked surprised to hear Akechi’s words. She raised her eyebrows.

“No, I don’t. And I’m not absolving you, either. You made choices that hurt people, and you need to face consequences for that. But, Akechi-kun…” 

Sae paused, as if weighing her next words on her tongue. “Goro. You were sixteen.”

Akechi didn’t know which part of her addendum offended him most: Sae’s use of his given name – he’d bristled, he couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone had been presumptuous enough to call him Goro – or her implication that he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing back when he first approached Shido. 

She hadn’t seen how proud he had been when Shido handed him his first pistol. She hadn’t been there each time he’d pulled its trigger. Akechi had stopped feeling anything about his hits after he’d downed a handful of targets. Through it all, he’d never felt remorse. He’d even smiled, the first time.

That smile hadn’t lasted, of course. It had fallen right along with Ishikki. Still, everyone knows that it’s your first reaction to a thing that really counts. 

Her eyes on his were resolute, as if she were daring him to object. She wasn’t budging. 

Sae had sounded awfully confident for someone who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Akechi remembered their long days at the police station and the late night dinners Sae would treat him to after, when he’d watch as she scarfed down cheap conveyor belt sushi and let her dignified mask slip like the rice that fell from her chopsticks to her perfectly starched dress shirt. He remembered their constant shop-talk that always seemed to border on something more personal. 

Sae knew what it was like to prove yourself in a world that wanted to see you fail. He remembered watching her come undone in October, how he almost felt bad as he watched her slip further away from her sister, and from him.

Gripping his mug hard enough to put its handle in peril, Akechi had bitten back the urge to inform Sae that he was eighteen years old now, and had done very bad things continuously from age sixteen through now, thank you very much. He was suddenly aware of exactly how juvenile it would sound if he did.

He decided that Sae could call him what she wanted. ‘Goro’ didn’t feel wrong, he supposed. It just felt new.

She was wrong about him, but he had let her continue without correction. 

“You did things that were unforgivable. What our system did to you was unforgivable.” She took a sip of her cappuccino. The action was smug, somehow, like she knew just how much she’d gotten away with when Akechi kept his silence. At least she was self-aware. “Masayoshi Shido is being brought to justice, and Kurusu-kun isn’t facing anything that he can’t handle. This will be over soon.” 

Akechi could hardly believe that. While he had faith in Sae’s legal prowess, Shido was just one head of a veritable hydra of corruption and intrigue. Rooting out his conspiracy would air out Japan’s dirty laundry in a way that he doubted the powerful men who soiled it would permit. It would be dangerous business to try.

He couldn’t fathom that Shido was a problem that had an imminent expiration date. He was supposed to be Akechi’s Gordian knot. Shido was his arms race, his mutually assured destruction. Unraveling him couldn’t possibly be so simple, and it couldn’t possibly be done without Akechi. 

Could it?

Where the hell did that leave him?

Of course, Sae’s words were meant to be encouraging, even if Akechi could actively feel his vision tunneling and his pulse jackhammering up. He clamped that feeling down and shoved it somewhere to sort through later – or never – as Sae pushed on.

“I want you to move forward. I don’t see any reason for you not to. That’s where you’ll find justice.”

It all sounded so scripted. Akechi wondered how many times she had practiced her little speech in the mirror after she’d drafted it on her legal pad. He knew it was her standard practice for high stakes days in court. Sae never let slip that she was nervous, but that didn’t mean she never was. 

While Akechi was almost flattered that she considered him worth a rehearsal or two, her dedication had been proving to be rather inconvenient that day. A Sae who had decided she needed to win seldom lost. The Phantom Thieves had helped her reorient her sense of justice towards good ends, but there was no version of Sae who wasn’t as stubborn as the one they’d encountered in her casino.

Fortunately, so was Akechi. 

“I’ve earned execution ten times over.” 

He barely managed to keep his words level as he forced them out. It was vexing that he needed to remind the woman sitting across from him – a public prosecutor with one of the most gleaming case records Tokyo had seen in recent memory – that per the word of her own law, he deserved to die. 

She tucked a wayward strand of hair neatly behind her ear and clasped her hands together on the tabletop between them.

“And I’m telling you that executing you doesn’t help anyone,” she hadn’t raised her voice, but Akechi could hear it harden with authority, “Learn to be a better person. You still have plenty of time to grow. Don’t forfeit this opportunity that you’ve been given to do that.”

He scoffed. “And if I can’t?”

“Then don’t. But I think you can.” 

She had said it without hesitation, like she really believed it. At that realization, Akechi let out a laugh that bordered on a snort, the kind he never would have allowed to slip through his throat when Sae had known him as someone else.

“You’re all insane.”

She hadn’t seemed surprised by his outburst as she took a long drink from her cup. As she swallowed, clearly unperturbed, Akechi found himself wondering if he’d given her too little credit, or himself too much. Probably both.

Sae’s lip quirked up. “Maybe. But I’ve realized that you need to be a little insane to believe you can see the world change for the better. Your teammates helped me learn that.”

Akechi’s hackles raised. “They are not my teammates.”

“Oh really?” She set her cup down onto her saucer, “I think Kurusu-kun would disagree.” 

That half-smile of hers persisted, like she thought she knew something he didn’t. “You know, he asked about you earlier this week. He seemed riled up. I think he would want to know that you’re alive.”

It didn’t even take eyes to notice Akira Kurusu’s bleeding-heart obsession with who he thought Akechi was. It practically radiated off of him in waves you could touch, like he was some sort of sad magnet for homicidal lost causes. Sae wasn’t telling Akechi anything he couldn’t have reasonably inferred, knowing what he did about Kurusu. 

If Sae said that Kurusu was ‘riled up,’ he knew that Kurusu must have been near hysterics. Well, per the yardstick of Kurusu’s typical emoting capacity. He could envision the way Kurusu’s lips had probably gotten all drawn, the way they tended to when he tried to hide that he was feeling more than he let on. 

Kurusu didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he wasn’t impossible to read if you knew what you were looking to find. His brow had probably furrowed, his fists had probably clenched, and his eyes had probably gone just short of misty. 

Akechi wasn’t sure how he felt about that mental image.

“Well, we can’t always get what we want, now can we?”

“I understand, Goro,” Sae stared him dead in the eye as she said his given name, leaving Akechi no option but to immediately take a good long drink of burnt coffee from his mug. “But consider it for me, won’t you? I don’t think that it would be a bad idea for you to build a support network for yourself.”

 Akechi cursed to himself. He should have known that she wouldn’t let this topic lie so easily.

Akechi grit his teeth. “I don’t think Sakura or Okumura would take kindly to seeing me.”

“Then don’t see them.” She said it matter of fact, like it was that easy. “But, for the record, I think that Kurusu-kun would.”

Of course Kurusu would. Even a child who couldn’t add two and two could piece together that Akira Kurusu would probably lop off a limb to have been in that booth with them that day. The idiot had wished Akechi back into existence and into his life, and he would again if he could.

That was why he couldn’t know that Akechi was alive. 

Well, it accounted for half the issue.

The other half rested on the fact that Kurusu had been the first thing to cross Akechi’s mind in that half second that passed between realizing he was alive and resolving to scream about it. He hadn’t had the decency to fully leave Akechi’s thoughts ever since, with the exception of the several hours he had spent blackout drunk. 

Somehow, that last bit was less than reassuring. 

Even worse, none of it was exactly new. 

The long and short of it was that Akechi needed to get himself clean, and he couldn’t very well do that if Kurusu came chasing after him. 

And so, he made his words as sharp as he could muster. “I think that Kurusu-kun should get a grip and realize that I very sincerely tried to murder him.”

Sae stared him down. He was under no illusions – this was an interrogation. It was a surprise when her gaze softened. 

She hummed. “Do you regret it?”

And wasn’t that a loaded question? 

He regretted that it had all amounted to nothing. He regretted that Shido had played him for a fool, and that on the evening of November 20th, he’d gone home and damn near cracked open his bottle of Shido revenge scotch. He regretted that at some catastrophic point in the past year, besting Joker had become something bigger than besting his father, and that just as soon as Akechi had thought he’d managed it, the metal on metal scent of blood splattering onto the interrogation room’s table from Kurusu’s too-blank face became something he needed to forget. 

Of course, he also regretted that he’d been tricked, and that he’d wasted several nights wide awake thinking about the way Kurusu had looked at him that night in the bathhouse, sweat on his brow and droplets of steam condensed on his irritatingly long lashes, like he had really wanted to be there with him, listening. 

His brief brush with insomnia had cost Akechi twelve dollars in drugstore coffee, five dollars in sugar-free energy drinks, and at least three years of his life, if you accounted for the carcinogens that made up the latter. Akechi did.

At least he’d saved that bottle of scotch. It had gone to waste anyway, but it was more about the principle of the thing.

But he couldn’t very well explain any of that to Sae. So, Akechi had lied.

“No.”

“I see.” If Sae was disappointed in his answer, she didn’t show it. She gave him a nod, drummed her fingers on the table, and checked her watch. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll keep your existence to myself until you tell me to do otherwise.”

Sae had swallowed down the last of her drink, and that was that.

Since that day, his life had gone on. He spent his weekdays looking over Sae’s contracts and his weekends grinding out practice problems from study books. Sometimes he would work in his apartment. He’d draw open the blinds and spread his papers across his bed – he had a desk, but it was cramped, his chair was stiff, and he’d never really brought himself around to using the space as it was meant to be used. 

Other days, Akechi camped out in cafés around the city. He operated under the assumption that any place that had the audacity to charge 700 yen for a barely passable latte must have presumed he would use said latte as an all-day pass to free wifi and a climate controlled workspace. Akechi felt vindicated in taking full advantage.

He found that the more tasks he had to fill his time, the less liable his mind was to wander. 

Not that it was always easy. It had been hardest at first, when more mornings than not the was filled with the urge to lay under his comforter and rot through the day. He’d learned quickly that when that urge struck, it was best to call Sae and pick up an extra stack of whatever she could push off on him before her work day started. He would chip away at it during the daylight hours and catch up with his other tasks at night, a can of cold brew in one hand and a highlighter in the other. 

He never slipped behind Sae’s expectations for him, because he was Goro Akechi, and he didn’t let himself lose if he could help it. Still, it wasn’t lost on him that he wasn’t supposed to be alive. Sue him if that got to him once in a while. 

He hadn’t planned for any of this, and if he did anything besides move straight through it all, the shiny paint of productivity he’d slapped over his unplanned extension pack to living would slide right off. It would become obvious that there was little holding his life together besides spite, busywork, and a lawyer who had willfully decided she wouldn’t let him quit as her part-timer, or as anything else. 

Thinking about that never did him any good, so he didn’t. Fortunately, Akechi was no stranger to doing what needed to be done first and wondering how on earth he had managed it after the fact. 

Now, he needed to move forward. So he did.

That wasn’t to say his strategy always worked. 

It tended to happen late at night, when Akechi didn’t have the energy to stop his thoughts from drifting to the subjects his wiser, more conscious self refused to engage. 

Typically, that meant Joker. No. It always meant Joker. Shido, too, but it was infuriating, really, how even those thoughts tended to meander back around to Joker, too. 

As Akechi had taken his post-hibernation shower months ago, his sheets in the wash and grease sloughing from his hair in the suds of overpriced shampoo, Akechi had come to a number of resolute conclusions about the state of his life. Namely, if he was going to continue to live it, he had a few non-negotiables.

To start, he would keep a wide berth from any news outlets covering the Shido trial – he was sure there would be more than a few. He’d find a way to get his hands on another, cheaper bottle of something high-proof. He would learn to use one kitchen appliance besides the microwave. The oven, maybe.

And, of course, he would keep himself far, far away from Akira Kurusu.

Akechi would have liked to think that his thoughts always seemed to land on Kurusu out of force of habit. After all, he’d spent months tracking his every move. He’d never quite learned to think like Kurusu – he doubted that anyone could – but Akechi certainly knew the timetables of the trains he took to get around town, the names of his managers at each of his (many) part-time jobs, and which vending machines he preferred to get his snacks from. 

Had he strictly needed to collect so much information on the leader of the Phantom Thieves in the name of reconnaissance? Perhaps not. It wasn’t as though knowing that Kurusu routinely arrived at his station around three minutes before his scheduled train would actually give him an edge in battle. 

(Akechi of the past had tried to posture that it might, but Akechi of the past was an idiot, and Akechi of the present could admit that.)

He had never been one to half-ass, though, and Kurusu had always been so interesting. His calendar protested his reprioritization, but there was nothing new or surprising about that. The detective prince’s life had been a scheduling impossibility, and Akechi had managed regardless. More than managed, really.

Tragically, ‘reconnaissance’ couldn’t account for the way Akechi’s vision tunneled around Kurusu. It couldn’t explain away the thoughts Kurusu always managed to coax out of his head and into speech. 

So, no. Akechi wasn’t stupid enough to believe that his continued fixation on Akira Kurusu was ‘force of habit.’ It was something much more dangerous, and he couldn’t afford to allow himself to succumb to it. Not after everything.

If Akechi was going to live a life, that life would damn well be his own. He refused to live for anybody but himself, and that included Akira Kurusu.

Still, the version of Akechi that lay awake in his bed at 4am, strung out on caffeine, had been known to have other thoughts from time to time. When his eyes were bloodshot and jargon swirled on his ceiling, he thought back to the look on Kurusu’s face when he had caught his glove. Cocky – Joker always was — but something more behind that. Akechi could only describe it as the expression of a boy missing something he hadn’t yet lost. 

It had taken him too long to realize that Kurusu had known exactly what the glove had meant from the moment it had been thrown. It had taken him even longer to realize that Kurusu had understood it better than Akechi had. 

It was enough to make him want to tear Kurusu apart, nice and slow, piece by piece. It was almost enough to make him want to reach for his phone.

He didn’t, of course. There was a lot of power in ‘almost.’ It meant that he was in control.

It was easier during the day. Sae always had something to shrug off on him if he needed it. 

Of course, there was also the pesky matter of his father.

That day at the café, Sae had mentioned that she’d spoken to him. Shido had said that he wouldn’t implicate Akechi in his trial. Apparently, he’d expressed regrets about his treatment of his son. 

Akechi hadn’t asked her for more information. She had already said too much. 

Once, there had been nothing Akechi wanted more than to hear his father drool out how big of a mistake it had been to leave him. Now, the thought of Shido feeling at all guilty, or heaven forbid, apologizing to him, made bile rise in the back of his throat.

Just one hit, and Akechi would want another. There would be nothing of him left. It was a trend, it seemed, that Akechi needed to learn when to keep well enough away from people he’d let spin him in circles.

Fortunately, he had always been a quick study.

Akechi hadn’t tried to contact him, and he and Sae hadn’t discussed Masayoshi Shido any further since. 

Given his track record with all things luck and Shido related, Akechi really should have expected that decision to come back and bite him. 

The rabid dog that was the universe’s refusal to let Akechi live his life in peace caught up to him one day in early June. Coming home from a coffee shop, mini-mart sushi in hand, he’d seen it. 

He had thirty days to vacate his apartment, because of fucking course he did.

Akechi felt six years old again. Seeing the notice pasted to his apartment door, he may as well have been holding his mother’s hand. He felt it clench around his pudgy fingers tight enough to hurt. He knew that she didn’t mean it. He knew that she hadn’t meant to fall behind on rent, either. He knew that some nights at her club were lucrative, and that some mornings, she couldn’t find it in herself to get out of bed. Their income had never been stable, and neither had their address.

But his mother wasn’t there, she hadn’t been for a long time, and Akechi was the only one responsible for the little crescent-shaped indents in his palms as he stared at the paper on his door and tried to will it away with the sheer force of his – in his humble opinion – very justified righteous anger.

He’d called Sae immediately, right as soon as he’d ripped down the notice, gone inside, and poured himself a drink. Apparently, all of Shido’s hidden assets had finally been frozen. Even if he wanted to continue to pay Akechi’s rent, he couldn’t. Akechi hadn’t been affected until now because Shido had, prior to recent events, had his apartment bills set to auto-pay from one of his more clandestine bank accounts. 

That was something that even now made the part of Akechi’s brain that had stayed young and poor recoil. To have so much cash that a transfer of that size could simply be counted on to go through every month, no risk of declining – from an auxiliary checking account – seemed almost gluttonous. 

Well, the payment had finally bounced, it seemed. Nobody was untouchable. It would have been more gratifying if Akechi weren’t the one being left high and dry. He had hung up the phone and downed the last of his drink. His mediocre room-temperature sushi forgotten, he’d taken a seat on his floor, opened his laptop, and typed in a preliminary search for Tokyo-studio-cheap. 

That brought him to now. It was remarkable, really, how his day had only managed to get worse and worse in the hour that had passed since then.

Staying in his current apartment simply wasn’t an option. Akechi had tucked money into his savings account during his time as the detective prince, of course, but even the sizable amount he had slowly accrued for himself over the last several years wouldn’t be able to cover more than a month or two of rent in the place Shido had picked out for him. It had a separate kitchen, living, and sleeping space, alongside a full bathroom. It was fully renovated and featured in-unit laundry. It even came with a parking spot (not that Akechi owned a car, could drive, or feasibly use his space in the garage in literally any capacity). 

All of it had been an undeniable power play on Shido’s part. The place really was too much for him. It was a needless show of excess – an in-your-face sort of look what I can do for you, aren’t you scared to lose it?

Sure, Akechi could spend three years worth of residual earnings on thirty extra days in this place, but all it would do was buy him time, not to mention drain the last financial cushion he had left. He needed to put down a deposit on another place, after all. His bank account would be running on fumes after that, and rent at his new place would be due almost immediately. 

Fuck. He’d almost forgotten his utilities. His phone bill. His Wi-Fi. He didn’t need to be a genius to know that any day now, those expenses would hit him too.

Shido would be burning in hell for a whole host of reasons – Akechi knew this, because he’d spent the last several years of his life passively looping his long, long list of them through his head like a rallying cry. It was always a solid hit that got his head where it needed to be to do whatever he needed to do. This newest slight was a tiny drop of water in the ocean of ways his father had wronged him. 

Still. If there was any justice in the world, Akechi would be allowed to spit on his father during his fiery descent. Just a little bonus to him for needing to go through this after everything he’d already endured.

All roads led to moving. May as well get it done sooner rather than later. 

Akechi would need to pick up a second job to somehow come up with the difference between his dwindling savings account, Sae’s weekly commission, and the cost of living accommodations that would let him avoid adding to his death toll. It would be a less insulting prospect if any of the studio apartments he would be able to afford after that looked remotely liveable.

This one said that the paint on its walls might contain traces of lead, and that its landlord wouldn’t be held liable for medical damages that resulted from it. That one had visible mold on the bathroom tiles, even in the very obviously postured online listing photos. He shuddered to think of the state of that shower if he saw it in the flesh. 

Every listing Akechi had looked at so far seemed to come with its own set of shockingly diverse hazards, their one continuity being that they evoked similar feelings of dread in the pit of his stomach. The ones that didn’t come with a laundry list of health and safety violations stated up front that they required an application pre-screening. Akechi’s credit score was perfectly fine – the detective prince had always paid off his statements in full, and on time. What he didn’t have were two good references. As it turned out, that was rapidly proving itself to be a serious problem.

Even on a webpage with the best user interface imaginable, the experience would have been bleak. That said, Akechi might have felt slightly less homicidal if the website didn’t reload every single time he clicked the back-out arrow after he decided he wasn’t (yet) desperate enough to risk braving exposed wiring in his combined living-bedroom-kitchen-foyer-bathroom space.

It wasn’t as though Akechi hadn’t expected this would happen – he just hadn’t expected it to happen now. He had wanted to be able to really plan his move. The fact he’d even thought that taking his sweet time could be an option for him was proof that he’d let his guard down. 

He clicked on another listing. Wonderful. This one was just under 150 square feet. He honestly hadn’t known that was legal.

Well. Actually. 

He paused. Zoomed in.

On second glance, maybe it wasn’t so bad. It looked clean, recently renovated. The move-in date fit his needs. It was small, sure, but it seemed like the space was well allocated. He mentally crumpled up his commitment to learning how to use an oven. It wouldn’t be happening in a place of this size, but maybe that was for the best, anyway.

He decided to click the button to arrange a tour with the landlord. Maybe his situation wasn’t so dire after all.

Of course, that was when the website decided to crash.

The noise that wrenched its way out of his throat wasn’t unlike how he expected a dying cat might sound. He slammed his laptop shut and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyelids. 

He needed another drink.

He poured himself a coffee mug of vodka and water. It was like vodka and soda for people who barely had the means to buy themself vodka, and for whom also needing to buy mixers felt like adding insult to injury. It was disgusting, but a disgusting necessity. Today, his crime against good taste was the housing market’s fault.

He took a sip, grimaced, and climbed into his bed. He propped himself up on his pillows and took another long drink. It didn’t taste quite so bad now that he’d whet his palate. 

Fuck. He hadn’t even had the chance to change when he’d gotten home. He undid the top buttons of his dress shirt where they pinched at his neck. It wasn’t as though Akechi had anyone to look nice for, nowadays, but his wardrobe hadn’t gotten a radical overhaul since the detective prince’s fall from notoriety. He’d worn designer shirts then, he’d wear designer shirts now. They looked slightly worse for wear, but at least that meant they were incrementally more comfortable to wear out now than they had been back in the day.

Not by much. He sighed as the stale air conditioning of his room hit his skin. He took another sip of his drink. Then another.

It wouldn’t be so hard to find that listing again. He was pissed on principle. Websites should work. Apartments should be bigger than closets. You should be able to beg a landlord to let you live in a closet-sized apartment on a website that at least functioned halfway decently.

He took another good long gulp from his mug.

He could have really gone for coffee, right then. Not the glorified overpriced milk you could get from any old chain. The good stuff.

It had been a long time since he’d had good coffee. 

There was only one place Akechi had ever had truly, honest-to-god good coffee.

His cellphone was lying at the foot of his bed.

He could send him a text, right now. Something clever. Akechi knew that no matter what it was, it would shock him, but it needed to be witty, too, because he would expect nothing less. He would kill to see the look on his face. He would look down at his phone, see Akechi’s name light up his screen, and his eyes would get all wide and scared. 

You’ve been alive all this time? 

They would meet up, and Kurusu, he’d be miserable, he’d probably cry or do something equally sappy, and – once he really processed – he’d be mad as all hell. Akechi would laugh at him, say something as snarky as the situation demanded, and watch the anger melt right off of Kurusu’s face in real time. 

Akechi would finally have pulled one over on him. He’d finally win. He could feel the rush already. 

Kurusu wanted to lose so bad, it was embarrassing, really.

Right as fantasy Kurusu threw himself at fantasy Akechi, real Akechi felt a wave of cold dread wash over him.

He walked to the sink and poured his final few sips of vodka water down the sink.

No. Hell no. 

He turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face. It dripped down his neck. He couldn’t bring himself to mind as it trickled down to the collar of his undone shirt.

He was better than this. He knew damn well that the only one ‘losing’ in the situation his addled mind had cooked up was himself. 

It had only taken half a drink to get him there. 

Fuck. He doused his face in more water for good measure.  

He walked back to his bedroom, unlocked his phone, and scrolled through his message logs to find his last conversation with Akira Kurusu. Taking care not to click anything damning, he swiped to delete it.

There. It was over. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t done that sooner.

He rinsed out his mug and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. It didn’t need ice – he’d already confirmed that it was sufficiently chilled.

His laptop was still on his kitchen floor. Akechi took a seat, cross legged, and reloaded the webpage he had been on previously. Surely, he’d have more luck this session. Maybe he’d even find a place larger than 150 square feet. 175 seemed like a reasonable goal.

He would make this work. He was moving apartments, and he was moving on. He’d managed far more difficult things in the past. 

He looked at his phone, sitting on the floor to his right. He tapped the display once. 

No new messages. And why would there be?

He sighed and got to work.

[andmaybegayer]

Hello it's me with another very naive computer question!

One of the really common complaints you see about modern software (from Adobe, Microsoft, etc.) is the move from the single-purchase model to a subscription-based model. While I understand that people are upset about paying more money over time, this also feels like the only viable option for shipping products that work with modern OSes, especially Windows (I don't have any experience with MacOS). Windows pretty regularly updates, and if you want your product to continue to work, you have to continue paying your engineers to maintain compatibility through time.

Obviously I understand that there are lots of FOSS options out there, but for the companies that are built on making money from these sorts of software products, I don't see another way. Am I way off the mark here?

This is a really good question. I don't have a great answer, but the model I have in my head is that "traditional software distribution" is partially an artifact of an era where companies were starting to use computers but internet use was still spotty so providing support for software was just a very different ballgame. A lot of what I'm saying here is not like. Fact as much as it is my understanding of The Software Business from the side of someone who is a little involved in that but mostly not in that.

(This is mostly about "business software", that is to say, accounting packages, creative suites, design packages, modelling tools, etc. This model does not explain like. Spotify. But that's much easier to explain.)

You're not wrong that the subscription model really make sense given modern software development, where patches come out continuously and you get upgraded to the latest version every time something changes, but there has been a significant change in how software is developed and sold that makes it noticeably different. I think that the cause of this is mostly because it's finally practical to do contract-style deals with hundreds of thousands of customers instead of doing one-off sales like we used to do.

In the Traditional model you charge a pretty sizeable upfront cost for a specific version of the software, you buy Windows XP or Jasc Paint Shop 7 or whatever and then you get That Version until we release The Next Version, plus a couple years of security and support. When the next version hits, we stop adding any new features to your version, and when that hits end of life, you maybe get offered a discount to buy licensing for the latest version, or you drop out of support.

Traditional software with robust support typically costs an awful lot, Photoshop CS2 was $600 new in 2005, or $150 to upgrade from CS, because you're paying for support and engineering time in advance. A current subscription for just Photoshop is $20/mo, and that's after twenty years of inflation. Photoshop is also cheap, a seat for something like SolidWorks 2003 could probably have run you $3000-4000 easy. I can't even give you a better guess there because SolidWorks still doesn't sell single commercial licenses online, you have to talk to their salespeople.

The interesting thing to me about Traditional pricing was that I think it was typically offered to medium to small businesses or individuals, because it's an easy way to sell to smaller customers, especially if it's the 90's and you're maybe selling your software through an intermediary reseller who works with local businesses or just a store shelf.

Independent software resellers were a big business back in the day, they served as a go-between for the software company and smaller businesses, they sold prepared packages in a few sizes and handled the personal relationship of phoning you up and saying "Hey there's a patch for your accounting software so that it doesn't crash when someone's surname is Zero, we'll send you a floppy disk in the mail with some instructions on how to install it." Versioned standard releases are a thing you can put in a box and give to resellers along with a spec sheet and sales talking points. This business still exists but it's much smaller than it once was, it's largely gone upmarket.

If you were bigger, say, if you were a publishing house that needed fifty seats of editing software you'd probably call the sales department of Jasc or whoever and get a volume deal along with a support contract.

Nowadays why would you bother going through resellers and making this whole complicated pricing model when you could just sell subscriptions with well-established e-commerce tools. You can make contract support deals with individuals at scale, all online, without hiring thousands of salespeople. You can even provide varying support levels at multiple cost brackets directly, so you don't need to cultivate a direct business relationship with all your customers in order to meet their needs. Your salespeople handle the really big megacorp and government deals and you let everyone else administer themselves.

It also makes development easier. You can also deploy patches over the net, you just do it in software. You can obsolete older versions faster, since you can make sure most people are using the latest version, and significantly cut down on engineering time spent backporting fixes to older versions. I think a lot of this is straightforwardly desirable on most software.

Now, there are still packages sold by the version, and there are even companies selling eternal licenses.

Fruity Loops Studio is still a "Buy once forever" type deal.

MatLab can be purchased as a subscription or as a perpetual one-version license.

Windows is still sold like this, but also direct to customer sales of Windows are minimal, Windows is primarily sold to OEM's who preinstall it on everything.

But it's a dying breed, your bigger customers are going to want current support and while there are industries where people want to hang around on older versions, for a lot of software your customer wants the latest thing with all the features and patches, and they'd rather hold on to their money until later using a subscription rather than spend it all upfront. Businesses love subscriptions, they make accounts books balance well, they're the opposite of debt.

Personal/private users who might just want the features of Photoshop CS2 and that's fine forever don't matter to you. They're not your major customers. This kind of person is not a person who your business cares to service, so you don't really care if you annoy them.

Even in the Open Source business world, subscriptions are how the money is made, just on support rather than for the software itself. You can jump through relatively few hoops to run Ubuntu Enterprise or SUSE Enterprise Linux on your own systems for free, but really there's not much benefit to that unless you pay for the dedicated support subscription.

In many ways I think a lot of things have changed in this way, I have a whole thing about the way medium-scale industrial manufacturing has changed in the past thirty years somewhere around here.

While there are valid reasons you might want to buy a single snapshot of some software and run that forever, the reality is that that's a pretty rare desire, or at least that desire is rarely backed by money. If you want to do that you either need access to the source code so that you can maintain it yourself, or you need to strike a deal with someone who will, or it needs to be software so limited that it (and the system it runs on!) never need updates. Very few useful programs are this simple. As a result subscription models make sense, but until recently you couldn't really sell a subscription to small businesses and individuals. Changes in e-commerce and banking have enabled such contracts to be made, and hey presto, it's subscription world.

[luctus-flos]

not a request id jst like to know how you color your graphics :3

‧₊˚౨ৎ good day to you, patron. indeed you may know how I color my graphics. I should share a fair warning beforehand, I do not claim my method of coloring images as the best or only method- there are many viable methods, though, I have found this one works best for my needs.

chapter I ⠀⠀✧ ⠀⠀image choice + program

‧₊˚౨ৎ for this tutorial, I will be using argenti's lightcone, 'an instant before a gaze.' such a beautiful lightcone will do wonderfully for a profile picture in my next edit, which you may want to keep an eye out for. the program I use is firealpaca, it is a free and easy to use drawing app that I have also found suitable for editing. however, this tutorial should apply to all programs usable for edits, so long as it has filters.

chapter II ⠀⠀✧ ⠀⠀color choice

‧₊˚౨ৎ the next step is to choose your colors. I typically only need two to begin recoloring my images, and if needed, I will change throughout the process. however, for simplicity's sake, I've chosen two colors for this edit. I quite like argenti in red, so I will be keeping him in red for this edit. I tend to memorize the general placement of my colors upon the color chart, but if you hold concerns for memorizing your colors, do not fret. I suggest placing your colors on a different layer so you may color pick them as needed. now that we have our colors, we may continue.

chapter III ⠀⠀✧ ⠀⠀beginning the recoloring

‧₊˚౨ৎ to begin coloring, create a new layer, and make sure it is above the image. I start off by using the gradient tool provided by firealpaca to place both colors in a nice gradient, in either order, and then change the blending filter to 'color.' you will see the image change into your desired colors in a natural way; if it does not look like how you imagined, attempt to adjust the opacity or the colors you are using before continuing. as you can see, the image is extremely red, so I will be turning the opacity down for a more natural recoloring.

‧₊˚౨ৎ that is a much better recoloring. it is less bright, and more akin to ambient lighting. this satisfies my needs, so I will continue onto the next step. to continue, you may either create a new layer with the gradient of colors again, or you may simply duplicate the layer from before and adjust as needed. I have chosen to do the latter. after you have the new gradient layer, combine the original gradient layer down to the image after you are certain it suits your tastes.

chapter IV ⠀⠀✧ ⠀⠀continuing to edit

‧₊˚౨ৎ now that you know the basics on how I personally choose to edit, it makes continuing the recoloring much easier. after this, you can duplicate the gradient as many times as needed, or create new gradients and adjust the opacity and the blending filters. I typically tend to use the following filters during my editing, though I may not use all of them if not needed- multiply, overlay, screen, lighten, darken, soft light, hard light, and then color. these are simply my most used filters, and I may branch out into hue or saturation change as needed, though rarely do. feel free to play around with your blending filters, it's important to find which filters suit your preferences and needs most, patron. for this edit, I used mostly multiply, overlay, and screen, and adjusted filters opacity as needed.

chapter V ⠀⠀✧ ⠀⠀returning to old roots

‧₊˚౨ৎ this step is entirely optional, but I enjoy doing this. I like to add a touch of different colors during my recoloring, and in this case, I would like to bring back argenti's green eyes. fetch an image of the character once more, and use it to color pick the color you wish to bring into the edit. in this case, I've used argenti's chibi sticker in order to return his original eye color. you may create a new layer with these colors as well, if you wish to, but I am usually fine to just remember it. this method is the same one I used to bring back the green hues in my personal graphics when editing them.

‧₊˚౨ৎ using your brush tool and on a new layer, color over and fill in the area you wish to recolor. since the area is small, this step is fairly easy, and I simply recolor over the pupil. then, set the blending filter to color, and adjust opacity as needed. you may also attempt to set the filter to overlay or multiply, the blending filter which works best to you is to be discovered by you, but I personally find the color filter to be enough. after this step, I tend to add another layer; in this case, I added an extra screen layer, to add more into it. be sure to add as much as you feel is needed.

chapter VI ⠀⠀✧ ⠀⠀finale

‧₊˚౨ৎ and this is the completed product. though it may not be the best recolor I've done to this day, it certainly befits a good tutorial and sample of how I tend to do my projects. I do hope this helps you color your graphics and images as well, patron. thank you for the question, it was a very fun experience writing up a small tutorial such as this one. do have a good day, now, and until we meet again, patron.

[addicted-to-dc]

Scorned - König x Assassin!Reader

(A/N) Always a sucker for spitfire assassin readers. 'Tis my weak spot. Anyways, this will contain gun use and descriptions, bullet wounds, violence, body horror, and amongst other things. Nothing too heavy for the first part. Slow burn, slight enemies to lovers. We shall see what the future holds, muahahaha. (2367 word count)

Of course, it had to be fucking Russia the 141 sent you to. Trust was something they’d never give you, not with your track record of running the second you saw a viable chance. Not this time. A severe winter storm obliterated every option you had. You hate being on their leash. If there’s two things you loved about your life before this, it was being rich and free. At least your rage is keeping you warm.

Teeth chattering, you lift your scope and finally spot your target. A warehouse in the middle of nowhere, apparently one of KorTac’s many weapons caches. The mission? Fucking sneak in and place cameras throughout the facility. That’s all they’re using you for, recon for something they’ll just blow up at the end of the day. A waste of your talents.

You itch for the hunt again, researching and observing everything about your target before finally taking them out. It’s not like you popped the heads of good people. All of them deserved it in the end.

“Got eyes on the warehouse. Going in…”

You wait a few seconds, unable to resist snarking back at the men who’re probably enjoying the heat of the base.

“…and go fuck yourselves. I better have a warm bath waiting for me after this.”

Silencing your comms, you pocket the scope and trudge up the snow. The snow boots they forced you to wear are clunky, something that would make sneaking around more difficult than it should be. It’s like they’re trying to kill you, which they most likely are.

Getting past the guards was too easy, quickly memorizing their patterns until you noticed an opening. Slipping through, the clunky boots are left behind and buried in the snow long before you enter. At least you were able to sneak in backups, much more lightweight and silent. Just the way you like it.

Your snake cam quickly slides underneath the door, confirming that it’s safe to enter. The door is unlocked… that’s the first strike. Your instincts tell you to get out of there, that the mission is already fucked, but you continue. Slipping in, you waste no time climbing to the rafters and place cameras. The unlocked door plagues your mind, something so small that KorTac would never allow to happen.

There are several exits you could use if your gut is right. A window, no, two windows and even a skylight, but even if you did manage to get out you would be stranded. The thought chills you to the bone. Was this a suicide mission? Would the ‘good guys’ really do that to you? Shaking the thought out of your head, you decide to save the last camera placement near the door. At least you’d be able to leave quickly.

Just as you place the second to last camera, the door opens. The cold air sends a chill down your spine, but the man you see walk in makes you freeze. He must be 7 feet tall. Fear finally settles in your bones. Hiding behind one of the metal beams, you shift out of his eyeline and regulate your breathing. You can’t lose your shit, not now. You sneak another peak at him and holy shit, he’s wearing a mask. It’s not cheesy like Ghost, the emo skull caricature ruining any intimidation tactics the man tried on you. No, it’s terrifying. The eye holes, a void of black in the lighting, feel like they’re staring right into your soul.

He moves to turn a corner and BAM!

You slam onto the ground before you know it, slamming on your side and  cracking your head on a crate. Your vision blurs, a possible concussion sealing your fate. God, you should be in the Caribbean right now getting your back blown out. This is such bullshit.

“Looks like a little birdy is nesting where she shouldn’t be.”

His voice is accented, possibly German. No, Austrian? It’s taunting, making your blood boil. Despite seeing three of him, you lift your pistol and aim at one of him, but he’s faster than he looks. The giant plucks the weapon from your hand and grabs you by the throat. As if you weigh nothing, he slams you into another crate, shattering the wood beneath you. Black spots dominate your vision, his eyes burning into yours.

Even while you’re clawing at his hand, he rips your mask off with ease. You try to suck in another breath, but it’s in vain. This is it. You’re dying. The dream of retiring and dying of old age is dead, just like you…

Air. You have air? Greedily filling up your lungs, you wheeze and gasp as you’re flung over a shoulder. Something painfully digs into your stomach, nearly making you lose your breath again, but the cold is enough to kickstart your body. You begin to struggle, but a harsh squeeze to your shoulder wound makes you freeze. Fuck, this giant really did a number on you.

Mr. Tall, dark, and horrifying shoves you into a vehicle, shouting something at the driver. The car lurches forward immediately. Your head nearly slams into the window from the force, but you’re pulled close to a warm body. A knife appears in your vision, your unfocused eyes unable to track it as your clothing is cut away. You move to push him away, but the knife moves to your throat.

The overhead light in the car finally lets you see his eyes, deep blue orbs paralyzing you instantly. Satisfied with your reaction, he finishes cutting through your clothes and applies pressure to your wound. Hissing, your eyes flutter shut, but you’re not even allowed the sweet peace of unconsciousness.

“Eyes open.”

A bump in the road sends pain straight down your spine, waking you enough to keep your eyes open. The giant, who is hunching in the vehicle, starts dressing your wound. The sight nearly makes you laugh. Maybe it does. His eyes move from your wound back to you. It makes you want to shrink away, but the fucked-up part of your brain is enjoying this. You missed working with mercs, at least they knew how to have a good time. A good time sounds good right now.

Everything’s a blur, you barely register leaving the vehicle, let alone the gurney trip through a hallway of blinding lights. Multiple figures pull you forward, slamming through door after door until you reach your destination. They stop so fast you nearly vomit, the whiplash too overwhelming. Too many pairs of hands tear at you, stripping your equipment and cutting through any cloth in the way.

“Sir, the resources we’re using for her-”

Heavy footsteps interrupt the doctor’s words, the room growing dead silent. “She’s worth more alive, unbroken. Do not make me repeat myself again.”

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Your mouth is dry, why the hell is it dry? Shifting in the bed, the blanket scratches at your exposed skin. The new angle shines a bright ass light in your face. It forces you to shift again, a sigh escaping your lips. That’s when you hear it: a beep. Frowning, your eyes refuse to open until you blink quickly. Flashes of a bright, barren room fill your senses. A hospital?

That’s when it hits you. Oh. Shit. There’s a creak next to you, and that’s when you see him. The giant that subdued you quicker than the 141 did, and that was the whole lot of them. You both stare at each other for a ridiculous amount of time, until he shifts, and your heart rate jumps at the movement. His eyes remain on you, barely blinking.

“You’ve been out for a while,” he remarks, standing up.

He grasps a cup of water, comically small in his hand, and offers it to you. You take it, eyes flicking down to inspect the water before finally taking a sip. God, it feels like heaven. Before you know it, the entire cup is empty. How long were you out?

“Why didn’t you kill me?” you ask, cringing at your own voice. Damn, you sound like you smoked one too many cigs.

“I did not spend months of planning just to kill you, Schatz,” he responds, folding his arms. “After the 141 intercepted our contact, it was my priority to get you back.”

“So, you rescued me?” No one has ever done that for you before. Being used is all you’ve ever known, paid or unpaid. It was you who had to prioritize yourself. “Why?”

“You are not an instrument of death; you use death as an art form.” Who knew he was such a poet? “Apologies for the wounds, I had to convince them we’d kill you.”

“How long was I out for?” Rotating your shoulder, you feel no pain from your bullet wound.

“A month… and there’s something else. The men who had you, the 141, yes?”

You nod, waiting for him to elaborate.

“We found a tag in your arm.”

That makes you sick to your stomach. A tracker? They tagged you like a fucking dog. You played their stupid game, did everything they asked so you could earn their freedom. Your nails dig into the sheets, tearing the fabric from the force of it.

Your eyes flick up to his. “You said something about a contract. What is it?”

Something flashes in his eyes, his head tilting upwards. Is he smiling? “You haven’t lost your fire yet.”

Grumbling, you start stretching your limbs. Like hell you’re going to stay in this bed any longer. Your limbs pop more than you want them to, but at least your body is not as run down as you expected it to be. The routine goes by quickly, and you finally, cautiously, stand up. You wobble slightly, but you’re able to recover.

Your eyes shoot at the mirror in the bathroom, sadness overwhelming you. Shit is what you look like. Your colored hair is long faded, replaced by a dull, washed-out color of blah. Gritting your teeth, you turn to the man who kidnapped you. Technically freed you, but you still have no idea what this giant wants.

“You still haven’t answered my question, big guy,” you huff, immediately snagging the spare clothes next to you. You run through the previous conversation through your head again, trying to get any information out of this gargantuan man.

You slide on the pants, thankfully it’s easier with the shitty hospital gown. Unfolding the shirt, you nearly cry when you see a sports bra fall out of it. God, it’s even your size.

“We will need you for future missions.”

You finish sliding on the bra, freezing. “Missions?”

“Ja. We will discuss a contract, something beneficial to both of us. You and I will be equals in this.”

Tearing off the gown, you pull your shirt over your head. You turn around, sliding your arms through the sleeves with a frown. “And I have a choice?”

“Of course.”

It’s so damn hard to read him with his entire face obscured. At least with Ghost you could cheat a little bit. Masks suck the fun out of everything. “What about living arrangements?”

“Since you are AWOL, soon KIA, I would prefer it if you remained here. There’s a room prepared for you.”

That’s nice of them, but how long until you go crazy in a new cage. You highly doubt they’ll just let you walk out the door, but there must be more to this. He’s got to sweeten the deal.

“The pay?”

“You will find it more generous than your usual prices,” he responds, taking a few steps towards the door. Damn he’s got some legs. Your eyes drift towards his backside. Nice ass, too.

You really need to be spayed. Forcing your eyes upwards, you follow him through the building. Your socked feet are silent compared to his heavy boot steps, but the noise grounds you enough. It allows your mind to wander, this whole situation forcing you to think about how you got here.

You aren’t military, special forces, not even a cop. No, you were a nobody who was willing to do anything to stand up for the little guys. Getting the weapons wasn’t that hard, but training yourself? Being self-taught is what made your skills sought out, always unexpected and untraceable. You made your own rules, picking up a few things whilst you traveled. It’s funny, a life of death and crime let you shed your shell. How things have changed.

You’re in the room before you realize it, your mind wandering too close to memory lane. It’s sparsely decorated, screaming military and barf beige, but it’s all you have. The guns mounted on the walls catch your attention immediately. A gasp leaves your lips before you can help it, gently removing your sniper from its mount.

“Where did you find this? Never thought I’d see this again,” you whisper, immediately falling into your routine of checking it for damages.

“We were too late to prevent your capture,” he replies, watching you, “but we recovered everything they didn’t bother taking.”

Your jaw clenches at the thought of them taking you. Wordlessly, you place it back on its mount. Your hand lingers on it for a few moments, your fingers sliding down in now resistance. “I didn’t wipe my slate clean just to be immediately kidnapped. There was a rat, and not just the one they squeezed my information out of.”

Rage enflames your entire being. Revenge would be a good hobby for you, something to get your strength back. You’re itching for something up close and personal. Almost as if the giant could read your thoughts, he places a file onto the desk. Where was he keeping that? Goddamn you really need to start paying attention.

“We’ve identified a previous client… your first…”

You sift through the information. What information is available on you is enough to fuck you over. She gave them your legal name, history… everything. Your throat tightens at the photo of her, someone you considered a friend. Past tense. She’s on your hit list, bumped up to priority number one. The 141 will have to wait.

[queers-gambit]

Ok ok, so since we are all thinking here…I hope you don’t mind me sharing my thoughts. I need someone to talk to about this 😅🙏🏼🤭(Literally been thinking about this for the last few days..opps 🤪).

We know she is thinking about her options- If I stay my family (the Blacks) will see me as a traitor and I risk not only my life in jeopardy but also my baby (babies?) and I’m stuck supporting a king I do not view worthy to have the crown…and my dragon will be used in a war to harm those I love…If I go, I leave my love breaking my vows and my child will not know their father…and Aemond could die and I would not be there…

There are literally so many factors that play into this it’s so difficult and not easy to work with at all!! Anyway…

One scenario is her staying with Aemond. She would explain to him she is only staying with him because of the love they have for each other. Leaving/abandoning him, her love and father of her child, would be a more painful fate than death. She’d make it clear that she is NOT staying because she is loyal to his brother and his ascension to the throne over her mother, only reason she is staying is cause their love. She would try to come up with a way to “fix” this to avoid war. Possibly trying to approach her mother with the fact Vhagar is the one who killed her son…not Aemond. Therefore punish Vhagar…it was foolish to allow a boy that dragon to begin with (that would hurt Aemond’s feelings but the reader doesn’t care) and that dragon is not one that should be ridden, it is a liability to all of them. A reflection of the beasts and cruelty within nature. Also, the whole “dragon rider illusion”, remind her of what her father told her as young girl.

OR

She does stay and her father would eventually come to take her home…maybe she hesitates in trying to explain why she wants to stay, but he pulls a dagger to her stomach (lightly pressing it to her) and he threatens her that he loves her (truly loves her as his own daughter, as of she were his blood) and doesn’t want to harm her or the babe, (as that would cause him great suffering) but he will if he must, for his wife/her mother the queen. ANGSSSSTTTTTT

yea…😫

I hope you don’t mind I wrote this all out , tried to keep this short 😅 whatcha think?

Love ya! Like seriously 😘😘😘😘

ah, fresh cup of coffee and gettin' right into the angst. i love this for me. thoughts about Distraction and Bearer of Bad News --

either are very viable options. sweet girl has to weigh the pros and cons of either side; like, is it worth leaving Aemond to take Kasta to her mother and join her efforts? would that later mean sweet girl encounters Aemond and Alys Rivers? if she stays, what if Alys still becomes a thing? hmmm, thoughts are being thunk again.

if she leaves, what does that mean for the baby? or babies? what if the anxiousness of leaving is too much for her? if she leaves, she's giving up both her husband and "family by law"; and she would more than likely be used as a pawn by her mother. where she doesn't have Aemond to defend her, protect her; to shield her from everyone else's selfishness.

think of it: Rhaenyra is beyond angry and disturbed following the death of her son, Luke. and sweet girl is feeling both betrayed and hurt, as well; and we know these emotions can lead hot-headed Targaryens into war. if she returns to her mother, bearing the news of her brother, even if it's technically Vhagar's "fault", Rhaenyra is still going to war 'cause mamabear is looking for blood now. i've tried to establish the point that Kasta is large, as well; and still growing. she's a machine of war by sheer size only; and while the Greens have Vhagar and Aemond, the Blacks would then have sweet girl (who is trained by both her fathers: Laenor and Daemon) and Kasta.

there are two sides to every coin and it's up to us to then examine potential outcomes. if the coin is to fall on either side, we must know what to do to keeping moving forward; and for sweet girl, the crushing pressure to choose is overwhelming enough.

staying with Aemond means she gets her husband and baby... or does it? or does the pressure drive a wedge between them; making her feel alone and so suffocated that she escapes in the night? Kasta has to burn a couple bitches to get away? if she stays, again, what if Aemond meets Alys, still? or does sweet girl come between her husband and his paramour, and possibly join in her husband's war efforts? what if she's there for the Battle Above the God's Eye instead of Alys Rivers? hmmm...

leaving King's Landing and Aemond, however, means she's going straight into war at her mother's side. could mean she puts her baby / babies in jeopardy, and would it then mean that if she goes into labor, her babes will never know their father? how will she cope with that after being close to her own birth father? if she leaves, what if her mother's not the same - and she feels even greater pressure to please Rhaenyra? yikes...

love reading your thoughts!! all my love is being sent your way! 🖤

[stobinesque]

WIP Weekend!

Tagged by @steves-strapcollection, thank you!!

THE RULES

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can’t share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

WIPs

wigwag (phryctoria sequel)

Wayfinder (S4 Fix-it, Lucas POV)

Stobin Soulmate AU

(I still have asks in my inbox for Jeff is Steve's Bi Awakening so I'll probably throw some answers to those in the mix)

(absolutely no pressure!) tagging @xenon-demon, @devondespresso, @hellsfireclub, @steventhusiast, and anyone else who wants to do it!

SNIPPET

from the Stobin Soulmate AU

It’s like watching a high wire balancing act. Maybe. She isn't sure why that exact metaphor is the one that comes to her. There’s just something about the delicate way they dance around each other that has the quality of an aerialist's graceful maneuvering to avoid plummeting to their death.

Dance isn't her thing the same way music is, but watching the three of them makes her want to choreograph.

There’s Nancy, slowly pirouetting down center stage as Steve enters upstage left and sweeps his gaze across the field. Robin wants so badly to compare that gaze to a predator's: stealthy and sly, waiting for attack—a lion searching for a gazelle. But there’s always something cautious in his gaze. Like he’s afraid of taking one wrong step.

Then there’s Jonathan, who hovers just past the edges of the wings stage right, before flitting back and forth across the stage, almost directionless. And as the days and weeks pass he becomes a distant, looping orbit around the other two. Never close enough to touch, but somehow corralling them towards each other, until Nancy and Steve are locked in a stilted sort of duet with one another, with Jonathan circling and watching from afar until he returns to his starting position halfway in the wings. Waiting.

She still doesn’t know why she’s so captivated by these three. Something had pushed her out towards the Byers house that night, and it was easy to think it was the soulmate bond. Except that narrowed her bondmate down to three potential options, and only one of them was even close to viable. But she can’t bring herself to accept that Nancy Wheeler is her soulmate.  

[faelid]

Duality

Changkyun x Reader Summary: Reader on the journey to baby bi. Changkyun is supportive. Warnings (in the interest of fairness): some angst/comfort, commitment-phobia/fear of relationships, caretaker-codependent, gender roles are silly, coming out to boyfriend.

It’s never been too much of a bother, people mistakenly assuming your sexuality. Why should it matter if a guy you wouldn’t sleep with on the first date comforted himself with thinking you were a lesbian? Or if Jane from accounting insisted that your standing lack of a boyfriend meant you liked girls? At the end of the day, it was no one’s business but yours; yours, and the person you were interested in.

It’s nice on paper; to think it that way.

You’d like to be so self-assured in the face of invasive questions into your personal life. The reality is that sometimes, it does it hit home. Long periods of being single make you question whether or not you’re genuinely pursuing other interests, or if all these strangers somehow know something about you that you don’t, something holding you back in the dating department.

The immediate reality, however, was more straightforward: man or woman, the concept of dating was overwhelming.

Juggling another person’s feelings in the balance with your own, knowing the relationship wouldn’t last because you have Things You Want To Do and you don’t want to be beholden to another person.

Trying to gauge when either party developed Feelings, even if it was casual, and having to end it, knowing it’s for your own good but feeling like a terrible person, anyway. The sense of being trapped, the heightened awareness of someone else’s emotions. Always waiting for the shoe to drop.

Not every relationship Has To Go Somewhere. You’ve reminded yourself before, for all the good it does. Your last relationship lasted four years, and looking back, you must have been insane. You’d tried twice to end things, because it made sense when you’d moved apart after graduation, made sense when you realized you didn’t want to move in together out of the blue.

It was harder to end it when things were otherwise fine. He was a genuinely nice guy, if with some flags you may have overlooked. He didn’t understand when you tried to call it off, and you faltered, questioning your own judgement.

And so you stayed.

In the end, he breaks up with you. You cry and he doesn’t. Maybe it’s more a sense of failure than any lingering feelings, because the sobbing makes you feel lighter, and you don’t try to convince him to stay.

Later you’ll understand that you should have stood your ground when the roles were reversed.

That when someone wants to break up with you, the best thing you can do is let them. You wish he’d given you that courtesy, saved both of you years of anxiety and remorse, but here you are.

Overstaying is your specialty. Work. Friendships. A pathological inability to walk away, to say “no.”

It’s like you never learn your lesson. That, more than anything, is what stays your hand. Even as you yearn for physical touch, companionship – a little bit of vitamin D.

The prospect of having twice as many options to disappoint people doesn't exactly propel you into exploration.

It’s exhausting just to think about, let alone pursue. It doesn't stop women from crossing your mind; just that, even feeling men as the only viable option, you're afraid to date.

It makes it all the more amazing that you fall into this thing with Changkyun. It's easy.

He's easy.

He doesn't come on too strong, doesn't bowl you over with enthusiasm.

He listens when you talk; genuinely listens, doesn't just hear what he wants to hear.

He doesn't demand every moment of attention, doesn't need you glued at his side to feel secure with you.

Dating Changkyun is...a relief.

The mutual respect and care is liberating - you have the sense that if you felt the need to separate, he would support you, even if it pained him to let you go.

It's that sense of safety that allows you, eventually, to process those niggling doubts about your preferences.

It's an unremarkable moment, when you're watching netflix together, that reminds you of this unsolved business.

"So, cupcake. What will it be: man...or woman?"

A quick glance at Changkyun's face, still glued to the tv, means he didn't notice the way your heart had just skipped a beat. Watching the flustered love interest in the show stumble through the next few scenes, you have to remind yourself to breathe normally.

You allow yourself to tuck the thought away for later consideration, because you don't need to know right this moment.

It is, in fact, the first you've even processed it as a possibility. And happy as you are in your current relationship, it's deserving of exploration. Even if it's just for you.

Days turn into weeks, checking your reactions to actors and actresses, replaying a backlog of slightly odd interactions with women throughout the years. Monitoring your reactions to women throughout the day.

The longer you think about it, the more natural it feels.

It's not every woman, just like it's never been every man.

But you remember catching eyes with a girl at camp, the 'hot damn' you'd felt and written off as envy, given how cool and effortlessly attractive she was.

Late night Google lets you know that questioning "do I want to be you, or do I just want you" is common when you don't realize you're attracted to women. And maybe, occasionally, it's a little bit of both.

It's not the only time you've felt that way.

It would be false to say that this period of reflection is painless, that one line in a television show caused everything click into place until all was right in the world.

It's...stressful. To fight your internalized bias. To be in a relationship with a man and acknowledge that you could also be in a relationship with a woman - not that you want to, right now.

Just that you could be. If you wanted to.

It’s a secret to no one that Changkyun likes looking pretty - that beyond the stage makeup and the camera glam, he enjoys the chance to press against his boundaries.

Well polished, well manicured nails make him smile, bringing bright spots to dark days.

A dab of power lipstick brings more satisfaction than power underpants, and he revels in the feel of eyes lingering on one of his favorite features.

Accessories – necklace, earrings, watch – give him a sense of fulfillment, bringing any outfit to the next level. The sparkles don’t hurt, either.

It doesn’t make him less of man; no more so than an ability to wield power tools makes you less of a woman.

You've always known that men don’t have the flexibility in self-expression women do, that the gates of masculinity are much more carefully guarded. It's why you've always been advised to 'date someone who toes the line' and not someone too far to either side.

You’ve heard him, and the others, quip “duality” at each other before; you’ve never asked, but understood on an intrinsic level that it referred, in part, to this back and forth, a fluidity in gender expression not afforded to most men. The balance between the attitude, makeup, and accessorizing required by his profession, versus his preference.

His quiet confidence, his ability to reflect and evolve. They're all things you admire about him, on top of the demonstrated attraction.

Maybe that's part of why he's the first person you're willing to trust with this self-discovery, even if it's his reaction you should be most concerned about.

Knowing, deciding to share, is one thing. How to approach it is an entirely other. You spend a few silly hours imagining some grand proclamation, an earth-shattering statement, plotting appropriate moments to reveal something so deeply life-altering.

In the end, it's almost nothing. A side bar to your day.

It happens on impulse one night while you're cooking dinner. Changkyun is sat at the counter with a glass, making idle conversation while he catches up on his internet fix for the day, and it slips out.

Of all the scenarios you considered, it comes out sheepish. Part confused as to how you'd gotten here, part embarrassed that it had taken so long. You could have just as easily been saying "Honey, I think I burnt the bread."

Instead you say, "Babe...I think I might be bi."

He looks up from his phone and blinks a few times, and you rush to fill the sudden silence.

"It's not that I want to date anyone else!" You wring your hands in the apron, searching for something to occupy them. "I'm really happy with you, and I love you. There's no one else, and I'm not trying to see other people, or get freaky and bring someone else into our relationship or anything! It's just...I think I also find women attractive and I wanted you to know." You finish lamely, searching his face for a response.

"Okay." He says, and of course he makes it simple. You echo it back to him, like the word is foreign, and then he smiles and beckons you over.

He looks up at you from his seat, tugging you closer until you're stood between his legs, his hands warm and reassuring on your hips.

"Yes, 'okay'. I trust you." He rocks you gently, like he's cementing the point. "I always trust you. And thank you for telling me."

"It's not weird for you?"

"It could be a little weird, but I'm not worried about it. Just keep me in the loop if you do decide you want to act on any of those feelings, 'kay?"

You feel liberated, afterwards. Like saying it aloud removed a weight from your shoulders, like you've finally given yourself permission to accept it as a part of your identity.

You don't see any need to shout it from the rooftops, or explain it to everyone you know, just like you'd never bothered to explain away not being a lesbian.

It's enough that you know, that your best friend and partner knows, too. That the next time he sees your gaze lingering on a woman, reveling in the ability to do so, he can lean in to whisper:

"She's cute."

"...yeah. Yeah, she is."

His commentary is a welcome reminder, as you adjust, that it's okay to notice, to appreciate, despite not wanting to explore in depth.

Your boyfriend is cool like that.

[lifewouldbebetteronmars]

Title & Lyrics from Hey Jude by The Beatles

Part of my TLH A/B/O AU

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey Jude, Don’t Be Afraid

Matthew stared down at the little bundle in his arms. His son. The little boy who’d just spent the last nine months inside his belly, kicking to his heart’s content.

He was finally here. And Matthew didn’t know how he felt about it.

The pregnancy itself felt like a total blur, there was no morning sickness or terrible cravings, it was by all standards an easy pregnancy. Had it truly been nine months? He couldn’t say for certain.

But some time must have passed, because if it hadn’t, his son wouldn’t be in his arms right now.

If Matthew was completely honest, the biggest thing he remembered about his entire pregnancy was the day he found out.

It had all started out as a regular check up, completely routine. There’d been no symptoms, no warnings. There hadn’t been any nausea or fatigue.

Matthew had been perfectly fine. Until he wasn’t.

The doctor had done a routine blood test, just as a precaution, she had said to him with a kind smile.

The blood test was routine but the results weren’t.

He’d been in the car when he found out, listening to some old Beatles songs for the nostalgia of it, when the phone call had come.

He was pregnant.

The doctor’s words had gone in one ear and out the other, he vaguely remembered being recommended a obstetrician. But mostly he remembers feeling numb.

It had taken awhile for the news to set in and when it did, the first thing Matthew wanted to do was drink.

He was sober almost ten years then and it hadn’t been easy, but nothing had wanted to make him drink more than that news.

He couldn’t drink, so he was numb. He just simply stared off into space as Paul McCartney’s voice crooned the lyrics of Hey Jude through his speakers, as if telling him everything would be okay.

Everything else after that was all blurred. Nothing had been particularly memorable when his mindset had been as dark as it was. Still is, if he’s still being honest.

Matthew spent the first half of his pregnancy acting on autopilot, just going through the motions of life, not processing a single thing.

It wasn’t until Alastair Lightwood-Carstairs, of all people, questioned him about it, having already had children himself and knew what a pregnant Omega looked like. He had twins, something Matthew couldn’t even imagine for himself.

That was the moment that Matthew finally let himself break down and cry for the first time in months. Alastair comforted him in his own way, with pats on the back and just letting him cry it out.

It was after he had calmed down that Alastair tentatively broached the subject of if Matthew had considered his options.

His options? It had slipped his mind that he even had options besides keeping the baby.

He was passed twenty-four weeks by then and the pregnancy was considered viable, so it was too late to consider an abortion, but adoption, was still a valid option.

And it turned out to be the best option for him. Matthew wasn’t ready to be a parent, not now, maybe not ever. He was sure he loved the baby inside of him, but how could he truly know? But maybe there were some parents out there who could love that baby more than he could, parents who actually wanted to be parents.

So for the next sixteen weeks, Matthew looked at the files of so many prospective parents. Until he found the one.

A lovely couple in Cheshire who had a nice house with a yard and two Golden Retrievers. It was the perfect fit.

He hadn’t told his brother or sisters (on account of them either being an asshole or too young to understand) about the pregnancy and his plan, but his parents had been accepting, happy with his decision, as long as it was made him happy.

Not that his friends had seen it that way.

James and Cordelia were the most upset, not understanding in the slightest how he could have kept a secret like that from them, especially since he was just “giving the baby away” in their words. He hadn’t really spoken to them since.

Grace had been accepting too, taking his news by squeezing his shoulder with a sad smile in the way she always did. She hadn’t quite been the same since Christopher’s death, but then again, none of them had.

Thomas (and Alastair), of course, had been the most supportive, even offering to be at the hospital with him when he went into labor.

Anna and Ari were supportive too, having known the hardships of adoption form both ends. He probably would have even considered giving his baby to them had it not been too hard for him.

All of that led to today, the day his son was born.

Matthew had wondered how he had ever doubted before the love he had for his son, the minute they had placed him on his chest.

He loved him immediately, a love he had never known before. All of his doubts were gone and he almost changed his mind. Almost.

If his first thought had been that he loved him, Matthew’s second thought had been how loved his son would be.

It would be impossible not too.

He was the loveliest baby Matthew had ever seen. All blonde curls and rosy cheeks. He was almost cherubic, a peaceful expression on his face as he slept.

His new parents would be arriving soon for him, Matthew knew, and the thought made him sad in a way he hadn’t thought it would.

And so he shifted the little boy in arms and began to hum a familiar tune, one that had stuck with him throughout the last nine months.

Hey Jude, don't be afraid

You were made to go out and get her

The minute you let her under your skin,

Then you begin to make it better

Jude, that was the name of his son, at least in his mind. It wouldn’t be his forever, but it was his for now.

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,

Don't carry the world upon your shoulders

For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool

By making his world a little colder

Jude shifted in his sleep, nose and forehead scrunching up. Matthew lightly kissed his nose. “I love you, Jude.” he whispered to his son, only loud enough of the two of them.

“Math, it’s time. Are you ready?” A familiar voice said from the doorway.

Matthew pressed a kiss to Jude’s forehead and held him close for the last time. He felt tears welling in his eyes but he fought them back.

“Yes, I’m ready.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before the angst begins, a little treat (but is it really?)

Tagging:

@tessherongraystairs

@petalsofaflower-shutupthomas

@littlx-songbxrd

@wagner-fell

[seventeenlovesthree]

Fandom Shipping Polls - Mimi Tachikawa Shipping Analysis (Poll I + Poll II)

As pointed out in the main post, every single Chosen Child will get their individual analysis post to check on the status of the current popularity of their ships. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at Mimi, shall we!  

The overall results / spreadsheet

Disclaimer: As the “Someone from 01/02″ and “Others” options from poll 1 and the “Someone from 01/02″ option from poll 2 have been excluded from the final analysis due to redundancy reasons and all results were culminated in another “final count”, the results will not be 1:1 to what the polls look like:

Overall votes: 127 (approx. 111 in sum after the exclusion), the main poll got 89 votes, the secondary poll got 38 votes.

The “Others” choice in the main poll received 4% (approx. 4 votes) and 2% (approx. 1 vote) in the secondary poll. The comments/tags did not specify any preferences here (aside from characters that were already part of the main choices).

Ship Analysis

1st place: As you may have guessed, I had already started to prepare the graphic designs a few days before the polls had ended - and I actually did expect Koushiro to win this one, considering how many times he had tied with Jou and actually surpassed him in the votes for the majority of the run-time. However, Jou (22%) picked up speed in the last few days and won with a lead of three votes in the end. Within the tumblr fandom - and especially throughout the last year -, the ship has gained visibly more attention than it has in other internet spheres, especially Japanese centric. Considering how their bond is displayed in the anime, framing their arcs to intertwine at several points in the timeline around the theme of “selfish choices vs own choices”, it is not surprising that they are viewed as viable romantic options for each other as well. They do discover their roles as supporting characters while also supporting each other just splendidly, with tiny hints of (mutual) affection sprinkled in, making it quite an appealing ship.

2nd place: Koushiro (19%) came in as second choice, despite the fact that he had led the poll by a marginal lead several times. And that is not surprising at all - as mentioned in his own analyis already, Koumi is considered to be one of the most popular Koushiro centric ships world-wide. This is due to their set-up in the series as being odd-balls of the same age while simultaneously bouncing off of each other very well as one of the go-to “opposites attract” dynamics. Additionally, Tri canonically made Koushiro crush on Mimi, solidifying a consistent fanon-headcanon (which usually goes the other way round, with her having a crush on him instead). While the portrayal of the crush was not appreciated everywhere equally, they have always been going strong for valid reasons. 

3rd place: For the first time, we actually have an undeniable tie, as both Sora and Taichi received the exact same number of votes (14 = 13%). While Sora had comfortably remained as sole heir of the third spot for a long time, Taichi had slowly but steadily caught up to her - leaving several choices behind that will be thoroughly mentioned in the Honorary mentions section. Sora’s lead is easy to explain, as both girls have been supporting each other and growing together throughout the series, displaying a gentle and loving bond despite their obious differences in character and design. Taichi on the other hand may appear to be more of a subtle choice in canon, but enjoys a lot of popularity as potential partner for Mimi in fandom, due to their rare, yet endearing interactions with one another.

Honorary mentions: Here we have quite a number of interesting characters, such as Miyako (who had tied with Taichi for fourth place for quite some time, but ended at 9%), Meiko (7%), Yamato (6%) and Michael (5%). While Miyako, Meiko and Michael are usually shipped with Mimi due to their foundations in the anime - with Miyako and Meiko being clearly enchanted by her and Michael and her bonding during her time in America -, Yamato is among the male fanon favourites. As Honorary mention among the honorary mentions, Takeru (2%) can also be mentioned.

“The 1 vote squad”: This spot is reserved for for Ken (1%) and Wallace (1%).

“0 votes go to...”: Hikari, Daisuke and Iori received 0 votes each.

Annotations: N/A.

What did the other polls say?

Mimi won Jou’s (38%) and Meiko’s (42%) polls, came in second in Koushiro’s (21%) and (technically) Sora’s (18%) and also finished third in Miyako’s (17%), thus making her one of the most represented choices in the “higher tiers”.

While Taichi and Yamato scored higher in Mimi’s own poll, she did not receive as many votes in their respective polls (5% and 4%), but still counts there as Honorable mention.

She was more of a niche choice in the polls for - surprisingly - Iori (2%), Takeru (1%) and Daisuke (1%). 

In the polls for Ken and Hikari, she received 0 votes - just like Hikari did in her own, thus ruling Mikari out as viable ship completely.

Notable additions / comments / thoughts

While her polls did not receive the most amount of votes, it is quite clear that Mimi inherits the reputation as currently being one of the most popular Adventure characters overall. With 127 votes, Mimi came in fifth after Taichi, Ken, Takeru and Daisuke, and even though the overall numbers are still just a comparably small sample size, it still makes her the female character with the most votes - and the most diversity in the results so far. While Jou and Koushiro were never threatened to be surpassed as first and second place, the competition between them - as well as between Sora and Taichi as third place - had been tough. Plus, several characters (Miyako, Meiko, Yamato and Michael) surpassed the “niche” option of 1-2 votes, indicating that there is quite some variation in the way how and with whom people like to ship Mimi. There is also the (in my opinion very important) notion that she’s a highly popular choice not only in the polls for the male characters (Jou and Koushiro in particular) but also in the polls for the female characters (Meiko, Sora and Miyako in particular). Which is absolutely backed up by her canon portrayal, as she is having some of her most emotional character development moments during interactions with other female characters - while also displaying quite a tendency to be affectionate and physical with them. With some male characters, she may not share as many interactions in comparison, but due to her personality structure, openness, kindness and sincerity, it is absolutely understandable that the fandom enjoys the potential her relationships offer. Still, I really hope to reach a wider audience if I choose to repeat the polls once the fandom is not as quiet as it is right now.

The comments in the tags have only referred to the already mentioned choices (”MIYAKO” and “SORA”) in all caps in particular). So the “Others” option did not reveal any other potentially preferred suitors. This leaves room for speculation, but usually, the option is reserved for OC ships or for when people prefer to not ship a character at all or when they’re considered asexual (which will definitely be a future option to include as well!)

Other Analysis Posts 

Taichi Yagami Shipping Analysis

Yamato Ishida Shipping Analysis

Sora Takenouchi Shipping Analysis

Koushiro Izumi Shipping Analysis

Jou Kido Shipping Analysis

Takeru Takaishi Shipping Analysis

Hikari Yagami Shipping Analysis

Daisuke Motomiya Shipping Analysis

Ken Ichijouji Shipping Analysis

Miyako Inoue Shipping Analysis

Iori Hida Shipping Analysis

Meiko Mochizuki Shipping Analysis

[electricbluebutterflies]

17. Masturbation (mutual or otherwise) for Garcy?

Another very late crosspost, at this point who even knows what's hidden in my drafts. NSFWish and also on ao3.

The damned door won’t lock.

Lucy has tried to adapt to the nuances of living with half a dozen other people in a space she suspects was never designed for this many occupants, she has made every compromise she can, but the utter lack of privacy occasionally gets under her skin, especially when she deeply wants it. She’s in a mood and has no easy way to resolve it – at present there are no viable partners for her as far as she’s aware, and getting herself off will be a better time anyways. But she barely even sleeps in her room because someone had the brilliant idea to put her in closest proximity to the shared living areas, she is absolutely goddamn not doing this where she’s actually spent most of her nights over the past few months, and-

The more out-of-the-way bathroom is the best option she has, but even that isn’t necessarily good enough. The lock is known not to work, this isn’t exactly a new problem, and the shower curtain is practically see-through and-

Screw it, her options are either this relatively minor risk or acting on a crush she intends to take to her grave. Accidentally getting walked in on, if it happens, will be less awkward.

A few unnecessary moments of trying to fight the door lower her mood a little, but not enough to change her plans for the afternoon. It has been a long couple of days, and that problem of a crush has started taking up far more of her mind than she can justify, and-

Would it kill her to do something about it, to yank that tree of a man down to her level and make it abundantly clear that she sees how he looks at her and she has no complaints about it?

It probably would, she thinks as she decides to take advantage of her situation and draw a bath. She should know by now that she can’t make good choices. Why start now?

Warm water, theoretically waterproof vibrator, distracting thoughts… she doubts she’ll actually get off, but she’ll get rid of some of this unfortunate tension in her body, hopefully calm herself, hopefully get somewhere. She’s always been efficient, no reason to tease herself when she’s not sure how much time she even has, and there’s barely a daydream in her mind as she puts her device on a medium setting and  it’s not enough but it’s something, it’s not-

Oh goddammit.

The door opens just slowly enough to give her a moment to hide the vibrator under her body and remind herself that innocent violations of privacy are completely normal and she’s pretty sure everyone has at least seen her naked from the waist up before and-

Lucy is not fond of living any erotic cliches, and the sudden presence of the subject of most of her recent fantasies – now currently standing as if turned to stone in the doorway, and definitely looking at her – is decidedly overrated. More awkward than not, and she isn’t sure-

“I walked in on something,” Flynn says, not a question and accent heavier than she’s heard in a while.

“You did.”

Perhaps this is how it has to be, she thinks. She has no inclination to cover herself, nothing to be frightened about, nothing-

“I can-“

“Or you could stay.”

Oh, if she’d thought he’d been turned to stone before, this is something else entirely. No one else has ever looked at her the way he does, like she is divine but not delicate, and-

“What do you want me to do?”

Ravish her, she wants to say, but that feels like asking too much. Anything involving touch would be too much, she’d probably kill him just by kissing with tongue, but-

“Watch me. Close the door, block it, and watch me.”

He does as she asks, and she can see the power she has over him and someday she will use that in the bed that somehow holds both of their bodies. For now there is this, her inhibitions forced down and her eyes closed, nothing below her breasts visible above the waterline, the low buzzing of her vibrator muted by its surroundings and her own noises barely audible. She’s always been quiet, and that has been convenient these past few months, and-

To her great surprise, she falls apart with a sudden gasp and her free hand clawing against the edge of the bathtub, and it’s not quite a great earth-shattering orgasm but it’s still more than she expected out of this and for a few moments everything is very bright and very warm, and-

“Are you alright?” he asks, and it still surprises her how occasionally protective he can be.

“Better now. That felt right. I… could you help me get out?”

She’s not enjoying this as much as she probably should, but she feels his eyes on her now fully exposed body, looking respectfully but still looking, and maybe they’re not as hopeless as she’d thought. Maybe…

“What do you want?” he asks again, low and uncertain.

“You, eventually. I’m just not sure…”

He leans down to kiss her forehead, and she is unafraid, and-

“Take your time.”

[riddles-n-games]

The Poetry of Battlefields

    The last time Rebecca and I had spoken, she’d confessed to covering for Skye Hawthorne’s role in my attempted murder.

    “I’m not sure I want one,” I said, an edge creeping into my voice. On an intellectual level, I understood that Rebecca had spent her whole life living in her sister’s shadow, that Emily’s death had wrecked her, that she’d felt some kind of sick responsibility to her dead sister to say nothing about Skye’s plot against me. But on a more visceral level: I could have died. “Come back with a different response another time and maybe I will.”

    “You’re not still holding a little grudge about all of that, are you?” Thea Calligaris asked, claiming the seat that Rebecca had left open. 

    “Little grudge?” I repeated and blinked in disbelief. The last time I’d been this close to Thea, she had admitted to setting me up to attend my debut in Texas society dressed like a dead girl and now had the audacity to act like it was just a bit of dirt that could be swept under the carpet. “You play mind games. And Rebecca almost got me killed!“ But, even though I was currently angry at both, more so at the redhead, at least Rebecca had some decency to feel guilty about her actions. Perhaps guilt tripping and her ability to feel easily pressured is exactly what made it easy for Emily to manipulate her, to feel sorry and guilty about almost anything.

    “What can I say?” Thea let her fingertips brush Rebecca’s. “We’re complicated girls.” 

    I rolled my eyes. She was trying to get to me again but I wasn’t going to let her and if she wanted me riled up, I would let rip just to show her why she shouldn’t next time around. Seeing as she had her eyes on Rebecca again, I spoke up to redirect her attention back to me. “Aww, isn’t that cute? Is that your way of telling me you’re quirky? Or is it prep girl talk for ‘I’m not like other girls’?” I air-quoted with my fingers then clasped my hands back together and gave her the best fake smile I could muster before continuing, “Because Thea, that’s no excuse. Not a very good one either, might I add. Frankly, I’m actually disappointed. Last time, you told me you were screwed up and clearly, you still are, because then, maybe you’d actually care about your actions and those consequences. From my perspective, that’s basically a cry for help and either you haven’t sought it out or you don’t want it. Am I right on that one? I think I am. You need a therapist and simply choose not to go therapy even though it is a very viable option for you given the traumatic circumstances of your past year. I know you can afford one otherwise you wouldn’t be here and your folks are most likely filthy rich so all you’d have to do is ask. But no, that’s too easy for you. Instead you woke up and chose violence because needless revenge is apparently better, right? Rather ruin the lives of two brothers further by stupid attempts at brainwashing when they already feel the brunt of that guilt every day and self-destructing with their own unhealthy ways of coping than trying to focus on yourself. Yet, you know about that, don’t you? I would have gladly taken therapy if given the opportunity in your position and swallow my damn pride just so I could move on with my life but I guess you’re just too bored or make no time for that.  That’s prime psychopath behavior and you know what? If you continue down that road of mind games, remorselessness, self-righteous bratting, and manipulation, I can foresee you either ending up in a jail cell in solitary confinement or in a mental asylum with just the voices in your head. But maybe, try being a little more original than the Joker or Harley Quinn because this isn’t Gotham City. Maybe next time you try to pull a stunt like that, you won’t like what I have in store like a restraining order for me, Grayson, Jameson, even Xander here.”

    By the end of my little speech, with my eyes constantly trained on her face, I could tell I struck a nerve. Surprisingly, Xander said nothing and didn’t react at all to my last statement, just let it be even though I could tell that from previous interactions there was still some kind of connection he had with her. Any smugness had left her expression and irritation had taken its place though she would look placid to anyone else.

However, she had a tell, her cheek lightly twitched and despite her effort to remain neutral, her mouth that was drawn into a thin-lipped smile, quivered ever so slightly. I had managed to annoy her. Good, she deserves it. It’s the least she does. Despite my lips threatening to reveal a traitorously victorious smirk, I maintained my innocent guise. I covered my mouth with a hand, in mock apology, “Oh, I’m sorry, was that too much? Whoops, I must have taken it too far this time, I didn’t mean to be so inconsiderate. Accept my deepest and sincerest apologies, but you know what ladies?” I stood up, brushed my skirt and straightened my blazer, and put my hands together.

“I think it’s time for me to be going. Xander, my favorite Hawthorne, I’ll see you at home.” I patted him on the back before turning back to the girls and putting a hand to my chest, “As for you two, I look forward to seeing you the next time around. It was such a pleasant surprise to bump into you, I’m sure we’ll have many more wonderful conversations like this one, isn’t that right, Thea? Really, I truly do anticipate with excitement what bullshit you’ll come up with next. Farewell and have a good afternoon.”

I saluted them and walked away from the table, a sway in my step, leaving them to their affairs. There were better things to do, namely a bet to win and a Hawthorne to beat. Although, I’m sure Jameson would have been proud and even though I tried to push away any and all thoughts related to him and that crooked smile of his, a small grin tugged at the corners of my mouth anyway. It was a good day to be a winner.

[dapperkobold]

Street Fighter 6 Demo: Yeah I’m Buying it.

I’ve always been interested in fighting games. I like a lot of things about them, the character designs, the in-depth controls, the interplay. The best ones have all that and story, too, focusing not only on how the characters interact in gameplay but emotionally. For a long time I’ve kept an eye on certain spaces, originally Blazblue and more recently Guilty Gear, just because I find these games fascinating.

Only one issue: I’m garbage at them.

You know the ‘I can’t do motion inputs’ guy? The one who goes ‘I can’t do the quarter-circle fireballs’? That’s me. Yes, I have just tried to buckle down and get good at it. I got from zero fireballs at all to about 40-50%. I might, maybe, be able to do it semi-reliably if I had a stick with an octagonal gate, but I do NOT have the money to spare to buy a fight stick. Yes, I have tried using the D-pad. It’s what let me get to that 50%. I still do accidental jumps on occasion.

By and large I’ve just... given up on fighting games. They’re something I enjoy at a distance, something beautiful that I can never partake in.

That might be all the better; I don’t really do PVP. Over time I’ve come to realize it’s just not my jam, just not something I really enjoy. That means that my enjoyment is largely limited to stuff like Injustice and the anime fighters, where they do have fun with the singleplayer campaigns.

Hm? Street Fighter 6 came out? It has a custom character? And a single-player campaign?

I don’t follow Street Fighter. Nothing against it, it’s just not my jam. as said, I’m very much on the anime/injustice side of fighting games, where zoning takes the form of sawblades covering half the screen and you have four nice buttons with easy to remember designations instead of the entire controller being mapped to various different kicks and punches. I had nothing against it, it just wasn’t for me.

But I do like single-player campaigns and customizable characters...

It has a free demo? Oh my, how long has it been...

Demos are something of a forgotten art anymore. At some point Demos shifted from being a taster that let players gauge whether they liked something, and started being warning signs on how badly the game was going to be exploited. I spent I don’t even know how many hours on demos back in the day, and I’ve always been a little sad to see them fade away. But Street Fighter 6 is bringing it back?

At this point, I search it up on Youtube. No idea who Maximillian Dood is, but he streamed the demo, and I’ll see what goes on-

‘Modern’ controls, huh?

A simplified control scheme that gives you a four-button setup and doesn’t require you to do any stick turns at all? 

At this point, this is basically my dream fighting game. I have to try the demo. I make a terrible little goblin woman, play the tutorial, and hit the streets.

And I’m having fun.

I get that Modern Controls are to cater to scrubs. I get that there’s a big question whether they’re high0end viable at all. As a complete scrub, I appreciate the option. I appreciate only having four buttons to fat-finger instead of 6. The auto-combo button is... eh? But I appreciate it.

The writing is fairly good. Not incredible, but good. There’s parts of it that tease and intrigue. The RPG mechanics tempt me with the ability to plan my way to victory, changing my stats and moves as needed to take on certain challenges. The option to try multiple different playstles appeals to me strongly in every game I play; part of my biggest gripe with most modern MMOs is that they offer a thousand ways to play the game and then charge you for every one past the first. But a big, one-purchase game like this...

I fight a mime. How many games let you walk up to a mime and just fight him?

The Demo is short, and doesn’t really have replayability. It literally cuts off the moment after you finish the tutorial. That said, by then it’s done it’s job: I want more. I now have a terrible little goblin woman taking up space on my computer and I want her to punch people.

I don’t have the spare money to get the full game right now, but sooner or later I’ll give in and get it. I’m never going to be good at it, I’m never going to be relevant in the PVP, but it’s offering me a chance to participate in a genre I like on terms that make me feel welcome.

That’s how you get players into your game.

[ladyazulina]

August 11th

So, uhm... Hi.

I'm not feeling Imposter Syndrome, I swear.

I'm just... down.

I went to sleep late last night wanting to make a post about wanting to be part of the Spoiler Game that I was seeing around, thinking on the characters and the novels I will line up for easy choosing and making it a bit more like "info that wasn't going to end on the final draft but not really sure about that because not all of them are even in writing stage".

It sounded funny in my mind, I swear.

If you're following me around, you can notice I didn't make such post. I don't know if I chickened, if I let myself go down, or if I was just genuinely distracted. The point is that the post doesn't exist. And may still not exist.

Though it felt so fun in my head.

I don't know, I don't want the interaction to define my participation, but sometimes I can't help it. I don't want the few people that are interacting with me to feel forced to interact with that post due to this.

I think some part of that is defined in the Imposter Syndrome or something, I'm not even going to look for it.

I'm also in a mental rearranging of my Patreon tiers. Taking advantage that I have no one patronizing me yet. First I thought of doubling it so there will be one in English and the same one in Spanish, but I don't want to divide more my future community by language, that's a barrier that I want to knock down, though that mentality doesn't if inside that tier I made one publication in English and that same one in Spanish. I'm feeling dumber the more I think about it.

What I was thinking was about dividing my projects into those tiers. Right now my writing there is divided according to its content (short, long, fluff, +18, raw, edited, etc) so every project will be basically everywhere and everyone would be able to see at least something about all projects. If I do what I'm thinking on, every project will be in a specific tier.

I don't know if it will be better. I don't know if it will be worse. I have no patrons to ask.

Wanted to try Ream, but that's out of the map until Stripe includes my country.

And I'm really out of viable options to advertise my stories. In the same way I don't feel good marketing myself, I feel about marketing my writing.

I want to believe that people will find me anyway.

Well, enough of the talk.

I thought I wasn't going to, but I'm happy to say that I

Worked in: AngelDemon. Words written: 1.392.

I'm a bit ahead of the half point of the old work, but I'm still two chapters short of what I was expecting to be the half. Maybe the story will be shorter than estimated. Maybe not. I really can't tell, but I'm not even have half (I think I do have half though) outline and I feel it short. I don't want a short story here. But we will see.

I also

Worked in: Iron Valley (Linney’s Campaign). Words written: 9.

wanted to edit this post (not edited here yet) because when I read it I noticed a few little mistakes. I still believe there's one I haven't found yet, but I'm not going to force myself. I wasn't in it for it when I did it, so... I will take a look at it later.

My head is also trying to think about how to edit my info in Twitch, there's something I want to change, but I still don't know how or what. I passed part of the day playing along it... mentally.

Anyway.

Total words: 1.401. Lower daily goal: 100 ✅ Higher daily goal: 300 ✅

I hope to not make a habit to come this late. It can be draining and time-consuming if I'm not careful. I don't want to bump into my schedule and night routine, but I do like coming to talk in these little talks. I guess is really good for my mental health.

Tagging: @aziz-reads

[ekmosteresi]

my love is dark, but its yours.

Hades could not be blamed for his bias. Zeus was his youngest brother, the one that had saved them, and the first face he had ever seen. It made sense that he was swept up in a doomed love, destined to never get closer.

or: hades is filled with self-loathing and tries to justify his solitude.

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Hades could only stare into the mirror for what felt like an eternity. He sighed and put his hands to his hair, combing out the minor tangles in his dark locks. He sometimes wished he kept his hair as short as his brothers, if only to keep it out of his way and neat, but quickly moved on from that train of thought as he knew he'd miss the feeling of it along his back. When his hands could finally run smoothly through his hair, he moved his attention to his dreadful eyes.

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Why couldn't he have had some form of blue eyes like his brothers? Or perhaps a brown, like his sisters? Either would've been far better than the emerald sheen of his eyes, far too similar to the green of his father's. 

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After realizing he couldn't do much to his eyes other than outlining them with kohl, he took a step back from the glass. He truly looked like a corpse, he disdainfully thought. With skin as pale as bone, and hair so black that it even put the darkness of Erebus to shame. His form was so skeletal, with barely any muscle other than a lean tone. 

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His self-depreciation lasted a couple more minutes before he finally lost all energy to care. He should just leave his domain already and get this whole affair done with.

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After years of silence, his siblings had invited him to an event on Olympos, quite an important one- since it's not every day that your brother gets married for the sixth time! To his sister, nonetheless. He didn't even get any warning or told beforehand, they just had the Golden-winged messenger fly down and send an invitation!

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They never even had a courtship from what he's heard- Hera has always rejected any suitor's advances, and Zeus even had a marriage not long ago! It doesn't make sense. 

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He was curious and frustrated about what caused the match, but it was a pointless endeavor, he wouldn't gain answers by himself. He could only sigh in annoyance and grit his teeth.

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Perhaps he was just too jealous to realize he had missed something between the two. He didn't leave the Underworld often, after all. It'd make sense for the two to have a connection beyond siblings... They both held dominion over the skies and beauty unrivaled. 

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Perfect, Cow eyed Hera. His youngest sister, how he envies her. He could only hate himself for this wicked jealousy he felt toward her. It was not her fault that Hades was undesirable and alone, it was not her fault that she obtained happiness.

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Fuck, what is he doing? Letting his feelings affect his relationship with his sister. Such a pathetic thing. 

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Perhaps he shouldn't go.

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He'd only lower the happiness of his siblings with his presence, he has always been far too gloomy. Hera doesn't deserve to be the subject of his ire just because he's petty. He'd only ruin the moment by showing up. 

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He could just send a gift, that would probably be alright. Yes, that'd likely be acceptable. Very last minute, but he could just send some excuse that there's a situation that must be prioritized! 

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Perhaps it's a coward's way out, but it's a viable option. What's another thousand years before he sees them again, anyway. He wouldn't haft to see them celebrate a day of joy, to see the one he loved with another.

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It was so easy to forget that Zeus fell in love many times over the years and very easy to avoid. Sometimes he could just imagine- No! He must stop these useless thoughts, there's no point wishing for the impossible.

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... Though, Zeus might be upset if he missed his wedding. Hades had arrived at all of the others, he'd always seemed glad to see him. Whenever Hades saw him he always graced him with a smile, and a gentle hug that disappears as quickly as it arrived. 

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He misses him, Hades admits reluctantly. Just seeing a glimpse of his bright brother always brought him joy. Zeus' presence brought greater light than Helios, his profound yet gentle laugh that would bounce across the room, everything about him was far too perfect. 

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What he wouldn't do for Zeus. He brought the age of winter at his request, fought for him at his command. He had beheaded the crooked one for a chance at his hand. A foolish hope, but a small desire. 

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Hades could only spend the rest of his time thinking, before he made his choice.

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Hades calls for his chariot to be summoned, only the fastest of his horses will guide it. He has a wedding to attend.

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