#it’s like they think if they write her in her full capacity her partner will wilt and to that i say Not Her Problem!

[synthville]

the ‘raffi is so wild and impulsive and emotional and can’t handle her shit’ schtick has gotten real old tho can’t lie. like it was already stale when plcard told her she was being ‘too emotional’ literal seconds after elnor died (um hello sir have you ever heard of grief? you might not participate but let a bitch breathe! thank you!) but having worf (who im actually liking so far) pull the same ‘she’s irrational, violent etc’ thing is just like. eye roll. obviously the writing isn’t doing my girl any favours by cheaply and gleefully playing into it with cliches left and right but my goodness can they come up with something else!

[yellowraincoat]

I wonder sometimes what the L&Co crew did after they aged out of having the sight. Obviously Lucy makes some mention of them helping DEPRAC clear the other side and you can help with that even w/o sight thanks to the Orpheus society, but I don’t imagine they did that forever or even full time.

I’ve actually thought a LOT about what I think they end up doing as adults so… here’s an extremely long post about it:

George’s path is obvious to me. He becomes a foremost voice on the nature of the problem, and he’s able to go to Oxford for university (or the most prestigious UK university still running) on this basis. He gets a degree in history and goes on to a PHD. He then dedicates several years to writing a complete, multi-volume, history of the problem/agencies/corruption/visitors (which will go down in history as THE TEXT about the problem)

… I’ll put the rest under the cut bc this is fr going to be lonnnng

We also know from the existence of Lockwood and Co the books that Lucy at some point metatextually writes a memoir detailing the antics of Lockwood and co. (Which, go off girlboss, she did a great job.) For Lucy’s career path, I imagine that she is a formal DEPRAC partner for a time goes to the other side more than any of her other L&Co colleagues to help out.

This may be a weird take, but I also think that Lucy’s relationship with the Skull and all the weird experiments on ghosts she witnesses lead her to go all GHOST RIGHTS. She campaigns for seeing ghosts differently and repsecting the dead and works to get DEPRAC to create better regulations for how sources are treated when contained and advocates for figuring out how to release them to the other side rather than destroying sources as a first move. Idk I think it suits her relationship to ghosts; she’s definitely more invested in their humanity than other agents.

I don’t think Lockwood would try to hire young agents as a supervisor to keep the agency going after losing his sight. Especially since he’s aware that the problem is fading and considering he’d still have work available through DEPRAC. I think Lockwood spends his first few post-sight years in lots of therapy and takes time off from working since he’s been running a very intense business since he was like 14. I also think he foots the bill for Flo to get a therapist as well.

They’re both able to work through their grief and trauma from the people they’ve lost, Lockwood works through his habit of repressing his feelings, and Flo works through her feelings of being cornered while in doors. Flo eventually moves into Portland Row, and she and George and Lucy and Lockwood spend most of their young adult lives (whole lives if you ask me) living in the same house or living right next door to each other.

As for Lockwood’s actual career path I think Lockwood’s would make it his life’s work to share his parents findings. He spreads the traditional burial practices and ways to ward off ghosts like that Lockwood’s parent’s researched to help people protect themselves from ghosts around the UK as the problem fades.

I don’t know that I see Flo having a real job. I could see her in advocacy for housing insecure youth (we know London has MANY due to the Problem) but I’d also like to see her have a relaxing-ass life. Enjoy therapy and her friends, date George, plant a vegetable garden. Flo’s never cared much about material goods so I could see her working odd jobs here and there to help contribute to Portland Row Expenses, but mostly focus on nonprofit work and political activism while enjoying her life.

I think both Kipps and Holly stay on at Lockwood and co until it permanently disbands, then I imagine they both work to advocate for the rights of former agents in some capacity. If Holly could further her eduction I think she’d work in the legal system, maybe working in administration/research on cases that are attempting to hold leaders of the Orpheus society and high up Fittes and Rottweil people accountable for compensating traumatized former agents. Oh and she asks out that girl from DEPRAC she was living with (and they were roommates oh my god they were roommates)

I think Kipps might (after he’s matured a bit) get involved with a young adult professional development program trying to address all of the former agents and nightwatch kids who forwent education at a young age to hunt ghosts and help them access free education and classes to gain new marketable skills as the ghost hunting industry declines and kids age out of the sight. He also stops beefing with teenagers (so much) and lives out his destiny as surrogate brother/20 year old adopted father to Lucy George and the rest. And he gets himself a husband bc he deserves it 😤

As for the Skull… I’m in the camp that he does return and he occasionally stops by Portland Row to chat with Lucy and pull poltergeists type pranks on the other residents. When Lucy can no longer hear him 🥲 I still think he sticks around for a while, making his presence known by moving objects and helping keep the house cool in the summer (yayyy ghost chill), he also still speaks to Lucy when she does work on the other side with DEPRAC. But eventually, maybe when Lucy’s in her late twenties, the skull feels ready to move on, and Lucy visits to the other side to say good by and help him pass on.

[philtstone]

OOH can i ask for 38. delightful smiles or 40. missing them - whichever feels more authentic / comfortable to u - for arawen, please? i love the way u write them 💖 if it’s too much trouble, i can send a prompt for shawn x jules instead!

38. delightful smiles

you can also read this on ao3!

Aragorn is dozing. He does not realize it until the corners of his consciousness are bent and shaped by song. It moves through him, life-giving, and not just for the fact that it sings in his wife’s voice.

Wakefulness comes back to him in lazy parts. Time has never been a matter of days and weeks to him, as it is to his faithful steward or more hobbitish friends, but he must admit it has been a taxing few months. There is ardour in their work, and care and hope, but much death and pain, too. And interminable meetings. The world has healed in ways that can only be called triumphs, yet has much healing left to be called at peace. 

They reached somewhat of a breaking point yesterday. Eomer King yelling at the stuffed up Gondorian minister for agriculture while poor Faramir distracted the latest Haradim peace ambassador from the chaos to dubious success was, in many ways, enough to do it. 

Perhaps they needn’t have snuck out to a faraway corner of one of Legolas’s more indulgent afforestation projects like they were but forty and two-thousand again, and escaping to the clear brook outside Imladris’s borders with a touch too much audacity, but it is hard to say no when the Evenstar is leading the way. Specifically when she is wearing that lilac nightshift that flutters around her legs. 

Aragorn blinks a few times and sighs, tipping his head back. Almost awake. His limbs are without partner in the soft grass, but that is unconcerning. Arwen has always had the uninhibited capacity to recover more quickly. 

His nose is full of orange blossom and chamomile, his neck is damp from his own sweat and the dewy grass, and half his cheek is hot; his own arm lays covering it, stretched above him in the position it took immediately before his little nap. The air is warm. Gondorian springs come in hot and fast, carrying everyone swiftly into the happy embrace of summer. Yet it has cooled since noon, quiet and blue under the twilight sky. Now the night air is perfect against his skin, and a soft wind moves through the tall pines that open themselves up to the heavens and starlight. Sssshhhhh cry the trees, a whisper of such magnitude that it has taken his breath away many a time as a young man hidden in the forested wilds and intent upon clinging to even the smallest token of hope. 

It is to the open sky that Aragorn finally opens his eyes. The night is full of stillness and quietude, and contentment falls over him like a blanket. 

Somewhere in the distance he hears a nightingale. As much as he could swoon from a carefully employed note of Arwen's voice, she’s never been quite so talented a singer as to match the little birds. But singing she is. And it’s from a little distance too. Soft Quenya fills the wood, lilting. So that is why the space beside him feels cold and empty, he thinks, to the extent that he is capable of functional thought. Aragorn lets himself focus on the sounds of her, one arm still flung over his face. He does not turn to look, but she is clear in his minds eye: fae and shocking yet totally at home in the greenery, face tipped skyward, arms outstretched to touch the Life that fills this glade, naked. Her hair is unbound; he is responsible for that. 

Her voice stops of a sudden, and two pale feet appear beside his shoulder.

“Your shift is ruined,” he mumbles to the sky. He cracks one eye open to peer from under his arm at the crumpled heap of purple in the bushes. “Silk is not made for the damp.”

“Estel the weaver,” says his wife. 

He revises his statement; she does not need to sing to warble as beautifully as the nightingale. 

“Or the poet,” Arwen sighs, only laughing a little bit. “I cannot say I don’t enjoy it.”

“One can only hope.”  

She kneels down and seats herself so that her long legs are bent over his stomach, and a small movement would touch the small of her back to his raised thigh. Thick spools of hair slip down from the pin atop her head and hang around her face, and his. She is smiling. He looks upon her rosy cheeks, the flush dusting her neck and collarbone and breasts, the little quirk at the corner of her lips. There is an impish quality to the smile that he recognizes.

“Why did you stop?” Aragorn says. 

She brushes two fingers over an old scar under his rib. It is a Dark one, and she herself had once healed it. Perhaps this is why his skin burns at her fluttering touch.

“Singing? I am humble enough to know I have not Tinuviel’s talent.”

The little nightingale continues to serenade them.

“That is not why you were singing,” he says, so lowly that she must surely hear and understand only because she is Arwen. Her thumb has made its way to his bottom lip. Her soft breath ghosts over his cheeks. Aragorn opens his eyes all the way and rolls his head to face her in the grass.

Arwen glows. 

The Valar have blessed him, he thinks, compelled.

“Mmm,” she says. 

“What.”

She tilts her head, scuffs the tip of her nail under his chin. Then his throat. “Only thinking.”

Lazily, one corner of his mouth tilts upward. The slight movement risks the brush of her mouth; she revels in it. “The verdict?”

“I want a baby.”

“Take one from me, then,” he murmurs. The words slip out as easily as a breath might, unhurried, assumed. Arwen’s delighted smile unfurls like the nephridil only her touch has coaxed to life in the corners of this garden.

“I believe I just did,” she breathes into his ear. 

Her eyes are shining. The joy of her radiates into the trees around them. Aragorn feels his own follow, uninhibited like the breeze in the sky. 

[deliciouskeys]

@cozycornerkinktober's prompt lucky #13: Nursing/lactation

Another deleted scene from the Selfish Gene (Butchlander)

Warnings: Everyone's going to write about HL's canon nursing/breast milk fetish for this one. And uh... so am I. But in mine he's the one lactating so trigger warning for that upfront. Mpreg. Supe baby. Injuries. Weird fetishes. Probably a little bit more emo than I intended. @vanshoundd requested this one, but I'm not at all sure they'll be pleased with the result lol, but I tried! AO3 link.

Butcher’s nose was never that sensitive, but he starts to detect it as soon as he’s out of the elevator on the twenty fourth floor of their new hoity-toity high rise condo building. It hits him full force when he opens the door to the apartment, thick, cloying, notes of melted butter and even something a little like apple, all mixing together into a bouquet that now smells like his partner, like their child, like home. Butcher puts away the groceries he brought in before following the overly familiar, obnoxiously loud sound of the pump coming from their bedroom.

Homelander is sitting half propped up in bed, browsing on his phone, the wearable vest with suction cups stuck to his otherwise bare torso, both 150ml milk bottles half-full with creamy white liquid, frothing up slightly from the negative pressure. Lena’s sleeping soundly on top of his body and not in her crib— as far as Butcher knows she’s never been in her crib in the two weeks since being born, Homelander being completely engrossed with taking her everywhere and keeping her close at all times. He hasn’t really left the house except to go out on the balcony, despite having been so enthusiastic about having the house confinement officially nixed a few months ago. At least their new apartment overlooks Central Park and has two spacious bedrooms— not that Homelander has let Lena stay in her nursery yet. Butcher made a token attempt to convince him that sleeping together with your newborn in the same bed was ill-advised, but SIDS was just not something on Homelander’s list of worries. ‘How about you worry about Sudden Dad Death Syndrome,’ he said dismissively. Butcher had no intention to stay away and sleep in another room. If he’s going to get lasered for rolling over on his infant daughter, well, it was a good run. Homelander seems genuinely worried about that eventuality though, and keeps Lena between his own body and a pillow. Butcher’s not sure how much the pillow would really protect him, but he’s learned not to argue about most of these things. He’s also not sure how much Homelander actually sleeps during the night, because he’s still feeding the baby so often, and every time Butcher wakes up groggy during the night, Homelander’s either feeding, burping, changing, or pumping.

At the moment Lena’s sound asleep, positioned along Homelander’s belly, tiny legs flexibly curled up under her diaper, tiny ribcage visibly moving in and out underneath the tiny blanket draped over her.

“I don’t know how she can sleep through that racket going on near her head,” Butcher says as he lies down next to Homelander.

“It’s really not that loud.” Homelander rolls his eyes, finally putting away the phone.

“It’s pretty loud, love. And I think you’re going to break it soon if you don’t stop running it 24-7.”

Homelander huffs. “What am I supposed to do if I can’t store much inside my body?”

Supplement with formula maybe, Butcher thinks but doesn’t say out loud. It’s a really sore topic they’ve been over multiple times over the past couple of weeks. Homelander’s body responded to pregnancy by the textbook, golden colostrum letting down as soon as Lena rut her face into his chest, not even an hour after being born. But his milk supply never came in as plentifully as the lactation coach assured him it would. He produced milk quickly, but had little storage capacity. His chest was only a little bit more swollen and veiny than before pregnancy, and there was apparently just not enough volume for a satisfying feeding, even for a tiny newborn. Butcher had probably never seen him as upset as when he was frantically switching Lena from one nipple to the other, to no avail because she’d drained both in short order and was crying for more. “Why can’t I do this right?!” he’d lamented, sobbing about his failure, rather than the fact that their famished newborn’s suction was apparently strong enough to make his nipples’ skin chafe, pop, and bleed. Butcher fed Lena formula out of a bottle between her breast feedings during those first few days, and Homelander refused to even watch it happen, lying in bed turned away, weeping, depressed, and defeated. The mere sight of the bottle would send him into what, in Butcher’s mind, was irrational hysterics, but suggesting that there might be some postpartum depression at play here was angrily dismissed out of hand. Butcher found what was at least a stopgap solution, buying one of those supplemental nursing systems where breast milk could be mixed with formula to boost the volume and be used to feed the baby through a thin plastic tube taped to align right with the nipple. All the nice physical bonding of not using a bottle, without the anxiety about your baby going hungry, Butcher figured. But Homelander was still a purist, and wanted zero Similac in the mixture. That’s why he’d taken to pumping day and night, every hour except when Lena was actually latched on to him. For better or worse, it seemed to be working, his body slowly adjusting to meet the demand. In the past few days, he finally started having leftovers to freeze. 

“I just feel like I haven’t been able to talk to you without raising my voice over the din of that motor,” Butcher says, cupping Homelander’s face and kissing him on the cheek, then rubbing his hand against the rough beard bristles on his chin. Homelander was so focused on his baby that apparently he stopped prioritizing shaving every morning, brushing his hair, or showering.

“Sorry, I haven’t been taking care of myself today,” Homelander says defensively as Butcher’s hand runs along his jaw.

“D’you want to?” Butcher asks.

Homelander looks down at Lena and sighs.

“I can watch her while you take a fifteen minute shower,” Butcher says, both amused and annoyed. “You can’t keep being this much of a control freak.”

“If she wakes up-”

“I’ll inform you at once, commander-in-chief, Jesus.”

“And if she…”

He trails off but Butcher knows what Homelander is getting at without any more being said. Lena has yet to actually fire off a laser but her eyes have powered up a glow a couple of times in the past two weeks. They haven’t been able to pinpoint what seems to trigger it. Every time it’s happened she was latched on, feeding, and not fussing. Butcher thinks it’s overwhelmed-with-happiness-and-pleasure lasers, not rage-lasers, but they can’t know for sure.

“I’ll be careful and point her away from me. What do you want me to say?”

Homelander nods and slowly sits up. Lena makes a quiet whimper and he freezes but she seems to go right back to sleep, despite being held almost fully upright. Butcher takes her gently into his arms and cradles her. She turns toward his body but thankfully doesn’t wake up and start searching for milk. Homelander walks out of the bedroom with the pump still attached to him.

“Maybe you should take it off before you get in the shower,” Butcher mutters to himself under his breath, but Homelander hears him loud and clear, of course, even with the machine still on and says “Very funny” from the bathroom.

Butcher enjoys the rare opportunity to study this tiny creature snoozing in his arms, a creature he helped make. He leans down and inhales the scent of her head, her wispy dark hairs flying up when he does. He finally hears the pump being shut off and the shower running shortly after. Lena stays asleep, eyes sometimes moving underneath her thin eyelids, long eyelashes twitching slightly. She’s unbearably cute. Holding her, Butcher admits he can understand why her other parent doesn’t seem to want to let go of her for even a minute. He never would have imagined he’d feel like that about anything, let alone a newborn, but there’s some kind of biological or psychological program that’s kicked into gear in his brain once he finally saw her in the flesh. Somewhere in his deep memory he also recalls what it was like to see Lenny for the first time, and feel an overwhelming immediate sense of love for someone so tiny.

As he watches her sleep, his mind starts to drift as well, as if the sleepiness is contagious. He’s in this hypnotized state, so he’s not sure how it happens exactly, but Lena wakes up pretty suddenly. She doesn’t cry, just opens her eyes and next thing Butcher feels is her tiny fist finding and wrapping around the pinky of the hand he’s laid on top of her. Butcher immediately realizes his dire circumstances when he feels powerful force squeezing his finger and bone starting to crack. He stays stoically silent, looking down at her open eyes. They’re huge—sometimes it feels like they’re taking up half of her face— and a piercing blue. He’s heard babies’ eyes often darken as they grow, but as of now they’re the spitting image of Homelander’s. Maybe that’s why he feels just a tiny bit unsettled whenever she fixes them on him– some echo of their old antagonism still buried somewhere deep in his brain.

“Lena, love, let go of Daddy’s hand,” he says quietly through teeth clenching in pain, still smiling at her, already knowing talking like this is futile. He’s fairly sure he feels something fracturing and blinks back tears. She stares up at him, but doesn’t release her grip. He can’t even try to pry her hand off, with none of his hands free. The shower is turned off already, and loath as Butcher is to prove that he can’t watch Lena for fifteen minutes, he gets up and carefully makes his way to the bathroom.

“Can you help me out…” he says as he’s pushing the door open with an elbow and sees Homelander choke on something and press the back of his hand to his mouth. Although he’s at the sink, turned away from the door, Butcher can see in the mirror that he was sipping on one of the milk containers that he detached from his chest.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST CAN YOU KNOCK?!” he explodes, apparently before he’s swallowed everything down because the first words come out with a gurgle.

“I actually couldn’t…” Butcher answers sheepishly, wincing because Lena’s grip tightened further around his already broken finger during the yelling.

Homelander looks over and sees the situation and his facial expression twists from anger to distress. He quickly approaches and pries her tiny fingers open, taking her into his own arms almost at the same time, cradling her close.

“She hurt you,” he says, frowning so dramatically that Butcher can’t help but feel amused at their predicament. A baby being able to mangle her father has some kind of dark humor to it.

“She’s fine. I was careless,” Butcher says, almost waving his injured hand dismissively before feeling a jolt of pain in his pinky at any movement.

“Your right hand. You need to go to the hospital,” Homelander laments, starting to sound panicked. 

“Hey, it’s not a big deal, alright? Leave it alone. I’ll take care of it later.”

Homelander looks unappeased by that, and it dawns on Butcher that he’s probably insecure about his child being perceived as a danger to normal people, the public. Perhaps to be locked away in a secure facility until all the powers are under control.

“Hey, I’m okay. I was just careless.” Butcher says, but he’s also starting to survey the scene he walked in on. Homelander’s standing naked, hair still wet, holding Lena in his arms who seems to recognize her feeder parent smell and is starting to root around his chest. Butcher sees the bottle of breast milk, almost drained. He doesn’t say anything, but Homelander seems to catch where his gaze went.

“I make enough for her! I’m not having anything that she needs!” he starts saying and Butcher doesn’t know where to start with this.

“Look, I don’t care what you do with it. You’re the one obsessed with not giving her formula. If you want to drink your own breast milk, I’m not going to be the one to stop you.”

Homelander chews on his lip, face crimson, and Butcher can’t believe that this is, of all the strange things this supe’s done, what he’s going to be mortified by.

“I’m not saying it’s normal, but you’re not harming anyone.”

“You don’t get it,” Homelander says, eyes fluttering when Lena finds his nipple and latches on but then he looks down at her and avoids eye contact with Butcher. “I obsess over it. I- I feel like I get turned on when she’s nursing. I even get a little turned on when I’m pumping. I’ve been wanting to drink it. I have real issues.”

Butcher rubs the bridge of his nose, remembering to use his left hand. “I mean, yeah, that sounds a bit sick, but it’s harmless I guess.”

“You never feel tempted to even just taste it?” Homelander asks. His tone is weird and desperate, as if he’s hoping to hear just a little bit of support for this freaky fixation.

“Can’t say I have,” Butcher says, but then adds. “I kind of like the way it smells. I’ll taste it if it makes you feel better.” He approaches and takes a small sip from the same bottle Homelander was drinking out of, smacking and trying to describe the taste like a connoisseur. “It’s really sweet. It’s not that bad. If I didn’t know what it was I might have though it was some kind of bland custard.”

Homelander watches him, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“What?” Butcher asks. “What do you want me to say?”

“You’re not revolted?” Homelander asks cautiously.

“I don’t know, after watching you be in labor for more than a day and then give the bloodiest birth I’ve ever heard of at home on a shower curtain I spread out on our bed? I think I’m beyond being revolted.”

When they move back to the bedroom, Butcher holds Lena while Homelander puts on fresh sweatpants. He’s rushing, as if every second Butcher is holding her is borrowed time.

“You can’t do everything yourself.” Butcher sighs. “It’s just a broken finger. I don’t even feel like going to the ER. They’ll just put it in a splint.”

“Fix your hand,” Homelander answers him brusquely. “I don’t want you walking around with an ugly crooked finger and have it be this ‘Story’ about how Lena broke your pinky.”

“And here I thought you cared about my well-being.” Butcher chuckles.

“Maybe that too,” Homelander says morosely, as he lies back and switches Lena over to his other nipple. His expression softens whenever she’s latched on. “If you’re not going to the ER, can you…bring the bottles from the bathroom…?”

Butcher shrugs and carries the two containers back into the bedroom.

“Can you…” Homelander’s voice gets really quiet. “Can you feed me with it.”

Now Butcher’s a bit disturbed. “Can I what now?”

“Just put the bottle top on it with the nipple and just hold it to my mouth.”

Butcher sighs, incredulous, but does as he’s asked. He watches Lena sucking languidly on Homelander’s nipple– she’s not hungry, she’s mostly doing it out of habit and for comfort. He watches Homelander slowly downing the remaining milk in one bottle and then the other.

“Yeah, this is a bit fucked, love, I have to tell you.”

Homelander licks his lips when he’s drained everything. Lena leans back at about the same time, and the synchrony is vaguely disturbing to Butcher.

“I know,” Homelander says, looking off into the distance and avoiding eye contact. “But it makes me happy.”

A/N: The oxytocin released by the brain upon the sensation of breastfeeding doesn't bring people to orgasm, but it can turn some people on quite a bit. Socially unacceptable biological phenomena, but honestly it makes a lot of evolutionary sense that you'd get rewarded for feeding your brood.

[thatsladyfaggottoyou]

okay so thinking more about Lucienne/Dream/Calliope and... I think I'd want to write it as set after Daniel!Dream comes about. I think that while in the show we've definitely seen Morpheus has the capacity for change--particularly in how he sees and addresses Lucienne--I don't see in him the kind of respect she deserves from a partner.

BUT!

Daniel!Dream is so lost and new-old and full of so many possible things, and I think he has the potential to treat her right.

And Calliope and Lucienne feels like a natural progression tbh. Like obviously the smartest butch and the most hopeful femme wind up together literally how could they not? Especially when they're also the most hopeful butch and the smartest femme? Themes of loyalty and hope (grit in her teeth rot in her blood but fighting and standing and flinching but still standing) and cleverness and hyper-competence and also two people who need much more support than they receive.

(Is this a thinly-veiled attempt to write a doting-on-Lucienne fic? no, because I'm admitting that one outright.)

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

The past couple of weeks I've been reading a bunch of Django Wexler books, and the thing that caught me by surprise was how many of his main characters came across as fairly nuanced aspec rep, and I'm not entirely sure whether it was on purpose or not.

The first book I noticed this in was Ashes of the Sun. It and its sequels are queernorm, and textually acknowledge asexuality and aromanticism as things that are known and accepted within the setting. There are two protagonists, Maya and Gyre, and Gyre's experience of sexual and romantic attraction is deeply interesting in its absence. He has sex on multiple occasions, and seems to enjoy it somewhat, but nothing about his narration ever indicates that he has any interest in seeking it out. He never expresses a specific sexual attraction to either of his partners (or anyone else for that matter), never initiates sex, and never even seems to be thinking about sex as a possibility until someone else points it out to him. His feelings for his partners don't necessarily read as romantic, either. That part is more complicated and more open to interpretation - one of his partners is a fling, and the other deliberately avoids defining their relationship beyond "we are friends and sometimes sleep together", but he clearly feels awkward about the possibility of getting involved with other people in any capacity in spite of their explicit lack of exclusivity. However, his primary partner doesn't receive emotional priority in his narration. He treats her and thinks of her like all of his other close friends, without prioritizing her either higher or lower than anyone else.

However, neither his narration nor anyone else comments on this apparent lack of sexual or romantic interest, which is what makes the authorial intent seem ambiguous to me. In a queernorm setting where aspec people are textually a known and unremarkable part of society, it feels odd that neither Gyre nor anyone else describes himself in those terms. Given that his only partners are women, I'd normally be inclined to say that the author intended for him to allo and straight and just didn't really focus on writing sex and romance if not for our other viewpoint character, Maya. Maya's narration is chock full of visceral romantic and sexual attraction. The force of her attraction regularly hits her like a punch to the gut. At first she has to psych herself up to look her crush in the eye because every time she does her brain functions are replaced with "hnnnnnng girl pretty😳😳😳". It's such a dramatic contrast that it feels like it almost has to be deliberate. It's also worth noting that Maya's eventual partner, Beq, describes herself as having never been interested in someone before and that she hadn't ever expected to be, and as being kind of overwhelmed by the whole experience, which certainly sounds like it could be a description of demisexuality. She doesn't get a pov, though, so that's about as far as that exploration goes.

Demisexuality does come up in a different Wexler series, though. The Shadow Campaigns series is not queernorm - misogyny is dealt with extensively, and homophobia peripherally. One of the pov characters, Raesinia, spends the first half of the series utterly uninterested in romance or sex. She's not dismissive of them, or without opportunities to explore either - she simply doesn't feel either kind of attraction to anyone and never has, and is unbothered by that fact, except for when it puts her in the situation of needing to let one of her friends down gently. However, over the course of two books and about a year and a half in universe time, she develops a friendship and mutual respect with one of the other pov characters, Markus. In spite of a few comments from some of their other friends, Raesinia's feelings for him are pretty unambiguously platonic, with the most she'll concede to her friends' teasing being that he seems and looks nice enough, I guess. However, eventually her feelings for him begin to shift, until eventually she expresses a romantic interest in him. Again, this is not a queernorm series. One of the pov characters and several other main and supporting characters are unambiguously queer, but there's no in-universe cultural awareness of aspec identities, and no one remarks on them as a possibility. Again, here is where I would normally assume that the author intended to write a slowburn between a two allo heterosexual characters, except. There is a specific point in the story, years since they first met and months after they became romantically involved, where Raesinia specifically and dramatically experiences sexual attraction for the first time. And the degree to which that is emphasized by the text makes me think that her demisexuality might have been purposeful.

Ultimately I'm not really concerned with authorial intent; the text is the text, and both series feature characters who read as aspec to me. But it's not often that I'm so uncertain about what the authorial intent was. In any case, it makes for compelling reading.

[bees--in-my--bones]

Silver Spoons - Terry Silver Part 2 of 7

Main Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Chapter 1 / -----

Character: Terry Silver x female reader

Summary: Time jump because I'm jumping back and forth with this series. I've got a plan and I think it makes sense. But back to the past where Terry and reader first meet. Like the 90s ish. After the events of kk3

Warnings: manipulation, some alcohol (but just casual drinking of, no drunkenness), mention of war (no detail), weapons, blood, warning for Terry Silver in general, fade to black scene, business majors

Word Count: 3600

A/N: This chapter has been written for a while but I just do not feel like my writing is doing him justice. I'm at the point where I have to post it so it'll stop haunting me tho. Lmk if you want to be on a taglist.

-----

"Really, Ms. L/N, he's been… incredibly insistent on meeting you," Dorothy said.

Terrence Silver.

That was the name that the file in front of you had read. You had only skimmed it before tossing it aside. “Dorothy, if we’re going to be partnering with anyone, it’s not going to be the disgraced head of Dynatox to advertise for his silly little startups. Is Dynatox even still active?”

Dorothy, an intern in her final year of college, who you had already set your sights on for full time PA, sighed and picked the file up herself, leafing through it. “Ms. L/N, it looks like the only two options at the moment are either Mr. Silver or Mr. Beckett. Anything else and we’d be pushing our limits too far. We simply don’t have the capacity to take on more than one additional major client at the moment. And yes, I believe it is still active, but on a much smaller scale.”

You shivered at Beckett’s name. “God, I hate that guy,” you said, leaning back into your chair. He was the owner of a high profile financial firm, and about as sleazy as they come. But the growth of his company was far more reliably linear than Silver's was. And although your father had left you a sizably large marketing company, you wanted more. Beckett was the safest option for expansion.

"Beckett would probably be a safer bet," said Dorothy echoing your thoughts, "but based on what we know of Mr. Silver, he has the potential to see some exponential growth in the next few years.”

"And the advertising firm that got him there would see the same growth," you said, leaning back in your chair.

Dorothy nodded.

You sighed. "Dorothy, do you know what my father's problem was?" you asked her.

"I can't say that I do, ma'am."

"He never took a single risk. Only safe bets. Which grew this company some, sure, but think of where we could be right now if he had taken a calculated gamble every now and then." You tapped your fingers on the table as you mused.

“So you want me to schedule a meeting with Mr. Silver then?” she asked.

“Can’t hurt to check him out. What do I have Thursday evening?”

She flipped through the pages on her clipboard, landing on her calendar. “You’re free. Tuesday and Wednesday nights as well.”

“Three days in a row, that’s a rare treat. Tell him Thursday, take it or leave it. If he really wants this then he’ll take it.”

“Yes ma’am,” she said. “Is that all?”

“For now,” you replied, and she was gone, no sooner had you said the words.

You picked up the file once more. If you were actually considering this, it couldn’t hurt to know as much about him as you could.

—--

And so Thursday evening came. Silver had sent a short reply to your acceptance.

Thank you for your time.

I’ll be by your office at 7. We can discuss details over dinner, my treat.

You had nearly laughed aloud when Dorothy read his response aloud to you. No doubt the domineering reply was in direct response to your insistence on the day. Contrary to what you first believed, Silver was going to be a challenge. Maybe even a fun challenge.

He came as promised, a long black limo pulling up outside your office building. You had dressed nicely, spent more time on your appearance than usual. First impressions were key.

As you walked down the steps of the building, you couldn’t help but be the tiniest bit relieved that most employees had gone home for the day. Maintaining your image was hard enough, you didn’t want to think about the impression that leaving the office for what very much looked like a date would leave.

The side door opened, and out stepped Silver himself, and so the game was afoot. You approached. He was taller than you thought he would be.

He outstretched his hand. “Terry Silver. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance Ms. L/N.”

You took it, shaking it firmly. “Likewise, Mr. Silver.”

“Please, Mr. Silver was my father. Call me Terry, I insist.”

“Then I must insist you call me Y/N.”

“Y/N.” He grinned. “Allow me to help you in, it’s a bit of a step.”

You only realized that your hand was still gripped in his just then, when he shifted his grip to help you into the car. Immediately, the pieces fell into place as you realized his plan, but you allowed him to help you regardless. You wouldn’t be charmed so easily.

You settled into a seat, and Terry followed close behind. With a quick rap of his knuckles on the driver’s window, you were off.

“It really isn’t that far of a drive,” he told you, “but if we’ve got to drive, I say we do it in style.”

You hummed slightly, an ambiguous sound that was close enough to agreement, without actually saying a word.

You couldn’t be sure, but you thought you saw him hesitate ever so slightly. Did he not think that you came prepared with games of your own? You wielded the power here, and you both knew that.

“It’s a nice place,” he went on, any previous hint of hesitation completely vanished. “I’m sure you’ll love it. I do prefer a more relaxing environment to chat business, don’t you?”

A direct question, a forced response. He adjusted quickly to his situation. Interesting. “I do. There’s far more to business than just meeting rooms, and I think you can learn a lot about your peers over a meal.”

He grinned again. “Good. That’s good. I hope we learn a lot about each other tonight."

"As do I."

There was silence for a short while, but not necessarily an uncomfortable one, then the car came to a halt. “What did I tell you?” he said. “Short drive.”

Quick as lightning, he was out of the car, offering his hand once more. “May I?”

You took his hand, accepting his assistance again, but dropped it as soon as you were standing on your own two feet.

The two of you entered the restaurant and were led to a private table. "For confidentiality," he had said with a wink.

You didn't talk business immediately, that would have been impolite. And small talk gave you a chance to get a handle on your opponent, see what he was thinking. Business deals were a battle after all, and Terry’s only hope of winning was proving to you that his once great company, now teetering between glory and ruination, had the potential to rise again, perhaps higher than it had before.

You were pleased to see that he seemed to think the same way, engaging with the small talk with a vivacity that you hadn't expected, but armed heavily with anecdotes and remarks that were absolutely riddled with reminders of how well he could do. A story of a successful business deal on his part. A small jab at a company that you had recently had a deal fall through with. You were impressed. He had clearly done his research.

Time passed rather quickly, with no talk of a deal. A waiter approached your table, bottle of wine in hand. "Allow me," Terry said, gesturing for the waiter to hand the bottle to him. He obliged and left the two of you alone.

Terry took your glass and filled it. "I've spent a lot of time in South Korea and Japan," he explained as he did. "To fill another's cup is a sign of respect, and I can't seem to break that habit here." He handed you your glass. "I simply wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.”

“I’m aware of the tradition. Much appreciated,” you said, accepting the drink. “What led you to travel there?”

He smiled, a smile this time, not one of the enthusiastic grins he had been throwing your way all night. “Like most men at that time, the war.”

“You served?” That was a polite question. You already knew that he had, from your prior research.

Again, an almost imperceptible change in his demeanor, his smile falling ever so slightly. “Yes.”

He shook his head. “I apologize, we should be talking about things far happier than that.”

“That’s alright,” you said, still pondering the hairline fracture in his facade. “Thank you for your service.”

The grin returned. “You are most welcome. Now, have you decided what you wanted?”

—--

The rest of the evening passed by quickly, with not a word of a business deal. At first, true, the both of you were dancing around the subject, playing games and avoiding cutting to the chase, but eventually, you were talking like old friends, contracts far from your minds. At least, that’s how it was for you, but a certain air of lightness had come over Terry by the end of the night that you couldn’t help but think it was the same for him.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to be dropped off at home?” he asked you many hours later when you were back in the limo.

“No, thank you,” you replied. “I have some things I need to finish up at the office.”

“At this hour?”

You shrugged. “Duty calls.”

“It probably doesn't help that we didn’t get a lick of work done tonight,” he said.

You smiled, small but genuine. “That’s true. We’ll have to meet again.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Booked. And I fly out to Denver for a conference this weekend.”

“I’ve got some time Monday.”

“I’ll have a lot of catching up to do after being gone all weekend. Does Tuesday work?”

“Tuesdays are no good.”

“Wednesday night?”

“I should be free.”

“Same time?”

“I can do that. Same place?”

“That works,” you said. “I’ll pick you up this time, and it’s on me.”

“Sounds fair to me,” he replied. “And it appears we are at our destination,”

The car rolled to a stop, and in a flash, Terry was holding the door open for the last time that night.

You exited the car. “Thank you, Terry. It was a nice night. We’ll have to actually talk business next time.”

“Of course. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

—--

Terry Silver stared at himself in the mirror.

He splashed cold water on his face.

He took down his ponytail and brushed out his hair, finding familiar comfort in the slight sting at his roots.

He had let his guard down around her, and it had shaken him to his core.

At some point tonight, the pretenses had fallen, his facade had dropped. He had no longer been playing the typical business game, he was just talking to her. The concept was almost foreign to him. And yet it seemed that the exact same thing had happened to her.

Even his time in the service, which usually he had no problem only mentioning casually, had somehow been different around her. It seemed to him that she had been able to decipher so much from so little, and as someone who usually had that effect on others, it unnerved him to be on the receiving end.

Had she said something? Done something that marked her as different than anyone else?

She was smart, he had to give her that. Maybe even as smart as he was. Was that why then? Perhaps, but the average businesswoman was always smarter than the average businessman, that was just the way things went.

But there was something about her. The carefully crafted words whenever she spoke. The subtle expression she wore, as mysterious in nature as the Mona Lisa, that told you nothing of what she was thinking.

Something in him wanted to break her. To push through her defenses, to get her barriers to crack. A genuine smile, a real laugh, a falling tear, or fiery anger. Something in him saw her as a challenge. Something in him wanted to win.

To beat her though, to triumph against her? Or to win her over, to have her for his own, this wily woman, this enigma? He couldn't tell.

—--

Time passed, much slower than you thought it would. The conference in Denver dragged on, and the first few days of the week were mind numbingly dull.

You, against your better judgment, found yourself eager to meet with Terry again. When you had told Dorothy to add another meeting with him to your calendar, she had seemed suspicious.

"Two meetings?" she had asked, an eyebrow raised. "Were you not able to work things out last night?"

You waved your hand dismissively. "We just had more to discuss than previously anticipated."

A small smile appeared on her face. "I take that it went a little too well."

"I said nothing of the sort."

"You don't have to," she said. "Are you planning on taking him on as a client then?"

You nodded. "Don't tell Beckett anything until the contract with Silver goes through, but I think so. Beckett's too content. Silver's got ambition, and unlike a lot of people, has the skill set to do something with it. I'll take that gamble."

"Even if he's tanked before?"

"Even if he's tanked before."

She nodded, and scribbled a note on her clipboard.

"Alright then, Ms. L/N. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment. And thank you Dorothy, I wouldn't have taken that meeting if it weren't for you."

That had been Friday morning, of course, and here you were, Wednesday night, feeling something far too close to nervousness for comfort.

The dinner went as smoothly as before. You made a point to get business out of the way at the beginning of the night. You both signed the contract your lawyers had drawn up, and just like that, Terry Silver was a client of L/N Legacy Marketing Group.

“To a long and fruitful partnership,” Terry said, raising his glass in a toast.

“Hear, hear,” you replied as you clinked your glasses together.

—--

You hadn't heard from Terry for a few weeks after that, not that you were counting. Your only correspondence had been between your respective assistants and legal departments, and you already had a team working on an ad campaign for one of his more prominent tech startups.

So needless to say, you were shocked when late one night, you were interrupted by a sharp knock at your office door. Snapping your head up, your eyes met Terry’s, who definitely was not scheduled to be in your office well after business hours.

"Can I help you, Mr. Silver?"

He raised an eyebrow, and you sighed.

"Can I help you, Terry?"

He leaned against the doorframe, his ascot becoming ever so slightly askew as he did. He straightened it. "I was thinking this morning," he began slowly, "that it's been quite a while since you and I have spoken. But I know you tend to work late…" He straightened and walked up to your desk. "I've heard bits and pieces from my assistant, but I'd really like an update straight from the source."

You swallowed thickly at his intense gaze, but didn't dare break eye contact. "Well, I'm not too hands on with it, but we've been considering expanding the target demographic-"

"Interesting," he said, quickly, not even allowing you to finish your sentence. "Why don't we discuss it further over dinner?"

This gave you a moment's pause. "I'm not dressed to go out," you offered up. A weak excuse and you knew it.

"Then I'll cook you something."

It was your turn to raise an eyebrow.

He laughed. "I have quite the home, if I do say so myself," he said. "I'll give you a tour of my collections after dinner."

"You're awfully confident, Terry Silver."

"You don't get this far if you aren't."

You shook your head. "Alright then. Give me a moment to pack up."

He grinned. "I'll be waiting outside."

He shut the door behind him as he left. The second it latched you quickly put your stuff away, then pulled the pocket mirror out of your drawer. You hastily fixed your appearance as best you could. When the initial adrenaline wore off, you found yourself staring into the mirror, not quite recognizing yourself. You were being ridiculous. No business partnership was worth this effort.

But you couldn't quite ignore the way your stomach twisted when you opened the door and walked outside.

—--

Terry wasn't lying. He did have quite the home. And he was a surprisingly excellent cook. Although you probably shouldn't have been surprised. There didn't seem to be anything that Terry was bad at.

He gave you a full tour of his home, telling you the history of every rare art piece on display. You found yourself hanging onto his every word.

Even more fascinating, though, was the weapons collection. Knives, swords, and various other sharp objects that you had no name for adorned the room. He took you over to one corner and lifted a particular dagger from its display.

"This is a tantō, traditionally worn by samurai. And one in this condition is worth quite a bit of money."

He held it out to you, looking at you expectantly.

Your eyes widened as you realized what he was saying, but gingerly took the blade into your hands as he nodded and pushed the knife slightly forward one again.

"It's beautiful," you said quietly.

You dragged your finger along the blunt edge of the blade, slipping by accident over the tip. You let out a soft “Oh!” of surprise as a small bead of blood pooled out of the nick in your fingertip.

Terry said nothing, seemingly entranced at the sight of your blood, slowly beginning to spill over the edge of your fingertip. Before you had realized the speed at which the blood was falling, a drop had spilled onto the floor. Terry took your hand in his.

“I’m sorry,” you said. He showed no signs of hearing you.

He raised your finger to his lips and gently put it in his mouth, tongue deftly swiping the blood away. You were too stunned to move, even as he released his grip, your hand dropping to your side.

Your breath became shallow as you realized just how close he was.

He brushed one hand over your cheek, his touch ghostlike and hesitant, as if he were holding himself back. “The things I would do to you,” he murmured, followed by a soft chuckle. There was a copper tinge to one of his front teeth.

You froze at his statement, and he lifted the dagger from your uninjured hand and set it back in its place.

He drew closer to you, piercing blue eyes not leaving yours, and you slowly backed away until your back hit the wall.

His arm rested against the wall behind you, leaving you effectively trapped. His face wasn't more than a few centimeters away.

"I'm not sure I know exactly what you're implying," you said, though you suspected that the hint of breathlessness in your voice told him the exact opposite.

"Oh, I think you do," he said, his eyes trained on your lips, and before you could think of a clever retort, his mouth captured yours.

The second it began, it was over. You swallowed thickly, tried to ignore the butterflies in your stomach and rush of heat in your face, and he looked at you expectantly. Seconds felt like hours as you tried to gather your thoughts.

"It's unprofessional," you finally breathed out.

"Then tell me to stop," His hand moved to rest on your waist.

"I'm doing you a favor by working with you," you reminded him. "You don't want to lose the chance I'm giving you."

"Then tell me to stop." His hand trailed lower, his fingers capturing the hem of your top, brushing faintly over the skin on your torso.

"I could ruin you," you said, struggling to keep your voice level. "Kick you while you're down. No investor would ever touch you again. It wouldn't be that hard."

"Then tell me. To stop." His voice was so low it was nearly a growl.

You said nothing.

For a long moment you stood there, silently, your breathing becoming harder and harder to keep even, before pushing yourself forward and planting your lips on his.

He broke the kiss, only for a moment, and you could feel his grin against your mouth. Not a second later he was kissing you once more.

It seemed to last both a lifetime and a millisecond, but eventually, regrettably, you had to come up for air. Terry was still grinning, and looking for all the world like he could have kept going for several more minutes. Judging by the firm torso you could feel beneath his shirt, he was in good enough shape that he quite possibly could have.

You were panting, he still had that smug grin on his face, and the both of you were clinging to one another like your lives depended on it. The second your chest stopped burning, you spoke.

"I don't want you to stop."

He took this as his cue, and soon the two of you were clumsily making your way out of the weapons room, stumbling into furniture and clawing at the walls in the brief reprises between kisses. Before you knew it, you were in his room, but you hardly had a moment to look around before the two of you were tangled in the sheets.

The night took a turn from there in a manner that could only be described as violent. Never, though, had the word violent had such pleasant connotations.

You had been right earlier in the evening. There really was nothing that Terry Silver was bad at.

-----

A/N: I'm sorry for another fade to black scene. cop out ending, i know. might happen again. idk. Also I need to think of a name for this beyond "Terry Silver Series" so I can post it on AO3. Could be all lana del rey vinyl about it and call it terrence loves you lmaooo

Chapter 1 / -----

[angelkissiies]

Sorry for the long message. I've been having Thoughts. So, I've always had the hc that abby hasn't even thought about her sexuality yet, cos the concept is sort of alien to her. Like, idk if I'm projecting onto her (I'm 6'3" and built kinda like abby, so I have more ~experiences~ to project than average...) But I get the feeling that Abby hasn't necessarily had that much agency over her love life? Just a hunch, ya know.

Like, she's been taught that she is at her most valuable when she's efficient. Love and affection are luxuries. It's rude to ask for them and, when she gets them, she's supposed to take what she's given. Even Owen seems to treat her like a project where he's giving and withholding affection to try to teach her how to be a better person while cheating on the mother of his child with her. Regardless of if you think he actually loves her (not you, I'd never suggest you'd think such a thing, babes. I'm specifying for... them... if you decide to post this... they... might see it) he constantly holds himself morally above her, and you can really tell how much he values being 'the good one' in their relationship, so I don't imagine the goal posts of moral worthiness are exactly static.

I don't know if the idea that sex and romance aren't just "things that she has to allow people to do to her, otherwise she'll be inflicting herself on them" has occurred to her. I think that, if you asked her what she looks for in a partner, she'd say she just wants someone to actually want her. Which is the bare fucking minimum and should be a given. But any further answer is her being picky, which she thinks she can't afford. And you can see why she'd come to that conclusion cos, since her dad died, who has actually expressed that they want her outside of her capacity for violence, and without the stipulation that she has to abide by an amorphous moral standard to be deserving of it? Like, I love confident abby but I can never stop thinking about how 'what you want in a relationship' stops being a practical consideration when you're used to being unwanted, and being dismissed or discouraged whenever you express your wants.

But it gets really practical when you get to catalina Island and its full of people with EYES who recognise that ur hot as FUCK and everyone starts hitting on you which is what happens at the end of the game Neil Druckman told me himself. And I think Abby would have an 'oh fuck, I get to choose?' moment and start to actually think about her sexuality and her own wants, not just needs. (Yes, I grew up in a small village and moved to a city for university. What of it?) I forget why I started writing this, but I'm on anon so it's not my problem anymore

anon you have ripped my heart out and then stuffed it back into my chest throughout this ask bc — you’re so right. i’ve never spoken to someone so right. i wish i could find the adequate words to express how this has made me feel but know that you are quite literally 100% correct.

[autumatically]

what's the coolest thing that you did this year?

so normally i would direct people to send asks to my main blog, especially if they make for good writing prompts like this one. but as you just noted, i kind of already answered this question!

...in a professional capacity. i left out one important detail about Retrush that i'm incredibly proud of, and i want to touch on it here.

i kind of keep this on the down-low in professional settings due to the stigma around it, but most of y'all here know that i'm plural. and the truth is that i, 🤍 Autumn, have kind of taken center stage in our shared life. most of the others in my system have plans and dreams that go unrealized, as hard as it is for me to admit...

tomorrow a second post will go up that compares my accomplishments vs my resolutions. my resolutions for the year are a shared compromise between us in the system, as a way of saying "this is what will make all of us happy together."

the truth is that we fell quite short of our resolution, and i feel like i'm letting the rest of my system down...

but 🖤 Ghost is backing me up with a memory.

see, Ghost's plan for the year was to find us a new job and a new place to live. this is the "stronger foundations" in tomorrow's post that we're a little afraid of admitting on a professional blog where my coworkers could see it.

(they've commented to me personally on some of the things that i write, which i love, but i sometimes have to be wary of what i post. it's chill!)

Ghost's memory is: her plan was to find us a new job early in the year. but then, all of the news stories started to roll in about layoffs. and Ghost took one look at that and said:

"hey, Autumn, let's finish Retrush while we wait for this to blow over. you have my full support."

and we did! and she was a HUGE help in keeping me on track with the project, managing our soft deadlines and which nights we could work on it, as well as getting others to help with things we couldn't do alone – she came up with the idea of commissioning our partner to cover Last Wave and help us work on the pre-release trailers.

we've never been so coordinated as a system before! we've always stepped on each others' toes and scrambled over each other to get anything done. i still remember in 2018, when i wanted to do anything to relax, how i'd hear a nagging voice in my head telling me to work on my resume instead of resting, because we needed a job Right Now...

but this time there was no such thing, and i think it's one of the coolest things we've ever accomplished. we were a united force seeing Retrush through to the end, and i couldn't have done it without my Ghostie leading the charge. thank you ;-;

our new years resolution for 2024 is to start HRT finally, because that's what she wants and it's long past time to pursue. no more making half-baked, compromised resolutions – i want us to be a united force for all of our dreams!

[csa-survivor-confessions]

?

I’ve been through a lot of csa and cocsa and now I have an amazing loving perfect girlfriend who understandably wants to be physically intimate. Frustratingly for myself, I keep getting triggered and I’m terrified of any physical intimacy most days (hugging, kissing, cuddling, and more sexual stuff). Rarely, I can cope with a hug or a kiss. I feel guilty, like I am depriving my girlfriend of what I owe her which is physical intimacy. I think she is getting frustrated as well. It’s not that I don’t want it or I am not physically attracted to her, I just get triggered incredibly easily and it sucks ass. Do I owe it to her? Do you think there is anything I can do to make it so my brain can be okay with intimacy?

Thanks for running this blog, it’s been really helpful for me and I am very grateful

Hello,

You do not owe anyone your body in any way. You do not have to touch her. It's perfectly reasonable to want to be physically close to a loved one, but you do not owe it to her. This is true of every kind of relationship; familial, romantic, sexual etc

people can have relationships without much physical intimacy if that is what is healthiest for the people in the relationship. It's all about communication! If people are incompatible because they have different needs when it comes to physical touch that's okay, it doesn't mean anyone is at fault.

Now talk as honestly as possible. That is the first place to start whenever there are situations where you are having issues in a relationship communicating about it is vital. let your partner know you are struggling with being triggered and dealing with trauma. Then you can work out how to move forward with your partner feeling loved and honoured and you are not being pushed towards interactions that are not healthy for you right now.

Now, as for healing moving forward start slow.

Until you can gain a felt sense of safety in your body this will continue to be hard. And that takes time, but it can happen! You can heal and be able to figure out what physical intimacy is something you want but are struggling with and if anything just isn't for you. Which will be fantastic.

Healing trauma can have many factors some things that can be good starts;

Learning about trauma and how it lives in the body. Psychoeducation can help with feeling more okay

Informational Article: Being Our Whole Selves Brain & Body

Informational Article: Define Trauma

Informational Article: Hyperarousal & Hypoarousal

Informational Article: Implicit Memories and Memory Systems

Diagnosis Primer: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Books Suggestions: The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body; in a Search for the Living Past by Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences by Peter Levine & Ann Fredrick

Another huge factor is starting to connect with and understand your emotions and thoughts.

Using writing, journaling, art or other forms of expression can be great! This can help us start to find a way to see our experiences outside of just spinning our minds. Having it out of us can feel great it can also help us see where we are. With journaling brain dumping can be good for people who don't have a history of journaling, this consists of just writing out whatever is coming into our mind. this can be full sentences or bullet points.

You can start to make art or write about things more specific to your trauma later but there is no rush. Putting words to where we are now is just as important.

Learning coping skills to handle symptoms and triggers throughout the day will also start to heal our nervous systems.

Coping Skills: Dealing With Body Memories

Coping Skills Masterposts: Panic Attacks, Flashbacks & Dissociation

Another factor in healing our nervous systems is utilizing physical activity to connect with our body and help to get out the traumatic energy.

Yoga (especially if you can find a trauma-informed yoga approach) is a very well-liked method

Some people like self-defence and/or martial arts as it helps make us feel in control and can get out that stored energy

Dance! From taking a class or just bopping around in your bedroom to your favourite song.

Walking or jogging can be really great! it's good for you in general but if you do it mindfully it can really help with grounding. It can also be helpful as it's a bilateral stimulative activity.

Learning boundaries during relationships can help with a felt sense of safety. Being able to say yes when you want it and now when you don't can be great in helping to not only have better relationships but actually build more trust.

Advice: Healthy Boundaries

Forming healthy emotional connections can also start to form healing relationships and a felt sense of safety. Working on open communication and forming emotional/psychological intimacy will help you figure out what you need physically.

There is of course more to go and there is no quick fix. But I truly believe you will feel more whole.

If you can access it therapy can also be great. Trauma-focused therapies (including but not limited to: Brain Spotting, EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and IFS) can really help move the process of healing forward. Basic things like DBT or CBT that have someone working with you who are trauma-informed can be helpful in coping and making deeper work more effective.

I do hope some of this is helpful,

Admin 1

[areseebee]

I want to see what James other relationships were like if you ever write Someday fics after you finish Someday. Or at least Faye because the way Erin and James treat her implies she was important to James in the way his other relationships weren’t and I’m curious. I know you said James is friends with his exes but what stuck out to me is that one scene where they’re on the phone in Someday because it implied to me that it’s a regular thing for him to just call her when he’s in his woes which strikes me as distinct from everyone else in his life. James isn’t honest with his feelings very often and her “Why are you doing this to yourself again?” shows an intimate knowledge that I don’t think I felt Miles had, as the only other ex you mentioned. I have a lot of questions about it.

How did they meet, how did they end up together, how did the girls meet Faye what’s their dynamic, how did their relationship function with Erin and outside of it, why did they breakup, how are they still so close they have late night calls and how did James react to Clare dating Faye, I know it ended up well but that has to be a little strange for both of them to have dated the same person seriously. How does Clare feel that James and Faye are so close? Because Erin doesn’t love it. Clare seems fine with it but it does make me curious how anxious Clare who overthinks everything is so okay in this relationship. Shows a lot of growth.

lots of (good) questions! faye will be in the next chapter in some capacity and i hope that will illuminate things a little more. as you mentioned, it’s also been a hope of mine to write a clare/faye fic in which i’d explore this all a lot more, but i don’t know if/when that will happen so i’ll address some things here.

faye was especially important to james in large part because they became friends in the immediate aftermath of smoke break when james was Going Through It. he didn’t feel like he could confide in the people he could normally confide in, and faye ended up being that person who heard all about everything. she knows a little too much about him and erin as a result of some oversharing on his part - but, really, there’d been no one to talk to about all of it; he couldn’t exactly involve the girls without feeling like everything was going to implode. so faye meets him (they have a class together) when he’s quite heartbroken and basically begging to talk to the first person to say, “hey are you good? you don’t seem good.” as a result, she doesn’t have the rosiest view of erin - but imo it’s easy to feel defensive of your friend against their ex-situationship.

ultimately, faye and james do date through university and i think they are important to each other, but it was never going to be marriage. they see the writing on the wall as they finish their degrees and are deciding to pursue their own paths and break up amicably, actually meaning it when they decide to stay friends (which sort of becomes a theme for james - he doesn’t like letting people go and if there isn’t another, more convenient reason, he has tended to end things before they’ve fully matured). it’s not ever romantic again, but faye remains a confidant that exists outside of the network of the girls. it’s not that his other ex-partners, like miles, don’t know about things in james’s past or aren’t as important to james, but the stuff that happened with erin when they were 19 gets less relevant/raw over time than it was when he met faye.

faye also stands apart in james’s life, and is more involved in the narrative compared to other of james’s ex-partners, because of clare. i think james has always felt closest/the most affinity with clare. i think he remained friendly with faye over the years and they’d check in from time to time, but there was a resurgence in their friendship when clare and faye began to date. i haven’t quite worked out the full details, but high level is that faye had also become very friendly/friends with clare through james and, when she found herself living in dublin several years later for work, rang clare up. they have their own cute friends-to-lovers/“i always sorta had a crush on you” moment, and the rest is history. the way i write clare and faye’s role in james’s life in the present someday timeline is very much as a unit. clare talks about how he’s not calling “them.” and while, yes, clare does overthink things, i don’t imagine that james and faye’s boundaries fluctuate in the way that he lets them fluctuate with erin. neither of them are interested in that. maybe james is calling faye up during his late nights when he’s across the world, but they aren’t late nights for her, it’s merely convenience because of things like 16-hour time differences. i imagine faye as someone who is fiercely protective of the people she cares about, and makes it very clear to clare from the very beginning of their romantic involvement where she stands. they have absolutely talked about it. unlike the two idiots, clare and faye have excellent communication and, by the time we get to the present someday timeline, they are well settled. ultimately, i think time and age and the varying levels of commitment/seriousness between james at 20 and clare at 27 allow for growth and for faye to exist in both their lives without it being a threat.

and, finally, for erin, it’s less that she has a problem with james and faye being friends/talking (even if her acceptance of it is somewhat begrudging in true erin fashion), and more that faye represents an area of james’s life where erin has never been. his friendship with faye, for a long time, existed outside of the girls and is not something that erin has ever had access to. i don’t think she’s concerned in the present someday timeline that there’s anything romantic, but faye is always a reminder of the things erin wanted, and got so close to getting, and never had (and, for a long time, erin felt like it was because faye showed up, even though faye had very little to do with why erin and james didn’t work out in the smoke break era). erin was very relieved when james and faye broke up, even though she was by that time happily in a relationship of her own, and has some consternation that she tries to tamp down about clare’s relationship because now it feels like faye is around for good. i’ll explore more about the faye and erin relationship in the next chapter.

i feel like this just barely scratches the surface, but i plan to explore this a bit more in someday so you’ll continue to get answers 😊

[findyourrp]

✨ hi there! i’m here to make a gentle plot call for some things that i’ve been very interested in lately but i’m super unsure of where to go to find them.

a little bit about me beforehand— my pronouns are she/her. i’m 25+ (i prefer my partners be in the same-ish age frame) in the cst timezone. i work full-time and tend to turn to writing/roleplay as a hobby/escape/just a creative space. i’m very open-minded and have very few triggers but i do have a few limits that can be discussed in private.

as for what i’m looking for is as following!

i’m looking for mxm rp’s on discord where we can have writing threads and text threads (to keep the chemistry moving when either one of us aren’t able to get out a para reply; like i said, i work full-time and sometimes just don’t have the capacity to reply to a para so i like for them to “ chat”).

i normally play an older/dominant character but i’m open to younger/submissive or a switch.

i like canon characters but i prefer oc’s! when it comes to a plot, i will create a new muse for said plot and usually figure out a plot before going any further with a muse. its easier for me somehow!

i like to get to know my writing partners ooc! i like people who really get into a plot/ship.

my aesthetic is all lowercase; even my paras but grammar is pretty a+ (in my opinion, at least).

for face claims, i prefer to use models from insta or musicians. right now, i would like to bring more musicians into my plot-lines. writing as or against harry styles, zayn malik, justin bieber, etc. but that does not mean those are the only faces i want to write against!

at the moment, i can’t think of anything else so if anyone is interested, give this a like and i’ll find you!

.

[chumpmagump]

dear mum & dad

TW; mention of abuse

Dear mum and dad,

I don’t hate you for how I grew up, I despise you for the lack of accountability, apology or any expressed regret for how it was. What am I thinking writing this right now. I have no capacity.

Dad why were you violent and screamed and threw things and strangled my mother against the wall in our Sydney home? Why have you entered a marriage now where none of that happens?  Does she know how you were?  Im happy for you but I think your deceiving her by keeping the full truth from how you were. I know you were not happy and you stayed with mum because of us kids, but at what cost. I struggle to trust any man that enters my life and I seem to keep attracting emotionally avoidant partners, much like how you were. You did your best. But it wasn’t enough and I carry the scars for the rest of my life and you should have been finding ways to make it up to me.a phone call once every few months doesn’t really cut it. why couldn’t we have talked about this. Why do you continue to put mum down yet take no responsibility for the harm you caused her and macros and i.

Mum, you’ve been scarred from the men you dated. I get that. You have been so desperate for connection you’ve put it above your own children again and again again. You’ve let people outstay their welcome and you’ve let yourself hurt. You don’t have to keep living in that cycle. You can at any moment decide you and your kids are too valuable to have any man interfere with your lives. Theres only so much time you have to play victim before you and your family really do become another statistic. I believe dad coud have killed you, and I think Andrew could too. Do what you will with that. I have always been hard on you because you have those kids in your care, if this was just you I would leave you alone. You are an adult to make your own choices. But as soon as  you have kids you give up the right to put yourself first and you need make those kids feel loved and safe and appreciated. Imogen looks like a shell, her whole body curls up around her shoulders. That’s trauma. That’s what the body does. Your back looks much the same. So did mine until I rid everyone that wasn’t providing any support.  Give her a hug, give her many. Give her what you couldn’t give me back then. Because you were so beaten down. Make it different this time. You have the power.

I will always be there to help you of getting rid of men. To the day I die I don’t care how fragile out relationship is I will house you and help you on your feet if it means you can change your life and theirs. I have always said that.  I will never use my help against you. But you cant tell me youre going to overdose because of me, and you cant scream at me because your in pain , and you cant tell me I should have called docs on my own father when I was small child. I wont accept any more abuse from you or my dad. In fact you would call me outside to help you not have dad abuse the animals , and when I didn’t come because I was so scared you blamed me. You blamed me as a young child. You do know children rely on their parents to keep them safe. Not the other way around. I wont tolerate you blaming me any more.

The amount of times ive picked myself up the floor or gotten myself home safe contemplating leaving this world, because I felt the pains of what I went through and the fact neither of you can really support me the way I need – countless. I got myself to where I am on my own. I rescued that small child that didn’t have anyone to turn to because to her everyone who loved her hurt her, would love one minute would hurt the next.  I rescue her every time she wants to leave this world. I thank you for your shelter and keeping me alive. You loved the way you only knew how. Please go to therapy and develop a relationship to yourself. There has to be someone deep inside that is hurting immensey to be able to hurt others the way you have. I go to therapy to deal with my trauma. Im 27 years old and I want to be known I needed to send this. I don’t care if you choose to dodge accountability, if you blame each other, I needed to say this for me.  

[princessslut6969]

I'm not gonna invite ppl already on that post to come crucify me, & it's a quote already, so.

.

[“A secret about lesbian sex that I don’t think I have ever seen written about before is that lesbians appreciate different things about the vulva and vagina than do straight men. If popular culture and the rise of vaginal tightening and rejuvenation procedures are any indication, straight men value a “tight” vagina. But this is incomprehensible to me as a dyke. If I only had a nickel for every time I have heard queer people brag about being size queens with capacious vaginas and/or anuses that welcome fists and giant dildos, I’d be a rich woman! In queer space, what makes an orifice “good” is not how it feels to the person going inside it (for whom it might make sense for the emphasis to be on tightness) but how the orifice feels about itself: what it wants, what it can do, what it can enjoy. For many humans, the capacity to take something very large into one’s body is extremely pleasurable, and this is much more difficult when one has been told that the goal is to keep all orifices small and tight. It is fine, of course, if size is not one’s thing, but the point here is that it makes queer people—like my comrades quoted above—quite sad that in straight culture, a vagina is evaluated according to its capacity to please men and not its capacity to experience pleasure.”]

-- Jane Ward, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

.

...That... is also incomprehensible to me? I guess, marry a man who's written by a woman?

& despite anything else I write or reblog, Hunny is straight, deadset against anything anal for him, & super masculine. Picture bodybuilder-dadbod, absolutely covered in hair.

.

Just a few hours ago, we had basically non-penetrative sex. His idea, even. Both came sooo hard.

We finally had one of our only two nights a week together, so when I seemed restless...

"What's the matter?"

"I'm horny..."

I'm still on my period, so I still have my cup in. Well, he wasn't about to let that stop him. He wasn't even horny himself, yet, lol. He pulled me into spooning me & fingered me til I came. It didn't take much, but it also simply wasn't a wild one I had brewing. Ah, sated enough to sleep, & not enough energy to do anything else. Sleepy. 🥰

But he wasn't happy with how not-crazy my orgasm was. 😈 He had other suggestions.

"Nah... I am sleepy now... It's okay."

"Can I rub my dick on your clit?" 😈

😳 "YES."

He wasn't even hard yet so not like he was trying to deal with taking care of that. Just missed me. Just in missionary, just spit-wetted dick between labia, just the pressure between us. (And a couple of his other tricks. 😏) But, clinically, no ~vaginal penetration. I have no idea how many times I came even, since he just never stopped, til I literally had to push him away & ride out my own freak out, practically crying (good) & almost screaming (good). 🤤

I finished sucking him off - as he fingered me again. No mercy. 😫 Made me go so wild on him. Back thigh pulling, ball squeezing, back-of-throat, moaning -- He came sooo hard, & twice as long as usual.

.

So, no, I don't know what it's like, to ever have a guy even come close to ignoring my pleasure.

True, I've only had full-on sex with 2 other guys besides Hunny. Both also straight to the best of my knowledge. But 1 had an oral fixation. The other 1 was only a few times, but also wonderful.

.

Yeah, "tight" pressure feels good to them. That's not bad in & of itself? How the... That's like saying you shouldn't care about getting pressure on your clit. 🙄

There's still wetness to take into account even. And, speaking of "size queens" or whatever, anyone even- we like to feel filled! Girth is more important than length! We like the other side of that pressure, hello???

.

She's just complaining about her partners ignoring what feels good to her. That may be a very widespread, mainstream, common problem, but that's not *because* the guy is straight. 🙄 What decent guy doesn't care about the girl feeling good? That's a requirement.

And, maybe she doesn't know this from never getting this far, but ever see a guy's reaction to your vagina climaxing and orgasming all around his dick? 🤨

[protected-and-loved-by-castiel]

We often hear the term ‘emotional availability’ thrown around, but what does it actually mean? Let’s talk about it…

Up until only a few years ago, I had no idea how to react to someone that was crying in front of me. I would completely freeze, shut down and stare blankly at them.

Like many of us, I was never taught how to process my big emotions as a child — so in my relationships, I couldn’t handle another human’s expression of emotion.

I also could not handle the vulnerability that was required to let myself cry in front of others (or show any emotion, for that matter) — I had a deep-seated belief that crying or ‘being emotional’ made me look weak.

This morning, when I started thinking about writing this, a particular memory came to mind…

It was about 5 years ago — I was a salon owner, standing behind the chair doing the hair of one of my clients, when my assistant at the time came up to me with tears in her eyes.

She said, ‘My uncle was just found dead.’

And I literally stood there and stared at her.

I had no idea how to handle her tears, and I was too afraid to be vulnerable enough with her to even attempt to soothe her.

My own system shut down around her system’s expression of emotion.

A few awkward moments of silence passed before I finally said, ‘Do you need to leave?’

(I’d tell you that I’m cringing as I recall this, but I’ve done enough of my own inner work to know that shame is the barrier to deeper healing and that I simply just did not have the emotional capacity or tools to support either of us at the time.)

Luckily my best friend also worked for me at the time — in the salon we had deemed her as ‘the welcome committee,’ because of her incredibly warm nature and inherent wealth of compassion. She came to the rescue, offering hugs and all of the other support that I had no idea how to even access at that point.

And I wondered why I kept attracting emotionally unavailable relationships?

Because ding ding — you guessed it!

I, myself, was emotionally unavailable.

When we are emotionally available, we are present and open to experiencing and expressing the full range of our emotions — even the ‘difficult’ ones.

Because we’re able to connect with the depth of our own emotions, we are also receptive and able to compassionately witness other’s in their emotional expression, as well.

Yet many of us find ourselves struggling with emotional availability due to our childhood conditioning.

Our upbringing and early experiences shape our beliefs and behaviors, making it challenging to be emotionally available in our most intimate relationships, as many of us have nervous system’s that learned that emotions are unsafe.

Here are a few ways childhood conditioning can impact emotional availability:

1. Emotional Neglect: Growing up in an environment where emotions were dismissed or ignored can lead to difficulties in recognizing and expressing emotions as adults. We may have learned to suppress our feelings or view them as a sign of weakness, making it harder to be emotionally available in relationships.

2. Fear of Vulnerability: If we experienced rejection or criticism when we expressed vulnerability as children, we may have developed a fear of being emotionally open in relationships. This fear can lead us to build walls and avoid deep emotional connections, causing us to inevitably choose partners who are also emotionally unavailable.

3. Unhealthy Relationship Models: Our childhood experiences shape our understanding of what relationships look like. If we witnessed unhealthy relationship dynamics or weren’t modeled emotionally safe relationships when we were children, we may unknowingly seek out partners who replicate those patterns of emotional unavailability.

Recognizing these patterns and understanding their origins is the first step towards breaking free from our childhood conditioning and cultivating emotionally available relationships.

If there is anything I’ve learned in my own personal somatic journey about healing my wounds around emotional unavailability, it’s this:

You will only be available for the emotions in others, that you are available for within yourself, first.

I now can sit beside you, comforting you through the depth of your big emotions like grief and anger, only because I have sat through the excruciating discomfort of coming back into contact with the depth of my own emotions, that I had been burying and avoiding for an entire lifetime.

And I was able to do that, because I had a somatic coach of my own that had also done her own deep soul-searching work of coming back into contact with the depth of her own emotions, and so on…

We heal in safe relationship, and because she was able to hold me through my first time witnessing my own somatic experience of grief and help me cultivate a healthy relationship with my unprocessed anger, I am able to do the same for the people in my personal life and for the clients in my coaching containers.

My coach was honestly my first experience of an emotionally safe relationship, and I am often the same for many of my clients.

Because of my experience of emotional safety with my coach, I was able to finally choose a partner to consciously enter an emotionally available relationship with, instead of continuing in my old conditioned pattern of chasing emotionally unavailable men.

I knew he was emotionally safe and available, because I now know what emotional safety feels like in my body, thanks to my investment in a somatic coach.

Remember, breaking free from this level of childhood conditioning takes time, effort and support — it doesn’t happen over night, and it can be uncomfortable.

And my recommendation is that you don’t try to do it alone. (Even though your emotional unavailability might convince you that you don’t need any support — that you’re strong enough on your own!) This level of deep emotional healing needs to happen within the proximity of someone well-equipped to support you through it.

As always, be patient and compassionate with yourself as you navigate this journey towards emotional availability.

[poke-muns]

Riff/Raff

Raff

Raffael Ford, known as Raff to all, is a 20 year old aspiring songwriter living in Ferrum. Raff goes with any pronouns used, having no understanding of gender at all and not particularly caring to learn much deeper about it or their orientations — they are who they are and they feel how they feel, that’s good enough for them. Raff has one pokémon, Riff.

Appearance

Raff is roughly 5’9”/1.75m tall and healthily built. Little bit of muscle, little bit of fat. He is also albino. He’s attempted to dye his hair multiple times but the results never last long so he has now given up. Mega big sad, you should see him with slightly green tips. He does paint his fingernails black; he’s fond of putting on silver layers, letting them dry, putting on a black layer and chipping bits off to reveal the shiny underneath. Crackled nail art forever!

He often wears casual clothes. White, black, and all shades in between are the main components of his wardrobe. Exceptions only come in undergarments and the occasional blue jean. Raff always wears some kind of outer layer, be it a shirt or leather jacket.

His body mods total 4: a piercing on each ear, a tattoo of an X just above his left hip, and a small tattoo of a double lightning bolt (ie 2 zags) on his left wrist. The lightning bolt was done so that raising his arm with a bend would make it strike him, in reference to the Green Day song Warning’s logo. The X is in the style of the Def Lyppard album. The ear piercings are only ever used for black studs.

Personality

Raff is an easygoing person. She doesn’t dwell on things that aren’t of importance or interest to her. Despite her indifference to many things she’s easily able to motivate herself when it comes to the things that she cares about, even when that end result is bound to be heavily delayed. This motivation doesn’t show as giddy excitement or relentless joy however — she stays as chill as ever.

She’s been writing bits of songs forever. If a lyric or melody or whatnot pops into her head she’ll write it on the closest available thing (usually her arm) to write up into her phone and notebooks later. She has not considered directly putting them into her phone. Even if not writing songs, Raff will find music in anything. If she’s in a place with music playing she’ll likely focus on that more than anything else; if she hears a sentence that’s like a song lyric she’ll be mumbling it to herself the rest of the conversation. Looking at her has 98% odds to see her dancing to some capacity.

She has the belief that “I would be smarter if I thought more.” This is not a self-deprecating comment on her part. What she means by this is that if she took a few more seconds to think things through properly she would be way smarter. This proves itself in a lot of minor ways. If she thought through what a friend says, she wouldn’t respond “oo yea, what flavour?” when they offer her a rawst berry milkshake.

History

Raff was born into a loving, capable family of a mother, a father, and an half-sister 15 years their elder called Mauvis. They were a quiet child, preferring to stay in their room eavesdropping the people of Technd city from their window when home. They could usually be pried away to spend time with the family; the only exception would be when the beach was full of concertgoers singing along to whoever was playing. This isn’t to say their relationships with family was poor — far from it — but the draw of music always seemed stronger. Their parents leant into this for their 12th birthday, taking them to Argus Park (a large public park in Neos City) to see their annual music festival.

Mauvis left for Kanto when she was 18. She took her partner and the only pokémon in the Ford household, a Weavile, with her. Their parents were never fond of owning pokémon due to already having at least a child to look after. The Weavile was solely Mauvis’ responsibility and the only pokémon Raff had memories of — being 3 — and was the only pokémon they’d properly interacted with for the first 6 years of their left. They had some injury with wild pokémon after assuming all were as friendly as their sister’s Weavile. Though scared of Pachirisu for a while after, they were never severely traumatised by any incidents.

In school Raff was a fine student. Kept under the radar. Did what was asked. Spent breaks with friends except on Wednesdays where they would use the music room to try learn what they could on piano. 5 minutes in they would end up just singing whatever was in their head for the rest of break. They never had much interest in any of the subjects. Their schoolbooks were bordered with random phrases and annotations around said phrases. Their final maths teacher was the only one who interacted positively with those notes, suggesting word changes or possible rhymes. “Coincidentally”, maths was Raff’s best subject.

Raff left formal education as soon as possible. Their parents were concerned for them because they seemed to not have any plans and not care to get any. This was not helped by the incident where their parents left 16 year old Raff in charge of the house for the evening and came back to them sharing a bowl of gnocchi with a Dunsparce they’d called Riff. They all had a talk that night. Riff’s got to get a job if they’re going to be looking after a pokémon. They accepted this easily and got themselves a job at a grocers.

Over the next 3 slow years they saved as much as they could. Though initially discouraged as the cost of getting a pokéball for Riff as well as food, potions, a bed, toys, and other things seemed to eat up all their money, they managed to get enough to rent a flat Neos. Since their birthday they’d always wanted to go back and see another festival; following some logic they’d figured moving there was the best choice.

Now in Neos life seems to be picking up again. They work in a convenience store in the heart of Neos. Besides being close to Argus Park, the chain allows workers’ pokémon to be released if they pass a course so Raff doesn’t have to use their breaks to let Riff have some out-of-pokéball time and food out the back of the store. They’ve made friends in the city too: a young trainer who’s trying to beat the Ferrum League with his togepi; a technique specialist that works the other side of the park and frequents the same underground music bar; an overworked student with a part time job at Diggersby Land. Nothing’s come of their songwriting yet though. They are only 20. They've plenty of time.

Misc. Info

Raff was maybe the only one not surprised when a Pachirisu helped win the most prestigious worldwide battling tournament.

As a kid the only thing stopping them looking after every pokémon they saw was lack of money. Now they’re older and have Riff they’re happy with just one.

Riff

A dunsparce.

Named after a drum riff — ba-dum-tsss. He’s da-dun-sparce for now, dun-dun-sparce if he evolves. By all accounts he should be able to (being able to Hyper Drill) and he has no everstone accessories, so maybe he physically can’t or just doesn’t want to.

Equally as relaxed as his partner, Riff does not do much to help Raff at work except deterring shoplifters and enticing customers to return. Both of these are done just by him sitting on the counter, where he accepts head pats from all and absentmindedly spins his tail so much it glows with energy. He does help himself to things around the store — most notably lemonade (sometimes fizzy, sometimes not) — by floating. Raff pays for it.

B-t-S Trivia

Like a lot of the OCs you’ll find on here, Raff was made because my brain likes coming up with a trainer for every pokémon — this time was (dun)dunsparce.

Riff was named first! I thought of the dun-dun-sparce while in the car and decided Riff would be a funny name if I ever got one in a game. OC creation came around and riff-raff only felt natural.

Raff’s design is an adapted version of an old Danganronpa OC; this happened when I decided Raff was a songwriter as that OC was one too.

Mauvis is named after Magenta from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was because just calling her “the sister” got annoying and RHPS was the only thing I could think of as a naming basis given Riff Raff. The connections end there.

Raff was originally going to work in a music store but it’s already too similar to another unlabelled Ferrum-living OC who used to work in a music store. I cycled through fast food worker, corner/convenience store worker, and butcher a lot before finally picking. I don’t know why butcher specifically.

(The other OC is mentioned in this description and is a blog.)

The mention of gnocchi being what Raff was eating when it met Riff is because Gnocchi was my previous go-to name for dunsparce (because of their shape and their Japanese name, Nokocchi).