#it's why i avoided using shared spaces when i lived with people before - i can avoid Grossing Up The Place if i'm not in them

[ourceliumnetwork]

the list of traumas i need to unpack still and my coping mechanisms (or, more frequently, lack-thereof) keeps getting longer and i'm not sure i like that. I think i like less how much i already know they're hangups before they become a problem i have to actively work on, too.

[lisbeth-kk]

Easter Egg Prompts (2025) Day 8

This is the last one, lovelies. Time flies when one's having fun, right? Thanks again to the sweet @helloliriels for making the prompts. It's been a joy sharing this story with you all.

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Rosie is acting like the teenager she's become, which rattles Sherlock to the core.

Marshmallows

Sherlock is not prepared when his darling girl turns into a stranger overnight. Luckily for them all, John takes it all in his stride. He has after all grown up with a sister, not to mention invaded Afghanistan. Disassembling Moriarty’s network is like a bumpy ride in comparison.

“Why do you have to be so strict? Everyone else is allowed!” Rosie roars at her Daddy.

“Names, please,” John replies calmly.

“You just want me to live with you forever, never letting me unfold my wings,” she yells dramatically.

Sherlock is quite impressed by her drama queen appearance, but he can't shake the unease of witnessing the two people he loves most in the world having a dispute of this proportion.

“Of course, we don’t. It’s not healthy for a child to live with their parents when they’ve grown up. I’m afraid our rule still applies; you are not allowed to attend an all-night disco. You are barely fifteen.”

“You’re a coward!”

Before John gets in a word, Sherlock rises from his chair, filled with a terrifying fury.

“Do not speak to your father like that, Rosamund Watson-Holmes!”

His tone is as cold as an arctic wind. A tone he’s never used on either his daughter or husband. Not even on Mycroft. Well, perhaps on one or two occasions…

For a moment Rosie blushes and looks utterly devastated, but soon enough, she turns on her heel and stomps up to her room, slamming the door for emphasis.

Sherlock’s knees give way, and he falls back into his chair. John rubs his face, and sighs.

“What is happening to her, John?” Sherlock whispers.

“She’s a teenager, Sherlock. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. She’s testing our boundaries, and trying to find her place in the world, and desperately wanting her independence.”

“But she’s become a…monster! How can she say those things about you?”

“I’ve had far worse, and I’m pretty sure she’s already regretting saying them, but she’s too stubborn to admit it. Yet.”

“How can you be so calm? We are losing her!”

Sherlock’s voice is on the verge of panic.

“Look at me, love,” John says softly, crouching down in front of Sherlock’s chair. “We are notlosing her.”

Running feet down the stairs, all the stairs, and then the slamming of the front door, doesn’t exactly support John’s reassurance. He groans, Sherlock leaps to his feet, determined to follow his girl, but John stops him.

“Here.”

John shows Sherlock his phone. A text from Harry lights up the screen.

Having a domestic, John? Ro is on her way over. Just wanted you to know. We’re free to take her this weekend if it’s alright with you and Sherlock. I think you all need some space, and she needs some female advice. We’ll keep you informed.

Sherlock collapses in John’s arms, his body trembles, and he feels like he’s run around for hours. The sudden fatigue is unnerving.

John guides him to the sofa and lets him curl up in his lap.

“She’ll be alright, love. At least we avoided the disco. There’s no way my sister and Clara will let her out of their sight.”

A vibration from Sherlock’s phone seconds later, discloses that the surveillance works impeccably.

What is wrong? Where is she going? Have you thrown her out? Do you acquire assistance? Answer immediately! MH

John chuckles while Sherlock sends his brother a reassuring text.

***

“So, what’s got your knickers in a twist?” Harry asks when she’s welcomed her niece with a warm hug.

“Who, more like,” the teenage girl mutters.

Harry laughs heartily, soon joined by Clara, who embraces Rosie and holds her for a long time. When the girl starts to cry, Harry steps in an makes it into a group hug.

“Tell us, love,” she coaxes. 

“It was Papa,” Rosie whispers. “I’ve never seen him like that. Ever.”

Harry looks at her with a frown.

“Sherlock? Are we talking about the softest father I’ve ever met? I thought it’d be my brother who – “

“Oh, he did his too, you know, stayed calm and captain-like. But then…”

“Out with it,” Harry demands, not unlike the forementioned captain behaviour of her brother.

“I called him a coward.”

Rosie’s voice cracks at the last word and she hides her face in the crook of Clara’s neck.

“Uh-oh,” Harry murmurs. “Calling John that in front of Sherlock. Courageous of you.”

“He was…I…if he ever looks at me like that again…”

Rosie starts to cry in earnest now and clings to them both. They say nothing, because there’s really no words that will suffice. Everyone knows that Sherlock was in his full right to react like he did.

***

Before she goes to make them hot cocoa, Harry sends her brother a text.

Ro is fine. Well, almost. Broken-hearted. Regrets what she called you. Is terrified of your detective. We don’t blame him. The nerve of that girl, calling my brother a coward! Will keep you posted. Take care of him. I reckon he’s beside himself.

Thanks, Harry! You’re a lifesaver, and quite right about Sherlock. Tell Rosie to text him when she feels up for it, will you.

I might have to frame this text. Are you going soft on me, old man? Making cocoa now. Speak later.

“Do you want whipped cream or marshmallows in your cocoa, Ro?” Harry asks.

The girl has calmed down, but she looks a right mess with red rimmed eyes and a puffy face.

“Marshmallows, please. I’ll just go to clean myself up a bit first.”

When she returns to the kitchen, the rich scent of hot milk and dark chocolate welcome her like a warm hug. Clara hands her a large mug topped with multi-coloured marshmallows.

“Nothing like hot cocoa to mend broken hearts,” she says matter-of-factly.

They seat themselves around the circular kitchen table. Rosie braces herself for heaps of questions but to her surprise, gets none.

“In your own time,” Harry says softly and takes a sip of her brew.

The synthetic taste of the soft sweets paired with the rich cocoa, feel calming on the teenager’s frayed nerves. She closes her eyes and wallows in it for a few moments. 

“I’ve been an idiot,” she says before opening her eyes. “They just want to protect me. I didn’t really want to go to that stupid disco, but…”

She opens her eyes and sets down her mug and runs her fingers through her hair in a sherlockian way.

“Brian and his mates made a bet. Said that I’d never get permission to go. Told me my parents are overprotective, wanting to lock me up inside 221B until I’m thirty.”

A chuckle from Harry, quite reminiscent of John’s, coaxes a smile from Rosie.

“Alright, I know it was stupid, okay! I wanted to prove to myself that I could stand up to Captain John Hamish Watson and the world’s only consulting detective. Dunno what I was thinking.“

“Believe me, love, I’ve been at the receiving end of my brother’s calm and infuriating reasoning all my life. That said, I think Sherlock’s reaction scared you more than a hissy fit from my brother could ever do, am I right?”

“Yes,” Rosie admitted with a whisper. “You should have seen him, Harry. It was like witnessing a blizzard in the Arctic. His eyes were icy blue, and almost stung me. He hates me, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, darling,” Clara murmurs. “Sherlock Holmes will never stop loving you. You are the light of his life together with John. According to the text your father sent his sister earlier, your Papa is a mess. Send him a text later to ease his mind, yeah?”

This sends the girl into another heart-breaking crying spell, and it takes another cup of cocoa to calm her down.

When she’s drained her cup and grabbed a handful of marshmallows to chew on, Rosie picks up her phone and composes a text to Sherlock and then one to John.

Hi. I’m sorry I called Daddy a coward. I didn’t mean it, and it isn’t true. Your reaction was sound. You are scary when you’re defending him, you know. Forgive me? xx

Hi. You’re not a coward, Daddy. My outburst was totally uncalled for. I’m sorry. You’re the bravest man I know. Thanks for letting me stay with H & C. xx

***

They’re both a bit blurry-eyed after they’ve read their respective texts, though John is not as easily induced as his husband. 

Sherlock types out his reply first; he is after all able to compose a text with his hands behind his back.

My darling girl. Of course, I forgive you. I am sorry if I scared you; I scared myself even more. Never doubt how much I adore you. Papa.

We will have a talk about this later. Love you.

Sherlock has his chin on John’s shoulder and frowns at the rather clipped tone in the text.

“That’s a little harsh,” he remarks.

John hums in agreement. All of him radiates frustration and rigidness.

“I’ve earned the nickname Stubborn Until Death for a reason,” he huffs.

“Good lord. How many nicknames do you have? I thought the continents name was more than sufficient.”

This loosens something in John, and he wraps his arms around his husband.

“One would think so, yeah,” he agrees. “It’s not pertinent anymore, though.”

“I hope not,” Sherlock replies dryly.

“I’m only devoted to one lover these days. If you’re amenable, I can show you just howdevoted I am to my chosen one.”

John’s voice is husky and full of promise, leaving Sherlock breathless, and he willingly agrees to his husband’s suggestion.

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[xoxoch3rry]

OH OH WAIT I HAVE A BETTER IDEA! what if reader finds out about Enid and carl and gets jealous and continuously distances themself from carl and enid out of pure jealousy until theh blow up on them? or until carl confronts them about it??

i hope this is good enough for you ml <3

𝕊𝕖𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕕 ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕖 | ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕝 𝔾𝕣𝕚𝕞𝕖𝕤

@ xoxoch3rry do not steal or translate my work.

Word count: 1,052

────

Carl Grimes x reader

Warnings: Jealousy, Confrontation.

Summary: You’ve always felt close to Carl—until Enid entered the picture. As Carl grows closer to her, your feelings of jealousy and heartbreak begin to spiral, pushing you to quietly distance yourself.

────⊹ ࣪ ˖⋆˖ ࣪⊹────

It started small. You noticed it in glances—those fleeting, almost imperceptible looks Carl would give Enid when she said something he found funny. You noticed it in the laughter they shared—low and secretive, like it was meant to be theirs and theirs alone. You noticed it in the subtle way they gravitated toward one another. At first, you dismissed it. They were friends, you told yourself. People needed connections in this world. You couldn’t be selfish.

But then those tiny moments started to pile up. You began noticing the pattern in everything: the way Carl waited for her before heading out, how he seemed to drift closer to her during meals, the way she leaned into him when she laughed. And each moment became a prick in your chest, sharp and inescapable.

Without fully realizing it, you started to pull away. It was gradual at first. You'd pass up offers to go on runs, opting to stay back and do chores or guard duty instead. You skipped late-night watches with Carl, making vague excuses about being tired or needing space. You avoided meals when you knew they'd be sitting together. Where once you would've sought Carl out just to hear his voice or sit beside him, now you kept your distance like it was a matter of survival.

“Hey, we're going to check the perimeter,” Carl would say in passing, voice casual, like it hadn’t once been the highlight of your day to hear those words. You'd glance up with a tight-lipped smile. “I think I'll stay back today.”

The ache in your chest grew each time you saw him walk off beside her. They laughed more now. At least, it seemed like it. Their bond had grown—thickened into something that made you feel like you were standing outside a house you used to live in, looking through a window as someone else made themselves comfortable inside.

Days blurred together, and the gap between you and Carl widened. You felt it every time he caught your eye and looked away too quickly. Every time, Enid smiled at you like she didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was all in your head. But that didn’t stop the knot from growing inside your chest.

One afternoon, you were hunched over a bench in the workshop, sharpening a set of dull knives. The rhythmic scrape of metal against stone was the only thing keeping your thoughts at bay. Then you heard it—that soft, familiar laughter. The kind that once brought you comfort. Now it lit a fire in your stomach. “Hey,” Carl said from behind you. His voice was hesitant, laced with concern. “Can we talk?”

“Busy,” you muttered without looking up, jaw clenched tight. Your fingers wrapped tightly around the knife handle, and you could feel your pulse hammering in your ears. You could sense Enid’s presence behind him too; the air suddenly too full.

“How come you've been avoiding us?” Carl said, taking a step closer. “Did we do something wrong?” The words snapped something inside you. You dropped the knife onto the table with a sharp clatter and turned around, eyes blazing. “Did you do something wrong?” you repeated bitterly. “I don’t know, Carl. Why don’t you ask Enid because you two seem to have a lot to talk about.” Carl’s brows furrowed, taken aback. “What are you—”

“Oh, come on!” you snapped, voice rising as emotion surged. “Every day it’s you and her. Whispering. Smiling. Going on runs together. Laughing like the world isn’t falling apart around us. And I’m just… what? Left behind?” Enid looked stunned, taking a step forward. “Y/N, it’s not what you think—”

“Not what I think?” Your voice cracked, a mixture of rage and hurt flooding through. “Then explain it to me. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like I got replaced.” There was a long silence. Enid shifted awkwardly, her face pale. She looked at Carl, who was still staring at you like he was trying to understand a language he didn’t speak. “I’ll give you guys a minute,” Enid finally said, her voice quiet, before turning and walking away.

Carl stepped forward slowly, his voice soft. “I didn’t know you felt this way.” You shook your head, a bitter laugh escaping. “Of course, you didn’t. You were too busy making new memories with her. I used to be the one you shared those with. I used to matter.”

“You still do,” he said quickly. “You matter so much to me. I didn’t mean to make you feel like you didn’t.” Your arms folded tightly across your chest, like they could hold in the storm that raged inside. “You acted like I was invisible. I tried so hard not to let it get to me, but it did. Watching you two together—it felt like watching someone walk away with something that used to be mine.” Carl looked down, his mouth set in a guilty line. “Enid is my friend. That’s all. I didn’t know it was hurting you. I never meant to—”

“Then why didn’t you notice?” you whispered, the first tear slipping free. “Why didn’t you ask me how I was when I stopped showing up? Why didn’t you see me pulling away?” He closed the distance between you, carefully reaching for your hand. “Because I was an idiot,” he murmured. “Because I didn’t realize what I had until I started losing it. You’ve always meant more to me than I’ve ever said out loud. And if I lost you because I was too blind to see it—”

“You haven’t lost me,” you whispered, voice trembling. “But it felt like you wanted to.” He stepped even closer, his forehead gently pressing against yours. His breath was warm, grounding. “I didn’t. I never did. And I’m sorry. For everything.” You closed your eyes, letting yourself breathe for the first time in weeks. The tension in your chest eased, replaced by a quiet, aching vulnerability. “Promise me,” you said, barely above a whisper. “Promise me you won’t let me fade again.”

“I promise,” Carl said, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you in tight. “I see you. And I’m not letting you go.”

For the first time since he started hanging out with her, you believed him.

[easy-there-leftovers]

hey! I was wondering if maybe you can do a Spencer Reid imagine where he is your best friend and you came home with a bloody nose or something due to a fight? You try to avoid him but maybe you pass out from pain or something? Super cute and fluffy

Didn't end up quite doing the ignoring part-- but we shall prevail!!

"What happened to you?" He was immediately by your side, but you elected to make a beeline to your kitchen sink and wash the blood off of your face.

Spencer loved Friday nights.

Studies have shown that people tend to be happier on the weekends, with its effect especially pronounced on Friday nights. Due to the day signifying the end of an average 9-5 work routine, people instinctively look forward to the rest and relaxation they can obtain once they enter their homes.

But Spencer loved it because that's when he got to spend time with you.

The both of you had agreed to set Friday as your weekly allotted "de-stress night" where the two of you would decide, based on a list of shared interests, what stimulating activity you would indulge in. (Though when his co-workers heard about this, they said it was boring and that there was no way it wasn't a euphemism for something else.)

This Friday was supposed to be an Italian Neorealism movie night where you would watch the classics.

He never anticipated you would come back looking like you were from one of the classics.

Much less laughing at him with a weird voice.

"I'm fine, doctor! Terribly sorry you had to see that."

That was definitely doing nothing to comfort him.

"Well-- I'm not fine!"

He went to grab some ice from your fridge and folded it into his handkerchief. Moving around your apartment like he owned the place, before bringing you to look at him and placing the makeshift ice pack on to your nose.

You were completely out of it. Barely even comprehending it was Spencer in front of you if it weren't for his telltale messy curls and soothing scent.

You giggled and nuzzled into his hand that was trying to keep your head upright. Looking up at him as you did.

"Oh my beautiful companion, you should've seen the other guy."

He feels his face flushes under your affection but shakes it away as he continues to fuss over you.

"How about we go sit down?"

He leads you to your couch carefully. Sitting down first and allowing you to use his body as support while you try to hold the cold pouch onto your face.

When it's your turn to sit however, you opt to instead lay your head on his awaiting lap. Deeming it more comfortable in your current state.

There's a lot of loaded emotions in his sigh, but he makes no move to push you off of him. Used to having this much contact with you.

Though usually not under these pretenses.

When he tries to ask about what happened again, you turn to look at him with a sincere expression.

"You know that I love you, right?" He nods, but not without feeling that pinch in his heart.

"You're my best friend and I would do anything for you. Which is why I didn't like it when my friends were saying mean things about you."

Now that, is unsurprising.

He had met a few of your friends before as he practically lived in your space, but he knew they were just trying to be polite. It was obvious they didn't like him.

In a way, it shouldn't have mattered. He wasn't the one who hung out with them, so who cared about what they said?

But you did. And if they didn't like him, it was only a matter of time before you had to choose if it was them and him. And he didn't want you to have to do that.

Then again, part of the reason was because he was dreading your answer.

He stares at your reflection in the TV and urges you to continue.

"To be fair, I think I was just looking for an excuse to pummel them. They were always my least favorite." You laugh out.

They never liked Spencer. Always going on and on about how he was boring, or how he was annoyingly awkward, or how he only ever got in the way when they wanted to hand out with you.

You feel your best friend card his fingers through your hair as you rant. Your thought and words becoming increasingly more coherent as he does.

"So I punched them."

Spencer sighs out your name, but you interrupt him.

"I know what you're going to say. That it's a stupid reason, or that there is no reason to ever resort to violence, but that's how I reacted, okay? I was just really mad and disappointed."

You move the ice pack a little higher on your face when you feel your hold slipping.

"We're probably never going to be friends again, but I don't care." He shakes his head at that.

"You can't just break off those kinds of relationships, you know?" He didn't want you to lose friends just because you felt bad about him.

He knew more than anyone what it was like to be alone. To not have anyone he could rely on.

He didn't want you to feel that way just because of him.

"Oh, but I can. In fact, I don't care what nasty things they have to say about me, but I will not allow them to rag on you."

The hand in your hair stills.

"Rationally speaking, they're right. It can't be all that fun being stuck with me."

You give him a comforting squeeze on his leg because that was all you could reach and look up at his profile.

"You're important to me, Spencer."

He finally looks down at you and sees you already looking at him. Eyes so full of care and wonder that it makes his heart hurt.

You then reached for his hand to rest in yours.

"And if losing a few friends means that I can keep you being yours? Then it can just be us two. Against the world."

He gives you a heartfelt smile as he nods. Squeezing the weakening hand in his as he does.

At the sight of your eyes starting to droop, he carefully takes the ice pack out of your other hand and puts it on your coffee table.

Moving down your sofa a little bit to make the two of you more comfortable.

While this wasn't how you agreed to spend your night, it didn't matter because he got to spend it with you.

Maybe there was another reason he loved Fridays.

[lostintransist]

Liaison - Chapter 2 - Da’ Fuck is a Roadman

The worst part about your job had to be the commute. The trip to the office each day took nearly an hour. Between the two trains, one bus, and a half-mile walk any energy you might have had been used up. You did not mention to anyone on the team where you lived and that you refused to buy a car. Mostly you were sure that your years of driving on the right side of the road and turning on red lights would lead to you killing someone in a vehicular collision and would rather avoid that.

The old building you shared with three other tenets creaked every time the wind blew and your small studio in the basement required two dehumidifiers to keep mold from overtaking the space. The jaw-cracking yawn overtook you as you stepped off the bus. You make it as far as the front door before the exhaustion becomes too much. You manage to brush your teeth, rip off your bra, and toss on an overlarge shirt you stole from an ex before sleep steals you away.

The weekend slips by too quickly for your liking. You can see the emails piling up in the inbox of your work email, anything truly urgent would CC Kate who worked nonstop. You stop into a cafe on your way home from the weekend market, happy to start to recognize the barista behind the counter. Sunday afternoons you did your shopping for the week and rewarded yourself with a scone and a warm latte. The day is capped off with a video call with a friend in Maryland and by eight you are asleep.

You wake early, 4 AM the alarm goes off to make it to the office for your 6:15 call. You dress simply in jeans, rain boots, and a long-sleeved green shirt. Starting on the walk for the bus you clock the young man posted up at the edge of an alley. You keep an eye on him but don’t change course as you continue closer to where he stands.

When you get within ten feet of him he jumps out and mumbles some words at you.

Tilting your head at him you try and process the sounds you heard.

“Wanna run that by me again kid?”

He mumbles the same words, louder and makes a vaguely threatening gesture.

“Yeah, I got nothing. Good luck with whatever you need,” you step into the road to continue past him.

Mumbler jumps in front of you, shouting now.

“I’m trying to rob ya you stupid American!”

“Why didn’t you say that back there?” Hooking a thumb over your shoulder to point to where this interaction started. “Also you don’t have a gun, do you even have a knife?”

As he starts to sputter the youth in his face is evident.

“Okay, so how does this shtick work?” gesturing to all of him, you continued. “Do you just walk up to people and demand their wallets or what?”

“Yeah, give me all your money!”

Mentioning wallets seemed to re-energize him.

“No thank you,” you start walking again. If you don’t make up the lost time you will delay yourself at least fifteen minutes and might need to call a cab to make it to work for your phone call.

❈❈❈

The hardest part of your job, second only to dealing with people who didn’t understand your role, would be the lack of consistency of who might be in the office from day to day. Harold hadn’t been at his desk when you finally rolled in, already accepting the call you had scheduled for this morning in the lobby. You waved to the one person at a computer as you dumped your things and asked for a moment of patience from everyone on the call as your headphones connected.

The call dragged on for nearly an hour as you stayed on mute replying to emails. When a question could not be answered by anyone else you jumped into the conversation, explaining you had three options for a team that would fit their needs. At this point, you would need a timeline and payment. Confirming the email address took another five minutes, back and forth. When the call wrapped up the clock ticked closer to 9 AM.

Letting your head slam against the desk you took a series of deep breaths. A message tone dinged from your computer. Looking up you found a message from someone named Roach.

>Calls that bad?

Turning you catch sight of the person who had been in the office when you arrived.

“You Roach?”

>That’s me.

Masked and covered from head to toe, the man looked as innocent as a bloodied tiger. You saw a lot of men like that lately. Something about this job had them covering up more than a nun in a convent.

“Okay, I’m still meeting everyone. And no? The call wasn’t that bad but I ended up being late because some fucker I think tried to rob me?” After explaining the whole situation this morning to Roach he sends you a message through the chatting platform.

>You met a roadman.

“Da’ fuck is a roadman?” Incredulity had become a familiar state since moving to England.

Staring at Roach you wait for his typed response. He looks at you, makes a face beneath his mask, bobs his head from shoulder to shoulder, sighs, and puts his fingers on the keys.

>A roadman is what you might call a mugger in the US.

“No, a mugger has a gun or a knife and can back up his threats. That child told me to give him all my money and couldn’t even find a decent threat to make me comply. All the bastard did was make me late.”

Roach’s only reply to this is a hearty shrug.

A voice from behind has both you and Roach spinning in place.

“Liaison I need a contract confirmed,” someone barked at you.

The demand hits wrong after the roadman incident and the achingly long call. You turn to see a large man, again in a mask, staring at you from near the door. This mask looked hard, the upper face half of a skull. This must be Ghost; Kate had warned you about him.

“I must have missed the question in that statement, care to try again?”

Roach’s brows nearly touch his hairline as he quickly averts his gaze.

The tall, broad Lieutenant moved faster than his shape would indicate he could. He looms over you, hard skull and eye black leaving no color beyond the whites of his eyes.

“Did I stutter Liaison?”

“No, but you might need to if you try to tell me what to do without asking again.” You flick a nail against his mask. “Now if you’ll excuse me I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Slipping from beneath Ghost’s shoulders you make it two steps before his hand wraps around your bicep. Snapping back to look at him you contemplate the wisdom of punching him.

“Ghost! Let her go,” Price’s command splits the air.

He lets you go with exaggerated care. You flip him the bird, hiding the move from Price using your body. You stalk up to Price who is staring Ghost down over your shoulder.

“Did he hurt you?” Price asks as you draw near. He wasn’t Ghost’s captain but had recently been promoted to work directly below the elusive Sheppard. You tried to keep up on who worked under who but with so many moving parts you had to check your spreadsheets every time you had a question.

“No, I’m fine. But next time the meathead needs something from me tell him to send an email and to use all his manners.” You sweep past Price and head for the kitchen. Might as well start some bread so you can beat something up.

That second interaction with Ghost solidified the tone of your relationship. The same day he threatened you with his size and laid hands on you he found you in the kitchen. You pulled the tray of rolls out of the oven when he spoke.

“I’ll take one of those.”

Without pausing to consider you shut the oven softly and tip the hot pan over, spilling the steaming buns onto the floor. You don’t even try to make it look like an accident.

“Whoops. Guess you forgot to ask for something you wanted.”

You ignored the fuming soldier behind you as you set the hot pan on the stove to cool and cover the dough and place it in the fridge for later. You gave it an hour before checking back to find the kitchen clear and cleaned up the rolls from the floor.

Three weeks later you are pulled from an important email by a fist in your hair. Ghost growls in your face.

“What the hell did you agree to with Sarcosis?”

A wince you can’t stop slips. “Hair pulling is a kinky thing for me Ghost, you ready to follow up on this offer?”

Disgusted, he lets you go. Then Soap is there, pushing between you two. Rubbing the back of your head you decide to answer. He did ask a question after all.

“Sarcosis needs to borrow one man, someone who can play spotter for one of their snipers. Job is less than three days. I wrangled a favor to borrowing one of their men if we ever need ‘em.”

“Why take the job?” Soap peers over his shoulder, hand still firmly placed on Ghost.

“All Keith is asking for is an impartial set of eyes to confirm a kill. They aren’t on the no-fly list. Do they need to be?”

“No-fly list?” This question comes from Ghost.

“Yeah, the no-fly list.” You pop open a sticky note from your screen, enlarging both the note and the words you let the men read the list you got from Kate. “Taking jobs with these guys won’t fly, hence the no-fly list.”

Ghost takes a deep breath, tucking the demon’s demeanor back behind his vest. Soap lets his hand drop back to his sides.

“Now if all this excitement is over I am going back to my emails,” turning your back to the men you return your screen to normal and type away at your ongoing email.

Roach sends you a message that you see but don’t reply to.

>Sarcosis nearly got Ghost killed on their last job, might want to flag them for your no-fly list.

Ghost and Soap stand behind you for an uncomfortably long time. When they eventually move you pull your headphones on and settle into the chaos of never-ending emails.

❈❈❈

It took you six months to figure out the rules for jobs. You had asked Kate, repeatedly. Each time she gave an answer about whether to accept or reject, you would question her. Why accept this job and not this one? Over and over you asked and the answer always amounted to a feeling. Vibes. You took notes on every call and Kate’s decision since she couldn’t articulate why to accept one job over another. She had worked with the 141 for so long that she had a sense for these things.

Those six months were grueling, but you found a pattern. The price of a job could be relied upon to weed out anything the team wouldn’t take. The numbers broke down to roughly £20,000 per man per job. The more complicated the explanation the more guys you figured would be needed. That rule of thumb would be right more often than not.

The guys would take rescue missions but were better equipped to handle situations where there would be no witnesses. They worked well with teams from most companies and governments but there were a few that several men refused to work with again. It was a small list but the fact you recognized each name on sight often gave you a queasy sensation in your stomach.

Enough of the team would submit requests to take one job or another you had to start a running list of preferences and skills. Pinning down hard skills turned into a bit of an issue so you had a self-reported list and a list of skills reported by others. The sheer number of interconnected spreadsheets and the random formulas learned to create boggled your mind. Once one of the members of the accounting team, Doreen, saw your massive spreadsheet she collected the general information known about the office to add to your knowledge pool. She also helped you break out the information about each member into a separate file that fed into your master sheet. Doreen, for as old as she was, had a vast understanding of spreadsheets. The search function would become a new god in your role.

Chapter 1 |

Masterlist

@nicroyal02 Chapter 26 is up on A03

[katsu28]

hi Kait! congrats!! ☕️ "Why are you mad?” “I’m not mad, I just think you can choose better people to kiss.” with bradley bradshaw please!! ily

thank you! this is unbelievably late so i apologize but you know what the french say! soo la voo, or whatever (that's from tiktok, french tumblr girlies (gn) pls don't come for me)

bradley "rooster" bradshaw x roommate!reader (2k)

“I had a really nice time tonight, Jake.” 

“Yeah?” Jake smiled, letting your joined hands swing between the two of you as he walked you to your front door. “Me too.” 

“We should do this again sometime.” Was it too bold of you, asking for a second date when you were only moments away from the end of your first? Probably. But Jake was nice and charming and made you feel special all night. 

“Can I kiss you right now?” 

Your smile grew even bigger at his words. Of course you wanted this very sweet, very handsome man to kiss you. You were hoping he’d do it this whole night. “Please.” 

Jake slid a hand around the back of your neck, bringing you closer and closer until your lips connected. The kiss was everything you’d hoped it would be, but before either of you could deepen it, you faintly heard the sound of the locks unlatching from inside your apartment. Before you could warn Jake, the door swung open with a gust of wind. 

“Well hello there, you crazy kids!” 

You fought the urge to scream at your roommate’s smug as shit voice, pulling away from Jake with what you hoped was an extremely venomous glare aimed at Bradley. The smile on his face matched his tone of voice, shit eating and absolutely enjoying it. 

“Rooster.” Jake nodded awkwardly. He stepped back like he’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, rubbing at the back of his neck. He avoided Bradley’s gaze, looking to you for any ounce of comfort you could provide, but there was little you could do when Bradley got like this. 

You’d been living with Bradley Bradshaw coming up on a year now, and for the most part it had been smooth sailing. He was a great roommate and tidy to a fault, always keeping his space neat and the shared space even neater. You probably had the Navy to thank for that. In addition to that Navy instilled tidiness, as a person he was kind and funny and a little bit of a dork, but you loved that about him. 

Something you didn’t quite love about him, however, was the way he acted whenever you went on dates. 

You couldn’t even really call it jealousy because you’d never been together—not that you hadn’t thought of it occasionally. With someone as perfect of a person as Bradley, the thought was bound to cross your mind sometime. It wasn’t quite territorial, but definitely more than him just looking out for you. 

“Hangman.” Bradley responded coolly. He mirrored Jake’s crossed arms, leaning against the door frame. “Getting back a little late, aren’t we?” 

“Shut up.” You said, words a near hiss through a tight smile. You turned back to Jake, splaying a hand across his chest. “Ignore him.” 

“He can’t ignore me, he’s standing on my doorstep.” 

“Bradley, I swear to god—” 

Jake patted your hand, giving it a squeeze before stepping away. “No it’s fine, I can take a hint. I’ll be on my way.” 

“Okay.” You sighed, trying hard not to sound too defeated. “Text me when you get home?” Jake nodded, but judging by how quickly he walked back to his car, it was safe to say there would be no second date. You stormed into the apartment without waiting for Jake to drive away, shouldering past a madly grinning Bradley with a frustrated huff. 

“You’re an asshole, Bradshaw.” You scowled, throwing your sweater at him. He dodged it easily, tossing it across the back of the couch with a snort. 

“I don’t like him!” 

“He’s from your squadron. He’s your friend.” You deadpanned, raising a brow. “You’re the one who introduced us to each other, and now you don’t like him?” 

“I don’t like him for you.” He corrected himself, crossing his arms over his chest. “He used to be a playboy, you know that, right? I don’t want him playing with your feelings!” 

You whirled around on your heel, fixing him to the spot with a glare. “Then why did you set me up with him?” 

Bradley’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, like he was searching for any excuse to answer your question. He could say he just wanted to help. He could say a whole lot of completely bullshit things, anything but the real reason. Bradley couldn’t give an honest answer to your question, not without exposing his own feelings for you. So he just shrugged, letting his hands slap against his thighs helplessly. 

“Don’t act like you did me any favors, Bradley. I don’t know what you have to gain from messing with my love life, but however funny you think you are, you’re not. So just stop it, please.” 

“Y/N, I—” 

“I’m gonna head to bed. See you in the morning.” 

You left him behind at that, hurrying to your bedroom before he could get in another word. 

-------

Bradley’s knuckles rapped against your door, echoing through the empty hall.

He wasn’t used to you being upset with him (not that he didn’t deserve it this time, because he definitely did). There was usually some sort of noise coming from your room, whether it was music or the show you were binging, or even just you having a conversation with yourself in the confines of your own space. Things that annoyed him a little at first, but soon grew to love about you. 

The silence right now felt weird. Foreign. Just another sign that he’d massively fucked up. 

“Hey. It’s me.” No answer. He knocked again, a little more insistent this time. “I’m sorry for being a dick.” Still no answer. “C’mon, Y/N. I hate it when we fight. And I really am sorry. Feel free to open the door and kick me in the nuts or something.” 

The door swung open with a creak, and Bradley squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation for a foot to the nether regions that thankfully never came. He cracked one eye open to see you retreating over to your bed. 

You’d changed into your pajamas in the time that it took him to formulate an apology in his head. Showered too, judging by the whiff of your citrusy shampoo he got when he came to settle at the edge of your mattress. 

“Thanks. For not actually kicking me in the nuts.” 

“I was thinking about it.” 

“I deserve it.” 

“You do. You were petty earlier, Bradley. Kinda mean too.” 

He bobbed his head quickly, agreeing. “I was. And I’m sorry.” 

“You set me up with Jake only to sabotage any chance of a relationship with him. And you can’t even tell me why.” 

“It doesn’t matter why.” Bradley blurted. He cleared his throat, composing himself despite the disbelieving look you threw his way. “I know it was wrong of me to do what I did, but Hangman wasn’t right for you.” 

“That’s none of your business though!” You said shrilly, rising from your seat with anger. You all but stormed across the room, putting enough distance between Bradley and yourself so you wouldn’t feel tempted to strangle him. He was being impossible and way out of line. “My love life—who I date, who I like, it’s none of your business!”

Bradley was growing angry too, but not at you. At himself, for letting his feelings for you get to this point. “It is! It is my business when I know there’s someone better out there for you. Someone who understands you and supports you and loves you—who would never even think about treating you like anything less than the amazing person you are.” 

“You’re not making any sense. Why do you even care so much?” 

“Of course I care! I care about you, Y/N, you know that!” 

“I know you do, but that’s not—” You let out a frustrated huff. “Why are you so mad?” You exclaimed, genuinely exasperated at the way he was acting. 

“I’m not mad.” Bradley scoffed. “I just think you can choose better people to kiss.” 

“Like who, Bradley? Who’s this someone better you keep talking about?” 

“Me.” He said simply. It was blunt—maybe a little too much so, but maybe it was necessary. Dancing around the fact hadn’t done any good, so maybe this unexpected approach would give a different result. A better one. 

All your anger dissipated in a flash, replaced with hurt. He had to be kidding. This had to be some sort of fucked up joke, because there was no way Bradley Bradshaw had feelings for you. Not in the same way you felt about him. “Bradley, that’s not funny.” 

“I’m not trying to be.” He insisted, shaking his head. “I mean it. I saw you from the side window, him walking you up to the step, and when I saw him kiss you, I just—there was this feeling…like I’d been kicked in the chest. And when I see you, every morning, every night, every day, I feel like I—” 

“Stop.” You whispered, barely audible. Bradley’s voice died mid-sentence, brows knitting together at the sight of your seemingly pained expression. “What are you doing? What do you want from me, Bradley?” 

“I want you. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. All I still want.” 

You didn’t reply for a scarily long time, and when you did, your voice shook. “If you cared about me like you say you do, you wouldn’t have done what you did earlier.” 

Bradley’s stomach dropped, tendrils of guilt creeping their way up the back of his neck like vines. He hadn’t even thought of it that way. He’d been so preoccupied with his feelings, he hadn’t even stopped to consider yours. From your perspective, Bradley was doing this all out of spite. (Which wasn’t at all true, but things weren’t looking too good for him.)

“It was stupid. A mistake, I know. One I’ll try my damndest to amend.” He insisted, reaching out with a reassuring hand on top of yours.

The moment his hand touched you, you stiffened. Didn’t pull away, didn’t retreat like you’d been burned, but it had the same effect. Oh, he’d definitely fucked up. You’d never reacted to him like that before, never had any reason to. Now you did, and the reason for it was entirely his own doing. 

“I think you should leave.” 

“...The apartment?” 

Your shoulders crept up to your ears, dropping in a haphazard shrug. “No. I don’t know, just—let me be alone right now?” 

He murmured out a soft okay, rising from his seat. He knew when to leave things be. Or he did now, at least. 

What he really wanted to do was to reach out as he passed you, to hold your hand or brush along your cheek or something, anything, to make you understand that he hadn’t told you to hurt you. But he didn’t, because he knew it would only make things worse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen, I—yeah, I’m just…sorry.” 

You didn’t respond, just kept your eyes trained on your socked feet like they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. It made his guilt grow a thousandfold. He lingered at the threshold of the room a moment, hoping you’d garner one last glance at him and see just how sorry he was. 

You didn’t. 

Bradley let the door click shut behind him on his way out. He let out the biggest, heaving sigh, letting his head tip down towards his chest, because seriously, he was such an asshole.

He’d never been good at the whole “talking about his feelings” thing, and it was clearly showing, bleeding into his words and actions as if it were some sort of excuse for him to be acting the way he did. 

He hated how it made you feel like he was trying to sabotage your love life. It had never been his intention, but intentions didn’t matter in this situation.

How could he even begin to try and make this better? Would you even let him have the chance? 

follow @katsu-library to be notified when i post new fics :)

[yuri-is-online]

Love and Deepspace Timeline: Xavier

This is all speculation and should not be taken as fact, I have made a previous post about Zayne, but as stated there I do not have the necessary cards to make one for Rafayel and will direct you to this post by u/joonmin on the love and deepspace subreddit. This post is being made before I have managed to complete the Myths date (as soon as I hit level 55 it is over for you hos) and will be updated at some point once I have finished it, but I think I have enough information to explain Xav's overall timeline and hopefully clear up a few things for people missing his cards.

I have included a TL;DR at the end of the post for people who don't want to get lost in the weeds of theorizing.

Some information from that post about Zayne will be re-hashed here to help provide context about the game's setting. SPOILERS FOR ALL IN GAME CONTENT UP TO CHAPTER 8, VARIOUS MOMENTS, AND ANECDOTES, PROCEED WITH CARE.

Current Timeline

The current timeline where the main story of LAD takes place is set in the year 2048 in a place called Linkon City. We are told that the Deepspace Tunnel opened 14 years prior and that is when wanderers started invading earth. There is a lack of understanding about why this has happened, and it has sparked an interest in space exploration in the hopes of finding a solution.

The Hunters Association is sort of like an adventurers guild? It's supervised by the government, and is sort of split between Hunters like MC and researchers attempting to understand what makes the wanderers tick.

This includes researching protocores, currently the only thing the hunter's association knows for sure is that they contain a great deal of energy, and that they can cause disease in humans based off of which category the protocore falls into. This is confirmed the be what is wrong with MC, and appears to be a problem all versions of her share.

The events immediately following the opening of the Deepspace Tunnel are referred to as the Catastrophe due to the amount of destruction caused by the influx of wanderers. This is what birthed the N109 Zone. According to the in game Spacepedia, it is surrounded by various other "no-hunt" zones, which it further clarifies as being places with "a chaotic Protofield and frequent Wanderer appearances," i.e. really dangerous places for people to live let alone go to. Civilians are outright banned and hunters need special permission to enter because of just how dangerous these places are considered to be.

Unlike Zayne and Rafayel, Xavier does not have an alternate self yet. The versions of him in his myths card and all of his anecdotes are all the same person, just at various points in his long life. The technicality of this is addressed in one of the shareable posts: Immortality No Longer A Dream! The article goes into detail about how a new biotech company using protocores to regenerate the heart. You can share this article with each of the three boys, who have different types of reactions, but Xavier's is not one of surprise or skepticism, but of acceptance. The article itself talks about immortality as something everyone will one day be able to accomplish, but Xavier disagrees.

Xavier's first two anecdotes, A Special Vacation and Passing By, both establish how exactly he has been living his life on earth since his arrival. We learn that he has been doing his best to keep a low profile by moving between various jobs and tries to avoid making friends. As mentioned by @exactlycleverpirate in the replies of this post (who has made their own timeline you can check out here) "Xavier says he has been on Earth for 214 years, and that this will be his last. That means he arrived in 1834. We also see in one of his Tender Moments, that he rented a book from the library 30 years ago. So he has definitely been on Earth longer than the Deepspace tunnel has been around." Chapter 8 ends tells us that soon Earth and Philos will be in alignment for the first time in billions of years, which is likely why Xavier says this year will be his last, but I am unclear about what exactly that will cause.

We learn that there are other immortals from the same place as Xavier living in Linkon City, and that some of the see him as a traitor. We can assume that many of these immortals are involved with Onychinus due to Xavier's knowledge of and interest in their organization.

It's not clear how or when Xavier chose to start working as a Deepspace Hunter, but the other jobs he's taken all seem to be related to the military/evol combat. He is also very keen on fighting wanderers, so being a hunter is a good way for him to hide in plain sight. Which is what he has been trying to do.

His Precious Bonfire date suggests he has been a hunter longer than MC and has a reputation of not participating in team events. He has the highest level of access to the Hunters Association database and seems to have a good working relationship with Jenna, who seems content to let him do his own thing. She also attempted to assign MC as his partner, in part seemingly because she wants to protect MC's evol.

There is of course also the concept of Lumiere, a legendary hunter who appears during the catastrophe caused by the Deepspace Tunnel and wreaked any wanderer he came across. He has a light evol, a giant bounty on his head, and looks exactly like Xavier when we see his wanted poster in Chapter 8. While MC might have her doubts, since we the reader know Xavier is immortal, it's not much of a jump to say these two hunters are the same person.

Chapter 8 gives us more detailed look at the exact dynamics these immortals have with each other, but I think it makes sense to talk about Xavier's origins first so we know where he is coming from.

Philos Timeline

As I said on my other post, all of the Myths cards take place on the planet of Philos. In the present timeline, Philos is no longer a planet, just a lonely core floating in deepspace at the other end of the deepspace tunnel. In Xavier's third anecdote, When Shooting Stars Fall, we finally learn what Philos is: it's Earth. An Earth that has been reborn by substituting the planet's old core with an artificial one and with a different name.

Now this anecdote takes place in the year 214, which is explained to us as meaning 214 years has passed since Earth was destroyed and reborn as Philos. How does that make sense if we are currently on a very much alive earth with a very dead Philos on the other end of the Deepspace Tunnel? No clue, but I think that's going to be one of the main focuses of the story. Something had to happen to Earth to make it become Philos, and then something happened to Philos to make it uninhabitable. Given what we know, both are likely related to wanderers.

I also want to briefly mention that in Rafayel's myths card, it is mentioned that the sea is missing so the Lemurians have no home. Based off of MC's description of the weather and how "fragmented landmasses" are being held together, I wonder if the re-birth of Earth as Philos is what caused the seas to dry up? And if so what role did MC have in the creation of Philos if any?

This anecdote is from the pov of MC who is studying at a school she simply refers to as "The Academy." It is unclear if this is the same school as she and Xavier are attending in his Lightseeker cards, but based off the uniform he wears and the sword he carries I think this is likely meant to be a highschool of some sort, and the Astria Knyght Academy is a form of military school equivalent to a college.

Xavier's words about immortality being a privilege come into play here as we learn something about MC: she always seems to have heart problems, specifically she always seems to have Protocore Syndrome, the exact same disease she currently has. In this anecdote she explains it as being a birth defect that has only one cure, a special protocore. One that supposedly can cure any illness.

Protocore disease prevents the patient from living forever, something Xavier finds very hard to accept. He abandons MC for a month without telling her where he is going to try and find this Protocore that she needs to live, but comes back too late. By the time he finds her, the core can't save her and he holds her as she dies. She asks if he thinks they will meet in her next life and he promises to always wait for her.

We know current timeline MC has shards of an Aether core in her heart, and that her heart is currently stable. While the anecdote does not outright say that the cure to Protocore Syndrome is an Aether core, Xavier's knowledge of them and his emotions when MC brings them up to him makes me think it probably is. Currently we do not know how an Aether core can be obtained, other than (assuming that is what he brought MC) Xavier was injured getting one. The MC here says she is unable to live for more that a century, something that has changed in her next re-incarnation but we don't know why.

When MC re-incarnates she is brought under the tutelage of the Grandis Knight, the personal knight and retainer to the King of Philos. Xavier is the Crown Prince of Philos, and is also studying under swordplay under the Grandis Knight. She has no memories of Xaveir, who does not tell her about their shared past despite holding on to the gift she made for him: a star sword tassel. This doesn't seem to bother him as much as you might expect, he mostly just seems happy to have her alive again.

She is stupid jealous of that tassel because Xavier openly admits to being in love with the girl who gave it to him. But he also speaks about her and the MC in the same sentence if that makes any sense? He sees both versions of her as her, and just as he promised he intends to wait for her so they can be together.

Xavier is an interesting character (to me anyway) because he has a pretty clear arc to his attitude towards his relationship with MC as he ages. He starts off as being shy in the third anecdote, then he moves to being openly teasing and affectionate (outright asking to elope and saying things that make it sounds like they might have been betrothed) in his lightseeker cards, to how he is at the end of his myths date and currently with MC: restrained in his interactions with her but unable to completely keep himself away. Why he has become restrained, why he thinks he needs to distance himself from MC is unclear. What is clear is that he has no interest in taking the throne from his father, a man he actively hates and does not seem to see eye to eye with. While their relationship seems to have always been tense, the breaking point is during Xavier's Gladius Ceremony.

The Gladius Ceremony is a sort of coming of age ceremony where the heir proves their ability to ascend the throne by killing a wanderer with nothing but their lightblade. Something happened during that trial that Xavier does not want to talk about and MC mentions he has "changed" since then. Like he left part of himself behind????

As an interesting note this trial takes place in a forest, a sentient forest much like No-Hunt Zone 7 in chapter three.

Xavier says he cannot be the man his father wants. What his father wants is not clear, but I personally think it has something to do with what wanderers are as Xavier seems to have a degree of sympathy towards them if they show a degree of sentience. It also might have something to do with how Philos was made, as both MC and Xavier acknowledge that the planet is dying.

The MC mentions that Xavier leaves her a lot but always comes back within a specified time frame. He goes on expeditions into Deepspace, but never tells MC what he is looking for and we as a reader do not learn. He does, however, mention finding a newborn planet filled with flowers and offers to take MC there if she will give up on being a knight. She is confused, as her entire life's purpose has been to be his knight, and doesn't fully comprehend a world where Xavier isn't going to be king.

But the card story starts with MC being crowned Queen, with Xavier as her Grandis knight, so we know that's what will happen. So neither of them got what they wanted in the end.

The "Lightseeker" title of Xavier's card refers to a unit of knights that are commanded by the Crown Prince and answer only to the royal family. Their duty is to keep Philos safe from Wanderers, much like the modern day Hunter's Association. Both the MC and Xavier are training to become Lightseekers, and have a sort of rivalry for the spot. MC keeps beating Xavier when they spar but he seems to have the stronger Evol so they're quite equally matched. It's stupid cute how everyone but Jeremiah thinks they hate each other, speaking of which:

Jeremiah is a friend of MC's in the same class as her. He's also her wingman who keeps trying to help set her and Xavier up, something Xav doesn't seem fully aware of. He's stupid jealous of their friendship which Jeremiah seems to find really funny (he's the only one who knows how delulu they are for each other and seems to find a lot of enjoyment in teasing them.)

Jeremiah also ends up being a knight under MC's command after they graduate the academy. Xavier however... goes missing after a meeting with his father and does not reappear even after he dies. He is missing for a period of 200 years until MC finds him again in the same forest that his Galdius Ceremony took place in. He saves her from... something. An illusion? A cosmic vortex? Whatever it was Xavier has discovered something that affects the health of people's hearts. And he seems determined to not get close to MC or let MC get close to him because of it.

I think it might just be because she is about to die from her disease, which she doesn't seem aware she has but always does, and Xavier doesn't want to have to watch her die again. But I haven't finished the card yet so I don't know.

He also seems to be under the impression the whole world is going to end now, and not just Philos.

The last thing we need to take from all of this information about Philos is the existence of a group called the Backtrackers. Xavier was with them once, but he isn't anymore. MC was seemingly under their care and, according to his Passing By anecdote, traveled through the Deepspace Tunnel with them but was lost. I'll explain more about what I think about them now that we're ready to return to the present timeline, but just know that the Backtrackers are A) from the Philos timeline and B) likely immortal just like Xavier is.

Back to the Present

In Chapter 8 you are either introduced or re-introduced to Jeremiah, who now owns a flower shop called Philo, likely named after his home planet of Philos. He is a friend of Xavier's and they both share the same current goals, which includes protecting the MC. Jer's job in this chapter is to provide MC with a fake identity to use in the N109 zone, but he does provide us with some information to try and tie up some loose ends with Xavier's timeline.

While the Nonintervention principal he refers to probably does have something to do with MC, it also likely just refers the fact that since both Xavier and Jeremiah are from Philos and therefore the future they are trying not to interfere with the timeline too much. Something that whoever blew up MC's house does not care about anymore, implying that if that was indeed Onychinus then we can assume they likely are also immortals from Philos who want MC and her Aether core for something.

When MC finds Xavier again after his 200 year disappearing act he is leading a squad of Lightseekers from various units. I think these are probably the Backtrackers, and that there was a split in the group after the MC and the Aether core went missing during their journey into the Deepspace Tunnel. We know that at least Xavier has been here longer than the Deepspace Tunnel has been, but there is room for speculation around Jeremiah and the others. As Pirate again pointed out in the comments, whatever disaster during the travel the Backtrackers took into the Deepspace Tunnel likely caused them to arrive at a bunch of different points in time.

While this confirms that Xavier and Jeremiah are not from this timeline it raises a lot of questions about MC. Her memory is constantly spotty, and I had wondered if that had something to do with the Aether core... but now.

With the way Xavier tries to limit his interactions with her and says he's the last person who should be trying to get close to her I wonder if Xavier is worried MC is being erased from time? Or if she belongs to this timeline so while he loves her, while he wants to be the one she chooses, he subconsciously knows he's from a doomed timeline and therefore unable to stay with her. This also raises questions about the other two love interests; we know MC has forgotten things about Rafayel and I theorized she has forgotten something about Zayne. Is this because they also don't belong? Does MC not belong? Or is it something related to the trauma MC experienced from being experimented on?

TL;DR

This was all pretty complicated so I thought I would sum up the basic points because I felt a bit incoherent.

Xavier is the Crown Prince of Philos, a future version of Earth that was created by replacing Earth's core with a fake one.

This fake core allowed the citizens of Philos to live forever unless they had the rare heart condition know as Protocore Syndrome, something the MC always has no matter how many times she is reborn.

The cure to Protocore Syndrome is a rare Protocore that Xavier tries to get for her but gets back with too late. He watches her die and while he was already shown dislike seeing her injured, this seems to turn it into a genuine trauma of his. He is shown to be deeply distraught seeing her gravely injured or sick in multiple moments/dates and is determined to take care of her. In a rare decision by the writers, this does not appear to manifest itself as a desire to not see her engage in combat as he trusts her ability to take care of herself, just maybe not her willingness.

MC is reborn and begins military training with Xavier intending to become his knight, but Xavier refuses to take the throne of Philos for reasons he does not share with MC. He also begins disappearing for long periods of time on journeys into space. On one of these journeys he finds a young planet filled with flowers and attempts to convince MC to elope with him and abandon her dreams of being a knight. He seems uncertain if MC's desire to be with him is just because she has been told she is to be his knight or if it is because she genuinely loves him; Xavier knows which one he wants it to be though.

After talking with his father he disappears for 200 years and founds a group of knights investigating a forest with an unstable Protofeild where killed Wanderers simply don't stay dead. It is my theory that these are the Backtrackers mentioned by past MC, Jeremiah, and Xavier.

Xavier arrives in this current timeline in year 1834. Other immortals from Philos begin to arrive in the current timeline at different points and agree upon something they call the Nonintervention Principal, likely to keep from destroying the spacetime continuum too much. What they are refusing to intervene in is unclear.

The Backtrackers made a journey through the Deepspace Tunnel with future past MC and an Aether core, but something goes wrong and she disappears. Xavier has been waiting to see her again ever since he got here, and intends to wait forever.

There are more immortals than just Xavier and Jeremiah living in Current Timeline Linkon City, some of which are very likely allied with Onychinus and searching for the MC. Why is related to the Aether core in her heart, but might also have something to do with her Evol.

It is my personal belief that many of these citizens of Philos used to be in the Backtrackers, but even if they didn't they see Xavier as a traitor to his people and more importantly to them. Why is unclear, but I imagine it might be because of their goals for the MC and her Aether core. In a broader sense it might be because they intend to do something to current earth to save their home, and Xavier disagrees with that but the two things do not seem mutually exclusive.

Earth and Philos are about to be in very close alignment, and both Xavier and Jeremiah expect something bad to happen around that time.

Final Thoughts

I would be interested in knowing the direct Chinese translation of these particular lines from precious bonfire to see if there is any difference to them... but honestly this is one of the things that sold me on him. She dies and he follows the traces of her light until he finds her again, and he tries to keep her alive but he fails and so he follows her again.

I saw at least one post wondering of Xavier will betray MC and rip the Aether core out of her heart, and I want to clear that up here. I understand why people might think this if they haven't read any of his anecdotes but no, that's not going to happen unless it's the only way to save MC's life. Xavier very much wants to keep MC alive, his efforts to distance himself and withhold information from her are always done to serve that goal.

Rafayel is the one who has a pretty good reason to want to cut out MC's heart, not Xavier. And I do mean good reason I don't really hate him for it and am not trying to imply he's a bad character or a bad romance option for it.

One of Xavier's immortal friends is name Noah. There is always a chance that this is a coincidence, but there's a part of me that wonders if he shares the same name as Dr Noah because they are the same person. The anecdote he appears in involves Xavier getting him a new identity so I don't think they're likely to be related.

I actually really like MC , Xavier, and Jeremiah's friendship and sort of hope it gets some focus in some small way in the future. Jer and Xav had to have bonded over losing MC, not to mention Jeremiah spent 200 years fighting Wanderers with MC under her command. She talks about him as being her best friend!!! I want to see more of him!!! (if he doesn't have a partner and if I can't have Tara x Jenna I should be allowed Tara x Jeremiah)

I'm worried there might be a plot point that involves Xavier dying in the future and then maybe we get to meet a different timeline version of him and end up on the opposite side of the "can't tell this ghost wearing your face how I really feel" spectrum.

Speaking of which I like how Xav seems to respect MC's current life and doesn't expect her to be a carbon copy of her past selves. It's nice (stares at critically acclaimed mmorpg villain Emet Selch)

Anyway that's it. I'll update the post when I finish the Myths card, which I fully expect to make me cry like a baby. If anything confused you my askbox is open, just because I write for twst doesn't mean I am not open to talking about this if I made mistakes or if you feel like any of this was unclear.

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Drabble-A-Thon Prompt #15

Pairing: ShigaDabi

Rating: Explicit

Prompt: Freestyle!

Contents: Makeouts, Cumming in Pants, Premature Ejaculation, Domestic Terrorism is a great date plan for your arsonist boyfriend, Dirty Talk

Tomura isn’t sure that he ever expected to be in this position. He didn’t expect his teacher to get captured and have them sent away. He didn’t expect to end up remembering who he was before he was Tomura Shigaraki. He certainly didn’t expect to find six people in the world that he not only doesn’t hate, but that he wants to see have good lives after they’ve helped him win their war. He absolutely did not expect to find himself falling for one of them. But after his prosthetic fingers are on, and his foot is healed and out of his cast, he decides that he wants to see where else that can go. 

He doesn’t think that Dabi expected it either when he pauses them once they’ve finished their work for the day and asks, “Will you go on a date with me?” Because the arsonist stares at him, his thumb lit and halfway to the cigarette in his mouth, but definitely not actually doing anything with the flame. And he doesn’t move for a solid minute. He doesn’t move until Tomura closes the space between them and wraps three fingers around his wrist and pulls his hand to the end of the cig to help him light it.

He thinks that the other is going to say ‘no’ and maybe tell him to fuck off, but after another second, and a drag of smoke into his lungs, Dabi finds his composure again far too late to not have endeared Tomura even more to him, and says, “Fuck it, why not?” He shrugs and turns to leave. “You better think of something good, Duster. I don’t have time to waste.” 

Dabi is always running towards something no matter how lazy and laid back he pretends to be, but Tomura is pleased with this development and feels like he’s vibrating a bit as he watches him go. He’ll think of something good. He’ll make the other man slow down and be worth it for him.

///

They can’t go just anywhere, but Tomura does plan a good date for them. He grills Twice and Toga, the two who have been consistently closest to Dabi, and finds out that he’s particularly annoyed about his continuing mission with Hawks and that he’s been wanting to piss off the bird badly enough he forgets his mission and avoids him for a while. So he has them teleported all around Fukuoka, letting Dabi torch places, before they end up in Esuha where they get some street food, make it into a bar for long enough for Dabi to swipe two bottles of alcohol, before that place is burning too and they’re stumbling as they cough out the last of the teleportation gunk as they end up back on the roof of the villa. He doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Dabi smiling and laughing like this before, and he’s not sure if his chest has ever felt so warm either. 

They make it back downstairs, into his office instead of a bedroom because he doesn’t want to be presumptuous, sharing the awful bottle of gin and whisky that Dabi managed to snatch as they go. 

They’re about halfway through the bottles, and Tomura is definitely feeling it, knowing that his slowed metabolism will have him absolutely wasted when he passes out tonight and that he’ll be hung over well into the morning if not to the afternoon, before Dabi sets his aside so that he can move. Tomura doesn’t expect him to climb right into his lap, but he’s certainly not complaining, especially not when Dabi doesn’t even flinch as he wraps his hands around his hips, careful not to hurt him, and tilts his head up. Their kiss taste like alcohol and smoke, and he finds out how his scars and staples feel against his tongue as he completely forgets that a first kiss probably shouldn’t so blatantly tell Dabi how badly he’s wanted to fuck him for the past few months, but he can’t help it. Besides, Dabi doesn’t seem to be complaining as he tangles his hands in his hair and moans into his mouth. The other man hasn’t even used his quirk, but that might as well light him on fire. 

Tomura gives him kiss after kiss, trying to map out every section of his mouth, his hands moving up along Dabi’s sides, stroking his skin through his thin shirt, finding the places that make Dabi gasp. He thrills to feel the other man grinding into his lap after just a few, another little moan coming out of him. When Dabi starts to push his hands up under his shirt and spread his legs wider so he can rock himself into his lap, when he feels that he’s starting to get hard, Tomura puts aside any thoughts of being particularly gentlemanly. They are both a little too inebriated for him to feel comfortable fucking him tonight without having talked about that, but he’s more than happy to let their makeout get hotter and heavier. 

“Fuck, Dabi,” he groans against his lips, his hands going down to cup Dabi’s ass, squeezing him tight and pulling him so he can make him grind down harder against his body. “Never thought you would be so sensitive– or so eager. Were you just waiting for this, baby boy? Just wanted me to give you my attention?” It is a hell of an ego boost when Dabi lets out a sweet little moan as his face flushes and he tries to kiss him again to shut him up and hide how cute his expression is. 

Tomura allows the kiss, but he keeps their hips moving together. Dabi’s cock feels good against his, even through their clothes, though there’s a strange texture to his that makes him wonder if he’s stapled there too. It doesn’t matter. He’ll happily learn how to stroke and suck at him if it means he can keep feeling how his body gets hotter as he’s touched. He moves along his neck, licking and nibbling at his scars and earning a more frantic twitch of Dabi’s hips against him. 

“Fuck, you’re so cute. All that attitude and it just takes one date for you to be humping my leg like a needy little whore?” It’s not a line that he would use on anyone but Dabi, because he knows that Dabi has the biggest attitude on the planet, and he has a very, very strong suspicion that he’ll like that being prodded at like this. 

He’s proven right when he gets a weak growl out of him, “Shut up,” but he can’t even stop the movements, instead pulling at his hair to get him to keep kissing his skin. 

Tomura laughs against it instead. “You’re so easy, baby boy. Let you cut loose a little, and you can’t contain yourself. I bet you could cum in your pants just like this. I don’t even need to touch your pretty cock. I bet you’re going to have to be trained to take my cock, because otherwise you’re just going to cum all over yourself as soon as I start to push in–” 

He’s not sure if he expected the words to have Dabi moaning loudly, an embarrassed, whiny tone in it as his rhythm falters and his body shudders as he cums. Tomura’s mind turns to white noise for a moment as Dabi gasps and trembles, his face burning. 

He only gets his brain to stop buffering when he sees that Dabi is starting to tense with his embarrassment, and he doesn’t want him to pull away, not when–

“Oh, precious,” he coos at him, catching him in another kiss, just as hot as all the ones before it, but slower and deeper, teasing him as much with the feeling as with his next words, “You needed it that much? Baby, you should have told me sooner. I would have taken care of you, sweetheart.” 

“Shut up, Duster,” he’s still blushing hot, but he doesn’t feel like he’s about to pull out of his lap. “...It’s been a while.” 

“That’s okay, firefly. I’ll give you as many as your body can take. At least one every day until you can hold out while I’m touching you. Going to see how many times I can get you to ruin your pants before you can take my cock without falling apart immediately.” He teases. But he wants that. He’s perfectly happy to have Dabi be so needy and oversensitive, and even when he’s not able to cum so quickly, he’s going to work him over the edge over and over again until he’s crying from it. He’ll look so cute completely at his mercy. 

“You’re a fucking pervert, and I should have never said ‘yes’.” He doesn’t mean it though, because he immediately leans in and kisses him hard again, nipping at his lips as punishment for his teasing that does nothing to cool the heat in his veins. “You better be able to live up to those words,” he tries to growl, “And you can start by fucking me over your desk.” 

“Nothing would make me happier, baby boy, but I don’t have any lube down here, and I don’t want to hurt you–” 

Any other protest dies on his tongue quickly when Dabi reaches into his back pocket and smacks two packs of lube into his hand. “Got a condom too, but I’m really hoping you’re clean.” 

He doesn’t think he really has to worry about how much they’ve had to drink if Dabi was ready for the night to go this way since before they left. All he needs to worry about is making his firefly feel good. 

It’s definitely not a position he expected to be in, but he can’t say he doesn’t feel extremely privileged as he finds himself in it. 

Thanks so much for your participation! If you want to join in, there are two hours left to get in a prompt! Check out my Ko-Fi here! 

[myfandomrealitea]

Your post regarding specifc places for things and some places dont need a vent channel it helped me realise that the people i follow online were damaging to my health. They were constantly sharing real people who died horrifically and saying things like "if you dont share you're supporting violence " while i only joined social media to view art.

I actively speak about real life events offline with my family, we always talk about whats happening in the world once a week and mention anything new within the local and worldwide news. I didn't understand why social media was worsening my mental health around these topics since i could speak about it in real life with my family. i assumed i was horrible for simply not wanting to see it online, When your post about a safe space came up i realised why it made me feel so bad, the artists i followed no longer were posting art and were just constantly sharing news daily about horrific events. It became inescapable and i was unknownly doomscrolling for hours on social media while hoping to see art (that just made me feel bad viewing after seeing so much death) , my only escape was going offline. I already made new accounts just for art and Im so thankful for your post since i did avoid everything that was about real world events since the account is only for art and i feel so much more.. i guess happier.. but definitely more mentally healthy if that makes sense? It felt like my mind was drained or foggy when scrolling through social media, and i wasnt actually paying attention before but now its a lot more, clear, healthy and positive. Im able to think properly and actually pay attention and appreciate the good things online

I'm so glad I was able to help you on your journey to bettering your wellbeing. Its an aspect of why I run this blog and talk about the things that I do.

So very often people don't actually register or realize what parts of their lives are causing stress. They attribute it to 'working too much' or 'not sleeping enough' without realizing that there are direct causes for things like not sleeping enough. And I'm not saying every single part of life comes back to activism, but very often we don't even realize how much negativity and forced awareness we're exposing ourselves to.

I used to religiously follow accounts on Instagram which posted about animal abuse. Other than a handful of celebrities my Instagram feed would be the most graphic videos you could imagine of people hacking into live dogs with axes, boiling cats alive in huge vats of water, jockeys tearing at horse's mouths until their teeth were loose and they were leaving a trail of blood as they walked the winner's circle.

I used to think if I wasn't constantly forcing myself to acknowledge that these things were happening, if I wasn't constantly reminding myself the extent at which these things happen, I was a bad person. I wasn't a real animal lover. If I truly loved animals why wasn't I sharing these videos? Why wasn't I sitting there with thousands of other people acknowledging what animals go through while I sit comfy at home doing nothing?

It got the point where I'd be throwing up constantly, I refused to sleep because I was terrified of the nightmares and my hands would shake as I opened up the Instagram app because I dreaded what I'd see today.

It wasn't helping me. It wasn't helping the animals. I'm just as aware now of what animals go through without having to see any of it.

But now, I have the wellbeing to actually devote myself to meaningful activism. Not just tormenting myself to no outcome. Now, I have the willpower and the energy to sign petitions and do research and take steps in my own life to better the welfare of the animals in my care.

Now I can sleep at night and wake up well-rested with the energy and the motivation to do things both for myself and for other people. Now, I can scroll Instagram and leave polite, correctional comments on misguided videos about animals. Now I have the knowledge to devote my attention and my efforts to where it actually makes a difference and changes animal's lives.

It is such, such a hard thing to drag yourself out of. We're so conditioned into thinking suffering shared is suffering lessened. We're so conditioned into believing that by spamming words anywhere we can we are the direct cause of change.

Its a hell of a learning climb. A steep one. But I genuinely believe the world would be better off for learning and changing as we both had the courage to.

[melonteee]

Zoro’s “she’s a woman” is also very funny to me, but after re-reading Skypeia I *think* I understand the vision behind it, even if the execution might’ve been clumsy.

Back in Jaya when Robin and Zoro are searching for the South Bird, there’s a brief scene where Robin criticizes Zoro for indiscriminately cutting down random critters, to which Zoro retorts that it’s the critters’ fault for getting in his way before reiterating his distrust for her. Despite this distrust, however, Zoro does seem to take Robin’s criticisms to heart as he stops uses the bladed end of his sword on critters in Jaya and mostly avoids using his swords on animals in Skypeia.

Which also creates an interesting parallel to Enel, who shares a very similar opinion to the one Zoro held in Jaya. Hell, some translations of Zoro’s response to Robin have it along the lines of “it’s their fault for challenging me” which is almost verbatim what Enel says in the arc about his “lambs.” And despite Enel insisting that he is an Equal Opportunity Vengeful God, there are scenes before the ones with Robin where Enel’s treatment of women is framed as predatory, in a way that also parallels how the Celestial Dragons are portrayed as treating women later, which also colors the way that Enel specifically attacks Robin also being predatory and motivated by misogyny. So I *think* Oda’s intent for Zoro was seeing his past attitude in Jaya reflected back at him and ultimately realizing that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you *should* while also using the scene to comment on how god complex’s are often used as covers for bigotry.

But, even so, Zoro’s line is a clumsy summary if that’s the case. The Doylist explanation is that Oda has always struggled when it comes to threading the needle that is “how to convey female fighters are as strong and capable as the male fighters without also inadvertently endorsing real life gender-based violence” and sometimes this results in clumsy lines like Zoro’s. But my personal Watsonian head-canon is that the Plinko Horse in Zoro’s brain didn’t fire up fast enough to coherently summarize 45 chapters of character development, which results in him spitting out what sounds like a complete non-sequitur.

I respect this but my interpretation of it was Zoro does have an internalised misogyny, which is proven to us in Punk Hazard. He admits he doesn't like to nor wants to fight women to Tashigi, and Monet backs him against a wall because of it. He thinks it's dishonourable to target women as a man, and considering his dojo dad was from Wano, and he was raised with Wano ideals, AND he was raised in an all male dojo, it makes tons of sense.

I know a lot of people are confused about this because of Kuina, but his mentor said TO HIS FACE "I am a woman, you are a man. You will be stronger than me." How in the world would Zoro, at his baby age, not internalise that in some twisted way? Especially coming from the person he looked up to. It feels like it's commentary on the fact misogyny is taught, it's not just a natural born thing, and it ruins ones own perception of self and lives around them.

Zoro was quite literally raised in a male dominated space, where ONLY men were trained and told they were the strongest - it has been programmed into him. The thing is, this is written to be a NEGATIVE thing. This isn't me pointing at Zoro and calling him a piece of shit, this is me saying it's a FLAW Zoro has, and it's clearly one he must get over. The strongest swordsman in the world can literally not afford to look down on women as weaker, because I HIGHLY doubt Mihawk does that. Tashigi calls him out for it, and it's very obvious this is an internalised issue Zoro doesn't LIKE that he has.

Why in the world would Oda make Wano openly sexist towards its women, refusing to let them fight, and THEN reveal Kuina's family is quite literally FROM this country - hence WHY Kuina's dad was so insanely sexist. Of course this is going to become commentary on Zoro having to overcome taught beliefs, especially considering Zoro is one of the few Strawhats who has never actually fought a woman. Not only did he not actually touch nor fight Monet (he just scared the shit out of her), but he also took zero shots at Big Mum on the rooftop lmao. He fought her homies but not her, physically - not even once. There's clearly something going on there, and it's Zoro (and Sanji) specific, cause literally NO other male strawhat has a problem fighting women or seeing women on the battlefield (once again, apart from Sanji, and that's possibly a parallel).

I say that last part because yes Oda has sexism in his writing, but every time I hear Zoro's 'woman' line is just Oda being Oda, I want to tear my hair out. Otherwise EVERY male character would act like Zoro towards women, and they quite literally do not LMAO

I don't know why this is the hot take it seems to be, because I LOVE Zoro, but it's clear there's something going on with him in regards to internal prejudice. I think it's because, as a Sanji fan, there's an irony to saying all this lmao. But of course, I do not mean for any of this to be negative, because I am excited to see if this side of Zoro actually gets explored. Ie Zoro defeats misogyny and sexism HAHA

[se-agapo-skywalker]

Silence at the Cliffs of Dawn

Celebrating one year of the blog 🥳

CW: age gap (dilf!Luke Skywalker), finger (cybernetic) sucking, oral sex (f! and m! receiving; blowjob/face sitting/69ing)

WC: 3.5k

"...All I ever do is make myself unlikable. You know that," Luke says, "Why do you even bother staying?"

The two of you are laying down in his bed, pressed together tightly to avoid accidentally pushing the other off the already small space--how you managed to convince Luke to let you sleep with him, you have no idea... Of course, you did sleep with him. Your current state of undress is evidence of that; in a move showcasing a rare display of his kindness, he allowed you to hog the majority of the blanket while he chose to rely on the warmth of his nightclothes.

Propping your head up on the pillow, you look at Luke and frown.

"I don't think you do it on purpose... for the most part, anyway," you tease. He raises an unamused eyebrow at you, before shaking his head and letting out a quiet almost-laugh.

"I can't even tell anymore. I guess I've really grown into it."

You fall silent for a moment. "What were you like? Before... When you were a Jedi?"

More silence. The rain outside is just starting to clear up, you notice, but it's still dark out. Luke's features are too dim to fully discern, but even then, you can notice the pain in his eyes... the conflict.

Strangely enough, he laughs. An actual laugh.

"...I looked a lot nicer. Dignified, you know? Not like some hobo hermit living in the middle of nowhere." He sighs. "In all seriousness, though... things were different. I can barely even recognize who I am now, nor can I the man I was before."

"Let me guess..." you smile, trying to picture a younger version of the greying man before you. You've seen the old propaganda posters--shockingly handsome ones, portraying him as the gorgeous golden boy of the Rebellion. "Plenty of admirers? Paramours, even?"

Luke shakes his head with something akin to embarrassment. "People certainly tried, but... that life wasn't for me."

Intrigued, you decide to press even further. "Well, what was? The daring pilot with a life full of adventure, or the wise, contemplative Jedi who liberated entire planets with the wave of his hand?"

"I did my fair share of both, but the truth is far more complicated than that. For a while, I did chase the feeling of being a hero..." His gaze grows distant. Regretful. "But it was all in vain. The people you save get killed. The things you build get destroyed. This galaxy, everything in it, it's all... temporary."

You sit up, blanket sliding off your nude form slightly and catching Luke's attention; as much as he tries to hide it, he can't help the way you affect him. For a moment, you smirk, but with the better view of his face you can see just how tormented he is.

"I mean, the galaxy isn't all that bad... it brought us together, right?"

"But it took so much in the process," Luke mutters in response.

"I-"

"Don't tell me it was worth it. It wasn't."

He moves over onto his back and covers his face with his left hand--hiding tears, no doubt. Tears he isn't yet ready to let you see.

"...The rain is over. You can leave if you wish."

"I'm not leaving," you say, maneuvering yourself over him. Luke peeks up at you through his fingers before you gently grab his hand and move it away from his face. "Not when you need me."

He exhales slowly, sadly, but he makes no move to shove you off him. With your other hand, you brush away the tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

"Let me take care of you, alright?"

Just as Luke instinctively opens his mouth to protest, he immediately concedes, settling back into the pillow. He's old, and he's tired, what use is it trying to fight you off? Besides, he wants this--needs it, he discovered at the onset of the rain--so the last thing he's going to do is stop you.

The room is silent, save for the sound of baited breath, as you finally lean over to kiss him. Using your free hand to stroke the fringe out of his eyes, other hand still holding his, you kiss the lines of his forehead, the bridge of his crooked nose, and finally his lips.

Luke doesn't think he's anything special; you think he's extraordinary. Not for being the hero of your dreams, but for being the man he truly is--as broken and as vulnerable as he may be, he's yours. And that's enough.

Despite the few times you've kissed him, you both take to it like a pikobi to water. You take the lead; his are quite shy, but by the time your lips meet, Luke noticeably relaxes beneath your touch.

His mechanical hand moves to your bare back, tracing the shape of your spine as you arch over him, the texture of the leather glove making you shiver. It moves from your back to your waist, slowly climbing toward your chest, where he graces your nipple with a firm pinch--not hard enough to hurt you, but enough to show his desire. Yes, Luke Skywalker desires you.

Although still sleeping, you can feel the stirrings beneath you as his arousal grows. You're fully awake, restless, hungry. Luke, on the other hand, needs a bit more time, time you're more than willing to give--you know the prize will be worth it.

"Master..." you purr, wiggling your hips slightly as he twitches at the sound of the nickname. "You've seen me. I haven't seen you yet."

"I-I'm nothing worth looking at..."

"You are to me."

Luke moves his cybernetic from the valley of your chest to cradle your face. You silently kiss the palm of his hand, mechanical fingers flexing within the leather, before taking the material between your teeth to pull it off.

"Wait-"

The leather doesn't catch on the metal; instead, it slips off like a raindrop sliding down the stone roof. Luke makes no move to halt its movement. The mechanical fingers are revealed to you, one by one, grey metal glinting in the slivers of moonlight streaming through the window.

"Beautiful..." you whisper, barely loud enough to be audible. But Luke hears you; if he were to respond, he's certain he'd just about cry.

Being linked to his nervous system, he has enough "feeling" in his cybernetic to control its movements and sense external stimuli, but without the synthskin, he can't truly feel. Hence why he barely uses it to touch you, let alone in a sexual context. All you have to do is show him he can.

In a swift motion you barely even stop to ponder, your tongue comes out to explore the metalwork; a metallic flavor--no surprise to you--accompanies the cold, and Luke refrains from flexing his fingers in your mouth.

Stars, he can't even register what you're doing, let alone why you're doing it. He watches you, blue eyes full blown to near-blackness as you suck on his fingers like they were a cock. Speaking of which, his throbs uncomfortably in the confines of his pants. Your movements in his lap feel incredible. Peeking down to look at your bare pussy grinding on him is enough to make him come... well, almost.

You, however, are not a fan of the cloth boundary between you; sure, it adds extra friction, but it's nowhere near as electric of a sensation as skin against skin. You've seen Luke's face, and his flesh hand, and his cock, but that's as far as you've gotten. Is he insecure about being old? It's not a problem to you, and he knows this, but you doubt he's fully internalized it. Being a (former) Jedi Master, you're sure he's covered in scars from the countless battles he's fought in... scars on his arms, his chest, his thighs-

"Y-yes," Luke pants out, seemingly reading your thoughts. "You can..." He can't even finish his sentence, flesh hand moving to grab your free hand and bring it to his clothes.

"Are you sure, Master?"

"Just do it already."

Delicately pulling his fingers out of your mouth, a thin line of spit connecting them to your lips, you pin Luke's right arm over his head, just like he did to yours earlier that night. He looks up at you with a mixture of surprise and arousal, a small smile of disbelief forming on his lips. You have plans--and you can't wait to show him.

The material of his sleep shirt is a rough wool of some kind, the cut of it a simple wrap-tunic similar to his Jedi robes. It gives you easy access to his chest; considering just how much Luke likes yours, you believe it's your turn to enjoy his. Ghosting your fingertips beneath the fabric, he shivers at your touch, and you raise an eyebrow at the texture you discover. Coarse, fuzzy, thick--you hadn't expected him to be just as hairy on his chest as he is on his face, but stars, you aren't complaining.

Luke is just about as red as a gundark by the time you pull his sleep shirt open. Of course, his embarrassment is no match for his stubbornness, which quickly bubbles up again to hide his discomfort. Typical Luke.

"Sure took you long enough."

"It did."

"Now what?"

"You'll see..."

Placing both of your palms flat on his chest, you lean over to kiss him once more; your mouth meets his, and then his neck, where you brand it with a startlingly red hickey. At the same time, you're scratching down his torso and tugging at the greying hairs.

Beneath the layer of fur is a web of tendril-like scars, stretching across his body like lightning. You can't help but wonder what dramatic battle between Jedi and Sith must have caused them... but stars, they're beautiful. You're determined to show him this.

Luke groans against your lips--if he had it his way, stars, he'd flip you over and pound you senseless. But no, he has already done that... and he's tired. Tired physically, tired mentally, tired of being in charge. For once, he'd like to experience what it means for someone to take care of him. Just once.

Taking care of yourself isn't even on your mind. Yes, you're horny beyond belief, skin on fire as you grind your dripping cunt against his still-clothed cock. Force, it isn't enough, it'll never be enough until you get the real thing. But... you want to try something different. You have a feeling he might want to as well.

"Where are you-" Luke begins to ask as you reluctantly pull yourself off him, only to be cut off by you running your fingers down his happy trail before shoving your hand down his pants. "Shavit, sweetheart!"

"Who are you calling sweetheart?" you smile, enjoying the thrill of feeling him before seeing him. His cock is hot and heavy in your palm, and much to your delight he neglected to wear any undergarments. As much as you enjoy the groans that escape his lips at the way you run your thumb over the already leaking tip, the devious part of you desires to tease him even more; removing your hand from his member, you move to squeeze his tightening balls.

"Fuck... fuck..." Luke moans. He's gripping the sheets with his cybernetic, flesh hand resting over the upper half of his face.

"Such language, Master... and such a light touch, too," you say, "I'm starting to worry you won't last for me."

When Luke finally manages to look out from under his hand, there's something strange in his eyes--lust, desire, conviction. To do what, you don't know.

"Sit on me."

"Are you sure? I don't think you're ready-"

"Not my cock. My face."

Now it's your turn to be surprised. All this teasing, all this bossing him around, yet he can't help but turn the tables and remind you who's in charge. That damn Skywalker is impossible to figure out, but you wouldn't have it any other way--in all honesty, that's why you're here. Why you stayed, even when he tried to push you away.

"Very well, Master... but I want a taste of you as well."

Before maneuvering to climb over him, you pull his trousers off his legs in one swift motion, his cock standing at full attention as it springs from its confines. Fuck, just the sight of it is enough to make you want to bounce on it until you're both sweaty and screaming. But not yet.

Your eyes are just keen enough to notice the way Luke blushes at you eyeing him up in the dim light. Stars, he is hairy--not that you're complaining, of course. You just didn't expect the wise old Jedi master to practically be a Wookiee beneath his clothes. He squirms a little under the intensity of your gaze, cock twitching in anticipation. A bead of precum glistens in the faint moonlight and dribbles down the veiny shaft... Licking your lips, you decide to do something about it.

Luke steadies you with his arms as you maneuver to climb over him. Soft apologies and awkward giggles are traded between the two of you as you try to figure out your bearings, metal hand accidentally pinching soft flesh and weight being distributed uncomfortably, but not painfully.

"I-I've never done this before," you breathe out, breaking your previously seductive demeanor.

"I wouldn't know where to begin," Luke's low voice chuckles, "but I think as long as you don't break my neck, we're doing it right."

Your current predicament involves you straddling his neck and facing his chest; you're bent over him, just barely hovering over his face, and his hands are gripping the soft flesh of your ass. The cybernetic in particular digs into your skin in a deliciously painful way, and you know it'll leave marks after--marks you'll wear with pride. Not that anyone other than him will be seeing them.

Luke quite enjoys the view he's getting--it takes practically all his willpower not to pull you down onto his face and go to town, damn the consequences (although a sprained neck at his age in the middle of nowhere is most certainly a bad idea). After having gotten a taste of your pussy before, he's insatiable; he'll do anything to get his fix.

Balancing your weight on your knees and your forearms, you lean forward to assess your target. The slight upward curve of his cock gives you easy access to it; licking down his happy trail, you nuzzle through wiry hairs before greeting his aching, impatient member. The Jedi Master may be able to hide his impatience beneath his actions and his demeanor, but, given his anatomy, his body can't.

Leaning forward, you greedily stick out your tongue to lap up the bead of precum already leaking out. It's... salty, and slightly bitter. You're still not sure about the taste, but it's him, so you want it.

Luke groans beneath you at the feeling of your tongue on him. The vibrations from his voice dance cruelly on your clit, the phantom of pleasure yet to come--before he finally grants you mercy and pulls you down onto his waiting lips.

The gasp that escapes your lips is muffled by you taking him in your mouth to gag yourself on his cock. He felt so massive when he was inside you, but like this... you almost can't handle it. Figuratively, and literally--you stop right before he hits the back of your throat, taking in just enough to really drive him wild without hurting yourself.

Luke drowns his moans in your soaking cunt, his noises and the movement of his hands beckoning you to start moving on his face.

Come on, sweetheart, his voice says in the back of your mind--another Jedi ability, you're sure. You won't hurt me.

Hips and mouth begin a slow, rhythmic pace on him. You can't help the way you tremble ever so slightly, unsure about the pressure of your movements or the depth of your strokes, but that anxiety becomes an afterthought as your senses dissolve into pure pleasure.

Luke fights the temptation to start bucking into your mouth--no, you've been far too good to him, you don't deserve to be treated in such a way. You're his angel, his saving grace, the being he isn't even worthy of touching (yet somehow is). Whatever he did to earn your affection, he wants to repay tenfold--you're his to use as you please.

He uses his tongue on you with as much fervor and hunger as he did earlier that night, if not even more. The taste of you on his lips lights a fire in the pit of his stomach and fully has him drunk on your essence. Reverently Luke alternates between fucking you with his tongue and swirling it around your clit, just as you alternate between sucking and stroking his shaft.

It's so wrong, a master and student behaving like this... Your cheeks flush at the utter indulgence of the act. Whatever afterlife the Jedi of old reside in, you can only hope they aren't witnessing your liaison.

Luke, however, doesn't give a fuck. He hasn't given one in quite some time--why should he live by the rules of the dead? That dogma nearly destroyed him. It ruined everything he ever cared about, everything he never allowed himself to truly love. No, "attachment" was forbidden. Anything that could become a pathway to the dark side was to be shunned.

Luke never understood how for so much of his Jedi training, so much of his life, his emotions were regarded as an inseparable part of him, passion and love he had harnessed to help countless others during the war. That all changed when he saved his father. He had defied Obi-Wan and Yoda's instruction to kill Anakin; therefore, his feelings were misguided, wrong. And it became his duty to suppress them.

But not anymore. He is no longer a Jedi, not in the way he was "meant" to be. He's just Luke, just a hermit, just an old man learning to love again--or, perhaps, learning to love for the very first time.

Luke's cock twitches and kicks in your mouth, threatening to spill at any moment. Teasingly, you pull him out of your mouth--earning a harsh groan into your cunt--to kiss the swollen, purple head.

"Oh, master..." you whisper, tracing his veins with your fingertips, "let go for me. I'm here, I'm ready."

A final squeeze of his balls urges him to finish on your tongue--and, capturing him in your mouth once more, he does. Spurts of hot liquid spill inside you, albeit in a different spot than before, and you choke slightly on the sheer load of it all. You're milking Luke for all he's worth, and he rewards you by practically breeding your mouth. Hips stutter and still as he calms down and starts to soften, so you slip him out of your mouth, gracing the overstimulated head with a final lick.

Your clit throbs at the taste of him cumming in your mouth, the knot forming within your belly signaling your own impending release. Beneath you, Luke is patiently at work drawing it out, exploring the depths of your sacred spot with his tongue. Now you're fully free to ride his face with reckless abandon--a task he encourages you to do with the guidance of his hands squeezing your thighs and groping your ass.

"Luke... Luke..." you moan, letting the sound freely escape your now unoccupied lips. No 'Master,' no titles or nicknames, just his name; his true name, the one he hasn't heard anyone call him in the past six years. If your senses are correct, coupled with the scratchy sensation of his beard, you can feel him smiling into you as he eats you out. He's positively making out with your cunt, kissing you just as he had kissed your other set of lips when you first came to him.

The orgasm that approaches is entirely unlike the one you experienced before; it approaches slowly, like a wave off the coast of the Temple Island, growing and growing in intensity before finally crashing against the shore. You buck your hips on his face, feeling the friction of his beard against your clit as you chase the delicious sensation bubbling beneath the surface.

Soon enough, Luke grants it; your Force bond burns white-hot as you tremble and come undone on his face, slicking his beard with juices he laps up as happily as a massiff. You're sure the cries that escape your lips are audible all the way in the Caretaker village. Luke chuckles beneath you, large hands--the ones that surely left bruises on your skin--coming up to help you slide off his face and into his lap.

Silence. No more rain. Just beyond the cliffs, the twin suns of Ahch-To begin to rise; much like the dawns of his youth, you imagine. You turn your gaze to your new lover's face as the first slivers of light stream through the opening of the window.

"That was..." you start, laughing breathlessly as you run your fingers through your hair.

Luke props himself up on his elbows, wiping his face with his flesh hand. A rare smile appears on his face.

"...Good. Very good."

[meltedbluecaterpillar]

Hello Absolute ♡

I'm sure you know who this is, but I would love to know your thoughts on Samatoki Aohitsugi from Hypnosis Mic 👉👈 Maybe any headcanons you have or anything like that? 🫣 ♡

Samatoki Aohitsugi Headcanons

A/N: Oh my sweet Alice. I do know you and I hold you close to my heart. I have a few actually. Some more adult in nature and some not. But I’ll give you the sweet ones for now. The more intimate ones… I’ll share later.

Nicotine and Dates;

Some people do not mind the scent of cigarettes. It all depends on the brand but the smell will cling to everything. Clothes and personal things. Even when you shower it’s as if the smell has become part of your skin. When you kiss the sweet taste of the burned tobacco is still there.

For a date, I think Samatoki will go out of his way to chew gum, get candy, and use nicotine patches to hide under his clothes. Even if you say you don’t mind, it’s a big bother in his eyes to stop your date so he can have a smoke. It feels… Impolite. Even if Samatoki looks rude and he’s quick to use his fist before his words he has manners (to an extent). He’s also more mature than some of the others in our cast. It wouldn’t upset him or his wallet if he went on a date with a sticky nicotine patch smacked on his shoulder where you couldn’t see it.

Driving Together;

Samatoki usually gets driven around due to his line of work. But when it comes to you he wants to be behind the wheel. He has a tendency to race through Yokohama when he’s alone (it’s fun!) but with you as his passenger he’s moving at a tortoise pace. To him it’s slow but when he sees you reaching for the safety bar he’s practically in slow motion…

He wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. He always cleans out his car when he knows he’s coming to pick you up from work/school/ect. So he dumps his ash tray, gets a fresh little tree to hang in his mirror, and he’s on his way. He tries to avoid smoking when you’re in the car just because it’s a confined space. He will crack a window and apologize, but usually he has so much fun he’s not even craving. That or he’s already started opening a canister of nicotine gum.

Bonus; I think when you get in he kisses your cheek and he asks about your day. Just as he reaches over to buckle your seatbelt for you. Yes you are capable, but he wants to do it for you. Samatoki is shockingly chivalrous despite his looks…

Arguments

I do not think Samatoki is someone who would raise his voice at his partner. A coworker or one of his unit members is a very different situation. When you become frustrated with him he becomes quiet, slightly tensing up and asking what the issue is. He usually doesn’t have interest in talking things out but this is very different.

The tenderness was something he learned while taking care of his younger sister. He isn’t as emotionless as his friends think. Just because it can be dangerous to show any form of softness with the life he lives. “I don’t get why you’re mad.” He never says this in a mean way. But because he wants to truly see the root of the issue you may be having between you.

Eventually you work things out and he says I’m sorry for whatever it could have been. Quietly wrapping his arms around you, asking if you forgive him. If you say yes, he might offer you something a little more intimate than a hug. If you say no, he’ll keep trying to earn your forgiveness.

[thisisthinprivilege]

How can I overcome internalized fatphobia? How can I not hate what I look like when I'm fat?

This is going to be a different process for everyone, so I'm not sure what will work for you. I will let you know what worked for me, and hopefully you find it helpful.

Deprogramming Step One: Coming to grips with having been programmed in the first place. Beauty standards change from age to age, they are not inborn as far as our research is able to conclude. There's perhaps a weak preference for facial symmetry, but that's about it. Weight-based beauty standards have not only varied wildly through human history, they vary in our very own era, between-cultures. Often what we believe we find beautiful has been programmed into us from a very early age. There's no conspiracy, it's simply how cultural preferences are transmitted within-culture: through the adults we look up to, media, and reinforced by peers. That's not to say deprogramming is a simple matter. It's very difficult. I wonder now, almost 15 years after starting my own journey to deprogram myself, whether who I find beautiful or attractive is rooted in beauty standards I saw reflected as a kid or teen.

Deprogramming Step Two: Define and avoid thin-centric messaging. A big part of this for me was controlling the media I consumed. I unsubscribed to cable, for instance, because of the intrusive and omnipresent weight loss ads. That was 15 years ago, but it's surprising how similar some streaming services/channels are in terms of ad length and intrusiveness these days. Unfortunately, tiktoks/reels aren't entirely controllable. Even though I don't consume weight loss or diet content, weight loss/diet tiktoks/reels pop up occasionally. Besides ads, you should also consider whether your magazines, books, movies, and shows over-focus on the stories of thin people, or demonize fat people. Obviously, stop watching exploitative shows that turn the lives of fat people into sideshows or sob stories. More controversially, you might want to temporarily unsubscribe or mute fat activist content. Fat activism is a highly stressful space where we confront the hatred of fat people explicitly. It's not great for deprogramming thin-centric messaging, because fat activists will be talking about thin-centric messaging from a critical perspective. Take a break, for a while.

Deprogramming Step Three: Exposure to fat-positive content. This is the fun part of the process, where you get a chance to rewrite the aesthetic coding in your brain! I suggest searching out fat models who wear the kind of clothing you like, fat role models who share your interests, fat positive videos showcasing fat people doing amazing things, fat positive art, fat positive fiction and movies, and so on. Fatshion is full of fat positivity. Be wary of "body positive" content, as it can still be subtly or explicitly fatphobic. I warn you, after a few months of exposure to a different aesthetic, thin-centric media is gonna look hella strange. You'll go to see some romcom-flavor-of-the-month movie and be like, "Where are all the fat people? Why is everyone super skinny?"

Deprogramming Step Four: From theory to practice. This step is about starting to wear the clothes you want to wear, being loud and proud to exist as a fat person in public, being romantically bolder if romance is your thing, being more assertive and confident in your body, traveling to the places you've always wanted to go, doing things you were holding back doing before, etc. You may need to dwell in Step Three for a while, or revisit it over and again, in order to complete Step Four. This doesn't mean becoming an activist. This means becoming your authentic self without fat-related qualms. Yes, you will still be constrained by the greater world around you. Traveling, going out to eat, dating, interviewing for jobs, even going to a fucking concert will present constraints and bigotries that smaller people (everything else held equal) don't have to face. But you can now see them as constraints placed on you, not as constraints you place on yourself or that are in any way deserved. Hopefully, you will be able to face them without it destroying your sense of self-worth.

Deprogramming Step Five: The authentic self...? We know that as fat people we are not morally or otherwise inferior to thin(ner) people. So what does it mean to leave our best and most authentic lives, as fat people? This is the human question, that all humans share with each other equally. We are connected to each other, each on our own grand journey to answer this question. When you are able to separate the sociocultural difficulty of being a fat person in a fat-hating society from your own life journey, you have one less barrier to manage in answering the great human question. At this stage, you'll feel calm and comfortable in your body, and surprised when people point out your fatness or treat you differently for it. They're distracted by false moral categories, while you have better things to do. Does anyone ever permanently dwell in this stage? Probably not. But I feel like this most of the time, now. It takes a lot to drag me back into the world where one of the worst things you can call another human is "fatty." I've got books to read and write, math to learn, art to create. A life to live, where my possibilities are not defined by the size of my body.

-ArteToLife

[darcytaylor]

I recently found your blog after hearing you mentioned on a discord I joined. I’m very glad I have. I’ve got very caught up in speculating the ship and it’s become draining and, I realise, unhealthy. After reading back over last few weeks, I’ve enjoyed your observations and insights, I have come to the realisation that we really don’t know anything for sure, it’s all speculation. And, as a fandom, perhaps avoiding certain realities by changing narratives. As a result, the fandom has become so whipped into a frenzy. So, it’s been a refreshing wake up call reading your blog.

Regarding Nicola and Luke, I have some thoughts I’d like to share ( for no other reasons than it feels a safe space to share and perhaps for others to read and acknowledge they’re normal human beings like us) I actually really feel for Nicola at the moment. She’s at an important stage in her life. A point where you may be thinking about where to go next and what you want for your life in the future. She’s a very giving, nurturing person, we can see she cares and supports her friends. My hope is that she has strong support back as her life is changing. She’s certainly in the spotlight and I think she’s at risk of overdoing things and burning out as she finds her way up. She’s appeared overwhelmed at times recently. This is my intuition.

re Luke, I hope he’s doing well. I’m very fond of him. He’s been very quiet and has had a lot of negativity on him for his life choices . I do think he’s made some unwise choices. Which. I think may have been impacted by the pressures of being a lead, perhaps personal pressure to change his outward appearance, a long term relationship break up, and then all the promotions. As an introvert, I feel this may have overwhelmed him? I also wonder if he’s afraid to take the next step ( like Nicola has) as it may impact the dynamics of friendships/relationship in terms of his and their own status ? It can be very hard to navigate higher achievements if you’re moving forward more quickly than the people in your life. There are always feelings involved from each side, both good and bad. So maybe it’s easier to stay lower key. Who knows? But I do feel , again, just from my own intuition, that there’s a lack of confidence behind decisions made, which is sad to think.

Thank you for reading if you’ve got this far. It has been quite cathartic to write it down before I take a step back, and remain hopeful for them finding true happiness, however that looks.

Sorry for the late response to this ask! I’m really glad you found my blog and that it’s given you a bit of a wake-up call with all the speculation going around. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in fandom drama, especially when narratives keep shifting and people start projecting their own feelings onto public figures.

I appreciate your insights about Nicola and Luke - just from reading your ask, I can see you have some empathy! Nicola is at a pivotal point in her life, and having solid support as she navigates these changes is incredibly important. It’s tough that she doesn’t live close to her family, but I know she views her friends in London as family because of that (she said that in an interview once). The pressures of being in the spotlight must be overwhelming, so I totally understand why you’d feel concerned for her well-being.

As for Luke, the pressure of being a lead is a lot to handle, especially for an introvert. Your intuition about his lack of confidence is an interesting take that I haven’t really considered, but I have wondered if he’s trying to figure out what kind of actor and celebrity he wants to be.

It’s definitely good to take a step back and process everything going on. It’s completely valid to care about their happiness while recognizing how wild their situations are. Here’s hoping they both find what they’re looking for in life, however that looks!

[punkrastination]

Lonely fag yells at antifa to step up their anti ableism and wear a damn mask. My contribution to PD La revue N° 7

Text translated under the cut

Antifa [soulève -untranslatable, play on the word which means both rise up and fuck] me

Historically more keen on political ardor than passion, from half a life of painstakingly performing femininity, and social anxiety only extinguished by the fire of rebellion, I came to anti fascism before coming to faggotery. Anti-ableism and the fight against rising eugenics in late stage capitalism followed this commitment naturally. My desire to form relationships with people who shared these values became a core part of my identity.

Because I know I will never fuck a fash, I will never get naked in front of a boss, will never put my heart in the hands of a cop. Why would it be any different with a cute left wing boy, unbothered with aligning himself with a rhetoric, practices and a general indifference worthy of the far right when it comes to COVID?

For some time I attempted the endeavor of the encounter. However I found myself helpless when confronted with the task of explaining to left wing people (often claiming to be antifascists) that it is important to avoid disabling your comrades (among others), and risking killing some of them, by not protecting yourself from a virus that promises exactly that. So I am left with solitude. Invisible in my masked visibility, the looks go right through me or worse, I find in them the familiar judgement, half badly hidden, that us deviants are used to receiving from unnerved heterocis eyes.

Activist solitude, which pushes me away from antifascism despite myself, because some are antifa only when it's easy, when it doesn't require you to shift your habits or make sacrifices. It stings to be deprived of community when we know how important it is in our lives on the margins, even more so in a period of rising fascism, massive instability, growing violence and exclusion. Even those who make some efforts on the subject do it begrudgingly, garbage accessibility that doesn't hold up more than 5 minutes, and that isn't conducive to meeting anyone I would be inclined to kiss.

Interpersonal solitude then, since neither activist spaces nor social gathering places are safe, and the people who frequent them live in a world where risks only concerns other people, vaguely ascertained as fragile, who can well stay home if they want to protect themselves.

So having barely stepped into the intimacy game, I see my options, already limited by my being trans, be obliterated by my values and my yearning for safety. After years of hesitation, I am finally on solid footing, ready for the experiences I was promised: community, solidarity, connection… They slip between my fingers like the years already gone. Meanwhile they all close their eyes, decide that the roulette is worth it, that I remind them too much of that reality they don't want, that a thousand times over they will take the risk over me, my masks, my tests, my vaccines and my figures, my fears, my hopes, my rage, my sour desire.

I wonder how things were at the very beginning of AIDS. I think of the Cassandras of the time, fighting against the state's deathly silence, and their peers who would say We can hardly just stop living. Hardly. To think you need to breathe to get it on. So you'd expect something else from faggots, used as they are to the government's minimizing lies about epidemics. But even grassroot community health groups are spineless or fully absent when it comes to covid. I look for solidarity in the crowds but no eyes meet mine. What antifa, mask clad when it comes to protests, will take my hand?

I'm left with hope in the fight, from my brethren in [autodéfense sanitaire, untranslated: grassroot covid arm reduction movement]: fags, trannies and crips held together with tape, rage and true solidarity. A minuscule grain of sand in the cogs of the neoliberal individualism eating up our communities.

Antifa fags who are ready to challenge the capitalist poison haunting every breath we take, join us.

[lightandfellowship]

Going over the KHDR Completion Commemorative Q&A

As requested by @starlightwayfinder a while back.

Taken from goldpanner's translation hosted on KHInsider.

Under the read more. I discuss some KHML trailer details in one of the sections.

Nomura saying that the installment was physically going over capacity makes me think that he's talking about the size of the app. As in, they fit as much data as they could onto the app's storage space before reaching a hard limit that couldn't be overcome, leading to them having to "cut the fat" as it were. Which I think would make sense given that (1. KHDR shares space with the KHUX side of the app; they're not two separate apps with two separate storage spaces and (2. both games are completely offline now and thus all the relevant data has to fit on the device itself and none of it can be "streamed" from a server (I assume.)

(Speaking from a very general understanding of how live-service mobile games work; take with a grain of salt...)

KHDR having connections to KHML is kind of a given, but Nomura saying in no uncertain terms that plot details from KHDR will be relevant to KH4 is...interesting, and encouraging. I suppose we could have guessed that given the Child of Destiny stuff, but it makes me wonder what other less obvious details from KHDR will turn out to be relevant down the line. We might be surprised by the plot threads and maybe even...characters? that make a return.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure I completely buy his explanation here (even though the "recycling assets to save space/time/money" part makes enough sense from a game dev perspective). Nomura is known for being fickle about the specifics of plot details and changing his mind about things over time; it wouldn't surprise me if he initially conceived Destiny Islands Xehanort to be a young man before deciding Xehanort needed to leave Destiny Islands at a much younger age in order to have the new "spending his teen years in Scala" backstory make sense. But, it's not a big deal; if the "catch-all symbolic representation" thing is the artsy explanation Nomura wants to use to avoid calling it a "retcon", then sure, fuck it, who cares. I don't care.

Seems Nomura was hoping that default male Player would be recognized as merely a default representation of Player (so, not canon, just one of many possible representations) but then realized people were going to take it as canon anyway. Which, yeah of course they would. You're implicitly favoring and legitimizing whatever version you choose to depict in the canon, immutable cutscenes, because the fact you chose it out of all possibilities suggests you prefer it. I'm glad the devs changed the cutscenes to make Player's gender ambigious, though they didn't go far enough to obscure Player's skintone, leading to people having to headcanon that Player is just wearing...light flesh-colored gloves? Frankly: yuck, but here we are. Maybe KHML will retcon this too and do a better job of hiding their skintone.

Also, I'm not sure what Nomura means when he says that Player showed up in Xehanort's "final battle" when they...didn't? Unless by "final battle" he just means the final episode in general? Idk, weird wording there, might be a translation thing.

I get why people felt that the bald explanation was kinda unnecessary and out of left field, but as user isan0rt points out in this post, the distinction between "his hair fell out" and "he shaved it" is actually pretty important from a character analysis perspective. I don't blame Nomura for wanting to further clarify and highlight the Buddhist monk themes at the core of Xehanort's character when, I guess, it was flying over a lot of people's heads (pun not intended).

It's unfortunately just one of those things where Nomura drawing attention to this "lore reveal" in pre-release interviews primed people to take it less seriously than if he had just...put it in the game with no fanfare.

Not sure why Nomura ended the answer talking about the Queen of Hearts and her not remembering Xehanort. I guess because the Mirror managed to remember him after like 60 years and him losing all of his hair but the Queen forgot about him after only, like, four years?

KHML trailer spoilers below.

The KHML trailers say that the Emblem Heartless reach Gothic Scala via the Astral Plane, and well, if KHDR's Emblem Heartless and KHML's Emblem Heartless share the same explanation for their anachronistic presence as Nomura implies here, then I guess the Astral Plane is where the KHDR Heartless are coming from? That's my theory for now anyway. The question just becomes, why were they arriving from the Astral Plane during the events of KHDR? Did somebody...let them in?

But then, "vessel" characters like the Queen of Hearts and Baldr also summon + control Emblem Heartless of their own that seem to originate from within them, so like. The Emblem Heartless situation seems a bit more complicated than just "they're coming from the Astral Plane."

And yes, the question was labeled "O4" rather than "Q4". There was a lot of speculation at the time about what this meant and whether or not Nomura was trying to send a secret message, but to this day we still don't know what this was about, apparently.

"Someone who bears the heart of the Player" is very interesting and specific wording. Is Nomura merely using the word "someone" to indicate that this is an entirely new body and life for Player, or is he using the word "someone" to indicate that this was an entirely different, fully-realized person before Player's heart "took over"?

The rest of this answer is worded...kind of unnaturally and strangely and I have no idea what Nomura is saying here, tbh. Again, might be a translation thing. But Player talking about a "second life" still exists in the most current version of the game, so Nomura can't possibly be talking about patching that line out, right? Like, it's still there! It never got "withdrawn". Unless he changed his mind after this interview?

Though, looking at the "that heart will once again melt into the heart of another person" bit, I think I now see where all those "Sora is reincarnated Player" theories come from?

Not much to say about this one. I still feel like the transition from KHML Scala to KHDR Scala had some magic involved, though. Between the Land of Departure's transformation feature that specifically activates with Master's Defender (turning LoD into a white roomed castle not unlike the white buildings of KHDR Scala), and the two Scalas looking so drastically different, it just makes sense to me.

Nomura isn't wrong here. I do think it's not too difficult to imagine what happened post-KHDR. Though it's still a shame that we didn't get to see those chapters of Xehanort's life.

(I know some people would probably argue that the game shouldn't have been called "Dark Road" in the first place then, if the game was just going to be about the events that led Xehanort to that road, but eh, I feel like that's semantics.)

If there's one thing I can respect and appreciate about the KH series as a whole, it's the commitment to focusing on character relationships. I think it was a good call by Nomura to prioritize depicting Xehanort and Eraqus' friendship in their youth.

Honestly? I actually really appreciate that Nomura seems to give a shit about the KHDR cast and feels genuinely disappointed and apologetic that he couldn't show them off more. Like he could've so easily just been all "Xehanort Xehanort Xehanort" about the game since Xehanort is his favorite OC, his favorite blorbo, but no he actually wanted to give the other characters their time in the spotlight, too. I really want that novel to happen eventually and I'm crossing my fingers for it. Please Square.

For context, apparently in the JP version of KHDR, Odin more directly references his teacher at the end of the game. While in the ENG version...you'd basically just have to guess at the existence of such a person from Odin's line "I finally see the truth of those words." or something? I have no idea why this wasn't made more obvious in ENG if it's more obvious in JP, but the series has been known for sometimes baffling localization choices, so like, eh.

It's interesting to think that Odin might have known Player2 in the past, and that they might have been working together on the Child of Destiny stuff. I fully expect to see a younger Odin in KHML, tbh.

By the way, I think Nomura calling KHML "a later period" is just some poor wording or translation hiccup and he meant to say "earlier"; I don't think he's saying some PLOT TWIST! thing about KHML somehow actually taking place after KHDR. (We'll see if my statement here ages poorly like 5 years from now lol.)

The Q&A response that made the entire "Skuld is Subject X" theory community freak out.

Yeah who the heck knows. "Connected" can mean so many things in this series, and following up that sentence with "Missing-Link is also a story about bloodlines" could be an intentionally misleading non-sequitur on Nomura's part.

Yes I'm speaking from bias because I want Skuld to be Subject X, what of it.

Another question labeled with "O" instead of "Q" as well. Both questions like that so far have been Missing-Link related.

Not much to say on this one. I personally think that Brain is indeed Eraqus' grandfather and I don't imagine Brain and Ephemer's bloodlines overlapping, but we'll see what KHML reveals about Brain's future family.

Oh and I think the secret report this question is referencing (Secret Report 2 from KH3) said "descended from the very first masters in the age of fairy tales" not "master", so it's not specifically talking about like. An individual person who could be considered the one and only "first", like the MoM or Founder Ephemer or something. It's Keyblade Masters from the age of fairy tales in general, at least, the earliest ones to exist. Which can potentially include Brain, I think?

Question 12 was just about when we'd get Missing-Link news, so skipping that one straight into Question 13.

What's interesting about this question and answer is that right below it is the Nomura artwork of Young Xehanort wearing modern clothes in Miyashita Park. Could that artwork then be hinting at what this "good opportunity" might look like?

Below is how the original Q&A and artwork looked together. You can see that Q13 was the final one, almost as if this question was asked last on purpose in order for the artwork to follow right after it as a sort of "unofficial" answer.