#log-damn-lines

[dionysiaproductions]

I am trying to use more tags when I post and Imma be real. I. Do. Not. Like. It. Exactly the same cognitive dissonance as trying to write longlines: I cannot summarize what this thing I wrote is about, I do not know what it is about.

[windupaidoneus]

i need to sleep but im not happy about ittttt

[astranauticus]

todays orv mood: standing at the water dispenser under my dorm building waiting for my instant noodles to cook just pacing in circles and swearing

[the-travelling-witch]

genshin this, fontaine that okay but… TWST HALLOWEEN EVENT !!

[indigospyder]

I am unwell,,, I have unlocked an inner joy I shut away after graduating high school and feel an intense love and enthusiasm for the first time in literally seven years…….

…..and it’s beCAUSE OF A FICTIONAL 30-SOMETHING BISEXUAL ARCHIVIST

[instantpansies]

who was going to tell me it's not standard to pronounce the natural log (ln) like "line" i've been going around saying "line e" "line two" "five line three x" for YEARS!! nobody corrected me!!! FUCK

[cherryblossomshadow]

Rather than creating hand-washing rules for restaurant kitchens, we should let restaurateurs decide whether it's economically rational to make us shit ourselves to death. The ones that choose poorly will get bad online reviews and people will "vote with their dollars" for the good restaurants

.

Regulation is corruptible, but it need not be corrupt

.

Google and Apple and Meta … claim that a bunch of eminently possible things are impossible. Apple claims that it's impossible to have a secure device where you get to decide which software you want to use and where publishers aren't deprive of 30 cents on every dollar you spend. Google says it's impossible to search the web without being comprehensively, nonconsensually spied upon from asshole to appetite. Meta insists that it's impossible to have digital social relationship without having your friendships surveilled and commodified

.

We can have nice things … The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire. (quoted from above)

.

Great explanation of how neoliberalism keeps the Overton window small, so the real solutions we need don't become part of the conversation. (comment courtesy of @fr-economics)

Greenwashing set Canada on fire

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

As a teenager growing up in Ontario, I always envied the kids who spent their summers tree planting; they'd come back from the bush in September, insect-chewed and leathery, with new muscle, incredible stories, thousands of dollars, and a glow imparted by the knowledge that they'd made a new forest with their own blistered hands.

I was too unathletic to follow them into the bush, but I spent my summers doing my bit, ringing doorbells for Greenpeace to get my neighbours fired up about the Canadian pulp-and-paper industry, which wasn't merely clear-cutting our old-growth forests – it was also poisoning the Great Lakes system with PCBs, threatening us all.

At the time, I thought of tree-planting as a small victory – sure, our homegrown, rapacious, extractive industry was able to pollute with impunity, but at least the government had reined them in on forests, forcing them to pay my pals to spend their summers replacing the forests they'd fed into their mills.

I was wrong. Last summer's Canadian wildfires blanketed the whole east coast and midwest in choking smoke as millions of trees burned and millions of tons of CO2 were sent into the atmosphere. Those wildfires weren't just an effect of the climate emergency: they were made far worse by all those trees planted by my pals in the eighties and nineties.

Writing in the New York Times, novelist Claire Cameron describes her own teen years working in the bush, planting row after row of black spruces, precisely spaced at six-foot intervals:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/wildfires-treeplanting-timebomb.html

Cameron's summer job was funded by the logging industry, whose self-pegulated, self-assigned "penalty" for clearcutting diverse forests of spruce, pine and aspen was to pay teenagers to create a tree farm, at nine cents per sapling (minus camp costs).

Black spruces are made to burn, filled with flammable sap and equipped with resin-filled cones that rely on fire, only opening and dropping seeds when they're heated. They're so flammable that firefighters call them "gas on a stick."

Cameron and her friends planted under brutal conditions: working long hours in blowlamp heat and dripping wet bulb humidity, amidst clouds of stinging insects, fingers blistered and muscles aching. But when they hit rock bottom and were ready to quit, they'd encourage one another with a rallying cry: "Let's go make a forest!"

Planting neat rows of black spruces was great for the logging industry: the even spacing guaranteed that when the trees matured, they could be easily reaped, with ample space between each near-identical tree for massive shears to operate. But that same monocropped, evenly spaced "forest" was also optimized to burn.

It burned.

The climate emergency's frequent droughts turn black spruces into "something closer to a blowtorch." The "pines in lines" approach to reforesting was an act of sabotage, not remediation. Black spruces are thirsty, and they absorb the water that moss needs to thrive, producing "kindling in the place of fire retardant."

Cameron's column concludes with this heartbreaking line: "Now when I think of that summer, I don’t think that I was planting trees at all. I was planting thousands of blowtorches a day."

The logging industry committed a triple crime. First, they stole our old-growth forests. Next, they (literally) planted a time-bomb across Ontario's north. Finally, they stole the idealism of people who genuinely cared about the environment. They taught a generation that resistance is futile, that anything you do to make a better future is a scam, and you're a sucker for falling for it. They planted nihilism with every tree.

That scam never ended. Today, we're sold carbon offsets, a modern Papal indulgence. We are told that if we pay the finance sector, they can absolve us for our climate sins. Carbon offsets are a scam, a market for lemons. The "offset" you buy might be a generated by a fake charity like the Nature Conservancy, who use well-intentioned donations to buy up wildlife reserves that can't be logged, which are then converted into carbon credits by promising not to log them:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#greenwashing

The credit-card company that promises to plant trees every time you use your card? They combine false promises, deceptive advertising, and legal threats against critics to convince you that you're saving the planet by shopping:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-well-do-good-do-nothing/#greenwashing

The carbon offset world is full of scams. The carbon offset that made the thing you bought into a "net zero" product? It might be a forest that already burned:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/11/a-market-for-flaming-lemons/#money-for-nothing

The only reason we have carbon offsets is that market cultists have spent forty years convincing us that actual regulation is impossible. In the neoliberal learned helplessness mind-palace, there's no way to simply say, "You may not log old-growth forests." Rather, we have to say, "We will 'align your incentives' by making you replace those forests."

The Climate Ad Project's "Murder Offsets" video deftly punctures this bubble. In it, a detective points his finger at the man who committed the locked-room murder in the isolated mansion. The murderer cheerfully admits that he did it, but produces a "murder offset," which allowed him to pay someone else not to commit a murder, using market-based price-discovery mechanisms to put a dollar-figure on the true worth of a murder, which he duly paid, making his kill absolutely fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

What's the alternative to murder offsets/carbon credits? We could ask our expert regulators to decide which carbon intensive activities are necessary and which ones aren't, and ban the unnecessary ones. We could ask those regulators to devise remediation programs that actually work. After all, there are plenty of forests that have already been clearcut, plenty that have burned. It would be nice to know how we can plant new forests there that aren't "thousands of blowtorches."

If that sounds implausible to you, then you've gotten trapped in the neoliberal mind-palace.

The term "regulatory capture" was popularized by far-right Chicago School economists who were promoting "public choice theory." In their telling, regulatory capture is inevitable, because companies will spend whatever it takes to get the government to pass laws making what they do legal, and making competing with them into a crime:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/13/public-choice/#ajit-pai-still-terrible

This is true, as far as it goes. Capitalists hate capitalism, and if an "entrepreneur" can make it illegal to compete with him, he will. But while this is a reasonable starting-point, the place that Public Choice Theory weirdos get to next is bonkers. They say that since corporations will always seek to capture their regulators, we should abolish regulators.

They say that it's impossible for good regulations to exist, and therefore the only regulation that is even possible is to let businesses do whatever they want and wait for the invisible hand to sweep away the bad companies. Rather than creating hand-washing rules for restaurant kitchens, we should let restaurateurs decide whether it's economically rational to make us shit ourselves to death. The ones that choose poorly will get bad online reviews and people will "vote with their dollars" for the good restaurants.

And if the online review site decides to sell "reputation management" to restaurants that get bad reviews? Well, soon the public will learn that the review site can't be trusted and they'll take their business elsewhere. No regulation needed! Unleash the innovators! Set the job-creators free!

This is the Ur-nihilism from which all the other nihilism springs. It contends that the regulations we have – the ones that keep our buildings from falling down on our heads, that keep our groceries from poisoning us, that keep our cars from exploding on impact – are either illusory, or perhaps the forgotten art of a lost civilization. Making good regulations is like embalming Pharaohs, something the ancients practiced in mist-shrouded, unrecoverable antiquity – and that may not have happened at all.

Regulation is corruptible, but it need not be corrupt. Regulation, like science, is a process of neutrally adjudicated, adversarial peer-review. In a robust regulatory process, multiple parties respond to a fact-intensive question – "what alloys and other properties make a reinforced steel joist structurally sound?" – with a mix of robust evidence and self-serving bullshit and then proceed to sort the two by pantsing each other, pointing out one another's lies.

The regulator, an independent expert with no conflicts of interest, sorts through the claims and counterclaims and makes a rule, showing their workings and leaving the door open to revisiting the rule based on new evidence or challenges to the evidence presented.

But when an industry becomes concentrated, it becomes unregulatable. 100 small and medium-sized companies will squabble. They'll struggle to come up with a common lie. There will always be defectors in their midst. Their conduct will be legible to external experts, who will be able to spot the self-serving BS.

But let that industry dwindle to a handful of giant companies, let them shrink to a number that will fit around a boardroom table, and they will sit down at a table and agree on a cozy arrangement that fucks us all over to their benefit. They will become so inbred that the only people who understand how they work will be their own insiders, and so top regulators will be drawn from their own number and be hopelessly conflicted.

When the corporate sector takes over, regulatory capture is inevitable. But corporate takeover isn't inevitable. We can – and have, and will again – fight corporate power, with antitrust law, with unions, and with consumer rights groups. Knowing things is possible. It simply requires that we keep the entities that profit by our confusion poor and thus weak.

The thing is, corporations don't always lie about regulations. Take the fight over working encryption, which – once again – the UK government is trying to ban:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/24/signal-app-warns-it-will-quit-uk-if-law-weakens-end-to-end-encryption

Advocates for criminalising working encryption insist that the claims that this is impossible are the same kind of self-serving nonsense as claims that banning clearcutting of old-growth forests is impossible:

https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1699339739042599276

They say that when technologists say, "We can't make an encryption system that keeps bad guys out but lets good guys in," that they are being lazy and unimaginative. "I have faith in you geeks," they said. "Go nerd harder! You'll figure it out."

Google and Apple and Meta say that selectively breakable encryption is impossible. But they also claim that a bunch of eminently possible things are impossible. Apple claims that it's impossible to have a secure device where you get to decide which software you want to use and where publishers aren't deprive of 30 cents on every dollar you spend. Google says it's impossible to search the web without being comprehensively, nonconsensually spied upon from asshole to appetite. Meta insists that it's impossible to have digital social relationship without having your friendships surveilled and commodified.

While they're not lying about encryption, they are lying about these other things, and sorting out the lies from the truth is the job of regulators, but that job is nearly impossible thanks to the fact that everyone who runs a large online service tells the same lies – and the regulators themselves are alumni of the industry's upper eschelons.

Logging companies know a lot about forests. When we ask, "What is the best way to remediate our forests," the companies may well have useful things to say. But those useful things will be mixed with actively harmful lies. The carefully cultivated incompetence of our regulators means that they can't tell the difference.

Conspiratorialism is characterized as a problem of what people believe, but the true roots of conspiracy belief isn't what we believe, it's how we decide what to believe. It's not beliefs, it's epistemology.

Because most of us aren't qualified to sort good reforesting programs from bad ones. And even if we are, we're probably not also well-versed enough in cryptography to sort credible claims about encryption from wishful thinking. And even if we're capable of making that determination, we're not experts in food hygiene or structural engineering.

Daily life in the 21st century means resolving a thousand life-or-death technical questions every day. Our regulators – corrupted by literally out-of-control corporations – are no longer reliable sources of ground truth on these questions. The resulting epistemological chaos is a cancer that gnaws away at our resolve to do anything about it. It is a festering pool where nihilism outbreaks are incubated.

The liberal response to conspiratorialism is mockery. In her new book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein tells of how right-wing surveillance fearmongering about QR-code "vaccine passports" was dismissed with a glib, "Wait until they hear about cellphones!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

But as Klein points out, it's not good that our cellphones invade our privacy in the way that right-wing conspiracists thought that vaccine passports might. The nihilism of liberalism – which insists that things can't be changed except through market "solutions" – leads us to despair.

By contrast, leftism – a muscular belief in democratic, publicly run planning and action – offers a tonic to nihilism. We don't have to let logging companies decide whether a forest can be cut, or what should be planted when it is. We can have nice things. The art of finding out what's true or prudent didn't die with the Reagan Revolution (or the discount Canadian version, the Mulroney Malaise). The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

[xinganhao]

⛓️‍💥 svt trying (and failing) to gatekeep you.

ANON REQUESTED “SEVEN-I wanted to gatekeep you from everyone else but I failed-TEEN and their bff/gf??”

ⓘ INCLUDES: romance, fluff, humor. established relationships, use of pet names, mention of alcohol (soonyoung). headcanons under the cut. ・ NOTE: the laugh i let out when i saw this request. my favorite genre of svt fr. ‹𝟹

⛓️‍💥 how (and why) seventeen failed at gatekeeping you.

seungcheol posts a photo of you on weverse. it's simple enough: a picture of you across the table from him, smiling over a dinner date. the only caption is a single red heart emoji. the photo choice is intentional. he chose one where your face is clear and your identity is unmistakable, because he'll be damned if any other guy tries to hit you up when you're spoken for.

jeonghan falls into the rabbit hole of couple items. it starts with the phone cases, but it doesn't end there. clothes of the same style. shoes from the same brand. he swears he's not playing relationship olympics; it's just so clear to him that the two of you are the it couple. anybody who says otherwise can talk to your matching luxury bags, thank you very much.

joshua misses the fact that he hadn't switched instagram accounts. he has two: his work-sanctioned one, and the one where he keeps up with everybody that matters. the boys call it his 'shrine' for you, because that's where he actually keeps log of your little dates. until he accidentally posts it to his main. where's that damn delete button, and why is it so elusive?

junhui is on a roll during an interview. he's in a chatty mood, and he's feeling a little loose-lipped. when the interviewer cleverly asks about his love life— phrasing it like they already know he has one— jun is trapped. hook, line, sinker. he happily yaps about you, only to realize much later that may have not been the move. too late. the interview's already live.

soonyoung should have known that alcohol and a media engagement would not be a good combination. he had begged the producers to cut the footage out, but, alas; it was the most clickbait-y part of the video. how could they? now, everybody knows soonyoung can rant about how much he loves you for upwards of twenty minutes.

wonwoo isn't aware he was supposed to be gatekeeping you. one fine day, he drops a carousel of photos on his photography account. you're partially visible in some of them— the side of your face, the curve of your side, the flash of your grin. the two of you had been on vacation. the account is his archive, anyway; everyone else's opinion be damned. he wants to remember you like this.

it's not a name drop, but it's a close thing. jihoon's never been the type to declare things on sns, so he does it in the way that he knows. a throwaway lyric. an entire song. fine, maybe a mini-album. he could have an entire discography solely about you, if he's being honest. people can guess all they want. if you're immortalize in his song, then jihoon's job is done.

from the very beginning, seokmin has wanted to scream you off the rooftops. he holds back because he knows the consequences of going public. he can't resist it, though, and he eventually sneaks a photo or two into a photo carousel. he gets giddy at perfecting the soft launch, at nailing the art of perfectly-cropped photos and choice songs. it scratches that itch of his— the urge to have everybody know about you, while also keeping you to himself.

you and mingyu show up at fashion week, immaculately dressed from head to toe. talk about a hard launch! he giggles as he answers questions from interviewers. it's clear to everybody that he's absolutely smitten. there are literal models in front of him, and he's looking at you like you beat them out any day. he never really liked these types of events, but if he gets to have you at his side, looking like the goddess that you are— well. he might have to start responding to a couple more invites.

minghao shocks the entertainment industry with a well-worded essay on weibo about the importance of valuing an idol's private relationships. in true minghao fashion, he makes it abundantly clear how important boundaries are to him. buried underneath that is the confirmation that he is dating, yes, and that it's a part of his life he'll stake his career to defend. this is just his job, but loving you is part of his life.

seungkwan's cover of a western love song has fans swooning, but a dedication buried in the description of the youtube video has everybody flabbergasted. 'dedicated to my girl,' it simply says. no explanation. no name drop. seungkwan has a girl, and that's that. he accepts your wrath; he knows you'll secretly enjoy reading the absurd speculation with him. chaos is fun in moderation, and this is one of the ways seungkwan likes to poke the bear.

it's a series of unfortunate events for vernon. he posts a mirror selfie of himself— a rare one!— without knowing anyone can zoom in and see you on his bed, (thankfully) fully clothed but definitely looking very comfortable. like you belong there. he takes a long nap after, missing dozens of calls and waking up to hundreds of texts. oh, well. you were going to have to go public one day, anyway.

your privacy might have lasted if chan wasn't so damn obvious whenever the two of you were out and about. even on your most discreet dates, chan looks a little too happy to just be hanging out with a friend. the paparazzi catches wind. the final nail on the coffin is a close-up stolen photo of chan's lockscreen: a selfie of him planting a big, fat kiss on your cheek.

› scroll through all my work ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧ ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ my masterlist | @xinganhao

[undyingdecay]

Ughhh Bob with a breeding kink 😓😓😓

Like him just letting go and going all caveman brain about it after begging you to just let him pretend it'll take😖😖😖

bob’s pull-out game is genuinely awful. like, laughably bad.

which is how you ended up insisting on condoms in the first place—not that it ever stopped him. he’d find ways. not in a sleazy, frat-boy kind of way, not with lines like “i’m allergic to latex” or “it doesn’t feel the same”—no, bob’s excuses came soaked in something too sincere, almost sweet, if it weren’t for how calculated it ended up being.

“jus’ wanna be close to you,” he’d murmur, voice all thick and needy from where he lay slotted against you, his whole body tacky with sweat and arousal, a gleaming sheen of it covering every inch of skin like lacquer. his weight always followed—not rough, but whole. he liked collapsing on top of you after he slid in, his arms hooked under yours so he could wrap around your back, chest pressed to yours, breath fanning against your ear as if the closeness wasn’t just desire, but some primal need to merge. be inside and on top and around you all at once.

you never got the chance to argue. half the time the condom was off before you’d even realized he’d unrolled it—pulled off between sleepy kisses and soft “please”s, left sagging and useless somewhere near your hipbone. once, he didn’t even bother pretending. you caught him, right there in the bedroom light, jabbing something—his key? a paperclip?—into a row of condoms like he was testing for weak spots.

“bob,” you’d said flatly, and he blinked up at you, all wide-eyed innocence. like he might lie. like he might not lie.

“…thought i saw air bubbles,” he mumbled. his cheeks flushed. his fingers fidgeted. you knew damn well he was lying. knew it, and still did nothing.

because what were your options? fight? withhold sex? as if that would’ve been possible with the way he looked at you, touched you, moaned so gratefully every time he was inside you, like it healed something. instead, you started taking birth control—not as rebellion, but as quiet damage control.

you didn’t hide it. didn’t even think to mention it. why would you?

then came the morning—early, light still soft and blue through the windows, your legs sore, your thighs sticky with dried cum. bob behind you with one arm around your waist, trailing down the stairs like a sleepy barnacle. he didn’t even try to untangle, just followed, skin warm and clinging as you went through your morning routine.

you grabbed the small bottle of vitamins, handed him two, and he popped them without looking. a routine. natural. his chin rested against your shoulder as you reached for your birth control.

instinctively, he held his hand out again.

you hesitated. glanced at him with a faint smile.

“do you plan on getting pregnant anytime soon?” you teased.

his brows pinched, lips parted just slightly.

“birth control,” you clarified, still smiling.

and just like that, his expression shifted. confusion first. then something deeper—quiet, raw. hurt, maybe. or worse: betrayal.

his arm fell away from your waist.

“…you’re taking that?” he asked, voice low, soft. as if the question pained him to ask.

you turned, brows drawing together. “yeah. i didn’t think—”

“but why?” his voice cracked. “why would you do that?”

you turn toward him fully now, your lower back pressing against the counter edge, cool marble grounding you—but only barely. you can feel the way he watches you, gaze heavy and warm, like it might scorch you if you held it too long. he isn’t mad. not really. there’s no raised voice, no cruelty. just this awful, quiet hurt, like you’d taken something from him he didn’t even know he couldn’t live without.

and maybe you had.

the pill still sits between your fingers, tiny and pale in the soft morning light, like it’s nothing—just 3mg of synthetic hormone—but his eyes are fixed on it like you’re holding a loaded gun.

you open your mouth to explain, to give him something gentle and sane and logical, but the words clog up behind your teeth. the kitchen feels darker now somehow. close and still. like it’s holding its breath for you.

“i’m sorry,” you whisper, the words barely there. you don’t even know what you’re apologizing for. but you mean it. that’s the worst part.

“i—i don’t want you to be upset. i love you. you know i love you. i’d do anything to make this better—”

his voice slices through your chest, quiet but wrecked. “throw it away.”

you blink. “bob—”

“please,” he breathes. “just throw it away. right now. i’ll feel better. i promise. i’ll feel better if you just—just let me—” his voice cracks around the edges, fraying like old thread. “i need to.”

you glance at the counter. at the pill. and you set it down without a word.

he breathes in like he’s just surfaced from under water.

his hands are on you again—gently first, palms warm and reverent at your hips like he’s still afraid you might back away—but you don’t. you let him close the distance, let him slot his body between your legs as he leans in to kiss you, deep and messy and grateful.

“i wanna be inside,” he mumbles against your mouth. “don’t wanna wait. let me… please—let me stay this time.”

you nod, not even realizing you’re nodding until he sighs like it’s relief and drops to his knees.

your sleep shorts are gone in seconds. no teasing, no preamble—just his mouth on you, warm and wet and desperate, tongue working like he’s trying to unravel something inside you, hands wrapped around your thighs like handles, pulling you open as if you owe it to him.

he licks until your legs shake, until your voice breaks, until he’s practically whimpering into your cunt, nose buried so deep you wonder if he can even breathe. when you finally try to push him back—half from overstimulation, half because you need him in you already—he doesn’t budge.

“you taste different when you’re not on the pill,” he murmurs, drunk off it. “sweeter. like your body knows.”

you don’t even know what that means. you don’t care.

“bob—fuck, come on, please?— do it for mommy”

that does it.

he rises like a wave, chest flushed, breath ragged, cock already slick and leaking through his briefs. he tugs them down with a frustrated groan and nearly cries when he presses against your entrance—his forehead drops against your shoulder, his voice high and fragile.

“gonna come so deep,” he moans, sliding in inch by inch. “gonna stay there, i swear—i’ll stay in you. don’t want it to leave.”

your hands thread into his curls, nails dragging at his scalp as he bottoms out. he’s trembling, hips stuttering already before he’s even pulled back. “i’ll be good. i’ll be so good. just wanna give you something—wanna fill you, please, let me—”

the counter digs into your spine. the kitchen lights feel too bright. and still, none of it matters except for him.

he starts fucking you slow at first, rolling his hips up into you like he’s memorizing it—like if he gets the angle just right, your body will take him in and keep him there. his hands grip your thighs, spreading you wider, sweat slick between your bellies, every wet slap echoing too loud in the quiet morning space.

you can feel it when he gets close—when the whining gets louder, the thrusts more erratic. he’s babbling again, forehead pressed against your cheek now, voice ruined.

“make me a dad,” he gasps. “let me—please—fuck, i wanna come in you so bad—wanna give you everything—i’ll stay inside forever if you let me—please—”

you pull him in deeper. his body jerks.

then he’s coming—hard—right against your cervix, crying out into your neck, hips twitching with every desperate pulse of cum spilling into you. you can feel it, hot and thick, pooling where you’re still joined. he doesn’t pull out.

doesn’t even try.

instead, he slumps forward, cock still hard inside you, panting against your throat. “don’t move,” he whispers. “i’ll fuck it in deeper. just—lemme stay here.”

and you do.

you don’t even reach for the pill.

[flwrkid14]

The Tim Drake Heartthrob Conspiracy

It started as a slow, creeping suspicion. A few throwaway comments here, a couple of odd interactions there. At first, no one thought much of it.

One day, Dick was grabbing coffee near Wayne Enterprises when he overheard two interns chatting in line. “I saw Tim Drake today, and let me tell you, I think I’ve developed a new celebrity crush,” one of them said, giggling.

Dick nearly choked on his iced latte. Tim? Celebrity crush? He shook it off, chalking it up to the occasional corporate crush, nothing out of the ordinary for someone who runs a massive company. But then he heard it again the next week at a Titan’s briefing. Garfield leaned over to him during a meeting, nodding toward Tim across the room.

“Man, Tim’s really come into his own, huh? Guy’s kinda a looker now,” Gar commented.

Dick blinked, then frowned. “Wait, what?”

“Oh, come on, Nightwing,” Gar teased, “you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed! The quiet broody thing is working for him. I bet half of Gotham has a crush on him.”

By the time Dick got back to Gotham, the gears were turning in his head. Did half of Gotham have a crush on Tim?

Then it happened again. This time it was Damian’s turn.

He had been sparring with Jon in the Batcave, when their conversation drifted, as it often did. “You ever think about what it would be like to date someone like Tim?” Jon asked, completely out of the blue.

Damian froze, mid-punch. “What?”

“I mean, he’s smart, right? Responsible, kinda low-key. Would probably make a great boyfriend,” Jon continued, completely oblivious to the growing horror on Damian’s face.

“Grayson and Todd, are enough. I refuse to let another sibling of mine become Gotham’s romantic fascination!” Damian exclaimed later that night at the dinner table. The others laughed, assuming Damian was just being overly dramatic, as usual.

But the seed had been planted.

It didn’t take long for the other Batfamily members to start picking up on the signs.

Steph first noticed when she logged onto a Wayne Enterprises fan forum (because yes, those exist) and saw a thread that was simply titled, “Tim Drake’s Glow-Up Appreciation Post”. The page was filled with comments fawning over him—talking about his “sharp jawline,” his “dark, mysterious aura,” and how “charming” he was during interviews.

Naturally, Steph sent the link to Cass with a laughing emoji. “Look at our boy, growing up into Gotham’s next heartbreaker,” she joked.

But as more and more of these comments popped up in the oddest places, Steph’s joking tone faded. Was Tim really the next heartthrob?

The realization hit Jason last, as most things concerning Tim usually did. He was scrolling through his usual online haunts, browsing forums that discussed Gotham’s vigilantes, when he stumbled on something unusual.

A post titled: Top 10 Reasons Why Red Robin is the Best Looking Vigilante in Gotham.

Jason almost clicked out of it immediately, assuming it was some kind of joke. But no. There were paragraphs. Analysis. Photos that somehow made Tim look like a damn model, even in his ridiculous Red Robin cape.

Jason scrolled through in disbelief, not sure what he was more stunned by: the fact that people were thirsting after Tim, or that someone had gone to this much effort to explain why he was hot.

“That’s it. The internet is officially broken,” Jason muttered to himself, before sending a screenshot to the family group chat with the caption: Since when did Tim become a fashion icon?

The real kicker, though, was Alfred. After weeks of the Batfamily casually throwing around jokes about Tim’s newly discovered “status,” Alfred finally made his observation one morning over breakfast.

“Master Timothy has always had a certain quiet charm about him,” Alfred said as he served coffee, completely unbothered by the ensuing chaos.

Dick, nearly spilling his coffee: “Wait, you knew about this? Why didn’t you say something?”

Alfred raised a brow. “It hardly seemed necessary. I assumed you all were already aware of Master Timothy’s appeal.”

Appeal. Appeal.

Jason was laughing so hard he had to leave the room, while Steph and Cass exchanged glances that said everything: they needed to re-evaluate everything about their little brother.

The whole Batfamily was still coming to terms with it. They joked, they teased, but there was an undeniable shift. When they looked at Tim now, they saw what others had apparently been seeing for years—a quietly confident, strikingly intelligent young man who had somehow grown into one of Gotham’s most eligible bachelors.

Of course, the moment that really sealed the deal came when Tim rode into the Batcave one evening on his Red Bird bike, wearing hastily thrown on stylish outfit—a black leather jacket, perfectly fitted jeans, and a shirt that gave him a casual, yet effortlessly cool look. Running a hand through his still damp hair, a look of mild annoyance on his face.

“Sorry, I’m running late. Got a date.”

For a moment, the Batfamily just stared.

Holy. Shit.

And then, as if on cue, Dick, Steph, Cass, Duke, Jason, and even Damian had the same thought at the same time: Oh my God, Tim Drake is the Batfamily’s biggest heartthrob.

The realization was almost too much to handle.

[dearcharms]

i dont consider myself a welt fan but istg every time he is on screen. his en voice actor is insane MY GOD he's so impressive

[marvelstoriesepic]

The Splinter and the Spark

Pairing: Lumberjack!Bucky x Neighbor!Reader

Summary: Your cabin’s heating breaks in times when you need it, so you try yourself at chopping firewood. But the last person you want help from is your smug, axe-swinging neighbor.

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: enemies to lovers; mild injury; slow burn tension; Bucky being smug; Bucky being worried

Author’s Note: Gosh, this grew way too long for this challenge again. But I just didn’t want to cut anything. I love them so much. Thank you for sending me this amazing request, my lovely!! I hope you’ll enjoy ♡

2k Drabble Challenge Masterlist | Masterlist

It started with the axe.

Not a chainsaw - no, that would have been too simple, too civilized, too modern. It was the thud of an axe that first made you hate him.

Every morning at 6:17 sharp, right when the sky was still learning how to be blue, you’d hear it. The clean, smug crack of metal meeting wood. Again and again. Like a heartbeat that belonged to a different kind of human - one with too much muscle and not enough consideration.

That first time, you’d stormed outside barefoot in your robe, clutching a coffee as if it might serve as a weapon. You asked him if he could wait until at least 8 am and he’d only given you a slow, lazy grin that stretched too wide on a face carved too perfectly and said, “Didn’t know we were keepin’ princess hours around here.” You had half a mind to actually throw your coffee at him.

The next time, he only grinned at you, blue eyes glinting under the brim of his flannel-lined cap. “Mornin’, princess,” he had greeted you with a voice that suggested he knew exactly that you’d come out. “Don’t call me that,” you’d snapped. “Would sweetheart be better?” he only teased back with a spark in his eyes.

You’d gone back inside fuming.

And that was just the beginning.

Since then, Bucky Barnes - your lumberjack neighbor with the smug jaw and unfairly sculptured arms - had accidentally parked his truck partially on your side of the gravel driveway twice. He’d borrowed your Amazon package - “didn’t even look at the name, swear it” - so you were forced to walk over to him and ask for it back, which he finally agreed to only after a discussion lasting over thirty minutes.

You had tried to out-snark him. Out-quiet him. You even filed a passive-aggressive noise complaint with the HOA, only to find out he was on the damn committee.

You hate him. You hate how his flannel sleeves always roll up just enough to show his thick forearms. You hate that his hair always looks a little too perfect for someone who supposedly lives without WiFi. And you especially hate that he looks amused every time you get mad.

Today, you need firewood, yourself.

The heating in your old, overpriced cabin went out last night - again - and the guy who promised to come fix it flaked for the third time in a row.

Your backup electric heater fried with a dramatic sizzle that nearly took your cat down with it, and now you’re left with a fireplace, a stack of unsplit logs, and more pride than sense.

You tie your hair back.

You’ve got gloves. Thin ones - meant for gardening. But that’s close enough, you guess. It has to be.

You’ve got a borrowed axe from Mrs. Caldwell down the lane. Pink-handled. Surprisingly heavy.

And you’ve got determination. Stubbornness. An undying loathing for asking Bucky Barnes for help.

You’d rather die barefoot in the freezing cold than ask him for help. He’s already smug enough, with those thick hands and smirking lips and Jesus Christ, the way he wipes his forehead with the back of his hand when he is sweating as if it’s performance art.

The air is harsh on your cheeks as you step outside. The wind snatches at your coat. There are logs stocked beside the chopping block. You plant your boots.

You drag the axe overhead, trying to remember what your uncle taught you once at a campground years ago.

You let the axe down. And you miss. The log shudders under the dull weight of your poor aim, laughing at you, maybe. You feel the reverberation up your arms.

Gritting your teeth, you reset, and swing again. Nothing. Just a dull smack, as if hitting a pillow made of shame.

“You tryna kill the wood or yourself?”

You freeze. You curse internally.

But you don’t turn around right away. You can hear the grin in his voice and you want just one second to school your face into something that won’t betray your flustered rage.

“I don’t recall inviting commentary,” you state annoyed. Only briefly granting him a glare.

He’s already at the fence line, one hand braced on the top rail, other gripping a thermos. He’s chewing on something. A toothpick? A matchstick? His own smugness?

“Y’gonna hurt someone with that form, princess,” he assesses easily.

“Mind your own business, Barnes,” you hiss unkindly.

He grins. Pushes off the fence with the easy grace of someone who knows they’re built like mythology.

“Hard not to when you’re over here looking like an axe-wielding toddler.”

You roll your eyes. Hard. But a fire burns low inside your body. It’s as if you’re trying to summon the strength of the gods for this conversation.

“Don’t you have logs to scream at or whatever it is you do every morning? Why are you even looking over here?” you bite out through clenched teeth.

There is steam curling from the lid of his thermos and he’s got the audacity to sip it slow as if this is all very amusing to him “You’re louder than I am today,” he remarks smoothly, still grinning with sparkling eyes. “A real accomplishment, considering how much you complain ‘bout me.”

You huff out a breath. It clouds around you. You grip the axe tighter.

“I didn’t choose to do this, Barnes. But I can.”

“Oh, I believe you,” he eases, sauntering through the open gate now, because he has no respect for boundaries. “I just don’t believe the logs will survive your technique.”

You don’t dignify that with a response. Instead, you turn back, lift the axe in indignation, and swing again.

Thunk.

“Y’know,” he drawls, getting closer, boots crunching across the frosted ground, “if you wanted me to come over, all you had to do was ask real nice.”

“I’d rather freeze.”

“Kinky.”

You spin, axe hanging at your side, panting more from rage than effort.

“Go away, Bucky.”

But he doesn’t. He only moves closer, ignoring you. As always. He smells of cedarwood and coffee and damn it, effortless masculinity. His beard is a little too neat, the plaid stretched a little too tight across those shoulders, and he’s looking at you with those annoying, laughing eyes.

He’s enjoying this.

You lift the axe again, jaw set, and swing.

This time, it lands. The log splits just a little at the top, not much, but enough to make you stand a little straighter.

Bucky whistles now. “Look at that. She’s got claws.”

“I told you I don’t need help.”

“I heard you,” he drones out, stepping closer again, and now his hand is on the handle of the axe with yours. The heat of his skin sears through your glove. “But I’ve also seen what you’re doing to these poor logs. You don’t have to be a martyr.”

You want to yank your hand back, yell, bite, something. But you just look up, ready to glare.

Suddenly, a sharp sting shoots through your palm. You flinch. Just subtly.

But he sees it.

“What is it?” he asks, voice shifting a little softer, quieter. Concern elbowing amusement out of the way.

“Nothing,” you lie, too fast.

He catches your wrist. Gently. His fingers are rough and warm and careful and it makes your stomach twist. “You okay?” he asks without sarcasm this time.

You want to say yes.

But your pride is bleeding out of your palm with the little splinter lodged deep beneath your skin, and somehow your hand is already in his.

“Lemme see.” He peels off your glove, gentle but fast, as if he’s done this a hundred times.

You try to pull away, but he holds on.

“Hold still.”

His thumb brushes over your knuckles. His face is different now - focused, brows knit together, all the flirt and teasing gone. And for the first time, you feel the quiet in him. As if under all that swagger and plaid, there’s a silence he doesn’t let out often. It makes your chest churn uncomfortably.

“I’ve got tweezers in the shed,” he says, voice low and grim. “Stay here.”

“I can-”

“Don’t argue.” His eyes meet yours. “You’ll dig it in deeper.”

You nod. Small and jerky.

He’s back in seconds, unsurprisingly quick, and he orders you to sit on a log before he kneels at your side. You expect him to be rough, maybe uncareful, but he’s not. He works delicately and precisely, eyes flicking up to yours every so often to check if it hurts, and when he finally pulls the splinter free, you don’t even feel it.

His fingers don’t let go. Not right away. Not even when the splinter’s gone completely and your hand is wrapped in the warmth of him. You feel the heat of his touch and you hate that it calms something in you. That it quiets the buzzing in your chest.

He’s still crouched in front of you, thick brows pulled together as though your skin is glass and he’s afraid to leave a mark. His eyes are focused entirely on your hand, sweeping over the lines of your palm. And it does things to his face. Softens it. Opens it. As if someone peeled away the cocky grin and the smart mouth and what’s left underneath is quieter, deeper.

You’ve never seen him like this.

And the worst part is, you don’t know if you want it to stop.

“You should disinfect this,” he notes, voice low, nearly hoarse.

“It was just a splinter.”

His gaze drifts up to yours. Locks in. But he doesn’t look at you like a man who enjoys the game. Not like the neighbor who calls you princess and sweetheart with a grin in his voice and a challenge in his eyes. This look he’s giving you right now scrapes across your bones. “Doesn’t take much. Even a splinter can fester. Get infected. They carry bacteria. Especially out here, with all the dirt and bark and- can get infected faster than you think. Fever. Swelling. Might need stitches if it goes bad. You don’t want to mess around with that.”

His voice is anything but teasing now. There is no glint in his eyes. Just steel. Seriousness. Something else that looks like concern.

It’s as if someone rearranged the pieces of his face and gave him a conscience.

You blink at him. He’s still holding your hand. Still cupping it as if it’s something valuable. As if you’re something worth careful handling. Just enough softness to keep you wondering.

You’ve fought with this man. Argued over property lines, over noise, over the fact that he whistles while he works like some Disney lumberjack. You’ve accused him of waking the dead with his morning routines. You’ve shoved snow back into his yard with passive-aggressive vengeance. He once left a Get Better Soon balloon on your porch after you sneezed twice on the way to your car.

And yet now. Now, his thumb brushes your wrist as if he forgot he was touching you. As if maybe he wants to keep forgetting.

“You’re starting to sound as if you care,” you murmur, maybe a little amused, but confused nevertheless.

Something flashes across his eyes. Behind them. He looks away for a second. One breath. Two.

“Next time,” he starts, quiet but sharper. Firm. “Come to me before you try to do something like this on your own.”

Your pride bristles, instinctive and stubborn. You straighten your spine, try to pull your hand back, but he doesn’t let you go just yet.

“If I remember correctly, and I do, I didn’t come to you at all, Barnes. It was you who walked into my-”

“I mean it, Y/n. You can always come to me. Promise me, you will,” he insists intensely, lowly.

There’s something in his voice that sits heavy in your chest. You feel it. All of it.

“Fine,” you relent finally, reluctantly.

Only then does he release you.

With the clear of his throat, he steps back. The loss is sudden. Cold. You almost feel foolish for missing it.

“I’ll disinfect it,” you say at last, trying not to sound too much as if you’re surrendering.

Bucky nods once. “Good. But go do it inside. Warm up.”

Your mouth opens immediately. “I’m not fragile, Barnes. A splinter doesn’t knock me out of the game.” You say it with a small teasing tone, but Bucky doesn’t seem to pick it up. Or he ignores it.

He only crosses his arms. Tight. His flannel strains across his chest. “Didn’t say it did. But that doesn’t mean you should be swingin’ an axe anytime soon. I’ll do it.”

He says it with a kind of dominance that makes you scoff. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“Don’t need you to ask.”

There is no grin. No smirk. Just the stubborn set of his jaw and the firm intensity in his eyes. It unnerves you. Not because it’s sharp - but because it’s gentle. Because he’s not teasing you. Because he’s worried, and you don’t know what to do with that version of Bucky Barnes.

So, with a sigh and slightly trembling hands, you turn and head inside. But the warmth in your cabin is nothing compared to the heat still lingering in your chest. You rinse your hand under water that runs slow and cold, and dab antiseptic. But your thoughts stay outside. Stay with those blue eyes watching for signs of weakness as though he’s reading a weather report.

He’s never been like that before. Never so serious. Never so close.

And when you step back outside, your breath catches.

Bucky is already splitting your wood.

His form is fluid, practiced. Each swing of the axe is poetry. Violence tamed. He doesn’t grunt or growl - he just moves with expertise. One hand on the handle, the other steadying the log, shoulders flexing beneath that worn flannel with every arc. The axe comes down like thunder. Wood cracks, clean and quick, falling in neat halves at his boots.

He’s got his sleeves rolled up past his elbows again, breath misting in the air. The sound of the logs cracking echoes through the trees like a song with no chorus.

You lean against the railing of your porch and watch him work.

And you hate that he’s mesmerizing.

He doesn’t look up. Just sets another log in place.

“Sit down,” he says, calm as a lake.

You stare. “What?”

“Or go back inside. Warmer there. I’ll finish up.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Are you seriously ordering me around?”

“Nope,” he deadpans, finally glancing at you. “I’m instructing you. There’s a difference.”

You’re still staring.

He gives you a look. Not mean. Not commanding. Just firm.

“You don’t have to do everything by yourself, you know.”

You flinch as if the words are sharp. As if they know something about you they shouldn’t.

You want to argue. To say watch me. To toss something sarcastic just to get back the balance.

But you don’t.

You sit. On the porch steps, cold wood stinging the backs of your thighs but you stay and watch him work.

His swings are controlled. His jaw is clenched. No more cocky remarks. No smile. Just focus. He splits like a man trying to prove a point - to you, or to himself, you don’t know.

“You can stop now,” you voice after a moment.

But he doesn’t.

“Bucky.”

Still nothing.

He sets another log. Lifts. Crack.

You cross your arms. Raise your voice.

“Barnes. That’s enough for now.”

Finally, he pauses. Looks over to you. His cheeks are flushed from the cold. He’s starting to sweat slowly. And still, he doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t tease.

“This won’t last long,” he says gruffly, nodding to the pile of wood at his feet. “You’ll be left freezin’ in less than a month.”

“That’s alright,” you try to argue. “I’ve got this guy coming by-”

But he interrupts you with the almost too-loud crack of another log splitting to pieces, his arms winding up to thunder down another time. He’s not even listening to you anymore. Just keeps going.

He looks so determined, it might even be endearing.

But you don’t say anything. You wouldn’t be able to bring out another word. Because this man surely is an enigma.

You didn’t know a man could be this quiet and still make so much noise inside your body.

You’re not sure how long you stay there, watching. But when he’s done, he gathers the logs in his arms as if they weigh nothing at all. Walks them to the side of your house, where the covered racks wait. He stacks them neatly. Tucks a tarp over them.

And then he turns to you.

His breath is ragged slightly, his eyes are unreadable, but there is something softened in them. Like thaw.

“You’re all set.”

You swallow, mouth dry, hands restless in your lap.

“Thank you,” you say. It feels like swallowing rocks.

He nods. Doesn’t say you’re welcome. Doesn’t wink.

He just turns and walks back to where the axe is resting. He picks it up. Fingers sliding over the pink handle. His expression is unreadable.

“Is this yours?” he asks, voice low, thick with something you never heard in his voice before.

You shake your head slowly. “Mrs. Caldwell’s. She loaned it to me.”

He nods. Slow. Thoughtful. As if he is filing that away in the same place he stores the weather, the weight of wood, the sound your boots make when you’re frustrated and trying not to show it.

“I’ll bring it back to her,” he voices. Deep and sure.

You’re thrown for a second.

There’s nothing performative about it. No smirk. No spark. He doesn’t even look at you when he says it - he just studies the axe again as if it’s dangerous.

You stare at him, hands curled into the sleeves of your coat. Trying to decide if the stuttering in your chest is from the cold or something far less logical.

Is he just trying to be polite? Returning something for you? Or is this about control? About making sure you won’t be getting your hands on that thing again?

You search his face for a clue, but he’s turned now, adjusting his grip on the handle as if he’s already taken care of this for you.

“You don’t have to,” you still try.

He moves around to you again, his gaze falling onto yours. “Nah, I’ve got it,” he insists, but his gaze is not as nonchalant as his voice is.

“Uhm, okay,” you start, a little unsure. “Thanks.”

Another one of his nods and it starts to make you uneasy. He keeps standing there for a moment too long, looking at you as though he might say something more.

But he doesn’t.

He just turns. Walks back across the yard, his boots crunching slightly on the ground, the axe hanging over his shoulder like some kind of burden he’s used to carrying.

You watch him disappear, into the warm glow of sunrise burning between the pines.

And you wonder.

You wonder what it means when the person you thought was your enemy touches you as though you’re important to him.

You wonder why it felt safer than anything else ever has.

[pigfacedbitch]

Second to None

summary : you may be Percy's girlfriend, but not his first choice.

word count : 0.9k

type : imagines

pairing/s : Percy Jackson x Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson x Daughter of Hades! Reader.

warning/s: angst lol, and a little cliche. never settle for fucking less, guys.

here's my masterlist! along with Part 2.

Note : I'm not against Percabeth, just so you know. Or Annabeth, I think she's a badass. I just thought of this and I was like "Damn, did I just hurt myself?" Blue aesthetic since the color represents sadness.

You knew what you were signing up for when Percy Jackson asked you out.

You fell in love with him despite knowing the risks.

The constant danger, the relentless quests, the whispered rumors, the pointed stares whenever you were together— none of it was enough to scare you away. He was the great hero of Olympus, the son of Poseidon who had saved the world twice and continued to do so. Of course, people talked.

And you could handle all of it.

All of it— except one thing.

Annabeth Chase.

You were new to Camp Half-Blood, but not naïve.

You knew, the moment you agreed to be his, that you were stepping into a love story written long before you came along. You weren’t a new chapter. You were just a footnote, scribbled in the margins, fighting for space in a tale that was never yours to begin with.

Even your own brother, Nico di Angelo, had warned you. Everyone did.

They had seen Percy and Annabeth’s story unfold— the rivals turned partners, the friends turned lovers, the two who walked through literal hell together and survived. The kind of love even the gods envied.

"It will only end in heartbreak."

But you ignored them all. Because when Percy pulled you into a fierce kiss after winning a game, when he whispered sweet nothings as you lay beside him, when he held you like you were the most precious thing in the world— it was easy to pretend.

Pretend you didn’t notice the silver owl pendant he kept hidden under his shirt.

Pretend you didn’t see the way his sea-green eyes softened at the mere mention of her name.

Pretend you didn’t feel the hesitation in his touch whenever she was near, or the way he always seemed to be waiting— for something, or someone.

Forget that you were never meant to be his forever. That you were just the one keeping his heart warm until she wanted it back.

And yet, you knew Percy loved you. Maybe not in the way he loves her, maybe not in the way you deserve, but in the only way he knew how.

You never doubted your own worth before. You were the daughter of Hades, powerful in your own right, admired, desired. But with Percy, doubt bloomed inside you like a slow-growing poison.

And you loathed it.

Loving Percy Jackson is your greatest blessing. And your greatest curse.

Annabeth never tried to take him back— not outright.

She didn’t need to.

She moved like the strategist she was— calculated, deliberate, patient. Weaving herself into his life in ways you couldn’t contest.

Inside jokes only they understood.

Touches that lingered just a second too long.

Shared memories and unfinished dreams that whispered, This isn’t over.

She never crossed a line.

She never had to.

Because she was Annabeth Chase. His first love. His best friend. The one who had built a world with him long before you ever arrived.

You were the outsider.

Because Annabeth never really lost Percy.

She had simply let go.

And Percy? He had never truly moved on.

So, you waited for the inevitable. Like an inmate on death row, counting down the days.

Maybe you were still hoping. Hoping he’d look at you and finally see you, not her shadow. Hoping he’d realize that you were the one here, standing beside him, loving him— not better, but differently.

Or maybe you were just a fool who enjoyed her own suffering.

Or an addict who couldn’t let go of her drug, even as it destroyed her.

Then one night, walking through the woods, finding solace in the quiet and darkness, you heard them.

Percy and Annabeth. Sitting on a log beneath the stars, wrapped in the weight of a history you could never rewrite.

"Do you ever think of what could’ve been?" She whispered.

Your breath caught in your throat.

"All the time." Percy admitted, after a long silence. "Annabeth, you know I’ll always—"

She moved closer. Too close. Her fingers brushed against his wrist, and you felt the chill of inevitability run down your spine.

"If I asked for a second chance..." She breathed. "Would you give it?"

You braced for the pain of hearing him say yes, for the final dagger to be driven into your heart.

But he hesitated.

Perseus Jackson, who never think twice in the face of death, hesitated.

But Annabeth didn’t.

Before he could answer, she leaned in, claiming a kiss that had always been hers. Her arms wrapped around his neck like they belonged there.

"Choose me, Percy." She whispered against his lips. "You know it’s always been me. Be with me again."

You turned away before he could kiss her back.

You didn’t need to hear his answer.

You already knew it.

Shadow-traveling to your cabin, you threw a few things into a bag. Nico wasn’t there— probably off with Will— and you were grateful. You weren’t in the mood for questions.

You couldn’t stay long enough for Percy to look at you with guilt-ridden eyes and tell you what you already know.

So you left a note on his nightstand.

"I wish you and Annabeth the best. Don’t let her go this time."

Some might call you a coward for walking away.

But you didn’t care.

Percy had made his choice.

And now, you had made yours.

[lowrisemiller]

ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ౨ৎ ‧₊ .ᐟ

based on this ask | joel miller x fem!reader | 1.9k words | masterlist | body worship, smooching, tit sucking, unprotected piv sex |

The fire cast long, lazy shadows across the walls, the logs crackling low and steady. Joel had you stretched out on the mattress, half-bare beneath him, and he looked at you like you were the first real thing he’d ever seen after a lifetime of chasing ghosts.

When you shifted under his gaze, arms instinctively moving to cover your chest, he caught your wrists with gentle hands.

“Don’t hide from me, sweetheart,” he murmured, voice husky and broken with feeling. “Ain’t a thing about you I don’t want to see.”

He kissed the inside of your wrist, slow and deliberate, before guiding your hands to rest by your sides. His rough palms trailed up, brushing over the delicate curves of your chest, reverent like you were made of something finer than he deserved to touch.

“You’re so goddamn pretty,” Joel whispered, his thumb stroking the soft underside of your breast, barely grazing the peak until it drew a whimper from your lips. “Don’t care what you think you oughta look like. You, just like this—” he kissed the top of your breast, beard scraping warmly against your sensitive skin, “—you’re perfect.”

You turned your head, trying to hide the overwhelmed look on your face, but Joel wasn’t having it. He kissed your jawline, trailing kisses up to your ear.

“Don’t you go shy on me now,” he rasped. “I want every part of you. Always have.”

He shifted down your body, nuzzling into the tender space between your breasts, taking his time. His hands smoothed over your sides, feeling the warmth of your skin, the softness of you, the way you trembled beneath him.

“You’re killin’ me, baby,” he groaned against your skin. “Don’t even know what you do to me.”

He mouthed at one nipple, careful and sweet, tongue flicking gently before drawing it into the heat of his mouth. His hand worked your other breast, squeezing just enough to make your hips arch off the mattress instinctively.

“That’s it,” he breathed, switching sides, giving your other nipple the same slow, aching attention. “Want you feelin’ good. Want you knowin’ how much I need you.”

You could feel the tremor in his hands, the way his control was slipping little by little. But he wasn’t rushing—he wanted to savor you.

“You don’t gotta change a damn thing,” he said, voice wrecked and raw. “You think I care about the size of you, the shape of you?” He kissed a line down the center of your chest, following the trail with his hand. “All I care about is you. The way you look at me. The way you laugh. The way you let me have you like this.”

He leaned up, pressing his forehead to yours, breathing you in.

“You’re everything, sweetheart,” he murmured against your lips. “Everything.”

Then he kissed you — deep, slow, endless — like he was trying to pour all of it into you, all the things he couldn’t say right, all the worship he didn’t know how to express except through the way he touched you.

His hands mapped every inch of your skin, lingering, stroking, exploring you like he had nowhere else to be but here, with you, forever.

You gasped softly into his mouth when he shifted his hips against you, the hard press of him unmistakable, but Joel didn’t push, didn’t rush. He just cradled your face in his big hands, brushing your hair back, looking at you like you were something holy.

“You tell me when you’re ready,” he said, voice shaking slightly with how much he wanted you. “Ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ll wait all damn night if I have to.”

You smiled, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from how gentle he was with you, how he treated you like you were precious. You kissed him again, softer this time, and Joel melted into you like he belonged there, tethered to you in the dim firelight.

And for the first time in a long time, you believed it.

You believed he really did want all of you.

You smiled, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes from how gentle he was with you, how he treated you like you were precious. You kissed him again, softer this time, and Joel melted into you like he belonged there, tethered to you in the dim firelight.

And for the first time in a long time, you believed it.

You believed he really did want all of you.

Joel groaned low against your mouth, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. You felt his body tense, holding himself back, but you slipped your hand down, brushing against his hip, silently giving him permission.

His breath hitched. He kissed you harder, like he couldn’t help himself anymore.

“You sure, baby?” he rasped against your lips, his forehead resting against yours.

You nodded, whispering a soft, trembling “yes,” and that was all it took.

He moved over you, slow and careful, guiding himself with one hand. He caught your gaze, holding it, needing you to see how much this meant to him. How much you meant to him.

When he finally pressed into you, it was with an aching slowness, every inch deliberate, every inch worshipful. His hand cradled the back of your neck, his other hand squeezing your waist, grounding you as he filled you.

A sharp gasp broke from your lips — the stretch of him, the heat, the way he fit so perfectly inside you — and Joel whispered sweet things against your skin.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured, pressing kisses along your jaw. “You’re doin’ so good. So fuckin’ good for me.”

He rocked into you gently, hips rolling slow, his whole body trembling with the effort it took to go easy, to savor the moment and not lose himself too fast.

You clutched at his shoulders, nails digging lightly into his skin, and Joel groaned again, burying his face against your throat.

“You feel so good,” he said, voice thick and strained. “So goddamn good… can’t believe you’re mine.”

He moved in slow, deliberate thrusts, pulling almost all the way out before sinking back in deep, savoring every tiny whimper and sigh you gave him.

The heat built slowly between you, molten and unstoppable. Every brush of his hips against yours, every whispered praise in your ear, every soft kiss against your heated skin — it made you fall harder, deeper, clinging to him like he was the only thing keeping you tethered to the world.

Joel’s pace quickened just a little, the tension in him coiling tighter, but he kept his focus on you, murmuring low, broken words between kisses.

“Love you, baby,” he breathed, voice wrecked with how much he meant it. “Ain’t never lettin’ you go.”

You whimpered his name, the sound of it breaking something loose inside him. He kissed you fiercely, one hand threading through your hair, the other gripping your hip to pull you closer as he drove into you with more urgency.

The fire popped in the hearth, but all you could feel was Joel — surrounding you, inside you, loving you so completely it made your chest ache.

You tumbled over the edge together, messy and breathless, clinging to each other through it, his low groans mixing with your soft cries. Joel buried himself deep one final time, hips shuddering, before collapsing against you, careful not to crush you with his weight.

He didn’t pull away, not right away. He stayed inside you, pressing slow kisses to your forehead, your cheeks, your lips, whispering your name like a prayer between each one.

You wrapped your arms around him, holding him close, heart still hammering in your chest.

And in that little cabin in Jackson, with winter still clawing at the windows and the fire burning low, you both knew — without having to say a word — that neither of you was going anywhere.

You were already home.

[riddlesrizzler]

Bambi Eyes

summary: “You’re gonna kill me with those eyes, Doe.” characters: mattheo riddle. deer! reader. slytherin boys warnings: none! word count: 1.2k

Mattheo Riddle wasn’t subtle about it.

He tried-oh, how he tried. Tried to lean back with that usual air of effortless cool, all sharp smirks and carelessly tousled curls, boots kicked up like he had the world at his feet and didn’t give a damn. But then your eyes would meet his-wide, unguarded, blinking up at him like you’d just wandered out of a forest clearing and into the wrong century-and suddenly, Mattheo couldn’t remember how to breathe.

It was stupid, really, how quickly he unraveled. How a single glance from you could take the floor out from under him.

They called you “Doe” sometimes. Theo started it, naturally, after catching a fleeting glimpse of your animagus form-elegant legs slicing through the trees, breath huffing in clouds, white-tipped ears flicking at every sound. You moved like something half-wild and half-holy, a creature carved from moonlight. But Mattheo had been calling you that in his mind long before he ever saw the hooves.

There was something about you.

Soft-spoken. Skittish. Like every word was carefully considered before it left your lips. You blinked too slowly when surprised, like your thoughts had to catch up with the rest of you. And your eyes-those eyes-were an entire language he hadn’t learned to read yet. Big, brown, velvet-warm things. Lit from within like melted honey.

You were curled in an armchair near the common room fireplace that afternoon, surrounded by the golden hush of crackling logs and late autumn light. A thick knit blanket was swaddled around your shoulders like a protective cocoon, your legs tucked beneath you, slippered toes peeking out. A worn Potions textbook rested in your lap, your fingers absentmindedly toying with the frayed corners of the pages as your eyes scanned the lines with quiet, concentrated intent.

Mattheo sat across the room, pretending to play chess with Draco. Theo, Blaise, and Enzo were sprawled on the rug nearby, voices low and amused as they recounted some ridiculous prank involving enchanted treacle tarts and Filch’s cat. But Mattheo wasn’t listening.

His attention was fixed on you.

Again.

“You’re staring,” Draco muttered, nudging a pawn forward without looking up.

“I’m not,” Mattheo said, voice flat. A lie.

Theo snorted under his breath. “Mate. You always are.”

Mattheo didn’t bother denying it this time. He looked back at you, openly, utterly helpless against it. How you tucked your chin when you read. How your lashes fluttered like wings against your cheeks. How you flinched just slightly when someone said your name-as if it startled you to be seen.

“She’s got those eyes,” he murmured, almost reverent. “Like she sees everything... in slow motion.”

Blaise leaned back on his elbows. “Like a deer in the woods,” he agreed. “One wrong step and she’s bolting.”

Mattheo smiled at that. A slow, lazy curve of the lips. “Yeah. But she doesn’t run when I call.”

That silenced them for a beat. Even the fire popped louder in the space between.

And then you looked up.

Right at him.

You blinked-once, twice-as if his gaze had pulled you gently out of the world you’d been swimming in. And sweet Merlin, those eyes. Doe eyes, innocent and unsure, like you hadn’t meant to catch him staring but now that you had, you didn’t quite know what to do with it.

Mattheo leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and tilted his head slightly. His grin was crooked, teasing-but beneath it, something warmer simmered.

“You’re gonna kill me with those eyes, Doe.”

Color bloomed instantly across your cheeks. You clutched the edges of your book a little tighter, as if it could shield you. “I-I wasn’t looking at you.”

“I know,” he said, voice low. “That’s the problem.”

You made a sound then-a tiny, breathy thing, part disbelief and part laughter-and turned your face away, burying it behind your book. But your eyes peeked out again a moment later, cautious and curious, like maybe, just maybe... you wanted to be caught.

Mattheo didn’t look away. Not even for a second.

“Do you think she hypnotizes people with them?” Enzo asked suddenly, squinting at you like he was genuinely trying to figure it out. “Like-accidental legilimency. Bambi edition.”

“She doesn’t need magic,” Mattheo muttered. “She just looks at me like I’m not a monster.”

You looked up again at that-truly looked this time. A quiet crease forming between your brows, not hurt, not afraid. Just... wondering. As if no one had ever said something like that before, and you weren’t quite sure what to make of it.

And gods, your eyes were so soft. So impossibly wide and open. Like you hadn’t learned to build walls yet.

“She sees everything,” Mattheo said, mostly to himself now. “And still stays.”

You blinked slowly. A pause. Then, like sunshine breaking through morning mist, you smiled. The smallest, shyest thing. It knocked the air from his lungs.

Mattheo melted.

Later that night, the others had drifted off-Theo with his head on the arm of the couch, Blaise stretched out like a cat by the fire, Draco murmuring something incoherent in his sleep. The room had quieted into a hush of embers and breathing.

You hadn’t moved. Still curled in your chair, blanket hugged tight around your shoulders, your book long forgotten in your lap. Your eyes found him again-soft, questioning, glowing with the last flickers of firelight.

Mattheo was already watching you.

This time, you didn’t look away.

There was something in your expression-vulnerability, maybe, or wonder. Like you weren’t used to being seen like this. Like it was a miracle someone kept looking.

“Why do you do that?” you whispered.

He tilted his head. “Do what?”

“Look at me like that.”

Mattheo leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. His voice dropped, low and quiet, like a secret being passed between shadows.

“Because your eyes,” he said, “make me feel like I’m worth looking at.”

You froze, lips parting just slightly, as if no one had ever dared say something so devastatingly honest to you before.

“And when you look at me,” he continued, “it doesn’t feel like judgment. Or pity. Or curiosity. It feels like… like the forest before a storm. Quiet. Alive. Like you already know everything I’m scared to say.”

Your gaze softened, impossibly tender, like you were seeing the boy beneath the edges-the anger, the snark, the shield of indifference. And you smiled, small and unsteady, like it surprised even you.

Mattheo leaned back just a little, breathing in that look like it could steady his heartbeat.

“Doe,” he said softly, like it meant something more than a nickname. “Your eyes undo me.”

You didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.

The firelight flickered between you, casting gold in the darkness, and you just looked.

And Mattheo knew. Knew that if he spent the rest of his life doing nothing else-just watching your eyes glow like dusk melting into dawn-it would be enough.

Because in them, he didn’t feel like a monster.

He felt seen.

[paradoxcase]

Right, so, after reading some error logs, obtaining a copy of the objects.package that shipped with the Sims 2 rerelease, and talking about this with Lazy Duchess, I have a conspiracy theory about why the rerelease is so damn broken

So first, I looked at an error log that was happening in the Enthusiasm Tracker. It was coming from the function that signs sims up for a magazine subscription after they choose that option on the phone. It's a very short function, all it does is 1) check to see if the family has a magazine subscription token, 2) create one if it does not already exist, and 3) set a property on the token regardless of whether 2 was necessary or not. All three of these actions make use of the Manage Inventory primitive, which controls not just sim inventories, but also tokens like this, memories, and gossip. I compared all like five lines of this function to the one in my objects.package, that I have from the Ultimate Collection, and they were exactly the same. But for some reason, in the rerelease, this throws an error. There is no explanation at the level of this function. I kind of scratched my head and thought, maybe they changed how the magazine subscription token works in this version, and forgot to update this function? Or something?

Next, there was an Too Many Iterations error log that had a very obvious cause: for some reason, the active family had over 500 tokens in its inventory. The family inventory isn't listed in the error log, so have no idea what those tokens were, or how there came to be 500+ of them. BUT. The aforementioned magazine subscription token is a token that goes in the family inventory. Maybe these two problems are somehow related. Are those 500 tokens all magazine subscription tokens, or something?

And then there is the infamous error that the game now throws when a sim goes to get abducted. I didn't see an error log for this one, but I was making a post on MTS listing all of the known issues with the rerelease, and someone mentioned there that the issue is not so much with the abduction as it is with other sims reacting to the abduction, and if there are no sims on the lot to react to the abduction, the error does not occur. Someone else then mentioned that the Abduction Reaction Fix mod that I made actually fixes this error. I made that mod, I know exactly what it does. What does it do?

Well, you see, objects in the game all have what is called a tree table, which is a table of interactions and the functions that need to be called when those interactions are triggered. One of the interactions on the telescope is the interaction to run to the telescope after someone has been abducted. But, in the Free Time expansion, a lot of new interactions were added to the telescope, and for some reason, EA decided to renumber all of the functions when they did that. They forgot to update the tree table, which references functions by their numbers, and as a result, the function that was called when sims were supposed to do the run-to-telescope interaction was actually the function that gives sims credit for discovering a new planet. In my mod, I fixed this, so that when sims are supposed to run to the telescope, the proper run-to-the-telescope function is called instead.

So, the error happens when my mod is not installed (when the planet discovery function is being called erroneously) and not when it is (when the run-to-the-telescope function is called instead). So the error must be coming from the planet discovery function. What is in the planet discovery function? It is almost identical to the magazine subscription function. It checks for the planet discovery token, adds it if it isn't there, and then modifies a property on it, using Manage Inventory. So this is exact same bug. And other people are reporting that some sims cannot gain memories - another game function that is handled by Manage Inventory. There is also an error that happens after a sim cooks food - one thing that happens at that point is that tokens and memories are added to the sim's inventory marking that they have successfully (or unsuccessfully) learned to cook that food.

So at this point, my theory is that EA somehow broke the Manage Inventory primitive. It's used all over the code, to do all sorts of stuff, if you break something that ubiquitous and fundamental, of course it's going to cause a whole lot of seemingly completely unrelated errors. Manage Inventory is now going hog-wild, throwing errors, adding hundreds of extraneous tokens to inventories, refusing to give sims memories, and who knows what else. I can feel it, this is the answer