Tumgik
#or 'bc' instead of  'because' if I'm in a rush or something but never much else)  so I haven't ever actually said 'ofc' but
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still have no idea what “icymi” stands for and refuse to just look it up, I simply read it a different way every time I see it  (”I can you me I”, “It cant young men inside”, “I could you mine I”, “I can your more information”, “I count your man in”, “Icy Me”, “If can you my eyes”, “International conference yearly (???)”, “I consider you most important”, “I call you me if”, etc) and move on, at peace with the fact that my brain will always interpret it as silly gibberish 
#like at this point i dont even  want to know#i like the puzzle of mentally reading it comepletely differently each time because no reading i come up with ever sounds#right or 'sticks' lol#I also heard somewhere that 'ofc' is actually supposed to be 'of fucking course' even though I always just read it as 'Of Course'#not that I really ever use abbreviations when I speak because I feel they're too vague (at most I might use idk for ;i dont know'#or 'bc' instead of  'because' if I'm in a rush or something but never much else)  so I haven't ever actually said 'ofc' but#I definitely have been reading it wrong if the 'fucking' being part of it is indeed true lol#Same with I had no idea what 'iirc' meant for like... years and would just see people use it#I mentally always read it as just 'IRK' or though it was 'if i really cared' or 'isnt it really cool' lol but those never made since in#context .#*sense#OR HOW long it took me to know 'nye' was new years eve#I legit always thought it had something to do with new york#like a festival held there or something#because I knew it often seemed like the pictures posted along side it contextually were often people drinking or in fancy clothes#Happy New York Event everyone! lol#I think sometimes it's more fun to not know things because then your life is full of happy little suprises and learning new random facts#I was like 20 yrs old when I realized the brand of clothes and shoes and etc. often labeled 'Polo Assn' was Polo Assocation#instead of Polo Assassin. And literally just this year realized that the red lobster biscuit things are 'Cheddar Bay Biscuits' instead of#'Cheddar BAKED Biscuits'. Also always thought the 'Mason Dixon Line' was the 'Mason Dixie Line'#Forever thought 'Cirque Du Soleil' was 'Circus Olay'. And that#that thing where people say 'Smile for candid camera!' was 'for CANDY camera!'#I learn new things everyday and it is a whimsical exploration of culture rather than a flow in my understanding lol#ANYWAY I keep seeing the little banner at the top of the tumblr dashboard with the advertisment that says icymi in it#the most common way I read it is like short common words but gibberish - 'if can your most it' or 'i can you me i'#sometimes my brain interprets it as a longer more complete seeming phrase#but usually its the tiny nonsensical ones#never anything actually cool like 'I Craft Your Malevolent Image' though. just boring stuff. internal conference of Michigan or something#'Infernal Curse You Must Internalize' 'It Carries Youthful Misguided Ignorance' 'Intense Craving Yearning (for) Mulberry Ice-Cream'#'I'll Consider Your Meddling Inquiries'
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thebearer · 1 year
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omg the part in that one blurb where reader makes a joke about being able to skip a meal and then carmy’s just like tf did you just say is so important to me as someone that has a long (and uneasy) history with body image and healthy eating habits
i was wondering if you had blurb/general thoughts/ideas on how carmy would react to the reader having a harder than usual time with body image for whatever reason
maybe they make one too many jokes or little comments about feeling insecure and carmy’s just not having it lol
carmen, with every ounce of love i have in my heart for him, would not be good with handling that. simply because he understands not liking yourself (like the idea of it, he can't fathom why you don't) but he grew up where food was kind of an act of love. he'd never hear an "i'm sorry" ever in his life, but his mom would very much so be the type to say "i have dinner ready for you" and that was as much as an apology as he'd get.
the first time you're kinda not eating, carmen's like trying to joke with you. "the food not good? don't like it?"
and you assure him that's not it. "i just... i'm not really hungry."
carmen's confused bc you've been together all day and you only had an iced coffee in the morning. "no way." he shook his head. "you haven't eaten all day. if you don't like it, baby, it won't hurt my feelings, i promise. nothin' you can say that a chef in new york didn't say, they said worse too. just tell me what you want and-"
"-carmen, it's ok. it's really good, i'm just not really hungry." you smile. "i need to not eat today anyways. my jeans are so tight-"
"-what?" carmen thinks you're joking at first, brows creasing with a small grin. until he sees your face. "you're-you're being serious?"
"well, kinda..." you mutter.
"that's... don't say that." carmen shook his head. "please, don't-don't do that, that's insane."
your face falls at his tone, you know he doesn't mean to be so hard about it, but you can't help but feel worse, like carmen's mad at you. in a way he is, but not out of anger, out of love. out of not wanting you to hurt yourself like that.
"i just... i feel gross, and i'm starting to look it-"
"- i think you look beautiful." carmen mutters. he sounds hurt, genuinely hurt by what you're saying, like you said them to him. "i don't... i don't like that you do that to yourself." he admitted after a moment. he'd been going to therapy, working on channeling his emotions out when he felt them instead of bottling them in, leading him to an anxiety attack.
"i'm sorry." you whisper, unsure of what else to say.
"no, it's not... i don't want you to apologize or- or feel bad, i just... i felt like i should say it." carmen's eyes lifted to yours. "that you don't need to do that."
you can't help the way your chest rushes with heat, anxiously picking up the spoon in front of you. you're not sure what to say, most of the time, most guys kinda brush it off. act like it's nothing or ignore it- some agreeing. no one ever got... hurt by it like this. like you were hurting them too.
maybe it was the guilt. maybe it was the fact that carmen looked so sad. whatever it was, you weren't sure, but you were fucking hungry- and the pasta was good.
you hesitantly took a bite, ignoring carmen's eyes tracking you. "it is really good." you hum, trying to break the obvious tension in the room.
"you don't have to eat it, i-i don't want you to feel pressured to." carmen shook his head. "but i'll make you something else? could i make you something else? whatever you want."
you blushed, looking down. you knew what he meant. he was trying to help in the only way he knew how to, by cooking. "carmen-" you sigh.
"no, it's... it's not good to not eat, ya know?" carmen looked up at you. "you have to eat but-but if you don't want pasta, i get it. i'll make you whatever if that's what you want." he looked at you pointedly. "but don't ever think you need to do anything like that f'me. i think you're perfect no matter what. love you no matter what. you know that, told you i'd still love you even if you were a worm."
you snorted lightly, his reference to the tiktok trend you'd done on him a while ago. "thanks, bear." you mutter, grabbing his hand lightly. "i-i would like, if it's not too much and you have all the stuff, that greek goddess salad sydney was testing the other day? i've been craving it."
"heard." carmen nodded, standing towards the fridge.
"if it's not too much trouble-"
"-c'mon." carmen scoffed, looking at you sweetly. "it'll take me fifteen minutes max. sit down f'me, alright. i got it."
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kitsuvil · 4 months
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— stay w me; genshin date hcs [gn! reader] part 1
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characters; tartaglia, neuvillette, zhongli, itto, heizou, scaramouche
warnings/notes; modern au, tooth rotting fluff, pre-established relationship, gn! reader, ajax & heizou's part have a kiss, murder/dead body joke in ittos
summary; your genshin boy invites you on a date, sorta ghibli and city pop style. part 1!
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AJAX ! — windy summer by anri
☆ ajax acts like he's just casually asking you out for a date but you can tell just from his tone while texting that he expects you to be there & would be really butthurt if you're not available
☆ “lyubov. it's my one free day, we're going smh”
☆ i imagine he's pretty busy with work and it's definitely a tasking job where he's in a higher position so he doesn't actually get this chance often, so when he asks you out on a date you're immediately up for it. how could you say no when his puppy dog eyes are visible even through text?
☆ he probably doesn't tell you what the date is but tells you when to be ready. since his full day is free, he's picking you up early in the morning. definitely takes you out for coffee or tea & if you didn't have breakfast, that too!
☆ which connects to the fact that i really think half the day would just be him confirming that gift giving is his love language. clothes here, jewelry there, something for your hobbies over yonder
☆ the car (which mind you is incredibly nice. if he has money, why would he not use it for himself and those around him?) is just stuffed with gifts. especially bc i think most of the date day would be him taking you around town? all the shops and everything, but it's all preparation for the real date
☆ somewhere in between all the places you visit in the city, ajax gets a phone call from work. but without a second's hesitation, he turns his phone off and ignores the call.
☆ “aren't you going to pick that up? i'm sure it's important.”
☆ “they know what today is. my attention is only on you, dear. my coworkers can handle it on their own. it's not like they're incapable, they're just lazy and they'll be fine.”
☆ and suddenly you're blushing because the way he looked at you when he said his attention is only on you? it makes you fully believe his words.
☆ when the time for sunset grows closer, both of you grow quieter. both for different reasons. he's about to take you to the final spot and you're probably getting a little sleepy after a long day tbh.
☆ “you can sleep in my arms tonight, just hold on a bit, lyubov.”
☆ both of you yawning as you pull into a parking lot, but it only hits you where you are after you get out of the car.
☆ “You took us to the beach?” Your mouth drops open a little in pleasant shock. It's not like the beach was something you could never go to, but it was rare to be there with Ajax. Something that felt extra sentimental. It had you reminiscing about the first time you two met, underneath a setting sun and with crashing waves in the backdrop. Looking out over the horizon now as the red sun reflected on the ocean wasn't so unlike that first meeting.
“I thought it would be a nice break from the usual rush of things if I took us here,” Ajax sheepishly shrugged his shoulders, a little bit taken aback by how obviously enthralled you were. While he often got to see joy sparkling on your face, it was almost never this meaningful. It made his own heart melt a little, knowing that he made the right choice coming here.
"It is. I can't believe there's so few people here to see this beautiful sunset."
"I think if there were many people here, the sunset would be long forgotten about. They'd all be distracted by your beauty instead," Ajax paused for a moment. "Just like I am right now."
Looking back at him, it was clear he was saying the truth. His eyes were a reflection of your heart, all your inner workings, and the deep emotions you felt for him. That you both felt for each other. So much to the point that when you grew closer to each other and your lips touching made imaginary fireworks go off, neither of you had a single thought running through your heads.
NEUVILLETTE! — i'm in love by tomoko aran
♡ neuvi would probably be a little hesitant at first asking you out on a date? it's like. you've already been together for so much time and this isn't a first, but every time he wants to make the date perfect so he's a little over-cautious. he refuses to miss the details.
♡ probably asks you in person. he wouldn't want to ask in text for multiple reasons. one, he can't see your reaction immediately if it's in text, two, it wouldn't feel real enough? to him. if anything, he might even hesitate more. it's in this aspect that he's a bit of a perfectionist.
♡ plans the date like weeks in advance. when you realize what it is, it makes a lot more sense why he felt that he needed so much time.
♡ "i managed to acquire some tickets to an opera show happening soon. since we're both free on that day, i was wondering if you'd do me the honor of joining me?"
♡ definitely an opera that he knows you'd like. he's often willing to sacrifice his own tastes for you and it goes to show his devotion. not to mention, sometimes your tastes in these things align anyway! so it's probably a show he knows both of you would like. best of both worlds because he knows most people wouldn't go to an opera out of the blue anyway, but he knows from experience that you're willing to do anything with him. (me too)
♡ MATCHING OUTFITS. his heart would melt. it doesn't have to be something super obvious, and i don't think he'd like it if it drew too much attention to you both anyway, but something really cute. he probably wears an accessory that reminds him of you in his day to day already and this is only the step up from that in formal outfits lolol
♡ before the show starts (ehem, you two obviously got the best seats in the house) i think he'd geek out to you for a little about the place itself and the show/cast you're about to see and you just listen with stars in your eyes. it's nice to see him talk about hobbies and interests when he's rarely focused on you instead of himself or worried about his other priorities.
♡ midway through the show, your wrist slowly moves towards the seat beside you until your arm is fully snaked together with neuvi's. if you look over, there's a slight flush over his cheeks. it's not at all obvious with the darkened lightning of the building, but the lights coming from the stage illuminate his face and his beautiful eyes instead.
♡ after the show ends and everyone is clapping and leaving, your hands are connected to each other's again. they don't separate until long after you both leave the building. even if neuvillette isn't always fond of pda, this time it fills his heart with warmth, and he can't help but enjoy it.
♡ he stops by a café for evening tea after, paying for both of your drinks.
♡ "Here's your green tea and (tea of choice)! Let us know if you need anything else!" The staff left just as quickly as they had arrived. You and Neuvillette were silent for a while, but it wasn't that awkward kind of silence that made you want to run away from a situation. It was comfortable. It was a silence that spoke both a million words but also none.
"Thank you for inviting me to the opera show and doing all this for me. It's been such a fun date, Neuvi!" You broke it first. "Even more fun for me than you. Getting to take you somewhere is far more than enough to make me happy," the corners of Neuvillette's mouth turned up into a smile. He took a sip of his tea before speaking again. "I thought it would be nice to bond over a form of entertainment, and what better option than this show. I know you were talking about it recently, too."
"You're so kind to not forget my blabberings, even when I forget them myself. It was a really enjoyable show, but a thousand times better just because you were there. Thank you."
Up until now, you never realized how easy it was to get a slight blush from the white-haired man. But there he was again, his cheeks a different tone from the rest of his skin. You wouldn't trade this for anything.
ZHONGLI! — sweet love by junko ohashi
◆ zhongli is straightforward about asking you out on a date. he acts a little bit 'sneaky' about it at first, but it doesn't take long until he's asking if you're available soon to visit a park. he won't give the location, but gives you all the other details you'd need instead. warns you that it's a bit of a drive to get there, but that the views are worth it.
◆ he wanted to leave earlier in the morning but when he sees you sleeping so soundly, he can't help to extend it to a bit later. the park can wait. atleast until he finishes preparing breakfast for you and packing everything for the trip, so that when you wake up you only need to focus on getting yourself ready (but he acts so casual about it like he didn't just do everything at once)
◆ "your tea is going to get cold by the time you finish staring at me. yes, everything is already prepared for us to leave." he's definitely proud of himself and so subtly flaunting it. he loves making you smile the most.
◆ there's already a pillow waiting in the passenger seat for you so you can rest easy during the ride. even if you offer to take the wheel instead, he'll just raise an eyebrow and say, "but you don't know where we're going, do you?" and just leaves you huffing in response
◆ eventually, you're both silent. probably with some music playing in the background but you're stuck staring outside. the surroundings had already turned from town to fields a bit ago & it makes you smile at the calm atmosphere
◆ "you're smiling to yourself over there but not telling me why?"
◆ "is loving you not reason enough to make me smile?" you tease.
◆ his eyes return to the road, and his hands on the wheel stiffen up a bit. it's such a subtle change that most people wouldn't pick up on it, but you know exactly how he reacts when you catch him off guard. zhongli is flustered.
◆ you wake up from a nap you didn't even realize you fell into, zhongli slowly tapping you awake. there's a bag you unhaul from the car with what you assume to be trailing necessities and then follow zhongli to the path
◆ he probably explains what route he chose because it's not the main one, he's the type to go for a "lesser known" path. it's paved in dirt and there's some fallen branches or leaning trees. some bushes that taunt you with spikes if you get too close
◆ and it's obvious that if you're not careful enough, you'll end up trip- and would you look at that, you're falling.
◆ but before you can make contact with the grass, zhongli's arms are wrapped around you tightly. of course he'd catch you, you sighed in relief.
◆ "i'm not sure if you're trying to get injured, or if this is your way at hinting that you want a piggyback ride for the rest of the walk."
◆ you pout in response, knowing that neither is the truth and zhongli knows that too. you continue on the trail (which fortunately doesn't seem to be taking too long. zhongli knows your limits and the fact that not everyone is a hiking fanatic... sometimes, him included) that's pleasantly unpopulated save for the animals. like birds chirping in the treetops that fill the silence whenever zhongli isn't talking about this plant and that plant.
◆ a clearing in the trees comes up in front of you, but you don't realize what it actually is until you make it out of the dense forest.
◆ With a deep breath in and out, you take in your surroundings. "I didn't realize this trail was on a mountain. When did we drive up a mountain?" There is no longer stretch after stretch of trees but instead, a large open view of what's below the cliffside. It looks out over nearby towns, forests, and fields. Flowers dot the fields like little specks of glitter, and the sun shines down light for them.
"You were asleep for quite a while, weren't you? Come, there's a picnic table nearby."
Upon sitting down, you realize what exactly was in that bag Zhongli had you bring. He unpacked multiple containers holding food inside of them, setting them onto the picnic table. "When did you have the time to make all this?" You questioned, a little shocked.
"I'm afraid that if I tell you, you'll scold me," he spoke as he opened the containers.
"I get the feeling you're telling me the truth." It wasn't the first time Zhongli spent all his free time on you. Part of him found that what fufilled him the most was making you happy, so he was alright with giving up time that could be spent alone. For so much of his years, he still felt alone even with people around him. You filled that loneliness.
"Isn't it lovely?" Zhongli's voice brought you out of your thoughts. "The view?" You gazed at him longingly.
"It's like a breath of fresh air or a change of pace. Seeing the world around us makes things slow down, and so does your presence."
He wasn't wrong. In a world that runs faster than an hourglass or a clock, Zhongli was the only one who made things feel normal.
ITTO! — slow motion by akina nakamori
★ “love!! are you free this weekend? i maybe have a surprise for you :P” text from him out of the blue bc why would he ever not be spontaneous
★ when the day comes he's ushering you into the car, and honestly looks more excited than you yourself for the date
★ the drive takes a bit as you guys exit the city and head for a more rural area, but quickly the surroundings grow from unfamiliar back to familiar again
★ he can't hold on any longer so even when you're not there yet, “surprise!! we're visiting my home town!” and you have to pretend to not have realized it multiple roads ago. “we haven't been in so long, i'm glad you chose this for our date”
★ last time you two went, you ended up returning home with the fullest bellies but also hearts. so your expectations were comfortably high
★ pulling up into the town is just a bunch of “hey itto! how's it been?” from each person that recognizes him (a lot)
★ before you reach your actual destination, the two of you get stopped in the town by an older lady. she invites you for lunch and how could you say no? even though she runs a restaurant, the meal is on the house. the lady doesn't even hide the grin on her face as she ‘whines’ about the many times itto got in trouble with her when he was younger.
★ “but granny, that kitty was really going to steal all the food, i was just trying to catch it! i didn't mean to break your dishes…”
★ “maybe that's why you were always told to tell an adult, weren't you?”
★ itto finds it hard to pull away when you're finally finished with your food and ready to leave, so you have to tug him a little back to the driver's seat
★ but you don't realize the goal for this date was different than the previous times you visited. he parks at a place you don't fully recognize but urges you to get out anyway. if it was anyone other than itto, you'd question if he was taking you down to do something suspicious. like have you help him hide a dead body.
★ running down the hill and through the trees though, you both quickly came across a river next to a large tree.
★ and so, itto introduces this as his secret hiding spot that he spent so much of his childhood in. surprisingly, most of it is left in great condition, and it's like the timeline of memories had just paused here. it felt like if you blinked, suddenly at you'd spot a tiny itto running around. not that this itto had changed from the young itto that was equally rambunctious.
★ You ran your fingers along the bark of the tree that covered the hiding place. It seemed really tiny to someone your size, but to a young child, it would've been the perfect spot. “Look, I can still stick in half of my body!!” Itto laughs while maneuvering his way through the hideout. “Before you get stuck, maybe. You've grown so much since being young, more than the normal person, silly.”
“Just because I'm tall and strong shouldn't mean I'm not allowed to have any childlike wonder,” he pouted as he removed himself from the hideout and crossed his arms. “When did anyone say that ever? You wouldn't be Itto if you were missing any traits that made me like you as much as I do.”
Your words had him dumbfounded for a moment, so much that a faint blush appeared on his cheeks, and anything he wanted to say before fell off his tongue.
“You're not allowed to say things like that,” he murmured. “How come?” There was a mischievous glint in your eyes. “It makes my stomach feel funky,” Itto admitted.
You found that now it was your turn to blush. “Come, let me show you the rock collection I gathered,” he quickly changed the topic even though the romantic tension in the air still lingered. “When you were young or just now? I can't predict you,” you let out a chuckle. “Hey!! I mean, making a rock collection now doesn't sound too bad but‐”
“Then let's do it. There's a really pretty rock over there to start with.”
HEIZOU! — shyness boy by anri
● sends you a photo of tickets to karaoke with no other context. “are you coming 🥹”
● how could you say no?? you're more than ready. and clearly heizou is too because when you both get to see each other, you're flabbergasted. maybe both dressed too nicely for karaoke, but for each other, maybe it's ok.
● he's probably wearing not exactly formal clothes but something that makes him extremely attractive (not that he wasn't already to begin with and you know it). dressed to impress(you)!!
● heizou probably messing around with some part of his clothes because he didn't realize he's actually kinda nervous to sing in front of you til now. but considering how talented he is at hiding his real feelings, it's not something you pick up on
● at least not until you're in the karaoke booth he rented out and one of you has to go and pick a song already. neither of you want to stand up and actually go sing
● “woooo” he howls into the mic awkwardly bc at least if you guys don't sing, he can make up for it by acting funny
● “do you want to pick a song?” you strike while the iron is hot. successfully forcing him to get up and pick a song because why would he put the pressure on you instead? he decides he has to man up
● probably sings a meme song to start off. it lightens the mood, so much that you join in too
● so it's not long before both of you are messing around, snacking on some treats you ordered for the room
● justin bieber. duh “and i was like baby baby baby oooo, baby baby baby nooo”
● until you get serious and pick a song you actually really like. totally not a love song that you'd like to direct to heizou, wdym?
● heizou is the type to blush really aggressively. there's one thing he's incredibly weak to and it's the knowledge that his people actually care for him and his crush actually likes him back
● of course, you guys have been together longer than you being just a “crush” but it solidifies the fact that no matter what stage of the relationship you're in, heizou will always consider you like a first love. the amount of butterflies in his tummy has never receded and it never will.
● which is why as you serenade him, he looks completely lulled by your voice. you could be a siren and he'd ask you to take him down with you. it's so clear in his body language and expression that he'd to anything at all for you
● “And when were you going to tell me you could sing like that, darling?” Heizou pretends to wipe a tear from his face as he applauds you. The timing of it is comedic because half of his actions are just him trying to cover up the fact that you had him fully under your spell.
“Whenever I discovered it, which happens to be now,” you giggled at his reaction. His flushed face didn't go unnoticed even one bit and you were prepared to tease him about it like your life depended on it. “Clearly, it gave you a bit of a shock too.”
Heizou's eyes looked almost glazed over and you knew that you had touched where it affected him the most. “Don't read me like a book, I know no such thing as shock.” He pouted and yet it only made you fall harder.
“I know something I can do that'll make you admit to being shocked.”
“And what would that be?”
You stepped closer towards Heizou. There was less than a second in between that and now, with your lips up against his and karaoke entirely forgotten. It was a rare occurrence that you guys shared a kiss for it never felt right—but as Heizou’s soft lips moved against yours, both of you knew that there was no better time than now.
SCARAMOUCHE! — 4:00am by taeko ohnuki
♥︎ scara calls you in the middle of the night knowing neither of you are asleep yet. his voice is all raspy and tired but you can tell he has something important to say
♥︎ “have you been outside tonight?”
♥︎ you curiously say no. what reason could he have for this specific of a question?
♥︎ “be ready in 10. i'm taking you to the park”
♥︎ this doesn't surprise you too much. scara was never one to make elaborate plans for going out, rather tiny things like this. so you hopped out of bed to get ready
♥︎ he was at your place in record time and upon getting into the car you spotted a few blankets and snacks in the back seat.
♥︎ “i know you're going to ask what they're for. we're going stargazing.”
♥︎ now this catches you off guard. “stargazing? at 2 am?”
♥︎ “did you want to wait until the sun has risen and the stars are all gone?”
♥︎ “fair.” but you couldn't hide the smile that crept up your face when you pictured scara doing something as romantic as stargazing. he'd glare at you if you actually said it to his face, but sometimes his heart feels so soft it makes you want to hug him out of adoration
♥︎ “What's so special about the stars tonight that makes you want to bring us both out here?” You ask while both of you work together to lay down a blanket and the snacks. “Other than the fact the moon isn't shining like someone who turned on their brights in the middle of the night? Nothing, really. I just felt like it,” Scaramouche shrugs before settling down on the blanket beside you.
“The sky is really pretty so I think that's fair. Is this your technique for making us feel sleepy, though?”
“If it works, then it works. Look at the constellation over there,” he points towards the sky.
“It's Ursa Minor, the little dipper, right?”
“Yeah. That one star is-” He pauses as his eyebrows furrow, “Hold on.” Scaramouche sits up from the ground, squinting his eyes.
“If you're seeing what I’m seeing… That's a falling star, right?”
“It was only there for a second, but it was definitely a falling star.”
“Did you take a moment to wish on it?” You questioned.
“Why would I wish on a falling star when I have everything I need already? That being you, of course.”
— this was a nightmare to format and write (lost half of zhongli's part at one point and had to rewrite it, tumblr refused to work w me and had to remove my line dividers, accidentally posted it before it was ready... a nightmare, truly) so i hope everyone enjoys it!! listen to the songs for each character for immersion if you'd like <3 and most important of all, ENJOY THE NEW GENSHIN UPDATE!! ILY
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astupidweeb69 · 6 months
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hello!! I am kinda nervous to write this bc I absolutely love your writing and the way you portray Toby is just so real. I love how you make him both a loser and a force of nature, like just bc he has no rizz doesn't mean he can't do anything lol. But I was lowkey thinking about your stories the other day and like, what if Y/N also had some screws loose? Like he pops up at her house covered in the blood of some guy who wouldn't leave her alone and instead of calling the police like a smart person she's just like: " 😳 omg you did this for me??" I know it's unrealistic and silly but it's also kind of interesting???
Ticci Toby x Violent! Reader
Toby with an unhinged reader? Well - there's a recipe for disaster lmao.
I know I said I'm not taking requests but this ended up becoming a scenario. I just had some inspo - hope this is what you were looking for! Because the reader isn't submissive? Idk
Y/N has some messed-up thoughts and there are mentions of violence under the cut!:
The reader I imagine in this case would have only seen how cringey Toby is - thinking he was just a creepy guy who's taken a liking to them and would avoid him at all costs. Probably up until this point assume that he's a wimp (Toby would initially try his best to seem weaker and unassuming when he approaches the person he likes)
The scenario I imagine is that Y/N grew up around conflict, and is fully comfortable around violence, even throwing a few punches themselves here and there. Maybe ended up in Juvie when they were younger and now works in some retail job - something where they regularly interact with the general public.
A customer tries to hit on Y/N when Toby's there - big mistake.
But Toby doesn't say anything at first.
He doesn't have to.
Y/N immediately shuts the customer down. But the guy doesn't let up. Curses are thrown back and forth, Y/N's wrist is grabbed.
He touched you.
Toby doesn't like that. Not one bit.
You get reprimanded by your boss after you punched the unruly customer in the face.
Luckily they didn't press charges.
You had a bit of an edge, from your surly demeanor and fucked sense of humor, but Toby had no idea you'd do that.
Kind of turned him on. He knew he picked you for a reason.
But alas, that was the extent of your revenge. You already had a record of aggravated assault and you didn't need another one added to the list.
Luckily for you that scrawny, lanky boy who always stared at you when he came in had a plan in motion.
Late at night, a knock on the door wakes you up from a nap on the couch. Of course, you look through the peephole first before answering.
Red.
Everything is red.
Only until you hear a familiar voice pipe up do you realize who it is.
Toby.
The blood covered so much of his face it was hard to point out who he was at first.
He speaks to you through the door, somehow already knowing you're there.
And he tells you what he did.
It takes a moment for you to process all the grizzly details, the way he followed the man, cornered him in an alley, and beat him so hard he'd pretty sure he cracked his skull on the brick wall.
He sounded giddy about it. Gleeful.
He was far from the loser you thought he was.
And you liked it.
Liked that he did that for you.
After all, in your head, hurting someone for someone else was the greatest form of love. It was the kind of devotion you'd always dreamed of from a partner.
You open the door.
Toby is surprised, but soon sees a look on your face he recognized. The kind of expression of sick joy and arousal that comes with blood lust.
You're blushing too. Blushing for him.
Everything was finally coming together perfectly, and once you let him into your home, he's never going to leave.
The relationship would start right off the bat. Toby is one to rush things.
It's all to claim you. Both mentally and physically. So you're attached to the hip pretty much. Expect a lot of PDA (Toby does not care who sees lol)
And a reader who's fully on board?
Yeah you're going to bring out the worst in each other. He'll encourage you to do more crimes, to get bloodier, to join him.
It would be a very bad situation for everyone involved.
But especially for anyone unfortunate enough to cross the paths of you two lovebirds.
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jeonbunnie · 1 year
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love is gone
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pairing: reader x jeon jeongguk
anon suggested: “I had this idea for a fic it's angst with a lot of heartbreak with soft smut based on love is gone by Slander ft. Dylan Matthew, basically the oc and jungkook have been in a relationship for two years but recently she's felt him drifting away from her and things aren't the way it used to be so she plans a super cute date night in hopes of saving their relationship which he agrees too but he doesn't come home that evening....when he does come home the next day and mentions they have to talk she knows what he's going to say but she thinks if she can show him one more time he'll feel how much she loves him...but in the end his love is gone.”
summary: Jeongguk tries to let you down easy.
genre: angst; smut; 18+;
content/warnings: POV shifts; boyfriend!jeongguk; established relationship;break up!au; hurt/comfort; make up sex (kinda lol); fingering,unprotected sex
soundtrack: love is gone— by slander ft.Dylan Matthew (highly recommend listening to the acoustic ver)
a/n: writing this made me… 😮‍💨 mark me down as sad and horny byeeeeeeeee. Also reader has brown eyes bc of reasons. Brown eyed girl supremacy, mwah!
word count: 1.4K
♪ It tears me up when you turn me down. I'm begging please, just stick around♪
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"Baby, let's talk."
Something about the way he said it made your heart crack. The tone of his voice, the softness of Jeongguk's words, there's a finality to it all that made you anxious for what came next.
"Can you come with me for a minute?"
You didn't want to have this conversation. You already knew where it would lead.
Everything in you wants to say no. But it's the first time you've seen Jeongguk in 24 hours and the first time he's held your hand in weeks, so you let him lead you outside, helpless against his touch.
You couldn't face him when you sat down on the park bench, and you're sure the words you've been avoiding will be written all over his expression, so instead, you look out at the horizon.
It was hurting you. Sitting at the bench with Jeongguk so close but so far away, the distance between you verging on strangers.
You had half a mind to lash out and accuse him of breaking up with you in public so you could accept it quietly and not cause a scene. But you know him.
You know your boyfriend was kind and gentle-hearted. He probably brought you out here because you loved sunsets, and he wanted to give you a nice memory even as he said goodbye.
In the distance, the sunset was a red-orangey glow, casting everything the light touched in golden warmth—but you can't feel it. All you feel is ice-cold dread for what's about to happen.
So you beat him to the punch. "You're breaking up with me, aren't you?"
All the air rushed out of Jeongguk in a sigh. "Am I that obvious?"
You would have laughed at his question if it hadn't hurt you so much. "You've been avoiding me all week. Last night, you asked me for space, and now you want to 'talk.' We haven't talked in days. I might be blindly in love with you, but I'm not an idiot," you said, trying hard to keep the words from coming out bitter.
Jeongguk ran a hand through his hair, nerves on edge. Masked behind your anger, he could hear the hurt in your voice, and he hated being the cause of it. This wasn't easy for him, letting you go. But he couldn't keep you either.
"I think," he started. "I think we should start seeing other people."
At his confirmation, a hot tear slid down your cheek. Before you could wipe the tear yourself, Jeongguk reached out, closing the distance between you, and brushed the tear away with his thumb. He never could stand seeing you cry.
"Did I do something wrong?" You asked, barely keeping yourself together.
"No. Of course not. It's not you—"
"—It's me?" You finished, offering him a wobbly smile. "You don't have to say that just to be nice."
The look on your face made Jeongguk's chest ache so much he could barely breathe. "I don't wanna hurt you. . ."
"But you don't want to stay either?"
He doesn't answer that question; somehow, the silence between you only makes you feel worse.
"I see. . . "you said, nodding your head. "So that's why you didn't come home last night."
You fell asleep on the couch, waiting for him to find his way back to you so the picnic basket you packed remained untouched on the counter. You thought you could remind him of how great things used to be by recreating your first date at the park.
It involved fairy lights, wine, and homemade sweets filled with the love you hoped to remind him of. The love you hoped was still there.
Now you realize Jeongguk was never going to come back home to you. Not last night or any night after.
In a way, you're grateful. Considering the surprise you had planned, it would have been embarrassing if he had come home the night before.
Of course, you still made it to the park, but the situation was dramatically different now. But instead of making up, you were breaking apart.
"I'm sure you noticed how different things are between us now," said Jeonggguk. "Last night, I needed time alone to think. I tried to imagine myself without you. And the thing is, I could….and it all felt so."
You bit your lip, holding back more tears. "Is there anything I can do to convince you to stay?"
Jeongguk was quiet for a moment, and hope built in your chest, but it died just as quickly when you saw him shake his head no.
Jeongguk forced his face to stay neutral. "I will always love you, but just not in the way I wish I still could."
"So this is it then? We're over? Just like that?"
You want to cry, scream, and beg, but Jeongguk is still and calm beside you. So calm you know he's already decided to end things, and you know him well enough to know how stubborn he is that he won't change his mind now that he's made it up.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I understand if you don't want to be around me, I've already made plans to stay at Joons tonight if you prefer me gone."
That was the last thing you wanted. "No," You said, pushing down the sobs that threatened to come from your mouth. "Can you stay, please?"
Jeongguk hesitated, looking away from the face of the setting sun. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea…" He didn't want to give you the wrong impression that there was any way to salvage your relationship. And more than that, he didn't want to lose his resolve because a night with you would make it that much harder to walk away.
"Just for tonight? I don't wanna be alone." It felt stupid to want him there now when he was the cause of your pain, but Jeongguk was one of the few people in your life who knew how to comfort you. You wanted him close, even at the most inopportune moment.
The word 'no' was at the tip of his tongue, but he turned to look at you, and the hurt he found there in your big brown eyes had him saying 'yes.'
And he knows he shouldn't, but Jeongguk can't help but comfort you like he always has. Even though you broke up, it didn't change the fact that he still cared for you, still had love for you. He told himself it was just a reflex that had him reaching for your hand on the walk back home.
It's reflex that has him curling up next to you in bed and wrapping his arms around your waist to be the big spoon, as always.
Reflex that has him kissing away your tears, neck, and shoulder.
Reflex that has his hands sliding underneath your clothes to rub you through your underwear, desperate to make you feel good.
At least, that's what he tells himself.
And before he knows it, he's sinking into you with a groan, getting lost in the familiar warmth of your body.
You're so wet it was easy to slip inside, and even though he's already inside you, so close, naked body flush against yours—it's not enough.
Jeongguk still wanted more.
He couldn't help but grip your thigh, lifting your leg to push in deeper, to feel more of you as his cock slid in and out of your heat.
It has to be a reflex because it can't be love that has his hips driving into you, over and over and over again.
It can't be love that has him moaning into your mouth, kissing you until you are both out of breath, till you clench around him and he spills inside you, filling you up so perfectly.
Because if it is love and not the memory of loving you that makes it so hard to pull away hours later when your tears have dried, and your heart beats steady as you sleep dreamless on the side of the bed that used to be his—then Jeongguk is making a mistake. It was possibly the biggest mistake of his life.
Jeongguk isn't sure he can live with being the one to break both of your hearts. But he'd rather end it all before your relationship's indifference could turn to something cruel. He'd finish it now before you could hurt each other further.
If he had thought about it more, Jeongguk might have seen the love hidden in his actions. That there was something here worth saving, worth fighting for.
But that wasn't what he wanted. Jeonguk didn't want to think of everything he was giving up walking away from you.
It was much easier to pretend his love for you was gone.
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koinotame · 15 days
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word count: 1.7K content warnings: general yandere content warnings and allusions to nsfw/sex but nothing super explicit
summary: it's your birthday!!!! what it's like celebrating with my ocs
a/n: i can now legally drink in a country i'll never visit 🎉 + bc i'm feeling nice another sneak peek of the new guys as well
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gacha isekai group:
first prince: only finds out after your birthday has passed because he's still doing the hot and cold act and genuinely breaks down crying. is lucid enough to realise maybe you're trying to be discreet so only hosts an elaborate dinner for the two of you instead of a national banquet and a barrage of gifts he think you'd enjoy
first hero: terrible gift giver who spends the entire day fussing over you. holds open doors, carries all your things, flexes when you ask because you like his muscles even if he's burning from how embarrassed he is, reminds you you could do anything to him and he'd still love you forever and ever and ever and— and so on
second hero: between the fact that you're almost definitely already overwhelmed from your entire harem and you treat (unfortunately most of your harem and not just) him like an object anyway, he doesn't dare get close on the actual day. a couple days later he just kind of silently presses something small but meaningful into your hands and wishes you a happy belated birthday. you pat him on the head dismissively and send his stomach soaring, but you look happy with it so it was worth spending his entire month's salary on
vampire: shows up in your bedroom in the morning dressed in basically nothing except a rose in his mouth and offers himself to you. he's your toy any day anyway but you can make extra use of him today… when this doesn't land he's distraught and attempts to make it up to you by buying you some really extravagant tools or materials you'll make use of
werewolf: doesn't have much to offer, so… you mentioned you were interested in seeing his true form a while ago, right? do you… want to see that now? he'd tower over you like this if he wasn't so busy rolling up at your feet and showing you his tummy. you can take him out on a walk with a leash, humanoid or true form, but to be fair you could do that any day
playboy: his gifts are surprisingly practical; think something like a water canteen or some very soft, very fluffy towels. he takes you out on a little tea party date as well, ready with all your favourite pastries, then offers to play and/or sing you a couple songs. overall focuses on giving you a nice, calm couple hours, partially because he loves you and partially because he's trying to cement himself as the better, more thoughtful option lol
immortal: brings you breakfast and surprises you with several hand sewn, incredibly sturdy and very much your style pieces of clothing. since your own had been getting a little ragged, and you complimented his sewing once… see, this one's even in the style of your clothes from back home! seeing how you've been homesick lately, he thought he could alleviate that a little for you. and if you'd really like him to, he could give you a kiss as a gift too…
living doll: since they don't technically have any living expenses, the army just kind of… doesn't pay them… so they don't have much to work with for gifts and frankly they don't really get the point of celebrating something like the day you were born on, but they let you dress them up really nicely and offers to match so they can at least make you look better throughout the day
lab experiment: gives you a handwritten light collection (it's a whole book) of poems and little pieces of art they've made of and/or for you. the contents are kind of concerning but the gesture is really sweet. also gets you some pressed flowers and your favourite treats, then ends up rushing back to their room to hide because they're worried none of this is enough for you
mage's apprentice: spends the week before your birthday asking you strange questions and hiding away in their atelier. you don't see much of them on the actual day until the evening when they shakily wish you a happy birthday and drag you out to the gardens, where they've prepared a special fireworks show just for you
disgraced god: doesn't know it's your birthday at first because the concept is kind of entirely foreign to them, but is not about to be outshined by the rest of your harem. they're always at your beck and call anyway, but they make sure to up the doting (and monopolise you as much as possible) to the max on your special day
servant: it's not really his intention, but he ends up coming off as if he's trying to prove what a good husband he'd make to you. he gets you some trinkets you've been eyeing for a while, but also some of the officials who'd been giving you a hard time recently have seemingly vanished off the face of the world and he seems extra proud of himself today…
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otome game group:
crown prince: national banquet!!! no i'm serious he throws an incredibly extravagant banquet for you. his father isn't super pleased about the misuse of funds but allows it since the two of you will be married soon anyway. gets you so many gifts it's a little scary. at least one of those is a collar and leash he wants you to put around his neck and absolutely wants you to dig in to him
heroine: doesn't really have the financial means to get you much, so instead she invites you to meet her family and spend the day in her house. apologises for how it's not much but expresses how happy she is that you're willing to spend the day with her and makes sure to cook all your favourites
villainess: invites you to spend the entire week surrounding your birthday at her estate, and then spends literally every single day celebrating your birthday, including daily banquets and a massive pile of gifts. expressing worry that this is too much just makes her go harder, because clearly you don't understand how important you are to her and spoiling you more will fix this
1: not to worry! he's already chased off your three persistent noble suitors, so you can spend all day at your own leisure. and if you're upset—either at the hassle with the other three, or at his actions—well, you can always take it out on him? he's already always there, but like today he really turns up the doting. overjoyed when you push him out of the way while pulling on his hair at one point
2: pools together some of his savings to buy you a nice piece of jewellery. presents it to you shyly when you have a moment to yourself and offers to take you out to a restaurant if you're willing to sneak out… or you can have him in the comfort of your bedroom, if you'd like
3: just kind of shows up at your estate with a bouquet, a couple handmade plushies in what they hope are your favourite animals and some blessed protective charms. if they have reason to believe you'd react well, they might as well just straight up offer themself. not in a sexual way (unless you want it to be), you just own every part of them already so if it pleases you you might as well make it official
4: playing 4d chess with the crown prince and villainess to ensure she's the only one who gets to celebrate with you on your birthday. takes you out on a fun day to the capital, where she gets to buy you tons of gifts and also play the role of your personal princely knight
5: can't take the day off (spends a long time bemoaning this) but since it's customary for you to stop by his place of work for your birthday anyway he decides he'll just give you your gift then. gives you a very professional congratulatory speech, a slightly less professional brooch set that fits you to a t, and (if he thinks you'll react positively) a considerably less professional offer for you to be the one to give him nipple piercings
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misc group:
house husband: makes you take the day off work to spend it doting on you. you best believe he's spent the last couple of months saving up some money to buy you gifts so tailored to you it's almost a little creepy. also brings you breakfast in bed, bakes you the best cake you've ever had and has a reservation planned for dinner at your favourite… and is definitely the type to tell you you have one more gift to unwrap at the end of the day (it's him)
horror protagonist: lol. she bounds up to you super cheerfully and gives you the eyes of her teammate, since you said you liked them so much a bit ago… you don't question how she knows your birthday at this point. is glued to your side the entire day (though you begrudgingly admit she's less annoying than usual) and offers to cook or bake something for you. doesn't mind (at all) if you want to take your stress out on her, but… she's trying to be sweet for today
6: takes the day off from his work despite your many complaints and spends it with you, insisting it's his turn to spoil you for once. you're actually kind of impressed at how accurate his gifts are to your tastes and how he managed to get them without you noticing. it's sweet until he takes the opportunity to attempt to coax you into taking advantage of him, lingerie in your favourite colour and style and all
7: spends his entire allowance on giving you the best day possible, but he's fumbling so hard for most of it. a special limited edition for your favourite game that's not worth the money, some admittedly very soft plushies of your favourite animals, and a new bag since you'd been complaining your current one was falling apart… spends the entire day trying to hype himself up to give you a kiss but doesn't quite manage. feels terrible about how lacklustre his attempt was (despite how happy you are) and vows to himself to make the next much, much more enjoyable for you
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heavenlycloud · 8 months
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all my thoughts, they're shaped like you: huh yunjin x fem! reader
request: i was wondering if you could write smth about yunjin and reader having a sleepover? it can be a smut or not js however you'd like &lt;3
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a/n: i decided to write this as sfw instead of smut just bc im...not confident in my smut writing abilities rn so i hope this will suffice! enjoy and thank you so much for requesting. *please note all pictures and videos are used for creative reference to give readers a visual of hair, makeup, clothes, shoes, etc. ONLY*
guilty was your first comeback in six months and by far your most successful since your debut four years ago. originally the song was to go to one of your seniors, but it was pushed your way when another caught his attention. the song was much more mature than the other songs you'd put out in the past which increased attention towards this new side of you as an artist. the past four weeks were filled with long schedules of music and variety show appearances, photoshoots, and too many fansigns to count. however, today was the last day of schedules before you got a two week long break to rest and recover.
you stood in front of your manager who was pressing you to take pictures for instagram before you got whisked away elsewhere. he smiled as you posed and the rest of your staff members made positive comments about you and your performance outfit. you didn't even bother settling back into your dressing room because not even two seconds later there was a knock at the door. you rushed over to open it and a small face peeked through as you beamed from ear to ear.
eunchae shyly greeted your staff members and you before she stepped back and onced you over with a gasp, "you're so pretty!" you reached forward and pulled her into a hug, "you're so precious oh my god." she giggled and led you down the hallway to the room where she films Eunchae's Star Diary. when you both got inside she motioned for you to sit down and she followed behind you.
for a moment there was silence after you introduced yourself before you and eunchae began laughing and you admitted in english, "i'm sorry i don't want to be awkward...it's this is just a little funny to me because we've never actually met." eunchae agreed and answered in korean, "yeah this is our first time meeting, but i feel like i know about you a lot because yunjin unnie talks about you all the time." similar to a professional she continued, "with your new comeback, can you tell us a little bit about the album and your favorite song?" you nodded and explained more professionally, "guilty is my first album since six months ago. it's also a different sound than what i've put out before. this time i wanted to focus on something that everyone can connect with."
eunchae looked at you with wide eyes and prompted you to continue so you added, "guilt is an emotion that everyone has to some extent or another. it's a feeling that has a negative connotation and that's something i wanted to change. of course singing about positive things is good, but i think singing about negative things and presenting them in a beautiful way is equally as important. more specifically, my single guilty’ is about a selfish love that hurts the other person. it’s not coming from my experience, but i used it as a way to define what love is and express it on stage.”
the younger girl looked at you and sighed, "everything you say sounds so smart." you laughed and shyly dismissed the complement out of habit before she asked you, "who was the first person to hear the single?" you side eyed her and she grinned because she already knew the answer but for the sake of her show you sighed, "huh yunjin of le sserafim." eunchae pointed and laughed at your facial expression and you playfully rolled your eyes but she shared happily, "yunjin unnie has been singing the song nonstop since it came out. when it dropped she was telling all of us in the dorm that she heard it first! she kept bragging that it was so good but didn't tell us any hints! but it was worth the wait because the comeback is incredible, unnie!" heat bloomed in your chest at the thought of yunjin listening to your music and bragging about how talented you were to those closest to her.
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the minute you got back into your apartment after your schedule all of your messages came rushing into your notifications. your best friends had blown up your phone all day which honestly wasn't new, but scrolling through 100+ messages was kinda annoying when you were tired. then, like clockwork your phone started ringing and you answered to see one of your best friends on your screen, "hey i don't know if you saw somi's texts or not but we're having a sleepover at your place tonight." immediately you responded, "who is we? you speak french now?" on the other line she laughed and said, "don't be like that y/n."
you whined, "aeri! i just finished promotions im TIRED! and why my place and not somi's?" aeri let out a small huff and said, "somi's apartment flooded like ten minutes ago so we can't stay there. you know the rest of us aren't allowed people to stay overni-" you cut her off immediately, "hold on it's not just you and somi?" aeri looked off to the side and bit her lip, "uh...so funny story..." before she could answer someone snatched her phone and continued, "jen is coming too." you spat out the water you were sipping, "WHY WOULD YOU INVITE YUNJIN?!" somi answered casually, not taking her eyes off of the road, "i thought you would've worked stuff out by now. besides it's kinda shitty if we have a sleepover and exclude one person. it's called a friend group for a reason, right?" you huffed, "yeah i guess..."
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the friend group started just as you and giselle when she entered SM entertainment back in December of 2019. the two of you clicked immediately even though you were technically her senior, having debuted that past summer. along with her members, they were the only girls close to your age in the entire company so you were quick to befriend them as soon as you were allowed. months after meeting giselle, you met somi who debuted a month before you as a soloist. then you introduced the two and the three of you were a trio of best friends...until yunjin came into the picture.
you and yunjin were familiar with one another but you only met once at a music show when you were promoting at the same time. from there you introduced her to somi and aeri, and she was added into the friend group. once you added her into the small bunch of friends you all were complete, and dubbed, The Plastics, by fans.
for the most part everything was fine with you four except that there were times when it was hard to meet up because of busy schedules. however, you started trying to distance yourself a bit when you realized that you had a crush on yunjin. the cardinal rule of friend groups was don't date other people in the same group. despite aeri and somi swearing up and down to you that yunjin liked you back, you refused to feed into it. your best friends weren't liars but you just couldn't bring yourself to believe them for whatever reason. besides even if you confessed to yunjin you didn't think much would come of it besides a ruined friend group. so you decided that you were just going to continue trying to compartmentalize your feelings and gaslighting yourself into thinking you didn't like her.
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you ran to your room trying to get everything ready for your friends, the least you could do is have a clean apartment. the vaccuum drowned out the sounds of the city streets below your building as you dragged it across your area rug. you hummed along to oceanfromtheblue that blasted through your headphones, further muting the noise from the outside world. unbeknownst to you, yunjin had already entered your apartment. she got in using the 10 digit code on your door that she memorized just in case because that's what friends do...right?
a pair of hands gently caught your hips as you backed up with the vaccuum in hand making you scream and jump. you whipped around to see yunjin standing before you looking perfect as usual. she was only in a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie with those ugg slippers she liked to leave in your apartment for when she visited you. even in a basic dressed down outfit she still looked like an angel with her red hair pulled into a messy bun with a few loose strands framing her face. the pair of glasses she wore sat low on her nose causing her to push them up before pulling you into a hug. she laughed and apologized, "y/n i'm sorry! i called out your name a few times i thought you would have heard me." you let out the breath you'd been holding and assured her, "no it's fine i shouldn't have had my headphones this loud..."
there was an awkward silence and her eyes found yours bringing out a pinkish hue to her cheeks that was only reserved for you. her hands remained on your hips and you brushed a piece of her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. the simple action sent butterflies straight to her stomach and made her catch her lip between her teeth. neither of you knew where this was headed but right before you two could figure it out, the front door swing open and aeri entered with somi, "HEY BITCHES- oh." the two of you jumped and yunjin inched away from you, "heyyyy!" somi motioned between the two of you, "did we just interrupt something or?" immediately you refused, "no we were just um... yeah anyways hey guys." you paused and realized the two let themselves in, "wait- how did you two get inside?" yunjin and your manager were the only two people who knew the password for your apartment so how did they manage to get in?"
somi pointed to her phone and said, "i wrote it down the last time yunjin and i were over. the real question is why does yunjin know it and we don't. i thought we were friends." the blonde placed her hands on her hips and pouted to which aeri added, "how do you even remember all those numbers anyways?" yunjin responded, "i memorized it after seeing y/n do it once. and it's not hard, i just remember important things." both aeri and somi shared a glance and you joked, "so basically i need to make a new passcode. got it." the three of them laughed and put their bags down so you could start your plans for the night.
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yunjin pulled out a vlogging camera from her bag and said, "i know we usually have a 'no work stuff' policy for our hangouts but i have to vlog and this is the only interesting thing i've done all week." your other friends started getting baking utensils and ingredients out of your pantry and cabinets while you preheated your oven.
the american idol stood in front of the camera and started speaking, "hi everyone! today i'm with my friends- and we're going to do the blind, mute, deaf challenge while cooking. y/n is being so kind to let us use her kitchen today!" you fake side eyed her and muttered, "you all showed up on my doorstep unannounced but okay." the three laughed and finished setting up the things you'd need.
since it was yunjin's vlog she decided how roles were split up and it was through rock paper scissors: aeri was deaf, somi and you were blind, yunjin was mute. for the sake of your kitchen and everyone's safety she decided to have two people who weren't allowed to speak. before starting the challenge yunjin explained, "so we already have the roles assigned. basically we are going to try to cook dinner together with our roles and we aren't allowed to switch or break character. so aeri is deaf- she already has her headphones on." she pointed the camera to aeri who was in her own world listening to some tyga song on blast, not paying attention to anyone else. yunjin continued, "somi and y/n are blind- wait do we have a blindfold?" she turned to you and you shook your head, "why would i have a blindfold? somi smirked and winked, "i have many blindfolds." yunjin slapped her arm and she laughed, "what?" you huffed in fake annoyance, "we should have made her one of the mute ones. yunjin finished explaining, "and i'm mute so i'm going to be silent because i didn't want to tape my face. anyways, aeri is the only one that can see the recipe and we have to follow her directions." you ended up finding two scarves in one of your drawers to tie around your and somi's heads and you all started the challenge.
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"OKAY! BOIL THE POT OF WATER!" aeri shouted loudly making you flinch at the sudden outburst. you reached your hands in front of you as you cautiously dug a pot out from your cabinet and placed it in somi's hands. the blonde started to slowly walk to your sink, hitting the front of it with a soft thud and a whine while the rest of you laughed. somi filled the pot up and gently walked it back with the help of yunjin before she turned on the stove. the rest of it went like this, yunjin slightly helping you while aeri screamed the directions to you all.
when it came to cutting the chicken somi backed away from the counter, "i don't wanna touch it ew." you muttered, "you big baby." aeri asked in confusion, "YOU SAID YOU HATE ME?" the three of you burst out laughing while aeri stood still confused, looking around then into yunjin's camera as if it would talk back to her. you stood in front of the cutting board with the raw chicken and grabbed the knife that was within reach. you thought aloud, "this is probably a bad idea having the blind one do this part of the challenge but...i have bandaids."
somi was busy trying to drain the pasta from the water with the help of aeri guiding her as yunjin nervously watched you handle the knife and raw meat. yunjin tensed as she watched you nearly cut your finger once and then placed a hand on your arm. this time you didn't jump at her touch and let her come behind you. her hands placed gently atop yours and you giggled before playfully asking, "oh my god what is this? so romantic." beside you somi and aeri pretended to gag, somi not even facing the right direction as she teased you. when you both finished cutting the meat, yunjin moved from behind you and immediately you missed her body pressed against yours.
the remainder of you all cooking was a hot mess. from aeri forgetting she was in charge of instructions to take mini dance breaks, to somi trying to spoon in pasta water into the sauce with a fork by accident, yunjin trying to mime out her questions about the recipe to aeri, and you walking smack into the open refrigerator door- the whole thing was a mess. but an entertaining one that fans would love to watch once it was uploaded. somehow by some miracle you all managed to make the food exactly how it was supposed to taste which paid off at the end.
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hours passed and aeri and somi had fallen asleep after crying their eyes out to the notebook that just finished playing. you poked aeri with your foot and her head lolled to the side limply making you and yunjin laugh. you pointed to your tv and asked, "did you like the movie?" the red aired woman nodded and mumbled quietly, "yeah, it was good. i understand the hype now but it was sad too. i love a happy ending but leading up to it was sad, you know?" you agreed and admitted, "i was mad when they made me watch it for the first time so you're better than me. all of that emotion just for me to get something kinda nice at the end, it was exhausting." she hummed in agreement and you both fell silent.
yunjin's hands brushed your hair gently, the softness of your silk press beneath her fingers was different from the way you usually wore it. unlike when most people touched your hair, you didn't pull away or dodge her hands running through the strands. instead you scooted closer to her and smiled when she began dutch braiding one of the sides on your head. the two of you basked in the quiet which was the first of it's kind tonight.
there was a small snag in your hair that caused you to almost whimper when her long fingers tugged at it. yunjin murmured an apology and pressed a gentle kiss to the spot before continuing. she then spoke up, "imagine just...forgetting who you are and everyone you love like that."
you didn't think before answering, "i almost did. when i left home and came here. i was around people that said i needed to leave my old life behind if i wanted to be successful here. i was naive and thought it was true, that my past would hold me back so i tried to let it all go. i only realized they were wrong after i was all alone." yunjin began braiding the other side of your head and asked, "so how'd you fix it?" you answered, "i met people who were like me and i made friends and talked to people. i tried to do things that reminded me of home, like being around you guys." yunjin finished your two braids and you turned around to see her smiling at you fondly. she could see the slight pain hidden behind your gaze as you recall one of the harder times in your life.
yunjin sighed and blurted out, "you smell like home." for a moment she froze and you pulled away and asked, "like new york? cuz that's not a complement if i smell like a new york street." yunjin laughed and answered nervously, "no you just...i don't know you're just- whenever i'm with you i feel at home." she moved down to the floor mattress you laid out earlier that night, knowing somi and aeri would be laid out on the couch like they are now.
you laid side by side as you told yunjin, "it feels like that with you too, like i'm back in the states just living without worries like now." yunjin bit her lip debating on if she wanted to do this now, but she caved into herself, "that's not what i meant but it's okay." you turned to face her, now laying on your side as you asked, "what did you mean then?"
yunjin felt her heart begin to race and she tried to brush it off, "no there's nothing." but you were determined to understand what she meant so you asked, "no, talk to me. what's going on in your head? tell me. i want to know, i want to know everything about you." of course yunjin knew that you weren't ever going to force her to speak, so she still had an out if she wanted to just not continue the conversation. however, she was tired doing this same dance with you where she almost admitted her feelings then ran away at the last minute. she knew that even if you didn't feel the same way that you wouldn't let that ruin the friendship you already have so she bit the bullet.
there was a pause then yunjin huffed and confessed "when i'm with you i feel safe, like i have nothing to worry about. i can just be myself and i know you'll never judge me or leave because i express myself the way i want to. whenever i'm not with you, you're still living in my head...all of my thoughts, they're shaped like you. i love you and i love being around you and being with you and i never want to leave your side which is why i try not to come too close because i can't risk fucking this up. but here i am telling you what i told myself i'd take to the grave so...just promise me if this screwed everything up and judging by your silence i think it did- just pretend it never happened and leave somi and aeri out of thi-" you refused to let her talk herself into thinking she ruined everything, "i love you too."
yunjin's breath caught in her throat and you repeated, "i love you too, huh yunjin. i love you so much and i love being around you and with you too." she sat up so she was upright then looked back down at you until you were sitting beside her. the small nightlight on your hallway outlet was the only thing allowing you to see her eyes locked on yours. you inched closer to her and brought your arms to rest on her shoulders while her hands were on your waist. her long fingernails scratched the ribbing of your tank top while your fingers twirled with a piece of her hair.
her forehead pressed against yours and you whispered, "what does this make us then?" yunjin shrugged and giggled which made you smile, "i dunno but we can figure it out together?" you asked, "yeah?" she nodded and you noticed how she eyed your two friends who were asleep tangled together yet half off the couch. she looked back at you and asked, "so when do we tell them?" you scrunched your nose and placed a gentle peck on yunjin's lips. the red haired woman paused then kissed you twice more, "who says we have to?" right when you pressed your lips against hers for the last time, a bright flash lit up your entire living room. you both looked over and aeri smacked somi's arm as she soft whisper yelled, "what part of NO FLASH did you not understand?" the two smiled as big as they could from ear to ear before yunjin let out a huff and sighed, "you all suck."
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that-one-p00k1e · 7 months
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Coincidence?
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Muichiro x Fem!Reader, lil High school AU
Warnings: none just fluff Ig Idk bro
Note: Wowzers!!😱😱 I'm still alive!!😱😱 This was a bit rushed because I wanted to post something after so long and bcs IT'S MY BIRTHDAY WHAATT🤯🤯 crazy amirite anw pls forgive the grammar and how boring this is
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Nothing felt better than hearing the last bell of a school day ring, knowing that the days after were the end of the week. The heavenly images in your head of finally being able to lay in bed, cuddled up in a warm blanket after taking a good relaxing shower.
However, instead of immediately going home, you decided to head to the park near the school to have a breath of fresh air. Fortunately, it seems to be vacant with no one on sight occupying it.
The rustling of leaves blown by the wind, the smell of fresh grass and dirt, and the silence that brought the feel of peace and tranquility. But the one thing that had always caught your attention, was the cherry blossom tree planted at the center of the park. For you, it was the most beautiful sight in the park. Almost never has its beauty failed to captivate passersby.
As you decided to take a seat underneath the tree, you noticed a familiar backpack laid on the ground. Thinking it could be anyone's and not just the specific familiar person you know who owns that exact same object, you reluctantly and carefully looked to the back of the tree to see who the mystery owner was. ‘Probably a random stranger’ you easily thought. But oh how wrong you were as your heart dropped the moment your eyes settled on the known figure.
Under the falling petals of cherry blossom he sat; beautiful mint-green eyes fixated on the strings of his guitar, fingers carefully strumming a melody that could soothe one's nerves. His long black hair gently swayed in the wind, coloured ends that matched his  irises. You've always admired him since the first day of high school; managing to get a few interactions here and there through group work. As much as you wanted to get to know him better, the charming and attractive classmate had his own walls built when it comes to the social environment. Not even the guys in your class could make him crack a bit of a smile. Thus, you've accepted such defeat ever since.
But seeing him being so peaceful right now, enjoying himself in his own world, made it hard for you to bat your eyes away from him. You couldn't help but just gaze in awe at the sight of such beauty.
Until his fingers suddenly stopped playing through the guitar strings.
The moment he perked his head up, you immediately hid yourself behind the other side of the tree; heart almost stopped working. You hear him getting up, walking closer and closer to where you once stood. As your breath hitched, you tried to act cool in case the both of you went face-to-face. You hoped you wouldn't, but fate unfortunately had its own plan.
“Y/N?” a deep yet gentle voice called out to you from the side of the tree, making your heart race faster than it already had been. He looked at you with a gaze oh-so empty; making it difficult to look through that stoic disposition of his.
“Oh! Uhh… yeah, it's me. Fancy seeing you here,” you greeted awkwardly, fidgeting the hem of your shirt from the embarrassment you felt deep down.
You thought he would be reluctant to engage further in the conversation, but to your surprise, he proceeded to ask another question.
“It's your birthday today, isn't it?”
The moment his words entered your hearing, it felt as if your organs were rearranged.
“I- uhh… How did you know?”
“Heard your friends mentioning about it. Forgot to give you this.”
He rummaged through his bag, before pulling out a box wrapped in gift paper and handing it to you with that blank stare maintained.
“For you. In addition to your birthday,” he said reluctantly.
You hesitantly took the gift from his hand, internally debating if this was a dream or not. Before you could word out your gratitude, he quickly picked up his belongings and threw a short “My bus is here, gotta go,” leaving you on your own with your thoughts; trying to process what just happened. You looked down at the gift he had given you, then pinched yourself to double check reality. Yet there was one thing you didn't put your mind into.
If he recently knew about your birthday from your friends today… How did he forget a gift regarding something he had never known about in the first place?
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WIBTA if I reminded a friend he owes me money?
@aitathrowaway321 for finding later
I (20s, they/them) lent a friend Johnny (fake name. 20s, he/him) about $300 for rent about a year and a half ago. He was panicking because he'd bought a small tattoo that week, and had thought he'd budgeted for rent, but realized he forgot about another bill.
I'd once not had enough for rent and a friend who wasn't well off, without me asking, had offered to lend me the money for rent. It had been an incredibly kind act, and though I'd paid that friend back a few months later the first second I could, I've always remembered it. So I offered to do the same to Johnny (who knew this story) as a sort of pay-it-forward and that he could just pay me back when he was able, no rush at all. I also at the time had an okay job where I made enough to be able to do this, and Johnny's job was pretty awful.
Johnny was very thankful and agreed. At first, he'd bring up the debt a lot himself (I would never bring it up) and continually promise to pay it when he could, to which I'd be like - just as soon as you comfortably can, don't stress! And he mentioned it A LOT. Multiple times every single time I saw him at first. But eventually he stopped mentioning it entirely.
The two of us had this in-joke, and Johnny realized he could buy something related to the in-joke. He swore he'd buy it for me as a birthday gift (I didn't ask) and it would be so much fun, very soon after I lent him money. It would have been a nice gift, but it would've cost at least $200. In my head I decided that if he decided to get me the gift instead of paying me back I'd be happy either way, bc it's nice to be thought of. All I said aloud was that it would be a lot of fun, and it was a very kind thought from him. He would then regularly bring up buying me this gift for months. Then my birthday passed and I didn't get anything at all from him. Which was fine, I didn't ask for gifts! But then he stopped bringing up buying me anything OR paying back the money.
Now it's been almost a year and a half, and he seems to have entirely forgotten he ever owed me. I wouldn't mind so much - times are hard! - and it's not like I'm going to be angry if someone is spending money on nice dinners and pretty clothes instead of saving up for a no-deadline debt to a friend. People need to have nice things to get through life. But he keeps getting new tattoos and piercings (we go to the same parlor, I know they're pricey) and he recently planned and went on a big trip with a friend. It's not as if he hasn't had the ability to pay me back in the last few years. I also got laid off from my job, and $300 is a lot more to me than it used to be.
It's not so much that I want the money back as it is that I'm hurt he spent so much time talking big about paying me, and then when enough time had passed just dropped it entirely. I've had an issue in the past when after I got an okay job, suddenly people who had ghosted me were begging me for money (didn't know my salary but just assumed bc of the job title). And having been in awful situations, I tried to help where I could anyway, but then after getting the money they'd ghost me again. Johnny hasn't ghosted me, but he seems to have decided not to pay me back and pretend it never happened.
We have an event coming up where people will be paying for things and everyone else will be paying them back immediately - just bc it's easier to do things like buy tickets all at once and then pass them out, and easier for a restaurant to have one bill and then people venmo each other after. I was considering having Johnny pay and then tell him he can take it out of his debt to me.
I'm unsure if this is passive aggressive and rude, or if it's a good way to gently remind him he owes me without being a jerk about money - if he is still just struggling financially and hasn't forgotten, I don't want to rub anything in or make him stressed. I don't want money to ruin a friendship, but I'm feeling hurt.
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elleloquently · 2 years
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i can’t explain how much i love your posts i-😭😭😭 they make me feel so safe and loved🥹
if u take requests, can i kindly request some headcanons with videogamer!ellie x reader!gf ?
thank u sm beauty!!💕💕💕💕💕
| a/n : i am so happy to hear that, that is so sweet!!! i'm so sorry this took so long, i'm rly behind on requests ): as a reader tho i adore this idea. modern au bc yay modern technology!
gamer!ellie with a reader!gf :
-having different interests definitely didn't keep either of you from spending time together. you would just do separate activities, together.
-if ellie was gaming you would always take the opportunity to read, and if you wanted to read then ellie would play something. you sorta correlated times that way someone wasn't feeling left out if you wanted to actively spend time together (ellie wouldn't want to see your pout when you saw her gaming while you were missing her lmao)
-if there was a game ellie was really into at the moment, she would def be guilty of surprising you with a book from your to read list so she could spend more time than usual playing ,,
-you are privy to her ways but you would certainly never complain about getting a new book !
-ellie always listens while you sit with your legs over her lap, ranting and raving about whichever book you're reading at the time.
-if you burn through books quickly she might get the side plots or characters mixed up, interrupting your rambles with a follow up question about a character that was definitely from like, three books ago.
"ellieeee," you would pretend to whine, though the look of interest crossed with confusion on her face made it difficult to stifle a giggle. "that was my last book, this one is different now."
"oh! right! but he did turn out to be bad, right?"
"yes. okay, anyway..."
-sometimes she gets distracted and loses or has to pause for awhile because she just likes . watching you. it's sweet, the way you look so peaceful with a book in your hands.
-ellie thinks it's funny when you mimic the facial expressions that you're reading about. rushes for her phone sometimes bc the faces you make while reading crack her tf up. you get so flustered when she shows you later but she absolutely adores the photos.
-especially if you're making an expression in regards to what is happening in the story. you're so quiet and ellie looks over to check on you, only to be met with your bewildered expression or a deep set frown. she'll pipe up and ask what's happening, grinning when you snap your book closed.
"oh my god," you start, leaning forward to clue her in.
-sometimes you find yourself rereading paragraphs over and over, finding it difficult to focus as your eyes wander to ellie instead.
-the look of concentration on her face... muttering and swearing under her breath... her hands.
!!!!!!!
-tugging ellie's hand in a book aisle at the store, pacing around the shelves with mumbles of "i promise i'm just looking, not buying any today"
-(ellie carries your books when you leave the store)
-displaying the same patience while she's browsing games, debating and comparing. you make sure to pay extra attention cause you love surprising her for special occasions.
-you try some of her games occasionally after much convincing on ellie's end. she's such a backseat gamer though and it ends with you either getting a lil grumpy or laughing too hard to take it seriously.
-she tries to find some low stakes, silly games so the two of you can play together. if there's a book you're really crazy about, you'll pass it on to ellie and she'll read it so you can have someone to discuss it with <3
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romanarose · 6 months
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If You Wanna be Wild: Chapter 7
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Co-written with @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction my beloved Fen, who I could not do this without. Thank you for being my emotional sounding board, my dear friend, my wonderful cowriter and helpful beta reader. I adore you.
Javier Peña x Latina!sex worker!informant!Reader x Santiago Garcia
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Summary: Everything falls apart and evryone is alone.
Content and warnings for whole fic, not chapter by chapter unless something is added: Sex work, drug trade, some drug use/pressured used, sex workers and the mistreatment/stigma surrounding them specifically in the 70’s (my blog is sex worker positive) but ima put potential dub con depending how you look at it as a sex worker who works with dangerous men, some action surrounding reader and the guys and the drug trade, SMUT HEAVY, corruption kink (were corrupting santi here, he’s young, 25), no loss of virginity tho, threesomes, some slight m/m smut but that’s not the focus here, but as you know this blog is an lgbt blog so I’m always open to gay shit. Talk of war and some PTSD but I won't be going a whole lot into it. Covert/emotional incest in the past, Santi's mommy issues, m/m dynamics, internalized bi/homophobia
Reader speaks Spanish and has hair. I've decided Candy is just latina bc she's a sex worker in Colombia so this is what I'm doing. Reader also has curly hair and dark skin.
ADDITIONAL WARNINGS!:mentions of rape an violence, what happened to Helena, smut, repressed feelings, angst.
Almost everything was written by Fen <3
2.7k words
Support writers! Reblog and comment!
**************
There was no making up. There was no Javi bringing Santi food as an apology, there was no talking. 
When Santi walked into the office on Monday, he saw the fucking desks rearranged, Javier’s and Santi’s on other sides of the room instead of pushed face to face. Santi quickly rushed to the bathroom where he panic vomited and had an anxiety attack, resulting in him being 45 minutes late. Javi didn’t say anything about it.
Where Santi couldn’t eat, Javi couldn’t stop eating, munching down food and taking frequent trips to the vending machine. His doctor was going to kill him. Santi could barely function, even coming in late or leaving early which was a cardinal sin in his book. Still, none of it stopped him from seeing Candy. Occasionally Candy asked about him because all month Javi hadn’t been to see her either. Santi couldn’t get much answer either.
They worked, but mostly separately. Javi had even been trying to find somewhere else to work, but there weren’t exactly free rooms in the precinct. They talked occasionally but only about Lorea… making Santi desperately lonely. He had his family and he loved his tias, but they weren’t Javi. It was the day of the rally for the beatification of Laura Montoya, which forced them to be in close proximity as they dressed in plain clothes and scouted the area for any sign of the Lorea family. Not wanting to look too much like officers on alert, Santi tried making conversation, none of which was working with Javi, only getting few word answers. 
The boy was going to drive him absolutely batshit insane if he didn’t stop talking. It was bad enough he kept asking. ‘Should we get food’ or ‘it’s nice out today’, but his voice mixed with the crowds and noise and music and chatter or the rally, people shouting about whoever it was they were here for, politicians trying to stop them and constantly flashbacks of that night of the ball… Then Santi had to go and say 
“She misses you.”
“You mentioned her name one more fucking time and I’ll-”
“You’ll fucking what?” Santi snapped, his nerves had twisted, hardened suddenly by rage. 
His anger took Javi by surprise, he’d never heard him speak like that to anyone let alone him. 
Santi took his pause as indignation. “I mentioned Candy once. Once. And that’s only because you haven’t seen her, or called her or anything!” He hissed. “She’s worried about you actually, she-”
It was Javi’s turn to snap. 
He grabbed the younger man by the back of his collar and pulled him into a side alley, using his own momentum against him and slamming him up against the brick wall. 
Sant let out a little huff of air as his back collided, gritting his jaw as pain raced along his back. 
The action had been forceful, but not enough to cause discomfort for most people. However, a rough, uneven lump of mortar had poked oddly against the scar at the nape of his neck, sending a tingle down his back.
Javi rammed the heel of his hand into the wall next to Santi’s head, using his height to his full advantage as he leaned over him like he was interrogating a suspect instead of a colleague. A friend. 
Santi breathed hard, his frown pinching his eyebrows together, and Javi would say he even looked cute if he wasn’t so bloody annoying, so obsessed with getting under his skin. Unable to let anything go, constantly digging at him in his self-righteous attitude, just needing to push, and push, and push, and…
Cute. The thought caught him off guard. When had he started to think of Santiago as cute?
“What the fuck are you doing Peña?” He growled, puffing his chest out, but not pushing back. 
Javi shook his head slightly, trying to break his racing mind, trying to get back to reality. “Candy, look, you can’t just-”
“She’s an adult Javi, I can-”
“You’re going to get her killed!” His voice raised at the end, louder and more desperate than he had intended, with just the slightest waver. He hoped Santi didn’t hear it, but he probably did. Nothing got past him. “Do you understand?” Santi glared at him, the muscles in his jaw flexing. Those stupid large doe eyes looking painfully dark and enticing. “You’re flaunting her. Taking her to the ball and, and-”
Santi scoffed. “That’s none of your business, I asked her, I-”
“You’re gonna get her gutted and dumped on the side of the road!” Javier screamed, haunting flashbacks to Helena’s beaten and raped body, wrapping his coat around her and having to carry her out, not sure if she was dying or not. “You know how easy it would be for Lorea to do something? This isn’t even a put two and two together situation, Pope, it’s you waving a four right in his fucking face! And what do you think is gonna happen when he takes her, huh? When he beats her and rapes her an tortures her to get information on YOU!” 
Santi swallows, his face still hard, but that little bob of his Adam’s apple draws Javier’s eye, but he doesn't respond. Javier lowers his voice, fist still gripping Santi’s jacket.
“She’s not gonna give you up, she’s not gonna help them hurt you. She’s gonna end up dead. You’re gonna…” He closed his eyes for a moment, took a small breath. It was easier not to look at him, not to have to stare at his soft eyes and plump lips. “You’re gonna end up dead too, Pope. I can’t… I’ve seen it, okay?”  
Javier screwed up his face, opening his eyes so that he could look at Santi man to man. Implore him to see reason. 
“I’m not telling you to stop seeing her, I’m just saying.... I’ve seen shit happen to girls in her line of work. To officers like you that are still wet behind the ears to this kind of thing-” The second it was out of his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. 
“I’m not a fucking child, Peña.” Santi hissed, pressing forward and getting up in Javier’s face. “I know that’s what everyone at the station seems to think and all their little Virgin Maria mierda. I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck if all they see is that.” He pushes firmly on Javier’s chest, almost smacking as he punctuates his sentence. “But I thought you’d know better! I was black ops special agent, I spend years of my life in almost every goddamn continent doing retcon, assassinations, covert operations and rescuing women and children and getting SHOT! I’m not-”
“I’m not saying you’re a child-”
“You are! You are!” Santiago growls, smacking Javi’s chest repeatedly. He doesn’t care that he does sound like a child in that moment, arguing relentlessly on semantics. His emotions are bubbling over and muddying his head. “You’re saying that you know best. That your word is law. Despite all you do to endanger Candy!”
“I do n-”
“You do! You think you’re above it all, you’re just as bad, you pretend to care but you-”
“Shut your fucking mouth, Garcia!”
“Make me!”
He doesn’t think. 
There’s always times he doesn’t think. When he gets too lost in whatever emotion he’s letting overwhelm him. Sometimes rage. Sometimes guilt. Usually negative either way. That’s where Santi is a good partner, keeping a cool and level head while Javi plays bad cop.
Usually ends up with him throwing a punch, not a kiss. 
Santi knew ‘make me’ was childish. Knew it was playground nonsense reserved for kids still in single digits. But if everyone was going to keep calling him that, keep pretending that he wasn’t the only actual goddamned adult in the room then-
Then…
Javier’s lips on his steal his breath away, rob him of every thought that has ever run through his mind. And, for once, it’s blissfully quiet. The anxieties pushed away for the peace of a lover's kiss.
Javi presses closer, pushing Santiago further into the wall and cupping his face with his warm hand as he kisses him, body to body, warmth to warmth. Darting out his tongue to just trace Santi’s bottom lip and groans when he parts them immediately, no hesitation, and lets him lick into his mouth. 
The angle’s a little awkward, Javier’s body trapping Santi’s hand between their chests. But Santiago’s fingers curl into his shirt, pulling him closer as his kisses leave him breathless and desperate for more.
Javier’s leg bumps into his and Santi moves a step, moaning softly and then whining as his thigh presses against his half hard cock, a sharp spike of pleasure running up his spine and- 
His thoughts all come crashing down. What the fuck, what the fuck  was he doing? His mother’s voice rang in his head, screaming his name. 
He could get arrested for this, thrown in jail, worse. He was going to burn in hell.
Santi pulled back quickly, disentangling himself from Javier so quickly that both men nearly fell. He turned, not giving the older man a second look, and ran out of the alley into the crowded street. 
He didn’t even hear Javier call his name. 
*
“Are you okay, baby?” You asked, your naked body covering Santiago while giving him tender kisses, scooting yourself up and down his cock. You loved to tease him, get him whimpering and watch as all those troublesome thoughts left his pretty little head. He was too pretty to be so worried all the time.
He’d been stressed on and off about Javi, occasionally bringing it up, but you think he stopped when he realized it upset you. You were really good at pretending to care when old professors droned on and on about academic works or when men talked about themselves or complained about their wives and mothers again and again and again. You could’ve faked not being upset when Santi, but you didn’t fake anything with him. Javi’s absence hurt your feelings. You were worried about him, and you were angry at him for abandoning you and hurting Santi. For continuing to hurt his feelings. Bitch.
But honestly… you just miss him. A lot. It would take more than a poster to patch this, he’d have to make things right with Santi too, but you’d forgive him. You just wanted him back, and you wanted Santi happy again. He was already thin enough, and as your body slid up and down the sweaty length of him, you could feel he’d lost weight. 
Santi moaned loudly, gripping onto your hips as you bounced on his length, his eyes rolling back in his head as your heat engulfs him over and over. Pulling him deeper and deeper. 
The fat tip of his cock presses deliriously, perfectly rubbing over your walls with every slick slide. Stretching you so wonderfully like he was made for you. He was, he really, really was. Something was bothering him today, and he was finding solace in you. You were happy to give it to him. Pushing all other thoughts out of your head. 
He whines, babbling nonsensically with his eyes closed, “please, please, please,” He rocks up against you, letting his body override his brain as you fuck him into the mattress. “Please, gonna come, please, need you so much,” he gasps, almost sobbing from pleasure. 
You stroke his cheek and pick up your pace, even if he hasn’t said you could tell how close he was. The way his stomach muscles tense, how his eyes are screwed shut and head thrown back into the pillow, “it’s okay, it’s okay, you can come, give it all to me.”
He shakes his head rapidly, “no, please,” he moans, “need you, need mommy to come, please.” 
His whines change in pitch, the little sounds getting higher and higher as he reaches the point of no return. His mouth hangs open, his skin flushed and sweaty, and heat floods to your core. 
You brace yourself with your left hand on his leg behind you as you ride him, leaning back ever so slightly to change the angle just enough that he continuously hits perfectly inside, stretching you to your limit. 
Santi sobs, the position change sending a buzz up his spine, pressing on the thick length of his cock to a surprisingly maddening degree. His whole body pulsed, stealing the air from his lungs.
He bucks up once, his eyes fluttering open in surprise as he comes, his length pulsating. He empties himself deep inside you, his orgasm stretching onwards and overtaking every possible thought. 
You smile as you watch him, happy to see him so blissed out. You ride him throughout his high, trying to prolong his sensations as long as possible. He deserved it.
He sighs, shivering with aftershocks as he comes back to himself and looks up at you. You open your mouth to speak, the words on the tip of your tongue.
Santi grabs you by the hips, urging you up and off him and pulling your aching pussy onto his face. He lets out a small groan at the mess he made, his cum leaking out of your folds before he runs the tip of his tongue through them. 
You bite back a moan, grabbing onto his hair for stability as his mustache brushes against your clit.
His mouth feels like heaven as he lick and swirls around your clit, his movements soft but certain, quickly pushing you towards your peak.
Instinctively you buck your hips, grinding down on his mouth to chase your high. He rocks you against him, urging you tp move and fuck his eager tongue. 
“Santi…” you whine as you come hard against him, pulling fiercely on his hair. 
He continues licking, moaning against you as he drinks down every drop of your release. 
You breathe heavily, boneless for a moment before slowly moving away to lay down next to him. 
He pouts a little as you settle. “I wasn’t finished.” He smiles cheekily, your cum shining all over the bottom half of his face,
You giggle, and gently swat his arm and cuddle up next to him. Santi didn’t need instruction, scooting his back to your chest. In your arms, where he belonged. You loved being like this with him, but somehow it always felt like something was missing. You loved when Javi used to hold you, protecting you with a strong arm around your body, but again, you felt like something was missing, in your arms this time instead of around you.
You kiss the scar on his spine. “Good boy, Santito.”
It happened so fast. Santi teanses and you barely have a second to register how he turns to you, his eyes widen in panic, his skin turning ashen before he’s up, out of bed and pulling on his clothes so fast that it shouldn’t have been possible. What the fuck? Did you do something wrong?
“Santi?” you start, trying to keep your voice soft but unable to hide the fear that has overcome your words.Why is he leaving? What did you do wrong? Did you mess up things with Santi too, the one good thing left? You barely sit up before he’s shoving a handful of dollars at you, practically just throwing them in your direction and the bed. 
“Here.” His voice is quiet, distant. Like he’s not really there. A stark comparison to his panicked, edgy movements. He doesn’t even bother tying his shoes, simply shoving his feet inside them and stumbling towards the door.
“Wait, Sant-”
He slams the door on his way out. 
Leaving your bed cold, and you alone.
It was supposed to be sex, talking. Build a nice repour. That was it. You were good at it too, making old ugly men think you were infatuated, but yourself detached from even the most charming and attractive. Something happened with Javi and Santi, a line that became blurred, friendship and genuine attraction and care. Now they were gone. 
You hate yourself for how hard you cry.
***************
thank you so much to everyone whose stuck around while i sort my SHIT OUT (its never ending)
If you like me writing javi, i wrote a drable today too, and if you wanna see a totally insane version of santi, come to rooms on fire!
be sure to give @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction a follow, he's amazing and my everything. they are pumping out AMAZING works rn for the moon knight bingo.
I appriciate you all very very much, please let know your thoughts in the comment!!!
I know you've stuck around for this song, please drop a comment and say hiiiiii!!!!
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killakalx · 4 months
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Pookie ur making me blush ehbfiwebiub I'm so glad I found someone as deranged as me litterly makes my stomach do a thing <3 (I have kidney failure)
like you think my lil ol ask are to good? keeping me a secret? hheehehhehe blushing and giggling 🤭🤭🤭
anyways, sure Jason at first is a bit like "erm.. ok I guess." when you first start messing around with his nipples but I firmly believe that he's so touch starved after while of messing around and they start to get a bit puffy and red from the constance touching he'll kinda start letting out cute little breaths and his face start to turn red, he's pushing you away cause he can't figure out if he likes it or not. I feel like he wouldn't bust in his pants from touch and more like it feels good but he needs more stimulation. its more like edging with him you know? Roy tho, bro can cum on the spot from just accidentally brushing against him. he knew he had sensitive nipples but he just never really messed with like before they would just itch??? ig?? or he'd get a shiver down his back but that's it, but after you find out about that and start to mess with them more often its to the point he has to go shirtless at home because he doesn't wanna bust in his pants while he's in the middle of something. just play with his nipples and nothing else for a good 30 minuets and he won't be able to form a single thought. Dick, since I'm not a huge fan of him I haven't really thought of it tbh? its mostly just Roy and Jason, but I feel like he'd be a mixed of both? Like he can be stimulated by his nipples but I feel like he'd have to already cum a few times before like his body is just so exhausted and overstimulated that he can't really control anything.
also Roy have a tongue piercing, eyebrow, and nipple piercings. He used to have a spectrum but not anymore cause it kinda irritated him during his hero work and stuff, he also got an eyebrow piercing after having lian. Dick just has studs cause he has that clean pitch boy look and Jason have a nose ring and a few ear piercings. Roy also has an ear piercings.
anyways I never thought id rant so much about nipple stimulation about grown men but life just takes you to wild places. Love you have a great day MUAh 😘 😘 😘
-🫶
girl. tumblr takes you to wild places. like this blog 🫶🏽 i’m glad u found your way to me bae
mmm instead of pushing you away, jason’s pulling you over the bulge in his pants and tugging at your clothes. more like he’d rush you into the fuck instead of letting you drive him insane because he does end up liking the stimulation to some extent. gets all huffy and antsy for the cat and in turn it drives you away from his pecs and to his cock, which was his intention when he started feeling a little out of control of the situation.
roy harper you pathetic motherfucker. when i get my hands on you. i’d want him to need more stimulation before he can cum just so i can torture his ass yk? and you said he’s gotta walk around shirtless… soooo free use? anyone? but instead of him touching all over you whenever he wants (bc he does that anyway), you get to sit with him while he’s on the couch and kiss all over him whenever you want. or better yet- just straddle him out of no where and nibble at his neck while your hands rub and pinch all over. and i mean until he’s basically fucking up into you through layers of clothes and begging you to get him off. drive that man insane!
“since i’m not a huge fan of him” oh i just fell to my knees nonnie don’t say that to me ever again 😞 it’s ok though bc i’ve got this bit. instead of his nipples his sensitive part is his stomach/abdomen. it isn’t that bad but he probably gets butterflies when you kiss your away down and he loves when you do it before sucking him off <333 trail lipstick and cover him in red kisses, make him look like those slutty models with his collar and tie fucked up yk? probably wants you to take pictures too
mmmmmm eyebrow piercing after lian 🥰🥰🥰 so he’s got the nice facial hair and slightly exhausted look in his eyes??? ugh i love my dilf sm. and i had the same thing in mind for dick, he’s gotta keep the clean preppy pretty boy look for the most part, but i still wanna give him a tongue piercing. something that’s sexy and isn’t obvious unless he’s being a whore about it on purpose 😋 and fuck let’s give jason a smiley or snakebites bc i’ve made it so clear that i’m obsessed with mouth piercings. in all honesty i don’t think he’d have anything other than ear piercings, i think his thing would be tattoos, but let a girl dream
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bumofthewild · 3 months
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my really really long rant about endwalker
i'm not kidding this is really long. spoilers ahead of course, like immediately upon entry. sorry i sound so angry the whole time
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unfortunately for me and for anyone reading this, endwalker is one of those cases where i like/d so much of what happens that the many weak moments make me more critical of the whole than i would be if it was just wholly bad like stormblood, bc it's a waste of potential. a lot of the time the moments i liked would even be happening simultaneously with the things i find so problematic: cheap storytelling decisions, cheap moments that only serve as fanservice or for shock value that only detract from a characters’ pre-existing complexity, poorly done rehashing of elements from shadowbringers, a lot of hollow pseudo-intellectual arguments, rushed and underdeveloped writing in one instance and then meandering wastes of time immediately after….these issues are so consistent that rather than try to break up endwalker's story based on these things, i will just try to run thru the whole thing chronologically and hope i don't get too repetitive. that's why this isn't an essay with some pretense of structure. i'll do my best.
what's crazy to me is i thought endwalker was going to be my second favourite expansion. this was despite not caring about its original main conflict--i thought fandaniel just wasn't a compelling or even interesting villain. he comes out of nowhere. and he's also asahi so that association is hard to break away from bc i find asahi silly. and he suffers from the same writing issues zenos does, where nearly every cutscene with them did little to develop their characters further from the baseline, only reiterated what i already know bc they literally never say anything else: zenos wants to fight wol, he's bored with everything life could possibly offer, fandaniel will ensure zenos can fight wol through his towers bc he no longer plays to the tune of his unsundered masters... even though what fandaniel was promising to cause were the final days i just didn't really care. in the wake of shadowbringers the final days are like a pretty big deal, but something about reviving a catastrophe i had just finished wrapping up--i thought, naively--made bringing them back seem really thoughtless. i don't really need to see anymore final days...like how much more do i need to understand how bad it was? i mean i think shb did a pretty good job????? of making the final days seem pretty fucking bad. why not come up with something new because this is endwalker and not shadowbringers haha? the only fresh thing about this new uncooler final days was the motivation behind them. fandaniel wanting to bring about the final days bc he wants to die and thinks everything should die with him vs emet-selch's unwillingness to die no matter what bc the final days took everything from him and he needs to bring it all back. still, recontextualising the final days from a past event into a present issue ruins them to me. whatever, i thought, there's no way we're letting the final days happen so what does this matter anyways. there's no way.
so yeah post-shb into ew was starting to lose me plot-wise. not the end of the world (LOL?) though bc the atmosphere in the beginning was so subtle and fresh and rich like dew in the morning that i was willing to look past it. going to old sharlayan i liked a lot. i liked going there not as a more typical homecoming for your friends but to instead uncover the sharlayan forum's cryptic behaviour. this kind of intrigue was what i really wanted after the grandness of shadowbringers and i really do think endwalker gave me that for a while. i liked the opening scene on the ship a lot bc it felt exciting and uncertain and new, especially talking to hydaelyn. i liked how she had become such an unstable variable after originally being the most anchoring presence in the entire game: learning she's a primal, whether she's actually “good” after listening to emet-selch’s explanation of her origins and actions in shb, and the fact that her appeals to her champions have been fewer and fewer… i thought her meeting with you at the very beginning of endwalker was cool and foreboding. i also really liked the emet-selch narration btw, i thought that was a fun choice. who better to guide you into the final stages of your adventure than the person who left you with that final, most important task. i wish this had been the only callback to his character at all. 
so a big part of why i like/d endwalker so much is all that atmosphere. and something i can't really put into words. it just felt cool and cohesive at the start. old sharlayan is one of my favourite locations now; i like that despite its rigidity and (to me farcical but w/e tangent) pursuit of rationality/knowledge, there's the quaint island charm and fresh winter sea and overgrown greenery and forest paths. i liked that the game enhanced the usual hubworld tour chore by having g’raha and krile follow you around to give you more personal anecdotes of the place, really gave it a more lived-in feeling, which really added to both them and the location. i also really liked all this charm and familiarity in tandem with the secret hostility of the place bc of the forum, having to sneak around and so on, sharlayan citizens not really recognising you somehow? but being very aware of a warrior of light threat to their way of life, even if i find that non-intervention way of life silly.
i also really liked labryinthos. it's a really creative place. i liked its uncanny false sky and controlled environment, and yet all the people scrambling about inside. and the music felt kind of magical like i had encountered another fairy area or something idk it all felt very whimsical. thavnair i really liked as well but i feel like my immediate impression of the place was kind of poisoned by the stereotypes, like the huge focus on trade and the first impression being undercutting foreign tourists but then i started to really enjoy the part where you run around with matsya and help him sell fish. i liked the mundanity and slow pace of that exercise bc it felt like a much more involved way of learning about thavnair and its current issues through conversations rather than the fetch quest slog, and this is one of the things i like a lot about the beginning of endwalker. the gameplay really improved i think bc they found more creative ways of having you interact with your surroundings, rather than having the usual running between npcs to fetch things for them or other chores. like rather than doing a string of quests and then being rewarded with development of the story, the gameplay simultaneously develops the story. like turning into frogs i thought was fun, testing nidhana’s aether lamp was fun, etc. it felt like they had better ideas about how to progress the in-between parts.
thavnair quickly started to upset me though bc it started to feel like the only relevance the location had was what they could give you for your military cause, that is, the scales. like alchemy is this place’s big highlight and its just the scales the scales the scales and the tower aughhhhhh!!!!!!! the tower!!!!!!!!!! i wish they had focused on something but i guess this is just to be expected with ffxiv...any interaction with a foreign ("foreign" as far as square enix eorzea is concerned) culture really boils down to how they might bolster your military efforts, the azim steppe for eg. so it felt like my concern for an individual (matsya) and the experience firsthand trying to help him with his day to day; the idea that every single person on earth is important and shouldn't be made to suffer, and helping that single person... was like overshadowed by something more focused on a “greater good", that is, the construction of the scales to defeat the towers to save the world ad infinitum. but if you played endwalker then you would know how this idea of only concerning oneself with a "greater good" and this diluting of the importance of an individual's life for the sake of this idealistic whole causes some problems for a certain someone..................so why didn't the game focus more on these themes? probably because at the end of the day it's a video game by square enix and you need a big boss to fight or something or bc this expansion is insanely unfocused i don't know. i feel like this concept about the importance of the small things that can add up to one life and how that one life is beautiful and important crops up with the significance of weeds despite its importance overall. i don't know if i think this is one of the main underlying themes of endwalker just poorly executed so as to not even be there or if i just wish it was one of its main themes. anyways i'm getting distracted, what i mean to say is thavnair gets dehumanised throughout the entire expansion in the most horrific ways possible so i guess this was just the start
moving on... i liked the part in garlemald a lot, which i didn't expect bc i don't expect this game to handle anything regarding imperialism well. i liked that the garlemald you finally experience, after it being one of your main enemies and this very proud nation, was just this dead quiet and ruined place. the quest where you follow that girl is another eg of how the gameplay was a bit more immersive, i think it helped me feel the loneliness and the danger of the place, that i could be a danger to this girl. that i really had to try if i wanted to help her. what i didn't like was alphinaud's and alisaie’s babying attitude towards the garleans? like ok yeah of course we’re gonna have patience and grace for GARLEMALD meanwhile lyse was losing her head at the ala mhigans whenever they disagreed with her. like sure arguing won't get anywhere but it felt like the twins were reckoning with children sometimes, it was so strange. but i did like that the game didn't shy away from making the garleans just unpleasant to be around at best, and an actual danger to you at worst. it's just better to me to make them harder to reconcile with so that there's no frustrating cheap shots at redemption but rather a good, sobering look at a society that's been totally and willingly misled. and i liked that alisaie's and alphinaud's attempts to help those garlean kids ended so badly, even though i'm not usually a fan of such cruel outcomes. it felt like we were seeing a garlemald not necessarily being punished for its actions more than we were seeing a place built on shitty ideals crumble bc of those ideals. i thought jullus was a good char and helped to carry that idea of disillusionment forward. i didn't care so much about sympathising with what he'd lost, but i did find it interesting how they contrast him with the legatus he's working under, who even while the place is in ruins is still more concerned with war than providing for the people relying on him. i don't think the part in garlemald is perfect by any means, like it doesn't do anything too brave, but ig it was a lot more subtle and complex in its storytelling than i expected. and it wasn't meaninglessly cruel. like i'm glad those shock collars put on the twins were only used to gauge jullus' emotional growth or something like him not wanting to activate them rather than them actually being fucking used which would have just made me close the game and not look back.
from here on is where i struggle to lock in for the rest of the story. starting with when zenos kidnaps you in the midst of the fighting at camp broken glass--i don't think i have ever been more immediately mentally locked out of a story. endwalker is darker than usual, trapping people in fleshy towers, two young girls lying dead on the ice, tentacles erupting out of tempered garlean soldiers... and so on. and while i don't personally like things that are overly dark or cruel, it's not that i think they're bad, just that with moments like that it's a lot better imo that a point is being made or they add something to the story, and that it doesn't feel soullessly random or disrespectful. unfortunately this stops being the case for the rest of the expansion..... like something about the weird eldritch feeling of fandaniel pulling you out of your body and putting you in a random soldier's was throwing me off immensely. it felt like i was playing a different game, like so disconcerting i found it distracting, because why would he not just do this to screw you over more often? i didn't understand them having access to such an unrestrained power. at the same time it was also just too wacky to really take seriously despite the apparent gravity of what was happening. zenos inside of my bunny girl's body??? i don't even understand why they did it? to piss you off?? the duty where you play as the imperial soldier was interesting i guess but i couldn’t understand what the meaning behind being made to struggle through that experience was... like didn't we just spend all that time sympathising with the garleans and wrap that section up already? why do i now need to sympathise with/experience firsthand what its like to be a garlean footsoldier? and it annoyed me because these parts felt emotionally rich, like stumbling across those garleans fighting that machine and trying to do your best to help them; dragging yourself across the ground to get to your friends before something bad happens to them, and running towards them before zenos hurts them while in your body--i thought all of that could've been really poignant if not for the actual situation being so silly?? they could have just kept some of those ideas, wol dragging themselves across the ground for eg--the extent to which they're willing to stop harm from reaching their friends (which reminds me of what vrtra says to you about the importance of protecting your friends the first time you meet him. but that was such a one-off moment that goes nowhere... i just wish ew would pick something, anything, to be a poignant message about love on planet earth if they want nihilism to be the main villain, and just stick to it)--and do something that felt a lot more relevant to the established story thus far? just felt totally pointless
what makes this worse is this ridiculous part is iirc right after fandaniel reveals that the entity tempering all of the garleans is varis reanimated as an ancient oh-so-important primal...?? like here's (what i thought was going to be) an actually important point in the story being sidelined for a moment that just goes absolutely nowhere. they certainly made it seem important for a moment, and i think this would've rounded off what was being said about garlemald well; the garleans are so taken in by the farce of their homeland that they think varis is calling them to reclaim their country over the radio, but all along what's actually causing their nation to fall apart is this monstrous version of their late emperor. the irony would've been interesting but they just do nothing with it... (i think desecrating a dead person's corpse by turning it into a monster is really weird btw, even weirder that they do it for no reason. whatever ew is weird.) i thought, considering that this plotline was being established from before endwalker started, that anima was going to take some time. not so. ffxiv would rather have you and zenos enact tropes from a disney channel movie. you merk that guy at the end of the tower of babil and from then on every important plot point the expansion could possibly have moves at fucking mach 567472838758745745
because why all of a sudden are you getting beamed up to the moon? and fighting ZODIARK? i was so confused when asahi i mean fandaniel was punching shit into that fuckgin allagan computer like fandaniel what the fuck are you talking about... i couldn't process anything that happened here. like i'll willingly put aside boring practicalities like why anyone can breathe on the moon, but not so much how fast this all happened and how out of nowhere--is this the reason fandaniel is also amon btw? so that he can use their allagan computers to do this? bc i honestly can’t find any other reason why him being amon is relevant when they revealed that in the tower of zot...like i dont get why that's important
and it doesn't get better after this is the sad thing to me. it doesn't pick itself back up. it is just extremely unfocused right until the endwalker. i was willing to move past getting rid of zodiark so quickly because it's not that i hold standard storytelling rules so dearly in my heart that i need the biggest final boss of the entire series to get a bit more gravitas. it actually ended up being a pretty interesting decision--dispatching the largest villain at the heart of the game being the catalyst for the biggest catastrophe you've ever heard of. like i like that wol gets played. but the entire mare lamentorum section that follows is disrespectful. this expansion suffers from some extreme tonal dissonance, bc how does wol learn that the final days are now upon them and then proceed to spend their time leisurely touring the moon rabbit facility to tell them that the clothes they’ve made for humans to wear isn’t fashionable? why on god's green earth does that matter at this current juncture? this part is one of the worst story-writing sinkholes in the expansion to me, bc why are the discrepancies between what the loporrits know of humanity vs what humanity is actually like something the story chooses to grapple with? we're building an ark to save humanity, and instead of approaching this in a contemplative or emotional way, the point of conflict they choose is logistics? in the expansion about nihilism? at best this conflict was overly realistic..... mostly it's just boring, and at worst the FINAL DAYS are now upon us, so why am i taste-testing carrots? how could the sharlayans, the most focused group of people on the entire planet, have been collaborating with the loporrits for decades and not even have one of the most basic aspects of staying alive squared away? i’m supposed to not only believe that nobody knew after all that time the lopporits think people only eat carrots, but also waste time on fixing this? whyyyyy would they even devote any time to this at all when there are so many more complicated and interesting ideas that they let flounder bc they rush through them at breakneck pace constantly? we just fucking killed zodiark! is this why they stick urianger up there to do all the fixing actually? to save time offscreen? maybe that's why they chose this asinine chunk of the story to start processing his character? though why they would choose to add more to a plate they can barely balance i don't know. i don’t even feel like getting into what they did with urianger bc it will just piss me off. i think only my love for rabbits and how i will never ever not find urianger precious were stopping me from putting a hex on square enix
the following section of the story is easily the worst part to me in the entire game. like i would rather replay stormblood multiple times in a row than ever sit through the final days coming to thavnair ever again. i've already said bringing back the final days would just be bad; a disservice to the time spent on it in shadowbringers. what more is there to say on that front? nothing. and the way ew utilises the final days tells me that the answer is nothing. it just wanted to unleash the violence of that event on the non-white area and spends an insane amount of time doing it. i can think of no other time in this game where there is so much wanton death and destruction for no useful storytelling reason other than to relish in the cheap shock of witnessing violence, violence they are unwilling to inflict on its white areas, because even in garlemald you only see the aftermath of what happens rather than being in the midst of it. it was actually making me feel fatigued. it was just so much of the same thing over and over with no real meaning to any of it. and that's not to say that meaning justifies suffering, but this is a game.....with a story... first and foremost? there needs to be some kind of reason to move the story forward? but nothing new or inspired is being said, just "the final days are really bad"
i’m actually not even sure where to begin so i’ll start with a glaring issue: i hate that people turn into abominations. people “randomly” turning into monsters just feels too unwieldy--how could there be any sense whatsoever that that situation is controllable? even learning that it's caused by feelings of despair is shit because emotions are so vague, how could there be any worthwhile attempt to control your emotions, let alone while watching your loved ones turn into/be eaten by monsters? this entire part felt so wildly out of hand/unpredictable to me that every single moment onward that wasn't more or less focused on maintaining this extremealy volatile situation felt like an unforgivable lack of priorities. it was extremely distracting to have it hovering over everything; everything else felt absolutely inconsequential in comparison. bc what the fuck do you mean people are randomly turning into monsters?? also the stakes were already really high just knowing the final days were coming, so raising them that much higher felt unnecessary to the point of it being hard to believe. and then bc you know there's no way any character important to wol is going to turn into a monster, subjecting commonfolk npcs to this just feels absurdly cruel, and also just made it obvious how much of a cheap scare it all was, bc it can't have any real narrative importance as a result of only happening to random npcs. it was all so blatantly fake-deep. there was no meaning behind them originally being people except for the useless horror of it--the scions still referred to them as monsters to be put down rather than as the people they used to be, just like any other monster in this game. dynamis was more of a retroactive explanation for why people turned into monsters, rather than people turning into monsters bolstering any understanding of dynamis. in shb the sin eaters had some method to them that made them more believable. you fight them throughout the story rather than them just being dropped on you midway through, they helped provide a picture of what kind of world the first was, they were emotional diving boards for characters like alisaie to develop personal goals and so on and so forth... the horror of the sin eaters had a narrative purpose. in endwalker it feels like they didn’t know what to do but wanted to replicate parts of shadowbringers, but didn't know why those parts worked so well bc they're too obsessed with trying to shock their audience. this part just sucked beyond description.
and it just continues to get worse. how can you be the one writing the parametres of a situation and you create something that's literally unmanageable, so that when its only manageable bc you need it to be, it's just so obviously shit writing? my sister described endwalker's writing as really contrived, like when they need something to happen (and that thing is often a really bad idea) they just shove it in there at the cost of keeping their characters in character, or having their story threads--both the interesting ones and the stupid ones--fall totally flat. she says they shortcut the writing. and it's true. for eg, the characters literally don't feel like themselves at times, or get utilised in really moronic ways. like when wol just watches the satrap die, another cheap scare btw he literally gets grabbed an eaten in a way my sis (i was ranting to her a lot about this game ok) described as straight from attack on titan. just gets grabbed and eaten. and this happens to him for such asinine reasons: 1. so that this random asf plot point of vrtra revealing himself as the true satrap can bear fruit. for some fucking reason. i struggle to understand why this is important at all but i guess it's yet another little sideplot that ew just can't seem to resist adding to its already towering plate at the plot buffet, like whatever is going on with urianger and moenbryda's parents/the loporrits, or zenos who now spends most of his time offscreen, or the twins and their father, etc, bc ew likes to waste time 2. so that g'raha (???????????????????????) out of fucking nowhere can have a big boy moment and direct the scions and the people of thavnair in their time of need. what on earth was that scene supposed to be? fanservice? a reminder that g'raha was a leader back in the first? which blows my mind bc mere moments before he had a scene i really enjoyed despite the circumstances, where after a man witnesses his son get turned into a beast and then stepped on by another beast because endwalker is literally jacking itself off to suffering and expects me to be doing the same... g’raha goes up to this man and stops him from panicking and turning into a monster himself. while i don't think any of this should be happening, i thought it was a nice take on his character to have a more sensitive moment in such a harrowing situation. i don't know, have a character demonstrate some emotional skills instead of the usual fighting ones. ofc all of this i thought mere moments before disaster. why was any of this necessary? literally why not just have the satrap, i don't know, take charge of his country when he's needed most, even if he's only been a figurehead the whole time? why let him go out so horribly when he obvious loves his people with his whole heart just so that vrtra can step in without any sort of conflict? i don't understand the focus on vrtra at all
and it actually just keeps getting worse.. the following part where you have to find matsya's friends at palaka's stand was awful. the friends have a newborn baby, so it's obvious that only that baby is surviving bc ew is convinced you don't know how harsh the world is yet. that must be why this part is so long? i'm repeating myself but so many other things that shouldn't be rushed get rushed, only for ew to devote a lot of time to sections like this where nothing changes or develops except for compounding how bad it all feels. i think it was at this point actually, that i realised endwalker actually had some underlying point it was trying to make. it would've been impossible not to realise bc of how heavy-handed it is. i'm not even going to try and paraphrase bc it was so random the way it was introduced i thought i had missed some lines of dialogue or something when it happened:
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the suddenness of this felt like when a writer forsakes trying to show what a story is about and instead opts to speak to their audience directly through poorly disguised self-inserts. like i know things are bad right now guys, but the preaching tone of this is jarring. like maybe if you spent some time trying to develop your themes you wouldn't have to be doing this endwalker. i know you need your final villain to literally parrot these ideas for the rest of the game, but if this was supposed to be such a core point of the story why wait all the way until now to just beat me over the head with it? was watching a child be crushed underfoot supposed to make elderly man of palaka using the phrase "at journey's end" seem profound?
anyways then you go and try to save matsya’s friend (the mother bc the father has now died, of course). this leads us to another forced decision that doesn’t make any sense: alisaie and alphinaud fail to kill a single abomination--just the one solitary abomination that was stalking the poor woman--so that we can see it fling her into the water and her corpse dangling on the surface. in what fucking world do alisaie and alphinaud, who have single-handedly dispatched numerous abominations prior to reaching this point, fail to kill just one of them between the two of them in a way reminiscent of a cartoon, one being knocked into the other and them both falling over? how is that fucking possible? and then to somehow make things worse, because that's still possible, despite the fact that wol spends this entire segment in palaka’s stand being told by alisaie and alphinaud not to leave matsya alone because he can’t fend for himself, the twins suggest sending him back on his own to deliver the baby to palaka's stand? why??????????????????????????????
this is what i mean when i say the characters get used in the most bullshit ways for the most bullshit reasons. it's like the game needs as much suffering as possible to happen so that it can make a worthwhile point on this later on (spoiler: it doesn't) so it pulls shit like this. why would the twins, who we just watched try to spoonfeed the garleans cereleum straight from the tank, leave matsya on his own if not solely bc the story needs the doomerism of the Resolute Citizen to ring true? and this is also what i mean when i say the scions try to manage a disaster that is just not manageable, bc they for some reason believe that bc they've taken care of the abominations they saw in the area, that means the area is safe enough for matsya to go back on his own? like are we just suddenly pretending the nature of these creatures doesn't imply that anyone can turn into one at any moment? everyone is ALWAYS in danger? we're just going to mill around while matsya weathers the most potent fear of his life running back to the village on his own, with the baby of his friends who just died moments before, while we all know that extremely negative emotions cause people to turn into the monsters? why are we doing this after we just went to so much trouble keeping people safe (or failing to, really)? forget turning into monsters for a sec, why are we even letting him experience such painful emotions at all? anyways the fucking baby starts turning into a monster because this is endwalker.. but i will say that matsya running and chanting that little piece up there about how life is suffering to try and convince me it's true calm himself down was one of the cutscenes i liked the most from this entire part, maybe endwalker in general. it was another one of those emotionally poignant and well-executed moments that just suffers from how much i wish it was happening under totally different circumstances. i don't even remember why one of us doesn’t go with him, like i don't remember what we were busy doing bc it was that unimportant--no wait, i remember! we were waiting for matsya to reach the total end of his rope so that when all things seem lost, when those monsters obviously show up on his path back to the village out of nowhere like they've been doing the past painstaking quest after quest of this entire part, estinien and vrtra can get this really cool moment of jumping into save him! it all makes so much sense now. i've never seen estinien do anything really cool before like diving down from the sky with his lance, so i understand how this was a really important moment that the game needed to make happen. also how vrtra really needs to prove to the people he can be a good satrap bc ahewann just died and all. yeah, i totally get it. perfect. just great. 
what is the message behind despair turning you into a monster? we're about to get into it with meteion and try to convince her she's wrong--come out championing the idea that suffering is just one of the many aspects of life we need to accept, and yet we're going to preface that with a part where to feel despair is bad? you get punished if you do it? honestly?
whatever. elpis...we go here because we need to learn about the elpis flower. i'm thinking we're definitely just going to ask the watcher, right? like the guy on the moon who told us the name of the flower in the first place? and time is of the fucking essence here, so surely we just go back to the watcher and ask him what we need to know and come back? wrong. we're going back to the first. to talk to elidibus. i thought we killed elidibus? does nobody truly die in this game except for my favourite character? so wol gets sent back to the first, and there's this upbeat tonally dissonant little section where you catch up with some old friends like beq lugg and those kids you helped back in shb bc now is just the perfect time for pleasantries and remembering how good shadowbringers was. ew trying to relive shadowbringers was already something i was feeling out in thavnair fighting leagues of "terminus" creatures and not "forgiven" ones, and watching the carefully constructed horror and gravity of the final days get reduced to an average apocalyptic shitshow. so i can't say i appreciated this part. also people are indiscriminately turning into monsters. i can't help but have that hang over everything constantly until the end of the expansion.
anyways we go to the crystal tower and drag out elidibus even though i personally prefer when characters have their final moments and are properly laid to rest. like i hate to not only beat a dead horse but also reanimate said horse and then drag its corpse around. well fuck what i want. so elidibus willingly does this favour for us i guess and sends us to the past somehow with some useless warnings about how we won't be able to interact with our surroundings or change the past. i say useless because the former is just untrue, i'm not sure why he bothered to say it. the moment we step foot on elpis you get a nice gift of aether from emet-selch that renders you tangible and now you can proceed to live love laugh with him and hythlodaeus on elpis even though people are indiscriminately dying back home. and the latter warning, well. i don't know, that just seemed obvious. i'm kind of just a hater.
time to be positive again for a short moment, if you can believe it? emet-selch is one of my favourite characters. i enjoyed this new light cast on him...for a short while. i like his relationship with hythlodaeus and i really like hythlodaeus; i’m really fond of the faceless simulacrum version of him you meet in shb and i'm really fond of him now. learning about the unsundered world in person rather than through hearsay was interesting, and although i can't lie and say i don't think this all kind of felt like a huge tangent despite the important aspects of the plot that come out of it, i still like it. i guess it feels this way because a lot of big plot points have already been established, like the ark on the moon and the sharlayans' involvement and the final days, so this was all kind of too big to me to be coming this late into the story. it doesn't feel all that relevant to prior parts of the expansion either except for hermes, who has been poorly developed throughout, so okay, i get it. it's time to give one of the main villains some depth (i want you to guess if this is successful or not). hermes has a lot of qualities i really like. has a child, secretly nurturing a potent sadness, thinks differently from the world around him because at his core he’s too deeply empathetic…. even though i was still largely aware of the insanity happening back at home which i'm going to keep repeating, i still enjoyed elpis At The Start. the exposition of this part was easily better than its resolution. it was taking the time to develop hermes’ character so that you could see if the game was written well anyhow how he became the fandaniel of the present. i really liked his relationship with meteion too. it's getting hard to talk about what i like without simultaneously talking about what i don't like so i'm going back to criticising now, positivity over, sorry....
personally, i’d have been totally fine without any more development to emet-selch’s character. i think it was nice to see a fresh perspective on him and all, really rounds out who he is from what you know and what he talks about in shadowbringers. and i actually like a lot of the things he said throughout, not all of it, but a good amount of it was fun and sorely needed whenever hermes was being annoying, which was often. but there was a lot of times wehere i thought, i don't really need to be hanging out with emet-selch right now? i don't need my wol and emet-selch to be friends? considering who he is....? .............and what's going on back home? how many more moments showing how endearingly prickly he is do i need to see? like sure, i can enjoy this emet-selch fest in isolation of what's going on because me love emet-selch like it's not like i think these moments are bad or anything but i don't know, don't we have other things to be doing? i'm not diametrically opposed to fanservice, i like when things are kept fresh and lighthearted. but. well you know by now. about the people turning into monsters. i guess i just both enjoyed this part and wished it happened under different circumstances or in a different way or something, or maybe not at all, bc as things progress his character just gets more and more diluted.
i actually really liked meteion. i will say i’m really tired of non-human, overly childish girl children creature characters who become villains, because i think there's this concept where…idk how to say it? i wish i could find something that talks about this more... it's like the dehumanisation involved when non-binary characters or non-white characters are often not human (not that these things are done in the same way). but i feel like women or females ig are often the ones chosen to be non-human in this particular way...? like, when emotional labour is involved. or when it needs to be some taboo evil entity. it's like a guy and his part-animal female second lead or part-alien love interest or female-voiced ai system or android or abandoned girl he finds/rescues. it's kind of like the born sexy yesterday trope but without the blatant sexuality (i don't want to go on a tangent). quite often this weird quirky alien and playful girl child is a harbinger of destruction. take drakengard, for example, or fire emblem engage, or cc from code geass iirc, or veronica from fire emblem heroes.. there's apparently something about childishness and girlishness and innocence and corrupting that innocence or being fooled by that innocence that seems to incite fear of the unknown enough in people for villainous children to be a trope in general regardless of gender, but it was just something i was thinking about in regards to meteion's character, especially when she becomes evil. and this blurry line between her as a "being" with a consciousness and free well as GIVEN to her by hermes, and her as a "tool" to be used by him as well, doesn't really get addressed in any meaningful way at all. like sure, she doesn't need to eat but she can still enjoy candy apples and flowers, and can empathise bc often of her own volition she wants to cheer hermes up, but actually her ability to empathise is programmed; so let's send send her, this highly empathetic being (with consciousness and free will and tastes and personality) into the cold expanse of space for as long as it takes for hermes to find his answer, that's totally fine. why did he make it a girl? why couldn't they address the fact that the loneliest bastard in this entire game made himself a child? like i'm not saying there needs to be clear-cut definitions on what meteion is or why she or hermes take certain actions, but it feels like a lot of things regarding their characters are really complex and implied to be really deep, and then just don't go anywhere or are completely ignored or unexplained? and because these things are so present yet passed over, it leaves me genuinely confused about most of what happens on elpis and how these two specifically reach any of the conclusions they do once things start going south
like i thought what she and hermes were going to add to the story was going to be a lot more interesting and complex than what it turned out to be.....a banal mantra on the "mercy" of nihilism. i can barely reconcile what bothers hermes in the first place with what meteion concludes from her sisters' expeditions, like they almost feel irrelevant to each other. he's upset over man's lording over who deserves to live and the callousness of making and unmaking life. he feels sadder about the coming death of his friend than the average ancient, and doesn't want to accept meaningless platitudes about dying for the good of the star. ok, i agree with that. so he wants to know what meaning there is to life, if it can be so easily judged and discarded...? okay. so his answer is to....secretly create creatures without any of the rigourous testing they usually go through to prevent them from being dangerous, and then send them on a potentially dangerous and traumatising mission to answer his vague philosophical questions? like.......? so when she reports back traumatised and tells him every single society out there is suffering (which i just find so unbelievable btw), then the answer to his question must be that suffering is the meaning of life--which she figures bc she's an entelechy so i imagine she's highly susceptible to her emotional surroundings, and because his pseudo-intellectual question is so poorly framed (something only emet-selch points out in a throwaway line btw). and this alone spurs him on to allowing meteion to unmake their entire society in the most violent way conceivable? you literally tell him that the final days are coming as a result of his actions, but he's fine with it because he'd rather that than enact some policy changes at his workplace, or talking to someone? everyone seemed to listen and respect his decision when he suggested helping that creature learn to fly instead of just killing it, i'm sure he could've talked it out? isn't he in charge of the place? this entire section was so hard for me to follow bc i kept thinking something more complex was making everyone behave the way they were, when it was actually just totally senseless.
as an aside, i hate how they chose to make the way meteion reports information so cooly technological btw, it felt not only anachronistic but corny. i’m sure there's a better way to have her impartially report things without making her sound like she's reporting weather conditions on some distant planet in star trek. anyways, when you frantically search for meteion after she receives her transmission was another part that took up a lot of time for no reason. it just made everything feel so dire when i could barely understand why any of what was going on was such a big deal. and i’ll never be one to say that any bureau of anything should “detain” anyone, but why hermes was so frantic to prevent meteion from being brought to the convocation i just don't know. like he goes on the run with her so that he can hear the end of her report? is that really it? i just find it hypocritical that he doesn't want her to be sent to the convocation where they'll limit her free will or fucking whatever but he's totally fine with ordering the meteia into space? why am i being made to guess what the convocation is going to do to meteion when hermes is making it seem like such a big deal?? what fucking sense does that make? what on earth was he afraid of? their judgment? the convocation members deciding whether meteion is good for the star or not? could they not have just reasoned this out? aren’t they a "highly advanced" and "reasonable" society? like okay he sees through the veil of his utopian home but i just did not get a sense of how much it was bothering him at all, like i cannot stress enough how him going turbo feels like an insane jump from what his problems seemingly were. why did nobody stop to think this through or communicate to each other? is it because of the bullshit time paradox this game has trapped us in so that nothing we do will amount to anything anyways so we might as well make the most confused villain of all time be responsible for the biggest event in this game's history?
but it annoys me because meteion and hermes felt like such a waste of potential, maybe the biggest waste to me in the entire expansion. i was really intrigued by their wholesome relationship at the start, knowing that hermes was a main villain. and that he can't find connection or meaning in an otherwise "perfect" society, so he has to create it for himself and try to find it elsewhere, as far as the reaches of outer space... he wants to make what's hurting him stop hurting him. i like that he approaches such human desires with meteion despite her non-humanness, and that she can return those feelings to him. he wants to signify meteion’s return with a flower because they both like flowers… like those things we can’t put into words but share with others, moments, emotions, connections……..but nope. nihilism beam. it feels like the worst sort of retroactive writing ever. they didn't even think too hard about dynamis--this hugely important thing, except nobody has ever heard of it, aside from nidhana back at home? while members of the highest office in the most advanced society earth has ever had are left squinting.
and the entire section after you fight hermes just pissed me off. we kicked his ass so that we could stop him from inciting meteion any further, and yet we just let him hear her out anyways? he's yelling at you during the entire dungeon that he just wants the time to hear her out, we're chasing after him so that we can stop him from doing that, and then we just let him hear her out anyways? and then even when we do that she doesn’t even say anything different? she just goes right back to reporting on different worlds and how self-destructive they are and That's All She Really Proceeds To Say For The Rest Of The Expansion But Fucking Who Cares Anymore. so we let her repeat herself. this sends her into a spiral, because she's an entelechy who just got hit by a high frequency nihilism beam, but subjecting her to all that despair is only ever addressed by one of the scions in a throwaway line near the very end of the story in ultima thule... and then hermes...captures venat, emet-selch and hythlodaeus??? he captures two of the strongest characters in the game? did we not just kick hermes’ ass??? what is going on?
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emet-selch: that's bullshit, and you know it's bullshit
hermes: *says more bullshit*
i really think hermes might be one of the worst villains in the game. it's a shame bc i think he's such an interesting character. i'm not sure why he started behaving like such an incel when he was right to be troubled by the things he was? why did they even bother have wol relate to him over experiencing sadness from loss if that just went totally nowhere? why does he behave so hypocritically? being saddened by loss leads to him setting the stage for the final days? him hating man's jurisdiction over other lives leads to him wiping emet-selch's and hythlodaeus' memories, and subjecting the entire planet to the worst test ever? he's not even morally grey or anything! just annoying! i saw someone say that it's even worse that he wants the ancients to prove that their life is meaningful to them, bc it's true, they do??? like isn't that what venat interrupts them from doing in the answers cutscene, calling back for that lost life? isn't that what you learn in shadowbringers? didn't an entire half of their population sacrifice themselves so that the other half could live? what the fuck else did they need to prove?
this part was pissing me off even more because i never even wanted hythlodaeus or emet-selch to learn about where wol came from or about the final days coming in the first place. i thought that was an awful writing decision. telling them just felt weirdly cruel to me considering elidibus explicitly told you there was nothing you could do to change it. maybe this is just my opinion, but why would anybody want to know that their planet is going to go up in flames and there is nothing they can do to stop it? telling venat i was like sure, she becomes hydaeyln so this makes a little more sense to me, but the other two…….? this is around when i was getting tired of the emet-selch cameo, because i don't really care to know what he thinks of his future self? i couldn't really understand what the point of any of that was? so it annoyed me even further that it amounts to nothing anyways when they get their minds conveniently erased. it felt like a fucking joke. why did we revive these characters, develop them, and then just treat them like tools...? like now that we're done using their powers and creation magicks--i thought, naively--we just toss them aside? like ohhhhh noooooo now they won't remember all the fun we had on elpis this is so sad......but at least before he got his memories wiped emet-selch, even though he definitely totally doesn't believe a fucking word i say, renews his shb vows to wol and leaves the future in my hands again? yeah, i totally wanted to hear him say that a second time. forget how deeply affecting and important a moment that was at the end of shadowbringers. i really needed to see him do that one more time in this shittier, more contrived context. that's really what i needed from endwalker. also i've been on reddit reading what people have to say about endwalker out of curiosity (ppl make a lot of good points that i haven't) and someone pointed out that moments before all this happens venat literally pulls memories from the aether around you so that we can watch hermes send the meteia to space. what on earth is stopping anyone from doing that for hermes, hythlodaeus, and emet-selch? but whatever, i already know the writing doesn't care how silly it is anymore. two of the strongest ancients get bound by a weakened hermes, only break out after the story conveniently needed meteion to start flying into space, and then venats lets her escape somehow even though doing so essentially dooms their entire planet. ok
so we’re back home and we have to go immediately help the thavnarians who are being punished for not being white again. the sharlayans were going to bring them to the teleporter to the moon in garlemald to start getting them on the moon, but oops, the final days have come to garlemald, so now we can't use the teleporter, so if you're thavnarian your life sucks. who saw that coming? absolute waste of time. so then we have to get rid of more beasts because we need to waste even more time doing something we already spent an agonising amount of time doing in thavnair. and then immediately after this we need to......wrap up yet another asinine plot thread endwalker is so obssesed with adding to it's already convoluted story: fourchenault excommunicating his children...? it seemed really important when he did this in post-shb, but materially nothing for alphinaud or alisaie really changed, everyone still gets into sharlayan no problem. ultimately i just didn’t really know why they chose to pursue this mini-plot at all because how many more pushes does alphinaud (i'm saying alphinaud bc he does not share that spotlight with alisaie lmfao) need to become resolute in his goals? he already does this throughout the series? they ruined arenvald's legs in post-shb so that alphinaud could become more resolute in his goals, why keep dedicating time to this? just keep juggling endwalker, just keep juggling. anyways we’re in garlemald, we calm the final days for now, zenos shows up out of nowhere to remind us he’s still in the game. and to be fair to him that was one of the most interesting cutscenes he’s had the whole time, and, get this--they have him randomly answer hermes' question? about the meaning of life? while talking to jullus? like jullus gets mad at him for not giving a fuck about causing what happened to garlemald, and zenos responds by saying: "ask any creature of this star and those above for answers, and they will tell you what suits their fancy. and they would be right to do so. what meaning there is to be found in the petty vicissitudes of your existence must be gleaned by you and you alone." like......? he just provides the answer right there in a conversation with jullus? did this expansion have any interest at all in putting any of its different parts in conversation with each other, or are we supposed to just try and build a good story like a puzzle, where the pieces, albeit interesting, don't actually fit together? weren't zenos and fandaniel working together at the beginning of the expansion? he should have just posed this question to zenos because the answer was apparently right fucking there, with the flattest character in the entire game, this whole time? whatever, i still liked this scene. alisaie putting a curse on zenos was very cool of her. so we're back in garlemald and....….tonal dissonance! puddingway shows up. cute scene where g’raha’s ears perk up also bc he's the one who hears the loporrits coming. just in case you forgot about g’raha, which is an oxymoron. and then maybe the second worst segment of endwalker...........we go back to labryinthos. 
now i love labryinthos. i thought it was interesting we only collected one aetheryte the first time we were there, and i was hoping the place would be as intriguing to me as it first was when we got back. admittedly learning that the sharlayans' secrecy only amounted to contributing to the moon project was kind of a let down, but i thought maybe there was still more to it. i mean, an ark to the moon? the abandonment of one's home planet? it's not like the ideas aren't there. let's go back to elpis for a second. one of the moments that really stood out to me during that part was a throwaway line that emet-selch says to wol after hermes starts freaking it:
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he's right. i don't think hermes found society so truly beyond help that he couldn't turn to any one of his peers for help before devising such a reckless plan. but i'm not trying to rehash my issues with hermes, more that i think an interesting parallel could have been made, possibly, with the ark flying to the moon as currenlty the most viable solution to the final days problem? challenging this notion of just throwing it all away as a last resort? especially because it's so obvious to me that by the end of this expansion nobody is actually going into space to start a new life out there; trying to sort out living accomodations and acquaint the lopporits properly with earth is just a waste of time. so why not pose the underlying question of the entire expansion, about what makes life meaningful, to the last bastion of hope in the entire universe--the sole planet amongst millions of dead stars that still believes in itself? would it not just be free real estate to try and connect this story's multiple parts together by ...connecting this story's multiple parts together? the scions say repeatedly how much they'd prefer to protect their planet rather than leave it, and everyone on earth vouches for you because they don't want to leave, either. could they not have made a connection in some way between that ark and the meteia's voyage to outer space? could the writing not have turned around and asked the actual inhabtants of the planet of that we've helped and saved and laughed with and broken bread with or whatever the fuck what they think about the meaning of life, now that they have to leave that life behind? i guess fucking not??? i guess endwalker would rather only highlight civilians when they're being turned into abominations to drive home the same points about life = suffering constantly, and not the points about how despite the suffering life needs to be lived? because they don't actually seem to care about challenging meteion's nihilism when that can just be lazily solved by beating her up at the end. hermes could have been learning to love the world he was on, the smaller things that make it beautiful. because that's what he does, he creates this creature that is built to understand him, and it does and it shares these small joys with him. but nope, time to waste time doing fetch quests in labryinthos. find every single researcher who is obviously losing their mind with stress in labryinthos and give them their government-assigned lopporit while this hectic music with only one minute's worth of loop value plays in the background. go and deliver these papers with alisaie and alphinaud bc if you do a former friend of their father’s will tell them that their father actually loves them duh that’s why he disrespects them publicly every chance he gets. go follow one of the lopporits around while they sample fruits so that they can learn to make food other than carrots. go and watch urianger reconcile with moenbryda's parents even though she died all the way back in a realm reborn. fuck you. also everyone is still just a bad day away from turning into an abomination. just in case you forgot.
that shit where asahi shows up to take fandaniel away for the final time might be top three most bizarre scenes in all of final fantasy fourteen btw. i almost didn't want to mention it, but i need it on record how silly i thought that was. we are in the final stages of this expansion and it still can't stop wasting time. did we see ardbert's thoughts on elidibus using his body? no. but asahi was who they chose to get upset about this? ok.
i liked the trial against mother. you might have noticed i've had very little to say on venat this whole time. that might just have to be its own post or something if nobody is sick of me by now. but anything to do with working together with your friends to overcome a trial is good.
that's what i liked about ultima thule. at the same time, this is where the game finally just loses me forever. i think, somehow, even despite all the things i didn't like, the way the story is told i still enjoyed, even if what it was saying was often. bad. there's still a lot of moments i really liked despite it all. but after ultima thule i was just done. we get on the ark. great. i like that things don't go as planned because meteion intercepts our ship. but now meteion is finally here, which means it's finally time for me to reckon with the pseudo-intellectual nihilism she's been touting every chance she gets. it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief that every single society out in space wanted oblivion, but if that's what endwalker wants me to believe for the sake of its story making sense (oxymoron) then fine. ok. but that's all that's ever said. "life is suffering" "life is suffering" "the final days are really bad"
just the same pseudo-intellectual browbeating about how living just leads to constant strife and the most beautiful thing to do is to just end it all for everyone ever again. like sure, empath hears death cry repeatedly--i can see how meteion could change so permanently. i think that's fine. i doubt that's why she's so repetitive. i genuinely just 't think there's nothing anyone really had to say on this. and the thing is, we've heard this argument before? the idea that humanity is imperfect so they don't deserve to live? it will all amount to nothing, so why let it continue to exist? these are major points of conflict from shadowbringers because it's what emet-selch was always saying. the difference is that emet-selch is just an easily more interesting and fleshed out character whose arguments are largely more complicated, even if they're just as morally wrong. like it's extremely easy for me to answer whatever meteion is saying with a resounding no. and while i feel that emet-selch can also be easily disagreed with on what he believes, bc i do disagree--he at least introduces ideas that complicate the story and his own character. he challenges the scions on their hatred of primals--their god is a primal. he offers visions of a world where nobody has to struggle ever again, where strife doesn't exist, and so on and so forth. while that doesn’t justify his actions, nor do i think they should, i think he at least gives the characters something to think about. he throws their own actions back at them. why would the scions not want a world without suffering? when emet-selch asks alphinaud if he believes half of the sundered world would give up half of their number to save the other half, alphinaud is unable to answer because he knows that the answer is no. i don't think humanity should be tested, let alone with such an insane standard, but i at least think that the questions being asked in shadowbringers were interesting. there's a point to them. with meteion, all she basically says to the scions is that she’s going to fucking kill everyone they know and love in the worst way possible. nothing to chew on that wouldn't better be solved by just getting rid of the threat. i don't know why they even bother arguing with her ever. she doesn't even feel like a character to me in that last section of the game. and they keep trying to have her seem all scary by having her get really close to the screen or move around without warning which is all very silly to me. i at least did like how much of a threat she was, and the way thancred vanished, and then everyone finds themselves in that dark area in front of the ship wondering where he is while the ultima thule music plays for the first time, distantly and quietly. i actually really liked that part. i thought it was really moving. i wish it had stayed that way.
the first area of ultima thule was the best part imo. i liked the immense darkness and quiet and lack of wind and the foul air and  yet, green grass. i liked the strange horror of being the only person at first who could really see the dragons, and then learning that estinien can see them too. i liked how that was the segue for his sacrifice. having those "final" moments with a specific scion each time until that climactic moment that pushes the group forward i really liked. i liked that thancred was no longer with them but still with them, a presence over them keeping them safe from harm. i found that very touching. but i was actually really confused while going through ultima thule becuase of how they visually shows what happens, like while the swirling vortex each scion would stand in was cool, and then standing to face off against that dark bird, i think what those things actually represented i just did not really understand what was actually being done or going on. i think that might be because dynamis suffers a bit from being just too nebulous or underdeveloped. i don't mind how abstract of a concept it is, i mean aether is used to do all sorts of never-explained things all the time.. it's more like... if ultima thule is going to be a place ruled by emotions, with laws different from what the scions are used to, it's hard for me to see how they were able to really draw any conclusions about where they were or what to do. it actually kind of reminded me of the logic of jojo's bizarre adventure where an attack only overrules another attack not becuase of some fundamental power scale the reader understands, but bc of what araki feels like contriving to get the story moving the way he wants. and that's fine because it's jojo. but this is ffxiv, so in my mind ultima thule should have either remained abstract and they don't try to explain the rules of the place so much, or they should’ve just made what was going on less abstract if they were going to try to logic the place out
what i mean is: the scene where estinien argues with that dragon so that he can overcome its despair is really cool. i liked that he turned into a cool wind. i liked that your friends sacrificed themselves for the sake of their home, that the power of their hopes for wol to overcome this final challenge was the only way they could move forward in such a stagnant place, as well as the only way they could be protected by meteion's violence. but after estinien does it--and he admits that he doesn't know how, just that it was the right thing to do--it feels like the writing immediately tries to specify what's going on so that there's some easy way forward the scions just have to follow the rulebook for, so that they can get to meteion. when urianger takes wol and g'raha aside i was actually just so lost. i don't know what it was i wasn't getting. i still don't. like to kind of say that there’s always one "individual" in these fake worlds who is despairing more than the others that can be located if they just identify a certain set of behaviours... this kind of just waters down what the scions are doing and the magic of being at the universe's end or w/e to me. we use language because of our inability otherwise to really express the depth of emotions and sensations that exist in this world, not the other way around--trying to box in something so complex through things like processes and so on...so to try and narrow down this part kind of rung a bit hollow to me. it was somehow both overexplained and underexplained at the same time. this might seem kind of nitpicky but i guess it was just hard for me to enjoy ultima thule when i was genuinely confused almost the whole way throughout. and bc the ea and the omicrons were so goddamn annoying. trying to do this slapdash learning about their societies at the very end of the game was just like...? okay? why bother, all they really care about is dying anyways. and then that final dungeon, ew's final attempt at replicating the wins of shadowbringers (the amaurot dungeon) with meteion's voice over. like who cares now meteion, you are somehow still just repeating yourself. endwalker is almost at it's end girl, i get it. everyone wants to die.
where i actually started to get annoyed though was where y'shtola says in no uncertain terms not to use the retcon crystal hydaelyn gave you to call their spirits back. y'shtola, you shouldn't have bothered, because you know wol is going to do absolutely that. why even have her say it? there is no sense of risk whatsoever because that crystal is involved. i still liked the sacrificing, but maybe they should have framed it in a way where it wasn't obvious that the scions were going to be totally fine. ew literally didn't seem ballsy enough to kill all of the scions, and i don't think it should've either. but then it just makes this all very wishy-washy. and even worse was when wol used it to summon HYTHLODAEUS AND EMET-SELCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY!!!!!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?????????????? i was so annoyed. i'm still annoyed. back when their memories got wiped hythlodaeus was like oh yeah by the way emet did you know that in the aetherial sea you can get your memories back haha? and i was like okay cool so when they die they can get their memories back, whatever, still don't think me and emet-selch should've been live love laughing on elpis. i didn’t actually think this game would be so juvenile as to let you get to meet them once more with their memories fully intact. i don't know why ew has to dot every i and cross every t and sign off every single bit of intrigue with the biggest fucking full stop The End ever where emet-selch is concerned, holy fuck man. i hated this decision so much. your friends SACRIFICE THEMSELVES so that WOL can face meteion. they believe that at the very end of everything, hydaelyn believes that at the very end of everything, WOL is the one who can defeat meteion. they all put so much faith in you. and the first thing you do is summon emet-selch and hythlodaeus because what? because you just can't fucking help yourself? just shit all over the importance of carrying your friends’ beliefs in you. christ i hated that. i loved seeing the elpis flowers grow all over that fake sun. why couldn't that have been wol who grew them, wol's turn to use dynamis to overcome meteion's despair, flowers that represent the hopes every single person on earth has placed in them to see their star to safety? why? emet-selch there for what? to set in stone his position as the Tsundere once and for all? is that it? to have him renew his vows to wol for the millionth time just in case you forgot that he wants you to take up the mantle of their future? i wish they would go back to never making emet-selch palatable and less hostile to the warrior of light, it feels like such a disservice to the character he was in shadowbringers and to just their characters in general like i do not want to be canon friends with emet-selch! it's not necessary! it's fucking emet-selch! what's even worse is that for some reason while the flowers are growing, emet-selch is just point blank explaining what's going on. he literally says something like, "these flowers are the hopes of everyone meteion you're washed. by the way, if you didn't catch that, wol. you can summon your friends back now." immersion gone. any sense of playing a game that actually gives a fuck gone. so we call our friends back, only to send them away again with the teleporter because meteion is just too strong for us. to be fair i liked that decision, but why fake me out a second time having me think yes, finally wol is going to face meteion ON HER OWN. and then have ZENOS show up? i actually just stopped playing and went to bed. genuinelly just fuck me. who fucking cares anymore.
and then after you finally get meteion to stop being emo and she offers to reconcile with you by sending you safely back to your friends it's like, actually i can't even accept this meteoin. because i have to go fight zenos now. and then it's crazy to me that after you kick zenos' ass for like the millionth time, we're literally on the edge of the world so i'm finally expecting him to say something worth listening to, he opens his mouth and says "you know, wol, this whole time... i've been so bored... and the only thing that gives me joy is fighting you...” like. stuck record. the writers dragged him all the way out here to be a stuck fucking record
i like endwalker btw. kind of. like i know nobody who reads this is going to believe me but i really do. if it had just, well. i don't even know. there's too much wrong with it. it wastes too much time and just doesn't seem to be able to let go. how is it possible that an expansion can make me tired of callbacks to haurchefant being important to wol? i've never felt that before. like how many more flashbacks to his grave does one need to have to know that when wol is fighting for their world they're fighting for their friends too. but this game just cannot let things go. it NEEDS to make that joke about alphinaud gathering firewood four more times. it makes anything i appreciated the second or maybe even the third time just upset me. they can't let anything go, they have to wave it in front of me like it's a dog treat and i'm a dog. a fucking dog with blonde hair and blue eyes
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sludgewolf · 5 months
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We need to talk about the lack of "filler" in series that're been released recently
I just watched a video about ATLA and it's filler or lack there of and, they're right, ATLA doesn't have filler episodes as we define "filler episodes" now. Our understanding of filler is closer to what's used for anime that is, non canon episodes that are made so the anime doesn't catch up with the manga. Applying this to western animation (I say animation bc I graduated in it thus a better understanding and I don't really watch many live action series so I don't have much of a say) we ended up with the impression that it means "episodes that don't move the plot forward"
Which, doesn't make sense with Western animation since most of it isn't a adaptation of something else, or with comic adaptations for ex, they're mostly adaptations of various arcs coming together as a single story. Smt very different from the manga to anime adaptation process
Comparing ATLA who positively doesn't have "filler" and X-men 97 who negatively doesn't have "filler" is a good example of what I'm trying to say.
Not all of ATLA episodes move the "learn the elements and defeat the firelord" plot forward and that's good thank fuck not all episodes are rushing ahead to throwing this 12yo we barely know into a battle with a full grown adult who's perpetrating a war against the rest of the world. Instead we actually get to know the characters, we see them traveling from the South to the North Pole instead of spawning where the plot demands, we see Aang adapt to the world post iceberg nap and learn to be the avatar, we see the effect the 100 year war had in this world. And most of all, the more "filler" episodes contributed to the pacing of the series, when binging the series now I still feel like the Gaang traveled across the whole world and didn't just teleport to the plot.
Opposed to X-men 97, don't get me wrong I'm absolutely loving it but the story is always being racing forward at a breakneck speed. They did try to pace it better inter cutting the main plot with Scott, Jean, Madelyne, Wolverine's whole deal and the "LifeDeath " plot, but if there wasn't the weekly wait for the next episode we would not have any time to breathe and digest what happened in the episodes.
I'm still confused on how Madelyne went from trying to have a normal life outside the x-men to being in Genosha's council. Still on Madelyne, I didn't care that they had to part ways with Nathan, ik he's their baby and all that, but as soon as they named the baby Nathan I knew they were throwing that baby to the future to complete the time loop of him being in the original series. And that's because they never got the chance to try to make us care, the writing team couldn't waste time with that since they only had 8 episodes to tell all these stories, the speed that the plot is being taken makes me believe that when writing this season Disney still hadn't signed on the second season and when they did it was too late to rework the script.
This whole thing is reminding me of Hazbin Hotel's pacing problems, analyzing it as if I didn't watch the pilot, we just met the characters and suddenly had to care that they were going to die in six months, we don't really know Charlie other than 1. she's Lucifer's daughter, 2. daddy issues that aren't rly addressed besides jokes, 3. she's with Vaggie (other character we didn't get to know) and 4. she's the owner of the hotel and wants to rehabilitate the sinners. The worst part of it is, we teleported from the start of the season to 6 months later out of nowhere and suddenly we're at the finale with the big boss battle. Of course HuskDust is a more popular ship than Charlie and Vaggie, we never got the chance to see them being together other than in episodes when the characters are being dragged by the plot while Angel and Husk had an episode where we met them and got the time to see them interact without being pushed by the extermination plot
This is exactly why "filler episodes" are important, we should actually know who these characters are before the big fight at the end so we can actually care about what happens to them. X-men 97 may not suffer that much from it but it's because we already knew most of the characters, but we never got to meet this version of Madelyne, see her going out alone to a world that hates her existence, see her morn having been forced to send her baby off to the future and maybe not being able to see him ever again and finally see never see how did she even end up in Genosha.
Or Storm, sure we got a two parter, but how did she get to fuck knows where to meet Forge in that bar, what did she go through during the time she was traveling alone, it's not as if people wouldn't recognize her as a x-men even if she'd left the team, maybe see more of how the relationship between her and Forge developed, cuz I didn't get why she still wants to be with him even after he basically created the tec that was turned into the weapons used to kill mutants, that's smt one can't just forgive, and yes I'd like to see her as she struggles with not having her powers, smt other than she feeling lonely without the wind (this would work even as just a montage with sad music as she travels to the fuckall haunted desert)
On a rly quick note on Invincible I do think they did a good job with their pacing and character development with the time they had, I'd like to have seen a bit more of Rex's development from complete douche to Lizard Leader homemade lobotomy to where we are now, but on the Grayson family whole thing they did an amazing job at showing how they're dealing with the aftermath of season 1, there was just a little jump from Debbie downing a bottle of wine every day to full bug mom mode but I do think she'd step up to it no doubt.
Maybe just some scenes of her still working through s1 trauma and questioning wtf is wrong w Nolan bc from her perspective he just killed hundreds of ppl on Earth, almost killed Mark, fucked off to space and suddenly there's a purple half bug baby living in her house calling her mom. But I don't think that's strictly necessary since there's always fanfiction to bridge this gap and it's just a minor thing that bothered me
TLDR: Filler in western cartoons isn't really filler, these are just episodes to help develop the world or characters without having to rush with the plot and also episodes that help with the pacing of the story, thus showing the passage of time or great distances being crossed without having the characters spawn at the next plot point. And we do need it specially for shows that are intended for binging, such as most shows now. What determines good filler from bad filler here is good writing
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maivolpe · 1 year
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hii! i j read “as long as ur with me” & i love ur writing :3 could i request a very cheesy fic in which reader’s alrdy confessed to bucky & bucky’s rejected them ? ( maybe bc he’s unsure abt his feelings ? ) tony holds a party later & bucky gets jealous ( ooo ~~ ) of the reader after he sees them talking & being close to sam, ( meanwhile the reader’s only talking to sam for help abt bucky ? ) basically mutual pining but reader & bucky just need a push in the right direction ?? thank u either way & i hope u have a nice day ♡Ꮺ៸៸
thank you so much for your kind words :) so sorry for the delay, writer's block hit me like a truck last month so i'm trying to slowly get back into it (this is really lengthy and i don’t like it very much eek) anyways thank you for requesting ♡
・。゚: ∘◦☾◦∘。゚.
pairing: bucky barnes x reader cw: mentions of alcohol, cursing, knives wc: 1.5k
tony was having yet another party. you swore he never even slept, just drank the night away with whoever was willing to with him. tonight, however, you didn’t have time to lecture him about his coping mechanisms. you had more pressing problems.
exactly a week before, bucky had invited you to spar. you'd jumped at the chance to have such experienced competition, and, if you were being honest, your heart raced when he pinned you. or talked to you, or even just looked at you, anything really. but everyone thought that way. right? right.
he’d let you choose one of his blades to work with, stating that he wanted you to be more familiar with knives. they were much easier to come by than guns, he’d noted.
"move your hand here instead of there... there you go."
"watch your six, good."
and soon enough the critiques turned to compliments, and it was much more of a fair fight. for almost an hour you were evenly matched, each dodging nearly all of the others’ blows.
as time dragged on, bucky started to get distracted. his eyes had flickered away for only a split second, but it was all you needed. you pushed him up against the wall, holding your knife to his throat. your breaths came quick and hard, and you'd stared up at his smirk, just inches from your face.
"careful there," he'd breathed. "you want to stab your opponent, not kiss them."
and with a rush of confidence, you'd cocked your head.
"would it be so bad?"
recognition dawned in his eyes, and that was the last thing you saw before a flash of metal overtook your vision. his knuckles had struck your ribs hard, and you went flying. he’d stalked out of the room and left you sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath.
ever since then, you’d been stuck in a whirlpool of emotions, keeping yourself confined to your room whenever you could. your ribs were bruised along with your ego, and altogether you just felt terrible. what were you thinking? what posessed you to leave a thought you would've been embarassed to even think, just floating in the air like that? and now tony was hosting this party, and the last thing you wanted to do was go.
well, maybe you'd get something to drink.
the room was flooded with people, packed to the brim with journalists, celebrities, and some uninvited partiers that had found their way in. trying to avoid conversation, you found yourself, drink in hand, tucked away in the corner of the room with sam.
“i feel so stupid, sam.”
“dude, i’m sure it’s not that serious. he probably just freaked out a little. and besides, i mean, look at you!” he motioned towards your dress, giving his hands a shake to emphasize how it flattered your figure.
“listen, though,” he continued. “just give him some time. he’s one to avoid any and all confrontation, but he’ll come around. with some nagging, maybe.”
you laughed. “thank you. i’m sorry for bothering you about this, i know it’s not super important.”
“it’s super important to you,” he pointed out, stuffing an hor d'oeuvre in his mouth. “‘s ‘mportant t’me by default.”
“ew, sam.”
bucky, in the meantime, was livid.
he’d come down just to grab a drink, or five, because the serum made it particularly tough for him to be inebriated. in the two minutes he was downstairs, of course he’d caught a glimpse of you, the very person he was trying to avoid. and you looked beautiful.
the party spilled out of open doors, people clambering in for a glance at tony. many shoved past him at an attempt to get closer to the middle of the room. it was a security nightmare, and also, he couldn’t hear anything.
he saw sam leaning in, whispering something to you, gesturing to your body? and you were laughing? as if his week hadn’t been bad enough, you’d moved right on from him. he wasn’t mad at you, he could never be. but sam?
“i need some air,” he grumbled to no one in particular. he pushed past waves of partygoers, keeping his head down, and slipped away through the first door he found.
across the room, you felt your heart sink to your stomach. you’d only seen bucky for a moment, and despite your determination to be happy, the look of revulsion on his face made you want to crumble.
“sam, i- i need some air.”
he nodded, brushing crumbs off of his chin and waving as you ducked through the crowd, dodging drinks and people alike. your ears rang, and even the silence of the elevator was deafening when the doors slid shut.
you tumbled out of the elevator as soon as the doors slid open, steadying yourself on a nearby doorknob. the wind whipped around your body, sending goosebumps down your arms and stinging your eyes. it was far too cold to be out on the roof, but where else was there to be?
you crept closer to the edge, perching on the roof so that you could see the city moving below you. cars and trucks whizzed by, oblivious to your existence. you found the bright colors of the stoplights blurring in your vision.
you were quickly learning that your emotions would always get the better of you. no matter how determined you were, they always took control.
the maintenance door behind you creaked open, and you whirled around to see who had found you. the glint of metal under the spotlights told you all you needed to know, and you quickly turned away.
“are you… crying?”
“no,” you sniffed, swiping fruitlessly at your tears.
"okay."
bucky lowered himself down next to you, stretching his legs to let them dangle off of the roof. he left a good space between the two of you, and you couldn't even bring yourself to hope he'd close the gap.
there was silence for a few moments, where neither of you dared to even breathe, much less look at each other.
"i was wrong," he whispered.
"what?"
“i said, i was wrong."
it was louder this time, but left you just as confused. was it guilt or pity that compelled him to make such a statement? either way, you shook your head. he couldn't be left thinking that way for simply feeling what he felt.
"no, you're not wrong. i was way too forward, and i made you uncomfortable. maybe you didn't have to lay me out like that, but that was a justified response. it's perfectly fine that you don't want me."
"but i do want you."
a puff of air escaped his lips with the words, visible in the frigid night. it dissipated as you turned the words over in your mind. you toyed with your fingers, afraid you'd misheard him. afraid you'd dreamed up the whole thing.
"i do want you. i've wanted you since i met you, the way you throw your head back when you laugh, the way you smile at me when you think i'm not looking, the way you hum along to every song, all of it. i just..."
he took a deep breath, and you could've sworn his hands had a little shake to them.
"it's... crazy. like shit, doll, i've hardly even talked to a girl in seventy years, and there you were lookin' beautiful, and talkin' about kissing me, and i just... didn't know what to do."
you nodded, gathering enough courage to peek up at him. he was watching you wistfully, emotion you'd never seen in him before displayed plainly on his face.
he looked away, though, shaking his head. "i'm sorry, i shouldn't have said anything. especially since you have that thing going on with sam now."
you wrinkled your nose. “what thing?”
“i, uh,” he started, clearing his throat, “i saw you guys talking. you looked happy.”
you giggled, smiling for what felt like the first time in forever. "about you, buck. i was worried about you. did you think i was making a move on sam?"
"maybe," he said sheepishly.
“he was helping me, or trying to, because i really messed up. i really do like you, james.”
his face softened at that, eyes widening at your confession. "in that case, i want- if you want to, i mean, i don't want to force anything-"
you reached over and took his hand, relishing the feeling of it slotting perfectly into your grip. "i want to."
"well, c'mere then."
he tucked an arm around your waist and pulled you closer to him, smiling down at you.
“can i kiss you now?” you breathed.
he answered by pressing his lips to yours, and it felt as though you melted into him for a moment. the colors dancing across your eyes were no longer from the traffic lights, but the dizzying happiness fizzing in your body, like the bubbles in a champagne glass.
he pulled away for a moment, and your heart pounded, afraid you’d messed something else up. but he only smiled at you.
“that felt really good.”
and before you could say “yes, it did,” his hands were cupping your face and he was pressing another gentle kiss to your longing lips.
・。゚: ∘◦☾◦∘。゚.
ko-fi ♡
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dave-me0wstaine · 1 year
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Dave has a size kink CONFIRMED (because I say so)
He'd literally like ANY sign of you being smaller than him, wearing his shirt, comparing hand sizes (A DREAM), him leaning down to whisper in your ear, or like when you stand on steps to look taller than him. Bro's down BAD for the size difference, it would all turn him on
HI HI HI i'm sorry i didn't get to this sooner! but YES dave having a size kink is mandatory in my head bc i just KNOW that man's hands are big and calloused <333 i'm gonna talk about sfw & nsfw aspects of this, if that's okay? i just have to get size kink dave out of my system
he'd totally be one of those boyfriends who would stoop or lean down a little bit to make sure he heard you. sometimes he does it to piss you off; he'll crouch down way too low to make it seem like you're shorter than you actually are, but for the most part he's doing it because he genuinely wants to make sure he hears whatever it is you have to say to him.
although he sometimes likes making fun of your height, at the end of the day he's a big sweetheart. and if anyone ever makes fun of your height, all of a sudden he's becoming your big scary dog boyfriend. just absolutely pissed until you call him off LOL
nsfw under the cut!
i think he'd really get a kick out of you holding his guitar because it dwarfs not only your body, but your hands. he's amazed, like he's seen a mythical creature or something. and he'd get so hard. so horny. like imagine he's teaching you guitar and he's got you sat in his lap, which is already making him horny, but then he notices just how small you are in his lap and how big the guitar is in yours. i think the thing that would really get him going is how small your hands look on the neck of the guitar. his hands swallow it, whilst you just barely can wrap a hand around it properly. immediately the blood is rushing to his cock because he imagines how your hand would look wrapped around his cock instead. your guitar lessons unfortunately never get too far </3
if he ever manages to catch on that the size difference turns you on too? oh you're done for. he's doing every little thing he can to make you get worked up just as much as he does. he's leaning down to whisper dirty words in your ear, he's running his big hands over your waist, he's looking down at you and giving you bedroom eyes. if he's real cocky (and maybe a tiny bit drunk) he'll pull you on his lap in public just so others can see how much he towers over you.
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