#shitty quality alert

[conjuring-ghouls]

Them rats! 🐀

[willowjay07]

How to sleep: 

*not want to sleep* 

How to stay awake: 

*want to sleep*

[clonesupport]

oops omg how did that get there oh my i wonder……..👀

so um i’m obsessed with my girl, fun fact i actually restarted cuz my first v i couldn’t make her an oc cuz i was too attracted to her that i couldn’t make her a self insert oc cuz i wouldn’t be able to fuck her- so if she shows up in the future umm she’s probably gonna be this v’s (i’m gonna give her her own name eventually just gotta think about it lol she’s too fresh) fuck buddy or ex👀👀👀 and i also decide i wanted my girl to be a street kid instead of a nomad so not me speed running the intro again just to feel better with my character AHAHAHAHA i swear my dedication to things are in the wrong places TwT

anyway basically i’m low key gonna have two ocs for this game lol but this babygirl right here is the one i focus on. my first v will be the v the game made her to be and this girlie is gonna be my own random street bruiser/punk rockstar. gotta think more about her story but i’ll make that it’s own separate post later🥴🥴

[insult-2-injury]

Scream Queen - Part 1/2

Gojo Satoru/FemReader

When it comes to horror films, Gojo considers himself a connoisseur. He knows a good chase when he sees one, and he's had his sights set on you for a long time.

AO3 Link

NSFW, 6.3k wc, porn with plot, dirty talk, fingering, pussy eating, masturbation, mild predator/prey

Part 1

Gojo had picked the horror flick that night. Had insisted it was critically acclaimed. But it was just some campy thing where the heroine was running all too slow down a flickering hallway, her screams serving only to alert the pursuing monster of her exact location. The woman’s hair was as beautifully curled as when she’d arrived, her skirt hiked up to her upper thighs, tank top torn in a way that left little to the imagination. 

“‘Amazing cinematography’ my ass,” you mumbled. You lay sleepily on Gojo’s couch, head in his lap, his fingers carding through your hair.

“You don’t like?” 

“She’s tripped over six times.”

“Yeahhh she’s a little clumsy,” he agreed. “But try and think about it this way: every time she stumbles, her tits go bananas. I mean talk about breaking the fourth wall.”

The woman ran into a room, barricading the door with just a weak press of her shoulder, weeping hysterically. You pointed at the screen, livid. “I can literally see a cameraman standing in the corner! Critically acclaimed? Really?”

“Yeah. Critically acclaimed by my penis.” He frowned. “Did I not say that?”

“No, actually, you failed to mention that, deviant.”

The tug of sleep was beginning to draw your eyes closed, the warmth of his thigh and the drone of shitty TV lulling you into a dreamlike trance. It was a rare occasion that you didn’t like the movies Gojo picked out; in fact this was a first. He actually had a surprising eye for pretty things and a knack for picking out quality flicks you’d never even heard of. But this was… decidedly un-epic.

The sound of wood splintering through indicated the start of yet another chase sequence that you couldn't care less about witnessing.

“Couldn’t be me,” you mumbled, melting further into his lap with a deep sigh, eyes finally closing. “I’m fast as fuck.”

“Yeah?” His voice held more than a touch of amusement. “You’re alright.”

With a cursed technique that granted you a speed on par with the all famous Gojo Satoru, you’d fare more than alright in a horror film.

“You could never catch me.”

The fingers in your hair paused for a good minute before he responded.

“You think?” he said.

Your only response was a sleepy hum.

“Hm.” The fingers continued. “Alright.”

You were too tired to think much of it, honestly, or the fact that you had inadvertently issued a challenge to the most insufferably competitive man you’d ever met. 

As your breathing slowed, his touch switched almost absentmindedly to the shell of your exposed ear, sweeping softly along the curve of it. Back and forth. Goosebumps tracked down your arms and you shivered, pulling your legs so tight to your chest that they knocked into his. You opted to ignore the puff of amusement from above – not like you could help that his couch was so comfortable.

Not to mention his apartment was bafflingly huge compared to your 400 square foot rabbit cage – with one of those open plan living spaces boasting enough area to plant a giant sectional couch right smack in the middle of it. But for how filthy rich he was, the place wasn’t ostentatious at all. It was cozy. Blessedly quiet, too, in comparison, even with the constant murmur of background noise that you were convinced Gojo would drop dead without. 

His apartment had become somewhat of a home base in recent months for you to decompress after tough missions. It hadn’t been easy finding friends since your move to Tokyo. Not that Gojo had started out as anything close to one. You’d hated his guts at first, actually. Still did sometimes - your first meeting ending with you fuming and him grinning down at you like you were the funniest little creature. He had a habit of that, making people feel small, what with his 6 '3 string bean stature and a perma-smirk that did little to fight off the asshole allegations.

You weren’t sure if you could deign to call whatever this was a friendship, either, with the two of you pushing each other’s buttons like it was your sworn duty to do so. But the bickering was a strange sort of constant in your life, and jujutsu sorcerers didn’t get many of those. So you showed up here time and time again for what? Normalcy? Comfort? Something like that. You just took it for what it was, and Gojo was certainly never one to complain about company.

You dozed off to the thought of how surprisingly cushy his thigh was, even if he was built like a string bean.

A sharp pinch on your earlobe jolted you awake. In an instant, you’d snatched the offending wrist and pulled yourself up. “Ow! The hell was that about?!” 

“Whoopsie! Sorry ‘bout that.” Gojo shrunk back from you, his sheepish apology so comically phony he reminded you of a kitten caught testing its boundaries. “Got scared. Hand slipped.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“Sheesh. Careful, no second chances with this one.” 

He was being extra annoying tonight, and you said as much. Grumpily, you released your hold of him and he made a real show of it: inspecting for bruises, rubbing at his wrist and shaking his hand out like he’d been in iron shackles. Worst of all, the movie seemed like it was only a little past the halfway point, which means he hadn’t let you sleep through much of it at all. 

“Well.” You clapped your hands together. “you’ve just got to fill me in on what I missed.”

He inhaled.

“Sarcasm.”

His bottom lip stuck out in a pout, his head falling against his shoulder as he regarded you.

“You’re so mean to me.”

With a dramatic huff, you turned and collapsed back into the couch beside him, rubbing the sleep from your eyes with the heels of your palms. With senses so finely attuned to Gojo’s impulsive tendencies by now, you blindly knocked his hand away with your forearm before he could reach out to aggressively ruffle your hair in retaliation.

Just as smug as he could be, you crossed your arms and smirked. You’d found he often liked to justify inciting violence by lecturing how a good sorcerer was always on their guard. Well, guess what.

“Who’s the strongest now, bitch? That’s twice now I’ve blocked your ass.”

You caught the tail end of his quiet, mournful suffering – “could’ve seriously been injured…” 

“You have a weak constitution.”

He pointed at himself, looking around the room as if to say ‘me?!’  You nodded solemnly.

“Uh oh, I smell jealousyyy,” he sang, fingers drumming a scattered beat on the leather behind your head.

“Yeah? What of?”

He raised his chin with a dazzling smile. “My dainty, effeminate wrists, of course!”

Despite your best attempt, you snorted a laugh. Damn if he didn’t look pleased as punch about it, too.

“Strongest,” you scoffed. “You can’t even stand up from the couch without groaning. Let’s get you home, grandpa…reduced to bone dust if someone tightened your watch band a little too hard–”

You let out an angry squeal when the fingers behind you finally seized the chance to reach up and tousle your hair– not in the cute little gesture of affection kind of way. More in the pure violence for violence sake kind of way. You threw your arms over your head, forehead tucking into your folded knees, shouting over his witchy cackle.

“Strongest guy at the bingo table more like! Stop. Stop!” You smacked at his accosting hand blindly but it was like swatting at a relentless swarm of bees. “THAT’S ENOUGH.”

With one final ruffle, he let you go. You threw him your fiercest scowl.

“I hate you.”

His fiendish laughter trailed into the low, drawn out sound of your name, hummed with a purring appreciation that had your stomach flipping oddly, twisting in knots. You froze. Dear lord, when had you gravitated so close to him? If you tipped your head back, you’d be lying on the crook of his elbow. 

Quickly, you averted your gaze and got to work on your hair, smoothing down the devastation he had wreaked upon it. But strangely, his touch never quite left you, knuckles stroking gently at the base of your neck in an unfamiliar act of intimacy. You waited for him to launch an attack again, but he didn’t. Just quietly kneaded his fingers into your spine. The whole thing left you feeling a little stranded by what seemed like an unnerving insinuation of closeness, gaining an invisible weight to it the longer it went uncontested by you.

You blinked and spouted the first lie you could conjure up.

“You make for a terrible pillow, by the way.”

He made a throaty noise of disappointment, studying you a moment longer before turning his attention back to the movie, touch abandoning your neck. “Come into my home…” 

“And I’ll walk right back out of it if you’re not careful.”

“Ooh, consider me scared!”

“You should be scared.”

“Don’t I know it.” His long form slouched impossibly further down into his seat, his fingers lacing over his chest before he barked out one startlingly loud laugh, as if he’d just remembered you’d said the funniest thing. “Careful,” he said, a self-satisfied grin beginning to creep across his lips. “You would hate careful.”

You frowned. “What–”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” he waved you off. “You can do whatever you want.”

Your jaw clenched at the pet name. But still it took a moment for your brain to kick back into gear. It was just… the way he’d said it that gave you pause, like he knew something you didn’t.

“Shit movie,” was all you could think to say.

“Yep,” he said, popping the ‘p’, sitting there still with a far-too-pleased grin.

Hit with a sudden bout of nerves, you turned to the coffee table, which was littered with a variety of sweet snacks he’d fished out of his cupboard. Stomach already full and strongly protesting to anything more, you panic-swiped two kit kats and jammed them into your mouth, taking the opportunity to scooch yourself away from him.

For a guy whose cursed technique allowed him to control space, Gojo was awfully oblivious to the concept of it. He was a taker; give him room to spread and he would take it unapologetically. It was no different now, his long form stretching immediately into your space again. His knee chased yours almost mindlessly, leg knocking into yours, bouncing there with a fervor.

“Stop.”

He looked at you with a raised brow. “Heh?”

“You’re encroaching.” 

His gaze flicked down, noticing the personal space violation for the first time, blinking, making a small hum of decision. He leaned in close, murmuring into your ear. “Well here’s an idea, yeah?” He grabbed your knee with an outstretched palm. “Go on and walk right out of here, then.”

You could only pray the movie was loud enough that he didn’t hear your breath catch. God, his hands were huge, his long, spidery grip bleeding warmth across your lower thigh and knee.

The feel of Gojo’s breath swept across your cheek as he observed your reactions closely. And you couldn’t help but gulp as a different, more alarming heat burned its way slowly up your thigh like a lit wick.

A thumb brushed featherlight across your bare skin, the pads of his fingers beginning to crawl gently inward to tickle the sensitive skin at the inside of your knee. You quickly jerked your leg away.

“Here’s an idea,” you sputtered, fumbling to find anything clever to say and failing miserably, “stop… being the way that you are.”

“Uh. Alright.” Gojo scratched his head, pulling back to give you the space you thought you wanted. “Don’t know what you want me to do about that, really. Sheesh. What’s a guy to do? Not like I can stop being hot or a genius or whatever. You want me to just ‘say goodbye’ to my baby blues?” He cupped his palm over his mouth in hushed confidentiality. “My giant horse cock?”

You made a horrible retching sound.

He shrugged away your disgust. “Just sayin’, you’ve gotta see it to believe it.”

“Cut it out.”

It was like you’d told him there was strawberry cake on the ceiling the way his eyes lit up, rolled back in his skull, jaw dropping as he threw his head back in fake ecstasy. And you just knew what he was about to do.

Your fist pulled back to prepare what should’ve been a non-punch to his infinity. 

“Stop or I will punch all the way through you.”

In an outrageously high-pitched, shrill voice, Gojo moaned.

“Make me, daddy–!”

The words were cut short by a choked grunt as he allowed your fist to connect to the soft of his stomach. Hard. His head lolled backward, a long, appreciative groan slipping from between an open-mouthed grin. The slender column of his throat bobbed as the raunchy noise dissolved into giggles. And you might as well have been struck in the gut yourself with how violently you yanked yourself back from him.

Because Gojo Satoru was beautiful like this. In that stupid, unfair way that made you want to run your tongue up and down his neck just once to see if he was made of real flesh and blood. You shook the thought from your head.

“You’re so weird.”

“You think so?” he asked, voice just a touch raspy.

‘Yeah. I do.”

His eyes rolled coyly to the side to meet yours.

“Brat.”

“Pervert.”

Gojo lifted his head lazily, perfect tufts of snow white falling across his forehead, a dangerous grin stretching slow and wide across his face. “Babe, you have no idea.”

Your face heated, nerves shooting off like a flurry of butterfly wings in your chest. You wanted to hiss at him. What was he playing at anyway? He’d flirt with the likes of a potted fern, but still.

It wasn’t something you could afford to think too hard on. This was just who he was: an irredeemable flirt, someone who couldn’t help but poke around the edges of boundaries just to test the strength of the fenceline. A guy like him wasn’t interested in the long term, anyway, and probably wouldn’t last with someone who didn’t want to sit around and stroke his vanity all day. 

Besides, it was nobody’s business but your own whether you occasionally thought about how it might slap his thighs when he walked.

To your growing horror, you found yourself unable to tear your wide eyes away from his; gaping far too long to chalk it up to a mental hiccup. And he was eating it right up if his stupidly smug smirk was anything to go by. 

You fell back into your earlier TV watching position, but instead of settling your head in his lap like before, you curled yourself beside him, the crown of your head pressing against his outer thigh. Safer that way, better to avoid his gaze. Mortification burned bright and unbearable in your chest. 

“Stop staring. And stop calling me babe.”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” you said sharply.

“Because,” Gojo considered, nodding, seeming to roll the word out on his tongue. He laughed, insincere. “Because! You’re so right.”

You remained stubbornly silent. The pad of his thumb dropped to smooth over the deepening scrunch of your brows and you barely allowed it to stay. It was just a thing with Gojo; his hands always had to be fiddling with something, touching something. And you were usually the closest thing.

That was all.

“Ya know, you get all twitchy when you’re nervous,” his voice purred from above. “You nervous?”

Having little hope that he missed the small shudder that tracked your spine, you craned your neck to shoot him a warning look. But the sight that greeted you had you forgetting how to breathe.

Gojo was studying you with a shocking intensity, the glowing Six Eyes flicking between yours like he was carefully mapping you out. The ghost of a fascinated, greedy sort of grin curled at one corner of his mouth, seeming only to deepen at the sight of your unease. You dropped your head back into the couch, squeezing your eyes shut to will away the stone of want that had lodged itself firmly at the base of your throat. 

“Can I ask you a question?” 

“Never been able to stop you before,” you snipped.

Gojo hummed, undeterred. 

So sly that you hardly registered what he was doing until his shadow was looming over you, he repositioned himself, one leg sliding onto the couch so he could turn sideways to fully lean over your balled up form. With a quick move and a scooch forward, you found your head propped on his lap again.

A large palm cut off your furious protests, sliding to cup gently beneath your jaw, two fingers grazing over your clattering pulse. A calloused thumb slid across the seam of your downturned lips.

“Do you like feeling helpless?” he asked softly.

You stilled as a drop of startling heat slithered between your legs. His hand drifted down the column of your throat to follow the contraction of your nervous swallow, like he’d predicted it, like he was fine-tuning an instrument. Shit, you felt so small tucked into his lap like this.

You averted your eyes back to the movie.

“Serial killer question,” you said, wretchedly anxious with him peering down, every tiny response of yours seeming to be dissected and filed away for something sinister.

You pretended to be invested in whatever Oscar-worthy, nonsensical bullshit was happening on screen, the woman now captured in the monster's clutches. That is, until you were thrown headfirst into a crippling silence.

“Hey! I was watching that.”

The remote landed with a loud clatter on the coffee table. “Sorry, baby. Can’t have you holding out on me.”

And then suddenly, the real horror was right here in the dead quiet. The only light source was a soft overhead. With a burst of anger drawn up from a slowly drying well, you rolled onto your back, glowering up at him.

“Can I fucking help you?!”

“Mhmm.”

Your teeth clenched. “What are you even talking about, helpless?”

Gojo propped back on one hand and pretended to think about it. “Ah, you knowww. Scream queen style or whatever. When the cards are down and you’re all played out.” His eyes flicked down your form to where your hands twisted nervously into the bottom of your t-shirt. Then back up, voice dropping pensively. “So fast you’ve probably never felt it, though… being chased down like that, backed into a corner. Never been challenged the way you deserve, I bet. You like the thought of someone who can keep up with you?”

If the body was a chest of drawers, yours overturned all at once. Someone who could keep up with you… Challenge you. Like… him? Your jaw clenched. A desire you didn’t even know you had settled with a pulsing heat in your lower belly.

“So, what I’m hearing, and correct me if I’m wrong.” You stopped, centered yourself with a deep breath. “What I’m hearing is you asking whether I’d get off on being chased?!?

“Get off on it?” Gojo’s jaw dropped, acting as if the idea had only just occurred to him. “Wow. Uh. Dirty girl. Well. Sure I mean, yeah. If you want.”

Your nails scraped across the leather of the couch, trying to distract yourself from how ridiculously enticing the idea was. Because it shouldn’t be at all. Nope. Not to a well-adjusted person. What made it exponentially worse was that the longer you went without storming out of his apartment, the more Gojo looked at you like the cat about to eat the canary. And damn it all, you didn’t hate it.

No. You hated that you didn’t hate it.

“If I want?” you grit out. “First of all, there’s something wrong with you if you get your rocks off on the idea of hunting women. Elmer Fudd over here. Get a grip.”

He smirked. “Be nice, kitty cat.”

Using your elbows, you shoved yourself up, whirling around to sit on your heels so you could better set him on fire with your eyes. 

“Why should I?!” you spat his earlier words back in his face.

Gojo went still, his slightly widened eyes flitting across your red-faced indignation. His gaze dropped to your lips as he chewed on his own for the span of a few breaths. Finally, he clucked his tongue. Whistled softly.

“Well, shit,” Gojo said. “Would ya look at that.”

Without an ounce of shame, his hand slid down the front of his pants.

“Wha–”

 “Sorryyy,” he sung. “Mind of his own, it’s the darndest thing!”

You gawked at him in disbelief as he casually adjusted himself.

“Really, man?!”

“Oh relaaax. Ever seen one before? Wanna take a peek?”

You tried to clear the image of those long fingers wrapping his cock, bringing himself to completion for you with that same groan he’d demonstrated for you earlier.  The thought had you too hot in your skin. 

“I’ll kill you. They’ll never stop finding your body.”

“Oh, keep going, I’m almost there!” he groaned theatrically before he shot you a cheeky, lopsided grin. “Gotta give it to you, babe, you really know how to get a guy goin’. I’m half hard and we haven’t even started.” His head cocked just a degree further and suddenly the playful grin he sported gained a sharp, predatory edge, voice dropping in low warning. “Keep looking at me like that. All angry. Sweetens the deal at the end of this thing. Makes it allll worth the wait.”

You swallowed, throat like sandpaper. “Deal?”

“When I catch you.”

You should walk out. You should walk right back out, like you said you would.

Unfortunately, your silence spoke volumes. Frustrated on several different levels, your hands flew up to cover your eyes, fingers pressing into the lids until you saw spots. But nothing could distract from the hyper awareness of the ache between your thighs.

“What do you want?” you asked, voice sounding small.

A long-fingered hand encircled each of your wrists, prying your hands away from your face. He held them hostage, pinning them to your upper thighs so you couldn’t retreat as he leaned in. Your heart stopped when his cheek brushed past yours.

“What I want is the whole thing. Listen. I love it when you play dumb with me. Seriously I do,” Gojo murmured into your ear. “But I think we’ve been sitting on the same page here for quite some time now, yeah? All the fighting, dancin’ around the tension and whatnot. I mean it’s sexy as hell, don’t get me wrong, but we both know it’s just extra bullshit.”

Your entire being was up in flames, face so hot you wondered if he could feel the heat emanating off your cheeks, his own pressed so tightly to yours he could probably feel your jaw work out a response.

“Make your point.”

He laughed, dipped his head, the tip of his nose nuzzling down the slope of your neck. The tiny, experimental flutter of warmth against your skin made you twitch, but the sudden hot drag of his tongue had you violently shuddering, searching for purchase until suddenly you were the one holding onto him, fingers digging into his shoulders. You could practically hear his arrogant smile as he breathed you in long and slow, the following sigh one of genuine contentment.

Gojo leaned back to have a look at you, disgustingly pleased with himself.

“Sure thing. I’ll make my point,” he said. Your arms felt strangely bereft when he moved out of your space, falling limply at your sides. Casual as could be, Gojo settled back into the couch, one ankle perched over his thigh, fingers clasping together like the two of you were discussing weather patterns. “Here’s the thing. I wanna find you, chase you, and fuck you in that order. Think you’d like somethin’ like that? Being pinned down with my cock in you?”

His eyes dropped to the motion of the unsubtle squeeze of your thighs, a razor sharp smile spreading slow across his lips.

“Yeah,” he purred. “Always thought you might.”

“You don’t know shit.”

His eyes flicked back to yours.

“I know that pussy has to be nice and wet by now.” Another spasm of want rocketed between your legs. God, he was so arrogant. “No shame in it, sweetheart. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll drop the whole thing.”

A palm settled on your knee, thumb stroking in a gesture of mock comfort. His voice was soft. “Orrr you could just admit you’re making a mess of your panties right now hearing me talk like this.”

It was like your strings were cut all at once, your chin tipping to your chest as you lost whatever self-preservation instinct you had left. “Shit,” you whispered.

A finger hooked into the bend of one of your knees, tugging invitingly. His hum was a soft, rolling lull.

“Come here and sit on me.”

You may have been cracking, folding beneath the weight of your desire, but nothing could have dulled the precision of the homicidal glare you leveled him with. 

“Think you have it in you to shut up for like six seconds?”

Gojo laughed. “Damn, my girl gets mean when she’s frustrated, huh?” At your lack of response, his smile dwindled and he seemed to truly consider you, taking in your stiff form. His gaze fell unabashedly between your legs again, tongue running along his teeth in deliberation. “You want me to eat you out a little? Loosen you up?”

Your jaw clenched as the mental image tore across your mind: hooded blue eyes looking up from between your legs, warm tongue put to work lapping at your cunt – he always did like to stay busy. Shit, why could you conjure up that image so well? 

Because Gojo had looked at you like that before, hadn’t he? Like he wanted to take you apart, piece you back together. You’d just been too blind to see it.

He continued, his other hand reaching out now so both were hooked behind your knees. “Yeah… Yeah. That’s what you need. About time, too, huh. Makes my dick so hard just thinking about it. C’mere.”

“I don’t–”

In a single movement, you were pulled off balance, falling flat on your back. He cut off your yelp of outrage, seized your ankles, spun and dragged you to the edge of the couch, your thighs now bracketing his. You squirmed, head spinning as you panted up at him with searching eyes. It wasn’t a comfortable position you’d been suddenly squeezed into, your head bent awkwardly against the back of the couch, trapped in a slouched position by the oppressive energy coming from the man standing between your spread legs.

Gojo loomed above. His fingers twitched at his sides, drawing your attention there and then directly over to the glaring evidence of his arousal pressing against the front of his pants. Your breath caught in your throat.

“Feels like I really don’t even have to check,” he breathed, hungry gaze trailing across your body like he couldn’t decide what to focus on. “Just know you’re soaking. It’s crazy.”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” he said again, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Last chance.

“I– you’re… F-fuck you.” His grin was deadly, eyes sparkling in dark victory. It was unsettling, how much you wanted to fall headfirst into that blue.

Gojo Satoru collapsed on his knees like he was about to start muttering prayers. He tugged you closer, the weight of his head falling against your inner thigh with a satisfied hum. Laying there so he could simply observe the slight quiver in your legs as he slowly drew his oversized palms up and down any bare skin available to him.

“Fuck. Look at you,” he murmured, breath sweeping across the damp crotch of your sleep shorts like he was talking right into your clothed pussy. 

At the sound of your tiny, pathetic squeak, his shoulders shuddered violently. He slid forward, fingers hooking into the hem of your shorts, teasing there. His eyes raised with a hooded intensity, holding yours for a few heated seconds. Terribly slow, he let his jaw drop, tongue unveiling itself, and leaned forward to press it firm and flat against the thin fabrics covering your entrance, letting the heat bleed from his mouth. A groan choked out of your throat, coming out more as a grating wheeze, the noise met with a gleaming, wicked satisfaction.

“So the…” you swallowed thickly, voice so ragged it was almost completely foreign. “The thing with eating pussy is you have to remove my-”

There was a sharp, reprimanding smack on your thigh. “Don’t start.”

You half expected him to rip your shorts right off; you wouldn’t have been opposed. But Gojo instead rolled the hem down little by little, so torturously slow your fingers ached with how hard they dug into the couch with anticipation. He nipped, sucked bruises into the skin as it was exposed, gently guiding you to lift your hips so he could pull your bottoms the rest of the way.

His eyes danced in wonder across the arousal that you could feel being squeezed from you just by his appraisal. “Shit,” he exhaled, his warm breath brushing gently across your soaking cunt. You gasped, legs automatically attempting to clamp together. To get away. When was the last time you’d been this vulnerable to anyone? 

“No, no. Nope. None of that,” he reprimanded, pushing your knees into your chest, spreading your legs more lewdly for his perusal. “Lemme see what I did to you.”

“I– I c-can’t.” You averted your gaze. It was all too much: the sight of Gojo Satoru kneeling between your legs, looking as if he’d let the world burn just to get a taste of you. He breathed across you again, his mouth so damn close that you wanted to start tearing at his hair.

“Shit,” he said again. “Pussy got hot hearing me talk about how hard I’m gonna fuck it later.”

You couldn’t help but let out a muffled cry when two fingers stroked down your slit, pressing against the entrance to your pussy, swirling there. He coated the tips of his fingers thoroughly in your wetness, raising them to the light just to slowly scissor them apart. Watch your own fluid stretch thin between them before going back for more, just lightly teasing. Your face felt impossibly hot, chest rising and falling in short gasps, chasing the stroke of his fingers, needing something to clench around, the slow spread of your slick too ridiculously loud in the quiet room.

“You always this wet for me, baby?”

“I d-didn’t think your head could get any bigger.”

Gojo hummed in amusement, giving no warning before he began to slowly ease two fingers inside you. A string of expletives punctuated the air as your cunt throbbed and clamped down in relief, accepting him greedily.

“Look at that,” he said, hooking the long digits inside you and pulling another whimpered curse from your lips. He took his time dragging them out, pushing them back in with an obscene squelch. “You’re a sweet girl letting me finger fuck you like this. Shit, look at your pussy suckin’ on my fingers. So fucking hot… my girl letting me do this to her.”

“You–You’re- I d-” You attempted to mouth off, snap back that you didn’t belong to him, but a targeted curl of his fingers cut you off at the pass. 

“I know,” he crooned. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

A thumb pressed into your clit and your back arched as bolts of pleasure shot up your spine, hips rolling with the pump of his fingers, chasing more. You needed more. You couldn’t even breathe you needed it so badly.

Gojo bit the inside of your thigh, moaning obscenely and latching harder when you yelped in pain and smacked him hard in the head. 

“Ow. What the– what the fuck,” you gasped, although you hadn’t really disliked it at all. He soothed the sting away with little licks.

“Sorry,” he said insincerely, voice in shreds now, strained with an odd concentration. “Wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve whacked off to the thought of this right here. But now look at you spreading your pretty legs for me. Still tryin’ to act like you’re not starved for my cock after all this time. Making me wait like that. Dripping your cum all over my couch. Makes me fucking crazy. Filthy girl. You’re my filthy girl, aren’t you? Ffuck,” he hissed. 

It took you too long in your blissed out state to realize his shoulders were rocking slightly, and not just from the push and pull of his fingers inside you. “And my sweet girl’s gonna let me hunt her down, isn’t she? Spit on her tits, slap her, fuck her from behind.”

You couldn’t see it, but there was no doubt now that Gojo was masturbating himself in tandem. Thrusting his hips, not fast enough to relieve himself, just to appease the torment. God, he was vulgar, he was disgusting. He was sexy. He was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.

With a wet schlick, his fingers pulled out of you. And you could only assume from the way both his gaze and hand fell down to his lap that he was spreading your cum along his cock. Fingers wrapping himself, Gojo choked on something between a salacious moan and a manic laugh. His eyes slid up to yours dangerously.

A quick flash of pink was all you got before he was leaning forward and sliding his tongue through your drenched folds. Finally, you let loose the keening cry that had been stuck in your chest. Your spine felt close to snapping with how hard it pulled taut, your fingers leaping from their death grip into the couch cushion to embed deep in his soft hair, unsure whether to push him away or pull him closer.

A long, appreciative groan came from deep in his chest and he sighed, relaxed further into his task. One hand fisted around his cock, the other wrapped round one of your thighs to draw you closer, hand splaying across your lower belly to better hold you down. The rough pad of his thumb found your clit, dragging tight circles. 

With long strokes of his tongue, he lapped at the wetness collecting at your entrance. You wanted him to go higher, needed his mouth elsewhere, for that wet heat to replace the thumb steadily masturbating you. You dipped your hips to guide him there but he didn’t relent, tongue fucking into your cunt with the same aching slowness. It was like this wasn’t even for you.

“Gojo,” you said weakly. He just hummed, the vibration sending arcs of pleasure up your spine. God you were so close already. You just needed… “G-Gojo.”

Still he didn’t speed up, acted like he hadn’t even heard you. And it pissed you right off. He wanted the whole thing, didn’t he? He’d said that before. Gojo Satoru wanted you. Badly. He was good, but so were you. Gojo was a man who took. Had taken his entire life. He didn’t want someone who sat around and stroked his vanity. No. He wanted someone who took, too. He wanted you.

A rising anger loosened your tongue.

“Gojo, you f-fucking prick,” you spat. “Take your hand off your fucking cock and do this the right way.”

Deliberately, his tongue pulled from you, thumb still working you at an infuriatingly slow pace. A lazy, dangerous grin began to crawl across his lips, still wet with your juices.

“Careful,” he warned.

“I hate careful.”

Something dazed crossed his face then, like you’d struck him square across the face. He shuddered, his eyes darkening, glimmering suddenly with an almost terrifying devotion.

And then both his hands were on you.

Arms wrapped under your thighs, palms splaying to lock your hips down completely. A blessed heat enveloped your clit with a gentle suction, tongue fluttering where you had so desperately needed it.

“Ffffff” was all you could manage, your back arching, unable to even watch him like you wanted to as your body contorted with the pleasure shooting to a quick crescendo. 

“Shitshitshitshit,” you cried, fingers yanking at his hair, uncaring whether it hurt him, shoving his face impossibly further into your pussy. A vulgar, encouraging groan left him and with one final suck and a flicker of his tongue, you were sailing into oblivion. You clawed at him, a string of filthy curses stuck in your throat as you spasmed against him. It was long, debilitating, and drawn out by warm, slow slides of his tongue against you as he continued to lap up what you spilled, murmuring soft praises.

Your spine laid flat against the couch again as you collapsed with satisfaction, the pleasure still buzzing like a livewire across your skin. You twitched with sensitivity when his thumbs spread you apart, observing the final, tiny convulsions of your pussy.

“I– you’re amazing,” he groaned, like he was imagining himself deep inside you. “God, baby I… I wanna ruin you. My fucking cock is…” His forehead fell between your thighs for a second, like he was gathering himself. “I’m so fucking hard.”

Gojo leaned back on his heels as you sat up, assisting as you pulled your pants back up. He helped you up on shaky legs, until the two of you stood looking at each other, him unmoving, just eyeing you silently with a dark intensity. 

Gently, you pulled his face down to yours, placing a short, gentle kiss to his lips.

You pulled back. 

“I really do hope you’re as fast as they say you are.”

And you disappeared.

[adickaboutspoons]

@bogeymangrandy I’m sorry - I know it’s prolly bad Tumblr etiquette to address a reply in a whole new post, but this is kind of too big an answer to address in the space a reply offers.

So the weird, shitty unchecked racist stuff isn’t JUST contained to episode 5. In episode 3, Izzy says Ed “was a wild dog, and we dealt with him like one.” It’s to set up the “doggy heaven” line, which is doing some heavy lifting in terms of conveying to Izzy exactly how much Ed trusted and confided in Stede, but referring to a MOC as a dog, especially a wild one, is still fucking gross, and, worse, it’s only part of a pattern of racist sentiments. In episode 6, Izzy tells Ed “I thought you were Roach” - that old “they all look alike to me” chestnut. Thanks, I fucking loathe it.

But episode 5 is particularly packed with troublingly racist bullshit, and carries with it connotations for the wider season.

The most straight-forward is when Stede tells Izzy that Blackbeard “credited you with a lot of his skills,” and then “you taught him everything he knows.” If it’s meant to be read as true, it’s attributing all the talent, skill, and brilliance of a MOC to some white dude. But even if it’s meant to be read as Stede flattering Izzy to get what he wants out of him (which I think it is - the whole thing with the fog in season 1 episode 4 kind of hinges on Ed having knowledge and skills that Izzy does not), it’s still not great because it means Stede thinks stroking some mediocre white guy’s ego is worth more than Ed’s reputation, which means he learned nothing from the tavern scene in season 1 episode 10 where he similarly disparages Ed’s reputation for the gratification of his white compatriots.

Similarly, consider him shouting “those fucking barbarians!” after the mostly POC (and Pete) crew rip his red coat, and compare to “You savages!” in season 1 episode 2 when Stede thinks the indigenous people who have captured him have roasted Wellington and Hornberry on a spit. But at least in season 1 Stede gets rightfully called out for being a racist. Season 2 has yet to push back.

Then, there’s the portrayal of retributive justice (the idea that, for justice to be served, a transgressor has to be punished). We start the episode with Ed in his penitence onesie and cat bell. And there is that whole Biblical connotation of sackcloth as an expression of humility, but it also calls to mind the ill-fitted and low-quality material of prison uniforms, with the cat bell as a low-tech ankle monitor, uncomfortably tight and alerting everyone to his position at all times. I’ve seen his non-pology framed as a corporate “apology” and I do think that’s mostly what they’re going for here, but there’s also an element of the preformative penitence that prisoners are forced to undergo during parole hearings. This is Ed being punished for his Kraken-era transgressions.

Now compare to how Izzy, a white dude, has been offered rehabilitative justice this season - never had to grovel, never had to debase himself, never even had to offer a single word of apology for any of the dire shit he inflicted on the crew in season 1, but was nonetheless given the unconditional support and resources he needed to transform into essentially a completely different person. 

It’s not just the races of the people upon whom these different modes of justice are being implemented that is significant - it’s also the races of the aggrieved parties in how they respond to the “justice” imparted by the retributive model, because we also see two direct, individual applications of retributive justice in the episode; Ed offering Lucius to push him overboard, and Fang describing how he brutalized Ed’s body after Jim knocked him unconscious. With Lucius, we see that he experiences a momentary thrill of vengeance, but almost immediately it flares out, and he’s still just as traumatized as before, and perhaps even more obsessed with Ed. Clearly, for him, a white dude, this primitive, Hamurabian form of justice does not give him closure. With Fang, a MOC, it’s the exact opposite - Ed terrorized him, he beat Ed up, and now they’re sweet.

In isolation, this wouldn’t read as implying that white people are more “civilized” and “evolved” than POC - except all the other POC that Kraken!Ed tormented are also seemingly fine now. Jim and Archie are immediately laughing and joking about torture after the non-pology, and Frenchie is debuting a new fancy cat flag and pointing out that “at least he’s wearing the sack” when Lucius starts freaking out about Blackbeard being back. There’s also a running through-line across several episodes about the supremacy of white, colonial values and civility, but I’ll get back to that in just a moment.

Because now we have to talk about the matter of the curse. Because, again, we’re seeing a break-down across racial lines. Team Curse is Jim, Archie, Olu, Frenchie, Roach, and token white guy Pete (the Swede having abandoned the crew for his new paramore, Buttons having transmogrified, Lucius busy being traumatized elsewhere, and Wee John just MIA). Team “Curses aren’t real” is Izzy and Stede. So this isn’t like season 1 where everyone is just kinda hilariously science illiterate and superstitious (like with the “not a mermaid” conversation) - instead, we’ve got a group of superstitious POC vs. the rational, enlightened White Dudes. And the White Dudes are unequivocally correct. Peanuts ARE a serious allergen (and a legume, not a bean). Yeast is what causes bread to rise, not fairies. Ergo curses AREN’T real, and the crew are being irrational. So when Stede relents at the end and agrees to give up his suit, it’s not him conceding that there is validity to his POC crew’s worldview - it’s a white dude condescending to the poor, simple-minded, uncivilized folk even though he’s for sure in the right. Isn’t that just SO magnanimous of him? Isn’t it awfully white of him?

And given that the White view is the Right view in episode 5, we have to start interrogating the other places where that idea shows up. In episode 1, we hear a white priest bloviating about how "The natural condition of humanity is base and vile. It is the obligation of people of standing, such as yourselves, to elevate the common human rabble through the sacred transaction of matrimony.” Normally (and at the time when I first watched it) I would clock this as CRITICAL of the tendency of predominantly white cultures to be self-congratulatory of how THEIR ceremonies are so much more CIVILIZED than those of the savage  - as though they invented the concepts of commitment and monogamy, and as though those concepts are inherently better than the alternatives. But then we have Ed, a MOC, issuing an objection - not to the specific union, but to the concept of a nice, white wedding in general, followed by a raid that Jim later comments on: “Is it just me or was the wedding thing a bit over the line?”

And, consider, in season 1 episode 3, Jim drops this line on Olu when he points out that Jim killed one of Jackie’s husbands: “We live in a state of nature.” So the “natural condition” is intrinsically tied up with that hyper-violent pirate lifestyle, and if even one of the practitioners thereof is clocking it as “a bit over the line” - does it not follow that the bloviating priest was RIGHT? That the white man sure DOES have that burden to take up, doesn’t he?

Which is exactly what Ricky is proposing in his little speech in episode 6: "It's up to us fine gentlemen to stand up against this modern piracy and stay vigilant". And we KNOW that Ricky is full of shit. We KNOW that he’s backing up his racist agenda with a self-serving, revisionist narrative. But maybe it would be better if he also didn’t, maybe, have a point? I guess what I’m saying is that I really miss the days when a racist got a knife through the hand or their ship burned down and it was something to be celebrated, and that I’m not loving the idea this season that maybe the racists are kind of in the right.

[monsterhugger]

vash plush scam alert

now that ppl are getting their vash plushes and ppl are looking for aftermarket ones just a PSA:

this site is fake.

when you search for the vash plush this will be one of the first results. it showed up less than a week ago as of writing this post. you'll find sites like this for a lot of anime merch with images pulled from official sites and/or etsy. they all have roughly this layout:

here's a fake chainsaw man merch site for comparison:

with the exception of pokemon i'm not aware of any anime that has its own (english-language) online merch store. nothing like this is to be trusted.

while we're here, if you REALLY want to spend the $100+ for an aftermarket plush and are okay with the practice of scalping, i'd be wary of ebay listings using only the promo images and/or this image:

i've found three listings from three different sellers in the last few minutes using this image

i don't know where it's from but i'd put money on none of these sellers being the origin of it. best case scenario the seller is waiting on their product and already trying to resell it which is shitty practice. more likely you're going to pay premium price for a knockoff or nothing.

this is currently the only legitimate site i'm aware of listing the vash plush:

they are a reseller and people have reported quality issues buying merchandise from there (eg. items came broken, months in shipping, bad customer service) but it's the only listing up at the moment i would actually trust. all that being said, vash is currently out of stock with no word from the manufacturer Ensky at the moment as to whether it will ever be back in stock.

[thranduilsperkybutt]

requirements.txt=unsatisfied

Pic source: 1

Pairings: Johnny Silverhand/V!Reader; Exceedingly minor Goro Takemura/V!Reader alluded to Warnings: Endgame spoilers; Arasaka!ending; I take liberties with the ending (everyone lives AU); yearning; fighting; nsfw banter (no actual explicit behaviors); angst with a happy ending; mentions of canon-typical drug use and violence Word Count: 9,936 words Reader Gender: Female Author: Meg Summary: Johnny always wants a lot of things--- a smoke, a good fuck, for you to turn the radio to 107.3 instead of that new age crap you like. In a perfect world, he'd like to have his own body back, too, but this isn't a perfect world. This is Night City, and he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to forgive you for going and doing this. Turns out that being in love requires being unsatisfied. A/N: Look. I finally finished playing the game as corpo!V and I will not live with these endings, alright? I'm gonna make my own.

“Think they make shitty motels like this just for screw-ups like us?”

You make a point to continue staring at the ceiling of the ‘shitty motel’ room, deep breathing the mildew and age-old cigarettes. He isn’t wrong, but you don’t want to hear it right now. He always has a way with words. Wiping your hands down your face, you do your best to ignore him, but Johnny wasn’t the most dismissible parasite you’ve ever had.

“’Parasite’s’ talkin’ to you, fuck-up,” he flicks his cigarette butt at you in retaliation for the thoughts in your head and it glitches through your thigh with a fuzzy tickle in your neurons. “Do ya’ really think Arasaka is gonna’ just let you waltz away after grabbin’ that stuck-up bitch princess of theirs? You’re fucked.”

“Was fucked before that, Johnny--- royally, if you’ll remember,” you groan, and turn away from him. He appears on the other side of the bed, leaning over it to glare at you. “Got you to show for it, after all.”

“Why are you so chill about this? Takemura fucked you both by deciding to take a life-sized souvenir from your trip to Cherry Town---"

“Cherry Blossom Market---” he barely acknowledges your interruption; you doubt he cares about the situation past hearing himself talk either way.

“--- and you’re just gonna’ do what? Sit here like a ditched date, waitin’ by the phone for that ‘Saka scum to call?”

“Johnny,” you push yourself up into a sitting position, headache threatening a presence at the back of your skull. The edges of his shoulders have that glitchy quality you’ve come to know follows his movements at times when he crosses his arms, but his glare is clear as ever.

“What? Don’t like me callin’ him that?” he rolls his eyes as he certainly feels your annoyance spike, “Jeez, didn’t think you could ride ‘Saka’s dick any harder, but if you literally want to---”

“What crawled up your holographic ass and died tonight?” you bark back, and the glint behind his eyes tells you that this is what he wanted all along. A fight, interaction, anything other than you just melting into the stained mattress of this motel room while the fan drones overhead in excruciating monotony. Johnny’s at his worst when he’s bored or cornered, you’ve found.

“I don’t know, V, maybe the fact that while I’m livin’ in your head, I’ve gotta’ listen to all your disgusting little thoughts about that Grade-A asshole? I’ve never had a dry spell that’d make me wanna’ sleep with a corpo drone, but maybe old habits die hard for you, huh?” You try to ignore his jab at your corporate background, but you know he just can’t help himself, “At this rate, alert a joytoy pronto, because I think I’ll throw up if I gotta’ watch you eyefuck your ronin anym---"

“You’re so fucking annoying sometimes, Johnny, you know that?” you rub your temples, trying to bite back the heat in your cheeks. No telling if it was from embarrassment at his inevitable acknowledgement of your major-league crush on Goro, or an oncoming stroke. At this point you are wishing for the stroke.

“You say that, but you’re not havin’ to watch how pathetic you look waitin’ on Takemura to call. Shit, even that cop you turned down would be better than this guy.”

Rising to your knees, you point a finger directly against his chest, feeling the fuzzy presence of your fried synapses mistaking him for something real at your fingertips, “Know what? Maybe I will fuck Goro the next time I see him, just to screw with you. Maybe I’ll finally get some peace and quiet when you slink back to God-knows-where to hide in my head while I lay back and take it from the big, bad, ‘Saka scum.’”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he growls down at you, the fire in his eyes flickering from your own to your lips and back again. “If you wanted me gone, you’d’ve taken those omega blockers by now.”

“Don’t tempt me. I’d take a half-dose of pseudoendotrizine just so I could kick your ass, if it wouldn’t mean kicking mine, too.”

“Now, there’s a thought,” he reaches out, pushing you back by a phantom grip on your shoulder. Your body flings itself onto the mattress without a thought, “But I don’t need a pill to kick your ass, remember?”

“Asshole,” you grumble defeatedly, but his anger seems to dissipate, if only a little.

“Bitch,” he chuckles, and it’s a short sound of disbelief. “Don’t pout like a damn kid.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re kind of mean, Silverhand?” you look down to where he still stood beside--- no, knelt onto, now--- the bed. His lips are quirked into a slight smile, one brow raised like he doesn’t quite understand just why all your annoyance has seemed to sink away into the dingy carpet and rotting walls of this place. Maybe it’s the exhaustion settling into your bones?

Or perhaps it’s the uneasy feeling in your gut when he looks at you. Despite the mountain of resentment your soul screams that you have every right to have at him for stealing your life away from you with every waking second, you can’t seem to bring yourself to hate him.

He clicks his teeth thoughtfully, dipping his weight onto the knee he has on the bed, but it doesn’t creak under his weight or acknowledge his presence, “It may have come up, once or twice.”

He isn’t really here, the soft static framing his hard edges reminds you.

“Why, then?” Why does he keep falling into the same pattern? Why does he treat you like this? Why does he look at you like that afterwards?

You don’t ask any of those questions, but you don’t have to. He’s in your head, after all--- but you think he’d be able to figure them out even if he didn’t have a front-row seat to your every thought. You still aren’t sure how much of your consciousness he is privy to, but you know it’s enough for him to know more about you than any other person ever has.

At this point, he might know your mind better than you do.

You wish you could read his half as well.

“Maybe I just don’t like watchin’ you run head-first into what’s bound to be another shit-show’s all, choom,” he deflects, but his eyes don’t turn from your gaze. There’s something guarded in them, sure, but they soften all the same.

You sit on his bullshit explanation for a few seconds, tasting the thought on your tongue, “Is that what we are, Johnny? Chooms?” It’s an unsatisfactory descriptor, but you don’t know if there’s a word in the English language that can accurately describe what you are to each other.

“I don’t know, V. Are we?”

Before you can even think of an answer, the sound of your holo ringing breaks through your ears and Goro’s image appears in your optics.

Johnny huffs and just like that, any softness in his gaze disintegrates with a roll of his eyes, “Go on--- know you’re giddy as a schoolgirl to answer that.”

“Fuck you, Johnny,” you grumble, before picking up the line and watching him straighten up off the bed before disappearing from your gaze in a static glitch. “Goro---”

“V, meet me, quickly as you can. I’m sending the coordinates.”

---

Your fingers run over the markings of Johnny’s initials you’d just carved against the metal. It’s jagged, raw, and as good a headstone as he was ever going to get, given you’d probably never find where his body had been truly laid to rest. In a city like Night City, after so many years? He’s lucky enough that Arasaka had dumped his body at all, instead of incinerating it like most folks these days.

“There, how’s that for a marker?”

Johnny leans back from where he’d been moping and gestures to your makeshift headstone, “Say this was my real grave, what would you write? ‘Here lies Johnny Silverhand…’”

The words roll around your head in tandem with the pit of dread in your stomach. It didn’t feel right talking to him like he was dead, even though the rational part of your mind knew it was true. The real Johnny Silverhand died more than fifty years ago, and you were left talking to a ghost--- a copy that seemed close enough to the real deal, but you never would be able to know if he was a good one. More recently, though, he’s started to seem just as real as the ground you walk on and, while you know that’s something to be deeply worried about, you can’t help but have come to enjoy his company.

When he’s not being an asshole, that is.

For better or worse, he was, “The guy who saved my life.” You’d been through so much--- everything--- together. It hadn’t been intentional on his part; he’s only a piece of broken prototype tech going haywire in your head, but it was still true. He’s saved you in more ways than one, lately.

The words sink into him, dragging his shoulders down like the same ache you feel in your soul. His eyes meet yours beneath his sunglasses, holding you in a regret so deep that you think it will swallow you both with the knowledge that he’ll be the death of you.

Johnny reaches up, metal fingertips clicking on his shades in a way that’s so honest in your ears that it’s difficult to remember it’s just another one of your disconnected mind’s lies anymore, “You don’t know how much I want that to be true.” He pulls the barrier from his face to dangle between his knees as his free hand wipes at the perpetual dirt on his skin, “Listen, I realize I’ve fucked up a lot of things. Either let down or used every last person who gave me their trust--- blind, selfish bastard that I was--- but I’ve managed one thing, for now. Not to fuck this up. What we have.”

Johnny’s always wanted a lot of things--- a smoke, a good fuck, for you to turn the radio to 107.3 instead of that new age crap you like. He's rather demanding, day in, day out.

You've been privy to his every request as it flits through your shared head for long enough that he’s come to annoy you nearly as much as he's grown on you. He’s like moss overtaking a stone, so slow that you don’t realize it until he’s covered all of you. He’s changing you into something neither of you can quite recognize anymore, and as the days pass, you worry you’ll never be able to wash him away and return to the person you were before him.

Worse, you don’t know if you will want to.

“What do we have, Johnny?” you sigh, looking up at the light-polluted sky. You weren’t far enough out of town to see stars, just the dim void and flickering city lights reflected on the clouds above. Maybe if you were at camp with the Aldecados, you’d spot a star among the dusky sky. Maybe life would seem simpler, easier, “I don’t know what you want from me.” All you know for sure is that you were growing so tired of the fight. There’s this hurt in your chest; you can’t tell if it’s yours or his. Maybe it’s something you share. Maybe this is what he means.

Or something close to it, “Most of who I thought were my friends, well, it turns out they couldn’t hardly stand to be in the same room with me. But you?”  You hear him pause, but you don’t dare to look at him. There’s a stammer in your chest, and you’re terrified at what it means, “You’re forced to be right fuckin’ here, twenty-four-seven, and you don’t seem to hate my living guts.”

This silence is something you can only achieve on the outskirts of the city, but you know it would be worse if you were further away. It’s almost excruciating, being alone with your thoughts--- being alone with his.

“There a point in there?” your heart aches for him, and you know he can feel it. It’s more than pity, more than friendship, but you try your hardest not to think of what it could possibly mean--- let alone, say it.

He knows, though. Of course he does. He has to.

“Just that… I think you’re my first real choom, even though you’re a real bitch sometimes.”

Your head lulls forward, and it takes all your strength to muster a glare at the pained smile dancing at his lips. There’s more to it than that, you both know it, but you’re grateful that he’s feeling somewhat merciful tonight--- it was something you didn’t know he had in him.

Maybe it’s only something he has in him when it comes to you.

“Chooms, huh?” tilting your head, you pretend to mull it over like it’s a proposition of eddies from a fixer. Playing it off with a shrug, you concede, “I could get used to being Johnny Silverhand’s choom, I guess, even though he was a total dick at first.”

“As if you didn’t deserve it,” Johnny smirks.

“Uh, remind me again, who’s been whining about missing his smokes since day one?” it’s a half-hearted blow, and his widening grin shows it. “Better yet, beggin’ me to get my rocks off?”

“My own personal hell is being stuck inside a non-smoker, and it doesn’t help that you’re practically a nun,” you toss a rock at him for that, and it goes straight through his chest like he isn’t even there. He isn’t, but he grins at you anyways, “Still… who’d’ve thought we’d make it this far?”

You sit there for a beat, feeling your own smile turn at your lips, before sighing, “You know, if you really want a marker, we could get you one at the columbarium.”

“For what, an empty box?” shaking his head, he puts his shades back on to perch atop his nose.

“Please, I have more of your stuff than even your most devoted fanboys. I don’t need it all. We could, I don’t know, ‘retire’ something of yours there. You know, as a symbol,” his gaze weighs heavy on you, and you can’t for the life of you understand what’s going through his mind. It frustrates you nearly as much as his stare seems to, and you shift your gaze back to the sky in your attempt to escape his holographic scrutiny.

“Let me guess, you’ll bring me flowers every day?” it surprises you that his tone isn’t mocking, but rather curious. “Would you visit his grave?” he seems to ask.

Trying to lighten the mood, you tease, “You know me, too busy trying not to die for all that.” You look back to him with a wink, “Plus, preem flowers are expensive these days, choom. ‘Fraid you’ll have to settle for the synth ones. Besides, you seem like a cheap date to me.”

“Bitch.”

“Just say, ‘Thank you.’”

It’s as close as either of you will come to what you really want to say.

---

From the roof of Misty’s building, it’s almost as if the troubles of the city no longer exist. You think you understand why Jackie found his choice up here. It seems as good a place as any to choose between life and death.

You would have to come to yours, too, soon. Maybe you already have, and you just don’t want to admit it.

The thought dwells in your head, and it feels like the only choice that makes sense.

“You’re not considering that. Please, tell me you’re not seriously considering going to those bastards again for help,” Johnny’s voice tears you from your dreadful stare over the neon Night City advertisements staring back at you. Promising everything from NiCola to the market version of the prototype Relic crammed in your head. “You’re trying to make sense of something that makes zero damn sense!”

You think he might wind up hating you forever, for this.

“Takemura said---” you begin, but he cuts you off as he stands from his spot on the ledge overlooking the city and takes up pacing.

“Fuck that guy!” Johnny rounds on you, fiery as ever--- but there’s something more terrible in his eyes; a grief that only comes from knowing he won’t be able to change your mind. “You’re just takin’ the easy way out! Those ‘Saka bastards won’t stay true to their word, you know. All they do is lie, and they’ll keep lying to you so long as it gets them what they want from you. You can’t really believe they’ll help you or me!”

The truth is, you’re too tired and you don’t know what’s worse: the taste of blood on your tongue, or the look of disappointment in his eyes.

You should be at least used to the blood by now.

“I’m dying, Johnny. Hanako is the only person who can maybe help us. Name someone else. Anyone! They made this tech---”

“They’re only gonna’ hurt you. We can do this a different way,” he stops pacing to stand so close that you can swear his boots touch yours. It’s as if you could feel the heat radiating off him, but that may just be the fever settling deathly into your skin, “Hell, give me the keys and I’ll get us to Mikoshi. I’ll burn this whole fuckin’ city to the ground to get you there and I’ll throw the pieces of you back together myself! I’ll gladly die trying---”

“But I don’t want you to die, either,” you fight back the tears at the thought of it, and he huffs down at you in utter exasperation, “can’t you get that?”

“Think they’ll do any better by me at Arasaka?” his chuckle is humorless, coming strained from the back of his throat. “You don’t believe that.”

“I can cut us a deal…” you look down, away from him, blinking out beyond where he stands towards the city lights. You don’t want to fight with him right now. You don’t think you can.

“With what leverage? Deals are only good so long as you have the upper hand, V,” he kneels into your eyeline, reaching out to grasp your chin in two silver fingers and turning you to face him fully. It’s gotten to the point that his hands on your skin feel akin to something real, dulled synapses firing with every spark of his hands on your skin. It’s how you know you’re close to the end. “Who is gonna’ be in your corner after they get everything they want?”

“Goro’s a man of his word.”

“You’re so fuckin’ naïve. Just as dumb as you were when you took that bullet to the brain from Dex, and I had to save your ass then, too,” Johnny growls your name like he hates you for it, but who knew how much you would come to welcome the end? Because when he frustratedly drags you forward by a harsh grip at the back of your head to eclipse his lips over yours, you can feel it. Him. In the burnt neurons of your addled mind, he is there against you--- kissing you with death on the edges of his lips, in all the heavy grief and anger that your choice has brought forth in him. It’s a terrible knowledge that pours from you into him of how much you’ve come to love him, and how desperately you know he’ll hate you for this, because maybe he’s right; maybe you really are naïve for wanting to believe in some way out of this.

He gasps against your lips like it wrecks him to the core; voice hoarse with the emotion as he curses, “Damn, you’re one stubborn bitch.”

“Inherited only your best traits, Johnny,” it’s just as dry on your tongue, and you lift your hand that has been clutching the omega blockers to your lips. You want to say it--- tell him in words how much you care for him. Instead, you murmur against his lips, “Please, don’t be mad,” and swallow the pills.

“I got a feeling you’re gonna’ regret this, choom, and I won’t be there to help you,” he leans away, and you feel the drugs start to kick in when his voice becomes more distant. “Don’t do this. Miracles like the one you’re hopin’ for don’t happen for screw-ups like us, you know.”

“Trust me.”

“I wish I didn’t trust you at all,” he sounds just as tired as you do when he says your name one last time before you blink and he’s gone. The bitter aftertaste of the pills tastes like betrayal on your tongue, and you already know Johnny will haunt you for the rest of your days.

You’re quickly reminded of why you’ve always hated taking the omega blockers.

It takes everything you have left not to sob at the feeling, like you’ve lost a limb--- gone numb and tingling painfully with the ghost of where he was. It’s as if everything is muted, including the deepest parts of yourself. You’re in a bad way, and you know you don’t have much longer now.

So, you find yourself committing to the desperate choice you’ve made, but you don’t call Hanako.

Instead, you call the only corpo you trust besides yourself, and hope it isn’t stupid to do so.

Takemura.

---

He is dressed in all white when he comes to find you at Misty’s Esoterica, looking like a harbinger of death in every sense of the word, “You… look like shit.”

“Don’t look half bad yourself, Goro,” you chuckle, but it turns into a wracking cough that leaves you with a more urgent taste of blood at your lips.

“Are you in any shape to negotiate?” he wonders, but it’s not threatening--- more of a genuine concern displayed with the arch of his brow. Johnny may disagree with you, but you still dare to think him a good man.

“Not in much shape to do anything, anymore, but I know exactly what I’m useful for. My eddies are on Hanako knowing this, too,” you lean on the arm he offers when you stumble on your way to the car. “After all, she sent you. Smart woman.”

“I would have come even had she not,” Goro confesses, pausing with his metal-laced fingertips on the back door. When you shoot him a questioning look, he offers you only a simple, “We have done much work to not see this through to the end, yes?”

“Who’d’ve thought we’d make it this far?”

Goro nods in agreement, before you’re sliding into the car behind Anders Hellman and hoping the Swede knows half of what he thinks he does about your condition, “Agreed.”

---

There’s something to be said for dying. It’s not always as bad as people make it out to be.

Some people would consider you dead. You always find yourself wondering what Johnny would think, these days.

You absentmindedly turn the Rubik’s cube in your hand with no real aim at solving it, letting your mind drift in the overly sterile room Arasaka’s finest clinicians have sequestered you to.

“Barbaric,” Goro called it once, but that didn’t stop them from putting you right back here again. The news plays softly on the screen you’ve been allowed to have after they determined it wouldn’t exacerbate your oversensitivity, but not even the privilege of phoning what few friends you have left can eat away at the boredom that’s settled into your bones in this space station. What was there to say, anyway?

Hi, it’s your favorite lab rat again! How’s it going in the real world? I’m going insane up here!

You can’t help but dwell on the thought that maybe Johnny was right about it all. Maybe it isn’t worth living if life is going to be like this.

Arasaka made no guarantees past what you had signed for on the dotted line the day Hanako had again sent Goro solely to break the news that your body was dying even after Johnny’s Relic had been extracted from your mind. It would seem the soft spot you’d held for Goro was well known by the Arasaka heiress. The woman is nothing if not strategic.

Hell, you’d gotten yourself a worse deal that day than you’d gotten for Johnny at the start of this. After all, you’d had nothing left to bargain with by then.

You were technically a construct, now. A lab experiment dreamed up by Arasaka’s best bioengineers and a team of physicians lead by Anders Hellman. Your current body was a multi-billion eurodollar joint Arasaka-Biotechnica venture that had only been put at the top of Hanako’s list when implanting her father’s construct into Yorinobu had gone awry. You’re convinced she would have been content to let you rot on a biochip in Mikoshi for the rest of your existence otherwise. After all, your contract never said when they had to provide you with a body, only that they were obligated to when the technology existed to allow it.

Turns out, rewriting someone else’s psyche does more damage to the physical body than anyone in Arasaka thought it would. You don’t know why it was such a surprise to them all when Yorinobu’s body couldn’t handle it, considering what it did to you. Maybe they just didn’t care, with how desperate they’d been to get any semblance of leadership back.

All you know is that Johnny Silverhand probably rolled over laughing in his grave, wherever it is, when Saburo Arasaka died a second, painful death.

They were using you as a top-secret prototype for Saburo 2.0, as you’ve come to call what will inevitably be the body they attempt to stick him in next. Sure, Arasaka as a company is facing charges in the New United States on Yorinobu’s death--- something about human testing that everyone knows will never stick--- but that will be swept under the rug much like any bad press Arasaka has gotten over this past year, with either cash or bullets dispensed.

“Shit,” you curse as you grow frustrated with the cube, tossing it onto the thin hospital mattress they kept on your bed. Rubbing your eyes as you try to refocus, it still feels strange to not feel the metal embedded in your skin. Worse still, you had to get used to what a fully ‘ganic body felt like again.

“You even human anymore, with all that chrome?” you can almost hear Johnny’s words to you when you got a new set of mantis blades from Vik’s clinic right before heading out for the oncoming fight at Clouds with the Tiger Claws. It was so long ago, now, but it doesn’t feel like it. That’s what Mikoshi does to a person, you figure. It’s hard to fully comprehend that so much time has passed.

Sometimes, you think you do hear him in more than just a memory. Like he’s still there, in your head. The doctors say it will pass with time, but they’ve been wrong before. Safe to say, Johnny literally changed your brain chemistry.

At least some part of you hopes they’re wrong, because you don’t know how you’ll make it in this world without him if Arasaka doesn’t stay true to their word.

It’s like you’ve lost a part of yourself, and you regret it more every day that you’re forced to live in this white box of a test tube that they’ve put you in. You should have died with him at Mikoshi. Gone out in a fiery blaze of glory and torn it all down with you, if only it would’ve made you feel a little better right before the end.

His last words to you had been as you went under the knife, right before they carefully excised him from your brain like a tumor.

“If this plan doesn’t work, Johnny--- If you wind up being right about Arasaka---” you had called to him through the code, as it weaved and curled around his form. It created and destroyed him all at the same time, but Johnny’s frown was still clear as day to you.

“I’m right about Arasaka,” he sounded nearly as exhausted as you had been on that roof the last time you’d talked. Defeated was something you’d never expected to see on him, “See? You haven’t changed at all. Still think you can outsmart the whole world, when you’re really just out of your depth.”

You didn’t want to think of this as a betrayal, but that’s what it was starting to feel like as you marinate in his sadness, “Look… I just want us to part as friends, for now. Just in case I don’t get to see you again after this, I wanted to tell you goodbye as proper friends.”

“Not sure that’s possible, anymore,” cut you to your core.

You wanted to reach for him, through the flickering code, but you didn’t dare. Heartbreak tastes a lot like blood on your tongue, even here.

“That’s what we are, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know, V. I just… don’t know.”

It was all you could remember of the interaction, though you’re certain there had to be more than that. Sometimes, when you dream instead of sleep, bits and pieces of it come back to you. That’s what you think it is, at least.

It’s far too real to be any normal nightmare.

It sounded too familiar when he said things like, “I just wish you’d stayed loyal to yourself,” or, “Those ‘Saka docs are cutting out a piece of us. Something we’ll never get back. It’ll leave a hole,” in those horrible dreams where memory emerges from the subconscious.

Perhaps this is just what you deserve. Your penance. The price you’ve got to pay for your choices, and the deal you made with the devil.

After all, nothing in Night City is ever free.

Multiple lifetimes of suffering, of being forced to go on without him? It’s almost poetic, in a Shakespearean tragedy sort of way. If this body fails, Arasaka will just test your construct in a new one until they get it right.

You’re company property and the Biotechnica cloning program is only in its infancy. Anders Hellman had told you as much himself when you’d asked.

“You’re one of the first successful cases, so far,” was, specifically, what he’d told you. It wasn’t much; Arasaka clearly wanted you in the dark.

You’d already proved too much trouble when left to your own devices, historically.

Have they brought you back before? How many bodies did you live and die in before this one? They could’ve wiped your memory of it, or maybe cut your engram into a million different pieces until something fit. You would never know the truth of what’s been done to you, most likely.

The door to your room slides open with a whirring noise, breaking you from your thoughts when the same scientist who you’ve come to understand is one of your daily handlers walks in, “It’s time for your daily tests.”

You try to not let the sarcasm drip from your tongue, but you’ve been failing at a lot of things these days.

“Always a pleasure to see you, too, Suki.”

You are dead, and this is just purgatory.

---

They eventually shipped you back to earth, “in accordance with the great progress you’ve displayed over these past few months,” as Anders had told it.

Earth was exhausting. Even though the Arasaka lab they had put you in had all the comforts of home, save for the overly-clinical aesthetics, it still took weeks for your body to become accustomed to its own weight. It was only then that you realized the space station’s simulated gravity was slightly less than that on earth, to allow for less pressure on your new joints and bones as your mind settled in. It’s perhaps why you had been able to relearn walking in the first place, because on earth you were much clumsier than you remember ever having been before.

There were bruises on your legs from the amount of times you’d tripped down or stumbled into something. You’re surprised they hadn’t yet put you in a padded room, but you must’ve been making progress, because eventually they sent a familiar face to see you again.

“おはようございます,” without translators installed into your body’s cyberware, the words that fall from Goro’s lips as he offers a slight bow take a moment for you to mentally decipher.

You don’t rightly care, because you’ve not seen a familiar face other than Anders since waking up in this body. Let alone, anything close to a friend.

He stiffens and freezes when you step forward to drag him into your arms, holding him in a tight embrace that almost has you melting against him with how much of a relief it felt to feel another person. It’s too forward, and you’d never have done it under normal circumstances---

But you’re so relieved to see him.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you,” you murmur as you release him, catching the slight tinge of a flush at his cheeks. He straightens his shirt, donned in black from head to toe. His hair isn’t pulled back, for once; it’s a little longer than when you had seen him last, “You look great, Goro.”

He seems to relax slightly at the familiar words, as if he hadn’t been quite sure what to expect of you at first. You watch as he takes you in, optics dilating as his settings switch with the distance you put between you again. It makes you slightly self-conscious under his scrutiny.

You know you look different. Sure, the core basics of yourself are the same, but you’re slimmer than you were before in this cloned body. Your cyberware is gone, as are the scars from a lifetime of mercenary work. Any tattoos you had were no longer etched into your skin, including Johnny’s. Then, there’s that new Arasaka logo brandished behind your ear that matched his own. The only good thing about your new appearance was that your hair had finally grown long enough to cover the logo when you left it down.

“You look like shit,” he cracks a smile after a second, “but it is good to see you, too.”

“What are you doing here?” you wonder as he walks further into your designated quarters, hands clasped behind his back, “Don’t tell me you get to tell a girl she’s dying twice.” He observes the room not unlike he did when he’d visited you on the space station, though seems less displeased with your living situation this time.

He doesn’t say, “barbaric,” at least.

It’s your words that earn his chastising side-eye, this time, “You should not joke. I do not want to do that again.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” the prodding does nothing to urge an explanation from him as he moves towards the desk on the other side of the room. The metal on his fingertips glints with sunlight as he moves the papers lying there--- some of the most recent status reports you’ve been given on your performance in Arasaka’s testing. A lot of it was redacted, but you were given just enough to know you weren’t dying currently.

That, they seemed to be taking as a win.

“How are you feeling?” he asks as his optics dart back and forth on the papers, reading them quickly. Surely, he’s had a briefing before he’d been sent to see you. Maybe he just doesn’t trust it was a full picture, or he wants to know what parts of it you know.

Settling into the couch, you reach for the tin of mints you’ve been hoarding recently. Popping one into your mouth, you turn it around as the fresh flavor bursts through your skin, scent sparking in your nostrils.

“Playing doctor now, Goro?” that gets him to look up from the papers to shoot you an unamused look that said just answer the question. You sigh, nail tapping the tin as you take a moment to get his answer, “Well, I’m tired and sore all the time from the physical therapy, and hypersensitive to almost fuck all. Oh, and they still won’t let me get any chrome installed--- even the minor stuff like optics.” You sigh, and the minty feeling tingles on your tongue, “Do you know how much deliberating it took for the white-coats to finally decide I was ready for an operating system update?”

“And the nightmares?” Goro turns away from the desk to instead lean on it, crossing his arms as he looks towards you. So, he had a more thorough briefing on your status than you expected.

You avert your eyes. It was bad enough having to talk to the mandated shrink about them. You really didn’t want to get into what plagued your mind with Goro.

“They’re nothing. It’s the physical symptoms that Arasaka cares about. That’s what’ll get Saburo a new body or not, right?”

He doesn’t let you off the hook that easily, “Arasaka has underestimated the impact of the mind on the body once already, at great cost. I do not think your mental state is considered ‘minor’ to your doctors and scientists, V.” After a moment’s pause, he confirms what you are thinking, “It is not considered something to be ignored by Arasaka’s board, either.”

“Is that what you’re here for?” you can’t help the irritation that seeps into your tone, “To give a first-hand report back to Hanako Arasaka and the board on my progress? Came to see the test subject for yourself instead of just reading the memo?”

“V…” his brow furrows, frown settling onto his lips as you turn your body away from him on the couch.

“Well, you’ve seen me! I trust you’ve gotten all the spicy details you need for your report on my mental status.”

“くそ,” he swears under his breath, as if exasperated with your antics. There is a stillness that comes with the silence between you after that, and you don’t dare turn to him. Instead, you focus on the tin in your hands and the mint in your mouth. Anything other than the pit in your stomach at the remembrance of the nightmares that plague you more nights than most.

There’s a shuffling of clothing and the sound of footsteps approaching as Goro comes to stand beside you, “You are… hypersensitive to words as well, it seems. Look at me, V.” You refuse to do it, and he sighs. In your peripheral, you can see him move to sit beside you on the couch, “Hanako-sama does expect me to relay your progress upon my return, but that is not the sole purpose for my visit.”

“Why’re you here, then?” it may be childish to still refuse to look at him, but you can’t bring yourself to. You feel as if nothing will be as it was before--- like even though you’ve fought terribly to return to normal, there would never be a moment when you felt like yourself again.

“You are being released.”

Your head snaps up to look at him when he says that, utter shock undoubtedly on your face. His own expression remains level, rock steady as he always seemed to be. You can see the truth of his words in his eyes; he has no reason to lie to you. You doubt Hanako would put him in a position to knowingly do so anyway.

“Released?” you breathe the word. You can’t quite believe the truth in his eyes.

“Hellman’s team has decided you have progressed as much as can be expected in a clinical setting. They think you are ready to return to a more ‘normal’ routine. I am here to tell Hanako-sama if I believe they are correct, based on what I know of you… who you were, already,” Goro holds up a hand, quelling the excitement he undoubtedly sees blossoming in your eyes. “This does not mean a return to what your routine was before. You cannot return to mercenary work.”

“So… I’m to live as a civilian, then?” you shift your whole body to face him, legs folded beneath you.

“In a sense… you will still be under Arasaka’s supervision, expected to meet every scheduled appointment and test. If you miss even one, you will be collected and returned here. There are other requirements, but I will leave those to be explained by your care team,” Goro watches as the news sinks in. He looks away, admitting, “I am maybe not the best to answer any questions you have about this.”

“Will I be staying in Tokyo?” is all you can think to ask, mind racing at the prospect of even a little freedom from this quarantine.

“At first, but I believe the goal is to reintroduce you to Night City should you continue to progress---” his words are choked off when you quickly grasp hold of his shoulders, pulling him into another hug. Just like before, he freezes, though this time he recovers enough to loosely hug you back.

“Thank you, Goro, for everything.”

---

The Corpo Plaza apartment didn’t feel like home, but it was closest to Arasaka tower and the Biotechnica building--- both of which you have to visit frequently. Well, at least it was less frequently than when you’d first been sent back to Night City, but it still wasn’t worth the constant drive from a different district.

Your fingers trace along the metal outlining your face as you glance at yourself in the mirror, having just finished a shower. The cyberware embedded in your cheeks is similar to what you had originally, though slightly different. You like it all the same, even if it had to be approved by Arasaka first. Every day you felt more like yourself, but you doubt you’ll ever be 100% you again. Too much has changed for this sense of newness to ever leave.

Even when you had reconnected with Victor, he looked at you like something uncanny. A dead woman walking. Misty could barely manage to look at you at all. Panam and the Aldecaldos had migrated; you were still waiting for her to return your call to figure out what they were up to these days. Judy was long gone, but getting out of Night City was maybe the best thing she could’ve done after everything.

Only Johnny’s old contacts seemed to remind you of who you were, and perhaps that’s because they’d never truly gotten to know you too well. Then, there was the feeling of loss that still gripped your soul. The ghost of Johnny Silverhand haunting your every thought and plaguing your dreams at night. You doubt you’ll ever be free of him. You hope he never fully fades from your psyche.

As much as it hurts, you still love him.

In hindsight, that’s probably the real reason why it would never work out between you and Goro. You’re still holding a torch for a dead man, and you’ll never be truly satisfied with anyone else.

In the end, Johnny has truly ruined you. Maybe it’s his last laugh: your complete inability to move on.

Your deal with Arasaka at the beginning had been for them to save him. To put him away into Mikoshi for the rainy day that the technology existed for a body suited for him to be a reality. The contract required them to release him into Night City after he had been deemed healthy, but you knew as well as anyone that contracts like these had loopholes even with the best lawyers pouring over them. Arasaka could truly do whatever they wanted with him once he was out of your head, other than destroying his engram.

When you had asked them the status on them holding up that end of your bargain, you had been met with cryptic answers. Hanako refused to meet with you, and you were in no shape without your combat cyberware to hunt her down yourself.

You’re terrified, honestly, at the idea of never seeing him again, nearly as much as you fear facing him.

Sighing, you step away from the mirror to move towards your bedroom while you towel-dry your hair as best you can. Tomorrow you were to report to Arasaka for your end-of-the-year testing and physical. Hellman would probably personally chastise you for the pizza you’ve ordered tonight. It was far from the approved meal plan, but it wasn’t as easy to find food that fit the diet and still tasted good outside of Japan. Finally, you understood Takemura’s issue with Night City’s synthfood.

Still, if one slice of pizza was going to kill you, you figure it’s a good enough way to go. Anything beats being an Arasaka pencil-pusher for the rest of your days.

“Night City Legend, Felled by PieZ,” the headlines would read, and it wouldn’t even mention the billions you’d cost Arasaka if you died.

Water drips down your jaw and you wipe it away with the towel before tossing it into the hamper. Scooping up an oversized sweatshirt that screamed support for the debut album of SAMURAI, it soaks up the few water droplets you’ve missed when drying and effectively covers the dog tags against your chest. Looking down at the hamper, you wish that Arasaka would sign off on you having a pet finally. Nibbles was doing fine at Victor’s, but you missed that furless cat.

The sound of your holo ringing is accompanied by Goro’s face flashing in your caller ID, and you pick up after a few moments, “Yo?”

“こんばんは,” Goro appears with his hair pulled up into a bun, and you could’ve been fooled that it was the old days if not for the few extra gray hairs he seemed to have now. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

“What? You worried I’ll disappoint?” you roll your eyes at his pointed look. “You know I’m doing great now, practically would be back to my old self if they’d ever let me get my combat cyberwear.”

“And you know that Arasaka has invested too much in you for you to involve yourself in a Night City street fight. Do not think they will approve all your requests tomorrow, V, regardless of your progress,” he speaks reasonably, and maybe that’s what grinds your gears the most. You know good and well that Arasaka has everything riding on you. If you successfully keep from pushing daisies they’ll move forward with Saburo’s resurrection. Hell, maybe they already were. For their one and only living test subject, you’ve been doing relatively well, if not a little hypersensitive at times still.

“Not every fight in Night City is one you pick. What if I need to defend myself, huh?”

“Do you feel in danger? Has something happened?” Goro’s voice has an edge to it, concern, and you shake your head.

“I’m just making a point. Most folks who die in this city are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My combat chrome would give me an edge again. Call it an investment in keeping me alive,” you snort, and Goro’s lips quirk upwards at your dry humor.

“You can plead that to the panel tomorrow after you pass all their tests. I think you should… what is the phrase? Not get your hopes up?”

“Did you call me just to bum me out, Goro?” you sigh, moving through your kitchen to rummage through your fridge and find a NiCola.

“Only to discuss reality.”

“I think you’re just scared I’ll kick your ass with all my chrome one of these days for how sassy you are,” the sarcasm drips from your tongue, and this time Takemura does sound thoroughly amused.

“I would like to watch your attempt at that, but I think you will need to remove the pizza from your diet first, V,” then, he hangs up. Never one for drawn-out goodbyes. You think you prefer it that way.

“I could’ve kicked your ass while on an only-pizza diet, once,” you grumble to the apartment around you, taking a swig of the NiCola. The ring of the doorbell breaks you from the thoughts of just how you can get back at Goro for that comment, “Speaking of pizza…”

Barefoot, you stroll towards the door, hoping the delivery guy followed your instructions to leave your food at the door. You don’t want to deal with awkward small talk with another human right now. Not bothering to check the cams to see if your instructions have been followed, you let the door slide open with a swipe of your hand against the key screen.

The door is barely halfway open when a hand catches your throat and forces you back into the apartment, a body forcing you up against the entryway wall as you choke out a startled noise under a firm grip. Terror claws at your skin as you grab at the arm attached to the hand before you manage to get a good look at him when he stills against you, breathing hard. It takes a moment for wide eyes to take in enough of his features to recognize the dark eyes staring back at you.

“J---”

“You couldn’t help yourself from being corpo scum again, could you? Selfish, that’s what this whole thing was--- what you are,” his voice--- oh, fuck, his voice, it rings in your ears in a way it never has before. Deep, familiar, and real. Strained with anger and choked with a breathless fury, but something else breaks against the fire swirling in his eyes--- some relief that settles nearly as devastatingly in your bones as his skin lays heavy and warm against yours.

You can’t believe it. You must be hallucinating. You’ve finally cracked and lost it. Something was malfunctioning in your head, certainly, because there’s no way he’s here.

Your fingertips shake as they reach out, away from the firm grip he still has on your throat, to ghost against the slope of his jaw. The scruff of a beard still remained there, but was shorter than how he had lived in your head. The scars on his face were gone, along with the tattoos on what skin of his you can see beneath the leather jacket he wears. His left hand was at your throat, and it was made of flesh and bone, not metal.

He swats at your hand when you finally touch him, a hurt in his voice that was so real that you couldn’t trick yourself into believing he was just a hallucination, “Did you ever think about what I wanted, huh, when you chose this?”

But you still can’t get past the sight of him, finally managing, “Is… it really you?”

“Fuck yes, it’s me. What’s wrong with you?”

“Johnny,” you gasp his name, nails digging into his pristine forearm, tears nearly blinding you as they well in your eyes at the overwhelming emotion that surges from your chest. You can’t hold it together, trembling against him, and only then does his grip soften at your throat.

His voice sounds devastatingly mournful as he growls in the quiet of your apartment, “You sold us both to fuckin’ Arasaka, V. Look what they did to you. You’re their property. Doesn’t it make you sick? Some things are worse than death, and I doubt ‘Saka will ever leave us to it, now.”

You hear what he’s saying. It sounds just like him, and your heart breaks at the sound. At the warmth of him, and the way his dark hair ghosts around his cheeks slightly shorter than you remember it being before. He’s really here, and he hates you.

His voice cracks, “Why are you crying?”

“I-I missed you,” you confess between the sobs, trying to swallow up the emotion. Damning yourself for not holding it together better than this at the sight of him, but it was such a shock, and only one thing could run through your mind as dreadful regret sank into your soul, “a-and now you’re going to hate me forever.”

He looks at you like he’s stunned by the words coming from your mouth, or maybe he’s shocked it’s all you’re capable of saying when you’ve betrayed him as thoroughly as he perceives.

“Shit, V,” he murmurs, reaching up to drag his thumb against your cheek and wiping away the messy tears that trailed there. He looks down at you like he’s almost annoyed at you for crying, but there’s a strange look in his eyes that you can’t fully place. “I wish it was something as easy as hating you, but I just can’t seem to catch a fuckin’ break.”

The confusion at his words nearly stuns your tears into small hiccups as you breathe, “What?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hate you,” it sounds like dread on his tongue, like fear and grief for the situation you’ve both found yourselves in. It sounds like a confession, from his lips, “I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive you for what you’ve done to me, either. I haven’t felt right without you since I woke up in this damn useless body. Feels like I should still be in yours.”

A breathless huff escapes you, almost akin to a laugh, as you realize what he’s trying to say, “You missed me, too, huh, rockerboy?”

“You’re the only thing about this damned city I missed,” he crowds you in, pressing you fully into the wall with his own body. “Not drugs, not alcohol, not music--- I came back here for you. Bein’ clean and having to put up with those ‘Saka corpo-drones has been the worst time of my life, by the way, but I did it because they said you were alive.” He looks at you, a hint of incredulousness in his eye, when he asks, “What the hell kind of a deal did you make with them?”

You’re terrified to tell him, but you can’t lie to him. Not after everything.

“I’m the reason Saburo Arasaka will live.”

Johnny curses, fury twisting his face, but the defeat is worse, “I should hate you. Fuck, why can’t I hate you?”

“I’m sorry---”

“Don’t lie to me,” he cuts you off, biting, “you’re not sorry. You don’t care if Saburo Arasaka lives or dies so long as we get to live.”

“Fine, you’re right,” anger flares in your own gut, exhausted annoyance lacing your tone, “but is that such a crime? I want to be okay again, Johnny! I want you to be okay, too!”

“And you’ll sell our souls for it?!”

“God, you’re such a dramatic asshole!” you nearly scream, slamming your eyes shut in your distress, “Go ahead and blame me for falling in love with a dead man, too, then! I should’ve known it would kill us both, but I couldn’t stop myself from loving you, Johnny! I wouldn’t have been able to go on knowing I’d left you to die, okay? That’s why I did this! Call me a selfish bitch if you want to; maybe you’re right---”

“Yeah? Well, I guess maybe I’m to blame for falling in love with a selfish bitch,” he growls, so close that his nose touches yours, and your eyes snap open just as he leans in to crash his lips against yours. It’s not wholly unlike the last kiss you shared with him, when he was just sparks on your neurons, and yet it’s entirely different.

There’s a taste to him now, but it’s not the cigarettes you had expected, but more akin to nicotine gum. Has he stopped smoking? He smells like leather and some sort of amber-scented cologne that has you weak in the knees.

But the way he kisses you is what nearly scrambles all coherent thought. He’s so warm and firm against you, the reality of his touch, tongue, and lips against yours desecrates the memory of the slight stimulation your neurons had simulated when he’d been in your head. Johnny seems to be in no better a state at the feeling of you against him, gasping into your mouth when your hands find his hair to drag him closer, and all the while all you can think is how happy you are that he is alive here and now.

It barely feels like it should be real.

He parts from you, catching his breath and staring at you with a look that sends heat rippling down your spine, flushing your skin in its wake.

You blink at him, head lulled back, and whisper through the feeling of having him back, like some piece of your soul coming home, “Fuck, I missed you, Johnny, so much.”

“You’re probably the only one, choom.”

“That’s not true. There’s Rogue, and Kerry---”

“They got their closure when I was hitchhiking in your skull. How can I just waltz back into their lives now?”

You tilt your head at him, “It can’t be that the Johnny Silverhand who was never afraid to die, is actually scared to live?”

He scoffs, leaning away from you with a roll of his eyes, “Is that the kinda’ psychobabble your ‘Saka shrink has been feeding you?”

“Could be,” you shrug, and a glint of the light at the metal around your neck catches his eye, “don’t mean it isn’t true.”

“What’s this?” he invades your space again, dragging a fingertip to loop at the chain at your neck, leading beneath your sweatshirt, and tugging it until the necklace drags into view. Dogtags clink in his hand and his eyes snap back up to yours in shock, “These--- you still have ‘em?”

Your cheeks heat with the find, and you don’t know why it’s so embarrassing even after you’ve told him that you’re in love with him. Of course you would’ve kept his dog tags. It only makes sense, but you want to defend it. The words crawl up your throat, and it takes all you have to swallow them down.

Instead, you reach up to begin to remove them, “You should probably have them back, now.”

Johnny’s hand catches yours, stilling it, “I… don’t know if I’m ready to step back into ‘em right now. ‘Sides, maybe I like the look of ‘em on you.”

You search his gaze, but he seems sure enough about the decision, “Alright. I’ll keep them, for now.”

“Good… It suits you,” a ring of the apartment door breaks you from whatever scrutiny weighed heavy in Johnny’s eyes. “The fuck is that?”

“My pizza this time, I hope,” you huff, pushing him back just enough to escape from between him and the wall. “I don’t know if I can take two of you showing up at my door tonight.”

Johnny trails after you, watching you open the door and pluck the pizza box from the ground where the delivery guy had left it as instructed, “Good news, there’s only one Johnny Silverhand.”

Turning towards him, you smirk, “Luckily.”

“Screw you.”

“You wish.”

[jayzdreamz]

New OC Alert!!!!!

Name: Spade

Gender: Male

Height: 5'11

**Also sorry for the shitty picture quality**

[anti-katsuki-lounge]

Have you ever watch 'Bojack Horseman'? If not, it's an adult show ( just so you know, and not like The Simpson or Family Guy, kind of adult show ), and you may or may not like it. But...

*Spoiler Alert*

Bojack Horseman? The MC who did shitty things? Actually gets consequences and the show knows how to write characters that doesn't deserve forgiveness, nor their victims are obligated to forgive their abusers.

I haven’t seen it but I hear nothing but good things about it. I’m glad there’s a series that actually portrays how not everyone is obligated to receive forgiveness from their victims even if they’re trying to do better. Compare this to My Abusive Academia where Hori desperately wants us to forgive some of the most vile characters around and there’s a huge difference in quality between the two. It also has one of my favorite callout speeches of all time:

“You can't keep doing this! You can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better! BoJack, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It's you. Okay? It's you. Fuck, man, what else is there to say?”



[conjuring-ghouls]

Video by cirice_ on ig

[munchboxart]

anon bc im embarrassed but im also a graphic designer and ive had quite a lot of.. *issues* dealing with the press printing companies we work with at my office and so now whenever i see the words trim and bleed im like [Metal Gear Alert Noise] so that post caught me at the end but then i laughed about it dhshhs

Oh my god I worked temporarily at a printing place and the other half of the office are the people who get the files ready for print, I would lose my mind. Like working with printers is already bad because they love to break down but being one of the guys who works with other people and having to reformat their shit & having to ask for higher quality files because they gave you a shitty jpeg of what they want... I would tear my cheeks out

Wait sorry I might've misread the post since I experienced the other end (press print) LMFAO

UI3Y4RIUWEHEFUIH but I understand the pain anon, sorry for the graphic design jumpscare afterhours

[autisticempathydaemon]

Redacted-tober 2023 Day Twenty-Three

Prompt: William & Haunting

Pairing: William/Original Listener Character

cw: discussion of the Surge accident, William calls his listener Cher (French for “dear”)

Summary: Yet another human goes traipsing into Worldworld at night… Fifth time’s the charm.

Read on AO3 here!

<- Previous Day

“Now, let me tell you why this isn’t like your typical haunting,” you say excitedly to the camera, traipsing through the abandoned amusement park with the joy and gracelessness of the toddlers of its glory days. “In addition to the lives lost in the Surge tragedy and the slew of mysterious incidents that plagued park goers beforehand, Wonderworld has been a hotbed of suspicious, supernatural activity the whole twenty years that it’s been closed. Disappearances, attacks, and unexplained, nightly wailing are just a few of the phenom- phennem- phenomenee? Fuck.”

You jam your thumb on the pause button and stomp your boots in the dirt and debris, thwacking yourself on the forehead with the selfie stick. The cheery, onscreen persona falls, and you groan in frustration. Again, you wonder how an ambitious skeptic with a masters degree in journalism and a bachelor’s in history ended up ghost hunting in the muck and cold and dark. Then you remember the state of the job market and the experience required for an entry level position and paste the wide smile back on your face.

‘Another eight months-’ you think to yourself, checking your ring light and positioning yourself with your back to the overgrowth of dark, rustling trees. ‘-then we can go apply to better places, places that won’t send you to dilapidated, condemned sites alone. Then there won’t be anymore shitty cell phone footage or sound quality or weird shadows behind me in the shape of a creature… wait, what?’ You whip your whole body around, your heel spinning and slipping on fallen, rotting leaves, and your sight shimmers black and red and white as you hit your head and look up at the man standing over you.

“Are you alright, cher?” he asks, a soft French lilt to his words a complement to his sweet, gentle voice. If he wants to laugh at the mortifying spill you just took, you think he hides it well, though you can’t see his face because of the moon looming behind him. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Didn’t mean to- are you fucking serious? Why else would you be lurking like fucking Dracula if not to fucking frighten?” The figure above you makes a sound akin to a sputter, a stifled laugh, and your face burns red hot at the humiliation, at how idiotic you must look splayed spread eagle on the ground with mud in your hair.

“Because I own this land,” he says, coughing delicately to cover his amusement. “And I was alerted to an intruder with a camera and ungainly gait. You wouldn’t happen to know where they’d be, would you, dear?” You pray to some sort of god you’re also shrouded in shadow because you can feel heat in your face spread from your cheeks to your ears and neck, and the realization this dulcet, charming gentleman might see that just makes it worse.

“I was told this was public property,” you sputter, lying through your teeth. Your boss had informed you the land was owned by some eccentric millionaire but also that security was few and far between. You try to get up and head out before he calls the police, but your ankle gives out from under you, dropping you back in the mud to add insult to injury.

“You were told wrong. Thankfully, I quite pride myself on being a good host, and I refuse to let any guest, invited or not, leave my care worse than they came into it.” The still anonymous man shifts his body weight, offering you a hand, and you worry you may have concussion when the refracting light makes his eyes gleam a hypnotizing swirl of silver and red, when the shadows make his teeth seem impossibly long. Despite these tricks of the light, he is irresistibly beautiful, and you place your hand in his and your trust in him. “My name is William Solaire. Let’s see how my family and I might help you.”

[sullustangin]

SWTOR 7.3 Feedback

Non-spoilery stuff first

No technical glitches that I experienced on two playthroughs on Pubside.  Minus one or two moments with Odessen NPCs wandering around, nothing broke the game or immersion.  All the quests worked for credit; I had the weekly for Ruhnuk not work the time round, so this was nice. 

I am aware that there are some financial changes they’re trying to patch back.  Basically, too much is being charged between trades with other players directly and when mailing to alts.  Also!  There is now a 30-day cooldown period between joining a guild and being able to access the guild bank. So get those alts in sooner rather than later, especially if you plan on raiding/doing group stuff with them.

On the Gunslingers and Snipers you now have a 2% per 3 seconds passive heal while in cover  -- level 64 option.  This is a big deal for survivability for these two classes.  I ran dailies and set my companion to DPS.  I had to pause and heal the comp after combat, not myself.   No more glass cannon, but this might be nerfed soon, since it’s a little op.  I’m going to have fun with it while I can.

If you love the Mantellian Privateer or Mira’s Armor from KOTOR II but can’t afford either on Cartel Market, good news:  the Mira set from Bounty Association (the event that comes around every 1-2 months) is now unlockable in collections.  So if you have a Mando char that goes hard on Bounty week, you now have a new cert sink + unlock with Cartel Points for the whole account.  There are some subtle differences in the outfits for the discerning Space Barbie player.

The Date Nights don’t happen in this patch; I would guess it will probably be activated during Night Life in July. Speculation on my part, though

Non-Spoilery Plot Stuff:  A lot of characters that we had the previous option to kill are present in this patch.  This really gives me hope for future content; I previously complained that Bioware was writing to the deadest version of the game (where they assume everyone is dead and only work with Lana).  We got A LOT of coverage with ‘optional’ characters, so this does give me hope for the future writing: assume everyone is alive, and some people get less content.  I’ll talk about what that means later for this patch.

Onward to spoilery stuff.

Torian does get an Alliance alert, which his ba’vodu Eva answered; this is unromanced I feel good about the Torian piece I just reblogged, because it seems consistent with what we see here.  Torian thought the drama over his father was over, the shame was done, the name redeemed -- and there is all is, resurrected from the dead.  Even more content with our neighborhood Mando really does make me want equivalent content with Vette; given that (shitty) decision was almost 7 years ago now and we JUST got a storyline with payoff for that choice, Vette needs some love now, romantic or platonic, beyond Date Night. 

The only downside to letting Torian live at the moment, especially if you’re a smug or bh, is that you lose quality screen time with Akaavi Spar on Ruhnuk. She comes to your rescue in the final fight.  I also feel as if this scene should have been back with the 6.2 content drop, when the banner is first stolen, but it does work here as well, with the burning of it compounding all of Torian’s feelings about his history. 

While Eva does hate that burnt tater thot, the content for Arcann was really good.  I actively wonder if they are pulling things from the aborted third KotXX expansion.  THIS is the character development many of us wanted to see before romancing him: we wanted to see the realization of what he’d done, the desire to fix things, the acknowledgement it may never be enough for some people.  Ding Ding Ding!  I did view both versions of the Darth Nul investigation -- I killed him on DS Eva and let him live on my sunshine and Rainbows LS smug Dyo -- and the version with Arcann in it is so much better.  You also get an additional scene with him; romanced folks get a hug! 

Like the Torian scene, this Arcann development probably should have been earlier in the plotline, but WAAAAY earlier -- like 6+ years.  I think before the romance trigger, most definitely, but at least by the time of Nathema, especially if the Commander takes any of his advice to heart regarding Theron.  I think this falls to fan fic writers to fix, in terms of char dev. 

As I mentioned above, both of these guys are killable.  And they got some great content this patch.  The story feels better with both of them in it. 

As for our dynamic duo, Lana and Theron do show up and play a vocal role with Shae in regard to the interrogation of Malgus.  Theron does get to call Shae out on her working with Malgus to sack Coruscant 2x years ago (I have no idea what year we’re in since COVID screwed everything up).  We also get wonderfully protective partners in Lana and Theron.  Theron makes a comment that the work among other “benefits” keep him young if you’ve romanced him -- poor Lana.  There is noticeable smoldering going on between him and the romanced PC.  Theron does provide significant dialogue content and reaction shots, even though he’s killable.  And of course you get a Theron letter, which alludes to Date Night.  In sum, I don’t think Theron was at all side-lined compared to Lana.

The one weak part of all this is the tenuous connection between the Voss and Malgus’s plans.  In part, it’s becacuse Sana Rae had to be on Voss and decided to kill a few birds with one stone (or one Commander).   It boils down to a vision in which the PC saves the galaxy again.  We do get the tidbit that if we outright kill Malgus, things happen faster, but ‘things’ are ‘inevitable.’  Some of the ‘mundane’ quests verge on the ridiculous, but Star Wars always stomps on character hubris when it can. 

Did I enjoy going back to Voss?  Yup.  Did it make sense, given the nature of the Arcann content?  Yup; if you didn’t spare Arcann, this feels more contrived than if you did, in my opinion.  If I recall correctly, Voss was supposed to be visited in an earlier expansion but that was also canned. 

The transition from Bioware to Broadsword may be bringing old things back to life to ‘finish’ the game -- or start a new beginning.  I remain optimistic.  I will say that the old story of Voss and the new story post Eternal Empire does spin together well.

Good patch, in my opinion, minus the issues with the economic system that are ongoing.

[docholligay]

Doc what do you think Konatsu would be like if Miyokichi had been a larger part of her life as a kid?

I think she would proabbly be worse, though of cours eit's hard ot say because it's me putting Miyokichi in the villain slot in literally the same way Kontqsu did when Shin was either just as bad or worse. But Shin was lazy and shitty and all the things Miyokichi was but also Miyokichi was MEAN. She saw the world as personally affronting her in a way I do not appreciate.

I think Konatsu has plenty of bad qualities but I don't think she ever learned meanness and particularly victimhood as a lifestyle, and I think if she'd spent more time around Miyokichi, if she'd been able to teach Konatsu that Shin was the sole villain of the piece instead of Miyokichi (spoiler alert, they both fucking sucked) maybe she'd have been harder to make into a reasonable person (Doc, is she a reasonable person now? Well I dunno to be honest)

sorry I have been drinking

[kobblefort]

Rushsly: Into the Depths 2

Clean-up time starts with the retooling of our marksbold squad, and on the plus side, we get a bunch of steel and iron back, if the kobbles can be persuaded to actually give up their bows. We sort of just let the caged ratfolk sit in the trap hallway and think about what they've done for now. Are we really going to kill them? well I mean probably, right, they killed some of our birds. I love birds. Blood will be repaid in blood and all that. In the real world I actually really like rats, but I hate mice - rats are basically dog software running on rodent hardware, but mice are skittering little freaks that will run into your room in the middle of the night literally just to suddenly roll over and die on the fucking floor. I do not live in a place with mice anymore and I hope to never have to deal with mice again (and I do everything in my power to make any environment I reside in completely inhospitable for them) but when I had to deal with mice they made me so violently angry that, had I ever owned a firearm, I would have just started fucking blasting. I know I'd probably miss, they're upsettingly fast and have the devil's luck. But it's the principle of the matter. However, in the greatest simulation game of all time Dwarf Fortress I really quite detest these ratfolk, especially because whenever they're spotted it plays a really fucking loud and scary alert sound. I ultimately want to do something funnier than "just dropping them down a pit" but worst comes to worst I am not at all opposed to "just dropping them down a pit." Forcing them to scout the cavern for me could be useful, but sounds inefficient and risks their necromancer turning some actually powerful monsters to their side. Digging a little "arena" for captured invaders to amuse the kobbles is another idea that feels at least worth considering, but I don't know how much the kobbles would actually like that. Well, we're in no hurry.

Alsrta, our caravan voice, is suddenly elected clan leader by the kobbles, requiring the construction of some new lodgings for her. Something I forgot to mention is that, besides the triplets she had while drunk, she had a fourth child, a peasant. When I try to click over to them in her "Relations" tab...

...it turns out he was the peasant crunched up in the bridge by the first were-beast attack. Uhh, fuck, sorry dude. In spite of it all, she's actually in the best possible mood. Maybe it's just the bump from getting elected, but she hasn't showed up on my radar of "kobbles in shitty moods" at all. I'll admit it's a pretty low-quality radar, and I am a pretty low-quality radar operator, but like it's there, and she hasn't really pinged on it.

Checking a random engraving in her room reveals that the kobbles worship a deity of deformity, disease and death named "Tulrac Dungsgalls." That's so fucking metal

On the other side of the spectrum, our most unhappy kobble is Zil Dentedleaks, who doesn't seem to actually be having a very bad time or any serious current issues. I mean like sorry about the trauma and shit but pretty much everyone has that at this point.

Speaking of trauma, the first bird tower gets its windows, but nobody particularly wants to get this dead peachick out of it, so uhh... I guess it's staying... This isn't related but just now at 288 hours of playtime on the Steam release I have just fucking now figured out how to get my kobbles to gather fruit. People have told me "you're so smart" for a lot of my life and I've always been dumbfounded by that, because if they saw how many obvious and simple things I miss they would probably not say that. I'm not sure what causes me to make problems 1000x more complicated in my head than they actually are but I've basically always been that way, I could read before I could tie my shoes, I can grasp the theoretical stuff in algebra just fine but actual basic arithmetic like making change is completely impossible to me, and when I play puzzle games I often flounder around trying absurdly overcomplicated solutions for entirely too long because some part of me just does not believe the solution can be simple and so unconsciously overlooks the most basic and obvious options. I don't know if this is an autism thing or what - yes I am autistic if you somehow couldn't tell - but it has made my life impossibly frustrating at times. You should see me play Zachtronics games, I like them but the kind of solutions I come up with on my first pass are fucking efficiency nightmares.

I like that this gets announced via the combat log for some reason, lol. Relax lil buddy we have literally no interest in any facet of your existence. We're just building some bird windows. The bird towers all have windows now and I find myself suddenly wondering if we'd have been able to just wall them in and carve fortifications, but oh well. Glass is free, baby!!!

Steel is most assuredly not free, but we have it now, and besides some iron pieces they've grown attached to, all the kobbles get some sweet-ass upgrades. There's also been some more personnel shuffling...

Kody, Ris, and Iltos were all in terrible moods, so I figured we might as well give them positions of authority, because, well, I don't know. I don't know what my reasoning was there. Zil was also made into the first squadron leader basically just as a lark.

Huge day for it/its bitches. No gender no problem. Well actually they're all fucking miserable. Agender, aproblem. A man, a plan, a canal: Paizuri! Uhh, wait, that's not quite right. Panama. Not paizuri. But whatever. You can't win them all. Sometimes you do everything right and you just lose anyway. Sometimes the person who goes through your entire 3 year history of Instagram posts and makes you really feel actually special and not just like another little bug in the world and makes you realize you're perfectly able to thrive in a polyamorous relationship isn't actually polyamorous and just wanted to enlist someone to tank a bit of emotional abuse from their clingy obsessive self-deprecating and wildly insecure partner. But I said I wasn't going to talk about David Cage. When success is impossible, what's important is to fail in fun and interesting ways.

Continuing the trend of boring artifacts, Roron Lastmelt creates a sheep wool cap with absolutely no distinguishing features.

Again, huge day for it/its bitches.

Moods are bad enough to make me consider building a mist generator, but I'm probably not going to for two reasons. First of all, levitating water around all willy-nilly like that can do some serious damage to the framerate, and it's already starting to struggle a bit outdoors even at just 50 kobbles. Second, it just sort of feels like cheating, and I understand that this seems insane considering I literally cheated to make the magma furnaces and wells, but I am literally dialing the difficulty level to my exact desired specifications and if you can't appreciate that I don't know what to tell you. Not having to run up and down 100 z-levels to make metal stuff, good. Putting kobbles in perfect moods for basically free after 5 mins of investment, bad. That's the game at least it's the way I see it you're free to see it some other way. You don't like how I play it's only like $30 on Steam and the ASCII version is literally free. Sorry I keep getting defensive, I just really need to win the argument against the demons that detract from everything I do residing inside my own head.

While the thought occurred to just gift them to the visiting Dwarven traders, it was ultimately decided to just throw the ratfolk prisoners (and their undead dog) in the dungeon and have them stripped of all their weapons and armor. And suddenly I decide, you know what, it would be funny to force them to fight in an arena, but just as I start digging one out:

Hey remember how I said we'd be fine as long as no forgotten beasts who can fly don't show up? Ok well something really funny just happened.

It must've smelled kobble blood, because it heads straight for the exit of the caverns, where I immediately stationed both squadrons. Unfortunately, it sunk its teeth into a civilian before they were able to stop it.

Susle loses an entire fucking foot, but under the full might of our expertly-trained steel-armored kobble army, the forgotten beast Murlu is not long for this world.

As the kobbles pile on, the beast is barely able to retaliate, and Ace Steel wins the killing blow, slicing the monster's head clean from its body. While she may have started out as kind of a mean-spirited joke about pro wrestling, she has won a great victory today. And so, she deserves a slightly less stupid title, even if I'm going to keep the name.

Shislik "Ace Steel" Trimgleeful - the Beast Slayer. Hell of a first kill to put on the record

Interestingly enough, the corpse is spattered with some ratfolk blood it must have spilled on the way here - too bad the enemy of your enemy really isn't your friend. It's a catchy saying, but sometimes the enemy of your enemy is also your enemy. Sometimes trying to see things in binaries will get you into real bad fucked up situations. But we are most assuredly out of this particular real bad fucked up situation.

I think the entire military has earned themselves a little vacation, at least for a time. Even Zil's mood has improved from the victory, though Ris is still in the absolute worst possible mood - his work is just about to begin. Or... well... it should be?

Susle basically refused bedrest, and while he's still faint, he only laid down long enough to be evaluated and given a crutch, then immediately got up and went to get drunk and have a bath. He headed back to the site of the battle to pick up the sock and shoe that once belonged to his now-dismembered foot and put them away in his bedroom cabinet, in case he ever needs them again or something, and now just wanders. We'll have to check back in on him later, but for now...

We're making progress on our second tavern and the ratfolk arena. The randomly generated name The Tooth of Midnight is very fucking cool and appropriate, and in just a bit we'll be able to toss the rat bastards down that hole to duke it out with whatever other nasties we can capture. The necromancer might just need to take a magma bath, though, I don't like thinking about the kind of cascade he could cause with those powers. Everyone else, though? Well they came here looking for a fight, and damnit they're going to get one - but we're keeping their weapons and armor, lol.

But that will all happen later, because I am being asked to play FPS games with my Gang, and would never deign to Leave my Gang Hanging, even if it means having to peel myself away from the greatest simulation game of all time Dwarf Fortress for a few hours. So that's all for now, next time we'll throw some rats down a big hole.

Oh, real quick before I go, I just got psychically assaulted by the thought "PawgChamp" and I'm dumping it on you instead of making my friends have to hear it. Sorry! Bye

[russilton]

I don’t really know what people is on when they first shit talk Mercedes, Lewis, George and the team and then proceed to say “X driver to Mercedes in 2024 when Lewis leaves”! Dudes, Mercedes is incredibly selective on their drivers, You have not only to bust your ass to get a chance, but also have certain talents and qualities required. There’s a reason why they’ve had 5:6 drivers in there since their creation as a team. Now my rant is done, I’ll go lay down and drown in britcedes feels, goodbye

Yeah I have a lot of thoughts on this honestly. Some nice and some not so nice lmao but all agreeing with you.

Long ramble under the cut bc I guess I wanted to get some stuff out of my brain and I can just refer back to this later if asked again lol.

And let me say first of all that look, I get it, I would bend over backwards and lie to myself and god when it comes to my favourite drivers. Part of me deeply and truly believes George and Lewis could walk into any other car in the grid if they asked, I really do. I don’t think they’d want to, but if they did, they could. Because we are ALL delusional about our faves. Sometimes it’s what makes this site so fun, we’re all a little stupid for these dudes.

But I have a very salty view of people who people who think certain drivers could just walk into Merc without a Nico level fall out, or a Lewis level of skill in the sport*. ESPECIALLY when it comes to “problematic” drivers like Lando, Max, Carlos, etc.

* more on that one in a sec, spoiler alert: they’ve already got that, his name is George.

I think what really grinds my gears about it (and I mean the people who SERIOUSLY think their driver has a shot at Merc, not people having fun) is it comes down to three tracks of thought; people who think Lewis is genuinely about to retire, people who seem to forget George exists, and people who seem to profoundly misunderstand how Merc work as an organisation.

The first one is easy to be annoyed at and dismiss, Lewis has made it clear over and over he’s not going anywhere. I’m rankled by people who think he’s suddenly going to retire bc of his age. Alonso is still here and he’s fuelled by salt rather than skill, you think Lewis is gonna go just bc he’s 38? He’s insane, and there is nothing he is more buck wild about than F1. I also don’t like thinking about Lewis retiring. Sue me.

The second I get but hate a lot. I’m a George fan, I am biased but George is ignored by a lot of people; and the narratives about him being PR63, even by some Lewis fans, are flimsy and shitty. He’s got so much heart in his stick thin frame that it flows out his ears. You look at him, past the surface for a couple seconds, and god you can see it shine like a beacon. He doesn’t answer Lewis and himself when he’s asked for the perfect driver line up because of PR, but because he fucking adores Lewis. He adores the team. He goofs around with them, spends time with them, he’s embedded with the engineers and mechanics. He seems boring off track because he’s private, but he has been going to dinners with them and travelling with them for years, he’s boring because he’s an old soul who puts focus on his family and his mental health. He does try to be funny online and people scoff at him. He posts shirtless pictures and he’s teased for it. Like what do you want from the guy; if he’s genuine he’s cringe and if he’s reserved he’s PR boring. Fuck that, he makes Lewis smile and that’s enough for me.

But then It’s because of his less than popular off track self that people look past him on track, and you shouldn’t because this man is insane. This is what I was talking about earlier when I said Merc have got their Lewis 2.0. George is him. He drives like Lewis, he’s learning to approach the garage like Lewis, he knows how to restrain himself to the media just like Lewis. Talk less, smile more, because they want to bait you more than anyone, they’re waiting for you to slip. Don’t give it to them and then unleash a terror that leaves other drivers blinking in shock on track. Singapore this year SHOULDN’T override Austria, when George drove from the back in a garbage car to finish 4th. He copied Lewis in Spain like a text book because that’s the kind of driver George is. He knows how to manage his tires because Lewis taught him. He says over and over again how important he finds it to learn from Lewis because Lewis is his standard of greatness. Merc have trained him like this, because together he and Lewis mesh well. They both know where to put their cars to make overtakes others wouldn’t, they drive like their cars are an extension of their body. Nothing bothers me more than people who set team line ups at Merc without Lewis or George, because it often assumes Lewis would retire and Merc would just… throw George out?

George Russell is grit, spirit, positivity and determination, and I feel like the people who don’t see him as an insanely impressive generational talent like Charles or Max are choosing not to look, or were blinded by how trash Williams was. I’d you don’t judge Mick on where haas dragged him down; you can’t judge George.

(Yet another place george is like Lewis, is he let the hard times humble him and make him better. He will never, ever have to struggle the same way Lewis did and he’s been afforded privileges that Lewis won’t, he himself will tell you that. But they were both boys from families without much money who’s parents struggled to let them follow their dreams. Why do you think Lewis likes him so much? He’s said it himself, he sees the same instinct he had, in George)

And finally the third thing I’ve probably spoken on most: some people really only see Merc as a fast car and not as a team. Which I guess is fair if you aren’t a massive fan of either of the boys. You think I’m invested in how mclaren or RB or Ferrari behave as organisations outside of drama? Of course I’m not. I barely even cared about Williams outside of GR and NL. But Merc is another breed of team honestly. Not to suck corporate dick bc you know I hate it but there’s a reason they aren’t really ever involved in silly season. Why them CHOOSING to hire George was monumental. They are unlike anyone else in how they cultured George. He’s been in the Merc garage on race weekends since 2016. They watched and carefully primed him for it, they made him work so hard for every step. I’m not sure they would have ever got rid of Nico and hired Val if he hadn’t chose to leave. Do you know how resistant they were to put anyone other than George in their car? They were worrying about who would take Lewis’ seat in Sakhir if they couldn’t get him. Their reserve driver, stoff, WAS RIGHT THERE.

If George hadn’t gone above and beyond to prove himself ready for Merc, they would have stuck with Valtteri. Merc play it safe and close to the chest far more than they’ll admit, I think it’s why our number one issue with races this year has been emergency strat choices. We so often play it safe and panic when pushed. And that’s why I end up laughing at some driver move theories bc it’s like really? You think, safe playing, elitist weirdos Merc are gonna do that??

The only driver on the 22/23 grid I genuinely, truly think Merc would consider putting in their car if LH decided to split second retire, or George, idk, stabbed Toto in the leg, is Esteban Ocon or MAYBE they’d go back to VB if VaL would be willing to accept the pressure of the seat again. They like Ocon, he has history with the team, he’s got some real promise in his development, and he’s got a lil bastard in him they like their drivers to have. But that would ONLY happen if they had 0 prep time and had to pick another grid driver. Merc have their dream team right now.