#some people in a more subtle way probably

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

When I Say Run 1

Warnings: dark elements, such as chasing and kidnapping.

Note: I do appreciate all your feedback if you read this. I will hopefully have the next few part done soon. I don't intend this to be very much more than three or so parts.

Inspired by @navybrat817's Monday Thot

You've seen the man before. Often the market is overcrowded enough that you rarely see the same face twice, but you recognize him at once. His deep blue eyes are hard to forget along with the grim shadow cast over his unaltered and unamused expression. You know him because he always seems to know you. 

More than once, you caught him watching you. At first, you convinced yourself he was looking past you, or through you, as it felt. But he doesn't look away that day, you do. 

You move to the next stall to examine some figs. You realise why you really noticed him. He doesn't belong. What it seems, by his fraying ball cap and canvas jacket, is that he is hiding from someone. 

The more you think about him, the more uneasy you are. How is it that you see him every time you come to the market? You come early and he is there, late and he is there. The coincidence feels too canny to be believed. 

Still, you aren’t convinced it is more than that. You get carried away and make up ridiculous hypotheticals in your mind. There are many who come to the market every weekend. You probably run into a dozen people over and over and never even realise it. Why then, does he stick out in your mind? 

You grab a carton of cherries and a couple of peaches. You pay and take your change, brushing against someone as you pull your hand back. You feel something fall on your foot and kneel down to help gather the dropped plums. The man’s gloved fingers touch the bruises on the skin and you hold back a gasp as you look him in the face. 

“Sorry,” you utter as you hand him a dark plum, “I didn’t see you there.” 

You stand as he takes the fruit and slip your own into your cloth bag. You sling it over your shoulder as he assures you it's fine but you don’t wait for a conversation. You hadn’t even noticed him get that close. Before, he was well across the plaza with a horde between you. That he moved that fast, so seamlessly is eerie. 

You enter a tent a few stalls down and pretend to admire the patterned china of a teapot. There is a putrid taste in your mouth, the rotten flavour of paranoia on your dry tongue. You check the tag on the pot and leave without purchase. 

You look around as you emerge back into the late morning sun, the heat of the crowd adding to the sheen of sweat over your brow. You clear your throat as you don’t see the man and keep your head down as you resign yourself to your light haul. You will feel better once you got home. 

You weave through the swarm to the edge of the market and dip down the side street as the hum of voices fades behind you. Your apartment is a few blocks down, nestled above a bookstore cafe. It's s humble and affordable, but you can’t complain. 

You pull out your change purse as you near the shop but as you reach the front door, it swings open before you can reach for it. It’s him. Again. The leather gloves, the vibrant irises, the dark shanks of hair that frame his squared jaw. He is striking in more ways than one. 

You thank him as he holds the door and enter the small shop. You’re nervous. You can get your coffee and wait him out. You don’t want to lead him back to your apartment just above. Or you could lead him on a chase through the city until you lose him and circle back. Your mind races as you try to convince yourself you’re overreacting but you just can’t. 

You order your cinnamon blend but the man once more curtails you. He hold a bill out to the cashier and grits for her to keep the change. 

“Sir, you don’t have to--” 

“I’d like to buy you a coffee,” he insists as he waves the bill at the cashier, “want something sweet to go with it?” 

His accent is subtle. He doesn’t speak your language naturally but he does it well. You shake your head and step away from the till. He follows you to the corner where you await your order. 

“You can have the coffee,” you say, “I’m not interested.” 

“Why not?” he asks. His bluntness makes you squirm. 

“I have a boyfriend,” you lie as you rub your neck, “here--” 

You unclasped your coin purse and he stops you, squeezing your hand until the clasp clicks shut. “No, you don’t,” he says, “it’s my treat.” 

“I don’t want it,” you recoil from him and repeat, “I’m not interested.” 

You make to brush by him and he catches your arm, “why not?” 

“Because,” you jerk away from him, “why are you following me?” 

“Following you?” he scoffs, “you feel special, don’t you?” 

“No, I told you, I have a boyfriend.” 

“You know, when you lie,” he says, “I can see it…” he hovers his finger along your throat, “right there. Your pulse picks up.” 

You push his hand away and sidle past him. You’re shaking as you hurry to the door and look back. He watches you but stays where he is. Your order is called and he turns to grab it. You leave under the chime of the door and peer up and down the street. 

You go to the left, heading for the market to hide among the sea of people. It will give you time to figure out what to do next. The station is on the other side of the plaza, you could probably get there without much trouble. That will scare him away. 

Your footsteps echo around you like a movie scene. You grip your bag on your shoulder and stop short as a figure appears from the alleyway. You can hear the market just ahead of you, just one corner away. 

“You forgot your coffee,” the man says as he blocks your path, “don’t you know that it’s rude to refuse a gift?” 

You swallow and back away, speechless. You glanc around. How did he move so fast? You spin on your heel and walk in the other direction. You listen for him behind you but when you dare to peek over your shoulder, he is gone. 

You quiver and hook around the next corner, hoping to loop to the west entrance of the market. He’s there too. He tilts his head as he grins and tosses the coffee so it spills down the brick wall. You retreat away from the splash and blink at him dumbly. The street is mostly empty but you hear someone else. 

You spin back and fight not to break into a sprint. That time, you don’t look back. You head back along the same way you came but turn down another street before you get to the alley. A metal rattle sounds from overhead as a blur drops down in front you from the rickety fire escape above. The man fixes his hat and chuckles. 

“I think you should start running,” he taunts. 

You nearly trip over your heels as you rear back. Fear bubbles in your chest and you fall into a run, spurred by his ominous timbre. The bag bounces against your side as you squeeze your change purse in your other hand, feet hitting the old brick road heavy and hard. You stumble as you glance back but find no pursuit. 

You slow as your chest burns and stop to catch your breath. It take a moment to get your bearings. You bend over and gulp. You straighten up and face the street behind you, searching for the man in the grey jacket. There is only a couple holding hands and a group of young boys giggling as they kick around a beaten football. 

You look up along the rooves of the buildings and the balconies. You don’t see anything. You shake your head and puff. Fucking creep. Probably just wanted to scare you. 

You don’t go back to your apartment right away. You’re too agitated for that. You can’t help but look around every few steps and peek down every alley and street before you pass. It’s a good forty minutes before you realise you're lost. You never come to this part of town. 

You swear under your breath and cringe. You should have gone to the precinct like you planned. You were so panicked you didn’t think. You were more focused on getting away than getting safe. 

You drop your change purse into your jumbled bag of cherries and peaches. You reach into your pocket and your heart drops. You search both pockets. Your phone must have fallen out when you were running. 

You resign yourself to a listless trail back home through the urban maze. You could figure it out, there has to be a map around here somewhere. You are sure you just passed one a moment ago.  

You start down the street and mourn the loss of your phone. That would take a while to replace with your lousy wages. Fuck. Why didn’t you buy the warranty? 

The roar of a motorcycle cuts through the din of the city streets and echoes all around you. You ignore it and follow the sidewalk as you squint at the street signs above. You try to find something familiar, something to find your way. 

Suddenly you're taken off your feet, a crushing grip knots the back of your shirt as you're hurtled forward. You scream as the brickwork hazes beneath you and suddenly the engine revs and you’re turned sharply with its motion. You float just above the ground, dangling from your shirt. 

You looked up in confusion, the strength of the man holding you with one arm sends ice through your veins. The twinkling eyes, the angle of his jaw, and the slight curve of his lips makes you wince. He thrusts you closer and bends you over the front of the motorcycle so that you're trapped between him and the tank. 

“Better tuck those feet in,” he warns as you're folded over the metal on your stomach, “I told you to run.” 

He veers suddenly and the momentum pushes you against him as you clung to the bike, wind whipping your face as it hovers before the dingy pipes of the bike. It feels as if you’ll fly off at any second. You reach to grasp onto the man's jacket as you clench every muscle of your body to keep from slipping. 

The engine rips through the air as your head spins. You have a choice; fall off and die or hang on and live. 

[marasmadness]

hii could you possibly do a jj x emily x reader smut fic where they are protective over her and maybe someone else flirts with her idk 🫶

What We Deserve || J.J x E.P x reader

a/n: changed it slightly bc I kept getting stuck and scrapped this like three times but hope you guys like it :)

CW: dark!jemily x sunshine reader, guns, violence, Emily and JJ turning to revenge, slightest past Emily angst, stalking and sexual harassment (a man who later becomes irrelevant), threesome, age gap, smut, mild gunplay, strap-on sex, oral sex, face-sitting, daddy kink (one time), light choking, praise (she holds your hand and talks you through it🥰)

“I can stay tonight,” you offered up easily, trying to hide the fact that you were incredibly eager at the possibility of not returning home tonight.

Emily looked up from her desk, baffled by why you would ask to spend the night working, and scrutinized your body language with her eyes. This was something Garcia had warned you about when she recommended you for the job position Emily and JJ were trying to fill. They were excellent profilers, or at least formerly, but their old habits never left them.

After the two women turned to a more avenging and under-the-table profession, they turned to Garcia for her usual tech intel, but as she remained a current government employee, she was unable to give them her usual assistance. Instead, she recommended you, “her protégé,” she claimed.

You had offered up your nights to the older woman four times in the last two weeks, which wouldn’t be unusual for a demanding corporate job, but this wasn’t that. The couple worked from their grand home with three offices to exceed all their work needs. You assisted them on the tech side of things and were an expert at tracking people down. In this case, it was usually whatever unpunished psychopath or scumbag they were currently hunting.

“Why don’t you want to ever go home?” Emily questioned, resting the end of her pen on her lip. Her question was in no way rude, despite her consistently assertive tone. She just wanted to know why anyone would rather spend their nights working at a new job with few people to talk to and staring at a mini computer screen than return to a cozy apartment.

“No, it’s not that. I’m just willing to help out here,” you replied, rubbing your knuckles against the fabric of your pencil skirt.

JJ, who was shuffling through a paper trail you just printed out, profiled you cockily without even looking up. “ Lying? Didn’t think you had it in you sunshine,” the blonde quipped.

The "Sunshine" nickname and “Learn that from Garcia?” Jokes have been nonstop since you started. You weren’t sure how much of your demeanor you actually picked up from spending plenty of time with Penelope or if it just stemmed from the fact that you were generally quieter and gentler than the two women who kept guns tucked underneath their blazers at all times.

Emily flicked JJ’s shoulder as she slid behind JJ’s chair to reach a final cabinet, a subtle way of telling her to cut it out, but she couldn’t help the small smirk that crossed her face. She tipped her head toward you, pointing across the hall. “Go grab your work and bring it back here. Shut the lights off on your way back too.”

You quickly pivoted around, treading to the conference room to grab a folder and your laptop. For two vigilantes, they were incredibly organized. You assumed that’s what made them so good, and their FBI experience probably helped. You returned to work in their office, working through the list of wanted profiles and trails for the two women. At some point, Emily appeared behind you, watching as your fingers flew across the keyboard. You restrained your instinct to flinch as her hands grasped your shoulders.

After two hours, the glare of your laptop screen blurred before your eyes. Entirely zoned out, you jumped slightly when Emily’s hands found your shoulders, her breath rushing across your ear. “Go home, rest; it’s late,” the gravelly sound of her voice sounded from just above your shoulder.

“You’re still here working though,” you protested out, pointing out how her and JJ were still camped out at their desks with no intent of leaving anytime soon.

She raised her eyebrow, catching you off guard when she spun your chair around, pressing her knee into the seat beside your thigh. “That was an order. You’re no help if you come back tomorrow sleep-deprived. JJ and I have been on this schedule for years. We’ll sleep when we retire.”

You listened, gathering up your stuff. Your keys jangled against your side as you stopped to linger in the doorway before making your way out to your car.

The streets were pitch black and mostly empty as you drove to the low thrum of the radio. Your fingers bounced anxiously on the steering wheel while pulling into the parking lot beneath your apartment complex. It was late; nobody would still be out and about, and your trip up to the 3rd floor would be uninterrupted. You reassured yourself. You were right to some extent. The stairwells were empty and a little eerie.

Your hand closed around your doorknob when the reason you were reluctant to return home called out, making you flinch in the dark. “Late night?”

“Mhm,” you replied dismissively while hurriedly fumbling for your keys. You could see his silhouette in his shadow as he stepped out of his apartment and turned down the hall toward yours.

“What kept you out late?”

“Just work.” You didn’t look up, pushing your door open roughly. Slipping inside, you were a second too slow. ”Good night, Ro,” you said sternly, attempting to close the door as he appeared in your doorway. Your heart started thumping in your chest as his palm slapped against the already splintering door.

“Hey, wait up, what’s the rush?” He grinned, holding his weight against the door to keep it open. You froze, only able to keep the door at the crack it was, and no further. Too focused on your sweaty hands gripping the door, you missed the soft clicking pair of footsteps until it was too late.

Two strong hands engulfed your body, one sliding around your waist and pulling you against a warm torso, and the other expertly clamping down on your mouth. Your eyes darted back and forth, catching a whirl of raven hair between you and the door. Without your half of the balancing act, the door slammed up against the wall, leaving Ro and the stranger in your apartment facing off.

“May I help you sweetheart?” A sickly sweet and familiar voice rang out, throwing your stalkerish neighbor for a loop. Emily.

You were dragged backward slightly, out of view, forcefully but not violently. A blond wave of hair fell over your shoulder, and vanilla perfume became mixed in with your heavy breaths. Emily, and JJ.

Ro suddenly stepped back into the hallway. ”Who the hell are you? Wait, you were on the news. You were in the FBI.”

“Catching on so quickly,” Emily taunted while revealing her gun from her side, raising it casually. “Step inside, close the door behind you, scream and you won’t make it back out alive,” she instructed, waving the barrel of the gun as she spoke.

He obeyed, if only out of obvious terror. JJ stepped out of the shadows with you in her grasp. Out of angry instinct, he lurched toward you. “Crazy bitch.”

JJ defensively tightened her bicep around your body, moving you behind her. She and Emily moved as one fluid, deadly unit. Sharp, efficiently placed pressure on Ro’s shoulders from Emily made him drop to the floor like a fly, his knees cracking against the floor. The point of JJ’s boot dug into the flesh of his leg, threateningly close to his crotch.

Emily was back to looming over him, hands steady as she clicked the gun against his temple. ”Here’s how this is going to work. We managed to find video footage of you breaking into this apartment, stalking, and harassing, and that’s just the surface—things that we found in seconds. If, and that’s a questionable if you leave here alive, so will we, because if you turn us in, we turn you in, and with all the cameras disabled in this apartment, who are the courts more likely to believe former FBI agents who left peacefully and with high credibility, or you?” Silence. “That’s what I thought. You’ll also be ending your lease within the next 24 hours, and I highly suggest your next place be at least 25 miles from this apartment. Last but not least, apologize.”

You saw him wince at the pressure from the weapon or Emily’s voice as he looked up at you from the ground.

“ I-, I’m sorry! Ah!” He yelled out as Emily knicked the side of his head.

“Do fucking better, and I’m not one to dish out third chances, so make it good.”

You nearly blacked out at the scene unfolding in front of you. His apology played like a distant voiceover in your head; JJ’s hands felt hot against your skin; and you didn’t even start to leave this dazed state until Emily was forcefully leading your now-former neighbor out of your apartment.

Emily guided you toward the back of your apartment while JJ locked it up, not before surveying the hallway twice.

Flicking on a dim light, Emily braced herself against the doorframe as you turned around to face her. “So, “I can totally work late,” was actually Mr. insecure fucking stalker?” She prodded, adding a slight imitation of your voice into her tone.

“He wasn’t a stalker; he was just gross and pushy. He asked me out when he first moved in; I said no, and he never really let it go,” you explained in an attempt to descalate.

Emily scoffed, removing her blazer as she invited herself to sit down on your bed with her hands pressed into her thighs. “Honey, he intercepted you every time you came home, couldn’t take no for an answer, and knew your schedule by heart. Why didn’t you just tell JJ or me? We could’ve handled it.”

You circled around the room, still attempting to process what had happened. “Okay, and by handled, do you mean go fucking insane?” You asked in a raised whisper, tangling your almost-twitching fingers in your hair. “You cannot just pull a gun out from underneath your blazer and hold it to someone’s head while your wife threatens them with credentials she no longer even has!”

Emily stood up quickly, untucking her blouse from her pants with her sharp movements. “And he can’t just monitor your life and push his way into your apartment!” She shot back with fire in her tone. You seemed to have hit a nerve. Your best guess was that wherever this anger was coming from, it also had to do with whatever reason she left the BAU for, something she had yet to reveal to you. “He had no right, and you’re not responsible for his actions. Look at me,” she commanded, tipping your chin toward her gaze with two fingers. “Even if you said yes, he would still behave as he always has, as a creeping coward. I spent my whole career chasing carbon copies of men like him. Nothing will change their sense of entitlement from believing they deserve women who they could never appreciate or understand.” Finishing, her chest rose up and down with emotion as you remained still in her grip.

“Is that why you quit?” You asked, slightly steering the conversation back toward her. “Because of people getting what they didn’t understand or deserve?”

“Yes, I was tired of having to put people I cared about or wanted to care about,” she added, refocusing on you, “in danger and not being able to be the one who served repercussions.”

Feelings you had pushed down since day 1 rose up in your throat. “And have you ever contemplated what you deserve?” you asked as a more relaxed smile curled on her lips.

She nodded as her eyes flickered down your skin. Her forehead glistened with unexpired anger and effort as she swiped a piece of damp hair from it.

“And what’s that?” you asked. Moving your hands backwards, they landed on the dresser, feeling as if the space between you and Emily was growing closer and closer, more intoxicatingly suffocating.

“You.” JJ’s smooth and confident voice filled in the blank for Emily, and you felt your entire body flush with warmth. She had been walking by the door with silent steps and filled in the rest with context. While her calm and mildly seductive reaction to the scene surprised you, it only made Emily grin, curling her fingers to invite the blonde into the room as she shut the door behind her. Emily had seen the way her wife’s gaze soaked in your body the first day you stepped in the door with a bright smile, making her hungrily sink her teeth into her lip. Emily admittedly had quite a similar reaction.

Distracted by JJ’s appearance, you hadn’t noticed Emily’s shift until you felt her body press up behind you and her lips dance across your neck. Removing her gun from her side, you expected her to put it on the nightstand beside you, so you were taken aback when she pressed the edge up against your ribs, leaving you to feel the cool metal through the thin material of your shirt. All the air left your lungs as she slowly dragged it up your skin, her deep red-painted nails leaving a trail of scratches in their wake. The barrel of the gun followed the curve of your chin until she used to tip to guide your gaze up to hers. Trust me, at least for tonight.” She placed the gun on your nightstand with dangerous amusement flashing across her eyes.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she pulled you between her legs, unbuttoning your shirt with nimble fingers until it slipped off your shoulders. Slipping her hands beneath the hem of your skirt, her fingers grazed against the skin of your lower belly, the cold metal of her rings making you tense.

She slowly and seductively removed the rest of your clothes, taking her sweet time to soak in every inch of your body. You followed her lead as she charmingly held out her hand to help you climb up and kneel on the mattress. She followed, settling at the top of the bed. “Come up here; let me taste you.” She rapped your thighs until you were straddled over her body. Her suave confidence and eagerness to aid in your pleasure were new to you and created a confusing knot of feelings in your stomach. Your knuckles turned white with your grip on the headboard, holding yourself up delicately.

Emily wet her lips, curving them into a smile. “Sit means actually sit, love.” Her hands gripped the back of your legs, dragging your throbbing cunt onto her mouth. A satisfied groan left her lips, vibrating through you.

Behind you, JJ’s nonchalance surprised you. In every other environment, she was incredibly overprotective. In this case, both the people she was ever overprotective of were right in front of her, so she was happy to pour a drink, sit back and watch… or at least for a moment.

Through your muffled thoughts brought on by Emily’s lips wrapping around your clit and her hands kneading at the flesh of your thighs, you heard JJ’s glass clink on the table before her hands appeared on your body. You felt the mattress sink beneath you as she climbed up on the bed behind you, cupping your breasts in her hands as her lips trailed along your neck. “If I’m gonna let you fuck my wife, I think it’s only appropriate that I get something as well, don’t you, doll?” She murmured, her breath leaving a trail of warmth along your skin, until she found your mouth, sinking her teeth into your bottom lip. A soft whine escaped as she pulled away, taking her touch with her, and sat down next to you.

Your knuckles grew white against the headboard as Emily’s tongue curled against the walls of your tongue, drawing you closer and closer to a shattering orgasm. JJ, next to you was only contributing to your arousal as she undressed herself and raked her long, blond hair out of her face with a ravenous look. Your body tensed on quivering thighs resting on either side of Emily’s head as she pulled your cunt down in her mouth, flattening her tongue against your sensitive nerve. A stew of moans and expletives fell from your lips as you coated her tongue, and she looked up with a slick, lopped grin as if she had just won a trophy.

Without more than half a breath, she was up and directing you between JJ’s legs, driven by lust-induced vigor. “Eat her out,” she commanded with a soft air of confidence.

Focused on pleasuring JJ, you only caught a blur of Emily in your peripheral vision, slipping out of black work pants and letting her belt hit the ground. Arched between JJ’s legs, she secured her feet over your shoulders, trapping your head between toned thighs as you delved into her cunt. The blonde’s head sank back with a guttural moan as you circled and sucked at her clit.

You stuttered as Emily caught you off guard, dragging her fingers down your spine until she squeezed your ass. JJ’s hands found their way into your hair, guiding your back down between her legs with a sickly soft tone, but you didn’t miss the smirk shot at Emily over her head. “Focus baby, okay? Don’t worry about her.”

You listened, far into the hazy trance of the women surrounding you. As your tongue roamed JJ’s pussy you could feel Emily’s grasp on your hips, positioning them to her likely, and then what came as a startle from your lack of awareness was the silicon texture of her thick strap gently teasing your entrance as you brought her wife closer and closer to an orgasm.

She pistoned the faux-cock inside of you, and you choked out a gasp that made JJ’s hips stutter as she arched her back off the mattress. “Fuck, almost there, doll, let me come on your tongue.” Her words slowly morphed into pants as she reached her climax, with a heaving chest and a tight grip on your hair. Her legs relaxed on your shoulder as Emily continued thrusting into you, the slight ridges of her strap against your walls leaving you gripping at JJ with desperation. JJ found your hands. Running her thumbs across your knuckles with soft praise. “Come for daddy, baby,” she mumbled into her forward before leaning up into Emily’s brief breathless kiss. Your three sheening bodies were intertwined in various ways. The room was filled with obscene noises and sounds from the lingering exhaustion of pleasure.

With close attention, JJ caught on when you were close, using two fingers to drag your chin upwards, forcing you to look her in the eye as your juices coated Emily’s cock. As you came, Emily’s hand wrapped lightly around your throat, adding an extra starry haze to your orgasm. You collapsed in a euphoric state on JJ’s lap. She chuckled at your fucked-out state, running her hands through your hair. Emily wore a similar smile of satisfaction as she left a trail of light kisses down the back of your legs. She was the one to get up and go to the bathroom, preparing to help the three of you clean up and collapse back onto your queen-sized bed in a dreamlike sleep.

[meanbossart]

Just thinking thoughts about Orin and Drow lore, and idk if this has been asked already, but

If Orin had just disappeared for like a year, not even Sceleritas could find her, with how obsessive pre-tadpole Drow was how would he handle that? Aside from being prideful and murdery, I don’t remember in the pre-tadpole Drow lore about any instance (after he made it to the temple) of him expressing anything else. Did the two ever have a wholesome moment?

Hmmmm not wholesome, no. I'm sorry to disappoint people who might wanted to see a more explicitly vulnerable side to both of them at that stage in their lives, but that's just not... How I envision things. I don't think anyone born into the temple would have had much room to express themselves in the way average people do.

What they did have was an undeniable connection and mutual understanding. This lasted for about 7 years, so between ages 18-25 for DU drow. (Canonically he's currently 28, give or take). I think that, sometimes, they also silently understood among themselves that things weren't always fair or good.

This might sound like a whole load of nothing to some people, but based on the culture within the cult, Orin's story, and the behavior of everyone involved in it, it seems huge to me that two people who were essentially groomed to be the embodiment of murder would harbor any kind of care for one another, even if it was subtle. The fact that they could share a bed, talk shit about Sarevok, and seamlessly work together and share in the glory of their deeds as equals is what intimacy looked like for them - before DU drow's ego (and the very need of a more explicitly intimate connection with someone, to be fair) got to his head.

They killed together, they rolled around in blood together, they bickered and fought and one time Orin stabbed him in the gut and DU drow punched her jaw out of it's socket. Then they flopped down on the ground and cackled about it while Sceleritas rushed in to stop the bleeding. Is that wholesome? I think for deified bhaalspawn who know nothing but that life it's the closest it gets.

There had to have been quiet moments I'm sure. Like Orin waiting around while DU drow got ready to go somewhere, him adjusting her headpiece, Orin slicing her brother's long hair off when he first arrived and looked like some sort of sinewy wood's creature. At night, they probably laid in bed in silence and sometimes stared at each other until either fell asleep.

I am very interested in not inventing an obscured, soft side to Orin that we didn't get to see, you know? While she wasn't always the level of manic we see in-game, she was completely unfit to function normally due to her upbringing, and this reflects in her relationships. DU drow is also undeniably emotionally stunted, just in a slightly different way.

I got off rambling to no one's surprise LOL but to answer the first part of your question - I don't think he would have been quite as dramatic about Orin just up and vanishing, as there's no explicit suggestion of death in that. He would have been insufferable to be around for a while, but in that scenario I could see his duties keeping him busy.

Not to mention that, while through death, she would be leaving him unwillingly - disappearing with no trace implies the uncomfortable possibility that she truly, honestly, just didn't want to be around him. That allows room for contempt and bitterness to fester until you wrongly convince yourself there was never any love there at all, even if just to soothe your own conscience.

He would have just become a much, much worse person that way in the sense that he would have nothing to focus on besides for his lord's will - as horrific as his attitude towards Orin was, it is very much a human feature to desperately cling to connection. With Orin around, he had a little bit of fucked up tenderness and love in him - it was a personal desire completely separate from his "job", a vestige of free-will. Without her, he just has Bhaal and whatever Bhaal wants.

Orin has always unwittingly anchored him, and then, later freed him. And he never ever deserved any of it.

🤷

[mild-and-hammered]

When I asked for prompts @unshatters-your-teacup blessed me with

"Teeny tiny superbat prompts 👀 what about them hanging out on a rooftop mid-patrol?"

and

"Or maybe Clark interviewing Batman? (writers choice if they know each other’s identities)"

So here we go!

The Rooftop

“We can stop here,” Kal El said, floating down beside Bruce, where he crouched beside a gargoyle. “It’s been slow tonight.”

“Mmh,” Bruce grunted. He needed a rest,he knew, recently bruised ribs presenting their bill. He knew Superman knew it too. 

Kal El –Clark– sat on the edge, feet dangling off the side of the building in his bright red boots. He kicked them a little, like a little kid. Bruce scowled at the way it made him want to smile, and settled from his crouch into a seated pose that mirrored Clark’s. He did not kick his legs. 

Gotham often ranked among the top five, regularly top three, ugliest cities in the United States. Bruce had never thought so, but then, most people didn’t get to see it from the vantage point that he did. He wondered what Clark thought of it, comparing it to the mirrored glass and sparkle of Metropolis. Was he disgusted by the fetid Finger River to the north? Could he smell it from here? In the middle of summer Bruce could sometimes. That insalubrious bit of Old Gotham generally known as the Cauldron was certainly not the prettiest part of the city, but Bruce stared to the southeast, in the direction of the Belfry and some of Gotham’s better kept older buildings. Through the fine, misting rain, everything looked like a watercolor done in deep purples and navy shadows, here and there the amber of a street light flickered.

“It’s gorgeous,” Superman said, smiling softly. 

Bruce studied him, then decided he was indeed being sincere. He reached into his utility belt and found the lollipops he usually kept for frightened kids. He handed one to Clark, who grinned and unwrapped it. 

“You don’t even need to eat,” Bruce snarked, but there was no edge to it. 

“I don’t need to read books, go for walks, or visit friends either,” Clark said. He leaned back bracing himself on his arms. One red-gloved hand brushed against Bruce’s fingertips. Clark didn’t seem to notice. 

“I suppose you think that’s what you’re doing now? Visiting a friend?”

Clark grinned again, teasingly, and Bruce was glad of the cowl to hide his expression. 

“Aren’t I?”

“You’re certainly visiting.”

“You love it,” Clark said. 

Bruce stared at him, feeling the solar-flare warmth of him even through both of their gloves, burning away just at his fingertips. The bat signal lit the sky, briefly framing Clark’s profile in a halo. 

“I do,” he said, shooting a grappling hook at the next building over. 

-----------------------------

The Interview

Bruce had agreed to be interviewed as Batman for one reason only. It was a stupid reason, and when all of his various kids had expressed utter disbelief that he was being interviewed, he’d dodged their questions neatly, passing it off vaguely as a favor.

It wasn’t a favor.

Bruce was, well, he was just a little bit jealous maybe. The thing was, he and Superman had gotten close lately. Really close, really. He was probably one of Bruce’s closest friends, even if they didn’t know each other’s identities yet. Admittedly, Bruce’s other closest friends were Ollie and Dinah, Diana, and Harvey whenever he wasn’t trying to beat the shit out of Bruce.

He didn’t feel the same about Ollie and Dinah as he did about Kal El, though. Kal made his stomach swoop like he’d mistimed a grapple. And Kal spent a lot of time rescuing Lois Lane. Lois was smart, beautiful, and accomplished, Bruce had no issue with her as a person, he just wanted to know. 

So when she’d asked if the Daily Planet could get the inside scoop when Batman had saved a gala, he’d agreed. The interview could go both ways, perhaps. Although, he’d be much more subtle about inquiring into her dating life, of course. All things considered, he was ready for Lois Lane to meet him in Grant Park that evening. He was not prepared for Clark Kent, who was sitting on a bench hunched over a tiny notebook. Bruce only recognized the man from the blurry photo they put next to the byline in the Planet. 

“Oh!” The man said, standing up and promptly dropping the notebook, then, when he bent to pick up the notebook, the pen he’d stuck in his shirt pocket fell to the ground. He nearly brained himself on the underside of the bench scrabbling to pick it up. Behind the cowl, Bruce rolled his eyes. He was running on eight hours of sleep in the past three or four days, and the last thing he wanted was to sit through a half hour interview with the Daily Planet’s village idiot.

A voice in the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like Alfred reminded him that he got rather mean when he was tired. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Kent said, at last standing and shifting pen and notebook to his left hand so he could  offer his right to shake. Bruce did not shake his hand. 

“I was expecting Miss Lane,” he said simply, letting his voice modulator turn it into a growl. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, she was really excited that the Planet got the exclusive with you, but she’s been scheduled for an interview with the mayor and–” Bruce waved a hand, dismissing the issue. 

“Go on,” he said. “Ask questions.”

“Why did you decide to fight crime?”

Bruce answered a few standard, rather banal questions, eyes flicking mostly around the park to make sure they weren’t being followed or otherwise hunted. He was secretly hoping to see the Bat Signal so he could have an excuse to leave without insulting the reporter who was, likely, a perfectly nice man. He just couldn’t tell Bruce what he wanted to know…probably.

“You work closely with Miss Lane?” Bruce asked, next time Kent was scribbling something. He finally really looked at the man, the line of his nose, the curve of his chin…

“Oh, yeah, we share a desk actually, Lois is great.”

“Must get annoying, all the flowers Superman gets her probably take up a lot of desk space.” It was not Bruce’s most subtle play. It was, in fact, a disastrously obvious one, but hopefully he could play it off as him being interested in Miss Lane, as opposed to Superman. Considering that half the tabloids in Gotham thought Batman was dating Bruce Wayne, he could deal with the rumor mill spinning that Batman had a crush on a reporter. 

Kent was blinking at him, full lips parted, dark brow furrowed. He was remarkably pretty, in a way that niggled at Bruce’s mind. He’d seen the man before, but sleep deprivation and deja vu were mixing in an odd way. 

“You mean the daisies she got for her birthday? How did you– world’s greatest detective, of course, but um, I think those were from her dad, she didn’t like them all that much.”

“Hmm,” Bruce said, keeping his face carefully neutral. At least Superman wasn’t dropping roses off for her every day or anything. 

“Speaking of Superman, do you like him?”

“What?” Bruce worked hard to keep the shock from his voice.

“Oh, I mean working with him, you’re both Justice League members, and all that. Are you two friends or just colleagues?”

Ah, of course Metropolis’ newspaper actually wanted to interview Batman about their local golden boy. He wasn’t particularly upset about it. 

“Superman is one of my closest friends,” he said simply, trying not to panic at being so plain about it. 

“That’s very high praise,” Kent said. Was he blushing? Why was he blushing?

“Not exactly, I have very few,” Bruce said, feeling the poison of sleep deprivation sinking hooks further into his brain. The stupid reporter was cute when he blushed. 

“However,” Bruce continued, realizing how his statement could be construed. “Kal El is someone I trust completely to have my back. He’s an asset to the Justice League, and those of us that get a chance to know him are truly lucky.”

“Wow,” Clark breathed, scribbling. “What about you Mister, uh, Batman, who knows you?” 

Bruce froze at the question and blue eyes widened behind thick-framed glasses.

“Oh no, I meant uh, when you aren’t in the cape…readers want to know…there’s rumors you’re dating Brucie Wayne.”

“Mister Wayne is an acquaintance,” Bruce said, simply. Of course, the gossip mill did love to turn. 

“No comment, then,” Kent said wryly. “Understood. Between the two of us, I think you could do better.”

“Do you?” 

“W-well,” Kent stuttered. “All I mean is that you deserve someone who…understands the burden, I think. Of the cape.”

“And what do you know of the ‘burden of the cape’,” Bruce said, smirking slightly. 

“Nothing, obviously, it was just a silly thought.” Kent’s face was so red, scarlet even in the dim light as the sun set and lamps flickered on in the park. Scarlet like a cape… The man bit his lip and the dimple on his chin…

“Kal?” Bruce whispered.

Mortification, then guilt flickered across Kent’s face. Then he sighed, resignation tipping his broad shoulders downward. He pulled off the glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

“I guess I should know better than to try and fool you, B,” he said. “Sorry for the–” he waved a hand at himself, the notebook, the park in general. “Everything. Lois really is busy, though, and the Planet still wanted the interview.”

“You have a day job at the Daily Planet?” Bruce asked. 

“Yes,” Kal said, then, for the second time that night, he stuck out his hand to shake. “Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter from Kansas, at your service.”

“Batman, bad mannered protector of Gotham,” Bruce said, shaking his hand. Kal– Clark– laughed. 

“Why ask about Bruce?” Bruce asked. He wasn’t opposed to Kal knowing, certainly not now that Bruce had uncovered his secret, but he wanted to know if he had let something slip. 

“Oh,” Kal said, blushing. He looked more human, much more like a Clark-from-Kansas when he did that, as opposed to Kal El-from-Krypton. “It’s very silly, please don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell?”

“I wanted to know if you were seeing someone,” Kal said. “I don’t know, I guess I just wondered if…”

“Mmh,” Bruce grunted as Kal trailed off miserably. “I agreed to the interview to find out if you were dating Lois Lane.”

“What?” Kal’s head came up, eyes confused. “Why–oh, I guess my dating life could be a liability for the league. Especially since Lois gets kidnapped so much now, when we’re just friends.”

“Just friends?”

“Yeah.”

Bruce hesitated a long while. “I was not considering the league in my inquiries,” he said at last. 

“No?”

“No. Do you really think I could do better than Bruce Wayne?”

“Um, I don’t know if better was actually fair of me to say–”

“What about you, do you think you could do better than Bruce Wayne?”

Kal, Clark, gaped at Bruce. “I’d never really–”

Bruce pulled off the cowl. 

[keicordelle]

Yuki and Performativity: the autistic mask

(aka the analysis I've been trying to figure out how to format for like 3 weeks)

Okay, so now that Yuki's autism has been ~established~ (here, but I'm just going to pretend everyone was following along), I'm really really interested in the subtle ways that that presents itself in his characterization.

Because Re:member does a really great job of making it obvious, because it's written in Yuki's perspective (at least in vol 2) and so heavily flavored with his own though process. But It's equally present in his characterization in the anime (and I assume the game, but I'm not caught up so we're just going based on the anime here). And a lot of that time, that characterization is so delightfully subtle that I didn't even pick up on it the first time through. But now I'm obsessed and I'm Noticing Things and y'all must suffer with me. so.

I think it's fair to say that Yuki's blunt and cold nature are features of his autism. Also probably the fact that he is extremely awkward when it comes to emotions and, notably for this discussion, expressing them. (oh to be a fire extinguisher)

But he's also really good at acting. And I'm making some assumptions here based on my own experiences, but I figure this comes in large part from the amount of effort he puts into trying to read others. He picks apart other people's interactions to figure out why they're reacting certain ways because he doesn't Get It.

And so he uses that in his every day life. Like, you wouldn't really figure someone so extremely autistic and introverted would make for a very good idol, what with the whole "having to interact with people all day every day" thing -- and he didn't want to be an idol! He just wanted to make his music and have people appreciate it! In fact, he looked down on idols at first, which probably had more to do with him undervaluing their artistic integrity (or at least I imagine that's how he would frame it), but he is very explicit about how he doesn't like how people fawn over him (read: idols) because of their looks rather than on the merits of the music.

Anyway. One of the key features of his characterization is that he's always acting. Always. There are a handful of moments we see him in the anime where he's not playing a role, even and particularly when he's off stage.

I've talked before (here) about Re:vale's introduction and how from the very first moment we see them, they're On. Not just in their initial prank on i7 where they pretend to be serious and scary, but also in the bubbly happy personas they present afterwards. They drop one mask for another, and at no point are they ever not wearing their idol stage personas. This is relevant to i7 for reasons but for this discussion rant it's relevant because this is how Yuki engages with the world. There are only a handful of times where we ever see him truly drop his guard -- usually only when he's alone with Momo, and occasionally around Yamato, which will be relevant in a bit. (And one other very notable time towards the end of season 3, but we'll get there.)

Anyway. He's only ever comfortable when he's playing a role. Which is never explicitly established, and I love it all the more for that, because they're totally content to just let you pick up on that without shoving it in your face. But they introduce it in ways that are subtler than I even thought at first. Because at first I was like, "okay, well he's got his stage ikemen persona, and he's got his sillier tsukkomi routine, and he's got his darker prankster who genuinely seems to be enjoying your discomfort persona (which is probably the one among them that's closest to his reality, because he really does seem to enjoy teasing and making people uncomfortable even when he's not On)

But literally any time he has to engage with someone, he falls back on a performance. A myriad of them, in as many different faces as he needs. And even when he tries to be genuine, he'll fall back on that performative role as soon as someone offers him an out. He will become whatever other people need or want him to be, so long as it doesn't involve being himself.

We see this particularly clearly while Yamato's struggling with his role in Mission and Yuki comes to him in a genuine effort to help

You can see the transformation in Yuki's face : Yamato has offered him a role, and he is now going to take that and run with it.

He steps into that role as easily as that, and from there on out, everything he says, while still true to his own beliefs, is very heavily shaded by his new performance as a criminal psychologist. It makes it easier for him to express himself, because he's no longer Yukito Orikasa, fumbling his way through emotions that he's been told time and again that he doesn't express properly, he's Yuki, criminal psychologist, and that's something he can figure out how to be.

You can even see it in his gestures; from then on, they get extremely dramatic, very much what you'd expect in a stage play (moreso even than in a movie). Which works well considering this is an anime and dramatic gestures suit the medium, and that's probably part of why I didn't really notice that at first. Even his tone becomes more dramatic. You can hear it flowing up and down the scale of emotion, rather than his usual low, teasing edge. Really great direction all around tbh

We see this same sort of transformation in the next episode, while Yamato's staying with him, and honestly this scene makes it a whole lot clearer. Yuki does actually start off more himself in this episode because he's in his own home. He doesn't really want to go out of his way for Yamato, he's mostly helping him out of obligation, so the mask slips a bit.

He flits in and out of a couple different personas fairly rapidly at the start of their interaction. Even Yamato remarks on this, which I actually didn't realize until just now when I was skimming through to find the shot I wanted to reference. He's never fully seen Yuki with his metaphorical hair down before, and the change is remarkable

He offers Yamato some advice, rather against his own will. His countdown here is his "speak now if you want me to listen to your problems or else I'm leaving" ultimatum, and he fully intended to when he gets to zero. But he doesn't (which I think surprises them both), and when Yamato calls out to him, he stops and actually offers genuine advice, no persona there to filter it. And it's harsh, like he usually is when he's unfiltered, because he's Autistic As Fuck and doesn't really know how to be anything else no matter how hard he tries (as is very explicitly laid out in Re:member : he has tried, hard, and he just can't figure it out)

And then he immediately falls into another role, when it's clear he's going to be trapped in this conversation that he doesn't really want to be having. Which is equal parts to soothe himself and to piss of Yamato, I think. Maybe heavier on the piss-off-Yamato side of things, because for all that he's helping him, they really really don't like each other, and Yuki's really kind of an asshole at heart

And from here on out he fully embraces the mocking asshole persona he's chosen to adopt. The same thing happens: he becomes more expressive both in voice and gesture, and it both softens the blow of the harsh things he says and makes it worse.

And you can then see the exact moment Yuki realizes that he's Fucked Up this conversation and pushed things much much further than he expected or intended to

(a shot which is on the screen for like less than half a second and that I had to clip and go frame by frame through to get because my own autism is now Activated)

The next scene is, I think, rather intentionally ambiguous (at least at the start) as to how genuine Yuki's responses are. It's fairly well established that, despite his aichmophobia, Yuki doesn't really have a ton of self-preservation instinct when it comes to fights, so it's seems entirely reasonable that his continued efforts to poke at the already enraged bear are just, what he'd do and not a persona he's putting on

However, it becomes clearer further into the scene that this is indeed another performance for him. First here, somewhat subtly, where in the actual line of dialogue, he calls Yamato "Yamato-bocchan", which, while appropriately mocking, also places him very firmly in a role other than his natural disposition.

From here on out, it becomes fairly clear to me that he's reverted back to his role from Mission. Yukito Orikasa is shed once more (if he was ever truly present here), and Yuki the Criminal Psychologist has taken his place. Yamato's breakdown follows a similar script to his character's here, though his is genuine -- but Yuki reads the similarities and falls back into his psychologist role.

He then offers Yamato some advice that actually references Shizuo's own words, which is... a huge Dick Move in this moment but that is actually a super neat and subtle reference, especially because he genuinely thinks he's helping.

he's not.

And this part is fun because it then becomes a lot less clear if Yamato's clued in to the role he's playing and is now playing along with his part in the movie, or if he's really just genuinely doing this (it's the latter, but it teases the possibility for most of the scene)

But anyway, the point kind of got away from me. You see Yuki fall back on this acting any time he's in a situation he doesn't know how to handle -- or, well. Not just then, actually. Pretty much in any situation. He's more comfortable pretending to be someone else than he is being himself, and he'll default to that whenever he can get away with it. He maintains it even when he's alone with Momo a lot of the time (I have an headcanon about Momo knowing what it is he's doing and allowing him it, as a sort of kindness)

Of course, his dealings with Yamato are hardly the only time we see this so clearly presented. He draws any number of roles over him like a mask, and falls into whichever suits his needs -- perhaps most notably at the very end of season 3, where he dons the caricature persona of a thug in order to try to protect Momo. Which is, uh. Maybe not the best idea he's ever had but hey, it works, kind of, so more power to you, Yuki.

He (arguably) adopts this same sort of thuggy image earlier in the season, for much the same reasons, when he waits outside Ryo's apartment with a baseball bat (that he definitely does not know how to use).

However! Of particular interest is the scene where he confronts Touma, where he's actually not assuming some sort of role. This scene is pure, unadulterated Yuki, and that frightens Touma and Torao exactly the same way as it puzzled Yamato above.

This scene itself is more a commentary on his relationship with Momo than it is Yuki's performative nature, really, because it highlights very well the fact that he's willing to do anything for the sake of his partner. It's pretty clear to me that when he walks into the dressing room and when he first confronts Touma, he's not Yuki the Badass, he's Yukito Orikasa, desperately trying to track down his partner.

Like, this is very much Yuki's real personality, not one of his endless roles

And that is precisely what gives him the edge here. Touma and Torao are really not expecting him to be so cruel and careless. They're used to Idol Yuki, handsome and flippant and appeasing. Not Yukito, entirely willing to stomp all over the law if it means saving Momo from danger

This is one of the only times that Yuki lets his true colors shine so obviously true. Usually Momo or Rinto is there to remind him to be aware of his station and to keep himself in check, but Momo is in danger and Yuki Does Not Care about the consequences, because at the end of the day, he's cold and calculating and absolutely nothing like the friendly persona he puts on, and he's only really doing this because he's passionate about music, not because he loves being an idol

Anyway. I guess all that sums up into: Yuki, first among the Autists, hides behind different masks so often that everyone around him is startled when he drops them, including himself a lot of the time. And that the show (and presumably the game) does a really incredible job of presenting this incredibly subtly

[dogtoling]

oh tumblr user dogtoling, blease, impart unto us your wisdom of drawing really good fat cephalopods

I think i've answered this exact question before and it's kind of a tall ask... the best advice I can always give is to just study how to draw fat people first (granted, easier said than done in regards to finding references). Once you have a hang on how that works and how fat sits on the body and how it usually accumulates, that basic knowledge goes a pretty long way when drawing non-human characters too. for people who are completely new to drawing fat, the best off-the-top-of-my-head tips i can give are:

1. don't just draw A Circle. you won't get very far with that most of the time. if you really want to start with a shape, i'd recommend a rectangle and working out the shapes from there (more balanced than a circle + you're less likely to mess up in the gravity part)

2. fat =/= JUST the belly. I think this is pretty commonly talked about but a lot of people that are new to trying to draw fat people will just try to add a belly to an otherwise thin frame. And don't get me wrong, that IS also a body type that exists, but especially when you go higher in weight it's about filling out the whole body. add some width. study which areas accumulate more fat and which don't!

3. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE DOUBLE CHIN. Skinny Face on Fat Body is pretty common to see and again while you can also have a body type like that, it just seems like a lot of people are scared to draw double chins or not sure how they work. Don't be afraid to give fat characters fat faces, it makes a huge difference!! (though, also pay attention to not go overboard with this part, because it can also end up looking really off.)

4. remember that fat has weight, so if you think you've done everything correctly but the drawing still looks off, it's often because the GRAVITY is off. Fat Has Weight. So while you draw, try to visualize where that weight rests organically. (also this specific step will come back to haunt you every single time you draw a fat character sitting down or in any non-standing position)

5. Fat can change shape in different positions (for example rolls can appear or disappear depending on how the torso is bent). consider this when doing different positions - but don't go overboard here. Fat still usually has a general shape, it's not some kind of freely shape-shifting jello with the consistency of some goop. And again, body type matters here, some people are more firm than others.

6. At bigger sizes, pay attention to subtle differences in positions and posture that both the weight and the space it takes up might cause. For example, with bigger bodies you'll often see the arms angled slightly to the side rather than straight down the sides (collision with chest/upper body fat = arms Cannot just go straight down). you probably get the point. The keyword most of the time is SUBTLE, but also if you skip this part, the results might look strange and again you have no idea why.

this list is Not comprehensive because as i've added a disclaimer in like every part, there is a huge variety of body types. So the best way you can learn in the end is, unsurprisingly, just seeing and drawing different body types! but i tried to think of and include a lot of common pitfalls that people (including me) tend to fall into when learning and how to Skip the extremely frustrating "why does this look Wrong" part to at least some degree instead of having to stare at the art for 5 hours and just try to work it out.

anyway NOW TO THE CEPHALOPODS PART - if you draw Inklings with human anatomy you're basically done already. Just, doubly study real-life fat people in that case. But in the case you don't, practicing on real fat bodies is still useful because as I said before, understanding the basic rules is widely applicable even for other creatures! My approach to inkfish is that they're generally pretty human-shaped, but because they have no joints or bones, I try to avoid rigid segments in most areas and thus make them generally more smooth. that means less rolls (pretty much none until actually larger sizes) and more just, idk, smoothness.

This is more or less the mental map i work off of:

While you'll usually look at the inkfish torso and view it as mostly A Singular Cylinder, it becomes more obviously segmented with more weight. The arms, legs or tentacles don't have any shape other than Noodle, so they just get thicker overall for the most part. Go above a certain weight threshold and you start seeing more texture and rolls. In humans you would definitely have to consider stretch marks, but I omit those from Inkfish because that's scarring that I feel wouldn't occur in a species that's got flexible enough skin to drastically stretch and change form unscathed all the time anyway.

I have to point out that fat tentacles are a game changer in my opinion! They're a part of the body too, so as a very inkfish-specific tip, just add weight to the tentacles if you have a fat character. It adds a significant amount of immersion and just looks more sensible I guess. I'll use Engel's old hairstyle as an example because he's a very good example of this specific aspect...

yeah i feel like that illustrates my point.

(This isn't really relevant to DRAWING fat inklings, but someone is probably going to wonder about it so I'll answer it: i'm ignoring the logistics of a fat inkling being able to stand or walk without any kind of internal support structure. It's definitely notably difficult for them because as opposed to humans with skeletons, they have to support the weight mostly using JUST muscle. However from a realism standpoint, inklings being able to stand or walk at their size EVEN WHEN NOT FAT wouldn't work in the first place, and Splatoon is full of creatures like Cohozuna or the Great Zapfish, or even Mr. Coco, which would crush themselves and suffocate and die under their mass if they came out of the water... and they're constantly out of the water, so TL;DR no one in Splatoon gives a shit about the laws of physics anyway. If you can have the suspension of disbelief to accept Crusty Sean walking on two legs as a whole ass bipedal giant prawn, that should be able to extend to a fat inkling.)

I don't really know what else to write so hopefully this helped somebody. Lol

[sophieinwonderland]

Preface: People are going to assume this is a response to recent drama. So I want to say that I started writing this draft before that one blog's response to me. It was shortly after midnight on the 8th when it was just barely what I consider my Birthday. I was reflecting on my 3 years of existence and where I am now. The fact that I got the response I did later that same day is a total coincidence.

I don't feel like I have friends anymore...

That's an awful thing to admit.

I have one other system I feel like I talk to with any sort of regularity, who I love and consider friends. But they're not involved with syscourse which is so often where my mind goes. And so I don't talk to them about it because I don't want to trouble them, which means I don't talk to them because I can't think of what to talk about.

What else do I care about?

I mean, there are other things I care about, but they probably wouldn't care about those things. And I struggle to find something to say. Something that feels worthy of their time. But again, not syscourse or something that would bring them down.

I've had other friends. But they've faded away with time. One by one.

And a lot of that is my fault. I'm not good at being a friend or knowing what to say. And I'm not very good at opening myself up.

And when I can't think of what to say, I choose to say nothing. I ghost people I like because it's hard to maintain those relationships.

And I'm aware on some level that this hurts people. I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who treated others the way I do.

And there will be times when I'll decide to do better. I will, with full confidence, say that I'm going to change. I'll be a better friend. A better person. I'll fully believe this is something I'll succeed at for the rest of the day. Then the next day comes and that conviction melts away.

I think one reason Jaiden's story of having ADHD appeals to me is that if this was the problem with us, maybe, we could identify it and then just take one little pill and it will fix me.

That's a nice fantasy, isn't it?

A naive fantasy that ignores the fact that I'm in the brain of someone who was homeschooled and barely had any friends as a child either. But it's a nice fantasy to hold onto anyway.

So, yeah. I don't feel like I have friends, for the most part, outside our system. I have a blog. I have followers. I have plenty of mutuals I like interacting with.

But there aren't people who I truly trust to let in. It doesn't feel like anyone actually knows me or who I am anymore, if anyone ever did.

Since I haven't posted on it for a week and don't know when I'll post on it again or if I will, here's a confession: I made @anti-lies! Sorry to ruin the mystery for anything speculating! Though I didn't think I was even that subtle about it.

But the only person I know who guessed it was me was SAS! Which, congratulations! But also, that's kind of a sad thought that the person who might know me better than anyone is someone who was my archnemesis for the past two-and-a-half years.

To be fair, SAS did imply that other people might have guessed it. But if so, whatever circles those conversations are happening in aren't ones I'm in.

Oh wait, I'm not really in any circles am I?

I'm on the outskirts of the community. I mean, that's sort of by choice really.

Public posts can bring more awareness of plurality and tulpamancy. Locking myself in Discord servers or some isolated community makes me feel like I'm wasting my time because I need to be talking about it publicly where the world can see. I really, really don't want to be part of a Discord server. It's my choice to stay out of those spaces and I don't regret that decision.

But sometimes it's weird when I realize that most everyone else is. That they're actually in plural communities in a way I'm not.

I wonder, do people even realize I'm an outsider? Again, by choice. I've been invited to servers and chose not to go. I'm not being ostracized or anything. I've turned down attempts at bringing me further in. No one is to blame but myself. But either way, the result is that I don't feel like I'm really part of the communities I spend so much time advocating for.

[rox-reads]

now im wondering how this would apply to taylor

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

To Shape A Dragon’s Breath

YA fantasy

a young Indigenous girl finds & bonds with a dragon hatchling - the first time in many generations for her people - and is required to go to the coloniser’s dragon academy in their mainland city, to learn how to raise her dragon and the science of its magic

historical inspired setting on the cusp of industrial revolution with steampunk vibes

bi polyamorous MC, Black lesbian SC, nonverbal autistic SC

[toytulini]

thinking about my oc Bytte. and. her gender is Aro. her Aromanticism is inextricable from her gender experience.

[crow-caller]

Reaper’s Creek is a requirment if you’re someone who likes bad books and is online. I usually keep to my obscure weird books, but I was very intrigued by the odd mystery of this very bad book. Onision is... bad (hot take), but when I read it I was very surprised I had a different take than I’d seen from other reviewers.

You see, Reaper’s Creek... um............ I think it’s more than just a youtuber imagining godlike powers and altering reality so he can kill god. I mean it is, man, it super is, but I think we might need to give Onision more credit. Ugh, sorry I typed that. But what if I told you the bizarre choices and immature view of the world in this book might not be because the author is weird, and might be because our lead is an 11 year old kid from an abusive home blindly given unlimited power? Yeah, the more I talk about it with commenters, the more I think we’ve all been wrong about Reaper’s Creek.

....or not, because well, it sucks ass. If the text is meant to be a slight horror, a story of a child unable to grow and given the gift to live out his every whim, it still is an utter failure. After all, if every person who reads the text misinterprets it as just a cringy self insert power trip, you have failed as an author. Also it’s just super poorly written in general, but I’m just talking narrative here

[aeide-thea]

the thing abt this website (and probably other websites as well) is that like. posters will complain that readers get mad at posts for not encompassing Everyone's Experiences, when they were just talking about their own experiences

and it's like. okay but did you phrase your post in the universalizing second person or.

cue janet-with-cactus gifset.

[starlightomatic]

Someone sent me an ask about how to avoid antisemitism when talking about what's happening in Palestine, but Tumblr ate it. This is a really important question, because we don't want to fight one oppression while enabling another; we don't want to accidentally foment the conditions that lead to antisemitic violence, and we also don't want to shy away from speaking about Gaza for fear that we're doing so.

Here are my thoughts.

There are a lot of unconscious antisemitic beliefs that people hold, that they may not be consciously aware of. They may have learned these from parents, peers, or society at large. Like any bigotry, a huge part of not being harmful in bigoted ways comes down to learning what unconscious bigotry looks like within you and learning how it is expressed.

Antisemitism is very old, and there are a lot of tropes and beliefs that have developed through the years. Many of these are alive and well, though they may be subtle enough that people don't realize they're carrying them. However, they show up in the way that people speak, especially about Israel and Palestine. Here are some:

1. Jews are overwhelmingly wealthy

2. Jews control the world

3. Jews control a given country (eg the US)

4. Jews are not oppressed

5. Jews are some of the most privileged people in society; more than non-Jewish white people. Jews are white people but even more so.

6. Jews are whiny and complain about their nonexistent oppression too much

7. Jews are sneaky, deceptive, and untrustworthy. They don't speak sincerely or plainly; they have an ulterior motive and are trying to get one over on you.

8. Jews are greedy

9. Jews are really powerful

10. Jews undermine and destabilize movements and countries. (This one connects to 3, 7, and 8).

11. Jews are inherently guilty; a good Jew needs to apologize for being Jewish

12. Jews are bloodthirsty and desire violence against non-Jews

13. A Jew is from somewhere else, and does not belong in the place that they are.

14. Jews sap resources from the country they are in and funnel them into their own communities/interests. They are a vampire-like parasite on the societies they live in.

How do these get expressed in the movement? Here are some examples (these are paraphrases and combinations of various things I've seen):

Example A:

"American Jews are complaining about oppression while living in their NYC apartments and taking Ubers. It's ridiculous, so much privilege and entitlement." This one's got 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

1: Assumes wealth. Plenty of us can't afford NYC apartments or Ubers!

4, 5, and 6: self-explanatory.

7: Belief that on some level, fear of antisemitism can't really be sincere; we must be talking about it for some other purpose, eg to distract from "real" issues.

Example B:

"The US is funding this genocide because of the influence of Israel and Israel's interests, and the Jewish lobbyists." Employs 3 and 9.

3: The US is doing this because of its own interests; if anything, the US wants to be able to use Israel as a pawn.

9: Imagines Jewish lobbyists as powerful enough to drive US policy. Also forgets how dramatically the US dwarfs Israel in size, money, and power; imagines it's the other way around.

Example C:

"These Israeli first responders are lying about finding mutilated and sexually abused bodies after October 7th. This Israeli girl who was held hostage is lying about having talked to fellow hostages who were sexually assaulted. This Israeli first responder is lying about children having been killed on October 7th."

This is 4, 6, and mainly 7.

7 because it assumes that these people are telling these lies for some nefarious purpose: to garner false sympathy, or worse, to manufacture support for genocide. It cannot be because they are actually telling the truth.

Example D:

"It's suspect if someone talks too much about antisemitism. Or if they correct my misinformation. They are probably a crypto-Zionist. In fact, all of these Jewish tumblr bloggers are crypto-Zionists."

(The first part of this I haven't heard said; but rather it's the unspoken attitude I'm frequently presented with.)

This one has 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10. Mostly 7 and 10.

Beliefs that our goal is to derail pro-Palestine organizing by sewing Zionist beliefs in the movement. That we would be capable of such (9). That it's impossible that we're sincere and we're concerned both about what's happening in Gaza and the everpresent, intangible potent threat of imminent antisemitic violence.

Example E:

"What everpresent threat of imminent antisemitic violence? You're either delusional, too privileged to understand how oppressed you aren't, or lying to some sinister purpose."

The first two (delusional and too privileged) often comes from other Jews, who, yes, can be antisemitic too.

This one has: 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9.

Example F:

"As a Jew I know I am responsible for what's happening in Gaza, and I need to call in my people who deny our privilege and who think they're unsafe."

1, 4, 5, 6, 11. Shades of 10.

Example G:

"Israel is invading Gaza for oil."

8. Also this isn't true.

Example H:

"No Israeli is a civilian. All settlers are guilty, and need to leave."

Technically, it is possible for someone to hold this belief consistently for all settlers worldwide due to stringent decolonial beliefs. However, it frequently is applied only to Israelis. In such an iteration, I think it contains 10, 11, 12, and 13.

Which leads to my next point: Double standards. If something doesn't invoke a particular trope, but views Jewish or Israeli actions more harshly than we'd view the equivalent in any other place or people, to me that's suspect.

For example, relating to the above, if we believe that Truth and Reconciliation is the answer in the US and Canada, but in Israel the answer would be forced displacement of the Jewish population, that would be antisemitic.

Also, if we're able to hold nuance around the idea of refugees to the US and Canada, and understand that they're simultaneously taking part in colonialism while also arriving under duress because they need a place to live, we can extend the same nuance to the idea of Jewish refugees (Holocaust survivors, SWANA Jews, Ethiopian Jews, etc) who have come to Israel.

And, going back to example A, is there any other marginalized group we would say is not actually oppressed because members of it live in NYC and take Ubers? No? Then, it's antisemitic when you say it about Jews.

I also think misinformation about Jewish history and identity is antisemitic. For example, lines of thought that deny our ancestral, historical, cultural, and liturgical connections to the land of Israel/Palestine. One false belief I see a lot is Khazar Theory, popularized by the quack Shlomo Sand. This states that Ashkenazi Jews do not have ancestral origins in what's now Israel/Palestine, but rather descend from a mass conversion of Turkic peoples in the Kingdom of Kazaria. It is not, in fact, true.

Something else along these lines is back-defining origins and land-connection through current events. For example, a white gentile ex-friend of mine shared a post stating that because the IDF, as well as settler extremists, destroy Palestinian olive trees (an egregious act, in my opinion, as well as against Jewish law), this means we are not native to the land. While I understand the term native is complex and this might have been an attempt to denote our positionality as colonizer in a colonizer-indigenous dynamic, the framing of the post led me to believe that, actually, the post was using these actions to prove that we do not actually originate from the land.

Destroying Palestinian olive trees is an act of great violence against the land, against the Palestinian people, and against our own history, culture, and religious traditions. However, it does not change the historical fact of our origins or ancestry, nor the fact the our religious traditions are deeply intertwined with the seasons, climate, and agriculture of Israel-Palestine, even when that puts them out of sync with the seasons and climate of wherever we live in Diaspora.

I hope this is helpful. This is a really hard time for so many of us, and I know it can feel like derailing to focus on antisemitism right now, and to focus on the potential of future violence when the people of Gaza are experiencing actual extreme levels of violence right now. But if we truly believe that none of us are free until all of us are free, then fighting antisemitism has to be part of our collective liberation. We cannot and should not fight genocide by engaging in oppression. Speaking up for Gaza and Palestine does not have to mean fomenting conditions that put Jews in danger of bigotry and violence. The world we're building is one where seeing your trees destroyed, or your family killed, or your home receding into the distance as you are forced to leave is but a distant memory. For Palestinians, and for Jews, and for everybody on this Earth.

[prokopetz]

In recent posts I've complained that a lot of tabletop RPGs which toss around the term "fiction first" don't actually understand what it means, and I've been asked to expand on that complaint. So:

In my experience, there are two ways that game texts which want to position themselves as "fiction first" trip themselves up, one obvious and one subtle.

The first and more obvious pitfall is treating "fiction first" as an abstract ideology. They're using "fiction first" as a synonym for "story over rules" in a way that calls back to the role-playing-versus-roll-playing discourse of the early 2000s. The trouble is, now as then, nobody can usefully explain what "story over rules" actually entails. At best, they land on a definition of "fiction first" that talks about the GM's right to ignore the rules to better serve the story, which is no kind of definition at all – it's just putting a funny hat on the Rule Zero fallacy and trying to pass it off as some sort of totalising ideology of play.

A more useful way of defining "fiction first" play is to think of it not in terms of whether you engage with the rules at all, but in terms of when they're invoked: specifically, as a question of order of operations.

Suppose, for example, that you're playing Dungeons & Dragons, and you pick up the dice and say "I attack the dragon". Some critics would claim that no actual narrative has been established – that this is simply a bare invocation of game mechanics – but in fact we can infer a great deal: your character is going to approach the dragon, navigating any inclement terrain which lies between them, and attempt to kill the dragon using the weapon they're holding in their hand. The rules are so tightly bound to a particular set of narrative circumstances that simply invoking those rules lets us work backwards to determine what the context and stakes must be for that invocation of the rules to be sensical; this, broadly speaking, is what "rules first" looks like.

Conversely, let's say that your game of Dungeons & Dragons has confronted you with a pit blocking your path, and you want to make an Athletics check to cross it. At this point the GM is probably going to stop you and say, hold up, tell us what that looks like. Are you trying to jump across it? Are you trying to climb down one wall of the pit and up the other? Are you trying to tie a rope to the halfling and toss them to the other side? In other words, before you can pick up the dice, you need to have a little sidebar with the GM to hash out what the narrative context is, and to negotiate what can be achieved and what's at stake if you mess it up; this, broadly, is what "fiction first" looks like.

At this point I know some people are thinking "wait, hold on – both of those examples were from Dungeons & Dragons; are you saying that Dungeons & Dragons is both a rules-first game and a fiction-first game?" And yeah, I am. That's the second, more subtle place where game texts that talk about "fiction first" go astray: they talk about it as though being "fiction first" or "rules first" is something which is inherent to game systems as a whole.

This is not in fact true: being "fiction first" or "rules first" is something which describes particular invocations of the rules. In practice, only very simple games spend all of their time in one mode or the other; most will switch back and forth at need. Generally, most "traditional" RPGs (i.e., the direct descendants of Dungeons & Dragons and its various imitators) tend to operate in rules-first mode in combat and fiction-first mode out of it, though this is a simplification – when and how such mode-switching occurs can be quite complex.

Like any other design pattern, "fiction first" mechanics are a tool that's well suited for some jobs, and ill suited for others. Sometimes your rules are fine-grained enough that having an explicit negotiation and stakes-setting phase would just be adding extra steps. Sometimes you're using the outputs of the rules a narrative prompt, and having to pin the context down ahead of time would defeat the purpose. Fortunately, you don't have to commit yourself to one approach or the other; as long as your text is clear about how you're assuming a given set of rules toys will be used, you can switch modes as need dictates. However, you're not going to be capable of that kind of transparency if you're thinking in terms of "this a Fiction First™ game".

(Incidentally, this is why it can be hard to talk about "fiction first" with OSR fans if you're being dogmatic about fiction-first framing being an immutable feature of particular games. Since traditional RPGs tend to observe the above-described rules-first-in-combat, fiction-first-out-of-combat division, and OSR games tend to treat actually getting into a fight as a strategic failure state, a lot of OSR games spend most of their time in fiction-first mode. If you go up to an OSR fan and insist that D&D-style games can never be fiction-first, then attempt to define "fiction first" for them and proceed to describe how they usually play, they'll quite justifiably conclude that you have your head up your ass!)

[prettyboykatsuki]

✮ tags ; gn! reader, established relationship, fluff, alcohol.

"Shouto,"

"Hm?"

"You're drunk,"

Your boyfriend leans his head on your shoulder and makes a noise in the back of his throat. "A bit."

More than a bit, you think. In actuality, you don't think you've ever seen him this drunk before. He's okay with alcohol, usually - but tends to stay away from drinking too much. You think the last time you saw him get actually drunk at all, you were both twenty and he was barely tipsy then.

He doesn't like getting drunk, he's told you before. A few times. The lack of control and hazy memories make him just slightly anxious, so he's careful around liquor.

You've been dating for years now, and unless he's living some double-life (a different one than being a hero) - you've never seen him get this wasted. Ever. To everyone else in your surroundings, it probably doesn't look that way.

But you've spent enough time to know him, and he's not like this usually. Nowhere near as absent minded he is now, at least. He hasn't been able to sit still since he downed that last bottle of shochu. He went to go play with Bakugou's cat, Momo and you couldn't find him afterwards. You lost sight of him for about half-an-hour until you finally found him in the living room while everyone else was outside, feeding Momo some treat that squeezes from a tube.

(You still don't know where or how he found where Bakugou kept the treats, but you decide it's better you don't ask. Plausible deniability, or something.)

You're both grown-ups, and you're not one to worry about his liquor intake. Still, though - you're worried. Even if it seems like he's not different to everyone else, you can tell. And it's bothering you.

"Shouto," You call out to him, your hands reaching to pet the back of his neck. He's a head taller than you, and a little heavy. Palms smooth against the prickly ends of his hair - tapered and neat. He presses his cheek to your shoulder. "Shouto, love."

"Oh," He says, suddenly remember where he is. He stands up but doesn't back away far enough to give you space. You're in a far off empty corner. Most people are in the backyard but Shouto wanted some air - so you're crowded against a wooden fence and wall with your boyfriend locking you in out by the entrance. He smells nice, you think - clean with a soft touch of aftershave. You look up at him. "Hi,"

"You're drunk," You repeat, watching him blink rapidly - bleary eyes and the faintest line of a smile whenever he glances at you. He's bent over, staring at you hard. "Is something wrong?"

His expression is the same as always. Unchangingly neutral with a strong and uncharacteristic rosiness to it. Your boyfriend is handsome, alarmingly so. You're aware of it constantly, but this new face knocks the air out of your lungs.

He's... pouting you think. But not fully. His lips aren't drawn together, it's subtle like most expressions on him.

But it's...there. You're not imagining it - the soft furrow of his brow, the press of his lips. His expression grows warmer and it only makes you more confused. He shakes it off, all of a sudden, a micro-expression that fades just as quickly as it appears.

"I'm okay."

"Are you?""

He blinks slowly at that. Concern aside, you can't help but think he's cute like this. His ears are pink enough to stick out against his skin, cold air making them flush even darker.

"I'm okay," He says, then looks at you. He sobers up if only for that moment. "Had something on my mind."

"Something you can't tell me?"

"It's supposed to be a secret," He mumbles. He's really drunk. You realize this late. "So I don't know if I can."

"Mm," You reply. You feel like doting on him suddenly, so you do, petting the back of his neck before hugging him a little. "That's okay."

He follows up with a light groan. You've never heard him complain like that, so you laugh. "But I want to tell you."

"I promise I'll keep your secret at least."

He smiles at you more fully that time.

He pauses for a minute, thinking it over. You don't do or say anything in return. A beat passes of you two standing and swaying with silence where Shout to grabs your hands from in front of you. You think he's being affectionate again, wanting to hold them.

He draws your hands to his pocket though. The angle is awkward, makes you bend your wrist on the inside of coat pocket until you feel something hard and square touch your fingers. It's velvet from the material. A box of some kind.

...A box?

Shouto guides your hand again, this time out. When you pull it out, his palm is over yours. It's a jewellery box. You blink a few times, confused. Shouto hasn't let go of your hand.

"I keep missing the timing," He says, hiccuping. The lack of sobriety more clear than ever from the slight slur in his words. "It's been in my pockets for a while."

Your eyes go wide open. You can feel your own confusion and excitement twist and tangle inside of you, frantic to get a better read on the situation. He smiles down at you, disarmingly and then closes his eyes. His forehead is warm as it touches yours.

"...I thought you didn't want to married. Not really, at least." You whisper.

"Me too," He says, a wetness to his laugh that tugs at your heart . "It was on a whim. I wanted to talk to you about it. But." He frowns a little "It's tough."

You chuckle, a sudden wetness to your voice too. "I bet it was,"

He smiles at you, big and stupid. "I love you," He closes is eyes and presses his forehead to yours more. "Thank you for everything."

"Shouto," You repeat, unsure of what else to say. "What brought this up?"

"Mm," He shrugs, getting sleepier by the minute. "I thought giving you my last name would make you suffer." He admits, soft and unsure. "But taking yours. That felt...okay. Felt nice."

"You're silly."

"Yes," He says, not denying it. "And I love you."

"And you love me." You repeat, a grin splitting your face. Big tears at the corner of your eyes, making your vision sting and your cheeks ache. You look up at him again. "Enough to marry me?"

He seems almost sheepish that time. "If you'll have me."

"Are you sober enough to even remember this?"

His embarrassment makes him blush and laugh again. "My heart is beating so loud I'm a little afraid of it. So yes. I'm sure I'll remember." He admits.

"Let's get married, then." You repeat to him, so achingly happy you think you could die. You wonder when to tell your friends. Bakugou will be pissed you did at his place. "If you'll have me."

He smiles. "I'd like too."

You lean up to press a kiss to his mouth, and Shouto holds you there to kiss you longer than you expect. When you're done kissing, he's smiling.

"Anymore secrets?"

He thinks on it, then hums.

"We should get a cat."

[queenie-the-court-jester]

take a hint fuckboy.

Yandere playboy x gn!reader

♥️Kameron usagi was the most popular guy in your school. He had money, good looks, fantastic grades, even his own car and well paying job, which was any sophomores dream. What was not to love? Well..just one itsy bitsy detail.

♥️ he was a major fuckboy. Hitting beds just like he's hitting bases on the fields. He's slept with nearly every girl on campus, you wouldn't be surprised if he slept in a couple guy's too. Still, he actually expected you to overlook his "past" of sleeping around? You probably would, if you hadn't spent the last four years in the same class with him

♥️wooing girls (and guys), going on a few dates, bed them, dump them, and repeat. It ended up with more broken hearts than you could count. But no one has the balls to actually speak up about it. Why? Because kameron could easily wreck their social life. make them be hated by the entire school, even potentially fucking up their future if they really ticked him off

♥️but with you? Oh he's complete putty in your hands. Sadly you seemed to hate his guts. You aren't seriously mad about him sleeping with all your friends-? Oh.. you are. Well, this complicates things huh!

♥️kameron is incredibly delusional the longer his persistence goes on. Believing this is all some game and deep down you love him back. You're just shy and nervous! Dont worry! He can wait (no he can't.)

♥️he sends his cronies to stalk you. Making them collect whatever they can to add to his shrine of you in his bedroom. He Photoshops pictures of you both, posting them on social media so everyone can see! His pressuring you into a relationship isn't very subtle. You know what he's doing. But what can you do? He practically rules the school since his parents are grand contributers to the funding

♥️by the time sophomore year is ending, you're worn out and too tired to fight back. Simply giving in to his obsessive love and silently praying that one of the college's you sent applications to will accept. When you nod your head as he holds a large rose bouquet and a box of chocolates, he's jumping for joy. Taking you into his arms and kissing you deeply. Swooping you into his Camaro.

♥️ atleast now you're technically the queen of the school. You're popular and people gush about your relationship with incredible fondness. The downside is now that everyone knows, it'll be harder to break up with him because how could you ruin such a picture perfect relationship? Shame on you y/n. (Ignore the fanclub of ex girlfriends frothing at the mouth thinking up ways to ruin your life)