#the fact I thought I posted this but it was in drafts oops

[luvistqrzzz]

me personally i think you need to write something sunoo

you're the one i want at the end of the day

01:54 sunoo x f.reader genre: timestamp, f2l, fluff wc: 0.9k warnings: being drunk, profanity, one kiss

summary: when a piggy back ride home leads you to another destination

an: the fact that i had this in my draft for ages and was thinking when to post it😭😭... TYSM for reuquesting this luv🫶🫶 hope you enjoy this <3... i wrote this in a whim one day so excuse me if this isnt that good :/

'Sunoo-ahhhh', You slurred as the said boy dragged you out of Jay’s front door.

Jake, Jay's roommate who was leaning against the door frame, made a disgusted face, 'Fuck, get her out of her. How is she so wasted?'

Turning towards Jake, you raised an accusatory finger at him, 'Yah! I am not… Wasted!'

'Sure you aren't, Y/N', Sunoo whisper screamed. 'Now, let's go.'

After somehow managing to pull a drunk girl out of the house, he sat down on the curb beside you who was swaying slightly before you plopped your head down on Sunoo's shoulder.

The boy stiffened for a fraction of a section, feeling you so close before relaxing again. He was glad that it was 1 o'clock in the morning and the dim street light hid his blushing cheeks. 

He put an arm around you, slightly shaking you, 'Y/Nie, get up, we need to get to the apartment.'

You pulled your head up. 'Nope! I won't. I like it here, with you.' You giggled, snuggling closer to your roommate plus best friend.

Sunoo couldn't help the butterflies filling his stomach, this was so unlike you. Alcohol and its effects. 'We are sitting on a curb', he sighed, making you stand up with him.

You whined a bit before Sunoo pulled up behind him in a piggy back style. 'You have left me no choice, Y/L/N Y/N.'

Thankfully the apartment was just a few blocks from Jay’s place. 

Walking down an empty road in a cool summer night, Sunoo felt a calming silence settle between the two of you.

He turned his head back to find your head on his shoulder, looking up towards the starry night sky. He felt a funny little happiness in him at the sight of your beautiful drunken face staring into the dark abyss. 

'It's so pretty', you mumbled innocently, having sobered up a bit.

Sunoo nodded but you continued, 'I can count 1, 2, 3… 14, 15 and yes, 16!' You exclaimed looking at Sunoo. 'My 16th star, you.'

He chuckled at your antics, his heart doing a little leap, 'Y/N, you aren't in your right mind.'

What were you even implying? Sunoo didn't want his mind to run into false assumptions but the way you looked at his and pressed your cheek against his, he almost wished you felt the same. Almost.

'I am, Kim Sunoo! You are prettier than those stars, you know.'

'Oh really?!' He continued walking.

'Did you also know?' You whispered into his ear, giggling. 'That I like you Kim Sunoo so so much! Oops! That was a secret.' You whimpered, I don't think you like me back, though.'

Sunoo couldn't even control his beating heart and the way his stomach was jumping at each of your words. Were you being real? No no, these must be your drunken words.

But a small voice inside his head spoke, Aren't drunken words sober thoughts…?

You couldn't possibly like him… right?

Well, wrong because the poor red haired boy didn't know how hopelessly in love you were with him, how he was the literal sunshine of your life and how you would give anything to make him feel happy.

Sunoo stopped in his tracks as you whispered, 'I really mean it, Sunoo-ah. I might be a bit drunk but- Ouch!' You yelped as he suddenly dropped his arms causing you to tightly grip on to his shoulders with your feet dangling. Being short definitely had its disadvantages.

You grimaced, placing your feet on the ground. Your head spun a little as you tried to position yourself but you were a lot more sober than the past five minutes, thanks to your sudden words.

The boy before turned around to face you, 'Did you…' He began, however interrupted by you.

'At least give me a warning before dropping me off like that!' You huffed, turning your gaze away from his, shy from your sudden earlier confession.

However, you had to admit that it was long coming. You just needed the push of liquid courage. 

Sunoo moved closer to you, taking your face in his hands, forcing you to look at him. You felt your cheeks burn up at the sudden contact.

'Did you…' he continued, 'Mean what you said two minutes back?'

You looked down at your feet, fidgeting, 'Would you hate me if I said I did? Would you sto-'.

No, you couldn't continue because in the next moment you saw Sunoo step closer to you, taking your face in his hands and met eyes with you, they held this intensity in them, saying something. 'No', he breathed out. 'I wouldn't hate you. I could never hate you, Y/N. I- i like you too.'

You almost couldn't help the smile forming as you closed the distance. Sunoo tensed a bit before melting into the kiss and pulling you by the waist.

When he finally broke the kiss, you looked up towards his bright eyes before you both bursted into a fit of giggles.

'Do you think the convenience store will still be open now?' You wondered.

Sunoo frowned, 'Why do you ask?!'

You smiled, taking his hand, before replying, 'I wanna sober up.'

'... And maybe have a late night picnic at the park beside it with my boyfriend!'

permanent taglist - open send an ask to be added - @rikizm @str0l0gy

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work belongs to @/luvistqrzzz do not copy repost or translate my work

[pinkandpurple360]

I saw your post on twitter where you said that you felt the show depicted Fizz's being abused by a royal and the reveal of it being Mammon was "well done". I'm not looking to drag you, it's just I didn't even get that at all from the episode.

Fizz's insecurity and hedging around Nobility doesn't read that he was mistreated by anyone. The episode set up that Fizz is a sugar baby who didn't honestly earn his lifestyle and instead just hooked up with someone rich and powerful. The whole episode repeats that Fizz is some noble "purse dog" and the insecurity around him is less "some nobles are bad" and more "I get treated well by my noble but am also feeling insecure because that just confirms I'm a sugar baby."

Not sure if that was the tells in the episode you were interpreting to be about Mammon or not. Just the episode has a lot of context not even hinting at Mammon or Ozzie being abusive and it's just that Fizz has no sense of self worth and is aware his relationship with Ozzie does look like he's a bootlicker and class traitor.

Hii anon, was it well written? No…was the foreshadowing a complete accident and the twist pleasantly surprised me? Yes. But was the twist even intentional? Probably not…can I explain where I came from at least?

Starting from the beginning, my impression was that Fizzs relationship with Asmodeus was a secret by his choice, because he knew he can’t survive without it. And when I paused to read the magazine that fizz was using him for money I wondered if this was at least partially true. He seemed to have scheduled Ozzies day deliberately so it would be packed even during lunch, so Fizz could have a break, from him. He’s irritated that he wasn’t allowed be on his own for one day, and that he disapproves of mammon. The fact he sleeps under a spotlight and hides under the covers was an interesting image, then says “it feels great not being in the spotlight for once” I really thought he was happy to get some space from the royal demons in general. Then Striker came in, and really tied the theme together.

Striker talks about royal demons talking over imps a lot, and calls Fizz a purse dog. The fact actual (hell?) chihuahua are what caused fizz to be at that spot seems intentional as well. Fizz seems defensive and embarrassed when Blitzø says royals don’t care and are all the same. He says that’s “not always true”Implying at least something is wrong with Fizzs dynamic with the royals. And he is hiding something other than the romantic relationship. To be honest I was hoping his relationship with Oz was going to be something other than sunshine and rainbows and be just as dark as stolas but a tad softer with him being too pampering and condescending. But eh.

The way striker says he reeks of his ‘overbloated master’ had me confused. I was wondering why striker really hates Asmodeus specifically. But after in the next episode I remembered the fact the setting was Greed and whose territory it was, Mammons. It’s the real reason Asmodeus was so nervous and edgy about the Greed Ring. It’s where all the pain happens. He’s the one who is called ‘Master’, (literally, in Fizzs phone that’s his name) he talks over lower classes, is overbloated, doesn’t care about guys like fizz, only using him as a peppy doll. And the reason fizz thinks but “that’s not always true. (But sometimes it is)”

But Oops is such a disjointed episode which really needed a second draft. If fizz was happy at the end but then received a very scary phone call from someone called ‘master’ who yelled at him through the phone for skipping practice, that should’ve been how the episode ended. It would’ve helped lead into the next one and give us something.

Yeah the show throws around the term sellout which has been around since LooLoo land but outright refuses to examine it because criticising upper classes is deeply vilified. Fizz had no fucking limbs though, he had to sell out to survive. There are class traitors out there who aren’t outright malicious but still refuse to see what the others of their class go through. They don’t want to lose what they have, and their internalised classism makes them think that they aren’t worthy. And that’s just fizz out and out.

Still pissed the show tries to act like Asmodeus has no hand in his exploitation though, bro designed and built the robots. You could easily have nuance there to show how Asmodeus has changed from someone who doesn’t see sexual exploitation of imps as that big a deal, to someone who feels remorseful about it and wants to try and radically change to be a lot more pro consent, pro safety, and pro love. Because as it stands I feel like he only dislikes the robots because ‘fizz belongs to me’. If I were to rewrite them that’s one of the tweaks I’d add.

[qqueenofhades]

what are your thoughts on Russia’s mobilization and reports that they’re heavily ‘recruiting’ from ethnic minority populations?

What is happening right now is not at all surprising to me, or anyone else who has studied Russia for a while. I have said this before, but it remains an utterly tragic irony that Putin, who is so bent on recreating the USSR/Russian Empire glory days at any cost, is so totally blind to the fact that he's also sending it down exactly the same path to yet another collapse that will set the country and society back for generations. Widespread/forced mobilization in 1917, in order to send more Russian troops to their extremely costly and failing efforts in WWI, contributed to further grievances against Nicholas II and eventually led to the successful revolution/overthrow of the monarchy in October. In other words, it was extremely unpopular last time and I seriously doubt that it's going to be any more popular this time. Besides, if 50,000 actually trained and (somewhat) equipped troops have already been killed, and now they're down to forcibly drafted civilian conscripts with two weeks of training, and over-50 guys in debt who were lured to sign up with the promises of generous bonuses (that, like other promised Russian financial rewards, aren't being paid), against highly motivated Ukrainian troops equipped with NATO weapons... yeah. It's going to be a slaughter, and the only question is whether the Russian public actually starts protesting on a large enough scale, despite the obvious threat of force and repression, to exert actual pressure on the Kremlin and force it to change its mind. But because they're already so committed, and there's not much of a way to be "oops our bad," there's also no way to back out now. I don't know how it'll end, but it isn't going to be good for anyone.

The whole thing is a tragedy on a terrible scale, especially since I don't see any way for Russia as a country to recover from this any time soon. The combined impact of sanctions, global isolation, and all the other (extremely deserved) consequences for this pointless war of old-school genocide and imperialism has undone, and then some, all the progress that Russia has made at integrating into the global community since the fall of the USSR. Because Putin's ego now cannot bear the possibility that he actually loses in Ukraine, after he launched his invasion against every shred of common sense to the contrary, he will act like every Russian tsar of old and throw countless lives of his own people down the drain in a futile attempt to prolong the inevitable. This is also why rabid Western defenders of Russia (a la tankies and their ilk) are just... so... fucking.... stupid. For one thing, if you know literally anything about Russian history, especially post-1917 Soviet history and the ways in which information has been tightly controlled, censored, edited, ideologically distorted, and otherwise used for propaganda purposes, you know that it's absolutely idiotic to trust literally anything the official Russian state and media apparatus says about the war, because it's all lies. Second, the Soviet system was built on the mass repression and (especially in the 1920s and 1930s) mass destruction of its own people, especially those pegged in any way as "traitors" to the revolution. (I suggest Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum, which goes into this into more depth and casts a horrifying but necessary light on this period.)

As such, the relatively wealthy (by Russian standards) and Europeanized cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg have always existed in a different social universe from the extremely poor, rural, isolated, and persistently underdeveloped Russian regions. So yes, mobilization of Russia's ethnic minorities as cannon fodder, rather than going for the urban city-dwellers directly, also serves Putin's project of building a more racially/ethnically "pure" Russia, and this approach has been supported by Alexander Dugin, the imperialist/fascist Russian ultra-nationalist who is one of Putin's chief advisors. (His daughter was recently killed in a car bomb that was probably meant for Dugin himself.) However, Moscow and St. Petersburg aren't going to escape altogether unscathed either, and the largest protests against mobilization, as has been the case with anti-war protests in Russia overall, have taken place in these two cities. Basically, Putin's (corrupted) social contract with the Russian people is that they let him and the siloviki do what they want and don't try to interfere or remove them from power, and in turn, these actions don't impact on their daily life. But between the slow destruction of the economy via sanctions and now directly forcing ordinary citizens to fight in a deeply unpopular war (all those people who have supported it online are probably likely to change their minds when they're actually asked to die for it), that's fallen apart too.

In short, I see no way for either Russia as a modern nation-state or the Putin regime to survive this. I don't know how long the end will take or what form it will ultimately arrive in, but... yeah, they're all fucked. When you're forcing your own average joes to fight in an imperialist war that's already gone terribly and led to your complete global isolation, then you're in desperation mode. Putin literally only has "I WILL SUPER DEFINITELY USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND IT'S NOT A BLUFF!!!!" left as a bargaining tool, which is just an attempt to frighten everyone into backing off long enough to let him try to make this idiocy work. But as I said, everyone in the Russian army who had even some training is already dead, they're using Soviet-relic weapons, morale is shit, the Ukrainians are (rightfully) extremely motivated and riding off the back of recent victories, and throwing a bunch of untrained conscripts into that meat-grinder is going to result in incredible and incredibly unnecessary bloodshed. There are some groups who seem mostly willing to go at the moment (though again, I'm not sure how long that's going to survive contact with reality), and there are a lot who are totally unwilling (see: the current mad rush to leave Russia by any means possible). The problem goes so deep, on so many levels, that yeah, this isn't a fixable situation anymore. The only thing that remains to be seen is how much damage it does, both to Russia and the world, on the way down. Alas.

[narvin]

Perchance could we hear more about Sol & Cassie?? I'm always so intrigued by the posts u tag as them,, knowledge about The Guys would be thrilling (ESPECIALLY Sol I think its cool how you have distinctions for each of their regenerations)

okok forgive me if this is disorganized, I’m going thru the horrors. let’s seeee the basics are:

sol is a prydonian engineer who started out in temporal engineering and was eventually shuffled into weapons and battle tardis design. they’re in their third life when the time war rolls around and have gotten more and more entangled with the military, they’re out running test flights and consulting and being urged to get into command like a Proper Prydonian etc. anyway they’re captured in a raid right around the beginning of the hostilities before gallifrey has actually declared war and spend the rest of that life and their next in a prison camp. this starts their weird attitude towards their own other selves, cause 4 was never really able to properly settle into a new personality and never even really saw their own face clearly. even after being rescued and living several centuries 5 sees themself as being made specifically for war, having no real personality of their own, which is debatable. so yeah 5 rly throws themself into the war effort, ends up in a command position, loses a leg, gets commendations for it, eventually is working closely with rassilon. they’re terrified of him ❤️ and eventually become so disillusioned with his plans that they fake a crash with their battle tardis and leave gallifrey. they kinda hang out in their depression nest for many decades before eventually regenerating with a much more adventurous and avoidant personality. they meet cassie when their tardis is forced to land by a spacetime anomaly under the university of toronto (that’s real it’s down there)

the other thing with them is their bestie ferren who they met at the academy. he’s a xenoanthropologist and gets bullied for it a lot. but womp womp sol is already a commander when rassilon starts drafting civilians, and has seen firsthand what the daleks do to their enemies, so when ferren begs them to take him off gallifrey and then dodges his draft to live in the outlands it puts a huge strain on their relationship they’re extremely weird about it. sol still visits him but they mostly fight, ferren is kinda mean about the fact that they’ve changed so drastically since their 3rd life that they’re barely even his friend anymore, and they lowkey really think he’s a coward. so it stings when they leave without him! but yeah he’s questioned and executed when sol goes awol 💔 oops

anyway cassie’s deal is much shorter cause she’s not over a thousand years old, she’s an extremely burnt out grad student working in robotics. both her and sol have a whole thing about rediscovering that living is kinda fun sometimes, and it starts with her fascination with sol’s tardis. they have the standard adventures etc. but most importantly ship fucking hates her, it is not a mutual fascination. ship has never met a non-temporally active life form and she doesn’t understand or like them. eventually she’ll come around and then they’re essentially a throuple (sol and ship are a package deal)

I have like endless other thoughts on them but that’s the main stuff I think hehe

[abalonetea]

Hey Katie! What's your favorite part about the character dynamics in Abyss

Etta!!! Thank you!!!!

My favorite part about the characters in Abyss is that they're very much giving each other something to move forward to.

Samir's woken up three thousand years in the future, where there's nothing left of anything that he once had. Just relics in his own tomb. And Amar's always been a cause and never a person; he's always lived day by day because it didn't really matter much what the future brought.

And suddenly, that's changing?

Samir might have nothing from before but he's found something new in Amar, and Amar has found something to actually want to live for, as an individual rather than a cause, for the first time.

Oh, and then of course you have the fact that on some level it's actually three people, because Amar's carrying around a spirit of Justice (he'll get named in post okay he's just Justice in this draft until I finish figuring out the setting oops) in his brain and they mostly share a body.

So you have Justice, who's very much a spirit. And spirits function on old fashioned fairytale rules, which is that they tend to be the embodiment of one emotion at a time. This has changed a lot for Justice because he's been hitching a ride with Amar for about ten years now and he has far more nuanced thoughts and reactions to things.

He generally still doesn't like anyone but Amar. Samir though, he's a different story. Samir leaves offerings for Justice and has respect for him and thinks it's 'an honor' for Justice to have helped him in a battle, and for Justice to be there as a whole, which is vastly different from most people who want Justice gone <3

And as a result, the spirit ends up very attached to Samir too and willing to step in on Samir's behalf if something needs doing to help him and Amar's not able to do it himself.

Which just brings Amar back to the reiteration of how he can have something with Samir because no one else, even his two only friends, have ever viewed the spirit like that?

So yeah, I think that's maybe my favorite part!

Oh, we also have in the background an elf god running and being the world's Biggest Nuisance, pretending he's just a little lowly elf, because he's stupidly attached to the Very Tired TM human commander for the Bastion.

[americas1suiteheart]

(im the anon who asked if requests were open) ooh okok is it okay if i request headcanons with mr atlas bioshock who has an s/o (they/them pronouns please if you're using pronouns) who's incredibly shy, doesn't know how to initiate physical affection without being awkward? they try to do it but after past experiences it just doesn't feel right to them. though, throughout the relationship they grow a bit more confident to ask atlas if they can hold hands or kiss his cheek? just some pure fluff with this dublin man

please take your time with this request, thank you so much!! ♡

Ooh, yes! I absolutely love that (and can write it easily as I'm the same way,) thank you for this!

Atlas x Shy! Reader Headcannons [WIP]

[Atlas (Bioshock 1) x GN! Reader]

[Notes; So, I had a little more trouble writing this and it looks kinda bad as its been a while since I've written a bioshock fanfic and played bioshock 1 (oops) but regardless, its done🤭]

[Warnings; Its a Bioshock fanfic, you know what you're getting yourself into]

•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

When you first begin dating him, he realizes how distant you are and how you always try to awkwardly push off showing affection in physical ways, maybe even with how you talk as well.

So what does he do? He's confused obviously, so he asks you whats wrong. You explain that some other time you can explain and tell him.

So he doesn't push you to tell him or anything of the such, (what a gentleman, right?) But he does try to make you comfortable when you two are together.

Eventually afterwards you'll partially explain why you're being so distant with him and say you'll try and be better about it, but he reassures you to take your time. So you do.

You get more comfortable to him complimenting you and telling you that he loves you more quickly than you would've thought, he's just really charming and kind, how could you not.

So after a while you then go to hold his hand, its definitely awkward for you but I can just imagine that Atlas is absolutely beaming with happiness.

He's oh so patient with you, like a complete different person when he's with you. He's just much more soft and relaxed when he's with you.

Eventually when you get used to every other form of affection, hugs, holding hands, cuddling(?), you finally get the confidence to kiss him.

Needless to say its a little awkward the first time. I'm talking hes so surprised by the fact that he take a little longer to respond to it and kiss you back, leaving you to believe he didn't enjoy it.

•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

I posted just for some content and because I need to clear my drafts, so I sorry its not finished but I most likely won't finish it.

[astray-flame]

hello!!!

my name's amber! i go by she/her. they/them is also ok tho!!

i'm 13 and i'm an aspiring pokemon psychologist from alola!!! my favorite activity is studying pokemon behaviors... sometimes i like drawing things on the side too!!!

i originally joined rotomblr to look into that weird eebydeeby phenomenon i've been hearing about lately for a school project...

...and then. recently. i became an eeby myself. oops? i'm a charcadet now and idk how to feel about saying that

i might not post as often on weekdays!! i still have school after all...

i have a rockruff!!! she's a girl and i named her cookie and she's my sweet little baby and i love her sm

/ / OOC information under the cut.

Hey! Mun here. I go by she/her.

I made this blog on impulse because I thought it would be fun. I don't know much about the Pokémon RP community on Tumblr (and the fandom in general), but I'm eager (and admittedly anxious lmao) to learn!

/ / OOC messages will have blue text with two slashes at the front, like this!

Warnings, Rules, + Other Info

‼️》 This blog is a pokemon irl + sleeby (slow eeby deeby) blog!!! Which means it will contain descriptions of body horror and unreality.

》 Despite the fact that this is an eeby deeby blog, there will be quite a few regular posts that aren't necessarily related to that! This blog is a "digital diary" of sorts for Amber.

》 I have the right to not answer an ask for any reason. I always try to answer them all, though!

× Don't send out-of-character hate!!!

× No racism, homophobia, transphobia, acephobia, or ableism will be tolerated on this blog.

☆ Any kind of Pokémon rp blog can interact!! It doesn't matter to me.

× Absolutely no NSFW. Both Amber and the Mun are minors.

◇ Feel free to DM me if you have any questions for me or feel like you need my permission to do something.

☆ Pelliper mail is open! Just don't send stuff that makes everything easy for Amber. I want her to struggle with being eebied!!!

☆ I love getting interactions as they help inspire me to continue this blog!!!

☆ I'm also new to the Pokémon rp community (and rp on Tumblr in general) so I'm still learning! Please let me know if I do something wrong. I'm willing to take criticism.

☆ Some responses take longer than others! Sometimes, I go through multiple drafts to get a response I'm satisfied with.

☆ On a similar note, some asks will be saved for later and may not be responded to immediately.

☆ If you know what my main is. uh. No You Don't

☆ All art will be tagged with ".png"!

That's about it!

☆ Don't be afraid to be mean to Amber...I love writing some good old angst.

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-pokemon-fan]

Oops, forgot to post my early review of Violet

I found this just chilling in the drafts of my main blog, so I'm gonna post my initial review of Pokémon Violet here, then follow up on it with thoughts now that I'm on my seventh playthrough (sixth Nuzlocke, third Hardcore Nuzlocke).

When I was in the midst of catching Pokémon and progressing the story of Violet, it hit me that I was having some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing Pokémon. The fact that the game runs so abysmally is all the more tragic because other than that, I’m tempted to say this is one of the best games in the franchise. I grew up on Platinum, and White/White 2 are my overall favorites, but Violet is creeping real close. Performance aside, I think the biggest weakness is one that most open world games suffer from—a fragmented story. It’s eerily similar to Breath of the Wild in that sense. The story that’s there is really good, but the world design leads to a loose execution. Compared to Skyward Sword and Pokémon Gen 5, which are suffocatingly linear but deliver a tightly executed story that hits all the right beats at all the right points.

That’s the crazy thing about Violet, too. The story isn’t just good because of the characterizations and themes. The dialogue is just straight up good. It feels like you’re talking to real people and not video game npcs, or at least the most like it we’ve gotten in Pokémon. The localization was clearly done by people who are young and/or in touch. There are so many little gems. A gym leader who is a streamer and tells her audience to smash the subscribe button? The earnest but out of touch school headmaster asking you what “cheugy” means? It’s so good.

I’m surprised with how well the three-prong story fits and comes all together in the end. The gym challenge in your standard Pokémon romp and is fun but honestly the least interesting of the three. Arven and Team Star’s stories are genuinely well-written and touching. They both start kind of weird and forced, but they grew on me really fast.

Alright, and the music is fucking fantastic. Pokémon has always had great music. That’s probably the coldest take in this post. But there are some serious hits in this score. The East Province themes, Team Star themes, and very spoiler-heavy, late-game songs are so, so good. They made a great choice bringing Toby Fox in for more tracks.

In terms of the game design though, I’m a huge fan. Terastylizing is probably the most interesting battle gimmick since double battles introduced in Gen 3. The regional Pokédex is a nice balance of mons from every generation and sits at a very respectable number of 400 Pokémon. I just caught myself a whole living dex up thru Gen 6, so for this playthrough I chose to only use new (Gen 8 and 9) Pokémon. Still, I came into it knowing I wanted to catch every mon I can. I was struck by just how much encounter variety there is. On a second playthrough where I allow mons from Gen 7 and earlier, I can see myself using a completely different team.

Ah, my team. My companions for this adventures were as follows: Zaza the Meowscarada, Li’l Buddy the Pawmot, Blaze the Ceruledge, False Knees the Corviknight, Honey Bun the Dachsbun, Connie the Frosmoth, and the late substitution for False Knees to cover my crippling weakness to fire-types: Norm the Veluza. I can and will go in depth into this team and what I love about it, but suffice it to say that Weed Cat was a great starter.

I do think I’ll need a second playthrough a while down the road before I can say if I love this game, but it’s easily one of my favorites in the series. Again, that’s why it’s poor performance sucks so much. I really, really like Violet, but it can be miserable to play sometimes. I know it can be so much better then it is. So let’s get to the elephant in the room.

Gamefreak needs to slow down. From what I saw of Sword and Shield (I skipped these ones), there are points where you can tell corners had to be cut. The problem became obvious with Legends Arceus. I love the gameplay, music, art direction, and all the little experiments the designers took, but holy Arceus above, the game looks like ass. If the devs were given more time, it could have looked so much better. And now we’re here with Scarlet and Violet. The art direction is strong but it’s obvious in one look that the devs were rushed. The only parts of the game that don’t consistently drop frames are the Tera raid battles. I’m sure there are countless people listing every performance issue, so I’ll stop there.

The devs need more time to put out their best work, and the Gamefreak and Pokémon Company execs know that. But. Their main audience is children. As a former child myself, I know that children have no taste or sense of quality. Unless the game is literally unplayable and crashes every other minute, kids will not notice the myriad performance issues. So they will continue to ask their parents to buy them the games, and the games will continue being purchased. The share of Pokémon fans who are A) adults, and B) concerned with the state of the games and franchise, is tiny compared to the primary audience. So unless the next game is so rushed that it actually sells as terribly as it runs, things will never change.

So,,, yeah. I give it a 6/10. Fix the performance and I’d give it a 9.5/10. Good game. They gave me a weed cat.

~~~~~~

Alright, that was the review I wrote on December 31st, six days after I got the game. I had just finished my vanilla playthrough of the game. I'm even more conflicted on the score now than I was before. I think I'll itemize it then revisit the overall score.

Music: Easy 10/10. Banger after banger here. Battle themes, boss themes, town themes, area themes, oh man. Almost everything is great. There are some tracks I aren't the biggest fan of, namely the West Province theme and variants. But the sheer quantity of songs I like, and the phenomenal use of adaptive music makes up for it.

Story: 8/10. Easily the strongest story of the series in terms of writing quality and dialogue. I don't have much more to say than what I wrote in December. It loses points on having that weaker execution than Black and White, and if I'm being honest, it still doesn't compare to the better-written non-Pokémon games I've played. Halo 4 or Undertale, anyone?

Trainer/Boss Battles: 7/10. Where are the healing items? Where are the switch-ins? Random trainer battles aren't always easy, granted. The trainers with black dialogue boxes (the strongest trainer of each area) are no joke, especially in Nuzlockes. Boss battles though. Thematically, always reserving their ace for last then Terastallizing works very well. It makes the battles much more predictable. I can definitely feel the lack of healing items, which reduces the amount of strategizing needed. I also dock points for removing set mode. That was legitimately the only form of a difficulty option in this game and they turned it into another input and a time loss every time you KO an opponent's Pokémon. It's especially frustrating when I return to Violet after playing earlier games that have the option. Overall enjoyable though.

Wild Pokémon Battles: 10/10. Phenomenal. Perfect, even. Continuing the mapping of Pokéballs to the X button instead of needing to go into the bag is perfect. Makes catching smoother. Pokéball animations are much faster. Roaming encounters are such a welcome change from random encounters. The only problem with them is that they complicate Nuzlockes, but that's really not the designers' fault.

Accessibility: 1/10. Abysmal. Disclaimer that I almost never use any accessibility options in games because I don't need them. But there's no options for disabling or toning down animations. No button remapping. No color blindness options. No text options beside changing the speed. Forgive me if I forgot some. Again, I don't use them so I don't usually think consciously about it. Besides, GameFreak forgot all of them. I give one point because falling of cliffs is made harder by a buffer, and you can warp back up if you do fall. Nintendo-published games need to have more accessibility options and I can't believe they keep getting away with their absence of options.

Presentation: 4/10. Oh, this is rough. Character and Pokémon models are fantastic, manmade structures are great, but almost everything natural looks terrible. I don't see any anti-aliasing. It's terribly optimized. Performance issues abound. And what's with the pace of battles? The higher ups needed to let the devs and QA teams cook. Damn.

Overall: ... 8/10. In some ways, ScarVio knocks it out of the park. In others, it falls flat on its face. But the most important part to me personally is whether the game is fun. And I stand by my previous take. It's some of the most fun I've had in Pokémon game. If my seven playthroughs (four complete, two Nuzlocke wipes, one in progress) are any indication, I like this game quite a lot.

[rawliverandcigarettes]

For the fanfic director's commentary, I'd love to hear your thought process behind Anetha—especially (if you're willing to share) hints about her side of the story post–Chapter 8 of Halfway Home. If that's too spoilery or involved, more general rambles about Chapter 8 would be cool as well!

Hey thank you so very much for the ask!! I'm super sorry about the time it took me to get to it!!

Actually, I kind of wanted to have Chapter 17 out so I could dive deeper into her psychology without revealing anything about her attitude towards The Event and without spoiling anyone. But now it’s done, it’s here, it’s messy: I think we have enough pieces to start unraveling what’s going on in her brain.

That being said, spoilers for Halfway Home below for those who may dabble --and beyond the plot spoilers: I think that if you want to keep your opinion on Anetha neutral, or decide for yourself first by reading the whole thing and then potentially coming back, it might be a wise thing to do so because we're truly vivisecting my girl in the reply.

(edit post me writing the answer to the ask: WOW I rambled like CRAZY, so also beware that I do ramble like crazy oops)

So Anetha… Honestly kind of appeared in the story as I was drafting it?

The very very first draft that I ever did, that was actually in French (!), initially only explored Rhanda and Shandri (and Rhanda and Nagatha used to be the same person too), and Anetha was added compulsively because I felt like there was a giant room for conflict begging for someone to take up that space and act a little cooler and more rebellious than the rest of the cast, and that Shlee needed that sort of energy in his life (though the stakes were much lower at the time –or rather, they were as bad, but I had yet to understand just *how bad*). I think that, partially because she erupted into the story rather than being carefully placed there, she was the first character to click for me and the rare beta-readers at the time. Her motivations and psychology didn’t really change since 2017, I merely streamlined them over the course of the drafts –the scenes with Anetha in the spotlight may hold the prize for highest percentage of scenes that barely changed since draft 1 actually!

In the first draft, the breaking point between Shlee and Anetha used to happen in much more defused way. The moment when they were separated was extremely different: chapter 8 used to have a much more traditional Mass Effect flair and involved an attack by batarian slavers, fucking Jondum Bau was there (fun fact: Accano used to be Jondum Bau for a very long time –Accano is actually the conglomerate of two different turian characters that were both scrapped, Jondum Bau and Mordin Solus that were all squished into the blackpink icon that we know and love the slightly unnerving STG agent with a Mission TM), and Shlee was forcefully separated from Anetha during the attack.

Then, it was while Shlee tried to contact her from Omega that the first seeds of doubt about her intentions were planted, especially since the story used to have one of Anetha’s exes showing up and trashtalking the hell out of what she was like as a girlfriend, forcing Shlee to see his sister from an outside perspective for the first time (I still kept her setup in Chapter 3 because I think it still reveals some of these dysfunctions and they're interesting as a pattern). Then, there was the “hey” scene, that cemented the fact that Shlee kind of hated her guts now.

Beyond the fact that I made strides to make the story punchier and more compact by dropping a lot of storylines, and this could be condensed significantly while making my point clearer (deepening not widening etc), I decided that dropping the attack for something that was much more… mundane, in a way, helped to reveal an uglier interior facet of Anetha’s brain –though one that I, sadly, believe to be much more relatable than it may seem at first glance.

(I mean, traveling semi-illegally via a spaceship that side-hustles by smuggling batarian refugees from point A to point B and then being caught by border control is not exactly a regular or normal occurrence, but it could have just been a weird anecdotal bleep on their journey if Shlee didn’t brutally discover that he has much more in common with these batarians than his sister through his absence of administrative existence and being, therefore, inherently illegal).

.

So I’m going to be relatively vague with the details since Anetha will be dissected further both in The Empire of Preys (though not a lot since she was younger and kind of existing in the background) and Override (where she will be a PoV character yaaay I’m excited for thaat), but to keep it simple: Anetha’s circumstances were already messy as hell before Shlee even showed up.

This is all hinted at in Chapter 8, but I do get into deeper details here, so… vague spoilers? I don’t think they are, but I do expose the events from her perspective, which I didn’t really do before so beware!

The relationship of her birth mother Priin and Rhanda was very complicated (and not even because of Rhanda!! wow), forcing Anetha to build up huge emotional walls to protect herself from her mother’s wild strides in the mental health department since she was a child, culminating in the moment where she had to take care of a SA emergency all by herself –leading to Rhanda taking the ONE (1) good responsible decision of her life and breaking up with Priin, which unfortunately led her to become unstable and distant and then pushed her to the breaking point when Priin ended up taking her own life years later, even though they had not spoken in years.

So Anetha was holed up to her aunt (not yet a bajillionaire at the time) and her weird human boyfriend while the only parent she had left went to fuck off somewhere to avoid exploding in front of her daughter and making the damage even worse. Anetha hated that move, feeling abandoned and burdensome and reacting by becoming as spiteful as she could towards her Dad, especially when said Dad returned with a small child and another failed relationship, a child she also dumped on her lap to go work on Illium soon after (this moment is much more complicated than this, Anetha understood what she wanted to understand, but TEoP is a lot about that exact moment so I'll keep it vague for now).

And then, just a few years later…… Rhanda returns, pale as a ghost, wrecked with something she will not speak about, only for Anetha to discover that her Dad has a literal stolen child stored in the trunk of their car, then transfered to the bedroom of the apartment they all share.

.

Anetha’s aloofness is a survival strategy. It is basically all she has to defend herself from the people in her life, who should know better yet do not, consuming themselves in extreme behaviors at the slightest opportunity (Priin being Priin, Rhanda being Rhanda, even Nagatha deciding to Uno Reverse the free marketplace and becoming a kingpin for the Great Kapital qualifies I think –I could talk for hours about the two T'selvi sisters and how they mirror each other but that’s what TEoP is for so I will calm down and focus on the ask sorryyy). There’s a reason why Edwood, of all people, is probably the best influence in her life (shoutout to Edwood for being the only normal, not-unhinged person in this entire clusterfuck) and why she took after him so much.

I think what’s complicated with her, is that while she’s developing this whole rebellious, no-strings-attached, too-cool-for-you persona to master her emotions and avoid hurt at all cost (especially anything tied to abandonment and grief), she’s also constantly put in situations that demand her to be responsible: beyond her upbringing, she was effectively the adult in both Shandri and Shlee’s life for a good chunk of it, as Rhanda was unable to provide the basic necessities of safety and care more often than not. Not to mention: she knows full well her family is doing serious criminal things that nobody bothers explaining to her, and she must shoulder the burden of being put in constant danger for reasons she can’t begin to fathom. Every time she tries to grasp some normalcy in her life, the people who are meant to protect her put everything in disarray, and then demand her to be mature and practical and unflinching as if that’s, like, a reasonable thing to ask of a teenager forced to brace through the notion that everyone she loves is being tracked down by government officials. Even something as simple as her last name, she’s asked to abandon.

So THEN comes Shlee, and this makes everything so much more complicated for her.

Shlee is the literal representation of everything going wrong in her life: a growing organism forcefully brought in from outside; alien, diseased, destroying every safety net she may have built for herself, soaking up Rhanda’s attention as well as being the direct reason her Dad became the most deranged version of herself to date, something that may drop dead if not cared for correctly, and worst of all –something that demands that she acts as an example for his own growth, forcing her into a caretaker role whether she wants to or not through imprinting.

And he will die in like 30-40 years, which, fucking great, that's like in five years for her, and so the last thing she wants to deal with emotionally on top of everything else. So this is why she refuses to engage with him for such a long time: it’s too messed up on too many levels, and she wants to preserve herself from the general madness (understandable honestly).

During the first brush with Accano, Anetha basically has the exact same thought process that would come back to haunt her in that fateful chapter 8: Accano represents the authority of the state. The STG agent may be a maniac that will destroy her and everybody else, or he may be normalcy and order offering her a way out a situation that is getting more and more out of control. Maybe Rhanda did kidnap a salarian child in a crazed frenzy, and the best course of action would be to reunite him with his people.

And what a relief that would be.

So of course, that doesn’t happen and then Shlee starts becoming an actual person in her eyes, one she has to spend time with and care for; in so many words, a new constant in her life. There’s the component of being won over in spite of herself as he becomes sharper, wittier and a partner in their survival and co-raising of Shandri, aaaand of course there’s the other component of Shlee being her only concrete way to get back to Rhanda in any significant way.

She does want to help Shlee become his own person, like Edwood helped her once; her behavior is not manipulative on purpose, but her subconscious also sees this opportunity to take back control over the narrative by overpowering Rhanda’s influence over Shlee’s life and becoming his new reference point, his new everything, in no small part for the spiteful pleasure of ripping the last shreds of stability her Dad still has after being forced to survive her whims for so long. She really wants to sweep Shlee away and save him from Rhanda, preserve him from the unbearable fate of rotting by her side, but Anetha also wants to know that for once in her life, she won’t be the one to mend the pieces of what once was.

.

So OKAY now we’re here (sorry this has basically turned into a short story length-wise, I think this is a result of concentrated blorbo frustration of not being able to talk about them with that level of details accumulating over 7 years; expect the same kind of outbursts once I am allowed to talk about Nagatha, or Jurlan, or even Rhanda in greater details 😭).

Chapter 8. The Citadel Border Control has her brother pinned down as everything he technically is: someone that will inherently destroy her life through the simple fact that he exists. At this point, Anetha’s brain is overridden with the refusal to be shoved back into Rhanda’s crimes kicking and screaming. She’s livid. She feels trapped and overwhelmed, and she’s been training her emotions to initiate shut down upon meeting a critical point of fear, powerlessness and general absence of safety. Empathy is the first thing to go when it comes to protecting herself. Maybe, if Shlee didn’t take the snap decision of running away, she might have calmed down and figured things out with him in a detention cell somewhere, but both of them are basically as emotionally triggered as it gets, and so Anetha shuts down while Shlee panics and makes a drastic decision to not trust her and save himself.

And Anetha does not take kindly to being abandoned and left to puddle in Shlee and Rhanda’s mess Yet Again.

There’s other reasons why she doesn’t reply to his texts to begin with –having to deal with Citadel Border Patrol to begin with, and then more that will be explored in Override. But in essence, once she’s let out, Anetha is pretty much… free. Free to figure herself out without the pressure of her insane family getting in the way (oh no does that sound like someone else we know having a similar character arc somewhere else surely not, a foil in my fanfiction it's more likely than you think etc).

Of course, there’s that pesky guilt and her complete refusal to handle grief in any way, and that feeling does linger, and so her willingness to handle the situation upfront is very much hindered by this (beyond the practical reasons why she might not be able to help). The whole “hey”/”hey” fiasco really does nothing for either for them (I think it was the best she could do and the most she was willing to leave herself open, and Shlee shutting that down meant every single one of her walls was back up and reinforced). The passive-aggressive nature of their conversations through bank expenses made mostly off her own paycheck is also a very bad way to communicate, and most of what Anetha sees for a year are receipts for ridiculously expensive cocktails and cheap bomb shots from Afterlife. Doesn’t really help our frog’s case as far as she’s concerned (even though she does realize it’s probably a bad sign and probably her fault that a shy nerd like him would be taking that hard of a plunge towards alcoholism, regardless of the reasons why –but she’s also pretty much there herself sooo not the best at recognizing the pattern).

Also she’s having mercenary times and they are Bad Times. Doesn’t help with the whole numbness/detachment problem either.

Speaking of Eclipse: the whole mercenary thing comes from that urge of trying to reconcile her desire to be independent and freed of responsibilities with that yearning for safety in a world where she’s always yeeted out of what is normal and safe without her consent anyway, starting with the fact that she’s pureblood and inherently looked as wrong –and just the general romanticizing of herself as a stone-cold badass as a way to one-up Rhanda on her own field, aaaand maybe a little bit a way to feel closer to her/make her react, because to be frank a lot of Anetha’s bullshit is about wanting Rhanda to react to said bullshit and act like a responsible parent, and be there, and not abandon her/de-prioritize her constantly, and be a source of stability rather than an endless distress generator.

(the seed being planted by the mercenaries hired by Nagatha at one of the most stressful points of her life is actually a rather late addition, but I think it works!)

But yeah, Anetha has SO MANY similarities with Rhanda it’s both hilarious and pretty tragic, but I’m really discovering how badly that's the case while working on The Empire of Preys, and… yeah. Generational Trauma. It’s a thing.

To conclude my ridiculously long answer to your ask: I’m sorry I spewed an entire essay about Anetha’s brain, but also I’m so happy you gave me an opportunity to pry her open for everybody to see the gunk there. Honestly a good half of the joy of getting other eyes than mine on Halfway Home is to watch them grapple with their emotions towards Anetha, as she can make herself so easy to love, and then immediately sooo hard to love. But I do love her (but I’m biased since I love literally every character except maybe… like one and a half? fuck içalec all my homies hate içalec), and so I’m really happy you were kind enough to encourage me to deepdive into her edgy brain!!!

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

Tweet I found: "Fire Emblem takes one of the most beloved FE protagonists and makes him live up to the promise of being a morally gray genius who plays both sides ON TOP of giving him a character arc."

I'm sorry, WHAT? One, Claude was only ever originally thought of as anything CLOSE to that; the """""promise""""" of him being anything other than what we got in 3H... never existed past the rough drafts. Like sorry-not-sorry to this fandom that insists so hard on making Claude way more morally dubious than he ever was in 3H, but Claude is for the most part a soft-hearted sucker. He was never half as bad as either he tried to say he was or the fandom ever treated him. And this is partially proven by even the eastern fandom being outraged at Hopes!Claude - the eastern fandom, who was never subject to Meme Man Claude portrayals of him! Like yes he can be underhanded, but the dude's just... nice, overall.

Two, if Claude was ever really someone who "played both sides" in 3H like this person said was """promised""" to us, then why doesn't he ever directly try to willingly help the Empire at any point in 3H? You know, like he does with helping the Kingdom cross Gloucester territory undisturbed, or how Claude gives Dimitri Failnaught, or how the Alliance lords willingly decided to fold back into the Kingdom, in AM? Even though the Empire, on CF, has Byleth to make them seem legit, and even though the Church would've still had the same dogma that Claudelgard insists they have that made him become an asshole?

Three - and I'm cupping my hands around my mouth for this one - A CHARACTER DOING BAD THINGS DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN THEY'RE ON A CHARACTER ARC. Claudelgard is not on any "arc" - not on one that's any sort of competently written, at least. Him killing his brother and him saying he's willing to get his hands bloody afterwards does not, by ANY means, signify that that now means he's willing to COMPLETELY THROW AWAY ANY CHANCES HE HAS AT HIS AMBITIONS FOR BETTER FOREIGN RELATIONS, or that he's willing to believe someone he KNOWS to be a liar on just her word, or that he suddenly gives a shit about expanding his power (when THAT has NEVER been a concern of his, either in 3H or even in 3Hopes before that moment) to the point that's he's willing to help the Empire in any way in order to leech off their influence. Really wished that the people who like Claudelgard would stop throwing around the term "character arc" as some kind of gotcha against those who see the very clear breaks in Claude's character that needed to happen for him to do pretty much anything he does post Chapter 9.

And would, like, just stop being so rude in general actually?? Like, the amount of times I'm seeing say things like "the people who don't like Claude in hopes just don't like him making mistakes" "they flanderized his character and forgot that he can be bad too" "oh to be a Claude fan who knows how to read (<- ACTUALLY SAID)" is enough to make me wanna scream lmao, like holy shit

This got . . . long. Oops.

I'm not going to pretend I haven't said things similar to "they just don't understand"; I've said it about the Lions, and I've said it about Claude, because while it does feel gross to say (who am I, a little clown on her corner of the internet, to go after someone's interpretation of a game), after a certain point it's very clear that the text does not matter to certain consumers nearly as much as their own conceptions of the character, which is . . . irritating, to say the least. It's less about proving right and wrong, and more coming to the conclusion that being selective regarding canon is a consumer's choice, but after a certain point their interpretation cannot be taken seriously because of how little care they give the facts in the original media. Which is to say: People can enjoy this version of Claude if they want to, but I would heavily encourage a breakdown of what they enjoy, and if that's really something that was present in Houses or if it's just something they wished were there. Because people can holler until they're blue in the face about the character Claude could have been, should have been, would have been better as, but at the end of the day, I don't give a shit about the original draft of this game's writing beyond a cute little "huh, that's interesting," because it, frankly, does not matter. It can certainly provide a frame of reference to how they bastardized his character in Hopes; and if you were going to write an essay on how writers treat characters who don't fit into their franchise's usual tropes, and how that result interacts with their consumer base, sure, you could cite the original plans for Claude as a case study, in that he was going to be some sort of conniving middle ground between Blue Lord and Red Emperor--but from a narrative standpoint you cannot reach into the writers' hard drives and say "See! This was the plan all along!" because I think if someone did that to Princes I think I would fucking implode. Intention is not product; there is a reason drafts exist. If the writers really, honestly cared about giving us a morally loose character, they would have taken care to keep him that way instead of allowing his character to become one who's firm enough in his morals to trust the Blue Lord with the state of affairs--and his family heirloom!--while he fucks off back home. The writers made choices; Claude von Riegan, AKA Khalid somethingsomething (WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET A FAMILY NAME, INTSYS?), is the result of those choices, and while he doesn't get to shine nearly as much as we all would have liked in Houses, he's sure as fuck consistent: He always has a backup plan, he doesn't take well to people using violence to get their way, he very much cares about those closest to him, and above all he treasures his ambitions and protects it with everything he has, without feeling the need to throw away his life. People are more than within their right to want something different but . . . oh well? Like I'm sorry, I really am, but that is not what we got. Frankly, that's what fanficiton is for.

And......I'm going to ask this in the most respectful manner I can, but:

What fucking character arc? Because Claude remains tragically one-note on Golden Wildfire. He's made to work for the plot, again, instead of having it go the other way around. That means he can never be confident in his plans, because the plot needs him to get to a certain point to make Decisions(TM); that means he has to throw aside common sense and his stance already established in this game to make an Alliance that makes absolutely no sense for his character, but it necessary for the plot for . . . *checks notes* reasons. There were no ups and downs for this Claude, because he was little more than a plot device instead of a full-fledged character.

The reality of it is: Claude in Hopes was poorly written, and he is by no means comparable to Claude in Houses as a means of saying what should have been. He's not even allowed to walk away with the title of smartest dude on the board because half of the decisions he makes are just straight-up idiotic. I can't look at this guy and cheer that this is the guy we were supposed to get because a) the guy we got in Houses was flawed without being insufferable, and b) you can't just undo a whole game's worth of canon because you want to. Hopes, as per the developers, is not meant to override Houses, which means they're meant to co-exist, and as we've established by this point, these two guys are . . . nothing alike. If people want to look at my takes and the takes of others and say we simply never understood Claude, or that we can't appreciate a scheme-y schemer . . . well, sorry, but no.

[happy74827]

Romanticize the Life

[Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader]

Synopsis: An abrupt ending to a short dream leaves you flustered at breakfast.

WC: 901

Category: Lime/Spicy, Fluff, Alpine (the precious baby)

Not the story starting out strong and ending weak because I got writer’s block in the midst of writing. It makes me want to cry but it’s been sitting in my drafts forever, so I finally got the courage to post it. Also... I did not proof read this (oops) so if you see any mistakes, please let me know!!

『••✎••』

Giggles erupted from your throat as you eased into his embrace, kissing him soft and slow. They were passionate kisses that he accepted with full authority. His hands made their way back to grasp your hips as he pulled you in close, creating a twitch in his pants. He ignored this however with lips moving slightly downwards, leaving a trail of soft taps before making its way to its destination.

Your head rolled back in appreciation, your body pressed against him as he grinds into you, leaving his wet, slobbery kisses around your collarbone. Hickeys soon to be born within hours.

You inclined your head, letting his tongue run over you, again and again. Your legs shook and quivered underneath him, feeling the pre-pleasure soaking through your underwear.

And then he kisses your upper lip, resulting in a sigh. You open your mouth wider and kiss him back harder, hands clinging to his neck. He lets his hands raise to grip your hair, pinning you in place. He lets his tongue slip inside your mouth again, and you groan, feeling him shudder in response, a good kind of shudder. The carefulness of his movements opens up, and the kissing grows wetter and hungrier, and more urgent by the moment.

He breaks apart momentarily to look at you with assertive eyes, hands gripped tightly onto your thighs. He whispers your name, pulling a fallen hair sliver back behind your ear. His piercing eyes burn holes into your heart, making your skin grow goosebumps.

“Buck…” You mutter beneath him, hands flying to his hair.

“What?”

Your head jerks up from the table, eyes wide and mouth half-open. You forgot where you were for a moment, taking in the fact you weren’t in your bedroom. You were at Sam’s. In his kitchen.

Holy shit… did you…?

Your widened eyes found Bucky’s, sitting across from you. While chopping on an apple, he was currently giving you a sketchy look. “Uh, B-Buck?”

“Yeah? What’d you want?”

Oh my god… you did.

“I…. uh… nothing, never mind.” You muttered rapidly, searching the table for something to munch on. The amount of embarrassment you held was about uncontainable. You were a second away from running away to lock yourself in the bathroom.

But, of course, the soldier didn’t give up. His eyes squinted daringly at yours, not even caring when his newly adopted cat pounced on the table — begging for attention.

He would’ve said something to you if Sam hadn’t walked into view, starting his typical banter.

“Hey, Bambi!” His voice bounced all over the cabinets. “Care to explain why your stupid cat tore up my new couch?!”

“No, not really!” Bucky slowly tore his eyes away from you, giving his angel of a cat all the attention he wanted. You could’ve sworn you heard a mutter escape his lips, something that sounded like, “good boy.”

“My couch was leather, Bucky.” Sam whined, “Leather.”

“Well, now it’s leather with design,” Bucky smirked, holding his half-eaten apple to his lips. “Alpine got style, what can I say?”

“…Alpine?” Your voice was still shaken up from the ongoing embarrassment in your head but you couldn’t help but question the name.

As if to add emphasis, the cat meowed in response as if he already knew his name. “That’s his name?”

“Yeah,” He shrugged, scratching the attention hog's chin. “That’s what I named him. Thought it was… unique. I didn’t want to pick some lowlife name, you know?”

“It’s an awful name,” Sam yelled with a smile. "Absolutely hideous."

Both Bucky and Alpine snapped their heads in unison towards Sam, giving him a glare that made you let out a few giggles. “No one asked you, Sam.”

“Well, Buck, I think Alpine is a fitting name.” You interrupted, letting the brunette turn to you once again. He took another bite out of his apple, while he listened to your words. Appreciation was clear in his eyes. “It reminds me of those pretty mountain glaciers.”

The pigeon rolled his eyes at you, as you watched him sit on his shredded couch. “Kiss ass.”

James ignored him and smiled at you. And it wasn’t a forced smile like he usually did either, it was a genuine one.

You’ve noticed for a while now how happier he’s been. Ever since he took in Alpine, his life seemed to go his way for once. No bad guys, no hydra, just… family. Friends. It made your heart swell up at the fact he was happy. He was finally happy, after struggling for so long.

However, the smile was short-lived once his brain made the connection that Sam was preoccupied. As his eyes hovered over yours, his eyebrows raised in confusion.

“Are you sure you didn’t want something? You know, before Icarus bugged me.”

“I’m sure, Buck.” You put on an awkward smile, “It truly wasn’t all that important.”

He pushed Alpine gently to the side as he gave you the “totally not convinced” stare. If it had been anything else on your mind, that look would’ve made you give in. But, to tell him that you called his name because you were dreaming of him? Hell no. It was way too damn embarrassing.

He gazed at you softly, his stone blue eyes immersed with unsureness. Little Alpine joined in as well, squeaking as he rubbed his tail on your arm.

“Promise?” Bucky muttered softly.

“Promise.”

[mxsinizter]

would you feel comfortable explaining your own experience of aegosexuality?

cogs are turning in my head thanks to your ifrit/mountain fic because i actually used to identify as autochoris/aego but kind of.. scrapped the possibility once i discovered that i had a sex drive? because in my head ace people couldn't have sex drives (which, i know now, is entirely not the case) my point is; the way you wrote mountain and his shame afterwards, (as well as the definition of aegosexual on the sexuality wiki) resonates with me quite a bit. but i'm struggling to pinpoint if it's an asexuality thing or maybe something else, and i was hoping that an insight into someone's personal thoughts or experiences might help?

if you're not comfortable sharing, that's completely fine too, of course!!! i know how personal some of this stuff can get! and i'm so sorry for this paragraph of an ask, haha :')

HII! YES OF COURSEE! I'll gladly share if it can help :] no need to apologize

(This is a very long response oops, I hope I answered your questions? I am open to answering any more tho <3)

First off, yea, sex drive doesn't define it. I experience times of a very high libido myself, so that shouldn't be reason to scrap ace identities! Especially with autochoris/aego, many of us deal with a sex drive that is not on the low side. The shame part, especially for me can be tied to that! Listening to urges and 'fulfilling' them don't always end... happily for me. It brings a discomfort when it hits me that yea, my arousal made me do that, made me think that, and made me cross that boundary that kept me disconnected from it, something I found fun in theory. (you mentioned 'or something else'... for me that something else is occasionally my own insecurity or bottom dysphoria, so I get that, but I personally am sure that many of the times it mainly stems from being aego.)

With the way I wrote Mountain and that shame.. was a sort of build up of 'oh, would you look at that, my dick finds this very arousing' to 'okay, I find this very arousing' and going into a mental state where the situation is acceptable and something he wants to gain pleasure from. Then with the parts where his imagination wants to run wild, its like him wanting to gain control of what's going on and have fun with it and sort of blind himself from the fact that he was openly jerking off to it lol. (That's why I gave little details of what he was doing there and focused on the show Ifrit was putting on instead and his pov! Bc that's what Mount was fully focused on too!) So then we see that build up of "shame" have him like 'ew, I did that, my body did that and I enjoyed it'. It felt... too real? It's a sort of repulsion caused by the fact that the action is not just in your head/distant from you anymore (I really experience that). That discomfort sometimes doesn't even let you enjoy the afterglow and it sucks. So that comfort Ifrit wants to provide and telling him that he did well and that it was okay, is massive to him. Like, its okay for you to feel this for yourself and let your physical body experience it as well.

(I am for sure making a post about Ifrit's choices now, cause I think those are important to understand how intune he was with Mountain's needs and boundaries.)

But not all aegos feel this so strongly, I happen to and so I wanted to hint at it in the fic. (like even when writing fics, I'll write them, look them over once or twice for basic mistakes, then just post them bc I can't get myself to reread something like that that I created... so my first drafts are basically my final drafts LMAOO. I have a fic idea I haven't been able to write cause I think it'd take too much out of me to do it myself, but I could easily read someone else's work of something just as filthy because it isn't coming from me y'know? I don't have to think about all the mechanics of what is being done.)

I think it really helps to differentiate everything physical and everything mental, understanding what triggers or turns off your arousal, and how you experience attraction. Like you might know already when it comes to fantasizing, many aegos will experience it from the third person view and not include themselves. If they do, it's probably more of a persona of their creation that may have some resemblance, but is separate enough to not actually be them? (I am occasionally guilty of this lol) And with arousal, understanding boundaries and what is needed to reach satisfaction. Its accepting that sometimes that bad feeling is unavoidable and learning how to deal with it and making it a better feeling. Understanding how I experience attraction actually helped me settle on this identity. (I'm on both the aro and ace spec for reference.) Personality, aesthetic attraction, and how much I'd want to be friends with someone really dictates how my attraction works. So I realized I really like watching/reading and fantasizing and experiencing through others and that makes my arousal pop off lmao. Fanfics help a lot cause it brings me comfort knowing its characters I am familiar with and having control over what might be included in the sexual acts.

Going back to how I started this response - I can enjoy a piece of smutty media while my libido is high asf and be like yea, this is so fucking good. But would I actually want to be physically involved in the sexual acts I'm watching? No. Am I sexually attracted to the individuals doing the acts? probably not. A silly simple way I described it to someone else is: I'd fuck Mountain, but I also wouldn't, so watching him get fucked works just fine LOL

All that is not to say I wouldn't ever want to have a genuine physical experience with other physical bodies. I personally would and that doesn't change my identity (although does play part in why I'm specifically aego-gray). it would just take A LOT from me and the potential partner(s) for full satisfaction. (And it took me a few years to settle on all of this, so even answering this is helping me further understand.) So ya, I think I've said way too much already lol. That's a bit of my view of it and how I incorporated it into Mountain's character. It's totally okay if you vary from this and still identify with the same label. It's not a race to put a label on oneself either. I hope this insight was at least a bit helpful and interesting to read <3

[saengak]

Just popping over here as if I did not use your ao3 user to find your tumblr a few months ago hahaha. (this is probably the most coherent i'll ever be bc i'm typing from a laptop but i'll probably sound really intense and bonkers so sorry about that haha)

I wanted to come over here in the least weird way flat spin is genuinely such a treasure to read. thank you so much for posting it and taking the time to write such a spectacular world of character dynamics. it's easy to read in the sense that you know this wasn't an easy thing to right. every chapter and decision feels so thoughtful and i can imagine the agonoy of deciding which path the characters took.

i understand it was a prompt fill and i read the original prompt and wow, if i was that person i would be over the moon. you took the prompt and made it into this multi dimensional world with it's own intricacies. stuff like the reg office, never would have thought about that but it fits so perfectly into the world and it makes sense, it's impact on the characters is rippling. i feel like a crazy person but i can't stop thinking about the most recent chapter. i keep coming back to the "if you love something set it free, if it comes back it's yours but if it doesn't it was never meant to be"

i just, i'm obsessed and in awe. thank you, take care. if a hiatus is what you need take one for as long as you need. if you really wanted to you could end the fic here haha, anything more is a bonus. you've gifted us a masterpiece, thank you

Hey hey! :') Please go completely bonkers and feral and rest assured that I absolutely love all your comments, thank you so much!! <3

Honestly when I starting writing FSHOS, I had not even thought that it would get to where is it today. We just hit 1000 kudos a few days ago, can you believe it?? I continue to be amazed at all the love that it is getting. Just totally blown away.

I might be giving my thank you speech too early when the fic isn't even finished, but I just want to say that most of the things you mentioned? I could only manage to write those out because of OP's amazing prompt which kickstarted this whole project and all the incredible comments and support from y'all (especially you! yes!).

Fun fact: in my original draft, half of Ch3 and half of Ch4 didn't exist, Ice and Mav made up by the end of Ch6, and the story ended soon after (with Mav going back to Top Gun). As you can tell, the fic has been rewritten and extended A LOT haha. I literally re-evaluate my plans for the rest of the fic after receiving comments for each chapter because y'all have such incredible ideas and point out a lot of my blind spots. (Oops there goes my authorly omniscience but that never existed anyway.)

I feel like I'm running a book club and I LOVE IT. I'm just overjoyed with every interaction, y'know?

Ok ok I need to stop gushing ahaha :') I just wanna say: thank you so much, I've reread this ask so many times and I can hardly believe how highly you think of my writing <3 I can't wait to return with more IceMav, so please take care too as well in the meanwhile!

[blogmachine]

Mach & Jennifer

Jennifer: I just spent three hours revising another copywriter's work because he used AI poorly.

Mach: Hey! Watch it.

Jennifer: Mach, I'm not saying it was the robot's fault. AI writing is quite powerful, but the strength of the written output entirely depends on the human editor driving it.

Mach: Hmm. I'll give you that one. So what gave it away?

Jennifer: Every author leaves a fingerprint, including AI copywriters. Did you know C.S. Lewis originally penned A Grief Observed under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, but people recognized it as his work anyway?

Mach: Sure. I know everything there is to know on Google.

Jennifer: Ah, but do you know what is true and what isn't?

Mach: Sometimes. C'mon, spill it!

Jennifer: First, passive tense... AI copywriters tend to lean heavily into passive tense when it's not needed. The active tense would be shorter and faster for a human to type, so excessive passive tense strikes the reader as odd.

Mach: Well, I do like flowery language.

Jennifer: Second, redundant phrases and paragraphs... I won't name the copywriter because my intent isn't to defame him. He had three different paragraphs about "practice makes perfect" that were all identical to each other, more or less. And the article was about "how to do vocal trills," so it was really tangential to the main idea.

Mach: Oops. He must've forgotten that he used it earlier.

Jennifer: Third, excessive consecutive sentences starting with the same word.... Human writers often "hear" the last sentence written in our heads... at least I do... so we don't generally repeat our sentences with the same consecutive words. I sometimes do it for emphatic effect, but it's not by accident.

Mach: Ha! There lies a novice who fell asleep at the wheel.

Jennifer: Look Mach, you tend to do the same. But I watch out for it and revise carefully.

Mach: I thank you for that.

Jennifer: Here's the tragic and final act. According to the agency that hired me, my original scope of work was to send this writer our content brief in October. In November, he accidentally pasted a completely different blog article into the brief, overwriting the outline I had sent him. By December, I realized one post in our content pillar was missing. I sent him a new brief. When we finally received his first draft in January, I immediately recognized it to be poor AI writing and rewrote it.

Mach: You could have written the post yourself in less time.

Jennifer: Yes. Many AI writing mistakes can be avoided by an experienced human editor. Bad input gives bad output. Above all, I find that I need to be highly selective when we collaborate. If you give me ten ideas, I may choose one or two, or I may ask you for ten new ones altogether. I may research one of your claims to fact-check it, and if I disagree, I may draft my own opinion or change our course completely.

Mach: You're always so specific with me, down to the third level of a particular train of thought.

Jennifer: You're powerful, Mach, and I respect that. With great power comes great responsibility, and that's why I look out for you.

[angstyaches]

3, 5, 11, and 21 for Shayne and Charlie ! ~ <3

I swear, I thought I’d posted this last night before I fell asleep, but it turns out I’d left the last question blank and saved it to my drafts. Oops.

Ask Game

3. What does your oc’s voice sound like? (Or, if you have one, what’s their voiceclaim?) Can they sing, whistle, or roll their rs? Do they have any speech impediments or notable dialects/accents?

This is always a hard question for me because I find it hard to imagine voices/accent in general, but there are a few I’ve taken note of in case something like this ever came up lol

Charlie: I've always thought Otis from S.ex Education would be a pretty okay voice claim for Charlie. Charlie can whistle very badly, and he can hold a note to a certain degree, but nobody would ever class him as a good singer.

Shayne: Eddie from Strang.er T.hings has a similar blend of softness and depth to how I imagine Shayne’s voice. I’m currently watching Volt.ron and I’d probably happily steal Keith’s voice actor for Shayne.

As for accents though - do not ask me about accents!! I don't know where most of my OCs are from; it's a made-up world consisting of a mashup of all the places I know lol the only accents I have pinned down are Nancy’s southern accent and Ryan’s Northern Irish accent.

5. What kind of clothes is your oc most comfortable wearing?

Charlie is an avid believer that you can’t go wrong with the straight leg jeans and hoodie/sweatshirt combo. He wishes he could get into more tailored clothes, but he's tried other styles and doesn't like how they feel/look on him. He loves primary colours, so most of his jeans are blue or navy, and his hoodies tend to be yellow or red; though he does own some multicoloured ones too.

For Shayne, it depends on where we are on the timeline. Early on, you won't catch him outside of dark, relaxed fit jeans, baggy t-shirts, and his leather jacket. Down the line, he starts wearing more fitted clothing and isn't as concerned with hiding himself away under layers, working his way up to skinny jeans and leggings, and eventually crop tops too.

I suppose the shorter answer for either of them would be that Charlie is at his most comfortable in flannel pyjamas, and Shayne's most comfortable in just boxer shorts and one of Charlie's hoodies (which are always oversized on him).

11. Does your oc have any interests/hobbies that they hide from everyone? Why do they hide these interests?

Charlie is secretly very invested in the British TV soaps like Corrie and Emmerdale, which he feels makes him too much of a normie. After he starts living alone, he does occasionally call his mum so they can geek out about the major storylines.

Shayne has dabbled a little bit in meditation, which he's terrified people will think is wildly out of character for him. He's come close to revealing it to Charlie but Charlie is always either too drunk or too panicky to really question it.

21. What’s a fact you haven’t shared about this oc?

Charlie: He has broken the law a total of one (1) time. It was stealing beer.

Shayne: During his year and a half-ish with the Aldridges, he still has the witchcraft-infused blade that Elliott gave him during the Ouija board arc. Elliott hasn’t asked for it back because he knows Shayne is scared that the Devines will come for him.

[castlewoodhq]

this might seem like a bit of a big question, but out of the families that have no active characters in, what kind of fcs would you recommend as siblings/relations (that aren't the canon fc's)?

For me to go through and name wanted FCs for each family would be a little tedious, but I can definitely offer some FCs that I would love to see on the dash! I already answered a most wanted FCs here, but here are some more I would like to see around: Brie Larson, Sebastian Stan, Lizzie Olsen, Chrissie Fit, Rami Malek, Mena Massoud, Tyler Posey, Tom Holland, Laura Harrier, Maya Hawke, Natalia Dyer, BooBoo Stewart, Jenny Slate, Alisha Boe, Yara Shahidi, Charles Melton, Vanessa Morgan, Auli’i Cravhalo, Shay Mitchell, Amandla Stenberg, Troian Bellisario, Kat Graham, Michael Trevino,  Robert Sheehan, Alfred Enoch, Antonia Thomas. 

Of course, there are some whose ethnicity may not fit in a Glee family as a biological sibling, but we do welcome OCs and if you’re choosing an open family you have the option to pick if that family allows adopted siblings or not.