#the quality of writing declined so damn bad

[yioh]

the bfs are matching guys <333

[callistoscope]

a healthy venture

Summary: As most know, sexual experimentation is all apart of a healthy relationship! It just so happens to coincide with a very awkward relationship for a couple like Harvey and Clarice, however.

Pairing: Cringefail(Clarice) x Harvey. (if you know you know.)

Word Count: 7.4k. I know, it’s ridiculous.

Warnings: Smut, smut, smut. AWKWARD smut. Takes a hot minute to get there, but when it’s there, it is THERE. The sexual experimentation in question is PEGGING with not much else, so….

a/n: this is silly and very crackfic-adjacent but also So Serious to me. also, yeah I guess they’re in a relationship, but early stages? probably had sex before this? Idk, whatever makes the most sense. sorry if the writing style comes off kinda cringe sometimes!!! I really tried to connect the writing style to what I imagine cringefail’s thought process would be like. and it might generally come off more amateurish since it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written. have mercy pls I swear I was so much better at writing like a year ago I’m getting back into the swing of things </3. If you have no idea who cringefail is or why’s she being paired with Harvey, she’s from @clarisinne ‘s comic!!! check it out!!!!!!(peer pressuring you). also @cowboyweevil since u asked me to tag u!

——

Clarice will be the first to admit that her life is consistently in tatters, and more often than not, it's her own hand that tears up that life the most. She had never been the type to have a sturdy head atop her unsteady shoulders— more the type to awkwardly headbutt into every problem and success that dared to beseech her. Both intentionally and unintentionally, sometimes simultaneously.

One thing she does know, a tidbit of information carved so deep into the recesses of her mind that even dementia wouldn't rob her of this simple fact— her sister was a fucking menace.

Clarice could have given her sister some semblance of underserved grace, could have said she wasn't so bad, if only that's where her bad qualities stopped. But Mars's abhorrent behavior was made all the more pesky by how relentless she was.

Her sister was as relentless as the damn splinter still wedged into Clarice's foot, a recent injury she had been careful to make sure Harvey wasn't privy to.

Harvey.

This was all his fault, really. For such a highly respected doctor, for whom which his town had only the most upstanding of opinions of him, beholding him as kind and responsible, Clarice feels safe in saying that her health had went down a steep decline since the moment. . . this happened. Since the moment this strikingly warm, gooey feeling coagulated in her heart, not unlike that of a fatal blood clot. Her life is effectively cut in half from the amount of stress she's experience since moving to this town. Her life force is visibly draining away, day by day, she's sure.

And her darling sister has the nerve to kick her while she's already down. Escalating the gradual deterioration of Clarice's health like the terminal illness only Mars can be like.

Even now, her sister giggles behind her hand in midst the autumn wind, brimming with an audacity that makes Clarice seethe. She has to bite back the urge to chuck her full watering can at her.

Casually, her sister leans down to pluck a pumpkin from the ground, holding it proudly in her arms. A smile plays on her face, one Clarice does not like one bit. "You know... I've been thinking—"

"Stop doing that."

"I've been thinking—" she trots along, happy as a clam. Content as a mischievous cat might be more apt. "If Harvey doesn't step up more, you might really have to take the reins. In a way you don't expect."

Stubbornly, Clarice stays off to the side. She crosses her arms, clutching the watering can high up in protest. Her job this morning was to water whatever crops weren't already covered by their sprinklers, and she was feeling like her labor wasn't deserved the more this conversation carried on. Nothing of substance had been said yet, but Clarice's ears pick up on the lilt in her little sister's voice.

Said sister finally shoots her a cursory glance over her shoulder. "Really! I'm just trying to help you out!" The laughter in her voice says otherwise. "Because, honest to God, the more I think about it— the more plausible it becomes."

Clarice's eyes narrow, body tense in anticipation for the nearing punchline. "... What?" However hesitant, the word ebbs out all the same.

Clarice can see her sister's figure trembling already, frame wracked with inexplicable mirth, and she already wants to sink into the dirt. "Because—" she starts, unhelpfully, voice warbling, "I'm sorry, but that is the exact kind of man who'd wanna get pegged."

Mars's voice grows high-pitched, wavering, and the cackle she lets out would rival a witch. Clarice can hardly focus on that sound, her ears ringing so loud it blocks everything else. Pegging. What the fuck?

Her face grows hot, and it takes conscious effort to not pass out right onto the dirt ground. Whether it be from the thought alone or merely from the fact that her younger sister thought this made for acceptable conversation, Clarice can't be sure. Before Clarice can even hope to respond, the other is rattling off like she's finally been given an excuse to.

"And— and listen! I'm not judging! Good for Harvey! Good for you! As long as everything is safe, sane, and consensual, right?" She bites the words out a bit, trying not to laugh too hard, nearly dropping the pumpkin.

"Stop." Clarice chokes, half plea half threat, blood rushing through her ears. Her mind is fraying at the edges, her brain rotting in record time. She's just starting to stomp her way over to her bastard sister.

"All I'm saying is— I know an online shop that'll ship here, yeah? Sells strap-ons, and has good variety. Pretty quick, too! Poor Harvey won't have to wait very long."

Clarice's free hand just reaches up to claw at her scalp in mortified agony, freezing for one sickening moment. She's on the path to getting her bearings and cursing Mars out like she never has before. Her mind is just on the verge of rewiring itself into proper working order. Like most things in her life, however, Clarice's life never stops at one bad thing.

"Um."

Harvey's voice is small, but the effect it has on her body is not. Clarice's body goes stiff as a rod, and the awkwardly loud clearing of his throat finally coaxes her into snapping her head back to look at him. So hard that one of her braids whips against her throat. Harvey stays where he is, loitering around the entrance of the farm with an odd rigidity to his face.

Clarice's body proves untrustworthy, and the hand holding the watering can goes limp. It's the moment after the tepid metal slips from her fingers that the gravity of her mistake hits her.

It really does hit her— the hefty watering swishes loudly as it lands straight on her foot with the accuracy of an Olympic gymnast.

"Fuck!" Clarice all but howls, stumbling back and promptly tipping back onto the dirt with an equally pained shout. It's a hard fall that ends with her gaze blearily aimed up at the blue sky, her ears picking up the sounds of two pairs of shoes scuttling up their respective pathways.

Of course. Of course it was the foot she had the splinter in.

——

Of all the sexual escapades both her waking and unconscious mind liked to torture herself with by envisioning… Clarice will admit that pegging isn't one of them. Not to say that her thoughts are incapable of running along the more adventurous paths she catches herself pointedly trying to ignore, but it simply had never come up.

Until now, at the violation of her coveted free will, at her sister's hands. She wishes all the terrible things for Mars, sometimes.

And she really shouldn't be mulling over her sister's words seriously, but her mind is deliberately caught on the thought.

... How does Clarice even feel about the concept? Even vaguely, if she just distantly ponders over what exactly that would entail? Maybe she feels some sexual curiosity she'll get to sating one of these days, should Harvey give it the okay?

If Clarice lets her mind do more than skim over the topic, however... the honest reality of what such an activity would bring is enough for her to be content to shelf it out of sheer mortification, never to see the light of day. Harvey, as always, is a different case. Adds integers into the equation that forces Clarice to reconsider everything, to reach for a different conclusion she otherwise never would have. She's forced into growth with him, sickeningly enough.

More annoyingly, she's forced into tending to herself in areas where she usually would shrug and walk it off. As soon as the hard, metal, heavy watering can had crashed onto her foot, the strange tension dispersed throughout the farm had vaporized on Harvey's part. Harvey had been painfully normal to her for those few minutes. Fussing over her, taking her carefully by the arm and coaxing her into her own house, insisting he check her foot for any major damage.

Mars had the social grace to stay outside, and Clarice prays she has enough to feel ashamed. She's knocked out of that thought when Harvey cautiously presses down on the top of her foot, and she promptly hisses.

"Sorry, sorry," he says, mouth flitting to a little frown. Harvey looks up at her from where he's taken a knee in front of her to closely inspect her foot, those brown eyes of his more like puppy dog eyes. "Just want to make sure nothing's fractured." Despite his words, he presses down at a different area of her foot, and Clarice's leg twitches with the instinct to kick him.

Her mind continues to fluctuate between nauseating panic and increasing irritation at Harvey's continued poking and prodding. It all culminates when he leans back, seeming satisfied with his work, meeting her eyes another time.

Abruptly, his eyes widen and his gaze scatters back to the floor, and that's all the confirmation Clarice needs to know exactly what place Harvey's mind goes back to. She'd had hope he'd forgotten about it, but that hope is thoroughly dashed and thrown back to drown in the river.

"So. Um..." he trails back into silence just as rapidly as he starts to speak, a palpable tension fracturing any temporary peace that had settled. Harvey shuffles, a stiffness settling over his body that she notices. It's the soft blush that peeks over his ears that does Clarice in, an innocent seashell pink that makes her eyes dart to the opposite direction of the room in deflection. Her hands claw shakily at the leather of the couch.

"Listen... I know it's technically none of my business, and it wasn't exactly meant for my ears—" Harvey lets out a labored breath. From the corner of her eye, Clarice can see his head tilt up, before hesitantly bobbling back down. He seems torn on where he should be looking. "And, uh— I didn't exactly hear everything? So, uh..." he says, voice wavering at the end. Clarice chances a glance, only to see a bright red blooming over the slopes of his cheeks, hands clenching at the pant leg of the knee he's supporting his weight on.

"I'm really sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but... how exactly did that topic come up?" He squirms a little from where he's kneeling, as if even just saying such vague words wired a shot of adrenaline straight through his nervous system. Clarice can relate, even if she knows what he's feeling is infinitesimal compared to the amount of adrenaline coursing through her.

Steam might start coming out through her ears if her mind ponders on any of this any longer. "... My sister brought it up." she mumbles, voice strained. Clarice brings her hands up, rubbing her temples, her cheeks nearly scorching her palms. Apologies, insults directed at her sister, humiliated blubbering, all sit at the tip of her tongue, but she just can't manage it. It's more like there's a stone in her mouth, on the verge of suffocating her, and her lips feel dementedly stitched together. "She thought you'd— I don't know. You know." It feels like flames lick up her cheeks then, and she winces with grief at the bitter loss of normalcy regarding their relationship. Who is she kidding? That ship had long since passed.

"Ah," Harvey actually scratches at the back of his neck, and something about that makes her want to scream in pain. It's such a stereotypical display of anxiety, and it makes those gooey feelings spring up like unwanted weeds along the sidewalk of her heart. It's endearing, damn him. "So, you're not...?"

Harvey eyes trail back up, she can feel them on her body before she can see them. Her eyes meet his in quick succession, and she feels herself jolt as if she's touched a live wire. He himself seems a bit frozen in comparison, but there's a glint in his eyes. Eyebrows furrowed, looking uncertain yet decidedly... curious. Flustered and nervous, but not disgusted.

Clarice jolts again, eyes going wide, hands falling from her head. She probably tears a few red hairs out in the process, but doesn't have the presence of mind to care when her mind is racing a mile a minute. "Oh God, you are into it." she blurts, bewildered for a multitude of reasons.

Any bravado Harvey seems to have procured promptly breaks from under him, his head bowing down as he's left to pick up the pieces. "I didn't say that!" he insists shakily, sweeping a hand through his hair.

"It's just— if that was something you were into, I wanted to..." Harvey's voice dies, swiftly fishing his hand out of his hair. "I... didn't want you to feel ashamed about it, is all. Or like you couldn't talk to me about it." he finishes with an exhale, his face brimming with a vibrant red.

Clarice swallows, shifting on the couch with an antsy energy. "... How do you feel about it?" she forces out, more stiffly than she'd like. Her methods of communication were never as smooth or clear-cut as she envisioned. Moments like these only exacerbated that flaw. "You can... talk to me, too." She cringes. She sounds a little robotic.

Yet, Clarice had promised herself to try and be more... open, about any such topics with Harvey. To be considerate and hold his feelings with higher priority than following through on her track record and waving them away. Instead of regressing into the skittish fawn she is at heart and dashing away.

Harvey fidgets before slowly rising to his feet, face still red as a rose. "I haven't thought about it much, until now. But honestly, I don't feel negatively about it." Something shifts in his expression, fills his face with unyielding tension, and his eyes shyly flit to the other side of the room.

"Morbid curiosity is probably the most accurate emotion for what I'm feeling." It's said with a weight, as though he's confessing some grand sin to a noble higher priest. "It was clearly just meant to all be jokes, though, so the last thing I'd do is expect anything out of it! Not to say I even really want anything out of it."

She sucks in a deep, steadying breath.

"It's okay if you do." Clarice's face flames as soon as she dares to utter such words. She gestures awkwardly with her hands, body more akin to lifeless metal than flesh and blood. "Haha! Sex—" she chokes, abruptly restarting the sentence.

"Sexual— Sexual experimentation is just a part of a healthy relationship! And we're healthy!" Smiling tightly, the inflection of her voice comes out more manic, a little frantic. She bumps her elbow against him, harder than she means if the wince that stretches over Harvey's face has anything to say about it.

"And it's normal! We're normal, and we can do this! Right, doctor?" Clarice grits her teeth a little, elbowing him again, desperate.

"Y- Yeah! Hah, definitely!" Harvey laughs nervously, rubbing the side of his stomach. "But, we should probably discuss this more, if you're really being serious—"

"— Harvey," Her face is promptly buried in her hands, unable to even cast a glance in his direction. "I'm at my limit. Please."

Another anxious little laugh bubbles out of him, pulling at a loose thread hanging from his coat. "Of course. Yes, that's, whatever makes you comfortable. We can talk about this later."

——

The simple fact of the matter is that they do. It's a verbal scuttle that seesaws back into Clarice conversationally dragging her feet, as most conversation between them winds up being on her end. How Harvey puts up with it is beyond her— hell, Harvey himself is beyond her.

Kind, wonderful Harvey mystifies her as much as he begrudgingly enchants. He is some strange, glittering galaxy that perplexes her with his intent to be swept into her chaotic gravity. Terrifyingly considerate, practically falling over himself with every other word when he insists that they don't have to do this, he wants her to be comfortable, he only wants what she wants—

And... What does Clarice want? The question echoes in her mind, the answer echoing in kind.

To be sated.

This curiosity, it stifles her in its attempt to persuade her. It sits in her chest, leaves residue when it attempts to glue itself in her head. Clarice had waved it off, tried to ignore it, but the remains fester there. The rot of the idea is only fertilizer, and ultimately, it only grows. She's curious, and she's always been one to explore what springs that emotion in her. For the most part.

And when she finally wrings out that honesty out of herself, Harvey flusters, but moves with the natural pull that such a confession swings a conversation into: what now? What's the plan?

There's a list of questions that are steadily answered, ticked off the mental list she's sure Harvey had conjured up in his head. Where? Definitely your apartment, I'd kill you and myself if my sister heard. Okay. Uh, how would we get the... equipment? Ship it to your apartment. My sister would never let me live it down if she got even a hint of it.

Many similar questions and answers filtered out amongst them. Harvey makes some timid remark about doing his own personal research regarding how he should prepare himself, and the conversation is effectively capped off for a few weeks. It's the persistent elephant in the room, one that grows inexplicably bigger one day in later Autumn. Finally, after some surface level digging that more exposed how deeply it burdened Harvey's mind rather than exposed any real concern from Clarice, he admitted that that the equipment came. 'It,' he'd referred to it so aptly.

It. It came. There wasn't much more to plan than the main event itself. Not much more to do other than biting the bullet and doing it. With the grand exception being thinking about it, a crime which Clarice finds herself exuberantly guilty of. The last few weeks had given her heartburn, her thoughts becoming expertly nomadic in the way they traveled from normal and innocent to salient and crude. Stray thoughts that clustered rapidly in one great moment of imagination before popping and deflating like a balloon. Leaving her flustered in midst her daily chores, normalcy strained for the rest of the day.

What would Harvey say? What would he sound like, how would it feel? How would Clarice feel, really, to be the one giving in such a way?

She didn't have to wonder much longer. Even still, her curiosities still ring so loud in her head as she stands at the door of the clinic, heart running at such a magnitude that a hummingbird's would pale in comparison. She clutches her to go bag in an iron grip, the reason why she had a to go bag making her body all the hotter.

Clarice's mind whirrs when the door opens, and it doesn't stop until they reach Harvey's humble apartment towards the top, and even then, it only dulls. She isn't even sure what sort of pleasantries they exchanged, too strung up in her thoughts to be in anything other than on autopilot.

"We don't have to do this," Harvey drills the notion yet again into her head as he is bending down at the side of his bed, hand grasping blindly at the space under the bed frame. "Really. We could just sit in for a normal night. I wouldn't mind any."

Clarice gathers herself, though her efforts are futile when it's like trying to keep water in her hands. "I would." she bites out, sucking in a breath through her teeth with a whistling sound as she gracelessly lets her bag drop to the floor. "I want to. We're doing this." she says, surprising herself with the shaky, albeit no less sincere, conviction in her voice.

"... As long as, you know, you're still down with it." she falters, twiddling with the sleeve of her jacket absently. Her gaze returns to Harvey when she hears a sliding sound, like something being dragged across the floor.

"I am!" Harvey breathes, voice wavering. He isn't looking at her, instead looking at the box he'd apparently stashed under his bed. "... I just like to be sure about these sorts of things." He stands back up with the box in tow, presenting it to her as he steps closer and closer. His face is already flushing, though it's a soft dainty pink that she finds all too fitting on him.

As her gaze roves over the box, it is not a dainty pink that seizes her face. On the white box is an understandably crude picture of a dildo, a strap-on she thinks belatedly, with words in varying fonts spewed around it. Reviews, the technical name of this model, the brand. Interestingly enough, it seems Harvey bought a set, her eyes pick up. A strap-on and a harness.

It hits her all at once, and she makes a sound that is part laugh and part cry. She's incredulous, unable to conceive everything that is happening, the things that click into place. "God, you hid it? Under your bed?" she mumbles, the humor of the situation washing over her as she lets out a raspy laugh. Harvey, the highly respected doctor of Pelican Town, hiding a strap-on under his bed.

Harvey makes an affronted noise, though his voice trembles a little with laughter when he weakly replies, "Yes. It— I didn't have room for it in my drawer." Bashfully, he gestures to said drawer, the one next to his colossal bookcase.

Clarice snorts, and the tension eases. Where this is all going, where the current is taking them, doesn't seem so scary for a moment. Harvey smiles, still a little timid, and starts to open up one of the flaps of the box. "Is it really that funny?"

"I don't know. Probably not." Clarice admits in a weak voice of her own, swallowing as he moves back the layers of the box. It's one of those types, weirdly shiny and like plastic more than the traditional brown box. That tension fills back in slightly when her eyes catch sight of it. Well, not yet, it's in a protective pouch— but nothing can really hide the distinct shape that the fabric really only enhances.

It only takes a moment for Harvey to grasp it, holding it in a limp grip as he pointedly looks at the other contents of the box, ears tipped in red. "And, ah, hm," Awkwardly, he moves the pouch into the curve of his elbow, the back of his arm holding it against his body. His free arm fishes out the harness more preparedly, touching it less like a dead fish. "Here's... the harness."

It takes a moment to realize that he's holding it out to her, waiting for her to take it. Clarice shuffles with nervous energy, taking it and holding it stiffly away from her body. As if any making any further contact with it will scorch her. She already burns, and it's in the most humiliating way. An uncomfortable heat bread-crumbing its way lower and lower, with plenty of pauses. "Should I... put it on?"

Harvey makes a sound, lips parting as if to say something. They only close again, and she can see his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. He only nods, abruptly turning around. Only then does he find his voice. "Probably, yes."

Respectively, both parties begin to disrobe, Clarice starting with her shoes and socks and whittling away at the rest. A part of her tries to be neat about it, wants to be, but quickly loses that train of thought as soon as she has it. Anxiety gnaws at her the whole way through, until there's a messy pile of clothes sitting next to her and a weight in her chest. And the harness tightly in her grasp. Clarice rubs the fabric between thumb and forefinger curiously, sighing as she starts to journey of putting it on.

And a journey it is, anxiety quickly becoming secondary to the frustration that shuffles to the forefront of her mind. Trying to figure out what could be adjusted, how to hold certain parts of the harness while she slides it further up her body, it was a bit of a nightmare. Clarice adjusts the position of the O-ring when she's decently certain it's secure enough, pulling the adjustable straps against her body tighter afterwards just for extra security.

Clarice exhales a slow breath as she turns, wiping sweat from her brow. Only to find Harvey watching, naked from the waist down, his dark eyes a little wide and glazed, clutching the hem of his shirt. He jolts, hand fidgeting with the hem, as if unable to decide if he should take it off or not. "I'm so sorry, I just—"

"Were you staring at me?" Clarice asks, mortification budding at every nerve in her body in hot sparks.

"I wanted to make sure you weren't struggling with the harness!" Harvey says defensively, slipping his shirt off in one bold movement. "Because, if you were, I did look into it. I... should have mentioned that." His voice grows calm again, face ripening to more of a raspberry pink. Predictably, he folds his shirt up with practiced ease, almost more of a nervous tic than him actively wanting to.

Her eyes absently wander over his body, only to trail down harshly even at something as simple as the look of his bare chest. Clarice catches blurry snapshots at every other part of his body, but her mind is too scrambled to attempt to study the details.

"Should I..." she hears Harvey swallow this time, him almost making a gurgling noise at the back of his throat. "Should I get onto my back?" he continues, voice edging on squeaky.

"No," she blurts, shaking her head frenetically. She can't. There's many things she can do right now, is willing to, wants to do, but having Harvey on his back under her during this, helpless and pliant... she just can't do that right now. It stirs something in her, sure, something she may want to get to know more intimately in due time. Maybe. But not now. "I'm getting on my back. You're going to have to just— figure it out."

She hugs her body, wobbling over to his bed with the intention to plop down in a show of dominance, only to pause. The pouch lays on his bed, the fabric still doing absolutely nothing to disfigure the phallic shape. That's all it takes to make her sweat again, that anxiety of hers rising from its grave as she picks it up much like he had carried it previously. Underlining it all is that tailspin of anticipation, lying snugly under any negative emotions that threaten to impede the event.

"I mean you can just, you know," she stammers, eyes bulging at her own thoughts. "You know." Her eyes avoid him, digging her fingers into the opening and tugging it open, looking away when she grasps at the flared base. Clarice has no hope of keeping her eyes open as she slides it out of the silk, immediately fluttering closed just upon seeing purple. Prying her eyes back open, she forces a study session of sorts, discerning any texture she can make out by sight. It seems... smooth, not sculpted to be very indicative of an actual dick besides the base shape. More like an artist's under drawing.

Harvey is staring at it just as intently, with bated breath, hands clenching into fists. "That's okay, I can do that. I just, before that, I'll need to... prep myself. I can't just—" His hand lurches up to adjust his glasses shakily, that scarlet Harvey has been valiantly fighting off spilling on his cheeks like paint. "I-I need to use my fingers first."

Clarice's eyes aren't beckoned away from the toy at that, but her brain fizzles. It flickers and flames, a part of her screaming to watch and another pleading to cover her face the whole time. You'll never survive if you watch, it pleads.

"... Okay." she chokes, because what other response is there? "I'm also going to... prepare." Her voice sounds so small, even to her own ears. With a trembling hand, Clarice twists the toy in her grip, carefully holding the flared base awkwardly to her pelvis, trying to figure out how to thread the base into the O-ring. Harvey tries to pipe up helpfully, blabbering nervously about what to do, but shuts up when Clarice begs out, "Please shut up."

Harvey is fumbling with something, and once Clarice ensures the strap-on is slotted in correctly, she turns to see him drawing out a little bottle of what she can only assume is lube. He opens it in a diligent twist, coating his fingers quickly and wincing. She notes how he seems to focus on covering two fingers above all else, and that flame stirs again. More like a spark, hesitant but hungry for a chance to ignite.

She stiffly sits and lays on the bed, in such a way that her legs splay out over the side of the bed, soles of her feet touching the wood. Harvey passes the lube to her, pressing it to her stomach. "You're... You should probably use this, too." he says, face flushing a red that Clarice's own rushes to imitate. Harvey sits, but does not lay, in the same way she does. Except he props a leg up on the bed, spreading himself open, pressing that knee to his stomach as he settles next to her. She decides to be grateful she can't see anything from this angle, only his back, everything else too far in her peripheral to make anything particularly lewd out.

That gratitude is a fleeting present, for she is suddenly made intimately aware of the moment he must edge a finger into himself by the way his breath hitches. Clarice can't not notice, it's such a sharp sound that resonates in her ears— the leg up on the bed twitches. The bed creaks, and the spark ignites like a firework.

She brings a hand up to her mouth as her eyes betray her, her own thighs twitching with want for relief as she scours his back. Sees his shoulder blades flex when he must push in deep, loosen when he pulls out shallow. Harvey's very breath is trembling, his hips attempting to buck, but only succeeding in a meek roll with the way he's scrunched up.

"I'm so sorry if this is weird," he says, voice muffled and breathy. He must be covering his mouth with his free hand, too. Clarice can't say anything, especially not when he sighs as a tremor wracks through his body. His hips give another pitiful roll, his head lolling back for a brief second.

"H-Have you done this before?" she asks, perhaps too banally. It's just too practiced, he falls into each motion with too much ease. Experience. Her ears are reacting that way to sound again, any noise muted, as if underwater.

Harvey whines quietly, though the sound reeks more of humiliation than bliss. Clarice's body reacts the same regardless, shifting on the bed fruitlessly. She can feel herself pulsing, and she thinks she's gonna pass out if she focuses on that facet of this situation any more than she needs to.

"... Not before any of this came up. Just over the past few weeks." he manages shakily, "Just... just to see what I thought. To see if I liked it."

The bed creaks particularly loud with one swipe of his pelvis, and the sound he makes does sound more pleased. "Didn't want to make you go through any of this if I didn't even like it."

"... And you like it?"

Clarice buries her face in her hand then, when the silence stretches out a bit too long. Every part of her burns. Every nerve is roaring fire, and it's suffocating. What could even relieve her, she doesn't know.

"... Yeah. It was— it's nice." Harvey gasps out, a flurry of panicked breaths escaping him. He's trying to catch his breath, body going tense as wood. He tries to exhale, some other noise laden in it. "I think— I think I'm ready."

Harvey's arm looks disfigured as he moves it from this angle, the movement sputtering to a quickness that slows just as soon. His head tilts as he wipes sweat from his forehead with his free hand, seeming to completely pause. it's confirmed when he rests the other hand on his leg.

Her mind is caught in a constant loop of What do I do? and I don't know for a few seconds. For once, Clarice's body is dependable and rational, a hand grabbing for the small plastic bottle on her stomach. It's like all sentience has seeped out of her ears, her mind going blank as she pumps the strap-on absently, making the toy nice and slick. Apparently, she’s already poured it out on her hand.

The blankness in her head abruptly swirls into color, thoughts, visions, when Harvey turns his body. He gets onto his knees, ushering himself closer to her body, but not bridging any actual distance. His warm skin and body sit plainly out of reach.

Harvey hums plaintively, and Clarice can't even begin to explore what that could mean.

"You're really sure you're okay with this?"

A deep sigh reverberates throughout the room. Clarice leans back on the bed, pressing her hand harder against her face. "Yes," she groans out, agonized. "I'll tell you if I'm not feeling it."

Harvey lets out another heavy breath, though it sounds less burdened. "Alright. In that case then, I'll, uh, I need to..."

"Okay." Clarice says, high pitched, pulling her hand quickly away from the strap-on. It's weird, wearing this thing. She can feel the phantom sensations of where it tilts, now that her hand isn't there to direct it straight.

"Okay," Harvey echoes her, similar down straight to the tone, the almost squeaky way he says it. "I'll... try not to put too much of my weight on you."

"Thanks." Clarice merely whines, wilting into the mattress.

Harvey shuffles over, bed creaking with every new placement of his knees jutting into the bed. There's a moment where the anticipation builds, becomes something tangible and unbearably thick. The tension squeezes against itself, then loosens, like a heartbeat. Like it's a real, pulsing thing.

Harvey places a hand on the bed, around her side, gripping his covers tight as he murmurs apologies. Throws a leg over her waist as his other hand braces near the other side of her, releasing a shaky breath. He keeps himself up on his knees, looking down at himself and grasping at the strap-on feverishly by the base, holding it more in a line. Clarice doesn't know what expression he's making, what expression she's making, all too busy covering her face. Risking glances through the spaces of her fingers. It's all happening simultaneously too fast and tortuously slow.

"Alright," Harvey exhales, adjusting his knees one more time, face wrought with anticipation. "... Alright."

With a steady gaze downwards, Harvey slowly lowers his body down. He jolts as if struck with electricity when the tip presses against his rim, lips parting with a slow breath as he inches down further after a pause. There's a start of a whine in the back of his throat every time the strap-on slides in deeper, but he always staves it off. Always sucks in more air, and keeps going dutifully.

Harvey keeps to his promise and carefully holds himself up even as the strap-on fills him, an occasional shake winding from his face to his legs. Those dance aerobics classes seem to be paying off, in any case.

This seems to be one of the rare circumstances where Harvey is considerate of his boundaries and limits, hips undulating up and down with a careful air. It's a process he treats delicately, gives himself plenty of time to relax in between motions, and Clarice can appreciate that solely because he deserves to be treated gently. Even if she's horrible at doing it, he deserves that much. That sort of growth is something she owes him, one of these days.

That day will come, but today is a different one, a different milestone. Harvey doesn't contest these thoughts of hers, moaning softly once the gentle treatment becomes unnecessary. Unwanted, if the gradually increasing speed of his rhythm could have any thoughts on the matter.

Through the slits of trembling fingers, Clarice watches. Everything is magnified, all the emotions breaking some impossibly high dam despite the odds. There's shifts in Harvey's expression every time he effectively bounces, lips twitching with effort to keep himself quiet. Sweat glistens along his forehead and neck— he shines in the low lamplight that sits glowing only about a foot away.

The heat between her legs is unbearable. Clarice can't remember the last time she had gotten so wet and hadn't tended to herself. Hadn't been able to. It's humiliating, but that emotion is so weak and malleable in the current of pure arousal her body is getting lost in. Her head is foggy, yet her vision is vibrant with clarity, with Harvey.

Harvey, who's working himself down harder with every passing second. Instead of that lost, cloudy look catching in his eyes, he only looks all the more searching. Harvey sits back further on his heels, letting out a moan that sounds frustrated. Unthinkingly, Clarice's eyes glance downward at the dick between his legs. Straining and flushed against his abdomen, with him close enough that she can see the pearl of pre-cum beading at the very tip. It moves with every motion he makes. The bead drips over, trailing over every bump and ridge.

"... What's wrong?" Clarice dares to speak, voice containing a rasp that floors her.

"... I can't," Harvey whines, back arching as he sculpts his hips into a particular rocking motion. "I-I can't, I need—" he chokes, leaning far enough that he has to grind his hips forward and back more than up and down for the strap-on to stay inside.

Then he jolts at a particular thrust he implores, gasping sharply. His brown eyes go wide, glasses jumping with every movement that he makes, suddenly speeding up. "Oh! Oh, please, please—"

His thighs tremble with effort, and suddenly he's sliding right down. Harvey's weight presses right into her as he essentially sits on her lap, making her let out a grunt of surprise rather than one of any meaningful discomfort. He's straddling her completely, and the whimper he lets out is downright pitiful.

Harvey blinks with wet eyes, his eyes searching for hers, face twisted with embarrassment. Need laces it, need seems nestled into every frantic little movement Harvey attempts to make. Only for Harvey's body to slump back down, clearly too exhausted to keep doing all the work. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I can't— can you—?"

He suffers through the moment for air, face red as a strawberry, thighs still shaking even as he's seated. ".... Help me," he breathes, air whistling through his teeth a little. "Please."

The blood in her body is torn between two places. Clarice feels light-headed, her chest heaving for air she hadn't realized had dissipated. She's sweating before she's even doing anything, before she warily places her spare hand on his hip for support. Harvey groans with relief before she even properly helps him out. "Thank you, thank you." he chants.

He starts to move up again, more uninhibited thanks to the added momentum of Clarice's hand moving with him. Harvey lets out a hoarse cry when Clarice gathers enough courage to start rolling her hips up, meeting in a messy pace where neither is sure who should follow who.

Clarice shudders at the sudden increase in sounds, and more importantly, the volume. Face flaming, her mind wails to reprimand him in some way, to remind him of his neighbors who know him, but more importantly her. It's here where input and output scramble uselessly in the recesses of her brain. "Harvey! You— You need to quiet down." she hisses from her hand, on the cusp of a grand mistake. Her mind aims for swatting at his arm, but seeing as both hands are busy with equally important tasks, an easy pair of dots are connected.

Clarice raises her hand for a brief moment, smacking his ass lightly. Absently.

Harvey downright squeaks with shock, jerking on her lap. "I'm— I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

She could die right that moment, but thankfully, Harvey seems too out of it to make a comment on it. She cowers further into her hand all the same, body as hot as a furnace, eyes watering.

Clarice is just as quick to look through her fingers again, her other hand gripping his hip tightly, heart stopping in her chest when Harvey bites into his palm, muffling yet another cry. His eyes are lidded behind his glasses, breathing unsteady against his palm.

Harvey shakes his head, babbling around his hand as his body starts to tense up. "Clarice. Clarice. Feels good." His voice catches, bed creaking. An embarrassed pride stings her chest, hand clawing into his hip with her nails.

Despite the strain her voice, she forces what she knows he needs out. "You're doing so good, Harvey."

Harvey trembles, eyes squeezing shut, head tipping back. "... Clarice, 'm gonna..." he's nearly incoherent, too weak to keep riding the strap-on even with Clarice's guidance. Her moving hips seem to be enough to suffice, his teeth visibly digging deeper into his skin.

He blinks, once, then twice, then again, each one more rapid than the last. Harvey's body seizes, Clarice can feel it down to his thighs, his head bolting back forward. To her surprise, his other hand goes to cover the one holding his hip, his hips rolling in sporadic little bursts.

Harvey holds her hand to him tightly, dragging in one more ragged breath as the tension crests and drops with an abruptness entirely expected. He wheezes a little, sounding almost pained as his body quakes through the orgasm, cock twitching with little spurts.

All Clarice can do is watch with wide eyes, hiding them behind her hand again when it gets too much. All of this has been too much, really, but the feeling really implodes in the aftermath.

Soon enough, Harvey manages to haul his body to the spot next to her, sluggish and sated when he lets his body collapse. The bed squeaks in protest. Clarice's eyes burn more and more with unshed tears by the second, face hotter than the sun. She is half convinced that when she pulls her hand away, there will be burns staining her fingers and palm.

"Do you..." Harvey suddenly pipes up, lungs still audibly fighting for oxygen. "... want me to return the favor?" he asks, managing to sound as timid as he was breathless. "I mean, I know you didn't... finish." he coughs as quiet as a mouse.

Clarice makes a strangled sound, rolling on the side that turned her back to him. Tears spill out of her eyes, though she can't say any part of her regrets the experience. She's just... overwhelmed, mortified, and irritatingly horny. "No."

"Are you crying?" The bed dips as Harvey's voice pitches higher up in panic. "Oh, I'm so—"

"Harvey, it was hot," she sputters through tears, not giving him the chance to piss her off through his relentless apologies yet again. "Shut up. I'm just overwhelmed."

A hand tentatively reaches for her shoulder, Clarice's body tensing when she feels him stroke her shoulder assuringly. She hates him a little for it, hates it more when she actually relaxes.

It takes a moment of deliberate silence until the feeling soothes in her chest. Wiping away a few tears, she reluctantly rolls onto her other side, facing Harvey. “… Hi.” she says, voice a little muted.

“Hi.” The sentiment is mimicked easily, breathlessly, though he tacks a hesitant smile onto his flushed face. Clarice bursts into a giddy giggle for a reason she can’t quite pin down, giving him a watery smile. Harvey’s smile brightens, looking relieved. Some sexual exploration is healthy in the long run, she supposes, if it feels this freeing at the end.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[zeltqz]

niyaaaa do u have any tips for people who wanna get into fic writing? 👀

i don’t really get how the whole posting format for fics works on here tbh 😭 and like your info area it’s so cool

YEAH OFC!! btw dm me your username so i can follow and support you <3

tip 1- the posting format isnt that hard to get used to actually its just you create a tumblr text post and then copy and paste your fic onto it, add the tags and stuff then post it. if you want to add banners, headers and stuff to make it look better then go ahead, just add images to the text post

tip 2- the info area is the same as above, just add pictures of your choice etc to the text post, add your information, name, age, fav things etc and then to link posts to your post, highlight where u want the link to go, then copy the link of the post u want linked then press the hyperlink that looks like two chains linked together when you highlight the text if that makes sense? sounds like a lot but its rlly not i promise haha

tip 3- always type your fics on other apps like word or google docs since they have an auto save feature!! i dont reccomend typing your fics on tumblr since one if the app crashes, it doesn't automatically save your work so everything you wrote will get deleted (some versions of tumblr do have autosave, my laptop has it but my phone and iPad doesn't, so i dont rely on it)

tip 4- idk if you want tips on actual fic writing or just how to get your fics onto tumblr but ill help you with that anyway. with me when i write fics i always imagine it out in my head. theres some of my fics where i just went with the flow and wrote wgatever came to mind and those are the fics i hate the most because they dont rlly make sense to me. theyre always so random and it just seems rushed and bad.

i picture my fics like a scene in my head and whatever i want the character to do, think, say or feel i write that shit down asap. i use other online sources to help get more descriptive like the emotion theasurus <- honestly one of my favourite things to use ever, they have so much body language to use for every emotion in the damn book

dialogue is also something i find difficult. i've improved i personally feel like but its still hard for me especially if im writing a new character. i never want to make the character seem OOC so i do lots of research before hand. i normally use the wiki to read up on a characters personality.

for example i'll use ran for this since he's like 99% of my account lmao. in the wiki, he's described as "naturally whimsical toward others which makes him inscrutable" though ran doesnt have many scenes in the manga (which i hate bc i love him sm) its impossible to actually write him down to a tee so i use that naturally whimsical description to make him playful, charismatic, carefree etc, going off what little information i have with him.

getting a characters personality down is what can make or break a dialogue. for me when im reading a fic of a character and their dialogue is so OOC it puts me off and i dont even wanna read. so i apply my same fic icks to myself and think if I don't like seeing this and that in a fic, why would I incorporate those in my fics and have ppl get put off it if they have the same fic icks as me?

hope that makes sense!!

tip 5- dont rush yourself at all. i used to rush a few of my fics and i just ended up hating it so much after and fought bck the urge to delete them so many times but then i'd see people's comments and realise i was being too harsh on myself. i'd keep them up but i'd just hate seeing them get attention.

rushing only makes you hate your work and the quality of your work will decline if you are not in the right headspace.

thats also why i have the don't rush me thing in my rules because not only is it annoying to see people constantly asking for updates, it also makes me mad because i know i'll just put out a piece of garbage if i did rush.

also another tip don't give yourself deadlines!! if you know your writing consistency can be a little sloppy, don't tell your followers that you're going to upload every so and so day. if something happens and you miss the deadline, you'll feel bad and rush something out and most times out of ten, a rushed fic doesn't do well. so take your time and don't rush.

tip 6- dont listen to what other people say or feel obligated to write something you don't wanna. establish your boundaries!! for example, from day one i started this blog i said im accepting requests but i will not write anything to do with non-con, incest or minors. i made sure that was out there so i wouldn't feel uncomforable writing anything i wasn't comfy with.

there are people on this app that may like your writing and request you to write something for them. you are not obligated to write anything for anyone! don't feel like you have to just because they asked nicely.

if you want to accept requests you can im not saying you shouldn't, im saying don't feel like you have to. you always have a choice. its your blog.

tip 7- remember this isn't a job. you're allowed to take breaks, allowed to have a personal life. don't feel like you need to be updating every day. i used to think i was obligated to be uploading consistently at least every week because i was obsesssed with engagement and seeing peoples comments and was scared if i took a break ppl will unfollow. now i honestly don't care. i'm not active as much as i used to because of school and that's fine! if ppl want to leave, let them. don't feel like you're forced to keep being active in order to keep your follower count stable.

tip 8- this app can get really toxic sometimes. luckily enough i've only had one toxic anon in my inbox and i've been on this app for a year. some people have so many, some ppl get harrassed etc. if that happens to you just be prepared since there's no actual way to find out who's behind anons. you can turn off your anon options which means if ppl want to inbox you something then their account will be showing. some people arent comfortable with that and that's fine! i keep mine on because i want people to feel comfortable on my page.

just remember though if you ever feel like this app is getting overwhelming take breaks! for the sake of your mental health take breaks. i know so many writers on here that took breaks and came back healthier and stronger.

i feel like this tip goes for social media in general. as much as i love social media im aware how unhealthy it is. breaks are so important for you. remember that.

i can't think of anymore tips right now but if i have some more i will edit the post and add it on.

if u have anymore questions about the tumblr posting format dm me and ill help you out :))

[fauxkaren]

Age of Youth/Hello My Twenties! - 8/10

Oh man, this series... Here's the thing.

Most K-dramas do not have more than one season. Age of Youth aka Hello My Twenties! had two seasons. And between seasons, due to scheduling conflicts they had to recast one of the leads and due to other reasons (possibly the actress being involved in a bullying scandal? idk) another one of the leads was written out of the show. The tragedy of this show is that the first season is SO good. Like we're verging on 10/10 territory and then the second season is... just not. It's more of a 7/10 show. I ended up giving the show, as a whole, 8/10 because the first season really is THAT good, but damn, I wish the second season wasn't what it was.

The show is about 5 women in their twenties who are housemates living in Seoul and are very different people. I LOVE how absolutely women-centric this show is. The way this show explores these different women, the secrets they carry, how they relate to each other (or sometimes fail to relate to each other) and how their pasts inform how they respond to situations. It's all SO good. Complicated female characters with genuinely compelling stories! And then... season 2 happened.

The decline in quality in season 2 is just SUCH a shame. I think the recasting of one of the main girls was... not great but I think if it was just that, I could have dealt with it.

But writing out one of the five housemates completely changed the dynamic. And the character they created to become the new housemate just sucked. She really did. The actress was not good. The character was not good. Just bad, all around. By halfway through the season I was fast forwarding through the scenes with her storyline.

It's a shame because I thought that in season 2, Ye-eun and Ji-won's storylines were legitimately good (and was really mad we had to sit through a million scenes with New Girl and her romance storyline when I'd much rather see Ye-eun with her new boyfriend). And Eun-jae's story was pretty solid too. Jin-myung's story in season 2 was... meh. But I def could have lived with all of that if they had kept the same 5 main characters as season 1. After season 1, I was really looking forward to seeing what Yi-na did with her life but... nope. She just got written out after the first ep of season 2 and was replaced by an utter flop of a character.

[thebakunawa]

I think the most damning thing about EK that people aren't mentioning enough (or maybe don't realize if they got into the game late in dev and don't know what was re-released vs what's actually new) is that the writing gets bad specifically once you get to what they've supposedly spent the last *TWO YEARS* developing. Like its not even 'declining quality as it goes on' bad where you can blame the devs being overworked or something like that - its a very clear distinction between the last pre-hiatus update, and the actual new content that wasn't re-released after they took everything down.

Combined with how they've managed the release post-hiatus and how unusually dodgy they are when asked about their beta testing which would give a much more clear idea of how development actually went, it *really* feels like they spent the vast majority of the last two years working on their third game, and then when the deadline for EK came up they panicked and basically started the game in the last couple months, maybe.

Exactly!

Thank you anon! I feel like a lot of people are quick to forgive when the waiting time took 2 whole years with barely any update and if they had any it was sketchy and dodgy at best. The moment you hit anything Chapter 5 and the rest it all nosedives so fast you end up wondering if you played another game.

I also feel like people forget to talk about how when Call Me Under was announced, what little news we heard from Errant Kingdom disappeared almost completely. They felt like a complete afterthought, like a project they committed to but lost interest and tried to hype up the newest one they had. I agree with you that they probably just crammed the most sensible things during the tail end to say they finished the game. It wouldnt be a surprise if news spread that they actually spent it finishing their newest game.

Speaking of, I recently replayed the game and you can tell how much quality and care there is for the first set of chapters that it makes you think the game is going to be good but you get past it and it just falls apart. Given how they basically gave us silence about behind the scenes and progress for Errant Kingdom, I think its safe to say to always take their new games with a grain of salt.

[writerswho]

Wait, what, let's rewind. "There are fans that risk 30 different viruses to..." You mean people that consume the media without paying. Real fans would find a way to pay for the show they love, and support it, real fans wouldn't pirate a TV show they love. "But but but..." No, you don't add to the profit of the show or even the viewing figures (which are at their lowest) - you contribute nothing.

Whiny Tumblr fans that demand a show, that they don't support, caters to them at the expense of the people that made the show successful and at the expense of the show itself, isn't being a fan. Real fans aren't that selfish. Real fans don't piss and moan when someone actually tries to save the show by getting the ratings up again by appealing to the paying customers.

Would you demand a restaurant caters to you by changing its menu, only for you to steal food off other customers' plates instead of buying your own? Would you get upset if they realised they were losing money and changed the menu back to what it was? I mean, probably, but I hope not, but this is what you're essentially doing.

Ratings are in the toilet, merch sales are down, the BBC have panicked and brought DT and RTD back because they're in trouble. They've done a deal with Disney because they're in trouble. 90% of the money the BBC gets is from the license payer - something you're not - and they can no longer justify the cost to them.

Are you really so damn naive that you honestly think it's just sexists that don't like 13? The writing and acting is terrible and the show is in the worst place it's ever been creatively (retconning 60 years of lore in the Timeless Child was, shock, universally hated). It's haemorrhaged around 60% of its audience and pulled only 3.71m for a regeneration episode - that's not sexism, that's a clear and marked decline in quality. Most people don't care about a female Doctor, they care that the lore was lazily retconned in 20 seconds towards the end of Moffit's run to allow it to happen.

The writing was in decline during 12's era and continued well into 13's. The writing has been bad for years, and this is the result. Was the 20-ish% that stopped watching Capaldi also sexist? And no, real fans don't watch something that's both bad and has told them multiple times they're the problem and they're not wanted. Why? Well, for one, if you reward bad writing and bad behaviour, it doesn't get better - it gets worse.

I honestly don't have to keep debating with you, so I'm going to ask you to please leave me alone after this. I realize that your [dumb] opinion won't change, if you like RTD and think that only Tenth can save the series... actually, if you believe the series needed to be saved, that already shows me your point of view and I know better than to waste my time with people like that, especially when they hide in anonymity.

I don't understand much about technical details, but from what little I do understand, I know that the most important numbers for the BBC are the UK ones, the rest of the world doesn't count, mainly because BBC doesn't invest in anything other than their little club. Again, I could be wrong, but I highly doubt piracy will hurt the BBC in any way because what matters to they are the UK and UK only. You want to talk about profits and ratings points, fine, go ahead, you want to say real fan 'find a way', you can talk too. I don't care. Doctor Who isn't on in my country, I can turn on the telly and put on BBC and watch it straight from the source. Doctor Who is not on Netflix, Amazon, Paramount or any other streaming service we have in my country. There is no legal means of watching the series in my country, there is also no legal means of buying merchandise. Do you know what I can legally buy from Doctor Who in my country? Four comics and one book, that's all we have. No DVDs or Blu-rays. No iPlayer, because that only works in England/UK. No Britbox, because it does not work on my country. What we do have is a VPN to try to watch the episodes live, but what about those who doesn't speak English? How do you watch the episode without subtitles? How do you consume the series 'legally' on the official website? These people need to resort to other means, and there is nothing shameful in that. You don't know how horrible it is to talk about your favourite series and want to share it with people, and you can't tell them where to watch it because there simply isn't anywhere to watch it. I'm sorry if I can't give BBC my money, but it is their fault, not mine. With the distribution deal with Disney, that's finally going to change, me and thousands of other people who don't live in the UK are going to be able to watch it again and again and share it with friends because we'll finally be able to say there's a place to watch it legally. But, until then, I'm going to keep going the way I am because it's this or nothing, and I'm not going to stop watching Doctor Who. 

Again and again you mentioned the 'whiny Tumblr fans', being that it was you who came whining on my asks. All I did was show my displeasure with an attitude I can only define as cowardly on my profile without attacking or mentioning anyone [I mentioned his name in only one of several posts I made] and you came whining in my ear and talking about how RTD is the 'great saviour'. Which I don't agree with. I'm not going to get into the merits of the quality of the series and the scripts because I have my criticisms of certain details and sharing them would be like give ammunition to a donkey, and I don't need that. From the way you talk, it's easy to assume that you're probably one of those people who think the series went into disrepair the moment Tenth regenerated. And if that's the case, I really can't understand how anyone thinks Tenth's seasons are so good when they are full of flaws, just like many other seasons. In my opinion [MY OPINION], Tenth was only well written in his third season, in the first season he is an annoying-jealous-possessive-jerk and in the second season he is a complete asshole who came very close to being racist several times — specially in the episodes where he thinks he is human — and even with all these points I still watch his seasons, I watch them complaining about the shameful way Tenth treats Martha and Mickey, but I watch them anyway. Because I like the series and I like the Doctor, regardless of regeneration, even if I like some more than others.

Nobody is forced to like Thirteenth, nobody is forced to like any regeneration of the Doctor. But there's a huge difference between disliking a Doctor because you didn't connect with him or like some other version better (I know many people who don't like Tenth or Eleventh) and disliking Thirteenth simply because she's a woman — and this what happened, and to deny that fact is just untruthful. Thirteenth's numbers may not be the best, but that's because of the boycott she's been getting since Jodie was cast in the role. To mention numbers and merchandise, you have to admit that Thirteenth has had the worst marketing in the Doctor Who history. Commenting on the latest episode, the BBC left it to advertise the episode with a week to go before its premiere. Some might argue that in this case the Queen's death got in the way of marketing, but what about other episodes? What about the other seasons? From the start Thirteenth and Jodie have suffered from the neglect of the BBC who just don't seem to care about her. She had her episodes cut — Capaldi had twelve episodes a season, she had ten and then only six, nine with the episodes (you can blame COVID, but still). Besides, BBC would put Tenth in the spotlight at any given opportunity. He appeared in her games, in her comics, they did an event just for him — practically. He also got audios, books, solo comics, and stuff and more stuff. During the Thirteenth era, Tenth was the Doctor who had the most new projects, the Doctor who showed up the most. BBC didn't bring him back because he never left. And that's one of the biggest angers of some people out there, but that's another subject.

In one day, the sixtieth anniversary special had more marketing than the Thirteenth regeneration special, which at the time had no confirmed date or title. David's return is having more marketing in this last month than the Thirteenth had during its entire era, and you can argue that it's because he's 'going to save the series', but the truth is that the BBC never bothered to announce anything from the Thirteenth and now that they no longer have to worry about that, they can talk about Tenth again and again without having to pretend they care about another Doctor other than him. 

The boycott of Thirteenth isn't just because a bunch of whiny bigoted fanboys were pissed off because the Doctor turned into a woman — and that's the real reason, don't insult my intelligence by trying to say otherwise. The boycott of Thirteenth also involves the BBC being cowardly and complacent with all these people who haven't watched the series since Tenth left and hate everyone who came after him (and harassed everybody who still enjoy the show), with the BBC keeping David on speed dial, so they could use and abuse Tenth again and again every time someone complained — without even bothering to watch Thirteenth (or the others) episodes. If you want to talk about profits, you first have to admit that the BBC is their own villain. They didn't invest in Thirteenth's marketing, they didn't invest in Thirteenth merchandise, they didn't invest in Thirteenth at all, period. Thirteenth has at most a half dozen hideous dolls of dubious quality, and whose fault is that? Jodie and Chibnall or the BBC, who didn't bother to produce her merchandise? The monsters in one episode have more merchandise than the Thirteenth. And even with the BBC trying their best to bury the Thirteenth, the series still one of the BBC's most profitable productions. Impressive, huh? I wonder what her numbers would look like if the BBC cared. 

Jodie gave everything she had for the role, she was a great ambassador for the series and a great performer for the character. She did the best she could with the script she had, and if it wasn't for her, the series really could be dead now. Don't try to belittle her performance or others just to justify a dishonest point.

About Capaldi, anyone can see the problem most people have with him is due to the fact that he's older than the other actors. You want to talk about the decline of the writing in his seasons, when season nine is one of the best seasons of New Who? With season ten being just as good? And season eight is only bad because they were afraid to delve deeper into Twelfth's relationship with Clara precisely because of the prejudice against Capaldi's age, which caused an awkwardness between characters and created unnecessary disagreements between them. So, no. In his case, it wasn't sexism, but it was ageism. A problem as real as the last one in this fandom. 

Now, do me a favour and go whine in someone else's ear.

[dearyallfrommatt]

A hole that's never to be filled.

A friend of mine's dog is dying. He and his husband are having his wiener dog put down later today as his advanced age has made his many infirmities too much to bear. It happens.

I've known this guy on the internet for as long as Waf's been in the picture. We knew each other way back in the days when blogs were the place to be an absolute asshole to people who can't slap you. Liberal politics, but we had a good bit in common. Two weirdos from the worst the rural South had to offer in the '80s.

The way my friend talks, as much as a square peg I was, his was way worse on account of being gay and I can't argue with him. He's pulled a full-on Thomas Wolfe and lives with his husband in the Big Apple. What love I have for my little village's corner of the world I do not push on him nor does he pull.

I wish I had something better to say to him. Otis was probably the last thing that kept me hanging on. He died and I quit writing my news blog, I quit messing around with harmonicas or paying attention to music, and I really quit giving too much of a shit about what previously grabbed my attention.

Namely, politics and video games. Video games became mere background noise like bad movies and Lovecraft pastiches of dubious quality, so that's a story for another time. Once I get my head wrapped around it, I'll get back to you.

As for politics, well, I'm just tired. We've had a microscope on the American Political Machine - including the media, all media, that coves said machine - and I really don't think we've learned a single thing. Not about how the government works or what the media is even supposed to be, nothing. I hate to be almost cliched, but look who's running for president come November and ponder the important issues of the day, and tell me we - as a culture, as a people, as a nation - have learned a goddamn thing.

But so much for all that. The end came and for once in my life, I didn't try to grind it out until it started to work. No one read my news blog except for my brother for news about Mississippi and my ex whenever Facebook reminded her. I never received one response and none of my visitors were able to convince me they weren't digital ephemera.

Maybe losing Otis gave me an excuse. I quit the gym not long after because I wasn't able to make myself go. I quit talking to both my therapist and the pysch doc because I'm tired of talking to people, especially about my general depression and the specific disinclination to hang around longer than necessary. Hell, it was around this time my teeth passed the point of no return. Keep up your orthodontal health, brethren.

The therapist asked me to come up with three reasons to stay in this world and I could only come up with Momma and Otis. The dog, of course, is easy. I took him on a responsibility and never found anyone better to take over the job. As for Momma, well, as rough as her life has been - and rougher than it needed to be for anyone and for no good reason - I figure she didn't need to spend her declining years wondering why her eldest son and favored child couldn't stay in this life anymore and what she did to cause it. It ain't her fault, but you know how mommas are.

But that's all I've got. It's recently occurred to me that my lifelong restlessness - always stymied by my fathomless laziness - is because I've never really had any ambition or goals or, really, dreams. The whole writing thing is partly ego and mostly because it's the first thing I ever did that someone told me, "Damn, Matt, that's really good." Otherwise, man, I just like to read and thought it'd be an easy gig.

Called that one wrong. Pay attention to your Uncle Matt, kids. Always remember that no matter what you do, the bills have to be paid and they never stop. Just something to consider.

But these days? It occurred to me that I have the perfect set-up. Someone's paying my bills and I am finally free to do... what? If there was something I wanted to do, I'd be doing it. If there was somewhere I wanted to be, I'd be there. If there was someone I wanted to be with, I'd be with them.

There isn't. There aren't any stories I want to tell, either, and since there's nowhere I want to go and no one I want to talk to - and I don't want to talk to anyone about anything anyway - I'm not getting any stories to tell. I really should sit Momma down and make her tell me the History of Peaceful Valley (According to Mr. & Mrs. C. B---). If nothing else, it'd be colorful and with her, it's gone forever.

But I just don't care. I don't care what I eat for supper tonight. The next book, the next game, the next movie, the next documentary, the next bowl, it's all static to drown out the dark voices in my head. I don't care what my brother does with the current jigsaw puzzle of his life. I trust him, he's smarter than me, and he'll do the right thing for him, so luckily, I don't have to care.

I care about making Momma happy and basically, all I have to do there is be pleasant and unproblematic. That's a chore in itself, I don't know if I could manage much else. I guess I should count my blessings that no one is asking anything out of me. It's lonely but I'm used to lonesome.

[diary-in-disguise]

One Cruel Joke 11/1/22

Oh god. How come whenever I have an actual decent day, its followed by a completely abnormal shit day. I had about 3 good days, Sunday was "eh" but i was on a good track. But man oh man, today was just awful. Like what kind of sick joke of a day is this? So much "wtf". It all started when i woke up. Something just didn't feel right at all. For some reason i started remembering some more dreams I had. You see, last night I dreamed about a university in the snow, and i was running from something, then i suddenly turned into Garfield and run in the snow. It was really bothering me because i was just done with dreaming. and...now im having a mini meltdown even when saying that-I feel bad i have to turn so much pain off in points of my life. Distancing from my family and now my own dreams.

Anyways, I found it really abnormal my brain was like check summing or filling the blanks to complete these dreams. It made me confused on if these were truly dreams i have even had. Anyways even as i type this i remember yet another weird one, i remember this one dream i had when i was going on trip and driving through Charleston again and ended up in this hotel that was expiring my room. Ok anyways im going to just keep writing this entry. So i keep telling my mind i am for sure 100% accurate on my remembering like i could never forget how familiar that dream is. Well anyways next i made spaghetti, i was super hungry. Well i took only 2 bites because the sauce was not good.

It sucked, anyways my week is too busy this week. Its really a damn shame. I pretty much entered work on Monday and a fuck ton of stuff just fell on me. No wonder this world is declining in quality when we have too much to do. Anyways i wasn't dreading work too-too much atleast. Until about 10am when the office hours first class was just completely bare. Hardly anyone. It was so awkward and annoying. But the conversation flowed smooth atleast, same with the second section but huge bummer because the FUCKING DIRECTOR came in and was awkward, probably wondering why its dead but whatever. Then i had to do a demo for a client later at 2:30 though and i encountered my first rude customer for the first time at this job. I was so annoyed with hte manners on him, this is a tech call not a mcdonalds. Basically i answered his question and then asked him "Did I answer your question" and he scoffed and said "I don't know, aren't you the "expert" all sarcastically. Fuck that guy, probably another misogynistic piece of shit. I was just surprised today was my 2 year work anniversary at this company and this fuck had to be rude on it. Anyways i had a huge stress headache at the end of it all. I RARELY get headaches but i guess it didnt escape me today.

Anyways i forgot to mention my grandma insulted my hair. I hate when that bitch has to insult my hair. I have never been called beautiful or pretty once from that woman. I never will! It is honestly so annoying when i try to be a good person and help her and she just has to trigger my bad thoughts in regards to my hair. So i basically spent all day with this nagging insecurity about my hair, i have walked by that stupid mirror so many times just to puff it up I feel too insecure about it now. I hope this passes fast because i am mentally not wanting this either. It took me about 3 months last time she did it.

Anyways I have tried fostering the love emotion in me. I was contacted by a guy who i liked a little, not the most to like date him tomorrow or anything, but i really was enjoying our conversations and was feeling like i was opening up to him more. We have known eachother for awhile and we just were getting along well the past few days. I was really getting into the conversations. Well anyways i was completely 360 wrecked when he got snappy at me because i misunderstood he WANTED TO DATE HIS COUSIN. bitch, WHAAAAAT? It caught me so off guard I was just completely thrown off I had to ask him 3 times. Anyways I probably will start drifting from this guy now, thanks world. For the "wtf" of an announcement. But you know what thankfully I have the reason to know ATLEAST IT WONT WORKOUT. Or maybe it will because the world be like that.

Anyways, I just feel really overwhelmed now. I for some reason just feel really worthless and dulled. It is like finding people you feel like awaken a creativity in you others dont seem to wake because of how into the conversation i was getting in. Anyways I guess i will keep searching, and am over it now. I'm more just hoping the world doesnt do this again if I truly do find someone.

Its like everyone I talk to is a glazed eye zombie. I talk to people in real life and its like when i say something that tries to dig deeper about myself, its like i somehow glitch the matrix because their faces always freeze in an unattentive glare and they turn away, not acknowledging it. Its like i wasnt supposed to ask that, or the programming was hit somehow. Anyways I feel like that guy from XXXHolic manga, like I am only existing in both the real world and spirit world, but only the spirit world speaks to me and im invisible in the real one. Oh god its exactly that im some weird mid dimension spirit getting ignored by the dead. So much suck! I guess thats all. I feel like i was making so much progress on my mental health lately and it just kind of feels like im back to square one. Same bed, same situation. Too many obstacles in between.

Oh god now the ESFJ INFJ thing compared me to him, a failure! Thats just the cherry on top of the shit day sundae

[jazzythursday]

I’m about to go into another very long Marvel rant/dissertation here— mostly for myself— that I started writing soon after the Loki Series finale so please feel free to just scroll past this, because honestly I think I kinda overdid this one. It’s jaded and overly dramatic even for me. You have been warned:

The last 4 Marvel movies/shows I’ve watched left me feeling so completely depressed and unsatisfied and hopeless about the future of popular entertainment and story telling in general, and I know I’m not the only one. The fact that fans are going into these experiences hoping for a good story and character arcs that make sense with prior characterization, and leaving feeling… empty is a very clear sign that their approach leaves a lot to be desired.

Infinite War had some valid reasons to end the way it did, because by having our heroes fall so much harder than ever before, it built up the tension and high stakes for the next film. But what does that do when Endgame leaves us feeling even worse? I wanted them to triumph and finally come together to be better. I expected there would be losses of course but not enough to negate the wins. Instead the characters were subjugated for plot, characterization was watered down, and we lost all the original Avengers besides Thor and Bruce (who was no longer even Bruce). Peter loses Tony, Thor’s previous loses are permanent, and so many other things that, in spite of loving a lot of the movie, mean I haven’t been able to stop being sad about it for literal years. And the amount of thoughtless destruction that seems to be at an all time high when it comes to character’s lives and disregard for properly exploring emotions just doesn’t leave much to be expected at this point. Far From Home was good. It was. I liked it a lot. The acting was wonderful and there were some really interesting themes they grappled with but I still walked out of the theater feeling like there was still so much detachment surrounding a lot of the decisions, a little too much thoughtlessness (that, and the gaping hole of Tony). I’m not going to talk about WandaVistion but I’ll say that I was invested until the start of episode 8, and finished episode 9 feeling drained and tired and sad.

Then we get to Loki, a show which has plagued far too many of my thoughts since I started watching it, and has crushed my hopes for ever truly being happy with a Marvel project ever again. Loki is a character who’s ostensibly felt alienated and unseen for most of his life, and that’s before finding out about his parentage. His first movie ends with his suicide attempt and subsequent fall into the void. His second takes place a year into working under Thanos and ends with him being taken away in chains (yes I know he’s the villain he’s done bad things etc. etc. but for the purposes of this I’m only focusing on his pov). Then his third involves his solitary imprisonment, his mother’s death, and his near-death (considering the likelihood that he was actually stabbed), although it does end on a lighter note with his acquisition of the throne. Then we get his redemption and reconciliation with Thor in Ragnarok, immediately followed by the utter tragedy that is the first 10 minutes of Infinite War, which I don’t think I need to explain.

So what I suppose I’m saying here (very very inadequately) is that after all of that, I can’t believe the proper story to tell in his first chance at being a main protagonist was one where he’s constantly degraded and beat up, convicted of things he didn’t actually do, given no focus on backstory or implied/established motivations, and labeled as a clown and a narcissist! His powers are weakened, he displays almost no recognizable mannerisms or competence, he’s held to a higher moral standard than every other character, shown no respect, and ultimately loses EVEN MORE. We’ve seen him lose and lose and lose and lose again. We’ve seen him die THREE TIMES, we’ve seen him redeemed TWICE. So who in their right mind thinks that the most compelling story to tell after all of that was to see him LOSE AGAIN?! And not only lose, but lose without any real triumph, dignity, or acknowledgment beforehand. Death to the author aside, reading the utter nonsense the team behind it have spread, it’s so clear that it wasn’t made in good faith. Whether in ignorance or true maliciousness, they just don’t care. They didn’t research. They didn’t try and see things from his point of view. They didn’t truly sympathize with him as a person while writing. They didn’t understand. And they truly, truly wanted him to fail.

I’m tired of feeling hopeless at the end of everything, of leaving the theater or turning off the TV wondering why I even bothered, why I even care when I’m just being strung along with as little consideration as an audience as my favorite characters. I wanted to actively see him strive to be better, not just be told he could be. I wanted to see him triumph over his demons, not forget them. I wanted to see him be the “master of magic” that every other damn movie has alluded to, and to use his powers effectively. I wanted him to be powerful. I wanted him to, if not win, then win on a personal level at least. I wanted to see him take agency in his life and PROVE EVERYONE WRONG! And, though it’s now bafflingly controversial to say, I wanted it to be told by an experienced and competent writing and directing team that knew and understood his character and were passionate about telling his story.

I would ascribe to the notion of “don’t like it, don’t watch” if I could but I care to much to not be affected by this obvious decline in quality and awareness. And I’m a relatively recent fan. I haven’t been waiting for Loki to get his moment in the sun for 10 years. I’M NEW HERE, and my heart breaks so much for fans of the original movies who have lost their love of Marvel or Loki because of the way it’s been handled. No one should fall further than they can climb up from, and I’m tired of watching loss after loss and never getting the release of gaining enough of it back. What’s the point of caring about these characters if the writers won’t? Of investing in a connecting cinematic universe if it lacks continuity? Of looking for clues and foreshadowing when there isn’t any and the only twists are random and pander to shock value? The way these pieces/characters are being created and interpreted is reductive and incompetent, and for once I’d like to watch something that feels crafted, inspiring, and gratifying to see to the end.

If some people like the Loki show we got, I have no argument against that, because my own opinion is just as subjective as theirs. Though, I’d like to think that if what I want is for the show to be better out of love for the same character, then what they enjoyed from the show can coexist in that. If anyone’s actually read up to this point, I have to admit I’ve forgotten mine. Mostly I just wanted to express my frustrations over how unfeeling and stale most entertainment, specifically from Marvel as of late, has been.

TL;DR: I care too much, waaay too much, Marvel cares too little, Disney doesn’t care at all, and I don’t know how to accept that.

[the-melting-world]

Oh damn. I’m about to give my actual 🧐opinions🧐 on the arcana. Scary stuff!

By the end of the Asra tale, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. And thankfully it wasn’t because I was practically asra-starved and surviving so long off my own damn content, but honestly because there were several key elements in the story that appealed to me personally. I’ll be going over those below the cut.

I’m also going to discuss how my apprentice Kipling and her specific connection with magic fits into all of this. Once again, that wasn’t really something I was expecting to develop so easily as I played the tale, but the experience was just too delightful to just keep to myself until I’m ready to write a fic.

There will be spoilers!

*Everything is under the cut!*

I’ll start with the basics first and then move onto Kip.

Locked boxes. Ok, not what you would expect in terms of things from the tale that are supposed to light up a reader’s brain, but whenever I see this little device (be it metaphor, motif, or just a plot developer) I go a little feral. First of all, I KNOW the box is empty. They almost always are, but that’s not the point. Locked boxes (and to be clear, I’m talking about the chest Gavin hands over) could represent a lot of things — a personal challenge, an unnamed reward, possible disappointment, tiny little worlds that the characters are entrusted to protect. They spark questions like: why me? Do I have what it takes (to open this bad boy?) Is this what I’m meant to do? What does it mean if I can unlock/protect/discover its contents? What does it say about me if I can’t??? As a writer who LOVES to drag out simple devices until there’s not a single crumb left, I was LIVING for that chest as soon as it was placed in Asra and the MC’s care. If I could extend the tale, it would be such that Asra and the MC end up taking the box with them in addition to the Hyberian spices. Or at least some version of the box (which I am happy to elaborate on in a future fic!)

Asra’s character was sooooo consistent! Y’all. With the unfortunate decline of the quality of writing in Muriel’s route, I was losing faith in the devs’ ability to maintain Asra’s character. We all know that he’s a little flighty — a trait that I find endearing and also a little personal because I’m also kind of spacey as well as naturally prone to overlooking details because of either (1) daydreaming (2) don’t think it really matters. Sorry — Anyway. Back to my point. Even though Asra’s supposed to give off the head-in-the-clouds vibe, they took that way too far in the last couple chapters of Muriel’s route to the point where (for me) he seemed rather childish and unreliable. For that reason, I was worried that this would be the case in the new tale. But it wasn’t! I felt like this tale showed all the sides of Asra that we came to know and love from his original route. It was so balanced and refreshing that for many points, I sat there staring at the sprites and the text, just processing all of the warm feelings I was having. And on top of Asra being consistent, he had also changed! The MC pointed out that Asra had been hiding his feelings for so long and now he no longer had to. I thought the scene where he got really protective of the MC was a great example of that. I don’t think that’s a side of himself he shows very often, especially in front of the MC because he doesn’t want to freak them out or push their feelings in a certain direction. For most of his route, it’s clear how much effort he puts into letting the MC make their own decisions and removing his personal desires from the equation in order to minimize any bias. But by the time this tale takes place, you can see that Asra is fully comfortable with being more open about his emotions. Instead of seething and shooting judge mental glares with salty comments, (because he also does this a lot) he actually elaborates on what he finds upsetting about the situation. He defends the MC without holding back as much as he has in the past. It was so hot 🥵 cool to see Asra stand up to Gavin like that! At the same time we got to see the bashful side of Asra in the bar. There were just so many sweet, fun small moments between him in the MC. I can’t wait to explore them in some way in the future!

THE CG???

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???? Y'ALL REALLY AIMED A MAGNIFYING GLASS ON THOSE DIMPLES AND LIPS AND SAID LOOK AT THIS???? I WAS SWEATING. I WAS CRYING. I WAS LIVING. I WAS DYING. HNNNNNNNNNN 😩🥴👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽🫀🫀🫀🫀

.

Now I'm going to get a little bit into Kipling's magic...

For the record, my apprentice Kipling wields two types of magic: plant magic and teleportation magic. Though she relies on her plant magic more on average because of her job, it’s actually her secondary skill. Teleportation or grey magic is her primary and her mastery over it has taken much longer due to the fact that it’s tied to her culture, which she was not only separated from when she moved to Vesuvia, but also didn’t have a lot access to in the first place thanks to the centuries of cultural genocide that took place on her home island.

My timeline for Kip’s mastery of her primary magic doesn’t really sync up for when this tale takes place in the arcana timeline, so I have to repurpose it to fit the Door Lord timeline that takes place in my fics.

LOL I said all of that just to point out that during a lot of the chase scenes, Asra and Kip relied on her teleportation to evade the guild thieves. And since Kip is something of a locksmith when it comes to her magic, she was very intrigued with the box and was more concerned about opening it to see what was inside rather than delivering it to the marked location.

Also, in the Herbalist Hideaway, Kip’s first instinct to trade the box for the Hyberian spices because she felt that making Selasi happy was worth more than all this craziness with the chest. 😆 Asra of course, had to talk her out of it and encouraged her to give the merchant a reading instead.

There was definitely more that I loved about the tale, but these are the strongest highlights for me. Thanks for letting me brain dump on your dash!

[plaidbooks]

Hi! 👋🏼 Can I request a Cabot x Reader? Reader is a detective who may or may not be in love with Cabot but is afraid to tell her. Alex gets injured which may be the push that reader needs to admit their feelings

Defending Counsel

A/N: Hey Anon. I was close to declining this, but then thought “why the fuck not?” That being said, I do only write for Barba, Sonny, and Nick. (if you want some quality Alex Cabot x reader content, I highly recommend @storiesofsvu!)

Tags: mention of rape, mention of blood

Words: 849

Taglist: @the-baby-bookworm @beccabarba @thatesqcrush @itsjustmyfantasyroom @stardust-fray @permanentlydizzy @ben-c-group-therapy @infiniteoddball @glowingmess @whimsicallymad (I hope you all don’t mind being tagged in this!)

You fidgeted nervously in the elevator while it slowly climbed to the correct floor. You were meeting with Alex Cabot to go over your testimony on Ben West, something you had done a hundred times with the ADA. But this time was different. You had always had a little crush on the attractive woman, but that last time you had seen her, she had come to the precinct drenched, having forgotten an umbrella and asking for a change of clothes. If your cheeks had burned when you saw her clothes sticking to her form, your face was fully on fire as she had changed in front of you, continuing on with whatever trial she was talking about, oblivious to how your eyes trailed over her, the water that rolled over her skin.

This was the first time you were seeing her since that day, but the image of her half-naked, changing into your clothes, was still fresh in your mind as you stepped off the elevator, heading to her office. You could only hope you could survive working with her; you didn’t even know if she liked women or not.

 ******************

It was the day you were going to give your testimony. You still had trouble looking Alex in the face without heat creeping into your face, but you could shove that aside on the stand…hopefully. You sat in the witness box, looking at Alex as she stood to start questioning you. She was in a dark grey skirt, matching blazer, and a dark blue blouse. Her style was simple, professional, and looked so damn good on her. You swallowed.

“So, Detective, you found Mr. West at his girlfriend’s apartment even though she had a restraining order against him? How’d you know to find him there?” Alex asked.

“Yes, we found him trying to escape out her window onto the fire escape. We believe Mr. West was baiting her with child support—”

“Objection, speculation,” the defense attorney called.

“Sustained, jury will disregard the witness’s last statement.”

You cleared your throat. “We received a call from the neighbors, letting us know that they saw Mr. West go inside Ms. Ortiz’s apartment; they knew about the restraining order since they had called the police in the past for domestic violence between the two—”

“Objection, prejudicial!” the defense attorney stood, waving his arm at you. West glared daggers at you.

“The DVs are public knowledge and have already been established,” Alex argued.

The judge nodded. “Overruled.”

Alex finished her questioning and sat back down at her table. The defense attorney stood angrily, only asking a few questions on cross, but you didn’t get tripped up, sticking with the truth, which was simply Mr. West was a rapist and was using his baby’s mother as an alibi. Before the defense attorney could return to his chair, before he could place himself between West and Alex, however, West lunged for the ADA. You launched from the witness box with a shout as Alex fell backwards out of her chair.

You and the bailiff got there at the same time, pulling him from Alex’s limp, unmoving body. Letting the bailiff deal with the bastard, you leaned over Alex, hands shaking, seeing blood pool at the back of her head. You called in a bus, then tried to stop the bleeding.

 *******************

You were sitting in the chair next to Alex’s hospital bed, her chest rising and falling, her soft breathing enough to know that she was alive, that she would be okay. The wound had looked worse than it was, but the sight of her laying there, blood pooling around her, dampening and darkening her light hair, hurt your heart.

You started when she let out a low groan, her eyes clenching tightly before she opened them, blearily looking at you.

“H-hey Alex, how are you?” you asked, leaning closer to her. You poured her a glass of water, holding it and the straw to her lips so that she could take a few sips.

“I feel like there’s a marching band in my head,” she grimaced “What happened?”

“That bastard West attacked you, and you hit your head on the floor. You got a small cut, but God, Alex, it looked so bad…” you trailed off, tears in your eyes.

She took your hand in hers. “Hey, I’m fine. I’ve had worse, trust me.” Alex gave you a soft smile. “Thank you for being here for me.”

You smiled back, covering her hand with your other. It was now or never. “Alex…I…I’ve—I like you.” You said it in a rush, feeling like a high schooler again. You ducked your head.

Alex gave you a small smile before she brought your hand to her lips, giving it a small kiss, and your words died in your throat, your brain short circuiting. “I know, [Y/N]. I’ve known for a while, and I feel the same…. After I’m released, why don’t we get a coffee?”

You smiled brightly, your nerves falling away. “I’d like that.” She pulled you to her, giving you a soft, sweet kiss.

[coriintucker]

Tell me the goss on Carrie...she annoys me

Carrie found Hollywood and brought Hollywood to Sleater-Kinney. When they ended their hiatus back in 2015, this became an ever present factor when Carrie wheeled out her famous friends for the No Cities music video. To me, this feels like the turning point in the band’s legacy and longevity. No Cities was a pretty decent reunion album in my opinion because it still felt like a band effort and had the SK musical brand.

Drifting through the No Cities era, Carrie became more and more vocal, fed into by Portlandia, shifting more and more towards egomaniacal front-woman status. One thing I always loved and respected about the band was that there was an equal share between duties with Corin (mostly) leading. This began to fracture, splintering as the reunion era progressed.

(The other thing that was weird was when the band grew from a 3-piece to using stage musicians which still seems so dumb and pointless when the powerhouse of the SK trio, another sign of the beginning of the end. I do wonder who’s bad idea it was to bring in back-up.)

Carrie’s personality reeks of ego and she reminds me of Susanna Hoffs, who treats her bandmates like trash, holding the ability to constantly frame herself as the most important, ‘me me me’ (but at least Carrie doesn’t trash Corin).

I’ve always disliked Carrie but her ego has only grown and grown, Sleater-Kinney now a solo effort. I am really happy Janet got out of there, freeing herself from such toxic egos, and that’s before the steady decline in writing and music. The Center Won’t Hold is a terrible, terrible album in my opinion, same with the newly released material. The title of the former is somewhat fitting for ending the power and highs of SK.

The decline of the band’s quality is directly tied into their failing relationships. Carrie’s initial “statement” about Janet was disgraceful, and shame on Corin and Carrie for treating her so carelessly as “The Drummer”.

I truly loved this band but their shadiness was fully on display the second they deliberately waited until tour tickets had gone on sale before the announcement of Janet’s departure, a very calculated move, only for them to play the faux ‘oh Janet surprised us’ shtick.

I’m the biggest SK fan but damn, I wish they had stopped after No Cities. It’s the Carrie Brownstein Band now.

I remember reading this article: ‘Sleater-Kinney has long symbolized a feminist utopia. What happens when things fall apart?’ and I think it captures things pretty well.

[hi-hey-haechan]

Perfect ~ Qian Kun

Pairing: Qian Kun x reader

Word count: 3.7k

Genre: Fluff, smut, angst

Warnings: mentions of starving oneself and insecurities about weight. I hope I didn’t romanticize this too much. It’s something that we deal with daily, and love isn’t enough to fix our own views of ourselves. This is also smutty, too.

When Kun began eating less, you didn’t think much of it. His comeback was nearing, and you figured that SM would probably force him to take off his shirt again. You believed that he looked stunning, even with his abs or jawline less prominent, but he didn’t think the same. Oh, how you wished he saw what you saw.

When “less” became even less, a gradual decline stretching out over several days, it didn’t go unnoticed. Kun knew exactly what he was doing, and so did you. While attempting to lose weight, he also tried to hide it from you. Eating more fruit (much to Ten’s dismay) and veggies, fewer carbs and less sugar, too. Overall, however, there was just a smaller amount consumed.

His energy hardly wavered, at least to the extent you could see. Kun continued to practically overwork himself, practicing arranging, producing, and writing songs into the dead of night. You saw him less, due to this, but you were sure he was living off of two hours of sleep and eight cups of coffee.

For tonight, he was back home, looking tired but happy to see you. His jawline was sharp, sharper than usual, and it kind of worried you. Have you eaten?  you wondered, looking at his slumped shoulders yet bright eyes. When you went up to hug him, he felt thinner in your arms. His hoodie didn’t hide the fact that his torso felt more rigid, less soft than before.

“I missed you,” Kun sighed, but his smile was bright. Your heart melted a bit -- gosh, you’d missed his beautiful grin. It had been so long since you’d genuinely had quality time with him, excluding a few hugs or kisses between the late nights and early mornings. He was still just as strong as his arms embraced you.

“I missed you, too. Have you eaten?”

Kun hated lying to you. He remained silent for a few seconds, considering his words carefully. “No, but I’m alright.” It wasn’t a lie: he hadn’t eaten that entire day, but he could continue to hold out. He was fine.

You couldn’t help but notice how his gaze was no longer trained on you. He didn’t want to see the expression on your face when he told you that he didn’t need to eat dinner. “You need to eat, Kun,” you told him softly. Your voice was gentle, but at the same time, you stated it like it was a fact that he couldn’t ignore.

“I’ll eat tomorrow.” That was a lie.

Based on how much weight he’d appeared to have lost, as much as you wished his statement to be the truth, you couldn’t. “I don’t believe you.”

“Okay.” His statement was plain and emotionless, like he didn’t care that you didn’t believe him. It was so much unlike him. When you looked at him, you could see that he was clenching his jaw, almost like he was angry.

“Why are you acting like this?” you felt a bit hurt by his words. You wanted him to look you in the eyes and see the softness and the warmth that was always there.

“Acting like what?” he spat.

That hurt. Kun never raised his voice. He was so patient, so level-headed and even-tempered. You thought it out. He was being defensive over his eating habits, and now he was attempting to stand his ground. He wasn’t telling you to go away or shut up, meaning that he still needed and wanted your presence, regardless of the squabbling. Kun couldn’t look you in the eye. If he stood up and left, you realized, he’d break down. He’d be running away from himself, which he wasn’t one to do. If he did this, he would force himself into the same cycle tomorrow of not eating.

You didn’t have to read into him any further. You knew him too well. He was never so blatantly against eating. He was even thinner than usual, and he was so defensive when you attempted to correct his eating habits. “Why are you starving yourself?” You had lightened your tone, trying to make it sound more welcoming, more understanding.

Kun took a ragged breath as his head slowly turned away from you. At first, you thought he was ignoring you, refusing to answer. You couldn’t see his face, but you could hear the slightest sniffle come from him.

You could only imagine how he was feeling. Now that you’d outright confronted him, he had nowhere to run. He always forced himself to stay strong, to put on a brave face and show nothing but kindness and love to the world, even when he was breaking down inside. Kun always bottled up how he felt, never wanting to burden the other people around him. But here, when you’d asked him outright about this vulnerability that he hid from others, he was breaking down, perhaps for the first time within this entire predicament. At the same time, you were stunned. You’d never seen Kun cry. Sure, he had been close to tears, like at the Beyond Live concert, where he looked so utterly happy and touched. You’d never seen him break like this, though.

You threw your arms around him. “It’s okay,” you murmured, “Cry, let it out, it’s okay.” He picked you up and placed you on his lap, granting him better access to you. His face buried itself into your shoulder, and his arms wound around your body tightly, as though you were the only thing anchoring him in that moment.

He didn’t contain his sobs, and his body shook as he cried, muffling the sounds of his sadness into the fabric of your his hoodie. His soft blue hair tickled your neck. Kun held you like you were his lifeline, hardly allowing you to move. You’d never seen him so upset, so utterly broken and vulnerable. Seeing him hurt like this without being able to help or relate to him was what was the most painful.

Upon listening to him the slightest bit further, you heard repeated whispers of the word “sorry.” The word left his mouth over and over, and you could still just barely hear him. He said it more loudly, an utterance you were intended to hear.

“You don’t need to be sorry. Don’t you ever feel sorry for hurting.” As soon as you said your words, you knew they couldn’t be attained. He felt sorry for making you see him like this, the opposite of the person he wanted to show you. As much as you didn’t want him to be sorry, he was. Because that was the kind of person Kun was: someone who would deeply regret any slight mistake he’d make and do anything to reverse it.

But as Woosung says in “She’s in the Rain” by The Rose, “It’s better to be held than holding on.”

Seeing him so broken shattered your heart into pieces. Your smiley, kind, talented, smart boyfriend was the same boy who was in your arms, sobbing because of a weakness he couldn’t overcome. You hugged him on the outside, but he was only suffering on the inside, and you didn’t know how deeply your hug would manage to touch him, to help him.

After almost an eternity, Kun’s tears and sobs ceased. He didn’t stop holding you, clutching onto you with everything he had. Even when the worst of the storm had passed, the bad weather was still present, just as Kun still needed you near.

“If I ask you something, I need you to be completely honest in your answer,” Kun said. “Please, don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Lying will hurt more than the truth.”

His head had withdrawn itself from your shoulder, his face tearstained and red. Kun’s eyes were slightly red from all the crying, and the sight made your heart clench. You leaned forward and pressed kisses to his cheeks, his nose, his mouth, trying to calm him down, to make him feel loved. His skin lingered with the salt of his tears, but you didn’t care. “Ask me anything,” you replied.

“So you know how they call me ‘Fat Kun,’“ he began, unable to look you in the eyes. Just hearing that statement alone sent a wave of anger through you. He then continued, “How accurate is that nickname?”

Oh, that’s why he’s been doing all this to himself. His members had given him that nickname back in 2018. One of his members would occasionally let the name slip now, but Kun would just brush it off, grin and bear it. What was worse was the fact that his fans picked up on the nickname. They found it funny and affectionate to pick on their favorite idols like that. NCTzens should have known damn well that calling him “Fat Kun” was not a term that made him feel good about himself. To some fans, that was his only character trait. Kun had outright said that being called by that derogatory nickname made him uncomfortable, yet people kept doing it. Some NCTzens sucked. Of course he felt self-conscious, if his own fans kept calling him fat.

And he wasn’t even fat! You were honestly concerned for his weight, since he was forced to conform to the beauty standards of idols, which meant being quite thin. He already was thin. You knew that Kun’s body gained weight easily, but you saw how conscious he was of it. He always watched what he ate and exercised daily.

“It’s not accurate at all, in the slightest,” you told him honestly.

“I knew you’d say that.” Most people wouldn’t be able to tell from him, but the slightest hint of disappointment was in his voice. He wanted to hear a different answer. If you’d called him fat indirectly, it would give him motivation for working towards being slimmer. You couldn’t call him fat for two reasons: one, it wasn’t true, and two, it would hurt him. The fact that he thought you were lying to him, the fact that he believed himself to truly look a certain way, was what caused you to embrace him, pulling his head to your chest.

His soft hair tickled against your neck at chin, but you pressed your lips to the top of his head regardless. One of your hands reached up to the back of his head, pulling it even closer to you. You heard Kun take a deep breath in, attempting to keep and remain calm. “I said it because it’s true,” you murmured. “You’re slim, Kun, and you care so much that it worries me.”

“I guess I just want to look my best? For the NCTzens and Weishennies?”

Kun was too sweet. Seriously. You smiled at it and stated the most truthful words you could: “Best? Kun, you’re too perfect for this world. You care about your fans, who usually don’t deserve a fraction of what you give them. You lead the other members so well, always caring for them. Your voice is beautiful, but it could never be as beautiful as your heart. Nothing could be as sweet and kind and open and wise as your own heart. Plus, you look absolutely beautiful, too. Your smile lights up the world and brings joy to my life. Your eyes are full of sincerity. That face you make when people tease you and you’re annoyed but just laugh it off because you love them too much? It’s so cute. Your dimples that pop out whenever you talk or laugh make my heart melt. You’re absolutely perfect.”

“Hey, don’t disrespect the fans like that,” he reprimanded gently. The fact that he cared so much about them made you want to cry. The way he had so much love for everything was so pure and sweet. He gave you a smile, and it felt like an apple cutter was trying to dig out the center of your heart, causing your stomach to do flips and your entire being to want to kiss him.

“I’ll disrespect anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself,” you told him.

“It’s part of life. I’ll get by.”

A thought suddenly occurred to you, and upon this curiosity, you inquired. “Wait, is this why you’ve been so...shy these past few weeks?”

The tips of Kun’s ears turned red, and his gaze shifted to something that was behind you. “I had felt bad about it before, you know. It’s just...I didn’t want you to see me like that until I had bettered myself.”

It broke your heart to hear. He wanted to be his best for you, and at the same time, he didn’t believe he was enough. You’d barely seen him for weeks, much less been able to be this close to him, due to how distant he was being. Intimacy had been practically nonexistent.

“Baby,” you whispered. You hardly knew what to say. “I love you no matter what you look like. You could be a potato and I’d still love you. Well, okay, I do love potatoes in general, but I hope you get what I’m saying. I, and your fans, too, love you for you, and not for your visuals or your abs or jawline. Yes, every physical part of you is absolutely perfect, but you’re more than that.”

You wished your words were making sense to him. You hoped you were making your point, that you loved him so, so unconditionally, and you couldn’t even try to change that. You didn’t want to change it.

“You don’t have to believe me,” you assured him. “I know that another person’s comments aren’t enough to change a person’s view of themselves. Just because I tell you that you’re perfect doesn’t mean you have to believe it. But I believe it because it’s what I see when I look at you.”

Kun’s eyes had met yours again, and they were bearing into yours with so much emotion that you almost wanted to cry. “Thank you,” was all he really could say. “I love you. I love you so much.” After hearing your words, you knew he had so much to say, so much to think about, but he didn’t know how to say it, especially without crying or being disingenuous towards himself.

So you kissed him. You had kissed him just a few times in those past two weeks, but this one was different. You could taste the salt of his tears on his lips, and you pulled him closer, trying to portray every feeling you had through the connection of your mouths. He held you fast, arms remaining tightly around your body. Kun’s lips were soft as ever, but they way he was kissing you, grasping onto you desperately, wasn’t quite so soft.

His mouth was moving against yours fervently, and the words he silently spoke were a mix of “I love yous,” “I missed yous,” and “I need yous.” He meant that last phrase in every sense of the term. He needed you in his life; he needed you to love him and anchor him when his entire world was chaos. He needed you close to him, as close as you were right then.

But any closer was when Kun’s brain would come into play, trying to turn his momentary comfort into something different. The prospect of you seeing him completely naked scared him. His confidence had never been too high regarding his physical appearance, but after dwelling on nothing else, twisting what he saw into something he disliked, he didn’t want you to look at him, no matter what you may have thought before.

Kun’s brain was running a million miles a second. He broke away, needing to understand his thoughts.

“What are you thinking about?” you asked quietly. “Are you alright?”

He looked at you apologetically, and his face was red. “It’s just...I want to make you feel...good. But the idea of actually getting undressed doesn’t sound...”

“You don’t have to explain. I understand. We don’t have to do anything. I care about you more than anything else.”

“But the problem is the fact that I want you so bad. I missed you in every sense of the word, but I can’t...show you me?”

“And you don’t have to.” Kun kissed your lips again, desperate and loving and understanding and lustful. His hands moved from your waist, to your hips, to your head, fingers tangling in your hair. When you ground your hips down on him, Kun’s member was already hard. You were just testing the waters, in a way, waiting to see his reaction, but you already knew what he wanted, both by the erection that pressed against your crotch and the quiet groan that was stifled in the back of his throat.

“Y/n,” Kun sighed against your mouth, “I missed you so much.” His lips captured yours again, and you couldn’t help but feel warm and loved. You adored this feeling of closeness, and you were aware of every detail of his body. His fingertips were lightly brushing against your scalp. His hair tickled against your forehead, and his heat radiated from his perfect mouth. Your own throbbing core was pressed against his erection, the layers between you refusing to limit the effect he had on you.

You broke away for a second, and your fingers flew down to his hoodie, lightly disappearing under the hem of it. “Can I...?” you whispered. The feeling of his skin under yours would make both of you into messes, and the heat of him would create an unspoken, powerful intimacy, just as it always did.

“Just for a minute,” he replied. Your mouth was no longer against his, and you slid your hands further up. The glancing touch of your fingertips made contact with his heated skin. You made sure to be gentle, and you dragged your hands down his stomach, running over the clear muscle that was present. The ridges of his abs turned you on even more, but it also reminded you how hard he worked to look perfect, how much he cared.

“You’re perfect,” you told him with unabashed sincerity. You kissed him again. “Absolutely beautiful,” you mumbled against his mouth. As you remembered his instructions, you withdrew your hands and tangled your fingers in his hair, kissing him harder, more roughly.

Once again, you ground your hips against his, letting out a soft “Fuck” as his hard-on pressed onto your clothed clit. His mouth opened against yours in a tiny gasp, and this allowed you to deepen the kiss.

Kun moaned into your mouth when you ground on him again and slid your tongue into his mouth. He felt too wrapped up in you to think of anything else. His senses were filled with you, how perfect you felt and how much pleasure you brought to him.

You two were in your own little world. You continued lightly humping on his hard member, coaxing the prettiest noises from him. Kun was clearly sensitive, hardly having been touched for a few weeks. With all the pent-up stress and emotion, he needed the release all the much more. Admittedly, you weren’t doing too well easily, either. You felt his erection press into your clit, indirectly dragging through your dripping folds. Shamelessly, a whimper passed your lips.

Kun, you realized, despite being under you, knew how to bring you the most amount of pleasure. He grabbed your waist, helping to guide you down on him more harshly. It felt even better, the increased pressure emitting moans from both of you. When he rotated you on his hips, the gyrating motion was right against your clit.

“Again,” you begged, which was when you realized how raw and husky your voice was.

After another gyration, Kun bucked his hips up into yours, letting out a breathless moan. “Why do you feel so good?” he managed to say.

When he began to help you move into a rhythm, you knew you wouldn’t last. The constant friction right against your clit, against your throbbing core, made you almost close your legs from the sensitivity. You could barely comprehend why grinding against his hard-on turned you into a mess, but you loved it so much.

“K-Kun, baby, I’m gonna cum,” you whispered against his sweatshirt, for your head was buried in his shoulder.

His hands squeezed your waist, and his cock twitched under you. He swore, which he really didn’t often do, and stuttered, “M-me, too,”

Your movements were faltering, and the knot in your stomach was begging to come loose. Kun and you couldn’t hold back your sounds of pleasure. Missing each other, deprived of touch, had taken its toll on both of you.

When you came, your thighs clamped more tightly around him as your pleasure overtook you. A choked sob passed your lips, and you found yourself clenching around nothing, squirming on his lap. You managed to squeak out his name multiple times, and you were gripping onto his shoulders as you got went over the edge.

Kun, too, was a mess when he came, legs shaking, breaths uneven, moans and breathless, beautiful sighs left his mouth. Under your core, which got so wet that it leaked through your leggings, you felt his hot seed be shot from him with nowhere to go. He was hugging you tightly, grasping onto you as he came hard, his cum staining the front of his sweatpants.

As soon as his breaths returned to normal, you embraced him again. “You’re perfect, Kun, in every single way. And if you don’t see it, I’ll remind you of it until you do.”

When Kun kissed you again this time, it wasn’t lustful as it was the first time around. This was gentle and patient. “I love you, and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you ever apologize for being insecure.”

Kun didn’t answer, but instead went back to just holding you. “I think I need to clean up,” he said, out of nowhere, despite it being true.

You laughed, climbed off his lap, and held out your hand. As soon as he cleaned himself off, and so did you, you refused to ever let him go again, and you two clung to each other endlessly.

I saw people still calling him “Fat Kun,” and I heard rumors about him starving himself, especially around NCT 2018. Kun is perfect, beautiful and precious in every way, and so I wrote this purely self-indulgent thing that took like a week.

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

RANDOM REVIEW #2: ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999)

“This game has got to be about more than winning. You’re part of something.”  Any Given Sunday (1999), directed by Oliver Stone and featuring Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, Al Pacino, LL Cool J, James Woods, and Matthew Modine, is my favourite sports movie of all time. Of all time.

I’m not betraying my favourite sport by saying this. The Mighty Ducks is a kid’s movie. It’s okay, but it’s not a timeless classic. I don’t like the Slap Shot series, Sudden Death is fun but silly, and the Goon movies were a missed opportunity. The only truly good scene in Goon is the diner scene where Liev Schreiber tells Seann William Scott: “Don’t go trying to be a hockey player. You’ll get your heart ripped out.”

  Such is the sad circumstance of the hockey enforcer. They all want to play, not just fight. Here’s a link to a video in which the most feared fighter in the history of the NHL, Bob Probert, explains that he wanted to be “an offensive threat...like Bobby Orr,” not a fighter: https://youtu.be/4sbxejbMH4g?t=118 Heartbreaking. But not unusual.

Donald Brashear, Marty McSorley, Tie Domi, Stu “The Grim Reaper” Grimson, Frazer McLaren: they all had hockey skills. But they were told they had to fight to remain on the roster, so they fought. As Schreiber says in the film: “You know they just want you to bleed, right?”  If the players don’t bleed, they don’t get to stay on the team. So they fight, and they pay dearly for it later. Many former fighters have CTE or other head injuries that make day-to-day life difficult. The makers of Goon should have taken that scene and run with it. I was so disappointed they didn’t, especially given what happened right around the time the film came out, with the tragic suicides of Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard, and Rick Rypien, all enforcers, all dead in a single summer. So Hollywood hasn’t even made a good hockey movie, let alone a great one. Baseball has a shitload of good films, probably because the slower pace of play makes it easier to film. Moneyball has a terrific home run scene, Rookie of the Year does too. Angels in the Outfield was a big favourite of mine when I was a kid, plus all the Major League films, and Bull Durham. 

Football has two good movies: The Program (1993) and Rudy (1993).    

And football has one masterpiece. The one I am writing about today.

A young Oliver Stone trying not to die in Vietnam. ^ Now, I know Stone is laughed at these days, given his nutty conspiracy theories and shitty behaviour and the marked decline in the quality of his films (although 2012’s Savages was underrated). I know Stone is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but do you want a football movie to be subtle? Baseball, sure. It’s a game of fine distinctions, but football? Football is war. And war is about steamrolling the enemy, distinctions be damned, which is why Any Given Sunday is such an amazing sports film. I love the way it shows the dark side of football. In fact, the film is so dark that the NFL withdrew their support and cooperation, forcing Stone to create a fictitious league and team to portray what he wanted to portray.

This is not to say the movie is fresh or original. Quite the opposite. Any Given Sunday has every single sports film cliché you can think of. But precisely because it tries to stuff every single cliché into its runtime, the finished product is not a cliched mess so much as a rich tapestry, a dense cinema verite depiction of the dizzying highs and depressing lows of a professional sports team as it wins, loses, parties, and staggers its way through a difficult season.  Cliché #1: The aging quarterback playing his final year, trying to win one last championship. (Dennis Quaid) 

Sample dialog: Dennis Quaid (lying in a hospital bed severely injured): Don’t give up on me coach. Al Pacino: You’re like a son to me. I’ll never give up on you. ^ I know this sounds awful. But it’s actually fuckin’ great. Cliché #2: The arrogant upstart new player who likes hip hop and won’t respect the old regime. (Jamie Foxx) 

Cliché #3: The walking wounded veteran who could die if he gets hit one more time. Coincidentally, he needs just one more tackle to make his million-dollar bonus for the season. (Lawrence Taylor) 

Cliché #4: The female executive in a man’s world who must assert herself aggressively in order to win the grudging respect of her knuckle-dragging male colleagues (Cameron Diaz). Diaz is fantastic in the role, though she should have had more screen time, given that the main conflict in the film is very much about the new generation, as represented by her and Jamie Foxx, trying to replace the old generation, represented by Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, Jim Brown, and Lawrence Taylor. Some people think Diaz’s character is too calculating, but here’s the thing: she’s right. Too many sports GMs shell out millions for the player an individual used to be, not the player he presently is. “I am not resigning a 39-year old QB, no matter how good he was,” she tells Pacino’s coach character, and you know what? She’s right. The Leafs’ David Clarkson signing is proof positive of the perils of signing a player based on past performance, not current capability. Diaz’s character is the living embodiment of the question: do you want to win, or do you want to be loyal? Cuz sometimes you can’t do both.

Cliché #5: The team doctor who won’t sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (Matthew Modine).

Cliché #6: The team doctor who will sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (James Woods) 

Clich�� #7: The grizzled, thrice-divorced coach who has sacrificed everything for his football team, to the detriment of his social and familial life, who must give a stirring speech at some point in the film (Al Pacino…who goes out there and gives the all-time greatest sports movie “we must win this game” speech) 

Cliché #8: The assistant or associate coach who takes a parental interest in his players, playing the good cop to the head coach’s bad cop (former NFL star Jim Brown). 

Best quote: “Who wants to be thinking about blitzes and crossblocks when you’re holding your grandkids in your arms? That’s why I wanna coach high school. Kids don’t know nothing. They just wanna play.” 

Cliché #9: The player who can’t stop doing drugs (L.L. Cool J).

Okay, so the first thing that needs to be talked about is Al Pacino’s legendary locker room speech.  Now, it’s the coach’s job to rile up and inspire the players. But eloquence alone won’t do it. If you use certain big words, you lose them (remember Brian Burke being endlessly mocked by the Toronto media for using the word “truculent?”). The coach must deliver the message in a language the players understand, while still making victory sound lofty and aspirational. This is not an easy thing to accomplish. One of my favourite inspirational lines was spoken by “Iron” Mike Keenan to the New York Rangers before Game 7 against the Vancouver Canucks in 1994. “Win tonight, and we’ll walk together forever.” Oooh that’s gorgeous. But Pacino’s speech is right up there with it. 

“You know, when you get old in life…things get taken from you. That’s parta life. But you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out…life’s this game of inches. So’s football. In either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean…one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it…one half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the fuckin difference between winnin’ and losin’! Between livin’ and dyin’!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_iKg7nutNY  Somehow, against all odds, Any Given Sunday succeeds. It is the Cinderella run of sports movies. You root for the film as you watch it. The dressing room scenes are incredible…the Black players listen to the newest hip hop while a trio of lunkhead white dudes headbang and scream “Hetfield is God.” There is a shower scene where a linebacker, tired of being teased about the size of his penis, tosses his pet alligator into the showers where it terrorizes his tormentors. There is a scene where a halfback has horrible diarrhea, but he’s hooked up to an IV so the doctor (Matthew Modine) has to follow him into the toilet cubicle, crinkling his nose as the player evacuates his bowels. There is a scene where someone loses an eye (the only scene in the film where Stone’s over-the-top approach misses the mark). There are scenes that discuss concussions (which is why the NFL refused to cooperate for the film), where Lawrence Taylor has to sign a waiver absolving the team of responsibility if he is hurt or paralyzed or killed. I wonder how purists and old school football fans reacted to the news that Oliver Stone was making a football film. If they even knew who he was (not totally unlikely…Stone made a string of jingoistic war movies in the 1980s) they probably thought the heavy hands of Oliver would ruin the film, take the poetry out of every play. But the actual football is filmed perfectly. The camera gets nice and low for the tackles. It flies the arcs of perfect spiral passes. It shows the chaos of a defensive line barreling down the field. When Al Pacino asked quarterback Dan Marino (fresh off his own Hollywood experience acting in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) what it was like to be an NFL QB, Marino said: “Imagine standing on a highway with traffic roaring at you while trying to read Hamlet.” A great explanation. Shoulda made the movie. So the football itself is fabulously done. Much better than what Cameron Crowe did in the few football scenes in Jerry Maguire. The Program had some great football, as did Rudy, but neither come close to the heights of Any Given Sunday. In one of the film’s best scenes, Jamie Foxx insists that his white coaches have routinely placed him in situations where he was doomed to fail or prone to injury, and we believe him because white coaches have been doing that to Black players for decades. Quarterback Doug Williams, who led his Washington Redskins team to a Superbowl victory in 1987, was frequently referred to by even liberal media outlets as a “Black quarterback,” instead of just “quarterback,” as if his skin colour necessitated a qualification. Even now, in 2021, the majority of quarterbacks are white, although the gap is gradually closing. The 2020 season saw the highest number of starting Black quarterbacks, with 10 out of a possible 32.  Quarterback is the most cerebral position on the field, and for a long time there was a racist belief that Black men couldn’t do the job. Foxx’s character is a composite of many of the different Black quarterbacks who came of age in the 1990s, fighting for playing time against white QBs beloved by their fan base, fawned over in hagiographic Sports Illustrated profiles, and protected by the good ol’ boys club of team executives and coaching staff. Foxx’s character isn’t demoted because he can’t play the game. He wins several crucial games for his team en route to the playoffs. He’s demoted because he listens to hip hop in the dressing room, because he recorded a rap song and shot a video for it, and because he’s cocky. Yes, the scene where he asks out Cameron Diaz is sexist, as if her power only comes from her sexuality, not her intelligence and business acumen, but it’s meant to show how overly confident Foxx is, not that he’s a sexist prick. Any Given Sunday isn’t a single issue film. It’s basically an omni-protest piece. It gleefully shows football’s dark side, and there is no director better than Oliver Stone for muck-raking. He’s in full-on investigative journalist mode in Any Given Sunday, showing how and why players play through serious brain injuries. How because they are given opiates, often leading to debilitating addictions (this happens in all contact sports...Colorado Avalanche player Marek Svatos overdosed on heroin a few years after retiring from injuries). As to why, Stone gives two reasons. One, team doctors are paid by the team, not the players, therefore their decisions will benefit the team, not the players. And two, the players themselves are encouraged to underreport injuries and play through them because stats are incentivized. James Woods unethical doctor argues with Modine’s idealistic one because an MRI the latter called for a player to have costs the team $20k. But the player in question, Lawrence Taylor, plays anyway because his contract is stat incentivized and if he makes on more tackle he gets a million dollars. Incentivizing stats leads to players playing hurt. And although I loathe this term, a lazy go-to for film critics, Stone really does give an unflinching account of how this shit happens and why. When Williams is inevitably hurt and lying prone on the field, he woozily warns the paramedics who are placing him on a stretcher to “be careful…I’m worth a million dollars.” It’s tragic, yet you’re happy for him. The film really makes you care about these guys.  Thanks to the smartly written script, the viewer knows that Williams has four kids, and you’re pleased he made his bonus because, in all likelihood, after he retires, his injuries will prevent him from any kind of gainful employment (naturally, they give the TV analyst jobs to retired white players, unless Williams can somehow land the coveted token Black guy gig). Stone is not above fan service, a populist at heart, and he stuffs the film with former and then-current NFL players, a miraculous stunt given the fact that the NFL revoked their cooperation. Personally, I think this was a good thing because it meant Stone didn’t have to compromise (the league wanted editorial say on all issues pertaining to the league…meaning they would have cut the best storyline, which is the playing hurt one). It also meant that they had to rename the team and the league. While I’m sure this took away from the realism for some fans, I’m cool with it. It also allowed the moviemakers to name the team the Sharks, a perfect name for this roving band of predatory capitalist sports executives. In another example of fan service, the call-girl Pacino’s quintessential lonely workaholic character rents a girlfriend experience from is none other than Elizabeth Berkley of Showgirls, who had been unfairly blacklisted after the titular Verhoven/Esterhaz venture, a movie my wife showed me one day while I was dopesick, which I became so transfixed and mesmerized by that I forgot I was. As mentioned above, the only misstep in the film is one of the offshoots of the Playing Hurt arc, where a player loses an eye on the field. Not because he gets poked, but because he gets hit so hard his eye simply falls out. A medic runs onto the field and puts the white globe on ice. Stone cast a player with a glass eye in order to achieve this effect. No CGI! Still, the scene is unconvincing, a tad too over-the-top. But this is Oliver Stone. At least Any Given Sunday’s sole over-the-top moment is a throwaway scene lasting all of thirty seconds. It easily could have been a secondary plot-line in which government officials try to sneak a Cuban football prodigy out of Castro’s communist stronghold but the player is brutally murdered the morning the officials arrive at his apartment to escort him to the private plane. Or else the team GM is revealed to be a massive international cocaine dealer. Or the tight end is one half of a serial killer couple. The film follows its own advice, focusing more on the players growth, particularly Beamon’s (Foxx). The anonymity of the title, Any Given Sunday, elevates the game, not the players. Thank God, the movie doesn’t force Beamon to assimilate into Pacino’s mold. He buys into the team-first philosophy without renouncing his idiosyncratic POV or his fierce individuality. This is a triumph. One of my biggest problems with sports is the flattening effect it can have on creative individuals. Players take media training in order to sound as alike as possible during media interviews, a long row of stoic giants spouting cliches. It’s boring. Which is why media latch onto a loudmouth, even while they scold him for it. All sports are dying for an intelligent mouthpiece who can explain his motivations in a succinct, sound-bite-friendly, manner. Sports are entertainment. As much as I love Sidney Crosby, in my heart I have to go with Alexander Ovechkin because Ovechkin is far more thrilling, both on and off the ice. Unlike almost every other NHL star before him, all of whom were forced to kneel and kiss Don Cherry’s Rock Em Sock Em ring, Ovechkin defiantly told the media he simply did not care about Cherry or Cherry’s disgusting parental reaction to one of Ovie’s more creative goal celebrations (called a “celly” in the biz). On the play in question, Ovechkin scored the goal, then dropped his stick and mimed warming his hands over it, as if his stick were on fire. As cheesy as the celebration appeared to the naked eye, it’s both a funny and accurate notion. Ovechkin was the hottest scorer in the league for many years and his stick was on fire, metaphorically speaking. The only celly I can think of that matches up in terms of creativity and entertainment value came from Teemu Selanne in 1993, who scored a beauty of a goal, threw one of his gloves straight up into the air, then pumped his stick like a shotgun while “shooting” his glove. Of course, Cherry took exception to it. Cherry’s favourite goal celebration features Bobby Orr putting his head down and refraining from raising his hands over his head. Cherry’s idea of an appropriate goal celly is no celly at all. This from a man who claims “we’ve got to sell our game.” But when an arrogant player shows up and he’s not white, he’s in for a shitload of bad press. Foxx’s Beamon illustrates this beautifully when he yells at Pacino after Pacino cuts him for an older QB who has lost four games this season. “Don’t play that racism card with me,” Pacino warns. “Okay…okay…” Foxx nods, “Maybe it’s not racism. Maybe it’s ‘placism’…as in…a brother got to know his place.”

Here is the original theatrical trailer, featuring Garbage’s classic “Push It.”

Above Lawrence Taylor begs Matthew Modine for Cortazone.  There’s also a great scene where Pacino is trying to figure out where he has gone wrong and Diaz just looks at him. “You got old,” she says simply. No enterprise is more cruel to an aging human being than sports. And this movie makes football a big giant corporate machine that chews players up and spits them out, injured and drug addicted, after four or five years. Those who play for a decade are lucky. This is still how the NFL works. And the NHL is increasingly becoming a young man’s game. Experience matters less and less.

When I started watching hockey in the 90s, players regularly competed into their late 30s. Not so anymore. Players peak at 23-24 now, and are often out of the league by age 35. Thornton and Chelois are exceptions, not the rule. After more than two hours, Any Given Sunday finally lurches across the finish line, bravely refusing to give its viewers a traditional happy ending, in the great tradition of underdog sports films like Rocky and Rudy. The bombshell dropped by Pacino’s character at the end feels less surprising than inevitable, but by now the movie has explored so much of professional sports' seedy underbelly that you're glad it's over. The film is great but exhausting. Stone seems to be advancing the notion that the sport itself is pure, but the people in it are corrupt. If money weren’t involved, the game would be played for its own sake.

I agree with this. People playing pond hockey are engaging in wholesome fun, not necessarily practicing to make a professional league. Commerce corrupts the purity of the game, and the extent to which it corrupts is directly proportional to how badly the individual in question needs the commerce. Of course, the sport is highly racialized, with people in positions of authority white, and those being told what to do with their bodies Black.

Any Given Sunday is an important film, but it never sacrifices entertainment for the sake of moralizing. That it pulls off such a strong moralistic stance is a testament to the actors, who are all incredible, and the material, which is among the strongest of Stone’s career.

He never really made a great movie after this one. So check it out sometime.

[solcheeky]

damn onion, is this really tumblr’s decline? i haven’t seen a good piece of work on here for the longestttttt time :((( i come on here every other day to check the tags but i feel like even they are promoting the weird 13 year old kids wattpad stories. what is even happening pls give us old tumblr back

i was thinking of starting to use ao3 bcs i know soo many writers who moved there but i honestly don’t have the slightest clue on how to use it..

anyway, how are uuu?? what have u been up to lately

honestly its been a decline since end of 2019 lmfao I didn’t actually think it would get this rock bottom but here we are LOL

I used to use ao3 but never got used to the crazy extensive tag system😅 and I was actually thinking of posting my works there too since the quality of writing here has really plummeted🥲

but otherwise

dude, I’ve been suffering ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I’m back for final year of uni and we had to start off with solo presentations in the first class, so I was working my ass off the week before, whilst simultaneously moving out of london into our rented place, and then the morning of our first class, our wifi crashed😭😭😭 so we ran to our studio, but it was occupied by first years and my old tutor caught my ass and made me give an impromptu motivational/advice speech😀 then we had to run to the student hub but it was so noisy in there trying to find a space to start this goddamn online presentation, bro it was a mess

(altho I will say, when I found a half-private pod to occupy, people kept asking if they can sit next to me since it’s capacity was for 6, but every time I told them I would be presenting out-loud thru my webcam they’d be like ‘nah okay dw’ until some guy sat and was like ‘idm :)’ and during my 5 min break for online class, I double checked with him if he minded me presenting out-loud again but he was chill and gave me some of jellies instead for good luck😳 eventually we ended up talking for that 5mins about each other and later on he ended up leaving while I was in the middle of class,,, but wrote his number on a page in my notebook ,,,, sounds like a great plot for writing hahah)

and that was just the first day, I’ve been catching endless L’s since then I don’t even have time to be depressed about it

and I want to write so bad it’s annoying so many things are getting in my wayyyyy(T⌓T)