#this is gonna be one of the last few major project i can work on

[gomzdrawfr]

alrighty....angst Ghoap comic ahead, you've been warned :]

cw: angst, depiction of mental health (spiraling and breaking down)

ଘ(੭ ᐛ )━⁺˚⋆｡°✩ reblogs are appreciated

Enough

:3c notes below (feel free to skip)

[chaos0pikachu]

4 Minutes and the Cinematography of Nipples

I said before that I thought 4 Minutes was pretty instantaneously the best looking BL on the market for 2024 after one episode. Which, not gonna lie, is a pretty big fucking claim. There’s been a lot of BL that’s come out that’s looked good, and I do think there’s been a steady improvement overall in the market in the last few years. Personally I think Japanese and Korean BL have a stronger production quality over a majority of Thai BL but like, if that’s a hot take I guess I prefer my food spicy. 

The point being~ if I’m gonna make such a hyperbolic statement, well I better back it up right? 

So I’m gonna break down a few scenes from the first episode, what I liked about them, why they worked for me, and why on a technical level I think 4 Minutes has just got it going on.

For better readability you can also check out this essay here.

Sidenote: my google docs kept trying to autocorrect “Bible” to “the Bible” and idk how to teach google I mean the hot Thai actor and not the book of Jesus. 

To start, I’m going to break down this scene featuring Great and his nepo baby cat: 

I thought starting with this scene would be good because it’s such a low-key scene and honestly making these simplistic scenes visually interesting is very difficult! But if you have the basics down, the foundations of cinematography and film making, these simpler scenes can be really memorable. 

Like yeah we’re all gonna remember this scene because shirtless Bible and oh my god Akira!? - I have only recently learned who Akira is; why is this cat getting a bigger bag than me? - but beyond that, what makes it cool to watch? What makes it interesting? What information does it showcase to the audience? 

One thing I added to the video was a grid for the rule of thirds. 

Rule of thirds is a shot composition technique applied to both film and photography. It’s the grid you see if you film a homevideo and helps a Director and Cinematographer figure out where to place the subject or subjects of the shot. The idea is the gridlines show you where you “should” place the subject(s) of said shot. 

Like everything, the rule of thirds is a guideline in filmmaking, not a hard and fast unbreakable rule. Filmmakers like Wes Anderson like to play more with central composition shots, rather than ROT. 

Anyway on to the opening shot, right after our credits and we’re moving into the shot. 

To start, the first thing I notice is the scene’s color grading. Color grading in film is the manipulation of raw film footage to create specific color tones throughout a project. Sometimes this grading is more pointed and obvious, think The Matrix, while in other films it’s not as obvious but still very prominent, think Killers of the Flower Moon. 

It’s not that the before credits scene looks entirely, jarringly different from the opening scene, but the hospital scene is surrounded by whites and blue tones, it’s darker, and only a single source of light exists. It gives the entire scene a much more frantic, uneasy aesthetic but it’s not so far off from the darker muted tones of the next scene that it feels jarring or out of place. 

The second big thing I noticed in the episode is the use of aspect ratio. I’m not 100% sure what aspect ratio the production used exactly, but the use of widescreen as opposed to full screen in my opinion, gives the episode a more cinematic feel to it in comparison to other Thai BLs. 

Example, if you look at Century of Love (2024) it appears to be filmed in the standard full screen - which I believe is 16:9? - while 4 Minutes is widescreen (thus the black bars at the top and bottom). Widescreen can give a show a more “movie like” quality to it which is part of the vibes I get from 4 Minutes. 

(source)

Onto Great’s actual introduction scene.

We’re not starting the shot with static movement, but with a camera panning right. I’ve talked about camera panning and such in BL before and it’s something I’ve found doesn’t happen as often as it should. Which is a shame! It’s such a simple technique but it adds so much. 

Imagine if we entered the frame with a static center shot, and then a cut to Great sleeping and turning off his alarm clock, and then another cut to above the bed. Think about how much more boring that could be visually. 

Instead, we enter the scene with movement, panning over and creating some interesting visual framing. 

So here’s our opening shot, do you notice anything interesting? To start, what I like about this shot other than the panning movement in, is that we don’t see Great’s face yet. In fact we don’t see his face in full until about 30 seconds into the scene. This builds anticipation, yeah we all know what Bible looks like, but for the audience who doesn’t this helps build anticipation. 

Who is this character? What does he look like? What’s his deal? 

It also engages the audience more, if you notice part of the composition of the shot has Great in the mid-ground slightly blurred out, while the foreground emphasizes the things on his desk. He’s distant from us, the audience, sleeping off his hangover not yet ready to “join” the world yet. 

Here’s another two more things I like about this shot:

Lines. 

Using lines and shapes can make a scene more visually interesting and invoke different feelings to the viewer. In this shot, I get a sense of symmetry, the camera panning right, lightly drags across the screen alongside the lines below and above Great, almost creating a frame within a frame effect. As if Great is boxed into a clock in and of itself. 

You can also see the use of balance in the scene as well, connecting back to that visual theme of symmetry as well as blocking our view of Great’s face. The lava lamb and champagne bottle are almost the same height, which helps create balance in the shot. The champagne bottle informs us Great has been drinking or does drink since it’s positioned so close to his bed, whilst also continuing to hide his face away from the viewer. 

I also like that the lava lamp is a bright spot of color. The tone of the scene is mostly muted greens, and gray, but the bright orange lava lamp and even the pink champagne bottle draw our attention but don’t overwhelm us either. It provides the scene with some warmth but doesn’t offset the overall tone of the color grading. 

And then, the last bit of this shot:

We have Great knocking over the champagne bottom, and turning off his alarm clock. Notice that the alarm clock and the champagne bottle hit those ROT dots almost exactly. There’s also the use of lines by the length of Great’s arm - I just forgot to add a line I’m a failure, a fake, fml - we see him knock over the bottle, and then we follow the line of his arm directly to the alarm clock which is also a shape, a circle. 

I like that they used a clock with a specific notable shape, since by the end of this scene the clock is relevant to the story as a whole. Using a shape makes the clock more visually noticeable and memorable to the audience. 

So in the next cut we’re above Great - just like Great’s gonna be above Tyme, fuckin hell I’m corny - in a medium-full shot and there’s a couple things I really like here. 

I really like the use of lines here with the bed going in one direction but Great’s body going another. It’s disconcerting, and off kilter a bit. 

The use of patterns plus the opposing symmetry, whereas in the previous shot the lava lamp and champagne bottle were providing balance, here one side of the bed is patterned, while the other isn’t. This creates a sense of imbalance and makes the shot more visually interesting.

This medium-full shot at a high angle makes Great smaller, and continues to showcase his dishevelment, keeping him distant from the world itself. Also notice the lack of color here as well. 

What could this say about Great as a character? Or his story? 

So this next cut is the one that actually inspired me to write this essay to begin with and know what I’ma eat some crow here. I originally said it was a great ROT shot but I was wrooooooong. It’s definitely a center composition shot. 

Notice as well, the bed itself is its own shape - rectangle - center in the frame, and yet the shot almost looks unbalanced again because of that singular patterned rug. It’s the only pattern in the entire shot, not even Great’s pillows have noticeable patterns on them. 

The above view camera angle in a full shot creates almost an omnipresent feel, as if the audience - or something else? - were looking down upon Great. Whose face we still haven’t seen! It makes him smaller, less powerful, and almost vulnerable. Shots like this are often used in horror films like James Wan’s Malignant (2021) where the horror spector will be looking down above the would-be victim. 

Another thing I like about this scene though is we have Great moving. It would be simpler and easier to have his phone just by his alarm clock, or under his pillow, but think about how much more visually interesting it is that he has to move down the bed and reach for his phone. It creates action in an actionless low stakes scene. 

And now, 30 whole seconds in and we’ve finally seen Great’s face! 

Fun fact, with the ROT grid the gridlines fall right across Bible’s nipples. That’s not a film analysis, just something I noticed entirely intentionally. Thanks Madam Director Ning Bhanbhassa Dhubthien.

The actual shot is in center composition again, as Great rolls over and reveals his face the camera begins to zoom in. 

This creates movement in the scene instead of leaving the camera to statically observe it’s now, finally, inviting the audience to meet Great. Pulling us in towards him whereas before we were kept at a distance. Great’s awake and, well as ready to meet the world as somebody with a raging hangover can be. 

I also like how Bible is moving constantly in this scene; he rubs his eyes and nose, he twitches his fingers, titles his head back and forth, etc it’s nothing revolutionary but it’s appreciated. 

When the scene cuts, we get this shot: 

I didn’t put the red dot on his nipple, it just landed there. This is all Madam Director Ning chepie. 

But you can see how Great’s body is landing on all those gridlines pretty solidly. Also in the background we see his alarm clock again, a bright blurred circle in the distance. I also like the angle of this shot, as it creates depth in the frame, with Great’s head being in the foreground his lower body in the mid-ground and the background blurred out. 

What follows is Akira appearing in frame. Which was really difficult to capture so I don’t have a screenshot. But what I really like is Akira entering the frame out of focus. They could have just cut to Akira, but instead they opted for Akira to enter the frame which is more interesting. 

When we do cut, Akira is firmly on one of those dots so we don’t miss them in the frame. I think it’s also interesting that we’ve pulled out again, into a mid-full shot, hanging above Great, and we see that clear symmetry line again between the patterned rug and the regular carpet. 

I also really love that when we got to Great sweet-talking Akira and feeding them we’re not just doing a cut, we’re panning downwards which continues to add movement to the scene. And we get that moneyed sponsor shot! 

Durex can’t pay for everything okay?

So in the final bit of this scene we get focus on Great, who’s in focus, before he gets up and leaves the frame where the camera then focuses on the clock behind him. 

See how in the first frame the background is all blurred out, but once Great walks out of the frame - again, great that he walks out, movement!! Y’all don’t understand how boring 1000 Stars was for me to watch because of the lack of this stuff okay? - and then the focus shifts to the clock. Which is round. 

God I know that sounds so dumb, but imagine the clock without that ring light bit on it, it’s just a tiny little rectangle. Not as fun or interesting to look at right? Or as noticeable especially from a distance? 

This shift in focus also tells us “this is important” whatever “this” is. The subject of the shot goes from Great to the alarm clock but they are positioned as equally important. We’re meant to pay attention to this seemingly innocuous item, which we learn later in the episode is time. We’re meant to remember and note that time will be important to the story - I know with a title like 4 Minutes you’d fucking hope time would be important but have y’all ever read Youtube comments? It’s rough out there for visual comprehension okay? 

So all in all this scene is only 1 minute and 40 seconds give or take. It’s very short, but I don’t think it was boring at all. I think it’s a really solid introduction to a main character. Think, Korn didn’t get this much time to showcase his introduction, his scene is shorter - though also well done - which showcases which character is more of a story priority. 

This scene eases the audience into the story, inviting us to wake up into the world like Great is. It uses techniques like lines, shapes, symmetry, color and focus to make what could be a very boring scene into an interesting one. 

There’s so so much I probably and certainly missed, I’m far from an expert, but I hope I was able to articulate what I liked about this scene, and why I think it looks good. 

Stay tuned for more if I can manage to focus long enough to breakdown more scenes lol

Also red dots on Bible’s nipples are just funny to me it be what it be. 

Further Reading: 

Composition in Cinematography / THE LAST OF US

Center-Framing vs Chaos-Cinema: Mad Max vs Transformers

Camera Framing: Shot Composition & Cinematography Techniques Explained [The Shot List, Ep 2]

The Ultimate Guide to Camera Shots (50+ Types of Shots and Angles in Film)

Color Grading 101 - Everything You Need to Know

Mixing Film And Digital Footage: Killers Of The Flower Moon

In Praise of Subtle Cinematography

[reagi-df]

Febuwhump Day 13: You weren’t supposed to get hurt

Old sketch design for my forgive me au but I’m gonna use it anyway

Donnie stares down at the screen as he types away, he's surrounded by the quietness of the lab. He's exhausted but he needs to finish what he started. It's been a rare few quiet days from having to go against any major Kraang players and he's taking this time to really get things sorted for when the time comes and he wakes up properly.

His fingers slow down on his keypad, eyes automatically looking up to his monitor showing the vital signs. Everything is stable for the moment and Donnie is grateful for that.

“Knock knock”  jolting, Donnie shoots his head around and sees Raph standing there. Even though his body doesn't have any eyes, he knows from how his head is tilted he assesses Donnie. 

And he doesn't like it.

“Raphael, what can I do for you at this hour”  he's glad his mask hides the bags under his eyes.

“Raph could ask you the same thing” the sounds of Raphs metal feet hitting his floor as he walks closer, Donnie lets his ninpō ripple under his skin as he subtly swipes away the taps connected to the chamber.

Raph cant see.

“Why are you still up?”

“Have a lot of things to do. Projects to finish. I need to make sure our defences are up and running frantically, even if the Kraang are being strangely quiet it won't last forever and I need to make sure we're ready” Donnies hands are flying about his keypad as he speaks.

A heavy hand rests on top of his own, stilling him. Donnie looks down at the metal digits, observes the grooves and scratches that litter his brother's metal casing. A sharp prain runs through him at the thought of not seeing his oldest brother's flesh hand again but he knows it's too late now. Even if he tried it wouldn't work.

And he doesn't want to go through that again. 

“You need to let me buffer out your hand again” he says absently.

Dragging his tiered eye up to these dimmed lit eyes of his brothers he hears Raph sigh. “Don, please go to sleep. I know its been hard  on you but I don't want you to burn yourself out again. I can't go through watching you die right in front of my eyes. Not again.”

Looking away Donnie swallows. “That wasn't my intention.”

“I know” Raph’s hand leaves Donnie’s and he secretly mourns the loss. “But you mean a lot to us Don, we don't want you to keep hurting.”

He stubbornly refuses to look up, “I’m fine, Raph.”

“Please donnie, Le-” 

“Dont!” Donnie grits out, cutting off whatever Raph was going to say.

Silence hangs in the air, tension heavy.

Closing his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose, “I'm sorry” he exhales.

Raphs gently places his hand back on Donnies broad shoulder and he leans into the touch. “I know I nag a lot, but I just don't want you to hurt”

Patting Raphs hand “I know big brother” looking up he turns to face Raph, metal hand falling from his shoulder. “Look I promise i'll go to sleep, I just need another 10 minutes”

They both stand there staring at each other, it feels like an eternity before Raph sighs again and steps back. “Okay, I know a losing  battle when I see one. Im making the rounds and when I come back and you're not asleep i'm dragging your ass to bed”

Snorting, Donnie bobs his head. “Sure” a small smile forms on his face.

Head shaking fondly, Raph walks to the door but pauses before he leaves. “I meant what I said Don” turning his head around he continues “you mean a lot to us, your family and we do anything for the family.

“Yeah” his voice catches in his throat.

They’ll do anything for their family.

Nodding Raph bids him farewell, “g’night don”

“Night” he whispers.

He stands there for a few seconds before he shuts all of his projects down, he pauses with his hand hovering in the air, he feels his ninpo running through his body, he brings up the tabs containing the chamber again and walks away as he transfers them to his gauntlet.

With a quick few strides to one side of the room, Donnie presses his palm to a hidden compartment, there's a hiss as the doors open. He's glad he never told anyone about this hidden room. It's become very useful for stuff he doesn't want others to see.

The doors close firmly behind him with the lights flickering on, with a flick of his fingers the tabs are transferred to the machine connected to the chamber. “I'll be quick, then you can go back to sleep. Donnie passes his time by making sure everything is working correctly, it usually takes about 10 minutes or so, but he's dragging his feet. He talks about anything that comes to mind, about the time Mikey ended up sleepwalking into a wall, or that time he ended up floating to the ceiling and unable to get down,. 

“He’s exhausted, Mikes been doing too much lately”. Donnie muses.

Donnie goes on, speaking about the time when April and he had found a stash of booze, that was strangely still in date, and got drunk. “April was cursing me out, she should've known that my metabolism is superior than hers.” he absently rubs his head from where she smacked him when he did tell her. 

His feet bring him closer to the chamber, “Jr is becoming a terror, coming more and more like his mother everyday” Donnie checks the systems and the vitals. “He's learning so fast, it was enjoyable watching him talk cheekily back to April” he pauses and looks down.

“You'd like him,” he whispers. 

A dull scratches his attention, turning his head Donnie sees a green hand with an IV cannula strapped to the back, tubing floating around his body. The hand drags down and his claws leave sharp grooves into the glass.

Walking up, Donnie places his own pawl onto the thick glass. Leo stares back at him with dull unseeing eyes, a mask firmly placed onto his mouth while his body is submerged in water.

“I'm sorry,” Donnie whispers as he watches those unseeing eyes flutter and shut.

“Please forgive me” he murmurs to the dead.

---------

Dropping this here for @febuwhump I was hoping id find something

Im hoping to get close to the juicy bits in Forgive Me, id love it if you'd vote for these boys in the @tmntaucompetition it'll be fun show what ive got planned 😈, as well as going up against other peoples

Again excuse my dyslexic unbetaed

[directdogman]

Greetings Mr. Man

Any updates on the progress of Rodger DLC?

Oh, yeah! Sorry, I usually just share small, informal updates in my discord server and leave the larger ones to my socials. But, i've been working on it diligently! So here's how things have been going as of late:

I finished 4-5 new pose-sets over the last couple of weeks. One of the new pose-sets is a variant of one already in the game and one is a brand new set for an existing character. Two of them are cameos for characters who've been mentioned but not seen yet (one of them in particular I'm quite excited about, as it features Norm's body model with a rotary phone I physically bought for this cameo!)

Including Peter + Roger's new pose-sets + the new variant I mentioned above, the route has 9 new pose-sets, the most of any route afaik. I'm on the fence about making a 10th, which I might do in the new few days (as there's a fun cameo I've got a few different ideas about how I'd show it on screen.)

The backgrounds are basically all done (just finished another yesterday), the ending slides are all done bar one (though one also needs a mild edit to show Gingi's regrown tail since there's a time-jump.)

Right now, I'm going over the whole script once more and trimming a few parts, adjusting dialogue here and there for a final layer of polish. I got the 'evil' half of the route done earlier today and now I'm doing the 'good' half! The early route is playable in-game and when I'm happy with the last layer of proofreading, I'll be making a major push to finish implementing the rest of the route.

All of the art for the route (minus that one ending slide I mentioned) is finished. A few collaborators of mine finished projects recently and are gonna be working on stuff while I push forward with programming the remaining scenes, including a few new tracks on the OST, a new 3d model for the route and some voice acting for Roger (which obviously won't slow me down as I'll be working alongside them!)

Yeah, the next 3 weeks are gonna be pretty hectic for me. I'm about a week or two behind my own schedule but I'm gonna be pushing to at least have a test version ready for around the end of August. Obviously it's very difficult to predict exactly how long the rest of the route'll take, but just know that I'm busy + working! Roger's route should be out before the Mingus plush campaign goes live, if I can keep my current pace up!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Aita for lieing to my mom for 6 years about a guy I dated?

🤐🇮🇪 <- so I notice me. This sounds bad but all things considered, i think I'm justified at least.

Tw for domestic abuse, physical abuse, fighting and non-explicit mentions of many other forms of abuse.

So in 7th grade grade I (12/13f at the time) was dating a guy named Jay(13/14m at the time)(not his real name and we were in the same grade) for about three months. I had a crush on him for years before we dated so I was ecstatic when he finally asked me out. Looking back now at 22, I can see he pitied me as i was very unpopular and no one wanted to be around me due to the fact I was very nerdy and very autisitc(I have a mental disability). He used me for sexual things and it wasn't super healthy but I was just happy to be getting attention as neither my school nor home life was safe from abuse/bullying.

Towards the end of those three months, an incident occured. Me and Jay were working on a mutural computer lab project that should of only tooken a week but the day we were set to start, jay had iss (in-school suspension. I don't know why). I needed his choice for a song because the project couldn't start without choosing it and he wasn't texting me and was being petty and whiny about it. Finally he picked some pop 2010s song and I got started. He was in the suspension for half the week so I was the one who did a majority of the project.

When he finally came back, he was being demanding and a jerk and I said fine, I'll do my own project and you can do yours, I wanted to do firework by katy perry anyway. He then demanded my part of the project since I wasn't doing that song anymore and I told him no and when he demanded it again, I deleted it infornt of him. Typical preteen arguments right? Well he slapped me. In front of all of his laughing friends. He'd never done that before and even though I had previous experience with physical abuse(a few instances with my dad but my mom didn't see it till much later after this incident. This is important.), never from a partner.

I don't remember too much as I saw red and reacted before I could think but I do remember ripping him out of his chair, throwing him on the floor and punching him in the chest and face a few times while his friends cheered me on in surprise. I was an average height but underweight and he was both taller than me and almost 300 lbs but it felt so easy. Once I was done I got up, told the teacher I was doing it on my own, aced the project while he failed and none of my bullies ever tried to physically fight me again. I went from nerdy shy weird pushover girl to scary strong weird girl and I'm ok with that. He hit first.

Even though we eventually broke up, we made up and it was something we joked about together as i didn't realize how serious that was at the time. But my mom did realize how serious it was and tried to explain to me how bad that was, that I should never let a partner hit me and she never wanted to see me talking to him again. She was being responsible but I was 13 and riding off the excitement of showing a guy I liked what for that we dated again not a month after we broke up. Except this time I wasn't dating Jay Lastname, I was dating "Sean mcduffin" or at least that's what i called him around family and because my mom never saw or met jay, she didnt recognize sean.

Our second time around only lasted another three months before we broke up and we're friends all through the rest of our school years, never more, but my mom still called him Sean because we'll.. I told her that was Sean and I couldn't back out now. I'm gonna shift gears for a second so stick with me.

I had gone through two extremely abusive relationships back to back from one in sophomore year (sexual and emotional abuse) and one in senior year (sexual, physical, religious and emotional abuse) and my mom didn't learn until a year later after I graduated. After my mom learned about it and the extent of the abuse with my father, she helped me heal and eventually started asking questions about the relationships and my dad and I answered her as were the closest weve ever been. She off handedly compared the one in senior year to the incident with Jay and then said how happy i seemed with Sean right after made her relax and hope i wouldnt be in another abusive relationship and it hadn't hurt me too badly.

I then realized I had never explicitly told her Jay and Sean were the same person and I had lied to her when I said they weren't (she had suspicions but never proof and trusted me). So I told her they were the same person and she got this very defeated look on her face. I apologized as I realized that was kinda shitty of me because my mom was just trying to protect me but I can also see why a 13 yr old who grew up in parental abuse wouldn't nessesarily take domestic abuse seriously. She just signed and said she wishes I was honest and I shouldn't of lied about it because it was serious. I explained my side but we eventually just moved on to talk further into our initial topic and she's not brought it up since.

I can see where I was the little 13 yr old asshole but I can also see why I wouldn't of taken the lie as seriously as I should due to my history. He never hit or hurt me again and I never heard of him doing it again so I guess i desuaded him from a life of abuse. Idk. Was I the asshole? Me and him don't talk anymore and since getting therapy, I've realized what a shitty person he was to me before, during and after our small relationship.

(small context: we were school friends only, he never really came over to my house or met my family more than once the second time we dated and I didn't talk about him as much after the second break up due to my focus on friends shifting from school friends to my girl scout troop. We were inseparable in school but outside of it, we rarely spoke.)

What are these acronyms?

[canmom]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, 000-012

Or, what if that mural was the heart of a web serial.

I'm reading The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, thanks largely to the enthusiasm of @azdoine and @lukore on my dash over the last few months.

This is absolutely not gonna be a liveblog in the level of detail of the great Umineko liveblog project. Rather I'm gonna be aiming at something like the comics comints series or those occasional posts on anime. Or indeed what I wrote about Worth The Candle last year. I must create a robot whose purpose is to watch to see if I start writing detailed plot summaries and hit me with a stick labelled 'remember you have a job now'.

That outta the way, let's talk flower!

No, not that flower!

I will start with an anecdote. When I was at university, I ended up attending a talk by court alchemist senescence researcher Aubrey de Grey, who at that time did not yet have a 'sexual harassment allegations' section on his Wikipedia page. The main thing that struck me at the time was his rather spectacularly long beard. But I did listen to his talk about ending aging.

de Grey's schtick is that he, like many people in the transhumanist milieu, believes that medical technology is on the cusp of being able to prevent aging sufficiently well to prolong human lifespans more or less indefinitely. He believes that the different processes of aging can be understood in terms of various forms of accumulating cellular 'damage', and that these will begin to be addressed within present human lifespans, buying time for further advancements - so that (paraphrasing from memory) 'the first immortals have already been born'. He has some pretty graphs to demonstrate this point.

At that talk, one of the audience members asked de Grey the (in my view) very obvious question about whether access to this technology would be distributed unevenly, creating in effect an immortal ruling class. de Grey scoffed at this, saying he always gets this question, and basically he didn't think it would be a big deal. I forget his exact words, but he seemed to assume the tech would trickle down sooner or later, and this was no reason not to pursue it.

I'm sure de Grey is just as tired of being reminded of how unbalanced access to medical technology is in our current world, or the differences in average life expectancy between countries.

So, I was very strongly reminded of de Grey as The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere laid out its major thematic concerns and characters. I was also put in mind of many online arguments in the transhumanist milieu about whether it would be a good thing, in principle, to end death.

In particular, of course, comes to mind transhumanist Nick Bostrom's short story The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, in which death is likened to a huge dragon that demands to be fed trains full of humans every day. In the story, humanity's scientists secretly build a giant gun to kill the dragon. Naturally, despite all the doubters and naysayers who foolishly feel obliged to justify the existence of the dragon, the gun works. Bostrom's imagery is incredibly heavy-handed (particularly the trains à la Auschwitz), but just in case you didn't get it, he also spells out the moral explicit at the end: basically, every day not spent putting resources to abolishing death is adding up more and more bodies to the pile of people who don't get to be immortal.

So far, Flower seems to be shaping up to be a critical intervention into that milieu, with a much more grounded view of death and a much stronger model of society - admittedly not a high bar but it's going good so far!

At the time of writing this commentary, I have read the prologue and first two six-chapter arcs, namely Mankind's Shining Future (1-6) and Pilgrimage to the Deep (7-12).

the general shape of things

We are introduced - from the perspective of sardonic, introverted Su, who is going to be the protagonist of our time loop - to a group of brilliant young medical wizards, who have just been invited to visit the headquarters of a secret society whose mission is precisely to abolish death. Su's grandfather was some kind of controversial luminary who was expelled this organisation, and he also did something to her, which is giving her some kind of ulterior motive to find her way into this society.

We know pretty much from the outset that this is a time loop scenario: Su has been explicitly given the opportunity to replay the scenario in the hopes of find an alternative outcome, by some kind of presently mysterious parties. This first part is the 'control' loop, i.e. probably more or less how things went down 'originally'.

I believe Umineko is an explicit inspiration for this story, and the influence is pretty evident. But parallels with the Locked Tomb series, especially Gideon the Ninth, are also quite noticeable. @lukore spoke of it as the STEM to Locked Tomb's humanities, and I can already kinda see it, although we haven't got into the real meat of the scenario yet. This story began serialisation four years ago, making the two works roughly contemporary. The latest chapter was published in the last couple of weeks - no idea if I've arrived just in time for the ending!

Stylistically, it's generally pretty heavy on dialogue and long asides. The characters are a bunch of mega nerds who love to have big philosophical and political discussions, but their dynamics are well enough realised and their dynamics clear enough that it can double up as naturalistic characterisation. So far, the discussions have been interesting to read.

Below I'm going to make some notes and comments on various elements of the setting and story. In a followup post (because it got too long) I'm going to talk a lot about entropy. Perhaps you will find this interesting!

the world

The first few chapters are dedicated pretty hard to exposition. We find ourselves in a distant-future setting - one in which it seems reality has totally collapsed and then been rebuilt using magic, creating a somewhat oddball universe which lacks things like the element iron, and also electromagnetism. This seems like it would have pretty severe implications for just about everything!

However, the 'ironworkers' have, after producing a series of trial and error 'lower planes' that didn't quite get it right, landed on a fairly close approximation of how things used to be on the old world. Though by 'fairly close approximation' I mean like... it's a bowl-shaped world and the sun and stars are artificial lanterns. But still, there are humans, and they seem to work more or less like we're used to humans working, apart from the whole 'magic' thing.

So, an alt-physics setting. Praise Aealacreatrananda, I love that shit.

While electromagnetism might be out, the more abstract physical principles like thermodynamics still apply, and the humans of this universe have managed to find analogues to a number of things in our world. Instead of computers, they have 'logic engines' which run on magic. Horses seem to have made it in, so we get delightful blends of historical and futuristic concepts like a self-driving computer-controlled horse-drawn carriage taxi.

The biggest difference is of course that in this setting, magic - more on that in a bit - has solved most medical problems and humans routinely live to around 500. The setting is ostensibly a semi-post-scarcity one, although a form of money exists in 'luxury debt', which can be exchanged for things like taxi rides, café food and trips on the space elevator.

Politically, we are told that the world has enjoyed a few hundred years of general peace, broken in living memory by a revolution which put an end to a regime of magical secrecy. There are lots of countries, and an alliance overseeing them.

There's a few other oddities in this world. Something called a 'prosognostic event' can happen if you see someone who has the same face as you, and whatever this is, it's bad enough news that everyone is constantly reminded to veil their faces in public and there's some kind of infant 'distinction treatment' to mitigate the risk. Given that, in the regular world, nothing particularly bad would happen if you ran into a long-lost identical twin, it suggest there is probably something a little fucky about how humans work in this world!

There's evidently a fair bit of effort put into the worldbuilding of fictional countries and historical periods. The important elements seem to be roughly along the lines of:

our world is currently in what they call the 'old kingdoms' period, which is poorly remembered;

next up comes an 'imperial' period of high transhumanist shenanigans in which society was ruled by 'gerontocrats' who got exclusive access to the longevity treatment, but this all somehow led to a huge disaster which destroyed og earth;

the survivors built the Mimikos where humanity currently lives using magic and created some kind of huge iron spike that holds the universe together; there was subsequently a 'fundamentalist' period in which a strict cutoff point was put on human lifespans and a lot of the wackier magic was banned;

now we're onto a new era of openness following a small revolution, while the major political structures remain largely intact.

Writing a far-future setting is hard, because trying to deal with the weight of history without the story getting bogged down with worldbuilding details is a fiddly line to walk. The Dying Earth series of Jack Vance might be a relevant point of comparison. Vance leaves the historical details vague - there are endless old kingdoms and strange artefacts and micro-societies for Cugel and co. to stumble on. Far more important than the specifics of history is establishing the vibe of a world that's seen an unimaginable amount of events layered on top of each other and is honestly a bit tired.

Flower makes things a bit more concrete and generally manages to make this work decently well. I do appreciate the asides where Su talks about, for example, the different architectural styles that layer up to make a place, or the way a technique has been refined. It establishes both that Su is the kind of person to notice this sort of thing, and also helps the world feel lived-in.

the names

The story doesn't do a lot with language. The story is written in English, and the narration will occasionally make reference to how things are phrased (e.g. how divination predates the suffix -mancy). We can probably make the standard assumption that this is all translated from $future_language, with the notional translator making a suitable substitution of whatever linguistic forms exist in that language.

The characters are named in a variety of languages. Our main character's full name is Utsushikome of Fusai. We're told that this is "an old name from Kutuy, and means something like 'mysterious child'" - so Kutuyan is one of the languages spoken in this world. It's blatantly got the same phonotactics as Japanese, and indeed if I search up 'Utsushikome', I find an obscure historical figure called Utsushikome-no-Mikoto, wife of the Emperor Kōgen; she has no article on English Wikipedia, but she does have a brief one on Japanese wiki. Just as Su says about Kutuyan, 'Utsushikome' is written 欝色謎 in Japanese, but it relies on archaic readings of those characters and wouldn't read that way in modern Japanese. We could perhaps assume a good old translation convention is in effect where Kutuyan is replaced with Japanese.

A lot of characters have Greek names, as do various setting elements. One exception is Kamrusepa, or Kam, who is named for an ancient goddess of medicine worshipped by the Hittites and Luwians. I know basically fuck all about Hittites and Luwians but it's a cool little nod to mythology, and it won't be the only one!

I'll run down a list of characters and my comments about them in a bit. But many are named after gods or other mythological figures.

the magic

Most of the divergences come from magic existing. Certain humans are 'arcanists', who are able to use the 'Power', which is a magic system with a highly computational flavour. Thanks to Su's expositional asides, we know that an incantation is something like a short program written in cuneiform with the ability to gather information, perform maths, and manipulate particles. An example we are given is a spell called "entropy-denying", which is the following string of cuneiform:

"…(𒌍𒌷𒀭)(𒌍𒁁𒀭)𒅥𒌈𒆜𒈣𒂠, 𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬𒊹."

We're told that spells always start with phrases ending in 𒀭, and end in 𒊹. Beyond that, I'm not sure how far the author has actually worked out the syntax of this magic system - probably not in too much detail! Seems like the kind of thing it's better to leave vague, but also she seems like kind of nerd who would (positive). It's conceptually a reasonable magic system for a world where more or less realistic physics applies.

The use of unusual scripts for a magic system isn't that unusual - the old European occultists who wrote the [Lesser] Key of Solomon loved to write on their magic circles in Hebrew, and in modern times we could mention Yoko Taro's signature use of the Celestial Alphabet for example - but the specific use of cuneiform here seems like it might be a little more significant, because a little later in the story the characters encounter a mural depicting The Epic of Gilgamesh, which of course was recorded on cuneiform tablets. Remains to be seen exactly what these allusions will mean!

The magic system is divided into various disciplines defined by the different ways they approach doing magic, with the disciplines breaking down broadly along the same lines as the modern scientific disciplines. For example, our protagonist is a thanatomancer ("necromancer" having become unfashionable), which is the discipline dealing with death; she's specifically an entropic thanatomancer, distinguished by their framework viewing death as the cessation of processes.

Magic relies on an energy that they refer to as 'eris' (unknown relation to the Greek goddess of strife and discord). We are told that eris must be carefully apportioned across the elements of a spell or shit blows up, that it can be stored, and it accumulates gradually enough that you don't want to be wasteful with it, but so far given little information about where it comes from.

Magic in this story generally seems to act as a kind of 'sufficiently advanced technology'. It's very rules-based, and used for a lot of mundane ends like operating computers or transport. Advancement in magic is something like a combination of basic research and software development. But the thing that makes it a magic system and not merely alt-physics is that it's at least a little bit personal: it must be invoked by an individual, and only certain people can operate the magic. We're told a little about how wizards are privileged in some societies, indoctrinated in social utility in others, and expected to be inconspicuous in the present setting. It's not clear yet if you need some kind of special innate capacity to do the magic, or if it's just a matter of skill issue.

With one exception, our main characters are a gaggle of wizards, and exceptionally skilled students at that. They're at an elite institution, carrying high expectations, even if they are themselves fairly dismissive of the pomp and ceremony. They have grandiose plans: Kamrusepa in particular is the main voice of the 'death should be abolished' current.

the cast

We're entering a cloistered environment with high political stakes hanging off of it. Even if I hadn't already heard it described as a murder mystery, it would feel like someone will probably be murdered at some point, so lets round up our future suspects.

Su (Utsushikome) is our protagonist and first-person POV. She's telling this story in the first past tense, with a style calling to mind verbal narration; she'll occasionally allude to future events so we know for sure narrator!Su knows more than present!Su. She's got a sardonic streak and she likes long depressing antijokes, especially if the punchline is suicide. She will happily tell us she's a liar - so maybe her narration isn't entirely reliable, huh.

Su is more than a little judgemental; she doesn't particularly like a lot of her classmates, or people in general, and generally the first thing she'll tell you about a character is how well she gets on with them. She introduces the theme of 'wow death sucks' in the first paragraph, but she is, at least at this point, pessimistic that anyone will manage to do anything about it for good.

Her magical specialisation is entropic thanatomancy, roughly making processes go again after they working coherently.

Her name is a reference to an obscure Japanese empress, as discussed above.

Ran is Su's bestie from the same home country. She is generally pretty on the level. She likes romance novels and she is pretty sharp at analysing them. She will cheerfully team up with Su to do a bit or bait someone else when an argument gets going.

Her magical specialisation is Divination, which is sort of a more fundamental layer of magic, about gathering information by any means. In medicine it's super advanced diagnostics.

Her name is too short to pin down to a specific allusion. Could be one of a couple of disciple of Confucius such as Ran Geng, or a Norse goddess of the sea.

Kam (Kamrusepa) is the de facto class prez and spotlight lover. She's hardcore ideological, the story's main voice of the de Grey/Bostrom death-abolishing concept so far - I think she straight up calls someone a 'deathist' at some point. She loves to tell everyone what she thinks about everything, and getting the last word.

Her magical specialisation is Chronomancy, so time magic. It's described as secretive and byzantine, but also it can do stuff like (locally?) rewind time for about five minutes. No doubt it has something to do with the time loop.

As mentioned above, she's named after a fairly obscure ancient deity of healing and magic.

Theo (Theodoros) is a fairly minor character. He's scatterbrained and easily flustered, he has a similar background to our protagonist, and he's not great with people. His name is shared with a number of ancient Greek figures, so it's hard to narrow it down to one allusion. I don't think his magic school has been mentioned.

Ptolema is a cheery outgoing one, someone who Su dismisses as an airhead. And she is at least easy to bait into saying something ill-considered. Her specialisation is applying magic to surgery. As a character, she tends to act as a bit of a foil to the others. Bit of a valley girl thing going on.

'Ptolema' is presumably a feminised version of the renowned Greek philosopher Ptolemy.

Seth is the jock to Ptolema's prep, and our goth protag Su doesn't particularly like him either. ...lol maybe that's too flippant, I may be misapplying these US high school stereotypes. To be a little more precise then, he's pretty casual in demeanour, flirty, likes to play the clown. He specialises in Assistive Biomancy, which revolves around accelerating natural healing processes.

Seth is named for either the Egyptian god (domain: deserts, violence and foreigners) or an Abrahamic figure, the third son of Adam and Eve granted by God after the whole Caim killing Abel thing.

Ophelia is someone Su describes as 'traditionally feminine' - soft-spoken, demure etc. (Gender in this world appears to be constructed along broadly similar lines to ours). Indeed we get a fairly extended description of her appearance. Her specialisation is Alienist Biomancy, which means introducing foreign elements to healing (not entirely sure how that differs from the Golemancy mentioned later).

Ophelia is of course a major character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, best known for going mad and dying in a river.

Fang is the only nonbinary member of the class, noted as the most academically successful. They're not on the expedition, but the characters discuss them a little in their absence, so maybe they'll show up later. It seems like they have a bit of a rebellious streak. Their magical specialisation is not mentioned.

Fang is a regular ol' English word, but I gave it a search all the same and found there's an ancient Chinese alchemist of that name. She is the oldest recorded woman to do an alchemy in China, said to know how to turn mercury into silver.

Lilith is the teenaged prodigy in computers logic engines, and Mehit is her mother who accompanies her on the trip. They've got a big Maria and Rosa (of Umineko) dynamic going on, with Mehit constantly scolding Lilith and trying to get her to obey social norms, though in contrast to Maria, Lilith is a lot more standoffish and condescending to the rest of the gang. Lilith specialises in 'Golemancy', which means basically medical robotics - prosthetic limbs and such. She spends most of her time fiddling with her phone logic engine, and will generally tell anyone who talks to her that they're an idiot. Sort of a zoomer stereotype.

Lilith is named for the Abrahamic figure, the disobedient first wife of Adam who was banished and, according to some Jewish traditions, subsequently became a demon who attacks women at night. There may be some connection between Lilith and the lioness-headed Mesopotamian chimeric monster Lamashtu, which I mention because Mehit is an Egyptian and Nubian lion goddess.

'Golemancy' is probably playing on the popular fantasy idea of a 'golem' as a kind of magic robot, but given the Jewish allusion in Lilith's name here, I do wonder a little bit if it's going to touch on the Jewish stories of the Golem which inspired it - a protective figure with a specific religious dimension.

There are some other characters but they're not part of the main party on their way to the function, so I won't say much about them just yet. Also it's entirely possible I went and forgot an entire classmate or something, big whoops if so.

the events

In true Umineko tradition, the beginning of the story narrates in great detail how the protagonists make their way to the place where the plot is going to happen.

To be fair, there's a lot of groundwork to be laid here, and the characters' discussions do a lot to lay out the concerns of the story and sketch out the setting, not to mention establish the major character relations. A murder mystery takes a certain amount of setup after all! There's plenty of sci-fi colour to be had in the 'aetherbridge', which is a kind of space elevator that lifts you up to a high altitude teleporter network. (It's technically not teleportation but 'transposition', since teleportation magic also exists in the story, with different restrictions! But close enough for government work.)

They go to a huge space citadel, which is kind of a transport hub; some cloak and dagger shit happens to hide the route they must take to the mysterious secret organisation. They find a strange room with a missing floor and a mural of the Epic of Gilgamesh, albeit modified to render it cyclic. What does it meeaaaan?

The idea of a secret society of rationalists is one that dates back to the dawn of ratfic, in HPMOR. It was kinda dumb then, but it works a lot better here, where we're approaching the wizard circle from outside. The phrase 'Great Work' has already been dropped. I love that kind of alchemical shit so I'm well into finding out what these wizards are plotting.

the dying

A lot of the discussions revolve around the mechanics of death. Essentially the big problem for living forever is information decay. Simple cancers can be thwarted fairly easily with the magic techniques available, but more subtle genetic slippages start to emerge after the first few hundred years; later, after roughly the 500 year mark, a form of dementia becomes inevitable. It's this dementia in particular that the characters set their sights on curing.

One thing that is interesting to me is that, contra a lot of fantasy that deals with necromancy (notably the Locked Tomb series), there appears to be no notion of a soul in this world whatsoever. The body is all that there is. Indeed, despite all the occult allusions in the character names, there is very little in the way of religion for that matter. Even the 'fundamentalism' is about an idea of human biological continuity that shouldn't be messed with too much.

Su distinguishes three schools of thought on death, namely 'traditional', 'transformative' and 'entropic'. The 'traditional' form attempts to restore limited function - classic skeleton shit. 'Transformative' sees death as a process and uses dead tissues together with living in healing. Su's 'entropic' school broadens this 'process' view to consider death as any kind of loss of order - a flame going out as much as an organism dying. At the outset of the story, Su has discovered a 'negentropic' means to restore life to an organism, which she considers promising, even if for now it only works for fifteen minutes.

This is an interesting perspective, but the devil is in the details. Because processes such as life or flames, necessarily, result in a continuous increase in the thermodynamic entropy of the universe. And yet this idea of death-as-loss-of-order does make a kind of sense, at a certain level of abstraction.

Elaborating on this got rather too long for this post, and I think it can stand alone, so I'm going to extract it to a followup post.

the comments

As is probably evident by the length of this post, I am very intrigued by The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere. The setting is compelling, and it seems like it's got the willingness to bite at the chewy questions it raises instead of acting like it has all the answers, which is I think one of the most crucial elements for this kind of scifi. I like how unabashed it is at having its characters straight-up debate shit.

Of course, this all depends where they go with it. There's so many ways it could be headed at this point. I hear where it's going is 'dark yuri' and 'Umineko-inspired murder mystery', so that should be really juicy fun, but I do end up wondering what space that will leave to address the core theme it's laid out in these first few chapters.

Overall, if this and Worth the Candle are what modern ratfic is like, the genre is honestly in pretty good shape! Of course, I am reading very selectively. But this is scratching the itch of 'the thing I want out of science fiction', so I'm excited to see where the next 133 chapters will take me.

Though all that said, I ended up writing this post all day instead of reading any other chapters or working, so I may need to rein it in a bit.

[greenerteacups]

Hi! Just wanted to say the latest chapter is lovely & amazing & sweet & had me smiling the whole time! I absolutely love your characterisation of everyone, especially Draco, so it was so so lovely to return to this world & to his thoughts!! with his best friend and crush at malfoy manor no less! All the yearning is already off to a great start hehe I am so excited for the rest of book 5!

Wanted to ask you how has it been for you to write this new book and volume? Has your writing process changed since when you’d first begun taking on a long form project like this?

& also are there any moments or surprises in this book that you’re especially excited about?

sending so much love & gratitude for you and your incredible works 💓

Thank you so much! This is really encouraging, I so appreciate it.

Inasmuch as I can use this metaphor without having kids myself, I sort of see each of the books as a different child. The first one flew out in basically a few weeks of very intensive writing, and it was a total dream — plot, pacing, symbolism, major beats, all fell into place basically without effort. The character stuff was the hardest, as I've written about before, but even then, the glorious part of writing beginnings is it's the most energy you'll ever have for a project, so the lows were pretty soft lows. Book 2, in contrast, I had to drag kicking and screaming by its ankle from under the bottommost mattress of my brain. It's one of my least favorite books (tone problem; COS has killer plot/setting/ingredients for a YA novel, but it's stuck in the doldrums of Harry Potter's well-documented Early-Installment Weirdness, before Cedric Diggory slams the gas and upshifts the whole series into its correct age bracket). More specifically, once I'd gone through and picked out everything in the book that happened because of Lucius, I didn't have a plot — hey alexa how do you rewrite Chamber of Secrets when We Got No Fucking Chamber Of Secrets — and oh by the way, even if you want to do a moody tone/political setup book, remember that your protagonists are still twelve, so if you go too dark or too intense, you'll risk torpedoing your readers' suspension of disbelief. Good luck, Charlie.

Book 3 felt the most like its own novel, if that makes sense? It's the last truly feel-good book of the series; it's a great stand-alone mystery novel with relatively low stakes. Plus you get a bunch of the big series icons: patronuses, dementors, werewolves, Hogsmeade, the Marauders' Map, and time turners arithmancy. It just felt like a good old-fashioned motherfucking romp of a mystery/adventure story, before any of the complex character work and major stakes of the late books come in.

Book 4 was the most fun I've had writing anything maybe ever. I don't even know what it was. Maybe the tournament arc, honestly? Love me a tournament arc. But in any case, I opened every new chapter feeling a tingle of excitement for what I was gonna get to do. Oh, and the romance started, finally, Jesus God (if it feels like a slow burn reading, just imagine what it felt like writing it, when everything takes ten times as long, and you have to figure out how to word the fucker.)

Book 5, in contrast, has felt much less like that tingle of "here we go!" and more like "oh, man, this is gonna be cool." Because this is the arc of the story that composed the original idea for Lionheart, literally years ago, and to be honest, I didn't think I'd get this far! If you'd asked me "do you know that it's going to take you 500,000 words of backstory before you can start writing that concept you're thinking about, and you're going to do it anyway?" I would have said: "absolutely not, strange mind-reader!" But like... I'm here! Finally! And it's... real now? Like, this isn't just a bunch of clips of scenes in my head anymore! That's rad!

That being said, it's definitely been slower than Book 4, because I kept switching back to my outline document to make sure that certain things were set up properly, and that I hadn't lost any of the plot threads or forgotten a minor beat that was vitally important for the story three chapters later. And I had a minor crisis about three months ago when I ripped out about 8 chapters in the first third of the book — basically everything from September to December — because I'd done a readthrough to check pacing (big mistake! never edit while drafting, that's satan talking) and realized I had a missing storyline. Like, there was a whole layer of the story that was just. Missing. Not there. And the existing text really couldn't fit another thread, so instead of taking weeks to pore through and try to sift out what I could save, I needed to factory reset and start over. And I didn't want to! I vividly remember sitting there with my head in my hands, trying not to weep, because I'd decimated 90,000 words of work in a single edit. But it had to be done. Because the story wasn't going to work. And now (hopefully) it will.

And of course, there's still that sense of excitement and exhilaration from before. Always. But whereas Book 4 felt like a delicious chocolate pudding, Book 5 is a medium-rare steak.

(Book 6, so far, is four shots of espresso and a whiskey chaser. FWIW.)

[blacktabbygames]

Good mornighternoon. Do you have any advice on making writing and/or coding branching dialogue less confusing?

It's always going to be confusing and difficult to keep track of branching, but here's some things that I think have helped. Gonna break this down into a few sections to make it a little easier to follow.

Foundations and Research

So much practice for me came from being obsessed with Bioware games growing up, especially Dragon Age and Mass Effect — just keeping track of complicated branching world states in complex games you already enjoy is extremely good exercise, and the best way to get better at thinking about a medium is to consume and discuss things in that medium.

Building on that, I think that the best media to take a deep dive into to improve your own craft is something that you really like, but that feels like it missed the mark in a few areas that are important to you. Again, revisiting Mass Effect and Dragon Age, I absolutely loved the way that those games set up challenging decisions, but was frustrated at how easy it was to circumvent those choices entirely. By the time Abby and I started work on Scarlet Hollow, I feel like I had a strong foundation from obsessively consuming those works and the two of us discussing at length how we wanted to handle branching compared to games we've enjoyed in the past.

The Big Picture

The bigger your project, the more important it is to have intentionality to your choices. With both Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess, we decided on the major themes of the story and wrote down and outlined all of our Big Plot Points before we wrote a word of the actual script.

It can also help to come up with Rules for your piece that fit within your outline. These aren't necessarily ever words that are directly communicated in the game, but rather something for you to personally follow (and to break, on occasion). To give some examples of rules we've come up with for Scarlet Hollow: Every chapter must have a "major" decision with seemingly only bad outcomes towards the end. Each of these decisions must have a secret "out" mapped to a trait. Each trait gets exactly one out. Every episode must contain at least one decision where the focus is the player's relationship with Tabitha. The story must come back together in a recognizable structure after a split. As an extension of that last point, subsequent playthroughs must feel both Similar and Different. Again, these aren't hard and fast rules, and one of the joys of writing is knowing which rules you should break and when you can break them. (So if you're reading this post and trying to use it to theorize about future plot developments, good luck!)

Having a finished outline and rules are important because then, as you work on the minutiae, you'll already have a strong framework to build around. Suddenly, when you're crafting decisions and thinking about cascading consequences, you're not just branching out into an infinite void: instead, you're actively working to draw everything into a set of predetermined thematic and structural points.

The Little Details

When it's time to write your script, it's very important to remain focused in the moment — if you think too long about the scale of a branching narrative and the work it requires, you'll find yourself easily overwhelmed. Just work on one menu at a time in one scene at a time, and you'll find a way to keep things straight and to get it done.

When writing a menu, define your player's options with intent. What are the things (within reason) that you would want to do in a scene? What emotional range do you want to grant the player? Do two options cover the same intent and emotionality? If so, condense them, and keep the option that's more fun.

Emotionality is very important here, so I want to take an extra line to emphasize it. Ask yourself, "what are the different reactions a player might have to this, emotionally" and find a way to let them express those emotions. Letting them express those emotions doesn't always mean you let the *action* behind those emotions work — it's more about acknowledging those feelings and letting them bake into the narrative.

Bolding this one because it's very important track everything. A lot of the callbacks and references in Scarlet Hollow aren't actually pre-planned — we just make sure to track most player decisions so if we realize we want to make a reference to something that might have happened, there's already a variable in place for it. An example of this that comes to mind is the "dead moms" callback in Episode 4, which we didn't plan in advance, but when we realized how right that callback was for that scene, we already had that information tracked.

I think I accidentally talked about a lot of stuff outside the scope of your question, but narrative design is such an interesting subject and I like talking about it. Hopefully this is helpful!

[rabbittwinrithings]

An Announcement

(The announcement below is copied from my discord)

   Hey everyone! This announcement has been a long time coming, I’ve just been pretty busy these past months. This announcement will have some good news, but also, some bad news. 

   First off, the good news: 

   End of last year I graduated from college and a few months after I got a new job! I had to move to a whole new state and it’s been perhaps one of, if not the, best experience of my life. This job has been amazing. My new place has been amazing. And just my life in general has been amazing! I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so content in my life! Sometimes I’ll just start looking around and be struck with disbelief that things turned out so well for me. Basically, I got a really nice job in writing and I couldn’t be happier! 

   With this new job, it has also given me time to discover old and new hobbies such as writing my own new material, reading, and I’m getting back into playing/running Dnd! (And once I get my hands on my sewing machine next month you better bet I’m gonna start sewing again!! And get back into cosplaying!!!) 

   But with this all new amazingness comes with a down side. My new job offers little time in the terms of modding. By the time I’m done with work I’m usually exhausted. (this may also be health related which I’m trying to figure out, but we’ll see.) And on the weekends I find myself looking for new hobbies. 

   Let me rip the bandaid off real quick:

   For now, I will no longer be working on my mods. That doesn’t mean I hope nothing new comes out of them. I’m still hoping to make an announcement later that may open up *some* of my mods for fan made expansions (if users wish to do so,) but I’m still trying to get all that sorted out. There was a lot of update work being done, and I’m still figuring out what to do with it. 

   I also still love seeing mod patches like replacers, translations, and such (like always, just shoot me a message first so I know they��re coming out.) 

   This also doesn’t mean it’s forever over. One day, I may return, but for now, I’m stepping aside.

With that sad news said, I want to let all of you know what a ride all this has been! I first started modding because I wanted to find a creative writing outlet, then it turned into realizing I could make a portfolio for a future career with it, and then, finally, I realized how many people enjoyed my work. There were a lot of times where I self doubted whether or not I was a good writer, but seeing the overwhelming support over the years for my art has helped me get over that. My final years of college weren’t great, and modding and you all helped me through the vast majority of it. Because of all that, I want to thank each and every one of you for your support!

   Now, just because I’m stepping away from modding doesn’t mean I want to stop creating. Like I said, I still love writing in my free time, so maybe in the future I can post various personal writings I make here. 

   And with that, once I get everything figured out about the future of my mods, this server may be taking a shift in a new direction from being solely about Sidekicks of Tamriel, but just as a general Rabbitt Winri server and whatever personal projects I pursue in the future. (I will also be changing my various social media accounts accordingly too.)

   Once again, I cannot thank all of you enough for what you’ve done for me! None of this would have been possible without you!

[4littlefishies]

The 36th Floor - Deal.

satoru gojo x suguru geto

warnings: smut and fluff ;)

wc: 7.5k

previous chapter here

note: I don't really post the notes here like I do on ao3, but this is the last chapter of this fic! ty guys for all the love here, I appreciate everything and I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I do writing <3

“I’m still pissed at both of you.” Shoko says as she watches both Satoru and Suguru pack up their desks. It’s both of their last days in the office. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest as she sits in her chair with one leg crossed over the other, brows furrowed, looking up at her friends. 

“Shouldn’t you be packing up your shit to move too?” Suguru shoots back, neatly packing up the last of his things to take home in a small box. 

“I’m moving down the hallway, not across the country.” She retorts, narrowing her eyes up at him. Suguru smiles back at her and looks over to Satoru as he packs up his desk as well. “And I have two idiots to help me move everything, so it’s not that big of a deal.” She continues.

“Hey.” Satoru interjects, looking at her with furrowed brows while he shakes his head, looking disapprovingly across the aisle at her. “Don’t call my boyfriend an idiot.” Suguru smiles at Satoru and Shoko smiles sweetly back at him and scrunches her nose, somehow teasing him without saying a word. 

It was nearing the end of November; the days were short and cold, and the year was close to an end. Satoru had given his notice that he was quitting the same day that he found out about Suguru’s new job. He marched right into Nanami’s office and told him that he was going as well, which was no surprise to Nanami. He was actually kind of upset to see him go, but was very understanding of the situation. 

Suguru was pretty much totally moved into Satoru’s apartment, besides a few miscellaneous items and some trash that needed to be taken out. It only took them a couple days to get the majority of his things moved over with the help of movers and a very determined Satoru. Suguru was surprised with how focused Satoru could get when it came to something that he actually really cared about. He only had about one suitcase full of stuff left that they would get tonight and bring back to Satoru's, which would mean that Suguru was officially moved in. 

Suguru looks down at his watch as he finishes up his desk. There was about an hour left in the work day and he was pretty much done with everything. He had wrapped up projects, and given the unfinished things back to Nanami, making sure to apologize for what he was leaving behind. 

“Geto, it’s okay, don’t worry about it, really.” Nanami responds, looking up at Suguru from where he sits behind his desk. “Ino’s going to be taking over some of your tasks, so this is actually really great for practice.” Suguru smiles back at him with an exhale of relief. 

“That’s good.” He says softly. “Do you need anything else from me?” He asks, unsure of what there is left to do, if anything at all. 

“I think we’re all good. If you wanna get out of here, you can take off a little bit early; start enjoying your vacation before you start your training.” Nanami says, sitting back in his chair and looking up at him with a soft smile.

Suguru smiles back at him as he takes a breath. They weren’t going anywhere special, but both Satoru and Suguru decided to finish a week early so that they would have time to transition easily and get settled in before Suguru started his training. “I think I’m gonna stay and help Shoko move her things. I also gotta wait for Satoru anyways, but I’ll catch you before I head out.” 

“Alright, sounds good.” Nanami nods his head and Suguru retreats back out of the office and heads back down the hallway, only to hear Satoru and Shoko bickering coming from around the corner as he gets closer.

“At least I’m not addicted to cigarettes.” He hears Satoru say. His voice is playful as the two of them bicker back and forth, neither of their feelings ever actually getting hurt.

“At least I didn’t quit my job because I can’t be away from my boyfriend for more than six hours.” She shoots back surprisingly calmly with a smirk on her face. Suguru chuckles lightly as he makes it back to his desk and sits down.

“Sugu, are you just gonna let her talk to me like that?!” Satoru asks, his voice getting higher in pitch towards the end of the sentence. 

Suguru crosses his arms and just sits back to watch the show unfold in front of him, for once, not having anything to do. “I think I’m on her side, actually.” The corners of his mouth downturned as he shakes his head.

Satoru’s jaw drops and his eyes widen as he tries to keep his smile contained. “Well, maybe I’ll just stay here then and you can go to Fukuoka by yourself.” He threatens, furrowing his brows and crossing his arms.

“Okay.” Suguru says, knowing he isn’t a serious threat and that Satoru will take it back immediately.

“Wait, no! I was kidding!”

The last hour of the day seems to go by in a flash. Many of their coworkers come to say goodbye and good luck to the both of them in their new adventures. Before they head out, Satoru and Suguru head up the hallway to say goodbye to Nanami and Utahime.

“Congratulations to the both of you.” Nanami looks between the two of them. “I hope you have a great time in Fukuoka and I look forward to working with you again in the future.” Nanami says, shaking Suguru’s hand with a smile. 

“Thank you.” Suguru says with a soft smile before they cross the hallway for Satoru to bother Utahime one last time.

“You’re gonna miss me, aren’t you Utahime?” Satoru asks, peeking his head into her office.

She lets out an exasperated sigh as she looks up at him and says with a deadpan face, “No.” Suguru chuckles behind him in the hallway and peeks his head inside. “You, I’ll miss though.” She says, standing up and walking to the front of her desk to give Suguru a hug.

“Why does he get one and I don’t?” Satoru asks, scrunching his nose and furrowing his brows.

“Because he wasn’t a thorn in my side the entire time he’s worked here.” She says, stepping back and crossing her arms as she looks at Satoru. Suguru smiles as he looks between the two of them. “You’re sure you wanna go with him?” Utahime asks as if Satoru can’t hear her.

Suguru smiles, looking back at her and nodding. “Unfortunately, I kinda like him a lot.” 

“Unfortunately?!” Satoru cries out dramatically, pulling another chuckle from Suguru. They say their final goodbyes before grabbing their things and heading out the front doors together for the last time.

“It feels weird that this isn’t gonna be my office anymore.” Suguru says as they step into the empty elevator, mostly everyone already having left for the weekend. Satoru pushes the button for the lobby and the doors close. 

“Remember when we made out in here?” Satoru asks, completely ignoring Suguru trying to be sentimental. Suguru shakes his head and rolls his eyes.

“Which time?” He asks with a quick chuckle, thinking back on the last year he’s been in this office. 

“Any of ‘em.” Satoru returns with a smile, leaning towards Suguru to press a quick peck to his lips. “We’re going to get the last of your things, right?” He asks as the doors open to a fairly dead lobby. 

“If that’s okay with you?” Suguru asks, okay with doing whatever Satoru wants to do. 

“Yeah, hurry, let’s go.” Satoru says, impatiently hurrying ahead towards the front doors of the building.

Suguru calls out after him, picking up his pace to keep up with Satoru. “Slow down! I’ve got more stuff to carry than you do.” 

~~~~~~~~~~

It takes them a couple hours, but they successfully get the last of everything packed and moved out of Suguru’s apartment, leaving it just as barren as the day he first moved in. The walls are blank, the rooms are empty once again. Suguru didn’t care as much as he thought he would, because when he thinks back on the past year, a majority of his memories were in Satoru’s apartment, not his. 

They make it up to the 36th floor with the last bags and close the front door with a huff, tired from carrying everything to the train and then from the train back to the apartment.

“I can’t believe we finally did it.” Suguru says, dropping the heavy bag in his arms right next to the front door. 

“Yeah… This is our apartment now.” Satoru says, turning around and smiling at Suguru who smiles back excitedly. There’s still stuff everywhere, but it’s slowly getting there. Both of them are busy trying to unpack Suguru’s things while also simultaneously trying to pack for six months away. They would be coming back a couple times over weekends, but only for one or two nights at a time.

“I can’t believe it.” He says, looking around the place where he’s spent more than half of his nights the past year. “It almost feels like a completely different place seeing my things everywhere mixed in with yours.” Suguru steps forward with his arms open, closing the gap between them. Satoru wraps his arms around Suguru’s shoulders, squeezing him tightly and pressing a kiss to the side of his head. 

“You won’t even be here a whole week before we’re gone for six months.” Satoru points out, talking against Suguru’s hair.

“Very astute observation, honey.” Suguru shoots back sarcastically as he leans his head back to look at Satoru. Satoru scrunches his nose at him before leaning in and pressing his lips to Suguru’s. Satoru smiles against his lips, feeling one of Suguru’s hands gently cupping the side of his face. He leans into it, earning a smile back from Suguru up against his lips. 

Satoru pulls back just enough to be able to look Suguru in the eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so thankful that you’re in my life and I probably don’t tell you that enough so I’m telling you now.” He says in a soft voice. Suguru can’t stop the smile that forms on his face. 

The night after what Satoru had dubbed, the email incident, they went to Suguru’s apartment where they sat on the couch and just talked for hours. No music, no tv, nothing but the sound of their voices. It started out with talking about why Suguru did what he did and Satoru explaining how he had felt the entire week and how much it hurt that he didn’t find out about the news from Suguru first. They talked about how to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again.

“What, did you think I was gonna be mad?”

“No, I don’t know, I guess? Maybe? I just didn’t want to be the reason that you were so disappointed.”

“Sugu! I’m ecstatic for you! Why do you think I’d be disappointed?”

“Well… I wasn’t really foreseeing you coming with me.”

“I think it’s a little bit insulting that you didn’t realize sooner that I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Suguru chuckles, thinking back to the moment.

“You’re right. I really should’ve seen that coming sooner.”

“But Sugu, you know you can tell me anything, right? I think you know better than anyone I’m usually pretty easy going when it comes to you especially.”

“Unless I eat your last mochi.”

“Unless you eat my last mochi.”

“What’s so funny?” Satoru asks, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Nothing, I was just thinking the same thing about you.” Suguru responds with a soft smile on his face. 

Satoru smiles before rolling his eyes dramatically. “Oh brother, we got a corndog over here.” He says, letting go of his grip on Suguru’s shoulders and looking around like he’s talking to a crowd of people.

Suguru scoffs lightly, an open mouthed smile on his face as he holds up one finger while his other hand finds its way around Satoru’s. “You said it, how am I the corny one?!”

“You didn’t know what to say so you just said that.”

“So you don’t think I’m thankful to have you in my life?”

“That’s not what I said, Suguru.” Satoru shakes his head at him. “I know you are, but I want to hear you say it. It’s not fair if I say it and you just say ‘ditto.’ You need to actually tell me how you feel.” Satoru goes on, for once sounding like the more mature one between the two.

“Okay, okay.” Suguru says to get him to stop for a moment. He takes a breath and looks into Satoru’s eyes, now holding both his hands in his own. “I’m very grateful to have you in my life and I’m very excited and can’t wait to live with you.” Satoru smiles like he’s just waiting because he has something to say. “What?” Suguru already knows it’s going to be some kind of teasing by the look he has.

“Sugu, you already live with me.” Satoru says with a shit eating grin on his face. Suguru looks into his eyes with a blank stare for a moment, not even a twitch of a smile to be seen. 

“You know what I meant, smartass.” Suguru says, letting go of Satoru’s hands and shaking his head with narrowed eyes. He turns around to head to the bedroom, wanting to change out of his work clothes that he’d been in all day. Satoru follows closely, trailing behind him like a duckling following its mother. 

“Wait!” He calls out after him, following him into their bedroom and grabbing his hand to stop him before he goes into the closet. Suguru turns around, slightly confused.

“What?” He turns around only to be met with Satoru’s arm around his waist, pulling him in close and kissing him deeply. Suguru melts against him, a warm, content feeling washing over his body.

“I just wanna kiss you some more.” Satoru says in between kisses as he continues pressing his lips around Suguru’s mouth and face. “I like kissing you.” His face kisses turn into jaw kisses which quickly turn into neck kisses. He pushes the long black hair back over Suguru’s shoulder and dips his head in between his head and shoulder to press soft, wet kisses to the side of his neck and up to his ear. 

Suguru lets him keep going, letting his eyes fall closed and his head fall back at the feeling. It causes goosebumps all over his skin that he can feel under his clothes. He holds his bottom lip in between his teeth as he presses his fingers into Satoru’s forearm. “I know what you're doing.” He says with a smirk.

“What am I doing?” Satoru asks, pretending to be oblivious as his warm breath tickles the sensitive skin of Suguru’s neck. 

Suguru can’t help but smile at the sensation, feeling Satoru continuing to press kisses all over his neck. “You always start by kissing my neck, you know?” 

“It hasn't failed me yet.” Satoru says in between kisses, a gentle smile on his lips.

“I can think of a couple times when it’s failed you, actually.”

Satoru is confident when he says his next sentence, his voice low and alluring as he speaks softly. “But it isn’t going to this time, is it?”

Suguru’s quiet, trying to hide the smirk growing on his face and the warmth in his cheeks. One hand holds onto Satoru’s forearm while the other rests against his lower back, pulling him closer. “Don’t you wanna shower first? We’re all sweaty and gross from moving my stuff.”   

“If you think I care for one second what you smell like, Suguru Geto, you are sorely mistaken.” Satoru says, his fingers already starting to make easy work of the buttons on the front of Suguru’s shirt. “It just makes you all the more enticing.” Suguru can’t help but smile as he lifts his head and takes over, undoing the rest of the buttons on his shirt.

Satoru starts to unbutton his own shirt, but promptly gets distracted when Suguru lets his fall to the ground, landing next to his feet. He lets his hands reach out and run over the warm skin of Suguru’s chest and shoulders while he takes the hair tie out of his hair, shaking the rest of it out to fall down and cascade around his shoulders and back. “You’re easily distracted.” Suguru teases as he continues unbuttoning Satoru’s shirt the rest of the way. 

Satoru traces his fingers delicately over the intricate ink in his skin. “You’re gorgeous, how am I supposed to not get distracted?” Satoru asks as he goes back in for another kiss, desperate to feel Suguru’s lips on his again. He brings his hand to Suguru’s pants, undoing his belt and unbuttoning his pants seamlessly without ever pulling away from his lips. Suguru tries to do the same, but Satoru stops him and pulls him over to the armchairs next to the tall windows. “Sit.” He commands.

“Someone’s being awfully bossy, aren’t they?” Suguru teases as he kicks his pants off and sits down, letting his legs spread wide. Satoru barely needs to do anything, Suguru’s cock is already straining against his underwear, begging for attention. He kneels on the ground in between Suguru’s legs, looking up at him with a smirk as he presses a couple kisses to the tops of his thighs and up towards his stomach. 

“You like it,” Satoru shoots back, “obviously.” Suguru sucks in a breath through his teeth as he watches Satoru finally press a kiss to his cock through the fabric. His head falls back over the chair as he looks up at the ceiling for a moment before closing his eyes, feeling his hair slowly falling and flowing down the back as well. His fingers grip onto the arms of the chair as Satoru runs his hands up the front of his thighs. Satoru hooks his fingers over the band and pulls down his underwear, Suguru lifting his hips just enough to allow him to slide them off. “Yeah, you really like it.” Satoru teases, taking the length in front of him into his hand and pressing a kiss to his hot, leaky tip. 

Suguru can feel the heat in his cheeks as he opens his eyes and lifts his head back up to look down at a very pleased-with-himself Satoru. “I think I’d like your mouth around my cock more.” Suguru retorts, looking at him with half lidded eyes. 

Satoru smiles up at him and decides to tease him no further, taking first, the tip into his mouth and sucking lightly on it before taking more into his mouth, pulling a low groan from Suguru’s throat. “Fuck, baby.” He breathes out, bringing one hand down to hold onto his face gently. Satoru doesn’t look away for a second, keeping eye contact with Suguru as he continues bobbing his head slowly, taking more of him in every time. “Why you like this all of a sudden?” 

Pulling off for just a second, a string of saliva connecting his lips to Suguru’s tip, Satoru smiles up at him. “I’m proud of you.” He says, making Suguru’s heart skip a beat. “Just wanna treat you nice right now.”

Suguru smiles back down at him, but Satoru doesn’t wait for him to answer before going back to what he was doing. “Hah, Satoru.” He breathes out, rubbing his thumb over Satoru’s cheek softly as he slowly swallows his cock like it’s nothing. “My handsome boy.” Satoru hums happily around Suguru, causing his hips to twitch from the sensation. “Shit.” 

His hand moves from where it rests on his cheek up to tangle into Satoru’s soft hair. He tugs lightly at the bright strands, his hands following the movement of Satoru’s head. The warmth that his mouth brings, the love in his eyes, and the way he looks on his knees in front of Suguru is enough to drive him crazy already. “Babyyy.” He draws out, leaning his head back with a groan. The way Satoru’s tongue feels as it drags against the bottom of his cock is indescribable.

Satoru lifts his head once again, his tongue slowly making its way up the bottom of Suguru’s cock as he pulls back as if he knew exactly what he was thinking. This time, he keeps his slow yet steady pace with his hand. “Yes, my sweet?” He asks with a wide smile on his face, his lips pink and shiny. 

Suguru nearly cums at the feeling of Satoru’s tongue alone. “Wanna cum with you.” Suguru whines shakily, somewhat out of character for once.

Satoru smirks back up at him, standing up and starting to undo his own pants quickly, the intense need and desire burning through his veins. “That’s good because I was getting really impatient.” Satoru says, shedding his clothes to reveal his already leaking tip.

“God, Satoru.” Suguru nearly scoffs while he’s gawking at the sight in front of him like he’s never seen it before. Before he can say anymore, Satoru is straddling him in the chair, grinding up against his painfully hard cock. He sucks in a hiss at the feeling, resting his hands on Satoru’s ass and gripping the flesh between his fingers. He rubs a few careful circles around Satoru’s hole with his middle finger before slowly pressing inside, earning a soft moan from Satoru’s mouth that makes his cock twitch. 

He buries his finger all the way inside before pulling it back out, watching the look on Satoru’s face as he continues, adding another finger as soon as he’s able to. The noises that emit from Satoru’s mouth are enough to have him incredibly impatient already. He takes his fingers out and looks up at Satoru, waiting for him to make a move.

Satoru reaches down to rub Suguru’s slick cock against his needy entrance, causing Suguru to hiss again at the feeling. “You like that?” Satoru asks, a smirk on his face as he looks down at Suguru.

Suguru this time is the one to have a pout on his face. “Baby, please stop teasing.” He pleads, running one of his large hands up Satoru’s back and pulling him closer. For once, Satoru doesn’t say anything and actually listens, feeling just as impatient. He slowly lowers himself, feeling as Suguru’s slick cock fills him up. 

“Fuck, Sugu.” He whimpers softly. He keeps slowly going until their bodies are flush against one another. 

“Yeah, baby?” Suguru asks, his voice sweet as he looks up at Satoru as he stills, adjusting to Suguru’s size. Both of his hands are now spread wide over Satoru’s back, the pads of his fingers pressing into the soft skin. Feeling the warmth and wetness of Satoru surrounding him is enough to make him take a deep breath, trying to ground himself.

Satoru grinds his hips down even further, his eyes rolling back in his head as he gets the feeling he’s desperately chasing after. “Shi-it, ‘tso big.” He says, looking down at Suguru underneath him with his eyebrows upturned and his mouth hanging slightly open. He looks back up at him with a big smile on his face as he leans forward, his mouth at the perfect height to press a wet kiss to one of Satoru’s nipples. Satoru lets out a whiny moan as Suguru’s tongue presses against it, licking a slow circle around it before he sucks on it lightly. “Fuck.” He breathes out simply, as Suguru pulls back with a sultry smile.

Finally finding the will power to move, Satoru lifts himself slowly up before lowering once again, lewd noises escaping his throat as he does so. Suguru can’t help but change the angle of his hips with the movement, rolling them upwards to meet Satoru’s and effectively hitting him in deeper spots than before. 

“You look so pretty like this, baby. So, so fucking pretty.” Suguru coos, continuing to press kisses to Satoru’s chest as he slowly rides him. “Breathtaking.” He lets out, his voice breathy as he says it. Satoru can’t help but smile at the compliments that spill out of Suguru’s mouth as he keeps his slow pace, not wanting to rush anything.

“You- hah, ah, shit- you should see my point of view.” Satoru manages to get out, barely managing to keep going and talk at the same time. Suguru chuckles lightly. “Ah- I can feel it when you laugh.” Satoru lets out, looking down at Suguru with his mouth hanging open and his hair starting to stick to his forehead. 

“You’re doing so, so good for me, Toru.” Suguru’s voice is low, but still soft and sweet as he murmurs quiet praises against Satoru’s skin. 

The whispers up against his skin are enough to have his legs feeling weak underneath him, but he keeps pushing through it, not wanting to stop just yet. “Mmmm.” Satoru hums out as he looks down at Suguru with his eyebrows upturned and his bottom lip in between his teeth. 

Suguru takes one of his hands from where it presses into Satoru’s back and brings it between them, running it slowly up the front of Satoru’s chest. Suguru doesn’t even need to tell Satoru to open his mouth, as his mouth already hangs open. He presses his middle finger against Satoru’s tongue, his smile alluring as Satoru sticks his tongue out. His ring finger joins his middle one on Satoru’s tongue before his lips close around his thick digits.

“I can’t believe you’re all mine, baby.” Suguru says with an open-mouthed smile, feeling Satoru’s tongue against his fingers as simultaneously he squeezes around his cock. He licks his lips, wetting them before pulling his fingers out of Satoru’s mouth and placing his hand lightly around Satoru’s throat, pulling him in for a kiss. 

A whiny moan comes out of Satoru’s mouth as he’s pulled forward, crashing against Suguru’s lips with little restraint, too eager to care at all. His own hands tangle into Suguru’s long onyx hair, pulling at the base where it meets his scalp. He notices that Suguru smiles against his lips and smiles back, moaning into his mouth as he feels the fingers tighten ever so slightly against the sides of his neck. His eyes are closed, but that does little to stop them from rolling back in his skull once again.

With every passing moment, it’s getting harder to continue, his thighs feeling like they’re going to give out any second from underneath him. Suguru can feel that he’s slowing down and brings both his hands down to grab underneath his ass, helping move him up and down at the same slow pace.

“Fuck, tired already, baby?” Suguru teases lightly, feeling Satoru stop, having him do almost all of the work now.

Satoru can’t find the words to answer, wanting to respond like the smartass he is, but the words won’t form in his head. “Sh-h- fuuck.” He mewls out as Suguru lifts and drops him back down on his cock with ease. 

Suguru stops, catching Satoru slightly by surprise. He does his best to keep his hips moving, but his legs are shaking too much to continue. “Can you stand up?” Suguru asks, his voice just above a whisper. Satoru nods his head, not even knowing if he can for sure before he answers. He lifts himself up, whining at the feeling of Suguru’s cock slipping out and leaving him with an overwhelming emptiness. He stands up and immediately leans against the window next to them, the freezing glass a shocking sensation against his hot and sticky skin. 

“Hahh.” He breathes out, feeling goosebumps forming along his skin as Suguru stands up and comes right behind him, holding his hips from behind. Satoru doesn’t need any warning, a moan ripping from his mouth when Suguru slips himself back inside, feeling whole once again. His flushed cheek is pressed up against the glass, his hands and forearms on either side of his head holding himself steady. Legs still shaky underneath him, he finds it easier to stand in one spot than to continue the motion he was doing earlier, bouncing up and down on Suguru’s cock. 

Suguru presses his hand against Satoru’s lower back, his fingers flaying out wide over the space as he holds his hip with his other hand. “Still doing alright baby?” He asks, his voice tender as he pushes all the way back in and pulls out, his movements slow but unfaltering.

“Mmhm.” Satoru hums in response, his cheek and arms still pressed against the freezing window. Between the sensation of the cold of the glass and the heat of Suguru slowly pressing into him from behind and pulling back out again, he can’t find any other words. 

“You’re squeezing me real good, baby.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Not gonna last much longer like this.” He says, letting his head fall back for just a moment before he hears Satoru speak up. His hair tickles the skin of his back as he looks up.

“I’m close too.” Satoru manages to get out, turning his head further back over his shoulder to look at Suguru. Seeing the look on Suguru’s face is nearly enough to send him over the edge; the way his cheeks are flushed, and his eyes are full of lust, but also full of complete love and adoration.

Without warning, Suguru reaches around and wraps his hand around Satoru’s cock that’s begging for attention. “Ah,” Satoru cries out at the sudden sensation, “Shiiit.” He was already close without this, but Suguru’s warm hand wrapped around him, pumping at the same rate he pushes into him from behind sends him even closer. He can feel as Suguru’s cock twitches inside of him, letting him know that he’s close as well. 

Hunched over him, Suguru’s chest is pressed against Satoru’s back. “You gonna cum for me baby? Let me hear those pretty noises of yours?” Suguru asks, his voice slightly whiny as he tries to talk, nearing his own orgasm as well. Satoru can’t do anything but answer with hums and moans, his mind too scrambled by the pleasure filling his entire body. His thrusts don’t speed up, but Satoru cries out as he feels him go deeper somehow, hitting the sweet spot deep inside him perfectly over and over again. 

Suguru can easily tell that Satoru’s nearing his climax. He has the same tells every time, which makes it easy for Suguru to know. He keeps his same pace, angling his hips perfectly to hit the same spot over and over again, knowing it’ll send him over the edge. He feels as Satoru’s squeezing around him, making it harder to maintain the same pace, but doing it anyway. “Shit, baby, ‘m cumming.” He lets out, his voice raspy as his eyes uncontrollably roll back.

Reaching back to grab at Suguru’s hand, Satoru feels his legs start to give out underneath himself. Suguru lets go of Satoru’s cock and grabs his hand instead, lacing their fingers tightly together while also managing to help hold him up with his other arm, continuing to slowly fuck him through both of their orgasms. Satoru feels the familiar warmth inside of him as he tips over the edge. He swears he sees stars as he cries out, still with his head over his shoulder watching Suguru. “Nngh, fuuck Sugu-” He mewls, his legs shaking underneath the weight of his own body as he cums onto the floor below. 

Suguru finally stills his hips, starting to slowly pull out before Satoru stops him, both of them still breathing hard. “Not yet please… Just stay like this for a little longer.” He pleas, his breath shaky as he speaks, turning his face back towards the window. His hot breath fogs up the glass in front of him, something that he knows he’ll have to clean the handprints off of later. 

Suguru smiles at his request, staying inside of him for a few extra moments while he starts to go soft once again. When he finally pulls out, the white sticky substance drips out of Satoru down onto the floor. I’ll deal with that later. Satoru stands up, pushing himself off of the window and turns around to immediately wrap his arms around Suguru’s shoulders. Their hot skin sticks together as Sguru reciprocates and wraps his own arms around Satoru’s torso, holding him close. “You okay?” He coos softly, his voice delicate and caring.

“Yeah.” Satoru says, smiling against the skin of Suguru’s shoulder. “Not sure if I can move from right here, though.” He says, pulling a chuckle from Suguru. 

“Need me to carry you?” Suguru asks, already knowing the answer. Satoru nods his head and Suguru carries him into the bathroom, turning on the bath with one hand before setting him down once again. Satoru keeps his hold around Suguru’s shoulders, sure that if he lets go, his legs will collapse underneath him. “I love you.” Suguru whispers against Satoru’s neck before he presses a soft kiss underneath his ear.

“I love you too.” He whispers in response, exhausted smiles on both of their faces. 

Once the tub is about halfway full, Suguru helps Satoru in and helps him sit down. He lays back and sighs at the feeling of the hot water soothing his muscles. “I’ll be right back.” Suguru says, leaning down to press a kiss to Satoru’s forehead before turning to head out of the bathroom.

“Wait!” Satoru cries out, grabbing his wrist just before he hurries away. Suguru turns back, looking down at Satoru where he sits with a waiting look. “Don’t leave yet.”

“Baby, I was just gonna go get you some water.” Suguru explains, looking down at Satoru with his white hair stuck to his forehead, his skin still all sweaty and flushed.

“There’s plenty of water right here.” Satoru says, pouting.

“You know what I meant.” Suguru says, shaking his head with a smile. “I won’t be more than a minute. Promise.” He looks into Satoru’s pleading eyes, the blue in them practically sparkling up at him.

Satoru looks up at him with a grin and lets go of his wrist. “Sixty. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven- you better get going, your time is running out quickly- Fifty-six.” Satoru starts counting down, looking up at Suguru with raised brows as he continues. Suguru chuckles and shakes his head before turning out and heading to the kitchen. He quickly fills up a glass of water and takes a sip for himself before he grabs a couple mochi from the fridge that they had received as a gift from Shoko celebrating their last day. He takes a bite out of what turns out to be a matcha flavored one and leaves the pink colored one for Satoru as he makes his way back to the bathroom. 

As he passes back through the bedroom door, he can still hear Satoru loudly counting. He chuckles to himself, unable to keep the smile from his face. “Seven. Six. Five. Four. Th- Oh, look, right on time.�� Satoru says, looking up at Suguru with an almost sleepy looking smile, and then a happily surprised look when he sees the mochi in his hand. Suguru sets the glass of water on the table next to the tub and hands the mochi that he hadn’t eaten off to Satoru. 

“Who’s that one for?” Satoru asks, completely serious as he’s looking at the mochi Suguru has in his hand for himself. The water is a light blue, stemming from a small blob that still fizzles in the middle of the tub. The bath bomb that Satoru had added in makes the water smell faintly like lemon, as well as lavender.  

Suguru clicks his tongue. “Baby, I want you to think long and hard about the question you just asked me.” Suguru says as he steps into the tub, sitting up against the edge opposite from Satoru. His hair floats on top of the water until it finally sinks, flowing around like a jellyfish’s tentacles under the light blue-colored water..

Satoru furrows his brows up at him as he watches him sit down facing him. He takes a bite of the mochi Suguru handed him and twists his mouth to the side, seeming to be thinking. “Well, seeing as it’s just the two of us, it’s obviously another one for me, right?” 

Suguru raises his eyebrows at Satoru as he takes a second bite out of the mochi. Satoru’s face turns into a disappointed pout that Suguru ignores while he turns off the faucet, finally feeling his muscles start to relax at the resolve of the hot water. “You’re acting like these weren’t a gift for both of us.” Suguru states with a smug grin. “What flavor did you get?” The room is finally quiet around them, nothing but the sounds of the water quietly rippling as they move.

Satoru stares at him for a moment, narrowing his eyes before smiling and taking a second bite. “Strawberry, do you wanna try?” He asks, holding it out in front of him for Suguru to take the last little bit.

“Here, you take mine.” Suguru trades with him and they both try the others, popping the last bite into their mouths. The water quietly ripples around them as they move, along with some bubbles that Satoru must have added as well while Suguru was away. Their legs are slotted in between each other and they both rest one hand on the other's leg. Suguru runs his fingers over Satoru’s skin beneath the water. “The strawberry’s good.” Suguru says with a soft smile, feeling Satoru doing the same on his leg. 

“This is good too, is it matcha?” Satoru asks, tilting his head to the side. Suguru nods his head in response, smiling softly across the way at Satoru. They sit quietly for a moment, just relaxing until Satoru speaks up again. “So they’re paying for a place for us to stay while we’re there?” Satoru asks, referring to the company that he no longer works for.

“They’re paying for a place for me to stay. You’re just lucky I’m letting you tag along.” Suguru teases. 

“Oh whatever. You don’t even know what you’d do without me for six months.” Satoru teases back with a dramatic roll of his eyes.

Suguru smiles silently, thinking of trying to deny it, but he knows he’s right. “Yeah… I’m really happy you’re coming with me though, baby.” 

“Me too. I’d go crazy if I didn’t get to sleep next to you for that long.” Satoru says and Suguru is sure that he’s telling the truth because he feels the same way. “Are you gonna miss it?” Satoru asks, his thumb still grazing lightly over the skin of Suguru’s leg underneath the water.

“I’m definitely gonna miss it.” He says, looking down with a half-smile. “I’m gonna miss being able to work with my best friends every day.” Satoru smiles back at him, but has a slightly sad look on his face. “I’m really excited for this new job, but I’m definitely gonna miss that the most.” He thinks back on the past year he’s had here and everything that’s happened. "It’s all just a little bittersweet” Suguru looks across the tub into Satoru’s eyes with a soft gaze, hoping to comfort him the best he can. “At least I have you to come home to every day.”

Satoru smiles at his last comment, thinking about it as well. “I’m really gonna miss giving you paperwork with little notes on them.”

“Baby, you can still write me notes, you know that right?” Suguru points out, angling his head to the side as he says it. 

“But we don’t work together anymore.” Satoru shoots back, his bottom lip stuck out slightly after he says it. 

“Yeah, but we live together, you don’t have to pout about it you big baby” Suguru says playfully, watching as Satoru plays with the bubbles that sit on top of the water in front of him. There’s a long pause while Satoru is seemingly thinking through his words for a moment. Suguru looks down at the water, watching the way his hand looks underneath the surface with a content look on his face.

“Sugu… Why don’t we just get married?” Satoru blurts out, sitting up slightly. The water ripples away from him towards Suguru who looks right back at him with a tender smile. 

“Okay.” Suguru answers without even a second thought. 

Satoru furrows his brows and scrunches his nose, the corners of his mouth slightly downturned. “Suguru, I was being serious” 

“So was I.” The feeling he has is one of confidence. He’d never been so sure of anything before, and he had no reason to hide it so he didn’t. Suguru didn’t think whatsoever before answering, already knowing exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

Satoru stares at him for a moment, completely dumbfounded that he agreed to something that Satoru was joking about and wasn’t even a hundred percent serious about. Yeah, he wanted to get married eventually, but Suguru just moved in. He didn’t want him to feel like he was pushing him, but he agreed on his own accord and he did it quickly.

“Really?” Satoru asks, his voice quiet and sweet, unsure if Suguru is being completely serious.

“Why would I lie about that? Baby, of course I want to marry you.” Suguru says like it’s common knowledge. His voice is warm when he speaks, finally making Satoru start to believe that he’s being serious. 

Satoru looks back with furrowed brows and a frown. “Well how was I supposed to know that if you didn’t tell me?” He’s not actually upset, more so just surprised.

“Toru, I agreed to move in with you, don’t you think that’s a good enough hint?” Suguru asks, but the face Satoru makes back at him makes him think that it definitely was not enough of a hint.

“Suguru, that’s another one of those things that you have to tell me.” Satoru chuckles lightly as he says it, moving across and repositioning himself in between Suguru’s legs. He lays with his back against his chest and rests his hand on Suguru’s thigh underneath the water. 

“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner, baby.” Suguru whispers into his neck, sending a shiver up Satoru’s spine even in the hot water. He presses a kiss to Satoru’s temple as he’s resting his head back against his chest. “Of course I want to marry you.” 

“This time, it’s okay. But next time you have something to tell me, I don’t want you to wait.” Satoru chides, poking him in the leg.

“Deal.” Suguru says, resting his chin in the crook of Satoru’s neck, sitting silently for a second, his cheeks warm from the water. “So, when did you plan on us getting married, hmm?” He asks quietly with a slight tease in his tone. 

“Well, I didn’t think you’d just agree, so I hadn’t really thought about it yet.” Satoru admits, playing with Suguru’s fingers at the surface of the water. Suguru smiles as he just watches for a moment, the gears turning quickly in his head.

“How about-'' He starts, stopping for a moment with his mouth ajar, his breath hitched in his throat as he’s thinking carefully about his next words, “-we wait until I'm done with training and get back home. Then, I’ll take us somewhere nice and we can have a nice vacation and everything.”

“I think you mean honeymoon?” 

“Okay, yes- honeymoon.” Suguru says with a smile on his face just hearing the word come out of each of their mouths. 

Satoru seems to think for a second before he speaks up again. “Can we do it right when we get back?” 

Suguru lets out a sigh, knowing that it can’t be right when they get back. He’s nervous that Satoru is going to be unhappy, but tells him anyway. “I get two weeks off at the beginning of September.” He hears and feels Satoru take a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. Is he going to be disappointed?

Satoru cranes his neck and brings his hand up and behind Suguru’s head, pulling him in for a soft kiss, subtle smiles on both of their lips as they come together. After a moment, Satoru pulls back and whispers one word against Suguru’s lips, his own curving into an excited smile.

“Deal.”

the end (except not actually, im already writing a sequel :) <3 )

[fangirlingfromdownunder]

A Sweet Mishap - Chapter 20

Pairing - Jensen Ackles x Reader 

A/N: I just want to start by thanking everyone for all the love on this story so far. Let me know if you want to be added to the tag list. This chapter is a little heavier (as is the story going forward, but I'll include potential triggers for each chapter as relevant), so please read the TW below and only read on if you feel comfortable doing so.

Potential Trigger Warnings: no warnings

A Sweet Mishap Masterlist | Main Masterlist

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

As the reality of making it on Broadway sets in I dedicate myself to self-improvement. I go for lengthy walks or jogs daily either before or after work depending on my shift. I call or text Jensen whenever we can, and decide to give a relationship with him a real shot. 

But, as the week goes on and he prepares to go back to Vancouver to start filming and I busy myself with night rehearsals, work at the cafe, and prep work for my classes, all while attempting to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. My contact with Jensen eventually drops back to sporadic text messages and a range of missed calls on either side. The one thing keeping me from a major meltdown is knowing my best friend will be back Sunday and I’ve already got a coffee date planned for Monday morning.

When I finally lay in bed on Saturday night, getting some much needed relaxation I scroll through my social media feed. Thanks to Jensen’s surprise stunt at the wedding and then his run-in at the barbecue joint, his face is all over my feed. I scroll through the lists of speculations about a secret girlfriend or project in New York. The adrenaline and secrecy makes me smile, but at the same time I’m terrified of the truth coming out before I’m ready. I send a few of the articles to Jensen. Minutes later he’s calling. As I answer I can hear music and other voices in the background and I instantly feel guilty for disrupting his night. 

“Hey Darlin’. Relax. I know about the posts. That’s one of the things my agent called about the other day. I’m handling it.”

“I’m sorry, did I disturb your night? You sound like you’re out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“I just haven’t had a chance to bring it up, but I’m here now. It doesn’t matter where else I am. You need me, so I’m here. Take a deep breath for me.”

I throw my head back on my pillow and take a deep breath, “There’s no way you’re real…”

“It makes me disappointed in my gender that you think that. It means your standards are low.”

“You don’t exactly get high standards when you’ve dated the people I have…But I really don’t want to talk or think about them. What’s your plan?”

“To treat you like my queen. Prove to you that you deserve the world and that you’re my number one.”

“I uh…I meant about the rumours…But that sounds amazing. It’s not gonna be easy, but I’m rooting for you.”

I hear another voice call out on the other end of the line, “Hey Jensen, go easy on my top shelf whiskey! And get back in here!” I figure it’s just someone else at the party or bar or wherever he is.

“I’m comin’!” He calls out before lowing his voice again, “I promise I’m gonna handle it all, so you can just focus on becoming the star I know you are.”

“Thanks. Sounds like your friends are missing you. You should get back.”

“Only if you’re sure you’re okay? No brisket?”

“No brisket, I’m okay now. I should get some sleep anyway.”

“Alright, Darlin’. Sweet dreams.”

I hang up and snuggle into my bed. 

After a long few hours in the cafe, I sit back at the counter in my apartment infront of my laptop. I fill out the digital forms to drop back to part-time study. I figure with getting fit, rehearsals, work and my new, budding relationship I just don’t have the time or mental capacity for the extra unnecessary stress and workload. And last night just confirmed in my mind that I need to focus on my mental health and wellbeing. Feeling a little disappointed but also relieved, I submit the forms and then focus on the required reading for the acting classes. 

After an hour and a half my eyes are straining and my stomach is growling, I shut my laptop and walk around the island bench to find something to eat. As I make a sandwich I keep glancing over at my face-down phone As I sit down to eat I quickly flip it over and slide up for notifications. I notice a missed call from Stella. I quickly call her back, excited to hear from her after what feels like the longest week ever. 

“Hey, Bestie! How’s married life?”

“Amazing! I’ve had the best week ever! I can’t wait to tell you everything tomorrow!”

“Abridged, please. I need a PG version, M at your worst. You can leave out the X-rated stuff, which I know there would have been plenty of.”

“That takes out 90 per cent of my week! Nah, you know what Nick’s like, we did plenty of PG-rated activities.”

“Speaking of Nick, shouldn’t you guys be enjoying your last afternoon and night before the official end of your honeymoon?”

“You would think…But Mr. Reality-check got back to reality the second we touched down. He’s busy checking mail and paying bills and then onto meal prep. I guess it’s good one of us wants to do that…”

“I’m sorry…”

“I know who I married. It’s sweet really, cause I know he’s only doing it to make the transition easier for both of us, and he knows I’ve been dying to hear your goss!”

“We agreed to talk about everything tomorrow…” I say trying to deflect as I start to pace.

“Yeah, but I’m only gonna get an hour for lunch and that includes travel time to and from the cafe. And I need more than the 45-ish minutes that we’re gonna have left. So, tell me about you and Mr Tall and Sexy.”

“There’s honestly not much to tell…We are a maybe something…a far-fetched possibility…”

“There’s a story there…You need me to come over?”

“No! No…You need to be at home with your husband. In other news! Grease? The audition YOU signed me up for…”

“No way! You got it? Who? Sandy? Frenchy?”

“Understudy…and…Female Student number three.”

“Well, you’re gonna be the best damn Female Student number three to ever bless that stage!”

“That’s the plan, but also, chances are over the six week run I’ll get at least one matinee show as the lead.”

“When that happens, I’ll be in the front row.”

“I know you will. Thanks.”

“I’m glad you got a part. I was worried I was gonna have to get you the junior HR position…”

“Broadway is where I want to be. I’m willing to work for it. It’s my first role and it’s a great position. No one lands the lead as their first role…except for probably Jensen Ackles,” I add under my breath.

“What’d he do? You always wear the blame but it’s always the guys in your life taking advantage, so what did HE do?”

“Nothing…I’ve got so much work to do before classes start this week, and I’ve got rehearsals most nights.”

“Hey, I’m your best friend. You can talk to me.”

“I’ve just got a lot to do. I’m thrilled that you had an amazing honeymoon and I can’t wait to see you tomorrow. But go enjoy your night with your husband…”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know. Enjoy your night.”

“I plan to. Don’t get too in your head about whatever’s going on.”

I sigh and hang up. As I try my best to refocus on the text about tone and enunciation, my mind keeps wandering back to the night before and the endless rumors that I’m caught in the middle of.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Taglist: @stoneyggirl2 @hobby27, @n-o-p-e-never, @deansimpalababy,

@winchesterwild78, @kr804573, @chriszgirl92, @smoothdogsgirl

@speakinvain, @deans-baby-momma, @1967winchesterimpala

[turtlebra1nrot]

Third Time's A Charm

Johnathon Ohnn (I/ATSV) x You

The first three times you met up with Johnathon for your project, they were more than pleasant. The fourth time was complete and sudden hell. And the fifth was, unexpectedly, nothing short of libidinous.

CHAPTER 1/6: PARTNERS...

A choir of groans and sighs filled the lecture hall after the professor's thoroughly voiced announcement of their new project having to be done in pairs.

"Yeah, moan and whine all you want. You're adults. You're gonna have human interaction anyway, suck it up." The professor responded sluggishly to the class's verbal distaste. You didn't particularly mind, however. In fact you'd hoped for this. Work had been piled up for you lately and you thought maybe having someone to help with a major assignment might do you some good.

Partners were selected by surname. The professor went down the roster while roving leisurely around the lecture hall at the same time. They came to a stop at the left side of the table where you were seated, looking at them expectantly. "You're withhhh— oh." The professor's tone was still laced with boredom but a hint of bewilderment seemed to weasel its way in. A few mutters left their parted lips. "...only one left? I'm sure I called of you..." their last string of words found your ear.

After more awkward silence from the class and professor, their eyes lit up. "Ah, I missed one. You." They call, swiveling at 180 degrees to lock eyes with someone else. A messy tuft of brown hair pulled into a low-ponytail shifted a bit in your field of vision. Then a pair of squared glasses and brown, doe eyes followed. "Ohnn. You're with them, alright? Alright." The professor then simply walks back to their desk at the front of the hall just as the intercom goes off, signifying the end of the class. Students exchange numbers, emails, socials — while you watch your own partner from afar.

You knew it'd be courteous to get up on your own two feet and go introduce yourself. But you waited to see if the guy'd come to you.

He didn't.

Ohnn sat there, head practically buried in his notes. You wouldn't be surprised if he was actually making out with that damn paper. But it was clear he wouldn't come to greet you any time soon. So with a twinge of exasperation, you huff — pushing yourself up from your seat — and walk over to the table in the third row while leaning your palms against its smooth oak wood.

"Hey." You spoke up. He nearly flew with the way he jumped back in surprise. Jesus, he's tense.

His brown eyes seem to almost bulge out of his head as he eyes you with shock, glasses slipping down the bridge of his straight nose unnoticeably. Despite the initial shock of his flinch, he attempted to gather a few words. Though he stumbled over his own tongue, "Wh- I — d-did you....need something?" Ohnn murmurs. It's like he wasn't used to being acknowledged or something. You let a smile fall upon your lips and stifle a chuckle, "Looks like we're partners, Ohnn."

The look on the guy's face voiced pure confusion but he did not protest. He was quiet again before shutting his college-rule notebook, "Looks like it..." he uttered feebly while seeming to give you a once-over. Johnathon could feel your eyes studying him as well in the silence and he hated it. He hadn't really been paying all that much attention during the lecture, so he unfortunately gained a partner who he hardly knew. As if he knew anyone other than his own family in the first place. The young man stood from his seat and that was when you could read him more clearly.

Johnathon seemed to fold in on himself as he stood. Arms tightly pressed to his sides, legs together, posture extremely informal, etc. Even with his stature he was like a frail dog, unable to hold eye contact for too long and keeping himself at a low profile. He seemed to make himself appear small. It made you feel kind of bad. No wonder he was so tense...

"You want my number? I'll text you my dorm and we can get started whenever, no pressure." It was like a bid with him. Convincing him to visit your place so you could both work. You could easily tell he might feel unease at the idea, so you kept it plain and simple for him. Johnathon steadily breathed in spite of his racing heart. He wasn't good with making plans with others because he'd get sidetracked and forget about them. He'd feel terrible to do that for a first impression. "Yeah, we could do that...if you'd like, that is. I don't wanna like, force you to do it o-or whatever—" "Dude. I offered. No need to worry." You try to reassure him with words and a smile. A croaky laugh left his lips as he realized he had been on the verge of an apologetic ramble, "Right. Sorry."

"You're good, Ohnn." You reaffirm your previous words. Johnathon nods whilst bending down to grasp the handle of his tote-bag, stuffing his notes carelessly inside. Once up straight (or as straight as he normally stood), he speaks again, "Hey, I don't mind being called Johnathon or John. I think Ohnn's a little formal since we're, y'know— partners?"

Johnathon looks down at the person before him with careful eyes, trying to gauge their reaction. He hoped that statement wasn't too forward. He never really knew when to keep things casual or professional so he always just assumed. God, what if that was too much for them? Did he really have to say that? Maybe they could just call him Ohnn, it's not a big deal—

"Sure thing."

Your response was simple. He hadn't gotten the stink eye like he'd thought he would. Johnathon's smile is sheepish when he clears his throat and hesitantly nods. He didn't always have conversations longer than 20 seconds. Talking with you had been a breath of fresh air for him and he couldn't tell if the churning in his belly was excitement, anxiety, or joy.

He exchanged numbers with you before departing from the lecture hall and moving onto his next class. He had a math exam that period and with the boost of morale from last period, he felt somewhat prepared.

[aceghosts]

WIP Wednesday

Hi everyone! I finally have WIP for this WIP Wednesday, and I was tagged by: @marivenah, @nightbloodbix, @cloudofbutterflies92, @cassietrn, @theelderhazelnut, @socially-awkward-skeleton, and others. (Sorry y'all! I've been tagged quite a few times.)

Tagging (Opt In/Out): @voidika, @bbrocklesnar, @captastra, @captmactavish, @alexxmason, @amalkavian, @direwombat, @strangefable, @carlosoliveiraa, @fourlittleseedlings, @clicheantagonist, and anyone else who wants to do this!

I've mainly been working on my gift for the Resident Evil Valentine Exchange, and it's been a little rough. It's my first time writing a Reader Insert, and it is definitely more difficult than thought, but I'm going to do some major edits. The second draft is always where it starts to come together for me.

However, while I've been working on that, I've also been picking at the fic about the first time Rooney and Yorinobu really get to talk with one another. Here's a little snippet from that, a flashback within the fic:

“Almost done, Shepard,” Elias says, tweaking some of the internal components of their mechanical arm, “Then, you can go to your physical therapy appointment.” Rooney doesn’t respond, not that they ever do. The Arasaka staff learned very quickly that Rooney will not speak unless they need to. And for some, it’s more frustrating. At their last therapy session, their therapist left in tears, begging them to speak, to just say anything. But they couldn’t or more accurately, Rooney wouldn’t. They hear footsteps, someone coming to the doorway. Elias looks up, eyes widening. “Yorinobu-sama!” He exclaims, getting up to bow. “I didn’t know that you were coming to visit.” “Last minute decision,” Yorinobu says, a laissez-faire tone to his voice, “I was curious about the old man’s new project.” Rooney’s eyes meet his, dark brown eyes hidden behind black square glasses. For a few seconds, they hold his stare, unafraid of him. Yet, they’re still the first to look away, returning their gaze to the blank spot on the wall where they’ve been staring throughout this whole appointment. “Don’t mind them!” Elias excuses, shooting Rooney a small glare. “They’re just like that.” “Like what?” Out of the corner of their eye, they catch Elias glancing nervously between them and Yorinobu. “Silent,” He says, honestly, “Sometimes, I think that the security robots are more human than Shepard. Guess that’s probably what makes them a good soldier.”

I've also been taking some screenshots in Cyberpunk too, and I thought I would share some of my favorites. I think I'm gonna post a few; haven't decided on the shippy ones though:

[queenof3ferrets]

Since seven people have given me the green light, I’m gonna briefly sum up my hatred for Focalors in a few (okay-maybe more) sentences. Warning, I swear. (And if you don’t share my opinion and want to be rude, I kindly ask you to leave because this is just my opinion.)

She didn’t do sh*t.

She’s like that one person in a group project that pitches in at the very last moment and then takes half the credit.

She says she didn’t wait around while Furina suffered but all I see is her playing with legos and slowly building her death-sword while Furina did all the hard work and suffered without rest.

AND THEN SHE HAS THE AUDACITY TO CLAIM FURINA’S WORK AS HER OWN BECAUSE THEY’RE “essentially the same person”

BULLSH*T.

I get it, Focalors “saved Fontaine with her sacrifice”. NO SHE DID NOT. Furina saved Fontaine with her sacrifice. And all she got was a thank you from a bubble.

DID ANYONE ELSE THANK FURINA AFTER THE PROPHECY?!

Because as far as I can tell, Furina needed to succeed in tricking everyone—AND I MEAN EVERYONE. So that Focalors could enact the rest of her plan. Furina carried, and she carried HARD.

And to be honest, I was pretty mad at everyone when they turned their backs on Furina in the trial. She said she had a plan, but they broke Furina’s trust anyway. And when I mean they, I mean Neuvillette and Clorinde, Sigewinne, Traveler, Lyney, EVERYONE.

So while everyone mourns the death of Focalors, I’m here worrying about Furina cuz she sacrificed every part of herself to save Fontaine from the prophecy. And NO ONE seems to care.

I’m even pretty sure she has identity issues and major trauma because of it. No, I’m definitely sure.

And what does she get? A single sorry from the one who made her suffer, and who knew she would suffer.

Sometimes it feels like Focalors saw her more like a doll than a human. “You truly are my ideal” she said. “Furina’s humanity is what made her perfect”

At least the ARCHONS respect FURINA. They should all go to Fontaine and give her a hug. And tell her she did a good job.

*takes a deep breath*

So, I’ve got one last question.

What would have happened to Furina if she said no?

Would she be re-absorbed(and basically killed) into the divinity half of the hydro archon until a human counterpart said yes? Would Focalors plead with her? Or control her to say yes? Or would that be that and Fontaine gets flooded?

Just think about that for a while.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Genshin Impact with all my heart, but I’m just mad about how everyone, especially Focalors, treated Furina in game. And it was an awesome archon quest! But I won’t be crying over Focalors anytime soon.

Furina deserves all the love. <3

[darkkitty1208]

if you still accept prompts...

wholesome wings au?

Sorry it took like, nearly a year lol. Anyway. Thank you for the prompt!

~

"Okay," Tony huffs out, adjusting Stephen's new mechanical wings carefully. This is the moment they've been waiting for. Tony takes in a shaky breath, turning to Stephen.

"You ready?" he asks, assuring himself repeatedly that Stephen is taking flight in a safe, secure place and within his sight in case things didn't go as well as expected.

They were in a secluded, clear field, the sky above them bright and blue. He checked the area multiple times to make sure no one is in their vicinity. He's brought some of his bots, EDITH, and made sure his suit is with him in case things go south.

The wings attached to Stephen's back has been a project he's spent the last few months trying to perfect.

When the accident happened, Stephen had been the most devastated Tony had ever seen him. His wings had been damaged horribly beyond repair, and taking flight in its state is near impossible. Tony hates seeing him that way. Since then, he had made it his mission to make sure Stephen could fly again.

It took so long to perfect, but here they are now.

It surprisingly did not take a lot of convincing for the Wakandans to lend him some vibranium for it. He thought about using nanotech instead, mainly due to its flexibility and his familiarity with it from past projects, but he wanted nothing but the best for Stephen. And if that meant one of the strongest metals in the world? Then he'd fight hell and back just to get it.

His nervous eyes meet Stephen's gentle ones, a small smile stretching the sorcerer's lips.

"Yes," he says, "Yes, I'm ready."

There was certainty in his voice. It calmed Tony's nerves.

"Alright," he says, turning to DUM-E. "Look alive, DUM-E. You're gonna stand by for fire safety." One can always trust DUM-E for fire safety. Even if the bot does a shit job at it. (He just can't bring himself to get rid of it.)

There really isn't any possible fire hazards but, well, who could blame him for being prepared? (Perhaps he just wanted to bring DUM-E along, but whatever.)

He points to another bot at a far distance, the camera attached to it turning to Tony. "You, start rolling."

He claps his hands together and takes a step back. "It's gonna take a while for you to adjust to flight again."

"I know."

"It's gonna be hard to balance it, but there isn't any wind currently so you should be good. Oh, and make sure not to put too much of your weight upon landing."

Stephen chuckles. "I know."

"And y–"

"Tony," Stephen cuts him off, and Tony gives him a look. Stephen responds with a reassuring smile and a slow recline of his head. "I've got this," he says, gently, "You've told me everything I need to know. We prepared for every possible wrong thing that could happen. Hell, it's mostly guaranteed it won't go wrong. Even if it does, I won't be in any major harm. Don't worry."

Tony nods curtly, more to himself than anything, jaw clenched. He breathes in.

"I just can't stop worrying that it'll just blow up or something." That gets a surprised laugh from Stephen. The edge of Tony's lips tilts up on its own at that.

"Which won't happen," Stephen shakes his head as if the mere idea is ridiculous. It is. "You know it won't."

"Yeah, you're right."

"How come you're more nervous than I am?"

Tony cards a hand over his hair, chuckling as he shrugs. "I just... I really want this to work, Stephen. It can't go wrong," his tone turns serious just as suddenly as his eyes stare intently into Stephen's. "It just can't. I... I want you to fly again."

Stephen smiles, hand reaching up to cup Tony's cheek, who leans into the touch immediately. "This means a lot for me, Tony. And you've spend so long for it. It's going to work," he says, "Thank you."

The edge of Tony's lip tilts up. "Yeah, 'course. For you, Stephen, I'd give the world if I could."

Stephen laughs a little bashfully. Tony expects him to call out how sappy he's being, but instead he says, "You have," and with gentle eyes, "It's you. You're my world."

And with that, Stephen steps back. Tony moves to a safe distance, enough to give Stephen space when he takes off.

"Okay," Tony says, "Take off in 3, 2..." He stares nervously, "...1."

Stephen takes flight.

[dyke-pollinator]

Im in the mood for a story

Im a little drunk and im in the mood to share a story with yall of when I was out living in Nevada. This was back in 2017 or so.

This story requires some backstory so please indulge me.

I was a crew leader, managing a group of 4-9 people ranging from 18-23 ( I was 24 at the time). Part of that meant helping them integrate into the new location they moved to (Reno, Nevada) despite living out of my car at this time.

One of my crew members, who I will call Shawn, was...... Interesting to say the least. He was a pretty interesting person, but was definitely way too interested in falling in love while on this job.

So while he was out with some other members on their off week, he confessed his feelings for another crew member who turned him down. He proceeded to seriously harm himself. So now, on my crew, I had to manage that shit and make sure he wasn’t a risk to himself. Because of course this motherfucker was on my crew and technically my responsibility.

Everything was basically fine. Shawn and the other member barely interacted and we were learning a lot about how to cut down trees safely.

During one of our hitches (time in the field) where we were building cattle fences on the border of Utah, this bitch decided he wanted to go for a walk. So idk if you know what the middle of no where Utah looks like but its basically the same as this for 100 miles in every directions 

Barely any geographic features. Insanely easy to get lost. 

We had a rule where if you were gonna split off from the group,  you had to let the crew lead (me) know, and you had to explicitly say where you were gonna go. He decided he wanted cell phone signal one night, and told no one where he was going.

He got lost. In the middle of the desert. I need you to understand how horrifying that is. There’s nothing out there. You can walk for 200+ miles (350km) in any direction and find literally nothing. Especially on the Nevada / Utah border. 

By 8pm we were all wondering where he was till a random person was like “Oh he went that was looking for signal”. Like wtf? Excuse me? We searched in the direction he went for like 4 hours before we called emergency services & our organization that was gonna send out reinforcements to help us look.

We parked our giant truck on the top on the highest hill around us, with our high beems on, and blared on the horn all night, hoping that he was going to find his way back to us. He never did.

We spent 38 hours looking for this person, and since we all knew his history, we legitimately thought he was dead.\

The next day we had the whole BLM (Bureau of Land Management) looking for him. They were about to call in the fucking helicopters.

Now, this next part is gonna sound like some bullshit I just made up but I stg it is true. My dumbass forgot to restock the first aid kit. My co-lead got stung by a bee / wasp while we were doing a grid search, and for the first time in his life, he had a major allergic reaction that none of the leftover meds we had would take down.

So we had to take him into town (an approximately 15 mile drive on back roads) and I did it since I was one of the few that was allowed to drive our trucks.

This motherfucker, Shawn, literally stumbled across the road while I was driving my co-lead into to town. Idk how the fuck he found this road. Idk how the fuck his timing was absolutely perfect. But we found him. After 56 hours when all of us thought he was already dead.

We would have NEVER found him if not for this random happenstance. Some divine power wanted this kid alive I swear. Its some of the most insane shit I have ever experienced.

And here’s the kicker: THIS HAPPENED ON THE 3RD DAY OF AN 8 DAY PROJECT AND THEY MADE ALL OF US FINISH OUR WORK INCLUDING THE DUDE THAT WAS LAST FOR THAT LONG

The moral is never trust Non-profit organizations. They dont give a fuck about you. 

And if yall wanna head this story from Shawn’s perspective just lmk I am happy to share it.