#when the whole point is that its supposed to fit everyone

[girlmetalsonic]

something that is like the baseline of amys entire character to me is that shes lonely. shes clingy and physically affectionate in a way none of her friends really are, shes always getting pushed aside and left behind. yeah, she helps out people she doesnt know because shes a nice person, but also, she sees part of herself in them. she wont leave someone else behind because she knows the feeling —and more importantly, hates the feeling. if she doesnt have somebody to stand by her and be there for her, then shes going to be that person for everybody else. something something her obsession with sonic is really just like a manifestation of that desire for closeness with someone, and she thinks that romance is the only way to get that. idk... this hedgehog can have so many abandonment issues.

[plutolovesyou]

how soon is now? | part one

READ THIS FIRST 🇵🇸

teasers: one. two. series masterlist. next part here!!

♡: hallway crush!ellie x uni student!reader

☆: listen, i know this timeline is kind of ridiculous, but i’ve organized it all best as i can! this is the expanded story based on those first little blurbs introducing the au (reads fine on its own though), and this part specifically was originally going to be one huge fic, but i've ultimately decided to split it up and drop the first part now, because i feel like it ends in a convenient enough space where i can make a separation not so jarring. so that means this will have a direct continuation (how soon is now? 2 ? lol this is so stupid-), and that will be posted soon enough once i finish it! but yes that means after so much waiting, it's finally here for y’all. i literally thought up this silly idea right before i passed out on new years, and never expected y’all to love it so much…but i keep my promises, so here. also love the smiths and felt the title sort of fit. i feel like not too much happens but eh anyway, thank you for waiting, thank you for reading, and please enjoy!

♧:4.6k word count

◇:suggestive but not explicit - horny descriptions and tension, however no smut (for now?….BUT DON'T HOLD ME TO THAT.) no descriptions of reader’s physical appearance, no use of “y/n”, slow-burn construction and loooooads of pining, a lot of build up but stay with me, attempts at occasional foreshadowing, smau elements(text messages lmao), savage starlight is a plot point lol, hallwaycrush!ellie is sort of a mix of loser/modern/university au/dorky-ish ellie I DON'T EVEN KNOW. abby is your bestie, girl what else do i put here- this is just kinda plot, plot, and more plot progression about the whole ordeal, and me indulging my obsession with modern!ellie. (lmk if there's anything to be added!)

“Abbyyyyyyyyyy.” 

You rolled around your lifelong best friend’s bed, babbling her ear off while she studied away at her desk, or tried to at least. This situation has been a daily occurrence for weeks at this point.

Laying on your stomach facing away from her, you could hear her scoff in annoyance. “What?” “Please give me some advice..I don't know what I'm even supposed to do. She's driving me up the wall." This crush was the sole thing occupying your poor mind, so naturally, you had to drown your bestie with your troubles as well. That's what friends do. Abby spun around on her chair to face you, with a clearly fed up expression on her face, and leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees. 

“Well I don’t fucking know man, I’ve already given you my best advice, and that's either introduce yourself, or suffer.” She said coolly. You sat up and groaned. Wasn't there an easier way? One that didn't involve actually taking initiative and doing something? Maybe, hypothetically, you ace a test, and the professor announces it in front of everyone as he emotionally congratulates his star student, and she bounds over, beaming. Then tearfully confesses her love and admiration for you- hold on, where the fuck is this going?

“Oh come on, you know I can’t do that..” You gulped a burning bundle of anxiety down as you replayed the scenarios with your obsession for the thousandth time that day, the mere crumbs you were forced to fixate on until you saw her next, the first sighting that started this whole fiasco,  and shook your head to clear it and listen to what your best friend had to say. She sighed and rubbed her eyes, slamming her textbook shut and making her way over to sit next to you.

“Listen babe, I love you, but you really gotta get ahold of yourself, alright?” She spoke sternly, looking you straight in the eyes to make sure you understood and absorbed every last word she said. “Listen, here's what you're gonna do. when you pass her in the hall, smile, it's simple but it's a classic, okay? And then you listen to the lecturer as normal, right? I have no idea what you nerds do in astrophysics, but that's besides my point. Make sure to pay attention and not stare only at her like a stalker or something, I cannot stress enough how normal you gotta be. But here's where it gets good, you still with me?” 

You're listening to her for sure, and nod vigorously. Crystal clear. She continues, “Okay you said you sit as far as possible from her? Sheesh, why'd you do that? When the class is over I want you to go over to her, and introduce yourself. Catch her on her way out, tap her on the shoulder if you're feeling bold. Ask for some of her contact details, play it cool. Just don't shit yourself, got it? All you gotta do." 

Abby finishes her speech, smirking and looking smug. She's positive she got through to you this time. On the surface you're totally chill, confident even, ready to snatch this ethereal being for yourself, however underneath all that you knew you didn't have an ounce of the courage that was required for this seemingly impossible task. 

Breathing deeply to calm yourself and try to take in her helpful words as best as possible, you give Abby a hug. “Thank you Abs, really. I'll do my best. Oh, but what if I freak out and start stuttering- or what if I trip and fall on her…I can't do this what the hell.” Swarmed with worry, you start doubting yourself yet again. Burying your face in your palms, you feel two strong hands on either side of your upper arms and you look back at Abby, who's really not playing around anymore. 

She was so serious about this it almost scared you. Either she cared about you more than anything, or she wanted to hear the end of these pathetic, lovestruck rambles. You prayed it was the former. 

“Suck it up. You can do this. You've had crushes before haven't you? This should be a piece of cake c’mon, I believe in you. Make sure to keep me updated every step of the way! I need to hear every last detail.” She lightens up at the end and releases you from her grip once she sees you've relaxed. 

Unsurprisingly, your best friend always knew what to say to snap you out of your spirals. Maybe most would disagree with her methods, say she was being rough, but they worked for you. Heart rate returning to a normal pace, you reply genuinely. 

“Okay, okay I got this. Yeah, it'll be fine.” She was getting through to you, this time you felt sure of it. “Good, good. Now will you let me finish this stupid assignment? Then we can watch something or do whatever." Abby chatted as she got up and sat back at her desk, resuming her studious endeavor as she left you with your thoughts. 

Immediately you heard her mutter, “All this and you don't even know her goddamn name…good grief.” For the sake of preserving the peace you chose to graciously ignore that one. She said she wanted some quiet, didn't she? 

Drifting away into a sea of daydreams, your thoughts inevitably returned to being clouded by this cryptic figure. It was like she'd cast a love spell on you. Did she even know who you were? Or did she shoot everyone those insufferably charming looks of hers. Was she even aware of how fucking cool she was? 

Dressed in that deliciously grungy style, you yearned to know what floated behind her greener-than-grass eyes. Her hair looked so smooth and soft, the wispy auburnette strands framing her refined features, intriguing fern tattoo decorating her lean forearm…. You felt your cheeks begin to heat up as a portrait of her materialized in your mind's eye. Nestling into the comfortable atmosphere of your best friend's room, you sunk deeper into your thoughts.

Like Abby had mentioned, it certainly wasn't as if you've never had crushes before, you've certainly had your fair share of them, like most people. But that was a sort of flaky, surface level interest, whether it be for their looks, their little quirks, or ways they treated you. Maybe it has been a while since you'd had a proper crush, but you couldn't recall a time when the infatuation, the pure limerence, had hit you this hard before. You almost felt helpless, just besotted by her.

You simply needed to act on this. Right then and there you steeled yourself, and decided you were going to follow Abby's advice after all, and go after this hallway crush. Worst comes to worst, she turns you down, you get over it eventually, bla bla end of story. It wasn't going to be too complicated, right?

You and Abby had stayed up all night, dusk till dawn, gossiping about things other than your hallway crush, shocking, and you were greatly regretting that decision the very moment it was time to gather your books and get to class.

You really did not feel like stunning everyone around you with a gorgeous outfit today, you were just trying to make it through the day in one piece to be honest with yourself. 

With a pounding headache you threw on some mismatched sweats, and ran out the door to be on time. Your bag felt unreasonably heavy as you made your way down your apartment stairs, and you cursed your past self for choosing a building without an elevator. Sure, exercise is healthy, but it can’t be when you’re feeling like a zombie, and wish for nothing more than a good, long nap.

Luckily the lecture hall was a comfortable distance away from your place, not far enough to make it a pain, but enough so you could get a much needed breath of fresh air. The tiredness had pushed all plans of action you and Abby had discussed the previous night to the back of your head, and you weren't thinking of your crush at all. At least for now. 

Walking slowly with your gaze pointed downward, you eventually made it to the hall. Completely dazed and zoned out, you made a mental note to never pull an all nighter again, gross, who’s idea was that- thump. 

Out of nowhere you're rudely jolted from your silent sulking by colliding with something, or someone? It takes a moment to register what happened, and you quickly look up from staring at the ground to sort the situation out. “Oh my gosh I am so sorry..” 

Profusely apologizing while simultaneously being smacked across the face with the realization of who this was. Her. Your words trail off as you’re suddenly winded, and you feel your blood run cold. You’re transfixed by the intense eye contact, and it feels like time has stopped. Goodness, this is dramatic. 

In the time it takes for you to briefly die and come back to life, the young woman has lowered her chunky headphones so they rest around her neck, Morissey’s vocals faintly floating out of them, and is looking at your stunned state with an indiscernible sneer playing on her face. Was this actually happening? Holy shit you and Abby did not discuss this scenario…you weren’t looking where you were going and had collided with an actual Earth angel. Great.

Still gawking at her like an absolute buffoon, akin to a deer in headlights, she breaks the tension first, with a smooth voice that you would obey virtually any command for. 

“Nah, you’re good.” And a wink. Your heart skipped a beat, or four, when you witnessed her wink at you. Did you imagine it? Was she being suave on purpose or did she have an eyelash in her eye…Was your life a literal rom-com or what? 

“Um..” Your mouth opens and closes in an attempt to form a coherent sentence, but your brain is much too fried to do so because, well, you had just made physical contact with the literal girl of your dreams. And gods did she smell good…while you’re unable to tear your eyes away from hers, she keeps talking as if nothing happened.

“I think the prof had an emergency or fuckin’, I dunno.” She stops to gesture around the two of you at the crowd that had formed in front of the auditorium’s double doors with elegant, ring adorned fingers..holy fuck you needed those inside you right fucking now- WHAT. 

Briskly shoving those thoughts down to the deepest depths of your subconscious back to where they belong, you turned your attention back to her, and put on a brave front. Hyper aware of how searing hot your face felt, her pretty self didn't show a hint of caring that you were making a fool of yourself. They say that any situation is always worse in your head than it was in actuality, well you hoped so. 

“So, what are we supposed to do now?” Clearing your throat you managed a sentence back, hooray. You were doing this. Good job. Although, of course, before the gorgeous nymph before you had a chance to respond with her own assumptions, a substitute lecturer you had never seen before pushes his way through the crowd and unlocks the door while people file in, separating you from her. You felt like Rose, viciously torn away from Jack from Titanic, what a cruel, cruel world this was.

And once again you didn't get to ask her name. Re-slinging her bag with one arm, she looks back at you one final time and throws you a “cya around.” Before disappearing into the auditorium with everyone else. You meekly nod at her and force a lopsided smile, before leaning against the wall to steady yourself after that fiasco in the now empty hallway.

Wasting virtually not a moment of time, you pulled your phone out and began furiously texting Abby with a recount of the events at a speed faster than the speed of light. 

Once that excruciatingly torturous class was over, you applauded yourself for containing the stares in her direction and keeping your eyes fixated on the professor. Whether you actually retained any information, now that was a different story. Picking up your bags and laptop, you stay behind for a moment as everyone else files out, no need to crowd and suffocate amongst the other students, and you had nowhere to be except catch up on your favorite shows and relax all by yourself. 

Filing out the auditorium with everyone else, you see a familiar face pass by you, and vaguely hear Abby’s voice in your head urging you to seize the moment. Now’s your chance, go! And so you gather every little bit of strength you possess to do just that. 

After a couple deep breaths you jog up to her. “Uh, hey.” She turns around and gives you a warm smile, making your legs instantly turn to jelly. You subtly checked her out and took in her outfit, another bulky jacket and lightly distressed jeans. Fingers studded with layered silver rings, and those big ole headphones seemed to be magnetically attached to her, she always had them on her. Note to self: ask for some music recommendations.

She was even hotter up close…with a beautiful galaxy of freckles scattered across her fair skin, you wanted to place a kiss on every single of them. “I, um, never caught your name.” “It's Ellie.” She sticks out her hand for a handshake and you accepted it, you finally had a name to the face you've been pining over so intensely for so long. Abby was going to lose it once you tell her about this. You steady your voice and hide the glee that was likely evident from this interaction going so smoothly, and introduce yourself to her as well.

After some time of idle chit chat and standing there, neither one of you knowing really what to say, Ellie pipes up, facepalming, tsking, and furrowing her brows. “Oh yeah, I don’t mean to spring this on you outta nowhere, but would you wanna study sometime?” She flushes a dusty pink, “I don't know anyone else taking this course and am having kind of a hard time with it...when I chose it, I expected it to be more about space and the planets, and less about numbers and math, my head hurts.”

Her demeanor was making you feel rather comfortable with her, even though the two of you had just formally met a few minutes prior. “I would love to, yeah!” Maybe you were being a little too enthusiastic, but at this point you were operating on pure instinct and not thinking critically of what was coming out of your mouth. “I actually don't have any plans now, or today at all, so if you want to, we can get a head start before the next class?” Well that just slipped out. Go you, blurting things out. 

You had no idea why you'd said that because your place was an absolute mess, clothes strewn everywhere, trash can still full, you'd been too preoccupied with your studies, and well her, to do much about it. To your horror, Ellie exclaims, “Hey, that's perfect! I don't have anything to do right now either, and it would be good to act on it while it's still fresh in my mind, y’know?” Her face morphs into an adorable toothy grin as she taps on her skull comically, you were becoming more obsessed by the second, if that was even possible.

Every little sliver of her personality you got to see under the stoic one you had assumed she had just grasped at your heartstrings. You smiled back at her so hard you almost pulled a muscle in your cheeks, “Awesome! Follow me, then, my dorm isn't far.”

The walk there was mostly fine as the two of you made it to your place, Ellie occasionally making comments about how she hates the class even though she adores outer space and learning about it on her own time, and you were nodding and acting as if you're listening, agreeing with her robotically while she rambled away and you daydreamed about what her lush lips would feel like on yours. You wondered if she was gentle with it, or if she’d kiss you hungrily, devour you like her very last meal….gulp.

Leading her to your place was an automatic task, not much navigation needed, and when the journey was done you had to legitimately stop short for a moment in an attempt to soothe the pounding in your chest. 

The crush that has plagued your mind for ages, who you've just met formally today, was about to be in your room. The two of you were about to be alone. That was totally fine, yeah, she can't be a murderer…..right?

“You good?” She asked sweetly, why did she have to be so nice, “Those stairs were killer, I totally get it, phew.” “Oh for sure, gets me every time.” Covering up your panic smoothly, you unlocked the door and went inside with her. When she walked inside, Ellie took a glance around your room and set herself down at the edge of your bed, immediately making herself comfortable, while you still lingered in the doorway, awkwardly swaying and staring at her, unsure of what to do with yourself. 

Suddenly you had completely forgotten why she was here in the first place. “No way, you read Savage Starlight too???” She spotted the figurine on your desk and snatched it up in her hands to inspect it thoroughly, with a childlike wonder in her eyes. “Wow, this one was a limited edition and it sold out in like an hour, I'm so jealous you got this!! How much you want for it, I'm serious.” She was so excited, and you couldn't believe it. Savage Starlight has always been one of your favorite comics ever, you've loved it since you were a young teen, and now this seemingly perfect human before you, who you're hopelessly obsessed with says she loves it too? Could she get any more flawless, is all you could wonder.

Her happiness because of this little thing you two bonded over was infectious, and some of your nerves slowly began to go away.  Grinning genuinely, you sheepishly said, “I've never met anyone else who likes it, that story has helped me through lots of phases in my life, and Daniela was my gay awakening.” Ellie gaped at you for a beat, making you almost doubt revealing that information.

“No. Fuckin’. Way. Mine too! Her suit was just- damn. And those action scenes in the third volume had my thirteen year old self’s brain just mush for, I don't even know for how long. This is crazy, I can already see we’re gonna get along so well.”

You wanted to talk to her about everything and anything forever, and her glee made you want to squish her, but there was unfortunately work to be done first. “There’s so much we have to discuss, but we gotta get some studying done first if we wanna make it out of this course alive.”

You were sitting at your desk, hunched over the sprawled out textbooks and messy notes, as you drew the graphs and talked to her about the concepts she was struggling with. Your desk was so small and you only had one chair, and you were the one using it, so Ellie was forced to hover over you to see all you were doing.

Focusing solely on the subject before you was proving to be more difficult as studying time went by, because you were a little too aware of the way she had caged you in against the desk to watch, her oversized shirt grazing your upper back. You gripped your pen ever so tightly to minimize any trembling, and kept a steady voice as best you could while explaining it all.

She was so, so close, the tension in the tiny room was palpable, she didn't seem to notice your nervous tremors or the proximity she’d created, and the low murmurs of, “ohhh, mhm, yeah,” as you embarrassingly stammered over your explanations made you flushed and to be frank, needy. You could feel her warmth radiating off of her, could faintly hear her breathing just above you. You didn't dare move a muscle. Was she feeling this too?

At this point you swore the delicious gravelly vibrations from her voice this close to you would be plenty enough to make you cream your pants. The air in the enclosed space was getting hotter and thicker by every passing moment, it took everything you had to keep yourself from losing your mind right now. If you moved back a petty few inches, you’d be pressed flush with her front. What would that be like, you wondered. Oh, no. Your throat felt drier than the desert when you swallowed, the thought of that making you weak.

Since your focus on the work was lapsing, you were beginning to make some little mistakes and blunders, compelling her to take the pen right from your hand and fix them herself. “No, no, this one’s supposed to be like this instead, see? Then you're able to get the right answer which is…” She stretches over you further, you nearly whined, someone save you, and grabs the textbook to review the solution. “Like this, yeah, I was right. Honest mistake though, don’t worry about it.”

You nod your head and make a pathetic murmur of approval, ignoring the fiery tingles spreading all the way up your arm when her hand bumps yours to return the writing utensil, and the blistering coil of want forming in your stomach. This all had to be deliberate, right? She couldn't lack that much spatial awareness, could she? Well, it wasn’t that you minded, she could get as close as she damn wanted to, you'd let her throw you around like a ragdoll even- you were just afraid your heart was going to give out if she kept it up. “Could you show me this work you guys did? Of course the one day I'm late, the prof talks about something new and I miss it.” 

What feels like an eternity later, you hear her groan above you and she returns to her earlier spot on your bed. You can finally breathe properly. Glancing at the clock, your own headache begins to set in. Crap it was late, how time flies. 

“We’ve been studying for so long, it’s getting late.” “Shit, you’re right, I’ve definitely overstayed my welcome. Sorry about that, and hey, thanks for this. I understand it all a lot better now, see you tomorrow.”

She stands up abruptly and ushers herself out of your door in a flash, to which you clumsily stand up, knock your chair over, and hastily run after her, not wanting her to go just yet. “Wait, Ellie!” “What's up, did I forget something?”

She pats her pockets and looks at you with concern. Round puppy dog eyes, and lips in a miniscule pout, so cute. You were in front of her now, but did not process what you actually wanted to say. Just ran after her like the smitten nincompoop you are. Upon feeling your face go hot, you look at the ground to mutter, “Uh- nothing. See you later.” Realistically, what were you planning on saying, or doing?

After stumbling over your words you two finally part ways and you slump down against your door, missing her presence already. You simultaneously wanted to jump around or open your bedside table drawer to release the energy you'd accumulated, and wanted to fall into the deepest sleep of your life to recuperate from the experience. This was just, a lot. You wanted to scream and screech like there's no tomorrow, but did not want to deal with noise complaints from the others living on your floor. Gosh she was so close, she shares your niche interest, your hands touched, albeit accidentally, lo and behold you were in love with her.

Maybe it was early to call it that, but you were going to plan out your future together. Preferably a quaint, peaceful farmhouse, the one you two lovebirds renovated together exactly how you envisioned, where you could ogle her doing the farmwork. Ugh. Cook all her favorite meals, make sweet, sweet love under the moonlight. Take strolls through the flower gardens you two planted, receive her curated bouquets as gifts, you two are going to have such a tender, domestic life. 

You had to mull it over some more, and didn’t dare wish to forget how close she was to you, you were still buzzing from her essence. You were pointlessly pacing around your room now, unable to stop looping the study session's events in your head. The simplicity, the eroticism of the encounter. One-sided or not, you had yet to find out more about her, the impatience was going to take over. The day almost seemed too good to be true, but for now you had to force yourself to relax and think about something other than her. Time to browse Pinterest with striking kitchen ideas for your beautiful future. 

What were you going to say to her the next time you see her? You were eager to know how, or if at all, this new friendship was going to progress. Part of you was dying of impatience, but the rest of you wanted to take it all as slow as possible, savoring every little moment and making the most of it. 

You sighed, this was going to be a long, long, year.

lovely taggies: @amiorca @mostlyhornyandsad @lasting-lover @radioheadfan699 @sophie-thefrog8 @machetegirl109 @ellieschair @aouiaa @wavesgocrash @tangerinngi @elliesbitchvenus @dinaissoprettyoml @rxreaqia @camicocom1a @elliesexual @ellslvr @boobdrug @writing-on-a-bathroom-stall @bready101 @yourelliewillms

.......really hoping this doesn't flop because it isn't smutty, yall wanted more fics that are plot soooo

[beefboyandbabygirl]

Pretend It's Someone That Came for You (18+)

pairing: coworker!wonwoo x fem!touch-starved!reader

genre: coworker au, office au, strangers to lovers, angst w a happy ending, smut (MDNI!!), fluffy fluffy fluff fluff

description: you're lonely. you're so lonely you think it might actually kill you. but when wonwoo transfers to your office, he might just change that fact.

warnings: unprotected sex (do NOT pls my babes), soft dom!wonwoo, sub!reader, v loving sex, praise (f. receiving), confession of love, riding, fingering (f. receiving), pussy rubbing tihi, pet names (pretty girl, good girl, baby, darling, etc), VERY angsty beginning, yn is truly v sad so DO NOT READ THIS if u fear it will make u sad!!, they say i love u unrealistically fast but i had to do it, yn uses sex to feel less lonely/ends up feeling more lonely, relatable yn frs, slightly dramatized symptoms of touch-starvation (?), kinda boring plot but idc bc its CUTE AF

quotes from my creative director (@joshibambi): "finally!!" (she was fed tf up), "stanley is the most stanley man ever. i hate him but i love him.", (more r coming she actually didnt have time 2 read this and i didnt want to wait with posting.)

wordcount: 10.0k

a/n: this story was supposed 2 have more angst, like it was supposed to have this whole misunderstanding, but it just didnt feel right, it made me sad, so instead this is a short n sweet love story xx

Sometimes you think that the loneliness might kill you. 

You weren’t always like this. You remember being a sociable, joyful child; half-broken bikes and teddy bears and booster seats. You remember pigtails and popsicle sticks and Power Rangers, and what came after that? Being a moody teenager, became being a moody adult. High school became college, and college became an office job that served to keep you alive, even if it didn’t feel like being alive. College wasn’t that bad, you remember, so at what point had you mistaken isolation for privilege? And at what point had you gone too far into that tunnel-hole to turn back? 

 You must’ve been cursed, you think, putting on your outfit for work in the deadly still apartment. Dust dares not move, dares not give you hope that you are not alone. 

You must’ve been cursed, you think, coming into work to a string of half-hearted, mumbled greetings. Your office is off-white and black and gray and everyone inhabiting it is also off-white and black and gray, and their skin is faintly oily and sickly and their faces are dragging down as if the very earth was reclaiming them and you think that you fit in here better than anywhere else. 

You must’ve been cursed, you think, when you spend your day writing emails and organizing documents of information into different formats to send to huge corporations. Sometimes you fantasize about the other end of the transaction. Maybe their office is warm and brown with an accent of blue, and maybe people put hands on each other's shoulders, when they tell one another they’ve done a good job. 

Yes, there’s no other explanation, you think, and can’t even muster the energy to feel bad when you blame some old hag from your hometown. You think she must’ve conjured up the worst ingredients, something cartoonishly evil, and a spell befell you, sunk into the crevices of your skin and dug into your pores.

You lie on your couch with a glass of wine and the television going, but you’re not really listening. You don’t think anyone has touched you in six months. You’re not even sure you’re real anymore. You swear, you could live with no one hearing you out, because you’re not sure you’d have anything worthwhile to say, but you just needed someone to touch you. To reach out a hand and confirm, you’re real, you’re right underneath my fingertips, and I’m squeezing your shoulder, and I see you, and I feel you right here.

Sometimes you think that the loneliness might kill you.

Lying physically very still, you still feel like you’re scrambling, fighting the clutch of the curse, and tugging on metal chains. Maybe that’s where all your energy goes. 

What do normal people do when they feel this bad?

Sometimes you leave open the window, and when the wind tugs at your door, you pretend it’s someone that came for you. 

Tug, tug, tug. The door rattles against its hinges when the fatally empty sky brings to you, in outstretched palms, the wind interlaced with glimmers of hope. 

There’s never anyone at the door.  _____________________________

This particular day starts like any other. You wake to your alarm and you put on clothes and you get ready and brush your teeth. Then you trample down to the bus stop. The sky is smothered by a duvet of heavy rain clouds. The rain hasn't come yet, but you know it will. Your fingers become stiff and hard, where they adhere to the polyester strap of your bag, massaging it. The bag is cold and dead.

The bus ride is by far the greatest part of your day. It’s quiet - early enough that you’re only accompanied by a few other souls. You rest your head on the window, vibrating gently against the curve of your forehead, and watch the people in the street. 

 The bus hums a gentle tune and snakes down the streets. Then you’re there, and whatever solace that it offers you under artificial light and mediocre, felted seats is gone. 

Your office building is maybe the most depressing place on earth. It’s no glamorous feat of architecture. It is but a large, orange-y, puke-y, brick square, and the building is shared between yours and the Forester company. You don’t talk to the Foresters, but you know they eat cream cheese bagels on their breaks and throw birthday parties and once you saw the branch manager squeezing a salesman’s shoulder and telling him he had done a good job. His fingers squeezed down and the movement of the fabric revealed a shoulder pad built into the suit. You remember thinking it was a shame that it blocked the real touch. 

Today, you walk up the stairs with heavy steps and you idle into the office building, eyes cast down to the dirty, gray carpet. You begin the long trek into the back of the building where your desk is located.

“Morning, Y/n,” mumbles Tina.

“Morning, Tina,” you mumble back.

“Morning, Y/n,” mumbles Gerard. 

“Morning, Gerard,” you mumble back. 

“Morning.”

“M-”

Wait a minute. 

Your greeting falls short. You don’t recognize that voice. Stopping in your tracks, your shoes scratch on the rough carpet, and lift your head to see him. 

The first thing you notice is that he’s the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen. He looks like he jumped out of an underwear commercial; he’s all strong jawline, sharp eyes, round glasses on his pretty nose, neatly trimmed, short dark hair stretching down the planes of his face. He’s wearing a button up (usually you wouldn’t even register the clothing your coworkers adorned, but something about how he wore it was noteworthy), a tie draping over the dress shirt, and formal slacks hugging his thighs. 

He smiles at you sheepishly, hands nervously smoothing down his thighs. 

“I’m Wonwoo” he says curtly, nodding to you. “Just transferred from the Wallingset branch.” 

You nod. “Right. Wallingset,” you nod more. “Nice to meet you. I’m Y/n.” 

“Nice to meet you too, Y/n.” 

Something about your name on his lips makes your heart flutter. It’s pathetic, you know, but his peregrine being in his office chair, spilling your name from his pink lips makes you feel a little more real. You look at him and then you nod again-again, kicking your legs into gear again and walking the last stretch to your desk. 

You can see the back of his head from your orange-wood desk. Papers and sticky notes are scattered among the desktop. The monitor watches you accusingly, all big and square and black, waiting for you to open it up and begin working. Your eyes linger on him for a moment. Then you work. 

A few hours pass on emails and translating information from a company into a comprehensive sheet. However, today you’re having a hard time focusing on work. 

This is not new. 

Sometimes you briefly talk to a man at the grocery store, and your mind will wander to him for next week, wondering if he’s thinking about you too, imagining yourself cuddling with him, watching movies, imagining him telling you it’ll all be okay. Sometimes you briefly talk to a man on the street, sometimes it’s even a date, but whatever the case you obsess and you dream and you always end up alone. 

Today the victim of your depraved mind is Wonwoo. The guilt is easy to push away. You feel sorry for yourself. You think you deserve this. You think you can’t survive without this. And so you imagine him hugging you, stroking your hair, and you imagine him falling in love with you, and you imagine not being alone. Your fingers rest on your keyboard. It’s old and mechanical. You think it’s from a yard sale, probably an old woman whose children moved away. It’s plastic, and it curves inwards underneath the pads of your fingertips. The keys are cold and dead. 

You fully zone out, eyes blearing into the back of his head, but you don’t really see it, your mind has traveled elsewhere. You guiltily imagine his hand between your legs, on your chest, straddling him, kissing him. And it’s not rough, it’s loving, because in this world he loves you, and he’d do anything for you, and you don’t have to be alone again.

You don’t love Wonwoo. It’s not some magical love at first sight, it’s not a romance book, it’s real life. You’re lonely. You need this to survive. 

“Hey, Y/n?” 

You snap your head up. Maybe you were still daydreaming. But you recognized the voice well and true, and it was Wonwoo, leaned over your desk, hands in his pockets.

“Oh, uhm, hey-” your voice is shaky and you quickly rush to compose yourself, hands moving frantically and uselessly to glide papers over one another and, then, realizing that there was no point to your movements, stilling and looking up at him, cheeks flushed. “Hey.” 

Wonwoo smiles gently. “Uh, you know, I was wondering,” he looks around the office, as if surveying the area. “If you knew where to get a good lunch? I don’t know this area at all, so..” 

He trails off, looking at you expectantly for an answer. Now that he’s standing before you, it’s much harder to ignore the guilt you feel. You wanna gnaw at your nails until they’re nubs, you want to crawl under your desk and cover your eyes. Does he see how red your cheeks are? 

“Uhm- well- I don’t- I eat a packed lunch, so I’m-” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, no expert,” you giggle awkwardly and watch his gentle smile drop into pursed lips. “But! Uh- I hear the- the hot dog stand, uh, just a little down the street is good!” 

“Really? Maybe I should try it,” he contemplates, smile returning to his lips. “Would you mind showing me this mysterious hot dog stand?” 

“Uh-” 

Just seconds before you were thinking of his fingers in your pussy, and his hands caressing you, and him making you feel loved. He’s standing before you and he’s a totally normal guy, and you feel like shit. You feel like shit for using this fake image of him to comfort yourself. You can’t be around him, can’t convince yourself that maybe this’ll turn into something more - not when you always end up alone. Your brows furrow in determination.

“Actually, I have to, uh, get this done, so-” you gesture vaguely to your monitor. 

“Right! Yeah,” Wonwoo seems embarrassed, biting his lips and nodding. “It’s, uh, just down the street?” 

“Yeah, to the right when you walk out the building.” 

“For sure. Thanks,” he doesn’t even look at you then, just waves you off half-heartedly and starts trailing down the office. His shoulders are incredibly broad and his belt wraps tightly around his small waist.

You feel like shit.  _____________________________

Why is no one else cursed? 

You look out of the window, lying on your bed after work. Everything is very still and unmoving - your whole apartment feels like it’s knotted in strings, tightened until everything is snapped into place, and if you move the wrong muscles, the invisible hands will let go and everything will fly and hurdle through your home, and you can almost hear the sound, like the hard, empty sound of throwing a bowling ball and getting a strike. 

No one else is cursed. People crowd the streets with friends, family, partners, and they’re talking and laughing. You rest your head in the windowsill, a lone spectator in the window. The glass cuts you off from the streets. 

The afternoon after daydreaming the way you did about Wonwoo is always hard. Your apartment seems intent on suffocating you. Your daydreams serve as a reminder that you’re alone, that you truly have no one, and the act itself is so humiliating, you sulk into a glass of red wine and sometimes you cry. What do normal people do when they feel this bad, you wonder again, sobbing in your bed and spilling wine on your nightie. 

Nighttime falls early while you’re crying. You weep on and off, hug your knees, eat a microwave dinner and watch TV, light casting onto your pathetic form on the couch.

And in your most vulnerable state is when you most easily slip into your old habits. 

You press an old contact in your phone, one you’d tried to steer away from recently. You wipe mascara from your reddened cheeks, you wear pretty lingerie, and you lie, completely empty, void of any warmth, on your bed, awaiting.

It’s the first time he touches you in months. When his hand finds your shoulder, you shudder terribly. Sorry, he says, and he seems taken aback. Just ignore it, you plead, just ignore it. He does so, unsurely, and every time his hand grazes over your body you shudder and sob and every time he hesitates, asking if you’re okay, you cry at him to continue.

It feels good while it’s happening. Skin beneath your fingertips, hands on you, a face close to yours. You and him are the only thing moving in the apartment, synergizing on your bed, conjoining and writhing, and for just a moment, you don’t feel so alone. 

When you’re done the anonymous man stands back up, sliding on his pants in the late hour. He says it was great and you hum. But then he looks around, hesitating on every old piece of furniture, on every photo on the walls, and lastly on you.

“What?” you ask, lying naked in your bed. He grimaces at you, as if signaling that he can’t quite figure it out himself. 

“I don’t know,” he says slowly, hands on his newly-clothed hips and surveying the corners of the room, where shadows pool. “It feels haunted in here.” 

He leaves. 

When the warmth is gone, the bile rises in your throat. Old habits die hard, you think, and you feel totally empty. You couldn’t go on like this. It was nights like these you began to feel like a martyr - sacrificing yourself for a brief escape. Because when the door is closed with a click and you’re alone again, you feel yourself trembling and your heart is glowing red in the empty astral plane. Brief, easy forms of pleasure are often the most harmful.

It feels haunted in here. You remember his words, and before you finally fall asleep, you wonder one thing. You wonder if you’re already dead.  _____________________________

The next day is a pain to overcome. You’re slightly hungover, slightly sore, and very uncomfortable. But you comply with your routine, and you enjoy the bus ride, and when you get to the office everyone greets you. 

 “Morning, Y/n,” mumbles Tina.

“Morning, Tina,” you mumble back.

“Morning, Y/n,” mumbles Gerard. 

“Morning, Gerard,” you mumble back. 

“Morning, Y/n,” Wonwoo says. You look up from the carpet carefully, flashing him an apologetic smile. You hope he can read its intention: Sorry about being weird yesterday. You think he got it.

“Morning, Wonwoo.” 

And then you’re landing yourself at your own desk and beginning work once more. It’s boring, but today you ward off the daydreams and you focus, and you’re getting an exceptional amount done. 

The clock on the wall (off-white, but yellowing near the top) reads 12:28 when your boss, Stan, approaches your table. He’s half bald, and his suit is much too loose, and he has a ladder of wrinkles climbing his larger-than-life forehead. 

“Hey, N/n!” he calls, so loud that a couple of heads turn at the commotion. You’ve asked him several times not to call you that. 

“Stanley,” you breathe, tapping a stack of papers on your desk to neaten the pile. You wonder if you were in trouble, but if his smile is anything to go by, you’d guess not. 

“My favorite woman in accounting!” 

“Hehe,” you laugh half-heartedly. You catch the eye of Wonwoo, glancing over his shoulder with a small, teasing smile. You smile back. 

“I have a big- oh wait, wait, new guy, uhh, Jeon? Come over here real quick!” Suddenly his solid fingers waft the now scared Wonwoo over. The spectacled man’s shoulders hunch up as he moves off the chair, nodding respectfully. Wonwoo stands beside Stanley at your desk, and you focus your attention on Stanley, hoping to not get too lost in the idea of Wonwoo again - you were doing so good today. 

“I have a big job for you, and I thought you could work with Wonwoo on it,” Stan moves his hand up to cup the side of his mouth, as if telling you a big secret, “seeing as he was a bit of a star over in Wallingset.”

Shit. The guy you were daydreaming about was working with you? Wonwoo laughs, embarrassed, but you hardly have time to catch it. You can’t do this. Yesterday you were thinking about him fingering you while looking at you lovingly!

“We have a massive, new client! Just dropped a big competitor of ours, and they want us to do their six month report!” Stanley seems genuinely excited about this, so you can’t help feeling a little guilty that you’ll be a gobbering, slobbering mess, sitting beside Wonwoo on this. 

“That’s great-”

“I know! So, my two star members in accountancy, I’ll hand this off to you. The data should be coming into your emails soon,” without letting either of you react, Stanley hunches over, like a coach does before a little-league baseball game, wrapping his arms around both of you and Wonwoo. “You got this, troopers!” 

Stanley claps his hands on both of your backs, so hard you jerk forward at the movement, and then he bounces off to the elevator at the far end of the room. You sigh heavily from the interaction. It’s quiet for a moment, while you fiddle with the papers in front of you.

“What a guy,” Wonwoo muses finally, thin fingers resting on the edge of your desk. You giggle, unable to look him in the eye for fear that you might remember how you’d thought about starting a family with him. “Yeah.”

You and Wonwoo settle into an unoccupied meeting room, and it’s all very professional. Markers and post-its, trying to find the best way to structure the report, excel sheets to categorize and overlook data, double check numbers. 

However bad you think it’s going to be, you’re wrong. Wonwoo is easy to talk to - he’s quiet, but he’s intelligent, and he understands how to bring on conversation, even when you fold in on yourself like a used napkin. 

“Yeah, we used to steal signs from our neighborhood,” Wonwoo admits halfway into a conversation about your hometowns. “I don’t think that’s gonna fly anymore.” 

“Why stop now? You’re letting societal rules hold you back,” you joke, and the two of you laugh, and it’s so pathetic, you’re certain you haven’t laughed this much in years, and the conversation has lasted maybe 20 minutes. 

“Well, I could show you the craft, you know, it’s a delicate process-” 

While Wonwoo talks your phone buzzes and you absent-mindedly pick it up, reviewing the notification.

Your grin drops. Faintly, you hear Wonwoo stop talking. He tilts his head to study the way you frown at the screen. “What’s up?” he asks. 

It’s the guy from last night and he’s asking if you’ll be available again tonight. 

Maybe it’s how you could almost forget it - how you let yourself into positions that would hurt you, just to feel seen and heard and touched. Maybe it’s the dichotomy of that encounter and now, talking to Wonwoo, and having the laughter steal away the loneliness. But you’re reminded so terribly of your position. You’re reminded that this, too, will end, and that the loneliness will return. You’re reminded that once the shift ends, you’re alone again. 

Suddenly you’re a thousand daggers all pointing out. You shield yourself. 

“Uh,” you trail off, putting the phone down again. “Just some guy.” 

Wonwoo’s eyebrows raise. “Boyfriend?” 

“No!” you say quickly. “No, he’s, uh. Just some guy.” 

A pause. 

“Okay,” Wonwoo says. You don’t even remember where you left off the conversation. You bite your lip because everything is all agony. The table is cold and dead beneath your hand. 

“I’m thinking we group these together,” you say, eyes now tuned to your screen and fully submerged back into your work. Work. That was all that could cover your beaten down, cursed self. 

The rest of the shift you feel Wonwoo looking at you carefully, as if he’s trying to read you. You don’t talk about yourselves anymore, no more banter, no more witty comments. You structure the report, and try to ignore how his eyes laser you open. You don’t like it. You feel like he can tell you’re a pathetic, lonely woman and that you have nothing and no one. You feel like he can sense the curse upon you. 

This would be torture.  _____________________________

It is not torture. 

The next day, to your surprise, Wonwoo is nowhere to be seen. You wait 5, 10, then 15 minutes in the meeting room you’d camped in, before you begin working on your own. It’s slower without him, but you manage. 

You can’t help but slightly worry about him. It feels stupid. You know you’re putting too much emotion into a person you’d known for two days, but you can’t help it. You wonder if he’s gotten hurt or injured, or if maybe he hates you and has transferred back. You think even Excel finds you pathetic. 

You sit there for three hours, among the ruins of paperwork and your open laptop, running your hand through your hair and typing in sentences that mean nothing, and the wallpaper is off-white and yellowing at the top, and the blinds are closed to the meeting room. 

Around 1 PM the door to the meeting room is opened, wood smacking against the glass that surrounds it, and Wonwoo stands in the doorway, slightly out of breath. You snap your head up to him, like the jerk of a lifeless doll, suddenly interrupted from a very disorganized Excel sheet.

“Hi, shit, sorry,” he gasps, slinging his bag off of his shoulder to sit down next to you. 

“Are you okay?” you ask immediately, and Wonwoo nods blindly, pulling his laptop out of his bag. “Yeah,” he says, cheeks slightly flushed and licking his lips. “My cat- my cat needed surgery, she got sick last night, it was an emergency.” 

You nod in understanding, “it’s okay-” 

You can hardly get the words out before Wonwoo rolls his chair back, wheels resounding hollowly on the floor, so he can look at you clearly. “I’m really sorry about this, it was not nice of me to leave you alone with this.” He gestures vaguely to the scattered papers, and you shake your head.

“It’s okay, Wonwoo, I get it,” you say reassuringly, peering up at him through your lashes. “You don’t need to worry about it. You’re here now.” 

Wonwoo seems less intent on personal conversations today - it’s probably because he was so late, and now is trying to make up the time. But it’s okay, in fact you’re somewhat relieved, because it dampens the false hope that blooms in your chest, whenever he asks you about your life. 

Even if you and Wonwoo work hard and quietly, you slip into the late hours of the night in an attempt to keep on track for your schedule. Outside the windows that separate you from real life, the sky turns orange, and then dark, muted blue, and stars begin dotting its impressive stretches. People begin to leave around five, and by the time you and Wonwoo finish all your work, you’re the last ones left on your floor of the office. 

Wonwoo lets out a loud sigh when he finally finishes the second segment of your report, and the both of you slump back in your seats. 

“It’s so fucking late,” Wonwoo limply throws his hand in the direction of the window. You smile a little, looking out. Smaller buildings spawn geometrically from the ground, and every once in a while someone walks by with their dog, spotlighted by the stretch of street lamps that stand outside the parking lot. “I really am sorry about this, you know. Really ruined your night,” he says quietly. 

You shake your head. “It’s fine, I had nothing to come home to anyway.” 

There’s a pause.

Wonwoo looks at you intensely. Oh shit, you realize, was that too obvious? Was that too pathetic? Has it just clicked that you’re a loser that no one wants? You nervously look back at him, but there’s no malice in his eyes. A totally unreadable expression adorns his features, where he’s leaned back in his leather chair, legs spread invitingly. You look away, feeling dumb. 

“At least we followed our schedule!” you say. Wonwoo snorts.

“Yeah, thanks to you. If you hadn’t completed so much before I got here, it would’ve been hopeless.” 

Now it’s your turn to scoff, blushing lightly and looking at the linoleum flooring. “I don’t know about tha-” 

“Seriously, Y/n, just take the compliment,” Wonwoo reaches a hand over, and you watch its movement.

It’s like time slows down, not like the movies, no, like you can stop time with the heavy weight of your gaze, pinning his muscles in place. But you can’t, and it lands on your shoulder with a soft thud. Fuck. His hand is warm and alive on you. 

“You did so well today, I-” Wonwoo cuts himself off, because suddenly you’re trembling. 

He feels your body shuddering and jerking under his hand, like the wind rattles your door when you leave it open, and he can’t see your face behind a curtain of hair, but he hears you gasp, and, fuck, you look like you’re sobbing. 

The man from last night had become so hesitant when you reacted this way. When your body trembled and shook and when you cried, but Wonwoo seems to understand. He peers at you from above the rims of his glasses, and his hand stays put right there on your shoulder. 

“Y/n,” he whispers, so sincere it causes a pathetic squeak to escape you. What must he think of you? The thoughts spiral and you can’t control a single one of them, they dance like freed souls in your head, and you can’t stop the spasming of your muscles, and you know you look so pathetic beside him right. “Y/n, look at me.” 

You don’t. You can’t. You can’t because there are tears spilling from the rims of your eyes, and rolling down your cheeks, wet and glossy. Besides, you’re an ugly crier. 

“Look at me,” he says seriously, finger tightening on your shoulder. You try to steady your breath and calm your tears, before you obey and begin to turn your chair. The simple motion requires so much effort - it’s like the air has become so thick, that the friction against your leather seat slows you down. 

Finally you turn to him, eyes first resting on his knees, then, carefully, traveling up to his face. He’s frowning. 

Your face is reddened and your eyes are puffy, your cheeks are shiny and you chew your bottom lip in a futile attempt to keep the tears at bay. 

Wonwoo looks genuinely devastated. The hand on your shoulder softens its grasp, then begins petting your arm, rubbing up and down. The action has you choking out gasps, trembling even more in his hold, and Wonwoo feels the need to roll his chair closer to you, so his other hand can grab yours. His thumb rubs over the back of it, and he lowers his head to look at you. 

“Shh, relax, relax, Y/n,” he whispers, and you try to nod, but it’s so overwhelming; being touched, being seen, being heard, all at once. For months, maybe years, no one has touched you like this - as if they care. Now the feeling is foreign, so scorching hot on your arm and your hand, your body can’t take it anymore. You’re stuck between wanting to lean into his hands, wanting to feel how real you are, and how physically true your existence is, and wanting to shy away. What must he think of you? 

“Y/n,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut to banish the sigh of your sobbing. “When was the last time someone touched you?” 

You hiccup painfully. “Uhm- I- I don’t, ” your eyes are bleary and your lashes are wet. Your lip trembles and your whole body shakes when you try to breathe. 

Apparently this was enough of an answer for Wonwoo, because he suddenly stands, somewhat harshly tugging you into a standing position too, and pulls you directly into the harbor of his arms. 

Instinctively, you wrap your arms around his torso. His chest is pressed flat against yours, so, so warm, when he nudges your head into the crook of his neck, and presses his face against its side, sighing softly into you, and breathing warm air onto your hair. His palms push you into him, soothing your trembling body, and holding you like an anker. One hand travels up to your hair. 

“W-Wonwoo, you don’t have to-”

“Shh,” he quiets you immediately, voice the softest wind of a peach tree. “Just let me take care of you.” 

You do. Wonwoo holds you until you stop crying, and though it must’ve been twenty minutes or so, it feels like no time at all. Standing in his space, breathing in his dark cologne, and letting his heat thaw your dead heart is a totally timeless act. Joy and serenity flows from the places where your bodies touch. When you stop crying, Wonwoo holds you for longer. 

Eventually, he lets you go. 

You step back sheepishly, now much calmer and the red in your face faded. You wipe your tired eyes shyly with your sleeve. 

“Thank you, Wonwoo,” you mumble, voice thick and garbled. When you look up at him, he smiles softly, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he says softly, arm extending one last time to squeeze your forearm. Then it falls limp again. 

“I, uh, I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” 

“Of course.” 

When you return home, you’re buzzing. Your entire apartment buzzes along with you, things seem to clatter and beam along with the bright, glowing of your heart. You snuggle into bed and nothing is still and even when you’re drifting into sleep, your nerve endings spin in joyful circles, and your feet are a static hum. Suddenly you are very, very real. _____________________________

You’d think the next day would be tense and awkward, and maybe it is at first, but soon enough you’re talking again, more intimately than before even. 

This is Wonwoo’s doing - you know this. You know he’s smart and you know he doesn’t want you to feel bad, so he makes conversation and builds trust between the two of you. You know he hopes you don’t feel insecure. Every word he says and every flick of his eyes is riddled with it. 

The conversation decidedly slows down your progress, so Wonwoo once more suggests staying overtime. You look at him for a moment before agreeing. 

You can’t tell what his end goal is. A chamber of your heart has been revived and rebirthed, and you’re more chipper, more bouncy, but the rest of your heart insists: you’re still cursed - eventually it’ll go back to how it should be. You listen. You try not to get your hopes up that Wonwoo really cares about you. Why should he, really?

Although when you’re done for the day, about an hour after your usual 5 PM, you stand up and begin to pack your things, laptop sliding into your bag and clustering pens in your hand. It’s gray outside, but the sun comes in a single strand through a gap in the smog and the clouds. The wind hoots by the windows, and it smells like the indian you ordered for lunch together. 

You stop your packing, feeling a set of eyes in your back. You twist your head to see him.

Wonwoo is sitting completely still in his chair, slack-covered legs spread open, and he makes no move to collect his own things. He just stares. 

“What’s up?” you quip. You’re slightly nervous. Just before it was all silly childhood stories, college and weed and life before the dead-end job. Now Wonwoo has that unreadable expression on his face again. 

He slowly lifts his hands from the armrest, eyes locked with yours, and claps his palms on the tops of his thighs. 

Your eyebrows furrow. 

“Wha-” 

“Come here,” he says simply. When you stand completely still, like a deer in the headlights, Wonwoo scoffs and rolls his eyes. “What? You think you’re cured because someone hugged you once?” 

“Cured?”

“You’re touch-starved, Y/n,” Wonwoo states matter-of-factly, “you need to be touched.” 

“Touch-starved?” you echo, a bewildered expression on your face.

“We can also just hug, like yesterday,” he suggests calmly. You envy his collectedness. “I just don’t want you to feel bad. So please. Come sit.”

To emphasize, Wonwoo pats his thighs again, patiently. You step away from your bag with hesitating steps, pursing your lips. Your cheeks blaze when you look at his thighs again - they’re so long, and the folds in his slacks stretch down and centralize on his crotch and- You’re being a pervert. 

“Okay,” you squeak and Wonwoo tuts. Why is that hot, you think, why the hell is that hot?

“We can just hug if you-” 

You feel bold.

Without letting him finish, you swing your leg over his, and plop down, straddling halfway down his thighs. You thank God you put pants on this morning instead of a skirt, when you look down at where you rest on top of him. 

Wonwoo is a little taken aback, but when you’ve settled on him, his hands find your waist and he looks up at you with a hum. Your breathing is a little shaky. Once again his hands provide a pumping of golden joy into your body, and more of you comes alive and becomes real, and you smile. 

What had Wonwoo been talking about? Touch-starved?

“What’s, um-” your question is cut off with a gasp, when Wonwoo uses his hands on your middle to tug you closer. You rest on the highest point of thighs that you can without sitting on his dick. Cheeks red and eyes squeezed shut, you hear how Wonwoo hums, pleased. “What were you talking about? Touch-starved?” you whisper, keeping your eyes shut. 

Wonwoo sighs, and once more, like the movement is entirely replayed, his hand finds your hair and pushes your face into the crook of his neck. You sigh against it, enjoying how his arms protect you and hide you from the evil of the world. 

“If you don’t touch anyone,” Wonwoo begins, his voice low bass in your ear, “you become touch-starved. That’s why you reacted the way you did yesterday.” 

His hands run up and down your sides. 

“But- but I’m not crying today,” you say quietly into his neck. Wonwoo hums.

“No, that’s good,” he says. “We can stop if you really want, I just wa-”

“No!” your voice squeaks immediately, and, as if he were running from you, you fist his shirt to keep him close. 

“Okay,” there’s a smile in Wonwoo’s voice. You can’t see it but you can imagine it. 

Comfortable silence. Wonwoo traces patterns on your back and you breathe deeply against the skin of his neck. The two of you function as one living thing, the only living thing left in the office. Chairs are turned halfway, a couple lights are left on. The desks betray the past presence of humans. 

“Wonwoo,” you pip. 

“Mhm?” 

“You don’t have to do this, you know? I don’t want you to do it if you- if it’s just.. Pity.” 

Wonwoo sighs, and you feel the way his torso deflates underneath you. He trails his hand up from your back to tap your cheek. You move back and look at him. 

Your faces are very close, you can feel how your exhales collide and then scatter, hell, you think you could count each of his eyelashes from here. 

“I already told you. I’m doing this because I don’t want you to feel bad. I-” he hesitates for a moment, pursing his lips. “I’ve been there. So I know what it’s like.” 

The thought of Wonwoo feeling like this, like you, is sickening. Genuinely sickening, you feel your insides turn to rot and mold and you frown so deeply, you think your lips might forever lock in that position. 

“I’m okay now,” he reassures, reading you immediately. His hand finds your cheek and he almost cries out at the way you lean into it blindly. 

“How did you-.. I- I always thought it was, like, a lifelong curse,” you say.

“A curse?” Wonwoo grins, thumb stroking over the skin of your cheek. It makes you happy, it makes you feel like your heart will burst. 

“Yeah. I guess I just blamed some old woman from my hometown,” you giggle, blushing a little because, yes, it did sound stupid when you weren’t just echoing the theory to yourself, like playing a team sport alone. 

“You’re not cursed,” Wonwoo promises, tucking your head into his chest. “I’ll help you, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you from now on.” 

He does take care of you. 

Every day you work overtime, and every day when you’re done with work, Wonwoo slides you into his lap and holds you, while you curl up in his chest. Then you talk and you laugh, and you listen to each other's music. His hands run warm up your back and in your hair and on your hips, gentle caresses, deeply intimate. For two weeks you and Wonwoo indulge in this nighttime ritual. 

You have not felt lonely since that night. And Wonwoo can tell. Your skin is warmer and brighter, you smile wider, your eyes twinkle, and there’s energy in every movement. Your body thaws under his warm hands every night, and sometimes when you smile, he gets so happy he could kiss you. 

You realize you like Wonwoo one particular night when you’re falling asleep in your bed and you can still feel the ghost of his arms around you and it lulls you into a deep, dreamless sleep, and when you wake up you smell a little bit like his cologne. That’s how you realize. You like how considerate and how gentle he is, you like how sweet he is to you, you like how he looks when he smiles and when he laughs and you like how much he loves his cat. You like how his arms feel wrapped around you. 

And you like him, and suddenly your apartment is a song that you dance in, and every photo on your walls is smiling and your bed is always warm and so is your heart. 

There’s nothing dead in here, you think, when you cook a delicious meal on the stovetop, sauce bubbling in a stainless steel pan. Nothing haunted about your home or your heart. _____________________________

“We’re almost done.” 

“Mhm.” 

“I can’t believe we’re almost done!” 

Wonwoo looks up, bemused, lips made small and pointed. You’re staring at the almost-done document, scrolling up and down through long and arduous paragraphs. It’s nighttime again - not that you had to stay late today, it was a choice - and the city glimmers brilliantly in the coolness. You and Wonwoo wear sweaters to keep warm. 

“Feels like a lifetime,” Wonwoo murmurs, same smile upon his beautiful face. His cheekbones point out from beneath his skin. 

“Yeah,” you breathe, leaning back. You won’t put your fingers back on the keyboard. Not when it could be done so soon. You look at him, all snuggled up in a brown sweater. “What if..” 

A pause. He tilts his head.

“Well, are we still gonna talk?” you chew your lip dejectedly, feeling a little sad and desperate, but Wonwoo only laughs. It’s a beautiful sound, it’s one you associate with joy. 

“Of course,” he says, as his laughter quiets down. “If you want to.” 

A shy smile forms on your lips. You turn to look back at the computer, but you hear the now-familiar sound of Wonwoo patting his thighs. You flit your eyes back to him, teasingly scolding.

“We’re not done.” 

“We don’t have to be done now,” he shrugs, an equally teasing smile on his lips. You roll your eyes, but, unsurprisingly, you shift over to him, sitting down in his lap. He immediately tugs you closer, fingers searching for stimulation on the seams of your jeans. There’s something different about Wonwoo today, you realize, his touch is more feverish, his fingers dig deeper into the fat of your hips and he looks up at you like you’re a diamond-encrusted chandelier, hanging from the ceiling, all glittering jewels. 

“What’s up?” you giggle nervously. It’s becoming hard to breathe with the way he paws at your hips. 

There’s something in the air between you, but maybe you’re imagining it. Maybe it’s your mind playing tricks on you, concocting the magnetic pull that lingers between you, the thicker, heavier air, that urges you closer. 

He sighs heavily, as if he was dreading this. All of a sudden composed, cool, icy Wonwoo is chewing his lip and avoiding your eyes, looking instead down where your fat gives way for his needy fingers. 

“I, uh, I really like you, Y/n,” his voice shakes. “Would you. Maybe. Want to go out some time?” 

At the last syllable his gaze locks on to yours, and you watch him visibly relax, because you’re fucking grinning. 

Not maliciously, not crudely, not a dime or a dab of evil, only genuine joy. 

“I-I would like that,” you control your smile, pointing your lips in the same way that Wonwoo does and blushing all over. Wonwoo grins too and it’s unbearably boyish. 

“Okay,” he says, as if he can’t believe it. “Okay. Great.” 

The window slams shut, the spell is undone by his hand, the dead defy their only law to bow to his necromancy. Wonwoo is alive and warm underneath you, and you are alive and warm on top of him, thighs pushed up against his and tugging at the fabric of his shirt. Your balloon of heart pops in your chest, and the bone-cage of your chest is filled with helium, that has you floating. Rosy and shiny, your heart beats at twice its normal speed.

There’s a lull in the conversation. It would’ve been a more comfortable silence, if you couldn’t see by how Wonwoo looks down and purses his lips, that he’s itching to say more. 

Sparked by his confession, you confidently snake your hand up to tap his cheek lazily. He turns to you with a loafy smile. “What is it?” 

He breathes out unsteadily.

“You’re-” he closes his eyes. “There’s so much I like about you. It- It makes me feel really bad that you weren’t feeling well, so I-” 

He cringes at himself, one hand pushing away his glasses to rub the eyes underneath them. 

“Can I make you feel better?” he asks vaguely. 

You huff out a laugh. “Are you trying to ask if I want to have sex?” 

He laughs too, behind his big hand. “No. It’s not the same, I want it to be about you!” 

You laugh more, and Wonwoo’s face reappears as he lowers his hand. He looks up at you adoringly, dotingly. He’s smiling.

“I’m being serious,” he says quietly, when you finish. He seems less embarrassed now, more so smug. “I want to make you feel good.” 

He’s paying an awful lot of attention to your hips, which he has not let up massaging and squeezing roughly. 

“Can I..?” he begins, eyes fixed on your hips in his lap. “Can I make you cum?” 

Then, slowly, Wonwoo lifts his hands and gently places them around on your face. His touch is always as soft as a hope-laced wind. He’s warm and he’s alive and he’s holding onto you, and you see it in his eyes: you’re real, you’re right underneath my fingertips. 

“Please.”

That’s all he needs, before he presses his lips against yours.

The kiss is everything you want it to be; because it’s loving. It’s slow, it’s deep, it’s gentle, there’s no tongue, just the soft, warm, real, alive flows of his lips against your own. His hands on both of your cheeks caress your cheekbones gently, and warm air is spilled in the small space between you. He pulls away, panting. 

“I don’t understand it,” he mumbles, before he’s pressing his lips back to yours hungrily. You let out a confused hum, and you have to gently push at his shoulder to back him off again. “What do you mean?” you ask.

“Why you were so alone,” he breathes, transfixed on your lips. “I want to be with you all the time.” 

Before you can respond, Wonwoo grips the underside of your thighs, lifting you and himself from the chair and placing you on the desk. You gasp at the impact when the glass table meets your bottom, and Wonwoo is standing over you, suddenly so tall and so broad, and slimming at the waist. His narrow eyes become hooded behind the reflection of his glasses. His head is tilted down to meet yours.

“Can I take off your clothes, pretty?” 

You don’t answer, only grip the edge of your shirt, tugging it over your head, so your bra-clad chest is exposed to him. He groans at the sight. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he mumbles, nimble fingers dancing across your back to unclip the bra, sucking in a harsh breath the fabric becomes loose, sliding down your arms. “Such a pretty girl.” 

“Stop,” you whisper, face warm and red. Your heart has never beat this way. It’s utterly unbearable and addicting at the same time, it’s without rhythm or class, it’s wild. And it’s because he’s looking at you and it’s not just lust. It’s adoration. There are deeper strings to the make-up of his eyes, there are lines connected to his heart, and he’s all flushed.

“What?” he asks. “I’m just telling you the truth.” 

Wonwoo throws your bra on the floor next to him, hands finding the hem of your pants. “Can I take your pants off?” 

You nod, still so shy and abashed, because Wonwoo’s eyes feel like a pink spotlight, and you are bathed in its warmth. He unbuttons your pants and you gently slide off the table to work them off your legs. 

“Your panties are cute,” Wonwoo remarks (it should feel lewd, but he has a hand on your hip, that brushes the bone and he smiles at it). “Thank you,” you breathe, before you’re taking them off too.

Wonwoo doesn’t need to, but he still insists on gently lifting you back onto the table, and he kisses your nose when you’re sitting before him. He’s standing in between your legs, and then he’s looking down at where wetness drips onto the glass table. 

His hand slides down your stomach, resting on the fat of it. He’s smiling, he’s so gorgeous, because he’s smiling the most gentle smile at how wet you are and how it leaks onto the table and his hand is so warm on your stomach, doing nothing, yet turning you on even more than you’d ever been before.

He sighs like he’s carrying the greatest burden on his broad back. “You’re so pretty,” he says, almost exasperated by it. He pinches some of the fat of your stomach between his fingers lovingly. “I can’t believe I get to have you like this.” 

Then the hand on your stomach slides down further. His large, veiny hand cups your pussy, the tips of his fingers just barely teasing your hole. You whimper against him, hands finding his biceps for support. Wonwoo studies you, craning his neck down to peer at your face, while his fingers begin swaddling your folds. 

“You’re so wet, baby,” he mumbles, trying to catch your eye where you bury into his chest. One finger dips into your hole, penetrating slowly and settling knuckle-deep. 

“Wonnie!” you cry out, squeezing your eyes shut. 

“Mmm, clenching down on Wonnie’s finger so hard. My beautiful girl.” 

He begins pushing his finger in and out of you, pace slow and torturous. His other hand slides up and down your body, squeezing your waist then your thigh, then coming right back up to fondle your chest. He pushes your back flat against the glass, so you’re all splayed out for him and you watch him from there, eyes hooded and legs spread to accommodate him. He breathes in shakily at the sight of you. 

“Shit, Y/n. What were you doing hiding all this from me?” His finger picks up the pace, as another finger slips in alongside it. You’re moaning and panting, lips red and hair mussed, unable to focus on his words, when his fingers curl against that spongy spot inside you. Apparently Wonwoo expects an answer though, because he speaks again, voice lower and rougher. “Hm? You didn’t want to go have lunch? What, was it that guy?”

“W-What?” 

“Just some guy,” Wonwoo echoes your past words, emphasizing with a harsh thrust of his fingers. 

“N-No, I- Hng!” you cry out, when Wonwoo’s thumb presses onto your clit. He rubs it torturously. “I-I was embarrassed because I- I was thinking about you!” 

“Oh?” this catches Wonwoo’s attention, as he diligently works his hand within you, staring down at your naked form, fully clothed and tall. “Tell me what you were thinking about, baby.” 

“This!” you cry out, too high off the pleasure to really feel embarrassed about it.

“Pretty, sweet, dumb baby. You were thinking about you whimpering and writhing while I fuck you with my hand, hm?”

“N-No,” you mumble, cheeks aflame. “W-Was thinking about you l-liking me.” 

At this Wonwoo hastily leans over you, pressing his lips onto yours again, and this time his tongue pries open your mouth, wet and warm in the cavern of your mouth. You moan into the kiss, hips canting into his hand. There’s something so desperate about him then, something so eager in the way he crooks his fingers, and how he kisses you, panting and covering your face in warm air. You feel a tight knot in your stomach.

“Cum on my fingers, please, pretty, sweet, baby, darling,” he mumbles into your mouth, rushing out the words before he’s sealing your lips again. 

“God, I think I might fall in love with you.” 

That makes you cum. You cum so fucking hard, clenching around his fingers like an air-tight seal, and your cum spills onto his fingers and his name spills into his mouth. The curse comes out with it, escaping like the air that spills out from an ancient, rediscovered chamber, and dissipating into the night. Your heart is beating and you’re breathing into his mouth, nose brushing his. 

“Good girl,” he breathes, finally releasing your lips and letting his lips fall heavy and wet on your cheek. 

He pulls out his fingers, unbearably wet and slick, and you think for a second that he’ll let you calm down and then maybe he’ll put his dick in you, but as soon as the fingers are out of you, they’re settling back on to your clit, rubbing heavy-handed circles.

You whine, arching your back off the table and wiggling your hips at the overstimulation. His other hand catches your hip and he shushes your cries softly. 

“You can cum again, can’t you, baby? You can take it,” he says, so nonchalantly, while his slick fingers rub you. You cry out. Your legs are shaking. “Think you can cum again from just this?”

“Y-Yes,” you sigh and when you look down, his entire hand covers your pussy, as he pets your clit in circles. He smiles at your words, pinching your clit teasingly. It causes a squeak to escape you, hips struggling against his hold, where he pins you to the table.

“Good girl,” he praises, purring. “Letting me use your pretty pussy like this, letting me make you feel good.” 

His body in front of you prevents your legs from closing, but, God, do they try, knees pinching his thin waist, and hair bunching up on the glass when your face scrunches up in pleasure. 

“A-a-ah!” you cry out. Your hips involuntarily begin to inch away from him, but Wonwoo pulls you back with one strong hand, tutting. 

“Don’t do that,” he mutters, pouting. “You need to be touched, remember?” 

The whole thing is so heart-achingly intimate. The way he stands, still fully clothed and with a huge fucking tent in his pants, simply rubbing your pussy and looking at you with heart-eyes. Seriously, eyes swimming with adoration for you, teasing words slipping from his mouth unable to mask the genuine wonder he feels, at how you gasp and you arch and you clean and you jerk from the simplest of his movements. And your pussy is so warm and wet under his hand, and his body between your legs is so warm, and you cum again from just that; from how much love he looks at you with, and from the fingers crooking to pinch your clit again, wet and swollen underneath his glistening fingertips. 

“W-Wonwoo!” you cry out, cumming again, and your body convulses around his, when it oozes out of your hole. Wonwoo’s fingers gently work you through it. His gaze on you is so intent, so careful and insistent, you can’t bear it, the way he sees you totally lost in the pleasure he brings you. 

“There you go,” he whispers gently, fingers letting up and disappearing from your pulsating pussy. 

“Wonwoo,” you mewl tiredly, pushing yourself onto your elbows to look up at him. He looks at you, so sweetly, so attentively, hands immediately finding your back to stabilize you. “Can I please have your cock now?” 

“We don’t have to-” 

“I want to!” you interrupt him, brows furrowed and lips in a pout. Wonwoo grins at that and though he may deny it, you don’t miss the red that twinges his cheeks. 

“It’s just if you were too tired..-” 

“I’m not,” you say decidedly, and Wonwoo nods. 

“Okay. C’mere then.” 

You’re confused when Wonwoo sits back down in the office chair, fingers working his slacks open. He doesn’t answer to your grimace though, only manages his pants unzipped and in one lift of his hips, peel both them and his boxers down. 

His cock springs free, and your confused grimace is replaced with one of awe. It’s pale and veiny, the head is red and thin, white liquid oozes from it, like melted candle wax. And it’s huge.

You’re too slow to mask your amazement, it seems, because when your eyes return to his face, he’s already looking at you, smiling smugly. 

“Come ride me, baby.” 

You don’t need to be told twice. You slide off the table eagerly, lumbering over to where he’s relaxed against the back of the chair. He looks up at you, all naked and pretty, with a grin. 

The top buttons of his dress shirt are unbuttoned, but he must’ve given up halfway. Either way, the milky plates of his chest are exposed, shining gloriously in the warm office light, and he discards his glasses, face fully exposed to you. He’s beautiful, and you think to tell him.

“You’re beautiful,” you whisper, planting each leg around his, so you’re straddling him. Like your ritual, Wonwoo grips your middle and pulls you closer, but this time it’s even closer than normal. Your stomach meets his dick, all heavy and hot on your skin, and your breath hitches at the sensation. 

“You’re beautiful,” he teases, looking up at you. You smile. 

“Can I put it in?” you ask. 

“As if the answer was ever gonna be no?” 

You snort out a laugh, raising yourself by your thighs and gripping the base of his dick to steer him inside. He hisses at the feeling of your hand grappling with his impressive size, and he hisses once more when the head of his cock buries into your heat. 

His hands on your waist anchor himself while you slowly sink down, until he’s so fully sheathed in you, you think the tip of his cock must be brushing your heart, because it feels like it’s swinging in your chest. 

“You’re so big,” you whimper, clutching his broad shoulders, and scrunching the fabric on top of them. 

“Don’t say shit like that, I’m gonna cum, babe,” he grits out, fingers bruising your waist. You mewl, clutching his shirt. Then you begin to bounce. 

Your thighs flex on either side of him as you heave up and down his cock, the both of you gasping into each other, and clutching each other for stability. 

“Shit,” he pants out, genuinely out of breath. “Fuck, you’re the loveliest girl in the world.”

You cry out, pressure already welling in your stomach and burying yourself in his neck like you’ve always done, and it’s so intimate and he’s warm, and, fuck, he wants you. You can feel it in his grip, in his cock, in his words; he wants you more than anything. The thought makes you wanna cum. 

Wonwoo is not quiet at all. He grunts and whines and his words are strangled and garbled, but frequent, showering you in affection and praise, while you bounce eagerly on his huge cock. 

“You’re so pretty, baby.” 

“Your tits are so perfect, shit.”

“Pretty girl.” 

“Loveliest, prettiest, sweetest girl, bouncing on my cock, fuck.”

Praises spill from his lips in purrs, one after another, and when you cum you can’t help but return it tenfold. 

“Wonwoo, Wonwoo, Wonnie, fuck! Gonna- fucking cum, I think I’m- f-falling in love with you”

You and Wonwoo come alive. Cum spurts from his cock and into your pussy, and you both cry out, entangled and completing one another in the space where you meet. 

And it’s true, falling in love with him is so easy. And falling in love with you is easy too, you realize, because the second he’s spilled his cum in you, he pulls you from his neck to kiss you so deeply, so thoroughly, you think your lips might never unpuff from his hasty, bitten kisses. 

His cock, now soft, still inside you, his warm chest against yours, his nose nudging yours, his eyelashes fluttering against your skin, the kiss is totally perfect, and you’re warm, and the windows are all closed and fogged up and there’s no curse other than the most fatal and most perfectly tantalizing of them all: love. 

You are not alone. You’re sitting in his lap and you think if you give it a day or two more, you might want to spend the rest of your life with him. 

You catch your breaths. 

“You’re really good at that,” you say finally. He grins again, perfectly undone, hair tousled and cheeks flushed. “Yeah?” he asks. You hum. 

After some minutes of keeping him inside you, kissing lazily, running your hands over his pretty chest and arms, you pull back, beginning to flex your legs to pull him out of you. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, hands wafting to still your movements. You furrow your brows, confused. 

“Am getting your dick out of me?” 

His hands sink down on your hips heavily, fully encompassing his dick again. You sigh at the feeling. 

“Don’t do that, silly. You’re touch-starved, remember?” 

He tilts his head teasingly. 

“So why don’t you just sit snug on my cock, so you can get all the closeness you need?”

[the-dixon-effect]

Lover, you should've come over

A/N: i had this idea a while ago just never got around to writing it. it's v fluffy, a little angsty and just the right amount of trauma, and the title from jeff buckley ofc. hope you enjoy lovelies :')

era: season 6, pre-Negan Alexandria

prompt: "Ya don't ever have to say sorry. Not to me."

summary: Y/N is feeling particularly affected by her past trauma sometime during the group's transition to the suburban atmosphere of Alexandria.

words: 1.5k

pairing: Daryl Dixon x f!reader

warnings: self-harm, anxiety, suggestive

9pm The garage; dark, gloomy, the perfect hiding spot.

The rest of the group was having dinner, courteously cooked by Carol, in the dining area of your shared house. Rick was right, it was going to take some considerable time before everyone properly adjusted to the strange atmosphere of the unaffected suburban paradise that was Alexandria. It seemed, however, that despite the incredible amount of time your people, your family, had spent surviving outside these walls, everybody was fitting in just fine.

The houses were strange, untouched, and the people even stranger. It was like this tiny pocket of the new world was a time capsule, a preserved artefact of an ancient time, all but forgotten to most. It felt like if you were to get too close, immerse yourself too much, the time would come when this place would come crashing down, and bring you down with it. Not only did this place feel like a fever dream about the old world, it also brought back certain memories from the past that you'd tried so desperately to leave behind.

So here you were, an empty seat at the dining room table. You pressed your back against the wall and hugged your legs to your chest. You wondered if they would even notice you weren't there.

Almost-silent sniffles were the only sounds that filled the dim room. The last of the daylight filtered through the tiny gap between the garage door and the ground. You rolled up the sleeves of your flannel shirt to reveal a checkerboard of familiar scratches and cuts, only half visible due to the distinct lack of light in the room. Your head rolled backwards, almost on its own, and hit the wall with a thud. Your eyes swelled with tears just as quick as the memories had come flooding back.

Maybe it wasn't this place. Or the people. Maybe it was just you. No point running now, you thought. You can escape from everything and everyone you love, but you'll never escape yourself, a part of you tried to tell yourself. No matter how far you run, your past, your scars, they will always remain.

9:30pm Despite Y/N's assumption that her absence at dinner would go unnoticed, she was wrong. A certain archer's eyes searched for yours but failed to meet them across the table. "Where's Y/N?" he asked, filling the silence. When all he received was a fleeting glance around the room from members of the group, he swiftly returned to his former position of silence.

"She's probably over at Aaron and Eric's. I heard they were having a couple people over for dinner tonight," said Michonne, a little dismissively.

Daryl shared your feelings about this strange community, and he too understood your lack of trust. Even before adjusting to the end of the world, he certainly would have felt uneasy in a place like this. People like him, like you, they're not supposed to be living in a place like this, pretending to forget about the world outside the walls. Paradise is no place for us, he thought.

Once dinner was finished and the chatter had died down, Daryl slipped off in an effort to find you, and he couldn't help but worry.

9:45pm After searching the whole damn neighbourhood and finding no one who knew where you were, he started to assume the worst. What if she left, ran away somehow? What if she went on a run and got hurt? No, no, he couldn't lose you, not when the both of you had just got here.

Suddenly he remembered the conversation he had with you last night, out on the porch. The stars were out, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, you could look up and admire them in somewhat safety. And they were beautiful. And the two of you sat and talked and talked and just watched those stars. He loved to just listen to you, in truth, he wanted to hear all your stories. Even the bad ones, the regretful ones, perhaps he just needed to hear your voice. He thought back to something you'd said, and his mind suddenly went overdrive with worry. A particular memory you'd recalled, and said that you'd never told anybody this before, alluding to an especially bad habit you'd broken. Could that be... self-harm? He was pretty sure he'd seen those marks on your arm, or he saw something, at least, that wasn't caused by walkers.

He started to go over every single place in his mind where you might be hiding, doing more harm to yourself than good by not speaking up. Your bedroom, the attic, the basement, the yard, the garage. The one place the rest of the group wouldn't think to look for you, if they even came looking at all, you thought. Except for Daryl, who had been working in there on his bike all day.

You could even sense it now, the oil, the tools, and the summer heat, even in the nighttime. As you thought of him, the whole place started to feel like him. You weren't even sure if you liked it or not, the familiar fondness you'd developed for him, but despite your loveable manner, you were so determined to be alone. To not appear as some anxious little presence going about the place.

The door swung open and the first thing you noticed was the light that streamed in, illuminating your tear-stained face.

"Y/N! Y/N, are ya' in here?" You buried your face in your hands as you approached the archer, weakly.

"Hey, hey, what's goin' on?" he drawled. Daryl placed his torch down and stepped a little closer to you, not in a threatening, fearsome way, but in an intimate way, a way that felt like you could be safe with him.

"Can- Do you think you could shut the door?" you said, sniffling a little as you spoke. He followed your request and returned to where he stood before, deep blue eyes locked on your pitiful face.

10pm It felt like there was nothing to be said, no way to express your feelings in a way that somebody could understand. It would be just perfect if, in this moment, he was able to read your mind somehow. Hesitantly, you rolled up your sleeves as you had done before and looked straight up at him with those wide eyes. It was a sight to behold, that was for sure, and if he could put aside every ounce of sorrow he felt just looking at the scars, he was grateful to be the one who you came to.

"This place, it's like- it's like a well," you were struggling to speak. The tears were flowing now, and you felt embarrassed to have this much emotion on display. "Couple days after we got here, I just started to remember, you know. The stuff you don't wanna remember. Just feel trapped, you know," your voice seemed to trail away as your closed your eyes. Nothing to be done now, you supposed.

When you looked up at Daryl again, you were suddenly overcome by a rush of guilt. "Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Daryl..."

He pulled you into a tight hug at once and whispered into your soft hair that he held so gently. "No, no darlin'..." he spoke. "Ya' don't ever have to say sorry. Not to me." Perhaps if you were thinking straight you would've tried a little harder to appreciate the moment. His distinct scent, the notes of sweet cigarettes, pinewood and thunderstorms. Instead, you cried into his shoulder as his other hand rubbed gentle lines up and down your back.

You pulled away from the embrace, keeping your arms draped around his neck. He was captured by those pretty eyes of yours, though glassed over completely, and held the silent eye contact. He lifted his right hand and softly held your arm, tracing your goosebumps with his calloused fingertips. And you just stared up at him, looking for the reassurance in his eyes that you knew you would always find.

Sensing your pain, Daryl brought your forearm to his lips and pressed sweet kisses on those same self-inflicted scars. You gazed up at him and mustered the best smile you could, as a sign to continue. You slipped off your flannel shirt revealing the little white t-shirt that you wore underneath. Moving further up the length of your arm, he planted soft kisses on your shoulder, and then your neck. The intimacy brought more overstimulated tears to your straining eyes. The only thing you knew how to do in this moment was simply grip him tighter. "Never let me go," you whispered.

Perhaps you didn't need to be alone after all.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 410: Kacchan Fights a Baby

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan was born and then he grew up and murdered the Demon Lord.

Today on BnHA: Kacchan fights a baby. Tomura and Deku finally remember that they were supposed to have been fighting too this entire time, and get on with that once again. Tomura is all, “[literally just reaches out and grabs Deku’s face because Deku’s main character powers suddenly abandoned him in a fit of confusion].” Deku is all, “[chops off Tomura’s fingers which is somehow not even in the top twenty of violent things that have happened in this series in just the last five chapters].” Tomura is all “joke’s on you I still got your quirk :D” and fuck me he actually stole Danger Sense, what the fuck.

logically I knew AFO still had to be alive somehow because he’s too big of a villain to go out that easily without a proper sendoff. but deep in my heart, I’m still secretly disappointed

it just isn’t fair, lol. this guy has died more times than Rasputin and he’s still out here scheming his schemey schemes. when oh when will it end

sir you did not just say you had yet ANOTHER unused trump card up your sleeve??

(ETA: the translation isn’t fully clear here, but I think the trump card he’s referring to is the whole “I’ll just go back inside him and join the part of me that was already in there and we’ll take over Tomura’s body again together” plan that he was trying to pull off. I think. if not though, that’s certainly something worth speculating about.)

well as always the psychology in this series is unironically fascinating! he just wants acknowledgement at the end of the day, huh. just wants some love and attention. too bad he was born in a rat-infested hellscape and learned all the wrong lessons and turned into a crazed omnipotent murderlad

also he really did turn back into a baby sdfsdlkjfl oh no. I need to see Katsuki’s reaction to this immediately

oh my lord

(●__●)

lmao this is so incredibly fucked up

ngl though, this is karma at its finest. he tortured and killed so many people trying to earn everyone’s fear and awe and reverence, only to literally blip out of existence at the end with absolutely nothing to show for it

everyone please enjoy this series of panels of a deeply vexed Bakugou Katsuki picking a fight with this slowly melting evil baby

“you think I care that you’re a baby now. you think I won’t fight a fuckin’ baby. let’s do this you little punk”

also I’m sorry but it’s absolutely ridiculous that the gigantic chest wound Tomura inflicted on him got sewed up so neatly lol. AFO’s not the only one who stubbornly refuses to die no matter what

...

just once, it would be nice if Horikoshi didn’t immediately shred my plot nitpicks to pieces mere seconds after I write them

LMAO

BABY AFO DON’T CARE. BABY AFO WILL THROW HANDS WITH ANYONE ＼(｀0´)／

KACCHAN MY BELOVED FAVE OF ALL TIME, ARE YOU REALLY ABOUT TO LOSE TO A LITERAL FUCKING INFANT

WHAT HAPPENED TO “PERFECT VICTORY” LMAO. MOVING THE GOALPOSTS EVEN AS HIS CONSCIOUSNESS FADES. “EH, CLOSE ENOUGH”

-- OH FOR THE LOVE OF --

me: wow it sure is uncharacteristic of Katsuki to just pass out before he properly wraps up this battle

Horikoshi: oh yeah good point, sure would be a shame if someone... IMMEDIATELY ADDRESSED THAT CONCERN ON THE VERY NEXT PAGE

me: ఠ_ఠ

ldskjflaksdjfkds

fdsfsdkf. “SORRY ABOUT THAT, FOR A MOMENT THERE I ALMOST FORGOT TO BEND THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE TO MY WILL”

holy fucking shit. his body was all “um, just a quick reminder that you’re HORRIBLY WOUNDED and have lost like ten gallons of blood and all of your cells are about to call an emergency meeting to shut this thing down before you get us all killed.” and he was all “WHAT WAS THAT?!” and his body was all “oh my GOD, FUCK, OKAY just forget we said anything”

and meanwhile Baby AFO is just lying there all “(◉⌓◉)”

this six-month-old child is truly and sincerely still trying to kill Kacchan while screeching death threats in high-pitched baby talk

this actually would have killed him too, if he’d succeeded in passing out. all that just to be punk’d by a damn baby

you are actually shitting me right now

at this point I’m genuinely not sure which of them has the more powerful angry toddler energy

oh no ffuffkdsfk

meeeeelting. meeeeeeltiiiiiing!!! oh what a world what a world

jesus Horikoshi I am genuinely speechless

... welp

WAIT NO WAY, REALLY?!?!

?!?!?! WAS IT ACTUALLY THAT SIMPLE THIS WHOLE TIME

-- lkjf

three times. three times in the same fucking chapter. I give up. apparently I’ll literally believe anything this man says. does it feel good, Horikoshi. preying on your readers’ hopeful naivete

yeefuckinghaw lmao

GOOD JOB KACCHAN YOU DEFEATED THE EVIL BABY

awwwww

I actually had a theory about this! well more of a wishlist item, really. I can’t remember if I’ve actually posted about it yet or not. but it’s like. you know how Deku and Kacchan are always being really dramatic about holding hands? wanting to hold hands; not wanting to hold hands; being afraid to hold hands; holding hands via proxy, etc. etc.?

and you know how both Endeavor and All Might have each done their own version of the victory pose that Kacchan is referring to here? with each one using a different hand?

so you see, I was thinking that it might be nice. might be a little poetic and all that. if at the end of the fight, Deku and Kacchan did, in fact, hold hands. and then did the victory pose together. and it became like their iconic hero moment. them standing there together. having accomplished their goal and defeated TomurAFO through teamwork. realizing their shared childhood dream. and sharing that moment of triumph with each other and with the world, ushering in a new era of heroes

anyway yeah. I was thinking that might be a pretty good ending. but it looks like Kacchan maybe really is about to pass out here now, lol, so maybe not? anyways time to finally scroll down

-- okay I literally said awww again out loud

what a fucking nerd. I have never felt more fondness for a character in my life

every damn person watching this on the news better have leaped to their feet and started applauding, goddammit. those motherfuckers better be CHANTING HIS FUCKING NAME. all those nagging reporters better be bombarding his phone with calls. those fuckers who deleted his footage from the Shouto interview better be shamelessly leaving him dozens of voicemails acting like none of that ever happened and presumptuously asking when he can free some time in his schedule to visit their studio again. all the heroes who haven’t hugged him yet better be lining the fuck up. that one guy from the post-kidnapping press conference in chapter 86 better be writing a fifty page letter of apology!!

oh hey it’s a random pre-battle flashback mysteriously taking place in Troy “a few days before the battle” even though I thought they only moved into that place the night before the fight

I love how Katsuki immediately narrows his eyes (I assume. we can’t see for sure but that’s the vibe I get) at Jeanist and has to resist the urge to call the police on him for that pun

so Hadou’s wondering what Jeanist is talking about because they already evacuated the civilians, so what else are they trying to protect. and Edgeshot is all, “well obviously we’ve gotta protect everyone’s future,” which is a nice... rearshadowing?? for him saving Katsuki’s life later on lol

and now Mirko is all “get to the fucking point already.” which, same

so Jeanist says that Tomura is an even bigger problem than AFO, because at least AFO doesn’t want to murder everyone on the entire planet. and he concludes with “he’ll probably try to touch the ground and use his quirk.” which is a conclusion that I have to say wasn’t really worth two pages of flashback buildup for, considering that we all figured that out years ago

I’m guessing this is all just some sort of awkward transition back to Deku’s fight now lol

and now we’re getting two pages of exposition on how long it would theoretically take Tomura’s Decay to spread throughout the city, and then the entire country, yikes

damn. talk about stakes

and now finally back to Deku!!

shoutout to everyone who correctly predicted that Deku was once again talking out of his ass when it came to being out of Gearshifts. we all knew. unlimited supply

wow Tomura way to throw AFO under the bus

the way I recall it, AFO wasn’t the one who failed to kill him back then lol. but go ahead and talk your shit king

DEKU WHAT ARE YOU DOING

holy shit?!?!

like my first thought was “well last time he did this he just tried to steal OFA rather than Decay him, so he’ll probably try that again and it’ll be fine.” only to remember that the AFO inside Tomura is currently permanently(?) out to lunch, and Tomura himself doesn’t give two figs about stealing OFA. so, uhhhh >_>

(ETA: nevermind.)

but then this happened

Deku what the actual fuck

OH MY GOD??!?!

HOLY SHIT

okay. okay, fuck. lemme gather up my thoughts, and then we’ll wrap this up

they’ll never admit it, but you know the other OFA Vestiges secretly resented Shino a tiny bit for being the only one of them to not be gruesomely murdered. bet they all feel guilty for thinking that now

Shino and Banjou also seemed to have this cute little pseudo-rivalry thing going on, so I really feel bad for Banjou now. :/ he looks so horrified in that bottom right panel

gotta admit, I did not see this coming in the slightest. OFA has been this immutable “I do what I want!” quirk for so long that I never thought Tomura or AFO would actually succeed in stealing it, even partially. that shook me to my core

BUT, it’s also really exciting to me because it’s going to make this battle much more interesting if Deku can’t use his get out of jail free card. shit just got way more real and I’m here for it

lastly, so! let me tell you guys my prediction. I still can’t see Tomura being the final villain lol. I just can’t. it feels too anticlimactic. if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I’ve certainly botched MANY predictions in the past, but I have not yet learned my lesson from any of it and I will not apologize lol

so here’s what I think. Deku and Tomura battle it out for the next chapter or two, and Tomura snatches up more of Deku’s quirks one by one. we see all of the Vestiges disappearing and the mood gets more and more desperate. eventually we’re down to just Kudou and Yoichi. Deku is panicking, but for some reason Kudou seems even MORE panicked

Kudou/Gearshift eventually gets stolen too, and it looks like this might finally be it for Deku (I have no idea how he’d stop Tomura from Decaying the ground once Blackwhip gets stolen, btw, but maybe Katsuki or someone else interferes in desperation towards the end). but just when it looks like Tomura is finally going to take the last piece of OFA, Deku’s vibes suddenly do a 180, stopping Tomura in his tracks

cut to the OFA Moon Gorgeous Meditation Realm, where Deku and Yoichi are staring at the door -- yes, that door -- in shock. because it’s finally been opened (now that the other Vestiges are no longer there to keep it at bay). and just like that, enter AFO, for the THIRD FUCKING TIME :D :D

tl;dr, HERE’S HOW HORCRUX!DEKU CAN STILL HAPPEN!!! wait where are you all going. wait come back

anyway so wow that was a really bizarre chapter that I truly thoroughly enjoyed, which should probably be a bit concerning. on to the next two week break! (for anyone who’s not aware, Shounen Jump will be on break next week, so yeah.) I’m on chapter 391 now. so close but still so far. the end of the year has gone by too damn fast tbh

[levi-ish]

You’d been fucking Eren for a few months now. Started at a party where you both were bored and a little drunk, so it felt like a great idea for him to fuck your brains out in that tiny bathroom.

It was perfect, to be honest. You two were good friends before, and being able to satisfy your desires wherever and whenever was a god’s given. It would take a fool not to realize how hot the man was, from the tanned skin to the dazzling green eyes that reminded you of emeralds — plus the fuckboy aura he had all over him. He was already attracted to you before, too, so it took one night, a few bottles of cheap beer and you bending over a sink.

Waking up from a hot dream? A quick text and he would be there, folding you in half and ramming your body into your mattress. Stress taking over your mind after exams? He would make sure all your worries went away by sucking the soul out of you from between your legs. Feeling too alone in the morning? He would come bearing pastries from the bakery downstairs and then treat himself to some nice dessert.

No feelings involved. At this point, he had already explored your whole body and knew all your weaknesses, so did you. The match was like a puzzle that fit just right. He could cum on your tongue, you could ride his face, he could thrust into you like you were his sex doll, you could use him however you’d like, and when you were done, you were both satisfied and then left to follow your lives separately. It was perfect.

Until one evening, right after you had just closed the door after letting him into your old apartment and heard a small ‘hey buddy’ from behind, turning around to find that big caveman crouched down, playing with your cat.

Your kitten turned around on the carpet, greeting him with a purr as Eren’s hands caressed under his ears. And for a second, your heart skipped a beat.

Didn’t take too long before he was towering over you and grabbing your hips to throw you over his shoulder like his prey and take you to your room. He then fucked you roughly.

Your legs were still wobbling as you saw him out, not before watching your cat clinging to his jeans, as if to beg for him to stay.

That wasn’t normal. You’d gotten your cat for a few years now, and he wasn’t a very welcoming pet. He would hide when people came over, avoid everyone as the little antisocial that he was. He did the same with Eren at first, until you noticed how he would keep close distance when you two were making out on the couch, our how he would sit on the kitchen counter and stare at the big man while you grabbed him beer.

But for him to actually play with Eren? No, not usual. At all.

It got worse from that, he would jump on the brunette’s lap as you were making out, scratch the door as his head was between your legs, make a fuss when Eren was about to leave. And the weird way that your heart started to fail its beats as you watched all that… that wasn’t supposed to happen.

One night, after you were done with your… activities, you were taking a small nap, and your cat entered your room and laid right by Eren’s side and fell asleep under his arm. You watched that with widened eyes, how both of them slept soundly, and how cozy that felt. For a second, you thought to yourself how you could grow used to seeing that, and the feeling scared you.

What now? Were you growing feelings for Eren because of your stupid cat?

But the way both of their breaths synchronized as they laid under the golden hour, you had to tighten your lips in order not to squeal.

Laying back into your pillow, you placed a hand over the man’s chest and quickly felt his arm sneak from under you to envelop your waist and keep you close. A smile formed in your lips as you looked up to find that he held the same expression as you did. With that, you listened to his heart rushing and the purrs by your side, falling asleep once again.

based on this post

[prettynalilmagic]

ℙ𝕚𝕔𝕜 𝔸 ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕕: 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕠𝕨 𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕜- ℝ𝕖𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤𝕚𝕠𝕟

Decks: Considerate Cat Tarot Vol 2, The Dark Mirror, Tarot of Pagan Cats, The Wild Unknown Archetypes

This reading will be shadow work based on what exactly are we repressing and not aware of. And how to work through it with advice from me and tarot. Take everything as a small guide, tarot is a tool for guidance and not to see or predict the future.

Pile one

First things first, Go get therapy.

"Its not about choosing the chains.

Its about choosing them again and again."

Pile one welcome to your little section. So, I had a theme card for your overall shadow, which was Addicted. At first, I was troubled with finding out exactly what type of addiction was causing you to repress your shadow, and I kept pulling cards and I realized that your shadow is built on way too many situations that come back to your dissatisfaction from your life. Pile One your addicted to hating yourself. You have heavy cards that show me that there’s this feeling of self-inflicted despair. Your shadow emits contempt for life, you hate yourself and honestly hate life overall. The hanged Man in reverse shows me that you grew up very much internally, most of your experiences are based inwardly as you felt left behind on life. Everyone seemed to reject you. Your loved ones, and people who are supposed to be close, turned their backs on you at some point so in turn you did the same. The world rejected you growing up. Life showed you, that you aren’t deserving of love, so you internalized that and have subconsciously clung onto that delusion.

Pile one do you feel like nothing can change you? Nothing can fix you? That things will stay the same or get worse over time? Have you even thought about how you feel about yourself truly? When was the last time you willingly reflected on your own self-image? Do you think there's any motivation for you to live your life beyond what traps you? Going back to your theme card, your repression is very much self-imprisoned. You don’t see you can work through any internal conflict and you in turn have been chaining your own self to depression. Nobody is perfect, that's true, but self-discovery is beautiful however it's also difficult. This won't be an easy task.

Mentally, you’re at rock bottom almost every day. Do you dissociate a lot? Do you even know if you do? Because I recently discovered that I dissociate a whole lot throughout my life and have never known I was doing it. Human brains are truly mind blowing, it can take and hold so much stress and pain, then hide it away from us so when we don’t keep reliving and feeling all that hurt.

Nobody wants to struggle and be depressed, and our brain very much plays a part in helping us hide it away. Chances are you downplay or don’t care to think or consider your own shadow self.

I'm not fit to diagnose, but pile one look into Complex Trauma, C-PTSD, and being Shame Bound. Learn about various types of traumas, habits, and attachment styles on YouTube it will help you get a rough idea on understanding what you need to improve on without using therapy. However, please if you can, look into seeing a psychologist and a therapist.

I know life is super tough as it is for you and you might not be able to afford it but research if there's anything you can afford and if you truly have searched, look into self-help groups online and self-help programs as well. There are free eBooks you can illegally get, pirate that shit. Get a tarot deck for yourself and do shadow work readings. Also please stop reading all the dumbass future partner and next lover readings, invest love into your own damn self before investing it onto some person you most likely haven’t even met or aren’t going to meet. Sorry it's a pet peeve of mine. Chances are you’re reading this on your phone or computer, get on the notes app and write out that little ass of yours. Please there’s still so many ways to make your own mental stability easier on yourself. There's so much stuff you can do if you truly look into it, I recommend watching Patrick Teahan, Heidi Priebe, Psych2Go, and Kati Morton, they're my personal favorite therapy youtubers, and they can help you.

Okay going back to the cards, and not my own personal input, the hanged man in reversed also shows me that it was your environment growing up that has formed you into who you are. Life for you looked like everything was so big and almost outta reach for you to grasp, but you’re still here, you have developed habits that has made growing up easier, you learn to get by.

Which leads me to the present, you got the 9 of cups, meaning that your experiences have made you who you are. It ties back to all those built of moments of isolation and lack of love for yourself that you grew up with. Obviously when we grow up knowing others are treating or making you feel some type of way, you take from that and build your mindset on all those experiences.

This hatred is what we use to get by and we build ourselves up to work with our hatred. You know you felt like you are replaceable or have a deep fear of being left behind, we go outta our way to justify being the ones to leave others and replace other people with anything else to get that same feeling, until the same trigger happens. It's a never-ending cycle and growing up it can actually be helpful. As a child we only experienced all the heavy emotions and were not shown consistent or significant amount of effort for our needs, so we learn to not expect that and run away from anything that triggers that little child in you. No one was there to show love so obviously unhealthy habits and mindsets get developed and grow up with us and only gets worse and worse as time flies by. Pile one, you are depressed and hopeless but cheer up, just because your life hasn’t been the best does not equate to that being a set-in stone reality for the rest of your life.

You can make your own life better; the daughter of cups reverse shows me that there's this desire to play around with stuff, just do it. Stop thinking about it, do it. Fuck shit up, stop being afraid of messing stuff up, you think the ones who have hurt you stopped when they were making you feel not cared for or loved? Nope, so just have fun.

Do that fun hobby idea you been thinking about. Get messy with life, even if it is creating something very sloppy. You want to express yourself some type of way but feel like you shouldn’t? Well just do it, even if you feel like a joke or an idiot just try it and see how it feels. Even if you don’t necessarily want to do something or show off a different look or skill, and your more so afraid of making mistakes and not being perfect, just push that thought to the back of your head.

If you spill your drink and make a mess, guess what you can clean it up, you don't have to get mad at yourself or at the drink. Shit happens, and why should you submerge yourself into all the small things with these big emotions like anger and sadness. Relax and rest those pretty eyes. Which goes into your last main card, Four of Swords. Again, relax for once, don’t guilt yourself. Everyone who has it easy, allows themself to relax from time. Even if they don’t doesn't mean that you should do the same thing. Have fun, learn more about who you are and why you are here. There’s so much self-sabotage that goes unnoticed by everyone.

Learn from yourself, thank who you had to become to get to here, and learn how to work past that when that shadow side doesn't help you anymore. You don’t have to 100% love yourself to overcome your shadow. Because here’s the thing, you’re not overcoming it, you’re learning to accept it and work with it to do better. Your shadow is who you are and use it to your ability to grow. Pile one get outta here and watch some therapy videos pls, you will be happier even for just a second.

Pile Two

"What I can't have forever, I will have for a minute. What I can't have for a minute, I will hold to me for one second."

Hello pile two, welcome to your pile. I assume for the most part your shadow is not something you shy away from because quite frankly there's not a significant amount of repression that is being displayed; I feel like this kind of shifted into a little bit of a motivational reading from your guides to tell you about one specific flaw in you rather to tackle down one serious hindering issue.

You guys got two theme cards for your theme of the overall shadow side that you're repressing. I pulled Masquerade and Queen of my world, for you pile two. Both cards have one thing in common. Both are attached to the word Bargain. Which tells me that you tend to do the most to procrastinate the process of bad emotions or habits. Masquerade is all about living in the moment and doing everything in your power to savor and dwell into the fleeting moments you so desperately want to hold onto and stick to. Queen of my world is all about holding onto a facade that hinders the possibility of being seen as anything other than graceful and powerful. You also pulled the daughter of wands in reversed. Which tells me that you procrastinate as well, and you can honestly be very disorderly as well.

You repress your shadow self because of how uncomfortable you are for being seen as who you wish you could be.

You know when we live our whole lives trying to maintain a certain image, it can be so hard and honestly draining. It makes sense why you want to slack off and just live in the moment because maintaining the way you think you have to come off to other people is very draining and if you think about it, your facade is stressful weather you are or aren't aware of it. Having live off of short moments and a false persona is only going to fulfill you for so long, do you think pretending to be stronger, smarter, or fiercer than you really going to stop you from embracing your true inner strength? Because aren't you tired of always having to consistently perform? I don't know if you are even doing it for yourself because doing that for so long will tire you out and make you unsure of who you are deep down.

Pile two, I did pull the son of cups. Which is a very charming and very appealing person to be around, this just reinforces that you will be this at all times for everyone and everything. Given that this is the card that's supposed to represent your present reality, I believe that you are a very much cookie cutter desired person. Someone who is always on top of how you appear as. All I see is that there's this big grand facade of being this person that is so desirable and welcoming. Everyone wants to present themselves in a good light to an extent but for you pile two it's very apparent that this isn't a want for you, it is a need and you do whatever needs to be done to be this beautiful picture-perfect version of yourself, but your human, so guess what? You are at a point where you have to chill out and learn to be yourself, not the ideal version at all times. It's okay to not be what everyone else wants you to be, or what your parents want you to be or whoever else you want to idealize you. You're a human, you're only capable of so much, you're flawed, and you can want to do or partake in things that are different from what should be expected from you. 

I pulled The High Priestess in reversed for you as clarification for Son of Cups.  Which tells me that you are a very spiritual person, which would make sense, you are reading a tarot reading. Besides that, it brings up to light that your inner self is not being done justice.

Do you even understand who you truly are? Not what you think you have to be to maintain approval.

This facade habit is not aligned with your highest potential. Because face it, do you think you will be happy for the rest of your life pretending to be something that isn't the real you? Just because others think you will be does not make that idea a reality, stop deceiving your true potential.

I don't want to assume but my guess is you may or may not have immigrant parents that have kind of forced this urgency to be a certain way to please them. At the end of the day, you know how you want to be or wish to be. If you don't relate to that portion obviously disregard it, it could be anything from grades, skills, and appearance. Maybe it's a controlling figure, which could be a lover or a person in power over you causing you to feel like you cannot be authentically yourself. 

The next card for you is Chariot, which is all about heading straight to where you want to be. Who you want to be. Nobody is going to be able to do it for you. You have built a wonderful mask for yourself for so long that it'll be hard to take it off and learn what you look like when you aren't wearing one. It will be unnatural to you at first, but you will get used to it. You got this pile two. I hope the best for you beautiful. 

Pile Three

"I cannot recognize myself. But I'm still me."

Welcome to your reading Pile three. I pulled two oracle cards; Downcast Pride and Is this Me, which the purpose is to reflect on the main themes of your reading. Is this Me is associated with the last stage the Dark Mirrors Oracle grief cycle, which the stage of acceptance, whereas Downcast Pride is associated with the depression stage.

Which brings up the primary point- your shadow self that is being repressed, is your own lack of attachment to joy or fulfillment for your life. This pile does remind me a lot about pile one, as both were attached to the stage of depression. There's been this emptiness in our lives for so long, that we become very dull in life and don't bother to work or see things in a way outside of that empty feeling. Yet, on contrast to pile one, pile three is more so at the phrase of depression morphing into the stage of acceptance. Pile three has wisdom and more insight compared to both previous piles. Pile three you have this inward recognition that everyone is within means of having the capacity to alter your method of thinking and act based on that. You're the more self-aware pile so congratulations on that. I got the High Priestess reversed, Nine of Cups reversed, and Two of Swords as the cards to represent what is being repressed from your past. Nine of Cups was the overall main card for the first question and when it's in reversed I read it as dissatisfaction despite all the opportunities that have been given to us. Perhaps, we overestimated what should be given or granted to us and are disappointed that we don't feel satisfied even if our needs have generally been met. In other words, even though you didn't have the worst hand in life, you're not content. It's possible, you have taken your status, or a piece of your own identity for granted. Given the length of time we have used certain facets of our identity for so long, or maybe even briefly; our perspective of our identity can very much be impacted with that facet we once were attached to and what we used to represent. And it also plays a significant role in preserving our happiness and contentment. Now, this "opportunity" or fragment of identify has gotten away as time gives space for it to vanish off. Life is all about change, it's difficult to accept yet we can't and shouldn't allow it to dictate our personal fulfillment. Change is devasting but so is self-pity, a little self-pity is healthy for you, too much is detrimental for us to expand ourselves onto newer and better things. This could mean anything, such as growing up thin and gorgeous. Years go by and now you've gained more weight than you like, eyes have become dull and wrinkly skin has formed in the corners of your eyes, forehead, arms and almost your entire body. Maybe you're blaming yourself for not earning as much money or for not being able to get the same level of love, appreciation or attention from other people. It could be anything—even a passion that ignited a fire in your life that has gradually faded over time. (Mind you, I am not saying that if you picked pile three you have to be old enough to be worrying about wrinkles or having to make more money from the previous year, any age group could pick this. School, family and mental/physical illnesses can be factors as well not just time itself.) Two of Swords also brings up a different point, that highlights being at a standoff with decision-making. Pile three, did you make a lot of decisions based off of what someone else told you was better or what would best suit someone else? Two of swords displays a lot of lack of self-assurance and I think that part of your fulfillment that's displayed from Downcast Pride roots from not being more assertive in your own personal decisions. The High Priestess is a very spiritual card, and as it is included in the spread's earlier sections, I interpret this to mean that either an inner wisdom has been present but has been clouded by the lack of purpose and achievement. You have potential, but with all this chaotic energy, you have suppressed a lot of this fulfillment. Even after all this time has passed and you still feel as though you are in the same place in life. How come you never knew or tried to figure out what you wanted to do? You're not content and have felt like happiness and fulfillment hasn't been present in life. Pile three, it has to feel devastating for you.

Another way that I’m reading the high priestess is that the high priestess is all about our inner calling and inner wisdom. Based on the other two cards, I would say that this is what is blocking off all this magical, inner wisdom being brought up. Meaning, we must solve our own issues to let our inner voice be shined. Seek assistance from anyone or any place that might help you becoming more aware of your inner reality.

You also got the Son of Cups and Judgement reversed. Which just reinforces what I said the previous paragraph. Son of Cups represents a charming and idealistic person that everyone loves and desires. Whilst Judgement reversed is highlighting missed opportunities and failure. Failure to be the Sun of Cups. Failure to grow past who you used to be.

Mourn your past. Accept it’s not with you anymore. Move on so you can grow. I am aware it’s easier said than done, but it still needs to be addressed.

Lamenting over who you wish you still were, or where you want to be is rather pointless. Stop wishing for something thats now unattainable for you. Look for the new you, answers and solutions for yourself. Morph into something better so that the old you would’ve been jealous of new present you. When you think about it, it’s actually good that some things cannot be changed because then there’s a plethora of options for growth and numerous outcomes for who we can be.

Now, I pulled Father of Swords, for advice for you to help you work through accepting your shadow self. This card is pretty straightforward, Father of Swords is a very authoritative and is someone who strives onward. He’s also someone who’s very logical and knows that in order for blessings we have to work and set ourselves up for blessings. He does what he has to do to get to where he wants to be. He dosn’t live in the past, he lives in the present while working for the future. Spirt wants me to tell you to do the same so you can work through your repression of your shadow.

[mothmanssweetsucculentass]

Ok here’s my two cents that no one asked for on the current (sort of?) debate going on in the Creepypasta fandom on here rn.

For starters, I grew up with Creepypasta. I also grew up mentally ill. I am also autistic. So I know my way around good and bad mental health rep at this point. And to be honest? A lot of the original stories DID suck balls at representation or just horror writing in general.

However, nowadays I see other people on here, often mentally ill or any other social outcast, taking these characters and reshaping them as their own to fit their own feelings and experiences, and I don’t think anyone has the authority to criticize things like that. Cringe culture is supposed to be dead anyways, nevermind the fact it’s inherently ableist at its core.

We also need to take into account kids still exist in the fandom. Pre teens who got tired of shit like scooby doo and wanted something more “mature” or “edgy” to get into without fully going off the deep end into full blown horror movies. At least that’s how it was for me. Not everyone, especially someone who’s younger, is gonna be comfortable with the grit and gore a lot of Creepypasta “purists” are pushing for these days, and that’s okay! When a fandom gets popular it’s always inevitable and unavoidable to have the popular characters get two dimensionalized.

There’s also the whole mascot horror thing that I don’t wanna get into, but I’m 90% sure that also plays a part in the old favorites like Jeff and slenderman being brought up again. They were and still are recognizable characters. Recognizable characters aren’t a bad thing. Making horror more approachable for younger audiences isn’t a bad thing. People having their own interpretations based out of their own experiences isn’t a bad thing.

Some of us grew up and wanted the more edgy and reality based content, and that’s also not a bad thing! But neither side should be dictating or policing how the other enjoys content in this fandom. If you personally don’t like the way something is written, characterized, depicted, or drawn, no one’s forcing you to look at it. No one’s claiming it as canon. No one’s asking for you to accept it as the end all be all.

At the end of the day this fandom was built on OCs and personal depictions of stuff. I can’t name a single character or story in this community that was created by some outside party like a movie or TV studio FIRST (because I know some got so popular they breached the fandom and got their own shows/movies/comics/etc). Everything here was created by someone who wanted an outlet for their creativity, or their pain, or their coping, or whatever else.

Realism and dark headcanons aren’t bad, and neither are any of the headcanons out there who just wanna make a goofy found family of social rejects as a form of escapism.

A 13 year old drawing a fictional layout of a fictional mansion where these fictional characters live isn’t going to suddenly invalidate the horror, I promise, it’s not that deep and it never was.

A 22 year old making a dark comic on the realistic origins of Jeff who is a fictional character in a fictional world isn’t going to suddenly invalidate the more softhearted side of the fandom.

Sure, there can still be a split if people are so adamant about that, but as someone who personally enjoys both the brutal horror side and the “haha Jeff is 15 and gay” sides equally, y’all need to at least learn to be civil to anyone who has a different headcanon than you. And if that seems like too much still, the block button exists for a reason.

TL:DR this fandom is based entirely off OCs and headcanons and people can do whatever the fuck they want because none of it is real and horror comes in many shapes and sizes and intensities and no one should be bashing anyone on their headcanons or views or rewrites or whatever else.

EDIT:

Actually wait I think I have more to say-

Horror, like any genre, has NO AGE LIMIT. And by that I mean, if someone younger wants to delve into scary stuff, they should be allowed to do so without criticism. I personally grew up on “child friendly” horror media like Scooby-Doo, and the older I got the more horror I wanted to experience.

There’s no right or wrong way to “understand” horror, and I frankly think it’s ignorant and stupid to say if you don’t fully “understand” something, then you shouldn’t be involved in it at all. Horror isn’t always about gore and unspeakable violence and the eldritch entity that wants everyone’s skin inside out. That’s why horror has sub genres for fucks sake. Gut wrenching brutality against innocent people isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and that’s okay!

However, bashing anyone’s tamer headcanons, or calling anything anyone interprets differently than you “stupid”, that’s not okay. God, I feel like an exhausted parent giving this lecture to fellow adults, but this really needs to be said and stressed.

I am an adult. I like when stuff in the fandom takes a dark turn. But for nostalgia’s sake, I also love the fanon so much, because that’s what I was exposed to.

And for fucks sake if it comes down to picking sides, I would rather stick with the part of this fandom that gives zero shits how you see a character as long as you’re having fun.

You can have your serial killer 30 year old Jeff and your canon-accurate-to-that-one-image eyeless Jack, but don’t shit on other people if they don’t want the same thing. Your interpretation isn’t canon, and neither is anyone else’s for that matter.

Realistic, dark, gritty Creepypasta isn’t a new concept, and neither is “adult” Creepypasta. And by the way, Creepypasta was never stated to be for adults. That’s like saying kids and only kids can eat trix cereal. It sounds that stupid on paper.

Let people interpret things the way they wanna interpret. No one is infringing on YOUR character ideas. Creepypasta has no age limit, nor a set way the horror has to be presented. Those who do continue to claim that just sound like pretentious assholes.

Very small side note, I personally think it’s inappropriate and rude to keep using Toby as a “bad example” of mental health rep when the creator has stated multiple times the character is old, not researched, and not even in the fandom anymore. Leave the poor guy alone.

[sgiandubh]

It all starts with a smoke alarm

This wasn't supposed to happen like that, of course. It was supposed to happen with an ”allow me to introduce myself”, at the least. But hey, I am playing the cards I've been dealt, and since an anonymous ask on Tumblr does not allow pictures or links, this will have to do. We'll have plenty of time later.

Yesterday, I said that reading that Single Report reaped benefits. I have screen capped and summed up all the things that made me rise an eyebrow, to make things easier. Hopefully, this is going to be short: who would wax lyrical about a septic tank, after all?

I did not use my superpowers to do this, but simply the link provided by a very active Anon on several shipper blogs, in order to properly stir shite, I presume: https://corumproperty.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HomeReport-31.pdf

Armed with my wits and a virtual highlighter, I started to carefully read the whole document. Ownership details aside - this, I discussed yesterday -, I remind you that it should give any prospective buyer a good, detailed idea of the available fittings and current condition of the house put on sale.

In Europe and elsewhere, I guess, inspections of this type are rather a dull and thorough affair. And these people did an excellent job: they checked every single nook & cranny, used binoculars to have a closer look at the roof tiles and listed it all on these papers a good researcher should read, before dropping to conclusions.

This is how we know, for example, that the inspection happened on a rainy day:

.. and that the guttering was overflowing. Does that sound like a well loved, lived-in house to you?

Thought so.

This brought a smile. And the image of a Christmas tree left near a London dustbin in June. Home, sweet home?

Like all properties, this also comes with burglar and fire alarm systems. However, apparently not much has been done, in this respect. Or at least, not recently. Not since February 2022, to be accurate: otherwise, they would have been upgraded. Yet, no such thing: it's up to the buyer to do and pay for the upgrade.

Lived-in? Certainly not after February 2022 and probably even earlier, would be my best guess. But lived-in at some point in time, most certainly.

You see, since I was on the real estate agent's webpage, I also took the virtual tour of the house. It is available to everyone, here: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=AFKibrk8QiD

Now, I don't know about you, but when I visit somebody's house for the first time, I always check the bookshelves: yes, I am a shameless nerd. I am also well aware that the rest of the furniture was staged, it looked that sad, clinical way it does all over the world. Did not expect to find any books in there, to be honest. And yet, there they were.

I didn't bother with the fashion coffee table books, although I thought they were a nice nod to Ms. B's past, and totally the kind of things she might have on her credenza.

A built-in bookshelf in the basement caught my eye. That did not look staged. It looked as she might have left some of her own books in there, like an afterthought, if you want. And people's choices of books are always speaking volumes to me, about who they really are.

It did not disappoint.

More fash-un. And yeah, Tiffany & Co! I knew it!

A Tina Turner bio or memoir. Awww:

Bette Davis and some feminist literature. Her books, I am pretty sure of that:

And, to save the best for last, lo and behold, what do we have here?

Bear Grylls?

That Bear Grylls?

Hahahaha. Of course. I have all the reasons in the world to believe the music producer/PA/whatever is into masculine thrillers written by a world-renowned survivalist, haven't I?

Not a chance in hell, to be honest. I grinned like the Cheshire cat because, ladies, we do know WHOSE book is this, don't we?

Judging by its jacket, well-read. Not a prop.

Belonging to someone with a dry, wicked sense of humor who apparently also left this gem:

A Captain's Duty. At this point in time, I wasn't grinning anymore. I was laughing like an idiot, of course.

Slàinte mhath, ladies. We'll have time for a proper introduction later.

[whetstonefires]

Do you have any opinions on Scholomance?

I do! I like it a lot. I really enjoyed all three books, blitzed through them easily and was much more excited to see how the plots unfolded than I'm used to these days, as a jaded adult, and I also really appreciated them as works of craft.

Especially the first one, I spent the whole time being all 'wow!' at how simple it was. So easy to read, but no waste. You really need to know what you're doing, to get that kind of pared-down elegance of form to work and still fit so much content in.

Like these are dense, there's a fantastic stylistic minimalism that allows El's character all the space it needs to breathe by making absolutely every other thing and person in the whole novel also do character work for her, which is exactly where the first person voice shines.

Also great use of character perspective to make the pacing feel really natural, so the fact that the first book takes three weeks, the second book takes one year, and the third book is like. Five or so incredibly stressful days spread out over the course of a few weeks? Doesn't feel imbalanced.

I actually got distracted from the story a few times by noticing the strength of Novik's technique. 😂 This is a me problem, in itself it's the opposite of distracting. Very low-profile.

I think the Scholomance is a great example of how far you can go in specfic when you aren't cringing from the label 'derivative,' because the Scholomance books feel very fresh ad clean specifically because nothing in them is concerned with standing out as 'original,' whatever that's supposed to mean, only with being well-executed and suitable to its task.

Hm, maybe that's where Liesel was born, the intersection of the efficient narrative style and the vast proportion of the story that concerns the maximization of utility and the instrumentalization of persons by themselves and others, and the forces that incentivize these behaviors. Or maybe she's just the narrative counterweight to Orion 'Head Empty' Lake lmao. How's that for a principle of balance, Galadriel?

I really did enjoy how beautifully it was laid out, over and over, in dozens of shades of humanity, how no matter where you go in an exploitative system almost everyone is being driven by the same survival instincts.

Because I don't think I've ever seen made so cleanly clear why you just can't expect any person or small group of people, no matter their level of goodwill or status, to unmake one of these systems from the inside; how it's not a matter of people being bad but of every single person being very...small.

And then not retreating into the idea of a person who is Big coming and breaking the cruel system from the outside as some kind of panacea, because 1) that is terrible, even if it's necessary and done in the best way possible and 2) that's not a sustainable answer to anything. Getting a balance between the protagonist being able to effect change and not subscribing to the great man theory of history can be really tricky!

Also did I mention, I love El, and I love most of the cast, even the dreadful ones. How am I going around with this many feelings about Li Shanfeng who doesn't appear until the actual climax?

The romance murdered me a bit, but it took up no more space than it absolutely needed to do its job, and I respect that. Also I appreciated Orion as a love interest; Novik has a slight record at this point of a version of that style of male love interest who's like a caricature of Mr. Darcy but old, which was shaping up to be my least favorite thing about her body of work.

...Orion is kind of like if you took the human king from Spinning Silver and gave him an alignment flip come to think of it, so he's not coming out of nowhere. Lmao.

Which reminds me (re: romance character typing) I've heard Novik didn't want it to be known she was astolat, which this series has renewed my sympathies if so. Because if I were a published novelist I wouldn't want people going 'you know, that resolution was really emotionally satisfying! reminds me of that fic she wrote where optimus prime and megatron get stuck in a hole underground and hatefuck about it.'

I don't even like Transformers. That fic almost made me cry. Actually I suspect it reads better if you don't like Transformers because I'm sure it does not give a shit about canon.

Anyway, whoever pointed out that one of the things El has going on is she's Enoby (and we're going to sit down and explore what the true reason to put your middle finger up at preps is, and what are some constructive ways to channel that socioeconomic wrath, and what it means that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism) was right and I'm not entirely over that either.

Fucking love El's mom as a character. Spectacular level of parent relevance and usefulness. A+.

Aadhya and Liu are also characters who fucking delivered.

Re: minimalism though, I laughed at the start of The Golden Enclaves when I realized that none of the enclaver characters who'd gotten development in the the first two books were from London, the enclave El was theoretically shooting for when we met her.

[factual-fantasy]

26 ASKS!! THANK YOU!! :}}} 🥪

(Post in question)

WAAHAHAAG THANK YOU SO MUHC!!! :DDDD As for your questions-

Spider crab's name is just a place holder for now, much like a lot of the crew has.. I want to give them all proper names at some point. Like Ellie and Louis have.. But I'm just really bad at coming up with names for stuff- <XD 💔💔

For Luigi- no one in particular! I just wanted to draw him with that expression <XD And don't worry, Mario cheered him up in the end :}}

As for the FNAF doodle, thats Foxy, Roxy and Mangle! I get that its hard to recognize her by her side profile and without color though-- <XD I had experimented with some ideas of a pirate themed Glamrock Mangle being added to one of the AUs. Though that sketch was the only one I really liked. :/

I have seen Encanto! :D It was alright, I liked the living house aspect of it :00

As for Red, I thiiink he might be too young to understand fusion or how to do it.. I pictured him being.. like what, five? Or something? That's like half the age of when Steven first learned to fuse-

That, and it felt a little odd for him to fuse with any of the crew, since they're all so much older than him. :/

@astaherussy (Post in question)

XD Sure were! Convenient aren't they?🤣🤣

I've definitely heard of it, and I've seen some gifs/posts about it here and there.. but truth be told I have no idea what its about. :( I think I've seen two Mario's and one wears a black suit...?

(Link/video in question)

XDD I imagine Ellie would shut that down real quick. But in the off chance that they get away with it.. I feel like Louis would come out on top.

He could block any oncoming attacks with his unbreakable claw arm, then whip around and launch whole watermelons and pies with the other XDD He would probably think it was fun too!

Does the game have large birds like that?? :0 I had no idea! They gotta be on the look out for those then--

Oof, I suppose they could.. though I don't intend for either party to experience that. It just sounds miserable! D:>

(Link/video in question)

XDD Oh man, that's hilarious! Poor Red--

@yourstrulylightstar283 (Referencing this post)

Thank you! I hope I get better soon too.. I hope to have some answers by next week.. <:) 🙏

:DD Thank you! I'm so glad you like my Freddy! :))

I always kind'a felt like a certain.. gloomy-ness, would be fitting for him. He already has some of that in the game. But with everything my Freddy's been through.. just.. having this weight to his tone. This lingering exhaustion.. I felt like it would suit him. :(

Hmm... I imagine that Seam and Jevil would be options.. Maybe in bad cases Calico Jack would.. Almost everyone in FNAF is an option <XD

No.. in a sad twist of fate, no one ever heard his cries in the dungeon. Imagine how much more lonely he felt becuase of that..

I don't know if he gets phantom pains from getting beat up.. but I imagine his horn stumps give him some aches and soreness that can be attributed to phantom pain.. :(

Who's gingerbrave? That's the main character right..? I have no idea if he'd come across my crew.. I don't know what kind of shenanigans he gets up to.. wait "gang"? He travels in a group with other people??

@chickenmilk120

fank uu! :}}}

@couchwow

Yeah,, I'm aware.. 😔🙄 ya hate to see it. But hey the watermark is right there saying "this art is stolen." so it could be worse I guess.

@littlelightfish

Tuna:

He is not being normal about it XDD You've totally flattered him!

@potatocryptid

Thank you!! :DD Yeah,, I think I WILL work on what ever I want!! XDD

Off the top of my head, there's an AWESOME Mario artist by the name of @katlyntheartist! I love her work, I highly recommend you stop by her blog! :D

I've also seen some jaw-dropping Mario artwork by @suedoodle! Both blogs are worth a visit! :}}

(Post in question)

Ah yes! The idea behind that was to show the initial divide between Grillby and Spamton.

You see, Spamton hails Jevil as his savior of sorts. He was at his lowest low, and in unimaginable pain.. then Jevil just swoops in and offers his hand. Bringing him outside of his AU. Away from the pain, away from the torment.. Jevil is awesome!!

But then you've got Grillby.. Jevil saved him from his AU right before it collapsed in on itself. He "saved" his life, but at what cost? Grillby lost everything. And he cant help but be angry at Jevil for it. Thinking that if Jevil hadn't been there, he could have just peacefully disappeared along with his family and everyone else in his AU..

So Spamton is endlessly respectful towards Jevil, and Grillby cant help but roll his eyes and spit sass at him all the time. Those two opposing views are bound to cause problems someday..

I imagine one day the whole group is tired and cranky. Jevil did something that Grillby didn't agree with. Some bitter remarks there, Spamton defending Jevil's decision here.. some back and fourth and next thing you know a fight breaks out. :x

@im-nice-but-i-dont-like-you

XDD idk!! Why are YOU into almost every single fandom I'M into?? Also than you so much!! :}}

Thank you! I'm glad you like my sona! But aaa sorry, no can do.. I don't want fanart at all, of anything. Just comments/asks/reblogs. <:}

@canonickero (Sent after this post)

XD Thank you! I'm glad you like him :}}

I pictured Yendo being another one of Funtime Foxy's nightmare-ish visions. Though I should consider passing that onto Bon Bon.. 👀

The story goes that Funtime Freddy is a frequent flyer in parts and service. The employees groan that there's always something wrong with Freddy that needs fixing. Nobody really knows why..

Now at some point Freddy was shut down and in parts and service. As per usual.. Foxy was nearby, and heard a sudden thud/crash coming from that room. He rushes inside to see what happened and finds Funtime Freddy on the floor, what ever he was propped up on had broken, causing him to fall.

He looked at Freddy's face.. and.. his face plates were wide open..

Foxy. freaked. out. If I remember correctly, he was supposed to start shouting and panicking. Trying to help Freddy, thinking he was hurt. When he couldn't move Freddy and he wouldn't wake up, Foxy ran out of the room to get help. He runs into some employees and tried to tell them what happened. They end up just forcibly shutting him down because he cant stop freaking out..

Later on he's reactivated and the rest of the gang is with him. Including Freddy. He uncharacteristically runs to Freddy all worried and frantically inspects his face for injuries. They ask him what he saw but he just.. doesn't have the words to describe it.

Part of the horror is Foxy's inability to understand what he saw. Therefore being terrified of it and being unable to describe it..

After that Foxy began to develop these hallucinations of sorts. Overtime the image of Freddy's skinned face kind'a turns in to its own nightmare. Yendo.. overtime it feels more like "Yendo" is an entity separate from Freddy. Foxy begins to imagine this skinned bear like creature that is out there somewhere.. wanting to hurt Freddy and take his face.. its not fun :(

This idea is still in development. Well, the whole AU is. But this was my initial idea for Yendo :)

Now old man consequences is tricky.. I had intentions of him being this weird vison that Foxy sees now and again. But with recent developments to the AU.. I might need to scrap the old gator. Or at least re-write his role and function in the AU-

@stripetkattelalala54 (Post linked in question)

No problem! I'm always up for Mario questions! :DD

And as for the question, I pictured that Mario never really liked the ice flower to begin with. I imagined Mario loving the heat and the sun. Always enjoyed being warm/hot and functions the best in it.. You know like a maniac-

So the Fire flower was naturally his favorite powerup. And that experience did leave Mario with some kind of trauma, which just added to his dislike of it..

@beryl-shade

OOO I like Tendrilfoam! :00 Hmm, Captain Tendrilfoam.. I'll have to consider that one! :D

[antianakin]

Honestly when people call Cassian Andor morally gray, mostly from the movie, I kinda side-eye? Because he doesn't really fit that. He's, he's a spy but the two things I see called morally gray are:

Shooting the other spy in the beginning, which was a sad choice to make, but the man was injured and they were being chased. There's no way for him to carry the man to safety while fleeing the stormtroopers, and leaving him there would have been a fate worse that death, we know what the Empire does to suspected spies, along with not risking intel leaks.

And setting out to assassinate Jyn's father, who at that point, nobody had confirmation he was anything other than a man loyal to the Empire, building a weapon of mass destruction. Its reasonable to think getting rid of the head engineer behind that project would either delay it or cause issues. The Rebellion was operating with less information than we, the audience had.

Both hard decisions made during hard times, but to me, Cassian Andor at least is an average guy, trying to make the best decision he can in basically the worst times ever.

I mean, I think that a lot of this is what MAKES Cassian morally gray. Being morally gray doesn't have to mean he doesn't care, or that his ultimate goal isn't something generally good and altruistic, either. Cassian is fighting for the greater good, he's trying to take down a tyrannical fascist Empire, he's doing what he's doing because he firmly believes that it's what's best for the entire galaxy and because it will ultimately save a lot of lives in the long run.

Being morally gray just generally means that the character operates outside of the more strict dichotomies of "good" and "evil." Luke Skywalker is pretty unequivocally "good" and he would likely never do the things Cassian does even though they both are aiming for the same goal. Luke would never even AGREE to assassinate Jyn's father, especially if he has to use Jyn to find her father in the first place. This would be something that Luke would consider wrong and he'd refuse to do it, even though there are reasons to think Galen might be working for the Empire and that it could be better for everyone if he was dead. And on the other end of the spectrum you have someone like Palpatine, or even Anakin (specifically during the OT) who aren't out for the greater good at all and are always motivated solely by selfish greed and nothing else.

So someone like Cassian operates somewhere between these two extremes. Cassian is willing to kill an innocent man who is his ally because he cannot take the risk of either of them getting captured by the Empire. He can presumably trust that HE'D hold up under torture, but he cannot trust that this informant (who has been pretty anxious and flustered so far) would do the same. Cassian's options are to stay and get captured with him, escape without him, or give him a quick and painless death and then escape on his own. The honorable option that we'd probably see a character like Luke choose is the first one, staying with the informant and trying to find a way for both of them to escape even though it runs a VERY high risk of both of them being captured. Killing an innocent man is an objectively evil thing to do, but Cassian looks at all of his options and weighs the risks and ultimately chooses the option that is best for his cause even if it requires doing something objectively evil.

And you ARE supposed to recognize that. There's this whole moment immediately after Cassian kills the guy that Diego Luna makes this really devastating face where you can tell he HATES what he just did, he HATES that he felt like he had to make that choice at all, but then he lets it go and escapes. This is not something that he just brushes off like it's nothing, it's something that does weigh on him and that's part of his whole arc within this film. He has to decide how to live with the choices he has made and the reasons he has made them and whether those reasons are worth what it costs to him personally. He obviously ultimately decides NOT to kill Galen because he cares about Jyn and he knows that killing Galen will mean ruining the connection that's been beginning to build between himself and Jyn. For the moment, he chooses to care about Jyn and Jyn's happiness more than he cares about the cause of the Rebellion. And at the end, he and the other volunteers all choose to go to Scarif because they cannot just abandon this cause that they've all given up so much for, that they've all had to do objectively evil things for. It HAS to be worth something, killing that informant HAS to be worth it or what does that make him? Without the cause, he's just a murderer.

And all of this is part of what makes him such a compelling character. Often these days we see morally gray characters in the position of the villain, where they have perhaps a sympathetic motivation but they're going about it all wrong and they have to be stopped because they've let their desire for a better world be corrupted into simply a desire for power. Some of these stories get done better than others, obviously, but this can be a really powerful narrative. But Cassian sits slightly differently where he is unequivocally one of The Good Guys, but the narrative posits the idea that sometimes sacrifices are required to achieve "the greater good." When your enemy is pure evil and willing to use tricks and lies to beat you, sometimes you have to give up some of your own moral code in order to beat them at their own game and protect as many people as possible. Sometimes being selfless looks like setting yourself on fire so that everyone else can stay warm.

And like I mentioned in the Andor post that I assume this is probably in reaction to, what I love most about this is how it relates to the Prequels Jedi and the themes therein, the struggle they have with maintaining who they are and the morals they live by when there's a galactic civil war going on and the other side of it is willing to commit massive atrocities in order to win. By fighting in the war, the Jedi are having to compromise, but if they refused to fight at all, they would lose everything that made them who they are. The Council chooses to commit treason in order to save the Republic from its own elected Chancellor. It's objectively morally wrong to commit treason, but it lands morally gray because of the motivation and the circumstances of the choice they are making.

Often doing the right thing isn't the same as doing the easy thing. Being selfless usually comes with making sacrifices. We see the the bigger "cosmic" version of this with the Prequels Jedi during the Clone War, but Rogue One and Andor show us another version of it from the perspective of the little people, those whose names and stories will never be remembered by history, but whose sacrifices paved the way for people like Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa to step in and be the heroes who took down the Empire. Cassian and the Prequels Jedi fall into a very similar thematic category in their stories and it's honestly SUCH a compelling story and I love the way Rogue One and Andor chose to follow up on that theme.

[mvltisstuff]

Hello

Could you make a request for Evan Buckley please.

The request would be based on the song Boyfriend - Big Time Rush. From the perspective of Buck who has a crush on his new neighbor.

Chim and Hen, tease each other about their supposed crush. But Buck knows it's not just a passing crush. Please, thank you 🙈 ✨

boyfriend - e.b

summary: request

evan buckley x reader

a/n: THAT UR LOOKIN FOR A BOYFRIEND I SEE THAT GIMME TIME YK THAT IMA BE THERE

she kind of looked like a robber smuggling boxes into the car. but, she looked beautiful while she did it. i saw the renting sign outside when i left for work every day. i wondered who’d be coming in next, but i just figured it was no one that would be too interested in me.

“here, can i help you with that?” i asked, noticing her struggle to carry in the two boxes.

“please,” she smiles. that’s when i first noticed her beauty. she graciously looked at me with the most gentle persona.

“i’m evan, buck,” i decide to say, despite my nervousness that’s accumulated from her. “i live right there.”

“good to know,” she says. “i don’t know anyone in this building, so it’s nice someone’s finally said something.”

i smile back at her, leading the boxes into the room. it looked similar to mine, so i knew where to put things.

“i hate moving,” she groans. “it’s such a pain.”

“i know, i remember when i moved out of my old place i just threw out a bunch of stuff.”

she looks back at me, and i feel the heat on my neck. i’ve known this woman for maybe five minutes and i’m already nervous near her. i cant be falling for someone this quickly. it’s happened in the past, and i won’t let it happen again.

“are you from the area?” i manage to ask to break the silence.

“yeah, i’ve lived in california my whole life, but never in la. you?”

“i’ve bounced around a lot. mainly from pennsylvania but i came here to work for the LAFD.”

“you’re a firefighter?”

“i am,” i grin, it’s already clear to her how much i love my job. “i love it, the team here is so great. the areas pretty good, too.”

“you’ll have to show me around sometime,” she says, effortlessly.

“yeah!” i reply, too fast which makes her bewitching smile appear again. “or, sure, i’d love to. if you need anything, i’m right next door.”

“thank you, buck,” she starts walking toward the open door to grab another box as i slide out next to her.

“of course…” i point at her lightly, realizing i don’t even know her name and i like her already.

“y/n,” she tells me. of course she has a beautiful name.

“right, y/n,” i send her another grin and go back to my apartment. when i see hen and chim walk toward my door, i meet them there.

“who’s that?” chimney asks.

“just a neighbor,” i say. “i was helping her move in.” the two partners exchange a glance, knowing i never meets a girl without taking an interest in her.

whenever i leave for work on certain days, it’s around the time y/n leaves too. she’s dressed in a casual, but business-like outfit that fits her perfectly. everyday, i’m blessed with the sight of her when start walking down the hallway. suddenly, today when i see her walking from her room, i can’t help but smile at her in hopes to get back her shining one.

“hey,” she speaks softly.

“hi,” i reply. “you like the building so far?”

“it’s perfect,” she exhales. “its so much better than the last place i was. it was my ex’s, but it didn’t work out.”

“oh, i’m sorry,” i say, but i’m also trying to figure out if i’m actually sorry.

“don’t be,” she manages to still pull out a bright aura that just makes everyone around her feel the same. “there’s better things waiting for me.”

after, she walks away and out of the building, and i pause behind her. better things, what could possibly be better. my next thought could have risen from my ego, but maybe i can be the next better thing.

at work, i’m permanently wondering about her. i don’t want to scare her off, she just moved in. something about her is catching me. it’s more than just her glory, it’s her mood and the way she carries herself with such decency and respect. she’s truly one of the most beautiful people i’ve ever seen, just to add. even when i’m sitting in the truck on the way to a scene, i just think about her over the rumbling of the street and murmuring of my friends.

“what’s got him so… on another planet?” bobby asks, looking back to me.

“sorry, what?” i ask, snapping out of y/n in my mind.

“i think i might have an idea,” hen teases, giving me a suggestive look. “any new neighbor time?”

“aw, the kids got a crush!” chim pokes his own fun at me, nudging my shoulder lightly as he chuckles at himself next to me.

“it’s not a crush,” i try and clear. “i just- she’s really nice and she’s gor- guys she’s gorgeous. she’s also single! so, more for me i guess.”

“listen, kid,” bobby starts. “just don’t get too attached too fast. remember how upset you were with abby?”

“trust me, she’s no abby-“

“where does she work? who’s her family? what’s her life behind closed doors?” i remain silent after being bombarded with questions. i know they’re trying to save me from more heartbreak, but i can’t help but be a little hurt. “exactly, you don’t know anything about her. why don’t you just ask her out? really get to know her…”

“it’s way too soon, she just got settled and i don’t want to be a pest.”

“buck, do you want this to be another girl you like that moves on without you?”

“not really,” i sulk, trying to think of the brighter side.

“then go for it!” hen encourages, bouncing back in on the fun discussion of my love life.

“fine!” i agree. “i’ll try and see if she’ll go out with me, now leave me alone!” i joke, in hopes to end the talk as we pull up to the scene we were called to.

after my shift had ended, i went back home. i was secretly manifesting an interaction with her, so maybe i had a chance to speak to her. the gods must’ve heard me, because when i saw her heading out of her apartment, dressed in slightly less casual clothes. she had a see-through black top with another cropped, tank top under it with a pair of jeans. her hair was done and her makeup was too, so i figured i missed my chance. she was probably going on a date.

when her voice entered my ears, part of me just wanted to keep opening my door. i didn’t want to hear about another guy, but i knew her sweetness would make her say something to me. she didn’t deserve someone like me, but i spoke to her anyway.

“long day?” she asks, slowing herself down as she passes by me.

“not too bad,” i say, giving her a kind grin back. “you look nice, though. headed out?”

“yeah,” she sighs. “just myself, though. i got dinner with friends, but i figured i’d grab a drink or something, too. they all had to leave, though.”

“o-oh!” i say, finding myself relieved that she’s not going on a date. it’s now or never, i tell myself. i have to take this shot or i’m gonna miss her forever. as soon as i open my mouth to speak, she does too.

“i was gonna go down to the bar on 7th,” she tells me. “you know if it’s any good?”

“it’s so good there, they make the best cocktails in la,” i turn my body toward her more, and i can sense her getting nervous with the pressure in the hallway too.

“do you, um,” she stutters and laughs at herself to try and ease the tension between us. it sounds bad, but i found her nervousness adorable as i can tell what she’s going to say next. “do you wanna come with me? maybe get to, like, know one another?”

the look on my face probably was frozen in, the face of anxiety and excitement. “yeah,” i begin. “yeah, i’d love to come.”

“great,” she beams back at me, and i put my extra things in my apartment before we walk down together.

it’s definitely something great.

[fuzzystudios]

yk when I started reading toa I was kinda disappointed at the lack of power that apollo / lester had, bc pjo and hoo had their main characters be basically op, and this is literally a (former) god. apollo in tho made me cringe and reading his perspective was like looking at pills in an orange prescription bottle. but he was the whiny teenager that felt like an out-of-depth teenager more than the actually lived for years-in-teen-numbers, because they were more heroes and soldiers than teens, like they were supposed to be. he is simultaneously whiny child and responsible adult.

the moment I really latched onto him was when he basically dropped everything and tried to dive into the forest to go save his kids. bro wasn’t actually a selfish idiot like he kept making himself look like. bro was an emotionally constipated loving loser (affectionate) and loveable. he would risk the wrath of styx to save these kids. positively skrunkly

oh and his power! look guys the former protagonists always had some power to back them up, some good strength. this guy? first not demigod protagonist and he goes from straight up zero to launching a guy to the clouds with his bare hands. and tfw he uses his voiceTM. BEGONE SNAKE! and he acts so pathetic lol and if you look through whatever sunglasses he’s wearing and you look at the things from 3rd person pov dude what is he doing. he just flew off a road driving a car, and puts himself in front of the gremlin child to face one of those creepy zombie things that scream FOOD!!. bro straight up stabbed himself. bro sings the most heart wrenching song that even giant ants that don’t even understand what he’s saying get the point to the extent that they go catatonic with depression.

and holy cheez-its what kind of pain tolerance does this guy have?? dude??? you fell from the literal sky above the Empire State Building which like literal greek heaven (ouch) straight into a dumpster and then gets beat into unconsciousness by a pair of thugs under Nero like??? and with broken ribs, injured nose, hurt shoulder, etc. he walks up the stairs, runs through the woods insane. dude is literally insane. he gets flayed alive, forgets his other half, trapped in place by molten chains all at once and still trying trying to walk wth like this guy’s pain tolerance is beyond ouranos. idk how he does it I can’t even tolerate a hot summer day.

bro gives advice to a lost gremlin child who betrayed him anyway, helps her defeat her abuser the way he never could. and he grew, like everyone around him, to something better, something hopeful. “you’ve changed” heck yeah!! we love to see it

and humor?? like random mentions of things no one else in pjo would give you like playing the zither at 2am, godly toilet seat, ares roundhouse kick, waking up in Argentina. I love that they’re so offhand but they’re so funny and random

the haiku. they’re hilarious, works of art.

the characters. Chiron. Chiara. Damien. Austin. Kayla. Cecil. will. nico. Rachel. Lavinia. emmie. Josephine. heck even Commodus. lityerses. Abelard. Diana. frank. Jason. piper. the trogs. lu. reyna omg. meg. aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAA I love them so much! just how they fit in with his own journey of self and how they grow with him, like a garden, like an orchestra building its crescendo together, in unity. little things like reading frank’s admiration of apollo first in hoo, and now we get apollo’s side of it, and he’s so cute. Reyna’s whole journey of “finding the one who will heal her heart”. (gods I loved that thank you rick.) and will’s “dad!” and making apollo literally weep and meg: “the beast is dead. I killed it.” and taps her head and I'm just so proud of them.

“YOU ARE NO GOD!” he isn’t the same god who fell to earth in the winter. he likely won’t be ever the same ever again. ‘cause he’s gonna work to being better. he’s saving the world, but he’s also having a journey of his own self, rediscovering himself, building onto himself like everyone else, they’re all gonna be a better version of themselves.

k one problem: not enough content. I am starved for content. please feed pet. ty

[kaibutsushidousha]

To be honest, your discussion of Minase's positive and negative qualities piqued my interest. What do you think are the main recurring fgo writers' strong and weak points? Also where would you rank the lilim harlot event?

For the sake of brevity, I'll stick to one per writer. Picking apart everyone to the extent I did with Minase would take forever and would be better done after their respective Ordeal Calls.

I hesitate to call Higashide's comedy his strong point because his huge hits are about as frequent as his huge misses. I suppose I'll go with clarity for Higashide's main strong point. Even when I think he sucked at delivering his point, I can always tell what he's trying to say, which is not something I can say about Sakurai's most compressed scripts. His weak point is his lack of ambition. It's nice to have at least one person in FGO's team who will never try to escalate things, but I can't see it doesn't make his stories more forgettable in the long run.

Minase was already detailed in his own post.

Meteo’s best quality is a tone setter. Requiem, Salem, and all his events come with an atmosphere that feels very tangibly different from what FGO usually does. Often his events are bad, but never they lack a unique identity. Which segues into his weak point, being that many of his events are comedy events and the man is simply not funny. Bullying Erice is his only consistently good joke, and when he tries other things, the results are more miss than hit. See Las Vegas and Wandjina World Tour for major examples of comedy events that failed hard at the comedy side.

Nasu is a master recycler. I don't know how he does it but the man is constantly reusing the same structures, the same themes, or the same dynamics and somehow it never feels repetitive. There is always something that makes the whole recipe feel fresh and unique despite being so easy to recognize the same usual ingredients there. And what I dislike about Nasu in FGO is how he's still stuck at the concept of selling waifus from the girls with routes days. Everyone has their list of characters who get ship tease with Fujimaru but only in Nasu's case it feels like an overwhelming majority and that some of the choices create too large of a difference between the summoned character and the character in the main story. Was it really necessary to do this with, say, Morgan? Melusine? Tenochtitlan?

And Sakurai I saved for last because one major reason this post took this long is that I was struggling to sort out what is characteristically good and bad about her. Well, even now I don’t have a simple and satisfying answer. Things can’t be simple with Sakurai, unfortunately. One friend of mine described the experience of reading Sakurai scripts as “playing chess against an opponent that doesn’t tell that you are in a game of chess” and that’s honestly a fascinating way to phrase it.

Sakurai is an intriguing combination of inflexibly ambitious and inflexibly professional. She has grand ideas for her characters and she will include them in the script without fail. But she's also strictly adherent to script size limitations. While Nasu is making Camelot and Avalon le Fae with total disregard to every possible limit, Sakurai is cramming so much into Septem's and London's microscopic file space that it becomes utterly incomprehensible. Nasu wrote Last Encore's plot as a whole ass novel and hired Sakurai to convert that into anime scripts because Sakurai is his expert in fitting a lot of stuff into tiny spaces. Tunguska was tossed at Sakurai because probably no one else could fit into its raid event constraints. And because she doesn't compromise on what goes in, her alternative is not revealing the mysteries about her characters but laying out all the hints so the players can figure it out themselves, which is a really fun thing once you're used to it (read: aware that you're playing chess against her).

And the answer to "Where would I rank the Lilim Harlot event" is 1st place.

[lu-is-not-ok]

While we're psychoanalyzing the EGOs, what are your opinions on Dimensional Shredder? Deffo something on freedom there, but I'm having trouble putting it to words myself.

Alright, another shared E.G.O. Cracks knuckles.

You know the drill, under cut we go.

So let's talk about Wayward Passenger as an abnormality first. It's a representation of the horrible things W Corp puts people through on their WARP trains given form. In a way, that makes it similar to abnormalities like Mountain of Smiling Bodies or CENSORED (if you subscribe to the smoke war monster theory).

The dungeon event in which we meet Wayward Passenger is especially telling in what themes it wants to carry. The narration mentions that the corporation responsible for disappearance will simply pretend that this person never existed. The reveal that the Passenger was actually a W Corp employee further adds to this.

(Also, random tangent, but am I the only one that got reminded of Bongcheon-Dong Ghost by this abno's event? Something about having to point a terrifying monster in a direction away from you and hope it doesn't come back just brought back memories. At least the Passenger has enough manners to not jumpscare you.)

When it comes to the abnormality itself, Wayward Passenger carries themes of corporate exploitation and negligence, specifically in the way W Corp might find its employees expendable and doesn't care about inflicting suffering upon its clients as long as they profit from it.

There are also some themes of abandonment and being lost, but also tenacity in spite of it. Despite not being able to escape, Wayward Passanger still searches for a way out and never stops moving forward.

So. With all that being said. How does it all tie back to Hong Lu and Yi Sang, as they are the ones with Dimension Shredder?

Thanks to Canto IV we now know that Yi Sang absolutely fits under the exploited by corporate greed umbrella. It's a major theme of his whole chapter in fact! The themes of being lost are also reflected in Yi Sang's aimlessness after the League collapsed. He was completely lost and effectively abandoned by everyone except Gubo, only to be further exploited by even more corporate greed.

Hell, you could even say his character arc in his Canto represents that tenacity in spite of being lost I mentioned. Though his goal might not be all that clear, he still wants to keep going and keep moving forward, no matter what.

When it comes to Hong Lu, we don't have nearly as much information... But we can speculate! I think in this case the "corporate exploitation" is less literally corporate, but still applicable. I'm talking about Hong Lu's family, of course. Though we don't know much, we do get quite a few hints about his family exploiting him for their own gain, especially now that we're getting a Hong Lu ID that is quite literally based on the idea of paralleling that part of him with Actual Corporate Exploitation!

With how cagey Hong Lu is about the deeper parts of his past, and how hard it is to tell when he's being genuine, it's honestly hard to pinpoint any of the other themes onto him.

However, we could work a little bit backwards here and see how Wayward Passenger might apply to Hong Lu's recurring themes of freedom.

In that way, we could be onto something here. Wayward Passenger is no longer under W Corp's protection, if it ever was. It's lost and abandoned by the thing that was supposed to be protecting it... But on the other hand, it is free now. W Corp can't reach it anymore. It can go wherever it wants and nothing will stop it.

If you want to translate that to how that might apply to Hong Lu, then you could interpret that as a sign that Hong Lu can only attain "true" freedom by severing ties with the thing exploiting him, aka his family... At the cost of losing the comfort and protection they offered him, as little as it may have been.

You could say that idea is reflected in Tingtang Hong Lu. Yes, he is probably the most free when it comes to authority bearing down on him compared to all his other IDs. ...But he's also a gambler living in the Backstreets leading a gang so incompetent he has to threaten them with death to keep them in line. He may be free, but his life is far from comfortable.

...I think it's funny that I already wrote that much and I haven't even touched the actual E.G.Os themselves, whoops! Let's go do that.

First thing to note about Dimension Shredder is that its damage type is Pride, especially since Yi Sang's version doesn't even *require* Pride resources. In fact, Dimension Shredder is the only non-base E.G.O that deals Pride damage.

To go a little bit deeper into that, all of the base E.G.O that deal Pride damage seem to imply taking an action while ignoring the consequences that might follow them. Rodion's What Is Cast is the most obvious example here, representing her murder of the pawnbroker without considering how the Middle would react to one of their family being killed. Likewise, Outis, Meursault, and Faust seem to carry similar ideas. Outis reminding herself of the Odyssey's purpose, as if trying to cope with the unforseen consequences of her actions. Meursault acting out despite noting how doing so only tightens the chains of those judging him. Faust opening herself to knowledge and possibilities regardless of what it may do.

In a way, that is what Pride is at its core. Performing actions purely because of what benefit they bring to oneself, without considering the drawbacks and consequences.

There's a couple of ways we could interpret that with Dimension Shredder.

For one, we could zoom back out to what Wayward Passenger represents. Dimension Shredder being a Pride E.G.O could be signifying the Pride inherent in corporate exploitation. By its very nature, it's an action done purely for the corporation's benefit, without considering the consequences on other people.

The other is a bit more directly applicable to Yi Sang and Hong Lu themselves. It could represent how they, and the abnormality included, continue moving forward regardless of what may stand in their way. Regardless what the consequences may be for doing so.

During the attack animations for both Dimension Shredder Awakenings, we see Yi Sang and Hong Lu enter a dimensional rift they make, with both of them notably hesitating before doing so. Judging by Hong Lu's expression when he exits the rift, it's not exactly a pleasant experience. And yet, they both do it anyway. The benefit of continuing to move outweighs the damage it may inflict on them, so they ignore the consequences. I think it kinda points to my second interpretation above.

When it comes to Sin Resources, both Yi Sang and Hong Lu require Gluttony, but while Hong Lu requires Pride, Yi Sang requires Sloth. Let's dissect it one at a time.

Gluttony in Limbus Company has two meanings, in my opinion. On one hand, there's the Greed-adjacent aspect, where it represents the want for more and more. This neverending need for growth, for consumption, for progress. On the other hand, when it's seen in a more sympathetic light, it can represent the actions one commits for the sake of one's own Survival.

When it comes to Dimension Shredder, I think it's a little bit of both for both Hong Lu and Yi Sang. They both need Gluttony to survive in an environment where they're actively being exploited, but at the same time they need Gluttony to keep moving further and further forward, to keep making progress endlessly.

For the other Resources that each of them uses, I think it specifically represents what part of them is what allows them to be easily exploited by those above them.

Sloth for Yi Sang represents his apathy and passiveness. He gets exploited because he doesn't care enough about himself to fight back against it. Why bother? It doesn't matter, everything and everyone else was exploited, so why stand up to being exploited yourself? While this is something that Yi Sang starts to come out of by the end of Canto IV, I doubt it's a habit that will be easy for him to break just like that.

The fact that Pride is a resource here for Hong Lu paints his passiveness when being exploited under a different light. He doesn't buckle because he's apathetic like Yi Sang, it's because he believes that the benefits of letting himself be exploited outweigh the drawbacks enough to ignore them. If we apply this to his family exploiting him, it paints a pretty vivid picture. Sure, he is being used and hurt by his family, but just accepting that it happens means he still gets to enjoy the comfort and "love" they give him. Because what happens if he stands up to them? He likely gets punished. He loses that comfort he relies on. So he'd rather just bear the pain and pretend everything is okay, because the alternative is far worse.

Now, let's examine the dialogue lines, because I think they are very interesting with all of that analysis behind us.

For starters, I think for both Dimension Shredder users, their Awakening lines are a reflection of their coping mechanism in the face of being exploited being pushed to its absolute limits.

Yi Sang's Awakening line is a reflection of how he tries to throw himself into research and scholarly pursuits as a form of escapism from his reality. Whether it's his activities with the League, or his dependency on the Mirror, we see in Canto IV that he turns to acting the part of a researcher when faced with corporate exploitation.

Likewise, while using Dimension Shredder he makes notes of his surroundings like a researcher traversing the space. Noting the enchanting colors and how he can't memorize the path he's on. However, his tone of voice is a lot more... manic? It's emotional, seemingly entranced by what he's seeing. I think it signifies how, when pushed to his limits, Yi Sang would completely throw himself into his research, to a perhaps almost obsessive degree.

Hong Lu's Awakening line on the other hand reflects how he tries to keep a happy tone regardless of the circumstances. His defense mechanism is hiding what he's truly feeling behind a mask of smiles and jokes.

Tingtang and Kurokumo Hong Lu are probably the best examples of this. While having a constant jovial tone, Tingtang Hong Lu is an utter piece of shit only using kindness as a thin veil to hide his actual intentions. Kurokumo Hong Lu on the other hand uses a somewhat polite tone despite the fact he clearly does not respect anyone. It's even more obvious with the latter when you examine his post-uptie illustration more closely. While he wears a smile on his face, the veins shown on the hand clutching his sword say that he's not as calm as he seems.

While using Dimension Shredder, Hong Lu tries to keep up his smiling facade... Except this time, he fails. At his very limit, he's too worn down and tired of the abuse to pretend he's fine. The words do come out, but he can't make them sound the way he wants to anymore. The mask finally cracks under the pressure.

Matching with how the Awakening lines share a specific theme, the Corrosion lines do as well. Dimension Shredder Corroded dialogue lines all seem to express some form of realization that they are finally free.

Yi Sang's Corrosion line describes how the alley he's going down does in fact have an exit. It's an open one. Not only is it a reference to Poem No. 1 from Crow's Eye View, but the way Yi Sang speaks it is very interesting here. His tone is fully confident, and even seems to lack the usual tired breathiness that Yi Sang usually has.

Good thing I'm writing this after Canto IV has come out, because... All of that is reflected in Yi Sang's character arc. He does realize that the alley is open. He does realize he can keep moving forward. And, most importantly, he does gain the confidence to not let himself be stopped.

With all of that context, let's look at Hong Lu's Corrosion line. His dialogue line expresses how nobody (or nothing) is forcing him to "be located there", causing him to fall into a fit of gasping laughter. There is something. Incredibly disturbing about this line to me. It's this dichotomy between Hong Lu hesitantly realizing that he's no longer stuck, that nobody is ordering him around anymore, and his downright histerical sounding delivery.

Since we don't have Hong Lu's Canto just yet, I can't do the same comparison as I did with Yi Sang... But I could try to predict what Hong Lu's Canto could end on if we assume this line is foreshadowing it the same way Yi Sang's was.

I think Canto 8 will show us Hong Lu finally break. There will be no more mask to hide behind, just a flood of emotions that had been held back for all of his life. Most importantly though, it won't be pretty. If there's any Sinner who will be in need of emotional catharsis through a mental breakdown boss battle, Hong Lu seems like the perfect candidate for that. Either that or Hong Lu just straight up fucking murders someone on screen. Ideally both.

There's probably more I can analyze based on the visual designs of the E.G.O... But honestly this already got way fucking longer than the Roseate Desire analysis so I'll just leave you with the mental image of me chanting Hong Lu Commit Fratricide.