#(but they're just going to fuck a whole bunch instead)

[novelconcepts]

Tai always has a plan. Every game they play, Tai wins. And when Tai wins, Van somehow wins, too. or Five times Taissa Turner got her way (and one time Van made a valiant attempt).

“Please,” Tai says, leaning against the doorframe. “I need the break.”

Van pointedly doesn’t look up from her homework. Lottie’s got this.

“Really?” Lottie asks. “Why?”

“Nat’s spraying this shit to cover the smell of her booze or whatever,” Tai says breezily. “It’s fucking with my allergies.”

She’s good. She’s smooth. Van almost believes her, save for the tiny detail of Tai’s not having allergies.

[cursedthing]

.havign lots of thoughts about how npcs are portrayed learning about the nature of their universe in works

[i-dont-bite]

i've been cancelled for the 2nd time on twitter because i thought finn wolfhard going to starbucks was not such a big deal lol

[ddiidi]

bf!Bangchan x gn!reader (ot8 mentioned)

Masterlist

When he calls you clingy, so you distance yourself

Previous Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Next Pt. 3

!Warnings: angst, swearing, fun at the end bc reader needs fun in life (lmk if i missed anything)

Important!Side-Note!: Should I do a happy ending for them?

It has been 3 days since that incident. 3 days and still not a single message from Chan, not even an apology for yelling at you, nothing. You've been texting him every now and then, to ask if he's okay, eats and sleeps. He never replied to any of them, nor has he seen them, so you spend most of the time packing your stuff and working from home. You were glad you had a job you also could work from home for. Every now and then, you went over to the building, to check a few things, walking extra detours, to make sure, you won't bump into Chan.

A few of the other members texted you the past days, asking if everything is okay and why the haven't seen you around for a while, to which you just replied with "Busy with work and private stuff, dww:)". It made you happy they actually care that much about you, just because they haven't seen you in a few days, but also anxious and sad, since they care, but chan hasn't even shown any intress in you the past days. You weren't even able to tell him that you're moving.

More days pass, and a few days, turn into a week of no textes from Chan. At this point, you wondered if he even knew that you still exist.

So here you were, in your old apartment, stuffed with boxes, not being able to get your mind off chan and his well-being, even though, you're still deeply hurt from what he said, you couldn't just not not care about him....He pointed out two of your insecurities, just like that as if it was nothing and he doesn't even care...not about you not your feelings.

You let out a deep sigh. You should be getting ready for a day with your friends. Not think about some man, who happened to be the love of your life, who calls you his partner, but doesn't even know how to cherish you.

You let out another, heavy, sigh as you drop to the floor to put on your shoes, Let's just focus on having a great time today, you thought to yourself and left the apartment.

Well, maybe it was not the best decision to go out today...

Chan for his part, had to listen to a lectur from Felix, after you ran out, crying. "Chris..you really shouldn't have said all that to her. I understand that you were annoyed or whatever, but that was no reason to yell at her" "Really now? They were just being a fucking, clingy and annoying crybaby that couldn't take no for an answer, for whatever reason." chan sighed out, at the younger member. "That crybaby...was really uncalled for chris. They're your partner, not some random person on the street you can yell at. I wouldn't wonder if they took that "Leave me alone" to heart and actually leave you after that action." "But I-" chan starts, "I'm just saying chris. You better fix this before it's too late. After what you pulled, partners are faster gone than you could blink" with that, Felix leaves the room, leaving Chan alone, again.

Since that talk, Chan locked himself in his studio, thinking about the best way to apologize for what he said. But he couldn't find one. No matter how long he thought, days, a whole week, there was nothing but regret. He just had to apologize in person and beg for forgivness, hoping that you'd actually forgive him.

So there he was, with a giant bouquet of flowers, fresh clothes and hope.

He had the code to your apartment, so he opened the door, ready to be greeted by the warm, wide open hallway, but was greeted with the cold gray of bunch of boxes instead and the first thing he felt, was panic."Y/n? Y/n are you there?" he yelled, as he ran through your whole apartment, but as he saw that even all your date polaroid pictures where gone, he couldn't help but panic even more.

He let's the flowers fall on the floor, running to your room and nearly collapsed when he found..nothing. Where were you? Did you actually go? Did you actually leave him? All these questions consumed his head and that's when he broke, crying to the point he couldn't breath. He took out his phone and called the first number he saw in his recent calls. It peeped a few times, before someone took the call.

"Hey Chris everything alr-" "They're gone! Felix they're gone, they're not here i don't know what to do! I've never meant it I was just-" chan cried and gasped out at felix on the other line. "Woah there calm down, try to breath I don't understand a word. Relax, I'll be there okay? You know there is an explination for everything, that's what you always say, so try to relax it's okay" Felix tried to soothen the older man, while grabbing his keys and running out to his car. Chan didn't reply anything to that and continued soobing.

I have your location, I'll be there in 5." that's the last thing chan heared from felix, before he collapsed on the floor in your apartment.

And you? You were drinking coffee with your friends, while your bestie told you guys a story how she saw a horse that nearly drowned.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✧༺🖤༻✧✧༺🖤༻✧✧༺🖤༻✧☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

@finnbbl @wolfs-howling

[gay-dorito-dust]

Can I request headcanons for Remy, poly! Logan, and Wade reacting to gn crush telling him that they had been told by their crushes that they're not good-looking and interesting please?

Poly! Wade and Logan

Bullshit! That is such utter bullshit! You’re so sexy don’t cry! - Wade

The idiot doesn’t know what he’s missing out on if that’s how he thinks - Logan.

Want me to kill them?’ - Wade

Logan would smack Wade on the arm ‘pack it in.’

Both of them didn’t like the prick, they never did but didn’t say anything about it for your sake.

Now? They’ll gladly drag that bastard through the mud and more for making you feel as though you weren’t shit. You are the shit when Logan and Wade are concerned.

Wade will be your hype man during this sensitive time but his affirmations were mainly things like:

You are sexy, you are fierce, you will crush that fuckers skull with your thighs the next time that fucker opens their mouth!

Dog pool likes you more than that fucking disappointment.

Emotions are neither of these men’s strong suit so they’re not going to be the best in comforting you but that doesn’t mean they don’t try to take your mind off of the whole thing.

Logan would be your shoulder to lean on for the teddy bear of a man wouldn’t bring himself to move as you openly ranted to him and Wade about the now former crush.

‘What did I do wrong?’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong and you know it, so stop trying to find a plausible way to blame yourself when the fault falls upon the fucking idiot who rejected you.’ Logan would say as Wade hums in agreement while painting his nails.

Pookie is right- Wade

Don’t call me Pookie- Logan

Pookie and I don’t want to see a cutie like you cry over yesterday’s news, if anything you should be strutting down the hallway to show that you don’t give a fuck.’ - Wade continued with a smile. ‘You don’t need someone like that who’ll abandon you upon the first sign of hardship and instead people who’ll gladly get their hands dirty regardless.’

These two may not know what they’re doing or whether they are doing it right but they’re doing their best to make you feel better and make you feel special, which they already do with Wade’s surprise cuddle piles, but that’s all that counts for you.

Out of the two Logan gives the better advice out of the two whereas Wade will want to trash your former crush’s stuff without getting caught. They both show their care in vastly different ways but you always come out of them with a smile and tad more confidence in yourself.

Remy LeBeau

‘They lie mon Cher, you are far from what they say and more.’ Remy would say while trying to bite back his own tongue.

This crush, or former crush now, must’ve been the most stupidest person to have ever lived to have called you uninteresting and not good looking.

To Remy you were by far the most beautiful souls he has ever come across and had nothing but love and respect for others you acquaint yourself with, not to mention you had anyone and everyone paying close attention on what it was you had to say.

He didn’t like seeing you become so unsure of yourself from one persons words and would do anything and everything just to prove that they were a bunch of lies made up by someone who doesn’t see you the way he does.

Remy would shower you in affection and praise that didn’t overstep any boundaries.

He’d spend all day and night with you if he must to show that you were more then some words made by someone else, he’d look at you as though you hung the stars in the sky, he’d look at you as though he could see you rather see through you.

It was beautiful to be seen and or looked at the way remy looks at you that it made you forget all about your former crush. He’d remember everything you’ve ever told him, would greet you in the morning with a tender kiss to the back of your hand while comparing you to the most beautiful rose in the garden.

How are you not meant to fall for him when he’s done nothing but sing your praises and listen intently to everything you’ve ever said.

‘Don’t let people like them get to you mon Cher, that’s what they want. They want you to be as miserable as them instead of flourishing like you should be.’ Remy said as he held your hand.

‘But I thought they-‘

‘Were the one?’ Remy asked. ‘We all think the first people we met are the ones for us, until we are proven to only have been blinded by the sweeter aspects of the relationship that we forget that the person we think we will love forever is as flawed as every other human.’ Remy adds as he lets you rest against his side, pressing a reassuring kiss to your forehead. ‘You’ll find your person.’ He smiled at you.

‘I hope they’re like you then.’ You said as you melted into his side.

‘Or you could just have me yourself.’ Remy would reply.

What’s your answer, will you have him Or wait.

[bo0tleg]

One thing I like about Top Gun (1986) is how believable the development with Ice and Mav's dynamic is.

I've seen a lot of the "Rivals suddenly become buddies after traumatic event together" in media, but I don't think I've seen it done better than in Top Gun. Mostly, I attribute it to how much build up it has.

Most of the time, the 'Rivals' hate each others guts throughout the entire movie/series and then they go through an extremely traumatic event that binds them for life and shifts their entire concept of each other. Ice and Mav never once changed how they saw each other, it just changed their understanding of it.

Ice saw Maverick as dangerous and Mav saw Iceman as stuck-up and commanding. And they weren't wrong, by any means.

From the beginning, they have tension between them because of how different they are. And it ends up in the audience seeing Ice as the 'Antagonist' because that's how Mav sees it, and we're seeing it from his perspective as the protagonist. But Ice was never inherently wrong, in fact he was right.

Other than his first scene, Iceman always has a point in what he's saying. He's criticizing Mav, not insulting him. Sure, he does it in a brash way because masculinity, but he's not trying to insult him, he's trying to knock him down a peg and wake him up to reality. All Ice wants is that he starts to act as a team player, start caring about everybody's safety AND his own, rather than being reckless for the sake of being reckless. But Mav sees it as an insult because he can't process criticism in a healthy way (due to how he grew up). The same thing happened with Charlie, for the record.

And so the strife between the two begins. What I like about it is how it bleeds out of them over time, becoming more settled as the movie goes on. In the locker room "You're dangerous" scene, the tension is palpable. It's obvious they're agitated by each other, and feel the need to prove they're the correct one.

If you pay attention, this whole... demand for superiority goes away as time progresses. They're fine with each other's presence, it's not like they're constantly at each others throat all the time. In the shower scene, Ice dropped all of the aggression and competitiveness from his tone and is instead just laying out what he thinks. He's not undermining Maverick, he's not lecturing him like a child. Iceman is just telling Maverick exactly how he sees the situation in hopes that it would make him realize what the fuck he's doing, but with little hope that it'll actually work.

That doesn't mean Ice is always correct either, he doesn't understand why Mav acts the way he does, thus fails to take into consideration the emotional trauma behind it. Which only causes even more strife.

The entire time, Iceman isn't being a dick for the sake of it, he just wants Mav to stop being stupid (by his standards). And Maverick doesn't understand it because all he gets from what Ice says is insults.

Maverick isn't good at understanding what people mean to say if it's implied, you need to say it to his face. This is the reason he stayed quiet in the shower scene, because Ice finally laid everything out in simple words that he can understand without making it sound like a dick-measuring contest.

Thing is, the tension mellows out. At the beginning, you could see the tension and cut it with a knife. By the middle you can see them getting used to each other without jumping to constantly trade jabs (namely: the volleyball scene, it's just a bunch of guys being dudes, and the scene where Charlie says that Mav flew recklessly in front of the whole class, Ice doesn't comment on it in any way). Over time, they've settled down into their tension without needing to address it all the time.

Then Goose dies.

And the tension between them is still there.

Just because Goose isn't there anymore, doesn't mean their whole dynamic vanishes all of a sudden. You can see their hesitation towards each other (especially Ice), and that's great! It demonstrates that Goose dying doesn't magically resolve their problems with each other in solidarity.

Ice tried to give his consolations to Mav, and is awfully awkward about it. You can see on his face that he wants to say more, but doesn't because he knows it's not his place given their history. And not much is said, but a lot it communicated. (Val Kilmer is a killer actor for this, OH MY FUCKING GOD BLESS THAT MAN)

Even in the graduation scene you can see how out of their depts they really are with each other. A stilted congratulations, that was it. But they're trying, and that's what matters.

A scene I think gets overlooked a lot is the scene right before the Layton, where Ice expressed his worries about Mav to Stinger, and Mav heard him. Because I feel like that was a shift that was more drastic than the Layton itself for them.

What Ice was doing in that scene wasn't doubting Maverick's flying abilities, it was his mental health. Sure, he passed the psych eval, but that means next to jack shit when in a real combat situation so close after his backseater dying. And Ice might be worried that he's gonna be left hanging, but with the way he was speaking I'm more inclined to believe he was more worried about Maverick's wellbeing than himself. Ice almost looked resigned. He knew it was gonna get dismissed because that's the military for you, but he still wanted to try to vouch for Mav to stay groundside, if only to keep his mind at bay.

But Maverick heard him, and as usual, he read it as an insult. He wasn't wrong to assume Ice didn't believe him capable of flying the mission, which wouldn't be a lie, but failed to realize that he had more than one reason to want Maverick on the ground rather than in the air. And for the first time, Maverick believes him.

Up until this point, Mav dismissed all of Ice's so called 'insults' because he was certain in and of himself. But now he isn't anymore.

And it affects his performance in the air. I'm not saying he was as shitty as he was at the start of that combat because of what he overheard, but I am saying that it certainly didn't help matters in the slightest.

So their weird 'stepping-on-eggshells' situation is all over the place by that point. Because they started to care about each other despite not being what one would call proper friends yet. It's establishing a potential friendship by implying that 1. Ice cares about Mav's wellbeing and 2. Mav cares about what Ice thinks.

On the ground, they have the wingman exchange, and their suddenly buddy buddy. Thing is, it wasn't sudden at all.

They've been setting this up the entire fucking movie.

Going back to what I said at the beginning: Ice thinks Mav is dangerous and Mav thinks Ice is stuck-up and controlling. After the Layton, they still think those things because they weren't wrong to begin with. What changed was that instead of seeing it as something that pitted them against each other, it was seen as something that simply was about the other, and that there was no changing it. It could be good.

Mav being dangerous could be good and Ice being stuck-up and controlling could be good, because those were just traits of who they were. By the end of the movie they didn't change how they saw each other, just how they interpreted each other.

And it was built up during the entire fucking movie.

There was a reason to why they acted the way they did with each other because of the stilted interpretation they had of each other. From rivalry to friendship (and perhaps more later down the line), it's glaringly obvious throughout that it wasn't a sudden shift, it was exponential.

That's why I think it was so well developed, because you could see it coming.

[dreaisgrayte]

Hello there, I hope your day is going well. I have a nsfw oneshot request for Mitsuri from KNY if that’s okay. (Preferably female reader)

HEAR ME OUT. Okay so I’ve seen a lot of fanfiction where Mitsuri is a bottom, but I can’t get Soft Dom Mitsuri out of my head- like you know she’s gonna be worshipping the readers body and praising her throughout everything and AHHHH I just know the aftercare is heavenly. (and also let’s just say strap-ons exist in her universe)

*ahem* Anyways, take as much time as you want on this and have a wonderful day mate!

ABSOLUTELY, AMEN, AHHHHHHHHHH (was screaming the whole time I wrote this) Soft Dom Mitsuri lives rent-free in my head. I want to live in this story >:( Why can't I ever get izakied into a story????? DAMN IT Sorry, this took a little longer than I had intended, I was working then a bunch of things happened to where my pregnant cat had three beautiful kittens which I've been co-parenting (since she's a stray and they're outside...which I so badly want to take them inside and cuddle them so nothing happens) Also! The next anime convention I attend, I will be cosplaying Mitsuri! So I'm BEYOND excited about that!! Thank you, annon!!!

Warnings: NSFW, MDNI, kissing, fingering, cunnilingus, face sitting, strap-on, Mitsuri has a thing for fucking reader with her new toy, body worship, cowgirl, Mitsuri is skilled ;) , wholesome aftercare

Word Count: 3.3k

A Secret Technique | Mitsuri Kanroji x fem!reader

As always, Mitsuri Kanroji was grinning ear to ear, the apples of her cheeks a rosy pink. She was captivating, a distraction to the trick you were trying to show her. Ever since you’d met the love Hashira her flexibility had always vexed you. Her ability to twist and contort mid-air was admirable, to say the least. “Is this what you were so excited to show me?” She inquires, walking around your attempt at doing the splits. She hums, a giggle bubbling out when you wince as she pushes on your ankle. “You’re super close YN! We can practice together if you want?” She pops up in front of you, hands clasped together with that fucking adorable excited smile she always wore. 

You tilt your head, closing your legs to wrap them into a sitting position. “Uh, sure.” A stupid smile tugs your lips upward as she squeals, sitting down gracefully in front of you. 

She spreads her legs easily to each side of her hips, her green socks pulling down on her thighs. You gulp as your gaze revels in the plush pink of her skin. Thank the gods her black skirt dips down to cover in between her legs or you’d have a hard time listening to anything else except your heartbeat. “Open your legs,” Mitsuri starts. You choke out a laugh, looking up expecting to see her playful expression, instead, you’re met with a more hungry emotion crossing her face. You do as you’re told, pushing them apart and watching with tensed breath as Mitsuri scoots closer to you. 

She delicately touches the muscle of your upper outer thigh. You gasp as her hand travels down the length of your leg and she makes steady eye contact with you. Goosebumps are erupting down your body as if your flushed cheeks weren’t enough of an indicator of how you were truly feeling. “You know YN,” She lets her gaze drop to where her fingers are tantalizingly traversing their way back up your leg. “I find that using a secret technique helps out immensely when it comes to stretching out.” Mitsuri professes, her electric green eyes flickering up to meet yours. 

A secret technique? You’d been friends with the love Hashira for a while now and she’d never once mentioned a secret technique to you. Here you were, thinking that there were no secrets between you two. Obviously, you were too blinded by how blissful every moment spent with her felt. “Oh, don’t feel pressured to tell me if it’s such a secret or something I wouldn’t want to-”

“YN,” Mitsuri’s gentle hands grab your face, mushing your cheeks to get you to stop talking. “You’re so cute when you start overthinking, but I’m going to need your express consent for what comes next.” The way she’s gazing into your eyes nearly makes your body go numb. How could one person be so perfect? 

She lets go of your face, placing her hands back on your thighs, this time with a little more command of where she grabs. You glance down, worried she might feel how erratic your pulse is through your skin. Between your thighs was a vortex of neediness, pleading with your brain to be fucked by the woman in front of you. Every time she got near your cunt, things got a little complicated inside your body. Hopefully, this secret technique would require you to climb a mountain far away from your growing desire. “I trust you Mitsuri, you can do anything you want.” 

Her lips twitch in a grin, but before you have any time to wonder why in the hell she was bracing your feet against hers, she pulls your thighs against hers – and swiftly kisses your lips. You groan at the burning sensation of your body feeling like it’s being torn apart, but as you lick your lips you can taste the sweet honey Mitsuri had eaten earlier. Somehow, it’s even sweeter than when you shared in the delicacy. Your fingertips brush against the tender skin of your lips, a stuttering breath blowing out of your mouth. “Do you understand what I mean now?” She inquires, letting your legs return to a less painful stretch. You gulp, blinking up to meet her gaze. 

You feel hazy, your skin is burning – but in the best way possible. “Not really, but I’d like to do more of that,” You putter out, swinging yourself into a kneeling position. Mitsuri giggles, doing the same, walking over to you on her knees. She smiles gently grabbing your hands.

Her uniform leaves little to the imagination and you are looking… disrespectfully. Have you always felt this draw toward Mitsuri? You’d assumed it was the desire to be her friend – and while that’s been enjoyable – you can’t help but wonder if you had an underlying motive for getting so close to her. “You do understand the secret technique is…sex, right?” Your eyes widen as you jerk your head to take in the expression on her face – completely serious. Whatever your motives were, it didn’t matter, all that mattered was pressing your lips into hers, so that’s what you do. Her fingers card through your hair, humming in delight as your hand finds her chest, tracing the curve of her cleavage. 

Your heart is beating like crazy as your chest swells with something akin to excitement. To think this was how you were spending your day. Kissing Mitsuri was like praying to a shrine and the gods blessing you with eternal riches and splendor. The way her plush lips formed against yours, trailing kisses down your cheek and neck, surely this is the paradise sought after. 

Mitsuri seemingly knew all the sensitive parts of your body – you weren’t sure if this was because you were both women, but as a Hashira Mitsuri knew the inner workings of how the body reacts. She was damn good at putting that knowledge into practice. Her mouth works against yours, lips slightly parting allowing her to slip her tongue into your mouth. The kiss was passionate, Mitsuri guiding you all the way onto your back. You’re both panting as she hovers above you. “Have you ever been with a woman before?” She inquires, looping her leg over your waist. She now sits on top of you and fuck was it a view. Her cheeks are red, her hair messy in parts, her chest heaving, and her warmth was spreading all over your body. 

There was a time when you had a mission in the entertainment district and having haven in one of the tea houses, you were alone with a gaggle of courtesans who were happy enough to show you how fun it could be to share intimacy with the same sex. One of them spoke of having a certain tool able to render men practically obsolete if you were into that sort of thing. You did think some men could be the absolute worst, but being evil wasn’t in their core, that much you could tell. The world can twist and confine anyone into becoming something they’re not. Just like demons, not all of them asked to be that way, yet the corps eradicated all demonic creatures. Needless to say, the company of men would not be forgotten by you, but if the only person you ever laid with again was Mitsuri – you’d be fine with that. “Yes, more than one.” Mitsuri’s eyes widen, then her face slowly curls into a grin. 

She places the palm of her hand flush against your chest. “Then you won’t have a problem,” She moves up your body, lifting her skirt up. Your breath catches when you realize her pussy was on you this whole time. Your gaze flits up to meet hers. “Stick your tongue out, darling. I’m going to test just how much you know.” She fluffs her skirt out over your head, hovering above your mouth with her bare cunt. Her thighs muffle any sounds from the outside world but amplify your beating pulse. Gods this was going to kill you – but what a way to go. 

Your tongue laps at her folds, enjoying the way you can feel her shiver above you. Her arousal was heady but a sweet tanginess floods into your mouth. Of course Mitsuri Kanroji had a delicious pussy. Your hands wrap around her thighs, locking her into position as you taste her again and again. You lift your skull off the ground to suck on her puffy clit, swirling your tongue around it with precision. Her thighs shake and then she’s pushing your head back down by sitting on your face. You happily make work of her clit, using the flat of your tongue to glide through her slick folds. Your face is soaking, a mixture of drool, sweat, and arousal coating your skin. The sounds you can hear are the sucking and slurping of a job well done for Mitsuri lets out a cry loud enough for you to hear. Her fingers are suddenly intertwined in your hair, pulling on the strands. A shiver runs through you as you smack your mouth against her pink pussy. Her muscles tense and she shutters, shaking as she cums all over your face. 

Mitsuri swings her leg over your face, a delightful moan rumbling from her chest. “I only wish you could’ve seen what a perfect job you did. You should’ve warned me about how good you are at eating pussy,” She presses the heel of her hand into her forehead as she laughs. You join in, sitting up to get a better look at her. 

She’s blushing, but the main difference you take note of is how her uniform is pulled open, revealing her perfect breasts. It sends a spike of want through your chest. She notices you gawking and squeaks. She shyly turns her back. “What are you doing? I want to see.” You reach out to grab her shoulder but she tosses a glare at you instead. 

You’re shocked. What happened? Gods, did you mess up somehow? You’re about to ask her what’s going on when she turns around, an adorable pout present on her face this time. “It’s not fair YN, you’ve gotten to see all of me and I haven’t seen more of your, frankly, gorgeously perfect body.” She twiddles her fingers together, nervously looking into your eyes. You can’t help but grin widely and Mitsuri slaps your shoulder. 

“You can’t be serious, you’re the one perfect thing in this world.” You exclaim, watching as she shakes her head.

“Well, that’s fine because your body is like a goddess’. In fact…” She drags a hand down your body, stopping at the hem of your skirt. “I think it’s about time I reward you for doing such a good job.” You bashfully watch her unbuckle your belt and pull it out of the loops slowly enough to drive you mad. She tosses it to the side with a smirk, pulling your skirt down your thighs. Her eyes meet yours. “Sit down,” She instructs, pushing at your chest until you’re in a laying position yet again. Your skirt is yanked off the rest of the way and there’s a long beat of silence. You lift your head to peek at Mitsuri who is gazing down at you lovingly. “YN, you’re so beautiful, may I?” She nods to the apex of your thighs, a giddiness in her voice. You nod and she wastes no time in spreading your knees apart. “You’re so wet already.” She giggles, reaching out to stroke some of your arousal that had accumulated from eating this gorgeous woman’s pussy. You hiss as her fingers dip into you, spreading the slick around until she slips inside your entrance – smiling the whole time. “Your pussy is such a pretty color YN, you’re doing such a good job for me.” She praises, sending a wave of a gooey feeling through you. 

Mitsuri braces herself on your knee, which is bent upward, as she works her fingers inside of you. Her gaze switches between observing your reaction to her hooking her fingers or swiping at a sensitive spot, to watching her fingers get eaten up by your greedy cunt. It made her thighs clench together watching how well you took her fingers. You were perfect and Mitsuri couldn’t think of anyone better to experiment with her new toy than you. 

Your hands are clenched, jerking your hips upward onto her fingers. She chuckles lowly, taking in how cute you were when you were desperately chasing your climax. She uses her free hand to rub your clit in small circles, edging you closer to orgasm. Mitsuri was curious how you would look and how you’d sound after she made you cum. You were certainly moaning up a storm as you bucked against her. You whimper and then groan as she works your clit directly. “That’s it, my pretty girl, you can cum now.” Her fingers are pumping in and out, overstimulating you as you careen off your crest of pleasure. Your throat is scratchy as you scream out, trembling against her gentle, yet relentless,  touch. The world is full of bright colors – a brilliant spectrum of satisfaction. 

As you try to catch your breath Mitsuri enjoys watching your body still shudder in waves of your previous orgasm. “YN…” She plays with a strand of your hair, curling it around her fingers with an absentminded expression. Your attention is on her – as if you could focus on anything else. “A little while ago I had to go to the swordsmith village and while I was there I got talking with a special smith. She has a shop that creates amazing things and I’d like to share with you what I bought there,” Her eyes gleam with an excited glitter. 

You raise a brow, sitting up from the floor. “I’d love that.” You exclaim, following Mitsuri into a standing position. She grabs your hand and leads you through the halls of her manor until she stops in front of what you remember to be her bedroom door. Your thighs are sticky and as you walk into the room Mitsuri rummages through a cupboard. You peer at her room, but you don’t have much time to admire how it’s decorated because Mitsuri drops her skirt and removes the rest of her clothing. Your pussy throbs with desire watching her muscular yet curvy body move around the room. 

She gathers what looks like a belt in her hand. “YN, my sweet, I’m going to need you to undress and get on your knees.” She chirps, fastening the belt around her thighs and waist. You hesitate for a moment, then scurry to follow her orders. Once you’re on your knees she turns around with lust-filled eyes. Your eyes travel down her body, stopping briefly to hungrily gaze at her tits, but something catches your attention. 

Attached to the belt she had latched around herself is a long pink phallic-shaped apparatus. Your lips part, your heart ramming against your ribcage as you look back into Mitsuri’s eyes.  “Well? Open your mouth, sweetheart.” You do as you are told, the image of Mitsuri with a cock causing you to reach down in between your thighs. You play with your sensitive and puffy clit, moaning as Mitsuri hits the cock against your face. “Mmm, you’re so pretty YN, so pretty and perfect for me. You make me so horny.” Then she places the tip against your lips, groaning softly as the head pushes into your mouth. “Gods, you have no idea what you’re doing to me,” She moves her cock in your mouth, grabbing a fistful of your hair. “That's it, choke on my cock,” She huffs, throwing her head back. Spit dribbles down your chin as the surprisingly soft cock rubs against the corners of your mouth. You abuse your clit, hungry for a crest. This was so hot, you would never forget this in all of your life. 

Mitsuri takes note of how you play with your clit while sucking on her length. Her mouth twitches up in a grin. “Ah, hungry for more?” She pops the tip out of your mouth and rests the wet toy against your cheek as you pant, dazed eyes pleading with her. “Lay on the bed with your gorgeous pussy in the air.” 

On your back, legs hooked around Mitsuri’s arms, she pushes her cock inside of you after spitting on your pussy. Your eyes roll back as she thrusts into you, cooing about how you’re so good, so perfect, you’re doing so well. You ball the sheets in your fists, moans gasping out of your throat. “Ah, ngh, please m’gonna, oohngh,” Your tits are bouncing up and down, Mitsuri can’t look away. Hearing your noises of pleasure and seeing how you squirm under her, it was all so perfect. 

She wanted to see you on top of her, cum all over her cock. “One second baby,” With how strong Mitsuri is she’s able to pick you up, fucking you still, then flips herself to be laying on the bed. She gasps as your weight settles on her, riding her like a good girl. “Fuck,” She hisses, digging her nails into your thighs, you play with your tits as you bounce on her cock. 

Your nipples are bruises, a splendor of painful pleasure radiating through your body. “Feels s’good,” You hum, but Mitsuri hasn’t had enough yet. She presses the pad of her thumb against your clit, rubbing it relentlessly. 

“Does it? You’re taking it so well,” She coos, excitedly watching you shudder in ecstasy from her musings on your clit. “Good girl,”

Her words send shocks of electricity coursing your veins like your very blood. “Gods, Mitsuri, m’gonna,” You plant your palms on her stomach, slapping your ass against her thighs. You hang your head while panting crazily. As Mitsuri stimulates your clit and pussy the cool magma washes over you as you jerk her cock deep inside of you. You cum hard all over her, laying down against her chest, breath rapid. 

She’s breathing hard too, but she pets your head, kissing your forehead. “You’re so perfect YN,” You giggle against her skin, lifting your head to look her in the eyes. 

She smiles sweetly back, pressing her forehead against yours. “What a secret technique,” Mitsuri blushes and laughs as she looks away. 

“Yeah, not my best pick-up line.” You shake your head and nuzzle against her again. 

“I thought it was great.” You mumble. Mitsuri shifts out from under you, sliding her cock out of you as she does. You pout with the empty sensation. 

She stands up and smiles down at you. “I’ll be right back.” Mitsuri returns a couple of minutes later with a steamed towel and a plate full of honey butter toast. She sets the plate next to you and lifts your leg to clean your thighs and slick cunt. You moan lightly at the warm sensation and her eyes darken for a second. “Careful you whore,” She slaps your ass with a playful grin. You hum, shoving toast into your mouth with careless hunger. Mitsuri tosses the towel to the floor, sitting down gently next to you. “Maybe next time I can teach you-”

“Another secret technique?” You interrupt, a few crumbs of toast spitting out of your mouth. She chuckles, wiping away the slight mess on your mouth with her thumb. 

Mitsuri brings her finger to her lips, her tongue darting out to taste the honey. “Mhm,” She gazes at you like you’re the sweet treat. 

You grin, kicking your feet in the air. “Yes please,” 

[minus-plus-zer0]

One Good Grovel

♡ Genre: Fluff (trust me), little crack ♡ Pairing: Bakugou x Reader ♡ Tags: Established relationships

You and Katsuki had your biggest fight in a while.

Both sides fought like they were out for blood. You two said things you shouldn't have, things that were hard to take back. It ended with Bakugou storming out of your shared apartment.

The moment he did, he regretted it. But he didn't know how to go back inside and say it.

Hours later after he came home from doing errands, Bakugou found you on the couch. You hadn't answered any of his texts, and Bakugou never felt so helpless before. He was already losing you fast, and he couldn't dawdle now. Bakugou dumped his groceries on the kitchen counter and then approached you. Neither of you said anything.

You still looked torn up about your earlier argument, your hair a little messy in a way that Bakugou liked. He'd prefer to be the one messing it up himself, but he knew he didn't deserve that privilege now. Bakugou threw an extra blanket over you, because you looked like you needed one.

"Yo," Bakugou said, sitting down beside you on the couch. "How've you been holding up?"

"...I don't wanna talk about it. Not with you."

Your voice was frail, quiet. It broke Bakugou's heart, knowing that he put you in this position.

He had to make it right.

"I'm sorry," Bakugou said. "For everything I said. I wouldn't be surprised if ya never wanted to talk to me ever again after this." You looked at him suspiciously. "It'd kill me if you did, but that's fine. 'Cause I value your feelings over mine. When I was out today, all I could think about was you and what I said to you. So I bought you some gifts and I really hope you'll love 'em."

Bakugou reached out to stroke your hair. "And I promise you, I'll never say that demeaning shit to you ever again. You mean more to me than winning that stupid argument, and I don't know where I'd be in my life without you by my side. I was wrong, okay? I was dead wrong for treating you like that, like anything less than the best. Most of all, I just want ya to take me back and love me. But I won't force ya to do anything. I can walk out that door again and leave you alone if you asked. And if you hate me forever... I understand."

You smiled at him. "...Okay, I hear you."

"...So do ya hate me now?"

You still smiled. "Only a whole bunch. You monster." You playfully punched him in the face.

"Sorry," Bakugou said, matching your sweet expression. "I deserved that. Punch me all ya want. Won't even stop ya."

You gave him several more feather-light punches. "You're soooo dead."

"Ya gonna call the cops on me too? Make sure I never do that shit again? Make sure I learn my lesson instead of forgiving me too easily?"

"Yes." You fluffed his hair. "They're already on their way. The conviction of a famous Pro Hero is gonna be the scandal of a century!"

Bakugou fixed his hair. "Well I'll still love ya, even while in jail."

You crossed your arms. "Only after you've served your 10-year sentence and repent through hours and hours of community service will I finally forgive you. Then you'll be free, we'll start all over, and we'll fall in love again."

"Deal," Bakugou said, kissing your forehead. "But I wanna skip to the end."

"No, that's the easy way out!"

"The hell? You're not actually gonna send me to jail for saying it was wrong to like Pepsi over Coca-Cola, are ya?"

"That's how the roleplay is going!"

"It ain't that serious! I said I was sorry babe! I'm sorry!"

You recalled what you originally fought about quite easily...

"Alright," Bakugou said. "I'm gonna head out for groceries. Any last minute changes to the shopping list?"

"Oh yes!" You rushed out to meet him in the entrance. "Could you get me some Pepsi? Pretty please?"

"What the fuck?" Bakugou looked at you like you grew two heads. "'Pepsi'? You want freaking 'Pepsi'?!"

You shrugged. "...Is that so bad? It'd be nice to have something besides Coca-Cola for once..."

Bakugou's eyes narrowed into slits. He shut the front door and approached you. "I didn't realize we had a freaking problem here. You're telling me I've been buying the wrong soda for you this entire time?!"

"Well... It's just not as good as Pepsi. It's not the same. I'm sorry... but I've always felt this way."

"Since fucking when?! When did things change?" Bakugou slapped a hand over his eyes. "What the hell did I miss?!"

Bakugou couldn't believe this. He thought he knew you better than anyone, just like how you knew him better than anyone. You two were the tightest couple ever. Bakugou had an engagement ring hidden in his dresser because he had already long since decided that what he wanted in life was you.

But now, he didn't feel like he knew you at all.

He'd still marry you though.

You remained silent. Bakugou couldn't stand it. He shook his head, then walked back to the front door, opening it. He stopped before he left, turning to you.

"Coca-Cola is better than Pepsi. That's just a fact."

Then he turned, and left. Instant regret washed over him, but he continued down to the front lobby. As Bakugou looked down upon his cursed shopping list, he couldn't in good conscious buy Coca-Cola anymore. Not when you hated it so much. He had to make things right.

He was getting Dr. Pepper instead.

"This is fucking disgusting, Katsuki," you said, halfway through your delicious can of Dr. Pepper at your dinner table.

"It was on sale, alright?!"

(I've read that a lot of people are unsatisfied with grovels in romance novels because they don't feel that the love interest apologizes well enough, so I wrote this just in case anybody needs one good quick grovel with none of the baggage attached. Btw, my favorite is Coke and it's not even close)

[elbiotipo]

Also, the point I always make: Jurassic Park is all about "PLAYING GOD!!!1!!1!!" because of cloning dinosaurs, and then sequels are all about "we must save the poor dinosaurs!" while canonically taking place in large islands off the coast of Costa Rica. Those islands, or at least the inspiration for them, actually exist, though much smaller.

And you know what they are? They are strictly protected reserves, because of their unique ecology and endemic species. In fact, one of the main worries is precisely the introduction of invasive species.

Could you imagine if instead of Isla Nublar, Jurassic Park was set in say, the Galápagos Islands? Could you imagine someone in real life trying to build Disneyland in the Galápagos or the Great Barrier Reef?

I know that joke that Jurassic Park is about "capitalism gone wrong" but it's even more fucked up if you think about the imperialist part too. A first world billionarie tycoon comes to a third world country, somehow achieves control of islands (it's implied that the Costa Rican military is at Jurassic Park's call; fun fact, Costa Rica has no military) which by all means should be protected as fragile ecosystems, to build a gigantic theme park with all the ecological disruption it implies, for first world tourists too. The theme park just so happens to be cloned dinosaurs, but Hammond might as well have razed the whole island and planted soybean fields and it would be the same horror story we in South America are very well acquainted with.

And then the sequels are about "saving the dinosaurs!" like they're a natural part of the ecosystem! No man, fuck the dinosaurs, they're giant walking GMOs in the most literal way possible. Hammond SHOULD have built it in Orlando, at least Florida (which has its own deep ecological troubles) is large enough so you can actually set preserved areas, wildlife corridors, better ecological practices... building a park in Isla Nublar is the same as destroying the Galápagos.

And no, the movies don't adress this fact, that Isla Nublar and etc. HAD A PREVIOUS ECOSYSTEM BEFORE JURASSIC PARK that is most likely wiped out. The book does worry a bit about dinosaurs introduced to the mainland before returning to its main message: "GENETICS IS PLAYING GOD!11!!1!!!!", yeah man, I'm a bit more concerned about the islands you're destroying for your stupid theme park. I don't mind you cloning the dinosaurs so much as much as the fact that you're destroying whole natural ecosystems to host them and then there are a bunch of freaking kids who want to preserve them even if they're THE case of an invasive species, you might as well try to preserve Pedro Escobar's hippos in Colombia.

(I did learn about island ecology and I'm reminded that during the Cold War, the paradigm of island ecology was used to use actual islands as test laboratories, including for nuclear weapons. Islands are never truly 'isolated' or 'blank slates', and at the same time they're incredibly fragile ecosystems, but if I keep writing I'm going to search actual papers and I have to do my actual work)

[velnna]

What are the races in your under garden comic? And how did you come up with them?

Oh oh oh juicy question

We're still exploring what "races" we have, how mixed they can get, etc etc, but I love yapping about this so I'll give a bit of a TL:DR

The Under Garden started off with me and my cowriter having a couple of DnD characters we got very attached to and didn't want to dispose, so the "basis" for their races was attached to DnD somewhat - namely drow and tiefling

HOWEVER when we decided to make it its own world we basically broke off with that and decided to, for starters, have a basic "elf" like race for humanoids. The range is basically any vaguely human creature with pointy ears, and then other physical attributes might determine where they're from but wouldn't exactly count as a whole separate thing.

When we worked out some of the large scale history of the world, we decided as well that the people we first interact with, with skin in shades of purple/blue and hair in shades of silver, would have been dominant at some point, then driven to seclusion in small pockets of the world. Meaning that if someone were to look vaguely.. "drowish" I suppose, they'd be linked to this ancient powerful people and the few places they're known to still exist in. They've got the longest lifespan (~250 years) and are also more intertwined with the high level magic system in this world.

For example:

From here we sort of made room for types of elf we haven't pinned down yet, and will probably parallel anything from bluer "sea" elves to stockier more dwarf-like people, and for all intended purposes even if someone just looks like a human they're a flavour of elf. For example:

And again, the further you go from the silver hair - purpleish skin combo the less connection you have to the OG magic dwellers. There's more nuance to the magic system but that's the gist of it.

ASIDE FROM ELVES HOWEVER we now get into what we decided to do with the "tiefling" side of it. The thought process here was funny because we had a character inspired by a cyborg but no way to have actual cyborg shit justified in this world without an extra layer of complication. So I was like yo what if he's like a bug instead. Exoskeleton vibes n all. So then we decided fuck it out more wack looking people will be mostly inspired by bugs. Within them you DO have a bigger variety of "races", lifespans, physiologies, etc, and there's a lot of room for us to wiggle. They're generally non magical and can cross breed with elves so bugness is also a spectrum.

Some bugs:

Some bug hybrids:

Basically anything with a weird number of limbs, eyes, odd scleras, exoskeletons, wings, etc is some flavour of bug or bug hybrid. They tend to be as far removed from magic as possible.

Obviously there's a bunch of more and lesser known types of bugs and the sheer diversity makes for some interesting worldbuilding questions and dynamics but as a whole it's a work in progress

*takes a bow*

[sixstepsaway]

so here's the thing

i've seen a bunch of people say on twitter and stuff how... ed's behavior is very abusive and his anger is dangerous and he isn't romantic lead material because of it

and i get where they're coming from

but to me the main issue isn't putting ed in the position of a romantic lead, but not crafting the narrative around his characterization so that it allows for a spicy romantic pirates-in-love narrative instead of...whatever this is.

i'm going to try and explain this. idk if i'll do well but i'll try

the way she show presents stede is as an innocent baby who isn't really equipped for pirate life. he goes into a fugue/disassociative state whenever there's any real violence, apparently, and needs protecting by other characters when things get too rough - for example when ed is telling ned lowe not to take the poker to stede.

that's fine! it's honestly adorable to see a masc character being so soft around the edges and being protected by other characters this way.

(i'm not going to touch on stede's... eh... not great characterization this season rn)

then there's izzy, who is shown as a bit violent, a bit rough around the edges. he's more likely to draw a sword or throw a punch or hit someone with a chair or take a punch like a champ. violence is just part of life for him and that's okay, it just Is, from small things like smacking stede on the ass to bigger things like being wall slammed, it's not all that big or bad for violence to happen around and with him, he tends to give as good as he gets (there's some nuance here but i'm talking the macro themes not the micro of what izzy does vs is done to him)

and finally there's ed

ed is presented as violent (stabbing knives at guys, telling fang to use the snail fork etc) and used to a life of violence, and then in season 2 he's presented as really violent, his anger coming out in dangerous and terrifying ways

and frankly, i'd be super into it if he and izzy were the main ship and that twisted dynamic from the first two episodes of s2 was explored and fleshed out into something deeper

friends to enemies to lovers who fight and fuck. angry pirates who lay hands on each other, who break the whole ship with each other in the heat of passion.

except instead, s2 gives us... abuse. it gives us izzy cringing and lowering his head and trying to protect the kids crew from ed's angry outbursts.

so when stede comes back and he's still soft around the edges and ed headbutts him and it's deliberate, it's... not a great look, and the vibes are a bit skewed

if stede fought back, if when ed struck out at him he struck back, if they fought rather than it being one-sided, if it was friends to enemies to lovers and not presented as healthy, but maybe they can work their way there, who knows, maybe even more like anne bonnie and mary read because hey, they were doing something very similar?

except they were both into it. they were both enjoying the fighting and the fucking and the burning down the house.

stede's not enjoying it.

i cannot describe how much i hate this sequence just because of the way stede flinches

anne and mary don't!! mary jumps at the unexpected bang but she doesnt flinch, she doesn't cover her face like she thinks the vase will be coming for her not the wall and anne? looks so into it

and the thing is that in real life, no, you don't want to date someone who throws shit around, or headbutts you

but in fiction when it's two fucked up people doing this shit together like anne and mary?

that can be fun.

but instead what we've been given is stede flinching and apologizing to ed and then all of ed's...what, semi-redemption???? is done away from the other collection of people he abused, and then he spends some time on a fishing boat wearing a dog collar and everything is fine because he's good now and won't be doing anything bad ever again

and it's just... poor writing. the vibes are rancid.

i spent a really big chunk of time between s1 and s2 defending ed. i kept saying how what he did to izzy by making him eat his toe wasn't abuse, it was a one-off and abuse isn't a one-off thing it's a pattern, and then s2 made it a pattern.

explicitly. explicitly a pattern.

not just one toe but three.

jim saying "you're in an unhealthy relationship with blackbeard"

and all ed offered izzy was a "sorry about your leg" which might've been fine if izzy survived and they could work on this more, but instead that's all the apology and closure izzy will ever get

ed threw a chair and a vase and made stede flinch in fear and stede was right to do that. what part of any of this implies this will never happen again? that stede won't press the wrong button at some point and be on the receiving end? none of it

and if we'd been presented with a s2 stede bonnet who could handle himself and stand up for himself and fight back, then maybe i could imagine that turning into a weird sexy fucked up anne/mary like thing and maybe that could be why they put that episode in, but instead it feels like that episode was going, "look, see, ed's violence is fine because these two are fine with it with each other"

but stede isn't

ed and izzy or ed and stede in an unhealthy battle of a relationship could be such a fun, interesting and downright sexy thing to watch unfold on tv, and could honestly end somewhere far more down the chill end of the spectrum, but that's not what we've been given here

i cannot argue that ed isn't an abuser anymore, and not just of izzy but of the whole crew. he terrified frenchie.

it's not good writing to try and lean into the idea that ed and the pirates are violent and live a life of violence, so it's okay that ed's been violent, while simultaneously presenting his violence as traumatic and abusive, and then less than three episodes later saying oh it's fine now, he's just a little meow meow who can do no wrong, see?

especially considering they had him murdering people at the end of the season. and sure, you can say the english are just cannon fodder and they dont 'count', but they did before. ed explicitly did not kill before, and that included the english, or the spanish, or anyone else. so either they count or they don't, but flipping him on a dime makes no sense.

ALSO

having ed be the son of an abusive man who threw plates at his mother and made her cringe and then having ed kill his father to protect his mother and then a season later having ed become the kind of man who throws chairs and vases and makes his love interest cringe is, again, not bloody optimal

i want to say again i dont CARE about tv always presenting healthy relationships or tv always giving us aspirational goals. i want messy fucked up dynamics and terrible people making terrible choices, and still, to this day, i fucking love ed teach. i would honestly love to have seen them continue with ed's darkness and bring stede into it and see where they went with that, to have stede kill ned lowe and not just bury his feelings in ed but get off on it, enjoy the violence, and see where that led, but no

and so instead all we end up with is a protagonist who is being set up for a lifetime of abuse from an intimate partner, and a romantic lead who abuses his love interests (and yes. izzy is a love interest, he is set up like one and positioned like one and treated like one), frightens his love interests with his violence, is erratic and most of all inconsistently written. he was so sorry about scaring fang as though he hadn't been deliberately terrifying the whole crew for fuck knows how long? what?!

the whole fandom has spent so long saying, "no no, i know stede bonnet irl was a slave owner, but ofmd is using the names and not any real piracy, it's more disney piracy, you know? so that kind of stuff doesnt exist!" and then they flipped around and went "blackbeard is blackbeard and so he is evil and does all these horrible things" and i dont know how to rationalize the two sides of that because it feels so out of place

i'm getting rambly, this isnt a particularly well constructed thought process, i just feel like we were robbed both of a toxic, violent relationship that could be fun to see explored on tv and a soft and sweet love story between two middle aged men exploring their first loves in one fell swoop and there's no way for s3 to bring either of those things back because they got utterly torpedoed by making ed a horrible person

ugh

[level2janitor]

tactiquest structure

Edit: Play tactiquest here!

so i've posted a lot about tactiquest's classes and monsters and everything on here but i haven't really talked about the non-combat subsystems much yet and i wanted to go into detail about them, bc tactiquest has very different goals from most heroic fantasy systems.

tracking inventory, travel time, worrying about actually running out of your adventuring budget, are things a lot of big-damn-heroes fantasy systems throw out because they're just paperwork that gets in the way of your cool fights. that's not the case in Tactiquest! these systems are so core to the experience that removing them will make a lot of classes unusable. the game is built around them.

travel & exploration

tactiquest explicitly assumes you're running an open-sandbox hexcrawl and is designed to support that, including the fact the game is designed around random encounters. this is the sort of thing D&D 3e expected you to do, but people ditched random encounters because they thought they were boring and tedious. so classes balanced around that attrition of resources ended up with a huge spike in power other classes couldn't match.

the boring-and-tedious problem is mostly addressed by trying to make combat really good and resolve really fast. if i fucked that up the whole thing falls apart, but so far people are liking it

the second thing that helps with random encounters is your resources don't fully restore immediately at the end of each day like they do in 3e. resting is less effective in the wilderness and resources expended are a tomorrow problem, not just a today problem. so you don't have to have 3+ fights every single day just to maintain parity - 0-2 fights per day still adds up to difficult resource management.

because the game has such a focus on it, you can have classes like the ranger actually be good at travel and exploration instead of just giving them vaguely-naturey combat abilities.

economy

in most D&D-likes, even usually OSR ones, you accrue so much gold. just as a side effect of adventuring. to the point money no longer actually matters because you can throw piles of it at any problem. this is bad. it's a system that defeats its own purpose; there are no interesting choices involving money when you have so much the only real expense is like, 50,000-gold-piece magic items.

i don't just want players to care about money, i want them to worry about money, like a normal person. you're not batman who's a billionaire as a side hobby, you're spiderman who has to deliver pizzas in between superhero work because he's got bills to pay like everyone else. so a whole lot of effort has been put into actually designing prices and treasure amounts around this dynamic.

i also hate how games will usually go "oh adventuring gives you 900,000 gold for existing but a normal person's living wage is 2 gold a month". i don't want to be fantasy jeff bezos, thanks

inventory

this is something i just lifted from OSR games outright. you can carry ten things (and tiny things don't take up an item slot). that's the whole rule.

tracking inventory can add a lot of interesting decisions to a game and adds a new lever for abilities from classes and magic items. having a character play the merchant class which gets a bunch of extra inventory slots feels really impactful. finding a bag of holding that doubles your carry capacity feels so good when you actually have to watch your inventory.

supply

the only thing i felt was really unenjoyable when running games with strict inventory limits was tracking rations for each character that you eat every night; it felt too much like busywork with not enough payoff. so in Tactiquest rations are abstracted into a single Supply stat that's tied to the party rather than any individual character.

you can only restock Supply in towns, and it drops by 1 each time you rest. you can sleep without resting and this won't cost supply, but you won't regain any HP or other resources. this gives you the impactful decision-making of tracking rations without the annoyance of "okay it's been a day of travel, everyone make sure you dock a ration from your sheet" like twice per session

Supply is one of the things that slowly drains your funds and gives you a reason to keep seeking out treasure, tying back into the economy. it also gives merchants and rangers some extra mechanical levers for their class abilities to pull on.

[toaarcan]

Hi, hey there, did you know that the whole "Jedi can deflect blasters so Mandalorians used solid-shot weapons to kill them because blocking a bullet with a lightsaber just results in molten metal spraying the Jedi" meme is actually bullshit?

Like, first thing you have to know about that lore is that it was written by Karen Traviss. Traviss is fairly infamous for writing a shitton of military wank and really hating the Jedi, portraying them as cruel, cold, fascist idiots, who are much, much lamer than the cool Mandalorians, who are badass military types and definitely haven't carried out multiple genocides in the past (they have). She was also known for not exactly playing ball with other writers, and ultimately ragequit the franchise when TCW started to include Mandalorians and portrayed them differently. This was not a detail that basically any other writer in anything Star Wars ever actually backs up.

And like, here's the thing... this exists.

That's a Jedi using the Force to deflect bullets with her bare hand.

This is Tutaminis. And/or Force Deflection, it's not really clear whether they're the same thing or not. It's a pretty standard Force ability that a bunch of characters have demonstrated. Obi-Wan blocks both bullets and a flamethrower with it in the 03 Clone Wars microseries. It's how Yoda catches and redirects Force Lightning during his duels with Dooku in Attack of the Clones and Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. It's how Vader absorbs Han's shots with his hand in The Empire Strikes Back.

It's also evident from the amount of times that the Mandalorians fight the Jedi with normal blasters instead of breaking out their "anti-Jedi" weapons for their ancient enemies. And the fact that the Mandalorians lost their wars against the Jedi.

If solid-shot guns/slugthrowers were the amazing anti-Jedi weapons that totally always worked against Jedi, then we'd see a lot more slugthrowers and a lot fewer Jedi. We see the CIS' Droid armies fight against the Jedi for three years, we see the Clones being designed from the get-go to kill the Jedi at the end of the war and being highly successful at it, we see the Empire hunting Jedi for the next 19 years and the rest of the Galactic Civil War after that, and y'know what they have in common? None of them use slugthrowers. They all just keep using blasters.

The answer to "How to kill a Jedi" equation has traditionally been depicted as "Use more blasters than they can actually physically deflect."

There's also the detail that Jedi are precognitive space wizards who can move with superhuman speed. If you're actually in range to shoot one with a gun, they'll sense you, evade or block with the Force, close the gap before you can chamber the next round, and revoke your Hand Privileges.

Even the "You'll kill them with a spray of molten metal from the melted bullet!" thing doesn't actually track with what we see on-screen. At the climax of Revenge of the Sith, we see Obi-Wan and Vader fight in the middle of an active volcano. They get splashed with showers of lava a couple of times, and at the end of the fight, both of their clothes are scorched and burned from the embers. Obi-Wan continues to wear his charred robes throughout the rest of the movie. And he's fine. No lava burns. Neither of them actually gets hurt by the lava until Obi-Wan cuts Vader's limbs off and he can no longer move or protect himself, and even then, Vader survives getting burned to a crisp by being really fucking mad about it.

So yeah, it's nonsense. A dumb "Hurr, Jedi are so lame and my unproblematic genocidal warrior race could totally kill them super-easy" take written by Star Wars' own version of Ken Penders.

[fastcardotmp3]

Eddie Munson does do the whole rock star thing, but it doesn't quite go the way it did in the daydreams of a sixteen-year-old kid trying to stay awake in school.

He leaves Hawkins after the world doesn't end, gets himself out there, takes all the hurt and fear and fucked up shit and puts it into a handful of good enough songs to get himself signed.

It's not quite the genre he grew up with, not quite something any of his idols might have played, but only because it is so entirely Eddie, so influenced by where he's been and what he's seen that it kind of doesn't fit one specific influence.

It's new and it's good, is the point. Really good. And he skyrockets fast enough to give himself the spins.

He's recognizable and then he's famous and then he's too famous and too young to know what to do with it and too far from home and everyone he loves to really cope with it and it's just.

Eddie isn't built for it. Eddie hasn't even processed the fact that he was maybe supposed to die in that place, or the fact that he did watch people better than him actually die, but he's out here shooting to the top of the charts and being called the next big thing and it's too much.

It's just enough, at the end of it all, for him to self-sabotage his way out of being more than a one-hit wonder.

One big hit, a contract broken by the guys at the top with the fancy lawyers because Eddie has become the too much thing, just like always, and it's over as quick as it started.

He disappears, becomes one of those whatever happened to him? he was supposed to be the next big thing? stories that travel by word of mouth and then fade with the shift in conversation.

So what does happen to Eddie Munson?

He falls hard, he hits rock bottom, he crawls his way home to an uncle who deserved for Eddie to really make it, make him proud, have him financially set for life and get him into a real house with two stories and a garage to park the truck in, maybe even a yard for a dog.

He spirals and isolates and falls apart and stops letting himself make music at all and makes some personal choices that will probably have lasting effects on him for the rest of his life and then somewhere along the line a girl with hair like tangerines and terrible aim manages to smack him with her cane and says if I learned to walk again, so can you, asshole.

There are people in his life again after that, a reason to get out of bed and realize that he can make Wayne proud in more ways than the one he'd already fucked straight to hell.

Eddie watches a bunch of kids graduate high school and then he packs up and chases down some people who pulled him out of hell once before up in Chicago, crashes on Steve and Robin's couch until he gets himself a job painting houses and they can afford three bedrooms instead of just the two.

He cuts his hair, not short but shorter, and he gets more tattoos and itches for the guitar that sits in a case under his bed, ignores it. Itches for the pen in his hand, ignores that too.

He's still barely past his mid-20s and he still has some fucking around left to get out of his system, some finding out to accomplish doubly so, but he learns as he goes no matter whether it's forwards or backwards.

He falls in love and falls out of it, gets fired from jobs and tracks down new ones, gets into fights with his friends because they're all a little fucked up and codependent and weird but makes up with them for the same reasons.

The thing with Steve happens slowly, going from tolerating each other for the sake of knowing they'll always be on the same team to genuinely liking each other to discovering a care between the two of them that's a bit too strong to be normal about even if it still takes them a half-dozen so-called turning points to really name it and take it and keep it.

Eddie's 33 when they buy a condo together on the outskirts of Chicago two weeks after they fall into bed with each other for the first time, and he's over a decade on from being a kid who rose to the top too fast but it doesn't feel dissimilar, that sensation of a too-good thing that's bound to go wrong.

Only this time he doesn't try to sabotage it, tries the opposite, tries to hold it tightly in ways that would probably be too tight for anyone other than Steve Harrington with all his deeply intense feelings and inability to love at anything other than an eleven.

It's in the move that Steve finds a box of notebooks, snoops because it's who he is, and finds years worth of words that never made it past the tip of a pen but did, eventually, make it that far.

And it's not an easy thing, convincing Eddie that they're words worth sharing, because Eddie doesn't want it to be an easy thing. He can't let kind words shoved into his orbit by a beautiful man be enough to make it feel worth it, can't see a world where sharing his art doesn't end in another great big self-induced mess that he can't let happen when he's finally found something good.

He doesn't want to go on tour and get screamed at on stage and, besides, he's pretty sure the rest of the world doesn't want to scream for him anymore either, but then Steve has to go and remind him--

"You don't have to be the face of it. You can just be the words; you are so fucking good at being the words, Ed."

Which still isn't quite enough to be convincing, but it's a start in a solid six months of the words coming easier now that he has someone to share them with, someone to listen as Eddie plucks away at a guitar that sits out in the open now, free of dust.

It stops feeling like something shameful to hide, his music, and the thing is? It doesn't feel how it did back then either.

It's not an escape or a purge of violent energy or a distraction from everything he didn't know how to think about. Sure, it takes all of that into consideration because it takes the whole of Eddie into consideration, but more than anything it's just fun.

Like he's thirteen and still learning how to play the guitar, like it's just a hobby that never has to go anywhere, like it's just art that maybe deserves to be heard.

Everyone pitches in on ideas when they find out he's trying to come up with a pseudonym, and it's goofy and supportive and kind of the final straw in reaching out to old, burned bridges to see about any new artists looking for equally new tunes.

The first time Eddie and Steve catch familiar lyrics being sung by a new hotshot band on the radio, Eddie cries not because he's jealous or disappointed, but because it feels right.

He doesn't like being up in front of the crowds, had only ever walked across tables and made himself big and scary and loud out of self preservation, would always rather his biggest performances be for the people he knows really care.. Besides, after everything he's survived he's learned, albeit slowly, that he really likes the freedom of the quiet.

This way he still gets to say what he has to say, gets to throw his hat into the ring of an artform that he loves without selling his soul to a machine that tried to eat him alive (trust him. he knows what that feels like.)

Of course, someone is going to put 2 and 2 together eventually, the industry isn't as big as it looks and pseudonyms only pull so much weight when you went out in such a spectacularly messy and memorable fashion, but Eddie's got his condo in Chicago.

He's got the guy he shares it with in his bed.

He's got two cats and a windowsill full of plants he's going to keep alive this time, Steve, just you watch.

He's got his uncle settled in Indy these days, a small place with a small yard.

He's got music, too. Turns out even his own tendency to self-destruct couldn't take that away, huh?

It's what got him out of hell alive, after all.

[nibbelraz]

SQH + An Ding Idea

-An Ding runs similar to a sort of college campus, everyone writes about An Ding basically doing everything for the whole peak.

(Architecture, Accounting, Business, Operations, Textiles, etc. etc.)

There's no way every disciple can learn all of the things An Ding does, and be able to perform them to a high quality.

So, perhaps SQH is the one who starts it because he realizes how kind of fucked the An Ding mechanics are. (Or system helped out, or possibly SQH god powers because that little guy is real busy and instituting all of these plans would take a whole long time)

But An Ding ends up running like some sort of campus, with a bunch of disciples specializing in different areas. Younger disciples take all of the essential classes, and then pick one or multiple areas of study/specialization. And they get real good at them, because specialization and not covering a million jobs at once means quality goes up. And I think SQH would just take in kids at the masses, just gathering up pretty much any kid with no place to go even if they have no real cultivation potential. Because running An Ding means they need a large number of disciples. He has a recruiting system or something, so there's a little girl in the street who fashioned her rags into a slightly cuter skirt. And an An Ding person is like 'hey, you like fashion? Textiles? You can do that for as long as you want if you join An Ding.' room, board, safety all for people who enjoy these sorts of trades to be able to specialize them and produce all the things the sects need. Street kids who are good with numbers or good with carpentry get taken into An Ding, no cultivation potential needed just kids who have passions but no way to enjoy them in their current situations.

This would also mean so much less outsourcing for the peak, much easier to work in house if it can be set up correctly.

Do the An Ding kids still get pushed around and shit on by other peaks, yeah for sure none of those peaks ever appreciate all the work An Ding does. But these kids are fine anyways because as soon as they get back on An Ding their solid, their doing what they enjoy and what they're good at. Who cares if some buff bai zhan kid teases them for being An Ding, they get to go to woodshop after this and the hall master is teaching embellishments and decor carving!

(one of the req. Classes would be a year long 'how to deal with Bai Zhan' training)

OH MAN OHHHH MAN I LOVE THIS IDEA SO MUCH??? OHHHHH THIS IS GOOD YES YES A THOUSAND PERCENT

Qinghua running the peak that has each category to specialize in is great. They handle literally everything for course they need more man power and of COURSE THEY NEED PEOPLE TO LEARN SOME THINGS THAT ARE VERY SPECIFIC INSTEAD OF A THOUSAND THINGS AT ONCE ohhh OH I love the does that he takes in just anyone

I wonder if he takes in whoever doesn't make it from the other peaks. "Trust me you don't want to be at Bai Zhan peak. You actually get to do what you like here" also I feel like there has to be a group that does the heavy lifting from all the stuff they get so there IS a group that are ready to fight anyone who picks on the other An Ding kids

This means An Ding must have the most disciples of course its HUGE, imagine if he doesn't tell the other peak lords

He's just like "fuck it what are they going to do? Tell me I can't when efficiency has SKYROCKETED AFTER MY SYSTEM!"

Yes YES i would read a fic with this premise so FAST I absolutely love this idea

Wonder what the whole "campus" of kids think when Mobei Jun starts popping in randomly

[lexirosewrites]

Okay, no previous thoughts on this, it just occurred to me. (Slick Sunday ask!!!)

This is A canon divergence, a pretty big one, if I do say so myself.

Normal Omegaverse world, with The Party having all the common designations (Argyle, Eddie and Nancy being Alphas, Jon and Robin being omegas, Chrissy I'm still undecided, the pups still un-presented)

And there's Steve.

Everyone thinks he's a beta bc he doesn't really smell like a lot? And bc he's pretty much past the age range anyone would usually present, so.

The thing is.

Steve is not a Beta.

Or an Omega.

Or an Alpha.

He's not even a Human.

He's a human-eating monster who happened to develop feelings for some of his food (Namely, Nancy. And then the pups, and then he met Robin and.... He might have some really weird feelings for Eddie, actually).

So now he tries to fumble a bit in the whole being human thing, bc at first it was Easy™, he had no real friends, no family, just a persona to maintain while in town after eating some rich dude and forging his will so he could exist in Hawkins.

Anyways. Steve knows he's not the only fucked up thing in town, in fact, after becoming attached to Nancy and seeing the amount of grief the upside down causes her, he pretty much goes and starts a new diet based entirely of demo-creatures, as Steve can technically eat /anything/ it was just that humans were easy to come by.

When El seems to pop out of nowhere, Steve tries to avoid her with all his might, but eventually she finds him and they have a Talk™ about whether or not he's a danger to her friends.

All the upsidedown plots end up sidetracked not only by hormones, but the local monster dealing with it better than a bunch of humans can.

Still, the only reason they haven't caught on at all is mostly bc they think Steve is a weirdo. But like, psychologically insane, instead of biologically different from them.

The first time they realize is when Steve finally realizes what the dynamic is and, even though it's a bit late, fakes a first heat, he doesn't manage to get the Scent right and they're all immediately onto it.

So he ends up confessing he just wanted to be an Omega bc he really likes Eddie, and discovered that way he could totally be his partner and everyone is kinda endeared.

Eddie is going insane about the fact that the party wants to skip over the fact Steve is a literal monster who's been eating upsidedown creatures for years, but after a bit of processing accepts letting Steve try to court him, even if that's nowhere near Eddie thought his life was going, but he DOES like Steve a lot, might be kinda in love with him, actually.

So anyways, they live happily ever after even if people judge the fact that they're a Male alpha/ male "beta" couple bc they can't have children (they totally can though, it's just that no one has asked Steve yet, when Eddie finds out about this he immediately asks if they can have at least one, Steve is happy with that development).

steve doing his best to play omega so he can be with eddie 🥺