#70-ish seems about right

[eddis-not-eeddis]

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[bangtan-junkie]

Dissonance (Part 2) | JJK

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader (f)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Genre/Tags: coworker!JK, enemies to lovers, smutttttt, slow burn (ish?), ANGST

Word Count: 6799 words

Synopsis:

After being left alone and humiliated on the floor of a dirty bar bathroom by Jungkook, you had to pick yourself up off the ground (literally). You had to get even, embarrass him like he'd done to you. Maybe you were mean to him before, but you were about to become a nightmare to humble this man. Unfortunately for you, your anger was short sighted, while Jungkook's wasn't. So you never predicted how your plans might backfire on you...

Note:

it's finally fucking here omg. ik it's super late but i'm finally decently satisfied with this. i'm looking forward to writing part 3 bc that's where the tension finally breaks and y'all aren't even ready for the revenge y/n gets lol. i hope y'all enjoy this and it lives up to part 1! i'd love to know your thoughts, if you're still pissed with jk lol, and any suggestions or requests are always welcome! chatting with you guys is my fav part <3

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Dread consumed your senses from the moment you woke up. The weekend had passed, but your chest still burned with rage at the thought of having to see Jungkook again. You hadn't even noticed the time go by over the last two days, too busy seething in your own anger. If you hated Jungkook before, you loathed him now. You forced composure as you got dressed for work. Jungkook already had the upper hand when he'd left you in the bar bathroom. He knew that you'd seen him with the girl afterwards too. You couldn't even think about whether he'd went home with her that night without being sick. After all that, the last thing you wanted was for him to think he had any kind of effect on you. You were going to go back to work with pride and confidence. At least you wanted to.

When you finally got to work, you made a beeline for your desk, pointedly not looking for Jungkook. As you settled in, one of your coworkers stopped by your desk.

"Oh hey Y/n, you feeling any better?" he asked. Your head whipped up, a gentle voice ripping you away from your resentful thoughts. You looked up at him in confusion, eyes settling on his red hair. "From Friday? You left early because you weren't feeling well?"

"Oh, right," you cleared your throat. Just then, you saw Jungkook's unmistakable figure from the corner of your eye. He was talking to someone but you could feel his eyes boring into you. Your blood began to boil but you forced yourself to stay calm. You refused to indulge him at all. "I'm feeling much better actually, thanks Jimin," you replied, shooting your coworker a sweet smile. Jimin was your acquaintance in the office; someone you could actually stand in that place. He was always kind and helpful which automatically made him better than 70% of the people there. Even though you hung out in the same circles, you never really became close friends. Probably because you were always more focused on how annoying Jungkook was whenever you were out. And you were doing it again. You made conversation to force any thoughts of him out of your mind.

"How does your hair seem more red every time I see you?" you asked with a light-hearted laugh.

"I can't be caught slacking. I put in a lot of work to keep this hair ya know," he smiled back at you.

"I still don't know how you got permission from the boss for that," you gestured to his hair. "I asked before and she shut me down so fast." Jimin laughed at the annoyed expression on your face, finding it endearing.

"I guess I'm just that charming," he shrugged, holding back a chuckle. You couldn't help but snicker. Jimin's jokes weren't that different from Jungkook's, but he wasn't obnoxious about it. Jungkook obviously believed his jokes and thought he was god's gift to the world, which made him insufferable. Jimin, on the other hand, didn't take his jokes too seriously and wasn't constantly flirting with anything that moved.

Jungkook, who was barely listening to the person talking to him, had heard your exchange with Jimin. He felt annoyance build in his chest. He knew that if he'd made the same joke, you would've been rolling your eyes and making fun of him. So why were you giggling when Jimin said it? He tried to distract himself by trying to focus on the conversation he was supposed to be having.

A quick chat with Jimin later, you turned back to your desk. You made the mistake of looking up and caught Jungkook's gaze. He looked at you, an indifferent look on his face. He wasn't sure what he was expecting; maybe you'd look away in embarrassment, maybe you'd glare at him angrily. But what he didn't expect was the cold, empty look you gave him - like you were looking right through him, like he wasn't even there. His brows furrowed for a quick second, even more annoyed now. You went right back to work.

That's how the next few days went by. Every time Jungkook was remotely in your vicinity, you'd look through him without ever acknowledging him. If he even tried to walk your way, you left the room immediately. At first, Jungkook thought you were just being childish. But when you regained your confidence after a few days, he knew that you weren't through with him just yet. If he thought your insults were bad before, the newfound loathing you had for him made things ten times worse. It started with you amplifying the spite in your voice when you insulted him for his work. You refused to speak with him directly either, so all the insults were being thrown indirectly and in front of your other coworkers. With every second this continued, Jungkook felt his patience running thin. But if you were stubborn, so was he. He kept up your little game by firing back with his usual sarcastic or flirty remarks. Internally, he was burning with fury, just like you wanted him to.

All the animosity and anger eventually came to its boiling point when you crossed the line for the last time. You had walked to your desk that morning to find that your boss had paired you and Jungkook on the next project. Your skin crawled at the idea of having to work with him over the next few weeks. Part of you wondered if Jungkook had something to do with this. Thinking about him getting your boss on board with making you his partner for this big project was only adding to the fire that was spreading through your body. You already hated the way your boss melted around him, but to think that he could manipulate her to this level? After spiraling for a few minutes, you forced yourself to take deep breaths. You had to remind yourself that you were jumping to conclusions and then convince yourself not to march over to Jungkook's desk and give him a piece of your mind. You tried to get back to work, but all you could think about were what reasonable excuses you could make to get out of this situation. The rest of your morning was spent racking your mind. With no luck, you decided to join your coworkers for lunch; hoping that it would give you a distraction.

Unluckily for you, Jungkook walked into the staff lunchroom soon after, only to find you and some of your other coworkers chatting around the coffee machine. Well, they were chatting and you were busy glaring him down from the second he stepped into the room. Your dark eyes peered at him over the rim of your mug as you sipped your coffee. You knew that there was no way in hell he was going to approach you to talk about this. The solution to your problem practically fell into your lap when you zoned back in to the conversation around you. If he really did get the boss to put you on the project with him, you'd make him regret that decision.

"I can't believe you got that huge project Y/n! You're so lucky," one of them said, playfully pouting.

"Talk about lucky," someone else chimed in, "You even get to work with Jungkook. But I guess that isn't so lucky for you." They laughed lightly, poking fun at you. Clearly they hadn't noticed that Jungkook was in the room, listening.

"Everyone here knows how much you hate him, even the boss. Really, what was she thinking pairing you guys up?" They continued to laugh at your misery. But you weren't annoyed. Instead, your mind lit up with the perfect way to get under Jungkook's skin in that moment. The second he saw the way your eyes lit up, he knew he was in for it. Jungkook prided himself on the fact that everyone liked him and thought highly of him. So what better way to get your revenge and get him to kick you off the project than to take that away from him?

"Yeah," you said skeptically, "She's never paired us up before." You continued to stare directly at Jungkook. Your coworkers looked at you with confusion and amusement.

"What changed this time?" Jimin's voice rang through the room as he walked in to join you. He'd already spotted Jungkook in the other corner of the room, and he saw the dark glint in your eyes. It was clear to him that you were up to something. So he helped you out by stirring the pot a little. Jungkook squinted his eyes at you, annoyed at seeing Jimin again and wondering where you were going with this.

"I think Jungkook really wanted this project," you answered. "And it's easy to get whatever you want when you're fucking the boss," you said, not breaking eye contact for a second. Gasps erupted across the circle as they all looked at you in disbelief. Jimin's brows raised and he scoffed, slightly taken aback that you were making that accusation. But you were more focused on Jungkook's reaction. The look on his face was beyond furious. His eyes darkened and you saw the tick in his jaw as he clenched it.

"Wait, you really think so?" one of them asked, everyone already engrossed in the gossip.

"He is a manwhore," you shrugged. Jimin stifled his laugh, not wanting to be too mean to Jungkook. You finally looked away from Jungkook and back at the group. "And he always gets the good projects. Boss doesn't favour anyone else like that." Your coworkers immediately started gossiping amongst themselves, making random connections because what you said made sense. Some of them already started getting riled up, thinking that their opportunities had been snatched by Jungkook through the boss. You obviously didn't know for sure whether Jungkook was sleeping with your boss or not. But you didn't have to. You just had to plant the idea and you knew your coworkers would jump to conclusions.

"You must be really pissed at him," Jimin whispered, leaning back against the counter. You felt Jungkook's eyes glaring daggers at you but you paid him no attention.

"I promise he had it coming," you whispered back, a devious smirk settling on your lips.

"Remind me to never get on your bad side," he chuckled. You just shot him a smirk. When you glanced back at Jungkook, you barely caught him walking out the door. You didn't know what you were expecting. Maybe you wanted him to lose his shit in front of everyone, or yank you out of the room with him. So the disappointment you felt only annoyed you more. By the time you finished your lunch and made your way back to your desk, you already began hearing whispers about Jungkook and your boss. For a moment, you wondered if this was crossing the line. Definitely. But so was getting you to blow him and ditching you in that bathroom. Now you're even. You couldn't help but smile, knowing that he must be seething about the rumours.

A couple hours later, you were being called to your boss' office to discuss the new project she'd assigned you and Jungkook. You reluctantly grabbed your things and made your way there. You couldn't keep in your scoff when you saw Jungkook already there, making your boss giggle about god knows what. Your boss cleared her throat as she noticed you in the doorway, peeling herself off her desk from how far she was leaning forward towards Jungkook. You fought the urge to roll your eyes. Way to be subtle.

"Y/n," she announced, "Come, sit down." You forced a smile as you sat down in the chair next to Jungkook. He didn't say anything to you, didn't even bother looking at you. Just being in his proximity was pissing you off, especially since he had nothing to say to you. Obviously he couldn't say anything in front of the boss, but you wanted to see that you'd made him just as angry as he'd made you. Maybe all this rage was clouding your mind and judgement...but who cares?

You pulled out your pen and began taking notes as she started talking about the project. Despite hating working with Jungkook, you weren't going to let that ruin your work on this project. You rolled your eyes when you saw that he wasn't taking notes at all. Of course. As your boss began wrapping up the conversation, you gathered your things again, getting up to leave.

"Listen you two," she started, her tone changing. You raised your brows and sat down, curious what she had to say. "I know you don't like working together, but this is an important project. So please, put your feelings aside and work on this together." You scoffed, forgetting to keep your composure. That's when Jungkook finally looked at you. His eyes were fiery but he looked vaguely amused that you had the courage to scoff at the boss. Your boss was also looking at you expectantly, waiting for an explanation. That was all you needed to decide that maybe you weren't even with him just yet.

"Sorry, but it's not about feelings. Our work ethics don't match. I'd rather work on this alone," you said, straightening your back as you felt like you were in the spotlight. Your boss didn't look too happy.

"This isn't a one person project Y/n," she pointed out.

"I know, but it would honestly be easier to do the work myself instead of having to chase him around, begging him to get anything done." The amusement quickly disappeared from Jungkook's face.

"Excuse me?" he finally spoke. You ignored him.

"Maybe we can switch him out for someone who's actually focused on their work instead of flirting," you boldly stated. Your boss scoffed in disbelief.

"What is your problem? Do you think I want to work with you?" Jungkook spat, just about done with your shit. He shifted in his chair to face you, one hand gripping the armrest hard enough to see the whites of his knuckles. Oh now he had something to say.

"You're lucky to be working on this with me. Or else this project would've gone to shit," you retorted with an equal amount of spite.

"There's a reason I'm on this project Y/n. Because I'm good at my job. So if you're letting your personal feelings affect your professionalism, you need to get a grip." His words stung but you refused to accept that there was some truth to them. He was giving you a taste of your own medicine; humiliating you in front of your boss like you were doing to him. All your self control and common sense went out the window when you felt that embarrassment.

"Yeah, that's why you're on this project," you said sarcastically, referring to the rumour you'd started a few short hours ago. You could practically see his nostrils flare as he willed himself to keep his mouth shut.

"You're out of line Y/n," your boss jumped in. She hadn't heard the rumours yet, but she could clearly see that Jungkook didn't like the implications of what you had said. "I don't care whether you two like each other or not. You will put aside...whatever this is...and work together on this, and that's final," she said firmly. Irritation coursed through you, seeing her take Jungkook's side yet again.

"Yes ma'am," you barely grit through your teeth. You'd be darned if you got fired over Jungkook. You quickly stood up and left, rushing to the file room for a moment to cool down. It was the only place you could get some silence - no one ever really stepped into the filing room because most of your work was stored digitally anyways. You pressed your back to one of the metal cabinets, sliding down to crouch as the door slowly shut. You took some deep breaths to calm down. If you went back out there now, you would rip someone's head off. How did Jungkook have the audacity to continue being a dick to you? You knew you'd without a doubt crossed the line back there, but despite that, you didn't feel even with him yet. After a few moments of dragging your mind away from these thoughts, you took one last deep breath and stood back up. You straightened your skirt and fixed your hair. Since you were already there, you decided to grab some files you needed for the project before going back out there. You turned around, pulling a drawer open and digging through the files before you found them. Just as you pulled them out, you heard the door open behind you. You already knew who it was, getting a waft of his cologne. Your heart already began beating faster, not knowing what to anticipate. There was a beat of silence as the door slowly shut.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jungkook grit through his teeth, trying to keep his voice down. You didn't bother turning around or replying to him. Any semblance of self control he had left snapped when you didn't even acknowledge him. With three quick strides, he was right behind you, pressing you face flat against the cabinets. He yanked one of your hands behind your back, making you drop your files. You yelped as his entire body caged you in, slight panic rising in your chest.

"You don't get to ignore me now," he snapped, voice low. "You haven't shut the fuck up for the last few days, don't start now." He yanked your arm down further so he could hold your wrist with one hand. You groaned at the ache, but decided against complaining about it. His anger was palpable; you could practically feel it seeping through your skin, igniting your own fury. In the shock of the moment, you'd almost forgotten that Jungkook wasn't the only one with reason to be upset. This was all a consequence of his insanely disrespectful behaviour, and he had the nerve to be mad at you now?

"What is it? What's got you so fucking riled up, hmm?" He sounded bewildered, gritting the words through his teeth. The more he pressed against you, the harder it got to ignore the heat building in you. An ugly satisfaction was creeping through you seeing the way you'd managed to get under his skin. This was what you wanted; to see that you'd affected him.

"Didn't get enough cock last time? That it?" he growled, bending down next to your ear. His words pierced right through you, as if he knew exactly which buttons to press.

"Fuck you," you spat before you could compose yourself. You strained in his hold, your arm coming up to elbow him in the ribs. To your dismay, Jungkook predicted your move and held you tighter, keeping you still.

"I thought it'd be enough to keep you satiated for at least a week. But you're just a cock hungry whore hm? " he taunted, his lips grazing your ear and sending an involuntary shiver down your spine. "I should've fucked your throat a little harder. Wouldn't be able to lie about me to everyone - including our boss - then, would you?" Despite the bitterness in his voice, your body reacted to his words. Your mind was scolding itself for the rush of arousal that coursed through you. How was he still affecting you like this?

You shook your head clear. No. He wasn't going to have his way this time.

"Lie? I haven't lied about anything," you replied with a snarky tone. Jungkook chuckled in disbelief. He quickly flipped you around so you were forced to face him. You didn't hesitate to meet his ravenous gaze with your own.

"No? So you really think I'm sleeping with the boss?" he asked, tone getting serious. You shrugged nonchalantly, annoying him more.

"You'll fuck anything that moves," you jabbed. "At least fucking the boss has some real benefits unlike the girl from the bar. Maybe she'd even give you a raise if you could satisfy her properly." Jungkook couldn't hide the disgust that flared across his features; insulted that you thought so little of him. The urge to shut you up was growing stronger by the second, burning through his insides. You were going to drive him insane.

"Watch yourself," he warned, the words coming out dark and gravelly. But the surge of excitement that you felt, knowing that you had managed to provoke him, was addicting. You wanted more.

"If it was anyone else, I'd be all for it. Get that bag, you know?" you said with indifference. "But you? I thought the boss had better taste. Her bar must be in hell." That was enough for Jungkook. Before you even had a second to process what was happening, one of his hands was wrapped around your neck. His fingers dug into the flesh, limiting your breath in the most delicious way.

"You didn't seem to think so when you were begging me to touch you - to fuck you in a dirty bar bathroom," he growled, stepping closer, face inches from yours.

"Yeah, obviously I expected too much," you sneered. "You don't know how to please anyone but yourself. Boss must be a real masochist to keep going back to you. Poor thing," you tutted, knowing you'd practically nailed the head in your own coffin before you'd even finished your thought. Jungkook's face contorted in a snarl as his grip tightened around your throat. You gasped, the dark swirl in your core intensifying.

"Maybe I should talk to her," you patronized, chasing the high from pissing him off. "I can recommend someone who can actually make her feel good - get her off. A man. Not a selfish boy," you emphasized. "Think she'll like me better than you after that?" With that, his other hand was pressed firmly against your mouth, effectively shutting you up. You grunted at the sheer pressure of his hold, now struggling to breathe.

"You just don't shut up, do you?" he spat. The look in his eyes was nearly feral; like he was going to eat you alive. His ego took a hit to your words, even though he knew you didn't actually believe everything you'd said. Still, you seemed to be stuck on his 'selfishness'. It infuriated him that you didn't understand why he wasn't giving you what you wanted, but he'd had enough of you running your mouth. If you'd forgotten how easily he made you melt under his touch, he'd just have to remind you. And make sure you never forgot again.

With each passing second of silent seething, you thought he might actually choke you out. But then he let go of you. You gasped for air, coughing as you caught your breath. Just as you were about to shoot him the dirtiest look you could muster, Jungkook sank to his knees. The snarky remark on your tongue vanished as you watched him kneel in front of you, looking up at you with a carnivorous gaze. Lust consumed your senses as he wordlessly loosened his tie, tugging at the collar of his shirt. You'd think that seeing him on his knees would make you feel more powerful in the situation. But the hunger in his eyes made it clear that he was still very much in control.

Simply put: Jungkook, in a suit and on his knees, was enough to wipe away your last bit of common sense.

"This is what you want, right?" he asked, his hands slipping under your skirt. You felt paralyzed, your breath caught in your throat. His hands moved up your thighs, slowly dragging your skirt up with them. "You wanna cum, yeah?" You were genuinely struggling to form any thoughts, your senses heightened.

"Want me to make you cum?" A strangled groan bubbled in your throat at his tone. He'd barely done a thing and your breathing was already heavy. So much for your resolve. As your skirt bunched above your hips, you suddenly became hyper aware of your situation. You were still at work, in a file room, door unlocked.

"Someone could walk in," you gasped, trying to convince yourself that you didn't want this. He ignored you, trailing his fingers down your hips and legs instead. "We've already been gone for a while. What if someone comes looking?" You desperately tried to focus your wandering mind.

"I guess I should hurry then," he sneered, shooting you a glare. Then his fingers were sliding between your legs, making you close your eyes and sigh as they eased the ache in your clit. By that point you were too far gone to even feel embarrassed about having soaked through your panties. Jungkook hissed as your slick coated his digits. "I put the bar in hell, but still, you get so wet for me," he snapped, adding more pressure. For the first time all day, you had nothing to quip back with. Your sweet silence was like music to his ears. Mindful of the time, Jungkook hooked his fingers in your underwear and pulled them down your legs. You knew there was no going back as you stepped out of them. Your knees felt weak as you watched him hastily shove them in his pocket. But before you could ask what he was planning on doing with them, he hooked a hand under your thigh, lifting your leg up and to the side. With your legs spread and your pussy staring him in the face, Jungkook was struggling to control himself. He wanted to tease you - make you beg and plead - but he didn't. Fuck. He couldn't; not when he felt like he'd lose his sanity if he didn't taste you right away.

Without wasting another second, his lips were pressed to you, the velvety heat of his mouth engulfing you as his tongue licked at your wetness. Your mouth was left agape as your hands buried into his hair, using the locks to keep yourself tethered. Jungkook groaned into your heat; he felt like he was getting drunk off of you. His fingers dug into your thighs as he hungrily lapped at your pussy. Your eyes rolled back and you let out a drawn out moan as his lips wrapped around your clit, creating the perfect amount of suction. You would've thought he was starved seeing the vigor with which he ate you out. He didn't stop, didn't pull away for a single breath - too consumed with the taste of you on his tongue. You were embarrassingly close already, struggling to contain your moans and whimpers. You bit your lip, trying to hold them in, but another particular harsh lick to your clit had you groaning Jungkook's name. Seeing you unravel so quickly only fueled Jungkook's appetite; the sound of his name on your lips going straight to his aching cock. All it took was him groaning into your cunt after that to send you over the edge. Your fingers yanked at his hair, desperately pulling him closer as you felt the white heat build up.

"Jungkook, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck," you cursed, voice whiny as you tried to keep quiet. "Gonna cum," you moaned right as you crashed over the edge. Jungkook felt you tense in his hold as you came on his tongue. He diligently lapped at your slit, sure to pay attention to your clit as well to help you ride out your orgasm. He slowed down as you came down from your high. Naturally, your legs tried to close together once his tongue became overstimulating. But Jungkook's hold was firm, keeping your legs apart. You tried to catch your breath, mind reeling from the mix of pleasure and pain flooding your senses.

"Jungkook... wait," is all you managed to get out. He ignored you again, picking up his pace despite your cringing.

"So fucking good," he growled against you, like he hated admitting it to himself. It felt weird hearing him compliment you after all the bickering and degrading earlier. Yet you couldn't deny that it boosted your ego seeing him so fucked out and angry. He pushed you further up against the cabinets, giving himself better access to you and delving his tongue into your dripping hole. And just like that, the sensitivity was replaced with a delicious pleasure once again.

"Please, wait..." you breathlessly pleaded. In contrast to the last orgasm, he was building this one up slowly. Unfortunately for you, that meant it felt twice as intense and you were getting increasingly worried about being caught.

"Thought you wanted to cum, sweetheart," he mocked. "That's why you're being such a bitch, right? Mad that I didn't make you cum last time?" he grit through his teeth. You cursed him under your breath, but were more focused on the feeling of his soft lips against. You finally looked down at him properly, ready to glare at him. But the second you saw his dark eyes staring up at you, the rest of his face buried between your legs, you lost your train of thought entirely. Then you saw his hand sprawled across your lower stomach while his thumb rubbed circles into your clit. Fuck, why was he so hot?

"What if we get caught?" you half-heartedly complained, trying to muffle your whimpers.

"They'll see what a fucking slut you are for me then," he grunted. You slapped a hand over your mouth when he picked up his pace, continuing to plunge his tongue in and out of you. "Keep your hands down," he demanded, pressing harder on your clit. "You're gonna keep moaning like that for me," he hissed, delving right back into the heat of your cunt. In that moment, all you heard was his demanding tone and your hands instinctively went back to his hair without a second thought. You whined, trying to keep your voice down as he slowly built up your pleasure.

"Good," he praised, his words muffled as he continued to eat you out. "I should make you scream, so that everyone knows that you, Y/n, are cumming on my tongue." His words were bitter but they turned you on more. You clearly had some problems. It didn't take very long after that to feel that white heat building up again. Jungkook could tell you were almost there, so he sped up the pace of his fingers and plunged his tongue deeper into you. "Including our boss," he rasped. And then you were cumming again; gripping tightly onto his hair and groaning his name once more.

"There you go," he coaxed, letting you ride his face. You hadn't realized, but at some point, your hips had started moving on their own. Seeing you with your eyes screwed shut and mouth hanging open, as you unraveled under his touch, only fueled Jungkook's hunger. When you started coming down, he finally pulled away; giving you a second of reprieve. That was until you looked down to see his blown out, dark eyes staring at you. His mouth and chin were covered in your juices and he looked ravenous. He quickly pulled off his suit jacket, wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt, eyes never leaving yours. Your chest heaved; partly because you were still catching your breath, and partly because of how fucking hot Jungkook looked in the moment. His hands went right back to your thighs, pulling them apart once more.

"Wait, what're you doing?!" you asked, eyes going wide. "I can't cum again, please," you nearly cried. His fingers dug into your thighs as he watched you plead.

"You can and you will," he said firmly. "You know why?" He slid his fingers between your folds, gathering all the wetness that had pooled. "Because you fucking love my touch," he growled. Your already weak knees felt even weaker.

"You're so desperate for it; for my mouth, my fingers, my cock." Your legs threatened to buckle under you if it weren't for Jungkook's hand holding you up. "So desperate that you're being such a fucking brat," he spat. "Trying to piss me off. So, what? So that I'd finally touch you again?" he mocked. Your senses were overwhelmed and his words settled in a pit in your stomach. You felt tears prick at the corners of your eyes; whether it was because of his harsh words or the overstimulation of his fingers, you weren't sure. Just as you were about to retort, Jungkook slipped a slender finger into you which slid in smoothly with how wet you were. He let out a throaty groan, quickly slipping another finger into you and curling them upwards. You nearly doubled over as he pressed right into your g-spot.

"See how tuned your body is to me? I've barely done a thing and you're already a mess," he taunted. Seeing how flimsy your legs had gotten, he quickly threw the leg he was holding over his shoulder, getting even closer to you. His name left your lips in a whine, your body torn between pleasure and worry. "Well here, I'm giving you what you want." He punctuated his words by curling his fingers again, making you moan. "You wanna cum? I'll make you cum...over and over again, so you never forget how good I make you feel." And with that, he finally pulled his fingers out before slamming them back into you, setting a hard pace.

Your mind was left blank, so consumed with pleasure that you couldn't even think about staying quiet. Whimpers and moans shamelessly tumbled out of you as he filled you up so delightfully. Jungkook wasn't unaffected either. Feeling how warm and wet you were was driving him up the wall, numbing his own thoughts.

"So wet for me, fuck. My cock would slide right into you with how drenched you are," he thought out loud. He felt you tighten around his fingers, making him snarl and pick up his pace. "Filthy fucking cockslut. I can't wait to feel you tighten around me like that when I'm fucking all this brattiness out of you," he growled, voice low. You could only moan in response.

"Jungkook, s-slow down, please," you begged, knowing that you wouldn't be able to hold on much longer. Before you knew it, his free hand came down on your pussy, leaving a delicious sting spreading through you. A half yelp-half moan sound came out of you, making Jungkook scoff.

"You're gonna take what I give you, like a good little slut," he grunted. "What do you have to say now Y/n?" he asked, annoyance lacing his voice. "You're so convinced I'm fucking every woman and leaving them unsatisfied. Do you feel satisfied yet?" With his fingers pumping you, grazing your g-spot with every thrust, it was nearly impossible for you to form a coherent thought. When you didn't answer, he gave your pussy another smack, making you hiss.

"Answer me," he demanded, "How do you feel now Y/n?"

"F-feel good," is all you could come up with. Jungkook chuckled at your fucked out state.

"Who's making you feel good sweetheart?"

"You," you moaned, feeling yourself reach your climax again. "Oh my god. Jungkook, please...don't stop. Feels so good, I'm gonna-"

Jungkook's ego inflated as you finally found your words again, saying exactly what he wanted to hear. Hearing you beg for him almost made up for all the shit you'd put him through that day. Almost. You were creaming on his fingers before you could even finish your sentence, moaning his name way louder than you should.

"Now you're finally being a good girl," he praised, continuing to pump his fingers through your orgasm. "Fuck, you're getting so tight. Keep cumming on my fingers like that, yeah?" he groaned, imagining how good you would feel on his cock. Your orgasm was so powerful, you were cumming for what felt like an eternity. Jungkook didn't mind; continuing to work you through it. When it was finally over, your legs gave out. Jungkook quickly caught you as you collapsed, and he placed you down on his discarded jacket on the floor. You closed your eyes and waited for your heart rate to go back to normal. When you opened your eyes after a few moments, Jungkook was still kneeling in front of you. His gaze was trained on your still exposed cunt and he had slipped his soaked fingers into his mouth, tasting you all over again. You worried for second that he still wasn't done with you. He slowly dragged his glazed over eyes to meet your. You gulped at the voracious look on his face, your legs instinctively closing.

Meanwhile, Jungkook was battling with his own insatiable thoughts. He knew he couldn't forget about this, about you, about your pussy after this. As infuriating and insufferable you were, he couldn't deny how good you tasted and felt. And he sure as hell couldn't deny how hard you'd gotten him either. With his hormones surging through him, all he could think about was being inside you, in any way. He saw the look on your face and nearly scoffed. You fucked up his reputation and humiliated him all because you wanted to cum, and now you couldn't take it. He took a deep breath, forcing his thoughts away so he could be rational.

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna make you cum again," he said. You scoffed, easing up a little with his reassurance. "You got what you wanted, right? Now maybe you'll keep your mouth shut." The high of your pleasure was wearing off and the weight of his words were hitting you. Did he really just think you were desperate for him? Had he forgotten how he was shamelessly flirting with that other girl right after leaving you in that bathroom? Reality finally caught up with you, and you realized how vulnerable you'd made yourself to him. If someone came in right now, the only person who'd be humiliated was you. Clearly, all of this was just a game to him; a way to shut you up. Jungkook was toying with you and you were letting him. A similar shame and hurt creeped across your skin as the night he'd left you in the bar bathroom. Part of you had started to feel bad about what you'd done earlier, but if Jungkook really was just using you, then you were still nowhere near even.

Without saying a word, you stood up, pulling your skirt back down. In the process, you remembered that he'd taken your underwear. But you'd have to talk to him to ask for them back, and the last thing you wanted to do was talk to him. You'd just have to clean up later and make it through the day without them. You straightened your clothes, trying to make them look as less wrinkly as possible, avoiding Jungkook's piercing gaze. When you finally felt like you looked presentable, that's when you looked at him. This time it was him that was left a mess. His hair was ruined by all the grabbing and pulling you'd done, and his collar was soaked with your juices. You looked at his jacket that you were not standing on, and sure enough, you'd left a wet spot and now heel marks on it too. It made you feel a little better, knowing that this time he'd have to fix himself up instead of you. You picked up his jacket with the toe of your shoe before kicking it over to him. You shot him a cold look.

"You're an asshole," you stated before walking out the door. Jungkook was left on the floor, even more frustrated. He'd felt more gratified after putting you in your place, but then what was that? You'd obviously enjoyed yourself, so what was the problem now? He groaned loudly. Despite his anger, the bulge in his pants was now aching. Everything about you was infuriating to him, so how did you have this much of an affect on him? His mind wandered back to how you felt in his hands and on his tongue. He growled as he palmed his crotch, slowly taking out his hard cock. He stroked himself harshly with the frustration you'd left him with. He quickly pulled out your panties from his pocket, unable to stop himself. His head rolled back and your name spilled past his lips along with low groans as he brought up the thin fabric to his face.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tag List: @myjungkookthighs @bemuas @junecat18 @exortedgoods @jahnaviii @jk97bam @itsmekylabear @blueberriesm @marvelbun @vantelover1306 @runariya @btstrology @diame93 @curse-of-art @minyoongi7016

[slvt4em1lyprenti2s]

Hi hi ! I was wondering if you would do Amelia Shepherd x fem reader fic where R is the third twisted sister to Cristina and Mer, Amelia and reader have been in a relationship in secret for a while because they afraid of Mer’s reaction. They finally tell her and she gets protective of R but at the end she is very supportive and protects them against a patient’s hate comment? Xoxo

You’re dating my sister?

Summary: see req above!

Pairings: Amelia Shepherd x fem!reader

fluff, slight angst, homophobia, use of a homophobic slur

Word Count: 1.04k

NOT PROOFREAD

SET WHEN MEREDITH DIDNT LIKE AMELIA MUCH IN THE BEGINNING

Reader pov:

One year. One whole year me and Amelia have been dating for. It’s crazy how fast time feels when you’re in love, I do t know what I’d do without her. The only issue is my best friends, Cristina and Metrdith. Not that I’m afraid of their answer, well. I’m not staid if Cristina’s answer.

Meredith’s husband happens to be my girlfriend brother. It’s a minor detail, and you know, Meredith isn’t the biggest fan of said sister. Me and ames have talked it over and we’re going to tell people soon, but leave Mer till last, what could go wrong right?

Cristina went wrong.

“Hey! Cristina!” I whisper yelled across the nurses station.

“If you have another twisted-sisters-almost-died-or-had-a-traumatic-event drama to tell me save it for after my surgery. Please.” She sighed out.

“No it’s not that I have to tell you something. But you can not, and I mean can not, tell mer.“ I insist

“Dann what did you do screw her sister or something?”

I stay silent at this and her eyes go wide. “Oh. My. God. No you did not.”

I nod my head profusely and respond “We’ve been dating for a year Cristina. Me and Amelia, what am I supposed to tell her?!” I start to panic just thinking about all the different ways this could go wrong.

“Ohh I have no idea! Good luck, you’re gunna need it, oh and tell me when you’re telling her so I can watch.” I rolled my eyes as she walked away from me towards the OR to scrub in.

I walk to my patients room pondering ways to tell mer about me and Amelia, it was going to be a long day.

Amelia pov:

“Derek! Come here!” I call out to him across the neuro floor.

“What do you need I’ve got a surgery with Yang in like, 2 minutes?” He says looking bored before I even start talking.

“Hey you could at least act interest in what I’m about to say, oh and don’t tell mer yet. Please.” His interest was piqued at this so he gave me a look as if to say ‘keep going you’ve got me hooked’ so I continued “Me and y/n have been dating for a year, and we are o my just telling people ad were scared how mer will react because she’s not exactly my biggest fan as of right now and her and y/n/n, and Cristina obviously, are like twisted sisters or whatever.” I took a breather after sayibg all that and my brother just looked like he wanted to laugh in my face.

“Well, good luck!” He smiled and walked off to the OR.

Well shit.

Reader pov:

I walk into my patients room still deep in thought when he speaks up, he’s fairly old, around 70-ish and was in for a broken hip. “You seemed pretty serious with whatever you were talking about back there and now I don’t even get a hello? Something’s gotta be on your mind Doctor.” He gave me a knowing smirk as I open my mouth yet no words come out and let out and exasperated sigh.

“Ah you know, trouble in paradise, well, paradise’s surroundings at least.” I say trying to be as brief as possible.

“Happens to the best of us kid.” He seemed like a genuinely nice guy and to be honest I needed a break so instead of getting a nurse to check his vitals I decided I was going to do them, although it seemed someone else had the same idea.

“Hey y/n/n what are you doing here?” I hear a voice I know all too well say from behind me.

“Hi Ames, just doing Mr Davison’s vitals, are you okay?” I say giving her a smile.

“Funny I was just coming to do the same thing.” she walked beside me and trailed her hand lightly over my lower back which didn’t go unnoticed by Mr Davison.

“Your ‘paradise’ is a she? Ugh just another dyke, exactly what we need!” I stare at him shocked, as does Amelia. His sudden outburst seemed to pull some attention from outside and the one person that I didn’t want to walked in, walked in.

“Is everything okay in here?” Meredith asked.

“No get these people away from me! Horrible people you lgqbt whatever people!” He flailed his arms about like a toddler as he was ranting and raving. Immediately Meredith jumped to our defence.

“Excuse you? Who do you think you’re talking to? I have you know you’ve just made and enemy out of the best neuro, general and ortho (sorry callie) in the state. It’s 2024 in the USA for gods sake, get a grip man!” With this she ushered us out of the room and then into an in call room so she could talk to us.

•

“YOURE WHAT?!” mer practically yelled

“Keep your voice down, yes we’re dating.” Amelia said to mer try help her keep her head on.

“Look Amelia, I love y/n with my whole heart she’s my sister okay? So, if you hurt her, break her heart or do anything to even slightly harm her, I will hurt you twice as much. She’s the best thing that’ll ever happened to you, so don’t screw it up okay?” My heart warmed after hearing just how much mer cared about me and that she would protect me but also slightly concerned she just threatened my girlfriend.

“Yes ma’am.” Amelia murmured clearly slightly intimidated by mer.

“Okay, now that that’s out the way, I’m so happy for you guys!” Me and Ames say thanks and mer’s oager goes off so she has to run so me and amy are left alone in the in-call room.

“I love you Amelia.” I say as I peck her lips and wrap my arms around her neck.

“I love you too y/n/n.” At this she pulled me into a passionate kiss and lowered us both down onto a bed.

When in an unoccupied on-call room…

[jennelikejennay]

Doyleistic History of the Vulcan Language

I prefer to talk about the Vulcan language in-universe, to come up with history and possible reconstructions. But in my search for meanings and explanations, I keep smashing my face into the real-life history of all the kinds of Vulcan that have been invented. That especially becomes a problem when I try to apply what I know about Vulcan to the canonical uses of the language.

So, after my last post on Vulcan, I decided to take a minute to talk about where Vulcan comes from, and what it means when I say I study Vulcan.

The first words of any type of Vulcan were invented for TOS, mostly by Theodore Sturgeon for Amok Time. (Not all of them were used in the final episode.) This is where we get pon farr, plak tow, kalifee, and kroykah. I don't think any subsequent version of Vulcan has failed to include these key words.

By 1968 we had the first beginnings of a fanmade conlang, by Dorothy Jones Heydt, published in Spocknalia volume 3. This version has no relation to any subsequent versions I know of, but her word "ni var" (two form, two aspects of the same thing) ended up being canonized later.

None of this was used for Vulcan's next appearance, which was in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The scene at Gol was filmed in English, but after filming, it was decided that it didn't seem right and they wanted to dub it over in Vulcan. Thus the words invented for the scene were made to fit the mouth movements already on film. Jimmy Doohan allegedly did most of this. So the phrase thrahp, hif-bi tu throks, is specifically made to fit something like "Spock, give me your thoughts."

The next two movies use a Vulcan that was allegedly made by Marc Okrand, though I can't for the life of me find out how much Vulcan he made up to make these sentences or how he meant the grammar to work. This is where we get words like ish-veh, he/she/it, and dungi, will. But other words, such as ikh-banut or wakli, aren't parsed anywhere that I know of.

A few words were made up by novel writers. Diane Duane, for instance, invented the words cthia (reality-truth), T'Khasi (Vulcan) and T'Khut (Vulcan's sister planet).

The language most fans use, however, is from none of these sources. What is called "Vulcan," or more properly Vuhlkansu or Modern Golic Vulcan, is the creation of a fan named Mark Gardner, along with several other people. The work began in the 70s and continued till the early 2000s. There's a book and an archived website. The sources also go with the Vulcan Language Dictionary available online.

It has the advantage over all the other sources that it is actually made as a (mostly) complete and usable language. It's something of a hodgepodge, however. The base of the language was reverse-engineered from the small quantities of Vulcan used in the first three movies. The problem with this is obvious: the Vulcan used in the first three movies was not created as a consistent language. Choices had to be made. I should probably make another post about the choices I would have made, but suffice it to say, these sources are different enough from Golic Vulcan that analyzing them might well produce something entirely different. And yet one gets the impression that they are the same language because some of the words are the same. You think you might be able to understand them using the VLD--but for the most part, you can't.

Gardner's dictionary also includes words from beta canon and a few words from fanfic. The rest was invented one word at a time, based on rules the creators had set down about phonetics and root words.

So, after that, did subsequent Star Trek use any of what Gardner had created?

No. It did not. I wish it had, despite the flaws, because I always prefer understandable conlangs in shows and Paramount seems to have no intention of making their own. Conlangs can't be copyrighted; that's presumably why they felt okay picking up words like "ni var" from fans.

The Vulcan in Enterprise was allegedly also made by Marc Okrand. (Memory Alpha gives us a big fat Citation Needed for this. I can find no other source.) However, looking at the (scanty) text used in both, I don't really see any similarities. For instance, ish-veh for he/she/it does not appear, though one would think it should, and I can't pick out any grammatical structure at all. (You can try it yourself with the very small corpus at Memory Alpha. I plan to dive deeper into these texts in a future post.)

Did Marc Okrand make this? As a real linguist, if he did, I'd like to think he'd bother to make something other than simply noises, but without either more text or more translations, it's difficult to be sure. I can't tell that it isn't gibberish like TMP, in other words.

Discovery and Strange New Worlds also use "Vulcan" and I can't parse those either according to Gardner's Vulcan or according to what little exists in the corpus. This is, of course, devastating to me. What's the point of a conlang if you can study everything that exists and you still can't understand what they say on the show?

I would like to believe that STII, STIII, Enterprise, Discovery, and SNW are all using some lean but grammatically consistent conlang created by Marc Okrand, which, as more text is released, we may finally come to understand a little. However, I can find no evidence of this. There is no Vulcan language consultant credited on SNW or Discovery, although there is a Klingon consultant. Could they be altering Klingon to fit it in? Could the Klingon consultant be making up a quick Vulcan conlang on the fly? Could they have access to Okrand's secret Vulcan notebook? Hours of research have turned up nothing.

I talked to someone at a convention last year who said she had been at a talk given by Marc Okrand where someone asked about Vulcan. She said he only shook his head and said it was a mess.

SECONDED, DOCTOR OKRAND.

Anyway, that's why we're out here using the VLD, despite its obvious flaws. For better or worse, it's the only usable Vulcan there is. But the fact that it doesn't match the Vulcan from any canon but the first three movies, and that only because it was derived from them in reverse, is kinda depressing, I'll admit.

If you have any further information about the real-life history of Vulcan conlangs, please let me know!

[zmediaoutlet]

My ask got too long so I’ll send a 2 parter, hopefully Tumblr doesn’t eat one of them.i’ve always valued your opinions on spn things (feel free to ignore this ask if you don't feel like answering lol). i'm a big dean!girl, but love both brothers and can see good and bad qualities in both (which you should be able to if they're well-written), and i try to follow people-not necessarily with the same views as me, but similar ish.

i like to be challenged on my opinions, but i also don't wanna be triggered everytime i come here. but ALL i see these days are abuser!dean, how basically every action of his is so negative and selfish and awful. And if it’s not hate, then it’s the fetishizing of it, like «Oh yes he’s so abusive and there’s nothing hotter!!!» And I’m always like.. whatever floats your boat but is this all there is???? I guess my question is, what’s your take on these arguments? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

hallo anon -- loving both brothers is the right and true move, so good on you, you're taking in the show as it exists.

I really don't know what's going on with the gals these days. I hear some people calling them 'atticwifers' -- it gags me, lol, but it's a good description. We should pause and put in a thing here which is: people do a lot of stuff for porn reasons, and if they're doing it for porn reasons I don't care at all. Go on with your bad self. Whatever you're jilling to is between you and the magic button, and if that's lolita sammy getting turned on big bad dean's big bad dick then I hope it's satisfactory. Don't forget to hydrate. When we talk about actual analysis, however -- oh boy.

(And also, really, who cares if someone's bad at analysis. Most people are. It's just when it's this pervasive that it starts to chap my tits, and I have nice tits. They shouldn't be chapped!)

My actual take is that these are not "arguments" but rather a long-form version of self-inserts. Y/n is meant to be taking it up the duff from Sam, not pretending you are him. Nevertheless that seems to be what's happening. By which I mean--

You hate your dad. He's such a dick. He's a man, and men are mean and gross and evil and white men especially so, ick. Fuck the patriarchy!! Men like sports and they like beer and they like red meat and they like 70s rock music and they like big muscle cars and they like porn and don't apologize for it and they (and this is the worst part) sometimes they tell you what to do, or have expectations of you, and they're so annoying and brutish and dumb. By contrast, you are someone who fancies themself an intellectual -- maybe you don't feel like you fit in with your family. Maybe you don't like beer or big cars or 70s rock music. You're the blonde chick in the Munsters. So, who's your favorite Winchester brother?

Is he even really a brother? Honestly he's so woman-coded. He's just like you! He doesn't even really like beer ignore that he drinks it constantly; he doesn't even like red meat, he's probably vegan/vegetarian ignore that he chows down on burgers and chicken on screen; he hates Dean's stupid bad music ignore that he sings along and enjoys it; he's practically ace, honestly, he doesn't even grossly pursue women, I bet he's really queer ignore the rapacious fucking of various on-screen women and the literal boner dream he has about eating out Bela.

He never even did anything wrong! He got led into all the bad choices he was forced to make! If Dean and his evil, awful, horrible dad weren't so shitty, he'd be okay and he'd be at college and he'd be living his best vegan lesbian life while listening to your favorite bands ignore that he's the protagonist of a fantasy-horror television show and has repeatedly stated on screen that he knew he was making bad choices, and that the reasons were deeply complicated but he understands that they were his own choices, and that even when given choices later on he continues to hunt, and stay with his brother, because he might genuinely like both of those things.

See, if the bae that you project on is always the victim and blameless, then he (you) get to be holy, too. He (you) didn't do anything wrong. He's a poor acted-upon lamb who didn't have any choice in the matter, and by the way he will always be fucked and not be the one fucking because he has to not show any masculine icky desire, because that would make him unclean and wrong and evil like his nasty big brother/dad Dean, and that just doesn't work with how I project myself onto him. Oh whoops, that came out of parentheses.

--So the thing is that alllll that shit has to exist in the context of Dean (and John, but Dean is the representative on earth) being Awful and Shitty and Abusive and Bad because then it makes Sam more Sainted and Holy and Perfect. Even the flaws become mary-sue-ified. Sure he did that bad thing but only because Dean made him. And then, actually, because Dean's quite handsome after all, if Sam (you) get abusively fucked by him, that's fun to imagine, too -- it's ravishment porn, with two safe layers in between. You get all the fun of the orgasm without any of the icky culpability of actually wanting it, or -- god forbid! -- being a positive actor in the pursuit of it. Hopefully Sam was tied up and crying during the act so he can really, really be blameless.

Atticwifed!Sam does not exist in the show Supernatural that was on the WB/CW. Like at any point. But he exists in many jerkoff fantasies, for better or worse, and I guess after enough gooning it's too hard to see the reality past the fantasy. Which is too bad. I'm sure they disapprove of Busty Asian Beauties for being poor representation, and then they keep putting out... this.

[guardevoir]

Fiber arts update! Featuring handspun and pin loom shenanigans!

Remember this stuff?

Left-to-right: 6-ply 50/50 silk/polwarth, 3-ply 60/20/20 polwarth/silk/yak, 4-ply silk/polwarth (same stuff as the 6-ply) and 4-ply 70/30 merino/silk. Made a scarf out of it.

And, well, I ended up with some leftovers! A very awkward amount of leftovers, not quite enough for anything, but too much to just leave lying about, especially because this is the good stuff.

So I figured I'd weave a bunch of pin loom squares, see if it's enough for something. Picked out a cowl to make halfway through.

I then promptly realized that I was gonna come up short by a decent amount of squares because I didn't have as much blue left as I thought... but I did have the same fiber in a similar colorway on my spindle!

(old photo, I had about 13g of fiber on that thing by that point)

I thusly guesstimated that I must've spun up about half of it, and quickly got the other half done on my wheel. Two-plied it, then cabled it, expecting that to be a pretty decent match to the other 50/50 4-ply silk mix.

It was not a decent match. The other blue shit is somewhere between sport and dk.

But thankfully I'm resourceful:

Most of the white squares have 4-ply warp and 6-ply weft for some texture and a denser weave; I did two of the blue ones with the 4-ply white stuff too to stretch the blue a little further, and for the more purple-ish ones, I ended up doubling the yarn for the weft, which means they had a 4-ply warp and an 8-ply weft. We're not even gonna talk about that gray/white square.

(4-ply/6-ply square in progress):

Sewed it up and felted it a fair bit, for more sturdiness and a more cohesive fabric:

And here's the finished thing, modelled by the resident giant owl plushie:

If you're wondering, the colors are laid out like that because I wanted the softer yak hair mix in the back, where it'd be touching my nape, because I'm super super sensitive to textures there and the merino/silk mix is a bit rougher. In the meantime, this also lets me have all the fun colors at the front. Win/win!

Anyway, this was fun. I always feel kinda dodgy just whipstitching the loops together because it never seems to quite fully come together... but I really enjoyed the process here, the end product is wonderful, and I am eager for more.

[carrotoplyn]

aiden isn’t just a dumb blonde OH MY GOSHHHH. i’ve seen a couple of people say this as like a joke and like haha funny i guess?? I mean it can be fun on the occasion but like ehh idk. but i’ve seen people say it and genuinely mean it and i’m like he’s no though??

it’s currently late at night and i can’t properly express my thoughts on this in such a way it would make sense but, i wanna just point out some simple-ish things. (also apologies for any mistakes you may see, like i said before, it is currently late at night for me when i’m posting this)

so this first one is something my friend noticed. (kinda mad i didn’t notice it myself but not important) which is how in one of the first few episodes (70% sure it’s episode 2) is how aiden was the only one who finished the homework. yes everyone was sleep deprived and tired so they couldn’t do it, but it seems like aiden did it and did it right considering even ashlyn copied off of him

he was smart enough to make a plan for ash to go on the field trip, which was a fully thought out plan that really couldn’t backfire unless she genuinely decided not to go (but she did and now look at where are today)

this next one isn’t talking about how he’s smart but it correlates so idgaf, and it’s how we probably only “plays dumb”. because like i’ve said this whole post, he’s not dumb. but he probably only acts like so people don’t expect him to actually be able to do more complex things. like being so for real when i first read sbg and saw aiden, i had low expectations (but look at me now, writing my second ‘analysis’ or whatever you call this in row on this him)

he beat the world record for how fast a rubix cube can be completed, need i say more? yes, need i say more actually because most people are not good at puzzles. and most puzzles aren’t easy to do either. well yes, for some people rubix cubes are easy, but ain’t no way all he does is those small little rubix cubes that are too easy for him.

hes able to think quick on his feet. first example of this to come to mind is episode 21 when they behead the phantom. and as well as him coming up with an way to save ash from the phantom. like he doesn’t need that much time to think of plans, and his plans are usually foolproof.

FASTPASS SPOLIERS FOR THIS NEXT ONE (the spoilers are under the cut)

he’s always smart enough to negotiate with alex (by negotiate i mean threaten, but same thing, right?) and he literally was about to use a pen as a lethal weapon here guys. A PEN PEOPLE. A PEN. and plus alex was ready to listen to him and make a compromise (to be fair alex already wanted to help anyways but shhh i use whatever crumbs i can for my stupid idiot thoughts)

ok that’s all, please add on if you can i beg i beg 🙏🙏

[231025]

Why V and his fs will decide too marry each other???

disclaimer: taehyung was quite picky with this one, i tried my best to use the right words to explain his reasons but he wants you guys to know that it's only 70%ish meeting his expectations ... "he could do it better" well, he has to live with this version now, i'm not gonna change it any further :'')

his reasons: (1) the good communication between them - it's mentally stimulating for him, it makes him all passionate and giddy, gives him new perspectives on things and ideas for the future etc. his fs is intellectually interesting to him. he likes that he can talk with her about anything in a very "objective", non-judgmental, detached way but at the same time she also gives him new perspectives as she is good at perceiving all the different (realistic, objective, cultural, emotional [...]) side of things and she seems to be able to discuss these things individually without being prejudiced or "judgy" if someone has other opinions or when someone asked "stupid questions" - she seems to be always willing to teach or further explain things in a very kind open-minded way. she is someone that is good at giving advice and making plans with. (2) also, another reason seems to be that he'll realize that they won't progress in the relationship (specifically in the emotional intimacy field) any further if he doesn't offer a serious commitment (for the future) at that time. he'll feel like it's the necessary next step to progress if he wants more from her (trust, openness, intimacy, support...). (3) additionally, he thinks she'd overall make a strong companion for life. + he really appreciates her always being so supportive and caring towards him. she is honest, fair and compassionate and those are all traits he adores - she connects with him on an emotional level and he doesn't experience this often. and i think she is not as emotionally dependent on him as his past partners as this always ended being a great burden on him. she cares about being emotionally fulfilled herself before filling other people's cups which leads to a very healthy dynamic and inspires him to put himself first too instead giving too much of himself away. (4) last but not least, she brings balance, harmony and peace into his life - as they balance each other's flaws out and she always kindly lets him know how to improve things as well as giving him space and time to make his own decisions and form his own opinions, never rushing him. ... and so on... there is probably more but i'm gonna stop here now lol

her reasons: (1) her love life may experience a slowdown (before meeting taehyung) which will lead to a period of (self)reflection. the newfound perspectives might propel her to make changes or take action which she hasn't before. with taehyung she will feel like the "waiting time" is over, "he is the one, it's time for me to settle down now" - specifically the dating phase will at some point feel like "this is not working for me anymore, i need more" - it seems like in past relationships the other party always longed for her to finally commit which ended up feeling like a burden to her - making her drift away even further. but with taehyung it will be the first time in her life that she desires that the other person wants her to commit. funnily enough, i think she already got marriage proposal(s) in the past which freaked her out because she wasn't ready to commit so seriously yet but with taehyung she'll feel like "damn, when will he finally propose to me" she will be quite impatient lol. (2) another reason is that taehyung helps her see things in different perspectives, broadening her mind (similar to taehyung's reason). (3) he helps her get rid of worries, gives her a joy of life, optimism and lust for life. he will be like the sun in her life. she'll feel comfortable, lucky and full of energy and confidence with him. in the past and even now, she might struggle with "her life feeling dull" which over the long period of time bothers her a lot + affecting her mental health - she might struggle with motivating herself and finding joy in life which might explain why taehyung feeling like a new found sun (that lights up her life) will feel so tremendously touching to her at that time. (4) being with taehyung will make her realize that the she needs to release past burdens to move forward - he will trigger an internal transformation - and this effect he he'll have on her will make her realize how important he is in her life and that she doesn't wanna experience a life without him ever again

[shmowder]

pathologic beach episode when? artemy needs to be buried in the sand by sticky and murky and no bachelor cannot swim bc I said so ❤️

I NEEED Alexander Saburov in this

But could you imagine how gorgeous Eva would look in any of these vintage swimsuits. With the headband and sandals and ugh so beautiful

Not to offset the mood, but I went to look up what kind of swimwear was most common during the Pathologic time period. It's hard to pinpoint an exact year.

The mismatch in technology/events/culture tend to be confusing. Personally, I resort to the Edwardian era in terms of culture (mostly thinking about P1) but the late 20th century in terms of inventions and technology. It's clearly set around one of the world wars, so either 1914–1918 or 1939–1945.

I'm not knowledgeable about russian history. Some sources say women earned the right to vote in the USSR during the 1917-ish. I know the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in america was established during 1974, which let women own credit cards under their own name, I don't know if russian banks were the same.

P2 is culturally set in a more "advanced" time-period than P1, that much is clear from the lack of misogyny and strict dress code enforced on P1 women (Aka the townsfolks considering Yulia's usage of pants as crossdressing because of how extreme and uncommon of a notion it was for a woman to wear trousers, whilst it becomes an extremely common thing in P2 to see women like that in the street)

But the way they talk in P2... the diseases Dankovsky mentions, and a lot of the technology found around the town points towards the 70s/80s. Hell, at times, it feels like each character belongs to a different time period. How can Katerina's gown coexist with Sticky's jeans and flannel in the same era

The difference between 1910s swimwear and 1980s is drastic. But again, the people of Gorkhon are eccentric and deviate from the social norms of their era, so you'd probably find both of these styles at any given day on Gorkhon beach.

Anyway, back to the topic on hand. Look at this bull floatie I found! You cannot tell me Taya wouldn't splash around in the ocean with it.

Maybe a beach would solve the town's issues, unironically. The Sand Pest emerged from the Polyhedron, uncovering the layers of decomposed bulls the Abattoir pumped into the earth, yes? An ocean seems like a more convenient trashbin. Just ask the oil companies. It would've been polluting the waters, just like the Gorkhon River is already polluted, but at least the majority of the town's population won't be eradicated by a plague.

[smilingformoney]

Your Elliot/Mary/Turpin story is just 😫💔 I felt sorry for them and wanted to give them a big hug. Thank you for the amazing story!✨

(Though to help Mary choose, i would stay with Elliot so she could be with Turpin.🫣)

Personally I would do it the other way round, Elliott is her soulmate so I’d take on Turpin so she can be with her true love 🥹

But I am so glad you like it! Sometimes I wonder if I’m getting to the point where it’s an original story with borrowed characters, especially when I was writing Tommy meeting the kids. I thought, “This is a scene with six OCs, who’s interested in this?!” but people seem to be as invested in them as I am 😅

Story time. It all started late 2022. I had an idea for a smutty one shot where Turpin takes reader’s virginity by force. But, as some who were with me back then might remember, this was right on the tail of some kids from Twitter trying to cancel me for bookmarking a noncon fic on Ao3 (yup) so I was feeling really insecure about whether I should write it. It took me about a year before I felt comfortable in writing it, so I wrote it in October 2023.

It was always meant to be a one shot, thus the use of yn. Then, as always seems to happen with me, I knew I had more story to tell, so one shot became 3 chapters became 4 chapters. Thus we had Sins of the Flesh.

Then in April (ish) 2024, I watched Quigley Down Under for the first time and fell in love with Elliott. While watching it my brain was whirring and by the time the film ended, I had a fic idea: Turpin and yn (as Mary then was, though she was forming into Mary) visit Elliott and yn is ‘lent’ to Elliott.

I genuinely wrote the first chapter of the Eternal Summer within 24 hours of watching the film. And, you guessed it, what was supposed to be a one shot turned into 5 chapters. (I count the sixth chapter as a separate thing.)

By the end of it, Mary was fully formed. I was writing in second person but calling her Mary, then before posting I’d change ‘Mary’ to ‘[Y/n]’.

So when I wrote my first one shot afterwards (An Unlikely Reunion), I decided it was time. She was Mary Taylor and that’s how I was gonna write her.

She’s now blorbo. I rotate her in my mind like a rotisserie chicken. Hence why I made Die With A Smile, because she keeps falling in love with Elliott in different ways in my head. I’m thinking of writing an original story to publish that adapts her story to bypass copyright. (I believe Sweeney Todd is public domain but Turpin isn’t as he comes from the play in the 70s, and Quigley Down Under certainly isn’t.)

I can’t guarantee it won’t happen but I don’t have any immediate plans to give them another story 😂 I think it will just be one shots until something else takes hold of my brain.

I don’t know if people find the different timelines confusing so for clarity:

Sins of the Flesh/Eternal Summer: canon timeline. Mary and Elliott have an affair, Elliott dies, Mary spends the rest of her life grieving him but still married to Turpin. Four kids: Elliott (Elliott’s son, Mary and Turpin both believe this but don’t speak about it), Billy, Victoria and Eleanor. Victoria’s line leads to Sinclair and Lionel, Elliott’s line leads to Eli. For the Love of Books and Sharing are also canon to this timeline.

In Another Life: the bonus chapter at the end of Eternal Summer, where Turpin is killed by Sweeney and Mary meets Elliott when he comes to execute the estate. Kids: all Elliott’s, don’t have a specific idea as to how many or names.

Die with a Smile: What if Mary met Elliott first? Inspired by me wondering what would happen if Mary had more of a choice and wasn’t already married. Kids: Billy (Elliott’s son), James (Turpin’s son), then maybe some more after that.

I have loads of half-finished WIPs but I think the most likely to be finished soon is Sinclair (who knows about Mary’s life from her diary, which he found tucked away in an attic when his ADHD hyperfocused on genealogy) discovering that the musical Sweeney Todd (now based on real events, instead of a folk tale) has missed Mary out of the story completely and he makes it his mission to get Sondheim to put her back in. Is Stephen Sondheim now a character in my fanfic? Somehow, yes, he is.

ANYWAY LONG STORY SHORT Mary is my baby girl baby. There are OCs who are just characters and those who are your children. If Abbie is my firstborn, Mary is my secondborn 🥰

[tismandrelativedimensionsinspace]

I just caught up with doctor who and I’m really curious what you think about the episodes? Specifically 73 yards, dot and bubble, and rogue were my personal favourites so I’d love to hear your thoughts on them or the others

ooooh ok yes here we go

space babies - i loved it. ok? i get that a lot of people didnt like the cgi baby mouths. but i think it had such series 1 vibes (i.e. ninth doctor). it took me right back to my childhood. loved it tbh

the devils chord - :/ yeah. maestro was the onky redeeming factor of this episode tbh. it was supposed to be about the beatles but like. nothing about the episodes plot felt specifically beatles-relevant? like. you could have had the exact same plot with any 60s/70s band and it would have worked out the same way. i think if you're gonna do an episode surrounding a specific historical figure, the plot has to Only make sense for that historical figure. otherwise whats the point

boom - ugh. yes. 10/10. loved ncutis acting in this one. HE WAS LITERALLY STUCK ON ONE SPOT THE WHOLE TIME. COULD BARELY MOVE. AND HE STILL GAVE A HELL OF A PERFORMANCE. i was so impressed tbh. i love bottle episodes. the side characters were a little lackluster tbh tho. my only qualm with it really

73 yards - ANOTHER BANGER. i love love love when they get a bit horror with it. i loved that we got to focus on ruby and get to know her and her character a lot better. i very nearly cried when she was sitting outside her mums door on the phone. loved the mystery and the lack of a coherant solution, really added to the spookiness and fae vibes of it all.

dot and bubble - ok. im gonna be honest. this episode was boring to me. nothing really happened for the first 30 minutes. lindy was annoying as fuck. and i know that was supposed to be the point but like. if you're gonna do a doctor-lite-ish episode you've gotta make the focal character interesting. give me sally sparrow any day. i get what they were going for, i see the vision, i just think it could have been executed a bit better

rogue - yessssss!!! yesssssss!!!! loved the gay of it all, obviously, but i feel like that has kinda. taken over literally everything else about the episode??? i love the idea of larping aliens thats so silly and fun. i loved the fight mode scene with ruby holding her own. i loved the bridgerton-esque drama and ruby trying to comfort emily. i loved seeing ncuti get his "fury of the timelord" moment when he thought ruby was dead. the doctors dark side is so important!!! hes not all sunshine and rainbows!!! family of blood anyone!!!!

legend of ruby sunday - hm. the pacing was a little off. i felt like a lot of the time i was like. ok can we get to the point now. they mentioned the anagram thing So Many Times. and probability of trap. like ok girl we get it!!!! but. im very excited about sutekh!! he seems like a fun villain and very high stakes. and im so intruiged and compelled by rubys story. i Need to know who she is and who her mum is so so bad.

ANYWAY SORRY FOR RAMBLING BUT. YOU ASKED LMAO. AUTISM MOMENT

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH FOR ASKING BTW ILY!!!!

[miss-midnightt]

I just watched an absolutely incredible video about Rufus Shinra and why he can see the whispers (Link) and wanted to add on to it. It's quite long, so I'll provide a summary(ish):

Essentially, the creator of the video had three theories as to why Rufus could see them: I want to dive into the last two, which hypothesize he is Cetra or had Jenova cells injected into him (more so about the Cetra).

About the Cetra theory:

Essentially, it states that he is part Cetra because he a) can see the whispers and b) seems to possess some level of precognition, much like Aerith.

Firstly, I'd like to discuss how his mother is only mentioned to have died when he was young; this doesn't necessarily mean that Ifalna is his mother, as she can't be the only pureblooded Cetra alive after two thousand years (unless she's the product of a lot of inbreeding).

He seems to show up at pivotal moments by almost pure coincidence (or so it seems) without having any explanations offered. This sense for important moments and appearance of precognition becomes more interesting when you take a look at the Diamond Weapon's attack on Shinra Tower.

Rufus ended up having his life saved during the Diamond Weapon's attack from the very escape route he had suggested as a child, which just so happened to have the entrance exactly where he was taking shelter. keep in mind that Rufus was only five years old when he made the suggestion; President Shinra had no reason (unless you consider the humiliation aspect) to include this in the plans. However, if the President somehow knew that Rufus was special/Cetra, then the inclusion (his office is 70 floors up, mind you; installing that seems a little silly if only based off of the ramblings of a kindergartener) makes a hell of a lot more sense.

The President has also maintained that he doesn't believe in sentiment or attachment; if he had known Rufus was Cetra, it would have been a legitimate reason to include the escape route. Shinra scientists thought the scribblings of young Aerith were important, so why not the seemingly logical ramblings of a five year old who was also Cetra be just as crucial? Also, Rufus did not only say an escape route should be built, he said why; if an enemy attacked from the top their would be no way to escape...which is exactly where the Diamond Weapon attacked from.

Rufus also seems to have these...gut feelings, let's say. Sounds similar to Aerith, right? How she feels pulls to places, to things, suchlike Rufus. This also ties into the Jenova Cells theory, so let's dive into that...

Jenova Cells:

I'd like to start right off of the bat by saying this is purely speculation. I find this interesting nonetheless. This also will probably jump around and seems a bit more headcanon-y and random than the stuff about the Cetra, considering I am wayyy more interested in the Cetra theory. Anyway, let's dive in!

The theory that Rufus was the first (before even Genesis) to receive Jenova cells is plausible for several reasons. First, I'd like to discuss the year in which he was born. In the OG, his age was stated to be 25, which was changed to 30 in the remake--pretty random and unnecessary, at a glance. But it gets a lot more interesting once you realize that that would mean that Rufus was born in 1977...the year Jenova was discovered at the North Crater.

President Sinra has done some awful stuff, and I honestly don't think he'd be totally above injecting unknown substances into his unborn child (especially if Rufus was actually a bastard child that he decided to use in experiments then keep.) Anyway...

While some may argue that his eyes are blue, not glowy green, the glow and green come from mako, not Jenova. Even if there is a correlation between eye/hair color and Jenova cells, he does have light, bright blue eyes (like Genesis) and silvery blond hair. It could be a design choice, it could mean something more.

Then there are the physical strength aspects. He was able to go toe to toe with Cloud, not even showing visible signs of fatigue. Heck, he even parried a blow from the Buster Sword! While Cloud is not a true SOLDIER, he is strong enough that people think so anyway when he tells him that, and also beat Reno, Rude, and other powerful enemies. Meanwhile, Rufus soloed Cloud (with the help of Darkstar/Dark Nation) and didn't seem to be seriously injured.

Furthermore, when Rufus is infected with Geostigma in On the way to a Smile, he says something along the lines of "it felt like it [the Geostigma] was calling to me..." Now, this sounds suspiciously like the pull receivers of J cells feel to Jenova (which could help explain Rufus' presence at the Northern Crater).

I'd really recommend watching at least some of the video, as it explains things way better than I did (it's very long though, so be warned).

Lastly, I'd like to discuss something not touched upon in the video: his coins, more specifically the side of the coin with Darkstar/Dark Nation on it. This coin depicts Darkstar/Dark Nation and flowers, specifically mandragora/mandrake flowers. Why is this important? There are several reasons.

These flowers have been involved in stories and superstitions about magical powers and other tales of the like. It was said in some tales that they could only be harvested in moonlight by a black dog attached to a cord (Darkstar/Dark Nation, anyone? She does appear on that side of the coin, hmm....) after proper rituals had been conducted. Some tales said that they were tied to dark powers, that, get this, drove men mad if they heard their roots shriek. The roots are also highly poisonous.

Now, I'd like to look at color theory and the symbolism of colors in FFVII. In this game, the color yellow seems to symbolize life, hope, and rebirth, whereas purple seems to symbolize desolation, corruption, and death. Yellow is associated with Aerith through her flowers, and purple with Sephiroth for his shadowy magic. They are also contrasting colors; two sides of the same coin (pun absolutely intended). How does this connect to the coins and flowers, you ask? Well, the mandragora/mandrake flowers have a color range of...purple to yellow. Interesting, because Rufus is easily one of the most morally grey characters in the game.

Again, all of this is wild ramblings and pure speculation, so take it with a grain of salt.

[littlelord]

the ASOIAF / HotD / GoT fandom does not talk about the Velaryons enough, (and i know y’all know why. work on that.) so let’s talk about them. I present:

Velaryon Appreciation Day 1:

Corlys Velaryon

The lack of recognition for Corlys is DISGRACEFUL in this fandom.. I genuinely didn’t know he was a main character until I watched the show this week.

So here are some reasons you should appreciate or at least recognize Corlys:

1. He loves his wife more than anyone on that show. Easily the best husband out of the lot.

2. Literally Rhaenys’ #1 fan

3. Puts aside his long-held ambition to have his blood on the throne when Rhaenys asks

4. Is one of the biggest supporters of Team Black

5. ..I’m not kidding, do y’all remember how he kept vying for Rhaenyra’s claim long after her death? Yeah

6. Dude got arrested and sentenced to death for plotting to unseat Aegon AFTER RHAENYRA WAS DEAD

7. Like instrumental to Team Black and Rhaenyra’s line succeeding the throne, especially post-dance

8. Some of the best hair in the series i mean COME. ON. :

the gold bands? that length??? outdid.

9. Some of the best outfits, especially among the men of HotD

10. He is THE Sea Snake, ruler of the seas!!!!!! Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark, Head of House Velaryon, and Princess Rhaenys’ husband (the final is obviously his best and most important title).

11. My dude is HARDY. Recovered from a near-fatal stab wound and intense fever at 70(ish) years old.

12. He is so sweet to Luke. Fights for him as heir to Driftmark despite knowing they are not blood related (“it was just so the Velaryon name stays on the throne!” so? he could’ve supported Vaemond’s claim but he chose to support Rhaenyra’s child, his grandchild)

(look at little Luke and his grandsire😞)

13. Driftmark is cool as fuck and he’s the Master of it so that’s another point to Corlys.

14. I said it once I’ll say it again: GILF.

15. (extra credit): Steve Toussaint (Corlys’ actor) seems to be a great guy. He’s funny, v entertaining in interviews, comes across so genuine, bffs with Eve Best (Rhaenys’ actress), and is a huge GoT nerd (seriously. he is the only one who can answer any questions about GoT in the interviews i’ve seen him in). And fun fact- as I was looking to see if he’s overtly problematic, I discovered that all of his twitter likes are just “human kindness” and funny animal videos.

And the worst thing is that if he looked like his pre-HotD fancast/fanon version, people would not shut up about him.

“He’s soo fine”

“I need a husband like him”

“We need to talk about him more.”

..and you know i’m right!

FINALLY:

I am not saying you have to like Corlys (especially if you do not fw any asoiaf men, which i deeply respect), but free him and House Velaryon from this double standard you hold them to.

Like I better not see anyone who appreciates, recognizes, or likes Daemon or Aemond or Criston or even Alicent talking about how Corlys is “too prideful,” “too ambitious,” because look the fuck around!!!!!!! who isn’t in this goddamn verse!!?!??!!! and also you know what?? if my beautiful amazing badass wife was denied her rightful throne, i’d be mad about it too!!!!! even after she said she was over it!!!

if you made it this far, i’m thoroughly impressed and even more grateful that you have heard me out in this Corlys Velaryon rant!

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach’s Issue with Queer characters (2/3)

[1][2][3]

Dordonii might seem like a weird one to point out here, compared to some of the more overt examples, but I think he had a fairly evident queer codedness to him.  His more overwhelming quality was his kind of Spanish flair, what with the tap shoes and Flamenco-esque poses and gestures, the devil horns in his greased hair and on his mask shard, and his little Mephistopheles mustache and beard.  But the ear ring, and Flamenco adjacent sex appeal mixed with the way he kind of baby talks Ichigo strikes me as contributing to a certain daddy-ish gay character type.  Also, I’ve never been 100% sure that it’s not just crosshatching, but I’ve always read it as some chest hair peaking out from his low v-neck.  But I feel like that assessment needs some qualifying context...

Western sensibilities tend to read effeminate features on men as a chief indicator of homosexuality, Japan has never been quite as narrowly focused with its own gay stereotypes.  There is definitely a particular character type in anime and manga that pins the preening vanity of smooth faced and long haired effeminate men on homosexuality, but it’s not really the go-to.  Tracing back to media trends of the 1970s the long haired, smooth chested pretty boy (even the gay ones) very much became the domain of female audiences and creators, where as the prevailing trends of gay portrayals by and for men actually settled more firmly on the hairy and muscular image that bara is associated with now.  I'm not about to do a whole big breakdown of the japanese gay subculture behind the bara thing, because that deserves more time and attentio that i can give it here, but you've got a keyword to work with now, so I encourage you to do a little googling yourself.

Also he has his right ear is pierced?  I don't know if this was ever a thing in Japan, but in America it became kind of a wide spread myth(?)  Originally it actually was a functioning kind of code within the queer community in the 1960s and 70s, but after it became somewhat more generally well known the practice more or less stopped, for pretty obvious practical reasons... but weirdly enough by the sheer power of stupid homophobia, straight people continued to scrutinize and be paranoid of men with pierced ears for decades following.  Again, though, I have no idea if either the original intent or the misinformation of that trend was ever anything that had any kind of Japanese presence...

Anyway... What I’m getting at is Dordonii feels very queer coded to me, just not in ways that everyone picks up on.  But speaking of muscular hairy gays...  Let’s talk about an elephant in the room:

Charlotte Chuhlhourne:

Obviously, Kubo doesn’t quite have the tact to make use of queer identities in a totally respectful way, so it’s hard to tell how much is attributable to Kubo making a character exactly as they appear, and what could be argued to be a character’s theoretical self-identifying terms filtered through Kubo’s limited vernacular.  But the word to know here is Okama[オカマ], which has traditionally referred to gay, AMAB transvestites.  Obvious stumbling point here is that prior to more widely codified and accepted trans identities this term applied to both transwoman and drag queens.

Granted until fairly recently(by which I mean within the relatively short spand my own lifetime) even the queer community at large didn’t always differentiate the two very well; presentation was presentation, the circumstances for it and the specificities of achieving it were personal choices, not taxonomical crossroads; some moonlit as queens and that was it, others would’ve lived as women and never walked a show in their life if that had been a practical option, others still were happily gender fluid, but the scene had one look and one label.  We made due with what we had.

Anyway...  point being that Charlotte’s character is specifically a play into an Okama stereotype.  That is to say, the archetypal look of Okama in Japanese media for many years has been a middle aged, square jawed, often broad or even muscular, drag queen.  Although Charlotte doesn’t actually have one, they are also frequently shown with a muzzle of stubble growing in.  Despite what you might think about jabs at the beard as a masculine feature betraying their feminine presentation, it’s actually not (usually) the reason...

The image comes out of Japan’s gay bar scene --in Tokyo, Shinjuku-Nichoume in particular-- which has long been a cultural centerpiece of Japan’s gay culture.  The larger Shinjuku ward as as whole is itself a commercial district.  So, to the general public who didn’t have any interaction with gay culture itself, the small glimpse they had was from the crossing paths of salarymen commuting into work as straggler okama headed home from the bars the morning after, still in drag and makeup but with unshaven stubble growing in after a long night.

(Also, just a side note on this, but if you’ve ever seen an older (usually bigger) woman with a deep, brassy voice in kind of sultry night attire at a bar referred to as “Mama,” it’s because that’s the owner of a okama bar.  She’s not literally anyone’s mother, she’s the defacto den-mother of sorts for the patrons of her bar.)

It’s still definitely not a flattering portrayal, but it’s one with a very specific history that doesn’t communicate to Western audiences at all.  But there is a certain strangeness to how the Japanese handle this, comparatively.  While Western rhetoric has its hangups with moralist preaching and bitching and moaning about “degeneracy” and “deviancy,” those judgments just aren’t baked into Japanese culture in quite the same way.  In fact, while most of these okama caricatures by and for cishetero creators/audiences are definitely not what anyone would call “good” representation, they do lack a certain expected malice.  Sure, flamboyant bafoonery is a constant in exploitation of gay culture on either side of the Pacific, but where as the West uses this as a means to disarm gay men --to make them non threatening, or to rationalize not taking them seriously-- anime manga and even videogames tend to fixate on the curiosity of it.

(although one enduring, generally positive case of this that actually seems to fly super under western audience’s radars are the great fairys in Zelda. which have maintained their extremely obvious dragqueen inspired look since OoT)

One of the first encounters with the okama charactertype that I only learned to identify looooong after the fact is the Magypsies (haha oh boy that localized choice of slur...) in Earthbound. On the one hand they were treated as a bizarre spectacle and literally not human, but they were magical and benevolent and a little comical but not in the way where they were relegated to being the punchline of a joke and nothing else. And I've found over the years that that tends to be the tone of these kinds of characters.

Another very similar case of this is Ivankov in One Piece, the Kamabakka kingdom Okama and Newkama, including Bonclay/Mr.2. (His "okama way" gimmick being a play on the hardboiled gritty actionhero cliche of a "man's way.")  Where on the one hand, it’s a disgusting, tacky use of the familiar okama cliches, but also their very existence as okama is painted as the basis of their unique form of super power?  Really, it’s just so wildly divorced from reality that it’s hard to even call it “representation,” harmful or otherwise...  Still, in impossibly poor taste based on optics alone, though.

This all is not to try and sweep under the rug that these are still ultimately problematic stereotypes and caricatures to have to debrief each new generation of viewer on just to avoid the slippery slope of total misinterpretation, but I've noticed that there is a distinct difference in how that tone is read. The overwhelming attitude I see from these creators is that these long standing cliches are how okama look and act, but that it makes them interesting or funny, and yes “other,” but rarely lesser.  Obviously that's still rooted deeply in ignorance on part of these non-queer creators, but you can see how it lacks the teeth that the western equivalent has, where such caricatures are explicitly there to defame and demonize, and I think that’s an important distinction to make.

(And let’s not even get into the issue of fake “woke” white people struggling to wrap their tiny brains around the idea of another culture by framing it as that culture’s unique idiosyncrasies as if they’re just failed attempts at conforming to white anglo-centric western values, because THAT is a whole other can of worms...)

To maybe put this into some better perspective here, Tier Harribel has blond hair and tan skin, and given what the Arrancar are and how they live she is presumably naturally dark skinned, and naturally blonde.  But her design is clearly based on gyaru/gal (or possibly ganguro) fashion, which makes use of fake tans and bleached hair.  She looks the way she does because she's made to look like that aesthetic, but looking the way she doesn't doesn't imply she bleaches and tans(presumably those colors are both natural on her in-world). 

That same relationship of image inspiring image while being divorced from meaning is just kind of how Kubo makes these kinds of aesthetic decisions, all across the board, problematic or not.  But of course no one really cares about it when it’s a weird recontextualization of the gal aesthetic because no one’s offended on their behalf.

And in general, I think a lot of these things are just so outside the Western perspective that even when they definitely are problematic, some people can’t even begin to grasp what about it is, and end up fabricating just nonsense arguments against it to rationalize a kneejerk kind of discomfort and confusion over the subject...

Anyway...  having said all that, the next one actually IS a huge problem...

[1][2][3]

[implausiblyjosh]

Did The DVD Drive Help Sell PS2s?

This is a repost of a cohost post from AUG 13, 2024:

Someone made a weird claim on twitter about the PS2 and how important DVD playback was in late 2000, claiming that DVD players were under $100 by the end of 2000. It didn't smell right, but this screenshot they kept posting didn't make sense to me. Where was it coming from, who was saying this about DVD players?

I went to try and find where this screenshot comes from, and it's the Wikipedia page for "DVD player". I went and skimmed the 5 refs included in that article, and as far as I can tell, of the 1 webpage, 1 service manual, and 3 articles, none of them say this about pricing. Here's the specific version of the article I was looking at.

The closest we get is the EETimes reference in that wikipedia article, an article from May 2002 which has "With DVD player prices on track to drop to about $70 by year's end". That's not super helpful because it doesn't tell us where the prices are in May 2002.

The remaining four sources aren't very helpful either. The service manual PDF is lots of circuit boards, no prices. The webpage and and the other two articles are talking about the first year of the DVD player & format, which is about 1997. So that doesn't help us. Where'd this number even come from?

I checked the Talk page for the article, I'm seeing someone point out in 2008 that there were 0 sources on this article, and I'm not digging in the edit logs of the article itself to see when/where the references came from. So we know sometime between 2008 and 2024 these five sources were added, but none of the sources back the claim.

Trying to find articles about pricing from the time, I google "dvd player price in 2000" and get an IGN article from August 2000 that lists prices ranging from $270 to $3,000. To confirm my knowledge of the PS2 launch (because now I'm doubting what I know lol) I find a GameSpot article from May 2000 announcing the price and launch of the PS2, which is October 26, 2000 for $299 USD.

If your entry level DVD player is $300 in August 2000, I don't know how easy it was to find players "under $100" by the end of the year, and definitely not by the PS2's launch date of late October 2000. Based on looking through some articles at the time, we're looking at something that cost the same as a budget Sony DVD player at the time, but also played video games. It's hard to say how much that drove sales, but I did a quick search for "ps2 launch sales", looking for articles before 2001. I found a CNN article from the PS2's launch day that says:

Perhaps the most important perk, the PS2 can play digital versatile disc (DVD) movies, a feature that Sony hopes will make the $299 console a standard appliance in North American homes. The game pad controls the DVD functions with a relatively rudimentary interface, allowing users to skip ahead, pause or view special features.

In Japan, the presence of the movie player has reportedly driven up sales of DVD movies.

Based on quick searches from articles at the time, T\the evidence that the DVD feature helped PS2 sales is way more evidenced than the idea of $100 DVD players by the end of 2000. Hell, trying to find something that gets me close to that pricing claim is a CNET article from 2002 which says:

The cost of DVD players fell more than $200 within two years of their introduction in 1997 for nearly $500, according to Peddie Research. And the price slide hasn't stopped. Although the Consumer Electronics Association says the average price of a DVD player was $193 last year, consumers can now find players for less than $100.

Looking at it all, it seems like the DVD functionality was a selling point according to Sony and articles at the time of the launch, so. Idk, seems like the DVD feature was important to sales of the PS2!

The above was adapted from a thread I made on Twitter. I'm adding the following new thoughts!

I woulda been 6-ish when the PS2 launched, so what I know first-hand of the era is skewed. Listening to people I trust talk about games has given me the impression the DVD drive and playback was important to the PS2's sales and initial success, making for a solid foundation for people to develop a shit ton of amazing, system-seller titles for the platform. It's a hand-in-hand situation, not an either-or situation. Based on what I remember growing up, the PS2 was a good investment for a video game household that loved movies but didn't have the funds to get a DVD player and get a game console. For us, the PS2 was a best of both worlds situation.

But that's kinda... not the point? It wasn't difficult to find these sources talking about price, but it shoulda been easier. Articles talking about DVD player prices should have been in the Wikipedia article, but weren't. That's super strange to me, a wikipedia article about a large and important type of media player has only 5 sources, and more than half of them are talking about it's first year. Google search should have been a lot better to allow me to find more sources from the time, because it was hard to find any coverage of the launch day vibes of the PS2. Thinking about this more after the fact, I think I need to learn how to search magazine scans because I know gaming print magazines at the time would have said something about DVD playback and how important it may or may not have been!

Idk where to end this. Seems like there's a weird bit of misinfo on the DVD player Wikipedia page, which seems hard to correct because I'm not sure where to look for better sourcing. Someone should do something about this I think!

[theangryman]

my hobbies are differential equations, gay sex, ancient Sumerian, getting really really stoned, Classical Chinese history, programming C roguelikes, injecting testosterone, pokemon - to the point of creating and releasing rom hacks, beer, postmodern literature and philosophy, my little pony, abstract expressionism, washi eggs, postmodern quilting, failing at gardening, #1 lacroix apologist, fiber artist, postmodern-*ish* while simultaneously materialist/pragmatic radical feminist (transhumanist?)

iam hyperlexic and own more books than most people read across a lifetime. i make a goddamn sexy solder joint. i *do like* the kind of black and white horror films that a lot of people think folks pretend to like (except *Citizen Kane* goddamist boring shit anyone has ever commit to film) i was captain of my schools basketball team. i’ve accidentally sat in the piss of a then dead presidential candidate. i’ve flown an airplane. Only two of those things are a lie.

I am a trans man. I am old enough to have grappled with that experience from before the term entered the popular imagination and discourse. I grew up in a place where being a butch lesbian was in itself considered unnatural. I thought a lot of things - and I *was precocious enough to be reading actual feminist literature* before I had even gone through puberty. This is the internet, and I could be a dog for all you know - but I checked out things like *The Feminine Mystique*. Actually engaging with Dworkin wasn’t something I did until after my divorce - but I had read a lot about the sex wars in the 70’s, lesbian feminism and some of its controversies - before I had even dated a boy. I kept a Google reader feed with probably *1000s of feminist blogs* and atheist and Christian and evolution and so many other things. I argued with men about rape before many of you were even born.

Transgender issues were never this dominant. People always had disagreements about higher philosophical ideas of sex and gender. I explicitly remember the conversation reigniting around Mary Daly’s death.

If you’re going with Daly, remember, Daly was a *theologian*. Her analysis rests on an idea of the “gendered souls” that does not seem particularly defendable.

The other, more scientific approach is to argue for a strict and arbitrary line drawn around sex. I do not like this idea. If you are going from medical point of view, I think a *categorical* issue with healthcare can be a refusal to see things as sets.

I worked in a lab where I collected and analyzed insect samples. One thing I learned is that there were many species of some things that were effectively unidentifiable. Color is a tell you lose extremely quickly - it also seems localized, because the breathtaking purples of the *Collembola* I saw under the scope just don’t seem to show up on the web. We lose species faster than we identify them - but I digress.

Species (ie, things that can breed with each other is maybe the “high school” definition?) is itself a category we often have to muddy because of things like “ring species” that can interbreed with neighbors, but not their neighbors neighbors. There’s evidence of *pizzly bears* interbreeding in the wild - polar bears driven inward by climate change breeding with grizzly bears.

Variation in itself is what facilitates evolution ultimately. Sexual reproduction is such a complicated process that it introduces all variation - that’s how it was selected right? Because species that exchange DNA have the chance to produce offspring that are different from them in some way on the net beneficial to their survival. That “mistakes” are not necessarily mistakes, that they are a function of the system that was selected for. The “natural order.”

Intersex humans are variations. There is nothing wrong with a variation. Variations do often have sets of characteristics with them, but those are not 100%. Some variations are more harmful to quantity of life than others, some safety issues need intervention prioritizing the needs of the *child* and not any desire for artificial conformity to standards for those characteristics. It is very good that we have science to help with things like HRT to help people now, that adult intersex people should get to make choices about how they want to approach their bodies, including surgery if they wish. It’s wonderful when medical technology facilitates them in reproductive goals.

My brother has a rarer genetic disorder, as assigned by genetic testing. This lead to a set of characteristics but not all, maybe half of the symptoms list? Or the number of people with Down’s syndrome with extremely mild cognitive delays if any?

Sex cannot be fundamentally *discrete*. There will be exceptions to every role. Defining medical sex as “having most of the characteristics of a specific reproductive role at birth” seems to be maybe the easiest thing to get everyone to agree to?

Why isn’t entirely unreasonable to not believe that there are similar variations in brain structures? That certain brains are mapped to expect certain bodies (is it really impossible that a trans man could have neurons that were “meant” to connect to a penis in some complicated way? How would you isolate that? I am genuinely curious.)

So what connection should we draw between that classification and other things?

What relevance do they have to identification? Is the purpose of identification to help in confirming that a person is “who they say they are.” I’ve long long long been at the state where flashing an “F” could get me accused of faking it or even put me in danger. I would also love to a tolerant society where everyone can wear whatever they want and that we completely disregarded any ideas of sex based oppression and asymmetrical expectations on the amount of work to look “presentable” and what is acceptable (ie, that’s actually the society that I think society that TIRFism advocates), but we don’t. We don’t live in a society where I can get my Snow Maiden with an “F” on it - it’s entirely reasonable to allow my license to reflect my identity. I’m not asking to be brave and loud every time I live the house. And I know this shkt can affect detransitioned women, and I imagine it really sucks. But I think the world I’m fighting for is a one that accommodates them to.

From an enforcement of patriarchal systems view: You can make a lot of stereotypes of *chronically online* trans people. We all like Fallout: New Vegas, are in hundreds of discords, and like the IKEA whale plush. Weird hobbies tend to collect people who feel themselves like societal rejects.

But when you start touching grass: some trans women like girly pop shit and that makes them feel good about themselves, and some trans women are firefighting butch lesbians. I literally used to *do panels* with other trans people where we would talk to people about our experiences as trans human beings. I didn’t hear fetishists, I didn’t hear lost little girls. I didn’t hear things that sounded like concessions to patriarchal structures, but more nuanced explorations of how our we had to interpret the mixture of culture, medicine, and our bodies.

As far as safety: rape is hard to analyze. It’s a rightly heavy topic. It’s also to discuss statistics meaningfully, because 1) obviously ridiculous over reporting which distorts so much of the picture that you can get and 2)of the size of the population we often try generalize to (ie, all medical/natal males). It’s not often that a good study has a *huge* sample size in sociological research, but that you are targeting a well defined population. You cannot justify throwing a study of Australian university students at trans women in America. We can say that objectively rape is overwhelmingly crime committed by natal makes against natal females, and that it is a form of hate crime, that it has been used as a tool of control, that throughout history to now that it is justified.

But rape is not primarily stranger danger. It is not men in the bushes leaping out. Except perhaps in warfare, that opportunistic chaotic violence - it’s usually through sanctioned relationships. The priest, the father, the teacher, the youth minister.

The media broadcast rape stories that draw attention, that hits some desired audience, that draws clicks. They do not report most rapes. You cannot use media bait stories to understand sexual violence. It is distraction bait, it is keeping you in fear to keep you from seeing the real danger of domestic life.

I do not think that denying trans women they ability to use the bathroom they are comfortable with is a danger. Trans people piss, everyday. The same as you do. We have to pull over and do our business. Rationally, we are going to use the bathroom which causes the least inconvenience. It’s asinine to expect otherwise - and are you really going to start saying certain kinds of people have to wear certain kinds of clothes or have certain kinds of haircuts? We had laws like that back in the day, buckaroo. Don’t think they were particularly *feminist*.

As far as dating goes - date who you want. Human sexual impulses are all over the places. But your sexual preferences aren’t relevant to social policy. Dating apps objectively garbage; if they worked they wouldn’t stay in business. It shouldn’t relate to how you treat people as human beings.