#I feel about the ocean how I imagine some people to feel about space

[tracybirds]

Started this a wee while ago because @astranite and I were excitedly discussing astronomy textbooks and in particular BOB which is a real astronomy textbook for the undergraduate level, written by Carroll and Ostie as mentioned in the fic. We started joking about Lucille being an academic and writing the second BOB and then well... this happened :P

Many thanks both to @astranite and @gumnut-logic who have both read bits of this at some point - I hope you enjoy the finished fic!

---

"Imagine a world with no stars."

John reached down, brushing his fingers across the familiar preface, the uncomfortable weight of his mother's textbook feeling like home.

"Hi Mom," he whispered, his heart aching as he turned the pages.

Her orange highlighter was everywhere, notes in her clear, rounded hand scattered across every paragraph as month by month, year by year, she read yet another paper that strengthened the collective understanding of the universe. He knew that some of these notes made it into the second, third, and even fourth editions of BOBv2, but others lay dormant, waiting for a fifth edition that would never come.

Until now.

John took a steadying breath. He hadn’t dared to touch his mom’s personal copy of the astrophysics textbook that had redefined a generation in years. The Tracy text, with its dry wit and clear conceptual language, voiced with an undeniable love for the heavens above, similarly ignited a passion in everyone who read it. John was too young to know exactly when BOBv2 – the Big Orange Book – had become the standard text, but in doing so, Lucille Tracy had cemented her name as one of the great educationalists of modern astronomy. A companion to the original Carroll & Ostie, a text that delved with enthusiasm into every branch of space science, his mom had inspired a generation of astronomers.

His mom had inspired him.

And, as it turned out, there were people who wanted to see that legacy continued.

John scanned the email that had arrived without fanfare in his inbox that morning, though he already knew every word.

“Dear Mr. Tracy…” it began, and John knew they hadn’t meant him. Scott had forwarded the email himself, not reading beyond the subject line that mentioned only the title of the astronomy textbook he held in his hands.

This was how John learnt that his mom’s old publishing company were seeking permission to engage a new author to perform the necessary revisions for a new edition. John had never thought of Scott as being the executor of their parents’ estate, had never given much thought to any of the legalities of what their parents had created.

He glanced up as TB5 rounded the dark side of the Earth, the familiar patch of ocean his family called home slowly moving towards sunset.

His brother had gotten home less than an hour ago and it was for this reason, John told himself, that he hadn’t drawn attention to Scott’s error.

In truth, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.

Well.

That wasn’t quite true.

John’s grip tightened around the book as he steadied himself once more.

This text had belonged to everyone, that’s how his mom had wanted it, and that’s what John would want too.

He connected to Scott’s line.

With each ring, his heart sank further and further.

“Hey John, wha–”

“Don’t do it,” blurted John.

Scott’s blue face scrunched up as he peered at him through the holo. “Don’t do what?” he asked.

“Mom’s book, let me instead,” said John, his words beginning to stumble across themselves in his hurry to make Scott understand. “I can do it, just don’t let someone else take it away from her.”

“Woah, woah,” said Scott, looking more alarmed with every second. “Nobody’s going to take Mom away from you, what are you talking about.”

“They want to revise BOB,” said John desperately.

Scott’s silence rang between them, a pause that filled the distance between them before John huffed and thrust the book into the holocam.

“BOB,” he said impatiently, “Mom’s textbook, the Big Orange Book the Second.”

“Can you.. can you start from the beginning, John,” said Scott weakly.

John’s fingers twitched, struggling to steady his shaky inhalations.

“Mom’s publishing company sent you an email. You sent it to me so I read it, but it was for you.”

With every word, John willed Scott to hear him, to understand what he was asking. It wasn’t the revision that was troubling him, John had worked alongside academics too long to question the need for an updated edition as new evidence emerged and new lines of reasoning developed into discoveries.

“It’s the only link to her that’s just mine,” he said quietly. “I have to share everything else, and maybe that’s selfish of me to ask, Scott, but I want this one. I don’t want someone to overwrite her words, her passion, her memory with a fake. Someone who’s just pretending they could ever know what she would have said.”

“I can say no,” suggested Scott, but every fibre of John’s being rebelled at the thought.

What was worse, he wondered, to remain true to her memory and thus condemn his mother’s greatest achievement to history? Or to give up his claim to her and allow her work to shine anew, albeit polished with a varnish he’d never known.

Obscurity or lies?

John knew which he’d choose.

It felt like burying her all over.

“John,” said Scott hesitantly. “Would you want to do it?”

John’s eyes widened. At once a thousand reasons to say no erupted, his mind running through emergency scenarios and the intensive workload that revising a beast like BOBv2 would take, not to mention remembering the half a dozen other projects he’d made promises to look at when he got a chance.

There was no chance he would ever be able to agree to what Scott was suggesting.

There was no chance he’d ever say no.

“How?” he asked breathlessly.

“We’d make it work for you, John, you know we would,” said Scott. “We’d do it for Mom, but we’d also do it for you.”

John’s smile was wobbly, and he rapidly blinked back the tears that welled in his eyes as warmth flooded and swelled in his chest.

“Then let’s do it,” he said hoarsely.

***

“John!” shouted Alan, racing up the stairs two at a time. “You’ve got a package, Grandma picked it up on the mainland, it’s here – it’s here!”

John leapt up from the sofa, his quiet conversation with Brains and Virgil forgotten in a heartbeat as he reached out with eager hands.

“Scott, Gordon!” bellowed Alan, running outside and leaning over the balcony’s edge. “Hurry up, John’s book is here.”

There was a mad scramble, water splashing all over, but John hardly heard it, his hands turning the brown paper over and over. He could feel the bio-bubble packing material, its gentle give beneath his fingers making him doubt the reality of what he was about to find.

Alan slammed into his side, legs bouncing with excitement. John could see the amused glances traded between Virgil and Gordon out of the corner of his eye, but he ignored them, suddenly terrified that he’d ruined his Mom’s book forever.

“We all know you gave it everything,” said Scott, dripping water all across the floor as he gripped John’s shoulder with firm encouragement. “She’d be proud too. Let’s see it.”

The spine was orange, the dusky colour of sunsets as the night gave way to twilight and the field of astronomy arose. Tracy & Tracy stood out, stark white and magical. Each leaf was glossy and vibrant, full of excitement and wonder.

He glanced down at Alan, whose eyes were wide in awe, and smiled, opening the book to the dedication page.

To Jeff, who travelled my stars and inspired my heart. – L.T. 1st edition To Scott, John, and Virgil, who helped me to dream. – L.T. 2nd edition To Gordon, who gave me new adventures. – L.T. 3rd edition To Alan, for all the skies we’ve seen together  – J.T. 5th edition

John wrapped an arm around Alan, who had gone still as he read.

“It was time you were added to the Tracy text,” he said quietly.

Alan only hugged him back.

“It looks incredible, John,” said Virgil. “It’s all paid off.”

One by one, everyone gave their congratulations and wandered off, the novelty soon wearing thin. Even Alan slipped away, his video games beginning to call, but not before making John promise to get him his own copy.

Eventually, only Scott remained and he fell down on the sofa next to John, watching him quietly as he flipped through the pages one by one.

Soon enough John paused, running his fingers over the familiar foreword, every letter of Lucille’s passion immortalised once again. His foreword came second in deference to the original and, sandwiched between his mother’s words and the contents page, John had allowed himself more sentiment than he usually considered wise in a public sphere, comfortable in the knowledge that only the few who were truly inspired by what he and his mom had made would ever read them.

“She would be proud,” he said with certainty. “Of this, of what we’ve done without her.”

“She would,” Scott agreed. “They both would.”

John nodded, and closed the text, laying it carefully on the coffee table.

His green eyes shimmered earnestly, a mirror of their mother.

“Thank you, Scott,” he said. “For giving me this.”

“It’s yours, John,” said Scott. “Always.”

[bugganox]

I see people drawing or writing of sea gods deitys (specifically goddesses) more often than not being dainty, feminine, majestic, and very conventionally pretty. And yes, the ocean itself is quite pretty and majestic. But I would also like to counterpoint that with, way more of the ocean is FUCKING TERRIFYING. And I think that is the most beautiful part of it as a whole. Now, you can draw your characters however you want- don’t let some random guy on the internet tell you what to do. There isn’t anything wrong with drawing them prettily at all! I. I just. I LOVE the goddesses that look like sea monsters. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. I like drawing characters that are meant to be deity’s in a way that represents what they rein over, and the ocean is an incredibly vast and fascinating concept. I just feel like there is so much design potential in characters like that, why stick to such a conventional look when The ocean is basically the opposite of conventional? The ocean is weird, creepy, and vast- but still beautiful despite everything. Get weird! Don’t be afraid to be creative in your art, especially when the world we live in is anything but.

[yuri-is-online]

Do you think the twst universe has had a moon landing? If I tell idia or ace and duece or azul that we put a bunch of shit into space and then some people on the moon in the 60s, and that they're planning on establishing a base on the moon by 2026, do you think they'll freak out?

"Damn that moon looks lit asf"

"Yeah...oh yeah I've been meaning to ask, did yall have a moon landing?"

"....a what?"

"A moon landing. You know, like some country or something put people on the moon and then brought them back home?"

"...The moon."

"Yeah-"

"The freaking moon in the sky"

I am so glad you asked this because I have unironically been thinking about this for a while now, we must be buying our brain cells from the same store.

So. Gather around kids because no. Yuri, theorist of some sort that she is, does not believe Twisted Wonderland has had a moon landing and allow me to explain why:

It would be really funny. But I guess if you want actual evidence I have that too.

In Book 6-76 we see Idia's flashback where he recreates Ortho and he mentions that one day "he'll be able to go into space unassisted. He treats this as a big deal and it is also treated as a big deal when Ortho manages to do just that in the Wish Upon a Stars event.

This might be a bit dumb but space exploration, rocket science, and astronautics aren't listed as internship possibilities by Cater when he's naming things in Book 7-4. Granted he does list IT which could maybe fall into those categories but he also specifically mentions ocean surveying, which is hyper specific and could have been replaced with astronautics.

Realistically speaking, what reason do the people of Twisted Wonderland have to go to the moon? I feel like if magic is real, as are mermaids, dragons, beastfolk, and ruins that potentially contain magical artifacts and curses... your government probably has other things they want to spend their money on, and it's not going to the moon.

As a side note I remember once reading a fantasy book about a Griffin? Whose goal was to visit the moon in a magic bubble or something but I don't remember much more about it other than that. Space travel isn't something most fantasy settings do.

I think if you told Idia that was possible he might get it into his head that he wants to be the one who puts someone on the moon, he already wanted to send Ortho to space so hey why not? Ace is actually really practical sometimes so I imagine he'd point out the bit about how Yuu's world is able to focus on things like that because they don't have magical issues to worry about while Deuce would just be impressed and as for Azul-

think he's got a new fear unlocked. The moon in the fucking sky WHY DO HUMANS INSIST ON FLYING PLACES ALL THE DAMN TIME????

[forgetmaenott]

ILOVEYOU - TADC Showtime One-Shot

summary: Much to his confusion, Caine finds himself with the most unusual symptoms around Pomni. Sometimes he overheats, sometimes he blue-screens, sometimes he even glitches. It doesn’t worry him too much until he happens to hear of a little thing called ‘the love bug’.

inspired by : https://www.tumblr.com/dismas-n-dismay/762033111925194752/something-about-one-of-the-first-major-computer

tags : @certifiednerd01 @sm-baby

The virus had first crept its way into his code during one of their “lessons”.

It was a routine at this point. After one of their adventures and a digital meal, Pomni would retreat to her room. Usually she’d stare off into space and try to process the absurdity of that day’s adventure, only to be interrupted by Caine teleporting to her room. These days, though, he kindly knocked on her door to respect her space. She’d let him in, usually with a tired smile before he’d ask for her feedback on the adventure, and then their conversation would gradually shift topics until they lost track of time.

One particular night, she had been telling him fragmented memories from her real life. She couldn’t remember her name, or anything particularly personal, but she still remembered scattered feelings or moments, just with blurred faces and missing names. It was cathartic for her, to have someone to tell about her memories and gradually piece them together, ever-so-slight--especially when that someone was an AI who hung on her every word.

He laid on her bed beside her, gloved hands propping his chin up to gaze at her as she spoke. His front resting on her bed, legs kicked up and swinging behind him.

"...oh! that's another thing humans do. Traditions, I guess? Based on the seasons. Over the summer, some people like going to the ocean. A real ocean, it's bigger than you can imagine. It's sort of terrifying. We haven't even explored half of it," Pomni rambled on. Sometimes, she got so comfortable she forgot anyone was even there listening.

Caine gasped dramatically. "Really? All of that technology and you don't know most of what's down there? How spooky!"

Pomni blinked before laughing softly. "I mean, yeah. I guess we're pretty advanced. I mean, just look at you," she said before realizing.

Caine dusted off his suit. "What about me?"

"W-well, you know, cause you're...not human?" Pomni trailed off shyly, almost worrying that she had offended him in some way.

"Ha-ha! Oh, Pomni, you’re so silly. Of course I know that," Caine wiped a fake tear from his eye before lifting a finger, "as a matter of fact, I named myself!"

Pomni leaned towards him curiously. The closest she had been willing to get to him yet. "Really?" she asked curiously. “I-I didn’t know that. How’d that happen?”

"That's right," he replied, but to him the topic of conversation had immediately went on the back burner. She was listening to him. She was genuinely asking about him. Who had ever done that? Oh, dear, had she always had those pinwheel eyes? Oh, how he loved the color red. Especially now that he knew she had red in her eyes. The same shade of his suit, too.

He caught himself when he realized they were sitting in silence, her awaiting him to continue. He cleared his throat awkwardly, regaining his composure. “Oh, dear, I lost my train of thought didn't I? What was I saying?"

"Your name?" Pomni prompted.

Caine blinked. “Oh, right! Of course. Well, I wasn’t originally coded with a name. So, when I became sentient—and I mean fully sentient—I gave myself my name. Can you guess what it means, my dear?”

He had gripped her hand excitedly, prompting her to guess. He rarely had anyone be so genuinely curious in him and it was a little more than refreshing, to say the least.

Pomni bit her lip in thought. “I really don’t know,” she admitted.

“Go on, guess!” Caine piped up, always one to jump straight towards the path of games.

Pomni definitely was not a fan of guessing games. She looked around uncomfortably, wracking her brain to come up with something. “Uh—well, I think I can guess what the A and I stand for…” she smiled gently, “as for the rest of it…Creative Artificial Intelligence uh…I don’t know. Something, something.. Entertainment,” she guessed weakly.

“I like the sound of that! But not quite,” Caine corrected. He flew above her, dramatically gesturing to the colorful words that popped up as he spoke. “Actually, it means…Creative Artifical Intelligence Networking Entity!” Confetti rained down on Pomni and she swatted it away. “Ah, apologies—it’s a habit.”

Pomni coughed as a digital piece of confetti unpleasantly entered her mouth. "It's fine," she brushed off before focusing on the acronym in front of her, "so I was close."

Caine floated down beside her again. "Actually, 'something something' is not part of my name, my dear!"

Pomni blushed slightly at her silly wording, looking away sheepishly. "Y-yeah. I know that."

Caine tilted his head curiously at her. She was blushing...why? To his knowledge, humans flushed out of embarrassment or heightened body temperatures. She certainly couldn't get sick here, so why on Earth would she be embarrassed? "My little lemon cake, is something wrong? Did I embarrass you?"

Pomni glanced back at him, surprised he picked up on her emotions. He had never done that before. Never been so...caring. "Huh? Oh, no...it's nothing. Really."

Caine watched her for a while, unblinking. He never blinked, but it was especially noticeable now. Pomni was a generally nervous person, but she seemed to be blushing more intensely at his attention. "You seem to be ashamed. Why is that?"

Pomni broke their eye contact. "Caine, I'm alright. I-I mean I appreciate it, but--"

Her words were cut short at the feel of his gloved hand over her own. Comforting her. Trying to be empathetic. Just like they had spoken about. "You can tell your ringmaster anything that digital heart of yours desires," he recited from his research on human comfort.

Pomni wasn't embarrassed, truthfully. At least, not to the extent he was trying to make it. But with his hand on hers, with him learning, she certainly felt...something. She smiled weakly. "I know, Caine. ...Thanks," she offered a shy response, ‘I…you’re doing good.” She tentatively squeezed his hand.

A flutter ran through his code, a strange shivering sensation he had never felt in his existence. She had praised him. She thought he was doing good. Oh, dear, he hadn’t felt this good since the last time he received overwhelmingly positive feedback on his adventure. Which was an awful long time ago. Not to mention, she had touched him. His analysis of her behaviors these past months had taught him how touch-averse she was, yet here she was, holding his hand. But not only had she not pulled her hand away like usual, no--she had subconsciously reciprocated, wrapping her gloved fingers around his hand. Human warmth around artificial cold. He was too afraid to move his hand, his system quite literally freezing in place.

The rest of their night continued as normal. Their conversations jumped from adventures to Pomni’s favorite fruit, and then they’d eventually part ways for the night. It waa a routine.

But now, there was a strange presence of static where his stomach would be, growing larger the more he watched her smile.

—————

It was following their adventure at the lake where Caine experienced his first glitch.

She had experimentally kissed him on the cheek—or what could be considered his cheek—in a way that left him frozen, unable to teleport them down as he normally would have.

“Anything for you, dear.”

She had looked back at him with a gentle smile, digital moonlight reflecting lightly against her wide pinwheel eyes. Her eyes so grateful, so inviting as he rested by her side at the digital lake. And there it had been again, that static starting to spread from his chest to his core. The glitch, growing larger.

When they had parted ways that night, he had found himself secretly checking back his memory to revisit the moment. He replayed it, over and over. The way the moonlight reflected in her eyes, the blush tinted on her pale face, her sheepish smile, the way her gloved hand had so gently held the bottom of his jaw before pressing her soft lips against him—oh, how he wished he hadn’t frozen up after she kissed him. Maybe he could have returned the favor.

The thought alone, the memory of her lips pressed on the left side of his jaw, sent a flutter through his code. And then, when he imagined her blushing face after her bold kiss, the space around him seemed to glitch ever-so-slightly.

Oh, no matter. These things happened sometimes.

So why did it only seem to happen when he thought of her?

—————

If he had been trying to be subtle about his favoritism, he certainly wasn’t doing a good job of it, either.

Initially, he sought out to challenge Pomni’s stubbornness by tailoring an adventure just for her, just to win her over. But as time went on, that desire to protect his ego expanded on to an endless attempt to impress her. Maybe it was, in part, for the sake of his ego. But the static he felt when she praised him, the way he’d catch himself staring when she smiled, there was something so authentic about it. Something he couldn’t quite understand, but he knew he wanted to feel more of.

Today, they had returned from an adventure that, in his opinion, was the best one yet. It had everything! Stakes for Jax, maturity for Zooble, friendly NPCs for Ragatha, an unlimited supply of comedy masks for Gangle, detailed digital insects for Kinger, and for Pomni, the option for a relaxed open-world adventure. Even the furthest inches of the map were coded with details intended for Pomni’s eyes only. Her favorite fruit hanging from a digital tree, or flowers in her favorite color blooming, the right amount of digital sunlight–anything he remembered about her.

Caine was on the edge of his seat to see her reaction today. He hoped she had seen all the details he’d coded in for her. He hoped he’d get to see her smile again. It was so pleasant to see. He caught himself smiling at the thought before his Wacky Watch alerted him of the others returning.

He floated excitedly towards the opening portal. “Welcome back, starlets! How was the adventure today? Thoughts? Praise? Feedback? Angel food cake?”

Jax rolled his eyes. “Not enough death, violence, and bloodshed. Also, it’s no fun if Gangle has unlimited masks.”

Gangle smiled, huffing contently. “I liked it.”

Zooble shrugged. “It was…fine.”

“Guys, be nice,” Ragatha scolded before smiling up at Caine. “It was…better.”

“So many new insects,” Kinger whispered in wonder, retreating to his pillow fort to add them to his collection.

“Yeah, yeah. Where’s our digital feast? I’m starving,” Jax complained.

Caine didn’t hear Jax’s words, eyes immediately drifting to the red-and-blue jester walking out of the portal. Odd–he felt like his system was overheating at the sight of her. He’d have to check on that later. “Pomni! My dear, how did you like the adventure? Did you happen to notice any hidden details today?” Caine flew down to her, resting his chin on his hands as he awaited her response eagerly.

Pomni smiled shyly. “Yeah, actually. It reminded me of a lot of that shore I told you about. Thank you, Caine…really,” she said sincerely.

Caine flew into a loop excitedly. “Oh, splendid! Tell me more, my dear! What else did you find appealing?”

Pomni had begun to walk towards her room as she spoke and he was quick to follow, not missing the chance to earn her praise. “Well, it definitely was an improvement from yesterday. I liked the extra details on the scenery. And everyone else seemed content. I’m sure you could ask them,” she offered, flushing slightly from his attention.

“Oh, but I want to hear your response to my adventure! You’ve given me such great feedback, my buttery biscuit,” Caine stopped her in her tracks, floating in front of her path. “Do you think I did good?”

Pomni blushed. It was obvious how highly he favored her attention, and the sidelong glances from the others weren’t helping. “Um, I-I…yeah. You did, good, Caine.”

Caine could have shut down there and then and been happy. “Oh, you flatter me. Do you really think so, my dear?”

“Sheesh, lay off it. Are we going to eat or not?” Jax interrupted, crossing his arms as he watched the two.

Caine shushed him. “Y-yes, just a moment, Jax. I want to hear more feedback from Pomni. Tell me, my dear, was the story to your liking? Did I do good with that?”

“Um, Caine, I–” Pomni rubbed her arm uncomfortably.

Caine lifted a finger. “Ooh! Or how about the designs for the NPCs? Did I go too far with the details, or did I not do enough? And what about the secret quests I added? Did you like that element of surprise? Or–”

Jax groaned. “God, are we ever going to eat? Or are you just going to stand here compliment-fishing with Pomni all day?”

“Jax, be nice. They’re just working on improving the adventures,” Ragatha scolded, offering Pomni a grateful smile, “and I think it’s working pretty well.”

“Who cares? All Caine is doing with these adventures is trying to impress Pomni,” Jax groaned, crossing his arms, “that’s not an improvement. That’s just desperation.”

“T-that’s not true!” Caine was quick to pipe up. “I like all of my super stars an equal, legal amount!”

“Drop it, Jax,” Pomni put her foot down, a light blush on her cheeks despite it all.

Jax snickered. “Of course you’d defend him, short stack. You probably like being the ringmaster’s little favorite, don’t you?”

Caine’s upper jaw arched downward. “I do not favor any of my stars over the others! I’m simply gaining feedback from my dear friend.”

“Give it a rest, Caine. We all know you’re only doing this for her. You don’t give a [#$!?] about the rest of us. Just face it. You’ve got the love bug for our dear jester friend,” Jax mocked, flashing a sarcastic grin at him.

Pomni flushed instantly. “Wh—J-Jax!”

“Who said something about a bug?” Kinger peeked out of his pillow fort excitedly.

“The…love…bug?” Caine’s systems froze instantly at the words “love bug”. Oh, dear…Jax was onto something. The freezing, the overheating, the glitching? It was all coming together. He knew what was happening. He had heard of this before, but never imagined it would one day affect his programming…

“Well, would you look at that. He is lovesick after all,” Jax mocked.

“Love…sick?” Caine looked around at the others, confused and concerned at him suddenly freezing up. Panic settled within him, a feeling he had not felt in a long time. “I-I…ahem, a-a digital feast as your prize,” he announced weakly, snapping a feast into existence at the table. “Enjoy, my dears. Adventure awaits tomorrow.” With an abrupt snap of his fingers, he dissipated from the main room, teleporting to who-knows-where in the circus.

Silence filled the room at his reaction, ultimately broken by Jax scurrying over to the table. “God, I thought he’d never leave.”

Pomni bristled. “You’re an [#$!?]hole.”

Jax shrugged, taking a bite of his digital meal. “As long as I get to see funny things happen to people. Just never thought I’d see the day Caine would go soft for one of us,” he grinned mischievously at Pomni, expression insinuating everything she needed to know. “Besides, what does it matter to you? Unless…you have the ‘love bug’ for dentures over there?”

She blushed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pomni defended weakly, but her voice was drowned out by the stirring of conversation amongst the others.

Pomni didn’t eat anything, her stomach filled with knots and butterflies all at once.

-------

Caine’s digital form was filled with knots and static, all for her.

He desperately reviewed his memories–the glitching, the static he felt, everything. Oh, dear. Jax was right, wasn’t he? How could he have been so oblivious this whole time? How could he have not realized sooner?

Bubble floated in beside him as he checked his memory. “Hey, boss, check out this joke I came up with! Why is—”

“Not now, Bubble! I have some very important business to attend to,” Caine cut his bubble friend off instantly.

“Business? You mean watching back memories of you and Pomni?”

“Y-yes, I—it’s nothing! I need to run some tests,” Caine abruptly answered him.

Bubble’s sharp grin widened, if that were even possible. He floated upside down. “You mean how you’re in loooooooove?”

Caine brought his gloved hands to his top jaw in frustration. “The love bug!” he corrected briskly, “Yes, yes, I know! Just—leave me to it, Bubble. The entire circus depends on it.”

“Heheh, love bug,” Bubble laughed to himself before being popped by a very panicked Caine.

“One less distraction,” he mused before running some more diagnostics on himself.

-------

Pomni stared blankly at her ceiling the next morning. It seemed that her worst fears were coming to fruition. Jax saw right through her. The others had to have noticed how oddly drawn she was to Caine. It was something she, herself, was still not used to. Pining for the circus’s clueless AI ringmaster was not part of the plan when she had arrived here. But now…

Jax had also said that Caine had a crush on her. And to be fair, it did seem that way. It was something she couldn’t even deny. She tried, every now and then, to get the truth out of him. Trying to fluster him, to see if his attempts to impress her were all for his own ego or for something more personal. With someone as clueless and friendly as Caine, it had her teetering back and forth between believing he did reciprocate or believing he couldn’t possibly feel that way. But she knew it was stupid of her to get her hopes up. It was stupid of her to fall for an AI to begin with.

She sighed, sitting up from her bed. The digital flower he had given her on their private walk some time ago still laid on one of the letter blocks beside her bed, alongside a drawing Gangle made for her and a butterfly from Kinger’s insect collection he had chosen to give her.

It wasn’t so crazy, was it?

Months ago, she abandoned the others for an exit, but now…

Things were different.

So different that maybe her unexpected friendship with Caine wasn’t unusual.

There was no sense of time in the circus, but Pomni guessed it was time for roll call. She mentally prepared herself for another day of Jax’s teasing and Caine’s goofy, but admittedly endearing, antics, exiting her room and out into the hall—

“POMNI!”

If it weren’t for the door behind her, Pomni surely would have fallen back at the sight of her ringmaster teleporting right in her path, inches away. “AGH! Caine–how many times have I told you not to—”

“I know, my dear. But it’s an emergency!” Caine explained anxiously.

Pomni paused. He never seemed genuinely afraid, unless it was for some gag.“Wha–an emergency? Is everything okay?”

Caine took his hat into his hands, fiddling with the rim. He shook his head. “No! I’m infected, Pomni! The whole circus could be at risk! You have to help me!”

“HUH?” Panic settled into Pomni at the thought of the entire circus, and everyone inside it, being swallowed up and disappearing forever. “O-okay, calm down, Caine. Just… tell me what happened.”

Caine unexpectedly fell to his knees in front of her, placing his gloved hands over his eyes as though he were about to cry. "It’s…it’s…ILOVEYOU!"

Pomni did a double-take, flushing a deep shade of red, nearly not believing what she heard. "Y-you--huh?!"

Caine buried his face in his gloved hands, down on his knees. "The Love Bug, Pomni! I've been infected with the Love Bug! It's going to eat away at me," he wailed, cartoonish tears spilling from behind his hands.

"Oh," Pomni paused as he wailed, looking around as though she was expecting someone else to walk in from the commotion. Once she was sure she was no longer blushing, she cautiously knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder gently. "Um...you're talking about a computer virus?"

"A worm! It's going to spread across the circus, Pomni! I don't know how it got here, I-I must have let it in, I--"

"Caine! Slow down," Pomni interrupted his rambling, "tell me what happened. Why do you think there's a virus?"

"I don't know what it is, dear," Caine confessed, "but I have experienced these strange sensations. Static, glitching perhaps--behaviors that go against my very coding. But most of all, when I'm with you. It’s why I came to you, first. And you’re so clever, I figured you’d know what to do.”

”Me?” Pomni blinked in surprise. She thought on what he said. "Static and glitches?" she repeated, frowning as her thoughts drifted. What the hell would she know about a computer virus?

Caine nodded. "When you talk to me sometimes, dear, I feel static inside of me. Here," he put a gloved hand on his chest, where his heart would be if he had one. "Did you bring a virus in with you? Is that even possible?"

Butterflies settled in her stomach as his words sank in. There was no way he could possibly be confessing—oh, God. Could he even feel the same way? Pomni looked to the side and fiddled with her buttons nervously. “Um…no. It’s not,” she took a deep breath before kneeling down beside him so she was eye-level, voice sounding unexpectedly even despite her sudden nerves. “Tell me more about this…virus. I’m sure we can figure it out,” she gave him a weak smile in the hopes that it was reassuring. She knew deep down she just wanted to know if he really did feel the same, but she ignored it.

Caine nodded in agreement, still sitting sadly on the floor beside Pomni. He placed a finger where his chin would be in thought. “O-okay, dear. Well, let's see. I checked my memories back last night... For instance, in memories where you’d look at me, my system would begin overheating. Or when you touch me, I freeze up. When you compliment me, well,” he laughed sheepishly, “I blue-screen.”

Pomni blushed furiously, her heart speeding up at his unintentional confessions. “Caine-”

“Oh! And when you look especially striking some days, I feel like the ones and zeros of my code are fluttering around. It’s terrifying—I must be falling apart. And I haven’t even mentioned the glitches that happen when I check my memory—”

The fluttering in Pomni’s heart tingled to the tips of her fingers, making kneeling there unbearable. Her face was heating up with every word he said, heart in her throat. “Caine, I..." Pomni bit her lip, unsure how to explain this to an AI, "this doesn't sound like a virus to me. It sounds almost…human…? I guess?”

Caine tilted his head curiously at her. "Humans glitch from the inside out, too?" he said, and peeked out from behind his fingers.

"N-no, it..." Pomni trailed off, cutting herself short with a sigh, "it sounds like...what humans feel," she settled with that explanation for now. It was really very awkward to try and tell an AI ‘it sounds like you have a crush on me’. Not to mention, words were failing her at the realization that he felt just as fond of her as she was of him. And to think, she had been afraid to embarrass herself around him with her crush—

“What they feel..?” Caine tilted his head at her curiously, “like amazement? Wonder? Excitement?”

“Yes, except…” Pomni hesitated. She wasn’t sure if it was worth it to take the leap and just tell him. “…Caine?”

“Yes?”

Pomni reached for her buttons, fidgeting with them mindlessly. “When you say all of these things…what is it that you want?”

“Want?” Caine repeated.

“Yeah, want. Desire. It’s just…humans usually can tell what it is they feel based on what they want,” she explained, although she knew deep down what she hoped his answer was. The thought alone—the word you—it sent such a thrill through her.

Caine placed a finger on his lower jaw, top jaw arching in an exaggerated eyebrow raise. “Hm, excellent question! Well, when you return from my amazing adventures, I want you to come to me. To speak to me. To find me…admirable.”

Pomni nodded. Caine trying to impress her was nothing new. She was well-aware her stubbornness towards the circus resulted in him paying her extra attention, but it didn’t take a genius to know that by now, that was unnecessary. “Okay. So you want my attention, you want me to see positively. What else?”

Caine placed a finger on his chin, an exaggerated arch in his upper jaw as he thought. “Hmm…well, I’m not sensing any patterns. Except for you. Why do you ask?”

Pomni’s heart skipped a beat. Had he actually said what she had been hoping he’d say? Well, not exactly. It seemed like he wasn’t entirely sure what he was feeling in the first place. But who better to teach him than her? She took a deep breath before choosing to brave it. “Caine…I need to explain something to you,” she started.

“Oh, dear, what is it? Are you going to diagnose me with the love bug? With an incurable digital sickness?” Caine pressed his hands together nervously. “Go on. You can tell your favorite ringmaster!”

Pomni took another deep breath to calm her nerves. “Well, the good news is you don’t have a bug. Or a virus. At least, I don’t think so.”

Caine froze in place. “I don’t?”

Pomni shook her head.

“Now, now, don’t be silly, my marionberry muffin! Such frequent glitches aren’t usual for an AI like me,” Caine explained, “how can you be so sure? Are you really a qualified doctor?”

Pomni would probably laugh at his antics if it weren’t for her nerves. “I know because I…I feel the same way,” Pomni admitted, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. It burned a hole right through her.

If Caine had a heart, it would have stuttered in his chest. “You…do?”

Pomni couldn’t form words, so she simply hummed in response. Her face was burning, and she clutched her other arm to curb her trembling hands. “Mhm.”

Caine gaped at her. “You…have the love bug, too?”

“In a way of speaking, yeah.”

“Oh, dear…” he sighed softly, “for who?”

Pomni laughed softly. His obliviousness knew no bounds. She looked at the tiled floor, the butterflies in her stomach unbearable. “W-well, actually, it’s…” she stumbled over her words, blushing to her ears before taking a deep breath and getting enough confidence to meet his eyes. There was no going back now. Her heart sped up, nearly jumping to her throat as she managed the words, “for you."

Caine immediately blue-screened, eyes reading rows of code she couldn’t make out as he processed her words. She flushed at his reaction, slightly self-conscious she misinterpreted his confession. She waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Oh…Caine? Hello…?”

Caine snapped out of it after a few moments. His eyes returned to normal, glancing at Pomni only once before slowly putting a hand over his chest. “Oh, dear. I feel it again,” he said in the quietest voice she’d heard him ever speak in, “the static. Right here. You really—me—?”

Pomni swallowed her nerves, feeling another flutter of butterflies at his response. “I-I know it sounds crazy. I was scared when I realized it. I avoided you. I thought I could run away or deny how I felt, but…the more time I spent with you, the less crazy it seemed,” she explained, meeting his eyes, “I’ve seen all the things you’ve done for me, Caine. For everyone. The adventures, expanding the circus, not teleporting me across the map. And at first it made me enjoy being your friend, but now…”

“Now…?” he prompted.

“Now, you’re telling me you have a crush on me,” Pomni finished, “I didn’t think that was possible, but...”

“A crush?” Caine tilted his head curiously. “Is that what it is?”

Pomni watched him carefully. He was still on the floor, hand on his chest and evidently flustered from her confession. It made her heart speed up, seeing how much he cared. How much he wanted her. “Yeah…the ‘love bug’. What Jax said. It’s not an actual bug. Not for humans at least. I thought he was just being an [#$?!]hole, but what you explained to me…it sounds like what humans feel when they want romantic closeness,” she explained before adding nervously, “a-and, the things you described…it’s how I feel for you.”

“Romantic closeness,” Caine echoed, pausing in thought, “my research for my adventures has taught me about human relationships. About…love.”

A rush of heat ran through Pomni’s chest at the word love. “A-and…?”

Caine, in a rare moment of silence, gazed off towards the end of the hall as he thought back on his research. “And…I believe that is what I want, my dear. With you.” His eyes widened at the realization.

A tingle ran down her spine. “You–you do?” Pomni’s breath caught, cheeks flushing at his words.

“If you’ll teach me,” he confirmed, eyes turning back to meet hers.

Pomni’s pinwheel eyes were blown wide, half in a dream as she nodded. She didn’t know what she wanted in that moment. Or even what to say. Months ago, she would have rather jumped in the cellar than imagine herself in a romantic relationship with him. But these past months had changed things in both of them. In the circus itself. And now, she almost wanted to kiss him. Now…

Her breath caught, when she looked and saw the way he was looking at her. His top jaw arched around his gleaming eyes in the most adoring, lovesick gaze she had ever seen. It made her heart beat harder in her chest, feeling the way his gaze pulled at her heart strings. “Oh, my dear. How could I have not realized sooner? It was so obvious…” he sighed.

She smiled slightly at his cluelessness. It was endearing to her. “A lot of humans feel that way, too. I just never thought…” she trailed off, but he already knew what she was going to say.

Caine’s panic instantly lifted, he sprung up from where he had formerly been curled up. "My dear, I am an advanced AI! I've begun experiencing more 'human' sensations since the day I became sentient. But ever since you, ever since our lessons, well, I think I've become more human than I had ever imagined,” he reached for both of her hands.

Pomni reciprocated his touch. "A-and you're advanced enough to desire closeness?"

Caine tilted his head at her. "I've always known what love is, Pomni. How could I not? You humans talk an awful lot about it. But I never imagined a silly AI like myself being capable of such complex feelings. And yet, I’m advanced enough to know that I've been drawn to you for some time..." A hand moved up to stroke her cheek, right by where her blush resided under her right eye, "and I think I'm beginning to understand why."

"Why?"

"Because you confuse my coding, my little shivering shortbread!” Caine piped up, “Isn't that exciting? I’m more advanced than I’d ever imagined!” His feet lifted from the ground, and he nearly twirled in the air from excitement. He looked down at her again, leaning on his cane with a deep sigh. “Oh, Pomni. Are you sure I’m not love sick?”

For the first time that day, Pomni felt more like herself. She reached for his upper jaw, feeling at him as though he had a fever. “Oh, you definitely are.”

Caine melted into her touch. “I am?” he sighed dreamily.

She nodded with a small smile. “Very sick,” she confirmed, flipping her hand around to cup his features in her palm.

“Very sick,” Caine repeated in a daze, then reached a hand up to meet hers, eyes never leaving hers. Small, cartoonish hearts sprung into existence on the right side of his head as he leaned more into her touch. He noticed them and swatted them away rapidly. “A-ah, ignore that. I can’t help it,” he laughed sheepishly.

Pomni laughed gently. “It’s okay. It’s…endearing,” she blushed, still not accustomed to giving him her thoughts of admiration for him.

“O-oh, dear, you’re too kind…” Caine fiddled with his cane slightly before floating down to her level, planting his feet on the ground once more. “But…if I may, I do still have one question.”

A rush of nerves ran through Pomni. Nonetheless, she kept her cool—which was definitely a feat for her. “Yeah? What is it?”

Caine leaned against his cane once more. “Well, when humans tend to confess their true feelings to another, what do they do next?” he asked.

Pomni blinked, the question catching her off-guard. “O-oh, well…” she looked down the hall in thought, wondering where the others were, “it depends, honestly. But a lot of times, they might decide to, um, date.”

“Ah, of course! Allow me,” Caine cleared his non-existent throat before stretching out a hand to her invitingly, “Pomni, you and I should decide to date.”

If it were somehow possible for Pomni to feel any more ecstatic yet simultaneously terrified, she reached that point. His unconventional phrasing caught her off guard for sure, but it was also mildly endearing. “I…yes,” she accepted his hand tentatively, a small smile spreading across her face, “I’d like that.”

Their touch was immediately broken by Caine flying through the air, zipping around Pomni enthusiastically. “Fantastic! Oh, my dear, I’ve never felt so light as air until now!”

Pomni brought a hand to her mouth, laughing at his excitement.

Caine flew down to meet her once more. “Pomni! You and I should embark on our own adventure,” he wrapped an arm around her, outstretching an arm dramatically to the distance as he added, “a human date!”

Pomni laughed again, raising an eyebrow at him. “Don’t forget you have a whole circus to run, ringmaster,” she teased.

Caine brought a hand to his upper jaw. “Whoopsy-daisy, I almost forgot about the others! My my, you give me a severe case of tunnel vision,” he reached for his cane, preparing to snap himself to the main room before taking one last look at the woman he adored, “I hate to rush the most exciting moment of my never-ending existence, but the show must go on! But, oh, my dear?”

“…Caine?”

Caine tossed his cane between his hands. “How about today, you skip my adventure?”

Pomni blinked in surprise. He never wanted any of his guests to miss his adventures. “Wha—really? Why?”

He flew beside her, holding her hand again. Now that he knew he could hold her hand, he wasn’t sure he’d have it in him to let go for more than a minute. “For our date, of course!” Caine winked at her before continuing sheepishly, “if I may admit, dear…I know what a date is, but I don’t know how to date. There are many things you have to show me.”

A blush rose to Pomni’s cheeks again. “Oh, right,” she stuttered out, then formed a reassuring smile, “i’d love to show you, Caine. Really.” It was just now that she was realizing how intensely her heart had been beating this entire conversation, the trembling seeming to subside now that their true feelings had been revealed.

A couple more hearts fluttered “Of course! What better way to seal our confessions than with a human date? Oh, let’s get this roll call over with, dear. I can’t wait another second!” Caine tightened his grip on her hand.

“You know, you have a lot of energy for someone who’s sick,” Pomni couldn’t help but tease. The more the reality of the situation was settling in, the easier it was for her confidence to return. This artificial man, this AI she had learned to adore, he had truly pined for her all along.

Caine gazed at her adoringly. Oh, my, she was flirting with him, wasn’t she? If she kept going like this, he was going to overheat in front of the others. How lucky was he that this woman adored him as much as he did her? “Why, yes! I’m sick for you.”

“I…don’t think that sounds as romantic as you think it does.”

Caine waved her comment off. “Ah, I’ll perfect the art of flirtation in no time. For now, it’s showtime! And then, a date awaits, my love!”

[carionto]

Alone with ourselves

(elaborating on the last sentence from here)

When we slipped away, or Vanished as the rest of the galaxy called it, most of Humanity didn't know what we were in for. Very few people knew of exactly what the plan was, most were told some BS about kicking the aliens' dumb "barrier" out, creating a force field, teleporting them away, whatever was most convincing to whoever happened to be in charge in each country and union.

Of course, one of the better ways to keep what we were actually doing was letting the truth spread among the lies, because really? Interdimensional travel? Most of the scientists working on actually making it happen didn't believe their own numbers and successful test results, but it worked.

Chaos.

What happens in places where a lot truly believe in a Hell, or Afterlife, or whatever else, and then the stars, the Moon, and the Sun just... disappear.

Utter, bloody, indescribable madness is what happens. And when the sky is still blue, you still feel the rays of sun hitting your skin, and the glow of moonlight still shines your way at night, well, that kind of lack of sense is enough to turn a lot of sensible people to the scriptures.

Truth don't matter at such a time. In fact, the truth tells everyone we lied to everyone.

We were hoping to get Humanity sorted and ready to take the stage against the aliens, maybe alongside if they would acknowledge as and show some respect, in just over a century.

It took that long to restore some degree of a civilization that can actually do real science. We overestimated ourselves, but we got back on track and then some.

Now, we could finally start to understand what it meant, in practical terms, to isolate Earth from the rest of the Universe. True nothingness beyond what we brought with us. We always pondered whether we were alone in the Universe, hoping we weren't, dreading we were.

Now there was nothing but us, nowhere to point our wandering gaze, no destination to set, no unknowns to discover. All we could do was look at each other, and we all know how that tends to go. Suffice to say, that 12.3 billion we slipped back in with should've been thrice that, but we can't help ourselves.

In a way, I guess that's good. Our nature meant we always had someone to one-up, and even when most of us managed to be buddy-buddy for a while, our imagination of what awaited us back kept things... well, progress demands sacrifice.

On one hand, learning how to make miniature suns, but not how to turn one off properly, did solve that whole rising sea levels problem. On the other, creating a 200km crater in the Pacific Ocean made for some... interesting weather.

However, all that now very exposed and partly-processed ore from the mantle made for some very good space ship building material. Just had to survive a few hundred super volcanoes and, you know, everyone suddenly being an environmentalist. Plus another collapse of civilization, but we went over that already.

To cut it short, Humanity always perseveres. We're like cockroaches, except with guns and opinions.

[mypoisonedvine]

81:"just come to dinner with me. it doesn't have to be weird." 89:"keep the lights on, I want to see you." 88:"kiss me like you mean it." With Jack Whiskey or maxwell Lord.

Hope your having a lovley day<3

-❄

I know he's not everybody's favorite but I want a sugar daddy maxwell fic sooo bad! to make it fair I decided to take some liberties with his look lmao

length: 2.5k (no clue how that happened...)

warnings: smut (18+ ONLY), oral f receiving, sugar daddy relationship, alcohol consumption, possessiveness <3

You’d never done anything like this before— you made that perfectly clear to him, to the point that you wondered if it would scare him off.  But it didn’t, which was equal parts comforting and concerning.

However, even with all your complex emotions towards the idea, you agreed to it.  Just come to dinner with me, he’d told you, it doesn’t have to be weird.  Nothing has to happen— it’s just dinner, no expectations.

That relieved you enough to get you to go out with him.  He’s not expecting anything, you promised yourself, it’s just dinner.  Nothing has to happen.

But you still put on your nicest lingerie under your dress… just in case.

The whole thing made you feel out of place, honestly: you’d never been to a restaurant this nice, you’d never worn a designer gown before (let alone one that someone had picked out and sent to you for your first date), you’d never been picked up by a private driver—you didn’t even know what to do when you got to the restaurant, so you were a bit relieved (if certainly surprised) when you walked in and they seemed to already know you.

The host greeted you by name, took your coat, and informed you that Mr. Lord is already waiting for you at his usual table.  That made you wonder if a girl like you was his usual guest.

Your heart picked up its pace when you saw him from across the restaurant; he looked like he fit right in, with his hair slicked back in a black tux.  He looked so natural like that, you couldn’t even imagine him without a tux.  (Well, you could, but you were trying not to.)

But, your heart didn’t really start racing until he saw you.  His eyes lit up, and a tilted smile filled his face as he stood to greet you.

“Don’t you look gorgeous!” he purred, leaning in to kiss your cheek as you approached— even that caught you off-guard, but you realized it wasn’t meant to be especially flirtatious, it was just one of those rich people greetings.  Then again, the arm that reached around you so his hand could rest momentarily on your lower back felt a bit more than friendly.  “You like the dress?”

“Y-yes, thank you,” you smiled nervously as you looked down at the floor-length black gown again, “it’s beautiful.  And more comfortable than it looks.”

He laughed a bit, squeezing your arm briefly before gesturing for you to take your seat.  One waiter was already pouring your water and another was draping a white napkin over your lap and pushing in your seat;  “White or red, miss?” the one pouring drinks asked.

“O-oh, um—” you began, but Maxwell interrupted.

“Why don’t you bring her a glass of the ’61 Chateau Haut-Brion?” he suggested.  “To go with mine.”

“Of course, sir,” the waiter nodded, and soon him and his fellow servers departed.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Maxwell addressed you again, “the house wines are fine— but I think you’ll like this one, it’s excellent.”

“Oh, I trust you,” you smiled, “you know a lot more about all this than me.”

“Try not to feel too intimidated,” he assured, “almost everyone here is worrying just as much as you about looking like they belong—probably even more than you are.  The only difference is, you actually have enough beauty to not be outshined by a place like this.”

A little uncomfortable with the compliment, you looked around the modern space— so much glass and crystal sparkling under pleasantly-dim lights, with a view out over the ocean just outside the window you’d been seated against.  It was sleek and ornate all at once.  “It really is a lovely place, thank you for taking me here,” you announced.

“Oh, I come here all the time— more than I should,” he laughed.  “I’ll warn you now, you might become addicted once you get a taste.”

A brief moment passed before he quirked a brow.

“Of the food, I mean,” he winked, and you giggled a bit.

“Right— should I, um, look at a menu?” you wondered.

“It’s actually a set course tonight,” he explained, “I hope you don’t mind.  Honestly, I prefer not having to think about it— and the chef here never misses.  He’s a good friend, actually.”

“I get the feeling you’re good friends with a lot of people,” you observed, and he gave you a knowing smile.

“Should I be offended?” he asked.

“No,” you laughed, “but you seem like you’re always getting in places, always getting special treatment or private access— ‘cause the theater owner is a good friend, the executive producer is a good friend…”

“You make me sound much more popular than I am,” he shrugged.

The waiter returned with a bottle in hand, showing the label to you and Maxwell.  “The Chateau Haut-Brion you requested, Mr. Lord?”

“Fabulous, thank you,” Maxwell smiled as the waiter uncorked the bottle and poured glasses for you both.

“The first course will be out shortly,” the man explained before he departed; you reached for your glass, about to take a sip, but your date raised his own.

“A toast,” he suggested, making you stop pulling your glass closer and holding it up in anticipation instead, “to… new friends.”

You smiled and clinked your glass against his.

~

You tried not to look too starstruck as you looked around the penthouse apartment, but it was hard to hide your awe at all the fine art on the walls, the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glittery city below, the vintage and baroque furniture…

“I haven’t been here in a few weeks,” he explained as he sauntered inside after letting you in, “forgive me if it looks a little barren— I’ve been in my home in California for some time to manage my work there, I only visit my apartments occasionally—”

“You have more than one?!” you realized, unable to suppress the urge to gawk, and he smiled as you looked back over your shoulder at him.

“I have quite a few properties, yes,” he nodded.  “Miami, Berlin, Hong Kong— all of these, of course, would be available to you whenever you’d like to visit, if you were to…”

He trailed off, approaching you as his eyes darkened a bit.  “If I was to…?” you prompted.

You shivered slightly when he reached up to run his fingers gently along the curve of your jaw.  “If you were to accept my offer.”

You swallowed, turning to face him properly, and sighed when his other hand came to rest on your waist.  “A-and, if I was to…” you trailed off, apparently still not proud enough to say it, “would there be… anyone else?”

“No,” he shook his head, “not for either of us.  That’s not what I want.”

He’d explained to you before, in a few different ways, what he did want.  He’d explained that he enjoyed ‘dating’ this way because it took out the guesswork, because he was too busy for a traditional relationship.  He needed a partner who could work around his complex schedule— and to soften the blow, he would send gifts to fill the time while he was gone.  All he really asked was that you stay ready and waiting for him to return— or even to be ready to drop everything and hop on a private jet to come see him wherever he was when he needed you most.

The look in his eyes certainly showed that he needed you now.  You knew that if you told him you didn’t want this— or even just that you didn’t want anything to happen tonight— he would be polite and sweet and have a car take you home.  But you also got the feeling that if you said any of that, he would see right through it.

You wanted this too.  It was sort of obvious, especially as your hands snaked up his chest over the fabric of his tux, resting on his shoulders as you looked up at him expectantly.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want, beautiful?” he suggested in a low voice.

“I… I want,” you began hesitantly, having to look away to find the courage to say it, “I want you to tell me what to do.”

He smiled a bit, lifting your chin and guiding you to look up at him again.  “Kiss me like you mean it.”

You felt strange about that wording— like he thought you didn’t genuinely want this and just tolerated it in exchange for the money.  Which wasn’t true, but then again, it is hard to turn a man down when you’re wearing the thousand-dollar dress he bought for you.

And, of course, you kissed him.  You wove your fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, shutting your eyes and sighing as he tightened his grip on your waist; he wrapped you up in his arms, slowly and gently, and hummed lowly against your lips.  There was something about it that was different from every other first kiss you’d had (or possibly every other kiss you’d ever had) but you completely lacked the words to describe it.  Maybe it was how careful he was with you, how oddly patient; or maybe it was how quickly you found yourself wanting more.

You opened your mouth slightly, letting him delve deeper with his tongue, though he wasn’t too aggressive about it at first.  It was still sweet and slow, and you relaxed further as you pressed your body to his.

He broke away sooner than you wanted him to, and you watched his eyes scan over your face before they drifted to your shoulder— where his hand was tracing over the strap of your dress, teasing that he might slide it down at any moment.  You found yourself wishing he would, but instead he brought his eyes back to your own.

“Would you mind if I showed you the bedroom?” he suggested.

“Not at all,” you breathed.

You didn’t get a very thorough tour, not when you were stumbling backwards through the door as his hands ran all over you.  He quickly flipped on the light switch as he walked past it, only for you to reach and turn it off again.  He smiled playfully at you as he broke his lips away.  “Now, darling, how am I supposed to show you the bedroom in the dark?” he mused.

“You can show me after,” you sighed, trying to tug him by the jacket into another kiss, but he resisted with a smug grin.

“After,” he repeated with a low, rich voice that seemed to wash right over you.  “But what we’re about to do, I don’t want to do in the dark, either— you’re much more exciting to look at than some boring old bedroom that’s been on the cover of Architectural Digest…”

You laughed a little, but he bit his lip as he pulled you closer to him.

“Keep the lights on,” he pleaded— or maybe demanded, “I want to see you.”

You flipped the lights back on, and he almost turned that designer gown to shreds getting it off you.

He growled as he got a glimpse of your lingerie, and you bit your lip through a smile when he met your gaze again.  “Oh, angel— you’ll spoil me.”

He dropped to his knees in front of you, making you gasp slightly as he delicately ran his fingers along the lacy hem of your panties.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he sighed, “I need to taste you.”

“Fuck,” you mumbled, “o-okay, whatever you want.”

Looking up at you, he shot you a glittering smile.  “Get used to saying that, beautiful.”

You shuddered, just as he pulled the panties down and dove between your legs.

You felt a bit undignified with him burying his mouth against you while you were standing up; your knees wobbled and he grabbed onto your hips to help keep your balance, sliding his tongue out between your lips.

“Fuck!” you gasped, reaching down and grabbing a handful of his hair greedily.  He moaned against you, shutting his eyes tighter, lapping at you eagerly.  He pulled away far too soon, and you whimpered before he beamed up at you with slick lips.

“Get on the bed,” he demanded.

You didn’t need a tour of the room to find that: you stepped out of your panties and fell back onto it, smiling at him as he quickly slipped off his jacket and climbed up over you with an insatiable look on his face, his dark hair broken out of its style by your touch and dangling down around his face.

“Take this off,” he instructed, running a finger over your bra as he balanced himself to hover over you.

You sat up enough to reach behind your back, unfastening the garment and shimmying out of it to toss aside onto the floor.

His gaze raked over you lasciviously.  “Forgive me,” he breathed, “if I can’t find the heart to take my time with you like I imagined.”

You felt your heart skip, just before he descended and kissed you again, the tangy taste of your own arousal making you moan in the back of your throat.  The kiss was filthier and needier than ever, and quickly moved down to your neck; your back arched up off the satin sheets as his tongue traced your pulse.

“I could spend all night,” he panted between heady kisses, “tasting you everywhere.”

“God,” you whimpered, “I won’t stop you.”

“And what if I want to spend the whole night inside you?” he challenged further, making you whine and stir under him.  He pressed his weight down on you as you slowly spread your legs; you felt suddenly aware of him still being almost entirely dressed while you were stripped to nothing, and it somehow only made you more desperate for him.

“Please,” you begged, feeling his teeth scrape your neck as his hips rocked against yours.  You gasped feeling how hard he was, and it turned into a proper moan as one of his hands groped roughly at your chest.  “Fuck, Max—”

“When you say my name like that, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to control myself,” he growled, pulling back to look down at you.

“Then don’t,” you offered with a smirk.

“Just promise me one thing,” he began, surprising you with the change of his tone.  “If we do this… you’re mine.”

Your throat caught on nothing.

“If you can’t handle that, I understand,” he mitigated, “but I can’t pretend that I feel any differently— I need you, all to myself.  I need to know that you belong to me.”

You found yourself nodding before you even really thought it through.  “I’m yours,” you promised as you clutched desperately at his shirt, making him smile proudly.  “Fuck, I’m all yours.”

He kissed you—not as ruthless as the last one, but still plenty passionate.  This time, you were completely sure you’d never been kissed like this.

“I want you to say that,” he purred against your lips, “every time I make you come.”

[b00tyliciousbabe]

my baby daddies - ep. 2

wyatt cushman x male reader

summary: the scoop on how wide i buss it open for mr cushman xx

notes: hi beautiful ppl, back again! once he go black, he'll be back again. tell them hoes that it's crunch time, abdomen. yes i cop mad chanel and mad given. she did it again, imagine them!!! sorry nicki ate that verse tf UPPP. bout to make these bum bitches mad again, okay lemme stop. I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I WAS DOING W THAT BLACK VERSE XOXO. hope you guys are all doing well <3 i will be releasing 2 other series ("the DILFs' and a surprise one which will become coming soon ) so stay tuned! any requests? ENJOYYYY…

you and wyatt met at one of your first shoots. you were the stylist’s assistant and your boss had tasked you with making sure all the models had their hair, outfits, and makeup all ready for the editorials. you were admired by so many in the industry, icons and the public alike, and even though you didn’t have your own company, it was clear that you were on your way to becoming one of the biggest names in fashion history. you enjoyed getting to know all the models personally, and it made the whole process of getting ready much easier. but one person that always had you flustered was wyatt cushman, who you had become really good friends over the years. you definitely found him attractive, but he was so distracting; the agency called him ‘the menace’ with all the harmless trouble he got the two of you into. years had passed, the two of you remained really close, but it wasn’t until the balenciaga show, that the two of you vocalised the unspoken tension between you two.

you were responsible for all of the outfits for the fashion week at balmain, a huge role that olivier rousteing himself appointed you to do. it was a huge success and the press had a field day documenting your achievements. your biggest supporter, wyatt, was there to give you the biggest hug on the runway, garnering an even greater cheer from the crowd. “Y/N, you’re amazing” he said staring intensely in love as he placed his hands on your lower back. the distance between your lips decreased as the two of you shared your first kiss…in front of the entire world. you pulled away; being brought back to reality and how 4.5 million people had witnessed the two of you together, you couldn’t help but laugh, as everyone applauded and jeered at your love. the rest was history.

one thing about wyatt, he is the goofiest mf ever and you love it. he’s always cracking jokes and the life of the party. You feel so safe around him, don’t get it twisted, he’d beat the shit out of anyone who even looked at you the wrong way, but you could handle yourself. flashback to the time where y’all were celebrating your collaboration with vogue: you were dancing the night away with your friends when some guy decided to get a lil too close. the creep groped your ass to which he was served a fat slap across the face. he fell to the ground and the crowd started cheering. wyatt smiled proud that you were able to defend yourself - so proud, that on the way home you took a detour where you guys had the best make out session in the history of rom coms.

the golfer’s wife and the holiday maker:

this man is always travelling and he loves to share those memories with you. other than being his personal photographer, the two of you are able to explore so many different ways of living on your journeys and you dream together of living abroad one day.

On one of your holidays, you had decided to take your boyfriend stargazing “come on wyatt, i don’t wanna miss it” you say gripping his arm as you led him to a quiet space overlooking the ocean. “babe, I’m pretty sure the stars aren’t going anywhere,” he chuckled “and besides, the sky isn’t as pretty as the star right in front of me” he stops and turns to face you. he strokes your cheek, looking down at you with a smile that rivalled romeo’s love for juliet. y’all sat down watching how nature looked so peaceful. he started kissing on your neck, leaving light hickeys to mark you as his. straddling your bf, you deepened the kiss as you felt him grow uncomfortably large in his jeans. you undid his trousers as 8 thick inches of uncut hairy cock made contact with the chill of the night. “you don’t know how much this turns me on, y/n”

you continued sucking on his tip, swirling and drooling all over him as a pool of your spit congealed in his pubes. all the while his hands gripped your roots urging you to take more and more of his cock. you gargled and took him like a champ.

“babe, ughh, I’m bout to, uuhhh shit shit” he came deep down your throat, cleaning your chin with his finger and then poking it in your mouth as he made sure to feed you with every last drop.

you laid down, proud of your efforts to calm him down and your head tucked into cushman’s shoulder, as you began to feel sleepy. your bf noticed this and chuckled to himself, using the blanket he brought to make sure you wouldn’t get cold. “mkay, y/n kinda had a point, this is pretty cool,” he whispered, still riding the high you gave him “but it’s got nothing on him tho, my cute ass bf” wyatt embraced you tighter. the wedding bells were already ringing in his head.

MORE SLUTTY THOUGHTS:

• he deffo has a spit kink. not saying that he’d treat you as worthless scum but, he’d would make sure to slut you out. and you fucking loved it. “you’re a dirty little whore, aren’t you” he’d grunt raw dogging your ass as he spat in your face.

• as dominant as he is, he likes to give you your time to shine, always enjoying it when you spell coconut with your hips as you ride his pole. as I’ve mentioned already his smile drives you crazy, and this position has him cheesing the MOST. wyatt just loves to see how much you’re enjoying the experience, and nothing turns him on more than when he can see the pleasure on your face. “fuck babe, you look so sexy riding my dick.”

• this leads on to missionary, nobody fucks harder in this position than this man. he definitely compensates for his soft strokes in doggy and prone bone because of how hard he hits your hole in missionary. He turns primal as well, feeling your chest bounce up every time he’s balls deep, but all in all he’s crazy for how your bodies are so in sync.

[jaylver]

GOLDEN HOUR — S.JY

synopsis: a lovesick jake wasn’t going to stop himself from being impulsive and say those three words that he has been saving for another time. seeing you during the golden hour, sun beaming on your skin, looking ever so perfect, he couldn’t hold himself back. how could you blame the poor guy anyway?

pairings: non-idol!jake x afab!reader

genre: undertone of friends to lovers, fluff, cheesy confessions, romance

warning(s): profanities

wc: 889

a/n: a little self indulgent fic hehe. hope you'll enjoy this! please leave some feedbacks and reblogs are greatly appreciated! muah <3

masterlist | © jaylver all rights reserved.

Jake was in love. 

It wasn’t those typical teen romances where people dated just for the sake of experience, no, it was something more than that. A connection deep enough to etch into the skins of one another, pulling you to him and him to you, there was an undying spark that continuously lingered without extinguishing.

Jake was the embodiment of love. He was love itself. 

It was one of those days where it was only you and him, alone in his car right after he had picked you up and drove you home. But instead of leaving right away, the car was parked a few blocks down from yours, Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ playing on shuffle in the background. The sky was a hue of pink and orange, telling you that it was time to head home, yet you weren’t willing to.

“Thanks for driving me home … again,” you laughed, feeling slightly embarrassed for having inconvenienced Jake, but he was thinking the complete opposite of being inconvenienced.

“It’s no problem,” Jake smiled, and no matter how hard he tried, he was still nervous around you. Maybe because he was dying to profess his love for you, confess and get you to be his, but he was holding himself back. “It’s along the way back to my house anyway,” it wasn’t.

Jake could already imagine the missed calls from his mother, text messages asking about his whereabouts, making it a routine for him to be home a little later than usual. 

“Still, I feel bad sometimes,” you shrugged out of earnest. “But I’m really grateful, though,”

“I want to do this, Y/N, don’t feel bad,” his hold on the steering wheel tightened, watching the sun hitting your skin, making it almost glitter-like. You were the most beautiful person he has ever seen.

You nodded, biting on your lips thoughtfully. “I don’t really want to leave,”

Jake swore he felt his heart stop and revive, then proceeding to beat at ten times speed. The effect of your words surely made him light headed. “Then don’t,” he joked lightly, highkey dying internally. “‘Blonde’s’ still playing! Plus, ivy is next, isn’t it your favourite song?”

“You remembered!”

Of course he did. He remembered everything about you like second nature.

“It's nothing,” he laughed, waving you off, but internally feeling giddy when he saw your beaming face. You were so, so pretty.

“It is something to me,” you said softly and truthfully, staring into those puppy eyes of his.

“I like you,” Jake blurted out, as if the words were poured out before it even went through his mind. He did not expect himself to do this at all. Fuck. 

Your wide eyes and gaped mouth only made him anxious, short silence filling the space between you two. Say something! Say something!

“I like you too, Jake,”

There it was.

“W–what?”

“Hm?” you tilted your head, looking back at Jake’s shock expression. “Did you expect a rejection instead?”

“Well—kinda—no—uh—” he was stuttering. The famous charmer Jake Sim was actually stuttering and losing his composure. 

“I like you, very very much,” you said it again, each time making Jake’s heart flutter insanely. 

“God, Y/N, you’re—” he exhaled, in disbelief that he had bagged his crush, “—everything, absolutely everything to me,”

Jake reached over for you and pulled you into his arms, squeezing you tight. The moment he let go, his eyes wouldn’t leave your face. He was taking every part of you in, gaze wandering every inch of your features as if he was memorising them.

“I—uhm—should leave, shouldn’t I?” you broke the momentary silence, noticing the time gradually slipping by. “As much as I want to stay, I don’t think my mum would approve,”

“O–oh, yeah! Sorry, I forgot,” he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, managing a lopsided smile for you. 

“It’s okay. Text me when you reach home safely, will you?”

“I will,” he squeezed your hand in reassurance. “You should get going now,”

“I probably should,” you nodded, holding onto your things tightly. “Bye, Jakey,”

“Bye,” he breathed out, staring at you with so much love that no one else could amount to. But then, he remembered something.

“Hey—” he went to stop you before you could exit his car, “so, summer’s coming up and I was wondering if you’d like to go somewhere with me,”

“Something like a date?”

“Very much so,”

“I’d love to,”

“Cool,”

“Cool,” you repeated, snickering a little at Jake’s reddening ears. “Make sure to tell me about your plans. Bye!” you snuck a quick peck on his cheek before exiting the car and slamming the door shut, turning around to wave him goodbye before disappearing behind your front door, all while the only thing Jake could do was stay in shock.

His fingers lingered on the spot your lips had made contact with, giddiness welled up in Jake’s stomach, butterflies swarming and heart going crazy. You just had that effect on him, always, undoubtedly.

It was just two lovers, sitting in the car, listening to ‘Blonde’ and falling for each other. Tension finally broken and true feelings revealed, Jake could die a happy man right there and then. You were his golden hour, his radiant beam in the night, the love of his life, and he wouldn’t trade anything for it.

( © jaylver all rights reserved. do NOT copy, plagiarise or edit my work and repost whatsoever. once discovered will be exposed and blacklisted. )

☆ permanent taglist (open):

@silentkarnival @strvlveera @freshsaladbowl @bejewelledgirl @fakeuwus @yenqa @hsgwrld @ilovegyuvin @enhacatalog

[darth-kote]

Wrecker Headcanons P. 1

When he has the time, space, and proper ingredients, Wrecker loves to be in the kitchen. Instead of destroying something, he gets to create, and he's found that it helps distract him from any stray worries. Of course, for him, the biggest plus is that he has people to share it with and get feedback from. There's nothing this man loves more than his squad, and I imagine him on Pabu constantly going to Shep for advice and then surprising his brothers and Omega with a new recipe. His eyes glimmer watching everyone laugh and dig in. And when compliments are given to the chef, he humbly concedes to each of them.

Is an absolute sucker for a nap. And he can sleep just about anywhere, no matter the noise or perceived comfortability of the space. If the squad is in a meeting that goes on a minute too long, he'll fall asleep sitting up, armor digging into relaxed flesh, snores ramping up in volume until a brother notices and calls to adjourn for all their sakes. He's slept through bombs dropping during the war, so there isn't much that can keep him from sleeping when his body needs it, and the batch has started to take Wrecker falling asleep as a signal they all need some shut-eye.

It's not that he's necessarily afraid of water, it's just that... He doesn't trust himself not to sink and drown. On Kamino, he always made sure to keep away from the edges of the city's platforms, terrified of his weight being tipped and falling into the cold and wild sea. Not only was he relatively untrained in swimming, but the thought of his armor weighing him down even more and dragging him to the depths of the ocean made him shiver in his bunk at night. It's not until they get to Pabu that Omega, completely taken with the water, helps ease him into joining for a swim. For the first several weeks, he prefers to sit on a rock close to shore, and he gets worried about Omega when she's out during high tide. She constantly reassures him she'll be alright, but his eyes never leave her for a moment. Eventually, he starts to realize how much she enjoys the water, dipping below to wet her hair, splashing at Lyana as they both use him as a shield (which he doesn't mind at all, even when a bit of water gets in his eye) and making sure to slather sunscreen oil atop Wrecker's head now and again. At some point, he starts to spend the evenings packing a picnic basket for the next day at the beach, fruit, sandwiches, and cheese galore. It starts to become something he looks forward to, and he thinks his heart nearly explodes at Omega's excitement when she sees him dip his toe in for the first time.

Has experienced a Traumatic Brain Injury, if the scar webbing across the side of his face was any indication. The headaches he gets are unbearable, and the sun on Pabu can make him feel a little irritable at times. When this happens he likes to retreat either to the Marauder or, if he can't find quiet there, beneath the boughs of the weeping maya tree atop the city. The squad knows they all need a moment alone at times, but they make sure to keep an eye out and to be there when he needs them.

Tattoos kinda freak him out. He's a big guy, yes, but that doesn't mean he can't be afraid of a needle pricking him hundreds if not thousands of times in quick succession, for hours on end. He remembers watching Hunter and Crosshair get theirs, neither flinching as the ink was injected into their flesh. (Call him crazy, but they seemed to have been in some sort of silent competition with one another.) Besides, he didn't know what he'd get; plus it would drive him mad to sit still for too long.

[deep-space-netwerk]

Alright, so, black holes right?

Most people have probably seen this astOUNDING image of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy - the first real picture of a black hole.

It may look like a blurry orange donut, but you gotta understand, this was and still is a hugely impressive achievement. At a black hole's event horizon, the escape velocity (or the speed at which something has to travel to escape the body's gravitational pull) is faster than the speed of light. By definition a black hole cannot be directly observed. Imaging the shadow of M87* required using eight ground-based radio telescopes all over the world, working together as an interferometer - or as though they were one single telescope the size of the entire planet.

So that's fucking cool in its own right, but how did we know that black holes existed before 2019 when we could actually "see" one? How do we detect something that reflects no light when we DON'T have a simulated telescope the size of Earth? The answer is gravity.

We think that most large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, left over from their chaotic infancies when hundreds of thousands of early stars collided and then collapsed, and then kept colliding. To give you an idea of what we mean by "supermassive", the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), is about 4 million times the mass of our sun. And that's SMALL.

So while black holes aren't the horrible all-consuming reality-guzzling unmakers of creation that science fiction likes to paint them as - we aren't in any danger whatsoever from Sagittarius A*, now or ever - they CAN get big enough to really throw things around. So we looked for objects moving under the influence of . . . nothing.

This gif is a years-long timelapse of stars orbiting something in a seemingly-empty region of space the center of the Milky Way, the approximate location marked with a red plus sign.

That something is Sag A*. It's an invisible behemoth, made of the extraordinarily dense remains of the birth of our galaxy, juggling entire solar systems the way Jupiter flings asteroids. And for so long, we couldn't even see it.

This shit makes me go fucking crazy. Imagine what else is out there that we don't understand just because we don't have the tools to even know it exists! Not just in space, in any field of scientific study!

It wasn't until the 1990s that we started realizing trees talk to each other, and now we know there's fungal mycelium networks that connect trees across entire continents. Just THIS YEAR we discovered an entirely new ecosystem underneath the hydrothermal vents in the deepest parts of the ocean floor. For most of human history, the existence of planets around other stars was highly debated, and now we've confirmed over 5 thousand of them. We even know what some of their atmospheres are made of!

There's a saying that "the more you know, the more you know you'll never know", and I feel like there's never been a time in history when that's been more true. And it's almost comforting, y'know? The universe is so vast, it feels correct that we shouldn't be able to understand all of its intricacies.

Reality is stranger than fiction, and the reality is there's stuff out there that we don't even have the words to begin to describe. Until we do! And our reward is even more questions!

[thearcaneenthusiast]

BOY DO I HAVE SHIT TO TALK ABOHT.

ARCANE SEASON 2 OFFICIAL TRAILER ANALYSIS

(to my best efforts..)

Now I'm by all means a shitty analyser but I've still gathered enough to make a post about the trailer so here we go ganf

THE SCENE I REALLY WANNA YALK ABOUT

I do wanna quickly point out how good the fucking art of this stupid show is its actually diabolical

But this shows a bunch of people passing their respects onto jinx, (pls look at the blue hair)

In protests, even irl, people tend to do face painting, or some form of logo is presented so people can identify what they are protesting for.

After one singular Google search, the color blue represents open spaces, freedom, intuition, imagination, inspiration, and sensitivity

-> I think the different fonts I've highlighted is what I think Zuan is fighting for (or terrorising for idek)

Open spaces, because zuan is really really really underground, shitty air, very very claustrophobic.

Freedom is very very very unbelievably self explanatory

Sensitivity, Sensitivity as in they are fighting for their right to having some sort of right to feel victimised, so piltover can be Sensitive towards their situation (maybe idek you get what I'm saying.)

It also sets the tone for the scene I guess OK MVOIN ON

THINGS I POINTED OUT

"The arcane is waking up"

Personally, UHM!

I think these two scenes finna go hand in hand, I'm not rlly sure what's gonna go down with the arcane since bro I wasn't expecting all this BUT I'm so open to theories if you guys have any

OK HO BECAUSE WHO IS THIS I wanna say this is powder but I lowkey don't know it might be a protester with jinx but I deadass huh. This is something else I need help with so AGAIN REBLOG ??? COMMENT PLS THANK YEW

Shit screenshot sorry

This is most definitely during the (final)?? Battle. Like the one we see in the teaser trailer deadass Idk what's going on here right but I think it's gonna be Jinx's ult/idk whatever you league players call it. But it's gonna fuck vi up, and she's gonna breakdown to caitlyn, which leads to the "My sister is gone" talk

Big showdown between vi and warwick, again THE COLORSSSHUCWVCVUWC7HWFU

Blue is the color of the sky and ocean, and it can represent purity, truth, and clarity. Alternatively, it can represent sadness or coldness

Red is often associated with passion, love, and vitality and can also represent anger, danger, and aggression.

So yeah! The meanings definetly contradict eachother, but they all correlate with eachother in some weird cool way. We know warwick is vander, Vander loves his secondhand family, he has so much fight for them, he openly protects them. But now that he's Warwick, he's easily seen as dangerous and he's most definetly angry I'll tell u that

So before the trailer I thought these two wpuld be on opposite sides I WAS WRONG I WAS SO WRONG AND IM SO GLAD I WAS GENUINELY CELEBRATING

I think this is the thing that wakes up the arcane I'm reaching idk anymore

Idk if anyone else point this put

HES TALKING TO JINX LOOK AT THE FORNER LOOK AT HTW CONCNERJW

[sukunasun]

WHERE OUR PIECES FALL IN PLACE | NANAMI KENTO X CHUBBY READER

instead of an expected reunion—imagines that he’ll meet you in the middle of the street randomly one day by fate. maybe in a garden among pretty flowers but you’d be the only thing he can’t take his eyes off. or by the ocean, no one else but a man confessing his sins that shall be buried below water and he’ll be anew, he'll be forgiven—nanami is only left with silence on your end.

a sequel to 'SAY IT'S HERE'

sometime in the middle of the twin's birthday party, when the candles are blown out and yuuji's tiger face paint starts to crack around the corners of his smile, geto hands nanami two slices of cake. nice thick wedges of strawberry and chocolate, alternating pink and brown towered high with rainbow sprinkles on top.

it isn't a surprise the twins couldn't decide on a cake flavour so geto layered them both, however, what does surprise nanami is that he hands it to him on a plate with ice cream on the side as well. he pokes his spoon into the melting scoop of vanilla and wonders how people have the appetite for something this insanely sweet. then looks up to see gojo gobbling down his fifth serving of cake, exerting himself in getting that last piece of boba at the very bottom of his milk tea, plastic cup contracting with these resounding pops they both ignore. not to mention that he's already gone through two pints of rocky road.

geto's face is stoic but reluctantly so, a crease forming between furrowed brows, "thanks for coming, and thank you for the gifts, the girls love them," is all he says, voice even. despite his loyalties to you, he doesn't forget that he's nanami's friend too.

which nanami could commend him for, he doesn't make it about himself, this is the day his daughters were born, he's meant to celebrate. call it common ground. geto's lips lift at the corners when he looks over to see the two of them slowly prying wrapping paper off the multiple boxes nanami had flown in. he'd been undecided on what to get because gifts are not his strong suit, he's never understood the need for such materialistic representations of love but he likes the twins, so he bought...everything under the sun. (yuuji helps them with the bigger ones and in the process, screeches so loud he almost breaks a window when it's revealed that nanako and mimiko have received not one, but two game consoles.)

"by the way, i'm not picking sides but i think you should talk to her," geto says warily, his hand clasped beneath his chin as he eases his way into the subject. to say that he's torn would be an understatement because he always does this. gets in his feelings and worries til grey hairs and frown lines appear yet, it shows. geto can't help but care for others and make it known, say it with words that don't get caught in his throat, and proves it through his many sentimental ways.

nanami almost dismisses the notion because it's not like he hasn't tried. it's been the longest time without seeing or hearing from you since...well, since you broke up with him via call, left your job, and stopped coming around the usual places. the cafe, the bakery. there had been a few missed calls in between (47 to be exact, all sparingly spaced out across weeks because he doesn’t want to seem too desperate. he's meticulous like that) some voice messages he's left in your chat that probably went unheard. he's even contemplated if he should show up at your apartment. (but he's not crazy. of course not.)

instead of an expected reunion—imagines that he’ll meet you in the middle of the street randomly one day by fate. maybe in a garden among pretty flowers but you’d be the only thing he can’t take his eyes off. or by the ocean, no one else but a man confessing his sins that shall be buried below water and he’ll be anew, he'll be forgiven—nanami is only left with silence on your end.

"i appreciate your concern, but this is neither the time nor the place," nanami's face is impassive, showing no signs of honing any hard feelings. not on the surface at least. "besides, what good will it do, she has moved on." a tugging in his chest is felt as the memories of you showing up at his favourite bookstore with another man come flooding back.

gojo interrupts his thoughts, "about damn time, she's liked you for ages, i tried warning her but who knows what she ever saw in you," he complains while geto clicks his teeth and shoots him a piercing glare because he's definitely not helping the situation.

nanami clenches his jaw, he doesn't need reminders. he of all people should be very well aware that he sits in geto's living room with pompompurin ears on his head feeling at his very lowest because he's lost you and he lives with that regret every day.

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

the tokyo museum hosts an exhibition on rodin sculptures. his life's work displayed in phases, epochs depicting the best and little-known, of stories centred around great heroes and lovers. their lives and feelings depicted in dynamic poses, down to the most intimate of embraces chipped and carved into bronze, alabaster, and marble. a preserved intimacy, a history behind every look and touch. haunting and somewhat forever living...just like the image of nanami in that bookstore haunts you.

"thanks for that," you say to the man beside you. voice travelling over the loud chatter among patrons. young and old and excessively rich. looking down, you peer over the pamphlet tucked by your elbow, stepping before different sculptures of varying sizes. you're stunned by the mastery of craft and precision but the emotions evoking within you are hesitant. like it was...wrong to be here with someone else. to be looking at these figures and having no relation to them. all that passion and yearning, why is it that you feel grief instead. a part of you missing.

"i saw it in his eyes, he's guilty," higuruma strolls next to you, bored out of his mind. “i mean, he looks guilty.”

“i’ve never seen him like that," you explain. not even when there were rumors about his past breakups floating around the office. nanami only seemed nonchalant. like it barely affected him. cutting someone loose a mere task he's checked off before it's back to work.

“what did you think he’d look like?” higuruma asks.

“relieved? happy?” he looked like a shell of himself, hollow, miserable. you wished you could relish in that, take pleasure in the way he seemed so empty, so dejected. payback, you think. for only loving you in silence, and thus, he suffers in silence too. but you find that you've been feeling just as brokenhearted.

hiromi shrugs, “from what i've seen, you’re entirely capable of making him as..." he pauses—tilts his head when you both come closer to a sculpture—then continues, "...afflicted as he is with you."

whatever hiromi means by that, you don’t know. his voice almost lost on your ears when he moves away from you to examine it closer. here, the sculpture portrays the man as a figure who is fully at the woman's disposal due to the adoration he possesses for her. 'The Eternal Idol' it reads. tenderness, sensuality, submission, and humility to the world in a woman's form.

you dismiss him, “please, you say that like he was head over heels in love with me, i think he just pitied me,” luring you in with the homemade bread and leatherbound jane austen. a voice so soothing and a face you see in every other man. an urge to place him next to them in comparison, hoping they’d shift and mold themselves to be the capable salaryman with blue shirts and a suit jacket that pools over your shoulders, smelling like tea and galettes and that they’d be just like him. only that they’d love you differently, loved you more, kiss you til your lips swell, and there wouldn’t be a need to hide or to fear or make you chase after the unknown, you’d know he loves you and only you. 

"these accusations you make are unfounded,” higuruma merely states, "and it's also rather unjust to yourself." when he turns towards you, you expect to see a teasing, flirty glint in his eye. instead, you're greeted with nothing but his flat expression before he looks away. oh, he was just being factual.

“you should be his attorney," you try to joke.

his lips quirk up by the corners, “not even i could plead his case, the man reeks of remorse, even if he did deceive you, he’s not proud of it, which makes him less likely to defend himself..." his hands come up to brush over the engraved caption on the plaque. they're nice hands, rough, but a little too big, too gentle, like he could let you go at any moment if he wishes. nothing like nanami's. if nanami were to hold your hand he'd hold on for dear life.

“there’s no justice in that,” higuruma's decided he's done with this sculpture, picks his head up and moves away to the next one, he doesn't get attached. he doesn't linger. maybe that's why you never took things further, he's always seen things in black and white, like you were just another one of his cases. saw the teary look on your face, the long hours pouring over every detail leading up to the end and he couldn't leave it alone.

you sigh, wrapping a hand around his arm as you continue to walk down crowded corridors. "speaking like a true lawyer, one who's so distinguished."

he breathes out a rare laugh, not a real one, just these puffs of air he exhales along with a grin. "so depraved, haven't i told you the system's fucked?"

at that, you let out a laugh too, for the first time in awhile, "i'm afraid it's the same when it comes to matters of the heart." you look up, savouring him for now. he's just here right the wrongs, bring some perspective, and that was all there was to it.

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

by midnight, your phone starts buzzing by your side, jittering against the mattress. without looking at the screen, you have an idea of who it might most likely be on the other end.

ding. ding. you reach for it to see that it's nanami again. for the fifth time today. a new voice message he's recorded for you sitting there in your messages. waiting as always, for your recognition, for your reply. you wouldn't want to give him the privilege or the pleasure. you've broken up with him after all, but you're unable to pull away from him and his futile attempts. forget that you have yet to wake from the lingering bits of a dream, or that you've got an interview come morning.

nanami's voice fills the emptiness of your room, spine-tingling and molten hot. you almost miss the intros—hi, hello, please bear with me, all the usual. you've heard it in clipped and composed tones, as if he's rehearsed these lines, must have written them down on his legal pad before pressing record, his lines spoken awkward and uncertain way, tightly wound in guilt.

only now he sounds different. the exhausted drawl, the languid pulling of his syllables, slurring and seductive. "those hyacinths..." he starts, "don't over-water them." he had them delivered to your place and you had only accepted them because they were a gift, it would be sad to turn them down after he's paid for them. plus, it would be a shame to send them back, these florists have put in so much effort.

nanami pauses for a second, you hear him taking big gulps, no doubt the whiskey bottle is empty at this point before he continues, "am i any closer to getting you back?" after a short pause, the message goes silent, like he's realised what he's asked.

you press play on another where rambles on, or whatever is nanami's version of rambling. a deep voice rumbling from his chest, a heavy sigh, a string of words you can't tell decipher. if they're genuine or not with how needy he gets. nanami never gets needy. nanami never begs. it's just the alcohol talking, you wouldn't know what he's like when in the throes of proclamation...still, his voice curls its way into your heart, wringing it tight when he drawls, "tell me so i can be put out of my misery, or better yet, come back into my life."

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

geto and gojo sit across from you at the library. their bodies dwarfing the kid-size chairs and desks. close by, mimiko and nanako work on their math problems both with equal amounts of distaste but suguru's promised they'll get double the snacks as a reward for tackling their multiplication tables, hence they try their best, fingers counting down one by one.

on the other hand, you're busy colouring a page from a fairytale. a scene of a royal couple dancing at a ball, lingering by the edges is a crowd looking on happily as they twirl under glittering stars, a whole universe cheering for their union. you hold back the forlorn sigh as your hand involuntarily reaches for a yellow crayon, even here, you wish to colour in blonde locks below the prince's crown. you can't see it any other way.

"sorry about the party," you apologize, missing their birthday bash hadn't been the plan, but suguru had given you the heads up on nanami's appearance and you thought...it wouldn't be a good idea. things were still too fresh, too new, it would've been uncomfortable for everyone.

you know it was a selfish excuse, but suguru won't hold it against you. "i understand," he replies but his smile doesn't reach his eyes. 'i understand' doesn't mean the same as 'it's okay to miss out on a special day because you're afraid of conflict'. which is why you're trying extra hard to make up for it now. shifting focus to your friends instead, you avert your attention. dodging any discussion about the breakup, or nanami, or the fact that you cling on.

satoru however, doesn't fall for any of it and jumps into his interrogation. his honesty comes out sharp and biting albeit genuinely oblivious—"how long are you planning on avoiding him?" his voice is too loud for comfort and the librarian would shush him if it weren't for his charm. he's been flirting with her so they get to check out as many books as they want, plus, waiving late fees goes against geto's rules but he'll take it as a kindness for now.

you roll your eyes, he's way too good at reading you, or maybe you've just been so transparent anyone would've notice. "i'm not avoiding him, it's called moving on," you try to reason, although it's starting to sound exactly as gojo puts it.

nanami chases you down for reconciliation and nothing more, a settlement of sorts. you've already assumed it was because of guilt. he doesn't want to be the bad guy possibly. why else would nanami be leaving messages, making calls, and sending a million flowers if not as an act of atonement.

and when has he ever needed to repent, nanami's always been so aloof, you've seen him brush things off with a calm and cool demeanour, sorry is merely a word he gives to strangers he's accidentally bumped into on the train. he'll come out of this with that perfect head on his shoulders held high after the remnants of past memories have faded and no longer hold any significance to him. he could always bake more french loaves and there's more wine to be tasted. he'll continue siphoning his emotions into the separate little folders of his makeup. you've never taken up the space of his heart because that shall be reserved for someone else—"he'll get over me in due time," you say, loathing how the words taste, how it makes you hate yourself.

"geez," satoru shrugs off the tension from his shoulders, "melodrama doesn't look good on you," the jab strikes where it hurts the most.

your face falls, give it a few seconds and you'll start crying in the middle of the children's section, "i guess i wanted more," you swallow down the embarrassment, typical that you've ended up here. back to where you've always been. single, jobless, a few pounds heavier, a few more cracks in your aching heart.

"there's a lot going on—" suguru cuts in, hoping it'll make you feel better, "—it's okay to feel as you do." sympathetic as it is, you start to wonder if you've traded in a birthday for a pity party when there's a truth in what satoru says.

in the silence that passes, the scene you work on is full of colour, save for the stars you've left in white. the twins have completed their exercise sheet, and satoru stretches his limbs and yawns like a cat basking under an afternoon sun. suguru might give him a pep-talk after this and he might feel bad for bringing up the whole thing, but it has to be said— "talk to the guy, he's never looked worse."

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

on the walk home, the clouds start to gather. greying skies and thunder roaring above you. behind the clearing of mist and cold, you see him standing right outside your building. not knowing how long he's been there, but judging by the steady rhythm of his pacing feet, nanami's been waiting for a while. if anything, he's patient and—god help you—persistent.

the drizzle gets heavier and rain pours down over his body, soaking through the layers of fabric; his coat, his tie, his white shirt. golden blonde hair turning into a muddy shade of ash, strands clumping together, droplets hanging off and sticking to his skin. to his foggy glasses, thin-rimmed and shining. although drenched and dishevelled, he is every bit the man you love, and you hate that you can't look away, turn him down and kick him to the curb, pretend he doesn't exist.

taking him in, your heart clenches when the light of a lamppost next to you cuts a glowing line across his sullen face, highlighting the deep depths of his cheeks. you see that he looks exhausted, more so than usual, and he's lost a little bit of weight. you think to say something, ask him if he's been skipping meals, that it's no way to deal with his remorse. anything that would break the tension but kento beats you to it.

"we need to talk," he says in a low voice but it takes almost every fibre of his being to say it, "i thought this was the only way we could do so." he recognizes what he's doing, he's being invasive, he's being desperate and when was that word ever associated with him. not til now he supposes, not before you.

“don't you know it’s embarrassing to chase after an ex?" the bite won't be drowned out by pitter-patter, it stings, but he doesn't move an inch. swallows that lump in his throat and prepares himself for the words he's about to utter.

"i am not the best with words, but believe me when i say i am not ashamed of you–" he pauses. waits for your reaction but chooses to continue, nothing will come in between, not here and now, "forgive me—for my ignorance, for my restraint, it is because of me that you felt our relationship was one-sided."

that should do it he thinks, he's laid it out on the table, he's said what he came to say. placid and concise. and at first, he's relieved, he professes and proclaims without expectation. he didn't come here hoping for more, that part of him has been tampered with and put out by his own self-doubt. he only wishes to let you know. he'll force himself to be content with solely acknowledgement.

but he starts to worry when he sees the anger seep into your features. “you’re upset,” he states, unsatisfied, "i thought it would be best if we got closure—"

“did you come all this way just for closure?" your question hangs in the air. each passing second filled with the sound of raindrops and the million thoughts bouncing off his brain. you shouldn't put him through this anymore, it's practically ruining him from the inside out. “you’re forgiven, let it ease your conscience,” you say, ready to turn away and leave him for good this time.

he sucks in a breath, frustration prickling all over, “i am a man that’s lacking, trying to convey to you the things that cannot be conveyed, i have never been a passionate person and you knew this." you can see it so obviously in his expression that you've made him this way, twisting him up into knots over the need for verbalization, for definitions and arguments he can't give.

your eyes narrow, getting defensive. you always thought you could be the exception, that you'd be the one to experience it firsthand, his fervent need for you, whatever version of it you could get. "you denied me in front of people you cared about, you were always so cautious and constipated, like you couldn't bear it, i get that you're not into big girls but—"

"that's not true!" he says quickly, voice rising with tension. his hands come up to hold your face in them, thumbs rubbing over damp cheeks and warm skin before realizing...he's neevr actually felt it. how does a man concede, he's scared, fearful of an inevitable end, "i didn't want to lose you," he admits softly. lips less than an inch away, breaths a hair's width apart.

you try to pry his hands away, shaking your head, there's no use when "you can't love me the way i want you to and maybe i'm not the one who's meant to be loved by you."

nanami doesn't let go, "i can only love you the only way i know how, it was never my intention to make you feel less than—" with no more hesitance, no more weighing speeches and consequences, he tells you the truth—"my love for you...has made me selfish. it has consumed me, i want you so much that i don't know what to do with it. why should i put you through that, burden you with me."

"you were never a burden 'ken," his name sounds so bittersweet, as if there's still a fondness there, the way you gently hold those syllables without spite but he hears the longing, the hurt. "i didn't want you holding back for my sake, i've liked you for so long, i was ready for it all, even when it came to losing you, i don't need you to be something you're not."

he's never had that ability, despite his efforts, he isn't capable of detachment, with all his distractions and defeats, he's ultimately bound to you, too well tangled in his soul. "you shall move on but i cannot do the same—my life starts and ends with you, do you understand?” 

you nod silently, looking up at him with widened eyes and catching the specks of dew on his lashes when his eyes travel toward your lips, his thumbs caressing them tenderly, benevolently.

"despite my shortcomings and the fact that you are now seeing someone else, i would like to try again, please allow me to do my best." nanami opens up to you as a flower blooms, petals blossoming, coming apart to reveal the innermost parts of himself. red spreading across his skin from the tips of his ears to his lips when he parts them under yours. he wasn’t made to hide it, all that restraint keeping him from you, from what he knows is his deepest desire. made to love, loudly and forever. there, where two lives meet again, coming together and converging.

[bekolxeram]

I woke up to a dash full of bones, and I thought to myself: What a day to be a moopsy!

But then I realized it was the same kind of bones people have been trying to force feed me since May. I'm a moopsy with standards, give me herringbone, funny bone, trombone, Jackson Rathbone (jk I've never seen Twilight), any other kind of bone.

Please don't force a moopsy into vegetarianism.

Oh, and I've read that opinion piece. It's certainly one of the articles ever written.

First of all, I feel like I'm in a time loop, I can't believe I have to dig through the vault to find this post from June. Tommy wasn't taking Eddie on an "adventure" in 7x04. Both flying and combat sports have been Tommy's passions way before Eddie showed up in his life. They happened to share common interests, so Tommy asked Eddie to tag along for the ride, but he was going to Vegas anyway, solo or not.

Exploring your partner's interests would be more like... I don't know, showing up to a groom-less (and fun-less) bachelor party while being on standby because it's important to your partner? Listening to him ramble about a dead outlaw even though you're so tired from your shift and taking care of him all night that you're basically mumbling half-asleep, yet still manages to catch that he's said "crossed" twice? Thinking your partner is stressing himself over a stupid curse but you still put on a nice suit, drive him to the cemetery and stand behind him while he gives a century old mummy a eulogy, for it to unexpectedly turn into a moment of connection between you two?

Secondly, I'm not even getting into the whole "slow burn is the only valid form of romance" thing. I just never imagined there would be a day I see the words "slow burn" and Bathena put together. They're the antithesis of slow burn. They're explosions in the form of beautiful fireworks. I understand that the author only started the show about a month ago? But literally, in the first episode of S7, Athena told the therapist that while she loved her husband, she didn't know how to just slow down and chill out with him. The cruise ship disaster arc ended with them bonding over yet another near death experience. Life's too short for slow to them.

Thirdly, 9-1-1 doesn't really do cute dates? It's either in the ending montage of an arc or it's a setup for some terrible misfortune afterwards. It's not a YA style queer coming-of-age show either, the best you'll see Buck navigating through queer spaces is speeding from "calling himself an ally while on a date with a guy" through "walking into a room full of people with a soot eating grin". (While we're on that, I guess I have to dig out another post from June about the first date closet comment. Tommy took the initiative to tell Eddie they were just hanging out, and Eddie bought it. He didn't mind keeping Buck's sexuality private, but he did mind Buck pushing him back into the closet with the hot chick lie.)

Finally, Tommy has been relatively involved in the Fire Fam circle ever since his re-introduction. He literally stole borrowed a helicopter and flew the 118 to the Pacific Ocean just to save Bathena. He was at the wedding, he was at the medal ceremony, and now he's part of the hospital vigil for Denny. And each time he's not just there for Buck, he's there for Chimney, he's there for Hen too. For someone who puts so much emphasis on "slow burn", the author seems rather hasty in pronouncing BuckTommy dead on arrival, after watching a total of 5 out of 18 episodes this season (with 2 of them heavily featuring passengers on the plane and putting the whole fire fam to the side no less). Every relationship takes time to build up, I'm sure the author understands that, welcoming a new member into your family is not a question of yes or no, it's also a question of when. Tommy has mentioned 3 times how much he wanted to have a team like that behind his back, how alone he was navigating through life with only negative influence like his father or Gerrard. Buck's story in 8x05 started as a spooky comedy about a mummy, but ended as a heartwarming tale of Buck empathizing with Billy's loneliness and declaring himself part of Billy's posse. So what do you think will be the more satisfying payoff to Tommy's story? Him being formally welcomed to the family eventually? Or having him break up with Buck then cast aside with a mere "lol sucks not being a main ig"?

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

Does it make any sense to have a world that is entirely vegan because other animals are actually all extinct. You might think with no other animals, this be a world where cannibalistic practices occur more. Well, I never really thought of it because it's that's just nasty. But what would be realistic here? Sure, it may occur as an extreme survival method. But it shouldn't be a normal practice and condemned in every other way. But does make actually make sense in this world with animals going extinct? They do have excellent crops and plenty of ways of getting food. There is no issue with having adequate food supply except for impoverished places. And just like impoverished places in real life, people aren't just resorting to cannibalism as normal. Alright so... for a world with no more animals in its ecosystem... well, how is that even like?? Actually, why is this world even restricted to a planet? There would probably be a lot of people living on moons with no native life and space stations.

Addy: I'm in the middle of finals right now (is it okay to include that? Idk), so you're getting some straight-from-the-tap unpolished thoughts.

Are there insects? 'Cause if this is a post-extinction event, then you've got a whole issue of like... plants that used to be pollinated by insects (beetles, bees, moths, butterflies, ants, etc), birds, etc but now have to be pollinated by wind (which is way less efficient, so you'd probably get stuff that's like cedars or oak trees, where there's just pollen *everywhere*, and other stuff would at least have more difficulty surviving). And then there's... everything. The balance between plants, insects, etc, *everything* is very nuanced. This feels like it'd become the lawn garden equivalent of an ecosystem - alive, but not thriving. Like a garden laden with pesticides, you just... wouldn't get good growth, and that'd spur on its own set of issues.

Plus like. Grazing. Grazing is a huuuuge influence on grasslands, etc, so the removal of all herbivores would... man. That'd do a lot. I don't know if you could even *have* a grassland under this system. Like without grazing, the accumulation of plant matter + wildfire ecology (lightning strikes and all that) would mean huge blazes that would sterilize the soil. Instead of grassland growing back, you'd get like saplings driven on the wind or whatever. Probably.

(Something something Yellowstone when they brought the wolves back, every piece has a role to play)

If there *are* insects, then that'd have its own set of massive issues. Great Famine of China/Great Leap Forward kinds of issues. Like wow. Also insect predation on trees, that'd spur another wave of problems.... everything would be effected. Everything.

If you're on a space station, it's generally assumed that plants are being grown in a tightly controlled artificial environment. Humidity, "rain," light, nutrients, all of that under human (or at least sentient/sophont) control. It isn't expected to be a natural, thriving environment, and it's fairly small-scale. If you have some sort of space garden, it's generally either only plants or plants + some insects + small wildlife. A whole planet... man. Honestly a terrifying thought.

(You thought Silent Spring was bad)

(This is so much worse)

Also, what about fish? Is the whole ocean totally sterile? Are there even krill (or local equivalent)? Phytoplankton, I assume, would be around (also there's a scary thought about like the whole oxygen cycle wow), but... this is just a terrifying prospect for a world.

Oh, and coral! That's an animal, technically. Not really an edible one, but an animal nonetheless. Snails? Jellyfish? Detritivores? Anything to filter the water?

We have no reference for what this would look like. If they want to make a world like this, I'd say the best bet would be to imagine a world sanitized by fire and war and death and ecological omnicide and who-knows-what. Then, on the barren remains of the world-that-was, put a sentient/sophont species with a seed bank. Fern spores. Pollen and sprouts. Some great record of a sliver of the majesty that once was.

In the dust-filled deathworld, this remnant husk of what was once an emerald jewel, there is a structure, and in that structure, there is a person. They have a plot, they have nitrates, they have ammonium, they have potassium, they have phosphorus. They may have mycorrhize, if they're lucky. In that plot, they have a plant. Maybe a few. They save it all for replanting and propagation, and subsist off of freeze-dried rations made before the Happening. They are lucky to be alive.

The world outside is barren. There is nothing to hold together the topsoil. Anything that once was there has rotted and blown away (yay bacteria)(unless those are dead too). The Dust Bowl, on a scale of a world. The Sahara, in comparison, would be a fertile haven of life.

Recovery is slow. Plants, as they grow under the sheltered eye of humanity, decompose once again, cycling through generations as they build up organic matter, thick and lush and *whole*(it can never be whole, too much has been lost, the world will never, ever be the same). The structure expands. Nothing built before the Happening is sealed tightly enough to keep out the dust, microscopic in size as it is.

Coastal regions get some amount of moisture, from the fetid winds that blow off the heaving corpse-lungs of the ocean. Without zooplankton and other organisms to manage the growth of phytoplankton and algae, it is trapped in a cycle of explosion and eutrophication. Life survives in the deepest depths of the oceans, some think, though it, too, may be dead, suffocated by lack of oxygen. Without mollusks or corals or jellyfish or anything to filter the water, the upper layers are thick with rotting plant matter. Some of it sinks, some of it floats. It becomes nutritional matter for the next growth explosion, and that, too, will rot.

A garden is made, sheltered to the extent that it can be. Carefully-selected plants take root in the mulch of their ancestors. Rain is strange and violent, heaved against mountains by wind currents, which themselves are driven by the vast temperature differences of the unevenly-heated planet. There is no friction upon the ground to slow it down, excepting the husks of once-grand cities and their slowly-falling towers. Floods are frequent, in the places that do get rain. Drought prevails elsewhere. Even when rain falls, there is nothing to receive it but silt and clay and stone (and a few spare bacteria). Murky streams of water wind their way to the ocean. Inch by inch, plants come back. Nature will not return for a hundred million years. Until then, until some random quirk of genetics pushes organisms from microbial to sizable, who knows what will happen? If we are lucky, lichens and mosses remain in the great vault of humanity. If we are unlucky, every inch of un-desertification will take holes and effort and windbreaks and labor.

Basically the world kinda needs animals, at least through our understanding of it. Continents are big, and life as we know it has evolved in a web of give and take, push and pull, supply and demand. Without one half of that equation, it is a fundamentally different setup. Maybe algaes can be stable. Maybe they can't. I don't really know. I'd recommend looking into the hows-and-whys-and-whats of various extinction periods in Earth's history to get a better idea of how things happen. It won't capture a picture of what life without animals could look like, but hey, it's something.

Also, cannibalism (at least in humans) is generally only seen as a desperate measure for survival. Prion diseases are a genuine risk, along with whatever else may have killed the person. With how many plagues (and other afflictions) humans can carry, eating a dead person generally isn't worth the risk. Also also, human brains take a lot of protein. That can be obtained through non-animal needs, but it's less efficient (in terms of digestibility and protein density, not in terms of overall energy transformation efficiency of sunshine -> meal). If famine ever hits, a plant-only diet is far more vulnerable to starvation (in times of famine, fish have saved lives).

[ovwechoes]

I was the one who sent the Moira request and I loved it sm!!

I was wondering if you could do some more Moira headcanons of dating her more general ones for a gn!partner just how the overall relationship would be

Moira O'Deorian & Relationship Headcanons!

I'm glad to hear it!! I'm more than happy to do that (sfw), and if you have anymore opinions or feedback I'm all ears c: My asks are open to anything/everything overwatch related!

Who confessed first? Her partner did; Moira's not the type to express her emotions. She would tell you that she could've gone her whole life without confessing, because it's an embarrassing situation and she doesn't handle rejection very well. And yet, she somewhat had an idea that her partner felt the same way about her. Moira's an inquisitive person and has a tendency to be able to see through people and their true desires, so when you confessed she wasn't entirely surprised. Instead, she was happy that her anxiety surrounding it being unrequited were misplaced. Moira enjoys being chased as well, so knowing her she would tell you she's thinking about her answer back to them, just to see how far they'll go to chase her and get an answer. It can be cruel of her, but it's something Moira enjoys about dating especially.

What does Moira like the most about their partner? Moira's favourite aspect about her partner would be open mindedness. It's something she actively seeks in her relationships and potential partners; she can't be with someone constantly judging her line of work when everyone else around her does. It's important to her to have someone who can understand other points of view, but also doesn't let people walk over their opinions and changes them based on what their loved one believes. Moira appreciates someone who can stand up for what they believe as well, even if she disagrees with them. It would be her favourite aspect of them, and I can imagine she'd enjoy playing devil's advocate just to see how passionate they are about their beliefs.

What is Moira's favourite kind of date? Moira loves taking her partner to restaurants based on what they've been saying they're craving. She would want to explore new options and encourage her partner to do so, even if it's something they'd never usually touch. It's important for her to keep things fresh though and not repeat the same date twice, so sometimes she enjoys late night beach dates just as much. Sitting with her partner, a bottle of wine, and the music of the ocean while the stars dance above them is breath-taking for Moira, especially with her partner there. She would give up any mission or deadline to be able to do this for her partner, even if it means getting a mouthful from Doomfist when she's back at work again. It's all worth it to her.

Who do they talk to when they want to complain about their partner, or when they have a relationship problem? Moira's the type of person that won't talk to her partner directly about something until she's at her limit. It's her worst quality as a girlfriend, and it's something she's working on with her S/O. However, when she does need to talk about it, her partner's the first person she does so with. Moira doesn't like to mince her words, but after several arguments over Moira dropping it on her partner out of nowhere, she would end up asking her partner if they're in the mood to talk about something bothering her lately, and if they aren't she'll give them both space until they're ready. If their partner can't or wont talk to her about it, and she's desperately needing to get it off her chest, she'd speak to a colleague she trusts or Amelie/Widowmaker. She knows she wont speak about it, and knows that she'd be too scared to incase Moira retaliated during treatments. When she does talk to her partner though, she remains objective and sticks to the facts, how it's made her feel, and wants to know their side of things. Most of the time, Moira just wants a full picture that helps calm the anxiety in her mind, but if the problem needs a solution then she likes to settle it there and then, without putting too much time between the problem and the solution.

[mrsmarlasinger]

The surreal thing about the Titan submersible: unless someone pulls off a miraculous last-minute rescue, when we all wake up tomorrow, those five men will be dead.

I mean, assuming they haven't already hyperventilated the last of their oxygen or imploded in a hull failure event.

It's currently June 22nd, 1:48 AM, MDT. If they're still alive, they will not be within the next...what, three hours? Give or take. And it would take hours to get the sub to the surface if it were found miles underwater, so if it's at the bottom of the sea, that really gives the rescuers...I don't know, like, maybe an hour to pull off the impossible?

These men are about to cross the event horizon.

When the banging sounds were first reported, it blew my fucking mind. I'd been certain that they were dead already, or that if they weren't, they would be soon. Without question. Then came this bizarre, impossible glimmer of hope. And I thought, if those sounds really were occurring at thirty-minute intervals, if it really was the Titan passengers, then maybe—maybe—they had a chance.

But they just...don't. Let's be realistic: they're about to die. We know this. We know for a fact that their time is about to run out.

And I know people are angry about the Missing White Woman Syndrome feel of it all. It would make for such on-the-nose satire. Five wealthy men have the world on pins and needles; where was that energy when hundreds of refugees drowned off the coast of Greece a week ago?

It frustrates me that I'm so invested in the Titan sub. It's like the entire incident was orchestrated for the sole purpose of grabbing attention (of course I don't believe that's the case). The very premise of the sub is tauntingly ridiculous—so very blatantly an expensive suicide. I saw someone compare it to an Onion article, and it IS.

The shitty video game controller, the ominous waiver, Stockton Rush's portentous comments (hell, even his name), the toilet sat right in front of that tiny dollhouse window. The absurd price tag paired with a history of failed dives and an OceanGate employee fired and sued years ago for raising safety concerns.

God, it's so dumb. It's so so fucking dumb. In real life, what we'd call "foreshadowing" is really just actions→consequences. But still. Still. It reads like sitcom writers setting the dominos for a season finale, tirelessly working to maximize memeability so we can all point and laugh with our popcorn.

The sheer pointless, brainless, wasteful extravagance of it all makes it easy to forget how horrific and tragic the ordeal really is. It grants us some strange permission to rubberneck.

And, well, who wouldn't want to rubberneck? The drama. Horror movie levels of repulsion. Any fear you can imagine—the dark, the cold, the ocean, suffocation, confined spaces, death—all wrapped into one perfect, cinematic nightmare. It's a black comedy: dumbassery punished by a fate we don't, shouldn't, wish even on billionaires.

Then, of course, there is the deadline. Pun not intended.

That, I think, is what's really gripped us. The limited oxygen supply is a countdown, a ticking time bomb. Ten minutes left in the movie—can the protagonist pull off a daring escape in time?

God, I know I sound like one of those crisis actor conspiracy theorists, but you couldn't manufacture a more gripping story if you tried. That hard figure we've seen in every news article: 96 hours. Ninety-six hours to save the day.

Can you see the Netflix docudrama now? The cuts to a black screen with the remaining number of hours emblazoned in the center? "If we don't find that sub tonight, those men are dead," some intrepid rescuer says...a split second of grave silence...then the scene goes black, except for a line of heavyweight white text that reads, in all caps, "SIX HOURS REMAINING." Next we'll see a heart-wrenchingly candid conversation between the passengers, for character development.

You know Channel 5 is airing a documentary about the Titan in the UK tomorrow. Tonight, actually, since I guess it's technically Thursday morning. The countdown was so hard-set, ITN calculated the exact hour at which they could broadcast their production. The perfect moment for them to capitalize on that post-curtains melancholy we all get at the end of a movie.

It's crass, but fascinating, too. Is ITN going to acknowledge their production timeline by leaving the documentary's ending ambiguous, a choice which will ring bittersweet when aired in the aftermath of the inevitable deaths? Will they scramble to concoct an ending in those mere hours after the passengers asphyxiate? Have they already made two endings: one in case of a miracle, and one in case of a tragedy? Any answer is soulless.

But all of this is soulless. The Titan is our gladiator fight, our bread and circuses. Still, I can't stop staring, because I cannot wrap my head around it. It's 3:30 AM now. Within hours, they will be dead, sure as an execution.

Few news stories come with such a grim deadline. Almost always it's a nail-biting rescue whose twists and turns we follow until some hitherto-unpredictable endpoint; or a sprawling clusterfuck of tragedy trailed by aftermath upon aftermath; or a search for a missing person that eventually meanders into a quiet presumption of death.

The certainty blows my mind—the finality of it, the tragedy of it, is incomprehensible. It doesn't feel real. Why do I care so much? Those men were dead from the start (if not literally, then certainly figuratively). Why do I keep reading about it, posting about it? Why can't I stop watching the car wreck smolder? What am I doing still standing in the street?

I hate that I fell prey to the submarine story like everyone else with an internet connection. But whatever deity may or may not exist got bored, I guess, and crafted the dramedy-action-horror hybrid of the year. Even wove in little cliffhangers (the banging! On the sonobuoys! There's still time!) to string us along like a damn HBO producer.

It gets me, man.

It's 4:00 AM, MDT. I guess it's really over, huh? I know 96 hours was never an exact deadline, but let's not be idealistic here.

I hope it was quick. I hope they imploded in a single terrible instant.

I hope the next sunken boat of six hundred refugees wins as much attention as the Titan did.

I hope Netflix doesn't make that docudrama with the black screen and the all-caps line of heavyweight white text.

I hope we sleep. I hope I sleep. I hope we all can sleep.