#I have no idea what i'm doing but I about died when I put this together

[organic-bloodbath]

Teach Ddakji to me - Part 2

The Salesman x American!Reader

Summary: The salesman teaches you a new game: Rock, paper, scissors, minus one. However, he adds a mix to the game whenever one of you loses.

Warnings: 18+ smut, pure sex. Minors, time for you to leave and come back in a few years, this not for your eyes ✋🏻 the door is that way 👉🏻🚪

A/N: This shall have part 3 and i'm working on part 2 for Mingle too ✍️🏻 i haven't written smut in several years so be nice to me thank you, i feel a bit rusty 🥲

Taglist:

@apookalypse

@lady-of-blossoms

@k1ra-park3r

♡♡

By now you had been seeing him for over a month. He had asked all kinds of things about your life in the U.S., your studies and what you'd want to do in the future, your hobbies and in general what you liked to do, and so on. He was genuinely interested in getting to know you and it warmed your heart.

He told you a little about his job, how he was recruiting new people for different businesses. He didn't get into lot of details, just said that he did like his job and it paid surprisingly well. He was happy at his current life.

He told you about his family, how his dad had died by someone shooting him to death, and that he didn't really keep in touch with many family members anymore. A lot of them had passed away apparently and he didn't want to get into more details at this stage of your relationship. You did feel sad for him, since you still had many living relatives who had some kind of part in your life, despite you moving so far away from your home.

You had gone to several different dates, none of them ending up all the way to the bedroom - yet. Mostly you had been only making out at the end of the date, and that was a lot. He was fine with waiting as long as you wished, not wanting you to be only a short term thing. You had told him about your past with one of your boyfriends how he had left you right after he had slept with you for the first time. He promised he wouldn't even think of acting like that.

He was a little too perfect and you had waited to find any kinds of flaws he had, but by far you found none and sometimes that worried you a little. There was no way a perfect man like he existed. Everyone had atleast one thing wrong with them, whatever it was.

Tonight, you had booked a hotel room together and you had made sure to wear your best pair of panties and bra, definitely avoiding the least sexy ones you owned. You had gone for a dinner before coming to the hotel, he had paid your meal again like a gentleman, as he always did. You tried to insist that you'd pay yours but he wasn't having any of that. Afterwards, you had let him know that you were ready to go all the way tonight, if he wanted to.

Right now, he was teaching you a new game, though this one you knew already but it had a little different twist to it that you hadn't played before.

Rock, paper, scissors, minus one.

It took you a while to understand how the game worked, but you grasped on the idea well enough. You both sat on your own chairs, directly facing each other, only a small gap between your knees.

He had added his own twist for the game - only with you: The one who lost, had to remove one piece of clothing, randomly chosen.

This time, you lost, his scissors cutting your paper. By now you had taken off only your cardigan, while he had taken off his tie and socks - he was taking it slowly, apparently.

You put your hands under your white top, unclipping your bra and pulling it out without taking your shirt off. You showed your dark red bra to him, hanging it in the air, until you threw it towards him. He catched it easily from the air. He brushed his fingers along the lacy canvas for a few times, until let it lay on his lap.

Another round, which made him lose his shirt. He took his time taking it off, a smirk on his face, just to mess with you. He knew you weren't very patient. But when he had taken it off and you saw him shirtless, you could definitely tell that he worked out regularly and kept himself in shape. You bit your lip and felt your cheeks warming up. God damn, you had prepared yourself for that - but still.

There were barely any words exchanged during the entire game, there was no need for that.

This was definitely a lot better than Ddakji.

It didn't take long anymore until you were only wearing your underwear and nothing else, your chest bare and you could see the hunger in his eyes.

"I think it's time for the second part of the game," he said and got up. "This part i haven't gone through with any other people i've played with."

You could see he was already hard through his underwear, which was the only thing he had on him as well. You got up before he managed to come to you and made him sit back down on the chair. He looked at you, eyebrows lifted up in surprise, but didn't stop what you were doing.

You kneeled down in front of him and pulled his underwear off, finally seeing his size how big he really was and you weren't sure if you'd be able to take it all. You looked up at him while taking his dick in your hand, stroking it a few times. He let out a sigh, not been prepared for you to make a move on him first.

You stroked him a few more times, until taking him in your mouth as deep as you were able to go. You got a gag reflex quite soon but managed to take surprisingly lot of him, though definitely not the entire length.

He grabbed your head with his hand, fingers brushing through your hair. He guided you with his hand for a while, noticing what your limits were so he wasn't pushing your mouth too deep. He let out deep moans and grunts, but before he was about to come, he pulled your head off him.

He pulled you up from the floor and grabbed your waist, pulling you tightly against him. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pressed your lips on his, taking him in a deep kiss. His hands fell on your ass, and his tongue found its way into your mouth when you let out a quiet moan.

He pushed you on the bed, immediately crawling on top of you, not breaking the kiss for more than a few seconds.

He massaged your breast until sliding his hand down your stomach all the way to between your legs, under your panties which you still had on. He gently massaged your clit, then putting more pressure on it, making you moan louder than before. He inserted his middle finger inside your vagina, pumping it in and out, soon sliding in a second finger as well.

"Oh god," you whispered, his touch felt so good and you felt like you were going to come sooner than you had expected.

But he stopped when he sensed you were starting to be on the edge of climax. You let out a frustrated groan but he shut you up with another kiss.

He pulled himself back a little bit to take your panties off and got a condom from the bedside table, wrapping it on him. He finally positioned himself against your entrance.

"You ready?" he asked, ready to push in whenever you gave her permission. "You remember the safe word, hm?"

"Ddakji," you breathed with a chuckle and nodded. "Ready."

He didn't wait even a second longer, right then pushing in, slowly. You gritted your teeth, nails digging on his back. God, it hurt so much and you were sure you were going to bleed a little.

"Just, wait a moment, okay?" you said quietly, getting used to his size. You had had sex with a few other men before, but the last time had been in the U.S. and none of them had been as big as him.

He kissed your neck on several different spots, and by now he knew exactly the right spots which made you insane.

"Okay go on," you whispered and that was all needed for him to start moving his hips back and forth.

"God you feel so good," he murmured in your ear.

You moved your hand on the back of his neck, pulling his head into a deep kiss, his tongue playing with yours.

You didn't know how many minutes had passed, you had lost the track of time, and slowly he was fastening his pace, becoming rougher than in the beginning.

Finally, you experienced the best orgasm you had ever had, the waves of pleasure going through your body. You didn't care how loud you were and how thin the walls of this room were, you let your body react the way it wanted. His body fell limp on yours, being a lot more heavy now that he didn't keep himself up on you.

"Was it good?" you whispered, unsure if he enjoyed it as much as you did. It was your first time with him and you weren't sure what kind of sex he had experienced with other women before.

He looked at you with a surprised expression on his face.

"Was it good?" he repeated and then kissed your forehead and smiled. "It was a lot more than just good. It was perfect."

You quickly washed yourself in the bathroom and when you got into the bed, it didn't take long until you fell asleep in his arms.

♡♡

"You fucked him," your roommate gasped, looking at the hickeys on your neck and below your collarbone. "Is this your walk of shame? Oh my god you definitely fucked him."

It was 6am and your class was about to start at 9am. You knew you should have spent the night with him on the weekend, and not when you had to go to a class in the morning, but you had other plans on the weekend and you couldn't wait another week to spend the night with him.

"Shut up," you chuckled, not denying it.

"So, tell me everything," she asked. "No, wait a moment until i get coffee for us."

She could see that you had stayed up late and needed some caffeine to wake you up before the first class. You waited until she was done with the coffee and brought two cups on the table.

"So, is he big?" she asked and your eyes widened. Straight to the deep end, then. "Like how big exactly?"

"Oh, he was big," you said, the back of your mouth still sore.

"On the scale of a cucumber - half of it? 2/3? Don't say an entire cucumber." Her eyes widened and she gasped. "I mean, he looked like he could easily be-"

"Oh god no, i would have instantly walked out of the door in that case," you cringed and showed an estimated size from memory.

"Ok but how did you do it? Bed, table, shower, wall? All of them?" she asked, talking so fast you weren't able to interrupt her. "Sorry, i haven't had sex in months i'm going insane if i don't get some soon. Like my vagina is actually screaming to be filled. Does he possibly have a hot friend? Could you text and ask? Friend, brother, dad - i'll take anything."

"I'm not going to ask that!" you laughed.

"How could you find a hottie like that in a damn subway station anyway? The only man who has come to talk to me there was a homeless man asking for money because he just got out of jail for drunk driving," she said. "Let's go clubbing this Friday, you can be my wingwoman."

"I don't know, i don't really do clubbing," you said awkwardly, you weren't a fan of those places and hadn't been at any club in a few years.

"Please you have to share your tricks with me," she was begging by now. "Otherwise i'm gonna have to seduce our professor who i've had hots for since the beginning of our semester and we all know that's a horrible, horrible idea."

"Yeah, that's a big no," you said instantly.

"You know what must be big? His-"

"Okay shut up," you interrupted immediately before she was able to continue. "Ask one of your friends to go clubbing with you."

"I will, but you should tag along," she insisted. "You should be more social with us outdoors, come on."

"I'll pass this time, thanks," you said, giving an 'i'm sorry' smile. You took a sip of your coffee, then changing the subject. "Oh, by the way, my brother is coming for a visit," you said and pointed a finger on your roommate before she was about to say something. "And he's definitely OFF limits, don't even think about it, he's going to get married next summer."

"Aw, fine," she pouted, for a second she had had her hopes up, but it was quickly erased.

♡♡

The salesman went to a park with a large bag full of bread, there was atleast 50 loafs in total, and pockets full of lottery tickets.

He found a group of homeless men and women, sitting on different benches. He approached them one by one, holding a loaf of bread on the other hand and a single lottery ticket on the other.

The homeless man looked at his hands and was about to take both to himself, but the salesman pulled his hands back.

"You can choose only one of these," he said. The man thought about his choice for a few seconds, until grabbed the lottery ticket. The salesman offered him a coin to scratch the ticket with.

The man's face fell when there was no win. The salesman repeated this action to all the people in the park nearby, and only one of them chose the bread.

Suddenly, he saw you in the distance, but his face fell when he saw who you were with. A young man was walking next to you, arm around you shoulder, keeping you close to him. The salesman had no idea what you were talking about, but somehow the man managed to make you laugh.

He didn't like what he was seeing, not one bit. Anger was rising inside him, he couldn't help it.

"Hey, give me the bread!" one of the homeless men yelled at him.

"Yeah, give us the bread!" a woman shouted nearby.

"I apologise, but you had a chance to choose the bread, but you chose the ticket instead," the salesman pointed out politely and threw the bags of bread on the ground.

He started pouring his anger out by stomping on the breads, mushing them all completely and letting out a few frustrated screams out of his mouth.

The homeless people looked at him like he had lost his mind and should have been taken into a mental hospital. They got up and left, it became too hard to watch a grown man's sudden tantrum.

The salesman pulled his hair back and brushed sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his suit. He took a deep breath to calm down.

"I'm cool, everything's cool," he mumbled to himself and straightened his tie a little bit. He looked around him, barely anyone on his sight anymore. He really needed to work on his anger issues.

♡♡

"Hi," you greeted and planted a kiss on his cheek when you arrived to the cafe a few hours later to meet him.

"How was your day, sweetheart?" he said and forced on a smile. He might have had a little sarcastic tone in his voice, but nothing what you might have noticed.

"Oh, my brother came to visit me, he's staying for a few days. I showed him a few places around here, he had never visited Korea before or really travelled much outside the States," you explained, seeming excited. "I haven't seen him since i moved to Korea."

He lifted his eyebrows and after a moment started laughing a little bit. You looked at him, confused what was so funny.

"Your brother," he mumbled. "Right, of course, your brother. Did you have fun?"

"A lot of fun, yes," you smiled widely. "Do you want to meet him?"

He went silent for a moment, somehow surprised by your suggestion. Sure, you had been dating for a while now but he hadn't been prepared to meeting your family members since they were all far away in the United States. It hadn't really seemed like an option before.

"Well, sure, why not," he said with a smile, though he was surprisingly a little nervous about it, which was quite unusual for him.

♡♡

That same night, your roommate had texted that she had found a guy at the club and if it wouldn't be a problem for you to find another place to spend the night, since she didn't want to go to the guy's place right when she had met him.

You were fine with it and answered that your boyfriend let you stay at his house. Calling him your boyfriend sounded so strange, but he was one, right? It just sounded like you were both still in high school, and he was a lot older than you anyway.

This was your first time visiting his home. You hadn't thought about what kind of home he had or what you were expecting, but it was larger than you had imagined. Certainly a lot fancier than your apartment, which felt like a closet compared to his place.

He hadn't visited your apartment either, so you didn't think much of it that you hadn't seen his place sooner.

He went to the kitchen to get a bottle of wine for you and left you in the living room by yourself. You saw a shelf which seemed to be full of old records, most of them seemed to be artists you weren't familiar with.

"Hey, can i look through your records and find something to listen to?" you shouted.

You heard his approval to choose anything you wanted and started browsing through them.

Then, opening one of the drawers to see if there was more, your heart stopped for a second when you saw something hidden in there.

A gun. He had a gun in his drawer.

You had never held a gun in your hand and carefully lifted it with your hand, making sure to keep your fingers far from the trigger, just in case it was loaded. You looked at it side to side, you didn't know much about guns but it seemed to be a real revolver.

Then, he came back to the living room, a red wine bottle and two wine glasses in his hands, eyes widening when he saw what you were holding and the shocked look on your face.

"Why do you have a gun?"

[protect-namine]

Ahhhhh your theory about how Vein died is sooooooooooo fucking real. Like I've seen people talk about how Lu Guang might have a secret power? But I feel like that's not the case cuz then we might have seen it play out in S1 and S2. Lg would surely would have used it in the fight with Qian Jin.

for context, anon is talking about this post where I theorize how vein "died." I go into it in more detail there, but the tl;dr version of it is: no lu guang did not kill him vein directly. he just delayed vein from entering the clinic early, thus creating a butterfly effect (hence his whole speech about it) that led to wang qing being awake when vein tries to leave with the notebook, thus creating an opportunity for her to "kill" vein which she wouldn't have had originally. but liu xiao interrupted this chain of events and that's why vein is alive using the faking death ability.

I am linking the reblog version here because other people have added their own thoughts since the creation of the post. I'm not sure if anon has seen it or just the original post, because in my original post I posit that liu xiao has the faking death ability. but after seeing other people's thoughts, I am now more leaning to the idea that wang qing has the faking death ability or perhaps, that a combination of wang qing and liu xiao is what made the "heart attack but fake death" happen. perhaps (unintentionally) they created a power combo-ing effect similar to how lu guang and cheng xiaoshi can create a mind link across time when combining their powers, or how li tianchen can possess people across space by proxy of li tianxi.

a power combo that works across "death" would be interesting, though this is merely speculative at this point. it would certainly provide another perspective to why they're paired up in the ed.

to now address anon: yeah, exactly. even if the addition of non-photo based powers is a recent change in writing direction (that they may not have had foresight on during the writing of previous seasons), it still would be too much of a drastic change for lu guang to be hiding another ability.

as I said in the post, it is unfortunate that we have to rely on information outside of the show to make sense of it, but yingdu really does make more sense when you've seen the recent interview with director li. in particular, it is heavily implied that liu xiao has more than one ability, and the process of gaining an ability (aside from inheritance from parents) is through death or stealing it from others.

while I am a believer in the idea that lu guang is willing to do morally questionable things for cheng xiaoshi, I don't think he would've had an opportunity to just get a new ability so soon after he just got the diving ability from cheng xiaoshi. on the flip side, if he always had multiple abilities since he was a kid, it would be bad writing lmao because then why has he never used it until now? especially when he's been timelooping for who knows how long to avoid a death node. I know link click is possibly retconning some details (2018 is now 2019, they changed the plans for red eyes, etc etc) but I don't think this would be a retcon they'd do because it would change too much of lu guang's character.

I am going to use this ask as a jumping off point to talk about yingdu's storytelling style, and how we should take this into account when analyzing this season. putting this under the cut now since this gets long and is kinda just a tangent now to the ask itself, though it does circle back to lu guang's role in vein's "death" in the end.

part of the reason vein's death is confusing is definitely because of the animation of lu guang puppeteering wang qing. I can totally see how people would come to the conclusion that lu guang was controlling her somehow. but we have to remember that yingdu is not like S1 and S2, for multiple reasons. one, it's a shorter season meant to introduce plot hooks, not plot; it's a setup for S3. two, it's a change in perspective from cheng xiaoshi's more grounded reality to lu guang who has been timelooping for forever. three, it was animated by a different studio than studio lan. fourth, it aims to provide a different story, and the storytelling style reflects that.

whereas S1 and S2 has a storytelling style that focused more on plot details and building up tension; yingdu focused more on relationships and emotions. it heavily uses visual metaphors in its storytelling compared to previous seasons.

in a way, although I have qualms about yingdu's writing, I do think visual metaphors is a valid solution to the problem of, "we only have six episodes to establish new plots and characters and motivations. how do we convey information efficiently in that amount of time without compromising artistry?"

I will mention one metaphor in detail that will be relevant for the lu guang discussion later. one example is glasses as a perception metaphor. this meta was written in YE5, and YE6 continues the metaphor as well because we see lu guang wear clear glasses for the first time, symbolizing that he is no longer stuck in his rose-tinted glasses era of looking into the past, and has decided to look into the future, solidified by his decision to remove vein from the situation and also because he reveals later that this is the last time he can loop.

there are, of course, more examples. idk if I have links for existing meta on this, but we have hands as a metaphor for relationships (hand holding, handshakes, fist bumps, etc) and the power balance of each relationship (with regards to secrets, deals, etc). we have various color theories floating around. we have theater/cinema and chess as metaphors for everyone's narrative roles. lu guang's imaginary clock as a metaphor for how he thinks the timeline should go, and how it's prevented from running by red strings forming the word BRIDON. we even see the clock fall apart in one of the later episodes (I forget which one atm). hell I could write a whole meta on liu xiao's tetris game as a metaphor for how he sees the "game" he's playing and the role xia fei plays into all of it.

side note: I think it's incredibly valid for people to feel that yingdu did not have enough space to properly establish characters, and I feel the same way too. but at the same time, I think a lot of characterization also gets missed in yingdu because it's a season that loves its metaphors and encodes character motivations through it instead of just showing it to us. I have conflicting feelings about this, but ultimately, they only had 6 episodes to tell a story, and I think that's something we should always keep in mind when managing expectations.

circling back to vein's "death" and lu guang's role in it... visual metaphors are gonna be confusing if people don't know this is what yingdu's storyelling heavily uses. I don't think we should be reading yingdu the same way we did S1/S2.

someone could watch lu guang puppetering wang qing and think, "oh he's using her to kill vein directly" but if we stick to yingdu's storytelling style, it is more likely a metaphor for him learning to manipulate the butterfly effect for his purposes (again also symbolized by the glasses metaphor, since he wears clear glasses in the same episode)

scenes should also not be taken out of context. there is a reason he made a whole speech about the butterfly effect first. a small change (delaying vein) results in a big change (killing vein). if lu guang was controlling wang qing or whatever, that is not a small change. that is not a butterfly effect. we literally had a butterfly land on lu guang's shoulder after he made this speech to vein. the point was to create a butterfly effect that would lead to a situation where vein dies.

and for my final tangent: this sets us up perfectly for S3 because I believe lu guang and liu xiao are supposed to be narrative foils.

they both have expressed wanting control over the timelines. liu xiao wants "to make uncertainties into certainties" (whatever this means) and lu guang wants "to make certainties (cheng xiaoshi's death node) uncertain." but as of S1 and S2, lu guang was not yet in a position to properly rival liu xiao over this theming, because we know he's been timelooping and failing over and over to save cheng xiaoshi, while liu xiao has been successfully manipulating people into doing things for him (getting li tianchen to retrieve liu min's phone for him; baiting cheng xiaoshi to go to bridon so he can use him to bait wang qing to revealing where she hid the location of cheng weimin's notebook so vein can steal it).

now, lu guang has shown some semblance of control. and we have seen the effects of it. cheng xiaoshi is still alive and well in a post-S2 post-yingdu timeline.

I mentioned this way back in YE2, but there's also a distinct change in the way we're moving from "closed loops" to "butterfly effects" as a theme in yingdu. yingdu has many objectives it wanted to do as a season, but the main one was lu guang learning to manipulate the timelines through creating a butterfly effect. in keeping with this theme and objective, it just does not make sense for him to kill vein by somehow directly controlling wang qing.

[entropicbias]

star trek online with a youtube video.

(note, this is an old post, but i've decided to do more blogging like this here, so i remembered it.)

i decided to try out star trek online and live out my trekkie fantasies the other day. my first run in with the game was eons ago at a thrift store, but my current laptop is lacking a cd player, so i couldn't really try it out for sure. i don't know if it would work anyways considering it's a copy of the game from, what, 2010? what would be the point of that.

the first star trek game i ever played was the TNG game for the snes. i emulated it on my shitty old laptop. it was unfortunately a bust, cause i had no idea what i was doing.

speaking of tng, before i do my review, did you know a certain somebody used to make tng edits? can you recognize that flute sample?

anyway, my best friend dave (who doesn’t even have a tumblr) brought it up, assuming i’d never heard of star trek online. TCH! who do you think i am, you simpleton? naturally, i had to flex on him. whipping out the cd like some kind of seasoned star trek online veteran just to make a mockery of him. but really, the joke is on me, because let’s be honest, no one takes a self-proclaimed star trek online expert seriously.

so, i downloaded it off steam and ignored all the mixed reviews! i didn't stay in character creation for too long, but i tried to make him resemble me as much as possible. that's because my character's name is john kirk. he is john tiberius kirk.

john t. kirk of the u.s.s johnterprise. because enterprise is a restricted word (STUPID AND LAME?)

here is what i was greeted to.

quite frankly, i'm a little upset at the amount of diversity aboard. already i am seeing TWO vulcans. this is absurd. there is only one vulcan that should be aboard my ship, and he hasn't finished downloading the game yet.

OK! TIME TO PLAY THE FREAKIN' GAME FOR REAL! :D

after picking some of my skills (i chose to be aggressive, pistol handy, and uhh... i forgot the other one but believe me when i say it was good.)

i am meet this son of a bitch

captain...? CAPTAIN? OF THE JOHNTERPRISE? THE HELL YOU ARE! GET YOUR FALLOUT CLAYMATION ASS OFF OF MY FREAKING CHAIR! i thought you started out as captain? what is the point of naming my ship if i don't even get to be captain??? i need to show this guy who is BOSS.

the second thing i figured out about this game, is that if you walk into an object and believe in yourself you can actually gyrate with skill akin to that of a zumba instructor. so, i immediately had to gyrate next to captain isaac carrot to put him in his place.

it was a massacre for garrett. if i was you, "captain", i'd hang my head in shame and go back to being an ensign from being so hopelessly outmatched. it was also at this point i remembered that i could record my gameplay, which countered my ability to remember that my computer's cpu couldn't properly cool itself and i hadn't turned on my laptop fan. so amidst scanning some debris, my computer shat itself and died.

AND THEN RECORDED THE REST OF MY GAMEPLAY! watch it here. https://youtu.be/eeEs0el8Woo?si=djN9iLpkH3bGwNle there is some impossibly hard to read commentary there, and you may be wondering why i don't talk, and that's because i sound like bart simpson, so it's best that you just squint your eyes and pretend like morgan freeman's sultry voice is narrating my captions. if you do not want to sit through half an hour of shitty footage, then feel free to skip to 24:47 where i realize that you do not get a chance to meet captain kirk at the end of your first rodeo, and it genuinely breaks my heart. that is todays post, goodbye. update from jan 2025: i haven't touched the game since because i realized that i was just not going to be all that invested if most of the gameplay was from outside of the ship and i didn't have my very own personal spock.

-eb

[anamericangirl]

Long message ahead (sorry about that LOL):

It's so insane to me how the left will constantly claim to be the pro-woman party and then turn around to tell any woman who disagrees with them that they hope said woman dies in some way or gets raped, and I'm not just talking about that repulsive ask you got. They'll say disgusting things like that even to other leftist women who disagree with them on only a handful of issues. But yeah, sure, they 100% care about the rights and safety of women. Totally.

If I'm honest, that's what "woke me up," so to speak, and I know I'm far from the first - the realization that they claim to want to protect "marginalized"/minority groups until someone from said groups disagrees. Then out come the violent threats and slurs that they reprimand others for or claim that conservatives are doing, thinking they can "revoke your [minority group] card" as if someone will stop being female or POC or homosexual/bisexual or disabled simply for disagreeing. Personally, I think it's them admitting that they use these characteristics as shields, so "revoking" them from those who dare to disagree makes them feel stronger. Since they put so much weight on the "community" aspect, they think kicking out anyone who disagrees will leave the opposition destitute and are implying minorities can't stand on our own.

I'll never stop pointing out that the only people who call minorities "marginalized" (defined as being treated as insignificant or peripheral) are leftists. The only people who are openly treating us as an unimportant second class are leftists, and they are the only ones who have ever consistently implied we are such in society ("you can never escape what we labeled you so that means we gotta either tear everything down and start again, or you can just live in fear").

Like I said, it's nothing new, but it's stopped shocking me when something makes them show their true colors. It just happens to be the election right now.

TLDR: minorities aren't "marginalized" because of Western society, leftists just labeled us that to say exactly what they think of us, and realizing this has freed me.

Also, your blog is awesome.

Well I am very glad you have escaped that toxic mindset and your eyes have been opened to how destructive and despicable the left really is.

They parade identity politics and thrive on the idea that how a person identifies themselves is the end all be all of their entire being and thus they present themselves as a group who is pro-every identity to look like they accept you based on identity alone. But that mask falls off once you dare disagree with them on one thing. Then you are the enemy. And that's because they really don't care about identity. They care about ideoloy and if your ideology doesn't match theirs, then they try to revoke your identity as if they own it and get to decide what it's acceptable for people of certain identities to believe or not believe.

And, as someone who fits into more than one identity they claim to be "pro", I have never been welcomed, accepted or tolerated by them because I don't have the opinions they want me to have.

When you get down to it, if you disagree with them, they are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, etc. and they collectively use more slurs than any other group I have ever seen. But they think it's ok because they're using them on people they don't like.

They aren't good people and I think more and more people are coming to that realization. They are their own worst enemy and their behavior will turn more people away then it will bring to them and that is the only good thing about them.

They attract a lot of people because they are good at publicly playing the empathy card and looking like they care but it doesn't take long to see the that's all bs when you really start watching them.

I am glad you have been freed from that and I'm glad you think my blog is awesome! I think you're awesome :)

[thediktatortot]

Imagine if this is what El saw when she would look into the Upside Down.

[tasmanianstripes]

People need to practice minding their own damn business

Don't come into people's inboxes giving unsolicited advice or criticizing their personal stuff. Don't reblog somebody's posts saying how much you hate it and their opinions.

Don't like somebody's characterisation, AUs or the kind of art they post? It might even annoy you?

Okay, cool. Go make your own post. Block them. Be a little hater about it to your friends. It's good for your soul!

But don't be goddamn rude to people. Don't make it their problem.

"I don't like what this artist likes mah mah mah"

Here's a wild idea;

Artists...don't need to cater to you. You are not entitles to their work. Nobody on the internet should coddle you and post only stuff you like.

Shocker, I know.

[zannolin]

you ever get an idea that is sooooo. arghhhhh bites into a roof tile and cries.

[inkskinned]

you said you were stuck in a time loop, which was fine. i feel like late-stage capitalism has us all in a time loop, ammiright? you came barging in at 5:33. in the morning. i hadn't even processed the idea of coffee.

but you had this look of utter panic in your eyes. terror like the ocean. you grabbed my cheeks. im in a time loop.

i don't know why in movies the first reaction is to deny it. when someone is panicking like that, it's not appropriate to ask them to calm down. it didn't matter if i believed it, what mattered was that you believed it so much that it was consuming you.

so here we are. i pour you some of the dark roast. "you look like utter and entire hell," i say.

you push your fingers into your eyes. "you always say that."

i try to think of something funny to say that i wouldn't have said on previous time loops, but jokes don't land without the proper timing (lol). "remind me to think -"

"-yeah, of a joke that only works in the future. and before you say anything, i know you're pissed i just stole your punchline." you bolt the coffee, which is wild. it's very hot. you don't seem to notice.

i blow on mine to cool it down. i both am very pissed at you and also i can't see you in this amount of panic without wanting to help. but i'm also not really sure what we are, not since i saw you kiss her like that, no offense. it just was like, kind of rude when you knew i liked you.

and besides. i'm just like, barely a person. i write omegaverse fanfiction. i love the concept of a time loop, but what the fuck am i gonna do? send an alpha in there? i open my mouth.

you point at me. "you're about to ask why me. and then say some disparaging shit about yourself. i'm just a nerd who plays dnd or something. that self-own is slightly different each time." you sigh. "i know you think you can't really help me. i don't know who can help me. i only came to you because you fucking believe me." you check your watch, sigh, and throw your head back. you cover your eyes with one hand. "i've come here on 26 separate revolutions," you say. "you have believed me every time. and yeah, i have no idea how you fit into this but i just -" you sigh again. "i just like fucking talking to someone about it."

"do you need more cof-" i start, but you're already holding the empty cup out. i frown at it. "you're not getting any more until you promise not to bolt this one like an animal."

you laugh a little and sit up, pushing your hair out of your face. "okay, that's new dialogue. but to be fair to you, i'm not usually this rude. i'm still pretty new at all of this." you check your watch again. another sigh. i guess you're cruising for a personal best in the Sigh Olympics.

i almost tell you im not an NPC but i've played enough video games to know i'm very much an NPC. i pour you another cup. "so what happens in the loop?"

"really bad explosion." you mutter into the mug. you put your elbows on the table (rude) and bury your face in your arms like an angsty teenager. one hand floats up while you talk, because evidently you literally can't talk without your hands. "i have to save the day and there's this bomb and i have no bomb training and it keeps moving, you know."

"do i die?"

you peek up from your arms. "yeah. bigtime. you keep trying to run or stay or do anything and you always super die."

"oh."

"to be fair, like, everyone dies in it though.... so you're in good company."

i hate that you make me laugh. i hate that being around you always feels tingly and strange, this electric tension between us. something that is evidently (given how you stuck your tongue down a stranger's throat literally 3 days ago) (well. 3 for me) super one-sided. i take a sip of my coffee and close my eyes.

i die today, i guess. a little spark of panic starts at the top of my hands and starts whipping up my wrists.

"shit," you say. you look at your watch and jump to your feet. "i have to go. if i can come back, i will. i am still trying to figure out when is best to do everything, you know? the order of stuff. maybe morning isn't good for us."

i look up at you and think about how you keep kissing me in the back of my car and in alleyways and in the dark. and i can never fucking get a read on you. and i also think about how incredibly panicked you look. how broken. how long have you been doing this? "i don't want to die," i say.

you glance downwards. "well, you're not really dead, you'll come back in the loop."

"but i will have died." my hands are shaking. i am trying really hard to stay calm.

you push your hands through your hair again. "i really have to go. i will have this discussion with the next version of you, though. it is like, something i am thinking about."

"but i don't get a next version," i say. i don't really have the language for this, because i haven't had 26 tries with you. i only have my memories: you, a week ago. drunk and telling me you loved me in my ear. you, kissing her anyway. you, months ago, throwing up on my birthday, whispering to me i ruin everything i touch, always, over and over. please don't ask. i can't ever fucking have that be you.

i run my finger along the rim of the mug. "i don't want to die in this one."

you seem baffled by this. "i get that but - time will reset, you'll be fine, you won't even remember we talked about this."

"but i know now." i stand up too. "i have to live the rest of this day knowing i could die. knowing i probably am going to."

"you could always die, to be fair."

i feel my hands get out of control. "earlier, you said i always say a different insult about myself. what if you're just going through different parallel universes and those are all just different - but real - versions of myself? what if you're not in a time loop, you're in a fucking universe loop?"

"if it helps, i've wondered this too. also, you're hot in all of them. if that helps."

i point at you. "no flirting. i'm trying to figure out if i die today."

"who's flirting?" you catch my wild hands and give me that long, perfect smile. like we're in this together. "i won't let ya die." you check your watch and sigh again. "well. maybe not this time."

i grit my teeth. you are so not making quips at me while i try to explain the existential dread i'm having. "does the time loop reset if i fucking kill you?"

"honestly i don't know how long it continues after i die, because i just wake up. it could be that the loop goes until the explosion for everyone, and we're all in the loop, or it could be that when i die, the loop restarts. when i die i wake up, is all."

i pull away from you and stalk into the kitchen and start doing all 3 of my dishes. "okay, first, you know i was joking. and secondly, this is exactly my point. you don't know if this is just a parallel universe. maybe in the ones where you died, the explosion happened and nobody reset and it's just you travelling." i have to stop and push the heel of my palm into my eyeball. "... how often have you died?"

i look at you. you look at me. you give me this very sad, halfway smile and a little what can ya do shrug. something in that action seems so old and weary that i want to burst into tears.

"i have to go," you say. "really. for real. there's this family of five i save from getting into a car crash. and i know it's like oh but we're all gonna die in the explosion anyway, what's the point. and..." you shrug again. "it matters to me, is all. at least i saved them for now. at least i saved anything."

you pad over to me and wrap me in a tight hug. you always seem so tall against me. i feel your cheek rest against the top of my head for a moment. for a second, it's just us, and the space is warm, and my heart is a little broken hare.

you leave me there, and i stand in my stupid badly lit kitchen with my stupid mugs. i think about you. i start texting my mom that she needs to get out of the city, but it feels pointless.

i don't know what to do. tomorrow is the same day for you. but i have to prepare to die in my today.

[gravegoer]

OMG sevika x reader who fills in for silco after he dies?? 🤍 but sevika is oddly shocked at her kindness—

Sevika's boss ꩜

i absolutely love this idea ! sevika pledging her loyalty to you whilst you pledge yours to her !! so this is how you met + how you treat her on the job.. and off (i fear silco didnt provide a safe work environment)

visit my masterlist HERE , part 2

Zaun needed a new leader, and you just so happened to be the second in line to the throne.

You had the option to throw Sevika out if you really wanted a different right hand man. But in your opinion, if she worked for SIlco; she would work for you.

You'd never met her before, only heard the things that Zaunites whispered about her on the street

" She took on three men at the last drop yesterday. I think Silco put her up to it. "

" The way she looked at me made me think I was going to meet my end. "

Silco was no gentle ruler, he was strong and fierce. You could only imagine how he treated his goons, and and only Gods know how he treated Sevika.

You sat in his office chair, displeased with the scattered papers on his desk and the old whiskey in a glass that now smelled rank.

You had called her in to have a chat, so that you knew who you were really working with. Not knowing what to expect; you watched as the door creaked open and you nervously drew in a quick breath.

In walked a tall woman, definitely over 6', obviously muscular with one prosthetic arm. Your eyes traveled up to her face, and now you knew why everyone talked about her gaze. It was steely and almost frightening. She looked you up and down with something in her eyes that you couldn't place. Her skin was littered with scars, the biggest one was smack dab across her cheek. How intimidating.

You spoke to her, firmly but gently, "As you know, I'm taking over for Silco until things can be.. sorted out-"

She cut you off with a brisk, "Get to the point."

You eyed her full lips as she said this, the gap between her teeth was more prominent when she spoke. Not to mention her husky voice, she sounded tired but with still a hint of determination.

"I'm not demoting you or anything, just so you know," you spoke while raising an eyebrow at her, "I just wanted to get to know you before I start ordering you around, y'know?"

She narrowed her eyes at this statement. Its obvious she expected you to immediately ask her to do things for you the way she did for her former boss. Always running around the city cleaning up his mess, fighting his battles. But no. You weren't Silco. There was something different in the air around you.

Now that you've officially met its time to put this girl to work !!

She was almost always available. This concerned you. If you asked for her presence she would be there within minutes. It was like she was waiting for you at the door 24/7.

This made you bring up off days to her, "You know, if you ever need time off or anything don't hesitate to ask me. I don't bite"

She was confused at your willingness to let her do nothing but sit around while you did the work. And even after you said this she never asked to be called off.

"Okay, you know what. If you're injured after a mission don't even think. About trying to leave your house," You called her in to run some errands but what she didn't tell you is that she got stabbed roughly in her side the night before.

This made her angry, did you think she was weak? You're making her take a break because she didn't do her job good enough for you? Trying to cut her pay by putting her out of work?

But no, surprisingly in the next few days you sent her out again, and when she came back you slid a hefty bag of coins her way. She questioned your ways but she wasn't complaining.

You tried never ask absurd or unnecessary things of her. If you needed to talk with someone in the city you would go down and do it yourself. She caught you out one day, talking to a shop owner about prices.

"Why the hell are you out without me."

You turned around to meet her eyes (also having to crain your neck to look up at her.) "Well, I don't need a body guard to walk around you know that right?" You said, tilting your head to the side.

She drug her hand over her face at this, "You could have asked me to do it for you, I'm free. Plus don't you know anyone could be trying to get at you? Are you an idiot?"

"I can handle myself Sevika. But if you're soo worried about me ill let you come next time," You teased before turning around to speak to the owner again.

She grumbled to herself before taking a seat in one of the old chairs behind you and crossing her arms. If you didn't know any better you would think a small embarrassed blush kissed her cheeks.

When you walked around in the streets with you she always walked behind you, looming over your shoulder. Sometimes you thought she would start barking if anyone came up to you. You slowed down a bit to match her pace before latching onto her arm.

Her body tensed at your touched and she looked down at you, though you didn't meet her gaze as you continued looking forward. The neon lights illuminating the angles of your face. She shook her head at your willingness to touch her, but didn't comment on it.

You felt the flex of her bicep when she tensed up at your fingers. Her arm was hot under your touch and you could feel the scars that littered her skin.

This became routine, when Sevika walked you home late at night she would get comfortable enough to drape her arm around your shoulder, her poncho sheltering you from the cold.

And yes, she started walking you home at night because she stayed in your office to keep you company whilst you did paperwork into the late hours. Saying, "Its the least I could do since you don't let me do it for you."

Lighting a cigarillo she sat on the couch, putting her feet up on the coffee table. The smoke wafted from her position to your nose, the smell oddly comforting.

When you groaned and dropped your head into your hands it was her queue to get up and pull your chair out from your desk.

"Its too late, you should get home."

Sometimes you'd fall asleep in at your desk, but this was no problem. Sevika would pick you up, gently as to not disturb you and carry you to your home. And she was careful to walk through quieter places in the city so that the hustle and bustle of people didn't wake you.

And yes she tucks you in.

If you really insisted on staying to do paperwork she would grumble a few curses but stay anyway.

You were starting to grow on her. Maybe being cuter than Silco gave you some brownie points.

thank you for reading ! if you sent an ask in the past few days, don't worry, I'm getting to them all :) I appreciate all the support !! ♡♡

[dravidious]

I think you're really great

Just wrapped up the signposts this morning!

[incorrectbatfam]

One thing I rarely see in injury and chronic pain fics is the grief that comes with missing out on stuff you love because you can no longer do them without hurting yourself. Writers who have been disabled their whole lives (or at least a long time) tend to forget that not all disabled people are used to being disabled. For able-bodied characters, especially athletic ones like vigilantes, a serious injury could mean a jarring change that includes giving up the things that mean the most to them.

I was physically fine until I was 18. Back then, my sense of self was entwined with interests that required a lot of movement and dexterity. I started doing MMA in middle school for self-defense. I loved parkour and even had a few hundred subscribers on my old YouTube channel. I learned to shoot and was gifted my first gun when I was 16. I took up multiple instruments. You get the idea.

My motorcycle accident fucked up the joints on my left side—my knee and shoulder especially, but also wrist to an extent. When it first happened, I thought I'd be on crutches for a bit but things would eventually get back to normal. The pain didn't go away even after I got rid of the crutches but I figured it was just residual and I should do what I'd been doing before. It's why I turned to substances—to block the pain and do what I love, but that's another topic. I didn't recognize my injury as a disabling thing until the end of the pandemic, when I put my parkour channel on an indefinite hiatus because it was seriously wearing my body down. It might sound silly to you but I was devastated. It's like if Spider-Man wasn't allowed to swing from buildings. It took me a long time to make peace with losing that part of me.

Another piece of that grief is even when you can do stuff, it's not the same because you have to exclude certain aspects of it for your own health. It's like the Robin that died and came back wrong. I can't use certain gym equipment and I have to tell my sparring partners what to avoid. I don't go to the shooting range much now because I can't extend my arm and hold a rifle for the amount of time it takes to aim without it starting to hurt. I'm a drummer, but I need breaks throughout the setlist and I can't do anything too fast or complex with the pedals, which means I can't play some of my favorite songs and my band is limited in what we write and perform. I can't take my motorcycle on road trips without frequent rest stops. Making accommodations helps physically, but emotionally, they're not always easy to accept because that means accepting the pain as a long-term disability rather than a temporary setback.

This got super long because I think it's unexplored in fics so some tips for creators:

First, learn how the body works and how stupidly fast and easy it is to get hurt. Mine was on a residential road because I didn't pay attention for 0.2 seconds

Learn the difference between internalized ableism and being upset over becoming disabled. I think a lot of writers skip over the feelings someone would naturally experience because it can be construed as ableism. Let them be in denial, sad, angry, etc. upon finding out because acceptance almost never happens right away. That's different from being a dick to themselves or others based on disability

Also, not everyone uses the same labels or has the same vocabulary to describe themselves. Different characters will have different ways of describing depending on their personality, level of knowledge, where they come from, and their relationship with their disability. I still don't really call myself disabled since I don't have it as bad as others so I tell people what happened instead (anyone who says "differently abled" will receive a different ability from me in the Denny's parking lot)

Think about how they cope with their new disability. Do they realize it's a disability right away? Do they talk to someone? Search desperately for a cure? Numb the pain? Turn to alternative methods? Do they worry about something else first, like money? Do they develop something else because of it, like a mental illness? Again, coping poorly is not ableism

What stays the same and what changes? I think about the difference between Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan after they were both wounded in battle

If they have a passion they can no longer pursue, it doesn't make much sense for them drop it so readily. Maybe they find a way to continue with accommodations (a good place to get creative!). Maybe they try and push through anyway. If they do ultimately resign, include the thought process and internal conflict behind it

[charmedimsure]

dae-ho x f!reader where they just met in the games and they obviously had a connection so they went to the bathroom

and when they were kissing someone came in and caught them (you can choose who) and then they tease them about it when they come out

(if you’re uncomfortable with smut it doesn’t have to be smut!!)

NOT A WORD || kang dae-ho

pairing: Kang Dae-ho x f!reader

summary: You and Dae-ho share a moment in the bathroom

word count: 1.4k

warnings: squid game stuff, 18+

A/N: this is the closest i will get to writing smut. if you see any mistakes no you didn't <3

You walk into the bathroom, rubbing your eyes with your hands. It had been a long day. First one of your friends died in Mingle, then the vote on whether to stay or go home was split 50/50, meaning tensions have never been higher.

You look up, pausing when you see the urinals. The guard could've at least guided you to the correct restroom. Instead, they just brought you to two doors, one with a triangle and one with a square. You chose the wrong one, apparently. Still, there are stalls, so whatever.

After you go, you come out of the stall, turning the knob of the sink to wash your hands. You look in the mirror at yourself. You wish you could take back all of those times that you apologized for looking like a mess. All those times you have never come close to how you look now. Your hair is a knotted mess, and the smudges of at least four day old mascara is smeared under your eyes, making you look gaunt.

With a huff, you comb your fingers through your hair, trying to get out as many knots as you can. The loose strands fall from your head, and you grimace as you watch them pile up in the sink. That's... a lot of hair. You turn the faucet back on, letting it go down the drain. It'll be their problem now.

The door to the bathroom opens and you jump. When a familiar face walks in, you relax.

"Thank god it's just you," you sigh.

Dae-ho gives you a confused look. "Why are you in the men's room?"

You roll your eyes. "I've just always really wanted to try pissing in a urinal," you deadpan.

The man smirks. "You walked into the wrong bathroom?"

"Yep."

He chuckles, going over to one of the stalls and locking the door.

You look back at yourself in the mirror, trying to make yourself look at least a little presentable. You rub under your eyes, trying to get the makeup off of your face, but if anything it just smudges even more.

Dae-ho comes out of the stall, walking to the sink next to you and washing his hands. He looks at you, a small frown on his face. "What's wrong."

"I'm trying to get this off but it won't budge," you say, throwing your hands in the air with a huff. Two hands grab your waist and you involuntarily let out a small squeal as you're lifted up.

Dae-ho sets you down so that you're sitting on the edge of the sink, you're back facing the mirror. He runs the sink next to yours, pulling his sleeve over his hand and running it under the water.

"What are you doing?"

"This is how my sisters take their's off when they run out of makeup wipes," he says, bringing his damp sleeve to your face. With the sleeve over his thumb, you watch him as he gently wipes under your right eye. You relax, opting to watch his face as he focuses.

"What do you think's gonna happen tomorrow with the vote?" you ask.

Dae-ho sighs. "I wish I could say we'll win, that we'll finally go home, but I have no idea." He puts his sleeve over his other hand, running under the water before copying his motions under your other eye. "Gi-hun says there's gonna be a fight tonight. That's why they gave us the forks with dinner today, they want us to kill each other."

"Sick fucks," you mumble. You wish you could say you're surprised, but nothing here really surprises you anymore. It's silent for another mminute before you speak again. "I'm going to die tonight."

Dae-ho gives you a concerned look. "Why do you say that?"

"I can play kids games, but I don't have the strength to fight off someone who's trying to kill me. The moment someone grabs me, I'm dead."

Dae-ho finishes cleaning your makeup off, wiping the wet areas with the dry part of his sleeves. "You know we're not gonna let that happen, right?"

You shrug.

Dae-ho cups your face with both hands, forcing you to look at him. "Listen to me. You are not going to die tonight. I'll protect you, I swear on my life."

Tears start to well up in your eyes. "And what if they get you?" You take a deep, shaky breath. "I don't want you to die."

You and Dae-ho had found each other during the first game. He kept you behind him, and you helped him know when to stop so he wouldn't get caught. When he joined Gi-hun's team, he brought you along.

"I don't want you to die, either," he whispers. He slides his hands down your arms, holding your hands in his.

A small smile appears on your face. "At least I'll die having watched the best game of Gong-gi ever played."

Dae-ho lets out a chuckle, his cheeks turning red as he looks away. When he looks back at you, the softness in his eyes nearly makes you melt.

"In case we die tonight," he says softly, "in case these are our last few hours alive, let me do something I've been thinking about since our first day here."

His eyes flicker to your lips and you gasp slightly. He looks back up to your eyes, silently asking permission, and you nod.

He closes the distance between you, breathing you in as he cradles your face. You bring your hands up to thread into his hair, kissing him back eagerly. If you're going to die tonight, this is how you want to spend your last moments.

His tongue teases your lips and you part them slightly, allowing him access. You lightly tug on his hair, the groan he lets out as a result going straight to your core.

Fuck, you need him right now.

Without breaking the kiss, you move your hands away from his hair, unzipping his jacket and pushing it over his shoulders. He takes his hands away from you for a moment to let the article fall to the floor before his hands attach to your hips. He steps closer to you, your bodies flush against each other.

He moves away from you lips, leaving open-mouthed kisses down your throat that have you gasping. His hands lift the hem of your shirt, rising underneath to roam your bare skin. You throw your head back as his lips travel lower and low-

"Oh shit!"

The voice breaks you out of the moment, your head whipping around to look at the door. Jung-bae stands at the entrance to the bathroom, eyes moving back and forth between you and Dae-ho. You freeze, along with the man whose hands are still underneath your shirt.

"Uhh, I'll just go. You two have fun," he walks out, a small smirk on his face.

Dae-ho is still looking at the door when he feels your stomach moving under his hands. He looks at you, a small smile spreading on his face when he sees your quiet laughter. He breaks into laughter as well, removing his hands from you.

"At least it was just him," you chuckle. "Imagine it was that old man."

Dae-ho laughs harder, picking his jacket up off of the ground. Instead of putting it on himself, he wraps it around your shoulders, taking your hips in his hands to help you off the counter.

Once your feet are back on the ground, you reach for the back of his neck, planting another kiss on his lips. "If we get out of here, we'll continue this."

Dae-ho nods, a smile on his face as he kisses your temple. You take his hand, walking to the door of the bathroom. When you leave, you spot Jung-bae leaning against the wall. As soon as he sees you, a smirk decorates his face. He opens his mouth to talk but you hold up your hand, stopping him.

"Not a word, Jung-bae," you threaten.

The man holds up his hands in surrender, the smirk still on his face as he enters the bathroom.

You sigh and shake your head, looking at Dae-ho and breaking out into another chuckle before walking back to your quarters.

Dae-ho tags: @whatthefuckeryfuckityfuck @ally1uvsu @hiphip-horray @k1michii @tpwkcaryslizb @louissst28 @sshwaa @jennwonwoo @sunnysurvives @lalalaa2210 @tayshs @sunshinethatlooksalive @plntmxrss @lxnnrobin @mariaxman @alexx-iia @batty-barty-crouchjr @kxsm3t @takuma-talkz @peacemakersbeloved @skywalker0809 @soobinbunnie5 @dragons-h0ard @silas-222 @putrescentpoet @chrisgetsmewetter

Squid Game tags: @thebiggestigurosimp @vvnbxz @lov3yy @miltzzy @l5byrinth @come-as-you-are-111 @starkeyszn @learninglinesintherainn

lmk if you want to be added to the tags! (lmk which one)

[sgtgarricks]

thinking about free use!johnny...

afab!reader

cw: free use, p in v, overstimulation!!!!!!!!, creampie, degradation but with love, soap being nasty, reader is also nasty, i am reader.

no one look at me.

johnny who starts dating you, who was always flustered and shy when it comes to initiating sex. he doesn't always catch when you ogle him, but when he does, he jumps immediately at the chance.

johnny who coos and nips at you when you wouldn't stop staring at his crotch. he thinks it's so adorable that you're still so shy around him even after dating him for months.

johnny who slowly takes your hand, kisses your fingers and places it on his hardening cock.

"is this what you want bonnie? you need me to fuck you?" he starts kissing your neck slowly when you give him a nod and press yourself closer to him.

johnny who gets a brilliant idea that he brings up to you on a random night.

"what do you think, hen? i think it'd be a great way for you to get more comfortable in asking for it!" he was propping his head on one hand, seemingly unfazed after the intense fucking he gave you few minutes prior.

"i-i'm not sure, johnny... isn't that kinda... degrading for you?" you question, eyes wide staring into johnny's baby blues. unexpectedly, he guffaws and brings a hand to your cheek.

"you're so silly bonnie, course not. 'm offering it for a reason, you don't have to do anything with ir. just know it's always on the table." you squeak when he pinches your cheek and the little shithead just grins at you.

"okay... so, anytime i want? are you sure?"

"aye, i'm sure. anytime you want."

free use!johnny who's genuinely surprised you're taking him up on his offer. it starts off slowly, you snuggle closer to him and mouths at his neck. his neck is slightly damp from the slow kisses you pepper everywhere.

normally, this is where he'd drop everything to pleasure you. but seeing you so needy for him and the thought of you having to beg him for what you want, gets his cock throbbing in his pants.

"johnny..." you whine in his ear, positioning yourself fully on his lap now, "need you so bad..."

and just like that his patience snaps. he flips you over on the couch and takes his shirt off, exposing his delicious abs that you sit up to lick. he holds your head while you continue to grope him all over.

"mmm, so needy... don't worry, 've got ye." he slowly removes you from him and you begin to protest when he places his mouth on your panties. your complaint dies out as you let out a long moan. he rubs you over your panties and places kisses all over your wet pussy.

"so fuckin' wet for me, bonnie." you try to push his head deeper into your pussy and he laughs, "you gotta ask for it." he teases you and runs a finger over your clothed folds.

"johnny, please! want your mouth and fingers in me!" you hear fabric tearing as his mouth latches on your clit. two of his thick fingers slide right in from how wet you are.

"oh, fuck... so good, johnny." you grind your hips into his mouth as his fingers keep pace, fingers curled hitting that gooey spot inside you. he's slobbering all over you, his own hips grinding into the bed.

you feel lightheaded from the stimulation, eyes closing and back arching. johnny's fingers move faster as he makes out with your drooling pussy.

"cum for me, bonnie." and you cum hard. pussy clenching his fingers tightly as juices squirt out all over his fingers and mouth. johnny lets out a moan and instead of stopping moves faster as you come down from your orgasm.

you breathe heavily as johnny slows down. he kisses your pussy gently before coming up to kiss you deeply. you can feel his cock still hard in his pants, but as your hand trails down, his hand stops you.

"not tonight. 'm so proud of you, bonnie." he places a gentle kiss on your forehead and cuddles you.

free use!johnny who, after putting the deal on the table begins to have more sex in a week than he could've imagined. before, you were getting fucked at least four times in a week, but now? he felt like he had unlocked something in you.

the first few weeks, you were still as shy as usual. initiating with slow kisses, pinching his butt, groping his arms. he was more than happy to indulge you. you were getting more confident and it made him happy.

free use!johnny who knows he definitely unleashed a fiend. you were insatiable, kneeling down and unzipping johnny's pants as he was watching the telly.

your head is bobbing up and down on his cock as johnny throws his head back in pleasure. you were drooling and slobbering all over his cock, tears in your eyes and johnny thinks you're the most beautiful person he's ever seen.

he let you set the pace for a few moments before losing control and thrusting into your hot mouth. you choke a little at the thick intrusion but push through as johnny's pace becomes ragged.

"such fuckin' good for me, hen... lettin' me fuck your mouth." you moan at his words, moving faster and licking all over his shaft. johnny whines at the feel of your tongue and thrusts a few more times.

you feel a his hot cum spurting down your throat and you gag at the sudden feeling. johnny groans, both hands gripping your head to keep it still.

after he let out the last few spurts, you slowly remove yourself and lick your lips. johnny was still recovering when you plopped on his lap, kissing his cheeks.

"thank you, johnny."

johnny, still coming down from his high and dazed, can only nod.

"anything f' you."

free use!johnny who doesn't think there would come a day where his cock might actually need a break. the two of you had been fucking like rabbits whenever there was a chance. before he left for work, when he came home, whenever you could find him, you would be on him.

johnny had only taken one step inside the apartment when you immediately dragged him to the couch and sat on his lap.

"bonnie-"

you tug his soft cock out of his pants and slide it along your already wet folds. he grunted when he felt how wet you were, hands immediately grabbing your hips as his tip slides into your warm heat.

"fuck, johnny... you're so big..." you grind your hips into his, matching his thrusts. his thighs were meeting yours with every rise as you use him.

"yeah? y'like my cock?" he grits, fingers playing with your clit.

"y-yeah.. l-love your cock!"

"it's yours, baby.. so take it." he pounds deliciously into your squelching pussy, his tip hitting your cervix. you can feel every throb inside your walls.

neither of you were going to last long, you'd been wet thinking about him all day and the way he keeps hitting your gooey spot has stars dotting your vision.

"'m gonna cum.." you warn him as he begins to move even faster.

"cum for me. cream on my fucking fat cock, baby. make a mess of it." his lips latches onto your nipple, tongue swirling and sucking as his finger draws circles on your clit.

johnny feels when you cum and it draws out his climax. he groans as he can feel cum spurt from his softening cock. he gives one last thrust, plugging you tightly.

he rests his head on your shoulder, panting heavily. he kisses your shoulder gently and was about to slowly pull out when you begin to move again.

your eyes were closed with your hands around his neck when you begin to slowly grind on him again. he groans at the overstimulation, his cock still throbbing.

"fuckin' minx you are..."

"johnny.. please..."

he doesn't think he has anything left in his balls after you drained him. but he's a weak man. he can never say no to you. grunting, he begins to move his hips again.

"so fucking needy... that why you were so shy, hen? didn't want me to know how much you loved my cock?" he says in your ear, regaining his stamina to pull you down onto him as he thrusts up.

"such a slut for my cock, aren't you?" you can't speak. your mouth was perpetually open, head thrown back in pleasure. your thighs were shaking from exhaustion but you couldn't stop yourself from slamming back onto johnny.

he stops moving when you don't respond and you immediately indulge him.

"y-yeah, 'm a slut johnny.. l-love your cock so much!"

he flips you over so you're on your back. you whine when he slips out and he shushes you. he grabs your legs and moves you into a mating press. when he slips back in you gush around him. the couch was positively defiled with how you two were going at it.

"gonna be the death of me.." he mumbles. he was sweating profusely and were you not in a mating press you would've leaned up to smell him. you let him pound you into the couch, content to just lay there and take what he gives you.

it doesn't take long for you to feel your climax coming, your thighs begin to shake and your walls begin to pulsate. instead of speeding up, johnny slows down. opting to lean almost all the way out, before thrusting deeply. each motion sends a glob of his cum out of your pussy and you moan.

eventually, your back arches and you reach your high. your climax triggers johnny's as he cums once more inside your ruined pussy. the both of you weren't speaking anymore, too fucked out to say anything.

he slowly pulls out of you, wincing slightly. he tries to get up but fails and ends up collapsing on your chest. he mumbles something about his balls running out of cum and closes his eyes.

you laugh, content and stroke his hair gently.

"thank you, johnny."

"i think 'm gonna pass out now."

[hexiva]

Roleplay Is Not Dead Nor Doth It Sleep

There's a post going around about how text-based, freeform roleplay is dead, and I was typing up a huge response to this, with an accompanying guide on how to find roleplayer in 2024, when I realized it might have a bigger reach if I made it its own post. So here's that guide.

I hesitate to say that there isn't a problem with the new format of social media making roleplay more difficult to find, but in the desire to make that point, the OP of the original post has left people with the idea that there's no way for them to get into freeform text roleplay in 2024. Which just isn't true! Here, look at all the ways.

Forums

The link to RPG-Directory to find roleplaying forums is a good start. Once you've found a forum RPG, even if you don't join, there's usually an 'advertising' section on that forum where other forum RPGs post their ads - this may help you to find forums that don't advertise on RPG-D.

Another really good forum to find roleplay on is Barbermonger. Barbermonger is focused on connecting people for one-on-one roleplays.

This last one's going to be weird, but it turns out that there are still people seeking roleplay on the Gaia Online forums after all these years. I think this is delightfully retro and then crowd there seems a little older than average. No pre-existing knowledge of Gaia required.

Tumblr

You can also find forum roleplay groups (as well as tumblr and Discord groups) right here on Tumblr. Usually, the thing to do is to use the search function - search for "[genre] rp" or "[fandom] rp" and sort by "latest." (If you sort by Top, you are likely to find dead RPs.) For example, here's fantasy rp, historical rp, and marvel rp. You can also try jcink rp, as most roleplay forums are hosted on Jcink these days, or discord rp, depending on your favored platform.

There are also tumblr blogs specifically dedicated to advertising roleplays. I'm not super familiar with these nowadays, but just in the process of searching those tags above, I found these:

Jcink Tinder

RPG Adverts

RPings

There are more, I just don't know them off the top of my head.

Reddit

Listen, don't run away, I swear it's good now - I swear Reddit is good now -

Reddit is a good place to find Discord roleplays. It's a little heavier on smut-only roleplays than other platforms mentioned here, but it's not impossible to find sexless, plot-based roleplay here either. Most ads are for one on one RP, but you can find groups mixed in here too. The big subreddits for text-based freeform RP seem to be:

r/DiscordRP

r/RoleplayPartnerSearch

r/roleplaying

r/Roleplay

Some of these have weird rules about what you can put in your ad, and I don't remember which ones, so read carefully and don't get discouraged if your ad is initially removed.

Discord

In 2024, Discord is by far the biggest and most popular platform for roleplay, and it has its own native roleplay advertising hubs. Here are a bunch:

roleplay partner hub

Rockin Roleplay

The Roleplay Garden

roleplay help

the roleplay connection

RP Central

Roleplay Central

Roleplay Hub

Barbermonger also has a Discord server

Roleplay Meets: Reborn

RP Hub

The Scribes Guild

DM Rp Village

cherry blossom! roleplay hub

DM-RP

Roleplay Round Table (21+)

The Historical Syndicate (specifically for historical roleplay)

The Roleplayer's Directory

If you can't find the Discord roleplay you want on here, you can also try Discord hub websites, like Disboard. These work similar to tumblr tags - search for [genre] rp or [fandom] rp.

Other

The original post specifically mentions that 'all the old "omegle but for role play" type websites died out ages ago'. This is mostly true, but not quite! There's still Rolechat. It's a little janky, but what it needs more than anything is a bigger user base. Their Discord server is also a good place to find one on one discord roleplay. It is, of course, free, but if you want to support its development, they have a patreon.

Please reblog this post, and add your own tips on how to find roleplay!

[literalgrill]

Do NOT Support Hard Drive On Patreon

You might see friends today suggesting you support Hard Drive on Patreon today. You know, the funny video games version of The Onion? As a journalist, I will firmly tell you DO NOT GIVE THEM A DIME.

The CEO has pushed out all former staff that have built the site up to its current greatness and has been pushing the use of AI. The staff begged to have a Patreon before basically all being pushed out, but the idea was refused until now, when it will only line the pockets of a single person instead of hard working writers.

I know they might have provided laughs before, but Hard Drive is a shell of what it was once. Let it die and support the people who actually made those moments of joy possible. Don't believe me? Check out what former employees are saying below:

Kevin Podas: Okay you know what, I would feel bad saying nothing about this, so here goes:🚨SAVE YOUR MONEY🚨

We passionately advocated for a Patreon at Hard Drive & were aggressively shot down. The talent & people who built the site were pushed out. To see this now is beyond upsetting. For the past few years or so I put a lot of myself into this website. I pitched a ton of jokes, got over 120 articles published, & met a lot of great people. I'm sure if you've been following me for some time you could easily see this.

However, there is a lot of misinformation. I was eventually promoted to Managing Editor of the site & was ecstatic. Grateful for the opportunity. Felt like all of my hard work in the comedy mines was finally paying off. But things took a turn for the worst, & each day there were new surprises that affected our livelihoods. These were all very avoidable surprises, mind you.

A patreon was going to be our hail mary, but alas, for some reason, the power that be did not want it. Causing us to leave a dream job behind. "At least we did all we could," we consoled ourselves afterwards. I put a lot of myself into this project. I pitched all sorts of ideas that could have helped-- we all did. Merch collaborations, Patreon-integrated YouTube content, so much more. And most of them were shot down out of sheer stubbornness and nothing more. To see lie after lie spread, and multiple big publications and YouTubers that I am a fan of promote this Patreon under these pretenses is incredibly upsetting. There are so many receipts.

Please share this and consider pulling out if you've already put money into this. On Hard Drive using AI, also from Kevin Podas: I can't personally confirm that part aside from some of the recent header images for articles on both Hard Drive and Hard Times are being made with AI. As far as writing, it's been mentioned in the past, but I personally do not know. Maybe others do, maybe not. MORE From Kevin Podas suggesting the owner denying a Patreon being set up earlier cost an artist a job that was replaced by AI: We had a social media person who was awesome! He made the images until this AI implementation. He had to leave because ad revenue was low and a Patreon was aggressively refused.

Luca Fisher: at the risk of burning some bridges, i have to back up kevin here. i've only been part-time, in-and-out of hard drive since i got in last year, but i can corroborate that management doubled and tripled down about not hosting a patreon/crowdfunding and that many other suggestions and ideas, including mine (and ones much smarter than mine!), were shot down in really long, apocalyptic threads of everyone left on deck desperately trying to come up with ways to keep the lights on. managerially it has been messy and sad

i've written for multiple publications that have long since died, ones that were in the process of dying, and ones that, in this case, are soon to be put in the ground. it is sad and sucks every time. i don't know what could have been done differently, but i do know that a lot of great writers and content creators were left shorthanded and unhappy by the way things have gone. and it is sort of puzzling to see the sudden championing of patreon after we were all told plenty of times that it couldn't work and we should move on also, just to add my own personal two cents here, i was really disappointed by the shuttering of many different article sections on the site over the past 6-8 months. i understand cutting corners in a deficit, and i know it had to be done. that said…

all in all, i'm really sad to see this all happen. i don't fault anyone, if only because i don't really know enough about how this all can happen to make sense of it. games journalism is in a sad, sorry state, and will likely no longer be a thing in the next decade

VideoSealMan: I'm gonna say this because I think I deserve to. For months, MONTHS on end I was bugging Hard Drive management about a Patreon. Often I got ignored for a week+, but when I actually got a response I was encouraged to - of all things, write up a Google Doc pitching the concept I did it regardless. I wasn't the only one trying to sway management on a Patreon, but so fiercely was I fighting for it that last night, I was accused of making this comment directly by the CEO! With no evidence whatsoever! After I'd been gone for over a month.

I vouched so hard for Patreon because I wanted all the writers and creatives working with Hard Drive including myself to get paid better. When I actually got a response, the idea was often shut down. Eventually due to the state of my company, my pay was cut for a second time I confronted management alongside a couple other important figureheads at the org and told them that if we couldn't do a Patreon - I could no longer financially justify staying there. The answer was still no, so I left. Baffled at the decision, but whatever.

It is unendingly frustrating to know that myself and many other people who put their soul into Hard Drive LEFT because of management's absolute refusal to compromise on a Patreon, to then see them launch one anyway a month later and get over 1000 people pledging money. I'm seeing a lot of things float around about greed and people being fired. No one was fired. Everyone who left, left because they were sick of management's decision-making. And honestly, management is a lot of things but I would not call them greedy. (From my experience.) They did genuinely make an effort to pay people as much as possible. I found the pay very fair for a while. I am not disputing that I was paid what I was owed - yet management frequently feels the need to remind critics of that. Lmao, yes. I was paid what I was owed. No one is disputing payment. You did the bare minimum a business owner should do and paid everyone their due, very well done. I make no allegations of greed, cheating or foul play. I make allegations of poor management and incompetence that has fucked over other people.

Basically the only people left at Hard Drive have been there for about 2 months. They will reap the rewards of this successful Patreon I and so many others passionately fought for for so long. We will not see a dime.

I do not know the new people at Hard Drive, But I feel bad for them. They were haphazardly thrust into Hard Drive's workplace with little to no explanation on how anything works, or given any context on the state of the place. Even now managements feeds them half-truths and misinformation about other people's grievances. I am broke and have been for a while. I had to move out of my flat in Reading and back with my family because of how little money I was making. This has basically doomed my flatmate to moving back in with abusive parents, which is something I feel guilty about every day. If we had gone with the Patreon I worked myself hoarse over back then, this could have been avoided. Some of my other good pals could also not have been fucked over.

It was a bad judgment call, but it's not a crime. It's just management getting it wrong.

So should you give to the Hard Drive Patreon? I don't know! I don't think any of the new people working there to patch up the holes left by the recent mass exodus have any bad intentions. Maybe they deserve it! But it is not the same site you knew a year ago, or even a month ago. Myself and many people who were there far longer than me and did far more for it than I did are all gone now because we could not deal with management's terrible decision-making and dogass communication any longer. That's what you should know, imo

I had an agreement in place with management that I would receive the next 8 months of revenue from the Hard Drive YT channel from my leaving in November. This was a deal I appreciated, and thought was very fair on management's behalf. So far, the deal has been honoured for 2 months. However as of last night I was removed from the Hard Drive Slack without warning, and as an editor for the YouTube channel. This means I no longer have any way of verifying how much I am owed, I just have to take their word for it. I'm sure management will make their own statements full of half-truths and weird language on the many cases being brought against them - I'd take everything they say with a pinch of salt if some of the screenshots I've seen of them talking about me are any indication lol

To management; I do not want to talk to you. I want you to DM me a screenshot of how much I'm owed every month and then send me the money per our agreement until June, then we can go our separate ways. Do that and admit to your mistakes, and maybe you can recover your reputation! That's it from me, lol. If they pull out of the deal and fuck me over I'll have more to say, but most of what I know is other people's stories of incompetence and poor decision-making, lol. I genuinely get no pleasure out of doing this; I do not think management is evil - I just think they're really bad at what they do and it's cost other, more talented people, lol. You should believe the writers imo

One last thing I wanna say btw, management did often stress that no one should try to make Hard Drive a full time thing. They were transparent about that, and that is fair. I was working on it because at a few points, I was lead to believe we actually were doing a Patreon. Many other ppl have similar stories of being strung along by management changing their minds and stop-starting shit every 2 weeks. We all made the fatal mistake of overestimating our manager - who would tell you one thing one day and something totally opposite the next week lol

Hunter R. Thompson:

I'm not your dad, but speaking as a Hard Drive writer, I don't know that funding Hard Drive on Patreon is worth it

The driving talent on the back end—behind the kickass site I joined in 2019—have peaced out over the years as the site's been (in our view) increasingly mismanaged. Mismanagement like, not setting up crowdfunding before the ship sank and all its best crew failed; or publishing a screenshot of Andy Ngo pedojacketing a trans writer, complete with her deadname; or a disgruntled ex-writer getting falsely accused of shit-talk, by actual staff. I'm grateful for the writing I've gotten to produce for HD (and will forever be kicking myself for not writing even more, in the four years I've had to do it!! i'm a dumbass!!!) but it is very much no longer the site I signed up for.

I don't want to resign as a contributor altogether, because I'm open to the idea of the site recovering and bad practices being retired as finances level out-- it would just be dishonest for potential backers to not be Aware Of The Circumstances, I think.

Jeremy Kaplowitz: i truly don't want to start shit, but feel compelled to say: i want to see Hard Drive succeed w/o resorting to throwing former writers & editors, myself included, under the bus. surely there's a way to save the site without building it over the corpses of those who left. my $0.02 i don't blame anyone who wants to sign up for the HD patreon and i support the website, but that includes those who worked on it for years, have complaints, and don't deserve to be treated like bitter assholes like this kind of stuff is just objectively true, meanwhile there's these new writers who joined the site after i left (meaning, in the last ~3 months) claiming people are liars. decide for yourself if you care, but this is what happened! [Quotes this Tweet]

Seth Finkelstein: Writing for Hard Drive has been a privilege the past few years, and it makes me so angry to see people I looked up to get jerked around behind the scenes. The amount of grenades the editors jumped on our behalf is immense, and I don't think the way they're being treated is right.

Other Bits On AI: We do know for sure however that AI art has been used by the site. Its fucking owner confirms it here:https://twitter.com/MattSaincome/status/1743040541603123622. Seems the owner pushed AI written articles as well! TayFabe: My vaguetweet is making the rounds & these made me apoplectic. - owner regularly lobbied using ai. Once he tested it & said ai was writing better satire than 25% of the HT/HD writers. - ai images were used on the site & socials w/o consulting the team or disclosing it publicly I found the ai bit relevant to include bc 1) it illuminates a stark change in HD's current direction & leadership, 2) ai images have previously been used on the site and (since deleted) ig posts, 3) ai content fucking sucks, and repeatedly pushing to use it is a telling quality The "handful of writers who chose to leave" includes 2 editors-in-chief (both cofounders who wrote a combined total of >1,000 articles & defined the voice of HD), & at least 3 other editors. These guys put in WORK since 2017, so cool to be corrected by ppl who joined in Nov 2023 [Link to mentioned vague tweet from post.] More from TayFabe: owner continuously lobbied for using ai in every possible way. No one else wanted to do it, but he kept on, saying ai was writing better satire than 25% of the HT/HD writers. Also, ai images were used on the site & socials without public disclosure or consulting the team.

The owner has responded now multiple times in a private discord... Thank you for people sharing screenshots! First Screenshot:

Kevin's Response: He banned me from the server for speaking out, so no, I didn't see it. And he gave no indication of a timeline, it was just "we'll do one when *I* say so" and gave every inclination he was totally against it. It bred an environment that pushed our hands to have to leave. Screenshot Round Two:

Kevin's Response: "Starting one in 3 months" is an absolute lie. He denied it, I have screenshots and others who can confirm. No timeline was given. Just "this is what it is now" and like, I couldn't live off of that. I wanted to do more but he was allergic to good ideas from others around him.

Matt, owner of Hard Drive, responds publicly on Twitter.

Matt: Kevin, the patreon launch was delayed because I didn't think it would work. Everyone is happy that it did work. Everyone who left the site because we didn't have money to pay for creative content which didn't revenue is welcome to return home. But unclear why the hostility.

Hard Drive paid out literally every dollar it had, then a bunch more, to creative people who worked on the site. When we ran out of money, we couldn't pay anymore. We did our best.

Kevin: Right, and my point of this thread was that it was completely and totally avoidable. This is reasonable to be upset about. How could I have been any more clear?

Matt: If we knew with 100% certainly that the community would have supported us via patreon, we would have done that. We didn't know. We had tried 4 years ago and got no support. We were wrong this time. We did our best to figure it out. We paid all the money we could.

Kevin: So you knew with 100% certainty this time? Or you took a leap of faith?

Matt: It was a last gasp panic effort after ad rates got cut in half on january 1st due to seasonal spending changes. We didn't know it would work. We were embarrassed to ask for support. We wanted to figure it out.

Kevin: Every site has a Patreon. Every YouTuber, comedy group, etc. But you insisted that nobody cared about Hard Drive. Which is wildly untrue. I know you see that now, but again, I think you can see why I and many others are pretty upset. A last ditch panic effort was long overdue. A couple more things from Matt:

It was about the size of the hole we needed plugged budget wise, the time I had left of personal resources, and the past data I had about us trying a patreon (which turned out to be a bad indicator). I didn't think the Patreon would help us fast enough. I made a bad estimation

aka "if we make $1000 more dollars a month via patreon, which would be 10x what we got last time, we will not solve any of our problems. If instead we try to plow down path B, we might make it out in time." That was the thinking. I chose the wrong path, but didn't mean to Kevin also retweeted this comment from the user Matt was responding to: So you're saying that you're bad at running the business, didn't listen to any of your employees until after they were forced to leave their jobs, and now you're going to get more of the money from the Patreon that was their idea in the first place? Matt's Response: Respectfully, I made a mistake delaying the patreon decision. But keeping a comedy site alive for 9 years is not easy, there are lots of potential ideas, and think overall we've done a good and honorable job. Will leave this thread in peace now to allow people their space.

Sorry for linking to Elon's hellsite (derogatory), but sources need links so...

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.