#I want to explore my thoughts more in a later post but I’m at work on my lunch break so I can’t now

[orangesnail]

Can we talk about Ms Casey instantly clueing into Burt and Irving’s interest in each other? To our knowledge, she only ever saw them interact once outside the wellness room, and when Irving mentioned to Mark that he wanted to seek Burt’s counsel.

It’s obvious to us, the viewers, their interest, but is it to someone who’s only “lived” for 100+ hours and only ever interacts with people through therapy?

On top of this, her encouragement by telling Irving that Burt was in the conference room, that seemed impulsive and almost somewhat defiant. A glimpse of humanity breaking through the carefully structured facade that’s been placed upon her. Love transcends severance.

[bless-my-demons]

Redamancy: Chapter Twenty-Nine

Series Summary: What happens when your soulmate is a vampire that struggles to maintain a diet of trying not to kill you? Common sense says run for the hills, nothing is worth your life - but my heart is whispering why not, what’s there to lose?

Warnings: does a handsy Jasper need a warning?

Notes: oh my god it’s been so long, I’ve been eating myself up over not posting. I’ve been working myself to death, but I’ve finally got a long weekend off and so I used it to get back to what makes me happy - this story! Omg I hope you guys love it🥹 I also have to go through and update my taglist later tonight, so bear with me on that until I add it!

Word Count: 1500

Series Masterlist

• April 3rd, 2006 • Forks HS •

Reader

Tingly.

That’s the state of my body this morning, the state of my mind.

Not only am I riding an emotional high from our conversation this weekend, but my dream last night… Good lord, that dream.

I can feel the echoes of his fingers on my skin, the coolness of his lips, the wet trail they would’ve left behind… the solid weight of what surely his body would feel like, pressed against mine. I can imagine all of what it would be like vividly, to be under him, to get carried away, to just explore-

“You alright, darlin’?”

His voice jolts me from the day dreaming stare I had on the locker before me, caught red handed. To make matters worse, that deep southern tenor questioned me inches from my ear, causing a blush to heat my cheeks to an almost uncomfortable degree.

“Perfectly fine, why?” I immediately busy myself within my locker so that I don’t have to face him right away.

“You do remember that I can feel you, right?” His voice is low and his hands find my hips tenderly, but the air changes around us.

My heart rate skyrockets, this is dangerous. His fingers flex against me and the death grip I have on this book in my hands turns my knuckles white.

“Jasper-” his name is a whispered warning, but also a plea.

“I know.” Instantly a cooling, soothing balm blankets our tension and I release the tightness in my chest. Leaning backwards into him I just feel tired all of a sudden, like I had run a marathon. “Let’s get out of here.”

His request sounds more like a demand and I twist in his arms, “Is that a good idea?”

“Darlin’, I don’t have many of those these days.” His mouth quirks up in a lopsided grin as he shoves all of my school supplies back in my locker, shutting it and tugging me along behind him towards the student parking lot.

Jasper

Something is on her mind, something dangerous. Something I absolutely want to know, something I’m not sure I have the strength for, but I can’t help it - it’s her.

I’ve never been more thankful for an overcast day with no rain: perfect motorcycle weather. Come to think of it, my sister had a knowing look in her eyes as my siblings all piled into their respective vehicles as I straddled my bike this morning. A decision that currently led me to now: Y/n and I leaving school before midday.

Those thoughts I interrupted earlier have her quiet, but her emotions are raging and it is driving me insane. Curiosity, need, nervousness - a dangerous concoction begging to overtake my rational mind. Separating myself from her feelings is almost impossible at this point, she is so well ingrained in me.

Finally arriving at my thankfully empty home, I shut my motorcycle off and offer a steady hand to help her dismount. Swinging my own leg over, I turn towards her and lean against it, observing her for a moment with crossed arms.

“What?” She makes eye contact as she struggles with the chin strap of my helmet.

Grabbing the helmet by the chin piece, I gently tug her forward between my legs, “Tell me.” I lace the command with neediness to encourage her to be pliant.

And judging by the way her lips part behind the dark visor, the immediate dilation of her eyes, and the weight of her hands settling on my thighs gently, I might’ve laid it on a little too thick.

Chuckling, I free her from my helmet and riding jacket. By the time I finish, she seems to snap from the daze and her hands clench on top of my legs.

“Not fair, Hale.” Feisty this morning.

I lean forward towards her ear with a grin as I stand from my bike to put away the gear, “All’s fair in love and war, sweetheart.”

Reaching to swat my chest, I grab her hand gently before she could injure herself.

Pausing as I hang my jacket up, her teasing response sends excitement through me, “Two can play at that game, baby.”

Stepping into my room, I realize too late what has her curiosity: my desk. Well, the art that occupies every inch, my art.

“What is all this?” Leafing through pencil sketches of my favorite hunting spots and pen etchings of my family at random moments, she gets to the important ones hidden below. Her breathing hitches and I know she’s found them, the ones of her.

Some are in pencil, some are in random felt-tip pens, but my favorites? Those are charcoal. A decently basic medium, but I feel like it captures so much more than anything else ever could. Maybe it’s because I use my fingers to smudge and shape her perfect curves and lines, but it radiates emotion in sweeping gestures and subtle shading - something that’s hard to capture with anything else.

“There’s-” awe, shock, surprise, they all shuffle through her and I’m on edge, waiting to hear her thoughts. “There’s so many…”

I watch her carefully examine each one and I smile when she chuckles at a few - some of her at school, some of her here in my home, moments I not only committed to memory, but to paper.

“Now you know what I do with my free time.” I smile through the minuscule anxiety that bubbles up at her seeing my secret hobby. Everyone in my family knows I draw, but they haven’t seen my drawings.

“Jasper…” I can tell she’s getting emotional, but a part of me is excited for her to see my innermost thoughts on paper, to see herself through my eyes - the unaltered beauty she contains.

“You haven’t even seen the ones I cherish the most.” Opening a familiar sketchbook buried under many other drawings, I reveal my favorites. “The very first ones.”

Her breath hitches, running a reverent finger down the first page. It’s the very first moment I saw her, crouched, scooping up papers on her first day of high school in Forks - absolutely radiant.

“You were a vision that day. A beautiful tornado that wrecked my world, I tried to capture every detail from memory because I never want to forget-”

Her hand finding my cheek breaks me from my explanation and my eyes find her watery ones, mouth open, searching for words clearly hard to get out, “Jasper…”

“I love you.” My confession steals her breath completely this time, the first time I’ve uttered these words aloud and it feels absolutely right. “I’ve loved you since the moment you hit me with that door. I knew I was absolutely ruined for anyone else and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Tilting her chin up with the tip of my finger as it wobbles at my confession, I smile, “Say something, darlin’.”

“I love you, too.” Now it’s my turn to go wholly still. “I knew from the moment I saw you I’d never be the same, I was yours-”

I couldn’t wait another second, I closed the minuscule gap between our mouths to seal these confessions. I love her and she loves me. Me.

Tilting her head back slightly as I cradle her, I take my cue to deepen the kiss, to pull her closer carefully. Groaning into her mouth, fuck I can’t get enough of her. Trailing kisses down her jawline as she tips her head to the side for much needed air, her gasps drive me to lift her onto my desk.

“Jaz…” her breathy plea of my nickname freezes me, panic seizing my actions.

“I am a gentleman, but only just barely.” My voice is gravel in my own ears, breathed down the slender column of her throat.

A shiver from her causes me to clench my jaw and attempt to gather myself.

“Maybe I don’t want a gentleman right now.” Her whisper damns me, it fucking sets me on fire.

A slamming door downstairs straightens my spine and my hands abandon the exploration of her. Fuck, my family’s timing couldn’t be better, but also worse.

“Honey, we’re home!” Emmett’s booming voice echoes up the stairs and immediately I know he knows, he can probably smell it.

Huffing, I help her regain her footing and straighten her clothes from the rumpled mess my hands made of it. I also take half a thought to smooth her arousal, a damn shame-but a necessity if we’re to face my siblings for the rest of the evening.

“Fucking Emmett.” Her frustration draws a chuckle from me as we make our way downstairs.

“I heard that!” My brother’s response causes her to roll her eyes at me playfully and I shake my head, my heart weighing much fuller in my chest as she plucks its invisible strings with her shit-eating grin.

Next

Taglist part 1:

@aoi-targaryen @Min-jianhyung @pbbsl @timelordhunterandmysterysolver @sheerangermany @clearwater-hoe @Blackbluerose666 @ivy-plays @random-human02 @delightfulbluebirdstarlight @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @gaymazinglula @l3ejm @angelfuzzy2 @losa12308 @thekinkpopstandsforkrackheads @flyawayprincess @ropickle @catbusloki @deviat3dsn0wf0x @lovesanimals0000 @unrevived @h-naec @cutesnakemum @zudooms @itsmytimetoodream @stinkii-boii @acoolnight @anothercoffeeblogx @irishblend10 @from-now-on-im-switzerland @kyraslife2 @naolvshan @kiiwiigii @rosedpetal @kiaraandrea @foolsgoldxo @heartfilia01 @azuredgalaxies @geekysimmerthings @graciereads @ramen-girl-2424 @0hmydekiru @creeqvealley @Cherriebat @whichwitchisthebitch @dragon-rider-with-a-book @secretfairytailpetscookie @psychobitchsthings

[choco-bite]

First of all this is nsfw blog so i do not want any minors lurking around here. Shooo! You don’t belong here. This blog is not for you.

And people over 18 please put your age in your bio or I’ll block you. I need your age visible when i stalk your blog from reblogs

Hello, myself J (picky for telling my name) 26yo switch leaning soft dominant. Lately I’ve been enjoying posting about being a sub so there’s that. My pronouns are he/him and I’m straight. Do not ask for personal details if we get comfortable I’ll tell you. I’m very much flirtatious so i like to flirt with everyone when i get the chance and the right opportunity. Also I’m a writer. A true hopeless romantic by heart. Sometimes im clingy, get obsessive and pretty possessive. I’m here to have fun and explore my kinks and meet similar minded people.

Spamming is a love language for me. If i like your blog, I’ll spam you, like your posts a lot and may drop a cute ask.

I may or may not follow you. I would like to follow those who posts their own thoughts here. I’m tired of seeing the same posts over and over through reblogs. So if you’re blog with just reblogs I won’t follow you.

– My kink includes:

Breeding, praise kink, degradation kink, humiliation kink, somno kink, ddlg, mdlb, pregnancy, piss kink, dirty talk, spanking, anal, rimming, orgasm control, orgasm denial, total power exchange, roleplay, adult nursing relationship & more

– my limit includes:

Scat, gore, vomit, sharing, threesomes, foursomes, hardcore stuff, balls kicking, licking shoes, licking floor, toilet stuff will include more later

Title/honorifics I prefer: daddy/dad (when domming)

Title/honorifics i want to call you by: mommy, princess, queen (when subbing)

Petnames i adore: baby, my babyboy, cute boy, little boy, sweetheart, darling, my love, my little prince

Dm is open for anyone right now. I maybe closing or opening as i see fit. I work and sometimes it gets hectic for me to reply. It’s not you just my stupid work. I’m always down to make friends tho. Hit me up anytime <3

My telegram:- homesickforyou

However I’m not much of a conversation starter. If you want to talk just hit me up. I don’t mind 💋

Aftercare is everything

Consent is everything

do not kink shame or I’ll block you on site

my posts under tag: choco typing

My asks under tag: choco spilling

few tags I adore: oh mommy & me and who

reblog if my posts made you cum, twitchy, leaky, creamy

If you’ve cummed to my posts you’re obligated to tell me [and give me something as a gift 🫢🎀]

stay safe, stay healthy and be kinky

l love you 3000

Divider credits goes to: @saradika-graphics @steddiecameraroll-graphics @anitalenia

[unicyclehippo]

ok so i submitted a story for a competition & didn't get far but i was pretty happy with it so imma post it here for y'all. pls enjoy!

YEAR OF THE WOLF

Blood and shampoo wash pink down the shower drain. My body aches, back hot with pain. I gotta stretch more, I think, before remembering what time of month it is.

I’m not stupid, I want that to be known up top.

Tired? Yes. A bit forgetful now and then? Certainly. Overly reliant on blind optimism? Of course. Who can afford for things to go wrong these days? But stupid? No. Not about this, anyway. I’ve known for almost a decade that I’m a werewolf. I just thought if I ignored it long enough it would stop, or at least stay low on the list of important things I had to deal with—somewhere between turning thirty and the world burning down around our ears.

Still, it manages to take me by surprise each month. I see the blood, feel the shift-pull-crack of bones and vitals, the wet throb of viscera and organs, as my body reshapes itself. The wolf and I share a space not big enough for two; something must give way.

I lose time daydreaming about it. Transforming. My only plan for the day is work, maybe video games later, cooking dinner. I could call in sick. I could clear away the bathmat and towels and fall to my hands and knees and change into something bloody and terrible and wonderful, I could lay myself down on the soft carpet in the sunrays, decadent, I could leap from my balcony, powerful, and lope away into the bush off the track to explore the silver-blue of the leaves and the cathedral termite mounds, I could—

The shower pipes groan, rattle, and spit freezing water down onto me.

I don’t transform.

I towel off. The mirror shows me a human with the same soft features as ever. Shampoo suds clinging to my shoulders. Hair cut short and plastered down on chalk-white skin paler than usual. The doctor warned me low iron was a side-effect of transformation but I look myself over for another cause. Lift my arms, twist to check my back. There’s a pimple or two where my binder digs in but no injuries. I promise the doctor in my head I’ll bring it up at our next appointment.

My doctor is a careful woman, dedicated and precise. She sits primly and dresses well—her blouse is fashionable, flowery, her trousers professional and practical. She keeps notes in a leatherbound book and her thoughts securely behind her eyes. She asked me to keep track of any changes Inoticed. I pull out a crumpled receipt where I’d scrawled some notes.

tired

hungry

headaches

more dreams than usual

tired—oh I already wrote that down. still true

irritated way more by stuff?

jaw hurts?

‘Alright,’ she says, writing it down on her page about me.

I sit hunched opposite her, then fix my posture, then let my shoulders droop again, conscious of being too broad, too big. In the time it takes for her to commit a few brief notes to paper, I’m struggling not to get distracted by the lights and their electric buzz—the popping stop and start as the filaments crackle in the bulbs. My eyes wander over neat stacks of paperwork, a penholder with all the pens pointed in the same direction.

‘We’re going to order a blood test. You’re right, the fatigue and headaches could be an indicator of iron deficiency.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you know if there’s a history?’

‘Of…iron deficiency?’

She smiles. ‘Of lycanthropy.’

The question makes my head spin. There’s been some excitement about there being some genetic predisposition to lycanthropy (unconfirmed), which half my friends were leery of, seeing the research as another way for hunters to exterminate us, and half took to romantic spirals, daydreaming about their ancestors being just like them. But the doc is asking about, like, my parents and grandparents, and it makes me laugh.

‘No. No way.’ I think harder. Is it possible? My maternal grandparents, definitely not. But my dad’s parents…I don’t know that well. ‘I could ask, maybe.’

After the three haphazard sessions we’ve had stretching across eleven months, which chiefly feature my repeated and sustained reluctance to talk, she indicates her doubt with a quiet raised brow.

It’s fair. I don’t tend to do things I don’t want to do, even if they’re important. Sometimes, especially if they’re important.

At the end of our fifteen-minute session, she walks me to the door and beneath the stench of eucalyptus-scented cleaner that makes my nose itch and head ache, I catch a whiff of her cologne. Wood pine and wild.

I think about it all day.

Has she helped me because she’s like me? The thought races ahead of me, tempting; I sprint after it. I wonder what she wears at home. Does she google boxers for bed because they seem so comfortable? Does she veer at the last moment to Boyfriend shorts! Now in satin – for HER! Or does she kick the world off at the front door next to her shoes and just…exist. Is she like me? Just a person who does things? Or is she a woman who does things? Or a person who does woman things or a woman who does womanly things or a woman who does things knowing they’re not womanly and caring or not caring? Does she splinter the cage that would contain her and let the hungry animal of her body carry her to meat and sleep and hunting and to the warmth of her partner at rest?

Is she like me?

As a kid, I wanted to take karate. My brother wanted to sing. Somehow, I ended up in the music class. It was in a demountable that creaked, off-key, with every step and stunk of the creek next door. The singing teacher had a red round face and told me not to sing too loud—I was practicing to be part of the choir, I should be part of the group. That group was made up entirely of nervous and near-silent girls who shivered with the desire above all else not to stand out. (I learned that part well.)

On the other side of school, my brother stood in karate class with a teacher who ignored him and older boys who picked on him—he was short back then, with baby fat still on his cheeks, and had a close relationship with boredom and distraction that came from being smarter than most.

Once we figured out the joke being played on us, our places switched, we made a pact to teach each other what we learned. It didn’t last. Within three lessons, I spent more time on the walk to the classroom than in class; I dawdled in the fields and by the creek, tracking beetles and digging for dinosaur bones in the mud. When I did arrive, it was twenty-five minutes late with dirt under my nails and finally the teacher told me not to show up. My brother took a faster approach and called the teacher a moron. Mum had to pick him up early from class and neither of us learned very much.

My gran lives hours away and I never got the impression she liked me much. I think about sitting in her drawing room, the sticky-sugar smell from bottles of fancy port on the shelf, and her sitting opposite, eyes hawklike, mouth pursed and tongue sharp. I don’t visit her. I think about asking my dad instead and, while he does like me, he doesn’t like werewolves and I’m not ready to risk exile.

I get my blood drawn. The doctor prescribes iron pills and congratulates me on my teeth coming in.

My mother doesn’t like my sharp teeth or short hair or the way I sit. I want to tell her I didn’t do anything to my teeth; that if anyone is to blame for the handsome jut of my canines, the neat, careful way they can tear flesh from bone, it’s her. She made me. But saying stuff like that only opens up the room for more questions.

‘Do you like it? Looking like that?’

It will hurt her if I say yes. When you are a daughter, wanting to change means you don’t want to become your mother, which means you don’t love her.

I can’t say no.

The wolf stirs. It wants me to say yes. It loves fiercely and loves me most of all. But it isn’t the one who has to live here—work, be a daughter, a sister. It won’t be the one who has to listen to my mother tell me to be sure before I tell anyone else because there’s no going back and people will hate me for it, just for being, and that she can’t support me doing that to myself, that it’s against the god she’s never thought twice about, and has someone talked me into it?

I’m not ready for that.

‘It’s just teeth,’ I say.

She shakes her head but doesn’t ask any more questions. I think she’s scared I’ll tell her the truth.

am i a coward?

My friend Luna takes a long while to answer.

While I wait, I wash the dishes I’ve been “soaking” for three days; the kitchen smells of dish soap when I’m done and the world is a little cleaner. Outside, my balcony is drenched in sunlight. I make my coffee and sit out there, turning my nose to the wind. Somewhere close by, someone is cooking chicken loaded up with paprika. It’s more accurate to say they’re burning chicken. Next door, my neighbour digs through the rich dirt of their garden and plants rosemary and lavender.

My phone lights up.

No, she says. Then, Why do you ask?

the whole werewolf thing. i won’t transform, wont tell my family.

This reply is much faster. Definitely not.

i feel like one

First of all, you transform when it’s right & as much or little as you want & that changes from person to person. Second, being safe is not cowardly.

yeah

Do you want to tell them?

The coffee is gorgeously strong. After a few gulps, I feel like someone has brushed the cobwebs out of my head.

it’s like. there’s this version of me in their heads that isn’t real yknow. like im not a person im a cloud in person shape & sometimes they get a glimpse of my hand or whatever. & its safe inside the cloud its harder to hit me but . they cant see me

Mm

sorry i know this is teenager shit

In the distance, a fire alarm starts to blare.

No it’s good. I get it, obviously. And you know my parents were awful when I told them but we go running every month now. The question isn’t “am I a coward”. The question is, are you prepared to confront that version of yourself in their heads? Are you ready for it to change?

i wish i knew. how it would change i mean. bc i feel like if i knew for Sure that they would take it badly then that’s one thing & i could deal w that. & if i knew theyd be fine w it i could deal with That but. i don’t know. & its freaking me out. but it’s also like…ok i don’t live w them, i’ve got a job, idont rely on them for anything. what real bad consequences could there be?

Dots pop up at the bottom of the screen. They disappear after a minute, then reappear, as Luna takes her time to answer. Finally, she says,

By announcing the real version of yourself, you open yourself up to vulnerability. Things that didn’t bother you before will feel uncomfortable or hurt because it touches you. And when you change the way that you exist in the eyes of people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, you invite the possibility that they will reveal the love was in fact conditional & not for you, that you somehow failed to live up to the person they imagined you to be

mate i’m already scraping the bottom lol

You’re wonderful, Luna says, because she can tell when a joke isn’t really a joke. Her worst trait. If they can’t see that, it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

yeah

You don’t have to tell everyone. You could pick whoever would take it best & get someone on your side. When I take too long to answer, Luna sends a string of photos—her dogs, her family in matching hiking shirts, the view of the nearly full moonon her side of the world. I’m on your side, she says. Always. Let me know how it goes.

The full moon burns, beckons. We are both gloriously awake this time. I have never been more awake. The sky is a black lake and when it rains we taste space and stars and smog. The stairs are slick with the rain. On all fours we are sure, quick, eager! The grass is waiting for us! Splendid! Everything is incandescent in silver, including me. The grass—dew-wet, green scent full in our nose—invites us to roll in it, sticks its seedlings to our fur, tagalongs on our adventure. We run! Smell everything! ticklegrass wetmoss possum pee BUG rough brick mud SPIKY plant big tree lavender dog smell road gutter old leaves bird feathers vinegar shARP on my tongue bag crinkles between our teeth

The days’ heat still smoulders on the surface of the road. We are standing in the centre of it, massive, when a car crests the hill. It stops, engine rumbling and blue-glare lights illuminating us. It waits for us to cross the road before driving on. The driver stares from their seat. In one easy jump, we clear the fence and disappear.

Three more streets and the road ends. The world is huge, bigger than I could have imagined. There’s dirt here! dirt mud rocks beetles scuffling under the leaves koala musk leads to claw marks at the base of trees.

The wolf likes it when I’m awake. It wants to show me the world. Look, its questing nose says, look what you miss out on when you sleep.

It takes us to a termite mound and we listen to them sing.

We stay out all night, trekking through the pocket of national park. I am the biggest thing in the forest. Nothing frightens me. We find a creek filled with every fascination the world has to offer. Ten thousand wet stones, bottle caps, an ill-tempered fish.

When the sun rises, I am sore and covered in blood. I call my brother to pick me up. I stand by the edge of the park to wait for him; at the bottom of the hill, the highway stretches out like a grey branch, cars buzzing along it like bugs. A firefly splits off from it, flying towards me.

The yellow of the headlights cuts through the trees. Inside the car, my brother jumps when he sees me and the light reflecting off my eyes. The wolf is still awake and we move fast and strong to the passenger side door.

He knows.

I can tell. Smell it on him, see it in his uneasy posture. He knows and still I can’t say it. It feels like I’ve swallowed a bird whole, alive. It trembles, stuck in my throat. When I think about talking it pecks at my tongue and if I open my mouth, if I try to explain, he will see my bloody tongue and the bird and he’ll see me all wrong, all the ugly brutish parts of me I’d like to keep hidden, if I can.

The wolf is still awake. It isn’t scared; it is massive and powerful, it can bite through anything, it can run forever without getting tired. We can. And if there is ever a time to talk to my brother, to let him know who I am, it is now.

I do not want him to think I am a bloody-mouthed girl.

I want him to know I am not a coward. I am myself, a werewolf, alive and finally happy for it.

The wolf yawns. I catch a glimpse of my teeth in the mirror, sharp.

‘Hey.’ Of all the ways to break a very tense silence, it’s not the worst. ‘Thank you. For picking me up.’

He risks a look at me, away from the road. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah.’

A muscle tics in his cheek as he chews on silence. He’s upset that I won’t say more. So am I. I want to. The bird is in the way. I have always had to trick myself into talking; it is never easy, not in doctor’s office, not in my parents’ home, not in the forest, or my brother’s car.

We slow. Ahead, the traffic lights paint the dashboard red. The car shivers around us, idling. I can feel it shake through my bare feet, dirty and scratched up from the rocks, pressed to the rubber floor mats.

The first word comes out like a pulled tooth.

‘I—need to say.’ He glances my way. I think, briefly, about jumping out the window but the light turns green so I can’t. I have to talk instead. ‘I’m a werewolf.’

He drives. I realise he must have been waiting to talk, really talk, because this is the first time I’ve been in his car without music playing.

‘I think the proper term is lycanthrope,’ he says, finally.

‘Dude.’

‘Sorry. Just, medically speaking...’ He shakes his head. Drums his fingers against the wheel. ‘How long?’

‘I dunno.’ I do. A decade of knowing and doing nothing about it. Almost a year of thinking very hard about it and doing slightly more.

He knows me better than my doctor; both his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, entirely unconvinced.

‘I’m still me,’ I tell him, because that’s what everyone says in books and movies. I guess it’s what you’re supposed to say. What I want to say is that I’m more me than ever. What I want him to say is thank you, and I’m his favourite person, and that he understands how hard it was for me to share but he’s proud of me. But I would have to ask for that and the bird in my throat won’t budge.

‘Okay. Wow. So… Are you going to move? Change your name? Are you going to get claws? A tail?’

‘Okay, never ask me that again.’ He laughs. ‘And no. I don’t think so. I kind of like that it’s not super obvious. It’s no-ones business but mine.’

‘And mine now.’ I think he’s smiling, a little. ‘Why did you tell me? If you don’t want anyone to know?’

I wish I was still a wolf. If I were a wolf, I would howl and people would understand. The tenor, the tremble, the shivering cadence. There would be no need for picking the right words, no eye contact, no consequences for an ill-timed joke, no shame for feeling everything so big and weird, like there’s a forest in my chest and a songbird choir blocking up my throat. My hands itch as the claws retract under my skin and I fight to keep from scratching, fidgeting. I turn to stare out the window.

To his reflection in the glass, I say, ‘I want you to like me.’

‘Of course I like you—’

‘I’m louder like this,’ I whisper. He looks unconvinced, which is fair. I’m still hiding. ‘Messy. Bigger and stubborn and hairier and angrier. It’s not the wolf. I’m like that too. I wanna be like that. Real. I’m so—I’m so tired. All the time. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want to be me and I want you to like me as me.’

My back aches as everything in me crunches back into place. The wolf is asleep and it has left me alone with my words and my brother.

‘I really love you,’ he tells me as he pulls up outside my house. He puts his hand warm on mine. He doesn’t flinch at the blood. He hugs me close. Plucks a leaf from my hair.

My brother offers to come with me to tell our parents. It probably would have been smart but I’m still wary. If it goes bad…I don’t want him to see that.

‘How did it happen?’ my mother asks when I’m done, like it’s something you can catch.

For a moment, I entertain the thought of lying.

Do you remember my uni friend? Verne? Well he’s part of a pack and if he brings in three new werewolves over three months, and they each bring in three new werewolves, he gets a bonus. Why? Are you interested in this exciting new life opportunity?

I can’t joke about it yet. Worst outcome, she thinks I’m serious about it being a some kind of cult. Less worse but still bad outcome, she thinks I’m being unserious about the whole thing. Nevermind that I have thought about it every day for ten years, this inevitable confrontation, this moment where I have to explain myself, defend my existence, back up my claims with proof and research like it’s my thesis. I tell her,

‘It just made sense.’

She likes that less than she would have if I’d joked about it, gets all stiff and pinched.

‘It doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t understand where this is coming from—you’re human. You’re not –‘ She shakes her head. ‘Maybe if you left the house more often. These things you’re imagining about yourself, if you were around more people…you’re not like that. You’re lovely,’ she insists. ‘You’re not that.’

It should hurt to hear. It probably does, in a way I’ll feel five years down the line, and I’ll wish that I had bit back, told her that just because she thinks there’s something wrong with me doesn’t make it true.

My dad hasn’t said anything.

When I look at him, he’s staring down at his plate. He eats everything on it, even the tomatoes he usually tries to hide under the broccoli stems. Then he stands, puts it in the dishwasher, and walks away.

‘It’ll pass,’ my mother tells me. ‘You’ll come to your senses. This won’t last—don’t do anything permanent. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.’

Don’t give in.

Don’t transform.

Don’t smile wide enough to show your teeth.

Don’t tell anyone else.

I realise I’ve been trying my hardest not to do anything, like being nothing would be preferable to being me. When did I get the idea that to starve would be better than anyone seeing me hungry?

‘I don’t want to hide anymore.’

‘But it’s no-one’s business,’ she insists. ‘I don’t understand why anyone needs to know, I mean, I don’t go around telling people I’m human.’

The words sound different coming from her mouth but they’re the same.

It’s no-ones business but mine. That’s what I told my brother and I thought I meant it but now I think I was still scared. Biting off bits of myself before anyone pulled out the silverware and cut it from me.

There’s a bird in my throat and the little bastard is choking me. It’s not fair. I don’t want to die without saying what I mean for once.

I bite down on it, blood between my teeth.

‘It’s not the same thing,’ I snap. There’s a gorgeous growl to my words I’ve never heard before. No one told me that would happen. I love it. I love the sound of my voice. ‘No one tries to kill you because you’re human.’

‘Exactly!’

When I stand up fast, chair scraping against the floor, she freezes. Caught between telling me to pick up the chair first and not knowing how to talk to a monster in her daughter’s skin.

It hadn’t occurred to me that telling the truth wouldn’t change just me.

Staring back at my mother, I find I don’t much like the woman I see. If that’s what awaited me, I’m glad to have changed. The world is huge and beautiful and painful and I am kinder, stronger, hardier for it.

I pick up my bag from the floor.

‘I’m the same person, it’s just now you know I’m a werewolf. When we went out for lunch last week? Werewolf. When I got you groceries when you were sick? Werewolf. Every birthday, holiday, every vacation we’ve had since I was nineteen? Werewolf.’

She looks sick. Puts a hand on the counter to steady herself.

When I get home, I’m going to curl up in my closet for a week. The bird is going to come back any second now with backup. Eagles, this time. ‘I’ve had a really long time to think about this and you haven’t so I’m - I’ll give you time. But you should know that I’m happy and healthy and safe. All the things you said you wanted for me.’

As I leave her house, maybe for the last time, I hope she’ll call. I don’t know if she will.

I have been sleeping better and dreaming more. In my dreams, I am always the same. I have a wolf head, with sharp teeth and keen eyes. I sing with a powerful voice that has unsettled for centuries. I cannot see my pack but I can hear them out there, howling. My body is the same; the only difference are the claw marks across my flat chest, red and raw and careful. I am not dead, only transformed.

[luka--lu]

Anthropological and philosophical analysis of Viktor’s story in Season 2 - Part I

Finally gathered thoughts that floated in my mind since Season 2 had ended. These will literally be my first posts ever, will be a bit chaotic, please be kind, I’m shy. But also very critical.

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a person with a disability. I cannot claim to know this experience, because I simply don’t. I love Viktor as a character and it so happens he has a disability, it’s something I always consider when engaging with his story. Besides, his story revolves around his disability since S1 Act 2 and he kind of falls into the trope of ‘disability as character motivation’, but he’s much more than that. And that’s what I want to explore in these posts.

My analytical approach is obviously influenced by my experience as an able-bodied person. I’ve had extensive courses on disability studies while at university and focused my bachelor’s thesis partially on disability representation in media (I focused on scars and ‘deformities’, something many Arcane characters have, but that’s perhaps for another post). To people out there who have disabilities and wish to engage with this post - please let me know your thoughts, I’m genuinely trying to learn more.

I want to stress that in my analysis I’m not saying Viktor is entirely ruined as a character by the writers or is bad disability representation. I analyse his story from the perspective of philosophical, cultural and social contexts, and through disability studies theory. I’m not an expert and certainly can't speak on behalf of people with disabilities, I'm talking as an anthropologist and enjoyer of storytelling and art.

Ok that being said, I’ll try to make it coherent and divided by topics, because these’ll be long posts. Some thoughts are a bit disjointed, I’ll be sharing some of my ideas for how Viktor’s arc could’ve been improved. Hopefully it makes sense as a whole.

TRANSHUMANISM & POSTHUMANISIM

Transhumanism as a philosophy and social movement originates from the notion that many people are forced to live worse lives than necessary and can’t reach their full potential. One of the most important thinkers of transhumanism Julian Huxley argued that application of science can prevent poverty, illness and change the world for better. He literally wrote that ‘the man can manage evolution’. 

Viktor represents transhumanist ideology in a way that, in Season 2, he literally can’t refuse the job - he was forced the moment Jayce fused him with the Hexcore. Sure, he could have refused to use its power, now residing in his body. But the writers chose to disallow him that choice. So Viktor ‘heals’ Huck and begins his Jesus Era. Viktor later asks Singed if the doctor believes in fate, which is followed by Viktor declaring evolution has a course - superseding nature. This way Viktor exemplifies Huxley’s idea of what transhumanism is:

(...) whether he [man, as in human] is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution (...). That is his inescapable destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned. (Huxley, Transhumanism)

If the Hexcore was actually sentient and controlled Viktor, then I guess it’s the soul of Julian Huxley.

The same way Huxley's work was grounded in a desire to make the world a better place, so is Viktor’s. His dream of betterment of his people was the primary motivation of Viktor’s character, but it got hijacked by the magical mumbo jumbo of the Hexcore and Arcane powers in S2. His transhumanist ideology wasn’t developed organically, the story just jumps to act 2 and then 3 without proper explanation as to why he turned to this philosophy so radically.

Important to add, Huxley was a eugenicist. Kinda wild to take transhumanist ideas and write Viktor’s, a disabled dying man’s arc, the way they did. Viktor wanted to use technology to change the world, but writers said: ‘hmmmm, what if… magic?? And eugenics! because he has internalised ableism now!’ But more on that later.

Central question regarding transhumanism is who decides what’s an enhancement and what’s a limitation. The short answer is: it’s a personal choice, we can use inventions to improve quality of life if we wish. Yes, some things can be a choice, but in reality it’s kind of compulsory, because the society is built in a way that demands conformity.

Viktor changed himself instead of trying to change the world the way he intended to in S1. His arc was derailed from his initial will to act for the society that needed positive change. Progress for Piltover meant technological advancement in the name of scientific and economic gain. In Viktor’s transhumanist vision, progress is about extending the self - to live without suffering, to cure physical and mental afflictions of Zaunites. It goes beyond his motivation to cure his disease, his actions in S2 don’t fit his characterization in S1. This is why I believe inserting parts of his original League Lore into Arcane would have made an amazing story with transhumanism as background.

Good part of technology is that it gives us opportunities for different forms of embodiment. Embodiment, important in phenomenology and feminist studies, means how we experience ourselves as a living body that feels the world as we inhabit it -  how we experience it in connection to us, simultaneously being influenced and influencing the world. There’re plenty of theories that tackle this concept, but let me go the short way.

Transhumanist philosophers talk at length about progress in relation to embodiment. Some critics ask questions about the ethical side: who’s gonna get to use the technology to enhance themselves? What about people who can’t afford technology used for the enhancement? How will technology influence the embodiment of certain people? Specifically, what does this philosophy say about disability?

I will talk more about disability in another section, but transhumanists consider physical disabilities as something open to changes. Different technologies can be used as mobility aids, different advanced procedures could help with improving the standard of life for people with disabilities.

But there still remains a question: what kinds of disability are considered in need of improvement? If technology changes a disabled person's body so they can function similar to able-bodied people, then is the category of 'disabled' even relevant anymore? Is there a definite line when it comes to influencing the body with technology? What kind of progress do transhumanists actually seek and for whom?

We don't hear Viktor’s stance on ideas similar to transhumanist ones, until his talk with Singed, but it's a bit convoluted and isn't developed well enough to be an interesting take on a very controversial and fascinating philosophy that is transhumanism. It’s only indirectly addressed at the end by Old Man Jenkins Viktor when he says ‘There’s no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit’, meaning that the glorious evolution doesn't really have a destination, even though Viktor believed so.

The change transhumanists seek can never actually reach a final, perfect end - who and when will decide what the end of human evolution looks like? What is the ultimate, trans- or even posthuman form we’re supposed to achieve? Arcane seems to argue that nobody will ever be able to decide, even with godlike powers and knowledge.

Old Man Jenkins Viktor calls back to primary belief of posthumanism, which Nietzshe wrote about:

Man is not the effect of some special purpose, of a will, an end; nor is he an object of an attempt to attain an ‘ideal of humanity’ or ‘an ideal of happiness’ or an ‘ideal of morality’. It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of ‘end’: in reality there is no end. (Nietzshe, Twilight of the Idols)

Posthumanism is another philosophy that provides an interesting context for analysing Viktor’s arc in S2. I first focused on transhumanism, since his story originally involved using technology to change lives. But Viktor seems to mix transhumanism and posthumanism.

Posthumanism is more about getting rid of core values of humanism. it’s about going beyond what makes humans, well, humans, which is a lot of things (biology, culture, economy, science, politics, environment, religion, social relations ect.). Posthumanism states that humans aren’t really that special, and argues that there are many other creatures and things that are equally as innovative as humans. It’s a philosophy critiquing anthropocentrism. It dismisses the notion of humans as apex creatures that can control and bend the world to their needs and will. The will to extend ourselves and find power within us isn’t exclusively a human trait - all organisms and things on Earth have that potential. (Interesting, that in the destroyed Piltover Jayce saw, the flora and fauna still expanded at the top of the Hexgates).

Viktor’s story isn’t really about that, but it ties to posthumanism when Viktor declares that emotions clash with reason, humanity is a contradiction which causes destruction, so there’s the need to go beyond humanism. Viktor’s ideas about human nature aren't really posthuman. His thought as he was dying after Jayce's attack revolved around the humanist idea that humans actually have an unchangeable essence.

Posthumanism, as understood by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri, states that there’s no essence of ‘humans’. There’s only the potentiality, which comes from an individual will to create oneself, apart from fixed rules of the world. Funny enough, Viktor speaks about similar ‘charge, potential, impulse', but I don’t think it’s in any way connected to Deleuze’s idea. The philosophy of Viktor in S2 seems all over the place with trans- and posthuman ideas underneath, but it's an interesting mix that I wanted to explore, even if only on surface level.

Deleuze is fucking difficult to understand, French philosophers are the demons that always kick my ass, but they had some good stuff to say. In  Postscript on the Societies of Control Deleuze claims that society is made by machines, not only in technological sense, but also by different systems: social, political, economic, religious ect. Every system is a machine. In the case of Piltover and Zaun, the social and political machines categorize people and program them to inhabit certain identities and spaces. Human body is also a machine consisting of different anatomical systems. We are machines living in machines, the flow of information and experiences between us and the world is constant. In a way, even before Viktor tried to change everyone into machines, the world was already run by machines.

I also think that technological posthumanism is an amazing lens to analyse the usage of Hextech and its final destruction of the world in Arcane. Technological posthumanism states that humans use tools and technology as integral to our identity and functioning. Inventions are made by humans, but inventions also invent humans - we use tools, art, machines, that extend us, that make us. Humans don’t make technology because they’re free and rational, rather they’re free and rational because they make technology.

Donna Haraway says we're already cyborgs, because tool-making and technology is always a part of our evolution - we incorporate the world into our bodies. We use tools, but according to posthumanism, tools use us in some sense, like a parasite. Interesting that Viktor becomes literally a mix of flesh and machine, influenced by the Hexcore.

Going further, posthumanist thinker Bernard Stiegler writes:

(...) the pursuit of the evolution of the living by other means than life - which is what the history of technics consists in, from the first flaked pebbles to today, a history that is also the history of humanity. (Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1)

Evolution's course is always directed by technology and tools. Stiegler asks: ‘Who’ or ‘what’ does the inventing? ‘Who’ or ‘what’ is invented?.

Jayce and Viktor invent Hextech. Piltover, City of Progress, is made by the development of Hextech. Hextech invents Piltover’s identity, makes its citizens and government free, rational, innovative and progressive, in opposition to Zaun, which supposedly lacks these traits. Is it really Viktor who causes the calamity in the end? Or is it Viktor and Jayce’s invention of Hextech that caused the end of Piltover? Was it humans using technology, or was it technology using humans? Technology can be human’s progression in evolution (as Viktor represented) but it can be the destruction of the world (as Jayce saw in the apocalyptic Piltover). There is no predestined essence or course, there is only the potentiality.

Viktor’s arc with the transhumanist/posthumanist Messiah plot fits a subgenre of these philosophies which states there’s a possibility of a Posthuman God. It means that humans, no longer limited by nature, flesh and emotions, will be able to grow into a god-like state of intelligence. It’s not about ascending to a literal god like Viktor did, but more about posthumans being so advanced and intelligent that modern-day humans wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. It is tied to Nietzshe’s Overman ideal, but that’s another long story.

Summing up, the writers butchered Viktor’s character and did something typical for the general transhumanist discourse. That our problems are technological, not political and social, it’s about science that changes our embodiment, and we need this change because the world is unfair. But why is it unfair? Too difficult of a question for the writers apparently… I'll be dissecting it further below.

* Interesting to add, transhumanists of today go as far as suggesting we’ll be able to upload our minds into computers/certain devices and this way live forever. Viktor sorta reminded me about that with his astral plane self. There was a movie with Johnny Depp with this idea, Transcendence. This movie is bad tho (*Wendy Williams voice* Guess who’s jealous of Viktor Arcane? … JOHNNY DEPP!)

DISABILITY

In The capacity of contract Stacy Clifford Simplican distinguishes two ways of thinking about disability: medical and social. Medical model means that people have a medical problem when we compare their state to fixed diagnostic norms. The social model is about how society creates disability by making the world adjusted to able-bodied people, while disability is an exception to the norm, an anomaly. 

What the social model explains is that the problem isn’t the disabled person’s body, the problem is that they didn’t have a chance to design the world that would accommodate everybody. Medical model is appealing to able-bodied people because it allows them to dismiss their anxieties connected to disability and the possibility of acquiring it. People would have to then face the fact that society is actually unfair, so the medical model allows thinking there’s a distinct difference between able-bodied ‘normal’ people and persons with disabilities. There is ‘us’ (able-bodied) and the Other.

The idea of a cultural Other is key in various theories, especially in post-colonial critical theories, disability studies, social stigma theory ect. It basically means that the dominant group considers everyone who’s an outsider or lacks certain attributes essential to the group, as inherently different, oftentimes meaning lesser, therefore considered ‘other than us’. The Other needs to be distinctly alien to the normative group or culture. In case of people with disabilities the line marking the difference is located in their bodies.

In season 2 Viktor literally crossed the line (haha see what i did there) by rejecting his disabled body and changing into the Machine Herald. By rejecting his embodiment, he wished to fit into the ‘perfect’ embodiment represented by the people of Piltover. However, I consider Machine Herald Viktor as the epitome of what Piltover society considers as the Other. At the end of S2, for people of Piltover the line between what’s worth saving and what’s dangerous yet again locates itself in the body of the Other. The body that originated from the embodiment of the disabled Zaunite.

Viktor’s body is central to his character. We see his embodiment is an experience of pain, struggle, not only physical (he feels his body eroding) and emotional, but also social, he’s a Zaunite in Piltover. He’s double stigmatised as an undercitizen and a disabled person. Theory of stigma tells us that problems disabled people experience oftentimes aren’t connected to the disability itself but to the unequal, negative approach, harmful representations and institutionalised practices that cause the stigmatisation. It all reveals itself in ableism. One of the most important authors of disability studies, Rosemary Garland-Thompson wrote at length about these topics, notably in Extraordinary bodies. I’ll be referring to her work a lot in this post.

Viktor changed his body in S1 and then again in S2, he became Machine Herald, what he thinks is ‘the most he’s ever been’. But Piltover still thinks of him as the Other, a threat - and we know that in their worldview ‘Zaunites’ equals ‘danger’. And here’s the thing - ‘disabled’ is a position you get in a concrete socioeconomic context.

Viktor’s Jesus arc and commune activities focus on ‘fixing’ people and allowing them to live on the outskirts, away from the stigmatising society. Paradoxically, he fixed Zaunites to be able-bodied, like Piltover’s society accepts, but Zaunites can’t join that society, they’re still on the outside. Arguably, they’re trying to create an alternative for the stigmatising society, a new ‘Herald’s vision’. But why does this vision involve getting rid of disabilities? 

‘Overcoming limitations’ isn't really about transforming the body. As Abigail Thorn said: ‘You're not gonna fix homelessness by turning homeless people into inspector Gadget’. Arcane S2 Viktor took the wrong angle on the whole ‘helping the Zaunites’ thing. The show for sure states that. And that makes me sad and mad because it’s just.. idk stupid? Viktor as he’s established in S1 is fiercely intelligent, has very strong morals and convictions. He acts recklessly and crosses ethical limits only when it comes to saving himself from literally dying. I don't see how he would go from ‘In pursuit of great we failed to do good’ to complete opposite and being SO misguided in act 2-3 in the 2nd season. They character assassinated him so hard it’s almost unbearable. Still love him, but gods, look how they massacred my boy. Anyway-

Viktor’s disability makes him significantly different from the rest of the cast - as Garland-Thompson wrote, the figure of Otherness is a result of interpreting and giving meaning to bodies. It gives categories and paradigms, which then give us identities. By making Viktor a person with disability the creators had the responsibility of understanding that their writing has real life consequences. Representation in art and media is a means of identification for real life people who relate to Viktor’s embodiment.

Disability is not only a physical state of being, a form of individual embodiment, but also an economic one. It’s true for Viktor - he self-described in S1 as ‘a poor cripple’ - using the language of his oppressors, clearly to pinpoint how he’s perceived by the normative majority of Piltover. I’d argue this doesn’t tell us how he actually feels about his disability. We don't really get his thoughts on it. I see many people assuming he thinks of it as an imperfection from the start and point to S1 when he shies away from the spotlight and then more obviously in S2 Jayce basically confirms to the audience Viktor’s internalised ableism in The Speech.

But I’m not so convinced. Viktor in S1 strikes me as someone who hopes his work will talk for itself, so he doesn't crave the spotlight, but it absolutely could be argued that the reason he hides in shadows is to protect himself from the scrutiny of onlookers. It might be an argument for him thinking poorly about himself and Arcane is known for ‘show don't tell’, but I sort of… wish they told us?

Viktor talks about his disease and focuses on his incoming death, which is central to his character in S1 after act 1. Disability and actively dying are different things though, but in sociocultural contexts are often considered almost the same. It seems to me that the writers made such an assumption - treating Viktor’s leg and his disease interchangeably.

Viktor’s internalised ableism wasn't prominent, I'd say nonexistent, in S1, his focus was on preventing his death, not on getting rid of his disability. He experimented on his leg and tested its durability when running. Season 1 already established that it was the wrong choice (although the running scene is contradictory in its message because of the ‘victorious’ framing and music). Viktor changes his mind at the end of S1 and asks Jayce to destroy the Hexcore. Never, not once, in S1 Viktor declares that he wished to help people of the Undercity get rid of disabilities or that he wants his own to go away. He only speaks about his general health deteriorating.

But then we get Jayce saying Viktor ‘always wanted to cure what he thought were weaknesses; his leg, his disease’. Um no, not true? Viktor always wanted to invent things to make a change for the disenfranchised. He couldn't do so because of his terminal illness and Piltover’s politicians not giving a damn about Zaunites. We don't know how he feels about his disability apart from recognising it as a part of his social status as a Zaunite in Piltover. We get the scene when as a child he shows Singed his leg, meaning he can’t play with kids and is lonely. This could mean he’s either shunned or can't access places where kids play. That's an issue of accessibility and how disability is created by alienating disabled people. It’s not enough proof to argue that Viktor dislikes his disability to the point of wishing to fix it when he becomes an adult.

I argue that Viktor’s internalised ableism was forced onto him by the writers. This way they put the responsibility of dealing with ableism on the disabled individual instead of asking the real question: why is Viktor experiencing ableism in the first place? Why is it Viktor who has to bear the burden of injustice and feel bad about himself? Apart from the positive sentiment of ‘disability is a part of humanity and doesn’t mean you’re broken’, the message of the ending seems to be: 'it's sad you feel bad about yourself, you need to hear you’re valid and get over your internalised ableism or you’ll doom everybody, but we won’t be addressing systemic opression’.

Audre Lorde pointed out issues that stigmatised people face, especially having to be representatives of their marginalised position, having to use their intellectual and emotional labor to address oppression. I can’t agree that Viktor taking on the labor of realising his internalised ableism thanks to Jayce’s Speech is amazing writing. His humanity was denied by the oppressors so much he ended up rejecting it all together? The framing of Viktor’s motivation after becoming Machine Herald is extremely detached from his original character’s. I can’t- it seems like they made him self-loath and cause harm just because the final battle would look cool?

I like Arcane’s message that erasing disability is like erasing humanity and love wins in the end. At the same time it’s done at the cost of the disabled character’s entire arc and positions him as the villain to a society of able-bodied people. I don't vibe with that writing choice. If the writers had the guts and we didn't live in capitalism, maybe we’d get more seasons and something truly revolutionary.

Feminist scholars pointed out how people’s standpoints shape politics, how identity, personhood and body are cultural constructs that need to be questioned. Standpoint theory suggests that representation is always a political act and thus disability representation needs to be treated as such. I don't think Linke and others thought about it this way while writing Viktor. They created a great character though, so allow me to open my ao3 tab and look up canon divergent fics.

Because of Viktor’s arc in S2 becoming about having his autonomy revoked and his supposed internalised ableism, we unfortunately got an interpretation that Garland-Thomson notes as widely accepted - that physical disability is a part of lower social status and a personal tragedy. We could have had Viktor as a transformative example of a physically disabled person who exposes social institutions of power and questions the notion of othering as a rule that permeates the Zaun-Piltover conflict. For that to happen, it wouldn't be Jayce who affirmed Viktor as valid - it would be Viktor affirming himself.

And we know he had the capacity to do that. In S1 act 1 he’s self-confident and we know he got to Piltover thanks to his intellect and resilience. Why would he lose these parts of himself so radically in S2? I understand that he was severely depressed and that could change his perception of self when his health deteriorated. Yet, I believe in S2 the acceptance Jayce talks about could have come from Viktor seeing his own value. Garland-Thomson calls it 'speaking with one’s voice’. To be seen and accepted means having autonomy and possibility to speak about our embodiment with other people. We don't get to see/hear Viktor do that. He speaks of his mortality and deteriorating body in the context of disease, not disability. And he doesn’t really react to Jayce’s Speech.

If the creators wanted a really empowering story about a disabled character, they needed to address that. According to Garland-Thomson, the body is a text that needs interpretation by their owners. Giving meaning to his body, affirming it (maybe choosing to change it only to stop himself from dying) would mean that Viktor frees himself from symbolic and systemic violence, and rebels against fantasies and anxiety projected onto him by the normative society. That would have been based as fuck.

I ship JayVik, but it doesn't mean The Speech is all fine. Jayce might understand some of Viktor’s struggles but he’ll never understand him fully. It’s true that Jayce experienced horrors beyond comprehension, saw how his dream destroyed the world, he starved, had to reflect on his decisions sitting in a dark cave and injured his leg. Him acquiring a disability to parallel Viktor is a very important moment, yet it’s not the same as knowing Viktor’s experience of embodiment.

Jayce didn't live with a disability all his life in the society that considered it as something inferior. Jayce didn't live with despair and desperation of struggling to prevent himself from dying of an illness caused by the actions of an oppressive state. Jayce’s speech is emotional and important for his relationship with Viktor, and I did get teary eyed when he expressed how much he adored Viktor. But they lost me with ‘fix weaknesses, your leg, disease, and there’s beauty in imperfections’.

The Speech is sweet on the surface level but it rubbed me the wrong way, because not only it didn't make sense with Viktor’s arc in S1, but it also feels weird to say that disability and terminal illness are an imperfection in which there's beauty. Imperfection is a tad insensitive of a term in this context... Having Jayce - who was more privileged socially, essentially able-bodied all his life and acquired his disability only recently - say this to Viktor, is kind of an odd choice. I do see what they’re trying to say: such experiences shape us but they don't define us. That Jayce loved Viktor as a whole human being with every part as integral to who he is.

At the end Jayce frees Viktor from his loneliness. Lovely stuff and I like it on a personal level, altho the Speech was poorly worded. Narratively, it tells me that the disabled character needed another person to say he was all he needed to be from the start. But it ignores the social context of why Viktor was lonely. Jayce's speech shifts focus from systemic oppression and inaccessibility to interpersonal connection he had with Viktor and the emotional side of it. It's possible to both establish a loving bond and acknowledge the discrimination Viktor experienced. But that didn’t happen in the story.

 Viktor’s actions as written in S2 seem to stem partially from an immense need for acceptance and a wish not to be lonely. Of course he has Jayce in the end. My JayVik side is kicking its feet in the air and giggling, but when I look at it from a representation perspective it's kind of bad. Jayce is after all a privileged man who has never experienced life long marginalisation, chronic pain and despair of accepting his death when there's so much work to do for a good cause. And he might have understood how lonely Viktor was, how Jayce neglected his partner but still, Jayce cannot fully get it if it's not his lived experience.

Viktor is defined by his body by the unfair society he exists in and it's impossible for him to ignore it, because that's what shapes him every day. It's understandable he’d want to be healthy but I dislike the ‘Magic Cure for disability’ trope they went with in S2 when Viktor merged with the Hexcore. The trope is widely considered regressive and even harmful when it comes to nuanced disability representation. Viktor's case isn't as obvious, so I'm not trying to pass any finite judgement here.

I wish we knew if there were people with disabilities or sensitivity readers at any stage of the creative process of making Arcane.

I’ll be referring to the topic of Viktor’s disability in other sections of my posts, so it’s not really the end of this subject.

THE RADICAL OTHER

As I wrote earlier, the concept of the Other is extremely important in anthropology. There’s a more expanded and emancipatory theory that I'd like to touch upon - the concept of Radical Otherness.

In itself, this concept is disruptive. When we’re faced with the Radical Other, we’re confused. We cannot relate to them, cannot ignore them, our predisposed opinions and structures of understanding are being postponed. It creates a cognitive dissonance, forces us to change perspective, create space for the Other and look for Otherness in ourselves. It can also cause bigger fear and cause us to alienate the Other even further than we initially did.

Experiencing Otherness touches our bodies and senses without us having prior notice of it. This experience disturbs us, it calls on us, it asks us to respond and to react. German philosopher, Bernhard Waldenfels writes in  Bodily experience between selfhood and otherness that people usually either welcome the Other as a guest or exclude the Other as an enemy. The Other is always transformed in a way that the normative society has disposal over them or they're available for the society's intentions. Radical Otherness, according to Waldenfels, is not available to anyone.

Viktor's disabled body is turned into a grotesque fusion of flesh and metal, then into an alien-like creature, not a cyborg which would be more in sync with transhumanist ideas of technological augmentation of the human body. The way Viktor looks in his god-like form is aesthetic but foreign.

What it means for disability visual representation is that Viktor either reinforces or rejects the sociopolitical relations that make the disability a kind of Otherness.

Interpreting Viktor the Machine Herald as rejecting oppressive notions, I’d say he symbolises what’s rebellious, exposing injustice and disrupting social order. He left Piltover behind and came back to cause a radical reinterpretation of the world. He looks absolutely different, strange, magical - and we know people of Piltover fear magic. But because he’s the villain and dies at the end, I'm more inclined to say the writers meant to show his transformation as a symbol of unpredictability, lack of stabilisation, anarchy - and that’s both dangerous and brave.

Viktor as Machine Herald can be read as embodiment of personal freedom by rejection of cultural uniformisation. But if it were to be true, he should have rejected conformity while still disabled or at least not transform with Singed’s alchemy. By the time we reach the last episode, his arc is a story of Piltover having to tame ,,the freak’’ as Garland-Thomson would describe it.

The freakiness of Machine Herald’s form is also an interesting choice, because it’s somewhat humanoid but unnatural. It reminds me of the practice of freak shows where people with unusual bodies and disabilities were displayed as freaks of nature, odd creatures. Able-bodied audience gawked at them and while looking in the face of the Others, they’d re-establish themselves as ‘the normal ones’. I hope you catch my drift and see how this is not a good look to have Viktor morph into an alien looking creature that all of Piltover fights in the end…

If I try to find positives in S2’s writing, I can speculate that Viktor becoming the Radical Other in an empowering sense would mean that he embodied an alternative to the status quo. Him leaving and in sense rebelling against domination of Piltover wouldn’t be an intellectual choice but a manifestation of his condition as a person. In this interpretation, his transformation is radical, it’s a positive marker of his individual story.

It’s still a story of oppression though - our Viktor doesn't save himself, Jayce does it for him. I’m not gonna be talking about Old Man Jenkins Viktor orchestrating everything to save himself by having Jayce sent on a mission to save main timeline Viktor. I’m focusing on the Viktor we got to know in S1. It’s beautiful to be seen and supported, the scene at the end was so loving, and my AroAce ass relished it. I love JayVik, yeah, though I think the message of Viktor’s arc being so centered on Jayce’s affirmation of him made the message a bit less complex. They’re soulmates, your honor, but they’re so codependent it’s really toxic yaoi.

Jokes aside, it would be amazing if Viktor chose to become the radical Other. He’d make an autonomous decision to use his status of the Other as the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the system. The system that overlooked him and prescribed him the identity of an undercitizen, ‘an outsider looking in’.

His arc would be even more profound if he recognised his internalised ableism and chose to become the Machine Herald the way he did in the League Lore. In League, his practices aren’t entirely ethical either, but that's besides the point. His decisions were made out of dissatisfaction with Piltover’s corrupt academia and politics, and the moral duty he felt to aid his fellow Zaunites in the face of calamities and everyday hardships. 

The Arcane version of the Divorce arc could’ve made JayVik more complex if they let Viktor express disappointment with Jayce’s decision to weaponize Hextech and Council’s lack of interest in the Undercity’s issues. Then the 'our paths diverged long ago' would be more impactful.

The character arc is a mess but I tried to reach and look for sth more interesting. I think the Radical Otherness of Machine Herald is a compelling angle. Not what writers intended, for sure not, I don’t think they taught anything through that deeply. My take on Viktor the Radical Other is a bit surface level, but it's just one of many things I wanted to share here.

ENDING PART I...

It all could have been more interesting if Viktor wasn't influenced by Hexcore as we’re led to believe, because… this is cheap writing and yet again takes away his autonomy, which he was denied far too much in S2. The magical stuff took away from Viktor’s character and lost focus of his actual motivation.

I think what we got isn’t good enough, but I appreciate bits that can be read as more meaningful, that's where my idea for this 'essay' came from. I just wish the writers had the guts to let Viktor be angry, come back to Zaun, not do the cult stuff and just help people, join the rebellion, basically tell the Pilties: ‘I hope I confuse the hell out of you’.

That’s it for the first part of this analysis. Part 2 coming soon i guess. (Edit: Second paaaart here)

��literally me writing this fucking dissertation:

[strawberripine]

yet again emerging from the depths to post my last bits of fable art :,)

also throwing in a large sappy paragraph (slight cw for some discussions of family issues):

being a part of fable smp was such a privilege. when i first joined, it was just me and a couple of my irl blorbos deciding it would be a fun quirky idea to start an smp our own, and now it has become something truly impressive and heartfelt.

specifically from my perspective, playing c!momboo meant a lot to me. she’s similar to me in a lot of ways, obviously she is an extension of me, but i think she’s way more than that. c!momboo was based on another story that means a lot to me: Oneshot. if you’re familiar, her character is extremely influenced by not only the plant woman in act 2, but the world itself that communicates with you throughout the game. the idea of the world itself becoming so vulnerable and weak it becomes sentient really struck me, and I knew immediately that’s what I wanted c!momboo to be. what i didn’t expect was how much of a turn her character made early on, when jamie and swipn approached me half joking about her being their mom within lore. i think that’s what really ended up bringing her to life, and what overall became her main driving force: being a mother.

i’m gonna be kinda vulnerable for a second here: i never thought of exploring motherhood in any story i’ve been a part of, even before fable. the idea always scared me, since I don’t have the best relationship with my own mom, and i thought i would end up doing things wrong. but i think that’s kind of the point. there is no guidebook on how to be a good mom, you have to figure that out yourself, along with help from your kids. c!momboo wasn’t a perfect parent, far from it. she made some pretty intense mistakes, especially early on, and i’ll be the first to admit that playing her through those times was rough. there were moments where i felt i was leaning into the exact parent i would never want to be, and it was scary, but eventually c!momboo learned from those mistakes, making an effort to regain her kids’ trust over time.

c!momboo holds a special place in my heart because of all the things i stated, and while her story is over, i think she’ll always somehow end up in things i create. not by name, but her own courage and strength infused into what i do.

before i wrap this up, i want to mention the one story that really stands out to me from the process of working on fable: when the famous haleygar herself and i the night before the server released were scrambling to help sherbert figure out a title (not only that, but knowing this title would end up being the name of a certain major character later on lol) and eventually settling on Fable, not just because it sounded cool, but because that’s what this server was always meant to be: a story. a story filled with heart and soul poured not just from the cast, but from you guys. i think my favorite part of this project was always seeing what you all created, and how you guys ended up influencing us. our stories wouldn’t have been the same without you guys there, whether that be in chat, or even simply lurking. i’m grateful for all of you who were there, and i really hope you enjoyed the story <3

Until next time,

Momboo <3

[seohwang]

XXXX.

First kisses with Ateez - Jongho ver.

Genre: fluff

Word count: 755

Warnings: none, Jongho is just too smooth for his own good, that's all

A/N: While working on my other bigger projects, I've decided to post another member's part of my First kisses with Ateez reaction series!! This time, the member of choice is Jongho, as I've been especially focused on him lately. Hope you enjoy and see you again soon! ♥

A/N 2: Btw, this is part of a small event I did on both this blog and my other, more nsfw one, @kp-alice! Go check it out if you're interested in some fun sub!yeosang smut ♥

Now, I think Jongho is a simple man

Not in a bad way, of course not!!

He just likes to take things at a slow, comfortable pace, especially when it comes to relationships

So he would definitely be one of the less nervous members when it came to your first kiss

He wouldn’t worry about it much, deciding that he’d stress about it when it actually happened

And in the meantime, he'd want to get to know you as much as possible, resulting in many relaxed, quiet dates where the two of you would get to hang out and talk, or even just vibe silently in the other’s presence

Whether it would be at a park, at home, or at some cute and cozy café - much like right now

You were just planning on taking a short walk around, wanting to enjoy the unexpectedly pleasant weather today

But then you saw this cool hand-made artisan shop, and this beautiful public art display, and-

Before you knew it, you strayed way off your original starting point, walking through unknown streets and exploring your new surroundings

Had it been just you walking around, you would have been a bit worried by now, pulling out your phone to try and find your way back

But with Jongho, you knew you had nothing to be concerned about

He just held your hand and pulled you along, a small smile never leaving his lips as he did so

And really, this did help you relax and allow yourself to roam freely

Until you noticed the sullen, grey sky looming above you, warning the two of you that the weather wouldn’t be staying nice for much longer

You told Jongho right away, making him reluctantly agree with you to call it a day just to be safe

But not even a few minutes later, rain started falling from the sky, growing in intensity with every street you passed

This alone would have been doable, but once the freezing wind picked up as well, you were starting to question your life decisions

Noticing your wet shirt, Jongho offered you his jacket to warm yourself up, but you quickly refused, not wanting him to get sick

But Jongho obviously didn’t want that for you either

And so, after a second failed attempt at convincing you to just take the jacket because he’d rather catch a cold himself than have you suffer, he thought of a different plan

Before you knew it, you were being pulled into the nearest café, a small bell chiming above your head as you entered

You tried to protest, but Jongho just gently shushed you, tugging you with him to a cozy table tucked in a far-away corner

There, he helped you get seated before taking off his jacket and sitting down next to you

“Jongho, we really don’t have to stay here, we’re not that far from-” “Of course we’re staying. I’m freezing cold and I was wearing more layers than you. No way I'm letting you out there before the rain stops,” he quickly retorted before reaching for the menu on the table

“But,” you tried again, nervously biting on your lip as you continued, “I didn’t even bring any money, I didn’t expect us to order anything today…”

You couldn’t help but feel embarrassed, silently scolding yourself for leaving your purse at home

The entire day was going great, but now you were going to ruin it with a small, stupid mistake

You wanted to apologize, to try and maybe save this situation somehow, but then…

???

Before you could say anything, you felt Jongho’s lips on yours, effectively shutting you up

Instinctively, you closed your eyes, resting a hand on his thigh for support as you leaned in for more

Shortly after, Jongho pulled away, tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear

“And who said I’d let you pay?” He retorted with a smile, lowering his hand to cup your cheek, “I chose to bring us here so it’s my treat. All you need to do is warm yourself back up and stop worrying.”

And with that (and a light blush blooming on his face), he turned back to the menu, skimming the drinks to find something for the two of you while you still sat there, shocked

Needless to say, thanks to Jongho, you did feel a lot warmer already.

Thank you so much for reading! And remember, feedback is always appreciated!! <3

[breathlesswordsbloodyknees]

Narrative Doom

Introduction

I've been playing around in and exploring this space where Sauron as Halbrand was genuinely seeking redemption, trying not to manipulate events but merely nudge them.

In my view, at this point he's in survivalist bed-rotting mode post-goo-form when he meets Galadriel. (I think he's more of an opportunist than a schemer in this era. Not that he doesn't have those schemes, but I think he's pushing those bad bad urges down. I have a web of scenes that I consider in this view for some other day)

I’m building much of this piece on these previous work: (link) (link) (link)

It's led me down some interesting philosophical rabbitholes, and I'd like to share.

Now, important to note, Sauron is a Maia—not a 'human' by any means. He's an ancient spiritual being who doesn’t feel the way us teeny tiny mortals do.

But on a broader scale: Tolkien’s work, like fiction as a whole, reflects and explores the human experience, so we’re riding that train.

All this with the framework of not absolving him for anything that came before or comes after. I plan on expanding into his evil alongside Morgoth and his actions in Season 2 at a later date.

But right now, we’re just exploring this blip of a moment where I consider Sauron could be genuine in repentance.

This is more an analysis of Sauron, but I feel like it has a lot to explore for Haladriel fans. There's some critique of Galadriel's choices here, but I want to make it clear: I'm not assigning blame. More just digging into the complexities.

And, well, I don't think this ship would be as compelling if it didn't have complexities.

Spoilers:

All of TROP S1

Vague themes/lines in TROP S2, mostly from S2E1.

The Good Place spoilers for overall theme and a few season 4 lines, but nothing outright about the plot.

Trigger Warning:

Be warned, I’m going to delve into some dark themes in a very personal way. Including but not limited to abuse cycles, personal trauma, harmful behaviors, and empathy within all of that.

I won’t lie, this work was hard for me. Painful to untangle. I would encourage you to have empathy and compassion for yourself, as well as me, while you read. I tried to put warnings before I go into these themes. Please take care of yourself.

---

To start

Sauron’s narrative, at its simplest, is a cautionary tale: If you let your ambition and drive for power go too far, you turn to evil. Higher values over sinful pleasures. Pride goeth before the fall.

But on a deeper level, being solely a cautionary tale, an overarching villain, a lesson to learn, what does that mean for the complexities of Sauron in The Rings of Power?

Charlie Vickers puts so many layers and so much emotion into his character. Yet he keeps it to a lot of imperceptible movements that, I found out last night, get almost completely lost in low resolution. I can see that being a part of some of the stricter interpretations of Vickers' Sauron. But there’s a vulnerability there that touches on some deeply raw thoughts.

—

So the relentless question in fandom: Does he mean any of it with Galadriel or is he just the Great Deceiver?

I'd like to ask, how much of it is just some deeply relatable ‘human’ behavior? Deflection, defensiveness. Half-truths, twisted truths, fibs.

Because as he says on the raft, he did tell her the truth, that he had done great evil in service of Morgoth. He never lied to her.

(An aside: I personally don’t give the “my ancestor” thing much weight as a true lie, I mean it’s his backstory and he had more reason for it than the Darkling did imho)

But really, who doesn’t try to hide and smooth over the worst ugly evil nasty bits of themselves and their past? We want to shine in the eyes of others—it's a fundamental desire to most.

—

On the other side, touching on influence and ambition:

Aren’t we all trying to sway events and leave an impact in whatever way we’re capable? Don’t we all attempt to sculpt the world like clay? Isn’t that really all we can do in this world?

And don't we often tell ourselves that we’re doing it for a better outcome? Even actions deemed ‘good’ and ‘heroic’ create ripples that have negative impacts, if only just for the orc babies.

I’ve been thinking a lot about orc babies.

—

Galadriel, from their first conversation on the raft in S1E2, backs him into a corner. She’s relentless in her quest for revenge against him and he’s whoops—sitting right there, doing the side eye meme. He’s gotta be self-preservational. And that rings true to me more than outright deceit. (At this point)

But I think over the course of the season, playing as Halbrand, “Lost King of the Southlands”, he’s trying. Trying to be “the hero she seeks”. Trying in the only way he knows how, which is…well, not great, he really toes the line. But he’s trying to ‘choose good every day and choose it again tomorrow’, while he’s on the path she set him on. So it’s a step by step journey towards the light, but the path is ever slippery.

And inevitably, as we know, he fails.

—

TW

So what does that mean for those of us who feel like we’re trapped in the narrative, hurtling toward a doomed end through harmful behaviors we can’t escape? Tied onto the train tracks, staring down what feels like an inevitable fate.

When all you’ve known for ages is subjugation and torment and abuse, what do you become? (Which makes Mairon even more painful, with his origin of beauty and light. Like a whisper of I was once admirable too)

I keep coming back to the image of grooves, well worn. And well, under the influence of an abuser and beyond, I too have done evil.

Holding the good you’ve aspired to and the evil you’ve done in one space; it’s a sharp, heavy feeling like holding coals, like touching a hot pan, something to run and hide from. And looking at my deeply ingrained behaviors from childhood, along with trauma that’s happened throughout my life...I see those grooves echoing in jagged bloody ways that feel comforting, even natural.

For a long while, it’s been the only way I knew how to self-soothe, these behaviors that can cause harm to myself and others. So I’ve been twisting around the question: Can we ever truly be free of the evil we’ve done? If it’s all we’ve ever known, baked and beaten into our bone marrow?

In Sauron’s case, the answer is no. His story unfolds the way it was written. The bad guys perish, the good guys win.

(though there’s the “they meet in Valinor” after canon theory, hope ever shines through)

—

That all brings me into The Good Place and that show’s moral thesis.

Spoilers for The Good Place:

More or less, the show states “people improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don't?” and “What matters isn't if people are good or bad. What matters is if they're trying to be better today than they were yesterday.” (S4E8)

Scanlons’ What We Owe to Each Other and the rabbithole of contractualism that I haven’t fully delved into.

I resonate deeply with what The Good Place says. All with the understanding that you have to put on your own air mask before you help others, don’t set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

But I do believe we should help each other in what ways we can, rather than writing people off entirely.

So, I struggle with Galadriel’s moments of “shutting the door” being considered wholly empowering. Light prevailing, resisting the allure of darkness and the draw of power. It is indeed all those things, especially for her journey. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame her.

But there’s an itching here for me and I have to scratch it.

—

In S1E8, if we’re assuming he’s genuine, he put it all out there in the raft illusion. It was his biggest, his all, his hope. A leap of faith. Real vulnerability with an internal truth that was like holding coals.

He did what was ‘right’. He reached for support, for understanding, for community, What We Owe to Each Other.

(though we can’t ignore the scene before that where he’s wearing Finrod’s face. But I haven’t followed that thread yet).

He made a play for a better future.

And she—light and goodness and holiness in her hair, denied him.

“You are Morgoth’s friend”, “There is no such future.” Boiling him down to his worst parts, reinforcing his worst fears.

Is that all we ever can be?

---

TW

When do we write off people like Sauron, with all his history of wrongdoing? People like my abusers or even myself? When does the potential for redemption become irrevocably lost?

How much empathy should we show, and what are we obligated to offer? What do we owe to each other? All of this while carefully balancing the line of not condoning or becoming an apologist, along with taking care of yourself first.

It’s mind-boggling.

---

The answers are out there: self-compassion, self-forgiveness. Change comes from within. Balance. But it's the same way people say go outside, exercise more, drink more water to fix depression. When you're in the throes of darkness, those words feel hollow, trite. And that glossy sunlit path is more than treacherous when you walk it, especially alone.

So again, I say, I scream: Should we not still help each other?

It's not just internal and external separately, we need both. I have to believe that. Internal change and external support.

—

Conclusion

In the end, I'm really only left with more questions. This barely scratches the surface of what I've been brewing on, I could go round and round for days. I mean, that’s what I’ve been doing this week.

Regardless, all the typical takeaways feel hollow. Choose light, choose hope, every single step, no matter how hard.

It’s never quite that simple, on a very visceral level. And for some of us, like Sauron, it never materializes.

It all just eats and scratches and twists inside me. Ultimately though, I think Caitlin Seida said it best about hope and redemption and the struggle in her poem, Hope is Not A Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat. Which I greatly hope you’ll read and find what I have in it. (link)

So I guess we keep being scrabbly little sewer rats, hoping to claw our way out of the dank dark cave. And y’know, it may not mean much, but I’ll be here, down in the muck. Right there with you.

Maybe that’s all we owe to each other.

Follow-up

[sugar-crash]

🍬King Candy (Wreck-It Ralph) x (gn) Reader👑

(First Date Edition!)

(Picture’s not mine)

(Request here! Picking out songs for this loser is so much easier than I thought it’d be, like I’d make my friends help me choose with previous posts I’ve done on my main, only for me to pluck these songs straight from my playlist.)

- Again this man is an avid date enjoyer, a complete contrast to how he was as Turbo, with him openly liking the concept of dates because he associates it with spending time with you, taking your attention up to fulfill his need for it.

- His intentions with you go from pure to not so pure (in a manipulative way you sickos) in a way akin to a pendulum, flicking back and forth while not going to their full extremes, at least not yet.

- Your first date is far from what it’d be Pre-RoadBlasters, having actual date stuff to it because he wants you to see him as a gentleman and a proper lover in general.

- His grip on everything at that point, where he knows who you are as a person to a great degree helps him mold that first date into something that benefits and his efforts to keep this relationship going.

- I’m thinking something small and yet classic, like a nice personal dinner in the castle spent after he claims his spot on the avatar roster for the umpteenth time, his golden coin pocketed for next time when he has to do it all over again.

- It’s the start of something rather grand, which he reiterates and emphasizes to his candy people as he makes them set things to your liking before you come.

- Everything has to be perfect for you, it’s much like the movie Coraline, the Beldam was able to make everything just look so picturesque at first in a way that was able to eventually ensnare Coraline into trusting her in the matter of a couple of days.

- However King Candy is more… Dare I say realistic in his approach? Like there’s no piano that plays you or a gravy train that pours it for you, but every request you may have is done almost immediately.

- Everything is done right by you— I mean, this is King Candy’s domain, and being his s/o gets you brownie points indefinitely.

- I think it’s a way to get you to keep coming, to spend your time in Sugar Rush than anywhere else, I mean— Why would you want to go anywhere else after hours when you are treated so well??

- That and the various areas of Sugar Rush are so numerous— So varied, so explorable, and he’s more than happy to drive you around the place whenever you want.

- Performative to a fault, which is something that comes from Pre-RoadBlasters— He needed to be for the sake of being the protagonist and main avatar of Turbo Time after all, everyone kinda has to be— But him especially.

- In a way, I think he was able to both perpetuate and diverge from who he was, those negative traits thriving underneath the guise of being a ruler who is highly defensive of his game and the citizens who reside in it.

- But in reality, he’s only really defensive over you— Much like the game he was able to alter and become a usurper for he worked hard to get this to where he wanted, and now that he had it and by extension you— He’s not exactly keen to let it all go.

- That first date when you look back at it later on encapsulates that desperation to be King Candy, to be something he wasn’t by any means while fooling everyone, fooling you.

- As King Candy, he’s more in tune with what he feels and knows how to react and when to react, giving off a more friendly aura that initially lures you in and makes you keep coming, especially if you are a particularly lonely person— Probably having no frame of reference to what a healthy relationship looks like beyond the niceties of previous relationships that didn’t stick as well as what you had with him.

- The more vulnerable you become with him the better he can worm his way into your heart and brain in an irreversible manner.

- That’s the thing with him, he wants to be significant so bad to any gamer or fellow game character that warrants it— Much like how Ralph is, but far more extreme, to the degree in which if it warrants it— He will kill someone to get what he wants, caution thrown to the wind if he’s been aggravated enough.

- That extreme behavior can even be seen in that first date you both have together, with him being strung up for brief moments when you bring something up that’s something he can’t easily explain away with smoke and mirrors.

- But those cracks aren’t established just yet, he’s able to get you wanting more and that’s enough to make him a bit giddy as he rejoices over this new and promising connection you have with him.

- It’s the start of something good, something bad, and something downright ugly.

(Svcl jhu mpa zv thuf kpmmlylua klzjypwapvuz av nv hsvun dpao kpmmlylua zpabhapvuz... Buzahisl pz aol wlymlja dvyk mvy doha fvb adv ohcl.)

[dead-enby-detective]

To continue my comparison of the Dead Boy Detective show and the Doom Patrol episode with them in it, I wanted to talk about the exploration of Charles’s aversion/fear of water in Doom Patrol, I thought that was an interesting way to give him some more depth in the short time frame (especially since we get to see more of Edwin’s depth with his pain being used to open the door to the afterlife and Larry reaching out to him to discuss his feelings for Charles).

In the scene above Charles has to work himself up quite a bit in order to cross the lake and continue their case.

DBD Charles, in comparison, doesn’t seem to feel the same way about water.

In episode 2, he’s delighted by the enchanted ocean container.

In episode four, he even calls the view “pretty brills” while staring out into the ocean.

He doesn’t hesitate to run to Crystal when she’s dangling over the ocean.

He walks on the ocean side later (probably partially to ensure she doesn’t try to throw herself into the ocean) and even walks toward the water without any fear.

And when the Night Nurse has him relive his memories she sends him to the lake.

To me he seems more confused, maybe frightened because he doesn’t know where he is or what’s going on and than is far more scared when he gets attacked by the boys again rather than afraid of the water itself.

Then after the Night Nurse lectures him he’s angry,

and willing submerges himself to get away.

Then when he returns he, in his anger, sends her over the wall into the water.

To me, if he was afraid of the water, he’d be less likely to want to go towards it, or he’d at least hesitate before putting his plan into motion.

In my first post comparing and contrasting the Agency from the two show, I said the Doom Patrol Boys feel far less reactive to violence, especially their own. They doesn’t seem scared of it or using it themselves. But while DP Charles isn’t afraid of violence, though it did cause his death, he is afraid of water, which also played a role in his death.

In the DBD show Charles is scared of violence (especially his own) - as violence impacted him greatly in live with his abusive father and bullies but doesn’t seem to be of the water which also played a part in his death.

It’s very interesting to me which parts of his death the writers focused on for each show, the DP writers focused on the water/hypothermia and the DBD writers, the bullies.

As I said in my first post, obviously there’s far less time to explore the boys in the Doom Patrol episode than in the Dead Boy Detectives show so that absolutely could have been part of it.

I haven’t yet read the comics so I’m unsure which version of Charles’s fears is more accurate to the source material, if there’s an exploration of it at all.

It makes sense, in the Doom Patrol episode to show his fear of water. It naturally introduces his death, just as the door to the afterlife being opened by open naturally introduces Edwin’s experience in Hell.

The actor handles it really well. Just as the DBD actor handles his fear of violence really well. Both feel natural and important within the context of their shows.

Additionally, I tired looking up to see if Charles’s father was also abusive in the comics and I couldn’t find anything (please let me know if you know otherwise) and according to his wiki Charles actually died from burn injuries - though he did have to spent time in the icy lake as well.

So it’s definitely interesting that both shows focused on the hypothermia from the lake rather than the burns and it makes sense that if there’s isn’t a major storyline about his father in the comics that DP Charles has less negative feelings about violence than DBD Charles and thus, going back to my first post, reacts differently to it even though he too was bullied to death.

It’s incredibly interesting to me to see how the same character can be played/written in two very different ways based off the same source material and the ways the writers chose to focus on their traumas and fear differently.

What do you all think about how the shows chose to handle Charles’s fears?

[azaharinflames]

Curently 911 is filming episode 11 & 12, and Lou is working on another project. There's no way he's working on 9-1-1 at the same time. LA traffic alone wouldn't allow it.

I thought I have prepared my heart for the possibility of Bucktommy not going back together again. But a new affirmative sign like this still hurts me a little 😔.

Hi, Nonnie!

Listen, I get it. But in my honest opinion? Lou was never gonna come back in the first eps of 8b. We know 9&10 are mostly going to deal with Maddie’s kidnapping and Tim has teased the end of ep 10 changes everyone’s life. Now, you can choose to be a bit skeptical about that part. I know I am.

Either way, we know post ep 10 there is a time jump. My personal theory is that it won’t be a super big one, rather it will be a natural time jump (to make it so what happens in the series happens at the same time as we watch it), and the first couple eps will be to establish some SLs.

Personal theory? We will see the rebound for Buck that Tim teased. I do believe it won’t last more than a couple eps. And then we’ll probably have Buck exploring or trying to get to know himself better. Boring and overused, but if they go in any other direction I will be genuinely surprised.

If/when Tommy comes back… honestly I don’t think it’ll be any earlier than at least midway through 8b, if not in the last couple of eps or even in the last one. Mostly so the audience is hooked for the next season but also because it wouldn’t make sense to make the audience go through the bs of 806-808 if things were going to be fine a few eps later.

We have to remember Tommy is not a main. Most likely, if Buck and he manage to find each other again, it will be something to mostly happen off-season, imo. As in, we will have a cute reunion on screen, then the season will end, then (perhaps based on the reaction idk) we’ll start the next season (if we get one) already with them having worked through their issues.

I know the idea of it sucks a bit but hey. They had Tarlos say their ILYs off-season. So. I wouldn’t be too surprised lmao.

(Also if he does not come back for this season, I honestly think he will only come back if they need a HEA for Buck once the series ends and Lou is available for that. Because imho they are not finding a LI that works better than him any time soon)

As for Lou’s filming schedule, I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. Mostly because we don’t know it. We don’t know if he’s mostly done with the sketch show, or if he only has to shoot 3 days a week, or what. Nothing tells us shooting that and shooting 911 is something impossible to combine.

And I don’t want to pretend I know something will happen, or give anyone false hope. I’m the first person who truly expects nothing from this show anymore and who knows chances are we will be disappointed, because the show has shown us we can’t trust it. Just wanted to point out some things ;)

Anyway, my inbox is open for venting, ranting, and giving your opinions! Physical therapy has been kicking my ass this week but I’ll try to be more present (don’t tear your meniscus, babes. I highly do not recommend)

Take care <3

[cable-salamdr]

Alright, y’all already know. It’s time for a teaser breakdown.

Before I start, I will say that I will at times deviate from the chronological timeline of the actual teaser in order to accentuate or explain my point, or just because the images correlate to each other. Spoilers ahead, obviously. And just be aware that this is probably going to be a massive read (future cable who just finished writing: it is.).

(Also, here’s the link to my previous analysis post on the IMBD pictures because I cite it a lot, in case someone hasn’t seen that one yet)

So, let’s crack in, shall we?

Right off the bat, what I noticed immediately: This is a different punch than we’ve seen in the other Lloyd vision where Beatrix punches him (right). The lighting and background are different. Maybe this could be an indication that Beatrix is close to coming back? Either way, that sure is a way to start a teaser (I will be addressing the other part of that vision later)

Yay! Roby! By that selfie stick bit I am PRAYING that he *actually* has the personality that he does in that set promo video, because it now seems ever more like that. Also, hey! That’s one of the Explorer’s Club members! I’m assuming that he managed to find work in this Temple City after the Merge (good for him honestly tho he doesn’t look too thrilled)

Okay, this. We’ve already had this image as per the IMDB thing and we already assumed that it was Roby welcoming the ninja into the temple city, and through that I am going to assume that that image comes right after this one:

Which implies what I had already kind of guessed, and it’s that the ninja will have difficulty getting into the Temple City/ there will be some force trying to stop them. I actually first assumed this was the Imperium Hunters, but it seems like those are actually the Temple Guards.

Now, as per what I thought before and what I see here, I’m going to assume that this is a challenge already. In a sec I’ll talk about all the different kinds of challenges we see, because I think they’re quite interesting in of themselves, but because of that giant screen we see projecting the ninja (Lloyd and Nya) on Jiro behind Roby, this basically confirms to me that these Temple Guards aren’t there because they want to particularity stop the ninja from entering, but that they are just a sort of obstacle that any potential participant has to overcome in order to get into the city.

So, yay, the lizards aren’t being hurt just for the sake of it! How nice.

Then we’ve got this and. Uhm. Well first off what the fuck

But now to actually be serious, other people have already been saying this, and it’s the idea that the person sitting down (in what looks like almost a throne? Idk) is Nokt, and he’s sort of… half and half between the two worlds, which could bring about all sorts of things.

Edit: I have been made aware that this, in fact, probably isn’t Nokt (neither his body nor soul)

So what do I think this is? I have no fucking clue. I could say that this was my idea about Jordana getting mildly possessed by another FF that may have gotten out (because the way she acted at the end of p1), and honestly that seems to be the most plausible answer right now. Either way, to me, it looks like the other FF are either praying/ casting, or perhaps having some sort of meeting together? No matter what, it looks ominous as fuck, and something Kai and Bonzle (who we see walk up behind Kai) should probably not be walking into for their own safety.

*THIS* I find a very curious screenshot. Because yay Lloyd in his master robe HEWLL YEARH but also. He didn’t wear that before. In that IMBD picture we see him on the screen, and he is in fact wearing the green tournament suit.

I think what this implies is that THIS is actually for the The Feast episode, wherein I think they gave this sort of formal robe to Lloyd as a way to… I guess make him stand out as the leader of the group? Not to mention that they seem to be coming from a building and going into a new building and looking at something rather grand, which I can thus only assume is a big dining hall. I know people are saying that Arin looks too happy for it to be an episode farther in, but I honestly think it could be a facade. The fact that he’s holding open the door could imply that he feels the need to do something useful, at least.

However, the fact that Lloyd is wearing his robe also makes me think of another clip that we see:

I am going to say that I’m directly assuming these two things happen within the same episode. I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Lloyd is wearing the same outfit, and I think that’s with the assumption that he’s wearing this for the entire tournament which, as said, I don’t think is true.

What everyone IS talking about tho is the cloaked figure. Which, yk, is a cloaked figure. Of course I want to know who it is, but I have attempted my best at cross referencing any of the villain’s suits, and none of them match (A further post about that here). Which brings me to…

Something that I find very curious is that we don’t see any of Ras’ crew, except for Cinder. He’s the only elemental master they’ve got, and we don’t know whether Jay is *actually* gonna be there at all now, considering we didn’t see him whatsoever. Could this cloaked figure be Jay? Sure. But the suit doesn’t match up, either. Which made me realize that we don’t see any of the other fighters at all, really, which is… interesting, to say the least. Perhaps they’re just waiting to reveal what kinds of others powers there will be present at the tournament.

And since I was already talking about Cinder, let’s look at these screenshots, shall we?

What I get from the first one is that HORRAH Wyld vs Cinder rematch!! (Which means we can’t fully trust those fighting promo cards from a while ago because the fights don’t seem to completely match up). What else I get from it is that Shatterspin is allowed in the tournament, and by extension Rising Dragon! Which means that this is likely a tournament with rules similar to the Tournament of Elements, where the rules were basically that you could do whatever you wanted.

And for the second one. Good lord, I don’t even know. It just scares me, that’s all.

No, but, fr, what is happening. Why does he suddenly have Wyld’s power. Someone said this could be also like in the TOE, but instead of the loser’s element going to one person they go to the winner, which, yk, isn’t terrifying at all. You know what else isn’t terrifying at all? This bit:

I have much thoughts about this image, but I’m just gonna say what my first thought was, and it’s that this is Wyld accidentally setting something on fire, and then not being able to control it. Maybe even IN the Cinder fight. Maybe this is someone else causing it and Wyld gets blamed.

Either way, what I think is going to happen here is exactly that: WF gets blamed, and she will have to show that she’s grown as a person and wouldn’t just set things on fire anymore without reason, that she can help. Whether that works, or whether other people even believe her, is yet to be seen, I suppose.

(On a lighter note, I fucking love the little face of the flame on her back. The second letter seems to be a F, and the first one perhaps an R? I’m not quite sure. Anyways, it’s adorable.)

And speaking of adorable things:

GEO. HE’S HERE!!! He’s here and he’s cheering and I am going to selfishly believe that he’s cheering on Cole because GAH I need Geode to become real by the end of this season. God I hope no one at that Tournament is racist to Geo I would punch my screen

Ahem. Anyways. I guess what we can get from this is that those outfits seem to be spectator outfits rather than what the participants wear! And what we can get from that is that Geo will sadly probably not participate in the tournament. To be fair, it seems like only trained fighters will be attending, and despite Geo being able to kick ass, I don’t think he would be particularity good at it against people who have been training for who knows how long.

This also might imply he left the finder kids at the monastery in Mr. Frohicky’s care— which, yk, still leaves the question of how he gets to this tournament in the first place, as we do not see him in any of the screenshots where the ninja are still outside Temply City.

What I also realised from this is that we don’t see Euphrasia anywhere in this trailer. I’m still holding onto hope, so we’ll wait and see.

Then we’ve got all the Sora centric bits (which there seem to a lot of, which kinda tells me that she’s gonna be a focus and YES this will cause issues for Arin no one can convince me otherwise)

Anyways, as I said before, these images demonstrate to me what kind of challenges there will actually be within this tournament: Not just fights, but also what looks like a parkour and a race! Oh what joys. The first one actually kind makes me think that this is a challenge about ingenuity (due to that pole Sora is holding), but I might be reaching with that.

I didn’t get a screenshot of that lil Cole we see in that third clip as well, but I think that means we can safely assume that they're driving that combo vehicle we already have a set of, for which Cole gets the white and orange wedding suit! (Why? I don’t know. In my heart I'm choosing to believe everyone gets a similar outfit to that one.)

And that fuckass little dragon? I've got no idea. It kinda reminds me of Vania's dragon, Chompy, but also of those little Source Dragons Lloyd saw floating around his head right before he had the Master Dragon vision. Idk, it confuses me, so I'm choosing to ignore it lmao

And now the screenshots that I’ve been wanting to hold off on the longest… ho boy. Okay, there’s a lot here.

First off: This is before the tournament, and the next two images that I will be looking at are also before the tournament (the one with Lloyd falling), due to the fact that they are wearing their normal suits.

Second: The Matriarch. In the Kingdom of Madness area. As many people have already been guessing, this is likely where she thought to settle next after getting forced out of their previous home. But also, she looks… bigger? Idk maybe that’s just me. I also keep thinking that it’s the Energy, the Source Dragon that was imprisoned, or that it kinda looks like a bigger Zanth, but I’m probably wrong with that, as that doesn’t make much sense.

Either way, the kids seem to have to help her with something. And, to me, she almost seems… hurt? Like she didn’t call them there to chat or catch up with Riyu, but that she desperately needs help, perhaps something about her horde. Anyways, it concerns me deeply, especially with the next image in mind, which I cannot imagine being before that first one.

Other’s have been saying it and we all know it: that in the background looks like an Administration computer. The problem is that… it’s not the usual color (which was I think green? Berate me if I’m wrong)

So, what do I think happened here? I think the pictures directly correlate. I think what’s gonna be happening here is that the Matriarch wanted to move to this place within the Kingdom of Madness, the Administration was notified of the wrong kind of dragon activity, and is then trying to get them back out, most likely by capturing and deporting them, but maybe also something worse— who knows at this point. Somehow, the Matriarch got hurt, that’s for sure. Maybe she fought them, who knows. What I think will then happen is that either the kids attempt to find where they took the dragons, or they, too, will be captured and brought back.

What happens after this is entirely illusive to me. Of course they could be seeing Jay in that second screenshot, but somehow I doubt it (if this prediction comes true I’m gonna lose my fucking marbles). Either way they are seeing something that’s not normal, which has got to be something extreme, considering Arin has been in that place and has most likely told Sora about it. Maybe they just set off an alarm and that’s why it’s blaring red? Who knows. I sure don’t.

And these screencaps are just as a mystery (as said, these are very likely pre-Tournament, as Lloyd is still in his climber suit)

But what I haven’t seen a lot of people say yet is that we do know who that dragon is, as it appears to be Heatwave (you can see his face in that split second, in the first screenshot). It looks to me as if Lloyd was either deliberately jumping to one place and Heatwave caught him as to prevent that (for whatever reason?), or Lloyd somehow ended up in this falling situation, and HW is saving him (for whatever reason???). Either explanation scares me.

And last, but oh my god definitely not least, we have this clip of Motion. She is so gorgeous I don’t know what to say.

So I’ll just repeat what others have been saying, which is that this is likely in the first episode and the way that the ninja actually get their invitation.

Also I lied I do have smth to say: I feel like this could correlate to that one part at the beginning with Lloyd’s nightmare, where he also sees Motion. Perhaps Lloyd will be convinced that following this invitation will be a bad thing, since he saw it in relation to the other bad things (such as Beatrix punching him for a second time), but the others will convince him, for better or for worse.

Either way, this means that the invitation is personal. We can assume that this will not be some sort of trick by others, but that this is really Motion, inviting them to the tournament, as she was also one of the SDs that was up for helping Lloyd. This makes me ever more so believe that whatever the prize of the Tournament is could potentially result in Kai’s return.

Anyways, that’s all from me. I hope this ramble wasn’t too unorganised, I’ve been writing this for………..an hour. I am normal about this show I swear.

[stargirlexie]

I saw a post about if sukuna had been trapped in some girls body instead of yuujis and just had to witness her girl blogging all day and I had to write it out. So yeah that’s what this is :)

—————————————————————————

Human_planet New Post: Wed. June 4. 4:43am

So earlier me and my friends were dicking around at this abandoned hospital. I didn’t want to go because back when I was a kid and I had those hallucinations that was one of the places I had the worst one I had ever had. But I never told I friends about all that because they’d think I was crazy so I went. God I hope they don’t see this. So anyways we were in this hospital walking around and I got this feeling. I almost never feel it this strong since I got on my meds but holy shit it was strong this time. So I was trying to tell them that I think we should get the fuck out of there without making them think I’m insane but they just said I was fine and we kept exploring. As we walked around and explored the feeling kept getting stronger and stronger to the point I was nauseous and was getting so paranoid I could barely keep walking. Uh but then we go into this dark ass room and my dumbass friends found a GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING FINGER honestly idk how they found it i was too busy not freaking out to pay attention to them. But jace took it to their house for some bc the bandages had runes n shit on it. I’ll keep y’all updated on the finger my friends found ig bc other than that my life has been pretty fucking boring.

Human_planet New Post: Thurs. June 5. 2:24pm

I have officially come to the conclusion that all of my friends are insane. So everyone read about the finger my friends found yesterday and I have come to my loyal followers with an update. They dared me to eat it. Let me repeat that for the people in the back. They. Dared. Me. To. Fucking. Eat. A. Disembodied. Finger. WHO WOULD FUCKING DO THAT???? They’re all assholes. They saw how I was tweaking when I was around the finger and I guess they came to the amazing conclusion that I SHOULD EAT IT???? Are they fucking toddlers? Why do they want to eat everything they find interesting? Why am I not surprised? WHY WOULD I FUCKING DO THAT???? Anyways the update is that i will absolutely never eat a dead finger that is ANCIENT by the way. And also that I should probably re-evaluate my friendships and boundaries. Anyways I’ll be back with more yapping later! Bye bye chat

Human_planet New Post: Thurs. June 5. 5:47 pm.

I ate the god damn finger. I really need to work on boundary setting.

Human_planet New Post: Thurs. June 5. 6:03pm

IM FUCKING DYING OH MY FUCKING GOD

Human_planet New Post: Thurs. June 5. 7:56pm.

So… I didn’t die. But I still haven’t ruled out the dying possibility. Who knows maybe hearing a VERY angry man screaming in my head is just a hallucination that the poison in that old ass finger gives ppl before they die, I don’t know I’m not a old finger poison expert. But anyways yeah now there’s some guy screaming in my brain and it’s kinda giving me a headache if I’m being honest. Why can’t he shut up? I just want to die in peace. He can stop screaming nonsense about curses and violence and that he’s “the king of curses” and that I’m not worthy to have him in my body and let the poison take me silently. I need another joint. Fuck this stupid old finger poison. Bye guys.

Human_planet New Post: Fri. June 6. 9:42 pm

Uhh so I’m not dead. The man hasn’t stopped screaming and I just slept for over 24 hours and my mom thought I did in fact die. So I should probably be comforting her about scaring her like that and not posting. I’ll be back and if I don’t die I’ll update y’all.

—————————————————————————

So that’s my first part 😼😼 I haven’t made a name for it yet but yeah

[99zurins]

summary: wonwoo knows a lot, especially how your thoughts get into your head. when he knows you had a bad week, he wants to shower you with the gentle love you always give him when his thoughts get into his head.

note: god its been ages since i posted but alas!! this was a request for a friend of mine, and it helped me get out of my writing slump. enjoy <3

pair: f!reader x jeon wonwoo

tags: soft bf!wonwoo, SMUT (minors dni), communication during sex, kink exploration, spit, slight choking, dirty talk, slight degradation, multiple positions (sorta), safe sex, oral (both m. and f. receiving), fingering (f. receiving), orgasm denial, edging, pet names (wonwoo calls reader baby, sweetheart, good girl, princess), soft dom!wonwoo, reader goes into subspace, wonwoo takes care of reader, reader works at a clinic

word count: 6.9k

[ wonu : babe

wonu: how are you feeling? ]

like shit, you want to text him. i’m not ok. so much, too much, is happening all at once your brain doesn’t know what to process first. it’s been like this from monday morning: you were short-staffed because three co-workers got sick, people kept complaining about the wait times, what could you do, you just work here. tuesday to thursday was absolute hell: how does someone mess up inventory TWICE? your co-worker doesn’t know shit. how did she get hired anyway! you don’t want to even think about friday’s disaster. you called in sick today, because fuck the clinic, and made sure you swapped your closing shift at the bookstore with someone else. your head is in chaos, all while managing a terrible migraine.

from the tylenol, the long naps, to the drops of essential oil on your pillow– none of it isn’t even helping.

you haven’t spoken to your boyfriend for a few days, there’s the i love yous, occasional memes or cat pics he sends, but it’s been quiet. he’s been busy too, he got hired by a better design company, meaning better schedules and much well-deserved salary, and has been finishing up his last few shifts on his secondary job at a milk tea shop. but since he’s one of the long time workers at the shop, he’s been busy training newbies to replace him, hence why he’s been awake earlier than you, and comes home so late. you know he’s home when he quietly slips into bed after a shower, snuggling you from behind, holding your small frame. but you miss the cuddles when you play games together, the shared silence with him, looking at dumb cat videos. everything about him, really, you miss. even though you live with him now.

[wonu: are you at your bookstore job tonight?]

you first tell a truth: you called in sick for both of your jobs. then, you lie, saying your friend-slash-coworker is coming over to talk about stuff.

[wonu: don’t lie to me

wonu: babe

wonu: i know you had a bad week]

it was just busy, you respond. you’re busy, baby. you’re probably tired too. we can talk about this later.

[wonu: i’m not ever tired when it comes to you

wonu: i’m gonna leave work right now

wonu: idc]

you feel tears well up. you not replying back is all he needs to know.

wonwoo shows up in twenty minutes, holding a bag of takeout, bubbletea, and a cute stuffed animal. you wondered how on earth did he get here so fast, considering it takes him about thirty-five minutes to get to back home, but you’re too tired to say anything. all he does is give you a hug, plant a soft kiss on your head, and you try really hard not to cry. he does the thing where he scratches softly under your chin, like how he usually would greet a cat, while your head leans into his chest.

“hi baby,” wonwoo finally speaks, giving you a soft smile. it fades when his cold fingertips linger around your cheekbones, and stops below your dark circles. “long week?”

“mm.” you try to pretend everything is okay. he knows you aren’t. he places more gentle kisses between your eyes and on the bridge of your nose.

“was hoping you would tell me, actually.” wonwoo quietly locks the front door, takes off his shoes, and you quickly scramble to find him some house sandals that would fit him. “baby, it’s okay, I don’t need slippers. none of them fit me, remember?”

wonwoo doesn’t wear the house slippers because the five house pairs are all yours. you insist on getting him a pair, he always refuses. you cough out a laugh, and you hear wonwoo giggle.

“right, i forgot, sorry,” you mumble. “what food did you get?”

“i got you your favourite,” pho from the restaurant where you had your first date with him in. it’s his favourite, too, “i got us a matcha cake slice and a strawberry one to share, too.” cakes from the cafe on the third date.

you nod quietly, and you watch him leave the takeout on the table. he pulls out a container (which is most likely the cakes), and grabs the two plastic forks.

“wonwoo, i’m not…” hungry, you trail off, you weren’t in the mood to eat, but wonwoo looks over at you, with such tenderness. his black turtleneck hugs his torso nicely, square glasses makes him look like a nerd, when did he get a haircut? and he looks over at you, attentive and with endearment. sometimes you wonder how you deserved him. “i’m…”

wonwoo finishes putting the takeout on the table, and approaches you with quiet steps. he cocks his head to the side, a motion to tell you come here, love, and you take a few steps closer, fiddling with the sleeves of the navy oversized sweatshirt (which belongs to wonwoo).

“how can i be here for you, baby?” he pulls you closer, rubbing small circles on your scalp with his thumb. you don’t really respond, but all you do is plant your face straight to his chest, wrapping your arms around his frame. you feel a low chuckle erupt from his chest. “baby, i’m not sure how my chest is… supportive enough.”

“well, they’re bigger than mine! it’s comfy!” you whine quietly, and wonwoo laughs at your answer. he embraces you, slightly moving side to side.

“i do want an answer, if you’re able to tell me.”

“um,” you hum, looking up to him, while he still scratches your head. “i kind of just want to cuddle… tell me about your new hires, or show me dumb videos of mingyu and seungkwan being stupid again, i really don’t wanna think about what this shitty week has done to me.”

“okay, we can do that.” he hums, and scoops you up, holding you like a sack of rice.

“why are you holding me like this.”

“i wanna open the door.”

“i…” you suddenly remember the bowl of pho sitting on the table. “wait, wonwoo, the pho–”

“we have a microwave.”

“i can walk to put it away first!”

“i wanna spoil you, princess. you deserve something good. no need to think about anything.”

you feel your brain go sideways.

“… okay.” you mumble, kissing the side of his head, ignoring the heat flushing in your cheeks, and the faded pink tint in wonwoo’s ears.

wonwoo puts you on the bed, and wraps you in a blanket burrito after a little cute protest and some kisses, telling you to wait while he quickly freshens up. you feel like you’re gonna fall off the bed, why did your boyfriend put you by the edge of the bed? idiot. after showering, he changes to a comfortable black muscle tee (gifted by soonyoung) and gray sweatpants. when he returns to the bedroom, he turns on the lampshade before shutting off the main light in the bedroom. he goes back by the bed, and unrolls you out from the blanket burrito, giggling as you find yourself rolling towards the middle of the bed.

“wonwoo, what the fuck,” you find it so silly, you’re trying to contain your laughter but it’s not working. you feel wonwoo climb up on the bed, and wonwoo seems like he’s having fun removing (more like unrolling) you out of the blanket. wonwoo starts pressing a few of your pressure points gently, making you giggle even more. “what are you, FUCK, that tickles, STOP THAT!”

“noooo,” wonwoo sounds like a child, and pushes off the final part of the blanket off your body. you’re laughing loudly on the bed, as wonwoo carefully pulls you up but you feel limp from laughing. he helps you sit up in front of him, and you think he’s finished with his confusing act, but he grabs the blanket, wraps you both in it, proceeds to embrace you close, and accidentally manhandles you, him hitting the bed while you’re on top of him. “oh, this wasn’t what i planned to do.”

“what?” you ask him. “manhandle me?”

“yeah, i got too excited, i’m sorry, baby.”

“well, if it makes you feel better,” you trace shapes on his cheekbones with your finger. “i liked it. had no thought in my head, just vibes.”

“mm,” wonwoo just hums, lightly patting your butt. a hand rests behind his own head, inadvertently flexing, and you mindlessly trace the healed floral ink that wraps around his bicep. “one of the new hires likes fruits basket, it reminded me of you.”

“WHAAAAAT?” you look at him with excitement gleaming in your eyes. you slap his chest lightly. “tell me more, tell me more!”

“well, she has a tattoo of kyo’s bracelet and named her pet hamster after yuki.” wonwoo says, playing with your hair. wonwoo started watching the series for you, although he hasn’t finished yet. “although she likes kuroo?”

“oh! kureno.”

“is he a bad person?” he likes to know what’s he in for at times, so some spoilers are okay.

“he falls in love with a minor.”

“oh.”

“yeah, it’s gross,” you sigh as you feel wonwoo massage your scalp. “oh that’s nice, by the way, did your manager allow you to take the cat apron?”

“i can’t. jihoon sucks.”

“boooo! he sucks.”

“my baby can always embroider me one, right?”

“i crochet, not embroider!”

“same idea!”

“no its not!” you pinch his nose. his nose scrunches up, and he tries to playfully bite your fingers. you pinch him even harder, and you giggle over his over exaggerated expression of pain. “i should really finish making that cat hat for you.”

“take your time, baby,” he kisses the tip of your fingers. “don’t stress on it. oh, speaking of which, jihoon sent me footage of seungkwan and mingyu tripping during close yesterday. i don’t know why you find it amusing to see them struggle.”

“because they’re so funny together,” you laugh, as wonwoo uses a free hand to grab his phone on the nightstand. he opens it and scrolls, looking for the video. you turn your head, listening to his steady heartbeat. the scent of his lavender bodywash is faint. it lingers. “besides, mingyu complains about his antics with seungkwan to me at the clinic sometimes.”

“ah, not surprised.”

wonwoo opens the video, and since it is security footage, it’s muted. the quality is grainy. it’s a bit blurry. as wonwoo lightly taps a tune on the small of your back, you watch with curious eyes. seungkwan is mopping, while mingyu is seen refilling the containers with straws and wooden utensils. it doesn’t look much, but you see seungkwan tell mingyu something, but his footing is awkward, causing him to slip on the wet floor. seungkwan doesn’t fall on the ground, and mingyu is laughing at him, throwing his head back in amusement. mingyu suddenly slips backwards, falling on his side, and a bunch of straws fall on the floor. seungkwan looks like he’s gonna cry so much from laughing too hard. someone else (it looks like vernon) appears from the corner and stares at mingyu, whose still on the floor. he leaves. you and wonwoo snort loudly, you shutting your eyes hard because it’s too funny. he locks his phone and puts it back on the nightstand, stroking your head while you continue to laugh.

“god, they’re so stupid,” you shake your head. “how does jihoon deal with them?”

“he tries not to.” wonwoo halfly jokes, scrunching up his nose. you snicker. “at least they get the job done, and jihoon will be less stressed.”

“hopefully the new hires don’t fuck up.”

“i made sure they won’t.” wonwoo says, looking at you with endearment. you can’t help but move up, and kiss him. he smiles into the kiss, even taking a hold of your face as you pepper him with soft kisses. “you’re being more adorable today.”

“well, i feel like i miss you a lot more lately,” you lightly push his glasses up. “even though i see you everyday, i don’t know, it’s different this time.”

“how so?”

you still don’t want to think about the disaster the week has been. but you want your heart to be open. steady.

“sometimes, i forget i’m not alone,” you tell him. his attentive gaze never leaves your face. “and that i don’t have to… i don’t have to burden everything all at once. and i’m sorry if i feel like i’m not relying on you.”

“baby,” wonwoo cups your face and squishes your cheeks. you inadvertently let out a laugh. “don’t be sorry. please don’t ever be.”

“i know, but i…”

“you’re very important to me.” he strokes your cheekbone. “i am always here. i’m sorry if i appeared… distant lately. you don’t deserve that.”

“it’s okay, woo. i’m just overthinking.”

“it’s not…” he whispers, face softening. “you had a bad week, and me being busy isn’t an excuse to make sure my baby is okay. like i said, you’re very important to me, and the love you give me makes me so happy. i love you so much.”

“i love you so much too, wonwoo… how did i deserve you?” you feel your heart swell, and the urge to cry comes. “sometimes i wonder about that.”

“you deserve everything. and i’ll make sure i can give everything to you.”

“then…” you trail off, going quiet for a moment. wonwoo watches you, and you raise yourself up, adjusting yourself to almost straddle his lap. “can you…”

“hm?”

“can you take care of me?” you whisper, tugging the hem of his shirt. you swallow the embarrassment down, reminding yourself that it’s okay. “please?”

it seems like a desperation from you, but wonwoo knows you best. you know that he’ll always and will take care of you with utmost tenderness and gentle love. but sometimes, just barely, or just too often, you question yourself how (and why) you deserve him. you already thought the shared kiss under the stars a few years ago was something he’d forget easily. but the nerd he is, he’ll plant constellations upon constellations of kisses across your body, (as if you’re the universe herself), and ask you to guess which constellation it is. on your anniversary, he’ll always kiss the libra constellation on you because that’s the one you both saw under that fated starry night. (although, he loves kissing the pisces constellation on your body. a lot).

wonwoo gazes upon you, eyes brimming with gentleness, and he carefully sits up, motioning you to move closer to him. his hands rest on your hips, his right thumb stroking your hip. your arms reach out to him, as they wrap slowly around his neck.

“how would like me to take care of you?” he whispers so low, leaning in close, his lips brushing against yours, his right hand going up to play with your sweatshirt, sending a chill down your spine.

“however you want.”

wonwoo pulls you in for a kiss, holding the back of your neck, while his left hand slips under your shorts, lightly caressing the back of your thigh. his tongue teases the roof of your mouth, causing you to let out a small whine, as his left hand takes a hold of your ass, occasionally squishing it.

“do you want me to continue?” wonwoo breathlessly says in between wet kisses. while he fiddles with the hem of your sweatshirt, you nod in response. “words, baby.”

“yes, please.”

“what do you want?”

you and wonwoo are no stranger to sex, but compared to your friends, you and him are considerably on the more… calmer side of things. and thats okay, it’s normal! everyone is different. tonight, however, feels different. even with his constant reassurance, little kisses of i’m here for you, and delicate whispers, you want wonwoo to…

“if you could help me not overthink, that’ll be great,” you feel yourself flush red, looking down at the end of his shirt, fiddling with it. “if you, uh, know what i mean.”

“oh.” wonwoo sighs when your fingers slip under his shirt and ghost over his chest. he’s figured what you meant. “are you sure?”

“as long as you fuck me, make me feel good,” you mumble, feeling yourself grind against him, kissing him wetly. “i could care less how you do it.”

wonwoo hisses at the pressure, and stares at you, a glint of lust and admiration starting to shine through, all while playing with the band of your shorts. he brings up a hand near your face, and pulls you in for another kiss, tongue toying with yours, and when you whine, he sucks the tip of your tongue.

“remember our safe word, baby?”

“kohyangi,” you breathe out, thinking about the cute cat cafe you both went to last year, while wonwoo kisses red blooms on your neck.

“how far do you want me to…”

“how we usually are, but i wanna see you try,” you stop wonwoo from kissing your neck, and you bring him to your face, letting him kiss you more. “you can be a little rougher tonight.”

“fuck, you’re gonna be the end of me.” he gently flips you over, carefully laying you down on the bed, lips never leaving yours until he briefly parts to remove his glasses. putting them on the nightstand clumsily, he comes back for your lips, and you melt against him. through his relentless teasing and his tender touches against you make your head spin. he kisses a little harder, a little more desperate, hands starting to roam around your frame, arms caging you– an underlying message that he isn’t going anywhere, and that he belongs to you, you are his, and that you are deserving of everything. a curious hand slips under your shirt, feeling your bare chest. his other hand toys with the band of your shorts, mumbling if it’s okay to take them off, and he swiftly removes them when you give him a ‘yes’.

“oh, this is pretty,” wonwoo compliments your underwear. it’s a baby blue thong. he takes off his shirt, tossing it somewhere in the room. “they new?”

“um, uh, yes? they were on sale… good deal, too…” you suddenly feel yourself shrink, turning red. you stare at his toned muscles, and you see a satisfied smirk on wonwoo’s face, eyes turning lustful. he pushes the sweatshirt high enough for your chest to be exposed to the air, never breaking eye contact until he swoops down, and starts planting kisses, tongue teasing your nipple, and occasionally biting at some places. “i bought a bunch since… kinda wanted to try wearing these… for you.”

you see wonwoo’s ears turn pink, and feel yourself crawling into a hole.

“aw, cute, my princess wants to treat me.” your brain screams. wonwoo kisses over the healed ink near your hip.“they look great on you, makes your tattoo here even sexier.”

“are.. are you doing the andromeda constellation?” you breathe out, trying to divert his (horny) attention somewhere else. “or is it something else?”

“mmhmm, correct, that’s my good girl,” wonwoo teases and you feel yourself choke on your own spit. he starts toying with the band of your underwear, and bites a mark on the hip bone. you didn’t even realize he’s already settled in between your legs until you feel him breathe. he tongues over the bite mark, soothing it. damn, ain’t this one nice way to go out. “you’re learning so well.”

“shit,” you shyly say between your teeth.

“keep the sweatshirt on, i wanna fuck you in it.”

“good, that was the intention.” you try to counter wonwoo, and you feel yourself twitch when wonwoo presses his thumb over your clothed clit. “does it make you possessive?”

“baby, you have no idea.” he responds, hooking a finger in the band of your thong.“may i?”

you nod at him, and he slowly peels off your underwear. as you slightly raise your hips so he can easily pull them off, he’s awkward with it, making you remove it instead. wonwoo clicks his tongue in slight annoyance. all you do is just smile at him, slipping them off with ease. you sit up (just a bit) to toss them somewhere on the bed or floor, and you don’t realize wonwoo is incredibly close to your pussy until you adjust your positioning. your breath hitches when he breathes.

“hm?” he starts to tease, kissing around the area and the lower stomach, but doesn’t do anything. “you’re pretty down here.”

“babe, please,” you try to sound exasperated but he plants the softest kiss on your clit and you almost collapse your arms. “just nervous, that’s all, even though we’ve done this a lot…”

“it’s okay, baby, i don’t blame you, i get nervous too,”wonwoo murmurs, and he can’t help it but he finds himself licking his lips. “may i eat you out?”

“yes, please.”

he first lightly swipes his tongue from the entrance to the clit, and he does it again, and again, and again, as you let out a soft noise the more he does it. he kisses your clit, and licks it, tongue flicking it a few times, doing a circular motion, and you sigh out a moan, hand resting on the crown of his head. he briefly pauses to use his thumbs to spread you out a little more, and opens his mouth, letting drool drip down on your pussy, watching it drip down, and he goes back in with his tongue. he increases the pressure, and you whine, almost hitting your head against the headboard. he keeps up the pace, moaning against your folds whenever you do, tongue slipping inside you occasionally. he starts to get even more sloppy, messy– making wet noises the more he eats you out.

“my princess is being so so good, so wet,” he mumbles lowly against your folds, hearing how wet he made you, briefly pulling away to kiss your inner thighs. you whine how his finger is teasing your hole, and his lips come back to suck on your clit again. “so needy, all for me.”

“fuck, fuck, fuck,” you whine breathlessly, feeling wonwoo’s hand grip your thigh a little harder. he looks up, eyes never breaking away from yours, while his tongue slowly licks up from the entrance to your clit. he closes his eyes, relishing in the taste of you. you are sure your thigh is going to bruise, but his head is in between your legs, so it’ll be worth the bruising. “wonwoo, fuck, oh my god,”

“mm, fuck, so sweet,” he mumbles against your pussy. a finger slips inside you, slowly moving back and forth. the bed slightly shakes, and you see that he’s lightly grinding against the sheets, in desperation for some relief. you sigh at the sight, trying to stifle a moan as he puts more pressure with his tongue. “baby, go ahead, be louder.”

“its, fuck, embarrassing! holy shit,” you respond back a little louder, body arching when wonwoo adds another finger and grazes that sweet spot inside. you feel wonwoo pin down your hips with his other hand. “so, fuck, so, so good.”

“good,” wonwoo coos. “how bad do you wanna come?”

“so bad, fuck, fuck, oh my god,” your brain feels dizzy. “please wonwoo, please.”

wonwoo hums, continuing to suck your clit with wet noises and fingering you good. you find yourself mumbling incoherent sentences, and you find yourself feeling a wave of relief and pleasure overtake your body, trying to breathe. you clench around his fingers, hearing wonwoo coax you through your orgasm, leaving little kisses on you of you’re doing so well for me, and my baby, baby, all mine.

“can i spit in your mouth?” wonwoo removes his mouth from you, but his fingers have slowed their movement.

“yes.” you whine at the brief loss.

“open up.” he demands softly, a wet thumb pressing against your bottom lip. you oblige, and he leans in, letting drool drip down from his mouth into yours, his fingers busy with your hole, and uses his tongue to push it in your mouth. you shut your eyes, moaning while wonwoo’s tongue meets with yours.“good girl. was that okay?”

“y-yes,” you say in between wet kisses. another finger slips inside you, making it three, while you both make out, tasting yourself against his tongue. “it was good.”

“do you want me to do it again tonight?” wonwoo slightly rolls on his side, all while fingering you and peppering your neck with more kisses.

“it was really hot but,” you moan, trying to reach the band of his sweatpants. you can see how hard he is, and how much relief he desperately needs. “i don’t know if i wanna do it again. not again tonight, if that’s okay.”

“it’s always okay, baby, thank you,” wonwoo smiles against your neck, and you really wonder how you feel horny and soft all at once. he feels your fingers tease the band of his sweatpants, almost tracing the dent against it.“oh, baby, no need to worry about me.”

“but i want to make you feel good, too,” you say softly, breaths staggering while he fingers you long and slow. “don’t want—fuck— to be the only one.”

“well,” wonwoo gazes at you, eyes half-lidded with a slight fucked out look on his face. “does my girl want to make me feel good? words, baby, i need to hear them.”

“i want to make you feel good, please.”

“how badly?”

“s-so bad,” you whine when wonwoo removes his fingers from you. rolling on top of him, you press your body against his, your fingers holding the band of his sweats. “i want to suck you off.”

“wanna show me how with my fingers?” he brings up his fingers covered in your wetness close to your lips. “how will my baby suck me off?”

“only if you let me jerk you off, too.”

“i’d love that, fuuck,” wonwoo groans when you pull down his sweats and your hand wraps over his hard dick. he’s so fucking hard. your thumb teases the tip, playing with the precum and letting your hand coat itself in it. wonwoo’s fingers slowly go in your mouth, and you swirl your tongue around them. “baby, fuck, you’re such a slut.”

“y-you’re the bigger slut,” you shyly whisper against his fingers. you help wonwoo get out from his sweatpants, leaving him naked, and you start grinding your cunt against his bare thigh. he hisses, feeling how wet you are down there, and his free hand grabs a hold of your hip. “you made me like this.”

“you’re so wet, baby,” wonwoo sighs, pulling you in for a kiss, sighing when you jerk him off slowly. as you slightly pick up the pace, thumbing the slit, wonwoo’s hand reaches from behind to play with your hole. you quickly pull away to let a trail of spit go down his cock for some lubrication, and wonwoo throws his head back, groaning, when you jerk him off faster. “fuck, that’s my girl, go ahead, suck me off.”

“and you’re calling me the slut,” you mumble. you hear wonwoo laugh against your lips, until you feel his hand lightly slap your ass. you sigh at the pain, wonwoo rubbing the reddenning spot. “wow, kinky, are we?”

“you’re cute.”

“you like it.”

“you’re so– oh, fuck,” wonwoo feels his breathing stagger when you slide down, your tongue teasing the tip. you look up, trying hard to maintain eye contact, all while holding his thick cock with your hand (you forget how thick he is, you can barely wrap your hand around it completely) and giving it kittenish licks, before wrapping your lip around the tip. you make a few wet sucking noises, before spitting down on his cock for more lubrication. “fuck, baby, can you take all of me?”

“i haven’t even done anything yet,” you continue to trail your tongue along the veins and stroke him at the girth, and he moans— you feel yourself clench around nothing, wanting to hear more of it. “wanna tell me what should i do?”

“d-do as you please.” he groans out your name, cursing under his breath, and strokes your head as you continue to suck him off. not only does he love it when he ensures you’re vocal about what you want, he loves it when you ask him what he wants. being communicative is something he prioritizes so much (in general, obviously). and during times like these, communication is so so sexy.

you look at him, eyes signaling am i doing good for you?, and wonwoo bites his lip, enthralled by the sight. he really, really, can’t wait to ravish you.

“oh, holy fuck,” his thoughts get slightly interrupted when he feels his cock almost hit the back of your throat. feelings mixed with surprise and arousal that overwhelm him, he bites his lip to avoid a moan slipping out, wrapping his own hand around the base and presses it, edging himself. “oh, fuck, baby, you don’t have to take everything in.”

“b-but,” you remove your mouth from him, a slick pop sound coming out, as a trail of spit and come stick on your mouth. you still use your hands to jerk him off, looking at him with glossed eyes. “i wanna make you feel good.”

“you already are, baby,” wonwoo hitches his breath when you put your mouth back on his cock, a finger trailing your jaw. “but i’m the one who was suppose to fuck you til you can’t think, right? do you still want that, sweetheart?”

“uh-huh,” you mumble. “i-i do.”

“come here, then,” wonwoo encourages you to come up, licking your mouth. he runs a tongue on the roof of your mouth, as you moan while his hand plays with your hole again. “i taste good, don’t i?”

“mmhmm,” you reply against his lips, and wonwoo easily slips two fingers inside you again. he sucks on your bottom lip, fingering you faster, and you find yourself instinctively riding his fingers, moans getting more desperate as his other hand takes a hold of your hip and helps you ride his fingers. “fuck, fuck, fuck, i’m gonna cum again, oh my god, your fingers are so good, woo.”

“that’s it, baby,” wonwoo says, adding in a third finger. you feel his thumb press again your clit. “come for me again, sweetheart.”

you ride out your second orgasm of the night. although it’s not as intense as the first, it feels more of like a softer wave holding you close. wonwoo kisses your neck and collarbones, whispering you praises and love notes as he helps you finish.

“please fuck me already,” you whine into the kiss, and wonwoo starts playing with the hem of your sweatshirt. “wonwoo, please, i want you…”

“patience, baby,” wonwoo whisper in your ear, and you feel his hand go up and down your back. “i’ll take care of you as long as you like me to. can you go on your hands and knees for me, baby?”

“can we kiss first?”

“of course, baby.”

you’ll never get sick of kissing wonwoo, ever. you find how you melt into each other’s warmth, comfort, and love— and how he feels like home, the hugs on rainy days, the shared smiles— you adore how his kisses are reminders of i’m always here and love letters, how much he loves you- all of you—

wonwoo shifts when you move onto the position, him moving his hand down your back. he asks if its okay if he can lift up your hips a little higher, and says good girl when you follow his instruction.

“can i…?” wonwoo asks, raising your hips up, so your ass is sticking up in the air. “can i fuck you holding one of your arms behind your back?”

“holy fuck,” you whisper, looking at him, a part of your face squished by the pillow. you and wonwoo aren’t that experimental, but this… is something. “if that will help you fuck me so hard til i can’t think, then okay.”

wonwoo slows his movements, and stares at you.

oh.

oh.

oh, fuck, that’s hot.

“well, if you say so,” he leans over, tilts your head to give you a kiss, before opening the drawer to grab a condom. “you’re gonna kill me.”

“at least fuck me first.” you joke, and wonwoo chuckles at that, pushing up your sweatshirt to expose your back. he kisses down your spine, and you hear the rustle of the condom wrapper. wonwoo adjusts your body, and you almost feel like a cramp coming on, but it’s okay—

“ready, baby?” wonwoo asks lowly. you nod against the pillow. “words, sweetheart. may i have your hand?”

“mm, yeah, i’m ready, are you?” you put your hand around your back, and you feel wonwoo’s hand wrap around your wrist.

“yeah, i’m putting it in,” wonwoo says, and you feel the tip prod against your entrance, and you bite back a moan before he slowly inserts himself in. you squeeze your eyes shut, gasping against the pillow, remembering to take deep breaths. you need a moment to adjust, but the stretch alone feels wonderful. “you okay?”

“y-yes,” you exhale. “fuck, i feel all of you, so, so much.”

“fuck, you’re so tight.” wonwoo groans, slowly bottoming out. “need a moment?”

“yeah.” you let yourself adjust to his cock, as wonwoo rubs your back (his way of helping you relax). a minute passes, and you start to feel good, inadvertently moving your hips back to his. wonwoo moans, and it encourages you to move faster against him. “f-fuck, oh my god, please fuck me, you’re so big—”

wonwoo finds himself moving his hips fast, a hand gripping your hip, the other pinning your wrist behind your back, as you gasp on how loud, wet, and hard he’s going. as hard and fast-paced his thrusts are, it remains concise and controlled. you hear him groan the more he thrusts into you, and you briefly look back at him, seeing him fling his head back in pleasure. god, it feels so good, the sounds of skin slapping grow louder, breathing out of sync, you feel so full, so fucking full, your head is starting to get dizzy—

your senses come back when wonwoo slows his pace, and you whine, tightening around him as a means to get him to move.

“nuh-uh, don’t come just yet,” wonwoo tuts, shallowly thrusting in you. “i’m not done with you.”

“w-what, fuck! oh my god, please go harder,” you tell him, feeling drool come out from your mouth, and wonwoo lets go of your hand, gently placing it above your head.

“so, so, impatient,” wonwoo slaps your ass, watching you fuck yourself on him. he continues to let you fuck yourself on him, his frame swooping down so he can whisper. “so needy for my cock, hm? didn’t know my baby is such a needy, little slut. look at you fucking yourself on me. i haven’t even fucked you stupid yet, and look at you being so needy for me. my baby is such a cute little whore.”

“wonwoo, please move,” you breathe, looking at him with glossy eyes. wonwoo continues to stare at you with lust and endearment, all while shallowly fucking into you. “i want you so much, ahhhh fuck, please, please.”

“hm? what was that?” wonwoo coos, and you whine even more. you feel like crying. wonwoo rubs his hands down your side. “oh, baby, it’s okay, i’ll give you want you want. wanna tell me what you want?”

“y-you, please.”

“just me?”

“want you to fuck me til i can’t think.”

“that’s it?”

“wanna be y-your cute little whore for you.”

and that’s all it takes for wonwoo to remove himself out from you. you wince at the loss of him, as you feel tears in your eyes, but he steadily grabs you, flipping you on your back. he pumps himself, spitting on his fingers and they go down to your pussy, playing with your clit with his thumb and wraps your legs around his waist.

“keep your legs wrapped for me, okay?” he says, using his long fingers to play with you. “can you do that for me?”

“yes,” you nod, and wonwoo peppers soft kisses around your neck and face. “wonwoo?”

“mm, baby?”

“can you spit in my mouth again?”

“oh, fuck, yes,” it catches wonwoo off guard and you find it cute how flustered he got. “i can, yeah.”

“good,” you nudge his back with your leg, telling him to start moving.

“ready?”

“mmhm- ah, fuck!” you nod, but wonwoo slips inside easily, holding onto your hips hard, fucking you at a hard, controlled pace. “oh my god, fuuuck, fuck!”

wonwoo smiles, watching your expressions change accordingly. he takes in all of your noises, expressions, all of you, how you ask to go faster, how you’re trying to fuck back too, how you’re willing to make it good for both of you. wonwoo takes a hold of your hand, putting it above your head. he gets caught off guard when you put your other hand up, and wraps his hand around your wrists, pinning them against the sheets.

“fuck, baby, you’re so tight, your pretty pussy loves taking me in, hm?” wonwoo whispers, and his free hand creeps up on your neck, but doesn’t add pressure on it. “open up.”

you oblige, and you feel him twitch. you tighten in instinct, as he lets spit drip down from his mouth to yours, and sticks his tongue in your mouth to push it in again. you moan at that, eyes going shut, all while wonwoo fucks harder and harder and harder. you feel nothing running in your brain, it feels numbing, feels exhilarating, you just feel yourself get lost into the pleasure and the praise wonwoo kisses on your skin. you numbingly hear him say words and words of i love you, can’t believe you are all mine, fuck you’re too good for me, come for me, your senses get blurred out, like your feeling everything all at once, and you don’t know when but you feel yourself unravel, coming undone as wonwoo finishes too, hips stuttering.

“baby…” wonwoo sighs against your lips, hands cautiously rubbing your sides, while putting his body weight against yours. “come back to me.”

“mmrgh?” you make a weird noise, feeling warm and a little light-headed. you hear wonwoo telling you to take deep breaths, and you use your hands to hold onto his shoulders. kisses and kisses and kisses of you did so well scatter across your skin like a cluster of stars, as wonwoo strokes your head with a comforting touch. “wonwoo?”

“m’ here baby, i’m right here,” he says, carefully slipping out from inside you after he softens. “i’m here, are you here?”

“yeah, sorry,” you finally collect yourself together, staring at the ceiling. wonwoo shifts on the bed, rolling over next to you to discard the condom, and plops next to you, an arm wrapping around your waist. you look over at him, lost in his bright eyes, and fucked out glow. “you did it.”

“wha?”

“you fucked me stupid, i don’t remember thinking at all.” you laugh. wonwoo’s face turns more pink, and he grumbles into your neck, kissing a spot or two.

“was that all okay?” he asks, stroking your head with one hand, playing with your hands with the other. “we did a little experimenting tonight.”

“it was good, yes, thank you,” you tell him, stroking his cheek fondly. “kinda wanna do more of it, you know.”

“oh.”

“oh my god, don’t act like a shy boy when you fucked me with your big dick.”

“i’m…” wonwoo get even more shy, and you laugh, kissing his nose and his cheeks. “just wasn’t expecting that, that’s all.”

“is it a lot for you?”

“no, i’m glad you trust me, and that i’m able to trust you.” wonwoo says, rubbing your stomach. “we should clean up.”

“eh, i kinda wanna lay here.” you say, sort of sprawling out on the bed. you stretch your arm a little weird so it ends up across wonwoo’s body. “too tired.”

“baby, you work in healthcare. didn’t they teach you to pee after sex?”

“i work in an eye clinic!”

“well yeah! same idea! it’s still healthcare! i’m getting you to clean up.” wonwoo says, slipping out of bed and grab his sweatpants. he slips it on, and goes over to your side, but you start rolling away, not wanting to get out of bed. “baby, don’t do that.”

“i want to cuddle first,” you say, not bothering to fight back when wonwoo grabs your body to carry you to the bathroom. “i feel like jelly.”

“good, that’s what i intended,” wonwoo kisses your face when you wrap your arms around his neck. “we can cuddle after. what do you want for breakfast?”

“eggs. toast, if we have bread. do we have bread?” wonwoo shrugs . “uh, coffee? oh! and maybe fried rice.”

“you work tomorrow?” he asks. you shake your head. “good, we’ll sleep in, eat breakfast, you wanna go play stardew valley together?”

you grin, giving him a kiss.

god, you love him so fucking much.

[makedonsgriva]

Random, what are your top favorite fics that you've written (feel free how much that you want to list)? Why they're special to you? Is there a specific inspiration when you wrote them?

Oh this is a pretty cool ask!

I will list five here!

1. We Should Just Kiss (Like Real People Do)

I’m actually pretty proud of this fic because it’s the first one I wrote after a pretty long hiatus and I was very nervous about it because a) it was my first fic for a new fandom b) it has explicit sexual content and I wasn’t sure if could pull it off nicely c) writing calamity xie lian and wu ming was a task alright like this fic took me almost a month i guess?? and d) since it was something I’d written after so long I was nervous my writing would be crappy

But people liked it and even I was very satisfied and pleased with how it turned out in the end! I’m pretty proud of it. Idk how I was inspired to write this fic because I started on a draft of it in the notes app of my phone while I was commuting back to home after my internship (harrowing experience fr)

(Maybe the fic made me channel out all my frustrations caused by the internship via xie lian)

2. I Really Like Your Company

I love this fic because it’s the first multi chapter fic I completed and posted. Also because it was my lifeline fr while I was grappling with many things. I’d started it as a gift for one of my dear friends and then it just became so much more. It’s so warm and comforting.

I was throwing in tropes and all cute stuff I could imagine in it and it made me happy. Writing that fic, getting comments on it made me very happy. I love that fic.

3. Once More We Try

Okay I’m actually still working on this fic and as a matter of fact I was working on its latest chapter before this and I truly think this fic has quickly become one of my favourites because I love writing all the characters in it so much. There’s so much to explore and so much to write and it’s a challenge but such a good challenge!

Idk how I got the inspiration for the fic I was just scrolling through tumblr one day and I randomly got this thought that huh what if SY had died instead of throwing Binghe in the abyss? And then I posted that idea and.

IT BLEW UP?

so I thought whoa why wait for someone else to write it when I can write it so I got down to business and here we are! It’s super fun. I love this fic so much. It’s also my first fic for scum villain fandom and I’m so glad it’s been so well received ❤️

4. Song of The River City

Another TGCF fanfic! I’ve put it on hold for now as I’m planning to complete OMWT before I get back to it. I’m actually very proud of this AU where we have ghost king! Xie Lian who had died during the hundred sword scene and cultivator! Hua Cheng (who had dispersed his soul as Wu Ming and was re incarcerated as the cultivator). I’m planning to do great things with this AU and I also love writing a darker XL.

The inspiration for this fic was that I was just thinking about the hundred sword scene and I thought, huh what if that guy died here? So I got down to work.

I love this fic and writing all the characters in it and plotting out the backstories is very fun! Especially the latest chapter where I’d posted the fengqing backstory is one of my favourites. I’m proud of it.

5. I Remember It

So this is just 100 words long and I love this fic because I feel like I managed to break mine and all its readers hearts in so few words. I love writing drabbles because they are always a good challenge for me and this one is a particular favorite of mine. The inspiration for it was actually a fic idea that I later scrapped away. The fic was supposed to be from the pov of snowbaz’s kid and her experience with them as she got older and they aged too and yeah.. somehow it turned into that.

Thank you so much for the ask!

[saintsenara]

Do you think there’s any situation in which Sirius/Snape could work as a ship if James Potter was alive/around?

I love both Sirius/Snape and Sirius/James (platonic, romantic and everything in between) as ships so I’d love to see a universe in which the 3 of them have a lovely time together but I dunno if I can picture it. I can mainly see Sirius/Snape working with James and Lily dead and Sirius post Azkaban because it really brings him off his pedestal and leaves that shared grief and longing for that intensity of companionship.

I guess part of the problem is trying to imagine Sirius being able to even remotely care about or prioritise someone else with James in the picture, even if James is only giving platonic on his end. But then doubly so if that person was someone James had a massive rivalry with and doesn’t want near his wife. (Although if he knew Snape wasn’t interested in Lily like that maybe he’d chill out about it? Or would only child syndrome kick in and he’d hate him even more for trying to “steal” Sirius from him because it would be really shocking and maybe low key traumatic for James to have any less than 110% of Sirius’ attention…again even if they were only platonic… 🤔)

If it was going to work I could see it maybe more after Hogwarts when they’ve all grown up a bit and James and Lily are wrapped up in their family and Sirius is a bit adrift at adjusting to not being able to have all of James all of the time.

The closest I’ve seen to making something like it work was a fic where Snape was horribly tortured for killing Peter in front of Voldemort to stop him telling the secret and it left him vegetative for years and the Potters cared for him and eventually Sirius took over so they could go live their married lives. I was really interested in where they were going with it and pretty sold on that being a situation in which it could end up all happy families but unfortunately the fic was kinda preslash and stopped before it explored how things would go romantically for Sirius/Snape after Snape regained his consciousness.

Would love to hear your thoughts on any scenarios in which you think the 3 of them could get along swimmingly!

My other thought was maybe if Sirius had been put in Slytherin and James decided to talk his way into Slytherin to be together, they might eventually adopt Snape into their wider friendship group for his dry wit the way they did Remus. I feel like James was waiting his whole life to have both a best friend and his own gang and would make one wherever he was with the best of what he had available (lbr Peter is hardly a stellar pick), and without the “he’s evil because he’s Slytherin” divide they could potentially find the Dark curses Sev knows fun/useful against whoever else they decide to bully instead, might notice in the shared dorm how poor he is and get a pity thing going like they did for Remus’ werewolf issue (which Snape’s pride would hate but he’d probably milk knowing how he was with Lucius?), and if Snape was gay and as devoted to a crush on Sirius as he was to the canon one on Lily and therefore willing to do some wing maning for James with Lily to keep in James and Sirius good graces, it could really cement his value as a pal….and if Snape had other options for well connected friends who could get him out of Cokeworth (picturing Fleamont setting up summer internships for James’ unfortunate looking poor but impeccably mannered pal at Sleekeasys R and D department 🥹) I’m sure Snape would be happy to not bother with the blood supremacist half of his year who want his childhood best friend dead (unless we think he joined to be in with them as a way to keep Lily safe, but I think that would be more a rationale he’d give himself or her later to justify his behaviour) ……..but anyway even if all of this elaborate scenario could happen so that the 3 of them would be pally, I still can’t picture Sirius being able to love/fancy someone more than James if James is right there, even if it’s only platonic on James’ end.

Unless I guess we take a reading of canon that Sirius was so mean to Snape because he fancied him madly and was furious about it, or because he could sense the queerness in him he hated/was being told by family to squash out in himself. Then maybe they’d have a special type of connection that could be powerful in a way Sirius wouldn’t be able to share with a straight James? Would that be enough though for Sirius never see one without the other Black? 🤔

I do think if that was the friendship group and they made Snape the secret secret keeper instead of Peter James and Lily might have lived! (And Snape might have let himself get killed keeping the secret 🥲) …although that said if Peter had an inkling James Potter might go to Slytherin he probably wouldn’t have fought the hat so hard and would have still been in the gang too!

I’ve really gone on a tangent here but yeah so interested in any scenarios you could see it working, I think about this a lot and I love the way you think about HP things! 👏

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

this is a question which i've wondered about for a while, which i'm going to answer with a tentative... yes.

because i do agree with you that one of the things which makes snack-in-the-90s really work is their shared grief over the loss of james and lily [and their shared guilt and desire to punish themselves for the role they each played in their deaths] and how it contributes to them being one of the series' most interesting narrative mirror pairings.

but it's equally true that they're narrative mirrors even without the grief aspect simply because of their mirrored love - whether you wish to interpret this as platonic or not - for one half of james and lily, and the quiet devastation [even though sirius expresses this very differently to snape] they feel when the two pair off.

and so i do think - in a world in which both james and lily survive [i don't think it can be either/or] - there is the potential for snape and sirius to find themselves drawn together by a grief which is less profound than that caused by james and lily's deaths, but is still transformational in a way that i think is often overlooked in fandom: the grief of realising that the person you love doesn't feel the same way.

because i love platonic prongsfoot and platonic snily as much as the next girl, and i think that the grief i'm describing can apply just as much to platonic love as to romantic love.

but i prefer - and, indeed, i'm on the record as being convinced this is the text's actual intention - to read both snape's love for lily and sirius' love for james as romantic.

and - obviously - the intensity of this feeling prevents either snape or sirius getting a grip while they're in their teens [especially if they're both also grappling with the idea that they're not straight - i'm afraid i've never bought the fanon that the wizarding world is more enlightened when it comes to sexuality]. it makes perfect sense that - as you say - it's impossible for the nineteen-year-old sirius to imagine caring about someone the way he care about james, and to convince himself that the only way he can live his life is to spend decades pining nobly from afar, never letting on how much his heart aches.

but one of the great tragedies of the canonical snape and sirius is that they get stuck in a state of arrested development from their lives - essentially - stopping when they're both twenty-one. there's an inherent pettiness to their interactions in canon - the obsessing over schoolboy experiences, the fact that snape finds himself stuck at school and sirius finds himself stuck in his childhood home - which other characters clearly don't quite understand [dumbledore saying to harry at the end of order of the phoenix that sirius was too sensible to be goaded by snape seems dismissive in the context of what we - the readers - have seen, but it makes perfect sense that - from dumbledore's perspective - a thirty-six-year-old man wouldn't still care about playground beef from twenty years ago.]

in a world where james and lily live, snape and sirius get a chance to act their actual ages - and with that, sirius gets to learn how to accept that his role in james' life will change as his best friend settles into being a husband and father and snape either gets to learn how to stop pining for lily from afar or how to start trying to make amends for his treatment of her.

and james and lily also get to grow up too - to recognise how their priorities towards their friends will change as they form a family of their own and to see their school days [and their behaviour during them] more objectively the further removed from them they become. james at eighteen would rather die than have anything less than 110% of sirius' attention. james at thirty has other things to worry about.

i think that it would only work in a scenario where snape and sirius encountered each other again after having left hogwarts [i like the slytherin!james suggestion - and i'd be interested to see how you'd write it - but i personally think that there's no way on earth james is having snape anywhere near him until he's - for want of a better term - "won" their rivalry over lily]. but i also think it would only work if that scenario was decades after they graduated, rather than years, and that the two don't meet again until they're - at least - in their early forties.

i think you could do something really quite interesting with james in that setting - as he realises, as his children reach adulthood and start to fly the nest, that sirius is chronically single and decides the project he wants for his middle age is to find his friend true love.

never expecting that his friend will bail from a date he arranges with a lovely woman and end up hiding in the leaky cauldron talking to snape - but then being mature enough [after some running around screaming "snape? snape?" at lily] to think that if sirius is happy, then he is.

and on this point, both sirius and snape canonically struggle to be realistic about how they see themselves and their worth - for example, in how they both refuse to believe that they could successfully atone for their roles in causing james and lily's deaths. when this is combined with the fact that sirius grew up in a community which is obsessed with blood and lineage - and how that blood and lineage is continued - and snape grew up with his primary masculine role-model being a violent man who was presumably also a homophobe, i do think that both of them would find it difficult to be open about their sexuality, especially since - in a world where they get to live normally after 1981 - they would be starting to understand themselves as queer during the aids crisis [which i refuse to believe doesn't impact the wizarding world, because i loathe the implication of canon that wizards are resistant to muggle diseases].

i think you can plausibly write them as both still in the closet in the 90s/00s - and for sirius especially to be worried about james' reaction if he found out he was interested in men. [which is a dimension often left out of things which examine sirius as queer and james as straight. lots of queer men worry - sometimes unnecessarily, sometimes, sadly, justifiably - that being open about their sexuality with straight male friends will cause those friends to back off from their platonic relationships due to a homophobic fear that queer men will automatically interpret platonic physical and emotional intimacy as romantic.]

but - whatever else he is - james clearly isn't a bigot. and i think he could once again get over the fact that sirius has shacked up with snape [snape?] in order to be proud that sirius was finally comfortable with who he is.

[and yes, i do genuinely think that sirius and snape's canonical vibe can be read as having some level of sexual attraction in it - they are both just so obsessed with each other that it's giving "why do i have this hyper-intense need to get in this other boy's face oh wait that's why"...]