#I will have it regardless to be clear. It’s just a matter of whether it has the fun ombre

[lizzybeeee]

DATV Spoilers - The Story We Lost

Posted earlier that I was compiling a list of lore/story threads that have been dropped with DATV's handling of Southern Thedas. The sheer number of things means that I've made this into two parts - this one focusing on all the story threads that have been effectively dropped.

Spoilers for the game ahead, of course.

If you've played the game then you'll know that Southern Thedas - everything from the past three games - was basically swept away by the blight.

A double blight should have catastrophic consequences for the entirety of Thedas, I don’t deny that, it’s nothing short of a mass extinction event – the absolute worst case scenario for all of Thedas.

However, waving away the fact that Southern Thedas - specifically every area you ever traveled to and interacted with in previous games – is gone, devastated by the blight, in a codex entry and line of dialogue makes it abundantly clear that BioWare is attempting to clean the slate so that they can move forwards with the game series with no ties to the previous ones.

The Warden, Hawke, and the Inquisitor effectively accomplished nothing.

As I put it in another post: I never expected them to consider every decision in game outside of the three options they gave us, but I certainly didn’t expect them to go scorched earth on the possibility of ever seeing the results of those decisions either.

How the lore has been handled in this game, summarized to “the elves did it” and “there’s been a shadowy organization in the shadows pulling the strings on everything” is absolutely devastating to the franchise.

The lack of care with which this was treated just bleeds, “There, we’ve answered all questions and finished with this era of Thedas. Moving on now.” At the same time, this destruction absolutely obliterated whatever story threads remained from the first three games.

Could BioWare bring these threads back? Yes, I suppose. But it doesn't change that it was so carelessly thrown aside in the first place.

If they didn't want people to care about their decisions and the impact they made on the world, perhaps they shouldn't have made that a feature of all the previous games.

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Story Threads/ Plot Points that were dropped:

Limited my points to what was in the Dragon Age Keep and what points were brought up frequently in codex entries, conversations, etc...

Edit: I never expected all of these points to be answered in DATV - this is just a list of what was effectively brushed to the side through very bad handling of lore and story.

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Dragon Age: Origins

What is the line of succession in Ferelden?

Things are looking very grim for Ferelden's succession and the Theirin/MacTir line if nothing is done. And nothing was done. The entire plot of DAO literally culminated in resolving this issue, yet no one seems to have learnt a thing from it?

- Anora ruling alone is unmarried with no heir - Alistair ruling alone is unmarried with no heir - Ruling together they have no heir - Alistair and a Cousland Queen have no heir - Anora and a Cousland King-Consort have no heir

The only potential candidate that can fit into several of those world states is Kieran.

Fergus Cousland, according to lore, is the second closest to the throne that is confirmed to be alive in DAI - potentially the brother in-law to the King/Queen of Ferelden.

Ferelden's succession with Alistair as King hinges on whether or not the Warden was able to cure the blight. Alternatively, it is hinted that he may be more resistant since he has dragon blood in him from Calenhad.

The potential implications of Kieran being the bastard son of the King of Ferelden.

Kieran being used as a political pawn to depose Anora using the Theirin bloodline.

DAI took away whatever destiny Kieran had with the Old God soul – that didn’t mean that BioWare had to take away everything else too. Regardless, it doesn't matter. Outside of Redcliffe, the rest of the land has fallen to the Blight - it's unlikely that any of this will ever be brought up again.

2. Did the Warden find a cure?

Unknown. Irrelevant.

Ferelden ended up blighted. Denerim fell. If Ferelden rises from the ashes, it will be without any sign of their influence. Any mention of them will likely be their title alone - no mention of their accomplishments.

3. General Questions about the Landsmeet

What happened to Anora if Alistair is named King? Who rules the teyrnir of Gwaren following the blight?

What happens to Alistair if he's exiled? We know Teagan finds him in DA2 but what happens after?

If Leliana becomes divine does that mean that Connor Guerrin is potentially an heir to Redcliffe?

4. Companion Plot Threads

Morrigan's sisters - the many daughters of Flemeth.

Shale's quest to reverse the process of becoming a golem.

Whatever the hell Nathaniel Howe was going on about when you run into him in DA2 in the blighted thaig.

What, if anything, Avernus leaned from spending a literal age or two studying blighted blood.

5. Zevran's Crusade against the Crows

RIP Zevran's one-man crusade against the Crows and their child slavery ring.

DATV messed up immensely by portraying the Crows as more of a ‘found family’ rather than the horrifically abusive organization it was set up to be.

The very same organization that preys on the weak and disenfranchised - honing them to be tools for the nobles/powerful of Thedas - are now the heroic freedom fighters of Antiva.

The literal decade he spent hunting down the Crows and their leaders is up in flames. No mention in DATV whatsoever.

Wasted a perfectly good opportunity to have a schism in the Crows, with Zevran at the helm of kicking out the antaam, taking in Crows who are are sick of what's happening.

6. The Dwarves of Orzammar

The impact of Bhelen/Harrowmont's reign - ruthless progression verses strict traditionalism

The rumours of an uprising of the casteless dwarves in DAI

Will we ever hear of noble House Brosca or Queen/Lady Rica? Nope.

Will we ever hear of the son that Aeducan can have with Mardy? Nope. (RIP Duncan Jnr - I still love you)

The Anvil of the Void and potential links it may have to the Titans.

No more fine goods direct from Orzammar

The entire caste system has been simplified by Harding in DATV to effectively be: 'surface dwarves' and 'deep roads' dwarves.

7. The Magisters Sidereal / Awakened Darkspawn

According to a codex in the Descent: one went mad, consumed another, and the final magister fled into the Deep Roads.

Corypheous + Codex Magister + the Architect (most likely) = 4/5 magisters remaining? Possibly?

Reminder that it's hinted that there's an eighth Old God that was struck from the records of Tevinter.

The Architect and his Awakened Darkspawn.

No, it was all the elves. They're all dead now anyway. Thanks BioWare.

8. The Guardian and the Urn of Sacred Ashes

"Where did you come from, where did you go? Nobody in Thedas will ever knowwwww."

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Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age 2 was pretty self-contained, with most things being tied up in Trespasser or DAI. The worst of the plot points abandoned relate to the companions in the game and the lack of closure/answers about them.

General Questions:

Kirkwalls, apparently, endless line of 'provisional' viscounts and constant political instability since Varric ran off to go after Solas.

According to DA: Absolution the Red Templars are still in Kirkwall...yet the show is set after Trespasser - when Varric is viscount? When he mentions that they threw a parade when getting Meredith out of the Gallows?

Aveline, Varric, Merrill and whoever remains of the Kirkwall crew apparently just allowing red templars take over the Gallows?

What happened to Petrice if she lived?

What happened to Feynriel if he went to Tevinter?

If Hawke lives following DAI - where are they?

I have a whole list of lore that's also been brushed over: the Sundermount, Corypheous, the Band of Three etc... I decided to put them in Part 2 since I feel they fit in more with 'lore obliterated' rather than 'abandoned plot points'.

2. Companions

Merrill's Eluvian:

Merrill spent years fixing an eluvian with a piece of string, a potato, and some gum - managing to actually do it.

And it meant nothing.

Eluvians are now a fast travel hub - all mysticism and awe at this marvel of magic are completely gone. Whatever sacrifices Merrill went through to save her sliver of elven history is meaningless.

Imagine if Merrill's eluvian aided in the fight against Solas - if having it intact gave you an advantage against him. Imagine Merrill weeping as Bellara fixes every other single eluvian in ten seconds with her magical omnitool.

Fenris and Slavery in Tevinter:

DATV utterly trivializing slavery in Tevinter is abominable.

Disregarding everything Fenris went through, everything he ever thought for, and making it something barely touched upon in DATV is insanity.

You wouldn't know there was slavery in Tevinter if the Shadow Dragons didn't drop a line or two about it. Limiting the conflict to "oops the venatori are being mean again" is absurd.

Fenris' entire story of going to help free the slaves is diminished because no one wanted to show the ugly, dark side of Tevinter in DATV.

DATV has retroactively made this choice for him to be so unfulfilling.

Where is Anders?

What happened with Sebastian's crusade against Anders? Was he ever captured? Was he executed? Are you telling me that no templars ever pursued this man fanatically after what happened in Kirkwall?

Does his fate vary if Hawke was friends/romanced him?

Varric appointing a new Viscount’s Keep healer called ‘Banders’ who just happens to sleep in the same room as Hawke and their children call him ‘daddy’ lmao

Does his fate vary according to who is Divine? Vivienne hunts him down, Cassandra puts him on trial, while Leliana pardons him?

How does he react to Leliana abolishing the Circles? How much does he weep when the rebellion fails and the mages are destroyed? This man instigated the starting event for DAI and drove most of DA2's major plot and he's just...gone.

The Hawke Siblings:

From DAI we know that Warden Bethany/Carver are safe, but what happened to them if they're in the Circle?

Give us Knight-Commander Carver and First Enchanter Bethany Hawke, you cowards! Have them dismantle the Gallows and be the shining examples of human decency we know they are.

What happens to them after DAI and the Mage/Templar War is concluded? In a world that can embrace or reject them - how do they find their place?

Varric

Trespasser gave him a satisfying conclusion - he's viscount, he's in his shit hole of a city, he's surrounded by the people that he loves and cares about. He has the chance to truly build up Kirkwall after all the shit its gone through.

It just feels so bitter, so meaningless, that they gave him the end that they did in DATV. Varric should never have been the one to go after Solas - the only reason it was him was because he's a popular character in the franchise and was used to draw others in.

Why not Cole?! Who was literally mentioned in Trespasser as being on hand to help his friends - who has the ability to get through to Solas in a way no one else could?

No proper send off - no acknowledgement from those who loved him as to his fate...Varric was reduced to a marketing gimmick to draw people in who wanted to see if he died or not. Despicable.

Isabela

Isabela's story was brought to a close in DAI - she became an admiral, got a fancy hat, helped the Inquisition, and kept in contact with those she loved/Hawke if defended from the arishok.

Imagine bringing her back in a terrible outfit, having the most sex/gender positive character outright insult another for their choices, and making her part of the group that steals cultural artifacts from others.

The tomb of Koslun and Aveline would like a word with you?!

Edit - Thanks to bunnyiscthulhu for reminding me that Isabela's mother sold her to a man who became her husband...yet she does nothing when Taash's mother is outright forcing them into a life they don't want. Isabela, who believed that everybody should be free - that no one should be forced into a life they don't want, just...lets it happen to another person?

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Dragon Age: Inquisition

What's going to happen to the Red Lyrium that's popped up across all of Thedas?

Ferelden, Orlais, Kirkwall - all areas are reported to have red lyrium on the surface.

What happens to the Red Lyrium in Suledin?

DAI speaks about how they can never stop the spread of red lyrium, only slow it – animals, insects, organisms - whatever life is in the ground is all susceptible to becoming blighted by red lyrium. Suledin Keep in particular was utterly devastated by the Red Templars - what happens to life there?

2. What happened to Corypheous' Inner Circle?

What happened to Samson? How long did he live *if* he’s given the chance to help Cullen? Can something good come from his cooperation?

What happened to Calpernia?

Looking at previous concept art for DATV she was a companion - freeing slaves, gossiping about Samson & Corypheous. Just...what a waste. Any potential insight we could have gotten into Corypheous is gone.

3. The Mage / Templar War:

How does the world vary if you conscripted vs allied with either?

How do the remnants of what faction was not chosen fit into this new world?

How does the world deal with abominations and weird magic shit now? Is an alternative to the Order made if it's wiped out in DAI?

How is Cullen's templar clinic doing? If the templars still exist, how is Divine Victoria changing/adapting the Order to better support mages/templars?

4. Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts:

How do Orlesian politics reflect who was made ruler?

Is Gaspard looking to expand into Ferelden once more? Are the elves being brutalized under his rule like they were by his chevaliers? Does he do away with the grand game like he threatened in DAI?

How does this differ if Briala has collared him? How do his supporters feel that Briala has his balls in a vice?

Do Celene and Briala stay together? Do things improve for the elves and for the culture of Orlais at large?

Do improvements for the elves mean that Solas' arguments to his elven agents are less persuasive?

If Florianne is alive what the hell is going to happen to her? How quickly does she fall on her blade after being forced to wear flat shoes for the rest of her life?

How quickly does shit fall apart if you get all three to cooperate lmao

Friendly reminder that DATV sets up that all of Orlais, except for the Winter Palace has been overrun by the Blight - and that a coup from the Venatori is inevitable, likely resulting in any ruler dying.

5. What is the line of succession in Orlais?!

Why does every noble family in Thedas have no contingency plans for if their head of government dies?!

Part of why we needed to resolve the leadership problem in DAI was because there was no clear, direct heir if Celene died!

Celene has no heir Gaspard has no heir

Florianne planned to frame Gaspard, meaning that there was no clear heir to the throne - Orlais was already in a civil war, the council of heralds/nobles would have all campaigned in their own interests...that was why this was so important!

Orlais shortsightedness and pride in their nation being the greatest in Thedas led to them almost falling in a single night!

6. Here Lies the Abyss:

What are the ramifications of having the Warden's exiled verses remaining in the south?

Trespasser literally states that there's a schism in the Order because some Warden's believe they should touch grass more often and not listen to some bloke up in Weisshaupt for what they do down in the south.

Perfect opportunity to have the wardens remaining in the south mean something! Greater numbers in the south means that there's a greater chance of holding against the blight - while greater numbers in the north can effect if Antiva/Tevinter end up blighted in the first attack!

How does public perception towards the Wardens/King of Ferelden change when they learn they were exiled for committing human sacrifice to demons?!

Give us a warden coup and First Warden Alistair / Blackwall, you cowards!

7. The Well of Sorrows:

What was the point of drinking Mythal's bathwater?!

It's been set up as something that changes you. Bound to Mythal forever?!

Retroactively, Solas feels like he's going mental about nothing! One of the few times he ever breaks - he begs you not to - and...for what? Nothing.

DATV does not acknowledge that in the slightest. Such a waste and disappointment of what was made out to be an impactful decision in DAI.

Imagine if the Inquisitor drinking from the well made us forced to fight against them during the fight with Solas - imagine if Solas, in a world state who hated the Inquisitor, used them as a puppet! Just like the envy demon in DAI - and no one notices until its too late. Imagine Mythal herself, wanting Solas to go through with his plan - (or one of the other evanuris) using an Inquisitor/Lavellan he loved as a puppet - imagine the horror he feels as another one of his friends is reduced to nothing more than a mindless slave of the evanuris once more. Imagine the devastation as he watches Lavellan lose all sense of self - perhaps swaying him to, maybe, not go through with his plan?! Imagine having Cole come back to help save the Inquisitor - or Solas begging Rook to save them.

8. DLC Implications:

What happens if Hakkon is not slain? What happens to Southern Ferelden and the Avaar?

How does the rest of Thedas react to the truth of what happened at Red Crossing and the Dales? How do they react to learning that Inquisitor Ameridan - First Inquisitor and leader of the Seekers - was a dalish, elven mage?

What happens if you do not save the mines in the Descent DLC? How badly is Orzammars economy crippled? There are already rumours of riots occurring within Orzammar - it this enough to push the caste system over the edge?

9. Elven Uprising and the War with the Qun:

The elven uprising that was implied to be occuring all over Thedas as a result of years of oppression, systematic abuse, and Solas’ influence.

Where are the agents of fen'harel?!

No, instead lets have him chill in the Fade with no contingency plans, agents, or support of any sort. It was set up that Solas was planning to use this rebellion as a smokescreen for his plans - the elves, all rebelling for good reason, rallying to his cause while Solas planned to restore the world that once was. The rest of Thedas would only see an elven uprising, not knowing the true face behind it until it was too late!

The war between Tevinter and the Qun?!

Everyone conveniently forgetting that the Qun literally attempted to assassinate every noble family in Thedas? Why was there no exalted march because of this? This should have destroyed any accord between the chantry and the qun. There would absolutely be blood for this – Tevinter could have attacked the Qun and all of Southern Thedas would have applauded - no one would have differentiated between extremist qunari and the normal qun, especially not after Kirkwall.

The implication at the end of Trespasser that we could convince Solas to abandon his plans? Him saying that he welcomed giving us the chance?!

The difference that the Inquisitors friendship, love, or hatred could have in either convincing Solas to take another path or damning him to go ahaead with his plan, no matter the cost?

Have our decisions in previous games matter! How we treated the elves - if we worked to better their lives or put them in their place - can be used to convince him that the world can change! Have the ripple effects of these decisions be seen when the elven gods return, blighted - does the world turn against the elves, hardening Solas, or does the world defend the elves from those who would blame them?

Why was Sandal in the Crossroads?! Where is Bodahn?!

10. Divine Victoria!

How does the world of Thedas change with Leliana, Cassandra, or Vivienne at the head of the chantry?

How does Tevinter react to having a mage divine?!

Do relations change between both nations because of this?

Leliana allowing elves, dwarves, and even qunari to join the Chantry! Leliana also allowing members of the chantry to get married if she's romanced by the warden.

What happened to the Seekers? Are they being rebuilt?

Does the chantry inform the masses, the rest of the mages, that they can CURE tranquility?!

If either Leliana or Cassandra was romanced - what are the implications that may have on the chantry?

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No wonder the writers insisted that none of the past choices would have an impact on Veilguard - they literally went scorched earth on everything we ever did.

Ferelden is blighted - any legacy of the warden is gone.

Kirkwall is destroyed - any impact Hawke had is gone.

The hard won peace/order of the Inquisition was rendered meaningless since every single place that you went to and helped is now destroyed by the blight.

Orlais' ruler will likely be assassinated by the venatori who are plotting a coup with the nobles - making whomever you chose obsolete.

AND IT WAS ALL THE WORK OF THE MAGICAL ILLUMINATI FROM ACROSS THE SEA???

[a-student-out-of-time]

An Important Reminder In Trying Times

Hey everyone, Mod Bubbles here.

I know that I've said over and over that I don't like talking about politics on here, but I really feel the need to say this:

This Is Not The End.

I understand things probably seem really bleak right now. A lot of people are going to be hurt by this, and the sheer amount of fearmongering and worst case scenarios are inescapable. But the country and the world are not going to change overnight. To be honest, it may not change very much at all in the next four years. I'm not a political scientist, so I can't tell you that for sure. There's a lot to be concerned about.

What I can tell you, as a student of history, is this: not only have we survived this once, we have survived this every time.

Think about it this way: every single tyrant, every single right-wing representative, every single emperor and colonial power, every corporate scumbag and power-hungry lunatic. No matter how many of them have ever come to power, held onto power, and tried to make themselves seem invincible, not a single one has ever held back humanity's progress and not a single one has proven to be invincible.

There were countries throughout history, especially in the 20th century, that fell under brutal dictatorships and saw countless lives lost. Did the people just give up and accept it? Fuck no they didn't. They fought back. Many of them lived to see democracy restored to their lands in their lifetimes, or fought to see it restored in their children's.

From Europe to Latin America, while many countries still have their issues, they endured and their people have survived. Their governments were not invincible, just as none ever have been.

Regardless of the outcome of this election, the world will go on. People will not just roll over and accept whatever horrible things happen, the fight will continue and we will do everything in our power to carry on as we always have. We'll carry on to achieve bigger and better things.

Let me also be clear: if you feel the need to cry, please cry. If you're afraid, don't pretend you're not. If you're angry, allow yourself to feel that anger. But if you're seriously contemplating giving up or hurting yourself, please don't.

You may hear all this news and ask yourself, "Bubbles, what's the point? What can I do about all this?" I've felt that way too, I have for a long time. I understand completely. It's scary and overwhelming, but I'll tell you exactly what you can do to fight against that: you can be kind.

Do you want to know where the most tangible change in the world begins? It's never at the top. It begins with people like us on a communal level, where we reach out to help others. Whether that means we help our neighbors, our friends, or any strangers we can.

Going out of your way to start fights, looking for someone to blame based on the flimsiest justifications, and just being cruel because you're angry, those aren't how you change anything. Those just add to the problem.

Here's just some ideas on what you can do instead:

Get away from the news, stop doomscrolling, mute doomers, and turn the TV and news apps off. This will get you out of a negative feedback loop that'll make you feel worse and more powerless, which is what they're designed to do in order to maximize traffic.

Remember to eat, sleep, brush your teeth, take a shower, take your meds, and do everything else you need to do to stay healthy.

If you or someone else really feel like leaving the country for your own safety is best, you can still work do so. But please don't convince yourself that if you can't, it's over.

Give back to people as much as you can. Show the people in your life who support you that you care, and that all that they do for you matters.

Donate to good causes you believe in.

Stand up to bullshit whenever you see it.

Do not give up on your dreams and ambitions. One bad leader does not mean your future automatically ends. Stop worrying about any potential apocalypse in the future, because you can do that even on the best days, and instead work toward a future that you CAN achieve.

There's this pervasive and very inaccurate idea that it's only the president who gets to enforce policies on the country. This ignores governors, the House of Representatives, Congress, mayors, and the countless other leaders involved. And it ignores you.

You do not have to spend the next 3 years and 364 days doing nothing but feeling miserable. In fact, that's the last thing you should do. Fear and despair are the weapons they wield, and they only have as much power as you allow them to have over you.

If your view of politics is that you just have to vote for the "right one" and then everything will be utopian, or that if people vote for the wrong one" then we're headed for a terrible dystopian nightmare, I have to tell you that that is incredibly reductionist and also very dumb. I can also tell you from personal experience that it's not them who make the real changes where it's needed.

A friend sent me a video that really opened my eyes on this situation: Adam Conover, the guy behind Adam Ruins Everything, said he's not worried about all this. Why? Because he and some friends were able, through their own power, to make real positive changes in their community. They were able to bring homelessness down in their district by over 38% through their own efforts.

And he's right that, as a silver lining to all this, it made more Americans than ever take a stand against all the horrible shit they were seeing and get involved with solutions.

Speaking from my own experiences as well, when Hurricane Helene devastated my area, it wasn't the politicians who came and repaired roads and power lines, it wasn't them who brought in food and supplies to everyone, and it wasn't them who worked tirelessly to save people still in need. It was everyone in our local communities.

The people at the top have never really cared about anything more than your money and your vote, but the people around you care more than you may believe they would. Hell, even strangers on the internet care more than you'd believe.

Now, even if you've made it this far, you may be wondering "What about when he starts outlawing and banning things?" To that, I say look at Prohibition and see how well that went. Politicians have only ever operated under the idea that banning something will make it go away, and it always does the exact opposite. And if you're still worried, you can get involved with organizations that fight to support these things being available and regulated.

But by now, you may also be wondering "What if I can't get involved? What if I'm too young or I don't have the money, or my parents won't let me?"

Then just be kind.

Stop looking for enemies to blame. Don't martyr yourself for some nebulous cause or the idea that your suffering increasing means the rest of the suffering in the world will go down. Don't torture yourself by telling yourself that you didn't do enough.

Show compassion, show support, show love and genuine care toward people who need it, including yourself.

"But there's so many shitty people in this country and the world, why should I-" Stop thinking that way. This isn't about them, this is about you and how you can make a difference. There will probably always be shitheads and power-hungry morons, but that does not negate the fact that you can choose to be different. You can choose to be kind.

Kindness is a sword that you have to learn how to wield. Wield it responsibly and use it to help others. No matter how small or insignificant it may be, YOU DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

I say all this as a 29-year-old who spent most of his life feeling scared and miserable about so many current events, convincing myself I'm useless and selfish because I was worried about so much and I hated myself for all of it. And I've decide I'm not going to do that anymore.

During the last right-wing era, I managed to help build a whole community out of my love for Danganronpa. I created friendships, relationships, and there are people alive right now because I chose to do so. Because I chose to use that community for kindness. I want to keep building from there by going into streaming and reaching out to more people.

I won't lie to you and say that I'm not scared, because I am. But I'm also not going to let fear change who I am. I want us all to be better to ourselves and others, because that is how you defeat hate. It starts with you.

And if you're still concerned, let me share with you a quote from The Great Dictator, a movie made in 1940, when World War II wasn't even at its height yet:

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

Please take care of yourselves out there, everyone. We'll get through this, just as we always have.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

honestly it's been really healing being back to actively contributing things and writing out thoughts on tumblr the last week or so, because while twitter tends to be easier for me to write out Thoughts on without getting overwhelmed, the environment in the twitter fandom circles i'm interested in is not only infested with antis but cliqueish in a way that is caustic to the fucking soul if you try to express a thought that's more than three sentences long--a hundred times over if you're autistic in slightly the wrong way--and it's incredibly reassuring to come back to an environment where the very kindest and most inclusive people toward you are not clearly thinking the r-slur the entire time they interact with you lmao

[alatariel-galadriel]

beautiful beautiful charmeuse silk with a black-to-red ombré why are you $60 dollars a yard when I desire you carnally????

[starryoak]

I know I describe myself as this a lot, but I feel like my autism and non-religious upbringing combined to make me the most edgy Reddit atheist possible in terms of my beliefs, just because it’s always been mildly confusing to me that the proposition of not believing in anything that cannot be reliably physically proven to exist is the radical and controversial one instead of the obviously correct position to take and people get mad at you when you don’t automatically treat believing in unfalsifiable things as equally valid.

I intellectually understand why that’s not the case due to the long and storied history of religion spanning far longer periods of history than science ever has, but it still feels emotionally to me like the scientific method should have replaced religion as it became obvious that most religious texts make objectively false statements about how the world works and that science could explain things about the world in a more accurate manner.

I obviously understand why that’s not the case, but it still feels like it should be true that now that we understand more objectively how the world works that not believing in things that science can’t prove should be the standard way of thinking about things and not the radical position of the ostracized from society.

[protobrieile]

ooooooo i am feeling particularly riled up about marginalized community infighting today

[hxnbi]

⸻ ❀°。❝ SHORT STACK ❞

requested by @kuppuru: furin boys + togame with short reader

pairings. hajime umemiya, hayato suo, haruka sakura, ren kaji, kyotaro sugishita, jo togame x gn. reader (separate)

note: tysm for your request! sorry if it took so long to write, i was suffering with exams but im finally free now. this goes to all my fellow short ppl out there 🫡 i also just wanted an excuse to find these goofy photos of my boys lmao

𝄞 ─ HAJIME UMEMIYA ♪♩ ₊⁺ 𐫱

What do you mean by that? You’re his significant other and that's all that matters! If anything, that only makes you even more adorable!

UMEMIYA's natural inclination to be clingy and protective intensifies tenfold when he's around you. As you often find yourself enveloped in his arms, whether it's at home, out for a walk, or even at a crowded event. He towers over you, using his height—and admittedly effective intimidation tactics, thanks to him being the leader of Furin—to shield you from the world’s troubles. 

"Up we go!" he jokes, effortlessly picking you up from out of nowhere and spinning you around like a merry-go-round carousel.

“Ume?!” you yelp in surprise.

Without realizing it, his face lights up like a neon sign, and he lets out a loud, joyful laugh. You’re so sweet! How could he not adore you?

Umemiya goes into press his lips against your cheek and buries his face in your neck. "You’re my perfect little charm." His laughter and love are almost infectious. 

Umemiya’s protectiveness doesn’t just stop at physical proximity, but extends to every aspect of your life. He’s always looking out for you, making sure no one dares to mess with you (not that anyone with a half-functioning nervous system would, anyway). Your height didn’t matter and will never matter to him, not when he sees you as his perfect partner and his other half, just the way you are.

𝄞 ─ HAYATO SUO ♪♩ ₊⁺ 𐫱

Without a doubt in my mind, SUO's a person who's all for teasing you. In fact, he revels in it. Even after calling the relationship official, Suo’s playfulness doesn’t stop. Rather, it only increases with time. Suo is all for teasing you about your height, flaunting his own height difference with that characteristic closed-eye smirk of his.

“Oh dear, do you perhaps need help?” he teases, pointing at something on a high shelf with one hand while the other resting at his back. “Would you like me to get you a ladder?” he asks 'kindly,' making you deadpan.

Suo finds your petite stature irresistibly cute, and he never misses a chance to remind you of it. But, to the surprise of nobody, like everything else in his life, he’s not as shamelessly open about it in public as opposed to in private. Rather, I see Suo bringing your height up when you least expect it, in hopes of getting a reaction from you recorded in his mind.

Though his teasing is always good-natured, Suo knows your boundaries well. He can tell when you're uncomfortable, especially around others. That alone is enough to make Suo's usual mischievous brows furrow, and he stares down whoever dares to cross the line, especially when he's around. His protective instincts kick in without hesitation. That, despite his constant banter, it’s clear that he adores you deeply, his eyes filled with warmth and affection so unlike his public persona that he discloses to the world.

𝄞 ─ HARUKA SAKURA ♪♩ ₊⁺ 𐫱

Okay, and? What about it? Who the fuck cares? He’ll just deal with anyone if they even dare to give you shit about it. SAKURA's nonchalant attitude towards your height is evident. He couldn't care less what others think, and he's ready to put anyone in their place if they dare to give you any trouble about it.

"If anyone has a problem with your height, they’ll have to deal with me," he barked, a protective arm around your shoulders. "And trust me, they won't like it.”

Nirei and Suo could only deadpan in unison seeing this. ‘He’s just a big softie…’ they both thought.

Regardless, his feelings for you don’t change. Sakura has also been through a lot. The people who berated and made fun of him due to things he didn’t have control over—his unconventional appearance—why do they care? Why should someone ever care? He understands how it feels to be judged for superficial reasons and is fiercely protective of you because of it. As for you? You felt warm, knowing he always has your back. 

Your height has nothing to do with who you are as a person, and he’s learning that, step by step. He’s always ready to defend you, ensuring you never have to go through the pain and ridicule he did, and not just because of your height, something you never had a peace or sovereignty over. Perhaps, he sees a bit of himself in you.

𝄞 ─ REN KAJI ♪♩ ₊⁺ 𐫱

Doesn't treat you any differently. And why should he? Is there some kind of top-secret reason that he's unaware of? Why should such a thing as height matter in his relationship? Dude grills his vice-captain Kusumi to get the full story, until he realizes that there is none. Tch, do you think he cares about bullcrap like that? Well suck it up, you shouldn't and never have to worry about such an outrageous thing.

KAJI continues to be his calm and composed self (when he isn’t blasting music until his ears bled), offering you the same level of respect and affection as always. Because, after all, "Why would your height change anything about how I feel?" he scoffed, putting back his headphones and closing the conversation right there, making you crack a smile at how matter-of-fact he was. 

Kaji’s grounded nature makes you feel secure. Height, weight, appearance, all those superficial aspects of a person doesn’t matter to him. It never did, because you never judged him for how he was. All he's doing is returning the favour to the one he one he loves, nothing more.

…So why are you looking at him with those sparkling eyes like he just found a cure for cancer?

𝄞 ─ KYOTARO SUGISHITA ♪♩ ₊⁺ 𐫱

SUGISHITA is in the same boat as Kaji, and, in actuality, it’s even more pronounced, as, while Sugishita doesn’t say a word, he’s quietly observant. Your height is just another characteristic to him that he loves in you, nothing that affects his feelings or how he treats you.

He is but a silent trooper that stands at your side.  Admittedly, it gets funny at times, seeing the difference in height between you and Sugishita, apparently especially when walking side by side. But he doesn’t mind. To him, your height is just another thing that makes you uniquely you. And all with a stoic grunt and a subtle smile that he tries to hide, but the hearts in his eyes don’t disappear with such that. 

“They’re so cute, aren’t they? You just have to show it!!” Umemiya says. And show it, he does.

The way Sugishita pats your head and cheeks, similar to how Umemiya would to the same to him, is his way of expressing affection—all in the most awkward way possible, as Sakura would scoff while the trio of Suo, Nirei, and him would from a distance. 

“...The hell is he doing? Does he treat them like a puppy or something?"

“S-Sakura-san!! Y-You might want to—”

All Sugishita would see was red, and it wasn't just from Suo's hair. "YOU—"

But don’t let that fool you. The end was anything but pleasant, as yet another chair became a victim of Sugishita’s wrath, and was broken that exact day, much to the dismay of Umemiya. 

𝄞 ─ JO TOGAME ♪♩ ₊⁺ 𐫱

TOGAME's initial reaction to your height is one of surprise, with the way he would stare and drill holes into your skull, genuinely amazed at how someone could be so short and yet so oblivious, like you didn’t have a care in the world. But his curious stare quickly transforms into admiration. At first, you really thought that he was judging you, from the way his eyes would stare down at you for seemingly uncomfortable amounts of time, but to Togame, it was nothing more than fascination. You were so petite (to him), to the point of being even adorable… 

Togame ran his fingers through his locks of hair. Shit, if you ever knew.

His best friend Choji is a bit on the shorter side, sure, but you? You were like some kind of tiny sprite. Unbeknownst to you, he finds your petite stature almost endearing in a way. And unintentionally or not, takes it as an opportunity to be even more attentive and caring over you. Togame’s affection is shown through his actions, whether it's reaching for items you can’t, or holding your hand protectively in crowded places. Whether it’s out of a sense of curiosity or if he truly loves you, one thing is clear, he can't help but show his affection in every little gesture.

©hxnbi. comments, reblogs, and likes are always appreciated ♡

[enchantressiren]

❝𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. 𝐈’𝐦 𝐬𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲.❞

What makes your future lover horny around you? (Detailed)

Masterlist.

Authors note,

Finding matching dividers and photos were a nightmare, unfortunately, but I also deeply missed my old theme.

Divider.

Pile 01. 

“You’re such a sweetheart, I wish I knew you before. I wish I waited for you instead of being in a relationship with her. I wished..” There are a lot of wishes from your future person and a lot of regrets from their past relationship. A lot of pain surrounds their heart, yet when it comes to you, their mind is crystal clear, and they know they are with the right person. You make them feel okay and safe and helped them understand their own emotions. A lot of healed energy and open-minded individuals here. I hear a lot of thanks from them; you also helped them realize their sexuality, yet you do not feel disgusted by them. A lot of them met close-minded individuals, and their minds have been accustomed to feeling ashamed and fearful about who they really are. You are their safe haven. 

Now, what makes your future spouse horny around you? A lot of things, they’re so romantically beautiful that my heart is fluttering for you. An immense feeling of serenity flows through me. 

The way you speak to them, you are always calm around them, and you speak/ooze elegance. Their hearts flutter, and this usually turns them on.

The way you command others to notice you, whether it is intentionally or not. You make others notice you so easily, which is also how you make your fp notice you or how your fp has noticed you. 

I see a scene where someone is wearing something that shines and makes others notice it. The outfit is your aesthetic; it doesn’t matter what it is. The vibe is this dark blue hue mixed with a saturated gray, but there is a spotlight on them. Everyone is watching their every move and cannot get enough of them. There are other socialites in this scene, yet everyone needs to notice this person. This is your energy, you steal others' spotlight, thus doing the same with your fp. Your dominant energy turns your fp on like a madman, and I can hear them masturbating while muttering your name.

Your word choices, your fp sees you full of richness. Your vocabulary is broad, and they think your intelligence is on another level. I see you saying filthy words to them during sex in a romanticized language, or your native language, and this is their killer. Their heart will beat like crazy, they will become sweaty and become aroused on the spot. Some will literally orgasm on the spot depending on their sex drive and yours (so this varies). 

This may seem normal to you, but to them this is.. Not sure how to explain it, but it is something else. Your healing nature is their turn on. So, as mentioned, their ex messed them up and there was a lot of toxic energy surrounding them with her (yes, regardless of their gender), but with you—it’s very healthy and romantic. For some reason (their words), it turns them on a lot. You could be setting up a boundary and explaining why, and their mind drifts to fucking you endlessly. Then they have to remind themselves to listen, and they will—every little word that comes from your mouth, the detail of where they are, every movement of yours, but ultimately go back to those thoughts. Again, this also comes back to your presence and how you make everyone drawn to you effortlessly. 

During sex, you tend to squirm around the person you make out with spontaneously, just something your body has been doing forever. For them, they find it adorable and cannot get enough of it. Some of you feel insecure about it, but you shouldn’t because it is one of their favorites. Now, it doesn’t necessarily turn them on, but it plays a part in your presence. Addictive is what pops into mind.

Seriously, your presence is incredible, so healing and nurturing and your presence itself is going to bring so many suitors into your life that you may feel overwhelmed. So make sure to tend to yourself and distance from energy vampires that will appear as your future lover; do not ignore your gut feeling or intuition around certain people despite how others speak kindly about them. Not everything meets the eye.

Your hardworking ability and determination are one of their turn ons. They have or will speak about this to their mother, hiding parts of their fantasy of you fucking them/pegging them endlessly while using a tie around their neck to control them but also choke them. A lot of rough fantasies, but aside from this. They adore how you work so hard to get what you want instead of projecting envious energy onto others and being bitter. Once again, this is normal for you, but for them and others around you, it is so refreshing. Also, they will peek around when you are working and admire your body and hope that you will not see them despite you knowing they are and accentuating your body for their eyes. 

Channeled song:

Climax - Djo 

✮ Masterlist.

Pile 02. 

With how you make them smile instantly. They have a rough and biker type of personality. Very heartwarming and soft with the right person yet so gruff. With you though, they are able to let loose, which makes it easier for them to show that they do become aroused by you. They have had instances where they could not or were not allowed by people they used to know. They have never been in a relationship, which has resulted in them being bitter, so do expect rough sex from time to time. I do find it ironic with how they have never had sex before, but you do teach them everything you know and they are able to adapt to the details and your body movement. 

You are an unbothered person and very laid back. They are someone who will overthink and let their insecurities interfere with their words, so sometimes they will try to assert their ‘dominance’ with you. The reality is: they want you to dominate them despite what they are actually saying. They have a lot of bratty energy, or scared bratty energy. Your unbothered personality turns them on and will make them realize they like being dominated, but it also pisses them off since they are used to others being intimidated by them and cowering away. 

They will become turned on by how you always wear something sexy or any type of accessory that is appealing to the male’s gaze, regardless of your and their gender. Something about them gets them going, and they will let you step on them, both metaphorically and physically. 

I see an image where someone is wearing red heels and clear stockings holding a baton as their lover's hands are tied with their used stocking after they came. And their lover is begging for them to touch them, but the person will not. The lover's main focus is their high heel as the image zooms onto it. Your fp main focus will be that sexy outfit or accessory whenever they can get their hands on you or if you are taking control. I feel a lot of vers energy despite you being prone to take the bottom role. I see them encouraging you and making you feel confident too.

This isn’t something that turns them on, but it is necessary for me to say. They love your legs. A lot of you feel insecure about it, and some of you feel shameful for not shaving your legs’ hair, but mind you, they will be worshiping your mind no matter what. If you were to insult them or your leg, expect them to drag you anywhere and kiss them so hard in an attempt to make a hickey but for it to fail miserably. 

Your tongue skills are to die for. The second you even mention oral to them, they will be aroused, and their heart will start to race like heartburn. Overwhelming sensations will drape around their body and make them into a mummy. This only comes down to when you do give them oral, as they will be your sucker. You could even bribe them or give a peace offering for oral and you will receive instant obliviousness or forgiveness. But they do know that it is their weakness, so they won’t be bothered or insulted by it. I see the both of you using this as a tease or a joke with others (when they become comfortable with the idea). 

I mentioned how they will worship you and have bratty energy, but I also feel toxic alpha energy. The meaning fits their personality when you meet and get to know one another but it is hidden perfectly. You will notice it and some of you will brush it off. They grew up in a toxic environment where toxic masculinity and misogynistic traits were normalized for them, and they believe it is their duty to do everything without getting help from anyone, hence the gruffness in their lovely personality. There are a lot of internalized misogynistic traits with them that they may project onto you, so when they do ask you out, make them wait for you for a few months or 1-2 years (depending on your gut feeling) and call them out for their behavior because it will be a toxic relationship if you do not. Calling them out makes them change for the better, so you can actually see the lovely personality I spoke of.

If you do make them wait, the relationship will blossom into something pretty.. Like a sakura tree. Their energy after they heal and are with you is so enchanting and soothing, it makes you desire to sit at a pond and read a book with one another while gazing at the clouds passing by. The breeze brushes on your skin, leaving a subtle chill, and their gaze from your body to your lips as you speak will send shivers both on your body. Their respectful movements with you will make you melt..

I could write a book on how beautiful the relationship will become, but that is for you to find out and for me to know. 

Channeled songs:

She calls me daddy - KiNG MALA

Sweet but psycho - Ava Max

✮ Masterlist.

Pile 03.

How many people do you have chasing after you? Your sex appeal is off the roof; I see so many people similar to a zombie horde chasing after you and begging you for your attention; the same goes for your fp. Some of you do manifestation techniques and affirm for sex appeal beauty, something about being sexy or being a queen/god, and an aura that draws people in and it’s working. This is how you will attract your fp. Some of you have met them and you know it’s them because you manifested them, and for those that haven't, they will come to you in April, May, June, or if you start to see things that have ‘’mars,’’ you are close. 

Now, what makes your fp horny around you?

They become aroused when you are boastful, cocky, and straight up arrogant. They remind me of a puppy, always following their owner, no matter what and always needing them. 

You have a seductive walk, you move and walk like a serpent. It’s silent, smooth, and confident, but you have this movement that draws its prey to you. I cannot explain the energy I am feeling, but I know that you know what I mean because you have been affirming it. 

You wear a lot of red and gold, red lipsticks, red eye shadow, gold suits, dark red suits, dresses that show a lot of skin, etc. You ooze the definition of sex appeal, and your fp sees it for themselves, and they desire for you to tie them up with red chains into your prey to devour. 

Is snakes your favorite or something you feel connected to? Your energy fits a snake in the best and worst ways. Meaning, you’re cunning as one but tantalizing as their eyes. You seriously pull people in, and I feel hypnotized as I do your reading. Your energy is secretive as a snake, but so open as the inside of their body when consuming their prey. You’re going to hypnotize them so well, and it happens accidentally. In that moment, you forget about your affirmations and techniques and meet them, even if you have met them (but you already knew that because it feels natural for you).

The way you move during sex. Your body movement is slow and smooth; your moves are sensual, as if you were a dancer for centuries. It reminds me of Egyptian belly dancers and their pharaoh would watch and enjoy. Your beauty and moves make them so horny that if you blew on their sensitive spot, they would instantly squirt.

You’re a secretive person, and you tell them small things about yourself, and they are itching for more. But the thing that turns them on is how you describe your past experiences, the words you use.. It is not meant to be suggestive, yet it is. 

Your tongue movement. You either lick your teeth sensually, flick your tongue, nibble or bite your lips, or do all of them and play with your hair in a subtle movement to make them notice you when they are busy with something. This catches their attention so fast and they will feel hot and bothered. 

Lap dances are your specialty, and if not now, in the future it will be because you wanted to tease them and be mischievous. Your lap dances compared to their last experiences always make them cum.. And it won’t even be 10 minutes in. And you will chuckle at them and play with their hair, and their cheeks will become so flushed they squirt.

There are so many things you will do that make your fp horny, but I have to stop it here because your energy is so strong that I felt like a sailor and you were the sirens singing to me and I was about to drown—I cannot write anymore (omg). Some of you have been manifesting for the ones I have written, and now that you have seen it, congratulations on your dedication and consistency for your desires. And to your fp, good luck to them because your energy—whew. 

Channeled song:

APT - ROSÉ and Bruno Mars

✮ Masterlist.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle tonight are lambasting the Biden administration for not getting Congressional approval before moving ahead with military strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.[...]

“The President needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle east conflict. That is Article I of the Constitution. I will stand up for that regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House,” posted California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on X, just as news was breaking that the strikes were in progress. Some 30 minutes earlier, there were reports that Congressional leaders were given a heads up that the strikes were a go.

“Only Congress has the power to declare war,” posted Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie. “I have to give credit to @RepRoKhanna here for sticking to his principles, as very few are willing to make this statement while their party is in the White House.”[...]

“@POTUS is violating Article I of the Constitution by carrying out airstrikes in Yemen without congressional approval,” charged Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib. “The American people are tired of endless war.” Democratic Reps. Cori Bush, Val Hoyle, Mark Pocan, and Pramila Jayapal weighed in similarly as of 9 p.m. tonight.

On the Republican side, Sen. Mike Lee, who has often crossed the aisle on war powers issues, also gave Khanna a boost. “The Constitution matters, regardless of party affiliation.”

"The Constitution is clear, only Congress has the power to declare war. President Biden must come to Congress and ask us to authorize this act of war," posted Florida Republican Rep. Anna Luna.[...]

“These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” Biden said. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

The Houthis have said they would continue the attacks until “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population.” The Biden administration, which has not supported a ceasefire in Gaza, said it would hit back hard if the Houthis did not stand down. After a particularly heavy volley of drones and rockets on Tuesday, the administration made its move.

This has a lot of analysts worried about escalation — something the Biden administration said it didn't want. "If the objective is to stop Houthi attacks without escalating matters toward a full war, then bombing them has proven quite inefficient in the past. Just ask the the Saudis," said the Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi, on X, referring to the Yemen civil war in which the Houthis gained major victories despite routine missile bombardments from U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia.

"Moreover, bombing them very likely will escalate matters, which means that not only will the attacks not be stopped, but the broader war that Biden [allegedly] seeks to prevent will likely become a reality."

12 Jan 24

[fans4wga]

26 July update from WGA's Chris Keyser

From the WGA: With SAG-AFTRA now on strike and new levels of solidarity across all Hollywood unions, we are witnessing the spectacular failure of the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy. In this video, WGA Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser lays out what this moment means and how we move forward. To learn more about the WGA strike, visit https://www.wgastrike.org.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Fellow members of the WGA East and West. It's been a while since our last video and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. So on behalf of the negotiating committee and leadership, I wanted to give you an update on where we are and what the near future at least is likely to bring.

We've been walking side by side on picket lines in New York and Los Angeles for a little over 12 weeks now. Only now we're joined by thousands upon thousands of members of SAG-AFTRA who, like us, have finally had enough.

This is the endpoint and the fruit of the AMPTP’s game plan. For 11 weeks, they negotiated with everyone but us. They claimed it was just practicality, that they could only do one thing at a time, which is not normally a point of pride. But events have made clear what we knew from the start: that not only was it a strategy, it was their only strategy. Negotiate a deal with a single guild and impose that deal on every other guild and union in Hollywood, whether it addresses the needs of those unions or not, all with the implicit threat: if you want more, strike for it.

Wow. It’s their 2007-8 playbook applied to 2023 as if nothing has changed, as if the accumulation of economic insults and injuries inflicted on us over the past decade would be borne in perpetual silence, as if the giant of labor had not awakened. But it has. And you only need to look as far as the front gates of every studio in LA and New York to see the evidence.

Two unions on strike willing to exercise their power, despite the pain, to ensure their members get the contract they deserve. For us, that means addressing the relentless mistreatment of screenwriters, which has only been exacerbated by the move to streaming; the continued denial of full MBA protection to comedy variety and other appendix A writers when they work in streaming; and the self-destructive unsustainable dismantling of the process by which episodic television is made and episodic television writers are paid.

It means addressing the existential threat of AI and the insufficiency of streaming residual formulas, including the need for transparency and a success-based component. All of these will need to be addressed for there to be a deal because in this strike it is our power and not their pattern that matters, not their strategy. Their strategy has failed them. Now they're in the midst of a streaming war with each other, an admittedly difficult transition. And as they face the future, their interests and business models could not be more different from Disney to Sony to Netflix to Amazon.

We root for their success, all of them. They root for each other's failure. We are the creative ammunition through which they will succeed. They are each other's apex predators. And yet, in a singular shared dedication to denying labor, they have shackled themselves together in what increasingly seems like a mutual suicide pact, as the 2023-24 broadcast season and the 2024-25 movie schedule and its streaming shows disappear, melt away week by week.

So what does this mean? What does it mean going forward? How do you play chess against an opponent who insists on screaming checkmate at every move regardless of how the board looks and the game is going?

You stay firm, you stay resolved, because our cause is no less existential than when we started and our leverage is increasing every day. Alone we withheld our labor with the support of our union siblings and the Teamsters and IATSE and the Crafts, we were able to delay the vast majority of production. Now with SAG-AFTRA on strike, those few studio projects that remained have also shut down. And it's not just the obvious delays. If this strike drags on, it's the actors with conflicting obligations and the directors and the double-booked studio facilities and release date chaos that the companies must now also contend with. Some of their most valuable product could well be delayed for years.

Add to that, no promotion of movies or television shows and famous faces on the picket lines and social media speaking directly to their customers. For the tech companies and the mega corporations, that should be their nightmare scenario: WGA and SAG-AFTRA side by side. Our bargaining agenda may not be identical, but our cause is the same. Our army of labor, defending labor has increased 17-fold in the past two weeks alone.

Even so, even with all this wind at our backs this negotiation won't happen overnight. It's not because the negotiations themselves are so complex. Once the companies fully engage, it could go very quickly, but because their strategy of many decades has just fallen apart and they didn't see it coming, and it's going to take them a minute to regroup, 'cause the companies have things to work out internally, and saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes. So either together or separately, as their divergent interests might suggest, they will come back to us, despite their understandable concern about how they've navigated this transition to streaming, which is on their heads and not ours; and their worries about costs and their worries about Wall Street; despite this being a season of doom and gloom, none of them are walking away from the riches of this business, and certainly not over the equitable minimum compensation to writers.

They didn't get the deal they wanted; that's fine, it happens all the time. They're not taking their ball and going home over it. And since we know they come from union families themselves, and since they've denied that “even-in-Hollywood-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me” ugliness of threatening to starve us out and leave us homeless (which we assume they understand also means making our children homeless,) they will come back to us. Although I will say they took a long time to deny that statement, longer than I would have had it been ascribed to me.

But what does it matter? You can starve a labor force slowly or quickly. The effect is the same. It's not like day rates for comedy variety writers and endless free drafts for screenwriters in exchange for a single paid one in four-week mini-rooms isn't cruelty. It's just cruelty written in contract language instead of a press quote.

So what can we expect from the companies as all of this plays itself out? They will try to convince Wall Street that taking a strike, prolonging it unnecessarily, losing their content stream in the process—that all of that is just smart business and no reason for investor concern. We will be talking to Wall Street too, and reminding them that for all these companies, all of 'em including Netflix, the bill, the price for making nothing, will eventually come due. And Wall Street is listening already. Here's Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush on Yahoo Finance the other day: “I think the studios are completely wrong on this one. Content is their lifeblood. They're feeling really foolish about this."

Wall Street isn't the only one listening. We've been talking to union pension funds too about the risks the companies are taking. We talked to CalPERS, the largest public pension plan in the country, talked about the loss of programming and the cost to the industry, and we heard strong support from its board for our struggle and the promise that the companies will be hearing from them, from CalPERS, and demanding answers on behalf of its 2 million members.

To us, of course, they will continue to plead temporary poverty, but we know the drill. These companies support billions into the streaming wars and taken short-term losses these past three years, because they know that to the winner will go the spoils. We're patient, will they share that with us when the time comes? What are the chances?

Since 2017, the last time the studios negotiated with us outside of COVID, the big six companies alone have made $150 billion in profits off our work, while they slashed our pay and degraded our working conditions. Maybe if they had shared a tiny piece of that then, made $1 billion or so less, this year wouldn't seem so costly. As it is, there is no iron law that these companies are entitled to record profits every year, and it isn't some great travesty if their shareholders or their CEOs get a slightly smaller slice of the massive profits we helped create if some balance is restored.

Look, no one denies that corporations exist to make a profit and no one wants our employers to be profitable more than we do, but the singular pursuit of corporate profits to the exclusion of their social and human cost is a real problem in this country—it’s a real problem. A corporation's bottom line is not the same as the world’s, and there is nothing in our studio's bottom lines today that accounts for the quality of our lives or for our dignity, for the comfort of our retirement or the security of our families. Their numbers have no conscience, but the people who report them as victories ought to.

In their refusal to recognize that, these companies have also extracted an awful price, which is laid at their feet and for which they are responsible. Losses to the economies of New York and Los Angeles and everywhere that film and television are made, terrible losses that mount every day, thousands of people out of work; not just us, all the crews, the crafts, the janitors, the drivers, the businesses that thrive when Hollywood thrives, the restaurants, the stores—for what? For nothing. So they could avoid coming to the table to negotiate the deal they will one day give us. Measured today that is the painfully mixed legacy of our employers, weighed against every beautiful piece of work we have made with them.

And if history is a guide, they have only temporary stewardship over a kind of national trust, which is Hollywood. Our story, our sometimes conscience, our public conversation, our diversion of the worst and best of times, our greatest export, the repository of our imagination. They have some obligation to more than just their shareholders to behave accordingly.

Unfortunately, it seems big tech, mega corporations, and some of the people who run them, as the saying goes know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So they have built a business model that no longer works for human beings who cannot be paid minimum for 10 to 20 weeks a year and make a career out of that, be paid for one draft of a screenplay that demands a year of labor, be paid a few episodic fees for a show about which to take years to decide be paid a daily rate.

And now we have a first glimpse of what they offered our actor colleagues. We are not 170,000 Willy Lomans to be used and then discarded. We know what the companies believe they have the power to do. We know what they think machines can do and do without any of us. Oh yeah, we've seen the writing on the wall and it's plagiarized.

The thing is this: the difference between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do is the greatest single difference in the world. Knowing that is the only real protection we have against a dystopian future. And if the companies sometimes forget that, writers will do it for them.

I can't know exactly how long it will take this revolutionary moment, and you've heard again and again what is happening today has not happened in 63 years, but I know that's not always how it feels, revolutionary and defining, even though we celebrate that on picket lines together, which is the right thing to do. That's not always how it feels when you go home at night. I know how tough this is: to strike, to hold the line. I know it gets tougher every day even with SAG-AFTRA marching beside us, how hard it is to face the uncertainty of when it will end, when we'll get back to work, how we'll pay the bills. I know it's hardest for those who've just gotten started, for those for whom the world opens doors more reluctantly, battled their whole life just to get here; but hard too for those struggling to maintain their long careers, who find work tougher and tougher to come by, or those with families with children or parents to take care of.

These companies understand the cruelty of what they're doing. It's their plan to starve us just a little, to exact as much pain as they can so that we wish more for the pain to end than for the better life we dreamed up. That we're more afraid of the uncertainty of the present than the certain devastation of the future. It's societally acceptable economic torture inflicted by management on labor every day, then blamed on labor for daring to fight back, for refusing to be complicit in its own mistreatment.

Here's how I know that's not going to work. Not with us, not with the writers, because we haven't come all this way, fought to have these careers in the first place, all the adversity, and marched together for all these months, only to let it slip away on our watch—because there is no point in rushing back to jobs that may not be there in a year or two anyway. Because the business, as the companies have twisted it, is now untenable, unsurvivable for so many of us, because even success is not enough to keep going, because this guild is younger than it's ever been and more diverse. And this young diverse membership knows from hard personal experience the system is broken and that it will not be fixed unless they fix it. And those of us who came before them will not let them down, because we and the writer's guild are the beneficiaries of all those who came before us who gave up everything for us.

Like the writers of 1960, the year I was born, who struck for 22 weeks and who gave away all the TV residuals for all the movies they had ever written so that we could have a health insurance and pension plan and residuals from that date forward. $15 billion flowed to writers and their benefit plans because of that sacrifice. Because writers are brave, because now it's our turn.

So what's our job? Even as we welcome SAG-AFTRA to our side, we are still responsible for our own deal, and so we must remain focused and diligent. We must continue to march, picket signs in hand. But we should also remember this and with pride, that before there was SAG-AFTRA, before even the Teamsters and IATSE and the laborers and the electrical workers and the musicians and the plasterers came to our side, there was the writers. Alone then, we looked at the blank page and began to imagine the future. With no net but each other we typed the words, what if?

And then we took a step into the darkness and found that it was light. And then we were joined by the crews and the drivers and the actors. The actors got a bit more fanfare when they showed up, but that's okay, we wrote the script. The WGA, still small, not alone anymore after all these decades. Hollywood labor has finally linked arms and found its voice, and that voice says enough. There is no road to longterm prosperity that burns a path through your own workforce. We are not your enemies. We are not merely a cost to be borne. We are your partners and your greatest asset. And we are, as you acknowledge yourselves, irreplaceable, but by accident or design and it doesn't really matter anymore, the business you are running no longer works for those who work for you.

What is the point in continuing to deny that? Why deny it when everyone else in the business to a person tells you it's true? Do you think it's a coincidence that two unions are on strike against you for the first time since Eisenhower was president? You can't exactly accuse us of being quick on the trigger. The effect has a cause, it has a cause. And there is no profit in insisting on the answers to the past for the questions of the future.

But if you want instead to invest in something that will reap you fortunes, I have a tip. And if you are visionaries, envision a solution, not a stalemate. Because this isn't a war we're in, it's a negotiation, it's just a negotiation. There is no face-saving here for either side, because there is no winner or loser. It's just a deal. And when you come to remember that again we will be here as we have been here all along.

And at this point with 170,000 writers and actors aligned against your intransigence, that is as generous as I can be, as close to an olive branch as I can offer. But if you insist instead on the same threatening rhetoric, on saying you would rather starve us than pay us, I would remind you of this: You are fighting for a dollar, we are fighting for survival. We are fighting for our home: writing is where we live, and we will defend that home with a bravery and stamina and ferocity that you will come to understand someday, which is why you cannot break us. You cannot outlast us, you cannot.

And not just because we have the will, because we have power. Nothing in this business happens until we start to write. And we will not start to write until we are paid.

Union now. Union forever.

[bellyyearner]

I want to see you balloon with fat slowly over time. None of that extreme gain, though it's very hot in its own right. I want to see you swell with lard because of love. Your fat being a representation of how well you've been loved and cared for. When I see a 400+ pounder with clear smooth skin(I'm not talking about stretch marks), and a healthy amount of movement, my heart just swoons and I can feel the care and consideration for yourself through the screen. Whether you did it solo or with a lover doesn't matter, I can see how much you love your body regardless. A careful consideration for how comfy you are at that moment and a constant decision made to continue gaining based on how you feel.

That slow burn of 10-20lbs a year over a long period of time, giving your body time to adjust while still indulging far more than the average person. I can just feel the love and positivity radiate off my screen.

And when the feedee is in a relationship I just know their partner cares for them *as a person* not just a sexual object and that alone makes them more attractive in my eyes. Because clearly you have plenty of good qualities and traits to make a relationship last that long. That love you share with a partner makes you beam with beauty, stress and anxiety age you and quite literally affect your body in profound ways. A happy and love filled life makes one appear more youthful and radiant as an individual.

Just another example of how love wins at the end of the day

[lockefanfic]

Truth

The following can be considered an alternate ending to the Business Trip series - although it can just as easily be read on its own. :)

---

The first few weeks together as an official couple were wonderful. Honeymoon phase and all that. Moving in together, domestic bliss. Fucking like rabbits, of course. But problems arose - became noticeable, and then unavoidable. Two of them, actually.

Problem 1: Your job.

Problem 2: Her job.

---

Problem 1: You’d thought business trips were a thing of the past. They weren’t.

You were happy to put the little adventure you’d had in Seoul and Tokyo behind you. Since then you’d done your best to decline any opportunities to engage in similar trips - feigning illness, sending underlings in your place, handling as many meetings as you could remotely. These days your life consisted of long, sometimes draining days at the office - a far cry from the brushes with danger and law enforcement that characterized your most recent trip overseas. Your days at work were boring and mundane now, but you were at home, and that was what mattered.

Home, after all, was where she was.

Regardless, the allure of another trip still came calling every now and then, tempting you, enticing you into spending a couple of weeks or months overseas where anything could - and sometimes did - happen. 

Sometimes that allure took physical form. Sometimes it came waltzing into your office wearing a tight blouse and a pencil skirt. Sometimes it was named Shin Ryujin. Other days it was named Hwang Yeji, or Lee Chaeryeong. Today, as with most days, it was named Shin Yuna.

“Ryujin and Yeji are on-site in Busan, and Chaeryeong is in Seoul, waiting for her flight to join them. Lia sustained injuries in our last operation and isn’t medically cleared for this one, but she’s recovering well. Ryujin has begin surveillance on our competitors’ teams - codenamed New Jeans and Le Sserafim - and she is ready to proceed with next steps once you arrive,” Yuna says, eagerness evident in the tone of her moderately Korean-accented english. “Shall I make travel arrangements for us to join them?”

For the first time since she walked into your office you look up from the reports on your laptop. You don’t miss the small bite the young woman is giving her lower lip, nor the way she has crossed her legs and begun leaning her wide hips against your desk. It takes more restraint than you were willing to admit not to steal a glance at her long pantyhose-clad legs and the tight charcoal pencil skirt they led to. You find the self-control to keep eye contact with your eager young executive assistant, even if her body language and tone of voice made her intentions clear and easy to read.

“Give me a second to finish reviewing Ryujin’s report,” you answer, returning your full attention to the screen in front of you. “I’ll confirm whether I need to be on-site by end of day, and if so you can make the necessary arrangements then.” 

Despite her best efforts, Yuna can’t hide the small twinge of disappointment that makes its way across her soft features. She’d been looking forward to the thirteen hour flight with you and the opportunities it would present.

“Oh, and…” she begins, her tone a little less upbeat now that you’d at least temporarily dampened her excitement. “You have a visitor. It’s Detective-”

“Let her in,” you interrupt. Yuna frowns, offers a short bow - a lingering habit from her Korean upbringing - and steps back toward the door to your office. She swings it open, and you catch the look of disdain on her features when she waves in your visitor.

Im Nayeon pushes past Yuna and into the office. She gives Yuna a sharp look as she passes the younger woman, and even from your chair you can sense the venom in it. The detective sits down in the chair opposite your desk, legs and arms crossed. She is dressed plainly, in a short denim skirt and a leather jacket, the glimmer of her badge on a chain around her neck the only clue as to her profession. She drops a large paper bag onto your desk.

“Please let me know if you need anything else, sir-”

“That will be all, Yuna,” you answer. 

Before your executive assistant has a chance to close the door, Nayeon turns her head and squeezes in one last shot.

“Cancel his next hour, Miss-” 

“My name is Yuna,” the young woman at the door answers, crossing her arms, scowl painted on her lips.

“Whatever,” Nayeon retorts, flatly. “Clear his schedule for the next hour. Oh, and do be a dear and lock the door.”

Out of the corner of your eye you catch two things - the barely restrained scoff on Yuna’s lips, and the satisfied sneer on Nayeon’s. With one last look of scorn directed at the back of the detective’s head, the younger Korean woman closes the door with a little more force than was necessary. The click of the lock engaging follows shortly after, as does the heavier than usual click-clack of her heels as she stomps away in obvious irritation.

“You have a thing for executive assistants with hips,” Nayeon observes. “Although this one’s much more of a brat than the last one.”

“Be nice,” you say, although you can’t keep the smirk from appearing on your lips as you continue to scroll through the report on your laptop. “She grew up in Korea, so she’s useful whenever I’m in-country. And she’s not a bad person.”

“I know,” Nayeon relents. “But the more of a cunt I am to her, the more she gets off on being a little fucktoy for you. I bet she gets off on thinking that you’re fucking her without me knowing. I bet it makes her so wet.”

Your smirk turns into a slim smile, and it becomes difficult to keep your eyes on the report in front of you.

“Am I wrong?” she contests.

“No,” you admit, finally turning to give her your full attention. “In fact, I’m about to hop on a plane with her to Korea in a couple of days. I expect it will be an… eventful flight.”

“Good,” Nayeon states, satisfied. “I bet she’ll be a good little girl for you, now that she’s received another reminder of how much you need some time away from your queen bitch of a girlfriend.”

She smiles - this one warm, soft - the smile that caught you in its clutches all those years ago and never let go. She turns momentarily to face the door.

“Oh, yeah, baby, fuck, you’re so big in me, fuck me! Fuck, this is the best dick I’ve ever had!” she exclaims in faux-pleasure, ensuring she was loud enough for the exasperated executive assistant sitting just outside your door to hear. You couldn’t help but chuckle.

“We can fuck at home later. I just wanted to piss her off,” Nayeon admits, a sly smile on her lips. “Anyway, pull up House of the Dragon?”

“Already on it,” you answer, swinging your laptop screen around so you can both watch. Nayeon pulls containers of take-out sushi from the paper bag.

She swaps your salmon for her tamago.

She leans over your desk as she passes you your chopsticks. She gives you a warm kiss, and the smile she leaves on your lips stays there for the rest of the day.

---

Even after all these years, she never tired of the collar and its leash.

It was showing signs of wear, of course - the bright fire engine red had faded into a softer, paler shade, the chain was no longer as shiny, and there was more than one set of her teeth marks on it from particularly frisky sessions - but she never missed a chance to put it on when the mood struck, and you never missed a chance to put it on her.

For now you are content to let the chain dangle freely in your left hand, watching the light streaming in from the open window as it plays on its metallic links. The chain glimmers in the morning light against her pale, creamy skin, swaying and occasionally bouncing along with her movements.

The chair you are sitting on protests with the weight and movement the both of you make atop it. Her soft sighs and gasps - a far cry from the loud shouts and moans you knew she was well capable of - happily cancel out the furniture’s squeaking protests as she rides you atop it. Soft, sensual, slow. The perfect fuck for a perfect morning.

You do your best to just sit there and savour the moment, letting Nayeon do all the work as she grinded back and forth on your lap. As much as you enjoyed watching her bounce up and down atop you, taking your full length in and out of her body - taking special delight in the delicious bounce it gave her breasts and thighs - there was something to be said for the intimacy of the way she was riding you now, slowly and softly. It gave her a chance to grind her slick, swollen clit against your crotch, and while it only let a third or so of your cock slip in and out of her hot, slippery cunt with each entry and exit, each movement nonetheless caused a warm spike of pleasure to course up your spine as your cock moves around inside her.

She was so beautiful, so utterly ethereal and intensely erotic all at the same time - clothed simultaneously in perfect golden sunlight and slick sweat, saliva, and other fluids. She was ethereal beauty and dirty sex. She wore both, was utterly enrapturing in both, was equally comfortable in both.

You watch each movement of her body - a body you knew well, knew every peak and curve and valley of - and you never tired of it. You watch as her round, full thighs flex and work, as her tight core drives her lower body back and forth, as her small, perfect breasts sway and bounce. Her face is immaculate, soft features twisted and wracked by pleasure. Sweat glistens over all of it. It makes her perfect skin glisten and glimmer in the sunlight.

You take a moment to look over her shoulder at the dressing mirror behind her, relishing the sight of her back - the beautiful curve of her spine and the sweat dripping down that delicious valley; the round cheeks of her ass and the muscles beneath them as they work to fuck herself on your cock; the short glimpses of your balls as she moves back and forth, takes you in and out of her body. Even her hair, having started the morning pulled into a messy bun, has become disheveled and loose - but in a way that is enticing and alluring, glued to the back of her neck and upper shoulders by perspiration.

Your right hand, resting on her thigh, snakes a path up her body - up her chiselled abs, cupping a soft breast and delighting in the tightness of her nipple as you capture it with your thumb and index finger and give it a pull, a twist, a pinch. Her pussy pulsates in response around you. She is sighing and moaning her pleasure when your hand continues its journey, sliding up a sweaty neck until you reach the side of her face.

Her eyes, shut, drift open at your touch. 

You give the chain a jerk forward.

Her entire upper body crashes against yours at the sudden pull at her neck. Your lips find and capture hers, and for a few moments you share a passionate, heavy kiss. As your tongues duel you give her a slight thrust upward with your hips, timed to meet the apex of her grind - and she sighs into your mouth at the movement, eyes shutting again, nails digging into your shoulders.

Spurred by her reaction, you continue to thrust upward as best you can given your sitting position. Her cunt, already so wet and slick and hot, clenches around you with each thrust, welcoming you, taking you.

“Oh god,” she sighs, the first full words either of you have spoken in a while. “Oh god, I’m close-“

Her sentence breaks into a moan, a soft, wordless cry of pleasure as you continue your thrusts upwards into her body. She wraps her arms around your shoulders, burying your face against her warm, moist chest. You lick the sweat from between her dangling breasts. You savour each moan that leaves her mouth, heavy and hot, directly into your ears.

The chain drops from your left hand, its end falling with a soft clink onto the hardwood floor of your apartment. Forgotten for now, because the faux, pretend-ownership it represented was no longer needed, was perhaps never necessary.

She orgasms around you - pussy clenching, lungs emptying of breath as she cries her pleasure into your bedroom. Your hands find themselves clutching at her moist, sweaty back, hugging her to you, bringing your bodies as close together as possible.

“Your cum, inside me,” she hisses, her voice soft and almost vulnerable in your ear, still at the height of her orgasm. “Please, I want, I need it, please.”

Im Nayeon knew you - knew every part of what made you tick. She knew what you wanted to hear, knew when you wanted to hear it.

You thrust upward into her clenching, creamy cunt one last time. Every part of her body surrounds you, wraps itself around you: she buries your head into her chest, fingers interwoven into your hair, cradling you with her arms and legs as her cunt clenches and tightens around your cock. 

Your shaft spurts warm, thick cum into her. She lets a sigh leave her breathless lips with each pulse of your cock inside her, knowing each one was another rope of cum that would bind your bodies even further together.

Your fluids mix inside her, eventually sliding out between the pussy lips stretched tight around the base of your cock. It drips down your shaft, your balls, and onto the chair. You are sticky everywhere - on your sweaty chests, your slick thighs, but especially where you are joined together, your shaft still embedded hilt deep inside her. You are glued together, made one.

You sigh into her chest, and the nails that had dug furrows into your scalp now stroke it softly. The exhaustion hits you both at once, and for a few wonderful moments the only sound either of you can hear is the sound of heavy breathing.

Her hands eventually slide from your scalp. Her turn now to cradle your face in her hands. Your faces hover in front of each other, noses barely touching, half-lidded, pleasure-ridden eyes locked on one another.

For a moment her left hand moves to her neck, where she undoes and releases the clasp of the red leather collar. It slips from her body and falls to the floor.

“I belong to you,” she says, breathless, not needing some scrap of leather around her neck to convince you of it - not that she ever needed such a thing to begin with. Her hands cradle your face, palms on each cheek, like you are the most delicate thing in the world. Your arms wrap themselves even tighter around her soft, trembling torso. Your foreheads touch, your eyes close.

“I know,” you answer. “I always have.”

Later that morning, when she is snoring peacefully, you slip out of the bed. Your flight to Korea wasn’t until later that afternoon, and so you had some time to spare before you had to leave the house, and her, for god knew how long. Every part of you wanted to lie there in bed with her and savour every moment of it, not knowing when you’d next be able to do so - but you had decided the night before that something needed to be done, and there was no better time to do it.

You fire up the coffee maker - you’d both settled into specific domestic roles since moving in together, and you were almost immediately appointed Minister of Caffeinated Beverages - and take a seat at the kitchen island with your laptop.

A few minutes later, and you’d begun an email to JYP informing him of your intention to resign your position following the end of your next business trip.

Distance had taken her from you once, and it wouldn’t do it again.

---

“Is she being a good girl?”

“Yes, Nayeon,” you say, your answer somewhere between a sigh and a hiss as you press your phone close to your ear, ensuring only you could hear the voice on the other side of the call. You made sure to use her name, as she’d previously suggested, knowing what hearing it would do to the young woman you were currently sharing a hotel room with. 

Between your legs, Yuna gives the tip of your cock a swirl with the end of her tongue. Those large doe eyes glance up at you, the mention of your girlfriend’s name giving the topless young woman a small spike of wicked delight. You watch with a measure of your own satisfaction as she pumps your cock with one hand, the other fondling her own small, round breast and the tight nipple atop it. After a moment her hand drifts down her body, between her legs - and soon after she begins to sigh and moan around a mouthful of your shaft as she begins to pleasure herself.

“Good,” Nayeon continues. “I told you she would be. Did you fuck her on the plane, too?”

“Yes, we’ve started the operation. And yeah, Korea’s hot this time of year,” you say, keeping up the false pretence you both agreed upon.

“Let me guess - she’s on her knees? Are you fucking that pretty little mouth of hers?”

“Not yet,” you answer, “I think I’ll let the team continue to observe before we move.” Your eyes drift closed as the pleasure begins to build. You lean your head back slightly as the young woman between your knees increases her pace. What Yuna lacked in experience and technique, she more than made up for with enthusiasm.

On the line, you hear a soft sigh. A moment later, the sigh turns into a barely audible moan.

“What about you?” you ask. “Are you busy? How’s work?”

“Fine. I’m… alone. In a squad car.”

“On a stakeout?”

“We prefer the term ‘distanced surveillance,’ but yes, a stakeout.”

“You miss me?”

“Fuck,” you hear, followed by a soft hum. “Yes, I miss you,” she admits.

A thousand miles away, you smirk. The image of Nayeon alone, in her car, in an alleyway, a hand down her pants, touching herself to the sound of her boyfriend getting head from another woman - it aroused you more than the young woman between your knees, truth be told.

“Do you… miss me?” she asks.

You reach out with your free hand, cradling the side of Yuna’s head, running your fingertips through the bright red strands. She redoubles her efforts at your touch - she quickens her pace, her hand squeezing tighter around your shaft as her head continues to bob up and down its length.

“Fuck, I want you right now, Nayeon,” you hiss, knowing what repeating her name would do to the younger woman filling her mouth with your shaft. “I wish you were here.”

Between your legs, the moan Yuna lets out around your cock sends a delicious pulse of pleasure up your spine. On the line, Nayeon lets a similar moan escape her lips. 

“Tell me what you would do to me,” Nayeon says, tone low and deep, the way it was when she was desperate, needy. “I bet she’d do it for you.”

You bite your lip for a second - listening to Nayeon’s increasingly breathless sighs and picturing her becoming a writhing, wet little mess in her car, watching Yuna try and fail to wrest your attention away - taking it all in, savouring every second of the two women, a thousand miles apart, each doing their best to pleasure you in their own way.

“I’d pull your mouth off my cock,” you say, gripping the base of Yuna’s ponytail and easing her off your shaft. She looks up with you with those large doe eyes of hers, momentarily confused, temporarily disappointed at the sudden emptiness in her mouth - until she quickly catches on to your intentions.

“Mmm, more,” Nayeon says, on the verge of a plea.

“I’d tell you to strip, and get your cunt on my cock like a good little girl.”

And just as she predicted, Yuna does exactly that - peels off ridiculously short denim shorts she wore, along with the flimsy scrap of string beneath it that passed for a thong. She climbs atop you, straddles your waist, reaches between your bodies, grasps your slick cock and spends just a second rubbing your head against her dripping, slick lips.

And then she takes you inside her. On the line, Nayeon hears that unmistakable gasp you made whenever you entered her own cunt, and it drives her crazy. Her fingers work quickly between her legs. 

A thousand miles away, you watch as Yuna bounces her young, tight little body on your cock - up and down, up and down, up and down. She is rough, fast, impatient, with little technique but plenty of need. 

Your free hand grips a thigh before snaking up her torso, gripping a soft, bouncing breast and pinching the taut nipple between two fingers and giving it a slight slap from the side that elicits a yelp of pleasure from the young woman. Your cock stretches her tight little cunt with each entry, filling her up, making her need more, want more, making her lose her control over her senses - not that she had much to begin with.

She is enthusiastic, needy - but she is clumsy in her movements, inexperienced, drunk on the idea of being used and fucked and not possessing the control to savour the moment, make it anything more memorable than a messy, quick fuck.

She sighs and moans. “Daddy,” she gasps, uncaring now of being heard on the line, forgetting that you were supposed to be fucking her on the down low, under your girlfriend’s nose. “Daddy please, I need… Daddy please, your cum, inside me, I want-”

You remind her of her place by closing your hand around her throat. Not enough to cause pain, but enough to remind her of what she was - a fucktoy. Something to warm your cock while you were apart from the woman you really wanted. A substitute for a woman a thousand miles away.

“Is she… is she good for you?” Nayeon asks, voice betraying the fact that she was bringing herself to the edge. She’s wet and squirming and sighing - but she’s alone, in her car, far away. 

Her fingers aren’t you.

Yuna continues to fuck herself on your cock, recklessly and wildly, her orgasm doing little to slow or stop her. You watch as she bites down hard on her lower lip, enough to draw blood, doing her best to keep herself from vocalizing the pleasure coursing through her body and only partially succeeding. You knew she’d be especially loud once you’d ended the call. You consider pretending to end it but leaving the line open, just to give Nayeon the satisfaction of hearing what Shin Yuna sounded like when she was being bent over the bed and having her tight little pussy pounded full of cum.

Your fingers tighten around Yuna’s neck as she bounces with an increasingly wild pace atop your cock. It forces her to slow down, forces her to submit to you and your needs. It reminds her of her place, reminds her who she was. It was necessary.

A makeshift leash. 

“She’s good, Nayeon,” you admit. “But she’s not you.”

---

“Alright, I have to admit - she’s pretty fucking perfect for you.”

“There’s something I never thought I’d hear you say,” you admit, looking up from your laptop and the report on it to give Shin Yuna a look. The young woman is lounging about on her stomach your hotel room bed, picking away at a plate of room service french fries. She’d taken a shower, but hadn’t bothered to put her clothes back on after you’d bent her over the bed and fucked a load into her.

“She’s a bitch, don’t get me wrong,” she continues, tone casual, as though she weren’t naked on her boss’ hotel room bed with his cum still warm inside her. “But she’s really fucking pretty, and she’s a cop? Man. That’s a dream girl for most guys, you have to admit.”

“I suppose,” you say, flatly. “Where are you going with this, Yuna?”

“Nowhere,” she answers, popping another fry into her mouth. “I was just curious, I guess.”

“About?”

“About why you’re not married yet. About why there aren’t little hellspawn baby versions of her running around in your life.”

The thought is finally enough to wrest your attention from the report for good. You give the young woman atop your bed a look.

“Listen, I think it’s hot as fuck to be some exec’s fucktoy,” Yuna continues. “I just want to make sure I’m not the thing that’s keeping him from marrying the love of his life or some shit.”

“You’re not stopping anything, Yuna,” you state, clearly, ensuring that she didn’t form any wrong impressions. You certainly didn’t want her to overestimate her role in your life. “Trust me,” you add.

“So then what is stopping you? You’re in love, aren’t you?” Yuna continues. “I’ve heard all about your past with her from the company grapevine, and Dahyun filled me in on the rest. College sweethearts finding each other again in a foreign land after so long apart - that’s cute as fuck. So why isn’t there a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly?”

You are struck temporarily wordless by your executive assistant’s forwardness, but the answer comes to you eventually.

“We’re not ready yet,” you state.

Yuna seems satisfied with your answer - or at least, isn’t curious enough to pursue it further. She gives you a shrug before she picks up her phone and begins to scroll on it. “Whatever you say, boss,” she says.

You return your attention to your laptop, and the resignation email to JYP that was sitting in your drafts. Sending it would mean leaving a career that, in many ways, had defined you. Yes, it had played a major role in bringing Nayeon back into your life, but were you really ready to give up the adventures in distant lands, not to mention all the romance and intrigue and excitement said adventures brought with them? 

Your cursor hovers over the send icon.

—

Problem 2: Her job.

As it turned out, JYP was more than happy to do whatever it took to keep you with the company - even if it meant giving you a tidy little promotion along with a promise to make any further business trips entirely optional. That was Problem 1 solved, then - leaving only Problem 2.

For the most part, Nayeon did a good job of keeping her work at work and not taking it home with her. Every now and then she’d vent about a particularly hard case she was on, or tell you about how something an actor did in a movie or tv show was wildly inaccurate compared to standard law enforcement procedures in the real world. By and large you could almost forget that she was a senior detective who regularly found herself in situations the average person might consider dangerous.

This was all to say that you only rarely gave Nayeon’s profession any thought, had you not noticed the breaking news report playing on the large TV screen in the JYP lobby on your way back from lunch one afternoon.

A reporter, apparently on scene, is speaking into the camera - but the TV is muted, and the captions are not turned on. Behind him civilians flee from a building under the guidance of two understandably anxious-looking uniformed police officers with their sidearms drawn. “Active hostage situation underway at downtown bank,” read the ticker. “Multiple hostages and casualties reported.” 

You were ready to give it no further thought aside from a passing sense of disappointment at the general state of crime in your country, had you not caught a fleeting glimpse of her on the screen.

In the background, behind the reporter, Nayeon steps into frame, her back to the camera - but it was unmistakably her. She flashes the badge around her neck to the two uniformed cops nervously holding the bank entrance door.

You watch as she draws her sidearm from the holster at her hip, racks the slide to chamber a round, and rushes into the building.

--

To say the next few hours were absolutely nerve wracking would be an understatement. 

Yes, you’d known that danger and the possibility of being hurt were part and parcel of being a member of active law enforcement. You were in the room when she was quite literally shot at close range in Seoul - a few layers of kevlar being the only thing that kept her from bleeding out on a dirty apartment floor.

You’d done your best to avoid having to deal with the reality that your girlfriend had a relatively dangerous profession. Maybe it was a subconscious thing - maybe your brain knew that living every day in fear of your girlfriend losing her life was not exactly conducive to a healthy relationship - or a healthy mental state.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t really hit home until that day. You’d never been so worried in your life, staying glued to the TV and your phone and news sites, pacing nervously alone in your apartment, grasping for any snippet of an update that would confirm she was okay, that she was safe. Needless to say she wasn’t picking up her phone, and a call to her precinct lieutenant went unanswered. 

You’d learn later that she was never in any actual danger - the gunfire she’d heard turned out to be warning shots fired into the ceiling to intimidate the bank staff. Nayeon, who’d been passing by the building randomly on her lunch break, had decided that civilians were in immediate danger and entered the bank on her own volition, cleared out the remaining customers from the bank lobby, and held down the hallway leading to the safety deposit boxes where the suspects were holed up until SWAT arrived. 

As the first responder to the scene, protocol demanded she remain on-site until it was resolved, explaining the length of her absence. She wasn’t actually in danger for very long, she’d later insist.

But she knew none of that when she rushed into the building, gun in hand. For all she’d known there could have easily been a suspect pointing an assault rifle down the hallway, finger on the trigger, just waiting for an eager young detective to stray into his sights. Moreover, her nine millimetre sidearm and lack of kevlar would’ve put her in a precarious position had they decided to make an escape using force.

Nonetheless, you were more relieved than you’d ever been in your life when she finally called to tell you she was on her way home - eight hours and forty-nine minutes since you’d made your first unanswered call to her cell phone (the first of thirty). 

Your heart let out the breath it had been holding for nine hours.

---

When she finally got home it was a lot, all at once. 

It was relief, mostly, and then reassurance, and comfort, followed shortly by an irresistible, intense lust. Danger never failed to get Im Nayeon going.

Within seconds of bursting through the door she was already on you, arms wrapped around your neck as yours wrapped around hers, lips searching for and quickly pulling yours into a deep, passionate kiss. Her leather jacket quickly leaves her body, her fingers immediately going to work on your button-up. While this hurried undressing was happening, when your lips parted long enough to draw in a breath, she’d tried, in broken sentences, to fill you in on what had happened.

You pieced enough together from her jumbled words to get an idea of how her day went, and how she wasn’t allowed to contact you until the incident was resolved. You wanted to ask her more, wanted to know more about what exactly happened, but she was in no mood for talking. Her lips and tongue stole the words and questions from your mouth before you could give them voice.

You are naked before long, stumbling into the bedroom and leaving behind a trail of haphazardly discarded clothing. She pushes you onto the bed with more force than you were ready for - silencing any objections by quickly climbing atop you, straddling your lap as you sit on its edge. Your mouths find each other and your tongues continue their frantic duel. Before long you slip from her lips to kiss a rough trail down her neck and to her chest.

You capture a breast in your mouth, closing your lips around her taut nipple. “Fuck,” she gasps, her hands quickly burying themselves in your hair, nails digging almost painfully into your scalp as you suckle from her tight bud.

A small part of you wants to slow down - perhaps even stop altogether - and tell her how damn worried you were for her, how the last nine hours were the longest nine hours you’d ever had in your life. But she steals your words again, this time with some of her own.

“Hard,” she hisses between gritted teeth, “I want it hard.”

She reaches between you, points your tip at her dripping entrance, and takes you inside her.

The long, hot sigh that escapes your lips finally rips them from her nipple. For the next few minutes you are powerless to do more than breathe heavily between her breasts as she rides you - those toned, full thighs of her working to throw her body up and down your shaft, taking you in and out of her tight, warm little cunt.

“Nayeon, I-” you begin, finally finding the wherewithal after a few minutes to look up at her.

She silences you with a finger to your lips. Her eyes are half-lidded, but hungry.

“Shut up,” she spits. “Just shut up.”

You were not one to argue, not when you were balls deep inside the most beautiful woman you’d ever known. And so you content yourself with watching as Nayeon took her pleasure from your body, using your cock like a toy, impaling herself with it over and over again until she became a mewling, moaning mess atop your lap.

You grasp her thighs, squeeze her bouncing breasts and tease the nipples atop them, slide your hand up her chest and up her throat and to her jaw before sliding your thumb between her lips for her to suck as you cradle the side of her pleasure-filled face - and throughout it all she rides you, pace relentless, merciless, hard.

Soon she is cumming - and she shows no sign of stopping, fucking herself through her orgasm even as her body is wracked by pleasure. She trembles, shakes, and quivers atop you - but it doesn’t stop her, doesn’t come close to fulfilling her immense need. She wants more. She needs more. 

Even as her orgasm radiates throughout her body and turns her into a wet, writhing mess, you hold her tight to you as you turn her over, putting her on her back atop the bed while you rise to your feet next to it. You wrap her legs around your waist, pull her hips onto yours, and continue to fuck her - hard, fast, rough.

She sighs and moans and cries and you are content to let her, content to let out some of the frustration and worry and fear you’d held inside you for most of the day on her tight, helpless little body. Her breasts bounce deliciously atop her heaving chest. Her fingers are claws, finding purchase wherever she can - on the bedsheets and your forearms, mostly. Eventually she reaches down and fingers her own clit, even as your cock pumps in and out between the lips of her cunt, just beyond her fingertips. Her eyes spur you on - telling you to keep fucking her, keep using her, all without saying a single word.

Your hands leave her hips, pulling on her legs until her calves are atop your shoulders. You continue to pound into her all along, this new position leaving her cunt open and exposed, rendering her helpless to do anything but take each hard, fast thrust you make into her body. It is almost callous, the way you fuck her, as though she were some whore and not the love of your life. You use her cunt. You make it yours, remind her who it belonged to. 

Her moans build, rising in volume and signalling another impending orgasm. You want to join her, and are about to give in, about to fill her-

“My ass,” she gasps. “Fuck my ass.”

She pulls her sweaty, still trembling body off you, denying you the warm slickness of her cunt. Her pussy drips onto the bedsheets as she wastes no time, getting atop the bed on her knees, upper body pressed against the bed. She reaches back with her hands, palming the cheeks of her ass, spreading them apart, showing you what she’d been keeping inside her.

And there it is, red silicone, glistening and slick with lube.

The sight of it takes your breath away. You let an unexpected sigh of pleasure leave your lips as you grasp the toy with your fingers, easing it out of her body slowly. She moans as it leaves her, perhaps in pain or pleasure or both. Soon it’s finally out. Every molecule in her body yearns to replace its absence.

Grasping your cock, slick and wet with her juices, you press the tip against her open, gaping hole - and begin to slide inside her.

You’d had her ass before, but never after she’d had a plug inside her, and it is sublime. Her ass immediately closes and tightens around you, and you think right then and there that you might cum. Your hand clutches her ass and left hip, fingers digging deep into the soft, yielding flesh, relishing the pleasure coursing through your veins but fighting it before it gets too intense, wanting to prolong this moment. She sighs and moans as she adjusts to your size. She trembles at the feeling of her ass being filled.

“Mmmm,” she hisses into the sheets, evidently having lost the ability to form words. She reaches back as far as she can with a free hand, her long fingers clutching your thigh. She pulls you toward her, and you oblige, pressing yourself as deep as you can until you are hilt deep.

“Do it,” she spits from between gritted teeth, “Fuck my ass. Hard.”

And so you begin - fucking Im Nayeon’s ass with hard, long strokes, using her tight, hot hole with the same tempo and speed as you did her cunt just moments earlier. She moans and shrieks and gasps into the sheets, the side of her face pressed against the bed, saliva dripping from a slack mouth. Her fingers are claws, digging into the sheets or your thighs or both, searching for something, anything, to ground herself amidst the constant pounding into the most vulnerable part of her body.

“Fuck, Nayeon,” you say, your brain unable to form much more than a curse and her name. She is so tight, so very hot - and she’d ensured the toy was well lubed before it entered her, so she was slick enough to make every entry and exit so delicious, so utterly sublime; a perfect cocktail of pleasure and pain all mixed into one irresistible sensation.

For the first time in a while Nayeon lifts her head from the bed, sweat pasting dark strands to the side of her face. She opens her mouth to say something-

But you reach forward, grasping her by the back of her neck, and slamming her back down onto the bed. She shrieks - partially in surprise, mostly in pleasure - as you resume pounding her.

“Shut up,” you spit. “Just shut up.”

The thick cotton bedsheets can do little to hide the long, deep moan of pleasure that leaves Nayeon’s lips as you impose yourself on her. She continues, not stopping for a moment, letting a drivel of wordless pleasure leave her mouth with each thrust you make into her body. She reaches a hand down, plays with her wet, slick clit even as you pound relentlessly into her ass - pleasuring her, hurting her - either way, making her yours.

The hand at her neck doesn’t leave her - it merely moves to her upper back, still keeping her pinned to the mattress, making sure she could do nothing more than take you. She lets you. She gives herself to you, lets you do what you want to her, because this - a rough, hard fuck - was what she wanted, what she craved.

It doesn’t take her long to orgasm, with her fingers on her clit and your cock pounding hard into her asshole. She tightens even more around you. She screams her pleasure into the bedsheets.

She clenches around your cock when she cums. It sends you over the edge, and you push yourself as deep as you can into Im Nayeon’s ass before you cum, filling her depths with thick, hot semen. Her moans turn into whimpers and then sobs, and you think for a moment that she might be crying.

You want to stay there, as you often did after you came inside her. You want to relish the moment and the sight of your cock embedded inside her ass and the feeling of her body wrapped around yours. But the accumulated physical and mental exhaustion of the day hit you all at once, and you collapse atop her, your arms only barely keeping you from crashing onto her back as you land on your elbows, still hilt-deep inside her.

You find the strength to bring your mouth to her ear. Filthy sex and dirty fucking aside, she had to know.

“I belong to you,” you say.

“I know,” she answers. Beneath the sweaty, messy hair and heavy breaths, Nayeon smiles.

—

The next morning, while you are still asleep, she wakes up early to make breakfast. She rarely cooked - every food delivery driver within a ten mile radius knew how to get to your apartment by heart - but when she did it was for special occasions. Or, in this case, a form of apology for making you worry so much the day before.

She’s stumbling towards the kitchen - she was understandably more than a little sore in places that made walking difficult - when she catches a glimpse of her old criminology textbooks on the hallway bookshelf. 

She was a fairly sentimental person, and despite your efforts she wouldn’t get rid of the old, heavy texts. She insisted that they were a part of what made her who she was, and wanted to keep them as a reminder of how far she’d come in her career; privately, she kept them to remind herself of those hard months when you’d left to join JYP all those years ago, and how much she missed being away from you. Those months were difficult, and she’d turned to her career as a way of coping. Those months were instrumental in putting her on the path to becoming a detective, but they were also part of what drove her to Seoul to find you.

A thought strikes her as her eyes take in titles of the texts. She reaches out and lets her fingertips graze their worn covers, seeing in them a way to ensure her career would never worry you so much again.

---

And so the problems were solved. All it took was a few uncomfortable emails, a few months of occasionally stressful worrying and intense interviews, and two new job offers. Easy peasy.

You’d taken a job at a branch office of JYP that promised travel would be completely optional. Nayeon had quit the PD and become a professor in criminology at a local college. You’d moved out of the small downtown apartment that had been the home you’d shared for the past five years, and into a slightly more comfortable townhouse in the suburbs.

Time passed. Good days and bad days. She was there for all of them, making the good days sweeter and the bad days more bearable. She was home. Safe harbour and north star for each other.

You are both sitting in a cafe on a lazy Sunday morning - you’re reading a book and nursing a coffee while she’s grading some papers on her laptop. You loved many things about your relationship, but one of the things you appreciated the most was how comfortable you both were in silence. The years had given you both a familiarity that had often transcended the need for speaking. Most of the time, you knew what the other was thinking, even before they spoke.

Your presence was enough, and there was no need to fill the space between you with words for the sake of it.

After awhile you look up to her to find that she’d been watching you, apparently for some time.

“I think we’re ready,” she says, a warm, soft smile on her lips. 

She says no more, returning her attention to her laptop, but you know what she means.

You smile as you return to your book.

---

Im Nayeon could always surprise you.

You’d had her more times than you could count, but this night was different - it was important, special in a way none of the in-shower quickies or weekend-long marathon sessions were. Just when you’d thought sex and lovemaking could hold no more surprises, you are proven wrong.

“It’s you,” she sighs into your ear, her voice soft, still filled with pleasure, but with an undercurrent of emotion that you’d never heard in her before. One of her arms wraps itself around your back, the other buried into the hair at the back of your neck as you thrust in and out of her body. 

“Cum inside me,” she continues, breathless, words spilling from her lips in a long, drawn out hiss. “Fill me up. It has to be you. Breed me, put a baby in my belly. I want it- I want you. It has to be you. It’s only ever been you.”

“Nayeon,” you say into her ear, and when she replies with your own name you think it is the most beautiful thing you’d ever heard in your life. 

She is tight, wet, hot - she feels every bit as good as she did when you were teenagers fumbling awkwardly in an old dorm room, or when you were reunited old flames brought together by fate in Seoul, or when you moved in together and decided to build lives together. But it means more now. It means more now than it ever did.

“Give me a baby,” she says, half-moan, half-sigh. “Breed me, make me yours.”

Words you’d heard before, from the same lips, on many another night. But none like tonight, not when she meant them more than she ever did - this wasn’t pillow talk, an act meant to spice up a risqué encounter; no, this was much more. She meant every word, without pretence or facade. She meant it all.

“Nayeon,” you repeat, unable to say much else. The sound of her name on your lips draws a sigh from hers, sends a quiver up her spine that is pure pleasure and love. 

“It has to be you,” she whispers into your ear, the most intimate words she has ever spoken. “It was always you - I love you.”

“I love you too,” you say, every molecule of your body shouting the words, even if they left your lips as little more than a light gasp.

You thrust between her spread legs, and she wraps her thighs and arms around you, making the two of you into one. 

You fill her. She sighs, moans - and when your cheeks press against each other as you both lie there, breathing heavily - you can feel her cheeks pull her lips into a smile.

---

“It was always going to be you and me, wasn’t it?”

You are caught a little off-guard by her words - truth be told your mind was solely fixated on the humble sign outside your favourite sushi restaurant and the familiar but delicious culinary delights that awaited you. It’s a Friday night, and you were looking forward to a quiet dinner with her following a long, draining week of work. 

The choice of dining establishment was a foregone conclusion, and you had nothing on your mind other than settling into a simple but comforting meal with her. Grand statements of destined love weren't exactly on your mind - not this early in the evening, anyway.

But when you turn to her and find a soft, warm smile on her lips, you couldn’t help but agree. She doesn’t even turn to look at you - her gaze, like yours, is locked on the old, dingy, familiar restaurant sign.

“Yes,” you answer, the word leaving your lips quickly, almost on instinct, almost on reflex, as though your body knew the truth - knew what you felt, in your innermost core. “It was always going to be you, Nayeon.”

She doesn’t turn her head to look at you. There is a slight deepening of the smile on her lips, a slightly deeper blush on her cheeks, but that’s it. She doesn’t need to read your face to verify or discern the truth in your expression. She is confident enough -  in the years you’ve spent together, in the trials and tribulations borne at each others’ side, to know the truth in your words.

She feels it in the way you clutch her hand, the way you hold her close in your most intimate moments, the way you brush stray hairs away from her forehead when you kiss her good morning before heading out the door to work. 

She sees it in the slight swell in her belly, and the family you were building together.

She knows all this. She feels it all, deep inside herself where nothing else exists except you and her and the home you’ve built with shared memories. She knows it is all true, always will be.

When you enter the restaurant you are greeted warmly with a smile and hug by the waiter - he’s become a good friend in the years since your escapades in Tokyo and Seoul. From behind the counter, Jisoo looks up from her prep work to wave and smile widely. She leaves the counter for a moment to greet you both, revealing the full roundness of her belly. She waddles awkwardly over, exchanging hugs, confirming plans for next week’s gender reveal dinner party for their child.

With one hand, Nayeon cradles Jisoo’s full belly. Perhaps unconsciously, her free hand hovers over her own, a warm, thoughtful smile on her lips.

Eventually, Jisoo shuffles adorably back to the counter to finish her vegetable prep, promising to come back later to chat. The waiter shows you to your table, leaving you both two cups of tea. 

He doesn’t leave a menu, because he already knows your order.

You tap the chest pocket of your jacket as you take it off and drape it over the back of your seat, making sure the small box and the engagement ring within were still there.

Nayeon cups her tea in both hands before taking a small sip. She finally locks eyes with you, although she doesn’t say anything. She knows she doesn’t have to. She’s content just to smile, content to reach her hand over the table, palm up, wanting nothing more than to feel your hand in hers.

Maybe she knew what was coming. Maybe she caught a glimpse of the box in your nightstand drawer, or noticed an open tab on your browser for a local jewelry store. Maybe she read it in your face at some point today, in the way you moved or the words you chose. She was a former detective and current professor of criminology, after all. She’d made a living out of reading people, and to her, you were an open book.

But it didn’t matter whether she knew it was coming or not, whether she would be surprised at all when, at the end of your meal, you got down on one knee in this restaurant where your relationship began and asked her to spend the rest of her life with you.

Because you both already knew, on some level had always known. It was always going to be you and her. And every trial and tribulation, every painful relationship with long-gone lovers, every day apart - it had all led to tonight.

Nayeon’s hand finds yours and your fingers intertwine.

Your heart warms at her touch.

---

Author’s Note: Good to be back ^^ Excuse any writing rust that was evident in this fic :( I actually had this alternate ending to BT mostly written awhile ago, but I'd been thinking about coming back to writing again and Nayeon's comeback gave me all the inspiration I needed to finally finish it.

Shoutout to @capslocked, whose work played a part in getting me back into writing. A special shoutout to his Tzuyu fic, which is probably one of my favorite smuts of all time - and I might have borrowed the phone sex idea from it. Love ya bud. Mimosa fic next pls k thx.

Stories and posts will be few and far between, but you’re always welcome to leave an ask. Thank you all for the love and support you've shown me over the past year. <3

[vamptarot]

Why I Think Your Insecurity Is Beautiful | PAC

𐀔 pile one 𝜗𝜚 pile two ✮ pile three

how to choose a pile . . . choose whichever you feel drawn to or ask your guides to guide your eyes to the one that is meant for you! ᡣ𐭩

— ⭑.ᐟ accidentally turned out as a pep talk pac </3 well, not completely, but I apologise 🫡 not proof read.

𐀔 pile one : – teddy gems !

𐙚 : knight of swords rev. , eight of swords rev. , knight of cups rev. , king of swords rev.

bottom of the deck : queen of swords rev.

♡ ⢷ why I think your insecurities are beautiful

I can see from the cards that people in this pile have body image issues due to bullying, self harm, e.ds or simply being put down by family members through inappropriate comments.

This especially could be true if you are not average weight for your height, don’t like the way your leg looks or don’t enjoy the way your stretch marks look on your body. It could potentially make you feel like you aren’t attractive, and that the people you are interested in wouldn’t even give you a second look.

Well I am here to say it’s not true, and it also doesn’t matter.

Your life shouldn’t revolve around romantic validation. Of course, you can care about the opinion of your romantic interests, how they view you and what not, but your life is yours. Whether or not there is someone to love you in a romantic manner you are beautiful, valid and possess a wonderful soul.

You are uniquely you, no one can do it like you but you only.

There is so many wonderful things about you, who gives a (what) about the opinion of people who won’t even matter in five years?

Don’t stress yourself out over things that are not worth your time beautiful.

Besides, I do think that your body is very pretty. “Oh but you don’t even know what it looks like! “ Yes I do, I have the gift of clairvoyance baby.

Of course, I do not mean this in a creepy way at all. [for those with uncomfortable or horrifying looks on their face.. ] Rather, what I mean is that your insecurities don’t take away from beauty at all, I would argue they add even more to it.

Your scars? They are here to tell us that you went through something horrible and came out winning. Or will. You don’t have the energy of someone that would lose themselves completely anyway, my beautiful pile one is a fighter!

Regardless, I just think that you are so cool, you went through all that yet you are still here today, trying your best to survive. Even if you don’t see it that way, I just think you are so strong.

Some people in this pile are also underweight, due to health issues, one unrelated to e.ds. You could be insecure about that, especially if your bones show. [Around your shoulders, is what I see for most of you.] I would like to say, please don’t beat yourself up about things that are out of your control. You are literally so pretty!! I like your eyes, and I am pretty suuure many people like your lips too. People that are romantically interested in you. There is quite a few, you just don’t notice due to being in your head a little too much. You kinda remind me of Bella Swan, but just a bit smarter and more mature. I just so happen to love twilight and find her sooo pretty… I am sure it’s hard to go through the things you do, but your personality, soul and outter appearance is full of beauty because it’s so clear that your heart is so full of love. So what if you are not someone’s type? Fu.. them, who cares lol You gonna be naturally beautiful regardless of their opinion.

You could also hate your stretch marks because they remind you of a time of your life where you didn’t like yourself, or for some of you they remind you of a part of yourself that you aren’t proud of.. Well guess what, I got them too, now we are matching baby girl / baby boy / baby 🙂‍↕️🤞🏻 [in a platonic way, of course <3<3]

No but seriously, you tell me WHY wouldn’t it make you more beautiful? If you don’t like them that’s okay, but beating yourself up and bullying your own self over something like this is not okay!

Your health comes first baby, don’t be the main cause of your misery. I think your stretch marks are beautiful, they wrap around your body like a hug.

Besides, if you don’t like it you can get rid of them.. but I don’t feel the need to, after all they can be a sign of your hard work. And I mean that! I don’t look at those sort of things, but if you pay closer attention to the instagram pics of some body builders I am sure you will be able to find a few with stretch marks. Also some artists! I love looking at concert stages, and I am pretty sure if you do too you will see some people, both women and men, have stretch marks regardless of size.

It’s really not an indicator or shame, it’s the indicator that you have a human body with human needs and reactions. It will never make you ugly no matter how much you want to believe it will. It just won’t, matter of fact a lot of you in this pile are sexy af but don’t even know it because you care too much about what other people think. 😵‍💫

It’s okay tho, I get it. Just don’t be too much in your head.

On that note, if you have a darker skin complexion please try body glitter on your stretch marks. I am specifically seeing yellow and blue. You will look pretty / hot af trust 🙂‍↕️ [ only calling adults hot also 🫡 ]

♡ ⢷ what you can do to be more confident

This will make me sound like a b!tch, and I don’t mean to be.. But a diet could possibly help and make you feel more confident. [Why are you getting mad, I told you it will make me sound like a b!tch!?] Of course, I don’t mean this with any sort of malicious intent.

A lot of people think diets consist of depriving yourself from food. Which is not true at all, diets depend on multiple factors including your health, weight, lifestyle, eating habits and so on. That’s why dieticians exist!

The sort of one I am thinking of is actually just balancing your meals. Now, I am no control freak so I won’t give you a whole schedule or ‘dos and don’ts’.. I just want to tell you that it is okay to eat both healthy and unhealthy food. That way, your immune system will be healthier and you will get more energy to actually do the things you want to enjoy and participate in. Whether that’s working out, going outside on walks or to the mall, drawing, painting, writing… is not my business! You can do whatever you want, I am only here to remind you that you don’t need to starve or deprive yourself in order to be healthy. It’s actually bad for you.

If you want to eat a kinder bueno after your avocado toast, or eat a burger bc you ate a home made meal the other day you should go ahead and do that baby girl / baby boy / baby mhm mhm 🙂‍↕️

Don’t take away good things from yourself just because you feel like you don’t deserve it.

That goes for food and other things you enjoy. If you wanna buy a cute lipgloss, buy the cute lipgloss. Don’t worry about overconsumption. I am being so serious, most people in this pile worrying about it have only a few lip products that are pushing being 5 years old or even older.

Spoil yourself, you deserve it. Even if you don’t in your eyes.. who gaf ? There will always be someone who thinks of you as undeserving of things because of their own misery. So just do what you wanna do, live life for yourself. Maybe it’s your last. Enjoy it!

So what if you don’t know how to use it? lol.. You will learn along the way. No one starts out perfect, and if they do, they are lying! [If you do really struggle tho, @/clownmakeupmua on tiktok did help me a lot!!]

If you wanna buy that artsy stuff.. do it! I promise you aren’t wasting money if most of your stuff can be bought for 5-10$ and then that one thing is like super expensive. You deserve nice things whether you like it or not!!! Your mental health matters and if you need to pamper yourself to feel better that’s okay!!! It’s not a crime to love yourself, neither is it a sin!! 😤 No, seriously, I mean those things.

You are wonderful, the world is already cruel, so you shouldn’t be that to yourself. I know getting out of habits and thinking patterns can be hard, but eventually you will need to have a different perspective of them to heal. It’s okay if it takes long, do it step by step at your own pace. You will eventually get there.

♡ ⢷ five things that are cool about you

one - you remind me so much of the song dancing queen by abba.. or you know, from mama mia if you aren’t familiar with the name. I think you are just like that song. many people think it’s not something they would vibe to.. but then they hear it and can’t stop singing along. with you, people think that you might not enjoy them around since you are introverted, but as soon as they get to know you better they crave your presence, they want you to be around. over and over, they want to spend time with you whenever they can.

two - the body is BODYIIIIING. I do not care what you say, it does, you are beautiful! you look soooo beautiful in red! let that be a shirt or lipstick.. this is especially true for someone reading this pile that’s into vintage fashion! 20s - 40s? whichever decade it is, trust you would KIIIILLL that look. [you know, like, slay..] try it if you wish 👀

three - do you have the sort of relationship with your friends where you are like siblings? the one where you can tease them or mock them, but if anyone else does you will make sure that they will regret it? because that is so cool about you. as I was growing up, I had a very close friend who was like that to me too. they always made me feel safe, and that’s what you remind me of. the feeling of safety. I am sure people around you are very comfortable. and that’s so cool!

four - you have such a good music taste I am hearing, mhm mhm 🙂‍↕️ matter of fact, if you chose this pile pleaseee recommend me songs you like regardless of when you see this. even if it’s months or years after upload!! I feel like your music taste is so fun, it could definitely get people hyped up or in their feels.. the people around you for sure always listen to whatever you recommend! it’s like, they can’t really go wrong with it

five - fashion on poiiiint, like you just ATEEEE.. no I am serious, I do think your accessories are very cool and put the whole picture together. it can be your shoes, nails or jewellery, you always choose well! it suits you and it suits your outfit. this especially goes if you are a guy / man, because it’s hard to dress fashionable by default but you do make it work so well 🙂‍↕️ and the ladies in this pile have such an unique sense of fashion they stand out from any piles 🙂‍↕️ my fashionistas 🙂‍↕️

— ✮⋆˙ : girl groups , lolly by maejor, juicy j & justin bieber , sweet tooth , adele (hell yeaaaaah) , messy hair , box dyes , long nails , ‘my babysitter is a vampire’ , 00s , mango , amigo , the statue of mother Mary crying , fertility issues

that’s all for now my beautiful pile one! your reading made me sooo sad because you are literally such a cute, cool and pretty person and yet you don’t see that.. do you want me to get that talking mirror from snow white so he can tell you himself?! bc imma get it 🤨 jokes aside, idgaf if you are the fairest of them all or not, you for sure are the loveliest! mwa <3 thank you for reading!

paid readings

𝜗𝜚 pile two : – sweater !

𐙚 : nine of wands rev. nine of pentacles rev., ten of pentacles, seven of pentacles

bottom of the deck : five of swords

♡ ⢷ why I think your insecurities are beautiful

You know what, I actually started out your reading sweet and kind, thinking it’s about being behind in life and about financial issues. Even gave you a song recommendation. Then tumblr deleted the entire section… 🫡

So, I spent more time looking at your cards.. meditated, connected to your energy. Eventually, I figured this is my troubled pile.

Simply, you are not proud of the person that you are. Lucky for you, I am the ‘I can change him’ sorta gal 🙂‍↕️

Of course, I am just joking. I am not here to change anything about you, I am here to uplift you.

Before I will do that, I will tell you about a celebrity that I used to like as a kid. I do not care if you don’t know much about celebrities, because that’s not really relevant! I am bringing him up because many people in this pile can relate to his story. If you can’t that’s okay, it’s not a message that was meant for you but for someone else.

Either way, have you ever heard of Kim Jisoo?.. No, not the blackpink one, but the actor! He was accused of doing bad things in his childhood, which he admitted to and apologised for because even if he changed as a person, guilt and anxiety always followed him. Even though he did that because he did think it’s the right thing to do, to be fair and honest, people made more accusations against him. Heavy ones. He was then kicked out of the company, and black listed from being an actor in Korea. You know what’s the thing though? Each and every accusation after his apology was false, the person didn’t even know him. Yet, many people still blame him for things he has not done.

My dearest pile two, I can see you not caring.. at least some of you. However, I did tell you this because you remind me of him in a sense. You know you have made mistakes, some worse, some almost insignificant by now. You own up to it, you have made the apologies necessary, you are the sort of person that doesn’t shy away from accountability because you are pretty mature in your own right. Yet, people like to lie about you right? Twist your words. Ruin your reputation as if it was nothing but fun to them. Then they call you crazy when you get angry, potentially even gaslighting you. It’s annoying.

The sort of regrets people have here are different from one another. Some is just things like yelling at a loved one, while others are much more graphic to the point I do not believe it’s appropriate for me to detail them. Though, not as vile as you might believe.

Enough of that though, I should get the the point.~

Your insecurity seems to come from deep within, from your soul. You worry that you are truly a bad person, not able to change.. That there is something inherently rotten inside you.

I am here to tell you that’s not true. I think you are pretty neat. Yeah, sure, everybody has regrets.. so what? They are regrets for a reason, it’s not truly who you are but mistakes you have made when you were in a vulnerable state of mind. That is not a sin.

Making one bad decision doesn’t mean you are immediately a bad person. Neither is making several. Especially if someone else forces or pushes you to! Come on now sweetheart, think from a higher sense of your being. Truly bad people don’t care they are bad even if they know, they just enjoy the pain and discomfort they have caused for other people.

That’s not you, I can see that you have a such a kind soul. I know what you did, and I do not care, because I still see the good in you.

You are kind to kids, the elderly, strangers on the street.. even if they don’t necessarily deserve it. Seriously, you are the sort of person that gives up seats for other people. (Especially if they are vulnerable, such as someone pregnant, elderly or injured.) The kinda person to stop to pet puppies, to feed stray animals and not care if they come back because it just means you can feed them again. You don’t see an issue with it. The sorta person to hold younger people’s ears when there is a fight so they aren’t scared. You just give and give and give.

You are so unconditionally generous, it’s actually shocking. With your time, money, food, resources, abilities.. is there something you don’t give? [I do not mean this in a mean manner 🫶🏻, it’s a praise. I adore generous people.]

Even when you are hurting, even when you are angry.. you hold it back and think of the happiness of other people. It’s like hurting other people is your greatest fear.

Yet you keep on emotionally hurt yourself, like a bully. Please stop with it, I don’t think you deserve it. Why would you judge someone based on the lowest part of their life? I know you wouldn’t, and since you are a person you deserve the same kind of respect you give to others. From within and from outside.

You are not a doormat, you are not an animal, you are just you. It’s okay to treat yourself gently, I just see a hurt kid when I look at your soul. You remind me of a little lamb. So vulnerable, yet so mistreated.

If you need to, please find yourself a safe space, a support net. It’s okay to rely on other people, I think if you allow yourself to heal the beauty in your heart will be seen in every step you make. You remind me of a pretty flower field as well, so sunny and bright.

I am sorry for the amount of comparisons in this pile, you are seriously so beautiful, chic, elegant, talented and lovely. I don’t want you to think, not even for a second, that you are anything less than deserving of love and peace.

You are so beautiful, constantly trying to make up for your past mistakes.. making sure that people don’t end up hurt like you do. There is so much nurture and worry in your heart.

The past is the past, live in the present.

♡ ⢷ what you can do to be more confident

Defend yourself. It’s okay.

Like genuinely, if you feel like someone is being too much it’s okay to defend yourself. You have a right, and just because someone doesn’t like you it won’t make them entitled to lie about you or hurt you way beyond what any human should take.

Speak your truth, but be disciplined. That way, who truly can say anything about you? Even if they won’t like you, people won’t bother you if you keep true to yourself, if you speak from your heart honestly.

You are not deserving of being bullied or hurt. If someone treats you as a pushover or looks down on you show them that whatever little ill fantasy they have created in their head of you is wrong. You are much more than what you let people on, I truly believe that.

You are really cool, ya know? Of course it’s okay to have doubts, but I think one of your beauties is that you have so much mental strength in you. Just don’t surpass it, as it could make things harder to deal with.

Something that you can really benefit from is to not let your feelings and emotions build up over time, especially if you struggle with anger issues. This could lead to you being so pent up with frustration that you end up letting it out on other people 😞

It’s okay to be angry, but you shouldn’t let it consume you. Feel your emotions for 20 minutes, then just let them go, allow yourself to let them go and not cling into them as that’s unhealthy for you. You can learn and grow, but you have to actively choose that for yourself.

If you experienced past violence, bullying or anything of the sort… also let them go. You don’t have to forgive them, it’s your choice to make not mine.

Do you know that saying that goes sort of like, “ there is always a man watching you, even in your mind/fantasies “? If you live your life continuously remembering the people that hurt you, you cannot heal. So please do yourself a favour, just live for yourself.

If that abusive person kept telling you to dress modest, stop hiding yourself. Dress however you want, if it’s revealing, it’s okay! If it’s modest good, that’s what you are comfortable in. If you are nervous to go to xyz place because it reminds you of them.. that’s fine, you go there now because that’s where you wanna go to, to make new memories. If not, just go wherever your heart desires.. or stay home. Living for you is not a sin, and it will never ever be selfish. Your life is yours, it belongs to you.

From now on, if you have the strength to, have yourself in mind when you do things. [It’s of course fine to be considerate and thoughtful of people, that’s not what I am talking about here.] Allow yourself to live.

♡ ⢷ five things that are cool about you

one - bad b energy mhm mhm 🙂‍↕️ there is a sort of air surrounding you that just screams ‘don’t mess with me’, which I think is soooo admirable. you are definitely not unfriendly at all of course, but it’s obvious that people shouldn’t make enemies with you. not because you are a bad person, but because of your sense of justice.

two - adults only message, sorry kiddos 🫡 this isn’t necessary a sexual thing, but I felt the need to put that addition.. like a gut feeling, ya know? I don’t want to be misunderstood 😤 anyway, your guides are saying that you have a really pretty tummy? like your tummy. your belly.. it’s pretty. I don’t know if you work out but it also doesn’t matter because I am seeing this for all sort of people.. those who work out, those who have a soft tummy, the chubbier ppl, the skinnier people.. men, women.. matter of fact if you happen to be pregnant rn you are extremeeeely beautiful! I think your guides wanted to help out with your body image issues is all <3 so cute, you really are pretty.

three - hair? something about your hair is so beautiful, it makes you look like an angel. very pure and loving as well. I am also seeing an encouragement to go ahead and change it if you wish to do so. you look pretty either way, with whatever hair colour!!! <3

four - you are so persistent!! you work so hard ??? like there is nothing that can bring your spirit down baby. unstoppable force kind of energy!! that is so cool, just make sure to watch out to not overwhelm yourself 🫶🏻

five - YOU LIKE TO GIVE ACTS OF SERVICE 🫵🏻 mhm you are the sort of person to peel fruits for your loved ones, put their phones on the charger, prepare their clothes and do these little things to make their life easier on harder days 🙂‍↕️ that’s so admirable, I look up to you in this case!

— ✮⋆˙ : teacher’s pet , my little pony , ‘a whole new world’ / ‘ can you feel the love tonight ‘ , ‘icey, wifey, haters wanna fight me. ‘ , lotto , number one , trampoline , today’s tickets (?)

my beautiful pile two, please stop looking down on yourself or heaven is gonna have a problem 🙂‍↕️ IT WILL BE MISSING AN ANGEL 🫵🏻 no but seriously, no kidding, I do think many of you here think that I am being fake nice to you in order to get people to interact more or read my pile and what not.. but I don’t care about how many people read my pile, I care about my messages being sincere from the heart and as accurate as possible. besides, I mean the things I said! don’t underestimate how forgiving my heart can be.. like I am fr a hater but I don’t hate you, so what does that tell you? 🧐 anyway, give yourself a rest beautiful, you have been enough harsh already. thank you for reading!

paid readings

✮ pile three : – book !

𐙚 : page of cups rev. , page of swords rev. , five of pentacles , knight of wands

bottom of the deck : nine of cups rev.

♡ ⢷ why I think your insecurities are beautiful

Hii my sweet, sweet pile three! Your energy is the most private, I thought I would let you know before you begin reading ᡣ𐭩

Out of all piles, yours is the one that had me stunned the most. Not because of any sort of bad reason, but this is such a sensitive and hard breaking topic my beautiful pile three..

Your insecurity is related to your dreams, worrying if you are enough. Enough young, enough talented, enough lucky…

It left me speechless because I can feel the pain in your heart, this can affect you on such a deep level. Most likely ever since your childhood. For some of you guys, you were made to work hard at something that you didn’t even care for, possibly still are, just to please your parents or other people around you.

It’s heavy, right? You are worried that if you actually go for something that you want you will worry the people around you.

I see your struggles, you don’t want to be selfish. Though, I don’t see that in your heart, rather I see something so beautiful. Love! Sounds cliché or whatever, but it’s still in your heart.

For the people around you and for the dream that you have for a long, long time. This is different for everyone, some of you dream of being a mom, some of you a ballerina, for most of you it’s related to music in one way or another.. I don’t think you are too old. At all. You never are.. only death can hold you back from achieving your dreams. Who knows, maybe not even he can.

For some of you, who are unable to live them out, this is a confirmation to reality shift / timeline jump.. That’s for only a very few people reading this though, most of you can and will achieve your dreams in this lifetime even if you give it your all.

I do not care if you are over 30, 40, 50 and so on.. I won’t promise that it will be fast, easy or that you will immediately get whatever you want; but the fire in your heart is burning with so much passion that it’s impossible to ignore.

The love that you have towards this ideal life of yours is so beautiful, I truly love it. Your eyes get so bright and full of life when you talk about the things you love and enjoy, yet you don’t even know it.

I would say it’s tragic, but that’s not true, because a sad ending doesn’t suit you. You are meant to be happy, and I hope that you will remember this.

♡ ⢷ what you can do to be more confident

Just do it. ✓

No, but for real, the cards here are incredibly supportive. So if you feel like you are ready for it and it’s the right call do what your heart calls you to do, that childhood dream of yours that you always dreamed of.

[Of course, I mean this as an encouragement for arts and such, not anything that can harm someone… let that be you or others.]

Do that art form, start to learn that subject, work towards that profession… who cares if people will like what you do or not? You do, you have passion and appreciation towards it in your heart. So the rest doesn’t matter, because you have this in your hands. Your destiny is under your control, whether you like that as a fact or not.. You are waaaay more powerful than what you think.

Your message is simple, so unfortunately I cannot write a lot here.. I think your guides are just intending this to be a wake up call, that you can always start anew. Your past is not you, neither is your present.. you can always change it. You don’t have to be stuck.

Just be you.

♡ ⢷ five things that are cool about you

one - you can get things done so easily.. muuuuch easier than other people, through sheer will and that’s all you need to get things done. it’s so admirable, tbh.

two - your art!! even if you aren’t into art or such stuff, it still has many many forms. you possibly like creating things, something that’s special to you. while it’s different for everyone in this pile, I think it’s so insanely cool you can just create something so perfect with so much attention to detail.

three - your posture! this is especially for people who are into dancing and actively practicing, I do think that you improve a lot day by day even if you don’t necessarily notice it. you could be perfecting the moves through hard work and be hella proud of it because you worked so hard. I am proud of you too!

four - your ability to just tune out, and be calm despite the hardships that you face. not a lot of people are able to stay still when they are hurting, or keep completely calm without losing themselves.. you are very mature and grounded. I adore this about you.

five - you have so much unconditional kindness it’s so remarkable and impactful. you probably don’t know this, but you are genuinely such a safe space for people.. your energy is so comforting.

— ✮⋆˙ : 50s diner , elvis & priscilla presley , pepper , paperbackpress , ‘one in a billion’ , sneezy from snow white, ballet shoes , paintings , true crime stories , jack the ripper , green apples , kiwi without it’s skin

my beautiful pile three.. I am so sorry that I couldn’t say more, your energy is a bit closed off and shy due to the things that you are going through and I didn’t wanna be forceful. though, I do hope that you can start healing soon and see the beauty in your passions… It’s important what your loved ones want, but you yourself should be a loved one as well. so don’t ignore your needs sweetheart 🫶🏻 thank you for reading!

paid readings

[gay-dorito-dust]

hiiiii I love your work so so much cannibal is my fav dragon!!! and I love the fic's you write!! and I was wondering what do you think reader and daemon's relationship? what would it be like you know with cannibal and caraxes added to the mix? also do you think that jace would end up falling for reader like aemond or no?

Cannibal has grown to be my favourite dragon out of all of them alongside Balerion the black dread and would love to do a mini series for him one day, but I don’t want it to feel as though I’m coping and pasting from my cannibal series and do something new.

Also I hope this is what you were after.

Daemon doesn’t make it easy for anyone to like him, neverless trust him wholeheartedly and he wasn’t going to make any exceptions for you, not by a long shot.

The relationship you’d share with the rouge prince is passive to say the least that you felt better when he was out of the room rather than in one. He’s just too much of a loose cannon for your liking and you didn’t take enough risks for his own liking, especially since you’ve claimed Cannibal, Daemon would’ve thought having him would make you more adventurous; only to feel discouraged when it did not.

If anything he probably saw you as Aemond 2.0, claiming a large dragon and all 💀

Daemon didn’t show fear when Cannibal was practically keeping you at a safe distance from him, shrugging it off as though it were a minor inconvenience, and head off in search of Caraxes.

Speaking of Caraxes and Cannibal, needless to say it would be best if they were kept apart from one another for there was not much love lost between the two considering who their riders were. Cannibal didn’t like anyone or anything near you, regardless whether it was dragon or human, he didn’t care as they shouldn’t get close to his human; meanwhile Caraxes cared about you or Cannibal about as much as Daemon did and would make that known however he could.

You and Daemon’s lacklustre of a relationship would be reflected in Cannibal and Caraxes as they side eye one another at every opportunity given to show their lack of trust towards one another. You swore you heard cannibal huff in amusement whenever Caraxes and Daemon got into trouble or exiled as it meant not having to deal with seeing that slim, sleek blood red dragon as often.

Again Cannibal doesn’t trust anyone but you, so don’t be surprised if Cannibal tries to take a bite out of Caraxes from time to time, only for Caraxes to escape every time, old habits die hard I guess.

Jacaerys on the other hand would probably have fallen for you the same time as Aemond did and would grow jealous whenever he heard his uncle speak about you as though you were already his.

You weren’t something to stake claim to as though you were nothing but a possession and Jace knew that he could treat you better than Aemond could, he could be your gentleman if you give him the chance, and he would never make you regret it as Rhaenyra raised him to be the pinochle of what a man should look like.

Jacaerys did not need you to claim Cannibal to realise his pre-established feelings, he need only look at you and be reminded of the kind of man he wanted to be for you, for he could see his future in your eyes and wants to make a start on it as soon as possible but was more then willing to wait for you no matter how long.

He would stand beside you, tall and strong, all the while looking at you from the corner of his eye now and then whenever you spoke up. Jacaerys didn’t make it subtle that he liked you, it was clear for anyone to see that this man was more than willing to walk through fire for you, should you ask it of him of course.

Jace’s lack of subtleness didn’t go unnoticed by Cannibal as he would watch the brown haired man practically follow you like a lovesick pup, making sure you were safe and guarded despite the fact that you could look after yourself, making sure you ate and so on to the point that Cannibal would growl at Jace; warning the prince of what would happen should he become overbearing.

[fairuzfan]

I have concern that I may still be technically zionist despite claiming to be pro-palestine. This is because I knew very little about Palestine when October 7th happened, so in the time since I have been reluctant to have a stance on a two-state or one-Palestinian-state solution. I know now that almost all of Isreal is stolen land and recognize Isreal only exists due to colonialism, it took me a long time to learn that but I know it now. Before I knew that, I knew that regardless of the prior history that in current day Palestine is being subjected to a genocide. However, I struggle with politics and therefore struggle with understanding how a one-Palestinian-state could be achieved and have concern about what would happen to any genuinely innocent people who live in Isreal. To be clear, Isreal as a whole is guilty and I just have concern about what will happen to the portion of people in Isreal who are just as horrified as the rest of the world at what their government is doing. I do not personally know any Palestinians, so I have not known who to talk to about this especially since I do not want to overstep in any way. Theres more context I could provide but I wont because this is roughly the gist of where I am currently at when it comes to my concerns about whether or not I am still zionist. Do you have any reccomendations as to what I can do about my concerns? I am not sure whether or not I am overstepping right now by asking you this, but I do not know any other Palestians on a personal level that I can go to.

hey thanks for sending this in. i think we all have zionist biases that we have to unlearn, even i catch myself falling for it sometimes. so it's not necessarily a moral failing if you're trying to undo the zionism you've been taught. thanks for trying to undo it!

i do want to correct you a bit thought, in that *all* of israel is stolen land because israel is a settler colonial society. until it is relabeled as "Palestine" it can't not be stolen land.

I guess my advice is that you read scholarship and perspectives on palestinian thought and heritage. i can't tell you what a free palestine will look like but i can tell you what i imagine it to be. but what i can tell you is that the state of israel is fully intent on erasing all traces of palestinian life no matter what.

i guess i can tell you why "two state solutions" don't really work because there is no.... prevention of settlement building in the west bank and they'll never really promote *not* settling in the west bank. like i really cannot imagine a world where there aren't settlers on palestinian land no matter the case. and that's even not allowing palestinians the right of return to their homes and expecting them to give up what they dedicated their lives to. many palestinians in the west bank and gaza are themselves refugees because they were displaced in '48. so no matter what, palestinians will always get the short end of the stick and told to "just deal with it."

plus, why are we concerned with the supposed future danger towards israelis when the current, very real danger towards palestinians exists? shouldn't we prioritize actual events over hypothetical ones? why should we concern ourselves with the future when for palestinians its not a guarantee? i have no idea what's going to happen to gaza, for example.... shouldn't we prioritize that gaza lives on today?

i think i would question why you think israelis are inherently in danger in a one state solution? like do you assume that palestinians will all universally commit violence on all israelis? is it because you believe that hamas wants to kill every single israeli jew no matter what? if so, i think that's where your problem lies — in the assumption that peace can only be achieved through segregation just in a lighter form (because the state of israel relies on segregation as a principal of its existence as a jewish state). what about the palestinians who fear living side by side with the same people who raped, tortured, and murdered them for 75 years, or advocated for their deaths? aren't they inherently in more danger?

i mean palestinians have consistently been painted as the villains for more than 75 years. like in every aspect. i think to really truly be antizionist you need to prioritize palestinian concerns and worries over israeli ones because of how.... unwilling much of the world is to even consider them.

approaching zionism from an idea of an inequality structure is also necessary — rather than assuming its a one off system, we examine it as a perpetuation of multiple types of systems of inequality embedded into one. i recommend the institute for the critical study of zionism (click) for more information on this. There's also this book by Ismail Zayid written in the 80's (click) about the longtime violence the ideology of zionism has done to multiple communities, not just palestinians.

Here's a great reading list by palipunk about different aspects of palestinian thought and culture (click). i suggest looking through them to help decolonize our way of thought.

i might add on to this later if i think of something else to say.

[bridge-arsonist]

Why The Voice Of The Cold Hates The Narrator

Replaying the Nightmare -> Wraith route and I'm realizing...

Jesus fucking christ, The Cold hates the narrator. Honestly, I think he might just give Smitten or Contrarian a run for their money.

He:

Doubts every word the narrator speaks

Insults the narrator whenever he gets the chance

Actively suggests killing the narrator, even stating that the princess could help do that

Not only suggests killing the narrator, but also suggests that—no—actually, death is too good for the guy. They should lock the narrator in a void just like the fake good ending. Mind you, this route doesn't even have the narrator do that!

Mocks the narrator when he finally gives up on trying to make you slay the princess

Seems happy that the narrator is gone, saying he had a feeling The Wraith could deal with him

I'm pretty sure Cold over here'd rather be playing Slay The Narrator.

Really though, upon further reflection, The Cold's hatred for The Narrator is also prevalent in The Spectre, where one of the few things he actually seems to have a firm stance on is "We should kill the Narrator". In the Greys, though he's arguably at his most nihilistic, he still seems to oppose the Narrator. He joins the Skeptic in his suspicions, and though he mostly just seems to be having a time provoking Smitten during the Burned Grey, he still does take the occasional second to spite the Narrator.

And honestly, come to think about it, it makes sense. After all, the Cold manifests not necessarily from slaying the Princess, but more specifically, from killing yourself. But not just from killing yourself, slaying yourself in The Tower at the hands of the Broken doesn't manifest him, but specifically by killing yourself to spite the narrator. I mean, other than Empty Cup and Moment of Clarity (Where we don't actually know how he manifested due to the timeskips), each iteration of Cold's manifestation checks out.

Spectre: You slay her, get the good ending, but then decide "fuck this and fuck your contruct", and stab yourself even as the narrator repeatedly urges you not to.

Burned Grey: You kill the Damsel, and in a fit of rage against both you and the narrator, the Smitten kills you, even as the narrator urges him not to. (Funnily enough, this means that, despite the Smitten's line of "you killed her, and so I killed you", it was the opposite, and the Smitten manifested the Cold)

Drowned Grey: You kill the Prisoner, and, just like in the Spectre's route, you kill yourself even as the Narrator urges you not to. If you refuse to kill yourself, Skeptic does it for you, seeming apologetic towards you, but definitely not towards The Narrator.

Wraith: You kill yourself as the Narrator urges you not to, and Paranoid also spends this route doubting the Narrator.

These routes involve various levels of emotion for the Princess, ranging from "My love! Still gonna kill you though" to "So scary! Still gonna kill you though", and an overall perception of the Princess as a corpse. But the Narrator? In all of the routes leading up to Cold's manifestation, the Narrator is met with hostility, usually leading to you killing yourself out of a mix of spite and suspicion.

So Cold's manifestation has two constants:

Some level of apathy towards the Princess, regardless of your previous interactions with her. Whether she's your perfect damsel or your worst nightmare, you don't care. You stab her.

Disregard for your own safety. You're just going to stab yourself, cool. It's better than this hell. Sometimes it's another voice fulfilling this requirement for you, like Smitten in the Damsel, or Skeptic in Prisoner depending on whether or not you willingly die.

Distaste towards the narrator. A conclusion that the Narrator is untrustworthy and distinctly not on your side. No matter how you manifest the Cold, it is clear that you do not like this pesky raven one bit. The Nightmater -> Wraith route shows this through Paranoid's constant suspicion of the Narrator. This distaste frequently, thought not always, occurs due to the Narrator attempting to force you to live out your life in the void, though it can also occur due to the Narrator attempting to make you live a life without the one thing you cherish (Damsel route).

Apathy towards most things, but one thing's for certain: You don't trust that Narrator guy. He tried to make you live out a crappy, boring life for eternity.

Cold's attitude makes sense when you look at how he was created. Just like Smitten was made by deciding the princess was an immediately trustworthy damsel in need of rescuing from the pesky narrator, or that the witch is a gorgeous woman whom you can save by giving your blade in spite of the narrator's wishes—Cold is made through deciding that neither your nor the princess's safety particularly matters, but fuck that narrator guy. He sucks. As apathetic as the Cold likes to act, he reacts to Smitten's threats and the Princess's murder attempts with "interesting", and reacts to the Narrator's explanation of the timeline with "we should kill him".

So, my point?

Well, I think that—not only does the Cold hate the Narrator—but hating the Narrator is part of him as a voice. He's cold, apathetic, and he hates the Narrator. It's been baked into his very being through the choices that you make. The princess doesn't matter, your physical well-being doesn't matter, but know that the Narrator is an untrustworthy little prick.

TLDR: Replaying Wraith made me realize that the Cold probably hates the Narrator very very much, and he does so because it is baked into his very being because of the choices you made to manifest him. You go, king. Let your inner hater run free.