#I write GREAT book proposals

[directactionforhope]

Might fuck around and write a book for real

[iamgonnagetyouback]

I’ve read every single one of your works, and I am absolutely obsessed! The way you write and capture emotions is beyond amazing—it’s pure magic. I really hope this isn’t too much to ask 😭, but I just adore your writing so much. If you’re not comfortable with this request, though, please don’t hesitate to ignore it. Thank you so much!

Could I request a James Potter x Reader story? The plot starts with James pursuing Lily Evans, but along the way, he realizes his feelings for her were more about the excitement of the chase. In contrast, with the reader, he feels truly at ease, able to be himself without pretending or changing for anyone. I’d love for Lily’s perspective to be included—how she starts to desire James after noticing how much he’s 'matured' in his relationship with the reader, but she can only stand by and watch as James and the reader create their beautiful love story.

chase ⋆˚࿔

synopsis ⭑.ᐟ james potter x reader where he realizes who he truly loves

warnings: fluff overload, mild angst

word count: 1,836 words

author's note: omg stopppp you’re making me blush ‹𝟹 this is the sweetest thing ever, and i’m so honored you enjoy my writing!! ♡

navigation┆ james potter masterlist┆request here 𝜗𝜚

James Potter had been chasing Lily Evans for years. Everyone at Hogwarts knew it—how he’d flash his most charming smile, throw an arm around her shoulder with a wink, and dramatically proclaim his undying love. It was all in good fun, of course. At least, that’s what he always told himself.

Lily, ever stubborn, had always rebuffed him. At first, she detested his arrogance. Later, she simply rolled her eyes and dismissed his advances, treating him as little more than a particularly persistent house elf. James didn't mind. The chase was half the fun, after all.

"She'll come around, you'll see," James would say after every rejection, running a hand through his already messy hair.

"Mate, she's been saying no for three years," Sirius pointed out, sprawled lazily on the Gryffindor common room couch. "At what point do you consider the possibility that she's actually not interested?"

James gasped, placing a dramatic hand on his chest. "Not interested? Padfoot, please. That’s just what she wants me to think."

Remus sighed from behind his book. "Or perhaps she genuinely means it. You ever consider not making a public spectacle every time you ask her out?"

Peter snickered. "Yeah, Prongs, maybe if you stop serenading her in the Great Hall, she'll stop running the other way."

"That was one time!" James protested. "And I thought she’d appreciate the gesture."

You, sitting cross-legged by the fire, smirked. "James, darling, even I was embarrassed for you, and I usually live for the drama."

Sirius grinned. "See? When even our dear, theatrical doll here cringes, you know you’ve gone too far."

James huffed, crossing his arms. "You lot are supposed to support me."

Remus finally set his book down, giving him a small smile. "We do support you. We just also support your dignity."

James groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Alright, fine. Maybe I’ll try… a different approach."

The boys exchanged glances, and you patted his knee sympathetically. "That’s the spirit, Prongs. Maybe next time, just… don’t propose in front of McGonagall again."

James groaned even louder as the Marauders burst into laughter.

But somewhere along the way, the chase had stopped being fun.

It had started with you.

You, the one he never really had to chase. You, who laughed at his antics but also scolded him when he was being too reckless. You, who had a quick wit but also a kindness about you that softened his rougher edges. You, who never needed him to be anything but himself.

It hadn’t happened all at once. There was no lightning strike, no grand revelation. Just little moments that wove themselves into something undeniable.

The way you tucked a stray curl behind your ear when you were reading, tongue poking out slightly in concentration. James had watched you do it a hundred times before realizing how endearing he found it. The way you argued with Sirius about the best way to sneak into Hogsmeade, eyes alight with mischief as you held your ground against the self-proclaimed master of rule-breaking. The way you always had a spare quill when he inevitably lost his, rolling your eyes fondly as you handed it over with a teasing, "Honestly, James, do you even own quills?"

There was the way you leaned against his shoulder after a long cold day, sighing. "James Potter, you are a human furnace. Please continue existing exactly as you are."

There was the way he found himself seeking you out first—before Remus, before Sirius, before Peter, before anyone else—whenever he had good news to share. The way his jokes felt funnier when you laughed at them. The way his name sounded different coming from your lips, softer somehow, like it belonged there.

One night, after an exhausting Quidditch practice, you had met him outside the changing rooms with a chocolate frog in hand. "For your heroic efforts," you’d said with a mock bow, pressing it into his palm. He had laughed, shoving it into his pocket, but the warmth in his chest lingered long after.

James Potter had always thought he wanted a grand, all-consuming love. He had spent years chasing something he thought would make him whole. But standing beside you, teasing and laughing and existing so effortlessly together, he realized something else.

Maybe love wasn’t supposed to be a chase.

Maybe it was supposed to feel like home.

Lily noticed the shift before James did. It crept up on her, subtle but undeniable, like the slow changing of seasons. He still ruffled his hair like a prat, still laughed too loudly with his friends, still turned every moment into a grand performance. But there was something quieter about him now, something settled in the way he carried himself. The endless pursuit that had once defined James Potter—the grand gestures, the dramatic declarations, the unrelenting chase—had stopped. And he hadn’t even noticed.

At first, she felt relief. She had spent years pushing him away, certain that his attention was something fleeting, something she didn’t want. And now, finally, he had listened.

Then she felt something else.

She caught herself watching him more often. Noticing the little things. The way his grin softened when he looked at you. The way his hand found your wrist when he pulled you toward him in the common room, like it was second nature. The way he listened when you spoke—really listened, with an intensity that made it clear you had his full attention. She had never seen that look on his face before. Not when he looked at her.

And suddenly, she found herself wondering. Had she been wrong about James Potter?

Had she spent all these years dismissing him without ever really knowing him? Had she mistaken boyish bravado for immaturity, mistaking the show for the substance beneath it?

But it didn’t matter.

Because James wasn’t looking at her anymore.

The realization hadn’t struck James like lightning, not at first. He hadn’t woken up one day and thought, Oh, I love her. No, it was something slower, quieter—woven into the fabric of every moment he spent with you.

It was the way you sat beside him in the common room, curled up with a book, the firelight casting flickering shadows across your face. The way you absently played with the hem of his sleeve when you were lost in thought. The way you saw him—not James Potter, Quidditch Captain, mischief-maker, the boy who never stopped chasing—but James. Just James.

And for the first time, he found that was all he wanted to be.

He didn’t need to impress you. He didn’t need to chase you. He could just exist with you, and it was enough.

There was a night—one that stuck with him, long after it had passed—when he had finally put words to the feeling.

You had found him on the Astronomy Tower, shoulders hunched against the cold, lost in thoughts he hadn’t even realized were weighing him down. You didn’t ask what was wrong. You just sat beside him, close enough that your knees touched, close enough that he could feel your warmth.

“You ever think about who you are without all the noise?” he murmured after a long silence.

You tilted your head. “What do you mean?”

James hesitated. Then he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve spent so much time being—being James Potter, you know? The one who’s always got a joke, the one who’s always chasing something. But with you…” He trailed off, glancing at you from the corner of his eye. “I don’t have to be anything but me.”

You blinked, taken aback, before a small smile curved your lips. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

James let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Yeah,” he said, his voice quieter now. “Yeah, it is.”

You nudged his shoulder gently. “For what it’s worth, I like just you.”

And that was it.

Not a grand confession. Not a dramatic moment. Just quiet understanding.

Just home.

Lily saw it all unfold. Saw James fall in love without the fanfare, without the spectacle. And for the first time, she saw him—not the boy who had chased her, but the boy who had finally stopped running.

And it wasn’t for her.

It was too late.

Then came the grand gesture.

James Potter did nothing in half measures, and asking you on a date was no exception. If anything, he seemed almost nostalgic about the whole ordeal—like he had spent so many years planning elaborate schemes for Lily that now, finally asking the right person, he wanted to do it justice.

So, naturally, it started with fireworks.

Not just any fireworks, but ones that spelled out your name across the sky in brilliant, shimmering letters, crackling above the Quidditch Pitch where half the school had gathered after dinner. Then came the enchanted banners floating midair, reading: 'WILL YOU GO ON A DATE WITH ME?' in flashing gold and red, trailing behind a very enthusiastic Sirius, who had volunteered to fly them around on his broom. A charmed choir of singing toads croaked a love song (Remus’ contribution, because, according to him, ‘there needed to be some class in this spectacle’), and Peter had somehow gotten his hands on a bouquet of flowers that smelled like sunshine.

James himself stood in the center of it all, hand on his heart, eyes locked on yours, waiting.

The crowd turned to you, hushed in anticipation. Lily, standing off to the side, watched with wide eyes, an unreadable expression on her face. There was a time when she would have scoffed at something like this, dismissed it with a roll of her eyes.

But you—

You were grinning.

Dramatically clutching your chest, you gasped, staggering back like a swooning damsel in distress. "Oh, James Potter! Whatever shall I say? This is all so sudden!"

James, without missing a beat, fell to one knee. "Say yes, my darling star! For I have loved you since the dawn of time—or, well, since fourth year at least, and that’s practically the same thing!"

You pretended to think, tapping your chin. "Hmm. I don’t know, Potter. It’s an awfully big commitment."

James shot to his feet, grabbing your hands, eyes wide with mock desperation. "I shall spend every day proving myself worthy of your love! I shall carry your books! Share my sweets! Defend your honor against Slytherins and bad hair days alike!"

You sighed deeply, then beamed. "Well, in that case… Yes! A thousand times yes!"

The crowd erupted into cheers, Sirius fist-pumped midair, and Remus groaned into his hands. James, triumphant, swept you up in a spin, laughing so hard his glasses nearly fell off.

Lily watched it all unfold, and for the first time, she felt the weight of what she had lost. Not because she wanted James, not really. But because once upon a time, it had been her he was chasing.

But James Potter had finally stopped chasing.

Because he had already caught what he was looking for.

© iamgonnagetyouback ⋆.˚ please do not copy, translate, or repost any of my work.

[merchelsea]

Could you write something really fluffy about Lando Norris x reader? Maybe something were their relationship is fairly new and it’s only like the 2nd or 3rd race week the reader has been to and she starts to get sick. She doesn’t feel well at all and try’s to hide it from lando so he can focus on the race but he eventually finds out and is all worried and cuteee

worried sick — lando norris

pairing: lando norris x girlfriend!reader

summary: it’s her first time attending a grand prix and also flying and she doesn’t want anything to ruin her boyfriend’s race, but she gets sick in the process.

author’s note: sorry for taking so long to get to the heart of your request (fluff) but i needed to give context to his worriess

word count: 3k

warnings: curse words

masterlist | requests (open)

you sat on the dinner table, unable to speak. the fork fell from your hand the moment you heard lando's proposal and your eyes followed it's trail.

lando genuinely thought this would be a good idea, but seeing your reaction, with his eyebrows lifted, he may have changed his mind.

you had been dating for quite some time, four months and sixteen days, to be precise, but you were still a little aprehensive about the attention.

from the start, he warned you and gave you an easy way out of his life, but your love overpowered your fears.

even in a relationship, you and lando did everything you could to keep you out of the public eye, and it was working. no one knew about you and him and you liked that. but you were aware that he wanted you by his side while facing the adventures that his job provided him, and that he didn't want to keep you as a secret forever.

so when he made the invitation, it didn't surprise you, but you had to think about it.

you looked at him, he was wearing some jeans and a white hoodie that made him adorable in your eyes. he was looking at you, and you could notice him telling you it was okay to say no with his look.

but there was still a glimpse of hope in his beautiful green eyes, and in your mind you took another look at the pros and cons.

you could scratch out a couple of cons... like the fact that you liked being private. it was true, but you didn't mind not being a secret, and you would never like the idea of having famous and stunning women thinking that your boyfriend was available.

so with a soft look, in that modernly decorated dinning room in his home, you nodded your head.

"i think we could go to china together, yeah." he gave you a confused glance, but refrained from questioning you, afraid you would change your mind.

"great!" he stood up and walked over to you, "i love you," he whispered, pecking your lips before taking his empty plate to the sink.

you watched him come back and sit with you while you finished your own plate. you couldn't say you were hungry anymore, a hundred and one scenarios of what could go wrong in the hard launch of your relationship played in your mind.

lando's presence made it a little easier for you, though. you could only be thankful.

you had never traveled by plane before, so you were pretty nervous.

china was really far from monaco, and your boyfriend told you that the flight would take 11 hours minimum, so you couldn't help feeling anxious.

he held your hand when he noticed your strange behaviour and you immediately intertwined your fingers together.

"it's going to be okay, love." norris kissed the back of your hand and you walked inside of the plane, hand in hand.

of course lando booked the first class seats. he knew about this fear of yours, so whatever he could do to help you out, he would.

you sat down and lando closed the little blind on the window by his side, so you didn't see how far from the ground you were.

you had your headphones on and lando held you close as the plane started moving. you were still not off the ground but the plane shaking scared the fuck out of you. you closed your eyes and tried to focus on the music. it wasn't easy. it was only when the plain stabilized in the air that you could open your eyes again.

"do you want water, food, anything?" your boyfriend asked as he noticed you were a little more calm now.

"water, maybe." you answered, still not feeling completely safe. "and can you open the blind please, i want to see."

"'you sure?" he asked, his hand already on the end of the blind.

"yup."

lando opened up the blind and you peeked through the window. you were already far from the ground and instead of feeling anxiety, that view actually made you a little more calm.

"it's beautiful." you whispered, body leaning towards lando so you could see it better.

the british boy's eyes were on you when he whispered back. "it really is." with a smile.

eventually you sat properly in your seat again and talked to lando as time passed.

you fell asleep with and lando carefully laid your chair back, took out your headphones and covered you with a blanket. he laid his chair back as well and watched you as you slept peacefully. you still had nine hours left and he knew you would be awake for the landing, which he didn't want.

you could only manage to sleep for 2 hours and when you woke up, you noticed your boyfriend sleeping. so the next hours were spent playing games in your mobile phone while you listened to taylor swift.

it wasn't as painful as you thought it would be, and it was only when landing that you felt the uneasy feeling come back. lando held you close through it, as he was used to it.

"it's okay, baby." he whispered. "i'm right here." his reassurence meant more to you than he imagined, and it helped as well.

everything went better than expected and you left the airport hand in hand just half an hour after getting out of the plane.

you felt tired, but it was still morning in china. lando seemed okay, he was already used to all the time changes, since he did this for a living.

"what d'you think about breakfast?" he asked as you passed a coffee shop.

lando was driving to the hotel you two would be staying in, and you honestly just wanted to rest. but you could'nt say no to a good breakfast.

"oh, great idea. i'm starving." you said and he chuckled.

"me too." he stated as his hand found place in your thigh. it stayed there until he needed to use it, to change gear.

he parked the car in front of the cute shop and you both walked in.

you both ordered and sat down talking to eachother until the food came. the driver explained the goods and the bads of the race here. and told you what he liked most about china.

you had done some research about the place yourself because you wanted to take profit of your time here.

as lando would probably have some meetings with the team and you would be alone, you decided to visit some interesting places of the city and even near cities.

you ate in a comfortable silence and left for the hotel as soon as you could. his team took care of the check in so you and him were able to just go straight to your room.

you felt yourself a little too soft, but never said anything because you didn't think it was anything serious and worrying him was something you were not going to do.

deciding to take a nap before doing anything, lando wrapped his arms around you and pulled the blanket over your bodies.

"i love the feeling of having you here." he murmured to your ear.

"i love being here with you." you told him honestly, falling asleep some moments later.

lando though it was weird, since you normally took some time to get to sleep, specially in new places.

when you first stayed the night at his place it took you two hours and a really boring movie.

he remembered it could've been caused by the flight or the time difference. the british was now used to it, but it was your first time, and it was a long flight.

he fell asleep thinking about it because, being honest, you were both more than exhausted.

you woke up just a couple of hours later, coughing, and imediately realized you had gotten sick, and were just in the first stages. you got up from the bed and went to the bathroom so you didn't disturb lando's sleep.

"this can't be happening" you whispered to your reflection in the mirror.

'it can be just a cold, everything will be okay in time for the race' you thought to yourself, trying to calm down.

it was frustrating, to be fair. you had been avoiding coming to his races for months, and when you finally decided to come you got sick.

however, you did not want that to get in the way of lando's weekend, so through the next two days, in which your boyfriend had free practices and qualifying, you pretended to be okay. it was not so easy because norris made every effort to make you feel okay there. that means he talked to every one of his mates and asked them to talk to their own girlfriends, to see if they were interested in meeting you, for his delight but not so yours, they all said yes.

so you were not only busy with pretending to be healthy but also trying to be nice to everyone and making people like you.

it wasn't that hard, you all just found something in common, that was your love for fashion and animals, and talked about it. you were pretty satisfied with the outcome of saturday, and so was lando, managing to get himself on fourth position, with two cars ahead he knew he could get out of his way.

he was starting to find your behaviour a little weird, as soon as you got home you took a really quick shower and got yourself comfortable in bed. he asked you if you were not going to get dinner with him and you told him you would just take a little nap, and asked him to wake you up once the food arrived.

the brit did as you said and tried to wake you up, but you told him you were not hungry in the moment. he made you eat anyways, because tomorrow was a big day and you didn't really have the energy to argue with him.

you both had a good dinner and what was his surprise when you got back to your bed and immediately fell asleep.

he tried to push his suspicions away but he was seriously getting worried. he laid next to you and held you close with one arm, the other resting behind his head as he thought. not only about you and your strange sleeping schedule but also about the circuit.

there was this one curve that he just couldn't get right, and he needed to get it tomorrow. or else he'd lose his chance of a podium or even a win.

he would never want to lose a podium, but with you here, the pressure was different. he wanted to do better for you. he needed to, after dragging you all the way to a new country and making you face your fear of planes.

he eventually fell asleep, your body so close to his comforting him and calming his mind that was going probably faster than his car.

you woke up first, in the morning. but, unlike the other two days, where you managed to get it together and pretend you were okay, today you had a huge headache along with an unbearable malaise.

immediately realizing you were not okay, you decided to not go to the track with lando. you were still planing to go, yes, but later on, after you took some medicine and felt better.

he was a little reluctant in letting you all by yourself because something inside him still thought that something was off. sleeping a lot, not feeling hungry, avoiding his touch and kisses (you did that once, but he still took note), it all felt a little weird.

but you convinved him, telling him that he no longer had time to wait for you and you still needed to get dressed and do your makeup.

"i'm going. but message me as soon as you get to the track, please. i want to see your pretty face before getting in the car." he asked you, his beautiful green eyes focused on yours.

you nodded your head and he pecked your lips. smiling, he turned around and left the hotel room. you decided to take a shower to see if it helped in any way.

it didn't.

you grabbed your phone and searched for lando's personal assistant's contact. someone needed to be informed about this, but you didn't want to alarm your boyfriend just before the big moment of the weekend.

he was really sweet to you, and suggested you stayed in bed and watched the race from the hotel. you were a little apprehensive about how lando would feel about this but he tried to calm you down as best as he could, telling you he knew the driver would understand and probably even be more worried than anything else.

he also promised to only tell lando once he couldn't do anything about it. of course you had asked.

was he going to be pissed? probably. did he love you more than anything and would he forget about all the rest in order to check up on you? absolutely.

once he was told about it, the only thing he could do was text you, so he ran to his phone and quickly wrote a message to you.

'baby i was just informed. i'm so sorry for not noticing.'

your heart clenched in your chest as you read his text. it was not his fault and you felt bad for making him believe that it was.

'it's not your fault, lan. and i'm okay'

you added a little heart at the end and sent it, automatically seeing the 'read' under the blue text baloon.

'you sure?? i can get someone to get you to a doctor'

you smiled at the screen, behind that smile was the way he didn't even hesitate to show you he cared and he worried.

'there's no need, i took some medicine and i'm better now. but good luck on the race. i'll be rooting for you.'

on the other side of the screen, lando sighed, he hated that he couldn't do anything about it but knowing you were okay comforted him a little. so he smiled and typed to you.

'thanks babe! i will be coming back to you as soon as i can, promise you.'

you simply liked his message, letting him focus before the race.

on the bed, you watched the entire race, as you always did. and you were so genuinely happy and proud of him for finishing second, that for a couple of minutes you even forgot you were sick.

you watched the podium celebrations and couldn't help but notice that your boyfriend wasn't as happy as he should be. of course he smiled receiving the trophy, and sprayed champagne on the other podium sitters, which were max and checo, but you knew him, and his smile wasn't as wide as usual.

you sat through and watched the interviews on sky sports. it seemed that you were not the only one who noticed his under-excitement, because that was the first thing the journalist questioned.

"so, lando norris. you just came second here in china. first of all, congratulations. second of all i have got to tell you that all of us were expecting a different reaction from you. you don't seem very excited."

he looked at the woman behind the camera atentively, but anyone with functional eyes could see that his mind was elsewhere. he smiled briefly at the end of her statement.

"well, thank you. and yeah, i'm not in the best mood but that has nothing to do with the race. i know i did my best out there and gave everything i could. unfortunately, max was still there, but we'll keep working, as a team, to get to him."

he smiled and the interview continued, as usual he discussed some technical stuff and gave his perspective on some bits of the race.

"right now i just want to go back to the hotel, to my girlfriend, who isn't here because she got sick, and give her all the love she deserves."

he smiled to the camera and left, leaving the space for others. you saw him walking with oscar behind alonso, who was now giving his own interview.

it didn't take long before you got a message from him, telling you he managed to escape some media duties to go back to you.

you smiled to yourself before answering, and then distracted yourself until you heard the door being unlocked.

jumping from the bed, you rushed towards your boyfriend when he arrived.

"easy there, baby." lando pulled you into a hug, one of his hands in your hair while the other circled your body.

"amazing race, my love." you whispered into his neck. he smiled and when his grip loosened, his lips met yours in a quick but lovely kiss.

"you've got me worried sick, you muppet." he smiled, but looking into his green iris you knew he was serious.

"didn't mean to worry you, i'm sorry," he shook his head and softy kissed your temple.

"don't be sorry. but nex time it happens, let me know. i wouldn't have made you go to practices and quali, and you could've rested."

his fingers caressed your hair and he pulled you to lay your head in his chest. you would never know how worried he got, and how he could only rest his mind after having you in his arms.

"i just didn't want you to worry unnecessarily. i thought i could go through it." your eyes made it possible for him to know that you were being honest. he let out a sigh.

"it's not unnecessarily, you stubborn thing. i love you and i care about you, and i wanted to be here for you." you pull your head back and lock eyes with him.

"i love you too. and thank you."

he kissed you again, all smiley.

you both decided to just lay in bed and do nothing for the rest of the day. you ordered dinner hours earlier, so you didn't have to worry about it later.

lando told you all about his race. from the lights out to the checkered flag he talked you through his decisions and his process of thinking in the moment.

he also kept asking you from time to time how you were feeling and if you needed anything.

you realized just how much you loved him and appreciated the way he cared for you.

once he fell asleep, you smiled out of pure happiness for having him by your side. no matter how much you had liked being kept a secret for a while, in that moment all you wanted was for people to know you loved him.

cause you did, more than you thought you could.

© merchelsea

if you'd like to be tagged in any of my future works, let me know ;)

[finnlongman]

Dear Tumblr, I have been desperately wanting to share this news with you since May last year and now I finally can: Gollancz is publishing not one, not two, but THREE of my queer medieval retellings over the next few years! You'll have seen me posting little bits about these books in the past, but I'm so excited to get to share them with you properly.

First up in 2025: The Wolf and His King, a queer retelling of Bisclavret that uses werewolfism as a metaphor to explore chronic pain and illness. It's also very much about gay yearning, fealty, and the mortifying ordeal of being known. Partially in second person and partially in verse, you can see my previous posts about it under the tag the wolf and his king or, for the really early ones, werewolves and gay yearning.

In 2026, I'm bringing you The Animals We Became [working title], which is a queertrans retelling of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, looking at gender, compulsory heterosexuality, and trauma, via nonconsensual shapeshifting. Lotta trans vibes, lotta trauma; I wrote a first draft of this last year because I got carried away writing the sample chapters for my proposal and I'm excited to get deeper into it in edits. Aka t4t shapeshifting and trauma; generally tagged as also owls are transmasculine now.

And finally, in 2027, which is the one I've honestly been most excited to tell you guys about, it's To Run With The Hound [working title]. If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I wrote a book with this title way back in 2018… well, the one I've sold isn't exactly that book, it's a proposal for how I intend to completely rewrite that book from the ground up, but yes, this is it: my Cú Chulainn novel, my queer medieval Irish book, my (hopefully) magnum opus. Haven't written it yet, but the plan is to use a nonlinear narrative to explore why Táin Bó Cúailnge is a tragedy, featuring a great many feelings about Fer Diad, Láeg, and Cú Chulainn himself.

There's a bit more detail and some FAQs on my website right now, but the most important thing is QUEER MEDIEVAL BOOKS WRITTEN BY SOMEBODY WITH MULTIPLE DEGREES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE. If that sounds like your jam, stick around.

[drchucktingle]

Good evening Dr. Tingle! Would you ever like to see a film adaption of Bury Your Gays? I think it would be so neat (especially with all of the tv and movie references present in the novel). If there ever was a movie, who would you want hypothetically cast?

HELLO BUCKAROO this is always a fun question to consider actors for a book adaption. when writing i sometimes CAST IN MY HEAD and sometimes it is just kind of a made up buckaroo. there are really only two characters in BURY YOUR GAYS that were cast in my head while writing and i will mention those below.

ultimately WHOEVER was to trot in these rolls i would be happy with, so lets just consider this a fun way through imagination. i will say that i would prefer to cast queer actors, but also i know the business of hollywood means sometimes that does not work out to get the movie on screens. if bury your gays was turned into a movie i would really have no say in any of this anyway, but queer actors would be my preference when possible.

despite all of that, when writing MISHA, the actor in my head was NOT a queer actor as far as i know (although for some reason us queer buckaroos have given him a pass to play queer characters which i think is very funny and interesting, i guess we just love him a lot regardless) anyway lets kick it off there

MISHA BYRNE

when writing BURY YOUR GAYS i was picturing none other than BILL HADER. maybe it is because i was watchin a lot of BARRY at the time, not exactly sure why but thats the truth.

that being said i think i would be great to get a queer lead in there. so if that was the case i would say LEE PACE, and of course we have the ultimate fan cast MISHA COLLINS

TARA ITO

this is the other character that was FULLY IN MY HEAD as i wrote it and mentally cast from day one. it also kind of coincides with the trot of a tv show i was watching at the time which was PEN 15. so tara in my mind was always MAYA ERSKINE

ZEKE ROMERO

not exactly a known actor in my head, but when considering options i think that OSCAR ISSAC would be very good

JACK HAYS

there are a few options for this, but i keep thinking of a very clean shaven MURRAY BARTLETT in a suit. another options would be ZACHARY QUINTO especially if we get chris pine as chris oak because thats just some incredible META KIRK AND SPOCK action for the sledgehammer scene.

now onto the dang villains.

CHRIS OAK

okay so obviously we gotta cast CHRIS PINE in this role (i might have an in). however if that does not work out i would like to suggest COLMAN DOMINGO

THE SMOKER / UNCLE KEITH

would be neat to have the monsters also play their inspiration. in the case of THE SMOKER i think STEVE BUSCEMI would be incredible

MRS. WHY / AGENT Y

last buck not least i propose ELIZABETH DEBICKI as MRS. WHY

if you have not read bury your gays yet but now you are DANG INTERESTED then you can get it here. thanks for reading buckaroos feel free to reply with your own castings. I AM NO EXPERT you know my art just as well as i do so i am curious your thoughts. LOVE IS REAL

[bootsukki]

“Hey Reddit, an update”

aita series masterlist previous part

author's note: tysm for the incredible amount of notes, reblogs and likes the series has had. i'm completely amazed by it :D i would love to read your opinions on this! hope you enjoy this part! there is just one part left to the series and that makes me really sad but life goes on (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀)

this has 5k words!!!! sorry!

warnings: a bit of angst, fluff and SMUTTTTTTTTT (smut will start and finish after this: *****) so please, mdni!!! p.s.: haven’t written smut in ages so……….

The university was buzzing with the usual midday energy when Tsukishima stepped through the front doors. Multiple students were going in and out of the several buildings, ready to go home or get some lunch. Tsukishima fixed his tie, nervous. It was two days after their painful phone conversation and even though he didn't want to admit it, talking to Akiteru about everything made him more aware of (Y/N)'s feelings. He couldn't let things stay the way they were. He didn't want to lose the woman of his dreams just because he cannot deal with his plans and his nerves towards his future proposal.

Clutching the bento in his hand, he made his way through the education building. (Y/N) was in her last days of finishing the first draft of her book so she was likely to be at the small office Fujimoto-san, her mentor, had given her to work on it. The smell of (Y/N)'s favourite food wafted from the bento and, despite the knots in his stomach, he hoped this would be the first peace offering that would get them closer.

He had tried his best to get her to come home, texting her the previous day with little success, only receiving a yes/no answer to his texts. He had even tried contacting Yachi but the smaller girl was completely blinded by rage towards him ("Tsukishima, you're a fucking asshole and if you think I'll let you hurt my best friend, you're terribly wrong about it. I may be 5 feet tall but I know how to punch someone, especially tall guys like you.") He regretted his actions from that night, including the complete silence he gave her when she was just trying to get an explanation from him.

When he reached her office, Tsukishima took a deep breath, stopping at the doorway. He was nervous to even see her as she had been staying at Yachi’s, knowing she had been at home showering and taking clean clothes whenever he was at work thanks to the smell of her coconut shampoo and the missing socks from the pile of laundry he needed to get through. As he was about to knock on the door, a voice called his name and he turned.

"Fujimoto-san."

"I knew it was you, Tsukishima." Fujimoto-san was a 55-year-old university professor that had been (Y/N)'s professor during her first year. He had been with her through every stage of her university degree and he was the one to who proposed writing a book on second language methodologies to her and the one who accompanied her during her research in the US. Tsukishima was grateful that (Y/N) had found someone who was giving her the support she needed to get over the project, almost acting like a father figure towards (Y/N). "What are you doing here?"

"I was bringing (Y/N) some lunch."

"Oh! That's so nice of you, boy. She hasn't been out of the office for the whole day." Fujimoto knocked on the door and without even waiting for an answer, he opened the door.

(Y/N) was sitting at her desk, completely absorbed in her work, clicking the keys on the keyboard quickly as she wrote, brows furrowed in concentration.

"(Y/N)."

"Fujimoto-san, sorry, I haven't been able to find the document you asked me for." She looked up, surprise flashing across her face as she saw her boyfriend next to the professor before her expression hardened slightly. She wasn't expecting him here. "Kei."

"He brought you some food, isn't that great?"

(Y/N) gave her mentor a soft smile and stood up, getting close to them. With a smile, she reached for the bento on his hands.

"I just wanted to let you know that he's here. I'll leave you two lovebirds eat alone."

"Thank you, Fujimoto-san."

The man waved his hands, leaving the office and closing the door behind him.

"Kei," she said, her tone uncertain, guarded. "What are you doing here?"

Tsukishima shifted, feeling awkward. "I thought you might be hungry," he said, voice softer than usual. "And… I wanted to talk."

Her eyes flickered to the bento, then back to his face, her expression unreadable. For a moment, she didn’t say anything, and Tsukishima’s heart pounded in his chest, nervousness gnawing at him. What if she didn’t want to hear him out? What if she was done?

But finally, she sighed, gesturing for him to sit down.

Relief washed over him as he sat down on a chair. "It’s your favorite," he added quietly, watching her reaction.

(Y/N) looked at the food, then back at him. Her walls were still up, and he could feel the distance between them. But she was here. She was listening.

"Thanks," she muttered, but there was still tension in her voice. "But you didn’t have to bring me food just to say whatever you came to say."

"I know," Tsukishima said, sliding his hands into his pockets. "But I wanted to."

There was another long pause before (Y/N) sighed, leaning back in her chair. "I can’t talk right now, I have a meeting in 10.”

“Oh.” Tsukishima shifted on his feet, feeling the weight of rejection settle uncomfortably on his shoulders. “I didn’t know.”

(Y/N) sighed softly, the tension between them palpable even in her small office. “I really can’t talk right now,” she repeated, glancing over at her desk again. “But maybe… we could talk after work? At home?”

Her voice was quieter on that last part, as if she was extending a tentative olive branch. Tsukishima nodded immediately, relief washing over him despite the lingering tension. “Yeah. Tonight, at home. We can talk then.”

She nodded, and for a moment, their eyes met—there was something fragile in her gaze. It made his chest ache. “Okay,” she whispered, opening the bento. “Thank you for the food.”

He didn’t press her further, didn’t try to fix everything in that moment. Instead, he turned to leave, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they’d be able to find their way back to each other that night.

*****

Later that evening, Tsukishima sat on the couch, waiting, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his knee as he tried to calm his nerves. His mind was racing, replaying everything that had happened between them—how distant he had become, how his silence had hurt her more than he’d realized.

When (Y/N) finally walked through the door, she looked drained from the long day. She dropped her bag by the door and glanced over at him, offering a small wave.

“Hi,” she said softly, as if unsure of how to start.

“Hey,” he replied, standing up awkwardly. “You want to sit down?”

She nodded, walking over to the couch and sitting down next to him, but there was still a noticeable gap between them. The air between them felt heavy, weighted down by everything they hadn’t said.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The silence stretched on, thick with tension and uncertainty, and Tsukishima felt the guilt gnawing at him. He hated how far apart they felt, how much he had hurt her without meaning to.

Finally, (Y/N) took a deep breath, her voice small and shaky when she spoke. “Kei, I… I don’t even know where to begin.”

He swallowed hard, his throat tight. “I know,” he muttered, his gaze dropping to his hands. “I’ve been terrible about all of this. I’ve shut you out, and I didn’t realize how much it was hurting you. I’m sorry.”

(Y/N) bit her lip, looking down at her lap. “It’s not just that you shut me out, Kei. It’s everything… You’ve been staying late, coming home at random hours, and… Mia—”

Her voice broke slightly as she said the name, and Tsukishima’s heart sank.

“You obviously don't notice but I’ve seen the way she looks at you,” she continued, her words trembling. “I've noticed since that time you were out with your coworkers and I had to give you your keys and from that moment, she’s always around, and I just—I couldn’t help but think that maybe you were spending time with her. Maybe… maybe you were choosing her over me.”

Her voice cracked, and she quickly wiped away a tear that slipped down her cheek, trying to maintain her composure. But Tsukishima could see how much this had been eating at her, festering under the surface.

“I felt so stupid for thinking that,” she whispered, her shoulders shaking slightly. “But I couldn’t help it. Every time you were late, every time you didn’t answer my texts… I thought maybe I was losing you to her.”

Tsukishima’s chest tightened painfully as he listened to her. The thought that she had been feeling like this—feeling jealous, insecure, like she wasn’t enough—it tore him apart inside. He had completely ignored her, left her on the dark on everything and his words from two nights before were eating him alive, seeing her like that. He had been so focused on keeping the surprise, on managing everything on his own, that he hadn’t even seen how much he was hurting her.

“Y/N,” he said softly, his voice filled with regret. He reached out, gently taking her trembling hands in his. “Mia means nothing to me. I don’t even notice her like that. She’s just a coworker. You... You’re the one I love. You’re the only one I want.”

Her lip quivered, and more tears fell from her eyes. She looked away, trying to compose herself, but the pain was too raw, too fresh. “But you...” she whispered. “You never told me what was going on, so I didn’t know… I didn’t know what to think. All those nights at the museum or with the computer here at home... I don't know, I felt so...”

Tsukishima squeezed her hands gently, his heart aching. “I should have told you sooner,” he admitted, his voice low. “I didn’t mean to make you doubt yourself or us. I was just… trying to plan something special for us. That’s why I’ve been working late. I’ve been trying to get everything ready for our anniversary. I've been looking for the best place where we can relax and I've been trying to get days off by just... overworking, I guess.”

She looked up at him through her tears. “Our anniversary?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, his voice soft. “I’ve been planning a trip. Just the two of us. I wanted it to be a surprise, but in trying to keep it secret, I ended up shutting you out. I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel like you weren’t enough. I'm the worst at these things. I hate surprises.”

(Y/N) blinked, more tears falling, but this time there was a flicker of relief in her expression. “You were doing all that for us?”

“I was,” he said, brushing a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “But that doesn’t excuse how I handled it. You shouldn’t have had to worry about Mia or think that I didn’t care. I should’ve been open with you, told you what was going on, not leaving you like nothing was happening. I was a complete asshole with you.”

Her shoulders trembled, and she let out a shaky breath, wiping at her eyes. “I felt so stupid, Kei,” she whispered. “I felt like I wasn’t good enough for you, like I was… like I was losing you to her.”

Tsukishima’s heart clenched, and without another word, he pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. “You’re not losing me,” he murmured into her hair, his voice soft but firm. “You’re never going to lose me. She isn’t even a thought in my mind. You’re the one I want, Y/N. You’ve always been the one.”

Her hands gripped his shirt tightly, and she sobbed quietly into his chest, letting out all the emotions she had been holding in. Tsukishima held her close, his hand gently stroking her back.

After a few moments, she pulled back slightly, her face streaked with tears. “I don’t want to feel like this again,” she whispered, her voice broken. “I don’t want to keep thinking I’m not enough for you.”

“You are enough,” he said firmly, cupping her face in his hands, forcing her to look into his eyes. “You’re more than enough. I’m sorry I made you doubt that. I’ll do better. I promise I’ll be honest with you from now on. We’ll talk about everything—no more shutting each other out.”

She sniffled, her fingers curling around his wrist, holding onto him like he was her anchor. “I just want to feel like I matter to you, Kei.”

“You do,” he whispered, his thumb gently brushing her cheek. “You matter more than anyone. I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I’m sorry I didn’t show that enough. I’ll do better. You are my everything. I won't hurt you like this again.”

She nodded, tears still clinging to her lashes, but the weight between them seemed to lift, just a little. “We’ll figure this out,” she whispered. “Together. I also need to communicate my feelings better."

Tsukishima leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, lingering there for a moment before moving onto her lips, kissing them for just a second. “Together,” he echoed, his heart swelling as he held her close.

"We really suck at this sometimes," she muttered.

"Yeah, we do."

They both laughed softly, still holding each other tight.

*****

(OP) tsuk113_:

Hey Reddit, an update.

Seems like we just needed to have a long and conversation between us. I took your comments and advice from friends to heart and explained everything to her. I told her about the surprise trip (but not about me proposing on that trip, surprise, I guess) and everything has gone well. WE are working on our problems and I promised her to be better. I need to be better for her because she is truly the best thing that has happened to me.

Anyway, trip is just a few days away and I'm actually nervous about proposing but, I hope it goes right.

*****

The drive up the mountains had been long, winding through dense forests and past breathtaking views, but the destination was worth it. Tsukishima had booked a secluded cabin that sat high up, surrounded by towering trees and overlooking a serene, glassy lake. The autumn air was crisp, carrying the scent of pine and earth, and the sky above was a brilliant expanse of deep blue. It was the kind of place that felt untouched by time, peaceful, and far removed from the hectic pace of their daily lives.

(Y/N) had been in better spirits since their talk. Tsukishima had worked hard to open up to her, to let her in on how overwhelmed he had been. And while she didn’t know the full reason for the trip, she had let herself hope that this weekend away was his way of making things right between them and celebrate their anniversary as well.

After they had settled into the cabin and left their small suitcases by the beautiful bedroom that had amazing views to the lake, (Y/N) found herself touring the place as Tsukishima started to cook them dinner, standing by the long railing at the balcony, appreciating the views and fresh air, the view of the mountains and lake calming her completely. She smiled softly as she took it all in, admiring the leaves on the trees and their vivid shades of gold, red and orange, making the entire scene look like something out of a painting.

Tsukishima had been looking at her from his place at the kitchen, the weight of the ring in his pocket settling in, waiting for the right moment.

As the sun began to set, casting the sky in shades of pink and lavender, Tsukishima suggested they take a walk before they have some dinner.

Taking their coats and putting on more comfortable shoes, they stepped outside into the cool evening air, the path they followed covered in fallen leaves that crunched beneath their boots. (Y/N) held her boyfriend's hand, leaning against him as they walked in comfortable silence. He had found the perfect place to relax and she was grateful for it. (Y/N) breathed deeply, feeling the tension of the last few weeks melting away in the serenity of the surroundings.

As they reached the lake, (Y/N) walked away from Tsukishima, leaning towards it, looking at the sky. "This place is amazing," she said, voice soft as she looked at the lake glimmering under the fading sunlight. "If this were a movie, we would see a proposal right now."

Tsukishima's heart skipped a beat as his hand made his way towards his front pocket.

"Is that so?"

(Y/N) laughed, completely unaware of the scene that was about to happen behind her. "I think we are the only people here, though, but..." She streched her arms out to the horizon. "Wouldn't that be something?"

When she turned back around to make another playful comment, the words died on her lips.

Tsukishima was no longer standing behind her. Instead, he was down on one knee, his tall frame somehow looking both awkward and incredibly graceful at the same time. In his hand was a small velvet box, the lid open to reveal a delicate, sparkling ring.

(Y/N)’s heart stopped. Her breath caught in her throat, her hands flying to her mouth as she stared at him in disbelief.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Tsukishima, for all his careful planning, looked almost… shy. His usual sharp gaze softened as he looked up at her, the words he had rehearsed for weeks suddenly feeling far more significant now that she was standing there, her eyes wide and her lips trembling in surprise.

“(Y/N),” he began, his voice low and steady, though his heart was racing in his chest. “I’ve never been good at showing how much you mean to me. I know I’ve messed up, more than once… but you’ve been with me through it all. And I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else. These 5 years with you as my girlfriend have been the best years of my life. You have taken care of me, loved me and I can't be more grateful that you are mine.”

(Y/N) was already tearing up, her hand still covering her mouth as she let out a soft, breathless laugh.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Tsukishima continued, his voice just a little quieter now, as if speaking the words made him feel vulnerable in a way he wasn’t used to. “I want us to have forever. So… will you marry me?”

For a moment, the world seemed to stand still. The only sounds were the gentle rustling of leaves in the breeze and the soft murmur of the lake below. (Y/N) stared down at Tsukishima, her heart pounding so loudly she could barely hear anything else. (Y/N) got on her knees, looking at Tsukishima, the man in front of her blushing.

“Yes,” she breathed, her voice cracking with emotion. “Yes, of course!”

Tsukishima let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, his lips pulling into a rare, genuine smile. He, carefully, took the ring away from the box, slipping the ring onto her finger with careful precision, as though it was the most important thing he’d ever done. Once the ring was in place, he cupped her face in his hands, leaning down to press his lips against hers.

(Y/N) closed the distance between them, her arms wrapping around his neck as she kissed him, the taste of salty tears on her lips from the emotions spilling over. In that moment, it felt like everything had fallen into place.

When they finally pulled away, (Y/N) laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I just joked about you proposing.”

Tsukishima raised an eyebrow, his smirk returning. “Timing is everything.”

She laughed again, glancing down at the ring on her finger. It had a parti sapphire as a centerpiece, a gem with a blend of rich forest green and subtle blue hues. The sapphire, in an oval shape, was set in a delicate gold band surrounded by what it seemed like small diamonds. It was, elegant and perfect—just like him, in his own way.

“Wow, Kei... It is beautiful... I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret,” she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “You, the guy who hates surprises.”

Tsukishima shrugged, a slight flush coloring his cheeks. “I figured you were worth making an exception for. To be honest, I thought you were going to find the ring at home.”

"What!?" (Y/N) gasped. "Where was it?"

"I know you hate grocery shopping so I hid the box between the bags I take shopping."

(Y/N) laughed, her heart swelling with so much love she thought it might burst. She reached up to brush a stray piece of hair out of his eyes, her thumb tracing the familiar curve of his jaw.

“I love you,” she whispered, her voice full of everything she felt but couldn’t quite put into words.

Tsukishima’s eyes softened, and for once, he didn’t feel the need to hold back. “I love you too.”

Their lips met in a kiss that was soft, sweet, and filled with everything unsaid. It wasn’t hurried or desperate—it was gentle, almost reverent. Her hands slid up to cup his face, his glasses cool under her fingertips as she pulled him closer, deepening the kiss just a little. It was a kiss that spoke of promises and forever, a merging of relief, joy, and love so deep it made their heart ache in the best way possible.

Tsukishima’s hands tightened around her, pulling her flush against him, and for once, he let himself be completely open, pouring all the love he had into that single kiss. As they finally pulled apart, their foreheads rested together, both of them smiling breathlessly, the world quiet except for the pounding of their hearts in sync.

*****

(Y/N) hugs Tsukishima from behind, enjoying the warmth of his body as he washes the dishes of their dinner. Tsukishima can't help the smile on his lips as his eyes glance down to her ring, sparkling under the lights of the kitchen. For a moment, he is grateful about the lack of signal of their phones because for once, (Y/N) is not checking her emails constantly (seriously, Tsukishima reckons she has a Gmail addiction) and secondly, because she's been teasing him all night, running her fingers, especially her ring finger, through his arm, chest and neck, kissing him slowly, running her tongue over his lips, well, teasing him more and more as the night went on.

Tsukishima dried his hands and turned around, pulling (Y/N) flush against his chest, cupping her face as he slowly leans down to brush their lips together, hands around her hips, massaging the eposed skin between her sweatshirt and her soft pajama bottoms. Without a second though, (Y/N) pulls away, taking his arm, leading him upstairs. As soon as she reaches the bedroom door, she opens it, pulling Tsukishima by his T-shirt to get him inside.

As their kisses grow deeper which every passing second, the man quickly takes off his glasses and T-shirt, leaving them at one of the bedsides tables before running his hands through (Y/N)'s body, undressing her slowly. First, her sweatshirt, leaving her bare from the waist up.

"God, you're so beautiful."

(Y/N) blushes but doesn't waste a second and takes off her pajama bottoms and underwear, pushing them aside with her foot before siting down at the end of the bed and spreading her legs.

Tsukishima can't help it and his eyes slowly make their way towards her most intimate part and he slowly, gets down on one knee and grabs her leg, kissing her leg and inner thigh, before, after what it seem like an incredible amount of time, delving in like a starved man.

Tsukishima lifted one of (Y/N)'s legs up, placing it atop of his shoulder as he parted her lower lips and started to lap his tongue in her.

He moans out, the vibrations of it sending a shiver all over (Y/N)'s body as she cries out his name, hands making its way towards his blonde hair.

Her breath hitches when Tsukishima makes a slurping sound as if he was tasting the most delicious meal in the world.

Tsukishima, eyes closed at the taste of his fiancée, cups her heat, one of his long fingers pressing against her walls.

"Oh, Kei..." (Y/N) opens her mouth, a loud moan leaving her throat, chest heaving. "Right there, baby. Jesus...."

"Right there, pretty?"

"Uh-huh, please! God, yes."

The combination of his mouth and fingers curling inside her shocks her with a wave of pleasure and she pulls on his hair, a gasp leaving his lips as he looks up at her. He can't believe it. He can't believe that the beautiful woman in front of him, so overcome with plasure, is his, forever. Tsukishima smirks, adding another finger as (Y/N) glances down to look at him as her body goes still, climaxing in a long and wonderful orgasm, moaning a mixture of what it seemed like Tsukishima’s name and several curse words.

Tsukishima looks at her once again, soflty massaging her thigh for a few seconds, letting her relax a little bit before rising to his feet and pushing her into the mattress, laying on top of her as her arms make their way around his neck.

From then, (Y/N) slowly reaches to take off his sweat pants, the sight of him that hard making her mouth water, still feeling a bit hazy from her orgasm. Teasing, she fondles with him for just a few seconds, hand slowly inside his boxers, touching him. Her hand moves up and down as she keeps her eyes on him, Tsukishima's eyes closing due to the feeling of her soft hand and the coldness of her new ring on him.

"I love you."

Tsukishima nearly comes at the sound of that and he inhales sharply, smiling. He can feel her everywhere, her hand moving the way he likes it, her lips moving and kissing along his jaw, neck and lips, the sight of her bare pussy... God, he is in heaven.

She pushes his boxers down, straddling his lap as she slaps his throbbing tip on her clit a few times before alinging it with her entrance, slowly making her way down, the sound of his name leaving her mouth as he fills her up.

"Fuck..." Tsukishima bites his lip as (Y/N) slowly moves her hips slowly, splaying her hands on his chest as she moved up and down, an animalistic look in her eyes as she watches him whimper. Without thinking, she grabs two of his fingers and places them inside her mouth, biting and licking them.

"Jesus, fuck."

"Tell me... Tell me what you want, pretty boy."

"You... So bad."

(Y/N) smiles, leaning down to kiss him slowly, the eye contact between them so suffocating that Tsukishima feels like he is going to explode. The feeling of her body on top, the pressure and warmth of her walls. It's too much. Tsukishima doesn't let her move and he cups her cheeks, sucking on her tongue as they both sigh in pleasure.

"Baby..." Tsukishima grabs her breast. "You're so pretty. You're so pretty when you fuck me."

(Y/N) pants, laughing and her hand wraps itself about his throat, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Yeah?"

He nods, biting his lip.

"You're mine, Kei." (Y/N) hisses, bouncing on top of him with more strength. She was close, so, so so close. "You're mine forever."

"Forever."

(Y/N)'s back arches for just a second and Tsukishima notices her movements are getting sloppy and without even thinking about it, she grabs her by the waist and rocks their hips together, thrusting into her at an alarming pace, bed shaking a bit due to their movements.

"Oh, fuck!" (Y/N) moans, her hands touching his chest, reaching for his shoulder. "Like that, baby. I'm so..."

"I know, me too."

(Y/N) leans down to tug on his earlobes wit her teeth as she growls something not even him can't understand. Tsukishima quivers at the feeling of his cock reaching even deeper and for a moment, he feels like he is seeing stars.

"I'm going to cum, Kei!" Please, please, keep going!"

"Cum with me, baby. Cum with me." His voice becomes deeper as he feels his own orgasm approach him, looking at (Y/N), who had her face on his shoulder, sweat running through her forehead. Tsukishima kisses her slowly, hands moving her hair out of her face. "Fuck, (Y/N), where do you want it?"

"Inside, please." (Y/N) begs, her lips still brushing his. "Please, baby. I need it so bad."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, yes!"

Tsukishima's cock twitches inside of (Y/N), gasps leaving his mouth as he cums inside of her. They both jerk, the feeling of their orgams making them feel dizzy and light-headed.

"Fuck."

"Yeah..."

"That was..."

"So fucking good."

(Y/N) laughs as Tsukishima kisses her cheeks repeatedly, lips swollen from all their kissing.

"If I knew we were gonna fuck this good after proposing, I would have done it at 18."

"Kei!"

Tsukishima laughs loudly and (Y/N) melts, the sight of him like this... So happy and perfect... She hums, hiding her face on his neck for just a second.

"I love you so much."

"Me too."

"No. I don't think you understand." Tsukishima adds. "You really taught me what is like to love and even though I may not be perfect at it, I promise I will love you every single day of my life and even after death."

"Kei..."

"You are my everything, you know that, right?"

"You can't say things like that!"

"Why?"

"Because..." (Y/N) blushes, placing her hands on her face and getting up from the bed. "Because! I'm going to take a shower."

Tsukishima laughs, looking at her as she walks towards the bathroom door, biting his lip.

"Don't look at me like that and come shower with me."

"Yes, (Y/N) Tsukishima."

"Shut up!"

*****

(OP) tsuk113_:

I'M GETTING MARRIED FUCK YES

User 1:

Congratulations! After 20 years of being married, let me give you a piece of adivce: listen to each other. Enjoy the little moments together. I am sure your love is pure.

taglist: @lavanderdreamve @lizzymizzy-blogg @quilyzayaki @uhnanix

[hazelsmirrorball]

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys | Charles Leclerc

SUMMARY: After being mia for a year, Y/n comes back better than ever ready to talk about her six year relationship, through music.

FACE CLAIM: Lola Tung

pairings: Singer! Reader x Charles Leclerc

a/n: sorry for also being mia!! i’ve been working with uni and publishing my book! i hope you guys enjoy

david.iacono via instagram

liked by logansargent, minnie.mills and 100,427 others

tagged: y/n.l/n_

david.iacono our girl is finally making a comeback!!

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user102 i’m sorry but she’s alive?!

user15 y/n is finally back!!

user12 omg finally!! i missed her so so much

user4579_ i’ve missed you in the paddock

minnie.mills she’s back!!!

user101 wait? our girl? what happened to charles?

-> user15 im pretty sure they broke up! she hasn’t been seen anywhere for the past year and that includes everything related to charles.

-> user278 they don’t even follow each other on instagram anymore!

y/n.l/n via insta stories. minnie.mills via insta stories.

y/n.l/n via insta

liked by charles_leclerc and 1,820,278 more.

y/n.l/n guess who’s back with great news!! if you’ve been following me for a while you would now how much i love musical theater and i’m forever thankful for giving life to eurydice in hadestown!

view all comments

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user10 our queen is back and she’s going to broadway?! omg guys!!!!!

user78 it’s happening!!!

user57 you did it y/n!!!

user17 i feel like a proud mother, congrats!!

minnie.mills broadway is shaking in their boots!! Just wait till they hear the album!

-> user890 the album?! what album??

-> user27 omg omg omg

-> y/n.l/n thank you for spoiling the album

user19 i don’t know what’s crazier, the album announcement in the comments or charles in the likes

y/n.l/n posted a video via insta.

liked by arthur_lecler, carlossainz55 and 2,920,831 others.

y/n.l/n. decided to give you guys a preview of a song I've been writing since I was gone, hope you guys enjoy!! xoxo

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user28 no fucking way!!!

user2901 I'm going to puke

user290 we can all agree this song is about Charles, right?!?! I can't be crazy

user190 this is so crazy

user789 but what’s the name of the song?

-> y/n.l/n my boy only breaks his favorite toys

-> user17 it keeps getting worse and worse for charles

user219 if this is the preview of the album she's writing if I were Charles I would start hiding

user89 once I fix me, he's gonna miss me?!?!? she ate I fear

user19 I guess the new album is a disstrack

user55 well at least we know who arthur and carlos side with in the breakup

user26 charles pr team should get to work

y/n.l/n via insta.

liked by charles_leclerc, chrisbriney_ and 920,194 more.

y/n.l/n opening night was a hit! thank you for everyone that waited for me to heal and supported me all the way, i love you guys. good things are coming soon

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user78 you are so mega talented!! you deserve this and more

user891 the caption seems shady?

user178 oh charles what did you do

charles_leclerc congrats xoxo

-> user16 i don’t know what shocks me more, charles commenting or his xoxo

-> user89 once i fix me, he’s gonna miss me…

patriciooward via insta stories!

y/n.l/n via instagram !

liked by patriciooward, minnie.mills and 3,991.782 others

y/n.l/n all’s fair in love and poetry…new album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. out on friday!

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user189 omg?!? we’ve been getting so much content

user167 they could never make me hate you charles

patriciooward congrats cariño 🤍

-> user78 come again?

-> user67 pato what are you doing here?!

user78 i’m scared, if this is something about charles never proposing im going feral

user589 honestly i can’t wait until friday someone leak it!!

user67 please be ready charles

charles_leclerc 🤍

[thehistoriangirl]

Hi!

Could you write something for Viktor in this Father's Day please??

Thank you so much, have a great day 🖤

Hi anon! For sure :3 I hope you like it

Little Genius

Viktor x Fem!Reader---1.4K----SFW

Tags: Established Relationship (they're married) | Pregnancy | Fluff | Viktor would be such a great dad yall can't change my mind | Happy Father's day to all who celebrate :3 | This is not proofread at all bc Father's Day is over in less than an hour i'm sorryyyy ;---; |

Viktor felt your head nudging against his side, making him lower the book he was reading since yesterday—since you had finished it without waiting for him to read it out loud. A small betrayal Viktor washed away with your extra long session of kisses after dinner.

He reached to turn off the lamp, your hand brushing his before he could pull the tiny rope. Golden eyes took in your alert face, body wiggling closer to him so Viktor could rest his right leg over your hip.

His hum reverberated in your whole body due to the closeness of your cheek and his chest, heart beating content as you melted against the soft touches, the nonsensical patterns he drew against the thin, worn-out fabric of your pajamas.

“Not tired yet?” he asked, looking at the clock hung on the wall almost reaching midnight.

“I want to show you something,” you said, fiddling with the loose threads of his favorite blanket, the one he packed from his house in Zaun and kept in Piltover, even now.

He mourned the sudden loss of your warmth once you incorporated in your elbows, reaching for the nightstand on your side of the bed. Though curiosity made his golden eyes twinkle as your fingers scouted the insides of the last drawer.

“What is it?” Viktor peeked over your shoulder, seeing your hand gently cradling a small, white box tied close with a golden ribbon. “Are you going to propose, my love? Because I’m sorry to tell you this, but I beat you to it around two years ago,” he chuckled, rubbing with his thumb over the golden band decorating a finger in your left hand. Soft, slightly dry lips kissing the reverse of your palm once you glared playfully at him.

“You’re not funny,” you said, thought your curved lips testified completely the opposite.

“I hate to argue with the love of my life, but I am. Otherwise I wouldn’t have win you over.”

“Well, what if I say that you win me over with your terrible jokes?”

Viktor feigned a deep betrayal just like they were represented in the Opera House; hand clutching his shirt over his heart, closing his eyes while his face twisted in a grimace of hurt. “Your words break my heart.” His hands enveloped your waist, pulling you against his chest. “You better have a plan to wound up my poor heart. Your devote lover is very sensible.”

You beamed at him, eyes crinkled in crescents. “I do have one.” Wriggling against his tangled hug, you sat with your legs crossed, settled right in front of Viktor, putting the box on his chest. “Open it.”

The mysterious object was covered with a layer of paper, and for a few moments all that it could be heard inside your shared room was the wrinkled paper being pushed away to reveal the gift.

“Huh?” Viktor frowned, his fingers brushing the softest fabric as he raised the clothing out the box to see it against the light of the bright, golden lamp.

A vivid, burnt yellow bib made of crochet in a pattern oddly familiar for his own baby clothes kept inside a bag under his mother’s bed back in Zaun. The lettering read: Papa’s Little Genius.

He gazed at you, founding your expression of pressed lips about to burst into giggles. “My love?”

“Do you know what day is today?” you said, brushing the empty box away to straddle his hips.

“Sunday?” He could barely articulate any words with your comfortable weight pressed against him.

You lowered over his chest, nuzzling your nose in the crook of his neck and nibbling on his ear just for the fun to see his pale skin flush deep crimson every time. “It’s Father’s Day,” your voice sent shivers down his spine, goosebumps traveling all over his body as his body torn between your allure making pool molten desire down his stomach, and his brain scrambling around by your shushed words.

“Father’s…” he said, holding your shoulders as he looked down toward you and over the bib resting on the pillow next to him. His golden eyes opened, a gasp hitching his already quickening breath. “Are you… you… I… we…”

You burst out laughing, your vision became blurry with the halo of tears pooling in your eyes. “Yes...,” you whispered, as if it were such a delicate thing, a dream, almost, that if talking too loud about it would make it disappear. “You’re going to be a Papa very soon.”

His teary eyes matched yours as he hugged him flush against him, taking in the smell of your hair, how perfectly he feels blessed at just basking in your presence. And now, not only had you given him your whole body and soul and heart. No, you were about to give him a legacy—a future carved in his blood and flesh.

A child.

His child.

His rough fingerpads caressed your cheeks, wishing to take in every little detail about this moment so he could treasure it for eternity.

“I thought I was the luckiest person in the whole world when you accepted to be my spouse, but now?” He laughed, wiping your tears away. “Now words can’t describe how I feel knowing that you’re carrying our baby.”

Viktor chuckled, his smile that one of a child’s that had just discovered the wonders of life for the first time. His hand cradling your belly.

“Hi, little one,” he muttered, almost afraid to cause a bad impression to his unborn baby. Fingers gently caressing the soft skin under your shirt. “I’m your Papa. Hi,” Viktor repeated, finding himself in a loss of words. “I… I promise I’m going to read a lot of books about parenting, and that I’m going to come up with pretty toys for you, and I promise that I will make daily time to play with you… and sing to you… and tucking you to bed,” his voice broke, a knot straining his throat. “I don’t know anything about being a father, but I promise you I will be the best for you, little one.”

With a groan, he sat on the bed, lowering his head to kiss your belly, hands interlocked in the small of your back. “Only the best for you and your stunning mother. I hope you look just like her,” he said with a chuckle. “Though I will struggle to ground if that occurs… hmm, just be easy on me, alright?”

He looked up at you, eyes full of wonder and pure, unfiltered adoration.

“I just know about them, but I already love them so,” Viktor confessed, caressing your hair, his hands pulling down your chin so his lips could encounter yours. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” He mumbled between kisses of all kind—as soft as the brush of a feather, bold ones with his teeth biting your bottom lip, his tongue exploring your mouth in a slow, sensual dance. “I love you. I love you both,” he corrected, patting your belly.

“Do you like the bib?” you hummed, and he laughed. “Your mother scold me a lot because I kept getting lost while knitting the pattern.

“I knew I recognized that style.” He scanned the bib, arching a playful eyebrow toward you. “Little Genius, eh? Pretty high standards, don’t you think?”

You roll your eyes, swatting his chest lightly. “You say that as if you won’t let them see all your blueprints and chalkboards full of equations the moment they’re born.”

Viktor’s heart fluttered at the thought. He would have to babyproof his studio—and for sure his child wouldn’t step inside the lab without a full-body protective uniform, but the thought of sharing with someone else besides you about his vision of the world and the place he had in it made him feel like he was inside paradise.

A personal goal to make this world much happier, and safer, and fairer.

His baby’s world.

“I love you,” he said, kissing your whole face with delicate kisses that poured out everything words could never express. His devotion. His love. Everything. “I will never be able to pay you back for this…this miracle.”

“I don’t want you to pay me back,” you said, hands resting over his quickly-beating heart. “I love you, too. And your love for both of us is more than enough.”

He smiled widely, showing you that grin you adored so much, that made you melt and wish you could, too, give him the whole world.

“How lucky I am,” he hummed, settling you against his chest. “To have my whole universe safely resting in my arms.”

[hughiecampbelle]

Supe Preference: How They Propose

Requested: I know you already did a preference with how they propose but please please please do this with the supes! I think it would be amazing. thank you thank you thank you ♥️♥️♥️ - anon

A/N: I hope you like it my love!!! This was so fun to write, I love exploring their characters!!! Feedback is always appreciated 💕

Homelander makes sure he's got a crowd with his supporters when he pulls out a ring and gets on one knee, asking you to marry him. There are cameras and reporters there, too. They will run stories about the most powerful man in the world finding his one true love, the sparkle in his eyes when he looks at you, the faulter in his voice when he asks you. Everyone who saw it for themselves says it was the most romantic speech they've ever heard. This will do great for his public support and image. His fans are all about traditional values. Homelander staying a bachelor makes his fans antsy, nervous, like he can't settle down. Now he's doing that. You, John, and Ryan will be the perfect little family. An instant family, actually. People cheer and whistle and cry. You say yes, because there is no other choice. And you hug and kiss, and he directs you were to look and what questions to answer like when the wedding will be or the color palette you'll choose. He makes jokes and quips that everyone laughs at.

The Deep asks you to marry him on television. You were placed together because you have fantastic ratings, and he could use a little boost in the public eye. You haven't been "dating" for very long but, as he puts it in his speech, he doesn't need to have known you for a long time to know that you're the one for him. You smile, and even she'd a few tears before putting the ring on and kissing him. You're not actually getting married, at least not legally, but Ashley already has color swatches and flowers and venues. It'll be the wedding of the century. You make sure, behind closed doors, he doesn't get the wrong idea. You put on a good act. You're smart and stunning, and you could have any Supe you want. When the inevitable divorce happens, you'll come out the better for it. Interviews, book deals, and talk shows. You'll ruin him. You just have to get through the next few months without any hiccups. You have to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid or vulgar. That, in itself, is a full-time job. You talk through grit teeth in your smile, telling him not to fuck this up for you.

A-Train does it out of desperation. You and Reggie were high school sweethearts. You were together when he was let in the The Seven, and you've stayed with him through every bump in the road. When things with Homelander get really tough, really scary, Reggie pops the question. It's not the most romantic drive for the proposal, but if anything ever happened to him because of Vought and Homelander he wants you to have access to everything he'd leave behind. All the money, the deals, everything. You can only get that through marriage. He loves you, he's loved you forever, but he does this not solely out of love. He can't. This decision is too big and has too much weight. He has to protect you, to save you from what he's had to deal with. You don't know any of this about the engagement though, so you say yes, proclaiming it one of the happiest days of your life. You understand some of the tension, but Reggies too afraid to go into detail. You'd worry too much. He can't do that to you.

Maeve blurts it out during a fight. You're tired of being hidden. You're tired of keeping things so low-key, rescheduling because she has to go play house with Homelander. You're both yelling at one another when she asks you if you want to marry her. Of course you do, you say, angry that she would think anything different. Then let's get married, she yells. Fine! She storms off into the linen closet where the small box sits between two towels. You hated them and said they were too scratchy. You never would have looked there. She hands it to you, and when you open it, you're speechless. You always said things about jewelery in passing: silver or gold, the cuts you like, the gems if diamonds aren't your thing. You're angry and then you're not. It's a lot to think about (knowing you and Maggie could never go public, it would put you and her in far too much danger) and yet, the answer is so clear. Yes. Yes you want to spend the rest of your life with her. That's all you've ever wanted.

Firecracker asks you live on her show. You always knew she'd want to include her fans. They're a big part of her life, her popularity, and a huge reason why she's even part of The Seven. Her audience has heard stories about you from the beginning. They heard all about your first date, how cute she thought you were. It's only right they be included in this. So, under the idea that you're doing an interview about being in a relationship with one of The Seven members, you agree. When she asks you, you're speechless. Everyone is cheering and whistling. Of course it's a yes! That episode of her show goes pretty viral. Some of her fans are upset and turn on her, but for the most part they're all happy you're now engaged. Ashley is happy, too. Misty's ratings haven't been great as of late, but this stunt makes her a fan favorite all over again. Her audience agrees with the traditional values of marriage, family, etc.

Soldier Boy always wanted to get married, settle down with a white pickett fence, and a couple of kids. He certainly thought it would have been sooner than this, but he's still young, and he wouldn't have found you if everything hadn't happened. Still, it's been on his mind. He sees you with him in that house, with those kids. There's one thing to be grateful for out of all this. Ben isn't a huge romantic. You're not expecting rose petals and candles. Instead, he rolls over in bed one lazy morning and pops the question. You think he's joking, saying that's not funny when it's something you wanted forever. He's serious, though. He's got the ring and everything. It takes you a minute to realize this is all real. Of course, you say yes! When you do, he attacks you in kisses, grinning from ear to ear. You go out and celebrate, drinking until the room spins, telling anyone who will listen that you're getting married.

Sister Sage comes to you with a list of pros and cons. Some are big, like the commitment of marriage and the issues behind the traditional values. Others are relatively small to you, like the number of books she'd bring with her when you got a place together. You and Sage have been together a long time. You know she has thousands of books, you know she's thoughtful about everything except her own messiness, her own chaos. It's up to you to decide. She leaves her list with you, but before she can step through the door you're already saying yes, explaining your feelings about the whole situation. You love her. You know she has faults, God knows you have yours. And she still loves you not despite them, but because of them. She wasn't really expecting you to say yes, at least so immediately, so you'll have to wait on the ring. It was the easiest yes of your life.

[menkya-and-charon]

₊˚⊹⋆ Howdy there! It’s finally time for Sandrock's final release yay ₊˚⊹⋆

To celebrate this special occasion Sandara pulled off her jewelry making skills to prepare some unique rings for every sandrocker who wishes to propose to their soulmate ! So without further, here's a little story behind each design,

Qi - Sended an intriguing blueprint to Sandara with complex symbols and diagrams…He assured her that it meant something important to his soulmate so she craved the coded message in precious silver with care. Even if she didn’t get Qi special love language as usual she was sure his loved one would get it ;)

Owen - Our favorite bartender showed an intricate design to Sandara, a delicate pattern almost the same as his own parents' engagement ring. Like the gilding flowers on the cover of a fine book he wished to give his lover the beginning of the story they were about to write together in this life.

Fang - The swan holding a special meaning to him Fang requested Sandara to make his ring the shape of that gracious animal to seal his promise to love and cherish his dearest one forever.

Ernest - Came by with this big and expensive pearl that got a special meaning to him asking Sandara if she could add it to his ring. The pearl symbol of his loyalty and love was carefully placed on the gold ring, the initials of his name and his lover one engraved on the inside.

Pablo - He made a special request to Sandara in search of the most colorful metal they could find for his ring in which bismuth mineral was perfect! Showing how bright and full of all the colors of this world his love was for his chosen one.

Arvio - Insisting on getting the most fine materials Arvio asked for a special ring. He showed Sandara a rare sand flower from Baranarok symbolizing hope and renewal inspiring the shape of that jewel meant to bond him and his other half forever.

Miguel - Requested a rather simple but very elegant ring, made with pale gold with a single diamond to show the purity of his love for his chosen one.

Burgess - Asked for something extra special to convey all his will to live in happiness and kindness with his soulmate. The yellow diamond he chose shining in the center of his ring radiating like the sun all his love.

Pen - In secret Pen demanded the most powerful ring Sandara could make to give his special one great strength and power he’s all for. However he never delivered it himself…

Unsuur - While admiring his collection Unsuur couldn't choose which gem was more fitting so he brought them all to Sandara to make a special ring! (even adding a few shards Wilson lost to make the base of his special ring ;)

Justice - Wanted a pretty ring that still felt like him so Sandara took great care at bringing out Justice strong will and honesty toward his most precious one with this silver and copper ring.

Logan - The only one Sandara didn’t made because well Logan made it himself for his special one! On late hunt nights he sat by the fire and carefully carved this ring in bones with the will to give his loved one something he made with all his heart.

This isn’t much but I hope everyone will have much fun playing and living wonderful adventures with Sandrockers friendly as romantic ones ! As I used to study jewelry making it was very much fun to do and fitting hc that Sandara would make them for the town folks !

It’s been already one year that I have being in this fandom and so so grateful for everything it brought me and the wonderful people it allowed me to meet ♡

I’m currently working on the girl next and some custom ones for my fellow builders who helped me with the designs ◇

₊˚⊹⋆ Happy Sandrock day ! Wish you all the best and see you soon to continue this journey together ₊˚⊹⋆

[ferrarifinnick]

WHO WANTS TO BE A DADDY | THE HUNGER GAMES HEADCANON

i absolutely loved exploring this with thg boys. we only ever really see katniss’ opinion on parenthood in the books, and it was so much fun exploring these perspectives. also i know everyone hates gale but honestly he’s so fun to write for. moody and stoic. just how i like ‘em!

set post-rebellion. if they want kids + how many/genders that suits them best.

includes: gale, finnick, peeta

warnings: none

gale would absolutely want to be a father, but just not for some time after the rebellion is won and over. i can see him moving back to the new district 12, building a new house for you both to live in, far away from the ruins he watched go up in flames. i think this would be his project for a while. it would be his way to grieve the loss of his old life, while focussing on building a new one. with you. i can see this being therapeutic for him, and i can see his younger siblings helping him with painting the walls and his mother cooking a meal for you to eat together once the project is complete. and as gale is eating in your new home with his family, i think he would realise that he no longer has to provide for them like he has since his dad died. they will be alright without him now, and he can finally live a life of his own. after his family goes back to their new home, i think he would finally tell you that he’s ready and wants to start this new chapter right away. but most importantly, he wants to start it with you.

i think gale would shine best with two boys, partly because he can fill the void his father’s death left in him, and to turn them into better men than he was growing up.

i’m going to defy canon and say that finnick doesn’t really have a preference. i think his attitude would be that if it happens, it happens, and if it doesn’t, that’s fine too. it would be something he’d like fate to decide, i think. after all, finnick is much more interested in all things you than about what you can or can’t give him. but that’s not to say he wouldn’t be completely overcome with excitement if you did happen to fall pregnant. i think he would occasionally wonder what your baby would look like, if it would have your eyes or his smile, and he’d spend a lot of his free time thinking of names that incorporate your favourite flowers and colours, just in case. but if you didn’t ever fall pregnant, i can see him being equally content in taking the number one spot on the list of people that you love.

finnick is definitely great with kids. i think he’d shine best as a girl dad or as the fun uncle katniss and peeta’s kids see occasionally for holidays.

peeta has three priorities in life: propose to you, marry you, and then have beautiful babies with you. plural, because peeta has so much love for you that it couldn’t possibly be contained to just you. no, he needs extensions of you, so that he can share his love with them, too. i think peeta would take his role as a husband and father incredibly seriously, and that would include cooking every meal for your family, organising family game nights every week, etc. but he would even do little things like filling up a vase with fresh flowers every week for you, crafting his own stories to read to your kids every night (and he’d definitely make a picture book to go along with it), and really taking the time to meet the emotional needs of your family. most of all, he wants to make the kind of loving family that he wished for but never had.

he would do best as a father to at least one girl and one boy, if not more. he would definitely make saturday mornings a baking day, with you and the kids helping to bake some treats for game night later that evening.

lmk what other headcanons you’d like to explore. like, comment, reblog. love <3

[numberonetacostan]

ONE HEADCANON FOR EVERY II CHARACTER!

Hello everyone!!!!!^^ For a little holiday season special, I’ve typed out a little headcanon for every character!!! By character I mean contestants + host + assistants!!!!! Sorry to all the Nick Le fans out there, he is not included. Since everyone is here, there are characters I may not know as well as my main roster, so if I get anything like, objectively wrong, feel free to let me know!!!^^ Please enjoy!!! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ

Apple- Her favorite song is Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan. She doesn’t really understand the lyrics but she really likes ponies!!!! I also think she’d start misspelling her name as “Appell” pretty often after she finds the song. 

Balloon- The first thing Suitcase does with her prize money is buy him a poetry book. He is so very moved by this and writes her dozens of poems with various styles he sees in the book within a few days. He’d read from the book and his own works to Suitcase every night before they go to bed. Some others could join in for a nice bedtime story :). 

Baseball- Once, while the hotel was under construction, Baseball fell down the stairs. And then kept rolling. And rolling. And bouncing. And rolling some more. Overall it set construction back two weeks and Paintbrush broke their leg trying to help stop him. Baseball was banned from the hotel until the elevators were finished. 

Bomb- He can’t eat spicy food. As in he’s banned from eating spicy food. If he gets too hot, he can accidentally set himself off, so despite his claim that he has a great spice tolerance, he is not allowed anywhere near the hot sauce. He doesn’t complain about the ban anymore post-canon, too risky, yeah? 

Bow- She watches so very many makeup tutorials, but being a ghost, can’t practice any of it on herself. That is, unless she possesses someone, like Marsh who would be very easy to put makeup on relative to other objects!!! She’d probably get pretty good at it, after some time, and Marsh would have some lovely new eyeshadow looks every day! 

Knife- He has a longer ghost tail than Dough and Bow do, so I propose him wrapping said tail around people and things he likes!!! Wraps around Pickle when they’re standing next to each other, wraps around Suitcase’s handle when they’re together, etc.!!! He’d get rather flustered if anyone called him out on it. 

Lightbulb- Gives incredible hugs. Incredible. How does an object made of glass and metal give such cuddly, warm hugs? Nobody knows. Sometimes she’ll turn herself on during the hug to make it extra warm!! As long as the person she’s hugging closes their eyes, it really elevates the already sacred experience of a Lightbulb hug. Luckily for everyone else, she is always happy to give one!^^

Marshmallow- She’s still pyrophobic after having been burnt all those years ago. As a very flammable marshmallow, fire would be scary to her anyways, but after having been roasted it’s a whole other story. She’d rather freeze than get close to a fire, but that’s not a problem since there’s a certain fruit always willing to warm her up with a hug <3!!

Nickel- He became very, very, very nervous to give his apology to Suitcase after she blew up Cobs and ate his corpse. He was planning to apologize either way, but clearly Suitcase could absolutely obliterate him if she wanted to do so, which means this apology has to be quite good or else. He has a serious amount of respect for her now. An upgrade, I’d say. 

OJ- His favorite Pokémon is Charizard. It’s orange, it’s very popular, OJ loves it. I know Justin has made a list of the contestant’s favorite Pokemon, but I have not read it in a while so Charizard it is!!!

Paintbrush- Experiments a lot with their image after season 3, mostly by dyeing their bristles with paint!!! Lightbulb helps :3!!! And by helps I mean makes it silly and very fun. Maybe she puts a little dot between Painty’s eyes to give them a “nose”. I think they’d try a solid color first, then maybe a fade, and eventually dye the nonbinary flag into their hair!!! They slay it of course. 

Paper- Pickle once wrote “Property of OJ” on Paper’s back and he didn’t notice for three days. No one told him it was there. When he asked everyone why in the world they would not inform him they said it was because they all thought OJ had written it and he was keeping it because he liked it. OJ did not know why Paper avoided eye contact with him for a week that one time but he did not like it. 

Pepper- Hotel OJ head chef. Yeah you heard me. Let me cook by letting her cook!! Salt wouldn’t like cooking, too much work, so this is something Pepper could enjoy on her own!! And it would be the sole reason that OJ has not yet kicked Salt out of the hotel- if he does than Pepper might be too sad to cook, and with the depressingly low amount of hotel residents that can make food, and the even smaller amount who are willing to make enough food for everyone, they need her. And, if Payjay help out, they can spend more time with her and get to know and enjoy her presence without Salt ruining it!

Pickle- With some help from Tea Kettle and Pepper, he makes Knife a new Dora doll post-finale, since it vanished with the rest of the stuff made by MeLife. He lets Knife possess him if he wants to hug the doll, but it also gets possessed by Knife so he can hug Pickle. Ah shit sorry my Knickle got all over the headcanon dang it. 

Salt- I headcanon her as the only cisgender, straight, alloromantic (I think that’s the right term?) member of the cast. Basically the only one who isn’t queer at all. But uh an actual headcanon for the ~60 or so Salt fans out there, both she and Pepper sleep with those little hair bonnets on to keep their salt and pepper from falling out of their heads in their sleep. 

Taco- This one is fitting for the winter season!! Taco is afraid of snow. Like, straight up terrified. I think she would grab a bunch of blankets and hide in the vents of the mansion whenever it snows, so she can be inside of the inside, as far and safe from the snow as she can be!! Having been homeless for years, she’s had some miserable experiences with hypothermia after it snows, and now that she has a home to live in, she’ll be staying inside until all the snow has melted. 

Mephone- I think he should have a pet bug post-canon. A little beetle or something that just chills on his head and feasts on the many crumbs he gets on himself while he eats. An intelligent one, like Baxter!!! Since we know Mephone will be stepping up into the more ‘big brother’ sort of role for 3GS, I think the bug would be a good outlet for Mephone to talk about his more intense feelings, specifically revolving around Mepad and the contestants. I also think, following his very creative naming of the contestants, the bug would be named Buggy. 

Box- I think she would be an insomniac. After years and years of living in an empty, timeless void-space thing, she’d have a lot of trouble getting to sleep!! She’d definitely need the whole works, warm milk, cheese, lullabies, etc., etc., just to get to sleep, and even then she probably wouldn’t sleep for very long. A lot of nightmares on this one, yeah? 

Cheesy- I think he’d actually quite enjoy eating cheese, as long as it’s not a chunk like he is. He’ll eat nachos, pizza, mozzarella sticks, grilled cheese, etc., etc., but he will not eat cheese cubes. He’d make approximately 5 cannibal jokes every time he does this, and this average goes up to 8 if Pickle is around. 

Cherries- They give Toilet their old Mepad mask post-canon, to try and make him feel better. Toilet might hang out with them a bit more after this- they can do some drawing together!! The more prank-buddies, the merrier, yeah? 

Dough- He eventually did get the recording of Bow saying that he was her brother!! Was it a cut-off version of her denying it yet again (though this time more playfully than anything)? Yes. Does that make him any less happy about having it? No. 

Fan- Out of everyone, he’s the most upset about II ending, and wants to find a new special interest!! He’d try a whole bunch of things, games, music, movies, TV shows, art, and I think it would be funny if he settled on the ii-universe equivalent of Survivor, since it was such a big inspiration for II!! He’d also occupy himself with being very interested in whatever Test Tube is doing and cheering her on!!! Also being a good Dad to Bot!!^^

Microphone- Has, on occasion, accidentally had her volume button pressed in her sleep and woke not only herself but everyone in the vicinity up with her snoring. The first time it happens post-canon it takes her a half-hour to get a very startled and scared but very sleepy and confused Taco to come out from her hiding spot under the bed. 

Soap- Her soap is french vanilla and rose scented!!! She’d find her own scent rather pleasant, yeah? I think being empty for her would have a similar effect on her as it does on objects like OJ and Test Tube, though if she’s in a real pinch she will use her own soap to get clean!! Letting someone use her soap would be a sweet gesture of love/appreciation from her!!!

Suitcase- Balloon would write her a lot of poems once they’re back together post-canon, and she’d keep them all inside of her!! She’d keep a lot of special little gifts from important people inside of her. The stone that Knife set beside her the first time they spoke on the docks, a dried flower bracelet from Box, whatever suits her fancy! (Get it? Ge- ‘cause she’s a suitcase? okay ill leave).

Test Tube- I think she would make phones for everyone post-canon!!!^^ It’s a big island, yeah? And they really need to be able to contact each other in case of emergency, with them being able to truly die now. She could make a functioning rocket out of a vending machine, I fully believe she could make however-many functioning phones out of what she can find on the island. (Or even better, Mepple HQ. I think they all should loot it.)

Tissues- He likes coding :) I personally hate coding, because I sucked at it in school and never want to look at one of those evil “easy kids coding” websites ever again. HOWEVER coding is something he could still do while he’s feeling sick, most of the time!! And we have quite a few gamers living in the hotel, so it would be a great way for him to connect with others!!!

Trophy- He always enjoyed photography as a hobby, but very much threw himself into it after being freed from the elimination closet. After months of seeing nothing but the snotty closet walls, he had a lot more appreciation for scenic and natural photographs. He’d hang a lot of them on the wall of his room to look at as he sleeps, since the rooms don’t have windows. 

Yin-Yang- This one is from my partner @galacticrain!! Because I consider them my resident yin-yang expert^^ Yang isn’t actually gluten free, like he says in season 2 episode 5, he just knew that Yin would confess to the eating of Dough if he put any ounce of pressure on him to tell the truth. 

Mepad- Another cold weather hc! As a Mepple device, he doesn’t really get cold! However, during their first winter together, Toilet worries that Mepad has no winter clothing!!! He buys Mepad one of those super fluffy, pink cases. Mepad does not take it off for months, until his systems start to overheat because of it. 

Toilet- I think he would be rather curious about what having limbs is like. He wouldn’t be particularly upset about his own lack of limbs, just curious!^^ He would ask Mepad about his legs, (try to) ask Mephone about his arms, and maybe make a little doodle of himself with a lot of limbs. A biblically accurate Toilet, if you will.

Blueberry- I like to think his white eyes glow a bit. He functions best in pitch-black darkness, yeah? So imagine you’re walking in the dark and two white eyes are staring at you from the depths. He would love scaring people with it, I think. 

Bot- Hanging out with everyone post-season 3 finale and even more so post-canon, they discover that they really do love videogames, similar to what they told Cabby!! They would absolutely dominate in fighting games, and would main R.O.B. in Super Smash Bros.!!! A fellow robot with a 3 letter name? Sign them UP. 

Cabby- She is endlessly fascinated by how Taco’s arms work. They just…go back in? How? Could she pull them out backwards? Both on the same side? Could she reverse them? Taco does not know either, and the two of them spend a full day together just trying to figure out how they work. Cabby gets a lot of new info about them, and Taco in general, after that :). I’m projecting but I think Cabby would be curious too.^^

Candle- Her meditation training post-canon is what keeps like half the cast from losing their minds after everything that happens. She is very very much needed after… all that. Meditation would help her too, of course, in the way that it usually does, but being so helpful would probably make her feel better than that. 

Clover- She was once blown across the entire island because someone dropped a penny on the ground. It was a particularly shiny penny, though, and the year was one her many, many lucky numbers!!

Goo- My little fella!!! Uh obviously he and Bot would make comics together. They like to draw, he likes to write, it’s perfect!!!! They could help him condense his writing down into a comic format as well!!! They could also make fanart and fanfics together!!! Goo would be a shipper I think he already ships Silver and Painty if you sit that little guy down in front of Steven Universe he will explode. 

Lifering- With everyone losing their immortality post-canon, he quickly becomes one of the most popular among the contestants. Twisted your ankle? Go see Lifering. Migraine? Go see Lifering. Ate the mushrooms that Taco very clearly told you were poisonous? Hurry to Lifering!! He’s happy to be of so much help, but gives some long and rather informative lectures on proper safety checks. 

Silver Spoon- Fills his room with candles. Particularly purple ones. And ones scented with lavender and chamomile. He’ll go on and on about how much he loves candles. Particularly purple ones scented with lavender and chamomile. No one can tell if Candle is trying to politely turn him down or really hasn’t noticed. He progressively gets more and more obvious with his candle collection and nearly sets a building on fire. 

Tea Kettle- #1 Nickloon shipper. I’m serious. Whether they get together or not, she ships it. I don’t think she’d be pushy about it, insistent that they get together if they’re interested in other people, but… we know silly Nickel, always chasing a Balloon. And if he needs a little help catching it, TK will be there in a flash!!!! She’d make them a little romantic picnic complete with hors d’oeuvres! 

The Floor- My guy The Floor still visits Mephone almost daily post-canon. I really don’t see the guy being super upset or holding a grudge over Mephone having made him. He’s pretty cool, if he does say so himself!!^^ And they’re buddies, anyways, so Floory would want to check in on him after his abusive father killed everyone and then was exploded!!!! He might even befriend 3GS while he’s at it :).

[hanrinz]

“when are you coming home?”

“next week,”

“too long,” you whine, burying your head in your comforter, your phone beside you prop up by your pillows as you hear sae let out a small chuckle on the other side of the phone.

it has been two weeks since you last saw your boyfriend, with him going for a game with real madrid and with you not being able to go there to support him because of your schedule, you were settled with watching him through a stupid screen throughout the whole match.

and as much as you would've loved to be there with him, you have so many things to tend to. and with the time differences between the two of you, it's been hard to have an alone time with him.

this is just one of the small moments where you can have him all to yourself. you turn your head to your phone as you peak at your boyfriend in the kitchen of his apartment, cooking a meal for himself.

“what are you laughing at, huh? do you find joy in me, the love of your life, dying because of you?” you said, dramatically. sae could only shake his head at you for your theatrics. “i miss you so much, you know.” you mumbled a little softly now.

“well then, you should've gone with me here in spain,” if you were a little sleepy right now, his statement might have just woke you up from how he casually said it. not that you've never imagined going to spain with sae before, but the thought has never been brought up since you started dating.

“are you proposing to me, oh great genius midfielder sae itoshi?” you questioned, with lilt to your tone, teasing him. positioning your body to your elbows as you face him on the phone a smug smile on your face as you see him growing a little shy and attempting to cover it with a small cough.

“maybe, if you say yes,”

you quirk your brows from his statement, say yes, huh? “come home soon and maybe i will say yes,” making you smile wider from the thought.

and the conversation was now diminished into a small kindling thought in his head, while you babbled about your day and how you have missed him a lot. whining about how you missed the taste of his cooking and saying you might die if he doesn't come home any sooner.

and when he doesn't hear your voice in the background anymore, he looks at you fast asleep in your bed with your arm under your head. exhaustion was written on your face, he took his phone and snapped a photo, a smile making its way to his face. he mutters 'good night' to you, ending the call.

grabbing his food and sitting on the kitchen counter to eat, he opens his contacts calling his manager (who is about to be bothered again by him.) at the second ring, he picks up and he doesn't wait for any greeting, already going straight to his concerns,

“book me a flight to japan for tomorrow morning,” he hangs up, not even staying on the call to hear the complaints of his ever pitiful manager.

yeah, he's gonna make you say, yes.

◞♡ uhm first writing for sae??? i hope he's not ooc but it's what i do best anyway :p i literally enjoyed this for some reason. @mitsies you said you wanted dessert😘

[deepestdelulu]

30 Things To Make Life Unforgettable

Appreciating life is one of the things I´ve learned this year, small things, happy moments... All of them are valuable for who we are as well as who we will become. However, we are not conscious of what we have, all the feellings we are experimenting and the opportunities we are losing for doing other things (such as being on our phones 5+ hours). I hope this list helps you making life a little bit simpler.

Walking in the rain. In my city rains a lot, so I´m not going to propose you going to the beach, since I can´t (obv you can do it), we have to adapt ourselves to what we have, and rain is one of my favourite things, I used to hate it when I was younger tho.

Spend your day in a cozy cafe. Not only can you have a coffee, but you can also read, study and be productive. The bes part is that you are experimenting new things, being productive and having fun with a hot coffe/tea.

Put your phone away. Be present babe, this is all what we have, you want to live your life, don´t you? Then start doing it, of course you are not going to live advemtures everyday, but at least you can try it. :)

Learn new things. It will never be a waste of time knowledge.

Be more passionate and intense. Who cares if you are too much? It only matters what YOU want.

Trying new recipees. I didn´t use to be a big fan of cooking, but I tried it few months ago, and let me tell you, all I do naw are bisquits for people I care.

More museums, more art gallery. I´ve always wanted to give mysterious girl vibes (I´m a yapper but introverted at the same time) you can always try reading in a museum.

"For the plot" mindset. My friends and I sometimes play saying yes to almost everything, just to see hwo things develop. It´s very fun:)

Bucketlisting. In a world of consumerism no one can scape

Trying something new. I started dancing, and I feel so energetic.

Learning to be alone. I do have a post about it :) go check it after this one.

Candle+Sweater=Coziness. Scented candles, my bff in autumn/winter.

Book annotating. It helps focusing, you can go through your notes after it and in my opinion creates more powerful bonds with the story and you.

Old classic books. Culture girls are the hottest.

Cooking your own meals. It's such a simple and sweet act of self-care. You can also try making your own Jam or something.

Doing things that you enjoyed as a child. My favorites are horse riding, swimming, baking, and bubble baths.

Buying flowers for yourself. It doesn't have to be an expensive and fancy bouquet, just some pretty flowers for your room.

Doing your nails. I like red wine ones, makes me feel like a vampire!

Taking more Photos. You can also buy a cool vintage camera (I recommend looking on eBay!) to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

Trying crochet, knitting, or sewing. I'm trying to crochet a sweater for my dog right now, haha.

Planting a plant. I tried to plant an avocado, but it didn´t grow as i expected, although i´ll keep trying it

Making plans with your friends like going on a picnic. You could plan some themed picnics like cottagecore, homemade food from your culture, strawberries, and so on; also a great opportunity to take some pictures!

Do volunteer work. Tried it last year, it was so fun to learn new skills and meeting new people while trying to make world better.

Writing a diary. Writing down things that have happened and looking back at them feels really lovely to me.

Writing letters to your friends. Letters just feel more personal than text; you can also keep them as a memory.

Dressing in a way that makes you feel happy. Wearing outfits that make you feel confident will definitely make life better.

Petting stray cats. I love cats.

Starting to collect something. You could collect something small like jewelry or postcards!

Playing music in the background while doing stuff. I can't stop listening to the lofi girl stream on youtube, haha.

Going on gloomy walks in the Forrest. Name something more comforting. I will wait.

Please feel free to add more suggestions in the comments! <3

✩‧₊*:・love ya ･:*₊‧

[rwrbficrecs]

ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with) by @everwitch-magiks (book-verse)

@dot524: Such a fun little punk band AU. There’s a meet-cute, some mild angst, and emotional music scenes with bonding. Plus, great cameos of June, Nora, and Alex’s family. I enjoyed the pacing, dialogue, and character development of this AU and its feel-good ending, and it was fun to see them as punk rockers!

Still Sitting in the Corner I Haunt by BrokenChair, mister_nic (book-verse)

@suseagull04: This fic is a high school AU and Groundhog Day combined! Henry is characterized so well in this fic, and each part of this 5+1 has both obvious and subtle differences that combine to make the perfect fic!

The Tea Shop on Verbena Street by @stutteringpeach (book-verse)

@suseagull04: If every fic was this good, I would never get any work done, because it was really hard to put this fic down! The mystery aspect of it is crafted so well, and to top it all off, this is the best slowburn I've read in awhile. Definitely a fic you don't want to miss out on!

Pretty Competent by @noahreids (book-verse)

@na-dineee: Single Dad Alex and hockey captain Henry Fox meet for the first time at Alex’s daughter’s tryouts – and yeah, they take it slow. But honestly, Alex flirts like crazy, Henry’s texting game is on fire, and to top it all off, Alex’s daughter is totally smitten with Henry. My heart does somersaults just thinking about this super sweet and super sexy fic.

The stranger you recognise by @clottedcreamfudge (book-verse)

@suseagull04: Usually I think the sequel is never as good as the original, but that's absolutely not the case with this fic! The version of our faves that we know and love from The Tea Shop on Verbena Street return, and CCF has so much respect and love for these characters that it's impossible to tell that the sequel isn't written by the original author, only with their permission. Add to that the fact that this fic adds tropes that make perfect sense in this verse, and you've got yet another fic that's worthy of becoming a classic. I'll definitely be reading this fic again soon!

Hit (My Love) Out of the Park by bleedingballroomfloor (book-verse)

@suseagull04: Rivals to lovers at its finest! I love the way this fic comes full circle and that it's so fun- the author's love for the sport definitely shows!

the full spectrum of human emotion by @firenati0n (book-verse)

@suseagull04: if you're a fan of movie AUs, you definitely need to read this one! Roop took all the best parts of The Proposal and gave them a RWRB twist! Arthur feels, ALLLLL the proposal feels, just enough nods to the movie to make fans like me happy without writing it word for word, our boys being so oblivious but so soft at the same time, so much heart that it's practically bursting at the seams with it... I can't say it enough, this fic is absolutely AMAZING, a must read!

Flirting for Dummies by @smblmn (book-verse)

@suseagull04: This fic is the perfect combination of holiday fluff, our boys being oblivious and Henry and June being besties! The perfect read to get anyone into the holiday spirit!

I must tell you what you will not ask by @lizzie-bennetdarcy (book-verse)

@suseagull04: combine a college roommates AU with oblivious firstprince (especially Alex, as always) and holiday feels and you have an incredibly soft fic that I'll likely find myself reading again and again, especially during the holiday season!

Careful Cooking by @iboatedhere (book-verse)

@na-dineee: Alex and Henry first met at culinary school, where they were inseparable—how did they end up parting ways?! Years later, they cross paths again under unexpected circumstances … It’s a lovers-to-exes-to-lovers story, with quite a bit of angst. Beautifully written, the tension builds perfectly, and the ending is just as lovely.

Pumped by @myheartalivewrites (book-verse)

@na-dineee: Firstprince goes Climbing AU! Set in London, Alex and Henry meet at their favorite hobby: climbing. After a rocky start, the game is on. Everything about this fic is perfect: the vibes, the banter, the sparks, the pacing, the pining—such a classic and one of my all-time favorites!

Got a will to win and a Cheshire grin by @kiwiana-writes (book-verse)

@suseagull04: This fic is so unique and fun! It captures a year in Alex and Henry's lives as Santa's elves and what that job entails, and the twists and turns all lead to such a satisfying conclusion!

check out our past Monthly Faves here ❤️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Doublethink sump linkdump

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Trigger warning for #eikositriophobia: this is my 23d linkdump (Hail Discordia!), an erratic Saturday purge of the open tabs I haven't managed to blog this week; here's the previous 22:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

When I was a kid, I idolized Harlan Ellison. I loved his prose styling, his stage presence, the way he blended activism and fiction, and the way he mixed critical nonfiction with fiction. As a 17 year old, I attended a writing workshop that Ann Crispin was giving at a local science fiction convention and she told me that I had the makings of a great writer, just as soon as I stopped trying to be Harlan Ellison.

But Harlan was a complicated figure. I attended the Clarion Workshop in 1992 specifically because he was our instructor, and came away bitterly disillusioned after he targeted one of my fellow students for relentless, cruel bullying, a performance that was so ugly that the board fired the director and permanently barred him from teaching the workshop.

Later on, Harlan became the kind of copyright maximalist who called for arbitrary internet surveillance and censorship in the name of shutting down ebook piracy. During a panel about this at a sf convention, he called one of the other panelists a "motherfucker" and threatened to punch him in the face. He took to badmouthing me in interviews, painting my position – whose nuances he certainly understood – in crude caricature.

But Harlan and I had many friends in common, people I really liked, and they were adamant that Harlan's flaws were not the whole story: if Harlan liked you, he would do anything to stand up for you, no matter the cost to himself. Famously, when Harlan taught Octavia Butler's Clarion, he demanded to know why she wasn't writing full time, and she replied that there was the inconvenient matter of making rent and groceries. He replied, "If that's all that's stopping you, come live in my guest house for as long as it takes, eat my groceries, and write." Which she did.

Which is great, but also: one of my own Clarion students told me about when his then-teenaged mother met Harlan at a sf convention and told him that she dreamed of becoming a writer, and he propositioned her. She was so turned off that she stopped writing forever (her son, my student, is now an accomplished writer).

So Harlan was a mixed bag. He did very, very good things. He did very, very bad things. When Harlan died, in 2018, I wrote an obit where I grappled with these two facts:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/28/rip-harlan-ellison/

In it, I proposed a way of thinking about people that tried to make sense of both Harlans – and of all the people in our lives. There's an unfortunate tendency to think of the people that matter to us as having their deeds recorded in a ledger, with good deeds in one column and wicked deeds down the other.

In this formulation, we add up the good deeds and the bad deeds and subtract the bad from the good. If the result is a positive number, we say the good outweighs the bad, and therefore the person is, on balance, good. On the other hand, if the bad outweighs the good, then the person is bad, and the good deeds are irrelevant.

This gets us into no end of trouble. It means that when someone we admire slips up, we give them a pass, because "they've earned it." And when someone who's hurt us does something selfless and kind and brave, we treat that as though it doesn't matter, because they're an asshole.

But the truth is, no amount of good deeds can wipe away the bad. If you hurt someone, the fact that you've helped someone else doesn't make that hurt any easier to bear. And the kindnesses you do for other people make their lives better, no matter what bad things you've done to others.

Rather than calculating the balance of our goodness or badness, I think we should just, you know, sit with our sins and virtues. Let all the harm and joy exist in a state of superposition. Don't cancel out the harm. Don't wave away the good. They both exist, neither cancels the other, and we should strive to help more, and to do less harm. We should do everything we can to help those we harm. No one owes us a pass because of the good we've done.

That's the lesson Harlan taught me, and he taught it to me by absolutely failing to live his life this way – a fact that exists alongside all of the good he did, including the great art he made, which I love, and which inspired me.

Not long after Harlan's death, I got a phone call from J Michael Straczynski, Harlan's literary executor. As part of his care for Harlan's literary legacy, Joe was editing a new anthology of short stories, The Last Dangerous Visions, and did I want to contribute a story?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/harlan-ellison-last-dangerous-vision-1235117069/

Of course I did. Harlan edited Dangerous Visions in 1967: a groundbreaking anthology of uncomfortable science fiction that featured everyone from Philip K Dick to Samuel Delany. The followup, 1972's Again, Dangerous Visions, was, if anything, even more influential, including Le Guin's The Word For World IS Forest, as well as work by Joanna Russ, Kurt Vonnegut, David Gerrold, and James Tiptree, Jr.

Though some of the stories in these books haven't aged well, together, they completely changed my view of what science fiction was and what it could be. But The Last Dangerous Visions was a different (ahem) story. For complicated reasons (which all cashed out to "Harlan being very difficult to work with, sometimes for damned good reasons, other times for completely petty ones), TLDV was, at the time of Harlan's death, fifty years behind schedule. It was "science fiction's most famous unpublished book." Harlan had bought early work from writers who had gone on to have major careers – like Bruce Sterling – and had sat on them for half a century.

Then Joe called me to tell me that he was starting over with TLDV and did I want to contribute a story – and of course I did. I wrote a story for him with the title "Jeffty Is Five," part of my series of stories with the same titles as famous works of sf:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

Joe liked the story, but not the title. He thought Harlan wouldn't have approved of this kind of appropriation, and he wanted to do right by the memory of his old friend. My first reaction was very Harlan-like: this is supposed to make you mad, it's my art, and if it offends you, that's your problem.

But I remembered the most important lesson I learned from Harlan, about good deeds and bad ones, and I thought about Joe, a writer I admired and liked, who was grappling with his grief and his commitment to Harlan's legacy, and I changed my mind and told him of course I'd change the title. I changed the title because Harlan would never have done so, and that's rather the point of the story.The story is (now)) called "The Weight of a Heart, the Weight of a Feather" (a very Harlanish title), and it's about the legacy of complicated people, whose lives are full of noble selflessness *and careless or deliberate cruelty. It's about throwing away the ledger and just letting all those facts sit together, about lives that are neither washed of sin by virtue, nor washed of virtue by sin.

It's a good story, I think, and I'm proud of it, and I'm interested in what the rest of you think now that the book is out:

https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/products/book-fyhm

Harlan was the writer who made me want to get good at reading my stories aloud. I was a charter member of the Harlan Ellison Record Club, as you can see for yourself from the time Harlan (accidentally) doxed me:

http://harlanellison.com/text/paladin.txt

After nearly 20 years of podcasting, I'm actually pretty good at this stuff. I'm going to be podcasting a reading of this story – eventually. I am nearly done "de-googling" my podcast feed, ripping it out of Feedburner, a service that I started using nearly two decades ago to convert a WordPress RSS feed to a podcast feed. In the intervening years, WordPress has come to support this natively and Feedburner has become a division of Google, so I've been methodically removing Feedburner's hooks from my feed, which is now proudly available here, without any surveillance or analytics:

https://craphound.com/feeds/doctorow_podcast

I'll be writing up the process eventually. In the meantime, I'm about to embark on another podcast fiction project, serializing my novella Spill, a "Little Brother" story that Tor's Reactor just published:

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

The first part of "Spill" will go out tomorrow or Monday. Reactor also just published another "Little Brother" story, "Vigilant," which I read in last week's podcast:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/09/29/vigilant-a-little-brother-story/

One of my long-running beefs with Harlan was his insistence that the answer of copyright infringement online was to create an obligation on intermediaries – like ISPs – to censor their users' communications on demand from anyone claiming to have been wronged by a post or upload.

This would be bad for free expression under any circumstances, but it's an especially dangerous vision for ISPs, who are among the worst-run, most venal businesses in modern society ("We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company" -L Tomlin).

It's hard to overstate just how terrible ISPs are, but even in a field that includes Charter and Comcast, there's one company that rises above the pack when it comes to being grotesquely, imaginatively awful: Cox Communications.

Here's the latest from Cox: they sell "unlimited" gigabit data plans that cost $100 for the base plan and $50 to add the "unlimited" data. But – as Jon Brodkin writes for Ars Technica – Cox uniquely defines "unlimited" as severely limited:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-internet-speeds-in-entire-neighborhoods-to-punish-any-heavy-users/

Now, you're probably thinking, ho-hum, another company that offered unlimited service and then acted like dicks when a customer treated it as unlimited, ::laughs in American Airlines::

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesasquith/2019/11/13/unlimited-first-class-flights-for-lifehow-american-airlines-made-the-most-expensive-mistake-in-aviation-history/

But that's not the Cox story! Cox doesn't just throttle "unlimited" customers' internet to 2006-vintage DSL speeds – they slow down the entire neighborhood around the unlimited customer to those speeds.

As Brodkin writes, every Cox customer in the same neighborhood as an "unlimited" customer named "Mike" had their upload speeds reduced by more than two thirds, from 35mbps to 10mbps, to punish Mike. And they're not the only ones!

https://www.reddit.com/r/GNV/comments/gkicjg/comment/fr670cx/

Cox confirmed they were doing this, saying "performance can be improved for all customers in the neighborhood by temporarily increasing or maintaining download speeds and changing upload speeds for some of our service tiers."

Cox has been on a roll lately, really going for the shitty-telecoms-company gold. Back in August, 404 Media published a leaked pitch deck in which Cox promised advertisers that they were secretly listening to their customers' smart devices, transcribing their private conversations, and using them to target ads:

https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

This isn't just appalling, it's also almost certainly fraudulent. As terrible as "smart" devices are (and oh God are they terrible), the vast majority of them don't do this. That's something a lot of security researchers have investigated, doing things like hooking up a protocol analyzer to a LAN with a smart device on it and looking for data transmissions that correspond to ambient speech in earshot of the gadget's mic.

My guess is that Cox has done a deal with a couple of the bottom-feedingest "smart TV" companies (as a cable operator, Cox will have relationships with a lot of these companies) to engage in this conduct. Smart TVs have emerged as one of the worst categories of consumer technology, on every axis: performance, privacy, repairability. The field has raced to the bottom, hit it, and then started digging to find new lows to sink to. This is just my hunch here, but I think it's highly likely that if there's a class of devices that are bugging your living room and selling the data to Cox, it's gonna be a smart TV (top tip: buy a computer monitor instead, and use your phone or laptop to stream to it).

Ask a certain kind of very smooth-brained, Samuelson-pilled economist about the enshittification of smart TVs and they'll tell you that this is a "revealed preference":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

As in, sure, you may say that you don't want your TV to secretly record your private conversations and sell them to Cox, but actually you quite like it, because you have a TV.

While this is a facially very stupid argument, it's routinely made by people who think they're very smart, a point famously made by Matt Bors's "Mr Gotcha":

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Comics turn out to be a very good medium for stringing up the revealed preferences crowd on their own petards. This week, Juan Santapau's "The Secret Knots" added to the Mr Gotcha canon with an equally brilliant webcomic, albeit one with a very different vibe, entitled "Remind Me Later":

https://thesecretknots.com/comic/remind-me-later/

Santapau really catches the zeitgeist with this one, which is more of a slow burn than a zinger, and which shows how online "revealed preferences" nonsense grooms us for the same bullshit in every corner of our lives, even our psychotherapist's office. Highly recommended – an instant classic.

"Revealed preferences" comes from the Chicago School of Economics, a field that decided that a) economics should be a discipline grounded in mathematical models; and b) it was impossible to factor power relationships into these models; so c) power doesn't matter.

Once you understand this fact, everything else snaps into focus – like, why the Chicago School loves monopolies. If you model an economy dominated by monopolists without factoring the power that monopolists wield, then you can very easily assume that any monopoly you discover is the result of a lot of people voluntarily choosing to spend all their money with the company they love best.

The fact that we all hate the monopolists we have to deal with is dismissed by these economists as a mirage: "sure, you say you hate them, but you do business with them, therefore, your 'revealed preference' shows that you actually love them."

Which is how we end up with absolutely outrageous rackets like the scholarly publishing cartel. Scholarly journals acquire academics' work for free; get other academics to edit the work for free; acquire lifetime copyright to those finished works; and charge the institutions that paid those "volunteer" academics salaries millions of dollars to access their publications:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/16/the-public-sphere/#not-the-elsevier

These companies don't just lock up knowledge and tie an anchor around the scientists' and scholars' ankles, dragging them down. Their market power means that they can hurt their customers and users in every way, including through rampant privacy violations.

A new study from SPARC investigates the privacy practices of Springerlink, and finds them to be a cesspit of invasive, abusive conduct that would make even a Cox executive blush:

https://zenodo.org/records/13886473

Yes, on the one hand, this isn't surprising. If a company can screw you on pricing, why wouldn't they scruple to give you the shaft on privacy as well? But The fact that a company as terrible as Springer can be the dominant firm in the sector is still shocking, somehow.

But that's terminal-stage capitalism for you. It's not just that bad companies companies thrive – it's that being a bad company is a predictor of sky-high valuations and fawning coverage from the finance press.

Take Openai, a company that the press treats as a heptillion-dollar money-printer whose valuation will eventually exceed the rest of the known universe. Openai has a lot of problems – a mass exodus of key personnel, a product that doesn't work for nearly all the things it's claimed as a solution to – but the biggest one is that it's a bad business.

That's the theme of a fantastic, characteristically scathing-but-deep Ed Zitron article called (what else?) "Openai is a bad business":

https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

Zitron does something that no one else in the business press does: takes Openai's claims about its business fundamentals – its costs, its prices, its competitors, and even its capabilities – at face value, and then asks, "Even if this is all true, will Openai ever turn a profit?"

The answer is a pretty convincing "no." Zitron calls it a "subprime AI crisis" in a nod to Tim Hwang's must-read 2020 book about the ad-tech bezzle, Subprime Attention Crisis:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

The fascinating thing about both Zitron and Hwang's analysis isn't that there are big companies that suck – it's that they are able to suck up so much money and credulous excitement, despite how badly they suck.

That's where power – the thing that neoliberal economists say doesn't matter – comes in. Monopoly power is a self-accelerating flywheel, as Amazon's famous investor pitch explains:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

Once a monopolist or a cartel wields market power, they can continue to dominate a sector, even though they're very bad – and even if they use their power to rip off both their customers and very powerful suppliers.

That's the lesson of Michael Jordan's lawsuit against NASCAR, as Matt Stoller explains in his latest BIG newsletter:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

Jordan is one of the most famous basketball players, but after retiring from the game, he became a NASCAR owner, and as such, has been embroiled in a monopoly whose abuses are both eerily familiar to anyone who pays attention to, say the pharmacy benefit manager racket:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

But on the other hand, the fact this is all happening to race-cars and not pharmacies makes it very weird indeed. As with, say, PBMs, NASCAR's monopoly isn't just victimizing the individuals who watch racing, but also the racecar teams. These teams are owned by rich, powerful people (like Jordan), but are "almost always on the verge of bankruptcy."

Why is that? NASCAR rips them off. For example, teams have to buy all their parts from NASCAR, at huge markups, and the purchase contract prohibits them from racing at any rival event. There are a million petty schemes like this, and NASCAR carefully titrates its bleed-off to leave its victims almost at death's door, but still (barely) solvent enough to keep racing.

NASCAR also bought out all the rival leagues, and most of the tracks, and then locked the remaining tracks to exclusivity deals. Then the teams all had to sign noncompetes as a condition of competing in NASCAR, the only game in town – forever.

Hence Michael Jordan, a person who steadfastly refused to involve himself in politics during his basketball career, becoming a firebreathing trustbuster. Stoller cites Jordan's transformation as reason to believe that the anti-monopoly agenda will survive even in the event that Harris wins but bows to corporate donors who insist on purging the Biden administration's trustbusters.

That's a hopeful note, and I'd add my own to it: the fact that the NASCAR scam is so similar to the pharma swindles, academic publishing swindles, and all the other monopoly rip-offs means that there is a potential class alliance between university professors, NASCAR owners, and people with chronic health conditions and big pharmaceutical bills.

That high note brings me to the end of this week's linkdump! And here's a little dessert in case you've got room for one more little link: Kitowares "Medieval Mules", a forthcoming clog styled as trompe l'oeil plate armor:

https://www.kitowares.la/

Pair with old favorites like lycra armor leggings:

https://loricaclothing.com/collections/leggings-1/products/the-augsburg-legging

And a DIY crotcheted knight's helmet:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/590854477/knights-helmet-w-detachable-visor

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER s tories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; a nd SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/05/farrago/#jeffty-is-five