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borathae · 2 days ago
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LETS GOOOOOO 🤪🤪🤪
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↳ Index [Day 31 - Werewolves]
Pairing: Alpha Dom!Jungkook x f. Omega sub!Reader
Genre: childhood best friends to enemies to lovers!AU, werewolf!AU
Warnings: Kook is kinda cold at first, it is implied that OC gets sold into a forced marriage where she will be tortured and assaulted (not to Kook but a villain character hahaha), yeah...her future is not looking good, or is it?, Koo might have a plan :----)
Kinks: the trope of "just the tip" and "we shouldn't be doing this", yeah besties i went there, sex in a shed in the forest, sex by the bonfire, nudity, naked cuddling for warmth *wink wink*, he is bigger and stronger than her, size & muscle & strength kink, he pins her down, fuck i'm literally so small when it comes to him like bro please i have so many thots, hahah sorry i'm really into him haahah, he pins her wrists & puts his hand over her mouth to silence her, huge werwolf dick, knotting, multiple orgasms for both, "just the tip" in spooning position, clit massages, rough penetrative sex in pronebone & doggy style, he has her in a headlock at one point, breeding for the sake of scent marking her, so much fucking cum oh lord, dirty talk, he has fangs, he bites her shoulder, he growls, what if i was weak?? what then??, tears, eye contact, this is emotional & has plot and i wanna write more about them, cuddly & safe aftercare, the plot in this is so good omfg
Wordcount: 11.5k
a/n: Click here if you wanna see his dick. I have zero (0) Z E R O knowledge of the workings of the omegaverse. i know that there’s alphas and betas and omegas but that’s it. and that there is heat and knots and slick and scenting(?) but how the dynamics work or what ABO each means? no clue. so if this is inaccurate, bear with me and let's see it as my interpretation of werwolves instead. Okay? Okay. Jjssjjs i also added this idea to the mix ps: i actually don't wanna talk about this, i need to recover first BRO GOODBYE this was kinktober 2024 besties FJJDF what a way to end it tbfh
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The storm caught you by surprise. You wouldn’t particularly mind it if it wasn’t for the company you have to keep. 
Jeon Jungkook. A stubborn, self-centred peacock of a man who thinks he is something just because he is the son of the alpha. 
Now, to perhaps understand the situation a little better, one might need what the literary world calls backstory. 
You lived in a small mountain town far away from any big human city. The town was surrounded by high walls and visitors rarely found their way to it. It was wanted by the townspeople because you weren’t particularly human. Most humans would call you demons, but you like to call yourselves werewolves. You lived in a pack and the town was your lair.
You can be human but also turn into a wolf by choice. Some choose to keep some of their wolfish features such as their golden eyes or sharp fangs, while others looked entirely human when they walked on two legs. 
Jeon Jungkook was the son of the pack alpha and therefore heir of the title. His mother was an alpha as well, which naturally gave him the alpha gen. He was stronger and faster than the other wolves in the pack and he had control over his body during the full moon. He never hid his fangs and showed his golden eyes whenever he was provoked. He earned his pack tattoos when he was twelve after killing three enemy wolves and when he turned eighteen, he earned the pack piercings after fulfilling the maturity rituals within a day. Something only his father managed to do before him.
Ever since that day, Jungkook became even more obnoxious and unlikable than he already was.
You weren’t so lucky. Born as an omega into a normal family with normal siblings in a normal house, your life has been pretty…normal. You are the same age as Jungkook, which naturally made you go to the same classes from elementary to high school. And throughout your academic career, you never learned to like him. 
He was an alpha while you were an omega. You were the only one like this from your family, but they never treated you differently. You were a beloved and cherished family member and therefore lived a normal life until your older brother made a mistake and you had to carry the consequences.
He killed the promised omega wife of the enemy’s alpha’s son. The warring alpha wanted to slaughter the entire town at first, but Jungkook’s father persuaded him to take revenge another way. Take one of the village’s omegas and marry her to his son. “She will be complacent and quiet. Once she is married, she will be your property. You can take out your anger on her.” So Jungkook’s father told him and the enemy alpha agreed happily. One night later, you were dragged from your home with no way to escape your future. You were born this way, it wasn’t your fault and now it would be your death sentence. You cursed your brother that night who begged to be taken in your stead. You told him to choke on it. It was the last thing you said to him and probably will ever say to him. You already started to regret it. 
Jungkook was ordered to make sure that you would arrive at the enemy village safe and sound. It has been three days ever since that night and all your hatred for anyone and anything has been directed solely at him. 
“The rain’s annoying me. Let’s take shelter”, Jungkook says dryly. 
“No.” 
Jungkook glares at you.
“Yes”, he hisses, grabbing your arm by your elbow to drag you to a shed nearby. “I’m not gonna walk in the rain. Besides, it’s late. We need to rest.” 
“Let go of me”, you protest, stumbling after him. There isn’t much that you can do. He is stronger and bigger and because of his status, he naturally has almost instinctive control over your actions. You could fight against these instincts, but it’s a lot easier not to. 
“Would you rather get sick in the rain?” 
“Maybe, yes. Maybe I’ll get sick enough to die. At least like this, I won’t be sold into torture”, you spit, ripping yourself free from his grasp. Again, all your hatred and anger is directed towards him, so it is easy to fight your instincts right now. 
Jungkook gawks at you in surprise. 
“I mean it”, you insist.
He frowns. He steps close and lifts you off the ground, throwing you over his shoulder.
“Hey! Let me down, you fuck!” you yell, flashing your fangs and kicking around you. 
Jungkook merely shoulders you better and walks, frowning deeply. 
“You brought this onto yourself.” 
“I hate you. I fucking hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You big, smelling piece of shit.” 
Jungkook kicks the shed open and drops you. You stumble in surprise, but catch yourself pretty quickly. You and he are mere inches away, sharing air. The constant lighting cutting the sky illuminates your angry faces. You and Jungkook have your golden eyes out and show off your fangs. Your bodies are steaming as your increased body heats dry the water. 
“I’m gonna let it slip because we were classmates, but insult me again and I will make you be quiet. Understood?” he gnarls. 
You step closer, making him taste your words. 
“Go kiss my ass.” 
You turn your back to him and stomp further into the shed.
The shed wasn’t much bigger than ten square meters. There were tools on each wall and some tools scattered around the ground. Clearly it was meant as storage for woodworkers. One corner had neat stacks of wood and on a table, some blankets were stacked in case some of the workers needed to stay the night.
“Great. That’s luxury,  isn’t it?” you grumble.
The door slams closed behind you, making you flinch. You don’t look however, wanting to appear stronger than you feel. In truth, you are scared and alone and heartbroken. You are frightened. You are sad. You are afraid. You are helpless and hopeless. And you are only a little bit angry. As you walked, you couldn’t stop crying. You were happy for the rain because it masked the constant tears running down your face and you were happy for the loud thunder masking your sobs.
You are being sold like property to a man who will torture you for sports. All you want is to be home and to be held and to have someone pay for your fucking therapy because, goddamn, you are going to need a hell lot of therapy if you should survive this. 
Jungkook is the last person you want to be with right now. He lacks empathy and kindness and has a tendency to impulsive anger. You are waiting for him to hurt you after slamming the door, frozen on the spot. 
But it doesn’t come. Instead, he swerves past you to get firewood. You can only watch him, frozen like a scared little girl despite having long moved past your second decade on this cruel earth. 
Jungkook uses his claws to ignite the fire by scratching them over a stone. He blows into the amber until it forms flames, then he stands up. He hooks his fingers in his shirt and takes it off. 
You gasp and look away. You don’t know what he is going to do but it scares you. Is he going to test you out now? Make sure that the alpha is going to get a good delivery?
“Relax. I need to dry my clothes and I can’t do that on my body. I’ll catch a cold otherwise.”
“Oh.” 
Jungkook scoffs and starts unbuckling his belt. You watch his tattooed fingers work. He is wearing heavy silver rings on them. Yep, your people can handle silver without pain. It’s only a myth that it hurts you. Just as garlic being lethal for vampires is a myth. Humans like to tell these tales to sleep better at night.
Jungkook begins taking off his pants, meeting your gawking eyes.
“Stop staring and bring the blankets instead.”
“Oh, uhm. Sorry.” 
You instinctively obey. 
“Make a bed by the fire. Away from the door.” 
You obey again. 
Afterwards you lift your head, having to gasp and stare. What? Stare? Why can’t you look away? 
He is completely naked, currently hanging up his clothes on a chair. You should want to look away but you can’t. His body is sculpted, his muscles well defined. He currently has his back turned to you. It is so big and broad, contrasting against his small waist. Shit, his legs and butt are so big and sculpted in comparison to it. His back is covered scars. Slashes, bite marks, cuts. Some seem to have dug very deep when fresh.
“Just spit it out”, Jungkook hisses, rolling his shoulders which makes his back muscles shift and flex.
“What?” 
“I can feel you staring. Just say what you wanna say.” 
“Your back. It’s covered in scars.” 
Jungkook touches his own back, tracing the scars he can reach.
“I guess it is.”
“Who did this to you?” 
“Too many people to count.”
“What happened to them?” 
“The fact that I’m still here and they’re not, should be answer enough. Shouldn’t it?” 
You gulp. 
Jungkook turns.
You gulp even harder. Look away! You know that no matter how hard you beg your eyes, they won’t look away. It is like they are enchanted.
His pecs are big, clearly sculpted and strong. His stomach is defined, carrying scars as well. But what truly catches your eyes is his cock. Sitting under a dark, masculine bush of pubes, it glistens in the shine of the fire. It is big, even soft, a little tanner than the rest of his skin and sitting against a pair of big, plumb balls made for breeding. So this is what the cock of an alpha looks like. The effect it has on you is embarrassing. You feel slick build up in your holes and saliva collect in your mouth. 
“Quit your staring. It’s like you’ve never seen a dick before.” 
You shake out of your trance, looking away in embarrassment. Your face feels on fire. Holy fuck, what is wrong with you? 
“You have seen dick before, right? Weren’t you and Tae a thing in high school?” he talks as he gets under the blanket. 
“Uh, yeah, uh. We were.” 
“And knowing Tae, he fucked you. Didn’t he?” 
You turn away in embarrassment, rubbing the side of your neck. Of course he did, but Jungkook doesn’t need to know that. 
He figures it out instantly however, glancing at your middle when you aren’t looking. Just for a second, nothing more.
“So stop being weird about it”, he says and lies down. 
You shrink. Jungkook studies you. You are trembling in your wet, cold clothes. He pities you.
“Get naked and hang your clothes up to dry”, he orders.
You want to move in obedience at first, but then stop. You are too scared to obey instinctively.
“No. Close your eyes.”
Jungkook groans and closes his eyes.
“You’re so stuck up. You should practice being naked in front of other people. I heard that Alpha Urquard likes for his pack to watch wedding nights.”
You bite down tears. Great. Not only will you be assaulted, it will happen in front of god knows how many people. What if you just throw yourself onto one of the sharp tools? It would be a bitch way to go, but it’s better than what will happen to you. 
You ogle the pitchfork. Maybe you could do it. Maybe.
“Hey!”
You snap out of it. You whip around, meeting Jungkook’s eyes.
“Hurry up and come here.”
“What?”
“Come here. It’s better than over there.”
You ogle the pitchfork then his darkened face. Did he figure you out?
“I’m not gonna repeat myself. Get out of your wet clothes and come to me.”
“Ple-please close your eyes.”
Jungkook sighs in defeat and obeys. With shaking fingers, you get naked. With trembling knees, you walk to his side. With weak muscles, you get under the blanket next to him. There is only one blanket and you try your fucking hardest not to touch his body in any kind of way. He left you the spot closer by the fire so you were warmer and he could oversee the door.
Jungkook, who senses your presence, opens his eyes. He studies your face, then your body. You have the blanket pulled up to your neck, shivering uncontrollably. Even now, you seem plagued by the cold.
He furrows his brows in distaste and closes the distance. He manages to put his arm around you before your quiet beg freezes him.
“Please don’t hurt me.” 
He moves away, studying you in shock. Your eyes are squeezed shut, your fingers are trembling as you grasp the blanket.
“Why would I hurt you?”
The honest confusion in his voice forces you to open your eyes.
The fire casts deep shadows into his face as much as it illuminates other parts of it. His wet hair is drying slowly, sticking to his wrinkled forehead. He is furrowing his brows which explains the wrinkles.
“Why would I hurt you?” he repeats his question with more urgency. 
“I don’t know.”
“I was ordered to make sure that you arrive unharmed to Urquard. The last thing I’ll do is hurt you.”
“Please don’t.”
“Please don’t?” 
“Don’t make sure that I arrive safely.” 
Jungkook blinks in surprise. Such vulnerability isn’t what he expected from the once feisty, rude woman of before. You are tiny in fear, trembling uncontrollably and begging him with greyed, hopeless eyes. 
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re gonna be an alpha’s wife. That’s every omega’s dream”, he snarls, sounding weirdly jealous. 
You burst into tears instantly, turning your back to him as you curl into a small ball. You wail loudly, unable to pretend any longer. You don’t want to be married off. You don’t want it.
“No, uh… stop crying. I, I’m ordering you to stop crying”, he panics, hissing his words which only makes you cry harder. 
He stares for a while, fumbling with his words. In the end he doesn’t know what to say, turning off his brain to speak from his heart instead.
“Don’t cry, it’s gonna be okay”, he says softly, rubbing your shoulder.
His touch is tender and soothing. You sob despite it or perhaps because of it. It feels so weird to receive because it is nice. 
“Hey, it’s okay”, he tells you, draping his arm over you. Like this, your bodies are touching under the blanket. He feels so warm against your skin. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“It’s not gonna be okay. I’m being sold like a pig to a man who likes to watch his daughters in law get raped in front of the entire pack and who will use every second of his life to torture me.” You shrink into yourself. “I just wanna die. I’m so scared.” 
“Hey no, don’t say that. Don’t be scared, I’m here.” 
“I heard that Urquard killed his first wife by ramming a medal hook into her stomach and hanging her like this. All because she couldn’t give him a child with the alpha gen. Please just kill me, please.” 
“I’m not gonna kill you, ___.”
The last time Jungkook said your name, you and he were both eleven and played adventurers in the forest. He celebrated his twelfth birthday two weeks later and another two weeks later, he killed those three wolves and got his tattoos. He stopped playing with you and stopped saying your name. Quite frankly, he stopped playing with any children since that day, saying stuff like “a man wouldn’t play stupid stuff” or “my father says that it’s weak to play” and he became quiet and distant. Maybe he became sadder as well and lonelier. 
Your name from his tongue after almost fifteen years forces you to turn in his arms. For just a second, the same innocent and playful boy looks back at you before you blink and come back to reality. His features and eyes are still the same shape and colour but he seemed to have grown into them. His left cheek carries a scar these days and his brows are furrowed more than they are relaxed. 
“I’m not gonna kill you, ___. And I’m not gonna let you kill yourself either.”
“So you would rather see me sold to a monster?” You squeeze out tears of anger and frustration. “I hate you so much. You sadistic, heartless piece of shit.”
Jungkook frowns deeper.
“You alphas are all the same. You think just because you are stronger than the rest of us, you can push us around like cattle. We aren’t cattle. We are people, we live normal and good lives. We are nothing special but that’s good. We’re boring and mundane but we love deeply. Unlike you disgusting, selfish alphas who see us as nothing but merchandise.”
“Are you done now?”
“I’ve only started. You are heartless, selfish, self-absorbed, apathetic and a snob. At the spot where your heart once was, a rotten piece of coal is sitting and when you talk, plants die out of spite.” 
“Anything else you like to add?” 
“You are the worst person to ever exist. You are elitist and stubborn and way too obsessed with status. And you…” Your eyes fill with tears. “...you broke my heart before I even knew what heartbreak was.” 
Jungkook’s eyes darken in an unfamiliar emotion. Guilt? Regret? More anger?
“We did everything together until one day, you decided that I wasn’t good enough anymore. For fuck’s sake, we were twelve and you acted like I was embarrassing for doing stuff kids our age were allowed to do.”
“You think that I had a choice?” He finally speaks up and you get a feeling that it was your turn to listen. “I stopped being a kid in my father’s eyes the day I killed those wolves. I didn’t wanna push you away, but father made me.”
“What?”
“I became his heir that day, I sealed my fucking fate. I had to stop playing a-and doing kid’s stuff. He forced me to train day in and out. I had to be the perfect man. I was twelve, for fuck’s sake. I was a fucking kid who wanted to play adventurers in the forest with, with his….with his best friend.” 
The silence which follows after his confession is deafening. Fifteen years of hating him. Fifteen years of thinking that he hated you. And all this time, he only acted like this because his father made him. You meet his emotional eyes, feeling emotional yourself.
“I was your best friend?” you whisper.
He nods his head, biting down on his lower lip to stop it from trembling. 
“I miss you, ___”, he presses out. 
You feel lost for words. You are so shaken in fact that you can’t even find it in you to cry. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of hating him for what he did and wishing for an apology you thought would never come and here it is. His confession. His apology. 
“It’s been fifteen years and I still do. I miss you and I’m sorry.” He cups your face, wiping away the remnants of tears. “I’m so sorry.”
You stare. And stare. And stare. 
“Please say something”, he whispers.
“I don’t know what to say.” 
“Just anything, please.” 
“You’re the most selfish piece of shit I have ever seen.”
Jungkook’s face falls in shock. His eyes show how much your words hurt him.
“Why tell me your stupid apology now? Why confess to me now? Knowing that I will be sold into a life of sex slavery and torture?” You hit his chest. “Why tell me now when you literally deliver me to my fucking death? You piece of shit, you’re selfish and cruel and I want you dead.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You and your entire family and the rest of the pack. Die. All of you just die.” 
You hit him with more vigour. More and more and more. 
“Enough”, he stops you, pinning your wrists into the ground and with it, rendering you helpless, “stop hitting me, please.”
You spit at his face. 
Jungkook flinches back. He sits up and wipes it away.
“What the fuck? You spat at me. Why would you do that?”
“Go to hell and shove your sappy confession up your sadistic ass”, you hiss. You feel no ounce of remorse for what you did. 
Jungkook wipes your spit into the blanket and moves quickly. He puts your wrists together and pins them above your head. Before you can spit again, he puts his other hand over your mouth, rending your legs useless as well by slinging one of his muscular legs over yours. 
There is no fabric between your bodies. You are skin against skin. Raw and naked and hot. You can feel his dick against you and you know that he can feel your tits against his arm. You are rendered useless, vulnerable to whatever he plans to do to you now that spat at him. You are scared, but you are also droopy. It is that same droopiness you felt when you looked at his naked body. Except stronger and more unbearable. You are hotter and there is slick gathering in your holes. You can barely breathe, but maybe this is because of his hand over your mouth. 
“Stop fighting me and listen”, Jungkook talks with his lips close to your face. You can’t stop staring at them. You fight him while your mind goes droopy at the sight of his lips moving. “You can either go to your new life or listen. Are you gonna listen?”
You nod your head.
“Good. I’m gonna pull my hand away now and you won’t spit at my face again. Promise?”
You nod hesitantly.
“Good. I trust your word.”
He pulls his hand away, keeping his arm around you. It lies exactly over your tits, rubbing against your nipples. You know for a fact that he is able to feel it. You curl your fingers, trying so hard not to get affected by his closeness. Or to make a sound for that matter.
“I said this stuff to you because I wanna make it right between us. Your brother fucked up, but what Urquard did in retaliation is crazy and what father allowed is insane. If you want me to, I won’t bring you to him.” 
“What? But…your father promised.”
“I don’t care. It’s barbaric that omega trading is still a thing. You are right, you are people not cattle.” 
“If he finds out that you refuse, he will disown you.”
“I have a plan for that.”
“Urquard will kill you.”
“That’s why I have a plan.”
“What plan?” 
“It’s gonna sound insane.”
“Just tell me please. I don’t wanna be sold.” 
“The only way I can free you of this pact is if you get marked by another alpha. You’re unclaimed right now, but if you were to be marked by an alpha other than Urquard’s son, then the pact would be invalid.”
“What do you mean with marked?”
He hesitates.
“Tell me.” 
“An alpha would have to put his dick into you.”
“So assault? I would have to be assaulted?”
“Not if you wanted it.”
“Huh?”
“Not if it’s with someone you trust. Someone who’s gonna be careful and gentle and who’s gonna make it nice for you.”
“And who should that be? Last time I checked, I’m not really friends with many…”
Your eyes meet Jungkook’s. He seems shy all of a sudden.
“Oh.” 
You gasp for air. 
“Oh.”
“I know it’s crazy. I thought of other ways. I’ve been plotting ever since we left town. That’s why I volunteered. To give us time, to give me time to think of something. I thought of lots of stuff, but they all ended in hypothetical death or enslavement of our pack. The only peaceful option was this.”
“You volunteered to bring me?” 
He nods his head, “anyone else would have been too scared of or too loyal to my dad. I know you’re scared, but I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” 
“And you thought of this?” 
“It’s the only way. We kill Urquard and his sons? Their pack comes after us. We run away? Their pack is gonna punish our pack. We kill everyone? Impossible we’d die and destine our pack to agony. It’s only death and pain u-unless you get marked by an alpha.”
“But I would have to be with you afterwards.”
“Only if you want to. We can pretend, make everyone think that it’s real. You wouldn’t have to be with me ever again.” 
“Oh my god, this is insane.”
“I know. I’m sorry. The choice is yours. I promise.”
You study his face. You are still trapped under him, sharing heat. Skin against skin. arm against chest and cock against hip. He is semi hard by now, smearing slick on your skin. The fact that he is affected by this - by you - doesn’t make it easier to stay calm. You are glad for his leg over yours because it forces your legs to be closed and therefore hide the masses of slick having accumulated by now. His hair is still damp, hanging into his face messily. His fingers feel so strong and protective around your wrists. You swear that each time he breathes out and you inhale it, you feel high. You are so attracted to him right now. 
Truth be told, you always thought that he was handsome beyond comparison. He has a mesmerizing aura and a captivating smile. His physique is your dream physique and his face often caught your attention in a crowd. You were utterly and insanely attracted to him which made your hatred for him grow deeper. He betrayed you, but he is still haunting your thoughts. It was unbearable until right now. 
“I’m scared. I never did it with an alpha before”, you confess, suddenly feeling so vulnerable.
And Jungkook takes that vulnerability, cradling it in his safe palm just as he cradles your cheek the same way. His eyes softened, his voice did too.
“Don’t be scared. I’ll be gentle. I promise”, he almost whispers the words, tracing your brow and temple between cradling your cheek. 
“I don’t know you like that.”
“Neither do I you. It’s gonna be a one time thing.” 
“I’m scared. I’ve been scared ever since all of this started.”
“Don’t be. I’m here. I won’t let them touch you.”
“But you’ll touch me?” you ask in a whisper, lifting the inner corners of your brows.
Jungkook has a hard time staying calm when you look at him with such puppy eyes. 
“If you let me, I will.” 
You exhale shakily, squirming under him. 
“I’m scared.” 
He lets go of your wrists to cradle your other cheek. You lean into the touch, barely wanting to keep your eyes open. Your arms stay in their submissive position naturally. 
“Just the tip. That’s all it takes. Just the tip for a few seconds so you take on my scent and then it’ll be over”, he says.
“Just the tip?” 
“Yes, just the tip. Nothing more. I promise.”
You are going to do something which you thought never to do. But if it saves your life, you would do anything. Even something as crazy as allow Jungkook to stick his tip into you.
“Okay. Just the tip.” 
Jungkook exhales shakily, moving closer for a kiss like it was instinct before he stops himself. You shudder, craving nothing more than what he denies both of you. 
“We shouldn’t be doing this”, he breathes.
“What?” 
“Kiss.” He lets the word dance over your lips, running his thumb under your lips as his eyes stare. “We shouldn’t.” 
“No, we shouldn’t”, you whimper, chasing him. 
Moments of craving and yearning where both of you try so hard to kiss the other. But you shouldn’t. Just the tip, nothing more.
“Roll to your side, please”, Jungkook breaks the electric silence, guiding you with his hand on your shoulder until your back faces his chest. 
You can see the fire and the rest of the shed like this, but not Jungkook.
“Why like this?” 
“If I look at your face, I’ll stick it in completely. I can’t do this to you.” 
“Oh.”
Jungkook closes the distance, connecting his hand with your hip. He guides it up your body, travelling along your waist and arm. His touch leaves goosebumps where it goes. His palm is slightly calloused from fighting but incredibly tender in how it touches you. You feel yourself breathe heavier and heavier the longer he touches you.
He reaches your shoulder, closing the last of the distance by lowering his lips to your back.
“Ah”, you let out quietly, tensing up. Your eyes are widened comically big, staring into the bright flames. He is kissing your naked skin. What the fuck. 
Jungkook’s eyes are closed in contrast. His head is foggy, but he tries to fight these feelings. You smell so good that it is very difficult to do so. 
His hand is still on your shoulder at first but moves to your waist when he guides his kisses to said shoulder. 
“Oh god”, you whisper, sighing afterwards. 
Jungkook feels droopy from the sound, digging his fingers into the softness of your side. He shouldn’t be doing this. Just the tip. That’s what he said. And yet here he is, kissing your soft skin as if it was his right to do so. He shouldn’t be doing this, but he can’t stop. He traces and holds your side and stomach, telling himself that he only does it to relax you. He kisses every inch of your exposed back and shoulder, telling himself that he only does it to calm you down. When in truth he does all of this because he wants to make it nice for you. And maybe he wants to be a source of tenderness after what you had to go through. 
Lies. These are still lies. He fucking does this because he wants to. He fucking does it because he wants to know how it is to touch you. Taehyung talked when you and he were high school sweethearts. Oh, Taehyung talked and Jungkook had to listen and secretly seethe with jealousy. It should be him, he thought back then, he would know how to treat you right.
You had no idea of these thoughts. You still haven’t as you lie here next to the warm fire while Jungkook touches you oh so carefully. You don’t know if you’re allowed to close your eyes. Just the tip, you agreed on. Can you close your eyes for that? 
But it feels so good. His lips are soft, while his piercings are hard in contrast. His touch is currently dancing up the middle of your torso slowly. You fight the shivers wanting to run through you. 
You lose the fight a moment later when he pulls you against his strong chest and kisses your neck. 
You whimper, trembling like crazy. You arch into him, craning your neck to give him more of it. Your heart skips beats under his lips. Jungkook grips the blanket to stop his hand from cradling your tits. 
“Fuck, I shouldn’t be doing this”, he presses out under his breath, mouthing at your neck hungrily. “I shouldn’t….do…this.” 
He drags his lips to your jawline and sucks. Your eyes close.
You mewl, rolling your hips back into him. His cock slides between your legs, rubbing between your puffy folds. He trembles in shock, gripping your hip to stop your wiggles. 
“Don’t do this. Don’t act like this when it is supposed to mean nothing.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”
“Mhhm I know. You can’t, but I can. I won’t do it again, I’m sorry.” 
You swallow your begs, not wanting to appear weak or desperate. It is so difficult not to beg when you have his cock between your legs. Hugged by your folds and exchanging slick. He feels hot and his veins are pulsing desperately. You have never before felt so stupidly horny than you do right now. Quite frankly, he might be forcing you to go into impromptu heat if he keeps being like this. 
“Just the tip, yeah? Just the tip”, he whispers as he puts his arm under your head so you have something comfortable to rest on. You practically melt into him, biting back tears. You are being held and it feels so good. So safe and warm. 
He kisses your neck and cheek, whispering his words.
“Are you comfortable? Are you ready?”
“Yeah”, you sigh, pushing your hips back. 
Jungkook slides his other hand between your bodies, using it to align his cock with your dripping entrance. Just the tip, he reminds himself, nothing more. Don’t be greedy, keep calm. This doesn’t mean anything. 
“Last chance”, he says, wanting to stall time so he can calm down. 
“I trust you.”
Jungkook bites back his moan, having to take a deep breath before he can act. You are messing him up without knowing. With a racing pulse, he applies pressure on your puffy cunt and slips inside. 
You squeak, shaking against your will. You convulse around him, gasping repeatedly. He went in so easily, despite his size. 
Jungkook growls, “fuck, holy fuck”, he gets out and bruises your hip as he grips it for support. It takes everything inside him not to push it all the way in. Jungkook genuinely has a hard time not to moan. You are so wet.
Judging from your tremors and the way you fight for air, it is just as difficult for you.
“Only a few more second”, he forces his voice to sound as normal as possible. He wants to fuck you, but knows that he shouldn’t.
“Mh-hm”, you squeak out, nodding your head. You want him to fuck you. 
Jungkook closes his hand to a fist, growing his claws to dig them into his own palm. The pain keeps him from acting up. He wouldn’t be able to handle it otherwise. 
Jungkook always hoped that he would marry you one day. There it is. It’s out there. Jungkook had feelings for you for decades. In his dreams, you marry him and he can spend the rest of his days spoiling you rotten. He would be your protector against any danger, your best friend to laugh with, your remedy for your heats and the lover you can be yourself with. 
Being with you like this is everything he ever wished for. You are so soft and warm around him, your slick is so wet. He knows that, deeper inside, it would be so much more. You'd be so warm, so soft. Jungkook gulps down his desire for more, otherwise he would do things he would regret.
“I think it should be good”, he presses out. He can’t do it anymore. One more second and he would push in all the way. He can’t do this to you. You trust him and he can’t abuse this trust. 
“Really?”
You turn your head, looking up at him in droopy devotion. Jungkook whimpers, instantly cradling your cheek. He furrows his brows, throbbing inside you. He fights the urge to kiss you, to rest his forehead against yours, to bury himself deep inside you.
“Please don’t look at me.”
“Jungkook.” 
His name hasn’t rolled off your tongue ever since he left you at the playground. It almost brings tears to his eyes, forcing his arm around you tighter.
“I can’t do this”, he drops his forehead against yours “I think I remembered that I need to put in all of it. It’s not gonna work otherwise.” 
He is lying, because he can’t accept the truth yet. That he is selfish and totally addicted to you. 
“Please do.” 
“No. No we shouldn’t be doing this”, he fights it still, shaking his head which makes his nose rub against yours. 
“Please”, your words tickle his lips, “save me. Whatever it takes, save me.”
“Urgh”, he growls through gritted teeth. 
“Please.” 
Jungkook lifts his head. He wants to look into your eyes as he does it. He wants to see the utter bliss in your eyes as he turns your relationship status from ex childhood best friends to two adults reunited.  
He rolls his hips, feeding your warmth his length inch by inch. Your brows furrow and lift, your lids flutter, your mouth falls open. 
“A-ah”, you squeak out.
“Shhh, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m all here”, he whispers. He closes his arm around you, cradling you in a gentle headlock. 
You close your fingers around his lower arm, spilling tears from your eyes. 
“Does it hurt?” 
You shake your head. 
“But?” 
“So…filled out. So big.”
“I know. I’m big, but you’re taking me so well.”
You whimper. Jungkook feels so insanely protective over you right now. 
“Yes, you are. Taking me so well”, he insists, brushing the back of his hand down your cheek. 
Jungkook continues until he bottoms out. He shudders, choking down a whimper. You feel so good. He never ever felt like this before. It feels like coming home which is insane because he was never with you like this. 
“___”, your name comes out of him against his will. 
“Jungkook”, you answer him, clenching around him.  
“Stay still, please.” 
“Okay”, you whimper, looking at his lips. 
The pull is magnetic. Jungkook draws closer with parted lips, you meet him with parted lips. Once you kiss, it will be over for you and him. There will be no coming back from this. 
“No”, he croaks, putting his hand over your mouth. The headlock tightens like this, giving you such a sense of being protected that your walls clench against your will. 
“We shouldn’t kiss. Never”, he rasps weakly, mouthing at his own hand right where your lips lie beneath. You close your eyes, trying to move your lips under his hand. It is starting to feel cruel to be denied his kiss. Especially when memories of your past come back to you. 
You remember that it was a group of eight kids and you were doing “dares” to see who is the coolest. Taehyung was dared to prank call his mom and he actually did. He pretended to be a grown up insurance clerk and once he hung up, you really thought that he managed to prank his mom (he didn’t hide his phone number and had a childlike voice). Jimin, another friend, was dared to climb a tree. Which he did and he was sooo cool for it. They were silly, childish dares who did no harm but made you feel so cool. Then it came to you and you were dared to kiss Jungkook. Which you did. In a childlike, innocent way but which made you and him feel so grown up for a moment.
The memory is haunting you right now, making you want to redo it in a grown up, mature way. You open your eyes, meeting Jungkook’s gaze. Judging from the foggy desperation in them, he is haunted by the same memory. 
“Please get out of my head”, he gets out.
You whimper his name behind his hand. Jungkook furrows his brows, grinding his teeth.
“No please. Stop it”, he croaks, squeezing his eyes shut.
You want to fight it as well, of course you do. You swore to hate him forever and now you want nothing else than his kiss. You want to fight it, but your hands move against your will. They rest themselves over Jungkook’s hand and try to dig between your face and his palm.
He growls, huffing out air. The only thing keeping your hips from joining the impossible fight is his hand on it. Shit, now he is concentrating on down below. Your puffy walls around him, so soft and warm. Being inside you, Jungkook swears he will never be cold again. Or maybe he will be, maybe he will never find warmth again once this stops, once he has to slip out and pretend that it meant nothing.
What will happen afterwards? He is so needy and he knows that you are too. What will happen? Are you going to lie next to each other, wet and needy and force your bodies to calm down? Or maybe he will need to excuse himself to outside, fuck his own fist as the loud thunder masks his desperate moans while inside the shed you most definitely would touch yourself as well?
Jungkook was so lost in his haunted thoughts that he realises too late that you managed to tug his hand away. Your lips brush his’. 
Jungkook moans from the bottom of his heart, going in for more at first. He even rolls his hips into you. Like instinct. Like it is meant to happen. 
“No”, he pushes you away, slips out, breaks the moment. “We shouldn’t be doing this. Not that far.”
You sob, shrinking into yourself. 
“Please”, you whimper your words, staring at him with desperate, sad eyes. You lift your hips, begging him silently.
“I won’t be able to stop if I do it again. I can’t do this to you.” 
“Please”, you beg.
“Do you even know what an alpha does when he fucks? I won’t be able to stop until I bred you. I-I’ll knot you and, and you won’t be able to get me out until I’m soft again.” 
“I know.” 
“This could take hours. You will feel out of control and vulnerable.” 
“You said that you will protect me. That I-I’m safe with you.” 
“___”, he chokes out and crawls to you. He picks you up in his strong arms, holding you against his chest. His heart is racing like crazy against your back. “Stop me. I beg you. I can’t pretend any longer that this means nothing to me. You have to stop this.”
You reach up and twist his hair, pulling him down to you. 
“We shouldn’t-” 
You silence him with a kiss. 
Jungkook trembles, resting his weight against you as the kiss renders his body useless for a moment. You are kissing him. You stopped this stupid farce for you and him. You sealed your fates. Jungkook knows that it won’t be the same after tonight. He will never fucking give you up. 
He breaks the kiss, but stay close.
“You shouldn’t have done this.”
“Please. More.”
“Are you even hearing me?” he hisses.
“Yes. Please, more.” 
“Fuck, we really shouldn’t, but maybe I…I have to move it a few times? To really mark you?” 
“Yes, sounds good, mark me please. I don’t wanna be sold.” 
“I-I’ll do it just for that. To make sure.” 
“Yes. Okay”, you sigh and melt into him, lifting your leg. 
Jungkook slides his hand under it instantly.
“Let me do it. Relax.” 
You let your muscles relax, allowing him to carry your leg’s weight. He does it so easily, tracing your hairline with his fingertips as he looks down at you. He moves his hips so his cock would slip between your folds, working you up to what was coming by grinding back and forth. He really drags out the movements, sending trembles through your legs each time his thick tip rubs your swollen clit. 
He exhales shakily, whispering his thoughts.
“You’re so wet. I have never felt slick so warm and, and wet before.” 
You look up at him with shy, nervous puppy eyes, making him want to protect you forever. 
“Is it bad?” 
“No, fuck no”, he puts his arm around your chest, pulling you up to him until he can rest his forehead against yours. “It’s perfect, baby.” 
“Baby?” 
“I…” he drops you, hips stilling in shock. He doesn’t know what to say. Anything he could say feels like too little of an apology. 
You however increase the lethalness of your puppy eyes, reaching down to try and move his hips again. 
“Please. More.” 
“We’re only doing this to save you, right?” He asks, picking up a rhythm again. It is the same as before but way more arousing because he purposefully makes sure that his tip slips into you every now and then. He starts off with just a little poke, increasing the inches more and more. But it stays just the tip, for now, don’t be mistaken. If he slips inside it should happen accidentally. He likes to tell himself if it happens like this, it will mean that it wasn’t his fault. 
“Yes, only to save me” you lull your words, getting droopier and droopier. Each time he has his tip inside you, it feels so good. Before he slips out and you feel sad, until of course he drags his cock over your clit instead.  
You can’t do this for long anymore and Jungkook seems to share your feelings. The tip he buries in you starts to go way past your entrance and it seems to stay longer inside. His golden eyes never break contact, his fingers rub your arm as he holds you so close. 
He slips into you again. So deep. 
“Mhhhhm” he lets out in a rumble, furrowing his brows. 
You whimper, lifting your brows. 
Deeper. Deeper. Deeper. He won’t be able to escape like this. 
Deeper.
He bottoms out. 
You moan, eyelids fluttering and lips chasing his kiss. 
He shakes his head, talking as he falls into the kiss.
“We really shouldn’t be doing this.”
You kiss and Jungkook’s cock doesn’t leave you again. It stays buried deep inside you, reshaping your walls as his hips move. Slowly for now, daring not to be too rough with you. Because being rough makes it real. Maybe if he keeps his movements tiny enough, it will still count as being nothing of importance. 
Because that’s what this is, right? Something that doesn’t mean anything, something that won’t change who you and he are. This is what those needy, hungry tongue kisses mean, this is what the desperate touches mean, this is what the exchanging of warm slick means. Nothing. Because if those things meant something, it would force Jungkook to admit that he is doing This for himself. Of course he does it to save you, but if it meant something, he would have to admit that he is also doing this for himself. 
But it doesn’t mean anything, right? Right?
You break the kiss for air, looking up at him submissively and droopy.
“It feels so good”, you whisper.
“Close your eyes, please.” 
You obey and Jungkook has to come to the realisation that it makes no difference. This fucking means something. Holy fuck, he is done for. 
“Maybe I have to make you cum?”
“What?” you ask, eyes still closed. 
“I think I need to make you cum once. Then you’ll be marked.”
“Please do. I trust you.” 
Trust. He thought that he would never earn it again and yet here he is. With your weakened, trembling body in his hold as you trust him to take good care of you. 
“Mhhm shit”, he presses out, biting down on his own tongue to calm himself. Be tender with her, he thinks, you swore to be a gentle alpha so fucking get it together.
He moves you into another position, draping your leg over his hip so you wouldn’t have to use your muscles. You are so open and spread like this, allowing his big cock entrance. He slides his hand to your clit and takes it between his thumb and middle finger to massage it. 
“A-ha”, you let out, arching your back and lifting your hips.
“Ssssh, relax. I’m here.”
“Please, deeper.” 
Jungkook buries his cock deep inside you and stays there, circling his hips. He is so big and long that he stimulates both your g-spot and your cervix. He is so gentle that it doesn’t hurt. It just feels so good that your fangs grow against your will and you leak masses of new slick.
“Like this? Am I making it nice for you?”
“So nice”, you mewl, nodding your head vigorously. 
Jungkook is gazing at you as it happens. He watches every change of expression on your face, fighting the urge to call you beautiful. Because that’s what you are. Beautiful. You would deserve to know but he is scared of the consequences. It would mean the fluttering of his heart is real.
“Is so nice”, you sigh, writhing happily. It breaks him.
“You’re beautiful”, he says, moaning softly when you tighten and arch your back. So you liked it. His cock throbs inside you, leaking into you needily. “Yeah that’s right, you’re beautiful. So fucking beautiful. Taking me so well, feeling so good on my cock.”
“Ah, aaaah”, your moans are so loud, your pussy so fucking wet and your clit so swollen. 
Jungkook fucks you gently, massaging your spot of pleasure with his long, skilled fingers. He can feel your heartbeat in your back, as much as he can feel you rub against his nipples. 
The blanket over your bodies is so hot, making you and him sweat wherever you are touching. He can’t deny it anymore that this is real, that this means something. This means fucking everything to him.
“You’re such a good omega, taking me so well.”
“You’re making me cum”, you croak, grasping his arm for support, “please, can I cum?” 
“Yes, baby. You can. Cum for me.” 
“Jungkook”, you gasp, ripping your eyes open to stare in shock as his gentle touches bring you over the edge.
Your eyes flicker golden, you moan silently with an open mouth. 
“That’s it, cum for your alpha. Let me mark you, that’s it.” 
He has a hard time saying these words to you. His thoughts are running wild. This is the face you make when you have an orgasm. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined this to be a face he gets to see. And it’s so beautiful that he treads the moment your high stops and he has to pull out. He doesn’t want to pull out. He needs more of you. He needs you like fucking crazy.
“More please”, and then your beg releases him. You are down from your high, yet still so hungry for more. You feel so fulfilled with him that you don’t want this to stop. 
“What?” he croaks.
“More please, more.”
“If I do this, I won’t stop until I cum too.” 
“I know.” 
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I have to cum inside you to mark you?” 
“Yeah, maybe.” 
The pretend continues. The fucking charades that this is only to save you from your fate, that you and he aren’t doing this because it feels so good to both of you. 
“Please Jungkook, fuck me properly.”
“Are you sure?” he almost squeaks the words because he has such a hard time controlling his urges. 
“Yes. Please.”
“Holy fuck. ___ urgh.”
Your needy beg does the rest. His animalistic instincts take over.
Jungkook growls, grabbing you roughly to flip you onto your stomach and therefore pin you down. He straddles you from behind. His right hand slips to the back of your head, his left hand has a possessive grip on your hip. His legs cage in your legs, keeping them squeezed together as he drills his thick cock into your pussy. You are so tight like this, jerking him off in such a maddening way. 
You scream up as you didn’t expect him to take on such a punishing pace instantly, but you aren’t complaining. It feels so good to take him. He fucks you so well. His cock is so filling, making you feel whole. 
“I’m not holding back now. For you, just for you. Is this good for you? Do you like this?”, he growls through gritted fangs, shifting his eyes between your face and his cock.
“Yeaa”, you sob, clawing at the ground helplessly. You were aware that Jungkook has been an adult for years, but this is still changing how you see him. Whenever you thought of him, you saw that twelve year old boy calling you immature for playing. That boy is gone as if he never existed. Jungkook is a fucking adult and he is rewriting the image in your mind one heavy stroke at a time.
“You should have never seen me like this. Fuck, this shouldn’t happen”, Jungkook spits, high on your body. He is embarrassed by his actions, but can’t stop them. “But I can’t stop. Holy fuck, I need you so fucking bad.” He needs to fuck you. You are so small and weak right now, so goddamn vulnerable. Once so unclaimed until he took you.
You are his. 
Jungkook growls, pinning you harder into the ground. 
You are his. 
You reach behind yourself because his hand on your head hurts. He grabs your wrist instantly, using it to pin your arm against your back. You wail up, kicking the ground as best as possible as you writhe in your imprisonment. 
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t see me like this. Not you. I’m sorry.” 
He apologises, knowing that he won’t be able to stop until you are claimed. The thought makes him crazy. He is claiming you. The girl who was his first kiss, his best friend who always came to him when she needed help, the woman who counts on him to protect her from her fate and the wife he always hoped to have one day. And he is claiming her. He is marking her, making you his for anyone to smell.
Jungkook drills you harder. He pulls out all the way to his tip just to thrust into you sloppily. He does it over and over again, reminding your dripping pussy of his size with each possessive thrust. 
And you take it with grateful sobs, existing only for him right now. You would never recover if he stopped right now. You need him to finish what he started even if it ruins you in the process. 
“We really shouldn’t be doing this, fuck, this shouldn’t happen”, Jungkook gets out, gawking at where he buries himself in you. 
Your slick is slowly taking on a milky colour from the intense friction. It sticks to his veiny shaft and his dark pubes, smearing all over your ass and his thighs as well.
If this shouldn’t happen, why does it feel so good? If this shouldn’t happen, why does it look so hot? If this shouldn’t happen, why does he not want to stop? 
Jungkook scrunches his face in anger. He lets go of your arm so he can grip your hips with both hands. He pulls them up until you are kneeling. Your face is still buried in the ground, your back is arched.
You shake and convulse instantly, sobbing in embarrassment because the open position of your legs forces your slick to run out of you. 
“Holy fuck”, he gets out, staring at it with blown out pupils, “holy fuck, ___.” 
“I’m sorry, please don’t judge me”, you beg, trying so hard to keep it inside with clenches around his cock.
“Never. Holy fuck, I could never.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. Relax, baby. Don’t fight it”, he says, knowing that you and he shouldn’t be doing this. 
You obey instinctively. You relax around him, releasing the slick you so desperately wanted to hide from him. It begins squirting out of you messily and audibly, marking him yours.
“Yes”, he growls and begins pulling your hips onto his cock possessively, thrusting into you at the same time. He does it with one hand because the other he slips between your legs to pinch your clit. Gently of course, keeping her between two fingers to massage her in circular motions.
“Let me help you.” 
You wail and shake, releasing more and more of your pretty slick. It runs down your thighs, covers his legs, smears all over your ass and his stomach.  
“Relax, that’s it. My pretty omega shouldn’t keep it inside. It’s not good for you.” 
“Jungkook, I can’t do this”, you sob.
“I know. We can’t do this, we never should have.”
“No”, you wail, “no. I have to cum again.”
“Whenever you want to. Your alpha’s right here, baby.” 
“Jungkook!” you scream, breaking apart as if you never orgasmed before. It feels so good.
“Holy fuck baby, ah!” Jungkook yelps, hips stuttering in shock, “you feel so good, what the fuck ah! Ah! I can’t control myself. Baby!” 
Jungkook growls and lays himself over you. He holds you up with one hand around you, biting down on your shoulder as his body breaks. You sob from the pain of the bite, loving every second of it. 
And then it hits you. 
His seed.
His thick, hot seed.
It shoots out of him with such strength that you feel punched in the gut. The effect is instant. You lose control over yourself. Quite literally, you lose control. You can still talk, using it to scream his name as you orgasm in a way you have never experienced before. 
The first one was intense but familiar. This right now? You didn’t even know that your body could feel this way. It is truly, seriously, religious. It is as if you finally found your purpose in life. And in a sense you did. You found your alpha. He finally claimed you properly. You are his’. You aren’t unclaimed anymore. Nobody ever educated on this, so you have no idea that these religious, soul fulfilling feelings mean that you changed forever, but you don’t mind right now. You are just riding on these feelings, screaming his name and milking him dry. 
Jungkook whimpers. He truly, honestly whimpers from the bottom of his heart, collapsing on top of you. He knocks you into the ground like that, burying you under his weight but he couldn’t stop it from happening. 
He never experienced this feeling either. He had sex with people, but it never felt like This before. He orgasmed in them but it never felt like this. It feels as if his seed finally has purpose. That’s how it feels. Like his efforts and all the rutting he is doing has fucking purpose. 
And then it happens. Something that he was only told could happen to him, finally happens to him. His knot swells. He actually fucking grows a knot and has to writhe on top of you, burying his nose deep in your hair as he sobs your name. 
You sob as well, insides suddenly feeling like bursting. His knot is so big and thick that it should feel like an intruder but it doesn’t. It feels like the best drug ever. You didn’t even know that you could stretch this far. The amount of stimulation it gives you as it rubs against your walls is otherworldly, making you chase one orgasm after the other.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me. Ah! ___!” Jungkook yelps, having to orgasm again as your tight walls stimulate his knot. The amount of sensitivity he feels on it is insane. 
His hands slide together with yours, holding them tightly as he pins them into the ground. His tears fall into your hair, your own tears soak the blanket. 
“I can’t stop”, you get out, shaking in fear, “I can’t stop cumming!”
“Me neither.”
“I’m scared. I’m so scared”, you sob, riding on the unfamiliar, scary sensations.
“Don’t be scared, I’m here. I’m here”, he talks you through it, shaking beyond saving.
You aren’t even moving much. There are no thrusts, no sloppy wiggles. Just and you and him, actually stuck together because of his knot while he pumps one cumshot after the other into you. There is no movement and yet it feels better than the most passionate rutting session you each had. No movement and yet you are fulfilled beyond comparison. Is this how it feels to find your mate? Is this what it is? 
Did “we shouldn’t be doing this” turn into the finding of your other half? Was “we shouldn’t be doing this” fate’s way of protecting you from what will happen once you gave in? Or was there ever a “we shouldn’t be doing this” strong enough that could have prevented you from doing this?
Whatever it might be, it is too late to think about the what ifs now. The reality is that you and he can’t stop climaxing, lost in the most addicting and intense pleasure you and he ever found yourselves in. It is never ending. When he climaxes, you have to too which sets him off again, triggering your need to as well. It is a vicious, never ending, orgasmic cycle.
“This feels so good”, he croaks out, writhing on top of you, “does it feel-” 
“Yes! Yes! Oh god please Kook not again. Kook!”
“Kook”, Jungkook repeats the nickname in a whimper, curling his toes as another orgasm hits him as well. He never thought to hear this name from you again. He can’t handle it any other way than filling you with more of him. 
There is so much of him inside you by now, having no way to escape because of his knot that your body reacts in the only way it knows how to survive. It opens up for his seed to go deeper. It trickles into the deepest parts of your sex organs, warming you from the inside out. It is like he is alive inside you, feeding you with the strongest drug you ever took. You think that you black out for a moment. You are still aware of what is happening to you, but it is hidden behind a thick layer of blurriness. 
“Eh”, you let out, falling into the darkness gladly. It feels so good to do. There is something because you are aware of your orgasm, but there is also nothing. It is as if you are standing next to your body, watching it shake and tremble as he makes a home inside you.
And then there is nothing. Truly nothing. No more orgasmic pleasure, no more watching yourself. Just darkness.
“___? Hey, ___? Holy fuck, what’s wrong with you? ___, open your eyes please”, Jungkook’s distraught voice comes closer and closer, his hand on your face becomes clearer and clearer, “please ___, open your eyes, please. Oh god, what have I done? I should never have done this. I- Oh god ___ please, I’m sorry. Wake up, please.”
He shakes your head gently. It brings you back to reality. Your body regains the ability to feel. 
“Jungkook”, you whimper, opening your eyes. You writhe instantly, throbbing around his knot happily.
“___ hey. Holy fuck, thank god. Hey”, he says, dropping his forehead against your temple and kissing the side of your face desperately, “I’m so glad that you’re back. I thought that I killed you.”
“No, just made me black out.” 
“Why? Does it hurt? Are you in lots of pain?” 
“No, just haven’t felt so good before. Ever. Kook, I”, you suddenly have to whimper your words, “I feel your cum inside my uterus. It’s so warm and alive and….right.”
“It is?” He whimpers as well, feeling weakened in emotion.
You nod your head. Jungkook sobs quietly, using the hold he has on your hand to guide your arm under your body and against your chest. Like this, he rolls your bodies to their sides, instantly cradling you against his chest while his trembling lips kiss any part of you that he can reach.
Your face, your neck, your shoulder, your arm, your back and the bite mark he left, your face again. Over and over he kisses each inch of you, whispering your name every now and then as if he is trying to make sure that he remembers who made him feel like this. As if he is trying to make his brain memorise who it was who made him experience his first knot.
He is still swollen, keeping everything inside you safely. It is still so intense, but suddenly it feels more emotionally intense than physically. Enough time must have passed for the fire to reduce the logs by lot. And all of a sudden you and he don’t feel the uncontrollable need to orgasm anymore. You still want to be close, moving your hips in emotionally needy wiggles in hopes of keeping his knot alive for as long as possible, but it is not to chase another orgasm. You want this to last because it feels so safe. 
“I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t want this to end”, Jungkook confesses, holding you protectively.
“Me neither. I feel so safe like this.”
“Holy fuck, ___. What did we do?” he presses out, kissing your cheek over and over again.
“I don’t know.”
“I never knotted before. I never felt like this. Holy fuck, ___.” 
“What is gonna happen to us now?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t let you go again. Ever. I don’t wanna fucking share you. Never. I’m trying so hard not to tell you that you’re mine ‘cause I promised you that this would never happen again.”
“Please don’t.”
“What?”
You turn your head, leaning deeper into his embrace. Like this, you feel his racing heart against your shoulder and you are entirely protected in his arms. His knotted cock throbs inside you as your eyes meet. The same playful, gentle boy of the past looks back at you, except that his once boyish features are mature and aged up. A gentle, adoring man stares back at you and you can’t seem to find your way out of his galaxy eyes. 
“Please don’t promise me that this won’t happen again.” You cradle his cheek. “Don’t hold back on telling me that I’m yours.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re high from my cum, these aren’t your real feelings.”
“Why shouldn’t they be?” 
“___, we-”
You put your thumb on his lips. 
“We shouldn’t have done this, I know. You kept telling me as we kept doing this.” 
Jungkook gives up in a sigh, having to chuckle afterwards. You giggle, cupping his cheek again.
“Just the tip. That’s what we agreed on. Just the tip”, he says.
You clench around his knot, touching your bloated stomach. You instantly guide his hand to it, wanting him to feel what he did to you. He purrs deeply, biting down on his lower lip. You grin goofily.
“Just the tip indeed.”
He laughs softly. You snicker and stub his nose with your own. 
“This is the messiest and deepest tip I have ever given”, he jokes, making you laugh. 
“Oh god, this was funny.”
“Mhm, I’m pretty funny”, he says and nuzzles his nose into your neck to tickle you gently.
You squeak and giggle, feeling happy beyond comparison. Jungkook ends his loving attack with kisses to your ear. 
You sigh, melting into the affection. You and he lace fingers, using the position to melt closer. 
Your droopy eyes stare into the flames while Jungkook relaxes you with soft kisses all over your neck, shoulder and back. 
The thunderstorm stopped outside. It is already a little brighter. Fuck, so you were really trapped in this orgasmic state for a few hours. It felt as if so little time passed as it was happening. 
“What is gonna happen now?” you whisper.
“Now? We’re gonna cuddle and I’ll be kissing you until you’re asleep.”
“I mean after that. Do we have to show Urquard that I’m claimed?”
“I guess. I haven’t thought that far into the future yet. But yes, he will probably want proof that you’re marked.”
“I’m scared. Do I have to get naked in front of him? And his pack? Will he put something in me to get a scent?”
“He can try if he wants to die.” Jungkook pulls you closer possessively. “You’re under my protection now. Okay? You won’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with and I’ll hunt down anyone who dares to overstep your boundaries. Even Urquard and his pack.” 
“Really?” 
“Yes, really. I promise you.”
You close your eyes, spilling tears.
“Thank you.” 
You never thought it possible to have your dreams fulfilled by Jungkook and yet here you are. You are being held and comforted by Jungkook and it feels like home. 
“Don’t thank me. You’re mine. My darling ___ to keep safe. You have my body to protect you and my heart to find a home in.” 
There is deep rooted honesty in his words, but you are suddenly too sleepy to ask him what he meant by them. There will still be another time. This wasn’t just a one time thing after all.
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canmking · 2 days ago
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Clip [3] Is Out Now To Watch❗️
Do 👀 Where 🫵 Are Most Comfortable 😄
Instagram | Tik-Tok | YouTube | Facebook | X | Pinterest
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wonderr-skyy · 3 days ago
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Compilation of Italy's change.
Italy in the first season was more innocent & naive.
Italy now is more self-conscious:
Rare embarrassed Italy faces. Especially only with Germany...
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(from here)
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(from here)
Also, since when is Italy embarrassed to be naked around Germany? (first clip). He didn't care before lol.
(also the crazy stuff he says to him in that second vid, is something else xD)
Italy got bolder and more flustered around Germany hmmm
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benoits-neckerchieves · 3 months ago
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Have not read any reviews yet but that’s a hell of a good start lmao
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Peter Bradshaw - The Guardian
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hkthatgffan · 7 months ago
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Barnes and Noble released some reviews of the Book of Bill...written by Bill himself!
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katnissandpeetamellark · 1 year ago
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More BOSAS Reviews Pt 3 ⭐
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pricelessreviews · 1 year ago
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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months ago
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Sandra Newman’s “Julia”
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The first chapter of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a fantastic joke that nearly everyone misses: when Julia, Winston Smith's love interest, is introduced, she has oily hands and a giant wrench, which she uses in her "mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines":
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt
That line just kills me every time I re-read the book – Orwell, a novelist, writing a dystopian future in which novels are written by giant, clanking mechanisms. Later on, when Winston and Julia begin their illicit affair, we get more detail:
She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.
I always assumed Orwell was subtweeting his publishers and editors here, and you can only imagine that the editor who asked Orwell to tweak the 1984 manuscript must have felt an uncomfortable parallel between their requests and the notional Planning Committee and Rewrite Squad at the Ministry of Truth.
I first read 1984 in the early winter of, well, 1984, when I was thirteen years old. I was on a family trip that included as visit to my relatives in Leningrad, and the novel made a significant impact on me. I immediately connected it to the canon of dystopian science fiction that I was already avidly consuming, and to the geopolitics of a world that seemed on the brink of nuclear devastation. I also connected it to my own hopes for the nascent field of personal computing, which I'd gotten an early start on, when my father – then a computer science student – started bringing home dumb terminals and acoustic couplers from his university in the mid-1970s. Orwell crystallized my nascent horror at the oppressive uses of technology (such as the automated Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear systems that haunted my nightmares) and my dreams of the better worlds we could have with computers.
It's not an overstatement to say that the rest of my life has been about this tension. It's no coincidence that I wrote a series of "Little Brother" novels whose protagonist calls himself w1n5t0n:
https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.htm
I didn't stop with Orwell, of course. I wrote a whole series of widely read, award-winning stories with the same titles as famous sf tales, starting with "Anda's Game" ("Ender's Game"):
https://www.salon.com/2004/11/15/andas_game/
And "I, Robot":
https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_I_Robot.html
"The Martian Chronicles":
https://escapepod.org/2019/10/03/escape-pod-700-martian-chronicles-part-1/
"True Names":
https://archive.org/details/TrueNames
"The Man Who Sold the Moon":
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/
and "The Brave Little Toaster":
https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212
Writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head is a very old and important literary tradition. As EL Doctorow (no relation) writes in his essay "Genesis," the Hebrews stole their Genesis story from the Babylonians, rewriting it to their specifications:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/
As my "famous title" stories and Little Brother books show, this work needn't be confined to antiquity. Modern copyright may be draconian, but it contains exceptions ("fair use" in the US, "fair dealing" in many other places) that allow for this kind of creative reworking. One of the most important fair use cases concerns The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's 2001 retelling of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind from the perspective of the enslaved characters, which was judged to be fair use after Mitchell's heirs tried to censor the book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suntrust_Bank_v._Houghton_Mifflin_Co.
In ruling for Randall, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals emphasized that she had "fully employed those conscripted elements from Gone With the Wind to make war against it." Randall used several of Mitchell's most famous lines, "but vest[ed] them with a completely new significance":
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/268/1257/608446/
The Wind Done Gone is an excellent book, and both its text and its legal controversy kept springing to mind as I read Sandra Newman's wonderful novel Julia, which retells 1984 from the perspective of Julia, she of the oily hands the novel-writing machine:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/julia-sandra-newman?variant=41467936636962
Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both Wind Done gone and Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.
For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.
This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. For Winston, the world of 1984 is totalitarian: the Party knows all, controls all and misses nothing. To merely think a disloyal thought is to be doomed, because the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnicompetent Party will sense the thought and mark you for torture and "vaporization."
Orwell's readers experience all of 1984 through Winston's eyes and are encouraged to trust his assessment of his situation. But Newman brings in a second point of view, that of Julia, who is indeed far more worldly than Winston. But that's not because she's younger than him – it's because she's more provincial. Julia, we learn, grew up outside of the Home Counties, where the revolution was incomplete and where dissidents – like her parents – were sent into exile. Julia has experienced the periphery of the Party's power, the places where it is frayed and incomplete. For Julia, the Party may be ruthless and powerful, but it's hardly omnicompetent. Indeed, it's rather fumbling.
Which makes sense. After all, if we take Winston at his word and assume that every disloyal citizen of Oceania is arrested, tortured and murdered, where would that leave Oceania? Even Kim Jong Un can't murder everyone who hates him, or he'd get awfully lonely, and then awfully hungry.
Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.
Julia is also perfectly positioned to uncover the vast blank spots in Winston's supposed intellectual curiosity, all the questions he doesn't ask – about her, about the Party, and about the world. I love this trope and used it myself, in Attack Surface, the third "Little Brother" book, which is told from the point of view of Marcus's frenemy Masha:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface
Through Julia, we come to understand the seemingly omniscient, omnipotent Party as fumbling sadists. The Thought Police are like MI5, an Island of Misfit Toys where the paranoid, the stupid, the vicious and the thuggish come together to ruin the lives of thousands, in such a chaotic and pointless manner that their victims find themselves spinning devastatingly clever explanations for their behavior:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460
And, as with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Julia is a first-rate novel, expertly plotted, with fantastic, nail-biting suspense and many smart turns and clever phrases. Newman is doing Orwell, and, at times, outdoing him. In her hands, Orwell – like Winston – is revealed as a kind of overly credulous romantic who can't believe that anyone as obviously stupid and deranged as the state's representatives could be kicking his ass so very thoroughly.
This was, in many ways, the defining trauma and problem of Orwell's life, from his origin story, in which he is shot through the throat by a fascist: sniper during the Spanish Civil War:
https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html
To his final days, when he developed a foolish crush on a British state spy and tried to impress her by turning his erstwhile comrades in to her:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
Newman's feminist retelling of Orwell is as much about puncturing the myth of male competence as it is about revealing the inner life, agency, and personhood of swooning love-interests. As someone who loves Orwell – but not unconditionally – I was moved, impressed, and delighted by Julia.
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Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.
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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/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic
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thatsbelievable · 3 months ago
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mouse-bones · 1 year ago
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Letterboxd reviews for Saw X
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neil-gaiman · 1 year ago
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How do you cope with seeing negative reviews about your work? I've always dreamed of publishing a novel, but I'm very afraid of seeing criticism online if I did.
You cope. You might cope by not reading them, or by not going online, or by deciding that different people have different tastes and it's a good thing that not everyone likes the same things because otherwise there would be no room in the world for those of us who make things that aren't intended for everyone. But however you do it, you cope.
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adm-starblitzsteel-4305 · 8 months ago
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So anyway, about the critics and the audience score...
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gayraeofsun · 3 months ago
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i just really want to scream about this movie into the void because it was so well done, and i doubt anyone will really see this but i don't really have anyone i could have a deep discussion about this with.
trigger warning and spoiler warning ahead for the movie blink twice. content ahead discusses themes around sa, including r*pe, drugging, manipulation, and general physical/verbal abuse.
i don't keep up with any previews or recent movie releases much anymore, so i was going into this movie almost completely blind like i do with most new movies anymore. i had seen one preview, but it was apparently plain and simple enough for me to mostly forget about it. the irony in that will be made known a bit later on.
the movie automatically opens with a screen that displays a trigger warning, which is something that i had been seeing for the first time in any kind of visual media. normally these things are already listed by the ratings, but as a sa survivor who had no idea what this movie was going to be, it was a good thing to see so i could brace myself for what was to come. do i think this is necessary for any and every movie of this kind? no, it feels a little redundant (again, these things are typically included in the ratings). and, well, asking me to not watch if it would upset me is kind of a no deal, since i paid for a ticket and popcorn to see this on the big screen.
we're immediately introduced to our two main characters, two best friends, and it's hard to not immediately fall for their relationship with each other. so playful and silly and ridiculous, you can immediately tell they adore each other's company in their shitty job living in their shitty apartment, and you can tell that they're written by a woman who loves these characters and wants to portray them as relatable people. the interactions between the whole cast of girls, i think, was just outstandingly done. they felt realistic, not constantly shitting on each other and fighting for the attention of the men (though some jealousy of that fashion is still portrayed). they were all there enjoying the island and they ended up bonding together wonderfully. they were funny without being over-the-top rude or nasty or promiscuous, as is portrayed commonly in female characters in popular media. i can't and won't stop gushing over how much these characters felt just like real life girls that i was hanging out with.
this movie was really great at putting a pit in your stomach and slowly making it grow. of course, the trigger warning at the beginning spoils what's to come, so for me the pit was there from the start. any sensible person who's been socialized to be a woman will know, you don't ever just run away with some random ass group of men you don't know to the middle of nowhere with no cell service. but the little things that make the main character, frida, stop and question are so subtle, and so easily dismissed to start with. the used lip gloss in the drawer, the available clothes despite being an "unexpected" guest, the weird cleaning staff. but they increasingly get more odd. the island is full of venomous snakes and they all have to be killed on sight. something about these flirty interactions isn't quite right anymore, and he's talking about repressed memories. what day even is it? why am i always waking up with dirt under my nails?
who even knows or cares though, since we're all high and/or drunk 24/7. welcome to paradise!
it builds and builds until it begins to unravel, slowly and then all at once as the girls come to the realization of what happens to them every night when they get unbelievably high after dinner. the bond between the first two to piece it together was outstanding, and i love that there wasn't a cheap "find the phones and call authorities" plan. they worked out why that wouldn't work at all, because who would they believe? the "hysterical bitches" making claims without any kind of solid evidence, or the rich white man who's now a reformed soul and probably good friends with some of the cops?
the ending is not a happy one, in my eyes, though i believe it was probably supposed to be portrayed as one? two girls live and three girls die by the end. the ringmaster (ceo) of the whole thing ends up accidentally taking his own forgetfulness juice and suddenly doesn't understand what's going on and why all his friends are dead or have been otherwise brutalized. he knocks over lit candles and then trips and knocks himself out in his stupor, and the island burns down, the photographic evidence (that was later discovered) and all. i thought it was just going to end there and we would be left with the ambiguous ending, and that's never satisfying and feels very overdone anymore.
but instead, we're given a scene where our main character is now the ceo of the company, and legally married to the man who lured her away and horrifically abused her. twice. i interpreted this as her getting her own form of justice/revenge. i doubt she gives him half the treatment he gave her, but now she controls him and everything he owns and knew, and gets every bit of respect she wants. he killed her best friend and two other girls after overpowering the lot of them every single night. in a perfect world, he'd get tried and punished for his crimes legally. but all the evidence of it ever happening burned to the ground. so this is what she does to cope. in the final scene, she seems very satisfied, more than pleased to make her new husband's old crew squirm. she becomes the thing that destroyed her and so many others (but yk, most likely without the rapist cult).
one character i very suddenly grew interested in was the scrawniest boy in the group. he flies perfectly under the radar and doesn't appear in many of scenes that portray the gruesome sa. the one where he's in clear view, he appears to be another victim, trying to flee from one of the bigger men and receiving a black eye, which he would have no memory of getting the next morning. he's told by one of the girls that he smells nice, most likely referencing the perfume that was making them forget everything. it seemed very clear that he was in a victim role here as well, likely also being sa-ed. but he's never seen bound and gagged with the girls.
his final scene gets interesting when the ceo berates him for doing nothing to help the girls the entire time (yeah, the same ceo millionaire who's been basically orchestrating this whole sick fucking show in his perfect little getaway island). how he thinks there's a special place in hell for people who sit and do nothing in the face of evil. there are two very different ways to interpret this. 1) he wasn't actually getting drugged and abused with the girls, and was there as someone who didn't actively participate in abusing the girls, but also didn't do anything to try to stop it either. this could be blatant commentary on the two types of evil; while "not all men" r*pe and abuse people, not enough men will speak out against it or try to run to the victim's defense. or 2) the ceo was casting blame onto someone who was genuinely confused as to what was happening (which seems to ring true in both scenarios), and someone who was also a victim and stuck in a completely helpless situation. both could hold some level of truth, but ultimately i read him as the latter, thinking he was meant to represent the less common male victim. he gets killed by one of the girls, who wasn't specifically targeting him but also wasn't taking any chances, and that's the last we see of him. in my eyes he could either be read as the kind of evil that merely observes and therefore was rightfully murdered, or he could represent his male victims often get forgotten about or less acknowledged, which could speak as to why he was killed off so quickly never to be discussed again.
and i've gotta say, one thing i really appreciate about the scenes depicting r*pe is that it put a lot of the focus on the r*pists and not their victims. they were careful to not show any nudity or any shots of the women getting r*ped, but still showed them getting forced down when they tried to flee. i have not personally seen any other graphic scenes of this nature in other movies, but from what i hear a lot of it can get rather pornographic, and i feel like that's incredibly distasteful when you're trying to depict something that's absolutely vile. this movie does a great job of getting the absolute terror of the moment across without compromising any of the actresses by posing them seductively or showing off their bodies, and same goes for the men (if you don't count a couple of them being shirtless).
the writing is so wonderful, and the little clues as to what's happening beneath the surface are so good and plentiful. this is a movie that i don't think i'd ever be able to sit through again, but the sense of dread that continued to grow and grow will surely stick with me. it was very darkly funny in many places, which did great to break up some of the tension. for anyone who was able to stomach it, i would highly recommend watching through it once you're able. i think it was outstandingly well done and handled certain things as well as it could without watering any of it down.
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perseidlion · 3 months ago
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The Interview With the Vampire TV show is a perfect example of how adaptations do not have to follow the source material closely to be an excellent adaptation.
(This is a spoiler-free commentary, but it does discuss the dynamics of the characters in general.)
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I read the books back in the day, and of course, saw the original movie. Despite a laundry list of big changes, the series still feels extremely true to the books because it captures the spirit. It gets the characters and their fucked-up dynamics right. It doesn't shy away from them being melodramatic monsters. It keeps to the rules established in the source material. The show also makes sure to preserve key moments and key scenes, but always with a twist.
Since they did that, they were free to shift things in time, amp up and adapt certain dynamics, and change the race of characters in a way that deepens the story and complicates already extremely complicated power dynamics.
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The original movie stuck more closely to the era and the appearance of the characters as described by Anne Rice, but I don't think the story loses anything by changing those two elements. In fact, it gives it modern relevance and room for political and social commentary.
I have never ascribed to the idea that an adaptation has to be slavishly accurate to the source material to be a good adaptation. It just has to be smart enough to identify what to keep and what can change. An adaptation adapts. Honestly, I find it boring when I see exactly what was in a book up on screen with no surprises. Where's the fun in that?
The difference between a good adaptation and a bad one is not how accurate it is to the source material, but how well the adaptation respects what made the story compelling to begin with.
What's important here?
Lestat is dramatic and powerful and a monster who is deeply charismatic, but also manipulative.
Louis is overdramatic and self-hating, but oddly drawn to Lestat.
Claudia is fierce, but bitter about her eternal childhood.
Their relationship is deeply toxic but with true affection. They are monsters, but monsters capable of intense love and devotion - to the point where it has the power to destroy them.
THAT is at the core of this story. THAT is what they keep intact. This frees up all sorts of avenues for play around a few key plot beats.
This room for play also gives opportunities to expand on thinner characters or rewrite them entirely. It's been a long time since I read the books, but I don't recall Daniel standing out as more than a framing device, especially in earlier books. But in the show, he's one of the best parts. Not only does he take a much more active role in the story, he delivers some of the most hilarious and cutting lines of the entire series. If the show had stuck closely to the source material, we wouldn't have this Daniel.
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It was also smart of them to make Claudia a few years older. The eternal child element is preserved, but the layer of arrested teenaged hormones and womanhood that will never blossom adds an extra layer of angst and sadness. She is stuck forever in a state of rebellion, never allowed to settle and come into her own.
Having her be a young Black woman also deepens her attachment to Louis, visually, socially and symbolically. They are different from Lestat and they understand each other in a way he never can. She's still very much the Claudia from the book but with layers added to deepen her character and add new, fresh dynamics and complications.
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It's also delightful to see the show take the homoeroticism that was subtextual in the early books with Louis and Lestat (and in the original film) and making it unapologetically text. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles have always been incredibly queer and subversive, but it's amazing to see that side of it fully embraced and stated plainly with no ambiguity or qualifiers or hints. It's queer and that queerness is woven into the fabric of the entire narrative. Louis and Lestat are the toxic beating heart of the Vampire Chronicles.
It's also important because we need messy, dark, fucked-up queer narratives. Sweet, coming-of-age stories and romances are of course, important - especially for younger queer people. But us older queer folk not only want to see ourselves in multiple genres, we want permission to see imperfect, messy, and yes, even evil characters. It's a way of reclaiming the monstrous queer that was villainized for so long and making it our own. We want to find something beautiful in the dark.
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If we all thought about it, we could probably think of dozens of examples where a show or movie went far off-script from the source material and was still an excellent adaptation.
Interview With the Vampire is just the most recent and one of the best examples of a stellar adaptation that respects the source material but also builds and expands on it.
I look forward to seeing how they surprise me next season.
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zedecksiew · 3 months ago
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Monument vs Shrine
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In "Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings", the political scientist Benedict Anderson (most famous for his Southeast Asia scholarship and that definitive critique of nationalism, Imagined Communities) muses on the Lincoln memorial:
Within a temple explicitly mimicking "the religious edifices of a safely pagan Greece";
Mazda Corp floodlights designed "to ward off unnatural, indifferent sunlight";
The abstract enshrinements of "Lincoln's memory" in the "hearts of the people", while neither Lincoln's actual remains or any rites for people to perform are present;
The sense that ultimately the most reverential thing to do there is to take photographs.
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The Lincoln Memorial; the Jefferson memorial next to it; both figures repeated again on Mt Rushmore; both figures repeated ad nauseum on dollar bills.
These monuments are designed to proliferate. Not only must they create a sober, stately experience for the visitor---but they must also do so consistently, because they are built for visitors: the mass audience of the national population.
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Otherwise they must be physically replicable: a memorial to a particular national hero, erected in every city.
The very format of monument-building get copied:
Post-colonial countries, in need of new myths, choose to manufacture national cenotaphs of their own, in imitation of Western models.
Malaysia has Putrajaya, a federal capital sprung ex nihilo from palm-oil agricultural land, its buildings all arches and onion domes and imitation arc de triomphes in inhuman scale, its avenues broad and utterly unwalkable in the tropical heat.
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At such monuments the citizen is cast as tourist.
Of this state-sanctioned object of devotion you are encouraged to take photographs, sell merchandise---ie: continue the process of replication. With every copy nationalism is reified.
God forbid you tweak the official monument with your own meanings, though! While writing this post, I found the following story, from December 2023:
"Lincoln Memorial temporarily closed after being vandalized with 'Free Gaza' graffiti"
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Anderson's essay cites instances where the personal and irreproducible sneak back into, or leak out from, or vandalise, national monuments:
"Early in the 1910s,"---in Manila's Cementerio del Norte, a municipal cemetery planned by an American urban designer---"a small pantheon was constructed for the interment of Filipino national heroes."
This monument was to emulate the Pantheon in Paris, where "great Frenchmen" of the national canon are memorialised.
But the Filipino version failed.
"Today, hardly anyone in the Philippines is aware of this dilapidated pantheon's existence ... What has happened is that the Filipino Voltaire and Rousseau have managed to escape, summoning devoted, often familial bodysnatchers, to convey them to home-town shrines."
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Not that the municipal cemetery itself is deserted. Custodians and their families live in the very mausoleums they care for.
Further, Anderson describes All Saints' Eve in the Cementerio del Norte, when thousands pour into its precincts.
But these multitudes adjourn to their own myriad family graves and small ancestral shrines: spending the day with immediate loved ones, "drinking, praying, gambling, making offerings ..."
Most of the Philippines' presidents have mausoleums in Norte, "but no one pays attention to them ... and only their separate descendants come to attend them."
"There is something exhilarating here that one rarely sees in national celebrations, maybe because the structure of the ceremonial is not serial, but entirely cellular."
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Hometowns re-exerting themselves within the nation; ordinary people scrawling meaning onto the edifices of the uppercase-P People. A multitude of the singular, instead of a single mass.
Despite nationalism's efforts to centralise and clone a national identity, still we mutate, still we bootleg, still we graffiti, becoming once again ourselves.
And---particular to post-colonial societies---in doing so we casually continue the work of liberation, sneaking the idea of freedom away from our own architects and elites and prime ministers, who would seek to seize its meaning for their own purposes.
The churches or mosques or temples to demos that the federal government builds are ours to transform. To take from. To ignore.
"No need. We've got our own shrines at home."
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National heroes become local saints and slip out of national control.
Does the Filipino government really control the various Rizalista sects? Karpal Singh is now a datuk kong, without his political dynasty's consent.
Across Melaka and Negeri Sembilan there once existed shrines dedicated to Hang Tuah, Malay folk hero, now a powerful figurehead of Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalism.
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One such shrine existed at Tanjung Tuan:
With a plain altar---more a porch, really---of poured cement, for folk to leave food offerings;
Sunlight mottled from the surrounding forest, and fluorescent lights from a nearby gazebo;
A large rock, with an indent on its crown, said to be Hang Tuah's actual footprint;
The idea that this was a sacred space, where you could come to ask the spirits of the place for love or children.
The shrine that existed was sited in a forest reserve. It was swept clean of leaves by locals; its adherents belonged to all faiths and ethnicities; following the transactional logic of folk religion, those who had received its blessing would've paid for its maintenance.
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"Existed".
Because the Religious Department of the State of Melaka destroyed the Hang Tuah shrine sometime in 2022, for the crime of idolatry.
A double heresy. An affront to both orthodox Sunni Islam---
But also to the Malaysian state, that sanctions Sunni Islam as its official religion; whose nationalism requires its mythic hero to have only the attributes and magics the state ulama and historians say he must have---and no others.
Local shrines are destroyed, because the nation-state intuits them to be threats to its exclusive franchise.
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Image sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-dollar_bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_de_Triomphe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrajaya https://www.facebook.com/PilipinasRetrostalgia https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/984521.shtml https://www.facebook.com/PerakPress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malays_(ethnic_group)
159 notes · View notes