#That go more into well what is authority and how does it work and how has it remained durable and violent before during and after the cold

[cupidsdolll]

pairings: best friend!Harry x fem!reader

summary: Y/N's having a bad day and who better to help than her best friend

word count: 2.2k

authors note: hi hello!! here’s something that’s been sitting in my drafts for a whileeeee while i work on chapter three! :) hope you enjoy!!

TW: for a mention of self harm but the only thing she does is pinch her arms over and over again, please read with caution or don’t read if it triggers you or make you uncomfortable. i love you❤️

----

Y/N’s always been such a happy person, always there for all her friends, always having a smile on her face and making sure her friends are okay. She’s always been that one friend that no matter what time it is, she’ll always be there to lend a listening ear and provide the needed solace. 

She’s always been that friend that’ll give the ones she cares about the last of her anything, always willing to give the last of her money to help a friend in need, willing to give the clothes off her back if it was necessary. She’s just a giver by nature. She’s always been the friend to go to whenever you need advice, always taking care of her friends, giving them whatever’s needed. 

Because she’s grown to be able to mask her emotions, it’s hard to tell whenever she’s not able to fully give as much, whenever she starts feeling down and gets in her head. No one notices as she starts becoming quieter, smaller, less. 

She very rarely has bad days, her sunshine personality weeding its way through the dark clouds and allowing her to smile and laugh her way through the day. It’s easy to forget why her day was bad when she’s around friends, but it’s especially easy when she’s around him. Her best friend, her right hand man, her everything in a sense. 

Her and Harry had become friends when she stumbled into him and spilled her tea all over his cream flared pants and she over-apologized until he laughed it off and rubbed her head gently. After that, they became inseparable, always attached at the hip. They were close, close enough to where whenever they were out by themselves they were constantly asked how long they’ve been together, they were constantly mistaken for a long term couple. At the question, they’d both blush softly and deny the question by laughing and shaking their heads as they smile and say they’re just friends. 

They’ve always been just friends and neither have entertained the thought of becoming more, not seeing the point of appeasing everyone else as long as they were happy. He’s always noticing her, takes in the small details and keeps them all in a special folder in his brain and his heart. 

He notices how she’ll sway lightly in her seat whenever she’s happy, he notices how her nose scrunches whenever she genuinely laughs, he notices how she never leaves without a hug and ���I love you’, how she puts her hand over a sharp corner when her friend bends down to get something, how she makes sure to never split the pole and to always give a little snack to any cat or dog she sees on the street. 

He also notices when she starts distancing herself in conversation, how her lip will quiver and her eyebrows furrow the tiniest bit when she’s upset but can’t sneak away, he notices that when she starts playing with her rings that means she’s in her head or she’s uncomfortable, he notices how her glossy eyes will lose the light in them whenever she’s having a bad day. He notices things that she doesn’t even notice in herself and he prides himself in knowing her so well. 

She’s his complete other half, his soulmate, he can’t imagine his life without her and refuses to even think about that. He can just feel whenever her energy shifts ever so slightly and he’s always been there to help her. 

But he knows that when she has the bad days she prefers to deal with it alone, she’ll start excusing herself from the friend group when she’s asked to hang out. Her most used excuse is she’s on her period and her cramps are just killing her, and he knows that’s when it’s bad, when her pain is at its worst and she can’t bother to attempt to mask. 

Her body aches, she can feel the pain rooting itself deep in her bones, she’s tense as her muscles scream at her. Her bloodshot eyes sting painfully as fat and heavy tears stream down her pink cheeks, her lips chapped no matter how many times she licks them. She can feel her head pounding and throbbing from how long she’s been crying, her throat sore and tight as she hiccups. 

Her arms are beginning to form a slight hue of red and she can feel bruises beginning to form as she pinches them quickly, trying to distract her mind from the intense feelings of her own emotions flooding through. The muscles in her stomach are tense and uncomfortable at the amount of heavy sobs and pants that flow through her body and out of her plump lips. 

She can’t remember what triggered all of this, her brain too fuzzy to even remember if she grabbed her list to ground her. As she cries and screams into the empty space, she can feel her lungs expand as she breathes, she can feel the light touch of her loose tank top brush lightly against her skin, she can feel the loose strands of hair brushing against the back of her neck. 

She feels as if she can’t breathe, it feels like her bedroom is caving in on her, the small room only seeming to grow smaller and smaller as her breath gets stronger and shaky. Her hand scrambles around her messy bed, searching for the list containing ways for her to calm down and a shaky sob racks through her body when she realizes she can’t find it. 

She closes her eyes tightly as she brings her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them, burying her face into her legs she can’t help as she shakes her head. She doesn’t know how long this has been going on, how long she’s trapped herself in her room, but she hopes it’ll be over soon. 

She grabs her phone from her beside table and with shaky hands she unlocks it and clicks on her messages app. She quickly taps on the conversation she’s looking for and attempts to write out a message. 

——

Sweet Girl: H, can u come over please

She doesn’t have to wait long for a response from him as her phone dings a couple seconds later.

Haz: Of course sweet girl. Do you need/want me to bring anything for you? Some food maybe?

Sweet: Girl: if u want, just want you rn

Haz: Ok bug. I’m gonna get us some food and then I’ll be over. See you soon x

Sweet Girl: kay, thanks H. love u

Haz: I love you sweet girl, just try to breathe for me, I won’t be too long and I’ll use my key so you don’t have to get up. 

——-

As she tries to focus on her breathing, attempting to take slow and deep breaths, she wipes her face to clear away the tears on her cheeks. She sniffles and wraps her arms around her torso gently as she lies in her bed, the soft material and warmth from her cover enveloping her and makes her smile softly. 

She’s only able to enjoy a couple moments of peace before another painful sobs rack through her body. She sobs into her pillow, the pain searing through her body as the tears stain her cheeks.

She hates this, she hates not knowing why she’s so upset, she hates everything to do with her bad days. She wishes she was able to ask for the help she needs but she’s so much of a people pleaser, she can’t bear the thought of not being there for her friends when they need her. 

A soft knock at her bedroom door jolts her gently from her thoughts. She quickly tries to wipe her face from any tears and snot streaks before telling the person to come on. Her door squeaks softly as it opens and his face appears in the small space. 

As he walks into her small bedroom, he smiles sadly at her in which she returns the favor. Her eyes light up just a bit when she spots the brown takeout bag with her favorite Mexican restaurant logo printed onto the cheap plastic. He leans down and kisses her forehead before sitting down on her bed gently and placing the bag next to him. 

“Hi” she whispers and he smiles 

“Hi, feelin’ any better?” He says and she nods 

“Not really, thank you for uh coming over” she says as she leans her head on his shoulder.

He hums softly as he wraps one arm around her shoulder and squeezes once. 

“Y’know m’always gonna come. You don’t have to thank me. Wanna talk about it?” He asks gently and she shakes her head lightly.

“Not much to talk about, dunno why it happens. I just get really sad out of nowhere.” She closes her eyes gently as she relaxes into his hold. 

He nods in response and they sit in silence for a couple minutes before he reaches over to the bag and holds it out to her. 

“Here, you should eat it before it gets cold.” She smiles in response as he nudges her hand with the bag. She thanks him quietly as she grabs the bag from him, smiling bashfully she begins to open the bag and the styrofoam box inside. 

As she eats in silence, she’s not able to eat as much as she normally would. She takes a couple decent sized bites before she begins to move the food around. 

“M’gonna put this in the fridge, I’ll be back.” He says quietly as he makes a way to grab the box, she sighs softly before looking at him. 

“Sorry..” he shakes his head in return.

“Don’t be sorry lovie. M’proud of you for eating as much as you did.” He says before walking out and setting the box in the fridge before walking back to her room. 

As he comes back into her room, he hums a soft song as he makes his way to her bed and wraps his arms around her, squeezing tightly. He kisses the top of her head before whispering into her ear. 

“M’so sorry you’re feelin’ like this lovie. But you’re not alone okay? You have so many people who care for you and love you.” He can hear her sniffle softly and be squeezes her once. 

“Not your fault Haz. I know I’m not alone but I don’t wanna burden anyone.” She says and he shakes his head.

“You’re never gonna be a burden. We want you to be happy, be okay, we want you to not have to suffer alone. All of us worry about you, it’s okay to ask for help, angel. We’re not gonna judge you.” Her quiet tears slowly become louder as he speaks, she shakes her head and he rubs her back.

“It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be in pain. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to accept the love you give out, angel. You give and give and give to everyone else, and I know you don’t give yourself the love and energy you deserve.. let us love you how you love us, let us help you. Let us care for you. We’re not gonna judge you sweet girl.” He says and she grabs his t-shirt tightly before sobbing into his chest. 

She can feel the tears streaming down her cheeks and wetting his shirt as she cries into him. She can’t find it to be embarrassed at how loud she’s being and how she looks, not with his hand rubbing small circles on her back and how his words have sparked a sense of warmth in her stomach. She can feel it fluttering throughout her body while he whispers all these soft and sweet words in her ear. 

She can’t remember how long she’s been crying, and she goes to move away from him and he stops her. 

“Y’okay now? You don’t have to move if you’re not ready yet.” She nods before scooting closer to him, their thighs mashed together and her head resting on his shoulder as he rubs her shoulders softly. 

They stay like that, sitting in the comfortable silence for a while before she yawns softly and catches his attention. 

“Y’tired?” He asks and she nods 

“Sorry you spent your day with a crying mess.” She says with a sad chuckle.

“You’re my best friend Y/N. I’d gladly spend however long with you no matter if you’re sad or happy. As long as you’re okay, I’m happy. Want me to stay with you tonight?” He asks and she shakes her head. 

“Uh uh, go have fun with your other friends. I think I’m okay now. Thank you for everything H.” She says as she squeezes him softly before moving to the head of her bed and getting under the covers. 

“Text or call me if y’need anything angel. I mean it.” He says and goes to tuck her in, resulting is a soft giggle to breeze past her lips.

“Okay, dad. I love you.” She says a smile playing on her lips as he leans forward and kisses her forehead.

“I love you sweet girl. Sleep well and have sweet dreams.”

[rebelssvy]

obsessed part two

bokuto x reader

(afab. this is the most comfortable i write in. i try my best to make it as gender neutral as possible and not give any description of the reader. lmk how i can do betterrrrrr)

- authors note: you guys really liked part one. so abt to write a SINFUL part two ☺️☺️☺️

part one -link here!

LABELS: smut omg smut. i’ve never written anything smut so don’t judge pls 😩😩contains, making out, oral sex, sex.

walking to school the next day was a pain. bokutos mind was filled with the guilt of what had happened last night.

he jerked off to the girl in his class, who he still has yet to talk to.

ashamed was an understatement. he was embarrassed and felt inhumane. it was even worse because the problem still hadn’t gone away. he still thought of you in the worst ways. he couldn’t help himself.

closing the distance between him and his class room, his eyes narrowed in on you. the guilt was overwhelming. but you looked so cute in your uniform.

entering the classroom he groaned to himself. sitting down at his assigned desk, putting his hands over his face to try to hide his frustration.

he just liked you so much that it was truly embarrassing. he was bokuto koutarou! one of the top aces in high school volleyball. no girl should have his attention like this.

i am not a man, he thought to himself, hands still covering his face.

“ahem…” he looked up at the person trying to get his attention.

to his absolute shock, you were standing right infront of his desk.

“hi…” you said to him waiting for a response…. the response never came as bokuto just looked up at you mouth agape.

“i didn’t know you were so shy!haha” you try playing off to make it less awkward. his silence seemed to be maybe a message for you to just walk away. and yet you stayed begging for his presence.

“well i’m yn, and i didn’t know if you noticed but we have a partner project in this class…. and we were paired up yesterday…. and before i could figure out a plan with you, you walked out of class before i could talk to you yesterday.” you felt yourself ramble on for what seemed like far to long. his silence was draining.

from what you heard from most people, your schools ace was a huge standout. most calling him extroverted, crazy and annoying.

but right now he sat infront of you saying not a word.

finally he spoke up “oh..” he said. that’s literally all he said.

you stayed for a little longer, watching his face grow into a friendly smile.

“it’s nice to meet you yn! i’m so sorry i didn’t even realize we had an assignment together!! HAHA well don’t worry we can get it figured out. also sorry about yesterday i just rushed off to practice without a second thought” bokutos voice boomed throughout the class room.

you let out a sigh of relief. maybe he was just waking up still? but he sure does seem awake now..

“we can only work on the assignment out side of the school hours…. if your comfortable with it you can come over to my house tonight and we can work on it.” you say smiling down at him.

bokutos prayers have been answered. everything he has ever worked for is being rewarded back to him now.

“yes.!” bokuto replied without hesitation. smile still beaming up at her.

“here’s my number, text me after this class gets out.” you say to him. stealing his phone and saving your contact in his phone. you were a little forward. bokuto was practically gushing.

with that you walked back to your desk and started talking with your friends.

bokuto was so happy he could scream.

the day went on, after you two had agreed on a set time for him to arrive at your house he was counting down the minutes.

he would have to come over after he practiced, meaning he would also have to go home to shower before hand.

it gave you more time to get ready before he made it to your house.

secretly, you had been honing a crush on bokuto for awhile now. when your teacher announced that you two would be in a group together you were thrilled. but when you looked over to bokuto, he seemed… upset.

his face was hard to read. it was a mix of tired, guilt, and anger. you chose to not introduce yourself to him until class was out, not wanting to make a fool of yourself. but before you could he had already left.

that’s why you were so nervous. he was so big, not just tall. that man was beefy. in all the right ways. and you couldn’t even tell if he liked you at all.

of course you would glance at him time to time in class, even showing up to some of his games in previous years. you noticed him.

analyzing yourself in your mirror. checking the time ever so often.

you had taken a shower, got out of the shower and did all your duties to look the best you could. sporting yourself in a way you were most confident.

also going to the measure of cleaning your room. everything had to be perfect.

before you new it your doorbell rang. you rushed to the door, opening to a freshly washed bokuto.

he had on grey sweats and a black hoodie. his hair was still a little damp from his shower, so it wasn’t spiked up in its usual manner. his bangs clung to his forehead.

“heeeLLO” he said to you voice getting a little louder as his word continued.

“hi” you said to him while still looking him up and down. it was a little obvious you were checking him out.

you quickly let him in and gave him a tour of your home. making a mental note to leave your bedroom for last. making a b- line for your kitchen you offered him somthing to drink.

his presence alone was enough. he was just soo huge. you felt his gaze after every corner you took.

“uh yes water is fine.” he said, way more calm.

you got him a glass and sat on your counter top. he was infront of you leaning his back on your cabinet.

as he drank he held a comfortable eye contact with you.

“how was practice?” you spoke up.

he reached forward and put his glass next to you, then leaned back to his formal position.

“i did way better then i did yesterday i can say that much.” he said with a chuckle. his voice was low. deep.

“what happened yesterday?” you asked.

he seemed a little taken back from your question. but it was only a second of that expression that was followed with a smile.

“oh i just didn’t do my best. my teammates say i get in my own head sometimes but even my worst is not that bad soo” he said with a low chuckle again. his grin never really left his face.

he was confident in himself that was forsure. you thought you should atleast see where you stand with him. gathering up all the confidence you had to flirt with him just a tinyyy bit.

“oh so you must be gooood.” you say leaning forward a little, still perched on your counter top. you made sure you arch your back a little, even though he couldn’t see it from where he was sitting. you applied the action anyways.

bokutos ears perked up a little. he sure did love flattery.

“i mean, yeah. i’m pretty good.” he said non chalantly. leaning forward a little more as well.

“tell me bokuto, how good are you?” you asked. leaning just as much as you could without falling off the counter top.

“oh i’m pretty good. but i can’t tell you how good i am… it’s something you have to experience yourself.” he said, smug. grin still on his face.

as he spoke he had stopped leaning against your counter top.

he got closer to you, your heart beat picked up. he then picked up his hand, reaching out.

just as you thought he was going to touch you, he picked up his glass beside you. blushing your thigh in the action.

he picked up his glass and finished the rest of his water with a gulp.

smug bastard. you thought to yourself.

you then got back onto your feet and started walking out of the kitchen. bokuto taking that as his note to follow behind you.

you silently led him to your room. anticipating whatever came next.

as you waked bokuto stared. he stared at your ass, your hips, your waist. anything he could look at he took a mental picture of.

this could be the only time he was this close to you. he thought.

opening the door to your room you, you showed him around.

“you can sit anywhere your comfortable with, but i did get an extra chair for you at my desk.” you say to him. going and taking a seat next to the school work you had already laid out.

bokuto was taking in everything. your posters, your decorations, anything you had in their he was saving in a file in his brain.

he finally sat down next to you.

you started going over the project, he would follow your words with some “hmm” or “ook” but overall he didn’t seem very into it.

all bokuto could think about is you stuffed full of his cock. really it was a shame. you were talking to him and that’s all he could think about. he watched your lips as they instructed him. that’s all he really watched.

“bokuto.” you said in a firm voice.

“are you even listening?” you said to him slightly annoyed.

“uhh yea…” he replied guilt sinking in once again.

he was evil. he wanted you. he felt as if you had just teased him in the kitchen too. he wanted to get you back. bad.

he licked his lips. confidence surging through him for a second. he opened his mouth to say somthing.

but the words never came. blush flooded his face. you probably think he’s stupid at this point.

“you are so pretty.” he said quickly. it came out of nowhere. he didn’t even mean to say it. he was so embarrassed!

but there was no way you were gonna know how embarrassed he is. no, bokuto koutaro never gets embarrassed!

you stare back at him. confused. but to all honestly. you were aching for him. his frame so close to yours, made you painfully aware of how big he was.

and he just called you pretty. what even in your next move! what are you supposed to say to that!

“y/n…” he said quietly. it was soft. he had gotten closer to you then you realized. you could feel his breath on your lips.

“bokuto…” you whispered back to him. the distance was painful.

before you could register he had his lips on yours. closing the gap. you locked your lips with his. it was just a quick kiss. romantic if anything.

you two pulled away. staring him in the eyes, there was a hunger.

“i need more” he said before grabbing you cheeks and closing the distance again. you were shocked. this must be a dream.

your hands found his body. scooting as close as you could without falling off your chair. one of your hands found his bicep. the other on his shoulder.

the kisses grew hungrier. his pace picked up. you gasped when his hand found your thigh. it was a comfortable position.

he took this chance to slip his tongue into your mouth. you purrred against him.

your touches grew with sexual tension. you parted for a second to catch your breath. a line of saliva connecting you two.

“c’mere” he said scooting his chair back alittle. signaling you to get out of your chair.

you stood up waiting further instruction.

he reached up and grabbed your hips pulling you closer to him. he was still seated, legs apart.

you felt like you were on fire. his eyes took in all off you. his hands rubbed your hips. even going a little farther to pinch at the fat of your ass.

“wanna sit on my lap?” he said tilting his head to the side. you shook your head and slowly made your way to his lap. you were positioned so you could face him.

his hands cradled you, finding your curves.

“you think i’m pretty?” you said to him bringing your hands to his jaw.

“you have no idea.” he breathed out.

finding his lips again except the tension in the room was now thick. you were growing a pool in your panties. every touch of his fingers was doing numbers to your core.

without knowing it you slowly started to grind yourself against him. you only noticed when you felt bokuto grow underneath you. his hands moved to your ass. grabbing at it.

then his hands slowly fell even farther. coming concerningly close to your core.

“y/n…. can i…?” he parted quickly. out of breath begging you for more.

“yes bokuto.” you moaned out to him. still grinding your hips against him.

“do whatever you want” you moaned out throwing your head back. you were growing needy.

without any words bokuto grabbed you and picked you up. putting you down on the bed.

your back was on the bed with your legs folded to your chest. he had ahold of your shins.

he was standing above you grinning like a kid in a candy shop.

“i’ve been waiting for this.” he stated.

his fingers graced over your core, you sucked in breath.

“you have?” you whimpered out.

“i have liked you for quite sometime. i have even dreamt of doing somthing like this too you. y/n… you have no idea.” he said while taking off your pants. you were left in only your underwear. then he started working on your shirt, pulling it off over your head.

now being left only in your bra you felt very conscious of everything.

“fuck…” he said to himself seeing you drenched through your panties. this was truly his dream.

“can i?” he said before continuing.

you shook your head yes.

he touched your clothed core with a certain grace. seeming like he was afraid to hurt you. you moaned out at his touch.

your ass was almost off the bed when he slowly came to the ground squatting on two knees.

you soon realized what he wanted to do.

“bo… you don’t have too” you said painfully, when al you really wanted was his tongue on your cunt.

“i want to.” he said before stuffing his face into your core.

you still had your panties on but the friction was just too much. you moaned out back arching for him.

he was hooked. he circled anything he could with his tongue, even taking breaks to kiss your stomach. he finally took your underwear off.

staring at your naked core he was in love. he wanted to be the only man to ever see you like this.

experimentally he blew on it, seeing your body react and you moan out. he loved his life.

diving back into you he licked all of you. slurping up your juices, sucking at your clit. taking every angle he could to make you feel good.

“more…” you whimpered out.

he brought his fingers up to your hole without warning. he played with our rimming a finger around your clenched spot. sticking it in you he stucked on your clit simultaneously.

you moaned out. it was really too much. your core was building up at a fast rate as his finger pumped in and out of you.

he stoped and stood infront of you again. you looked up at him wondering why he had to hault your pleasure.

he took off his hoodie and sweats leaving himself in just his boxers.

and oh. my. god. he was wonderful. he was everything you could ever dream.

“bokuto… i need you.” you told him.

he was on fire right now. you were sprawled out on the bed, cunt for his to see.

“fuck… you drive me insane.” he said pulling his boxers down to free his length.

“oh my god” you moaned out. it was huge. there was no way that was going to inside you. his one finger did the job, so what is that thing even going to do to you.

“cmon baby you can take me.” he said lying down next to you on the bed. you crouch up on your knees.

“ride me.” he demanded.

you positioned yourself on top of him. grabbing at his his abs as you mentally prepped yourself for what was gonna be inside you.

slowly you reach down for his cock. he had already been stroking it.

you touch it and he lets in a sharp gasp of air. you give it a good couple pumps

“hah” he moaned out. you had kept eye contact the hold time you entered him in you.

lowering yourself as best you can. his face was of euphoria.

“bokuto… your tooooo big hah” you moaned out to him.

“call me koutarou” he gasped out.

you found the strength to get him in you. bottoming out you clenched around him.

“fuuuck kou” you moaned out. you started grinding yourself against him.

it was the best pain you had ever felt.

“your beautiful. oh my god.” he said as his hands found your boobs.

pulling your bra down and bringing his lips to your hardened nipples.

your back arched for him. you moaned out louder and louder.

bouncing against him. this was all he ever wanted. he was in heaven.

you felt that familiar coil in your core tighten up again.

and bokuto could tell. he felt your walls clench around him as your threw your head back.

before he could think about it he changed positions. throwing you on your back and into a missionary position.

he took it to himself to start pounding into you.

“kou… nnnits too muchhch” you moaned out. it was almost hard to hear because of the sound your pussy was making.

“cmon. you can take it” he grunted out, slamming himself into you.

you moaned more. eye contact the whole time he fucked you.

the way you clenched around him was almost painful. but he could tell you were close.

he brought his fingers to your sensitive bud.

“cum for me. come on baby you can do it.” he grunted.

“come on my cock.” he grunted even more.

you were so close.

“your mine, understand?”

that sent you have the edge. you clamped around him spasmsing through your orgasm.

bokuto barely pulled out in time to cum on your stomach.

“i’m yours im yours im yours…” you babbled off to yourself.

fuck.

you were both drained.

who ever thought this is where you would be.

he got up to get a tissue for you to wipe you off. then coming over to press a kiss to your forehead.

“i’ll be right back” he said he before he left.

he came back with some water and helped you up.

“what’s going on?” you asked still faint from your orgasm.

“i started a shower for us!” he beamed at you.

yep. he could definitely be the one for you.

………………………………………………………………………………….

- WOWWWWW WHAT DID I JUST WRITE! this is my longest and still some of my first works i’ve put out. well i hope you like it also. comment any ideas you guys have for me!

[burningcheese-merchant]

What does Spice and Jack like to do together?

It's unbearably hot here and I hate working. One more ask, for realsies this time, because fuck everything else

"What do Kratos Burning Spice and Atreus Pepper Jack like to do together?" Sorry, I wanted to do that lol

Spice travels back and forth between the Golden Cheese Kingdom and the Spice Ridge by himself a lot (for work, basically), and he brings Jack with him whenever he can (after Paneer was born, he started either taking them both or alternating between them each time so they get an equal amounts of trips with him). He actually likes when his son joins him to do stuff, even if it's "boring" king/leader duties (which Jack does not find boring, he actually is legitimately interested in things like that and likes that his dad takes him to his "work")

They go on hunting trips often, too. Spice got him in on that early - as soon as he could walk in a straight line without tripping lol. Paneer doesn't like hunting (she actually really loves animals and doesn't want to hurt any ever), so it remained purely a father/son activity. They'll go out for a while - a few hours usually, or even a few days if Spice wants to go somewhere far for a challenge - and hunt game together. They lock onto/track something and work out a plan of attack, so to speak. They both have very different ways of doing/approaching things, both on a hunt and in general (it's those clashing personalities again), so they try to meet halfway and think of something that works for them both. They actually work quite well together and make a good team. (As Jack ages, Spice grants him a little more control/authority of their hunts, to see how he handles taking charge of something like that. Jack does well, for the most part. It makes Spice really proud.)

Jack likes to tell Spice about things he learns (he likes telling both his parents, really). Jack is very smart and even more curious, so he tends to pick a thing or two up every day, even if just a bit of obscure trivia - and he likes to share it with his dad, because he actually likes hearing what Spice has to say about stuff. He'll show him books, he'll bring Spice with him to the library when he can so they can read books together (I honestly think Spice is a smart guy, or at least I headcanon him as such. He was the Herald of History; it's canon that he used to enjoy having deep, open-minded discussions with others, particularly about history, so I think that lends itself to Spice being reasonably intelligent, even wise to some degree). When he was little, he'd just walk up to Spice with a book in hand and climb into his lap, then either ask him to read it to him or ask to read it together. (While Spice no longer fully possesses the patience he once had to entertain people's thoughts and attempts at conversation (he regained a decent amount, but a few millennia being violently antisocial kinda damages your people skills lol)... he has all the patience in the world for his son, so he's happy to indulge him.) Somewhere underneath this behavior is Jack's inherent need/want to get closer to his father, because (as I've mentioned in another post) they're so different from each other otherwise and he doesn't want that little gap between them to exist. They don't always understand each other very well and Jack doesn't like that. And there's still that little nagging insecurity in his heart that Spice is disappointed in who he is and he's not "worthy" of being his son, so it sometimes leads to him trying too hard to "prove" himself to Spice in one way or another. He knows his dad is smart, and he knows his dad will at least indulge him when he wants to tell him stuff, so that's the avenue Jack most often takes. "Look, Father, I know lots of things like you do. I know/want to know history like you do. I'm like you, see? Am I doing a good job?" Some sort of thought process like that. It's sad and unnecessary, but Jack doesn't really understand that for a long time (that "not knowing how to communicate with each other" thing doesn't help)

They also like to spar. Spice always made the biggest effort and took on the biggest role in training the kids in combat, and that reflects in him having one-on-one fights/sparring sessions with them both often. It's one of the ways he likes/tries to bond with them the most; he never loses his taste for battle even as a better man, and he wants to share that excitement with his children. He fights them for practical reasons and also just for fun. Jack views sparring more as a way to let off steam than to have fun (not that he doesn't have fun, though), so he doesn't necessarily always dig this every single time (because he's not upset about something all the time, you know?), but he rarely turns Spice down when he challenges him, so.

And this is more when Jack is little than any other time, but - Spice likes to pick him up and carry him around places. Jack will sit or perch on his shoulders and they'll walk around together. Just a father/son stroll, just because. Jack likes it because it makes him feel tall (Spice is like 6'5" minimum in my headcanon lol). Spice knows it makes him feel tall, so he helps his son pretend he's tall for a little while lol. They do this a lot less after Jack gets past toddler age; Jack thinks it's a little embarrassing to get piggyback rides when he's older... He just sticks to walking by Spice's side like a "mature" person then. But... Sometimes he misses clinging to his dad and feeling tall, so he'll just go ahead and fly up and perch on his shoulders like he used to. And Spice just lets him do it, whenever he wants, without any issue, because he likes being seen and admired as this larger-than-life figure (figuratively and literally) by his kids

[wheel-of-fics]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thank you for the tag, @kotaka-kun! I'm trying to get back into writing and am forcing myself to get in a better fic-writer mindset.

How many works do you have on AO3?

14 (but more on FFN, from the olden times)

What's your total AO3 word count?

209.294 (442,145 on FFN)

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

Unsung

Out of the Woods

Old Haunts

Turnabout

Restoration

(If we're considering legacy FFN stuff, By Starlight would fall just after Unsung, and The Ivory Tower would probably be on the list, but since it's forever unfinished I like to pretend it doesn't exist.)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Usually! Although they sometimes fall through the cracks. I am really, really appreciative of comments and try to respond earnestly, but I feel like my replies start to sound like a broken record and it's awkward.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

IIIII don't know. Maybe Burn? I almost always turn angst into a happy ending by the end of the story. It's self-preservation.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

See previous answer—can't pick one!

Do you write crossovers?

I have not attempted to yet!

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I've received several passive-aggressive comments and seen some not-nice things said about my work elsewhere, but I'm not sure I've gotten any straight-up hate comments, thankfully.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do; it's usually a part of a story and not the sole reason for it (though I have done that, too).

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of...

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, Unsung and maybe something else (?) (it's been a while) has been translated into Chinese.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, I think I would drive a co-author insane.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Uhhhh I can't pick, actually...I'll come back to this later (I won't)

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Red Death Riding JUST KIDDING but it does feel like that sometimes. Still, we persevere.

What are your writing strengths?

Ughghgh I don't know. I’ve been told I'm good at pacing, and that balance between like inner thoughts and external goings-on. (There is a better way to say that, but I'm tired.) Um...I think I'm pretty good at sentence flow? And...punctuating correctly? I sure hope I'm decent at character development. And I like to think I bring original ideas to the table.

What are your writing weaknesses?

The ideation of it all (though this hasn't always been the case—it's a work in progress), and honestly just getting words on the page. It's so hard to turn off the editor brain I use for work, and I feel like I'm always editing myself before, during, and after every sentence. I also wish I could delve deeper into the thoughts and reactions of characters who aren't like me.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Not a huge fan. It can be OK if done well, but it often takes me out of the narrative.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I have enough trouble focusing on my current fic/fandom as it is! Don't make me think about other things!

What's your favorite fic you've written?

I honestly don’t have one. I see each fic as a stepping stone in the course of my writing journey—a challenge that I issued to myself and completed—and I'm usually looking forward to the next challenge instead of back.

I haven't been around much lately and don't know who all has done this! I'll try tagging @musicalhell @les-gnossiennes-fantomatiques @emotionalmotionsicknessxx and @rienerose (but please feel free to ignore!).

[nenilein]

Okay, lemme start to deconstruct this because MAN does this entire thread make me Angry

Yoggus, Fudoushi and Runelord

Yog, Yoggus and Yog-Sothos aren't characters, Yog, Yoggus and Yog-Sothos are forces of nature, and fighting them is portrayed as akin to fighting a natural disaster. They are not interesting in the slightest, and their mindless, animalistic nature more often than not leads to jokes about them, and the game making fun of how silly the stupid floating eyeballs making everyone go cuckoo are. In other words: They're EXACTLY the same as the corruptive forces in Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 and 2. The ONLY difference is that those two games had an actual human mind at the source of that corruption, while in Madou Saturn, there's only a big monster, followed by an even bigger monster, that can be defeated simply by beating down on it and that isn't treated as anything other than an excuse for the characters to prove how much they love being alive in this world, not an actual character. Yog-Sothos being insanely underutilized is actually a big reason Madou Saturn is so difficult to recommend to me personally. The actual overarching plot of Madou Saturn is aimless and boring AF as a result of Yog-Sothos just being an animalistic creature of chaos and destruction, rather than a character, what makes Madou Saturn good is all the small stuff that happens on the way to it! Incidentally, "Arle's Adventure" is a similar case to that, because due to the plot being cut down to size for unknown reasons, Diés is ALSO just an animalistic force of chaos with no actual motivation, except Arle's Adventure's narrative has almost NOTHING else in there that could make it interesting, so Diés irredeemable nature as a pure ball of bad makes the game even less noteworthy than it already is.

"Fudoushi", or, as he SHOULD be translated "Rot Mage" is just a glorified midboss. No character, no lore, no anything. It's just a creepy visual that's there to scare Arle in some ports of Madou 1. That's it. There's absolutely zero to it, hence why some ports (such as the SNES remake) actually TRY to make Rot Mage funny/redeemable to make him more interesting, which barely works. He's not even really a villain. He's an obstacle that was placed in the tower to make Arle's exam harder by her teacher. If you count this as a "final villain", then the friggin' Medal in Puyo 15th is an irredeemable villain too, for all the nonsense it pulls on the characters.

Runelord may be irredeemable. He's also very dead and has been so before the games ever started. He exists solely to add depth to Schezo's character and make the fact that Schezo is NOT irredeemable far more interesting, something the new games, ESPECIALLY Puyo Puyo Puzzle Pop, play into hard. Runelord would be INSANELY less interesting/utilized by the fanbase if not for all the depth Schezo has.

But now every villain MUST be redeemed. Squares? Redeemed. Rafisol? Redeemed. Ecolo? Well more tamed but still!

Because these characters are actual characters and the writers are writing actual stories with them. If you want a character to be an actual character, giving them zero motivation simply is NOT an option, and when a character has a motivation, making them "irredeemable" is very, very difficult, because human beings do not work like that. Unless they're in very unhealthy IRL positions of power, which, in a setting like Puyo Puyo/Madou Monogatari… I wrote an entire MASTER'S THESIS about that exact theme, but that doesn't work there, because a major theme of this franchise overall is that it makes sure that unhealthy, unearned authority can ALWAYS be destroyed quickly by the effort of the people. A "villain" like that would not be around for long, because the cast would eliminate them or drive them into hiding ASAP. Why do I know this? Because we HAVE a villain like that! Thousand/Issen from Puyo Puyo Quest is EXACTLY that, an irredeemable, rich asshole in an insanely abusive position of power, who was quickly driven into hiding by the cast upon being found out. I hate it when people act like Sega is "Lazy" and "Can't write" that stuff. They can and they do, it just doesn't get attention because these characters are INHERENTLY less interesting, because their intruige lies in how they affect the rest of the world, not in themselves.

Then there is The Crimson Spirit. A sealed away spirit that possesses a child against his will, so he can kill another child. Afterwards, the formally possessed child still keeps the book, and while he's not stupid, he is riddled with insecurities, and given the book is compared to a security blanket in the next game, one can imagine he's being manipulated. In the japanese version of Tetris the spirit even insults him. This…finally, a pure evil villain again!

NO. IT NEVER WAS.

The crimson spirit was EXPLICITELY redeemable from the very start! Guys. You DID NOT "play" Fever 2. You played an incomplete patch of the Manzai Demos only, which are only a MINISCULE part of the game, that only holds, like, 5% of the game text, and is NOT why anyone in the Japanese fandom is interested in these characters.

Do I need to quote the entirety of the actual text of the Tome of Sealing, which the player immediately gets after beating Possessed Klug for the first time again? No? TOO BAD I'M DOING IT ANYWAY.

Do you see this? The Crimson Spirit was ALWAYS portrayed as a victim of racism. Not a "pure evil villain". In fact, reading them as this is such an INSANE misreading of the character, it can downright be said to actively destroy the entire narrative and mean you are siding with fictional racists! Please, cease!

But the writer of Quest and the Audio Dramas are doing their best to RUIN THIS! Turning the spirit from a mysterious threat to a forgettable pathetic loser! There's a reason I am so cherry picky with the Audio dramas, because they even try to tame Doppelganger Arle! And they just make everyone softer, there are very few I like.

WHAT??? HUUUUH?

You are displaying that you haven't actually listened to/read any of quest at all right now! The audio dramas constantly portray the crimson spirit as genuinely threatening and better at everything than the main characters! In the Super Sentai Parody, they outright smash Amitie, Raffina and Lidelle due to their own hubris of all wanting to be Red Rangers and are the unambigious victor of the battle, no questions asked! In the Tour Guide Drama Track, they chase Amitie and Lidelle's tour group away from the Arka ruins solely with their intimidating presence alone! In Quest Main story, they outright threaten to scatter the children across the dimensions (possibly getting them killed) and blow themself up WITH Klug when people get in their way, both times causing Rokia to remark how ruthless/threatening a character they are! The second time, Ms. Accord has to personally step in and help take them out, something she almost NEVER does! You simply do not know the content of what you are complaining about here, plain off! You are complaining about a fictional version of this stuff that DOESN'T exist anywhere but the depths of your brain!

And what in the HEL do you mean Doppelganger Arle is being "tamed" in the drama CDs?? She has 2 lines and they don't indicate ANY change in her personality! We don't see that she is still alive and has a HOME. This is the opposite of what you are complaining about! It means Sega is keeping an irredeemed antagonist around, NOT that she's been "tamed". In fact, in Quest, she is one of the few characters who hasn't had a SINGLE comedic storyline connected to her, unless you count the training manzai, which nobody counts. She is purely a force of intimidation (which is part of why she isn't really interesting and never has been, but I DIGRESS)

And Quest is a Gatcha Game. I will never count Gatcha games as canon to anything.

Then you are simply WRONG. Period. More people play Quest than ever listened to the audio dramas. More people play Quest then play the story modes in the mainline games! To ignore it is to SIMPLY IGNORE THE TEXT OF THE FRANCHISE. This is pure media illiteracy, and means that what you are complaining about is a version of the franchise that is purely made up of headcanons of yours, not the actual thing, which is actively poisonous to fandom dialogue and I SO wish you would stop. If you are not interested in the actual text of the franchise, then do not discuss it. Write fanfic instead. Nobody would take that away from you. Do not lie about what other writers did or did not write just because you maneuevered yourself into believing you read something that you didn't read. This sort of stuff pisses me as a writer off immensely, because it makes fandom discussion so much less vibrant and interesting and has no place in it.

Basically, instead of "What kind of threat is this? How will we beat it?" it becomes "Whats this guy's tragic backstory and how will they be redeemed?"

Oh, you mean like in 7, where defeating Ecolo required Amitie to find an escape route from the margin dimension to help Ringo, because otherwise she would have been killed in Ecolo's dimensional breakdown? Or in Tet2, where the characters actively have to play "hot potato" with Marle to wear her down before they can get through to her?

You act like it's "one or the other", which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how writing works! Kindly at least watch some goddamn Anime and actually analyze what is happening in it before you talk about this shit! Oh and Yog-Sothos, Rot Mage and Runelord all weren't defeated by going "What kind of threat is this? How will we beat it?" They were defeated by hitting them with bigger numbers. Which took less effort than ANY of the villains you complain about.

I want a new writer.

I want you to shut your mouth and respect people who actually write for a living. I was kind to you the last time we talked, but you just proved you have zero goodwill for other writers, only for yourself and your own fanfic, and it shows you are immature and not ready to be a writer yourself yet. You will never be ready until you can look at a text for what it is, not what your gut feelings are telling you it is based on vague second hand experiences you have with it.

It's still perfectly canon for me to see Strange Klug as pure evil due to the ambiguous cannonicity of the drama.

So, are you ignoring 95% of the text of Fever 2 as well then? Okay, cool, you are just wrong. Thank you for being so bad at media literacy and poisoning the fandom with that lack of insight. Thank you for making this fandom a worse place to discuss characters in. I am so fucking pissed.

I hate the idea of being the guy who makes someone say "he would not fucking say that" and I had a breakdown about that because of how I write The Crimson Spirit and how it contradicts the dramas and Quest!

So it's just you wanting your fanfic to be canon. I am so disappointed in you, you learned NOTHING from our talk back then. So close to blocking you on all my social media platforms too. This just makes me shake with anger. This is not how you treat a writer just because you want your goddamn fanfic to be canon.

In fact, I am shaking so hard right now that I am only responding to this initial post for the time being, rather than the rest of the asinine thread this created. I just can't. Why did you feel the need to backslide so hard into your stubbornness after the good talk we had?

I thought you had gotten better about this. The fact that you haven't makes me so damn sad.

By the way, the writer you are slandering here is Utako Yoshino. She has a name. And she is not subtle about the fact that she is scared of people like you, because they can ruin her entire livelihood with poorly thought-out flaming like this in an instance. She's posted about it. You are contributing to that very real anxiety.

Do better.

Be better.

I am getting sick of the redeemable/not really evil villains. Yes I do like them but there's just so many now! It was far more varied in Compile!

[Post this and I will reblog with my rant about this subject]

shit, sorry I didn't post earlier. Yap away. Or... yap eway...?

[grenade-maid]

Signalis, Authority, and History

There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?

I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.

The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.

Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.

This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.

Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.

We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.

Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[tanicus-caesareth]

guarana drama, damage control

[sapphiresaphics]

“they don’t work out their issues. they don’t discuss any of their issues. they are forced to work together because vander’s situation provides urgency. and then they insult each other and slap fight without explaining why they did what they did, what’s been going through their minds, why they’re angry at each other. they don’t communicate at all.”

You’ve never had siblings have you? Or if you have.. you’ve never gotten into actual fights with them have you?

Vi isn’t “forced” to do anything. She CHOOSES to go with Jinx. And the Vander situation is a problem, yes, but it’s not URGENT. If it was they wouldn’t be casually strolling through the caves. And this is where they TRULY come to blows. The big epic fight earlier was just spectacle. THIS is the fight between sisters. And it’s raw and silly and childish. That’s the point of it.

And again. You don’t need to SAY why you did anything. Vi learns Mir about Jinx as a person by how she interacts with Isha than she does taking to her. It’s also no secret that during their little brawl in the caves on a mission to save Vander, Vi accidentally hurts Isha (Jinx’s personification) just as she did when she punched Powder back in season 1. This is very deliberate storytelling parallels.

Also, screenwriting 101: characters never just say what they mean. Cuz that’s just boring and uninteresting. Scenes are more interesting when characters can’t say what they want to say, so they talk about other issues to make up for it. All dialogue should HINT at what they really want. The tussle in the mines is far more authentic and realistic than the over the top brawl they had in the pipe works.

Take the note they find from Vander to Silco. Jinx reads it out loud and then comments about how if Silco had found it maybe things would’ve been different. And in that moment Vi raises her hand and wants to touch Jinx’s shoulder but can’t quite bring herself to do it yet. Because that moment isn’t REALLY about Vander and Silco. It’s about Jinx and Vi. Say one thing, but mean another. That’s GOOD scriptwriting.

“She’s not exactly a dictator in the traditional sense”

Okay stop right there. If she’s not a dictator in the traditional sense then she’s not a god damn dictator. End of story. Stop trying to justify her being one when you freely admit she is not one.

The show repeatedly shows that despite her being hardened and angry and doing these things out of fear and hate… she ultimately doesn’t want to. Has she been impressing Zaun even more than before? Absolutely. But is she also chastising Ambessa’s guard for instigating violence and calling out Ambessa’s justification for more violence? Absolutely as well.

Caitlyn is an oppressive authority figure clouded in privileged and doing what she’s doing because of hate and fear and anger. Yes. 100% no getting around that. But she’s not a dictator. And she doesn’t WANT to be a dictator. She was thrust into this position through peer pressure and manipulation just like Jayce was when he became a counselor. And she’s been looking for an excuse to get out of it for a while too. Maddie says as much in bed.

And remember Vi? When Caitlyn is sad after her mother died, she refers to Vi as the person who calms her down and guides her through things. Vi is who she breaks down and cries with. Vi is who she listens to when things get more dangerous in the pipe works. There’s a reason why when Vi shows up again, Caitlyn is all too willing to help her out. Especially if it means she can get rid of Ambessa and save VI’s father in the process.

This show is filled with nuance and morally grey characters. So when you reduce them to binary black and white roles and call them dictators, yeah that’s not gonna jive well when they do stuff contrary to that binary. That’s what I’m calling you out for and why I insist you don’t refer to Caitlyn as a dictator. Because calling her a dictator erases her moral complexity and ignores everything that happened in season 1. You are flattening out her character so you can whine.

“Hextech didn’t break them apart, systemic oppression did”

No… hextech broke them apart. The bomb Powder used in season 1 was hextech. It happened at the exact same time Jayce and Viktor were experimenting and their experiments resulted in teleportation magic. And if you watch closely when the explosion goes off, there are pieces of debris and rubble that get teleported through the door and end up killing the two boys. As we’ve learned this season, all Hextech devices are linked. It was Jayce and Viktor tampering with Hextech that resulted in the bomb going off being so devastating to Vi and Powder’s family.

Additionally, the explosion at the beginning of the show that sets everything in motion is Hextech. Yes they were infiltrating Jayce’s workshop because of systemic inequality, but that’s a background detail to explain why. It’s not the inciting incident that started it all. That’s the hextech gem explosion. The show begins with Hextech being volatile and dangerous and that’s the reoccurring conundrum throughout the entire show. Everybody wants this power and they use their positions of inequality and oppression to get it. Again… that’s the inequality being a background excuse, but not the driving force.

“How does Vander being alive fix everything?”

Because that’s the rift that broke Powder and Vi apart. It’s because of Powder’s bomb that Vander died. It’s because Vander died that Vi hurt Powder and started her on this path to becoming Jinx. It was the inciding incident that broke them apart.

Vander being alive means they can heal their rift. Vander being alive means Powder didn’t kill him. Finding Vander and bringing him back allows Vi to forgive Powder for what she did. Like Jinx says “maybe this is a do-over.”

Vander is their father. Having him back means they don’t have to fight anymore. They don’t have to try to kill each other anymore. It means Jinx can heal and become herself again. Vi can forgive Jinx. Etc etc.

This is like one of the biggest moments in the show. That you seem to put so little emphasis on its importance and can’t understand why Vander being alive could heal their rift is sad.

You seem like the type of person who needs characters to just say what they mean literally or else you don’t understand what’s happening. Body language, voice acting, dialogue, shot composition and framing… you seem to IGNORE all of that and complain that characters just don’t sit down and talk one on one with each other. You don’t seem to understand or respect the craft of the show.

When a character says something but means something else, you seem like you only take things at face value and can’t comprehend that they might be lying, or saying meaning something else.

Take the moment when Sallow is rolled in on a wheelchair demanding they go to war with the undercity. Mel clocks that this is not how Sallow talks. And since he was rolled out by Ambessa, it’s made very clear that it’s Ambessa who’s ACTUALLY talking in the scene. Even though she never says a word. I wonder.. how did you read that scene? Did you pick up on Mel playing chess with her mother? Or did you think she was actually addressing Sallow the whole time?

I don’t know what else to tell you dude. You’re not wrong that systemic oppression and power dynamics play a significant role in the show’s message. I would just argue that it’s not the MAIN FOCUS of the show and has never been. It’s window dressing at best. The main focus has always been how attempts to do good for love and for family can result in doing terrible awful things.

As Victor puts it “we lost ourselves. Lost our dreams. In our attempt to save the world we failed to do good.”

I find it hilarious when the show called ARCANE starts talking about the ARCANE and the ARCANE starts having a more prominent role in the trajectory of the show named ARCANE that people are only now complaining about “lore” being added to the show.

Like, my dudes… the show was about the ARCANE. Now that it’s reacting and developing and becoming the big thing the whole show is heading towards… NOW you’re worried about the “lore” messing things up??!

Hahah

Sorry guys. I know we started with class inequality, and that’s definitely a theme of the show… but the TRUE star has ALWAYS been the ARCANE and how it reacts to the events around it.

They wouldn’t have named the show ARCANE if they weren’t going to address the ARCANE.

[lord-squiggletits]

"Rodimus is a better Prime because it didn't hurt for him to bond with the Matrix while for Optimus it did" headcanon/theory my beloathed.

One day I'm literally gonna snap and make a whole post addressing why what's wrong bc I'm tired of the inaccuracy and tired of ppl not understanding the Point TM of IDW and its version of the Matrix/Primacy and even more tired of people putting down Optimus in favor of Rodimus by essentially arguing that being unworthy means you deserve to be punished/put in pain bc you just weren't good enough to hold the Symbol of Ultimate Authority

[a-b-riddle]

Part Six

Can't stop thinking about reader finally giving the boys a taste of their own medicine. And hurting my own feelings in the process of it all. I wanted to make this a baddie reader chapter, but its just a saddie reader chapter. I played Down Bad by T.S on repeat while writing this. Y'all need to thank @blueladys-world for being my ventor for this part.

None of them came the next day to pick up the box of everything you had collected. By everything, quite literally everything. Birthday cards and gifts. Keepsakes from your time together they had given you. Even going as far as returning lingerie they had given you. You didn't want any trace of them in your home anymore. You were gonna have to work hard in rebuilding it to be your safe space once again.

You were surprised that someone from the expo had DM'd you. Renée was an author who had tried to stop by to your stand, but got too caught up in the day. She was in London, working on her next series installment and wanted to pick your brain. Writer to writer.

The two of you agreed on a time. She had mentioned wanting to try this restaurant the last time she visited and you already knew you would be putting that meal on a credit card. It was a bit of splurge, but after the past week you deserved it. You could even wear that sexy black number that had been collecting dust in your closet.

By the time you were done getting ready and squeezing into your dress, you looked more ready for a date than dinner with a colleague.

A colleague. You had a colleague!!!

The knock on the door pulled you from your girlish glee. You didn't need to guess who it was. Your friends knew to text you before they came over and Renée had agreed just to meet you at the restaurant.

It was one of them.

You didn't even t bother looking through your peephole before you opened the door to find Johnny standing there with a floral arrangement of your favorite flowers.

Johnny began to speak, afraid you were going to shut him down immediately no less. But no words came out. His eyes traveled up and down your body, taking you in.

A vision.

You wanted to snap at him that your eyes weren't located on your hips. But damn if it didn’t feel empowering seeing Johnny’s gaze gloss over.

"Fuck me." He swore, gathering his bearings before realizing you were dressed. In a sexy black dress and heels and makeup and oh, fuck you were going out. "Where are you going?"

"First off, none of your business," you said holding a finger up. "And secondly, what are you doing here?"

"Listen," "Bon-"

"The box is right there." You said pointing to a large cardboard box on the floor. "That's everything."

"If you just let me make it-"

"Up to me?" You cut him off again. "I'm over it. Really."

"Just give me a chance."

"Either you haven't spoken to the other two to know I am well and truly done with this situationship, or you’re hoping some half-ass apology and flowers will let you get a last fuck in and the skedaddle. So hopefully if it was latter, hopefully the former answered that for ya.”

So if that's all you came here for, I've got to get going. My reservation is at seven and it's rude to keep a friend waiting."

"It's been a week and you're already going on a date?" He accused.

"Who said anything about a date?" You didn't outright say it wasn't. Where would be the fun in that? “It's just dinner with a colleague.” You didn’t want to lie. It wasn’t a date. But you didn’t need to say it was a woman. “Hardly a date.”

“Look at the sight of ye!" He said, taking the opportunity to take a quick look at how deliciously your ass filled that dress. “A fookin’ dinner with a colleague. Like one of us would show up to a briefing like that.” You opened your compact. Not needed in the age of cellphones but loving the feminine touch.

There was something so... seductive about using a compact mirror to apply your lipstick.

“Kyle does have the legs for this dress.” You said, applying that lipstick he loves. That same shade that looked beautiful on your lips. The same lipstick you would mark all over Johnny’s body. “Believe what you want. Not my problem anymore.”

You put your compact back in your purse along with the lipstick in case you needed to reapply it after dinner.

Johnny's eyes zeroed in on your lips before his eyes met yours. That's when you felt it again. That undeniably spark of chemistry that you had with him. With all of them. That feeling that sucked the very breath from your lungs and for a moment all you could see was the man in front of you.

"Bonnie," he said placing his hands on your neck. His thumbs stroking your cheeks softly. "Just one more chance." He begged, his voice breaking. "I'm a fucking git, but I won't let you go again. I won't leave." You knew that when it came to promises, Johnny had proven that even if he didn't mean to break them, he had forgotten he made them in the first place.

But in that moment you didn't care. Even after everything, Meredith was right. You had loved them. Everything else had ended so shitty. John had blamed you. Kyle had only shown up until it was too late. And Simon. The last time you would ever hear his voice was after he said such cruel things to you.

No.

If you were done with Johnny, you won't let the last time he fucked you being a quick, rough fuck doggystyle before leaving you naked and alone in your bed.

No. The last time with Johnny needed to be good. It might make it harder to finally leave, but you needed this. You needed to know that he could still make love to you and not just fuck you like an animal in heat.

"Johnny?" You asked. Your mouth dangerously close to his. "I don't want you to fuck me."

"I don't have to," he said, starting to take a step back to give you some space before your hands reached his. Holding him in place.

He can't let you go. You couldn't let him go. Not yet. Just one more. You needed just one more time to get him out of your system. The closure you needed.

"Make love to me." You begged, your eyes pleading. "I need to know that I wasn't just something you wanted to fuck." You don't move as his eyes search yours, looking for reassurance. When you nod, his mouth softly touches your own.

His hands travel along your body, but never fully leave you. Sliding your neck to your back. Pulling your body closer to his. A hand placed on your hip so tightly he's afraid you might disappear.

There's no rush, no haste in his touch. His mouth not eager to devour you.

He's slow. With his hands, his tongue. Even when he picks you up and walks to your bedroom with your legs around his waist.

He doesn't throw you on the bed.

Not this time.

He lays you down. His body laying on top of yours. His hand skimming along your bare thighs, but not daring to travel any higher.

But damn you needed him. You wanted love making, but if he didn't get inside you soon, you weren't sure you could let him go after this. You weren't sure you would be able to leave.

"Johnny," you whimpered, pulling away from his mouth. "Please." You took his hand, putting it between your thigh. Aching for any friction.

He obeyed without hesitation. If you told him to get on his bark, he would in that moment. Anything to make you happy. Anything to keep you.

"Got to get you out of this dress first." He resting on his knees before he began to slide the black satin from your thighs to your stomach. You maneuvered, helping him undress you leaving you in nothing.

"I thought you liked the dress." You couldn't help, but tease. Your hand finding its home on the back of his neck, pulling you to him once more.

In a tone lacking any note of humor and in all seriousness, he looked at you. Really looking at you. Taking in how your smile reached your beautiful eyes before he said, "I want you bare to me when I take you."

You felt your stomach flutter at his words before he began to take off his clothes.

He joined you again. His body relaxing when they got between your legs again. His mouth traveled from your exposed neck to your nipples. Sucking and flicking them with his tongue until your back arched. Pressing harder into his mouth.

Your hands tangled in his soft brown hair before you boldly guided him to your already dripping core. He slid down your body before his hands began to push your knees apart until you were fully expose to him.

With your knees bent, Johnny settled on his stomach, placing soft kisses on your soft inner thighs. God, did he love seeing you squirm. He smiled at your tortured expression before looking down at your sex. "There she is." He said before placing a kiss on your pussy.

It wasn't sloppy. He wasn't diving in and licking at your center like so many times before. He was kissing it just as tenderly as he kissed your mouth. Slowly building it deeper and deeper. Adding tongue. Breaking away to readjust his head.

The delicious ache between your thighs began to become to unbearable. "Need you inside me." You panted. "Johnny-"

"Shhh." He soothed. "Got to warm you up first , Bonnie." He said before slipping his finger inside of you. One was all it took before your head settled against the pillows again. When your body relaxed, he added another. He would need to add three to make sure you were good and ready.

His digits stroked that spongy spot inside of you that made your toes curl. "You're barely fitting around my fingers." Johnny was a good 6 inches in length, but the girth is what always did you in. It hurt to take anything past his head into your mouth. If you fucked him without any preparation, especially after a week of no sex, he would tear you into too.

His tongue caressed your clit, your eyes squeezing shut as you felt your first orgasm creeping up on you.

"Johnny." You moaned, your fingers running through his soft brown hair.

"Give it to me, beauty." He panted. "Come on my face. Squeeze my fingers, Lass." He begged before his mouth went back to you.

It was like lightning. Your body now sensitive after being forsaken for so long. Your vision blurred and before you could process it, Johnny was sitting on his haunches between your legs, stroking his cock.

You could only nod, dazed and barely keeping a grip onto the reality of what this was.

The end.

He leaned forward, his cock nestling against you. You knew this was going to be nothing compared to his fingers. "Tell me if I need to stop."

You smiled, mockingly. Reminding him, "Not our first time together, Johnny." just our last.

"You were wrapped tight around my fingers." He gave a half smile before kissing your forehead. The gesture like a knife twisting in your heart. "I just don't want to hurt you."

"I'm ready." You brought your legs around his waist again. Pulling him to you, your arms wrapping around his neck as your mouths meet.

He presses into you. The head of his cock sliding inside just one or two inches. You body contracting around him in a small spasm. He swallows your moan and lets you adjust. He pulls away before looking down where the two of you meet.

"I could die like this, Lass." He said, his breath coming out unsteady as he tries his best to control himself. So close to just burying himself inside of you to the fucking hilt. "Seeing you like this is this first thing I want to see when I make it to the other side." You let out a choked cry as he pushes deeper inside you. Another inch. And another. And another until you're taking all of him.

He slurs something that sound like "fuck", but you are in too much of a daze to care. You arch into him, trying to get closer.

His thrusts are slow and deep. His pubic bone brushing against your clit making you whine and squirm. Begging for more.

You're not sure how long he had fucked you like that.

You needed it to stop.

You couldn't handle it. The softness. His words.

I could die like this, Lass.

Your lip quivered as you told him you wanted to be on top. You needed a moment. A chance to create a bit of space before he shattered your world yet again.

He pulled out. His absence already making you ache for him again before he settled beside you.

You squatted above his cock. Your feet flat against the mattress as you grabbed his hardness and slipping it inside of you. The sound you let out was pornographic. A high pitched, soft moan slipping from your lips as he buried himself inside of you again.

You placed you hands on his chest. Using the leverage to ride him. Your arms serving as barrier for you to get your bearings.

You used his body just as he had used yours. Throwing your head back, you moved faster and faster. Readjusting so your hands went from his chest to his stomach, giving him a better view of your connecting bodies.

His hand slips between the two of you, thumb pressing against your clit, and you tighten even more around. A needy whimper coming out of your throat. The sound mixing in with the sounds of his labored breathing and slapping skin as he begins to fuck up into you.

Even though he had been doing all the work for the last several minutes, you felt the tension start to creep into your calf.

"Fuck fuck fuck." You screech, barely able to hold yourself up any longer. "Ow." You hissed as the cramp took hold.

"Leg cramp?" He asked, not even faltering in his thrusts. You pathetically nod before he takes it upon himself to flip you on your back again.

"I'm going to do this every chance I can." He promises, pressing a searing kiss onto your exposed neck. "Any chance you'll give me." You can't take it. His words, his mouth, his fucking cock. It's too much. "I'm going to show you how much I want you. How much I want to fucking worship ye. Do anything to make you feel good. Not going to leave you again like that, Bonnie."

You reach for him again, pull him into a searing kiss just to shut him up. You need him to shut up. You couldn't take his false promises. You wouldn't survive it. Couldn't.

"Shit." His thrusts quicken, his thumb returning to your swollen bud. Flicking it in a way he had crafted into an art. He buries his face into your neck and you know he's getting close.

You weren't too far behind.

He didn't want to come, not yet, but this was fully out of his control. It was pathetic. A week without sex and you had him nearly coming in the first ten minutes.

But that's what you want. To see him lost in the idea that you would stay.

"Johnny." You groan out. "Please. Cum inside me."

He draws fast, beautiful circles around your clit that immediately push you over the edge. You shut your eyes tight, squeezing him like a vice as you come in strong waves, continuing to push inside you.

in out in out in out.

Deliciously clenching around him tighter and tighter until he can't take it anymore.

"Fuck," he says again, and you see it in his face, and you see it in his face, the second it's all over for him. You want to sear the image in your head. Keep it there forever. Knowing you'll never see it again. The way those enchanting blue eyes squint nearly shut before closing in complete ecstacy.

His mouth would open. A moan caught in his throat that he isn't ready to let go.

His hand closes around your hip, holding you to him while he presses as far as he can go, and it's only then do you feel his cock twitch in quick, jerky movements. He moans out your name before taking your mouth into a searing kiss.

"I fucking love you." He says. "So fucking much."

He was still under the blanket when you returned from the bathroom. You picked up your clothes up from the floor. Looking at the clock realizing you had less than five minutes to get out the door before you would be late for dinner.

"What are you doing?" he asked. You couldn't look at him. Hearing the panic in his voice almost made you stop. Tell him it really was just dinner with a colleague. A woman. That you would be back. Beg him to wait until you came home.

"I can't cancel on the dinner." You said slipping your feet into your heels. "This was a mistake."

You weren't sure why you said it. You weren't sure if you were trying to convince him or yourself. If you wanted to hurt him or make him think you regretted it when you would truthfully do it again. You would do it again and again. You would never stop.

Like Johnny, you could have died in that moment, but for a completely different. Where he would be content, you would be saved from the pain. The pain currently coursing throughout your very soul.

"Lock the door behind you." You say as you practically sprint out the bedroom. Only slowing in your stride to snatch your purse off the kitchen counter before running out. The door slamming behind you.

The restaurant was nicer than you expected. The wine alone was the price of an entree. You didn't seem to be phased at all and were relieved when Renée insisted on picking up the bill.

Your dinner had been delicious and the conversation even better. Renée wrote fantasy romance and wanted to pick your brain about a Why Choose. You had nearly spent out the over priced wine you weren't even really enjoying. Oh the irony.

"It's like all the rage now, but it's hard to make more than one appealing as the love interest. You should have seen the Goodreads comments on my last book. So many people bitched about my FMC not ending up with a character who was quite literally her adopted brother."

"So," you took a breath trying to find the words. "I'm going to be honest. I only read your latest book and I loved Luka. But I can't compare him to other MMCs you've written about so I don't know if they are similar or different. But what I can say is that I'm seeing like this trend of MMCs where they are all this dark-haired, brooding or mysterious character who dislikes mostly everyone and is only soft for either a select few or only the FMC."

"I think if you are going to write a Why Choose you need to think of guys you wouldn't mind falling in love with." You couldn't help, but think of what drew you to your boys. "One could be the leader. Someone who isn't afraid to have his neck on the line. To make sure everyone else is taken care of and being strong enough to handle the stress of that. He would be big on words of affirmation. Lifting the FMC up. For me, it would be someone that I know will take care of business. He's confident in his decision. That confidence would extend to me." You clear your throat. "If I was the FMC, that is."

"Okay." She nodded, pulling out a pen and notepad. "You don't mind if I-"

"I don't write about polygamy." Crossed that bridge. Currently trying to burn it. "So feel free."

"Another could be the one who it's so easy to fall in love with their charm. The one who falls to his knees. Wanting to worship every inch of her. The one who makes her laugh. That one to make her forget about the sadness that creeps into her bones. The one to hold her whenever he could. He's about quality time and physical touch."

"So different love languages." She said, her pen quickly scribbling.

"Yeah." You said, leaning forward. "Then there is the gift giver." Your mind went to Gaz. Most of the gifts and trinkets in the box sitting by your door had came from him. He had gotten you new earbuds when yours broke. When you were being harassed at your gym, he had bought you and him a membership at a different one. "The one who would give her the world if she asked for it. If you're going with a high fantasy then maybe the one to take note of something at a market that the FMC had been eyeing and he bought it for her. Just someone who takes notice like that."

"So acts of service would fall with all of them then you think?"

No. Simon had been the one who probably spent the least amount of money on you. He didn't praise you like John. He didn't even try to attach himself at your hip like Johnny.

But if you needed something fixed, he would come fix it himself. He'd be damned letting a strange man into your apartment. And alone? Fucking forget about it. The one who hated any sort of cardio activity outside of fucking you, but didn't hesitate in attempting to keep up with you when you wanted to go on a run and get some fresh air. If you needed something done, he didn't pay someone else to do it. He did it. If you wanted to do something, he made it happen. He made you safe.

You couldn't bring yourself to say explain it. Your eyes begin to itch. Warning you to think of something else.

So instead you just told her yeah. That they would all commit acts of service. And even in your hypothetical explanation of characters that haven't even been written yet, Simon was still the ghost among them.

"Lucky fucking girl." Renée said setting down her pen.

"Yeah." You said, downing the rest of your wine.

You walked home. The cool crisp wind feeling like it was whipping your exposed skin. It was soothing as the ghost of Johnny's touch still seemed to burn you.

You had hoped that you would get some closure, but you just felt hollow. You came twice and still manage to leave unsatisfied. Johnny wasn't malicious... he was Johnny. He wasn't like the others. Simon would never apologize and John and Kyle wouldn't try to keep reaching out after you told them know once.

Johnny couldn't stand you being mad at him. He never could. He would beg and beg for your forgiveness. You didn't regret fucking him one last time. He needed to know that you were well and truly done. There was no going back from this.

"Hey, Love!" You were pulled from your thoughts at the sound of a voice coming from a source you couldn't see. You perked up, quickly scanning the dimly lit street before your eyes settled on a cluster of shadows just across the street. "Yeah." The slurring voice said again. "Talking to you gorgeous!"

You resumed your trek home. Now picking up your pace. "Don't be like that! Where ya off to?" The voice followed you. You kept your gaze straight. You were three minutes away. Three minutes and you would be at your building.

Three minutes.

Three minutes.

"What's the rush?" Another voice joined the cacophony. "Just want to have a chat."

You turned. They were maybe twenty feet away. You kept your eyes glued to them as your started to make a run for it.

You had made it about ten feet before your body collided with someone. Firm hands gripped your upper arms, steading you as you threatened to fall back.

You sucked in a breath of air, ready to scream when you looked up. It was too dark to make out the man's facial features. He was tall. His head eclipsing the street lamp just behind him. You shook beneath his hands. The voices behind you now silent.

"Keep walking." You didn't need to see his face. You knew that deep timber voice anywhere. He released you from his grip before letting you pass him.

"Just wanted to have a chat." You heard one of them try to reason. "No harm done."

"No harm done yet." Was the last thing you heard Simon say before you broke out into a full fledged run.

[biscuityskies]

With the impending implementation of Project 2025, I suspect that AO3 will come under fire as well. And given that it’s a US based organisation, and the US has wedged itself somehow into every possible thing, I would also suspect that this will have global impacts. I cannot be certain of it - I’m certainly not an expert on political things and Trump remains, frankly, unpredictable - but I have personally found it’s more helpful to prepare beforehand than to scramble to keep myself afloat in the midst of a crisis. Knowing how important our favourite stories are to so many of us, here’s what I suggest:

Readers, I recommend you find your favourite stories again. Go all the way back in your bookmarks. Tell the authors you appreciate them, and you love their work. I think we could all use some nice words right now. If you want to keep the story, I recommend downloading it: here’s a guide on how to do so from the AO3 FAQ. I personally have wanted to take up bookbinding for a hot second; I might print off my favourite fics for myself and figure out how to bind them. The OTW also recommends downloading your favourites - see link below.

Authors, I recommend you keep your manuscripts. Download them onto an external flash drive and save them for a rainy day four or so years from now. Even the ones you don’t like are worth keeping - I guarantee you somebody else likes them even if you don’t. (I’m speaking to myself here, too.) Project 2025 has blatantly laid out a ban of pornography, and they will take that to mean whatever they want it to; I suggest you don’t even keep your fics on a Google drive if possible it’s definitely easier to keep them all online, trust me, I know, but so does the government. Corporations do not care about you: they will sell you out to whoever is willing to pay. Remember also to turn off AI scraping wherever possible, or better yet use sites that don’t engage in that behaviour.

For further reading from people more qualified than I, here’s the OTW’s statement on what their plans are so far.

I hope I’m wrong. I honestly would love nothing more. But more importantly, we will get through this. Humanity has told stories and put blorbos in situations for literal millennia. We’ll see the other side of this.

[crazy-pages]

See I get this, but also, holy shit sometimes those gripe groupchats become an awful stew of shitting on everyone constantly for any and no reason. It's very easy to forget that "thoughts and feelings aren't bad, just how you act on them" and "you need to have a safe space to speak authentically" is not the same thing as a space where all your thoughts and feelings are validated and reflected back at you. There's no such thing as thoughtcrime, but there sure are thoughts we need to hear friends say "uhhh, no" to.

Places to gripe about your boss are great. Place to vent about a disappointing fanfic where you aren't shitting on someone who shared something for free are good. Places to ask friends "hey is it just me who's getting a worrying vibe off the new guy?" are important. But unless you're willing to hear that you're in the wrong, that's not a private place to vent you've got, it's an echo chamber for all your most hateful impulses.

Safe places to put your inside thoughts are important, but sometimes "safe" means a safe place to have them rejected. It means a place where you trust your loved ones enough to hear them say "I think you're in the wrong" and know to your bones that they don't mean "I hate you".

Safe doesn't mean the absence of negative feedback, it means a place where negative feedback is safe to receive. You might have deliberately curated positive spaces to calm down or recover from shit, but those cannot be the spaces where you shit on people. That's not creating a space for deliberate positivity, that's creating a place where no one is allowed to say anything if someone steps over a line.

There is no thoughtcrime, but working yourself into a frenzy over nothing because you and your friends don't know how to calm each other down or question the righteousness of your petty grievances is in fact a bad thing.

i cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have gossipy bitchy littl pirvate group chats or discord servers with like 4 people in them whose stated purpose is posting “new kind of guy” or “this reddit post is so fuckin dumb” or “i got into a fight on twitter today look at this idiot’s reply” so your homies can still see it and laugh and back you up but more importantly, so you are not tempted to post these kind of things on main

[sunderwight]

Modern AU where Shen Yuan accidentally sugar-daddies everyone.

So for the purposes of this, Shen Yuan's family is basically $10 Bananas levels of cluelessly rich. Shen Yuan has almost never had to look at the prices of anything he wants. He and his siblings all get an allowance from the family's main account, which increases when they reach adulthood, and in the interest of fairness his parents made it all the same size. So Shen Yuan gets the same amount of money for his daily living expenses as his older brothers with their penthouse apartments and vacation homes and private jets, at least from the family account (since he doesn't work, he doesn't actually make as much as them in total because they earn more on top of their allowances).

And the thing is, Shen Yuan genuinely just lives a lot more humbly. He likes people but what would he do with a vacation house? Anything really nice would probably require him to fly to get out there, and he gets sick as hell on planes. Living in the central city is also not great for him, because the air pollution is so bad. Having a whole house to himself would also be ridiculous. So he has a reasonable apartment, in a reasonable area, and he splurges every so often on purchases that make him happy and take-out food that he likes, and of course he pays a cleaning service to come in twice a week. Most people assume he's comfortably middle class and has some tech job he does from home, but he's been getting a lot more than he's been spending in his monthly allowances for years now, and the figures are big.

Enter into this environment author Airplane and his trash novels. Novels, multiple, because in this AU there's no PIDW, and instead after some alternate PIDW prototype got popular in the harem genre, Airplane decided to churn out a series of copy-paste shorter stories rather than recycling the same subplots in one massively long epic.

Shen Yuan of course discovers Airplane's writing and becomes as obsessed with it as ever, except this time he notices that if there are delays between new stories, they seem to clear up faster whenever he throws some cash at the problem. And also that the drops in Airplane's writing quality coincide with times when Shen Yuan was having health issues and not keeping up with his VIP purchases. So, he works out that Airplane's probably doing the writing for the money, and that when Peerless Cucumber isn't paying the most for it, Airplane starts listening to the other buffoons in the comment section more to try and entice them to pay his bills instead.

Peerless Cucumber leaves a comment on one of Airplane's latest stories that kicks off the two of them actually chatting, and Shen Yuan eventually gets to the point of offering to fund all Airplane's writing, in exchange for Airplane not doing his crap sellout stuff to appeal to other readers anymore. Airplane thinks he's joking or maybe mocking him. Shen Yuan asks how much it would cost. Airplane fires off a ridiculous number. Shen Yuan doesn't even blink and wires him the first payment. Then he gets annoyed because Airplane leaves him on read for a while, but that's because Airplane is staring at his account balance in shock.

Of course, it's Airplane who starts referring to Peerless Cucumber as his sugar daddy. Shen Yuan is just like "based on your sex scenes I don't think anyone would pay you for that" and Airplane's all "but you WOULD pay for my sex scenes ^_~" and Shen Yuan's like "technically I am actually paying you not to write that shit" and so on. Usual banter. The quality of Airplane's writing improves dramatically, a lot of his readership drops off but he does get new readers and gradually builds up an even bigger fanbase than before, and so on, it all goes pretty well. He eventually writes a few things that take off to the point of getting physical publications and international translations. Technically Airplane no longer needs Shen Yuan to pay all of his bills by that point but he's not going to tell Shen Yuan that! The contract's still good as long as he keeps writing!

Then one of Airplane's online acquaintances runs into some financial trouble and asks for help.

Liu Mingyan used to beta read for Airplane back when he wrote fanfiction (she was like thirteen, Airplane was unaware because internet and hey free beta), and it seems her family has hit a rough patch. She wants tips on how to go pro, but Airplane explains that it was extremely difficult and he mostly lucked out by finding a single wealthy backer. Mingyan wonders if the same guy would be interested in her writing, Airplane sadly thinks not because Mingyan exclusively writes kinky danmei erotica and Peerless Cucumber seems pretty firmly in the closet still and also generally prefers plotty and world-building heavy stuff.

But like, Airplane has definitely gotten a vibe off of Cucumber-bro, and Mingyan's gorgeous older brother does video streams of himself doing cool martial arts and swordsmanship stuff. So he asks her permission and when she gives it, he recommends Liu Qingge's videos to Shen Yuan, being sure to mention that the guy in question can't really afford to keep up with his hobbies and oh what a shame it would be if he had to stop making art like that.

Haha, Airplane, you're not subtle.

Even so, Shen Yuan watches the videos and immediately agrees that Liu Qingge is beauty in motion, and that it would be criminal to deprive the world of more videos of his sword. Swordsmanship! That is the, the art of, martial arts! Definitely. He clicks the donate button, reasoning out that he'll just send a donation about the size of his usual monthly payments to Airplane and call it his good deed for the day.

Liu Qingge is very confused by this new follower from nowhere who suddenly dumped a little over a month's rent into his account. One thing leads to another, with Mingyan and Airplane conspiring to try and get Shen Yuan as a permanent patron, and then Liu Qingge being let in on it. Except that Airplane keeps referring to Shen Yuan as his sugar daddy, and well... it's not like Liu Qingge doesn't ever get 'those' kinds of comments on his videos. At first he's embarrassed, then offended, then mortified that his own younger sister is apparently setting him up to make premium private videos for what he assumes is some old pervert who is going to want him to do untoward things.

However, their options are pretty bleak at the moment, and Liu Qingge worries that if he doesn't do this then Mingyan might. She even mentions something to the effect of having planned to offer herself, and only didn't because she wasn't this "sugar daddy" guy's type!

Teeth clenched, Liu Qingge asks Airplane stiltedly for advice on how to... appeal, to this wealthy benefactor.

In the end though it's not nearly as bad as Liu Qingge feared. He winds up doing more videos in costumes and cosplay, which ought to have been an untenable expense, but Peerless Cucumber always ends up covering the cost of whatever he invests in plus extra. Sometimes he sends Liu Qingge stuff with a request to wear it, but so far it's just been like, badass warrior-themed or historical costumes. Nothing overtly pervy. He does some LARPing, he makes enough to start doing horseback archery again, convinces some of his good-looking peers from various clubs to spar with him, and ultimately the most risque videos he ends up doing are the ones where he demonstrates how to put on certain kinds of gear. He still locks those ones behind paid subscribers only, mostly because he feels like he's doing something illicit now, even if he used to show more skin on his older videos any time he took his shirt off.

Peerless Cucumber doesn't leave creepy comments, either. In fact he seems genuinely nice and supportive, it's hard not to like him, and so even once his situation levels out Liu Qingge decides there's not really much need to stop making videos for him. (He maybe even gets a little giddy thrill over... well, sometimes he finds it all a bit... just when he thinks about Peerless Cucumber watching him demonstrate his physical prowess and finding that alone worth... ANYWAY--)

So that goes on for a while, before Yue Qi enters the scene.

Yue Qi is the childhood friend of one of Shen Yuan's older brothers (Shen bros!) and Shen Jiu owes him a big favor for something that he won't talk about. At least he won't talk to Shen Yuan about it. But Yue Qi is also not the type to ask for help, and Shen Jiu is very bad at offering it, so when Shen Jiu gets word that Yue Qi is having some difficulties making ends meet, he tells Shen Yuan to act as the middle man. Go offer Qi-ge money, he knows you're nice he'll just accept it, and then Shen Jiu will pay the actual bill.

Well it turns out that Yue Qi doesn't just accept it, of course he sees right through it, and gently but firmly tells Shen Yuan that he's not interested in burdening Shen Jiu further than he already has. Etc, etc, stoic stiff upper lips and no proper communication all around. Shen Yuan panics because it's not working and he's also genuinely worried about Yue Qi by now, so he tries to figure out how to make it compelling and basically blurts that, well, see, the thing is that sometimes he pays men to entertain him. You know. To like. Do things, for him. So. He could also pay Yue Qi? To do something for him?

Yue Qi gets the wrong idea entirely, and at first is like, oh, no, A'Yuan, you shouldn't be paying people for that! These things should just happen organically! But Shen Yuan is very adamant that he believes in compensating people for what they do for him, it's not like he can't afford to, and it gets awkward but Yue Qi is like well he does have health problems. It's perhaps difficult for him to meet people. So then he starts worrying about Shen Yuan and all these strange men he's apparently paying for "entertainment". Does his brother know about this?

No of course Shen Jiu doesn't know! He'd hate it, and Shen Yuan doesn't want to hear about how he's doing everything wrong with his life again!

Then Shen Yuan mentions that his prior house cleaning service up and quit on him (they didn't), and if Yue Qi would like to earn fair compensation he could just come over sometimes to help instead, and Shen Yuan would pay him just to tidy up and hang out for a few hours! Which Yue Qi thinks is a fantastic idea, actually, even if Shen Yuan is only doing this because of his brother, this will give Yue Qi a chance to keep an eye on him and his so-called entertainers. Even if he sort of... ends up also being one?

Shen Yuan keeps everything above board, though his apartment always seems perfectly clean and he overpays way too much (Shen Jiu is still footing this bill after all), and Yue Qi starts to think maybe he actually is being paid for intimacy. Of a sort that they're maybe still working up to? Shen Yuan usually has a very thin face after all. He's kind of got two minds about this prospect. On the one hand, he's got his situationship with Shen Jiu, so dating his brother would be absurd. But on the other hand, it's not actually dating, and he does like Shen Yuan, and maybe if they can be good company for each other then Yue Qi won't feel so depressed and Shen Yuan won't need to hire strange men so often.

Meanwhile it's come to Shen Yuan's attention, perhaps through an offhand comment he read online somewhere, that people who are struggling financially often also struggle to "treat themselves". Because even when they have enough money to be comfortable there's often the looming specter of deprivation, and etc, so he figures he should start buying some of his dependents more treats and things. Since they might not buy them for themselves? And also he's enjoying doing this but shhh no he isn't, it's a huge hassle, he's only doing it out of basic moral decency, etc.

So like, Airplane starts getting little things that he'd put on some public wish lists, clearly sent by Peerless Cucumber. And he tells Mingyan to make a list for Liu Qingge too, and sure enough, Liu Qingge (bewildered, slightly flustered) tries to figure out what he's supposed to do with an album from a band he likes and some high-end leather polish. Ultimately settles on playing the music and wearing his nicest leather in his next video. Yue Qi starts arriving at Shen Yuan's place to be plied with his favorite coffees and to have scented candles awkwardly foisted onto him (Shen Yuan does not know what Yue Qi likes in gifts) (he buys these presents himself they're not out of Shen Jiu's pocket).

So finally Shen Yuan's parents start to notice that he's been spending a lot more than usual, and start to worry that he's either been taken in by a scam artist or is secretly dating a gold digger or has developed a drug addiction or something. But asking things directly like normal people is basically illegal in the Shen family, so they decide to hire a private investigator.

Enter Luo Binghe, a young man of humble background who is struggling to make ends meet after the untimely death of his adoptive mother, and is using his P.I. job and his online cooking videos to help pay his way through school (scholarship student). Usually his cases are more like, cyberstalking someone to find out if they're cheating on their spouse, or helping someone planning a lawsuit accumulate evidence on their corrupt employer, or other things like that. When he gets the Shen Yuan case, the idea that the Shen family's son is paying for "company" is well within his list of probable answers.

Though this one is a little... peculiar?

Mostly because Binghe can't find evidence of Shen Yuan actually getting what he would, presumably, be paying for. At first Luo Binghe just goes through the online paper trails, using the info that the Shen parents give him to figure out that Shen Yuan is paying Airplane and Swordmaster Liu (*cough*) what seem to be exorbitant prices just for trashy fiction and cosplay videos. He assumes this is a cover, that someone's actually delivering drugs or going over for "private meetings" or at least actually sending dirty videos as well, but even when he pays for Liu Qingge's VIP access it's just tutorials and such. Neither of these guys are even on any of the sites that are more lenient towards hosting explicit content. Luo Binghe's aware that kinks aren't always obviously sexual, but people don't usually pay through the nose for the kind of content they can easily find for free all over the place, either.

He digs a little more but keeps coming up empty on evidence to clarify which of the many vices the Shen family's son is actually indulging in. Which is a problem because that's the information they're paying him to find out. Plus his curiosity kind of piques as he reads Shen Yuan's seemingly quite invested comments on Airplane's writing and Liu Qingge's videos, looking to see if there's any kind of clandestine code or pattern. But near as he can tell, whatever else Shen Yuan might be getting out of these arrangements, he does genuinely like the stories and videos too? Well. Sometimes. Sometimes he's actually scathingly vitriolic towards Airplane's writing.

Luo Binghe decides that surveilling Shen Yuan himself is probably the way to go. That gets more complicated in court cases, but since the Shen parents just wants to know what's going on and aren't planning on prosecuting their son for anything, it doesn't matter as much if Luo Binghe gets information in sneaky or underhanded ways.

So, Binghe uses the account he created to access Liu Qingge's videos to chat with Shen Yuan a few times, and then recommends his own cooking channel. Shen Yuan doesn't seem too interested in cooking, so Luo Binghe makes sure to include a video that has an image of himself in his recommendation, and then films a few new videos of himself cooking with his shirtsleeves rolled up to three quarters and a few more buttons than usual unbuttoned, adopting a more flirty persona than he typically does for his shows. He takes his cues from some of Liu Qingge's more popular videos for how to be enticing bait.

It takes a few videos, but eventually Shen Yuan comments. Luo Binghe latches onto the chance to start talking to him, playing up a persona of a vulnerable young man with little means who is trying hard to make it through school, etc, and sure enough Shen Yuan seems interested. Well, most predatory people like vulnerable targets, don't they?

However... Shen Yuan just sends him a chunk of money.

Luo Binghe is confused.

Isn't he supposed to ask for something or create some kind of expectation of repayment first? But, maybe this is his approach to handling new targets. Maybe he's just trying to lull Binghe into a false sense of complacency, before he starts indicating what he wants from all of this. Luo Binghe makes sure to move the money Shen Yuan sends him into a separate account, so that if the Shen parents get angry about it then he can return it as a gesture of good faith.

But Shen Yuan just keeps sending supportive comments and donations. Eventually he leaves a comment that alludes to how badly he'd like to taste Binghe's cooking, and Binghe is like finally, but when he implies that they could perhaps meet in person and Luo Binghe could thank him for his support by making him something, Shen Yuan backs off.

Things eventually progress to the point where Luo Binghe, who is a totally normal person treating this like a totally normal job still thank you very much, is basically camping out in the bushes in front of Shen Yuan's apartment building. At some point he conscripts the aid of his weird cousin (finding his birth family was how he got into this business initially), and then almost immediately regrets it because Shen Yuan helps get Zhuzhi Lang a job doing landscaping for his building.

Why would he want Zhuzhi Lang close but not Binghe? Binghe is much handsomer! He'd make an excellent target for seduction! >:(

Anyway eventually Yue Qi catches Luo Binghe lurking around like a creeper and is like, finally, I have caught one of these suspicious men, whilst Binghe is like oh so he does have a lover, well this guy sucks and is clearly not good enough for him, and they both try and chase one another off and Shen Yuan comes home to a heated passive-aggressive-politeness war being waged in front of his apartment. Eventually he realizes the misunderstanding and calls everyone together (zoom conference? in-person meet-up?) to clarify that he is not paying any of them for "special favors", that was just Airplane being deranged about his sense of humor, and then he has no idea what to do when the prevailing response seems to be disappointment.

[osaemu]

GOJO SATORU: ❛❛ FINDERS KEEPERS, LOSERS WEEPERS! ❜❜

.ೃ࿐ streamer!au: the user "gojoslittleslut" tries to make a move on your boyfriend, but she doesn't stand a chance

contents: fem!reader. it's not too serious, nobody gets angry/jealous (except the comments lol). if u haven't already read the other streamer!gojo works u probably should so u understand the dynamic between satoru and his commenters !

author's note: reader is actually a mature person who doesn't pick fights with random ppl on the internet and i think we should all be more like her ꨄ︎

satoru leans back in his chair, idly chatting with people who pop up in his comments after he finishes his last round of the co-op game. his viewers are eager to chat, and some even shoot money satoru's way to draw his attention. whenever someone donates money, he gives them a quick shoutout and has a small back-and-forth with them, and he does that for everyone.

that is, until a user with a questionable username donates to his stream.

gojoslittleslut has donated $100.00!

gojoslittleslut: notice me pls

"shit, a hundred dollars?" satoru says, raising his eyebrows in mild surprise. "thanks, gojoslittl— oh, fuck, what is that?"

you look up from your laptop and see the way your boyfriend's cheeks have gone bright red. satoru laughs a bit nervously, so you get up and walk over, making sure to stay out of sight of the camera. you sit on satoru's desk beside his computer and peer at his screen curiously.

gojoslittleslut: im ur number one fan~

satoru's eyes flicker to yours for a second before he looks back at his monitor. "ah, well, thanks for the donation!" he replies, completely ignoring the user's advances.

suguru-geto: he has a gf ...

gojoslittleslut: yeah

gojoslittleslut: me

you cover your mouth to suppress a giggle, scrunching up your nose at satoru to let him know that you really weren't taking it too seriously. after all, it's just some random person on the internet—they don't stand a chance with your boyfriend. 

satoru reaches over and takes your hand, twining his fingers with yours off-camera. he ignores the sudden burst of comments that litter the corner of his screen, instead watching you intently. in response, you roll your eyes playfully and blow him a kiss, snickering when satoru pretends to faint.

eventually, he turns back to his screen, cerulean eyes doing a quick once-over of his new comments.

toji-fushiguro: ill take his gf any day

inumaki: we know gtfo

gojoslittleslut: toji i get gojo and u take his girl. deal?

toji-fushiguro: bet

"alright guys, settle down," satoru huffs, rolling his eyes. "for the record, i still have a girlfriend and i don't plan on changing that anytime soon," he clarifies, addressing the current feud going on in his comments. 

satoru's a good streamer—he does his best to keep things cordial and lighthearted with his audience, but he also knows his limits. one of his limits involves people trying to separate you and him, his one true pairing (of course satoru's otp is his own relationship).

your boyfriend leans closer to the screen and scowls good-naturedly, holding up the hand still wrapped around yours. "this isn't gonna change, so don't even think about it!"

satoru says his goodbyes and then ends the stream, turning to you with a sigh. "how down bad do you have to be to name yourself 'gojo's little slut?'" he grumbles, clicking through his stream analytics and finding the user. he opens gojoslittleslut's profile and studies it for a moment before hovering his mouse over the block button.

he leans back in his chair and tilting his chin up at you. "she just gave me a hundred dollars, so i kinda feel bad about blocking her," satoru muses, tapping his foot on the floor. he looks up at where you still sit on his desk, twirling a strand of hair around your finger. "c'mere," he mumbles, slipping his hands around your waist and hoisting you into his lap with a soft grunt.

satoru rests his chin on your shoulder and nudges his face into your neck, breath tickling your skin. "you know that i'm all yours, right?"

"of course i do," you murmur, settling into his arms. he's warm and comfortable, like always. satoru smiles warmly and kisses the side of your face, letting his lips linger.

"good. 'cause no fan account's ever gonna change that."

[lyrefromthesea]

Male pillars x Reader - sitting on their lap

author's note: I'm strictly against any kind of sexual interactions with minors. That's why I will either exclude Muichiro from such fics of or portray a wholesome interaction instead.

pairing: Tengen x reader, Obanai x reader, Rengoku x reader, Sanemi x reader, Giyuu x reader, Muichiro x reader, Gyomei x reader

content warning: suggestive words and actions

Tengen:

"excuse me? I'm married!" he dramatically exclaimed, looking down at you. the man was already trying to refrain from smiling, watching you turn your head towards him.

"i'm sure Hinatsuru, Makio and Suma will forgive me." you answered, showing him your hand. he smirked at the all too familiar ring. he was glad he had married you.

"just playin', i could never disappoint the flamboyant person i married!" he laughed, clearly proud of himself. when you cocked your eyebrow at him, he let out a dramatic gasp, pulling you closer.

"are you trying to say i'm not the most perfect husband you could imagine?" he asked, displaying a huge amount of shock. you knew he was just making fun, especially when he pressed your back against his chest, bringing his lips to your ear.

"you were saying entirely different things yesterday." he said, watching you shudder at his words. you slapped his knee, scolding him for saying such things outside.

"come on, you know you love it!"

Obanai:

he freezes, his brain nearly malfunctioning. it's not like you've never sat on his lap before, but you usually gave him a warning first - asked for his approval.

"[name]? what's-" he asked, surprised when your arms wrapped around his neck, barely giving Kaburamaru time to slither away. words got stuck in his throat, feeling your lips against his mask - right above his own.

"nothing. i was just feeling affectionate." you answered, shifting to wrap your arms around his torso. he looked down at you, letting out a quiet yelp when your hips moved a bit too much on his lap.

"oh..?" you looked at him, a smile slowly forming on your lips. a blush made his way towards his cheeks, luckily covered by his mask. at least he felt lucky, you would've liked to see him blush.

"it looks like you're feeling affectionate too, Obanai." you chuckled, purposely drawing light circles with your hips. of course you had noticed the growing bulge in his pants, his hands now holding yours.

"don't tease me, [name].."

Rengoku:

"little flame! how was your day?" he enthusiastically asked, his arms wrapping around your torso. he pulled you closer, placing his chin on your shoulder.

"it was okay, i missed you." you answered, leaning against his chest. he smiled at you, enjoying the way your bodies were pressed together so gently.

"we can't have that, little flame! how about we go eat later?" he asked, holding you a bit closer. you chuckled at his words, he really loved taking you to new places - especially restaurants.

"i'd like that. let's go eat something later."

Sanemi:

"and what the hell are you doing?" Sanemi asked, feeling you make yourself comfortable on his lap.

he had cleaned his sword moments prior, hearing the door open - it was you. you moved towards him without warning, getting between him and his sword.

"getting your attention." you answered, moving even closer. don't think he didn't notice the way you purposely squished your chest against his own.

"yeah? didn't I give ya enough attention, sweetheart?" he teased, watching you pout in response. you had been alone for far too long, you finally wanted to spend time with him.

"you've been working on your sword for two hours now.." you complained. he placed it down, knowing that you were right. he just felt like the proper care could safe his ass one day, though a shiny sword probably wasn't that important.

"fine, ya win. this was getting uncomfortable anyways." he answered, almost making you question what he meant until he pressed his hips against yours more. oh, now you could feel it too.

"does that mean you want my attention as well-" you asked playfully, getting cut off by his lips pressing against yours before you could finished talking.

Giyuu:

"is everything alright?" his voice broke the silence, you've been sitting on his lap for almost 5 minutes now, not saying a single word. he was confused, not sure if you were fine or needed help.

"Giyuu, attention?" you asked, feeling him relax under you. he had been tense, thinking you could've been hurt somewhere. your words instantly calmed him down, his lips pressing against yours gently.

he didn't expect you to turn his soft kiss into something more passionate. his hands slowly came to hold your hips, tongues swishing against each other.

you broke the kiss, panting against his lips. he pressed his forehead against yours, pulling you a bit closer, only to have your hips start grinding slightly.

"l- love.. t- that's not.." he muttered, his cheeks visibly growing more red. hands squeezing your hips more, trying to create more friction. he could only moan when you finally started grinding against him properly.

"i.. i need to go on a mission later.." he panted against your lips, but he didn't object when you kissed him again, your hand wandering to his belt.

Muichiro:

"Muichiro! i finally caught up to you.." you heaved, letting yourself fall onto his lap. you had been running for nearly twenty minutes now, watching the boy leave his estate without food. being the good friend you were, you ran after him.

"[name]? what are you doing here..?" he asked, letting you lean against him. your cheeks were flushed from running. it would've been different if you also were a hashira, but you still had much to learn.

"you.. you forget your food, Mui.." you panted, reaching into your pocket. he looked rather surprised when he saw the small box of food he usually brought with him.

"thank you..! i've completely forgotten." he laughed, eventually coaxing a smile out of you. you gave him the box, seeing his eyes lit up at the promise of food.

he wanted to dive right in before he had a quiet growl come from your stomach, making your cheeks flush. "do you want some?" he asked, watching you shake your head.

"i brought my own!" you countered, grabbing into your back once more. silence filled the room when you noticed you had only brought his food.

his arm wrapped around your torso, forcing you to stay on his lap a while longer. "let's share." he said, offering you some of his food. you knew he wouldn't let you go until you have had a healthy portion.

Gyomei:

"welcome back." the giant said, feeling you plop onto his lap, nuzzling against his chest. you let out a tired hum, feeling a large hand soothingly rub over your arm.

"is there something wrong? you're more quiet than usual." he asked, gently bringing your head closer with his hand - allowing you to be closer to him. you could hear the gentle rhythm of his heartbeat.

your day had been stressful, but he somehow always managed to calm you down. his warmth. his voice. his actions. they put your mind at ease.

"i know it's ridiculous, but i've felt really stressed out lately. i just want a break.." you muttered, closing your eyes. you were trying to focus on his heartbeat and ignore everything else around you.

"it's not ridiculous, you deserve a break. perhaps a visit to the hot spring would help calm you down?" he offered, feeling you nod against his chest. you felt warm hands rub over your thighs, his head now closer to yours.

"and i could pamper you a bit more after that.." he muttered against your ear, your eyes opening again. the warmth pooling in your gut could probably rival the hot spring's temperature