#WHICH MAY I ADD JUST ADDS TO ITS MEANING!!

[mythalism]

You seem to be both a solavellan and mythal fan so maybe I won’t get shot for this question lol

Veilguard was my first game. I kept default settings, which meant solavellan world state.

I genuinely wonder: what makes people think Solas loves Lavellan? Or that if being with Mythal possible, he still would choose Lavellan?

He is so clearly not over Mythal. Last game is filled with references to their connection, she herself confirms that both still love each other. He is very protective of her while arguing with Elgarnan. Statues of them everywhere, him painting and playing songs about her, his very own room having statues of Mythal… In the end he discloses he does it all for her, refuses to stop after Lavellan’s appeals, and only does so after Mythal shows up.

In comparison, Solas describes what he had with Lavellan as “entanglement he selfishly grow close to” he both regrets and cherishes. Most of the romance is carried on Inquisitor’s shoulders, as she both explicitly tells what he means to her, reaches out to him and ultimately shares his burden of atonement.

I couldn’t understand why this ship was so popular, so I watched solavellan romance in DAI. And while it was beautifully done, having the context of Veilguard, I just keep seeing Mythal in every “we shouldn’t”/his face after balcony kiss/ultimately abandoning her in the end. It feels almost unfair and cruel for him to enter another relationship while his heart isn’t free. And to visit Lavellan’s dreams afterwards

What am I missing?

a lot of people would shoot you for this. but dont worry i am not one of them. be careful out there tho

i think the first thing i would say is that instead of watching a video, you would need to do play a full solavellan playthrough of the game if you do want to genuinely understand the relationship and why it is so beloved. im not sure which compilation you watched, but even one that includes all their conversations (rather than just the cutscenes, of which there are very few) cannot do the relationship justice. so much of understanding solas as a character and how he loves people, by extension, is wrapped up in how he reacts to the world at large, its people, its history, its institutions, and its metaphysics. assuming you're new to DA and wouldn't know this, solas's romance in inquisition is the shortest, most sparse romance in the game, and was added later in development. as a result, much of his essential characterization happens outside the bounds of romance content, but still adds deeper meaning, context, and depth to the relationship. even in terms of romance specific content, some of my favorite content occurs in banter that probably was not included in the video you watched. the solas romance is less a standalone love story, in the way many of the romances are, and more of a big juicy delicious cherry on top that helps you better understand the overall dragon age solas plot/cake you're eating.

theres a couple non-romance specific scenes that shed significant light on solas & mythal's dynamic from his perspective that i am not sure if you have seen and honestly i wouldnt recommend watching them because, again, i think you should just play inquisition and experience them in the proper context. but solas's companion personal quest is directly about his corruption at the hands of mythal, though we didn't know that until veilguard came out and contextualized it. and this quest pretty explicitly demonstrates how he feels about what she did to him: rage, beyond forgiveness, deserving of death. he also comments on her at the temple of mythal, and his comments are mostly neutral but verging on judgemental, and do illuminate that while he may have loved her, he certainly did not trust her. it is he who first clarifies that she was a goddess of vengeance, rather than justice. which i cant think about too long or else i'll get angry that they ret-conned it to benevolence -> retribution or whatever the fuck and erased the anders/justice/vengeance parallel... anyway

but i think more telling is his absolute refusal to drink from the well if asked, and most telling; how he fears for an inquisitor who drank.

he specifically calls mythal dangerous, arrogant, and fickle, absolutely refuses to submit to her will once again via the drinking of the well, and begs an inquisitor he loves not to do the same lest she suffer the same fate. he loves mythal, of course, but he also fears her. he is critical of her behavior and wary of her motivations. his love for her exists alongside his recognition of what she was.

another fairly vital bit of information is how according to trespasser (cole banter), solas used to wear mythal vallaslin until he burnt it off his own face when he developed his vallaslin removal spell. its how he got the little scar above his eyebrow. meaning, if vallaslin were slave markings, that solas was effectively enslaved to her. this is... pretty important context, obviously. but we never find out what it might have been like for him. veilguard.... didnt forget but rather deliberately ignored this because it wasnt willing to interrogate the issue of slavery which had been vital to solas as the leader of a slave rebellion. ugh. anyway.

this leads into my next point which is that veilguard really drastically changes solas's motivations to be far more mythal-centric than what was set up in inquisition/trespasser. we always knew something was up with them, and people always wondered if they might have been lovers, but veilguard goes in on this idea in a way that many people would actually call out-of-character compared to how he behaves in inquisition. veilguard itself though does present their relationship as rather complex though, in my opinion its one of the best parts of the game. the two moments that i chew on most frequently are the letter from felassan in mythal's weird little dragon pit that reveals how he made that island for her but locked it away when she was killed. and my ultimate fave is how she reveals that in the literal thousands of years she has been sitting there alone since her murder, many of which he was alive and fighting a rebellion partly in her name, and in the 12 years since he woke up from uthenera, he never went to visit her. not once. its giving jane eyre and i fucking love it. in this same conversation, she also says that when he killed flemeth, he wept. this, i think, is the crux of how he feels about her. he can barely look at her. he resents her. he will use her like he did anyone else. he loves her. he feels lost without her. he will never forgive her. he misses her. all of these things are true at once, and mythal seems to feel similarly; she loathes him. she understands him better than anyone. she resents him for betraying her and abandoning her. she calls him a pathetic little crybaby pussy ass bitch. she loves him.

i dont think anything you said in your message is necessarily wrong. i do think he loves mythal still. i think he always will. i think mythal is valid when she says that they have a bond that no one will ever understand. i agree he is protective over her. i also interpret their relationship as romantic though a lot of people do not. i just love drama. but i think you are misinterpreting his reluctance to be with lavellan as coming from his attachment to mythal as a person, rather than his attachment to his duty to what mythal represents - the world he ruined, everything he's ever done wrong. to say that solas would actually consciously choose mythal over lavellan if they were the final two contestants on the bachelorette is honestly, absurd. sorry. because actually he would choose neither, he would dramatically let the rose fall to the ground and run off to restore the elven people while chris hansen (felassan) dramatically runs after him. both women are secondary to him when it comes to the good of the entire world, and fixing what he broke. he has had plenty of moments to choose mythal and run away with her if he wanted. he has literally had her bertha-ing out in his crossroads attic for 10 years. he also literally does kill her via flemeth. which isnt to say that he wouldn't kill lavellan if forced to, i think he would. but the point here is that its not mythal vs. lavellan. its mythal vs. the world, and lavellan vs. the world. he should have chosen the world over mythal. he didnt. he created the blight instead. he destroyed everything. he cannot make the same mistake again, so he will choose the world every. single. time.

regardless, every time solas turns away from lavellan in the romance, he is not thinking "i wish you were her". he is thinking "if i do this to you, i have become her". prioritizing his own desires over the good of the world, stringing her along, using her as a tool to do his bidding (getting the orb back), are all things mythal did to him. he told her he would follow her anywhere. and when he begins to realize that lavellan would follow him anywhere (as she says in veilguard), he freaks out and has to end it. he knows he will have to continue to kill and cause destruction to bring his world back, so if he did allow her to join him in walking the dinan'shiral, or did anything other than break her heart and leave her, he would be corrupting her the way mythal corrupted him; a weapon to achieve his goal. but he refuses. in his mind, he already destroyed the world for love once; at mythal's behest. if he abandons the world for lavellan, he is destroying the world for love again, and making her an accomplice. so, every time he leaves her it is an act of love.

the way the inquisitor is the driving force of their romance is partly just... gameplay lol but its also consistent with the overarching theme of consent in a relationship that is fundamentally unethical and unequal. lavellan has to be the initiator or else solas becomes a predator. some would say he is anyway lol, but its clear much of the writing was designed to avoid this with the way he is constantly denying himself, backing away, trying not to give in. it might have been juicy, but for him to knowingly romantically and sexually pursue a young woman 10,000 years younger while lying to her about his identity and using her for his plans would make him an entirely different character. a character that would be a hit on romantasy booktok, but not solas. consent and ethics are so central to not only the relationship thematically, but to solas himself, and some of that is because of mythal and the inequality of their own past dynamic. solas is so passive in the romance not because he doesnt like this weird clingy bitch who wont leave him alone, but because he does not want to recreate the same dynamic that corrupted him into pride and uhhhh literally destroyed the world. i'll leave you with another essential quote that you may not have encountered yet:

Cole: It isn’t abuse if I ask! Solas: Not always true.

in trespasser, solas's duty to bring down the veil was more unambiguously to the elven people and the alleviation of his own crushing guilt, while mythal was collateral damage in his way and he used her like he would use anyone else (including lavellan loool) as a tool to achieve his goals. we see this when he kills flemeth and takes mythal's power. in veilguard they had to obscure this slightly to make him "less sympathetic", to use the devs own words. and they did this by shifting the crux of his motivations to mythal. i dont think his lap dog devotion is out of character, i adore it, but i hate that it came at the expense of his more complex and sympathetic motivations of saving the elven people and spirits from the damage of the veil. as a result, when looking at his behavior in the context of inquisition + trespasser + veilguard, i interpret it as mythal being symbolic of the destruction of the world at his hands. and not to toot my own horn but trick's interpretation that they shared on bluesky does support this, when they said that to solas, mythal represents the past and lavellan represents the future. ive written about his statement that it was all for mythal, and the tldr is that i think it is also supposed to be interpreted as symbolic and reflective of his psyche. but even if he did do it all for her, i dont think that necessarily negates his relationship with lavellan. he needs mythal to break the cognitive dissonance, alleviate his guilt, and release him, because she is the source of all of those things in the first place. lavellan could never break them because she is frankly irrelevant to those things. he is so caught up in his sunk-cost fallacy that he feels the only way is through. lavellan may not be able to break the hold the past has on him because she is separate from it, but she can offer him another path once it has been broken, a fork in the road he thought was straight; her, their future.

i think to say solas's heart is not free is a misunderstanding. he denies his heart's desire over and over, we see this clearly in the letter he sends to lavellan in veilguard that expresses how badly he wanted to put down his burden and stay with her. in his expressed reluctance to leave her in crestwood, how he refuses to lie and tell her it meant nothing. in "no matter what happens, i want you to know that what we had was real". his indulgent final kiss in trespasser. in "i will never forget you". its especially apt that you worded it this way and that vhenan means "my heart". if anything, his heart is the most free part of him. it is everything else that belongs to mythal: his body, created at her command. his path of destruction and ruin, which she set him on. his purpose, which she distorted from wisdom to pride. she, then, is the only one who can give it all back to him. and as soon as she does, he is free to prioritize his heart. and he quite literally does.

tldr; play inquisition <3

[deadbeandrop]

ah yes, my favorite characters from camp lazlo, how come no one talks about them uhhh (checks notes) slinkman's parents from a family portrait in one episode

they met at slugfest ❤️

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[crippleddetective]

who has ever said that in the history of ever. what is cruel about wanting our own fucking exclusive space without able-bodied people in it. for someone with blah blah i drink abled tears or whatever the fuck on your profile, you sure do a lot of abled bootlicking.

[bluejaybytes]

Here's actually the first doodle I did of all May, June, and Jake when I was first making them over a year ago. It is still completely accurate

[duvewing]

Your Kyrie interpretation is so based and correct finally somebody else who also has huge brain

[theabstruseone]

I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:

Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.

The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.

The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.

The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.

Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.

The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.

Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".

He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.

This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.

Edit to add further developments:

Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.

Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.

The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.

The act of sending a tweet is now known as "Xeet". They even added a guide for how to Xeet.

The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words "tweet" and "Twitter" are still all over the place on the site.

TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it's because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).

This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to "X-Paypal" and eventually just to "X".

This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to "pay online" (as in "I'll paypal you the money")

X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I'm not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he's hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn't be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.

Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.

The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.

One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt (since it's worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.

Sesame Street's official accounts mocked the rebranding.

[netscapenavigator-official]

It actually makes water boil slower, so there absolutely is some other reason we do it. Like, actually. Adding salt to water increases its boiling temperature. It’s the same chemical property that we exploit when salting roads in the winter. To over simplify, adding salt to water makes it want to stay water. It increases the boiling point and decreases the freezing point. We add salt to roads because doing so means it’s need to be a LOT colder before the roads start to freeze. That means that ice won’t form on the road until well below 0°C/32°F, giving us an extra safety buffer, which could make the difference. The same is true with boiling water. If you add salt, it’ll take longer to come to a boil because of boiling-point elevation. Salt water will not boil at 100°C/212°F. It’ll boil a few degrees higher than that.

My baseless theory is that the "adding salt makes water boil faster" was a clever ploy by Italians to make efficiency-obsessed protestants put the bare minimum of flavour into their cooking.

[arolesbianism]

Y'know I know I've said like a billion times I don't want to know shit abt Jackie's past but erm. Hi klei. Please just tell me if Josephine and Alan are her parents or some miscellaneous relative this is so important. Did Jackie seriously come from a household with a colonel and another person with a doctorate or does she just happen to be related to them this is so important for how I decide to move forward with my Jackie hcs and with my aus in general I need to know so bad tell me right fucking now

[fromevertonow]

Suzanne Collins is one of the few contemporary writers who realizes the importance of names in her stories and the significance they bear. They add so many layers to the story, additional meanings that otherwise would not have existed.

The original trilogy:

Katniss: named after a plant of which you can eat the roots. Her father taught her where to find it and told her that “as long as you can find yourself, you’ll survive” (quote may be a little bit off, but it’s from one of the early chapters in THG). Additionally, the leaves are in the shape of an arrowhead, referencing her skills with the bow which her father also taught her how to use.

Peeta: literally bread lmao. But bread is one of the basic nutritions humans need, a little bit goes a long way to keep you alive. Peeta’s presence in Katniss’s life also kept her alive, literally and figuratively—the burned bread he threw her in the flashback and their complicated relationship.

Primrose: a plant with medicinal purposes, even more significant in light of her work as a medic in Mockingjay.

Gale: literally means “strong wind” and considering that in every encounter with Katniss he’s caused some reaction, he pulls her into directions she maybe initially doesn’t want to go in. Additionally, his name also represents his determination and steadfastness in his beliefs.

TBOSAS

Lucy Gray: named after William Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy Gray” which is about the titular character of the poem who got lost during a blizzard. She literally got lost in snow. Rachel Zegler sang this poem in two parts on the original soundtrack of the movie. When Snow asked who the girl in the song is, Lucy answers that she’s a mystery, just like her.

Snow: aside from the obvious snow references, I think his name is most significant in relation to Lucy and the poem. The only one who knows what caused her disappearance is Snow. He is the reason that Lucy is gone. But her traces in the snow are still visible. He will always remember her because the memory of Lucy has manifested itself in every part of his life.

Coriolanus: named after the Roman general (and also the titular character of Shakespeare’s play), Coriolanus wanted to attack Rome and become its ruler. He was scorned and celebrated by the people, only to be later exiled from the city by them. In TBOSAS, Coriolanus is the star pupil at the Capitol’s academy but sent into exile to the districts after he won the Games with Lucy through cheating.

Volumnia: Coriolanus mother who played a part in his ascent to power. In TBOSAS, she almost serves like a mentor to Coriolanus, teaching him how to think in terms of power.

(Edit) Sejanus: a roman soldier who was betrayed by the roman emperor Tiberius, just like the future president betrayed him.

(Edit) Plinth: got this info from here, but it was too good not to include here. A plinth is a base for a statue or vase to stand on. After Sejanus’s death, all of the Plinth fortune was given to Snow for being such a good to friend him. It was this money that skyrocketed the Snow family from poverty to filthy rich. The Plinth money was the foundation upon which Snow built his power.

There are so many other names that have historical (mostly Roman and Greek) connotations—Plutarch, Seneca, Cinna—but also regular names like Trinket and Beetee bear meanings that represent the character beautifully.

Names are important. For any lover of literature or (aspiring) writers, please look closely at them. They can shape your story into something unique.

Feel free to correct me if I’ve said something wrong. I know there are many names missing, but I can only add so many examples ✊🏻😔

[hamadisthings]

HELP US STOP CHAT CONTROL!

If you live in the EU, you absolutely need to pay attention to what's to come. What is Chat Control, you may ask? In a (failed) attempt to combat child abuse online the EU made Chat Control, Chat Control will result in getting your private messages and emails to be scanned by artificial intelligence aka AI to search for CSAM pictures or discussion that might have grooming in there. And on top of having your private conversations handed to AI or the police to snoop in, like your family pictures, selfies, or more sensitive pics, like the medical kind, only meant to be seen by your doctors, or the "flirtatious" kind you send to your partner, you either have to ACCEPT to be scanned...or else you will be forbidden from sending pictures, videos, or even links, as said here.

Kids should absolutely be protected online, without question, but the things that Chat Control gets wrong is that this is a blatant violation of privacy, without even considering the fact that AI WILL create tons of false positives, this is not a theory, this is a fact. And for all the false positives that will be detected, all of them will be sent to the police, which will just flood their system with useless junk instead of efficiently putting resources to actual protect kids from predators.

It also does not help that politicians, police officers, soldiers etc will be exempt from Chat Control if it passes. If it's for the sake of protection, shouldn't everyone get the same treatment? Which further prove that Chat Control would NOT keep your data of private life safe. Plus, bad actors will simply stop using messenger apps as soon as they know they're being tracked, using more obscure means, meanwhile innocent people will be punished by using those services On top of this, the EU also plans on reintroducing Data retention called "EU Going Dark". Both Chat Control and EU Going Dark are clear violation of the GDPR, and even if they shouldn't stand a chance in court, its not going to prevent politicians from trying to ram these through as an excuse to mass surveil European citizens, using kids as a shield. Even teenagers sending pictures to each other won't be exempt, which entirely goes against the purpose of protecting kids by retaining their private photos instead. Furthermore, once messaging apps are forced to comply with Chat Control, the president of Signal, a secured messaging app with encryption, have confirmed that they will be forced to leave the EU if this is enforced against them.

If Chat Control also ends up targeting any websites with the option of private messages, you better expect Europe to be geo-blocked by any websites offering such function. I would also like to add that EU citizens were very vocal in the fight against KOSA, an equally bad internet bill from the US-- and it showed! Which is why we heavily need the help of our fellow US peers to fight against Chat Control too, so please, because we all know if it passes, the US government will take a look at this and conclude "Ooh, a way to force mass surveillance on citizens even more than before? don't mind if I do!" It's always a snowball effect.

KEEP IN MIND THE EUROPE COUNCIL WILL LIKELY VOTE ON CHAT CONTROL THIS 19 JUNE OF NEXT WEEK TO SEE IF IT WILL ENTER TRILOGIES OR NOT. Even if it does enter Trilogues, the fight will only be beginning. Absentees may not count as a no, so it is crucial that you contact your MEPs HERE, as well as HERE, and you can also show your support for Edri's campaign against Chat Control HERE.

You can read more on Chat Control here as well, and you can find useful information as to which arguments to use when politely contacting your MEP (calling is better than email) here, and beneath you will find graphics you can use to spread the word!

YOU CAN ALSO JOIN OUR DISCORD SERVER (linked here) TO HELP ORGANIZE AGAINST CHAT CONTROL NON EU PEOPLE ARE MORE THAN WELCOME TO JOIN TOO!

https://discord.gg/FPDJYkUujM

PLEASE REBLOG ! NON EU PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED TO REBLOG AS WELL CONTACT YOUTUBERS, CONTENT CREATORS, ANYONE YOU KNOW THAT MAY HELP GET THE WORD OUT ! Let's fight for our Internet and actually keep kids safe online! Because Chat Control and EU Going Dark will only endanger kids.

PLEASE REBLOG! NON EU PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED TO REBLOG AS WELL CONTACT YOUTUBERS, CONTENT CREATORS, ANYONE YOU KNOW THAT MAY HELP GET THE WORD OUT !

Let's fight for our Internet and actually keep kids safe online! Because Chat Control and EU Going Dark will only endanger kids.

[prettieinpink]

CREATING AN INTENTIONAL WARDROBE

I. SETTING GOALS

IDENTIFY YOUR STYLE. You don’t have to look through the list of different aesthetics, nor do you have to name it, but at least have a way in which you could explain it in a sentence. 

If you’re someone who is a bit on the fence with their fashion identity, I would start with a ‘base’ aesthetic that you like then start building your own on top of it over time. Think boho, streetwear, y2k, classy etc. 

CONSIDER YOUR LIFESTYLE. I don’t think its a great idea to go buy a fancy dress for a hypothetical event which may not ever happen. You have to think about what you’re doing on a daily basis, and which staples will be worn to their full extent. 

If you’re a very active person, I would invest into activewear or clothes that resemble it. If you’re someone who’s attending university, I would invest into casual cute basics but also smart staples for networking events. 

So in a way, don’t buy clothes for your fantasy self or events. I do understand that wearing clothes that our higher self would wear can close the gap between us and the, however material things don’t mean anything when it comes to that. 

SET A GOAL. Your goal can be anything when it comes to fashion. You could also have multiple goals. Here are some ideas for goals which may speak to you!

Investing into high quality pieces

Having less but wearing them more. 

Increased confidence

Developing personal style

Having a versatile collection

Comfortable yet stylish. 

There is a lot more goals that you may have came up with by yourself, but this is just to get you started. I recommend just having one goal and really honing down into it, is a lot better in this aspect. 

II. INSPIRATION + PLANNING

CREATE YOUR DREAM WARDROBE, whether digitally or physically. Pinterest is a great place to start, and you can create collages now. Or, you may choose to create a beauty binder which consists of outfits that you like. 

One thing I will add on to this, is to add in people who look like you or just don’t show their faces at all. Attractive and fit people can make most outfits look good, and you may be influenced by that, even if it's not going to be flattering on you (considering colours, shape, texture etc). 

LOOK AT THE CONSISTENCY, which colours were you drawn to the most, did you favour any patterns, are there any pieces which showed up repeatedly? Look for any consistency throughout the outfits. 

TAKE NOTES !

Colours: Did you lean towards lighter/darker colours, were there any colours that showed up repeatedly, patterns that you gravitated to?

Silhouettes: Were the clothes flowy and light, or fitted and shaped the body? 

Minimalism: Were the clothes simple and straight to the point, or were they maximalist and boasting personality? 

Alignment: Does the outfits match the lifestyle that you have and the one that you want? 

Staples: What articles of clothing showed up repeatedly? 

You don’t have to write it down, however I would make a mental note of all these details in your dream wardrobe.

III. DEALING WITH YOUR CURRENT WARDROBE 

LIMIT AS MUCH WASTE AS YOU CAN. More of a disclaimer, than a tip, but you don’t have to throw away everything just to replace everything. A lot of clothes that are in good condition can either be upcycled or have another purpose. 

SORT CLOTHES INTO THREE PILES. Keep, potential or donate. Keep are clothes that align with all of your goals, potential are clothes that are almost there and may need some tweaking and donating is for clothes that you feel misaligned with. 

That being said, don’t keep clothes that you know will collect dust in your closet if you have no intention of repurposing them. You could give them away to your friends, a facebook buy nothing group, if it's really good quality and in good condition then consider reselling it on depop or vinted. It's still wasteful when you’re not using it. 

Before deciding anything, actually wear them instead of evaluating them on a hanger. Hangers can make clothes look worse or better depending, but the only way to find out if you like it, is to try it on. 

IDENTIFY WHAT'S MISSING. From the clothes that you have left, see if there’s anything in your dream wardrobe that you don’t have in your closet. I’m not a big fan of ‘filling gaps’ in closets, so I would avoid purchasing statement pieces to fill that gap, just focus on staples that, considering your lifestyle, will wear. 

Make a list of all of these items, and try to eliminate any pieces of clothing which wouldn’t be staples in your life. 

IV. BEING INTENTIONALLY FASHIONABLE

CREATE YOUR OWN COLOUR PALETTE, I dislike the colour theory for people or colour seasons, just because you may not feel confident in the colours that are ‘best suited’ for you. However, I do love the idea of having your own personal palette that you gravitate towards. 

I would recommend having 1 dark colour, 1 neutral colour and 2-3 accent or statement colours (depending on your style). My current palette is navy, grey, pastel pink, pastel blue and pastel yellow. 

This does not mean you only buy clothes in that colour, it just means that its easier to curate your wardrobe with pieces that you love and do wear. I do wear colours outside of my palette, but I do favour those colours when looking for new clothes. 

AVOID ULTRA FAST FASHION. I’m talking about SHEIN, temu, alibaba or aliexpress. I know the cheap prices seem enticing, but their clothes will fall apart after some time and it's just not sustainable in the long term. Save your money and buy from places which you know will last. 

Other fashion stores are fast fashion (just not to the extent of the ones listed above), so I would still be very intentional about what I’m buying from them. Reminder, expensive does not equate to being sustainable. 

AVOID MICROTRENDS. If you do feel that a trend speaks to you, then go for it, but otherwise I would not give in. You’re buying clothes that are misaligned to you, so you waste money, and then when that trend inevitably dies out, you have a reason to throw it out. It's an endless cycle, don’t give in. 

One trend which I will never give into, has to be baggy jeans. Baggy jeans are really unflattering on my curves, no matter the waist. While they’ve definitely had a decline recently, when I was in year 7, it seemed that was all that everyone was wearing but I just couldn’t get into it. 

LEARN HOW TO TAILOR CLOTHES. It is not a given that all clothes regardless of your size, will fit right. Just because something doesn’t fit you properly, doesn’t mean you have to throw it away or put it back on the rack. 

Personally, I’ve lost a bit of weight over my high school years, so a lot of clothes that used to fit me, become a bit loose on my body. I found it unflattering, so I learnt how to do the basics of hand sewing to make clothes fit me the best. 

Learning how to tailor could also help in upcycling clothes that have potential. There’s a lot of basic clothes out there, which just need subtle changes to elevate the whole article. Plus, you’re saving money!

HAVE A SIGNATURE ELEMENT. Something personal to you that expresses yourself without having to say anything. It could be a certain type of jewellery, a bag, a colour, pattern etc. Its just something nice, but not essential for those who are constantly experimenting.

V. SHOPPING MINDFULLY

KEEP IN MIND YOUR PALETTE. For me, being experimental with so many colours ends up with too many fashion failures. I do buy outside of that palette, but only if I know for a fact that I will wear it (not just once) and I do feel like it aligns with me regardless of the colour. 

Even with that, I’m still very likely to put back anything which is not my palette. As much as I do like experimenting, I find security knowing that I do like my clothes and I will wear them.

PURCHASE INTENTIONALLY. Even if something fits your palette, it may not be something that you will wear or style. Always ask yourself questions when shopping, and if you’re not all in, I would put it back. 

Does it tick all of your boxes according to your dream wardrobe? Do you see yourself wearing it next year? (trends, body changes, lifestyle changes), can you style it with the wardrobe you have now? 

CREATE A WISHLIST. Create a list of all the clothes that you want, regardless of any questions or palette. However, these clothes will have to sit on that list for at least a month. If you still find yourself wanting it, then you can permit yourself to purchase it. If not, you’ve just avoided a regretful purchase. 

If you would like to shop in person, I would still create a list when I go out then only purchase items that resemble what’s on my list.

VI. MAINTENANCE 

REGULARLY CLEAN. If you have a shelving system, at least bi-monthly I would take out all of my clothes and wipe down all surfaces in my closet. If you have a hanging rack instead, I would still wipe it down because of dust accumulation. 

ORGANISE. Whatever system works best for you, keeps your clothes easily identifiable at a glance and it's neat, I would use it. Utilise hangers and baskets to help your wardrobe if needed.

Learn how to fold your clothes nicely yet easy to pick out what you want. Its such a small thing, but I do believe it will improve the quality of daily life as you don’t have to scavenge for what you want.

DECLUTTER BIANNUALLY. Whatever time of the year works best for you, then do it. Turn your wardrobe upside down to see if there’s anything that misaligns with you. Overtime as you declutter, you should be donating less stuff if you’re practicing intentional shopping habits.  WASH YOUR CLOTHES AS INSTRUCTED. Washing your clothes properly will extend their lifespan, unfortunately, just throwing them all in the wash isn’t actually beneficial. Read the care labels on each of your clothes and use them.

[sukeruton-san]

A Coffee Heart pt 3

First Previous Next

" Drake, why are you looking at a civilian's family history "

"The adults are Midwestern villains their secret hero son may be my long lost twin and they also have a daughter but she's mostly fine by herself. We might need to overthrow an entire government branch though"

"Excuse, me"

" You're excused"

After chatting with Danny for a while and getting more information without it sounding like an interrogation also making sure he'll be fine for couple of hours I went digging for the rest of the day.

And oh boy you won't believe what I found.

The Fenton's are fucking wild, after breaking through several firewalls just for the town and then even more for their security I found out 'the haunting world' really means haunted like ghost haunted. These people are the definition of mad scientists proudly stating that they built a portal to another dimension in their basement, and judging by the floor plan right below where Danny sleeps, said portal was letting dangerous ghosts out onto the city, but not all of the ghost are like that though.

The 'echoscientist' are heavily biased when it comes to ghost stating that they are 'nonsenseient' and 'don't feel pain' that they need to be a 'contained' 'experimented on' or even 'eradicated'' which is bullshit and horrifying. It's pretty obvious that there are several neutral and even some good ghosts appearing, most noteworthy being Phantom the hero of Amity Park (I know that majority is painting him as a villain but that is so far from the truth! there is an hour long video of him playing with children at the park helping everyone with daily tasks and more) also it seems pretty clear to me that Lazarus water and ectoplasm are similar in compounds which is frankly something I rather not think about right now.

The Fenton's cause so much property damage it's not even funny. they seem to not care for human lives and their excuse for doing so being 'dangerous ghost in the area' when it's clear that Phantom has it handled they don't even shoot at the attacking ghost they shoot at him which is so wrong on so many levels. the anti-ghost inventions they make seemed to even cause several attacks as well. Phantom already has enough on that his plate with the ghost attacks being 24/7.( Poor guy looks exhausted and burnt out) He doesn't need to have to hide/escape/be afraid from the people he's trying to protect. Hell even the red huntress(another vigilante) makes allies with him then shoots him in the back when the danger is over.

Looking closer at Phantom he has fluffy, soft, and thick white hair that seems to move like it's underwater; piercing, glowing, Lazarus green eyes; body type like Danny's but you can see more of the muscle and shape with his clothing being more skin tight, speaking of clothing he looks like he's wearing a hazmat suit with a symbol(a stylized D with a P in its negative space) postered on it and a utility belt. both the symbol and utility belt were added on later to the original suit which seems to resemble the ones the Fenton adults wear constantly

Actually Phantom looks a lot like Danny in general. . .

And Phantom has been called 'halfa' by some of his rouges. . .

No. . .

OH NO

Phantom and Danny looks so similar because they are the same person!?! after looking at Danny's school absences, tardys, and straight up running out of the class with the ghost attacks they line up

Danny seamlessly shows up with injuries that phanton has gained from Ghost attacks (but they're also injuries that seems to come from something else). Danny is apparently known to run from ghost attacks and as soon as that happens Phantom comes around the corner. Phantom uses Fenton tech that has been modified from the original, which probably he did, another similarity to add between us. . .

Wait I can add being a vigilante/hero as a similarity between us as well!

SHIT! Phantom is a ghost, dead, not living, did my twin brother die at some point!?! Cuz he sure as hell wasn't born like that!?! It must have been the day the portal was open. from what I was able to gather he was the only one home that day and the portal spontaneously worked after failing at first. And about a week later the first official ghost attack happened.

Also what is all this shit about the Anti-Echo Acts and the GIW!?!?! A whole government branch dedicated to the horrendous sayings of the Fenton adults!?!?! It looks like a lot of the Ghost attacks are dying down because it's became too dangerous for them to be out there.

We probably wouldn't have even noticed about all bullshittery with the government and this town in pacifically if if it wasn't for danny coming here.

. . . . .

Danny is here.

He is Phantom.

He said he was forced to be here.

He was forced into leaving his town.

The town that is attacking him at every corner.

With a support system that seems to be nonexistent.

And from looking at the old videos/photos he was learning everything from scratch.

With barely any appreciation for the things he does.

With the government trying to dissect him ( the fuck)

So logically after taking down the government and shutting down the portal if possible ( don't know if Danny needs it or if they environment has changed too much) Amity Park wouldn't need a hero if there's nothing to do there.

plus with their treatment of obvious heroes they could deal with their shit themselves, how does he deal with that I don't know.

They wouldn't mind if Phantom stays in Gotham would they? Probably not.

Oh well

He should probably start that welfare check now he'll do a more thorough investigation with the government later, twin brother priority right now.

" Drake, where are you going? You can't just say all of that and leave! Drake!!"

Yup welfare check

(think I'm getting better at writing shit!)

[kissesz]

𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞

caitlyn kiramman x f!reader

warnings : see above. mdni. angst. f!sub!reader. dom!caitlyn. mean!caitlyn, just briefly. cunnilingus. tribbing. vaginal sex. non-sexual intimacy. read: kissing. a lot of it. sapphic debauchery at its finest. arguing. emotional hurt/comfort. mentions of injuries & blood but not too graphic.

notes: (can be read as a standalone, part II of 'all that glitters') a oneshot—which, clearly, it isn’t anymore. i may have made a promise about making up. unfortunately, the dialogue is subpar at best, perhaps because i genuinely dread writing anything involving communication (which is why i attempted—only half-successfully—to compensate with overly long descriptions). on top of that, i’ve rewritten this at least a thousand times, meaning six and a half hours were spent agonizing over every single paragraph. i digress. i love you all, dearly.

Aged whiskey scorched a trail down your throat, amber liquid catching glimmers of the kaleidoscopic hues painting Piltover for Progress Day—sapphire tones of hextech glinting off effervescent fireworks, swirling and bleeding like watercolors through the fractured prism of your mind.

Or perhaps that was the alcohol, settling leaden in your veins as you draped yourself against the balcony railing. 

Revelry echoed distant and muted from the streets below, laughter filtering through as if from ripples underwater. Each scintillating burst a reminder of her, salt in wounds unhealed—nights of bare skin illuminated by those same lights, susurrous promises you'd been foolish enough to believe. Skin and sweat and lies, impermanent.

So naive.

The crystal tumbler in your hand caught light, throwing severed rainbows across your fingers. Watching them dance, you tried (and failed) to focus on anything but the ache that had made its home in your ribcage months ago, a persistent throb that no amount of liquor could numb.

Then, a knock cleaved through the silence like a gunshot.

Your heart seized—a pavlovian response so violent it stole the breath from your lungs, leaving you gasping. Two strikes against solid wood, precise, just like the woman behind them. 

"Don't you fucking dare," you hissed to the empty air, fingers tightening around the railing until your knuckles blanched white against the dark metal. After months of absence, after countless nights spent aching and alone, after everything—she had the audacity to return?

The knock came again, more insistent this time, the sound like a second heartbeat, out of sync with your own yet impossible to ignore.

"Open the door." Caitlyn's voice, muffled yet unmistakable in its authority. That voice that had once whispered such honeyed poison against your skin now felt like sandpaper against raw nerves, abrasive and unrelenting. "Please."

Your laugh spilled out bitter, a broken sound for a broken moment. "Or what, Officer? You'll break it down? Add that to your litany of things you've destroyed?"

Silence stretched between you—taut and ready to snap. Then: "I'll wait all night if I have to."

"Go ahead." The drink seared going down, a familiar burn doing nothing to thaw the frost in your veins. "You're good at that, aren't you? Waiting until the perfect moment to walk away?"

More silence followed, heavy and sticky as molasses. For a moment, you thought she'd left, until you heard it—the soft thud of something solid against wood. Her forehead, perhaps, resting against your door as if she couldn't support her own weight anymore, as if the burden of her choices had finally become too much to bear.

"I deserve that," she said quietly, her voice carrying a of vulnerability you'd never heard before. A hairline fracture in her usually impenetrable facade. "I deserve all of it. But please... let me explain."

"Explain what?" The words clawed their way from your throat, each word tasting of copper and acrimony. "How you used me? How you'd come to me in the dead of night, take what you wanted, then vanish like I meant nothing?"

"You were never—" Her voice splintered on ‘never’, the sound slitting something in your chest, a fissure spreading through the walls you'd built to keep her out. "You were everything to me. That was the problem."

The crystal glass shattered in your grip, a startling crack that echoed the something rupturing inside you. Shards scattered across marble tiles like fallen stars, blood and alcohol—you couldn't tell which—dripping from your trembling fingers. The pain felt distant, secondary to the storm of emotions threatening to rend you apart.

Your feet carried you to the door of their own volition, possessed by a desperate momentum that overrode any semblance of self-preservation. The handle felt unfamiliar against your palm as you wrenched it open.

And there she stood.

Caitlyn Kiramman, in your foyer, like a washed out black and white photo of a deceased relative you couldn't bring yourself to look at. Her uniform was spotless as always, every button polished, every crease perfect—but her eyes—her eyes told a different story. They widened at the sight of your bleeding hand, that familiar concern suffusing her features before she could conceal it.

"You're hurt–" She reached for you, her fingers extending with such tender intent that it made your chest constrict, your heart stuttering behind the cage of your ribs.

You recoiled as if scorched, spine colliding with the wall behind you with a dull thud. "Don't." Your voice emerged raw, stripped of all pretense. "Don't you dare pretend to care now."

"Do you hear yourself? How ridiculous you sound?" She advanced, her presence flooding your space like smoke, cloying and suffocating. The scent of her, vanilla and gunpowder, so achingly familiar, made your head reel. Or maybe that was the blood loss. The whiskey. Turning everything soft at the edges except for her, sharp and impossible to ignore. "Not once, for a single second, did I stop caring. I left because I cared too much, because it was destroying me. Every time I chose you over my duty, every time I let my heart overrule my head, we were—"

"Oh, spare me the noble sacrifice bullshit, Caitlyn. Your precious integrity, right? Let me remind you of what you said: 'You know where I am if you need me.' Do you remember that? How you kissed me goodbye like it wasn't the last fucking time?" A dismissive sound tore from your lips, acrid.

"Enlighten me," you continued, voice quavering in a way that made you want to claw the weakness from your throat, "in all those months, all those nights I spent alone, where exactly were you? Because I needed you. Gods, I needed you every single day! And you were nowhere to be found!"

"It wasn't—" she started, but you cut her off, unwilling to hear whatever justification she'd made up for her absence.

"Shut up." Your palm struck her chest, leaving behind a bloody handprint stark against her pristine uniform. The fabric drank it in like it had been starved for it, marring perfection with your pain. Some bitter part of you relished it, wanted her to wear your anguish for once.

Hands caught your wrists then, a grip gentle but resolute, like you were something fragile, something invaluable she was afraid to break.

The calluses on her palms, from her rifle, from years of relentless training rasped against your pulse points. "You think it was easy?" Her voice trembled, her composure fracturing like a teacup on the verge of shattering. "You think I wanted to walk away? To lie awake every night remembering how you taste, how you feel, how you cry out my name when you—"

"Stop." You tried to wrench away but her hold was unbreakable, fingers branding your skin with unspoken apologies, with pleas for absolution. Your heart battered against your ribcage, that traitorous organ that still raced at her proximity, even after everything.

"Why?" She surged forward, and suddenly you were pinned between the heat of her body and the unyielding wall, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. 

Her breath ghosted across your face, expensive brandy chasing crisp mint—she'd been drinking too. She'd been drinking too, and that realization struck you like a knife to the sternum, twisting viciously. "Because it hurts? Because despite everything, you still remember? How I'd touch you, how I'd make you beg, how you'd unravel for me like you were made for it?"

"Fuck you," you spat, even as your body responded to her, muscle memory overriding reason.

"You did, darling." The endearment dripped from her lips, sweet and searing like honey on a spoon. Her face was a hairsbreadth from yours, close enough to count the individual flecks of navy in her eyes, to feel the heat of her breath mingling with your own. "Countless times. And I remember every single one. Every sound, every sigh, every way you fell apart beneath my hands."

Your breath hitched, catching on a breath suspiciously similar to a sob. "I hate you."

You did, truly.

Hating her felt natural, instinctual.

"No." Her thumb skated over your bottom lip, coming away stained with the smear of your lipstick. The tenderness of the gesture was devastating, a brutal reminder of everything you'd lost. "You wish you did. Just like I wish I could stop loving you."

The confession hung between you like a noose, tightening with each shallow breath.

"Why now?" Your voice cracked, splintering, jagged and razor-edged. "Why come back after all this time?"

"Because I'm tired," she breathed, resting her forehead against yours, the contact like a livewire against your skin. Her skin burned feverish against your own, her breaths labored. "Tired of pretending I don't need you. Tired of walking past your building every night, aching to come up but telling myself I shouldn't. Tired of being half a person without you."

Closing your eyes, the nearness of her was overwhelming, intoxicating; it made you dizzy, memories crashing over you in waves—lips on your throat, hands on your hips, her voice in your ear whispering vows she couldn't keep, oaths she'd shattered like porcelain against stone.

"You broke me." Words falling from your numb lips, more honest than you'd allowed yourself to be since she left, since she carved out your heart and took it with her.

"I know." Her lips brushed your temple, a benediction and a curse. A tear—yours or hers, you couldn't say—slid between your pressed skin, salt and sorrow. "Let me put you back together. Let me try."

"How?" You opened your eyes, meeting her gaze, stripped of all pretense. Your fingers itched to trace the circles beneath her eyes, proof that maybe she'd been haunted by your absence just as viscerally as you'd been ravaged by hers. "How can I ever trust you again?"

In lieu of an answer, she kissed you.

Not like before—not with the practiced restraint of Officer Kiramman, the consummate professional. No, this kiss was desperate, woozy and salty of mingled tears. Her hands cupped your face like you were something hallowed, her thumbs sweeping away the evidence of your shared misery, your shared sin.

Kissing her back, it bordered on violence, every shred of hurt and longing poured into the crush of your mouths. Your fingers knotted in her hair, yanking hard enough to sting, needing her to feel even a fraction of the agony you'd endured in her absence. Silken strands twined around your fingers like they'd been waiting for your touch, like they remembered every time you'd gripped them in ecstasy rather than anguish.

She gasped into your mouth, the sound caught between a moan and a whimper, apology and plea tangled on her tongue. "I'm sorry," she murmured between bruising kisses, each word a fervent promise falling from kiss-swollen lips. "I'm so sorry. I love you. I never stopped. Please..."

You bit down on her bottom lip, hard enough to taste blood of her own, the metallic sting a twisted sort of penance. "Prove it."

Her eyes met yours, understanding dawning like the sun cresting the horizon. With deliberate, measured movements, she began to strip away her armor. Her utility belt hit the floor with a leaden thud, bullets rattling in their clips. Her badge followed, the metal making a mournful sound as it clattered against marble. Then her uniform jacket, each button slipping free of its mooring until the garment slid from her shoulders like a remnant of a past she was shedding, a chrysalis giving way to something raw and new.

Each piece of her fell away until only Caitlyn remained.

The woman behind the title, the beating heart beneath the badge. She stood before you in her crisp white undershirt, more vulnerable than you'd ever seen her, her chest rising and falling with unsteady breaths, her eyes wide and shining in the low light.

"I'm yours," she said softly, her voice replaced by something fragile and aching. "Just me, loving you, for as long as you'll have me."

You stared at her, this woman who could command an entire city with a single look yet now trembled beneath the weight of your gaze. Who could stare down the barrel of a gun without flinching yet now looked at you like you held the power to destroy her. Who had walked away from you once yet now stood before you offering her heart, her future, her everything.

"If you leave again..." you started, the words tasting like rust on your tongue, sharp and metallic.

"I won't." She stepped closer, her hands finding the dip of your waist, the swell of your hips, relearning curves and planes she'd once mapped in the dark, in stolen moments that now felt like lifetimes ago. Her touch sparked wildfires in its wake, your skin remembering her, craving her, even as your mind screamed for self-preservation. "I can't. Losing you... it nearly killed me. Let me spend the rest of my life making it right. Making us right."

You knew you should’ve resisted, should’ve made her work harder for your forgiveness, for a second chance at the heart she'd so carelessly shattered. But then her lips found that spot just below your ear, the one that made your knees buckle and your breath hitch, and all rational thought fled, replaced by an all-consuming need, a hunger that had gone unsated for far too long.

Her hands relearned your body with admiration that bordered on worshipful—each touch an act of contrition. Her fingers caught on scars she'd never seen before, on new edges and angles wrought in the crucible of her absence, but she didn't shy away. Instead, she traced each one like a devotee tracing the lines of a sacred text, committing them to memory, etching them onto her heart.

"I missed you," she breathed against your throat, her voice cracking on the admission. "Missed this. The way you melt for me, the way your pulse flutters beneath my lips." To illustrate her point, she pressed a lingering kiss to the hammering beat at the base of your throat, smiling against your skin as you failed to bite back a whimper.

Her name fell from your lips like a benediction, like a curse, like an invocation of something bigger than both of you. "Caitlyn..."

She pulled back just far enough to meet your eyes, and the naked adoration in her gaze stole the breath from your lungs. 

Gone was the stoic persona, the enforcer of the law. In her place was a woman laid bare, stripped of all pretense. A woman whose eyes shone with unshed tears and unspoken promises, whose hands shook with the force of her need, her longing.

"I love you," she said simply, the words rusty from disuse but no less true for it. "I love your fire, your strength, the way you never once made it easy for me. I love the way you see me, all of me, even the parts I try to hide. I love—"

You swallowed the rest of her words with a searing kiss, your hands fisting in the fabric of her shirt, dragging her closer until you could feel her heartbeat against your own, a desperate staccato that echoed the racing of your pulse. 

She caught you as you swayed, strong arms banding around your waist, holding you up, anchoring you to her as she'd always done, even when you insisted you didn't need it, didn't want it. "Let me take care of you," she murmured against your lips, the words akin to a plea. "Let me show you how much I've missed you, how sorry I am, how I—"

"Show me," you demanded, the words scraping your throat raw with their urgency. "Make me believe you."

The sound she made was part growl, part whimper, animal and anguished. Her hands glided down your sides to grip the backs of your thighs, fingers sinking into yielding flesh, and then you were airborne, your back hitting the wall with enough force to rattle the abstract art piece hanging beside your head. Your legs locked around her waist on instinct, muscle memory overriding the part of you still screaming for restraint.

"I'll spend forever making you believe," she vowed, punctuating each word with a press of her lips—to your jaw, the edge of your lips, the sensitive spot where neck meets shoulder. "Forever proving that you're it for me, that I'm done hiding from this, from us."

As she carried you to the bedroom, her steps never faltering despite the tremors wracking her frame, you realized with startling, terrifying clarity that you wanted to let her. Wanted to give her the chance to piece back together the remnants of you, to rebuild from the rubble and ashes she'd left behind. 

A tangle of limbs and discarded silks draped upon the edge of your bed held nothing new, freshly washed sheets tousling as she haphazardly lowered you into their embrace. 

And then, she was on you, her hand sliding up the apex of your thigh, teasing.

Finally, finally, her tongue met the barrier of your underwear, the fabric the only thing separating you from the heat and wetness that promised heaven. She took her time, tracing every inch of you, biting and nipping, until you were writhing beneath her, begging for more. And then she pulled them down, your hips lifting off the bed to accommodate her, exposing you completely to the cool air and the burning heat of her gaze.

Her mouth followed the path of your underwear, leaving a damp trail of kisses as she descended. She hovered above your clit for a moment, her eyes searching yours for permission, for reassurance. You gave it with a nod, and she took it as the invitation it was, her tongue flicking out to taste you, to show you without words how much she'd missed this, missed you. 

The sensation was foreign in its familiarity, your entire body tensing before relaxing into the bliss she’d coaxed from you, licking and suckling, driving you closer to the edge with every pass.

And then, with a lingering kiss, she pulled away, leaving you panting and desperate. Deja vu, perhaps? "Take these off," she ordered, her voice thick with desire, gesturing to her own pants. You obeyed, your fingers fumbling with the zipper, eager to feel her bare skin against yours. When she was finally naked, she straddled you, the wetness between her thighs pressing against your stomach, leaving a damp heat that sent a shiver of anticipation down your spine.

Her hands roamed your body, touching, everywhere, and you watched her, breathless, feeling your desire for her swell until it was a living, pulsing thing between you. 

When she reached your breasts, her caresses were feather-light at first, teasing your already-sensitized nipples until they were hard points of pleasure-pain that had you gasping. Then, she took one into her mouth, her tongue flicking against the sensitive flesh, her teeth grazing the tight bud, sending skitters of desire straight to your core.

As she worked you over with her mouth and hands, each touch, each kiss, each lick brought you closer to the precipice. Your hips bucked against her, seeking more, seeking everything she had to give, needing to be filled, to be claimed by her again. You reached down to guide her, impatient (if it were another time, she’d make a show of rolling her eyes), fingers curling around hers, to show her where you needed her most, and she took the hint, sliding down your body, aligning herself with your aching sex.

Her hips rolled against yours, the friction building until you were both heaving and desperate. The world narrowed to just the two of you, the slick slide of skin on skin, the gasps and murmurs of pleasure. You felt her love in every stroke, every touch, every shudder of her body as she took you higher, until you were both teetering on the brink of oblivion.

The feeling of her was exquisite, the pressure just right—coiling tighter and tighter, until you were both ready to shatter. Your nails raked down her back, leaving red streaks on her skin, and she groaned into your neck. The sound sent you over the edge, your body convulsing with the force of your climax, waves of pleasure crashing through you like a storm at sea. She followed, her hips stuttering against yours, her own release a hot, wet rush that mingled with yours, until you were both spent, limp and trembling in each other's arms.

Perhaps there would be no gold at the end of this, no sunset-fade and happily ever after. Perhaps you'd end up right back here again someday, bleeding out on memories gone septic with neglect. Perhaps you'd lose as much as you'd gain, in the end.

But what a thing it was—to be shattered and scattered, to cut yourself open on the fractured pieces and trust that the other person would help you staunch the flow of injuries after. To hold your own heart in your hands and decide that theirs was worth the risk anyway, every time.

So you sealed your mouth to hers and poured yourself into the spaces between, the cracks and scars and fault-lines cobwebbing you both. Let her lick the hurt from your teeth, suck apologies purple-dark into your skin until you couldn't tell her contrition from your clemency.

And later, when you laid tangled up in sheets that smelled of sex and forgiveness, her head pillowed on your chest and the ghosts of your names still ringing in the rafters, you thought that maybe this was a new breed of faith.

To believe, against all evidence, that you could piece each other back together. To know that you'd never be what you were before, untarnished and golden all the way through—but that maybe, just maybe, there was something rawer and realer and infinitely more precious to be found in those broken places.

To reach your hand between each other's ribs and hold tight to whatever you found there, battered and bloodied but beating still. Whispering: I love you, I love you, I love you.

I love you enough to stay.

I love you enough to bleed.

I love you in ways only the shattered know how to love.

I love you, and all your splintered edges.

I love you, and the way you carve yourself into me.

I love you, and I'll spend every breath I have left proving it.

I love you, and that's the best and worst thing I know how to do.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

©️ kissesz

tags for the lovely sweethearts who requested a continuation: @prettyyyy-girl & @hiroklaiz

[romerona]

Ethera Operation!!

You're the government’s best hacker, but that doesn’t mean you were prepared to be thrown into a fighter jet.

Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Awkward!Hacker! FemReader

Part I

This was never supposed to happen. Your role in this operation was simple—deliver the program, ensure it reached the right hands, and let the professionals handle the breaching.

And then, of course, reality decided to light that plan on fire.

The program—codenamed Ethera—was yours. You built it from scratch with encryption so advanced that even the most elite cyber operatives couldn’t crack it without your input. A next-generation adaptive, self-learning decryption software, an intrusion system designed to override and manipulate high-security military networks, Ethera was intended to be both a weapon and a shield, capable of infiltrating enemy systems while protecting your own from counterattacks in real-time. A ghost in the machine. A digital predator. A weapon in the form of pure code. If it fell into the wrong hands, it could disable fleets, and ground aircraft, and turn classified intelligence into an open book. Governments would kill for it. Nations could fall because of it.

Not that you ever meant to, of course. It started as a little experimental security measure program, something to protect high-level data from cyberattacks, not become the ultimate hacking tool. But innovation has a funny way of attracting the wrong kind of attention, and before you knew it, Ethera had become one, if not the most classified, high-risk program in modern times. Tier One asset or so the Secret Service called it.

It was too powerful, too dangerous—so secret that only a select few even knew of its existence, and even fewer could comprehend how it worked.

And therein lay the problem. You were the only person who could properly operate it.

Which was so unfair.

Because it wasn’t supposed to be your problem. You were just the creator, the brain behind the code, the one who spent way too many sleepless nights debugging this monstrosity. Your job was supposed to end at development. But no. Now, because of some bureaucratic nonsense and the fact that no one else could run it without accidentally bricking an entire system, you had been promoted—scratch that, forcibly conscripted—into field duty.

And your mission? To install it in an enemy satellite.

A literal, orbiting, high-security, military-grade satellite, may you add.

God. Why? Why was your country always at war with others? Why couldn’t world leaders just, you know, go to therapy like normal people? Why did everything have to escalate to international cyber warfare?

Which is how you ended up here.

At Top Gun. The last place in the world you wanted to be.

You weren’t built for this. You thrive in sipping coffee in a cosy little office and handling cyber threats from a safe, grounded location. You weren’t meant to be standing in the halls of an elite fighter pilot training program, surrounded by the best aviators in the world—people who thought breaking the sound barrier was a casual Wednesday.

It wasn’t the high-tech cyberwarfare department of the Pentagon, nor some dimly lit black ops facility where hackers in hoodies clacked away at keyboards. No. It was Top Gun. A place where pilots use G-forces like a personal amusement park ride.

You weren’t a soldier, you weren’t a spy, you got queasy in elevators, you got dizzy when you stood too fast, hell, you weren’t even good at keeping your phone screen from cracking.

... And now you were sweating.

You swallowed hard as Admiral Solomon "Warlock" Bates led you through the halls of the naval base, your heels clacking on the polished floors as you wiped your forehead. You're nervous, too damn nervous and this damned weather did not help.

"Relax, Miss," Warlock muttered in that calm, authoritative way of his. "They're just pilots."

Just pilots.

Right. And a nuclear warhead was just a firework.

And now, somehow, you were supposed to explain—loosely explain, because God help you, the full details were above even their clearance level—how Ethera, your elegant, lethal, unstoppable digital masterpiece, was about to be injected into an enemy satellite as part of a classified mission.

This was going to be a disaster.

You had barely made it through the doors of the briefing room when you felt it—every single eye in the room locking onto you.

It wasn’t just the number of them that got you, it was the intensity. These were Top Gun pilots, the best of the best, and they radiated the kind of confidence you could only dream of having. Meanwhile, you felt like a stray kitten wandering into a lion’s den.

Your hands tightened around the tablet clutched to your chest. It was your lifeline, holding every critical detail of Ethera, the program that had dragged you into this utterly ridiculous situation. If you could’ve melted into the walls, you absolutely would have. But there was no escaping this.

You just had to keep it together long enough to survive this briefing.

So, you inhaled deeply, squared your shoulders, and forced your heels forward, trying to project confidence—chin up, back straight, eyes locked onto Vice Admiral Beau "Cyclone" Simpson, who you’d been introduced to earlier that day.

And then, of course, you dropped the damn tablet.

Not a graceful drop. Not the kind of gentle slip where you could scoop it back up and act like nothing happened. No, this was a full-on, physics-defying fumble. The tablet flipped out of your arms, ricocheted off your knee, and skidded across the floor to the feet of one of the pilots.

Silence.

Pure, excruciating silence.

You didn’t even have the nerve to look up right away, too busy contemplating whether it was physically possible to disintegrate on command. But when you finally did glance up—because, you know, social convention demanded it—you were met with a sight that somehow made this entire disaster worse.

Because the person crouching down to pick up your poor, abused tablet was freaking hot.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with a head of golden curls that practically begged to be tousled by the wind, and, oh, yeah—a moustache that somehow worked way too well on him.

He turned the tablet over in his hands, inspecting it with an amused little smirk before handing it over to you. "You, uh… need this?"

Oh, great. His voice is hot too.

You grabbed it back, praying he couldn't see how your hands were shaking. “Nope. Just thought I’d test gravity real quick.”

A few chuckles rippled through the room, and his smirk deepened like he was enjoying this way too much. You, on the other hand, wanted to launch yourself into the sun.

With what little dignity you had left, you forced a quick, tight-lipped smile at him before turning on your heel and continuing forward, clutching your tablet like it was a life raft in the middle of the worst social shipwreck imaginable.

At the front of the room, Vice Admiral Beau Cyclone Simpson stood with the kind of posture that said he had zero time for nonsense, waiting for the room to settle. You barely had time to take a deep breath before his voice cut through the air.

“Alright, listen up.” His tone was crisp, commanding, and impossible to ignore. “This is Dr Y/N L/N. Everything she is about to tell you is highly classified. What you hear in this briefing does not leave this room. Understood?”

A chorus of nods. "Yes, sir."

You barely resisted the urge to physically cringe as every pilot in the room turned to stare at you—some with confusion, others with barely concealed amusement, and a few with the sharp assessing glances of people who had no clue what they were supposed to do with you.

You cleared your throat, squared your shoulders, and did your best to channel even an ounce of the confidence you usually had when you were coding at 3 AM in a secure, pilot-free lab—where the only judgment you faced was from coffee cups and the occasional system error.

As you reached the podium, you forced what you hoped was a composed smile. “Uh… hi, nice to meet you all.”

Solid. Real professional.

You glanced up just long enough to take in the mix of expressions in the room—some mildly interested, some unreadable, and one particular moustached pilot who still had the faintest trace of amusement on his face.

Nope. Not looking at him.

You exhaled slowly, centering yourself. Stay focused. Stay professional. You weren’t just here because of Ethera—you were Ethera. The only one who truly understood it. The only one who could execute this mission.

With another tap on your tablet, the slide shifted to a blacked-out, redacted briefing—only the necessary information was visible. A sleek 3D-rendered model of the enemy satellite appeared on the screen, rotating slowly. Most of its details were blurred or omitted entirely.

“This is Blackstar, a highly classified enemy satellite that has been operating in a low-Earth orbit over restricted airspace.” Your voice remained even, and steady, but the weight of what you were revealing sent a shiver down your spine. “Its existence has remained off the radar—literally and figuratively—until recently, when intelligence confirmed that it has been intercepting our encrypted communications, rerouting information, altering intelligence, and in some cases—fabricating entire communications.”

Someone exhaled sharply. Another shifted in their seat.

“So they’re feeding us bad intel?” one of them with big glasses and blonde hair asked, voice sceptical but sharp.

“That’s the theory,” you confirmed. “And given how quickly our ops have been compromised recently, it’s working.”

You tapped again, shifting to the next slide. The silent infiltration diagram appeared—an intricate web of glowing red lines showing Etherea’s integration process, slowly wrapping around the satellite’s systems like a virus embedding itself into a host.

“This is where Ethera comes in,” you said, shifting to a slide that displayed a cascading string of code, flickering across the screen. “Unlike traditional cyberweapons, Ethera doesn’t just break into a system. It integrates—restructuring security protocols as if it was always meant to be there. It’s undetectable, untraceable, and once inside, it grants us complete control of the Blackstar and won’t even register it as a breach.”

“So we’re not just hacking it," The only female pilot of the team said, arms crossed as she studied the data. “We’re hijacking it.”

“Exactly,” You nodded with a grin.

You switched to the next slide—a detailed radar map displaying the satellite’s location over international waters.

“This is the target area,” you continued after a deep breath. “It’s flying low-altitude reconnaissance patterns, which means it’s using ground relays for some of its communication. That gives us a small window to infiltrate and shut it down.”

The next slide appeared—a pair of unidentified fighter aircraft, patrolling the vicinity.

“And this is the problem,” you said grimly. “This satellite isn’t unguarded.”

A murmur rippled through the room as the pilots took in the fifth-generation stealth fighters displayed on the screen.

“We don’t know who they belong to,” you admitted. “What we do know is that they’re operating with highly classified tech—possibly experimental—and have been seen running defence patterns around the satellite’s flight path.”

Cyclone stepped forward then, arms crossed, his voice sharp and authoritative. “Which means your job is twofold. You will escort Dr L/N’s aircraft to the infiltration zone, ensuring Ethera is successfully deployed. If we are engaged, your priority remains protecting the package and ensuring a safe return.”

Oh, fantastic, you could not only feel your heartbeat in your toes, you were now officially the package.

You cleared your throat, tapping the screen again. Ethera’s interface expanded, displaying a cascade of sleek code.

“Once I’m in range,” you continued, “Ethera will lock onto the satellite’s frequency and begin infiltration. From that point, it’ll take approximately fifty-eight seconds to bypass security and assume control."

Silence settled over the room like a thick cloud, the weight of their stares pressing down on you. You could feel them analyzing, calculating, probably questioning who in their right mind thought putting you—a hacker, a tech specialist, someone whose idea of adrenaline was passing cars on the highway—into a fighter jet was a good idea.

Finally, one of the pilots—tall, broad-shouldered, blonde, and very clearly one of the cocky ones—tilted his head, arms crossed over his chest in a way that screamed too much confidence.

“So, let me get this straight.” His voice was smooth, and confident, with just the right amount of teasing. “You, Doctor—our very classified, very important tech specialist—have to be in the air, in a plane, during a mission that has a high probability of turning into a dogfight… just so you can press a button?”

Your stomach twisted at the mention of being airborne.

“Well…” You gulped, very much aware of how absolutely insane this sounded when put like that. “It’s… more than just that, but, yeah, essentially.”

A slow grin spread across his face, far too entertained by your predicament.

“Oh,” he drawled, “this is gonna be fun.”

Before you could fully process how much you already hated this, Cyclone—who had been watching the exchange with his signature unamused glare—stepped forward, cutting through the tension with his sharp, no-nonsense voice.

“This is a classified operation,” he stated, sharp and authoritative. “Not a joyride.”

The blonde’s smirk faded slightly as he straightened, and the rest of the pilots quickly fell in line.

Silence lingered for a moment longer before Vice Admiral Beau Cyclone Simpson let out a slow breath and straightened. His sharp gaze swept over the room before he nodded once.

“All right. That’s enough.” His tone was firm, the kind that left no room for argument. “We’ve got work to do. The mission will take place in a few weeks' time, once we’ve run full assessments, completed necessary preparations, and designated a lead for this operation.”

There was a slight shift in the room. Some of the pilots exchanged glances, the weight of the upcoming mission finally settling in. Others, mainly the cocky ones, looked as though they were already imagining themselves in the cockpit.

“Dismissed,” Cyclone finished.

The pilots stood, murmuring amongst themselves as they filed out of the room, the blonde one still wearing a smug grin as he passed you making you frown and turn away, your gaze then briefly met the eyes of the moustached pilot.

You hadn’t meant to look, but the moment your eyes connected, something flickered in his expression. Amusement? Curiosity? You weren’t sure, and frankly, you didn’t want to know.

So you did the only logical thing and immediately looked away and turned to gather your things. You needed to get out of here, to find some space to breathe before your brain short-circuited from stress—

“Doctor, Stay for a moment.”

You tightened your grip on your tablet and turned back to Cyclone, who was watching you with that unreadable, vaguely disapproving expression that all high-ranking officers seemed to have perfected. “Uh… yes, sir?”

Once the last pilot was out the door, Cyclone exhaled sharply and crossed his arms.

“You realize,” he said, “that you’re going to have to actually fly, correct?”

You swallowed. “I—well, technically, I’ll just be a passenger.”

His stare didn’t waver.

“Doctor,” he said, tone flat, “I’ve read your file. I know you requested to be driven here instead of taking a military transport plane. You also took a ferry across the bay instead of a helicopter. And I know that you chose to work remotely for three years to avoid getting on a plane.”

You felt heat rise to your cheeks. “That… could mean anything.”

“It means you do not like flying, am I correct?”

Your fingers tightened around the tablet as you tried to find a way—any way—out of this. “Sir, with all due respect, I don’t need to fly the plane. I just need to be in it long enough to deploy Ethera—”

Cyclone cut you off with a sharp look. “And what happens if something goes wrong, Doctor? If the aircraft takes damage? If you have to eject mid-flight? If you lose comms and have to rely on emergency protocols?”

You swallowed hard, your stomach twisting at the very thought of ejecting from a jet.

Cyclone sighed, rubbing his temple as if this entire conversation was giving him a migraine. “We cannot afford to have you panicking mid-mission. If this is going to work, you need to be prepared. That’s why, starting next week you will train with the pilots on aerial procedures and undergoing mandatory training in our flight simulation program.”

Your stomach dropped. “I—wait, what? That’s not necessary—”

“It’s absolutely necessary,” Cyclone cut in, his tone sharp. “If you can’t handle a simulated flight, you become a liability—not just to yourself, but to the pilots escorting you. And in case I need to remind you, Doctor, this mission is classified at the highest level. If you panic mid-air, it won’t just be your life at risk. It’ll be theirs. And it’ll be national security at stake.”

You inhaled sharply. No pressure. None at all.

Cyclone watched you for a moment before speaking again, his tone slightly softer but still firm. “You’re the only one who can do this, Doctor. That means you need to be ready.”

You exhaled slowly, pressing your lips together before nodding stiffly. “Understood, sir.”

Cyclone gave a small nod of approval. “Good. Dismissed.”

You turned and walked out, shoulders tense, fully aware that in three days' time, you were going to be strapped into a high-speed, fighter jet. And knowing your luck?

You were definitely going to puke.

Part 2???

[yingdu-lover]

this scene will have a special place in my heart REGARDLESS of what is about to unfold, even after the end of Link Click

Lu Guang's genuine happy smile slowly breaks as he looks at silly Cheng Xiaoshi.

it's not just a small smile we usually see

it's a smile that takes over the looming gloominess we have seen for the entire 3 seasons

this smile is DIFFERENT. The pleasant warm forest background along with the young green leaves falling on them, it is one of the most beautiful framings of shiguang I have ever seen. If the leaves were yellow/orange, it would have made me cry like a howling hyena because that signifies 'the autumn of life', death is not far away. But it's green and young! it symbolises young and pure love. The warmth of the forest really holds them like a blanket. This scene is vibrant with youthfulness and lively spirit, and the focus of the scene is THEM.

You know what is interesting, why is Yingdu so special? We had multiple opportunities in S1 and S2 to see Shiguang framed like this but they deliberately avoided it. for example take this scene,

the focus is on their hands, which is of course very symbolic and it just looks like Cheng Xiaoshi just asked,

"Would you like to be my life partner?"

- "yes"

but they didn't show their faces.

But I am not here just to talk about Shiguang. It's him

there is something in his expressions that pleasantly sends shivers to my heart.

He is genuinely happy to cross paths with them, probably in another life, he would not meet them as a spy. In another timeline, he would have enough agency upon his life to choose to befriend them of his own volition. Link Click is so agonisingly beautiful to portray the often ignored yet deep yearning of the human mind, the yearning to meet people who make you believe in 'found family', even if it's for a fleeting moment, you are grateful to be able to form human bondings, with people who feel to be 'your people'. You know when Beckett said that the fundamental condition of human existence is being enveloped by loneliness and that's why they are constantly in search of the 'others'...he was painfully truthful.

Whatever transpires (even if it's Xia Fei who actually kills Cheng Xiaoshi and wants to kill Lu Guang) this scene will not lose its value. On the contrary, the emotions will be more profound. In a world where destiny had not designed such a heinous survival game, we will be alive and happy together.

Another thing (apart from their friendship) he realises is that...how Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang are so deeply in love. (Listen, Ik the dialogues may add a whole different meaning altogether but I wanna write it cuz it makes me happy hmph!) He recognises it, and kind of wishes something of that in his own life too. I would not be surprised if he actually views shiguang as the model lovers he kind of pines for in his own life too ( probably with Vein-)

whatever, this scene is PRICELESS!

edit : this.