#a question mark for the “time loop” because I can see the time here but am not sure about the loop TT

[writemeverything]

Doksoo week DAY 3: time loop(?)

[jolalibrary]

1. butterscotch orange

frankie morales x f!reader | chapter one of do me yourself

summary: a meet-cute in a hardware store? impossible, out of the question. except, that's exactly what happens. a need for screws leads you to a broad-shouldered, brown-eyed man who you're sure is about to change your day, never mind your life.

wordcount: 3.3k chapter warnings: [see masterlist for series warnings] meet cute, flirting. fluff. flirting in person and over <redacted>. frankie being a single!dad to a son. coffee date. an: it is finally here! this little thing has rotted me from the inside out and nothing brings me more joy than a romcom. so here we go. buckle in. all hail @secretelephanttattoo for the wondrous idea and support (seriously thank you, i know you know ily, but i don't think I've been this happy writing something in so long). a thank you to @thetriumphantpanda who i forced to read this when we had our sleepover, ily.

key: frankie is in bold, you are in italics [winks]

IF I CAN DO IT, ANYONE CAN DO IT. ALL YOU NEED—

It rings, echoes through your skull.

Has been doing so the whole ride over—your groan doing nothing to dilute it, even as you kill the engine of your car and are welcomed with silence.

There’s an element of regret you feel thrumming in you since discovering that perky voice, her high-pitched excitement becoming the bane of your existence. Forever replaying in your head. Regardless of whether it is actually playing. It remains on a loop in your mind—all light and sweet—grating on you from the amount you’ve had to watch it, just to get to this stage.

Realistically, you know you shouldn’t hate the voice, because it has been helpful—in that effortlessly playful way that’s kind of begun to fuck you off.

But then, you’re not even sure if any voice would fare much better. Because you just don’t feel like it’s just that easy—so possible, all simple and quick to do.

Because DIY apparently isn't that trouble-free for you. The bandaids on your palm, fingers, and forearm are proof of it.

Yet, somehow you’re outside of a hardware store.

One that Google promises will have all you need and more. Not that you know what that is.

The only thing you do know is that it at least gives you another reason to focus on something other than the mountain of boxes that never end. The ones not unpacked. In the home that’s now only slowly beginning to feel more like yours, and not the people you purchased it from.

Eyes flicking over the front of the store, the clutter of things all left outside—in judging various shades of buckets and plastic garden chairs—before your eyes land on the door to Harold’s Hardware.

There’s no breeze, but the door moves ever so slightly. Sitting, slightly ajar, as though once—a long time ago—it fit in the frame perfectly, but now remained warped and unwilling to even try. Then there’s the glass, all smeared and sitting inside (what you assume) would have been a bright-white frame that’s slightly yellowed and has been adorned in scuffs, swinging in its layered overuse.

But, at least it’s visited, you think. Shoving open the door, a bell sounds in some distant corner, ringing, it almost muffled by the voice from the video continuing to play in the space between your ears—a to-do list, a handful of items required, listing themselves on a never-ending loop, the billionth play through since you’d woken up.

It’s so much bigger inside than you banked on. Jaw-ticking to the side, eyes marvelling at the floor-to-ceiling display and the array of things all living and existing under hanging signs that appear worn and peeling.

With each second, more and more of the charm comes to you.

That there’s a radio, crackling away, a song from decades gone by playing with difficulty, as an array of scents swirl, fighting themselves for your attention. But, two stand out, fresh-cut wood and lemon disinfectant. The latter you assume kills dirt but doesn’t make the floor tiles gleam in the way they once did. Scuff marks adorning well-walked paths. But the former, you gravitate more to, wish for it to fill your nose and remain with you long after your visit.

Adjusting the strap of your bag, you glance about again, almost fidgeting your feet in your shoes, before it dawns on you. Slams into you as you flick your gaze from sign to sign—

You haven’t got a clue about where to start.

Listing the things from memory—suddenly distant and difficult to find amongst the dooming overwhelm—as your feet begin moving of their own accord. Choosing an aisle, selecting it—all eeny-meeny-miny-mo.

Because better that, than standing aimless, lost. Watched on some flickering CCTV in the back where you assume the person who works here is.

Dragging your eyes, scanning them up and down, taking in the varying types of paint brushes, different thicknesses, different intentions. Moving from single purchase to grouped, to multi-packs, and landing finally on rollers before you’re turning, heading down an entirely different aisle.

The next isn’t any less overwhelming.

If anything, it’s more, because it’s at least more of what you needed.

Screws, bolts, fixings.

Your brain assessing, attempting to assemble whether a bolt is what you need, a screw or—

“You need a hand?”

It throws you off, the voice.

Cuts through your processing, through the low replays of the video (the ones only in your head) and the cracking radio which has moved into an advert for migraines.

It’s low, a slight gravel that he rids with a clear of his throat as you look over your shoulder, eyes sweeping over the owner of the voice, eventually turning to face him.

And fuck.

He’s broad, dressed in a deep green t-shirt under a tan apron—name badge scratched over, only leaving the lingering marks of a “here to help” and the fading logo you’d seen outside.

You don’t mean to gawk, but yet you do all the same.

Practically swallowing, attempting to whir your brain into gear as you take in the rest of him. The thick loose curls atop his head, the strong nose and the round-brown eyes. His moustache, the wiry facial hair across his chin he slowly begins to scrape at, as he remains waiting for a response.

“Screws.”

“You… you need screws?”

Nodding, you will your brain to work, to function. But, he’s just so—

Lifting his chin, he runs his thumb up and down the underside of his chin, waiting, waiting, until he smiles. “Do you know the kind?”

Think. Think. Fucking think.

And then you do. Somehow able to unspool some thoughts, find sentences. Beginning to explain, in barely-there pauses and animated hand gestures about your move, and your new lease of life, and this video you found and how you felt inspired by it to the point it had led you to order wood cut to size and tools from the internet, but screws, screws and this and that are all that you’d forgotten.

And, he listens. Sliding a hand over the sleeve of his sun-scorched tee as he does. Just nodding on occasion. Thin lines appear along his forehead at certain parts of the story, but nonetheless listening.

“Show me.”

“Show… you?”

Then he smiles. Soft, it slides up in a slow, almost cautious way, but then it’s at his eyes, touching, brushing itself there and sending sparks up into the darker brown flecks.

Licking his lips, he gestures, “The video.”

You do.

A quick shuffle in your pocket, a slide to unlock your phone and then your fingers are brushing his. They’re warm, his. That you can tell.

Heat radiating from them, slowly blanketing yours as his hand and yours cradle the phone like a newborn in an announcement photo.

From there, your chest tightens, more so when you meet his eyes, finding them watching you as intently as you wish to look at him, and it makes your heart stammer, skip—a full chaos of beats following before he’s holding your phone independently.

That’s when a new crisis calls. A new thought is all set to erode your mind.

Because your phone looks tiny in his hand.

The plastic case is almost dwarfed by him as he tips his chin, watching the video, occasionally tapping at the screen to skip ahead before he nods to himself, you all but busy trying not to choke on your own drool.

“I know what you need.”

“You do?”

A foolish question, all escaping without thought or rationale.

He just smiles, in a way that seems to settle your incoming anxiousness.

“I do.”

And he does.

A tilt of his head, his back turned to you, a brief thought crossing your brain at the sight but you quickly rid, and you’re following. Listening as he explains, as he points out things with his long, thick finger, as you nod, as though nothing lives in the space between both of your ears.

It isn’t until you’re back in your car that it hits you. Do you suddenly wish as your engine ignites and your car roars to life, that you had asked for his number—or better yet, his name.

It’s been days, and you’re still wondering if some part of you’d concocted him, made him up—thrown up an illusion of a man and exaggerated how good he looked.

The more you thought about him, the more insane it got. Even hearing yourself explain it to a friend made you question if you'd been dreaming. That maybe you’d let days mould him, shaping perfection in your consciousness.

It has more weight when you walk past the older man at the till, all white hair in a slick-back style and who tips his head and looks more what you’d expect from the decor of the place.

But a part, one fighting, scrapping for a moment to exist, still believes. Hopes.

Forcing your legs to wander down aisles you don’t need, pausing at each corner, desiring to be proven wrong. Hovering, hoping—half-wondering if it was essential that to make him appear, you had to look lost and hopeless—or whether that had just been a coincidence that first time.

With each up and down, you almost give up. Hope almost gone, erasing itself with each step, all but fading.

But there, in the centre of the paint aisle, speckled in dried flecks, it clinging in varying shades—a kaleidoscope dream on his jeans and worn t-shirt—is him. The man you haven't stopped thinking about.

"It's you."

"It's me," you grin, heat flooding your cheeks, growing up into your neck.

Arm lifting, hand brushing the back of his curls not housed in a cap, as he matches your grin. "New project?"

"Something like that."

His gaze doesn't waver, doesn't lessen, not as his grin slopes into a shy smile, before he wipes his hand on his jeans, offering it out. "Realised... I never... I'm Frankie, by the way."

You hand him your name, dropping an octave as you do—all unmeaning, entirely accidental—fingers sliding past his as you shake his hand.

“I don’t… you’ve not got your apron on.”

Glancing down, you find him grinning when he looks up, “Not my day today. Here on personal business.”

“Oh is…” squinting at the paint can in his hand, “Butterscotch Orange on a hit list or something?”

His lips slide into his cheek, a tooth-filled smirk. “Should be, it’s a right bitc—pain in the ass to sell.”

Rolling your lips, you trace your tongue across your teeth as you grin. “It’s no…” eyes squinting. “Mt Rainier Grey.”

His brow arches. “That your shade of choice?”

“I like it—don’t hate the orange though. So, maybe it’s not the paint, but the seller.”

Something twinkles in his eye, lips still cocked to one side, smirk still ever-present.

And it’s a challenge to drag your eyes to look at the floor, you shift your weight. Trying, and failing, to think of an excuse, to leave before it gets weird—before you become too much and ruin this nondescript thing. But, his throat clearing stops you. It forces your chin up. Barely just able to catch it, the whisper, how it’s almost said to the can in his hand than to you.

“You… doing anything right now?”

Shaking your head slowly, you bite your cheek as you grin. “Just talking to a man holding a paint can.”

Tapping his fingers along the top, lips rolling, “You fancy getting a coffee? With me?”

You have to bite your smile, out of fear you’ll show how practically beaming you are. Mouth opening, but he adds an addition of I don’t usually do this that makes your lips curl into a smirk.

“What? Invite random customers for coffee or accost them with paint you can’t sell?”

Biting his upper lip, he shakes his head, tucking a curl behind his ear as your eyes glance over at them. How they glisten under the yellow-fluorescent light.

Letting your heart dance like leaves in the wind. “I’d love to get coffee with you, Frankie.”

It’s nice, the coffee place.

Not a far walk, a few doors down. The charm of it coaxes you in with sounds of crunching beans and strong scents of varying levels of caffeine sliding over and relaxing your shoulders from your ears.

Because suddenly you’re nervous.

A slight shake to your bones, a twitch of your fingers.

“Let me get this.”

Smiling, you find him watching you, not caring to drag his eyes away when you catch him.

“Because you never do this or because you’re hoping to persuade me to buy your unsellable paint?”

Smirking, he traces his eyes over you, “Both.”

The corner of his mouth slides back into his cheek, a dimple appearing, deepening—one you want to brush over with your thumb the longer he keeps looking at you the way he does.

All dark eyes, beedy, but sparkling.

'Who's next?' breaks the spell. Shatters the magic. It forces you both to blink, to focus on the task at hand. Both orders said, whirring and crunching sounding as you admire the place, glaze over the menu until he’s nudging you.

With your order in hand and tucked away in the corner—the large window letting in light and warmth from the sun on your back—you try not to moan at the taste of your drink once it hits your tongue.

Because it’s good. Brilliant, practically everything.

To the point you have to bite back a thank you, one that you feel would be never-ending, a constant swirl of words landing on the circular table between the two of you. Nothing napkins and good conversation could soak up.

Because good coffee is always great, but knowing where to find it in an unknown place is something else.

Distantly, you hear him say your name, chin dipped, eyes focused, realising—in a flood of embarrassment—he’s been talking to you.

“Sorry?”

“I said, I’ve not seen you in the store before…”

Swallowing, you take a steadying breath.

“You don’t have to…”

But, you do all the same. You pour open small bits of truth, words falling, tumbling half-strung together as your history rolls out in a timeline in front of you both. How you’d bought a new place, that it’s a bit run down, seen better days—a determination to prove friends wrong by doing it yourself.

Foolish, you comment with a shake of your head, I know fuck all about decorating.

And he listens—to the fact you’re alone, not even a pet; he listens even as you talk about your work, all boring, not entirely interesting. The two of you simply lost in one another, surrounded by coffee mug swirls and the sounds of sizzling food, coffee shop noises and mumbling daytime talk as you ask him about work, about his love for orange shades.

And your eyes glance down at his phone, how it’s turned over—his all undivided attention given to you—yet your eyes linger on the phone case. The one with a drawing, likely in pencil, a man in a hat on a hill, a child next to him and a sun with a smile on its face.

“I… I have a kid. Luca—shared custody,” he says, nodding, tongue peeking out between his teeth, hands leaving the table and wiping back on his jeans in slow slides up and down. “He… he made it me.”

It’s the grin that makes your heart swell.

Makes your hand cup your mug a little tighter so you don’t offer it out to him to hold, a thing which feels so natural, no thought required. Except you don’t know his last name—barely know a thing about him.

Yet, your body practically leans forward as you mirror the smile—all soft, as another piece of a missing puzzle sliding into place.

“Does he like drawing?”

Laughing, his palm slides along his jaw. “Loves it.”

“How old?”

“Five—does that… does that bother you?”

“That you’re a dad?” He nods, and you lick your lips, you make sure to hold his gaze. “Not in the slightest.”

You smile, watching him mirror you this time. It rushes out, kissing across every bit of his face—a shyness soon fluttering over him before he clears his throat.

“So, you freelance? You like being your own boss?”

“Not especially, but it does mean I can work at night.”

Nodding, he slides his hand around the white porcelain, hand practically dwarfing the mug. It makes you want to ask him to hold things, to see if IKEA pencils or children’s eating utensils look more ridiculous than your iPhone and a regular coffee mug.

“Prefer the night?”

“I prefer the quiet of it... to think. It’s why… why I began trying to do something in the day, needed to still be busy.”

“Sitting still not an option, Rainier Grey?”

Shrugging, you smile. “Says you Butterscotch and your three tins of unsellable paint in the bed of your truck.”

“You got me there.”

“I just… like to be busy, and with the new house, no partner—commitments, I thought why not try a bit of DIY.”

Nodding, he lifts his mug, and takes a sip—eyes remaining fixed on you as he does, as though it buys him time, lets him think up an opinion, an assessment. It makes your skin warm, but for all the uncomfortable reasons, the panicking ones—parts of you beginning to catastrophise that you’ve said the wrong thing.

“Open up your Instagram.”

You stare, blinking.

“Trust me.”

And you do. With another fumble, another slide of your phone screen open, and you follow his instructions as you type in the spelling he gives you. When you click the page, it’s hard not to grin, to not have your face explode into a smile so large it cuts into your cheeks.

“I don’t like to sit still either,” Frankie adds, as though the thousand photos and videos, the tutorials and follower count don’t say that on their own.

You’ve fallen down a hole—willingly.

It cracked open the moment you’d sat on your couch, drink in hand, blanket half over your body.

The moment you’d begun your scroll, you discovered you couldn’t stop. Starting with the latest and moving back, until you realise you’d rather see the story in the way it happened.

Choosing a moment, almost nine months ago, before you work your way forward to the present.

You were cautious, more careful than needed, to not like anything too late—to not give away how deep into his page you’d gone. Even if you were in awe, a little proud—your cheeks a little warm and lips turned up into your cheek—as you saw in real-time his confidence grow. The way he’d look at the camera, began experimenting with angles, all in all being smoother, more happy.

You suppose that’s why you type a comment under one picture:

Is that butterscotch orange in the flesh? 🟠

Stalking me are you?

Getting some tips from Mr DIY himself.

I know you went back some months, Rainy.

How do you know that?

Because as soon as you commented that’s what I did. You looked nice at the beach.

Now who’s the stalker, Butterscotch.

Me. Clearly. I’m being very upfront about it.

Out of interest, do you tutor at all? Give hands on help to beginner DIYers?

You genuinely asking or flirting?

Big-headed much?

I can help you with something if you need it.

I think I do.

Then I’m yours. Don’t worry, I promise to only snoop in your drawers when left alone.

Think we should get food first, show you what I’m thinking—make sure you’re up to the task.

You asking me on a date?

No. But if you keep showing off tools topless I’ll be tempted to ask you.

Knew you’d gone back further than a month.

FRANKIE’S INSTAGRAM 🌝

NEXT CHAPTER

an: you do not understand how giddy i am about this series. the chapters have flown out of me. i hope you enjoy it half as much as i'm enjoying writing it. see you soon xx

[murdrdocs]

age gap (r is 18+!); southern coded r; implied domestic violence; fingering MDNI 18+ w/ GARY JOHNSON

the scent of jealousy reeks back at the precinct and it’s fucking with gary’s mindset. he’s been off of his game lately, thrown for a loop since people have been questioning him. to put it short: he's getting sloppy.

he's staring at you more than he's listening to you. he's stuttering over his words, trying desperately to follow the script he's made up in his head.

"so ... uh." he clears his throat and adjusts his position. "how d'you want me to do it?"

how do you want him to do it? what kind of question is that?

he can feel claude and phil wincing in the van.

you don’t question it. you take a breath, and then you take a breather. gary—or grant, as you know him—watches your lips wrap around the straw in your sweet tea. his eyes dip for a second, settling on the red of your bra peeking out beneath your low cut white shirt.

he swallows as your lipstick leaves a mark behind on the paper straw and lifts his eyes just soon enough to meet your gaze.

“i…i think there should be a body. if it wouldn’t get you—us—into too much trouble. not havin’ a body just seems cruel. my momma deserves better. that’s why im doin’ this.”

you speak slowly, meticulously, as if you’re holding off tears. when you sniff, gary pulls a tissue from the dispenser to his left and hands it to you. you wipe under your eyes, uncaring of the mascara you leave smudged behind.

"okay. we're doing this for your momma, yeah?"

you nod, lips pulled into a thin smile. "yeah."

gary shouldn't do this. he's done it once, and the backlash he got was heavy. he shouldn't do it again.

but you're young. you care about your family. he sees the bruise along your wrist and he can only imagine the ones your mother has, likely more severe if he's following the picture you painted for him.

you've told him that you refuse to finish school when she's with him. you refuse to do anything other than work and go home. it's not a life you should be living.

you don't want your stepdad killed. you want your mother liberated. you want liberation.

it wouldn't be right for gary to let you incriminate yourself.

when you turn to the side and reach into your purse, gary stops you. he gives you the spiel, the spiel he shouldn't be giving, but he stops you while you're ahead.

"listen, let's stay here. you can finish your pie and your sweet tea. and then after this, you promise me you'll get someone involved—someone else involved—and you'll get you and your momma out of that house. alright?"

you nodded and gave gary your word.

he paid the tab and left the diner after you.

he got shit for his choice. he defended you as best as he could. he saved two lives that time and then he put it in the past. grant, a good southern boy who said ma'am as pure instinct, was shelved.

until gary got a phone call.

not too far past eight, the summer sun starting to make its descend past the horizon. the cats are fed, gary's fed, his second episode of jeopardy! of the night is playing in the back and then his work phone buzzes against the coffee table. he doesn't have your contact saved, there was no reason to, so he doesn't answer the first time. he didn't know it was you. but when you call again, and he picks up this time, he regrets hitting the red button the first time around.

because you're crying. sniffling and gulping down breaths of air. he can hardly understand what's wrong. he has to ask you to repeat your plea to be picked up at least three times, and even then he's apprehensive.

he's not grant right now. he's gary. sitting on the couch, covered in cat hair, wearing his blue light glasses as he partially reads on his kindle. but you sound so pathetic and gary wants to help you so he slips on a pair of sweatpants and an old college sweatshirt that he thrifted just for grant (UT Austin) and in half an hour he's pulling up outside of your trailer and watching you slip out of a window and run to his car.

he doesn't have anywhere to take you. he asks you if you want to go to a friends place, his fingers nervously tapping against his steering wheel.

you sniffle and gary's taken back to the first time he met you. then, he was wearing a wire. he was sitting in the vicinity of cameras and other people. many things keeping him on his best behavior.

but now he's alone, in his car, with you. a you who has a friends place to go to, but you don't wanna go there yet. a you who asks to grab food from somewhere, but when you get there you sit in the car, unmoving. a you who leans across the console and presses your lips to gary's.

he's not gary anymore. he's never been gary to you, always grant, but right now he's not gary to himself, either.

gary wouldn't kiss a vulnerable younger girl in his car. gary wouldn't entertain the way you slip your tongue into his mouth. gary would shut this down, drop you off, and go home where he would wallow in self pity and copious amounts of guilt.

but grant indulges.

grant slides his seat back and taps his thighs. grant rests his hands on your hips when you straddle him. grant slips your shirt over your head and his hand down your shorts. grant gets you off with his fingers, kissing you through it all, taking in the salty taste of your tears as you let out wanton gasps into his mouth.

and grant drives you to your friends house, kisses your forehead, and tells you to call him if you need anything.

(later in the night when he's laying in his bed, gary barely has any regrets about it all)

[buckymorelikefuckme]

sweet, sugar, handyman

steve rogers x bimbo reader

words: 3.9k

warnings: **18 + ONLY** smut, light daddy dom steve, unprotected sex (don’t do that), creampie. if i missed anything pls let me know!!!

a/n: any and all mistakes are mine. feedback is encouraged & welcomed <3

part 1 ❀

It's been a few days since Steve took you out on a date. Even though he got the clear and undeniable message that you would one hundred percent be down to fuck afterward, he felt that he still wanted to wine & dine you more first. He wanted to work for it; earn it, so to speak. So when the date was done and he opened the door to the cab he hailed for you, he only kissed you goodnight. Admittedly, it did turn into a little bit of a make-out session, which only stopped because the cabbie cleared his throat pointedly.

You were absolutely not making it easy for him though. In the span of four days, you’ve made every possible innuendo when given the chance, and sometimes even said outright explicit things to him. Steve is losing his goddamn mind. He's beginning to question why he’s so hellbent on being a gentleman.

Even at work he’s not able to concentrate. He's had to restock the same shelves three times now because he keeps putting the wrong items in the wrong places.

He’s grumbling under his breath about how fucking pathetic he is when he gets a whiff of your perfume and immediately stiffens.

“Hey there, big boy.”

He has to shut his eyes at the sound of your voice. It’s just so…

“What’s a girl gotta do to get some good hardware around here, huh?”

Teasing. Your voice is sexy, no doubt, and cute in the worst way, but above all it’s teasing. Steve can hear your smile as you speak. He takes a calming breath before slowly turning to meet your siren stare. He doesn't feel any calmer when he gets a look at you.

Your hair is pulled up in a high ponytail, the ends curling upward adorably. Unsurprisingly, your makeup is beautiful, highlighting your features perfectly, and your outfit is nothing short of incredible. You’ve got a cute, little strapless sundress on—pink, of course—with tiny flowers all over, leaving your collarbones and shoulders on display. Steve’s mouth waters, his desire to bite and mark the skin rushing to the forefront of his mind.

A sweet grin spreads across your glossed lips the longer he stares at you like an idiot.

“Steve?”

He blinks, coming back to the present. “Hi,” he finally says.

You giggle. “Hi.”

He clears his throat. “What, um… What brings you here?”

“I’m looking for some tools,” you reply, putting emphasis on the last word in a way that puts Steve on guard right away.

“Well,” he starts, clinging to his sanity, “you’re certainly in the right place.”

You smirk. “Do you think I could get my hands on your tools then?”

Steve curses under his breath and you're giggling again, making him feel a confusing mix of endeared and aroused.

“Why do you do that?”

Steve does not whine. And he didn't whine just now. Nobody can prove it and nobody would believe it.

“Because you make it so easy and it's fun to see you get all flushed,” you answer honestly.

He tries to glare, but even he can tell it's weak. You step into his space, curling your fingers in the belt loops at the front of his jeans, right above his groin, peering up at him through your fluttery lashes. Suddenly, his palms are sweating.

“Steve?” you start softly. He hums in reply, not trusting his voice. “Will you come over tonight?”

“Tonight? To–for what?”

You smile innocently. “I’m not allowed to want to spend time with you?”

He swallows roughly. “N-No, you are, I just… Do I—Should I bring anything?”

You tilt your head as you pretend to think. “You're a handyman, yes?” At his hesitant nod, you grin. “Then all I need is you and your big hands.”

Ah, shit. Steve is in for some trouble, isn't he?

You lean up on your tiptoes to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He barely resists letting out a groan when your breasts brush his chest. Now he knows you're not wearing a bra because he can feel your nipples through your dress.

“See you later.”

“Uh huh,” he replies dazedly.

Yeah… He’s in deep shit.

~

Steve fiddles with the sleeves of his black henley, the cellophane encasing the bouquet of daffodils in his clammy grip crinkling noisily as he shuffles awkwardly on your doorstep. Inhale for three, exhale for three.

He knocks and waits. It only takes a moment for you to open the door. And then Steve’s stomach promptly attempts to fall out of his ass.

You're wearing a skintight, blood red mini dress, sleeveless and low cut enough to show off your ample cleavage. Your legs, toned and perfect, look positively sinful. You've got on a matching pair of strappy heels, and there, on one of your cute toes, sits a gold toe ring. Why that detail makes his heart race faster is beyond him. Your hair falls in soft waves around your face.

You're glowing as you lean your hand against the doorframe. Steve's never seen you in red before, but damn you wear it well.

“Wow,” he whispers.

You bite your lip to tamp down on your smile. “Thanks. You're pretty wow yourself.” You step aside. “Come on in, handsome.”

There's just enough space for him to squeeze past you. He gets a whiff of your perfume and, fuck, you smell divine. It's not your usual soft perfume that he's gotten used to already; it's something slightly darker, spicier. It makes his cock twitch in his jeans.

“Are those for me?” you wonder as you shut the door, gesturing at the bouquet.

“Oh,” he says, thrusting them towards you, “Um, yes. For you.”

You take them with a small smile. “Thank you. They're beautiful.”

“So are you,” Steve mumbles shyly.

He's pretty sure he notes the tiniest, pleased curl of your lips and counts it as a win.

You go about putting them in a vase, arranging them just so before placing them on the kitchen counter. Steve watches you flit about your home and something warm spreads throughout his body. When you're not flustering him and making him stumble over his words and feet, you're pretty fucking cute.

“Would you like something to drink? Wine? Water?”

“Water would be great,” he replies

He accepts the glass with a nod of thanks after you hand it to him, taking a sip then sitting it on the table beside him. You stare at each other, Steve assessing while you're happy to just look.

“Why did you invite me over?” he questions.

You shrug. “I wanted to spend time with you.”

Slowly, Steve shakes his head, walking over to you with his hands in his pockets.

“Bullshit,” he accuses. “That's not the whole reason.”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” you respond defiantly.

He backs you into the counter, hearing your light gasp and feels his lips twitch. “Don't act coy,” he admonishes. “You didn't wear this dress to sit on your couch and watch a movie.”

He trails a finger along your side, down the fabric of your dress, then toys with the hem of it. He's not sure where this burst of confidence is coming from, but he's going to go with the flow and see where it takes him.

“No, you chose to wear this to drive me crazy. You couldn't just wait a little bit longer.” Your breathing picks up, eyes becoming heavy-lidded as he speaks. “Do I need to teach you how to be patient?”

You remain silent as you hold his gaze, seemingly at a loss.

“What, no smartass remarks? That's a first. This is what you wanted, isn't it? You want me to give in and fuck you like the needy little slut you are, yeah?”

A short, choked off noise escapes you, your expression shocked, and Steve smirks in satisfaction.

“Not so fun on that side of it, huh?” he teases.

You clear your throat and try to gather yourself. “It's not that bad. Maybe you're just a pussy.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “You're really testing me. I’m starting to think you want more than just a quick fuck. I think you might need to be bent over my knee and taught a lesson.”

“Fuck, Steve…”

You grab his hand and hurriedly walk out of the kitchen, leading him down the hall. You open a door at the end of it without stopping. Steve finds himself in your bedroom, which is just as frilly and pink as he imagined. You whirl around after you reach your bed, facing him with determination and lust in your eyes.

“I wonder if it's all talk, or if you can actually deliver,” you goad, though your voice does waver.

It's clear you're trying to get a rise out of him, and he would absolutely hate to disappoint you.

“Careful what you wish for.”

In a blink, he's got you wrapped in his arms, lips lightly grazing your neck and shoulder. Your hands fly up to squeeze his biceps as you begin squirming. He presses a whisper of a kiss to your collarbone, smiling at the way you try to push into it more. His lips trail up to your ear where he briefly tugs on your earlobe with his teeth. You whine, tilting your head back to give him more access, but he only lets his breath fan out across your skin for a moment, watching goosebumps appear before pulling back entirely.

“What—” you start, frowning, trying to pull him back to where he was.

“Do you have a safeword?”

You swallow thickly. “I like the color system.”

He nods. “What's your color now?”

“So fucking green, Steve, please just fuck me—”

“You need to learn patience,” he decides. “I'm gonna take my time, gonna explore every inch of your beautiful, sacred body, and you're going to lie there and take it like a good girl. Understood?”

You nod, but that's not what Steve wants. He grips your chin, his fingers and thumb pressing into your cheeks.

“I need to hear you say it, sweetheart. Use your words.”

You exhale shakily. “Understood.”

Steve grins, letting go. “That's a good girl.” You let out a quiet moan. “Now. Where should I begin, hm? Part of me wants to rip this dress right off of you, but another part of me doesn't want to ruin something so stunning.”

You fidget under his observation. He's sure your cheeks are warm beneath your beloved pink blush you always wear. His eyes finally settle on your collarbones, remembering earlier that day and how he wanted to mark them. Without a word, he pushes the straps of your dress down your arms. Then he runs his thumb along the jut of bone, reverent, wondering how and why he got so lucky.

He leans down and attaches his mouth to your skin, sucking and licking and biting until he's positive blood has rushed to the surface under his ministrations. Your small hands are clutching at the sides of his shirt as you moan. And damn, that's a sound he's already growing fond of.

He switches to the other side, biting a matching mark on that collarbone, then decides it's not enough and moves up to the point where your shoulder meets your neck and sucks a mark there too. By the time he's done you're panting and wriggling in a way that tells him you're searching for relief.

“Take the straps off all the way, but don't take the dress off,” he instructs. You're quick to obey and he hums, pleased, when you wait for further direction. “Such a good girl.”

You nod. “Yes.”

As a reward, he pulls down the cups of the dress, exposing your tits to the cool air of your room and watching in delight as your nipples harden. He brushes his thumbs over them, smirking when you twitch and whimper.

“Does my little slut want my mouth on her tits?” he asks as he continues playing with them.

“Yes, please,” you rush to say, “Please, daddy.”

Your mouth snaps shut with an audible click. It's clear you hadn't meant to let that slip.

He pauses, raising his eyebrows. “Daddy? Oh baby, I should've known.” You whine at his mocking tone. “Don't you worry, sweetheart, daddy will take good care of you. Sit down for me.”

Despite your embarrassment, you do as you're told and sit on your bed. Steve kneels on the floor in front of you, pulling you to the edge of the mattress so your tits are directly in his face.

“So soft. So pretty,” he murmurs, cupping them in his hands.

He takes one nipple into his mouth and you let out a high pitched whine, hands coming up to bury themselves in his hair. He gives your nipple the same treatment your collarbones received, sucking harshly and flicking his tongue back and forth. Abruptly, he shifts to the other side, not giving you a chance to catch up. You tug roughly at his hair as you push your chest closer and closer to him.

He pulls off, blowing across your spit-covered breasts, seeing you shiver and whine with a twisted sense of gratification. With a sudden urgency, he determines he needs his mouth on your pussy now. He spreads your legs and pushes up the hem of your dress at the same time. If he wasn't already on his knees, he'd have fallen to them when he sees you're not wearing panties.

“What a naughty, naughty girl,” he chides, voice gruff.

Your pussy glistens with your wetness and you start squirming as he stares.

“Please,” you gasp.

“Please what, sweetheart?” he wonders and meets your desperate gaze.

“Daddy, please, want your mouth.”

He tilts his head. “Where, baby?” You whine again, fingers twitching where they still rest in his hair. He runs his forefinger down your wet slit and you cry out. “Here? You want daddy there?”

“Yes! Please, daddy,” you beg, hips trying to meet his hand.

Steve hums. “I don't know, sweetheart. You weren't wearing any panties. Is that something good girls do?”

You whimper, brows furrowing as you bite your lip and shake your head.

“Think I’m gonna have to spank you, after all.”

“Daddy—”

“Are you gonna be a good girl or not, sweetheart? I can stop here.”

He definitely cannot, but you don't seem to be in the mindset to call his bluff. You whimper loudly.

“No, no, please, I'll be good, daddy, I promise!”

“Color?” he checks in.

“Green,” you reply, eager and breathless.

He grins. “Alright, sweetheart, up you go.”

He rises to his feet and helps you stand before taking your place on the mattress. He pats at his lap, raising an expectant brow. You only hesitate for a second, carefully draping yourself across his lap, making a small noise when you feel his erection pressing into your stomach.

“How many spanks do you think I should give you? Three? Five? Ten?”

You fist your blanket tightly. “However many daddy thinks is appropriate.”

He coos. “Look at that. You can be a good girl. I'll do five this time, okay, sweetheart?”

“Yes, daddy,” you whisper.

“Count them out for me,” he directs as he pushes your dress up past your hips, swiping his large hand over your plump ass.

He lifts his hand and brings it back down in a firm smack. With a wicked grin, he watches your ass jiggle with the impact. The only sound you let out is a small gasp.

“One,” you mutter shakily.

Each time he spanks you, he soothes the sting by softly rubbing his hand along your heated flesh.

As he lands his fifth and final spank he's almost upset to be finished. But then he pulls your ass cheek to the side and leans over to look at your dripping pussy, and his mouth waters with want.

“Five,” you whine, squirming, fists clenching and unclenching.

Steve hums. “Perfect.”

“Daddy…”

“I know, darlin’, I know,” he coos.

He maneuvers your pliant body until you're on your back, legs dangling off the edge as he makes himself comfortable between them again.

“Since you were good for me, I’ll give you a reward,” he murmurs, pushing your thighs apart and back so you're on full display for him.

You're already writhing on your bed and he hasn't even touched you properly. It makes his cock throb where it's pressing against his zipper. God, he wants to fuck you, and he fully plans on it, but he has to taste you first or he’ll go crazy.

With that thought in mind, he leans in and sucks on your clit, making you inhale sharply and arch your back. He kisses your pussy sloppily, letting your wetness coat his tongue. He groans deep in his chest; you taste unlike any other and he's on the fast-track to becoming addicted.

“Daddy,” you whine, tugging at his hair, “daddy, please, please fuck me.”

He ignores you for a moment, thrusting his tongue in and out of you, bringing his fingers down to rub messily at your clit. You cry out, a sob forcing itself out of you.

“Steve,” you plead.

Reluctantly, and with a final suck and lick, he pulls his mouth away from your delicious cunt. He stands to his full height and quickly removes his clothes, eyes never leaving your prone form. The way you're spread out is indecent, downright sinful, and the way your stare is already going glazed makes his spine tingle.

When he shoves his boxer briefs down and frees his cock, he sighs in relief. You moan at the sight of it, spreading your legs even wider.

Steve gives you a half grin, stroking himself, “Want daddy’s cock, sweetheart?” You nod, which makes him raise an eyebrow in expectance. “Words, darlin’. Use them.”

“Yes, please,” you whimper.

“Please what?” he taunts, joining you on the bed, manhandling you so that your legs are no longer hanging off.

He makes no move to finish removing your dress or your heels.

“Please, daddy,” you groan.

“Good girl,” he intones. He kisses the inside of one of your knees. “Condom.”

You lick your lips, biting them anxiously. “Can I… I wanna feel daddy’s cum drip out of me,” you whisper, your eyelids getting heavier.

“Jesus,” Steve exhales. “Are you sure? Color?”

“Green, it's green,” you assure quickly.

You're gonna be the death of him.

He pushes two fingers in your cunt without warning and you whine, long and loud enough that he wonders if your neighbors can hear. Part of him hopes they can.

“Mm, so tight with only two of my fingers inside you,” he observes, teasing, “Are you sure you can take my cock?”

“Yes,” you gasp out, “Please, daddy. Wanna feel you split me open, wanna feel full.”

He groans. “Fuck, baby. You're not just a slut, are you? You're a cockslut. A greedy one at that.”

“Yes, yeah, ‘m a cockslut,” you hurriedly agree, “your little cockslut.”

The flare of possessiveness that spreads throughout him is sudden and ignites his desires even more.

“Mine, huh? I like the sound of that.”

He teases the head of his cock along your slit, loving the way you squirm and whimper but still wait so patiently. Finally, he takes mercy on you and pushes in. Your mouth falls open on a silent moan, your eyebrows scrunching together in the sweetest way. Steve groans deep in his chest as he sinks deeper and deeper into your tight, wet heat. When his hips are flush against yours, he only waits a beat before pulling out and thrusting right back in, setting an immediate, steady rhythm that has your knees hiking higher and higher on either side of him.

You're restless with pleasure, unable to be still, head tossing from side to side, hands grappling at nothing and everything. Steve is so big inside you, hitting all the right spots, plus some you didn't even know about. A constant flow of moans, whimpers, and pleas fall from your bitten lips. A light sheen of sweat covers your neck and chest, your nipples hardened into peaks.

“God, you feel so good,” Steve grunts, watching the way his cock slides in and out of you.

You nod in agreement. “My–oh–my pussy was m-made for you,” you whine. “Fit me just right, daddy, fuck! Never… Never had anyone feel this perfect.”

“Yeah? Is daddy ruining you for everybody else?” Steve goads.

“Yes! Yes, daddy, don't want anyone else, ever, please,” you beg, hips twitching up into his next thrust.

Your heels bite into the skin on Steve’s back, but he welcomes the pain. He wants to wear your marks just as much as he wants you to wear his. He thrusts into you harder, loving the way your back arches beneath him, the way your tits bounce with the movement.

You're about a million percent sure if Steve changed the position now you'd punch him in the throat, but you're also just as sure that he knows this, if the way he's looking at you is any indication. His eyes are sparkling, lips tilted up on one side. The apples of his cheeks are pink from exertion, and it makes you bite your lip.

Steve cups his hands under your knees, pushing them up and open more, adjusting the angle of his thrusts just so and making you nearly scream.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” you chant, “Steve, daddy, fuck!”

He grins at your babbling, feeling you clench around him as you near your climax. He's not far behind, heat pooling in his lower abdomen quickly. He lets go of your legs, letting them drop to his sides, reaching down to hold your pussy lips open as he spits on your clit. A ragged moan comes from you at the action. Wondering how far he can push, Steve lightly slaps your clit, and fuck. You cry out and clench around him so tight he has to pause.

“Again, again, please, daddy, do that again, don't stop,” you ramble, words blurring together.

Steve does it again. And again. And again. Until you're clamping down on his cock, body locking up as your orgasm hits, your breath halting. But then you're jerking, letting out a throaty gasp, followed by long whines as you ride out what's got to be an intense high. The sight alone is enough to bring Steve to completion, grinding into you as his cock throbs and releases inside you. He groans, closing his eyes, feeling beyond sated and happy.

“Fuck,” you whisper.

Steve huffs a laugh. “Agreed.”

He looks down at you and you’re the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. Your hair is splayed out messily around your face, some pieces sticking to your clammy cheeks and forehead, the sheen of sweat making you glow in the low light of your bedroom. Your eyes are still heavy-lidded, but you're smiling in complete bliss, arms stretching above you.

“That was incredible,” you rasp. Your smile goes wonky. “Thank you, daddy.”

His cock twitches where it's still buried inside you and you giggle.

“You're a menace,” he accuses, the gentle way he brushes your hair off your face softening the accusation.

You preen. “Yep! But you like me anyway.”

Steve sighs heavily. “God help me, I do.”

[humornaut]

Hey, @basil-daisy here.

I just wanted to drop by because there's something that has been eating my insides for a long time and I can't get it out of my head.

I wanna talk about the scenes in Black Space, more precisely the scenes in the Church of Something, both the Sunny route and Omori route, although the Omori route one was really the one that made me think.

Have you ever thought about how the scene where Omori finally finds and "saves" Basil in the Omori route feels strangely like... A wedding?

It's not only the bridal style way Omori catches Basil. It's the way Basil lightly complains about Omori being late, the way they stop as Omori gives Basil his flower crown back and how directly after the act is interrupted by Stranger, who objects the whole "thing". A spectacle a bunch of "guests" witness.

I was always really curious about the church symbolism. For example the way Basil is stuck at the top of the church. I've tried really hard not to think about what usually is in the same place in churches because that comparison is making me die inside, even if it weirdly makes sense (Basil died for your sins U^U).

Besides that we have Sunny's interesting relationship with religion. Mainly that he probably feels insanely guilty. He feels judged by all the religious statues, moreover the snow angels, which are also one of my favourites, don't need to have the game tell us Omori feels judged by them. You feel it just by looking at their eyes.

The fact that Basil is in a church of all places is so telling too. Besides masses churches are known for holding weddings and, well, funerals. And in case of Faraway town's church is has a graveyard right behind it, where Mari lies.

I wonder if the scene in the Omori route is supposed to feel like a wedding but also double as a funeral (considering it marks the end of Stranger and his admittance of defeat that is actually a premonition of Basil's death in real life). It's one of the few scenes between routes that changes drastically and what it represents is absolutely fascinating.

What is really interesting also is that in the Sunny route the scene feels is completely different. It no longer feels like wedding. If anything it is just Basil begging for forgiveness, which does of course ties well with religion. But he's not begging for God's forgiveness, no, he's begging for his best friend's forgiveness.

I imagine this might be another way of showing us that Basil idolises Sunny as well as telling us that Basil feels really bad (what an understatement).

I also question if the Omori route scene is there to mirror the Sweetheart marriage scene somewhat, but I think I would need to dwell a bit more on that to come reach a proper conclusion.

Anyway, I hope you're having a lovely day! 💜

Wow, this is a really good ask! I'm going to break it down into a few different parts.

The Symbolism of the Church of Something

I think you are right on the money in how things go down in the Church of Something in the Omori route. The entire scene does almost play out as a wedding! Not just as a marriage to Headspace Basil, but as a final marriage to Headspace in general. After Sunny moves, whether or not he ever finds out about the fate of the real Basil, he has wholly become Omori. Stranger's objection does represent the last vestige of Sunny's mind trying to stop him from doing this; after all, saving the real Basil is the only loose end that Sunny really feels a responsibility for in a way that he can fix. He may want to see his other friends again, but he doesn't feel guilty for not doing so, because he feels he doesn't deserve it. Basil's a different story, because he knows he did Basil wrong for the selfish reason of protecting himself from his past.

To deepen the significance of this "wedding to Headspace Basil, and with it, a marriage to the concept of Headspace itself", I also want to point out that there is an implication that the end of Black Space in the Sunny route is not an end to the loop of Headspace, which won't happen until Sunny decides to shatter the light bulb on the next night. There is Stranger dialogue in the hub area that makes clear that killing the Basil that has seen the truth in Red Space is something that usually happens, and when you go there, you can find multiple of Basil's bodies littering the area. Instead, it's the Omori route that "breaks the loop of Headspace", via Stranger choosing to attack Sunny for abandoning Basil and the others.

That's not even mentioning the things that happen after this in the Omori route.

The flower crown that Headspace Basil gives to Sunny in the last Headspace Night in the Omori route provides twice as much HEART as the next best charm in that department (with those charms being the the Pretty Bow, a charm tied to Aubrey, and the Tulip Hairstick, a charm tied to Omori). The use of the word "precious" is also used in the Sunny route, in the description for Basil's Photo Album:

All three of these charms are only accessible in the Omori route, as well. The Pretty Bow item is only receivable after defeating Abbi, and is explicitly described as "too flashy for your taste".

Finally, so long as we are talking about weddings in Headspace, there is another thing that we would be remiss not to talk about. To go along with your mention of the Snow Angels (who have another interesting connection that I will go over later), the charm that you get from completing this area is the Wedding Ring.

As I've mentioned before, there are three different charms that allow the wearer to start happy, and they generally have fairly romantic connotations. First is the daisy, which both you and I understand is likely tied to Basil, but also has a romantic connotation due to the context of being a reward for assisting a character acquire a gift for their crush.

The second is one that I would also tie to Basil.

The Heart String is such an interesting little item, and the way it is tied to Basil isn't as immediately obvious as the Daisy. First off, this item is really easy to miss. You have to grab it during the chase section within Humphrey, and you can't go back to grab it afterwards to get it. There is also another item in the same area: the Blender weapon for Hero. This item immediately sets off alarm bells in my head, because smoothies (the only snacks in the list that are made in a blender) are snacks that are pretty clearly tied to Basil. Why make these two items into two of the only completely miss-able items in the game? And it doesn't evade my notice that shortly before Humphrey, where you find these charms, you have the Branch Coral, who makes another connection to Basil using the romantic image of a string.

Finally, the wedding ring is tied to Basil in another way, and that is what's going on in the area that you find it. Obviously, there is a negative association between Headspace Basil and the cold/snow, but there's also the fact that the ascent up Snowglobe Mountain is reminiscent of the leadup to the Church of Something in general, with the stairs and the snow. And regarding the Snow Angels, aside from the religious connotations behind them, there is another neat association. Take a look:

this was pointed out by someone in a discord server that I am in, and I unfortunately do not remember who at this point. Let me know if you see this and want credit!

I would argue that this similarity was intentional, as an older version of the game had White Egret Orchids looking much different, though I can't find a beta picture of Basil's house at this exact moment. These Snow Angels serve much the same purpose as Stranger in this route: being embodiments of Sunny's guilt for abandoning Basil and refusing to take responsibility for his sins. This takes place on the final night before Sunny moves, the same night that the real Basil chooses to end his own life. These are his final thoughts following Sunny into his dreams (whether you take this as literal or figurative).

One last thought on Basil in the Omori route before moving on: the Basil Rush, and how it’s the most explicit the game ever gets about how Sunny imagines his Basil's closeness.

Like, oh my goodness. The TAG photos didn't even need to exist, but they were put in anyway! And a little detail that goes unnoticed a lot, is that the hand-holding TAG photo is one in which Omori has initiated it! I think part of the tragedy of the Omori route is that it is most player's second playthrough (if they ever play it at all) and it is when the idea of Sunny and Basil having romantic feelings for each other starts being implied way heavier than before. Congrats! You got some heavy romantic subtext between the two boys. One of them is dead in the real world because you didn't save him.

Moving on!

The Religious Connotations of Headspace Basil

You didn't want to go into it very heavily, but I will: among other things, Sunny's dreamworld has turned Headspace Basil into a Christ-like figure.

Of course, there is his position in the Church of Something, but that's not all. He constantly wears a Flower Crown (crown of thorns, anyone?). In fact, Omori has to give Basil the Flower Crown back in the very first Black Space area, the Watermelon Area, seemingly as a preface for what's going to be happening with Headspace Basil throughout that portion of the game.

Look at what he says during the hide and seek game:

There's also the fact that in the Sunny route, we are looking at a game that takes place over three days and three nights after Basil disappears from Headspace, which I'm sure I don't have to point out the significance of.

This is a connotation that Sunny is making himself. Basil did not choose to take on Sunny's sins in real life, he expected that they would always be together. It was Sunny that decided to throw the responsibility of both of their sins on Basil, by choosing to forget. Basil will literally die for Sunny's sins in the real world.

Which brings us to the Flower Crown that Basil gifts to Omori after being rescued. Whether Sunny knows it or not, Basil has decided to end his own suffering in the real world. By gifting the flower crown to Omori, Headspace Basil has symbolically indicated that the situation has been reversed. Basil is no longer suffering for Sunny's sins, but Sunny is about to start suffering for Basil's. We are told numerous times throughout the game that Headspace is on its last legs. It's running out of places to hide the truth. We see Black Space leaking through almost everywhere, and the Basil Rush ends in a direct reminder of the day of the incident.

All that is to say, Headspace is seemingly going to fail, and soon. Black Space has grown too strong. If you ask me, it's only a matter of time until news of the real Basil's death has reached Sunny in the real world, and that will be the tipping point. From there on, assuming Sunny even decides to go on after that point, he will be living with the same weight that Basil did for those four years after Sunny left him, and there won't be anyone to save him.

The Sunny Route and Sweetheart's Castle

Finally, you mentioned how the scene goes in the Sunny Route. It should be noted, right after Stranger merges with the version of Basil there is the first time in the entire game that a version of Basil in Sunny's head refers to Sunny exclusively as his best friend, and from that point on, we will see that repeated in Sunny's mind. The room that Omori and Basil fall into prior to Red Space is one that we will see during the truth sequence, but it also appears in the Omori route, in a manner that we should discuss, as it ties into what you said about Sweetheart's Castle being connected. After all, the room that Omori and Basil falls into is the same room that Sweetheart's Castle turns into once you accept the Keeper of the Castle's deal, as I noted in my post about Sweetheart's Castle previously.

Sweetheart herself represents Sunny; both in his quest for presenting a perfect version of himself and his broken understanding of love, both of others and himself. Spaceboy represents the more "Omori" part of him; someone claiming to be above his emotions, but ultimately ruled by them. He even changes his name while he is in a relationship with Sweetheart. From this interpretation, we can extrapolate that their wedding in the castle is a representation of the Omori route's ending, right down to ending up on Snowglobe Mountain.

I also want to point out what happens right after this. You don't immediately just jump on down to the Lost Library. You try to leave, but right before you exit the area, you get the cutscene showing Stranger on the stage, leading you into the hole, meaning you literally need to walk down the aisle of an area explicitly designed for a wedding to follow Stranger into the Lost Library.

Whether or not you interpret Sunny and Basil as having romantic feelings for each other, this seems very symbolic of the fact that accepting and following Stranger (who I have previously described as the individual in which Basil's love of Sunny resides, be it romantic or platonic) is how you get to the truth. It's as if Sweetheart and Spaceboy's wedding represented the ending of Black Space in the Omori route, while what happens right after represents the ending of Black Space in the Sunny route. And like most of the ways Sunny remembers aspects of his history, the library is tied to Basil. Where the real Basil would provide books for Sunny to read, Stranger leads him to an entire library filled with books depicting his memories, both good and bad.

I hope you found all this interesting! I haven't really gotten the chance to talk about these things before, since I haven't really found the motivation to talk about them in their own post before! I hope you have a wonderful day as well! Time to go back to packing for my flight tomorrow!

[alwayslurkinginthebackground]

The Shirt - A Pedrotober Drabble

Day Thirty of Pedrotober: Fav Awards 'fit Pedrotober Hosted by @norththelemon and @alyssamariag. View the full prompt list HERE and view my entire Pedrotober drabble catalog HERE.

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader

Rating: Javi took the wheel, which means E. Oral (fem receiving), rough sex, bondage, dirty talk, unprotected p in v, cum shot.

Word Count: 1466

a/n: I had such good intentions with this prompt and then Javi threw them all out the window. So here's whatever this is instead.

When he finds you, you're in his shirt.

Not just any shirt, either. The shirt. The one he was wearing the day you first met.

If you were being honest, you'd clocked the way he was uncomfortable in it the second your eyes landed on him at the press conference. A little too tight around his neck with a tie that you'd watched him loosen the second he walked out to his truck. Almost like it wasn't something he'd wear normally.

Or, at least, that he'd prefer not to.

"You're home late."

He's shuffling past the door to your bedroom, tie already loose around his neck as he toes off his shoes. "Damn newbies couldn't get their heads on straight today," he grumbles, tossing his suit jacket over the chair that sits by the desk he never uses. His belt is off next, and you know the exact moment he figures out what you're wearing because all movement stops.

You've been sprawled out on the bed for the better part of the evening, his white shirt hanging from your shoulders, barely buttoned down your middle. You know it's hitched up in your slumber while you waited for him to get home because you've barely cleared the sleep from your vision when you feel the warmth of his hand tracing the curve of your ass.

"Thought I told you that you aren't allowed to wear my good shirt," Javi grumbles, the mattress dipping beside you as he closes in on your body.

"You hate this shirt," you point out, rolling toward him and reaching for the buttons that keep him from your view, unbuttoning them one at a time to expose his chest. "If I remember correctly, you stated that it made you feel like you were going to a funeral."

He leans over you, making quick work of your legs so he can kneel between them. "It does make me feel like I'm going to a funeral," he insists, capturing your lips in a heated kiss as the ends of his tie hang around you, "but it's also my best shirt."

"Well then the way I see it you have two options."

Javi's already working at your neck, the rough scrape of his stubble leaving red marks along your skin. "Oh yeah? And what exactly are my choices here?"

"Option one," you state, trying your best to regain the little bit of composure you can cling to when he's tugging the shirt in question down to expose one of your breasts. "You get a new shirt."

He hums, tongue trailing along your skin as he tugs at the buttons until you're exposed before him, "and option two?"

"You'll just have to think of me every time you wear it."

Your suggestion causes him to still, pulling back to stare down at you with a heated gaze. He sucks in a deep breath, his hands trailing along your thighs, up your sides, and along your arms until he's capturing your hands in his. It's only when he slips the tie from his neck and begins to weave it around your wrists that you question him. "What's it gonna be, Peña?"

"Option two," he returns with a low voice, looping the fabric around the bedpost as he hovers over you. "Except if I'm going to think of you every time I wear this shirt, I want it to be worthwhile."

You try to test the strength of the knots he's made, only to find them secure above your head. This isn't the first time he's done this with you, and you mentally recall the safe word he insisted upon the first time you slept together. Vermillion. Not that you've ever used it.

"Is the image of me in only this shirt not enough for you?" you tease.

Javi doesn't respond, not right away, because he's already busy kissing down your stomach and settling between your legs. He presses his lips to the sensitive skin of your thigh, wrapping your legs over his shoulders and hitching your hips closer to his waiting mouth before looking back up at you.

"You're always stunning, Carino, but when you come? That is the picture I want to remember."

He gives you no time to protest, diving into your folds like a man dying of thirst. Lapping at your clit and holding you still as you try to roll your hips into his mouth. You'd learned early on that Javi would do just about anything to make you come like this, with just his tongue and nothing more, and you have no problem providing him with the opportunity to do so as often as possible.

It's his name that comes from your lips first, a high-pitched whine that continues when he doesn't let up. A repeated prayer for him to ease you over the edge and let you fall into the abyss. "Javi. Javi. Javi." Your shoulders burn from the way you tug against the restraints, your fingers longing to grip at his curls, but there's no point in trying. Not when he has you exactly where he wants you.

"Fuck, you're so sweet," he mutters against you, a brief respite before he's diving back in, tongue dipping into your center as he laps at an unforgiving pace. Your nails dig into your palm, a hint of pain amidst the pleasure until you're falling apart in his firm grasp. Even then, Javi doesn't stop, working you through it as he watches you carefully, memorizing the keenness of your voice and every flex of your muscles as you spasm around him.

"That a better picture for you?" you breathe out when he maneuvers back up your body, kneeling between your legs after he makes quick work of the dress pants he's forced to wear to the embassy every day. Your eyes never leave his cock, hands absentmindedly tugging at your bonds when he takes himself in his hand.

He runs a thumb over the tip, gathering the pre-cum with a hiss. "I think you can do better," he challenges, shifting closer and lining himself up. He pushes into you slowly, stretching you bit by bit at a torturous pace that has you desperately fighting to get closer. The tie prevents it all, fabric digging into your wrists, and you can't help but catch the glimmer in his eyes as he takes in the sight of you beneath him.

"How about now?"

His mouth meets yours in a lengthy kiss, lingering until he's fully engulfed in your heat. "There's still room for improvement," he notes, taking the opportunity to prove it to you, and your face twists in pleasure when he pulls back only to bottom out inside you a moment later. "There you go, you're getting there."

There are a few things you know to be true about Javier Peña. One, that he loves fucking you as much as he loves eating you out. Two, that he fills you in a way no other man has ever been able to, his cock pounding against something deep and devastating inside you. And three, that he really loves when you wear this shirt.

"Gonna think about you like this every time I wear it, Carino." He leans down, rhythm consistent as his lips ghost against the shell of your ear. "Gonna think about the way you look wearing it when you're coming around my cock."

He must know you're close because then he's shifting back, grabbing at you, tugging you as far as the binds will allow. "So. Fucking. Beautiful," he grits out between thrusts when he catches the telltale signs of your impending climax. The way you bite into your lower lip, the way you go limp in his arms, the way the sound of your voice reaches higher and higher until you clench around him with a groan.

That is the picture he'll remember.

He comes in hot spurts against your stomach, and you memorize it all, too. The way he lets you watch him. The way his hand fists his length and the way he groans out your name, body tense until he's able to meet your gaze and reach above you to untie you. He leaves the tie wrapped around the bedpost, more intent on running his thumb gently over the curve of your wrists, bringing each to his lips with reverence.

When he releases you completely, he's quick to clean his spend from your skin, wiping with the edges of the shirt that still hangs loosely from your body.

"I thought you wanted this back?" you taunt, watching the way he slowly and methodically tends to you in the aftermath.

Javi shakes his head, gathering you in his arms. "I'll get a new one. This one looks better on you anyway."

[staywhore]

countdown to midnight

felix x reader

word count: 2009

genre: smut with a hint of angst?! (my first attempt so be nice)

warnings: friends to lovers, hot hot hot takeout sesh, biting, slight angst if you can call it that.

an: sorry there's not a lot here! this is part one of two so look forward to the next update to see what happens (eye emoji) I hope everyone had an amazing new year! I love you all, thank you so much for supporting me this past year despite my hiatus.

taglist: @mingigoo @ravenjoongie @wickeddarkness-place @whatudowhennooneseesyou @teezers99 @mirror-juliet

new years confession part one click here for part two

~

You ducked fast as a mis-shapen ball of snow is hurled towards your head. A pang of adrenalin strikes right through your heart despite the fact that there now is a small smile pulling at the corner of your mouth. You clutch the ball of snow in your beige mitten and prepare to throw it back at your attacker. Risking a quick look you see that he has his back turned to you and you take your chance to make your move. You quickly stand and throw the snowball with as much force as you can muster to ensure it makes its mark. Watching as the non lethal projectile flies across the imagined battlefield, you see as it connects with the neck of your blonde attacker. His head moves forward with impact, causing him to look as though he’s bowing. 

He turns to you with a shocked look on your face. The laughter fills your mind until you can’t help but fold as it erupts from you. With tears now in your eyes and the look on his face on loop in your mind, you don’t notice that the man is now running towards you. You look up right before he makes contact with you. His arms wrapping around your waist lifting you up slightly before you feel yourself falling backwards. You can’t help but let out a little scream at the feeling of falling. He tackles you into a pile of snow that previously was your attempt at a snowman before the snowball fight ensued. 

“How does it feel to lose to a girl?” You say a little out of breath from the adrenalin still pumping rapidly throughout your body. You can’t help but smile as you look up and see a matching grin paired with that oh-so-familiar sparkle of mischief in his deep brown eyes. The former flicks back and forth a few times from your eyes to your mouth. He just lets out a short throaty laugh as a response. 

“Are you going to let me get up?” You say, starting to feel the weight of his stare. His hand reaches out and he brushes some snowflakes that are collecting on your eyelashes. 

Felix has been your friend for three years now. You’ve stayed friends through drunken calls, colds, and breakups. Of course you’ve noticed his impeccable beauty. His deep brown eyes that glow in the sunlight giving the illusion of having dark chocolate for irises. The freckles that are splattered across his nose, cheeks, and a few on his forehead; it’s as if an artist took his brush and placed each one specifically. His full pink lips that you have only ever seen turned down in frustration or anger a handful of times. He is the image of beauty to you. Yet in these past two, nearly three, years you never let your feelings manifest into anything stronger. You’ve seen the girls he has dated, you look nothing like them. So you keep your love for him platonic, and lock up anything less deep within your heart. 

His gentle touch threatens to bring your bubbling feelings to the surface. The soft material of his gloved fingers moved from your closed eyes onto your cheeks, that are no longer flushed because of the cold. Sometimes you think he’s looking at you as more than a friend, but the thought leaves you quickly. Despite what happened a year ago. 

“I’m quite comfortable actually.” The corner of his lips turn up in challenge to your question. 

~

It was New Years Eve, everyone was drinking and having a good time playing games and sharing stories. Felix had not left you alone for the entirety of the evening, not that that was unusual. Usually you stick to each other’s side, but something was different. If you stepped out of arm's reach of him you could feel his stare following you throughout the apartment. Eventually you decided to ask what the fuck is up. 

You pulled him off to one of the two bathrooms in yours and your friends shared apartment. It just happened to be the smaller of the two, just enough room for a sink, toilet, and a small shower encased by frosted glass. Not totally realizing that we are now nearly chest to chest as you look up to him to confront him. 

“What’s wrong with you tonight?” You say a little too loud, noting to lower your volume from now on. 

“Nothing’s wrong y/n.” He says without looking at you. Seemingly focused on a very interesting spot on the wall no doubt. 

“Bull shit Felix.” Attempting to cross your arms at your chest, but can’t successfully without touching him. It feels weird to touch him tonight. You can’t figure out why. “You have been acting strange all evening.” You settle with placing your hands on your hips. 

After a few beats of silence Felix finally looks at you. He seems to be searching for something in your face. His chocolate eyes flicking to the different parts of your face. An unspoken emotion hanging in the air between the two of us. Maybe it’s the seclusion, or maybe it’s the drinks finally working their way into your system, but tonight he looks different. Your eyes dared a look at his lips, quickly looking back up to his eyes. His pupils dilated.

“Felix..” Now he looked at your lips as you spoke, but he wasn’t quick to look away like you were. He leaned forward causing you to step back hitting the wall. “What is wr-” He cuts you off with a finger shushing your lips. 

“Y/n, I know you feel it two.” You could feel yourself pale. 

“I don’t know what you are talking about Felix.” 

“I know this is sudden y/n, maybe it’s the alcohol or the fact that it’s new years eve, but I want to kiss you tonight.. I want you and I don’t wanna hide it anymore.” His hands found their way to your face, tilting it back slightly. Your mouth was suddenly dry and eyes wide at the confession. 

“But.. I- I didn’t think I was your type?” You barely manage to get your words out. 

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life y/n.” Past the pounding of your heart echoing in your ears you can hear your friends call for you. 

“It’s nearly midnight.” Your response to his second confession. 

“I know y/n.” He continues to stare down at you. Trapping you against the cool wall and his hard body. “I’d like to kiss you if you’ll let me.” 

Mind racing. You swear he could hear your heart beating. Your eyes roamed over his face, looking for any sign of deception. You could hear your friends starting their count down into the new year. 

"10"

"9"

"8"

"7"

"6"

"5"

"4"

"3"

“Kiss me felix.” His lips crashed onto yours as your friends finished counting down, and cheered as they rang the new year in. Hands found their way into your hair, pulling slightly, causing you to gasp. He took his chance to kiss you deeper. Felix consumed you wholly. His tongue explored your mouth as he continued to deepen the kiss. His hands roaming further down your body. They moved from your hair to your neck, then shoulders, and smoothed down your back softly causing you to shiver. Your own found their way to his shaggy blonde hair. 

Finally snapping from your stupor you tug at his locks softly. He moans into your mouth, sending a bolt of arousal directly to your core. So you pull harder. This time he growls as his grip on your ass tightens. He spins the two of you around so your back is now to the sink, lifting you, you now are sitting on the lip of the sink; wrapping your legs around his waist to pull him closer. His hand slid from your ass to your waist, fingers playing with the hem of your shirt. A silent request for permission, you respond by taking your nails to his broad shoulders and running them along his clothed skin. Cool fingertips slid up your skin sending goosebumps to your arms. The further north his hands went, the deeper your nails dug into his shoulders. 

He breaks away from the kiss to look into your eyes. His own half lidded with arousal looking at your lips that are no doubt plumped and a deeper shade of pink from the kiss. He lets out a deep breath before he leans in to kiss you gently. Staring at your lips then going to your nose and forehead. Moving to your neck where he places pepperings of kisses that once again cause you to shiver. All while his fingers are running along your rib cage, and just under the fabric of your bra. As his hands move up taking the silky material of your shirt with him he bites your earlobe. 

Pulling your shirt over your head he leans back slightly to take a full look at you. Chest heaving and knuckles gone white from the grip you have on the sink. One hand goes to your neck to pull you back into a deep kiss. His lips run down your neck this time he’s not so gentle. He leaves bite marks in his wake. Each time he sucks your skin you let out a little moan, and the next time he sucks a little harder. He does the same thing to your chest. Teasing you as he plays with the edge of our bra, not quite going underneath the fabric. 

“Please Felix.” You say breathlessly. He obeys and reaches behind to unhook your bra. The feel of it sliding against your skin only heightens your arousal. Without hesitation he takes one of your nipples into your mouth and sucks it. It was a struggle to not scream at the sensation. 

“F-felix.. Fuck.” You moan as he releases the first with a pop and moves to the second. Your hands find their way to his head once more, tugging as he moans around your breast. Your abs begin to burn trying to keep you balanced on the ledge. Releasing the second with a pop he looks up at you, this time with fire in his eyes. 

“Y/n…” Right before he can say anything else the handle to the door jiggles, shortly followed by a pounding fist. 

“Hey open up! I gotta piss.” Someone who sounds an awful lot like a drunken changbin shouts from the other side of the door. Heat instantly rushes to your face as you push Felix off of you and quickly try to make yourself decent. 

“Be right out.” You stammer, frantically searching for your shirt. Seriously, where did that thing go in such a small space! Only stopping when Felix's hands cup your face once more, causing you to look up at him. He looked like he had a lot to say, but he leaned in to kiss you. Flinching back not wanting to seem any more suspicious than you probably already have to the party, you regretted it immediately. The hurt that flashed across his beautiful features stung you. 

“Felix.. I didn’t-” He turned away from you picking up your shirt and handed it to you, his silence was deadly. He waited until you readied yourself, tucking you behind him while he opened the door. 

Feeling awkward and embarrassed you hid out in your room until the last of your party guests left, feigning a headache. Curled up in your bed scrolling through your phone, when Felix’s name pops onto your screen. 

[sorry for tonight y/n] Another ding sounds 

[maybe we should just stay friends, go back to the way things were before tonight] it’s almost as if a knife went straight through your heart. With tears in your eyes you begin to reply, but you can’t find any words so you just turn your phone over and quietly cry yourself to sleep.

[smolsleepyfox]

hello! I've been listening to Wake Up the Wicked on loop pretty much constantly for the past couple days and keep finding new things to love about it! in particular I have many Thoughts about the way Powerwolf's songs with women as the focus have shifted over the years. unfortunately when I try to articulate those thoughts they mostly just come out as "AAAAAAAA Vargamor and Kyrie Klitorem and Joan of Arc just FEEL like such an important thing! I've been a fan for so long but something about these songs makes me (as a fem-adjacent person) feel like I can actually be part of the group!" in one of your posts about your thesis, you note how there's never been a Powerwolf song with a woman werewolf — I'd never noticed that until now, tho Vargamor and Dancing with the Dead feel close. examining that distinction is fascinating!

considering you've got a whole thesis on it and so will likely be able to go deeper than me, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on how gender is handled in this album as compared to others, and in general, who "gets" to be a monster!

Okay this is a great question and also funnily enough something I've spoken about with another friend recently.

So the thing about monstrosity is that it is very heavily gendered. This doesn't start but is reflected in the Middle Ages where monstrosity is physical (since the distincion body/mind didn't really exist) BUT directly related to gender roles. The example most scholars go with are the Amazons, the mythical warrior women. They are monstrous because they only have one breast AND because they take on both gender roles, making clothing (female) and hunting (male). If you behaved weird people would assume you had a physical abnormality and a physical abnormality could be a sign of somethig wrong (e.g. witch marks). Note that "monstrous" isn't technically synonymous with "bad/evil". From what I gather, bestiaries and collections of monsters from far away lands were a curiosity with no inherent moral dimension, although it obviously held implications for the treatment of queer and disabled people, foreigners etc. Dana Oswald splits monstrosity into hypermasculine, hypersexual (feminine) and hybrid. Hypermasculine is exactly what you think it is, werewolves, giants, anything that is large and hairy and ravenous. The theme here is Taking. Wealth, sex, someone's life. Interestingly, exaggerated sexuality in the middle ages was culturally feminine, so centaurs are monstrously feminine due to their exagerrated sexuality. Another example are sirens. Hypersexual/feminine monsters seduce instead of take by brute force.

About werewolves specifically, let me open with Willem de Blecourt's opening line in a book about werewolf history: There is no werewolf history. What we today see as a werewolf (and Powerwolf uses as a mascot) is a modern cultural concept that is only an approximate to other times and cultures. Let's take the Varcolac, a creature from Slavic mythology (spelled differently in different languages). The Varcolac is often translated as werewolf, but if you look at the mythology it is - simplified - a reanimated corpse that drinks blood. Usually it's a person who was evil/frivolous/was excommunicated in life that rises again. So for all intents and purposes it's a vampire. Powerwolf does have some werewolf/vampire hybrids in their music and on tshirts, but since werewolves and vampires are both hypermasculine monsters that's only a side note.

To talk about as actual a werewolf as possible, you know 1589, you know the story of Peter Stubbe. Peter Stubbe was a highly publicized case that influenced later ones. Elements of his case reappear in trials in the low countries, Germany and England, but not in France because the pamphlets telling his story were not translated into French afawk. Some details also bear striking resemblances to earlier French cases, so it's very difficult to know what actually happened. Peter Stubbe single-handedly (heh) cemented the image of the cannibal werewolf for the early modern public BUT he's an outlier. Werewolf Georg if you will. Cannibalism is definitely a defining trait of many werewolves but almost everything else is different from our modern understanding. The persecution of werewolves in central Europe was almost completely tied to witchcraft allegations. Without getting into historical witchcraft as a whole, there was a concept of male and female witchcraft in line with the gender roles of agrarian society. A werewolf was related to violence against people and livestock as well as sexual threats. Just like witches, werewolves were assumed to transform with an ointment or belt given to them by the devil. The transformation is not physical, just like witches can't actually fly but fall into a trance (induced by the devil). [Note that the idea of physical transformation has been a MASSIVE point of debate for church scholars for as long as said church existed. Go take a look if you're curious.] More modern werewolf lore (1960s) from the B/NL/DE border region shows werewolves to be a shorthand for unacceptable liaisons and sexual assault, possibly homosexuality and bestiality, but usually just people dressed in a wolf pelt taking the piss. The modern idea of the werewolf, specifically the bipedal form and painful transformation is a Hollywood product. We can quite easily pin the origin on one specific film: The Wolf Man from 1941. The transformation and visual presentation was driven by the improved special effects of the film industry and their desire to give people a spectacle. This is also a central trait of monstrosity: It is physical because people want to see it.

SO! If we're being pedantic, no, werewolves are not inherently male. A handful of women were prosecuted as werewolves, though they were the minority within the already minor number of werewolf trials. But it is a fact that the majority of werewolves are male throughout history and werewolf characteristics are - as Dana Oswald puts it - hypermasculine, meaning they exaggerate and therefore threaten the dominant concept of masculinity in a given societal context. That's the baseline of monstrosity- it breaks boundaries and threatens the system it inhabits while reinforcing a rule for the listener.

It's notable that female werewolves in modern film are almost never seen transforming, including in staple films like Underworld. You have those beefy werewolf guys and the women just. Stand there. An outlier that gets quoted in almost every paper I've ever read is Ginger Snaps, which directly deals with the way Ginger's lycanthropy makes her monstrous both in breaking the boundaries of human/animal but also what is acceptable behavior for a girl. I don't have the sources to back this up yet but I see a strong parallel in this to women in Metal in general. Think about it, Metal music is counterculture and is almost defined by depicting monstrosity (satanism, violence, etc) and breaking the boundaries of what is music. Women in Metal are "monstrous" by associating with the transgressive scene the same as men - except they get held to a completely different standard. Metal is so male-dominated the ideal (visual, behavioral) gender presentation cannot include femininity or at least makes two clearly gendered molds. Women in metal, then, have to balance being "Metal" and being sufficiently feminine to be accepted. The male ideal I like to call the 'Metal warrior', because he's so often inspired by historical warrior culture but primarily defines himself by being large, strong, possibly aggressive and definitely drinking a lot. Everything that is masculine but juuuuust over the line of polite society. Which is what Powerwolf sings about as well, they just made it a furry.

-------

ANYWAY sorry for the long-ass background info, I got carried away lol. Note that for the next section, I am doing this off the top of my head since I haven't gotten to that part of the analysis yet. The deadline is approaching, send help.

I like to call Powerwolf my problematic faves because as camp as their performances are and as self-ironic as they try to make themselves out to be, their lyrics and videos are profoundly cishet. This isn't a criticism, just an observation. As far as we know they are cishet men from a rural part of Germany (and one Dutchman). I know we make jokes about the homoeroticism between Falk and Attila but I would not be surprised if they had no idea that's what they're doing. Most cishet people do not think about queerness unless they have a reason, and in a lot of social circles there simply is none. They just don't even consider it. There's something to be said about homosocial bonds in metal music but that's a topic so large I'll skip it for now. The only queer aspect I've seen in the entire history of Powerwolf is that lesbian kiss in the music video of No Prayer at Midnight and that was so blatantly male gaze-y I'm not sure if it even counts. So, fair warning, I'm going to say men and women as in cis men and women because I'm on mobile and typing is annoying as is.

First off, to answer your question: Yes, women have absolutely become a bigger part of Powerwolf's repertoire. Joan of Arc is a historical story that they implemented beautifully, and so is Vargamor. While I personally don't like Kyrie Klitorem it's definitely interesting to analyze in a wider context. What does stick out is that the majority of women in Powerwolf's music are sexualized in some way along with sexuality becoming a larger part of their theme in general. As far as I can see, sexuality was actually not a major part of the Powerwolf brand until Sacrament of Sin. Coleus Sanctus and Resurrection by Erection are from albums before that, but they're single songs on albums otherwise concerned with werewolves, vampires and that warrior image I mentioned before. Their earlier videos have almost never any side characters and it's mostly about spooky priest things and/or werewolves (kind of mixed with vampirism, which is a parallel to the Varcolac).

In general I would say there are two 'roles' that characters in the PW universe take and it was kind of hard to find the right wording, because depending on your reading they have VERY different connotations. I'm just going to call it the 'active' and the 'passive' right now until I've explained what I mean.

Women are sexualized in the music and the videos/artworks. That's just a fact, and hasn't changed much from the beginning until now. It's not even out of character for Power Metal as an heir to classic Heavy Metal and Glam Rock. Powerwolf sing about sex, specifically hetero sex, and mostly from the perspective of cishet men. Matt even said in an interview many years ago that he's unsure if he could write about pussy because he doesn't have one. Yes, really.

The language of the music is clerical, and commonly from the viewpoint of a religious person/priest of course, which reinforces the themes of wildness/hedonism by contrasting them with what is 'proper'. Circling back to my explanations of monstrosity - improper behavior and improper physical appearance are linked, so to break the laws of faith is to become monstrous, possibly physically. The band constantly portrays this overstepping of boundaries in a religious context. Call of the Wild quite literally says "To praise the wild while the bible we're tearing". Corpse paint I would argue I'd a visual marker of monstrosity as well, especially since the band are usually the only ones in that type of makeup.

Just visually, women are a big part in Powerwolf's art and video as side characters, especially burlesque dancers, and they're typically a shorthand for desire and sexuality. Open sexuality is a massive taboo in the Catholic Church, especially in the pseudo-medieval world their music inhabits. And a woman being active in her sexuality, even choosing what, who and how to desire is far over the line even in many modern societies. (Ginger Snaps tackled this as well.) So let's take a look:

There's Demons are a girl's best friend, which is on the surface a warning against being "corrupted" by demons (sexuality) but can also be interpreted - as the title suggests - that the female protagonist is quite aware of what she's doing and likes it. Kiss of the Cobra King shows the female protagonist in white, standing in for purity, before being corrupted and possibly killed for her transgression. Still unsure about that video tbh. Dancing with the Dead is less sexual and leans more heavily into the corruption (by witchcraft?) angle. I feel like there is a disconnect between text and video in this one because in the video, the female protagonist doesn't look at all willing to dance and Attila forces her to, whereas in the text the protagonist seems quite aware and in control of what she's doing. Undress to Confess is pretty fucking clear that the woman is having fun and the artwork shows a nun, while naked, in a dynamic, powerful pose. This is what I'd call the active role. There's also the flip side of that active role that isn't passiveness but control:

Kyrie Klitorem is about how women have power over men by virtue of their sexuality. Powerwolf often uses 'we' in their lyrics and while that's technically a non-gendered pronoun, the songs suggest the narrator is a (cishet) man. Venom of Venus is also similar in topic and structure, and the vampire queen from the Killers with the Cross video is also clearly in control while being sexy (as are the hunters).

So in the 'active' role, women can be corrupted, seductive as well as empowered, it really depends on your reading. Same goes for the videos by the way - the dancers can be shown in an objectifying way, but thinking of the dancer in My Will be Done she is on equal standing with the other characters asking Attila for something. (Also, burlesque dance is an awesome art form.) Angel and Devil in that same music video are portrayed by women. However, the reduction of a woman to her body is obviously part of a long history of sexualization.

Which brings me to the passive role and the use of the nun image. Nuns have been sexualized for absolute ages. There's drawings and gossip from the Middle Ages about nuns and priests doing stuff they shouldn't. Good for them etc pp.* Powerwolf is really not reinventing the wheel by contrasting the nun's modesty/virtuousness with unrestrained sexuality. I mean look at this.

The role of women in the Catholic Church is an entire can of worms by itself. In Powerwolf's art, the love of Jesus/God is just placed on a different figure. I actually hesitate to interpret what the intention is, if it's critical of the church or a power fantasy. They absolutely criticize religion in their songs (Glaubenskraft, Sinners of the Seven Seas) but their visuals are also heavily inspired by historical art and can just be meant to look cool. That's something the band stresses in almost every interview when they are asked about deeper meanings: It has to be entertainment first. Their cover artist Zsofia Dankova told me the same: Looking cool has priority.

So nuns are in general portrayed as subservient, as they are in history and art, and sexualized. The focus on the band in performances - which in itself isn't really that surprising - and Attila's and Falk's role as 'clergy' does put them into a position of power. Here's where it gets interesting, because the bottom line of Powerwolf has been and is Have fun. In Wake up the Wicked it's a major plot point that one of them actively invites the young priest (altar boy? Idk I grew up Protestant). The artworks draw on art conventions from pulp fiction and classical works, but if you look at the lyrics involving women** it's either about submitting yourself (to pleasure) or actively seeking it out.

This has gotten way too fucking long but here's a minor detour before we get to the end. What else does PW sing about? Yes, werewolves, and history, but regardless of the underlying inspiration (Blood for Blood is about an Irish legend, I wouldn't have guessed that just from the lyrics) they sing about either bravery and power, or excess and hedonism, sometimes both. I've already mentioned the warrior ideal in my introduction, and that does a LOT of heavy lifting. Many of the artworks and merch have some sort of military theme, especially the crusades because that's fitting for the medieval-ish vibe the band has. The 'holy' knights as werewolves is both commentary on the actual crusades in a way, but also puts the listener into the body of a powerful beast heading into battle, which is just plain fun. Plenty of music is about riding into battle, Viking Metal exists. I spoke to Zsofia Dankova, Powerwolf's resident visual artist, and asked her what she thinks about the werewolf being implicitly male. She said she doesn't really see the werewolf she draws as gendered because it's just a symbol, something that stands in for power. I was a bit dubious about that answer at first, but it actually shows my own cultural bias, because that is the connotation of the werewolf at work, not the artwork itself. You can absolutely argue that the positions and clothes the werewolf is in (see image above) are men's, but for the most part, the wolves in their art are clothed in simple robes or armour that anyone could wear. It is just convention that makes it seem male. Growling (the vocal technique) is also male-coded even though men and women who growl sound identical.

I'm not going into more detail about the depiction of masculinity because y'all can read my thesis for that. Instead, I want to return to my introduction about what is considered monstrous: The breaking and exaggeration of social norms. Sexuality is what makes the women in Powerwolf monstrous - alongside a proclivity for witchcraft. Vargamor shows her to be a mother as the name implies, but more importantly a wise leader and powerful magic user. It's implied that she can fight, but the chorus is more insistent that she dwells in the shadows and is a steady presence for many different iterations of the pack through the years.

The men on the other hand are shown to be monstrous by being violent, hedonistic beasts. The songs again and again reiterate wildness and unrestrained summer fun battle prowess. Technically you could argue that 'we' doesn't have to mean men, but that would ignore centuries of cultural connotations and that it needs a pretty good in-text reason to assume an all-male metal band is writing their songs in a female lyrical I (we?).

Powerwolf quite simply portrays monstrosity as it has been since the Middle Ages, along gendered lines. This makes sense because they draw on given cultural conventions, history and folklore, they're just on the side of the monster. There's definitely something to be said about the sexualization of women in Metal and the male gaze, but the wolves have also very clearly heard the call for more female representation.

If anyone is still reading, congratulations I nearly drove myself insane here.

* As with most things in life, this isn't black and white. Nuns had some social advantages and there were most likely plenty of consensual relationships, but as women in a patriarchal society they were still under the authority of men who could harm them. ** I excluded Glaubenskraft because that song breaks with the Powerwolf universe by adressing a current, real-life injustice. Completely different topic.

[timeloop-observer]

time loop Stands For Some Things question mark? mostly just curious about your interpretation of the metaphor(s) there as someone only vaguely familiar with the game. sorry for stumbling on your special interest blog and asking for the literal ABCs of isat im just soo questions

ok well the thing is the things that the loop stands for in isat are Big Spoilers. so uh, go into the read more at your own discretion? also keep in mind this is just my interpretation

the way i see it, the loops can be read psychologically and metawise. psychologically, it's all about being trapped in patterns of behavior. conversations that you've already had dozens of time before, things that you and the people around you keep doing, cycles that repeat for no one's benefit, safe for the unintended effect of not having to change or open up about your issues. siffrin keeping himself and his party hostage by not being vulnerable with them but refusing to let them leave out of fear and love. and thus making the same mistakes and doing the same things over and over until they get so burnt out and mess up so hard it threatens to Ruin Everything (where the game once again ramps up siffrin's subjective perception to cosmic cataclysm proportions via wish craft).

metawise, isat is also a commentary on how hard it is to leave a good game behind. the story is framed as the endgame area of a different jrpg (which i'll refer to as "the larger game" from here on out) for a reason: siffrin is effectively the player being unable to reckon with the fact the larger game is almost over. running around with different sidequests, trying to find more ways to spend time with the characters, feeling the endgame grind of fighting against enemies time and time again for exp, doing anything and everything to just not let the game go. it even escalates to the point of their attachment becoming warped, ironically getting so invested that they wind up flattening the complexities of the story and characters that they loved so much it caused this (siffrin with their stageplay metaphors paralleling how some people become hyperaware of the fact they're "playing a game" and "trying to 100% it" which ironically even happens to isat).

the two allegories are in my opinion two sides of the same silver coin and serve as another element of what makes siffrin so compelling (not to mention relatable, i only thought of the psychological angle because i sometimes feel like i'm in a timeloop when a depressing situation happens that has happened before- I MEAN WHAT).

[cogentsummoner]

Hi! So I'm rereading the Smite soulmate au and I was curious- Will we ever find out what exactly their soulmate marks are? Based on chapter 2 its a mark or something on the wrist. Is it a picture or certain word?

Also idk if you had plans to write out the actual scene of Smite and reader meeting for the first time but him kidnapping them and bombarding them with questions always sounded so funny 😭 I personaly would love a fleshed out scene of that if it's something you've thought about writing!

This fic is everything and I'm obsessed 💖

so i was largely gonna leave the soulmark designs up to reader interpretations, mostly because i don't really have any specific symbolism in mind for them. like, its not a sunflower or something like that. its just a kind of... curvy little design. if i had to pin down a design for it, it looks something like this!

as for how the reader and smite met.... well. let's just say it was a rocky beginning.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

You took stock of the situation; you weren't injured- anymore, that is- but you were deeply fatigued and pinned down amongst the rubble. You could hear the sounds of battle, far too close for comfort. Your left arm was stuck, your wrist- your soulmark - exposed to the world.

Gazing at its familiar looping design, you felt your tired eyes fill with tears. Were you going to die? Before ever having gotten to meet your soulmate? You'd been waiting for them for such a long time… it wasn't fair. Fuck, it wasn't fair!

Without warning, something crashed like a comet nearby, it's impact making the earth tremble- and making your coffin almost complete. You could barely see anything anymore, just a sliver of light penetrating the oppressive darkness.

You heard the sound of heavy, stomping footsteps approaching, and a deep, distorted laugh, and found yourself frozen in fear. Oh god. You were going to die, weren't you? This was it.

Cowering in fear, you remained silent- and All Might, King of Chaos, Symbol of Fear- he almost passed you by without noticing you.

But something caught his eye, and he stopped. Right in front of you.

"What is this?" he breathed out. There was no cocky malice in his voice- only genuine confusion… no, wonder?

Suddenly, you could feel the ground shake a little as he dropped to his knees, clearing away the rubble and debris pinning your arm down. Once it was free, he… cradled your arm, your wrist, gently, as if it was something precious.

"Hey- hey! Are you alive under there? Can you hear me?" came the voice of All Might as he… began digging you out.

"I'm here," you replied, voice shaking with terror. You begged pathetically, "Please don't hurt me."

"No- no, no, no, I'd never hurt you," All Might reassured you in a way your exhausted mind couldn't comprehend.

He pushed aside huge chunks of cement and rubble like they were nothing, pulling you out and then holding you with his hands under your armpits, as if you were a small child. You stared into the unforgiving and uncaring mask of the most dangerous man in the world, and you could do little more than tremble like a frightened prey animal.

"Hey, it's okay!" All Might said, his voice changer making what was surely supposed to be a comforting statement into an unsettling one. "I'm not gonna hurt you, and I'm not gonna let anyone else hurt you. I promise."

"Why?" you whispered, your confusion only feeding into the fear.

"Oh- right. Got a little ahead of myself!" All Might replied with a belly laugh. He put you down gently, and then- to your horror- rolled up his left sleeve.

It was a perfect match. It was a perfect match of your soulmark.

You stared, uncomprehending, until it finally clicked.

Tears welled up in your eyes. They were not tears of joy.

When the sound of the Number One Hero's yell reached the two of you, the moment was cut short, and All Might made his move.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

All Might was on cloud fucking nine.

Literally, as in he was bounding high in the air, from building to building, as Endeavor blazed after him like a fiery comet- but also metaphorically, because he had, at long last, found his soulmate.

"Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? What do you do for a living?" he asked, voice loud enough to carry over the intense wind rushing past the two of you. There was just so much he wanted to know about you- it'd been a little over forty years since his soulmark appeared, and he wanted to know every detail of what had happened to you in that time. He was so goddamn excited, a warm bubbling feeling taking root where his stomach should be. "What's your favorite color? And food? And flower?"

You only answered one of his questions, your voice barely above a whisper. "Daisies," he could barely make out. "I like daisies."

"Daisies are nice!" he replied cheerily.

It took him a few more minutes to get Endeavor off his tail, but finally, he came to a stop on a rooftop in a quiet section of town. He gingerly took you off his shoulder and set you down on the ground, and you immediately leaned on him for support, which he was more than happy to give you.

"Are you alright?" he asked, which- in hindsight, it was a stupid question. He could admit that now. But in the moment, he was just...worried about you.

Your grip on his arms tightened, and you laughed. It was a harsh, hysterical sound.

"No!" you shouted, tears once again filling your eyes. "No, I'm not alright! I-I was buried alive because of your stupid fight, then I'm 'rescued' only to find out the Number One Villain is my soulmate, and now-! Now you've kidnapped me, and I'm so nauseous from all that jumping, I could puke! So, no, I'm not alright! In fact, this is perhaps the worst day of my fucking life!"

For a long moment, All Might simply stood there, still as a statue, your words making his heart freeze over, then shatter. You were trembling, and you refused to look at him- finally, he realized the obvious. You were terrified of him.

Before he could say anything, you let go of him, taking a few stumbling steps back from him, your back hitting the wall of the rooftop door. Your hands covered your tired, dusty face, and you sobbed as you slid down against the wall, pulling your knees close to your body.

You looked so fucking heartbroken. So genuinely fucking upset. Upset that he was your soulmate.

Minutes passed in silence as you wept, and All Might fought the sudden, pathetic urge to do the same. You didn't want him. You were afraid of him, you hated him!

He'd been so excited to finally meet you. After so many long years of isolation, necessitated by his crusade against All for One, he had hoped that when he did finally find his soulmate…

He wanted you to love him. You were supposed to love him.

This wasn't fair.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

This wasn't fair.

Your soulmate was supposed to be someone charming and sweet and kind- not a villain. Not the Villain. Not a murderer, a monster. What had you done to deserve this?

Slowly, you stopped crying, having no tears left in you. You were exhausted, physically and emotionally, and now you had a headache on top of everything else. You simply curled up, resting your forehead on your knees as you hugged them, and closed your eyes.

You tried not to jump when you heard heavy footsteps approaching you, but despite your efforts, you flinched. You could hear All Might sigh, then came the rustling of buckles and leather. When he spoke again, his voice was noticeably different.

"I'm… I'm sorry. I didn't… mean to kidnap you. I… I just couldn't leave you behind, and Endeavor…" he said. His voice was deep and low, almost soothing.

You opened your eyes and tried not to gasp at the startlingly handsome face of an unmasked All Might. Chiseled features, hypnotic blue eyes, and golden, slicked back hair… Nothing could've prepared you for the sight of the Number One Villain's true face.

You furrowed your eyebrows. "So I can go home whenever I want?" you asked. Handsome though he may be… he was still All Might. This changed nothing.

He nodded, mouth set in a firm line. "Of course. I can drop you off-"

"If you're going to jump like you did to get here, then absolutely not," you interrupted sourly. Then, quietly, you added, "I'm afraid of heights."

He winced, then rubbed the back of his neck. Seemingly embarrassed, he mumbled, "…sorry."

He reached out a hand, to place on your shoulder, but you immediately tensed and said, in a voice as cold as ice, "Don't. Don't touch me."

You could see him swallow thickly, and he nodded. "Alright. Alright," he replied with a sigh, just the barest hint of… disappointment? sadness? in his expression. He took a few steps away from you, then asked, "Is it okay if I sit down here?"

You had to bite down a hysterical laugh. The most dangerous man in the world, asking for permission from you? What a joke.

You nodded warily. "Fine."

All Might sat down across from you, brows furrowed as he seemed to study you. You merely closed your eyes and rested your forehead on your knees again.

Finally, he spoke. "I… I know I'm not… what you wanted-"

You let out a derisive snort.

"-but we are soulmates, and… and I'd like the chance to get to know you," he said, sounding incredibly sincere, if not somber.

You contemplated his words for a minute, then replied, "There is quite literally nothing I could do to stop you from doing… anything, really. If you wanted to stalk me every moment of every day, there is no force on this planet I could enlist to get you to go away. If you wanted to actually kidnap me on purpose, then I doubt anyone could save me. Don't pretend like I have a choice in all of this."

You opened your eyes, and looked up to see unmistakable hurt in All Might's expression. He was quick to hide it, but his stricken face sat heavy in your mind.

"You do have a choice," he insisted. "I don't- I don't want to force you to do anything! I won't! I want you to…"

"To want you? To love you? Of my own free will?" you supplied, letting out a heavy sigh and straightening out your legs. You folded your hands in your lap.

A fierce blush bloomed on All Might's face, even as he looked away. "…yeah."

"I don't know if I can do that," you answered honestly.

His eyes squeezed shut, and his hands clenched into fists. "Can you… can you give me a chance at least? Please?"

Without his eyes on you, you stared at him unabashedly, then let out another sigh. "If I do, and the answer is still no, I do not or cannot love you at the end of it, will you accept that? Will you leave me alone? Or should I fear for my life if I do reject you?"

His mouth trembled. "I would never hurt you. No matter what you do to me, or how you feel, I-I… I could never hurt you. Please, please- if nothing else, please believe me on that."

You were quiet for a long moment, letting the two of you stew in the mess of emotions you were both feeling, before finally replying, "Okay. Alright. I'll give you a chance."

And with that decision, you sealed your fate.

[strangesthirdeye]

Listen Before I Go (SH x Fem! Reader)

Summary: A quick call won't hurt, right?

Warning: It's Sherlock everyone like him..heavy angst? Attempt Suicide, mental breakdown, mental health, You are loved by people, don't do that. You need a hug, pleading, high ceiling, hanging rope, almost suffocating. The Empty Hearse episode.

As usual, I'm sorry if there are any wrong sentences or typos or grammatical mistakes, please forgive me and again English is not my first language, so I try to improve my language and writing in this way.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

One more loop and the knots are strong enough to support your weight. You sighed heavily. The creaking sound of the chair under your feet is heard when you make some motions on it. You look around your living room. Everything is scattered and unmanaged. Papers and books on the floor not to mentioned chairs are scattered around the living room, just like your wooden table.

you exhaled a heavy breath and looked up to see the noose hanging from the ceiling of your house. Well, here it is. After running around in your own mind and going through all the painful and stressful things in the real world, you are finally lost. Those things successfully kick your ass. Not to mention what happened to Sherlock two years ago. He committed suicide and claimed he was a liar, but that was not true. Why did he do that makes it a question mark for you, John, Mrs Hudson, Greg, Molly and Lestrade. Mycroft? hmm, he's just quiet. There was no news from him after that.

As if he has disappeared from existence.

Every dark plagued plays in your mind. All those rude people who curse Sherlock and proudly claim that Sherlock is a fraud. Not to mention those people have started bothering Sherlock's friends including you as his girlfriend. Those people don't know the meaning of grief.

You then look down. This is high enough. As long as your feet do not touch the floor is enough. Suffocate is not the first thing in your mind but because you don't want to commit suicide dirty with blood, you immediately decide to hang yourself. At least your life is taken slowly and in that time you can see all the happy memories at the end of your time.

You stand on your tiptoes and stick your head into the noose. The noose gently ends around your neck. Your hands started to tighten the noose around your neck so that it would be tight and not come loose when you hung it later. You sighed for the second time.

You are not afraid but nervous. Well, at least you know what your destiny is. You then close your eyes and your legs are ready to push the chair. All of the sudden, your phone rang in your pants pocket. You were shocked and almost pushed the chair under you but luckily the chair didn't slip.

You fish out your pocket and take your phone out of your pocket. You gulped your saliva slowly when you saw the contact on your phone.

John.

You immediately slide accept and open the speaker.

"Y/n"

"Hey, John"

"Where are you now? I need to tell you something.. Might be a surprise from me to you... I guess" John chuckled a little. Following with his hype tone means that John is in a good mood. Good. You're going to ruin his mood if you tell him what you're up to.

"what is it that you want to tell me? Is it Mary tho?" You pretend to hype your voice just to hide your crack tone.

"Well, I prefer to tell you at a cafe around your house only if you're not busy" John reasoned.

"well, i can't go out now.. can you just tell me on the phone instead? i kind of not really having a mood to go out anymore" You bit your lip slightly.

John was silent for a moment. You can imagine his confused face in your mind. Classic John. Gonna miss him.

"Are you alright?" John asked.

"mhmm.. I'm always alright" You replied.

"really? cuz' that's not how your 'alright' voice sounds like" John said suspiciously. "is it about Sherlock again?" John added.

Dammit. Why does he have to be the one who is always right? You are silent.

"It's been two years, Y/n. You have to let go that 'feeling'. It's not good for you" John said as if a father was advising his children to be useful human beings.

"you don't understand, aren't you? It's not easy. You have Mary.. while I don't have no one. No one to help me. Not even Mycroft. And I don't want to bring Mrs Hudson into this. She's already got a lot of plates in her hands." you paused you stand on your tiptoes.

"well, at least you don't have to deal with me anymore. I know what I'm doing now is a very useful thing. You don't have to worry about me." you added, the voice started to crack.

"What are you doing right now, Y/n. Don't you dare say that to me. I know exactly what you are trying to do. I'm coming" John's voice seemed to rush.

"tell me, John" you spoke up.

"what" John snapped trying to stop himself from yelling at you not to say negative things again.

"tell me what you want to say to me. That you expect me to be surprised" You closed your eyes. Tears streamed down your cheeks.

John let out a heavy breath. "I- oh god! this is not the situation I expected to tell you what it is. Taxi!" John yelled. John's voice then became muffled for a few moments before it became clear again. John then hurriedly told the cab driver your home address. Although the location is quite far from your house, John doesn't care about the fare. As long as he can save his other friend this time.

"just hold on. Don't end the call" John informed you firmly. John then sighed anxiously. "I-I plan to propose Mary tonight"

You smiled sadly. "is it going to be fancy? big?" you questioned him.

"fancy but simple.. oh gosh, why can't you just.. not doing all these things? You have many other things out there to go through! why now do you want to end it?" John is furiously rich.

"I think this is the end of my story. I've got nothing out there to go through. You have Mary. She's the one, John. Marry her. Make her half of your life. Have a family." You said lowly. your toes little by little push the chair under you.

"don't you dare say that. Think about it again. Sherlock doesn't want all this. He doesn't like any decision to end your life. He despises it. He wants you to move on and live a normal life. Normal life! Don't you want that? Find someone who can be with you for the rest of your life. Please.. I don't want to lose my best friend again" John begged.

Your line is quiet. Only the sound of the cab that John was riding in was heard. You look down. The hanging rope around the neck feels tight.

You know he's right but why don't you move away from the noose that is now resting on your neck? Sherlock doesn't like this. He despises it like John said earlier. Why then don't you open the rope and get off the chair? It's not going to work you know. Kill yourself. It's not.

Every thousand possibilities play in your mind as you hold the phone tightly in your hand. You bit your lips hard.

"I can't hold it anymore. The feeling of pain, grief and lost. It's not easy like what you say. It's just- Move on? no.. it's not working." you sobbed.

"No.." John paused. Probably is choosing and arranging the next sentence. "No, it's not easy. But, Sherlock wouldn't want that, right? So whatever you're doing now just drop it. Please. For the sake of Sherlock Holmes" John added in a tone of hope.

You paused and closed your eyes. Thumbs up on the screen. "I'm sorry, John" and you ended the call.

'just get on with it' whispered the demon in your ear. You choked on your own tears in your throat. You tossed your phone aside and stared for a moment then without hesitation you pushed the chair down so fast that it landed on the floor. But you don't fall, you float in the air with a hanging rope around your neck.

And there goes your oxygen is cut off quickly as you gasp for air while thrashing in the air. Both hands on the noose around your neck while your eyes darted around the living room. Mouth part away trying to get even a little oxygen. Your skin's colour is getting paler and your brain is in a state of shock when the oxygen is getting less and less to the brain.

You almost lost consciousness and then you see it. Life flashes before your eyes. Happy and sad memories. All in one. As the last piece of memories played in your eyes, you finally lost consciousness. Both your hands limp to the side while your head lolled forward. Your hair frames your pale face. But not before you hear the door of your house burst open by someone. Someone who you didn't get to see as your eyes are now tightly closed. Welcoming the feeling of a blanket of darkness.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Eyes opened slowly as you gasped to take enough oxygen into your body system. Every thought plays in your mind. Why can't you just go in peace? Why do people have to bother you?

You look around the living room. Now you are lying on the floor. Eyes on the ceiling while your breath is still panting. Everything is hurt especially in your neck. You can still feel the texture of the hanging rope around your neck.

You curse whoever messed up your suicide attempt. It could be John but the taxi John took could not be able to get here quickly. So who? You glared at the person who was kneeling next to you but then as soon as your eyes landed on the silhouette, you widened your eyes.

there he is, a man who claims to be a sociopath and never believes in sentiment but then falls into the terms boyfriend and girlfriend. His brunette hair, his eyes, his cheek bones and his face are still the same but at the same time he looks a little mature. While his eyes hold emotions that are very heavy plus panic and concerned etched on his face.

Sherlock Holmes. The so called 'fraud' is now on your side.

"What were you thinking?!" Sherlock said loudly.

You are stunned. Sherlock then touched your shoulder and shook it a little trying to get you out of the trance.

Oh, God. What you think is a dream is actually not a dream but real. The feeling of him touching your shoulder and his deep raspy and smoky timbre makes you miss him so much. Your eyes start to glaze over with tears.

"Sherlock?" you whispered his name.

Sherlock looked at you with concern and tried to help you sit up. "what were you thinking? Suffocate yourself to death? why? just why?"

"because you died! For two years. I thought you were dead once your body hit the ground in front of the hospital. Two years, Sherlock. Two years. And you think I can live without you just like that?" you yelled while slapping him on the chest several times.

Sherlock deflected your blow by holding both of your wrists to his chest. He looked at you with sympathy. "I want to save you and the others. This is all I can do. Moriarty will do worse than what you don't expect that's why I have to do that. Two years I tried to take down his network and now I'm here. What you did earlier there was the most horrible thing for me. I don't want to come back home knowing that you are dead."

You thought for a moment. Your red eyes looked at Sherlock's face with realization on your face. And then you sniffed and leaned your head on his chest.

Sherlock then put his arms around you. His right hand was placed on the back of your head and stroked gently while his head was placed on top of your head.

"You saved me.. oh, how stupid I am to do that" you sobbed.

"no you're not stupid. Don't say that. You are the most brilliant and courageous woman I know. Your intelligent and kind attitude makes me adore and fond of you more.. listen, I don't always say this but you are the only reason I'm coming home. Please.. don't do that ever again" Sherlock said while kissing your hair.

"John will be here soon." you say. Your voice is muffled in his chest.

"let him. might as well make it a surprise for him." Sherlock joked trying to lighten up the mood.

You chuckled tearfully and then hugged Sherlock tightly. Sherlock smiled gently and tightened his arms and rocked you left and right with his eyes closed.

[skyeslittlecorner]

can you post some photos on chapter five? ive been struggling to get to it and im impatient if ykwim 😭😭

Don't worry anon, I got you covered! Let's break this chapter for three parts - one for story and for one for both H-scenes. There are a lot of things to look forward to~

Warning: HEAVY SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT. In fact, I'll try to shorten the whole thing and focus on plot-relevant facts, so for those who want to go through chapter 5 on their own, come back when you're done! (Or just skip to h-scene, they are marked.)

Ch5 - STORY

First, I would like to warn that my opinion about it may be unpopular. As someone who hadn't paid much attention to Hades before, I fell in love with it after this episode. I adore ch5. A lot of people hate these boys to the core for what they did, and I understand and respect their opinion, but I'm with Hades here. I would love to analyze their behavior in more detail, but we don't have time for that today.

Summarizing this chapter is going to be hard because a lot of things happened. Let's go!

We start by going down a slide sponsored by Leviathan and his Lovecraftian friends (TM). But worry not! It seems we have friends even in the realm of death. Say hello to grandpa!

We talk a little, being in a questionable mood. Well, who wouldn't be? But we have the opportunity to know Solomon better, and I'm getting to understand why all devils love him. By the way, it turns out that we are his last descendant.

Sorry Solomon, you're still a peepaw.

He also advises us not to be afraid of Leviathan and not to be submissive to him, and then in a brilliant way he sends us back to the world of the living. Of course, our beautiful king is delighted.

We take Grandpa's advice to heart and finally stand up to Levi. He's surprised, but he doesn't try to kill us again (for now). We witness him hanging one of his subjects, who dared to ask about an accident from 311 years ago.

Fun fact. Devils must have much stronger spines. Do you know how people used to die by hanging? The first methods involved cutting off oxygen, but later they involved into breaking the cervical spine and this was considered a standard hanging execution. Leviathan must be gentle (how bad it sounds in this context), he could kill instantly with a loop like that.

Back to the point. We find out that we also have a noose around our neck, and Leviathan makes use of it. We're hanging, but we finally begin to meet Leviathan's nobles one by one.

Glasyal plots (and ends up hanging for it), Foras argues with him, along the way we learn that Leviathan needs us in his plan, and, you know, maybe killing us isn't the smartest thing he can do. Only Barbatos realizes that maybe it's a good idea to stop hanging us like wet laundry. He's the only one so openly nice to us.

Remember that.

Another fun fact, our MC is of medium height (~160 cm I guess). Leviathan is 187cm, Foras should be similar. I only noticed this because I myself am 180 cm so they are not so strappingly tall for me.

Foras wants to take us away from Levi and explain everything calmly, but the king does not agree. We learn that the guys know where the seed from the Tree of Knowledge is. We're supposed to go with them, and we have about a 50/50 chance of survival. Also, we have the opportunity to see a very rare phenomenon, a joking Leviathan.

Sweetie.

Colossally shortening the rest, the cavalry arrives! You didn't have to. I haven't had time to fuck them yet.

And this cavalry is very much at odds with the nobles of Hades. Most of the time is them arguing. Fortunately, they didn't kill each other…

...because Barbie decided to kill us.

Barbatos is poisoning us to force Bimet and Valefor to join the plan. While we are unconscious, we have flashes of Leviathan's past, which is too sad to analyze considering that we are about to jump to hot scenes now. Besides, most of us already know what this is about. Experience it for yourself. Really. We also learn that not only angels experimented on children, and a little about Mammon's childhood.

In the end, we learn that in Ch6 we must visit the abandoned laboratory in Tartaros, where the seed from the tree of knowledge should be, because as Solomon's descendants, we may be the only ones who will not be killed by it.

Ch5 - VALEFOR H-SCENE

(I really wanted to post CG from Valefor's scene here, but I don't know if Tumblr will block it.)

TIME FOR DESSERT!

Bimet is the first to realize that we lack devil energy. He wants to take care of it, but Valefor brushes him off, sends him to scout, and overall Bimet is our wingman, what a bro lol

Since we are away from Satan and Gehenna, we cannot summon Minhyeok's room. MC thinks she's outgrown it anyway. So we can count on the next scenes to be more and more creative.

It all starts with us telling Valefor that he reminds us of Mammon. And what a beast it brings out of him.

And he loves it.

...aaand then, someone wants to interrupt. Bimet informs us about this and goes to chase them out. Valefor stands with us at the door to see if anyone else is coming. Yes. Naked. With us. In us.

Fortunately, no one catches us and after the entire session we fall asleep in our knight's arms.

I really would like to do more screenshots, but tumblr is blocked… and there's one more part to come.

Ch5 - LEVIATHAN H-SCENE

At least you look beautiful and the platform won't block you.

And here's what I love the most. It was sick. I'd love to experience it again.

I would love to make a whole post ONLY about this and just leave the screenshots.

We are in Leviathan's office, and he interrogates us when we feel like we are lacking devil energy. We want to go to Bimet, but do you think our jealous king will allow it? Oh no no no. And of course, his hands land on our chin and then our neck. He doesn't like our hickeys.

We start asking him valid questions like "why are you jealous of us if you hate us?" So he silences us with a kiss. A deep, suffocating kiss. This is also how Leviathan discovers that we gain their energy through "intercourse with the devil".

And how can I not fall in love with this idiot.

The conversation that follows gives us some light on his approach to sex and to relationships in general. Which is… sad. It fits him perfectly, but it's sad. And I would also like to analyze this someday, this character is beautiful and how he's written is even more beautiful, especially from writer's point of view. He does not want the admiration of his people or the hatred of angels. The only thing he can believe and consider to be sincere is that someone's dislike. This is something that might actually turn him on.

At first he rules, he asks questions and he hangs us. And he does everything he can to piss us off. He hands us a whip and lowers us down.

Just disliking him isn't enough, and he works diligently to make us hate him. He insults Minhyeok, us, wishes us dead, and the more he sees our anger, the more he gets excited and talks more. He knows that we are connected to Satan and we will know how to release our anger. On him.

He finally got what he wanted. We straddle him and, with the help of Satan's strength, begin to strangle him. Neither you nor he are gentle.

Also, his words (unfortunately, I already have a limit on screenshots). "Do not bite your lips. Bite mine instead." I beg, let me violate him even more.

Compliment from Leviathan, nice. In the end, we fall asleep cuddled up to him, and he has no intention of giving us up to anyone. As in the case of Sitri, he only opens up to us when we are so unconscious that we do not see his softer side.

꧁:･ ✡ ･:꧂

AND THATS ALL! What a ride it was, I hope I was a good guide. One day I will go into the Hades boys in more depth, but for now, let this be a shortcut for everyone who is still struggling with ch5.

[olivieblake]

I know it's SO silly to avoid posting spoilers on a fic that was written almost a decade ago but @wonniesverse asked about what happens in chapter 35 or 36 or whatever of Marked (you know the one) and I am putting my answer under the cut!!! it's unfortunately kind of a short answer lol

hi! i am so sorry if i've got the wrong account but i had just recently read the clean and marked dramione series you wrote on ao3, and i was genuinely FLOORED. yep it's me lol this was the first fic i had ever genuinely cried for, the way you expressed hermione's and draco's relationship so well. the fic was written so long ago - in 2016 - and you might have forgotten about it, ahahahah pls but i had one question i simply couldn't ignore for the life of me: when snape used the time turner, he went to another parallel universe, right?

sorry to interrupt you here, but no! he used the time turner to go back in time, within the same universe, in a time loop. as with the events of book 3, there is still only one universe and only one timeline—there are briefly two harrys and two hermiones in the book because they're the ones who used the time-turner, but in this case, only snape went back, so he's the only one who is experiencing both the current timeline and the rewritten past.

so the new universe's hermione and draco could feel the phantom original universe's draco and hermione's experiences, so the original universe must still have been existing and operating alongside the new parallel one, meaning that the original hermione and draco were still there (please correct me if i'm wrong!).

so again, there is only one timeline, but them being able to feel the echoes of other decisions and other lives was meant to be sort of ineffable. magic!!! etc etc

but i was wondering, if that was a separate timeline, what happened to the original universe's draco and hermione if they still existed? i know draco died in the original universe, but i was curious how the original universe's hermione (master of death) lived after that, and if she ever found joy again, or if she only talked to the ghost of draco forever, and i also wonder how theo fared in that original timeline. there are so many other questions i'd like to ask, but i'll keep this as short as i can.

I made a joke in this week's not writing video that the oversaturation of multiverse media has led to some confusion so yeah, the timeline is disrupted and written over, like—oops maybe this is too Aged a reference—but it's like when you record over an existing VHS and the original footage is simply lost. but there is also the concept of a palimpsest, which is what I wanted those echoes of another life to feel like

as for what would have happened if that timeline continued: what the story suggests (the reason snape went back to begin with) is that the timeline is hopeless—draco is dead and can't be resurrected, hermione maybe never moves on, she allows absolute power to corrupt her absolutely. but that was the point of the story, that the pressure point that re-starts the time loop each time is that draco dies and everything goes irreparably wrong from there. you are of course welcome to reimagine something else! but that was the point of writing a story that resets to canon; I was trying to resolve and explain all the places where something doesn't make sense, like whenever an adult makes a terrible and illogical decision

the way that you wrote of hermione's heartbreak truly tore me apart, and i cried unabashedly when i saw draco died. draco loved her so much and she loved him, so to kill one of them would be utter torture, and i hope the original hermione got to find peace or at the very least see draco in the afterlife. theo was so strong too - even though he wished he could be selfish and talk to draco too, he knew he couldn't take even the ghost of draco away from hermione, so he gave up his chance. i cannot even begin to describe how this story broke my heart and mended it again, and i'm happy that at least the hermione and draco in the other parallel universe got their happy ending, but i also worry about the original hermione and draco too. if you've read until here, thank you so so much for just indulging and entertaining this silly question of mine, and i wholly understand if you don't feel like reading this question anymore. nonetheless, regardless of if you read or reply to this message, i just wanted to let you know that this series was truly of the best i have ever read, and i thank you so so much for that. again, if this is the wrong account, i apologize! but the fic was written in 2016, and the author said this was her tumblr account, so i found the best match i could <3

hahahaah it's so funny to me that you would have any doubt that this was me... I still pretty much write endings that people get mad

but thank you so much for caring this much about the story and I'm so glad you enjoyed it!!

[dark-dimare]

Imagine seven year old Luffy seeing some baby animals (maybe wolves?) play-biting out of affection and deciding to do the same. So he goes up to Ace and just gently *nom*.

Ace is confused, cause what? He asks, and Luffy just says that he saw someone else do that to their siblings. Ace, not realizing that Luffy saw baby /animals/ play-bite their sibling, and runs with it. After all, Luffy has the most experience with kids their age between the two of them. (Sabo’ as experiences don’t count to them because “Nobles are weird”)

So the two (or three if it happens before Sabo’s accident) just start biting each other as a way of showing affection. No big deal, just average wild child stuff, only it continues once they’ve set out and gathered crew.

I imagine Ace ended up gathering the Spades in a similar manner to Luffy, one by one kind of way but no more than two at a time. By the time the next Spade joined, the previous one was not only accustomed to but joined in with affectionate biting. It wasn’t much, or often, but still present enough.

Ace doesn’t even realize that it’s not a normal thing until after he joins Whitebeard, when he affectionately bites Thatch for bringing him food. A whole shenanigan-esque scene happens where they try to explain to Ace that No, humans do not tend to bite each other in affection outside of lovers in intimate situations. Once it finally sinks in, all he can say is “Oh no, my brother’s poor crew.”

Luffy doesn’t hesitate to affectionately bite his nakama, and they just take it as part of him, just like how he’s rubber. It mainly becomes a thing when the other Straw Hats start doing it as well.

Zoro, I imagine, would be the first, and would first do it to Sanji. Like, he just woke up from a nap, and sees Sanji handing him a bottle of booze. So, as thanks, he instinctively gives Sanji a gentle nip on his wrist as he takes the bottle. Sanji is so shook he doesn’t even start a fight over it, and just numbly walks over to the girl(s). “You know how Luffy keeps biting us?” “Yeah, he’s like a damn mosquito, only he doesn’t draw blood.” “Zoro just bit me. Like how Luffy does.” “…What?”

From there, it spreads. Gentle nips as thanks, worried noms for those injured, soft bites as just general “I’m glad you’re here”. Every one of the Straw Hats bite each other. (I imagine Brook has a bone in particular that he lets them nom on because he’s so tall, and they don’t want to upset him by making him feel like a chew toy, and it just has various teeth marks simply because of how many times they’ve gently bit him. He’s very thankful for it, because on nights when he can’t sleep because he’s suddenly thrown mentally back into isolation, he can feel their marks on his bone and remember that he will never be alone as long as they live.)

The Whitebeards are thrown through a loop if/when they meet a small crew captained by their Second Division Commander’s precious baby brother, and finds that a l l of them have the same way of showing affection, and none of them brought up how weird it is.

(If Sabo was still around when Luffy came to this conclusion, I imagine it’d gotten stuck in Sabo’s instincts to nom with affection. Koala is the first -and only for a long time- person he bites, and she doesn’t question it because “maybe it’s an amnesia thing? Like him not even knowing his name?”, and doesn’t even bring it up. The others only find out once Hack gets bitten for delivering a tired and hungry Sabo a snack after training. “You know I’m not food, right?” “Yeah?” “So then why did you bite me?” “I bite Koala all the time?” “I thought it was an amnesia thing, is it not?” “No, it’s not even really a human thing, with some very age-specific exceptions.” “Huh. Normally, I just feel like biting, so I bite. Normally, it’s a ‘I’m glad you’re here’ or ‘hello/goodbye’ bite. That was a ‘thank you’.” “…all right.”)

[yersina]

a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 3)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [x] [pt 4] [pt 5]

onwards and upwards!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the third language and will contain spoilers! it also assumes that you know what all of the symbols mean already.

have a huge soft spot for this language the most out of all of them haha. again, missed part of the gameplay for the dictionary—i couldn’t find the last fruit to feed the monkey lmao. also, i had the game open while writing this post this time, so more screenshots, yay!

visually, i'd say that this compares to arabic script or devanagari, especially with the line that runs through all of the characters, but it's still a logographic language. culturally/artistically, i think it's meant to represent how flow-y and artistic the bards are haha. i also remember seeing something once about the thai script (which this is not entirely dissimilar to) and how it was originally written on organic matter (eg leaves, bark, etc idk) and needed to have loops in order to work against the grain of the leaves. i haven’t done my due diligence and confirmed that in any historical or anthropological context yet, but it seems plausible to me?? the bards do seem to have a more tropical environment, tho again it’s likely just an artistic decision haha

once again, in terms of visual patterns in the words, we can see that a verb is indicated by a dot in the top right hand corner. the people words ("warrior", "bard", "you", "i/me") seem to all have a swoopy symbol that crosses the horizontal line, which is interesting. the only exception is "idiot", which might be because it's primarily functions as an adjective. locative nouns, including the cardinal directions, have a dot below the line. the only noun that includes a dot is “compass”, which might be a reflection of its connection to location? as in it contains locations, or navigates to locations? i’m uncertain. interestingly, the only non-person nouns that touch the horizontal line are “monster” and “greeting”, which might also be indicative of the senses of those words—if we recategorize “monster” with the people-words and “greeting” with the verbs, then we don’t have any outliers. however, this would include a word without a dot in the verb category. perhaps at some point in the evolution of the bard’s language, “greeting” lost its verb features? again, i’m unsure and possibly reading too far into it lmao.

this is our first OSV (object subject verb) language! ngl, i was annoyed by the way the game chose to translate the meaning into english—there are plenty of verb-final languages out there irl, no need to be so literal with the translation lol. amusingly, we see this being the most apparent when translating between the bards’ language (which is OSV and has plural marker suffixes) and the warriors’ language (which is SVO and has plural marker prefixes). absolutely none of the characters line up w each other lmao

(we can also see from this exchange that there’s no distinction between “go/pass” (i.e, from here to there) and “come” (from there to here), which is not something that i specifically noted before. interesting! again, i assume this is due to the capacity of these languages being limited.)

this is also our first possible (possible) indication of punctuation, with “question”. i’ve seen some people directly translate the “question” word as <¿?> (the punctuation marks), which i’m hesitant to do, especially considering that there’s no other evidence of punctuation in any of the languages. irl, japanese (and other languages) has a question word <か>, which indicates orally that something is a question—the bards’ language could easily have something similar.

we also see this mirrored in “not” in terms of grammatical structure, which probably indicates something about how auxiliary verbs are used/placed in this language (even tho “not” isn’t a verb—i’m sure there’s a linguistic category that includes the both of them but it escapes me rn). someone else on tumblr called this negative concord, and julia on an sss stream likened it to the french “ne pas”, and yes that is what this is, but it’s also… a little different?? my academic interest in linguistics when i was in school lay more in socio-cultural contexts than syntax so this is definitely NOT my area of expertise at all, so take what i say here with a large hunk of salt:

after some very brief research, it seems that negation can either take place at the sentence-level (e.g., through verbs like “can’t” or “won’t”) or through negative words (e.g., “nobody”, “nowhere”). so, a sentence like “i don’t go nowhere” (meaning “i don’t go anywhere”) achieves double negation through negating once at the sentence-level and once at the word-level. standard english doesn’t have negative concord, but some dialects do. different languages treat multiple negation differently; sometimes it conveys a slightly different meaning (from wikipedia: “you’re not unattractive” vs “you’re attractive”) and sometimes it intensifies the negation (also from wikipedia: “i haven’t never owed nothing to no one”).

the thing that i’m struggling with in the bard’s language is that the negation isn’t… attached to anything??? it’s not affixed to a verb or a noun, so really it’s not conveying negation of a particular thing, it’s negation of the whole sentence….???? which (in my mind) isn’t… really… negative concord. if that makes sense. like sure, there’s two symbols of it at both ends of the sentence, but it’s more indicative of the meaning of the sentence as a whole, rather than conveying smth abt a specific word. like it's not as if both of them mean "no" or each of them are adding meaning in a particular way. so. that’s why i’m more inclined to take it as a general grammatical feature of the language, along with “question”, and say that this is just how the language treats auxiliary/modal/whatever words??? it’s not as if we have other evidence. 😐

another option could be that negation w a noun takes places as a prefix (e.g., "not-warrior") and negation w a verb takes place as a suffix (e.g., "be-not"), so because of the OSV word order, you end up with something like ("not-warrior you be-not" or "a warrior, you're not").

HOWEVER. we do see some instances of the game's internal translation of some sentences conveying a slightly different meaning than a pure ('pure') negation, which makes figuring out the syntactic structure of this language kinda difficult.

if we take each of the "not" words as a negation, we'd end up with "not-hammer i carry-not", which is not "a hammer, i miss" lol. (to demonstrate w an english equivalent example: "i ain't no warrior" vs "i don't carry no hammer"). if you're a speaker of a negative concord language/dialect, pls pls feel free to correct me here; my intuition's going to be slightly off because i haven't studied any languages where this would be relevant. I think it could work, probably, but again, it's really difficult to say anything concrete without more examples. given its congruence with the "can you get a hammer" example, though, i really am inclined to say that this is just a grammar thing, not a negative concord thing (even tho negative concord IS a grammar thing—you get my drift).

questions that remain unanswered: - does the fact that "question" is two dots relate to the presence of dots in the verbs and locative nouns?

[chaoticgoodthief]

Redraw Time :D

So... It's been a while since I drew this. And... I gave into the siren call to do a redraw of my voice designs!

Alright, starting off with a major design change. Went with something a bit more abstract that I really think better captures "submission". Harsh edges (almost like broken glass) since no matter how weak-willed he is, he can and will still be a major threat against you.

Oh my gosh I am SO HAPPY with my Paranoid redraw I cannot begin to articulate how much I adore this new version compared to the last. Would have included a bit more blood, but... yeah I'm happy I went without. Because a) my hands already hurt and b) eh probably would have not looked that good anyway.

Poor, well-intentioned Smitten. He wants so badly to be human, to be the noble prince sweeping the princess off her feet. Such a shame he's doomed to be the monster no matter how hard he tries.

Another major design change, this time less abstract! Tried to keep the same animalistic look to him (Wide eyes, ear tufts looking like rabbit ears) but a lot more humanoid and mobile (my boy is fleeing) than before. Originally, I was trying to shape this into a Paranoid design, but I think Hunted fits it much better.

Often I see people giving Hero the knight in shining armour treatment. Which, honestly, fair. He is Hero after all. But look me in my digital eyes and tell me Stubborn isn't rocking the look. Dented armour and tattered cloak to add a bit of flavour. He's not just ready for battle. He is the battle.

Alright, I gave into masked Opportunist. What can I say? He is rocking the mask + suit combo. Inspiration for his mask comes mainly from bird-themed masquerade masks. One of the few designs that I actually kept the wings, mainly becuase they're just too him to leave out.

Not much changes with Cheated, mainly just changing his facial expression to better fit his personality and getting him mobile. Yes, I know he's literally just wearing bandages. Laugh all you want, but it's pretty convenient when you're getting turned into bird mâché.

Once again, not much changes needed for Cold. Just a bit of changing the placement of the string, a little additional violence (as a treat) and a few other minor aesthetic details to spruce up his Look TM.

Same general expression, but a lot of changes design-wise. Tried to include as many curving, amlost question-mark shapes in as I could and I think I'm happy with how it turned out. Also yes, he's literally leaving no stone unturned.

Hey come back here I haven't finished your backround yet- Oh well whatever guess I'll just get started then. Only voice other than Smitten with a brightly coloured outfit, a face that makes it hard to tell whether he's grinning or has downcast eyes, jester outfit because why not?

Alright, I lied. Hero still gets a bit of knight in the design of his ear tufts. Tried to keep with a more simplistic, abstract design while still adding a lot more of a Friend TM vibe that I think really worked out quite well.

Extra fun facts:

All the counterpart voices have the same arm markings! Spikes for Broken and Stubborn. Chain-like loops for Paranoid and Cold. Daggers/Blades for Smitten and Skeptic. Arrowheads for Hunted and Opportunist. Wavy lines for Cheated and Contrarian.

Counterpart voices also have the same ear tufts, some of them are just hidden from sight. Yes, this means that Opportunist's "ear tufts" are actually just part of his mask. He has the bunny ears too >:3