#all i remember is the reference photo i didnt even use

[n0thingbutlov3]

need you now

in which an impulsive voicemail leads to some secrets being spilled.

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader. warnings/tags: angst (sorry i’m incapable of being nice lol) hurt/comfort tho!! lil bit of fluff too because i AM capable of being nice, alcohol consumption as a coping mechanism (i’m literally just a girl…) spencer and reader are broken up :( but they’re still sooo in love and it’s soo obvious so it’s fine!! (also it kind of gets fixed at the end-ish. you’ll see *evil smirk*) reader cries a lot (real) spencer is a cutie (as always) spencer and reader sleep together…no like literally, not in a funny business way, some swearing, no use of y/n!!! wc: 3k a/n: hihihi!! so this is my first fan fiction i’ve wrote and completed ever (gulp) it’s also my first time publishing one (gulp) my writing could definitely be better and so could my grammar tbh but i HOPE if you choose to read you’ll enjoy…feedback is always appreciated (plsplspls) also like requests?? if anyone’s into that—id love to write more but inspo is difficult sometimes. if there’s any spelling mistakes im sorry, eye am very tired!! it’s 5am *eye twitching* okay i’m going to sleep, gootbye IF U SAW ME EDITING THIS 5 TIMES NO U DIDNT (i’m bad at tumblr ok..)

“Hi. This is Doctor Spencer Reid. I’m not available right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…”

His tinny voice cut off to make way for the signature beep of the beginning of a voicemail recording.

You could hang up now—you should hang up now, save yourself some dignity and go drown your sorrows in alcohol like a normal person instead of calling your ex-boyfriend.

You should, but your mouth was opening before your finger could reach the hang-up button, and…and it was a losing battle from the moment you clicked on Spencer’s icon.

“Uh—hi, it’s…it’s me.” You huffed out a sad laugh.

“So, um, I…I tried calling, but you didn’t answer so…” The static buzz of silence hummed through your ear, just inches from where you held your phone with a shaky grip. “maybe you’re on a case or out with friends, or someone else—“ You let the implication hang in the air—the thought of Spencer potentially being in a relationship bringing a lump to your throat.

You swallowed it down.

“I just…I just had an unbelievably shitty day, Spence.” You sniffed, wiping the moisture that had escaped from your eye with your sweater sleeve. “I know you’ve never read A Series of Unfortunate Events but I think I’d give those kids a run for their money.” You tried to laugh but it came out as more of a sob.

You inhaled shakily, trying to collect yourself and remember why on earth you thought it would be a good idea to call Spencer when you’d been broken up for months. Hell, you hadn’t heard from him at all since you had parted ways—except from the odd text about returning each others’ things. It was obvious he had moved on, and here you were, filling up his voicemail with blubbering messages and making references to adolescent books.

“God, sorry about this.” You breathed out a watery chuckle. “I just…didn’t want to be alone, I guess. But that’s-um-not your problem anymore, so I’m—I’m sorry. Have a nice night.” Your voice cracked and you hung up before you could start weeping down the line. You didn’t need to look even more pathetic.

You pulled your phone away from your ear, looking down at his contact photo through blurred vision. He was smiling—not the tight, closed lip smile he gave other people, but a full, bright smile that had his dimples showing. One of your hands was wrapped loosely around his neck and the other was holding your phone just far enough away to capture both of your smiles. Your head was rested on top of his shoulder, tilted just slightly to the left so your temple was brushing against his.

It felt like looking at a vintage photograph—you knew those people and their happiness existed at some point in time, but it wasn’t tangible; you couldn’t verify it was real.

When you were with Spencer, you never doubted how real it was. All you had to was look at him across the room and he’d flash you a smile identical to the one in that photo and you’d just…know.

It felt like forever ago now that you’d been on the receiving end of that grin and it killed you. So much so that before you could consider the repercussions, you were trudging through to your kitchen and grabbing the bottle of whiskey that sat unopened in your cabinet. It had been a present—from Rossi, actually. When Spencer had first introduced you to the team, the older man had given it to you as something of a welcome gift. Of course, he couldn’t have known you weren’t much of a drinker, and since you wanted to make a good impression (and because you were sure it had cost more than all the alcohol you had consumed in your life combined) you accepted it—deciding to save it for a rainy day.

You think this qualified.

You grabbed the bottle, a glass, and padded back through to your living room, slumping onto your couch. You filled your glass up a little less than halfway before gulping it down, enjoying the burn in your throat—it was better than the constant thickness.

You poured yourself another glass before turning on the TV. You weren’t sure what was playing—it didn’t really matter anyway, your vision was already being obscured by tears again.

You thought the pounding was in your head at first—serves you right for drinking half a bottle of whiskey. Only, it wasn’t, because moments later the pounding subsided and instead, your apartment door was opening, casting your pitch-black living room in a yellow glow which temporarily blinded you.

You squeezed your eyes shut, your mind hazy—again, serves you right for drinking half a bottle of whiskey. Someone was calling your name, but there was too much sensory input for you to make out who.

You certainly hoped it wasn’t a paramedic—maybe your neighbour had heard you sobbing for the last four hours and decided you needed a wellness check. Then there were hands on your face, and that had you flicking your eyes open, because you recognised those hands—impossibly soft, with a callus on his trigger finger being the only thing to mar them. Spencer.

“Spencer?” You slurred.

He sighed in exasperation (or relief) and tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear.

“Are you alright? You weren’t answering your phone, I thought…” He trailed off, worry evident in his voice.

You sat up then, trying to compose yourself even though the room was spinning. Fucking whiskey. You rubbed your eyes haphazardly, blinking until you could finally see.

You should’ve stayed bleary-eyed. Because nothing could prepare you for the way your breath hitched when you finally saw him. After months of not seeing each other, Spencer was here, sitting on your couch, and he was looking at you like you were something fragile, and—God, you needed another drink. You turned away from him, reaching for the neck of the bottle as you spoke.

“I’m fine.”

Before you could lift it up, Spencer gently pried your hand away from the bottle with his own, and then slid it across the coffee table with his other.

“You’re drunk. No more of that, please.” His tone wasn’t unkind, but he left no room to argue. You probably would’ve objected anyway, if it weren’t for the way he kept his hand clasped around yours, rubbing soothing circles into your pulse point almost absentmindedly.

You glanced up to him—to stop yourself from staring at your hand in his and how natural it felt, more than anything—but that proved to be a mistake too, because he looked just as beautiful as thirty seconds prior and it felt just as natural for him to be sitting next to you on your sofa, but it wasn’t natural anymore.

“How did you get in?”

“My key.”

“Oh.”

Right. The key that he still had because you refused to meet up with him to let him return it. He tried for weeks to contact you, but you ignored him, because getting the key back meant things were finally over. You supposed he could return it now—maybe that’s why he came in the first place.

“Why did you come?” You asked, your voice impossibly small.

“You called.” He replied—as though he was talking about something as simple as the weather. You call and I come.

You searched in his eyes for any sign of a lie, but of course, there was none. He was being completely genuine—as always. You were the awful ex-girlfriend who left concerning voicemails on his phone and had him travelling to your apartment in the middle of the night only for him to look completely okay with the situation—like there was nothing he’d rather be doing than making sure you were safe.

You couldn’t help the way tears sprung to your eyes or your lip began to tremble as you lolled your head back onto the couch, pulling your gaze away from his.

“Angel, what’s wrong?”

You liked to consider yourself to be a strong person. You had been through things in your life that were objectively worse than your breakup with Spencer, but something about the gentleness of his tone and the way he had let one of his many (past) petnames for you slip had your throat tightening and you ducked your head into your one hand—the other still seized by Spencer’s—to try and muffle a sob.

“Hey,” He trailed his hand that was wrapped around yours up your arm, all the way to your shoulder blade before lightly guiding you towards him. You don’t have enough energy in you to fight his magnetic pull, so you shuffle over until you can bury your head into his shirt. You inhale his scent; vanilla, neroli, and so him it makes you ache.

Stopping your tears is futile—you’d know, they’d barely ceased all night—so you just let them fall, seeping into Spencer’s tie as he rubs one hand softly up and down your back, the other cradling the crown of your head.

His breathing is quiet and slow—the exact opposite of yours—and you try to imitate it—forcing air into your lungs. When your sobbing has turned to shaky breathing and the occasional sniffle, he speaks up.

“Do you want to talk?”

Talk about what? About what had happened today—what had led you to calling him? Talk about how for the last few months, he had been the only person you had wanted to call?

“No.” You hated how pitiful you sounded.

“Okay.”

Spencer didn’t say anything else for a minute—your synchronised breathing being the only thing to stop the room from falling into dead silence.

“You need to rehydrate.” He murmured, smoothing down your hair.

You hummed into him, in no hurry to unwrap yourself from his body. You probably wouldn’t get to be this close to him again, after all.

He moved both of his hands to your biceps, pulling you back slightly so you could look at him. He knitted his brows together in a silent plea which had you rolling your eyes petulantly, your lashes still damp from tears.

“Fine.” You peeled yourself off of him, pushing yourself into a standing position. Horrible mistake. You were still incredibly drunk, turns out, and everything was spinning a little bit and come to think of it, you were also nauseous and—

“Careful, lovely.” Spencer placed his hand firmly on the small of your back, keeping you upright.

and—actually, you were fine now.

He stood too, moving his hand just slightly over to your waist so he could guide you to the kitchen. When he knew you could stand upright—even if you were relying mostly on the counter behind you—he grabbed a glass from your cabinet, moving around effortlessly to pour you some water. The sight was so domestic you almost wanted to cry again. Maybe in some alternate timeline, where you and him could’ve worked, this would be an every day thing—minus the drunk sobbing part, of course.

He handed you the glass of water, watching as you took a few sips. He raised an eyebrow, nodding his head slowly.

“Whole thing, please.”

You let out an exasperated (affectionate) sigh and gulped the rest of it down, setting it on the counter behind you.

“Happy?”

“Very.”

You smirked, trailing your gaze down his body. He was still in his work clothes which, at the very least, meant he wasn’t on a date before he came here. He always changed before dates—well, for you, anyway. You wondered if he had been on any dates since the breakup—you certainly hadn’t. It had been long enough now that it wouldn’t be weird for you to start seeing other people—but you didn’t want to. You weren’t sure you’d ever want to, to be completely honest.

The more you thought about it, the more the whole thing seemed stupid. You didn’t want anyone else, you wanted Spencer. You had tried to get over him but if tonight was any indication—it clearly wasn’t working. You can’t even remember why you broke up in the first place—it all seemed so insignificant now. No amount of pain you had ever experienced in your relationship had come close to that of living without him.

You met his eyes once more and it was like he could see the question brewing. He tried to stop you, calling your name in a quiet warning, but you ignored him.

“Why did we break up?”

He frowned, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth with his tongue in that maddening way he did.

“I—you know why—“

“No, but I don’t! I know things were difficult sometimes but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work. It worked—we worked.” Your eyes were stinging again.

Spencer pressed his index and middle finger into his eye, furrowing his brows.

“I know, I know we worked, angel—but you were sad all the time, remember? I was gone so often and it wasn’t good for you.” His true emotions were indecipherable but his tone was soft, and you wished you could be as calm about this as him. Did he just not care as much as you did?

“But It’s—It’s worse now—“ You choked out, tears falling freely now. “I was sad when you were gone, but you always came back—you don’t come back anymore.”

Spencer removed his hand from his face, flexing it at his side like he was uncertain what to do with himself before taking a stride towards you. He brought a hand to your face, wiping the tears from under your eyes delicately—like you were made of porcelain.

“Listen, sweetheart—alcohol affects your ability to regulate your emotions and I know right now it might feel worse but that doesn’t mean it always—“

“Spencer, stop! It’s not the fucking alcohol, I miss you! I miss you all of the time! Even—even when I’m having a good day—I still want you—and especially when I—when I have a bad day—“ You choked out through heaving breaths.

“Breathe.” He urges, cupping your cheek. And you’re so, so angry, and sad, and tired that you have no choice but to shut up and listen to him. When you’ve adequately calmed down, he moves his hand to your jaw, tilting your head up to look at him.

“I don’t think we should talk about this tonight but I—“ You open your mouth to protest.

“I promise we can talk about it tomorrow when you’re sober—if you still want to.”

Your lip trembles of its own volition and you frown.

“Of course I want to.”

“Okay,”

“Okay.”

He gives your eyes a final wipe before he’s—rather unexpectedly—pulling you into a hug. You all but melt into him, your head finding its home in his sternum and your arms wrapping around his middle. He tilts his head down, kissing the top of your head—and you’re certain you can’t let this go again. You will chain him down before Spencer leaves this apartment again.

Everything is wordless from there—mostly because you’re so, so exhausted that even talking seems like too difficult a task. Spencer helps you find something more comfortable to change into and you pull out an old t-shirt of his and a pair of plaid pyjama pants you had kept here for him. I guess your keeping them ‘just in case you needed them in the future’ had come in handy, after all.

As you washed your face, Spencer snuck through to the kitchen, refilling your water and grabbing two aspirin in a not-so-subtle attempt to help the inevitable hangover you were going to have in the morning.

You caught him placing them on your bedside table and mock gasped.

“Trying to drug me in my sleep so you can make a run for it in the night?”

He grinned lazily—exhaustion creeping up on him as well.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

You smiled, flopping yourself onto your bed rather ungraciously. Spencer looked at you like you were something fascinating before biting his lip, clearly deep in thought.

“What?” You let out a self-effacing little chuckle.

“I was just…wondering…if you’d like me to sleep on the couch?”

You probably should’ve been more careful in your facial expressions considering you were still broken up but your thoughts about that offer were obvious.

“No, stay.” Stay in your bed, in your apartment—stay anywhere that was close to you.

Maybe you were coming on a little too strong.

“Unless you want to, I mean—“

“No, no—I’ll stay.” Forever, preferably.

He walked around to the other side of your bed—as he had done so many times before—and sat down, pulling the covers over his legs. You mirrored his movements before flicking your bedside lamp out, turning to face him.

You were a little thankful you were so out of it, because this had the potential to be very awkward otherwise. Spencer shuffled down so that he was at eye level with you, turning to face you as well.

You just stared for a moment, committing him to memory. The moonlight had a way of highlighting all the high points of his face, and the twinkle in his eyes, and—God, you were so glad the moon existed and that Spencer was in your bed that you couldn’t help but giggle.

“What?” Spencer laughed along with you, even though he had no idea what was so funny.

“Nothing. You’re pretty.”

“You’re drunk. Go to sleep.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Why?”

“Scared you’ll be gone when I wake up—like I made it all up.”

Spencer’s smile faded then, and he looked at you with something that seemed so much like the one thing you had been willing yourself to stop doing the whole time that you’d been broken up, that it almost took your breath away.

“I won’t. I promised, didn’t I?”

You nodded.

“So there’s nothing to worry about. Now get some sleep, lovely.”

You smiled, feeling Spencer’s hand inching towards yours. He intertwined them and gave yours a squeeze.

“Just in case you make a run for it in the night.”

You chuckled, your eyelids fluttering shut. Yeah, you could make it work.

part two!

[haztory]

['sex' by the 1975]

⤷ atsumu miya x f!reader; best friends, references to infidelity, pining, sexual content (w.c 3.1k)

“it’s not sex.” he insists between mouthfuls. a drop of mustard dots the corner of his mouth. you stare incredulously.

“are you joking?” you ask. atsumu just shrugs his shoulder, intense focus saved for the burger held in his hands. practically inhaling a third of it in one bite as he brings it up to his mouth.

“‘s not like it’s the real thing.” he bobs his head side to side in consideration of the sandwich before he’s grabbing at the fries in your lap, “can i haf some.”

the carton lays practically emptied from his pilfering next to your abandoned chicken nuggets. three remaining, absent of consumption in favor of a bewildered stare at the man seated beside you on his bed. 

“fingering is penetration, that’s sex.” you say simply.

atsumu raises a brow, “yer gyno having sex with ya?”

“that’s different.” you level a stare at him, one that’s serious and fierce and that communicates everything you mean in the single look alone. he meets it with one of his own, familiarity and uncommunicated languages all the rage between the two of you. “she doesn't make me cum.”

“neither does yer boyfriend.” he shrugs, taking another large bite of his burger as you screech in offense. your hand meets his bicep with a sharp slap and he grabs at it in pain. “ow! ya were the one that told me that!”

”some people take a minute to figure it out.”

”sounds like its taking a lot longer than a minute.” he mutters to himself. “look, its a lost cause. just dump the guy before it gets anywhere. ya haven’t had sex yet, he’s got a weird face, dude cant tell a fake orgasm from a real one. why are ya fighting me on this?”

“fingering is sex! your body count would be zero if fingering didnt count.” you insist loudly and atsumu rolls his eyes. he crumples the foil his burger came in and throws it across the room, cheering loudly when it makes it into the bin in the corner of his room. 

his room is much the same since the last time you visited. photos of passing years sit framed on the desk— an image of he and osamu with their arms wrapped around each other, taken right before atsumu left for the olympics. another of you and atsumu placed right next to it, you leaning over his shoulder and him laughing loudly, beer bottles held deftly in hands and drunken flushes decorating your faces. momentos of faded high school memories, interspersed with flashes of young adult realities. 

its more sophisticated than it once was. minimal in furniture, and of the items that decorate the room they’re the perfect reflection of a twenty-four year old athlete. his closet is lined with designer gifted clothes, but his desk chair remains stacked with undone laundry, the basics of his everyday life found in the plush cushion more than on the hangers. the jacket you’re currently wearing was stolen from the top of that pile just after delivering a pointed comment at how cold he keeps his apartment. 

its a far cry from the bedroom he used to share with his brother, the one you remember at the dusk of previous memories. it was cramped and contained, lines between the two boys constantly blurred and you having to learn rather quickly where to step and when. but even now, as he lives on his own in a city a bit further from you than you’re comfortable with, not much has changed. you still sit on the left side of the bed and he takes the right; you still eat burgers on his bed and steal his jackets, and he throws papers into trash bins and insists he could’ve made it professional were he not already in volleyball; you still moan and complain about the woes of daily life and he still listens to them endlessly, interjecting the same amount of dumb enthusiasm as you know him to have. 

there is still much in common that remains between he and you. trusted familiarity, endless comfort; a bubble that remains whole and precious, unaltered despite life dealing its hand to you. you’re convinced there’s no one else in the world that gets you quite like atsumu does. 

there’s also no one in the world that works you up, quite like atsumu does.

atsumu stands from the bed, retrieving your own trash from your lap and chucking the rest of it in the bin. lithe and lean, he moves with a body that is sculpted to perfection as he turns off the overhead light and instead turns on the desk lamp, submerging the room in the lowly warmth of its glow. days are shorter now and the sun has just made it return home, leaving you to the dim luster of a pleasant comfort. 

its quiet, intimate. words entirely inappropriate to describe the weekly hangout with your best friend of seven years. 

pushing thoughts aside, you fight to remember what the whole point of the conversation was about. a boyfriend, right. your boyfriend.

right. 

“and he does not have a weird face, he’s just… interesting. it’s what i liked about him.” 

“revolting. i’m this close to spiking a ball in his face. it would be plastic surgery for the dud.”

“you’re being mean.” you tell him. 

atsumu scoffs loudly, “and yer being stupid! yer the one that’s complaining to me about it. yer really gonna date a guy who can’t figure it out when he fingers ya? what happens when ya actually have sex with the bozo?”

“it takes practice. i don’t blame him for not being able to get me there on the first try. i see him later tonight so i’ll talk to him about it. it’s hard to figure out how to turn someone on and then try to, you know, get me there—“

“woahwoahwoah—timeout.” atsumu hold his hands perpendicular to one another, forming a ‘t’. his eyebrows practically touch the hairline of his bleached hair. “he doesn't even turn you on?”

“not everyone is good at everything, like you.” you mean it sarcastically, but it comes out short and meek. it’s embarrassing to have to cover for the misgivings of your current beau, but there’s an obligation to. a point to make, especially to the man in front of you. 

you’ve met the ex-girlfriends, heard their feedback for the man before you. an average of six out of ten in boyfriend material, but he knocks the ball out of the park when it comes to the bed—or so you’ve heard. 

(aya, the most recent girl to have made her grand exit, followed you on instagram and asked you to not be a stranger. whether that was so she could have her in for atsumu or because she really wanted to be friends is still up for debate, but the gesture ended with a message in your directs.

[9:17] it sucks, he’ll always be more in love with volleyball than any girl he could ever date. and even if he didn’t, you’re his number two anyway, so there’s really no way i can win.

[9:20] i’m super sorry, aya. if it’s any consolation, i really liked you two together. he’s just slow, i’m sure you guys will figure it out.

[9:20] you were our biggest argument. 

[9:20] so no, i don’t think we will.

[9:21] i’ll miss that dick tho, best orgasm of my life. rip

there’s not much you can say to a message like that. there’s not much you can say to the surge of smugness that courses through you either, so you don’t.

you don’t tell atsumu about it.)

“alright. sit up then.”

his voice startles you. “what?” 

suddenly, he stands before the side of the bed, looming horribly tall over you as he peers down at you. he shoves his hands in the pockets of his gray sweatpants, the fabric unintentionally pulling down ever so slightly and the waistband of his black boxers peeking out in greeting. the light of the desklamp casts a halo over his silhouette.

your attention is drawn upward and it’s hard to deny the familiar pang that tends to strike through you every so often in times like this. the simple effect of being near him. atsumu is unfairly handsome, and while it’s hard to put a name to the feeling that pulses inside of you when the light catches him just right or when a smile is even more charming than usual, the ache is always the same.

it’s fleeting, you convince yourself. something you refuse to settle on for too long. contexts and suppressed hopes pushed to the back of your mind along with the other unspoken things.

“come on.” he gestures two fingers upward. “i’ll show ya how easy it is to turn a girl on.”

its curiosity that has you standing up on your knees on the comforter, nothing more. its the wonder of how exactly your best friend makes his move on women that leads you to be so close to him, chests practically touching. breaths intertwining as atsumu stares a kind of serious into you that you’ve never been in the receiving end of before.

“im gonna touch ya.” his voice is low and your heart beats erratically in your chest. you nod. 

lifting his right hand, cold fingertips run across the heated skin on the back of your arm. digits trailing upward as he paints a pathway up. and it’s nothing—just his hand on your arm, nothing new or different, and yet your breath hitches. innocent in theory, but something solidifies on atsumu’s face, the familiar signs of determination playing out on his face. it’s less babied now, more formed and angular with the growings of an adult man, but it’s the same focus in his eye, the same clench in his jaw. 

his fingers trail up then down, repeating a circular figure on your skin. the sounds of your mingling breaths the only whispers between you two. your eyes dart down to his lips, but his stay fixed on you. studying every flicker of your eye, every inhale. 

his fingers break from their pattern and trails down to your wrist, then your palm, then your own fingers. tracing them, dancing with them, intertwining them slightly only to pull them away. 

“we should stop.” you whisper after a moment of his caress.

“why?” he asks and a quick glance to his gaze reveals that he knows why. he’s just making you spell it out.

it’s unfortunate that the only reason you want to stop is out of principle, and not because you truly have any reservations about any of this. your boyfriend of three months all but an annoying buzz in your ear.

“this feels like cheating.” you tell him simply. atsumu cocks his head to the side, charming smirk pulling across his lips. 

“i’m touching yer arm. this isn’t anything, yet.”

“you shouldn’t be touching my arm like this.”

“why? cause it’s working, right?” his voice drops to a low rumble, words vibrating through you and shooting straight to your core. “see how easy it is?”

“that means this is cheating then, right?” the question is posed, but it’s obvious it’s more to convince yourself than him. because all that he’s done is touch your arm and you’ve felt the bubbling of that unnamed something heat within you. it feels the exact same as it did seven years ago when you met him; feels identical to the moment four years ago when a drunken night led to a drunken kiss that was forgotten about the next day; feels the exact same whenever he looks at you like he does now, like you're open for the taking. a pointedly very different response to the dread that comes when getting intimate with your actual boyfriend. 

and while atsumu may be doing this to prove a point, to rub it in your face that he was right and you were wrong, you don’t trust that you’ll be able to not carry this with you. to not want more than you should. 

“nah.” he says simply, knowingly. “if i kiss you then it’s a problem.”

“oh, so kissing is cheating, but fingering isn’t?”

“can you shuddup? always runnin’ that damn mouth.” he renders you quiet. 

satisfied with your silence, he brings his left hand to cup your jaw, thumb and index finger grasping your chin and tilting your head to the left, leaving your neck exposed. he leans in, nose tracing a line up the column of your neck until he meets the juncture between that and your jaw. it’s a simple movement, and yet it feels like eternity in his hands. his breath hits steadily against the expanse of your cheek as he whispers into your ear.  “does he touch ya like this?” 

the gasp you release is guttural.

the arm previously fiddling with your fingers quickly wraps around your waist, pulling you flush to him. you have no choice but to embrace him with your own arms, hands cupping the back of his neck to steady yourself. it’s impulse to run them down the expanse of his back, to feel the muscles that he’s worked so hard for, but you resist. keeping yourself locked on his neck and nothing more, as though you being pliant to his ministrations wasn’t jeopardizing enough.  

his thumb inches upward, stroking the corner of your lips sweetly. “does he take his time with ya? cause i would.” 

its then that his lips meet the skin of your neck, tingles erupting from the connection. all of its effects causing an inadvertent clench within you. “it’s not about shoving fingers inside and just doing it. its about doing it the way you like it. and i’d make ya tell me how ya like it. since yer always runnin’ that damn mouth, might as well put it to good use.”

its all-encompassing, the traitorous burn between your thighs. and yet, this is the unnamed something, all that you’ve pushed away.

“astumu—” you whine and its in that exhale of yours that he releases a sigh of his own. one that almost sounds restrained.

“tell me to stop.” he says quickly, lips mouthing against your neck as he utters the words. 

and you don’t want him to. not really. the desire is feverish, unlike anything you’ve felt before and to end this is to end the sweetness of something you’ve yet to taste. if it were to be with anyone you would want it to be with him.

you could take the teasing, the “i-told-you-so” from osamu, the obliteration of a friendship for the uncertain promise of something more. but it isn’t right. not like this. if mountains were to come to a head, you want it to happen because they were gravitated to each other, not because the earth told them to do so.

“stop.” you tell him, and it’s like a hot brand that strikes him. he’s immediately pushing away from, untangling his limbs from you and stepping back into the swath of darkness in the room. 

his breaths are deep and heavy, that much you can tell from the distance. shuttering exhales that wrack his chest. you can hardly make out his irises, only see the intensity of dark pupils. it’s hard to believe that he could be feeling the way you do, just from the simple touch alone. a quick glance down to his grey sweatpants proves otherwise. 

a moment, then two, pass by. ragged breaths filling the distance, words spoken in the silent language you’re both fluent in. 

“does this mean i’m easy then?” you ask quietly, an effort to ease the wall of tension. 

“no.” he shakes his head gently, “just means i know ya.”

he knows what he means to say, the words and all of their yearning practically knocking against his teeth to escape. it’s the long haul, almost a decade long game of carefully advanced chess pieces to get to this point. blocked, temporarily, by the appearance of the new guy. a boyfriend of yours that atsumu met once, a guy he barely attempted to learn the name of. for reasons of his own, their knowing pertinent only to him. held deeply within the urges of being seen, the desires of having you wholly, completely.

there are plenty of other ways that he could do this—probably be more eloquent about it. admit pushed away feelings when you’re not in the midst of ranting about how your boyfriend just can’t get you off. 

but the tension irks him. thick enough to cut a knife, always following the two of you in the long held stares and closeness in which you two gravitate towards each other. the answer to your boyfriend problem is standing right in front of you. he knows what he wants you to do when you see your boyfriend later tonight. 

there are certain shoes that atsumu is convinced he could fill better than your boyfriend.

your face is flushed, and the desk lamp makes you look angelic under the lowlights, and you're wearing his jacket like you always do in a way that makes him believe it was always meant for you. and he’s not entirely convinced, even without the cloud of lust that hangs over him, that you don’t want this just as bad as he does.

osamu once said that atsumu wouldn’t admit his feelings to you even if they hit him over the head. they’re here, now. settling in the distance between you two, bobbing in the capsizing waves of want. they ache to be spoken, knock repeatedly against his gritted teeth. 

but a choice is made in that moment, with you looking at him as wild as you are. atsumu will admit to the selfish and prideful part of himself, but this—you— aren’t something to just take. the taste of your neck, the feel of your body against him, it must be given to him, earned. not because he needs to make a petty point, but because you want him to. 

he cares for you too much to be reckless in how he plays his cards. even if osamu will bust his balls for it later.

you have a boyfriend. and he can’t force you to change that. it wouldn’t be right, he’s given you the taste, he hopes it will be enough.

“like that.” he says after a moment, pushing down his pride and long held desires for you. “tell him ya like it like that.”

a/n: why is it that whenever i stop writing for kuroo, the one i always want to write for is atsumu. also big ups for my beta who entertains me and proofreads me at all hours of the day. i love you sanju!!!!!!

[radiolore]

venture x childhoodfriends!reader

heeeyyy soooo.... I watched that one episode of mlp where twilight meets and reconciles with Moondancer and it inspired me to write this 😈😈

ALSO MY FUCKIN DRAFT OF THIS DIDNT SAVE SO I HAD TO START OVER RASGDHFJXKSN

also I haven't written a fanfiction since like.. middle school and for reference I've already graduated so I'm sorry if it's not that good 😭🙏

Sloan Cameron, also known as Venture. a now very well known archeologist, talon fighter, and the occasional overwatch agent. needless to say, their strength, wits, and discoveries has put them in the news and a few articles a good number of times.

right now, believe or not, they're not on some site looking for ancient relics of the past. or, in some way they could be. right now, they're at home looking through old photos of their childhood. they had recently moved after their previous apartment had been destroyed in an omnic attack.

for hours, they had been giggling to themselves, reminiscing old memories.

"awww, that was when I dressed up as a mummy for Halloween! I got called a nerd so many times.." they cringed briefly at the teasing they used to face. not like it was their fault that nobody else seemed to care about having a historically accurate costume! well... nobody except....

"wait.. who's that?" Sloan grabbed another photo, one of them in high school standing next to someone. they scratched their head as they tried to remember who this mystery person is.

"oh! that's y/n!" they finally remembered. their victorious smile faded as they started to remember you. "wow i... completely forgot about them.." they furrowed their brows.

they started to look for more photos of you. the more they saw, the more they remembered.

and the more they remembered about you, the more they remembered what they did to you and the pain they caused.

you and Sloan were best friends. from grade school until high school. the two of you met in grade school, both sharing a passion for dinosaurs, and you were inseparable since. you did everything together. you had a passion for art that matched the passion Sloan had for archeology.

Sloan remembered how you always said that you'd become an infamous artist, creating art for all to see and relate to or empathize with. they thought to themselves... well, if you were as passionate as they were, as they remembered, they were sure they could look you up and find countless of articles and online discussions about you. it would be easy to get in touch with you.

so Sloan pulled out their old cracked phone, and started to do some research on your name.

but... nothing. not so much as an online profile appeared. they blinked, confused. what happened? where were you?

their mind was filled with conflicting thoughts about why they couldn't find you online. they didn't doubt your ability to become successful, but maybe... you have an underground succession thing going on?

after not coming to a satisfying enough conclusion, Sloan shook their head. then they had an idea. even if you don't have an online appearance, you two used to be childhood best friends. it wouldn't be that hard to find you.

Sloan didn't know why, but they felt compelled and determined to find you.

actually, that's a lie. they do know why. they just don't want to think about it.

~

Sloan's nerves were through the roof right now. they started looking for you in their old hometown, and, surprisingly enough, you never left. so after some asking around, they found the apartment you supposedly lived in.

Sloan felt nervous as they stood at your door, feeling like an unwanted guest. well, they kinda are, but you'd be happy to see your old friend, right? who wouldn't be?

taking a deep breath in and puffing their chest out to feign confidence, they finally mustered up the courage to knock at your door.

after waiting dreadfully for a few seconds, the door slowly creaked open. Sloan's heart raced with anticipation for seeing your face again after so many years. and, from what they heard from the people who live here still, it seems nobody else has really seen you that often either.

eventually, the darkness inside your home filled with some light as Sloan was finally able to see your face. wow... you looked.. different. but still just as beautiful.

you styled your hair/hijab differently now, you were wearing more casual clothes (assumably resting at home), and.... you had bags under your eyes?

Sloan stood there awkwardly, watching your face go from confusion to shock. they lifted a hand and said, "hey..." while looking off to the side, unsure of how to greet you after so many years.

"uhm.. do you remember me? it's me, Sloan! we used to be friends? I just moved recently and I found some photos of us, and I thought of you so I wanted to-" they started rambling a bit, before they got interrupted.

"what are you doing here." Sloan's heart dropped as they heard the slight venom in your tone and they looked at your expression, only to find an emotionless, yet slightly bitter face. it wasn't the face they remembered... you used to be so sweet and caring, never letting a sour expression on your face. so why are you so different now?

"er- well.. I wanted to reconnect. I know we haven't talked in years, a-and I'm sorry for not reaching out before! but I got so focused on my work that i-" they were interrupted yet again as you scoffed, looking away.

"right. I know you were. I see you all the time on the news." you sighed. "look, it was real nice of you to stop by, but I'd rather be alone right now. goodbye." you shut the door.

Sloan stood there, shocked at your words and reaction.

meanwhile, on the other side of the door, your hands shook as you gripped the doorknob still. your heart ached as you just slammed the door in the face of your old friend, and... your old love.

way back when you two were still friends, as you grew up, you grew to like Sloan. like, really like them. they were everything to you. they meant everything to you. that is, until..

you shook the thought away, not wanting to remember. you let out a shaky sigh, trying to clam down from the flurry of emotions flowing through you right now. you held your head in your hands, overwhelmed. another knock at your door snapped you out of your thoughts. feeling anger build up again, you opened the door again, narrowing your exhausted eyes at your ex-friend.

"why are you still here? what do you want from me?" you spewed at them, feeling annoyed at the sight of them still at your door.

"listen, I know that we've- I've been gone for a long time, but I really want to reconnect with you. I want to be friends with you again." they pleaded, hoping you'll agree to their request.

your heart winced at the word "friends". you bit your lip, closed your eyes and sighed. "no thanks. I don't need anyone else, and I certainly don't need you." you closed the door again, this time with the intention of ignoring them if they tried knocking again.

Sloan stood there yet again, not knowing what to do. you were so... angry. and they knew why. and they knew they had to make it up to you. they did try knocking again, but after you didn't open the door again after the third knock, they left. they were still just as determined as ever to make it up to you.

you on the other hand, was determined as ever to push your feelings away and forget about them. you thought you had moved on, but seeing them again just brought up so many old memories, feelings, emotions, and heart break.

you sat on your couch, going through your phone. finally finding your and Sloan's old messages, you scrolled through the countless unread messages you had sent. tears welled up in your eyes as every emotion you felt then made themselves known again.

you remembered the heart ache you felt. the betrayal you felt. the sadness, the anxiety, the frustration, and the anger. you felt so.. distraught. you didn't know what to do with all these emotions.

after what happened, you became a shut-in. you closed yourself off from everyone else. you never left your hometown, never having enough money to do so and no goal in mind of where you would even move to if you wanted to. the sheer pain Sloan had caused you ruined you.

you had spent countless nights remembering them. so many nights wasted on laying in bed awake at 3am crying your eyes out over them. after a while, you convinced yourself that you moved on and that they weren't worth your time or emotions. nobody was worth your heart anymore. and you weren't going to mope around anymore hoping someone would change your mind. and you certaininly weren't going to let Sloan give you that hope.

~

Sloan felt defeated as they continued on their walk throughout their old town. every idea they had seemed like an idea that wouldn't work or go well.

almost considering giving up and going home, they paused as they saw a flier on a telephone pole. it was an advertisement for an art show coming up, which happens to be the next day. face lighting up, Sloan had an idea, it may be a dumb one, but most of the ideas they had were dumb, and those pretty much always worked out, so why wouldn't this one?

grabbing one of the fliers, they started to make their way back to your home, remembering your door had a mail slot in it.

~

you were sitting on your couch, sketching in your sketchbook to calm yourself down from earlier. even after what happened all those years ago, you still pursued art as a hobby.

your ears perked up as you heard something go through your mail slot in your door. curious, you got up to check what it was. you opened up the folded piece of paper, and saw it was an ad for an art show coming up tomorrow at the local museum. you felt a little excitement run through you at the thought of going to another art show. you enjoyed going to shows like this, seeing other artists' work. but that excitement was short lived as it was replaced with confusion.

"why am I getting mail at 8pm at night...?" you mumbled to yourself. opening the door, hoping to catch the culprit who gave you this ad, you looked around but found no one in sight. you just shrugged your shoulders and closed the door.

around the corner, Sloan was hiding behind a corner, silently celebrating that didn't seem to find out it was them who left it there and, fingers-crossed, were going to the art show the next day. their heart raced again that day as they prayed that you would show up.

~

sure enough, the next day came and you dressed up in some nice clothes and showed up to the art show. but, as you were arriving to the first steps to the museum, a familiar face stopped you dead in your tracks. Sloan.

"what are YOU doing here?" you asked, irritated.

Sloan took some steps towards you, "well, I know how passionate you are for art, so I thought I'd invite you here! we could walk through the exhibits and all the art together and catch up!" they excitedly explained, reaching their hand out for you to take.

they looked away for a second, finally being more honest, "look i- I know I hurt you. and I wanted to make it up to you. so please, let me try." they pleaded, looking back at you, flashing that famous smile at you that you loved.

your eyes wavered, considering taking their hand for a brief moment. but then you swallowed your feelings and pushed their hand away.

"and.. you think this is going to make up for everything?" you questioned.

"uhh, yes?" they said, full of hope.

"oh, so, you're gonna invite ME to this art show, when you couldn't even bother to show up to the last one?" you felt your emotions begin to rise up.

"what after this? you're going to leave? are you going to leave me again without even saying goodbye?" tears started to well up in your eyes.

"everyone was expecting me to be able to make a name for myself at that show, to finally start my successful career in art like I said I would! and i completely bombed it! I felt absolutely humiliated!!" your voice started to rise as you finally started venting all your feelings about what happened to them.

"I spent the whole event thinking about you: 'where's Sloan?', 'where are they?', 'maybe they're just late!', 'where's the person that i love?'!" your voice cracked.

"I felt like I didn't matter to you! it was the biggest opportunity of my life and I needed you there, and you! DIDN'T! SHOW! UP!" finally being overwhelmed by your emotions, you stormed off, tears rolling down your face as you ran off back home.

Sloan stood at the entrance of the museum, unaware of the people staring and just focused on your fleeing form. they were absolutely mortified. they knew they had hurt you.. but they didn't know it was this bad. or maybe they just didn't want to accept that it was this bad. they let a few stray tears go down their face before wiping them and coming after you.

~

you were at home, feeling as embarrassed and exhausted as ever. you felt empty too. tears were still coming down your face as you heard a soft knock at the door. you knew who it was. you briefly contemplated ignoring it, before getting up and opening the door, avoiding eye contact with the tall figure.

"y/n... can- can I come in?" Sloan stammered, unsure if you'd actually say yes.

you didn't even care at this point, you nodded and opened the door enough for them to come inside.

Sloan looked around your home, various art pieces and papers scattered around. they watched as you sat on your couch, following suit.

"hey.. about what-" they started before getting interrupted by none other than you once again. except this time it was much different than the last times.

"im sorry." you croaked out. Sloan had a confused expression on their face.

"i-im sorry for yelling and making a scene like that at the museum. I'm sorry for being so cold to you before when you were just trying to make amends." you genuinely felt guilty. you started to realize that, as much of a horrible friend they were for leaving you, you were just as bad for treating them that way.

Sloan shook their head, "no, I should be the one apologizing." they paused. "I abandoned you when you needed me. and... I never even said goodbye. I left. and we never spoke for over 10 years." Sloan started to feel their own guilt begin to rise up in them as they confessed.

"the reason I left... well, we were 16 and I had gotten accepted for an internship with the wayfinders society. but... it required me to leave to wherever they needed me, whether it's Cairo, Petra, Egypt, anywhere. it was the biggest opportunity of my life... and I knew that if I didn't accept it, I'd miss out on having my dream job." they smiled a bit as they remembered their early days as an archeologist. you started to look up at them, listening to their explanation.

Sloan frowned again, "but... the day they needed me to get on the plane and leave.. was the day of your art show. I had to choose. and... I'm sorry. I couldn't let this opportunity slip by me. so.. I got on the plane and left." their voice started to waver. "i.. I'm sorry I never even said goodbye. I wanted to but... I didn't know how. I knew it'd hurt you. and after you started texting me so much, asking me where I was and why I disappeared and left, I didn't know what to do. I was scared." there were now more tears coming down Sloan's face as they finally confessed how they felt about that whole situation. ever since it happened, they had never told a soul about what they did. they had too much guilt ridden inside them to ever tell that to anybody, especially you.

you reached over to hold their hand, hoping to comfort them, just like you used to.

"im... I'm sorry you had to make that decision. I know it must have been an incredibly difficult one. but you not showing up and leaving without a word really did hurt me a lot..." you swallowed nervously, preparing to say your next words.

"the truth is... the reason why it was so important to me for you to be there was because.. I was going to confess to you afterwards." you closed your eyes, not wanting to see what Sloan's reaction to that was. "i... I had a huge crush on you for so long, and-and i had planned for months how I was going to confess, and after I heard about the art show and applying, I had a whole plan to invite you and confess to you afterwards." your cheeks started to flush a little.

"so... when you didn't show up.. and you left... it completely broke me. I felt abandoned, I felt like you hated me and didn't care about me." your voice started to crack again as tears threatened to spill.

Sloan's own cheeks heated up a little at your confession. you.. liked them? suddenly little behaviors you exhibited way back when started to make sense in their head. seeing that you were about to start crying, they brought a hand up to your face and caressed your cheek with their thumb.

you jumped a little at the sudden feeling of their hand comforting you. it had been so long since you've felt a comforting touch like this, let alone from them. you naturally leaned into and actually begun crying again.

"y/n.. I had no idea you liked me that much.. I'm sorry for not realizing sooner." they paused to think... they knew they never really had feelings for you like that. but... that was over 10 years ago. both of you were completely different people.

"do you think maybe.. we could start over?" Sloan proposed. they still wanted to make things up to you. hurting you was the last thing they ever wanted to do.

you sniffled as you looked up at them through blurry vision and teary eyes.

"i.. I'd like that." you finally smiled. the smile that Sloan loved.

"great.." Sloan cleared their throat as they stuck out their other hand to you for a handshake. "Heya! I'm Sloan, also known as Venture, it's nice to meet you! that's your name?"

you giggled at their silliness, but after calming down, you gently took their hand and shook it. "hi, I'm y/n. it's nice to meet you too." the both of you sat in comfortable silence, smiling at each other.

neither of you knew what your own respective feelings were for the other.. you didn't know if you loved them still. and Sloan didn't know if they'd ever grow to love you the way that you did. but either way, neither of you will ever be abandoning each other. you're here for each other.

~

HOLY SHIT I FUCKING FINISHED IT JESUSSSSS

anywayz

I hope at least one of u gooners liked this even tho I yap a lot 🙏🙏

also not proofread cuz it's like 5am and I've been typing for hours and I'm not gonna read allat 😭🙏

anywayz

hope it was good enough considering I hadn't written for years lol

Bai Bai :3

[lunarleonardo]

I honestly have no idea how else to explain this sooo....

I absolutely ADORE how you write tsumugi. Like especially in love letter and heaven given hell. Like she's not just torturing in a constant-beatings-and-i dunno way but like the way she does it is so MASTERMIND-Y and it fits her AND the victim soooo weeeeellll

Like the white room torture. Fucking GENIOUS.

Fits so well for someone as stubborn as kokichi, and it's ACTUALLY useful for tsumugi -like "breaking him", and not just for funsies. I dunno what I'm saying but everything she does in your fics is so tsumugi coded :3 And the way she acts around others knowing DAMN WELL what she's doing is absolutely amazing to me. She even made poor Shuichi WATCH allat In love letter?! WILD.

And technically she tortured EVERYONE in love letter- giving himiko the clicker, the two-late thingy, showing them the photo and all OH MY GOD I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.

She was amazing in IA and M5 (gee i STILL didnt read blue eyes shield blue lies IVE BEEN PLANNING ON IT FOR WEEKS but...school >:) too !! M5 is actually my favourite and it's tooottaaallyy not because I am a major SAW fan and will go on rambles for HOURS about how it's not just pointless gore and has a plot aaannd I'm going off topic so buh-bye !! \(>○<)/

Also the Kaito / Shuichi sleepover is melting my heart UGDHCJXJD KILL ME

djhfhehfj wuwUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA <33

I see a lot of people compare SAW to M5. I'll trust your guys' judgment on that one because I have never seen SAW and don't plan to ;_; The fic was inspired off of Your Turn To Die and this song. Any SAW reference is completely accidental because I don't know a damn thing about it LOL

I only started really giving Tsumugi more thought during Love Letter, and now she's one of my favorite characters to write!! She's just so shapeable and,, hdhfjr :3 my evil and insane blorbo. i adore her . shes covered in blood and it is not hers

Believe it or not I don't really like writing physical beatings. Maybe it's trauma or something but I just,, don't enjoy it? (゜ロ゜) There will probably be SOME physical fighting later down the line, but overall I'm trying to stay creative ♪ also the act of punching someone is inherently funny to me

I actually wanted to do sensory deprivation/overstimulation in Love Letter, but I ... Forgot ....... and by the time i remembered it was too late :( so I'm redeeming myself here !!! I'm doing all the things I didn't get to in Love Letter! Fewer limitations baby >:D !!!!

THANK YOUUU SI MUCH THOUGH<3 THIS Means so much to me Genuinely. thank you ahgttreehehyrhrh ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡ it's things like this i look back on when im feeling down so thankyou thank yo u ♡♡

[hballegro]

Havin' a ball at the ball

"How am I supposed to dip you? You're a head taller than me even without the heels!" "I can dip you." "But I've never been dipped before!"

we dont have to talk about how long this took. ive long since lost the reference photo i used for the pose.

bts and transparent version under cut.

first off; originally they were gonna be in a bar. but. as you can see that did not happen. the bar would have been easier overall but i didnt wanna draw bottles :/

secondly; hes supposed to be wearing peridot. because thats an august birthstone that is green and therefore matches his eyes. and the flower is supposed to be a peony. the state flower of indiana. obviously al gave it to him. al would be wearing a matching one on his suit pocket if i had been bothered to draw a suit pocket but his collar gave me enough trouble

anyway heres my various 'tester' things that i used to see what i changed from version to version

just lines;

adding colour [and changed some line stuff, cause im a liar. such as making his arm smaller/fixing anatomy. and a corsage. for fun]

me after staring to shade stuff last night

heres a hastily made transparent version

then we have:

the earlier version where i didnt have the lace thing yet, had not drawn al's face, and sam's nose was ever so slightly smaller. i think. i distinctly remember making it bigger

and then normal bts from me

during gathering reference photos from my gallery;

if tumblr lets you see that kind of thing, you'll notice the file name is 'stop touching it stop touching it' because ive been fucking w/ it for like 3 hours

theres all the file names so u can see it anyway

i dont remember how this idea got started. truly. its been several days so i dont remember. i just wanted to draw sam pretty and knew i could draw a big chunky suit.

[deedala]

🍃w e e k l y t a g w e d n e s d a y🍃

thank you to @energievie for writing the game this week and thanks for tagging me!! also thanks for tagging me for this and also for the pinterest game which im putting down below @lingy910y @gallapiech @suzy-queued @creepkinginc @thepupperino @blue-disco-lights @crossmydna @jrooc @heymacy @wehangout @mybrainismelted @xninetiestrendx @heymrspatel XOXOXO all of you 💖💖💖

Name: deanna

Age: noel-aged

Location: ooohiooo

And now...

What is your DJ name? i dunno, when i worked in college radio it was something about a fish... okay wait yes, lets go with DJ Fishy 🙃

If you were a genre of music, what would it be? whatever chappell roan's the rise and fall of a midwest princess is

What would you title your biography? Wellp

What are the first three things you'd do if you were invisible? i like this idea of sneaking onto expensive modes of transportation. i would do that assuming i had no where else to be and no responsibilities to see to 😆 and i would also rob rich people... and maybe i would go for walks int he middle of the night by myself and feel safe lol

What subject do you wish was taught in every school?  all the important money and personal finance basics that they used to teach but then stopped because it made it easier to prey on adults who didnt know how to manage their credit and debt or do their taxes correctly 😜

When was the last time you tried something for the first time and what was it?  uuhhh...the only thing i can think of right now is a lavender flavored matcha drink that was recommended a few months ago? ive gotten it again a few times (including today!) and its very good. im so happy i know what lavender tastes like now 😆

What is the most underrated city you have ever visited?  this is very hard...i dont even really know how to know how most cities are rated anyway?? i feel like all the cities ive been to and loved are pretty universally rated highly lol. uhhhhh...i dunno.. Heidelberg, Germany? Luxembourg City? one of those.

What day in your life would you like to relive? uuhh i dunno, im going with wedding day because i barely remember any of it, it was such a blur. i would be less responsible and have more fun 😅

If you could eliminate one thing from your daily routine, what would it be and why?  i really love sleeping and going to bed and falling asleep. but i hate waking up and i hate losing the time to unconsciousness. so if i could stay alive and not be tired and never sleep that would be so cool.

How long would you last in a zombie apocalypse?  i like to think i could last pretty long because i am a huge wimp and have great Nope It's Time To Go instincts. Also im good at climbing.

What would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable? uuhhh backwards time travel

If you could have any view out your office window, what would you choose? puget sound with the olympic mountain range in the distance

☀️pinterest tag game☀️

i was tagged to do this pinterest game where you search Fashion, Pantone, Mood, and Food and post the first pin from each of the search results. gotta be honest buddies i dont really use pinterest very often and when i do its for random photo references sooooo...

x x x x

i do not know what is happening with that outfit. that is not really a color i would pick but its fine? the mood is pretty but looks kind of melancholy. that last photo though??? oh my god let me climb into there i wanna sit in the cozy rustic kitchen and eat pastries pleaaaaassseeeee!!!!!!

and now to tag in more folks to play either or both of these games!! 💖💖 @michellemisfit @darlingian @too-schoolforcool @the-rat-wins @lee-ow @mmmichyyy @iansw0rld @transmickey @burninface @loftec @metalheadmickey @gallawitchxx @gardenerian @vintagelacerosette @palepinkgoat @sam-loves-seb @samantitheos @sleepyfacetoughguy @sickness-health-all-that-shit @sleepyheadgallavich @rereadanon @mikhailoisbaby @mickeysgaymom @themarchg1rl @callivich @softmick @captainjowl @howlinchickhowl @spookygingerr @spoonfulstar @steorie @whatwouldmickeydo @burninface

[hypnos-tized-ao3]

This game got me feeling childlike wonder

This game feels like a love letter to those who are given the ability to jump and climb in a 3d environment and try to climb to the top of a city

This reminds me of the part of genshin impact i liked, i didnt like the combat, i liked seeing something in the distance and figuring out hiw to get there

I wish there was a photo mode

Im really enjoying 100%ing this game man. I love the area just outside of the space colony ark area, its not actually that big but theres so much there. I love using boost midair to cross large gaps. I love doom morph though i wish the camera cooperated more with me while using it. I love black doom's hyperfixation. I love beating the everloving shit out of mephiles. I love finding all the little knickknacks everywhere. Ive gotten 79 nuts and bolts and the recently discovered ones made me feel good, not frustrated.

I love that i can decide to be allergic to wings

I hope shadow feels a fraction of what i do

I hope im not the only one whos favorite part of genshin was clambering all over the walls and rooftops when i was supposed to be progressing the story or something

I havent touched the sonic portion yet but when i do ill be going for the collectibles and the chao holy shit theyre acknowledging the different chao types i love chao so muchgdjgshfjge

I hope everyone that worked on shadow gens gets a raise and some time off ALSO i love how even though they dont directly include shadow 05 anywhere theres still a ton of references i love them for that

I hope there will be so much love even for what was considered bad i hope they move on from their failures and remember the ambition that made them good anyway

[postmoderntongues]

I will forever stand by as somebody who knew him in a previous life from having similar interests in a small web community that i do not believe that by the end of his life Soren Hayes was fully cognitively aware that his narrative was fabricated and theres a real possibility that he was being manipulated by a charlatan 80's satanic panic style false-memory implanting psychosis validating abusive unprofessional therapist who actively exacerbated his condition and deepened his gap from fact and what was his brain's honest perception of reality at that point. Behavior that we have evidence that is considered shocking now was considered common and unremarkable in 4chan-dominant autistic oldweb late 00s emo edgelord culture. While a lot of their references and elements of their narrative have been traced back to media including 90s indie cult horror, guro manga, bandshipping MCR yaoi fanfiction (which got dark) SRA testimonies, and creepypasta and even potentially some writing that I showed them at the time based on my own intrusive thoughts and a lifelong paranoid delusion. it is not unheard of or even uncommon for people with psychosis to have delusions related to media they've consumed at some point especially when you throw in autistic special interest levels of fandom. I also believe something really bad DID happen to soren. At one point theres a post with a line of photos going through the years as a child and in two of the young photos maybe around age 9 or 10 which was the age that the most obvious fabrications/exaggerations in the narrative happened. Between two of the pictures something just changes in his eyes or facial expression. Given my own history with mental illness, I was around a similar age when the frequency and intensity of my violent intrusive thoughts and antisocial fantasies began to disrupt my everyday functioning in a way that i not only could no longer deny but was having trouble hiding and beginning to face social ostracization for voicing these thoughts and also first faced exclusion for being neurodivergent although I didn't have the medical or sociological language to describe it.

Weirdly relevant to our participation in the MCR fandom, Soren and I were also close enough in age that he likely carried some degree of cultural trauma from 9/11. living less than an hour outside NYC i remember the event being very traumatic including believing for days that my father had died because he had a mental breakdown and didnt contact anybody and just started helping pull bodies out and my mom made us kids all go in the basement and drink boiled water from a spackle bucket and shit/piss in another spackle bucket and eat room temperature canned food and pray very loudly and sincerely for a little under 72 hours, and im not sure if it's related to that age in my development or in part triggered by that trauma but within a year I started almost all of my self destructive behaviors from SH to Purging to household substance abuse. I also had an odd response when the event was explained to me that hinted at foreshadowing my cluster B diagnosis in adulthood; I was very upset that the terrorists died in the plane crash and suffered the same amount as the American passengers did and didn't survive so their punishment and suffering could be worse than what they caused "my people" (worth mentioning that my father is and especially at the time was an out and proud white supremist with public ties to racist organizations within my community especially in the cultural surge in racism against Muslims and middle eastern and west asian people who a few weeks after 9/11 showed me grainy low quality video footage of a clitoridectomies being preformed on a little girl, explained what id seen, and told me that the people who did 9/11 who we were going to war with were going to do that to me if we didn't win the war and make it illegal for me to go to school (which was my refuge from a household with a severely mentally ill alcoholic criminal parent) and stop me from reading or writing ever again so I couldn't fall for tricks pretending we can all be friends because thats what they will do to me if I don't possibly even personally kill them first when the time comes. My brother regularly downloaded and a few times even included me in viewing war gore on websites like Ogrish and Rotten.

For a long time all non-child specific age-contained content on the internet was held only and often not even to the strictest most technical definition of free speech law and assumed to be fair game for adult content with no content warning. This was before monetized social media when anonymity existed even between burner accounts (its was a very common lonely millennial autistic middle schooler pastime to larp dramatic mary sue OCs on gaiaonline and AIM chatrooms. My best friend from my teens even once created a fake cute emo boy with photos of Alex Evans, dated me over AIM including pretty serious plans to run away together, and then killed the character off in a dramatic car accident along with his twin sister who were an Americanized ripoff of Hansel and Gretel from the anime Black Lagoon in a convoluted attempt to get me to admit that I was neither straight nor cis) and nothing was cleaned up for advertisers and unless a community became a hub of obvious in the open illegal activity very few website owners wanted to shell out the costs of a moderation team. There were pro-suicide forums, NAMBLA had an early internet presence with their propaganda as did hate groups like the Westboro Baptist Church and hundreds of flavors of white cishet male supremacy, Ive mentioned 4chan which at its height was actually quite mainstream, early fetlife which myself and lots of other minors I knew were active on and was for a long time the only transgender-specific community larger than a few dozen regular members that had a space for just FtM people where most trans-related forums were dominated by selfie-obsessed transwomen, livejournal and eventually early tumblr pro-ED anti-recovery anti-harm-reduction communities, recipes for chemical weapons and bomb-building instructions, the rise in the normalization of hybristophilia and violent sexual practices once considered niche like BDSM (everybody into something weird could suddenly connect with a relatively large community of people into the same thing for the first time and the social validation within these communities emboldened predators and exhibitionists) the rapid escalation of taboo content in internet porn, the subculture surrounding shock videos, the availability of films like Salo or August Underground or gunea Pig or cannibal Holoaust that big chains like Walmart and blockbuster refused to carry or distribute. Like the way my parents talk about the normalization of psychedelic drugs growing up in the 60's and my grandpa talked about spending his childhood playing in the woods for 12+ hours a day and how awesome it was to have that much freedom as a child compared to what he saw me have after the child abduction panic of the late 80's/early 90s driven by cases like Adam Walsh and Johnbenet Remsey and Etan Patz in addition to the increased frequency of reporting of both abductions and severe accidental injury due to local and 24 hour TV news needing to fill the air and being used as a tool to raise awareness in missing person's cases and sensational court trials. Like yeah he saw one of his friends drown in a creek in elementary school but he wasn't part of a generation of indoor cats like I was. That's how it was with obscenity laws in the 00s. If you hit your teens after 2010 you missed out on a completely different cyberspace culture.

Being autistic I doubt he had an entirely positive social experience as peers became more aware of his symptoms. As an autistic kid i always felt and still to some degree feel more comfortable existing in cyberspace where not only are interactions easier for me to process given I have both an auditory processing disability and a speech impediment but especially in the days of the oldweb there was a majority ND population especially among heavy users who did most of their socializing virtually. being able to abandon your identity at any time with little to no consequences after a major soial faux pas and rejoin a community with a fresh slate, having complete control to the information other community members were able to gather on you, and I think most importantly for a lot of AFAB teens especially those of us who struggled with gender dysphoria or body dysmorphia or the impossible photoshopped beauty standards of the 00s that was so severe that the body positivity movement originally caught on as a response to how insanely body-negative beauty culture had become, it being normal to not do face reveals or let anybody know your physical appearance at the time and often not even announce that you were female (which immediately drew both public socially acceptable sexual harassment from the males in the community and accusations of something called GOTIS or Girl On The internet Syndrome popularized when a user named Augucat revealed herself to be female and made a sex joke but was later found to be a normal looking slightly chubby girl instead of a victoria secret model and was driven off the internet).

This community was also extremely hostile to trauma survivors, one infamous example involved the mass cyberbullying of an 11 year old Dhavie Vanity SA victim who is now a trans man but at the time was known by the name Jesse Slaughter escalating into his father slapping him while on camera for continuing to use the internet and him being taken into state custody for the crime of telling the truth about his assault by the celebrity to an online drama community. These claims were later proven to have been true but references to the incident including lines such as "you dun goofed" "cyber police" and "ill pop a glock in your moth and make a brain slushie" are such commonly referenced pieces of early meme culture that a lot of people making the reference today don't know the dark orogin, similar to the use of the phrase "Mods are asleep, post sinks" and its variations. Audio clips from the original video posted on a YRYL thread on /b/ are even fairly popular samples unused in millennial EDM music that ive personally heard dropped in clubs and raves enough to consider its use cliche.

If you think tumblr users behave badly with anon privileges it didn't hold a candle to what behavior was considered unremarkable on not only 4chan but eventually anonymous message websites like formspring or the fact that exhibitionism on anonymous/random video chat platforms like Chatroulette were so common that it was the major cliche cultural reference joke about such websites. Cybersex and explicit roleplay and minors trading explicit pictures for in-game currency was commonplace even on what were considered to be reputable well-moderated teen-appropriate websites like gaiaonline.com and a lot of people adopted a dont ask dont tell attitude toward sexual interaction with suspected/alleged minors. I started participating in this activity in 4th grade when my website of choice became gaiaonline instead of the strictly moderated and fairly advanced filtered Neopets. Like I said behavior that is shocking today was unremarkable and often even encouraged in oldweb spaces.

Soren likely did not feel safe telling the truth about whatever trauma he did experience, at least not as himself (females discovered to have any physical flaw were deemed liars because "i wouldnt fuck her if she let me" and ones considered physically attractive were told that they invited or consented to their assault by not making themselves unattractive to potential predators). Tori Amos became a meme for her song "me and a gun". Everybody into horror was talking about A Serbian Film and Maichan's Daily Life. Googling the word "rape" was as likely to get you a porn video as it was to get you a news article or crisis hotline. The word itself was a punchline and colloquial metaphor for any act of violation, dominance, or extortion from winning a video game to getting ripped off by an unscrupulous auto mechanic. This did not create an environment where survivors felt comfortable identifying ourselves or even in many cases understanding that we'd been victimized at all. Frat house gang rapes of girls with alcohol poisoning and supposed confessions of incest and pictures of female children wearing bathing suits or Halloween costumes or warm-weather fashions with sexually explicit captions became the bread and butter of websites like Motherless.

A lot of people's brothers and brother's friends went off to war and came back all fucked up and lot of them became opiate addicts or committed suicide. Kids who were around a certain stage in development when this massive cultural trauma took place are likely to display similar symptoms, which lead to the emo subculture and the commodification and glorification of mental illness as an identity and severity and medical confirmation of debilitating symptoms was social currency and earned you clout within emo subculture. From the timeline of photos they gave, the event that caused the visible signs of traumatized body language could have potentially in theory been 9/11 especially since as an Indian person he would have likely faced anti-Muslimism racism or at least bullying from racist whites who can't tell the difference between Eastern ethnicities. He had a very obvious complex about his race and often complained about gender-trenders, cosplay/fandom communities, and aesthetic tropes associated with white/Eurocentric supremacy and on top of that he was adopted as an infant and likely subject to some degree of neglect in early infancy if he was a toddler or almost that old when he was adopted by a rich white family which in a white supremacist society comes with all sorts of psychological complications and power dynamics.

Just statistically, its unlikely that by the age of 17 when what became the narrative was first recorded to have surfaced, about a year or two after I fell out of contact with him, he had not experienced some adverse sexual event in his life. IDK if it was online grooming or a random violent attack by a stranger but Soren painting "The Bad Guys" with the same sinister anonymity as the SRA panic painted satanists or qanon weirdos paint "the Elite" which leads me to believe he likely knew the person that encroached upon him and had some sort of relationship or implicit trust that was violated by this incident and wished the crime had been committed by a morally unambiguous stranger. he tells in the original narrative what he WISHES happened instead. he wishes hed been a tall thin white grunge model who met patriarchal feminine beauty standards who people would not only believe and sympathize with but possibly even martyr or eroticize, and also that the trauma was more physically extreme and sensationalistic to justify the severity of his symptoms which impaired his day to day functioning and provide an explanation less stigmatized in online circles of the time than PTSD or verbal autism without significant IQ deficit.

it is also necessary to understand that a lot of female parahelia is the misinterpretation of a physical defense mechanism. Unlike male sexual arousal where the body prepares to penetrate, female physical arousal response mainly exists to reduce the potential harm that can be caused to the mucus membrane during penetration. Thoughts of violent penetration often produce a stronger physical arousal response not because the female desires it but to protect the body from the possible harm it could cause. Purity culture especially in religious communities also creates a disconnect where women commonly develop "rape fantasies' to indulge the fantasy of experiencing sex without being at fault or losing standing within the community or potential value as a future wife. Romance/Dating/hookup/Party culture is also just heavily rooted in not just the normalization of using physical forces to get sex but to coerce or influence the state of consent with things like money or substances or the implicit cultural threat that you MIGHT respond violently if she refuses so she may as well negotiate or even the promise of emotional labor. Females even when we are not abused are aware of sex and the fact that people want to sexually abuse us to some degree or another even if we dont have the specific vocabulary for it from the time we are sentient. That in and of itself is fucking traumatizing. We grow up knowing of it as something horrible that males want to do to us. Then in our teens we are suddenly expected to change our view of sex from a lifelong association with violence to an act of intimacy and romance and also a precious finite resource that we must distribute strategically. A lot of ND people, myself included, have a hard time disconnecting sex from violence and re-assigning it the context it is supposed to take on in our teens and as a result associate feelings of anxiety or pain with arousal or develop inappropriate responses to violence.

From both his posts and our conversations, I think there is a good chance that like me Soren had some degree of OCD and experienced violent intrusive thoughts. Contrary to popular belief, enjoying or responding positively to an antisocial intrusive thought is not what separates it from a fantasy and a lot of people with severe OCD's brains cope by responding positively to all intense thoughts and stimuli indiscriminately. Desensitization to violence is also a common but little discussed OCD symptom which I suspect is why all the descriptions are so over the top, he's thinking of things that hes not desensitized to and still considers shocking which by 17 had escalated to splatterpunk territory but this theory would also explain the escalation between the first and final narrative.

Another reason autistics struggle to form a healthy sexuality is because we tend to be developmentally immature in an emotional and social sense. In American culture, your mid to late teens are supposed to include certain milestones and there's a lot of shame around not meeting them; driving, your first part time job, high school graduation and moving away from home for college, certain intensity of friendships and romantic relationships, substance experimentation, pop culture bildungsroman staples, crisis like most people's first peer death, disordered eating, bullying/peer abuse, very special episode type stuff that he really ruminates on. he wants to have lived these milestones but his only references for them are fiction. He wants to have been in such intense love that he can never love again and therefor will never have to explain his romantic struggles. He wants to have not only had a normal adolescent sex life but to have been sexually experienced so much earlier than his peers that his "advancement" in terms of experience would in and of itself be shocking enough to shut down and discussion of the topic where he didn't feel he could control the narrative.

His use of hard drugs is debatable since he did have funding and basic knowledge of Tor and substances like club drugs and controlled substance prescription medication with recreational abuse potential were easily available through the mail and as somebody who didn't party socially I wouldn't be surprised if he had some experience with opiates (not IV tar and her use of slang was regionally and anachronistically inconsistent so i don't believe she ran in those social circles). he also had a record of being prescribed both adderal (pharmaceutical meth) and benzos and mostly lived in blue states with easier access to weed but i don't believe he ever habitually used let alone was addicted to street drugs or socialized with other hard drug users in person with any regularity. I don't think its impossible that on occasion he sold his pills to other nerdy kids. if he did struggle with substances they were prescription and he claimed to be on street drugs for more shock/clout/to further the charade of having what he considers to be interesting life experiences. I don't think he got 'tar" in a gum packet through airport security, maybe his boomer parents were lucky enough to score an indefinite opiate prescription back when those were still a thing and he sometimes swiped their pills for a buzz. Like I said his knowledge of Silk Road and it's convenience and ease of use for a while makes it not impossible that he tried street drugs but IMHO less likely than abusing his prescriptions.

SingitForDanny and catfishing with Ashton Drew's photos and the beginnings of the character of a girlfriend who committed suicide and left him a note which he posted on his blog faceclaimed with some red haired girl who was NOT ginger who i have never seen in another context were the lies he was telling when I knew him personally along with (like myself) open participation in anti-recovery SH and Ed communities that was NOT a LARP i don't even think those two things were that exaggerated. Compulsive lying is not uncommon in trauma survivors. Again hes telling how he wishes it was; he's all alone not because he struggles socially but because all his friends who were the closest people ever died tragic trendy topical deaths.

I strongly believe that from the escalation of the narrative and his tying his identity to this character that he built but unlike every time before this time the web had advanced enough to where most people knew how to reverse search an image and identities were no longer as disposable as they once were. it was the truth because it had to be the truth because the social implications of being exposed in this kind of a lie to his entire social circle was more than his brain could cope with. It was easier to believe about himself that he was experiencing a recovered memories Sybil Dorsett situation from unspeakable trauma than that he lied about something that horrible. Often compulsive lying, a highly stigmatized symptom, is a phenomenon beyond the person's control. it is not calculated or a moral choice and usually serves no practical purpose beyond a momentary immediate dopamine reward and temporary increase in intensity of attention from the person he is attempting to socialize with but does not know how to form a more intense connection with appropriately. In males this usually manifests as aggression and instigating fights because a negative social interaction is still a social interaction and provoking and receiving a negative reaction is safer and more predictable than attempting to provoke a positive reaction and the attempt being rejected. In females it often manifests as compulsive lying or dramatizing of minor events and other symptoms that define whats currently known as HPD (a lesser-diagnosed cluster B disorder).

If hes not a survivor it could also be part of the compulsive part of the theorized OCD which I struggled with as a pre-teen and overcame by forming a pattern of real behavior so shocking and self destructive that i had enough real crazy things to overshare about and didn't need to make them up after my social standing was compromised by a reputation for making shit up. Still today I have a real problem with lying by omission because I've had enormous shameful secrets since Ive been sentient. I also don't think compulsive lying is even totally developmental inappropriate boundary testing behavior and being autistic and not forced into learning socialization for survival through the public school system he just might not have grown out of it. my father never socially or emotionally developed past whats typical for a 8-12 year old child. I maxed out at 14-16. Some autistic people function on the level of an infant or small child. But if the lying was an OCD compulsion and not poorly socialized overly-sheltered autistic arrested development that comes with SO MUCH shame and self blame and stigma and carries such a heavy moral assignment and is still so poorly understood as a phenomenon. Why was he having all these sick thoughts and inappropriate responses and unable to stop insisting these things were true unless maybe they were and he was really remembering buried memories. it makes as much sense as "your brain is doing it because it is malfunctioning and chronically ill and you lost a genetic lottery and theres no real reason or satisfying explanation for why you are experiencing these life-ruining symptoms other than fuck you".

I believe he was severely mentally ill, had made serious attempts on his life although probably fewer than he claimed but had absolutely spent extensive portions of time especially during his formative social years institutionalized in a community where his severe symptoms were more socially acceptable. I also believe his delusions were encouraged by Ellen Lector whose website has at points contained some suspect-sounding articles or conferences. I do not believe he was fabricating his claims of DID, i think he was in the beginning of the current pop medical trend of slapping the DID label on autistic people with rapidly-fluctuating ability levels if we have A comorbid PTSD/CPTSD/Cluster B diagnosis and any cognitive disability related to struggles with memory or attention/alertness. Schizophrenia was over diagnosed in the 60s, ADHD was over diagnosed in the 00s, autism was over diagnosed in the 2010s, there was a female cluster b swell in the last decade, gender dysphoria had become the first rout of diagnostic investigation when addressing pediatric mental illness which Im not totally personally convinced isnt a sugar coating for a eugenics movement to steralyze the mentally ill as children, now the trend is DID. diagnostic fads move through the mental health world just like diet fads do with physical health communities where every other week eggs are going to either save or kill you. These therapists are encouraging psychotic patients to "get to know the cast of their headspace" by indulging fully in these masks as different beings with in a religious sense different souls in one body. Similar to a lot of modern theories about gender dysphoria being caused by a soul being "in the wrong body" this approach to mental health first and foremost insists that diagnostic science officially validate ad recognize the religious concept of a soul or spirit. They now insist indulging it fully is the only way to achieve 'headspace integration" like DID is the vines from harry Potter that strangle you when you wiggle.

Basically in conclusion Im convinced that, by the time he died, Soren was no longer LARPing or lying but believed his version of reality and that there's a plausible medical explanation for his seemingly inexplicable behavior. If King Or Cooper Or Sotos or Welsh or Burgess or Woolf or Ketchum or Plath had access to the oldweb as a teenager they might have behaved similarly (King infamously sold violent stories about his classmates as a kid, which I also did but for free post-columbine so I got suspended and had to talk to cops and then a court-ordered therapist). Soren's poetry and taste in media shows creativity and some sense of understanding art and it is a tragedy that his symptoms became terminal before he was able to settle into a healthy career as an artist. He was also a pretty nice kid in general when I knew him. We need to do better as a society for people with severe and/or stigmatized symptoms than was done for Soren. His symptoms were enabled/neglected at best and potentially exacerbated by a psychologically abusive therapist. Watching the record of it unfolding and his deterioration between the time I knew him and his death is medically fascinating in the same way that gore is but it shouldn't be any funnier than pictures of late stage cancer patients.

[toxooz]

The canvases aren’t even safe 😭 they used the Boroque era as reference for their search engines. Like I’m losing my shit constantly over ai art so bad. Like this is totally gonna be a rant so forgive me but it’s driving up the WALLS. Ai art being readily available is killing the incentive for people to be creative. I cannot tell you how many times I think I’ve found a really cool fellow artist on tiktok and then see #midjourney. I take psychic damage every time that happens to me. And I’m starting to see it infiltrating business too where they generate ai images instead of hire photographers. I also saw someone selling tshirts with ai art on it at my local farmers market. MOTHERFUCKER THE FARMERS MARKET??? HAVE YOU NO SHAME????

NAW PREACH IT cause its become a nagging issue for me for a while that i simply try to not think about and dwell on but dear FUCKING god is it everywhere and it's painfully obvious too! just about every ad takes me 3 seconds to find damning evidence that its ai and im 99% ready to just delete facebook bc #1 i dont give a fuck abt anyone on there anymore and #2 Literally every other post is the most deplorable ai shit ive ever seen that everyone is carelessly oblivious to i mean total abominations that don't make any sense as an image but ppl share bc its the most bottom of the barrel ''relatable'' shit and that's just the sad reality of it is most people don't even give a shit what they're looking at as long as it looks pretty to their eyes for 3 seconds they don't give a damn

and that's just on basic everyday world shit like u said there's so many mfs i think are decent artists where i legitimately cant tell its ai until i read their fuckshit bio or somethin, like that midjourney i didnt even know it was an ai program i would've just thought it was the name of a video game or some shit! like I feel like I'm kinda turning my back on the whole art community involuntarily bc i just dont trust any image i see most of the time and its fukkin sad i ESPECIALLY feel for the real artists prior to this shitshow who have art styles that now look so much like ai that they basically hijacked to feed the machine like I couldn't imagine spending thousands of dollars on an art college and hours of practice just for your art style to be The Blueprint for empty soulless photos cranked out at inhuman rates by any stupid fucking lazy ass clown like Fuck Man it all sucks so much and the worst part is I just feel like it's one of those things where it will not stop until Something caves and i honestly dont know which one it will be but i just know its only going to get worse idk i try to remember that i can pick up a paintbrush or even whatever the hell i want and make something beautiful while 98% of these ai sacks of shit are just limited to stealing other peoples art on the internet and they couldn't even paint a damn flower if their lives depended on it and if i was stuck on a deserted island I'd probably still find ways to make art with whatever tools and resources i have cause that's an artist baybay but as far as The Internet and its grasp it has on the world and trying to make it as a digital artist and trying to make money from your homemade artwork is very grim man and dont even get me started on art and artists in just about every job field rn my heart goes out to them

[1tsjusty0u]

ok perhaps i would like to know more about the link/robbie fic. the ship has never occurred to me for some reason despite the whole "robbie went on a rampage throughout blatchery plain bc of link and to test out his new weapons" thing and now i'm so weirdly intrigued. alsoooo the omamori(?) one

OGH!! yeah i get that! part of it came with reading pre-cal fics and thinking ‘hm. i think robbie and link would get along’- trying to chat whenever he gets the chance and have it so hes not just. Standing There. accidentally setting something on fire while zeldas distracted by purah already having set something on fire and the building explodes leading for zelda afterwards to just stare extremely suspiciously at link. making an effort to include him basically </3 ALSO YEAH speaking of robbie did not actually go on a rampage! i remember that but in his diary it actually never mentions him going out there to test his weapons. which. is weird because i know that came from somewhere? but i forgot ….. more specifically his diary says “I’m sorry, Link… I spent so much of my life researching the Guardians… Even with all my knowledge, I wasn’t able to give you the weapons or power you needed to succeed.” which. really struck me?? a part of him seems to blame himself and considering he Now Gives link ancient armor that he once wasnt able to. he also says this when he first got to fort hateno. thats what he thought when he looked at the destroyed guardians. so i like to think they had Some form of a connection, one-sided or not. i just think its interesting because its like. almost nobody thinks like this in-game about link (which is Good and would set more implications than the game already has,) and it ties into like. pre-cal link (to me) not even being remotely normal. as someone who hcs (canon in wotb hahahahahahaahhaa peter griffin death pose) link to have Major Depression especially in the memory cutscenes and also how he was propped up as The Hero who can defeat Anything and is Awesomesauce partly as a way to ease worries about zelda Not having her powers but can also tie into military propaganda and the whole divine right thing but i digress and how he tried masking a lot of himself to look perfect in the eye of the public (accidentally making himself look More weird). the thought of someone recognizing that link didnt Have enough resources to go against the calamity, that robbie was Trying to help give the resources and power he needed. stares out into the abyss. also he thinks highly of link mentioning that ‘a master swordsman such as link who impressed king rhoam and became princess zeldas royal guard… well, even someone like that has their limits.’ (ALSO I SHOULD MENTION THIS IS A WATSONIAN EXPLANATION FOR THIS. I THINK THIS WAS ANOTHER ONE OF THE DEVS ‘ooohohohohh links So Special hes the Greatest of All Time Everyone Else shouldve just tried harder!’ MOMENTS AND I THINK THAT IS STUPID.)

OH HEHEH okok so this actually started out as a concept of ‘things everyone would give yomiel while hes in prison’ type deal (kamila would probably give mechanical keyboards with cool keyboard caps and some toys that she thought he would like. she would get him to play minecraft with her and they would build redstone together. jowd brings in painting stuff and printed photos to use as reference but also as keepsakes. probably stuff that would make painting just. Easier. alma would give office stationary and specific tech things and cabanela would give the same things he does to jowd: random specific items that couldnt be more useless if they tried until they become Absolutely Needee in One Specific Scenario in the future. also sunglass accessories for all of them. stickers on sunglasses for lynne.) SPEAKING OF the thing i came up for lynne was omamoris- theyre usually given as good luck charms or like Gifts in japan (citation: I Think). theres different kinds and you can get them specially made if the ones arent sold dont meet what you need. lynne specifically gives the yaku-yoke one (used for getting rid of bad luck or evil spirits). and for yomiel its less about the omamori itself (he is already in prison his life has been through the gutters. it Can get worse but by how much truly) but more of the thought of it. like for context lynne gives this to him back when she Just got saved or before shes a detective. only a couple of minutes ago he tried to Frame Her For Murder and have her rot in a cell unable to do anything meaningful. he literally just pointed a gun to her head but she still thanks him for saving her from getting crushed. the fact she went out searching for something to give him and genuinely thought of a thanks. also its not necessary but omamoris are usually replaced and returned to the shrine every new year to have better luck This Year. and so im having lynne also do this. he fully expected it to be a one time thing. It Is Not. once yomiels finally Out of prison he immediately gives jowd and lynne a kanai-azen (safety/well-being for someones family) as a way to ‘repay the debt’. in the end its mostly like. yomiel is no longer cut off. he has a support system now that genuinely means well and is there for him. time to actually Adjust to that. also sissel still visits. sissel is a daily visitor whether hes in cat form or Not. sorry this is less of a plot and more of ‘oh neat :D’. also some of the omamori lore may be wrong in which case: i am sorry

[thecrazyphantom]

Just some interactions that happened to me a couple of years ago.

The person I'm referring to is probably stalking my account as I post this 😕

(This is just a vent of mine, you can skip if you don't want to read it ❤️)

Btw both of us are Female(well idk what they are but they're afab)

I was so uncomfortable trying to respond to them saying this, let alone in response to my photo.

When they broke our friendship (In a very cringe way btw. I can elaborate if anyone asks) they told me how I "treated them horribly" even though I was the one who constantly just had to deal with their Bullshit when they texted me.

They'd also constantly oversexualize all the female characters I Roleplay/I like

Ex: Saying that Peko has (AND I LITERALLY QUOTE.) "phat juicy tits".

When we had a Simp channel in our Discord server That was Yk... Dedicated to fictional characters.. or people in their class they thought were pretty. They posted a photo into it of Me in a Byakuya Cosplay looking down at the camera and then started going on and on about how they'd give me everything they owned and such and it made me so uncomfortable that I couldn't even response logically so i just sent "<3" and didn't respond to the text.

They would also talk constantly about their AUs and stuff about The Cuphead show. I rlly did like a lot of what they talked about since I liked Cuphead the Game and have a very open mind to others Aus. But the thing was was that I had openly talked about how I didnt want to watch the Cuphead show because I just didn't like the voice acting ((Well they've got good voice acting, good Animation, and funny plots , but I just don't think the Cuphead cast should have voices. But I did watch the show after all this, and it was pretty good)). But i just remember that one day I was getting tired of them talking about Cuphead and I texted them "I don't mean to be rude but can you stop sending Cuphead content? You're slowly making me dislike it 😕" (that's the exact quote), and then they got annoyed and was like "that was the only direct cuphead thing I've sent" And I ofc denied that bc I don't rlly loose interest in things through only one message unless it's controversial. And I wasn't gonna deal with pulling up all that evidence so I just said "Omfg *name*" "Nah I'm done with discord" and they instantly started to "im so sorry" bomb but I told them I wouldn't talk to them until I calmed down bc I was just pretty grouchy at the moment. When I came back I sent some words abt me calming myself down again, then said "I apologize for my outburst". And bam we were somehow friends again????

What was even worse was that they did this all in front of our mutual friend (well at the time it was mutual, now they're just my friend ^_^) that they were at the time dating.

(I don't even remember if they sent more cuphead and I'm not even gonna dig for it)

All I know is that that could've been easily resolved by either just saying something along the lines of "I'm sorry I'll try to send them less" or even being like "Cuphead is my Hyperfixation, just like how your hyperfixation is Danganronpa"

They'd also text the gc that me and my friend were in that they were going to commit Slick-a-Slide and then disappear for weeks on end. So ofc me and my friend would be worried and get in a depressive state because we were under the false narrative that they Unalived, just for them to come back after a while and just brush it off. Each time we asked if they were okay they would always be like "Yeah Sorry my mom just took away my phone." And for a while I started to speculate that they were just in a Mental hospital but they never mentioned it (and they Kinda told us EVERYTHING that happens in their life/day/week.) So not only were they treating me wrong, they were dragging my friend into it and Worrying them. (This happened multiple times while they were dating, so I can't even imagine the levels of depression that could've spiraled my friend into. Like having to hear your lover say they were going to commit, then go offline for a long time, is actually petrifying.)

This is a small one but I also remember that a couple weeks or months before they broke ties with me, We were in a server with all of their friends (+my friend and I), they texted the public channel asking if anyone wanted to call, and when I said that I was down to call that literally responded something along the lines of "someone who isn't Phantom" and then they kicked me shortly after I responded with a sad emoji. That made me lose all left over respect I had for them. My friend confronted them on how that wasn't too nice to say, and then they got kicked too.

Also this is off track but imma bring it up since I'm currently obsessed with Korekiyo, but the way they Roleplayed Korekiyo made him seem like he's some Holier than thou character that could pretty much read minds and just tell what they were doing prior ((for example a character could make and excuse to walk off to give something to someone they're currently seeing and come back to Korekiyo and they'd respond "Oh were you giving something to *name*?")). Idk this just made me not like Korekiyo for a while after they broke ties with me.

Anyways that's all my ranting for now. Pip, Ace, whatever you're going by rn. If you see this, please get off my page, for you've made me dread each second and more that you've talked to me ;) ❤️

[ambyandony]

shortcuts I took to make drawing the squatizi comic easier

Used a photo reference for the backgrounds (note: this actually made it harder, I couldn’t figure out which beach was in the picture I was looking at so I only had one angle)

(note 2: I didn’t trace the photo or anything but I did colour pick from it)

made Squalo’s towel fall off his shoulder because it looked awkward and it remains on the ground for the rest of the comic . That stupid fucking blue towel.

for fun I made it visibly do this like you can just see it slowly slide off

didn’t overline the background characters and made them all a solid colour cause fuckem

didnt even draw the background characters in one of the panels even though the lesbians probably still should’ve been visible . I just have to assume Squalo is in the exact position on the frame where they just aren’t visible behind him

there’s a rock in the background but I didn’t draw it at all when the camera angle was facing only tiziano because I fucking hate that rock

If I don’t like how something looks and it’s inconsequential to the overall panel and in a corner I just deform the panel so it’s covered. Cause fuckit

covered one of Squalo’s hands with Tiziano’s hair while they were hugging because it looked wonky and I redrew it too many times

accidentally drew Tiziano’s hair wrong in one panel. That wasn’t a shortcut I just fucked it up and by the time I realised I’d already coloured and shaded it and it sucks and I want to fix it

used speech bubbles to hide shit I didn’t like

used a grid to write most of the dialogue

chibified the boyfriends for 2 panels but that was more because the panels were very tiny.

I would say having Squalo’s arms covering his chest for the first half but that was intended and not a shortcut

One side of Tiziano’s hair was originally over his shoulder but it was very annoying so I scrapped it . Except for exactly one panel where I could not draw his neck/collarbone right in that exact area.

the other side IS partially on his shoulder but not fully. I just think it looks more elegant that way but it has the added benefit that I don’t have to think too hard about shading his neck . Thank fuck for men with long hair 🙌

Tiziano’s hair length is inconsistent because I was having trouble making it not look awkward in certain poses

not drawing the lips

Tiziano takes his stupid sunglasses off for exactly one panel because I could not make them look good and then he puts them back up on his forehead because he needed a free hand and had nowhere else to put them. He is not shown doing this

I save Squalo’s freckles till the last step. Squalo’s freckles go on when I’m done with everything else so I have GOT TO REMEMBER TO PUT THE FUCKING FRECKLES ON ITS GONNA BE SOOOO ANNOYING IF I POST HIM WITH NO FRECKLES

The background characters with speaking roles have the exact same hair and skin colour and I drew their faces simplified even when they’re visible up close for one panel because speaking roles or not they are still background characters. Even though I named them.

as an artistic choice I didn’t refine the lineart in the central panel of page 1 (inadvertently made it easier it was actually a choice for the aesthetic of the panel)

Didn’t try very hard to draw the back of Squalo’s hair.

things that did not make the comic easier

Adding extra panels . and reworking all the dialogue from the previous version because it was awkward

themed dialogue fonts

I HANDWRITE ALL THE DIALOGUE MYSELF ALL OF IT. AND I DECIDED TO FUCKING MAKE THE TITTLES ON THE IS AND JS CUSTOM FOR SQUALO AND TIZIANO. AMONG OTHER THINGS. HELP ME

drawing Squalo’s stupid nose broken

the last minute inclusion of the Portuguese Man O’ War

not knowing how to draw nipples

changing background character with speaking role #2’s swimsuit top and not knowing how to draw boobs

THOSE STUPID FUCKING SUNGLASSES

I draw Tiziano’s eyes so fucking detailed. Because he is beautiful

Emphasising Squalo’s musculature

not saving the base skin colour I used for Tiziano OR Squalo before I started shading

drawing them hugging. 3 1/2 times.

making this post instead of finishing it

[electrificata]

having music critic thots abt the weeknd im so so sorry

i saw the weeknd in concert last summer, it was amazing. i really dont like stadium shows usually, but his was killer, he had a cool stage concept (gently mad max-ish cult leader and his dancer-disciples, giant inflatable moon) and he's got the presence to fill up all that space. and ive been listening to him for almost a decade, obviously the music's there. actually the show i was at was where he debuted the trailer for the idol. its out now and i havent watched yet. i thought it looked cool then, but after everything ive heard.....im just really ambivalent.

in the early days, when he was keeping mysterious, no press, no photos, you didnt even know if the weeknd was a band or a guy. just this chilly, atmospheric, sleazy/sexy horror-movie r&b. nothing supernatural. but cruel. the lyrics were all about the worst kind of fuckboy shit, and obviously drugs, and the music really seemed to give proper weight to it. the speaker in the songs was awful, the music was telling you that his actions were violent and terrifying for the women he's hurting and for toxic for himself. if youre a person attracted to men, you know what its like to see how awful a guy can be and still be into him, maybe even BECAUSE of how awful he is. thats a fucking horror movie. those first xo eps are crazy, i still listen to them.

then he goes pop star. i remember the collab w/ ariana grande in 2014 was surprising but it found a perfect, plausible midpoint between their two universes. then he goes full max martin in 2015 with "can't feel my face" and again, bizarre to see this plausible way for the prince of darkness to get to the top 40 via a neo-michael jackson jam with a veiled drug reference as opposed to multiple explicit ones. but it made sense! he danced onstage now! i remember hearing it on the radio when i was picking my cousins up from middle school, that felt surreal.

and he just kept on doing the popstar thing. i dont think the sleaze ever really left, it just receded into the background. killer atmosphere, more pop hooks, a general darkness that felt credible coming from him because of the early stuff, its just lit with neon now. he gets increasingly more conceptual, which i love. i love a concept album. its still about fucked up relationships and now death more generally instead of drugs specifically. cool, great. i've been with him the entire time. that brings us up more-or-less to the present.

im not gonna recap all the shit around the idol, if you want it im sure theres an article or youtube video thatll do a better job than i can. ill just summarize my own thoughts: it feels like the sleaze is back, maybe some of the horror, but also Glamour. johnny depp's supermodel daughter has cum on her face. we're seeing headlines about how gross the sex scenes are. look how Glamorous this is. classic showbiz trick of using a cautionary tale about gross men preying on women to just....create images and narratives about gross men preying on women. this might be the place i cant follow him. i cant rule out watching it, i am a habitual hater and i might be in the mood to hate soon. but its making me think about the way we use glamour and beauty in entertainment. it cant be a default, it has an effect on the story.

[junglehomo]

i just got to sing again

theyve been quieter lately

i like to sing to stim

it's one of my things

vocal stimming

i like screamo songs and i like r n b

i love singing along in the car i love karaoke even if its bad

its like you cant be 100% sad or mad singing something

i like to practice it until I remember the words if it's a song i really like or if its fun to sing it

i really wanted to start a screamo band when i was a kid

but nobody wanted to do it or nobody really knew drums lol

people were jealous and didnt want to put me on to anyone

i used to want to start a music channel too where i just did covers because

not to toot my horn, but a lot of screaming these days is ass

like kids are getting it wrong ? or idk

like mixing 90's punk with what they want to be 2006 hardcore

and they just butcher it and sound like grandmas on ventilator

it took me years even through transitioning to

get there

my biggest idol was Oliver Sykes of bring me the horizon

his style was the best to me also his voice

but up until...2015 to me

i stopped listening after thats the spirit.

before he had to alter his style to save his vocal cords

I'm very good at the whole album of Count Your Blessings it's like my bible

I really like death metal but not as familiar

suicide silence is another good point of reference for me

but i have yet to find people who also live in that decade or era

i dont know anyone who is mentally still in 2008 lol

to get that ssound im talking about that mood

the partying the drinking the weird emo emulation of "70's 80's rock n roll glam rock hard core" like really weird

people wanted to be aerosmith but

were doing emo and screamo but it was so dope it was so cool and all the genres mixed too

like people werent so stuck on clothes like they are now.....

the type of music u listened to through your headphones and what blared outside the plastic to the person next to you

was what made you cool and was the accessory

i had to walk to the mall or bike

to go to hot topic and buy the cd's in real life with my hands and with cash

that was the aesthetic

bc it was harder to obtain it was all for the love of the genre and music and the bands

not "i wanna look like" "where to buy"

people did want to emulate models back then or what we now call "influencers"

they were on myspace

ndyou had to go on the PC or Apple clam shell if ur rich or dell hp whatever

and go on myspace . com

and friend them and post your photos of yourself you downloaded from your digital camera

which you plugged into the computer or laptop via usb and dragged the file onto desktop to post to myspace or facebook

going home was part of going on social media

until Ipod touch and Blackberry

then it kind of changed but you still needed wifi public wifi which wasnt as available or good

so it would tale hours to post sometimes lol

the new music would be found on youtube thru a music video the artist posted or audio version etc

to be fair , there was "hype" brands at the time for scene and emo people. Like DROP DEAD and i think SKELANIMALS Lmao SANRIO . but not as over saturated as it was today

also not really represented on TV at all much

there was Tila Tequila ashlee simpson MTV

the aesthetic was in cartoon network shows like

adventure time

it's "quirky" it's "random XD"

this is where i go in my mind when i listen to this music lol

i am a millenial. I am RandomxD

these people dont understand I dont get these serial killer ipad children..............

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[qualityempathshoebear]

18th Birthday and Obsessions

Im 18; an adult. Thats fun I think. I honestly dont feel much different than I did yesterday. Today was whatever; my mom and brother said happy birthday. My dad and sister did not. Im not sure if my dad said it and I just didnt hear It but ill make sure tmr. My sister absolutely did not say happy birthday which im honestly happy about. I dont need that insidious energy.

I hope 18 is a year of success, freedom, fun, love and new opportunities and experiences.

I spent the day watching a movie actually! I watched Barbarian (Check letterboxd for a super short review lol). But dont worry Im planning on celebrating at this restaurant in the city with some friends. Some I would consider more friends than others. Im also inviting the friend of boy 2 (you know, the one that "set us up"). I want to get her drunk (in a consensual way obviously) and hope that she spills some tea on him. I have a feeling that hes talking to this one black girl that goes to journalism club at my school and who is also friends with this one gay boy (not relevant) in my class. I actually went to poland with him and the girl that set me up with boy 2. Anyway, the reason I think theyre talking is becaue he has been liking her letterboxd reviews and follows her now (although he didnt like her most recent review).

Also, UGHH I think im going crazy. Im lowkey obsessed with boy 2 even though he has had me on opened for 10 weeks (well I guess i technically left him on opened in a way). Ive gone as far as to make fake letterboxd accounts pretending to be my "friends" from back home (im using their photos and names lol; i think that may be a crime actually lol) and have been commenting back and forth with myself to make him jealous. AKA, Im absolutely losing my fucking mind. I wish he had tried harder and seemed more interested because I would honestly have loved to give it another shot in another world. There is just no way I can handle a boy rn. Im still not over it, even though its been so long and i technically ended it. Its affected my academics and my procrastination and lack of care has gotten worse. Two days ago I handed in my application for my dream uni and halfassed the applicaiton (did it all in like 1 hour) and missed out on two full essays. There is absolutly NO WAY im getting in there now and ive just wasted an early decision application. Im sort of just ignoring the fact that I did that because I cant afford to fall into a depressive state with mock exams two weeks away.

Note: I hope we wont have to talk about boy 2 again but If i do ill start referring to him as "LK".

Thank you so much for being here, loca (haha twilight reference). Bye sexy!! and until next time :)

OMG ALSO JUST REMEMBERED! IM SO OVER CEASER SALAD I HAVE NOT THOUGHT OF HIM AT ALLLLLLL! AND HES WITH SOME GIRL I THINK. HONESTLY GOOD FOR HIM!!!

[jemmo]

the physical and verbal approaches to the topic of love: ep 6

i really wanna talk about how much i loved how the idea of love was brought up in this episode. bc throughout the ep there’s constants points and reminders to the fact that love is here, its present, even if its not being spoken about. and there’s this wonderful irony to the physical approaches to love versus the verbal, how they wont talk about this thing between the two of them but their actions make it so that it cant be ignored. 

the first time i saw this was when they first see each other after the kiss, when they’re taking photos and ask to make mini-hearts

watching this was somewhere between awkward and difficult and heart-breaking for me, bc these two know what transpired that night, and yet haven’t said a word. yet here they are, less than a metre apart, both showing that love exists, its a thing. i dunno exactly how to word it, the mood was just so interesting. its these two people that had this moment that felt huge, momentous, having to deal with the fact that after that moment happened, the world didnt stop. they had to crash back to reality and deal with the consequences and ramifications of their actions. and no matter how much pran doesnt want to mention it, here he is making a heart. love is being brought up, pulled out into the open against his will instead of being something that he can hide. its the understanding in the stolen glances that each of them are thinking about it, they remember it, cant help but remember it, cant erase it and pretend it never happened. both them and us as an audience knew when the kiss happened, it shifted everything, there was no going back, and that change between them is being forced out into the open, its forcing itself to be recognised all because of a finger heart. 

and these actions, these things that recognise love as an emotion that exists are countered by pat and pran’s words, their reluctance to say what actually happened, use the words ‘kiss’ or ‘like’ or ‘love’. the kiss is constantly referred to as ‘that night’, because unlike these physical actions that are forcing love as a concept out into the open, they cant bring themselves to do the same with their words. 

equally though, they both know what transpired on that night, there’s no need to say it. and while their reluctance to put the name to it shows how wary they are about approaching the topic, i also love that, whenever pat says ‘that night’, pran never comes back with that classic ‘what about that night?’. it’d been such an easy remark to put in the script but its absence for me is really telling of pran’s character. first of all, that line would prompt pat to be specific, say ‘the kiss’, and thats not a word pran can bear to hear spoken out loud. but also, its him admitting that he does understand, that he remembers, he is admitting and acknowledging that the kiss happened, its a thing. whenever they start to approach this topic, pran’s approach is never about trying to forget or erase the kiss, and i think thats already strong of him. because as he clams up, his rhetoric could’ve easily been ‘forget about it pat, pretend it never happened, move on, act normal’, but its not. it happened and now they cannot act normal, pat can’t and neither can pran. his evasiveness, his silent treatment, yes its him trying to cope and not let pat in, but the fact he’s acting this way shows he’s affected, that he’s not trying to move past this and go back to before it happened. he knows it cant be the same and he’s not trying to make it the same. and honestly, i was shocked by that approach, but im really glad that thats where pran started out. not regretting, not in denial, not trying to forget. he’s just closed off, and thats why pat is able to make him open up, because he never dismissed the kiss in the first place. 

anyway, as the ep progresses, we get more and more physical displays of love in different ways, the difference being that pat is now an instigator, he’s the one bringing it up, pushing the topic. this already speaks to his understanding of pran by approaching the topic through non-verbal means. the first of these that stood out to me was in the newspaper game, when pat places his foot between pran’s. 

this game is already a metaphor in itself just through their feet, how they start in front of each other, then are side by side, then finally intertwined. and for some reason, when pat did this, i reacted like a blushing lady from the 1800s would when even just the topic of love would be brought up. bc its such a small, simple thing, and yet there’s such intimacy to it. intertwined legs already have a sort of sexual implication (at least to me they do), but even on a symbolic level, its the closest you can be. from a side view like this, you can see how their feet are in line, on a single plane. and it speaks of coming together, becoming one almost, occupying a single space, 2 people in a space that can only fit 1. to me the imagery was powerful, but its also the beginning of pat’s slow introduction of physical closeness to pran. bc they have been physically close before, but they never had any of the implications before. now there’s a shared knowledge that their physical closeness is romantic, they know each other has some kind of feelings and that physical closeness now means something more. again, its a non-verbal introduction of the topic of love as something that exists between the two, and at this point pran cannot take it, hence the falling over. 

we then go back to pat trying to verbally bring up the topic, again using the phrase ‘that night’, and pran flat out asking him not to. again, pran’s language is not dismissive of the kiss, just dismissive of talking about it. him saying ‘can we not talk about it’ is not the same as him saying ‘can we not think about it’, bc they are thinking about it. its in the air, its in the glances, its in the words unsaid, the knowledge of the kiss still lingers, pran is just not ready to speak of its existence. 

but what we do get is another physical introduction to love. i kinda dont know if this slip of pat’s hand towards pran’s was intentional or not, but i think either way makes sense. its either pat trying again to introduce pran to the idea of physical closeness, or its pat respecting that pran right now doesnt want to approach the topic, and yet like the waves, gravity pulls his hand in to where it should be. 

all the same things can be said about an introduction of physical closeness, but what i love most about this (besides their hands almost making a heart shape, as if it wasn’t obvious enough already) are the the looks, and the fact that pran doesn’t pull away. its progress from the newspaper game bc pran is now open to introducing physical touch into their relationship, in this quiet secluded moment he can deal with it, he feels comfortable to explore it, hence his hand doesnt retreat. and the looks they share are again an acknowledgement of what just happened, the fact their hands are touching, and a shared understanding of what it means, that the touch is romantic. and i love that they arent forcing themselves to talk about or explain it. its just them slowly getting comfortable with the idea that there’s something more in this private pocket of space they’ve carved out on the beach. and in the grand scheme of things, they need this. bc the kiss was so sudden and so much and it gave them no time to approach things slowly. it was definitely what they needed in the moment, but in this moment they need to slow down, they need to take their time, they need this period where the idea of a relationship can be introduced to the both of them. and i’m really glad they were able to take that time. 

then we have the bet scene, where finally these 2 different approaches, the verbal and the non-verbal, finally meet. and again, its pat being the instigator, pulling the topic to the forefront of the conversation. i actually got shivers and tears in my eyes as he wrote the word kiss on the sand, bc it was just... beautiful. bc there has been this lingering vibe the whole episode. both them and us know how enormous of a moment the kiss was and have had to sit with all those feelings unresolved for the whole episode, and its kept us on edge, anticipating when it’ll finally be addressed. we’ve had this push and pull of intimate physical moments toying with this reservation to talk about any of it plainly and boldly, not through layers and layers of metaphor and subtly. and then pat cracks through all that nervous, tingly energy and just puts it out there, writes the word into the earth and poses the question we’ve all been waiting for. bc we’ve talked about families, we’ve talked about the past, but what about the kiss. and writing it in the sand is this perfect middle ground between the words unsaid and the actions that cannot be silenced. its pat taking the meaning of those tiny finger hearts, the feet intertwined, the fingers touching, and solidifying their meaning into a word that pran isn’t brave enough to hear spoken but cannot stop from existing. 

and i love the line that follows, bc its almost pat being a little bit crafty, if he wasn’t already crafty enough by finding the loophole in pran’s words. bc not only is he not talking about it, he also says ‘I’m not talking’. that doesn’t mean pran cant talk about it tho. its pat jumping through hoops to not break his promise while showing pran that there’s still an open door to walk through if he wants. he’s saying look, i heard you loud and clear, you asked me not to talk about it so i wont, but here’s a way we can start this conversation without compromising any of that. he’s giving pran a way in. and i’m so glad pran takes that in. even if he does’t talk openly about it, he still starts a conversation and is able to guide how he wants this exchange to go so that they can make progress while still feeling safe. 

and overall, i think how this conversation starts perfectly sets up how it ends. bc pat introduces an idea and pran takes it in a way that makes him comfortable enough to move forward. similarly, pat introduces the idea of competing and pran moves them forward by agreeing, by showing his willingness to explore their relationship in these safe confines. again, its pat giving pran a way in, a way to begin a form of relationship without compromising any of the walls he still has up. and the thing is, this bet, it makes it so that this dichotomy between physical and verbal approaches to love is maintained. bc now they are going to flirt, hit on each other, make advances, and so much of it is going to be physical, the most flirtatious things they do will be actions, while so much of their language is going to be tame and understated, not matching the level their actions are at. and of all places, you see it in the damn finger lick. 

bc especially for pran, this is how flirting will be. a contradiction. him doing these bold physical actions that have such weighty implications and then brushing it off with a ‘see you later, friend’, words that are so completely at odds with and undermine the meaning of his actions. and as a progression of their relationship it makes sense, bc for this episode pran has made it clear that he’s not comfortable with direct conversation, and so pat has slowly been introducing the idea of physical touch, a way to explore their relationship on his terms. and here’s pran finally being the instigator, saying this is the form of communication where i can speak the loudest, so hear me loud and clear. 

and basically, i can see this gap between words and actions being the thing that finally breaks one of them. bc they’ll keep pushing physically, keep doing things that are more and more bold and teasing and provocative. until ultimately one of them won’t be able to cope with just unspoken implications. one of them will need to talk, say the word love, give it, give them a name. they will want to speak the words the actions do, or external circumstances will put on pressure until the actions aren’t loud enough, until they need the concrete words so that they don’t go out of their minds always searching for the meaning. bc sometimes, even if actions do speak a thousand words, sometimes the words are the only thing you can hear.