#along with spiral breed change of course

[konakoro]

Look at the best dragon I hatched from NotN, I only hatched 3 and he was the best one with not only good matching colors (red/blush/orchid), but a great eye color to match

His name is PinkLemonade and he’s going to be a pricey project but it’ll be worth it, I love him already

[mysticstronomy]

IS QUASAR A BLACK HOLE??

Blog#289

Wednesday, April 19th, 2023

Welcome back,

A quasar is a supermassive black hole feeding on gas at the center of a distant galaxy.

Quasar is short for quasi-stellar radio source, because astronomers first discovered quasars in 1963 as objects that looked like stars but emitted radio waves.

Now, the term is a catch-all for all feeding, and therefore luminous supermassive black holes, also often called active galactic nuclei.

It’s a bit of a contradiction to call a black hole luminous; black holes themselves are, of course, black. In fact, almost every large galaxy hosts a black hole with the mass of millions to billions of Suns, and many of these black holes lurk in the dark. Our Milky Way’s behemoth weighs in at 4.3 million solar masses, but its starvation diet mutes all but faint flashes and flickers.

We know it’s there, though, from the orbits of stars around it. Other dormant black holes occasionally shred an infalling star, making their presence known by the flare of radiation that ensues.

But quasars are a different breed of black hole. They reside in galaxies with plentiful gas supplies, perhaps supplied by a recent galaxy-galaxy collision, and they gorge on the inflowing material.

The gas spirals around as it falls in, heating up in the process and emitting radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies typically do not have that much gas available to them, so quasars are typically found in distant galaxies. The nearest quasar is Markarian 231, which lies about 600 million light-years from Earth.

A quasar is not only the feeding black hole itself, but the light-producing structures that surround it. Visible and ultraviolet light come from the glowing disk of infalling material, while even hotter gas above the disk shines at X-ray energies. Jets shooting out along the black hole’s poles emit everything from radio waves to X-rays. Farther out from the black hole, the prolific dust and gas glow at infrared wavelengths.

The size of a quasar accretion disk, which scales with the mass of its black hole, is typically a few light-days across. That dwarfs in comparison to its host galaxy; the Milky Way for comparison is roughly 100,000 light-years across. Yet quasars often outshine their hosts.

Despite their brilliance, quasars are so small and distant that even the most powerful telescope cannot resolve all the structures within a quasar.

Astronomers have to ferret out the details using other techniques, such as analyzing spectroscopy (spreading out the light by wavelength) or light curves (spreading out the light by its arrival time).

While the details are still up for debate, we can use current knowledge to paint a general picture of a quasar. Just remember that this picture might change over time as we learn more!

Originally published on skyandtelescope.org

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, April 22nd, 2023)

"HOW LONG DO BLACK HOLES LAST??"

[kit-williams]

Warhammer 40k and D&D crossover/au

Whose everyone's favorite wolf boy? It's good boy Leman Russ! Just as rambly as the original post but I think I'm getting better at these

Leman Russ was eager to split off after he enjoyed his time roaming with his brothers.

He would certainly be one of the first ones to throw hands with all of his confused "traitor" brothers as the heresy would be raw and fresh

He really embraced the sense of adventure that came about as the brothers travelled together. Initially just to do some recon which turned into to the quest to get Angron's butcher's nails removed... it slowly spiraled for them and suddenly they found themselves fighting a Dragon, a lich, and some godly amalgamation (You know typical player character stuff)

They were considered a warband as in this homebrew a large army was around 100 people so 19 large men wandering around was deadly.

Though many villagers and others versed with adventurers found the group was odd with how they lacked a dedicated healer or even a bard. (They assumed Logar was the cleric)

If the brothers split up because of another argument then it would be along sort of heresy lines but it probably split apart because someone got tired and the fact that they could just relax and not worry... the fact that they could actually fall in love was also a big thing.

Leman would head back north to be with the raiders as their rambunctus nature reminded him of Fenris and of course he would start to conquor a large swath till he would come into conflict with Sanguinius whom had himself wandered north and found his own wife.

Leman's Wife would be named Ylva (which means wolf funny enough) as she was one who trained war wolves/war hounds/animal handler basically

They fought often enough as both are stubborn till Leman found out she was the daughter of a Jarl and before he came around was trying to regain her ancestral lands and Leman basically stole her chance for revenge.

Leman would have loved to remember her passionate and angry rant at him when he pushed her to finally open up but it all went out of his brain when he saw the way her bottom pushed out as she was pouting

It was with Ylva he finally understood what was "ailing" his brothers who all suddenly started showing interest in mortals

Leman was very ill for Ylva

Though it took her awhile to realize that the "high jarl" was very much down bad for her.

But as soon as she started to return the affection he put a pup in her as fast as he could

The son that is important to the au is either named Bjorn or Lukas this is up for debate as I figured Leman would name his first son Bjorn and maybe his youngest Lukas but the son that would be important to the story is defo not the eldest but he might not be the youngest I'm not sure. Subject to change; just mainly he isn't an only child is the big thing. Leman would not be content with just one child.

The only person who can be rough to his kids and wife is him and the man will go feral

He loves his pups no matter how old they get they will always be pups compared to him; he refuses to reveal how old he actually is; cares little for the gender they are his precious pups.

Even if they aren't all warriors he still loves them

~NSFW~

Breeding kink given the amount of children Ylva has given him; much to her dismay she enjoys teasing him too much and ends up on the recieving end of that pent up affection

Primal play; There's something terrifying and thrilling about being chased in the snow by a butt naked man literally howling like some werewolf

Marking; Ylva has a big scar on her shoulder from when Leman bit her

[theriddlersunderwear]

The Library Creation Myth Part 1

Once upon a time, mankind was living drastically different lives than they do now. Humans lived with every piece of knowledge of the natural world, down to the smallest of facts. There was no earthly problem that they could not solve. Young girls possessed the knowledge to weave intricate animal sculptures from sweet grass, and the elderly learned complex knitting patterns that have been lost to the ages.

All of this knowledge came from a singular source: Wan Shi Tong’s library. Wan Shi Tong, also known to mankind as He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things, was a Deity of Intelligence. A shapeshifting spirit, Wan Shi Tong commonly took the form of a black barn owl with a stark white face that stood at approximately ten feet tall. He did not shape-shift often, only taking a new form when entering a battle. There were rumors among the humans that he could partially transform his neck to stretch and slither like a snake, while continuing to maintain his barn owl form.

Wan Shi Tong’s library was as massive as the Deity himself, standing at four stories tall and an incomprehensible length. The library was located at the center of human civilization in an expansive desert, where humans of all tribes could visit. The building’s white ivory pillars coated in gold brushed against the clouds, standing tall as a symbol of humanity’s wisdom. The large, ornate oak doors were rimmed with the finest silver. The doors had never been closed in the millennia that the library had stood, always thrown wide as a welcoming gesture to the humans that wished to learn.

Ever a generous Spirit, Wan Shi Tong never imposed a limit on when visitors could come, or how many books and scrolls they could read. He had only two rules: You must first present him with a story in exchange for your visit, and nothing could ever, ever leave the library. For the millennia that Wan Shi Tong had ruled, no creature had ever dared break the library rules. Until one day, a brazen soldier stormed into the building seeking knowledge. Consequently, this would be the very man to set in motion the events that caused humanity to lose their expansive knowledge forever.

The human man stood a mighty 6 '6”, and was adorned with golden armor that was only crafted for the finest soldiers. The golden plates glimmered in the multicolored light shining through the library’s stained-glass windows. A well-sharpened sword sat unsheathed on his hip, the fine tip scraping along the marble floors. The light scraping sound was akin to pointed fingernails running down a chalkboard, and the sound alerted the Deity.

Wan Shi Tong descended from the spiraling towers of the library. His feathered black wings stretched twelve feet in length, beating heavily as he lowered himself to the floor. The force was enough to stir up winds that blew the man’s warrior helmet from his head, sending it clattering across the floor.

The once brash soldier found himself shrinking back in fear. Despite being known for his friendly and accommodating nature, Wan Shi Tong was still a horrifying sight to behold. His grapefruit-sized eyes were entirely black, and they shimmered in the light like a beetle. No creature the warrior had ever slain could have prepared him for the sheer size of the Spirit. Wan Shi Tong’s mere presence demanded respect from even the most unruly of humans.

“And what might you be doing here?” The Knowledge Deity demanded, his deep voice reverberating throughout the open space. He bent his long neck slightly to make easier eye contact.

The man lowered himself to one knee as a sign of respect, “Great Spirit of the Mind! I have come seeking information from your wondrous library!”

Wan Shi Tong’s impassive expression did not change, “Then you should already be aware of the rules. You are to provide me with a story before going any further.”

“Of course, O’ Wise One. Let me tell you the tale of how I discovered a new breed of mushrooms–”

“Silence,” the Deity commanded, rising to his full height. His voice took on a cocky tone, “I am Wan Shi Tong, He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things, and you assume that I am not already aware of all existing mushroom breeds?”

“Wait a minute, Wise One! I was told that to enter your library all I must do is tell a story, why is it that you stop me?” The human protested as respectfully as he could, scrambling to his feet. This is not how his visit was supposed to go. When he asked the locals how to get inside the mythical library, they said that he just needed to tell the Spirit a story. So why was the Spirit rejecting his tale before it had even begun? Had he offended the Spirit?

Wan Shi Tong narrowed his beady black eyes, “That is correct, however, the story told is meant to present me with new information. People from all walks of life travel here, and each one brings me a story of new innovations and progress. You have the audacity to traipse into my library with tales of mushrooms?”

The traveler blinked slowly with understanding. He had not offended the owl, he had simply misunderstood the assignment. He cleared his throat,

“My apologies, Wise One. Please, allow me to tell you a different story.”

Wan Shi Tong was silent, contemplating the request. In truth, he had been insulted initially. He had believed the traveler was insinuating that the Great Knowledge Spirit was unfamiliar with every mushroom breed in the world, when, in reality, he was just stupid.

After a prolonged pause, he answered, “Very well, if you believe you have a story that can truly challenge my intellect.”

The mortal bowed, “Thank you. You see, my country has invented a new way to take the radio with you to work. It’s called the Portable Hat Radio. The name is rather self-explanatory, it’s a hat with a radio attached.”

“Hmm,” Wan Shi Tong hummed. “This invention is new to me, and sounds mildly useful. You may pass, Human.”

“Once again, I extend my sincerest thanks to you. My name is Nathaniel.” Wan Shi Tong did not respond, simply staring at Nathaniel until he awkwardly hurried deeper into the library. The scent of old books and aged parchment washed over him, a testament to how long the library had stood collecting its knowledge. His hollow footsteps echoed through the massive building, bouncing off the sleek stone walls and wooden bookshelves. Occasionally, he would spot a person huddled up in between shelves, sorting carefully through stacks of ancient books.

Using the faded signs posted on walls, Nathaniel was finally able to find the section he required.

WEAPONS OF WAR —->

He slowed down, running a finger gently along the book spines as he read the titles. Nathaniel paused after finding a title that interested him, How to Build a Cannon in 6 Easy Steps by renowned author R. Edogawa. He pulled the book from the shelf, coughing as plumes of dust flew into the air and clogged his nose. Once the dust had cleared, he opened the book as carefully as possible. The binding was hanging on by a thread and the yellowed pages crinkled like the skin of an elderly woman’s arm.

“Perfect,” Nathaniel whispered to himself as his amber eyes skimmed the instructions. Nathaniel set the book aside and fumbled in his pants pockets for a pencil and paper. Once he found a slip and a small piece of charcoal, Nathaniel set to work copying down the instructions. Less than an hour later, Nathaniel found himself walking out of the library with a sense of satisfaction. He had collected all the information he needed.

[moons-rising]

breed change headcanons

the “scrolls” used to change a dragon’s breed actually have no magical properties on their own. instead, they are functionally instruction manuals carrying the magical inscriptions required for the transformation, all of which has to be ritually inscribed. it is easier to perform the ceremony with help, but it’s possible to do it to oneself without aid. each scroll or other item is consumed in the process of the transmutation, which varies depending on the breed:

to become a snapper or obelisk, one must carve a large pillar from solid stone and chisel the required inscriptions into the surface. this pillar must then be shattered and the fragments, along with additional rock and earth, must be piled over the body akin to a cairn and may be decorated with crystals. over the course of a day the earth and stone will reshape and become hide and scales, revealing the newly transformed snapper or obelisk.

to become a spiral or skydancer, one must harvest bamboo and craft a continuous scroll of paper many dozen meters in length. this scroll must be inscribed with colourful inks and then wrapped around the body, held in place with many lengths of bamboo rope, strung with feathers and chimes. over the course of a day the scroll and ropes will shift and become scales and feathers, revealing the newly transformed spiral or skydancer.

to become a coatl, one must collect metal ore and smelt it over fresh lava, then forge it into a full suit of armor plating fitting the body, covering it from nose to tail. the metal must be inscribed and may be decorated with metal ornaments and gemstone inlays. over a course of a day one must rest in or near a pool of lava, causing the heat to warp and reshape the metal until it becomes scales and feathers, revealing the newly transformed coatl.

to become a guardian, one must travel to the shore of the sea or another large body of water and collect coral and seashells and inscribe each piece. the entire body must be wrapped in fresh algae, tucking the seashells and coral into the wrappings. over a course of a day one must rest submerged in the water as deeply as possible, until the algae and inscribed fragments become scales and fins, revealing the newly transformed guardian.

to become a tundra, one must travel to a snowy region, gather branches of dead, frozen wood and carve the required inscriptions into the bark. the branches must be tied around body with lengths of string. then one must collect great amounts of fresh ice and snow and cover the body entirely. over the course of a day the snow and ice will melt and become hide and the branches will become fur, revealing the newly transformed tundra.

to become a nocturne, one must collect mud, tangles of thorny vines and glowing fungi from a swamp. beginning at dusk, one must carve the required inscriptions into the entire lengths of the vines, then wrap them around the entire body before covering it with mud and fungi. over the course of a day the vines, fungi and mud will shift and fuse with the body, becoming scales and hide by the next dusk, revealing the newly transformed nocturne.

to become a pearlcatcher or imperial, one must create a great tome many hundred pages in length, and fill it entirely with the required inscriptions. beginning at dawn, one must tear each page into shreds and cover the entire body like paper scales. the leather binding must cover the eyes. over the course of a day the paper will shift and become scales, hide and fur by next dawn, revealing the newly transformed pearlcatcher or imperial.

to become a ridgeback, one must prepare many dozen brass plates and many hundred meters of copper wire. the brass plates must be inscribed and then tied to the body with copper wire, covering it entirely from nose to tail. ideally during a storm a low, slowly increasing electric current must be applied to the wires and plates. over the course of a day the brass plates become hide and scales, revealing the newly transformed ridgeback.

to become a wildclaw, one must gather pieces of fallen bark, large leaves and many lengths of leafy vines. one must inscribe the bark and the leaves and then use them cover the entire body, held in place by tightly wrapped vines. over the course of a day the plant material will begin to grow and reshape until the bark and leaves become hide and feathers, causing the vines to wither away, revealing the newly transformed wildclaw.

to become a mirror, one must prepare a cauldron of any kind large enough to hold ones entire body, commonly a hole in the ground. one must inscribe bones and teeth and place them into the vessel, along with animal blood, viscera, swamp water, dead meat and rotten wood. over the course of a day one must submerge oneself in the mixture until it melts into the body to become hide and scales, revealing the newly transformed mirror.

to become a fae, one must gather shards of magically charged crystal. one must grind up the crystals, mix them with sifted sand and crushed flower petals and create many large glass lenses. one must carve the required inscriptions into the glass and tie them all over the entire body with lengths of colourful silk. over the course of the day the glass will warp and distort until it becomes hide and fins, revealing the newly transformed fae.

to become a bogsneak, one must prepare a cauldron and fill it with a mixture of as many alchemical concoctions as possible. to speed up the normally lengthy transformation one must inscribe alchemical formulas all over ones body. over the course of a day one must repeatedly cover oneself entirely with the mixture until it begins to harden and gradually mutate parts of the body one by one, eventually revealing the newly transformed bogsneak.

to become an ancient, the process is similar to that of the same flight’s modern breeds. however, ancient transformations are difficult and prone to failure, sometimes leaving the body disfigured and occasionally even resulting in death. an ancient transformation can take many days and often comes with great physical pain and terrible hallucinations.

regardless of breed such a transformation is a very vulnerable time. other clan members may aid in the process and provide protection. those who go through the transformation on their own usually look for a secluded place to hide away until the process is complete. in the first few days following the transformation one may experience sore muscles, irritated hide and scales, itchy feathers and fur, as well as spatial distortion from a shift in body proportions and a general clumsiness while adjusting to a changed body.

[narumi-gens]

Breed Me

Gojo Satoru x Reader

summary: It’s Gojo’s turn to try out a new kink. You just never expected to like it so much.

warnings: 18+, smut, breeding kink, daddy kink, squirting, cum play, the whole shebang

notes: I had a request awhile ago for fun smut with Gojo feat. a breeding kink and decided that it was perfect Chaos Couple material and now here we are.

words: 3k

related Chaos Couple drabbles

“Hey, there’s something I want to try,” Gojo says as he yanks your phone out of your hand so that he has your full attention. There’s a familiar smirk on his lips and it makes you roll your eyes and turn over in bed so that your back is to him.

“Satoru, how many times do we have to go over this? I’m not letting you call me mommy,” you huff. “I’m never changing my mind on that one.”

“No, it’s not that,” he tells you and you can’t help but perk up, intrigued by what it is that he could want to try. “It’s something else.”

You can feel the bed shifting as he lays down behind you, dropping his arm around your waist and pulling you to him, his chest pressed right up against your back. He skims his nose along the side of your neck, taking care to brush it right up against the spot below your ear that makes you shiver.

You can’t help but squirm at the sensation and he takes the opportunity to angle your hips so that your ass is flush with his crotch. Your breath hitches when he grinds his half-hard cock against you and you find your clutch on the pillow beneath your head growing slightly tighter.

“What is it?” you ask, your voice suddenly breathless and you’re unable to see the way he smugly smirks, knowing that he has you right where he wants you.

In lieu of an answer, he slides his hand down your stomach and under the waistband of your leggings. His long fingers begin to stroke the lips of your pussy over the fabric of your underwear, his touch light and lazy.

You sigh contentedly and let your eyelids flutter shut, resting your head back on his shoulder. Instinctively, your legs open a little wider for him, your body speaking for you and instructing him to be more purposeful with his movements.

He chuckles as he feels you leaning into him, his chest rumbling against your back. You remind him of a cat telling its owner exactly how it wants to be scratched.

Owner.

His cock twitches in his pants at the word, something dark in him stirring and begging to be given attention. But he quickly tamps down on it. That’s something for another time.

Right now, there’s something else he wants.

He begins to apply more pressure to your clothed folds with his fingers. It doesn’t take much longer before he can feel the cotton beginning to grow wet from his touch.

He knows he needs to make his request strategically. You could easily interpret it the wrong way and then instead of spending his night pumping you full of his cum until your cunt’s overflowing, he’ll be stuck in a long, boring conversation that neither of you is all that interested in having — at least not right now.

“I think this is something you’ll like,” he grins into your ear, his voice low and teasing.

You softly hum, a sign for him to continue but also one that lets him know that you’re becoming increasingly amenable to whatever request he’s about to make. His fingers find your clit, making you whimper quietly and gently buck your hips up into his touch.

“I wanna fuck you raw and fill you with my cum,” he says, a note of eagerness tinging his tone, and when your breathing stutters, he’s not sure whether it’s because of his words or the way he’s circling your clit.

“You already do that,” you remind him lightly, focused more on his touch than what you’re saying. “We haven’t used a condom in years.”

He moves his knee between your legs and opens them wider, making it easier for him to slide his fingers under the crotch of your now soaked underwear. Your clit is slightly slippery as he rolls it between his fingers while grinding his cock into your ass at the same time. You moan softly and he knows he has you right where he wants you.

“But this time, I want to fill you up over and over again until I fuck a baby into you,” he practically purrs and he immediately feels you tense against him, his words dousing your lust like a bucket of ice-cold water. He pinches your clit in an attempt to pull you back into the moment, making your hips reflexively jerk in his hold. “Wanna get you nice and round so that everyone knows exactly who you belong to.”

Suddenly you begin to wiggle in his grasp, but it’s clear from the frantic nature of your movements that it’s from panic rather than pleasure. Gojo lets you go with a sigh and rolls onto his back as you sit up and turn around so that you can look down at him with a mixture of shock and alarm.

“Y-you wanna try for a kid?” you ask, your voice growing increasingly high-pitched with each word. “And you thought this was the way to bring it up?”

He can see you beginning to spiral and he knows that if he doesn’t stop it now, then this will all go exactly how he didn’t want it to turn out. So, he grabs your hips and pulls you on top of him, straddling his hips and seated right on his clothed cock, which is still hard underneath your ass.

“I don’t want to actually get you pregnant,” he quickly explains and those words alone seem to be enough to stop the hysteria in its tracks. But he can see the confusion growing in its stead.

“Just think about it,” he encourages you, his voice dark and low and full of promise. “Me pumping you full of cum until your pussy can’t take any more. And you’d get so big and round with my baby. And everyone would know it’s because of me, that it’s my baby in there, that you belong to me. Isn't it kind of hot?”

He can see from the way your mouth is now slightly parted and how your chest is rising and falling just a bit faster that the picture he’s painted for you is doing more than just piquing your interest. A grin begins to grow on his lips when you start to squirm and he uses his hold on your hips to grind you down on his cock, making you gasp softly and clutch onto the fabric of his shirt.

“Satoru…” you trail off hesitantly but he doesn’t miss the slight whine in your tone. He grinds you down on him again, only this time much slower so that you can feel all of him.

“Just try it.”

And that’s how you end up naked with two pillows stacked underneath your lower back to prop up your hips as Gojo takes his time slowly thrusting his fat cock in and out of your swollen cunt. Your calves are resting against his shoulders, your ankles by his ears as he leans over you and bends you in a way that will almost certainly leave you sore tomorrow.

But none of that matters. All that matters is the way you tremble beneath him each time he sinks his cock into you until his hips are pressed up against your ass. It feels like he’s splitting you open with every deep thrust and you muffle your whimpers into the back of your wrist.

Mindlessly, you slide your free hand down your body until it stops right underneath your navel. The angle he has you in allows him to get so deep that you’re half-expecting to feel a bulge like this is some sort of hentai.

Gojo smirks down at the sight like he knows exactly what you’re thinking. Honestly, he’s kind of disappointed that life does not in fact mirror art because there’s nothing that he would love to see more than your belly bulging with every thrust of his cock

His smirk goes unnoticed by you since your eyelids are squeezed tightly shut, fat teardrops leaking from the corners of them and mixing with the dewy sheen of sweat that covers your entire body. You drop the hand from your stomach down to the bed, where your fingers desperately clutch onto the sheets.

His cock is dragging so perfectly along your walls with each thrust in and out of your pussy, which by now is positively dripping. You’re so wet that there’s a trail of your slick leaking from your entrance down the crack of your ass onto the pillow propping you up.

Of course, all of this is only exacerbated by the filth pouring from Gojo’s mouth.

“Fuck, your pussy’s so tight, baby. You’re clenching down so hard it’s like you’re trying to milk my cock. Is that what you’re trying to do, baby? You wanna milk my cock until your sweet pussy’s full of my cum?”

His words are loud in your ears, drowning out your own whimpers and the obscenely wet sound his cock makes every time he slides in and out of your cunt.

“Come on, baby,” he grunts and the pet name alone is enough to have your walls clamping down on his cock. “Tell me. You want my cum? Want me to fill you up until you’re stuffed with it? Want me to put a baby in you?”

You furiously nod and he chuckles at how desperate you are.

“You gotta say it out loud, baby,” he tells you, sounding almost regretful, like it’s just something that can’t be helped, like it’s out of his control. “Say it out loud, baby.”

Your eyelids flutter open and you look up at him, your vision blurred with the tears that won’t stop coming because he just feels so good. You lift your hand from where it had been covering your mouth, the back of your wrist wet from where you’ve drooled on your skin, as you reach for him, your fingers desperately burying themselves in his snow-white strands.

The stretch in your legs grows deeper, burning slightly, as he lets you pull his head down so that you can catch his lips with yours in a needy and sloppy kiss. When he breaks away from the kiss, a string of saliva follows, keeping his lips connected to yours.

“C’mon, baby,” he encourages, giving you a harder thrust to urge you on and his skin slaps loudly against yours as he does so.

“Breed me, daddy,” you finally breathe and his eyes go wide.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans as he hears the words roll off of your lips, his head dropping back and his face scrunching up. “Don’t worry, baby. Daddy’s got you.”

He gives you one last messy kiss before sitting up on his knees, alleviating some of the burn in your aching muscles. But the relief is only momentary because this new angle allows him to hit your g-spot perfectly and you can’t hold back a high-pitched whine, your eyes squeezing shut once again. His thrusts begin to pick up speed and it feels like he’s forcing the air from your lungs every time his cock spears apart your walls.

But what really has you wailing and arching your back is how he licks the pad of his thumb — an unnecessary action considering that your folds are absolutely drenched —  and starts to play with your slippery clit.

“Daddy’s gonna breed your sweet, sweet pussy,” he pants and his words stoke the fire that’s already raging through you from the tips of your fingers to the tips of your toes. “Gonna pump you with my cum until your stomach gets round with my baby and your tits get big with milk.”

“Daddy!” you absolutely scream, your vision turning white as you come. Your cunt clenches down so hard that his cock slips out of you as you squirt all over him, making his expression light up with joy at this newfound discovery.

“Oh, shit,” he laughs, only taking another moment to revel in the sight before he plunges his cock right back into your still-twitching pussy.

This time, he doesn’t hold back as he fucks you hard and fast, chasing his own end. The image of your cunt leaking his cum onto the sheets is fresh in his mind as he returns his thumb back to your clit.

You whine in protest, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes as you try to wiggle away from the overstimulation. But he won’t let you. In this position, you’re completely at his mercy and he wants to see if he can get you to squirt again.

“Fuck, gonna fill you up,” he groans, his hips and balls loudly smacking against your ass each time he bottoms out. “You’re gonna look so good, baby. Gonna look so good for daddy. Gonna get all round and beautiful and everyone’s gonna know it’s because of me.”

His running mouth combines with his perfectly placed thrusts and the stimulation to your swollen and abused clit. Before long, you’re gushing around him again, your loud moans echoing around the bedroom as your surroundings disappear, eclipsed by the pure, unadulterated pleasure that has you bowing up off the mattress and pillows underneath you.

Held captive by the endorphins rushing through your system, you completely miss the way Gojo groans and his hips stutter as he comes, emptying himself inside of you and filling you up just like he promised he would.

You slowly start to come back to the present when you feel Gojo’s softening cock slipping out of you and your eyes slowly open to see how his gaze is trained on the mess he’s left behind. Absently, you lament not having put down a towel.

Despite how your hands are tingling, you lift them up and hook them underneath the backs of your thighs and pull them towards you, opening yourself wider for his enjoyment. When he looks up at you, it’s with actual heart eyes.

“You’re perfect, you know that?” he laughs before looking back down at your cunt and the trail of cum that’s now beginning to leak out of it.

He’s quick to scoop up the gobs of white that drop down onto the sheets with two fingers and shove them back inside your walls, making you sharply inhale and clench down at the stimulation. You suddenly see him perk up and you know that something just occurred to him — something that you’re probably not going to like.

“Hold on,” he says as he pats the side of your thigh with a grin. “Keep holding ’em open, okay?”

“Satoru…” you croon pathetically as he leaves you to reach over to the bedside table and grab his phone. When you see him fumbling with it, you pout. “Satoru! I don’t want a picture of this…”

Your actions contradict your whining because even as you protest, you hold your legs open wider.

“Come on, what else am I supposed to get off to when I’m away on a mission?” he asks as he points the camera of his phone directly at your pussy and begins to take a series of pictures in rapid succession. Your face warms as you hear the loud sound of the shutter, audible evidence that this moment will now live forever in the cloud.

“I don’t know,” you grumble as you continue to hold yourself open for him. “Probably the hundreds of other pictures and videos you have saved on your phone.”

He merely chuckles and you bite down on your bottom lip to keep yourself from asking him to send you some of them. You can just steal his phone and do it yourself when he’s not paying attention.

But then you hear your phone beginning to buzz incessantly on the nightstand and know that he’s already sending them to you. You scowl up at him — knowing some of the effect is probably lost considering your submissive pose — and he merely tosses you a playful wink.

He discards his phone off to the side before he leans down over you and gives your pouting lips an affectionate kiss. You release your legs and they flop down uselessly onto the bed. Gojo holds up your hips and removes the pillows beneath you before carefully lowering you down until you’re laying flat. You raise your arms high above your head and stretch, relishing the way your spine loudly pops.

You sigh contentedly as he drops down beside you, sliding his arm underneath your neck and pulling you into his side. His skin is slick and sweaty against yours and you’re overcome with the sudden urge to lick his chest but know that doing so will lead to something that you don’t have the energy for. Instead, you close your eyes and enjoy the intimacy as your heartbeat and breathing begin to calm.

But then a thought begins to creep into your mind and your eyelids flutter open to look at him. His own eyes are closed and you wonder if he’s drifting off to sleep.

“Our kinks don’t say anything about us, right?” you ask, your eyebrows knitted together thoughtfully.

“No, why would they?” he replies dismissively without even opening his eyes and you let out a small sigh of relief.

“Okay, good. Just checking,” you yawn but then you see one of Gojo’s eyes peek open and the corner of his lips start to inch upwards and whatever exhaustion you’re feeling is quickly replaced with trepidation.

“So, you can squirt?”

There’s plenty of mischief to be found in those four words and you roll your eyes and turn your back to him.

“Yes, I can squirt,” you sigh wearily and you can feel him shifting behind you.

“We’ve been together for how long and you’re just letting me find out now?” He sounds wounded and you scoff at his dramatics.

“It’s not my fault it took you this long to make it happen,” you tell him. “You know, my last boyfriend figured out how to make me do it after only a couple of months.”

He gasps like you’ve slapped him across the face and you’re almost disappointed that with your back to him, you’re unable to see the look on his face — especially when the next words leave your smirking lips.

“Guess the great Gojo Satoru isn’t great at everything.”

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

[tomione thing] Thanks for the recs! I actually was looking forward to the rant, I like how you break things apart so they make sense in a very unique way.( I don't have any strong feelings to the pairing if that was your concern, I just think the stories about them have the potential to be fantastic because I enjoy intelligent characters going through life and solving problems and, usually, in fanfiction there's focus on only one smart character.

So, you people are just poking me with sticks to see what ridiculous opinions spew out then. I’m onto your game.

With that said, let’s get to answering then, and know that you bring this upon yourself.

I loathe Tomione. I put up with it, sometimes, because I will read almost any fic featuring Tom Riddle as a main character. (Want the Carnivorous Muffin to read your fic? Tom Riddle as a main character. Even if I disagree with 110% of your premise I will probably still read your story.)

However, it’s extremely telling that my recs the other day were hilariously small, and one was actually Hermione/Loki. The Tomione exists, I just hate it.

This is for two main reasons. First, I just don’t believe the ship would ever work under any circumstances and the pair are naturally doomed to loathe one another. Second, fanfiction has a collection of tropes associated with Tomione that are in unbearable (likely caused unconsciously by the first, Tomione doesn’t really work, so we do terrible things to make it work). 

Tomione Doesn’t Work: Change My Mind

So, remember we’re living in Muffin-land for this. I’ve explained some of my headcanons regarding these characters, and I’ll offer brief explanation for why I think what I do here, but I’m not going to expand on it too much.

Tomione has appeal under the premise that either you or someone else previously mentioned: they’re both so smart, of course they belong together.

The trouble, Hermione’s not nearly as smart as she thinks she is. What we see of Hermione’s cleverness boils down to having a very good work ethic and reading a lot of books. She tends to outsmart Ron and Harry because she actually puts in the work to do her homework and, my god, read her text books. Also, as I’ve covered before, Harry’s an idiot, so that’s a low bar.

Because Hogwarts can be passed by the likes of Crabbe and Goyle, and the curriculum seems to boil down to “pronounce this fake Latin correctly, ooh look, a spell”, actually reading her books not only gets Hermione by but skyrockets her ahead of her peers. Who, apparently, have no ear at all and don’t understand the swishy motions are important and probably never bothered to read their books.

This isn’t to say she’s stupid, she’s by far one of the more intelligent characters in the series, but it says a lot of not so good things about Hogwarts that Hermione is the “brightest witch of her generation”. In my mind she has never compared to characters like Tom Riddle, Lily Evans, Severus Snape, or Albus Dumbledore.

Hermione never questions how magic exists, why wands work, or why pronunciation is so weirdly important and why we’re using spells that are gibberish Latin instead of English or simply Latin. She never takes that step outside the box I would expect a truly intelligent person to take.

An example, Hermione completely throws out the entire discipline of divination. This is part because she believes it’s stupid, but she also only spends about two seconds thinking about it, and she doesn’t appear to be any good at it. If Hermione’s not good at it then it must be a stupid subject for stupid people.

Now, that alone doesn’t doom her, but it does put a huge chink in the major appeal of Tomione: they’re both just so brilliant that they’d be great together.

What dooms them is that Hermione both a) thinks she is as brilliant as all these other people and b) has this pervasive need to be the smartest person in any room she walks into. Hermione comes across Tom Riddle in the past or just chills with Voldemort in the future, she will inevitably try to show him up. This isn’t just to assure us that good is better than evil, but because she can’t help herself, because being the smartest is how she defines herself.

As a result, especially if we’re in the time travel/school setting, she would inevitably get in competition with him to prove she’s so much better/smarter than he is. It would undoubtedly be on her terms, probably revolving around school work, and she’d throw a fit when Tom wins because he understands the value in being concise where Hermione would quite easily write a hundred page Potions’ essay (that had a five page limit) with the subtext “PRAISE ME” written on every page.

I can’t imagine Tom Riddle would find this anything but completely obnoxious and a waste of his time.

Now, part of this goes into headcanon land, but I have always imagined, 100%, that Tom Riddle in Hogwarts was treated like a muggleborn, that he didn’t find out his ancestry until at least part of the way through, and he never confessed to being the Heir of Slytherin. I can back this up, but that’s another story for another day, I’ll just say that no matter what Dumbledore says any other backdrop makes no damn sense.

So, Tom has clawed the respect of his peers into reality with bleeding hands, he came from nothing in a way that even the ‘good’ purebloods wouldn’t have sympathy for. Even the muggleborns I imagine thought they were better than him. Tom is an impoverished orphan, so poor he has to stay at Hogwarts over the holidays, he was not having a fun time at school.

Tom has ambitions, is mired in hatred, and is not really all that wrapped up in Hogwarts except to get him where he wants to go.

Now, imagine Hermione suddenly shows up in front of this Tom. Suddenly he’s being challenged to essay competitions, she probably leaves cryptic remarks all the time about how evil he is and how amazing she is because she’s not evil and smarter than he is, and if he thinks he’s smarter than her then he better find time to prove it.

It’s like talking to a Dumbledore he can never escape from.

Tom doesn’t have time for this bullshit.

Tomione not only insists that he does but that he lives for this bullshit. Forget Voldemort, Hermione making weird comments about how Tom has a mutilated soul, or that Dumbledore is so much cooler than he is, is where it’s at. 

As for Hermione, ultimately, I don’t think she’d ever really be attracted to Tom Riddle because he’s too much competition. The guys we’ve seen Hermione with are all safely much dumber than she is, Hermione likes being in relationships with men she feels in some way better than. Tom Riddle is not that guy. 

Add on top of this that Hermione’s righteousness would never allow her to even think about dating someone like Tom and we get her, at best, trying for the sake of destroying him (if she seduces Tom then she destroys Voldemort!) but ultimately failing.

Because the thing is, circling back to where we started, there are different kinds of intelligence, different levels of intelligence, and intelligence alone isn’t a reason to get along. Smart people might gravitate towards smart people, but they still have to have compatible personalities. Reading books isn’t magical glue that can bind people together.

No matter what way I look at it, Hermione and Tom would absolutely loathe one another in every capacity. 

Hermione ends up back in time accidentally and goes to Tom with Hogwarts: utter loathing.

Hermione ends up back in time on purpose and tries to save Tom’s troubled soul or else murder the shit out of him: utter loathing with an extra dash of “what the fuck?!” on Tom’s end.

Hermione ends up back in time after Hogwarts when Tom’s a store clerk: utter loathing (Hermione walks into Tom’s shop to tell him how cool and interesting she is to enter into the typical Tomione mind games, all Tom wants is commission.)

Hermione enters into deals with devils with the horcruxes: utter loathing complete with Tom’s triumphant/Nelson laugh when he inevitably betrays her to get his own body.

A young Tom Riddle somehow winds up in the future and is forced to attend Hogwarts because Dumbledore does what he wants: utter loathing (Tom has to sit there and enjoy Harry and especially Hermione telling him how evil he is and how Hermione’s so much smarter than him because she’s muggleborn and reads books.)

Lord Voldemort takes Hermione hostage during the horcrux hunt: utter loathing (though this would be sadly less irritating to Tom than the others, I imagine, if only because Hermione would probably be more terrified and less righteous. But she’d hate him with the fire of a thousand suns and inevitably pull a horrific revenge scheme on either him or his Death Eaters. No one crosses Hermione. No one.)

You name it, I think it’s going to end with the pair hurling chairs at each other and just being completely and utterly uninterested in every capacity. 

Now, onto how Tomione is typically written, which just makes it so much worse.

Tomione Fics Breed Awful: Change My Mind

Tomione, to me, is born from a few things. It’s born from the author’s desire to have an intelligent, female, borderline SI lead and to shove her together with another edgy smart person with some degree of a bad boy persona.

In this way Tomione fics are very similar to Snape/Hermione fics, are similar to Lokane from Thor/Avengers, are similar to Zutara back in the earlier seasons of Avatar the Last Airbender, etc. 

As a result the fics almost invariably spiral into: “Hermione is so smart, she’s so much smarter than everyone else, she impresses Tom because she is so smart. Tom is so smart but so evil, he sexy growls at her, and confesses how much he hates love every other chapter.” 

Only, as I noted above, while there are many interpretations of Tom’s character (and mine certainly doesn’t agree with the vast majority) I can’t help but think every single version would hate her.

To make him not hate her the author will often turn him into one of two Tom Riddles: Emotionally Deficient Robot Tom or Growling Sexy Sociopath Tom. Emotionally Deficient Robot Tom will often have paragraph long tangents to remind us he doesn’t compute your human emotions, “Beep boop” but despite this Hermione’s out of control hair makes him feel urges “bloop bloop”. Growling sexy sociopath Tom usually goes on a rant about how love is beneath him, backs Hermione into broom closets, and growls as he sexily makes out with her in a non-romantic manner because “ew love”. 

In other words, Tom is made an unbelievably flat character. He becomes a base archetype of sexy villain character. He never really gets redeemed, even if the story insists he does, he usually doesn’t have a reason for the way he is (”um, love potions!” the author often cries), and he and Hermione always think they’re much more important than they are.

The story rarely, if ever, goes anywhere because the entire point of the story is mind games between two sixteen-year-olds who think they’re smarter than everyone else. So we get a lot of chapters of Hermione and Tom running around, being very clever to each other, but doing nothing.

Sometimes authors do deviate from this, we will have an actual plot where we’re not just in Hogwarts again or it’s not just centering on ridiculous mind games. However, even then, Tom is usually is some variant of a very flat cartoon villain while Hermione is... Well, one would think the way she’s described that she’s the smartest, best, most beautiful, most brilliant thing to ever grace this earth.

TL;DR

Tomione is not my jam.

[starship-squidlet]

Modern Stargate SG-1 Headcanons:

To go along with this post

Daniel:

Was always a nerd. Definitely had a “Greek mythology” phase growing up and never technically grew out of it, he just shifted a little more towards Egyptian mythology as he got older.

He felt closer to his parents when he was studying Egyptian mythology, and wound up turning it into a whole career by becoming an Egyptologist like they had been.

Guilty pleasure: Ancient Aliens.

Seriously, when he found out about the stargate and aliens and all of that his mind was absolutely blown. Even though he’d posited Ancient Aliens-esque theories himself, there was always a little part of him that went “there’s absolutely no way this is real and I might actually be a little crazy”. He did a little happy cry after going to Abydos and dealing with Ra and everything not just because all of that was over and they had won, but because he really was right and not crazy and all these theories he’d always wanted to believe but couldn’t quite bring himself to 100% believe really were true.

Aromantic/Asexual

But he still married Sha’re—he didn’t really have a choice.

Even after they got everything sorted out with Ra, and he chose to stay on the planet when Jack and the others left, he didn’t leave her. Initially, this was because he didn’t want her to be punished for not “pleasing” him or something like that (he had no idea how Kasuf and the other elders would react if he tried to send her away and didn’t want to risk her getting in trouble), but he did come to genuinely care for her. Once Kasuf and Skaara understood this about him, they were just as accepting of his identity as Sha’re was and became his family.

(Kasuf probably never truly understood what Daniel was trying to tell him about romantic/sexual attraction but he just smiled and nodded and accepted this weird kid anyways. All that mattered to him was that Sha’re was happy.)

When Sha’re was taken by Apophis, Daniel still joined SG-1 to get her back. He became almost immediate friends with Sam, who he always felt understood him on a level almost no-one else ever had, except for possibly Sha’re. Jack and Teal’c were friends on a different level, but they were no less close.

Has a lot of strong opinions on Google translate.

Tutors ESL students online (when he’s on Earth).

The only time his Duolingo streak was broken was when he ascended for a year.

Sam:

Sam Carter grew up a tomboy. While the other girls were all having tea parties and playing with dolls, she was building Lego spaceships with her brother and tying parachutes to plastic army men (and other toys) and throwing off the upstairs back porch of their house to see what would work.

In high school, she entered robotics tournaments and anything else she could get into.

She played softball and field hockey and was good at basketball even though she never joined the team. She took karate and tae kwon do and jui jutsu classes on the weekends. By the end of high school, she was teaching self defense classes at like the local Y or something.

She was also on the chess club in high school.

Got all As in math and science classes, but was more of a B student in any other subject—still above average, but she didn’t excell quite as much in the humanities.

Got into every college she applied to and got good scholarships to most of them, but decided to go to the Air Force Academy instead at the last minute without explanation to anyone.

No-one was more shocked by this move than Jacob, who had never expected her to follow in his footsteps. When pressed for answers by the school counselor, she said she felt it was her best chance to go to the moon someday.

In the academy, she excelled not only in her classes but in every physical test. She beat guys twice her size in hand-to-hand combat, had perfect aim on the gun range, and continued to get near perfect scores in her math and science classes in particular.

When Jacob expressed his pride in her accomplishments, it proved to be a mistake. She got into a slightly questionable relationship with one of the lowest-ranked guys in her year, who was always inches away from a dishonorable discharge. Her grades and performance slipped.

Some people suspected abuse when she would show up to classes with a black eye or split lip, but any suggestion of this to her would earn them the most wicked glare and a possible punch to the gut if no officers were around.

When Sam and her boyfriend got engaged, Jacob came to the school personally to try to talk her out of marrying him. He’d heard enough about the guy from his friends at the academy to feel the need to intervene, but this proved to be the worst possible choice. That weekend, Sam and her fiance ran off to elope. At the last second, she snapped to her senses and broke it off. Afterwards, she always denied that he had been the source of her bruises, but since those stopped after they broke up, not many people believed her.

She was one of the first people pulled for the stargate project and designed the majority of the dialing system herself. Once it was finished, she left the program to work on her doctorate.

When Apophis’s soldiers came through the gate and the stargate program was reopened, newly-doctorized Sam leapt at the chance to go to Abydos with Jack and his team. She never expected it to last beyond that one mission, but was certainly not complaining when they found the cartouche with more gate addresses!

She’s a very private person, and only discloses her feelings with those she trusts the most deeply. Daniel is usually the first to find out about stuff though—and not just romantic stuff; she also confides in him about things that she’s stressed or worried about, and he’s always the first or one of the first to hear her good news.

Besides Daniel, her closest friend is Janet Frasier. They went through basic training/the air force academy together, and reunited upon joining the stargate program. They started dating not long after joining the program, although they kept their relationship fairly quiet.

They went on a break after Janet adopted Cassie, and never quite found their way back to each other as partners, although they remained close friends. Never telling Janet how she really felt became Sam’s greatest regret after Janet died, and she devoted herself to Cassie to assuage her guilt over that.

Fierce feminist and a massive supporter of women in STEM and similar movements.

Disaster bisexual.

Jack

Jack and Sarah married fairly young and had Charlie not long after. He wasn’t exactly planned, but they loved him more than anything, and when he died it absolutely tore the two of them apart.

Jack went from a fairly happy-go-lucky, glass-half-full, ray of actual sunshine to a sarcastic, pessimistic, ball of anxiety literally overnight.

He was severely depressed after Charlie’s death, to the point where he actually had to be hospitalized.

When he was released, he moved back in with Sarah, even though they had been separated before his hospitalization. It wasn’t long after his release that he was pulled for the first mission to Abydos with Daniel.

After that mission, his nightmares changed. After Charlie’s death, they had all been about watching his son die, but after Abydos the nightmares now forced him to relive the deaths of his men, Daniel, and the boys who were killed fighting Ra. He and Sarah got divorced, and he went into early retirement.

To everyone’s shock, retirement turned out to be the best possible thing for Jack.

While he was still clearly depressed, he improved in leaps and bounds. He put a lot of energy into himself and his mental state, and, a year later when General Hammond called him back to Cheyenne Mountain, he was almost unrecognizable as a different person.

Going back to Abydos and seeing Daniel, Sha’re, and Skaara and his boys living and thriving was also really good for him. After Skaara and Sha’re were taken, he went into another spiral, but forced himself out of it by telling himself that he had to get them back. Was this healthy? Probably not. Did he care. Definitely not.

He didn’t really want to rejoin the air force and the stargate program, but did it more to watch over Daniel and to rescue Skaara than anything else.

He did come to truly love it, though, and even though the circumstances that brought him back were horrible he was still grateful to be part of SG-1.

Teal’c

Most of the Goa’uld system lords saw their female Jaffa as little more than breeding partners to the males, to create more Jaffa soldiers to serve their “gods”, and incubators for the juvenile symbiotes that all Jaffa carried, and Apophis was no exception.

Teal’c was fairly young when her father died, executed by Cronus for failing him in battle. She had already been in training with her father and Bra’tac—female Jaffa were expected to know how to fight, even if they were never called upon to serve their overlords in this way—determined to break out of the traditional path expected of her as a woman. Her father’s death lit a new fire within her, however, and she attacked her training with a new fierceness that unnerved even Bra’tac a little. She vowed to someday become the first prime of Apophis, Cronus’s greatest enemy, so she would one day have the pleasure of killing the god that ordered her father’s death.

The only woman in Apophis’s ranks, she literally clawed her way to the top of his Jaffa.

The other warriors feared her and whispered horrible stories of her victories in battle behind her back.

These were greatly exaggerated, of course, but Teal’c did nothing to discourage them. She wanted the most fearsome reputation she could get.

She gained a reputation for bloodthirstiness, fierceness in battle, and an almost animalistic nature when she fought. This caught Apophis’s attention, and she earned his favor.

Drey’auc was a childhood friend, and one of the only people Teal’c ever trusted enough to show her softer side to.

When Drey’auc’s husband was killed in battle, Teal’c took her and her newborn son Rya’c under her protection.

Deep down (largely thanks to Bra’tac and her father) Teal’c never truly believed that the Goa’uld were actually gods. She wanted to become Apophis’s first prime more for the power and respect that came with the position, and in hopes of having the chance to kill Cronus, than to actually serve him.

There were a lot of things that happened over her years in service to Apophis, both before and after becoming first prime, that really cemented her belief that the “gods” she had been raised to believe in were false, but she didn’t dare voice this to anyone but Bra’tac—she never even tonld Drey’auc, beyond a few vague hints.

When she met Jack, Sam, and Daniel and heard Jack promise to save the other prisoners, she saw it as her best choice to finally rise up against the oppression of the Goa’uld and jumped at the chance to help the humans.

On Earth, she realized that the humans there would trust her and respect her without the bloodthirstiness she’d been forced to show to the other Jaffa, and slowly began to relax slightly.

Seeing the respect shown to Sam, Janet, and other women on the base was basically revolutionary to her.

Slowly, she began to relax and open up to her new friends.

She sees herself as a protecter to her team in particular, and even to the SGC as a whole. Daniel, Sam, Jack, and Janet specifically are the people she feels the most protective over.

As time goes on, she slowly accepts SG-1 as a newfound family. As far as she’s concerned, the three of them are the siblings she never had, and she would do anything to protect them.

Drey’auc’s death rocked her to the core and led to a lot of questioning.

She almost left the SGC to take care of Rya’c, but it was actually Bra’tac who convinced her to stay, telling her that the Tau’ri were their best chance to defeat the Goa’uld once and for all and promising to take care of Rya’c in her name.

[n6or]

the colours of our youth | raihan nsfw

Rating: General

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/M

Fandom: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions

Relationships: Kibana | Raihan/Reader

Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Breeding Kink, Rough Sex, Childhood Friends, Comfort, Mild Hurt/Comfort

Words: 4042

READ HERE ON AO3!

From an early age you had both been rather infatuated with one another, your parents cooing constantly over how sweet it was that you always held Raihan's hand or that he always chased away the birds you were so frightful of. From an early age, Raihan had always been keenly aware of his position in your life, knowing from the sweet age of five that he was destined to protect you from anything and everything;

One day, we'll get married! Is what he told you, grinning wide and exposing his little fang. You remember that day well, even know; many things you've forgotten with age, but that day wasn't one of them. We'll get married and we're gonna live happily ever after like those people in all those stories you read to me!

The days were so bright back then, coloured with warm saturations of yellow and orange, not a hint of anxiety or worry about—at least none that either of you were aware of. As childhood best friends, you were inseparable, but as the years began collapsing upon one another and age ripened the pair of you, things became complicated.

The promise of marriage seemed to blur into the stress of social cliques and the harsh realities and brutalities that was high school.

At first, every day was spent with one another: eating lunch, playing on the field, laying under an old oak tree up the back of campus… but slowly, as you both met new people, the gap between you both began growing wider and wider until the only time you ever saw each other was the mandatory gym classes on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

You hated gym more than anything. It was one class you wished you could never show up to, but of course that idea deflated on its own when the teachers realised your recurring "nausea" was just a feeble attempt of evading the judgemental gazes of hormonal teenage boys.

By the age of fifteen, most girls in your grade had presented; a vast array of secondary genders littered your classes nowadays: alphas, omegas, betas, but of course you were yet to present. You didn't mind, though. Watching the stress of your classmates over the years (as you entered senior classes) trying to juggle their studies with their heats and ruts made you more than grateful that you hadn't presented yet.

Raihan presented proudly at the ripe age of sixteen, texting you (for the first time in weeks) about the update. Of course he presented as an alpha. At sixteen with the height of six foot, you wouldn't expect anything else. You sent him back a congratulatory text followed by a little kaomoji that he then teased you for.

You fell asleep with a smile that night, and Raihan fell asleep laughing after realising you had fallen asleep mid-conversation, but hey… slowly, the bridge between you both began to shift; slowly, the distance between you both was reducing.

It was in the eleventh grade when you realised something wasn't right.

Four years later and you still hated the gym, but were more willing to participate. Four years later and you still shared the same gym class as Raihan.

Over the years you have made two close friends that have stuck by your side through the absence of Raihan; Nessa and Sonia. Nessa presented as an Alpha female, and Sonia - much like you - was yet to present. Nonetheless, the three of you got along like a house on fire, having a group chat and weekly sleepovers, too.

As the three of you mozey into the gym, you feel uncomfortable. You halt momentarily, glancing around the gym when you notice a familiar group of notorious alpha's in the back corner, undressing you with their eyes. Over the year you had failed to notice the change in your pubescent body, but the other boys in your class hadn't. Time and time again your name was whispered amongst certain alphas, and time and time again a certain someone had threatened to shut them up if they didn't stop.

"Heya short-cake," You hear a familiar voice call, strong arms tugging you back by your waist. Raihan curls into your back, blowing a raspberry on your cheek.

You squeal, earning a laugh from all three of your friends as you turn around and shove the alpha off. You pout up at your best friend who merely grins a lazy grin, shrugging.

"Oopsy~ oh, by the way," He's shrugging his jacket off as he speaks, carefully draping it over your shoulders. "Don't worry about those dickwads. They'd fuck a piece of salami if they got the chance."

"Did you just compare me to salami?"

Raihan smirks. "Nah. You're waaaay spicier~"  

The punch to his gut makes him laugh louder as he tries to zip up the jacket. You miss the way he looks at you when you look away; cheeks red and puffed, arms folded over your chest, his jacket falling mid-way down your thighs; it acts almost like a dress considering your height differences.  

The lesson rolls past slowly and by the end of your mock volleyball match you had tied Raihan's jacket around your waist. Volleyball is fun; you mainly act as the libero (considering your stature), but you enjoy it, nonetheless—especially when you were on the opposing team to Nessa. You're both so competitive it fires everybody else up.

As the students file out of the gym, you offer your hand in packing up the nets and cones that decorate the court. You were just bending over to retrieve the last cone when you felt a sharp smack against your rear.

With a sharp yelp, you spin around and stumble back slightly at alpha that stands before you. Your breath hitches when he takes a step forward towards you, two sniggering alphas on the other side of the gym catching your eye.

"You've gotten real hot lately, pet." The alpha hums, continuing to back you up until your back meets the chill of the bricked wall. "What's with that? Y'still haven't presented yet? I can't smell nothin' comin' from ya but that stinkin' jacket." With a sharp tug, he rips the jacket from your waist.

"Oi!" You shout, shoving at his chest. "Give that back!" You grab his wrist in one hand whilst the other takes a fistful of the jacket. You notice the other two alphas beginning to approach and it's at a time like this that you can't help but wonder where the fuck the teacher's are.

"Don't speak to me like that, bitch!" He laughs venomously, realing his free hand back. Your eyes widen momentarily when you realise that he's about to hit you. Your body stiffens, and like a deer in headlights, you braces for impact.

Crack!

"Ugh, what the fuck?!"

You tremble in place. It all happened so fast. One moment the alpha was plunging his fist forward, and then suddenly he was spiraling to the ground, blood seeping from his nose.

"What the fuck is right. What the fuck did you just call her?" Raihan grabs the boy by the collar and yanks him back to his feet, shoving him away.

"R-Rai…" You call, cursing the shake in your voice. You hold the torn jacket in your hands, feeling something inside you tearing as well.

"Why do you fucking care? It's not like she's your mut y'fuckin—"

Another disgusting crunch of skin colliding with cartilage echoes the gym.

"Are you dumb? Are you seriously that thick?!"

Again, Raihan grabs the boy's collar, but suddenly his body stiffens, stopping him dead in his tracks.

You stare at the now tattered jacket in your hands and bite back your lower lip. You don't know when you started crying, but suddenly you can't stop. It's all a haze to you, in all honesty. You remember Raihan cupping your cheeks, large hands smoothing back your hair as he talks to you. You don't know where your mind is, or why Raihan suddenly sounds like Isabella from Animal Crossing, but it's not long before your eyes are fluttering back open. When had they fallen shut? Had you collapsed? Where were you?

A small groan erupts from you when you slowly revive from your unconsciousness, head feeling swollen and stuffed with tissue paper. You feel a squeeze to your hand and suddenly a familiar brown beauty comes into your line of sight, breathing out a sigh of relief and then your name once he sees you.

"What happened?" You mumble quietly. "Where am I? Are you—Oh, Rai," you frown, shaky hands tracing the cut across his eyebrow.

"You're alright, I'm alright," is the first thing he whispers. He runs his free hand through your hair, smiling, but it wasn't as bright as usual. "The doctors said you got too stressed and triggered a, uh.. erm, a heat."

You blink a few times, frowning. "Heat? But that can't be possible? I haven't… I'm not a…"

"The doctors explained that, basically, the stress triggered the presentation and, uh, kinda… Y'know i'm not good at explaining," he whines. He notices the perplexed expression that colours your face and bites his lip. "I'm really sorry…"

"Huh?"

You catch his gaze, noticing the sadness that swims in the cyan circles.

"I acted like a real meathead and basically put you here because I stressed you out…" His gaze falls as he plays with your fingers. You notice the way he frowns and glares and then sighs. "I just… seeing the way he was with you… i seriously—i was seriously gonna kill him. I don't know what's wrong with me… I know you can look after yourself, but seeing those pricks… and the way they look at you like you're some sort of—like you're a piece of meat!" Raihan drops his head on your bed. "I'm so sorry…"

Your heart twists in your chest at the sight, not liking how sad Raihan looks. You reach up, ignoring the dizziness that plagues you, and run your fingers through his hair.

"You saved me," you whisper almost laboriously. Heat travels from your face down your neck, red splotching your skin like a fever, sweat lining your brow. "I'm glad you gave that shithead what he deserves, because I tried to and…" You notice how Raihan's shoulders stiffen again, just like how they did in the gym. "Rai? Are… you okay?"

The tips of his ears are red. You're sure of it. Is he coming down with a fever? What if you weren't actually an Omega and this was just some really bad flu?

"...good."

You frown. "Huh?"

Raihan clears his throat. "Said you smell good."

You continue to lazily play with his hair, frowning. Why wouldn't he look at you? Something inside you aches strangely; you don't know what it is, but it has made you want to cry. You need Raihan. You don't know how you need him, but you need him.

"Rai…" Your voice is tiny when it leaves your lips, soft and needy, you feel Raihan shiver beneath your fingertips. "Can… I have a hug? I dunno what's goin' on and I'm sorry to ask because I know it's probably inappropriate and-"

Your rambling is cut off once the alpha slides in under the covers beside you. Strong arms encircle your waist, holding your heated body flush against your own. A wave of relief washes over you once your nose naturally finds its way up into the crook of Raihan's neck, nestling against the scent gland.

He holds you so tight. You feel so safe, so secure, like you're being bathed in both his scent and security. He smells so warm and tender, like crackling wood during a winter fire, comforting and caressing your senses beautifully.  

He whispers your name, lips resting against the shell of your ear. "I'll stay with you, okay? I won't hurt you. I promise. You won't be alone through this…"

And alone you weren't. With the permission of your parents, Raihan was allowed to stay as a comfort for you during your very first and (very torturous) heat. The nights were spent clinging desperately to your best friend, whimpering softly into his ear, enjoying the way he squeezed your hips, the way he responded to your quiet calls with a low grumble of his own.

You didn't have sex that night, but you did share a tender part of your life together. Upon your quiet plead, Raihan's lips had found yours and satiated the desire that coursed through your veins. The kiss was slow and passionate and everything you could ever had imagined it to be. His lips were slow and supple and soft and even in your hazy state you knew they were addictive.

Raihan ended up shedding a few layers and coaxing you into his chest, surrounding you with his clothes in an attempt to appease your agony. It was a long and painful three days, but Raihan never left your side (unless it was to get you food or drink, of course).

During those three days, you became his girlfriend.

And four years later, he proposed.

Now it's winter. You're twenty one and currently dozing in the arms of your lover. Fingertips gingerly map his chocolate chest, tracing over every crease and every crevice of his muscles. He was sleeping now, lightly, of course, but the first two rounds had seemed to tire him out. There's a deep ache in your hips, but you don't mind. You'd take the pain any day if it meant caring for your alpha like this.

Your hands smooth back his tousled hair, sweat greasing the darker strands. You laugh to yourself quietly, leaning up to kiss along his hot cheek. Stirring, Raihan grumbles tiredly, rolling over so he pushes you flat onto your back and nuzzles his face into the swells of your breasts.

"Tch," you mutter as he lays atop your tinier frame. "So needy. What a hopeless alpha."

"Mmm…"

His lips drag against your right breast, the caress of his rougher lips have your back arching up off the mattress. You take a fistful of his hair, tugging it, enjoying the low growl that emits from your lover. One hand, large and tender, runs up your naked thigh, gripping the softness.

A sweet gush of slick wets your folds as his tongue rolls against your erected nipple. The way he sucks at you makes your eyes roll shut, a loud gasp being torn from you once the pad of his thumb presses against your twitching clit. Your hips press down against him when he begins drawing figure eights against your core, a familiar heat igniting in your belly.

"Rai…" You sigh, delighted.

The alpha slowly rolls you onto your stomach and props your hips up.

"Touch yourself," he all but grunts as he pulls away. You look over your shoulder at him, eyes slightly wider now.

"W-What?" The heat recedes to your now burning ears.

Raihan leans back on his knees, dick standing high and proud against his abdomen. A lazy smirk appears as he takes a fistful of your ass, digging his well-kept nails into the supple sphere.

"Touch yourself," he growls again. "And then i'll give you my cock."

A needy whine leaves you at the rougher treatment, the pleasure going straight to your core. Your head drops back onto the pillow, hot cheek pressed to the softness as you sheepishly reach between your thighs.

"Rai…" You find yourself whimpering as your fingers gingerly trace at the swelling of your clit. Your hips tremble, breath stuttering in your chest. You shyly watch over your shoulder, noticing just how hard those cyan orbs watch your fingers. It's always flattering just how enamoured Raihan is with you; even like this you're the centre of his attention.

You bite your lip, watching the tall man pant from behind you as your fingers explore the depths of your pleasure. You begin rocking your hips, fingers slowly inching back to sink into your sopping pussy. That's when you hear the low groan of your alpha. He really seems to be getting off on watching you play with yourself.

"Look, Alpha," you mumble, removing your fingers from your stretched hole; a line of slick joins your fingertips to your entrance. "So wet… All for you…"

You can tell he's barely holding onto his sanity; but truth be told, so are you. Over the years you've learned to quiet the voice of your biology, but sometimes you can't help to succumb to your inner omega and beg to be fucked until you're crying.

You reach behind with your free hand and pull one cheek apart, exposing your puckered rim. Your fingertips teasingly circle your upper hole, eyes focused on the way Raihan's widen. That seems to be the last straw for the alpha.

In a flurry of movements he has your wrists bound tightly above your head and tied to the headboard, his mouth absolutely ravishing your dripping sex. You're a writhing wreck once his tongue pries inside of you, relentlessly ravishing the sweet slick that pours from your throbbing entrance. You throw your head back, gasping loudly when his tongue licks at your ass, teasing the puckered rim with a smirk.

"G-Gah! N-No, Rai—Rai that's—oh fuck." You tighten your grip on the binds around your wrists, mewling loudly when his tongue pries your ass open. Your hips tremble. "S-So dirty… Y-You're so- ha~ so gross…"

A dark chuckle reverberates off each wall of the room. The wet appendage pushes deep inside you, curling and flicking as his teeth nibble at the sensitive muscles.

"You say it's gross, tell me to stop," he chuckles as he pulls back. He shuffles behind you, hands trapping your squirming hips that try to find some sort of friction. Slowly, with one hand on his cock, he drags the swollen head up along your folds. "But look how wet my precious little Omega is~ You really don't want it, baby? You really don't want me to fuck you again? Fill you with my pups and breed you like the beautiful little whore you are~?"

Your head has fallen back onto the pillow, tears now streaking your hot cheeks. "Please…" You choke out, pitifully.

Raihan lolls his head to the side, smirking down at you. "Look at me," His voice is so low when he speaks, the tinge of Alpha that colours his words awakening something inside of you. "Look at me when you beg for my dick."  

And you obey instantaneously. Looking over at him, your expression is wrecked; eyes teary, face wet, lips bleeding from how hard you had bit them.

"Please, Alpha. Please fuck me. Please fill me with all you have. I want to feel you inside of me-"

Your words die in your throat when the thick, girthy cock plunges deep inside you with one swift thrust. It's so sudden that all that leaves you is a strangled cry. Considering the past two rounds you have gone through today, your body accommodates the intrusion gladly, your self-lubricated walls hugging his cock snuggly.

"Fuck, baby…" he growls, head dropping onto your shoulder. "Even now, your body keeps suckin' me in. You really are my nasty little whore, huh?"

"Yes!" You choke, wriggling your hips. "Yes, yes, please don't stop."

And he doesn't. It's not long before a nice pace is set up, hips retracting before pushing deep inside you until your filled to the hilt with cock. Raihan's head falls back as he relishes in the warmth your pussy provides, sighing with nothing but absolute bliss.

"You feel so good on my dick like this. You're so small, but you take it so good," Raihan gives a harder thrust that makes you yelp before he's pushing you onto your side and opening your legs. He smirks when your eyes meet, one hand going back to caress the sensitive bundle of nerves beneath your folds once more. Your body jolts and, as Raihan picks up the pace, soon your voice becomes louder, moans toppling effortlessly from your lips. "I wanna watch you cum on my dick, baby. Be a good girl, yeah? Let alpha make you feel real fucking nice."

The first orgasm has you crying out his name loudly. Your body rocks through the violent convulsions that follow suit, body tingling and hips twitching to rock back and forth. Raihan is absolutely mesmerised by the way your body struggles; he always enjoys watching you struggle the most. He enjoys watching your face flush and your back arch and your muscles tighten as you ride out the pleasure that waltzes with you.

"Rai-- Rai, fuck!"

You try to pull away when his hand quickens against your front, rubbing you without mercy through your first orgasm. Truth be told, you love this treatment; deep down you love when Raihan uses you like this, you love when he fucks you like he's going to break you.

"No one can make you come undone like this," he sneers, lightly slapping your thigh before moving his hand. Reaching up, still entirely sheathed inside of you, he rips the binds from your wrists, carelessly discarding the now shredded rope to the bedroom floor. "Now, how badly do you want my knot, Princess~?"

"Please-" You squeak instantaneously, eliciting a loud bark of laughter from your fiance. You flush. "P-Please."

Leaning over your smaller frame, Raihan presses a chaste kiss to your lips before pushing you entirely onto your back. He helps you wrap your legs around his waist, reeling his hips back before plunging them forward. The rhythm he sets up is slow at first, his lips moving knowingly against yours. Again, you're already panting, head becoming gradually foggy.

The scene plays through, the echo of sloppy kisses and obscenity of skin slapping against skin. Your souls slowly become one as your bodies press flush against one another.

Raihan gradually loses himself, holding your hips tighter, digging his nails into your skin and decorating you with red crescent moons. His lips leave yours and eventually find your neck, growling as he sucks and bites a constellation of red down your expanse.

The pain makes it all the while better, and when Raihan angles your hips up so he can begin drilling his cock deeper, you find yourself coming undone yet again, totally unannounced. You cling desperately to your fiance, clawing at his back, leaving your own artwork behind. It's not long before Raihan follows suit, hips snapping harder along to a silent three-four rhythm. The expansion of his knot knocks the air from your lungs once he sheaths himself inside you. Your eyes roll back and your back arches back up off the mattress for the umpteenth time.

A loud, low growl leaves Raihan when you clench around his growing knot. Then, he's moaning shamelessly into your ear once his own coils of cum spill inside of you. He holds your hips tighter, biting into the scarred mark that adorns your neck.

The small yelp that leaves you results in Raihan lapping the skin with his tongue, collecting any spillage of blood that may so soil your neck.

"Such a good girl," he purrs into your ear, voice low and thick, dripping with an amalgamation of adoration and desire. "I love you so much. I seriously love you so much," His lips trail along your jaw and to yours, hands moving to hover either side of your face. He kisses you gently before awkwardly rolling you both over. The position shift makes you whimper, discontent with the movement of his knot. Considering you'll be locked together for a while, Raihan helps you lay on his chest, pulling the blankets up over your back. "I can't wait to marry you," he murmurs quietly, large hand caressing your lower back. He smiles when you look up, tired. "Seriously. I can't wait to marry you and start a family with you, (name)."

Your burning face hides away in Raihan's chest and you feel the rumble of laughter shake him.

It still blew your mind that one day you were going to marry this man.

Oh, how lovely fate had been to you during this lifetime.

[fairylightsandchai]

The Internship - Part 1

A/N: Hello! I know I usually don’t post fanfiction to this blog, but I really wanted to participate in @darkficsyouneveraskedfor​‘s Pre-Code Challenge! Just ignore this if you follow me and you’re not interested. 

Pairing: Dark!Professor!Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: >10K

Summary: You are a student in the former-Captain America’s American History class, and you soon notice that Professor Rogers has been paying more than a professional amount of attention to you. But when he approaches you with an internship opportunity that’s too good to be true, how can you say no? 

(A/N: This fic contains non-con elements, stalking, and manipulation, and in later parts it will inclue rape, breeding kink, and kidnapping. It is also inspired by The Wild Party, a film from 1929. I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think.) 

           You had always wanted to be a writer. When you were a little girl, you’d spent most of your time with your nose in a book and your head in the clouds, dreaming of the day when you would tell stories of your own, stories that connected with people all over the globe.

           And then the Battle of New York had happened.

           You had been in high school during the attack, a shy freshman who had only wanted to blend in and disappear amongst the rest of your classmates. You’d still had your dreams of being a bestselling author someday.

           But, like so many other things in your small, sheltered world, all of that changed the day the Chitauri invaded. You hadn’t been in the city at the time; you’d grown up in upstate New York, about an hour away from the busy metropolis, but it had still shaken your small town to its foundations. It was too close to home, too huge for you and your neighbors to comprehend.

           After it had happened, you spent less time dwelling on fiction and more time focused on the truth; the nonfiction isles of your school’s library became your second home, and you were always the first one in your family to read the Sunday paper. You followed current events almost obsessively, imagining one day having your name printed on the New York Post under a ground-breaking story that would define the rest of your career – the rest of your life.  

           You had not, however, counted on having one of the Avengers as your professors in college, and yet here you were, stood outside the history building of Columbia University with binder in hand, a syllabus and class schedule tucked inside of it.

You hadn’t realized that you would need to take classes on subjects other than writing – you’d known about the needed electives for your course, obviously, but most of them were somehow linked to writing, be it creatively or informatively. Your required history credit had surprised you, though, and your surprise only doubled as you’d scrolled through the available history courses on your student Blackboard account and found a name that stood out amongst the rest. American History (157) – Professor Steven Grant Rogers.

At first you’d chuckled at the coincidence and signed up for it without thinking, but after you’d been accepted into the course, after you’d read and studied its syllabus, you’d started researching your various professors only to find that Professor Steven Grant Rogers…was actually THE Steven Grant Rogers. As in, Captain America himself. As in, one of the people who had fought against the Chitauri and inspired you to seek out journalism.

           And now you were about to walk into his class.

           Letting out a deep sigh, you pushed a strand of your hair out of your eyes and adjusted your cardigan before pushing open the door of the classroom and stepping inside. Looking around, you only noticed a handful of other students, but then again you had arrived fifteen minutes early for class. Your eyes scanned each of their faces before finally meandering to the front of the classroom, immediately picking out the shape of your professor sitting at his desk.

           Even with him sitting behind his desk, you could tell that he was huge. His shoulders were broad, and the fabric of his light blue shirt strained against them as he hunched over, jotting something into a leather notebook. His hair was neat and trimmed, and he had grown out a beard since his retirement from the Avengers. It looked good on him, you mused, but in the middle of your thoughts he turned and looked at you, his piercing blue eyes looking directly into yours, and you froze where you stood.

           You saw his eyes widen for a split second while he took you in, but before you could register the shift in his expression he had put on an easy smile, giving you a small nod.

           “Welcome,” Professor Rogers spoke, his voice warm and genuine.

           You, for your part, answered with an incredibly smooth and well-thought-out response.

           “U-um…” you stammered, shifting on your feet. “Hello.”

           Feeling your cheeks heat up in embarrassment, you ducked your head and darted to the first row of desks and sank into one, willing your heart to stop its infernal pounding. As you silently cursed yourself for being so nervous, you opened your binder and pulled out the only two sheets of paper in it along with your spiral bound notebook before reaching into your backpack and rooting around for a pen.

           He’s just a person, you lectured yourself internally. A person who has saved the world on more than one occasion, but a person, nonetheless. He probably gets tired of people acting differently around him just because he’s-            “Do you need a copy of the syllabus?”

           The voice came from in front of you, and your head popped up to see Professor Rogers standing in front of your desk holding a stack of papers. He held one out to you, but you quickly smiled and picked your syllabus off of your desk.

           “Oh, no, thanks! I printed one off last night,” you explained. “But thank you.”

           His smile grew, and he walked back to his desk, setting the papers back down.

           “You’re prepared; I’m glad to hear it.”

           The minutes ticked by after that, a slow but steady line of students filing into the class as its start time grew nearer. You gauged your peers’ reactions curiously, observing as some hardly seemed to recognize your professor while a few others stopped to ask for a selfie with him. The first time that happened, your eyes had widened their bold question, but the former Avenger bared it gracefully, simply shaking his head and giving them a smile.

           “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to hold off on that till the end of class,” he’d say. “If you still want one after we’re all done then just stay behind for a few minutes.”

           Finally the clock read 10:30 and Professor Rogers made his way to the front of the desk, right in front of the empty, clean whiteboard. He took a few moments to look out over the full classroom, taking in all of the students before him. When his eyes landed on you, you swore that you saw him linger for a moment, a curious gleam resting in his eyes before he looked away and opened his mouth to speak.

           “Well, everyone, it’s time to get started,” he began. “As you probably know by now, my name is Steve Rogers, and this class is dedicated to American History from 1914 to 1939. I’d like to just say right off the bat that I’m happy to have all of you in my class, and I hope that this course is informative and helpful to each of your personal fields of study.

           “Now to address the elephant in the room,” he said, starting to pace slowly, “yes, I was alive during most of that period of time, and I did use to be known as Captain America. But I hung up that hat a few years ago, and I’d appreciate it if you showed me the same courtesy and respect that you show your other professors. That being said, I don’t want you to hesitate to ask me any personal questions you may have as long as they relate to what we’re discussing in class. Any off topic questions should be kept to yourselves or saved for after we are finished for the day.

           “Any questions?”

           There was a moment of silence as he searched for any raised hands.

           “Is the shield as heavy as it looks?” someone called from the back row, and a few snickers could be heard from around the room.

           Professor Rogers let out a chuckle of his own and pointed to the student who’d asked.

           “That is a great example of a question that should be saved for after class.”

____________

           Steve waved goodbye to the last of his students, only minorly annoyed at how many had stayed late to take a picture with him. As he packed up his things and prepared to head to his office for the rest of the day, he mused that he should have been used to it by now. With social media so prominent in society these days, he’d been hounded for selfies ever since 2012, but they were still (and probably would always be) aggravating to him.

           He didn’t linger on that today, though; he had so many other important things to think about, after all. And most of them revolved around you.

           A smile twisted his features as he remembered how you’d looked when you’d first walked into his class – so shy and hesitant but just as gorgeous as always. He’d been so pleased to see you wearing your long green cardigan today; it was one of his favorites. Mostly because of that time he’d seen you walking around your little apartment wearing nothing but your bra and panties under it, but he had to admit that you’d looked almost just as sexy wearing it with those brown leggings you’d had on today.

           As he made his way across campus to the building his office was in, he didn’t even try to hide the smirk on his face; he finally had accomplished the first part of his plan. He’d hoped to have you in his class sooner, but it had been hard finding someone to hack into the school records to add that history credit to your list of prerequisites. Well, rather, it had been hard finding someone discreet enough to get the job done. Plenty of his friends would have been able to do it without any problem; hell, Tony probably had done that exact same thing in the past. But they would have asked questions, and he couldn’t afford to have people poking around in something that didn’t concern them.

           A part of Steve knew that this wasn’t the right way of going about having you; the Steve from before Thanos would have been disgusted with his actions, absolutely repulsed at what he was planning to do. But after the snap, after he’d watched so many people he’d cared about turn to dust, something in him had changed. He’d tried so hard, so goddamn hard, to do the right thing, but in the end it hadn’t been good enough to stop everything from happening. And even now, after Thanos was dead and the fallen had been brought back, he was still different than before. He’d done the right thing his entire life, and all he’d gotten from it was heartache.

           But now he would finally claim what he deserved. He would claim you.

           The first time he’d seen you, it had been in the campus coffee shop. He had only been teaching for a year at the time, and he hadn’t foreseen how overwhelming it could be. While the students were cramming and stressing over finals, he was clamoring to compile the perfect exam for his class, the perfectionist in him never fully satisfied and constantly worrying if he had enough questions, if they were balanced enough, if they were too easy or too hard or irrelevant to the course.

           Basically, he had been frazzled, and all he’d wanted was a small black coffee and a corner booth at the café to work on his laptop in. But then he’d seen you.

You were sitting at a table with a girl around your age, and the two of you were laughing about something; it must have been hilarious, because your head was thrown back and your eyes were closed as your laugh bubbled out of your smiling lips. It was in that moment that he knew that love at first sight existed. Every love song he’d ever heard had suddenly sounded in his ears, and he stood there as if frozen as he watched you, his eyes already straining to remember every little detail about your face.            

After that day, he’d started seeing you on campus more and more often, though that might have been because he was following you. In his mind, though, it wasn’t following. It was…researching. He had to know if he’d been mistaken, if that electric feeling he’d felt upon seeing you had somehow been something other than love at first sight.

But as days turned to weeks turned to months of him following you, of him watching you while you were none the wiser, he knew that he hadn’t been mistaken. It seemed fell for you more and more with everything he learned about you and your life. Your body, your mind, your very soul seemed to be meant for him.

There was a problem, though. On the third day of him watching you, you and your friend from the café (he’d learned that her name was Tina) had gone to the library to study together, and he’d overheard you telling her something that made his heart sink.            “So… You’ve been in college for a year now,” Tina had started, and you’d groaned, knowing where she was going even before she said anything else.

“No, Tina,” you sighed.

“What! I’m just wondering when you’re planning on finding yourself a man,” your friend insisted as you rolled your eyes.

“Is never a viable answer?”

“No – you and I both know it’s not. C’mon, you’ve talked about wanting to meet your dream man since high school!”

“Well, yeah, I’ve talked about it,” you’d said. “Talking about something and actually doing it are two different things, babe.”

“I knowww,” Tina had sighed. “But c’mon, now is the time to be looking for people to share a future with.”

You’d snorted a bark of laughter at that.

“It most certainly is not,” you’d countered. “I need to focus on my career right now, Tina. Even IF I met Mr. Right, I’m not gonna start a serious relationship until after college. I gotta put myself first right now.”

“I guess I see where you’re coming from,” she’d huffed. “I get it. But you could just, you know…fool around, right? College is the time for experimentation! Don’t you wanna get that cherry popped before you graduate?”

“TINA!”

“What!” your friend had laughed. “I know you’re dying to turn in that v-card of yours.”

Steve had had to stop listening at that point. With a muffled curse, he’d turned on his heel and all but fled from the library, feeling his heart soar and shatter all at once. On one hand, that same sick part of him that was driving his actions was all but singing; if your friend had been telling the truth, then you were a virgin. His (Y/N) really was a good girl – something that was rare to find these days, especially in young college girls. A sweet, innocent girl just like he’d always dreamed about starting a family with.

But, on the other hand, you were determined to hold off on relationships until the end of college. And even if you’d be willing to let Steve be the exception to that rule, that still didn’t change the fact that you were a student and he was a member of the faculty; he would not only lose his job if the two of you were found out, but he was sure that reporters and journalists would jump at the opportunity to write an exposé  about Captain America taking advantage of a student at the university he taught at.

No, he would have to be smart about this. He knew he didn’t want to wait for you to finish your four-year degree, but he also couldn’t risk either of your reputations with some kind of forbidden relationship, if you’d even have him. He would have to think this through. He would have to come up with a plan.

___________

You were surprised at how quickly you got used to having Captain America as a teacher. You would still get nervous when he spoke directly to you, of course, but the insight he had to offer was priceless. It was one thing to learn about a period of history from a textbook, but it was another thing entirely to learn about it from someone who was actually there.

Professor Rogers was knowledgeable and kind to all of his students, and your favorite parts of his lectures were when your classmates would raise their hands and ask him about what it was like to live during whatever part of history you were learning about. You’d learned about Captain America and his backstory in high school history classes, of course, but the way he would answer those personal questions showed a whole different side of him. But you were starting to wonder if that new side of him was as golden as his status as a hero made him out to be.

Recently, something seemed a little bit off about him, as much as you hated to admit it. It only would happen in brief little flashes, so brief that immediately after you would find yourself questioning whether or not it had actually happened, but you could swear that he’d been…staring a lot recently. Specifically, he would be staring at you.

More and more often in class, you would start to feel like you were being watched; it was if you could sense eyes on you just out of the corner of your vision, and it would make your hairs stand on end. Usually, you would turn and see nothing out of the ordinary, and you would be able to chalk it up to an overactive imagination. But every now and then, you would turn and see Professor Rogers staring at you, his jaw clenched and his eyes dark.

As soon as it would happen, his expression would clear into a neutrally polite smile, and you always tried to return it to the best of your ability. But as the weeks went by, it was happening more and more frequently. And then there were the touches.

Mr. Rogers never touched you in an inappropriate way; you were almost certain that he never would. But whenever he would collect your papers, or whenever he would pass out assignments, his hand would always seem to linger. Sometimes, he would let his fingertips drag against yours as he took whatever you were handing to him; sometimes, he would set his hand on your shoulder for the briefest of moments when you dropped an assignment off with him before leaving class.

He’d also started commenting about your appearance at the beginning of class. From the moment you walked in the door to the moment you sat down in your seat, he’d manage to make some comment on your outfit. The first time he’d said something was on one of the many occasions where you were wearing your favorite cardigan.

“You look very nice today, (Y/N),” he’d mentioned in passing, almost making you stumble on your way to your seat. You’d barely managed to stutter out a ‘thank you’. After that, it happened every time you saw him, and some part of your mind whispered that he never complimented your classmates the way he would compliment you.

“I like how you did your hair this morning,” he’d said the next time.

“Like the new jeans, (Y/N),” the week after. (How had he even known those jeans were new?)

“That’s a nice color on you.”

“Looking lovely as always.”

You did love having Professor Rogers as your teacher, but each class with him made you feel increasingly uncomfortable despite your best efforts. In your mind, you knew that you were reading too much into it, but that was never able to stop you from feeling a cold shiver run up your back when you’d see him glaring at you from behind his desk.

           Despite your growing anxiety about your history professor, though, you were settling in quite nicely to your day to day routine. Your favorite days were Fridays, though; you spent your afternoons right before the weekend with your best friend, Tina. She had been your friend since junior year of high school, and while the two of you were opposites when it came to most things, the bond you shared was strong and deep.

           This Friday, however, she’d had to cancel your weekly study session; Tina was in Columbia’s dental department, and every now and then her and the other aspiring dentists would do volunteer events to help people in the surrounding area get free dental care. You were always proud of her when she took part in events like those, but you always felt a little lonelier on Friday afternoons.

           After spending the morning sleeping in and meal prepping for the week, you set out on your way to the library without your best friend in tow; you would just have to study on your own that week, especially with the first test of the semester looming over you in Mr. Roger’s class. He was kind to his students, yes, but he was also demanding. He’d made it abundantly clear that he expected quality work out of his students.

           “This is an advanced class,” he would say. “I expect you to be advanced learners.”

           Pulling your heavy wool jacket tighter around your body, you trudged into the library and sat at yours and Tina’s regular table towards the back, opening your history textbook and busting out your favorite blue highlighter; this would be a study session of the ages, not interrupted by anything or anybody-

           “(Y/N), is that you?”

           …Maybe you’d spoken too soon.

           Looking up, you saw none other than the man whose class you were about to be studying for. Professor Rogers was walking over to you with one hand in his pocket; in his other rested a copy of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and you smiled as you read its title.

           “Hi, Professor,” you greeted him. You made to stand up out of your chair, but before you could he took his hand out of his pocket and set it on your shoulder, squeezing it lightly.

           “Oh, no, don’t get up on my account. What brings you here today? Got a big test coming up or something?”

           You forced a weak smile to your lips, acutely aware that his hand was still on your shoulder.

           “Oh, yeah,” you managed to joke. “One of my pesky teachers is giving us a test next Thursday.”

           “Who does he think he is?” your teacher chuckled. Finally, he let his hand slide off of your shoulder, and you once again looked at the book he was holding.

           “The Book Thief?” you asked, nodding to it. “Are you checking it out?”

           “Oh! Yeah. For the second time, actually. It’s one of my favorites.”

           “Really? It’s one of my favorites too!”

           Steve grinned, even though he’d already known that. He’d read most of the books you had on your shelf at home; at first, he’d done it to try and draw closer to you, to see what kind of stories you liked. But after a while he just did it because you had good taste; the only book of yours that had disappointed him was a cheesy teenager romance you’d had since high school, but even then he thought it was adorable that you found enjoyment in such things.

           “It sure is a small world, huh?” he drawled, pulling out the chair across the table from yours. “Do you mind if I join you for a little while?”

           You hesitated, looking between the chair he was already half sitting in and the charming smile he had on his face. Something about the whole thing seemed off to you, but you shook away that feeling and nodded your head.

           “Be my guest,” you finally said, and your professor didn’t hesitate to sink into his seat.

           “Thanks, doll.”

           You felt your cheeks heat up at that and quickly gave him what you hoped was more of a convincing smile.

           “N-no problem, Mr. Rogers,” you hurriedly assured him. A smirk stretched across his lips as he reached across the table, letting his hand rest on the back of yours.

           “I’ll never get used to people calling me that,” he chuckled. “How about you just call me Steve when we’re not in class?”

           Your eyes widened and you gulped, eyes flickering between his face and his hand, so warm against yours.

           “Wouldn’t that be, uh… unprofessional?” Your voice was higher pitched than usual as you said it, and it only made his smile grow.

           “Not if we kept it our little secret. You wouldn’t tell anyone, would you?”

           He arched his eyebrows questioningly at you, and for some reason you immediately shook your head.

           “No, I… I wouldn’t tell anyone, Prof- Steve.”

           Steve tried his best to keep his face neutral, but on the inside, he felt like fire works were going off in his head upon hearing you say his name. He knew it would sound sweet in your soft voice, and if it sounded good now, he couldn’t imagine how nice it would be to hear you moan it. One day, he promised himself. One day.

           You squirmed in your seat as Professor Ro- Steve, you told yourself, Steve – watched you. After a few seconds of silence you hesitantly leaned forward.

           “Steve?”

           He seemed to snap back to reality, and once more his ever-present smile was carefully arranged on his face.

           “Sorry, sorry,” he said, clearing his throat. “I, uh… Zoned out there for a second.”

           “It’s ok,” you assured him. “I do that in your class all the time.”

           “Hey,” he laughed, “C’mon, that’s not nice.”

           You chuckled at your own joke and shrugged.

           “I’m just joking,” you assured him.

           “Oh, I don’t know,” he grinned. “Maybe that’s why you and Tina are always studying together.”

           You opened your mouth to defend yourself, but something stopped you from saying anything. Something about what he’d just said didn’t quite make sense, you told yourself.

           Steve furrowed his brows at the look on your face.

           “You ok over there, doll?”

           “Y-yeah,” you nodded rapidly, turning to collect your things as alarm bells kept going off in your head. “I’m fine. I actually just remembered something; I have to go.”

           “Go? So soon? I didn’t chase you off, did I?” His lips were lifted into a half-smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes as he watched you pack up your books.

           “Oh, no!” you were quick to exclaim. “No, not at all! I just… I just left one of my textbooks at home. I’m so stupid.”

           You finally slung your bag over your shoulder and made to leave, but all of a sudden there was an iron-like grip encircling your upper arm. You whipped your head around so quickly that for a moment your hair obscured your vision. When you shook it away, you saw Steve watching you with slightly narrowed eyes, his smirk still on his lips.

           For a moment, you just stared at him, feeling your heartbeat quicken as his thumb idly rubbed circles against your bicep.

           “Don’t call yourself stupid,” he finally muttered, letting his hand fall. “You’re a smart girl, (Y/N). I’m sure you’re just feeling a little…overwhelmed. From your classes, that is.”

           You nodded numbly, taking a small step backwards, taking yourself out of arm’s reach.

           “Y-yeah… That must be it. Sorry, Steve.”

           You turned and walked away, just barely catching his next few words.

           “No problem, hon.”

           You felt his eyes on you all the way out of the library, and the feeling didn’t go away until you fell asleep that night, the sound of his voice echoing in your ears and the line of his smile still etched behind your eyelids. Just before you drifted off, it suddenly came to you, the reason why you’d felt such a sudden need to leave him.

           How had he known that you were friends with Tina?

_____

           Steve sighed as he sank into his armchair, watching you fall asleep through his telescope; one day he would really have to talk to you about leaving your blinds open.

           Once he was sure you were asleep for the night, he looked around his small apartment, thinking about your little study session in the library. When you’d left in such a hurry, he’d felt angry at first, just barely able to keep himself from snapping at you to sit back down. It was rude to just run off like that, after all.

           But then he’d heard your heartbeat, pounding away in your soft, sweet chest, and he’d understood: you were nervous around him. The fact had made him so giddy that he’d excused your impolite behavior this time, letting you go and waiting a few minutes before following you back to your apartment. You were nervous around him, and he was willing to bet it was because of your feelings. He’d been watching you even closer than usual for the past month, watching how you’d squirm in your seat in class when your eyes met his, feeling your quickening pulse anytime his hand lingered on yours.

           You were starting to fall for him, he just knew it.

           He stood up from his armchair, wandering over to his tiny kitchen and grabbing a beer for himself. It would all be worth it someday – the tiny apartment he’d bought just to be closer to you, the time he’d dedicated to watching you each day, the expensive hidden bugs he’d planted in your house so he could listen in on your life. One day, when you were well and truly his, he would move out of this apartment and buy a home for the two of you, one big enough for the family you would have.

           He could see it even now as he settled back into his favorite chair, peeking through the telescope to glance at your sleeping form. One day, you would be able to quit your silly dream of journalism and be his wife, focusing on him and the children you would have. Oftentimes, Steve would imagine five or six little kids running around the house, even though he knew it was unreasonable to think of such things.

           You guys would stop at four, he’d decided.

           His cock twitched in his sweatpants at the idea of you round and swollen with his child. You would be such a good mother, such a good wife. You would be everything he’d ever wanted.

           With a sigh, he took his cock out, stroking it leisurely as he kept your eyes on your face, peaceful and oblivious as you slept on. He hoped you were dreaming about him, fantasizing about him the way he was fantasizing about you right now.

           He let out a soft moan at the idea of what your first time together would be like. You would lead him into your bedroom, hand in his as your hips swayed with your stride. He would sit on the edge of the bed as you stripped, watching as each delicious inch of your skin was slowly revealed to him. You would be wearing white, lacy lingerie, as pure and unsullied as your body.

           His hand moved faster on his cock as he imagined what you’d taste like, what it would be like to have his face buried between your legs, his tongue delving into your tight, wet heat as you bucked and squirmed against him. You’d pull his hair and moan his name, your voice getting higher and breathier the closer you got to your release.

           But he wouldn’t give it to you, oh no. Not with his tongue at least. He would pull away at the last second and hold you in his arms, his eyes not leaving yours for a second as he pushed his cock into you. He would go slow, at first. He knew it would be your first time, and the last thing he ever, ever wanted was to hurt you. A small part of him still wondered, though, what noise you would make as he pressed into you for the first time, how his cock would look coated in your cum and blood, how your face would contort in that strange mix of pleasure and pain as he took your innocence.

           All too soon, though, he was brought back to reality when he felt his cum coat the back of his hand, and as he came down from his release, he felt a familiar surge of disappointment that it wasn’t your pussy that was making him cum, that his were the only moans to be heard in his lonely apartment.

           He shoved his cock back into his pants and took one last look at you before standing up to go clean himself off. You were still sleeping, innocent and unaware of all the plans he had in store for you.

_______

           You debated skipping your next class with Steve. As each day went by, you got more and more paranoid. Whether you were at work, walking from class to class, or even at the grocery store, you kept thinking you saw Steve. You would catch a glimpse of blonde hair or broad shoulders and do a double-take, but every time you saw nothing out of the ordinary.

           Part of you still thought you were overreacting. He was your teacher, for god’s sake. And he was a former Avenger; if anything, you should’ve felt safer in his presence.

           When Thursday came around, you pushed down your desire to skip class and soldiered on, stopping for a coffee on the way and taking your seats just a few minutes before class began. The teacher you’d been so paranoid about was seated behind his desk, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he stared at his laptop.

           As you passed him on the way to your seat, his bright blue eyes darted upwards, and he gave you a soft smile like he always did when you walked into his classroom.

           “Good morning, (Y/N),” he greeted you. “That’s a nice sweater you got on today.”

           “Good morning, professor,” you’d murmured back, shoving your hands into your pockets. “Thank you.”

           You scurried over to your seat and plopped down into it. With all of your nerves, you’d almost forgotten to study for the test today. You’d only managed to cram in about half an hour last night; all of your other attempts at studying had found you without the ability to focus on the textbooks in front of you, mind wandering distractedly.

           “Alright, guys,” your professor finally sighed, standing up from his desk and grabbing a stack of papers off of it. “Before we get started with this test, do any of you have any questions?”

           When no one raised their hand, he nodded and started passing them out. As he set your test on your desk, you looked to see him wink at you, his lips curving upwards.

           “Good luck,” he whispered, and your cheeks heated as you slid the paper closer to yourself.

           After that, you made a decided effort not to make any more eye contact with your teacher as you started writing out your answers. Mr. Rogers had only ever given you guys essay questions, encouraging his students to write out their thought processes behind each of their answers. You kind of resented him for it; essay questions were always, without fail, tedious.

           The minutes ticked by slowly, the only sounds in the room behind the scratches of pens and pencils against papers and the occasional rustle when someone would flip their page over. You were amongst the first ones to finish, and when you dropped your test off with Steve at his desk, his hand once again found a way to linger against your own.

           Biting your lip, you drew your hand back quicker than usual, scurrying back to your desk and pulling a book out of your bag to read. Not that you actually read it; your eyes stayed steadily on one sentence for the next several minutes. When they finally did lift off of the page, they immediately found your teacher’s eyes, boring into you with that same dark intensity. You shivered as you snapped your gaze back to the page in front of you.

           When everyone had finished with their tests, Professor Rogers stood from his desk chair and cleared his throat, drawing all attention to himself.

           “Alright, good job guys. Feeling good about how you did?” There were a few grumbles and murmurings heard throughout the room; apparently you weren’t alone in your dislike of essay questions. “I’ll take that as a yes.

           “So I thought that I would cut today’s class short this week,” he went on, and all of you perked up at the idea of leaving early. “Before you all head out, though, I wanted to tell you about a new internship opportunity I’m spearheading.

           “For the time being, the details of the internship are being kept under wraps, but I can say that it involves travelling to New York City for a week and keeping a field journal while you’re there. What you’ll be doing in New York, unfortunately, can’t be disclosed right now.”

           You sat up straighter in your seat, interest piqued. A field journal? It sounded like whatever the internship was involved journalism skills. (Or scientific skills – you were pretty sure scientists kept field journals, at least. You shrugged that idea off pretty quickly, though; why would a history professor be in charge of a scientific internship?)

           “If you’re interested in applying for it, you’ll need to write an essay and turn it in to me at the beginning of next week’s class. The essay needs to be about a historic event that has somehow impacted your personal life, and it can be from any era of history, not just the one we’re learning about in class… Oh, and make it over 1,500 words in length. Any questions?”

           A few students raised their hands, but you tuned them out as you thought over what you would write about. That is, if you decided to apply for it. You still had no idea what the internship was for, after all. But, you reasoned, if it didn’t turn out to be something you were interested in, you could always say no, right?

           “…Alright, guys, you’re free to go. Email me if you have any questions about your test grades once they’re posted,” Steve finally said, and you distractedly started putting your things away, still thinking about what you would write about.

           When you finally stood up from your desk, you went to sling your backpack over your shoulder only to feel it hit against something. Or, if the small “oof” that had sounded upon impact was anything to go by, someone.

           Your hand flew up to your mouth when you turned and saw none other than your teacher standing there, having just been hit in the stomach by your bag – your very heavy bag, which contained no less than three textbooks inside of it.

           “Professor Rogers! Oh my god, I am so sorry-“ you started, but he waved it off with a good-natured grin.

           “Don’t worry about it, (Y/N),” he insisted, waving off your concern. “I’ve survived much worse, believe me.”

           You smiled a little at that and finished putting your bookbag over your shoulders.

           “Still, I’m sorry. I promise I’ve never assaulted any of my professors before.”

           “A likely story, Miss (Y/L/N),” he joked. “A likely story.”

The two of you were silent for a beat before he cleared his throat and gestured to you.

“I was just wanting to ask if you were planning on applying for that internship I mentioned.”

           “Oh, uh… Yeah, I was, actually. Why do you ask?”

           “Well… I know that I said I couldn’t go into what exactly the internship entails, but I did want to mention to you that it involves some journalism. That’s what you’re majoring in, right?”

           You nodded, feeling excited about your suspicions being correct.

           “It is, yeah! I thought it might have something to do with it when you mentioned field journaling,” you said. “Could I ask what the journaling would be about, or would that give too much away?”

           “It would give way too much away,” your teacher confirmed. “But trust me, I think it’ll be up your alley.”  

           Your mind turned it over, taking in Steve’s raised eyebrows and expectant smile. He seemed even more eager than you were about the internship.

           “Well, I’ll make sure to write my essay for it,” you assured him. “Just gotta think of what I’ll be writing about.” Your brain had already pondered writing about the Battle of New York; sure, it hadn’t even been ten years since it happened, but it was a historical event. And it was the main reason you’d wanted to pursue journalism, of course. But you almost died with embarrassment at the idea of writing an essay about something Captain America was involved in and then letting it be read by Captain America himself.

           As if reading your thoughts, Steve asked, “Any idea about what your subject will be on?”

           “Oh, uh…” you muttered, “I-I had one idea, but I don’t think I’m gonna go with it.”

           “Why not?”

           “Well…” You sighed, not able to meet his eyes as you confessed, “My immediate thought was the Battle of New York. I know you probably don’t like being reminded of it, but it just… It changed my world, the entire way I view things – it’s what made me want to be a journalist. After the invasion, the world – the universe, really – seemed so much bigger, and it made me want to tell stories about the reality we live in now rather than telling stories that are fiction.”

           You trailed off, looking back up at him sheepishly when you realized you were rambling. He was watching you with an intent look on his face, and for a second you were worried that the memory had upset him.

           “I’m so sorry, Mr. Rogers. I didn’t mean-“

           “No, no,” he interrupted, shaking his head, “don’t be. I understand; it kinda turned my world upside down, too. I’d thought that waking up from the 40’s had been disorienting enough, but… When I saw aliens on the streets of the city I grew up in, it really made me feel like I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.”

           Your lips twitched into a half-smile.

           “Was that a Wizard of Oz reference?”

           “…It sure was,” Steve grinned. “Old fashioned, I know, but it was one of my favorites growing up.”

           “Me too,” you nodded. The man in front of you chuckled at that and you arched an eyebrow questioningly.

           “What is it?” you asked.

           “Nothing, it’s just…not too often that I have something from my childhood in common with someone else these days,” he answered.

           Your heart squeezed with compassion for the soldier in front of you, and without realizing what you were doing, you’d rested your hand on his shoulder. You didn’t know what to say, but you knew what you wanted to; you wanted to tell him that you were sorry for what he went through, that you would never be able to understand what it had been like for him but that you knew it had to have been hard. For a second, you regretted ever feeling uncomfortable around him; hadn’t he proven his entire life that he just wanted to do what was right?

           You said none of that, though, and after a second you let your hand slide down to your side.

           “I’ll have that essay ready for you next week,” you promised him, and with that you turned and left the room, not even feeling the weight of his stare on your back as you retreated.

           For several moments, Steve just stood there, glaring at the spot you’d been standing in and feeling himself fall for you even more. Because even though you hadn’t said any of what you’d been thinking, he was able to read it all in your eyes.

­­­­______

           You’d missed your study session with Tina that week again; for the next several days, when you weren’t working on homework for your other classes, you were working on your essay. You didn’t know why you felt such a sudden need to do well on it; something in you just couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing Steve. Plus, you’d never before written about your feelings on the Battle of New York and what it had meant to you.

           Even though Steve had said the word limit was 1,500, your final essay clocked in over 3,000 words, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to shorten it. You’d dedicated an entire week to making it perfect, and you finally got to the point where you didn’t want to change a single word.        

           When that fateful Thursday came around, you gave Steve a bright smile as you set your stapled essay onto his desk. Judging from the pile of papers resting on it, you hadn’t been the only one to apply for the internship, but you didn’t feel nervous about your odds; either you got in or you didn’t. You were content knowing you’d done your best.

           “You seem like you’re in a good mood,” Steve noticed, and you winked, actually fucking winked, at him, wondering a second later why you’d even done such a thing.

           “I’m just happy to be done with that essay,” you confessed, continuing on to your seat. “I spent all week perfecting it.”

           Steve grinned, knowing for a fact that you were telling the truth. He’d kept an ever-so-diligent eye on you since your last conversation, watching as you typed away on your laptop ceaselessly, feeling satisfied to know that all your work was for him. His heart soared this morning to see you so happy, and he’d felt butterflies, actual goddamn butterflies, in his chest when you’d winked at him.

           Class went by as usual, closing off with a list of chapters to be read and homework to be completed before the next class. In fact, the rest of your day went by uneventfully, and the only thing out of the ordinary came in the form of an email on Friday morning.

           You were standing in your kitchen, just wearing your most comfy pair of sweatpants and a tank top, sipping some coffee when you heard your phone ding with a notification. Opening up the email, you felt yourself gulp so fast that your coffee burned your throat as you read it.

           Dear (Y/N),

           Good morning! I know that this is last minute, but would you be willing to come see me in my office today at 11 am? I would like to discuss your essay with you. I’m in the C Building, third floor, Room 212.

           Sincerely,

                       Steve Rogers

           You looked up to the clock on your microwave and cursed when you saw what time it was – 10:34. You set your coffee down so quickly that some of it spilled on your pants as you rushed to your room, throwing on some jeans and a cream cable knit sweater before rushing to gather your phone, keys, and wallet. It usually only took you ten minutes to get to campus from your apartment, but the C Building was basically on the other side of the continent from student parking.

           You sped in your tiny, beat up car all the way to your college, power walking to the administrative building while huffing and puffing; this was the most exercise you’d gotten in a while, what with your busy schedule.

           After an agonizingly slow elevator ride, you reached the third floor and glanced at your phone as you passed by several offices – it was 10:58. You felt your lips spread into a grin.

           When you finally reached room 212, you hesitantly rose your fist to knock on its door, but before you could make contact it was opened from the inside. Steve looked down at you with a smile as you jumped.

           “Sorry! Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said sheepishly. “I heard you walking up the hall.”

           “…Super hearing?” you guessed, and he nodded bashfully.

           He gestured for you to follow him into the room, your nose immediately flooded with the scent of something delicious. Your eyes fell on two bags from your favorite café on campus, and you could distinctly make out the smell of their turkey bacon wafting up from within.

           “I hope you don’t mind that I got some food for us,” he said, settling into the cushy office chair placed on the side of the desk opposite to you. “I know you haven’t eaten yet, and all I’ve had was coffee-“

           “How?” you interrupted him, feeling that old coil of unease wrap itself around you. “How did you know I haven’t eaten yet, that is?”

           Steve’s lips parted and his eyes widened for a split second after you’d asked, but he quickly schooled his features back into something more neutral.

           “Oh, sorry,” he chuckled. “I shouldn’t have said that I knew you hadn’t eaten; it was just a guess. I’m assuming I was right?”

           You warily nodded, slowly walking over to the chair he had situated in front of his desk. The door behind you was still cracked open, something that helped comfort you enough to reach into the nearest bag and pull out a to-go box.

           “I got you some turkey bacon and a cheese biscuit,” he said as you opened the package up. “And there’s some blueberry muffins in the other bag if you’d like any.”

           Your hands trembled as you took a bite of your bacon; it was the exact same order you usually got for breakfast.

           You were so focused on swallowing your bite of food that you jolted when you heard the man in front of you clear his throat. Your head popped up to see him watching you with an expectant face, tapping his fingertips on the desk beneath him.

           “U-um…” you stuttered, not sure of what he was expecting you to do or say.

           “It probably shouldn’t bother me, but… Back in my day, we thanked people when they got us something,” Steve shrugged, trying to pass off his words as nonchalant. You could see the way his fists were clenched, though, and it made your heartbeat quicken.

           “Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry,” you exclaimed. “I, um… Thank you, Steve. For breakfast.”

           Your cheeks were on fire, and you felt your palms getting sweaty as you set down your piece of bacon; maybe you weren’t so hungry after all.

           Steve, though, just smiled gently and dug into the matching box of food he had placed before himself.

           “It’s ok, doll,” he hummed. “Bad manners are just a pet peeve of mine. Go ahead and eat.”

           The food felt like cardboard against your teeth as you hesitantly obeyed, still uncomfortable from how Steve had just spoken to you. You began to squirm in your chair as the minutes ticked on, the only sounds in his office coming from your quiet eating. Finally, when you couldn’t take it anymore, you cleared your throat and spoke so quietly that Steve probably wouldn’t have been able to hear you if not for his advanced hearing.

           “So, um… In your email you mentioned my essay?” you asked, sitting up straighter. “Did you want to talk with me about it today?”

           He smiled and set down the muffin he’d been working on, leaning his elbows against his desk and looking at you with a gleam in his eyes.

           “That’s right, (Y/N),” he answered, his face so bright and excited that it was almost easy to forget how harsh his tone had been just a minute ago. “I wanted you to be the first to know that you got the internship.”

           You blinked a few times, feeling surprised despite how hard you’d worked on your essay.

           “Really?” you asked, slowly starting to smile again. “I did?”

           “Of course,” Steve insisted. “Your essay was the best out of the bunch; it’s obvious that you want to be a writer.”

           “Thank you so much, sir,” you said, hurrying to say so after what had happened the last time you hadn’t been grateful for his kindness. “That…means a lot.”

           “Well, it’s true,” he assured you. “And now you get to know what the internship actually is; I know you were curious about it yesterday.”

           You nodded eagerly, watching as he leaned back in his chair.

           “A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to write an autobiography,” he began, thumbs twiddling in his lap. “I’ve never been much of a writer, but I figured that it would be nice to try and put my story down on paper. And I thought that it would be a great idea to go back to Brooklyn, where I grew up, and write down what’s changed about it and what’s the same as a sort of opening for the first chapter of my book.

           “That’s where you come in,” he added, pointing to you before setting his hands on his desk. “I wanted to go back to Brooklyn with someone who grew up in this century, someone who could help me take notes on that part of the city and who I could bounce ideas off of. After all, most of my readers would be people who have no clue about what the 40’s were like. I’d need someone to hear my ideas and tell me if they’re relevant and if they’d appeal to folks these days.”

           Your head was already turning with ideas on how he could link his past to his present in the beginning of his novel; the writer in you was salivating that the idea of this project, and you opened your mouth to tell Steve that you’d take the position.

           But then you hesitated, slowly closing your mouth again as you looked at the man seated across from you. You remembered every time he’d made you uncomfortable, every doubt you’d had about him, every time he’d made you squirm under his penetrative gaze. Would you be able to work with him one on one without feeling so nervous around him?

           “I’m…flattered that you think I’m a good fit for the job,” you started out, “And this is such an amazing opportunity, but… Um, would we the alone in Brooklyn or would there be other people with us?”

           Steve’s brows furrowed; clearly, he hadn’t expected that question.

           “Why would it matter?” he asked, voice hard as steel.

           “Well, I just… I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong i-idea, you know?” you stammered. “I wouldn’t want them to think-“

           “No one would know,” he interrupted. “For obvious reasons, this project is being kept strictly confidential. You would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we left.”

           Your doubt must have read on your face, because Steve’s face softened, and he slowly stood up, walking around to stand in front of your chair.

           “Hey, (Y/N),” he said softly. “You know you don’t have to worry about me, right? I understand that you can be…shy, but think of this as a week off! I’ve already talked to the school board, and your absences with your other classes won’t be counted against you. We’ll go to the city, take our notes, maybe even have a little fun.

           “Whatya say?”

           You sighed and let your head droop, looking down to your clenched hands as they rested in your lap. You liked his words; they were kind and considerate, but they didn’t reach his eyes. No, they were dark, a stormy gray-ish blue as he watched you intently.

           “I… I’m still not sure,” you murmured weakly. “Could I have some time to-“

           “It’s a paid internship,” Steve interrupted you, his voice just barely edging to desperate. “And I would let you write the Forward to my novel. Think about it, (Y/N) – your name on the cover of ‘Captain America’s’,” he rolled his eyes at the name, “autobiography. You’ll be able to have any job you want when you graduate. A guaranteed successful start to your career.”

           You paused at that, eyes widening at the thought; he had a point. You’d be a famous writer even before the beginning of your writing career. And your bank account was laughable at the moment; you only had a part-time job at the college library, and it definitely didn’t pay much.

           Your head tilted up and your eyes met Steve’s, and he was wearing a smile that spoke volumes; he knew what you were going to say even before you said it.

           “I’ll do it.”

_______

           Steve let out a soft grunt as he came, his hand finally stilling on his cock before he tucked it back into his pants. You’d left his office hours ago, but his mind hadn’t stopped thinking of you since you’d said those three little words. He was coming close to the end of his plan; his reward was so close now. He could practically taste it – taste you.

           He wasn’t happy that he’d had to bribe you, of course. He hated the idea that you were just saying yes because of the money and success he could offer you. But if that’s what it took to make you his, then he would do it. It was worth it for your future children, for your future life.

           Letting out a soft sigh, he stood up, putting in his airpods and selecting his favorite app on his phone. With a press of a button, he could hear the sound of your soft humming as you turned the pages of your textbook. The camera in your living room showed you curled up on your couch, studying like the good little student you were. Soon you wouldn’t have to work so hard; Steve would give you everything you could ever want or need – a family, a house, a ring on your finger… He smiled at the thought.

           He shoved his phone into his back pocket, keeping his airpods in so he could listen to the sound of your humming as background noise. He grabbed his keys and headed out, tucking his laptop under his arm as he started walking out of the building. The two of you would leave for New York in a week, and he had so many preparations to make. His back-up plan still needed to be put in order, though he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it with you.

           You were different from all the others – sweet, obedient, smart… Whatever ended up happening, Steve knew that you would see things his way eventually. The two of you were meant to be, after all.

[regrettablewritings]

Soulmate AU: Whenever Your Soulmate Lies, Their Lie Appears on Your Skin

You knew what people thought whenever you would pass them by: “Poor thing . . . Might’ve been pretty if not for all those markings.”

And no, this wasn’t paranoia or any seat-rooted insecurities talking -- you had heard people whisper it, other planetary beings garbling it to their speaking partners whenever they thought you were just out of earshot.

The one thing they didn’t say was what paranoia and common sense told you: “Poor dear, having a soulmate that lies so much.”

Indeed, at this point in your young life, it was hard to tell where the words ended and your skin, marred with the usual scabs and scars from living, began. You dared to even think that perhaps you had come out the womb covered in lies. Of course, your mother never told you so, even upon your insistence that she tell you. Perhaps, in her mind, sparing you would keep your curiosity at bay. Maybe you would recognize the unfortunate implications of having such a lover in store, and steer clear of trouble.

Well . . . She was only about three-quarters right.

Of course, you hadn’t come to Canto Bight to stir up trouble, but that didn’t change the fact that you’d come to a city with a shady reputation that marred all who entered it by mere association. But then again, maybe that was why you were here: Maybe you were subconsciously drawn to this city of sinners, believing that perhaps its sordid reputation would make your lie-marked skin pale by comparison. Maybe you knew deep down that by coming here, nobody would look twice at you, think twice about you, judge you --

Aaaanndd maybe it’s the fruit cider talking, you thought. You sighed as you took another sip anyway. You’d already dropped a few credits on the overpriced drink; may as well finish it and enjoy the view from the balcony you’d positioned yourself at.

The reality was more like this: You had come to Canto Bight because this was just where people who felt the need to live it up came when they felt their life spiraling down.

You weren’t doing terribly in life, per se, but it was hard to make connections with people, personal or occupation-wise, when you had a body slathered in dishonesty. Sure, it wasn’t your fault that you had a soulmate who apparently couldn’t tell the truth if it were tattooed to their tongue. But the connotations were already there: Few wanted to take a chance on someone with such a connection to somebody so dishonest -- especially during an intergalactic war.

Thankfully, the one employer who did offer you work (perhaps out of pity) quickly learned that you could be trusted. You’d worked your ass off to prove your worth, and that deserved an eventual break, however depressing the nature might’ve been.

Sure, the location was glitzy, but not all the lights in the galaxy could scour away the glumness . . .

And yup. It’s the fruit cider talking, you decided. And yet, you decided to grab yourself another; maybe if you drank just enough, you’d forget your sorrows for the evening and actually find a way to enjoy your off-time for once.

But unfortunately for you, the evening had other plans in store.

Plans that started when you were just about to head back inside, only to be thwarted by a figure literally rushing into you. You growled in dismay as the remaining corner of your drink was wasted, splattered on your top. You glared up at the idiot who ruined your night in one fell swoop, ready to snap at him, only to find yourself coming up short.

He wasn’t the usual sort found in the brighter parts of Canto Bight. But then, his breed of grunginess didn’t quite fit the less fortunate side, either. It was unkept in a wild way. Almost like a tomcat, what with the scruff lining his jaw and the mess of hair sticking out even from beneath his worn cap.

Even the smile he flashed you was like that of a tomcat’s.

“S-s-s-sorry there, friend,” he offered. In spite of the low and gravelly nature of his voice, he managed to sound just a bit too mischievous for your liking. “Just p-p-passin’ on through.” He raised his grubby-gloved hands up as if to show no harm, no foul.

You already weren’t prepared to believe him (after all, the only running a non-fathier did in Canto Bight was when they were trying to outrun trouble). But your body had something different in mind to confirm it: A dull, dull stinging sensation. Almost like welts coming into being, but less uncomfortable. It spread along your right jawline.

The same feeling you got whenever your soulmate told a lie.

One fell swoop, indeed.

The tomcat’s smile slowly faltered, his eyes lit not only by the casino lights but by realization. You must’ve looked something similar back at him. You slowly raised a trembling hand to the spot where the new lie had appeared. Maybe it was coincidence? Surely it was; your soulmate lied so often, it was rare to go a moment where you didn’t feel their words etching into you. But judging by what the tomcat uttered next, this appeared to not be the case.

“I, uh . . . Huh . . .” He raised a hand to awkwardly scratch his scruffy cheek. “Well, a-a-a-ain’t that a k-ki-kick in the pants.”

What does one even say to something like that in a moment like this? You parted your lips as if to respond, but didn’t. It was, indeed, a kick in the pants. So hard of a kick that you were pretty sure your ability to logically think had escaped your entire being and was currently floating aimlessly in the planet’s stratosphere. The man sighed, almost in defeat. He bit a corner of his bottom lip in thought, almost as though he was trying to think of his words delicately for once in his life.

But eventually, he came up with, “L-listen, kid: I’m not s-s-s-someone you should bother getting tangled up with. You’re better off without . . .”

There was no dull, dull sting.

He gave you no time to respond even after that before he made his way over to the balcony ledge behind you and began to climb over it. But before descending proper, he paused. For a split second, you saw hesitation in his features. Aside from his inability to tell the truth (until just now, apparently), you knew nothing of this man, but something -- call it a gut feeling -- told you that hesitation wasn’t generally a part of his repertoire. But then again, you got him to tell the truth for once; so many tonight was a new experience for both parties?

“If you, uh . . . If we ever c-c-c-cr-cross paths again . . . Don’t be sh-shy,” he suggested. A beat of silence. “. . . And . . . I’m sorry. For everyth-th-thing.” And with that, he dropped from view.

Once again, you felt no new lies appearing on your skin. Instead, all you felt was the breeze of a Canto Bight night gently curling around you, and your mind buzzing with thoughts.

Optional Epilogue:

Okay, after that experience, you definitely needed something stronger than just a fruity cider. You were once again about to make your way back inside to the bar when, yet again, your efforts were thwarted. This time, however, it was by two guards storming through the threshold. They would have paid you no real mind if it weren’t for the fact that they couldn’t find who or what they were looking for.

One of them looked at you with stern eyes. “Did you see a man come by this way? A particularly filthy husk of a man?” the guard demanded.

You thought that by now, the looks people gave you when it clicked that you were riddled with lies wouldn’t even faze you. But in that moment, you felt a bit of unease.

Oh, kriff, the one on my jaw --

Realistically, it wasn’t very likely that either one of the guards could take one look at the words on the side of your face and correctly decipher the context. But in that moment, you were abuzz with all kinds of thoughts and worry.

Wait, why the hell were you worried?

Before you could even begin to consider it in depth, you found yourself responding: “Nope. Haven’t seen a man here; I’ve been trying to stay away from people all night, actually.”

The second bouncer scoffed. That last bit made absolutely no sense. You came to a casino to get away from people? You wanted to slap your forehead. Clearly your soulmate’s silver tongue did not somehow translate to you. But what you did have on your side was the ability to hold a blank expression -- something gained from learning to not express dismay over peoples’ watchful eyes.

And the very something needed to hold up your clumsy lie -- just enough for the guards to, against their personal suspicions, be forced to accept your answer before returning back into the building to continue their so far fruitless search. Which thusly allowed you to finally get the chance to acquire a new drink.

But the very moment you made your third and final attempt to do just that, you were stopped once more. However, not by a person this time. Instead, it was by a feeling: That faint prickling. On your forearm this time.

"Oh, great,” you grumbled, eyes rolling. Exasperation washed over you . . . as well as curiosity. Really, at this point, you rarely cared to invest even a moment of time to whatever fabrications appeared on you. But given how just this one small corner of your night had gone . . . you couldn’t help but wonder . . .

As you pulled back your sleeve, you read in the dim light, “You did bad, kid.”

You never really found much humor in the marks you gained. It’s hard to find humor in one’s own burdens, really. But in that moment, you released a small huff of amusement.

Hm. What a way with words he had.

[projectnoah]

Burmese Pythons in the Everglades: How an Invasive Species is Hurting Native Wildlife

As of February 2013, scientists estimate anywhere between 30,000 and 150,000 Burmese Pythons exist in South Florida. As you may have suspected, Burmese Pythons are not native to Florida. They are native to Southeast Asia and south China.

The problem? The pythons are completely decimating populations of native wildlife. A study conducted by Michael Dorcas, a herpetologist at Davidson College in North Carolina in 2011 documented “severe declines” in mammal sightings. The 2003 to 2011 surveys compare mammal sightings to data from surveys conducted in 1996 and 1997 – before the python was breeding in the wild.

As the population of pythons has spiraled upwards in the last decade, mammal observations have declined by the following percentages:

87.5% bobcat decline

94.1% white-tailed deer decline

98.9% opossum decline

99.3% raccoon decline

100% rabbit decline

100% fox decline

Not a single rabbit or fox sighting was found. Furthermore, the impact of the invasive species on rare animals is unknown. It’s unclear whether or not the python is consuming the Florida panther. It’s quite possible, as these snakes eat leopards in their native habitat of Southeast Asia.

As per above, the pythons aren’t picky eaters. They will often eat any animal they can find. Even large numbers of birds are being consumed. Over 25% of the pythons found in the Everglades contain bird remains.

The above-listed mammals simply have no instinctive defense or fear from a large carnivorous snake. As a result, they fall easy prey. Before the Burmese Python in early 2000, the last large snake to live in this region was 16 million years ago, when a boa-like snake became extinct.

The study does report that certain animals, like turtles, may thrive as a result of this ecological distortion. Raccoons routinely prey upon turtle eggs. With severe declines in raccoon population, turtles have the potential to grow at a higher rate. Of course, this argument assumes the python doesn’t eventually turn on the turtle as food sources dwindle.

In addition to the above report, the National Academy of Sciences published a separate report suggesting bird and coyote populations are also threatened due to the invasive species.

“Survival of the Fittest” Argument Rebuffed

Some counter that survival-of-the-fittest dictates the pythons should spread, as they are simply more powerful predators than their prey. They argue there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this scenario as it simply represents natural selection playing course. But this argument makes little sense as it runs counter to how ecosystems function.

Burmese pythons in their native habitat in Southeast Asia do not cause a 90+% decline in the population of their prey. And neither do large carnivorous snakes like anacondas in the Amazon. Populations of predator and prey evolve together over time and live in balance. Prey develop natural instinctive defenses from these predators. The animals of the Everglades have no natural instinctive defense from these large snakes.

It’s worth noting a further element of tragic irony in this story. While the pythons are spreading like rabbits throughout south Florida, they are endangered in their native habitat of Southeast Asia. Back home, they are hunted for their skins and captured alive for sale abroad as pets.

How did they get here?

Between 1996 and 2006, roughly 99,000 pythons were imported into the United States as pets.

It’s believed the pythons began breeding in the wild as a result of two primary causes: irresponsible pet owners releasing them and the animals escaping their loosely-kept cages as a result of hurricane or stormy weather.

As for the former, these snakes grow to an average of 12 feet. Pet owners likely grew uncomfortable with the health risk and financial burden of securing and feeding a 12-foot snake in their home. After not wanting to deal with these challenges, many released them into the wild.

As for the latter, in 1992, Florida’s Hurricane Andrew was responsible for destroying a python breeding facility. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, other less severe storms likely enabled snakes in loosely secured cages to escape during stormy weather.

Here’s a brief timeline of how the population began to spiral out of control:

2000: A breeding population was confirmed in the Everglades.

2001-2005: 201 pythons observed or killed in the Everglades.

2006-2007: 418 pythons seen or killed in the Everglades.

2009: 5,000 – 180,000 estimated by South Florida Water Management District

It’s difficult to know exact population numbers over the last decade as these animals are difficult to spot. The above numbers are based on sightings and killings of pythons. The bottom line is that from early 2000 to the present, the population of breeding pythons in the Everglades spiraled to well over 30,000.

More on the Python’s Biology

The severity of this proliferation is better understood after learning about certain aspects of this snake’s biology.

For starters, the Burmese python routinely lives 25 years or more. Astonishingly, the record life span for a python in captivity is 47 years!

Females typically lay one clutch of eggs per year, usually in the spring. Each clutch contains somewhere between 12 and 36 eggs. But much larger numbers have been recorded. This August 15 report from the New York Times included finding a 17-foot python with 87 eggs.

These key aspects of the python’s reproductive behavior, combined with the prey’s lack of natural defenses, have led to a perfect storm of ecological collapse for the land-dwelling mammals.

Some Good News: Pythons Can’t Survive the Winter

I was thrilled to learn some apparent good news in this otherwise awful story. The consensus among herpetologists appears that the python cannot survive through a winter beyond south Florida.

An initial USGS study by Reed Rodda in 2008 claimed the pythons could expand as far north as the southern third of the United States. But that study appears to be an outlier.

Consensus among snake biologists is that Burmese pythons are unable to withstand a winter beyond south Florida.  An experimental closure in South Carolina kept a number of pythons over winter. All of the animals died, as they could not properly acclimate to the change in climate. When it gets cold, these pythons simply die. The study did note, however, that the pythons could survive extended periods of temperatures lower than southern Florida.

Python's inability to survive winter, however, may very well be the only good news with regards to their ability to spread throughout the region.

Research in an early 2012 issue of the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology report concluded that pythons are able to tolerate salt water and can therefore travel through marine and estuarine environments like bays or inlets. The open seas are also a possibility. Prior to the report, it was hoped that the pythons would die in saltwater and would therefore be primarily limited to the freshwater of the Everglades.

The snakes can therefore travel along the southeastern coastline and would only be limited by climate restrictions. Worse still, many climate biologists and snake herpetologists claim this climatic range is quite suitable habitat and very similar to that of Southeast Asia.

Burmese Pythons and the American Alligator

One animal in the Everglades appears able to pose a threat to an adult python. In a battle between the Burmese Python and an American Alligator, who wins? The answer: it depends. Both animals have been found to prey on one another. A large alligator can kill and eat a medium-sized python. And the opposite holds true for a large python.

To be fair, newly hatched juvenile pythons are vulnerable to predation by birds and other animals; but that doesn’t say much as the young of any species are always vulnerable.

Back to the alligator-python battle. How is it decided? The battle is often decided by two main factors: the respective size of each animal and the caliber of the first strike. If the alligator secures a swift bite at the python’s head, the snake’s neck will snap and it dies instantly. The python, on the other hand, aims to wrap itself around the alligator, as it would any other prey. After securing a full wrap, it suffocates the animal and then eats it whole. For a successful alligator hunt, size is key for the snake. The larger the python, the greater it’s chance of successfully wrapping itself around the alligator. Pythons are not venomous and must wrap around their prey to secure a kill. Naturally, small and medium-sized alligators are more vulnerable.  

Some sensational pictures have showed up online of battles between the python and the alligator.

There’s even a grotesque story of a python’s stomach exploding after attempting to consume an alligator too large to digest. Its body rejected the meal outright and the snake died a gruesome death. For any remaining survival-of-the-fittest arguers out there - no, ecosystems are not supposed to function in which a predator’s remaining food source causes its stomach to explode.

If there’s any silver lining here, however small, some predation of the python is good and healthy.

Size becomes a key-determining factor of survival between what will inevitably be the two significant remaining animals. Over time, as evolution runs its course, natural selection would favor increasingly large alligators and pythons.

Yes, what was previously a balanced and varied ecosystem of rabbits, foxes, bobcats, deer and opossums in the Everglades is now becoming a battle between larger-and-larger pythons and alligators.

Public Hunts to Raise Awareness

In February of 2012, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission initiated a 30-day hunt to raise public awareness on this issue. Around 1,600 people from 38 states participated in the hunt. 68 pythons were killed. 68. Assuming 30,000 are in the wild, the low end of figures, 68 represents .2% of the python population. The primary reason for this low number is that the snakes are notoriously difficult to locate.

A more recent hunt, as part of Florida's 2016 Python Challenge, took place this past January. 106 pythons were captured this past year. This represents an improvement from 2013 but hardly puts a dent in the total number in the wild. Cooler temperatures have forced snakes into open spaces and assists hunters in finding them. In addition, hunters are improving their hunting skills.

Florida's approach appears to be containing the snakes as the solution. This hunt represents one of the first steps in the process. And the hunt also was meant as a way of doing some introductory research on where the snakes are located.

The Nature Conservancy also launched a Python Patrol Program in 2008 where citizens are trained to alert authorities of snake sightings. As part of the program, wildlife officials then move forward with capturing the snakes. The program was effective in the Florida Keys and then was expanded mainland to the Everglades with support from the National Park Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In total, 200 python capture responders are trained.

This python patrol program is unquestionably a step in the right direction.

Preventing the spread of these animals is an enormously challenging undertaking. I have no idea how it can be done. These animals are excellent swimmers and travel extensively through marsh, swamps and river valleys. They also travel by land and are great climbers with prehensile tails.

Worse still, a challenge exists with Florida’s proposed attempt at containment. Reducing the population of pythons decreases the competition for remaining food resources. As a result, the pythons that do remain become healthier, stronger and more fertile. And in the end, the population continues to grow at high rates. Yep, decreasing the population in the short-term might actually cause it to spike in the long-term. The brutal reality is that preventing the spread of these animals appears nearly impossible.

In Conclusion

It's a tragic situation for all the native wildlife defenseless from these invasive animals - bobcat, deer, opossum, raccoon, rabbit and fox. When these animals run out, it seems any remaining animals would be vulnerable as the pythons basically eat anything.

My point isn't a sentimental one in favor of one specific animal over another; I have nothing against the pythons. It's simply an appreciation for ecological balance, sustainability and life. The situation now is completely imbalanced and unsustainable. It's truly tragic to see the devastating consequences humanity can have on an ecosystem because of some people's misguided desire to own as a "pet" a 12-foot wild snake.

In January of 2012, the federal government announced a ban on the import of the Burmese pythons, South African python, North African python, and yellow anaconda. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar acknowledges the severity of the crisis when he uses the word "forever" to describe how long the ban would last.

Apparently, the law was held up in bureaucracy for nearly two years by the reptile industry. Furthermore, environmentalists were pushing for 9 species of non-native snakes to be included in the legislation but only 4 were listed.

Thank you to the federal government for finally getting this right. Naturally, this ban represents progress and is a good thing.  

At the same time, the ban seems monumentally overdue, at least 7 years too late.  With populations of many native mammals down 90+% and the most conservative estimate pinning 30,000 pythons breeding in the wild, the damage is done and irreversible. While good and necessary, this ban is a bit like administering a vaccine to a patient that died years ago. Perhaps, we will learn faster next time.

[thelostcatpodcast]

THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: SEASON 5: EPISODE 4: BIRDS

Released on : 8th May 2020

https://thelostcat.libsyn.com/season-5-episode-4-birds

Birds. Birds are amazing! They are small and they are cute and they come in all kinds of colours.  But did you know their pretty little bird songs are actually aggressively territorial threats? It’s true! Technically, they’re dinosaurs. They taste really nice, if you are that way inclined, which my cat certainly is. They can fly, which I think is an ability we tend to under-rate in birds. Birds are amazing.

And that’s it. That’s the intro.

THE LOST CAT PODCAST BY A P CLARKE: SEASON 5, EPISODE 4: BIRDS

I was in the pub with my housemates, Dom and Bojana, and I was telling them how great birds are. I was wearing a big hat that covered my entire head. And they were mocking me for my hat. They are my friends.

They were used to me telling them stories about the completely true adventures I have had while looking for my cat. They would often mock me for the more unlikely aspects of the stories, but I guess it passed the time for them, and they let me carry on.

“And another that birds do,” I said  “Is murmur. At the end of the day they form in to massive clouds of ten thousand birds, and they fly about above the trees. They fly in such numbers and so close together that these murmurations can blacken the sky. Then then whole cloud can turn on a penny and blind you with light as ten thousand white bellies are suddenly turned towards you.  Like a stun grenade. It is like a sudden flash.

“People mistake them for UFOs.

“Most likely it is so predators will mistake them for even bigger predators, but what do we know? We hardly know anything! Birds are amazing.”

Back in the pub, Dom said. “Birds. I mean, if you say so.”

Bojana, “let’s see where he’s going with it, OK?”

“Alright. Alright.”

“And a few days ago,” I continued. “I was sat on our roof, watching the evening drift in to night and I saw a huge murmuration, hovering above the top of the hill of the Far Park. It was gorgeous. Untold birds flew around, wafting and weaving about to their own rhythms, their own restless, ever-changing patterns. I looked out over the rows and rows of houses, and the birds looked so alive in comparison. The city felt like frozen time, and the murmuration was like the heartbeat of the world. Like the fire itself.”

“Yeah, alright, mate,” said Dom, back in the pub.

“Oh let him be,” said Bojana. “You carry on.”

“OK, so: in my reveries, I like to think that these murmurations hint at something deeper going on that we can’t see. Like just the surface shadow of something else. Like cats running away, hours before an earthquake, like dragonflies hovering over only perfectly clean water. Like, I would think in my more mischievous moments, the light on an angler fish.

“but then this murmuration swung round dramatically, turning almost exactly ninety degrees, then leapt almost straight upwards. It hung almost completely still, then gently collapsed into its normal coil and curves.

What could make the birds act like that? What predator could it be trying to fool?

I immediately thought of my cat,

“Of course you did,” said Bojana, back in the pub.

“Now, now,” said Dom. “You can’t blame the boy for being consistent. OK, mate, then what did you do?”

“I grabbed my gear, and headed out to the Far Park.”

“Nice. Movement. Action. Makes a change.”

“Are you going to be constantly interrupting me?”

“Probably, but don’t let that stop you.”

So I found my place in the story, and carried on:

“I arrived without incident in the waning hours of the day, with a few scattered people enjoying the last of the sun while sitting on the grass with a pleasantly tended form of nature buzzed all around us.

The murmuration still hung in the air above the hill, huge now I was beneath it, towering above me, swinging around lazily this way and that.

I reached the top of the hill in a hurry and found a man, tall with wild hair and big honest eyes, holding a complicated machine in his hands. He stood directly beneath the cloud of birds, looking straight up. He turned to me and smiled hugely.

“Hey, don’t I know you from the pub?” he said.

“Yeah, i think so,” I said, still panting at the effort of climbing the hill. I’m not sure I knew much about him, but I had seen him around.

“Oh yeah,” said Dom. “Bright shirts, right. Mostly sits at the bar. I’ve had a few with him. I’ve not seen him around recently.”

Well, back on the top of the hill, the man made a connection as to what he knew about me.

“Oh, did you think all this was your cat?”

I sighed, “yeah.”

“I’[m sorry: It’s just me. But still: hey! Look at this! It’s amazing! Birds!”

And he showed me his machine, which looked an awful lot like a remote control device.

“Do you know how murmurations work?” he asked.

“Like, instinct?”

“Kind of,” he said. “Not really. You see:”

And you could tell he really wanted to explain this. He’d been waiting. You should never ignore such enthusiasm. “Each individual bird is in visual contact with the half dozen birds directly around them, so if one of them moves, they move along with it. This way a huge swarm can move in a coordinated fashion almost simultaneously after the first mover has moved. Really simple rules define their action, but it leads to such incredibly complex behaviour! And all controlled by a single, first-mover, bird.”

“Who sees a predator, right?” I said.

“Well,” said the man. This was obviously a topic of debate. “We don’t know,” he said, with the equanimity of someone who had worked very hard on achieving it.

He looked up at the spiral of birds. “The patterns of nature are so beautiful, aren’t they? I think we have lost the ability to read its simple signals. The meaning in those patterns. Civilisation has separated us from nature Rather than adapt to an ever changing world, now we change the world to fit our needs, and our desires. Now, I fear we are completely blind to the patterns of the world. Completely deaf to its communications. Well I am trying to forge that connection again!”

 And he held up a small, mechanical bird. “This is a drone - of my own design - it looks, moves and even smells exactly like the breed of bird above us. I control it with this box.”

He pressed a button on the bird and then threw it up in to the air.

“And if I fly it in to the murmuration, I can become the first mover!”

He synced the bird-drone to the controller and then gently manoeuvred the control stick and, above us, the great cloud of birds all moved to the right, and then to the left.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” he said with wild, honest eyes.

He swung the birds around in great arcs, all from his little remote control. We stood on top of the hill and looked up as the immense plume of birds whirled around us, towering hundreds of feet in to the evening sky. He flew them right up towards the cloud, then right down to just over our heads, and then away.

I noticed a bunch of cats turned up and watched the moving cloud.

And back in the pub Dom said: “cats, finally.”

“None of them were mine, sadly,” I said.

“Well obviously,” he said, and I ignored him.

Back in the park I did ask the cats “Have you seen my cat?”. Let’s say I did it half-jokingly, alright? Either way, they did not respond. They were watching the birds with great interest.

I asked the man: “But are you stopping the birds doing what they want?”

He smiled, patiently.  “They’re just animals. They are not doing this for any particular reason. It is mathematics, really: complex behaviours out of simple rules. This is what all complexity is: the weather, the leaves on a tree, animal behaviour. It is, looked at it this way, as nonsensical to ask what the birds want as much as to ask a drop of water in a storm.”

He handed me the controller: “go on! It is fun”

I took the controller and nervously pushed a stick. The tiny bird drone inside the Murmur shifted and the entire swarm moved with it. My eyes went wide. This was amazing.

I spun the birds gently around us, above our heads. The last of the sun shone through their wings, dappling the hill with light and shadow. It really was all just incredibly beautiful.

And then, in my hands, the controls began to feel heavy - the murmuration responded slowly, sluggishly to my prompts.

“Ooo, hello,” said Dom.

“Oh come on,” I said.

“Oh: no. It’s getting good! Carry on!” said Bojana.

“OK, well: I handed the controller back to the man.

“They seem to be resisting.”

“What?” He took the controls back with a disappointed look. “Don’t be silly.” He looked up and wrestled with the controls. The patterns above us were becoming more ragged, less stable.

Then I noticed that the cats were gone.

“We should stop,” I said, perhaps finally learning the lessons from all the missing parts of me.

“Ha!” said Bojana, who then stopped herself. “Sorry – I couldn’t help myself. Please: carry on.”

“Well, OK. To the man, I said “Maybe you should stop. I mean, how would you like it?”

He said, “they’re just birds!”And he twiddled some knobs and he upped the ampage, and the sounds of the birds above us changed as wings began to collide with each other.

And I started to feel unbalanced, almost queasy, as if the ground had shifted.

And I said, “you know, i’ve always thought these murmurations were like surface shadows of some deeper behaviours. Like cats, running away from earthquakes.”

“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “Or like dragonflies hovering over only clean water.”

“Yeah, or like the lights on pilot fish.”

“Nonsense!” he said dismissively.

And the sound from the birds grew to a roar, and the sky darkened.

And then the bird drone fell from the swarm and lay unmoving and broken at his feet

“Oh you bastards!” He yelled.

And he took out three more drones and sent them up in to the Murmuration.

And a great screeching came from the swarm now. The patterns became chaotic as conflicting signals pulsed through it.

It began to rain feathers.

“Please?” I said.

“What?”

And the three drones smashed down in to the control device which sparked and smoked, and the man had to throw it onto the floor.

And then the birds all shifted around together in perfect formation. They made patterns in the sky, high above the city.

And, pointed directly towards the top of the hill of the far park, the birds formed in to the letters: S.T.O. and P.

“No!” Yelled the man, response. He stood tall, and held up both his middle fingers at the great swarm of birds.

He turned to me and yelled, “look at me! I’m flipping the birds!”

A small cloud of birds separated from the Murmur, swept down and bit both his fingers off. They disappeared, with his fingers, back in to the Murmur.

The man looked at me and, as the blood started squirting and, with a sense of realisation on his face, he took a deep breath in to scream.

And then every bird in the Murmur changed direction at once and flew at the man and completely surrounded him.

If he did scream, I never heard it.

But the Murmur turned red, and bathed the park in strobing, neon, crimson light.

A bit like a disco.

The Murmur lifted and revealed the man’s skeleton, picked clean, standing tall and defiant for a final moment.

Then his bones collapsed.

Then they took the bones.

And then there was nothing left at all.

Then great swarm of birds towered above me on the top of the hill, spinning to a point, like a tornado, like a giant arrow pointing directly at me.

They dropped. They surrounded me. It was like I was in a zoetrope, with light and dark spinning around me so fast I could not see the outside world at all.

And I did nothing. For I had held the controls too.

And then ten thousands birds reached in... and one by one plucked one hair each from my head.

And with that done they lifted, and dissipated, and went back to their trees, and the Murmur was gone, and I was left alone on the top of the hill.

And, back in the pub, I finished my story.

“I was plucked clean,” I said. “It hurt like hell. They had pulled every hair out by the follicle.”

I took my hat off with a flourish, to reveal a completely bare head.

What they did with my hair I could not say, and would not dare venture to guess. Birds are amazing, but do not look too closely in to their nests!”

“Yeah, look, I dunno about this one,” said Dom.

“What?”

“The moral does seem a bit obvious, you know?” Bojana agreed.

“Well look at my head!”

“I can’t stop. It’s a really weird shape.”

“You know you could just say you were balding. There’s no shame in that - a man your age.”

“Honestly, mate, I’m more likely to believe the dinosaurs.”

“They were… oh, never mind. OK. Look, these days I have come to the conclusion that there is no moral so obvious that humans won’t ignore it. I have come to the conclusion that the unique quality that marks a story out as made-up is subtlety.”

And, just at that moment as if to make my point completely clearly:

A thousand birds all came and sat on the fence of the pub garden, lining the walls all around us. Bojana looked at me suspiciously, while I hurriedly put my hat back on.

She looked around. “Oh gild it, why don’t you.”

And then the birds all sang a song. One song, all the same, over and over, all around us.

“Birds are amazing,” said Dom.

And Bojana said, “well played.”

“Thank you,” I said.

And that mostly settled that. Everyone in the pub listened to the bird song in the beautiful late evening air. We got another bottle, and enjoyed the sounds too.

“Ain’t they lovely?” said Dom.

I leant in and whispered, “don’t tell them what we had for dinner.”

And so, in quiet, and surrounded by birds, we all had a large glass of wine.

THIS HAS BEEN EPISODE 4 OF SEASON 5 OF THE LOST CAT PODCAST, CALLED ‘BIRDS’, WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY A P CLARKE

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

Links:

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twitter.com/LostCatPod

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facebook.com/lostcatpodcast

soundcloud.com/a-p-clarke/sets/the-lost-cat-podcast

[m00nslippers]

just because the batboys dont see themselves as siblings all the time doesnt mean they don't all have the same (adopted) father. at any one point in time, at least 2 of the boys have considered each other brothers

Just because you have a piece of paper that says something, that doesn’t mean the feelings are automatic. A document that claims them as ‘siblings’ doesn’t automatically give them a sibling bond, you have to earn that with actual sibling interaction, and until very recently in the canon, Jason did not have that with any of the other Robins. Jason also outright said he was ‘no one’s son’ in Under The Red Hood so at the time he pretty much rejected Bruce as his father, even if the history and feelings were still there. So calling them brothers in any capacity until very recently is just a technicality as far as I’m concerned. But for some people that’s a big important technicality so, okay let’s dissect this argument.

I think it’s a little silly that I actually have to discuss this, but let me ask you the question, ‘why is incest wrong?’  because actual incest is definitely wrong in my opinion but there are real reasons for why it’s wrong, and I’ll tell you why. It’s not just because a religious text or two said so. I like to think we’re beyond blindly following ancient texts to designate who is allowed to have a relationship with who. As far as I see it, there’s two main reasons why incest is bad:

1. Genetic issues with children. Basically if you’re blood-related and you have a kid, that kid has a substantial likelihood to develop a genetic disease just because of how gene inheritance and expression works. Incest relationships that produce children are bad for the gene pool and humanity as a species. Inbreeding is how we got dog breeds that can’t survive giving birth naturally or have a 90% chance of having spine issues and early deaths. It’s objectively bad.

2. Potential for abuse and difficulty in identifying abuse. Basically when you are raised together in the way siblings are, especially with one being older and in a position of power over the younger, there is a huge potential for the elder sibling especially to manipulate or abuse the other, possibly without even realizing what they are doing. Siblings are already supposed to and most likely will care for and love each other, and especially if you are young it would be difficult to tell if any romantic love between the two is because both parties want it or because one feels as if they have to, to maintain the sibling relationship or please the other whom they care about. It just gets really muddy, and difficult to navigate, and it’s hard to tell if the feelings are real or gas-lighting on someone’s end, so at least until both people are adults, it’s really just a situation that should be avoided to make sure everyone stays and feels safe. Avoiding a situation that has a high possibility of abuse is objectively a good thing. 

If you can think of another reason incest is wrong besides “yuck! I don’t want to think of my sibling like that!” then I’m all ears. But that being said, do any of these things apply to the batboys?

Well 1 is a non-issue because they aren’t blood-related and it’s mlm so they aren’t in a child-baring relationship. 2 could be an issue with DickDami or Dick Tim since they do have a decent amount of sibling-like interaction, but if the relationship happens when they are both adults I think it pretty much avoids the problems of number 2. But in the case of JayDick or JayTim is think it is a complete non-issue because they don’t have any relationship at all when growing up and they are all pretty much adults anyways by the time they meet again.

So as far as I can see it, the issues of incest are completely irrelevant to most batcest relationships. Can you wave around a piece of paper that says they are adoptive siblings and therefor their relationship is unlawful in a couple of states in the USA? Yeah, I guess you can, but that’s more a ‘follow the letter of the law rather than the spirit’, type issue. Culture/tradition in the past has said that a lot of things were wrong that if you looked at it objectively you’d see there wasn’t really a logical reason behind it. For a long time relationships between the same sex were seen as wrong but when it comes down to it most of the ‘reasons’ boiled down to “It’s different from what I’m used to so I don’t like it, also some religious person told me it was wrong” (By the way, I’m not against religion here, just against blindly following it and ignoring logic/reality and how certain practices can hurt people.)

Now since we are on the subject, let me just plug something that actually colors my feelings on this issue. When I was pretty young I used to watch a show called House M.D. and there is a particular episode of this show that relates to this subject and really kind of stuck with me when I watched it.

for those who don’t know, House M.D. was a very interesting show where a cynical asshole genius doctor and his crew of put-upon other genius doctors would solve medical mysteries ins a sort of Sherlock Holmes manner (the similarities between the name House and Holmes was intentional on the show’s part). A patient would come into their hospital with a complaint or sickness that no one else could figure out, they would dramatically spiral toward death as the crew clamored to figure out the cause and eventually House, being a genius, would diagnose the patient at the last second as save the day–but he was still a jerk so he was never happy.

In one particular episode, the wife in a young couple came into the ER. She was black and her husband was white, they’d run away and eloped, and been disowned by their families because they were a mixed race couple. But they didn’t care because they were deeply in love and had been there for each other since they were teens because they lived right next door to each other. So she is really sick with something and of course everyone scrambles to figure out what the problem is to save her and the whole time her husband is there for her and being loving and wonderful, refusing to leave her side.

Because that’s how this show works, there is a dramatic reveal that isn’t really relevant that is actually some genetic issue or something. But since their relationship was such a focal point of their situation, House had gleaned enough information about them to realize a disturbing truth–the loving husband and wife who were each other’s only support had been half-siblings all along and didn’t even realize it. The man’s father had an affair with the girl’s mother and they’d both hid it. It hadn’t been obvious because on the surface level they appeared to be different races, but they both had a rare color of green eyes. Their parents weren’t against the couple because it was interracial, but because it was incestuous, but hadn’t told either of them. The husband had to be tested for the same genetic issue as the wife and both were devastated at this realization. We don’t see what the couple decide to do, whether they break off their relationship or continue it. But either way, their feelings were real, their husband and wife relationship was real, and being genetically siblings didn’t change that. Neither of them did anything wrong, they just didn’t grow up as siblings, didn’t realize they were supposed to see each other as siblings.

Now, look. I know this is a fictional story, but it illustrates something that is true to life–sibling relationships are something you have to build. They aren’t automatic, they aren’t genetic, they don’t just happen as soon as you have a piece of paper that says you are siblings. And romantic relationships are something that occur between people who are compatible, regardless of technicalities in law or culture that those involved may or may not be aware of at the time. Judging people or relationships and having expectations about people and relationships based on arbitrary rules and technicalities like ‘technically they are brothers because Bruce adopted Jason and then later he adopted Tim after Jason was dead’  is dumb. It’s meaningless. It really just has no bearing on anything. In most states it’s not even illegal because making an issue of it is based on arbitrary, archaic rules. If someone can give me a solid reason why JayDick or JayTim is wrong or bad, then maybe I’ll change my opinion, (but I still wouldn’t be against people writing it because even messed up and really unhealthy relationships can be weirdly cathartic or interesting to read/write and also do happen in real life–PEOPLE CAN WRITE WHAT THEY WANT EVEN IF ITS ‘WRONG’ THEY DON’T HAVE TO JUSTIFY IT TO YOU OR MEET SOME MEASURING STICK OF MORALITY) but personally I just don’t see why it’s a problem for anyone.

[salaciouscrumpet]

Whumptober Day 10

Whumptober Day 10 Prompt: “Unconscious”

This one actually ended up being more fluff than whump. In fact, it’s not really whumpy at all, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

CW: animal death (humanely and not the focal point of the ficlet)

Characters: Charlie, Luke, Kate, a bunch of happy sleepy critters 

Charlie was trapped, pinned in on all sides, but he wasn’t terribly bothered by his predicament. 

He sat, back to the headboard and supported by a mountain of pillows, his legs stretched out in front of him. To his right Luke was sprawled on his side, his head buried under a pillow, his scarred right arm draped lazily over Charlie’s hip. To Charlie’s left Kate was still for a change, her body curled around his leg and her head pillowed on his thigh. The pair of them were out cold, and although Charlie was tired himself there was something about their exhaustion that made him want to stay awake and alert and to watch over them. 

Bear was, for once, curled up on the doggy bed on the floor. He had tried coming up onto the bed with his humans, but three adults took up a lot of space even on a king-sized bed, and besides that the cats had already staked out their own territory and made it clear the dog was unwelcome. And for all that Titter was frail and elderly and Bear outweighed her by a good hundred and sixty pounds, she was in charge, and Bear had been terrified of her ever since he’d come home as a rambunctious puppy and she’d put him in his place with a single slash of her tiny paw. Sekhmet, the undisputed queen of the house, was perched on the pillow at Luke’s shoulder while Titter slept in a tiny little ball at Kate’s feet. Spud, the kitten, had been relegated to the doggy bed with Bear for being too rowdy, and so he was nestled in against Bear’s thick fur, purring so loudly Charlie could hear him from the bed. 

It was a peaceful scene but it had been hard-won after a day filled with victories that felt Pyrrhic at best. 

Charlie’s day had been tinged with bittersweet sadness. The Petersons had brought their old German Shepherd, Max, in to be put to sleep; Max had been battling hip dysplasia and now Charlie was pretty sure the dog had cancer as well. The euthanasia had been arranged in advance, and the Petersons had given their beloved pet a grand send-off with a day spent doing all the things the old dog enjoyed: basking in the sunlight on the beach while the kids played around him, a short walk in the woods, all of his favourite foods (including the things he wasn’t supposed to eat but loved), and of course lots and lots of cuddles. It was sad, but the Petersons were good people who loved their pet very much, and so they sat with him and cried while he went to sleep in their arms. Max had led a good long life for a large-breed dog and he’d been well-loved, and Charlie’s heart ached for his humans who would miss him very much. He was grateful the Petersons had stayed with Max; it was a hard thing to do, but it always made him think better of his patients’ humans. 

Charlie had come home from work feeling sad and tired, and he’d found Luke huddled in bed with a migraine and his cellphone turned off. Luke’s mother had called, something she did periodically that managed to upset him every single time. His parents were holding a dinner party and expected Luke to attend – alone, so that he could meet the daughter (or daughters) of their wealthy, well-connected friends within the Order. His parents refused to acknowledge Luke’s relationships with Charlie and Kate: Charlie, the child of a human and one of the Fair Folk (Unseelie Court, but still acceptable in the eyes of the Knights of Oberon), was unsuitable because he was a man; Kate was a woman, but she was the offspring of a demon, which barred her in Luke’s parents’ eyes. It probably also didn’t help that neither Charlie nor Kate fell under the definition of “tractable” or “obedient,” which were qualities deemed of utmost necessity in a future wife and mother. Luke’s own opinions on the matter – that he loved Charlie and Kate, that they were committed to each other, that he liked his life the way it was – were irrelevant, as was, apparently, the fact that his parents had disowned him a decade ago. 

So Luke and Rita had argued over the phone, because every time Luke and his mother spoke, they argued. And Kate and Charlie hadn’t been home, so the argument had gone on for way too long because Luke was terrible at telling his mother ‘no’ (and his mother was even worse at listening to it) and then afterwards he’d spiraled until he’d given himself a stress-induced migraine. Charlie’s healing magic was good for a lot of things, but migraines were, unfortunately, not on the list. The only thing to be done was for Luke to try and sleep it off, which was one of the many reasons their bedroom had blackout curtains in the windows, because he was particularly sensitive to light when he had a migraine. 

Then, just as Charlie had walked in the front door of the farmhouse the three of them shared – seconds after stepping in a puddle of cat vomit, almost certainly courtesy of Sekkie – he got a text from Devon, letting him and Luke know that Kate had been injured while on patrol. Nothing serious (which, in the context of superhumanly resilient people like Luke and Kate, meant nothing actually life-threatening, but probably still actually serious for anyone else), and they’d already had one of the only other charmers at the camp heal her up, but she was going to be on light-duty for a few days. Rishaan, bless his heart, would drive her home. Kate got home about forty-five minutes later, tired and grumpy and limping on what had only shortly before been a leg broken in several places, the result of a fall. Charlie suspected there was more to the story – Kate was not known for simply falling – but it could wait until morning. Charlie had long ago learned to pick his battles, and confronting a post-injury Kate about how she’d come to be injured was not the hill he wanted to die on that night. 

Some time later the cat puke was cleaned up, the animals were fed (and Charlie helped himself to some leftovers; neither Kate nor Luke was hungry), and Charlie managed to get his two miserable partners tucked into bed on either side of him. Luke’s migraine was mostly over with, which set it on the shorter end of such things for him, and Kate’s leg – healed up but still stiff and tender – was covered in a smelly ointment Charlie made from scratch that only had a few magical properties. Magical healing took a lot of energy out of both the charmer and the patient, so Kate was out like a light. Charlie had lulled Luke to sleep with a scalp massage (and only a tiny amount of magic to urge him on), and the animals had piled onto the bed. The bedroom was dark and just cool enough to make climbing under a pile of quilts seem like a brilliant idea. There was a mountain of pillows, the cats were purring, and somewhere in the distance a loon called out over the lake behind the house. 

Charlie had been reading on his tablet, using the warmer light settings specifically designed for nighttime usage. He leaned over Kate and set the tablet on the end table before settling back against the headboard again. He was tired but at peace, even with the heartache from earlier in the day and the stresses that had met him upon arriving home. He played with the end of Kate’s braid, coiling it around his hand before running his hand over her head. He and Luke were the only ones who were allowed to touch or play with Kate’s hair; she claimed she didn’t like being petted and fussed over – unless she shifted into a cat, which was her ‘comfort’ form – but they could get away with it because they were hers. Charlie’s other hand stroked along the solid curve of Luke’s shoulder, brushing over the stark black and red tattoos that lined him from neck to wrist. He couldn’t actually see the markings, but he knew them so well he could picture them in his mind: based off primitive Scythian tattoos, each one a different animal Luke had chosen to indicate an important moment or memory. Soon he would need to start moving on to his chest and back, because he was running out of real estate on his left arm, and he wasn’t willing to tattoo over the scars on his right. Charlie was never sure what to make of that – as the man responsible for healing Luke’s badly burned arm, Charlie saw those scars as a sort of failing, that he hadn’t been able to make his lover completely whole again. Luke, on the other hand, was grateful simply to have an arm that functioned (and functioned well), and didn’t much care about the aesthetics. The scars had meaning to Luke, just as his tattoos did. And both represented a break from his past, although for completely different reasons. 

Down on the floor Bear let out a small yelp, one of his hind legs scuffing against the hardwood as he kicked and chased something in his dreams. The movement dislodged the kitten, and within seconds Spud was up on the bed, casting cautious glances at both Titter and Sekhmet. Both female cats were ignoring him, so Spud wound his way over the quilts and in between Luke’s legs, snuggling in the crook of his knee. His noisy purr – which sounded something like a broken engine – seemed to take on a triumphant note as he made himself comfortable on the bed despite his mean and territorial older sisters. 

“Be nice,” Charlie whispered softly when Sekhmet opened her eyes to glare pointedly at the kitten. She turned and blinked at him, falling back to sleep. There was no doubt in his mind that she had simply chosen to continue ignoring Spud, and not that she was listening to or obeying her human’s commands. Sekkie was the queen of the house; Charlie and the others just lived there, to serve at her leisure. 

“’M always nice,” Kate murmured sleepily, smushing her face into Charlie’s hip. 

“Lies,” Luke replied, every bit as sleepy. His voice was muffled by the pillow he still had pressed over his face. 

“Shush,” Charlie said. He stroked one hand over Kate’s hair and the other over Luke’s shoulder, and Spud’s contented, broken-machine purr rumbled out through the room. The day had been a shitshow, and no doubt tomorrow Charlie would still need to deal with the fallout of Luke’s conversation with his mother as well as Kate’s inexplicable injury, but until tomorrow he was content to sit and snuggle with the family they had made for themselves.

[erenthecoordinate]

Hello. Please share your thoughts about the latest couple of chapters/Zeke's backstory.

Not gonna lie, this probably one of the most emotional chapters I’ve read in a while.  I’ve been asking for a Zeke-centric chapter that would explain his motives and we got it in the classical heartbreaking fashion that this series is known to dish out.  AND it includes an explosive cliffhanger that Michael Bay would be proud of and make a good portion of the fandom look at a panel at 200% zoom and contrast change for 3 days.

I think the last time I talked about Zeke on this blog, I mentioned that I believe there is a chance Zeke is being genuine with working on Eldia’s side, but it wasn’t yet clear how much he wanted to include Paradis in the fruits of his potential “free the people” plan.  Yeah, so, things have changed obviously.  But not as drastically as I was led to believe after chapter 112.  By ch113, I figured there was more to the story with Zeke, since it seemed that his intentions for escaping was based on a time restraint and the fact he couldn’t trust Levi in the end.  Fortunately for his fans and unfortunately for Zeke, Levi’s plot armor saved him this time.  Only for fate to be teased once more!  Ugh!

I’m going to give a few super brief hot takes that I posted before but Tumblr decided to throw it into the abyss the first time.  This is going to be the least analytical and organized list I’ve ever written so be kind:

Finally, a flashback chapter of the most mysterious guy in this series

…AND HE’S CUTE!?

Oh my god.

Grisha and Dina are not the worst parents nor bad people but hell if they aren’t misguided, radical, and negligent of their only son.

This gives me middle school flashbacks.

I didn’t expect Zeke to suck at military training, to be honest.  They really did just call him a child prodigy for his miracle abilities and the fact he betrayed his parents.

Which I don’t entirely blame him anymore…if it wasn’t his free decision, he was influenced by a replacement nurturing parental figure to do it.  Ouch.

I was mad when these spoilers came out but now it makes sense why this is Zeke’s motive.

I’m pretty confident Eren is double crossing Zeke now.

Zeke is not dead.  Levi is not dead.  Splash text is clickbait.

I don’t even think Levi lost any arms, but we won’t know until 2 or 3 chapters from now.  Hope he knows how to swim!

For wordy rambling, please read on--

As most of the fandom assumed, this chapter was going to be primarily a flashback containing Zeke’s childhood.  And it’s a heavy reveal that spirals into his present-day motives.  It opens up with another scene that illustrates exactly how mistreated and disrespected Eldians are, the janitor going so far as to question why they are “breeding” for more devils.  This is unsurprisingly traumatizing to Zeke and those words are the seeds that flourish the plant of self-hatred soon to wreak havoc.  On the other hand, Grisha vents his frustrations and feeds the idea that their only salvation is to be free from their internment.  They have barely enough freedom to leave their residence and to do so require legal permission.  At this point, we’re familiar enough with how Marley reacts to Eldians both in the past and present day and those views haven’t changed no matter the year.  The story makes us aware that other nations prefer the race to be eradicated whereas Marley’s action is to keep them controlled, though of course there are people who support the former option.  It’s demeaning enough to be ostracized but threatened with genocidal wishes from the general public induces a lot of paranoia and, in the Restorationists’ case, rage.

Zeke is considerably mellow though.  There is no contempt because he’s too busy appeasing his parents.  He struggles with his training and falls far too short from the other warrior candidates.  But he is nothing but loyal to Grisha and Dina, even lying to his grandparents about how his father lectures him about their history.  Zeke uniquely gets two different teachings, but interestingly we don’t see him doubting either of them.  He seems to absorb more of what Grisha is saying, but doesn’t confess that to his grandparents, and simply nods and follows along to whatever is being read to him.  Most of his anxiety is reaching the expectation of becoming a warrior like his parents wanted.

His parents don’t make it a mystery to Zeke that him becoming a warrior is part of their restoration plan.  It’s not out of glory or that they want to best for him, but he is already exposed to the group as the one to save them all, a beacon of hope that the whole of the Eldian race depends on.

Of course, with the pressure on, Zeke cannot make the cut.  A mix of physical weakness and mental turmoil has Magath questioning Zeke’s integrity.  This brings him trailing behind his comrades, defeated, only to run into one of the current warriors playing catch with himself.  This is where we get a first glimpse of Zeke’s hidden pitching talent.  Tom Xaver, the current Beast Titan whose main job is a titan science researcher, is impressed and Zeke illuminates.

I know he murdered hundreds in very unkind ways, but it is a canon fact he is adorable.

Afterwards, Grisha, Dina, and their restorationist friend Grice become stressed with the fact Zeke isn’t performing to acceptable standards to even qualify to be a candidate of the warrior program, let alone having the chance to harness one of the titans.  Zeke overhears this and is taken back by the urgency. Grisha takes notice and attempts to encourage his son by saying he is special and therefore he can succeed.

Immediately follows probably one of the most depressing, soul-crushing pages that doesn’t include death (unless you count the death of Grisha and Dina’s faith in their son).  You don’t have to like Zeke to feel a twinge of relatability when he nearly breaks down from watching his parents turn away in disappointment.  It’s the worst kind of rejection because there is no improving something you simply cannot do and don’t truly have a passion for, even if you fight tooth and nail for it.

Xaver comments on Zeke’s atrocious training attempt and Zeke admits that his parents are the reason he has to become a warrior.  Xaver loosely describes the “perks” of being a warrior: harness unbelievable power, fight in wars, and die in 13 years by the teeth of your successor.  Avoiding that fate doesn’t grant much freedom, but to Zeke, staying alive for as long as possible is good enough.  To survive is fine.  He doesn’t need to fight to be free.

Naturally, cruel circumstances bombarde Zeke’s world when he overhears that his parents are in serious danger of being discovered.  He attempts to vere them to safer options so that they won’t be sent to Paradis, but Grisha and Dina immediately shut him down.  Living in an oppressed system is damaging to their self-esteem.  Revolution is necessary to change the world.  Zeke is their golden ticket.  There is a fatal risk to all this, but it is all for the name of their people.  For those who died for trying to reach beyond their boundaries.  Grisha omits his guilt over his sister’s death, saying what he wanted was simple.  Did that deserve punishment?  We already know his feelings about that, though.

Zeke on the other hand is convinced that it is all over for his family.  The power others have over them is far greater than his parents can overcome.  Xaver sees his distress and Zeke is quick to surrender any possibility of a long life, grateful he can hold onto memories of him as he eternally sleeps.  Xaver is too fond of Zeke, though, and we learn he is the one who suggests Zeke turn in his parents in order to save himself and his grandparents.  Zeke objects, of course, but it doesn’t take too long for Xaver to convince him that his parents cared more about their agenda than their child’s happiness and wellbeing.  And then that all happens.

Several years pass, and Zeke has gone from adorable to totally handsome.

Err...and he has become a successor to the Beast Titan.  He’s woven a close bond with this man to know progressions concerning his research.  A lot of it is information we already know but to them it’s a mix of theory and hearsay.  The new bit of information we gather is the theory that the Founding Titan can manipulate Eldian’s genetic makeup based on paths alone.  It’s what has saved them from plagues in the past.  Zeke recalls the janitor that harassed him and his parents years ago, and laments on the idea that the Founder can also prevent more Eldians from being born.

Xaver reacts somber over this concept.  He confesses that he used to have a family under disguise as a Marleyan.  It wasn’t until after his wife found out and killed herself and their son out of shame and disgust that he ultimately decided to become a warrior-- so he could die in the most glorified way possible, I guess?  In that time, he was dedicated to his research more than anything, but overall expressed he virtually replaced the void in his heart with Zeke’s presence, which explains why he was so important to him.  It’s kind of touching that they both found  each other to fill in roles that were empty in their lives.  Xaver still exhibits a great deal of self-hatred, something that Zeke can relate to.  At this point, he declares his motive of taking the Beast Titan, recovering the Founder, and stop the cycle of suffering by effectively ending the existence of Eldians altogether.  It’s...certainly a goal, albeit a method of giving in to their circumstances and accepting that they cannot fight against this oppression, so that the best thing to actually do is not exist.  Because no matter what they do, to exist is to suffer, and what kind of life is that?

The flashback closes with Levi overhearing Zeke mutter that the only salvation for Eldia is their euthanasia, and that all the deaths he is responsible for was a method of setting them free.  Of course, Levi doesn’t buy it and prepares for another round of Chopped.  Zeke appears to be only partially lucid when he shouts for his dead mentor to watch his next move.

In a matter of seconds, Zeke jerks the string that pulls the fuse and Levi looks to try to make a quick escape.  Zeke risks it all in an explosion that splits his body in parts, though it looks like his neck and head are still intact.  Meanwhile, Levi is blown back a distance with some blood trailing from his body due to ambiguous injuries.  And there is our cliffhanger of the volume!

I know I basically just summarized the chapter with some flavor additions, but there are a few things that drove me to a pit of emotions and questions during the spoiler drop.  Context from the fully translated chapter fixed a lot of my primary thoughts.

The Zekecrets

First big gain from this chapter is Zeke’s motive!  Finally, the zekecret is out!  And it’s rooted from a traumatic childhood and is buzzing with controversy.  I can’t say I agree with Zeke’s idea of ending the Eldian race by sterilizing them and killing those that he can.  But I will say that considering his experiences as a child and that discussion with Xaver had inspired this motive and, therefore, makes a lot of sense.  We’ve seen Zeke as a kind of chessmaster with many tricks up his sleeve yet was a shroud of mystery.  He has killed without mercy, he has betrayed his country, and he has turned that people he claimed to protect into Titans.  But to him, these deaths are convenient and align to his ultimate goal.

It’s honestly hard to believe that a character that has convinced people that his empathy level is so low that he barely even forms any attachments (as evidence with his betrayal) started off as an extremely sensitive and emotionally intelligent child.  His confidence is constantly challenged because of his blood from both sides.  His parents put him on a pedestal because his relation to them is what makes him special and therefore he must succeed.  On the other front, he is subjected to harsh ostracization from the general Marleyan public for simply being Eldian.  And at training, being the weaker of the child soldiers, he is put down by instructors and his trainee peers.  And even so, he still finds a bit of salvation in learning how to pitch while having some close conversation with a kind stranger.  Where he can’t find affection and acceptance in one area, he finds it in Xaver.

Still, the reality is that he is given these expectations that he himself simply has no strong drive to achieve nor the physical strength.  He presses on for the sake of his parents, but only his success will gain their acceptance and...he is unable to do it.  I think the most heartbreaking thing about this is that he accepts that he is somewhat of a tool for their agenda yet he sticks his neck out in hopes that he gets affectionate attention from his parents.  The fact he watches a child play ball with their father on his way home show that it’s an attention he craves because he doesn’t receive it often.  Even when he knows they are soon to get caught, Zeke’s first instinct is to say his goodbyes and surrender to whatever fate has in store for him.  To him, he is useless to carve his own path.  He has failed his parents, the Restorationists, the whole Eldian race, and himself.

Parenting Contrast: Grisha&Dina v Carla

I do briefly want to say that I don’t think Grisha and Dina were bad people, they are bad (not worst) parents and were too radicalized in their beliefs to realize that their son was emotionally struggling with self-esteem issues.  Anything they knew about Zeke was very on the surface.  Their priority was the revolution.  They manufactured a child for this due to their ignorance and anger.  But I don’t think they didn’t care about Zeke at all.  Zeke, to them, was to gain just as much of a positive outcome and life of freedom if he succeeded.  They were never aware of the pressure they put on Zeke.  Grisha later assumed that their negligence was the reason for Zeke’s betrayal and he never blames him for it.

Ironically, though, Eren is the appropriate child Grisha could have had for his revolution before it rapidly failed.  Second time’s the charm?  This is likely due to Eren’s lack of responsibility.  There were no dire expectations until later in his life.  Carla parented opposite of Dina and Grisha, believing that not everyone has to be special to be great.  Eren had more options open to him. 

Regardless, I don’t think Grisha quite parented the same way as he did with Zeke, but it may have been a bit difficult to keep reactions to certain circumstances subtle.  I don’t know if we’ll ever get more insight about why Eren used to be a weird loner kid that followed life through “the strong conquer the weak” system.  I just have a sneaking suspicion that it’s due to indirect mimicking of Grisha’s behavior.  After all, a real issue in this series are ignorant adults.  Or sometimes kids are just weird and easily influenced.  Unfortunately, in the end, Grisha does resort back to pressing responsibility on his second son, most likely because of their dire situation and Eren’s willingness to break free.  Because Eren is his son, of course.

Bit by bit, however, Zeke seems to be progressively aware of the obsession his parents have over their revolution plan.  They spend very little time with him, so he is often spending time with his grandparents, effectively keeping the cover up for his parents.  And any time they do spend with him is spent reversing the studies he has learned at school.  Zeke accepts the lessons but isn’t enthused.  I mentioned that he doesn’t really seem to question which history is correct and which isn’t; he doesn’t cast doubts on either and it’s difficult to say whether Grisha’s teachings were ones he felt were more accurate or that he was just parroting in order to gain approval.  A majority of his interactions with his parents are “yes” and nods.  

When Xaver comes into the picture and Zeke projects him as a father figure, he becomes more aware of his parents’ actions.  Which is why I don’t think it was especially a struggle for Zeke to believe Xaver when he told him that his parents don’t really care about him and that it’ll be worth selling them out if it means he and his grandparents get to live.  Zeke is very good at shutting down his emotions at this moment.  He is, however, not without heart though, because he continues to nurture that fondness for Xaver, who he is later a successor to.  In fact, he is the reason why Zeke entertains the idea that Eldians should stop reproducing.

The Plan and is Eren actually part of this?

This is where things get controversial, of course.  On one hand, technically, no longer existing means that they would no longer have to suffer.  Zeke says those on Paradis are ignorant to what the world has in store for them.  This isn’t to buy more time to properly unite with other nations, it was time to stop reproduction altogether and (probably) eliminate the Eldians on Paradis.  To Zeke it’s merciful to end this.  But it’s still genocide.  And I don’t believe this is the ultimate answer nor do I believe Eren is actually going to end up accepting this plan.

Unlike Zeke, Eren grew up with an everlasting flame that urged him to seek freedom in every format.  Freedom of his environment, freedom of his choices, etc.  He too gets weighed down by crushing expectations, becoming something of a tool for the military and government to achieve victory, but it is something that he genuinely wants.  Included, he still had the compassion of his comrades.  He wished them long lives.  He believes that people deserve to live simply by being born into the world.  Their existence gives them the right to freedom.  It gives them a chance to fight.  Sterilization is a big surrender.  Death and prevention of life, robbing that choice from others, is completely contradicting to anything Eren has ever learned, said, or believed in.  And I think his reaction to Willy’s words at the festival is a key indicator that his intention is to keep the Eldians alive.  I’m not sure how far ahead Eren is in terms of double crossing his brother, but at the very least, I think that if he knows Zeke’s true intentions, he has found or is finding a way to skirt around that option and use Zeke for his own plans.

I plan to write a progression meta theorizing Eren’s motives that edits and re-publishes with every reveal in each chapter but basically my guess is that Eren does know what Zeke wants and that he has been playing along with Zeke’s orchestrated plan, festival, Warhammer Titan, prisonbreak, etc. to earn loyalty points.  Which unfortunately included him killing innocents in the process.  But if Zeke really does believe their deaths are their true freedom, then Eren has to convince Zeke that he believe the same too.  Doesn’t mean he hasn’t internally struggled as a result.  But for now, Eren’s individual thoughts remain an enigma so it’s difficult to pinpoint his exact intentions at the moment.

Explosive (haha) End

Anyway, the other big thing was Zeke’s dramatic escape act which required an enormous explosion and the splitting of his own body.  Uh, yuck!  But I can’t help but feel a bit tickled that we actually have a panel with Zeke’s detached ass in the air.  His torso, including his neck and head, are more or less together, so he can easily pull off the Reiner trick to implant his brain to elsewhere on the nervous system so that he can regenerate from there.  So, yeah, Zeke will be fine.  And probably pantless if he can’t recover his lower half.

Levi, on the other hand, has no regenerating powers and appears pretty injured if the blood splattering off his body is anything to go by.  He wasn’t as close to the explosion, so it’s possible any injuries he sustained are because of the shooting debris and/or his sword, which he still had out in front guarding his body prior to the fuse going off.  I remember when the first grainy image of this panel came out and everyone was zooming in and tracing areas to figure out if Levi lost anything.  I think it’s consensus now that Levi has both legs intact and at the very least his left arm.  The only big question is whether his right arm is there and any other injuries on his torso or face that may exist.  If you want my personal visual analysis and theory, I think his injuries are not fatal nor crippling, meaning all his limbs are intact, but he probably has decent sized gashes on his body to have him temporarily side-lined.  I think the angle of the drawing and multiple gradients to indicate fast motion and blood direction is meant to give the reader uncertainty but in the end it’ll reveal that nothing was lost.  At least, I hope so.  It would be absolutely disheartening and irresponsible to put him out of commission for the rest of the series and the rest of his life-- I think out of all the suffering Levi has gone through, he definitely doesn’t deserve to feel completely useless to do anything,  Plus it’d be extremely underwhelming to set your strongest and most popular character on the bench before the big climax.

I will say that Levi is definitely not dead, though.  None of the notable deaths we’ve seen have been obscured by body angles.  They’ve been explicitly shown without debate on their status, Erwin and Sasha especially.  I believe the only off-screen deaths the series has had was Moblit and Ymir, and even then the scenes before then leave you no doubt to their inevitable fate.  Even Marco eventually got a scene of his death.  And neither of these deaths happened as cliffhangers.  But false death cliffhangers have always been a thing in the series.  Plus, I think Levi is far more deserving of a multi-panel, half chapter death scene if he were to die at all.

I do think he will land in the river and those injuries will prevent him from fighting effectively against the current to stay in his location.  I believe the convenient landscape was rather deliberate as it gives Zeke enough time and lonesomeness to recover and seek Eren.  Really, the explosion was an excuse to remove Levi from the scene and quickly be transported elsewhere.  But I want to bet we won’t find out Levi’s fate for another couple chapters.  Because Isayama is just that cruel!

....

Sorry this got extensive.  I’m still building up on these thoughts, so nothing is definite or without possibility of change.  But to summarize, Zeke’s childhood is sad, his plan is genocide and Eren ain’t about that life, Yeagerbros are dramatic people and forever interesting to me, and Levi is alive and battered but not handicapped.

That said, I would love to hear from everyone else about what they thought of the chapter.  Were you sympathetic to Zeke’s backstory?  Is he irredeemable?  What’s Eren’s role in all this?  Does he actually subscribe to Zeke’s scheme of eliminating all Eldians to end their suffering, or does he have other tricks up his sleeve?  Is Levi alive? How bad are his injuries?  Does he know how to swim?

Will I ever recover from the emotional rollercoaster this chapter has put me though?

Thanks for sending this ask!  I haven’t meta’d in a while and this honestly is inspiring to write again!