#also i like to date old men/women so that does come into play but whatever

[wizardclown]

getting to the age where im seeing lawyers, and doctors in my dating apps

[likesunsetorange]

okay so similar to the mikasa ones, here are all the ones for eren and my thought processes behind them!

i think men’s fashion tends to be a little less versatile than women’s fashion by a long shot, so i think there’s definitely a lot less diversity and variation between my eren’s compared to my mikasa’s! i think each of my mikasa’s have a specific “aesthetic” whereas my eren’s more so have more of a color palette/vibe to their style because i think there’s only so much you can do with men’s clothing tbh unless you’re aiming for a super curated aesthetic (e.g. cowboy eren)! so i think they’ll have a lot of overlap tbh, but this is kind of how i envision them all! and again i’ll include the moodboards i’ve made previously!

— 𝐝𝐨𝐥 𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

i think dol eren and mikasa both have this very “boy next door” and girl vibe to them, like i don’t wanna call them “basic” per se, but it’s a very sort of typical and like almost expected vibe you’d expect of average 24 year olds. for eren, since he works a more physically demanding job, i imagine him being a very casual person. i also just see most guys being casual in general, so wearing a lot of like solid/vintage graphic tees and then whatever random bottoms on a day to day basis if he’s not doing anything special! i imagine the only time he dresses up is when he goes out with mikasa, because she’s the only person who he cares to really impress (hence the chapter about their date), so he’d have some nicer clothes for when he has nice things to attend, but they’re only reserved for things like that!

i see him wearing the most of: t-shirts, hoodies/sweatshirts, the occasional nice button up. idk dol eren would be uniqlo if he were a brand. he is a GOOD QUALITY, LOYAL, and DEPENDABLE! when has uniqlo EVER done you wrong??? like it’s simple but it’s tried and true man, for good reason!!!

— 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

bodyguard eren is a casual guy but he’s like the emo version in my head lol. like bodyguard mikasa’s colors in my head are red/pink/white, and bodyguard eren’s are black/green/grey—he wears a lot of darker colors essentially! mikasa obviously is the more fashion forward one in this relationship, and eren is def more casual lol, he basically just wears all black or some variation of a neutral outfit bc he’s a very simple and apathetic man lol, he doesn’t really care. but similar to how eren inspires mikasa to dress more casual, mikasa would def play ken doll with eren and buy him clothes lol, so i think he’d dress up a bit more too! but i don’t think she’d ever force him to wear anything he didn’t like, i just think eren dresses casually bc it’s simple and easy, and he’s just a laxxed man.

he would be converse bc i see him begrudgingly taking his shoes off when mikasa pisses him off and he’s struggling to get them off in ample time bc they’re high tops lol

(also there’s a cardigan bc mikasa would so put him in a cardigan lol)

— 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

okay after model eren, i think e2l eren is the second best dressed, and this is solely because him and mikasa were together for so long LOL, she played build a boyfriend! like his style comes from her! but eventually after being together so long he does sort of develop his own sense of style but like the foundation of his style IS mikasa. so i think his style kinda emulates the same kind of vibe as hers, idk how that translates in male description. he would dress up a little more than some of the other eren’s and probably wear a bit more color too! def has that vacation-y vibe too. also e2l eren is a graphic designer, so he has that artsy boy vibe to him a bit too!

he’d be zara bc mikasa definitely introduced him to zara while they were dating lol

— 𝐜𝐨𝐰𝐛𝐨𝐲 𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

i feel like this one doesn’t need much explanation, we all know cowboy eren is just a hot, sexy cowboy. he’s a working man and he has to dress accordingly!!!! (and for whatever reason we’re all very oddly attracted to it) (it’s bc it’s eren) but i think for mikasa’s fancier events he would dress up, and occasionally omit the cowboy hat if need be lol

he is boot barn lol. and maybe levi’s.

— 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

model eren to me is obviously the BEST DRESSED out of all the eren’s, like this is an obvious given. he’s a model! of course he’s gonna be the most fashionable! to me, he screams pretty boy lol, so he’s going to dress and act accordingly lol. it’s one of the main things that mikasa also makes fun of him for too. so i think of his style as very tailored, very classic, but also some fun and a bit more stylized pieces! i think he would wear a little bit of everything, so he would dress super fancy some days, but then have some more casual pieces too! but then once he kind of stays in montana with his family, he’ll def kind of his model mikasa moment and have the little bit of cowboy flare to his style a bit too!

he would be all saints! or some niche expensive brand im probably too poor to afford

— 𝐚𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧

academic rivals eren is kinda my favorite to talk about bc he’s kinda funny LOL he’s basically frat boy adjacent and it makes me giggle. he’s literally what you’d think of when you’d think of an obnoxious little frat boy in the most stereotypical way (not in the board shorts and polos way tho omg), although he isn’t technically one! his style is definitely pretty casual, so he’d definitely wear a lot of t-shirts and flannels, but since he’s a bit well off, i think he’d wear a lot of stuff like golf wang and more expensive sneakers! i see eren as kinda basic tbh lol he’s a simple man but i think he’d have his occasional indulgences lol (and golf wang stuff is SO comfy). he’s just your tried and true college boy in my opinion!

he would be golf wang & converse (but not for the reasons stated above).

i won’t lie i feel like this one gave me more grief than the one for mikasa did lol like i definitely had to think about it a bit more! men’s fashion is way harder to me so i had to be a lot more considerate about each eren and their vibes, but this was fun!

[thelyingjoke]

mashed my 2 favorite games together because from that mere passing reference i made to the other one last week i could Not stop thinking about it. so here. danganronpa v3 crossover with dialtown: phone dating sim :)

the premise of dialtown is that everyone has an object head, with default Men having Phones and Women having Typewriters, but they can also be swapped out for any other object if someone wants to for whatever reason, like for identity purposes, disability accomodations, jobs, etc. i Highly recommend it!!! it's a very lovable and bizarre game (and i mean it when i say bizarre. just look at the description on steam) and it's only 8 dollars, as well as also having a free demo that has hours of content in it to see if you'd like it!!!!! (also a fun webquiz i got karen tell me who you got in the comments below /j) anyway advertisement over below is a lot of thoughts and art about how i think the v3 characters would fit into the world :)

the things i will do for dialtown (render a drawing)...disclaimer the characters do not Actually have faces. i just think they're cute and like drawing them :) anyway!

For Kaede, as pictured above, I think she'd have a piano keyboard head! She still plays normal piano (she's gotta get her fingers moving), but now she can play on the go! And she plays almost all the time. You can typically hear her before you see her. The music she plays often reflects her mood, and if something surprises or shocks her or something similar she plays a silly little key-slamming noise. I think that, when she had a typewriter head, she would have often been typing too, just as a fidgeting thing—but the constant dings and clicking of the keys would have been too loud and annoying to others, and it would waste a lot of paper. So she got a piano head instead! It suited her a lot more and was more bearable to be around! Not only that, but now she can also play piano duets by herself (though she sometimes thinks it feels lonely and wrong to be the only one playing a song meant for two).

i started to get tired after that drawing so i didn't do many others, and rantaro was the only other one i shaded, so i will talk about him next!

Rantaro changed his head to a GPS shortly after his first couple of sisters went missing and he dedicated himself to adventuring in order to find them. I think his old head was a smartphone, since his family is rich it would be a status symbol, but while it did have more functions and would certainly house a GPS within itself, it would also be much harder to repair, thus where the status symbol part comes in. He could afford the healthcare fees required to repair it if it ever got damaged, certainly, but if he were ever caught in a tough bind he wouldn't necessarily be able to get to any medical professional skilled enough to handle it. So he switched it out for an older model of a GPS, to make any repairs that would need to be done much easier, and maybe even possible to do on himself if he had to. Some of his sisters would put stickers on his head. Most of them are faded and breaking away now, but he won't ever take them off.

i was running out of energy at this point so this and one other thing are the last things i drew (though i still have lots to talk about!)

Let's talk about the silly goober on the right first :) It's The Guy!!! D.l.C.E. in this universe stands for Dialtown league of Clown Enthusiasts (the I is secretly a lowercase L). They are a secret group of people that believe in clowns and plan to bring them back from extinction by participating in clown activities themselves. Their current mission is obtaining enough money ($4) in order to hopefully summon Frongles the Clown to them (by calling him on the phone). Nobody believes them yet, but Kokichi is certain that they will soon. He would love to masquerade as an evil supreme leader and cause mischief all around town, which he does, but unfortunately for him those roles are already both fulfilled by two other people (Mayor Mingus and Little Billy), and no one likes a copycat. His main concern right now, aside from the clown thing, is simply to entertain people in the best ways he can. Pretty much anyone who lives in Dialtown would need that. If he can make people smile (metaphorically), that's the greatest success he can hope for.

And now for the fella on the left! That is Gonta! His head is a candlestick telephone, like Abel—similar to Rantaro, it's a status symbol, though in a different way. But Gonta gets a slightly fancier one that Abel, because he is much cooler. I think in the Dialtown universe, it would be possible for reptites to exist. However, I think it's funner to imagine Gonta being raised instead by one of the cryptids in-game. I think Bigfoot would be the best one to do so. He lives deep in the woods and isn't believed to be real by most people, fitting with how the reptites are, and is just caring enough that I could see him actually manage to raise a child. For an explanation to that drawing: Bigfoot's name has been put down as the primary shareholder for a local restaurant business ('bear.', a reference to the developer's FNAF fangame series, Dayshift at Freddy's, which I also love hehe) because the owner doesn't believe he's real, and wants to collect the money himself. However, Bigfoot has somehow figured this out, and now regularly goes to the bank to collect his shares (which are given to him in the form of bananas). I think Gonta would sometimes accompany him on these trips :) I think he would get along great with Karen! They'd be besties! I think that every time Gonta goes with Bigfoot to collect bananas, he and Karen would exchange one (1) cool bug and horse fact each (if only there weren't a line, then they'd talk for ages). The power of two people with animal special interests... They'd also both appreciate each other being so honest (Gonta wouldn't have to lie to her about Bigfoot like he would with other people) and talking to Gonta is so much easier than most people for Karen. She doesn't have to watch out for sarcasm or worry about missing idioms, because Gonta doesn't use either. And he is always so respectful. And he gives her cool bug facts. What's not to enjoy?

I have considered, however, Gonta being raised by the other local Dialtown cryptid: Phonegingi. Realistically, I don't think this could happen; Phonegingi lives too close to the town, and has a lifestyle that no human could survive. However. The idea is VERY funny. I think if Phonegingi found Gonta, and decided to adopt him instead of kicking him or using him for child labor, and it somehow managed to keep him alive for 10 years, Gonta would be much weirder. That was the other thing I drew:

He'd still be Gonta, but, you know...being raised by the protagonist of Dialtown would mess anyone up.

those are all the things i drew for, but i still have thoughts about the other characters:

I think Kaito would be a Motorola StarTAC. Haha get it because Star. He also just seems like a flip phone kinda guy. I think Kokichi likes to terrorize him as a clown. Kaito would be scared shitless screaming "CLOWNS AREN'T REAL! STOP IT!!!" and Kokichi would simply say "Honk honk", leading to Kaito crying, even though he has no eyes. He would also, of course, get along amazingly with Norm. He'd be starstruck to meet not just any astronaut, but the only one who's ever been through a wormhole, and Norm would greatly admire Kaito's strong will and desire to do what's right.

And someone else who I think would have a fascination with Norm is Kirumi! Her interest in the Victorian era lends itself to having an interest in pre-Dialup heads, and Norm being the only person with one left would intrigue her, though she probably wouldn't say so out loud. As for her head...I feel like she could have something that relates to her job as a maid, considering how devoted she is to it, but I struggle to come up with something. I think it would have to be something practical, because I don't think she'd get her head changed unless it meant she could perform her duties better, but I don't really know what that would be. Another thought I have is keeping her as a typewriter head, but have it be the same model as whatever Marla Crown's was. Since she was the woman the typewriter heads were modeled after, with her and Callum being the sort of "Adam & Eve" of the Dialup world, it would be an example of how Kirumi is the "model woman", so to speak.

Maki would have a typewriter head, since her job is supposed to be inconspicuous, but she might have a hidden compartment to keep weapons, or something like that.

Tsumugi I think would have a small flat screen TV head. And she's the One who I think in-universe would have a face that shows up onscreen. It's a little funny—she says she's plain but has possibly the least plain head out of anyone in the group.

Korekiyo would have a hybrid head. The top, visible part would be a phone, and underneath the mask would be typewriter keys.

Miu would definitely have one of her own inventions as a head. Maybe the one that lets you work while you sleep? She gave herself the surgery, for sure.

Angie's an interesting one, because God does actually exist in Dialtown, and he is nowhere near impressive. Angie wouldn't be from Dialtown though, so she wouldn't know that. I feel like she would have a special head, but I don't really know what it is. Possibly one of her artworks? But then, people would keep passing out whenever they see her... It would be interesting to see her interact with Dialtown's God, though. Seeing his absolute apathy. Would she care? Would she deny that he's actually God, like Norm? I honestly have no idea, but it's a fun idea! I think she would creep God out. He doesn't exactly have much desire to be worshipped, especially to that level. The freaky knowledge she does have would scare him, too. Where did you learn those people's family members?!?! ...Maybe she's a void-gazer. Maybe the one she calls "God" is a different thing entirely.

Everyone else I don't have much thoughts on, I think they'd have default heads.

And one last thing—how I think Kokichi would get along with Dialtown's main characters, because of course I have to give him more relevance:

Phonegingi: It would go feral if Kokichi brought up his clown schtick in front of it. Potentially to the point of violence. It refuses to believe in a world where clowns could exist. (My personal thought is that Phonegingi is biologically a clown, and is in denial about this, blocking out all the memories. Kokichi would not be spared its wrath.)

Randy: He would be terrified of Kokichi. He would think "oh fuck, this is it, this is how I die, at the hands of a clown—" when Kokichi so much as approaches him. If Kokichi was not in clown getup, he would still be terrified, it would just take until Kokichi said a word to him, if Kokichi used his usual attitude. I think it would be like a Mikan in UTDP situation though—once he realizes how much of a wet puppy Randy is, Kokichi would actually be kind to him because he's so sad and his life is such a mess, it's not fair to kick him while he's already down. He'd try to get Randy to stand up for himself more often.

Oliver: He would think Kokichi's a blast! They'd have fun being silly little guys with each other! Kokichi would go off on a tirade about his secret evil organization, and how he's a liar, and Oliver would go "Groovy!" They're both a bit freaky. Oliver's also an orphan, who is not at all bothered by the fact that he is an orphan because he has such a swag found family, and I think they could find common ground in that. I think they have a likelihood to be best friends.

Karen: She would find him confusing and annoying at first. You can't get close to her without being honest, and I mean, lying's his whole thing. But I think, also, once she realizes he's joking most of the time, she'd actually find him quite funny, because of her secret love of absurdist comedy. And I think she'd actually notice that despite lying being his whole thing, he is actually very honest, in his own way. Because of her inability to read subtle emotive cues she's constantly putting everything she hears under scrutiny to see if it lines up with everything, and so she can actually detect lies quite easily. If something doesn't make sense, she will point it out and analyze it, and find the things that do make sense. Along with Kokichi's own willingness to admit he's a liar upfront before anything else, I think she'd actually start to almost appreciate this in a way, and be able to tell when he's lying pretty accurately. #Autism. I think this would kind of unnerve Kokichi in a way.

Bigfoot: Even as a clown-believer, Kokichi is still a Bigfoot-denier. This is one of his biggest mistakes and will be his downfall.

Norm: Kokichi wouldn't last long in a conversation with Norm before he threatens to shoot. Kokichi, not wanting to die, would run.

Mingus: Kokichi would be pretty insignificant to her. She thinks that this "DICE" organization is just some teens pranking everyone. Clowns went extinct years ago—no one would actually try to bring them back, right...? Kokichi knows better than to ever approach her, though he wishes to one day overthrow her. He really, really hates people like her.

Tango: Tango is nowhere near a main character, but I wanted to include him anyway. I think he'd be an enigma to Kokichi. Tango is just so incredibly positive and it baffles Kokichi because he means every bit of it. There's no lies. No hidden resentment, not even towards the people who would absolutely deserve it. Tango never has anything bad to say about anyone, and none of that is fake. If this was his DSaF counterpart, at least there's the explanation of how his programming won't allow him to be negative, but Dialtown Tango? He's just Like That! Kokichi can't believe that someone could be that optimistic, so he assumes he must just be really good at lying. Which disturbs Kokichi, because he has no idea what could be going on underneath that cheerful, empathetic, gullible facade. But he will never find out, because there is no facade. Scary stuff!

ANYWAY. that's all the thoughts i have right now. play dialtown

[youremyheaven]

they dooo notice everything, I love it sometimes because they can surprise you with lowkey deep insights

okay my childhood friend who was a Bharani guy wrote this about me for primary school graduation lmao

'you have a face like the mona lisa and you make beautiful art' loll it was cheesy but so sweet for a 12 year old like awww- too bad that guy got too into drugs and recklessness. Plus he had major daddy issues-

wait that reminds me, I'd been meaning to mention.. I know we shouldn't take Freud too literally/seriously, but every Venus men I've met seems to have what looks like the 'opedius complex', like unconsciously they are always competing with their fathers and feel emasculated by him somehow, which is part of what drives their strong pursuit but also self-machoism when it comes to women

OMG UR A GENIUSSSS

I've noticed the daddy issues with literally every single Venusian man I know 🤣🤣🤣 and yk what's even more funny??? They all adore/borderline worship their moms 😭😭

In many instances their dads were kind of losers that their moms had to settle for and thus from early childhood they wanted to "be the man" of the household to make life easier for her and this developed into a need to do the same in relationships because they saw their own dad's as being very beta and not provider-y and try to overcompensate with their heightened masculinity. They're softies on the inside but they put on suchhhh a tough guy exterior because they despise such weakness and very much wants to be perceived as "a real man" 👀

The number of times a Venus man has told me something along the lines of "a real man would never let the..." or "real men don't depend on their women to run the house" or whatever is insane 💀💀💀 they saw their moms struggle and it left a deep impression on their psyche, so they spend their whole lives trying to make things easier for her and for "their" women. These men seem disgusted as hell by their fathers 🤡 it's 🤧🤧🤧

But yk as you said, trying to be the "man" who takes care of your mom and competing with your dad from childhood kinda puts you in a strange headspace when it comes to women 😣😣😣 because in this dynamic, he can never be her man. No matter how big of a loser the dad is, he's still the dad 😖😖

This means they endure a lot of humiliation and perceived betrayal throughout childhood bc their moms can't leave their incompetent husbands etc or no matter what the Venus boy does, he can't be the father 😔 as adults in love, they're already preconditioned to give love one way endlessly and get nothing in return.

The humiliation and rejection does not bother them because they've already spent their whole childhood enduring it at home 😔😔so they'll just obsess over you and project on to you even if you're not dating them or interested in them. They can be doormats this way 😔😔 it reminds me of Jane (I think that was her name?) from Forrest Gump who never reciprocates Forrest's love for her but uses him time and again. Forrest, like a Venusian man, loves her blindly and goes back to her again and again.

Forrest Gump is played by Tom Hanks who has Venus in Mrigashira atmakaraka (also in retrograde) and Sun in Punarvasu (his character is supperrrr Punarvasu coded) (Jupiter men are also endlessly giving in nature)

Blindness is actually a theme with Bharani & Purvaphalguni naks 👀

[gascon-en-exil]

If you could make a few changes to Dream Daddy to make it more to your tastes, what would they be?

I take it that scrapping the whole concept and starting from the beginning would constitute more than "a few" changes? All the characters being literal fathers, with so much time devoted to their relationships with their children, is downright weird in what is supposed to be a dating sim, and dad jokes absolutely cannot carry an entire script and get old very fast. I also hate the Dadsona as a concept, and find that customizable main characters sharply limit what can be done with them (including sex scenes). However, if I had to stick to those parameters, and also avoid any explicit content lest it no longer be safe for social media:

Get rid of at least some of the child characters. Maybe one or two of the love interests can still have children for extra development or whatever, but they don't all need them. As much as I don't care for Amanda or for how the game uses her to fill in time that would be better suited to giving the Dadsona a personality beyond bad puns, I imagine she'd have to stay to preserve the theming.

Most of the minigames can be removed, as they add nothing whatsoever to the experience beyond tedium. Brian's route will need to be completely rewritten to not revolve around gimmicky minigame set pieces as much as it does, and to actually feel romantic. Given his physique, he'd be a good opportunity to have the game discuss what "daddy" actually means to queer men, and how Brian feels about that as a part of his relationship with the Dadsona.

Damien needs to be trans beyond the single missable line of dialogue. There are multiple angles to work that in and still keep his Victorian cosplayer who's secretly a boring IT guy characterization. Maybe cosplaying and feeling like he was born in the wrong century got him realizing some things, maybe his love of yaoi fanfiction had something to do with it...just something. Also, while we can't do anything explicit, those ending pinups could stand to be a bit spicier all around. Let Damian show off one of the binders he talks about!

Robert and Joseph's routes should not punish the player for pursuing sex. It's unexpected, prudish, and frankly suggests a rather juvenile understanding of the role of sex in romantic relationships. If the Dadsona sleeps with Robert early but continues to do well on their dates, have him come to the realization that he was wrong to be so disrespectful toward his casual hookups, and that he appreciates the Dadsona for continually making the effort to get close to him even after they've had sex. Joseph's good ending has to be rewritten entirely to not be as awful as it is; have him and Mary agree to an open relationship, or decide to get divorced since neither of them are happy in their marriage (here's one place where the kids not existing would allow for a tidier resolution, if that's a problem). Personally I'd be fine with the thrill of an ongoing adulterous fling, but I know many would consider that inappropriate.

Also with Joseph, if he's going to be a Protestant youth minister his faith needs to actually come into play in the story. How does it affect his perception of his sexuality, and of his failure of a marriage? The answers will of course depend on what denomination he's supposed to be, so clarifying that would be helpful. This would be a nice opportunity to explore the mind of a queer religious person, because they do in fact exist. (Carefully nonspecific American Protestantism may very well be the most boring religious background ever conceived, but at least it's better than nothing?)

Oh, and for the cult ending - Calvinist Protestantism has branches that are essentially death cults already, so lean into those for your wacky non-canon horror scenario instead of dressing Joseph up like a Catholic priest just for the aesthetic.

Craig could stand to feel more bisexual. He already gets hit on by multiple women throughout his route, but throw a man or two in there as well so that when he finally gets with the Dadsona it feels less like he randomly decided to experiment.

Hugo and Matt are more or less fine as far as I can recall. Possibly one or both of them can have fade-to-black sex with the Dadsona before their ending, for extra spice. This would mean that the Dadsona could have sex with multiple men before getting a good ending, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. These people should all be mature enough to handle the concept of casual sex.

[buttcheek2]

i finished interior chinatown and i thought it was really good up until the ending which.... i hated!!!! SO MUCH!!!

spoilers below

i literally just finished the finale so processing still, but my first reaction was that it was fucking corny and incomprehensible and also antiblack 😑 so much so that it literally ruined the whole show for me.

i was literally just thinking abt how im afraid to watch asian american media that's too hyped up bc of the whole crazy rich asians reaction being so antiblack ("it's the asian black panther etc") and how it reeked of "asian lives matter" (aka black ppl get too much attention!! what abt asians!!) and then even after all that it turns out to be the most lukewarm surface level messaging abt asian ppl ever. and im sorry but the whole ending of interior chinatown turned into that which was just. bad and extremely disappointing.

so the show in the show WAS literally called "black and white" bc they're saying american media is just abt black and white ppl!!!! and the whole story was abt a conspiracy abt playing ppl like puppets for tv but then the puppet master was hulu which was where interior chinatown streams irl and it's like ok 😑 corny 😑 and then hulu didn't even turn out to be a bad guy or the main puppet master it was us as viewers. OK. CORNY. 🤢

so are asian ppl invisible bc of black ppl or is it bc of evil racist corporations or is it bc viewers don't care enough or which one is it. they said a lot of words and alluded to a lot of aspects of anti asian racism with fancy artistic story telling but ended up saying nothing. and was racist/antiblack abt it too. i can't believe i was so invested in this show 😭

also once again another chinese american story abt a man. im sorry i tried to look past it this time and there were women in the show who were amazing and very lovable and smart and compelling but. who were they in the end? lana's whole motivation was jonny and then willis the entire time. i have so many questions abt her. where did she come from? how did she meet jonny? how come she appears to be the same age as willis in the present AND jonny in the past? how come she feels at home in chinatown but also doesn't know anything abt it but also used to live there before (i assume?? bc she was dating jonny?? or if not then once again... how did they even meet) who is her family? why is she wasian?? is she the only wasian??

and i was hoping they'd address how chinese american men push aside chinese american women in favor of white women/women who are ""less asian"" in regards to audrey's story but they barely did.

also in the end he celebrated his mom for being a successful business woman which she literally JUST rejected an award for bc she realized she was just a sellout. i wanted more abt that besides just an opportunity to use the buzzword "gentrification" bc that is an issue that chinatowns face but then not even address it bc the gentrifier was hulu but actually not its us viewers??????

also the whole show is abt how asian ppl get treated in media as tools or bg characters or however "they" want us to be and then they scapegoat us to be the bad guy whenever they want too and it's like.

that's literallly the story of black ppl!!!!! in media and in real life!!!! and im sorry but i cant for the life of me think of that many asian american villains in media like the show made a big deal abt. i can think of many villains who are evil just bc they are black/have dark skin tho.

AND IN THE END THEY WIN BY DYING??? wtf???? what does that mean?? they just left everyone behind to start over!! even if it's like a metaphor for like leaving old times behind or whatever it just was like. very hamfisted and confusing as fuck at the same time???

im so disappointed bc i did rly enjoy watching the show. jimmy o yang and the rest of the cast were all incredible. i fell in love with all of them and i was rly invested. i rly saw myself in willis. so it's pretty impressive honestly that the finale managed to ruin all that lol.

[smokeybrand]

A Miserable Little Pile of Secrets

What does it mean to be a man in the year 2025? How does one define masculinity through modern lenses? I’m forty-one. I was raised by a Boomers. I am also the oldest of three. My twin brothers were born when I was seven years old and I became the de-facto third (primary) parent. It was my responsibility to look out for those little assholes to the best of my ability, up until I moved out at twenty-one. We were latchkey kids, left to wander neighborhoods and fend for ourselves out in the wilds of my not-so-safe neighborhood. I was expected to do all of the stuff that is generally associated with being a man. Protect and provide were the primary responsibility hurled upon my tiny shoulders so early in life and I took that to heart. I was quiet, polite, and carried myself with dignity.  I swallowed my emotions and learned to be stoic as f*ck, to my detriment. That doesn’t come natural. It comes with abuse and trauma, which I had a ton of. For all intents and purposes, I was the epitome of what people think a “man” is back in my teenage and early Twenties. But, in reality, I just developed an empathy problem and addiction to violence. I’m a sociopath, not the quintessential man, and that’s not okay. It’s weird to that’s coming back into style when the path to get there, is so f*cking destructive.

These Manosphere and Fitness Influencers are all doing massive damage to young men trying to find their way. I’m talking your Andrew Tates and your Wes Watsons are out her selling impressionable and hurting dudes a pipe dream they’ll never achieve. Andrew Tate is a grifters who made the bulk of his money trafficking women and playing errand boy for the Romanian mob. Wes Watson is a fraud who has over-leveraged himself to the point his escort “girlfriend” has left him and he’s facing another prison stint. These cats don’t own any of the h*t you see, they lease everything. It’s all a front to get weak willed and lost men to buy into their seminars or clubs or whatever. It’s a pyramid scheme. They don’t teach you anything you can’t learn on your own. The only reason these cats are “millionaire” is because they steal money from the vulnerable or commit crimes. That’s it. And what is any of this for? To get women. That’s the end goal. You want the money and the physique and the cars and the house, to bed beautiful, “high value” women. Well, none of these roided out misogynists actually DO that! They pay for their relationships and I don’t mean in emotional currency or the occasional date. I mean actual money for sex with high end hookers, but you want a “high value” women, though? Word?

That’s what kills me. Like, I still don’t care about people I don’t know and get exhausted dealing with other people’s emotions but I’ve gotten much, much, better at being people. I had to actually do the work on myself to get to this point. I have a long way to go but I understand that self-improvement is a constant thing. It’s an ongoing march that can be exhausting but absolutely necessary for growth. These assholes in the Manosphere seem to think that work can be substituted for money and abs, superficial nonsense that is both fleeting and doesn’t address the real issues: Yourself and self-esteem. Women don’t like you because your personality sucks. They don’t like you because you’re entitled and aggressive. They don’t want to be with you because they’re not attracted to you, money, cars, and clothes, be damned. Those things don’t offer substance. They’re not going to make her laugh or cuddle her at night or listen to her problems attentively or anything like that. You can’t just throw money at a relationship and expect your partner to actually love you. Especially when you follow Andrew Tate’s advice and treat them like sh*t.

What does it mean to be a man in 2025? I don’t know. That’s something you, as a man, have to figure out for yourself. It’s a hard process and the journey is ongoing but if you put in the work, you’ll be better off for it. What I do know is that it ain’t gym bro, Top G, bullsh*t. It’s definitely not paying tens of thousands of dollars for a three day boot camp where you get yelled at and called a pussy. It’s not Kevin Samuels or Jordan Peterson’s weird ass, poindexter influenced, broiler plate sexism. A lot of this nonsense is tied into “Western values” and “traditional gender rolls” but, I mean, taking that sh*t to heart is absurd. Especially in this day and age. Woman can provide for themselves. They can protect themselves. Men aren’t ��needed” like they were back in the day and throwing a hissy fit about it now, seems embarrassing. Sh*t changes. Society grows. Tradition is nice for reference but has no place in a progressive society. A Man can be anything at this point. It can be defined through a feminine lens if need be. None of that sh*t matters at the end of the day. It’s all up to you. The work needs to be done by you. You have to get right with who you are and make that happen. No amount of money, misogyny, or gym time will ever change that.

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[genericpuff]

Hi! So first things first happy belated new year!(sorry it's my first time interacting with your blog and I thought I'd start off on a positive note) second things second I wanted you to know I am ~besotted~ with your lore rekindled content , I love the art and how it resembles rachel's old style but most importantly I love the way you depicted persephone , she seems much more feisty and spunky ,she also possesses the agency many fans of the original LO claimed the OG persephone did (but never cared to show why that was the case whenever I asked them) as it is clearly shown, a good example of this is her " "meet cute" with hades at the party where SHE'S the one who approaches HIM, in the OG webtoon it was the opposite and the way hades gawked at her physical attractiveness while she was depicted as alone and vulnerable felt extremely predatory and not at all romantic (the "actual" first time they met with 18 year old or possibly younger persephone being naked on top of a drunk hades wasn't any better sadly:( ) also I'd like to ask a question if it doesn't bother you, (I don't know if you've been asked this before or not)Is persephone still going to be 19 years old in your comic? Or is she closer in age to hades ?I'd be grateful if you answered ! Have a good one❤👋🏻

Awww this was such a nice message to wake up to! Happy belated New Year! But now I wonder what your version of starting off your interactions on my blog with a negative note would have been like? 😈 Bring me allll your salt! (if there is any, I'm also just being a dick LMAO)

Thanks so much for your kind words, I'm glad you're enjoying Rekindled! It's wild to me how people are already loving it this much when like... I've barely put anything out? I think I've mentioned this before but I'm used to putting out like, 40-60 panels worth of stuff on a weekly basis (as Rekindled isn't my main comic project) so the fact y'all have been so sweet to the handfuls of panels I've put out for Rekindled already is like... absolutely wild to me. It blows me away :' 0

As for your question, I'm definitely gonna be age'ing up Persephone, not just because of the questionable age gap but also because her being 19 in LO serves absolutely no narrative purpose. The issue with the 19 year old age gap thing isn't just the fact that the age gap exists, that alone would be fine on its own because there would still be an age gap even if she were 100 or 200 or 500 or whatever have you. The issue is that 1.) 19 is a very specific age to use that has a lot of real world equivalencies to "barely legal" and "robbing the cradle" culture, there are FAR too many real life examples of rich 40 year old men exclusively dating 19 year old girls (Leo DiCaprio, hello?) and taking advantage of them in worst case scenarios and it makes it hard not to draw those parallels with LO when Hades is literally coded as a 40 year old man and Persephone is such a 'mortal' age like 19; and 2.) Persephone is very often framed as being some innocent virgin "valley girl" archetype which is, again, very common when it comes to the May December romance. A lot of gross older man will often specifically target younger women because they can play out their fantasies of "deflowering" a young woman or whatnot.

It's hard not to take issue with the Persephone/Hades age gap when they're constantly being drawn like this:

"Art experts" will argue that it's Rachel trying to make Persephone look "small" to convey the mood but if that's the case, she's failing miserably at it, she doesn't just look 'small', she looks like a literal infant. It also always seems to be happening in real time and outside Persephone's head which makes it come across more as other people seeing her that way, not herself.

Compare it to (and I hate that I'm about to use this as a comparison because I also can't stand this webtoon for how infantalizing it is) Let's Play which does a MUCH better job showing characters' inner emotions through the literal personification of their emotions.

Point is, you can convey how a character might feel compared to those around them WITHOUT making them look ridiculous in the story's own setting and universe.

And that's not even getting to how Persephone is treated by both the people around her and the way the comic frames her, there's a LOT of exaggeration put on how "young and innocent" she is and the fact that the comic will take any opportunity it can to draw Persephone in some Vogue magazine like pose even when the scene doesn't call for it is... creepy and distracting, to say the least.

(this is not the look of a person who is 'lonely', at least not the way she's describing it LMAO)

Anyways. This got off topic. It's taken me like, 3 hours to formulate a response to this because I've had my brain split between like 4 different things today LMAO but yes, Rekindled will be ageing up Persephone, at least just to get her away from the real life touchiness of her being a literal 19 year old girl in a relationship with a 40-coded man. I don't mind or think there's much wrong with reasonable age gaps in relationships, but it's a whole other thing when you make your immortal god character an incredibly relatable age like 19 and then also proceed to overly sexualize them/objectify them/infantalize them every chance you get.

And ultimately, they're gods. Their ages really shouldn't matter as 'age' is a concept that shouldn't apply to immortal beings, Rachel's mistake was making it matter with Hecate/Hera calling out Hades for being into a 19 year old girl. If we're not supposed to raise an eyebrow at it, don't have your in-universe characters call it out either, y'know? That just establishes the rule in the story that age gaps are something even the gods would get upset over LMAO It's just not gonna be a focus in Rekindled because it serves no narrative purpose besides pushing Rachel's gross pro-shipping/DDLG fetish.

And, y'know... I kinda don't wanna encourage any more of this shit:

[gothamslostboy]

The Lost Boys

Sexuality HC

These are my personal opinions, we’re probably not going to agree on everything and that’s ok! You can comment your opinions below as long as you’re not a dick about it :]

NOTE: I think after turning most vampires don’t gaf about gender and that will play into my hc

NOTE 2: the F_/M_ is for how you present. If you’re a guy who dresses feminine you fall into F, same for masculine girls. I did this bc I wanted to include Non binary ppl but it felt weird adding a 3rd gender percentage bc enby ppl don’t have a gender . So to clarify: the percentage is not gender, it is clothing preference

NOTE 3: yes I know it was the 80s. I. Don’t. Care. Gay ppl existed in the 80s and the whole movie has gay undertones so sush.

David

I originally said he was bi in this post bc I didn’t want ppl mad at me but imma be brave now

Gay asf

Likes seeing S/O in feminine clothes though

I know I said vamps don’t care after turning but every rule has an exception

F65/M35

Dwayne

Bi

F70/M30

Paul

Pan

No preference here, gender or clothing,just personality

He does like matching with his S/O so get him something in the same color or pattern

Marko

Bi

Does have a male preference though

Him and Paul definitely fuck

F25/M75

Star

Straight

Has experimented and decided it’s not her thing

Very supportive

F50/M50

Her boyfriend wants to wear a skirt? She’ll buy matching ones!

He wants makeup? Let her teach him!

Earrings? We saw in the movie she wants to do it!

Probably pierced all the boys ears

She doesn’t care how he dresses, as long as he doesn’t tell her how to dress either

Michael

He’s unsure but when asked will say bi

He’s still trying to come to terms with not being straight so he prefers S/O wearing more feminine things

(David rn: 💃🏼💃🏼💃🏼)

F82/M18

Lucy

Straight

Supports everyone

Doesn’t understand why people care about who others date

F6/M94

Loves a man in a nice suit

Still nice if he wants to try typically feminine things

Just doesn’t seek out more feminine men

Max

Straight

One of the vampires who DO care

Like too much caring

Weirdly insecure and kills men who hit on him:[

Eats primarily female victims

Only supports if it’s one of his pack

More supportive of the boys straight interest though

The boys don’t give a fuck though and if they are dating a guy will purposely show more affection in front of him

F100/M0 (he definitely still thinks women shouldn’t wear pants I’m sorry but he’s old af)

Grandpa Emerson

Straight

He used to be a homophobe (he was raised in a very homophobic time)

Lucy has talked to him about being supportive since she was a teen

Finally gets that it doesn’t affect him and supports

F50/M50

She can wear whatever she wants as long as she’s happy

Sam

I can’t decide if he’s aroace or not bc he’s still early teen years, and he was more focused on stopping his brother from becoming a vampire then finding a date

If he is interested in anyone, it’s dudes

He had that poster in his room, and was making fun of Michael for chasing a girl

He also has more of a fashion sense then most men of the 80s (I’m not saying having a fashion sense makes you gay, I’m saying if writers in the 80s wanted to have a gay character w/o saying he’s gay, this is probably a trait they’d give him)

F20/M80

He feels like feminine clothing would “draw too much attention”

Like the mf doesn’t wear the most attention seeking clothing in Santa Carla

Alan

Bi? at most

Huge fem preference

F70/M30

I don’t think he’d like completely girly girls

But still wants a partner how dresses nice

He thinks everyone looks good in long, loose skirts and crop tops regardless of gender

Edgar

Straight as a ruler

Supports, but doesn’t really get it

If Sam came out to him he would probably ask if Sam was into him, but genuinely didn’t mean to be offensive

He just doesn’t know why he needs to know

F40/M60

He’s ok w/ a girl who dresses up sometimes, but if you’re vampire hunting with him you need to be able to move fast, maybe leave the dress or skirt for another time

Yes I put the younger 3 teens here. I’m only doing the bc I think at 14 you are aware of your preference, I know I was many ppl I know were

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

Omg can I please get a hannibal x a shy girl reader ? Like he’s really possessive of her and she doesn’t know how to handle it but she likes him so they date??

Sorry this took so long, anon. I’ve been bouncing ideas around and this one in particular, I believe, fits your request. Y/n feels out of place among Hannibal’s fancy friends and it becomes even more obvious when he abandons her at a party. 

Trigger warnings: social anxiety, sexual harassment, overstimulation

You and Hannibal had an agreement about large gatherings. He could only bring you to a party if you had a week's notice and at least three uninterrupted hours of gaming time prior to the event.

For this event, you needed a solid six.

One of the major Maryland universities was awarding a lucrative research grant to a student of clinical psychology, and every influential name in the industry was expected to be there. As a recent college grad with a bachelor's in business you didn't know what to do with, you couldn't imagine a less welcoming environment if you tried. You couldn't fit into their world and more importantly, you didn't want to. But the thought of being noticeably different in any situation was twice as terrifying. So you spent the whole week repeating your mantra; blend in, be quiet and make it through the night.

But Hannibal had different plans for you.

Halfway through the week, just when you'd pushed the party out of your mind, Hannibal presented you with a gift.

"What's the occasion?" You asked. You hoped that if you pretended not to know, it would just magically go away.

"I brought you something to wear on Friday." Hannibal answered, hanging the garment bag up on the bureau. "You know I'll take any excuse to dress you up."

He unzipped the bag and placed a black silk dress into your arms. "Try it on so I have time to get it altered if it needs it."

The material was cool to the touch and outlined your figure so perfectly, you felt even a little naked. Hannibal, of course, loved this. You were his own personal Venus de Milo. His goddess and his muse. 

“Yes, that will do nicely.” He observed, looking at you hungrily. 

“Seems a little short for a such a sophisticated event, doesn’t it?” You raised an eyebrow. The answer was yes and he knew it. He was very deliberate in everything he did. “I don’t want to come off the wrong way.” 

“And what way would that be, darling?” He asked, not taking his eyes off your figure. 

“I mean--” You searched for the right words. “It’s a gathering of the Mid-Atlantic’s most esteemed academics, I feel like, in a dress like this, I might be seen as, well, a...” 

“A prostitute?” Hannibal finished, choosing a much nicer word than you would have.

You looked down. “Yeah. It just doesn’t seem all that appropriate.” 

Hannibal approached you and lifted your chin slightly to look into his eyes. “Many Christian denominations believe that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, yet she was Christ’s right-hand woman. She was first to see him crucified and first to witness his resurrection.” 

“Dr. Lecter,” You smirked. “I never would have taken you for a religious man.” 

“Goodness, no.” He shook his head. “But any reputable academic is expected to be familiar with biblical literature and its many contradictions and impossibilities.” 

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You are my divine feminine, Miss [L/N].” Hannibal said in a low whisper. “And I want everyone to see it. If they see a common whore, it would only be a reflection of their own jealousy.” 

Hannibal's rationalization almost made you forget about your fear of being noticed. Almost. It all came rushing back when you arrived at the event. Not one person your age was in attendance. The women wore long, flowing evening gowns that reached the floor. The length of your skirt alone guaranteed that all eyes were on you. In a simple black silk dress, you looked the very model of high society. Silk was a sign of luxury, and Hannibal wanted everyone to know that you were a woman of means. His woman, to be precise. That was why he brought you to these functions in the first place. To put you in a dress short enough for any wandering eyes so see the smattering of love bites running up your inner thighs. He wanted everyone in his field to know that you were completely and entirely his.

You realized too late that this was all his little exercise in showing you off.

Everyone seemed to know him. He only knew a handful of people by name, and you didn't know anyone.

"And who is this delightful young woman?" A woman with a light southern twang in her voice asked, looking at you as if you were a caged animal on display.

"I wasn't aware you had a daughter, Dr. Lecter." The young man beside her laughed. "Or is she your side piece?"

Your eyes scanned the room for the nearest exit. It would be unbecoming to make a scene, so you plotted a way to slip out quietly.

“Darling, meet Dr. Charlotte Ramset and her TA, David.” Hannibal introduced, notably ignoring the young man. “Dr. Ramset, this is my intended, [F/N] [L/N].”

"I didn't realize she was also a ventriloquist!" The lady, presumably Dr. Ramset, joked. You'd heard that one a million times. She looked at you. "Tell me about yourself, sweetie. What are you studying?"

The lady was old enough to be your grandmother and reeked of too much perfume.

"I graduated last year." You said, quietly. "With a BA in business."

"See, there's a good woman." David added. "Only speaks when spoken to. They don't make ’em like you anymore, baby."

Hannibal tightened his grip on your hand. "On the contrary, David. See, Miss [L/N] is quite a bit like myself. She only dignifies those she deems worthy with a response. There's nothing wrong with being selective."

The lady laughed at David's expense and smiled at you. "Good for you."

You smiled back just a little, not ready to bring your guard down yet. "I've had to deal with more than enough. It's best not to engage."

"Oh, I know, I know." The lady said, shaking her head. "That's how it is for us educated gals. Always having to put up with pigs. See, I went to college in the sixties, so I can tell you some real stories."

This was a new experience. Talking to Hannibal's friends and having them listen to you was something you never considered possible. Now, you were one of the educated gals. You were just about to strike up a conversation with this woman, when the man next to her decided someone desperately needed to play devil’s advocate.

“I find that sexist, actually.” He cut in. “Not all men are pigs.” 

The silence following his comment was deafening and you wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Whatever progress Hannibal and Dr. Ramset made breaking down your defenses was completely reversed and you were ready to retreat.

Dr. Ramset took a long sip of wine and adjusted her shawl. “David, none of us said anything about men, you drew that conclusion yourself.”

“I mean, look at you.” David gestured to your dress. You knew exactly where this was going and you wished you could just disappear. “You’re basically asking for it.” 

Dr. Ramset glared at him. “David, that’s enough.” 

“I’m just stating facts.” David crossed his arms. “If you dress like a slut, what do you expect?”

Dr. Ramset and Hannibal seemed to have an entire conversation through prolonged eye contact before one of them broke the silence. 

"Charlotte, I hate to have to excuse myself so soon, but the president of the university is expecting me." Hannibal said, dropping your hand. Your heart hit the floor when you realized that he would be throwing you to the wolves.

"Of course, Dr. Lecter." She nodded. "Duty calls."

"I trust you'll keep an eye on my beloved [F/N] in my absence?" His voice hardened. The severity in his tone frightened you.

Dr. Ramset didn't seem disturbed or even surprised in the slightest by his gently threatening demand. "Of course."

"Thank you. And [F/N]?" He said, pressing his lips to the back of your hand. "I won't be going far. Please, try to have fun."

You tried not to look affronted, but you were going to have a long talk with Hannibal when you got home. 

"I'm just saying what everyone is thinking." David continued, his inability to take a hint positively astounding. "Why don't you respect yourself enough to cover up, [F/N]? You have a boyfriend!"

Your eyes scrolled across the room looking for any sign of Hannibal, but he was gone. Dr. Ramset finished her wine and stared at her TA with the resigned disgust of a death row jailer.

"Any other thoughts?" She said, snatching a fresh glass of wine. You looked at her with a clear expression of discomfort.

"Come on, do you see any other woman in the room dressed so provocatively?" David's voice broke mid-sentence. "No. Because they're educated enough to know that real men don't care about their bodies."

The hotel clerk approached the group. "Mr. Hosmer, there's a call for you."

David narrowed his eyes. "Uh, what?"

"Someone is on the phone asking for you." The clerk repeated. "Says it's an emergency."

David shrugged. "Fine."

Just when you thought you would be rid of him, at least for a moment, he planted his hands on your hips in attempt to "get by" you. His touch was like that of an insect crawling across your skin; unexpected, filthy and leaving you squeamish.

"I'm so sorry about that." Dr. Ramset's words echoed in your ears, but you didn't really hear them. You were too focused on grounding yourself to process what she was saying. 

“Dr. Ramset?” You said, quietly. “Which one is the president of the university?” 

She glanced at a tall woman in a dark blue suit, surrounded by equally important looking businesspeople. You followed her eyes. “That’s Dr. Mary Hosmer.”

Your ounce of righteous fury was squelched in two seconds when the reality of having to talk to someone, especially someone of stature, set in. You looked sheepishly back at Dr. Ramset. 

“Could you please ask her where Hannibal went?” You whispered. “I’d really like him to take me home now.” 

Her face turned sympathetic. “Of course, [F/N]. Stay right there.” 

You nodded. “Thank you.” 

Dr. Ramset crossed the floor and politely greeted the president. You took a few slow, calculated steps closer, just to get in earshot.

“Pardon me, but, have you seen Dr. Hannibal Lecter?” Dr. Ramset said, casually. 

“I wasn’t aware Hannibal had even arrived yet.” The president answered. “I haven’t seen him.” 

Your eyes widened. You fought the urge to freeze, but you had to move back before Dr. Ramset knew you’d been eavesdropping. You heard everything you needed and rushed back to where she’d left you.

“Dr. Hosmer said he stepped out.” She told you upon her return. “He should be back soon.” 

You tried not to show that you knew she was lying. “...oh.” 

“Would you like me to stay with you until he comes back?” 

You knew you were completely on your own. You didn’t know what was going on, but you had an inkling that it had to do with the president and David sharing a last name. All you knew for certain was that you couldn’t trust anybody. 

“Don’t bother.” You shook your head. You took off for the door, but Dr. Ramset grabbed your wrist. 

“I’m sorry, [F/N].” Her voice dropped to a low whisper. She didn’t look mad, but afraid. “But Dr. Lecter told me to stay with you. Please. Don’t make this harder for me.”

You recalled how seriously threatening Hannibal’s request was. She wasn’t answering to the president of the university. She was answering to Hannibal. You didn’t know whether to be scared or relieved. 

“Right.” You conceded, stepping back in. “I’m sorry.” 

The actual award ceremony was much longer than it needed to be, and it dragged on even longer knowing there was no reason for you to be there. Other than that, you awkwardly followed Dr. Ramset around the party like a lost puppy the whole time. You were back to your original plan: blend in, be quiet and make it through the night. 

Just when you thought the party would never end, someone tapped you on the arm. You turned around, hoping with every fiber of your being that it was Hannibal, but it wasn’t. A tall woman in a dark blue suit stared back at you. 

“I’m sorry to bother you, miss.” She said, apologetically. “But have you seen my son? I saw him talking to you and Dr. Charlotte earlier, perhaps he told you where he was going?” 

You’d pushed that man completely out of your mind. You shook your head. “He left to take a phone call and I haven’t seen him since.” 

A hand found your shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Hosmer, but I believe I saw the boy on his phone out in the lobby.” 

“Dr. Lecter!” The president’s eyes widened. “How nice of you to finally join us.” 

“...Yes, I believe he left right after making unwarranted comments towards my intended here.” Hannibal ran his hand down your arm lovingly. 

“Well, boys will be boys.” The president chuckled. “Maybe you should teach your girlfriend not to wear such revealing clothes.” 

Hannibal smiled and pulled you in protectively. “Whatever the case, I hope you find him very soon.” 

Her phone chimed in her back pocket. “Oh, that’s him right now.” 

“Wonderful.” Hannibal said. “[F/N] and I will be taking our leave.” 

He hurried you towards the door, his hand tight around yours. A blood-curdling scream came from behind you. You looked back for just a moment and found the president hollering in pain and falling to her knees. 

“Let’s go, darling.” Hannibal tugged at your arm. “They don’t deserve your presence.” 

“Hannibal, I swear.” You said, once you were in the safety of the car. “If you killed every man who looked at me like a piece of meat, sooner or later, there won’t be any men left.” 

Hannibal smirked and reached for his seatbelt. “Wonderful.” 

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Okay but I would LOVE to here your heretical opinions on Padame if you ever want to share them or any of your other views on star wars prequel characters. Your character analysises are INCREDIBLE and really fun to read <3

Oh boy, are you sure about that? Well, the ask has been made so here, we, gooooooooooooooo!

Padme’s one of those strange characters who appears as one thing but in actuality is quite different. Because she appears as the first thing, and it’s something people really like, most people accept that at face value and if she’s not always consistent--well, she came from a series of screenplays written by George Lucas.

Padme comes across as a very noble, kind, and courageous character who is also quite politically savvy. At fourteen, against all odds, she saves her planet from invasion when the Senate did nothing, secured herself an ally in the chancellor (nevermind him being secretly Palpatine), and even after relinquishing her title as queen remains a major player in the senate for years and is seen as enough of a threat to warrant several assassination attempts (one so bad she has to be guarded by Jedi and sent home to Naboo for several weeks). 

And I’m not saying she’s not any of these things. Padme is very courageous, is one of those odd politicians who... believes she stands for what she believes in (more on this later), and has a remarkable political career.

However, she’s also romantic to the point of being completely and utterly delusional, self-centered, and frankly a little nuts.

(Yeah, you knew you were waiting for me to say something terrible, WEREN’T YOU?!) Right, so what’s wrong with Padme?

Well, if you look closely at a few of her choices, the ones that never seemed to make much sense, then you can look at her other choices and... Well, it all sort of comes together. 

That’s right, I’m talking about “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”.

Attack of the Clones we have the very lackluster and strange romance of Anakin and Padme.

On Anakin’s end, his infatuation with Padme makes a lot of sense. She was part of the party that rescued him from slavery, she was very kind to him, and was the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life. Ten years later, always having harbored a crush on her memory and keeping it alive through whatever news he hears of her, she’s grown into a very beautiful woman and Anakin is by chance introduced back into her life. I get why Anakin falls head over heels for Padme, I’ll get more into this later and how their relationship has some major issues (aside from the obvious), but I understand why he marries this girl out of nowhere even when it could get him thrown out of the Jedi. (As an aside, since this is more of a Padme post, I think Anakin was spurred on in part also by the death of his mother and his massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Anakin’s life was flipped upside down in a very short amount of time, one of his great emotional ties is suddenly gone, and I think he has this internal crisis that culminates in him deciding to marry Padme. Without this, he and Padme may have become lovers, but I don’t think he’d marry her).

On Padme’s end... it’s a little less clear. Anakin has grown into an attractive young man, yes. Take out all of George Lucas’ dialogue, and maybe Padme finds Anakin very charming. However, Padme secretly marries a Jedi she’s known for three weeks. Now, I’d be a bit more forgiving of this, love is love and we can’t always think rationally, but there’s some other things.

Unlike Anakin, Padme hasn’t been spending the past ten years romanticizing her memory of Anakin Skywalker. When they met in Phantom Menace, Anakin was not only five years younger than her, he was nine-years-old. To fourteen-year-old Padme, Anakin was not then dating material and was instead this poor boy in slavery. Which means while Anakin has build up justifying this rapid romance, Padme really doesn’t. What this means is that her romance with Anakin reads a lot more like a romantic fantasy. Cute dashing bodyguard shows up, saves her life, through contrived circumstances they’re sent back to beautiful Naboo where they spend time together, only cute bodyguard is a Jedi and can’t marry, which makes their love excitingly taboo! 

Everything Padme does, before and after this point, lends itself to this overdeveloped sense of romance. Padme wants to be whisked away, wants to have this secret unsustainable marriage with a man who cannot be married, she’s in love with the idea of being in love. Given how little time she spends with Anakin, how little they really know of each other, I’d say she’s more in love with the idea of Anakin than Anakin Skywalker himself. And this isn’t a bad thing necessarily, or at least not a grievous flaw, however, that’s not all. 

Padme chooses to marry Anakin knowing he murdered an entire village of men, women, and children. She marries him almost immediately after the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Note, she does not learn about this later and have to come to terms with it, she is right there. She is on Tatooine with him and sees him go to do it and then return. 

Padme doesn’t take it... particularly well, that said, she also seems to shove it under the carpet immediately. She, first, marries Anakin within days after this event. She second, never really has a “holy fuck, Anakin” conversation with him. And worst yet, she never confesses to anyone else. Padme is a hypocrite and willing to sacrifice everything she believes in, albeit I believe unwittingly, for her romantic fantasy.

She tells no one about what happened. An entire village was brutally massacred, those who are already poor and oppressed and have no voice, by a man who is supposed to be a protector of all people in the galaxy. I’m sorry, Anakin, but if Padme was who you think she is then she would have to tell the Jedi Order at the very least if not the Republic. Instead, there are no consequences, only Anakin’s descent into guilt and madness as three years pass with it festering in the back of his mind.  Padme does not stand for the poor, for the people, or for justice. She only does so when it does not conflict with her own interests, i.e. her actions regarding the invasion of Naboo. More, I do not believe Padme has the introspection to realize this about herself, she never realizes that not narking on Anakin was very very very bad. Three years pass and she lives the whirlwind romantic fantasy that she and Anakin both want. They’re secret lovers/spouses, meeting up at the oddest hours of the day and... This is three years of this ridiculous affair. Three years to come to terms with the fact that something must change. And then the kicker, Padme gets pregnant, and this is where the extra delusional comes in.

The child should have been a signal of the end. There can be no more secret now. Padme is having a child, presumably out of wedlock, and even if space is very very very different from our society I imagine this would be quite the scandal that could even get her thrown out of the senate. I believe Padme mentions as much to Anakin. More, Anakin is no longer a lover, he is now a father. What’s supposed to happen now? They raise this secret child, instructing them that Anakin is only a father in private, never in public?

Anakin and Padme briefly flirt with the idea of Anakin leaving the order. Anakin even wants to do so, but it... never happens. Now is the time it absolutely should happen. Yes, Anakin’s a big part of the war effort, but he could at least start talking to the Order and they could decide if it’d be a slow or fast exit. 

My theory, Padme’s too in love with the fantasy. Anakin leaving means he’s no longer a Jedi, it means he’ll come to Naboo, be unemployed and be around. Anakin visiting will no longer be this romantic, fraught with the danger of being found out, passionate, short lived event for Padme. It’ll become real life. He’ll be a real, ordinary man, she’ll be a real, ordinary, woman, and that spark of romance will be gone.

I don’t think Padme wants that. 

Which is why, even with the child on the way, we see Anakin and Padme continue to play out this ridiculous secret lovers fantasy. And then, of course, Anakin goes insane off screen.

Padme is told that, once again, Anakin has murdered dozens of children. Of course, this is a terrible thing to be told and she can’t process it. She needs to find Anakin and confront him, but people always criticize Lucas here and feel it’s out of character for Padme to have run to Anakin in sobbing hysterics with no plan of enacting vengence.

Frankly, I think it’s very in character. She did nothing about the Tuskens, remember? I think at the end of the day, the murder of the Jedi children means very little to her. What hurts Padme the most is that the fantasy of Anakin she married is not real. The Anakin she married would never murder the Jedi children, betray the Republic, or do any of what he’s done. And I think Padme only has that strong, iron, will when she knows the world she’s in. With the Trade Federation, her stance was obvious. Her people were being oppressed, butchered, and invaded. In this case, the world she knew no longer exists.

The Republic is gone, perhaps hasn’t existed in thirteen years, as it turns out the senator who had always been her biggest supporter was a Sith Lord. The Jedi are gone, children murdered by Anakin while those in the field are picked off by their own clone soldiers. Padme’s world has fallen apart, and I think that makes it much harder for her to be the girl we saw in Phantom Menace. In time, perhaps, she would have joined the rebellion but... I do think Padme might have also given into despair.

So, yeah, that’s Padme for you.

[the-penguin-of-baskervilles]

Bucky Barnes is a Traditional Man

- Bucky Barnes is a traditional man in the sense that his woman comes first.

- You have more doors held open for you than you could have imagined before you began dating Bucky.

- Door to buildings, your car door (always!), he even moves one step ahead of you when you walk down the stairs in heels so he could break your fall, just in case.

- James Buchanan Barnes is quite protective of his girlfriend.

- He’s in love with you and it finally allows some of the deeper wounds from Hydra, from the war, and losing Steve to heal.

- His heart was cold and aching before he met you. Now it’s warm and soft.

- Your perspective on the world is something that attracted him to you in the first place. You’re an optimist in a jaded world and vibrant with life in a way he’s not sure he’s even capable of.

- But somehow, being with you helps bridge the gap. He can look in the mirror and not see the Winter Soldier looking back at him. Instead he sees the man from the 1940s who loved to dance and who hoped to win a boxing title.

- You gave him that man back with your care and affection, even before the two of you fell in love. And he feels such a gratitude for that his heart throbs and his eyes glass over when he thinks about it for too long.

- Bucky is a man in love and you’re happier with him than you ever thought was possible to be. Things are so good between you two; easy, light, and sweet.

- Then one night at dinner Bucky forgets his phone. He asks to borrow your to check the score of a baseball game.

- And he accidentally finds an open porn tab. Curious, he turns the screen so no one else can see and watches. His stomach twists. The appetizer from earlier suddenly isn’t sitting so well.

- Choking.

- You watch porn with men choking their women.

- He’s not judging. He’s really not. But he’d been hoping for something he could replicate for you, and this? He can’t. Not in a million years.

- He’s afraid of hurting you.

- He doesn’t say it out loud because it feels like speaking one of his worst fears into existence. He doesn’t want even the words to pass his lips and take root in your imagination.

- You can’t see him like that. Like a monster. Too many others have and there’s enough truth behind the title for him to sleep well at night, despite all his progress. But most of the time, he sleeps well. It’s because of you and he knows it. Your comforting presence allows him to relax.

- He sleeps in bed with you nowadays. He likes how firm your mattress is.

- He struggles through dinner, the video playing through the back of his mind. When you ask him what the score of the game was he can’t figure out what you’re talking about. It’s an awkward moment.

- The thing here, is that Bucky Barnes is a traditional man. His woman comes first. So he’s going to do whatever it takes to please you and he knows it.

- You always come first. Both in the bedroom and out of it. That’s one of his rules. So he’s already forming ideas about how he’s going to accommodate your kink.

- Two weeks later is your anniversary. He gets flowers, takes you to a nice restaurant and when you get home, brings up the thing.

- “I found your porn open when I borrowed your phone. I’m guessing that you like choking, doll?”

- Your cheeks turn bright red. And you stammer.

- “Hey. Don’t be embarrassed. I want to know this stuff. I need to. How can I please you if we don’t talk about it?”

- “Bucky, you don’t have to... I would never ask you...”

- He smiles. He loves that you’re protective of him in your own way. Knowing this has done a lot for his mental well-being. It makes the relationship between you two solid and strong.

- “I want to give you everything you want in bed,” Bucky says.

- “But you already do!”

- That’s true. Too many of your ex-boyfriends were quick and rough without taking the time for foreplay.

- Bucky is an expert at foreplay. He’s able to build the tension until you fall apart for him is an addiction that he feeds as often as he can. Knowing he provides for your needs like no other man before him is a point of pride for him. (Private pride, that is. Even Sam doesn’t know anything about his sex life. Some parts of 1940’s discretion is very much ingrained in him. It’s not shame. He just likes keeping intimacy... intimate.)

- Bucky is slow and sensual in bed, warm and passionate. With him sex really does feel like making love. It was on your first night together that you’d fallen for him and his patient, gentle way of touching you.

- Orgasming had been so easy when you felt worshiped and safe. And it remained that way with him. Later, these feelings heightened your desire for rough sex with your boyfriend. Because sex with Bucky was a place of security for you. He was utterly harmless towards you and in that context, rough sex would be amazing.

- But things between you two are pretty much vanilla.

- He’s always soft with you. Things can be heightened and swirling with passion, but he’s never show even a flash of aggression or force.

- The super soldier serum means he has stamina for days. He can accomplish and position you want to try, even if it involves lifting you for long periods of time. And there’s no question if he’s going to last. Also, his recovery time is so short “round two” sometimes blurs in with round one.

- But he’s careful about using his strength against you, even more so during intimate situations.

- You’re not “breakable” and he knows that. But you’re precious to him and leaving a mark that isn’t from pure passion would wreck his mental health. Permanently. He’d never forgive himself.

- You know this too, which is why you never asked him to choke you.

- “Baby doll. I want to give you your fantasy. Will you let me? Do you want that from me?”

- You do. You really, really want to be choked by him. So you quietly respond, “Yes.”

- Before he starts, you two sit on the couch and he holds you while you tell him about your fantasies. He takes off your heels while you tell him all your darkest desires. And he gives the sore arches of your feet a massage, listening intently.

- One comforting thing for Bucky is that having been a soldier, he knows how to choke someone. He’ll be able to tell if it’s too much for you. He knows how long before it would damage you. There’s some confidence forming that this will be safe and he won’t hurt you.

- It’s nice that for once his violent past is proving helpful in your relationship. He thought agreeing to choke you might rattle him a little, stirring up old emotions, but it’s soothing. He’s enjoying using what he knows to make this experience good for you.

- He lets things get rough when you go to bed. He doesn’t hold back the passion tonight. Instead, he focuses on eating you to orgasm and holding you on the edge until you pull his hair.

- “Bucky! Please!”

- Then he slides two fingers inside of you and draws fast little circles on your g-spot until you break.

- He lets up on your clit but as the orgasm fades, slides in a third finger and pounds the spot until your pussy creams on his hand and your groans are low and raw, filled with ecstasy.

- “That’s it, doll. Just like that. So pretty when you cum for me. Keep going, baby girl. I’m right here.”

- His metal arm wraps around your waist when you arch your back, holding you so he can keep toying with the spot as your hips begin to jerk away.

- When he’s finally done with your g-spot his hand is drenched. So is the sheet and your inner thighs.

- And you’re gasping for breath from the intense orgasm. When it comes on this hard you can’t really tell if it’s one long orgasm or three separate ones that came almost back to back.

- Bucky takes you in his arms, cooing sweet nothings into your ear.

- It helps you calm down when he talks in a soft soothing voice. The man should narrate meditations.

- His voice is silky and smooth for you, yet rough with repressed need. You can hear the need and it feeds your desire.

- “Please, Bucky. I need to feel you inside of me.”

- You find yourself underneath him, with your legs pushed apart and his body selling between them.

- You love feeling the weight of him on top of you.

- Then, he gently opens the petals of your sex and guides himself inside of you.

- There’s a stretch and burn as he enters you, just like there always is. Your body never quite adjusts to his girth. Each time you have to relax for him.

- He knows it’s a challenge to take him at first. He’s always careful and there’s a tube of lubricant in the side table. It’s not always needed but he’s always prepared.

- His hips begin to roll, and he sets a steady pace that pushes the tip of his cock against your spot with each thrust. At first his thrusts are shallow but as you begin to relax around him he goes deeper. His body moves forward to cover you and he starts fucking you hard.

- Each snap of his hips has you keening. Your body is so sensitive from your earlier orgasms. He keeps up the pace steady and constant until you’re begging. Then he reaches out with his metal hand and covers your throat. At this point, your channel clenches around him, almost in orgasm.

- “You wanted my metal hand baby, didn’t you?”

- Yeah. You had. The idea had fueled your fantasies night after night.

- The cool press of metal into your throat makes you moan and tremble.

- Bucky feels the shiver and worry flashes through his eyes. “This okay, doll?”

- “Yes, harder, please!”

- He can feel your body responding and it encourages him to press down, finally choking you the way you’d dreamed of.

- You orgasm almost instantly as he chokes you through your climax.

- Bucky lets go when your fluttering muscles start to ease. Suddenly he’s driving into you hard. He drops his hand from your neck, needing both to balance his weight as he seeks his own pleasure.

- The wild, rough movement is harder than the two of you have ever gone before.

- Because he’s always been afraid of hurting you with his enhanced strength until he was too far gone to think.

- When his orgasm hits, his sight goes white and he jerks against you, pumping his seed into you. Then he collapses.

- You hold him tight, savoring the press of his body and the feeling of his release inside of you.

- “You okay, doll? I wasn’t too rough?”

- “It was perfect.”

- Your hand strokes through his hair as you lay together in the same position for several minutes. Heartbeats pounding, your minds still struggling to return to equilibrium.

- Bucky recovers first. Damn that super soldier serum. It’s not fair that you’re still limp and dazed.

- He slips out of you and rolls over, bringing you with him. Your head finds its cradle in his shoulder and your eyes drift shut.

- Recovery isn’t going to happen for you tonight. You’re just going straight to sleep. You’ve earned it.

- Bucky shifts you onto your side. He gets up and you hear water running in the bathroom before a cool cloth touches between your legs, cleaning you.

- You murmur a thanks, half asleep.

- He comes back to cuddle you into his arms, adjusting the pillows around you before he lays down.

- When you throw a leg over his hip, he draws you closer so that you’re lying almost on top of him.

- “You make such a good pillow of someone with so many hard muscles.”

- Bucky chuckles and kisses the top of your head.

- “I’m glad. Go to sleep, doll. I love you.”

- “I love you too, James.”

[todayisafridaynight]

Of course! I'm glad my Unmitigated Braindumping has given you more opportunities to talk about them at length I never know where to start myself, so I'm very thankful for the jumping-off point that first post provided (and that many of your posts provide!) This has been a wonderful experience. (Also, uh, since these "bookends" work for more personal stuff--I am No Longer Sick and I'm happy to hear you seem to be doing a bit better!)

Reading it over, I figure the event transcript itself is okay to share, so here it is on my test wiki! It's, well, it's about the same length as this ask will probably end up, and it's a "sequel" to his first event. A thing I really like about Mine's RGGO content is that It's All Connected; the narratives continue to build upon each other to this day. That's not the case for almost any other character.

And totally! With Mine in specific, I feel there's enough reductiveness on "both sides" regarding his sexuality and regarding Daigo that trying to put forward any particular stance would be detrimental on top of the reasons we've discussed. It's probably a bit weird to say this about a fictional character, but Mine's a whole person independent of the men in his life, y'know?

I actually fell for the red herring with Katase myself until the Kanda scene we talk about below haha, so I guess that's fair enough on your friend's part. Definitely the case that the ending makes it clear that's not how it is, though.

Mine's interactions with women are always fascinating to me, especially in contrast to Kanda as you mentioned, but also in contrast to the main series protagonists. Just the way he immediately drops everything to help the woman Kanda attempts to assault when he and Kanda first meet almost on instinct says a lot to me when almost every protagonist occasionally acts like it's an inconvenience to Them to intervene.

I'd say a lot of it comes from growth on the writers' parts in terms of understanding that, hey, being totally complacent in Kanda's actions is scummy. So I appreciate that Mine is by far the one who does the most to minimize Kanda's harm (up to and including having him killed, of course, but also getting him arrested in that event as well as physically stopping him--and apparently dozens of others, since every woman who picks him up in that event is apparently a woman he saved lmao.)

I feel like Mine, when mentally stable, has this almost "chivalrous" quality to him. I'm kind of reminded of Hijikata as well in that they both insist on calling every younger woman they meet "miss"; it's a little old-fashioned, perhaps condescending, but still kind of cute (biased though lol, the ratios on those three things may vary.) There's a lot I want to talk about on this topic with regard to Hijikata, the historical account, and other "definitive" Shinsengumi media, but I'll probably save that for another ask.

But on Mine and relationships, there's so much to unpack there! The old joke is absolutely applicable. And because he was talking about how he's "never 'picked anyone up' in his life" in that event, agreeing to all these "dates" but never enthusiastically (I think the one and only time he didn't seem actively unhappy was in the finale to the accompanying card's character story), I do wonder to what degree his passivity would play a role in other romantic encounters. Agreeing to whatever those women wanted whether he really wanted it himself.

Rewinding to Katase a bit, while that was obviously not romantic, I think the interaction in the finale could perhaps provide insight as to a problem he may face in romantic relationships. Which is his refusal (or inability) to be emotionally honest while sort of expecting the other party to be perfectly attuned to his emotions.

Because like, I don't think Katase /didn't/ care about him whatsoever, I think she just took his "I'm fine"(s) at face-value and took a "business as usual" approach without realizing how much that would upset him in his current state. I would be mortified in her position if I called up my boss on an urgent matter and he said he was "fine" and then just completely stopped responding before hanging up lol, especially upon learning he committed suicide shortly thereafter.

But that interaction is (or appears to be) something he emotionally experienced as a "betrayal" despite being totally unintentional, so I have to wonder how much of a pattern it is in his life; he's been concealing his real problems and saying he was """fine""" since he was a kid, after all. I obviously can't say anything conclusive, but it "feels like" there's something there with the way he sort of lumped in the women he's been with with his coworkers when talking about how "they'll all abandon ship sooner or later" or whatever.

Like, I don't doubt that some (or perhaps many) women would like him for shallow reasons, but all of them…? Hm. Not Sure. That said, there's definitely an argument to be made he was seeing hostesses and sex workers (seeing him talk to a hostess is one of my top 10 reasons for wanting him to be a protagonist at some point tbh), but I guess there's also an argument to made that those types of relationships are overtly "fake" and "paid-for" and so wouldn't appeal to him? I wish we actually got to see some of that when Kanda took him to cabaret clubs.

And hey, you're totally right about Aoki's secretary! That was something that stood out to me as well. Her screen-time is roughly comparable to Katase iirc, so it's puzzling. Jo's leftover files really are such an enigma, because everyone's got unused voice lines and stuff (and they're still interesting to listen through for "another dimension" to the characters you don't get to see in-game), but there's so much that's Unique to him. I can only hope some of those ideas are explored elsewhere.

Kanda's insult is a lot of fun to examine for the exact reasons you mentioned, because on the surface and in a literal sense, the translation is "off the mark"--but is it? I'm not sure how much crossover there is between cultures in this regard, but I know when I came out as bisexual to my family, there were a lot of accusations thrown around that I'd become "too Westernized." It's definitely something I'd like to ask native speakers about if I can get over the embarrassment; perhaps if that's no help, one of my books or papers on LGBT issues in Japan might have an answer.

I'm definitely under the impression that both localization teams understood Mine wasn't straight. I might be a little bit biased with regard to the original, since, like I said, that was actually the scene I began to "suspect" Mine was gay lmao. But there was an effort to maintain accuracy in the finale even if the wording is superseded by Y3R's intensity. In that respect I kind of wonder about the reason for the change, because it addresses the homophobia but not the inaccuracy.

Right! I do give Mine some credit for attempting to be cautious with Kanda and Daigo, of course. It does seem like his misanthropy (or his tendency to spiral into it when things go wrong, anyway) has a lot to do with his guardedness. And he definitely does have a tendency to look to the future to the detriment of his ability to consider the present (or even that the future might not turn out exactly as he predicts). "The pinnacle of hindsight bias" is the perfect way to put it.

I think that's very much evident in how much of his mental state hinges on things he takes for granted. He'll finally be happy now that he has Daigo to dedicate his life to, because of course Daigo will be around forever (spoilers: he won't.) He'll finally be happy now that he can take over the Tojo, because of course the Tojo will both accept him without a fuss and be around forever (spoilers: it won't).

But I very much agree this is exactly the sort of thing that makes him such a captivating and relatable character! It's been a lot of fun exploring that side of him with you, just as it's been a lot of fun exploring the Arakawas. Of course, I would also be interested in your take on Arakawa and femininity whenever you're feeling up to it.

It was no trouble, thank you so much for taking the time to watch my recommendations! Also gave me the push to get started on Hero with a friend and am excited to see how much that changes my perception of the special! Tsugaru's very much got things going on and I'm excited for the rewatch. Eventually! I honestly have no idea where I stopped watching Pure haha, but I recall wondering if her dependence on her family would just end up being transferred onto Toru, so I'm glad that's not the case at least.

I really appreciate the vote of confidence regarding examining the localization further! That means a lot to me. I think it was especially worth emphasizing Jo and Ikumi's youth because both dubs make the somewhat odd choice to have Jo voiced by the same actor (whereas teen Arakawa is given a different actor), and the model doesn't really have the same wide-eyed innocence Tsutsumi did when he was younger.

I did notice Tsutsumi's performance was much more animated than for Jo as an adult though, and it was a lot more "obvious" when he was saying things he didn't mean, so I appreciate the effort to make up for it in terms of Tsutsumi's acting and probably-Yokoyama's direction.

It's probably hard to believe these days haha, but if anything, people were significantly more vicious towards Arakawa than towards Jo at launch. It just got to be too much to take after a while, especially because I had to see it from ~mutuals~ too. Like you guys know that man's my namesake and that I can see what you're saying, but you're not even going to tone it down a little bit? Okay I Guess.

It felt really aimless to me, because it was like, what, "betraying" Ichi? Having a "weak" "redemption?" I'm not going to say Arakawa Did Nothing Wrong, and I'm sure even he would never be satisfied with whatever he tried to do to make it up to Ichi (he never was when it came to Masato), but he Kind Of Died before he had the chance. Sometimes that's how it is, but Ichi was always going to forgive him.

Of course I should be happy people loved Ichi enough to feel so protective over him, and I kind of am, but I can't fully put my experiences aside either. I don't want to harp on all that too much now that things are looking better though lol.

All of that aside, I'm glad Princess Toyotomi was an enjoyable enough experience! Although it's not as direct as Honnouji Hotel, I think there are still some time-bending aspects with reincarnation and such that history buffs can enjoy. For example, Matsudaira was Tokugawa Ieyasu's family name, and Sanada was the name of a samurai he respected greatly although they were on opposing sides. And of course, the Sanadas as a whole served as vassals to Toyotomi (after the Honnouji incident, coincidentally, haha.)

Chako was also named after the mother of Toyotomi's heirs, so I suppose one could have seen that coming if they were aware of that, but I really, really wanted Daisuke to be the princess too! She (and Sanada's acceptance of her) were very much one of my favorite things about the movie as a whole. I appreciate that, whenever I've seen transgender identities and gender non-conformity come up in Nakai and Tsutsumi's works, that's generally how it goes. Most of their works tend to narratively align with their viewpoints in real life so it's cool.

Speaking of, family issues are very much a pattern in Tsutsumi's characters! Most of what I could say here is a bit spoiler-y, so I won't, but I hope you'll notice more as you go on to experience other roles.

I was hoping to reply to the other asks here, but that got to be Too Hot To Handle (read: way too long), so I'll section them off into a different ask (that you'll probably end up seeing before this one haha). Hopefully they're a bit easier to respond to separately as well. Thank you for your time, and sorry to take up so much of it!

I love how all of Mine’s stories are connected, it feels like some sort of atonement for the fact that Mine wasn’t going to be RGGO’s main protagonist anymore: if we can’t have him in a brand new story, then we can at least make up for it by having multiple prologue stories line up together. HUGE huge thank you for sharing this with me, it was an absolute honor to be able to read this!

It’s incredibly interesting to see Mine and his line of thinking in this story. At the end of Y3, Mine practically explodes with anger towards the people who betrayed him back then, yet with Tashiro he’s almost entirely the opposite. I guess in this particular situation though, Mine managed to find an optimistic outcome of that deceit: because Mine was booted from his company, he was able to find the thing he really wanted with the Tojo Clan. I can’t explain it properly, but that’s a sweet mentality for Mine to have honestly considering his displeasure with the society around him: something terrible happened to him (and Tashiro even tried to worsen the wound), but having been able to make the most out of the situation, he was almost prepared to let Tashiro go unpunished (I suppose this ties back into Mine’s whole thing of not striking unless attacked first). As a final small note on the story and translation, I love the sprinkle of French in his dialogue. As we’d talked about before, it’s just small details like that that help enhance his Westernism and I appreciate it immensely.

I totally agree on Mine being his own man/character and wanting to focus on that! That’s something I’m always worried about when I post honestly, as weird as that might seem. It’d be ridiculous for me to try to deny relationships between characters are some of my favorite aspects of RGG, but I also try to highlight the characters on their own. The reason why examining the relationships in RGG is so fun is because of how the characters are by themselves, and ergo the type of characters they become when put with others/how certain qualities of their characters become enhanced when in a (any sort of) relationship. In that, relationships help deepened characters, but they definitely shouldn’t be reduced to ONLY the relationships they have.

As for Mine’s relationship with women in RGGO stories, that’s an aspect of Mine I adore too, and I agree on the whole ‘address women as ‘miss’’ bit: it is old fashioned and potentially condescending, but the over-polite nature of it is endearing all the same to me personally. Just in general, Mine’s very polite and I feel like that’s a detail that’s overlooked at times, but it’s a detail I love all the same. Moreover, Mine generally being- at the very least- a decent person does remind me of Hijikata now that you mention it (despite his scary reputation, apparently almost all personal accounts with him only ever said nice things about him and how amiable he was), not to mention the virtuous nature of kirins, to go back to his original symbol. To extend on that, it does just solidify that Mine is a kirin at heart: he respects the people who haven’t done anything wrong or egregious, but he’s harsh on the people who do injustice (and even then, his tolerance is incredibly high. Back to the subject of when Mine first meets Kanda, he doesn’t punish Kanda for acting inappropriately with the woman, he only engages in a fight with him to get his attention. I appreciate that Mine still wanted to make sure the woman he helped was alright though, making sure she was able to walk first before putting his full attention back to Kanda).

I agree that Mine probably doesn’t pursue relationships himself and more so lets them come to him (especially if the ending of that Okinawa story where Mine’s approached by a woman on the beach is any indication or hint at his past relationships), and I especially agree that due to his closed-off nature, he ultimately jeopardizing any romantic partners he could have had. Ergo, I agree in that Katase shouldn’t be put at fault for dismissing Mine’s feelings (while we’re on the subject, I’ve always wanted to explore how Katase might have reacted to Mine’s death. I know she’s considerably an irrelevant character, but I can’t help but wonder how she might have felt and if she ever felt guilty for something she had no control over). I personally always live by the idea of saying what you mean, and as a result I don’t get upset with people if they can’t discern I’m not okay if I don’t tell them that. As for Mine, it’s painfully evident that’s now how he operates: he fully expects others to be on the same page as him, and as we see that becomes incredibly detrimental to him. It’s a consequence of his need to be independent, I believe: he’s become so focused on himself, he either isn’t comfortable with expressing the truth and relying on others emotionally, or he doesn’t know how to do it.

To expand on the hypotheticals of his past relationship, it really is hard to discern what ‘type’ of women he was entangled with (as in whether they were hostesses/sex workers or women he met naturally), and trying to find out which one is significant to understand the depth of his grievances. We know Mine isn’t fond of money- he understands it’s a tool to achieve what he wants, but it doesn’t make him happy (it wouldn’t be a stretch to even say it disgusts him in some aspects, or at least the greed it brings out of people turns him off). So would he seek out workers to get a sample of a human bond? But again, he’d know right at the start that bond would be artificial, so the only conclusion I can come to is that he really did have the capability to attract women on his own (or at least he didn’t have to ‘buy’ them, per say). And of course, the reason they didn’t work out could have been due in part to multiple reasons: women being with him only for shallow reasons, Mine’s inability to be sincere with others, potentially his sexuality, or maybe some mixture of these factors. Not all relationships are the same, after all. BUT this is all speculation at this point, and unfortunately I doubt we’ll get a concrete backstory on Mine’s relationships (but I do agree in being curious as to how he behaves around hostesses…)

I’m not overly versed on LGBT issues and terminology in the East, so I can’t say my input would be anything of much value. All I know is that- at least in the West as well- the concept of LGBT seems to be very ‘western’ for whatever reason (or at least, I see a lot of people get upset with Japanese franchises having LGBT elements and then claiming they’re ‘affected by the West’. Maybe it’s a two-way street for some). But yeah, all-in-all, it really is an interesting case of ‘technically this is wrong translation wise, but character wise it’s accurate’.

As for Mine and his tendency to be ‘short sighted’, that’s precisely how he operates! He very much has the mentality of ‘there’s no problem now, so don’t worry about it’, or at the very least he is very present-minded (outside of business endeavors, of course) and focuses on his happiness in the moment. I can’t fault him for that, though: again, it’s a very human trait to have, even if a little naive, so to say, but again it’s greatly compelling and relatable.

On to Jo though, it definitely was a weird choice to not have child Jo dubbed with a different actor- I know some boys can have deep voices by 15, but it really is jarring to watch and doesn’t help keep me in the mindset that they’re kids at the time. But you’re right in Tsutsumi’s effort to try and sound more youthful at least: it’s not perfect of course, but it’s definitely easier to discern that he’s supposed to be younger (and definitely fits better based on the interpretation the director might have wanted. For the Japanese dub, Jo sounds a lot more carefree about the situation and like he’s just ready to go home- like the circumstances are more of an annoyance than anything severe. Whereas in the English dub, Jo sounds more remorseful- or at least like he’s struggling with moving on from what happened. But that’s just my takeaway, of course).

About Arakawa’s negative reception though, on the surface I get it just from the premise of ‘Arakawa betrays Ichiban’. Even when I didn’t know anything about Y7 and I was just reading a quick summary of the game, I had a sour taste in my mouth after reading that part. BUT of course now I adore Arakawa. His methods were extreme and deadly, but it’s hard to come up with any alternatives for his situation (and it’s not as though he isn’t aware of the pain he put Ichiban through with his elaborate plan. It’s just another case of not everything a character does can be categorized as a purely good or purely evil action), and it’s unfortunate we didn’t get to see Arakawa try to make things up to Ichi after all they went through.

Onto Princess Toyotomi, I wish I was as much of a history buff for Japan as I am with American history: I love history so much, so I’m sure if I’d known these bits before watching I would’ve appreciated the movie and its details a whole lot more (not that I didn’t enjoy it of course, but having that context definitely would’ve been fun to notice while viewing)! It’s also sweet to hear that Nakai and Tsutsumi seem to be accepting of LGBT themes (I try not to look too deep into actors since I’m scared I’ll find terrible things and it’ll make viewing media they’re in awkward, but so far I’m glad that they appear to be decent guys)! On that note, I am absolutely excited to watch more Nakai and Tsutsumi works when I get the chance- I’m curious what you’re referring to when you talk about spoilers, but I’ll find that out seen enough I guess!

And I also have replies to your second ask, though I'll put it below the cut just to keep things separated and organized.

Whatever you decide to do, I’m sure it’ll turn out great (and if you ever need the tweet, I have it bookmarked and screenshotted- I can never be too certain on whether Twitter’s going to nuke a tweet nowadays…)! As for Masato though, I’d be absolutely surprised if he somehow survived. My reason to doubt as much were the funeral scenes, but with Mine- even if unlikely without repercussions- it’s not impossible to survive a fall from that height, so yeah RGG if you drop the confirmed He’s Fine I have no promises on being Not Annoying LMAO

In reference the nature of Jo and Arakawa’s relationship, I’m glad to have given you a chance to talk about their relationship further (it really is an awkward subject to navigate: it’s fair and reasonable to assume SOMETHING is there obviously, we just can’t put an exact label on it.)! And I am open to criticisms, whether that was the intent or not, otherwise I’m a fan of peer review and looking at notes on a subject together, so no worries!

I’ve always been a big fan of turn-based RPGs, so RGG’s push towards the genre’s been really fun to watch! Again, while you certainly can do storytelling through gameplay for action games, RPGs inherently being more story based definitely lend a hand in being able to inject smaller details better (especially in regards to attack/ability and weapon names that highlight aspects of a character)!

Thank you about my latest comic, it means the world that you enjoyed it despite how simple it is! It’s unfortunate I never draw Ichi since whenever I do, I always have fun with how different and expressive I make him (most of it’s due in part to wanting to make a homage to Akira Toriyama since if the gameplay of Y7’s going to be affected by Ichi’s love for Dragon Quest, then I might as well draw him with Toriyama in mind. But at this point, it’s just fitting to draw him so exaggerated)! And I definitely wouldn’t say your contribution was ‘small’, our back and forth’s were a pretty significant reason for me to have the energy and inspiration to draw the thing in full, so thank you again for chatting with me so much!

The subject of Hijikata and his poetry’s one of my favorite topics (if not majorly because according to people who read them, his poems weren’t all that good despite their famous nature nowadays), and I’m glad they managed to sneak in bits about him and in poetry in Ishin (like him reading in his room, and as you said, the quote at the end)! I can definitely see Mine wanting to thoroughly analyze Hijikata’s poetry just on the basis of being an art buff and wanting to extract as much meaning as he could from the writing (but again, considering the questionable quality of them, I can just as easily see pretty much everyone else looking at it without much regard lmao). On that note though, I’d be interested to see how the poems’ meaning ultimately become reworked in your vision!

Talking more about Ishin, Arakawa and Jo would have fit well with Kondo and Hijikata’s roles, I agree! Honestly, if it weren’t for Mine and how popular he is (which I’m infinitely grateful for, I shouldn’t have to say), it wouldn’t be hard for me to imagine Jo filling in his spot (especially if they were willing to swap in Zhao for Baba; they weren’t afraid to switch out RGG characters for other RGG characters. Though imaging Y7Jo having that slightly friendly air that Hijikata does definitely would have been… something to see lmao). Kondo was also considerably sneaky in Ishin too, wasn’t he? That definitely would have been a good fit for how lowkey Arakawa tries to keep things in Y7.

The complicated nature of Ichi and Jo’s relationship is such a neat subject. As you said, I’m sure part of Jo’s frustrations with Ichi lie in how Ichi’s seeming aloof nature reminds him of his own careless attitude as a kid: nothing like old-fashioned projection to make you irked by someone, right. On the note of Arakawa though, it will be interesting to see how they interact now that they aren’t technically ‘required’ to with Arakawa gone and there’s technically no more need to keep the peace. As I said in some ask ago, I do hope they have a more neutral bond come LaD8; I don’t think it’s reasonable to think they can ever be as close as Ichi and Arakawa are, especially how shut off Jo is, but it would be nice to see them more civil and relatively on the same page (maybe despite Arakawa being gone, they can at least appreciate his memory together right. Not that Jo seems too earnest to crack on sharing his personal feelings about Arakawa anytime soon, though, but maybe one day Ichi can convince him lmao).

Shifting a bit, I do wonder why Kiryu was responsible for making sure Jo was going to be alright. That seems so weirdly specific, especially when Kiryu doesn’t seem to have any connection with the Arakawa family. I hope Gaiden answers that question too!

And if you ever want to talk about Ryuji, feel free to write in about him! It’s been a while since I’ve focused on Y2’s story, but I at least remember his scenes well and I’m pretty solid on his character!

[allthingsarmin]

fratboy/stoner armin!! in love with how you write asshole! armin ❤

Thank you for your request! I feel I didn’t do a good job with this one, so I will probably go back later and rewrite it. (And I really appreciate your feedback <3 I hope this dose of asshole!armin will satisfy your needs haha)~

MINORS DNI! Ft. NSFW TOPICS (weed, one mention of vomit, and sex (groping, drunk noncon), mentions of religion, one mention of sexaul assault).

Fem!Reader, FemBodied!Reader

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who dresses like a gentleman - wearing white shorts and a white button-up collared shirt under a cerulean sweater that compliments his mesmerizing blue eyes as well as a dainty silver watch on his left wrist and always comes to class with a freshly shaven face and cologne that is just a little too “manly” for him - but acts like a complete hooligan, making inappropriate jokes in class, pranking innocent passersby on campus, and getting black-out drunk at frat parties every Friday night.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who looks so poised and has such a refined posture, having enough manners (like holding the door open) to swoon enough girls but is such a menace when it comes to anything serious… like being harshly shushed in the library because he was being too loud or skipping finals to go on a spontaneous road trip with his frat buddies then sending an email to his professor saying he was sick, even printing out a fake doctor’s note, or pranking the sorority across the street by TPing their house or even how he can’t seem to care less when the police ruthlessly question him because there have been so many reports of sexual assault done by his frat friends.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who thinks he is so smart because he’s a business major and genuinely believes he is better than everyone else because he gets out of class to go to all these events even though he is undoubtedly one of the most irresponsible and reckless people on campus… having unprotected sex with countless unfortunate women who have fallen for his false compliments, throwing parties that become too big for him to handle - so loud the police become involved, so messy with red cups littering the floor and vomit being found in every trashcan in the house - and failing nearly every class he’s in because “it’s too easy for me, my advisor put me in the wrong class, and the teacher is an old hag.”

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin whose backpack is filled with anything but college textbooks and notebooks, like a chewed pencil, three packs of condoms, some headphones, and an energy drink.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who swears he’s being a good boy when his rich parents who are on their abroad trip ask him how he’s doing over the phone but is actually spending most of his weekly allowance buying weed and smoking it with his frat buddies, who often gets into intense fights with them because he “knows he had two ounces left, but now he only has one,” and who shows up to class high the few times he does actually decide to go - eyes red, a constant small smirk, can’t stop rambling about useless things.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who walks together with his big group of frat friends, taking up large amounts of room on the sidewalk and in restaurants, cat-calling girls they think look fuckable and loudly mocking those who look prude.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who has a main Instagram where he looks so well-mannered, posting pictures with his family or his frat buddies when they go on a trip together but also has a secret Instagram where he posts thirst traps, follows barely clothed women, and stalks accounts of girls who go the same college as him, even DMing the men at your college to see if they have your nudes.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who knows how handsome he is, who knows how easy it is to make your knees weak and your heart flutter when he looks at you from across the campus soccer field with such intent, biting his lip, maliciously smiling because yet another girl has fallen for his seemingly innocent aura as you excitedly wave at him.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who revels in the fact that he can convince you to do anything. When he’s whining so pathetically in the driver’s seat and pressuring you to just hit the blunt one time while he locks you in his car that’s parked on the far end of the campus parking lot. And you, so submissive and selfless sitting in the passenger seat, not wanting to disappoint him because his frown harshly tugs at your heart, take a hit, choking on the fumes and heart pounding at the unfamiliarity as a warm buzz sets in.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who pressures you to skip class with him so that you both can go to the campus cafeteria and buy an unholy amount of cookies and chips because he’s high and he’s hungry… and now you know why his bedsheets at the frat house reek of weed and why his crusty floor is littered with food wrappers.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who so easily persuaded you to play those type of sexually suggestive games at the weekend frat party where everyone is drunk, breath seething with vodka, and sweatily rubbing up against each other, so horny for a release, and so desperate to feel something besides the headache from the loud music… who you somehow wind up in the closet with, his right arm holding you close against his body as his left hand slithers into your panties and forces itself into your cunt because he wanted you to play ‘seven minutes in heaven.’

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who promises that there’s nothing to be afraid of because he’s ‘secretly a sweetheart’ but calls you his “bitch” and pats his thigh, signaling that he wants you to come sit in his lap so that he can feel you up in front of his friends at the frat party when drinking cheap, shitty beer.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who swears he won’t bite but gets you so drunk at parties that you can’t even tell him no when he takes you upstairs, locks the door, and practically forces his hard, throbbing cock into you while holding you into a mating press, covering your mouth to suppress your cries as his tongue trails your jawline and neck.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who prays before every dinner, keeps a bible in the lowest drawer of his nightstand, and goes to church promptly at 10am every Sunday with his frat buddies despite being hungover. Sitting in the front pews, he listens intently to the preacher, letting the word of God spill into his heart even though he was rigorously fisting his cock the night before to your pictures on Instagram, cumming four times but his balls still swollen and cock still desperate for your messy cunt, having to hold back his needy whimpers each time his slender fingers brisk past his sensitive tip as he imagines your warm, wet tongue licking off the pre-cum.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who invites you to a Sunday lunch with his frat. Of course, he looks so polished: a clean, white button-up with a baby blue sweater hanging around his shoulders and a pair of new Sperrys. When you show him what you’re wearing, he tells you that you could do better as he convinces you to wear something a little low-cut but not too much because he doesn’t want his frat buddies to think he’s dating a slut.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin whose friends look at you like starving dogs when you both finally get to the restaurant, never including you in the conversation except for when they comment on your body and how irresistible it is.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who doesn’t defend you and instead soaks up all of this appraisal.

“Yeah, she’s a good toy to play with,” he proudly smiles while gripping your thigh in his strong, pale hands.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who makes you order a small salad and only allows you to drink water because “you need to watch your figure.”

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who’s the perfect predator, the perfect manipulator. He can do whatever he wants without ever getting caught, howling at the fact that you try to tell advisors or teachers how Armin violated and manipulated you, but they just never believe you. “You’re talking about Armin? Armin Arlert? He would never do anything like that,” they chuckle… because everyone knows Armin’s an angel; he’s part of the frat, so that makes him a good boy, right?

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who you can’t possibly ever escape from because he’s done such a good job at manipulating you to be his little slutty girlfriend, his heaven-like appearance making it impossible for others to believe what a devil he is, isolating you as he convinced all of your friends that you’re just some cock-hungry whore.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who has done such a good job at defiling you, successfully taking your virginity and eagerly pressuring you to do things for him, letting him so easily enter your sloppy cunt as he takes in the sight of your tender breasts, contorted face, and bright red hand imprints on your thighs.

ᵔᴥᵔ Fratboy!armin who despite all the manipulation and sexist comments, you don’t want to leave because he smells so sweet thanks to all the treats he eats; because his arm muscles look so good when he plays golf with his rude friends; because he makes your high from weed more fun as you two cuddle and talk about nonsense; because he is able to bury your shy side and awaken your submissive side as he slowly degrades the human being in you and raises a filthy slut whose pussy he makes so wet, so needy, and so pathetically sloppy.

[troubatrain]

cowboy like me - m. barzal

a/n: omg suddenly she remembers how to write - so this is bigger than a blurb but definitely shorter than a fic so i’m calling it a baby fic!! i really haven’t written anything i love (or have been able to finish) in weeks so this feels really good to post so i hope you guys like it!!!

tagging @texanstarslove & @hookingminor because they both read this ahead of time to tell me it’s not trash (and i appreciate it sm!!)

“...and the skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up, and the old men that I've swindled really did believe I was the one...”

She’s only here for her inheritance.

I heard she was dating a CEO but she got caught having an affair with his assistant.

Careful Barz, you might be next after that contract.

Mat’s gaze was held on you while he listened to his teammates and their wives gossip next to him. Mat saw you twice, maybe three times a year, only when you were forced to show your face at an Islanders event. Other than that, Mat knew no more about than Page Six did about Manhattan’s new up and coming socialite. Your family owned the team, putting a pretty penny in your pocket as long as you kept up with appearances, or at least that’s what Sydney seemed to think. You looked perfect, a silk floor length dress that Mat couldn’t imagine wasn’t made for only your body, hair pinned up perfectly while a pair of earrings hung low. Diamonds for sure. Everything about you was eloquent and expensive, and Mat had heard just about every rumor in the book about you.

Mat felt good about himself that night. He was on a point streak and having a monster season. He was wearing a suit that was tailored to absolute perfection, Mat’s dark brown locks tousled perfectly on his head. There was no reason that he couldn’t just walk up to you and finally take a moment to introduce himself to you instead of gawking at you from afar like he’d been doing since he was a rookie. He was a kid then, and you were probably dating a prince or the son of a millionaire and had no time for a dorky kid from Vancouver. Now, Mat was a man with a contract to match and hopes that you could give him the time of day at least. His gazes lingers a bit longer, watching the way your eyes rolled briefly at whatever that man was saying to you. You excuse yourself, waving your empty wine glass in your and like Mat was stalking his prey - this was the moment.

“You’re not very subtle you know,” You muse, looking over at Mat who was leaning against the bar getting a drink of his own, “And blue’s a better color on you.”

Being a bitch was second nature to you. The way scoring came to Mat or business came to your father and siblings. It was easy to be snarky, because snarky kept people at a distance. Besides, no one thought much about you that didn’t involve how many commas were in your bank account or the constant debate about whether or not you’d gotten a nose job when you were eighteen. If they wanted nothing more than a pretty face, then that’s what you’d give them.

“Noted,” Mat takes a gulp of his drink, and your eyes linger a little too long at his hand wrapped around a glass, “You want to dance?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” You hum, taking a sip of your drink. Mat Barzal had a reputation that was cleaner than your own, the Islanders golden boy if you will, but you knew better than that. You knew about the revolving door in his apartment and all of the girls who got strung along in hopes they’d get to be the ones who wore that number thirteen jersey to games. Mat Barzal was no saint, and it didn’t matter how many rich men he convinced he was.

“No harm in dancing darling,” Mat husks, voice close to your ear while you desperately hoped he didn’t see the goosebumps on your arm. Mat was throwing you off your game, but it’s a welcome feeling. Darling. You liked that one, tired of the men who constantly called you babe or baby.

“One dance Barz,” You took his hand, letting him guide you to the middle of the tent that your parents had set up on the tennis court in the same home you grew up in. Your hand remained in his, your other gripping his shoulder while you swayed back and forth, “You know your teammates are staring.”

And they were. Mat turns his head, stifling a laugh at Tito’s jaw that was practically on the floor, “Let them.”

“Not afraid of the rumors?” You hum, leaning your head on Mat’s shoulder, “Or are you just like me?”

“Like you?” Mat asks, raising his eyebrows at you, grabbing your and spinning you around before he pulled you closer.

“You don’t want love, just a fancy car or two and girls falling at your feet. You’ll ride into town and leave with more damage done than the time before but you’ll always get away with it. You’ll tell all the stuck up rich people anything they want to hear to keep up appearances. A cowboy if you will,” You explain, a smile on Mat’s face telling you that maybe you nailed it on the head.

“And what if those rumors about me aren’t true?” Mat asks, lips ghosting over yours but he won’t kiss you just yet.

“And what if the ones about me aren’t true?” You quip back to avoid Mat’s question about whether or not you believed any of the shit you heard about him.

“Guess we’ll have to find out.”

***

And so you did. It wasn’t supposed to happen, you took Mat home that night no intentions of ever speaking to him again. He was going to leave your place and you were going to be another notch in his bedpost. Because that’s what the Mat Barzal’s of the world did. And you were right after all, Mat Barzal was a bandit, who stole the hearts of the women he saw and deleted their numbers without a second thought.

Except Mat wasn’t going to that with you, well he was, but when he woke up the next morning to see you perched in the chair by the window in your apartment, sipping a cup of tea - he didn’t want to leave. You looked so normal, your walls finally down in the comfort of your own space and suddenly Mat needed to know why you had them up so high to begin with. Mat found out quickly, it was the pressure of the people around you. Your family needed you to be perfect, but they didn’t think you’d be good enough for the family business like your brothers.

I just hope she doesn’t ruin him like Oliver.

Mat needs someone who’s going to support him.

She’s just going to hurt him and he’s going to play like shit because of it.

“Would you just stop for a second?” Mat had been chasing you three blocks from the restaurant he was having a nice dinner with you and your family at. He wasn’t supposed to hear them, but he did and you were embarrassed, “Darling-”

“Mat, stop just stop,” You sigh, finally slowing down because those stupid heels you chose to wore were killing your feet. You shiver for a second, Mat’s large hands move to

your arms to try and warm you up, “Go ahead, ask what horrible thing I did to drive my last boyfriend away… because it wasn’t my fucking fault. He was using me, just like everyone else does and-”

“I believe you,” Mat rushes out, pulling you into his arms and holding you close. It wasn’t the first time one the skeletons in either of your closets would try and tear you apart, and it probably wasn’t going to last. There was always going to be brunches with his teammates who hounded him about his girlfriend’s past or whatever rumor they were hearing. There would always be times their significant others would grab your arm in a crowd when Mat was having a conversation with another woman like he was going to hurt you. That wasn’t going away, but it also didn’t matter to him at all. All of that was before he locked it down, things were different now.

Mat went back to your place that night, taking note of the way one of his suits was pressed and in your closet for him, like he belonged there. He smiled at it, the blue suit you insisted he bought because it was the best color on him, “You’re not mad at me right?”

“Why would I be mad darling?” Mat sighs, smiling softly at his shirt that you seemed to always steal when you stayed over. You give him a look like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world, “I love you, and I don’t care about the past. It’s you and me now and that’s what matters.”

Mat hadn’t said it yet, waiting for the right moment for him to drop a four letter word he never thought he’d ever use. He’d thought it plenty of times, but he was saving for when the moment felt right. Maybe he’d drop it on the trip you had planned in a few weeks, or after a nice date, but you needed to hear it from him now. He loved you, everything down to the way you snored if you had too much to drink.

“I love you too,” You nod, wiping the last tear that had fallen from your eyes, “Cowboy.”

“Call me that forever,” Mat husks, pressing a sweet kiss to your lips, “And ever.”