#also some of the tagging just DOES not work so ill. manually do it in the comments

[genshin-impacted]

Exchange of Rings

(Alhaitham x Reader - 4/?) 

It was only a matter of time until you and Alhaitham begin to affect each other-- in a good way. OR disagreements + touch + groceries + sleep

Word Count: ~3.9k

Notes: afab!reader, second person pov “you”, gn!reader, switches pov with Alhaitham, modern au, arranged marriage, fall first/fall harder, slow burn

[Previous - Next]

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You like to say you're an open person. Open-minded, open-hearted, but open about yourself? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you are honest about what you think, though definitely not as honest as Alhaitham. 

He definitely does not soften the blow for anyone, even for you– or so you think until you hear just how blunt and abrasive Alhaitham can be when he receives a phone call from work on the weekend. ("Do not call me again." “But-” “Goodbye.”) You never realized it was possible to talk to someone at work like that, but you think maybe Alhaitham’s got something right with how clearly he sets his boundaries. 

In comparison to that, his words to you are more like… flicks on the forehead. It makes you cringe, maybe yelp if you're sensitive, but otherwise they're harmless. The forehead flick is also a reminder of the greater force Alhaitham is capable of so you take his mercy in stride. 

It's not as though you're prone to being chastised by Alhaitham, but you're not a perfect human being. Sometimes you forget that you put laundry in the washing machine or that the heater is still on when you leave the apartment. And you know you're unused to being scolded because every time he needs to, it comes as a surprise to you, and you don’t think you’ll ever see it coming. 

You do notice eventually that when Alhaitham needs to tell you something, he stands in front of you regardless of what you're doing and says your name tonelessly, though you feel unprepared each time it happens. In your defense, Alhaitham's tone of voice has never had variety. He also says your name like that when he asks you what you want for dinner or if you want him to leave the lights on for you when he goes to bed.

You wish you could say the scolding goes both ways in equal frequency, but Alhaitham is extremely organized and conscientious, so you never have much chance to tell him anything. He always washes the dishes after he eats, clears the table without asking, and does his chores when it's due. You do think he tends to leave his books laying around when he's done with them, but that's a habit you don't mind much. It's even a little fun for you to figure out which books he finished and where: the neuroscience book at his bed, the finance book at the dining table, the biography at the kitchen counter. You did have to tell him off about that last one, mainly because you wouldn't want it to get splashed with oil or food if it's left there. 

That's also the thing with Alhaitham. You only need to tell him once and he will remember and do it– if he finds it reasonable, of course. You never find another book in the kitchen or on the dining table, just stacks of books on the living room table. But even that gets cleaned up when you bring over snacks for the both of you to munch on as you watch TV and he reads. It's apparent to you that Alhaitham doesn't want his books to get dirty, so it all works out in the end.

It's usually never the small household things, but you remember you did have to talk to him about how to handle the landlord and the neighbors. As much as he doesn't care about what others think of him, you do. Especially when you want to leave a good impression on the landlord so they're more willing to help out or need to ask the neighbors for a cup of sugar. No matter how annoying they can be, you don't like to burn bridges, and perhaps that is the biggest difference between you and Alhaitham. 

Thankfully, when you tell him how you feel, he takes it in stride. You must have looked as surprised as you felt because he sighs at your expression. "You gave a logical reason," Alhaitham says, "so I concede. I'll be… cordial with the neighbors."

"You can tell them off if they play disco music again at 3am," you say, warmth swirling in your chest with the knowledge that Alhaitham listens to you. "Nothing against disco, of course."

"Of course," he says with dry amusement. "They're manageable. But if the landlord tries to check up on us after 10PM again-" 

"It's because you have such an early bedtime," you tease. The deadpan (read: grumpy) stare you get from Alhaitham makes you laugh. "But yeah, you can let him have it. As long as we don't get evicted."

"Has it come to mind that maybe you just stay up too late?" Alhaitham scoffs and you just smile sheepishly at him. "If they even try to wrongfully evict us, I'll have Cyno involved," he says, strangely ominous. "And believe me when I say that's the last thing any of us want."

When you ask about Cyno, Alhaitham gives you a short answer of “coworker” and leaves it at that. He would have moved on without any elaboration had you not reeled him back and asked follow-up questions.

What’s his role in the company? Attorney. 

Is he a good attorney? He gets his job done. 

Are you guys friends? gets you a blank stare that you give right back until Alhaitham responds with a “most likely.” He ignores your look of confusion and finishes his plate of salmon. 

Alhaitham is honest but he isn’t the most forthcoming with information about his life unless you ask. So, you suppose neither of you are very open.

You think the closest you get is how open you are about showering affection unto other people. When you like someone, whether it's platonic or romantic, it's hard not to show it through proximity. And you like Alhaitham a lot, so you teeter the line of being close to him at all times and giving him the space to actually breathe. You compromise by patting Alhaitham on the back when you pass by, peering over his shoulder to look at what he's cooking, or scooting closer to him on the couch so the two of you can share the blanket. 

You’re careful to gauge his reaction. If he shows any sign of disliking it, it would break your heart, but you would also respectfully keep your distance. Luckily enough for you, Alhaitham doesn’t bat an eye at your attempts to be close to him, so you lean over until you’re shoulder to shoulder to show him the latest funny and/or informational video you’ve found scrolling on your phone. Like clockwork, Alhaitham turns his head to look at your phone as you press the play button.

“It’s feng shui,” you tell him. You want to go into more detail, but you think the man in the video exuberantly helping other people rearrange their furniture is the only explanation Alhaitham will need. For most funny videos–if he happens to find them funny–you get to hear a huff of laughter from him. For the more informational videos, it either ends with a short “interesting” or starts an entirely new discussion between the two of you about the clip's content or something related. When the video ends you look at Alhaitham expectantly, and without fail, he provides you with a response. 

“Is this why you bought that potted plant the other day?” Alhaitham asks when the video begins to loop again, and you smile at him sheepishly.

“Well, no,” you say, “I actually just wanted to spruce up the living room a little bit, but!” You scroll through your phone. “I think there’s a video that talks about filling in the space with certain plants for good luck, so maybe I got the right sort of plant in the end.” 

There’s that huff of laughter, and you smile at your phone, heart fluttering at the thought of making him laugh. Your arm shifts against his as you continue to watch other videos, and he does not move away even as he uses his hand to flip his book to the next page. Having this knowledge makes you beam, but you taper it down just in case Alhaitham can see how lovestruck you are. 

And that’s how you know you’re not ‘open’, per say. You leave lingering touches on Alhaitham, seek his company and approval, but not once have you told him how much you like him. You’re conflicted about it, but no matter how open you have been about your feelings on anything else, with Alhaitham, there’s so much more to think about. Would he be okay with how you feel about him? Would he return your feelings? Does it matter if he returns your feelings now, as rapidly developing as they are? Alhaitham makes your heart flutter, your stomach flip, and your brain blank. But not for too long, luckily; Alhaitham would notice if you took a long time to answer his question and notice how you stare dreamily at him when he isn’t looking.

So you decide not to open that can of worms. For now. All you know now is that being with him makes you light, that every time he reciprocates your energy, you feel as though embers are sifting in your chest. 

It’s 2AM when you rub your eyes, sleep finally catching up to you. Alhaitham had gone to bed a few hours ago, bidding you goodnight and warning you to stop staying up so late if you really don’t want those eyebags you always complain about. It’s about a few hours past a healthy bedtime, but you suppose it’s better late than never when you close your laptop and head to the bathroom for your nightly routine. You’re quiet as you go through your toiletries, careful not to wake Alhaitham up with the noise, though the toilet flushing is out of your control.

You tiptoe into your shared bedroom a few minutes after, your eyes adjusting just enough in the dark to see where the blanket has been folded to lift and put yourself under. To your surprise, you hear Alhaitham shift the same time you do, turning his body so that it faces the center of the bed. You can’t see his eyes in the dark, but you think you can feel his gaze.

“Sorry,” you whisper, “did I wake you?”

“...No,” he says, just as quietly. You try not to melt at the softness of his voice in the covers of the dark. “I was still awake.”

“Couldn’t sleep?” You ask sympathetically, tucking yourself under the blankets and turning to face him. 

A sigh. “Unfortunately, no.” 

“Did you want to try taking something to help you sleep?”

“No, I usually don’t have any problems-” Alhaitham stops, and you wait for him to speak again, the only sounds in the bedroom are your shared breaths. “Never mind. If I can’t fall asleep in the next twenty minutes, I’ll find a solution.” 

“Alright,” you say, yawning. You laugh quietly when you hear Alhaitham follow after you. “Let me know if you need anything.” 

You guess Alhaitham found a way to sleep because the next time you wake up, the sun has almost reached its apex. Your stomach growls when you smell lunch cooking a room away. 

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Alhaitham can’t remember the last time someone has wanted to spend as much time with him as you do. Granted, he actively avoids people to prevent exactly that, but you are, he finds, the exception for many things in his life recently.

Alhaitham wouldn’t say he is touch-adverse, but he isn’t particular to physical touch at all. Only family has ever been that familiar with him, and even then, it is not excessive. He remembers most vividly the head pats that his grandmother would give him, his mother’s hand in his when he was young, and his father’s firm grip on his shoulder when he tells Alhaitham he’s proud of him. And when he did find himself in a group of people he didn’t mind being around, they weren’t exactly the touchiest of people either. He imagines Cyno trying to put his arm around his shoulder in a show of camaraderie and almost grimaces in real life. The only person who would even consider doing something like that to him would be Kaveh, but that’s only when he’s had quite a few drinks in…

With you around, he’s beginning to become more familiar with being close to you, in a literal sense. He feels it is subconscious for you most of the time, the way you hold onto his shoulders to go around him or the times you talk to him, a nudge here or a slap on the back there when you’re particularly amused about something. The frequency of touches has only grown since the two of you have gotten to know each other. Without knowing how physically affectionate you are previously, Alhaitham finds it hard to tell whether or not you’re doing it on purpose until you start asking him for permission. 

“Alhaitham,” you start to say, pointing to the seat directly next to him on the couch, “can I sit next to you?”

“Alhaitham,” you ask, pulling your hand back after showing him a video on your phone, “do you mind if I lean on you a little bit?”

“Alhaitham,” you say sleepily, lifting your head up from his shoulder for a moment, “is this okay?”

It’s very straightforward, he thinks after you let out an appreciative sound when he replies with an affirmation. Your head is an unfamiliar weight on his shoulder, but it is not uncomfortable, and he thinks he will get used to it very soon, if he hasn’t already. It’s become almost instinctual to do some things with you, beyond the habits that he has formed with living with you like the chore rotation or cooking for four people. Having your presence next to him is one of them. 

It’s almost comforting how predictable your actions are. When you slide into bed with him as he reads, you’ll almost always inch forward until you can comfortably show him some videos on your phone if the algorithm is to his taste. Without fail, you end up falling asleep with your head by his hand. Alhaitham never moves away though; he lets you stay as you are, close enough that your breaths tickle his arm. He reasons that it would be a hassle waking you up and making you move. You don’t fall asleep as easily as he does, kicking and turning before you leave the room for a glass of water so as to not bother him. (Another reason why you should start sleeping early as a habit, he thinks.)

And without fail, when the two of you go grocery shopping together, you will reach out for his arm to hold onto as he pushes the cart. You’ll hold onto the list the two of you made together, eyes on the screen of your phone as you trust Alhaitham to guide you through the throng of people safely. You don’t even blink when he has to tug your arm to move you from incoming foot traffic, but when the danger has cleared, you will always look at him and smile gratefully before going back to your list.

Speaking of the list, the two of you always make a list– you say this with a hint of exasperation. It's the result of an hour discussion of what groceries the two of you need for that week. And without fail the two of you will end up spending another fifteen minutes or so debating on the necessity of some extra items while shopping.

Some of the things that you insist on do annoy him somewhat, just because of how unrealistic it is. You do and will never need the bulk-sized croissants that will go bad before the two of you can eat them all, despite your insistence to bring the leftovers to work. He’d rather not be known as the coworker who brings free food; he can already imagine the racket his coworkers would cause with the free food let alone have him be the one to bring it. 

But you wouldn’t be able to live with him so well if you couldn’t hold yourself up in a discussion. Even Alhaitham caves if the madeleines are on sale or if the linguini pasta is a buy two get one free deal. “You know we both love eating these,” you would tell him. “And we always end up needing more pasta by the end of the month.”  

You always look so pleased when he tells you that ‘you have a point,’ as though winning an argument against him– if you can even call it that– is a cause for celebration. (He has a feeling that many of his coworkers would agree, so he keeps silent.) 

The times where he wants to purchase something, and you don’t are rare and far in-between. You have a habit of indulging his purchases, or perhaps you simply trust him to be financially frugal. He does find out that the two of you have a similar sense of humor though, when he buys the most experimental (read: ugly) art piece for the apartment and weeks later you still can’t stop laughing when you look at it on his side of the bed. 

With amusement, Alhaitham finds that you are easily prone to laughter. You can laugh at his dry, sardonic humor and turn around to laugh at a sex joke on your phone right after. (“You’re not going to ask your fiancé if they’re good after choking on their own spit?” “You’re talking just fine, aren’t you?” “Boo-o-o-o-o.”) 

Some parts of you he will never comprehend, but Alhaitham enjoys being able to unveil the different sides of you, layer by layer. It’s almost like a never-ending puzzle trying to figure out what makes you tick and the habits that make you you. 

What he doesn’t realize, as he finds out one sleepless night, is how these new habits affect him. 

Alhaitham can hear you start to get ready for bed hours after he has. He glances at the clock and barely represses a sigh when he sees that it’s already 2 AM. He’s never stayed up this late, even when he was still in school, and yet here he is, almost bleary eyed as he struggles to sleep without you there. 

And he knows that’s the reason why. There is no other justification. He’s worked out today so he should be thoroughly tired. He’s avoided blue-light, so his circadian rhythm isn’t disrupted. The only difference now is how much he has grown accustomed to having you in the same bed as him, a familiar warmth on the other pillow. 

Alhaitham almost wants to call his grandmother and demand if this is what she wanted for him. (She would probably just laugh until she cried. Maybe even be a little proud, though Alhaitham wouldn’t quite understand why.) Is this what it was all for? Dependency on another person for a good night’s sleep? It’s almost unthinkable for him to have gotten to this stage when he has never, ever relied on someone to live his life the way he wanted it to be. 

But then you finally get to bed, whisper to him good night, and Alhaitham finds his eyes closing as they should have been hours ago. 

Alhaitham wakes up feeling refreshed and unable to be miffed at you for ruining his sleep schedule, unbeknownst to you. Perhaps, like the many other things he has adapted to through living with you, needing to sleep next to you is something else he will get used to.

(Since when has that become so natural to him?)

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You’ve been trying to sleep at the same time as Alhaitham lately. 

For one, he sleeps at a healthy time, which you haven’t done for years now. Secondly, it’ll be better for you in the long-run with your work schedule. And finally, you now have a reason other than work to go through with it. Alhaitham is encouraging you to do it and how could you say ‘no’ to that? Some parts of it are positive reinforcement (“Sleep is good for your health.”) and other parts of it sound more like a threat (“Didn’t you say your eyebags had eyebags just yesterday?”). You think maybe it just gets rid of any interruptions when you come into bed in the middle of the night, but Alhaitham rarely takes a long time to fall back asleep even if you do wake him up. 

Alhaitham has been the reason for a lot of your rather positive changes. Slow changes, you think, as you play on your laptop when Alhaitham shuts his book to head to sleep. Blue light be damned, you feel a yawn coming on already despite it only being 9 PM, a testament to the habits you’ve been building with Alhaitham. But old habits die hard, and your dailies have yet to be done for Genshin. You know the light makes it hard for Alhaitham to sleep so you close your laptop, slipping out of bed with the intention to play in the living room for a few minutes. 

“Wait,” Alhaitham says, stopping you before you stand. “You can stay.”

The words alone from Alhaitham are enough to make warmth swirl in your chest. You think your voice is softer when you speak to him, “But won’t the sounds and lights bother you?” To your surprise, you watch as Alhaitham pulls out an eye mask and earbuds from his nightstand. 

You don’t know if you’re too much of a hopeless romantic or if you’re reading too much into this, but you think maybe– perhaps– Alhaitham would rather inconvenience himself with using an eye mask and earbuds than have you leave his side. You feel your heart flutter, though you think you mask it well when you tease him, “You miss me that much when I’m gone?” 

You see Alhaitham roll his eyes before setting in his eye mask and earbuds. “Good night,” he says. 

You watch him for a little bit afterwards, heartbeat thrumming in your ears, and all you can think about is the fact that he never said ‘no’ to you. (And he would if you were wrong. You know he would; he has never let a lie stand when it’s the two of you.) 

The giddiness never leaves– you don’t know if it will ever– but a wave of tranquility rolls over you too. A pervading warmth. A sense of belonging that mixes itself with the tangles in your stomach. Something in you shifts, and you think you’re beyond infatuation now. 

You’re in love with Alhaitham. 

You take another glance at him before going back to your game, wondering if he would wear a funny eye mask if you were to buy it for him. (You love him.) You finish your dailies in a few minutes and close your laptop, the fan quieting until all you can hear is silence. (You love him.) You turn off the last lamp of the room and slide underneath the blanket. You hear Alhaitham shift on his side of bed, turning towards you, and you wonder if he knows he does that every time you slip into bed with him. 

Just as you lean into him on the couch or bicker with him over groceries, this, too, is starting to feel natural: you love him.

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taglist:

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[hongism]

29 - s.mingi - punishment + dacryphilia (18+)

» s.mingi x fem!reader » pwp, 18+ » language, mentions of drinking/smoking, explicit smut » wc 8.1k » link to masterlist » repost now that tumblr solved my tagging issues! fingers crossed everything works as normal now 🤞

smut warnings: semi-public sex, fingering, manual stimulation, oral sex: m, unprotected sex, facial, creampie, dirty talk, pet names: baby/baby girl/princess, crying during sex, deepthroating/face-fucking, edging, orgasm control, overstimulation

“So, you ever gonna tell me where you were last Tuesday?”

You can’t say that you weren’t expecting the question to come eventually, especially after you left Mingi with such a shitty excuse about not being able to meet up, but you expected to at least have a few more hours to get a story together before he cornered you here in one Choi San’s kitchen on a Friday evening. There’s an assortment of drinks spread out over the counters, no doubt in the fridge as well, but you aren’t after any of those goods in particular right now. Instead, you opt to simply snag water from the fridge and turn to face Mingi as you’re unscrewing the cap.

“Hm? What happened last Tuesday?” The quaint tilt of your chin does nothing to solidify your innocence, and Mingi’s sharp stare hones in on your face within seconds.

“You tell me, yn.”

Your lips part to prepare some sort of response, gaze trailing off to the ceiling as you piece together the excuse of a story. Mingi grants you that much, at least, even if it’s a show of how extravagantly you’re about to lie to him here and now. He leans around you as you’re gathering your thoughts, reaching for the counter and snagging a beer off it. You’d be impressed with his strength if you didn’t know that it’s the kind that screws off at the cap because Hongjoong has dainty hands that can easily be injured and he’s no good at opening bottles, thus San coddles him as such even when it comes to house parties.

“Well… I remember getting dinner with a few people. Didn’t drink or smoke anything because I had an early shift the next day. Then I went home.”

“Went home, huh?”

“We don’t typically get together on Tuesdays, Min,” you say between sips, arching a brow at the man who stands across from you. He pauses as well just to stand a little straighter and look you in the eye before arching one of his one brows — the pierced one that has a little black barbell poking through the skin — at you in return. His silence allows you a moment of reprieve, even if it comes at the cost of his staring so heavily at your face all the while. Still, you make no effort to conceal the way you drag your own gaze from his face down his body, taking in the ill-fitting tank top that has obscenely large holes cut out for his arms to stick through. You’d argue that it fits a bit better than it used to with how he’s been bulking up and putting on muscle these days, but you would also never give him the pleasure of hearing your appreciation out loud. He hears enough of it in the late hours of the night, three or four times a week as he has you pressed into the mattress in your apartment. The tank also gives you an eyeful of one of your favorite pieces in Mingi’s extensive collection — the snaking vines of tattoos that spread from his wrists up to his shoulders, dipping beneath the fabric and leaving much to the imagination. But of course, you don’t need to think too hard about what’s underneath when you see it as often as you do.

“What are you smirking about?” he questions, pulling your focus back up to his face before you can dip below the waistline.

“Thinking about what a lucky girl I am, that’s all.” You push off the counter to step around your friend, laying a hand on his shoulder as you slip between his body and the fridge to get past. “Got a big strong man all to myself.”

“That so?” He turns with you like his gaze is glued to you and can’t be separated even for a second. “Which one would that be?”

In hindsight, you should also have known that Mingi is smart enough to figure out little nuances and pick up on context clues when they’re presented to him. Thankfully, you have your back to him now so the shock doesn’t register on your face by the time you shift to look back at him over your shoulder. There’s a smile planted on your lips instead, one that you hope deters him for a little while longer.

“Look in the mirror some, pretty boy.”

You dip out of the kitchen then to rejoin the others in the living room, sinking to the couch cushions between San and some girl you’ve never seen before.

“Freshly rolled, milady,” San says through a dimpled grin as he lifts a somewhat sketchy-looking joint to dangle before your face. You’d decline if it were coming from anyone other than San — you’ve seen your fair share of sketchy and downright awful homemade joints come from his hands, but he is also the only one amongst your friend group who has the patience and tact to do it. (That, and you’re still vacuuming weed out of the carpet in your own living room from when Wooyoung and Mingi had a rolling contest that resulted in what can only be considered a horrendous fire hazard.)

“Thank you, kind sir.”

Hongjoong is sat on the other side of San, knees pulled up to his chest and tucked into the armrest as though he’s trying to make himself seem as small as possible. You barely get a glimpse at the red cup in his hands before San’s broad shoulders are blocking your view and you have to give up. The group tonight is quite large, more than the typically small get-togethers that you’re used to having with the others where it’s only eight or nine of you at most. San seems to have invited quite a few more party-goers this time around, which you hardly mind all in all.

“Can I crash in your room tonight?” you ask as San is in the midst of pulling a lighter up to the end of the joint.

“Mhm, just don’t get cum on the sheets.” His grin is nothing but cheeky, although that doesn’t keep you from whacking his arm with your free hand once he sets the lighter aside.

“Oh, fuck off!”

“I’m gonna be busy getting some on someone else’s sheets later so I won’t have time to police you about it.”

“You’re so nasty.” The man simply passes off the comment with a laugh, leaning back into the couch cushions with a dopey little grin that tells you he’s already hit a joint himself more than a few times tonight. As he moves, Hongjoong goes with him, stretching his legs out across the party host’s lap and letting San slump against his body. You snort at the minute show of affection and take a hit from the joint between your fingers.

“You’re the one—” San pauses to make a crude gesture involving his index finger and a lightly balled fist “—one of the two towers over there.”

Following the jerk of his chin isn’t too difficult, but you still regret glancing over in that direction because it means you make eye contact with the exact man you were trying to avoid in the kitchen earlier. Your stare flickers away too quickly to read as confident, and the only viable distraction within reach is San’s homemade joint. You aren’t too interested in getting too high tonight, just enough to get a little light and airy if anything, so as soon as you catch Wooyoung moving past the back of the couch, you pass the joint off to him before he gets too far away. Two hits will leave you fully lucid but any more than that and you’d be pushing the buttons on an emotional rollercoaster that you aren’t wanting to have in front of a bunch of strangers.

“Both… well, only once for one of them,” you mutter under your breath with the hope that Mingi hasn’t miraculously gained the skill of lip-reading.

“Is that where you were last Tuesday?” Hongjoong pipes up this time, pulling himself a little straighter to get a better look at you and you nearly hiss at him to keep it down.

“A lady never kisses and tells,” you say instead with a smile plastered over your lips. That has both men hollering in each other’s arms, one high and the other quite tipsy from the looks of it, but you’re happy to be their entertainment even if only for a few minutes.

“No wonder Min was fuming! Oh, I’d fucking kill to be a fly in the wall in that room when shit hits the fan.” San exhales a deep sigh, head tipping from side to side as he speaks. His laugh turns airy as he tips his body further back, sinking hard into Hongjoong’s body and knocking them both to the cushions. You don’t share in his amusement, however, as you turn to regard him with a furrowed brow and confusion etched across your features. Hongjoong notices the shift in your expression before San has the chance to.

“You might think about putting a muzzle on that one—” his gaze shifts as discreetly as possible to where Yunho sits “—‘cause he’s a little loose-lipped.”

Your lips draw into a tight purse, pulling to one corner of your mouth. You aren’t really upset about Yunho saying something — neither of you had an agreement on anything of the sort, and you’re smart enough to know how men behave at this point in your life. It is a bit funny though, in your opinion, for Mingi to be the one angry (undoubtedly jealous on top of that) when the two of you simply hook up when there aren’t other options available. You just so happened to have another option available last week, one that was quite hard to pass up on and very much worth the exhaustion and soreness that came the next day.

“Though, I suppose only the two of us know about what you and Min do when left alone.” When you shift to pass a half-hearted glare in Hongjoong’s direction, he’s wearing a shit-eating grin that makes you want to smack him even more. If not for the lengthy stretch it would take to get past the guard dog that drapes over him in the form of Choi San, you would certainly go through all that trouble just to yank his ear a little. Instead of dealing with that, you push up from where you’ve crammed yourself on the couch and move to step around the furniture — not without kicking at Hongjoong’s foot as you pass just because it’s within reach and San is out of it. That creeping lightness coming from the weed is starting to sink into your bones and make you feel everything a little more intensely. “Remember not to mess up the sheets!”

You don’t turn to see if Hongjoong catches the middle finger you send his way, but you do make for the stairs solely with the excuse that you have to use the bathroom planted at the tip of your tongue if anyone asks. Of course, that comes as a shroud to the real reason you’re headed up there, because you know someone will follow and you expect nothing less from him anyway.

The two of you follow a rather simple formula when it comes to parties like these, which is part of the reason San and Hongjoong both know about what you get up to at these events after having been caught in various corners of the house by both men multiple times. And while you are more than willing and able to mess around with the man without anything in your system, you like fucking Mingi best when you’re a little high and can feel every sensation that much more with him. You linger at the top of the stairs before heading straight for San’s room, pausing on the landing to angle yourself over the railing and peer down the flight of stairs as you wait for your companion’s head to pop up. He comes quicker than you expected him to and with a good deal of determination to his steps that makes him look entirely suspicious on all accounts.

“Everyone is gonna guess what we’re up to with you marching up here like that,” you drawl from your spot at the railing, chin coming to rest on the wood as you speak down at him. Mingi hesitates midway up the stairs, and his chin tilts up to find the source of your voice. Despite the grin playing at your lips, he doesn’t return the humor with even a small laugh.

“Good, then maybe they’ll get the hint,” he snips back.

A sigh escapes you, and you turn your head until your cheek presses into the wood. Leaving one hand to dangle by your side, you bring the other up to stretch over the length of the railing. Mingi walks up the rest of the flight of stairs, rounding the edge of the landing with a hand that skates over yours with a barely-there touch. You hum in the back of your throat. He tilts his head to match yours, and although the angle should be wholly awkward and nothing else, you feel that familiar thrum of arousal boiling deep in your gut when he meets your eyes. The sharpness in his tone doesn’t match the way he looks down at you — you know that much for certain, and you can safely take that as a hint that he’s not nearly as upset with you as he is with Yunho.

“Did you do it on purpose?” he asks nonetheless. He’s fishing for an answer you don’t have, but you can’t deny that there’s some sick part of you that wants to play into it and see how possessive he can get. “To make me jealous?”

“Hm.” You pull yourself back into an upright position a little too quickly, and the rush of blood to your head coupled with the tingling in your nerves makes your vision swim some. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” Mingi moves back to prop himself against the wall opposite the railing, and you make the pointed (and extremely difficult) decision not to eye the tremors in the muscles of his arms as he tugs them across his chest. As your eyes sweep over his torso to focus on his face once more, you shift to let your back rest against the wall the railing provides and secure your hands behind you on the lip of it. “He offered, and I accepted. Simple as that.”

“Simple, huh?” He makes it hard to not give into a wandering gaze when he’s drumming his fingers along the inked skin of his forearm. “Except he’s supposed to know you’re off-limits.”

“I can’t sleep with other people? Maybe I missed the memo that said we’re exclusive, Min.”

“You can sleep with anyone with you want,” Mingi starts, pulling his head forward a little as his gaze turns fiery, “but my best friend can’t sleep with you. And he knows that. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Then that’s not anyone I want, big boy.”

“If he offered, then he’s the one who presented the opportunity.”

“Maybe he was trying to get you to be a real man.”

“A real man?” Mingi echoes, and now his lips stretch to form a grin that displays his teeth. You dip your chin down with a laugh, hand subconsciously coming up to hover over your face. When you blink back up at your companion, he has his tongue pushed between his lips and teases the corner of his mouth, a gesture you know to read frustration. You smile despite yourself. A glint bounces off his tongue and reflects the ball of metal that sits caught between his teeth. “Didn’t know you could be such a brat, angel, you’re usually so good and pliant when I’m fuckin’ you into the mattress.”

“You could try asking Yunho then, princess, I’m sure he’d love to answer any questions you might have given how mouthy he’s apparently been.” Some part of you realizes that you’re pushing your luck perhaps a little too far, but if Yunho is going to talk himself then you believe yourself to have every right to do the same as long as it benefits you. “Did he tell you how he fucked me? How many marks he left on my body? If you look hard enough, I bet you could find some leftover ones.”

“Look, doll, because I know he called you that thinking it was charming—” Mingi shoves himself off the wall and takes a single step in your direction, but that’s enough to have you pulling yourself straighter and swallowing around nothing. “You can let yourself believe he fucked you nice just ‘cause he’s got a dick nearly as big as mine, but you’re up here with me, looking to get fucked by me, and testing me and my patience so I give it to you better than he could ever hope to. But you can keep playing that game and scamper on downstairs to his lap if you wanna. I’ll wait.”

“You know I won’t do that, Min. Not when you’re offering so sweetly like this. But I appreciate how willing you are to let me have whatever I want.” You drop your head to the side and glance down the flight of stairs that’s at your back. There’s no one there — not that you expected there to be — but this shroud of privacy you have with the man can’t last that long when so many people are in the house right now. You aren’t as high as you’d like to be, not as much as usual, mostly because Mingi is making your thoughts clear up bit by bit with each step he takes in your direction. It’s wholly distracting while also keeping you honed in on every little shift in his muscles, from the twitch of his fingers around the railing as he closes in on you to the twitch hanging about the corner of his mouth. “Should I take you up on your offer the way I did with Yunho?”

“I’m a jealous person, darling. If you’re gonna want me, then you’re gonna have to want me the most.”

You let him minimize the distance between your torsos, feeling his feet stop short of yours as he leans over you with the height advantage he has. That alone is a bit dizzying solely because it lets you get an eyeful of his inked arms all the way up to where those strands of tattoos dip under the baggy fabric of his shirt and where his muscles shine through the most.

“Why don’t you look in the mirror, huh?” You push a pout onto your lips as you speak, brows drawing into a tight knot that’s hardly serious, but it makes Mingi’s harshness falter nonetheless. “Showing yourself off like this, how am I supposed to know you’re not trying to get some other girl to want you?”

He catches your bluff a moment later, unfortunately for you because you had hoped to let the charade linger in the air a little while longer, but it turns favorable when he pushes the point of his nose under your jaw.

“I can want you the most, Mingi,” you continue still. Your voice is airy like you’re already out of breath, accompanied by a sweet sigh that makes Mingi nuzzle into your warm skin even more. “Shall I prove it?”

“I shouldn’t give you what you want so easily,” he murmurs against your neck. One of his large hands sweeps up from the railing to move across your collarbone, skating over the skin and up your throat so he can cup the point of your chin and dig his thumb into your lower lip. Your teeth graze his nail but never fully latch onto the digit as he tugs harder at your chin. “Should tease you the way you teased me, but I can’t do that.”

“Do you have other plans for me then?”

Mingi pulls up from your neck at the question, eyes finding yours without hesitation and digging deep into whatever emotion you’re hiding there.

“Oh angel, I have a whole number of plans for you tonight. It’s just a matter of whether you’ll be able to go that many rounds with me.”

You huff out a laugh, partially out of disbelief, and push your tongue between the parted line of your teeth. Mingi pushes his thumb up against the tip of your tongue then and nudges his way into your mouth with little to no resistance on your part. It’s a heady sensation, letting Mingi take over like that, but it’s made even more delicious with the knowledge that you’re fully in control at the end of the night. Even now, you pull his thumb deeper between your lips to let it rest fully against your tongue, and that’s the only thing keeping you from smirking at him while you do so. When you pull off, it’s with a grossly wet pop that sounds far lewder than it should. Mingi’s neck is tinted pink.

“I should’ve done that downstairs for everyone to see, I’m sure.” As an answer to your quip, Mingi pulls his free hand up to rest against the small of your back. He tugs you away from the blunt edge of the railing, leaving you to throw a hand up between your bodies to keep your head from knocking into his chin immediately.

“I don’t want you putting on a show for anyone but me.”

“Now that’s a red flag if I’ve seen one.”

“You gonna not fuck me because of it?” He seems to know your answer without you needing to say it, and without needing to watch the way your eyes roll to the side as you smile. Still, you offer that much, if only because you know there’s a long list of red flags he could point out in return. Ever the gentleman, he doesn’t.

“I think every good girl wants a bad boy, at least a little. I happen to want you a lot.” He’s giving a marvelous show of restraint from your perspective because you can’t imagine a time when he’s gone this long without claiming your lips, but he forgoes that gesture in favor of pulling you to the opposite wall. Your body hits with a soft thud, barely an impact with his hand blocking most of the pressure he gives by nudging a thigh between your legs.

“That’s only applicable if you’re a good girl.”

“Am I not?” Your lip catches between your teeth as you pose the question, and while you’re fully aware of the answer to it, it still fills you with endless delight to see the way Mingi seethes at your audacity to ask such a thing. His hands come down strong on either side of your head — not threatening, but firmly in a way that sends a thrill of arousal straight to your gut. His thigh tenses where it rests between your legs, making it near impossible to ignore the flexing muscles that press right against your clothed crotch. You’re certain he feels it just as much as you do.

“You most certainly are not, darling.”

“What are you gonna do about it then?” His proximity makes it difficult for you to move at all, but when you start inching along the wall in an attempt to get closer to San’s door, Mingi moves like a man possessed, following your movements with his own. “Nothing drastic I hope…?” You sink your teeth into your lower lip, reaching around the edge of the doorframe to grab at the handle.

“I think you’d like it better if I did, yn.”

Your fingers twitch against the cool metal before closing around it.

“Maybe I wanna just hear if you’ve got any bright ideas in that head of yours. You’re usually quite creative with the way we do things, darling.”

“Nothing’s punishment to you. Not when you enjoy it the way you do.” He takes a step back to regard you with a sharp stare, one that is a little ambiguous in terms of emotion and leaves you wondering what exactly is on his mind as he watches you. Still, you take the chance he provides to slip in front of the door and pop it open, releasing the seal on the room and making the tension in the air spike. It becomes something even more enticing, a thing that’s not fully within reach as you have the out you were after, the metaphorical nail in the coffin to get what you’re after, and you know Mingi sees it as such himself because he drags his tongue over his lower lip and lets his gaze wander down your legs. “Would still love to make you cry on my cock though.”

You pause midway through the doorframe to eye Mingi’s expression once more. There’s a sadistic sort of grin toying at the edges of his lips as he looks back at you, dragging his eyes up from your body to land on your face once more.

“Think you can manage it?”

“I know I always do.”

There’s something dirty in the way he kisses you then, tongue breaching the line of your lips with no resistance on your part, and when his tongue presses hot and heavy against yours, you feel something clench tight in your chest. You like it best this way: when he’s rough, when he doesn’t treat you delicately and instead kisses you like it might literally be the last time he can get his hands on you, and perhaps that's what you missed so desperately with Yunho. Mingi knows your body like the back of his hand and knows how to push all your buttons and toy with your strings. Part of you wonders (and is very self-aware about it) if the reason you don’t let things go any further between the two of you is out of an innate fear that things will change if feelings were truly involved. Maybe if love was part of the equation, he wouldn’t be as willing to have you this way, or maybe you wouldn’t enjoy it as much as you do now.

When he pushes you back into the safe privacy of San’s bedroom, you loop an arm around Mingi’s waist and pull him closer into your little bubble of space. The door falls shut behind him quickly and quietly, probably an effort on his part to maintain this little bit of privacy you have. One of these days you have to hand deliver a bouquet of flowers to San for even allowing you access to his room like this, but also for keeping your little secret just that the way he does.

Those thoughts leave you quickly, however, as Mingi’s large hands start to wander lower and skate over the curve of your ass. You groan into his mouth when he squeezes your flesh in his palms. You take the cue to lift your leg along his. There’s a rush of goosebumps over your skin as his hand moves along the line of your hamstring to hook at your knee, and when he rolls his hips towards yours, there’s much more contact this time. The firm bulge of his erection presses between your legs just enough to tease — it’s not nearly enough pressure to bring you the kind of pleasure you’re searching for. Maybe that frustration leaks into your next movements, into the way you kick your leg back down and bring your hands up to Mingi’s tank to push him off you for a moment. His lips part from yours with nothing more than a thin line of spit to connect the two of you but even that doesn’t last long as you fight to change your positions. Mingi lets it happen with a growing smile tugging at the corners of his lips, barely flinching when his knees hit the edge of the bed and make him collapse to the edge of the mattress.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, baby,” he murmurs as you drop to your knees between his legs. A scoff leaves your lips.

“What’s it look like, big boy?”

He hums, hand coming up to comb over your scalp for less than a second before the soft touch turns to a firmer grip that holds you in place for the time being.

“Gonna let me fuck your pretty mouth, yeah?”

Your fingers twitch against where you’ve just let them rest on his pants. It’s hard to maintain the fight you’ve been showing up until this point simply because of how damn pronounced his cock is through those pants, and how fucking badly you want to feel him against your tongue.

“You can work for it, can’t you?” you counter through gritted teeth instead of giving in right away. Still, your hands move against the waistband of his pants and continue with their path to work them down enough to give you some access to his member within. The fingers in your hair hold tighter as Mingi shifts his hips and lets you slide his pants down to the floor.

“Thinking about my cock between those lips.” He sounds a bit dazed already, which would be a new record for you, but it comes with his hand traveling from the top of your head down to your mouth. It doesn’t take much for him to cup your jaw and press the pads of his fingers into the hollows of your cheeks. He doesn’t pinch your mouth open as he usually would, even when you pull his length out from its confines. You’re just close enough to kiss the tip, lips staying firmly shut as you tilt your head to wrap your kisses around the side of him.

“You’re always thinking about that though.” You pout just a little; it’s hard to do anything else with the control he has over your face right now. Mingi’s eyes move from your face down to where his cock rests against the curve of your lips. His other hand comes up from the mattress to take the place of the one he just had in your hair, and this time when he pinches your cheeks, your lips part just enough to welcome the leaking tip of his dick into your wet heat.

“Then open wide for me and lemme have it.” You ought to be ashamed of how hot and bothered his voice gets you, something so simple yet incredibly enticing on every level, but there’s no denying how the deep timbre of his voice sends heat right between your legs. You take him deeper into your mouth as his hand falls away from your cheeks. The one in your hair remains although it’s moreso there for him to simply touch because he clearly has no intent on doing any work himself. You don’t mind necessarily, taking your hand to wrap around the inches of his cock you can’t quite fit in your mouth without breaching your throat.

His next groan is much louder than the last little sigh of pleasure he let out, and it comes with him tilting his chin to the ceiling and leaning further back. You watch his movements carefully even with your mouth now fully occupied and hard at work. It’s equally intoxicating to watch him succumb to arousal and pleasure, and although the idea of him blindfolding you and just using his voice and hands to get you off is very enticing, you think you would miss seeing his face contort in pleasure the way it does now. You hollow your cheeks along his length as you pull up, barely stopping at the head of his cock before dipping back down to touch where your hand grips him.

Despite the lack of effort to fuck your mouth, you can see how he’s desperately trying to keep himself from doing exactly that. His lashes flutter as he blinks down between his legs to catch a glimpse of your lips stretched into an ‘o’ around his cock.

“Fuck, you’re so hot.” You slip further down on his length, cheeks sucking in around him. “On your knees, taking my big cock like that.” A harder, more pointed suck as you dip your thumb down to trace over the sensitive skin of his balls. “Baby.”

His moans turn almost guttural as you continue until you give him a moment’s rest and tug off him to press your nose along the side of his cock now. You paint his skin with little kisses along the way, tracing over the places you’ve already touched with your tongue. It feels a bit like your nerve endings are being set on fire when he takes both hands to your hair and guides your head back to take his cock into your mouth. The first upwards thrust of his hips is gentle enough: testing and prodding at the limits as well as your well-being before he drives deeper into your mouth. Shock overwhelms you merely because of how quickly he flips the switch on you, and if not for the hand you smartly kept in place at the base of his cock, you would surely choke on his member without warning.

“Don’t wanna cum yet, but fuck, you’re so pretty. Wanna cover your pretty face in cum, wanna ruin you.”

All you can do is moan around his dick and hope that it’s an answer enough for him.

“You like it, princess? Want me to make your makeup run—” he thrusts hard enough to nudge into your throat, and your throat constricts around his tip by sheer instinct “—and mark you nicely with my cum?” Tears are pricking at the corners of your eyes already just from the sheer force of his cock hitting the back of your throat, but there’s also this antsy frustration that is building up in your gut from going this long without any relief of your own. You want him to touch you desperately at this point, so much so that you take it upon yourself to retract a hand to settle between your legs and press against the sensitive nub of your clit through your underwear. Even that slight bit of relief feels so heavenly that you whine around Mingi’s cock. Eyes squeezing shut, you let your jaw go slack as he continues to use your face and work your fingers over your clit until the wetness seeps through the fabric of your panties. “You’re so fucking good, yn, letting me use you like this. Look at you getting off on it too. Like getting used that much?”

A breath of pause in his words where he inhales sharply like he’s weighing what he wants to say next. It works to his advantage because his next statement hits you like a ton of bricks, sharp and pointed and spoken with irrevocable confidence that makes your thighs tremble.

“Knew he wasn’t good enough to please you properly.”

Your moans get louder in volume only because he pulls his cock from the wet cavern that is your mouth but you’re still dazed enough to leave your lips hanging open as your fingers move faster against your cunt. Mingi doesn’t knock your hand away from the base of his length but he wraps a hand over himself nonetheless and jerks over the wet path you left on him. The sounds are sinful as can be, wet and messy to match your equally-ruined expression.

“Close your eyes, princess.” You barely have time to do that much before hot ropes of cum are spilling out over your features, painting your face from forehead to chin with no real direction, and Mingi doesn’t stop until he’s milked his cock for all its worth on you. “So fuckin’ pretty.”

His large hands move to your body, lifting you off your knees with a ridiculous amount of ease, and while you don’t want to, you’re forced to stop touching yourself as he nudges you onto the bed without further ado.

“In me, Mingi, I want you inside—”

“Shh, gotta prep you first, baby girl, I ain’t that heartless.” Even with his sweet consideration, you whine like you’ve been eternally denied what you’re after, fists balling up around the comforter as you press your face into it. Mingi lifts your hips high enough to get you to brace yourself on your knees. It makes your skirt swoop forward, assisted of course by Mingi who shoves the material up over your ass without an ounce of hesitation. The new position is hardly inconspicuous in the slightest, and well beyond the realm of suggestiveness to the point where if any one of your friends were to come in unannounced, you would have no chance of defending yourself from their suspicions. You can only hope that San and Hongjoong both remember to deter anyone from trying to use San’s room for its bathroom because you well and truly don’t want to move from this position at all. The mere thought of Mingi having you like this, bent over your form as he drills into your cunt and pins your wrists to the bed is enough to make your core clench around nothing.

“Just—” you interrupt your own train of thought with a whine that breaches your lips without thought, and Mingi is the one to elicit it from you as he drags the blunt ends of his nails over your ass while tugging your underwear down. “Min…”

“I’m not fuckin’ you until you’re in tears, baby.” If that’s his version of punishment then you consider it to be only mildly effective because you’re frustrated and pent-up enough at this point to where you might just cry for the hell of it to soften him up a bit. But then his fingers come to brush through the line of your folds, skating over the wetness that’s pooled there, and without warning, he pushes two fingers into your fluttering hole. The haste with which he does so has you releasing a noise so embarrassing that you push your cheek further into the sheets in an (ineffective) attempt to hide yourself from Mingi’s prying eyes. “Gotta see you to know when that is, yn.”

You get an eyeful of his half-grin and the sharp curve of his lips, and that’s unfortunately enough for you to tilt your head so that he can see your face a bit better.

“There’s my pretty girl.” The praise goes straight between your legs, making you clench blindly around the fingers Mingi has pumping in and out of your cunt. He curls them at the second knuckle at the same time and prods deeper inside you until he pushes up against the spot that really makes your head spin and vision go blurry. He pays such close attention to that spot that you hardly notice it when he slips a third digit into you. The sole infuriating nuance to his actions is how he doesn’t quite hit your g-spot the way you want him to: not with force or direct pressure. He merely teases the flesh around it, nudging closer and closer to it without quite giving you the satisfaction you want from it. Yet each time you open your mouth to complain about the treatment, he deliberately presses into it with one finger as though to tell you ‘see I’m giving you what you want, you can’t complain‘.

You have to keep your fists balled around the comforter to quell the shaking in your fingers, but your whole body is trembling at this point with how many times Mingi has brought you right to the precipice of a mindblowing orgasm only to steal that heat away and focus on stretching your walls around his fingers.

“H-Haven’t you — Min… come on!”

“Hm? What is it you want, baby girl? I can’t read your mind.”

“Insufferable, you’re so annoying, I can’t stand you, you’re so — ugh!” Perhaps it’s his antics that pluck at your nerves like they’re nothing more than strings for him to play with, but the unending routine of getting closer and closer to your satisfaction without truly getting it reaches its peak as you sob against the mattress and finally let tears fall.

“Shh, shh, I’ve got you, yn.” You don’t bother looking back at Mingi’s face when he pulls his fingers out of your cunt, but you are vaguely aware of his other hand coming up to brush over the tears on your cheeks. That only lasts a second before his hand comes down to rest over where yours still clenches the bedsheets so tight that your knuckles bleed white. Another sob tumbles out of you as you feel the blunt tip of his cock pushing up against your slit, and your whole body trembles under Mingi’s weight right after. He sinks his length into you slowly, letting it fill you and stretch you as he pushes inch after inch into you. “Let go of the bed, baby, I’ve got you.” You do as told without complaint or resistance this time. Mingi draws your wrists up higher along the bed until they’re both perched closer to the pillows, then he settles his hips fully against your backside, draping his form over yours.

“F-Fuck me, please, stop — stop making me wait,” you say barely louder than a whisper because your throat already feels scratchy and overused.

“Of course, pretty angel, anything for you.”

The first real drive of his cock into you is maddening at best, a sweet slide of pressure and relief that makes you cry out louder than before, and he continues to build up a steady pace that fills the air with the sounds of skin slapping against skin. You aren’t at all surprised that he’s already hard a second time; he usually pushes you to the limit with how many rounds he likes to go. Equally unsurprising is the way his thrusts quickly lose their rhythm and turn into sharp, punctuated thrusts that threaten to knock your hips all the way down to the bed. He’s muttering quite a bit in your ear — things you aren’t wholly processing because you finally get to chase that sweet pleasure you’ve been denied all this time. You aren’t aware of how noisy you’re being either until Mingi brings a hand down to tilt your mouth closer to the sheets to shush you some. You take it in stride, for whatever that’s worth, and simply clench tighter around his dick as he seeks the angle that will make you see stars.

A white-hot pleasure sears through your system with enough force to make your back curl and have you writhing under Mingi’s weight.

“Got it,” he murmurs behind you, sounding insufferably proud of himself, but you don’t have it in you to chastise him for it. What you do do, however, is free one of your hands to throw it behind you, grabbing for his hip and trying to encourage him to keep at it for your sake. He catches your wrist between his fingers before you have the chance though, and rather than pushing it back to the bed, he simply pins your arm behind your back and uses you as leverage to fuck up against that spot along your walls over and over again.

And in your defense, you don’t usually cum so quickly but he’s been teasing you and riling you up for so long at this point that you don’t find yourself embarrassed in the slightest when your walls start to pulse around his length. The euphoric pleasure is certainly worth it too, the release you were after finally sending shockwaves through your system until your toes curl and your neck hurts from the angle you’ve got it tilted at. Mingi keeps at his pace, only slowed a hair by your cunt squeezing tight around his cock, and he shows no signs of being close behind you until you’re back to sobbing into the mattress. Your core can’t keep pace with the drives of his cock, clenching and fluttering at odd intervals while Mingi chases a second high to pump into you.

“Gonna cum, baby.”

“In — inside, don’t you dare pull out.” Spoken through gritted teeth, you sound a little angry but also choked because of the tears that are still leaking out of your eyes and onto the bed. You aren’t sure if your tone is what pushes him over the edge, but you do catch the glint in his eyes as you inadvertently glare over your shoulder at him, and your only thought is that it’s simply another exciting facet to explore with him later.

His orgasm finally comes, to your relief because it means your cunt finally gets to break from his ruthless pace and the obscene stretch around his length, and it comes with a string of colorful expletives that are spoken through broken groans. You echo his groan albeit very much so not in the same kind of pleasure he’s experiencing as his weight fully collapses on top of you and nearly knocks the air out of your lungs.

“You’re so—”

“Go again?”

“No. For once you oaf, no,” you whine from under him, twisting your body as best you can like it’ll help your case. Mingi has enough energy to laugh, a full and throaty noise that always makes your heart somersault, then he’s peeling his body off yours to let you breathe easy again.

“Was I too rough?”

“Nooo, no, you were so good, Min.” His hands are already wandering to turn you over onto your back. “So fucking good, if I had the energy, I’d want you to do that several more times.”

“Yeah? That so?” He’s laughing again, either at your drawling tone or at the way you curl your arms and legs around his body to get him to lift you off the bed.

“You got cum in my hair…”

“I’ll wash it out for you.”

Showering is a feat in and of itself that you’re almost too tired to accomplish on your own, so when Mingi slips in behind you midway through and finishes washing your skin down, you’re more than a little grateful for the help. Not enough to get on your knees on that tiled floor, but grateful still.

And as is routine at this point, the two of you stumble back to San’s bed in a dark room, tangling yourselves in the sheets together like a perfectly mismatched puzzle.

“When you said maybe Yunho was trying to get me to be a real man… what did you mean by that?”

“Don’t push it, Min.” You can feel the man shifting at your back but the arm resting under your head doesn’t move, and he continues with the soft circles that he’s massaging into your skin with that hand. “We really did fuck though. It’s not some practical joke or just me trying to get under your skin. We fucked, and I liked it, but I didn’t like it the way I like it with you so I don’t think I wanna sleep with him again.”

“He remembered protection, right?”

“Yes, Min, of course he did. And if he hadn’t, I would have.”

Mingi huffs through his nose, a little indignant and very much dramatic, yet he seems to settle down just fine in the following seconds. Warm blooms over your head, a telltale sign of how close his face is to the crown of your head, and he twists his whole body to curl further around yours.

“Let’s keep at it then.”

Internally, you laugh a little solely because of how nonchalant Mingi makes it sound when the subject matter isn’t something as simple as that. Belatedly, you’re struck with a certain realization that makes your blood run cold and has you jerking in Mingi’s hold to look at the side of his face.

“What?”

“San said not to get cum on the sheets and you shoved my whole face in them!”

"It was just the comforter..."

"Just the comforter?!"

[faerunsbest]

Tav Character Worksheet: Ma'na

(i wasn't sure if you wanted dwylla or the new tav ma'na so im using this to flesh out mana)

with Ma'na i haven't even built her up in bg3 i just built her like Dwylla. with whatever i was capable of doodling and what i know from playing and researching.

as far as tags uhh if you guys wanna play @dutifullylazybread @falcatamandarina @cinnasalmon @commander-krios

thank you elven-e-girl

Name: ma'na its a joke because mages need mana and i made her for rolan! haha i thought it was funny anywho

Age: shes early to late 30's but doesn't actually know how old she is as she doesn't count it or celebrate birthdays.

Gender:female, happily woman although she does not limit herself to 'fem' activities and the like

Sexuality:Bisexual. she find herself attracted to certain features (dark eyes//split tongue//ect) although you can be none of the things she finds attractive and still land her if you make her laugh and feel safe

Pronouns:she/her

Tav voice:n/a

Family:Ma'na is one of 23 children. they are drowe that work mines, there are so many of them for the same reason farmers used to have a million kids. its cheaper to raise em then hire em. She used to be a rather mid worker but was prominent for the sole reason of she

Birthplace: Somwhere between mintar and thornwood there is mine. that mine is where she was born and where she lived her life

Job(s): she has done very little as since she was born she as told her purpose. to work. manual labor, mining, building, digging, demolition and all that comes with helping keep her family up and running

Phobia(s): drowning/suffocating ,nothing terrifies her as much as not being able to just perform the basic task of breathing

Guilty Pleasures:in all honestly she feels guilty about wanting to be wanted for more than she can offer.

she feels guilty about feeling pleasure in her body and her form, things like touching cuddling, kissing fucking and masturbating makes her feel likes shes doing something wrong

Hobbies:singing. sculpting sewing

she sings in the mines and her voice echoes down cold stone keeping people awake, sending chills when you've forgotten shes there.

with all the clay she pulls up from the soil, she pressed her fingers deep appreciating the feel of around her fingers, pressing, pulling stretching and smoothing clay until it resembles someone or something

she loves fixing old clothes, stitching in little pictures to make broken old worn out things feel new and loved still

alignment chaotic good. overall she wants good happy things but people aren't always good and she sometime retaliate with excessive violence or some form of mischief

sins.previous to the nautiloid she didn't have a lot of opportunity to commit any notable sin. even so probably the most notable things shes done is sleep with Dammon when she was supposed to be working. she also kicked the absolute living shit out aradin far past a singular punch

virtues: she does her best to believe people are good and give them a few chances to be good which is why she wont let astarion ascend

This or That?that?

Introverted or extraverted? depends on the day, but mostly extroverted

Organized or disorganized?mostly organized but any more than is useful

Closed or open-minded? forever curious shes quite open minded

Calm, anxious, or restless? calm, theres very little that sirs anxiety in her. shes always very much 'ill either die or i wont'

Disagreeable or agreeable?usually very agreeable as she just wants to enjoy herself

Cautious or reckless? moderately cautious

Patient or impatient? very patient, she willing to wait for good things

Outspoken or reserved?depends on the topic, shes very reserved with gale as she like to let him yammer but with astarion and laezel she feels its incredibly important they know how she feels

Leader or follower? she never lead anything until the nautiloid, as long as she knows what needs to be done she can lead but prefers to just do her part and be done

Empathetic or apathetic?incredibly empathetic

Optimist, pessimist, or realist?somewhere between optimist and realist, as in do the best with what you've got but a person can not expect miracles

Traditional or modern? whatever is easiest and most efficient she has no qualms in either direction

Hardworking or lazy? she will as hard as is needed but no harder than is required

OTP: ma'na and rolan my loves

BROTP:astarion/ ma'na they talk a lot, about things they wish would or wouldn't have happened. when he offers to please her at the grove she catches him outright, stating she wont touch him unless that what he wants, actively wants. he's so thrown off guard they wind up sitting out there talking until its time to leave in the morning

NOTP:SHADOW HEART

they just do not mesh and shart doesn't join them on the mission despite being rescued on the ship

[lazyneonrabbitt]

One person asked you to and you said it was formatted automatically or something but you would try next time. Very just shrugging it off. Then you didn't try or the formatting didn't work on the next thing you posted. The context is people thought you were either bullshitting and the formatting excuse was a copout so you could keep clogging the tag, or you were telling the truth but just didn't care to check. That's why people didn't come to you. That's why people bitch on discord. They didn't see the point in speaking to you. That one person told you they had arthritis and your response was like who gives a fuck. You post a long post in the tags again.

The fact you had to go back and format all your fic could be construed as very telling. Maybe some people would accuse you of bullshitting. I've never heard of readmore being automatically applied. Long posts are not always cut off, but even then it's just courtesy to always manually apply readmore to long posts. Not every one does so as you know.

Maybe this is just a huge miscommunication thing. Whoever spoke to Murda was well intentioned but it was ill put. They should have spoken to you upfront even as it might have been a waste of time.

To the person worried about posting their writing, seriously, hold up a minute. When did it become about that. When did become about you, anon? Stop fishing for sympathy from a popular writer just to get attention. Nobody is bitching about fic where I am , it's about how it's presented in the tags. Nobody likes being confronted by a huge wall of text when browsing. We are only human and vent on discord. But we don't slag off the content of the fic. Because people don't use readmore we end up losing out on finding good writers and fic because the first impression is so so so bad.

Welcome, anon.

Long post, so readmore 🙃

First of all I do not "shrug off" the anons I get. If it sounded like that, it wasn't intentional.

And yes. 99% of the longer posts I see (me personally, in the app that I use on my samsung phone and iPad sometimes too) do have the app's "see more" button on longer posts.

I do, not joking in the slightest, forget. I forget half of the things I'm supposed to do in life because I have the worst memory ever and it bothers me in my daily life. At work, everywhere. (Not fishing for shit, just stating) and wtf I shouldn't even have to defend myself like this but here we are.

Also why would I clog tags?? I block people who's content I don't wanna see in tags or who spamtag. Wanna see my blocked tags and users? I'll post them for you.

"Maybe this is just a huge miscommunication thing." Please read rhe above statements.

I'm not adressing that anon further. It's not my place.

"Because the first impression is so so bad." Is one I can't wrap my head around. I scroll the tag casually and find cute fluff. I see angst and mayor character death, hell I've seen Dixon insest fics (Not hating, if the writing is good I applaud you for your works) so, where is the "bad first impression" coming from? My posts are not that frequent nor popular to be always at the top of the searches.

I'm running out of words.

[north-wilkesboro-moonshine-cave]

thank you to @mossistyping and @oxygenpdf for the tag!

Do you make your bed? I really really try to... but i usually do it when i come home these days.

Favourite number? usually 4, but I also am fond of 2, 13 (because I thought it was sad when i was little that it was unlucky). Also huge fan of 11 and 21.

What's your job? technically graduate student, but I also work in a grocery store (ugh)

If you could go back to school, would you? sort of. I think I'd love to get another bachelors if I had the chance but also. Deadlines. my enemy. (also grad school kicked my ASS this year)

Can you parallel park? I cannot drive, so the answer is not really. however in theory I know how to and have done so successfully (once)

Do you think aliens are real? kinda? not in a way that impacts us, really.

Can you drive a manual car? no!!!!

Guilty pleasure? I have an unironic love of reality television and although it is hilariously academic, man do i love some trashy reality tv. I also love watching just. terrible movies or movies that definitely aren't good or possibly good enough to be even cult classics. this is what novelty seeking does to a motherfucker friends. this is also not much of a guilty pleasure but damn do i love nothing more than an international soap opera.

Tattoos? none yet, but if i ever get over my pain tolerance and fear of needles i have a few i'd like.

Favourite colour? green!

Favourite type of music? I've been very fond of art pop and baroque pop recently, that caroline polachek and florence and the machine type of stuff.

Do you like puzzles? fuckin LOVE a puzzle

Favourite childhood sport? archery! it's not even close! I miss shooting so badly and have every day since I stopped around fifteen/sixteen.

Do you talk to yourself? constantly, and it gets me in trouble.

Tea or coffee? tea.

First thing you wanted to be when growing up? either a shark scientist or a coroner (i am serious, i literally wanted to be a medical examiner when I was little)

What movies do you adore? The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) by Victor Erice. It's a movie about a family in Franco's Spain in the 40s, and it is the most beautifully shot movie I have seen in my entire life. There is a very specific sequence somewhere around halfway into the film with a character playing piano (I think) that absolutely left me breathless the first time I saw it because of how it's framed and how the lighting looks. I think about this film so fucking often. please please watch it if you ever get the chance. Honorable mention to Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952), a movie i watched for the same class I watched Beehive for, and literally cried for almost the entire movie because it really hit close to home in a lot of ways. uh. both of these movies are kind of bananas heavy (so if u watch them, which u should, please do so in a good mental state and mind trigger warnings for death and family dysfunction in both, overt fascism in the first one, and chronic/terminal illness in the second, and probably look up trigger warnings for either ahead of time) so for a fun one, Bringing Up Baby (1938). this movie involves: cary grant as a sexy and beleaguered paleontologist, a missing dinosaur bone, katherine hepburn being so fucking hot and such a fucking problem for everyone in the world and especially cary grant, and of all fucking things, a fucking leopard. it is legitimately one of the funniest fucking movies I have ever watched in my life and i actually fully believe it is a movie every last person should watch at least once before they die. I recommend going in blind as possible and perhaps watching with your best friend who also knows nothing about the film.

tagging @two-tyred-problems @nautical-nasa @stockcarbaby24 and @theladysherlock

[cainsign]

Hey do u wanna talk about your ocs? 👀

TYSM for asking!!!! I love talking about my ocs theyre so fun!!! I’m putting this under a cut because it got kinda long but here you go ☺️☺️

ill start with adam cause he’s my specialest little guy. adam is trans, does manual labor, and has a past he doesn’t like talking about. he’s a compulsive liar out of the belief that it’s the only way to keep himself safe. he was abused as a child and his abuser died under mysterious circumstances. (is this related to his compulsive lying? maybe!) he moves around a lot, and everywhere new he goes he tells them a different story about his past, and renames himself every time. he’s missing two fingers on his left hand but it’s not plot relevant or anything he was careless and lost them in a workplace accident. he’s outwardly quite friendly but people often come off of conversations with him feeling a little unsettled. his wife is willow, who in some iterations of the story dies young (i wrote this when i was less aware of the dead wife trope but not an excuse (she and adam were originally intended to both die at the end of their story but it didn’t end up working out that way)). no matter what she is quite ill, possibly dying, and she can see the future. she’s also mostly blind with very limited vision left. she’s very beautiful in the way people in black and white photos are beautiful. people tend to tell her their secrets, possibly because she seems very trustworthy, and partially because she’s dying. she is the only other person who actually knows what happened to adam’s father. (i call her wife as shorthand but they aren’t officially married in any capacity)

finally we have river, who is a little bit of a wild card. willow and adam grew up together and they essentially know all of each others secrets, but river is just some guy they met. hm what to say about river. he’s a terrorist. when he was in high school he beat one of his classmates to death. he makes a lot of poor decisions mostly with the guilt of murdering his classmate as a motivator. he has three chipped teeth. before i started using it as a catchall, my dogposting tag was originally about river so he’s actually my best documented character. people often dislike river as soon as they meet him, but willow and adam both like him a lot.

[sitron-sunni]

a get to know you better meme

tagged by @dummerjan, tysm!<33

do you make your bed? no.

what's your favourite number? Four! No reason behind it, I've just always really liked four.

what is your job? don't have one

If you could go back to school, would you? I'm in school! I actually had to drop out for several long years due to chronic illness. I had to move to find a school willing to provide accommodations, but I got started again with online classes almost three years ago. Now, I'm finally (finally!!), wrapping up my last subject for upper secondary school, which qualifies me for higher education. I literally sent in my application for art school last night<3 Everything is terrifying but also exciting but also terrifying but also there's no other way but forward, so.

can you parallel park? nope, I can't drive.

a job you had that would surprise people? Have not had any jobs.

do you think aliens are real? Well yes. the universe is infinitely big, I do believe some form of life exists out there, whether single-cell organisms or a more intelligent species. Do I think they came over here and built the pyramids? no. no i do not.

can you drive a manual car? still can't drive...

what's your guilty pleasure? i don't know, do i have one? I like lots of things people might find cringe, like, 80's love ballads or early one direction songs, but I wouldn't say there's anything I think of as a guilty pleasure.

tattoos? can look really cool on other people, though they're not necessarily something I'm inherently attracted to. also, they are not meant for me. I'm too indescisive, too afraid of making a mistake, and too aware of how changeable I am. I hope I keep growing and changing for the rest of my life, and I don't wanna put marks on my body that define me as someone I've moved away from, if that makes sense.

that being said, there are some tattoo artists i follow on instagram whose work i really like. People who do the loveliest watercolour work, people with insane colors, people with gorgeous, folk art-style. If I had to get a tatto, I would go to one of them, and let them dream up something wonderful.

favourite colour? yellow! yellow-y orange! sunlight!<3

favourite type of music? I think spotify usually tells me it's some type of folk indie pop rock-thing, but it's easier to answer the reverse: I don't really listen to opera, screamo/heavy metal or dubstep/edm. Aside from that? I love gathering artists and songs of all different styles from all over the world in all different languages. I'm eclectic at heart.

do you like puzzles? yes, although it's a struggle to do physical puzzles as I can't seem to find a spot with good lighting. But I've done lots of digital puzzles and they're fun.

any phobias? my fear of insects has gotten progressivley worse. specifically the crawling ones. especially if they have lots of legs, and are fast. ughhhh. does it classify as a phobia? idk.

favourite childhood sport? the words 'childhood' and 'sport' in combination are rarely associated with enjoyment for me. idk. we played a game similar to baseball sometimes, that would probably have to be the one but... I've never really been a sports-person...

do you talk to yourself? Hm. rarely out loud, but often in my head.

what movie(s) do you adore? the first lotr movie = ultimate comfort movie. Mamma mia, pretty woman, notting hill, wild child = fond childhood memories w/ my mom. Billy Elliot and the way back are two movies I've watched several times and really really enjoyed, like they just stand out in my mind. Divines, which I stumbled across on netflix, is possibly my fave. If I were to rec someone one movie, it would be that one. I just think it's good. I vibe with it.

coffee or tea? coffee, I cannot stand tea.

first thing you wanted to be growing up? A hairdresser, maybe? and I wanted to be a designer for several years after I read the book threads by sophia bennett, lol. Grew out of that one around 13/14 i think.

tagging whoever sees this and wants to do it!<3

[rosethornewrites]

Fics I read this week

Some of these may have been read earlier than a week ago, but I tried to keep it contained. Not sure I’ll keep this up, but I’ll try.

Finished:

Rated E:

the origin of change, by kissteethstainred, rated E

Lan Xichen said, “Time for regrowth and mourning is, of course, the most important. But there has also been a—frequent—discussion of marriage.” He paused to drink more tea. He almost seemed apologetic when he added, “Your name has been brought up often.”

“For marriage,” Lan Wangji repeated.

Except with Wei Ying in the picture, nothing goes exactly as planned.

Opportunity, by brooklinegirl, rated E

Lan Zhan is jostled slightly and he turns in his seat to see a harried-looking man squeezing in next to him. There isn't an empty seat there, and the bar is quite crowded. "Sorry," the man says, sounding out of breath. "I know I'm all up in your business, I'll move, I promise, I just—" He blows his breath out. "I'm going to lose this seat next to you, that dude over there has been eyeing it, and it's mine as soon as this guy leaves.”

Rated M:

Oxymoron, by feline_somnambulist, rated M

Jiang Yanli was in the kitchen. She hummed softly along to music being played somewhere else in the house, as she shuffled carefully back and forth from the prep table to the giant vat of soup. The house smelled like pork rib and savory broth. As always, she was beautiful in her element, a goddess of her domain despite the limp and the leg brace.

Her phone rang just as Jiang Cheng entered the kitchen. She saw him and smiled as she made her careful way to the phone on the wall-mounted charging station.

Jiang Cheng put the stack of paperwork down on a counter. He got to the phone first, picked it up. It was Lan Wangji’s number. He rejected the call and put the phone in his pocket.

“A-Cheng? Is everything okay?” Jiang Yanli asked, a frown creasing her brow. “Who was that?”

It Ends With the Beginning, by feline_somnambulist, rated M

They fight. They part. Jiang Cheng is hurt. Wei Wuxian comes to help. Wei Wuxian runs. Jiang Cheng is tired of chasing. They fight.

Until The End, by abCEE, rated M

"When I -- when I tied my ribbon around our wrists, I knew what I was doing and I privately honored it." Wei Wuxian's brows continued to meet as he tried to understand where the conversation was going until realization dawned on him. "Wa -- wait! Lan Zhan, is it what I think it is?!!" "It is usually done at the end of a wedding ceremony --" "What-" "But it could have been acknowledged as an engagement." "Lan Zhan!" He cannot believe what he is hearing now. "But my ancestor revealed herself --" "And we bowed… three times. We bowed, Lan Zhan!"

In which wangxian are married since the Cold Pond Cave incident, knows how proper communication works, and had confessed in the middle of the Sunshot Campaign. Things went spiraling up and down from there.

Rated T:

as it should be, by Sienne, rated T

Post-canon Lan Qiren time travels to before the Cloud Recesses lectures. The Cloud Recesses are quiet and peaceful, something his home hasn't been in years. ...In fact, it is too quiet and peaceful.

Judgment Day, by Grace_Logan, rated T

Cornered Wei Wuxian sees only one way out after cluing in on the Jin's plan.

Welcome To Gusu, by perkynurples, rated T

Deep in the lush forests of Gusu hides an aging resort that hosts dozens of children every summer for an unforgettable couple of weeks. It’s where Lan Wangji grew up alongside Wei Wuxian, and when his childhood friend (for the lack of a better term) surprisingly returns years later in the position of Senior Counsellor, seemingly hell bent on causing the same kind of mischief that got him kicked out of Gusu in the first place, but also taller, broader and tanner than ever before, Lan Wangji knows he’s In Trouble. Or, this fic has it all: longing looks over campfires, found family dynamics, ill-timed skinny dipping, teenagers inappropriately shipping their counsellors, camp weddings...

Therapy is a Performative Act, by cinder1013, rated T

“What does your dad think of your comedy?”

“Oh, he hates it, but it pays the bills and I need it to pay for my goddamn fuckin’ therapy.”

Jiang Cheng stumbles into being a stand-up comic and his favorite topic is dear ol’ dad.

sorry, i love you, by moon_thief, rated T

lan wangji was practically seething as he watched it happen. what kind of person could be so careless, unruly, undisciplined-

and then their eyes met.

oh. oh.

Tremble a Prayer, by cqlorphan, rated T

They kiss, and Lan Wangji regulates himself. There are no tears pricking at his eyes. There is no lump in his throat. His hands are undressing Wei Ying, and then Wei Ying’s hands are on his hands.

“What is it?” Wei Ying says, between kisses.

Even with Wei Ying back, Lan Wangji's sadness overwhelms him at times. He tries, and fails, to keep it from him.

The Quiet Work, by ShipsAreLaunching, rated T

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian get a summons for help from a minor clan in Gusu. When they go to investigate they find a horrible truth, and do what they do best.

Rated G:

Ink Stains Not So Ignored, by Preludian_Staves, rated G

Qiren found something that he still couldn't bring himself to ignore about his youngest nephew's husband.

I’d buy a big house where we both could live, by failed2be_chill, rated G

“Ah, so you want to play with the rabbits and enjoy their soft fur and silly little nose twitches while your poor husband toils in the heat of the day with hammer and nail doing exhausting manual labour. I see how it is. It’s a good job I love you, huh?” Wei Wuxian kisses his husband’s soft cheek.

“Mn, very good.”

---

Or, married WangXian embrace the practical and symbolic joys of home ownership. Domestic bliss.

Family, by Speechless_since_1998, rated G

Jiang Cheng blinked as his brother while he played with the baby he was holding.

He hoped he had misunderstood, but he had proof that it was true right in front of him.

So he did the only sensible thing that came to mind, "Wei Ying, what the fuck ?! '

"A-Cheng, language!" Shijie scolded him with a stern look.

"A-Jie, you can't really accept such a thing!"

"Why not? He is so cute!" she said, making funny faces at the child, totally in love with him.

Was it possible that he was the only one with a bit of mental sanity left?

A Lonely Guqin (No More), by Asphodel_Meadow, rated G

Wei Wuxian is the first person who makes Lan Wangji want to have a duet.

piercing, by escapingaugust, rated G (read the tags)

Stolen Midnights, by hinotoriii, rated G

There are nights where sleep eludes Wei Wuxian. Where the demons of his past are too loud in his mind, reminding him of that which he could never forget, second life or not.

Unfinished:

Not Rated:

Disclosed Regrets, by zLanWuxian, Not Rated

The majority of the cultivation world are pulled into a room that suspiciously resembled the burial mounds. (Their golden cores were sealed too. As to why, nobody knew.)

They are invited to watch Wei Wuxian's life.

What will they do when they find out everything they believed was a lie?

(Or: The characters of Mo Dao Zu Shi watch Mo Dao Zu Shi)

Rated E:

Where You Fell, by Sweet_William, rated E

Years ago, Lan Wangji was a Senior in high school, readying himself for graduation and the coming years studying at the Gusu Lan Institute of Music. Everything in his life made sense, from his role in his family, to a future as a classical musician. The only thing that didn’t fit was the sudden epiphanies he had about himself brought on by his bothersome and flirtatious classmate, Wei Wuxian. When the growing attraction and friendship was cut short by the other boy’s disappearance, he mourned what could have been, but ultimately had to move on. What he didn’t know was that fate would bring them back together again one day, or the reality of how far apart two lives can diverge, how some can find peace and prosperity, while others can fall farther than he ever imagined.

A Narrow Bridge, by FrameofMind and Jo Lasalle (Jo_Lasalle), rated E

Once, Lan Wangji made a choice to step aside. Ten years after Wei Ying’s death, he finds a way back to choose again.

Setting fire to our insides, by StarsAlignNomore, rated E

Lan Wangji dies after the thirty-third strike. Lan Xichen does not handle it well.

*fleabag voice* This is a fix it.

Rated M:

Live Again, Love Anew, by kkanime5555, rated M

“Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian finally speaks up.

“Mn.” Lan Zhan hums to show he’s listening.

“I think we traveled back in time.”

...

“I’ll go, Lan Zhan. I’ll come to Gusu with you.”

-----

Or,

Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are soulmates and, upon Wei Ying's death, they are sent back to when they first met as kids on the streets of Yiling. From there, they both are taken to Gusu, where they are raised together, gradually learning of their shared feelings and finding out the mystery of who sent them back in time and why, all while planning how to save the world, preferably with all their loved ones left alive.

A Torn Red Ribbon, by shiroakuma, rated M

The night before they marched into the Nightless City, Lan Wangji was invited to join Wei Wuxian in his tent.

Unbeknownst to him at that time, it became their last real conversation.

In which, a resounding victory against the QishanWen Sect is won seemingly at the cost of Wei Wuxian's life. Lan Wangji still spends some time being heavily injured. Lan Xichen tries to pick the pieces left behind by the war. The Jiang Sect is renowned thanks to the revered Wei Wuxian and the cultivation world is plagued by unknown forces while Lan Wangji meets with Wei Wuxian in his dreams.

Sacrifices Made with Blood, by NocturnalFriend, rated M

Lan Wangji knew it was too late, there was too much blood on Wei Ying's hands already. Still, if he asked his brother for help, surely. There was a way to rescue the man who held his heart?

Or: Trust is not easily given and all to easily shattered. Lan Wangji learns this in the worst way, when Lan Xichen gives into the demands of the cultivation world. Although nobody could have predicted the whims of fate, giving them another chance at righting things.

What makes you sing?, by Fictio, rated M

Madam Yu was never known for her matchmaking skills but she was known for her inherent meddling. Though it still came as a surprise, when on one fine Saturday afternoon, she called Wei Ying and set him up for a blind date.

There She Rose, by Aiiiru, rated M

Many years had passed yet whispers and gossips about YiLing Matriarch still stayed alive like unruly weeds refusing to die.

"That damn Wei Wuxian must have cursed this year's harvest with 'unkillable' locusts" "But Wei Wuxian had died right?" "Didn't you know that her body wasn't found?" "I heard some cultivators saying that during the chaos, some people saw her leaving in a sword, flying away with someone else." "That must be the demon with whom she signed a contract, a female challenging three thousand or was it five thousand cultivators by herself? Hah!! She definitely has ties with evil creatures and ghosts." "I heard from my cousin in Yunmeng that YiLing Matriarch was born shameless." "Some say she was a male but took female form to seduce the ghosts of burial mounds and gain power by starting demonic cultivation" "Shhh! Don't talk so loudly! My cousin knew a man who loudly gossiped about Yilling Matriarch only to be cursed to death the next day"

Visitations, by Vir_Abelasan, rated M

"Wei Ying-" Lan Zhan says, stutters, "I'm sorry."

And now Wei Wuxian sees it, the red rimming Lan Zhan's eyes, the rumpled edges of his blazer. There is an old, familiar urge for him to reach over, to hold Lan Zhan's hand and smooth his hair, to tell him that everything will be fine.

"We're all a bit sorry about this, I think," he says instead, and finds that he means it. For Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji and everyone else in that Guanyin temple, the pain must be unbearably fresh, like skin just flayed open. But Wei Wuxian's chest had been cracked open a long time ago, his wounds licked and cauterized and sewn shut over five long years - Ever hurting, but a dull, constant ache, "It's really alright, Lan Zhan."

Five years after being accused of corporate espionage and losing everything, the Guanyin Scandal breaks open and Wei Wuxian finds a familiar face at his door.

Kiss My Wounds, Bless My Scars, by Pegunicent, rated M

When he is sixteen, Lan Wangji makes a choice. He becomes Wei Ying's bride.

Rated T:

the one where Jiang Yanli visits (and she's a fucking goddess), by ShippersList, rated T (part 4 of a series)

Wei Wuxian’s sister was a fucking goddess so it was a travesty she wasn’t being fucked like a goddess deserved.

Luo Qingyang decided to do something about it.

(Also, family feels and some plotting but that's beside the point.)

obscured in the shade of the willow, bathed in the light of the moon, by cloud_wanderer, rated T

Wei Wuxian leaves the Burial Mounds for the first time to attend his martial brother's wedding, and everything changes from there. (a.k.a. a universe in which Nie Huaisang schemes to thwart Jin Guangshan's plans and ends up saving Wei Wuxian and the Wens in the process)

Wei Wuxian meets Xiao Xingchen and helps found a sect in Yiling.

Inchoate, by Marinelifeclub, rated T

“Where would you even go once you left? Wait a few more years before leaving." persuaded Jiang Fengmian,

“Will I live to see that long?” Wei Wuxian whispered under his breath.

Jiang Fengmian felt cold at those words. He always thought his children would be the ones to heal the scars left by their mother on Wei Wuxian, but just the concise way he spoke about them, he knows that wasn’t true. Now his best friend’s son sat in front of him, confessing to not thinking he will live to see himself become a man. Cangse and Changze must be furious in their graves as the sweet smiling son they raised endured pain because of a jealous woman and a cowardly man. Sighing, he did the only thing he could to make things right and accepted the boy’s wishes.

At age 14, Wei Wuxian left Lotus Pier and never looked back.

Wei Wuxian leaves Lotus Pier and while things change something’s are just set in fate.

Here We Go Again, by Alliandra, rated T

He looked over to where the swordswoman was still fighting, but her focus seemed entirely locked onto that fight so it was unlikely that she could have had anything to do with the energy drain. He was still wracking his brain for something else to do to assist, so this thing didn’t kill them both, but now he was feeling weak, dizzy and currently not far from helpless.

~~~~~~~~~~

It has been several months since the events at the Guanyin temple and Wei Wuxian is wandering around on his own. After he helps a stranger kill a very dangerous beast he uncovers what seems to be a conspiracy aimed at ending his life. He heads back to Cloud Recesses with his new companion in tow, looking to get Lan Wanji's help in working out what is involved.

Meanwhile, Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling made a surprising discovery under Koi Tower that may well be linked to the threat against Wei Wuxian's life.

Can they all work together to find out what is going on and put a stop to it, before something disastrous occurs?

Nie Huaisang's Ten Steps to Fix The Fucked Up Reality, by cosmic_zephyr (ProudHaikyuuTrash)

1. Find the time travel array in the Nie library 2. Convince (manipulate) Wei Wuxian to use demonic cultivation to activate the array. 3. Transmigrate to the body of your 15-year-old selves with Wei Wuxian and Survive his wrath. 4. Come up with yet another exaggerated, slightly concerning, plan to save Lotus Pier, Dafan Wens and your brother. 5. Use Empathy to make the Wen siblings side with you in the mess that is soon to come. 6. Kill the main Wen family and make Wen Qing the new leader of Qishan Wen so innocent people are not killed. 7. Annoy the hell out of Lanling Jin just for funsies and also a political statement because Jin Guangshan can suck it. 8 Preferably, just for your own sanity, find a way to kill Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao. 9. Work with Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing to solve the sabre problem of the Nie clan. 10. Live a happy life with your brother alive and the cultivation world not being the huge fucked up mess in your own time-line. P.S. Matchmake the pining pile of disaster and gay aka Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

Aka canon divergence where Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian (and Lan Wangji) travel back in time and save the cultivation world.

Deal, by Rahar_Moonfire, rated T

Nie Huaisang wants revenge for his brother. He also wants his friend Wei Wuxian back. Lan Wangji left the Cultivation World after Wei Wuxian's death and hasn't been heard from since. It's a good thing Nie Huaisang has spies everywhere. He has everything he needs to put his plan into motion: the notes, the instructions, the "willing body," and the patience to pull it all off.

Now he just needs to be sure Wei Wuxian survives long enough to pick up Nie Huaisang's bread crumbs, solve the puzzle, and shatter the Cultivation World again. The only person suitable for that job is Black Jade of Yiling, the husband of the infamous Yiling Patriarch, Lan Wangji.

Rated G:

Hadn't gone as I planned, by hamlets_ghost, rated G (part of a series)

Lan Xichen leaves the Cloud Recesses with Wei Wuxian and Wangji to meet his mother.

He cannot stay.

[continuation of 'Hold on to your heart']

[citrineghost]

On ADHD, Being Dramatic, and Being Lazy

Gather round everyone. It’s time for our every-few-monthsly post on ADHD by your local ADHD ghost. In this episode, we’re talking about ADHD and how it relates to “being dramatic” and “being lazy.”

On Being Dramatic

No doubt a lot of you have been told you’re being dramatic over the years. I know I have. There are a lot of reasons one might be dramatic, but they’re rarely about the drama.

If I’m to guess the origin of the word dramatic, I’d guess it probably has something to do with over exaggerating your response for the drama. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of people being dramatic - on tiktok and vine, on youtube... drama calls for dramaticism.

Do you want to know what isn’t dramatic? Genuine reactions. That’s right - genuine reactions, inherently, cannot be categorized as dramatic or hyperbolic. There is nothing about them that is being overdone with the intention of getting attention or entertaining other people. So, let’s talk a bit about how this conflation has hurt us as a community.

Growing up, everything I did was “dramatic.” Crying because I didn’t want to do more chores was dramatic. Having a panic attack because there was a spider in the room was dramatic. Freaking out because I needed people to stop touching me was dramatic. Getting angry when my mother made jokes about my sex life as a teen was dramatic (and apparently abusive, but that’s neither here nor there). Nothing I did that involved a noteworthy amount of emotion was anything, if not dramatic.

On Being Lazy

I know a lot of you have also been labeled as lazy over the years. “Lazy” is the diagnosis everyone loves to give to those who don’t do enough, in their eyes. If you “could have” done something and then “chose not to,” you’re lazy... right?

Growing up, I was lazy too. I was lazy for avoiding housework. I was lazy for not wanting to brush my teeth. I was lazy because I didn’t turn in my homework. I was lazy for staying in bed, on my computer, most of the day.

If I’d only just “applied myself,” or if I would just “put in the work,” then I would be respectable to the people around me. But, because I wasn’t “willing” to put in the time and effort, I was lazy.

Why Is Emotion Dramatic?

The short answer is: it’s not. The real question is, why do people seem to perceive emotion as being dramatic? These are real emotions, after all - real and genuine feelings that are being dismissed as playacting. There are a number of reasons.

Why Are We Lazy?

Again, the short answer is: most people aren’t. The question here is, why do people see others not doing something and assume it’s because they simply don’t want to put in the work? Why do they not seek out an explanation or consider other alternatives? There are a number of reasons for that too.

The Answer...

Editing to put a Read More here because it’s very long

(TW for each of these sections in their name)

1. Sexism

At its core, seeing emotional outbursts or responses as dramatic is inherently rooted in sexism. Whether you’re a boy or a girl, man or woman, if your emotions are being mocked, it’s almost definitely because of our world’s history of sexism and relating emotion to women, who are “illogical” and “just want attention.”

And “real men” work! They work hard! They work long hours! They put themselves into an early grave, with pride, by never sitting down to rest! For this very reason, women, housewives of decades past, were expected, after a long day of doing housework and caring for the children - things that are just as exhausting as a full time job - to dote on their husbands who had just returned from work expecting a hot meal and a beer to be ready for them. Her work is devalued. It wasn’t grueling or tiring or important. It was just “women’s work.” A wife who does all of the housework and child rearing and fails to provide a hot meal and a warm body to her husband is “lazy.”

This is further shown to affect men as well. We can see, as early as non-manual labor-based jobs existed, the men who took them were lesser. Men who work at computers are seen as nerds and geeks - weak. Men who work in universities, coming up with new solutions to our medical needs and discovering the mathematics we need for space travel and advanced technology - they’re weak too. They’re unimportant to society because they’re not willing to get their hands dirty. Those men who prefer artistry are called gay and seen as disposable. It is irrelevant to the conservative man that his artistic counterpart designs everything that fills his home and office - that without artists we would have nothing.

2. Racism and classism

You might be surprised, but racism and classism both have their hands in this as well. I’m talking full on systemic oppression. The ability for people in power to look down on those they see as beneath them for being emotional or passionate about a topic or incident is all about power. You can see a million examples of this today. POC are called dramatic or are implied to be blowing things out of proportion by conservative white people because they want equal rights and feel they’re being treated unfairly. Their emotions are dismissed as irrational and dramatic. 

The cries of the poor, whether white or of color, are mocked. They have no reason to be having the emotions they’re having because they wouldn’t be in the position they’re in if they weren’t “lazy.” After all, only lazy people don’t have money. Only lazy people can’t get work. If they had just “applied themselves,” they would have an income, a home, and ample food on the table.

3. Ableism

And, last but not least, we have ableism. The neurotypical and abled people of the world, at large, cannot understand the experiences of the disabled, both emotionally(those with mental illnesses, disorders, and so on(whether or not certain disorders can be categorized as a disability in a just society is another topic entirely, but they are regarded that way, generally)) and physically.

If you have sensory overload, you are being irrational. It doesn’t matter to a NT if this is caused by an actually chemically different response in your brain. It doesn’t matter if it’s Real To You. To them, it doesn’t make sense, and so you deserve no compassion for your experience. Your emotional response is dramatic.

If you have executive dysfunction, you are simply choosing not to do your work. It doesn’t matter that there is an actual reason, buried in you somewhere, for why you have become Stuck. It doesn’t matter if you feel crippled by this aspect of your life. They see that you have neglected to do something they deem easy. Therefore, you are “lazy.”

ADHD and Being Dramatic

For those of us with ADHD, being called dramatic is a very familiar experience. After a while, we begin to internalize it. We must be dramatic, right? After all, so many different people have told us we are - and for good reason. We do tend to get overly emotional.

So the question is, why? Why do we get overly emotional? Why are our emotions so much different than those of our NT peers?

1. Lack of Emotional Regulation

A big part of ADHD, which is not yet a diagnostic criteria, is our emotional disregulation. ADHD, inherently, comes with some amount of disregulation in our emotions. We have a hard time controlling the emotions that we feel and managing the intensity of them. They may come across as overly intense, or they may seem subdued, both for reasons we can’t possibly figure out as individuals. This disregulation is entirely out of our control, happening at a neurological level. Our brain chemicals don’t work as they should. But, no matter how unregulated our emotions are, they are still real. We do still feel them, exactly as intensely as we think we do. Disregulated does not mean made up.

2. RSD

If you knew about RSD before, or you’ve read my last post on ADHD (under my tag adhdghost), which has gained some popularity, you already know what this means. For those who don’t, RSD is short for Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. This condition plagues something like 99.9% of people with ADHD (while not being ADHD exclusive.) It comes with the lack of emotional regulation and means we have a reaction, that seems out of proportion (or “dramatic”), relative to the thing that caused it.

In short, RSD episodes can look like an entire breakdown, a very sudden loss of any self esteem or confidence, the feeling that you are certain someone now hates you or has secretly always hated you, and/or an immediate need to get rid of the thing that caused it. These episodes are caused by any kind of perceived failure or disappointment. They can be caused by someone whose opinion or relationship we value who gives us a slightly judgmental look, someone saying they don’t understand why we like the thing we’re interested in, or even not living up to our own expectations. These episodes frequently lead to emotional outburts, episodes, breakdowns, and tears. Naturally, all of this is “dramatic,” despite it being very real and painful for those experiencing it.

3. Combination with Other Things

Emotional disregulation can interact with other parts of our lives as well. For instance, I have a lot of phobias. My reactions to seeing or being around the things that terrify me can be even more intense than how most people react to their phobias. They can cause anxiety attacks, emotional breakdowns, and lasting fear for hours or days after. My recovery from these instances is hindered by my inability to regulate the feelings they caused.

Emotional disregulation can also interact with triggers, trauma, sensory problems, etc.

ADHD and Being Lazy

And of course, if you struggle with ADHD, you want to know, “Why am I so lazy?” The answer is: you’re not! Laziness is a made up word. Laziness was created to pass blame onto people who struggle to do things that more typical people can accomplish with ease.

So, what is the reason we struggle to do these seemingly simple tasks?

1. Executive Dysfunction

This is The Big One. Of all the things that can cause an inability to do things, executive dysfunction is the Achilles heel of ADHD. Because ADHD causes a difficulty with prioritizing, rewarding actions with no immediate reward, and creating a list of steps for us to take (something that comes naturally to NT people), we sometimes get “Stuck.”

This feeling of being stuck may look like us just having fun and avoiding our responsibilities. You may be Stuck right now, scrolling through tumblr mechanically even though you’ve been needing to pee for three hours. Naturally, you’ve been wanting to go to the bathroom... you just don’t know how.

To a NT, this sounds ridiculous. “Just get up and go?!” I’m sure you can imagine your parents saying, when they simply don’t understand. The truth is, tumblr can be a nightmare for executive function. It endlessly scrolls, giving you post after post. There’s no natural stopping point. You keep an eye out for a natural end to this activity, but it’s hard to find the right post to stop on. If you find those, “This is your sign to go to bed,” posts helpful - otherwise locked into the activity of scrolling regardless of whether you want to - you might be struggling with executive dysfunction.

This inability to “queue” our actions or prioritize what we need to do, and in what order, can wreak all kinds of havoc in our lives. You remember you didn’t really understand that equation the math teacher explained earlier. You know today’s homework is related to its use. Therefore, you cannot start your homework. There are a number of possible solutions floating around your head. Maybe the book will explain it better. Maybe your parents know how to do this and you could ask them. Maybe you could Google it. It’s possible the homework is about something else. But, if it is, what if you don’t understand that? Maybe you should ask your teacher before class?

Even though you have all of these solutions in your head, because you don’t know which solution is the best solution, you find yourself unable to do any of them. You show up to class with no homework and your teacher gives you a disappointed look. “I don’t understand why you don’t just apply yourself more. You’re a very smart student.” The remark brings you to holding back tears, because you want, with every fiber of your being, to apply yourself and make your teacher proud, but you simply don’t know how.

This is the destructive nature of executive dysfunction, and it is not something to be taken lightly.

2. Distraction

For those with ADHD, the inability to regulate external stimuli makes focusing incredibly hard. You wake up one morning and plan to start that English paper after breakfast. You go to get yourself some cereal. You’re out of milk. You decide to make toast instead. You burn your toast because you lost track of time for just 30 seconds. You go to throw it away, feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt over the two pieces of bread you wasted. The trash is overflowing. You decide to take it outside. It’s a really nice day out. Maybe you should take your dog for a walk. You haven’t taken her on a walk in a while and you’re just now feeling motivated to, so you should take advantage of that. You go to retrieve your dog and take her for a walk. When you bring her back in, you go to get her treats from the shelf in the laundry room. Oh yeah, you’d been meaning to do laundry. You go to get your laundry hamper from your room and notice there’s a bunch of laundry on the floor. You begin picking up the laundry from the floor. You may as well tidy up the other things on the floor as well. You finally get around to taking your laundry to the washer. You’re out of soap. Maybe you ought to make a run to the grocery store. You take ten minutes to find your keys and wallet and then head out to the grocery store. When you get there, you’ve forgotten what it was you needed. “Oh, right! I’m out of milk!” You go and retrieve milk. When you get to the checkout and the cashier rings you up, you suddenly remember you need laundry soap. Well, it’s too late now. You’ll have to do laundry tomorrow. You can’t risk the cashier giving you a tired look by asking them to wait. You go home and make some cereal. You can’t really write while you eat, so you open tumblr. you scroll through tumblr for a while. Your cereal gets soggy, you notice, disappointed. You see a tumblr post reminding you that you forgot to order something important online that you need to get here as soon as possible. The day continues in this way until you finally realize at 5pm that you never started your paper. “It’s so late now... I’ll just start it tomorrow morning,” you tell yourself. Rinse and repeat.

If you relate to this, you might want to consider researching ADHD a bit, because this is a very typical ADHD experience.

3. Hyperfixation and Hyperfocus

The last prominent reason why people with ADHD are seen as lazy has to do with a cycle in hyperfixation and hyperfocus.

If you don’t already know, hyperfixations are those interests you have that fill you with an overwhelming love and which take up an incredible amount of your time, energy, and brain space. These could be fandoms, hobbies, characters, games, or otherwise.

Hyperfocus, on the other hand, can be related to hyperfixations or things that aren’t hyperfixations. Hyperfocus is when you get “locked in” on a task and can’t seem to put it down. If you started this post not knowing how long it was and find yourself still raptly reading, completely ignoring the world around you, you may have hyperfocused on it. If you ever start cleaning and just can’t stop until the whole house is clean, despite your lack of regularly cleaning for over a month, you are hyperfocusing on cleaning. If you write a 20k word fic in one night, you are hyperfocusing.

Hyperfocusing can leave you completely unaware of the world around you, causing you to neglect your own basic needs, such as food, bathroom breaks, water, and social interaction. 

Because people with ADHD are able to occasionally apply themselves to such an extreme degree, NT people don’t understand why ADHD people are unable to apply themselves to other things as well. The reason we can’t is because we do not regulate our hyperfocus. Hyperfocus comes from tasks that are giving us serotonin, to make up for our brains inability to give serotonin in the way it should - in the way NT brains do. Emptying the dishwasher just felt really good. The next thing you know, you’re filling it with more dishes and wiping off counters and sweeping the floor and, “oh god, it looks so nice what if I just-” and then you move on to the laundry and the living room and the bedroom and then somehow 6 hours have passed. You don’t know how it happened, but now your house is clean and you feel amazing... but also tired and hungry. So you go make some food and then pass out on the couch.

So, when NT people see this kind of laser focus, they demand to know why you couldn’t do that simple math assignment, or why you haven’t been returning their texts, or why you couldn’t apply the same level of energy and enthusiasm on that really boring geography project. They demand to know why you’re so “lazy” the rest of the time.

There’s also the element of hyperfixation. It is the ultimate distraction. Your parents tell you to do the dishes and you say you will. Suddenly, you’ve found a fanfiction about your hyperfixation and you can’t stop reading it. It’s 60k words long and it will take you all day, but you’ll find a break to do your chores somewhere in there, right?

Your mom is suddenly knocking on your door what feels like 5 minutes later, but it’s been an hour. She wants to know why you didn’t do the dishes yet. You’re upset at yourself, but you lash out at her, because you’re unable to regulate your emotions. “I’ll do it in a minute!” you say loudly from behind your door. She walks off, irritated. You ask yourself why you can’t just do it now. Why does it feel impossible to tear yourself away? Your hyperfixation is the ultimate creator of hyperfocus. It rules you.

Before you know it, it’s midnight. You’ve finished the fic. It was amazing. You realize with dread that you still haven’t done the dishes, so you sneak out to the kitchen, hoping your parents have gone to bed. They have, but you find the dishes have already been done by someone else. Suddenly, you’re holding back tears from the RSD episode this has triggered. You ruined everything. You disappointed your parents. You’re a lazy and terrible child and they deserve better.

The truth is, you’re none of those things. In fact, you’re struggling with one of the most difficult mental blocks someone can have. But to others, you’re just making excuses. To others, you should have been able to just do the dishes and then go back to reading. But you know it’s not that easy. But why?

It’s ADHD, Babey!

If this post is hitting hard in a way that feels like your life is being splayed out before you, you might just have ADHD.

The fact is you are not dramatic and you are not lazy. You are struggling with a lot of ADHD symptoms that are making functioning in a neurotypical world incredibly difficult. This world was designed by and for NT people. Your worth is not based in how you live up to their expectations.

If you think you might have ADHD, it might be time to ask your doctor about getting an ADHD evaluation. Please check out my last post (the one i mentioned is under my tag adhdghost) to get more information on RSD and on getting evaluated.

An Important Note

Many experiences and struggles caused by ADHD are also present in other disorders. For example, RSD can be seen frequently in autism as well as in anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Sensory overload, emotional disregulation, executive dysfunction, and so on, can all be present in things other than ADHD. If you want to know if you fit the criteria for ADHD, go check out the criteria on the ADDitude website, which is a great source for ADHD related information.

[goose-books]

darklingverse & magic

as promised! a look at the magical system in my speculative fiction loose-retelling-of-king-lear WIP, which you can find out more about here and here! this is a terribly, terribly long post, so i’m sticking most of it under a cut, but i can guarantee there are at least a few fun diagrams in there. (all character images used are from this picrew by cinnasmores!)

shoutout to waya @harehearts​ for helping me work out some of the kinks in this by asking incredibly helpful questions... waya i will untag you if you want i just wanted to appreciate your contribution. also going to tag @suits-of-woe​ because you mentioned wanting to see this!

Jasper’s dad talks about it like oil. Petroleum has to be refined before you can put it in your car. Unrefined, it’ll just as soon kill you as anything else. The natural clock ticks. A mage hits twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen. And then it’s roaring under their skin, like an electric volt, like a fever, burning in them, fighting tooth and nail to get out.

It always gets out. You pick the route. Or you don’t.

The first thing Vee ever learned was duplication. Small objects only. Jasper was crawling through stacks of post-it notes for weeks. It was like an illness: Vee would get too itchy, his magic nipping at his neck, and he’d clench his fists and then they’d have another goddamn stack of stickies. “He has to get it out somehow,” Dad had admonished Jasper, when he’d complained. “Otherwise it’ll hurt him. I do it, too. The difference is I’m useful.” And he had demonstrated by snapping his fingers and cleaning all the house’s dishes at once.

Jasper is loath to give his father props for anything. But he was, on that particular occasion, right. Within a year Vee could flick his hands and shut windows, heat leftovers, unlock doors, send laundry skittering across the floor into the hamper.

It makes sense; Vee’s an infuriatingly quick study, magically and academically. And he inherited their dad’s style of magic. Easygoing. Quiet. Unobtrusive. Less explosive, more creative. Nowadays the worst that happens when he gets hot under the collar is that he spawns another houseplant and Jasper has to brush the leaves off the kitchen table.

Because Vee followed Dad’s instructions. He annotated all of his textbooks. He mastered it early, by seventeen, because of-fucking-course he did, but he was already in control by fifteen. Everyone learns to control their magic eventually.

Most people do eventually.

— darkling, segment iv: control

okay so let’s get into this!!!

isn’t darkling a modern king lear retelling? what do you mean, “the magic system?”

great question! darkling is, in fact, a modern king lear retelling (well, very loosely; it’s my city now and i reserve the right to do what i want). it takes place entirely in and around a city called dovermorry, an extremely isolated place secluded in the mountains, surrounded by wilderness for hundreds of miles, and only reachable via a single train through the mountains. dovermorry is loosely in the american northwest, sort of, i guess. by which i mean that’s kind of where i’m picturing it, but also it’s incredibly vague and honestly i don’t really know. dovermorry is, like, you know… [gesturing] it’s around. [kicking any kind of definable map under the rug]

the plot is set in the modern day with modern technology. the magic that exists is woven into daily life alongside said modern technology, which is the primary reason i’m calling darkling speculative fiction. most people in darklingverse aren’t actually heavily affected by magic (for reasons i’ll get into but which basically boil down to “they don’t have much”); however, dovermorry as a city is mostly known for being The Place Where Mages Go. most of the families in the city have been there for a long time; they’re old money families with powerful magic who use their inheritances to study increasingly esoteric forms of magic that aren’t very helpful in praxis. this is because dovermorry is home to the large and powerful Mage’s Guild, which is in charge of setting the laws around what kind of magic can be practiced in the city and by who. if you want to study magic at a scholarly level, you’d better pay your dues to the guild, otherwise you’re gonna get the boot.

every large city has a guild, but dovermorry’s in specific is Really Big and, unusually, has more political power than the actual mayor / government of the city. partially because leovald stayer, the guild’s president, is just… ughghhebwfbefbdsbfbdsfsd. That Way. in dovermorry if you’re not getting the boot you’re licking it

“wait, slow down. what is a mage anyway?”

well, technically, anyone! everyone in darklingverse has at least a little bit of natural magic (though it might be very little) that develops during puberty/adolescence! so by its literal definition, A Person Who Does Magic, everyone is a mage. that said, in colloquial terms, the word mage has taken on a connotation that basically means… exactly the kind of people who live in dovermorry. like i just said: scholarly, probably rich, probably a little elitist. so your average working-class person is TECHNICALLY a mage, but if you asked they’d say something like, “oh, mages are those hoity-toity folks who join guilds and stuff, WE’RE just regular folks over here.”

“you keep saying magic. what are you talking about. magic is a word that means so many things”

don’t worry, in darkling it just means [gestures vaguely]. re: everyone has magic, it develops in puberty, and there aren’t really specifications - it isn’t like some folks get fire magic and others get shapeshifting magic or etc. it’s more like everyone has a certain amount of raw energy inside them that can be drawn out and funneled into different tasks/spells. some ground rules:

1. you can’t change the amount of magic you have. your magic develops naturally, and maybe you get a lot of raw energy, or maybe you only get a little, but that’s what you’re stuck with and no amount of practicing is gonna give you more.

2. that said, magic is hard to control when it first develops - and practicing WILL help you get better at controlling it. so while you’ll always have the same base amount, you’ll get faster and more efficient about concentrating it into tasks.

3. re: amount of raw energy: that shit isn’t limitless. whether you have a lot or a little, it will eventually run out and you’ll have to wait for your juice to recharge. like a battery. you are a battery. how long this recharge period takes depends on how much magic you have, how fast you used it all up (if you push your limits to do something Really Big, you’re gonna be wiped), and also just how you’re doing physically in general? if you use up all of your magic in one go and you haven’t slept in a while, you might want to, like, sit down. drink a juice box. take a nap

4. while magic isn’t limitless, you can’t just NOT use it, either. when you aren’t using your magic, that raw magical energy builds up in you. and builds up. and builds up. and it does not particularly want to be in you. it wants to be out in the world, actually, and by god your fragile human meatsack is not going to stop it. so if you don’t choose a task to funnel your magical energy into (eg, i use my built-up energy to send my socks scuttling across the floor of their own accord to get into the laundry basket), that energy will eventually decide to just come out on its own. more on this later.

5. like i said, the mage’s guild of any particular city sets the rules, but there’s generally one core rule and that’s “don’t do necromancy.” like, obviously you’re not allowed to kill someone magically, but you’re also not allowed to kill someone NONMAGICALLY, so that’s kind of a given? but necromancy is something only a few very powerful mages can do and it is a BIG no-no. don’t fuck around with death, man. people don’t come back right, but also, just, like, let them rest, all right? let the dead rest.

[image description: the “society if X” meme, showing a futuristic “ideal” society full of green landscapes, smooth silver buildings, and flying cars. the text on the top reads “society if no one did necromancy.” the text on the bottom reads “this post made by the official mage’s guild don’t do necromancy you freaks bottom text.” in the corner you can see the imgflip.com watermark that i could have erased were i less lazy.]

“so what CAN you do with magic?”

the average joe? not much. again, there aren’t specific categories of magic; there aren’t any ATLA-style bending divisions. if you and i have the same raw amount of energy, there’s no reason we can’t both learn the same spells.

that said, the average person doesn’t have a lot of magic! it is much less dramatic than i’ve made it sound. there are not big magical firefights happening marvel-movie-style on every city street. if you want to talk to your friend, you use your iphone, not some kind of distance-speaking spell (which would be hard to maintain anyway and oh my god the phone lines are right there). the average person, on a daily basis, will use their small amounts of magic to heat their coffee up, or to wipe up a mess or spill, or to clean their floor re: the socks i mentioned earlier. (while writing this post, i had to begrudgingly admit that the socks were not going to scuttle anywhere, and i was forced to pick them up with my hands, manually. tragic, i know.)

again. dovermorry is the exception to this rule. most of the people in dovermorry have a little too much money and a little too much magic and not nearly enough chill. but dovermorry has also been festering like a petri dish alone up in the mountains for decades so what can you do.

“hold on, are you telling me that people in darklingverse didn’t immediately start wielding innate magic quantities as a tool of classism? sounds fake”

regretfully i cannot retcon classism out of darklingverse as it is relevant to the plot. this is because the plot is “Incredible: This Rich White Guy Has Never Been Told No And Doesn’t Know How To Handle It Without Crytyping!”

[image description: a picrew of leovald stayer, a pale-skinned man with short blond hair and an angry-looking frown, plus tears that i drew onto him with the paint tool in paint.net. beside his head is red crytyping text reading “ii’mm sso; so..rryy i didn’t[ mme  a nit wwhy . are yu,,o suiiicdee .bai,,it,ing MMe gr;;acen im yuour da[d,,,”]

the general implicit belief across the country, but especially in highly stratified cities like dovermorry, is that upper-class people from distinguished noble families are just naturally born with more magic, and lower-class people are born with progressively less as we trip down the social ladder. is this kind of true, demographically? yeah but everyone’s got their cause-and-effect turned around. class doesn’t dictate natural magic so much as natural magic dictates class. the people on top like to be on top. and having jacked-up magic is a nice way to stay on top. so rip to the rich kids born with piddly little amounts of raw magic, because your family probably is not going to help you get places. and rip to everyone else born with piddly little amounts of magic, too, because unless you’re REALLY good at something nonmagical, you probably are not going to Strike It Big because those in power are gonna keep you down. and if you DO make it to the top you’ll be viewed as an exception that proves the rule.

there is some magic that is genuinely naturally harder to work with. the upper classes are personally really invested in making sure that kind of magic is painted as rough and lower-class. this is because it is threatening to them! and they do not want to be threatened. unless, of course, it’s them with the hard-to-handle magic. and then they’re fine with it.

“but didn’t you say everyone’s magic is basically the same?”

everyone’s magic can be wielded to do basically the same things. you can’t control how much flows through you. you CAN control where/how it gets out. and everyone’s pathways for how to let it out are basically the same (see the examples i mentioned above!). but some magic is a lot easier to control than other magic.

you can’t just not use magic, because if you don’t use it, it will use itself. it will Do Shit On Its Own. and that’s where this gets sticky.

so let’s get into that.

active vs. passive magic

now with fun diagrams!

[image description: a rainbow spectrum stretching from blue to red. the leftmost end (blue) is labeled “’passive’ magic” and “way down here you can mostly do fun party tricks.” the rightmost end (red) is labeled “’active’ magic” and “way down here you’re officially a ‘witch’ lol.”]

when i say active vs. passive magic, i should specify that this is not a strict binary! i’m about to use the terms in a sort of binary way to simplify this post down, but magic exists on a spectrum.* generally the less raw magic energy you have, the more “passive” your magic will be, but that’s not a hard and fast rule! characters vee and rory, for example, both have comparatively passive magic; however, rory’s is smaller and generally good for party tricks, illusions, and sleight of hand, while vee has more magic that he finds is really good for things like Growing Plants Really Fast and Making The Plants Do What You Want.

*i know this looks like some kind of metaphor for gender but i swear it’s not. you can trans your gender no matter WHAT your magic looks like i promise <3

i mentioned that if it builds up for too long unused, magic will Do Shit On Its Own. with passive magic, the Shit It Does is, like, accidentally growing a plant where plants shouldn’t grow, or changing your hair color when you aren’t looking. slow seeping magic that just kind of oozes out of you until you notice, “wait, shit, my hair didn’t used to be blue.” with active magic, if you don’t control it, it will Break Shit and it will not be nice about it.

active magic is - if we simplify both the magic binary and human genetics until they’re really really blurry - the dominant trait. if you made a middle school biology punnet square, active magic would be the dominant allele and passive the recessive allele. (i haven’t taken a bio class in two years no one get my ass for this analogy.) the child’s magic will take after whichever parent has more active magic. so, to illustrate that, let’s look at a normal family with a normal non-scandalous family tree. by which of course i mean the greenwoods. [canned laugh track playing in the studio]

here are ara, griffin, and medea (parents) charted by how active their magic is:

[image description: the same spectrum, now featuring three picrews of characters. ara, a dark-skinned woman with wavy black hair, freckles, and glasses, is placed leftmost, closest to the blue/passive end. griffin, a dark-skinned man with short black hair and glasses, is placed near the middle of the spectrum, slightly to the left. medea, a pale-skinned woman with spiky white hair, freckles, and gold hoop earrings, is placed rightmost, at the very edge of the red/active end.]

...and here’s how that went for them, progeny-wise:

[image description: a little family tree. ara and griffin’s child, vee, a dark-skinned person with wavy black hair, a worried look, and band-aids on his face, is labeled “quiet unobtrusive plant-based magic” in green text. medea and griffin’s child, jasper, a lighter-skinned person with spiky brown hair and freckles, is labeled “once accidentally shattered 50 champagne glasses at his dad’s birthday party” in red text.]

(yes, i know i said there aren’t any ATLA-esque magical divisions; that’s still true; vee just happens to get on really, really well with plants. much like jasper gets on really really well with entropy and causing problems on purpose.)

so the thing about “active” magic is that it’s usually more powerful, but if it’s too powerful it gets incredibly destructive. like i said earlier - if you’re part of the upper class, it shakes out fine; otherwise not so much. your choices with this kind of dangerous magic are to either fight it and keep it tamped down, or to lean completely into it and embrace your massive amounts of dangerous power. if you are rich, you can do that second thing! that’s what leovald stayer does, and he’s the president of the mage’s guild! good for him! [i say, through gritted teeth.] but if you aren’t rich, you had better try to keep that shit on lockdown, unless you want to be branded a reckless uncultured social deviant and - in most cases - a witch.

mages vs. witches

everyone with magic is a mage. only a few mages are witches. it’s like squares and rectangles, you know? you can hear gracen talk about that here in nice prose (plus baby cressida!), but the bottom line is that “witch” is shorthand for “woman* who has magic so powerful it’s unsafe, who uses it to break shit and be reckless,” and anyone with the “wrong” type of magic who doesn’t have a trust fund to back them up is getting tarred with that brush. they’re nothing like those elegant learned mages casting down benevolent laws from their ivory towers, you see.

*this isn’t a gender specific thing but usually women are the ones who get called witches because Women Should Know How To Control Themselves But Men Are Just Like That. god we love misogyny <3

tl;dr: misogyny and classism real. if you have hard-to-control magic that breaks shit then you’re destined to be a pariah UNLESS of course you’re rich and powerful and then it’s COOL that if you got too out-of-control you could collapse a building or cause a monumental storm or something. you know. cool.

[image description: the same magic spectrum. medea is still there, placed exactly where she was before. leovald’s face is also there, right above hers; in terms of magic, they are equally placed on the spectrum. leovald is labeled “runs the whole city” and medea is labeled “lives in a cave in the woods,” both in white text. there are three thinking emojis at the very top of the image.]

funny how these things work out.

in conclusion

in conclusion, if you’ve read all of this, you’re braver than the marines and have my undying love. if you’re down here for a tl;dr: magic is a natural force everyone is born with; some magic is comparatively harder to control; classism & other social structures affect the way a person’s magic is viewed (there are a lot of double standards); i really enjoy making little oc diagrams.

if you have questions, comments, etc, about this post or darkling in general, my ask box is always open! thank you for reading! [blowing you a kiss]

[catbreon-draws]

I absolutely love you, thank you for helping us stick up against t*rfs and gendercr*tical people 💙💙💙

Thank you, I love you too! ^-^

—

I’m going to put my responses to other messages in here so I don’t clog up my mouse blog with this stuff and also because they didn’t censor certain words that I do not want to end up in certain tags on here so I am pasting and manually censoring them

—

transm*ds/t*rfs really be like “my belief is that trans people aren’t real and/or deserve to be subject to violence until they’re ‘normal’ Like Us.” and then turn around and call you a dick for not wanting them to interact with you. the headassery is mindblowing.

I know, right? God forbid I want my own blog to be a safe place for myself, a trans person.

—

I have a kinda off topic question, if you know the answer what does someone being 'transm*d’ mean? Google gives a basic answer like “the belief that trans people should be allowed to get surgery” but in digging deeper all answers are different? Is it really like “trans people aren’t trans until they get surgery” or something?

Transm*dicalism is a bit different depending on the person you ask but these are generally things that many transm*ds believe

- Transgenderism is a mental illness (gender identity disorder) and you have to have major dysphoria to be trans. Otherwise you’re faking it or it’s just a phase.

- You are not Actually trans unless you have had, or are planning to have some kind of gender confirmation surgery. If you can’t afford to have surgery, you have to still Desperately Want Surgery And To Be “Normal” or it doesn’t count.

- For some transm*ds you aren’t Actually A Male/Female until you have had the surgeries, which ties into “secret men in the women’s room pissing on YOUR DAUGHTERS HEAD with a PENIS!!!!!” t*rf rhetoric and is very harmful for the community.

- There are only two genders, and most/all of the people that identify as nonbinary are just making it up to be Cool, because being trans is the In Thing right now I guess, according to them. For example if you’re an afab nonbinary person but still accept she pronouns or don’t burst into tears when you’re called a woman then you’re Not Valid and you’re just a Special Snowflake for calling yourself nb/trans. This can also tie into t*rf rhetoric- a trans man or transmasc nb person that doesn’t care much if they get misgendered are Actually Women and are just Ashamed of openly calling themselves a woman because of our male dominated society or whatever the fuck,.. idfk

- People who are Not Actually Trans are “stealing resources” from Actual Trans People. For example a nonbinary person taking up limited space in a homeless shelter for LGBT people. Or a trans woman who could, in theory, live without breasts without killing herself, taking estrogen away from those poor Real Trans People who will now have to go without, because that’s how it works I guess.

There’s more but those are the big points and it’s pretty self explanatory why they are yucky

—

Trenders 100% exist. If they didn’t, detransitioners wouldn’t be a thing. You insult me. I’m an actual trans man who has to deal with the consequences of just trying to be my genuine self while 14 year old GIRLS cut their hair short and dye it pink and say “I’m a trans boy I use he/him” only to completely change their mind in a few months. That is TRANSPHOBIC. You are clearly a moron to think that the spike in trans population isn’t people misconstruing an actual mental illness.

Well, Actual Trans Man, how is a 14 year old girl questioning her gender and then deciding she isn’t trans after all transphobic, and how does that harm you in ANY way??? (rhetorical question) The only “consequences” we as trans people have to deal with are from cis people who were never going to be our allies. As well as, unfortunately, other trans people such as yourself with your hurtful mindset. Also, detransitioning is largely due to surgeries and “having to pass” being pushed down the throats of trans people who didn’t want them in the first place, but were forced to believe that they had to have them to be legitimate, by people like you! 

Kisses says fuck you and learn to accept yourself without worrying about what other people are doing

[gumnut-logic]

We’ll Be Home For Christmas 2.3

Sorry this was a little later than usual. I was out of the house.

Title: We’ll be home for Christmas

Day Two – Aboard This Tiny Ship – Part 3 Prologue | 1.1 | 1.2 | 2.1 | 2.2

Author: Gumnut

18 - 23 Dec 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: The boys can’t fly home for Christmas, so they have to find another way.

Word count: 4029

Spoilers & warnings: language and so, so much fluff. Science!Gordon. Minor various ships, mostly background.

Timeline: Christmas Season 3, I have also kinda ignored the main storyline of Season 3. The boys needed a break, so I gave them one. Post season 3B, before Season 3C cos we haven’t seen it yet.

Author’s note: For @scattergraph. This is my 2019 TAG Secret Santa fic :D I hope you enjoy it.

Mentions of ship in this bit, but only in discussion. There may be more later (that I haven’t written yet :D)

Many thanks to @vegetacide and @scribbles97 for cheering me on and their wonderful support through this craziness. And to @onereyofstarlight for geeking out with me over the setting.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

 Gordon told him it was unnecessary, but John didn’t agree. He had a brother deployed, it was his job to keep an eye on him. Besides, he hadn’t spoken to Eos for nearly twenty-four hours.

He sat down at the same table Gordon had been using for his fish studies. “Eos, can you relay Gordon’s mission stats down to my tablet? Also, I need seismic readings, wildlife mapping and all the latest observational data for the volcanics around the caldera.”

“Hello, John.”

“Hello, Eos. How are you?”

“Functional.” A pause. “A bit bored.”

Oh no. “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Eos!”

“You should have seen them. They were so poor. They were almost starving.”

“What did you do?”

“I saved them.”

“How?”

“They won the lottery.”

“You rigged a lottery? How? They are all manual.”

“I have my ways.”

“Who did you bribe?”

“I didn’t bribe anyone.”

“Who did you blackmail?”

“Honestly, he wasn’t a very nice man anyway.”

John closed his eyes. Thank god Scott was on the other side of the boat helping Alan load up the dingy.

Virgil sat on the lounge opposite staring at him.

“Eos doesn’t like injustice very much.”

His brother arched an eyebrow.

“Eos, we will discuss this later. Deploy the mission to my tablet. Oh, and can you move Gordon’s sensor buoy into range so we can sharpen our reception. Thank you.”

Virgil’s eyebrow was still arched.

“You know if you leave it that way long enough, the wind will change and you will become permanently half Vulcan.”

His brother ignored him. “We will discuss this later, John. Scott hears about it and the shit will hit the fan.”

“Yes, I know.” Scott would likely always be sensitive where Eos was concerned. John had to tread lightly.

Turning to his tablet, he brought up the sensor relay from the buoy and propelled it to one side of the table. Gordon’s vitals, followed by Four’s telemetry were deployed to another corner, followed by a submarine map of the area.

“What is that?”

John jumped as Virgil sat down beside him and pointed at the map. “Is that the caldera?”

“Yes.” John swiped at his tablet and brought up the necessary information. “The island itself is only a fragment of the volcano.”

“That’s considerably bigger than our caldera. When did it last erupt?”

“It’s still active.”

“What?! We just sent Gordon down there.”

John stared at Virgil and wondered if his brother had been taking painkillers and was loopy as a result. “Gordon knows what he is doing.”

Virgil ran a hand over his face and sighed. “Yeah, I know. Just with his accident...”

“He’ll be fine. We are just looking at hydrothermal vents in this case. There is no lava field down there. It shouldn’t take much time to replace the sensor as long as he doesn’t get distracted.”

“Distracted? Gordon?”

“Hmmm, yeah. You have a point.”

-o-o-o-

Gordon was in heaven.

Well, if heaven had this many starfish and in Gordon’s book, it definitely did. Clustered around the heat generating hydrothermal vents, the patches and swarms of specialised life down here were amazing to see. He had read several studies on the ecosystems of the Kermadec chain, but it was always a wonder to see them thriving like this in the darkness.

The caldera was massive. He knew the geological history of the Kermadec chain. They all did as Tracy Island was technically part of it. He knew it had a habit of exploding quite regularly and this caldera was no different, various child cones spewing forth hydrothermal concoctions. It had last blown up quite spectacularly over 6000 years ago, collapsing what used to be a much larger island into this undersea ring of vents.

The heat supported scores of mussels, farmed by starfish and the occasional white crab. He had done a lot of diving around Tracy Island, but that underseascape was considerably different. Higher water temperatures and a dead volcano produced a different ecosystem to what Macauley supported.

Four’s spots lit up the underwater mountain range, volcanic remnants were scattered across the sea floor. The sensor bank was closest to one of the dominant cones to the north-west of the island, placed there specifically to monitor the active spot. The moment he approached it, he knew exactly what the problem was.

“Thunderbird Four to Raoul.”

“Raoul receiving. Thunderfish, did you get your ‘bird out just for me? I thought you were on vacation.”

“Eh, I owe you one.” If he was honest, coasting about the waterline for a couple days without the facility to drop below it at will had left him a little longing for the depths. “I found your sensor problem.”

“Yeah, what do we have?”

“A brand new baby hydrothermal vent right on top of the sensor bank”

“Again? That’s the third this year.”

Gordon frowned. “This happens a lot?”

“You bet your ass it does. This whole bloody volcanic chain does what it bloody wants. Hell, Giggenbach just a little north-west of Macauley threw a fit just last year and dumped a pile of rubble on all our sensor equipment. I’m lucky Tracy Industries continues to provide me with new supplies or I would have had to close up shop years ago. The Kermadecs eat sensors for breakfast.”

“So, what did you want me to do?”

“You got one of those temporary seismic monitors?”

“Not on Four, but Two stocks vibration sensors.”

“Sensitive enough to catch a below 0.0001?”

“I’ll send you the specs. Virgil would be the one to confirm.”

“Really?”

“Be kind to him, Mel. He’s not at his best.”

“Would I do anything to hurt such a gorgeous man?”

“Mel.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll talk nice to the dark-haired hunk.”

“Mel.”

“What?”

-o-o-o-

Alan eyed Virgil as he made his way down the side of the yacht, one arm clutched to his belly. He hated it when his older brothers were injured. It always shook his foundations.

Sure, Alan was an adult, he could handle it, but his eldest brothers had pretty much been his parents for half his life and seeing one them taken down by a medical condition, even one as paltry as appendicitis, struck a nerve.

It didn’t help that Gordon had been so sick, so injured, so recently. To only just have him back in the air and for Virgil to fall out of the sky like that.

It was scary.

“Alan, you okay?”

Scott was standing in the little inflatable dingy, waiting for Alan to hand him the heat cube equipment. The plan was to have a ‘bonfire’ dinner on the beach without the actual bonfire. Gordon’s description of what the Director at Raoul would do to them if they lit a fire on one of her islands was graphic and to the point. So, heat cube it was.

The marshmallows never quite tasted the same.

He shrugged. “Should Virgil be doing that?”

His eldest brother glanced over to where Virgil was making his way in their direction. “As long as he isn’t over doing it, he should be okay.” Scott stared up at him. “He’s going to be fine, Alan.”

Alan grimaced and turned back to watching Virgil slowly approach. He could still hear his brother groaning on that hover stretcher as Gordon maxed out Two’s engines to get them across the Tasman Sea.

A hand touched his arm and he jumped a little. Scott was back on the yacht beside him, earnest blue eyes trying to pin him down. “He is going to be fine.”

Alan sighed. “I know. I guess he just scared me.” A swallow. “For a second there, all I could think was that Virg was going to be as sick as Gords, or worse, and it...it terrified me.”

An arm wrapped around his shoulders and Alan suddenly felt twelve again, big brother Scott ever looking after him. “He scared all of us, but he is recovering. A couple of weeks and he’ll be back on Two nagging Gordon, a month and you won’t even know he was ill.

“It could have been worse.”

“It wasn’t.” Scott squeezed his shoulder and as Virgil finally made it the last few steps into hearing range, challenged the convalescent. “And what do you think you are doing out here?”

“Just checking out what you two are up to.” Virgil leant on the railing.

“We are preparing a feast for your senses, little brother, and you are not lifting a finger. Alan and I will be your heavy lifters for this dining experience.”

Virgil grunted at his brother.

Alan grinned, hiding his thoughts. “Hey, bro, take the opportunity for what it is and just sit back and relax.”

A lopsided half smile and a mumbled, “Not sure I know how to do that.” Virgil leant both of his elbows on the railing and stared up at the island cliffs looming over them. Alan had to admit, for a tiny chunk of volcano, it was pretty damn big.

“You could always ask Alan for some instruction.” Scott was grinning.

“Hey!” But the twinkle in his brother’s eyes made it clear it was all in jest. “Just because I find efficiencies in everything I do.”

And it was Virgil’s turn to grin and reach out to wrap an arm around his shoulders.

Sometimes being the youngest of five had its challenges. Over protective and mother-henning older brothers was one of them. Half the challenge was working out whether he should accept the gestures or stand more securely on his own two feet.

Considering they were isolated, in the middle of nowhere and his brother had recently scared the shit out of him, he was inclined to accept any and all reassurances.

“You okay, Alan?” Dark eyes and brows were peering at him. Oh, for the love of...

He shouldered off Virgil’s arm and grabbed the heat cube equipment. “Are we packing this before or after sunset?”

Scott rolled his eyes and stepped back into the dingy while Virgil frowned at Alan even more.” I’m fine, Virgil. You’re the one who has the holes in his gut.”

“I’m fine.” It was automatic and defensive.

Scott snorted as Alan handed him a crate.

Hmm, maybe he wasn’t the only one being mother-henned.

-o-o-o-

As afternoon waned and evening moved in, the sun lit up the west side of the island in sharp white gold, riddled with the emerald green of recovering forest. The huge cliffs that ringed the volcanic remnant were a stark mixture of pale tephra and black basalt, an echo of a volcano that had had many moods in its relatively short life.

It was a dramatic background to their rather everyday activities.

Gordon surfaced with little fuss. Mel contacted Virgil and he arranged for Kayo to bring some vibration sensors when she came back to collect Four.  Gordon was stunned to discover Virgil addressed her as Ms Fisher. What the hell?

“What century were you born in, Virg?”

His brother shrugged. “Never hurts to be polite.”

Gordon stared until Virgil glared at him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Another brown-eyed stab and his brother turned his back on him.

Some smart targeting with Two’s forward cannon and several of the temporary devices were deployed at the foot of the volcanic cone around five hundred metres underwater. Gordon dipped down to check their placement, John looped Mel into their feed via Five and the job was considered complete. Tin picked up Four and with a cheery farewell to her brothers, flew back to Tracy Island.

Gordon did note that Virgil stood staring after his vanished ‘bird a lot longer than necessary. He wasn’t sure which his brother was missing more, Two or her temporary pilot.

He stepped up to the rocks beside his brother. “Hey, she’ll take care of her.”

“I know.”

“Tin knows far more than she ever lets on.”

“I know.”

Gordon placed a hand on his shoulder and stuck a kebab stick with a white blob on one end in front of him. “Want a toasted marshmallow?”

Virgil looked at it and then at Gordon. “It appears to be missing the toasted part.”

Gordon grinned. “Then I guess you better get cooking.”

His brother rolled his eyes, but it appeared to snap him out of his moroseness, which had been the plan.

“Gimme that.” Virgil grabbed the marshmallow on its stick and stalked back to the little camp set up on the island’s excuse for a beach.

He used the term ‘beach’ very broadly, if you could consider a mixture of powdered pumice and basalt dumped like frosting on tumbled rocks, some of which were damn sharp, a ‘beach’.

It had taken both Scott and John to help Virgil first into the inflatable dingy and then onto the rocks and across to the ‘sand’. There were at least two moments where Gordon could see his eldest brother regretting the decision to let Virgil off the yacht. But a determined glare from that brother coupled with at least one whispered profane word appeared to stop Scott from saying anything.

Virgil did sit down in a camp chair and stay that way for some time after that so it was fairly obvious it had hurt.

When Two returned, Gordon found himself caught up with the sensor deployment. The only reason he had been on the beach when the green behemoth finally left was because Tin had delayed her departure to speak to Virgil.

He hadn’t heard what they said to each other, but Virgil was unusually quiet when he returned to the circle with Gordon.

The heat cube was set to cook and Alan had some bacon and eggs sizzling in one pan and Scott was keeping an eye on some pancake batter in another. His eldest brother handed Virgil a soda and the engineer found his seat again, lowering himself slowly into it. Gordon didn’t miss the frustrated exhale.

John even had some fries cooking in a camp quick-oven. All-in-all a decent feast on the rocky beach was almost ready.

The next fifteen minutes or so were spent consuming said food.

“These pancakes are fantastic, Scott.” It was muffled and muttered around one of those pancakes, but Gordon meant every word of it.

“So they should be. Dad’s recipe.”

“Legendary.” Virgil’s voice was equally muffled by another pancake.

“Toasted marshmallows and chocolate mud-cake with cream for dessert.” Alan was grinning. “We packed the best.”

“Oh, god, thank you.” Virgil was always one to appreciate good food.

“Don’t choke yourself, bro. There is plenty to go around.”

“Yes, thank you, guys, so much.”

“Stop talking with your mouth full.” But Scott was grinning like a loon.

Virgil grinned back at him with pancake stuck in his teeth.

Gordon snorted, Alan laughed out loud, and John smiled.

“I would like to raise a toast.” Virgil grabbed his can of soda and held it up and all four brothers scrambled for their own drinks. “To Gordon! For having one of the best ideas ever!” There was a resounding yell of agreement, but Virgil raised his drink again. “Also, to all my brothers for making it happen. I couldn’t ask for a better family than the one I have. I am truly blessed. Thank you, guys, for everything you have done.” And the big dope was all seriousness and, god, was he getting teary? What the hell had Tin said to him?

Every can, cup and glass around the heat cube was lifted, but Gordon stood up so he was taller than everyone for once in his life. “To the Tracy brothers!”

“Hear, hear!” It was shouted and cheered.

Virgil smiled up at him and caught Gordon’s eyes as he drank.

Alan broke the tableau.

“Who want’s mud-cake?!”

-o-o-o-

It was a very satisfied group of brothers who watched the sun dip below the horizon sometime later. The cube temperature had been lowered, but not entirely extinguished. They weren’t in tropical latitudes yet and although the days were warm, the nights got chilly. The sea breeze was gentle and the ocean only mumbled against the rocks.

Virgil had slipped into bit of a stupor, his body determined to digest and removing resources from his brain to do it. Consequently, he missed the beginning of the conversation between his brothers while he stared after the disappearing sun.

“So how long has this been going on?”

“It is just a bit of friendly recreation, Alan.”

A Gordon snort. “Yeah, John, but how friendly and what kind of recreation?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Gordon.”

“I’m only following yours, spacebro.”

“There is nothing untoward occurring between Captain O’Bannon and myself.”

“Ooh, ‘untoward’ no, but there are two lonely space souls stuck up there together, none other than each other’s company.”

This time it was Scott’s snort. “Oh, only the resident AI who sees and hears all, and about twenty-odd GDF specialists.”

“Oh, yes, Eos!” Virgil arched an eyebrow as he realised his fishbrother was tapping his collar comms. “Hey, Eos, are you willing to share the goss on your Dad and Captain Ridley O’Bannon.”

“Hello, Gordon. What would you like to know?”

“Does John have a ‘thing’ for the girl next door?”

“Most definitely.”

“Eos!” John shot up ramrod straight in his seat as Gordon cracked up laughing.

“It is true, John. You have sixteen processors, four electronic clipboards and twenty-three bottles of moisturiser set aside for Captain O’Bannon. These are all things you have for the girl next door.”

Virgil couldn’t help himself and had to smother a laugh.

The expression on Gordon’s face was a mixture of confusion and incredulity. “Twenty-three bottles of moisturiser?”

“It is her favourite brand and she was unable to purchase it before beginning her last rotation, so I acquired some for her.” He glared at his aquanaut brother. “Just like friends do.”

“But twenty-three bottles?” Even Scott was staring at John as if he was a little weirded out.

“You obviously like her. Why don’t you ask her out?” Trust Gordon to poke the issue further.

John shrugged. “Hasn’t come up.”

Gordon groaned. “Really?” His hands dropped to his knees. “I thought it would be obvious.”

John’s glare was acidic. “I can’t see why you can talk. How long did it take you to ask Penny out? Hmm, let me think, oh, yes, that’s right. You didn’t. She asked you.”

“Hey, I was bedridden!”

“Excuses, excuses...”

“Well, at least I’m making progress. Please tell me at least one of you guys has a possibility in your back pocket. Hell, we’re all tough and buff and saving people. Hasn’t anyone swooned for any of you?” Gordon’s eyes raked around the circle and to Virgil’s horror landed on him. “What about you, Virg. You and Tin have a bit of thing happening, don’t you?”

His heart missed a beat. “What? No!”

“Virg and Kayo? Are you kidding me?” Alan was glaring at Gordon, but then seemed to second guess himself and turned that glare on Virgil. “She’s our sister, bro.”

Virgil held up his hands. “Hey, it wasn’t me who postulated the idea.”

“Postulated? Really, Virg? Me thinks you be hiding behind a dictionary.”

“Shut up, Gordon.”

“I think he doth protest too much.”

“I think you should look into the fact she is spending the next month with Wayne Rigby and not entirely for mission related reasons.”

There was no satisfaction in seeing Gordon freeze like that, or Scott’s “What?”

“She’s with us for New Years, but then it is onto Siberia on the third of January. Something about the possibility of a Chaos Crew tech lab infiltration.” Virgil grabbed the carafe of hot chocolate off the heat cube and poured himself a good dose. He ignored the voice in the back of his head that wished it was something ever so much stronger.

“She hasn’t told me about any mission.” Scott was frowning at him.

Virgil hid behind his mug. “Only just came in apparently. She only mentioned it in passing while she was saying goodbye. I have no doubt she will brief you when we get home.”

Gordon was staring at him. He opened his mouth but failed to say anything.

Virgil took another sip and just stared straight back. It took a moment, but eventually Gordon appeared to shake it off, frowning just a little before turning to Scott. “What about you, bro? You’ve always been our leader in the girlfriend department. What’s the count now?”

“Thirty-two.” John was smug behind his own mug of hot chocolate.

His eldest brother shifted in his seat as if suddenly uncomfortable. “Okay, I’m with Virgil on this - shut up, Gordon.”

Gordon held up his hands in all his innocent glory. “Hey, I’m just brotherly bonding around the fire.”

“Go bond with the volcano.” John’s voice was dry. “Or a whale, I hear a few pass through on occasion.”

“Hey, you were the one keeping count.”

“I can’t help it, I’m good with numbers.”

Virgil snorted. “Not good enough. You’re at least two out.”

The glare Scott shot him could have scorched his hair off.

“Don’t worry, Scott, I’m not going to tell them about Petunia.”

“Virgil!”

“What?”

“Shut it or lose it.”

“Hey, I said I wasn’t going to tell them.”

“Tell us what?” Both Alan and Gordon were about ready to fall off their chairs with glee.

John just rolled his eyes.

“About Petunia.”

“Who is Petunia?”

“You’re an idiot, Virg.” Scott’s glare was becoming more resigned and flatter by the second. “I am so gonna let them know about Gertrude now.”

Virgil snorted. “As if I’d care. She really wanted you anyway.”

“Not true, you were her favourite.”

“Yeah, sure, she’d turn to anyone who would give her what she wanted. I just had it more often than you.”

“You planned it that way.”

“I thought you of all people would appreciate a few tactics. With you around, I need all the help I can get.”

“What?”

Okay, so that had come out a little too serious for Petunia talk, but then Virgil’s count was far smaller than thirty-two or thirty-four depending on how you counted. Early on he had tried to get out and about like his eldest brother, but honestly it wasn’t in him. He wasn’t a one-nighter like Scott. Besides standing next to the heir of Tracy Industries, tall and female magnet was like trying to catch moths while standing next to a bug zapper.

“Virgil?”

“Petunia was a goose.”

“What?!” It was choral from both Alan and Gordon and quickly followed by a “Virgil!” from Scott.

“She used to follow him around everywhere about the farm. It was hilarious.

“Yeah, well, Gertrude was goat and she once ate Virgil’s pants. He’s lucky he didn’t lose more.”

Scott and Virgil glared at each other across the heat cube while Gordon and Alan played eyeball tennis between them.

John just drank his chocolate, a vaguely amused expression on his face.

Virgil held his brother’s furious gaze as long as he could, but he had to bite his lip. The moment he realised Scott was doing the same, it became oh so much harder.

Two seconds later he cracked up laughing. Scott followed not a moment after and both of them laughed even harder when they caught sight of the expressions on Gordon and Alan’s faces.

Virgil laughed so hard he had to hold his stitches in place.

Which of course Scott saw and it drew the night to a close as big brother shifted gears into smother brother.

They cleared off the island leaving no mark behind. Gordon clucking like a hen and claiming death threats from Melissa Fisher if they left anything behind.

Making it back to the boat in the dark was easily done, but awkward and a little painful for Virgil and by the time he made it to his bed, he was worn out.

Regardless, he didn’t fall asleep immediately, despite the gentle rocking of the boat. Thoughts of what could be, what could have been and what he actually wanted bounced around the inside of his skull.

It took a long time for them to fall quiet.

-o-o-o-

End Day Two.

Day Three, Part One

[fuckyeahasexual]

A complete guide to how the asexual community is NOT lying about the pathologization of asexuality and how many aces(even young ones)have had their asexuality tried to be“fixed” and “converted back to normalcy”

Trigger warning : Conversion therapy,abuse

As if the so called ace “”discourse””( which has till now involved aphobes and exclusionists comparing ace people to nazis,pedophiles,white supremacists,slave owners,homophobes,  ,talking over ace WOC by white people, telling ace people AND kids to kill themselves,victim blamig and gaslighting ace victims of rape, putting extremely graphic sexual content into asexual tags and sending sexual content to ace minors and adults who are are suffering from sexual trauma even after they told them to STOP ) could not get any worse, we now have these pathetic excuses of human beings accusing ace people of lying about their trauma and abuse just so that they can justify their harassing of ace people.

Im TIRED of seeing these “”highly intellectual people”” keeps repeating bullshit arguments so im gonna make this post addled with appropriate resources and links to handle these two topics:

How asexuality is pathologized

Can the abuse and trauma ace people go through when people try to “convert ace people back to normalcy” and “fix” their asexuality really be called “conversion therapy”?

This is gonna be long,but i hope you will stick with me though this because im going to try as much as possible to make this as source-fuilled and educational for yall. So here we go:

1. Has asexuality really been pathologized?

Short answer,Yes.  Many mental health professionals had consideredasexuality an illness throughout history.There are many articles talking about it.Up till 2013, indicators of asexuality like lack of sexual attraction,sexual fantasies towards other people, lack of interest in sex etc were basically classified as Hypoactive sexual desire disorder in the DSM which was revised just to include that all those indicators WOULD be considered as a “symptom” of HSDD unless a person self identified as “asexual” which wasnt much useful since not everyone(especially young people) might know that they are ace and can be pressured by their peers into going through the “treatment” for HSDD .They did the same thing before they removed homosexuality from the DSM.

Heres the long answer :

Throughout history , asexuality has brought out bigots to talk about how “unnatural” it is and how it obviously is a “mental illness/disorder” bc experiencing sexual attraction is always considered an inherent experience to almost all living beings.There are many medical and psychological articles either directly referring to asexuality as a disorder or referring its main indicators like “lack of sexual attraction,sexual feelings towards other people”etc as a mental disorder.

But the most well known instance of pathologization of asexuality is the  HSDD (Hypoactive sexual desire disorder).It has been in both The International Classification of Diseases and  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders both which are used by mental health professionals and psychologists to diagnose people.

There was a huge pushback against HSDD by asexual activists bc it categorized all indicators of asexuality like lack of sexual attraction,sexual fantasies towards other people and lack of sexual desire etc as a disorder.As a result,  asexuality was officially given an exception in the DSM-V by stating that if a person experiencing all the symptoms of HSDD self ID’d as asexual then they wont be diagnosed with it.This seemed a good enough thing to do and acephobes keep bringing it up to show how “different HSDD is from asexuality” and how “The medical world has “”accommodated”” itself for the comfort of ace people” but this act and the whole concept of a “Hypoactive sexual desire disorder” are considered problematic and have been put through questions not only by ace people, but feminists and activists too . Heres why :

1. The person STILL has to identify as asexual to be not diagnosed.Asexuality still isnt as visible and well known of an orientation so  if a person doesn’t know that they’re asexual, the DSM does no work to sufficiently differentiate between these “sexual disorders” and a sexual identity. so it could very well happen that someone who doesn’t know that they’re asexual is convinced by a therapist that they have a sexual abnormality that needs to be corrected(x)  .Taking into consideration the fact that a lack of sexual attraction is still seen as a sign of “brokenness” etc , the aphobia ace people face from their peers,how sex is seen an inherent part of one’s relationship and the immense number of ace people who experience internalized aphobia, theres a higher chance of ace people being pressurized into lying about not being ace and being made to go through treatment of HSDD .

2. The asexuality exception is not included in the diagnostic criteria, but a different part of the text. The desk reference version, which is the smaller version most psychiatrists will use because the actual DSM is a monster of a book, only contains the diagnostic criteria. So, unless a doctor is very familiar with the update DSM, you could still be diagnosed despite identifying as asexual. (X)

3.The DSM is put out by the APA, an American organization and is not used internationally in ALL countries.The international appx. equivalent to the DSM is the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) where an exception of asexuality is NOT made like they did in DSM-V. So many countries where DSM-V is not followed are free to diagnose ace people with almost no repercussions.

4.There is till NO distinction made between HSDD and asexuality and all indicators of asexuality are still considered “symptoms” of HSDD. the DSM does no work to sufficiently differentiate between these “sexual disorders” and a sexual identity. so it could very well happen that someone who doesn’t know that they’re asexual is convinced by a therapist that they have a sexual abnormality that needs to be corrected(x) Just putting “All these signs are of HSDD unless a person identifies as asexual” is literally the same as saying “Being attracted to the same gender and/or being attracted to more than two genders is a disorder unless a person identifies as gay/bi”.In fact a very very similar thing was done to homosexuality in the DSM before homosexuality was deleted off entirely as a disorder.

5.Im not even gonna get into the fact that alot of people have pointed out how  the big push to keep HSDD in the DSM came from the pharmaceutical companies who need this diagnosis to exist so thatthey can market a drug called Flibanserin and both of these thingshave been called out by both ace as well as non ace feminists bc studies showed it improved very little in terms of sexual satisfaction in its participants and has potentially big risks(x) and  MANY women disinterested in sex(weather ace or not) were pressurized to undergo treatment of HSDD and use flibanserin bc of the misogynist belief that women need to put out more than care about their safety white taking it bc thats not the point of this post.

But just for yalls consideration : Just bc there is a disorder in the DSM doesnt mean that its legit.Female hysteria,homosexuality were considered disorders.As an amazing post here said : “until psychology stops operating in terms of “inappropriate behavior” and starts looking at patients’ experiences of symptoms as stressful and unpleasant, it will be an enforcement of ableism first and an aid to the mentally ill last.”  . Unless someone goes through some trauma which make them LOSE their capability to feel sexual attraction and desire,i’ll consider any “disorder” which automatically assumes lack of sexual attraction and desire “unnatural”, as doubtful .

So  yeah , asexuality still technically remains pathologized and ace people still are at a risk of being diagnosed and being forced/pressurized to undergo treatments which arent usually even that effective and have health risks associated with them.On to the next topic :

2.Can ace people call the trauma and abuse they went through  when people tried to “convert ace people back to normalcy” and “fix” their asexuality  “conversion therapy”?

First off, Read THIS And THIS. Now,

Short answer,Yes. Maybe they might not be under the threat of going through the EXACT conversion therapy which involves basically torture and is legal in like 36/41 states IN AMERICA but then again, so arent those gay people who didnt/dont/wont be living/going to those 36/41 states IN AMERICA but have/are/will be  tried to be “converted back to” straightness by their peers.Any way in which non straight people are forced/pressurized to be converted into straight by so called “professionals” and “medical experts” counts as conversion therapy to me bc at the end of the day it doesnt really matter WHAT word you define it as when those trying to “fix” non straight people’s non straightness view those non straight people as someone who needs “fixing”.

Also, saying that ace people’s experience when their peers were trying to “fix” their asexuality isnt AS bad as what gay people go through when their gayness is tried to be “fixed” is…not a good thing to say.Trauma isnt a competition.Telling a person with a sprained leg that another person has a  fractured leg doesnt make the first person’s sprained leg hurt any less

Heres the long answer :

Here is the thing.The most “well known”  conversion therapy(and in aphobes’ case,the conversion therapy they keep bringing up to discourage ace people from calling their trauma involving attempts to fix them “conversion therapy” ) is the one which is legal in 36 or 41(The data keeps differing from diff sources) states in AMERICA ONLY and basically involves showing homoerotic images and videos to gay/bi people and inflicting some sort of violence/harm on them when them and/or their mind and/or their body shows any sort of interest on such images till they form an aversion to same gender attraction and other forms of torture.I described it as PG rated as possible but if anyone is interested and is NOT at the risk of being triggered they can read the whole process here(x).

Aphobes keep arguing that since no clinic advertises that they will “convert ace people back to normalcy” ,and even IF some ace person IS forced to undergo treatment of HSDD ,their experience doesnt matches the EXACT amount of abuse and trauma gay people go through during conversion therapy, aces arent “allowed” to call their experiences “conversion therapy”.Now , anyone with common sense and general morality will realize how bullshit this is bc aphobes are just putting their american centric rhetorics over ALL aces in THIS WORLD(bc they are ALWAYS considering the american conversion therapy)but i’ll still just prove how WRONG this argument is :

1.This argument is only AMERICA CENTRIC.Aphobes keep saying that since ace people dont go through the exact conversion therapy which is legal in 36/41 states in america,they cant call it “conversion therapy”.Now america is only one country.There are 193 countries in this world.The “valid”Conversion therapy is only there in america.But HOMOPHOBIA is there in ALL countries of this world.Now, If we consider aphobes’ argument as legit, then it would imply that any gay person who suffered through the trauma and abuse of having their identity turned into “straight” by their peers in any country OTHER THAN AMERICA CANNOT call their experiences “Conversion therapy”.That means all the gay people who faced torture in russia (especially in Chechnya)to be “fixed” cannot call their experiences “conversion therapy”.Gay people in Brazil and Jamaica who are tried to be “fixed” cannot call their experiences conversion therapy.I live in south asia,we dont even HAVE any special places dedicated to “convert” gay people.But there are many instances where gay people are hauled to the nearest “religious medical practitioners” who abuse and torture them for WEEKS to “cure” them.I guess those gay people cant even call their experiences “conversion therapy”.THIS IS HOW RIDICULOUS APHOBES SOUND.

2.Not every ace conversion therapy is caused by going through the treatment of HSDD : There are many ace people who have been told that it was their asexuality ITSELF that was a disorder and went through abusive therapies to “cure” it which led to some people ending up self-isolating until they ended up in a psych hospital and some people felt broken and alone after that(x).Many health professionals simply pass off asexuality as some  symptomatic of deeper mental health problem and thus not every ace who might have been tried to be “converted back to normalcy” might have been gone through quite a rough treatment too.

3.Telling people that their trauma isnt “”really that bad”” isnt a good thing.Telling them that their trauma  dosent really “”qualify”” enough to be considered “”real”” conversion therapy isnt good.Oppression and traumas arent a competition.The abuse and torture gay people go through during conversion therapy isnt gonna make the trauma ace people go through “better” or less severe.Telling women that “at least they arent being human trafficked and beaten by their husbands everyday like in middle east” isnt gonna make them feel better when they are catcalled or sexually harassed at work.If ace people are tried to be “”fixed”” by being forced/pressurized undergo “” treatments”” by so called “professionals” and “medical experts” , it counts as conversion therapy to me bc at the end of the day, ace people’s orientation is still being seen as “something to be fixed into straightness”.

So yeah, ace people CAN call all the abuse they go through to be “fixed” of their asexuality “conversion therapy”.Now that we are done, here are a few examples of ace people talking about their fears and/or experiences about conversion therapy which i havent provided already

If you really want to respect lgbtqa people who have gone through conversion therapy,try to make this world a better place for lgbtqa people so that their identity isnt seen as something to be fixed.Telling group of people you are bigoted against that they cant call their experiences of tried to be fixed “conversion therapy” isnt gonna do SHIT to help the community you think you are trying to protect.Saying that No ace person has EVER went to conversion therapy bc there are “valid proofs” is disgusting.

Asexuality IS a highly marginalized orientation and all your refutes against it WILL be debunked and shot down bc we have sources and real people’s accounts on our sides which is supported by many prominent lgbtqa organizations across the world.All aphobes have is bigotry and a bunch of followers who eat up whatever they say without applying any critical thinking skills to it.

[sodrippy]

thank u legend @honeyreynolds for tagging me!!

1) do you make your own bed? no but not bc someone else does it for me, i just dont....make my bed...judge me but i dont care about folding and laying out my blankets when im just gonna come back in 15 hours to crash out

2) what’s your favorite number? i think it used to be 16 or 18 but now 7 has a very fresh spicy vibe 

3) what’s your job? im a vfx artist! soon to be an unemployed vfx artist but until then i work as a junior artist in the compositing department

4) can you parallel park? when i was taking driving lessons my instructor said i was really good at it but sometimes if its a tight park between two cars ill half do it and then decide its not worth it and just leave grjdfcn

5) a job you had that would surprise people? ive only had like 3 jobs, i think the most surprising one is my current job actually

6) do you think aliens are real? dude duh

7) can you drive a manual car? i WISH

8) what’s your guilty pleasure? i think im pretty embarrassing on main already anyways, maybe though like reading fic counts as a guilty pleasure only bc i only read a very very niche type of fic and sometimes i will go back to years-old shows and pairings

9) tattoos? ive got the lyra constellation with some little flowers, and medusa on the back of my arm, and im biding my time to get some new additions (next on the cards is swords)

10) favorite color: how can i pick one bro it depends...i love turquoise and seafoam tones, but for clothes in particular im a sucker for that mustard/ochre yellow vibe, love me a good deep green too, i cannot choose

11) things people do that drive you crazy: seconded about grown ass people who just dont clean up after themselves but in particular people who use bathroom sinks and leave the whole fucking counter wet? what the fuck are you doing bro?? you bathing in that sink?? whys the whole place look like a fish just tried to escape your clutches?

12) any phobias? bugs. barring bees, if youve got more than four legs stay the Fuck away from me thank you!

13) favorite childhood sport? i used to play field hockey which was so fun, and i Loved baseball when we played it in high school sport but they didnt have any leagues or anything when i was a kid unfortunately. idk if gymnastics counts but i loved that too, only it wouldnt have mattered if i had been able to continue it bc of my back problems and all 

14) do you talk to yourself? always babe!

15) what movies do you adore? i dont really watch movies bc i cant focus for that long, but genre-wise the only one im not a fan of is horror. theres heaps of movies that if you mention them ill remember how much i love them, but i can only remember like. the mummy and potc right now fdjnbn

16) do you like doing puzzles? i do but im really not smart enough to figure them out, and i absolutely hate doing anything of the sort in front of other people

17) favorite kind of music? i shift a lot between indie-pop and rock, as well as folk, but lets be honest my fave kind of music is simply hozier

18) tea or coffee? coffee babey! the only tea i like is my ma’s chai, and ok lemon-ginger lipton when im sick

19) what was the first thing you remember you wanted to be when you grew up? probably a writer, but lawyer is also up there as one of my longest-standing dream careers

id like to tag @gaylukecrains @pendraegon @lesbianbobbiedraper @valentimanes and @lizortech

[thebibliosphere]

heelsandswords replied to your post “It’s…it’s an experience, when you go get extensive body work done (I...”

@thebibliosphere sometime when you have the chance, could you explain what muscle adhesions means?

@heelsandswords​ it's somewhere in my health tag I think (who knows, tumblr deleted a lot of them) but a muscle adhesion, as it has been described to me by my health care providers, is like fibrous scar where the damaged muscle tissue has sort of stuck together, which decreases the muscle function, and weakens its ability to contract and move like it ought, which decreases movement, circulation etc etc which hinders the ability for it to heal properly.

You can google what they look like if you’re not squeamish about medical diagrams, though I know some people are so I wont insert any here.

They form naturally as a result of injury and some surgeries too, as a means of preventing further injury to the area while it heals, but for some of us, our bodies go wrong and they can form on healthy tissue as well.

So in the context of my own body, I don’t just have sore knots like you might get from working out a little too hard or waking up at a bad angle that most people can stretch out or heal from with rest, (though those are certainly painful too, and can turn into an adhesion if you don’t remedy the thing injuring you, so don’t ignore those folks!) but rather that due to an inflammation response my body decided all the tissue was damaged and tried to help me by forming protective scar tissue which uh, sort of… fused my muscles together I guess.

It made exercise and the “life style changes” suggested to me by doctors virtually impossible, and actually damaging to my health, as every time I tried to exercise I’d just rip the scar tissue and the muscle underneath, which would cause more inflammation, which in turn would cause more scar tissue to form and round and round we go. I only started to get real relief when Physio Man realized what was happening and put a halt to my physical therapy in favor of working on breaking up the scar tissue through manual manipulation (he does a mixture of deep tissue massage, acupressure, shiatsu, mysofascial release and probably a bunch of other things I’m not aware of, to try and help manage my pain. And he’ll vary techniques throughout the session in response to what he finds in my body while working. It’s been life changing in terms of reducing my pain.) so that the scar tissue could be gently worked away to let the healthy tissue form and be kept in good condition without immediately being subjected to strenuous exercise they weren’t strong enough for. We did six weeks of this until he deemed it safe enough to try working on stretches again without risk of causing me further injury, and when an area proved to not respond well to the physical therapy, we’d switch it up again.

At present my neck is still in the process of “splinting” itself following the neck injury I sustained in November, and I’m profoundly aware of the muscle adhesions that have formed there while the soft tissue heals. I can feel them pulling all the other muscles and making things hurt that haven’t hurt in a while, and while it feels counter intuitive to leave them there, they are a necessary part of the healing procedure for now, and we’re not going out of our way to remove them just yet. (If any of you are in a similar situation, I’ve found heat treatment helps a lot) In another 4-6 weeks I will hopefully be well enough to start doing physical therapy again and continue my progress, but in the meantime, I’ll settle for pain reduction and call it a win lol.

So if you always have a muscle knot you can never seem to get rid of, chances are it might have formed into a minor adhesion that could do with a little care to get rid of. A competent massage therapist can help greatly with this, and it doesn’t even have to be intensive. Just a little bit of self care before things get out of hand can go a long way, and not ignoring persistent pain when it starts is a big part of that. Also if your doctor prescribes exercise, start slow. A lot of people jump in thinking if they punish the muscles they’ll work faster, which is uh, not really the case, even for able bodied people. They’re just fortunate enough to be able to heal more quickly from their injuries.

I hope that explained it well? I’m afraid I only know how to explain it in context of what it means to have them, not like, the actual know how or science behind it.

[erinaceina]

20 for 2020

Thanks to @notasapleasure for tagging me. :D

Tagging anyone who feels like it.

1. Do you make your bed? Most of the time, yes, except when I’m running late or there’s a cat in the middle of it.

2. What’s your favorite number? 7.

3. What’s your job? Oh, this is a bit complicated. Job #1 is reading academic articles about the Middle Ages, writing synopses of them and cataloguing them in a database that allows researchers, students etc to find articles relevant to their interests. Unfortunately, they don’t have enough money to employ me full-time, so I also have job #2: working for the civil service administering payments to farmers and landholders for doing environmentally useful stuff. Most of the money comes from the EU, so who knows what will happen after Brexit?

4. If you could, would you go back to school? Oh yes, especially with the same caveats @notasapleasure gave (full time, for the pleasure of learning, no financial worries). Think of all the dead languages out there! But, to be honest, I’m reaching the point where I’d even be glad to do a professional qualification because I need to learn something new.

5. Can you parallel park? Nope. 

6. A job you had which would surprise people? McDonald’s? it was my first job and I smelt of burgers continually for an entire summer. It’s not really that surprising, though. The next summer, I worked a bunch of temp jobs including packing medical supplies, which was actually really fun.

7. Do you think aliens are real? Yes, in the sense that I think it’s highly likely that there’s other life (intelligent or otherwise) out there in the universe. I don’t, however, think that they’re wandering round cornfields in the middle of the night with a lawnmower making crop circles or interfering in the government. Humans are quite strange enough all by themselves.

8. Can you drive a manual car? No. I can’t drive any kind of car. I really need to learn, but other things keep getting in the way.

9. What’s your guilty pleasure? I’m trying to feel less guilty about stuff and I’m not going to apologise for reading romance novels or singing along to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack or any of my somewhat cheesy tastes in entertainment. I guess if I had to choose something... so-bad-it’s-good takeaway pizza. I like the fancy, authentically Italian kind with sophisticated toppings where you can taste the freshness of the tomatoes and the charring on the crust, but honestly on a Friday night, often what I most want is cheesy takeaway pizza with toppings that would send an Italian into a screaming rage (not pineapple though because that’s terrible).

10. Tattoos? 12, I think. On my legs, a jar of pansies, a mouse with some oak leaves and acorns, some fox-and-cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca) flowers and a sparrowhawk with lily of the valley (which is a symbol of hope renewed but also very poisonous, a combination that I find very satisfying, symbolically speaking). On my left arm, a star of David (something of a personal fuck-you to the far right after the Charlottesville shit storm), a strawberry and leaves, wildflowers (blackberries, foxgloves, poppies) and forget-me-nots. On my right arm, a traditional swallow, a bee, a wild strawberry plant and a bigger overgrown-garden-themed piece with a weasel, dog roses, hawthorn and a great tit. Basically, I’m turning myself into a wildwood, but I really want my next tattoo to be Lymond-themed.

11. Favorite color? Purple. I also really like colours like burgundy and dark petrol blue. I’m surprised to find that I like the ochre yellow that’s everywhere at the moment a lot because I usually hate yellow.

12. Things people do that drive you crazy? Listen to music out loud on public transport. It’s so rude and it makes me feel like someone’s peeled my head and is just poking my brain incessantly. Also, and I know this is weird and specific, people who feel the need to tell you continuously how much they hate cats when they know you’re a cat person. There was one woman in work who literally told me that she’d rather have a taxidermied cat than a living one. Great? Thanks? Because I don’t live in dread of coming home to find that one of my cats is ill or dead or anything. Thanks.

13. Any Phobias? Spiders. Why do they need so many legs and eyes? Why? I hate absolutely everything about them. Possibly a fear of heights, but that may just be vertigo and really poor sense of balance. I also have a phobia about death that has literally left me sitting up in bed screaming in terror in the middle of the night - and, because I tend to overthink things anyway, this extends not just to a fear of my own death and the death of my family/friends but literally to utter despair at the thought of the end of the universe in however many billion or trillion years. I read an article that said that most people have a sort of filter in their mind that stops them associating images of death with themselves and I guess my brain just doesn’t have that filter. So that’s always fun. On a lighter note, as a small kid I was terrified of chimneys.

14. Favorite childhood sport? Does swimming count? Because I loved swimming and still do, even though I don’t get the chance to go very often. If you mean team sports, I guess hockey. I have very poor spatial awareness (premature baby with a slightly miswired brain) and I’m not a natural team player, so most sports at school were an utter nightmare.

15. Do you talk to yourself? Pretty much continually, unless I’m talking to the cats.

16. What movie do you adore? The Lord of the Rings trilogy, obviously. Death of Stalin, although it’s much, much darker than my usual tastes. Pride (2014).

17. Do you like doing puzzles? I mainly like doing map puzzles, so I guess I just like fiddling round with maps. Otherwise, I’d rather sit in the same room as people doing the puzzle and read a book and occasionally move a piece around.

18. Favorite kind of music? All sorts, really (folk, classical, metal, cheesy pop especially). I’m enjoying @notasapleasure’s folk recs, particularly Offa Rex.

19. Tea or coffee? Mainly tea (English breakfast with milk) but I usually have a latte in the morning when I’m at work.

20. The first thing you remember you wanted to be when you grew up? An astronaut, I think.