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sunandflame · 2 days ago

Note

hey lovely 🥰

hope you’re having a peaceful day. i was wondering if you’d feel like writing something where the reader gets married and then goes on a very dreamy (and spicy) honeymoon? 🌸🥺i’m getting married soon and feeling all kinds of butterflies 🫣

you can choose the character. i adore them all 💌

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding, sweetheart! 🥺✨ That’s such a beautiful and exciting time—full of fluttery nerves, happy tears, and stolen kisses. Since you adore all the characters (which I deeply respect 😌), how about I give you a dreamy, romantic, and spicy honeymoon piece featuring a character known for unexpected tenderness beneath a hard exterior?

Let’s go with Sir Crocodile.

He’s powerful, intimidating—and yet the image of him being soft only for his new spouse? Ugh. Delicious contrast. Think: private island, silk sheets, his rings trailing heat over bare skin, possessive murmurs like “Mine now. Forever.”

Silk and Sand

Warnings: nsfw, smut, fluff

Word Count: 1600~

Pairing: Sir Crocodile x Wife!Reader

crossposted on AO3

The world had narrowed to the gentle lapping of waves against polished stone and the hush of warm wind sweeping over the villa’s private terrace. Somewhere below, the sea shimmered gold from the setting sun—but you barely noticed.

Because he was looking at you like that again.

The sky had turned to honey, dusk rolling in slow and warm. You wore nothing but a silk robe—ivory, sheer, tied in a lazy knot at your waist—and your skin still glowed from the bath he’d drawn for you earlier. The scent of sandalwood and jasmine clung to you. Your steps were silent as you crossed the polished floor, barefoot, but his eyes still found you. They always did.

Crocodile sat on the edge of the villa’s massive bed, bare-chested, slacks undone, cigar forgotten between his fingers. His scarred chest caught the light, and the contrast of his golden hook against his tanned skin made your breath catch. He was sprawled like he owned the room. Like he owned you.

Maybe he did.

“You’re staring,” you teased, leaning on the doorframe.

He exhaled slowly, smoke curling like a secret between you. “That’s because I married a goddess.”

You flushed—caught off guard even now, three days after the wedding. After vows whispered before an ancient altar, after nights tangled in each other and mornings slower than time. Even now, he still had a way of making you feel like something sacred. Something his.

“You haven’t stopped looking at me since we got here,” you said softly.

“I’ve earned the right,” he murmured, eyes dark, hooded. “I married you.”

You let your robe slip just slightly off one shoulder. “Have you?”

The look he gave you was pure possession.

He stood. Walked toward you like a slow, rolling storm. His cologne—sandalwood, clove, a hint of sea salt—wrapped around you like silk. When he stopped inches from you, the heat of his body raised goosebumps on your skin.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing, dressed like that?”

“You like it.”

“I love it,” he said, voice low and raspy. “But I love what’s underneath more.”

His hook touched the tie at your waist—gentle, deliberate—and tugged. The knot came loose. The robe parted. His eyes lowered, molten with want.

He stepped behind you, one hand flesh, the other cool metal, sliding down your sides. You gasped softly, leaning back into him as he pulled the silk from your shoulders. It slipped down your arms and pooled at your feet. His lips brushed the nape of your neck, reverent.

“All mine now,” he growled.

You shivered.

“You nervous?” he asked next, rough against your ear.

“No,” you whispered. “Just... overwhelmed. Happy.”

The air between you charged, heavy with the weight of promises made three nights ago, now about to be kept. Crocodile stood behind you, hands dragging slowly down your bare waist. His hook remained at your side—dangerous, gleaming—but his other hand? Hot. Steady. Possessive.

“I’ll be gentle,” he murmured, voice a slow purr against your ear. “At first.”

His teeth grazed your neck, and your knees nearly buckled.

He chuckled—low and pleased. “Don’t fall apart on me yet, habibi.”

You were lifted before you could reply. His arm slid beneath your knees, the metal curve of his hook pressing cold against your thigh as he carried you to the bed. He laid you down like you were priceless. Sacred. And yet his gaze said he’d ruin you before the moon rose.

He removed the rest of his clothes slowly—purposefully—watching your eyes the entire time. You took in the thick lines of muscle, the broad chest, the scar that crossed his torso like a war medal. And lower…

Your mouth went dry.

He saw. Smirked. Crawled over you with the grace of a desert lion, hair tousled and golden eyes dark with heat.

“Tell me,” he said, voice husky, “do you want me slow?” He dipped his head to kiss your throat. “Or rough?” He bit, just enough to sting. You gasped.

“Both,” you whispered. “Start slow. End… however you want.”

He growled something in a language you didn’t understand—and you felt it more than heard it.

His mouth found your chest, warm and wet and patient. He sucked one nipple between his lips, tongue teasing until you arched, breath broken. His hook braced your waist, cold contrast against the heat of his tongue.

“You’re so sensitive,” he rasped, switching sides, lips wet with you. “So soft.”

Your fingers clawed at his back. “Crocodile—please—”

“I am pleasing you,” he said, licking a slow stripe down your stomach. “Don’t rush me.”

But you felt the tension in him. Barely leashed. Coiled tight.

When his mouth reached your thighs, you shuddered. He opened them with a nudge of his hook—gentle but firm—and dragged two fingers through your wetness.

He hissed.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Already this wet for me?” He glanced up, eyes glowing. “You want me to taste you, wife?”

You nodded frantically. “Yes. Please.”

And gods—he did.

Crocodile buried his face between your legs like a starving man. His tongue moved slow, then fast, then teasing again—drawing whimpers from you like silk unraveling. He sucked on your clit until your thighs trembled, and when you came, it was with your hands in his hair and his name sobbed against your wrist.

He didn’t stop.

Another orgasm hit you too fast, too hard. He dragged it out, lips never leaving you, until you were gasping his name and pushing weakly at his shoulders.

Only then did he rise, mouth wet, eyes burning.

“Still overwhelmed?” he asked, voice wrecked with restraint.

“Please,” you begged. “Need you inside—”

He kissed you, deep and possessive. You could taste yourself on his tongue. When he finally slid inside you, it was slow. Torturous. He filled you completely, holding himself still as you clutched at him, thighs trembling.

“Mine,” he rasped against your mouth. “Say it.”

“Yours,” you breathed. “Always yours.”

His control snapped.

He began to move—hard, deep, claiming every inch of you. The bed rocked with each thrust. Your moans turned to cries, and his name became the only word you could remember. He kissed your cheek, your shoulder, the curve of your neck. He marked you—softly, sweetly, then with teeth.

When you came again, he followed, spilling into you with a groan that vibrated through his whole body. He didn’t pull out. He didn’t move.

He just held you.

~~~

You woke to the hush of waves and the warmth of breath on your shoulder.

The sun hadn’t yet risen fully—just a pale gold glow bleeding through the gauzy curtains that swayed in the breeze. The sheets beneath you were tangled silk, still warm from the heat of the night. Every inch of your body ached, but not unpleasantly.

He was still there. Still inside the bed, and still impossibly close.

Crocodile's arm was wrapped around your waist, his bare chest pressed to your back. His hook—removed sometime during the night—rested nearby on the nightstand, but his remaining hand was sprawled possessively across your stomach.

You shifted slightly, only to feel him press closer, groaning against your skin.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he muttered, voice thick with sleep.

“Nowhere,” you whispered, smiling into the pillow. “Just stretching.”

“Mm.” He kissed the top of your shoulder. “Don’t.”

You giggled softly. “You can’t stop me from stretching.”

“You're sore, aren't you?” he murmured, smugness threading into his drowsy tone.

You flushed. “...A little.”

He chuckled. “Good.”

You rolled onto your back slowly, and he moved with you—elbow propped, gaze sleepy and warm. Without the usual tension in his brow, he looked younger. Softer. Unarmored.

“You look smug,” you whispered.

“I’m married,” he said, leaning down to kiss your collarbone, “to the most beautiful creature on the sea.”

His lips trailed higher, warm and slow. He kissed your jaw, your cheek, the tip of your nose. When he reached your mouth, the kiss was so gentle you almost cried. Lazy. Lingering. The kind of kiss that made time irrelevant.

You curled into him. “How long can we stay here?”

“As long as we want,” he said without hesitation. “I told them not to expect us back for weeks.”

You blinked. “Weeks?”

“You think I waited all this time just to have you for three days?” he drawled. “No, habibi. I plan to ruin you properly.”

You snorted, muffling your laughter in his chest. “You're awful.”

“I’m perfect,” he said, tugging the covers higher over you both, “and you’re not leaving this bed until I say so.”

You yawned against his shoulder. “Good. Because I wasn’t planning to.”

His hand found yours beneath the covers, fingers interlacing lazily. “Sleep more. I’ll wake you when the champagne arrives. Then I’ll draw us a bath,” he said. “Then you’ll eat something.” He nuzzled the small of your back. “Then I’ll have you again.”

You laughed into the pillow, heat rising in your face. “I didn’t realize I’d married a tyrant.”

“You married a man who waited too damn long to call you his.”

You turned, and he caught your face in his hand—gentle, slow, reverent. His thumb brushed your lower lip. And when he kissed you again—full, sweet, unhurried—you felt the weight of forever in it.

The rest of the day passed in sun-drenched blur. Silk robes and fresh fruit. Long baths and longer kisses. A nap curled against his chest, your legs over his, his hand on your thigh as he murmured things you only half-remembered, words that sank into your bones like heat.

And when night fell again, you returned to those same sheets—already warm, already familiar—with the man who made the world stop when he looked at you like you were everything.

Taglist: @tomatop @hethia @kisechiii @thatanonymouschocolate @justmylifeme @sagyunaro @celestedangelica @cherubyim @cryptip0wer-blog @lessie-oxj

#sunnys work #one piece #sir crocodile #sir crocodile x reader #sir crocodile x yn #sir crocodile x y/n #sir crocodile x you #sir crocodile x oc #one piece sir crocodile #one piece crocodile #one piece smut #crocodile x reader #crocodile x you #crocodile x y/n #crocodile x oc #crocodile x yn #divider by cafekitsune

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soulsforsales · 3 days ago

Text

“Gotham Winters”

But your boyfriend makes them better<3

Jason’s hand sneaks under your hoodie—his hoodie, technically, but yours since you stole it from his drawer last week—and settles flat on your stomach. His thumb strokes the curve of your waist and you can feel his breath against your neck.

The morning sun teases your sleep. Sunlight pours in through the curtains and despite the sun being high in the sky, you can almost instantly feel the chill crawl under your skin.

Gotham winters are usually brutal. But this moment feels peaceful. Cozy, even.

You hum, too tired to speak and lean more into Jason, your back pressed to his bare chest.

Jason moves his palm, brushing his fingers against the underside of your breast.

You let the smile take over your lips.

With eyes still closed and mind still fuzzy with sleep, you mumble. “Jay…”

You can feel Jason grin against your skin. “Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Jason replies, voice low, lips brushing the dip where your neck meets your shoulder before he plants a kiss.

Your smile widens. “Doesn’t feel like nothing.”

His arm moves, wrapping around your middle now to pull you closer.

Jason presses another kiss to your shoulder before burying his face against your neck. He inhales your scent like he needs it to remind him this isn’t a dream, that you’re real and he has woken up with you in his arms yet again.

“Mhm. Maybe I’m just appreciating my girl.”

You chuckle, he feels it reverberate through his chest. “This early in the morning?”

Jason smiles, wrapping you up in both of his arms now. Both of yours eyes still closed and sleep-heavy.

“Of course, it’s the first thing I wanna do everyday.”

It’s not what Jason had wanted to say. But you’re warm in his arms. And even though he hasn’t opened his eyes yet, all he can see is the image of you.

He can feel the sun on his skin, feel the shift in his arms when you huddle the blanket even closer to both of you, hear the curtains shift with the wind. He can feel the way your chest rises and falls with each soft breath.

There are no sounds other than those of home.

His home.

And Jason Todd never thought he’d have that. He’s still scared every second that he’ll lose it one day, that something this good—something this blessed cannot be all his.

But for now you’re lying next to him. And his head is quiet.

So he lets himself feel without being terrified of it.

Jason doesn’t take the words back when you turn in his hold to face him fully. He finally opens his eyes and sees you.

Your hair is messy, face warm with that post sleep look. And the sunlight from the window makes you glow, makes your hair look like a halo above your head.

And Jason agrees, because what else could you be if not some Angel sent by God to help him redeem himself?

You make it feel like he was never a sinner, like his hands aren’t drenched in blood. The way you look at him, the way you kiss him, the way you treat him.

Jason might just start believing in God again if he has given someone like you to someone like him.

“You mean that?” You ask, grinning cheek to cheek. And Jason can’t help but smile at your smile. He’s weak like that.

He rolls his eyes before propping himself up on one elbow.

“Yeah.”

That’s enough to make your whole face light up and Jason? He still can’t believe he’s the one who gets to make you feel like that. The one who makes you look like that.

He doesn’t understand why you love him so, but he’s glad you do.

“Sap.” You mutter, hiding behind the blanket to hide your blush.

Jason huffs through his nose, something almost close to a laugh.

“Oh, yeah? It’s just the truth, baby.”

You roll your eyes, even if you’re smiling so hard your cheeks are beginning to hurt.

You pull the blanket down to say something, probably give him a snarky remark even when you’re blushing down to your neck.

But before you can, Jason leans down to kiss you.

He couldn’t help it. He never can. Not when it’s you looking at him like that—like he’s the most annoying yet the most loveable person in the world. When you see him and smile like he’s your whole world.

It makes Jason feel like he might be worth something, after all.

You kiss him back, cupping his jaw with one hand while Jason cups your face with both.

Despite the chilly winters, it’s Jason’s kiss that gives you goosebumps.

It’s the way he kisses you. Like he can’t wait to feel your lips against his, like it’s a prayer, need and promise all in one.

When Jason pulls back, his nose brushes against yours and he’s smiling—the real, soft, die-for kind of smile that only you get.

You look up at him.

At his tousled hair, the dark strands stick up in every direction and the white tuft falls over his forehead that’s relaxed for once. His blue-green eyes glow with something otherworldly. And the sunlight catches on the scar on his cheek, you brush it with your thumb.

And then, you say the only words that can embody everything he makes you feel.

“I love you.”

Jason blinks, his smile faltering ever so slightly but his eyes—they glow brighter, like something in his chest cracked open.

This isn’t the first time you’ve said these words, and it sure as hell won’t be the last but whenever you do, Jason looks at you like this.

Like you’re doing something wrong. Like he isn’t sure he deserves them.

But then, like every time, his expression turns so unbearably soft that you almost fear he might cry.

“Who’s the sap now?”

You can only roll your eyes at that, pushing him away with no actual motive of creating distance.

Jason pulls you closer, tucks you against his chest and kisses the side of your head. Then your cheek. Then whispers, with the most sincerity you’ve ever heard from him.

“I love you more, princess.”

Gotham winters might be brutal. But with Jason they’re always warm.

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writingsoftarnishedsilver · 2 days ago

Text

Almost, Always | Sebastian Sallow x Reader

Chapter Three

← Previous Chapter Next Chapter →

A story of almosts, maybes, and finallys. You and Sebastian Sallow have loved each other for years, just never at the right time.

Words: ~3,300

Series Tags: Modern AU, Post-Hogwarts, Auror!Sebastian Sallow, Cursebreaker!MC, Modern Magical AU, Female Reader Insert, Mid-Size / Plus-Size Female Protagonist, Friends to Lovers, Long-Term Mutual Pining, Slow Burn Romance, Missed Timing, Second Chances, Grief and Recovery, Hurt/Comfort, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Body Image Issues, Fluff, Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending

Content Warnings: Sexual Assault, Trauma, Abortion (Non-Descriptive), Strong Emotional Themes

Chapter Track: Falling Away With You, Muse

Special thanks to @sunnyrealist for beta-ing the plot of this story and @dreamy-gal-30 for beta-ing the chapter drafts! I could not do this without you!

You, Age 20

The air in the tomb was dry, thick with the scent of dust and sand. You moved carefully, wandlight bobbing in rhythm with your slow steps. The humidity of the upper ruins had given way to a creeping cold down here.

Your hand hovered steady over the crumbling reliefs etched into the stone walls. The carvings were Minoan-inspired, but the language beneath them had Akkadian roots, a hybridization you were still working to decode. Whoever built this place had borrowed heavily from multiple magical traditions.

You crouched beside a mosaic set into the floor, blue and gold tile caked in sand, and reached for the leather-bound notebook tucked into your satchel. You jotted a note in the margin.

Section Four. Tile pattern repeats, likely a curse trigger. Possible pressure plate?

“Curse architecture built to last forever,” your supervisor had told you during orientation. “Layered wards. Traps that reset. Think like a sadist and you’ll live longer.”

Her voice echoed in your mind as you stepped around the mosaic with practiced precision, heart hammering against your ribs. It wasn’t quite fear anymore, but the pulse of adrenaline. After two years of fieldwork, you’d learned how to live with it. The constant knowledge that one wrong move could be the last.

You moved deeper into the tomb, passing beneath a narrow archway etched with faded script and the half-preserved image of a woman holding a wand in one hand and scales in the other. A judge, perhaps.

The tunnel beyond was more intact than you’d anticipated. A ribcage of stone columns held up the vaulted ceiling, dust drifting in lazy sheets through the shaft of your wandlight. You passed through, slowly, eyes scanning every groove, every gap between the bricks.

Then, just ahead, your light caught on something.

A glint. Thin. Metallic.

You stopped cold.

A tripwire.

You lowered yourself to the floor, boots scraping lightly against the worn stone, and leaned in to inspect it. The wire was anchored with old solder, but someone had reinforced it recently with magically bonded copper. Local work. Likely black market.

You swore under your breath.

This wasn’t just a historical site anymore. Someone else had been here. Possibly still was.

You muttered a revelio and watched as lines of warding magic bloomed across the thread, illuminating the web of spells it triggered: paralysis hex, concussive burst, maybe worse. A layer cake of consequences.

You straightened slowly, pulse hammering behind your ribs. One step back. Then another.

Your boot hit something that clicked.

Too late.

The floor beneath you shifted with a deep, mechanical groan as stone slabs slid into new positions.

You turned, but the passage you’d come through was already sealing itself shut, dust spilling down like rain as the wall slammed into place with a deafening thud.

Shit.

You pivoted and sprinted forward, wand raised, just as the ceiling behind you began to crack apart. A barrage of darts shot from the walls, fast and precise. You threw yourself into a side alcove, cast Protego on instinct, and felt the force of them ping off your shield like hail on glass.

You couldn’t go back. Couldn't stay put.

And the tomb knew it.

Stone groaned again—grinding gears embedded deep in the walls, waking for the first time in who knew how long. Dust and mortar showered you from the ceiling. Somewhere ahead, you heard another snap of metal. A door unlocking if you were lucky. A trap springing if you were realistic.

"Lumos maxima!"

Your light flared, catching a small stairwell at the far end of the chamber, half-buried under collapsed debris. A way out. Maybe.

You ran.

Your legs burned, boots slipping on gravel and bone-dry sand. The stairs curved in a tight spiral, barely wide enough for one person, and halfway up you caught the glitter of another tripwire.

You jumped over it mid-stride, heart in your throat, and didn’t slow down until you burst through a narrow stone doorway that led outside, lightheaded and sweating.

A wall of dust and dry heat chased you out, screaming through the gap like a living thing.

You stumbled forward and hit the ground hard, knees first, then palms—sand digging into your skin, biting into the cuts already torn open on your hands. The wind caught in your ears. A deafening whoosh of air and grit and crumbling stone.

Then nothing. Just the sound of your own breath, ragged and loud in the stillness.

You made it.

The tomb’s exit, half-swallowed by the desert, sunburnt and ancient, gaped behind you like the mouth of something that hadn’t eaten in centuries and was very nearly satisfied.

You collapsed onto your back with a long, shaking exhale, blinking up at the sky. Bright, cloudless blue stretched above you, so sharp it made your eyes water. You tasted sand in your teeth and blood on your lip. You’d skinned your elbow, bruised your ribs, and lost a whole page of notes somewhere down in the stairwell.

But you were alive.

“Fuck me,” you muttered to no one. “That was close.”

A shadow passed overhead, a vulture, maybe. Or just a cloud you’d imagined. You didn’t move right away. Just lay there in the heat and let your heartbeat slow down and the adrenaline fade, leaving behind the telltale throb in your joints and the ache in your legs.

You should have been shaken. Maybe you were. But this? This part? You loved it.

The adrenaline, the puzzles, the split-second decisions. The heart-pounding rush of surviving something that absolutely should have killed you. It was the same thrill that made you want to be an Auror. The same rush you’d chased back at school, shoulder to shoulder with Sebastian, racing headlong into chaos with only instinct, trust, and a half-baked plan between you and disaster.

He lived for moments like that. And you did too.

But then there was the paperwork. The endless artifact cataloguing. The diplomatic briefings with tight-lipped supervisors who’d never set foot inside a collapsing tomb. The long nights cross-referencing dead languages in bad lighting.

And that was the part about cursebreaking that you hated. The part that made you wonder, sometimes, why you hadn’t just become an Auror after all. Why you hadn’t gone with Sebastian. Why you’d said yes to a job that so often felt like a waiting room between moments of clarity.

But at least out here, you weren’t torturing yourself trying to pretend you didn’t still love him.

You sat there for a minute longer, hand reaching instinctively for your satchel. Your fingers brushed the cracked leather of your notebook, but you passed over it. Instead, you pulled out your phone. Thumb swiped the screen. No signal.

Of course.

You stared at it anyway, breath still shaky. You always wanted to talk to him first after you made it out of something like this. He’d understand the thrill of it, the madness. It was the kind of story he’d eat up with a crooked grin and a thousand questions.

But he wasn’t here to tell.

You locked the screen and let the phone fall into your lap. For a second, you thought about lying back again and just letting the sun bake the exhaustion out of your bones, but basecamp would be expecting you soon, and someone would sound an alert if you didn’t check in by dusk.

So you stood, slow and stiff, brushing sand from your trousers and tugging your gear into place. The tomb was silent now. The trap had reset. The dust was already beginning to settle over the stones like it had never been disturbed.

And wasn’t that just the way of things?

You turned toward the horizon and began the walk back, sand crunching under your boots and the phantom sound of Sebastian’s voice echoing somewhere in your chest.

Camp was a half hour away, maybe more with the heat and the weight of fatigue pulling at your limbs. The sun was sinking low now, casting everything in gold and rust, and the wind had picked up just enough to sting your cheeks with dry grit.

You kept walking.

You passed the jagged rocks that marked the ridge, then the weathered outcrop where the local team had set up signal beacons weeks ago, now half-buried in sand.

The first torches were being lit when you finally reached camp, their flickering light casting long shadows across the canvas tents and makeshift pathways. The air smelled faintly of roasted meat, soot, and dust.

A few heads turned as you passed—nods, quick once-overs, someone offering a tired, “You good?”

You nodded. “Fine. Just a collapse. North tunnel. Nothing major.”

Nobody pressed. You were all used to bruises and near-misses by now.

Inside your tent, you peeled off your gear piece by piece, hands stiff and sore. Your shirt clung to your back, damp with sweat and dust, and your trousers were streaked with sandstone grit and dried blood from a shallow cut on your thigh you hadn’t even registered until now.

You sat down hard on your cot and exhaled.

The tent was dim, lit only by the spill of golden light through the canvas flap and the soft glow of a lantern swinging from a hook. Your mirror hung crooked above the footlocker, scratched and warped at the edges from too many field packs and transport jostles.

You caught your reflection and paused.

Not the same girl who left Hogwarts. The sharp lines of adolescence had blurred into womanhood. Your hips were fuller now, your arms softer, your face a little rounder in the cheeks.

You leaned forward slightly, tugged your shirt away from your skin, angled your body in the mirror like that might make a difference.

It didn’t.

You tried not to care. You tried not to hear the voice in your head whispering he never felt that way about you back then, and there’s certainly no chance now.

You rubbed at your face, trying to shake the thought loose, and failing.

Sebastian had never once commented on your body, but you’d seen the pattern in the girls he’d snogged back at school. The Samantha Dales of the world, slim and polished and perfect. Girls who looked effortless in skirts and who never seemed to worry about how they took up space. Girls who didn’t stumble over their words or laugh too loud or tug self-consciously at the hems of their jumpers.

You didn’t resent them. You just… weren’t them.

Getting to your feet, you grabbed your towel from where it was slung over the corner of your trunk and turned toward the showers, muscles aching with every step. All you wanted was to rinse off the tomb dust, scrub the dried blood from your leg, and stand under the water until your thoughts quieted down.

You ducked out into the main pathway, feet dragging a little in your worn boots, when a familiar voice called your name.

“Hey—hold up a second.”

You turned to find your supervisor, an older Cursebreaker named Chandra, striding toward you with a clipboard tucked under one arm and a half-eaten fig in the other.

“North tunnel, right?” she asked, glancing you over. “Heard it collapsed.”

You nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just some bruises.”

“Lucky,” she said. “Most people don’t walk out of a Type III trigger room with just bruises. Good instincts.”

You didn’t really know what to say to that, so you offered a tired shrug.

Chandra glanced at her clipboard. “Listen, I’ve got an opening.”

You blinked. “What kind of opening?”

“Rotation slot. Five days. Could be six, depending on weather. We’ve got a newer team flying in to take over Site 8 temporarily. You’re due for a break anyway. Figured I’d offer it before putting it to the rest of the team.”

Your first instinct was yes. God, yes. Five days of clean sheets and warm meals that didn’t come out of a tin. Of falling asleep without worrying about tripwires or heatstroke. You hadn’t been home in two years. You could visit Ominis. You could see Anne. You could see him.

But your stomach twisted at the thought. The idea of standing in front of Sebastian after all this time, looking different than he remembered… it made your throat close.

You forced a smile. “Thanks. But I should stay. Too much going on here. Better if I don’t fall behind.”

Chandra studied you for a beat too long but didn’t argue. Just nodded and scribbled something on her clipboard.

“Your call,” she said. “Just don’t wait until your limbs start falling off to take your next break.”

You gave a polite laugh. She wandered off.

You stood there for a second, towel in hand, wondering why you always did this. Why you always said no to the things you wanted most.

Then you turned and made your way toward the showers, telling yourself it was fine. It wasn’t the right time. You’d go take a break next time.

Maybe.

The showers were barely lukewarm, sputtering out in weak spurts that never quite rinsed away the grit. You stood under the stream for your allotted ten minutes, watching the water turn brown at your feet before swirling down the drain. It stung a little as it passed over the cut on your thigh.

The mirror above the rusted tap was no less unforgiving than the one in your tent. You didn’t linger. Just tied your damp hair back, toweled off with the speed of someone used to racing the clock, and redressed in a fresh shirt and your loosest trousers.

Dinner was the same it had been all week—some variation of lentils and rice, bulk-cooked in a blackened cauldron and ladled onto plates with mechanical efficiency. You took your usual seat under the canvas awning near the back, where the air was a bit cooler and the din of conversation faded into low background hum.

You ate slowly, forcing each bite down like routine. It wasn’t the food that bothered you. It was the ache behind your ribs, the tight coil of something unresolved that had been winding tighter for what felt like an eternity.

You told yourself it was just the exhaustion. The long days. The endless dust and bureaucracy and heatstroke headaches.

But you knew the truth.

You missed him.

After dinner, you walked up the ridge alone. No one stopped your or asked where you were going. They knew your routines by now. Knew you had people elsewhere. That you were always looking for a signal.

You reached the top, boots crunching against dry rock and sand, and pulled out your phone.

Two bars.

It was a goddamn miracle.

Twenty-seven new texts. Four missed calls. Six new voice memos. All from the same name.

Sebastian.

You didn’t open them right away. You just stood there for a minute, phone clutched in your hand, staring out across the vast horizon as dusk wrapped the world in shades of violet.

Then you sat down on a warm stone, legs crossed beneath you, and opened the messages. Most of them were exactly what you’d expect; equal parts worried and ridiculous, in true Sebastian fashion.

“Are you alive or just ignoring me?”

“Ominis says hi. He also says I’m insufferable when you’re gone.”

“There’s a new café near the Ministry that does pumpkin spice cold brew. I tried it. Thought of you. It was foul. But you’d love it.”

“Seriously though. Just let me know you’re okay, yeah?”

“They had to pair me with a rookie on patrol yesterday. I deserve hazard pay.”

You let out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh. Your eyes stung, but you blinked it away. Then you moved to the voice memos. The first was short.

“Alright, Cursebreaker. Starting to think you’ve joined a cult. Or gotten lost. Or are too famous now for us regular Ministry folk. If you’re not dead, message me back.”

The second had been sent later that same day.

“Sorry. That came out wrong. You’re probably just busy. Or stuck in a mountain or something. I just…” A pause. “Never mind. Just… let me know you’re alright, yeah?”

You listened to them one by one, each one more vulnerable than the last. A running commentary of his week: an annoying paperwork mix-up, a late night on patrol, Ominis catching him sneaking biscuits from the shared cupboard. Mundane, silly things. But his voice had that edge to it. That tension he only got when he was worried.

In the last one, he sounded tired.

“They filed the entire report under the wrong Sebastian. Took me three hours to prove I didn’t hex a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. I wasn’t even in Edinburgh. Anyway. I hate everything. Except you… assuming you’re alive.”

That one broke you a little. Your thumb hovered over the screen for a long moment. Then you hit record. Your voice came out quiet, low with exhaustion but laced with something warm.

“Just got reception. Still alive. Dusty, bruised, possibly concussed… but alive. Today I set off an trap meant to crush me under four tons of decorative ceiling, but you know. Occupational hazard.”

You paused, thumb brushing the ridge of your phone, then exhaled slowly.

“Missed hearing your voice. Sorry it’s been so long. Wasn’t avoiding you, I swear, just couldn’t get a signal all bloody week."

Another pause. You swallowed, trying not to overthink it.

“Anyway. I’m okay. I promise. Tired. A little worn down. But okay.”

Then, after a breath, softer:

“You’re still the first person I want to talk to after a day like this. That hasn’t changed.”

You debated adding something more, sarcasm, maybe, or a joke to soften the weight of it, but in the end, you just hit send and sat there while the wind tugged gently at your sleeves.

Your phone buzzed. You fumbled it open. Sebastian had sent new voice a new voice memo. You hit play.

“Bloody hell,” he said, voice low and disbelieving. “I was starting to think I’d have to file a missing persons report. Don’t scare me like that again, yeah?”

You smiled.

“...It’s good to hear your voice” he went on. “Even if you do sound half-dead. The hell do they do to you lot out there? Honestly. Ancient death traps, collapsing tunnels… I’m starting to think your career choice was a personal attack on my blood pressure.”

You laughed quietly, forehead pressed to your knees, eyes stinging.

“Also, just for the record, if you had been crushed by a ceiling, I’d never forgive you." He paused, then added, almost sheepishly, “Glad you’re okay. Really. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear your voice until I did.”

Your chest swelled with something tight and bittersweet.

You tapped your phone against your knee, debating a reply, but your thoughts were slow now—dulled by exhaustion, by relief, by that aching, half-buried longing you’d tried to keep at bay.

Instead, you just texted back, “I’m okay, I promise. Just dust and bruises. Talk more soon?”

The reply came almost immediately.

“More always.”

Then he sent another voice recording. You tapped play without thinking and there it was.

A soft, familiar hum. The same absentminded tune he used to whistle when you were studying in the library together, or sprawled out across the floor of the Undercroft with books open and parchment everywhere. The melody wasn’t anything special—just something he'd made up once and never stopped doing—but it was his. It was home.

You pressed your free hand to your mouth. You definitely didn’t cry.

Well… maybe you did. Just a little.

Just enough that it blurred the edge of the stars overhead. Just enough that your breath caught when the message ended and silence crept back in, broken only by the wind skimming over the ridge.

You wiped your cheeks with the heel of your palm. Sniffed. Shook your head and laughed at yourself.

Then you whispered to no one, “You bloody sap.”

The tune still echoed in your ears. And when you headed back down to your tent, you hummed it too.

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digitialwonderland · 16 hours ago

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Swan lake with the TF 141

Pursuit at Swan Lake

Chapter 3 Previous

Simon’s warmth seemed to follow you through your dreams like a phantom. Foolishly, you chased it past each flashing image of your nightmares. But when you woke, it was nothing but your white feathers that were gathered around you. The fire was at a low simmer, and his scent still seemed to cling to the furs.

He returned the next night, and the next. Always carrying with him the jar of medicine, and always leaving food behind. It took only a few days before you were able to gather enough strength to start moving.

“We’ll start off slow, until you can swim on yer own again.” Simon mumbled as he quickly tossed off his shirt.

He had been planning this out step by step, taking everything with more care than he ever dared to give himself when healing. Truth be told, it broke his heart every time he had to watch his doll go through her transformation. Even in her sleep she let out soft whimpers of pain as feather and beak replaced her skin and lips.

Simon stepped forward, not missing how the swans large eyes seemed to linger on his torso. “We only have about an hour before sunset,” he reminded her as he crouched down and held out his hands. “Let’s make it count, yeah?”

She hesitated for a moment, looking down her beak at his large hands. He could see the gears turning in that head of hers, practically hear them. But after a moment she gave a small huff and then slowly started to stand. “Easy, sweetheart.”

The words fell from his lips far easier than he ever cared to admit. He had almost tried to resist calling her all the endearments, but the sweetness the stung at his cheeks and warmed in his chest was like a hit that he could grow addicted to.

She stood and wobbled for a second. Even in this form, Simon could see the way her eyes narrowed in determination and the way her legs trembled a bit. “Tha’s it, doll.” He held his hands further out, unable to help the hope that blossomed in his chest. “Take it nice ‘n slow.”

In a shuffle, she cautiously made her way to him. She spent every step like she was expecting for the pain to come back to haunt her, Simon would be lying if he didn’t wait on the edge for her to show signs of pain. It was so natural that he barely noticed how ready he was to jump in if she needed him. But his doll was strong, and sure as night she slowly made her way into his arms. “There she is.”

Simon scooped up the swan as delicately as if she were an infant, “you did good, doll.” He held her to his chest, careful to avoid the blackened star of feathering on her plumage. He still found it difficult to look at the mark. Every time he did he felt his eyes snag for a few seconds too long. Guilt always followed, along with the tight squeeze of regret in his heart. But there was something underneath all that, a beast he refused to acknowledge.

He took the first step into the lake, watching as the water rippled out from beneath him. Her eyes flicked back and forth, watching the flock at the other end of the lake. Under different circumstances he would have chuckled about how worried she was for them.

Deeper and deeper he went into the cool water, it wasn’t an awful temperature, the spring heat had offered the lake some time to warm after winter. “There we go,” Simon muttered, more to her than himself as he settled in a spot that was up to his waist. “You ready, doll?”

She looked down at the water, tapping her beak at it as if to disapprove in some way. But then, her sleek, white-feathered head dipped into a nod. “Just swim right back to me when yer ready to be done.” It sounded a little ridiculous, telling a swan to come back when she was done swimming. But then again, she wasn’t a swan.

Slowly, Simon lowered her into the water, letting her get her bearings before fully letting her go. She bobbed for a second, making Simon’s heart nearly turn to stone, but then her feet started to catch a rhythm and she started to move.

In the distance, the flock of swans quacked in an uproar, almost like a choir. She responded in equal, paddling in happily little circles in the water.

Hardened Hunter be damned, Simon couldn’t stop the smile that cracked crookedly over his lips. In any form, it was a delight to see his doll happy. The way her eyes squinted even hinted at a smile. “Tha’s good, love.” He watched her swim around, the golden light of the setting sun passing over her feathers. She didn’t need him one bit, a thought that had panic rising in his chest, even when he pushed it aside.

She swam until the sun had slipped beneath the horizon. Then, with slightly more ease than she had the last couple of times, she transformed. Simon felt his breath escape in a small gasp as he watched her avian body dive beneath the water and transform into her beautiful human form beneath the wavering surface.

God, she was gorgeous. Possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. But he fought hard to shove down the feelings that warmed in his chest because of it.

She surfaced again in front of him, her eyes wide as a little lambs. Quickly, Simon cleared his throat and averted his eyes from what was just beneath the surface. “Let’s get you dry n’ dressed, doll.”

The more Simon visited, the more your body strengthened and the more your burns healed. Yet, you still refused to admit it. The fire flicked in front of you, he had brought a sort of sleeping mat this time, said that ‘a lady ought to have a proper sleeping arrangement.”

Now, the warmth of the fire radiated from the embers in front of you, and his warmth burned behind you. How had you so easily allowed a man to get so close? The very man who had shot you was now beside you, propped up against his pack and whittling. Every night since the first had led to more training, or rehabilitation rather. You could walk, swim, hell your burns had even smooth out to a light pink mark. And yet, Simon still returned every night to spend it with you.

The thought had your cheeks warming and your heart leaping. But you weren’t ready to admit that, you couldn’t admit that. After all, you spent half your life as a bird, who would want to be with someone they only saw at night?

“Simon?”

“Yes, doll?”

You shifted onto your back to look up at him, “where are you from?”

He paused whittling all together, his eyes going distant for a moment. Then, just as suddenly, they flicked down to you and softened. “A land very far from here.”

Well, that was certainly vague. Your brows pinched, and you could feel your frustration with the response gather in the crinkle of your nose. This didn’t seem to have the desired effect though, his eyes only gained this new, tender warmth that seemed to spread across his whole face. Even the parts hidden by the beard and ear length hair he still had yet to maintain. Everything about him just seemed to melt into something endearing.

“My home is a kingdom filled to the brim with spirit,” he murmured, reached down and brushing some of your hair off your forehead. “The people there are kind and hard workers.” He paused, his eyes going distant again. “When winter touched the land, it didn’t dim our smiles. People would dance and sing in celebration.” He chuckled quietly to himself, “every year, on Christmas, you could walk down the street and find every house with there front door open.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because each home was hosting a feast, and each feast was open for anyone to join.” A crooked, handsome smile formed over his lips and his rough fingertips started to swirl mindlessly in your hair. “In the summer, it was perfect. Filled with colorful flowers and parades for the royal family.”

“Your home sounds beautiful…” you breathed, mind deep in the thought of a place so full of life.

“It was.”

“Was?” Your eyes drew back up to see his face, where some of the warmth had drained away.

“‘S not my home anymore, doll.”

Something deep within you saddened, almost like you could feel his hurt, even without context. “Where do you live now?” You asked softly, unable to bridle your curiosity for even a second.

“With a friend.”

Afternoons continued as swimming lessons, or more like “supervised swimming”. And then nights became quiet moments of comfort and warmth. You’d fall asleep beside him and wake with his presence still clinging to your skin.

Waking up without him, started to almost … hurt. Like the contrast between his warmth and the morning chill was only becoming more and more dramatic. But no matter how much it did hurt, you still clung to the moments spent with him. It was like you had nothing else to live for.

Even as you began to join the flock during the day, you found your attention lingering on the tree line. Waiting for that same tall, broad shoulder silhouette that would surely appear that night.

Now was one of those moments that you felt your heart leap at every shift in the shadows. You swam closer to your shared camp on the shore, your eyes flicking between the trees and the horizon.

He’s running late today. The suns about to set.

Something about the uncharacteristic tardiness sent your heart down a path of growing panic. What if something happened? What if Makorov-

No.

You wouldn’t let yourself go there. Surely that evil, cruel man had better fish to fry than you.

Much to your relief, something in the brush finally moved and Simon stepped out, approaching your camp with a perfectly normal appearance and demeanor. It was silly, you never should have even worried. He was Simon, of course he was fine.

You swam to the shore, just in time for the sun to slip out of the skies grasp. You dove into the water as a bird and reappeared as a woman. When you did, Simon was right there at the edge of the water, holding out a towel and politely turning his head away.

“You had me scared there for a moment,” you smiled, still elated with relief as you stepped into the towel and let him wrap the thick cloth around you.

“Would never abandon you, doll.” He reassured, but his eyes took a moment to go to you. They lingered on the woods, darting around as if in search of something.

“Simon?” He finally looked down at you, his jaw set and tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, love.” He tried, reaching up and gently resting both hands on your arms.

There was a sharp click from the woods. Someone loading a crossbow. “Nae, Ghost. I beg to differ.”

Both your heads whipped towards the voice, but you only got a glimpse of who stepped out of them before Simon tucked you behind his large frame.

It was a man, a northerner if you had ever heard that accent before. His eyes were nearly as bright a blue as the summer sky, and his hair a dark brown that resembled some of the chocolates you so often found yourself craving. More noticeably, his head was trimmed short on either side, leaving a proud strip of hair down the center. Over his broad shoulders, a wolf fur was draped, but there was nothing beside that to cover his strong chest and abdomen. A kilt was belted around his hips and draped over his thick, muscular thighs, dawning colors of bright blue and deep, rich green. Out of all the details, the only one that mattered was his gaze on you and the crossbow he had fixed right at you and Simon.

“Soap, let me explain.”

Kyle couldn’t help but slouch in his chair as more and more families entered the front door of the thrown room. His capacity for polite greetings had long since expired, even for the princesses that were potentially going to become his fiance in the up coming weeks.

“Might want to sit up before your mother says something.” A familiar, gravely voice said from slightly behind his thrown. Captain John Price of the Royal Guard.

Kyle sat up, but took the brief break in arriving guests to speak to the man. “When you see the young women that have arrived, Captain, what do you think?”

The man stepped forward as to be more visible to the young prince. “Well, my prince, I see great potential. Most of these princesses seem quite accomplished, you have many good options.”

“Yes yes, but what makes them…stand out.” Kyle pressed, resting his chin in his palm. “What makes them any different from women that you have met in the kingdom.”

A keen, intelligent smile curled over Price’s lips. “I think you will find them very different from the women I have met, my prince.”

Kyle couldn’t help but snort, he knew very well of the ladies the Captain and his men spent time with. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that weighed down on him. “You know what I mean, I-I’m not just looking for a princess, Captain. I want someone who could lead and love the kingdom while at my side.” He glanced over at the king and queen, who were speaking among themselves. “Despite what my parents want.” He tacked on quietly.

The captains eyes warmed and wrinkled at the corners with an expression so soft it was simply unfit for such a hardened warrior. “If you keep that in mind. I don’t doubt that you will be able to find the right one.”

It eased Kyle’s soul to have his support, but still, something within him had felt frantic lately. Night and day he would fidget or find himself unable to sit for too long. “I hope you are right.” He murmured, watching silently as the next royal family stepped through the doors.

Hope you enjoyed it lovelies! Next chapter coming soon!

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goodwomanbadlady · 23 hours ago

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I have absolutely no skills in fanvids, but I couldn't help thinking today and well, I had an idea.

Aziraphale being excited with Crowley at his shoulder before he asks him to dance.

Aziraphale flying through the sky before Crowley calls him over to help

Aziraphale in the yellow Bentley for laughs

-Repeat of him flying through the sky on each repeat lyric-

Supersonic man outta you - flash to image of Crowley calling lightning down

Having a ball - Aziraphale's "she had balls - Cotillion balls"

Crowley's phone flashing calling Aziraphale on the "gimme a call"

Sex machine has to be the LOOK he gave Crowley when he was talking to Muriel about love

Supersonic woman - flash to Nanny Ashtoreth, ObvIOusLy

Next stanza - all the other looks Aziraphale gives Crowley when he's not looking

Last stanza - them dancing

I don't wanna stop at all - Aziraphale looking back at the elevator

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #fanvid #fanvid idea #good omens season 2 #good omens 2 #don't stop me now #queen band #queen lyrics

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plasmapumpkin · 8 hours ago

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The Language of the Black Parade

By Nate Piekos

Soon after being contacted by Gerard Way to work on the 2025 Long Live the Black Parade tour, I thought it might be a good idea to start writing down notes in the event that I decided to compose an article on how the typeface came together. Not really knowing if I’d actually get it done—or have enough interesting info to even justify an article—I just scribbled thoughts and dates on sticky notes which were soon lost to the chaos of my studio. I tried my best to find them all (and I was semi-successful) when the time came to write this.

In August of 2024, I received an email from Gerard asking me if I was up to design a font for the following year’s My Chemical Romance tour. Gerard and I have worked together since the beginning of The Umbrella Academy comic books published at Dark Horse (Wikipedia tells me that was back in 2007). We’ve always gotten along really well. We’re approximately the same age, and we’re both really into comics and music. Of course I said I was interested, so we scheduled a Zoom call to hash out the details.

The afternoon of the Zoom call, Gerard filled me in on his concept of the tour, which would lean heavily on a fictional dictatorship rooted in an equally-fictional Eastern Bloc country. He wanted to create a language that was both made-up, and yet felt entirely real. In fact, he already had a name for this language...

KEPOSHKA

We started delving into 1930s and 40s posters from Russia, England, Italy, and other countries, compiling a morgue file of reference images. We would send pictures to each other and try to figure out what appealed to us. After poster art, we moved on to brutalist architecture and then period typefaces. It was about that time that I broke out the art supplies and started sketching. I used 11” x 17” graph paper, tech pencils, and Copic tech pens.

As I filled out the first sheet of ideas, I would email or text pics to Gerard and he enthusiastically approved pretty much everything—going so far as to hang print-outs in his studio as inspiration for the other facets of the tour’s design work. Quite an honor for me. Other members of My Chemical Romance were now getting their first look at what we had been cooking up. While I didn’t have any direct contact with Mikey, Frank, or Ray, I was told that they were excited at the samples they’d been shown.

After three or four rounds of this piecemeal approval of ideas, it seemed we were moving in the right direction and Gerard gave me the go-ahead to work independently. While I was sketching, he emailed me one particular glyph that he’d created and was calling, “the hangman” symbol. It was inspired by the old pen and paper game called, Hangman, that kids used to play. Gerard thought the symbol looked like the gallows from the game. This eventually became our Keposhka version of the letter “R”, and you can see it in the translated version of the MCR logo at the beginning of this article.

A second sheet of 11” x 17” sketches followed over the next couple of weeks. When that was approved, I felt like it was time to progress to the next step: bringing these ideas into the digital realm. I began working on vector versions of the glyphs in Adobe Illustrator. Quite a few of the ideas from the sketches were used. When I ran out, I began creating new glyphs without reference. I was finally at a point where my familiarity with the style allowed me to just make up new symbols on the fly.

We also began thinking about numbers and punctuation. Many other non-English languages use standard numbers. Since these fonts might be used for merch, tour graphics, and other instances that might require understandable numbers, I created a clean, western set of numbers.

KEPOSHKA CONDENSED & EXTRA CONDENSED

Originally, this whole project was just focused on a single pair of fonts; somewhat wide, very clean, sans-serif versions of Keposhka Regular and Italic—but I began to see that there might be a need for more. I finished up the initial set, I proposed a Condensed Regular and Condensed Italic. Gerard was all for it. Later on, this Condensed set was shown prominently in the initial live-action trailer for the tour. If you look closely, you can see many instances of Keposhka Regular in the final scene of the trailer as well.

Since I was proposing the Condensed set, I figured an Extra Condensed Regular and Extra Condensed Italic might be useful for scenarios where space was at a premium. Gerard was eager for me to come up with anything I thought might be useful and gave me the thumbs up.

I took the vectors of Keposhka Regular, Italic, Condensed Regular, Condensed Italic, Extra Condensed Regular, and Extra Condensed Italic created in Illustrator, and ported them over to Fontlab. This is my software of choice for doing all the programming, kerning, etc. involved in making professional, finished typefaces. I think it took about a month and a half to wrap up all six fonts. A well-designed font family can take up to several months to finish, but our deadlines were tight—there were other designers waiting on these fonts so they could get started on other facets of the tour.

MCRIn late October/early November, with very few corrections from Gerard, the six fonts were approved and delivered, and as far as I knew, I was finished with the project. Little did I know that six fonts was soon to become fourteen!

KEPOSHKA ENGLISH

A few months later, I got an email from Gerard. He’d realized that he needed an English typeface…and it would need to work aesthetically with our fictional language. Off the shelf English fonts might not cut it. Gerard wanted something custom-made. Gerard was already very busy with tour prep, so he let me work almost completely on my own. I found myself re-hired on the project, and I got back to work. There would be no more analog sketching of ideas; I decided to work 100% in the digital realm, creating vectors in Illustrator. We decided on a simple sans-serif. Something traditional, slightly wide, and pleasing to the eye. This eventually led to Keposhka English Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic (bringing us up to ten fonts total).

I’ve been making fonts for over twenty years, almost all of which are in English and other Latin-based glyph sets, so Keposhka English went more quickly than the fictional language. I didn’t have to imagine how weird symbols would fit together, or how this imaginary culture used punctuation, etc. I was back in my comfort zone.

I finished and delivered Keposhka English Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic in mid-April of 2025. I thought it meshed with the original Keposhka when displayed side-by-side, and so did Gerard. Once again, I thought I was done . . . but it was not to be! Gerard had one more idea up his sleeve.

[continued in reblog]

#figured I'd copy/paste the article here because so many old articles end up lost to time and this is genuinely fascinating stuff #but I am promoting this article!!! go read it on his site!!!!#My Chemical Romance

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nyxs-ships · 3 days ago

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the bezsava fic is done idk what else to say kinda sexual at the beginning but not in detail and vaguely at the end and dick cock is used once each because of course it is

1800 words

A Thought Experiment

If you were to ask them, Bez and Sava would vehemently deny knowing what the other looks like undressed.

And they would both be liars for it.

In fact, both would deny knowing much of anything about the other save for what is common knowledge around the paddock, but if you were to look at the apples of their cheeks, you would see a light pink start to form. One would assume this would be from the nature of the question, and one would be very, very wrong.

If you were to somehow project the minds of both riders, in the moments after asking, onto a screen, you would see rather similar scenes just from different perspectives.

Bezs would be a bit difficult to look at with how blurry the image is—not to mention the limited range of movement he had that night. Even still, you would be able to see the closeup outline of a man with his head thrown back, arm tense where it grips the hair on Bez's head.

On Savas, you would see a head of soft curly brown hair, gorgeous brown eyes filled to the brim with tears not yet fallen, and pink lips stretched thin from the sheer size of the cock between them.

Through both you would hear the sounds of grunting, choked-off moans, and of course vain attempts to not choke. Oh, and the faint sound of people still partying outside the bathroom they were currently in, but as none of them knew this was happening, they aren't important.

So to get back to the main point of this thought exercise, denial. If the only two people to know an event happened deny it did, does that mean the event never happened in the first place? Of course not! Don't be silly. Especially not when both participants regularly find themselves thinking about that night to let off some steam. Definitely not when both participants can't look or interact with each other without thinking about it and hoping to get another taste.

All this to say none of it matters if they only ever interact on the rare occasion and Marco Bezzecchi never joins Aprilia and his teammate doesn't get injured, taking him out for the better part of a season, and Lorenzo Savadori doesn't race in his place...

Well, shit.

So, as it turns out, if you want to avoid interacting with the guy who has been the main subject of your fantasies for nearly three years, maybe just maybe don't join the team he's a reserve rider for, Marco.

Which brings us to now, inside a restaurant packed with mechanics and friends, fortunately, to celebrate the 2025 British Grand Prix and its winner, our very own Marco Bezzecchi. Let's watch this situation unfold.

Lorenzo Savadori sits next to a, rightfully, cheery Marco Bezzecchi with a smile so big you'd think he'd won the race instead of listening to the shorter man ramble about something or another, suppressing every urge to do something stupid like declare his undying love for the man next to him for everyone to hear. Fortunately for Sava, one of the mechanics chooses the second before his breaking point to stand up, raising a glass and declaring, "To our winner, Marco Bezzecchi, and to many more in the future."

Whilst Bez is distracted by all the cheering, Sava decides to do the bravest thing a person could do in that moment and run away to the bathroom to avoid doing something that would stop him from being able to race in Qatar. Once in the bathroom, Sava takes a moment to calm down and splash his face with cold water and not think about Bez's lips and what they looked like wrapped around his—he splashes his face again.

Sava has known since long before 2022, long before he knew Bez existed, that he was as straight as Bez's hair and has had to deal with the knowledge that he either races or comes out, not both. will probably never get to do both, not publicly at least. So, he did what he had to; he didn't act on his queer thoughts and never spared a man a second glance. Which worked so well, and for so long, until Marco fucking Bezzecchi, the unapologetic, beautiful bastard that he is. Now he hasn't just spared a second or a third glance; he's spared hundreds, if not thousands, of glances. Even now with that mullet, he's the most beautiful thing Lorenzo has ever seen.

After how many bad haircuts does it stop being a crush and start being love?

At that thought Sava splashes his face for a third time and decides he should probably leave the bathroom and slowly die from embarrassment at every thought he has about his current teammate.

As he sits down, Bez turns to him. "Are you feeling tired? Some of the guys were talking about heading to a club if you wanted to go," and really, who can blame Sava if he needs the question repeated because he was staring at Bez's eyes? Because it's loud, he couldn't hear; because it's loud, not because he wants to see what Bez's eyes look like when he's begging. You have no proof.

If Sava was a smart man, he would've stayed at the hotel that night, maybe had a wank whilst picturing nipple piercings and awful tattoos; alas, he is not, so obviously he went to the restaurant, and of course he agreed to go to the club with Bez and too large of an amount of their colleagues.

Once there, Sava heads straight to the bar to order two drinks, one for himself and one for Bez. As he walks over to the table the others have settled at, he calms himself down and promises himself that he's going to let himself enjoy tonight and not wallow in self-pity over his adoration for the smaller man.

The night wears on, drinks are downed, stories are shared, dancing is done poorly, and people make sure a steady supply of alcohol is given to the winner, so by the time 2AM has passed, Sava is suitably tipsy and Bez looks on the verge of being blackout drunk. Most people had cleared out of the club by this point, as most people aren't racers and do have work on Mondays, which leaves Bez and Sava in a booth by themselves.

Bez, by no means, is a man afraid to get touchy with other people; in fact, he finds great comfort in hugging and leaning on his friends and has yet to be disappointed by a butt slap or ten from the mechanics. And this moment is no different; despite the ample amount of room, Bez has pressed himself up against Sava to show him a video on his phone.

As the video ends, Bez ducks his head into the other's neck and sighs softly, "I can't stop thinking about it, you know?"

Sava laughs, thinking he was talking about the video on his phone. "I can't blame you; it was a great video. You should send it to me."

"Eh?" Bez pulls away from where he had nestled into Savas's neck with an expression that reminded Sava of a kicked puppy. "Do you not remember? at the club when you came to the ranch three years ago? You seemed to enjoy it, but maybe I wasn't as good as I had hoped."

And it was in that moment so many emotions flew through Savas's body it was like they were having their own grand prix. After a couple seconds and the furrow in Bez's brow deepening, Sava finally responds, "Of course I remember that night; it was perfect—well, not perfect because it was on a bathroom floor, but you were amazing, and if anything, I wasn't good with how long I lasted, but you were amazing, and I've also thought about that night."

The grin that breaks out on Bez's face at that would have onlookers thinking Sava had just solved every problem Bez has ever had and not just told him he remembers the tipsy bathroom head the younger had given him three years ago. The pure unfiltered joy on his face made the embarrassment of admitting everything he just did worth it, "so you want a round two? and three? and many, many more?" the shorter asks now almost on top of the other.

'Did I pass out?' sava thinks not having expected Bez to both remember and be this unrestrained in his pursuit after so many months of subtle glances, light blushing and touching that toes the line between friendly and romantic. 'The things alcohol does to a man' sava's mind supplies before realising hes yet to say anything out loud, "what?" Smooth, Sava. smooth. "well yes i would love to, but you are very drunk right now so let's maybe get you back to the hotel, and we can talk about this when you are a lot more sober."

Bez pouts and the kicked puppy look is back though slightly less strong no less effective for it, "I dont have whiskey dick though?"

"I– you know what? good to know" Sava sighs and resigns himself to having a conversation about consent with Bez at some point. Now, Sava has to try and get the clingier man back to the hotel without injury or getting arrested.

Much to Sava's amazement the walk back to the hotel was rather uneventful save for Bez barely being able to walk by himself. By the time they get back to the hotel Bez is half asleep already and yet still managing to cling to Sava like a buoy.

So after all that and managing to get bez's key card from him he finally gets Bez to a bed and he can go back to his own room and they can get this all cleared up in the morning.

Except Bez has a strong grip and is refusing to let go of Savas arm and when Sava was imagining Bez pleading it wasn't exactly drunkenly pleading for cuddles. "please stay," Bez begs once again managing to look like a puppy with the way he stares up at Sava "I'll behave, I'll be a good boy."

Sava is still not a strong man. He caves. Immediately.

So sava kicks off his shoes and gets into the bed and straight away gets an armful of Bez who is currently just wearing a tshirt and boxers. As Bez finally passes out Sava can't believe this is real and its actually happening.

they will have to have a long and awkward discussion come morning, but it will hopefully be worth it. At the very least, it's a problem for tomorrow.

#bezsava #motogp rpf #once again first ever fic so its definitely not good but its definitely there

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laurarolla · 2 days ago

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Update time! We got some new info from the Release Celebration livestream, including some info about Japanese only events and a chance to see a few of the alt-art cards included in the first Booster Set (All three they showed off were G-Witch cards that look very cool). But for me, someone who is primarily interested in playing the game, the big reveals were the tidbits about future releases.

First off, Gundam 00 is the theme for the previously announced but not revealed starter deck 7, with Celestial Being being our third announced Purple faction. Additionally, they showed off a full PV for the game with the song "Purfume" that had a lot of little details of note about cards from starter deck 5 and 6 as well as booster set 2.

The Gquuuuuux Starter Deck, ST06, will be a Red and Green deck, with the headlining rares being Gquuuuuux Omega Psycommu and Red Gundam. This means Machu and Shuji do not actually share a color in the game (Machu is red and Shuji is green), and seems to point to a focus on the clan battle specific elements of the early series rather than the big looming Zeon politics and cross-dimension stuff.

As for a few Booster Set 2 previews, the Gundam X main pilot will actually be a single card featuring both Garrod Ran and Tiffa Adill, which makes me very happy specifically. Shuji, Machu, and Flit Asuno also make short cameos with no listed effects on the cards.

Xi Gundam has a very short appearance, and will be a Level 8 or 9 unit with an 8 cost, which is the highest cost card we've seen so far. No listed effect, but with a stat line of 5/5, there must be something pretty absurd to justify that price. A version of Gundam X that appears to be a Level 7 with a 6 cost shows up, but the image isn't clear enough to say for sure.

Some clearer cards can be seen in the final part of the video, where people play against each other. Mikazuki Augus from IBO has a visible effect: When paired, he deals one damage to one of your own units and one damage to an enemy unit. This seems to hint at the general vibe of Purple being able to use powerful or flexable abilities with penalties or costs to the player using them, kind of like Black in Magic the Gathering.

A few more Zeta cards were visible, including the Methuss and Hyaku Shiki. Along with the Zeta, they all have effects, but the text is out of focus every time they show the Zeta. Zeta does have a Once Per Turn effect, so it may be pretty strong.

Beyond that, there will be some G Generation Eternal crossover prizes in future Japanese events, and they put up a calendar for future Japan event and set releases up through March. Oh, and also they announced that the first American event specifically connected to their planned World Championship will be in Dallas, Texas.

That's pretty much all I was able to get from the event other than the Teaching App getting some new decks to play with and against. Anyway, now I just have to decide if I want to spend money on the starter deck event at my local game shop next weekend or if I just want to buy the other two decks I don't have yet with that same amount of money.

So Gundam Card game comes out this friday (for everyone, not just people who went to a con or got the beta on P-Bandai), I got my two starter decks ordered (Seed deck and MSG/G-Witch deck), and I've been looking at the upcoming cards and series to see what each color style and identity is. I'm still not 100% sure how each thing will play out, but a lot of early players I've seen appear to be going for Zeon aggro decks of Green and Red.

Anyway, since factions will actually matter for deck building after the first booster is out, lets see what each color has in store for the future factions/series included.

Current colors and factions: Blue: Earth Federation (Gundam 0079/Unicorn), Oz (Gundam Wing) White: Academy (G-Witch), Earth Alliance and Three Ships Alliance (Gundam Seed) Green: Principality of Zeon (Gundam 0079), Operation Meteor/G-Team (Gundam Wing) Red: Neo Zeon "Sleeves" (Unicorn), ZAFT (Gundam Seed)

Future colors and factions (in deck building, you can use any two colors for your deck): Blue: ??? (no officially announced new blue factions) White: AEUG (Zeta Gundam) Green: Earth Federation AG (Gundam AGE) Red: Clan "Pomeranians"(Gundam Gquuuuuux), Mafty (Gundam Hathaway) Purple (New Color): Tekkadan (Iron-blooded Orphens), Vultures/Freeden (Gundam X)

I would speculate on what antagonist factions would be for each show, but with a whole additional color being added, I can only hazard guesses for IBO and X, which I would guess Gjallerhorn would be White or Blue, the New Federation would be White or Red (or maybe also Purple), and the Space Revolutionary Army would be Red or Green. Also, some shots in the dark, Titans Green or Blue, UE Red, Alternate Zeon White, Circe Unit Blue, and Axis Zeon Green. We'll know how wrong I am in a few months. XP

#gundam #gundam card game #mobile suit gundam #gundam tcg #tcg #trading card game

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javierduffy · 3 months ago

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hi something true and beautiful happened just as i was gearing up to do short walk in a pretty town and it made me think of ur art

YOU. HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUVE JUST DONE FOR ME WITH THESE IMAGES

#THESE JUSR RAISED THE JAVIERAN STOCKS BY 200% AND IM NOT EVEN JOKING #THE ECONOMOY IS BOOMING #UP UNTIL NOW IVE ONLY WVER BEEN ABLE TO FIND/CAPTURE THEM STANDINF NEXT TO EACH OTHER T W I C E #I HAD *TWO* IMAGES OF THEM NEXT TO EACH OTHWR IN-GAME PRIOR TO RHIS #autism is a crazy drug cuz why am i backflipping on the floor at work because someone sent me pics of my ship that exists only in my mind #THANK YOU THOUGH HONESTLY IM INSANE I FEEL LIKE SOMEOE JUST WALKED UP TO ME AND HANDED ME ONE MILLION DOLLARS #doing their morning routines together ☹️ … they look so sweet ….#they’re probably going to the shore to watch the fish breach the water and wordlessly swear to themselves that they’re going to take each #other camping again soon … sorry i’m hijacking this post to say that they probably do actually start getting suspiciously clingy when it’s #been too long in between times where they leave camp together. like cuz in my head clemens point is when they get together and esp if this #is around a short walk that means that (in my timeline) they’ve actually gotten together by now. anyway so like they’re just happening to #walk to the same place at the same time because The Yearning is winning. they’re definitely going to ✨disappear✨ that evening #THEY LOOK SO CUTE IM WRITHING ON THE FLOOR #IVE BEEN WANTING PICS OF THEM TOGETHER LIKE THIS FOR SO LONG DUDE YOU HAVE NO IDEA IM SO HAPPY #THANK YOU YOURE GOATED THIS JUST FIXED ME #also … oh my god sorry it took me so long to address this .. but … you think of my art when you see them together 🥺🥺 ??? i’m so honored #that’s so sweet that genuinely means the world to me that what i do is like … memorable to even a small degree #😭😭😭☹️☹️☹️😭😭😭😭☹️☹️💛💛💛 thank you ……#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #kieran duffy #javier escuella #javieran #image #ask #hero's yelling at folks again #cxyotl #fav

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 5 months ago

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did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.

#pez dispenser debris #me with fictional worlds: where is your city planner I just want to talk #none of the heroes were happy at the thought of abandoning Yokohama #Yokohama didn’t happen because the heroes actually all got together and said ‘fuck those guys let ‘em die’#it was an absolute implosion of the heroics structure that they’d spent their entire careers working on #in my mind there’s a heroics organizational reform bill still making its way through the Japanese government in an attempt to correct the #structural failings that led to Yokohama happening. Aizawa keeps getting calls for his fucking kids to speak to the government about the #issue. and he’s like ‘absolutely not someone will tell them to do a flip and they will do it and cause a public incident’#no one said it out loud but everyone was sort of terrified that one of them would die at Yokohama #you could choke on the fear during the ride over #but they didn’t know what else to do. Yokohama needed heroes and all they had were them #but when you think of Yokohama think of all the big boss fights during bnha #not afo but like. overhaul. now think of fighting a few dozen of him at once. it’s. it’s not great odds.#the idea of just responding alone in the face of that is a nonstarter. and the decentralized nature of the system meant it was borderline #impossible to get the support needed to make a defense feasible. but class 2a had each other. and that was all they needed.#going to Yokohama the next day and it not having been a bloodbath was the biggest relief of those heroes lives #endeavor had never had a good relationship with shouto but he went to him in the hospital after and genuinely thanked him #I have this mental image of Iida. concussed four times over running on fumes and slightly delirious. desperately trying to keep it together #just a little while long. he has a list of the injured who need immediate evacuation. and his classmates. some of them need to be taken to #a hospital immediately. he made a list of their medication allergies. please ensure everyone is taken to the same hospital. he doesn’t think #he could bear it if they were scattered about. and he needs to help coordinate the transports of the villains from where they’ve been #containing them. and one of the Idaten sidekicks is like. Tenya. it’s okay. you did amazing. you can relieve command now. they’ll take it #from here. and he just says. okay. and he sits on the curb and cries. he asks them if one of them could call his brother. he’d. he’d really #like to come home if that’s okay. just for a few days. he just. he wants to go home. like the aftermath of that scene was kind of brutal to #process because on one hand they had all done so amazing but on the other they were so painfully young. a lot of them broke down in the #aftermath. kirishima got embarrassed because he started crying and asked mr Aizawa to call his moms. like once the adrenaline crashed it #all sort of hit them. they had all been so brave but also they were kids and they really really wanted their parents now if that’s alright #they know they’re heroes now and they have to be brave but also can someone please call their mom. please please please they just want their #mom. it was sort of a punch in the face for the full heroes to get there and see just how young these kids were. like these weren’t they’re #colleagues. these were kids who they didn’t protect. it hurt.

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