#and side order’s already giving me lots of content to expand on

[squidthusiast]

The only thing pushing me thru this nightmarish last semester is the fact that once I graduate as an official professional illustrator, I can make professional gay ass Illustrations of pearlina/off the hook 🫢

[abbyzmami]

pink toy.

• dom abby anderson x sub fem! reader

cw; explicit +18 content, exhibitionism, praise kink, praising, degradation, overstimulation, squiring, dom abby, use of toys (vibrator, dildo), masturbation (receiving), slapping, orgasm denial, finger sucking, fingering, dirty talking, hair pulling, kinda public sex, public masturbation… MINORS DNI

- notes: guys, this is my first time writing for tumblr, i have a lot of ideas and i hope you like them. sorry for any mistakes, i wrote this at 2am without proofreading much LOL 😭

laughter filled the atmosphere, the sound of glasses clinking and people chatting. it was one of those classic dinner nights with your group of friends at your favorite restaurant, everything was perfect. except for one small factor: you couldn't relax the whole night with a vibrator plugged into your fucking cunt, which abby controlled on the cell phone next to you.

as the desserts arrived on the table, everyone fumbled around trying to remember who ordered what, but everything was more than rattling around in your head, and all you could process all night were voices far away.

"are you even listening to me? hey!" dina says, completely frustrated as she tries to talk to you and gets no response. you keep your hand over your mouth, looking out at the street, trying your best to keep any sound or moan from escaping your lips.

"hey dina. i'm sorry, i'm a little distracted." you say, a little breathless but almost imperceptible to your friends who were already super drunk.

"you ordered the cherry ice cream, yea?" dina says, laughing and changing the words. you could feel the alcohol exhaling from her breath, while she was being pulled from side to side by ellie in her chair.

"yes, she did, thank you so much dina." abby says, picking up the dessert and placing it in front of you, one arm on the back of your chair. she moves closer to your face, speaking quietly enough for only you to hear. "if you keep panting like that, i swear, i'll put this on full speed and turn off my phone." she says, then kisses your cheek and smiles at you as if nothing is happening, picking up the glass of wine in front of her on the table and taking a sip.

you squirm once again under the table, crossing your legs in the hope of getting some friction for your relief, but abby immediately notices and grabs your thigh tightly, pulling them apart, leaving you completely open in the corner of the table which, luckily, was in a darker part of the restaurant. abby reaches up under your tight skirt, staring at you in disbelief as she realizes how wet and hot you were after all this time. the blonde decides to start an even bigger teasing game, massaging your needy cunt over the thin panties you were wearing.

she moves closer again, stroking your hair with the other hand that was resting on the chair, whispering in your ear. "if you make any noise, i'll stop."

you swallowed dry, desperate to feel abby's hands on you for the first time that night. god, how could she be so mean? you were practically begging for it with your eyes all night, while she slid her finger up and down on her cell phone, just giving you the most innocent, unintentional look of all.

abby uses one of her middle fingers to push your panties aside, massaging your throbbing clit painfully slowly in response, sliding in circles, in a light and extremely provocative touch, feeling all the heat exuding from your body at that moment. you squirm even more in your chair, feeling abby's hand squeeze your shoulder, silently scolding you. she stroked your hair so gently that anyone looking would never suspect that you were being completely fucked under that table.

"abby..." you said, sighing heavily, whimpering. "i can't take this anymore, please..." your legs were shaking more and more, accompanied by shivers that ran down your spine every time abby unlocked that damn cell phone to control the vibrations that were only expanding inside you.

"guys, we're going to the bathroom for a minute, we'll be right back." abby says, getting up and encouraging you to do the same, as she picks up your bag for you, holding out one of her arms for support. you look around and no one seems to notice that anything's wrong, everyone's too far away, laughing loudly and drinking their ass off.

as soon as you enter the bathroom, abby locks the door and immediately pulls you tightly by the waist, planting a violent kiss on your lips, as if she's been hungry for you all night. the taller woman sighs, helping you take off the short skirt that covers your hips. "god, you're such a slut, couldn't wait for us to get home to get fucked."

abby pulls you hard over the sink, standing behind you and inducing you to bend over for her, facing the mirror. she finally pulls the toy out of you, making your walls contract completely. "i'm fucking you in front of the mirror so you can see clearly what a whore you are" she says, bringing her own hand to her mouth. "open up and suck it good," she says, inserting her two middle fingers into your lips.

you completely moisten abby's fingers as soon as you open your mouth, which has been salivating for her for a long time, sucking carefully and eagerly, moaning muffledly as you do so. "you're a pathetic slut, all turned on just by sucking my fingers." she says, kissing your neck, moving down the area with licks and bites, making sure to give you goosebumps.

she removes her fingers from your mouth, patting your face twice before finally penetrating you. "that's my pretty girl, huh?" you moan in response to the pet name, leaning further over the sink, opening your pussy wide for her. "god, you're soaking wet." she says, slipping her two fingers into your hole, curling them inside you, with back and forth movements that make you moan louder, failing to control yourself.

she slid perfectly inside you, which was completely lubricated with your own juices and saliva. abby pulled you by the hair, wrapping it around her own hand, having complete control over you at that moment. in the reflection of the mirror you could see her smiling sadistically as she watched you in this situation, thrusting even harder inside you, hitting your sensitive inner spot several times. "will you be a good girl and cum for me? hm?" she said, making you melt even more, moaning and calling out her name, which was filled with even more lust, as if she possessed you at that moment.

you could feel your body weakening more and more as you felt all of your wetness dripping down your thighs, with her in and out of you with so much hunger, as she sucked on your neck like a fucking vampire, sucking your soul out of your body. using you as if you were nothing but a toy, with a completely devilish face, looking at you through the mirror with that stupid smile.

"abby, im gonna c-" you barely manage to finish your sentence when she speeds up her movements with precision, making you arch and tremble even more, moaning loudly as she laughs, watching you melt completely in her hands. "you're so fucking easy to please, such a needy whore."

a huge wave of pleasure-filled shocks unloaded over your body, after being overstimulated for so long, you felt your orgasm so strong that tears began to run down your face as you moaned her name, pulsing against the fingers still curling inside you. "atta girl." she says, chuckling.

"i think i might even need to order some dessert too, after fucking you all over like that." she says, teasingly as she watches you trying to come back to yourself, or at least recover enough to be able to get back to that table.

"i hate you" you say, annoyed by the cocky blonde's provocations.

"you know you love me."

[reidsaurora]

happy 1k!!!! 🥳🍾

Can I please order a sauvignon blanc 🍷 (<-pretend this is wine wine) of Spencer Reid x bau!reader with 12. “Just shut up and kiss me" ?

Backstory- they are in the first few weeks of dating after being best friends for forever and them overcoming the awkwardness of that transition?

Thank you bestie 😘

"You Give Me Butterflies" ~ S. Reid

Summary: a cute lil blurb about Spencer and Reader's first kiss :)

Pairing: Spencer Reid x GN!Reader (i think, i don't think any pronouns were used LOL i can't remember)

Word Count: 711

Content Warning: mentions of food, a small mention of throwing up but like as a comparison (?), no use of YN!

Genre: awkward Fluff <3

Extra Notes: yes the title is from Butterflies by Kacey Musgraves 🫡

Based On the Prompt: "Just shut up and kiss me."

Originally Written: 01/31/2023 through 02/03/2023

Beta Read By: @lukeclvez

Criminal Minds masterlist can be found here!

ofwilliamandwalter's 1K cocktail party

🍸 Spencer's Sauvignon Blanc - send me a character + prompt and i'll write you a small blurb!

"Is this OK?" Spencer asked quietly, his fingers freshly entwined with mine.

I giggled. "What? You holding my hand or you taking me out for sushi for our first official date?"

His cheeks blushed crimson, a tone to match the wrapper of the chopsticks he'd been fiddling with since we sat down. "Both."

I gave him a small smile, but nodded. "It's perfect."

The waiter appeared, one menu in hand. "My apologies. It's a very busy night. This was the only menu I could find," he said, a nervous sigh settling on his tongue.

Spencer blushed even darker at this, avoiding eye contact with both me and the waiter.

After taking our drink order, the waiter left us alone once again. I stood, sliding myself into Spencer's side of the booth. "Is this OK?" I said, a giggle nearly falling from my tongue.

He simply nodded, turning his attention to the menu and away from me. His breathing became heavy as he looked over the menu, something it had been doing a lot since he finally told me he liked me.

The rest of the date went similarly to this, the two of us making awkward small talk until our food arrived, eating in a silence that was almost as awkward as the small talk, and quite frankly, an even more awkward walk around the park near my apartment.

It wasn't until the last five minutes of our walk that I finally convinced him to lace his fingers between mine again, his breath shaky at the sensation.

We continued the walk back to my apartment in silence, though this time, it was a much more comfortable silence.

"So, this is your building," he said, looking down at his shoes as he removed his hand from mine.

"Yep," I answered, popping the p a little harder than I'd meant to.

"It's a very nice building. Much nicer than my old, run-down building. I'm surprised the elevator hasn't broken down on my ride up to my apartment," he uttered, an expression on his face that announced he was being betrayed by his lips.

We both stayed silent for a beat, until he mentioned, "But you already knew that because you've visited my apartment before."

"Spencer-"

"Is it- is it hot out here or is it just me?" he asked, adjusting his scarf. "The temperature was supposed to be 65° tonight but I'm still extremely hot. Are you hot?" His eyes widened. "I-I didn't mean it like that. I mean, you are hot. Not hot but pretty. Oh, my God-"

"Spencer, will you please just shut up and kiss me goodnight?" I asked.

His cheeks went red, a maroon shade almost as red as the lipstick I wore, a color that was twice as dark as his cheeks had been earlier. "Are you sure?"

I placed both my hands on either side of his face, pulling him toward me. "Yes, I'm sure." And with that, our lips met, a sensation that not even a romance novel could ever describe.

He pulled away first, those hazel eyes expanding so wide, I wasn't sure they wouldn't reach his hairline. "I'm sorry."

I chuckled, running a hand through his hair. "Why are you sorry?"

"Ever since I realized I like you, I get this weird feeling in my stomach. It's kinda like I wanna throw up. Not in a bad way! In an exciting way. Sorta like when you're in line for a roller-coaster. Not that I've ever done that because roller-coasters scare me. Anyway, it makes my hands shake and I get all sweaty. That's gross. Anyway-"

"Spencer, what you're experiencing is called butterflies."

"What?" he asked, his brows furrowing.

"You've got butterflies in your tummy."

"Butterflies don't just appear in your stomach. That's not scientifically possi-"

"Spencer Reid, you have butterflies in your tummy. Would you like me to make them go away?"

"I don't under-"

I cut him off with another kiss, his breath hitching as my hands moved back to his face. Once again, he pulled away first, his cheeks heating up yet again.

He scratched at the base of his neck, a sheepish grin tugging at the corners of his lips. "Can you do it again? I'm not sure it fully worked."

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[styrmwb]

I beat Splatoon 3: Side Order

woomy

I hate Splatoon multiplayer. I'm not great at it, and it gets me very heated, so I essentially avoid it after the first couple months, I make myself a character, all good to go.

I LOVE Splatoon singleplayer. So so so so so so much. Splatoon is essentially a singleplayer experience for me, and I am ok and content with that. I also love roguelikes! So when the DLC is a roguelike (with best idols as the feature), it's peak. Ignore the fact it took me a while to beat it that's how ADHD works. Anyways, I have a format that I think I've made now, so I'm going to do said format

Gameplay

Roguelike :)))))) I love these! I already said this! There's not much to say other than it certainly is a tower where I get more upgrades and create silly broken builds and I love that! Drone and Lucky Combo was my favorite cause I could just make inkstrike and special and bomb spam and nobody could stand a chance against me, it was super fun. Roller was my favorite weapon for this reason too (I also beat the tower with roller first so that might be part of it). The game def takes a few runs to really get going but like, I can't hold that against it?? That's what the genre is. You start to unlock shit and it starts to ramp up and that's the fun. I got frustrated at times on certain levels, and especially the rigorous ones on earlier runs get very very exhausting (I had to take a lot of breathers cause my hands would get sore), but that's not really like... a bad thing. I expect this genre to make me work. When I was going through with all of the different weapons, it was nice that each felt different enough, especially with the color biases, to make each run for 100% fresh (HA) feeling.

Murch was NOT cooking with his loadout though how the fuck does that dude play irl it took me so much fire speed up chips and changing his whole loadout to make that feel ANY good

Characters

Pearl and Marina :)))))))) They're my favorite idols. They're the best ones. I get more of them and even more Marina backstory and I'm not upset about it. Dedf1sh/Acht was a really cool addition and I'm glad they're expanding on characters that were previously just musicians. I found their whole shtick of "Thank god you're here Eight otherwise these two might just start making out in front of me and I can't handle that". It was funny. Order was a very cool force, and even as Smollusk with his stwupid wittle baby voice (DISCLAIMER: I ENJOYED IT) was a neat little character, just a program doing what it's supposed to do.

Story

The best part of this DLC's story is its worldbuilding and continuity from the last DLC expansion from 2. Seeing them acknowledge the Octoling society exodus, AND all of the sanitized people??? That's super cool! Marina showing off more of the skill they talk about constantly with her creating this whole program and working to fight against it is awesome. I appreciate how they tied the gameplay being constant runs into the story, each complete run giving you more and more details on what created Order, why everything is the way it is. Of course, that is also what makes it a little frustrating at the start, because you want to see the story but you have to play the game more to really get it going. It's what happens, so like, whatever, but I do wish for the story's sake alone I could have sped my progress up A LITTLE (the solution is to git gud).

Music

It's fucking Splatoon. Of course the music is peak. I loved the empty sounding songs, the evil printer techno, the super hype club beats while you are dying, it's hype! My favorite song was Parallel Canon :)

Everything Else

Part of the reason I love Splatoon is the ocean theming, I love sea creatures. I thought it was really cool how they made irl dying coral reefs into the theme, combining it with the digital and technology aspect of grayscaling, it's such a cool combination of theming that only Splatoon can do. Speaking of, the attention to detail in this DLC (and really the series as a whole) is INCREDIBLE. The app icons, the programs Marina using being actually recognizable as real programs, the demonstrations showing off character with the silly little anime eyes, there's just so much to look at in every point. The text and writing has also always been a strength of Splatoon, and Side Order just continues to deliver. I loved all the enemy names being musical terms, the puns are always great, the extra dialogue in the menus as you unlock and kill enemies, and even Overlorder's title changing as you do more runs??? It's so cool and it all gives you more motivation to continue to play more. This game is a charming joy with one of the most unique settings I've seen, and the DLC just gives me more of what I love.

10/10. Continued supply of Splatoon and Roguelike goodness with a jelle-ton of charm (I'm funny!)

[c7thetumbler]

Quick Game Reviews March 2024

3 month combo hell yeah

I'm reusing last months banner because I got super lazy

Image taken from my switch. We fist bumped.

Splatoon 3 [Revisited] (Switch)

I previously "reviewed" this in 2022, and here were my thoughts on that:

While it doesn't break much ground in comparison to the previous game, it's definitely worth a go if you've enjoyed the first 2 entries.

Now that the DLC and a number of updates are out, I went ahead and revisited this for about a whole months worth of eveneings just to see how far it's come.

And it's doing pretty well! I"m still utter trash at pvp, but that's not stopped me from enjoying it. Additionally all of the new Salmon Run content, including Big Run, is really fun to continue grinding away at for hours on end. The level of customization the game has is great as well, and the badges being hidden is a solid way of doing achievements. Again, It's a very solid Splatoon experience and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in it, though you've probably gotten it already if you are.

That being said, it + the expansion pack are a little pricey for what you're getting, at least so far. Nintendo hasn't announced a 3rd wave of DLC, but the 1st wave consisted of just some more cosmetics and an optional hub world, which wasn't a whole lot to go off of, and the 2nd, Side Order (reviewed last month) is great but not $30 great. The game seems to be getting gameplay and Splatfest updates still at least, so I'll probably be sticking with it for a while cuz it's just a fun romp while listening to podcasts and chillin with the cat in the lap.

Image from the B3313 fandom wiki

B3313 (N64 Rom hack)

B3313 is a Mario 64 Rom Hack that thrives off of your previous experiences with SM64 and SM64DS and twists it with dream-like surreal changes and a vast degree of inception-like complexity. It is near impossible to map out its worlds, and around every corner, death, door, or even successful star you will often find yourself thrown into a completely new, slightly twisted version of somewhere you may recognize.

I had a really good time at first divng straight into it and navigating my way through the worlds, trying to maker cohesive sense of it, and managed to get ~40 stars before I got bored of it. I know there's a whole lot more there, but its fatal flaw is when you get this complex, your levels really have to be engaging or interesting in and of themselves, and most of the time they just aren't. You'll spend a lot of time running around big, empty levels looking for a silver star or red coinv, or in a lot of cases replaying the same start of a level to get to a sub area within a sub area that your previously died at only to get thrown off by the game's camera and miss a jump and then thrown back out into Peach's castle as imagine by MC Escher.

It's a fun romhack, and a lot of love was thrown into it, but as a "game" or for-fun experience it doesn't really hold up there. I would more recommend it just to see if it's something you enjoy, but prepare for some frustration and backtracking.

Image from Dreamsweeper's steam page

Dreamsweeper (Steam Demo)

I saw GirlDM (wholesome catgirl vtuber) playing this on my feed once and decided to give it a go. It's basically like if Crypt of the Necrodancer replace the music mechanics with Minesweeper instead, which I'm down for.

The core loop is good; I had a lot of fun applying Minesweeper logic in a new way, as well as the aesthetics really bringing out the comfy, lofi dream look they were really going for, so that's a huge plus. That being said, it's still got some growing to do. I'm a little confused as to how you would expand this into a full game, and sometimes the generation can just make it impossible to logic out some areas. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; the difference between Minesweeper and a logic complete puzzle game like Sudoku is occasionally you do run into guesses. It's like dealing with real mines!

Additionally, the combat is a bit out of place. That's not to say the DDR-esque (or like Undyne from Undertale) minigame isn't good, but it doesn't really fit with the minesweeper or even dream look in and of itself, and just serves to take you out of it rather than add to it. I would've preferred something like a logic puzzle, or even another variation or callback to a different old windows pc minigame everyone had just to kinda keep it cohesive.

That being said, I enjoyed my time time with and am looking forward to seeing how they expand on it in the future!

Image from the steam page

Megaman X Dive Offline (Steam)

You get mad props in my book for turning your mobile game from a F2P gacha game to a cohesive, single-purchase experience. Even more so, when you take the servers down you release that as its own offline game so that it's accessible to anyone who may have missed out.

This was an impulse purchase alongside the Battle Network Legacy collections, and honestly? Kind of regret it. Not because the game is bad exactly, but because I realized that I don't actually like Mega Man X that much to begin with so me getting the whole deal didn't make a lot of sense. The levels are fine and the gameplay is too, however I can already tell that because of how the Gacha works it's a grindfest to get any character up to par, and there's as a result a bunch of inventory management between levels to ensure your stuff remains good. I'm glad they did it, but it exemplifies why adding mechanics that meld with microtransactions inherently makes the core experience worse and the game's not for me.

Image taken from the Sonic Triple Trouble 16 bit website

Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit (Fan game)

I saw an article that the Noah Copeland was hopping off of the Sonic Drift 16-bit project to make his own game with his own characters. His reasoning was he had two goals: Make a Sonic fan game and make his own games, and now that he had done the former with Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit, he wanted to start on the latter. That's completely fair and understandable, and I wish him the best and hope the Sonic Drift 16-bit project continues with the current devs because it looks really good!

I'd be lying if my initial reaction wasn't actually me being like "Wait, there's a really good remake of Sonic Triple Trouble?" Though.

And it is really good! It remakes Sonic Triple Trouble into a "modern" classic Sonic game w3hile adding new levels, playable characters, and layouts and expanding on the story to make it cohesive and fun. Sonic's drop dash returns from Mania, and again it really brings his moveset together and makes him the most fun character to play in my opinion. Tails is also playable at the same time as Sonic, and you can swap to him on the fly with a single button press, which is a welcome change over just having him be around. In Free play mode you can unlock 3 more characters as well, which is always fun.

Overall this is, like Mania, peak classic Sonic gameplay. This is what Sonic Superstars should've been, and its quality is higher than a lot of official Sonic releases as of late (looking at you, Origins and Forces). If you're a fan of Classic Sonic, this is a well designed and excellent experience you need to give a try! And it won't cost you a cent!

Image taken from the steam store page

Insaniquarium Deluxe (Steam)

This was a fun revisit. I Hadn't played this since way back in the day when they had the original, much more pixelated version and it was nice to revisit.

Just some quick notes on this one: PvZ definitely aged a lot better. While I appreciate that large amount of modes and variety in levels, the gameplay itself is very one note. It's addictive fore sure, but as soon as you get into the habit of it there really isn't much variety between the different tanks other than figuring out how to ramp up production.

Additionally the game has you clicking a lot, and the speed at which you can click is very much ingrained into its core mechanics. If this were made today, that would not go well given how utterly painful play sessions can get. I opted to use a mouse clicker, because I wanted to have fun and also be able to work tomorrow without dying.

All that being said, it's still a fantastic game in its own right! Sure, it's not the deepest gameplay you've ever seen, but not all games have to have deep, complex interweaving mechanics to be a grand old time. It's a great time to play for an hour or so while you're listening to a video or podcast, and honestly I recommend it for just being a fun, nostalgic clicker game. But wait for a sale.

And it's more enjoyable than cookie clicker, imo

Image from my switch

Princess Peach: Showtime!

As of the time of this writing I haven't beaten it yet, so my story & gameplay assessment may change by that time. If that does, I'll update this in my reviews next month, but I think I'm still pretty on point.

I'll go into this saying I had pretty high hopes for this one. Nintendo has a great track record when it comes to making spin-offs based off of other Mario characters; Yoshi games offer a different but still engaging platforming experience to the basic Mario platformers. Wario Land games are for the most part all great, ranging from platformers that test your wits and abilities to the iconic WL4/Shake it gameplay that would give rise to Pizza Tower. Luigi's mansion took a character whose only feature was being Green Mario and made it into a successful franchise with completely unique gameplay.

And sure, Peach has had a platformer before with Super Princess Peach. I haven't played it, but I heard it was fun. But when this game was announced I will say I was excited to see another Mario spin-off but with Peach as the leading lady.

And it's definitely not bad! I want to make sure that's clear; I don't dislike the game. It's difficult to describe the gameplay in a way that encompasses everything though. The best comparison would be a puzzle platformer but with a large amount of minigames interspersed, along with hidden collectibles all throughout the levels. To go with probably the worst possible game mashup I can think of, It's like Wario: Master of Disguise mixed with Luigi's Mansion 2 and a Spin-off Kirby game.

I will also say that I'm not the target audience for it, for sure, so I'm keeping that in mind when I say this. It's just, I'm kind of disappointed in it myself. It's not challenging, kinda like how Yoshi's Crafted World and most modern Kirby's aren't, but the gameplay isn't really engaging me enough to want to progress that frequently. Additionally most of the challenge seems to be from collecting the green sparkles scattered throughout the level, and for the most part it's not so much a skill challenge as a "Oh did you find the right part of the screen to stand on and pose" sort of thing.

The setting and story kind of irks me as well. The theatre aesthetic isn't foreign to Mario games, with Paper Mario and SMB3 even embracing it, but it feels inconsistent here. Peach is put through a variety of different plays where she assumes the main role in order to complete the stage and overcome the main antagonist: Grape and the Sour Bunch, and bring order back to the play. But it feels like they couldn't decide whether the game was trying to be like "Hey this is you actually helping people in need" and "This is all an act for your amusement", and bouncing back between those constantly and clumsily does it a disservice.

Performance wise the game's not doing so hot either. I know it's on switch, but with how smooth Mario Kart 8 DX and Splatoon 3 run, the game doesn't really have an excuse to be dropping frames. Most of the game is a fixed perspective with models made to look like theater props, but I find it's actually pretty common to see things operating at a lower framerate or stuttering. They also didn't even stick 100% with the theater aesthetic, with a lot of transitions looking almost voxel and digital in nature rather than actively moving set pieces like a performance, which is a shame because if they went all in on it it would've been cool to see them nail it like modern Paper Mario hits the paper aesthetic really well.

All in all, I'd say this a fairly decent game that has some issues finding what it's supposed to be. There's definitely fun to have here, but the variety of costumes and performances which for the most part don't mix together make the game feel like a mini-game collection more than a cohesive experience. So, it's alright, but in my opinion I'd wait for a big sale before picking it up. If you're looking for a challenge, consider this to be like a Kirby game before you buy

[sneek-m]

Favorite Japanese Dramas 2022

I watched even more Japanese dramas this year. Here’s what I liked:

Waru ~ Hataraku No Ga Kakko Waruitte Dare Ga Itta? ~ (Wednesdays, 10 p.m.; Nippon TV)

What a powerful vehicle this drama was for Mio Imada, who delivered if not the year’s best comedy performance as Maririn, then one of the year’s most physical. Her character’s role as part-village idiot of the story called for the actress to practically be a cartoon character come to life, but she transcended the status of the central class clown by sheer committal to the act. Her performance is absolutely to the show’s benefit when the show’s actual politics isn’t as progressive as it thinks it is: it reveals the sad state of things, and how behind the conversation is, if the writers think we the audience should be applauding them for merely bringing up the existence of the glass ceiling and gender inequality in the workplace in 2022. Maririn seemed as though she was written as the modern Japanese Forest Gump, naively navigating the country’s workforce culture, but Imada turned it into a whole lot more.

Shizukachan To Papa (Sundays, 10 p.m.; NHK)

The chemistry between Tsurube Shofukutei and Riho Yoshioka as the titular father and daughter was incredible — I can watch them yell at each hour every week for months — but I also have to bring up the unforgettable Keiichi played by Hey! Say! JUMP’s Yuto Nakajima. An exaggeration of a character to deliver the point of communication, sure, but his whimsy is something I missed once I tuned into the actor’s following project, Junjou Dissonance, whose character was so tonally opposite, it completely turned me off.

First Penguin! (Wednesdays, 10 p.m.; Nippon TV)

Nao is another actress I’ve seen as a side character in past dramas, and so it was exhilarating to watch her take the wheel of First Penguin! as basically her star-making vehicle. A big hand to the source material for providing her the foundation of an already-strong character for her to further flesh out: First Penguin! is inspired by the real story of Chika Tsubouchi, who, like Nao’s Nodoka, rallied together fishermen, though not without conflict, to create the direct-delivery business in the form of what they call the “fish box” in the drama. While the actual politicking is questionable as real accounts, a true story from the Tsubouchi’s history does get expanded into one memorable episode: in order to win their favor and trust in the business, Nodoka treats out her fishermen to a Michelin-star French restaurant managed by a client in order for them to actually taste the fruits of their labor. Fact or fiction, the victory is priceless.

Tsukuritai Onna To Tabetai Onna (Weekdays, 10:45 p.m.; NHK)

Fifteen minutes feel way too short for the amount of sweetness each episode contains, though the length makes the story tidy, not slight. The drama presents enough without being expanded into a feature-length rom-com a la Kinou Nani Tabeta? I partly suspect the source material has yet to build the story and its lead characters to warrant such a length for an adaptation, but also the size of its conversations more properly fit in scale within a miniature, slice-of-life story such as this. The title gives away the simplicity anyway: while there are definitely moments of questioning — of sexuality, relationship dynamics, among others — it leaves the two feeling content to be just that: a woman who likes to cook and a woman who likes to eat.

Mahou No Rinobe (Mondays, 10 p.m.; Fuji TV)

As if I didn’t name Remo Love my favorite drama of 2020, Haru once again surprised me how great she is in a comedy. She appears so cool on the surface as Koume, and  I also perceive her as a rather soft-spoken celebrity, so it’s a sight whenever she absolutely cracks in response to the dumb mistakes made by the series of pathetic men among her line of work. (You know who’s the dark horse among the men in the main cast? Taizo Harada of, yes, comedy trio Neptune.) I see this drama more in line with a buddy-cop comedy in the suits of a home renovation marketing firm than workplace romance, though not that it bothers to have some inevitable office love.

Hatsukoi No Akuma (Saturdays, 10 p.m.; Nippon TV)

Three of the main four leads are so idiosyncratic as characters that I worry they may present a barrier of entry for this show. But like the best shows written by Yuji Sakamoto — Quartet, Omameda Towako — it nurtures a one-of-a-kind relationship among them, enough to convince these oddballs deserve each other as companions. The actual mystery component to the story is fine, but it’s really about getting to know these characters and each of their dark histories. Or, more like how you can only know a version of them as they present themselves to you.

Tsuma, Shougakusei Ni Naru (Fridays, 10 p.m.; TBS)

Even with a wacky premise — a dead wife returns to the family in the body of a third grader — the least convincing part of the whole story is Misato Morita’s Yoshimi being attracted to Shinichi Tsutsumi’s Keisuke, who is at least 20 years senior as her co-worker. It helps the drama is self-aware of its absurdity, making for great, if expected comedic moments, like the constant reality check given to Keisuke of who he’s actually hanging out with whenever he’s out catching up with his “wife.” Get through that initial obstacle, and the drama reveals a poignant story about death, grief and how to ultimately make peace.

Mai Agare! (Weekdays, 8 a.m.; NHK)

Mai Agare! is the first asadora I’ve ever watched, and maybe I’ll find it less unique as I watch more of it in the future. For now, I am enamored by its simple, soap-y wholesomeness. I’m charmed by the innocence in Haruka Fukuhara’s Mai as she embraces her naive dream to become a pilot because she simply finds flying so life-fulfilling. (Meanwhile, her cohorts in pilot school is inspired by more noble reasons, like being the change in a male-dominated field or following the footsteps of his family, but the gap only further establishes Mai’s character.) I suspect it will get darker as the ripples of the 2008 recession has started to make its way into the drama now third of the way in,  but I am not worried of it getting any bit of cynical. Call me to easy to please, but sometimes when I get back from a long day of work, I just want a heart-warming story like this one.

Silent (Thursdays, 10 p.m.; Fuji TV)

Here’s a question to those who also watched Silent: Did we need Minato? All I can say is that I sure was happy when he got out of the picture, and the drama finally gave floor for Haruna Kawaguchi’s Tsumugi and Ren Meguro’s Sou to deepen their relationship. The show actually opened up and spotlighted a whole other characters, too, after the first act, with each episode becoming more essay-like as it focused on its character of the week to deliver a point. I initially worried Silent would wear itself thin because it carried itself as a rather low-key slice-of-life, but that very day-to-day ease is what I loved from it, especially as matters between its character grew more complicated.

Other dramas I liked:

Elpis ~Kibou, Arui Wa Wazawai~

Atom No Ko

Jizoku Kanou Na Koi Desuka ~Chichi To Musume No Kekkon Koushinkyoku~

Kimi No Hana Ni Naru

Ishiko To Haneo ~Sonna Koto De Uttaemasu?~

Unicorn Ni Notte

[sharkneto]

I have finished! Some thoughts under read more, spoiler warning for Wind and Truth -

That was just... A frustrating read. I'm trying to justify giving the book 3 stars because I gave SJM 2 stars for the two ACOTAR books I read this year and I want to like it more than ACOTAR, but at least I knew what SJM was doing and recognized what she was trying to do. If Wind and Truth had been 500 pages shorter, I could justify it, easy. But 1,329 pages??? The amount of time and effort I committed to reading it? For how frustrating an ending? Sorry Brando, I can't.

Things I liked and I was invested in: 1) I always love Adolin, and my fear coming into this book was, as my one Normal Guy Left, he was going to end up bonding a spren and becoming Radiant. I thought his chapters trying to hold Azimir were really the only time I felt the plot's 10 day time crunch and used the insane length of the book to its advantage to feel the exhaustion of his impossible task. I loved how he ended up forming "platonic" bonds with deadeyes through his power of just being a Good Dude. Fit his character nicely and built on the trend he was already on. I was excited whenever the book checked back in with him. 2) I loved getting Szeth's backstory and his journey he was on. Poor fucked up little guy, he had one of the best paced plots and it worked really well to reframe who he's been the past four books. A very sympathetic character for the assassin that kicked off the whole series. 3) I liked how Dalinar's final choice worked - I'm a sucker for when characters have to choose to lose in order to win.

Otherwise? Just too much, too busy, so much bloat. The spirit realm plot of Dalinar and Navani and Gav tumbling around there could have been cut in half. Same with Shallan, Rlain, and Renarin with there being zero payoff for them releasing Mishram. I liked Kaladin's journey but unfortunately the pacing for it was rushed, which is insane when the book is this long. Kaladin is arguably the character we are all here for, and more time should have been spent with him and his plot given more attention for his own growth figuring out how to be a therapist. Was nice Jasnah got humbled, but we never got any consequences for countries that sided with Odium vs the Human Resistance, so ended up very little payoff for how she lost. So many little plots picked up and put down or just left because they set up things for the larger Cosmere.

That's where most of my frustration with the ending comes in. To be slightly fair, I bet the consequences and how the ascension of Retribution ripples makes more sense if you're fully up to date on the state of the Cosmere. I, however, am not. I've read 5/7 of Mistborn, and have read the Stormlight Archive. That's it. I enjoyed the nods to Mistborn I caught (but why is Kelsier here???). But once Dalinar made his move with Honor (and Honor's whole backstory tbh) the scale exploded to the entire Cosmere and I didn't have context for what these consequences were or what they were referencing. So very little satisfaction in conclusions for what the characters on Roshar accomplished (or didn't!), and lots and lots of set up for the larger Universe and the next five books. Which, unfortunately, leaves me holding these 1300 pages of words and content and going "Ok, but Why???"

I had a similar experience with The Hero of Ages - the scale of the plot expanded too much, beyond what I was really interested in or had good context to appreciate, and there were too many moments where I was left going "Sure, why not, that might as well happen." But at least that one had the decency to be half the length of Wind and Truth. So, really seems like the issue I have is with Brandon Sanderson's ability to balance and pace the later half of his series. He's obviously got his whole Cosmere very planned out on where things are going and how they all fit together, but I think he loses the forest for the trees, can't see what details are actually relevant vs a darling he should kill. I am begging him to get an editor to help him streamline.

Am I glad I read it? I guess, mostly to get the conclusion for this arc of the series and because I read it with a couple friends and there will be a lot of discussion had about it. But it's not a book I'd rec, and cements my Stormlight Archive series rec as "Read the Way of Kings, because that is a great book, and then read as far as you want." The bloat in these books means that it's a series of unfortunately diminishing returns, and I can't rec a book this long with so little overall payoff to anyone unless they're already committed to the series and want to read it just for completion's sake.

At least the hardcover looks pretty on my shelf.

W*nd and Tr*th really cementing my opinion that very rarely does a book need to be more than 600 pages, and doubly so for over a 1000

[henrysfedora]

mega mafia 2 rant, mostly eddie but:

you know thinking about how we're all so desperate for eddie content and how he deserved more screen time and development and he really did i'm still angry about it. but i'm just wishing right now that vito and eddie had gotten closer in game and that their relationship had been explored more because a lot of people love eddie and i just think (and as others have also thought) having him as the fourth main character really would have been absolutely great, eddie is so lovable, he's interesting as a character. he should've gotten closer to vito, joe and henry on screen. i don't want to undermine eddie because with what we've got he really is great for how little he appears, but having more content not because he isn't good without it but because he had wasted potential would be nice and satisfying.

is it just me or does eddie sound so, unlike himself on the phone to vito during chapter fifteen? he sounded so plain? it sounded as if he was being held at gunpoint honestly and i bring this up because i really wish as i said before, vito and eddie got closer canonically because i wonder how the story would've went if eddie knew vito was lying when he said he didn't know anything about the drug deal. and i'm pretty sure that has actually already been brought up but i just wanna see eddie angry on camera more, showing us his character and temper. i wanna see him be concerned for our protagonist who is one of his best friends and i want to see him worried for all of his best friends in general. he's worried about carlo and he's worried about his friends who are going against carlo. give me eddie dragging vito and joe's asses along for henry's confrontation, this is a big deal between the four of them so let us see them handle it as best friends. just let us see the confrontation on camera in all of its glory. arguments like this bring you closer to someone. eddie should've been treated as a main character, he seems so important even in the base game, being the fourth main character almost, being their boss, being the one who confronts henry, having the best introduction in the game honestly and being the fucking antagonists best friend like there's so much potential there and it all went unused. carlo is this interesting piece of shit don't get me wrong but he is not close with vito, eddie is, both eddie and carlo are extremely interesting, let vito see this, let vito side with eddie, let him decide something.

carlo's love for eddie has dwindled over time: and going back, way back when i said it sounds as if eddie was being held at gunpoint during the start of chapter fifteen, it's probably carlo's men that would do that and carlo had ordered them to keep eddie in his place. and even if that doesn't make sense the fact alone that carlo intimidated eddie enough to tell vito to go to the observatory is a little insane? eddie finds carlo terrifying and an order alone is enough to persuade eddie to fuck vito over which gives us more reason to hate carlo. hell, naomi bringing leo into this in some of their discussions- carlo and leo worked together back during the vinci-moretti war, surely eddie knew something about that? eddie is having his best friend work with a man from another family that helped him go through with a wish he desired (that was killing his own boss) when eddie was by his side. leo has orchestrated both of these plans, eddie is being cornered by two very terrifying people who don't give a fuck about him in the long run. two people he has known for a very long time, two immensely powerful people, and sure eddie himself is also a force to be reckoned with but carlo has gotten into his head and leo isn't someone to fuck with. eddie is powerless without his real family.

i can't tell if i'm getting it across, more attention being put onto eddie would not have ruined the game in my opinion, i love vito and joe so much, but having our perspectives expanded to eddie would have been really nice. and even henry as well because he was barely on screen, he's the third main character after all, he's incredibly important to the story and vito, joe and eddie too. vito and joe are our 'main' characters of mafia 2, show us their family and show us how important they are.

and i think all this ties into the ending of the game and how wrong it feels for vito to be the one to kill carlo (and i'm not the first one to mention that) having more attention on eddie and getting to know him more, having him tied into more of the drama vito, joe and henry face, letting us understand that he has an extremely strong connection with them. and then showing us vito, joe and henry sharing that bond back with eddie, showing us that all four of them feel the same way about one another and that they all consider each other important. like henry should've lived as vavra originally intended, henry wanted to kill carlo, so let henry live, let the trio get even closer to eddie, let us see eddie and carlo's relationship so we can have our soldiers: vito and joe, helping their boss, eddie, overcome his best friend that had constructed all the torture eddie has suffered and has turned a blind eye to. and give us henry going through with a goal of his and actually fucking accomplishing it for once, even if eddie gets the final shot in. let us see our characters that have been going through hell the entire game have something nice for once. let vito and joe rise to the people they have wanted to become ever since they were kids. let henry finally get something right for himself and let us see eddie heal and recover after getting rid of the person that has been hurting him for years.

having this connection with eddie as an audience and as vito would've been great because in the end it isn't all about vito and breaking this soldier persona of his (well it is but it isn't) it's about helping his family which is the most important thing to him and it has always been the most important thing to him, joe, henry, eddie, leo and his actual blood related family, maria, francesca and antonio. and because it's important to him it's important to us. he wants to follow orders and love his friends and i personally think that, that would've been a nice full circle for vito story wise. he's going to follow eddie's orders and he's going to help him because he's family. family is forever.

vito is our protagonist, vito wants to protect his family, so getting to know eddie more and learning that vito really cares about him, getting us to care about him more as a player because he is our protagonist's family, he is important.

and i can even go on about mafia 2's original game design and how it was going to be a multi choice game: having all this and then on top of all this having the risk that we could lose eddie at any point of the game, we come to realise that he is important because we love him and his introduction into the game, we love him because he is our protagonists family and because we understand the bond he and all the other characters share with one another. honestly as rude as this sounds if we got a multi choice game but only the eddie we got canonically, there really wouldn't be that much of a risk in losing eddie other than feeling upset about him dying and losing his charismatic presence in game. but, if we got to see more of him and more of how he acts and we learn about his importance, and he gets that final scene with carlo. i would protect him every damn chapter of the game he's in. if he dies, i'm restarting the mission because without him we've lost such a great part of the story, we've lost a best friend and we've lost the chance to help and love this best friend.

personally, knowing that eddie is an alcoholic most likely due to traumatic events in his life. just having him be more important to the story and its characters and eventually recovering from everything he's faced, and helping vito recover from everything he's gone through. would make me really happy to see the characters get what they deserve. but i know that all this would take away from that impact of mafia 2's original ending. an ending that doesn't glorify this life and shows us that mafioso's do not get a happy ending, but it would be so nice for our beloved characters to be happy.

this even makes me think about leo more, i don't know what use he would have other than saving vito's ass from getting assassinated in his sleep after the drug deal. because we don't even know his motives in the original (i personally think it's him trying to prove himself to frank to gain his trust again). leo could either go through with what he does originally, or conspire with carlo once more, or talk to vito and help him with killing carlo because as much as i like to think leo and carlo still get along after the assassination of moretti, i doubt it really, as has already been explored by harry specifically. like eddie, leo is family to vito and having this surrogate father figure come in clutch at the end of the game would've been really nice instead of ruining vito's life.

hell, henry.. vavra wasn't going to kill henry. canonically speaking henry was going to continue on with vito and joe after carlo died. with the way the game went having this happy ending in which we could've potentially seen henry finally have these refreshing, non-stressing moments with vito and joe because probably by now the air was clear. that would be so nice. the drug deal was that point of the quartets relationship where henry realised his plans aren't fucking cutting it. and i just like to think that if henry survived the drug deal and eddie was there for them all this time, those two bouncing off vito and joe: they all run into problems, but when they work as a quartet, things go right, carlo is killed. when they work together things are thought through. especially after experiencing the drug deal and the consequences of it, things are definitely thought through.

really i'm just upset that eddie got sidelined, i'm curious about the other endings we could've had, i'm sad that leo was a bitch at the end of the game, i'm upset that henry got killed off so early (and in general) and i'm sad that 2k threw all the good content out of the window because i fucking bet they had plans for eddie that was going to make it into the final game. the way vavra speaks about his project, the way the original soundtrack is fucking beautiful and crafted like a masterpiece, the way certain parts of mafia 2's story blows our minds when it's his writing: eddie had content, he had a story and they THREW IT AWAY.

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

fuck I still haven't done the rewrite of the Mutant Town AU that I specifically came off hiatus to write, like the Plant Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts were written to prep this au and I just got wildly distracted so uhhhh

yeah the concept is in the link but the gist is that the people and town becoming mutated by constant ectoplasmic contamination, we all know and love this concept right but I'm gonna expand on it

this is a direct result of the portal being opened, but they aren't getting infected from the portal, the issue is that creating a permanent opening into the ghost zone has weakened the veil between their worlds and Amity Park and the Ghost Zone sort of slip in and out of each other constantly

and because ectoplasm responds strongly to emotions (poltergeists being made from atmospheric emotions for example) it all tends to converge very heavily at the school full of hormonal teenagers

so Casper High becomes its own god damn cryptid, the teachers get so jaded about opening the door to a classroom and finding just a whole ass ghost zone on the other side that they just put a sign on the door telling kids to go to a different room, lockers swap contents with other lockers so kids have started putting their names on the inside so they know who's stuff they've just found

this also means the kids get super affected, like super affected, literally, they all get ghost powers, some are just physical mutations, some are just super abilities, or a general increase in natural ability, like a member of the track team getting super speed

it takes a while for Danny and co. to figure this out, Sam and Tucker should have been warning signs as they've spent the most time around ghosts and the ghost zone, but that's why the Witch Sam and Pharaoh Tucker posts are important

they have powers, but they thought they came exclusively from outside sources, they had no idea that their abilities were also strengthened and influenced by being highly contaminated by ectoplasm, which is why when one day Mikey sneezes and green acid shoots out of his nose and melts his desk, everyone is a little bit startled

the teachers have long since started using ghost detectors after the time Paulina spent a whole week overshadowed by Kitty, so Mikey gets a check over and other than the usual atmospheric reading Lancer gets nothing especially strong from him

there have been concerns about the gradually increasing ectoplasmic content in the air messing with ghost detector results, the devices have to be recalibrated constantly, so Lancer asks the one and only son of the local ghost hunters in the room if he has some other way to check

Danny's parents make him keep a few protective items in his schoolbag, so he tries some gear on him to see if anything comes flying out, but nothing does, Danny isn't too surprised seeing as he couldn't sense a ghost in the room anyway, but it definitely makes things a little concerning

even if it were a repeat of the Spectra incident and he wasn't being overshadowed, the Fenton's tech would have still gotten rid of whatever was causing this if it were an external influence

Mikey is sent home for the day and his parents are told to keep an eye on him

and then the next week, Star drops a pen off her desk and a strand of her hair whips out to grab it, she's also checked for ghost influence and sent home

a few weeks after that it happens again, a kid on the basketball team makes a leap to the net and stays in the air, they have to call in the cheerleaders to climb on top of each other to reach him and pull him down

Danny has been trying to figure out what's happening from the first moment with Mikey, and his parents have also been getting calls from worried parents who want to know if they can fix whatever's happening to their kids

over the next couple of months, every kid in the school has some kind of ability or mutation, Dash heals whoever he touches, which he discovers after punching Nathan in the face and curing his acne, Paulina turns invisible, which freaks her out at first until she realises it's great for eavesdropping, Wes can conjure fire (because I desperately needed him to have a polarising ability to Danny), Kwan becomes empathic and can feel and influence people's emotions

Valerie also had an early mutation that she didn't know about, when Technus gave her a new suit, her body pretty much just absorbed it as a part of her, Technus had not intended this to happen, and was pretty peeved about it, Valerie found out that she had stolen control over the suit when Technus had a big rant about it during a fight, and she put the pieces together once other kids started developing abilities

this whole thing causes a ton of chaos as kids are struggling to control what they can do, so Danny has to step in and help them out, he often has to run off to change into Phantom in order to protect everyone from an ability that's gone haywire, he ends up pretty much running ghost power training courses after school to help them control themselves

he's also gotten stuck in situations where he's had to step in and help someone without having the time to change forms, meaning he has to make up a cover story about having developed his own powers way before everyone else since he's been living on top of a portal for years, he only tells people about his ice powers

Jazz has always had a tendency to be able to reign in her emotions and keep a cool head, (the only ones who can really push her buttons are Danny and sometimes her parents, at school around other kids who look up to her she's often very in control) meaning she doesn't draw ectoplasm to herself all that much, and though Danny uses the excuse of having lived on top of a ghost portal to explain why he's already so familiar with using his power, it's actually not even remotely true, because the Fentons use specialised air purifiers to keep the atmospheric ectoplasm at a manageable level, the Fenton house ironically has the least atmospheric contamination compared to the rest of the town, that's how Maddie and Jack have had limited mutation to themselves (though they aren't wholly free, they've mostly just gotten physically stronger and tougher)

so even though Jazz develops her power a little earlier than everyone else's, it's not that far ahead, and she actually doesn't even realise she already has one until half the school has developed theirs

Jazz has the power to slow time in a little bubble around herself, she'd been using it without realising while studying, having gotten through hours of work in half that time, she always thought it was just her losing track of time or she was just getting faster at reading, she also spends a lot of time counselling other students and trying to help them sort out their problems, and they'd often comment that they felt like they'd been talking for so much longer than they had, again she just chalked it up to losing track of time

a lot of students had wondered why Danny developed a power early and Jazz hadn't, until someone walked in on Jazz helping a girl through a panic attack in the bathroom, and found them both talking extremely fast, a lot of her friends realised in hindsight that she'd been doing that unwittingly for quite a while, nobody had noticed because she always talked to people privately, so nobody outside her little time bubble had seen it happen

Sam and Tucker come clean about their abilities too, but they also don't give the full rundown, still keeping some things close to the chest to avoid standing out from everyone else

then there's the teachers

adults typically have a better time regulating emotions than teenagers, meaning much like Jazz they aren't drawing as much ectoplasm toward themselves, but this doesn't exempt them from developing something after a while, especially with the heightened stress of managing a school full of volatile super kids

Mr Lancer discovers that he can create shields, after an incident where he jumps in front of some students to protect them from another power gone awry

Tetslaff ends up with a sonic ability, able to project her voice like a megaphone (yes this is a Coach Boomer from Sky High reference don't @ me), Principal Ishiyama develops a physical mutation, growing to twice her size, she likes that she can tower over the students while delivering speeches, but she doesn't like having to stoop through doors all the time, she has the one to her office resized, along with her chair and desk

so as you can imagine, the town ends up erupting into chaos, a lot of kids very much misuse their abilities, Danny does his best as Phantom to teach people to be responsible, but sometimes he has to resort to literally kicking their asses to get them to straighten up

but for the most part, a ton of kids were already looking up to him, and are generally pretty happy to follow his example, especially the more popular kids, it's generally considered not very cool to get your ass kicked by Phantom, so weirdly enough a lot of kids get peer pressured into not causing any real damage or injury with their powers

this doesn't mean they don't absolutely misuse them, they're just more subtle about it

until a ghost shows up, a lot of the kids are more than happy to let loose to protect themselves and their friends, and Phantom for the most part is happy to let them, with some supervision of course, he still has to make sure nobody gets too hurt (including the ghosts)

the entire debacle makes Danny's life simultaneously a whole lot easier AND so much more fucking stressful

[tummy-stuffing-king]

All Day Stuffing: Chapter 2- Lunch

Chapter 1

For lunch, you go to a Mexican restaurant. As you and your partner settle into the red vinyl booth, the waiter approaches with a basket of chips and a couple small saucers of salsa.

“What can I get you guys to drink today?” he asks as he sets them down. 

“They’ll have a coke, and just a water for me.” your partner says before you can even open your mouth. They flash you a grin and you smile in return.

“Great, anything else?”

“A large bowl of queso as well, please” your partner replies.

“Alright, that’ll be out in just a minute.” Your partner thanks them as they head off to the kitchen.

At the thought of queso, your mouth begins to water, despite the lingering fullness from breakfast. You can feel your belly pressing lightly against the waistband of your jeans and your abdomen is nicely rounded under the maternity shirt. You already have the beginnings of a muffin top poking out. 

“Here. These are for you.” Your partner pushes the basket of chips across the table to you. You groan as the smell hits you. They’re still warm, and the smell of oil and salt is mesmerizing.

You pick up a chip but pause. “You don’t want any?”

They smile. “I’ll steal a couple, but remember it’s my job today to feed you, darling. And I want you to be eating these chips from now until your entree gets her, and finish off the last basket after that too, got it?”

You nod in faux seriousness. “Aye aye captain.” With that you scoop up some salsa and shove the oversized chip in your mouth. As you eat, you rest your hand on your belly, feeling as it ever so slowly expands. At some point the water drops off your soda and a new basket of chips, along with the queso, and you eagerly dig in. The cheese is thick and spicy and delicious, and you can feel your belly grow with every bubbly sip of coke. 

The waiter comes by again as you’re nearing the end of the second basket of chips. The queso is long gone, and you’re on the third bowl of salsa. 

“Are you ready to order?” It seems as though he may be eyeing you, but you refuse to acknowledge it and shove another chip in your mouth.

“Yeah, they’ll have the triple enchilada meal with beans and rice, and I will have the steak burrito.”

“Great choice. Would you like some more chips before that comes out?”

Your partner glances at you before replying and their lips twitch into a smile. “Yes please.”

“I’ll be right back with that then.” he says, and steps away. 

You scrounge up the last few chip shards in the bottom of the basket and drop them into your mouth before sighing and leaning back, your hand absently rubbing your stomach. 

“Oh don’t tell me you’re full already,” your partner teases, watching your hand on your belly.

“No.” You sit upright again, but pause wincing. Your meal hasn’t even come yet and your jeans are already painfully tight against your midsection, and there’s a very noticeable muffin top below your ribs. “No, I’m not, I just need to free up some space is all.” As discreetly as you can, you reach under your belly-molded shirt to undo your pants button. As it comes loose, the zipper slides down of its own accord and your tummy plops onto your thighs, heavy and soft. You pull down the hem of your shirt and tuck it up underneath your belly, creating a very clear outline of it under the stretchy material. 

“Whew, much better.” You give your belly a couple pats for good measure, and lean forward in your seat, putting your elbows on the table and resting your chin on your hands.

“Good.” Your partner leans forward as well. “It would be a shame for you to fill up now when there’s still so much growing to do.” They reach out their hand as if to try and touch your stomach, but stop halfway across the table. You’re too far away here, and this isn’t the place anyways. They’d be able to touch you properly later. 

The waiter returns with more chips and a new round of drinks, and you get back to work. This food isn’t going to eat itself after all. You mindlessly down chip after chip, taking sips of your coke every few bites as your partner watches, eyes flicking between your stomach and your face. 

There are only a few chips left when the waiter returns holding your entrees. You both scramble to shove debris out of the way so he can set down your plates, and sit up in anticipation. 

“Careful, they’re hot,” he says as he lays them down on the table. “Will you be needing anything else?”

“Just some more refills,” your partner replies. “Thank you.”

As the waiter heads off again, you unwrap your utensils from their napkin and survey your plate. The three enchiladas are all different flavours, one sour cream, one salsa verde, and one mole, each filled with a different meat as well. 

You start with the sour cream, the chicken inside savoury and roasted to perfection, full of onions and peppers and exploding with spices. You moan with delight as the flavours mix and contrast to perfection, and before you know it the whole thing is gone. Desperately you scoop up the last of the sauce left on the plate.

“Woah now, slow down there, you don’t want to fill yourself up too quick. You have to save room for the rest of it.”

You lean back and take a couple gulps of your soda before letting out a belch, barely stifled by your hand. “Oops, ‘scuse me.” The pressure in your gut relents somewhat, but you lean back for a minute, rubbing your belly and letting it settle before you go back for more. 

“Don’t get too overeager or you won’t be able to enjoy yourself.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me enjoying myself. Believe me, that’s the furthest concern from my mind.”

You let out another burp as you sit back up straight, scooting forward again in the booth. Before you can regain your position, however, your belly bumps against the edge of the table. Sitting up, your belly now protrudes far out onto your lap. You hadn’t even noticed, you were so enraptured by the food.

You glance up and your partner is staring, a flush creeping across their cheeks. They clear their throat, trying to collect themself. “I guess you really are starting to fill out that shirt, huh?”

You look down again. It was true; the formerly loose folds of the maternity shirt were now stretched taut in the middle, a smooth dome resting upon your lap.

“What, this?” you ask, pushing your hands between your belly and your thighs. “This isn’t all that much.” You lift your hands a couple times, feeling the new weight, several pounds pushing your abdomen outward, watching the loose muscles jiggle just a bit. There wasn’t much give with so much food packed inside. Despite your words, your stomach is actually quite full, and you can feel the pressure of it just below your chest and the slight strain on your back. You pick up your fork and lean forward. These enchiladas aren’t going to eat themselves, after all. 

You eat the other two enchiladas, rubbing your belly continuously, partially to help soothe it, but mostly because you simply can’t keep your hands off of your growing gut. The feeling of your usually flat stomach, now distended, is a marvel. You keep running your hand along it, down the sides and up over the top, just to feel how expansive it is, how much you’ve managed to change it in such a short period of time. 

Before you know it your plate is empty except for the last traces of sauce along the bottom. You let out a sigh and lean back in your seat again. The movement reminds you sharply of the discomfort of your gut, the heavy weight of it pressing in on your lungs and stretching your abdominals to their max. 

You look up at your partner, tearing your eyes away from the mound of your belly, and find them looking back across the table at you. Half their burrito is still on their plate.A slow smile spreads across their face.

When dessert arrives, a heaping plate of soft, sugary sopapillas, you can’t stop yourself. Despite the shortness of breath and the persistent ache in your middle and the growing sleepiness you are beginning to succumb to, it simply takes more willpower than you possess to resist. Your partner knows this. You know your partner knows this. And as the honey drips down your face and hands you can’t help but moan and continue until the plate is empty.

When you finally shove the platter away and attempt to clean yourself of the sticky residue, you are panting. The last few bites had been difficult to swallow and you can still feel them resisting the confines of your stomach, but you hold in a burp and force them to settle.

At length the dishes are cleared away and the bill is paid and it is time to leave. You stand from the booth, wavering slightly at the altered center of gravity, before your partner catches your arm and glides their hand around your waist. As you make your way out of the restaurant, their hand rubs discreet circles against your side as you lean against them. The zipper of your jeans is spread wide under your shirt and biting in slightly to the tender flesh of your belly. The maternity shirt could hardly be called oversized now. 

You’re tight and uncomfortable, but also sated in a way you rarely get to be. Settling into the car, contentment washes over you and drowsiness pulls you down before you’ve even left the parking lot.

[bluerose5]

First Impressions (Part 1)

Word Count: 1,726

Rated T (Warnings for Swearing, Canon-Typical Violence)

Summary: What if, after receiving that call from Garrus while he was pinned down on Omega, Castis tries to track him down?

"Are you sure it was him?"

"I'm sure." Alec's smile turned mocking, the vitriol directed more towards himself. "I'm no Shadow Broker, but I still have my list of contacts here on the Citadel, even if it's dwindling by the seconds."

"Alec—"

"I don't need your pity, Castis." His smile fell, a subtle frown curling at the edges of his lips. "Besides, I'm doing this as a favor for a friend. Father to father. You know how it is."

"Yeah," Castis Vakarian sighed, "so I do."

It had been quite some time since the elder Vakarian graced the Citadel with his presence, but ever since he received that call...

"You finish up what you have to do there, and then you come on home to Palaven. We have a lot to sort out."

Even now, the echoes of gunfire rang in his ears, but not as much as the resignation in Garrus’s voice.

"Target practice," Garrus had called it.

As if an experienced C-Sec officer with common sense couldn't tell the difference between target practice and an all-out gunfight.

Even now, Castis's chest tightened.

The thought of losing Garrus now, especially when his mother's condition wasn't showing any signs of improvement—

Castis couldn't stand the thought. He couldn't lose both his wife and his son all at once.

When Garrus never reported back, he had to do something. After he spoke with some old friends on the Citadel, Alec Ryder put out some feelers of his own at his friend's request. For a while, there was nothing.

Then, they got a hit.

The Normandy SR-2, arriving to the Citadel from Omega. A ship flagged by Citadel Control's security algorithms for having alleged ties to the pro-human extremist group known only as Cerberus.

It was under the command of no other than Commander Shepard.

Why was Castis not surprised?

Between his and Alec's contacts, they had been able to discern that there were indeed aliens listed as part of the ship’s crew. A surprising move, given the organization's history, but Castis was far from calling them friends. Just because they expanded recruitment beyond their own species did not make them allies.

Add in a Spectre miraculously back from the dead, and the whole situation reeked of trouble.

Alec agreed, so they approached the matter with caution.

Thankfully, Solana understood when Castis had to drop everything and go. All that she asked was that he return home with the knowledge that Garrus was safe. That's it.

Of course, that wasn't enough to satisfy him.

Castis knew that Garrus was alive now, but that wasn't enough.

The next time he and Alec were pinged, they received intel stating that Garrus was spotted poking around the shipping sector of Zakera Ward with Commander Shepard, seeking out a notorious forger. For what? Spirits only knew.

The only other info that they had was that there was a drell and a quarian accompanying them as well.

While they awaited positive IDs on those two, they continued following Garrus’s trail, questioning the loose-lipped volus who was more than happy to give up Fade's position after his lousy bodyguards wandered off for a break.

Eventually, they were led to Harkin's position. It wasn't exactly hard to figure out that Garrus had already been there, what with the trail of bodies and mechs they left in their wake.

Seeing Harkin curled up on the floor, the bastard took one look up at them, then swore under his breath.

"Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me," he spat. "First your son, and now you? Haven't you Vakarians done enough?"

"Heh," Alec chuckled. "We're just getting started, tough guy."

Tapping at his omni-tool, Castis sent out an alert. While he dealt with Harkin, Alec approached the open console nearby, downloading all of its content, including the most recent call to a client.

"Have fun explaining yourself to C-Sec, Harkin, or is it Fade now?" Castis paused, crossing his arms over his chest as he peered down at him. "You can't resist making a fool of yourself for even a second, can you?"

"Hot take, coming from you." Harkin sneered. "You can't even keep that hot-headed son of yours on a leash. Bet C-Sec was glad to finally have his insubordinate ass off the force."

Castis saw red.

He took a step forward, but Alec's hand came down onto his shoulder, stopping him in his path.

"He's not worth it," Alec reminded him gently. As C-Sec swarmed the area, Alec jerked his chin in the direction of the door. "Come on. Let’s go find him before it's too late."

They strolled out together, heads ducked close and voices kept low.

"Did you find anything?" Castis asked.

"More than enough," Alec assured him. "Garrus is looking for a turian by the name of Lantar Sidonis."

"Can't say I've heard of him."

"Hmm..." Alec hummed thoughtfully to himself. "There was a location sent to set up a meeting. Orbital Lounge."

"Good work," Castis said, but Alec shrugged off the praise. "Let's go."

They stopped to make a quick change in a clothing store along the way. They got dressed in casual attire, posing as a couple of friends enjoying the sights.

By the time they made it to the lounge, Castis was already getting antsy. He struggled to maintain his cover, his eyes darting this way and that.

Alec elbowed him in the side.

"Calm down," he warned. He turned towards a random window display to glance over the selection of model ships. "Maintenance walkway above. Over your shoulder and to the right."

Castis snuck a peek as soon as he had the chance to.

He felt all of the blood drain from his face.

Turning quickly back towards the display, he hissed under his breath, "He has a rifle."

Alec shushed him before they could attract too much attention.

"I know, but do we really want to announce that little fact to the entire plaza?!" he whispered frantically.

Right.

Taking a deep breath, Castis composed himself. Usually, he wasn't this bad at remaining undercover, but the stakes were too high —too personal— to ignore.

It was hard to remain calm when your son was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

Killing in a public place...

What happened to make him fall so far?

"I spotted someone up there with him," Alec said, breaking Castis of his reverie. "Shepard, maybe?"

Looking around at the crowd, Castis shook his head a moment later.

"No, not Shepard. Look. To your left."

Alec followed his line of sight, then ducked his head back down.

"Her, the quarian, and I'm assuming that's Sidonis," Alec said, counting them off one by one. "Which means that might be the drell up top with Garrus. A lookout, perhaps?"

"Hmph."

That was when Castis noticed the spotting laser.

His pupils narrowed into thin slits.

"No."

Alec stopped him again, stepping out in front of him with his hands spread wide.

"Wait, wait, wait," he ordered. "Let's see how this plays out first."

Castis turned on him with a glare.

"My son is about to commit a murder in plain sight, and you want me to wait?" he snapped.

"I want you to think clearly," Alec corrected. "Take another look at who the spotting laser is trained on."

Staring him down, Castis huffed impatiently, but quickly complied. They couldn’t afford to be stuck at an impasse at such a crucial moment.

One look was enough to clear up the image that had been blurred by emotion.

What in the—

"No." Castis shook his head in disbelief, but that didn't change what he was witnessing. "No, Garrus is too fond of the Commander. He wouldn't hurt her."

The conviction with which he spoke surprised even himself, but Garrus's attachment to Shepard was undeniable, as much as he was loath to admit it.

Even then, he couldn’t deny what was right there in front of him. The spotting laser was focused on the back of Commander Shepard’s skull, clear as day.

However, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

When Sidonis moved, Garrus followed him, but the Commander was instantly there to block his opening.

There were a few tense moments where words were exchanged, far too quiet to hear from where Alec and Castis were positioned. They went back and forth for a bit, and Castis admittedly feared for the worst when both Shepard and Sidonis started to leave.

The second Garrus had a clear shot at Sidonis, Castis held his breath.

But the shot never came.

"Well," Alec muttered, "that was anticlimactic."

Castis glared and punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow!"

"That's my son, Ryder."

With a grumble, Castis dragged Alec along. Their hunt wasn't over yet.

"You should meet mine. I feel like if Scott would've let him go, then he would have somehow managed to pull the trigger by accident. A real stroke of bad luck, that one."

"Spirits."

Strolling through the crowds, they laid low for as long as they could.

By the time they found Garrus again, he was talking with the others by a skycar terminal, presumably waiting on a cab.

A whole flood of emotions came crashing down on Castis at once, and there was no holding back. Not anymore.

Ignoring Alec's warnings not to do anything rash, Castis stormed off in their direction.

Insane how, after so many years of being friends, the N7 was only choosing now to try to be the voice of reason when Castis wanted to be anything but.

Out of everyone, the drell noticed him first, regarding him with suspicion.

Before he could warn him, Castis called out, "Garrus!"

The other three instantly froze, right before they turned to face him.

Garrus’s eyes widened, his mandibles falling slack as he gaped.

"Dad?"

"'Dad?!'" Shepard and the quarian echoed, shocked by such an unexpected turn of events.

The drell, on the other hand, didn't seem the least bit perturbed.

"Ah, his father," he hummed, nodding in understanding. "Your presence in the lounge makes sense now."

Alec's brow furrowed.

"Hold up, you knew we were there?" he asked skeptically.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call you two 'subtle.'"

"That doesn't matter!" Castis snapped.

Clenching his jaw, his mandibles were clamped down tight.

Time to get this meeting back on track.

"Garrus, we need to talk."

[neesieiumz]

Live Accident {Katsuki Bakugou x Black!Female!Reader}

Summary: You are an up and coming beauty influencer and content creator on YouTube. Some say you are a miniature version of Jackie Aina, keeping it real  and taking shit from nobody. You live a private life due to wanting have somethings for yourself, including your significant others. But accidents happen, it was an honest mistake. 

A/N: I know I said I was gonna have this hereby Friday but things happen. This idea came to me randomly, and I worked with it. All the Stars chapter 7, I’m gonna put it out before the end of the year... I know that for a fact, so keep pushing me please. So with that being said, enjoy this oneshot I wrote for all my black queens...

Word Count: 5.9k 

It was his red eyes that pulled you in, they were one of a determined man, one who was too determined. His ideals and attitude pushed away a lot of people who had just met him, but not you. You were intrigued, you wanted to know what made this man tick, why he was so loud, explosive, why his circle was so small. It took an effort for him to even let you in, and before you knew it, you two were in a relationship for one year. 

You met Katsuki at an exclusive event, you were only in the industry for a couple of years and wanted to expand your brand. There were a lot of people in the industry at that gala, from famous agents, managers, other makeup artists, people who you knew could get you into higher places. There were not only people in the entertainment and influencer industry, but there were also pro-heroes there, for both protection and to enjoy the gala. You were there with your other YouTuber friend and were talking amongst yourselves, taking a break from all the fake smiles and even faker laughs. The two of you were currently talking about another collab when two people came over, dragging over another person into your conversation. It was a man and woman dragging another man, who, mumbling under his breath, didn’t want to be dragged into the conversation. 

“Hi, there!” The lady interjected, helping the red-headed man pull the ash-blond on to where they were all standing. 

You both stopped your conversation to look at them, the girl was pink, pink all over, from her hair to her skin, it was pink all over for her. She was wearing a black, velvet, strappy, mini bodycon dress with strappy heels to match. The red-headed guy was wearing a simple black suit, white shirt, and black bowtie, and his long hair was slicked back into a man bun. The man that they were pulling over to us was wearing a deep burgundy suit with a black shirt and tie with a chain connecting the flap of the suit jacket to the pocket. 

You were about to say something but one of the guys, who still couldn’t remember their names, cut you off even before you could speak. 

“Can I help you?”

You took a moment to get a better look at the three of them before recognizing them from the hero course at UA, “Oh my god, you three went to UA, you were in the hero course right?!” You exclaimed, making them all stiffened and turn to look at you. 

You recognized the uneasiness in their eyes, so to ease their concerns, you put your hands up in surrender, “I went to UA as well, I was in the business course though.” 

Your explanation made them all relax, and they all straightened up to face the two of you. 

“My name is Mina Ashido but my Alias is Pinky, because well, you know,” she said, pointing at her pink skin and pink hair. 

You nodded and gave her a smile before facing the two other men who came with her. One was facing you and the other was facing the other way, looking into the crowd. Both of their eyes were red, yet one was filled with kindness you’ve never seen in a man, and the other man’s eyes were filled with an arrogance that, while you’ve seen the look in other men’s eyes before, something about him that wasn’t arrogance but more of well put confidence. 

“My name is Eijirou Kirishima, Alias, Red Riot! And this….” He dragged out, turning the other man around to face all of us. 

His face screamed of boredom, he didn’t want to be here. Arms crossed and his nose flared to the point I could see his nose hairs. His face honestly looked so funny, you couldn’t help yourselves but laugh. 

“Dude, what’s with your face?” You let out while chuckling at the same time. 

He tensed up a little before turning to glare at you, his face not deterring your laughter, “Heh?! What the fuck are you talking about?!”

He only made you laugh harder, your explanation coming out in between laughs, “you...look...like you constipated.” 

“Shut up before I kill you!” 

You started to calm down a little, your friend handing you a glass of water to help you soothe your throat. His two friends were looking back at him while holding back their laughter while he just glared at four of you laughing at his despair. 

“And this is Katsuki Bakugou, you may know him as Dynamight…” Kirishima finally finished introducing him. 

You decided to call it a truce and held your hand out to him, “My name is Y/n L/n, it's nice to meet each of you.” 

He looked down at your hand and wasn’t gonna shake until Ashido used her elbow to nudge and he slightly turned to glare at her and she hushed her head to point at me. The two of them were speaking to each other with their eyes before Bakugou rolled his eyes and shook my hand. 

“We didn’t just come here just to get to know you, Bakugou here has a proposition for you, Ms. L/n.” Ashido motioned at him, making me tilt my head in question. 

You wondered what he could do, especially since you just laughed in his face about his face and the fact that he’s a hero, what could a hero need with a Youtube makeup artist? Bakugo placed his hands in his pockets, searching for something. 

“So my parents are fashion designers or what-fucking-ever, and they tasked me with if “I ever see you, to give you their card or some shit. They “apparently” want to work with for a video or whatever you do, I couldn’t be bothered to fully remember the details,” he pulled out his wallet and handed you the card. 

Your eyes widened at his half-assed proposal, you slowly grabbed the card and looked at the names on the card, Masaru and Mitsuki Bakugou, CEO of Relz Brand. You damn near fainted at the names and your friend had to catch you before you made a mess of yourself. You had to catch your breath and your friend ordered you another glass of water. 

“Relz?!? Your parents own the most relevant fashion brands in Japan and they want to work with me?!” You managed to squeak out once you were able to down some more water. 

“I mean, you’re good at what you do and my mom has a knack for finding the next “top person”, her words not fucking mine.” He looked away, you were too busy looking at the card to notice his cheeks burning red but his two friends and your friend saw as well. 

They all smirked in his direction and Ashido even nudged her elbow into his side, making him push her off and straighten up his outfit. You started to nod once you realized that you were staring at the card for way too long. You opened your purse and placed the card inside it. 

“I’ll be sure to give them a call, thank you so much for this opportunity,” You bowed in gratefulness to him and he just hissed under his breath but you all heard him. 

“Don’t fucking thank me yet, thank me when your collaboration is the best fucking one out there. Pinky, Kirishima, let’s go, I’m fucking tired.”

Before you could say anything to him, he and his friends had already walked away. Kirishima and Ashido both looked back to give you a thumbs up and mouth “good luck” and words similar to that. 

                                                              ---

You were walking out of the Relz office, having a successful meeting with Mitsuki and Masaru, and already have a draft of a contract for your exclusive collection with them. Their marriage was one that you loved, and you could see where Bakugou got his explosive behavior from. 

“THAT BRAT, CAN’T EVEN GIVE A SIMPLE FUCKING BUSINESS CARD!!” Mrs. Bakugou yelled, slamming her hands on the desk, making some of the papers fly. 

“Now, dear, at least he gave the card, he doesn’t work here remember?” Mr. Bakugou said softly, bending down to pick up the papers that fell. 

“Shut up Masaru! Anyways, Y/n dear, we’ve seen your videos, we’ve seen the interactions, we think that you would be the perfect person to have an exclusive collaborative line with our brand? We think your style is just what we need here at Relz and would love to work with you.” 

You smiled at how much you got done at the meeting, and was about to walk out when you ran into a hard wall of flesh. You took a couple of steps back, trying to catch yourself when you felt two hands grab at your shoulders to be able to steady you. You looked up to find Bakugou holding you and giving you a look that had no fire behind it. 

“Bakugou? What are you doing here?” You asked before realizing how stupid of a question that was. He gave you a blank stare before you realized the only reason he could be here, “sorry that was a stupid question. Of course, you would be here, your parents own the damn place.” You chuckled, taking another step back as he let go of your shoulders. 

He didn’t say anything, instead just shoes to look at you up and down, taking a look at your outfit, “you were in a business meeting with my parents?” He asked, shoving his hands in his jeans. 

You nodded and glanced down at your outfit, which was a long sleeve bodycon dress while holding your jacket in one hand and your bag in the other. You took this time to take a look at what he was wearing, some black baggy jeans, with a tight black t-shirt and a leather jacket. He had circular sunglasses, possibly to deter anyone from recognizing him. Your eyes stayed a little too long at his chest before looking away, feeling your cheeks burn. 

“You… look good,” you complimented, making him raise another eyebrow at you. 

“Just good?” he questioned while smirking at you, steeping closer and bending down, leaning into your face. 

His closeness made you squirm a little and you pushed his head away, “move, you all up in my space.”

Your actions just made him laugh loudly but he refused to even move from his position making you try and walk around him but he just grabbed you by the waist and started pulling back from where you came. From the elevators, but this time he walked over the private elevator that led straight to the CEOs’ office. 

“Hey!” You started to fight him, “let me go!” You struggled to get out of his grip but that just made him hold you tighter and walked to the private elevator faster. 

“Bakugou! Bro, fucking let me go!” 

He ignored what you said and fished out a key card and swiped it, unlocking the elevator and the doors sliding open. He hauled you into the elevator and closed the door and pressed the button that led them straight to The Bakugous’ office. Once it was just the two of them, Bakugo let you go and you pushed him before standing up straight. You fixed up your outfit, fixing the ponytail your braids were in. Once you looked presentable once again, you turned back to the ash-blonde man before giving him one of your deadliest glarest which he just returned with a smirk. 

“What is your fucking problem? So we just kidnap people now? That’s not very heroic-like!” You exclaimed, going into your bag. 

He ignored what you said and just said, “I need you to come with lunch with my parents. It’s unbearable every single fucking time cause all they ask about is “Katsuki, are you dating someone?’ “Katsuki, where’s your girlfriend?” It gets so fucking tiring at times!” 

You narrowed your eyes while you looked at him, “so you want me, the girl who just got out of the meeting with your parents, whose literally is about to collaborate with them and doesn’t want ANYTHING to jeopardize this, to come with you to your private family lunch?!” 

He looked at you and nodded, making you facepalm, “let me off, let me off right now!” 

He grabbed you and pulled you closer to him, “Hey, hey, let’s not do anything too rash,” he said, making you give him an annoyed look.

“Like dragging the first girl you see to a private lunch? Sounds pretty rash to me.” You said, making him look away and roll his eyes. 

“Okay, if you do this, I’ll make sure that you don’t lose the collaboration,” he bargained, letting you go. 

You crossed your arms and stared at him and he stared back at you. You contemplated this, you could also use this lunch to woo them even if they have some wavering thoughts about collaborating with you… but you wanted something else from this as well. 

“I want one more thing.”

He groaned out loud, “fucking what? What else could you want?”

“A real date with you.”

He choked on his spit. You laughed at his ration, even pulling out your phone to take a picture of it. He glared at you making you smile cheekily and raise your eyebrows in rapid motions.

“You’re joking right?” He asked, pulling out a water bottle from his book bag. 

“On the contrary, I’m not. Since your parents want you to get a girlfriend, might as well start somewhere. Right?” You suggested, smiling at him. 

He looked at you before hissing under his breath, “one date, and if I don’t like it, never again.”

And before you could say anything, the elevator doors opened and his parents were staring at the two of them. He looks back down at you and offers a hand, “let’s do this?”

You look at his hand before nodding and take it. 

                                                             ---

Okay, Bakugou can admit. You’re a fun person to be around… whenever you're not chasing him around your penthouse trying to put makeup on him. It’s been two months since he had you join him and his parents for lunch and since he took you on an actual date, taking you to one of his favorite restaurants where he challenged you to eat the spiciest thing on their menu… which led you to postpone your scheduled video recording cause your lips were so swollen, it hurt to talk, let alone put any products on your lips. He laughed for a good hour and every time he looked at your lips, he couldn’t help but let out a chortle. 

Today was his day off, one he hasn’t had in over a month due to being one of the busiest and most reliable pro-heroes out there. He wanted to take the longest nap, he hadn’t been able to catch up in his sleep in a while and decided to crash at your place. He knocked on your door, a large duffle bag on his right shoulder, which held his sweaty hero costume. He waited for a moment, holding his wrist close to him to look at the time. That’s when he heard the lock unclick and the door open to find wearing nothing but a silk robe and your faux locs pulled back into a messy bun. The both of you just stared at each other, while he had nothing but a smirk on his face, you held a questioning look on your face, wondering why he was here without calling. 

“Let me in?” Is all he said, making you roll your eyes and take a couple of steps back to let him in. He walked inside and headed to your living room as you closed the door behind him. You tightened the rope around you as he flopped down on the couch, throwing his duffle bag somewhere across your living room. He spread his legs and cracked his neck as he could finally relax after 

“So…” You started, “you mind telling me what you're doing here?” 

Bakugou groaned, turning his body to lay down on her couch and snuggling into her throw pillows, “Can’t. Fucking tired.” 

You rolled your eyes before grabbing a spare pillow and hitting him over the head worth it, “Come on, out with it. What happened?” 

He signed and turned around onto his back, snuggling with a pillow and looking up at you. His eyes told you to come here and so you crawled on top of him and sat on his midsection and stared down back at him. You both stared at each other, your eyes speaking to each other. 

“Had a bad day with the fucking media, had them questioning my ability to be a hero again and I wasn’t in the right “mental space” to deal with them so I fucking lashed out, Kirishima had to pull me away from them before I broke someone’s camera or face, I had no idea which one.” You couldn’t help yourself but laugh at that last line. 

“The media can be devils, trust me I know,” you said, reaching down to softly scratch his scalp. It was a recent thing you found out about him, helped him relax more even if he hated it. This time he didn’t fight you on it, making you realize how much of a bad day this was for him. 

“Anything else?” You asked him, laying down against the pillow on his chest. 

He shook his head before taking his arms, reached around and grabbed at your waist, and pulled you even closer to him. For a whole the two of them just laid there, not moving, no one saying a thing. You could feel his speeding heart slow down as he could finally relax after his hectic day. 

“I have a day off tomorrow,” he mumbled in your head. 

You hummed, “Is that so?” 

“Yeah…” 

After that, it fell back into the comfortable quiet. Nothing but the both of you hearing each other breathe. You knew he needed this, yes he’s an explosive person but even the angriest person needs time to cool down, and honestly, it makes your heart race when you think about the fact that wants to spend that time with you. You both sat there for another ten minutes before you looked at your overhead clock and saw it was almost time for you to go live on Instagram. You promised your fans you would give a live makeup tutorial and your real-time review of a palette that’s taken the industry by storm. 

You softly hit his arms, “let me up, I got work to do.”

He groaned loudly at that, “the FUCK you gotta do wearing nothing but a silk robe?!?” He complained but removed his arms at the same time. 

“I promised my people I’d do a live makeup tutorial while live-reviewing a critically acclaimed palette, and it’s almost the time I promised to go live and I need to get ready.” You got off him and stretched, cracking your neck as well. 

You walked over to your linen closet and grabbed a large blanket and walked back to where he was still laying down on the couch. He had pulled out his phone and was answering back some texts, probably Kirishima and Kaminari asking if he's okay after what happened today. You threw the blanket at his head, making him drop his phone. You started to laugh as he pulled the blanket away from his head. He glared at you making you laugh harder. Your eyes were closed and you were hunched over so you didn't notice the pillow he threw, hitting you on the top of your head, knocking over the bun in your head. He busted out in laughter, making him roll over and fall off the couch. 

“Ah fuck,” he hissed, holding his head in his arms. 

You stopped laughing, and quickly went to him in concern, “you okay?” You were only able to wrap your arms around him for less than a minute before he pushed you away and used the couch to push himself up. He stood up straight and grabbed my waist to pull me to my feet as well. You bent down and grabbed the blanket and shoved it in his hands. 

“You have a headache, so how about you lay down, I’ll get you some spicy chips, ibuprofen and you need to take a long-ass nap after it. I’m not taking no for an answer,” you demanded, grabbing his hand, leading him to the guest bedroom. 

“I don’t wanna fucking sleep in there, it smells like your brother,” he complained. 

He took the lead and headed straight to your bedroom, opening the door and body flopping onto the bed, taking the blanket and wrapping himself in it. You leaned against the doorway and glared at him, “really, my bed? My fucking bed?” 

He didn’t answer, instead just pulling the blanket tighter in his hands. You took a deep breath before walking into your bathroom and grabbing a bottle of ibuprofen from your medicine cabinet. You walked out of your bathroom and walked to the kitchen to grab a water bottle and a bag of hot Cheetos before heading back to your bedroom. Holding the items in one hand, you crawled on your bed and tapped at his head repeatedly until he popped out the blanket and glared at you. 

“Here,” is all you said, showing him the things in your hand. 

He looked at them and then back at them before pulling a hand out of the blanket and grabbing all of the items in one fell swoop. He pulled the blanket back over his head and rolled over. I rolled my eyes and crawled off the bed and walked towards the door. 

“Try and take a nap, I’ll only take about two hours on live and then we could order something to eat okay?” 

He just groaned and flipped you off, making you scoff and walk out the door, closing it behind you. You tightened your robe and walked into your beauty room, where you record all of your videos. You turned on your lights and placed my phone on the stand you bought for having lives. You made sure you had everything, your snacks, your makeup, and everything. You tested your camera out to make sure you looked good in the lighting you had. 

Pulling your hair back into the messy bun that Kat messed up, you pressed “Start Live.” and started your live makeup tutorial. 

                                                            ---

I know you told Kat that you would be done in two hours but you couldn’t help yourself, you had to create at least 3 different looks, one after another. Was it good for your skin? No! But did you care? No! This palette was perfect, and you really couldn't help yourself when it came to palettes like this. But Kat was very privy to time management, when you said two hours he would automatically believe you would only take two hours. But you’re black, time is always an illusion to you. It’s been three and a half hours and you were in the middle of blending green into black when all of a sudden the door flew open. 

Right behind you. Where everyone watching your live can see the 6’4 pro hero wrapped in a fluffy green blanket walk in, well more like shuffled in the room. Before he could say something, you quickly turned back around and ended your live before they could see or hear anything he may have wanted to talk about. You turned back around and stared at him, mouth wide open. He glared back at you in confusion. 

“I wasn’t done with my live.”

He slowly registered your words, nodding his head which was still messy from his nap before his eyes widened in realization at your words. 

“You were still live… which means that people just saw me walk in your room with a fluffy blanket wrapped around me…”

You slowly nodded your head and the two of you just stood there in silence….

That’s when both of your phones BLARED out in notifications, calls coming in, text messages, notifications from social media. Both of you quickly went to your phones and scrolled through them to find Japan’s hero and beauty online community in an uproar. 

“FUCK!” Kat cursed, flinging the blanket aside, pulling up a chair, and sitting down. 

Both of you started looking online, trying to see what everyone was saying before you got a call. It was your P.R agent. You groaned as you answered it and waited for her to shout at you. 

“Y/n M/n L/n… mind telling me what’s going on?” Her voice was eerily calm, too calm which made you even more nervous.

“Um, so I may have made a mistake...”

“A MISTAKE??? AN UP AND RISING PRO-HERO WHO HAPPENS TO HAVE A BAD REPUTATION WITH THE MEDIA WAS JUST SEEN IN YOUR HOME BEING DOMESTICALLY COMFORTABLE!”

You winced at her loud voice and looked over at Kat to find him on the phone with his hero agency, wrinkles appearing in his forehead and him pressing against his temple. 

“I know, I know Ami, I know who he is....”

“So if you know who he is, then why are you being SEEN with him, do you WANT to lose your collaboration with Relz?!? Need I remind you that this is your FIRST major collaboration and you’re gonna ruin it by sleeping with the owners’ SON?!?!”

You sighed as you tried to explain that his parents already know about you and Kat but Ami went on a rant that could have gone on for days about how irresponsible you were and you just sat there, checking your nails. You checked on Kat and he wasn’t frowning anymore but more in deep thought. You turned back into your conversation with Ami, and she told you that she’ll be at your place in twenty minutes and TO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOUSE. 

You rolled your eyes and told her you wouldn't and she also mentioned that Kat had stayed as well and asked if he was in touch with his agency’s P.R which you confirmed. You ended the call and turned your phone off, not wanting to talk to anyone you knew until you figure out what to do next. You crossed your arms and waited for Kat to get off the phone as well. Soon enough, he ended the call with a “Whatever” and rolled his eyes before ending the call and throwing his phone somewhere, not caring about what happened to it. The both of you just sat in silence, relishing in what just happened…

That your… could you even call it a relationship…? Was out for the world to see. Ll because you couldn’t let go of the palette. 

“Kat…” You started, your voice was heavy. 

“No.” Kat’s voice was sharp, he wasn’t looking at you. His eyes squeezed shut with his fingers pinching at the bridge of his nose between his eyes. 

“I can hear it in your voice… it’s not… it’s not your fucking fault this happened. Yeah, you told me two hours but things happen, should have fucking knocked on the door or some shit like that.” 

You said nothing, deciding to eat and walk over to him, sitting on his lap and moving his head to look at you. 

“How’s your headache?” You asked, mumbling it while holding him close. 

“Better than before, but I can still feel it.” He mumbled in your chest. 

You hummed and grabbed his hand and you both walked out the door and headed to the living room. Before you went you grabbed a soda and a water bottle for him while we waited for my P.R agent to come through. You gave him the water and he grabbed it and began downing it, while you took sips of your soda. 

“While we wait for Ami, can we talk about… what this,” you gestured to the both of you, “is?” 

You and Kat honestly didn’t have a label to your relationship, he wasn’t in for labels, and for a while, you were okay with that but recently you’ve been thinking and even though this was an accident, it still provided you with the time to ask him the questions you’ve been holding back from him. Kat lifted his head to look at you, looking at you to continue your thought. You sighed and leaned back into the couch. 

“We’ve basically been acting like a couple without us putting a label on it? So what are we?” You asked with finality, waiting for an answer. 

He leaned back into the couch but kept his eyes on you, spinning on what’s left of his water. Both of you stared at each other, this seemed like a regular occurrence between the two of you. The two of you are just staring at each other. He blinks at you before looking away and grabbing the remote.

“Don’t ask me any stupid questions like that. You think I would waste my time with you and not thinking of you as my partner or some stupid shit like that?”

You stared at him, blinking a couple of times before reaching over and smacking him dead in the back of his head. He hissed and turned around to glare at you. 

“I have a fucking headache and you know that shit!” He shouted at you, throwing his empty water bottle at you. 

You closed your half-empty soda bottle and whacked him across the head with it, making him stand up and glare at you.

“Alright, now we gotta fight.” That is all he said before grabbing you by the waist and hoisting you onto his shoulder. 

“Let me go!!” You shouted, hitting him on the back. 

He ignored you, did a little evil laugh as he ran back to the bedroom, and straight threw you on the bed. Before you could catch your breath, he threw himself on top of you and started tickling you. Before you could catch up with what’s happening, you burst out in hysterical laughter. You tried to push Kat away but he just pressed into you further, tickling you harder. The both of you continued like this for while before the both of you heard someone clearing their throat. 

He both of you looked up to find your P.R agent standing there, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed glaring at the both of you. Kat rolled his eyes and rolled over to get off of you. You sat up and fixed your robe before getting off the bed to greet Ami. You both bugged although she was a little more hostile with her hug. You backed and allowed her to come into the room, she walked over to your dresser and pulled out the chair and sat down, and turned around to face the both of you. 

“So let’s stalk clean up, while on my way here, I noticed that Mr. Dynamight’s reputation is going up, yours on the other hand is being dragged through the mud. Now if I were Dynamight’s P.R agent, I would not do anything, but I’m not, I’m Y/n’s agent, and right now, here’s what believe that we should do…” She was about to explain everything when Kat got a call again from his agency. 

“Hold up,” he answered the call. 

“Hello?” a pause. “Oh, you’ve already done it?” another, longer pause “her P.R agent is here and I don’t think she’ll like what you’ve done.” 

You looked at him confused, glancing at Ami who narrowed her eyes at Kat, glaring with every bit of poison in her eyes. 

“Well, what’s done is fucking done… can’t change nothing about it…” That is the last thing he says before ending the conversation. 

Ami and I were both about to ask him what the conversation was about when Ami got a notification on her phone. She pulled it out and looked at it. Her eyes widen in shock and she quickly stood up and glared down at Kat who looks like he couldn’t give any more of a fuck. 

“YOUR AGENCY ALREADY PUT OUT A STATEMENT AND SAID THE TWO OF YOU WERE DATING?!?!” 

You blinked in shock before turning your head around to look at Kat who looked back at you and shrugged his shoulders. You took a deep breath and shook your head and turned back to Ami who was a glaring fire at Kat. 

“Do you see what they are fucking calling her out there?! This could ruin the collab which YOUR PARENTS set up anyways!” 

Kat looked back up at Ami, “check your phone again.” 

Ami looked confused before pulling her phone out and checking it, still looking confused before something popped up on her screen again which made her eyes widen. 

“You got your parents to release a statement?”

You grabbed your phone to look at social media and sure enough on the Relz Twitter Page was a statement saying that they do not control who their son wishes to be with and that anyone involved with him deserves to be working with the Relz brand… You giggled to yourself because they said that Y/n deserves the world for putting up with their emotionally constipated son. 

“I didn’t make them do shit. They like Y/n and they “think she’s good for me” their words not mine and so they wanna make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible considering this is the first time they are collaborating with an influencer for a designer brand…. Or some bullshit like that.”

Ami looked at Kat in shock  before turning to you, “well, things are turning around, they may push back the launch date of your collaboration but other than that… you may come out of this scot-free, you may actually get more fans which means more media, especially since you are now dating a pro-hero, a pro-hero who is well-liked by young women across Japan, be careful, okay?” 

You nodded and got up to hug her, you could tell she was ready to leave. 

“Thanks so much, I know I give you headaches all the time, but I couldn't be me without you, Ami.” You held her tight and she returned the gesture. 

“And you,” she pointed at Kat, “stop fighting with the media, or we’ll have some problems.”

He simply waved her off and continued scrolling through social media. Ami rolled her eyes and leaned up near your ear, “and this is why I like Deku over him.”

You giggled and told her to not let Kat hear you say that before she left our bedroom and soon enough she left your house. Once she was gone, you were able to relax and flopped on the end with Kat. He said nothing as you moved his arm around you and snuggled into his side. The two of you just sat in silence before…

RAWWWWR….

You lifted your head to look at Kat whose face was flushed and was looking over to the side, looking anywhere but where you were. You giggled a little before reaching for your phone, opening up your favorite pizza place’s app to order. 

“Does pizza sound good?”

“I don’t give a fuck.” 

[reveriequill-rai]

Shroud: Withered Soul

A/N: Sorry it’s been a while. As of right now I’ve just been uploading stories I’ve written in my newspaper club, and now that I’ve graduated I hope that can now expand to short stories generally. I’m not gonna promise that posts from now on will be more consistent, but I would like to at least speed up my uploads a bit before they actually wind down, as I imagine I will be working on more stories in the future. Everything being uploaded right now is previous work, but nothing too old--probably like, from last year tops. This was completed sometime in May, I believe. 

This is an introduction to a character I created called ‘Shroud,’ an amateur self-proclaimed ‘detective’ who exclusively investigates occult-based crimes and malefic.

Content Warning: death, descriptions of corpses, graphic descriptions of violence and pain, cults 

[My blog will usually contain PG-13 stories, and as of right now I am writing some darker content, but I will tag anything that may be especially disturbing or uncomfortable. I’ll include this warning in my bio, too.]

----------

The corpse in front of me wasn’t all that disturbing by itself. I had seen dead people before–comes with the territory. I had been dead before. Murder rates in Twilight were, naturally, much higher than any other district in New Fable–especially further south of the district where I was–considering how much wild magic was around, and not even the police force sent here from the northern district of Bastion could do anything about it. So the corpse itself didn’t bother me, all things considered.

What did disturb me, though, was a number of other things.

For one, the corpse just being there was a problem. They weren’t stopping, and they were getting far too close to home.

Its eyes were still open, for another thing, and nearly colorless, and looking at me specifically, and I can swear to you that had not happened when I first laid eyes on it. Even worse, like me, the man lying dead in front of me appeared to be wearing a few bandages like I was, perhaps just recovering from an injury.

And for yet another thing, and perhaps the worst part of this, was the connection I felt with this dead man. Something about the state he was in struck a familiar chord that only I and a select unlucky others knew. As if we were kindred spirits–undergoing the same fate, yet with (probably) different outcomes.

I had been at this–whatever you would call tracking down cults as someone with zero prior detective experience with the help of almost no one–for…a few months now? And I’ve made a bit less progress than would be expected from someone who has seen just about everything the darker sides of magic had to offer. I did have one solid lead, though, and hopefully one that would lead me to exactly who I was looking for.

“Everyone move,” I ordered, pushing my way through the crowd.

Ignoring their complaints, I made my way over toward the body and began to examine it, hoping for any hint of who had done this, and more importantly, if it was exactly who I had suspected. There didn’t appear to be much damage, but what first caught my attention was the note tucked into the man’s pocket. I took it out and unfolded it, and immediately flinched.

Demon tongue.

Hellish whispers ran through my head, and I wasn’t sure if they were just in my head or not. It was hard to tell these days.

I honed in on the note, written on some old paper as if torn from an ancient book. The more I stared, the louder the whispers got. I ignored the throbbing in my head as best as I could–humans were not mentally equipped to engage with the infernal language at all, and I much less so. My hands shook as I read the brief message, which I must have read dozens and dozens of times already; I wasn’t counting and didn’t care to.

Some people studied demon tongue despite…well…everything, even the illegality. It probably didn’t matter to them. It didn’t matter to me, either, but someone had spoken to me in demon tongue before–though, in their defense, likely not out of their own volition–and the trembling and rapid heart rate was not worth the ability to communicate with infernals. (Nothing was, honestly.)

For these reasons–and also not wanting to be arrested or have my mage license revoked–I personally didn’t speak or write demon tongue, but I at least knew a little bit and could recognize some of the infernal runes. And those runes were enough for me to know that this was the exact same message that the abyss had been trying to send me in my last moments.

—

Can’t run home, I thought. They’ll follow me.

Just gotta run until I find a phone booth.

I ran until I finally spotted one on the street corner near a bridge. I let out a sigh of relief, taking a quick moment to catch my breath. Then, I quickly crossed the street and ran toward the phone booth, quickly dialing the police station.

“Hello?” I said into the phone as quietly as I could manage. “My name is [……………………………] I’m at the corner of Coral Avenue by the Armada IV Memorial Bridge. I’m being pursued by a group of kids in demon-charmed cloaks and shawls, please I need your help they have knives and they’re trying to kill me-“

The tears stinging at the edge of my eyes began to overflow as a human voice at the end of the line responded in perfect, uncharacteristically calm demon tongue. It was a short sentence, repeated over and over again, but with the little knowledge I *did* have, I could translate it by about the sixth loop:

“You are going to hell.”

I hung up the phone immediately, resisting the urge to yell, “I KNOW” directly into the phone.

Humans can’t speak demon tongue here. It’s illegal.

So how did an officer know demon tongue?

—

Unsurprisingly, the body was still in semi-good condition. After all, little damage was done to the body—only the soul. The only physical marks I could make out were marks around the wrist and neck, likely to restrain the victim. Couple of bruises here and there, too, but nothing was broken.

This…disturbed me, to say the least.

Cults around here were usually known to be violent. After all, a lot of them stood for violent causes–executing the ‘impure,’ plunging everyone into the dreams of a volatile eldritch creature, usurping the throne and forcing everyone to convert, rallying the youth to their bloody cause with claims that they alone possessed special powers…I had heard it all, all of them violent to some degree. But the ones that had gotten me…they seemed to worship oblivion itself. Or maybe whatever was in it. That was beyond even my knowledge.

But…even then, they still had arguably the least violent cause. The deadliest, yes–they seemed to just be destroying souls–but strangely not as bloody. Yet their means of carrying out this objective has historically been, well, bloody.

Or maybe that was just me.

Either way, this victim had certainly not gotten the worst of it. There were no twisted limbs, no bloodied nose, no wounds from blade or bullet, basically no magic-driven attacks aside from the terminating consumption of the soul…only marks of the initial restraint, bruises from the subduing, and the abyss claiming and destroying the soul.

I could almost picture it in my head: they likely jumped him in the middle of the street, kicking him around a bit to possibly weaken him, throw him off balance, but not too much as to rouse resistance, then restraining him–to the floor? A wall? I couldn’t tell, but there were no rope burns so they must have done this by hand–and calling, somehow, for their god, for lack of a better word, to devour its newest victim’s soul.

What did he see as he died? Did their eyes turn as colorless as his would become? Had they shown any sign of enjoying his torment? I doubt it; it didn’t seem like a very ‘fun’ kill. And likely not as personal as it was for me.

They were getting much better at their kills. It probably wasn’t as fun, but more precise.

And a lot less violent than I had gotten.

—

I caught a glimpse of the charm from earlier out of the corner of my eye, but just as I looked it vanished. Just then a cold breeze hit me as the door behind me opened, and I was yanked out onto the street, leaving the phone dangling by the cord. The book dropped from my hands.

The four delinquents appeared in front of me from nowhere, likely having turned off their Moonlight Shroud charms.

“Gotcha,” Ransley said, smiling as he picked up the book.

“Give it BACK!” I roared, lunging for him. Ransley hit me hard across the face with the book, sending me flying a few feet back onto the brick road. Quickly I realized that my safety was not worth keeping that book. I didn’t know where or how Ransley learned to hit that hard but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. As he and the others examined the book, I began to scurry away as Ransley gave an order to the others:

“Get him.”

An instant later, I heard something click far behind me, and a sharp pain ripped through my knee. I collapsed to the floor, letting out an agonized cry. I examined my knee, and saw a hole much bigger than a bullet hole should be. I looked up at my attackers.

A gun?!

“What the HELL?!” I shouted. “You’ve already got what you want! LEAVE ME ALO-“

Ardent appeared behind me and punched me square in the face. I held my probably-broken nose as a muffled shriek of pain escaped me. Each of them vanished and took turns raining blows and slashes on me as I tried to step back and run. They gave me almost no chance to react. My body ached everywhere; the knife wounds, though shallow, stung just as bad, if not worse, as any bee. I could barely stand. I used my remaining strength to try and push them off of me whenever I felt them, but I stumbled each time I did, giving them room to knock me around further. Finally I collapsed, and Ardent grabbed my shirt and dragged me to the bridge.

“W-wait-“ I cried, still wincing and crying from my bruises and decayed knee. “STOP IT!-”

—

I examined the bandages on my hand and knee. The ones from that night must’ve been amateurs, or at least new to the cult’s way of doing things.

Focus, Shroud.

The victim’s eyes were still open, and almost completely empty.

Almost.

The body must not be entirely empty, then. This wasn’t exactly a kill—whoever this person was, they would not be dead for much longer, or at least depending on your definition of ‘dead.’

How long ago had this attack been, then? I touched the skin—still warm-ish. This had to be recent.

By that logic, if this was meant not as a lethal attack, but as one of induction into their group…

I wasn’t sure how long I had been out, but I at least knew it wasn’t for very long.

So…I didn’t have much longer, then.

I instinctively jerked away from the body. Would he come back? He wouldn’t be under anyone’s control, at least for the first few minutes–how long does it take to kill someone? Would it be long enough for him to kill me?–no, he probably wouldn’t go after me; I had barely any soul left for him to long for…unless he’s just that desperate enough to take scraps from a near-husk.

What would he do when he came back? Would he wander around, lost, confused, until they welcomed him with false promises of salvation and freedom from the ‘burden’ of having a judgement-tied soul? Would he be violent, as they had been to him?

Then again…I came back after one of their attacks, but with a will of my own. Did they want me to come back? Why would they want me of all people to come back?

—

“You know how much trouble you caused us, […….…]?!” Ransley shouted as he kicked me in my injured leg. “Don’t act like you didn’t have this coming, you little weasel.”

“I didn’t-“ I tried to say.

Ransley propped me up on the sidewalk, just by the edge of the bridge, right above the river. He placed his hand on my bruised shoulder, looking at me with a bone-chilling grin.

Again, I got a good look at his eyes. This time, everything except the pupils was entirely white. As I looked I almost felt like I was staring at something beyond; further, even. But the harder I looked the more I could see how much nothing there was. And yet, in spite of that, this nothing seemed to be staring back at me.

The others had the same white eyes too, looking on with a horrible satisfaction.

“What…” I barely managed to say, “…what are y-you…?”

“Free,” Ransley answered, without his usual cruelty and instead with an uncharacteristically sanctimonious tone. “And with our help, so too will you be free.”

With a hard shove, I was pushed off the bridge.

I grabbed onto the edge with my hand, barely having the strength to pull myself up.

“T-this is insane-!” I cried. “Ransley! Please! Y-you can keep the book; I won’t call the police, just help me up-“

Ransley frowned and put his boot on my hand. He leaned in as he brought his foot down harder, crushing my hand. Bone splintered and crumbled under the weight of the shoe, and I let out a shriek as a cold look crossed his face.

“You really should stop holding on so much,” he said. “That’s your problem. That’s why you’re here. Just let go, and face oblivion.”

Ransley took his foot off finally, but my hand had run out of strength. I slipped, and fell into the river.

—

Either way, I had to work fast.

“Hey, kid!” Someone from the crowd called. “What’re you doing? Leave this to the professionals.”

I turned around, and maybe it was the speed at which I had whirled around to face them, or he did just flinch.

Was it my eyes?

“The police won’t find them,” I explained. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve studied demonology for a few years.”

I went back to the body.

“You mean you know who did this?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I answered. “I just wanna be sure…”

I pressed down on the bruises on their shoulder and arms. Hollow. I felt no bone or extra layer of skin or muscle underneath.

Just as I suspected, I thought. Soul devouring.

My only question now was, how much of the soul was left?

—-

The bridge wasn’t particularly tall; just enough for any small cargo ships to run under. But the fall felt much longer than it had any right to.

I never hit the water. I was swallowed by something but it certainly wasn’t the river. It was as cold and sharp but nothing wet ever touched my skin or clothes.

I did not fall into water. I fell into something foreign, something dark, something alive, something evil.

Its eyes were beady and attentive, focused, eager, and it had long rows of sharp fangs. It appeared to smile at me, expecting me, welcoming me. Whispers in demon-tongue surrounded me, and I overwhelmed myself trying to find a single word I could understand. The only thing I could catch was “going to hell” again…was this it? Was this hell? What circle was this?

I was immobile, unable to look away from the creature in front of me, unable to scream as it opened its fang-filled mouth. I couldn’t even let out a scream of protest; no, not against this, as it brought down its jaws and took a large bite out of a deep part of me even I could never access. The pain from my bruises and wounds no longer burned; only ached, as if the pain had been there forever.

I was hollow. If there was anything left, I barely even felt it. My wounds glowed a hot white color and became shallow. I felt nothing but an aching nigh-emptiness that seemed to have no origin I could place; no past; only a present and a long future.

I didn’t know how long I was in that void. But as much as I despised that thing for robbing me of my life, I was grateful that it chose to let me go.

—-


I took out my pen from my pocket and a couple of mini-candles from my satchel. I flicked a lighter and lit the candles, surrounding them at different points around the body. I began to draw an evocation circle around the body. I’m not sure what had stopped this cult from performing forced evocations as opposed to beating everyone into submission until they blacked out enough to face the abyss and have their soul devoured, but I wasn’t about to find any sense in a group of people who literally worship the abyss.

I took my time with the intricate webs of the circle, carefully connecting whatever remained of the soul to the points where I would draw in the runes, and connected those to the candles.

I then drew in symbols in the language of the spirits at the different sub-points that would draw up souls from the afterlife, adding a desperate prayer in each pen stroke that I evoke the right thing and not something unwelcome. I had to steady my hand as I did this, reminding myself that this was merely a human soul who was recently killed, so the chances of him having ended up in hell – was he that kind of person? – were slim; they had to be, of course they were; there was no need to panic so stop panicking. Yet knowing I was drawing the same symbols, the same webs, lighting the same candles as the deadly evokers around town who would break into people’s houses and draw evocation circles under their beds to call up who-knows-what from the pits of hell to torment the living…to think I was drawing the same circle that I checked for every night when I went to sleep…

The pen snapped in my shaking hand against the concrete, getting ink all over my hand. I swore, and rubbed some on my finger tip so I could start to finish the circle.

“What the hell are you doing, kid?!” someone cried, making me jump. “You’re tampering with evidence! That’s illegal!”

“You’re gonna screw up the investigation!” someone else shouted.

I steadied myself from being startled.

“This…this is the investigation,” I replied bluntly.

“Wh–okay…? Are you a detective or something?” the first guy asked.

I shrugged.

“I think so,” I said.

“You think-”

I could hear further shouts from the crowd as I turned the body over to draw the rest of the circle underneath, but I held up my hand to stop them from getting closer.

“Just let me work!” I cried without looking back.

That’s when I noticed some of the rapidly-decaying skin near the shoulder and side of the ankles. The skin had withered and given way to bone, the effect cutting through flesh and muscle. Even the bone had begun to decay.

Well, so much for minimal damage.  

I unzipped the victim’s jacket and pulled back the shirt just slightly to get a better look at the damage. The withering had spread further—the entire shoulder seemed about ready to decay. I took a camera out of my bag and took a picture of the decaying wounds.

With the remaining ink, I drew another sigil on the bandage of my injured hand, a heart-shaped eye-like symbol with two lines running up my index and middle finger. It was a painful process and I was just careful enough to have the pen not tear through the bandage, and I placed my shaking hand on the decaying shoulder and closed my eyes. I saw all of the injuries on the man’s body, including where he had been injured–he had a broken arm that had almost finished recovering, and a fractured foot that was also healing, but wasn’t as near completion as his arms. Either way, both of these had stopped healing, and had actually gotten worse, with the bones beginning to decay in both areas.

What was the point of beating people up, breaking them, letting them decay, and then expecting them to join you after you had broken them? My attackers probably went through the same thing as this man had–as I had, if this cult was larger than them. So why do the same thing to others?

But that was just it, though, wasn’t it?

They knew what it was like to be soulless, and only they knew not only how to recover from the injuries suffered, but how to disguise themselves as living to avoid trouble with the law.

I looked again at the bandages on my hand, and unraveled it slightly, careful not to let the crowd see. There, too, did my flesh begin to decay. This was the primary issue with not having a soul: without the very essence that gives us life, our bodies aren’t capable of self-healing anymore. Any injuries are permanent unless fixed by a doctor, or if we tend our own wounds.

Fortunately my bones—at least in my hand—hadn’t completely withered away. I managed to revive just in time, fortunately.

Just in time.

——

I don’t remember much about the day I woke up. Just the excruciating, aching pain.

What I did know was I had washed up on the shore of the city, and I couldn’t stand up for a very long time. A burning sensation enveloped my entire hand and knee, and I felt a throbbing sensation in both areas. The bruises from the beatdown stuck on me like a leech, but most vividly, my chest felt hollow. And it hurt. The emptiness gnawed at the inside of my chest, and it, too, burned and ached. Like a stomach ache in the wrong place.

With my good hand I crawled my way off of the shore until I found a lamppost. I grabbed onto it, and propped up my good knee. I swung my arm toward the lamppost, grabbing onto it with my bad hand, shocks of pain running through my body. I tried to haul myself up, but the weight of my body caved my knee in, and I collapsed. That’s when I got a good look at my hand.

Bits of skin had completely come off, seeming to have withered away. Pieces of bone underneath had chipped off.

I grew nauseous and I felt the blood drain from my face. I let out some inhuman noise that I reckoned was some attempt at a scream but came out as a cross between that and a moan of agony.

How had this happened?

It was a horrible sound, but at least I had been found. Otherwise, who knows what would’ve happened?

Or who else would’ve found me?

——

Finishing the circle grew tricky as my hand trembled, though I was unsure if it was from the injury or from the reality of the process itself.

“Kid, we don’t even know who you are,” the guy from earlier said. “Are you even a licensed detective?”

I ignored him and wiped some of the ink from my pen on my hand, pressing my hands together to activate the circle. As the soul fire candles flared, what little color was left in their eyes drained slowly, and a small, glowing, deteriorated wisp of a soul rose out of the victim’s body.

This was all that was left…

Somehow this dead man was just the same as I, who could still breath, still walk, still talk, still live—but only just.

What had this man’s soul seen before it was decimated? If, in fact, the same people who killed me are responsible for this, did he, too, see the same grinning face in the abyss that I had? Was he as afraid as I was? Or did he accept this as death?

I took my mage’s license out of my pocket and showed it to the crowd.

“I’m a licensed magic user,” I said, “is that enough?”

“…that’s not a detective license,” the same guy said. “I’m calling the police.”

“Great!” I said. “Tell them the Brotherhood of Abyss Walkers did this.” At this point it was all but confirmed.

“The…what?”

“The cult that keeps tormenting this forsaken town,” I explained. “The one behind all the unexplained murders.”

The guy—along with the rest of the crowd—stifled a laugh. Some of them couldn’t hold it in.

“There’s no cult in New Lumanore,” someone else said. “Our security’s airtight; no way they would’ve been able to form a guild without a license.”

“Just call the authorities, Aaron,” a lady in the crowd said. “This kid isn’t worth persuading.”

“W-wait-“ I said before letting out a resigned sigh. I packed up the candles and pocketed my pen, and took off. I knew who the culprit was. What the police had to say didn’t bother me.

They’ll believe me when I put the culprit behind bars.

—————

In previous investigations I managed to pin down the general area where the Abyss Walkers operate. Prior murders took place at least within a mile’s range of Eclipse Avenue, an area further south of New Lumanore. It was a relatively quiet and empty area; there were quite a bit of shops and buildings of unknown function that no one ever seemed to go into, not even during the day.

The entire place screamed occult activity.

Sure enough, just as I hit the corner of the avenue I caught a glimpse of a Moonlight Shroud charm, pinned to the outwear of a hooded figure. They were walking along the other side of the street, hanging close to the bare wall of a wide building.

Once they were some distance along I crossed the street quickly and began tailing them.

Confrontation wasn’t new to me, just…unfavorable. Is that why I trembled? Either way I knew the procedure: Walk with the same beat. Same path, same pattern of step. Stop when he stops. Walk like this until the shadow is close enough for contact.

Once I did I took out a capsule from my coat. It contained shadow ink, allowing me to either create my own shadow, or to hide within someone else’s. I didn’t have enough of a soul to perform any magical feats on my own–whatever I could do would probably just come out as sparks–so this was the best I could work with. Unfortunately the capsule was nearly empty, and I made a mental note to contact my supplier after I was finished. In the meantime, I used what was left to lather my hand in ink as I silently crept behind the lone cultist, and pressed my hand against his shadow. I latched on and eventually got pulled in. Inside the shadow realm, I had a black-and-white view of the street from inside the wall. I couldn’t breathe, though, and I couldn’t hold my breath for very long so I knew I had to jump him sooner rather than later.

I took a coin out of my pocket and tossed it outside behind the cultist. He stopped and turned around, as expected, and I took the moment to lunge out and grab him by the throat.

—————

The cultist narrowed his eyes, and an amused smirk came on his face.

“Hey…” he said. “I know you.”

I flinched. How?

He kicked me off and stood up.

“You…you’re the kid we got that book from!” He chuckled. “You don’t quit, do you? This is really what you chose to do after death? Vigilante work?”

I felt the blood drained from my face.

“…what are you talking about?” I lied. “What book?”

“The demonology book, stupid,” he said. “The thing damning you to begin with. You forgot already? Or did you lose your memories alongside almost all your soul somehow?”

I clenched my fist, resisting the urge to charge at him again. I couldn’t take him in a head-on fight. I was too weak for that.

“Tell me,” he said. “How’s it feel? Being so close to freedom, so close to ridding yourself of that moral creed weighing you down…no fear of rapture…just your life and your…well, I suppose now broken…body, and your heart and mind.”

“Shut up,” I snapped.

“Good thing you came back, though. We’ve been slacking on our initiations recently…Ardent went a little too hard on too many people. We’re behind on our quota.”

“Wait a sec…” I took a step back. “What do you mean ‘too hard?’ Aren’t they supposed to come back?”

“The idiot decided to use magic to slow the initiates down,” the cultist explained. “As if that wouldn’t damage the soul at all. I’m sure you of all people know. You’ve taken enough beatings form him, right, D–“

I punched him in the face. The second I made contact I realized I had used my bad hand without thinking. Bone snapped, collapsed, and even shifted through the hole in my hand. I let out a far-too-loud shriek of agony as I recoiled and caressed my hand, trying to relocate the bone.

The cultist looked at me and laughed, and I raised a finger on my good hand and threatened him:

“Don’t try that again,” I said. “I’ve still got one—ahh…—perfectly functioning hand.”

“Fine by me,” he replied. “You hit hard for a dead person…”

My hand still ached from the punch. I imagine it probably hurt me way more than it hurt him.

“Do you mean to turn me in, Shroud?” the cultist hissed. “Just try it. I know who you are. They’ll find out you’re undead and investigate you to hell and back. Whatever decimal of a soul you have left won’t save you. Not even close.”

“I can’t trust you with that information even if I let you go,” I said. “But even if you do…I’ll know sooner or later if you’ve said something. You best not try it if you don’t wanna die twice.”

The cultist grinned.

“I’m shaking,” he said, deadpan. “I’ll just come back again.”

“What, are there no revival limits in your little group?”

“Nope. He’ll bring us back again and again as long as he needs us.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“Oh, you’ve only been resurrected once, you big baby,” the cultist said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I’m not joining you.”

“You have no reason not to,” the cultist said. “We can fix your broken body; make you look and seem as alive as the next person. Those remnants of a soul may not matter to the police, who’ll mark you as soulless anyway, but you know who it does matter to?” He pointed at the sky and at the group. “Them. Someone like you, who’s spent hours learning about heaven’s enemies…you think you have any chance of reaching heaven? HA!”

I fell silent. Just when I thought being registered as ‘dead’ to everyone you know meant they wouldn’t bother you about being a (rookie) demonologist anymore. That reminder worked my last nerve, yet every time it was brought up I could never muster up a proper defense.

“…I’m aware,” I mumbled.

“Besides, I’m sure you’re just livid at the police, who never caught who got you. I’m sure you’d like your vengeance against them for failing you…we can help you out with that, if you’d like. After all, why should we fear death, or judgement, from this life or the next? Like I’ve said, we’ve got no soul to weigh us down to heaven or hell. No death, no judgment. Just you, whatever you wanna do, and a welcoming oblivion who’ll spit you back out as many times as needed. As long as you keep it fed, that is.”

“It doesn’t matter if the police know or if they don’t know,” I said. “I know. And I’ll know more than they ever will. Besides, why the hell would I trust you to give me closure about my death–the death YOU caused?!”

The cultist frowned.

“And that’s just the trouble, isn’t it…you’re just about soulless, and the only soulless person New Lumanore who isn’t with us and…for what? You lose nothing by joining us!”

“First of all,” I shouted. “I am not soulless. Your stupid demon didn’t take all of it.”

“Yeah. Still not sure why that happened,” the cultist replied, “but who am I to question the great abyss–”

“Oh, shut up. And second of all–just in case you forgot–YOU KILLED ME! I don’t owe you loyalty, or gratitude, or mercy…I owe you nothing.”

“You may be upset now,” the cultist said, “but you’ll learn to thank us later.”

“I will not.”

His frown turned into a scowl. He took out a small cylinder from his pocket.

“I was gonna use this the day of the attack,” he said, “but I didn’t see any point. Seemed like the others were doing just fine without the staff.”

Sure enough, the cylinder popped open into a metal bo-staff. He walked towards me, twirling it through his fingers.

“You’ve been chasing the wrong thing, Shroud,” he said. “You think you need vengeance, but what you really need is security. We all know what being soulless is like. You’re weaker, you can’t heal your wounds, you can’t do magic, and it’s pretty obvious when you’ve just come back from the dead. I don’t care what three-percent of a soul you do have; it’s nowhere near enough for you to enjoy all the privileges of being fully human. Face it. You’re basically the same as us.”

As I stepped back, he stopped spinning the staff and instead gripped it with both hands.

“So you can either let go of those remnants you have the audacity to still call a soul, then come with us and let us give you the safety you so desperately need,” he said, rearing the staff back, “…or we’ll just break you further and let oblivion do what it wishes with your remains.”

He started to bring the staff down.

“WAIT!” I yelled, bringing my hands to my face.

Surprisingly enough, he actually froze, the staff a couple inches from my face.

“Okay…I get it…” I said. “You’re right. I won’t turn you in. Just…promise me you won’t tell anyone who I am.”

“What’s stopping me?” the cultist asked, cocking his head slightly and raising an eyebrow.

“Look. I didn’t turn you in,” I said. “You owe me.”

“No I don’t. I’m not tied to anything but oblivion.”

I let out an annoyed huff.

“Like I said. I’ll know if you exposed me,” I reminded him. “I don’t care if that scares you or not, just…let me go.”

“Let YOU go?! You jumped ME!”

“And I had—I…thought…I had the right to. Look…I’m backing down. You go about your night. I go about mine. We don’t speak of this.”

The cultist hesitated, then put the staff away.

“Fine,” he said. “But we’ll still come back for you. Whether or not your initiation goes smoothly is entirely on you.”

With that, he pulled out the same charm he had on the day of the attack, and vanished.

“See you around,” he said.

That was the last I heard of him that night.

Once I thought I was safe, I let out a loud groan of annoyance.

I had him. He was literally a few feet away. If I *just* had more shadow ink that would’ve been it for him.

But…he was right. I was at every possible disadvantage. And I couldn’t work like that. I shouldn’t have jumped him. I should’ve just taken note of his appearance and went from there. That was foolish on my part.

But…I did have his appearance now.

But he had my identity.

I still wasn’t at a complete advantage. And I couldn’t work like that. I had to lay low, and rebuild. My hand was wounded and I was lucky I didn’t get my skull bashed in. There was no way I could have recovered from that. But I wouldn’t give up. I had a lead and I wasn’t letting go of it.

I didn’t care about their ‘freedom’ or ‘not being tied down’ or anything like that. Fact of the matter is, they were hurting people, and their demon lord had more control over them than they’d realize.

They were beyond redemption. The demon didn’t bind them through any soul manipulation or contract–it was some weird combination of free will, gratitude, and the threat of permanent death.

These cultists had to go, and quickly. They had to pay, and dearly.

I know I’m weak, but once I’m back up and running I would do as much damage from the shadows as humanly possible.

They weren’t bound by any rules, so why should I have to be?

I didn’t care how many times I would get hurt. They ruined my life, and I was going to pay them back tenfold.

[quazartranslates]

Welcome to the Nightmare Game - CH136 (Final)

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

-----

Chapter 136: Goodbye, Neverland (Extra)

{cw: religious homophobia}

Would you fall in love with such a person? You have the same sex and different beliefs. It is a sin to love each other.

For the former Ning Zhou, this was unthinkable.

But fate had played a cruel trick on him, making absurdity become reality.

Neverland was in a world of ice and snow. The shortest day had not yet arrived, but the coldest time of the year was almost over. Ning Zhou, who had just stepped out of the spiritual barrier, knelt on the glacier in exhaustion, and the hot tears that had just flowed out of his eyes froze into ice. Neverland was just around the corner, but it seemed as if he would never reach it.

In the face of the coldness of death, he had finally put aside all his hesitations and concerns and shouldered his guilt, even if he would fall into hell after death and bear the punishment of eternal fire.

Ning Zhou slowly stood up from the glacier, watching the bright lights that were like the eternal kingdom of heaven was on the ground. Amidst the ice and snow the Vatican stood on the ice sheet, majestic, holy, and ethereal.

He knew that this was the last time he would see Neverland.

Ning Zhou walked down the glacier and walked into the Vatican with awe.

Through the row upon row of buildings, the noise of the world rang again in his ears. Several children ran past him laughing and frolicking. Because they ran too fast, they almost ran into Ning Zhou. Ning Zhou took a step back, avoided the children, and watched them run away laughing.

Ning Zhou could hardly remember what he was like when he was as small as them. He was thirteen years old when he’d come to the Vatican, and Maria had just died. According to her last wish, he was sent here by his teacher Arnold and met the Pope for the first time.

He was a kind old man, his eyes were full of wisdom precipitated by years, and he had taught him a lot of things, not only the knowledge of survival, but also the truth of life. It could be said that after Maria died, it was this wise old man who had shaped his personality. In Ning Zhou's eyes, he was not only God’s speaker on earth, but also an elder whom he respected from the heart.

But today, he wanted to tell the old man who had raised him that he was in love with someone whom he was not allowed.

Ning Zhou passed through the city of ice and snow without a face. In order to welcome the residents of the Holy City who would come here soon, this polar city was expanding. It was like the projection of the divine world onto the living world, full of prosperity and warmth everywhere, far away from all the evils in the world, just like the home he dreamed of.

But after everything, he was going to leave this pure land, and from then on he would wander in the wind and rain all his life.

Stepping into the border of the Vatican, bathed in the power of ethereal and holy power, Ning Zhou's abdominal wound once again burned with pain, which combined with a stabbing pain all over his body. He frowned and strode forward regardless of the pain. Through the huge snowy square, countless ice sculptures silently guarded the heaven on earth, soaking in the cold air together with the guards patrolling back and forth.

Ning Zhou looked toward the deepest part of the Vatican, a magnificent cathedral, where the Pope was standing as he completed a prayer alone under the huge cross, the Canon spread out on the podium at his side. Gold and silver points of holy light were faintly visible in the cold, fluttering up and down.

Ice benches ran on both sides and in the middle was an aisle covered with gold and red carpet. Ning Zhou walked along it towards the Pope and looked up at him from the base of the stairs.

The Pope turned around and gazed at Ning Zhou kindly: "A few days ago, the will of the blazing angel returned to the Holy See and told me that your faith was shaken. Son, tell me what happened?"

Ning Zhou bowed to him and said calmly, "Under the crown of the Pope, I... fell in love with someone."

"You are embarrassed about this." The Pope saw through his heart.

Ning Zhou replied honestly: "Yes. The person I fell in love with is a man like me. He comes from another world and is an non-believer."

The Pope's voice suddenly became severe and solemn: "The Lord said, 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination'; If a man sleeps with a man, just like a woman, they have done an abominable thing and so they must be put to death, and the sin should be attributed to them. You know this is a sin, and if you blindly obey these rebellious feelings and desires, you will be punished by eternal fire."

"Yes, I understand," Ning Zhou calmly replied.

"Then repent. God will forgive sinners who are willing to repent. Tell me, are you willing to repent?" the Pope snapped.

Ning Zhou raised his head and looked him in the eye: "No, I cannot repent under the crown."

The Pope was silent for a long time, and the high crown on his head and the red vestments on his body seemed to overwhelm the old man. He said wearily, "Your mother chose to entrust you to the Holy See before she died, not to let you go the same way as her. You kept the last name of your foreigner father, the name your mother gave you, and... a heart lost for love like hers.

"Ning Zhou, my child, I give you one last chance: give him up and confess to the Lord."

Ning Zhou closed his eyes and a wind seemed to blow past him. He seemed to return to the Garden of the Holy Tomb in the afternoon, quietly staring at the lover sleeping in the tree stump full of petals, watching while every minute and second his heart was suffering in the fires of guilt, a kind of desperate pain, yet it happened that he felt the sweetness of sin.

His memories suddenly fast-forwarded and came to an abrupt end in the Garden of the Holy Tomb at dawn. His lover had returned there again, but was never to open his brown eyes again... He suddenly understood that his heart, which he’d tried to persuade, cheat, and block, had already fallen into hell.

He was guilty of a crime for which he did not wish to repent.

"I'm sorry, crown, I can't. I tried, but I couldn't. He sacrificed again and again for me, refused the temptation of the Devil for me, and died because of it. I’ve failed his life once, and I can't fail his love again. I am willing to accept eternal torture in hell after death, but please allow me to be loyal to my heart in the short time when I still live in this world." Ning Zhou opened his blue eyes and spoke succinctly and firmly.

"Even if you will lose everything the Vatican has given you, even if you must leave this country forever?" asked the Pope.

Ning Zhou lowered his eyes, untied the buckle, put aside the dagger and the pass order given by the Holy See. He knelt in front of the cross on one knee: "I am ready."

After the anger reached its apex, it became a deep disappointment. The Pope came down from the high platform with a scepter in his hand. The cross-shaped scepter inlaid with gems pointed to the top of Ning Zhou's head: "The glory given to you by the Lord will be fully recovered."

Ethereal music came from the cold air and the golden light fell from the sky like raindrops. Behind Ning Zhou, it painted and wove into the shape of a blazing angel with six wings. He watched all this sadly, spread his wings silently, flew to the ice sculpture of an angel in the church, merged with it, and was no longer inspired by him.

The holy power flowing in his blood was taken out a little at a time, and the pain of it being torn from his soul made Ning Zhou sweat like rain in the extreme cold of tens of degrees below zero, feeling as if he were dying.

The scepter left Ning Zhou's head and the Pope sighed, "Is it worth it for a dead foreigner?"

Ning Zhou struggled to stand up, his face pale, but his eyes were still bright: "I can't deceive my heart. Does love dissipate when its object dies? No, the Lord said love never stops. From the day he died and every day from now on, this feeling will be precipitated by time and memories. The longer it is, the stronger it will be. I can't pretend that I’ve let go. This would be the most unforgivable shame."

He seldom said so much, but every word came from the bottom of his heart: "Under the crown, love should only be love. I have never lost my piety because of love. I will only be stronger because of it. It should not be a sin. If it is a sin, please let me bear this sin and fall into hell after death... I don't regret it.

"I still believe in my Lord, I abide by all the commandments except that one, and will continue to fight against the Devils. My heart will always belong here no matter where and when."

This was the last sentence Ning Zhou said before he left.

He left everything given by the Vatican and left alone. The Pope watched his distant back and sighed deeply: "Those who fight against the Devils should be careful not to become a Devil. 'If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.'"

Ning Zhou didn't answer again. At this moment, he firmly believed that he wouldn't fall in the current, because his soul had already docked in his own harbor.

The road to leave his hometown was longer than the one to enter it. He had lost the power of faith. It was tantamount to seeking death to trudge through the extreme cold with human frailty alone. Only a body that had carried out severe training all the year round could cross the vast ice sheet by its own strength.

Ning Zhou walked alone in the extremely cold ice and snow. Under the vast expanse of the starry sky, he recalled the scene when he’d passed through the spiritual enchantment of the Holy See not long ago - while walking through this heavy enchantment, everyone would be eroded by past memories and those distractions contrary to faith would be magnified hundreds of times. If you couldn't wash yourself of it here, you would be lost in the ice sheet forever.

Ning Zhou thought he would get lost here. However, when he really set foot on the ice sheet under the starry sky, an illusion he’d never imagined appeared in front of his eyes.

He saw that the ice sheet was covered with white roses, from one end of the world to the other, and the overwhelming white under the pure starry sky seemed to announce that the love between them was pure.

It was not evil, it was not immoral, it was not unnatural, it was not perverse - this desire, it was just love.

The deep and remote green aurora danced on the horizon, illuminating this empty and cold wasteland. From stepping into the spiritual barrier to finally leaving this white rose sea, Ning Zhou never saw Qi Leren again, not once.

-He was no longer his distraction, he was his whole world.

-----　

The author has something to say:

PS: Some lines refer to Christian teachings, but they are not the same religion, just refer to it; The man who fights the devil... This sentence is Nietzsche's; In the face of cold death, he finally put aside all his wandering worries and shouldered his guilt, and turned to Yeat's "The Cold Heaven": And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason.

PPS: a little nonsense after the end. When conceiving the Nightmare Game, the author wanted to find out the feeling of writing this kind of piece before completing the Egg Game and prepared to write a simple story of a fast-paced horror game, in which the attacks are coming from the environments and the victim is constantly dying.

However, when the story of Novice Village was gradually perfected, when the predetermined characters were getting fuller and fuller, and when the brain hole was getting out of control, the author couldn't help but want to dig down. So the world view became bigger, the setting became more complicated, and the emotional drama became more tortuous. Finally, I finished the outline of the first Nightmare Game with the idea of exercising how to write emotional drama. At that time, the author thought: Yes, I just want to write such a story.

When conceiving the end of the first part, the author seriously considered several options, and also thought about setting it so Qi Leren wouldn’t die, and instead Ning Zhou would share his life with this person forbidden by the Holy See and take him to Neverland; or he would become a demon, follow Su He to the underworld, and they would both love and kill each other from now on. But in the end, I chose this ending, which is actually the best ending and the best beginning for these two people. They can abandon their stubbornness, face up to themselves, and start over. This is death and a new life, which perfectly conforms to the aesthetics of the author.

Qi Leren is not dead (those who will be resurrected are certainly not dead), but Ning Zhou has firmly established that his love was swayed in the end, and with this in mind + all alive + destined to be together = HE, so please touch your chest and tell every little friend loudly that this is a happy ending full of love and hope. As for why it doesn't end with the two people meeting again after seven days, it’s because the two people can't meet for the time being even after seven days, as Ning Zhou went to Purgatory... This is the second story.

Although it's my first time writing CP*, when I look back, all the sugar I sent is poisonous… But it doesn't matter, we have the second one! In the second part, Chen Baiqi's sister has a saying "God assists", which she likes very much. She announces in advance: "How much courage does it take for a person to deny his past, destroy his present and future with his own hands, and make himself struggle to abandon his faith before and after his death, just for his right to love. From now on, you are his God and his sin. You should heal him, redeem him, be his scabbard, be his armor, and become his faith. Qi Leren, you should take good care of him."

*{EN: Character Pairing}

I give full marks for this assist.

Thanks to the readers here, I really appreciate your support. Sometimes I am really not a good author, and I often write willfully regardless of the market. However, the author thinks that although I can't make readers like every work, at least I can make myself like it. If my brain waves are lucky enough to keep pace with the readers while satisfying my cute point, it is the greatest fate.

Here, once again, I love the master reminder with a stupid face. She must regret dating me because of the Nightmare Game now, but it's too late to get on the false boat.

The plan for the second half of the year is tentatively set as Egg Game 3 and a silly white sweet medium-length brain hole. The outline of Nightmare Game 2 will be carried out synchronously, and the second one will be opened as soon as possible. In addition, the manhua of Nightmare Game 1 is also being done. The pre-sale time depends on the progress of the two artists, the art being set, and my writing. You can pay attention to my Weibo @ 薄暮冰轮, or directly pay attention to the @ secret newspaper in charge of agency.

The text has been roughly revised, and I'll pack a TXT and send it to Weibo later. Goodbye until the next story, love everyone, Mwah~

-----

Editor’s Notes: 

We still have one non-canon extra left, but I know not everyone reads those so I will put my final comments here. 

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented, and spoken to me directly! I’ve really enjoyed working on this and have appreciated the engagement my little pet project has gotten. With that said, I will be taking a one month break before I begin posting Nightmare Game II, so the first chapter will be up on May 10th, mark your calendars and check back here then. If the date changes for whatever reason I will announce it both here and on [my twitter]. Sorry to leave you all on such a cliffhanger ending.

To fill the Nightmare Game-shaped holes that I know must be in all of your hearts, I have two novel recommendations. The first is that I want to once again urge you to read BMBL’s other trilogy The Easter Egg Game if you haven’t yet, as its connection to Nightmare Game will become more prominent in Part II. It is much shorter so I promise it won’t take as much time to read as this one has. My other recommendation is Kaleidoscope of Death, which is actually the reason I started reading Nightmare Game in the first place as I had finished reading Kaleidoscope and was desperate for something similar. I would say the horror in Kaleidoscope is honestly much better than in this, though I prefer Nightmare Game’s overall story. (A warning though that it includes quite a few crossdressing jokes.)

Thank you again for sticking with this series and my editing of it all the way! I hope you’ll continue reading in the future. Until then, farewell ( *・∀・)ノ゛

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[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

[bigskydreaming]

Also if people instinctively reaching for their “its just my interpretation” arguments as a rebuttal to that post about issue #416 could just not, I’d super appreciate it, thaaaaaanks.

See, the problem I have with that is like....no its not. Its really really not. If your fic or your meta is otherwise DIRECTLY referencing specific story beats of that specific ISSUE, like Dick not having talked to Bruce in over a year, or Dick not knowing Jason even existed until he saw it on the news, or Dick leaving Jason his phone number, or anything of the like.....it is not at all unreasonable for me to expect you to acknowledge the story beats of that very same issue that all of those things are written IN RESPONSE TO. 

You can yell at me about how the firing is just a retcon til the cows come home, but y’know what? It was a retcon that was reiterated IN THAT VERY SAME ISSUE. In it, Dick reiterated what the firing looked like from his perspective, how he waited around for two weeks for Bruce to change his mind before packing up and leaving with opportunities for Bruce to say something every step of the way....THAT is the SPECIFIC sequence of events that Dick’s anger about all of this comes from.

So its extremely disingenuous to try and pair that anger with the pre-Crisis ‘better version’ of events where Dick gives up being Robin all on his own and becomes Nightwing while still on good terms with Bruce...because that version of events has its OWN corresponding aftermath that was written in direct response to THOSE character choices. Like the aftermath where right after becoming Nightwing, Dick turns around and offers Robin to Jason himself, as he of course is already well acquainted with Jason by then. See, that’s kinda part of why Dick and Bruce are on such better terms in that version of events. It has a lot to do with Bruce not adopting a whole other son without so much as a phone call to let Dick know his family had expanded.

Now you can mix and match to your heart’s content, that has NEVER been in question. Especially since as so often said, its a fandom past time to take a match to canon and watch it burn. You don’t have to adhere to aaaaaanything you don’t want to.

BUT.

If you want to talk about INTERPRETING the canon? That is subject to a different set of standards. Because you’re acknowledging that the source material exists as a point of RELEVANCE to you.....and the fact is....the source material is the SAME for everyone discussing it. Now, people can and do have different interpretations of that same material, this is obviously true. But ACTUAL. GENUINE. DISCUSSION of it.....requires that all parties at least discuss those interpretations in good faith, and make an honest attempt to address the material as it is.

And that is not what happens in this fandom. Because you damn well KNOW that for all your talk of the firing just being a retcon......its still the specific version of events the “Dick being mad about Bruce giving Robin to Jason” thing is directly meant to reference and BUILD off of. Retcon or not, it is indisputably the FOUNDATION upon which the other character choices of that very same issue are built atop of.

Because there is another version of events, yes. The pre-Crisis version where Dick gives up Robin. But as I said, that version DOES NOT HAVE Dick angry or resentful....because a key component of it is that all three of them, Bruce, Dick and Jason, are already a family in spirit. There’s a true succession of Robin from Dick passing it down to Jason.

And a lot of you guys know this too. Especially the ones most likely to reach for that “let us have our interpretation!” arguments. Because the Dick Grayson corner of fandom has posted about it a LOT. In fact, we kinda churn out a crap ton of content for this fandom. Headcanons, ficlets, informative posts, etc. And there’s a very curious phenomenon that exists.....

Literally anything I or certain other DG fans post that is inclusive of the whole family, or does not reference any specific event that’s infamous within fandom for pitting Dick against another Batfam member in a ‘who was right, discuss” kinda way.....that tends to circulate WIDELY in fandom. We’re talking upwards of a thousand notes, regularly.

In comparison.....the informative posts that are chock full of panels pointing out how canon actually goes in these specific instances.....tend to top out at a couple hundred max. Its pretty much just fellow DG stans who reblog them. Everyone else, despite them going through the same initial routes of circulation....are very good at pretending they don’t see them.

Because see, misinformation - and make no mistake, that is what we’re talking about here - RELIES on a lack of like.....actual information provided to the contrary to thrive. 

For instance, if it were as common knowledge that in the pre-Crisis version of Dick becoming Nightwing, he makes Jason Robin himself, as it is say.....that the firing Dick as Robin story is ‘just a shitty retcon’......people might start to ask in greater numbers, like, okay, so why DON’T more people write Dick making Jason into Robin after giving it up himself? Why have Dick so bitter at Bruce and/or Jason, if in the only version where Dick gives up Robin, Dick passes it on himself? If you’re gonna go with the one, why not the other?

Because we all know damn well that’s not a difference in interpretation. That’s a conscious CHOICE to TRANSFORM the source material by stitching together two different sides of a cause and effect chasm. The events transpiring after Dick finds out Bruce made Jason Robin himself ARE NOT MEANT to reference the inciting event of Dick giving up Robin himself. You can make that happen, sure. But you have to MAKE it happen. There is no point in the comics where you can honestly, genuinely point to the comics and say this right here shows Dick being mad about this, where ‘this’ is Bruce giving Robin to Jason SPECIFICALLY after Dick gave Robin up, rather than being fired.

A choice has to be made there, for that to happen, if one has the ACTUAL information about how that really played out in the comics rather than just misinformation. And not everyone in fandom trusts everyone else to make the choices they would like them to make with the source material, do they?

After all, isn’t that the REAL root of all this?

See.....its no secret to any of us that nobody’s been all that happy with the actual comics aka source material in years. Meaning most of fandom, myself included, is here for meta and fics based on previously written comics, or our own adaptations of the material.

And fandom, being interactive, unlike canon.....is something that CAN be influenced by other fans.

So why don’t we all just stop fucking pretending that we’re not all trying to influence what the overarching fandom narratives are, shall we?

Oh, you can say this is just me projecting, but I’ve got plenty of instances of hypocrisy to point to that say otherwise. And THAT is the true source of my hostility in so many posts in this fandom.

Because its the very same people who loudly cry “let people have their headcanons” and “let people have their interpretations” and “stop trying to tell people there’s only one true version of canon to go off of” who NEVER. EVER. fail to show up on posts like that last one, the SECOND they start to circulate ‘too widely’ throughout fandom. There is ALWAYS someone waiting in the wings the minute a post like that starts to top a couple hundred notes, ready and raring to shoot it down with some kind of derailment or condescending reminders to everyone who might see it that ‘that’s just a bad retcon for people obsessed with misery porn’ or something like that.

And what exactly should we be calling that? When people show up every single time I make a post about the importance of Robin as a name to Dick, in order to make a big stink about how it being his mother’s name for him is just a retcon? Even though....did I say it wasn’t? Does it being a retcon mean it doesn’t exist? Am I not allowed MY interpretation of a story that very much does exist in canon, am I not allowed to reference other stories where that specific retcon is specifically linked to?

Or how about if I say, post a headcanon about Alfred getting snippy with Bruce about not reaching out to Dick after he leaves home, where within the headcanon itself I specifically reference a clear version of the story where Dick is fired and its eighteen months before he and Bruce speak again? Does this story not exist in canon? Am I not allowed to base stuff of it? It would seem not, given the way people jumped to derail that one by adding in additions about Dick being upset with Bruce about college, which is an entirely different continuity that in no way intersects with the specific events I reference, where they’re estranged for a clear reason that is directly raised within the headcanon itself. People even acknowledge “OP is entitled to any version of continuity they want” in that one, but are like....this one is wrong though, and true fans prefer the one that isn’t just misery porn meant to validate Dick’s teenage angst. With people all too happy to reblog that one while gleefully pointing out the tags that completely derail the post about a clear point in canon by making it entirely about another unrelated point in a different continuity in order to invalidate the initial headcanon or whatever.

Don’t even get me started on when we dare reference stories where Bruce is actually physically abusive to Dick, or when we link Dick’s actions in stories that acknowledge the emotional abuse or neglect of certain key moments in his life TO those inciting moments directly and say “hey its kinda shitty to act like Dick was just being a standoffish brat here when Dick’s attitude is actually directly based on the last time he and Bruce interacted being when Bruce told him to get out and leave his keys.” LOLOL nooooo, that’s not allowed to stand, because see, the ONLY possible reason we could have for even CONSIDERING those stories in character or in continuity, is because of the aforementioned addiction to misery porn or else because we’re just trying to smear Bruce to make our own fave look better.

Never mind that another popular refrain for a lot of the people I’m talking about here is “you don’t know what people are thinking or why they like the things that they like” so, y’know. It is a tad irritating to see that double standard applied, like I mean. Just speaking personally, I’m a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse with a lifetime’s worth of C-PTSD and permanent estrangement from my abusive family, so like....those stories where Dick is abused by a figure he never thought would hurt him and now has to reconcile that with still loving and admiring that very same person and still wanting to be family.....like, hey guess what, those themes are part of why his character resonates for me in particular and so they’re kiiiiiinda key for me to explore for a lot of reasons. And given that this fandom looooooves to talk about some people writing dark shit to cope, I find it veeeeeery curious that people are so willing to shut the fuck up and say nothing about incest, rape and pedophilia fics even if they don’t like them themselves......but will still come out of the woodwork to condescend about there being absolutely no valid reason for anyone to ever engage with content where Bruce is abusive even just in one singular instance.....nah. Its literally just cuz of the misery porn addiction.

But see.....the thing at the heart of all this is the simple fact that this hypocrisy doesn’t exist just for the sake of hypocrisy. It exists because we actually all DO know how much power and influence fans can have in an interactive environment like fandom.

After all, the entire reason that Dick Grayson fans are so often posting informative panel-filled posts about what ACTUALLY happens in canon stories that are DIRECTLY cited in many meta, fanfics and headcanons, just.....in a totally backwards way that just so happens to fail to mention that its not intended to be an accurate depiction of the canon its definitely mentioning its in reference to....

The entire reason for this is because of how thoroughly fandom has crafted a specific narrative for Dick Grayson’s character that is based PURELY on their own characterization wants and needs and has very little to do with the actual canon of the character.

Its not a coincidence that so many fans just so happen to genuinely, truly believe that Dick was a grade A asshole to Jason while he was Robin, and there’s a wealth of canon out there somewhere to back it up. No, this happened because of fanFIC narratives where this is the case, and these catching on, and being encouraged by the initial writers of this trope and its fans and so on and so forth until it became the overarching fandom narrative and not only didn’t require any canon basis to be so....it barely ALLOWED for any talk of the contrary. Dick Grayson stans had to yell and churn out posts like that last one for YEARS to make a DENT in this fanon conviction, and do NOT even approach me about it being an issue of tone and ‘if we’d only asked politely’ because lol. No. We did. You can find the clear shift in the tone of my posts from when I first re-entered the fandom years ago to when I just got frustrated with the willful avoidance of WHY so many fans like myself are so annoyed by certain fandom convictions......and even then, it was about the hypocrisy. It was about how loudly other people crow about letting them have their headcanons while literally shouting down ANY post we made about wanting space to just have our CANON-canon.

Pro-tip: that thing where if you just ignore someone long enough on a certain point, they’ll inevitably start to get frustrated and then you can point to their tone as being the problem and claim that was the issue all along? Yeah. Its not slick. This fandom didn’t invent it. Its always very transparent, and very obnoxious. 

But the point is.....fandom absolutely has the ability to override canon narratives with their own version that’s then formative for new entrants to the fandom who never even BOTHER with the source material and just are here for the fic. And so its dishonest as FUCK for people to not only MAKE no distinction between what’s genuinely their interpretation of the canon and what’s their transformation of it, with INTENT......but to weaponize fandom’s aversion to content-criticism to shout down even ATTEMPTS to introduce discussion of the actual source material by claiming oh you’re just trying force your preferred narrative on everyone else. Aka that thing THEY’RE actually doing themselves by once attaining a fandom wide narrative they like, maintaining a stranglehold on it and doing their best to dissuade any narratives to the contrary staking a claim alongside that.

Because again, it all comes back to the fic. See, as a Dick Grayson fan, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I turn to fic for what I can’t get from canon...and its frustrating as hell to see writers that loudly talk of being BETTER than canon and “RIP to canon but my Batfam loves each other” in a lot of cases DELIBERATELY make Dick in particular look WORSE.....and then act like they have no idea what we’re talking about when we try and tell fans who take these narratives at face value that uh, they’re lacking some extremely relevant context and nuance. Or in some cases, outright facts.

And I will happily laugh loudly in the face of anyone who tries to claim that they don’t feel similarly about fics that characterize their own faves in ways they don’t like.

Yeah, try telling me that after years of some of you writing fics that specifically exclude all reference to the events of Nightwing #30 when talking about Dick’s death or Spyral.....while still including every in canon instance of people bagging on Dick for what he only did in canon because of Bruce’s abusive writing. There’s kinda a vested interest in keeping fandom relatively free of talk of Nightwing #30 then.....because weirdly, people who write about a DIFFERENT take that’s not hostile to Dick seem to end up putting the blame on Bruce for that situation. Bizarre, I know. People attributing blame to the character who was actually abusive in the canon and being cranky that the victim of said abuse is held up as the sacrificial lamb in everyone else’s fics? Whodathunkit.

(Also a point of irritation - it never had to be just one or the other. This is where the whole ‘maybe its YOU guys who were projecting all along when you said the only reason we could have for talking about Bruce’s abuse was an intent to smear the character’ bit is a thing. See, fun fact: if you were going to ignore an issue or two in order to completely flip the narrative of what really happened with Spyral and dominate the fandom landscape for a couple of years....it never had to be Nightwing #30 that was the ONLY issue you could leave out in order to not make Bruce look like an abusive asshat. Like, there was always another option right there in front of you. You could have instead chosen to also leave out Grayson #12, aka the one where Dick informs everyone else he’s alive.....then you could very easily just sliiiiiide in reference to Bruce and Dick quietly informing the whole family of his status and his mission while insisting on keeping it quiet for his safety. Voila. NOBODY has to be an asshole then, and the whole family gets to be in the know. But see, most people didn’t actually have a problem with someone being an asshole in that story. They just didn’t want it to be Bruce, and didn’t mind it being his actual victim. 

Even though, lol, just another FYI.....abuse victims having things flipped on them so it looks like they’re the true problem and their abusers are completely innocent is a HUGE thing that happens a lot in real life, so FYI about that FYI.....anyone who does say, gravitate towards Dick Grayson specifically because of how he’s impacted or might be impacted by abuse from his father, like.....is proooooobably not going to have a super fun time with diehard commitment to making this particular fictional character the true mastermind of his family’s misery and abusive instead of the abused. Weird huh.)

And round and round it goes. Where it ends, nobody knows.....because it doesn’t. fucking. stop. The number of ways in which fandom has willfully flipped the narrative so that Dick is the aggressor instead of the aggrieved is just absolutely ridiculous. This guy has been punched by every member of his family except Duke and Alfred, and somehow he’s the one characterized as uncomfy to be around because of how volatile he is. This guy is the only one who has actually been KICKED OUT of the manor, and somehow that gets glossed over and considered out of character while he apparently definitely did very much do this exact specific thing to Tim, I hear.

And like broken records, people squawk ‘let us have our interpretations/headcanons/etc’ any time we try and make a stink about how no, actually, that’s NOT HOW IT WENT....and at the EXACT SAME TIME....most of these exact same people show up on every post that uses ACTUAL information to make Bruce or Jason or Tim or whomever look like the actual problem in a story where they were actually problematic, like, the SECOND a post gets popular enough....to derail, to condescend, to shout it down with how its just a retcon or its out of character or its just a bad take or how fans with taste know better than to take it seriously.

And why do you care? Like, if we’re all supposed to just live and let live and everyone’s allowed their own interpretations, why this everpresent need to show up all the time with a superior, patronizing ‘oof, this is just not good’ the second one of YOUR faves is in the hotseat, while condescendingly boxing out any posts informing people of how no, actually, Dick and Kory’s breakup WAS linked to Mirage and Dick and Donna’s infamous fight WASN’T the way its commonly talked about and oh yeah there was brainwashing there too and etc, etc....see, when WE do that, we’re just overacting stans who can’t stand others not liking our fave. Instead of just....trying to correct misinformation so more fans can at least engage with the character from a starting point of zero instead of a negative integer. 

So why this hypocrisy? Oh yeah, because you don’t WANT the misinformation corrected. Because see, when the misinformation IS corrected, fic writers en masse....make different choices. And that’s why ever since more people started picking up the refrain of “well no actually Dick DIDN’T hate Jason, here’s the proof”.....there’s a lot more stories out there where...shockingly....Dick doesn’t hate Jason. Which bizarrely, does not really work well for the people who WANTED Dick to hate Jason and made a point to SHAPE the narrative to make him hate Jason.....because it wasn’t about that just being their interpretation, and it never was. Because the CHOICE to cut out Dick’s ‘justification for feeling slighted’ by being fired as Robin and pair that specifically WITH Dick resenting Jason for Bruce still making him Robin instead of Dick doing it....that has a narrative cause and effect within a lot of the fics that go with this. It gives Jason eternal underdog status that makes it easy to root for him while positioning someone specifically to blame for that underdog status and unfair playing field, and it also keeps focus off Bruce as the cause of any issues between his sons due to choices HE made, thus one singular figure is positioned as the obstacle to family unity....and that figure isn’t Bruce.

And no canon to the contrary will be acknowledged as legitimate.

Convenient huh?

Especially paired with the ‘thou shalt not con crit on another’s fic’ fandom commandment. Because when you can’t complain about any fanfic depictions whatsoever without immediately and inherently being cast as the rabble-rouser by default.....the ability to shape and dominate a specific fandom narrative becomes veeeeery key. After all, another popular fandom phrase is ‘we’re not the DC writers, complain to them about canon.’ But when there’s no canon complaint to be made to DC specifically, because its not canon we’re actually upset about, and we’re not ‘allowed’ to criticize fandom depictions because people are allowed to have their interpretations......all you have to do is stand your ground and insist that the fandom depictions of Dick are nothing BUT ‘interpretations’ and not acknowledge aaaaaaany of the places where you consciously make the decision to transform canon choices and behavior around him.....and voila. You’ve wrapped everything up in a neat little logic trap. Quite the fait accompli. There’s really no way for anyone to say or do anything ABOUT this little situation here without being ‘disruptive,’ ‘divisive’ and ‘having a negative impact on fandom harmony.’

Its just always gonna be a little weird to me, how much your positivity culture looks a lot like plausible deniability culture instead.

But whatever. That’s just a me problem I guess. Definitely not something anyone else in fandom has anything to do with. Just like they have nothing to do with derailments or condescension or counter arguments to so many of the canon-based Dick Grayson posts I make, and this is also all my doing...wait...hang on. I think I got mixed up again somewhere. Dang it.

[blingywitch]

Good Feelings - Chapter II

Hey! Here’s chapter two! This fic is going to go in a bit of a weird direction for a while I think— starting in the next couple chapters— but I promise it’ll all align eventually! (Even if it doesn’t seem that way) See, the problem is... I’m having a little trouble figuring out how things will work with it—plot wise—hence why this took some time to get out. It’s out now and that’s all that matters :) But just note that if the chapters are taking longer to get out than usual it’s probably because I’m stuck and can’t write anything but they will get out... eventually. I promise <3

Umm... all I have left to say is Logan Tremblay is a sucker for pretty eyes... as am I.

Full Masterlist & Good Feelings Masterlist

Characters belong to the lovely, @lumosinlove

CW: mentions of food and drink

The sun was barely out when Logan woke up that morning. He could already tell it was going to be a nice day though, there was no clouds in sight and the only reminiscence of the rain that had passed through Gryffindor earlier in the week was the damp grass and small puddles that were scattered around the pavement. 

Logan liked the rain, it reminded him of home; And yes, rain was still as common in Gryffindor than it was in Quebec but it just wasn’t the same. No matter where he was in the world nothing would be the same as his home. He missed it.

Logan and his three sisters had moved down to Gryffindor about a month ago. They wanted to expand their families business—Tremblay’s— that had been solely in Rimouski, Quebec until now; and Gryffindor seemed like the perfect place to start. So they packed their bags, said goodbye to their parents—who were staying in Rimouski to mange things there— and they were off.

It was hard at first; Being in such an unfamiliar place. Being without anything that was normal to them. But the Tremblay siblings had each other and that was familiar. They worked together, getting used to the new things and eventually it got to a point where Gryffindor was starting to feel like home to them— a second home.

Moving in together helped. Again, it was comforting to have someone around 24/7 that they knew in a city that was filled with strangers. Logan and Noelle had bought a small apartment together while Audrey and Sydney got places of their own on the other side of town. Being the youngest siblings Noelle and Logan didn’t think they were quite ready to be on their own anyways.

And that’s how Logan got here; closing the door to his Uber and telling the driver where to go. Off to his first official day working at Tremblay’s. Aka opening day.

When the car exited the parking lot Logan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He hauled it out to see who it was.

New message from: Noelle

Hey, are you almost here? Please tell me you’re almost here.

I just got into the Uber. What’s the rush?

Aubrey is flipping out; Running around the place and talking to herself. Saying something is going to go ‘terribly wrong’. She checked if the open sign was working 3 times already. Syd and I can’t handle this much longer. SOS.

Logan chuckled softly.

Tell Aubrey that it’s going to be fine and that nothing is going to go ‘terribly wrong’. I’ll be there soon.

And if you want me there so bad why didn’t you wake me up when you left this morning?!

I didn’t wake you up this morning because before you went to bed last night you were grumbling about not being awoken before 6 or you’ll be all moody.

I can’t deal with moody Logan in the morning. Especially not this one.

Ok that’s reasonable. See you soon!

Byee.

—

“Logan!” He heard his name being shouted at him by one of his sisters as he entered the coffee shop— Sydney, he realized it was when he looked up. “Vous êtes ici!” She exclaimed.

“Logan!?” He heard again, accompanied by a clash that sounded like a pan hitting the floor. The next moment Audrey appeared; looking slightly frantic.

“Oh thank gods.” Audrey breathed. “You’re here.”

“Finally.” Noelle said playfully; joining in from where she was straightening mugs on a shelf.

Her brother narrowed his eyes at her. Only for her to shoot Logan back a smile that said, you know you love me.

“D’accord d’accord,” Audrey interrupted her siblings moment. “Enough playing around. We have work to do.” She walked over to the back and grabbed a classic blue Tremblay’s apron off of the rack that was there. She tossed it at Logan, the fabric draping over his head, “Put this on. This place opens in twenty.”

Logan lifted the apron off his head, “Yes, captain. I’ll get right to work.”

Audrey ignored her brother’s attempt at trying to loosen the tense atmosphere that was looming over her and went back to what she was doing.

“Oh, and Audrey?!” Logan called after her.

Audrey turned around, raising a questioning eyebrow at him.

“Everything is going to be fine. Nothing crazy or terribly bad is going to happen; I promise.” Logan had a serious look in his eyes.

Audrey smiled softly at him. Logan sure as hell didn’t know how to deal with his emotions but he always knew how to comfort others; especially his sisters.

Walking over to turn on the record player Logan quietly repeated his words to himself so no one would hear, “Everything is going to be fine. Nothing crazy or terribly bad is going to happen; I promise.”

If only Logan knew.

—

Noelle was cleaning off one of the front counters when she heard them walk in; laughing and joking with each other. Holding hands and going to sit down at a table in the corner. She watched as the taller one pulled out a chair for the other and then start a small conversation.

They hadn’t Looked her way, so she was able to sneak away to the back without them noticing while the pair got settled and decided what they wanted. Plus, Logan said he wanted to serve people today.

So she picked up her wash cloth and made her way back into the kitchen where her siblings were. She looked at her brother, “Logan, a couple of people just walked in. You got it?”

“Y-yeah.” Logan almost looked nervous at learning the information. “Ouais.”

Noelle nodded. “Okay. Just give them a couple more minutes to get settled.”

Logan knew he was nervous about today. Would he ever admit that to his sisters? Fuck no. But he never would have guessed that when the time came for the actual work to happen he would be this nervous.

Noelle said there were people here. What if those people hated it here? What if they didn’t like any of the food? Or what if he messed up and got an order wrong? What if he trips over his own feet walking over to them and embarrasses himself— knowing himself though, and how clumsy he could be that is something Logan would do.

“Logan?” Sydney’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts that were quickly getting the best of him. “You okay?” She asked “You look a little sick there.”

Trying to regain himself, Logan took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Okay.” She sounded unsure with his response but didn’t push it anymore. “Noelle said they should be ready now.”

“Right....” Logan nodded, bringing his hand up to take off his hat before he realized what he was doing and quickly brought it back down.

So, clearing his throat and patting his apron pocket to make sure he had his pen and note pad he set off to take their order. Exiting the kitchen, turning the corner, looking around and—

The odds really weren’t in his favour today were they?

His first thought was, pretty. His second, get it together Tremblay. But that was easier said then done when the two boys that were sat at the table looked like they did. He was still a good ten feet away from them but from what he could see Logan didn’t think he’d ever seen two boys they were so— pretty, as he described them. It was the only clear word in his head right now so it would have to do.

It was then Logan realized he was just standing there, staring at these pretty boys— thank gods they hadn’t noticed him yet— and he had a job to do. So, for what felt like the hundred time that day he took a deep breath and composed himself and mustering up all the courage he had, walked over.

As he got closer he noticed that the boys looked to be in deep conversation, pointing at the menu and nodding along with whatever the other said and Logan almost felt bad for having to break it up. He didn’t want to break it up. He had only laid eyes on the two for a maximum of thirty seconds but he felt content to watch them talk to each other for hours. Something about the way they communicated drew him in, the way they weren’t using many words—from what Logan could hear anyways— but seemed to know exactly what the person across from them meant. It took two people knowing each other well to be able to do that. Logan wanted to know these people well.

He had reached their table. Here goes nothing. “Bonjour, welcome to Tremblay’s,” he greeted. “I’m Logan. What can I get for you two?”

The boys looked up at his voice and Logan felt like he got punched in the stomach. If he thought they were pretty before then this was godly.

Eyes he thought. A deep shade of brown that looked like pools of melted chocolate. In the early morning sunlight Logan could see that they had lighter spots making chocolate and honey swirl into each other in a perfect circle around his pupils. Logan could stare forever. His Auburn hair that appeared as fire itself looked incredibly soft, with the sides shaved and the waves on top flopping to one side. It took Logan everything he had in him to keep his jaw off the floor.

He looked away from the redhead and met the others eyes. Mon dieu was Logan a sucker for eyes. Orbs of cornflower blue stared into his green. They looked curious, observing, almost like they held an expression of their own, like they were doing the thinking instead of his brain. Though Logan couldn’t guess what the boy was thinking if he tried. His face was Guarded; Not in a way that said he didn’t want you to know what he was thinking but in a way that said you just needed to earn it. And Logan couldn’t comprehend why he so badly wanted to. His hair curled around his ears and came down slightly over his forehead where a tuft of white could be seen amongst blonde curls. He was gorgeous. And just before Logan snapped out of his trance he saw the boy’s eyes roam over him; he really had trouble keeping his face straight at that.

The blonde suddenly cleared his throat. “Oh, um... sorry. Finn?”

The other boy— Who Logan now knew as Finn— looked at his friend. Those beautiful eyes of his going wide for a second before looking down at the table. “Right, uhh, I’ll have....”

Logan nodded along with their orders. It was nothing complicated— thankfully. He didn’t think he could handle complicated right now. “Alright, sounds good. I’ll be back with that, you guys sit tight.” He smiled politely at them and started making his way back to the kitchen. Careful not to match his pace with his rapidly beating heart.

As soon as he was out of sight from the boys and back in the kitchen he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and just sat there for a moment; leaning against the wall and calming himself down. Why today? His first day. At least give him a couple days before the really hot guy—or in this case, guys— walked into the coffee shop.

“You okay?” Noelle noticed him first and he was asked that question for the millionth time that day.

Logan opened his eyes and looked at his sister. “You could have told me they were hot!” he whispered yelled.

Noelle just laughed loudly, accompanied by chuckles from his other sisters. They knew that Logan was bisexual; There was an incident when he was in high school where Logan was crushing so hard on a boy that he had to tell somebody and he chose his sisters. It had been a good choice; Unsurprisingly, they were greatly accepting. Sydney even telling him she wasn’t exactly straight herself either. And maybe things didn’t work out between Logan and the boy but he now had amazing sisters that loved him no matter who he loved and that made him more than happy.

“Sorry,” Noelle managed to get out when her laughter died down. “It didn’t cross my mind if I’m being honest.”

Logan narrowed his eyes at her but left it alone. He turned to Sydney, “Syd, I need a breakfast sandwich, hold the tomato— Oh! and a croissant instead of a bagel please!”

“I’m on it, petit fère.” She smiled.

“Excuse me.” He said to Noelle, still playfully narrowing his eyes at her. “I have coffee to go make.”

Noelle smirked and moved out of the way, as Logan walked away she called after him, “I’ll put your number on their check later!”

Logan rolled his eyes, though he was trying to suppress a smile.

—

Deep breaths Logan. Deep breaths.

“Okay, so, we have the breakfast sandwich and the black coffee for you.” Who drinks black coffee? Ew. Logan thought, placing Finn’s order in front of him. “And just the medium two sugar two cream for you.” He handed the blonde his coffee. Did he ever want to know his name.

“Thanks.” He said, looking right into Logan’s eyes.

“No problem!” Logan managed to get out. But not before a pink tint washed over his cheeks.

Logan abruptly looked away. In a failed attempt to hide his blush he smiled politely at Finn and he got one in return, though the redhead looked a bit confused. And that was all Logan could stand before he turned around and walked away, not being able to resist bringing his hand up to remove his hat and run his fingers through his hair.

How was it still only 9 am? Logan didn’t know. But let’s just say he continued his work day with two beautiful faces never leaving his mind.

Auburn and brown, blonde and blue.