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hivemuthur · 1 month ago

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To Be Known - Ch.5.

viktorxfemale!reader explicit! (and I can't stress this enough, kids shoo!) Modern AU, set in London, current era but not very specific. It's just a love story.

<- previous chapter MASTERLIST next chapter ->

word count: 6K

warnings, or rather this chapter contains: d/s etiquette (stoplight system), punishment (spanking), slight dacryphilia, cunnilingus, slight overstimulation, word 'cum' (hi Krys!), yearning, yearning, yearning, yearning.

author’s note: Ok, so time for me to explain Baal a bit if you didn’t have the opportunity to check it out. It’s a play that explores the life and fall (I guess) of a drunken poet Baal, that rejects society and dips into the philosophy of Sturm und Drang (yk, Goethe and all that shit). Baal is an anti-hero and it’s basically a study of (an evil? morally gray?) genius that went as far as he could. There is a nice, recorded version with David Bowie in it for anyone who doesn’t want to read but it’s a cool read nevertheless, very poetic. Honestly to this day I don’t know if it’s good or not, it’s just a thing I’ve read a long time ago during my times of Bowie obsession and it stayed with me forever. And as usual, playlist here, @rennethen my beta, massive thank you and artist is @petitesieste ♡

Cross-posted on AO3

—

A light shuffle, then a tickle. A kiss to your temple, dry and warm, a throaty hum, then a hand rubbing your cheek. It would be all sweet and loving if it weren’t for the way he wipes away remnants of night drool before placing a kiss there.

“Wake up,” he says, voice rough with morning gravel, and you breathe deeply against his chest, pressing your stomach into his. “It’s 9 a.m.”

“Oh, no.” You jolt, panicked, eyes snapping wide painfully fast, and Viktor rushes to put out the fire.

“It’s 9 a.m. on Sunday,” he chuckles. “I just really need to pee,” he adds, tipping his chin down, gesturing at the fusion of bodies—your bellies pressed together tight, arms wrapped around each other, yours circling his waist, his draped over your shoulders, one trapped beneath your neck, legs tangled with your thigh swung over his hip. “I’m trapped, you see.”

“Oh.” You blink twice, slowly, catching up, then release him. “Sorry. I don’t really sleep with people too often,” you try to explain your greediness, but he’s already getting up.

Viktor smirks. “That I can tell,” he says, pulling on a jumper, and you say goodbye to his pretty back. “You’re not the easiest nap partner,” he throws over his shoulder as his legs swing off the bed.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.” Viktor smiles, leaning back on one hand against the mattress. “The snoring, the drooling, eh, some mumbling,” he lists, tracing the curve of your thigh with his fingers. “I think you quoted some Hamlet.”

“Oh, God.” You groan, hiding your face in the crook of your elbow. “Sorry.”

“I don’t mind a bit of gross,” he muses, his hand skimming higher, to your hip.

Your hand falls back on the bed, firm, and you pull your leg away from his touch. “Are you saying I’m an ugly sleeper?” you ask, eyebrows quirked.

“No,” Viktor says quickly. “No, absolutely not.” He corrects himself, crawling back next to you, stopping you from turning away, hands pulling you flush against him. “You are so, so pretty, no matter what you’re doing,” he breathes into your mouth before kissing you. And you are so painfully aware that this is the first kiss outside of sex that it twists your gut. He parts from you with a quiet pop and mutters, “Just a bit disgusting, that’s all.”

“Oh, get lost.” You snort and push his face away with one hand. He chuckles but gets up awkwardly, shuffling toward the bathroom. As soon as he’s gone, you cover your eyes and mutter a quiet, “Fuck,” into the air of his bedroom, your voice a rasp coming from your abused throat.

Moments pass, leaving you alone, staring at the ceiling, thinking, overthinking, grinding everything from last night. Weighing what it is exactly that had you French exit the business dinner and skip to his apartment like a dog, tongue out and panting. Whether it’s just the thrill of it, the benefits that come with it, the absolute freedom of expression that Viktor guarantees, or just… him.

Is it the setup or his praise, the mouth that gives it, the tongue it rolls off, his hands that bruise and cleanse, his stomach that you desperately want to lick all over, his criminally gorgeous nose, his stupid man-smell, the crook of his shoulder shaped for your cheek and yours only, or… or what?

The door creak breaks you out of your self-mind-flagellation as Viktor sighs deeply and returns to bed.

“So.” He plops onto the mattress with a grunt, completely unaware. “How are you?”

“Why do you always ask?” You roll to your side, prop your head on your palm, and pull the covers up to your armpits.

Viktor leans in, lays flat on his stomach, and brushes hair off your neck. “It’s my job,” he says quietly, tracing the fading marks with his fingers. Then, he wraps them around the column of your throat, gently, and asks, “Asphyxiation then? Did you like it?”

“No innuendos with you, I swear to God,” you laugh, the tendons in your neck flexing under his palm. He squeezes tighter, just a notch, and watches with quiet fascination as your skin dents beneath his fingers. For a moment, Viktor seems lost in thought, absorbed in the sensation, before your answer pulls him back.

“Yes, I liked it.”

His grip eases, fingers shifting into a slow, absentminded caress. “We should be more careful, though,” he murmurs, pressing his thighs to yours. “You should tap more. And I got a bit carried away.” His voice is steady, but his eyes are softer, something sorrowful flickering in their depths.

“You didn’t hurt me,” you say, even though you know full well that your throat aches as fuck.

“That’s a lie,” Viktor counters easily, voice dipping lower. “I know your throat hurts, but it’s not about that.” His fingers trace light patterns on your skin now, smoothing over where his grip had been firm. “Some aches are good the day after,” he says, leaving out which aches are not of a good kind. “But this one... it’s a thin line. So if you want this, you need to promise me you’ll tap. Diligently.”

“Diligently tap or diligently promise?” you tease, rubbing your nose against his cheek. Any occasion to steer the conversation into a less serious area—you take.

But Viktor doesn’t. He reaches for a fistful of hair at your nape, gently unplucking you from himself. “Both,” he says earnestly, then gives you a kiss like a man grown—serious and deep. “Promise me you will tap diligently, or I won’t fuck your mouth like that again.”

And that’s a threat, the first one you’ve received. As serious as the kiss, it has you simultaneously scared for the sentence to be delivered and hot between your legs at the chance to prove your obedience. “I diligently promise,” you say, swallowing a gulp that travels slowly through your aching throat.

“Good,” he mutters. “Now, coffee.”

And that’s it. Viktor stands up, reaches for his cane, and marches to the kitchen, leaving you tensed up and clenched up. You scoff loud enough for him to hear, having no idea that your brat point meter is already swelling at the tip.

You go through your bathroom necessities, and before you can turn to join him, his voice reaches you from the living room: “In here.”

He sits on the couch, reading a newspaper—of course. An act so vintage it complements his wardrobe. He holds out a cup for you, not looking up. When you don’t take it for a long moment, just outright stare at him, he finally lifts his head and asks, “What?”

“Nothing,” you mutter, taking the coffee.

Then you sit with your back to the armrest, knees pulled up to your chin, your shorts revealing a slice of ass that Viktor looks at not very secretively. He smiles, leaving you to do whatever it is you apparently need to do to make yourself feel less uncomfortable, and suddenly, you realise you’re getting the skittish cat treatment.

The obvious thing to do would be to sink your nose into work, so you skim through your phone. It feels oddly domestic—again—to be doing this around him, but you push the thought away, along with the unease creeping into your lungs.

Scrolling through emails, you give your hand a break to perform your morning joint-cracking ritual, perfected over the years—one-handed, each finger getting its special time under the thumb, and then the thumb itself skilfully popped by your middle.

Viktor watches from his seat on the couch, eyebrows climbing high onto his forehead. “I forgot to tell you—that’s another thing you do in your sleep,” he remarks, voice smooth, amused.

“What?”

“You pop your joints when you’re asleep,” he states flatly.

“You’re kidding,” you huff a laugh through your nose and roll your eyes at him.

“No.” He lifts his hand, mimicking whatever it was he saw, crude and imprecise, his own joints refusing to cooperate with the demonstration. “You did this—” he attempts again, fingers stiff, useless “—then went right back to sleep.”

“Sorry,” you laugh and clasp a hand to your forehead. “I know it’s freaky.”

Viktor smiles, runs his tongue on the inner side of his cheek, and says, “I told you—I don’t mind it.”

“Hm…” You stretch your fingers, press your knuckles idly into your palm. “Do you… like it?”

“I don’t mind it,” he repeats, a challenge lingering in his tone. Doesn’t mind is possibly an understatement, as the sound has already crawled into the realm of his favourites.

You eye him inquisitively and after a moment, give him a disbelieving grin. “You think it’s hot.”

The newspaper folds with a soft rustle against his lap, long fingers pressing it down at the centre crease. He capitulates with a lopsided smile, eyes flicking up from beneath his lashes. “What does it say about me?”

“Alright, that’s freaky,” now you outright laugh at him. And that’s possibly the last of the last straws that Viktor has kept promising himself to act upon.

“Oh, is it now?” His lips curl. “Amongst all the things, that’s the one that’s freaky?”

“Completely, yes.” You nod, wicked grin in place. “Look at yourself, you are bloody delighted.” A slow shake of your head. “Absolutely freaky.”

The newspaper slides from his lap to the floor, forgotten. He moves, shifting close, crowding you against the armrest. “I am,” he says, a murmur against your skin as he hooks a hand around your neck, thumb brushing beneath your ear. His other hand drags down your spine, slow, pressing the length of his palm to each notch of your vertebrae before dipping lower. “And you,” he continues, voice an easy purr, “have been a brat since yesterday.”

“Have I now?” you ask, feigning innocence, but there’s a tremor to it when his hand coasts lower, over the curve of your ass.

His hum is deep, approving. He palms the swell of your cheek, squeezes, then presses down, a firm, unspoken instruction. Your arms fold, chin pressed to your palms, body angled over his lap. You breathe deep, infinitely grateful for the shift—domesticity dispersing like steam off skin.

“What should I do with you?” he muses, fingertips teasing over bare flesh, lingering at the crease of your thigh.

You smirk. “I don’t know. Tell me how sexy my wobbly joints are—ah!” A slap. Not hard, just sudden, a sharp clap of skin that jolts through you like a shock of cold water.

His fingers fist in your hair, gentle but insistent, tugging your head back just enough to tilt your face toward him. “Colour?” he asks, voice lower now, serious.

“Green,” you breathe.

Viktor’s smile inches toward something near evil, sharp at the edges, gleaming wicked. His hand slips beneath your shorts, trailing slowly down the curve of your bum. Then he yanks them down your thighs, fabric dragging warm skin in its wake—but he pauses, stops at his favourite place, fingers finding slick heat.

“How come you’re already wet?” he asks, swiping long fingers across your slit, dragging through the damp, teasing.

You exhale, slow, measured, pressing back into his touch. “Maybe I’m freaky too.”

His breath is a laugh, dark and knowing. “Completely spoiled,” he murmurs, thumb pressing light against your clit, just enough to make your hips twitch. “I have been far too lax with you.” A pause, like he’s running numbers in his head, then, “From my calculations, it would seem you’ve accumulated eleven brat points.”

You grin into the crook of your arm, half a laugh slipping free. “It’s a wild guess, but… eleven?”

“Twelve, then.” And then his hand leaves you, a brief absence before the first slap lands.

And it’s sharp, bright, a sound that cuts through the quiet and bounces off the walls. It steals a gasp from your throat, hips lurching forward, heat blooming under the heel of his palm.

Viktor hums, a satisfied little noise, fingers tracing the pinking print he’s left behind. “One,” he counts, voice steady. “This one is for nit-picking my words yesterday.” The hand returns, smooths over skin like an apology, then—another slap.

You jolt, breath stuttering, fingers curling into the couch cushion.

“And now, for sulking—two,” he says, like it’s a tally to be kept, a record of your misbehaviour. The weight of his other hand stays firm on your lower back, keeping you in place.

The next strike is sharper. You let out a low sound that doesn’t know if it wants to be protest or plea. The sting lingers, heat rolling beneath your skin, seeping lower.

“Three,” he counts again, sliding his palm over your ass in slow, thoughtful strokes, fingers curling just enough to drag the pain into something worse, something better. “For me having to pull the safety rules out of you,” he explains. “Twelve is quite the number, isn’t it?”

You nod against your folded arms, breath heavy.

He clicks his tongue, unimpressed. “Use your words.”

“Yes,” you manage, voice thin, needy.

“Yes, what?” Viktor insists, positively entertained.

“Yes, it’s a big number.”

He chuckles, a sound full of dark satisfaction. “Pity.” His palm lifts, hovers a moment too long before striking down again. “Four. For the cocksucking remark.”

The sharp sting melts into warmth, deep, insistent, and you shift, thighs pressing together. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Ah,” Viktor murmurs, pleased. His fingers skim between your legs, drag through wetness, push inside with slow, measured pressure. He groans, quiet and low, before pulling back. “I see. It seems I’ve miscalculated.”

You whimper at the loss, at the teasing, at the way he’s making you feel exposed, unravelled. “What—what do you mean?”

His palm ghosts over your skin, grip tightening. “We may need more than twelve, after all.”

The fifth lands heavier, the flat of his palm striking where the sting is still fresh. Your hips jerk, a whimper caught in your throat. Pain and pleasure meld together into one, indescribable feeling that swells in your chest.

“Five, for being a smartass in general,” he murmurs, rubbing warmth into the skin, dragging his nails in light, barely-there scratches. “More to go.”

Six—for calling him freaky—has you moaning out. Seven—for teasing him about it—has your moan breaking into a hoarse curse.

Eight, which you don’t even hear what it’s for, tips something over. The burn settles deep, thick and heady, curling into rawness. Your breath comes out uneven, shaky, and you press your face harder against your arms, squeezing your eyes shut. It’s too much—not the pain, not the way he touches you after, not even the arousal pooling between your thighs. It’s the slow erosion of restraint, the creeping sense of surrender, the fact that every strike is carving you open and he’s watching, watching, watching.

Nine lands and you don’t realise you’re crying until a quiet, broken sound escapes.

Viktor pauses. His hands, always moving, smoothing, measuring the way you react, still against your skin. “Colour?”

You swallow, a sob trembling in your chest. “Yellow.”

A breath, sharp. Then he moves, quick and sure, gathering you up from where you lay, pulling you into his lap, into warmth, into the steady, certain press of his body. His hand cradles the back of your head, tucks you in close, fingers threading through your hair.

“Good,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Very good.”

The shift is instant, from teasing discipline to something else, something solid, something safe. His palm rubs slow circles between your shoulder blades, the other smoothing over your thigh, careful and reverent.

“You did so well,” he tells you, voice a murmur against your skin. “I’m here.”

His hands come to cradle your cheeks, thumbs tracing the damp tracks of tears. He watches them soak into his skin, then, as if testing a theory, he lifts one to his mouth, licks the salt from his thumb, slow and indulgent. His gaze darkens. “So pretty like this, hmm?”

“We didn’t get to twelve,” you mumble, voice small, barely there, as if the weight of it matters. As if stopping short means failure.

Viktor exhales, something close to a chuckle, though fond, though aching. He presses his forehead to yours, the heat of him grounding, anchoring. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, softer now, the edge of control giving way to something more tender. “You’ve been a very good girl.”

His hand skims down, over the sore heat of your skin, soothing and possessive. “Would you like a reward now?”

You look up at him, eyes big and wet, and for a moment he looks so in love it’s almost bone crushing. Nearly undoes whatever fragile thing still holds you together. But you tell yourself it’s just your subspaced brain, that it’s the haze of it, that it’s the moment—because anything else would be too much.

Unsure, you give a slow nod, almost dazed, and Viktor hums in approval, guiding you to lie back against the couch. His hands are steady and sure—one at the back of your neck, the other skimming down your stomach, pressing, positioning. Your shorts are still bunched around your thighs, and he takes his time peeling them away, dragging the fabric down, down, as if unwrapping something sacred.

His breath skates over your skin as he settles, hands bracketing your hips, thumbs pressing gently into the dip there. He takes a moment—just looks, just lets his hands trace over what he’s made of you. The warmth, the slight tremble, the slick evidence of your keen.

Then, with a patience that feels like both a mercy and a torment, he presses a kiss just above your knee. Then another, higher, the rough scratch of his stubble making you twitch. His mouth moves slow, open-mouthed, trailing along the sensitive skin of your inner thigh, heating every nerve until you’re shifting beneath him, restless.

“So needy,” he murmurs against you, voice like low smoke, thick with satisfaction. He noses into you, inhaling deep, greedy. “Messy girl.”

And then, finally, he licks into you.

It’s devastating—the first stroke of his tongue, firm and languid, tasting. He works you over like he’s memorising, like he’s deciphering something only he is meant to understand. His grip tightens, holding you in place, keeping you from squirming away from the overwhelming contrast of the ache of your ass pressed into the couch and pleasure that his mouth brings.

His tongue is so precise, lapping up every drop. He sucks at your clit, just enough to make you cry out, then soothes it with broad, slow strokes. And Viktor enjoys it so, so much—pausing just to watch you react, the way you arch into him, the way your hands, unsure, try to twist into his locks and tug, only to shy away and barely skim across his temples.

You feel raw, open, experimented on, but the success of it entails your pleasure and this only. Heat begins to crawl up your spine, and you moan out loud, neck seizing and fingers emboldened, when you finally choose to hold onto his hair. Like a praise, he hums deep into you, and the vibration alone nearly sends you over. His hands tighten on your hips, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh, holding you steady as he eats you with slow, devastating precision.

Cunt sealed over with his mouth, you rock your pelvis to meet him and Viktor chuckles into you. His tongue works you over like he’s trying to dig out an answer to a question deep down he already knows, but he wants to hear it from you. Nearly sucking the soul out of you, Viktor is almost in heaven. Knees bent where the couch restricts him, ankles bumping against each other, he lays squeezed against you and the armrest, hips pressing down, trying to find at least a little friction against his aching cock.

You whimper his name, barely coherent, tugging harder at his hair. He groans into you, deep and pleased, and it carries all the way to the tips of your toes. His hands flex on your hips, adjusting his grip, and then he tilts his head, lips sealing over your clit in a way that leaves you shaking, clenching down on nothing.

It crests fast, this pull from the base of your spine to your throat, strong and imminent, stealing your breath as you cum hard, hugging his ears with your thighs. You don’t even realise you’re sobbing out his name, not until he presses his tongue against you again, lapping up the aftermath, and your whole body jerks.

“Too much,” you gasp, hands trying weakly to push him away.

“Mm,” Viktor hums, but doesn’t listen. He presses one last, slow kiss to your overstimulated nerves with the damndest smirk on his slick-covered lips. Then he pulls back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes half-lidded, pupils blown wide.

Before you can fully catch your breath, he’s crawling up, pressing you back into the cushions, body warm and heavy over yours. His mouth finds yours, tasting like salt and heat and something uniquely you, and the way he kisses you—messy, deep, like he needs you to understand—has you whimpering against his lips.

“It’s a crime that I only get to do this now,” he says, wrapping his arms around your waist, trapping you in. “You are so sweet.”

“Viktor,” you chuckle, overwhelmed. “How are you so good at this?”

“Which would make you more comfortable?” he asks, voice thoughtful. “That I had a lot of practice, or that it’s easy with you?”

You blink at that and realise—none of the above. The first one digs a pit of dead cold jealousy low in your stomach. The second triggers a reaction tethering between flight and freeze. Seeing no response coming and a slight discomfort settling in, Viktor asks, “Are you alright? What do you need?”

“I’m fine,” you give him a smile, locking your jaw in it. “My ass hurts, though.”

“Show me,” Viktor says between soft pecks left all over your face. When he sees you wincing, he clarifies, “I wasn’t asking.”

With a groan and an eye roll (which triggers the brat point meter back to action), you turn onto your stomach, and Viktor sits back on his heels to admire the painting he’s left on your ass. “I can’t really decide what’s prettier—this or your neck,” he muses, rubbing his palms over the bruised skin. You hiss at the contact but arch into it anyway.

Then, he lowers back onto his belly and rests his cheek on one of yours, red and swollen. His lips press soft kisses into the heat of your body, tongue flicking out to soothe where his hand had been heavy. "Can I ask—what’s your opposition to safe words?" he murmurs into you, voice slow, thick, like liquid band air poured onto a wound.

“Oh, nothing really,” you say, shifting against the couch, arms hooked over the armrest, head turned to glance at him. “I just come up with criminally bad ones, and they get so, so bad I can’t bring myself to actually use them when I need them.”

Viktor hums, a quiet vibration against your you. “And the colour system works better?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you use it?” He presses another kiss, open-mouthed, dragging heat along your bruised flesh.

“What do you mean?”

“I use it. I ask you, and you reply. But you do not say it first,” he says, lips curving against you. “We got to yellow today—would you ask me to stop if I didn’t check on you?”

A lump grows in your throat, dry and insistent, a pang of confused shame follows. “I… I don’t know.”

He exhales a gush of warm air as his hands smooth along the back of your thighs. “Do you promise to pay more attention, or do I have to fuck your throat again now?”

You tense—just for a moment—then breathe out a small, half-laugh. “I promise.” A pause. “Though I thought we’d agreed that I’m not opposed to throat fucking.”

“And I thought we’d agreed that I want you to love it, not be merely not opposed,” he counters, nipping the swell of your ass, tongue following after before you can complain.

“This is my way of saying I… love it,” you admit, voice quieter. “I like everything you do so far.”

He sighs through his nose, lips still against you. “I’m glad.” Another kiss. “And likewise.”

Your fingers twitch against the couch, mind circling back. “Why are you being so careful?”

A beat. Then, his nose lifts your shirt, mouth drags to the dip of your lower back, his breath ghosting the words over your skin. “Hmm. I wouldn’t say that’s being careful.” His palms press down, grounding and reverent. “I just want you to understand that I’m not the one making decisions here. At least not the only one.”

His voice sinks lower, words soft at the edges. “It’s not about how far I will go,” he continues. “It’s about how much you are willing to give me.”

You swallow your breath, fingers digging into the fabric beneath you. “Viktor,” you say, and he hums, lifting his head slightly. “How experienced exactly are you?”

His lips curl into a smirk where they rest against you. “Quite.” His fingers trace slow, absentminded patterns against your hip. “But less than you think.” A kiss, softer now. “I am also quite well-read on the matter.”

"I see," you murmur, skin still alight beneath his mouth, warmth pooling where his lips had been.

Before you can say anything more, your phone buzzes—wedged somewhere between the couch cushions. You groan as you fish it out, flipping it over to see the name flashing across the screen. Mel. A rather unwanted lifeline thrown into the ocean named Viktor, in which you have snugly sunken.

The very reason for your lack of breath is staring at you intently, chin propped against the swell of your butt, his fingers idly tracing the curve of your hip. As if he can read the concern from the back of your head, he asks, "Is something the matter?"

"No," you sigh, thumb hovering over the notification. "It's just Mel. She wants to hang and talk about the play change."

"Ah." He shifts, stretching his arms across your back, like he might keep you pinned if you so much as thought about leaving. "Jayce texted me too."

You glance over your shoulder, raising an eyebrow. "What did you say?"

"That I'm busy."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that," he confirms, expression utterly unmoved.

You huff, rolling onto your side, phone still clutched in your palm. "What do you want me to say?"

He shrugs, casual, infuriating. "To Mel? Anything you want," he says, fully lying to himself. He’d rather throw the wretched phone out of the window now than have you leave, but he promised.

You scoff. "Viktor!"

"What?" His fingers trail up your thigh, dancing light, teasing. "I told you already—as much as you are willing to give, no more."

Your lips press together, frustration curling in your chest. "That's… not fair."

He smirks, dipping his head to nip at your side, the whisper of teeth making you shiver. "Brat," he murmurs, all smug and satisfied. “What play are you changing to? And which?”

“Oh, right,” you say, catching up with the events from your actual life. “We are doing Baal instead of Hamlet.”

“How interesting,” he muses, dragging a slow hand down your ribs, feeling the way your skin jumps under his touch. “Any particular inspiration for it?”

You give him a look, narrowing your eyes. “Are you trying to insult me, or do you enjoy teasing me?”

“Never insult you,” he says, shifting closer, nuzzling into your cheek, his breath warm against your skin. A slow kiss pressed to your temple, soft and lingering. “Always enjoy teasing you, though.” Another kiss, this time at the corner of your mouth, deliberate in its restraint. “And I’m flattered to be a source of your inspiration.” His lips trail lower, catching yours at last, but lightly, like he’s waiting for you to chase him.

Forgetting yourself for a moment, you toss your phone to the couch and twist your fingers into his hair. Lips parted by breath, you kiss him, humming and licking into his mouth. And Viktor responds, pulling you flush and pressing his nose next to yours, melding your faces together.

Finally, with a deep sigh, you settle on moving Mel to next weekend, your excuse as weak as work—put in brackets on the return text message. Guilt settles in immediately, thick and cloying, for lying to a friend. Viktor also sighs, tries to disguise it as a yawn, but you notice.

The day is slow, one of the slowest you've had in the longest time. Breakfast at 1 p.m. A shower later, separate, functional—none of the couple-like washing each other’s backs. It both calms you and unsettles some part of you, standing alone under the stream of hot water, which you later exchange for ice-cold poured over your ass cheeks.

Then, Viktor—wandering around his apartment in just a jumper and boxer shorts, his hair wet, framing his face prettily, barefoot, limping toward bookshelves when he tires of whatever he’s reading. Brief conversations about Baal, more teasing. Some serious, when he finally shares the notes he’s scribbled in the margins.

“Here, it says: The line between submission and subjugation,” he tells you, pointing his long finger at his handwriting. “It’s just something to meditate upon,” he explains, and you just listen, expression serious, free of judgment.

“Here: To be needed is a burden. To be worshipped is a curse. I was in a dark place when I wrote this,” he chuckles, shaking his head.

“Have you?” you ask. “Been needed and worshipped?”

“Not in the way you think, again,” he replies, placing a hand on your cheek. And somehow, even though it’s Viktor baring his soul to you, all he still cares about is you being comfortable. You not getting scared away. And you feel another lump of guilt forming somewhere in your stomach.

“Here, some more. You can use some of this if you want,” he adds with a smile. “He who demands all is left with nothing,” he translates. “And To consume and to care—mutually exclusive, or merely difficult?—and that’s just me theorizing again.” He waves his hand dismissively and flicks through, searching for more. Finally:

“Pleasure without control is a slow kind of death.”

It lances through you, a thought, unbidden—were Viktor ever to love you, it would be a crushing kind of love. One that you couldn’t possibly deserve. One that never gets complacent, always watches, always pays attention. All of this grants you such a large piece of him, you feel inclined to give him something back.

And it’s all incredibly silly, because you’ve known a man for barely a week and feel like you’ve known him for a lifetime.

You nuzzle into him, the book still in his lap, and breathe into his neck, “Thank you.” Viktor places a hand on your bare leg, fingers skimming beneath the hem of your shorts. He puts the book aside and lifts his thighs so you can snug your feet underneath, cocooned in warmth.

“Is that your handbook on how not to do things?” you ask finally.

“Something like that,” he chuckles. “But I also do love this play.”

“Would you come to the premiere?”

“I would love to.”

A long moment passes between you, long enough for the sun to stretch golden arms through his windows, for the dust to dance in its light. You sigh, reluctant. “I should get back. Still some stuff to do.”

“Of course,” Viktor says, patting your hip, but his fingers linger, just for a second, before pulling away.

When you are all set—changed, packed, bag slung over your shoulder, second pair of shoes in hand—you wait in the corridor, shuffling on your feet, caught in the awkward gravity of goodbye. Viktor takes your hand in his, holding it between both of his palms, staring at it like it holds some unspoken answer. He plays with your fingers, brushing a thumb over your knuckles, tracing the ridges of your joints like a map he doesn’t want to forget.

“Do you have to go?” he asks, quiet, like the words might scare you off. Against everything said today, he tries. Where his mind tells him to wait, his heart reaches too fast, too soon—but the thought of letting go of your hand now is harrowing.

“I should,” you murmur, eyes fixed on his fingers threading through yours, unable to shake the thought of how well they fit together.

“When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know. But soon?” You hesitate. “I have, um… work,” you say weakly, unbelieving your own reasoning.

He steps closer, tilting his head, studying you. “Stay,” he says, low and quiet, his voice threading through the space between you like a plea and a command all at once. “Please. I really, really want to fuck you,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to yours.

Your breath shudders in your throat.

“I’ll wake you. I’ll make you coffee and drive you to work,” he murmurs, nuzzling into your cheek, breathing you in, the barest brush of lips against your jaw. “Just stay and be a good girl for me.”

Your bag slips down your shoulder, forgotten. Shoes tumble from your hand, hitting the floor with dull thuds.

“Oh, God,” you breathe, already dizzy.

“Please,” he murmurs against your skin. His mouth finds your neck, kisses pressing between words, melting the last of your resistance.

“Ah—” Your hands fist into his jumper, grip faltering. “Fuck me,” you exhale, light-headed. “Fuck me,” you whisper into his lips.

And then his mouth is on yours, and he’s walking you back toward the wall, hands sure, touch convincing—but not much convincing had to be done.

By the time you reach the bedroom, you’re both half undressed, clothes marking a scattered trail from the hallway. Viktor’s hands are on your ribs, your hips, burning their way over your skin, rolling his beloved skirt up so he can touch your still-warm ass again.

Moth to flame, you follow him onto the bed, across his lap, and it’s not long before he sits against the backrest, you sink onto his cock until he’s buried deep inside you, guiding your hips over his. Your arms wrap around his neck, tight and needy, mouth to mouth when you breathe out moans for him to breathe in.

The rhythm of it is slow, deep. He moves you like he’s known your body longer than you have, hands spanning your ribs, your waist, guiding you in the way that makes you feel worshipped without being consumed. It’s easy to obey him, to let him set the pace, to fall into the shape of what he wants—because what he wants is you, not just your body, but the trembling, aching need of you, the part that melts and yields beneath his touch.

Viktor’s control frays by degrees, need eroding it like wind over rock. He bows his head to the slope of your shoulder, breath hot, arms tightening around you as if he could press you deeper into himself. His hands flex, grasping, clutching, like he’s trying to commit the feeling of you to memory—soft where he is sharp, pliant where he is rigid, and together something better, something whole.

After, when breath evens and sweat cools, you remain folded together, the fit of you easy, natural, as if shaped by the same hands. Viktor presses a final kiss to your temple, sighs against your skin, and lets his grip loosen—but not fully. He never fully lets go. Sleep comes like fog rolling in, weightless, inevitable, and you let it take you, safe in the quiet shelter of him.

#my writing #viktor arcane #viktor fanfic #viktor x reader #viktor x reader smut #viktor smut #viktor x f!reader #viktor x oc #arcane #arcane fanfic #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #viktor nation #to be known

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corseque · 3 months ago

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I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

#DA4 critical #Dragon Age #FF14 #meandering and I don't know what I'm talking about here idk #it's hard to be more clear without getting out very specific examples and I'm not ready to do that yet - I would need to map out the plots #like there are direct 1-to-1 comparisons and for a couple of them Dragon Age is more interesting (mostly stuff in Trespasser) but #like most of them... most of them are better or more successful or more impactful in FFXIV #I think the thing that kills me most is Emet-Selch comes out of FF14 looking capable and wise and thoughtful and Solas does not and #that actually kills me inside... solas is literally a spirit of wisdom #I might need to make that video to explain #anyway FFXIV proves that I CAN be very happy and satisfied with a story even after waiting more than a year and hard speculating about it #so the problem is not my raised expectations - the problem is the lack of complexity

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skythealmighty · 8 months ago

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gang ngl i miss object universe. i should rewatch it again and get way too emotionally attached to Ice Cream and Map

#rocket talk #i made fanart of them with a steven universe song once i'm unwell

(1 note)

🪟 im-not-electric Follow

why does gamey get to be on ii TWICE. who gave him permission

🪟 im-not-electric Follow

thanks for the suggestion @cabtube-truther

📟 knockoff-gameboy Follow

You don't hear PBSB complaining about this...

🪟 im-not-electric Follow

well they're in a show that's super popular

📟 knockoff-gameboy Follow

Yeah, and you're in one that got cancelled

🪟 im-not-electric Follow

shut up you didnt even finish season one

#just one more cameo mephone4 thats all i ask

(316 notes)

anonymous asked: not sure you're gonna want a cameo rn mephone is going Through it

🪟 im-not-electric Follow

hold on im not actually caught up lemme see

🪟 im-not-electric Follow

holy shit

#I TAKE IT BACK

(58 notes)

anonymous asked: omg fan pleaaaase marru me ill do anythinggg ❤❤❤🥵🥵🥵

💥 fans-fantastic-features Follow

hey @test-tubular just checking was i ever this weird

🧪 test-tubular Follow

Weird? Always. This weird? No.

💥 fans-fantastic-features Follow

COOL just checking anyway

no please stop sending me these

#fans fantastic asks #this is the least weird anon ask from i think this specific anon #ive blocked them but oh my god #NO!!!

(83 notes)

💥🔃 fans-fantastic-features Follow reblogged 4️⃣ four-therecord

2️⃣ hey-two Follow

Hello everyone!! 👋 Since I've gotten many an ask about my cheesecake recipe from previous TPOT episodes, I've decided to make a longpost and put it here for you all to use!! Feel free to use without credit but credit is still appreciated 😊

Keep reading

4️⃣ four-therecord Follow

i hate you

#so they ARE on here #followed both immediately #how did i not come across them earlier...

(2,613 notes)

💊 the-cringe-one Follow

Recovery across different universes, a scientific theory

(Full post below the cut)

((Thank you to @not-tally-hall for the testimony regarding the S*n!))

Keep reading

😎 the-chad-one Follow

boring 👎👎👎👎

💊 the-cringe-one Follow

Get off my post

⛳ bossy-bot Follow

This is incredibly fascinating and an enjoyable read! There are some points of debate I've brought up in DMs, but otherwise this is a very solid theory. Good job!

💊 the-cringe-one Follow

Thank you, that means a lot!!

#I follow your papers closely so hearing that coming from you is an honor #anyway back to my regularly scheduled nonsense

(13 notes)

🟧 julian-waiting Follow

Bonjour! J'ai découvert ce cite grâce à des vidéos amusantes

Je suis encore en train de m'habiteur à la société et je pense que c'est une bonne façon de me faire des amis! Enchanté de vous recontrer tous 😃

🥖 shut-up-about-boto Follow

bienvenue sur le site de l'enfer ! la plupart des gens ici ne parlent qu'anglais, vous pouvez donc m'envoyer un message si vous voulez parler à quelqu'un en français. je peux également vous montrer des endroits en ligne pour apprendre l'anglais

🟧 julian-waiting Follow

Cela signifierait beaucoup pour moi, merci

🥖 shut-up-about-boto Follow

bien sûr!

🍐 betterthanpearaib Follow

Baguette we all know you're not actually French you don't need to keep pretending 😒...

🥖 shut-up-about-boto Follow

(172 notes)

anonymous asked: your iconic quote from episode 10 has unfortunately become a vocal stim for me. please help, i'm suffering

🍿 stevecobseviltwin Follow

Hey? This is the funniest ask anyone's ever sent me. Can we make out behind a Denny's

#my condolences though oh my god 😭

(4 notes)

⚾️ take-me-out-to-theballgame Follow

Guys, this site is easy! Just watch

⚾️ take-me-out-to-theballgame Follow

Based ball? Based on what?

⚾️ take-me-out-to-theballgame Follow

#hey. are you doing okay

(42,526 notes)

🍐 betterthanpearaib Follow

Finally watched II! Good show. I want that twink OJ dead why is he like that

☝ i-date-iconic-posts Follow

Date of origin: November 2nd, 2020

🍐 betterthanpearaib Follow

I DIDNT MEAN IT I DIDNT MEAN IT I DIDNT MEAN JT I DIDNT

#😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

(26,942 notes)

🎒 liam-plecak Follow

Thanks everyone for the help so far! I'm not too much of a science nerd, unfortunately, @bossy-bot, so I didn't understand everything in the papers you sent me- but they still helped a ton! Especially the coding help. I was a telemarketer, not an IT person...

Now that I know what I'm doing, I have some free time. With some recommendations from @fans-fantastic-features:

If you have any other recommendations, just leave them in the comments. And please go and send help to @fire-cartoon-schtick while you're at it!

#i crowdsourced julian's french to leafyztar but baguette's is just from translate. hopefully google doesnt botch it too bad for yall #unreality #fake dashboard #object universe #object overload #inanimate insanity #bfdi #the daily object show #hfjone #onehfj #brawl of the objects #showvember #rocket talk #roc save #osc #object shows #osc community #object show community

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vettelsvee · 7 months ago

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GOODBYES ARE BITTERSWEET | Sebastian Vettel ✩₊˚.⋆PART 6: LITTLE WHITE LIES [PREVIOUS PART] [NEXT PART]

goodbyes are bittersweet masterlist | a not so secret santa project ‼️ f1 masterlist | ao3 | ask anything or let's talk!

ferrari sebastian vettel x ex gf!female reader (smau)

summary: seb just wants y/n to accept that contract, and he's going to do everything he can to make it happen. also... the sebastian vettel fandom goes wild when her ex girlfriend does her comeback

warnings: curse words, bad language. mentions of cheating. faceclaim: emma stone, hanna prater

taglist: [ @saltycomicsanimalssalad @hc-dutch @mycenterfold @simplyamberj @spitesfvl-blog @jaydaaasworld @lottalove4evelyn @zoeyjadetice2010 @jehun @ferralari @cosmoscoffeee @mcmuppet @myescapefromthislife @sleutherclaw @youre-on-your-ownkid ]

a/n: surprise, i posted again! and first smau! I've been wanting to do one of this for a long time, so i hope you like it (please tell me)! feedback (please let me now what you thought of this!) and reposts are truly appreciated. and also comment me your thoughts and theories on the story pls!

MAY 25TH 2018

JUNE 1ST 2018

ynyln just posted

ynyln moving on from him is impossible when i still see it all in my head in burning red... see you on june 15th x (more news coming soon... in july <3)

user1 omg are we having red mv? this is ALL red coded

user 2 THERE'S NO WAY SHE DID THIS ↳ user3 wait what is this about? ↳ user 2 user3 take a closer look to the pictures 😁 ↳ user4 i'm not getting it... someone explain it?

lewishamilton it's good to see you finally achieving your dreams! ❤️🙏🏿 ↳ ynyln can't wait to see you soon lew! missed you lots x

user6 she's absolutely insane for posting this pictures... i gotta love her ↳ user7 why is it with the pictures she chose to post? aren't they related to what her song says? ↳ user6 take a look at the twitter thread sebsrrari just posted!

user8 EXCUSE ME MISS YLN? WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH THAT "SEE YOU SOON"? ↳ ynyln maybe redbullracing can give you a hint... ☺️ ↳ redbullracing ynyln, do you really want us to post certain something we have already saved? ↳ ynyln redbullracing you know i do! i don't know what are you waiting for?

user9 wait wasn't she dating sebastian vettel back in the day? it seems like she's recalling her years with him ↳ user10 i'm 110% sure that the quote goes to seb ↳ user11 and the fact that lewis has left a comment... they know i'm sure

user12 if this post has anything to do with seb... the og wag fandom is going to rise from the ashes and go WILD.

redbullracing just posted

redbullracing We are so delighted to announce that from now on we will officially become the main sponsor of our former golden girl, ynyln, who just started her career as a singer. Also... she will be joining us for the 2018 German Grand Prix next July! More details coming soon.

user1 THEY POSTED SEB AND Y/N OH MY GOD ↳ user2 is this some kind of throwback? weren't they dating a while back? 😯

user3 ok but the fact that they posted that picture makes me think maybe seb and y/n never really lost touch... could this be the start of something more than just sponsorship? ↳ user4 exactly thought this! there's definitely something more going on

user5 seb and y/n together again in 2018 does this mean they're dating again or is it just for promo? ↳ user6 probably promo... ↳ user7 or maybe they know something we don't... ↳ user8 really why posting a picture of them together when they broke up a while ago? ↳ user9 user8 WAIT THEY WERE DATING? ↳ user8 user9 yes! twitter is now full of their story, it's quite a romantic one but also bittersweet... it didn't end well according to most of people

user10 of course seb's the reason y/n's getting back in the spotlight ↳ user11 seb and y/n have way too much chemistry for you to say that ↳ user12 exactly! seeing her again after going viral without us knowing, and her being with seb again, is making me think there’s more to this story!

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sloanesallow · 5 months ago

Text

Sebastian Sallow Headcanons

So I've seen some of my moots do one of these and decided it was my turn, even if nobody asked. 🤣

These are all ideas that are present in stories I’ve already published, or ones that are forthcoming in Void. A lot of this is word-vomit LOL. I’ve credited anyone that I’ve been inspired by, but otherwise, similar head-canons to other creators are coincidental.

Disclaimer: My opinions are mine. They might also be yours! They might also be somebody else’s. Or not. That’s the fun thing about fandom. We can all have our own thoughts! Disagree? Cool! Just don’t be mean about it. :)

Sebastian is left-handed.

Actually, ambidextrous. So while it’s probably an error in-game, if you take Sebastian with you to Hogsmeade, in the Three-Broomsticks he stands up to defend you with his wand in his left hand. I’ve just decided to run with it and think his left is more dominant than his right, but he can use both.

Sebastian is on the spectrum.

Because I am on the spectrum, it’s hard not to write this nerdy little boy as somebody who obsesses over data and information. Sebastian is a numbers guy. Counts stuff in his head; keeps lists. Obsessive about his note-taking and will throw away a page if he thinks his penmanship isn’t perfect enough. I put in a previous post that he’d be the type to stare at a jar of jelly beans and know how many are inside with one glance.

Sebastian is very intelligent but oh so stupid (affectionately)

For some reason, the only comparison I can think of right now is a weird combination of Abed and Troy from Community. You know the friend that seems to always be in weird, preventable situations and says the most out-of-pocket things but will turn around and quote Shakespeare. He probably is the smartest person in the room but isn’t humble about it. Sebastian is book-smart and thinks he’s street-smart (insert John Mullaney here) but his life experience is actually quite limited. Yes, his parents died (and he may have witnessed it to some degree), but I do think he might have been sheltered in some capacity. Which brings me to my next point:

Sebastian’s feelings are intense, and sometimes misguided

Sebastian would benefit from therapy, no joke. He likely wasn’t given the space to process his parent’s death, so it’s no wonder he SPIRALS when Anne gets sick. His desperation comes from a place of fear, but his inability to cope leads to some very unfortunate circumstances. And yes, Sebastian can be deceptive and manipulative, but I don’t think he acts this way on purpose, but because he doesn’t know any better. He acts first, thinks later, and this can lead to tension in his friendships (MC/Ominis). It’s also why so many authors write him as somewhat possessive when pairing him romantically with MC (or anyone, really). I tend to write him as being disinterested in romance (too busy) until it smacks him in the face and he chases that high obsessively. However, I think it takes a long time for Sebastian to recognize what real, healthy love is.

Sebastian would never be an Auror

I’ll die on this hill. Sebastian would probably not ever want to work for the Ministry, and distrusts authority, even as he ages and matures. Regardless if you think he acted in self-defense or not, he still killed his uncle with an unforgivable. That’s scary. And dangerous. A kid knowing and practicing Dark Magic? Even if he never does it again, he wouldn’t risk his life by flaunting himself in front of the Ministry. Also, Solomon was an Auror. Now, I’ll admit I have him working with the Ministry in some capacity in my fics (curse breaker), but for the most part, he is a free agent and does what he wants (in true Sebastian fashion).

Pocket cookies

Always has some kind of snack in his pockets for emergencies. I’ve had this come up several times now in my fics (see below) and it’s a running joke. I just love the idea of him pulling out a cookie to offer somebody in their time of need.

Other little things:

Triple Scorpio??? I did this on accident when making a birthday (November 8 1873) for him and CoStar said based on my made-up birth chart he was Scorpio Sun/Moon/Ascending which according to my astrology babes, is uhhhhh insane.

Allergic to lavender???? Don’t ask.

He's just a silly, goofy guy, okay?

#hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow #sebastian sallow headcanons

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undying-love · 10 months ago

Note

Give me a fact or some facts that make me believe in McLennan completely!

The only way it would be confirmed 100% is if Paul decides to speak about it (which is very unlikely). But there is a lot of interesting things that, when added up, make a compelling case.

Check out some of my previous posts:

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/747116547607314432?source=share (John seemingly hinting at it)

https://www.tumblr.com/i-am-the-oyster/745421073667031040?source=share (this post was made by @i-am-the-oyster. It's extremely compelling)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/745845642958700544/is-arrow-through-me-about-john?source=share (Arrow Through Me is very likely about John)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/744309254463324160/why-pauls-song-fuh-you-might-be-about-john?source=share (why Paul's song "Fuh You" is highly likely to be about John)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/763072273237393408/they-always-make-it-sound-like-johns-ex-was-paul?source=share (why do they always talk like Paul was John's ex and not Cynthia?)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/743060695141203968/quotes-to-think-about?source=share (analysis of some quotes)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/745385646421606400/paul-being-very-secure-about-his-sexuality-andor?source=share (someone who is an "immovable heterosexual" doesn't talk like this, imo)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/740604882160091136/in-these-four-months-pauls-attatchment-to-john?source=share (very interesting comments made by Francie)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/741853393262346240/bizarre-poem-written-by-paul?source=share (weird poem which may be about him and John)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/740518716575563776/what-does-pattie-know?source=share ("What does Pattie know?")

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/746737159003832320/everything-that-paul-and-johns-girlfriendswives?source=share (comments made by almost all of their wives/girlfriends)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/745712172768919552/paul-turned-to-linda-and-one-or-two-friends-and?source=share (do you think this might be normal platonic friends behavior?)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/744843356938682368/mpls-pauls-london-office-interior-style-is (Paul collecting John-related things)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/745773134413791232/paul-being-normal-over-john-a-compilation?source=share (Paul's comments about John)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/742882446559838208/beatles-book-authors-saying-totally-normal-things?source=share (even their biographers noticed it)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/748696306813386752/love-goes-both-ways?source=share (the way the look at each other)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/743961690413105152/beatles-insiders-comparing-john-and-pauls?source=share (every time insiders compared their relationship to a marriage)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/756850117398659072/some-lyrics-they-wrote-about-each-other?source=share (very revealing song lyrics)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/755299637557067776/paul-describing-john-a-compilation?source=share (Paul describing John's looks)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/759175217991057408/john-and-paul-being-normal-about-each-other-a?source=share (John and Paul revealing comments about each other)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/760524606194974720/i-would-like-too-see-a-compilation-of-all-the?source=share (them being jealous of each others girlfriends, wives and friends)

https://www.tumblr.com/undying-love/760724033259061248/pauls-grief-over-time-a-compilation?source=share (Paul still not being over John's death)

#mclennon #links megapost

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weaselandfriends · 6 months ago

Text

The Making Of: When I Win the World Ends

(For my previous Making Of post, see The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic.)

I. 1999

It was the year of the cubicle movie. It was the year of Fight Club, of Office Space, of Being John Malkovich, of Three Kings, of The Matrix, and of American Beauty. It was the year of suburban malaise, of eternal sunshine, of ceaseless normality. A year of United States hegemony; a year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.

Before the millennium turned and the towers fell, there was an initial challenge to this order, a completely inconsequential one made consequential by a newly minted 24/7 news media machine running out of noise to fill dead air now that people were sick to bursting of the Clinton impeachment. This challenge came not through war, revolution, or violence, but through entertainment. Children's entertainment.

And I was a child. Unaware of any cultural context, I knew only one thing: I loved Pokémon. I really, really loved Pokémon.

I owned Red Version, Blue Version, Yellow Version, Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, Hey You Pikachu, a Pokémon Tetris sort of puzzle game, even the Pokémon TCG game for Gameboy. I had ten to fifteen strategy guides for the games, an encyclopedia of the 151 Pokémon, a choose your own adventure book, an I Spy-style book. I had Pokémon figurines, Pokémon plushies, toy Poké Balls, toy Pokédexes. I had Pokémon stamps and Pokémon stickers and a deck of Pokémon cards. Not trading cards, just a standard 52-card deck with Pokémon pictures on it. Of course I also had the trading cards. A complete set of the first three runs, plus a special Mew card you could get from I dunno Toys R Us or something as part of some promotion. I had a guide for the card game that explained which cards were good or bad even though I didn't even play the card game. I had a Pokémon Tamagotchi and Pokémon pencils and Pokémon erasers and Ash Ketchum's hat and I dressed up as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Of course I watched every episode of the anime, and in notebooks I drew doodles of existing Pokémon and came up with names for new Pokémon. My father had died that year.

My father was a sports fanatic. Traditional sports. He, too, collected. Sports memorabilia, baseball cards, figures of famous stars. When I was an infant, he drove me on a cross country road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I became a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. He had always wanted me to grow up and pursue professional sports. When I was born, the doctor apparently said to start looking for football colleges, a quote he saved in a scrapbook of baby photos. He had played sports himself, in college; he was a baseball catcher, until a hitter accidentally struck him in the head with a full force swing.

Almost everything I personally remember about him involves him dying. He was sick for a long time, and I remember hospitals and hospital beds and strange smells and gauze. And then one day my mother told me he died.

He was a charismatic man, very social and very popular. He had many friends and a lot of family, all of whom had constantly been around our house. Once he was gone, they stopped coming around. Then it was just me and my mother, who was not a fanatic for anything, except maybe her job as an elementary school teacher, which consumed her time as she assiduously prepared lesson plans and graded tests until late at night. When my father died, she got into some argument with his side of the family, the details of which I still don't fully understand, and afterward they no longer spoke. Her own family lived far away, out-of-state, seen only at Christmas. The house became quiet.

And I… played… Pokémon.

II. The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Toshihiro Ono was a mangaka primarily known for shotacon and futanari hentai. His credits such as Innyou Megami and Anal Justice made him a no-brainer pick for the officially licensed Pokémon manga, Electric Tale of Pikachu, as it too would feature a 10-year-old boy as the protagonist.

This manga would be the foundation for my conception of what Pokémon was, narratively. Though I also had the Pokémon Adventures manga that ran concurrently and which has by now long outlasted it, Electric Tale left a significantly deeper imprint on my memory.

In summary, Electric Tale is a retelling of the first two seasons of the anime. Ash Ketchum is the main character, he's accompanied by Misty and later Brock, his rival is Gary, and Team Rocket harangues him.

What sets Electric Tale apart is its tone, which is far more adult than Adventures and the anime. Obviously, part of this comes from the author's primary area of expertise being hentai. Even in the censored English version, there is a sense of sexual playfulness in how every single female character is an older woman who likes to tease Ash about his romantic interests.

But there are other elements that creep in unrelated to sex, due to the perspective of someone only used to speaking to adults who suddenly has to speak to children. Ono doesn't really get the childish fantasy of leaving at 10 being normal in society, so he introduces an element where Ash can only get a one year deferment from school and will have to return unless he hits it big. Team Rocket are former competitive hopefuls who flamed out and then, with no education or work experience to speak of, had no choice but to turn to crime. The Pokémon are depicted more realistically, often eschewing the toyetic mascot elements of their designs.

And the landscapes are often wistful, even apocalyptic in their presentation:

This more sedate, mature, realistic depiction of Pokémon became what I wanted Pokémon to be, what I projected onto an original Red and Blue version that left everything open to interpretation, and what would increasingly frustrate me with the series as it deviated more toward bombastic villain groups with goofy destroy-the-world plots. (Which was what put me off Pokémon Adventures.)

Amid all this, one panel stuck with me in particular. One panel I would think about ever since I first saw it as a child, that would turn around in my head and keep coming back. That panel would eventually—over two decades later—become the basis for When I Win the World Ends, the seed from which an entire story grew:

III. The Unkillable Demon King

But in the interim, the seed remained dormant. 1999 fell away. I grew up. I played later Pokémon games and increasingly lost interest by around Gen 4 and 5. Then I went to college.

That's when I started playing League of Legends.

I was something of a psychopath in college. I operated on a strict schedule and did not deviate. Wake up, read 50 pages of classic literature, write 2,000 words, go to classes, study, and then by about four in the afternoon all my obligations were done and it was League of Legends until midnight.

I wasn't actually interested in the League of Legends esports scene in its infancy. In 2012, I was actually invited to attend its World Championship in Los Angeles and refused. (When I received this invitation, I had just finished reading Homestuck for the first time, and was caught in a month-long haze in which I could do little but bask within what I considered the greatest artistic achievement I'd seen in my life. It was this month that inspired Modern Cannibals.) I only liked playing the game and watching Dunkey videos.

It wasn't until the next year, when a girl I was interested in recommended I watch, that I tuned in to my first professional League of Legends game, at the 2013 World Championship. It was there that I got to watch this new, hyped, upcoming Korean player who had apparently taken the pro scene by storm that season. That player was Faker.

It has seemingly become essential to the narrative of any sport that there is "the man who always wins." American football has Tom Brady, and the moment Brady retired, he was replaced by Patrick Mahomes. Basketball has LeBron James, picking up the mantle from Michael Jordan. It's as if someone being "the best" validates the skill-based promise of the sport, the fundamental top-down fairness of its premise, the idea that the person who wins is the best and deserved it. Faker would become the backbone of League of Legends esports and his ascendance correlated to that of the sport itself, from its humble roots at small-scale tournaments in places like Jönköping, Sweden, to max capacity arenas in the biggest cities in the world.

It's surprising, though, how the legend of Faker had already begun even before he won his first World Championship. League of Legends was designed as a clone of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a popular mod for Warcraft III that emphasized competitive play. In its infancy, the competitive scene was mostly dominated by players who had migrated from DotA to League. They were older, winning thanks to a fundamental conceptual understanding of the game that was superior to everyone else, and frankly not very good in the aggregate. As League of Legends esports exploded in popularity from 2013 to 2015, these old pros would get filtered out swiftly, with even the biggest and most popular names retiring after only a couple of years in the scene.

Even once the new generation of League-grown talent ascended, though, careers were nasty, brutish, and short. The best players only remained on top for a season, as game patches dramatically changed viable strategies. Internationally the sport was dominated by Koreans, with the Korean regional league sometimes being seen as more difficult to win than the World Championship, where Koreans often breezed through uncompetitive Chinese, European, and North American squads.

This possibly affected the demographics of the professional scene. South Korea has mandatory military service, and leaving the pro scene to join the military was basically the end of a Korean player's career. This meant that it was rare to see a Korean player older than 25. Retiring in your early 20s was and remains common. Korean organizations, which had an infrastructural leg up on other regions due to the popularity of StarCraft 2 esports in the country, became adept at scouting promising players at 15 or 16, building them into top level competitive pros, wringing them dry for a few seasons with brutal training regimens, and spitting them out.

Faker was the exception. Though he had been discovered young by SK Telecom, a major Korean telecommunications company that did esports on the side, and gone through the training regimen, he refused to be spit out. He simply didn't stop. He won in 2013, then with a completely new four-man squad around him won again in 2015 and 2016 before narrowly losing the 2017 finals in a nail biter. Given League of Legends esports had only existed since 2011, he basically accounted for half of the championships up until that point. Nobody else, except for his teammates, had won more than once. And it was like it was known he would be this juggernaut the instant he manifested ex nihilo. Like it was known, even in 2013, that he would always win.

Then, Faker stopped winning.

By 2017, League of Legends esports was a titan. Venture capital firms, seeing the millions of eyeballs, thought that this was the next NBA in its infancy, and decided to get in on the ground floor. Multiple millions of dollars were pumped into the scene as even mediocre players in weak regions like North America pulled seven-digit salaries. In China, where League of Legends had become the national pastime, the nation's richest oligarchs ran teams for fun and vanity, outbidding Korean organizations for top Korean players in pursuit of a trophy that had gone to Korea every year since 2013. Riot, the studio developing the game, pumped tons of money into creating a professional sports product, with skilled announcers, dedicated arenas for regional leagues, live performances by musicians like Imagine Dragons and Lil Nas X, and all the other bells and whistles one might expect from a program watched on ESPN.

In this milieu, it seemed like Faker had finally reached his limit. He was still good, but not the best. Even as an individual, while everyone still considered him the "greatest of all time," he was considered outmatched by newer pros like Chovy and ShowMaker. 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 passed with no championships. In 2022, on a team of mostly rookies, he reached the world finals, but was ultimately beaten. Korea's stranglehold over the sport had been shaken by China, which had finally strung together some championships. People wondered if Faker would retire, although he had managed to avoid mandatory military service by representing Korea in the Olympics-esque Asian Games. He'd dealt with wrist injuries and his level of play dropped year over year. He just didn't seem to be that good anymore, potentially holding back his team of talented young players rather than leading them to victory.

Then, in 2023—

youtube

And in 2024—

youtube

In the end, never count out Touchdown Tom. 11 years of professional play, 5 world championships.

From this longwinded explanation, you might have realized that after watching that game in 2013, I became a League of Legends esports fanatic, fulfilling the prophecy set before me by my father though perhaps in not the way he would have expected.

And the things I become a fanatic about, I want to write a story about.

IV. Modern Cannibals

There's a deleted scene in Modern Cannibals, as Maximillion is driving Z. and her friends through the Utah desert. He starts to talk about Pokémon.

"I bring it up because my university thesis was about Pokemon in particular how Pokemon has basically trained an entire generation of children to think in a completely different way than preceding generations my generation for instance our fad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now I don't know how much you know about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but from an educational standpoint we're talking absolute bankrupt complete and utter goose egg but Pokemon now Pokemon you see it's more like there's some substance to it you know that refrain Gotta Catch Em All right?" "..." "Well to most parents it looks like a marketing gimmick you make one hundred fifty-one characters and structure a game around collecting them the merchandising potential is astronomical kids buy one hundred fifty-one trading cards stickers coloring books figurines uh collectable lunchable toys I'm sure you've got some yourself."

He continues:

"But really you look at the game itself before the big toy explosion the game itself the focus is placed less on the collection and more on the catalogue you're given a blank encyclopedia to fill and you fill it by capturing one hundred fifty-one Pokemon but the goal is to create a complete database of each and every one and this is what I argue is the educational core of the Pokemon series." His hands left the wheel to conceive of his idea in the cool air of the car, which remained steady on its ever-forward path. "Our modern era is no longer one of singular isolated knowledge it is one of the catalogue the database which is most clearly personified in the advent of the internet because now all knowledge can be at the fingertips of any one human being all that is needed is someone to go and put the catalogue together and presto whiz bang it's there think about it Z. when you catch a bunch of Pokemon where do you store them?" Z. didn't need to think long to remember the game's mechanics. "In the PC." "Exactly now isn't that odd consider it in real life terms you have real life creatures made assumedly of flesh and bone and yet you store them in a computer how does that make sense you'd expect a farm or a holding pen but no it's the computer and that too prepares the budding portion of the millennial generation to become cognizant of the linkage between the computer the encyclopedia and the database structure of knowledge in a new era." "So," said Z. "So you're saying Pokemon taught kids how to think in the digital age?"

There's also a deleted character in Modern Cannibals. Well, mostly deleted—he still shows up, unnamed, in a couple of pages. He is Cole Coulter, Z.'s older brother, a popular League of Legends streamer. Before I deleted him, his role was to accompany Mrs. Roddlevan and Frederick in an attempt to bring Z. back home. He had POV scenes that gave insight into the weirdness of his cotravelers, but ultimately, I decided he didn't add anything to the story and removed him almost entirely.

Even then, though, I was already considering the future of Cole Coulter as the protagonist of a story about League of Legends esports. Playing under the ID MadKing, he would be a North American professional top laner, once known for his aggressive duelist style but recently forced into playing boring tanks as the esports metagame became more sophisticated and tactics-based.

The story would be simple, something I envisioned as a "sports story" only about esports instead of regular sports. It would start with Cole's team being relegated from the league, only for Cole to get a last chance signing to a new team with two promising Korean imports. One import, the mid laner, would be a charismatic and eccentric player in the mold of Doinb/Ganked By Mom/Huhi, while the other, an AD carry, would be introverted and pissy and elitist, in the mold of Piglet. The team would initially struggle, cultures would clash, then a mid-season replacement to sign a psychopathic Tyler1/Tarzaned style streamer as jungler would revitalize the team, put them on a major run, and get them to the World Championship. Though they would eventually fall after a miracle run, Cole would get a moment to truly shine on the biggest stage when he won a pivotal game by aggressive split pushing rather than tank play.

Thematically, the story would be about two things. First, a counterpoint to the idea of American exceptionalism, featuring a league where Americans are particularly bad compared to Korean or Chinese players. Second, an exploration of what it means to be exceptional at all. Cole would be an all-around mediocre person. Middling at school, at (real) sports, at the various popularity contests of being a teenager. League of Legends, this niche sub-sport, is the one thing he truly excelled at, the one place where he was good, better than 99.9 percent of all players, and yet even within that statistical greatness he wound up, ultimately, in a professional scene where he was once again mediocre, relegated to "tank duty," to facilitating other players to carry.

What does it mean to be the best? How can someone be so, so good, only to reach a level where they were still nothing special? Is there any way to win if you're not "the man who always wins"?

I remembered that panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu. The last people filtered before the final champion. It's certainly no walk in the zoo!

This idea was pretty detailed for a story I never wound up writing, something I mostly blame on the years 2018 and 2019, when a lot of bad things happened to me and in retrospect I consider it a minor miracle I managed to finish Chicago at all. As a human being, I would be decimated for the next three years, and so a lot of stories I might have written in that time never came to fruition.

Meanwhile, League of Legends esports reached a peak, then the venture capital bubble burst as investors realized there was no monetization scheme in place for any interested party except Riot Games. Money hemorrhaged out, Riot shifted resources to Valorant, and a sport that had been overinflated based on projected exponential growth in perpetuity fell back down to earth.

Also, Players came out.

Players was a 2022 mockumentary about a fictional League of Legends team competing in the North American league. Conceptually, it was doing a lot of what I had planned for my story: following a single team on a rags-to-riches run, focusing on the interpersonal drama of the team members, asking questions about greatness and its pursuit. It's a pretty good show if you're familiar with League of Legends esports at all, with a lot of on-the-ground fidelity that gives it an authentic feel, which is exactly what I had been hoping to use my esports fanaticism to accomplish. It completely took the wind out of my sails; it was like my idea had already been done.

So by 2022, the idea of a League of Legends esports story was dead. But there was still a drive to create something with that spirit, that would delve into those themes.

What remained after all these years of sifting the sieve, letting sand slip through, was that one panel from the manga. The number of people pursuing greatness slowly filtering until only one remained. And if I wasn't going to pursue that idea through League of Legends, maybe I could pursue it through another vehicle. Maybe the vehicle through which the idea had originally been exposed to me. Pokémon. It all came back to Pokémon.

V. Everything Evolving Into Crabs

I knew immediately that if I were to write a Pokémon fic, it would be a tournament arc. This was the natural evolution of my esports story idea. Also, if I were to write Pokémon, I wanted it to be a story about utopia, immersed within Pokémon's near-future ideal world, where everything is clean and healthy, where society is neat and ordered.

This idea caused me to remember the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, which I had read a few years back. A mostly autobiographical bildungsroman written on the precipice of World War II, the novel ends with the young protagonist on a journey to Central America, where he meets an idealistic doctor who believes sport to be a proper substitution for war. He tells the story of two tribes locked in internecine conflict through generations, able to replace that violence with soccer matches.

And wasn't that what the world of Pokémon was, a utopia revolving around neutralizing weapons of war by using them for competitive sport?

This tournament, I envisioned, would not simply be about deciding who was best, but an ideological battle for the future of the Pokémon world. To that end, I imagined a war between an entrenched trainer class, who competed as philosopher-warriors, intense individuals with deep connections to their Pokémon, and an upstart commercialization that sought to replace the ideological underpinnings that made their society so safe and prosperous with economic accumulation. It was from this kernel that the character who would become Aracely Sosa arose: charismatic, appealing, human-empathic, and propped up by a support staff who did all the hard work of teambuilding for her.

I imagined the story having an ensemble cast, focusing on nearly every competitor equally, with the Aracely character not having any especial focus until her improbable rise to the top. I imagined a final round where she faced off against "the man who always wins," and though she would lose to him, she would seem to have won the ideological battle, altering the course of society as major corporations scrambled to employ her formula for success at a much grander scale. The story would end with this realization of the earth-shattering importance behind her run, only for Aracely to sink in disappointment. Because in the end, all she really wanted was to win.

The more I thought about it, though, the less I liked the idea of an ensemble cast. The ensemble cast element of Chicago hadn't gone over very well (though I like it), and I figured it would wind up inflating the length of the story considerably. I was coming to the end of Cleveland Quixotic, after all, and once more wanted to write something smaller, tighter, and denser.

So I oriented my thinking to instead have the story revolve around Aracely and one major rival, to give an interpersonal mirror to the ideological war being waged. Thus, Toril came about as an antithesis to everything I had imagined Aracely to be: gruff, antisocial, independent. Their rivalry would culminate in a semifinals battle, before Aracely went on to fight "the man who always wins" in the finals.

I forget exactly when the gender theme came into the equation, but it evolved as an outgrowth of (once again) my competitive League of Legends expertise, where women are essentially nonexistent despite there seemingly being no biological blocks against them. This dovetailed nicely with Pokémon, a world where women seemingly could be powerful competitors, but where—in the anime at least—none ever are. For instance, look at this chart of every major tournament in the anime:

Every known winner is male. Every known finalist and semifinalist is male. Only a handful of female characters have reached the quarterfinals. What possible in-universe justification could there be for that?

This question was actually far more prominent in early planning and drafting than it wound up being in the final work. Initially, I had Aracely's personal motivation revolve around a drive to be the first female trainer to win; this would increase the ideological conflict between her and Toril, who attempted to ignore that she was female altogether. Over time, this theme would see diminished importance in face of the last piece of the thematic puzzle: cults.

It came from reading Underground by Haruki Murakami, a nonfiction journalistic account of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult Aum Shinrikyo under the direction of its leader Shoko Asahara. Japan in the 90s was experiencing its own End of History, one taken literally by those disaffected with modern society's grand narrative. The prophecies of Nostradamus became fashionable among the young, who believed that 1999 would be the final year before the world was destroyed. Murakami interviewed both survivors of the gas attack and members of Aum Shinrikyo, collecting worldviews of people who simply thought they were "different" and who were willing to give everything in their lives to the one place that seemed to accept that difference.

The 1995 attacks were a watershed moment in Japanese culture. In their wake would come pivotal works of Japanese pop media, like the titan of otaku culture, Neon Genesis Evangelion:

(What's scary about Nostradamus' prophecy is that it might not come true. A year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.)

Pokémon, whose first games released in Japan in 1996, also emerged within this post-Aum world where fixation on the minutiae of pop media was becoming a primary pillar of meaning for the youth, and it's hard not to see echoes of cultism in the evil teams that dot the series' landscape. Even Team Rocket, originally more modeled on organized crime than occultism, veers that direction in Gold and Silver, and afterward the organizations and their world-ending plots become increasingly absurd, to the point where it starts to become unclear why anyone would ever follow, say, Lysandre.

As I mentioned earlier, my personal interest in Pokémon was at odds with these clownish, Saturday morning cartoon villain organizations, but Murakami's account of the Aum attacks recontextualized them for me, made them make sense even within the framework of a "realistic" utopian world. The last elements snapped into place, and I knew my main character would be the member of one of these cults. A cult dedicated to, what else? Evolution. A core element of the Pokémon series, a perfect metaphor for the frustrating lack of movement of the End of History 90s. I imagined a cult leader as a surrogate mother figure for Aracely, who would have a strained relationship with both of her own parents, and deciding on that, the idea of making Pokémon's canon evil mother Lusamine the villain was a no-brainer. I imagined a post-SuMo Lusamine, unable to move on from her experience merged with Nihilego, languishing in Kanto after being sent there to consult with Bill, who had his own experience being merged with a Pokémon... It didn't take long to figure out how all these pieces connected.

The full form of the story had taken shape.

VI. Showdown

I knew immediately I would be following Showdown rules for the battles. No alternative even crossed my mind. I had dabbled in Showdown a few times over the years, first in Gen 3 OUs, then later in Gen 7 OUs, and I knew from experience that Pokémon is a monumentally more interesting competitive game when operating at a high level compared to either its depiction in the anime (shounen logic, mid-fight evolutions) or the general playing experience (spam your best move on your overleveled starter). I knew I would use competitive rulesets before I even considered the thematic or worldbuilding aspect I would eventually take in the story itself (i.e., that the specific rulesets prevent battles from becoming bloodsport and enforce order on the world). I simply thought doing battles this way would be far more entertaining.

To prepare, I started playing Gen 9 OUs under the guidance of a few friends who were into the competitive scene. I grinded the ladder for months, eventually getting a good enough grasp on the metagame to reach 1500 Elo on the Showdown ladder, which is not very good but generally higher than someone can reach with dumb luck.

Crafting the tournament format and rulesets used in the story wasn't difficult. I modeled the tournament format on the League of Legends World Championship, with region-based seeds (having been selected due to performance in regional tournaments) competing in four groups before the highest performers advanced to a single elimination bracket. Initially, I envisioned a 32-competitor bracket instead of the 16-competitor bracket that would appear in the final draft, but otherwise the format came quickly and easily.

In terms of the rulesets and available Pokémon, my considerations were made primarily in terms of what would be most entertaining to read. I decided to include Mega Evolutions and not include Z Moves, Dynamax, or Terastallization, because Mega Evolutions are cool and those other gimmicks are not. The bring-9-pick-6 format, while unusual in Showdown rulesets, is similar to the rules in Pokémon Stadium and VGC tournaments, and also adds a level of intrigue to which Pokémon each competitor uses. (It also enabled Red's Zapdos at the climax of the story, which was something I knew I would bring out from very early on.)

With the help of one of my friends who knew competitive Pokémon, I scripted out each battle assiduously before I wrote them. Every battle was tested using Showdown itself, with only a few turns mocked up to account for luck. For instance, in Aracely versus Jinjiao, Slowking is meant to stay asleep for three turns. Rather than rely on luck to ensure Slowking actually slept that long during the test, I could give Slowking a useless move and have him use that instead to simulate being asleep.

The only thing that couldn't be tested in Showdown was the 7 PP Kingambit trick Red uses at the end of the story, because it's impossible to set a Pokémon to have fewer than max PP in Showdown. This led to one of the bigger mistakes of the story, as it turns out that Encore would simply wear off if Kingambit ran out of PP, rather than forcing him to use Struggle like I assumed. Luckily, even if this were the case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the battle, so it's not an error I lose too much sleep over.

Character teams were chosen to thread the needle between a few considerations. The team needed to be competitively viable, reflect the character's personality in some way, and be distinct from other teams for the sake of variety. (Variety is somewhat unrealistic in real top-level competitive Pokémon, where you'll often see many almost identical teams in the top ranks. But that would be boring.) Some lack of optimization was allowed under the conceit that actually training these Pokémon to peak form would take a lot of time in the real world, compared to Showdown were optimization can be determined quickly due to the ability to immediately adjust stats and builds.

I also tried to give some preference for Pokémon that would be more familiar to layman fans, though this was difficult because Gen 8 and 9 have outrageous power creep and many popular early generation Pokémon have been completely phased out. (Using Megas helped with this issue.) It was this consideration that led to Azumarill being Aracely's ace. There was also an innate challenge to imagining what the competitive scene would look like without legendary Pokémon. Zapdos and Landorus-Therian have been inexorable staples of the competitive scene for generations. What happens in a world where they aren't used at all?

In the original 32-person bracket, I imagined Aracely competing against Jinjiao in the first round, then minor characters Adrian da Cunha and Jacq Ray Johnson in the next two rounds, before facing Toril in semifinals. I imagined Adrian da Cunha as a "hometown hero" whose team wasn't great but he was plucky with a lot of grit, and Jacq Ray Johnson as a self-aware heel who liked to use cheesy strategies and gimmicky Pokémon like Smeargle and Ditto. Condensing from 32 to 16 occurred around the same time I had settled on Lusamine as my villain/cult leader, which led to replacing those two with Gladion. I developed full brackets for both the 32-man and 16-man iterations, with character names and regions, just in case I ever needed to mention them.

All that was left to do was write the story.

VII. Unbroken Line of History

I began writing in September 2023 under the tentative title Unbroken Line of History, which I would later change to simply Lines. In the original drafts, I opened the story with a modified version of the panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu detailing how people are filtered over time in their pursuit of being the best, this time starting with all 8 billion people in the world until only one remains. The story then cut to Aracely's perspective in the restroom as she mentally prepared for her final group stage match.

At this point I was more set on Aracely being the clear protagonist of the story, so she had a few facets of her personality designed around that. First, as I mentioned before, there was a feminist angle where she was motivated specifically to be the first female trainer to win the championship. Secondly, I threw in some more generic nervousness/fear of failure. The other major difference is that I did not lead with the cult prophecy of the world ending. I originally envisioned the cult reveal to be a mid-story twist, and only obliquely hinted at it.

The scene still played out with Toril appearing and the two getting off to a bad start. Then, Cely's father tried to talk strategy with her while she ignored him, before the battle transpired in much the same form as it does in the final draft.

I showed this early draft to my friends and most disliked it. My girlfriend at the time told me Cely sounded like an edgy 13-year-old boy, while my neuroscientist friend whose aspirational idol is Bondrewd from Made in Abyss wanted to know more about the oblique hints of a cult, finding everything else boring. Another friend said it was stupid that there were 30 seconds between turns during the battle and that the Pokémon should just go at each other; nobody would actually want to watch a battle that was paced so slowly. (I vehemently disagreed with that take. Basically every popular sport balances between slow-paced moments of strategy and fast-paced moments of action and execution.) Some people I showed it to did enjoy it, though. Gazemaize, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory, was especially enamored by the Brittany/Gardevoir reveal and the Bud Light Analyst Desk, and implored me to keep both of those elements at all costs. 7th, one of my friends who helped me with the Showdown stuff, was so into it she drew fan art of all the characters (which I've posted before) and also wrote eight pornographic short stories about them.

I rewrote the same opening scene several times across October and November, though these were minor iterations without significant adjustments. Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to take a break from writing to simply think about the story for a few months.

During this time, to fix Aracely's edgy 13-year-old voice, I decided to lean into her being from Pokémon Los Angeles (with her native region, Visia, being a play on "visual" as a reference to Hollywood) and gave her a Valley Girl accent. To prepare for this, I listened to hours and hours of ASMR videos of people speaking like Valley Girls and took notes on their inflection and syntax. It was here where I decided on Aracely's underlining quirk, as a way of capturing the unique style of emphasis Valley Girls used.

This also made me realize I needed to adjust Aracely's personality. Despite the tone of her voice, she was still acting antisocially. She didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to Lachlan Nguyen, she didn't even really want to talk to Toril. Toril herself was a lump of coal. My own misanthropy kept leaking into the characters, even when I conceptually didn't want them to have it. I thought back to Cleveland Quixotic, and how what made the Jay and Viviendre romance work was that they actually both liked each other, and figured—even though I didn't have explicitly romantic plans for Aracely and Toril—that I needed to do something similar to make their rivalry truly pop. Rather than avoid people, Aracely would lean into talking to them, even if they were annoying. Although Toril remained frigid, there would be a part of her yearning for emotional contact, a way to coax her out of her shell.

I also thought deeply about the structure of my stories in general, and my inability to come up with good hooks. It was around this time that someone I knew was reading Chicago. They pointed out that the plot of Chicago doesn't really start until Chapter 26; that I was "burying the lede." I considered this. My logic, when writing Chicago, was that the Empire moving to take over Washington would be a twist, something that would shock and excite people and change their perception of the entire story.

But did that make sense, when really the story was "about" that twist? Didn't that just make everything before the twist harder to get into for a reader? Chicago might look radically different if I revealed the Empire's goals immediately, but it would also probably be a more immediately engaging work. I'm a big fan of delayed gratification in storytelling, but had I taken it too far?

This was a major revelation for me, and immediately I understood what I needed to do for my Pokémon story: move up the cult plotline. Place it front and center. Name the whole story after it even. I decided on framing the opening scene from Toril's perspective, depicting Aracely initially more as an alien other, emphasizing the fact that she was in a cult rather than hide it behind foreshadowing. This could also lead to Aracely and Toril having more of a dual protagonist setup, which would make my planned two-half finale (one half where Aracely battled "the man who always wins," one half where Toril got involved in stopping the cult's doomsday plot) work even better.

Confidence resurged. At the end of January 2024, my girlfriend of seven years and I broke up. A few days later, I started writing the sixth—and ultimately final—draft of When I Win the World Ends.

VIII. When I Win the World Ends

Now it's the part of the Making Of where I actually make the thing I'm supposed to be making, but there's a lot less to say about it. Once I have a plan, the actual writing of the story is the easy part, and most of what I wrote—with a few exceptions—looks similar to the story as it exists now.

There were some oddities. I wrote the first seven chapters (everything up to the end of the Jinjiao battle) and then had to take a two week break to write a short piece for a writing contest I had entered in December as part of an effort to stop overthinking WIW. After this interruption, I returned to WIW writing perhaps a bit more perfunctorily than I usually would, leading to an original version of Chapter 8 (the chapter where MOTHER makes her first real appearance) that was short and abbreviated. Later, in editing, I would rewrite most of this chapter.

A few ideas emerged while writing, like the motif of serendipity/Logos, which I felt tied nicely to the ideas of evolution and history. It was also in this draft that I introduced Cely's friends Haydn and Charlie, as a nod to an earlier work of mine also featuring a fashion-obsessed girl from Los Angeles. (Speaking of nods to earlier works, in the original 32-man bracket, Cole Coulter featured as one of the competitors, but he didn't make the 16-man cut.)

The process went smoothly. I finished the draft at the end of May, a little under four months after I started it. I had envisioned the full story as being about 70,000 words, but the draft ended up closer to 115,000. Underestimating story length is just an essential element of the trade, though.

A few days after finishing the draft I went on a four-day Oklahoma Darkness Retreat where I had access to zero electronics. The goal was to think about my story deeply and how it could be improved in the editing process.

In this time chamber, where I did nothing except complete crossword puzzles and read The Recognitions by William Gaddis, I came to a realization. There was one element the story needed that wasn't already there.

That element was Sabrina. In the original draft, Sabrina was not present during the scene where Aracely meets the Old Man. She was mentioned obliquely a couple of times in conjunction with Aracely's "psychic powers," but it never really built to anything. There was still a scene where Aracely was interrogated due to her relationship with MOTHER, but only by nameless goons, and the scene lacked tension as it was clear Aracely could talk circles around them.

When I returned from Oklahoma, I prepared for my conception of Sabrina as a character by writing an 8,000 word short story from her perspective, which hashed out an entire backstory for her. Then, I started editing the draft.

For me, a lot of editing is just polish. Usually, cutting out needless sentences and fixing clunky ones, as well as emphasizing a few of the more understated themes and motifs. For instance, during editing, I made slight additions to emphasize the thematic connection between Aracely's suicide attempt and the global war that almost destroyed the world, as well as the connection between the moon and cyclical insanity (lunacy, etymologically, being related to the moon). I made the Old Man more of a Walt Disney-esque figure (from my notes: "a dying Disney"), rewriting much of his dialogue to either be direct quotes or to evoke his ideals. I also expanded on several of the scenes where Toril and Aracely interact to make their relationship more complex and nuanced. I gave MOTHER some new dialogue, including her speech in Chapter 18 about loving a child for the potential it promises, while also paradoxically wanting it to remain a child forever.

The largest changes were in the three chapters I almost fully rewrote. The first was Chapter 8, which as I mentioned earlier was overly terse. In the original draft, it depicted MOTHER as more pathetic, more dependent on Aracely. I decided to make her a more threatening figure, and incorporated a few references to the Moloch sacrifice scene from Valle Verde to make her seem more like a false idol. Similarly, I rewrote Chapter 12, which was originally a very short chapter that focused solely on a conversation between MOTHER and Nilufer that ended with the order to kidnap Aracely. In rewriting the chapter to include Fiorella, I gave myself more opportunity to flesh out the respective philosophies of her and MOTHER (including some of the story's most salient discussions about why cults exist), as well as give more of an insight into the inner workings of RISE as an organization. And lastly, I fully rewrote Chapter 19 to include Sabrina.

The last changes I made in editing were to the final chapter. When I finished the final draft of the story, I sent it to several readers, many of whom had looked at the original drafts of the first chapter, as well as julirites, the author of a Fargo fan fiction called London. There was an immediate and minor backlash to the final chapter, which was originally much more pessimistic, from most people who read it. In the original version, Aracely and Toril were not still in communication. (Fiorella was also dying of cancer instead of jockeying to replace the Old Man.) The finale had a much more somber, sedate, tragic note. Juli and 7th disliked this sad ending, while Gazemaize wanted me to cut the final chapter altogether. I felt confident that the final chapter was necessary, though, and revised it to its current version, which was much better liked.

And then... the story was finished, near the end of July. I crunched the numbers and realized that if I posted two chapters to start and then did a twice-weekly posting schedule, I could end the story serendipitously on October 12. So I did.

IX. Names and Special Thanks

In my Making Of post for Cleveland Quixotic, I had a fairly extensive list of where I got all the character and place names from. The list is a lot less extensive here; most names I constructed for the purpose of sounding evocative, rather than taking them from someplace specific. For instance, I chose the name Aracely Sosa because it sounds like whistling with its repeated S sounds, compared to Toril Lund which is a lot harsher with its consonants. You can see a similar rationale behind names like Fiorella Fiorina, Yui Matsui, and even some of the background characters, like Jacq Ray Johnson, Jr., where there is a lot of emphasis on alliteration and rhyme.

There are a couple of exceptions. Jinjiao is the in-game ID of a longtime Chinese League of Legends pro of middling notability. He picked the name (which means "Golden Horn") as a reference to the Golden Horned King, a villain from Journey to the West.

Lutz, Fiorella's cameraman, was named after an extremely minor character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, who is not playable and only appears in a singular cutscene before being killed. They are so irrelevant that despite naming a character after them, I actually forgot their name, which is Lotz, not Lutz.

Haydn is named after the famous classical composer.

Special thanks to 7th and Elick320 for helping me with the teams and battles. Thanks to Gazemaize and julirites, among others unnamed, for reading and providing feedback. And thank you all for enjoying the story.

#when i win the world ends #wiw #bavitz #the making of #writing #pokemon #fanfic #fan fiction #league of legends #faker #the electric tale of pikachu #Youtube

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ajastu · 18 days ago

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god okay. sorry for yet another text post. but i'm just still thinking about the argument that veilguard is bad because the only option re: morality of your player character that it gives is kindness.

Now, to preface. I understand where this criticism comes from. Veilguard IS a departure from the general scheme of the previous games, in several aspects. And i understand how people would be upset at not having quite the same kind of options/ways to influence the world. It took me some getting used to, also.

What i do disagree with, however, is using that to claim that the game is bad, irredeemable, and also meaningless n soft or whatever.

Because it's really not. It's just different, with a different narrative focus. I've played the previous games several times, and as i said before, origins is in first place for me. Veilguard is a very close second. And i'm not more right or wrong in this opinion than someone who thinks datv is the worst game in the series.

You can still make choices that will influence the world in wildly different ways, they're just not... ''genocide or no genocide'' kinds of choices. Which i can see how some people would not consider the difference significant enough to be interesting for them personally. Which is whatever, im not their dad, i dont really care.

However. I think it's kind of weird to say that ''the game made me resent being a nice person'' or that "kindness you dont have the choice not to offer isnt worth a lot"

Like, game criticism aside. That is just an objectively weird thing to say.

There are ways to phrase that particular dissatisfaction in a way that will not make most people side-eye you. This is not one of those ways.

The thing is, it was a deliberate choice in characterization. Since game development at AAA scale is. an incredibly complex beast, i suspect there were many different reasons for it, and not all of them purely narrative. It is also not 2009 anymore. We are not getting another Origins, like, probably ever.

But. Rook is established in the very second cutscene to care about other people. It makes sense narratively, too, with Varric being the one to recruit them. Their backstory also shows that they gravitate towards the 'moral' choices. It's not bad writing. It's deliberate.

That does not mean that everyone has to like it. And i don't think the people who are upset about the change in this gameplay aspect are stupid or wrong.

We are all different people with different preferences, and i really am sorry if the game ended up being a disappointment for you. I know how it feels, and it does suck.

But i also do think it might be worth to examine the way people choose to phrase this complaining. The claim that kindness is somehow diminished in value if you aren't offered the choice to be cruel alongside it. I just think that, like. misses the point of what kindness is?

I know what those people mean when they say it, i just...fundamentally disagree with the sentiment. And i think phrasing it in this way is incredibly weird. sorry 🤷‍♂️

There is a better way to talk about this particular complaint. I just never actually SEE that being done. and i do think a lot of it comes from not actually engaging with the source material people are trying to criticize. Like, the person i sort of quoted earlier explicitly said they have not finished the game. If you never give something a chance in the first place, if all the information you have is second-hand, then i do not find your criticism valuable in any way. There is no substance to it, no backing. You are not proving a point, you're just chasing your own tail at that point. There isnt even a bone to chew. You've only heard of the bone. you havent actually experienced it.

Another part is people being too twisted up in the emotion of disappointment to actually see that they're not making compelling arguments, necessarily, and that they're actually being a tar pit.

I know not everyone thinks as much about the push towards dismissing the value of kindness for kindness' sake as i do. But like. It really is very weird to see this insistence that game bad bcs it didnt have the option to do a murder to an innocent person, or something. While also dismissing the horrible things we Are shown as 'not in your face enough'.

And honestly, personally? I dont love origins or any of the other ones specifically for the ability to choose the evil options. It's never even been a choice for me, because you can very well play the games without having to make the bad choices. theres always a workaround. And that workaround doesnt even harm u in any significant way. there isnt an actual like. terrible complexity here. I enjoy the dwarf politics quest a lot but ultimately, knowing the outcome? its EASY to choose Bhelen. Unless you're playing a dwarf noble origin, i guess. Rip Harrowmont 🙏 you would have made a terrible king.

And again, my personal opinion is not more right or wrong than that of someone who adored the prev dragon age games exactly because they allow you to make some terrible terrible moral choices.

At the end of the day. why are people still so pissed about a game that came out almost 6 months ago that many of them havent even played in the first place? Relax. take a walk if you can. Maybe move a snail out of the road if you find one. There tends to be a lot of them after it rains. Think about the ones that didn't make it. Try to find compassion for lives so easily dismissed. Maybe that will make you think about whether or not kindness on its own really is so lacking in value.

#valtalks #da fandom critical #dragon age fandom critical #honestly this is just an excuse for me to spread the 'be kind to bugs and other tiny creatures' propaganda #anyway. this is the piss on the poor website so im sure it will be taken out of context eventually yet again #but like. at some point. stop being a tar pit n actually go do something you enjoy #my original post that got vagued i made. admittedly. while being a bit fired up from the sheer ridiculousness of a crit post i saw in the #Main Tags for the game #so maybe i wasnt making my point clearly enough #or maybe they just did not want to actually engage with my point #but like. do you Need to use the main tags for your nothingburger of a complaint?#like youre not even bringing anything valuable to the conversation #cite ur sources or go do something that makes u actually happy #THAT was my point #and kindness IS valuable on its own #and yeah sorry i do think you need to play the game at least once and actually engage with it if you want to pretend #that your complaining has any weight #thats just usually how media analysis works #u cant analyze something u havent engaged with #anyway. back to da2 replay #during which i shall thank all the gods that might listen that there is a 'skip combat' mod because GOOD. GOD.

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milkoomi · 4 months ago

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semester success. ᥫ᭡

[ 3 chapter mini series ] | chapter one , chapter two

in this series, i’m going to teach you all my helpful tips and tricks on how to succeed in the new semester in just 3 quick chapters! get ready to take notes, we’re diving right in!

final chapter — SACRED STUDYING

the time you spend studying or doing schoolwork should feel sacred to you. you should immerse yourself into this trance where you just grind; making the most of your time and putting your best work into your assignments/studies. in this final chapter i’m going to share some ways that have helped me really lock in when i study for big exams! this is a lengthy chapter, so let’s get right into!

class is in session …

୨ৎ — create/find your sanctuary

where you study is the very first step into effective study habits. i touched on this point briefly in previous posts (such as this one), but i want to go more in-depth!

creating your study space

whether it’s your bedroom, an office, or even a spare room in your house, if you choose to study at home there are a few key things we need to settle.

cleanliness: your space needs to be clean and that cleaning needs to be maintained. when we study in areas that are messy and full of chaos, we’ll find ourselves stuck in a headspace that is just as messy and chaotic. if you’re in your bedroom and you have clothes lying on the floor, go put them away! clean your floors, dust off your shelves, make your bed; refresh your space so that when you go to sit down and get to work you have a clear mind!

organization: this is just to go off of the first point, but organize your work space. your desk is where all the magic happens, so create an organization system! make sure you have a pencil/pen holder, a desk lamp, maybe some small storage bins that can hold notecards/post-it notes/tape/etc.! amazon has some really great desk organization finds for a great price, and you can also score some really cute and aesthetically pleasing pieces as well! my pen/pencil holder also doubles as my desk lamp as well as a phone stand! i have another pencil holder that doubles as extra storage as well where i can keep my extra notecards & post-its! keep your study space organized!

decorations: your work space should feel like your space. don’t be afraid to cater your room’s/desk’s aesthetic to your liking! i personally love figurines (hatsune miku, blindbox finds, anime figures, etc.) and i love crystals, so i’ve added my own little trinkets onto my desk so that when i sit down to work i feel happy because i’m in my own space surrounded by things that bring me joy! your study space shouldn’t feel boring or lackluster, it should bring you joy! it should motivate you to work in that area because you created it into what you want it to be! don’t hesitate to add inspirational quotes around your study space as well whether it be ones you print out and frame or ones you write down on cute stationary and hang them up around your room and/or desk!

lighting: natural sunlight, overhead lighting, fairy lights, led lights; whatever it is, pick some kind of lighting that makes you feel relaxed yet still motivated to get work done! lighting is important! you need to be able to see your work, duh! but you also want to make sure your lighting isn’t too harsh on your eyes especially if you’re sensitive to light or isn’t too dim so that it makes you feel tired!

some other optional aspects to creating your study space:

candles/incense!

background music!

comfy back cushions!

your at-home study area needs to be a place for that productive energy to flow! it needs to not only make you feel comfortable at home, but also to motivate you to lock in. make it personable to you! include your favorite things, but don’t forget to incorporate supplies that will be useful and beneficial to you!

finding a good study environment

of course you have the typical libraries and cafés, and while those places are absolutely perfect for getting work done, you might find yourself getting bored of the same locations.

what to look for in a study location:

aesthetics: for a lot of us, how a place looks/is decorated matters! most of us strive for having an aesthetic area to study and work on assignments, it just adds to that motivation and makes us feel like those iconic characters like rory gilmore, paris geller, or even elle woods! so find a place that fits your aesthetic needs. maybe you want something leaning towards dark or light academia, maybe you’re searching for something cute and cozy, or maybe a place that’s a bit more modernized and minimalistic!

population & demographic: crowded areas are not the place for study sessions, so keep an eye out for how populated an area is! personally, i can’t focus when there’s a bunch of crowds in a place where i’m trying to study. people are distracting, and the more people there are in a place where i’m trying to study, the more i’ll lose focus. also, it’d be good to scope out what kind of people are at the place you’re trying to work at! are there any fellow students you see hard at work? are there clusters of people conversing and laughing together in different sections? are there people quietly reading in more secluded areas? who is exactly is at the place you wish to study? if the demographic fits to what you’re also trying to accomplish then maybe that place is a good fit for you! but if you notice that there are more people there to chat and laugh it up with friends/colleagues, then you might want to keep the search going.

noise: as crowds can be distracting, so can the level of noise. you might find yourself in a café where the music might be way too loud and it makes you lose your focus or the place you’re at is far too quiet and, for some reason, it might make you feel uncomfortable. consider the amount of noise around you and determine if you’re able to focus or not. some people prefer more noise while others don’t, and that’s okay! find what suits you and your study habits best!

furniture: any outside location (a place that isn’t your bedroom/personal office) needs to have proper furnishings so that you can lay out your notebooks, textbooks, and laptop/tablet. tables and chairs are key! make note of what kinds of tables you like. do you prefer lower standing tables or ones that are higher up? do you need to sit on a more cushioned chair/couch or do you need a stiff and stable chair? make sure the furniture at any location you plan on working at is optimal for your study sessions!

other things to consider:

amount of privacy!

smells!

hours of operation!

bathroom accessibility!

୨ৎ — form a ritual

having a good routine for your study sessions can make your work experience feel so much organized and even more enjoyable!

you might want to light some candles and start setting the overall vibe or maybe you have a specific way of preparing for your study sessions, either way whatever it is you do to get into the zone can help you get the most out of your work sessions.

things to do to prepare

clean: i’m not saying you have to do an entire deep cleaning of your space, but maybe just picking up laundry off your floor or making your bed! maybe you have cups & empty water bottles scattered on your desk, take them out! maybe you’ve got papers just all in miscellaneous piles, go and reorganize them! do whatever it might be to clean up your space a little, nothing major needs to happen, just pick up after yourself!

prepare a snack: making sure you have something to munch on while working is very important (making sure you’re eating is just important in general!), so before you sit down and get to work, make yourself a little snack! maybe a toasted pb&j (or nutella, my personal fav) sandwich or a little fruit salad or maybe it’s even a simple bag of chips! get yourself a little snack ready! brain food!!

make yourself a cup of coffee/tea: every time i post something under my #milkmedia tag, you’ll almost always see a cup of tea in my pictures! i’ve been trying to drink more tea rather than coffee, but if you need some kind of caffeine for your study sessions, make yourself a cup of coffee/tea! i love making myself some chai & i mix in a small teaspoon of honey and then i add some vanilla creamer!

write down your goals: make a quick list of what you want to get done during your session! avoid making it really detailed and keep it more generalized. it doesn’t even have to be coursework related, one of your goals might be to work for an hour! another goal could be taking a break during your session!

whatever it is you decide to do to incorporate into your study/work routine or what it is that you do to prepare for your session, make it personable to you! let it be things or little activities that prepare, calm, and clear your mind. your ritual doesn’t need to be any intricate or crazy, but simple things to bring into your routine can make your study sessions more enjoyable!

୨ৎ — time is gold

the time you take to study should be the length that you, your body, and your mind can handle! if a 4 hour study session is too overwhelming, try an hour less than that or you can always start by seeing how well you do within one hour. get a good gauge of how long you can keep your mind focused on your work. if you find yourself getting exhausted after 2 hours, then maybe some things within your routine need to change or you just need a break.

also be sure to consider that your time spent on studying/working should only be used for that reason! remove any distractions from your study space so that you can devote your time and energy into your work. of course, breaks are also essential, so be sure you set timers for yourself so that you can avoid burn out! when you do take those breaks, try to avoid scrolling through your phone. try closing your eyes and focus on your breathing! you can also get up and stretch, keep your body moving (trust me, your knees and back will thank you!). you can even take some time to read a few pages of a book that you read for entertainment!

incorporate the pomodoro method!! i’ve discussed this method a few times in previous posts, and loads of studyblr blogs talk about this method as well! but the pomodoro method helps you stay on track with your work/study sessions while still including much needed breaks within that time. again, you can set a timer, but there’s also so many “study with me” videos on youtube that follow the pomodoro method!

before you’re dismissed …

study sessions and the time you spend working on schoolwork shouldn’t feel like a trap to you, it should be time that motivates and inspires you! keeping yourself engaged is key, and if including simple decorations or creating an entire prep routine will help you get focused or keep you from going insane (because i know that getting work done can drive me a little crazy from time to time) will make your sessions so much more enjoyable, or at least tolerable! best of luck to all of you in your academic journey! i know that this semester will be full of successes for you!

with lots of love, faustina 🌷

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pseudophan · 1 month ago

Note

What's the jedward tatinof lore?

i know i've answered this before so i went to find the previous reply but it seems to be lost, basically when dnp were doing their LA tatinof shows (well the evening one specifically) jedward were stood outside like can we come in please let us in we want in pleaseee, and were quoting old dnp tweets about them to get their attention

and like is this all that funny in itself? i guess not really. but just in the context of who jedward are and all their ridiculous lore and shenanigans, this was such a random (yet not truly random bc they were friends with a lot of youtubers and just generally if something's happening anywhere jedward WILL show up, somehow) event, and it was 2016 so just the fact that they were quoting old dnp tweets, even if they were perfectly innocent ones, made a few people go :O whoa… some people got mad at them for clout chasing but honestly when it comes to jedward i'm like.. let them do their thing who really cares. any time you hear people talk about jedward (especially those who have worked with them) they're like "they're so annoying but so lovely" which i feel like sums them up

anway what i always found hilarious about this was the way dan and phil didn't acknowledge it at all (while still interacting with them several times afterwards for other reasons) until phil brought it up in his 'judging your faves with no context' video in pre-comeback 2023

you know this was serious to me bc i posted about it and while i watched all of phil's hiatus videos i didn't necessarily post about each one, but this was clearly too important not to mention

#answered

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inkbloto · 10 days ago

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✌🏾😈🔮▪︎ Purgatorio Art Dump ▪︎🔮😈✌🏾

Heyo it's me, back at it again with another project.

Okay but in all seriousness, this has probably been the wildest one I've been on, but in a good + learning experience way.

I haven't felt very much into my original characters for a long time now, ( PacAU doesn't count it's more of a fan-work I'm obsessed with lol.) which I know kinda sucks to hear since some do like my other original stories + concepts but ngl the previous ones just didn't *CLICK* for me. Felt like I was more-so doing them for portfolio reasons rather then actually digging the "story/characters" Ya'know? Not to say I don't like em or will never return to them, but It just didn't feel like I was into it If that makes any sense.

I was in a slight funk during Febuarry + March and thought randomly one day about Bloto. My old persona Bloto ( who isn't my persona anymore and hasn't been for awhile btw ) was always kinda a blank slate of a character so I was like: " What if I made them have a human form to blend in with ppl. " so concept art started then boom lore and a story for it too SOOO now we are here. I also managed to slip in my crack-ship here somehow so bonus points.

I've kinda gotten hyper-fixated on this one as of late. Feels weird to say but I haven't felt this STRONG BOND ever since I created PacAU LOL. I have a sunshine son and night daughter now.

SO ANYWAYS, I recommend following my bluesky + main twitter for updates revolving around these guys but I will TRY to post more oc stuff here. DO NOT quote me on that though.

BASIC INFO TO KNOW FOR NOW:

Beatrix / Bloto: Beatrix is Bloto's human disguise they turn into in order to blend with mortals ever since they were banished from Montero ( The Daimon relam ) to the earthly-mortal one; Purgatorio, mostly referred to as Atorio. They were kicked out due to attempted murder of a friend who had betrayed them. . . Now they are stuck on Atorio with cuffs that can't come off as punishment, but it allows them to turn into a human while working as a art teacher and protector at a church+academy.

Dante: A close friend to Beatrix/Bloto who is into the paranormal and the supernatural while trying to solve his family curse. . . Maybe the mysterious but heroic Daimon in town can help him? He does not know Bloto IS Beatrix in the earlier parts of the story.

Jewels / Jezebel : A happy go-lucky Daimon who was banished for not performing their daily qouta, so she would be shunned to the human realm. Even so, she has never thrived better than before as fashion designer on Atorio referring to herself as Jewels. She and Beatrix/Bloto at first don't see eye to eye as polar opposites, but eventually become good friends. Especially after learning the two are both Daimons.

Father/Headmaster Donovan : One of the earliest Daimons exiled for unknown reasons and the man who found Bloto/Beatrix after their banishment. . . To not give attention, he raises them as his own as an act but clearly shows deep care for them. Runs a pretty normal church/academy.

Other character info will come out later as I'm drawing more stuff but that's basic info you have for now lolz.

#inkartz #inkrambles #orginal characters #digital arwork #artists on tumblr #clip stuido paint #my ocs #Purgat0ri0 #oclore #send me asks

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cobrakaisb · 8 months ago

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end of beginning

summary: you’re back at camp half-blood after spending months on the princess andromeda and all you feel is the haunting of luke’s presence

featuring: SPOILERS for BOTL and TLO!!!, brief spoilers for the outsiders (just mentions of a quote from the book), 3+1, multi-pov: reader, luke, and percy, angst and only angst (i cried a little while writing)

word count: 2.4k

author’s note:guys, the end is near. there’s one blurb, and then the post heroes of olympus fic. so crazyyyyyy

series masterlist ||| previous ||| next

connor and travis stoll

the hustle and bustle of the city was a nice contrast from the stifling loneliness at camp half-blood. most people wouldn’t describe the hidden oasis buried between the forest and long island sound that way. they’d talk about the camaraderie between cabins, or the sense of family within their own. maybe they’d emphasize the humidity, and the temperature controlled barrier which prevented major storms or severe weather. then again people like clarisse and annabeth, those with a warrior mindset, wouldn’t feel the cloak of loneliness as they’re too busy with clashing swords and grunts of pain characteristic only to the training arena.

none of those things, however, were pertinent to you. so, when connor and travis invited you to the farmer’s market to sell the overflow of camp strawberries, you jumped at the chance to escape.

“i can’t believe we made it here in one piece,” connor exclaims, closing the door to the van once it's in park.

“hey! i needed to practice my driving at some point,” travis defends, meeting you and connor at the back doors.

while the boys argue back and forth about who’s the better driver — you or travis — you start unloading the cartons of strawberries. the farmers market is already starting to get busy. between other vendors setting up their booths and the diehard organic hippies already perusing the options, it seems like today will be an eventful day.

and you were right.

your eyes catch on someone lurking a couple booths over from yours. the guy is tall and wearing a leather jacket, so he sticks out like a sore thumb while sifting through the oranges in front of him. you squint in his direction. he looks vaguely familiar but you can’t place it. he must feel someone staring, because he turns to face you. you gasp at the sight of him, dropping the small carton of strawberries in your hand.

“you okay?” connor asks, approaching you.

you shake your head, crouching down to pick up the berries before they get squished under someone’s birkenstocks. connor is right beside you, speeding up the process. you can’t help it when your eyes drift back to the direction where you saw luke, but the person is gone.

you let out a sigh of relief, “sorry, had a moment of clumsiness there.”

connor nods in understanding, “all good. besides, i wouldn’t expect anything less from you since i’m around. i know my good looks and charming personality make you nervous.”

you laugh loudly at his words, shoving his shoulder before he can walk away to discard the ruined berries.

annabeth chase

“the bookstore is just down this way,” annabeth exclaims, sipping on her drink from the cafe.

you nod, mustering a smile as you follow her lead. when annabeth asked you to visit her over spring break, you were hesitant, but she was insistent. there was a lot of history between the two of you, most of it revolving around your traitor boyfriend, but neither of you mentioned it. and whenever the subject did get brought up, one of you quickly changed it.

“they have so many books. and i think there’s even a record section too,” she explains, pointing toward the quaint bookshop on the corner of a street in san francisco

the awning is a faded emerald green, and the white letters detailing the store’s name are barely legible. but you can tell that it’s well loved. there’s a large bay window where a young mother and her children are sitting, flipping through a picture book with a pig and elephant character. you stop in your tracks for a minute, letting annabeth get a couple steps ahead of you.

that could’ve been us, you think, twirling the golden band around your finger three times. it should’ve been us.

“you okay?” annabeth asks, stopping at the base of the three cement steps.

you nod, taking one more fleeting glance at the little family, “fine. just lost in thought i guess. you think they’ll have a copy of the outsiders?”

“probably. maybe in the young adult section,” she answers, opening the door.

a bell chimes overhead, and the middle-aged woman behind the counter greets her warmly. annabeth stops to talk with her, while you hover awkwardly. it’s so clear to you that she’s built a life for herself, one outside of camp half-blood and her demigod status. she laughs at something the woman says, and you almost feel jealous of the fourteen year old. she’s lost so much, yet she has so much more. you can’t say the same.

there’s no one else for you. he was the one. you’ve always known that, even aphrodite confirmed that a long time ago, claiming that you two were one of her favorites. that never seems to work out though does it? her favorite couples always ending in a tragedy: romeo and juliet, orpheus and eurydice, liam neeson and natasha richardson, and now you and luke.

you won’t get a happy ending, that you’re sure of.

“you didn’t have to wait, i would’ve found you,” annabeth appears, startling you.

you wonder how long she’s been there — how long you've been staring off into space. looking down at her, you meet her inquisitive gray eyes. she’s trying to get a read on you, but you don’t want her to; it’s not what either of you need.

you grip her shoulder, the one without the tote bag, and say, “let’s go find the outsiders.”

she nods, but somehow you know the conversation isn’t over as she leads you down the aisle. the store is fairly quiet, not many shoppers except for the family, a group of college students, and the two of you so it’s easy to navigate. the young adult section is even emptier, but it still makes you feel claustrophobic. the smell of books and the thick tension is suffocating you. the teen must feel the same way, because she’s the first to break it after picking up a book.

“you don’t need to feel guilty. i don’t blame you,” she whispers.

you gulp at her words, tugging on your baby tee as you pretend to pull off a string.

“neither does percy, or anyone else at camp,” she finishes.

you nod, picking up a copy of the outsiders. the cover is black and white, featuring a photo of a boy in a leather jacket. his face is turned downwards, but you see him clear as day: brown eyes and a white scar.

“you know what i like about this book?” you ask, but the question’s rhetorical.

“i like johnny’s take on the world. there’s so much good in it, but we get so caught up in the bad that we forget…we forget how beautiful it is,” you say, choking on your words as tears well up in your eyes.

“i think he forgot that too,” you whisper, and you don’t need to specify who you’re referring to, annabeth just knows.

she throws her arms around you, squeezing your abdomen tightly. you close your eyes, struggling to hold back the tears, but a few drip down your cheeks anyways. you sniffle, and she squeezes you even tighter. when she pulls away, you look over her shoulder. you swear you meet brown eyes and a white scar.

may castellan

luke hated westport. everyone there was the same, entitled, stuck up, and selfish. all the houses stood in a line. each one an exact replica of the one before it: pocket white fence, pristine green lawn, and a faded blue siding. his house, or rather his mother’s house, was no different.

everything looked exactly the same as when he returned at fourteen. her kitchen window looked over the front yard and main road. he can picture her standing there, washing dishes and mumbling unanswered prayers to a god who never cared. he hates how easily she fell victim to him and he hates how emotional it makes him.

at same time, there’s something different about his childhood home. a place that should have been filled with love, warmth, and happiness no longer harbors the coldness and terror he always associated with his childhood. somehow, the house feels more homey. there’s a floral wreath hanging on the wooden door, hidden behind the screen. he spots a vase of sunflowers on the kitchen windowsill; their bright yellow petals starkly contrasting the darkness inside. the house almost looks lived in. if a neighbor were to walk by, they would never guess it’s inhabited by a crazy person. luke would never guess that, especially with the beat-up red pickup parked out front.

wait, he thinks, doing a double take.

he’s seen that red pickup before, but he can’t figure out where. he looks at the license plate, hoping that will give him a clue into the owner. it’s navy blue and yellow, a clear sign that it’s from new york and that alone makes luke think of you.

he’s come to visit a couple times, and each time he’s almost gotten caught. at the farmers market with connor and travis it was pure luck that he startled you into dropping the berries. when he showed up to talk to annabeth, it was a coincidence that you were there too. (it’s not like he had silena beauregard keeping tabs on you or anything.) but even if he did, hypothetically have her reporting back to him about your every move, he never expected you to be at his mom’s house.

the front door opens, and he can hear your voice ring out into the stillness of the neighborhood: “i’ll be back later this week, okay may?”

“shit,” he seethes, crouching down behind one of the neighbor’s suvs.

he hears a commotion in the house, and watches as you wait patiently at the door. his mother must say something to you, because you smile softly and nod your head. he wishes he could hear her words, but he knows you’ll catch him with one move.

that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says a small voice inside his head.

he shakes his head at those words, curls bouncing from the action. he runs a hand through his hair, frustration and anger building up inside him. he ruined this, not you. and no matter what he truly wants, luke knows there’s nothing he can do to win you back.

the creaking of the wooden porch stairs and slam of the screen door draw his attention back to what’s right in front of him. it takes a bitter laugh out of him; ironic how he’s longed for your proximity and now that he has it he’s ignoring it.

you freeze at the gate, left hand on the hinge and right on your ring. your eyes dart around the neighborhood, looking for the cause of the noise, but you never find him. he watches as you release the breath you’re holding and twirl the golden band three times. opening the gate, you step towards the truck.

he waits patiently, not daring to move a muscle until your car pulls away from his mother’s house. even then, when the engine is nothing but a faint rumble in the distance, he doesn’t move. he remains crouched behind the suv for a few extra minutes, gathering both his courage and sanity. with a final breath, he gets up, fixes his jacket and approaches the house.

“mom,” he calls out, knocking on the door, “i’m home.”

the door swings open and her arms wrap around him. she smells faintly of burnt cookies, but it’s overpowered by shea butter and coconut shampoo. she’s crying into his shoulder, mumbling about how she always knew it wasn’t true; that wasn’t her son’s fate.

but she has no idea, luke thinks, that i break everything i touch.

luke castellan

percy hears your scream before he sees you.

it’s loud, shrill, and gut-wrenching. his heart sinks to the bottom of his stomach and bile climbs up his throat.

i’m gonna be sick, he thinks.

percy faced a lot today. silena died. ethan died. annabeth almost died. now he’s stuck watching as you try to console luke.

you’re sitting beside him, bow and arrows haphazardly thrown to the side. there’s a cut on your shoulder caked with dry blood, and other bruises litter your body. he imagines that the pain from them is the least of your concerns.

“it’s okay. you’ll be okay,” you keep whispering, cupping the older boy’s cheeks.

luke grabs your left wrist, his thumb rubbing over your engagement ring. “i’m okay sweetheart. you’re gonna be okay.”

he approaches the two of you. it feels like he’s intruding on an intimate scene. percy feels a strange sense of deja vu when luke squeezes your wrist before returning his gaze to him. he wishes that he just caught the two of you sharing a vape instead of your final goodbye.

“never again percy…don’t let it happen again,” luke croaks out.

percy promises that he won’t, all while watching you. you bite your bottom lip, turning away from luke as you squeeze your eyes shut. he knows you're trying to be strong, but it doesn’t work as tears leak past your lash line and create tracks on your grimy face.

“i love you,” luke whispers, and you echo the words right back.

when his eyes close, percy swears that you’ll go with him, falling on top of annabeth’s dagger. but all you do is sit there, cradling luke’s face in your hands. you trace over his features: the bridge of his nose, his cupid’s bow, and the white scar.

percy placed a hand on your shoulder, giving it a reaffirming squeeze. you sniffle, placing luke’s head down gently onto the destroyed cobblestone. your fingers brush his curls away from his forehead, and you unclasp the necklace resting against his collarbone. it’s a silver chain with three clay beads and a golden ring to match yours. you pocket the jewelry, and force a drachma in his hands.

wiping your nose, you get up from the ground, collect your bow and arrows, and head towards the elevator.

percy thinks he should call out to you, beg you to face the olympian council with him, but he’s stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

“leave her. my daughter won’t be joining you percy jackson.”

taglist: @percabethlvr @iwantahockeyhimbo @hottiewifeyyyy @loveryoushouldcomeoverr @maraschinocherry3 @used2beeeeee @harrysnovia @cami-is-reading @mxtokko @cxcilla @obxstiles @dracoslovergirl @vanessa-rafesgirl @l1a-pjosversion @vikimontethegirlblogger

#luke castellan x reader #luke castellan x you #luke castellan imagine #luke castellan oneshot #luke castellan fanfic #luke castellan fluff #luke castellan angst #luke castellan #luke castellan pjo #pjo luke #pjo fic #all american bitch series #cobrakaisb writing

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