#basically I thought this would be a cool video idea

[themuseofaphrodite]

know that you and i shouldn’t feel like a crime ✧ OP81

summary: after viewing a series of viral tiktoks, you decide to partake in the “hear me out” cake trend with your very wary boyfriend.

trigger warnings: suggestive & mature content, swearing

word count: 1k

⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹

One of your most surprising qualities was that you were a TikTok fiend, especially since you were usually down to earth and didn’t use your phone much in public — but for good reason. Your “For You” page was filled with some of the weirdest, wackiest things: dangerous extreme sport challenges, odd filters used on pets for a quick laugh… the list could go on. Each video was a perfect way to destroy your reputation as the effortlessly suave McLaren princess.

You slouched on the creaky recliner next to Oscar Piastri, your boyfriend of almost three years, and sighed loudly, garnering his attention immediately. He was perfectly attuned to your every movement and breath, which was why you liked him so much. Nothing was worse than a nonchalant man, and Oscar was anything but that.

“Hm, darling? Everything OK?” Oscar looked up at you from where he was sitting, pausing the television with a careless flick of his hand. “It’s getting late, maybe you’re tired? You did have a long day.”

You shrugged one shoulder, feigning coolness. “No, I’m fine, I’m not tired. I just have an idea.”

Oscar raised one eyebrow, already on alert. That last sentence always warned him that something was afoot, and nine times out of ten, it was never anything good. “Oh, no. What now?”

“There’s a trend going around” — this made Oscar visibly tense, a vein in his neck going taut as he waited for you to continue. He disliked the viral pranks and never laughed at any of them, to your dismay — “and I was hoping you’d be willing to participate in one of them with me?” You batted your eyelashes, giving him puppy dog eyes, a trick you knew he couldn’t resist.

“If my mates find out about this,” he warned you, waving a finger menacingly at you like a stereotypical villain. “No posting this like you did last time.” You stifled a laugh at the thought of the last prank you engaged in, and the way it had broken the Internet when you posted it on social media. Oscar had not forgiven you, and it had been almost a year.

You shook your head solemnly, extending your pinky finger out to him so he would interlock his own in an unspoken vow. “I promise you I won’t post it.”

“Good.” He pursed his lips, obviously remembering the media disaster that had unfolded last time. McLaren had not been happy with him in the slightest, to say the least. He was still making it up to them even now. “What’s the trend?”

You edged yourself closer to him, tilting your chin conspiratorially and speaking in a low whisper. “Hear me out.”

Oscar’s eyebrows furrowed, clueless. He scrolled through TikTok very rarely, mainly preferring to stick to television, and sometimes Instagram reels, so he had no idea what you were talking about. “Pardon?”

“So, basically,” you explained, your voice bright with mischief, “you have to think of a few characters, or people, that you think are attractive, although others might disagree with you. For example, hear me out,” you started, a moment’s pause between your response. “Bumblebee from Transformers.”

Oscar’s jaw dropped as the name clicked. “The robot? You want to tell me that you find a machine attractive?”

“He’s protective and sweet, and has really good music taste,” you defended, pouting.

“Goddamn, Y/N, starting off strong.” Oscar hummed under his breath, thinking. “Hear me out, Megan Fox but in Jennifer’s Body.”

You groaned loudly, annoyed. “That’s not a ‘hear me out’. Everyone agrees that Megan Fox in that film was beautiful. It has to be something unhinged, like, hear me out” — you clucked your tongue, pondering over the various choices floating around in your mind — “the Goldfish cracker on the front of the bag.”

Oscar made a distinct choking noise, his face flushing red. “An animal? God, Y/N. I should report you to the police so they can put you behind bars.”

You swatted him on the shoulder, barely missing him since his reflexes were superhuman. “Try again, Osc. Really shock me with this next one, please.”

“Hear me out…Belle from Beauty and the Beast.” Oscar waited for your approval, and you sighed, throwing your hands up in the air in surrender. “What? How was that not good? She’s a cartoon!”

“Everyone loves Belle! She’s fierce, intelligent, and stunning. All qualities that are conventionally attractive!” You shook your head. “Come on. Hear me out, a string bass.”

Oscar’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “What the — Please tell me you’re joking, love. There’s no way you could find an instrument attractive.”

“A bass is tall, deep-pitched, and mysterious. Just what I like in a man.” You beamed up at him. “OK, Oscar. Don’t disappoint me.”

He side-eyed you, tapping his fingers on his lap as he thought. “I have one.” You watched him with bated breath, hoping that he would finally catch on. “Hear me out, Sydney Sweeney, in general.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I give up, Oscar. I should’ve known that this wouldn’t have worked. Lando would be so much better to do this with… Let me ask him if he’s free.”

Oscar rolled his eyes, pulling you onto his lap before you could escape, and giving you a quick peck to your lips. “Sorry, darling. Better luck next time?”

You huffed. “Whatever, Oscar. I forgot you were an inadequate, basic white boy.”

Oscar nudged his nose against your jaw, whispering in a husky, deep voice. “Hear me out, my girlfriend, Y/N L/N. She might be batshit crazy sometimes, but she’s absolutely breathtaking. When she’s underneath me, begging for my cock like a good girl? It’s a fucking work of art.”

You suppressed a shiver, looping your arm and burying yourself against him, arousal dancing under your skin. “Fuck, OK. You win.”

He kissed you again, a smirk dancing on his lips. “Oh, I know. I always do. Future world champion, remember?”

“Arrogant prick,” you muttered, but your curses were swallowed up by a new wave of kisses Oscar pressed against your lips.

⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹

[personinthepalace]

Odd Squad First and Last Lines

Happy 9th Anniversary to Odd Squad!

[star-anise]

Currently getting my socks clean blown off by Rethinking Narcissism, by Dr. Craig Malkin. Which I found, in a roundabout way, from this video on Midsommar, grief, and narcissism.

Tonight I woke up from a nap and accidentally took my morning meds, so I'm going to be up for a few hours because of the meth. In place of sleep, I'll try to roughly sum up some basic ideas proposed by the research the book is based on:

That traits of "narcissism" like entitlement, grandiosity, and feeling special are not inherently toxic. There are times and places they are appropriate and beneficial. If you show up at a hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest, you should not sit and wait to be seen after people with earaches and coughs. (Actually, medical systems are designed to prioritize people with more urgent needs, and you qualify under that system. You are special and are deserving of different treatment than those others, which is why making your needs known, even insisting on it if you're not listened to appropriately the first time, is an extremely good idea. It keeps you from bleeding to death on the floor, and keeps the hospital from getting its pants sued off by your heirs.)

It is more useful to view "narcissism" not as an inherent immutable personality trait, but as a cluster of coping mechanisms. As previously stated, there are times they are exactly the right coping mechanism for the job. However, people we call "narcissists" tend to cling to these ones even when they become detrimental to themselves and others, often because they lack other ways of regulating their emotions and getting their needs met. And that is something they can change, if a person is willing to put in sincere and difficult work. It is not usually fast change; it's a matter of years, not weeks. But a skillbuilding approach turned Borderline Personality Disorder from an immutable curse to a fully treatable (though not quickly treatable) condition, and there's a lot of hope that it can do the same for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Meanwhile, there's an opposite end to the narcissism spectrum, and it is also pathological and destructive to hang out there all the time. It's an aversion, or even a resistance, to expecting yourself or other people to treat your own feelings, thoughts, ideas, needs, or preferences as important. For Greek mythology reasons, its proposed name is Echoism.

Unfortunately, because most of the damage echoism does is, by its very nature, localized to its sufferer and their own personal relationships, its downsides aren't often talked about. In fact, it's often seen as an ideal moral state, a kind of altruism or saintliness everyone should strive for. As a pathological coping mechanism a person is trapped in, though, it's often more a fear-based reflex than a conscious and deliberate attempt to achieve some real and specific good. It's not actually as beneficial as being able to recognize your needs, desires, positive aspects, and areas of competence or excellence, and bring them forward in your relationships with other people and yourself.

To me this has all been a cross between a gut-punch and a cool, sweet drink of water. There have been other ways to describe echoism over the years, but this feels like the most concise and useful one I've seen in ages.

It specifically puts its pin down in the middle of the moral debate a lot of people struggle with—"What right do I have to put myself forward? What hope do I have of being seen and accepted? Isn't it better not to burden anybody else?"—and says that the problem is not feeling in touch with either side of the equation, but specifically, the inability to move from one part of the spectrum to another when it's merited by circumstances.

When I was a child, I thought Echoism was the answer. It was my ideal. I thought it was what would get me the love and acceptance I wanted, and would keep me safe from the pain of rejection or not being understood. I had no idea it would actually, in fact, be the primary cause of alienation and loneliness for the rest of my life.

Now I'm so deeply thankful I couldn't fully achieve it, in practical terms. As hard as I tried to erase myself, there were always things I loved too much to suppress. I still found ways to express and discover myself in the books I read, the stories I wrote, the intellectual work of school and the experience of pursuing hobbies I loved, my ambitions to be helpful even when they demanded I stop being selfless, and the relationships where I felt safe enough to experience love and acceptance even if I didn't think I deserved them.

There's this question I found a while back that echoed in my bones: Who am I allowed to be around you? Because that's what I felt like, as a child. If I wanted to engage with other people and minimize my risk of harm, it was my job to bend into a pretzel and fit the shape they wanted. And thank god, thank god, thank god, I couldn't fully do it. Despite everything, there were parts of me too strong and bright to lop off completely to get my arms and legs inside the carriage. I was able to take care of myself and let them grow in secret until I found social places I could let them out again. Despite myself, I found ways to grow and thrive, well beyond the trauma that said I shouldn't have.

[thatdeadaquarius]

Topic: Genshin impact.

au: Sagau.

idea: So what if you had the powers of every character you played as in every game you played and then get isekaid into genshin impact with imposter au. I imagine it goes smth like

Zhongli: “I will have order!”

reader, Who played Roblox as someone who lagged the game (explanation: I’m pretty sure ping is also how time works in games. If you can control the flow of ping you can control the flow of time in games.): “ZA WARUDO!”

Heyyy!! Thanks for waiting for the reply/response from my slow ass :0

So they did clarify what they meant/expand so imma just copy paste that here!

��k now I remember. So basically imma write it here since it’s easier: Basically you don’t have to (but you can) transform into the character that has those set of powers but if you do those powers are enhanced.”

Sun: Reader (”you”/they/them)

Orbit: Headcanons-ish, Light Imposter AU (as in, NOT Yandere/Dark), mild crossover elements bc Shapeshifter Shenanigans™️

Stars: bro idek

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: mild cussing, genshin typical mild violence, & Trigger Warnings: none known.

Please comment if I missed any. /gen

☆

so fair warning,, ive never seen jojo bizarre, but i appreciate i come off well-read/watched? LMAO

so im just gonna kinda,, guess? like just cycle thru diff. random media, and im hoping both me and you reading this will have a fun time (as this is a little challenge, but i like it so ill give it a shot, dont kno if its a good one but- 😅)

so to set the scene, of how u got to this point, ykno of running like ur life (maybe?) depends on u running around different teyvat countries,

u thought it was weird everyone knew a little too much about you?? (ofc theyve heard u during gaming, they know u the same way we all know Markiplier, get it?)

then a bunch of NPCs/Vision users/Archons?? were REALLY invested in talking to you, which freaked u out even more

and by the time you saw Zhongli, yknow, just the oldest god in game, making a fast-walk towards you, ykno the retired god who didnt move an inch when an old water god attacked Liyue for a test, is now hurrying to you???

ur logically get so fucking scared sm shits abt to go down, u just start running

it isnt until ur reaching for a ledge and some webbing shoots out of ur arm (from a glitchy little spot on ur arm, where it could be coming out of ur skin, but sometimes its a blue and red bracelet)

it latched onto the nearest building, and thats how u find out u can grapple ur way, literally Spiderman style, out of the harbor

and bro, idk if it would be fun, or confusing and stressful, or maybe both?? to just find out u can use any video game power from any game youve played before as you go running from countries bc for some freaky reason they know too much abt you/are pursuing you-

dUDE- they had small statues of you in like every little section of their cities

u head to Mondstadt and as Venti comes screaming and flying at you (in excitement, but ur freaked), u go to hold a hand up and suddenly ur holding a heavy stone tablet that unleashes some holographic yellow chains that freeze him in place-?? why is this familiar-

oh my god u have the sheikah slate from Breath of the Wild,

and as ur booking it out of there, u manage to get ahold of a sword, and u know exactly how to use it to knock back favonius knights trying to stop you (they are concerned for their god who is just unleashing random powers on ppl, pls let Grandmaster Jean just talk to you Your Majesty-!!)

by the time you teleport ur way to Inazuma, (bc u still have this worlds access to ur player/traveler’s powers), ur trying to find a nice place to stay for a little bit

at least in that sweet spot of the Raiden not noticing/finding you, while things cool down on the main continent, before moving on,

and u get some tools to help fashion just a little shelter, bc u dont have any money/mora rn, and ur able to literally build a house???

a mailbox pops up and thanks you for renting with Tom Nook???? As in Animal Crossing-

and rlly if the BOTW/slate thing didnt clue u into video game powers, then this definitely would tbh lmao

right as u see Yae Miko circling ur house, with an armful of books? ..is she planning to thru them at you??, u get the hell out of dodge before her favorite god can follow along

(she knows ur prefrences in books and got authors/trends to start so youd have plenty to read, and she was making sure it was ur house before politely dropping them off! how was she to know thatd spook their favorite God, Ei?!)

u get to Sumeru and think ur safe, hiding in an abandoned forest watcher outpost (1 person treehouse rlly) when Nahida shows up in ur dreams,

and u just,

walk out of the dream, into reality, and possess a nearby ruin guard so u can sleep in peace, bc she cant access a robot,

that one baffled u as you re-possessed ur own body before realizing-

Five Nights at Freddy’s. 💀

U cant do that forever, so u try Fontaine, hoping Neuvillette/Furina wont rlly give af abt you, plus theyre the latest region, so maybe they have the least exposure to whatever the other archons didnt like abt you??

u get there and are immediately summoned to court, and right as the mekas show up to escort you, jfc they have a mecha army

(meanwhile, theyre thinking, yknow. high profile guest/our god of gods. ofc we need state of the art mekas to escort them, its only polite-)

meanwhile ur cape has now become wings, and a mask covers ur face as you glide and fly ur way over the city in an attempt to get to where u assume Snezhnaya is

it doesnt occur to you the game until ur running out of stamnia and catch ur reflection in the waters of fontaine, Sky: Children of the Light

u hope the Tsaritsa’s dislike for other gods/Celestia doesnt extend to ur otherworldly presence so ur just hoping for the best atp tbh

tbh youd forget what all powers you have, and the absolute chaos ur causing urself as u try to desperately rememeber what games youve played thru ur entire life is NOT helping to reduce confusion when u randomly wake up with elf ears (legend of zelda/botw) or get dragged into another ruin machine when u fall asleep/faint/do smth u guess mimics death lmao- (fnaf) 💀

…

(meanwhile the Tsaritsa does get wind ur coming this way, and just, makes the people have a parade/festival to celebrate you coming,

she did also have to get Pierro/Captaino to physically restrain some of them from going ahead to meet/escort you to the palace, she’d heard how the others scared u off, and was, ironically, hoping the warm welcome would clear things up)

☆

well that was, something. 😃🫠

sorry lil car, that was such a fun idea idk if i did it justice!! i thought itd be too op to include every media youve consumed ever, so i kept it to video games, (which, could u cheat the system if youve played smash bros??)

i hope it was at least a decent read, and sorry im half asleep so i was not v funny this time around, but, again, hope u got smth out of it 😭

</3

on another note, im having my wisdom teeth surgery this friday, send whatever u got my way, prayers, blessings, good vibes, ill take anything im nervous 🙃

have a good week guys!

Safe Travels Lil Car,

💀♒

If you wanna join a taglist, DM me what for! "Pspspsss, please tag me for [All SAGAU posts, Only SAGAU Language AUs, diff fandom, etc.]!"

(If you ever wanna drop, just DM me! "No more taglists/[specifically this AU/fandom] please!")

♡the beloveds♡

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If ur tag doesnt work, pls check ur settings to see if ur a "searchable blog"!! Its not the same as the Ai selling data thing.

[chaos0pikachu]

4 Minutes and the Cinematography of Nipples

I said before that I thought 4 Minutes was pretty instantaneously the best looking BL on the market for 2024 after one episode. Which, not gonna lie, is a pretty big fucking claim. There’s been a lot of BL that’s come out that’s looked good, and I do think there’s been a steady improvement overall in the market in the last few years. Personally I think Japanese and Korean BL have a stronger production quality over a majority of Thai BL but like, if that’s a hot take I guess I prefer my food spicy. 

The point being~ if I’m gonna make such a hyperbolic statement, well I better back it up right? 

So I’m gonna break down a few scenes from the first episode, what I liked about them, why they worked for me, and why on a technical level I think 4 Minutes has just got it going on.

For better readability you can also check out this essay here.

Sidenote: my google docs kept trying to autocorrect “Bible” to “the Bible” and idk how to teach google I mean the hot Thai actor and not the book of Jesus. 

To start, I’m going to break down this scene featuring Great and his nepo baby cat: 

I thought starting with this scene would be good because it’s such a low-key scene and honestly making these simplistic scenes visually interesting is very difficult! But if you have the basics down, the foundations of cinematography and film making, these simpler scenes can be really memorable. 

Like yeah we’re all gonna remember this scene because shirtless Bible and oh my god Akira!? - I have only recently learned who Akira is; why is this cat getting a bigger bag than me? - but beyond that, what makes it cool to watch? What makes it interesting? What information does it showcase to the audience? 

One thing I added to the video was a grid for the rule of thirds. 

Rule of thirds is a shot composition technique applied to both film and photography. It’s the grid you see if you film a homevideo and helps a Director and Cinematographer figure out where to place the subject or subjects of the shot. The idea is the gridlines show you where you “should” place the subject(s) of said shot. 

Like everything, the rule of thirds is a guideline in filmmaking, not a hard and fast unbreakable rule. Filmmakers like Wes Anderson like to play more with central composition shots, rather than ROT. 

Anyway on to the opening shot, right after our credits and we’re moving into the shot. 

To start, the first thing I notice is the scene’s color grading. Color grading in film is the manipulation of raw film footage to create specific color tones throughout a project. Sometimes this grading is more pointed and obvious, think The Matrix, while in other films it’s not as obvious but still very prominent, think Killers of the Flower Moon. 

It’s not that the before credits scene looks entirely, jarringly different from the opening scene, but the hospital scene is surrounded by whites and blue tones, it’s darker, and only a single source of light exists. It gives the entire scene a much more frantic, uneasy aesthetic but it’s not so far off from the darker muted tones of the next scene that it feels jarring or out of place. 

The second big thing I noticed in the episode is the use of aspect ratio. I’m not 100% sure what aspect ratio the production used exactly, but the use of widescreen as opposed to full screen in my opinion, gives the episode a more cinematic feel to it in comparison to other Thai BLs. 

Example, if you look at Century of Love (2024) it appears to be filmed in the standard full screen - which I believe is 16:9? - while 4 Minutes is widescreen (thus the black bars at the top and bottom). Widescreen can give a show a more “movie like” quality to it which is part of the vibes I get from 4 Minutes. 

(source)

Onto Great’s actual introduction scene.

We’re not starting the shot with static movement, but with a camera panning right. I’ve talked about camera panning and such in BL before and it’s something I’ve found doesn’t happen as often as it should. Which is a shame! It’s such a simple technique but it adds so much. 

Imagine if we entered the frame with a static center shot, and then a cut to Great sleeping and turning off his alarm clock, and then another cut to above the bed. Think about how much more boring that could be visually. 

Instead, we enter the scene with movement, panning over and creating some interesting visual framing. 

So here’s our opening shot, do you notice anything interesting? To start, what I like about this shot other than the panning movement in, is that we don’t see Great’s face yet. In fact we don’t see his face in full until about 30 seconds into the scene. This builds anticipation, yeah we all know what Bible looks like, but for the audience who doesn’t this helps build anticipation. 

Who is this character? What does he look like? What’s his deal? 

It also engages the audience more, if you notice part of the composition of the shot has Great in the mid-ground slightly blurred out, while the foreground emphasizes the things on his desk. He’s distant from us, the audience, sleeping off his hangover not yet ready to “join” the world yet. 

Here’s another two more things I like about this shot:

Lines. 

Using lines and shapes can make a scene more visually interesting and invoke different feelings to the viewer. In this shot, I get a sense of symmetry, the camera panning right, lightly drags across the screen alongside the lines below and above Great, almost creating a frame within a frame effect. As if Great is boxed into a clock in and of itself. 

You can also see the use of balance in the scene as well, connecting back to that visual theme of symmetry as well as blocking our view of Great’s face. The lava lamb and champagne bottle are almost the same height, which helps create balance in the shot. The champagne bottle informs us Great has been drinking or does drink since it’s positioned so close to his bed, whilst also continuing to hide his face away from the viewer. 

I also like that the lava lamp is a bright spot of color. The tone of the scene is mostly muted greens, and gray, but the bright orange lava lamp and even the pink champagne bottle draw our attention but don’t overwhelm us either. It provides the scene with some warmth but doesn’t offset the overall tone of the color grading. 

And then, the last bit of this shot:

We have Great knocking over the champagne bottom, and turning off his alarm clock. Notice that the alarm clock and the champagne bottle hit those ROT dots almost exactly. There’s also the use of lines by the length of Great’s arm - I just forgot to add a line I’m a failure, a fake, fml - we see him knock over the bottle, and then we follow the line of his arm directly to the alarm clock which is also a shape, a circle. 

I like that they used a clock with a specific notable shape, since by the end of this scene the clock is relevant to the story as a whole. Using a shape makes the clock more visually noticeable and memorable to the audience. 

So in the next cut we’re above Great - just like Great’s gonna be above Tyme, fuckin hell I’m corny - in a medium-full shot and there’s a couple things I really like here. 

I really like the use of lines here with the bed going in one direction but Great’s body going another. It’s disconcerting, and off kilter a bit. 

The use of patterns plus the opposing symmetry, whereas in the previous shot the lava lamp and champagne bottle were providing balance, here one side of the bed is patterned, while the other isn’t. This creates a sense of imbalance and makes the shot more visually interesting.

This medium-full shot at a high angle makes Great smaller, and continues to showcase his dishevelment, keeping him distant from the world itself. Also notice the lack of color here as well. 

What could this say about Great as a character? Or his story? 

So this next cut is the one that actually inspired me to write this essay to begin with and know what I’ma eat some crow here. I originally said it was a great ROT shot but I was wrooooooong. It’s definitely a center composition shot. 

Notice as well, the bed itself is its own shape - rectangle - center in the frame, and yet the shot almost looks unbalanced again because of that singular patterned rug. It’s the only pattern in the entire shot, not even Great’s pillows have noticeable patterns on them. 

The above view camera angle in a full shot creates almost an omnipresent feel, as if the audience - or something else? - were looking down upon Great. Whose face we still haven’t seen! It makes him smaller, less powerful, and almost vulnerable. Shots like this are often used in horror films like James Wan’s Malignant (2021) where the horror spector will be looking down above the would-be victim. 

Another thing I like about this scene though is we have Great moving. It would be simpler and easier to have his phone just by his alarm clock, or under his pillow, but think about how much more visually interesting it is that he has to move down the bed and reach for his phone. It creates action in an actionless low stakes scene. 

And now, 30 whole seconds in and we’ve finally seen Great’s face! 

Fun fact, with the ROT grid the gridlines fall right across Bible’s nipples. That’s not a film analysis, just something I noticed entirely intentionally. Thanks Madam Director Ning Bhanbhassa Dhubthien.

The actual shot is in center composition again, as Great rolls over and reveals his face the camera begins to zoom in. 

This creates movement in the scene instead of leaving the camera to statically observe it’s now, finally, inviting the audience to meet Great. Pulling us in towards him whereas before we were kept at a distance. Great’s awake and, well as ready to meet the world as somebody with a raging hangover can be. 

I also like how Bible is moving constantly in this scene; he rubs his eyes and nose, he twitches his fingers, titles his head back and forth, etc it’s nothing revolutionary but it’s appreciated. 

When the scene cuts, we get this shot: 

I didn’t put the red dot on his nipple, it just landed there. This is all Madam Director Ning chepie. 

But you can see how Great’s body is landing on all those gridlines pretty solidly. Also in the background we see his alarm clock again, a bright blurred circle in the distance. I also like the angle of this shot, as it creates depth in the frame, with Great’s head being in the foreground his lower body in the mid-ground and the background blurred out. 

What follows is Akira appearing in frame. Which was really difficult to capture so I don’t have a screenshot. But what I really like is Akira entering the frame out of focus. They could have just cut to Akira, but instead they opted for Akira to enter the frame which is more interesting. 

When we do cut, Akira is firmly on one of those dots so we don’t miss them in the frame. I think it’s also interesting that we’ve pulled out again, into a mid-full shot, hanging above Great, and we see that clear symmetry line again between the patterned rug and the regular carpet. 

I also really love that when we got to Great sweet-talking Akira and feeding them we’re not just doing a cut, we’re panning downwards which continues to add movement to the scene. And we get that moneyed sponsor shot! 

Durex can’t pay for everything okay?

So in the final bit of this scene we get focus on Great, who’s in focus, before he gets up and leaves the frame where the camera then focuses on the clock behind him. 

See how in the first frame the background is all blurred out, but once Great walks out of the frame - again, great that he walks out, movement!! Y’all don’t understand how boring 1000 Stars was for me to watch because of the lack of this stuff okay? - and then the focus shifts to the clock. Which is round. 

God I know that sounds so dumb, but imagine the clock without that ring light bit on it, it’s just a tiny little rectangle. Not as fun or interesting to look at right? Or as noticeable especially from a distance? 

This shift in focus also tells us “this is important” whatever “this” is. The subject of the shot goes from Great to the alarm clock but they are positioned as equally important. We’re meant to pay attention to this seemingly innocuous item, which we learn later in the episode is time. We’re meant to remember and note that time will be important to the story - I know with a title like 4 Minutes you’d fucking hope time would be important but have y’all ever read Youtube comments? It’s rough out there for visual comprehension okay? 

So all in all this scene is only 1 minute and 40 seconds give or take. It’s very short, but I don’t think it was boring at all. I think it’s a really solid introduction to a main character. Think, Korn didn’t get this much time to showcase his introduction, his scene is shorter - though also well done - which showcases which character is more of a story priority. 

This scene eases the audience into the story, inviting us to wake up into the world like Great is. It uses techniques like lines, shapes, symmetry, color and focus to make what could be a very boring scene into an interesting one. 

There’s so so much I probably and certainly missed, I’m far from an expert, but I hope I was able to articulate what I liked about this scene, and why I think it looks good. 

Stay tuned for more if I can manage to focus long enough to breakdown more scenes lol

Also red dots on Bible’s nipples are just funny to me it be what it be. 

Further Reading: 

Composition in Cinematography / THE LAST OF US

Center-Framing vs Chaos-Cinema: Mad Max vs Transformers

Camera Framing: Shot Composition & Cinematography Techniques Explained [The Shot List, Ep 2]

The Ultimate Guide to Camera Shots (50+ Types of Shots and Angles in Film)

Color Grading 101 - Everything You Need to Know

Mixing Film And Digital Footage: Killers Of The Flower Moon

In Praise of Subtle Cinematography

[thecoppercompendium]

So, you want to make a TTRPG…

Image from Pexels.

I made a post a long while back about what advice you would give to new designers. My opinions have changed somewhat on what I think beginners should start with (I originally talked about probability) but I thought it might be useful to provide some resources for designers, new and established, that I've come across or been told about. Any additions to these in reblogs are much appreciated!

This is going to be a long post, so I'll continue beneath the cut.

SRDs

So, you have an idea for a type of game you want to play, and you've decided you want to make it yourself. Fantastic! The problem is, you're not sure where to start. That's where System Reference Documents (SRDs) can come in handy. There are a lot of games out there, and a lot of mechanical systems designed for those games. Using one of these as a basis can massively accelerate and smooth the process of designing your game. I came across a database of a bunch of SRDs (including the licenses you should adhere to when using them) a while back, I think from someone mentioning it on Tumblr or Discord.

SRDs Database

Probability

So, you have a basic system but want to tweak it to work better with the vision you have for the game. If you're using dice, this is where you might want to consider probability. Not every game needs this step, but it's worth checking that the numbers tell the story you're trying to tell with your game. For this, I'll link the site I did in that first post, AnyDice. It allows you to do a lot of mathematical calculations using dice, and see the probability distribution that results for each. There's documentation that explains how to use it, though it does take practice.

AnyDice

Playtesting

So you've written the rules of your game and want to playtest it but can't convince any of your friends to give it a try. Enter Quest Check. Quest Check is a website created by Trekiros for connecting potential playtesters to designers. I can't speak to how effective it is (I've yet to use it myself) but it's great that a resource like it exists. There's a video he made about the site, and the site can be found here:

Quest Check

Graphic Design and Art

Game is written and tested? You can publish it as-is, or you can make it look cool with graphics and design. This is by no means an essential step, but is useful if you want to get eyes on it. I've got a few links for this. First off, design principles:

Design Cheatsheet

Secondly, art. I would encourage budding designers to avoid AI imagery. You'll be surprised how good you can make your game look with only shapes and lines, even if you aren't confident in your own artistic ability. As another option, public domain art is plentiful, and is fairly easy to find! I've compiled a few links to compilations of public domain art sources here (be sure to check the filters to ensure it's public domain):

Public Domain Sources 1

Public Domain Sources 2

You can also make use of free stock image sites like Pexels or Pixabay (Pixabay can filter by vector graphics, but has recently become much more clogged with AI imagery, though you can filter out most of it, providing it's tagged correctly).

Pexels

Pixabay

Fonts

Turns out I've collected a lot of resources. When publishing, it's important to bear in mind what you use has to be licensed for commercial use if you plan to sell your game. One place this can slip through is fonts. Enter, my saviour (and eternal time sink), Google Fonts. The Open Font License (OFL) has minimal restrictions for what you can do with it, and most fonts here are available under it:

Google Fonts

Publishing

So, game is designed, written, and formatted. Publishing time! There are two places that I go to to publish my work: itch.io and DriveThruRPG. For beginners I would recommend itch - there's less hoops to jump through and you take a much better cut of what you sell your games for, but DriveThruRPG has its own merits (@theresattrpgforthat made great posts here and here for discovering games on each). Itch in particular has regular game jams to take part in to inspire new games. I'll link both sites:

itch.io

DriveThruRPG

Finally, a bunch of other links I wasn't sure where to put, along with a very brief summary of what they are.

Affinity Suite, the programs I use for all my layout and designing. Has an up-front cost to buy but no subscriptions, and has a month-long free trial for each.

Affinity Suite

A database of designers to be inspired by or work with. Bear in mind that people should be paid for their work and their time should be respected.

Designer Directory

An absolute behemoth list of resources for TTRPG creators:

Massive Resources List

A site to make mockups of products, should you decide to go that route:

Mockup Selection

A guide to making published documents accessible to those with visual impairments:

Visual Impairment Guidelines

A post from @theresattrpgforthat about newsletters:

Newsletter Post

Rascal News, a great place to hear about what's going on in the wider TTRPG world:

Rascal News

Lastly, two UK-specific links for those based here, like me:

A list of conventions in the UK & Ireland:

Convention List

A link to the UK Tabletop Industry Network (@uktabletopindustrynetwork) Discord where you can chat with fellow UK-based designers:

TIN Discord

That's all I've got! Feel free to reblog if you have more stuff people might find useful (I almost certainly will be)!

[alphajocklover]

Genie Glory the Game

(A [Very Late] Trade with @bigwishes. I hope you like it!) 43 followers. Rich Donaldson, also known as TF2Twink on Twitch, had 43 followers.Rich had been streaming for over 3 years now and only had 43 followers. 43 measly followers. It made him feel pathetic. It made him feel like he was useless. Yet at the same time, Rich was incredibly grateful for every one of those followers. 

Rich Donaldson had wanted to become a gaming streamer since he was a kid. It hadn’t really been a real thing until he was a teen, and most people thought he was crazy for thinking he could make money that way. Some people doubted it was a real job, some thought it was too competitive, some thought it was just a dumb idea in general. No matter what the reason, everyone in Rich’s life agreed that Rich wasn’t going to make it as a streamer. Especially his hyper religious, video game hating parents. Still Rich refused to give up. He knew it would be hard, maybe impossible, but he was passionate and felt like he had to follow his dream. That was what everyone in the movies did after all. Rich moved out, cut contact with his parents, went into debt buying the best streaming gear he could… and immediately regretted it. Rich didn’t mind losing contact with his parents. They had never been the most loving people, so he hadn’t really lost much. Except things weren’t working out like they did in the movies. Rich wasn’t making it, and worse than that he wasn’t getting any better at streaming. He was good at the games, so he knew that wasn’t the issue. The issue was… he was incredibly, painfully, horribly shy. Rich didn’t have the confidence that a streamer needed. He could barely get a word out during the stream without starting to awkwardly ramble, and even when he did he came off as awkward and weird. He wasn’t just unconfident, he was a downright nervous wreck. Still he didn’t give up. He couldn’t after everything he had thrown away to get this chance… all the sleepless nights working part time jobs to stay above water… he was in too deep. So he kept going “Hey chat! S-so t-today…” Rich took a deep breath, trying his best not to ramble “T-today I’m going to be playing a new game. I-it’s not very well known, but i-it looked cool and I’ve heard a lot of people are playing it… S-so let's get into ‘Genie Glory the Game!” Rich said, trying to be excited. Barely anyone was watching, and it was getting hard to pretend he wasn’t incredibly depressed, but he kept smiling. Genie Glory was a pretty simple game with a simple premise that had been baffling gamers for months. It was a pretty simple idea based on a classic scenario. You play a random guy who has discovered a genie’s lamp and now has 3 wishes. You make a wish by typing it into the computer, and the genie grants the wish, but usually in some twisted way that is accompanied by a pixelated animation of the player's fate. The goal is to get through all 3 wishes alive. What made the game so popular was that no one had beat it yet. Whatever AI the game used was incredibly clever and strangely creative, and to make it even more difficult, the game only allowed you to play it once. Popular streamers, actually geniuses, and even philosophers hadn’t been able to beat the game, so Rich knew beating it would make him famous.

“Ok chat. I-it’s time for our first wish… And I’m taking suggestions…” Rich said. Rich wanted to beat the game, but… he wasn’t sure how to beat this game, so he’d take all the help he could get. A few suggestions actually came across the screen ‘BasedBro69: Wish for your muscles to grow!’

‘GenieGay33: No way, that's the way to open ended! The Genie will make him grow until he pops or something’

‘MissTaken27: That's such a basic idea. Might as well ask him to wish to be a frat boy or something.’

Rich laughed at this. He knew most of his followers' usernames by heart, but BasedBro69 was new. Still the conversation he had started was kind of funny, and he figured… why not? “Ok then, why not! Lets make me a frat boy!” He said, snickering as he typed in his computer. He tried to be as specific as possible to avoid the spell being twisted “‘I wish I was an attractive, stereotypical frat boy.”

Rich laughed as he watched the pixelated version of himself grow muscular, his clothing changing to a tank top and backwards cap. He watched as the other version of him rushed a frat. Rich was certain something would go wrong, afterall he knew from first hand experience that hazing could get fucking intense, but surprisingly his character survived and got through the first wish without any incident. Rich grinned widely. Most people never even made it through the first wish, but he, a relative nobody, had managed! He stood up straighter as he watched people start to flood into the stream. He checked the chat happily. ‘GenieMan33: He actually made it with that wish? I’ll never understand this game, but good for you!’ ‘MisterRichD27: Kind of an ironic wish considering you are a frat boy. No offense.’ ‘BasedBro69: I fucking knew that would work bro! You can do this!’

Rich blushed slightly at MisterRichD27’s comment, and his flirty name. While he didn’t tend to think of himself that way, he was technically a frat boy. He had joined one after heading to college in the hopes of finding some friends. His frat brothers could be… kind of obnoxious, and very stereotypical, but they had helped him come out of his shell somewhat and even get in shape. He was still fairly shy, but he never would have gotten this far in college or with his streaming if it wasn’t for them. He chuckled at the chat, slightly embarrassed “I’ll admit, that was a weird wish, but hey, it worked so who cares!” Rich said cheerily “Ok, so what's the next wish going to be? I’m trusting you on this chat!” Rich said with what he hoped was a charming wink. ‘GenieMan33: Maybe something basic like money? That doesn’t usually work but you seem to be on a hot streak.’

‘BasedBro69: No way bro. He only gets to play once. Wish for something like fucking confidence or something. Something fun!’

‘MisterRichD27: IDK, Basedbro69 was right last time. Maybe you should wish for confidence?’ Rich shrugged. He could think up even more ways that this could go wrong, but this game had never seemed to work on logic in any of the videos he watched to prepare for this. So with a grin, he typed in his second wish “I wish I had the kind of cocky confidence that ladies love.” he said with a chuckle. He hoped it would be obvious that it was a joke, since his Twitch username, FortnightOtter44, made it obvious he was gay. He watched as the little version of him grew a big head, quite literally. Rich was worried this was leading to some type of game over, but his head deflated, his muscles grew, and a bunch of pixelated girls in bikinis ran up to the pixelated him. Rich grinned wide and tried not to cuss in celebration, not wanting to get demonetized (again). He had fucking done it! He fucking got past wish 2! He smirked as he watched the chat explode as more people tuned in ‘GenieStud33: Fuck yeah! RDH fucking did it! Knew you had it in you bro!’

‘MissRichD27: RDH is the best gamer ever! And the hottest! DM me!’

BasedBro69: HELL YEAH! You can do this bro!’ Rich, known as RDH to his fans, or RichDaHunk on Twitch, smirked, as he saw the comments roll in. He fucking knew he could get this game. He may not have been the most popular streamer on twitch, but he was a fucking good gamer and a total stud. He flexed his biceps, getting the chat riled up again in a frenzy of lust and admiration. Rich didn’t bother to look at the chat this time. He gave a smarmy, cocky smirk at the camera “I know what to put in next bros. I’m gonna wish for something fucking inevitable.” he said cockily.

He quickly typed in “I wish I was the most popular gaming streamer on Twitch”, and watched with a practiced cool confidence as the pixelated version of him gained millions of followers. The chat exploded with awe and wonder as what Rich had always known was going to happen, happened. He had won the game. He flexed his muscles for the stream, celebrating with his 43 million followers. He didn’t understand why they were all shocked. He was the coolest, hottest, douchiest gamer on twitch. Of course he fucking won!

[justatalkingface]

If society is the reason for the personality of Bakugo, why aren't there more Bakugos in society?

If "strong" quirks turn people into violent a**holes, why aren't Nejire, Tokoyami, Kaminari, and that loud wind quirk guy relatively well-adjusted to social interaction.

The answer is simple: because it isn't society's fault.

Like, don't get me wrong, it didn't help, that's for sure, but Bakugou's problem isn't society, it's that he's a jerk. Bakugou is unironically high on his own brand.

Part of that is how other people treated him, true (though it was happening even before he had a Quirk, so it's not society in the way it's usually used for Bakugou, where it's about his Quirk), because he was cool and competent as a kid, which made the kids praise him, which fed his ego, which made him want to do it more, in a vicious cycle... but even with that, there's still something unique to him that is at fault here: he's told, as a kid, that he has a good Quirk, and he can be a hero with it. This is basic, bog standard encouragement; it's a good Quirk, but he's, what, ten? That woman is probably telling every single kid that their Quirk is great. But Bakugou, though, he hears this, and his mind instantly snaps to a conclusion: he realizes that he's The Best, TM. That he's special, that he's better than everyone else. And that? That's not 'society', that's not the fault of people around him, that's Bakugou's fault, Bakugou's problem.

I'll be honest here, kids are stupid; Bakugou isn't the first kid to have a delusion of grandeur and he's not going to be the last. What makes it different with him, though, is that it's more than just a passing phase. That philosophy, his fundamental superiority, is a train of thought that remains with him for the rest of his life, and not only that, it is a cancerous logic that festers in his mind like a disease.

You know how Bakugou calls everyone else 'Extras'? That's the logical conclusion of his superiority complex, of the idea of that he alone is special, superior, the honored one: because if he's special, what is everyone else? Less then him. An extra in his story. Or, as Shigaraki would put it?

An NPC.

That's concerning. More than that, that is deeply alarming. Unironically, I think that counts as a mental disorder of some form (probably narcissism?), and it also inherently dehumanizes other people... which explains why he's so casual about hurting everyone around them.

And to be blunt? That's a very, very bad thing. Dehumanizing other people is how people are taught that it's OK to hurt others, or even kill them; fundamentally, Bakugou is radicalizing himself against everyone who isn't Bakugou.

If they are less than him, if they are not 'real people', if they are just extras... then it doesn't matter if he hurts them, insults them, because... why would it? It's not like they're actually people, it's not like they're important. They're just extras in The Great Story Of Bakugou. They're just NPCs in the Hero Game he's playing, and nothing else.

People do horrible, horrible things to NPCs in video games that they would never in a million years do to people in real life. They do it because NPCs don't matter, not like real human beings do. Think, for a minute, how you treat the random characters in Fallout or whatever, the nameless mooks you that will always more of, because they will always respawn after whatever you do to them. Think about what would happen if you did that to a real person.

You can even see it in how he acts in the various flashbacks back when he was a child: when he was young, Bakugou was brash, a bit aggressive, but largely an OK kid. But as time passed, his aggression grew, and his respect for others shrunk. He went from insulting people (at times probably accidentally), to actively bullying them. He became more and more comfortable not just verbally abusing others, but then physically hurting them. By the time canon starts, Bakugou seemed to treat, and consider, other human beings as barely more than trash, and Izuku's existence in particular as something like a cosmic mistake he was 'graciously' tolerating.

And then we find out that he was willing, in fact, to kill people. It's very likely that, if driven to a corner, that people may be willing to kill to survive, but that isn't what happened to Bakugou: he was in school. He was unironically playing cops and robbers.

And yet, Izuku's basic unwillingness to just... give up, to just sit back and let someone maim him as much as he wanted is what 'cornered' Bakugou to the point he resorted to overwhelmingly lethal force. He doesn't feel an ounce of guilt about it afterwords, either, and he only stops because he's threatened... with being kicked out of the exercise. He's not even serious about, he's willing to kill someone but he values winning more than his murder attempt, winning at something that's essentially worthless, even. It's an impulse, one that he doesn't ever question or think about again after the fact.

To be fair, his... radicalization, or just plain assholishness, got noticeably cut back after that point (to the point where it seems more like retcon than character development), but if it wasn't for that? Clearly, no one was willing to call him on things before, so if he didn't get serious consequences, and he had killed Izuku? He probably would have grown more and more comfortable with killing, the same way he did with everything else he's done.

But it's more than just that. His parents are... well, they're good people, but... they don't seem to be the best at making their son not be an asshat; both of them were pretty OK with their son calling his mother a 'hag', and not even in a sarcastic, well meaning way, but as an actual insult.

His mom is cut from the same cloth as her son (normally, it'd be the other way around, but Bakugou's character probably came first), if more restrained. Unfortunately, that means she's probably a source of a lot of his more aggressive behaviors in the first place, and not just in a genetic way: he watched what she did, and then learned to do it from her. She tries to get him to stop the worst of it but she doesn't seem to making a serious effort? It's not a serious punishment, or a heart to heart talk about his behavior, it's... basiclly the fan gag, which doesn't really teach anyone anything?

His dad, meanwhile is more passive, grounded, but at the same time: he married Bakugou's mother. He's clearly OK with behavior in that vein. It's good he's not contributing to the problem, but he's not solving it, either.

At the end of the day, while there are contributing factors, not of them are enough to explain, much less justify, Bakugou's actions or personality. Society didn't make him like this. No one taught him that it was OK.

The only one with responsibility was Bakugou himself.

[cinhomi]

Okay you want a concept, and I need to share this idea I had a few months ago. Basically I was trying on some new panties and being amazed at how soft and comfortable and pretty they were and my mind went : Jisung would DEFINITELY try lingerie on for sexy reasons but then he would try these and be like “okay the soft life chose me”. And just imagine you and him with matching soft panties, matching grey sweatpants, matching everything cuddling close and drinking tea and being happy. That’s my idea I needed to share.

I should have waited to write this, I did it while I was super tired and I also fell asleep in the process 😭 I could do better, that's for sure, but baby, I think about Jiji in lingerie more than anyone could ever imagine. that is for sure.

"Ji? What are you doing?"

Jisung freezes. He didn't expect for you to be home so... early. And now he feels so embarassed that he can't turn his head to look at you in the eyes. His puffy cheeks tint of the colour of freshly bloomed roses, while his hands tremble a bit, like the leaves outside being carried on the sidewalk by the cool breeze. His eyes are wide open for a second, and then they squeeze shut, wrinkles forming between his eyebrows, nose crunching as his teeth catch his bottom lip.

Will you think differently of him now? You do like his feminine side but... seeing your boyfriend wearing women's underwear might not be the best, especially if he's home alone, smiling at himself while posing. But then he suddenly feels the soft touch of your hand on his arm, caressing it from shoulder to wrist with your fingers, more softly than you ever did. He flinches in surprise, jumping a bit foward, before seeing your endeared look.

"You look so pretty..." the sentence just stumbles out of your mouth. You look so soft saying it, so convincing. He was at the store to buy you some pretty lingerie, but then he remembered a video you sent him saying you wanted to try and replicate it and well, the guy was wearing panties and stockings. The thought wouldn't leave his head. And it wasn't like he never wondered what it felt to wear your things, looking at you change so often. He knew you meant you wanted to try the position, but...

"Yes? Really?" he asks, under a breath, almost hoping you would say that. The fabric feels too soft, too comfortable compared to the one of his boxers. The frilly details on the elastic band are endearing and fun to look at, they make him feel tingly inside his chest. Do all girls feel prettier when wearing nice underwear? For a moment, he thinks about all the cute bras you have in your drawer.

"These suit you a lot." you purr into his ear, the corners of your lips lifted so that he sees your bright smile in the reflection of the mirror. The fingers of your other hand take the hem of the skimpy panties and play with it a little, as you leave a kiss on his nape, giggling when he squirms from the teasing touches.

He truly, really looks like a dream. The panties are white and definitely not the right size, hugging his every curve deliciously, but still looking soft on him. A little pink bow sits on the front, adding the last touch that makes you swoon. Jisung feels your arms enveloping him, hugging him from the back.

"You're not mad?" he's still unsure, still in disbelief. But the cotton feels amazing on his sensitive skin, and a little stain appears slightly on the right. He can't help it.

But then you don't reply. You just detach from him, and put down your bag on the floor. Then you let your jacket slide down your body. Jisung looks as you throw your sweater away, and in the end, just at the end, your pants. His eyes widen and his hands close in tight fists.

The mirror now reflects two pairs of white panties, with a frilly end and a pink bow carefully ebroidered at the front. Jisung can't help but grab you and take you closer, chest against chest, as he feels the delicate fabric between in his palms. You too, feel his sides under your hands, and the air becomes hot, and the kiss you share is electrical and exciting.

"What do you think about these?" you hold the black pair with the red details in front of your face, and Jisung immediately shoves them down and looks around, blushing like crazy.

"Baby please lower your voice!" he whisper-screams, covering his face with his hands, as desperate as a cartoon character. But you can't help the laugh that you let out, making an old lady look at you two.

"No one will ever know, I promise! You're just my boyfriend helping me pick up innerwear!" you kiss his cheek, the little part that's not hidden.

He suddenly looks around all over again, but the lady is no longer reserving her attention to you two, so he pouts and whines. "Won't the cashier find it suspicious that you're buying two different sizes?!" You keep looking around the thin decorated fabric, also searching for whole sets. The little store's shop bag is already full, but the image of Jisung wearing all the lingerie you touch is like a dream come true.

"I promise you that they don't care, baby." your smile is sickenly sweet, and that makes him huff. "Promise!" you add once again, making him sigh.

You've been kissing for a while now. You can usually sit together and actually listen to the documentary, but today you're a bit more cozy at your place. The new brand of tea you two decided to try turned out to be the best you have ever bought, the blankets were fresh out of the drier, especially fluffy, emanating a sweet scent of cardamom. And the cuddling became quite handsy. And you found yourself straddling Jisung, making out on the couch after licking away the crumbs of the last biscuit from his lips.

When you lower the zip of his jacket and let your hands wander under his sweatpants, meeting the familiar fabric of the panties you bought for him a soft moan escapes you. Jisung smiles. He smiles widely.

"These are the light blue ones... what are you wearing today, my baby?

[nicherayyy]

Niche!! Im glad to see u back!! How are you doing?

I had this scenario in my mind about La Squadra x child reader and im sorry if my asks are too much but I love the way you write this entire concept so much, i rlly hope you don’t mind if I share some of my scenarios and thoughts.

There was this video , the closest I could find to the original (besides that annoying robotic voiceover, I apologise )

I thought it was so cute because I can only imagine this w Pros. Imagine receiving a crumb of this mans affection😭 Like ofc he tries to look professional, even at home, but for his kid?? I think he would appreciate it, especially if reader is not really the cuddly type as they get older. Maybe there will be a pat on the back or head, or a genuine smile, letting you know that even if you get older he will still love you the same. He will still fight for you, protect you and root for you- because you are his child. I like to imagine Ghiaccio too- he would try to ask what you are doing as you simply settle against him, just wanting to show some affection. he won’t complain once he realized what you were trying to do- on the inside he is like 🥺. You are his kid and he will not deny your hugs, wrapping his arms around you and leaving the laptop he previously worked on aside- even if Formaggio or Illuso come barging in, teasing him and all, he will make a note to beat them up later-but for now he will enjoy this moment between you two (Cue these two idiots wanting hugs too, but you will never catch Illuso alive saying that)

Hiii! I’m doing great, thanks for asking <3

And no, I absolutely love this type of requests, so don’t worry abt it!!

Okay so here’s the hcs

Teenage Reader hugging their Father Figure from La Squadra

Oh yes, Risotto Nero. Stoic leader of the most feared assassin group

And a loving father

Just imagine this tall, intimidating man cuddling his child😭💔

And of course, as reader was younger, they used to cuddle all the time

Reader returned from school? Cuddles

Reader is getting ready for bed? Yeah, could someone (*cough cough* Risotto) give them a cuddle?

So yeah, reader is basically a cuddle bug

But after some years of course, cuddles became a rare occurrence

(Which Risotto was very sad about)

But he understood, maybe reader just didn’t want to, or think that cuddles are for children

So when teenage reader just crawled into Risotto’s arms just like in old times..

The man literally melted

Immediately hugged reader back

He didn’t even realise how much he missed this😭

“If I’m too heavy I can stand up”

“Please don’t”

Literally so happy

With Prosciutto it’s a bit different

Of course, even after reader got older he still gives them some pats on a head and words of encouragement

I mean, it’s his child, he loves them to death

But still, he wasn’t an affectionate type of parent

And when reader crawled into his lap he immediately got still

For a few seconds he didn’t know what to do

“Is it okay? If you don’t want to cuddle—“

“I do want to cuddle”, he hugged reader back

Okay let me tell you Pesci is so sad when reader stop wanting to cuddle

Like.. why don’t they want to cuddle?

Did he do something and now reader hates them?

Where’s his cuddly baby?😭

But he made peace with it after some time

I mean, reader is a teenager now

And I guess it’s not so cool for teenagers to hug with their dad

So when reader just randomly hugged him..

He cried

And of course hugged reader back

“Wha- why are you crying?”

“I’m just *sob* so happy”

Melone is a cuddle bug himself

Like he LOVES to cuddle

It’s his favourite way to show people that he cares for them

So when his child got older and stopped to cuddle he was really sad

He knew it was normal, reader got older and maybe they just stopped liking this type of affection

And of course he didn’t expect to get a hug from them when he was working on his laptop

The speed with which he put aside all of his tasks😭

Mf was over the moon with happiness

“You have no idea how happy I am right now”

Okay I believe Ghiaccio won’t tolerate any cuddles

Unless those cuddles are from reader

I mean they’re his child, why wouldn’t he want cuddles from them?

But of course he won’t show it

Imagine reader crawling into his arms and he’s like:

“What are you doing?”

“Cuddling”

“Okay”

HE LOVES IT

Even is he’s just sitting on the couch with poker face, he still will hug reader back

And if someone (*cough* Formaggio *cough* Illuso) tries to tease him about it.. well Ghiaccio would handle it later

Let’s just hope this someone has enough time to stay frozen

Speaking about Illuso

I think he like cuddles

But he rarely initiates them

Of course he loves giving his child affection, only he prefers to show his love with words or gift giving

But still he would appreciate the hug from reader

“Oh so you still love your old man? How sweet of you”

The same as Melone, Formaggio is a cuddle bug

But let’s be fr, he loves all types of affections

Pats on the back, words of encouragement, you name it

He always initiates cuddles with reader

And he’s got kinda used to the fact that only he initiates them

So when reader initiated hugs first—

“OH MY GOD FINALLY”

He immediately hugged reader back

And I mean this tight bear hug

Definitely won’t let reader go for a few minutes

[bonefall]

i found a god awful doc about this one person (who, too, is a god awful being) trying to reason why mudClaw would be a bad leader. I'ma try to find the doc but meanwhile I'll submit this because someone could have the link, I'll need your honest thought about it bcs why are we defending oneWhiker now

Anon, buddy, I'm gonna have to sit you down and gently discourage you from casually calling random human people "god awful beings" in my inbox like this. Not when you're just talking about relatively basic media analysis. That isn't ok or normal.

I hope that when I speak harshly, it's coming from a place of condemning hurtful actions and the tangible harm that they cause. I don't appreciate people trying to get me to directly beef with other people directly by requesting I break down their individual posts or analysis documents (when I ask for people to share links, it's so I can see and prepare to counter the ideas because they usually "float downstream" if they get popular); but in a second ask, you linked this document and there's nothing harmful in it. In fact, it's got a far more neutral tone than I'd take if I was writing an analysis about Mudclaw.

If you couldn't tell the difference between a document like this and one that contains active abuse apologia rhetoric, I would be filled with concern. But I don't think you read it. I think you maybe skimmed it and stopped reading, or just heard the title.

Because this document literally says this;

and your takeaway, something you felt so strongly about that you came to me hoping I'd validate it, was "Why Are We Defending Onewhisker Now."

Art is a tool we can use to explore our own biases, and teach us something about ourselves. That overwhelming sense of anger and disgust that you probably felt when you saw "Mudclaw Would Be A Bad Leader" made you jump to an emotional conclusion and you assumed something that was not said. I know the feeling. You might have had a reactionary impulse.

You are not a bad person for doing that-- you're human. You can grow.

Why did it upset you this much, though? Is there something very personal about this that set you off? ...are you spending a lot of time in spaces online that keep you angry? These are questions for you to reflect with.

I do not know the owner of this document or "what they've done," if anything, so I will not link it, because their Discord is at the bottom of the doc. If they are truly a "god awful being", please do not engage, just block and move on. Nothing is accomplished by following around 'A Bad Guy' and boosting their cat takes.

But something VERY bad WOULD be accomplished if I indulged an anon for a situation I know nothing about and unwittingly became part of a harassment campaign. How do I know that you've got good intentions?

I usually just delete unsolicited links to docs and videos that are 'fightbaiting' like this-- trying to get me to beef publicly with a 3rd person. But I've seen more of these than usual lately so I would like to try and cool it down.

[yuurei20]

Will you write an in depth detail or summary of the midorikawa talk show?

Hello hello! Thank you for this request! Certainly!

They discussed the chapters one by one from 7-1 to 7-7 (and a little mention of 7-8), but this blog pretends that content not released on EN does not exist 💦 So here is the topics from the video from the beginning through 7-4! ^^

An interesting revelation was that it seems the VAs have actually been told very little about the direction of the story 👀 Midorikawa says multiple times that he'd had no idea that this is where Book 7 was going!

*Note: everything outside of quotation marks is only paraphrased from the conversations between Kato Kazuki (Malleus) and Midorikawa Hikaru (Lilia) and is not literal quotes.

Opening

・They compared guest rooms. ・Kato’s has a kitchen area and living rooms, a mix of various dorms and holiday furniture. ・The 1st floor of Midorikawa's guest room is Ignihyde themed, and the 2nd floor is Diasomnia themed. He is proud of having all their tsums. ・Kato says he will update his room for when they meet next time. Midorikawa says he’ll be reminding him.

7-1

・Everyone was surprised by Lilia’s announcement that he will be leaving the school.

・緑川：「皆、先の話知らないから、誰も。『え？出なくなんの？』俺、別事件で動揺していたからな」 (Midorikawa: “No one knows how the story will go.  So I was upset for a different reason than everybody else: ‘I’m not going to be in the game anymore?’”)

・Kato and Midorikawa discuss their favorite flavors of shaved ice: the “basic” flavor of strawberry for Kato, and milk flavor for Midorikawa, which he says is harder to find these days. Kato says that there was a place in front of a public pool when he was a child that sold chocolate milk-flavor shaved ice, but he’s never found it anywhere else.

・They were both surprised by Lilia’s magearm.

・The appearance of Lilia’s general design silhouette: Midorikawa saw it before it was revealed and thought it was very cool. 

7-2

・Midorikawa enjoyed the farewell party where Lilia was able to speak with all of the characters, which is so rare.

・緑川：「僕もその後の、リリアの出番的に知らないので…中退しちゃうのか…出番、ぼちぼちなくなるのかな…という、ね」 加藤: 「確かに、先知らないって…不安っすね」 緑川: 「そうそう。知らん。全く…全然知らないからね」 (Midorikawa: "I don't know how things are going to progress, with Lilia's appearances in the story...dropping out of school...I guess his appearances are going to drop off, then...is what I started thinking." Kato: "That's right, not knowing anything...it's a little nerve-wracking." Midorikawa: "Exactly. I don't know. At all...I have no idea.")

・Silver is the only one different from the faerie group, he is in a difficult situation.

・Gao Gao Drakon-kun is cute. And they both want one.

・The humming scene. Midorikawa says that he'd thought the game had ended, and Kato explains how hard the humming was as he would run out of breath, so recording took a long time. He had wanted to do his best, since it was such an important point in the story.

・Malleus’ overblot line is directly a line that Maleficent has.

7-3

・And now everyone is asleep. Midorikawa says he is jealous because he does not sleep very well at night.

・They both wanted to know more about the Mickey situation, but that will probably not be for a while. They don’t know anything about the future of the story, but that is the assumption. Meeting Mickey felt like seeing something they’re weren’t supposed to see.

・Malleus’ magic was beyond what they’d imagined. 

・Since the previous book’s characters tend to have a role in the next book they had expected Idia staying behind from the farewell party to be how he escaped Malleus, but then he was asleep with everyone else.

・Idia’s parents voiced by veteran actors Tange Sakura and Onosaka Masaya. Mother is adorable. 

・Sebek’s dream: Kato says that keeping the balance between Malleus’ voice in his overblotted state and how he speaks in the dream is difficult, and he will often slip into overblot-voice and need to be corrected.

・Cerberus Ortho is a very cool card.

・The forest background from Lilia’s dream was illustrated in the same style as the forest in the original Sleeping Beauty.

7-4

・Midorikawa knew that Lilia was based on a bat from the audition but he was very surprised by the realism of Lilia’s bat mask. 

・Midorikawa had no idea about anything to do with Lilia's past. Nothing was mentioned about it in the audition or anything. He’d been told nothing in advance. It was a whole new perspective of the character. If he had been told in the audition then he would’ve understood that they had finally arrived at the part of Lilia’s life, but no one had ever told him anything. And he has so much more dialogue in the dream. 

・And Baur appeared—that was a surprise. Midorikawa had had a feeling that his voice actor would be Koyasu Takehito. (Note: Midorikawa and Koyasu have worked on the same projects very often, with both of them voicing characters in Gundam W, Slayers, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Fushigi Yugi, Weiss Kruez, Shaman King and more.) 

[baphometsss]

We need to talk about spirit hand!Inquisitor

I've been trying to put this into words for a while but it's really tricky to explain. I'm gonna try anyway bc I feel like it's an important discussion to have

First though, a disclaimer: I'm not physically disabled. Everything I'm about to say is based on me trying to relate through my own experiences of mental illness, the experiences of a disabled family member who uses a prosthetic leg, and research into how to write disabled characters properly in my own personal projects (thanks to cripplecharacters blog for helping me understand it better!) So, you know, you can take it or leave it--and please feel free to add your own experiences! This isn't a call out post or anything, I'm just trying to put my thoughts into words and start a conversation in good faith

The problem with fanworks where the inquisitor's wooden prosthetic is replaced by a magic/spirit hand is that it falls into a really tiresome trope where the character has the limb replaced with a magical prosthetic that essentially nixes the disability entirely. It's called the Cool Robot Arm or Perfect Prosthetic trope and it plays into disability erasure in a big way. This is pretty frustrating when you know having a limb amputated is a big deal that comes with a lot of pain and long-term effects, even if the amputation procedure itself was free of complications. Prosthetics are also basically a whole thing of their own, but suffice to say they also come with their risks and problems as well.

The thing with representation is that it needs to reflect real life experiences if its going to approach anything good or meaningful. Video games like Dragon Age often attempt to do this, but they also often miss the mark. I know a lot of disabled (and able-bodied) people want to see better representation of disability in media, but when that fails, we have the opportunity to do better in our fanworks. It feels like a lot DAI/DATV fanworks jump into the magical prosthetic trope far too easily and without very much thought for how it negatively impacts that representation. The Inquisitor becomes disabled through losing their left hand, and that would be a complicated journey for them. This is not a part of their character that can be written away without losing a huge part of their story--regardless of how we role-play them.

For me personally, I try to balance it out by being realistic about both the prosthetic, the spirit hand, and the remaining limb. For example, prosthetics rub and cause blisters and other skin conditions. They can be bulky and heavy and cause musculoskeletal problems. Residual limb pain is thing and can be chronic and debilitating. Learning to use a prosthetic usually requires physical therapy, and some people just prefer not to use prosthetics at all, or only some of the time or for specific tasks. Much of the discourse around prosthetics is focused on making them indistinguishable from a natural limb, when practicality and comfort should really be the focus and not this ableist idea that differently limbed people should want a prosthetic that looks identical to the one that was lost. There are so many potential stories that can be written about this experience, yet we almost never see any of them. My mage Inquisitor has a spirit hand, but she doesn't use it much because it's difficult to maintain both that and use offensive magic in battle, and she doesn't have the mental energy to use it 100% of the time. It's also not that easy to use, even when she does have the energy. She only really uses it occasionally anyway (usually to make random shapes with it to amuse other people) and prefers her prosthetic.

To put it another way--consider how deaf/HoH people who get cochlear implants often continue to use sign language afterwards anyway, even if the procedure was successful. This is because a. it's their first language, which means verbal language is a new language to them and b. gaining hearing after a long period without it can be extremely difficult to adjust to. It can be overwhelming and even painful. The point is that just because aids and treatments exist, it doesn't mean that they're a one size fits all and each individual person will have their own journey in figuring it out. That's one of the things we should be writing about, rather than just nixing it away with a magic limb because it's the easier route and it doesn't require us to consider writing outside of our own experiences. And don't get me wrong, I get that it's scary. You don't wanna upset people with your writing or make them feel even more alienated. But you have to start somewhere and be willing to listen to criticism if you're going to get better.

Furthermore: ableism for sure exists in Thedas. Can you imagine how that would affect the Inquisitor? How they'd adjust from being revered as the Herald of Andraste with a divine mark on their hand to being almost killed by it? How their political enemies would use their disability against them? How they would be affected emotionally by having to deal with that ableism potentially for the first time? Would they find community among other veterans who have become disabled through conflict? Or would they isolate themselves and carry the burden alone? Would they experience mental health issues because of it? These are all examples of how ableism affects real people. Of course, none of this is negated by the spirit hand, but it's something I've seen very little attention given in fanworks.

For me personally, I also try to think of this through my own experiences of mental illness. I have chronic depression/Dysthymia, which is not exactly the same as clinical depression. It follows similar patterns to other mood disorders like Bipolar Disorder in that it's cyclical; my baseline is being moderately depressed, and then every 2 or 3 months I will go into 'double depression' which is where I experience an intensification of symptoms that mimic going into an initial depressed state, while aggravating the symptoms I already have. It's hard to explain it, but suffice to say, it requires me to take medication to control it. I don't like it, but it's the way my brain is wired up and I've been told by multiple professionals that I will always have to take medication for it (antidepressants and antipsychotics, although I don't take the antipsychotics atm). This medication causes a variety of annoying side effects that I have to accept as a trade off so I don't regress too far.

This is just one of the mental health conditions I have to contend with, but it's one that probably effects my life the most. I know it's not comparable to amputation or other physical disabilities and I'm not trying to say it is. But I use it to understand writing for disabled characters by, in conjunction with my research, empathising, by thinking of how much it would bother me if someone wrote about my life and did everything they could to ignore this very prominent part of who I am. I would have to ask why they were so keen to ignore it. Dysthymia doesn't define me, it's not something I'm 'proud' of per se, but it does affect a big part of my life; I've struggled with it every day since I was 10 or 11--so of course it's shaped who I am. I use it to imagine how frustrating it would be if someone tried to cover up or negate this part of me and then dressed it up with something like... idk. Magical anti-depression goggles or something, or worse still decided to make my story all about the goggles. It would make me feel like I wasn't a person with experiences worth writing about, that I would be fine if it weren't for this illness I undeniably have and can't help having. That my illness is akin to a personality flaw--an ableist assumption that Dysthymia sufferers in particular have to deal with, because it's a depression that does not go away and people think it's just our personality rather than an illness.

I personally found these posts x x x really helpful in figuring out how to write my inquisitor. Tbh cripplecharacters is invaluable anyway, especially their 'magic aids' tag for writing Inky. I really strongly recommend that you read them before writing about your inquisitor's prosthetic and their perspective on losing their arm. Listening to actual disabled people when writing disabled characters is the most important part of the process and it'll only make your work better. You really have nothing to lose by doing it.

Like I said, I'm not trying to call anyone out. I have most likely missed the mark just in writing this post, because it's not my personal experience. I do think the spirit hand is a cool concept. It's just not a quick fix and writing about it needs to be done more consciously than I think most people do.

[dean-winchester-is-a-warrior]

The Christmas Present

This fic will cover my Dates Keep Getting Interrupted square on my 2nd @jacklesversebingo card. ❤️

Summary: Y/N is beginning to wonder just where she fits into Jensen's life. Is she expendable?

Warnings/Explicit 18+: Pretty much all fluff. A wee tiny bit of smut. Just a wisp of oral (f receiving) and unprotected PinV sex. Nothing really explicit. Pretty much a smidge of angst and mostly fluff.

Pairings: Jensen x Reader

Word Count: 2,599

A/N: Here is the next request for my second @jacklesversebingo card. This one came from a lovely anon who asked this:

hi! how about an angsty “dates keep getting interrupted” with jensen? something along the lines of him being busy and just simply being swamped with work but reader feels like jensen might not be in love with them anymore.

I basically took that first idea in your request and ran with it sweetie! Hope you enjoy this one. It ran a bit fluffy, but I hope you like it.

The beautiful dividers used here are from @talesmaniac89

Y/N inhaled deeply as she pulled the freshly made pumpkin pie out of the oven. She looked at it with pride; she’d made it from scratch because she knew it was Jensen’s favorite this time of year.

And he was finally coming home. 

For the last month and a half he’d been working all the way across the country and in all that time, they’d been relegated to nothing but video calls and texting. When he took the job the week before Thanksgiving she’d been disappointed they wouldn’t get to spend the holiday together. But as Jensen had assured her, it was only a month of shooting, and he was only one, six hour flight away; they’d visit lots and he’d be home a good week or more before Christmas.

But the shoot had dragged on and on with an inexperienced director and a picky and demanding producer. Everything was so disorganized that Jensen had made it home only one time in those six weeks, and he’d been swamped with press the entire time, as well as trying to fit in meetings with his manager, agent, and another producer considering him for a different project. It meant that in his one day at home Y/N had him to herself for barely more than an hour, during which, he'd been completely, understandably, exhausted.

Four other trips home had been planned, complete with date nights Y/N put together that would allow them to go out together, but also stay in together a lot too. But all four times  those trips and those dates had been canceled. Even a desperately planned skype dinner date had only lasted a half hour before one of the PAs came banging on Jensen's trailer to drag him away to help with some unforeseen dilemma on set.

Y/N was sick with missing him. She knew he missed her too, but lately she’d been wondering...just how much?

How hard was he really trying to get home? How important was she to him? Was she just a girlfriend he was saddled with, someone he was obligated to try and get home to see? Was she just a scheduling conflict - one of the smaller ones, easily brushed aside for something more important?

After their last canceled date, she'd even asked herself the question that terrified her...was he losing interest? After a year and three months of dating...was she still loving him while he had one foot out the door?

Her mind shied away from answering those questions. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answers.

But two days ago he’d called her up to say he was finally going to be wrapped the following day, and he’d be home early Christmas morning. She’d seen his plane ticket and everything; it was going to be the best Christmas present she could get.

So she’d made his favorite pie in celebration.

As she set the pie on the rack to cool, she heard a notification bing, telling her she had a video call from Jensen. She felt knots form in her stomach, but decided he was probably just calling to say he was getting on the plane in a few hours. 

He’d just text you for that, she thought, but she brushed the thought aside.

She sat down at her kitchen table, and clicked her mouse to answer, smiling as Jensen’s face appeared on her laptop screen.

“Hey.” She said, overly cheerful.

“Hey.” He said back, and she could hear the waver in his voice, but she ignored that too.

“How are you?” She asked.

His jaw clenched and she felt her stomach plummet further. 

“I’m…not good…I…” His green eyes looked at her through the screen, regret etched deep into his verdant irises. “I’m so sorry, baby - “ he began, but Y/N cut him off with a cry of disappointment.

“No! No!” She denied loudly. “What the hell? You said you’re wrapped, you said -”

“I know, I know. But they’ve decided they need a shit ton of reshoots, there’s a bunch of stuff they said they didn’t like, and…” He trailed off. “I’m so sorry.”

Y/N turned her face away from the camera as she nodded in heartbroken acceptance, trying to hide her eyes swimming in tears. “But…” she cleared her throat. “This is like the fifth time you’ve had to cancel, can’t they understand that? I mean, it’s Christmas. Why the hell do they need you to work on Christmas?” Her voice rose at the end, anger seeping through to fill in her cracked heart.

“I don’t know.” Jensen said with a shrug, and the gesture made her anger take a swift turn towards him. “It’s Hollywood, they don’t always give a shit about things like national holidays.”

“Well, they should!” She shouted. “I mean, what the hell? Do they think they own you? Why don’t you just tell them to fuck off?”

“Y/N -”

“Seriously, that’s basically what you’ve been telling me to do for the past six weeks, but you can't even tell them once?”

The muscle ticked in Jensen’s jaw again. “Y/N, I’ve spent the last day and a half doing nothing but trying to get them to listen to me, to agree to let me go for a day or two and then come back, but -”

“Wait!” Y/N cut him off. “You’ve known about this for a day and a half and you’re only telling me now?” Her voice was incensed and furious. 

Jensen threw up his hands. “I was hoping I could get out of it, Y/N! I was…look, I’m sorry." His anger was obvious but she couldn't tell if it was directed at her or not. "Don’t you think I’m disappointed too?”

“Are you?” Y/N asked before she could stop herself.

Jensen’s face grew suddenly calm. “What does that mean?” He asked.

Y/N shook her head. “Nothing. It just means that it’s been six weeks, and so many canceled dates and plans, I mean…”

“Five weeks.” Jensen interjected as she paused for a breath.

Y/N scowled at him. “What?”

“It’s only been five weeks.”

Y/N clenched her teeth. “Oh well, excuse me! Then, I guess - who cares?"

Jensen was shaking his head. “No, look I just meant to say that I’m well aware of how long it’s been since I’ve gotten to see you, but…” He looked slightly defeated. “I don’t…I mean, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Y/N’s heart sank. She smiled sadly and nodded at him. “Yeah, well, you should know. That’s uh…” She sniffed and wiped her fingers across her cheeks. “That’s sort of the problem.”

Jensen opened his mouth to say something, but when he hesitated, Y/N just gave him another broken smile. 

“Merry Christmas.” She said softly before clicking off the call.

***

Y/N sat slumped on her couch with a half eaten pumpkin pie discarded on her coffee table. On the TV, Ebeneezer Scrooge was calling out Merry Christmas to everyone in the street below him, having realized the true meaning and value of Christmas. Y/N’s face was nothing but frowning lips and a scowl as she shut off her TV.

“Bah, humbug.” She countered quietly.

Her heart was actually hurting; a physical ache had taken up residence in her chest and she rubbed her palm over it trying to ease the sting. 

All she could see was Jensen’s face as she'd ended the call. And whenever she saw his face the fear started that it was going to be the last time she saw it - at least the last time off the silver screen.

She’d picked up the phone a dozen times to call him, but she never managed to hit “call” before tossing her phone down and crying some more. Now it was almost one in the morning and she picked it up again. This time she managed to press his name and hit the green call button.

It went straight to voicemail. The beep sounded and she contemplated hanging up. But after a pause she spoke, clearing her throat first.

“Hey, it’s me…but you probably saw that already.” Another long pause. “So…I was hoping you’d pick up, but…you’re probably sleeping. I just…wanted to…”

She paused long enough that she was worried she’d be cut off, so she rushed out the rest. “Just wanted to say I love you.” Her throat caught. “And Merry Christmas.” 

She heard a beep in her ear. “Oh,” she said, surprised, “I’ve got another call.” She saw Jensen’s name on the caller ID and hung up with the voicemail.

“Jensen?” She said tentatively as she answered.

“Hey.” He said softly.

“Hi. I was just…” She let out a burst of slightly nervous laughter. “I just left you a message.”

“Oh?” Jensen asked. “What did you say?”

“Just…just Merry Christmas, and…love you.” She answered, her voice almost shy. Then she burst out full voice. “Jensen I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to -”

But Jensen cut her off. “No, baby, I’m sorry. That’s the whole point.”

The tension eased slightly from their voices and Y/N tried to explain her disappointment. “I just miss you.”

“I know, believe me, I know.”

She was going to say something else, but Jensen spoke first. “I had something delivered to you.”

“You what?” Y/N asked with a laugh of surprise. “You had something delivered to me, from across the country, at one in the morning on Christmas Eve?”

“Yeah, it should have been there by now. It’s probably already sitting on your porch. Go check. But stay on the phone with me cause it’s after midnight.”

Y/N giggled a little breathlessly and ran to the front door. She grabbed her sweater from the peg beside it and pulled it on against the snowy chill outside. She opened the door and peered out, but she didn’t see anything. 

She stepped tentatively outside in her slippers. “There’s nothing here.” She told him. “I hope someone didn’t steal it.” She worried.

“No, it’s okay, I got it.”

Y/N's head whipped around as Jensen’s voice echoed tinnily through the phone. Her face froze as he walked towards her from the side of the porch, holding a box in his hand.

Y/N gasped loudly and then immediately screamed, running forward to throw herself into Jensen’s arms, making him drop the box. She wrapped her arms around him, holding on for dear life

His strong arms wrapped her up, cuddling her close against his thick, navy blue winter coat. She buried her face in his chest and wept unabashedly. He placed a kiss on the crown of her head and then kept his cheek pressed there while she cried her fill of happy tears. She finally pulled back to look up at him, with tear tracks mottling her skin. His big hands were cold as he pushed her hair back and cupped her cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” She asked. “How did you manage this? What did you tell them?”

Jensen shrugged. “Told ‘em to fuck off.” She choked on her laughter as he continued. “I told them in slightly more polite terms, but not by much.”

She shook her head, a worried smile on her face. “But Jensen, you’re gonna get in trouble.” 

“I don’t care.”

“You’re gonna get fired.” 

“I don’t care.”

When she opened her mouth to speak again, he kissed her, sucking away her breath and warming her from head to toe. Then he pulled away before pulling her close, tucking his face into the crook of her neck, and speaking against her skin. “I don’t care about anything more than I care about you.”

He pushed on her shoulders so he could look her in the eye. “You are everything to me Y/N and I need you to know that.”

He cupped her cheeks again, thumbs brushing away her newest tears. “So, to that end…” he bent down and scooped up the box he’d dropped. He brushed the fluffy snow from it and handed it to Y/N for her to open. “Merry Christmas.”

Y/N felt her heart race and then lodge in her throat as she cracked open the ring-sized box. Sure enough, nestled inside on a bed of velvet was a beautiful, elegant, gold engagement ring.

Jensen bent to one knee, and she started sobbing, trying desperately to hear him over her own noisy joy.

His bright, green gaze was sure and steady and overflowing with love. She wondered now, how she could ever have doubted it.

“I need you to know,” He began, “that I love you more than anything. That there is nothing,” he emphasized, “nothing more important to me than you. And for the rest of our lives I wanna be with you on all our Christmases and every New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day, Fourth of Julys, hell, Arbor Days even!” he said with a watery chuckle. “It doesn’t matter what I’m celebrating, I wanna be celebrating it with you.”

He slipped the ring on her finger and she cried harder. After a minute he squeezed her hand. “Is there a yes in there, maybe - this snow’s cold on the knee.”

Y/N laughed merrily and threw her arms around his neck. “Yes!” She shouted, and squealed as he stood up, and spun her around in a dizzying circle. 

“Thank god.” He said quietly as he brushed his thumb across her mouth. “Fuck, I missed you, baby. Please say I can kiss you now.”

Y/N's belly clenched and her breathing kicked up a notch as she nodded and breathed against his cool lips. “Yes, god.” She sighed.

He kissed her deeply, sweeping his tongue past her lips and licking up into the roof of her mouth. Many breathless minutes later, Jensen pulled back and wore a contemplative look. “Mmm…you taste like pumpkin pie.”

Y/N smiled. “Oh yeah, I made you a pumpkin pie.” His eyes lit up. “But I ate it.”

Jensen laughed and began kissing and nibbling on her neck. “Well, then I guess I just gotta feast on you.”

He pushed her back through her front door and slammed it shut, kicking off his shoes and pulling off her sweater as he went. By the time he got her to her bedroom, he had them both stripped to nothing. They fell easily onto the bed, clinging to each other and savoring the closeness they’d missed for so long.

Jensen kissed her slowly, skating his lips across her skin, stopping to lick and nip at different peaks and valleys of her body, making her arch into him and card her fingers through his hair. She tugged on it as his soft, smooth beard tickled her skin, before moaning deeply as it scratched against the delicate skin of her inner thighs.

Jensen kept her coming on his tongue for a very long time, till she was shaking and shuddering and begging him to fill her up.

“Jensen, please,” she panted, “I need you so close to me.”

Jensen understood exactly what she meant. Seconds later he pushed into her welcoming heat, home at last, finding the bliss he always found in her arms, and giving it back to her. 

***

Christmas morning dawned bright and sunny and Y/N stretched languidly, rousing Jensen beside her, smiling as he gave out a sleepy moan. She turned to face him and gently traced her finger down the line of his nose and then began counting his cinnamon freckles, connecting them as she went.

Another small moan issued from Jensen’s throat. “S’early.” He mumbled. “Why’re you wake?”

She placed kisses all along his tight, square jaw before she answered. “I was just admiring my gift.”

He cracked one eye and looked at her left hand as it passed over his chest. A small smile lit his face and he ran a finger over her engagement ring. “You like, sweetheart?”

Y/N nodded. “Oh, definitely. The ring is gorgeous.” She moved quickly, climbing on top of him and straddling his hips, surprising a deep groan out of him; she could feel him harden beneath her. “But that’s not the gift I was talking about.”

She braced herself against his shoulders and rolled her hips against him before leaning down and pressing her lips softly to his, her voice teasing and full of love.

“Merry Christmas, Christmas present.”

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[feroluce]

I have been informed by a mutual aid that you are a henghill enjoyer. You've single-handedly gotten me to care about Gepard and I would love to hear your thoughts on Cowborg Menace x Dragon That Can't Catch a Break

Aaaaaaaa I'm really flattered!! I have also been informed by a mutual aid that you have good taste (read: rvb enjoyer) and I need you to know that part of the reason I treat Gepard the way I do, like messing with him constantly, is because he makes me think of Wash. Poor dude was doomed the moment I got my grubby little mitts on him sksjkskdjd

But anyway yes, henghill! They really got me by the throat out of nowhere in 2.2. They're just. Surprisingly sweet?

The two of them get along very well, they see eye to eye on a lot of matters and have some similar mannerisms, they can hold long conversations together, and they have a shockingly swift understanding of the other in a very small amount of time! Platonically or romantically, there's a lot to dig into there. ♡

And I do mean a lot this basically ended up becoming a big long ship manifesto I'm so sorry zmjzznkdjd

Like first of all they're both fucking nerds over each other. Boothill's adoration for the Xianzhou alliance is already well-documented in his About Dan Heng voice line, and is appropriately pointed out in the fandom as sounding gay as all hell.

We know what you are, Boothill.

But then! He further cements it by trying to use Xianzhou sayings in front of Dan Heng haha

Not only that, but Boothill was able to recognize the Jade Abacus of Allying Oath for what it was like immediately, and instantly took it as proof of Dan Heng's identity as a Nameless. The validation of the Xianzhou is clearly a huge deal to him.

And Dan Heng plays it cool but like. I don't think he's actually much better JFKLASJDKL

The in-game Data Bank, which is supposed to be written and maintained by Dan Heng himself, has a pretty positive glowing review of the Galaxy Rangers.

And I feel the need to point out that like. The Galaxy Rangers are essentially a vigilante justice group..."group" being a pretty loose term, there isn't a whole lot of organization in there. Not everyone has a very good view of them because they're outlaws and there's a pretty wide and wild variety of individuals in the mix there, Boothill even confirms it as such.

And that archive entry is a hilariously stark contrast to the one for the Masked Fools, who Dan Heng does NOT seem to respect. So you can tell he puts a lot of his own opinion into the data and you can really see where his preferences lie KFDLAJFKLD

He does let his fanboy slip when Boothill first announces himself as a Galaxy Ranger though, just a little bit haha:

They're like the equivalent of when your favorite big name fandom person follows you back, you feel me fjkdjasflkdjskal

Which. I feel like it does make sense that he would really idolize the Galaxy Rangers and see them as heroes. Dan Heng is someone who was a victim of centuries of wrongful imprisonment and political power plays, and it would have been way worse had Jing Yuan not gone above the preceptors to protect him. He is someone that the system failed, and horrifically so. Of course he would like the idea of righteous heroes who stand for justice and travel the cosmos freely to help people.

And as @hydrachea, CEO of Dan Heng Enterprises and Super Genius with Giant Wrinkly Brain pointed out, this background DOES lay the foundation for Dan Heng to relate to Boothill a lot. You see this displayed beautifully in his Keeping Up With Star Rail video, where Dan Heng gets really protective of him, I adored it so so much. ♡

In it, Dan Heng not only comments that he originally came because he thought he was giving a presentation on how to be friendly with Boothill, but every time the IPC tries to paint him as some violent dangerous ruthless criminal, Dan Heng speaks up to explain his way of thinking and to defend him. It was really sweet!

And Dan Heng is protective of people anyway. He serves as the Guard of the Astral Express for a reason. He had nothing and no one before Himeko took him in, and now that he's found companions to love he is viciously defensive of them. You see it in the way he guards March 7th during fights on Jarilo-IV, in how he goes out of his way to bring important info to the trailblazer, in how he left the safety of the Express and infiltrated the Luofu because he was terrified he was going to lose them. But there's maybe a little extra layer of Understanding in the way he so persistently speaks up in Boothill's defense.

And I'm sure that this is a part of him that Boothill really admires, too, because Dan Heng also displays these instincts in Penacony. He makes the decision not just once, but twice, to use the Jade Abacus to save the Express Crew. And we know from Boothill's earlier reaction to it that like. The Jade Abacus is a Big Fuckin' Deal. It is something of immense value. Even with everything that's at stake, Boothill urges him to really make sure he wants to use it.

And this was something that really got me in the heart later, because! In Ena's Dream, Dan Heng once again decides to use the Jade Abacus, and. I'm not quite sure I can effectively put it in words, but there is something just so so sweet in the way that Boothill tells him no, Dan Heng should keep it. This is a get out of jail free card that could save his life down the line, he wants him to have it in case he finds himself in danger again later.

It really gives the feeling that Boothill actually wanted Dan Heng to not have to rely on this before, but there was no other way at the time. But now there IS something Boothill can do about it, and he wants to do something about it. A sorta-kinda "let me protect you this time"-ish feeling. If that makes any sense. He doesn't want Dan Heng to have to make that sacrifice.

Because I think Boothill would consider that a really admirable and respectable action, especially given his background. The IPC eradicated his homeplanet. He lost his parents, his siblings, his daughter, his home all in one fell swoop, and he has been on a fully dedicated revenge quest ever since. How could he not be a little awed by someone willing to give so much to protect his home and his family?

I think it's something the two of them understand in each other, because as it shows in the dialogue the first time Dan Heng decided to use the Jade Abacus, Boothill caught on immediately. He already knew what Dan Heng was planning before he even said so. And it's not even the first time he does that! Even as early as their initial entrance into the Reverie, Boothill is able to tell when Dan Heng is stressed, why he's stressed, and he backs off and gives him space without any fuss.

And it works! After the Express Crew are safe, they go from Dan Heng correcting him to more just kind of going with Boothill's flow, and I feel like this is a much better basis for their interactions.

Also I'm crying about Dan Heng blabbing that the trailblazer is a vessel of a Stellaron, gossipy little dragon fjdkasjfdklsaj

Like the two of them just GET each other! And so quickly and easily! It's ridiculous! Dan Heng is able to explain the methods behind Boothill's madness. Boothill is able to read Dan Heng like a book. They both had the same reaction to learning Acheron was a Self-Annihilator. They both really believe it's just fine and normal to have a weapon out if you don't trust someone yet- Boothill pulled his gun on Acheron the second he saw her, Dan Heng got his spear out and poked Sampo the first time he met him (valid). And they both act Like That because they're similar flavors of wary and cautious. They had to prove their identities to each other when they first met before either of them could relax.

They're both frank, and blunt, and will openly call shit out or question it when they see fit. They both believe in answering the call to action, and share a lot of their ideologies of The Hunt, like upholding justice and saving the innocent and protecting the weak. Boothill lives to fuck over the IPC and keep them from colonizing more planets like his, Dan Heng didn't even consider his own wants and asked to go to Edo Star to help the population there. They take their creeds seriously, and dedicate themselves to them, enough to be offended by imposters. Dan Heng dislikes Boothill claiming to be a Nameless, Boothill was literally hunting down Acheron for parading around as a Galaxy Ranger.

And all throughout 2.2, Boothill displays an immense knowledge of Paths and Aeons and even Emanators, and Dan Heng is a huge nerd an archiver and a collector of knowledge. The conversations these two could have!! They've both been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things, and I think Dan Heng especially would love listening to Boothill's stories and then adding them to the data bank. They can probably relate on rough travel, too- Boothill refers to the Astral Express as "bunkin' in luxury" and Pom-Pom once said Dan Heng was "used to sleeping on the rope." When March 7th takes the trailblazer to look for Dan Heng, she even phrases this as though he and Boothill have been talking together for quite a while!

Hell, even when they awaken in Ena's Dream, they arrive together:

They were together for almost the entirety of 2.2; literally the very first scene of it was their introduction. They only truly separated when Dan Heng went to help in the fight with The Great Septimus and Boothill to gather the Rangers (and then go shoot Aventurine full of holes fjkdlsajd) but! I'm really hoping we'll get to see more of them together in 2.3! They were a really cool duo, and it was so fun to watch them all through this update, I really want to see more of them now and explore their relationship dynamic more! ♡

[damiansgoodgirll]

are r up for writing about gavi if so could you do gavi reacting to u pranking him telling his a guy did ur brazilian wax? if not that’s ok but can u then do it with kylian?

i’m not really a gavi fan so i hope you don’t mind i made this with kylian 🫶🏻🥹

kylian mbappè x reader

Prank goes wrong

you saw this video on tiktok right before you had your wax appointment and you had this mischievous idea to recreate the same with kylian, even though you wouldn’t be filming it you couldn’t wait to see his reaction.

“hey baby!” you said almost screaming once you got back home from your appointment.

“hey mon amour” he said from over the couch “come here next to me” he aimed at you for joining him on the very large and comfortable sofa he had in his living room.

“how was your day?” you asked him.

“boring. no practice, nothing to do…you were gone all morning and the house was pretty silent without having you here” he confessed.

“i’m sorry baby…you knew i couldn’t cancel my appointment today” you smiled to him and kissed him.

“i know i know…by the way, how did it go?” he asked, focusing all of his attention on you.

“oh pretty good! you know, the usual girl who wax me was sick today so i had someone else to do it” you said trying to act natural.

“oh, was she good?” he asked.

“yeah, he was really really good” you said, not looking into his eyes yet.

“oh great…wait, he?” kylian asked you turning off the tv.

“yup…no one else was able to do it this morning, but they have this new guy and he’s actually really good” you said once again.

“but-but where did you? you know…where, which part of your body?” he asked you trying to keep it cool.

“oh, i shaved my legs, my armpits and my vagina” you said completely normal.

“hold on…you’re telling me you had a man touching you down there?” he almost screamed.

“what? he wasn’t touching…he was just doing his job kylian, why are you so pressed? you’ve never acted like this when it was one of the girls doing it…” you said.

“exactly! those were girls! today you had a man! a man! a man who basically saw you naked! isn’t this illegal?”

“why should it be illegal kylian? he was simply doing his job…i don’t get why are you so mad…” you tried to look hurt but inside you couldn’t stop laughing, this was evil but you were having so much fun.

“but-but…a man? seriously? he touched you down there y/n…a man!”

“you probably said man a thousand times already…kylian, i don’t get why you are so mad, he was just doing his job…” you tried to resonate with him but he was actually pissed about it.

“i’m not mad!” he screamed and you looked at him “okay…i’m mad…not mad mad, just mad, i don’t know okay? i don’t know how to feel! a guy saw you naked down there and touched you and i don’t care if it was his job that shit should be illegal! a man? no way that’s crazy! you know what? give me the name of that place…i want to get waxed too…” he said and that was the moment you completely lost in and bursted out laughing.

“why are you laughing? it’s because i wanna get waxed too?” he asked you.

“no…no that’s not the reason” you said between laughs “you’re so jealous i love you kylian”

“i don’t get it…” he looked like a lost puppy.

“no man touched me down there…” you kept laughing.

“then how did he wax you?”

“kylian…” you had tears in your eyes because you kept laughing “no man waxed me, it was all a prank” you said.

you couldn’t decipher the look on his face. he went from mad to confused, from confused to sad, from sad to relieved and from relieved to speechless.

“so you thought this was funny?” he asked you and you nodded “why would you think it would be funny? i was about to get fired a man that doesn’t even exist!” he said.

“you are so jealous you would even get a man fired for me?”

“well if a man saw my woman naked i would have his head on my table…” he said smirking at you.

“oh my - you’re something else” you kept laughing.

you both spent the rest of the day laughing about the prank you did but what you didn’t know was that kylian was already working on how to get revenge on you.