#bundle was $27

[huhinhalingpink]

seventeen

should i get back into seventeen? these were my favorite songs from them:

"Trauma" from "Teen, Age"

"Adore U" from "17 Carat"

"Oh My!" from "You Make My Day"

The ENTIREEE "You Made My Dawn" EPPP ohhh myy goshhhhh that mini album is soo nostalgic to me ToT

[azurescaled]

for the first time in what feels like forever, i got unnerved because of something horror related.

[reidmania]

use somebody | spencer reid

part two

summary; spencer doesn’t believe someone like you could ever like someone like him, but he would do anything for a chance.

warnings; fem!reader, reader is described as being really really kind, bau!worker reader, fluff (slight angst bc spencer doubts himself) reader is a bundle of joy idk, spencer is absolutely disgustingly in love with reader. reader has a dog ( a golden retriever ) reader IS A BOOK LOVER, reader is shorter than spencer., no love confession but like there basically is. maybe a part two coming idk!

an; this is based off use somebody by kings of leon bc that song just AHHHH

‘I've been roamin' around, always lookin' down at all I see, painted faces fill the places I can't reach. You know that I could use somebody, you know that I could use somebody, someone like you and all you know and how you speak, countless lovers under cover of the street, you know that I could use somebody, you know that I could use somebody. Someone like you, off in the night, while you live it up, I'm off to sleep, wagin' wars to shape the poet and the beat. I hope it's gonna make you notice, I hope it's gonna make you notice someone like me’

If there was a single light in a room, it would be your smile. Spencer had decided that the minute you introduced yourself to him on your first day, your wide smile was the first thing he noticed, then your kind voice — ever since Spencer Reid’s heart had your name written all over it and you had no idea.

You had been talking to Emily, your hands flinging around the more excited you got about whatever it was you were talking about, you were still smiling when Spencer approached with furrowed eyebrows after Emily had noticed him in the doorway and called him over to introduce himself to the team newest member.

You had introduced yourself with probably the widest, and sweetest grin he had ever seen. He almost forgot about the amount of germs spread through hand shaking when you offered him yours. He was pretty sure he felt the most embarrassment and disappointment when he didn’t forget — and turned down your handshake with his name and a silly ramble about what your name means historically.

He didn’t miss the way your smile never dampened — not even after his rejection of your offered hand, not during his embarrassingly long ramble, not as you listened intriguingly and then told him how cool it was that he just knew that off the top of his head.

That was a year, forty three days, 16 hours and 27 minutes ago — not that Spencer was counting. But he definitely was.

Your kindness won his heart from that moment. Your smile became his moral support during a particularly tough case. It seemed all the less tense when you would meet his eyes from across the room and offer him the sweetest smile. Your small gifts you left around for each member of the team became what he looked forward to and the end of every week — each more thoughtful than the last.

Spencer had kept the collection of small gifts you had given him on the shelf of his bedroom. Each one was specific to him. If someone on the team had mentioned wanting something or something they liked — at the end of the week it would be sitting on their desk with a little pink sticky note and a small ‘I hope you like it!’ in your hand writing.

He noticed that a lot of the time your gifts for him reference whatever he had rambled about the most that week, because he never explicitly told you he wanted anything or liked something because he knew you would go out of your way to get him it — you however found a way anyways.

Doctor who figurines, books, dvd’s. one week you had noticed him fidgeting more than normal and on the friday evening you had left a small collection of different fidget toys for him, with the same pink sticky note that wrote, ‘Picking at your skin is bad!! it can lead to infections and sometimes if you do it too much you could end up needing surgery. (I dont know if thats true, doctor google wasn’t helpful!) I hope these help’

He hadn’t picked at his skin since, if he was fidgeting it was with one of the small metal fidgets you had gifted him.

“Good morning!” You chirped — suddenly the room seemed brighter as you walked into the bullpen, your bag was slung over your shoulders as you made your way towards your desk. You turned your head to offer Spencer a sweet smile.

He returned it, lifting his hand to wiggle his fingers in a gentle waving. A habit he had picked up from you. You never just waved like everyone else did, instead you just held up your hand and wiggled your fingers. When you were asked about it you had smiled and shrugged and said it seemed like your fingers were dancing.

Spencer was pretty sure it was the sweetest reasoning for something he had even heard, but maybe that was just the fact it was coming from you.

“Did you like the dvd I gave you on Friday? The documentary one — if you have even watched it yet! I thought it was interesting!!” You said as you placed your bag on your desk. He thought his heart was going to jump out of his chest at the way your hair fell over your face when your head dropped down to look at your desk.

He shuffled slightly at his desk to sit up a little bit straighter. “I watched it.” He stated. Any dvd you gave him he watched the night he had got it. This one particularly — he had known all of the information that was in it, but it didn’t stop him from enjoying it any less — because you liked it enough to recommend it to him.

“I thought it was interesting.” He nodded, you lifted your head and smiled and he started to wonder at what point that sweet smile would stop having an effect on him. He partly hoped it never would. “I watched another one yesterday. I think you’d like it.” He said, not mentioning the fact he had paid extra attention to all of it, making sure it included something you were interested in, just so he could recommend it to you then talk to you about it the next day.

You grinned, leaning against your desk as you looked at him. He was thankful your desk was so close to his. That you were so close to him. Close enough to have a conversation without having to talk across the room, close enough that he could lean over and help with whatever you needed if you asked.

“The documentaries you watch might be a little above my expertise. I think I’ll just be confused the entire time” You giggled out, tilting your head slightly to the side. He shook his head instantly, eyes following the hair that fell the way your head tilted, down your shoulder.

“You’re smart, you’d understand.” He said.

You smiled and raised your eyebrow slightly, “I’m not smart like you’re smart, Spence.” You shook your head, just as he had a few minutes ago.

He shrugged, “Not many people are” It came out cockier than he intended, he was about to apologise for how it sounded before he heard you let out a gutty laugh. A real laugh. “If- If you’d like.. We uh- We could watch it together and I could explain to you whatever you don’t understand” He added, then he realised he had basically just invited you to hang out with him. Just you and him, in an unprofessional setting. Now his mind was fuelled by the fear of rejection.

That fear dimmed when your smile widened. “Really? That would be great! I’d love that.” You had said.

Spencers mind went to almost a million different places in that moment. He thought about curling up with you on his couch, the documentary playing on his tv as you focused intently on whatever information was being said, he would admire you, he would ache to pull you closer and kiss your smiling lips.

Then he remembered how kind you were. The memory was both a blessing and a curse because then he remembered that your acceptance was probably an acceptance from your kind heart and want to spend time with your friend, opposed to wanting to spend time with him.

You smiled at him sweetly again before you were rushing off to greet JJ and tell her about something silly or maybe talk about whatever the two of you did on the weekend. He knew you often went out with the girls of the team on weekends.

Those nights he would lay in bed and wonder what you were doing, what you were wearing, how your hair was done, if you were laughing at a strangers jokes — you probably were. He knew that because you laughed at everyone’s jokes.

if all the joy in the world was wrapped up into a bundle and forced upon a person — that person was you. Spencer didn’t know if he had ever seen you not smiling and honestly his heart ached for the day he would have to.

“Hey Spence?” His head turned instantly towards the sound of your voice, he looked around to see you on your tiptoes trying to reach a file from a top shelf. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight. You didn’t need to say anything else before he was standing and walking over towards you.

He reached up, fingertips skimming along the files, “Which one do you need?” He asked gently, his eyes dipping away from the files to meet yours as you returned flat on your feet, a grateful smile on your lips, staring up at him.

“Um” You paused, eyebrows furrowing before a laugh left your lips, “The.. second one- I think” You paused before nodding.

He smiled “You think?” reaching up to pull out the second file nonetheless. He heard you sigh dramatically — he didn’t need to look at you to know you were smiling still, probably pushing hair behind your ear.

“Yes, I think.” You stated. He pulled out the file, handing it to you. You took it gently, flicking through it for a moment, your eyes dancing along the words on the page before nodding.

You scrunched up your nose a little when you looked back up at him. “— I thought right! Thank you Spence. You’re amazing and great and awesome” You rambled, flooding him with praise. He felt his cheeks warm at your never ending compliments despite how often you gave them. You constantly reminded him how amazing you thought he was — when he was doing the most minimal things.

He wanted to take it as a sign that maybe you felt the same way he did but then you’d flood someone else with the same praise and that flame of hope would dwindle down just as fast as it came alight.

“You’re welcome” He settled on as his eyes lingered on yours for a moment, your cheeks were a warm shade of pink and he wondered if that had anything to do with him rather than the fact the room was just a little bit warmer than normal.

You grinned and turned away. He followed as you walked back towards the desks. He sat down at his desk, swivelling his chair to face your desk. “I was thinking — if you wanted, this weekend we could watch that documentary at mine, my dog gets a bit excited around new people but he could stay outside if it makes you more comfortable— Oh and theres a new take away shop near my house if you wanted to get dinner” You rambled about your plan’s absentmindedly as you looked over the case.

Spencer felt his heart pull for a number of reasons, one because he didn’t even know you had a dog. He couldn’t help but wonder if everyone else did and this was just a piece of information he had missed out on. Secondly, at the fact you were serious about watching the documentary with him. You actually wanted to.

He had partly assumed you had just agreed because you were kind and didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and it would just be plans you two never really followed through with. He should’ve known better — because it was you.

“You don’t have plans with the girls?” He asked, eyebrows pinched together because he could clearly remember this morning hearing you and Emily talk about where you guys would go this weekend.

You let out a gentle laugh, shaking your head. “Im making plans with you actually. I go out with them every weekend, I’m sure they will survive without me for one.” You smiled sweetly at him, and his heart felt like it was being clenched by someones tight hand.

He tried to hide the fact his cheeks had turned an ugly shade of pink, and that his eyes had blinked away from your captivating gaze for a moment. “That- Yeah- Yeah. That would, thats fine. Your dog is fine. We can get dinner.” He stammered out, because apparently your kindness took away his ability to think straight. Although he knew that already.

“Great!” You smiled. Suddenly Spencer hoped this week would go fast. He turned his gaze back to yours as a question weighed on his tongue, a wonder.

“What type of dog do you have?” He asked, his tone laced with curiosity as he watched you reorganise your desk. How you were smiling while doing something so mundane had his stomach filling with an ache of longing.

You raised your eyes back to his, a gasp of excitement leaving your lips at the opportunity to talk about your dog. “A golden retriever!!” You said, before going into a ramble about your dog.

He grinned as he listened to every word. He couldn’t help but think, a golden retriever. That was so fitting.

What Spencer wasn’t expecting at the end of the week, was a book sitting on his desk. The book wasn’t the surprising part. It was the pink sticky note and what it had written on it that sparked his curiosity.

‘I read this last week and I know romance novels aren’t usually your style but I thought of you. Its annotated. The key is on the back. Have the greatest night <3’

You had already left for the night after dropping everyone’s weekly small gift off around their desks and waving goodbye. Spencer knew you left a little earlier than anyone else to get the bus. You knew how to drive, you had a car. When he had asked you why you got the bus everyday you had told him you just enjoyed people watching.

He constantly worried about what may happen with the dangers of public transport and with how kind you were — well you would be an easy target. How could he tell you that he worried about you when you gave him the sweetest reasoning in the world? How could he tell you he worried without pouring his heart out to you.

Spencer went home that night and in bed he read the book you had gifted him — you were right, romance novels weren’t necessarily his favourite but it didn’t stop him from reading it with just as much interest because it was you that recommended it.

His eyes danced along the key on the back for your annotation. Pink was things you found sweet, green was moments you found interesting, yellow was things that moments that made you sad. — that one made Spencer’s lips pull into a tug because how dare anything make someone so sweet so sad?

But what really caught his interest was the blue. ‘things i want you to know’ It made him wonder what things in this book could possibly be something you wanted him to know.

When reading, he came across many colours and lines highlighted, most in pink and green, a few in yellow, but there was only one part highlighted in blue, it was lines in a conversation in the middle of a particularly mushy love confession between the two characters of the book.

‘You smile a lot.’ was highlighted in blue,

and then, “When you’re around, its hard not to’

Spencer didn’t know what it meant — thats not true. He knew what it meant, he knew what you were saying but he didn’t know what it meant about how you felt about him. His mind swirled with the possibility that you might feel something for him.

How it was possible that someone like you, could ever feel anything for someone like him had his mind in a frenzy.

That didn’t matter when Spencer finished the book and added it to the collection of items you had gifted him, he kept the sticky note and placed it back on the book. He looked over the collection — each gift partnered with the sticky note you had written when gifting them.

Spencer Reid loved you, and if he played any part in making you smile — That was enough for him.

[dungeonzine]

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[meanbossart]

Pin!

Hi, I'm RJ (Male, 27 years old) I'm a -usually- horror oriented artist and collaborator alongside my partner and better-half @barbatusart, though I'm currently on a Baldur's Gate 3/DnD streak with both my art and writing, specifically centered around the Dark Urge I created for my campaign and his antics, so that's most of what you will find here!

I want to leave a warning right here that I occasionally venture into delicate topics in regards to character lore and history - though none of it strays too far from what the game already delves into and I try to give a heads-up ahead of time whenever I feel like something might catch someone off-guard otherwise.

PATREON WHERE I POST WIPS, SKETCHES, UNRELEASED ART, ALL OF MY NSFW CONTENT, ETC : patreon.com/meanbossart/

BLUESKY WHERE I PUT UP FULL VERSIONS OF *SOME* OF THE NSFW THAT I CAN'T POST HERE: bsky.app/profile/meanbossart.bsky.social

TWITCH WHERE I STREAM SOMETIMES: twitch.tv/meanboss14

PSA: I get a lot of asks and I'm slow to go through them, please don't take it personally :U

Anyway, here's the guy of the hour:

🚨FAQ BELOW🚨

Q: Does your Durge have a name? A: Nope! I named him "drow" when I played the game because I didn't feel like thinking up anything special. His lack of a name has become part of the character's lore and you will find him to always be tagged with "DU drow", or referred to as The Drow or just Drow.

Q: Where can I read your BG3 fan-fiction? And what is it about? A: Right here! The main plot follows DU Drow, Astarion, and Shadowheart on a new adventure that fractures into a couple of different directions, but mainly focuses on the aftermath of the spawn that Astarion has released and the personal development of the main cast, alongside a number of original characters that get involved in the narrative. My goal was to create a kind of "DLC" experience, so you can expect a lot of themes that parallel the main game.

Q: Can I draw one of your characters, a scene from your story, or any of your characters interacting with mine/other characters? And can it be NSFW in nature? A: YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN, AND I'LL BE DELIGHTED TO SEE IT IF YOU CARE TO SHARE. I'm equally fine with NSFW as long as everyone involved (in the art and otherwise) is an adult.

Q: What drawing software/tablet/brushes do you use? A: I draw on a Wacom Cintiq 22, using Clip Studio Pro. I switch around brushes quite often but most of what I use comes from the DAUB super-bundle by Paolo Limoncelli.

Q: Where can I find more of your work? A: You can find mine and my partner's comics here, but please bear in mind that most of it is highly violent stuff and you should read the content warnings on the store page carefully before making any purchases - if in doubt of whether or not any of it could be detrimental to your mental health, DON'T BUY IT. Stay safe!

Q: Do you take commissions? A: I am not currently taking any new commission inquiries, sorry!

[bamboozledbird]

Written in the Stars // Stiles Stilinski Imagine

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, fem!reader Pairing: Stiles x Reader, Stiles x You (no use of y/n) Word Count: 5k Tags: fluff, fluff, fluff, i love my men nerdy and desperate, all characters are over 19, my vibe is it's like their sophomore or junior year of college Warnings: NSFW, MDNI, unprotected pnv (terrible advice, babes, don't listen to these idiots)

Request: stiles smut plssss!!! anything fluffy??? A/N: request mixed with a lil bit of an old work to ease me into my first smut. still coming across virginities at 27, and that is really something. s/o to the anon who requested it lmao.

Stiles’s childhood bedroom is an assortment of Star Wars paraphernalia, baseball posters, and bundles of wrinkled flannels squeezed to fit within four faded blue walls. There are a few books stacked on top of his desk, coated in a thin layer of dust from the semester away from home, and little plastic stormtroopers stand at attention on his dresser corners. It smells a little musty in his room, a little like damp earth, but you’ve always liked that smell. You especially like how his cologne smells here—like spice, like fallen leaves, like Christmas morning. 

“The curtains are blackout,” Stiles says. He pulls the heavy navy curtains over the window facing the small backyard. The grass is yellowing from the cold of winter, and the air is crisp with the same bitter chill. You shiver and burrow further into the sweatshirt you’d somehow commandeered long before you and Stiles were a we. A few flecks of dust float off the plaid bedding when he sits down on his bed. He looks up at you and grins at the sleeves hanging limply below your fingers, “Flip off the light.” 

You turn off the light and shut the door. It’s dark inside the room now—almost completely black. What little remains of the sun is gone, and now you can only see the glow-in-the-dark stars sticky-tacked to the ceiling. “You must have taken a lot of people up here,” you hum, grinning at him coyly over your shoulder. You’re not quite sure if he can make out the glint in your eyes under the pale fluorescent glow, but you’d like to think he can. Either way, you’re sure he knows.

Stiles laughs easily and scoots himself down to the edge of his bed, “Why?”

“For kissing,” you say, matter-of-factly, but you’re still grinning. You make your way towards him, and your prowl is far less smooth than you’d like it to be—the piles of books and a couple month’s worth of dirty laundry make an already difficult path downright hazardous. You count it as a win when you end up in his lap without tripping on anything, “Doesn’t everyone want to be kissed under the stars?”

His hands, his wonderfully large and veiny hands, find their way to your hips. It’s instinct for him, reflexive at this point, and here in the dark it feels like the only thing he knows. You can feel his grin against your neck, “Do you?” 

You hum, playing coy, and absently curl your fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, thick and curling a bit at the ends. It’s grown out over the last few months. He’s been too busy with studying for finals and working at the library to bother getting it cut. You like it like this, long enough to hold onto, long enough to yank. “I like the stars,” you sigh—so close to his mouth, but not touching—and then you pull back, smiling fondly when you see his mouth is already puckered. “Tell me about ‘em.”

Stiles groans and falls onto his back, pulling you down with him. You end up tucked against his side, shivering as he slides his hand under your sweatshirt to trace a feathery line up and down your back. “That’s like the worst possible genre for innuendo. I can’t woo you while I’m David Attenborough-ing about astrology.”

You smile against his shoulder, and he yelps when you nip at his skin through his thread-bare t-shirt. “You like a challenge.”

He wraps a strand of your hair around his finger and pulls a little, just hard enough to tip into a reprimand. It’s at least half the reason you turn into a brat when he’s this close. “There’s Andromeda,” he hums against the top of your head, pointing towards a small cluster of stars. “Those are supposed to be her legs, and that’s her head, and the ones over there are her arms—fuckin’ uneven, I know. I think that side kinda looks like she’s holding out one of those canes with tennis balls on t—”

You smile and knock your head into his chin lightly, “Wooing, Stiles.”

He tugs on your hair again and swears under his breath when a little whimper tumbles past your lips. “Anyway, she’s next to Perseus—who looks a lot more like Patrick than a demigod. I mean, look at him; his body type is like…something between Dorito and spanakopita.” You laugh, and Stiles squeezes you closer to his side, tangles your legs together, and kisses the tip of your nose like he just can’t help himself. “Story goes, Andromeda's mom royally pissed off Poseidon, so he sent a sea monster to destroy her kingdom—as one does when someone’s talking shit.”

“Naturally,” you hum as you reach for the hand he has cupped around your waist. 

“Naturally,” Stiles agrees, nodding against the crown of your head. You try not to get too distracted by the length of his fingers, bending them and straightening them out one at a time, as he carries on with the story, “So Andromeda’s mom is up there with the titans of bad parents—like right next to Vader and every Disney step-mom ‘cause she fuckin’ ties Andromeda to a rock as a sacrifice for the mo—” He sucks in a shallow breath through his teeth when you start kissing along the row of his knuckles, first little soft brushes that almost tickle and then a few lingering ones that wet his skin. He swears again and ever-so slowly shifts his hips against the thigh tucked between his legs. You take pity on him and rest your entwined hands in the small gap between your breastbone and his ribs. His exhale is warm against your forehead, “Obviously, Perseus swoops in at the last minute, slays the beast, gets the girl, etcetera, etcetera.”

Humming, you tip your chin up against his chest and look at him through your lashes, “What happens during etcetera, etcetera?” 

“I think,” Stiles rolls over so that he’s on top of you, bracing his weight on his forearms, caging you in delightfully close to his broad chest, “something like this.”

You forget about the game for a minute when he starts mouthing at your skin with just the right amount of teeth. His hair, adorably messy and sticking up in little patches from your fingers, tickles the hinge of your jaw. “Didn’t Perseus kill Medusa?” you mumble, head tipping back into the mattress, eyes closed. 

“Uh,” Stiles keeps kissing along your neck, obviously distracted by the hitches in your breath and the soft sighs you let out when he breathes against spit-slick skin, “yeah?”

You can feel the heaviness of his whine against your mouth when you pull away, blinking up at him with big, round eyes—the picture of innocence. A little lamb, an unplucked daisy, a gossamer butterfly wing, entirely unaware of the raging hard-on pressed against your inner thigh. His skin is warm through his shirt, so warm you feel it on your legs when you wrap them around his waist. “While she was sleeping?”

“Uh huh,” Stiles slides a hand up your thigh. The other one is pressed into the mattress, and the muscles in his forearm flex under his full weight. You’re pretty sure he’d agree with anything you say like this.

Unfortunately for the pulsing between your legs, you’ve fallen victim to your own ruse. Your head tilts as you recall all the unsavory details of the Medusa myth, “After she was literally assaulted by his dad?”

Stiles drops his head against your chest and groans, “You’re killing me, baby.”

You grin and curl your fingers in his hair, petting him gently and squeezing your thighs against his hips, “Tell me another one.”

He sighs and rolls over, starfishing his right arm and leg over the edge of the bed with a dramatic flop. “We’ll skip Orion and the seven girls he stalked.”

“Smart choice,” you hum and snuggle into his side. His chest is firm from hours of trying to lift enough to play lacrosse with werewolves, but it still makes for a nice pillow. Stiles’s fingers find their way into your hair, and you swallow back the purr rising in your throat for his sake. He’s been so good for you, after all. You don’t want the torture to be too painful.

“And the swan-fucker,” he adds, scratching lightly at your scalp.

“What?”

Stiles ignores your wide eyes, smirking, and continues playing with your hair, “Altair and Vega. That’s a good one.” In the blanket of darkness and under the strain of yearning, his voice sounds soft and crackly, like one of those singers in the black and white movies, the ones that dance with the microphone. “Starts with a gorgeous, sexy, incredibly charitable goddess falling for a lowly mortal,” his grin is sly as he hikes your thigh over his, squeezing just under your ass, “a lot like us.”

“Boo. Awful.” You pull a face as he drops a flurry of kisses over your cheeks, nose, chin—your laughing mouth, “Disgusting. I’m disgusted.” 

His fingers dip into the waistband of your leggings, tauntingly close to just where you want him, “You don’t feel disgusted.”

Now, that won’t do. You’re just getting started. You trap his hand with your thighs and tap your finger against the slope of his upturned nose, “Finish the story.” 

Stiles whines a little and then sighs, returning the palm of his hand to the little dip above your hip. “Her dad is disgusted that she wants to bring a loser human home, so he turns them into stars on opposite sides of the galaxy.”

Frowning, you squint at the collection of stars he’d pointed to. They don’t look so far apart on his bedroom ceiling. “That’s…depressing.”

“It’s not over yet,” Stiles pulls on your hair and does his best to look annoyed, but the nip to your bottom lip feels far more like a reward than a punishment, “hush.” He waits a minute for you to comply—or, more likely, not comply—and you settle back on his chest and arch your brow, waiting. He arches his brow right back and then keeps going, “One day a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, Altair fills the galaxy with his tears, and every bird in the sky makes a bridge with their wings so that they can spend one more night together.”

The corner of your mouth tugs into a little grin, “That is a good one.” You trace little patterns on his bicep, little swirls and stars, and rest your chin on his shoulder so that you can see his pretty face, “But just for the story. Only one night a year would kill me.”

“Baby,” Stiles clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth and shakes his head like he's disappointed, bottom lip jutting out slightly from under his top, “it'd take a helluva lot more than a couple light-years and an immortal father-in-law to keep me from getting to you.” 

It’s such a line, but the dopey grin he gives you while he says it somehow makes it charming. Maybe you’re just a little bit lovesick. Okay, maybe a lot. “You can kiss me n—”

He’s on you before you can finish, but you don’t mind being interrupted when he's slanting his mouth against yours just right and groaning into your sighs with a gravelly pitch that makes your toes curl. “Fuck me,” Stiles sighs. He dips back in before you can quip something bratty, something that would definitely earn you another yank on your hair—later perhaps. 

You straddle his waist, sit back in the cradle of his pelvis, and lace your fingers together on the mattress against the sides of his head. He whimpers. You curse. “Off,” you mutter against his mouth, tugging petulantly on the hem of his t-shirt. Stiles is quick to comply, like always, but the fabric gets stuck around his shoulders. You let him struggle for a minute, just long enough to hear more of those petulant little whines. When you finally help him wrangle his shirt over his head, you’re up close and personal with his mouth. His lips are pretty—swollen, pink, and shiny with salvia and your lip balm—and you’re filled with the overwhelming urge to bite. You toss his shirt somewhere on the floor behind you and lean down, your chest pressed against his. You can feel his heartbeat stutter, like a rabbit in a trap, when you stroke your thumb over his bottom lip. It’s soft and wet against your finger, and you sigh high in your throat, “Pretty.”

His chest warms, and you wish you had more light to admire the flush spreading from his neck to his cheeks. You know it’s pink and pretty too, but you’d enjoy seeing the proof. “Pretty?” Stiles echoes, cocking his head slightly, and slides his hands from your ass to your hips. He continues his path along the sides of your ribcage with the bottom of your sweatshirt bunched between his fingers.

“Pretty,” you nod, sharp and definitive. You sit up a little so that Stiles can pull your hoodie off, and then it’s lost to the dark abyss. Frankly, you aren’t that worried about if you ever see it again. You can always steal another one after you’re done. 

He shakes his head and runs his hands over your torso, your collarbones, your stomach, just under your tits—he can’t see that well in the dim light, so he’s damn well going to see you the only way he can. “Pretty,” Stiles groans, cupping your tits and gently thumbing over your nipples through the thin fabric of your cotton bra. It’s simple, white, unadorned by lace or a pattern—and it’s sexier than it has any right to be, he thinks. He’s eager to rip it off.

You shudder through the entire length of your spinal column, through all the nerves attached, and arch into his touch, “Yeah?” 

He coos, and your nipples pebble in response. It’s embarrassing but soon forgotten when Stiles cups your face, big hands encompassing almost the entire length of your jaw, and whispers, “Pretty girl. My pretty baby.” 

It’s even more embarrassing how quickly you feel your underwear dampen under the scrutiny of some simple praise. Now, you’re whining, and he’s letting out a string of guttural, “Fuck,”s as you grind down against the increasingly painful bulge in his jeans. Your nails leave little pink lines along the sculpted v of his pelvis, just deep enough to sting a bit—enough to send his head back towards his shoulders. He sits up a little more so that he can grip your hips, holding them still as he catches his breath, and you’re only a little ashamed of the way you mewl his name in protest. Stiles shuts you up with a kiss and shakes his head, “Can’t come in my pants like I’m 17 again. That’s the worst possible ending to our constellation. Like a 1/10, definitely certified rotten.”

You grin against his throat, and he swallows at the sharp press of your teeth. “Oh, I don’t think that’s the worst ending. Wouldn’t the worst be the one where you don’t come at all?” 

Stiles’s fingers dig into your hips and he pulls you down firmly against his lap, like he’s scared you’ll get up and leave him with a weeping cock and teary eyes. “Baby, don’t even joke about that. That’s a billion times worse than letting a sea monster rip me in half.”

“Guess you can split me in half then,” you shrug a little, and Stiles goes taut under you, fingertips flexing into the small of your back, “unless you want me to tie you to a rock. I’d be into that.”

He growls in your ear, nipping at your jaw and flipping you onto your back. You laugh, a little breathless, as you bounce back on the mattress from the force of it. “Definitely wanna split you in half,” Stiles mutters as he shucks off his pants and kneels at the edge of his bed. He starts peeling back your leggings, taking his time to kiss each sliver of skin revealed to him despite the urgency in his eyes, despite the ache in his white-knuckled grip on the buttery martial of your bottoms. “Gonna wreck you,” Stiles promises as he brushes his lips over your ankle a few times. His words are filthy, but his eyes are honey-sweet and lit with nothing but complete and utter devotion—like you really are a goddess in the sky. You’re already wrecked, probably have been since he kissed you for the first time, entirely ruined for anyone else.

“Did’ya know that Vega is brighter than Altair,” he says, quiet and reverent as he drops your leggings. You blink at him, a bit dumbly, but it’s his own fault for trying to have a conversation while he’s sliding your legs over his shoulders and fiddling with the hem of your underwear. “By, like, 5 places? I think? That’s us too—can’t even look at you sometimes,” he hums, warm against your wet cunt, and hooks his thumbs around your panties. You shudder, and he smiles. You aren’t quite sure if he’s talking to you or to the glistening flesh he reveals when he yanks the baby pink cotton to the side. Either way, you understand his dilemma. It’s torture to watch him sometimes. You have to close your eyes when the pink tip of his tongue darts out, wetting his lip, tasting the air. 

There’s a sigh. So soft. Really more of an exhale, and you aren’t sure where it came from. It could’ve been you, or him, or the stars. “You talk a lot,” this time you know the sigh is coming from you. 

Stiles smirks a little and slips his thumb inside your panties, swiping through your slick folds like he’s fingerpainting, “Is that a complaint?”

Your hips stutter, and his other hand is quick to clamp down on your skin, stopping any attempts to skitter away from his light touch. “I love it when you talk,” you hum, leaning up onto your elbows so that you can watch him work. He grins up at you, almost shy, and presses down against your clit. A wet gasp bursts through swollen lips as your back arches, and Stiles isn’t so shy when he bends down to drop a gentle kiss over his thumb. “But I, uh,” you brush your fingers through the dark hair flopping over his forehead and squeeze your eyes shut when his kisses become kitten licks, “I also love it when you use your mo—” His finger (his long, gifted finger) slides into your cunt with an embarrassing squelch, and his lips wrap around your clit as he sucks. “That,” you whine, back arching a little until Stiles spreads his fingers over your stomach and presses down, “I also love it when you do that.” 

His laugh vibrates deliciously against all the places he’s trying to devour, and you think it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go—being eaten alive by your gorgeous boyfriend. He pulls back to slip another finger in your pussy, spreading them just enough to burn in the best way, and then he’s prodding at the spot inside you that sends a jolt up your spine—makes your fingers wind in the bedspread, pull on his hair, fly to your mouth when you start to cry a little. It didn’t used to be like this. Sex. Getting fingered, fucked, even eaten out—it never felt like this before him. It’s…overwhelming, sometimes. Most of the time, actually. You keep waiting to get used to it, for the newness, the discovery of it all, to wear off. Hasn’t happened yet. You don’t think it ever will. Certainly not tonight. 

“Good?” Stiles licks his lips, at the glistening corners of his mouth, and you toss your head back—overwhelmed. “Good,” he concludes, and he’s not even smug about it. More like he’s making a note in one of his case files, something to look back on later when he needs it. He’s quick about getting what little remains of your clothes off, and when he crawls on top of you, you’re immensely grateful for it. Skin on skin, nothing quite like it. Quick romps in the jeep, up against alley walls, the sink of the occasional bar bathroom—all fun, but not nearly as satisfying as being completely pressed against his naked body, completely caged in by his large frame. Sappy, maybe, but it feels dirty when he drags the tip of his cock through your folds. When he bumps against your clit, you mewl and dig your nails into his back. He sucks in sharply and buries his face in the crook of your neck, “There’s a condom in th—”

“Forget it,” you whimper, carding your fingers through his hair. It’s a little sweaty where it meets his neck, and it’s so soft, and thick, and perfect, and—he’s stopped breathing against your neck. 

He groans from a place deep in his gut, deeper actually, and his arms shake, “Are you su—”

“Yes,” you nod rapidly and wrap your legs around him, arms too, and your fingers join in on the clinging when they twist in his hair. “Absolutely. 1000%. Please don’t make me say please.”

He lets out a little laugh that stirs the hair framing your face, and he traces your cheekbone, barely touching your skin. Your head swims with the look in his eyes: amber, warmth, and worship, “But you’re just so pretty when you beg.” Not that you’ve ever had to for long. Stiles gives you anything you want if you ask him the right way. If you look at him with big, wet eyes, if you jut out your lower lip just so—wet as well, the little lick of your tongue is part of it; that took him months to figure out—he crumbles. He’s said many times that better men than he have fallen victim to far less beautiful schemes. 

Stiles kisses the pout off your lips and nudges the tip of his nose over yours, grinning like a drunken idiot, “Told’ya, baby. Not a light-year, definitely not a little latex.” His grin slides into a little ‘o’ when you slither your hand between your bodies and grip his cock, sliding the first inch into your cunt, impatient. “F-fuck—fuck-ing hell,” he grunts and takes over for you, squeezing your hip until it starts to hurt a little. You’d say something, but then he’d stop—and you like the way it aches. You like knowing there will be a bruise. He’ll fret over it later, kiss each mottled spot better a million times, and you like that too. You like being taken care of, almost as much as he likes taking care of you. 

When he bottoms out, when his pelvic bone ruts up against you, a long, drawn out whimper spills through your pout. “Yeah? Feels good, baby?” Stiles watches your face closely, brushes away the hair sticking to your forehead, and drops a few kisses on your shut eyelids. You nod, and nod, and nod, until he stops you with another kiss to your lips. He kisses you slowly, presses his tongue against the seam of your lips, and you sigh. The kiss quickly becomes wet and filthy, and you’d be embarrassed by the sound of your tongues sliding together if you could actually hear it. At the moment, all you can hear is his cock sliding in and out of your dripping pussy—and that’s definitely sending a dizzying heat up your neck. You don’t worry about it for long when his hips shift and he starts hitting that spot inside you again. After that, neither of you can hear anything over your squealing. Stiles kisses away the tears gathering at the corners of your eyes and licks his lips, chasing the taste. “Right there, huh?” You babble an incoherent answer, and he strokes your hair and noses at your cheek, “Yeah, right there. I know. It’s okay.” 

Stiles slides his hands under your back and sits up, taking you with him. The new angle is impossibly deep, and you bite down on his shoulder and wind your arms around his neck to keep yourself there. With him. In the moment. “It’s okay, baby. I got you, promise,” he squeezes your hips, and despite his reassurances and the strength of his grip, you know he’s falling apart too. He’s close. You can feel it. His hips stutter a little, change direction, lose their dedicated pace—and it’s perfect because you’re right there with him. It’s been building for a while, probably since he led you by hand to his room, maybe even before that when he smirked at you behind his cup of tequila and (mostly) pineapple juice. 

You cry a little and bite down on your bottom lip, hard. Stiles kisses the sting away, and your eyes screw shut as you start babbling again, “I’m—”

He kisses you again and lifts his hands from your hips to cup your face, thumbing along your bottom lip when he pulls back—not far, just enough to look at your face, shiny with sweat and tears. “I know,” he stills for a moment, pausing the movement of his hips so that he can just feel you pulsing around him for a moment, “me too.” You aren’t sure if you want to hit him or kiss him for stopping, but you don’t have the strength to do either when he starts what must be his final round of thrusts. It has to be—you’re a few seconds away from collapsing or coming, whichever comes first. When Stiles moans your name in your ear, soft and high like he does when he’s right there, and he slides his hand down your stomach to rub firm circles on your clit, you’re happy it’s your orgasm that happens first. Your abs convulse a little as you twitch around him, and you curl in on yourself as much as you can with Stiles in the way. He’s not in the way for long. Growling, he shoves you back against the bed and mumbles, “Where?” after a few sloppy thrusts. 

You mewl as he keeps the pressure on your clit, reach for his wrist and try to pull his hand away, but he’s determined and you’re tired. You twitch and throw your head back, whimpering, “Inside,” before you can think better of it. It’s his fault, you’ll decide later, for prolonging your high with his mean, unforgiving, wonderful thumb. 

He’ll blame you, for feeling so perfect around him—for fluttering, and leaking, and trembling better than…anything he’s ever seen in porn, and he’s watched...a lot of it, so he’s a bit of an expert on the cinematic orgasm. “You’re so fuckin—you,” he shakes his head against your heaving chest and groans, “you’re everything.” And when he finally comes in you, you’re okay with taking the blame for something that feels so good. He manages a few more thrusts, and then he finally lets you pull his hand away from your cunt when he collapses onto his forearms, barely holding himself up from crushing you with his full weight. You’d tell him to roll over, but then he’d be over there and not in you, so you put up with the sweat and heaviness while your head spins. 

“Baby?” Stiles hums noncommittally in response to your soft prodding, and you smirk against the top of his head. All the smugness leaves you when you finally feel the foreign sensation of his cum leaking out of you. Shuddering, you kiss his hair a few times and scratch up and down his back lightly until he’s able to breathe normally. He pushes himself up onto his arms and glances down when he pulls out, staring for a moment at the way your pussy gapes a bit, watching the trickle of cum drip down your folds and onto the bed. He rubs his hand over his jaw and licks his lips, shaking his head—at a loss for words for the first time in his life. Your tongue is a little thick when you fill the void for him, “Next time, towel first.”

He finds it within himself to tear his eyes away from your cunt and gives you a crooked little grin, “Next time?”

You roll your eyes, but your grin is stupid with affection, “Sure, next time. Maybe. If you’re good.” 

It’s a little disgusting, the way he just rolls over and pulls you on top of him with absolutely no regard for the various bodily fluids sticking to your skin, but you forget about the unpleasantness of drying cum and cooling sweat when he kisses you. “I’m always good,” he huffs against your cheek. You shoot him a look, brows arched and eyes narrowed, and he smirks, “Okay, maybe not, but I’m always good for you.”

You nuzzle in a little closer and scoff, but it’s true. Stiles is so good, always—especially for you. “I guess you did manage to woo me. You’re very sexy when you’re talkin’ astrology, you know that?” 

He smiles, wide and happy, and wiggles his brows, “An absolute banger of an ending, right? I don’t think they could chart it in the stars without ruining your pretty face, but that’s probably for the best.” Stiles brushes his fingers over your lips when you let out a little questioning hum and takes your hand, growling playfully as he nibbles at your fingertips, “You’re mine. Nobody’s allowed to see you like this but me—definitely not horny little nerds with their telescopes.” 

You grin and bump your nose against his, “You’re a horny little nerd with a telescope.”

Stiles tips his head with a sly grin, and you already know what he’s going to say—it’s still devastatingly adorable when he whispers, “No, I’m your horny little nerd with a telescope.” 

Adorable enough to make you consider pulling him into the shower with you, and if the heavy-lidded look he’s giving you is anything to go by, you’d say he agrees.

[fanonical]

btw if you or anybody in your discord server or whatever likes party games then you should check out this humble bundle of jackbox party pack games. jackbox party pack is full of beloved e-party games like quiplash, fibbage, trivia murder party, tee k.o. etc -- you've probably seen some youtubers or streamers play it at some point.

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[evilminji]

Okay, but... now I'm wondering >.>

@the-witchhunter We talked about Danny being Morningstar's feral, probably engineering oils and ectoplasmic goo covered, mad scientist/himbo hybrid (attack) purse dog. His special lil guy.

But!

I seek your Knowledge(TM).

From second hand accounts? He seems to HATE the hypocrisy. The blaming HIM for humanity's own choices. The rat race and endless song n dance of "Righteous Good VS. Cartoonish Evil". Because it let's humanity paint themselves the helpless victims. Because it's all surface level. Because it is not so easy to escape the ugliness of your Sins, yet they keep trying to scapegoat him.

Fuck um.

He was tired of it.

But? He still has CONSIDERABLE POWER. It's probably written down. And the Ring Of Rage? Is proooobably not the loveliest of artifacts? I imagine, like the Crown, it's NOT leaving Danny alone. One of those "we don't CARE if there is no throne left to sit upon, you WILL wear us, as King" sort of systems.

It genuinely would not and DOES NOT matter, if not a single soul in all the Zone bows to him. Did he defeat the previous holder of their Right To Rulership? Yes or No.

If No, fuck off.

If Yes, new monarch.

Is it hurting him? Not the rings problem. Nor the Crown's. Heavy is the weight, etc etc. But! DANNY would certainly care. He is... is ANGRY all the time now. Has no idea who would even MAKE this bullshit ring. Why JUST Rage? Yeah, it makes ghosts stronger, but at what COST?

He can't even get rid of it!

......by himself.

Luckily, he's still clear headed enough to know that he's NOT in this by himself. And it's amazing what "mom, dad, this ring is trying to drive me insane. Help me" in a terrified and tearful voice, can brush over. No one threatens their baby and all that.

It would honestly be hilarious, seeing the extended Fenton clan decend like LOCUSTS on Pariahs Keep, searching for clues, terrifying the local ghosts, if... if he wasn't so tired.

God he's so tired.

It's Aunt Alecia who... "politely encourages" a passing scholar to lend them the book they need. Took the poor sucker right out of the sky. Guy never stood a chance. RIP.

He learns he has to head..... over? Like... 27 that-ish way, then up. Huh. 27 WHAT?

Realities, apparently. He's in the wrong bundle. Branch? Neighborhood? Eh. Clan Fenton rolls back out, he packs his bags, and hilariously enough? Goes off to the devils night club. Hopes he likes rings. Or hates them.

Thankfully, being "king" means the Zone? Kinda... humors him? Like... it still has RULES(tm). He can... can FEEL that now. But it's willing to bend some for him, if he asks. And anything NOT against the rules? If it's in the right mood? He need only ask. It's weird. Being suddenly so powerful, yet NOT, at the same time.

Cause none of it's his.

All he has is the Zone's attention. The ability to ask pretty please. If you don't mind. And then? The highways between... ALL will just? Shift and change for him. He can see how it went to Pariah's head. The Zone is pretty agreeable. Is by nature Amoral, cause it's not a Being, it's... well, it's the Zone.

And everyone wants him to ask things. Do things. Demand this or that. Use this power.

Maybe he doesn't WANT too! Maybe he didn't WANT to be king! Doesn't he have the right to say NO? To refuse? Why do they think he OWES them service? An eternity of politics and people trying to kill him, for something he never wanted in the FIRST PLACE.

He's so tired.

The nightclub's pretty cool.

So he comes to ask, politely of course, cause the guy's probably busy, if Morningstar could... dunno, fix or destroy it? Want a ring, maybe? Also he heard you MADE the stars. Huge fan of all of that. Can I ask about the process? Or are you in the middle of something?

And? Lucifer? Turns around, from where he's Leaning Seductive Yet Elegantly(tm) to see... scrawny. Tiny corpse child. No... half? Corpse? Alive. Dying. Alive yet dying. Huh. Well, that is different. And here he didn't think he'd get see anything NEW. You, child, are NOT a zombie. What are you?

Halfa.

I have no idea what that is. What do you want?

He gets shown the ugliest, crudest, peice of shit ring imaginable. A genuine foul little curse. Really stinks up the place. He destroys it, obviously. This club has STANDARDS. Hope that wasn't important?

Kid just smiles the biggest fangy lil grin. No. No it was not.

Obvious, lie, but cute lil teeth. He'll allow it.

He gets dragged into talking about the stars. And talking. And talking. Mostly bragging and explaining. Kid hangs off his every word. Follows him around as he makes his rounds. Asks good questions. Completely focused, dispite the booze and barely dressed dancing all around him.

Lucifer can't help notice the crown.

Lovely little thing. Space ice and star dust, glittering like jewels and light catching the mist. If he remembers right... that one iiiiiis..... not Limbo, it's.... Zone! That crown is the Zone, it changes to suit the wearer. He recognizes the vibe. Awfully young, aren't you?

And.... it all burst forth. He didn't even need to press. Use persuasive words and honeyed tones. Like an inflamed, festering wound. The merest brush is enough to spill everything.

Negligence, greed, blood lust. Bigotry and xenophobia. A tyrants endless quest for power. Ah, humans. They truly don't change do they? Realities away, dead or alive. Now they're harrasing a child. He honestly looks miserable. Whereas just a moment before, listening to Lucifer talk about his work on the stars, his soul practically GLOWED with light. A tiny little star unto himself.

.......maybe it's the big ol "I'm you BIGGEST FAN" eyes. The sad wet cat aura. Perhaps the scrawny "could snap you like a twig" teenager, all elbows and knees. The fact he is, in fact, NOT human; for all that he once was. But?? The kid? Is... not terrible company.

He'd even go so far as to say? It's like having a pet intern.

He can sleep on the couch.

Tell you what, you stay here? I'll keep taking about stars and YOU can do the chores I don't feel like doing. I'll take care of you and all that.

And Danny? Honestly was sold at the word "stars" but? This sounds like a phenomenally terrible idea... and he has yet to meet one of THOSE he hasn't made out sloppy still with, so deal! But as a minor, that DOES make you his new gaurdian for the next four-ish years. He's legally obligated to finish schooling.

Ah.

.....well shit.

(Just? Local stressed 14-15 year old Ghost King does RESPONSIBILE thing and finds Adultier Adult. With more qualified Adult powers. Unfortunately for everyone, the adult is Lucifer Morningstar, night club owner. Even MORE Unfortunately, said ghost kind has pack bonded with the Nice Star Man, who saved him from the Bad Ring, and effectively offered to let him crash on his swanky couchs.

Now Morningstar has to? Somewhat VAGUELY pretend he gives a shit local schooling system, as he puts his charge INTO it. Actively giving waking terrors to the magical community. What evil plot is afoot? Where did he get this tiny minor death god? What is his end goal FOR said child?

No one knooooows~

But Lucifer is just doing this cause he's a Being of his word. He hates the tedious minor chores he'll be foisting off onto Danny. And? Most importantly? Look at that face. *shoujo sparkly eyes of Star Sempai Noticed Me!* it's like having a golden retriever puppy. Ffs he has STANDARDS.)

(It'd be hilarious to watch the hostile 5th dimensional chess DC characters have going on in the background, all while? Danny is like? Man! Isn't this universe GREAT? Everyone here is so CHILL! And nice to me! I'm so relaxed now! Finally, I can finish my education in peace.)

@hdgnj @hypewinter @lolottes @babbling-babull @nerdpoe @mutable-manifestation

[skvrpion]

Windows🔞

a co-opted fanfiction I previously wrote, now starring Trevante Rhodes

TW: drug paraphernalia, vouyerism, unprotected sex & general filthiness

Frozen rain and snow beat down on Shawna's roof as she struggled work Photoshop. Every picture she was tweaking ended up turning into a confusing mess, one exposure line would go too high, and she couldn't turn back. Winter storms kept her boredom high and thoughts on hold as she wouldn't dare leave the house for anything else.

With a defeated sigh, Shawna slid her MacBook under her bed and went for her phone that'd been charging for when seemed to be hours. Not one notification was to be found from any of her apps, not even the games she had shoved off into a folder. The only thing left was to go through her contacts and FaceTime every single person until someone picked up. Usually, it was her sister or old housemate that would end up persuading her back into editing or asking her to show them her pieces. She could always be thankful for the two when she needed them.

As Shawna began her mind-numbing quest, a faint light caught her eye from her bedroom window. It was rare she saw life coming from the outside her home, almost everyone in her neighborhood was old, dying, or extremely weird to the point that she didn't even bother staying outside after dark.

To her surprise, it wasn't a peeping tom or aliens trying to harvest her body for experimentation, but her neighbor that lived right beside her.

Trevante's blinds were always closed, no matter what time of week it was they didn't move a peep and tonight, they were wide open. From what she knew, he was a night owl with with a hulking stature. In the mornings she'd be leaving for work, his Jeep would roll in and he'd quickly depart into his home bundled in a ski jacket (it sadly never reached above 40 in their town). Shawna always wanted to stick around to see what he truly looked like, to even hear his voice and compare it to the image she'd formed in the back of her head over the months he'd been there.

For a moment, Shawna couldn't tell what she was looking at due to the bright wash of red that painted his room. As her eyes settled, the black SD card she had in her hand quickly left her grip and scattered across the floor.

She was captivated.

Trevante looked nothing like what she thought he did. He was way more mesmerizing than that.

Smooth brown skin flexed with the sharp, defined muscles that ran up his tall frame; almost like the marble statues she studied from the Renaissance. To her delight profile was chiseled flawlessly, cheek bones high and lips full. She watched quietly as he discarded everything but his pajama bottoms and stretched, taking note of each carefully built muscle could see.

‘Had he always been that jacked?’

Trevante threw himself back onto what looked like a bean bag and fiddled with something on the nightstand beside him. Shawna felt creepy for watching him, but just couldn't rip her eyes away. As he sat back once again, he drew blunt his mouth and lit the end, quickly tossing his head back into his inhale. A billow of white clouds escaped into the air above him as he let the hit go without even an ounce of hesitation. He lit it again as Shawna watched smoke pour from his mouth, then into his nose.

She had no idea her neighbor was a smoker; let alone how he kept the smell undetectable from her sensitive nose. Curiosity got the best of her as she inched closer to her window, giving her a better picture of what was unfolding right beside her. Smoke coiled around Trevante's room and slipped through his hands as he quickly finished off what was left of the blunt and laid deeper back into the chair. Weed wasn't something Shawna was interested in or used to. With Cogic parents, anything illegal she thought about doing would quickly be crushed and out the window. Even at the age of 27 they'd still come tearing her doors down if they suspected she was smoking pot.

‘Only if they knew what door it was in.’

A lightbulb went off in Shawna's head. She had the perfect idea to: A. get out of her boring house for a while, B. cross something off her bucket list and C. stare at Trevante in a more reasonable setting. Pulling her blinds shut, she ended the show and went back to her phone that'd been abandoned on her dresser.

It was time to make a game plan.

Flipping through countless unopened snapchats she landed on one story in particular that she quickly swiped left on.

Me | Can u show me how to roll up?

DeeStroyer | are pigs flying?? Wyd 👀👀👀

Me | I'm not being funny 💀 it's my neighbor

Me | I kinda spied on him

Me | he fine as hell & he was smoking with his blinds open

DeeStroyer | so you asking me to get you high so you can go over there and get some neighbor dick? sounds like a plan 😼

Me | yes and no! it's brick as fuck outside I know you not about to come to my place, I just need a way over there. If that doesn't sound too creepy.

DeeStroyer | there's only like 6 people that chief on this side of town, he probably comes into the smoke shop a lot. I'll catch him for ya freaky girl 😉

Me | jfc, thanks DD

Me | his name is Trevante!!

DeeStroyer | marked & 📝

Shawna slung herself into her bed and screamed into her pillow like a big ass kid. She may have found the cure for her boredom-fueled artist block.

Now to play the waiting game.

...

Three dreary days had passed and not once had Shawna's neighbor cracked his blinds. It wasn't going to kill her, but it was still bothering her that she hadn't seen or heard a peep of Trevante since that one night. Tonight was the same as every other night, her music was playing, a candle was burning, and she couldn't bring herself to render the perfect picture.

As she got lost in her head, her phone began to jingle and the name "De'aria😈" flashed across the screen. DD was calling her which meant the plan worked for failed miserably.

"Wassup' homieeee."

Her raspy voice struggled to keep up with her sluggish words as she laid on her futon with her hoodie covering her face. She was baked out of her mind and ready to spill the tea.

"You want news on your dream boy?"

"Yes please." Shawna said while turning her Pandora station completely off.

"Okay so one, he's fine as fuck. But like not even that he's like...super handsome. If you put him next to the sexiest man alive, boom, blown out the water.”

She paused to take a puff off the blunt she'd rolled and blew the smoke into the camera in typical high DD fashion.

"So, I was chillin' behind the counter, and he rolls in all smooth and and asks to get some wraps - oh his teeth are gorgeous. Anyway, I bullshit and act like the the case is broke so Mark could come fix it while I chatted him up for you. I asked him where he was from, and he said some shit about Louisiana - I was a little high so I really wasn't tryna pay attention. He’s thirty something and works logistics at the Med.”

Shawna clutched her imaginary pearls. That position was the most sought after in their town, with only one hospital they’d triple the average salary for the lucky fuck who landed the gig; the only catch was that they were located in the middle of nowhere.

"You gotta be some type of straight shot to move here and not go insane. So anyway, I asked where he lived since there's only three feet of town here and I told him he was right by you."

"You what?"

"Chill out peeping tom, I ain't blow your cover. I just said my really good friend had been wanting to smoke but I couldn't go see her so he could always show you if he wanted to, blah blah blah. He has your number by the way."

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

DD cackled over the phone as Shawna flushed with anxiety, it was always fun to make her friend uncomfortable.

"Calm downnn, he's gonna text you in like 5 minutes. I promise he's super chill, I just got off the phone with him and I think you'll be over there in like a day. I gotta finish this damn backwood before I burn my apartment down though. Later girl."

The FaceTime ended and Shawna was a complete mess internally. How was she going to talk to him? Spying on him was one thing but actually making contact with this man she'd fell even deeper in lust in was going to kill her. Before she could comprehend the situation, a random number popped onto her screen with a text.

hey, is this Shawna?

She held her breath, swiped right, and began to click her her keyboard, making sure she'd saved his contact as "Tre".

It was so happening. …

Shawna couldn't feel her feet.

She was walking only a few steps out to his house, but the combination of her nerves and the freezing weather had her body iced up. Her heart was racing out of her chest the closer she inched to his door, the light from inside his home pulling her in. After they ended their texts, Shawna immediately called De'aria and screamed a thank you. She raided her closet in search of something decent to wear, settling on a track suit that'd been re-gifted to her for Christmas. She bundled up and headed to her front door, getting more and more anxious the further she paced. Now she was standing at his front door with her camera bag in her left hand and her right hovering over the doorbell.

‘Just ring it you wimp.’

Her nerves got the best of her, and she pressed the glowing button twice, hoping he'd hurry up before her fingers fell off in the cold. Footsteps paced; locks jingled then the door quickly flew back to reveal a very damp Trevante.

"I was in the shower, sorry."

His voice was so deep Shawna could feel it vibrating in the back of her head, she would've screamed if De'aria was there. Without looking she shuffled into his place and was greeted by the strong smell of flowers; the smart man knew how to keep the smell of weed away from any surprise visitors.

Shawna studied his place, full of plants and odd nicknacks that'd been donated by various family members upon his sudden move. Trailing him, she realized how similar their houses were and began her picture taking. She loved scenery, it was just other people she couldn't photograph to save her life. They stopped at his room that Shawna had already seen in her creeping to collect what all they needed for the night. As her eyes darted in curiosity, a long, black cabinet with what looked like rocks and branches in it caught her eye. It was right beside his bed, and she couldn't figure out exactly what it was for. Maybe he liked nature?

"I wouldn't get too close to that." His voiced boomed from behind her. Shawna hid her startled reaction and turned her head back to catch a glance of Trevante. He was holding mason jar and an assortment of wraps, both brand new from De'aria's salesmanship earlier that day.

"Huh?

"Most people that come over don't like animals...well specifically them."

Shawna whipped her head back to the cabinet and realized it was in fact a terrarium she was staring at. Immediately she noticed a large, bright yellow snake that'd been hiding in the corner of the enclosure and another, fat, brown one that was coiled up tightly in the bottom.

"Carpet pythons. I forget they're in there sometimes."

She snapped three pictures of the serpents and left them alone, not wanting to bother whatever world they had going on in there.

"C'mon, we can match in the back,” Trevante said while eyeing his pets, "I'm really not supposed to smoke around them."

Shawna quietly made her way out of his warm abode and cut a left into what felt like the complete opposite. It was damn near pitch black besides the blue, fluorescent lights that casted a cold shadow across the room. It reminded Shawna of all those clubs she was drug to by her friends, just a little more inviting and way less crowded. Fiddling with the exposure on her camera, she snapped what at first was a box of nothing until her surroundings became fully recognizable.

A leather couch sat aside to one wall that was plastered with graphic style posters, some donning scantily clad women and drug paraphernalia. A fish tank glowed softly to the side of a record player that was across from them, and a coffee table stood neatly between it all. It was almost as if the place had been copied and pasted from an 80s movie set.

She tried for one more of the fish tank but caught Trevante in the midst of taking his hoodie off, he still hadn't dried off from his shower and the light was reflecting off his wet stomach. Shawna quickly put her camera down and hid her face in embarrassment while Trevante laughed. It's not like she hadn't seen him shirtless before.

"Sorry for flashing you. Can I see it?"

She handed him her camera and he softly smiled at the monitor; his shirt was still over his head leaving only the silhouette of his body visible.

"Send that to me later, it's nice"

Shawna got her camera back whilst a brilliant idea formed in her head.

"Hey before we start, can I take a picture of you smoking? That's really weird but it'd be cool with the lights...this room is really cool."

Trevante shrugged and plopped down into the loveseat, opening the glass jar he'd been holding on to. Now she knew why they called it loud, the smell almost making her eyes tear. Taking in the pungent aroma she took pictures of him breaking it down, subjugating her attention to the cone he gently stuffed. It was in that moment she noticed he in fact, was in grey sweats that she struggled to not further examine.

‘Bitch don't be creepy.’

The sound of the lighter flicking brought her attention back. Trevante was staring at her with a slight grin which made her face flush hot. Thank God it was cold out or she’d died of a stroke heat stroke then and there.

"You good?"

Shawna quickly nodded and held her camera close to her face, trying hard to conceal a smile that was working its way through her cheeks. Doing the same as he did the previous nights ago, Trevante lit the end of the joint and inhaled smoothly. To make the pictures more interesting he blew a large cloud of smoke that almost obscured the lens view. Shawna had no idea how it was possible to keep that much in his lungs, but she was soon going to find out.

"I feel like a model," he mumbled while flashing his teeth through the haze, "come here. Before I get too high."

Shawna's stomach dropped as she put her camera aside. She was about to be extremely close to a breathtaking man that she barely even knew outside of passing. All she could hear was De'aria bagging on her if she bitched out, tonight was not the night she'd fail. She slid next to him and sunk into the seating, unzipping her hoodie just a little bit to let some air hit her skin. Along with her nervousness, she was starting to break a sweat and had completely forgot about the thick jumpsuit she'd put on.

Relaxing, Shawna took the still lit joint from him and let it hang off her lip. He noticed and cocked his eyebrow before moving over to spark the flame again.

"De'aria?”

"Yeah, I punked out a lot."

"Well, you ain’t got to now, I got you,” he ensured, “Just go slow, inhale when I say...go."

A rush of warm smoke flooded Shawna's throat as she slowly pulled inwards, taking note to double tap before handing it off. Her lungs, however, almost gave out before she could exhale forcing her to cough into the collar of her shirt. Head rushing with endorphins, she'd was astonished by somehow surviving her first real toke of weed. Trevante replaced the spliff with a water bottle and laughed, making Shawna flush hot again. It was something about his smile that flipped her insides around and she really wanted him to keep doing it. She let him smoke a little more while she caught her breath and stared in awe as he French inhaled. She usually thought it looked stupid when people played with smoke, but he made it look sexy. He passed it back for her to finish the rest, but she willfully denied.

Being high was different for everyone, for Trevante it made everything feel good. From cramming numbers to partying he found solstice in the euphoric feeling. Shawna on the other hand was skeptic but quickly found her discernment to be highly false; whatever she was feeling had begun to creep down her body and into her chest. Warmth was the best way she could put it, and her thoughts? They were everywhere but where she currently was, only being able to focus on Tre’s inexplicably huge arms flexing as he ashed the joint.

"You high already?" he snickered softly beside her.

Instead of forming words that would've made absolutely no sense she opted to nod. Being high didn't seem so bad, not as bad as her dad stressed it was. Thinking of him, she started laughing again and ran her fingers through her braids, forgetting what it even was that had started her giggle fest. Trevante had gotten up to put a record on, as he always did when he smoked in here. Through the dim lights Shawna could make out an old school album and closed her eyes as the record scratched on. How he was even capable of standing was blowing her mind, she could barely type a text out on her phone which now felt microscopic in her hand.

As if Cupids angels had alerted who she was thinking about, De'aria's contact number popped onto her screen as her FaceTime rang.

"Uh oh." Trevante said while taking his seat back next to her, this time way closer. His arm was draped behind her neck when De'aria connected, making the matchmakers eyes go wide. Shawna popped a headphone in and only caught part of what her friend was saying.

"-ich are you high?! And is that his arm behind you?!"

She could only laugh, causing DD to explode in screams. The plan sounded like an L waiting to happen, but it actually worked.

"I can hear music playing, please tell me you tapping that tonight?"

"Shh shut up!" Shawna whispered while bringing her finger to her mouth. It's not like either of them could hear what the hell she was saying.

"This is great, bitch I gotta smoke another one for this. Don't call me unless you got some dick!"

De'aria ended the phone call abruptly, taking Shawna back to her home screen which was currently moving around. Instead of fiddling with it she placed it next to her and turned to meet Trevante's glossed over eyes. It was then she got a full view of his face and took in every detail she could; he really did have a perfect smile, and his beard was well taken care of. She even noted his eyes scanning her chest before he averted his attention elsewhere.

"You smacked," he said while fishing his lighter back out his pocket, "I rolled a dutch if you don’t mind the tobacco smell. You in or you done?"

"I'm aight." Shawna half mumbled; half laughed. To be truthful, the more she watched him smoke the more she found herself imaging what his lips felt like elsewhere. She questioned taking more pictures but gave up on the idea entirely as he made a sudden reach for her camera. He wanted to be nosy too - not knowing the preloaded SD card was also home to self-made nude studies from her time in art school.

Shawna couldn’t have moved fast enough as they both made a break for camera, praying to high heavens it would die before he could take a gander at her most precious assets. What started as gentle tug of war quickly turned into grappling contest as she fought him for her camera.

“What you hiding in here a dead body?”

“Maybe, just give it here. Your mama teach you any manners?”

He took full advantage of their heigh difference and held the device high in the air away from her reach with that goofy ass smile of his. If she weren’t pressed for her reputation she’d laugh. Instead, Shawna jumped, and failed, then jumped again before deciding to launch herself off the couch.

“Give it back!” Was the last thing Trevante heard before she slammed dead center into his chest – toppling them both to the cold floor. He threw the camera to safety, then focused his attention on halting Shawna’s desperate attempt at getting one up on him. She squealed, struggling to release from his solid grip until she ultimately gave up. At this point both of her arms were pinned behind her head and her legs had gotten tangled between his. She tried her hardest to look away from him, the thought of what it looked like they were doing was turning her on and she didn't want to 'pop a lady boner' as De'aria always said.

"Okay I give up," she panted, “you strong as hell.”

"Apologize for jumping on me then."

"Boy please. Manners remember?

"Sure. But how you think you getting out of this?"

"Bet if I kissed you, you'd let me go."

Shawna wasn't exactly sure if it was her or the weed talking, but she was feeling frisky and didn't want to waste such an opportune moment. She watched the solid man hovering over her pause to cock his eyebrows, then lean down closer in her face.

"Bet."

He tasted like mint and grabba, and her panties were instantly drenched at the softness of his lips. It'd been a very long time since she'd been kissed like this, hell she wasn’t sure if she’d even been kissed like this at all. Though she tried to restrain herself, Shawna stifled a moaned into Trevante’ mouth, prompting him to draw back – stifling a promiscuous grin as he gently placed her camera back in her hand and stood her upright. An out of breath Shawna eyed him bewilderedly and quietly considered how the next few seconds could go. In good ole Shawna fashion, she could chicken out and hide in the bathroom for the rest of the night…or she could get some dick for the first time in months.

Where her own words failed her, Trevante’ curious mind came to the rescue.

“I guess you won that one…Can I make bet?

“Yes” she blurted a little too quickly, prompting a laugh from them both. As Trevante caught his breath, he gently snaked an arm around her waist to steady her and caught her eyes – her heart thumping near out of her chest as they pressed against one another.

“I bet I got you wet just now.”

A gasp was the only thing Shawna could muster, in part to his filthy decree and also due to his hand gripping deep past her ass – fingertips dancing near the damp spot in her sweats.

For a second time she moaned, now with more conviction as the situation fully dawned on her. She was about to get laid with possibly the best dick east of state line – Trevante on the other hand was all teeth, marveling at how soft she was in his hands. To be truthful, he’d been in heaven tangled between her legs and wanted to feel more. See more. But, only knowing her for a few hours he was fully aware that she could hightail it back home if it was all too much.

But it wasn’t.

In fact, it wasn’t enough.

The soft grip Trevante had on her as tightened up as Shawna stole another kiss, ensuring her tongue held up a good fight against his as they stumbled back into the couch. By the time they separated she was seated eye-level with the drawstring of his sweats, finally getting a guilt free image of what he was working with. Even through the thick fabric she could make out his impressive girth, to her dismay it was about all she could ogle at before he tilted her head back towards his.

“You or me first?”

Before answering, Shawna shed herself of her zip up, “Me.”

Trevante responded by dropping to his knees, eyes never breaking contact as he helped her out of her fleece bottoms. For just a moment he reveled at her soaked panties, and to make her squirm he ran a gentle thumb in the center seam of the fabric before pulling it entirely to the side. His lips met hers with a ferocious force before she could chide him for teasing, turning her complaint into a meager whisper as her legs inched closed. She could only watch as he took her in with every part of his mouth, tongue toying with her clit as he kept her spread eagle by the inner thighs with both hands.

“Oh shit.” Was the only legible thing she could voice through the euphoria flooding her mind and body. With one hand nestled atop his fade, she gripped the couch with her entire might as he ate her from front to back; his head beginning to swivel as he lapped up the warmth dripping down her folds. Shawna had never been this horny before; of course, she’d heard about high sex but this. This was way more than she could comprehend; not even shit faced drunk did she get this wet from a kiss - let alone head. It didn’t help that her captor was the eater of the century. Just the sight of him nose deep in her pussy was enough to send her right over the edge. As if it weren’t enough, Trevante started the drawn-out process of spelling his name on her soaked clit; tongue dancing on the rock-solid button like it was his last meal.

He got to V before Shawna felting an abrupt orgasm coming on, nearly barking at the man for some sort of relief, “Tre stop…I’m finna, oh fuck.”

Startled he came up for air, his beard near drenched with her essence. She couldn’t push him back down fast enough as she began to climax against her own wishes. In seconds, Shawnas head snapped back, and she hyperventilated into a moan so loud it overcast the music – clawing her nails deep across ever taut back. Trevante met her cries with even harder tongue lashings, finally opting to let up once her legs stoped shaking.

As she came back to Earth, the man beneath her trailed small kisses up her thighs, meeting her blushed gaze for the first time in minutes. Shawna truthfully wanted to ball up and hide – to cum this quickly on her neighbors’ leather seats when there was a much bigger (and thicker) issue at hand was a bit embarrassing in her mind.

“My bad ma. You good? We can stop if you want.” He insisted from her lap.

“I’m okay. I just…wasn’t tryna do that so quick. Sorry.”

“Sorry for what,” he chided, “you taste good. Like I said, we can stop if you want to.”

“But what about you?”

“Me? I can handle that. Unless you wanna watch like you have been.”

A pang of guilt zapped Shawnas head – had he known she’d been peeping on him this whole time? She sat up, ruined panties getting warm for the ump-teeth time that night and gave him a puzzled look. He chuckled deeply and rose up. With the erectionin his is briefs now threatening to tent outward, he pulled his sweats completely off and gripped his hard on down. Underneath the fluorescent lights he looked godly, and his dick was every bit of enticing through the thin cotton briefs keeping him contained.

“I saw you that night. To be real I bout’ to jack off but I didn’t want to be the perv of the neighborhood,” he paused, hand slowly moving up and down his shaft, “but you. You wanted to see it too. You wanted to see me… like this?”

To Shawnas surprise he was beginning to moan through his words, right hand picking up speed in his shorts. With his free hand, the towering man retrieved her long-discarded phone from the floor and tossed it her way – already recording a new kind of masterpiece for her her collection. Though still incredibly high, she was still very horny and game to his antics; ensuring the flash was on, Shawna aimed the camera at her subject and took it upon herself to get him completely naked.

She took his low eyes into hers and cooed, “Let me take it out and you show me then.”

He let off another moan at her sudden touch, her fingertips tracing the poking veins trailing his skin as she peeled him out of underwear. Just as she though, his dick was as gorgeous as he was – thick and two toned at the tip, he was slick with precum and twitching out of control. With the roles now reversed Shawna was emboldened to see him get weak in the knees like she was.

“It’s so pretty Tre. Show me how you stroke it when you alone.”

“Yes ma’am,” he exhaled, voice shaking as he whimpered her name over the music. He worked his wrist from tip to the base of his shaft, fingers squelching as he pumped swears from his soul; the more he worked the wider his mouth gaped open – moaning with each breath he took.

“Shawna…,” his voice trailed off, eyes beginning to roll back.

“Huh? Say it loud papa.”

“Please baby. You got my tip so. Fucking. Sensitive.”

She was all smiles behind the camera, partly giddy from the weed, and incredibly humbled at her ability to take Trevante’ soul without touching him. He was moaning like a bitch, now choking himself out with that free hand that had held her captive minutes before.

Nasty ass nigga

“Where you gone cum Tre? On the floor or in me?” Shawna taunted. He paused for only a second and bit back a smile, “in you.”

Keeping him at bay, Shawna wagged her finger and propped her phone up on the arm of the couch, only letting him get close when she was ready. Letting her panties slip down her figure, she raised her legs and pulled him over by the back of the thighs. Eyes glued to the screen, they both watched as his head finally made contact with her folds, each parties faces screwing up with undeniable pleasure. Taking after his solo performance, Shawna snaked her hand around his throat and squeezed hard as Trevante slowly entered her pussy.

“Oh my God.” He exclaimed. Just as he expected she felt just as heavenly as she tasted.

A drawn out ‘Tre’ was just about all the stout woman could muster, occasionally peering down to watch him slide in and out of her with the growing conviction he had brewing that entire night. Rocking his hips to the slow tempo of the music, he made sure to keep that dangerous thumb of his on her clit and circle– he wanted to break her down for all the teasing she’d been doing, one step at a time. This time she was the bitch, cursing him with all her might as he fucked her deep into the couch. With every stroke her grip loosened on his neck, hands eventually flailing aside to anchor herself in place. To make things worse, Trevante’ face was crammed deep in her neck talking big shit while he drilled her,

Between each stroke he growled, “you taking this dick so good mama. Look at how creamy it’s getting.”

“W-why?”

“Why what? Why I’m fucking you like this? Cause you deserve it.”

Again, she began to pant just as she had when she came in his mouth, only this time she was dangerously close to ruining his furniture with sweat and incoming release. Shawna clung to his shoulders, squeezing him into her bare breasts to keep them both secure, and cried into the night as he roughly blew her out in missionary. Her walls began clenching involuntarily, eyes now glued to the roof of her skull as a second orgasm crept its way out of her. Besides their exclamations a sound akin to water splashing overtook their space. She was getting close and as much as Tre wanted to go all night, he knew she couldn’t survive another round.

“Let that shit out Shawna.” Was all she had to hear. With a screech of ecstasy her hips jerked into his and she wept; bouncing from his name to a string of curses she came harder than she had in almost a year.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck! Tre fuck!”

He, on the other hand, was still stroking– rhythm becoming unhinged as his own nut started to unwind. Even blacked out she could feel his dick hitting every spot she couldn’t with a pitiful rose toy; in typical Trevante fashion he snatched her by the jaw forced her to look him in the eyes as the tension holding him together snapped.

An airy “Im cumming,” was all he could muster – twitching inside the vice grip she had on his length one last time he finally let it all out: warm cum shooting in her soft walls and voice groaning through the blue lit room. He was surprisingly more of mess than she was, collapsing into her, hips jerking violently as his climax came to a slow end.

By the time they both came to the long-forgotten record had stopped and scratched in rhythm with their cyclic breathing. Shawna took the moment to lazily turn her phone off and untangle her body from his as he tended to the mess they’d created. She was three blinks away from sleep when he finally returned to escort her to a well needed bed, wet towel in hand for her to clean off as they shuffled to his room. Before quite literally collapsing into his bed she quipped an earnest statement his way,

“You think De’aria gone flip out when I call her?”

“Think? You better hope she don’t see that video. She might wanna watch next time like you.”

With a final grumble Shawna retorted “You the one that can’t shut your blinds.”

And with, that their banter was even for the night. With only the pale terrarium silhouetting their faces the pair drifted into sleep, chests rising in tandem to the sounds of life carrying on outside that cozy bedroom window.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The paradox of choice screens

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

It's official: the DOJ has won its case, and Google is a convicted monopolist. Over the next six months, we're gonna move into the "remedy" phase, where we figure out what the court is going to order Google to do to address its illegal monopoly power:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

That's just the beginning, of course. Even if the court orders some big, muscular remedies, we can expect Google to appeal (they've already said they would) and that could drag out the case for years. But that can be a feature, not a bug: a years-long appeal will see Google on its very best behavior, with massive, attendant culture changes inside the company. A Google that's fighting for its life in the appeals court isn't going to be the kind of company that promotes a guy whose strategy for increasing revenue is to make Google Search deliberately worse, so that you will have to do more searches (and see more ads) to get the info you're seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It's hard to overstate how much good stuff can emerge from a company that's mired itself in antitrust hell with extended appeals. In 1982, IBM wriggled off the antitrust hook after a 12-year fight that completely transformed the company's approach to business. After more than a decade of being micromanaged by lawyers who wanted to be sure that the company didn't screw up its appeal and anger antitrust enforcers, IBM's executives were totally transformed. When the company made its first PC, it decided to use commodity components (meaning anyone could build a similar PC by buying the same parts), and to buy its OS from an outside vendor called Micros-Soft (meaning competing PCs could use the same OS), and it turned a blind eye to the company that cloned the PC ROM, enabling companies like Dell, Compaq and Gateway to enter the market with "PC clones" that cost less and did more than the official IBM PC:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

The big question, of course, is whether the court will order Google to break up, say, by selling off Android, its ad-tech stack, and Chrome. That's a question I'll address on another day. For today, I want to think about how to de-monopolize browsers, the key portal to the internet. The world has two extremely dominant browsers, Safari and Chrome, and each of them are owned by an operating system vendor that pre-installs their own browser on their devices and pre-selects them as the default.

Defaults matter. That's a huge part of Judge Mehta's finding in the Google case, where the court saw evidence from Google's own internal research suggesting that people rarely change defaults, meaning that whatever the gadget does out of the box it will likely do forever. This puts a lie to Google's longstanding defense of its monopoly power: "choice is just a click away." Sure, it's just a click away – a click, you're pretty sure no one is ever going to make.

This means that any remedy to Google's browser dominance is going to involve a lot of wrangling about defaults. That's not a new wrangle, either. For many years, regulators and tech companies have tinkered with "choice screens" that were nominally designed to encourage users to try out different browsers and brake the inertia of the big two browsers that came bundled with OSes.

These choice screens have a mixed record. Google's 2019 Android setup choice screen for the European Mobile Application Distribution Agreement somehow managed to result in the vast majority of users sticking with Chrome. Microsoft had a similar experience in 2010 with BrowserChoice.eu, its response to the EU's 2000s-era antitrust action:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

Does this mean that choice screens don't work? Maybe. The idea of choice screens comes to us from the "choice architecture" world of "nudging," a technocratic pseudoscience that grew to prominence by offering the promise that regulators could make big changes without having to do any real regulating:

https://verfassungsblog.de/nudging-after-the-replication-crisis/

Nudge research is mired in the "replication crisis" (where foundational research findings turn out to be nonreplicable, due to bad research methodology, sloppy analysis, etc) and nudge researchers keep getting caught committing academic fraud:

https://www.ft.com/content/846cc7a5-12ee-4a44-830e-11ad00f224f9

When the first nudgers were caught committing fraud, more than a decade ago, they were assumed to be outliers in an otherwise honest and exciting field:

https://www.npr.org/2016/10/01/496093672/power-poses-co-author-i-do-not-believe-the-effects-are-real

Today, it's hard to find much to salvage from the field. To the extent the field is taken seriously today, it's often due to its critics repeating the claims of its boosters, a process Lee Vinsel calls "criti-hype":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

For example, the term "dark patterns" lumps together really sneaky tactics with blunt acts of fraud. When you click an "opt out of cookies" button and get a screen that says "Success!" but which has a tiny little "confirm" button on it that you have to click to actually opt out, that's not a "dark pattern," it's just a scam:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/beware-of-the-leopard/#relentless

By ascribing widespread negative effects to subtle psychological manipulation ("dark patterns") rather than obvious and blatant fraud, we inadvertently elevate "nudging" to a real science, rather than a cult led by scammy fake scientists.

All this raises some empirical questions about choice screens: do they work (in the sense of getting people to break away from defaults), and if so, what's the best way to make them work?

This is an area with a pretty good literature, as it turns out, thanks in part due to some natural experiments, like when Russia forced Google to offer choice screens for Android in 2017, but didn't let Google design that screen. The Russian policy produced a significant switch away from Google's own apps to Russian versions, primarily made by Yandex:

https://cepr.org/publications/dp17779

In 2023, Mozilla Research published a detailed study in which 12,000 people from Germany, Spain and Poland set up simulated mobile and desktop devices with different kinds of choice screens, a project spurred on by the EU's Digital Markets Act, which is going to mandate choice screens starting this year:

https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/choicescreen/

I'm spending this week reviewing choice screen literature, and I've just read the Mozilla paper, which I found very interesting, albeit limited. The biggest limitation is that the researchers are getting users to simulate setting up a new device and then asking them how satisfied they are with the experience. That's certainly a question worth researching, but a far more important question is "How do users feel about the setup choices they made later, after living with them on the devices they use every day?" Unfortunately, that's a much more expensive and difficult question to answer, and beyond the scope of this paper.

With that limitation in mind, I'm going to break down the paper's findings here and draw some conclusions about what we should be looking for in any kind of choice screen remedy that comes out of the DOJ antitrust victory over Google.

The first thing note is that people report liking choice screens. When users get to choose their browsers, they expect to be happy with that choice; by contrast, users are skeptical that they'll like the default browser the vendor chose for them. Users don't consider choice screens to be burdensome, and adding a choice screen doesn't appreciably increase setup time.

There are some nuances to this. Users like choice screens during device setup but they don't like choice screens that pop up the first time they use a browser. That makes total sense: "choosing a browser" is colorably part of the "setting up your gadget" task. By contrast, the first time you open a browser on a new device, it's probably to get something else done (e.g. look up how to install a piece of software you used on your old device) and being interrupted with a choice screen at that moment is an unwelcome interruption. This is the psychology behind those obnoxious cookie-consent pop-ups that website bombard you with when you first visit them: you've clicked to that website because you need something it has, and being stuck with a privacy opt-out screen at that moment is predictably frustrating (which is why companies do it, and also why the DMA is going to punish companies that do).

The researchers experimented with different kinds of choice screens, varying the number of browsers on offer and the amount of information given on each. Again, users report that they prefer more choices and more information, and indeed, more choice and more info is correlated with choosing indie, non-default browsers, but this effect size is small (<10%), and no matter what kind of choice screen users get, most of them come away from the experience without absorbing any knowledge about indie browsers.

The order in which browsers are presented has a much larger effect than how many browsers or how much detail is present. People say they want lots of choices, but they usually choose one of the first four options. That said, users who get choice screens say it changes which browser they'd choose as a default.

Some of these contradictions appear to stem from users' fuzziness on what "default browser" means. For an OS vendor, "default browser" is the browser that pops up when you click a link in an email or social media. For most users, "default browser" means "the browser pinned to my home screen."

Where does all this leave us? I think it cashes out to this: choice screens will probably make a appreciable, but not massive, difference in browser dominance. They're cheap to implement, have no major downsides, and are easy to monitor. Choice screens might be needed to address Chrome's dominance even if the court orders Google to break off Chrome and stand it up as a separate business (we don't want any browser monopolies, even if they're not owned by a search monopolist!). So yeah, we should probably make a lot of noise to the effect that the court should order a choice screen, as part of a remedy.

That choice screen should be presented during device setup, with the choices presented in random order – with this caveat: Chrome should never appear in the top four choices.

All of that would help address the browser duopoly, even if it doesn't solve it. I would love to see more market-share for Firefox, which is the browser I've used every day for more than a decade, on my laptop and my phone. Of course, Mozilla has a role to play here. The company says it's going to refocus on browser quality, at the expense of the various side-hustles it's tried, which have ranged from uninteresting to catastrophically flawed:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again

For example, there was the tool to automatically remove your information from scummy data brokers, that they outsourced to a scummy data-broker:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/22/24109116/mozilla-ends-onerep-data-removal-partnership

And there's the "Privacy Preserving Attribution" tracking system that helps advertisers target you with surveillance advertising (in a way that's less invasive than existing techniques). Mozilla rolled this into Firefox on an opt out basis, and made opting out absurdly complicated, suggesting that it knew that it was imposing something on its users that they wouldn't freely choose:

https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/

They've been committing these kinds of unforced errors for more than a decade, seeking some kind of balance between monopolistic web companies and its users' desire to have a browser that protects them from invasive and unfair practices:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm-video-browser-cory-doctorow

These compromises represent the fallacy that Mozilla's future depends on keeping bullying entertainment companies and Big Tech happy, so it can go on serving its users. At the same time, these compromises have alienated Mozilla's core users, the technical people who were its fiercest evangelists. Those core users are the authority on technical questions for the normies in their life, and they know exactly how cursed it is for Moz to be making these awful compromises.

Moz has hemorrhaged users over the past decade, meaning they have even less leverage over the corporations demanding that they make more compromises. This sets up a doom loop: make a bad compromise, lose users, become more vulnerable to demands for even worse compromises. "This capitulation puts us in a great position to make a stand in some hypothetical future where we don't instantly capitulate again" is a pretty unconvincing proposition.

After the past decade's heartbreaks, seeing Moz under new leadership makes me cautiously hopeful. Like I say, I am dependent on Firefox and want an independent, principled browser vendor that sees their role as producing a "user agent" that is faithful to its users' interests above all else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Of course, Moz depends on Google's payment for default search placement for 90% of its revenue. If Google can't pay for this in the future, the org is going to have to find another source of revenue. Perhaps that will be the EU, or foundations, or users. In any of these cases, the org will find it much easier to raise funds if it is standing up for its users – not compromising on their interests.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/12/defaults-matter/#make-up-your-mind-already

Image: ICMA Photos (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/icma/3635981474/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[canmom]

I've been watching Star Trek, and also been learning about boats. Like, a big boat is more stable in the water, so you don't get tossed and turned so much when it's rocked by waves or turning.

Now, on Star Trek, they do the dramatic tilt-y cam and actors flinging themselves around. This makes sense when the ship is hit by weapons, but sometimes they do it when they are navigating asteroid fields and such. The original Enterprise (from the 60s) is 288m long, similar to a modern cruise liner, 127m wide, 73m wide, and 190,000 tonnes. Surely even a high-speed jaunt through an asteroid field would be barely felt on the bridge (which is the tiny raised part in the centre of the saucer)?

Hello anon! You're not wrong that like, there is a lot of artistic license in Star Trek's treatment of astrophysics.

The 'asteroid fields' seen in Wars and Trek are presumably inspired by the asteroid belt in our solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is true that there are a lot more big space rocks in the asteroid belt than there are in much of the rest of the solar system. However, space is really very big so there's a lot of room for big rocks. Spacecraft are routinely able to pass through the asteroid belt without coming anywhere near an asteroid (which is good, because at space velocities, collisions are really catastrophic).

The largest asteroids such as Ceres are nowadays classified as 'dwarf planets'; they might be as big as around 1000 kilometres in diameter, which is about 1/12 the diameter of the Earth. Many other asteroids are also hundreds of kilometres big. With the dimensions you've given me, if the Enterprise collided with such an asteroid, it would be a 'bug on a windscreen' kind of situation and the Enterprise would certainly not come off better for the experience.

However, most asteroids aren't quite so big. Here's a log-linear graph of the size distribution of asteroids:

There's about a million asteroids a kilometre big, and about ten million a hundred metres across; at some point the asteroids become too small for us to track, but I assume this approximately power-law distribution holds down to some small size.

Now, that sounds like a lot of asteroids, but the thing is they're spread across an absolutely enormous region of space. They cover a range of orbital radii of about 1 AU, which is to say the distance between the Earth and the sun, and a range of orbital inclinations about 20 degrees:

So, assuming we had about 10 million asteroids of 100m or bigger, that turns out to be about 1E-27 asteroids of that size per cubic metre of space. Which is to say you'd need to explore a cube of about 900,000km on a side to find even one asteroid that big. Space is really, truly, extremely very big. So, far from this kind of scene (src)...

...you'd be lucky to see even one rock outside the window. As Wikipedia puts it:

Contrary to popular imagery, the asteroid belt is mostly empty. The asteroids are spread over such a large volume that reaching an asteroid without aiming carefully would be improbable.

Now, OK, that's our solar system's asteroid belt. What about in deeper space? The thing is, big space rocks don't tend to just hang out. Our solar system's asteroid belt is presently thought to be a result of Jupiter disrupting the coalescence of planetesimals into a planet during the formation of the solar system. So in general, without a Jupiter, either your big bundle of space rocks has enough kinetic energy to spread out into space like a gas, or it doesn't and their mutual gravity causes them to collapse into a big clump, forming something planetish.

The Star Trek/Wars picture of a bunch of space rocks just kind of floating around doesn't make any sense on astrophysical timescales; about the only way you might see that is if some kind of much bigger rock has very recently exploded, and especially if you're in orbit around something or other which can keep the particles reasonably close together. The rings of Saturn are a great example, consisting mainly of bits of ice smaller than 10m. Saturn's rings are probably the closest place we know to a scifi asteroid field, but they are also incredibly thin, in many parts only tens of metres across.

So in short 'asteroid fields' in the depths of space are kind of not a thing. But what if they were?

On a boat, you are held against the water by gravity; you have various restoring forces, e.g. if the boat dips under water, it gets pushed back out by buoyancy. This causes, in physics-speak, oscillations on various timescales. The dynamics of ships are very complicated, but it has a lot to do with the buoyancy of water rather than collisions with solid objects. Here's Casual Navigation, pretty much my go-to source for any questions about how boats work, explaining the physics of ships rolling, and ways we mitigate that:

Water buoyancy applies a kind of 'soft' force spread relatively evenly across the surface of a ship, so the ship responds mostly rigidly by rolling around, maybe flexing a bit. But when ships actually hit something hard, even something like a sandbank, it tends to go very poorly for them.

In general, a spaceship is not very much like a boat. Space is, notably, a place where there aren't any fluids. Most of the ways that vehicles move on Earth don't really apply in space.

On the ocean, land or even air, objects in motion tend to stop (or at least fall downwards) due to friction and drag, and you need a constant supply of energy to stay moving in a straight line. In space, the opposite is true - you keep moving along your orbit unless you provide energy to change direction. Rocket acceleration is very limited and you try to do as little as possible. With real spacecraft, you mostly move along a ballistic trajectory, applying 'burns' with your rocket at just the right moment to push you onto a new trajectory - or you have a very weak but efficient engine like an ion drive which very gradually nudges you onto the trajectory you want.

In hardish scifi, we can handwave a lot of this complexity away by imagining amazing futuristic technologies like fusion torches and antimatter drives, which allow us to follow 'brachistochrone' trajectories, where you accelerate at something like 1g all the way up to the midpoint of your trajectory and then flip around and slow down. These have their own worldbuilding implications (which is to say the difference between a really fast spaceship and a weapon of mass destruction is basically which way you point it), but it allows you to get on with your plot without having your characters spending years in transit.

Star Trek is not hard scifi, although it sometimes likes to cosplay as it, so trying to apply this kind of standard is a fool's errand. Still, let's consider it. In Star Trek, spaceships move around in two ways. They have something called a warp drive, which allows FTL by distorting spacetime - it is presumably inspired by the Alcubierre metric (edit: no it isn't, it actually predates Alcubierre and he took inspiration from star trek in naming his solution a 'warp drive'), a solution to the field equations of general relativity that allows you to move a 'bubble' of spacetime at FTL speeds. There are many reasons to think the Alcubierre metric wouldn't actually work, or be survivable inside the bubble if it did; how it would interact with matter in the path of the bubble is unclear, but it seems quite likely it would scrape it all up at the front of the bubble and then perhaps release it at the destination in a blast of ultra-high-energy radiation. At least getting hit by asteroids is not a concern...

For slower-than-light travel, Star Trek ships apparently move around with something called an 'impulse drive', which is just a fusion rocket. (We shouldn't ask questions like 'where do you keep the reaction mass' or 'why doesn't the spaceship spin when the force vector is off-axis').

So, as far as space rocks, the big concern is that at high velocities, collisions with any tiny meteorites on your path have more and more energy, much like being shot with a bullet. It's less about shaking the ship around and more about damaging it, because at this kind of scale and energy, rigid things don't tend to stay rigid when they collide. Real solutions to this problem include things like layers of thin 'whipple shields' which break up the meteorite into small fragments before they hit the spacecraft. There's some crazier ideas out there, like spraying hot droplets from your engine's cooling system ahead of the ship to intercept dust grains and catching them with magnetic fields as you accelerate forwards.

I don't know that much Trek lore, but my understanding is they have some kind of magic 'shield' that prevents damage when they git hit by weapons. This presumably stops any space rocks from smashing right through the decks. But as you observe, the rapid camera shaking doesn't make a lot of sense either: it suggests some kind of shock going through the structure of the vessel. The ship is somehow getting hit by something with enough momentum to shake it violently but not throw it off course or severely damage it. That's not really how structures on this kind of scale work.

Of course, the main purpose of the screen shake is dramatic: you need to convey the characters are in a dangerous situation, and if they're all just sitting calmly in the set watching things play out on the screen, that doesn't really 'sell' it. Just like a wrestler pretending to be injured, you need your actors to convey the stakes of the space battle, and throwing themselves around the set is a very cheap way to do it. The asteroid field serves as a scifi version of a choppy sea or ice floe, adding an extra element of constant tension; it doesn't really matter that it doesn't make sense.

Much the same dramatic techniques are still used in more recent scifi, even relatively hard scifi such as The Expanse - observe the use of camera shake (though milder than in Star Trek), reaction shots, characters helpfully providing commentary ('they were expecting that', 'I'm putting us into a spin'). Or this scene; we link the action 'outside' (the full 3DCG space scenes) to the action 'inside' by changes of lighting (there's no real reason for turning the lights blue during combat except that it looks cool), bullets punching through the ship (so scary), and characters getting pushed around by g-forces. The plot contrives for the ships to do a close flyby while strafing each other with machine guns. This is a thrilling scene, and it relies on much later iterations of the 'shake the camera' concept - to link what is happening 'outside' to the characters we care about 'inside'.

Here is a breakdown of what is apparently the first, iconic Star Trek battle scene from which everything else follows:

This sequence is essentially taking most of its cues from submarine movies such as The Enemy Below: the two ships are attempting to figure out where the other is and get in an advantageous position. It is mostly a prediction battle between the two captains, both presented as honourable gentlemen types in what is essentially a duel. The mechanics of the ships is largely based on thin scifi skins over boat stuff.

In general, Star Trek takes various measures to make the captain and bridge crew the main people who 'matter' to a story, which keeps the cast and sets to a manageable size. The thing is, of course, that modern ships are much bigger than the sort of historical ships that could be imagined to be led by a charismatic captain having heroic exploits. There are thousands of people supposedly on board the Enterprise, but you wouldn't know it from the way the characters act.

It's notable that the inspiration here is a WWII movie, pretty much the last time big ships fought big ships. (Star Wars also takes most of its cues from WWII). The principle activity of modern warships seems mostly to be making a political gesture by floating around somewhere, maybe launching some missiles or planes. It's been a long time since we've seen ships having battles with other ships, and ships were a lot smaller then. A military officer is, as I understand it, someone who's a lot more like a politician or company manager, whose job is to keep a large and complex organisation running smoothly. (No doubt you remember the old saying about logistics and tactics.)

So more than the dubious engineering of having the bridge rattle around, I think 'the bridge crew are all charismatic geniuses from whom all the action flows' is the really big liberty that Star Trek takes with its storytelling, from which a lot of other things follow.

Everything in the sequence from Balance of Terror is designed to ratchet up tension for the bridge officers as much as possible - and we see the screen shake and actors getting thrown about here too. In a naval battle, this makes sense: a big explosion near your ship will cause a wave in the water which will rock the ship. In space... not so much. For example, a big shake happens when a nuclear weapon goes off near the Enterprise. A nuclear weapon deployed in space is mainly there to cause heating, not to push things around. But the big moves of the battle are punctuated by everyone getting thrown about: it's a way of saying 'something important just happened'. If the nuke went off and we didn't hear anything, but Kirk was just like 'ok cool, that missed us, good job' it would feel less significant.

Over time I'm sure this device got diluted down until nearly anything would result in people flopping about! But yeah, tl;dr: it is purely a dramatic convention leaning hard on WWII movies, not something that makes a lot of within-the-fiction sense if you think about it at all.

What would space battles look like in real life? We can only speculate, of course, it may never come to pass at all. But if it does, probably it's going to be more a story of shooting expensive missiles at extremely long range to hit things that are too far away to see without a telescope, rather than thrilling close-range dogfights or tense naval mind games. And with humans being very squishy and not taking well to extreme acceleration, you probably want to avoid having them on your ships if you can help it. Which is a bit of an obstacle for a dramatic presentation, unless you want to focus on the disconnect between the comfy air-conditioned drone control room and the horrible destruction being wrought on the ground - and honestly that is a very relevant thing to want to do in the present era.

Plenty of people would still presumably be in harm's way in the space war. But the problem is that in general, the story that people want to tell with military fiction is about heroic characters whose individual efforts make a difference to the course of The War. Not just someone having a bunch of meetings full of incomprehensible acronyms and then randomly dying to a missile that was launched from the other side of the solar system that their side's interceptor system failed to catch.

[oldschoolfrp]

The calendar tell me it's July 27, Gary Gygax's birthday, so I rolled up a character -- 3D6 rolled six times in order referencing Holmes' 1977 basic D&D rules (his tidy edit of Gygax and Arneson's original 1974 little books):

Srength 8

Intelligence 13

Wisdom 10

Constitution 8

Dexterity 10

Charisma 8

In old school D&D this is a perfectly viable character with no penalties, before 50 years of stat inflation was built into the rules. He could be almost anything, but will be most capable as a magic-user, receiving a +5% bonus to earned experience for having a 13 in the prime requisite ability.

Magic-users and thieves get only a D4 for hit points in early editions, and as often happens I rolled a 1. Survival past the first few levels will be extremely unlikely, but it always was for those classes. He'll need to hide in the middle of the party and hope for the best.

3D6 x 10 for starting gold pieces results in only 60, but he doesn't need much gear. He'll carry some basic tools and a bundle of empty sacks to help carry treasure after his one and only spell is spent.

With Int 13 he has a 65% chance of having a specific level 1 spell in his book, and will have a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8. He can roll in any order, and can reroll from the list if they fail to meet the minimum. On the first pass through the list he fails to know Detect Magic, Magic Missile, or Hold Portal, but his book holds Charm Person, Dancing Lights, Protection from Evil, Read Languages, Read Magic, Shield, Sleep, and Tenser's Floating Disc. From that list of 8 he can choose one spell each day to use, only one time per day. In combat Sleep and Charm Person will be useful for reducing the number of opponents.

[loveephia]

:¨ ·.· ¨: ハイキュー!! cuddles with some of the HQ boys . . .

`· . ꔫ . . . (suna, ushijima, atsumu, osamu, akaashi, iwaizumi.)

⚠ warning/s: manga spoilers in iwaizumi's.

part 1 | part 2 is coming soon!

SUNA RINTARŌ

- right after showering from practice, he immediately drags you to the bed and clings onto you like his life depends on it

- this is it. this is your life now; forever trapped in the arms of suna rintarō.

- now to some of you, that might sound like absolute bliss, but if you're anything like me, i'd want some oxygen.

- "tarō, air." you state

- "no." suna stubbornly mumbles

- "tarō." you warned

- and with a defeated sigh, he untightens his grip, but his long arms are still around you

USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

- cuddles with ushijima are the best because you can lay on him like a weighted blanket :3

- and because of how big he is in general, he generates his own warmth, which makes you even closer to him on colder days

- ushijima sometimes has to pry you off of him because he gets a bit sweaty, and he doesn't want you to feel uncomfortable from it

- you don't really care tbh. your mind is just "toshi cuddles, toshi cuddles!" on repeat.

- so even though he pries you off, you always find a way back in his arms

ATSUMU MIYA

- uhuh, if u thought suna was bad, atsumu is about 10× worse.

- yeah, he lets you breathe. for a few minutes.

- savor the oxygen while you can.

- somehow, in the middle of the night, his head is at the footboard, sleeping on his stomach, with a foot in your face

- does he think he's still sleeping with osamu??

- when he ACTUALLY sleeps properly, he sleeps on you with his head buried nicely in your chest

- you brush your fingers through his blond hair while he snores happily

OSAMU MIYA

- "osamu miya, what do you think you're doing?"

- osamu's making you into a sushi roll. that's what he's doing.

- now that you're bundled up in the blanket (thanks to osamu's stupidly strong muscles), he gets on the bed and cuddles you

- he may not have a blanket, but he has a sushi roll, and with that, he's happy.

- "y/n, when'd ya get so cute?" he coos, noticing how the blanket squished your cheeks

- "please let me go. i have a family."

- "hmm.. no." osamu gives you an endless amount of pecks to your dismay

KEIJI AKAASHI

- akaashi falls asleep whenever you two cuddle

- and he's so beautiful :((

- you can't even go to sleep because you're too busy admiring at him

- he unconsciously does that thing bunnies do with their nose, like a little twitch, but it's not on purpose or anything

- it's just a little sleep habit he does

- "keiji, why are you so.." breathtaking, you want to say

- when you finally drift off to slumber, it's akaashi's turn to admire you

- sometimes, he traces a finger over your features

- I'M SICK OF YOUR CUTENESS. DON'T TOUCH ME.

IWAIZUMI HAJIME

- iwaizumi hajime (27) athletic trainer is an expert cuddler. if the national japan team ever knew that, they'd tease him non-stop.

- his cuddles are always perfect, never too suffocating, never too far

- though you're a bit selfish, wanting to always be super duper close to him

- he has an arm secure around you at all times, and you absolutely love it

- "ha-ji-me!" you call out in that cute little tune of yours

- "yes, princess?"

- "cuddles please." you smile at him, and he's quick to bring you into his arms

© lowercase intended | loveephia

[borom1r]

i can’t find it and im too lazy to dig thru my archive so if i DID post sth similar already……. :3c

anyways base layers. tunic/jacket, high trousers, winingas. I have linen high trousers myself but obvs for winter layers, wool. high trousers are EXTREMELY fucking comfortable— genuinely the most comfortable pants I own, and there are archeological + textual evidence of versions with front/rear gussets specifically for horseback

klappenrock coats would be bound with a belt or left open + again as someone with experience in these, they are both extremely warm when closed and extremely cozy all the time. 10/10. there are various belt options for men ranging from your obvious leather choice to silk with wire decorations; I am personally a fan of the tablet-woven belts bc I love weaving as an art form and opens the door to some really cool Rohirric knotwork patterns:

of note, silk also would’ve been used at times for trim decoration on viking tunics/coats, alongside embroidered decoration— this was a sign of status and connection, as silk would’ve been an imported good.

+ I’ve used these boots as an example in the costuming document, but I hold that a Hedeby-style high boot with toggle closures was probably the common footwear for Riders; Rohirrim on foot would’ve likely used a similar turnshoe that was both 1) ankle height and 2) had closures on the insides of the shoe so they are easier to take on and off. note, again, the woven leather— another sign of status, alongside bone toggles:

ALSO, assuming Rohan has four seasons and gets snow in the winter— rabbit pelts for insoles ✌🏻

for outer layers, a wool cloak in a similar style to this. I’d also expect a lot of intricacy with any brooch Éomer himself would use— sth similar to the Rogaland fibula but with horse heads

again, personal experience, but these wool blanket cloaks are SOOOOOO nice. toss one side over your shoulder when you need both hands, pull it back over your front when you get cold + can get away with only using one hand. also, that cloak model is a good example of a wool tunic over a linen undertunic :3

+ last, ACCESSORIES.

the first pic is a set of winingas pins; you fold the end of your winingas into a triangle and stitch the pin on, then all you need to do is push it through the fabric when you’re finished wrapping. these are bear heads but again, Rohirrim, horse heads. you can also use small fibulas but they’re a bit of a hassle.

+ hats! pictured is a simple wool, fur lined hat. my current kit has a naalbound hat; naalbinding is VERY NICE, it’s similar to knitting but because of how it comes together it won’t unravel if you wear a hole in it/accidentally break the yarn/etc. very easy to repair! it also felts with wear if you use wool, making it both warmer and sturdier— this was obviously useful for vikings who were, you know, at sea for a significant chunk of the year. I imagine it would be equally useful for a culture of warriors primarily on horseback + therefore very active. naalbound hats, socks, and mittens have all been found (though I use sheepskin mittens with my current kit)

now, strider, you might say, “wouldn’t all that wool get extremely fucking hot?” + to that I will say. uh no not really! I’ve spent multiple days in sub-zero temperatures going between heated buildings and The Great Outdoors in my full wool viking kit and the only thing I needed to take off indoors was my mittens!! if you’ve never worn full wool, it’s a very adaptable material and I’ve never experienced any discomfort wearing it! my face got cold and my hands got hot and that was about it!

layering like this, particularly with an undertunic, would be especially important considering Fucking Wind. if you’re climbing on horseback and planning on going even vaguely fast, you’re gonna want layers over your core. wind is the bitch that will do you in.

also, we can get into a little debate about traction and hobnailing; I expect Riders would carry separate ice crampons so they aren’t digging hobnails into their horses’ sides. leather-soled shoes are a BITCH for traction and if there IS snow/ice, you will Die. You will Fucking Die. I watched a man in leather-soled shoes almost slide into a bonfire They Will Kill You For Real. rubber soles were not a Thing in this time period even tho the movies absolutely used rubber soles for Traction and not having their actors look like idiots trying to run on smooth surfaces. Gondor’s marble roads as a concept is the most hateful thing I’ve ever fucking heard of but That is a tangent for another post. “walking shoes” for winter were 100% hobnailed, riding boots would not be but again, separate ice crampons that could be tied into place would be used instead

did I ever actually post pics of Iron Age Norse winter garb inspo for Éomer or did I just ramble about gender conventions and disappear into the void…..

[signfromeywa]

Huevember bundle: 26, 27, 28, 29 💚

Hue: 26 💚 my OC Ma'nu

Hue: 27 💚 OC Ni'raya from @eywaseclipse

Hue: 28 💚 OC Zoley from @anxiousdreamcore

Hue: 29 💚 OC Theo from @frogletscribe

[karanoid]

Hello, in 2018 I sold a DBH zine with the pairing markus and simon. I'm selling the leftovers. There are 5 books and 5 keychains left.

I'm selling it bundled and on sale from $27 to $12. Pls help me deplete my stock 😭😭

Get them here: