#but also hard to stop doing when I live in a society that does not care if I live or die. I'm always reminded of it.

[torchickentacos]

If anyone else's windows device taskbar has been giving them too much world health news and prompting anxiety spirals, you can turn this thing off:

by right-clicking any blank part of the task bar, hitting this:

and turning this off.

Signed, 'oh my god I already mask indoors every day and live in constant fear of my jacked up immune system leading to my untimely demise, please stop telling me about fun new diseases'.

[dalekofchaos]

AU Asami is Amon by nikoniko_808

Give me the forbidden enemies to lovers Korrasami

Okay I wrote up my own au of Asami as Amon

Hiroshi and Asami witnessed the death of Asami’s mother at the hands of the Red Lotus society. Asami swore revenge on all benders. The corruption of Benders has gone too far and Asami and her father cannot let it continue. So they create a movement. The Equalists. Near the end of season 1. Asami would be nowhere to be seen. The Krew believes the Equalists have kidnapped Asami and when Korra confronts Amon, they don’t see her.

Tarrlok is still captured by Amon, when Korra sees him and they chat, he tells the whole story of Amon as it happened in the show to her and everything. Like it goes in the show. Korra and friends go to confront Amon at the arena where Tenzin and his family are about to lose their bending. But they don’t because she gets there in time. She accuses Amon of being a bender, as per Tarrlok’s story. Amon doesn’t unmask. And he isn’t a bender. Tarrlok lied to get Korra to confront Amon so that he could capture her and he could hopefully save his own skin for the service at least. They fight. Amon takes Korra’s bending in a big demonstrative way. So all the crowd can see what comes to any benders, especially The Avatar who stand against him. Then the reveal happens. Asami is Amon.

In order to get her bending back and learn how to give others their bending back (yeah, Korra wouldn’t get it back at the end of Book 1 because consequences? What’re those?), Korra has to go on a quest to learn her bending(her masters would be Toph, Katara, Izumi and Tenzin) in the Spirit World to understand everything. Korra does not cry about loosing her bending because she realized she’s still The Avatar and has to go to The Spirit World to get her bending back, to help everyone get their bending back and stop Asami

Throughout the series, we would meet Kya, Bumi, Izumi, Eska, Desna(Eska and Desna would be Korra’s siblings in this universe, because fuck Unaloq) Opal and Kai. We have the same romance between Bolin and Opal and Jinora and Kai. We would also meet Varrick and Zhu Li, because they are comedy gold. They would all help in the fight against Amon and the Equalists.

In Korra’s venture to the Spirit World,

she would still see Wan’s story(because that’s the only thing I liked about Book 2) and I think in her journey in the spirit world she would see Asami’s story, in which her family were victims of the Red Lotus society and Asami learned to take bending away in the spirit world. Not only that, we would find out that Asami would be bonded with Vaatu. Asami is the darker Avatar.

Before she leaves The Spirit World she connects with all her past lives to ask what she should do about Asami. Korra has her Aang moment where she has too has to decide what to do like he did with the fire lord, only this time there’s more to it than just stopping the bad guy. It’s about the person she loved. She can restore everyone’s bending by reversing Amon’s convergence, but she can’t do that so long as the avatar spirit is split. And as long as Asami is part avatar, she can go into the avatar state. That’s still pretty damn dangerous even with only water and blood bending. Korra realizes the only thing she can do to stop Asami? Love her.

After her journey to relearn her bending and journey in the spirit world, Korra travels the world to gain allies. From the Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes and Air Nomads. Korra unites the world against Amon and the Equalists.

In the final fight, Korra defeats Amon. She exorcises Vaatu from Asami, thus ending the dark Avatar and stopping Amon’s convergence. She reverses what Asami has done and uses it to restore everyone’s bending. So she has to come to the hard part. Amon makes it clear, no matter what, even without the ability to energy bend or without Vaatu, Amon will never stop, Benders will never be safe. Korra shows Asami what she was denied. Korra loves her and forgives her. Asami gives up and accepts whatever punishment.

During Book 3, Asami would work with Korra in stopping and killing the Red Lotus society. However, when Zaheer is stopped. He is left at the mercy of Asami and for everything he’s done and turned her into. Asami kills him.

Book 4 happens. Asami’s redemption is rebuilding Republic City and using Future Industries to repair the damage she’s done as Amon. Blah blah blah Korra stops Kuvira blah blah. Asami earns her redemption and the love of Republic City, the krew and more importantly Korra. Ends with Korra and Asami venturing in the Spirit World and ends with a kiss.

[ryukatters]

don’t go - k. bakugo

a/n: I’m so horny for this man I can’t even think straight. This was supposed to be short and fluffy but now it’s turned into this. I would say sorry but I’m not. (Yes I am alive)

pairing: katsuki bakugo x fem! reader

wc: 1.5k

content/warnings: smut, unprotected morning s*x, begging, overstimulation, bkg is obsessed with you, also completely not proofread

Your boyfriend Katsuki is clingy. Very clingy— in all senses of the word, and you’re convinced that if you open a dictionary right now his name would show up as the very definition of it. Bakugo would live under your skin if he could, or at the very least come up with a way to keep you in his pocket. 

As lovely as your boyfriend is, his innate urge to smother you in affection poses a problem in times like these— early mornings where you have to get up and get ready for work. 

“Katsuki, I need to go to work. Go back to your side of the bed.”

“Just quit,” he murmurs, “I’ll take care of ya.” 

“As appealing as that sounds, no. I need to get up and do my part as a functioning member of society.” Any attempt to leave your shared bed is shut down by Bakugo, his strength easily overpowering yours as he wraps his arms around you and lays on top of you. 

“But you’re my pillow,” he says with a bit of a sigh, pressing his into the crook of your neck, melting further into you. His hot breath tickles your skin, and it’s enough to have your heart pounding along with a familiar warmth in between your legs. Katsuki is observant to a fault, he knows you better than the back of his own hand, and knows just what to do to turn you into putty. 

His hands snake up under your (read: his) shirt, kneading your breasts. You let out a sharp gasp as he tweaks your nipples and sucks a love bite at the junction of your neck. He hums in appreciation as he slowly leaves a trail of wet kisses down your stomach, stopping just as he reaches your underwear. 

He traces your slit, eyes darkening as the fabric begins to dampen with your slick. “So wet for me already, baby.” It’s not a question, it’s a fact that he already knew. Katsuki wastes no time sliding the garment down your legs. He takes a moment to run his hands up and down both your thighs before prying your legs further apart, exposing yourself to him completely. He can feel his mouth water at the sight of you. 

Katsuki can’t help but moan the minute his lips attach themselves to your clit, sucking fervently. “Always taste so good, princess.” 

You take a moment to glance down, which proves to be a mistake. Katsuki’s practically making out with your pussy, and when his eyes meet yours, they’re nothing short of lovesick. His vermillion orbs draw you in, and they’re absolutely magnetizing. You have to close your eyes to stave off your orgasm for a little longer. 

Katsuki can’t help but grind against the edge of the bed to feel some sort of release. He’s so fucking hard. He thinks he’s growing delirious. Katsuki swears he can cum from the taste of your pussy and the sound of your angelic voice filling the room with a sweet symphony. When you let out a particularly breathy call of his name, he has to will himself not to finish in his boxers, which is already usually a difficult enough task on its own, but now it's almost impossible from how impossibly hard he is with morning wood.

You grind against his mouth, hands carding through his hair as your orgasm rapidly approaches. Katsuki is more than eager to be used as a means of getting there. Even as you cum, he continues to fuck your hole with his tongue and lapping up your pussy. It’s only when you begin to push him away does he feel the need to lean back, a loud pop reverberating as he does. 

“You gonna be a good girl and let me take care of ya?”

“Mmm, fuck. Yes, ‘ki.”

“Good girl,” he coos, his lips pressing against yours with fervor. You allow him to deepen the kiss, sucking on his tongue. He moans appreciatively, hips stuttering as he continues to grind against you. The head of his cock bumps against your clit over and over, smearing precum all over your pussy. His tip just barely presses against your fluttering hole, and you can feel your insides ache with anticipation and utter need.

He’s teasing you. You’re overstimulated yet somehow unsatisfied. Your pussy is craving to be stretched out, and Katsuki is making sure he’s doing everything but that. He likes getting you like this— needy, clingy, nearly delirious as you beg for him. He likes to think of it as reparations for how insane you make him feel on the daily. 

You’re not sure how much more you can take. 

“Katsuki, please,” you whine, lifting your hips to grind against his dick, hoping to get what you want, what you need. You look up at Katsuki and for a moment, you think you’ve got him— think that you’d be able to look at him with those doe eyes and get what you want easily, like always. He never could refuse you.

But he merely smirks, and uses one hand to press you back down into the mattress. 

“Tell me what you want, princess. You know I’ll make it good for you.” 

“Want you to fuck me, ‘ki.” 

“Yeah?”

“Mhm,” you whine sweetly. 

“I’ll give you what you want baby,” he affirms, the timbres of his voice reaching the depths of your soul. He uses both hands to press both of your legs by your shoulders, cock lined at your entrance. I always do, don’t I?

You can’t stop the moan that tumbles out of your lips as he fills you up. Katsuki presses a kiss against your forehead, relishing in the way you tighten around his dick. 

The familiar coil that’s been forming in your tummy is threatening to unravel, if your stuttered moans and breaths are any indication. Katsuki seems to know this too, as he pulls out right before you hit your climax. You whine at the sudden lack of overwhelming pressure, and Katsuki’s quick to silence you with a hard stare. 

His breath ghosts against your lips, vermillion eyes burning into yours with intense, unspoken passion. “What’s wrong, princess?”

You shake your head in the negative. “Wanna cum, Katsuki. Please.” 

He starts thrusting again, slowly and with purpose. His eyes never leave yours. It doesn’t take long for you to be on the brink of an orgasm again. “You want to cum, right baby?” He smiles when he sees you nod. “You can cum,” he says carefully, “but only if you do one thing for me.” 

“I’ll do anything Kats,” you manage to choke out. Katsuki continues to pound into you, the sound of skin slapping filling the room. You really would do anything, Katsuki’s own desire and utter want for you is so persuasive that you feel compelled to follow. 

“Don’t leave,” he whispers, lips pressing a chaste kiss against yours. “Stay with me, today.” There’s an urgency behind his words despite them being said so softly. 

Fuck it. 

You barely manage to let out a stuttered “yes, ‘ki,” before you reach your peak. The pleasure rolls over you in waves, tears threatening to spill as Katsuki continues to drill into you, chasing his own high. A few particularly rough thrusts punctuated by staggered moans let you know that he’s cumming. 

Katsuki manages to plop right next to you, bed shifting under his weight. You lock eyes as you both try to catch your breaths. He gives you a quick smile before pressing a kiss to your sweaty temple, one arm wrapping around you to pull you against him.

“So…” he starts, his eyes brimming with satisfaction, lips upturned into a smirk. He knows he’s won. “Ready for round 2?”

[tiamathh]

Compliments from the Universe

Note: From the universe and me to you, you're all doing so well keep it up and take care of yourselves! My Paid Readings have been reopened if you want to check them out there's only 17 slots <3

Masterlist | Paid Readings | Paid Feedback

Hi Pile 1! The universe is here to complement you on your ability to stay truthful and vulnerable even in situations that make you want to lie and avoid and run away. You embrace change and don't run from it which makes life a tad bit easier for you than others who keep trying to claw their way out of inevitable situations. You are courageous and beautiful and people want to court you or ask you out because of how fun and flirty you seem.

Fast paced those are the words that can be used for you, but in a good way of course you want something and you go for it, you don't wait for life to happen and life rewards you by keeping things interesting whether for good or for bad, usually for the good though. You're free spirited and have the ability to be alone and stay with yourself and your thoughts which is very tough for some people (me) to do, this ability of yours does not only make you very self aware but also puts you on a path to self actualisation and being the best version of yourself.

You're sensual and I heard the song "All I do is win win win no matter what" so you have that going for you, even if it seems like things are not going your way, you somehow still keep control of yourself and ground yourself till you end up making things happen for you. You do not go down without a fight and have a natural affinity towards healing. Your presence itself is like a bandage on a cut, warm and safe and protective.

Hello Pile 2 <3 The universe is here to give you your flowers for being someone who knows how to protect your peace, you have the ability to save up and aren't a big spender which also provides you with stability and a good eye for investments. You may be someone who starts a lot of projects and even though you may not see them through, you still use whatever you've learnt from the previous project into new ones, whatever you learn you never let go to waste and always carry it with you. You have the kind of speech which can pull people in, the way you talk makes people want to listen to you, not only because of your words but also your voice helps calm others down.

You're blessed with the ability to see through people's bs and save yourself and the people close to you from such individuals as well. You carry yourself with a lot of grace and poise and may be very lucky when it comes to finances but this is not all luck it's also based on how you work hard for whatever you have. You don't shy away from controversy or conflict either, you know how to fight and you'll do it if you need to.

You refuse to trap yourself within the conventionality of society and let yourself do what you want and live how you want, you don't fear judgement, the only thing you fear is not being able to experience life the way you want which is very commendable. You entirely understand the concept of living for yourself and not for anyone else which makes the universe give you what you want if you ask nicely.

Hi Pile 3! The universe wants to tell you that they're proud of how you are extremely firm when it comes to any decision you make and how you have the ability to balance rationality and emotionality and do them both justice whenever you make your decisions. You're someone who has grown into this role which is even more commendable because you were able to overcome your inability to make decisions and may have been wishy washy.

You have this feeling of restlessness and freshness to you, like the wind at the top of a mountain, filled with energy and gusto but just so refreshing. However, you know when to stop and stand still, you know when it is right for you to take a step back and self evaluate. You're someone who's very sociable and loveable, a lot of people are naturally drawn to you and you may be someone who steps into the spotlight with ease, you do not have troubles when it comes to mingling with people from any walk of life and could also have a lot of wanderlust within you which encourages you to experience new things and everything the world has to offer.

You're generous and willing to help anyone out especially when they're just starting out, I heard start ups so that could be important for someone. You have this ability within you where you are very good at laying foundations for anything, your foundation with your life and what you want to do itself is very strong and almost unshakeable and you may not experience a lot of tower moments in your life because as soon as you clock that something is not working for you or meant for you, you get rid of it yourself and don't force the universe to intervene.

DO NOT PLAGIARISE, REWORD, REPHRASE, REPOST OR COPY MY CONTENT all rights reserved @tiamathh

[greentrickster]

It occurs to me that, in light of his discovery about Shang Qinghua's true nature and relationship to the world, and of his own place within all this, Mobei-jun's probably going to become just a touch insufferable, though not in the way he usually is. Like, the biggest hurdle to the Moshang relationship from his perspective is that he's never, ever been able to get a solid read on this weird servant of his. Mobei-jun can't figure it out for himself, Shang Qinghua refuses to explain himself or ask for anything other than his own life even as he makes himself indispensable and pulls off these amazing acts of service, but he also seems terrified of Mobei-jun a lot of the time, and, frankly, yeah, I'd be confused and irritable as heck after a couple decades of mixed signals like this too. And that's on top of having some very well-founded and (given his life experiences) extremely understandable trust issues.

(Because, while Airplane is genuinely my favorite, I can also acknowledge that, from Mobei-jun's perspective, he probably looks shadier than Reigan from MP100.)

Except now? Now. Now Mobei-jun knows why Shang Qinghua's always been so squirrely and secretive, why he's always been devoted to Mobei-jun even while terrified of him, why he never responds to Mobei-jun's overt courting tactics in spite of seeming to find him attractive... he's got all the pieces. Including that absolute, most important of pieces:

Shang Qinghua loves him best. Shang Qinghua has always loved him best.

I think that knowledge makes him melt a bit. Not because of who or what Shang Qinghua is, but because Mobei-jun finally, finally understands this strange little man, and that means it's finally safe to trust him, fully and completely.

Of course this makes our favorite popsicle melt a bit. And, when popsicles melt a bit, it's only natural that they get a little sticky.

Which is to say Airplane is never going to have to worry about touch-starvation again, because he's going to be getting all the hugs and cuddles and pats (and affectionate (and very careful) slaps and pinches, because Mobei-jun's doing his best to respect boundaries but he's still a demon and this is part of their culture, society, and nature (and also because Airplane has come to the conclusion that if Mobei-jun gets to have a go at his cheeks every now and then, then Airplane gets to smack the butt in retaliation, and Mobei-jun has yet to disabuse him of this notion)). Also just picked up and carried around sometimes, because Qinghua's legs are so short and he works so hard, it is unfitting to make him work extra to keep up with Mobei-jun (which is definitely the only reason he's doing this, not because he just wants to carry Qinghua around like his favorite cuddle toy just because he can, really).

There's at least one Peak Lord meeting that Shang Qinghua arrives to via Mobei-jun carrying him there bridal style. This is also the meeting where everyone has to deal with the fact that Shang shidi has a demon king hugging his waist while laying his head in Shang shidi's lap, because Qinghua needed to attend this meeting, but Mobei-jun wasn't ready to stop cuddling yet.

And when everyone makes extremely reasonable noises about maybe not having a demon king in attendance while they went over private sect affairs and maybe Mobei-jun should leave, the giant brat just looks at them all with one eye and says, "No, I'm his favorite." And then closes his eye again and proceeds to ignore them all in favour of sticking his face in Qinghua's stomach and having a nap.

Meaning now they all have to live with the knowledge that Shang shidi is the most important being in the world and what his taste in men is like.

Shang shidi going, "I mean... he's right, and also I've been telling him stuff about these meetings for years and also, like... you can't really stop me." does not help.

[kelluinox]

I just want to understand how westerners who never experienced war, who don't have anyone they know affected by war, have the audacity to sit in their ivory towers and pontificate about war. It's truly mind boggling. These pampered, privileged, spoiled little kids sitting on social media, treating wars in which real people are dying like they're a particularly interesting Netflix show, drawing anime characters with the colors of terrorist regimes.

I have family in Odesa. Practically every summer of my childhood I spent in Odesa. I went to the beaches. I stayed at my aunt's apartment. Walked around the city with my cousin. Odesa is beautiful. And I watched it be bombed by Russians with no ability to stop my terrorist government from doing so. I received text messages from my cousin, saying, "we have fireworks tonight" and nearly lost my mind every time I heard of new bombing. I didn't know if the next day I would be hearing of my relatives being trapped under rubble. I had nightmares over what the Russians did and are doing in Ukraine. Bucha still haunts my thoughts. All of this slaughter is being done by my government and I have no ability to stop it. And Russian society supports it. You know, those screaming about innocent civilians show only one thing - they don't understand the first thing about fascist societies. The innocent civilians of Russia celebrated the annexation of Crimea. They stuck Z symbols to their cars and hung st George ribbons on their clothes to support the invasion. They got their kids to record their anti war teachers to get them fired or even imprisoned. They dress up their kids in military style clothes and they invite terrorists to speak in front of class about 'patriotism'. An innocent civilian art class teacher reported a girl who drew an anti war picture in class to the innocent civilian school principal. The principal called the police. The girl was put into solitary confinement until her mother agreed to take her. Her father was kidnapped and secretly put in prison.

Some other absolutely ignorant claims I've heard are ones about "collective punishment" and "illegal blockades". Funny. I live under collective punishment - sanctions, and countries bordering Russia are closing entry to Russians, slowly forming a blockade. And you know what? Russia deserves it. Russia deserves to learn the hard way that this is what you get for being an imperialist aggressor. I don't blame the Baltics, or Finland for closing their borders with Russia. I blame Russia for being such a shitty neighbor that such measures were needed in the first place.

And for those who will say, oh but how does this relate to the Middle East. Well, first of all, I'm a jew. I care when the biggest attack on jews since the Holocaust happens and the world spends 12 months celebrating it and bemoaning that only 1200 were murdered and not 7 million. I also care because, unlike you, I know Putin's allies, I know who helps bomb my family in Ukraine. I know that Hamas and Hezbollah and numerous other terrorist organizations terrorizing Israel are Iranian proxies. And I know Iran and Russia are buddies and Iran sells weapons to Russia. I was here, in Moscow, when the PA and Hamas were here for a visit. I was in the same city as those bloodthirsty murderers who want all jews dead. And yet people will still have the audacity to tell me that I'm the one who's in the wrong. It's me who doesn't understand anything about geopolitics, you see. I'm the one who can't tell the difference between a war and genocide even though I had entire branches of my family erased by the Holocaust, have parents and grandparents who lived in the Soviet Union and watched my own government attempt a genocide in Ukraine. I'm the one who doesn't understand imperialism even though Russia is an empire. Russians believe that all post Soviet states should still belong to them and make no mistake once they have them they'll go on to grab some more. I'm the one who doesn't understand how dictatorships operate such as using outside conflicts to distract the population from internal problems and hold on to power. I'm the one who doesn't understand anything.

I don't care if anything of what I say isn't politically correct. I don't care if just being honest about reality and refusing to coddle westerners with lies loses me followers. I'm not going to lie about my life just to be accepted on social media. I don't care. I don't care what the UN says, they've shown me their alliance way back when they didn't do shit for Ukraine. They let Russia veto whatever it didn't like. Putin wasn't arrested when he visited Mongolia. What did the UN do, really? Except waste their time with Israel? I'm not surprised to learn of the complicity of UNWRA. I'm not surprised to see videos of Hezbollah tunnels mere meters away from UN outposts. The majority of countries in the UN are undemocratic and interested in pushing their own agendas. The UN has lost its purpose. I don't care about the Red Cross, who told hostage families concerned about their family members being held by a brutal terrorist organization that "they should think about the palestinians". The red cross claimed there were no installations for the extermination of jews at Auschwitz too. I don't care about Greta Thunberg who now claims that Israel is causing damage to the environment and has forgotten all about Russia that continues to bomb Ukraine. Russia blew up a fucking dam, but everyone has already forgotten all about that. It wasn't the jews who brought down the Kakhovka dam, so who cares, right? No jews, no news. I don't care about student activists demanding they be brought humanitarian aid on the steps of elite US universities. I don't care about Biden who spent more time holding Israel back, than actually rescuing his own citizens from Hamas. I don't care about the Spanish with their history of antisemitism (the Inquisition), and colonialism (that they're now trying to blame on us by saying Columbus was a jew when he was not). I don't care about the British who also have their own history of colonialism and tried to stop jews who were fleeing the Holocaust from migrating to the then British Mandate. I don't care about South Africa, who would rather distract their own people with Israel rather than sort out their internal problems. I don't care about the BBC, Reuters, CNN, NYT nazi rags that give awards to terrorists taking pictures of the bodies of dead jewish women and cry bitter tears over a murderous monster like Nasrallah. I'm past the point of caring what any of these people say. I see who they are. I see their hypocrisy. I see their blatant bias and hatred. I see all of it. I'm tired of it.

And I'm tired of being lectured by westerners who don't live in reality. Who are so morally confused and who live with such a simplified worldview that they've started supporting terrorism. I actually live these conflicts. Who the fuck are you to lecture me? Who the fuck are you to "educate" me on anything?

[totokoismyfav]

hi i have a request for headcanons :] how would the sextuplets react to an s/o who is objectively a functional member of society (job and/or school, booming social life, well liked, etc) but for some reason simps really hard for them. it can by goofy or not, depends on what you think!

osomatsu san/reader | reader who is a functional member of society who is head over heels for the brothers

A functional member of society in love with a NEET? Oh, what a thought! All of them equally are just as infatuated with you, maybe even more so as you are just shining with confidence and wit. So imagine their surprise when you finally ask them to be your boyfriend! They all react differently so let’s see up close and personal.

Osomatsu: - How are you with him, seriously? Everyone wants to know. - A shitty NEET with such bad habits like gambling and drinking and you looked in his direction? He’s just as shocked as everyone else to be honest. - Although, he’s not complaining one bit.  - Proudly parades you around in front of his brothers, like damn he might as well have won the lottery. - Oh, they are so jealous by the way. - At first, he doesn’t really change besides that but a little bit into your relationship, he starts making small changes and working up to the big ones.  - At first, it’s picking up after himself and doing more chores around the house, then it’s actually looking for jobs and talking about moving out one day. - Soon enough, he ends up doing just that and moves in with you, even holding a job and stops complaining about it all the time. - He’s trying, for you, and that is a lot coming from him. 

Karamatsu:  - Oh, be prepared anon.  - This man will make it known that he is just as much in love with you back.  - Things like surprise flowers and gifts show up at your work’s front desk, only the best for his Karamatrsu darling! - “Oh my darling flower, it makes my heart palpitate just to know how much you adore me!”  - Of course, you are eating up every cheesy line and equally spoiling him despite his surprise when you do so, despite still living with his mother he’s not used to being spoiled like this. - Like you swear you saw tears when you gave him a gift on your first date, and it was something so simple too. A guitar pick with yours and his initials on it. He swears to use it all the time, and he does, especially when he serenades to you. He even started to freak out when the image on it started to fade.  - At first, he refuses to let you pay for things even though you have a job and he doesn’t. After a few high-priced dates, he finally lets you help with the costs and even slightly enjoys being spoiled by you. - To still help out and spoil you, he even starts working at a nearby clothing store. - Your love is so annoying to everyone around you but the both of you don’t care, not one bit. 

Choromatsu: - To his non-existent calculations, you two should NOT be a thing, but he doesn’t care at this point. - He’s also kinda jealous of you? Like you’re everything he wants to be but he quickly gets over that once you ask him out.  - At the beginning of your relationship, he is constantly stuttering and sweating from his nerves but he’s over the moon about finally dating you, he always has his signature smile on his face.  - When you start holding hands, you can physically feel his whole body shake just from your palm against his.  - Of course, you are no better as you are in LOVE with this man. - You’re both a couple who are head over heels for one another and very much show it instead of saying it. - It took you guys weeks just to say ‘I love you’ which ended in you running away with your hands covering your face and Choromastu shouting to the night sky of how he was in love.  - He also starts to become a functional member of society (with your help and motivation). - Soon enough, he’s living with you and has a job of his own, and surprisingly to him he couldn’t be happier getting out of the NEET lifestyle he was in for so long. 

Ichimatsu:  - He can barely believe it himself, how could someone like you be in love with him? - You were a knockout, a functional member of society and he was just a shitty NEET, a nobody who no one wants. You must be fucking around with him.   - And he really thinks that at first, it takes a bit of persuasion for him to believe you are actually infatuated with him.  - On your first date, he would sit tables away from you as you drank a milkshake. His face turned bright red as he tried to sip from four tables away with a long straw. - You would simply smile at him, telling him it’s ok to get closer and that you were truly interested in dating him. - Soon enough, you two were doing regular couple stuff like holding hands and regularly going on dates.  - As you both get further into the relationship you notice he starts to really change things, Ichimatsu even gets a job at a local cat cafe. - Soon enough, he’s living with you and holding down a job he actually enjoys (although interacting with people still irks him).  - Although, when you first asked him to spend the night at your house, he spontaneously combusted right on the bench. 

Jyushimatsu:  - Oh ho ho! This man is ecstatic! - His brothers swear that he’s been faster with his batting swing when you both start dating. - It’s like he has a new form of motivation when practicing baseball, running faster, swinging harder and throwing farther all at the same time. - He also seems happier than usual (somehow) , his smile widening whenever he sees you and your wonderful face.  - Will point you out to his brothers whenever he sees you, like he’s bragging or something. “Ha ha look, it’s my partner! Do you see them, huh? Huh?”  - He also starts working as well, hoping to start working as a baseball player in the future. - With your help, he eventually works up to that point and starts playing in local leagues!

Todomatsu:  - Oh he’s the most smug out of all of them. - Of course, he has no idea why you looked in his direction but he’s so glad you did.  - When you told him you were in love with him, he dropped his coffee you two had gotten minutes prior. Of course, he spilled it all over you and profusely apologized about it while helping to clean you up. - Luckily, it was iced so it didn’t burn or anything so you simply just smiled and told him he was fine and it was ok.  - Totally rubs it in his brother's faces, just like Oso and Jyushi but he’s more of a bitch about it.  - “Oh would you look at that, I have a partner now who’s actually interested in me. Score one for the youngest!” - He actually got a scoreboard for it too, the bastard. - He eventually goes back to Sutabaa, working the same position he did before. - He’s officially out of NEET status when he moves in with you and he’s so happy about it as he went up a level as a human once more!

[thesiltverses]

Hello! Writing first to thank you for such an extraordinary creation - as a piece of writing and even more so in performance. Every episode manages to somehow build on and outdo the last; you navigated that transition from a smaller scale story of grisly mysteries and personal crises of faith to a grand scale of war, revolution and political satire with absolute aplomb, and never lost that throughline of exceptional characterisation and sharp writing, always steering to the most interesting conflicts. You are always very humble in your public comments, but I hope you allow yourself a little pride, because this is absolutely top notch stuff.

I was struck by Paige's final words, that she hopes what they left would be found 'flawed, inadequate, yearning'. As the show went on, I was surprised - in a good way - that the show's politics gradually crystalised into a full-on nihilist anarchism, something perhaps even along the lines of Monsieur Dupont. (Muna used the 'a' word in one of the Q&As but it was pretty evident even before that). Taking these gods as a metaphor for ideologies and social systems, the scope of it becomes pretty universal - and unsparing. And, equally, hard to answer.

I wondered when the Many Below/Wound Tree was introduced what answers they would find: what political movement could truly resist cooption or becoming its own horrible self-sustaining egregore. And in the end the answer you express I suppose is a negative one: that even Paige's god of victims is a tool, one that must eventually be discarded to go into some unknown place beyond it all (to walk away from Omelas), towards something that narrative fiction - as a form of the 'endless words' that are derided so much in the third season - can no longer address. Which I respect - to pose the question is vital, even if the tools can't reach any answers if they even exist.

I think this struggle exists in many stories that address themes of making a break from the rapacious society that created them (and take it seriously) - your Baru Cormorants and Mononoke-himes. We can describe the problem vividly, but since we do not have a counterexample to hand, any story we tell about ~what is to be done~ and what it will look like when it is feels like it will be just as hollow as the spins and angles and parasitic fantasies that so many characters advance in the Silt Verses. (How could there possibly be a time where it finally works out, after we have seen all this? But then, what are we living for?)

To try to make this a question and not a ramble, I wanted to ask - what do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world? Is it enough to pose the question particularly sharply, skewer the bad and inadequate answers, and leave the readers/listeners to figure out how to make the killing of gods concrete? How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

I don't know what answer I'm hoping for here, but given the themes of the show, I feel like this must be a kind of thing you've thought about, and probably have a far more developed line of thought than I do. And if this is a bit too much to drop in your inbox on a Saturday morning, I will say again thank you for writing this story and all the actors for making it so strikingly concrete - it truly means a lot, and I will treasure it.

Hi, and thank you for listening and for a beautifully written and thoughtful ask! ('Horrible machinery of the world' stopped me dead in my tracks.) And I am very proud, genuinely.

I don't have a good enough answer to your questions, and for me a lot of TSV is very much about trying to figure those answers out, but let me try and sum up my perspective bit by bit.

Is it enough for fiction to pose the question, without also proposing the answer?

I don't think it's enough for fiction as a collective body of work.

I'd argue there's probably a tendency towards open-endedness and irresolution in these individual narratives simply because it feels like a more honest acknowledgement that in real life, the foe has yet to take a real body blow and will not go down easy; that the foe, in fact, is the marketplace for the work itself and ironically profits from the popularity of stories with easy heroic victories over villains who represent capitalism. That these stories inevitably become a pleasant consumable that serves our complacency within the belly of the beast, a kind of daily tonic to reassure us that good always triumphs and regular people always come out on top.

I also think that the sheer scale and scope of the topic creates its own challenges; you probably can't engage thoroughly enough with both the dystopian question and your ideas for a utopian answer all in a single story, without ultimately turning the latter into that false reassurance, a quick handwave of a happy ending.

You mention Omelas, and I think we could illustrate the problem by looking at how LeGuin handles her two successive masterpieces:

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which gives us the titular resource-rich u(dys)topia built on invisible suffering, and the dissidents who turn their backs on that world and walk out into the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

The Dispossessed, which as its premise gives us Anarres, an imperfect but sympathetic anarchist society whose adherents turned their backs on a neighbouring world of capitalist plenty to live out in the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

Anarres can very reasonably be viewed as LeGuin's direct answer to the question posed by Omelas, and she would have likely had it in her mind already as she wrote Omelas. But if the short story had ended with 'I hear that against all odds, the ones who walk away have successfully founded an anarchist utopia where hardship is everywhere but it's shared as equitably as possible. THE END', the amount of lazy shorthand and empty comfort involved in that happier ending would inevitably make it a dishonest and unserious offering.

Instead, Anarres is a starting premise to be interrogated at length over the course of a separate story, rather than a happy ending to simply reassure the reader that better things are possible - and even at the end of the novel LeGuin's unresolved questions are still very similar to the ones that we're left with in Omelas (and the same questions that I feel like we were knocking about in The Silt Verses, and which I guess you could argue are all lingering concerns at the end of Mononoke, as well): how and where can we find space to create and sustain a genuine alternative when the narrative environment of capitalism is so powerfully all-subsuming and constantly growing to fill the space? Do we need to disconnect entirely, vanishing as if dead? If we disconnect, how can we possibly survive and what inhumanities or ethical compromises will be required of us? If we do survive, is our isolationism a dereliction of human responsibility to those left behind?

All of which is to say that I think present-day fiction absolutely can make the attempt to meaningfully explore potential alternative-utopian solutions in more depth and with far more tangibility than we attempted with TSV - but that dystopian fiction like ours which concludes with the unexplored promise of a revolutionary utopia and the vague reassurance that the irrepressible human spirit will figure things out from here on out (Chewbacca gets a medal, everyone's in the streets wearing a Guy Fawkes mask) doesn't do much more than dramatically undermine its own goal of disrupting the audience's comfort.

That said, one of my big regrets this season was that we didn't succeed in more engagingly exploring and articulating the Woundtree camp's development into a flawed but functioning society in Dispossessed fashion ahead of the ending. That was my intention, but what quickly became clear was that in a dramatic format, with a limited cast, it was just endless static meeting-room scenes with Paige and Elgin discussing difficult responses to impossible challenges, while everyone else was out having dynamic and exciting adventures with lots of fun and exciting gods. Dystopias remain too entertaining for utopias' own good.

What do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world?

I believe that absurdist horror fiction specifically, founded on the principle of 'people in a world that makes no sense, deluding themselves that it definitely does make sense' can play a very powerful role in that stated purpose.

Many horror traditions carry the baggage of inbuilt or inadvertent conservatism - the concept of a peaceable, passive, safe, middle-class Normality which is then disrupted by a terrifying outside threat (alien, ultra-foreign, ultra-low-class, underworldly, wild, etc). But absurdist horror very directly identifies Normality as the true source of our terror and very directly confronts our human response to it. It creates the right environment for us to ask all of the good questions. Isn't this an unsustainable nightmare we're living in? Why are we expending so much energy pretending it isn't? How do we get out and what do we do if we can't?

Probably the only listener reaction that's genuinely frustrated me about both of our shows is the folks who come away turning their noses up at the bluntness of that approach and acting like they've Solved The Art simply for figuring out where our broad sympathies lie. "Hm, just listened to The Silt Verses and I understood it at once; it's clearly trying to say that capitalism is bad. A little heavy-handed in its messaging for my liking, hm-hm!"

Not to go full Garth Marenghi, but for me the directness of the provocation and the obvious outrageousness of the nightmare is the point; it then allows us to go to places that other genres (or more understated critiques) generally can't.

How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

God, I don't know.

Maybe it means nothing; maybe we can't punch through; maybe there is no story unruly enough to be truly unco-optable, and therefore even the most radical fiction ultimately serves as a distraction, a placebo, a reassurance (that we are not alone, that better things are possible) which will impact the wider world more by keeping us subscribed to the Kindle app than by any action we might feel inspired to take.

Amazon is paying Boots Riley to make TV shows. Disney won much praise for delivering a revolutionary fantasy in a Star Wars shell. Apple is funding excellent, discomfiting and furious corporate satires about how we happily ignore invisible worker abuses for the sake of our own lifestyles, but they also cannot be considered accountable for the deaths of Congolese child-labourers in the global cobalt supply chain. The Dispossessed is in development as a limited series and the LeGuin estate are closely involved.

The master doesn't just own the tools, he's been buying up the guillotines as well.

What if, as with the unknowable nothingness outside of Omelas, the only art that cannot be reduced to product in net service of the status quo is the art that's so invisible and inaccessible and disconnected as to not exist at all? Does being relatively small and ramshackle really lend us any ideological purity, any genuine detachment? You can listen to The Silt Verses on Apple and Spotify and Amazon Music. Brought to you by Acast.

Chapter 36 with Dev and Seb was to a large extent intended as an articulation of that worry. To what extent can we still trust in the integrity of a sincere love story (one that we want to believe in) it if takes place in an insincere and predatory environment? Can any meaningful story be told honestly within such a space?

This stuff really worries me. I think it's probably right to worry. I don't know the answer. I do know that there are some folks for whom the show has made a tangible difference in terms of their life's direction, and that's a huge comfort to me.

There was someone who said it helped them find their faith, strangely and wonderfully. Someone else who said it contributed to their decision not to go down a more lucrative career path within what they view as an exploitative industry. (I hope they don't regret that decision; I hope it makes them happy.)

So there's something there. Maybe.

[wheelie-sick]

going to just... dissect the whole "glasses make me disabled" thing as someone who is moderately disabled and mildly visually impaired because it annoys me to death. I know this is going to be controversial but if you have vision that is fully corrected by glasses then you are not disabled by your vision nor are you visually impaired.

Visual impairment

let's begin with the definition of visual impairment according to several universities

"Vision impairment means that a person’s eyesight cannot be corrected to a “normal” level." - University of Pittsburgh Department of Opthamology

"‘Visual impairment’ (VI) is a term used to describe a loss of sight that cannot be corrected using lenses." - University of Oxford

the US EEOC also answers the question of whether all people who wear glasses are disabled:

"No, not everyone who wears glasses is an individual with a disability under the ADA. When deciding if an individual with a vision impairment who uses (or used, in the case of a past impairment) “ordinary eyeglasses or contact lenses” is an individual with an “actual” or “record of” a disability, the ADA directs that their impairment should be assessed as it is corrected by the lenses." - US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

visual impairment exists as a category for people with uncorrectable vision loss or other vision related conditions. most definitions of visual impairment also include eye movement disorders (e.g nystagmus) and other eye conditions that are not correctable but do not necessarily cause traditional vision loss. these are exceptions, but again, are not correctable with glasses.

if your vision is correctable with glasses it is not visual impairment. period. full stop.

Disability

there are two different ways you can look at disability and fully corrected vision fits neither:

the social model

the social model of disability looks at disability as it is caused by society's lack of access. let's start with a fact: 81% of adults wear some sort of corrective eyewear! that is the vast majority of people. people who wear glasses are just simply not facing structural barriers in the world because the world is built for people who wear glasses by people who wear glasses.

and, no, being bullied in the playground is not a form of structural disadvantage. children bully each other for any and every reason.

"but I can't drive without my glasses!"

I can't walk in hot concrete without shoes. that doesn't make shoes a disability aid nor does it make needing shoes a disability. plenty of things require something else to allow you to do something, that doesn't make needing those things a disability. not all forms of support for an action are disability aids.

the medical model

the medical model looks at disability through the lens of impairment. wearing glasses with fully corrected vision is not an impairment.

people often point to hearing aids and say "well deaf/hard of hearing people are disabled despite hearing aids!" and it makes it clear you have never worn hearing aids. disability aids do not correct they accommodate. glasses mean you get to see at 20/20 vision. hearing aids are imperfect accommodations. wheelchairs are imperfect accommodations. feeding tubes are imperfect accommodations. the list goes on.

glasses mean you get to live your life exactly how someone who doesn't wear glasses would. someone wearing hearing aids does not get that. a wheelchair user does not get that. etc. because those disability aids are something you have to live your life around. they define your day to day routine. the day to day routine with glasses is 1. wake up in the morning 2. put them on 3. take them off at night 4. possibly clean them somewhere in there. you get to forget about glasses. I do not get to forget about my hearing aids or FM system or crutches or wheelchair because they are ever present in my life.

* just a note: this post is not referring to people who wear glasses and don't have fully correctable vision

** OP wears glasses with a high prescription, his vision is just not fully correctable

[visenyaism]

Sorry if you’ve been asked this but what do you think of all the rot in asoiaf? Obv some of it is related to the problems with monarchy but I feel like a lot of it isn’t and it just leaves me curious. Like cold hands or people killed by the others idk what that symbolizes there. Jon is in a land in which rot is in stasis from the cold and it’s creepy as shit. And then there’s stuff that could have multiple interpretations like dany by proxy of selmy experiencing bio warfare with the corpses like I know some people see it as the fall of old ghis but I wondered if maybe it was a sign to dany about breaking the wheel and doing as her ancestors did. Idk I know it’s a nasty series and sometimes grrm is just doing stuff so that it’s gross but I feel like rot comes up SO much and I people are usually talking online about like Tywin when it comes to rot.

Oh one of my favorite things about the asoiaf series is how heavy-handed george rr martin is with the rot symbolism. and (at the risk of sounding like an mfa vomited on my keyboard) the way that the political, pestilential, societal, and climatological aspects of the rot symbolism all interconnect.

In a society founded on so many feudal evils that has perpetuated for centuries, something has to give. It is a recurring theme in these books that violations of human decency under feudalism cause cataclysmic societal collapse represented through literal and metaphorical pestilence.

There’s the sociopolitical collapse in the riverlands caused by war of human decency and norms like guest right and prohibitions on kinslaying or cannibalism just dedicating away as times get hard. broken men. bodies left to rot in the sun for the crows to feast on. There’s the fermenting wildfire under every major street in Kings Landing. There’s the familial/relational decay of incest especially the targaryens and the lannisters. The people who hold power and that society rot, despite everyone’s best efforts at keeping up appearances: Robert Baratheon the “war hero” dies of a very nasty festering stomach wound he got in a drunken hunting accident, Tywin gets shot on the privy and his corpse putefies in the sept.

The climate stuff is also very salient. The series starts during late summer and as things get worse and worse in the world declines into the autumn where the summer fruit and all of the abundance is literally rotting through the hands of the characters. (see: renly’s peach vs doran’s blood oranges!) The cold up at the wall keeps the rot at bay for a while, but it does not entirely stop it. Coldhands’ hands are still blackening. Things are still unraveling at the hinges of the world. that’s pretty representative of the way that the violence of the border wall and the penal colony stationed there to patrol it are not sustainable. The decline of the night’s watch from a once proud order to a penal colony full of cruel and often impoverished convicts dropped off there by circumstance is a symptom of the society that sends people up there. But something still has to give. The wall will fall down and the existential crisis will come, it’s just slowed.

Critically, there is also the forgotten parable of Old Valyria: a society founded on extreme cruelty and slavery which eventually experiences cataclysm coming up from the very tunnels they send the enslaved into to die for the empire. A lot of what Daenerys experiences in Essos is an extension of that commentary on slave societies to me. Like. as the slavers try and reconquer places dany has liberated, people fleeing the violence, bring disease like the bloody flux with them. The rot creeps back. (important: disease and rot in the series is not always something people get for being morally bad. it often happens to people who just have no choice but to live in these places.)

But that’s why I think the way Volantis is described really ties a lot of those elements of the rot symbolism together. This is a society that has founded itself up from out of the corpse of old valyria. The city maintains some veneer of old glory, but the fountains are dry and the paint is chipping. The people there eat food that is so sweet it literally causes your teeth to rot out if you were to consume it every day. In terms of climate, I think it’s relevant that it is described as extremely, almost disgustingly, humid, and everything is excessively perfumed to cover up a tangible smell of decay.The air is quite literally cloying and difficult to breathe. You feel dirty after walking through it. The evil of slavery is rotting the city to its core in the same way that the evil of feudalism and the wars for the iron throne is affecting the city of king’s landing.

To wrap allllll this up. Rot is a signal that obviously societal collapse is coming, but it’s also transitional: the empire of old ghis brought about its downfall, and then valyria found itself on the same principles which brought about its own downfall, and then the Targaryen went to westeros and engineered their collapse in Kings Landing while the freehold did the same essos. I think the climatological and disease aspects of it are really heavy-handed symbolism that something has to give in the societies and we’re at the point in the series where that’s about to happen.

I think the ultimate arc of the series ends in some form of significant societal collapse, but instead of building upon a rotten foundation again people are going to have try and hope for something new and gather the courage to build that.,quite literally dreaming of the spring.

[throughthewaves-if]

Demo TBA // Ask Boundaries

Should be noted that this is a side IF. Which means it’s something I work on whenever I’m bored of Aquarii or am in need of something a little more chill and wholesome. Main IF is @aquarii-if.

Sometimes, it feels like your life is falling apart.

Losing one family member is hard enough, but losing all of them at the same time is almost unheard of. All it took was one malfunction on an airplane, and suddenly your world ended.

Being fresh out of college with no direction, you weren’t sure what to do with the heap of inheritance money you got from their death. But upon seeing the ads for beach houses in Blue Mist, an island that finished emerging a few years ago and just finished some of its construction, you decided ‘why not’?

Now it’s time to wash your worries away in the pristine waters of Blue Mist. Enjoy taste testing the unique cuisines using the islands native ingredients, run along the boardwalk and find things to decorate your new house with, learn about this new island that brings all kinds of unprecedented adventures… Oh, and meet your new neighbors that happen to be a little more wet than usual. Don’t worry, it’s completely normal.

Choose your pronouns, sexuality, and appearance.

Swim with some mermaids, and learn about the large city beneath the waves.

Develop your relationship with your late family and how you mourn their loss. Seek comfort and stability in this quaint little island.

Choose between four unique gender-selectable RO's, some mermaid, some human, and some in-between. (Very high chance of more RO's being added.)

Explore the new island, and use its secrets to protect you and your newfound aquatic friends.

Simon/Sophia, Your Friendly Neighbor- S is considerate, welcoming, and an overall delight to be around. They're very supportive and you can always count on them to be a shoulder to cry on during your moments of grief. With how much they seem to care about living things, you're certain they'll be a great asset to the fight for the mermaids.

Idris/Iris, The Curious Mermaid- I scared you on your first encounter with them, but over time, you've found them to be quite sweet, if not a little naive. Mischievous and curious, I wants to know everything there is to know about humans, and they dream of a day humans and mermaids can live at peace with one another. They also seem happy to teach you about mermaid culture, and you enjoy trading knowledge with them.

Malachi/Madeline, The Hostile Mermaid- Though your encounter was a mistake on your part, M has never been one to hide their hatred for you and your kind. When they may not want humans dead as humans want mermaids dead, M does wish humans would stay out of the ocean, since mermaids stay off of the land, it's only fair humans respect their property as well. M has no interest in trying to solve the conflict between the species and would prefer everything to stay just as it is. Maybe you can convince them to open their eyes to peace between mermaids and humans?

Altair/Astrid, The Prince/Princess- While I loves humans and M hates them, A simply expresses no interest for your kind. They're polite and welcoming to you when you visit their kingdom, but outside of that, they're very clear about the fact that humans have no place in their kingdom, just as mermaids have no place in human society. All A wishes to do is stop the humans from harming the mermaids, but after that, they plan to make Blue Mist return to it's uninhabitable state and close off the mermaid kingdom from all outside contact. The world between humans and mermaids was once entirely closed off, and so it shall return.

RO's Physical Descriptions

[onesidedradiostatic]

aromantic alastor headcanons for aro-week (with some ace in there as well, because I think for alastor those things are so entwined, it's hard to separate them):

tried going out with girls a couple of times when he was alive, to make his mother happy, but always found a way to extricate himself from the attachment. this ties into his learning how to have complete control over any situation he's in

I wonder as well about whether or not he "passed" as white, or whether his community knew that he was creole, and how that affected his dating opportunities, and his paranoia, his need to be in control, basically his constant hyper-vigilance

got a lot of fanmail for his radio host work, women (and men, but more furtively) loooved his voice. this was acceptable, because (apart from some of the weirder ones) he could use this as a metric for how accepted he was in society, as well as how well he was passing -- both in terms of race and orientation, but also youknow, as someone who is definitely not clockable as a serial killer

although of course we know he also enjoyed company. he'd go out drinking and dancing a lot. was mimzy a bit in love with him? I just like the idea that people kept being incredibly taken with his charm and his politeness and his poise, because he does have all those traits. whether he notices...? (no). I mention this point not so much as headcanon, I just like that alastor as aroace and repulsed on both of those points, was never a shut-in about it. he's always been very lively (ha) and outgoing, and clearly likes being in the company of others... but maybe that last point has gotten to be a little difficult during his time in hell, due to having to be so careful about showing any kind of emotional "weakness." speaking of...

post-death became a more extreme version of himself -- that is, a man on a mission to be in control and create emotional distance between himself and others through the power of voice, rather than having to faff about pretending emotional connections where there were none. very suited for hell because of his precarious political lived reality whilst alive, and because hell is built on who has power and who doesn't. these are rituals he understands better than the strange romantic ones during life

the smile as mask and unhealthy coping mechanism -- wonder if when he was alive people swooned over his having a lovely smile (as well as its being useful to placate and to disorient people who had more violent intentions, and in both cases potentially to lure in victims). so the smile likewise became the most extreme version of itself. the smile in essence as the signifier of someone who doesn't fit into any boxes and needs to hide that fact, both by being mixed race and aroace, but then the smile itself becomes something that effectively owns him, because he literally cannot let it drop, ever (honestly if alastor ever stops smiling, it'll be the biggest gasp moment on this show)

all that being said, surprising connections do occur: rosie, I think, sees through him from the beginning, and she's so disarming (ha, disarming... cannibal joke) that she never feels like a threat + they're both cannibals, so there's a relaxed kinship there and maybe she reminds him of the parts of home he (secretly) misses a bit

I wonder how rosie figured out that alastor wasn't into dating. I think at first she might have thought he was gay, but then quite quickly seen that that's not it, he doesn't even like men much, and she feels like she's been around the block enough to piece together peoples' natures from one of a million other people she's known, so way before she knows the terminology, she knows, and crucially, she never judges or tries to force the point

I wonder how vox and alastor met -- whether vox was able to gain power on his own and this attracted alastor's attention, or if alastor saw something of himself (that turned out to be surface level) in vox, that is, they both wear smiles as masks, they're both presenters, their mediums may be different, but their aims feel similar. perhaps alastor was comfortable enough in hell at this point -- probably in a way he never was whilst alive -- that he was feeling magnanimous towards what must have felt a bit like an upstart. and most importantly, the constraints of alloromantic ideas are a comfortable 20 years in the past by now, alastor can barely remember that this was ever anything that was expected of him, or that others' could possibly feel about him

cue vox falling head over heels, the way people so often did while he was alive, and he... does not notice at all (barely a headcanon). I kind of feel like I don't have much to say on these two, because this blog is already a treasure trove of vox and alastor hcs!

I think rosie is the only one who knows alastor is aroace, although... maybe husk? not in so many words, but he knows alastor isn't interested in those things. nifty Does Not Notice Nor Care (in a good way). charlie i will forever think will at some point do a deep-dive on modern queer lingo and get everyone flags (this is practically word of god canon considering that older piece of art you shared). vox definitely doesn't know. val....... sort of kinda knows but in an evil way. vaggie does not care, but she'd be chill about it. mimzy... I don't think knows, mainly because she never cared to think about his behaviours, as someone who's quite self-centered on what alastor is to her. jeez, who am i missing... angel, does not know, head empty

speaking of angel, I think if he ever found out, especially with where he's at in his journey rn, would be very unhappy in some way about having stepped over his boundaries so often so casually at the beginning. dunno how he'd act about it, but i like the idea of vigilantly (and crudely, and bluntly) supportive angel if they ever manage to get alastor out on the town. more on the ace side of things but i can see him going: "do not try to fuck this guy! this guy is unfuckable!"

(i like hypersexual and deeply romantic angel + sex and romance repulsed alastor as unlikely friendship in my head. opposites finding common ground type stuff is always good)

at the end of the day, alastor living and dying in an amatonormative world and having to orient himself within that by building walls that persist/worsen after his death because of the culture of hell being predicated on who controls whom, veeeeery slowly discovering that he can be vulnerable on his own terms without people demanding things from him that he cannot give (smthinsmthin the hotel gang as the opposite of vox in that sense -- not only that sense, but also that)

also something about imagining his mother hoping he'd find a nice girl and settle down (in the way parents often do, because that's the metric of happiness right.....) and how he never could give her what she wanted, and maybe feels some very locked away guilt about that, which he thinks he'll never be able to deal with because his mother is in heaven, but perhaps in this story she'll get to see what he's built with the people at the hotel and that's really all she wanted for him in the end

OH MY GOD ANON THIS IS ALL SO GOOD?? THANK YOU SO MUCH HAHAHA. happy aro week everyone!! (x2)

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

[disruptivevoib]

Long Ramble about CCCC and my overall feelings on what the album means and such

Something I find important about CCCC is like.

The fact that all three of them are, in some way, trying.

Heart is emotion, he is prone to himself and being reactionary, in the moment. Prone to the past of learned behavior and trauma. Reactive and rapidly changing. He isn't going to make pure sense because he isn't based in logic or in societal ideals or views. He is an instinctual response to the environment and circumstances. His manipulation is not intentional. He has very little control of himself in the end. Its why Mind talks about claiming to relish entropy yet clearly needing help. But, Heart in earnest wants them to be okay and safe. He believes that Mind's control will drain the life from them. It will make things monotonous and the same. Too much order.

Mind in turn, believes Heart is manipulative with intention. He wants to control Soul or wants to just drag them all down with him into this depressive state. Mind is logic, he is the reasoning out of your emotional instinct. Your inner critique, and when unchecked, that inner critique goes from a guiding hand for your emotion to one that debates and bullies it. Invalidating its responses. Ultimately, though. Mind just believes he is helping. He is doing what must be done and telling the "hard truths" to Heart. And that Heart is being the petty child. Which- I mean. Sort of sure. But Mind is definitely fucking petty and childish. He's stubborn! Prideful! So ofc he is. Admitting you're wrong? No.. why would he EVER do that.. nuh uh.

Which is what makes Light so crucial. Mind asking Heart for help- but also. There is Soul.

Who while ambiguous in purpose, is mostly that background voice. Your inner narration. If Mind is Logic and Reason then Heart is Emotion and Instinct,, Soul is all that lives between it. And he is constantly silenced or spoken over or around. He does not get a word in edgewise until TSE. He may show up in the background occasionally but as much as Heart and Mind claim to want to keep him alive and help him, they also fail to actually acknowledge what he says.

Which is that they both are right and wrong. That this fighting is doing directly what they both feared it would. Soul is desperate by the end. He is angry and resentful because.. well. Self hatred due to intense self awareness and reflection is rather ig. Common. Im not a professional here but from personal experience, you get so tired of rehashing the same shit with yourself over and over. It all feels pointless.

The only out, by the end of it all to Soul is that if they cannot be Whole, whats the point? He is desperate. He does not want to die but he feels theres no other solution.

And. About Whole, Soul throughout the album seems to want that. At the beginning, to be Whole or Harmonious is to be mentally healthy, maybe even "normal" by society's standards. To be able to put a mask over your problems and be, again, "normal". It takes the entire album for Soul to realize that this:

1. isnt possible

And

2. There isn't anything evil or wrong with him for that.

Mental health is a struggle. But you are not evil and should not be othered because you struggle. You also do not need to be fixed for being a little different and people's opinion of you is not what matters most so long as you are happy (and not hurting others. Lol).

Thats what Two Wuv is entirely about as a song. Its a "fuck you. Fuck this! I thought I needed to be this! But I DON'T. Stop telling me who I am! How to be! I'm gonna be me!"

His entire arc is parallel to Heart and Mind's and is crucial in the culmination of becoming yourself again and accepting yourself.

But, as mental health will always be, this period of respite and self acceptance is not always forever. And as life continues or as you lapse back into a depressive episode.. you cannot help but forget what it is like when you're not this way- and hell! Vice versa too! Some people have this disconnect between the periods. Where the things from the depressive state seem dramatic or obtuse to you while you are doing better. And from the other end, you just want to be happy again.. but you get so lost in it all you can struggle to feel like you've ever been happy.

The album is about the human experience. It is about self-sabotage, mental illness, self-hatred and reflection and it is, maybe more importantly about self-acceptance and healing. Having a bit of mercy on yourself. Accepting that you are imperfect and that this is okay. And whatever flaws you may have that need to be mended or worked on, can be. And that who you are, for example, if you are queer, is okay. And no one has the right to take that identity from you! That the internalized ideas of how someone should be are not always correct or right. Not for you, at least. Stuff like that.

[kpop---scenarios]

Hush, Hush (1)

Pairing: Seonghwa x Reader | Lee Know x Reader | Jeongin x Reader | Jisung x Reader

Summary: When you and Seonghwa met, it was almost like love at first sight. But things get hard when he's away and you get lonely.

Warning: Cheating, Smut (Oral, f. Receiving, m. Receiving, unprotected sex, public bathroom sex, swallowing cum, drunk sex, dirty talk) Language, Loneliness

Word Count: 4.2k

A/N: this was commissioned by @imperfectlyperfectprincess1 , I hope you enjoy the first part!! Part two coming soon!

Everything Taglist: @wife2straykidss @piscesrising01 @baby-stay92 @kisses-too-the-moon

@dwaekkiiracha @silly250 @rylea08 @imperfectlyperfectprincess1

@satosugu4l @gabriellamarie @tsunderelino @iovecb97

@1810cl @lordmaahes-nsc @sailorkoss @minh0scat @pixie0627

@50-husbands @jinnies-muse @yaorzu-blog @anskiiz @joyofbebbanburg

@number1jeonginstan @skzooluvr @jisunglyricist @ambersnowxxx @ayyonoona

@31maze13 @stay-tiny-things @thegingerthatwaited @hoesheez

Networks: @straykidsland | @mirohs-aurora-society | @ksmutsociety

“You only have one life. Live it to the fullest.”

That phrase was said to you so often by your mother as you were growing up, that when you became an adult yourself, it was the mantra that you lived by. You only have one life, so you had to take the opportunity to do what made you happy, be with who made you happy. You weren't going to waste your life at a miserable 9-5 job, where you were chained to a desk while being underpaid and undervalued. You also weren't going to be stuck in a relationship with some dickhead who truly couldn't give two shits about you or your wellbeing.

These types of things being instilled in you since a young age, made you who you were today. Were you proud of that woman? Absolutely. You were strong, you knew what you wanted and when you knew you'd go after it, and you didn't pay mind to what you were doing to those around you in your life. Were you a good person though? You tried, but a lot of the time, no you weren't. Especially when it comes to relationships, and while you were happy and satisfied for the most part in your current relationship, you had never been a one to turn down attention and a way to satisfy your needs, especially when you weren't getting what you needed.

You and Seonghwa had met when you went to the hugely anticipated Ateez concert. You were front row, right at the barriers and honestly, you hadn't been able to take your eyes off of him all fucking night. The way he sang, the way he moved his body. He had you in a trance, and he knew it. It didn't take you long to realize that while you were unable to tear his eyes away from him, he was also unable to look away from you. He tried to smile and wave to other fans, but he continued to look back at you, singing to you, even winking. And you swore you felt like your knees were going to buckle.

When the concert was finished, you turned to leave, but were stopped by a man wearing a ‘staff’ t-shirt, urging you to come with him.

“Ma'am, come with me please.” He says, motioning towards the stage. You felt like you knew what was going to happen, and you couldn't contain your smile.

He pulls you towards the back of the stage, but before you can go further, he grabs a clipboard with a piece of paper.

“You need to sign this.” He says, handing you the board. You glance at just the title, grinning widely as you sign your name at the bottom of it. You knew what an NDA entailed, you didn't need to read the rest of it. It wasn't your first time with one of these and you were sure it wouldn't be your last.

“Done.” You smile, handing him back the board. The man sighs, taking the clipboard, leading you to a dressing room. You open the door, walking in but there's no one there. You sit down on the couch, waiting for Seonghwa to walk in, and seconds later, he does.

He stares at you for a second, a smile slowly creeping up on his face. “You're gorgeous. I wasn't sure you'd come.” He murmurs, walking towards you.

“How could I not?” You reply, as he stands so close to you. You can feel his breath on you as he slowly leans in, gently pressing his lips to yours. You don't hesitate, not even for a second. You kiss him back, taking charge of the kiss, slipping your tongue into his mouth. His hands roam your body, before making their way down to your ass, moving until your skirt, cupping your bare ass harshly as he breaks the kiss. He moves you to the couch, pushing you back, falling to his knees in front of you. He spreads your legs, planting small kisses up and down your thighs, avoiding your already wet pussy on purpose.

“Seonghwa…” You gasp. “Please.”

“Please what, gorgeous?” He murmurs, dragging the tip of his tongue over your wet panties.

“Fuck.” You hiss. “Eat my pussy, please.” You cry out. Seonghwa chuckles, moving your panties to the side. He dives right in, his mouth devouring your soaked cunt. Your head falls back against the couch, your eyes fluttering, having a hard time staying open while Seonghwa goes to town on you. “Y-yes.” You moan, bucking your hips against his mouth. You move your hands off the couch, grabbing his hair, pulling his face closer into you, his lips sloppily moving against your heat, sucking your clit, now inserting two fingers deep inside you.

“Shit… just like that.” You cry out, squirming as you can feel your orgasm quickly approaching. Seonghwa digs his fingertips into your thighs, pulling you down the couch slightly, pulling you closer. “Fuck I'm gonna… cum.” You cry out, forcefully bucking your hips as pure ecstasy flows through your body, your eyes rolling back in your head. Seonghwa pulls away from your cunt, smirking as he licks his lips, lapping up your fluids from his face. He stands up, his cock pressing against his pants, practically begging you to release him. You scoot forward, your fingers furiously working on his button and zipper, yanking his pants and boxers down, letting him spring free. You watch as precum seeps from the tip of his cock. He smiles as you open your mouth, only taking in his tip, swirling your tongue around, savoring the taste of his cum before he rams his cock down your throat. He grabs onto your head, grunting as he shoves his cock into your mouth over and over again. Tears brim in your eyes with each thrust.

“Your mouth feels so fucking good.” He groans, pushing himself deep into your mouth, holding it there for a second before he pulls himself out. “I'm not cumming in your mouth.” He murmurs. “Can I cum in that pretty pussy of yours?” He asks, stroking his cock.

“Mhmm, please do.” You groan. You get onto your knees on the couch, sticking your ass into the air, looking back at Seonghwa, who's standing there taking in the sight in front of him.

“Fuck.” He moans, walking towards you, slapping your ass harshly before shoving his cock in your cunt. He gave you no time to adjust to his size, his hands gripping your sides while he fucks you. You reach between your legs, rubbing your already sensitive clit. “Greedy girl, aren't you?” He groans, pushing his cock in further, hitting every spot you needed him to. There was something about the way he fucked you that made you dizzy, your whole body heat up like someone had set you on fire. He was driving you crazy and you needed him to make you cum all over his cock.

“I am… Yes… fuck.” You whimper, your second orgasm ready to send you over the edge.

“Cum for me, gorgeous.” He grunts, his own orgasm about to hit.

Your eyes roll back again as you cum, feeling all your wetness dripping out of you as Seonghwa bursts, filling you up with every ounce of cum he has.

The room is quiet for a second. The smell of sex surrounds you as he pulls his cock from inside you, fixing himself up before grabbing a towel to help clean you up. “That was…wow.” He chuckles, helping you off the couch.

“Thank you. It was amazing.” You grin. You move to grab your things, you know not to overstay your welcome.

“Wait.” He calls out. “Can you give me your number? I'd like to see you again.” He murmurs, shyly.

You can feel the blush creeping up on your face as you nod your head, reaching out for his phone he was handing to you. You quickly put your name and number into the phone, leaving out the same way you came in. This was a memory you'd hold onto forever.

You had honestly thought that you'd never see Seonghwa again, not after your little fling that night. He had taken your number but you didn't expect much. He was a very famous idol, and you were… well you. You'd understand if he wasn't interested in more from you. But it was exactly the opposite of that. Later that night he texted you, asking you to come to the next show the next night, telling you he'd pay for your plane ticket, all you needed to do was say yes. And of course you did.

Since that night, the two of you had become inseparable. A few months into it, you quit your job, sold your belongings, your apartment and you moved to Seoul, it was the best decision you had ever made. You stayed faithful for the first year and a half, and while you were happy with Seonghwa, you were beginning to get lonely. He was often gone for practices, recordings, award shows, concerts and tours. He led a very busy life and while the time you spent with him was magical, you were horny, lonely and needy and FaceTime just wasn't doing it for you. You didn't want to bring it up to Seonghwa, he was a sensitive man and if you told him it would destroy him that he wasn't able to be there to give you what you needed. You felt guilty for wanting to stray… for feeling like you needed to look elsewhere for what you were craving. You loved Seonghwa, you really did and you wanted to be with him but you were someone with needs that weren't being met. What else could you do? Being alone at home all the time was destroying you mentally. You wanted Seonghwa home with you but you knew what wasn't an option, and talking about it wasn't possible either. So what the fuck were your options?

One night you went to a bar, it was always pretty empty, a little hole in the wall type of place. But they served the best drinks and had the nicest employees, you always went there when you were feeling lonely. You had made a good friend who worked there and with Seonghwa gone so much, you were there often.

“Lisa.” You whine. She smiles as she walks over to you. You slide your cup to the edge of the table.

“Last one. Then I'm cutting your ass off.” She laughs, picking up your glass, heading back to the bar. You hear the door open from behind you, and you're a nosey girl, so of course you turn your head, only to see the one and only Lee Know from Stray Kids walk in. Surprisingly, he was by himself, sitting only one table away from you. Your mouth almost drops open seeing him in person. He was so fucking beautiful, you felt like you couldn't breathe. Lisa slides your cocktail in front of you, chuckling at your facial expression.

“He's so good-looking, huh?” She says, walking away before you can answer.

You were drunk enough to feel overly confident in your flirting abilities, so you went over to his table. You slide in the chair across from him, he looks up, surprised to see someone sitting with them.

“Hi.” You grin, you can feel the redness already covering your face.

“Hi.” He smiles back.

“I'm Jennie.” You say, extending your hand. He takes it gently, licking his lips.

“Minho.” He replies.

“I know.” You say back. Neither of you can take your eyes off of each other, your fingertips now just barely touching on the table. It didn't take long after that for the two of you to end up in the bathroom, Minho pressing his body against yours against the wall, your legs wrapped around his waist while he rammed his cock into you over and over again. His hand covers your mouth, muffling your moans while his other hand rubs your clit. Your eyes roll into the back of your head as your orgasm hits you, you grind on him hard as you work through your high.

“Good girl.” He moans, thrusting his cock into you a few more times, before he pulls himself out of you, putting you on the floor. “On your knees.” He groans, jerking his cock. You drop to your knees, looking up at him. “Open your mouth.” He grunts. You do as you're told, opening your mouth, sticking out your tongue, waiting for him to cum.

“Fuck!” He yells, his cum shoots out, landing mostly in your mouth. Minho pants, lightly chuckling, tucking his sensitive cock away.

“That was fun.” You smile, licking your lips.

“Really fucking fun.” He says. “Can I please see you again, Jennie?” He asks.

“Give me your phone.” You say, putting out your hand. He pulls his phone from his pocket, placing it in your hand, unlocked. You quickly put your name and your number in it, handing it back to him.

“Call me.” You say, placing a kiss on his cheek, leaving the bathroom with a large grin on your face.

Your phone rings as you're walking out of the bar, and without looking at the caller ID, you answered it. “Hello?” You whisper, a little sultry.

“Hi baby.” You hear from a familiar voice.

“Seonghwa!” You say, you're honestly surprised. “Hi baby, how are you? How's the tour?” You ask.

“It's good! So much fun. But I fucking miss you.” He whines. You slip out the front door of the bar, breathing in the fresh air, clearing your head.

“I miss you too.” You whimper. “You've been gone for so long.”

“It's only a few more weeks.” He sighs. “What are you doing?” He asks.

“I'm just trying to get a cab.” You laugh. “I went and saw Lisa and had a few drinks.” You tell him.

“How was the bar? Did anything interesting happen? Bar fight?” He chuckles. “Did Jeongin go with you?” Your mind flashes back to Minho's cock so deep inside you, only minutes ago.

“Nah nothing that comes to mind.” You sigh. “It's always pretty quiet there. And no, Jeongin was busy tonight.” You say, sliding into the cab.

Jeongin, of Stray Kids, was Seonghwa's best friend. And with you and Hwa being in a relationship, and them being besties, you and Jeongin naturally became close. You had always asked to meet the rest of the members and Jeongin promised you he would but in the last year and a half, it just never worked out. When you were free they weren't, when they were free, you weren't. Timelines never matched up, which now proved to be a good thing for you.

Jeongin was a good guy, and Hwa trusted him to watch out for you while he was out of town. And he took care of you. He took really good care of you while he was around.

“Can we FaceTime when you get home? I miss your face so fucking much.” He groans.

“Yes baby, I'll be home soon. I'll call you as soon as I'm there, okay?”

“Don't forget.” He laughs. “I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.” You whisper, hanging up the phone. You slip it back into your purse, gazing out the window, rain now starting to pour from the sky. You smiled to yourself, you had Park Seonghwa, and now, hopefully, Lee Know. What more could you possibly ask for?

You walked into your apartment, pulling your phone from your purse. You dial Seonghwa’s number, you wait but there's no answer. You try again. And again. And again. Each time, each call went unanswered. You frustratedly toss your phone on the couch, shuffling to the kitchen to grab a drink before you hopped in the shower. Sometimes you liked to catch up on your favorite K-Dramas while you showered but tonight you weren't in the mood. Seonghwa asked you not to forget to call him, but it only took 10 minutes to get home and now he doesn't answer? You shake the thought from your head, wash your body, brush your teeth before you get out, wrapping yourself in a towel. You head towards your dresser, the moonlight shining illuminating the dark room. You look at the side of the bed that was usually occupied by Seonghwa, but it had been empty for what felt like forever, and you were missing the warmth of his body against yours. You sighed loudly, crawling into your empty bed, getting snuggled under the blankets. Your phone pings beside you. You grab it, feeling the tears well up in your eyes as you stare at the bright screen, a text from Seonghwa displayed across the screen.

[From: My Baby Hwa ♡ 11:42pm] sorry baby! Guys took me for drinks! Love you!

You stare at the text message, a tear rolling over your nose, dropping onto your pillow. Putting your phone down you wipe away your tears, closing your eyes, hoping for a peaceful sleep.

When you woke up in the morning, the text you had received from Seonghwa was still displayed on your phone, but no new messages from him. You weren't surprised, Seonghwa was busy but that didn't stop it from hurting. You went about your day, every so often checking your phone but there was nothing, not until the evening. You wanted to call Jeongin, but you knew he wasn't around, being on tour as well. You're about to just shut off your phone when it starts to ring and you don't recognize the number.

“Hello?” You answer.

“Jennie?” The other person says.

“Um, this is…” you pause, remembering Minho, and telling him your name was Jennie. “Minho right?” You ask, switching what you were going to say.

He laughs. “Yeah it is. I just wanted to call, let you know I had a great time last night… and I wanted to know if you wanted to go out tomorrow?” He asks.

“Yeah.” You smile. “I'd really like that. Do you want to come over? We can order some food, watch a movie or something.” You suggest.

“That sounds great.” He replies. “Text me your address. See you tomorrow, gorgeous.” He finishes before hanging up the phone. You giddily skip around your apartment, excited for tomorrow. You plop down in your bed, scrolling through your phone, when a FaceTime call comes through. You smile, answering the call.

“Hi baby.” You smile, looking at the beautiful face of your beautiful man.

“Hi my love.” He grins. “You're so gorgeous.” He coos. “I miss your face.”

“And I miss yours. So much.” You sigh, biting your lip, trying not to cry.

“Don't cry, sweet girl. I'll be home before you know it.” He smiles.

“Yeah, but then you'll be gone again.” You whisper. You didn't mean too, it just slipped out.

“Baby…” He pauses.

“I just miss you tonight. That's all. I'm good. The concert must be starting soon, right?” You ask.

“Yeah, it is.” He says. You can tell he's upset that you're so upset and this was the last thing you wanted.

“Good luck, my love. I know you'll knock it out of the park.” You grin. “Say hi to everyone for me.” You say, blowing a kiss before hanging up the phone. You couldn't talk to him anymore, you needed to clear your head. Grabbing your headphones, you put them on, put on your favorite Playlist and closed your eyes, letting your mind wander anywhere it wanted to go, besides thinking about Seonghwa.

***

“Hi, welcome.” You smile, letting Minho into your apartment. You had spent the day putting away any pictures of you and Seonghwa, and anything that showed you were in a relationship. You had decided this was just going to be a thing you did while Seonghwa was gone. Just someone to help you through the loneliness.

“Thanks for inviting me.” Minho smiles, walking into your place, food in hand. The two of you talk, asking each other questions as you both dish up your plates, taking them and your wine into the living room. You both settle on the couch, the lights dimmed down as you scroll through movies, deciding on which show you wanted to pick. Once you settle on a movie, the volume down low, you continue to talk and eat, laughing so hard you couldn't catch your breath. It was so nice to have someone to talk to, someone to just be with.

You and Minho talked for hours, plowing through 3 bottles of wine and you admitted that you were definitely tipsy. So when you were in the kitchen and Minho leaned forward and pressed his lips against yours, you happily welcomed it. The kiss didn't last long, you were both drunk and obviously needy. He bent you over the kitchen table, pulling down your pants before fumbling with his own. Your face lay flat against the cool wooden table as you waited for the feeling of his cock entering you. You craved the feeling of him stretching you out, hitting your walls. You wiggle your ass slightly, whining for him.

“I feel empty.” You murmur, making him laugh.

“Don't worry, I can fill you up.” He replies.

You can hear the jingle of his belt as he unbuckles his, the sound of his zipper being pulled down. The quiet moan that escaped his lips when he pulled his rock hard cock from his pants. Minho spreads your legs, spreading your lips as well before he slowly pushes himself into you. You gasp at the feeling of being stretched out, pushing his entire length into you. Fuck you forgot how thick he was.

“Oh my god.” You cry out, gripping the edge of the table.

“Fuck I missed your pussy.” He groans, thrusting in and out, so painfully slow.

“I need…it… harder.” You gasp with each thrust.

“What's that, princess? You want me to be rough with you?” He asks, pressing his body against yours, whispering into your ear.

“P-please.” You murmur, your body flustered with the lack of movement. Minho reaches around, tightly grabbing your throat, pulling the both of you up, so you're flush against him. “Like this?” He grunts, thrusting into you as hard as he can, his fingertips digging into your throat.

“Fuck, yes.” You gargle, as he rams into you, over and over again.

Minho lets go of your neck, pushing you back down against the table. He begins to fuck you faster, your hips ramming into the edge of the table with each thrust. He grabs a chunk of your hair, pulling it hard. “Oh my… Just like that.” You cry out.

“You feel so fucking good.” He groans. You can just barely hear the sound of the TV playing over the sound of your harsh breaths, and the sounds of Minho grunting.

He reaches in-between your legs, rubbing your clit, making your body jolt with pleasure. You clench your cunt around him, making him moan even louder.

“Cum for me princess.” He spits. “Cum all over my fucking cock.”

“Shit.” You cry, your orgasm spilling over the edge. You moan his name, loudly, as you cum, making him fuck you harder, chasing his own high.

He pulls out of you, pinning you down on the table still, stroking his cock until he releases his load, shooting it onto your ass. He throws his head back, slowing his strokes down as he works through his orgasm, breathing heavily. He fixes himself up, running to grab you a cloth before you even had to ask. He laughs as he wipes his cum off your ass, which makes you roll your eyes. You stand up, pulling up your pants, turning to face him.

“Just for next time, cum inside.” You whisper, with a smile.

“Oh you're gonna fucking kill me.” He groans, following you to the living room. A few hours later, Minho left but not without giving you a long kiss, his palm resting on your cheek. “I'll call you.” He smiles, walking down the hallway. You close the door, heading into the shower to scrub yourself clean before going to bed.

Over the next few weeks, you and Minho were almost inseparable. He would come over to your place, or you would go to his. You and he would talk, eat, drink, laugh and fuck, and you thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. On your last date, you had told him that you were going out of town for a few weeks and wouldn't be able to see him, but you'd try to text him when you could but really, you had planned to just take the two weeks you had with Seonghwa and spend them at home, in bed, just being together.

“I'm so happy you're home!” You screech, running into Seonghwa's arms. He drops his luggage, wrapping his arms around you tightly as you wrap your arms and legs around him. You hold onto him so tight, taking in his presence, his scent, his everything. He places a kiss on your lips and you quickly turn it into more. You slide your tongue into his mouth, deepening the kiss. He walks you to the bedroom, tossing you down onto the bed.

“I've fucking missed you so much.” He groans, taking off his shirt. You blush at the sight of him.

“Show me how much you missed me.” You whisper, licking your lips.

[steveyockey]

As I watched people online debate the models of anti-colonial struggle, raising comparisons to Algeria and North America and South Africa, I found myself returning to the foundational Jewish liberation myth: the Exodus. It was hard not to think about the moment in the Passover seder when we lessen the wine in our full cups with our pinkies as we recite the plagues. This ritual has materialized as an indispensable touchstone, insisting that to hold onto our humanity we must grieve all violence, even against the oppressor.

But I also thought of the plagues themselves, particularly the final one, the slaying of the first born—children, adults, the elderly. It seems that hiding in our liberation myth is a recognition that violence will visit the oppressor society indiscriminately. I know that I have many friends, and that Currents has many readers, who are asking themselves how they can be part of a left that seems to treat Israeli deaths as a necessary, if not desirable, part of Palestinian liberation. But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life. As the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” We are seeing the ways that Jews as the agents of apartheid will not be spared—even those of us who have devoted our lives to the work of ending it. (I am thinking of Hayim Katsman, zichrono l’vracha, killed by Hamas, an activist against the expulsion of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, and Vivian Silver, a hostage in Gaza, who is known to many of its residents as the person they meet at the Erez Crossing who advocates for and facilitates their transfers to Israeli hospitals for treatment.)

That question of how we recuperate this humanity is ultimately an organizing question. People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you “cannot tell Palestinians how to resist.” To me, it seems there is a very literal dimension to this axiom: They are not asking. Part of what has made the experience of this event feel so different from the status quo—and so different to Palestinians and Jews—comes from the fact that Palestinians were undeniably the actors, for once, not the acted upon. The protagonists of the story. I consider it an enormous failure of our movements that we have not been able to build a vehicle for that kind of reversal in any other way thus far. Our Jewish movements for Palestine were not powerful enough to stop other Jews from gunning down Palestinians in peaceful marches at the Gazan border fence, or to keep Palestinians from being fired, harassed, and sued for speaking the truth about their experience or—God forbid—advocating the nonviolent tactic of boycott. And now, we do not have a shared struggle able to credibly respond to these massacres of Israelis and Palestinians. With all of the work that many Jews and Palestinians have done to reach toward each other over the years, I believe at heart it is this failure that is now driving us apart. There is no formidable political formation that I know of that can hold the political subjectivity of both Jews and Palestinians in this moment without simply attempting to assimilate one into the other. No place where Jews and Palestinians who agree on the basics of Palestinian liberation—right of return, equality, and reparations—are poised to turn the synthesis of these two subjectivities into a coherent strategy.

One of the most terrible things about this event is the sense of its inevitability. The violence of apartheid and colonialism begets more violence. Many people have struggled with the straightjacket of this inevitability, straining to articulate that its recognition does not mean its embrace. I am reminding myself that it was from Palestinians, many of them writing and speaking in these pages, that I learned to think of Palestine as a site of possibility—a place where the very idea of the nation-state, which has so harmed both peoples, could be remade or destroyed entirely. And it was Palestinians who opened my thinking to multiple visions of sharing the land. On the left, I hope we do not mistake the inevitability of the violence for an inescapable limit on our work or the quality of our thought. Even if our dreams for better have failed, they must accompany us through this moment to the other side. We need to imagine a movement for liberation better even than the Exodus—an exodus where neither people has to leave. Where people stay to pick up the pieces, rearranging themselves not just as Jews or Palestinians but as antifascists and workers and artists. I want what Puerto Rican Jewish poet and activist Aurora Levins Morales describes in her poem “Red Sea”:

We cannot cross until we carry each other,

all of us refugees, all of us prophets.

No more taking turns on history’s wheel,

trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.

The sea will not open that way.

This time that country

is what we promise each other,

our rage pressed cheek to cheek

until tears flood the space between,

until there are no enemies left,

because this time no one will be left to drown

and all of us must be chosen.

This time it’s all of us or none.

Arielle Angel, “‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’,” Jewish Currents, October 12, 2023.