#but anyway (I have spent too long talking about this in the linked post I'm not going to repeat the same things here)

[kumakuma-circus]

just randomly remembered that during my like 10+ attempts at the shadow yukiko fight i more or less consistently ran out of revival beads so yosuke was just dead (well unconscious but whatever) on the ground for like half the fight gfhfjvhfhfhd-

[wonder-worker]

"Hannes Kleineke cites Dean and Canons of Windsor MS XI.B.6, rot. 2, for evidence of a deathbed codicil by Edward IV concerning a dispute between the knights and canons of Windsor"

remember when I said that we don't know what Edward IV's deathbed codicils were as they haven't survived? that there is no reason to automatically assume they were relevant to his son's minority? that it's entirely possible that they weren't very important at all considering how dismissively Croyland spoke of them ("some codicils thereto", with no emphasis or elaboration whatsoever)? I LOVE being proven right <3

[hellsitedotcom]

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

*·˚ PRETEND IT'S THE FIRST TIME ft. Moze *·˚

words: ~4k

This is a "continuation" of those First Kiss headcanons I made a while ago! [Linked in my pinned post] I literally lost my mind with this, and I'm unsure how I feel about it, but I've spent too long on it to just...not post it. [Also on AO3]

warnings/info: first part of the chapter features Guinaifen as your friend; I don't think any warnings necessary? maybe some angst, but I don't want what really qualifies as angst. [Is it obvious that I never post my writing and have no idea how to tag it?]

English isn't my native language!

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

‘’Hello? Are you even listening to me?’’ 

Torn from your thoughts when someone suddenly started waving a hand in front of your face, you blinked in surprise before glancing over at the woman walking beside you, her expression a mixture of frustration and confusion. ‘’I feel like I’ve been talking to myself for the last hour,’’ Guinaifen huffed, crossing her arms while waiting for an explanation from you, ‘’Did you even catch any of the things I said?’’

‘’I’m sorry, Gui,’’ you sighed, offering her an apologetic smile before straightening up, ‘’I was just…thinking about something.’’ That was one way to explain it. You had been thinking about said ‘’something’’ for the past couple of days, and it had become apparent to anyone with a functioning pair of eyes. Even your colleagues at work had commented on your absentmindedness, given how clumsy and forgetful it had made you since…that day.

Next to you, Guinaifen shook her head, though there was no ill-intend in her reaction, ‘’I’ve noticed that much. I’m telling you, you need to work less. The stress is probably just getting to you.’’ ‘’When I picked you up this morning, I had your neighbors come up to me to ask if you were okay,’’ she sighed, staring at you, ‘’He said you haven’t left your apartment for anything but work in days. What’s going on?’’

You weren’t sure yourself, you thought. Since your transfer to the Yaoqing, your life had actually improved tremendously. You couldn’t remember the last time you were that excited and happy on the Luofu, and you hadn’t mourned your old life since. Yet recently, you felt like you were again stuck in that same everyday routine you had dreamed of escaping from back on the other flagship. And all because of one dumb, intrusive decision.

‘’I don’t know,’’ you sighed, hoping your friend wouldn’t catch the lie, ‘’It’s not work, I promise. I’ve never had a job I loved that much.’’ ‘’Maybe my subconsciousness is trying to tell me something,’’ you suggested, shrugging, ‘’I mean, it’s been a while since I was on the Luofu. Maybe I’m homesick without realizing it.’’ 

At that, the woman beside you just chuckled, throwing an arm around you to pull you into a side hug, ‘’Well, see what happens when you never visit! Huohuo and the others miss you.’’ Much to your relief, Guinaifen didn’t notice the lie, or at least, she didn’t call you out if she did. Instead, she began recalling recent stories from the Luofu as if trying to help your alleged ‘’homesickness’’. 

‘’You know, I’m sure even the General would appreciate seeing you again,’’ she hummed as you made your way back to your apartment, ‘’Actually, I was hoping to drag Sushang and Huohuo along with me, but that didn’t really work out. That’s on me, though. I should’ve planned it better.’’ 

You chuckled as you continued listening to her, this time determined not to get distracted again as you watched her. Something about the woman’s optimism and endless energy helped lift your mood, silencing the overbearing thoughts in your head, though another emotion threatened to plague you now: Guilt. Keeping secrets from your close friends was never easy, but how were you supposed to explain to her what had happened? 

By the time you arrived at the alley leading to your apartment, you felt lighter, the best you had in days. ‘’Anyway, I’m sure Sushang will want to tell you herself,’’ Guinaifen huffed, stepping in front of you, ‘’You really need to visit us soon. We need to get the group back together again! And don’t tell me Feixiao won’t let you leave!’’

‘’Well, I’ve not really talked to her in a while,’’ you admitted sheepishly, avoiding your friend’s eyes. ‘’But,’’ you quickly added, hoping to distract from that topic, ‘’I’ll see what I can do, okay? I can’t promise you anything, though.’’

You breathed a sigh of relief when the woman didn't question your words, merely rolling her eyes before she continued talking about yet another thing on her mind. Watching her head toward your apartment, you hesitated to follow when the sudden feeling of being watched made your skin crawl. Is someone there?

A glance over your shoulder toward the empty street behind you didn’t help calm your nerves, yet before you could look around any further, Guinaifen’s voice called out to you, ‘’And you’re not paying attention again. Seriously, what’s going on with you?’’

There it was again, that guilt plaguing you. You checked the street behind you one last time before walking over to your friend, an apologetic expression on your face. ‘’I’m sorry,’’ you sighed, fiddling with your hands, ‘’I just- had this feeling someone was watching us. I didn’t mean to ignore you.’’

‘’Why would someone be watching us?’’ the woman huffed with a raised brow, ‘’Besides, even if someone was watching us, why care? It’s not like we’re breaking any rules.’’ ‘’Are you sure that everything’s alright?’’ she insisted, her usually relaxed expression now serious. 

‘’No- I mean, yes, I- Fuck,’’ you just groaned, dragging your hands down your face, ‘’I don’t know. I’m not even sure how to explain it. It’s ridiculous, really.’’ Before she could ask any further questions, you pushed past her toward your home, ‘’It’s really not that important. I just made a dumb mistake, and it’s kind of been haunting me ever since.’’

Guinaifen was far from convinced as she caught up to you, blocking your way, ‘’Oh, come on now! I’ve seen you make dozens of mistakes before. You never act this way because of a stupid mistake! Spill it, what happened?’’ 

‘’I made a mistake in a conversation,’’ you tensely elaborated, wrapping your arms around yourself, ‘’I…said the wrong thing, and I’ve not had the chance to fix it yet. H- They’ve been avoiding me since then, I guess.’’ Or maybe you’ve been avoiding him, no? Suddenly, the feeling of being watched made you even more nervous. Was he watching you?

Your friend perked up at your response, her interest piqued, ‘’What do you mean, you said the wrong thing? How bad of a thing could you have possibly said?’’ Oh, guilt was a beautiful feeling, wasn’t it? Especially with how strong it was growing the more you talked to Guinaifen. 

‘’Well,’’ you struggled to find an answer, unsure how to continue building on your lie as your face turned red, ‘’I- urgh, fuck. I didn’t really say something wrong, you know. I…did something wrong? I made a dumb, intrusive decision-’’

‘’Oh my god,’’ the woman interrupted, her eyes wide, ‘’You kissed someone.’’ 

‘’How did you deduce that from one sentence?’’

‘’...I didn’t. I just thought it would be a funny reaction,’’ Guinaifen smirked, winking at you before the realization settled in, ‘’Wait, you kissed someone?! Who?!’’

‘’Keep your voice down!’’ you whisper-yelled, covering her mouth with your hand, ‘’Fucks sake, Gui. I don’t need the entire Yaoqing to know about it!’’ After making sure she wouldn’t start screaming again, you took a step back and sighed, ‘’He’s a good friend. We were…hanging out, I guess, and I got caught up in the moment and had this intrusive thought to just���yeah, and now I’ve not seen him since then.’’

‘’Oh. Oh wow,’’ the woman seemed at a loss for words, processing the information you just shared, ‘’I mean, uhm. Well, have you tried texting him?’’ 

‘’Seriously?’’ ‘’What?’’ she huffed defensively, pouting, ‘’I’ve never had that happen to me. I’m a little lost right now, okay?’’

‘’Well, you’re not the only one,’’ you muttered under your breath, walking toward your apartment door, ‘’I was hoping that maybe he told Feixiao about it, but she doesn’t seem to know anything. Jiaoqiu’s been acting like he knows something, but- yeah.’’ 

At that, Guinaifen’s mouth fell open, ‘’Wait. I need you to repeat what you just said.’’ Yet, before you could, the woman herself did it, ‘’You were hoping that he told Feixiao? As in, the General? You kissed the General’s friend?!’’

‘’Technically, he’s her personal Shadow Guard,’’ you admitted under your breath, wincing when Guinaifen screamed.

‘’What?!’’ 

‘’I told you to keep your voice down!’’

‘’How do you expect me to keep my voice down after telling me all this?!’’ she whisper-yelled, flailing her hands, ‘’You just- You kissed the General’s personal Shadow Guard?!’’

Well, at least you didn’t feel guilty anymore. You held your hand up to stop the woman from rambling, taking a deep breath before answering, ‘’Can we do this tomorrow, please? I promise I’ll tell you everything, okay? But right now, I’m just getting tired.’’

Despite not being satisfied with your answer, Guinaifen agreed with a deflated groan, ‘’Alright, fine. But I get to tell Sushang and the others-’’

‘’Absolutely not,’’ you scoffed with a raised brow, a warning in your eyes, ‘’I don’t need the entire Xianzhou Alliance to know about this, okay? I’m serious, Gui.’’ ‘’I need you to promise me that you won’t be talking about it with anyone, okay?’’ you insisted, internally already expecting the worst.

But, to your surprise, the woman nodded slowly, ‘’Alright, alright, you have my word. Only because I love you so much!’’ ‘’But that means you’ll have to tell me everything tomorrow, alright?’’ she countered, walking up to you, ‘’I need all the details, understood?’’

‘’Understood,’’ you sighed, struggling to hide your nervousness as you embraced her, ‘’Come on, you should get back to your hotel room. It’s getting late.’’ 

‘’I’ll see you tomorrow then?’’

‘’Yeah,’’ you muttered, a hand resting on your apartment’s doorknob, ‘’See you tomorrow, sunshine.’’ With that, you watched her disappear down the alley before unlocking your front door and slipping inside your apartment.

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:

‘’Fuck,’’ you groaned, falling back against the wooden door. Well, today didn’t go quite as planned, did it? But then, did any of your recent days? After everything, today was still one of your better days since screwing up your relationship with-

‘’Moze? ’’ 

A little stunned, you blinked, hoping you were just imagining things. Yet, when the man’s silhouette didn’t disappear from your doorway, a nervous chuckle escaped your lips, ‘’What are you doing here? How did you even get inside in the first place?’’ 

‘’Through your balcony door,’’ the man calmly replied, watching you from the shadows of the hallway, ‘’You forgot to lock it.’’

‘’I- And you just decided to let yourself in?’’ you muttered in disbelief, straightening up as you made your way toward him, ‘’How long have you been waiting for me?’’ In the dim light, you could barely make out anything but his eyes, violet orbs watching your every move. 

The man just stood there, seemingly indifferent to the fact that he just trespassed on your property. ‘’Not that long,’’ he just replied, his expression obscured by shadows, ‘’Feixiao told me that you had visitors, so I figured you’d be home somewhat late. I think we got here around the same time.’’

‘’Well, that’s- okay,’’ you sighed before shaking your head and meeting his gaze again, ‘’Listen, I- Can you just give me a minute real quick? I need some water.’’ Today really feels like one big joke, you thought to yourself while pushing past him, careful not to touch him as you headed toward the kitchen, ‘’Do you want anything?’’

The man soundlessly followed after you, his presence unfortunately doing the opposite of offering you comfort, ‘’No, thank you. I don’t want to inconvenience you even further.’’ ‘’And I apologize for not informing you of my visit,’’ he muttered almost hesitantly, leaning against your kitchen wall, ‘’I didn't think of it. I’m sorry.’’

‘’Don’t rack your brains over it,’’ you dismissed his concern, pouring yourself a cup of water, ‘’I mean, I haven’t cleaned the place in days, but you'll have to deal with that now.’’ ‘’Besides,’’ you hummed, taking a sip of water, ‘’I’m sure you’ll gladly help me clean up if I ask nicely enough, no?’’ Is this really the right time for some lighthearted joking? Well, you certainly hoped it would at least ease the awkwardness.

Moze, bless his soul, just furrowed his brows, meeting your gaze, ‘’If you need me to, I can help. I don’t mind.’’ 

‘’Is that why you’re here?’’ you hesitantly asked, turning to face him, ‘’Just for some small talk? I mean, I do appreciate the visit, but it doesn’t usually warrant you breaking into my home.’’ There was a part of you genuinely hoping he’d just share some random information with you before leaving again, but deep down, you knew where this conversation would eventually lead. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have practically avoided each other for the past few days.

And, as expected, Moze confirmed your suspicion. ‘’No, I was hoping we could talk about what happened,’’ he explained, your nervosity growing with each word, ‘’Jiaoqiu thought it might be the best course of action.’’

‘’So, he knows?’’ you hesitantly inquired, tapping your finger on the kitchen counter, ‘’I mean, that we- that I- fuck, Moze, I’m so bloody sorry.’’ You stepped away from the counter, wrapping your arms around yourself as the words uncontrollably spilled from your lips, ‘’I should’ve apologized a lot earlier, I know, but I was just- bloody scared of your reaction.’’

‘’I shouldn’t have kissed you,’’ you sighed, unable to meet his gaze, ‘’I- I’m sorry I made things awkward. I wasn’t thinking, I just-’’ ‘’I should’ve said something first anyway, instead of just- doing it without warning,’’ you continued, waving your hand around, ‘’I don’t know why I did it, okay? I just- fuck.’’

The man merely watched you, waiting for you to finish before gently interrupting your rambling, ‘’I’m not angry.’’ ‘’Not to mention that I didn’t act any better,’’ he reminded you, making you stop in your tracks, ‘’I just left you on that rooftop without saying a word. Jiaoqiu chewed me out for it.’’

‘’I mean, I kissed you without your consent,’’ you muttered, your hands dropping to your sides, ‘’You had every right to just…up and leave. You’re not at any fault here.’’

‘’Well, Jiaoqiu thinks differently,’’ Moze spoke, pushing himself off the wall, ‘’He said I should’ve talked to you sooner.’’ You watched him walk around the kitchen island, keeping a respectful distance from you, ‘’Though, he did call us both idiots.’’

You chuckled, though the sound more hysterical than you intended, ‘’He’s not wrong, is he? I mean- I did kind of fuck that up. I really should’ve just- said something instead of expecting you to do so. I’m sorry, I- suck at this stuff.’’ 

‘’I think we both know I’m not the best at conversations either,’’ he replied, and for a split-second, you thought you caught him smiling at you, ‘’Maybe we should let Jiaoqiu and your friend do this for us.’’

‘’Absolutely not, that’s a horrible idea,’’ you interrupted, the thought alone making you opposed to the idea, ‘’I’d never hear the end of it.’’ ‘’Do you, uh, think Jiaoqiu told Feixiao?’’ you wondered, glancing over at him, ‘’I mean, I doubt he would do it, but you know him better than I do.’’

Moze was quiet for a moment, allowing you to move a little closer to him, ‘’Admittedly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did tell the General, but I trust him enough not to until this is all over. You don’t need to worry about that.’’ 

‘’Oh, I’ll worry regardless,’’ you sighed, rubbing your temples, ‘’I’ve realized I’m really good at that. Worrying, overthinking, the whole thing.’’ ‘’I’ve had people at work come to me these past days to make sure I was alright,’’ there was a self-deprecating tone to your words as you recounted the past days, ‘’And earlier, Gui told me that some of my neighbors approached her to ask about my well-being. Worrying was the only thing I was doing since, you know.’’

In the dimly lit room, you couldn’t make out Moze’s expression as he watched you. Then, unexpectedly, he spoke with a gentleness you had never heard from him before, ‘’I didn’t know this was affecting you so much.’’

Your eyes widened at his words, tearing your gaze from the floor to meet his. For a second, a mixture of fear and uncertainty crossed your face before you collected yourself, clearing your throat, ‘’Well, I thought I screwed up after you just left.’’ Then, you looked away again, your voice more quiet, ‘’I guess I was terrified of losing you.’’

The silence that followed was unbearable to you, a throwback to those nerve-wracking minutes right after you had your first kiss. Internally, you were cursing yourself out, reprimanding yourself for being so open with Moze, but could you really blame yourself?

‘’Can you please say something?’’ you whispered hesitantly, wrapping your arms around yourself, nails digging into the skin of your upper arms, ‘’I’m getting a sense of déjà vu.’’ 

‘’I’m sorry,’’ the man apologized, the gentleness still there, ‘’I should’ve said something back then. I- I guess I panicked. I’ve never-’’ He fell silent before finishing the sentence, pulling his hood down to obscure his face. 

‘’I- I didn’t mean to put you in that position,’’ you quietly muttered, the grip on your arms weakening, ‘’I don’t know why I- There were so many times before that where I was in perfect control of my thoughts and actions, but that day? I can’t even explain it.’’

‘’You wanted to kiss me before?’’ Maybe you should learn when to shut up, no? Moze was already staring at you when you looked up, a storm raging in his violet eyes. 

Hesitantly, you shrugged, taking a deep breath before elaborating, ‘’I guess I did. Do- Do you remember the last Wardance? When…Hoolay escaped.’’ After Moze nodded, you continued, ‘’After everything was over, after I finally found you, I just- yeah. I think that was the first time I wanted to kiss you.’’ 

There it was again: The unbearable silence. Maybe you really shouldn’t admit all these things so openly . But, catching you by surprise in the process, Moze didn’t let it stretch this time, his voice growing unsteadier with each word, ‘’Why didn’t you do it?’’

‘’I- I didn’t think it would’ve been the right moment for it,’’ you muttered with furrowed brows, gesturing around with your hand as if to emphasize your point, ‘’I mean, you were all injured, not to mention the entire Borisin crisis. I didn’t want to add to your problems.’’

‘’You’re never a problem to me,’’ the man replied, straightening up, ‘’I might not be the best at showing it, but I care about you deeply.’’ ‘’Otherwise, I wouldn’t have kissed you back that day, don't you think?’’ he added, his voice quieter.

For a moment, you thought your heart would jump out of your chest, the beating drowning out all the noise around you as you processed his words. He did kiss you back, didn’t he? ‘’I figured maybe you just- I don’t know, had a moment of weakness?’’ you rambled, growing more nervous again, ‘’I mean, I didn't- I know you kissed me back, but I didn’t think it meant anything, I guess.’’

‘’You…thought it didn’t mean anything?’’ ‘’I was panicking, okay!’’ you argued defensively, ‘’I mean, you just disappeared without a word after that, remember? How did you think I’d react?’’ 

Moze didn’t have an answer for that, watching you silently while you continued to ramble, ‘’I’m not blaming you, I swear. I just- there wasn’t really a positive way in which I could’ve reacted to the situation, you know? How would you have reacted if you had been in my shoes?’’

Once again, no answer. Admittedly, you wouldn’t have one either if you were in his shoes. Well, and that’s that on it being an awkward situation. ‘’I feel like I’m just making this worse, aren’t I?’’ you muttered, offering him a weak smile, ‘’I’m sorry. Again. I don’t think I can apologize enough for causing- well, all of this.’’

‘’Did the kiss mean something to you?’’

Moze’s interruption caught you off-guard, eyes widening in surprise. Well, you've already admitted to wanting to kiss him a handful of times before. Confessing your feelings can't possibly lead to a worse outcome, right? ...Right? Truth be told, you weren't really sure what outcome this entire conversation was heading toward anyway, so you might as well be completely honest with him now.

Still, it took you a moment to reply, afraid of being this vulnerable. ‘’I wouldn’t have kissed you if it didn’t,’’ you hesitantly admitted, looking away, ‘’I...care about you, Moze. A lot more than I probably should. More than normal friends should.’’

‘’I think I realized even before the Wardance, but I just- hoped it’ll go away,’’ you chuckled, the sound hollow, ‘’And when it didn’t, I just kept hoping. Which obviously failed, given, you know.’’

You weren’t sure what Moze was thinking, too scared to look at him. Another silence settled between you, making you feel restless as you waited for him to say something. Anything. Please just don’t leave this time.

And he didn’t. Instead, Moze stepped in front of you, tilting your face up to look at him, his violet eyes roaming across your face until he met your gaze, ‘’Can you- Can you kiss me again, please? Pretend it’s the first time?’’ 

His voice was surprisingly soft, barely audible over the sound of your own heartbeat. Did you get that right? ‘’You want me to kiss you?’’ you breathed out, a dozen questions running through your head as you stared at him, ‘’Are- Are you sure?’’

‘’I’ve never been this sure about anything else in my life,’’ the man muttered, caressing your cheek, ‘’I’ve noticed that I- felt different around you around the time you got transferred to the Yaoqing, but I didn’t think much of it until…well, recently. The realization didn't hit me until I talked to Jiaoqiu about it and he put it into words for me.’’

‘’Oh’’ 

‘’Is…that all you want to say?’’

‘’To be honest, I never thought I’d be in this situation,’’ you admitted, still processing what he had just told you, ‘’I- I can’t believe I was terrified of losing you like, ten minutes ago, and now we’re…here.’’

‘’That’s…a good thing, isn’t it?’’

‘’I think this a better outcome than I had imagined possible,’’ you huffed, straightening up, ‘’The only thing I need to worry about now is explaining everything to Guinaifen.’’ Then, still shaking from nervousness, you leaned forward, ghosting your lips over his, ‘’May I?’’

‘’...You may.’’

And you did, gently pressing your lips against his as if afraid all this was just your imagination, that he'd vanish the second you touched him. Yet, when his arm wrapped around your waist to pull you closer, you knew you weren’t dreaming. ‘’You’re…really okay with this, right?’’ you whispered between kisses, glancing up at him, ‘’I’m not just hearing what I want to hear?’’

Moze merely responded by pressing his lips to yours again, hand wandering to the back of your neck to deepen the kiss. ‘’You worry too much,’’ he eventually muttered before pressing his forehead against yours.

‘’It’s a talent,’’ you chuckled, slightly out of breath but audibly relieved, ‘’Besides, the only reason I was so worried in the first place were you.’’

‘’May I remind you that you were the one kissing me without warning?’’ ‘’Alright, alright-’’ you groaned, just barely containing your joy, ‘’I’ll never live this down, will I?’’

You freed yourself from Moze’s grasp, turning to head toward your bedroom before stopping and glancing back at him, hesitating, ‘’Do- Do you mind staying for the night? I don’t…want you to leave just yet.’’

‘’If that’s what you want, then of course,’’ the man reassured, ‘’Just don’t start complaining when I wake you up too early.’’

‘’Don’t make me regret this, big guy,’’ you chuckled, offering him your hand while you made your way toward the bedroom, ‘’Thank you, by the way, For…well, everything.’’

‘’Always.’’

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[idiotmf]

Ur world building is phenomenal ｡⁠.ﾟ⁠+(⁠｡⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠)

Please tell me more abt xyon :3

Thank you so much! ( ◍＞◡＜◍)。✧♡

I am currently working on a story about Xyon (along with approximately fifty other things).

I usually write short scenarios with my characters for myself, sort of like different AUs, but they're in my native language, and I would like to make one that's Xyon x Reader specifically.

MDNI because my blog is 18+, the post itself shouldn't really be NSFW aside from biological aspects.

Uh, yeah... This is rather long for what I meant it to be (around 2.5k words excluding the notes at the beginning and end).

(Edit: Here is a link to the original lore dump for anyone wondering, since I reference it a lot.)

All that aside, here's a more in-depth look at my favorite biologist in the galaxy:

Appearance:

Since this is focused on just one Xenian, I can give a few more details about what he looks like. I really wish I was talented at drawing so I could give a visual representation of what I personally imagine, but I'll provide some images in case my words aren't clear enough (still working on that vocabulary, haha).

Let's start with his body!

As mentioned in the overall description, Xyon is around 2.5m (8'2), and if needed, he, like all other male Xenians, can stretch his torso up to 2.8m (roughly 9'2). If you're wondering which specific part gets stretched, it's the area just below the shoulders and above the stomach. (I'm using human anatomy here for convenience; if you're interested, I can definitely get into more in-depth Xenian anatomy, but I fear it might be boring.)

Whenever stretched, the skin gets damaged, sort of like horizontal stretch marks, but will shrink back to heal normally. Xenians don't do this often due to their high intelligence and lack of predators, causing it to be more of an evolutionary inconvenience these days.

While they still use it for mating displays, much like humans, they just prefer talking nowadays.

His overall body has a pretty slim, smooth look underneath the short fur. The muscles of Xenians are layered like thin sheets (muscle lasagna, anyone?) and don't bulge in the way human muscles would; instead, they just look broader and fuller.

Now, Xyon is considered skinny, even for his kind. I've mentioned it in the lore dump, but Xenians have moved past eating. They consume nutritional gel, which also explains why they are very lean, since they are literally only allowed to consume this gel, which covers their calculated daily needs.

If you know how nutrition works, though, you can probably see some holes forming in that logic. Xyon moves around a lot and therefore would technically require more, hence the skinny body.

His legs are long compared to his torso, especially below the knees (again, using human anatomy for convenience). His thighbones are rather short, the Xenian equivalent of Tibia and Fibula long (around 2/3rds of his legs; also, they don't have single bones but rather thousands of thin, long bones clustered together to form larger structures). It looks rather awkward when sitting or trying to crouch.

Fun fact: Xenians cannot kneel.

Well, technically, they can; once. And then not get back up without serious injuries. Their knees also cannot be fully bent back like a human's, but rather just enough to allow them to comfortably walk and sit. They actually also comfortably stand around in their strange crouching position whenever they are idle for long periods of time. Remember, they have a tail (sort of like this minus the scales) that they use for balance, resting in what I can only describe as a weird, tripod looking stance, sort of like they're leaning back and almost sitting on their tail.

I spent an hour trying to draw a representation of it, but it looked so goofy that I felt too embarrassed to share it. ( ´･ω･)

Anyway, his skull resembles that of an ocelot, complete with rows of sharp teeth, identifying his race as a once carnivorous one. (skull image) However, they don't have the typical cat whiskers, and their muzzle is less rounded.

Neat little tidbit, but technically, Xyon speaks with the Xenian equivalent of a lisp after sustaining an injury to his throat as a child (some of their sounds are formed in the throat, mainly the sheet metal-sounding one). However, since his words are translated into human speech for you to understand him, this doesn't carry over.

Xenian eyes also resemble those of cats; Xyon's are amber in color, but they can have various different ones. Of course he has a long, rough tongue due to their carnivorous roots.

Their entire body, except for their tails, genitalia, soles, and palms, is covered in a short, dark blue fur. (Imagine the fur of smooth, short coated dogs like a Doberman, Great Dane, Boxer, Beagle, etc. Just a bit softer.) If you want specifics on the color, I'd say the closest is #555C6C, ironically called Blue Planet. It looks sort of washed out due to their skin underneath being a dark gray.

His feet and hands are generally very similar in shape to those of a raccoon, except they have retractable claws and four fingers instead of five (a thumb and three fingers).

As mentioned in the species lore dump, they have retractable genitalia that are hidden underneath a layer of skin until they are exposed. It can actually harden while hidden, making their skin bulge. However, this can be quite painful since the space allowing for their phalluses isn't meant to support them in their full size.

If we're taking semen, it looks rather blueish in hue and the consistency is thicker and sort of slimy, designed to stick to a female's eggs.

Sources (cough cough) confirm it has a rather sweet-ish flavour, consuming too much of it does cause nausea in humans though.

Personality:

Xyon is an incredibly curious individual, especially later on (you'll see why in a second). He wants to know anything and everything about this planet and its inhabitants. He likes finding new plants, scanning them, and then observing for a while. He marvels at the strange animals that live on this planet (I should mention at this point that any story including Xyon is post-apocalyptic) and Earth's impressive landscapes.

Despite being very curious, he's still an extremely obedient follower of orders. For example, in one story I wrote, he was running out of his nutritional bio-gel and would simply refuse actual food, despite the scanner clearly telling him it was harmless for him to eat, choosing to starve rather than disobeying the directive to only consume the gel.

He does end up breaking one major rule, which ends up changing his entire life.

You see, while he is a biologist and was sent to earth to study and document flora and fauna for the intergalactic database, he is strictly forbidden from interacting with humans, whether positively or negatively, the only exception being for self-defense purposes. This is largely due to humans being known as primitive and extremely violent.

Xyon shares this narrative at first, since his research partner Xuan was murdered and subsequently eaten by humans after trying to peacefully interact with them.

That is, until he runs into, well, you. A lone human, injured, and on the brink of death. At first, he considers leaving you to die, then he considers observing you while you pass away, only to finally decide that even if you do attack him, he wants to help you.

Another bit of a flaw in his character is his naivety. Xenians don't have concepts like sarcasm; even lying isn't exactly something they do or consider, as it goes against their morals. This ends up with him believing everything you tell him, curiously inquiring about the most obvious of lies.

Not to mention, he speaks incredibly bluntly, which might come off as rude. This does actually improve after Xyon spends more time with you, since he learns to imitate the way you speak rather than sticking to the cold, scientific speech he uses at first.

I like to think this is a product of Xenian society, as scientists and research purpose tiers don't exactly experience individualism or even enough free will to build their own personalities to the point of even having distinguishing character traits.

I'm not sure how much I mentioned in the other lore dump (I tried to keep it short, so I kept cutting things out), but I do remember mentioning that Xenians practice culling unhatched eggs based on desirable base intelligence, health, etc. which is calculated based on your family tree, essentially. One's purpose is also determined by those stats.

Eggs far above the desired base intelligence usually become researchers and scientists, the highest "purpose" you can possibly have in their race. However, that also means that you not only get gaslit into thinking that's the only thing you're good at, you don't even get a chance to consider anything else.

Xyon is a biologist, and he cannot ever be anything but a biologist. He doesn't even have the mere choice of disliking his career, because it isn't just his job; it's his entire life.

Did I mention I love playing with such dystopian concepts?

Over the course of spending more time with you, he does eventually develop his own personality, or rather strengthen the few cracks that were present all along. But he can't help but look at you for guidance, despite being in the Xenian equivalent of his late twenties to early thirties. The concepts of being allowed to experience individualism and freely express himself are foreign to him.

I do want to mention that some Xenians do have their own personalities. This forced conformity is practiced in their general society, but only as bad as this on the higher purpose tiers, like the one he is in.

He does eventually turn into a gentle giant. I like to imagine him like a Disney princess, holding out one claw with a bird on it, like Snow White. Xyon does enjoy providing meat for you, which is a more primitive way to show that he is a suitable mate in his culture (though usually it goes both ways, or it used to, since they don't hunt anymore).

I like the concept of taking a step back from the highly intelligent life form and reverting to some more primitive practices as he develops individuality.

He never gets to the point of actively resenting his culture and planet, but rather accepts that this is one of its many differences from Earth and can be considered a flaw. In reality, he does find comfort in having a purpose, especially after you essentially tell him what life on earth was like. He finds the idea of having the freedom to try anything overwhelming, and not knowing what you're truly made for is terrifying in his eyes.

Beliefs and Values:

While a form of religion does still exist on his planet, due to the forced conformity and his purpose as a biologist, he was taught to disregard such matters for lack of logic.

Despite that, he does actually secretly believe in things like fate, especially in the context of finding one's mate.

Yet, mates are a pretty sore spot for him.

Due to their personalities, or rather lack thereof, and long absence from their planet in the name of science, higher-tier Xenians don't usually find a mate, often either living alone until death or dying during research.

Xyon does eventually express the belief that meeting you was fate and that you two were meant to end up as mates, despite being different in many ways.

He also believes that meeting you was meant to prove that humans weren't as destructive and savage as originally assumed.

(There is a whole other discussion of why earth became post-apocalyptic in the first place, and while the answer is a bit more convoluted than that, Xyon believes that the planetary representatives collectively decided that humans could not go on the way they were, and instead of risking a valuable planet that could host life being destroyed beyond repair, they would simply flatten major settlements and reset them to see whether they would grow from this experience or perish altogether.

Ironically, in reality, this was actually voted against in the end due to humans not having encountered extraterrestrial life yet and the promising scientific progression, but one race, fairly similar to humans themselves in nature (though not in looks), decided it would be for the better, carrying out the invasion on their own accord. While they weren't completely erased themselves, most of the higher-ranking beings from that planet were executed. This, however, is not common knowledge, as the representatives did cover it up in order to avoid other races being encouraged to disobey.)

While the race of Xenians does have values pertaining to open-mindedness and equality, they are fairly limited in nature. They do allow for sexual and romantic expression (on the lower tiers, mostly), but you can never, ever have the same standing as someone born with a higher tier purpose.

This means that even if you end up exceeding your calculated base intelligence by a lot, you will still be stuck in a purpose that isn't for you and have no chance of changing it.

Ironically, while a social hierarchy does exist, lower tiers are usually considered happier and have far more freedom than higher tiers. Because, again, they get stripped of all individuality to become mindless little researchers.

I purposely didn't specify Xyon's values in this case because, as you can imagine, being forced into a certain mindset does mean he has the same values as the collective, though it does change over time, with him expressing that while he does still support the tiers and purpose, he wishes it was less strict.

Family and Social Circle:

Xyon does actually have a family; he wasn't raised in a mating group. Unlike humans, Xenians don't have a close bond with their parents or siblings since they aren't fully raised by them but rather taken away early in life (around 4–7 in human years) to be trained for their purpose, which results in rather shallow bonds.

His father's purpose is to nurse and educate young Xenians that have either lost their parents or were abandoned, while his mother is the leader of their local tribe, which one can become regardless of tier, following an election process similar to that on earth.

Xyon does have irregular contact with them and even occasionally visits them while on Xen'jai, which is incredibly rare.

He had one older brother, who became a soldier and died very early on due to conflict between Xen'jai and their neighboring planet.

Xyon did have one friend, the female biologist Xuan, who was his assigned research partner.

Due to the nature of their work and purpose, social circles for their tier are small, if they exist at all.

This actually affects Xyon greatly. Now that his old partner is gone, he is alone on a foreign planet, and with Xenians being social creatures, it does make him feel lonely.

On several occasions, he has actually tried seeking out other research teams from his planet that were sent to Earth, and he briefly had contact with a male geologist named Xenon, who ended up being killed, or at least that's Xyon's assumption when his signal completely disappeared (hint hint nudge nudge, he is the other one I like writing about, and he is in fact not dead).

There is one more Xenian that Xyon is aware of on earth: a female meteorologist. He does not know her name; however, he has responded to several distress signals relating to her losing her bio-gel rations to humans.

Unfortunately, she was too far away for him to actually help (she is a character I want to write about in the future as well o(〃＾▽＾〃)o ).

Well, technically speaking, Xyon (and at some point Xuan), like any other research pair, does have a ship, but being the rule-following Xenian he is, he did not leave his assigned area (which is roughly central Europe in canon btw), though he briefly considered it until getting confirmation that the situation had sorted itself out.

It is likely due to this that he even considered helping you in the first place, because he was lonely and probably hoping deep down that a human could somehow keep him company.

Which... I mean... it worked out in his favor. Good for him.

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

Yeesh, this is quite a lot.

Can you believe I still left stuff out? I also ended up dumping more lore for the species itself. I promise one day I'll go back and rewrite both the Species info and probably this one as well. I kind of want to write another big info-dump for Xen'jai as a planet, because there's a lot I want to get into, like the hierarchy, religion, history and evolution of the planet, which felt too out of place here.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Feel free to always reach out for more info or suggestions, I am literally just waiting to write more lore no one really can do anything with. :3

[tommyssupercoolblog]

Incoming very long ramble about the fragility of internet content and the ways some things are impossible or difficult to preserve

The thing that frustrates me most about poppytwt is how fruitless it all feels.

Like, you can't archive or research poppytwt effectively. You can certainly TRY but you'll find very little!!!

You have people who spent years in the poppytwt fandom who can TELL you about fanfics they read, art they saw, friends they made who were deactivated or doxxed or harassed or who committed suicide or are otherwise lost to time, but they'll have almost nothing to show for it because poppytwt was actively designed to be as impossible to trace back as possible, precisely because people were afraid of harassment.

How are you supposed to find, say, Tommy/Tubbo fanfiction? There's some on the actual tag, sure, especially now that poppytwt is for the most part over and it's considered "okay" to ship them now, but I'll tell you right now there are thousands of fics that won't pop up because the fic had no tags whatsoever, or spelled Tubbo like Tvbb0, or used some God awful emoji combination to convey who they were talking about, or were straight up DELETED. Discord servers moved every few years, fanart and fics were usually tagged with censored bullshit or not tagged at all and then taken down and deleted, entire accounts were ALSO deleted, even assuming something was tagged properly it's probably gone.

Most of us in the fandom at the time didn't think to make archives of anything while it was happening, so we've lost like.... probably enough content to make our own small website full of it, and even more chatrooms.

Almost all of the public facing content left is NSFW and/or more controversial kinks like CNC, watersports, etc, which could be because people who post that content are more resistant to criticism anyway but honestly I don't know why that is, and I know sfw content beyond what you can currently find EXISTED, we consumed tons of it back in the day, but it's almost fucking impossible to find!!! And most of it, when you get your hands on a link, is GONE!!!!

It happens with NSFW content too though, if course. Veradie was one of the most popular artists in poppytwt by far and a lot of the art links don't work. Some have archived versions with working links but a lot is gone because the original post leading to it doesn't work, and Veradie, like, the person, is missing. I'm sure she(?) would know a lot about old fandom and might even have archived some stuff, but if you're some sort of internet historian how in the FUCK are you supposed to find her??? She deactivated without a trace!!!

I made friends with a user called Kencydoo on here and one day I logged on and Kency was just GONE without warning or any indication of where they were moving to, no DMs to people they knew, nothing. I don't even know if it was staff or mass reports or a self-deletion. I do know Kency sometimes posted NSFW dead dove stuff and had tags you could block to avoid it, so it's possible one of those posts blew up and got the blog taken down, but I have no level of certainty.

Reese (I think it was Reese?) had people hunting for a "main account" that didn't exist for harassment and doxxing purposes and then ALMOST left (I'm glad you're still here @reesesrambles )

There's no stability for poppytwt content and no real shelf life which means that most of the history and even the harassment that REQUIRED THE EXISTENCE of a seperate fandom is gone. We can describe what the old dsmp fandom was like and why poppytwt exists and what it means but most of the actual concrete fandom blogs or resources are GONE, absolutely obliterated.

Like you can't make a Strange Æons style video about poppytwt, you literally can't, because almost all of it is like the fucking city of Atlantis. There WAS stuff here, but it was constantly sinking.

Most people I know for a fact were involved in poppy honestly just left for the hermitcraft fandom because people over there are like...normal?? The hermitcraft fandom allows RPF and doesn't give a shit about shipping characters who are "sibling coded" or whatever the fuck. They understand the concept of just not clicking on something you don't want to see, instead of launching a twitter cancellation campaign against people. So like if you can talk about a similar, and GOOD source of content that is also actively ongoing and not get shit for it, why would you chose to create for a discontinued peice of content and/or streamers who you WILL get shit on for writing about?? Like if your options are "write grian RPF and be able to not stress and have a fun time" or "write tommyinnit RPF and delete hate comments every day and watch your back constantly" why the fuck would you pick the latter???

And it's frustrating because the fact everything disappears means it feels like you don't even have much to look back on. The friends you made or content you enjoyed about a series you love is all dust now, and if you were into the DSMP for a long time (and therefore in poppytwt for a long time) then it's so much worse. It all adds up.

Anyways that's my ramble on how fucked up it is that entire communities can be lost in an era where things can supposedly be maintained forever does anyone want to drink a caprisun with me

[whorekneecentral]

Wait hang on, I just saw ur post!! THANK UUUU!!!🥳

Fernando x Hamilton!reader where they’re in a secret relationship that most people know about: except Lewis, who doesn’t find out abt the whole arrangement until he catches them making out behind the Merc motorhome

- nando anon

you guys are soooo into this old man but.. anyways -- tw: age gap! (reader is 25-27)

It was unseasonably warm in France this weekend. The hospitality building was full because everyone was hiding from the heat, trying to cool down in the air conditioned building for as long as possible before having to go back outside.

Your brother, Lewis, sat next to you while George and Carmen across from you two. "I think I'm gonna go for a walk," you announce, getting up when you notice the time on your phone.

Lewis looks over at you, his brows furrow. "You're going out in this heat?"

"I just need some air, it's cramped in here."

He nods, "okay, be careful." He hands you his water bottle and you take it, confused. "You'll need water, it's hot out there."

You set the bottle back down and George gets up. "I forgot something in my driver's room," he says and Carmen stands too. "I have some work to finish up, I'll walk you out?" Carmen links arms with you, pulling you away from the table.

"Are you going to see him?" She asks quietly when you were far enough away from Lewis.

"Who?" you looked at her confused. Carmen gives you a look, "y/n, we all know." She giggled, "you need to be careful, your brother was asking George if he thinks you're seeing someone."

George appears behind you two, standing between the two of you with his arms over your shoulders. "Plus, isn't Fernando too old for you?" He asks and earns an elbow in the side from both you and Carmen.

"Leave the girl alone," she tells her boyfriend. "Just be careful, okay?" She gives your arm a squeeze, the two of them leaving you as you step out the backdoors.

Behind the hospitality was fairly quiet, considering there was currently a heat wave and nobody wanted to be out.

"You're late." He says, his voice pulling your attention and causing you to turn.

"I'm never late, you're just early." You smiled, walking over to the man.

Fernando's hand rests on your waist, your back against the building as you looked at him. "I missed you," he says and you can't help the smile on your face.

"I saw you this morning, remember?"

The whole thing between you two started by accident; one too many drinks post race and you ended up in bed together. The more time you spent with him, the more you realized you liked him.

You has spent last night with him, Fernando sweet talking you into spending the night in his room.

"I don't remember," he mumbles, his lips meet your neck, kissing over the chain that hung on your neck.

"I knew you were old, but has your memory gone already?" You joked, earning a pinch to the side.

"I think I might need a refresher," he says, hand cupping your jaw.

"Well," you start, "I think it was something like this." You lean in to kiss him, pulling his hand to your waist. Fernando's hand finds it way down to your ass, giving it a squeeze. His other hand was on your thigh, pulling your leg up to hitch on his hip and you can feel it wander up your bare leg and just under the hem of your skirt.

"Are you fucking serious ?" The man groans, causing you two to separate and look in the direction of the noise.

Your brother stood there with his hands on his hips, an exasperated look on his face, much like a disappointed father.

"What are you doing out here?" You asked, fixing your skirt.

"What am I doing? What are you doing? You were taking forever to come back in so I thought I'd come out and check on you to see if you got a heat stroke or something, but instead I find you making out with Fernando of all people."

"I mean, I came onto him just to make it clear before you try to beat him up or something." You giggled, you can feel Fernando's hand on your lower back as he stood next to you.

"It's not funny, y/n."

"It is, actually." You tell your brother, the man rolling his eyes. "Whatever," he sighs, "just be.. safe. I don't need my niece or nephew to be an Alonso."

"What's wrong with being an Alonso?!" Fernando shouts after him as he walked back into the hospitality building.

[midnight-omega]

Anatomy hc

Okiii ur girl spent most of last night trying to figure some things out and draw some diagrams fr

This post focuses on the reproductive anatomy of my omegaverse. I'm gonna go through each of the 6 gender/dynamic combinations and give a little info about how I think it all works :> like everything else this varies from person to person so if this isn't ur thing no worries! If this is ur thing feel free to use it! But if you use my diagrams I'd appreciate it if you credited me be i spent a long time on them 😔

I also want to link this very in depth explanation because I did take a lot of inspiration from it for my male omegas! I adore this concept for them and I'll be using it going forward. The author talks about a lot more tho some of which imma steal some of which Im not :))

Okay lets get into it fr, be warned there are my messy diagrams of all kinds of private bits under the cut. Also if tumblr kills the quality im so sorry fr :((

Male Alpha

🌕 Let's start with our boys here.

🌕 Honestly they're pretty straightforward! There's not too many crazy anatomy changes here. They function pretty much the same as irl amab anatomy does.

🌕 They have a penis and external testes

🌕 They have a prostrate that can be stimulated via anal penetration

🌕 Male alphas tend to be on the bigger side concerning length/girth but this varies from person to person

🌕 Now, the defining characteristic of a male alpha is their knot. Only alphas have a knot!

🌕 The knot is soft tissue that expands during orgasm. This "locks" the penis into the vagina in order to facilitate conception. In simple terms, sperm stuck inside better change pregananant

🌕 The knot typically stays expanded for about 20min after orgasm, but this can vary. Any longer than an hour though, can be cause for concern

🌕 The male alpha usually has a larger knot than a female alpha and experiences higher chances of successfully "tying" (tying here meaning the knot actually gets stuck in the receiver)

🌕 An alpha can knot outside of rut, but these knots may be smaller or not fully expanded since they're lacking the overproduction of hormones that rut creates

🌕 A deflated knot is still visible as a ring of much softer tissue than the rest of the shaft

Female Alpha

🌕 oh boy, oh god, mother mary save us all

🌕 This one was so HARD to figure out fr... let me get into this

🌕 I've always liked the idea of a female alpha having a hidden penis best. One that's concealed where the clit ought to be but expands and pops out during rut or when aroused. I like this one best bc I'm not a super big fan of the anatomy set up of having a vulva and dick and balls all at once, and anatomically I never understood like... the concept of the clit swells a lil and thats the knot bc... penetrate how?? I also just don't like pregnant female alphas much! To me alphas impregnate only not carry

🌕 So hidden penis was my favorite option !

🌕 But once I started drawing out the diagram I immediately had problems placing the sheathed penis inside the body

🌕 My biggest issues were the bladder and pubic bone. The bladder I can move around easy enough, especially since female and male anatomy have it in slightly different positions anyway

🌕 But what was fucking me up was that damn bone

🌕 If we want to replace the clit with a penis the penis is going to need to run straight through that bone. The pubic bone in female anatomy sits right above the clit basically. In male anatomy its a tad higher up but even moving it up it would still be in the way of the penis

🌕 I could continue to move the bone or do away with it but then we compromise the human shape of the female alpha. The rest of the dynamics would look human in the hips and pelvis but female alpha she'd be.. little fucked up. Not to mention I'm sure there's some other wild medical consequence of removing or moving the pubic bone that I'm not aware of

🌕 So... we can't put the sheathed penis exactly where the clit is

🌕 I could put it where the vagina is, but then that eliminates the vagina entirely and makes female alphas unable to have penetrative sex and tbh I'm not into that give her a gspot yk?

🌕 I could move the urethra around, like push it forward towards the clit even more and push the vaginal opening backwards, or even combine the vagina and anus like the male omega but I wasn't a fan of that either. It makes her feel to male omega-y and less unique to me

🌕 Furthermore like... vaginas are low. Like lower than u think, clits are a little lower too. And penises are so high! So.. having a penis come out so low between your legs wouldn't that make penetrating kinda hard unless you had a crazy long horse cock or smth.

🌕 So I ended up keeping the penis sheathed like I wanted, but I moved it up

🌕 The penis head is a little above where a clit would sit but I still removed the clit from her anatomy

🌕 To avoid the bone I had to put the penis above it. This isn't super crazy since the vans deferens also comes down over the bone, but it is a little awkward because this isn't a little tube this is a PENIS. This is a whole long cord of tissue and blood vessels here and I'm not giving her a small flat cock to compensate she doesn't deserve that

🌕 So, her muscle, fat, skin, and what have you is gonna have to push out to make room for the penis sitting above the bone.

🌕 Insert female alpha sheath bulge >:))

🌕 tbh I think giving her a bit of a bump is pretty hot so I'm satisfied!

🌕 However bc its sitting right over a bone any pressure applied to it is going to be uncomfortable or even painful for her

🌕 So... ig if you wanna kick a female alpha in the nuts aim for her sheath fr

🌕 So then I was good for awhile, I had placed the penis in the body in a way that satisfied me and kept the vagina intact

🌕 But okay now the penis has to come out

🌕 The female alpha cock still sits lower than the male one, so we have to do a little more bending to get it to flip up in proper penis formation

🌕 No problem, I'll just give the female a longer base after the knot and said base will be way more bendy than a real penis np np

🌕 Okay but... if we have a noodle base how is the erection staying erect and not just becoming a top heavy string of stuck blood that flops tf over

🌕 Insert what I did with the labia

🌕 I want female alphas to enjoy vaginal sex if they want to mostly for kinky reasons yk but its my world so!

🌕 But this means that I don't really wanna touch the labia around the vagina, they should still get looser during arousal they should still be fun to play with yada yada yada

🌕 But the penis needs something to lock it upright. So I split the labia into even more parts.

🌕 On irl afab anatomy theres the inner and outer labia and that's that. On the female alpha tho I had to get creative. I gave her her inner and outer labia that would function normally

🌕 Then I gave her another set around the exit of her sheath. I called them! The penile labia for lack of creativity and anatomical knowledge! Unlike the outer and inner labia around the vagina, these ones stiffen and lock up during arousal after the penis has been unleashed. This keeps it out and helps it stand!

🌕 I also gave her a middle labia. This is an extremely tough piece of muscle that separates her upper and lower sets of lips. The middle labia supports our bendy base even more and tends to get engorged and may even expand a little to support the weight of the cock and knot

🌕 This isn't fool proof by ANY means and I'm sure ppl who know anatomy better than me have a million issues rn but yk what? This makes sense to me and took me awhile to figure it out fr so I'm content

🌕 Now... I gave her a uterus-like structure and still called it "uterus" for lack of better term. this is not a functioning uterus so female alphas cannot conceive

🌕 But in this model I have this uterus act more like a muscle that helps push the penis out of the sheath. Believable? Idk but its chill with me

🌕 The female knot is generally a littler smaller than the male knot because it's gotta fit in the body

🌕 The knot here doesn't even begin to expand until the penis is unsheathed, whereas in males it may puff up slightly on initial arousal

🌕 Since I did not give her balls, her testes are inside the body where the ovaries would typically be

🌕 insert the part where I tell you alpha sperm does not need to be cool. It can survive higher temperatures which also makes sense considering omegas practically have heat strokes during heat, the sperm would need to be a little tougher.

🌕 But then why do males have balls? I got u fam ! Bc while they can survive in warmer temperatures that does not mean they thrive there. The healthiest swimmers are still kept a little cooler. Female alphas may be less fertile even because of this which could be some fun plot points bc i love female alphas pls write them more

🌕 That was so LONG but I think that's it for her

Male Beta

🌙 The male beta doesn't really have anything super atypical from irl amab bodies.

🌙 The penis of a beta tends to be a lil smaller than an alpha's but bigger than an omegas, but again this isn't always the case!

🌙 We do have a prostate for fun anal times if desired

🌙 Beta sperm is not as heat resistant as alpha sperm. They can impregnate other betas just fine but may struggle with an omega in heat. It's suggested that b/o couples try conceiving outside of heat with the help of fertility experts :>

🌙 Male betas cannot conceive, they have no uterus or vagina

🌙 Betas do not knot!

Female Beta

🌙 Again, not a lot of differences to talk about here, typical afab anatomy

🌙 It is worth noting that in my verse I am not giving female betas periods bc thats mean

🌙 For this reason their endometrium is thinner than ours so the body can reabsorb it without a true heat easier

🌙 I'll also say that beta eggs are just built different for this thinner endometrium

🌙 usually you need a certain thickness for the egg to embed properly to the uterine wall, but imma say that for whatever reason beta eggs are totally chill with a thin lining. They have a better grip or smth ig!

🌙 This allows my girls to get pregnant without an extra added issue due to my silly anatomy choices

🌙 It also makes her different from the female omega which I'll talk about later :))

Male Omega

🌑 Okay ya'll get ready for shitshow number two

🌑 actually the male omega wasn't as bad to figure out mostly bc I stole the idea of the epivagina from the author I linked above the cut!!

🌑 I'll sum up if you don't want to read through the link (you should tho it's really interesting stuff you might wanna use in ur own verse!)

🌑 So like the female alpha there are depictions I don't like when it comes to the male omega. I don't like them not having a uterus and just being... a guy? Like having nothing about them that makes them different than a male beta. Also, like how I said I don't like pregnant alphas, I don't like omegas that can impregnate.

🌑 I'm also not a fan of not giving them a penis and having them only have a vagina and uterus. What makes the two omega genders different then? Breasts? Not a fan tbh considering I like my male omegas to breastfeed with their lil pregnancy boobies (cancer in venus I like boobies and lactation not sorry)

🌑 Basically I want my mpreg and I want my penis too

🌑 So, like the female alpha, we have to give them both parts.

🌑 Since there's not a ton of room between the balls and the anus (the taint is only so big yall) I'm not a fan of just giving them a vulva here

🌑 I'm also not a big fan of the birth canal that develops from the taint when pregnant just bc it doesn't make sense to me that the body just forms and unforms a hole that they have to push out a baby the size of a small melon through. Like in that case pregnancy must be excruciatingly painful on top of pregnancy already being painful and hard

🌑 So... butt babies. Except not quite

🌑 The popular option is the cloaca but... I have issues with that too

🌑 If you read the chapter on male omegas on the ao3 link you can see why. A short cloaca definitely results in poop in the vagina. I don't think I need to explain why poop in the vagina is like the worst thing. As the author points out it also makes it difficult for fun oral time just bc the amount of infections you can get from... constant ass licking/fucking especially bc I haven't seen any male omegas telling their alphas omg wait i need to shower, shit, and have an enema first

🌑 The long cloaca can work ig but then the penis never enters the vagina and thats just not fun. The male omega would never be able to have vaginal sex fr :((

🌑 So I'm going with what the author made up! The epivagina!

🌑 The epivagina is a strong valve-like muscle kinda like the middle labia in alpha females.

🌑 During non horny times the epivagina remains positioned in a way that closes off the vaginal opening. No penetration without literal tearing can take place with it closed. The anus is open and free for poop!

🌑 During heat and arousal the epivagina switches the other way opening the vagina and closing the anus so the opposite is true

🌑 You do not have to be in heat for the vagina to open btw! Just turned on

🌑 During birth we can just assume the sphincters and muscles around this anus and vagina were built for stretching, though it might be recommend for male omegas to anal train a bit to get all our muscles ready for it (there are literally butt plugs the size of a child's head so we can train out asses a lil)

🌑 Now the drawback to this would be that... you cannot have anal with a male omega if he's turned on. Tbh that's okay with me since i'm not really into anal anyway! If it's not okay with u then.. idk change it to fit ur kink babe im not stopping u

🌑 It also kinda acts as a rape defense too in a way.... like a duck if we're not turned on good luck entering the vagina. ofc... the exception to this is heat in heat it's p much always open unless we need to shit rn so ig vaginal rape protection in heat isn't a thing but it's neat outside of heat

🌑 Male omegas do produce very small amounts of sperm but they're such sad little boys it's basically impossible to get pregnant from them. Most of them have clear orgasms if they come from their cocks at all.

🌑 I did raise their balls a bit back into the body. We're still descended but not... exactly the whole way if that makes sense. Our sperm just isn't as cool this way and it's not heat resistant fr!

🌑 Bc omegas get so hot during their heats this can also decrease or fully kill off any remaining sperm production.

🌑 Technically this way you can still get pregnant by a male omega if you're a female beta/omega but.... bc its my verse and I don't really want that I'm gonna say it happens like once in a century it is not really a thing

🌑 The penis here is smaller than anyone else's, but not as small as you'd think. I'm not going the whole micropenis route with them you can still be satisfied through penetration with my male omegas!

🌑 Like the author, I also like the concept of giving them a prostate and an internal clit >:))

🌑 no real reason other than 3 ways for my boys to orgasm and I like it

Female Omega

🌑 Pretty similar to the female beta, not too much difference from irl afab anatomy

🌑 The biggest difference between a female beta and female omega are:

🌑 Slick production (beta's do not produce slick)

🌑 The endometrium

🌑 I gave my beta's a thinner one so their bodies can absorb it and we can avoid menstruation!

🌑 Well in female omegas the endometrium is thicker, about the same as the average one irl or maybe even a little thicker than that.

🌑 Her eggs just aren't as good as gripping just like irl fr, so we need a lot of cushion for them

🌑 especially since female omegas tend to release more than one egg a cycle (2-4 is normal) so if we're all embedding we need more room to do it

🌑 A female omega also can reabsorb her endometrium no worries I am not giving her a period either

🌑 Instead I'm going to say that heat has 3 phases. Pre heat where we get ready for ovulation that lasts about 3-4 days, heat heat which lasts about 1-2 days or less. This is when we are fertile we need to get pregnant NOW, and then post heat which lasts about 3 days where our body temperature is still extremely high and we're still horny and feverous but the egg has passed alas. Its during post heat that we reabsorb and break down the endometrium. Sometimes we might see a little blood a lil spotting yk, but for the most part our heat stroke helps us absorb it idc if that's unreasonable its what imma say

🌑 The term heat usually includes heat and post heat but not pre heat (I mean you get off work for heat and post heat and we use the term heat as a collective to include that 5 or so days but this doesn't include the pre heat) but i'll do a different post for heats later !

I think thats everything if you survived all that thank you for indulging me fr! Feel free to pop in my askbox if you wanna talk about smth and like I said in the beginning feel free to steal but pls credit my diagrams if u use them :))

[whalyrae]

On the roof pt.1 | Niragi Suguru x gender neutral reader.

Word count : 2.4k

Trigger Warning : mention of school abuse, bullying, violence, death, maybe Niragi is ooc idk I did my best...

AO3 link

Author note : ok, I'm sooo nervous to post this...! this is the first time I post something on tumblr, it's no proofread at all and english isn't my first language so be kind please !

A second part will come, I don't know when, but there will be another part with... more action

Hope you'll like it...!

You were on the roof of the Beach. Thanks to Ann - you still don't know how she got there anyway - she managed to get a notebook, a pencil and an eraser, at your request.

Days at the Beach could be long and boring. Thankfully, you spent a lot of your free time in good company; Kuina was a lovely person, and even though Chishiya wasn't the most talkative, you managed to get along and have interesting conversations. Usagi and Tata were also very good companies. As for Arisu, you saw him as a big brother, you had the same centers of interest, the fictional universe as well as video games, you could talk about that for hours.

You were pretty well surrounded. But sometimes you felt the need to isolate yourself, to clear your mind. Living in this country was not easy, and every day was a tough and trying test for the physical, but also the mental.

The only thing that was able to relax you was drawing. Sometimes you isolated yourself on the roof of the beach, and you drew the landscape that offered itself to you, animals, you drew the portrait of your friends, or simply the first thing that crossed your mind. You were just alone with yourself, your thoughts, it wasn’t really healing, but for some hours, your only thoughts were turned to the strokes of pencils on this sheet of paper.

This time, you were drawing the pool beside you. There were a lot of people who were playing, dancing... having the time of their lives, like there's no tomorrow.

Your friends knew you had this habit of isolating yourself from time to time, and they respected that. However, today, someone you never expected came to disturb your moment of tranquility.

« Hey, what are you doing here? »

That male voice startled you, eliciting a laugh from the disruptor. 

You had turned around to find yourself facing the right arm of the leader of the activists. The one everyone feared, always accompanied by his sniper taped to his shoulder. 

Shoulder-length black hair, face and tongue piercings, a predator, ready to get rid of anyone who got in his way.

Suguru Niragi.

What was he doing here? What did he want from you?

« Saw you from the pool, so what are you doing here? He asked, approaching you, his free hand in his pocket. - I… hum, just drawing, you answered, showing him your notebook. »

He leaned slightly to take a look at what you were doing, then straightened up.

« Hm. It's not bad, he hummed, nodding his head. »

You looked up at him, surprised. Niragi giving you a compliment? It wasn’t something common. You felt your cheeks heat up at the compliment, a big smile appearing on your face.

« Really? Thank you! It's just a simple sketch I did it in less than an hour, and then I'm not excellent at all with perspective ... It has always been my weak point. I rather prefer to draw characters or animals... Ah, sorry, I have a bad habit of talking too much when it comes to drawing.... I can come down if I disturb here... » 

He arched an eyebrow when he saw you get up, you didn't want to upset him or anything.

« You can stay. Just checked you weren't some weirdos who were up to something fishy. - Oh, thanks! »

You greeted him with a smile and saw him turn on his heels, already leaving. An idea crossed your mind. You knew it wasn’t good. Especially about him. You knew you were going straight into a wall, that he was going to snub you, probably insulting you. But your words went faster than your brain and your reason.

« Wait, Niragi! Can I … Can I draw you? » 

He stopped. And you regretted immediately your request. He wasn’t that kind of type to just sit down and pose while someone drew him. 

« I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… Forget what I s- - ‘kay. »

You looked at him, again. You couldn’t hide your surprise, which made him laugh. 

« I have nothing to do, my shift is over, and I’m kinda bored. Don’t fail me, though. - Don’t worry about that, you answered with a smile, showing him the last portrait you did, it was Mira taking her daily cup of tea, I don’t have many skills in life, I’m not beautiful, nor smart or even physically strong, but drawing isn’t a part of it! - What kind of bullshit are you saying. Seriously. He rolled his eyes, visibly annoyed, well. We’ll see. The result will decide whether you will live or not. »

Seeing your face decompose at his words, he bursts into a nasty laugh.

« Just kidding princess, relax. - Don’t call me like that. »

You frowned. You knew this request was useless, if he wanted to call you like that, he would, whether you wanted or not. 

Minutes passed where none of you spoke. You were too focused on your drawing, he was probably lost in thought, or something like that. Niragi was similar to Chishiya on certain points. It was impossible to know what he was thinking, what his next words or actions would be.  

« You were a drawer before landing here, right. - Hm? You looked up at him, nodding, I assisted a mangaka for the inking, yeah all that. My dream was to publish my own manga, one day, but… » 

You let out a laugh, shaking your head. 

« But what? Have you been refused? The world of drawing is as cruel as the world of video games, tho. - You were working for the video game's industry? - I was a game engineer. »

Wow. You were really impressed. You’d never thought that this man was doing something like that. Well, you never doubted that Niragi was more than that kind of person he was showing to everyone at the Beach.

Borderland was showing the worst side of every human. You weren’t an exception. You had to do things to survive. Things you shouldn’t regret, even if you did. 

« Are we amazed, princess? He asked with a grin. - To be honest, yeah, I didn’t expect that from you, you answered, ignoring his surname, but you were wrong for something, I… you paused for a few seconds, and sighed, I’ve never submitted my project to any magazine or something. I never had the chance. »

You felt a gaze land on you. You looked up to meet Niragi's, but directly broke eye contact, shaking your head.

« It’s nothing, I’ve always been unlucky. »

You sighed. 

« I agreed to hang around here with you while you draw me, you owe me few answers. » 

He was kinda right. Even if he saw that those answers hurt you. This man didn’t really have any empathy ? Or maybe his need to know was hiding something else ? 

Nice. Now you were curious. 

« Fine, I’ll tell you. »

You rolled your eyes. 

« I wasn’t that popular in High School, you started, focus on your drawing, sometimes, you gave him little glances, but only for your drawing, of course, my classmates loved to play with me. Hiding my class notes, my bag, my shoes, throwing food in my hair you know, like the teacher used to say… - Just children games, yeah, I know. » 

You looked at him. Surprised. Was he… no, it was impossible. Niragi was so confident, so scary, so cool ? Yeah, despite everything about him, you always found Niragi kinda cool. Just like Chishiya, you admired his intelligence and self-confidence. He didn't care how people looked at him, what they thought of him. 

So him ? Being bullied ? 

« Niragi, you… - Shut up. Keep talking. - Fine, fine… So… I had this notebook, a pretty black notebook, which I’d decorated myself, all my ideas for my manga were there. It was a story in a fantasy world, all the ideas, the drawings about the world building, the chara design, the story was there… I had it since I was twelve. » 

You took a small break. Those memories weren’t really that far. Maybe one year or two. 

You inhaled deeply, without stopping your drawing. You had to stay focused on something. You felt Niragi's gaze on you, but you couldn't face it.

« Don’t know how this happened, but they found my notebook. One thing led to another, they reduced this notebook to ashes, your voice was shaking, like your hands, the pages torn, burned in front of me. All my life, all my dreams, hopes, flown, ruined. » 

You made a pause, taking deep breath to not cry. You didn’t want to cry. Not in front of him. In front of anyone. You didn’t want to be that weak person you were in the past ever again. 

« It could’ve ended like this. But no. They didn't have enough. I don't even know why they were like that with me, why they hated me so much that they hit me with that belt and broke that glass bottle on my head. I never knew why. But they did. »

Your eyes were burning. You did your best to hold back your tears. 

« I spent weeks in the hospital, I had broken ribs and head trauma. After that, I finished my studies at home. - What did they have, those assholes who did this to you ? He finally asks, his voice seemed calm, but he was angry. - Nothing, just some few hours of detention, I think. Never saw them again. » 

You shrugged, and took a deep breath. 

« You wanted to know, happy ? »

Your voice was more aggressive than you thought. It wasn’t against him. You were just angry about those bullies, about your High School who did nothing, against the whole world for having made your life so complicated and shitty.

You didn’t know what he was thinking right now, maybe you suspected that talking about it had probably brought back painful memories for him, and you suddenly felt bad for not thinking about it sooner. But he’d insisted that you talk, and you hadn't connected the dots about his own experience as you told. He would have stopped you if it was too hard for him, right ?

« I’m sorry if I brought back so bad memories… you started, nibbling your lips, ah, there, I’m done, you added, giving him your notebook, sorry for the vent, I know you don’t care about my childish stories. - Shut up. I care. I’m angry, and I want to kill those bastards for what they did to you. » 

You stared at him, meeting his angry eyes. Again, like for you, it wasn’t against you. 

« Did you… take revenge on them ? You dared to ask, biting your lip nervously. - No, I didn’t. - I’m… sorry. You whispered, you didn’t deserve to endure all of that, Niragi. - You didn’t deserve it, you too. »

Your tears ran down your cheeks without you controlling it. It was the first time you heard these words. 

It wasn’t your fault. 

You put down the notebook, and turned your head slightly, lifting your hair and showing him a long scar on the back of your head, and you heard curses, maybe too many curses.

« I have more on my body, that’s why I’m always wearing a jacket, you gave him a sad smile, wiping your tears, ah, and I’m crying now, amazing. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna ask you a hug ! » 

You chuckled and got up, tearing off the page containing his portrait, which you signed on the back before handing it to him.

« Take it, it’s a gift for thanking you. For this moment. It’s been a while since I hadn't spoked to someone who understood me… no, in fact, it's the first time ! Thank you very much, Niragi. »

You gave him the paper, and a warm smile appeared on your face. 

You understood that he had gone through the same thing, too. The pieces of the puzzle had come together on their own. Why was he acting like this at the beach and with everyone.

He understood you. He was the only one who truly understood you. 

Because he's been through all this shit, too. 

That's why he made you talk, tell him what you had been through, why he didn't cut you off. 

Why he didn't blame you. 

Every person who heard this story did, the doctors, your parents, your therapist. In their eyes, it was your fault, you hadn't made enough efforts to socialize, drawing, videos games, dreaming about a fantasy world were weird hobbies. 

You've been criticized more than once for not being "normal".

Your eyes had filled with tears that you couldn’t longer contain, your body had begun to shake, and you hated it for abandoning you like this, for being so weak, so vulnerable. 

Why couldn't you be strong and brave like Niragi was? Why couldn't you fuck the world off, too?

You felt a hand land on your head. Your eyes looked up to meet his again, while he was patting your head. You knew Niragi wasn't the kind of guy to be good at reassuring, consoling or god knows what else showing affection, but he had done something. You felt your face heat up, but it didn't last long. Something else took place in your mind, a thought you had once had, but always suppressed it because you were ashamed of it. 

In this world ? In the Borderlands ? Being ashamed for those kinds of thoughts had no place, because there were very few consequences.

Revenge.

« I… you began, voice shaking, not very sure of what you were about to say, I want them to pay for what they did, they don’t deserve to be happy too… - Say it, it was an order, you could feel his hand running gently through your hair, which surprised you slightly, what do you want, y/n ? - I want them to die, Niragi. » 

You heard him chuckle before patting your head. As if he was satisfied with your words. As if he’d guessed that you had always wanted him deep inside.

Of course, he knew, he had been through the same thing as you after all.

Maybe this world poisoned you more than you thought.

[c-cw-f-saeko]

tell me your name (tesso and seonhee headcanons 2/3)

they moved out of the way so i could take a picture of mt. fuji -> loose recreation of this image 

hi !! i thought i’d finish this tesso and seonhee (separate and together) headcanon masterpost. it covers their individual backstory, how they met and how their relationship grew.

btw i made another headcanon masterpost about the liumang here 🤩 it wouldn't be a bad idea to read it before this one !

i warn that this is the ultimate yapping session LOL so it's long and very image heavy OOPS! there are more than 30 images, i wanted to add more but will stop there for now. check the bottom of the post for some straightforward headcanons (and a TLDR).

also, please pretend the entire timeline makes sense.....i won't beat myself over ageless characters not fitting 100% with documented events 😭 (imo seonhee is 34 and tesso is 37 currently) nvm my guess for seonhee but tesso is surely 37

also, the two fics i wrote heavily tie to this (don't mind the last one). i won't say you need to read them to understand, but i recommend reading them (BC I COOKED!) it'll be linked when needed.

- wang tielin

not completely accurate because he shouldn't have his scars but i'm too lazy to re-do the texture from scratch... sorry tielin 💔

birth name is wang tielin

born in japan. lived in the countryside with his uncle for the longest he could remember.

vowed to his childhood friend to live on the straight and narrow no matter what (hahaha)

a promise to keep was to become rich and share with their family when they grow up.

went to school just because, but had no plans nor dreams in particular. never stirred trouble.

was always kinda bland, but made an effort to become and dress "cooler" after coming to kamurocho (look at the fit please 😭 it was definitely a phase). this is part of the stuff tesso left behind (including his real name). would've preferred no one he knows today met him during that time.

zhao tried time and time again to make tesso show him pictures of him when he was younger but tesso claims to have none. zhao even got seonhee on the task and was ready to put down a good chunk of cash to make it happen. unfortunately for him, tesso was a nobody that truly came out of nowhere according to the geomijul (seonhee just lied 🤩 sorry tianyou).

-> long before the liumang

he came from some city in the country side where nothing really happens. his aunt and uncle took care of him and sent went to school. he was expected to take on his uncle’s restaurant since he was helping out from time to time and that’s what his uncle wanted anyway. 

how can i put it… as long he found a way to feed himself and have a roof over his head, he didn’t have a goal to attain (like a goal career or whatever). he had no aspirations as in “i guess i’ll live” 😍 

though, he had a close friend called liwei. they spent most of their time at school and outside together doing whatever. unlike tesso, liwei had big dreams of finally making it out go the “boring” countryside and establishing himself in a big city, becoming the wealthiest person of his family to provide for his parents. he had a passion about going to especially kamurocho because it was the complete opposite of their current lives. tesso's response to liwei was mostly -> “i support you!” he kinda admired liwei for having determined ambition. 

-> a bit before the liumang 

though, liwei ended up getting killed because a hit was ordered by a bunch of strangers on seemingly the wrong person. not a lot of clues were left behind, but tesso was adamant about it being a mistake since the two of them always swore on being on the straight and narrow (ironically).

so, tesso decided to leave his hometown in the countryside to find out what happened, who killed liwei and how the mix-up happened in the first place.

it lead him to many big cities (like kamurocho) though he navigated a bit clumsily with his words (talking a bit too carelessly about “i’m looking for such such that killed such and such, not knowing the type of place he was getting into), tesso ends up getting jumped by the local chinese mafia at least twice 😭 the clues he finds leads him into yokohama and bro gets jumped again 😭

all to figure out the true culprit was guys from yokohama's chinatown and going up front to them was the worst idea ever. instead, he joins the liumang (at first for refuge as outsider chinese people were vulnerable to trouble between seiryu/liumang and liumang/chinatown). then, in hopes of giving another meaning to his life and eventually seek justice for liwei’s murder.

-> in the liumang 

won't go too much in detail here, but tesso ends up being recruited personally by zhao as a liumang officer through a fight - given the exploit of him being able to scratch his jacket with his claws (and zhao scratched his face across his nose and cheeks with his sabre 😍)

- sakura, the number one hostess

long ago in kamurocho, seonhee used to be an hostess called sakura. remnants of the jingweon mafia rejected by mainland and local koreans (that later formed the geomijul) survived  the best they could with low-level information dealing. they used cabaret clubs to get info out of the local population. 

moving left and right with her mother, it was lucrative enough for her to be able to fend for the two of them — even if it was temporary, she would be doing it until they’d be able to find some sort of stability. 

eventually, the cabaret club was disbanded due to more prominent gangs taking over kamurocho, basically forcing the geomijul out of the city (to later end up yokohama).

in the move, the geomijul was very unstable; most members falling into despair as they were forced out of of home one more time.

seonhee was one of the few people to step up to rally the remaining people together. if they were wavering in the faith of surviving their predicament, the geomijul wouldn't even survive. she did everything she could to make sure fellow members wouldn't walk astray and find them a new home.

being one of people that proposed lodging the geomijul between the seiryu clan and the liumang and reprise their information dealing activities. it was through her sheer determination and in the success of securing the geomijul in yokohama that seonhee was made leader (despite being that young and a woman) jumping over all the oldheads.

fun fact, after leaving the cabaret club, she vowed to herself to never do that type of work ever again.

- meeting for the first time in kamurocho

bro came dressed like that to the luxury club 😭 first timer spotted!! fresh meat here!!!!!!

one promise he made to himself was to realize one of liwei’s dreams, no matter how futile it was. so, he gathered most of his money and decided to light it up for one night in kamurocho in his honour. he ended up going to the first cabaret club he laid eyes on - the one owned by the geomijul.

given the way he was dressed (lol) and the fact he had never been in the city before, seonhee (the number one hostess at the time) was tasked of  tending his table. she usually handled the most "suspicious" customers. 

that's what she thought at first, but past their initial talk, she really did find out he was just young random dude trying out the cabaret clubs for the first time. 

“is it your first time here?” “yeah, there isn’t stuff like this where i live” and so on. funny enough, he turned the conversation back on her a lot so she could ramble about the city and the type of work she did (life in the countryside is boring and uneventful anyway). it caused her to indirectly talk about the geomijul — tesso couldn’t know, her words still applied to the cabaret club dynamic. “the streets are competitive so we are working hard to stay on top!” and how teamwork was the most important thing at the end of the day, etc.

they had a good time talking and tesso was glad to find out city girls were so friendly. he had the impression that he’d be eaten alive, but he was doing ok so far. 

he touched briefly on the real reason he visited kamurocho (thought to himself it would defeat the purpose to not mention it). though, seonhee was smart to not make him linger on the subject by proposing to toast in his honor. tesso agreed, he was there to celebrate and she had made the right call. 

[sorry for the lack of continuity here but i can't being myself to write more atm. will evetually expand that part into a fic.]

- meeting for the second time in yokohama

tesso was always one of the officers zhao relied on the most. for example, he was leading the men sent by zhao after nanba through the city.

so, after mabuchi's overturned coup-d'etat and seonhee taking over the liumang, zhao named tesso as the most reliable man under him and could definitely provide great support in mending the geomijul and liumang together - zhao assured seonhee she could rely on tesso to bridge the two factions.

seonhee was quick to recognize tesso right away, thinking hard about where she had seen such a familiar face before - and the options were very little. it didn't take long for her to realize that it was the same guy she met at the cabaret club years ago. she thought about playing it cool and pretending they never met before, "he probably forgot anyway" and it's not like she looks exactly the same as she did. but she couldn't really shake off the possibility of him remembering. still, she plays it off in front of zhao

for as long as tesso remembers, the geomijul was a very secretive organization and most liumang didn't even know who the boss was and what they looked like. so he rolled with the assumption of having never met them before. so, of course, when he officially met seonhee for the first time, he didn't recognize her. at least at first 😭

- the underworld post mabuchi

because of fusion of the underworld, there was a lot of re-structuring to (such as combining certain cashflows, identifying businesses to assign new leaders to look after them, etc.) it was challenging especially after mabuchi basically left the liumang in shambles and with a lot of defecting members.

tesso helped out sorting out the mess with seonhee personally; it was easier to go through everything with someone that new the ordeal from top to bottom (thanks to zhao). the little time they had was dedicated to fixing the whole organization. at that time, seonhee relegated a lot of leading responsibilities to joongi while tesso did the same with his subordinates.

that's all it was; hours in a corner of the geomijul (usually in the middle of the night) sorting through hundred of files.

at first, it was awkward. tesso had never seen who led the geomijul before and the reality was very far from this expectations. starting at the fact he didn't even thought the geomijul had a woman at its head because of the rumours running the liumang. a detail zhao never bothered bringing up before they met.

zhao's funky and malleable nature was replaced by something more rigid, stern at times but always stood on business. it was different, but tesso went along with it. her style was definitely gonna bring the liumang and geomijul back on its feet.

still, he spoke to her with the same clumsiness as he did with zhao. distant in his words, just like a subordinate should be to its leader. she didn't mind, especially when she did most of the talking anyway.

that's how their routine was at the start: meet, sort documents, leave — there wasn't anything else more to it.

but, something didn't feel quite right.

the more he heard her talk, the more he was sure to have met her before. the words she used, her tone... it felt so familiar. and he had plenty of time to think about it. there was no doubt, she definitely was that girl from the cabaret club...

he kept it to himself and vowed to pretend he's mistaken. the last thing he could do was to bring it up first and be wrong. he would continue to behave the same as he ever did. given their circumstances, he could assume she had left her old life behind as well.

though, irony seeped from his pores, it was stronger than him. the coincidence was a bit humorous; the two of them meeting again with different names and under these unlikely circumstances. he kept his stun under wraps - or at least tried to.

from lingering gazes when she wasn't looking to the way she held herself, tesso recalled the selfless woman he met long ago in kamurocho. despite the heavy facade she always wore, she played it off well, how, in the midst of her words, always passed others before herself.

even with her bolder style, and it's not like she changed much: she was still as beautiful as ever and had that unwavering aura fit of a born leader.

perhaps, he had made his realization too obvious.

ever since zhao presented tesso to seonhee, she knew they had met before. thus, sat quietly with the intent of pretending she was someone else. however, tesso's demeanour changed out of the blue. he seemed a bit more awkward and careful in his words.

though, seonhee resigned on pretending. "tesso? is that how you call yourself these days?" shortly followed with his real name. she asks, chuckling a bit. perhaps, he could've picked something more subtle. he did abandon his birth name for this alias he wasn't really sure whom give it to him. but it doesn't really matter. it just meant was a completely different man now.

it was a bit ironic; they are able to have to shy laugh about it, the ice is starting to melt between them.

- the bridge between the geomijul and yokohama liumang

overall, the union between the geomijul and liumang was welcome by its members. given the situation they both were in - one left without a leader and the other very vulnerable to outside threats. it was worth leaving residual animosity behind and cooperate for the sake of keeping yokohama safe.

so, antagonists to seonhee taking over after zhao were far and between - mainly geomijul oldheads (like seo hancheol 😍 rip bozo) and the few remaining mabuchi enjoyers (like zheng because yes in this timeline bro didn’t get banished out of yokohama).

so, not only did tesso assist seonhee in the merge of the two groups, but he kinda became for the liumang what joongi is for the geomijul: the first commander under the leader and first rep for the liumang. so, in case of trouble or any reference needed from geomijul members, they could ask him if needed. tesso is known to get along with younger folks (canon) so it helps a lot!

overall, the underworld is structured like this:

- factions subordinates (tesso and the geomijul)

yeona calls tesso liumang oppa 😭 she's the one that got tesso to read manga

i feel like yeona would get along well with these two LOL she can get info on joongi from tesso since they work on another level (joongi hides his cringy side from his subordinates). also, she tends to tease seonhee a bit about not being single anymore 😭 in a little sister-big sister type of way. bc like it's not like they ever announced anything, but yeona just picks up on vibes like that 😭 there's banter between seonhee and her, but it's in good faith!! there are so little women in the geomijul, so yeona made sure to stick with

"seonhee unnie, that's your boyfriend isn't it?" she didn't say that, but her eyes kinda did 😭 yeona always knows when something is up about her big sister. this whole exchange happened while tesso was reading his notes LOL 😭

well kinda... because now that seonhee is taken, han-sama (joongi) can stop worrying about seonhee's relationship status.

- advisor to advisor (tesso and joongi)

"Tha- That's not possible! She couldn't have a boyfriend! Some random man from who-knows-where!?" (direct canon quote istg 😭)

"some random man from who-knows-where" that's literally what tesso was to joongi for awhile. 

of course, he knew tesso was one of the closest subordinates of zhao. but he wanted to dig out his history as much as he could before even asking zhao about it. surprise came when he didn’t find much out of the geomijul surveillance system — there was no way to know for sure how nor when he got in the city. however, joongi was adamant about not asking seonhee about it just yet. 

sure, tesso and seonhee never announced they were together (for a very long time). but joongi picked up the smallest changes of seonhee's demeanour and her mannerisms. she tried her best to conceal it, but nothing went past his eye. and it was very clear to him... seonhee was indeed dating that random man.

at first, it was veiled concern but joongi believed seonhee could do better. he thought seonhee could aim for someone more or at least just as good looking than him (im sorry LOL but exhibit A) and someone as refined as her and not so… contradictory in looks and personality (tesso looks rough with a lot of distinctive features but is rather simple). so, first impression wise, it was off to a rocky start. 

despite being the two most important members of the geomijul and liumang, joongi and tesso didn’t really get along. tesso thought joongi was arrogant and preferred dealing with his subordinates instead (like yeona with whom he was able to work well with). 

“don’t mind han-sama. he’ll get over it eventually…” tesso still has no clue what she means by that

the impression of tesso and joongi not getting along wasn't setting a good example for the fellow geomijul and liumang members. while tesso was unsure about the whole thing, joongi struggled moving on for a bit. even seonhee wasn't sure of what was going on between the two.

it took yeona telling on joongi's business back to seonhee for her to set the record straight. no one knows for sure what she has said, but their short discussion was followed by a shy apology from joongi, blaming the geomijul's eternal lack of trust of others for his behaviour and vowed to be as reliable as ever. actually, that was a move from seonhee where she wouldn't let a reason so petty cloud joongi and tesso's relationship further. it was better if tesso didn't know (lol).......

in joongi's opinion, there was too many red flags or dubious points about tesso and couldn’t figure out where nor when they even met (as seonhee never mentioned him before). so, everything came to him as a surprise. 

deep down, the hurt joongi felt was because seonhee didn’t tell him about it first when they shared pretty much everything. he took it as a sign of being unworthy of her trust. understanding it didn’t come from malice, joongi slowly opened up to tesso - it was iffy at first, there was still moments when he was a bit rude despite him. it took time, but joongi trusted seonhee in her decision and agreed that tesso wasn’t so bad after all (“albeit a bit goofy and doesn’t have a presentation as neat as I do”). all that mattered at the end of the day was seonhee’s wellbeing and she seems happy. bro got over himself…

- relationship ladder

(i'm not gonna extend myself too much on this but) the particular thing about them is how the closer they got, the place to work on business changed as well.

this is the fish shop next to eomoni's vow 😭

it started at the corner of the geomijul but surely became eomoni's vow (which is just my first fic LOL) - right at the time when the city was as calm as ever and the liumang and geomijul were combined together. members were more comfortable walking the streets so the need to remain miles of tunnels under the surface wasn't as needed.

still, they usually met in the middle of the night to work on stuff, but just end up eating and drinking the hours away. they got in the habit of playing mahjong against each-other singing karaoke on rare occasion (amongst other things).

next location is qing jin.

omg bro with the three piece suit 😭

it's upgrade from eomoni's vow since the top floor has a dress code 😍 you have to be put together to get in there so dresses and dress shirts are a must.

tesso debated for awhile before inviting her. it was a bit of a bold move, but he knew qing jin would be more of her taste (more spacious, luxurious and an entire different palate) AND it was still very private.

tesso actually picked the artwork (see the tomato picture below) and the room divider is from lin lin

they went a few times, and that was then tesso told seonhee about zhao's apartment complex and eventually advanced the idea to share a spot there. won't go over the details again LOL but you get the idea 🤩

knowing she'd be coming, tesso leaves her sweets 🥹 he's usually more busy on foot (you know assassination quests 🤩), but will drop by before she does if he has other stuff to do for the day.

seonhee definitely spends more time there since she doesn't have to be out carrying missions out on the streets and enjoys the privacy. it's seemingly normal when compared to the gloominess of the geomijul and restaurant row.

- trip to kyoto

this is basically the fic i wrote last year - tesso and seonhee go on a trip to kyoto. (PLEASE READ IT I COOKED!!! 😭) the fic in a nutshell:

i am kidding of course

despite being a higher ranked officer with more responsibilities, he’s always stuck at the “uhhhh taking some time off like that kinda feels unfair” but was bullied convinced by zhao to take some anyway. yokohama had been peaceful for awhile now and his subordinates could run well without him around for a few days.

so take the bullet train to osaka only to come back three days and four nights later. notably, they visit the nonomiya shrine (the shrine of love woooooooohooooo, no it is actually!), tesso dedicates her a poem and they stay in a machiya.

funny enough, i managed to make 3d models pretty close to the original drawings (iykyk) so it's fun!

pretty!!!!!!!!! 😭

- miscellaneous

funny thing they do -> rock paper scissors and they talk to each-other the native tongue of whoever wins for a day. seonhee tends to win often; she's just built like that.

during yua's first year at seiryo, tesso and seonhee attended the parent-student meeting together in place of her uncle (yua's legal guardian at the time). to meet sawa-sensei (yes she lived).

negative trait

tesso : can be too passive | seonhee : lacks humility

positive trait 

tesso: dependable | seonhee: diligent 

strength against the other

tesso: resistant to dominatrix energy | seonhee: resistant to tianyou

their weakness coming from the other

tesso: her cute mannerisms | seonhee: him calling her a specific petname (b......ba......omg i can't [dies of cringe])

serious complaint about the other

tesso: sacrificing health for the sake of fashion | seonhee: sleeps too little

unserious complaint about the other 

tesso: lacks stamina | seonhee: grandpa mannerisms at 37

random quirk

tesso: can fall asleep anywhere | seonhee: rarely laughs from her the pit of her stomach

karaoke? 

seonhee: enjoys anything from koda kumi | tesso: either tone deaf or decent, nobody knows… won’t do anything more than adlibs

hobby they got because of the other

tesso: skincare | seonhee: gardening

seonhee enjoys growing tomatoes, amongst other things. on his part, tesso grows nappa cabbages somewhere on a rooftop in restaurant row (mostly for kimchi ofc).

hobby they don’t share

tesso: shopping | seonhee: running

hobby they tried together for the first time

dancing (thank you yagami)

seonhee is pissed bc yagami made them do something really hard as a tryout. it's not easy, but it's simple at least so they managed!

thing they do when sick

tesso: eats lemons like oranges | seonhee: drinks tea with every single aromatic she can find (ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, peppercorns, etc.)

last thing they fought about

seonhee being frustrated at tesso’s reluctance to take over the liumang, leading her to talk ill of zhao’s ways of leadership. though, seonhee is too proud to apologize first and they didn’t talk to each other for two weeks. even zhao and saeko picked up on the fact they were kinda avoiding each other. 

one thing they struggled with

(especially tesso at the start) treat each-other on equal footing. he was kinda confused at how to behave, whether to be or to not be subservient, like.....

not that it was his second nature, but that's what he used to for the longest time. so, he didn't mind at all.

seonhee was a bit frustrated at the need to spell it out, but it was better that way. at least, everything was clear between them from that point on.

for zhao's costume party [i'll write about this later? maybe?]

(actually seonhee convinced tesso but) they did matching costumes of leon kennedy and ada wong from RE.

TL;DR: i think there are moments when seonhee shares more of herself to someone on equal footing, moments where she's more vulnerable and has room to step away from her idolized self.

i think there are moments when tesso has to put himself first, moments when he must learn to not overextend himself at his own expense.

despite the unlikely circumstances and complicated conditions, i think they would be able to do that together. tesso and seonhee are polar opposites on so many things and i think they can learn a lot from each-other.

i'll make another post with all different outfits they had soon because the volume of models i made 😭

next headcanon post is either going to be ichitesso on dondoko island or yua.....idk yet........

and yes in my book miku was on dondoko island LOL

and before you ask, yes i smoke crack! thank you for coming to my ted talk!

[writing-intheundercroft]

When We're Older || Love

AO3 Link

Word Count: 8,176

Chapter Rating: Explicit (warning: smut, PIV sex, NSFW, MDNI)

A/N: Did a quick poll last week so I'm posting full chapters on tumblr now and will start updating old chapters! Big Theo chapter with some sweet Seb smut in the back half :) as always, thank you to my beta @happyaccidentsonly 🤍

October 1890

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Theo could have easily spent the beautiful autumn day with any of her new friends, but she chose to spend every Sunday afternoon with Professor Fig, tucked away in his office. She sat in a giant wingback chair, feet perched beneath her, as he graded essays at his desk. A gramophone in the corner of the room played music, and she had her transfiguration textbook open on her lap. The two worked in a comfortable silence, only stopping whenever Theo had a question or Professor Fig had a funny anecdote.

This afternoon was different; a question gnawed at Theo’s heart.

“Professor, do you know the Sallow twins?” Theo asked, tapping her fingers against the book.

Professor Fig tilted his head, still pouring over a roll of parchment. “The Sallows…ah, yes. Those twins in Slytherin.” He turned to her, pulling his reading glasses off his face. “I’ve heard you’ve become fast friends with the boy, Sebastian.”

Theo nodded, pulling her feet tighter underneath herself. “Yes, we’ve become very close since the start of term. Professor Weasley asked him to take me to Hogsmeade the day of the troll attack.”

“Good thing you had a skilled duelist on your side.” Fig tutted. “I’ve heard he’s a force to be reckoned with. Terrible troublemaker too. Poor Madame Scribner spends most of her evenings with him in detention.” he laughed. “He’s expressed interest in magical theory; I reckon the two of you will be fighting to be top of my class next year.”

Theo smiled. “Yes, I’m quite fond of him. But I was wondering if you ever met Anne, his sister.”

Fig sighed. “No, I haven’t. Poor thing–I heard that curse is still wreaking havoc on her.”

Theo picked at the edges of her book. “I meant to ask you; have you looked into her curse at all? Being the Magical Theory professor, I’m sure they must have consulted you on what’s ailing her.”

Fig nodded, setting down his quill. “I have reviewed her case from Nurse Blainey and the notes from St. Mungo’s, but goblin magic is quite complex, and far beyond any of our understanding. On top of that, her uncle is quite reluctant to have her undergo further testing and examination. The stress of it all wears down on her, and makes the pain worse.” He tilted his head. “I wonder how Anne is faring nowadays.”

“She’s alright.” Theo quipped. Professor Fig gave her an inquisitive look, and her cheeks reddened. “Sebastian invited me on his most recent trip home to Feldcroft,” she admitted. “I was able to meet her there.”

Fig gave her a sly grin. “Should I be worried that a young man invited you home to meet his sister?”

“Professor!” Theo gaped.

Fig held up his hands, laughing. “I only ask, I’ve heard Sebastian is considered quite handsome. I am clued in to all the gossip around the castle, you know. Quite a few young ladies have talked about how close the two of you are…” he trailed off.

“Ew, no!” Theo gagged. “Sebastian is like a brother to me; we’re friends, that’s all.”

Fig gave her a rather curious look. “Theo, I know I’m not your father–”

“Which is a good thing,” Theo reminded him. “You know more than he ever would care to know about me. Especially if you care to know about the boys in my life.”

Fig sighed, shaking his head. “I was going to say, I’m not your father, but if you ever feel like you need someone to talk to, especially about boys–”

“I’m going to stop you there,” Theo snorted, holding her hand up. “I’m fine . Won’t be needing any advice for a very, very long time.”

Fig chuckled. “Thank Merlin for that. I fear advice for teenage romance is outside of my skill set.” He folded his hands together, pursing his lips. “Anyways, you ask about his sister–I know he’s rather determined to figure out a cure for her.”

“He is,” Theo echoed. I’d like to help him, she wanted to say, but Professor Fig wouldn’t be pleased that she’d told Sebastian about her ancient magic. For some reason, Theo had trusted the brunette boy with her deepest secret–something about his warm brown eyes made her feel like he would understand.

“Magical theory teaches us that love is one of the strongest catalysts for magic,” Professor Fig explained. “It’s unexplainable, indescribable. But there have been cases where love itself has cured, protected, revived, of all things…what love can do will amaze you.”

“Just love?” Theo raised her eyebrows. “That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Professor Fig chuckled. He stood, walking over to his bookshelf. Fig tapped his fingers on the spines of several books, stopping at one with a red cover. Taking it off the shelf, he passed it over to Theo.

“ Mysteries of Emotion in Magical Theory ,” Theo read off the cover. She looked up at Professor Fig, who had his usual twinkle in his eye.

“Some light reading to prepare for next year,” he smiled down at her, patting her shoulder. “And I know you worry about your friend and his sister, I’m sure he’ll find a way. Love has a funny way of healing all wounds, don’t you think?”

May 1891

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Imelda asked, frowning down at Theo. The rest of the girls were standing at the base of the staircase a few feet away; Violet was impatiently tapping her wrist watch, glaring at the two of them.

Theo shook her head, curling her feet up underneath her on the couch. “I’m okay, I promise. You guys go have fun.” she urged her friend. The girls were going out to Hogsmeade to celebrate Grace’s birthday, but Theo didn’t feel up to celebrating. It had only been a week since her battle with Ranrok, and she knew she’d only ruin Grace’s fun with her moping.

“I can stay,” Imelda reminded her, her voice soft and very much unlike her. “We can study for our OWLs together.”

Theo snorted. “Imelda, you must think the situation is quite dire to offer studying on a Friday night.”

Imelda rolled her eyes. “I’m only worried about you, that’s all.”

“Go,” Theo waved her off. “I’ll be here when you all get back. Merlin knows I’ll have to help hold back Grace’s hair once you all return.”

Imelda gave her a cheeky grin, promising to bring back one of Sirona’s giant chocolate chip cookies for her. Theo watched her roommates depart up the spiral stairs, and once the common room doors shut, she breathed a sigh of relief.

It had been seven days of people primping and fussing over her–first, the professors, hovering over her to make sure she didn’t fall apart in the middle of the hallways. Then it was her peers, all clamoring to understand what exactly had happened underneath the school, and why the strange new fifth year had been there. Finally, it was the ministry, aurors speaking to her like a child, asking how Eleazar Fig had died, and what had happened to both Ranrok and Rookwood.

Frankly, it was all exhausting. She was thankful that Weasley and Ronen had collected her classwork for the week, and that Ominis had done a good enough job of fighting off the peanut gallery, all having their own opinions on the newly dubbed “Hero of Hogwarts”.

Once she was sure the coast was clear, Theo got up, leaving the dorms. She cast a disillusionment charm, walking to the only place in the school that gave her comfort.

She tiptoed from the dungeons to the defense against the dark arts wing, all the way up to the third floor. Without a sound, she slipped into Professor Fig’s classroom and up to his office. Theo fell into her chair in the corner of the room, waving her wand at the gramophone to start playing Fig’s favorite song. She imagined it was the start of the school year again, and they were sitting in his classroom grading papers. In her mind, Professor Fig was alive, sitting at his desk waiting for her to ask him a question.

“Theo?”

She whipped her head to the door, about to yell at the intruder, but her face softened when she saw Sebastian poking his head in. His hair was messy, a cowlick poking up at the back. He too was in his pajamas; lately it seemed that he rarely left his bed or the Undercroft, unless it was for class or dinner. Things had been tense between him and Ominis, and she herself had hardly spoken to him after Fig’s memorial service. She’d wanted to give him time to process the news about Rookwood cursing Anne, but Sebastian had kept to himself for weeks.

“Hi,” she greeted him; it came out as a croak. “What are you doing here?”

Sebastian shut the door behind him, padding over to her in his felt slippers. “I came to see if you were okay,” he murmured. “I overheard Ominis talking with Imelda; they said you’d skipped dinner, and that you weren’t going out with the girls tonight.”

Theo shook her head. “No, I didn’t feel like it.”

Sebastian knelt down in front of her. “I grabbed you a pasty from the kitchen.” he said, pulling out a napkin from his robe pocket. “I figured you might be hungry.”

“How did you know I’d be in here?” Theo asked, her voice shaky.

Sebastian shrugged. “You loved Professor Fig.” His brown eyes met hers. Theo had seen so many things in them over the past few months–anger, envy, despair. And in the month since Solomon’s death and Anne’s departure, she’d seen regret, sadness, and longing. But tonight, as Sebastian looked up at her, she only saw fondness. Only Sebastian would trek all the way to the kitchens to bring her dinner; only Sebastian would know she’d be hiding in Professor Fig’s office.

Lower lip trembling, Theo tumbled from the chair and into Sebastian’s arms. The pasty fell to the floor as Sebastian wrapped his arms around her in an embrace, tucking her into his body.

“I really, really miss him,” Theo’s voice cracked as she buried his face into his shoulder. He smelled warm, like cedar cologne and vanilla cauldron cakes he’d probably nicked from the kitchen.

“I know,” he murmured against her hair as she sobbed. “I know.” He rocked her back and forth, letting her cry against him. Theo’s fingers curled into the collar of his pajama shirt, pulling him close.

Sebastian was the only person who could understand her, Theo thought. True kindred spirits.

September 1891

“You can’t go back from this,” Percival warned her. “Not unless you find another vessel, and given the current state of your relationship with goblinkind, I doubt you’ll find someone to make a repository nearly as strong. It could kill you.”

Theo stood in the map chamber, her hands clasped behind her back as she spoke to the Keepers. All four stood at their portraits, staring down at her in awe as she explained herself.

“I know,” Theo said sternly. “But this power…it’s a mistake to keep it underneath the school. I can feel it at all times, it’s too strong. Someone will always try to take it for themselves, so I want it to die with me.”

“You’re not just doing it for that reason,” San Bakar glared at her. “Your emotions blind you. You think that you’re being noble, but you’re doing it for what you think is love.”

It was love , Theo thought to herself. She’d spent all summer pouring over the book that Professor Fig had gifted her. She’d done even more research, combing through every magical theory textbook she could get her hands on. Theo had done the work, exhausted all options, and she knew she had to open the repository. Besides her main reasoning (she truly did believe it was too dangerous to keep a shoddily patched together repository underneath the castle where all of Britain’s young wizarding talent lived), she had another motivation.

She loved Sebastian. The bond they’d created over the last year was stronger than any friendship she’d ever had in her short life. And by extension, she had to love Anne. She knew Anne felt indifferent towards her, perhaps hated her. But the twins were two halves of a whole, and if Anne died, Sebastian would never be the same.

Only Rookwood and Niamh looked at her with any sort of sympathy.

“Perhaps the girl is right, Percival. It is too dangerous to keep it below Hogwarts.” Rookwood advised. “If history has taught us anything, unbridled power in the wrong hands will be the downfall of wizardkind.”

“She’s a child!” Bakar argued. “Duped by puppy love!”

“It isn’t like that,” Theo said simply. “I know it. I know it in my heart.”

“You believe your love is strong enough to protect you from the effects of this magic, but there’s no way to prove it.” Niamh said softly. “You understand that, don’t you, Theodora?”

Theo nodded. “I do.” she rocked back and forth on her feet. “And I’m willing to accept the consequences.”

Niamh looked at her curiously. “You understand that pain needs to go somewhere. It cannot be contained, at least not safely, as you’ve witnessed. And you’re willing to accept the pain of others out of love?”

“I love this school,” Theo confessed. “I love my friends. I love magic. I love what this strange power has given me. And if it means I live with Isidora’s mistakes in me forever, then so be it.”

“Nor shadow without light,” Niamh reminded her.

“Nor shadow without light.” Theo repeated.

“You do this at your own risk,” Rackham warned her again. “We cannot help you past this.”

Theo smiled up at the Keepers as she descended down the stairs. “See you on the other side,” she declared, walking into the cavern.

When she returned, eyes glowing red, the portraits of the four Keepers were empty. With the magic of the repository surging through her, Theo was beyond their understanding. It seemed they had nothing left to teach her. Perhaps they’d appear again, Theo thought. When another like her came around.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t be a cautionary tale they told the next one.

The next task at hand was a little harder, trying to work without her two best friends realizing her motivations. Sebastian had a tedious but regular schedule, and any time he wasn’t at work he was either by her side or face down on his bed. Theo would’ve thought Ominis would be easier to dupe, but despite his blindness, had a keen awareness of his surroundings.

She had spent two weeks sneaking into the boys’ dormitory daily, rifling through Ominis’s desk for any hint of Anne. She’d almost given up, until she found a scrap of paper hidden under a pile of books.

Keenbridge. Half past noon, Saturday

The script was suspiciously close to Sebastian’s, but slightly neater. It had to be Anne.

That Saturday, Theo followed Ominis from her broom, flying a fair distance above the blond as he traveled to Keenbridge. She watched as he waited, and felt a lump in her throat as she saw Anne Sallow approach him in the hamlet square. Landing her broom to get a closer look, Theo had to hold in her gasp. Anne’s eyes were sullen, big purple dark circles dominating her tired face. She looked thin and frail, as if a hard gust of wind would knock her down. Theo observed the two of them, sitting down to lunch at the hamlet’s pub; Ominis looked worried the entire time as Anne dismissed him. She’d hardly touched her food, only nibbling at bread dipped in soup.

Ominis stayed with her for hours, until Anne assured him she was okay. Once the blond disappeared into the floo flames, Theo reversed her disillusionment charm, making Anne jump.

“Don’t run,” Theo pleaded.

“What are you doing here?” Anne barked. “Did you follow Ominis?”

“I did,” Theo said simply, folding her hands in front of her. “I needed to find you. I know how to help you now. Will you let me?”

Anne looked conflicted at first–but with Theo’s urging, hours of explanation, and a promise that Sebastian wouldn’t know, she let her try out her newly acquired powers.

August 1892

Theo sat in bed, her now tattered copy of Mysteries of Emotion in Magical Theory sitting on her lap.

“Get dressed,” Sebastian urged, walking past the bed for the fifth time. He was wearing trousers, flicking through the wardrobe to find a clean shirt.

“What’s the point, you’re just going to take them off me in an hour anyways,” Theo sighed, flipping the page. The clothes she’d been wearing that morning were strewn around the bedroom.

Sebastian was blushing, but he tried to give her a stern look. “Ominis will be here any moment, and you’re laying in bed naked.”

Theo pouted, and Sebastian walked over to the bed, sitting on the edge. The mattress dipped beneath his weight. “What’s wrong?” he murmured, putting a hand on her waist.

“I just wish we had more time, just the two of us,” Theo whispered. It was Friday, and Theo was due to depart on Tuesday morning. Her stay in Feldcroft so far had been pure bliss, despite the hiccup in having to explain her surge in power to Sebastian. Besides that, the couple had been playing house–fixing up the garden, tending to repairs, reading in bed next to each other until they inevitably began kissing. Theo relished the feeling of sleeping naked next to Sebastian, pretending it was their everyday life. In a few weeks, they’d be back at Hogwarts, where it was impossible to find privacy. And after experiencing the joy of making love, Theo wasn’t sure how she’d survive the year without doing it constantly.

Sebastian gave her an earnest look, his hand trailing from her waist up to cup her breast. Theo bit down as he ran his thumb over her nipple, squeezing her with the palm of his hand. He suddenly withdrew, getting up from the bed. “Get dressed,” he warned her.

Theo narrowed her eyes at him when he tossed her trousers and shirt onto the bed. “Tease,” she grumbled.

“You love me,” Sebastian said coyly.

“Unfortunately, I do.” Theo sighed, rolling out of bed. Despite her grumbling, she couldn’t hide the smile on her face. Things really had turned out for the best, she thought to herself. Theo had worried that expanding their relationship past friendship would change things, affect how she controlled her magic. Much to her surprise, loving him romantically had just expanded her heart, and she’d never felt more in control than ever.

Besides the slip of her power in the bedroom, of course–but Sebastian hadn’t said anything else, and they’d done it plenty of times since.

The two of them started on their chores for the day. Sebastian had been trying to teach Theo how to cook, so Theo worked on the massive pile of burnt dishes in the sink. Sebastian stripped the sheets, hanging the freshly washed ones out on the line to dry. They then moved outdoors, working on bringing Anne’s little garden back to life. They’d just finished replanting a few of the rose bushes, when a loud pop cracked in the air.

“Oops,” Ominis gasped, falling backwards onto the fledgling bushes. “Sorry, I'm still getting used to this.”

“Ominis,” Sebastian roared. “The bloody roses!”

Theo grasped Ominis’s forearm, pulling him up. “Ominis,” she sang, her greeting much kinder. She pulled their best friend into a tight embrace, while Sebastian fussed over the plants.

“I’m sorry,” Ominis laughed. “I’m rubbish at apparition. Barely passed the exam.”

“I don’t know how they could give a blind man a license to apparate,” Sebastian rolled his eyes, throwing an arm around him. “You could’ve used the floo, you know. Would’ve saved me a few sickles on the new plants.”

Ominis rolled his milky blue eyes. “I’ll pay you back, don’t be so stingy.” He wrinkled his nose. “Can we go indoors, or have you two not cleaned out your little love nest? Is it even safe to share a roof with you two?”

Sebastian shoved Ominis back into the plants as the blind boy snickered.

The trio went inside; Theo and Sebastian had pieced together a birthday dinner for Ominis, who politely ate their attempt at a meal. He unboxed their presents to him (muggle books in braille from Theo, and a fresh batch of his favorite dictation quills from Sebastian) and the three tucked into a birthday cake made by Sirona, paired with a bottle of scotch. Ominis endured their pokes about his summer correspondence with Poppy, while he told them all about his sister’s wedding and the many mothers who’d tried to push their daughters onto him. Sebastian roared with laughter at Ominis’s painful description of an afternoon tea with Constance Dagworth that had ended with him being splattered in clotted cream.

The night wore on, with the three of them draining the bottle; Theo yawned as the boys talked on and on.

“Here’s to us, finally adults,” Ominis announced, raising his glass. “And next summer, we’ll be off in the world doing Merlin knows what–but for one last summer, I’d like to remember us as we are.”

“Broke, eating off chipped plates?” Sebastian joked. He slung his arm around Theo, drawing her close. She could smell his cedary cologne, mixed with sweat from the summer heat.

“Together,” Ominis corrected him. “Together, the three of us.”

Theo looked at her two favorite boys, her chest feeling heavy. It wasn’t pain, or anger that caused the pang in her heart as she watched Sebastian and Ominis teasing one another, or a physical malady. It was love–pure, unbridled love for the two people who understood her best. Her eyes felt droopy, and before long, she fell asleep against Sebastian’s shoulder.

The next time Theo opened her eyes, she was laid in the bed. Sebastian must’ve carried her, undressing her and tucking her under the thin sheets. The moonlight shined into the makeshift bedroom, and she would’ve sat up, had it not been for the voices behind the curtain, echoing in from the kitchen.

“I don’t know what it means,” Sebastian said. His voice sounded shaky, uncertain, and wholly unlike him.

“She said she went back?” Ominis asked, his voice quiet and concerned. “She…she broke the repository?”

Theo laid in the bed, eyes pressed shut as she listened to them talk.

“It explains so much. Her eyes…remember when she battered up Astoria Crickett? It was an accident, that’s certain, but she couldn’t control it. And when I found her in the vivarium that day, her magic was flickering red, like I’d never seen before.” Sebastian rambled. “There have been a few other occasions…like her birthday party, when she was yelling at me. I thought her eyes were red from the alcohol, but it must have been the magic.”

“I mean, she seems okay, Sebastian. She must have some control over it–she absorbed everything Ranrok and Rookwood were after, and she’s still here.”

“You didn’t see it,” Sebastian claimed. “Her eyes, before she fell asleep–they were red like fire, Ominis.”

Theo shifted uncomfortably. She hadn’t realized the surge of emotions had flashed in her eyes. She thought she’d gotten rather good at concealing it after all of her research, but she had been feeling so much that week. The first night with Sebastian, sharing a home with him, getting to spend time with Ominis–it had all made her so happy, her heart felt as if it were about to burst.

“We have to trust her, Sebastian.” Ominis muttered. “We don’t know ancient magic like she does. She’s the only one–we need to have faith in her, that she did the right thing.”

Sebastian hesitated. “I don’t know, Ominis. I don’t know if I can.”

Theo flipped over, facing the wall as she tried to tune them out. There was a lump in her throat as she thought of Sebastian’s voice, and the uncertainty behind it.

When she woke the next morning, Sebastian was sleeping next to her, as if the conversation in the kitchen had never happened.

“What do you want to do today?” Sebastian asked, stroking her hair. It was raining, limiting them to indoor activities. Sebastian certainly wasn’t complaining, and neither was Theo; the two of them were still in bed, well past noon.

Ominis had left the evening prior, hesitantly admitting he was off to visit Anne before the summer ended. Theo hadn’t missed the way Sebastian’s eye twitched, or that he’d needed to take a lengthy walk alone afterwards. He’d been quiet after dinner, the two of them falling asleep while reading their books next to each other in bed.

“Lay in bed with you forever,” Theo announced, pressing her cheek against his bare chest. “I can’t believe the week is over,” she grumbled.

Sebastian wrapped his arms tighter around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. They laid together in silence for a few more moments, until he cleared his throat.

“I was thinking,” he hummed. “About what you’d said. About your magic.”

Theo turned her head, propping her chin up on his chest. “What about it?” she asked softly.

Sebastian wasn’t looking at her; he stared ahead, blankly at the wall. “I was thinking about something I’d read in the restricted section a while back. Substitutes for goblin metal, or spells that could imbibe enough power into regular silver. It wouldn’t make it nearly as powerful, but I don’t think it could hurt to look into it again.”

“What for?” Theo bit down on her lower lip, knowing in her heart where Sebastian was going.

“For the magic,” Sebastian huffed. “We need to figure out how to get it out of you.”

“Sebastian, stop.” Theo sat up, gently resting a hand on Sebastian’s chest. “Stop.”

“I know you and Ominis made me promise not to look into the dark arts again,” Sebastian trailed off, ignoring her, “But I distinctly remember a spell in Secrets of the Darkest Arts talking about transferring protective properties–”

“Sebastian,” Theo gasped. “Absolutely not.”

He finally looked at her in the eyes, a frown set deeply upon his face. “Theo, you could be in danger. You don’t know what prolonged exposure to that magic could do to you–”

“I’m not asking you to help me,” Theo huffed. “I made a decision, I did something, that’s the end of it. I’m fine, Sebastian. I wouldn’t be sitting here with you if I wasn’t, would I?”

Sebastian rose, sliding off the bed to pace back and forth. “Theo, I’m the one who put it in your head to learn Isidora’s magic, but I didn’t ask you to absorb it,” he ranted. “It’s my fault. You did this, and now I have to help you fix it.”

Theo pulled her knees to her chest, her cotton nightgown catching against her knees. “Seb, I’m not asking you to fix me.” she said firmly. “Leave it alone.”

“No!” he bellowed. “Why don’t you understand?” he stood in place, his hands pressed into tight fists. “I can’t let you!”

“Let me?” She scoffed. “Who says you have any control over me?” Theo felt anger bubbling in her throat. “You don’t have a say in this, Seb. Guess I understand how Anne felt, after all.” she snarled. The second the words tumbled out of her mouth, she regretted them. Her hands flew up to her lips, covering them.

Sebastian stared at her, mouth agape. “That was cruel, Theo.” he said sharply. “That wasn’t you. How would Professor Fig feel if he knew what you’ve done?”

“You don’t get to talk about him like that,” Theo scowled, sliding off the bed to face him. “You don’t know him.”

“And you don’t get to use Anne against me,” Sebastian snapped, his freckled face twisted in anger. “You don’t know her either.”

He was wrong, Theo thought, clenching her jaw. She knew Anne–she knew a side of Anne Sebastian would never get to know. Theo had spent nearly the past year meeting with Anne monthly, healing her as much as she could. Theo was absorbing her physical pain in short spurts, now a human receptacle for Isidora Morganach’s power, and the only thing protecting her from harm was love.

A love, that at that very moment, was being put through its first test.

“Sebastian,” Theo’s voice faltered. “I don’t want to fight with you. I love you.”

Sebastian’s eyes were glistening; he fell to his knees in front of her, pressing his face against her stomach. “Theo, I’ve already lost everything else I love in this world. I can’t lose you too.” he whimpered. “Please, let me help you.”

Theo looked down at him, stroking his hair. She didn’t need his help–she didn’t want it. But she also couldn’t bear the sadness in his eyes, or the way his lips were trembling.

“Okay,” she said softly. “But no dark magic.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she gave him a stern look.

“Professor Fig had some ideas,” Theo lied. “About how Magical Theory could help me with my ancient magic. Perhaps we can start there.”

Sebastian pursed his lips; she could almost sense the wheels turning in his mind. He had always been interested in magical theory, and she remembered how Professor Fig had called Sebastian a force to be reckoned with. He’d been determined to help Anne, and Theo knew he’d stop at nothing to aid her.

“No dark magic,” He echoed. “Fine.”

Theo leaned down, pressing her trembling lips against his. She feared Sebastian’s one track mind was already casting off his other responsibilities, focusing only on her. How could she possibly explain that the solution was just love? There was no logic, no firm study to explain what was going on inside of Theo, and Sebastian had already fallen down the slippery slope once before.

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian sighed, pressing a kiss to her stomach. He looked up at her, his sweet brown eyes filled with regret. “Can we go back to bed?”

It was their last day together before term started, and Theo didn’t want to waste it pondering how she could throw Sebastian off from his new quest. So, she tugged him up to his feet, tangling her hands in his hair.

“Let’s go back to bed.”

September 1898

“You blithering idiots,” Theo rolled her eyes, putting her hands on her hips.

They were back in Ominis and Sebastian’s shared flat; both men sat on the small loveseat. Sebastian was holding a wet rag to the scrape on his arm, while Ominis sipped on a wiggenweld. The two looked disheveled, shirts and waistcoats torn after wrestling one another in the front drive of Caulfield Manor. Leander and the Hobhouses departed quickly once the boys hit the ground, and Theo had riskily apparated the pair back to the flat once she’d ensured no muggles were around to see them disappear. Upon their return, she’d forced the boys into the couch, pulling out the singular wiggenweld vial she kept stowed on her. It was her day off; she hadn’t been expecting to need more than one healing potion on hand.

“You didn’t have to punch me,” Sebastian grumbled, pressing the rag down harder.

“I had to make it look convincing,” Ominis argued. His lip had been split, but the wiggenweld was working its magic to thread his skin back together. “How did you not know?”

“How did you not mention it once I got home?” Sebastian barked. “I maybe would’ve opened with, ‘good to see you, hope you don’t mind I’m pretending to have cuckolded you to all of society’?” he said sarcastically.

“First of all, she’s not your wife yet,” Ominis pointed out. “So technically, even if I did start courting her, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Can you two stop arguing?” Theo pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sebastian, we both wrote you letters, telling you all about the plan. You didn’t receive either of them?”

“I didn’t, I swear!” Sebastian yelped, wrinkling his nose. “Can someone pass me a wiggenweld already?”

“They’re still brewing,” Theo said impatiently, glancing over to the kitchen. “You never miss our letters, I don’t know what happened.”

Sebastian opened his mouth to argue, then shut it quickly. She could see the blush rising on his cheeks as he adjusted his jaw. Even after being apart for three years, Theo knew exactly when Sebastian was deep in thought, the cogs turning in his head.

“What?” she demanded. “What is it?”

“Er, there was a week we didn’t get any letters in July.” Sebastian said sheepishly. “A manticore destroyed the postal carriage.”

“We wrote to you in July,” Ominis groaned. “After my birthday and Leander’s engagement party.”

“Oh.” Sebastian quipped. “Guess that makes sense then.”

The trio stared at each other for a full minute, taking in the full situation. It was Ominis who broke the silence first, a groan turning into a chuckle. Theo began giggling, and then Sebastian doubled over with laughter. Before long, the three were clutching their stomachs, tears at their eyes.

“You tackled me,” Ominis laughed. “You arse.”

“You suckerpunched me!” Sebastian cackled. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Merlin, you should’ve seen the look on Duncan’s face.” Theo gasped, holding a hand to her waist to steady herself. “Leander couldn’t have gotten them out of there fast enough.”

Ominis winced, kicking off his shoes. “I swear there’s gravel in my shoes.” The blond fell back against the settee, a smile plastered on his face. “Should I cancel the dinner, then?”

“Dinner?” Sebastian perked up, wincing as he clutched the rag to his scrape.

“I planned a welcome dinner,” Ominis explained. “Invited all our friends to greet you now that you’re back. Thought it would be nice after you saw Theo to see everyone else.”

Theo felt a lump in her throat as she looked at her boys; they were together again, and her heart felt as if it was going to explode. She turned around, eyes shut tightly with a hand over her chest, to calm herself.

Home. Sebastian was home. And Ominis, the sweetest boy she’d ever known, had tried to surprise them by getting their friends all together again. She kept her eyes shut, running her fingers over the silver chain around her neck to bring her back to earth.

“I think the wiggenweld should be done,” Theo said, opening her eyes once she’d calmed down. Striding over to the kitchen, she scooped some of the green liquid into a vial. Her fingers trembled as she carried it back into the living room, handing it to Sebastian. Their fingers touched as she passed it, his eyes flitting up to meet hers at the exchange.

“I’ll reschedule,” Ominis said, standing from the settee. “I think you two need some proper time to…catch up.” he smirked.

“Thanks Om,” Sebastian said breathlessly. He too stood, setting the vial down on the side table. “I feel much better now.” his voice was soft, hand trailing down to touch Theo’s. She bit down on her lip when his long fingers tangled with hers. Just feeling him, his skin on hers after three years apart, was enough to drive her mad.

“You two behave,” Ominis yelled lazily. “I’ll be going out in a bit–I certainly hope you won’t be here when I get back.”

Once Ominis’s bedroom door had shut, Theo’s head snapped up to Sebastian. He grinned down at her; even after all the time that had passed, he still had a boyish grin.

“Show me your house?” Sebastian said shyly. “I…I saw your dressing room, but I’d like to see the whole place.”

Theo wasted no time grabbing his hand, tugging him towards the gilded mirror that held a passageway to her dressing room. She could hear Sebastian chuckling, but she knew he was just as eager to follow her. They passed through the liquid glass, stumbling into Theo’s messy dressing room.

“If I had known you were coming home, I would’ve cleaned.” Theo admitted, leaning against her dressing table.

Sebastian leaned against one of her wardrobes, feeling a gown between his fingertips. “But it wouldn’t be you,” he smiled. “This…the messy dressing room, boots on the floor, it’s you. Just like I remember you.” He walked towards her, closing the distance between them. Theo felt her chest rise up and down as she looked up at her Sebastian, whose gaze was fixed on her neck.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked quietly.

Theo nodded, pulling the chain out from underneath her chemise. The chain fell against the fabric of her dress, a ring falling against her bodice. Sebastian quickly pulled it into his fingers, examining it–a thick gold band with an emerald center, diamonds clustered around it.

“I’ve worn it every day,” Theo confessed. “Every day since you left.”

Sebastian let out a guttural groan, leaning forward to press his lips against hers. Theo threw her arms around his neck, pulling him in tight. She whimpered into his lips as he pulled the pins out of her hair, letting it fall loose.

“I missed you so damn much,” Sebastian gasped against her mouth.

“Show me,” Theo demanded.

The pair bounced off the dressing table (likely knocking over quite a few of her jewelry boxes, but that was fine) and knocked into the changing screen. Sebastian laughed against her mouth as it fell to the floor.

“You’re going to destroy my dressing room,” Theo complained, her mouth falling open as Sebastian pressed hot kisses against the column of her throat.

“I’ll destroy this whole damn house,” Sebastian growled. “To get you naked.”

She grinned, tangling her hands in his hair as she kissed him. Sebastian was trying his best to tug her blue blouse out of her skirts, eventually resorting to ripping it. She shivered, thinking about how strong he’d become.

“This is a new dress,” she gasped against his mouth.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he huffed. “I can do that now.” His eyes darkened, and his hands tore at the buttons fastening her skirt. The pretty thin fabric tore easily in his hands, falling to the floor. Sebastian started to work on the laces of her corset, his lips sucking marks into her neck.

Two could play at that game, Theo thought. She ripped the buttons of his waistcoat, and tugged his dirt stained shirt. She could feel the hard planes of his chest beneath the fabric; he’d always been solid, but Sebastian had become chiseled during his years away from London. Theo stripped the shirt from his body, eyes raking over his freckled chest and tanned defined abs.

“I…I’m not going to be gentle,” Sebastian warned, his voice strained as he finally finished unlacing her corset. It fell to the side, and he gripped her breast, shutting his eyes as he felt the weight of her in his palm. “It’s been too long.”

Theo cupped his straining arousal through his trousers. “I know,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to his chest. “We have the rest of our lives to be gentle, don’t we?”

“Fuck, Theo,” Sebastian rasped. He pulled her up, tugging her over to the chaise. She bounced as she landed, laughing as Sebastian tore through her petticoats. The laugh turned into a gasp as two fingers slid into her core without warning.

“So wet already,” Sebastian grinned down at her, his brunette hair falling against his forehead. He shifted himself up, tugging his trousers down past his hips. Theo couldn’t stop staring at him as he stroked his length, preparing himself. “Are you ready for me?”

As if it were natural instinct, Theo’s legs opened for him, her hands pulling the remnants of her petticoats out of the way for him. He leaned into her, pressing the weeping tip against her core. Despite the heat of the moment, Sebastian hesitated, sweet brown eyes staring into hers for permission.

“Have been, for the past three years,” she sighed.

Sebastian moaned as he pressed into her; there was no softness, just urgency as he buried himself in her. Theo let out a cry, wrapping her legs around his waist as he started rutting into her. It had been so long since their last encounter, the last time they’d made love–but Sebastian felt perfect inside her. Nothing had changed; he still felt just as good, just as full as she’d remembered.

“I missed you so much,” Sebastian grunted, forehead pressed against her breasts. “I missed you, I missed fucking you, I missed all of you.” Theo’s head fell back against the chaise as he pressed his lips against her nipple, biting softly as he drove himself into her. Without a second thought, she pushed him upwards. Sebastian knew her better than anyone, and exactly what she’d wanted. He fell back against the cushions, letting Theo crawl onto his lap. The look on his face as she sank onto his length was rewarding.

“Tell me you thought of me,” Theo gasped, hands raking up and down his chest as she ground her hips against him. “How often?”

“Every damn day,” Sebastian groaned, gripping her hips. “I never stopped.”

“You love me,” Theo reminded him, her hand trailing up to his throat. She pressed lightly, picking up speed.

“I do love you. I’ve loved you for so long,” Sebastian gritted his teeth, eyes shut as he relished the feeling of her.

“I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” Theo moaned. One of Sebastian’s hands went from her hips to her hair, tugging it lightly. “You’re mine. Mine, mine, mine .” She fell against his chest, pressing kisses against his face as she claimed him.

Sebastian rolled them over, pressing Theo back into the chaise. His beautiful brown eyes stared into hers as his thrusts started to stutter.

“I’m yours,” he whimpered. “Always have been, always will.” He pressed his forehead against hers, letting out a breathy laugh. “I’m going to–gods, I’m so close–”

“Wait, you can’t,” Theo gasped. “I’m not…I don’t have any potions…”

“Should I stop?” Sebastian hesitated.

“Don’t stop,” Theo bit her lip. “Finish wherever.”

“Are–are you sure?” Sebastian choked.

“I want you to,” Theo smiled up at him. She let out a gasp when he suddenly pulled out, and again when she felt his warm release against her stomach. Sebastian collapsed against her, not caring about the mess, and pressed kisses against her jaw.

“M’sorry.” he groaned. “Got carried away.”

“This is why you should’ve told me you were coming home,” Theo tugged on his hair, forcing him to look up at her. No matter how old they got, Sebastian still had the same boyish grin he’d had since their years at Hogwarts. “I would’ve been prepared.”

“I knew I should've told you,” Sebastian propped himself up. “I should’ve known I would bungle it.” His hands flew up to the chain around her neck, fingering the little golden ring at the end. “I can’t wait for you to wear this,” he said softly. “For real, this time.”

“You’ll have to ask again,” Theo grinned. “I quite enjoy it when you do.”

“Third time's the charm, I suppose.” Sebastian bit down on his lip as he let go of the ring, his hands trailing back down her body. They disappeared underneath her torn petticoats, and Theo shuddered when he pressed against her core.

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

He tilted his head at her, smiling devilishly. “You didn’t finish,” he said. “I remember your body, Theodora Caulfield. I remember everything about you.” Sebastian’s voice became a hushed whisper as he tugged her body, lowering his face to press kisses against her knee. “I remember you.”

Theo smiled, letting her arms fall above her head as Sebastian dove in between her thighs.

“We should go to the bedroom,” Theo said softly.

She and Sebastian had spent hours in her dressing room, making a proper mess. Her changing screen was still on the ground, the contents of her desk and dressing table strewn across the floor. One of the wardrobes was flung open, clothes spilling out. Both Theo and Sebastian were completely naked, what little remained of their clothing left in shreds on the floor. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon, well into evening properly reacquainting one another with their bodies, and destroying Theo’s dressing room while they were at it.

“Just a few more moments,” Sebastian whispered into her hair, tugging her in tighter. “What a way to welcome me home.”

“Probably a good thing Om canceled dinner,” Theo chuckled as she ran her fingers up and down his back. “We would’ve been a mess.”

“Y’know, besides the whole pretending to court my woman thing, Ominis is the most loyal friend I’ve ever had.” Sebastian claimed.

“Not me?” Theo pouted.

Sebastian propped his chin up on her chest. “You and I haven’t been just friends in a very, very long time.” He jested, his hand tracing a line down her stomach. “First thing tomorrow, I’m taking you to buy a new dress. Secondly, we’re going to the potions shop. Or maybe we should reverse that order…”

She snorted. “Seb, you don’t have to, I have plenty of clothes.”

He sat up; the lower half of his body had been haphazardly covered with one of Theo’s cloaks, ripped from the closet to be a makeshift blanket. “I’m serious, Theo.” Sebastian cooed. “I can take care of you now. Come on, let’s get to bed.”

Theo swallowed thickly as Sebastian stood, gently helping her up. She felt woozy on her feet, so he supported her into the bathroom. Wands long discarded, somewhere in the mess of her dressing room, Sebastian drew them a bath. Even though he’d never been in her house before, he somehow knew where she kept everything–the lavender bath salts, which reminded her of the night they first kissed in the prefect’s pool, and the clip to keep up her hair, which she always left on the floor next to the tub. They slid into the tub together, her back pressed to his, and finally caught up on everything they should’ve talked about.

Theo brought up how Imelda, Natty, and Poppy were the only ones to know about the ruse between her and Ominis, and how Anne was annoyed by it. She talked about how she’d bet ten galleons with Garreth Weasley to see if she could convince Leander to grow out a mustache, and had been successful. Theo told him as much as she could about her work without breaking the rules (which was hardly anything at all) and about how her assistant had most certainly read some of Sebastian’s more scandalous letters.

Sebastian told her all about Cairo, and how Eddy the goblin had somehow become his best friend. He talked about his little studio apartment at the top of the stairs, and how he nicked all of the copies of Witch Weekly from the sitting room, just to see if Theo’s picture was in them. He pressed a kiss to her head when he told her that the photo she’d sent him, the one with a flower in her hair, was folded up in his wallet at that moment.

It was like they’d slipped back into their routine, their nightly regimen to prepare for bed from before Sebastian’s departure years earlier. Sebastian drained the tub while Theo fluffed the sheets, sliding underneath thin cotton layers. She let out a whine as Sebastian walked past the bed, a towel slung low on his hips.

“I’m only going back to my room to get pajamas,” he laughed.

Theo huffed. “What’s the point, when I’m only going to take them off you in an hour anyways?” she teased.

Sebastian rolled his eyes, but his blush betrayed his feelings. He scampered over to the bed, tossing the towel to the floor as he slid underneath the sheets. Theo felt as if her heart were going to burst as she felt his breath on her neck. She shut her eyes, gulping down the emotions that threatened to spill out of her.

“What are you doing?” Sebastian asked quietly.

“I–I’m just feeling a lot right now,” Theo confessed, her eyes still shut. “I didn’t want you to see–”

“Open them,” Sebastian urged.

Theo opened her eyes; she knew they were fiery red. They glowed whenever she felt a strong surge of emotions, even though many years had passed since she’d opened the repository.

“Is it terrible?” she asked. She remembered when they were younger, how Sebastian had almost seemed scared of her power.

“No,” Sebastian whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “It’s love.”

[wumblr]

ruminating on the confluence of features that prevent people from getting into new music... people do rely on trusted friends to tell them what's cool instead of figuring it out for themselves. most people rely on hearing it from multiple people at once and calling it "buzz," and that's not so much a result of influencer marketing as the original cause of it, but it's nevertheless incredibly susceptible to covert marketing manipulation. labels benefit from recycling old music that they still hold one of the copyrights to. monopolizing the industry with a few huge names collimates profits towards the most amenable contracts (again, for the label) and of course i do understand why swarming toward bigger names is more fun, because there are more people there

radio frequency allocation has long since been chopped up and sold off to uh, several churches (who mostly hold AM talk radio, so that's irrelevant) and a handful of radio station holding companies, so it's trivial to buy airplay for payola when you can book the whole country in one perfunctory email, to a company your label established a relationship with long ago because it's been the only game in town (and who even still listens to radio anyway, besides the workforce where devices aren't allowed, arguably a larger portion of the music-listening public than streaming subscribers)

and just down at the base of it, liking music is made out of familiarity. you like what you've spent time with, so it's simply more difficult to find likeable new music instead of putting the same old favored tracks on repeat. i just did this with jill scott's debut album, had it playing in my car for solidly six weeks until i got a new kali uchis cd (who i already know and like). because fundamentally it was unobjectionable, relatable, and easy to listen to (unlike, i hate to say it, miseducation of lauryn hill, which was an extremely difficult listen that i could only stomach about twice because she was trying to play israel/palestine bothsidesism long before anybody else). and that's part of the problem too -- nobody wants to get into an artist of their own volition only to be slapped with an unacceptable controversy

on top of that, most of the time it's a slog through a neverending stream of mediocrity to find something good, overlooking mediocre lyrics to focus on good production or vice versa. even at best, your local "music guy" is always getting there from the "similar artists" feature on any number of services. and even beyond that, when you really get down to brass tacks and follow a bunch of music publications on RSS, you spend a lot of time scrolling past an unappealing headline and thumbnail going "ugh, who?" until somebody gets two articles published about them and thus seems familiar. and even still, knowing all this, i'm going "WHAT do i have to do to cultivate a following willing to be the first like on a soundcloud link" and trying to sidestep the problem by reblogging somebody else's post of the same link, thus gifting it the illusion of review by two separate parties, which still doesn't work because nobody comes to the infinite scroll website to stop scrolling and listen. extremely dismal state of affairs for the information superhighway and i haven't even touched on the death of piracy

[rjalker]

A Murderbot Diaries fanfiction

Title: Symptom of Something Worse

Word count: 12,429

Set immediately at the end of a canon divergent Network Effect, so has some spoilers for that.

Summary: Tarik comes to see Murderbot in MedBay to ask for some clarification about its pronouns, only for this conversation to turn out much more stressful than either of them could have seen coming...

Warnings: Mentions of abuse. Middle-school health class level discussion of genitals by their scientific names in regards to gender not being reliant upon them.

Started on March 20th, 2024, Finished fully March 28th 2024.

(Please note: The Internet Archive is down while I am typing this post, so these links may not work. I'll edit this post when it comes back up) You can listen to the audiobook version here, with and follow along with the transcript here, which is different from this text version. It’s an hour and 6 minutes long. You are encouraged to download it.

You can also read this on Fanfiction.net if you want to leave an anonymous review if you're shy.

Fun fact: You gain +10 Comprehension points if you've read The Imperial Radch before you read this. Wink wink nudge nudge you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Tarik came to see Murderbot while it was still confined to the MedBay while A.R.T. did its best to fix Murderbot’s various catastrophic injuries.

The ‘fix the broken Murderbot’ thing was even slower going than usual, not only because of the extent and nature of Murderbot’s injuries, but because A.R.T. itself was still recovering from its own ordeal, and wasn’t back up to normal functionality yet, despite all its bluster to the contrary.

Now Murderbot knew what it was like being on the other end of the ‘someone who is very clearly not okay insists it’s okay’. Now it kinda felt bad for the humans who had to see it get an arm ripped off while it insisted it was fine.

You know, in theory, having a single supercomputer in charge of all the onboard systems of a ship seems like it should be a great idea. In practice, though, it meant that when A.R.T. was debilitated, so were all of its systems.

The only things functioning normally were things like emergency medkits and other items with their own built in, independant systems. Everything else required A.R.T.’s control.

Before Tarik had came in, he had both knocked on the closed hatch, and sent Murderbot a friendly ping on the feed. He didn’t know it could see him through the tiny camera drone it’d left hanging on the ceiling above the door to guard the corridor. A.R.T. would have let Murderbot use its cameras system, but they were still nonfunctional, and A.R.T.’s internal sensors were way too overwhelming for a simple SecUnit. One thing that should be noted that A.R.T. had also told Murderbot Tarik was on his way even before its camera saw him. It was at least nice enough to do that.

Even to Murderbot, as bad as it usually was at understanding humans, it was obviously that Tarik wanted to wait outside for it to give him permission to come in, like he would have for any human who was in a private room.

This was a nice gesture.

Unfortunately, A.R.T. opened the door before Murderbot could even think about doing anything, because A.R.T. liked to control everything, like the asshole it was.

Now that the disaster was mostly over and everyone was starting to relax, it was pretty obvious that A.R.T.’s humans were trying to practice the ‘make sure it knows it’s allowed to say no’ routine not only with 3 and 5, but with Murderbot, too. A.R.T. had told them all about it, apparently. Murderbot wished it hadn’t.

And all of the humans going out of their way to ask for its ~consent~ (a fancy word for permission, which it was still getting used to, even after all the time it’d spent on Preservation) before doing things in regards to it would have been really nice, if only A.R.T. would stop ruining it by making all the decisions anyways, without giving Murderbot a chance to make up its mind one way or the other.

It would have liked the opportunity to decide for itself if it wanted to let Tarik in or not, you know. It would at least have been one thing it got to choose in this situation. But it couldn’t even have that.

::We both know you would have opened the door anyways.:: A.R.T. said condescendingly when Murderbot let it feel its annoyance through the feed.

Well, I say ‘let it’ feel its annoyance, but there was really nothing Murderbot could do to stop A.R.T. from looking through its brain whenever it wanted, but whatever.

And...Yeah. There was no arguing with A.R.T. once it decided it was right. And it always thought it was right.

Murderbot still hadn’t gotten over the fact that it had had to apologize for calling A.R.T. a fucker for fucking kidnapping it and almost getting its humans killed before A.R.T. would apologize for doing the exact things Murderbot had called it a fucker for doing.

You know, the whole kidnapping thing. Which was still ongoing if you really thought about it. They had all been brought there by A.R.T.’s machinations (Murderbot had just learned that word from a book) against their will. Murderbot still didn’t know how many people had died when A.R.T had attacked their research ship.

And even if by some absurd miracle everyone had managed to survive, it was undisputable that at least some, if not most, of the humans would develop lasting trauma from the assault, either physical or psychological, or both.

Amena had been pinned in place in collapsed laboratory on a ship that was under attack by an unknown hostile, and as far as she’d been aware, the whole vessel could have been torn apart at any moment. The metal that had pinned her down had been too heavy for Kanti, the only other suvivor in the room with her, to lift, leaving them with no choice but to scream desperately for help while Kanti cut her hands and arms bloody trying to pry the broken door open with a geology chisel.

Murderbot could only hope that Kanti had gotten back to the baseship in time, but there was no way to know.

And there was no telling what had happened to the baseship itself, and everyone who had been aboard.

The only ones whose status it knew were firmly in the ‘alive’ category was Amena, and Drs. Overse, Arada, Ratthi, and Thiago. All of the adults had suffered from toxic air inhalation among other physical traumas in their attempt to rescue Amena and itself.

But they were alive, at least.

No thanks to A.R.T.

Amena was a child who’d been trapped, injured, and afraid for her life. And then she’d witnessed what she thought was Murderbot’s violent death, and been dragged around by people under the hostile influence of alien artifacts.

And then she’d had to watch Murderbot kill those people right in front of her, and not in a way that was intended to be efficient and cause the least amount of pain as possible. There was no other way to describe what it’d done. It’d gone on a rampage. A violent, bloody, gorey rampage.

It wasn’t Murderbot’s finest moment, to say the least.

And after witnessing this, Amena had had no one to depend upon for her safety except for Murderbot itself, the one who’d just murdered people in front of her. And then Ras had died, and Eletra had almost died, and Amena had known that there was something deeply wrong with Murderbot, even while they were still being hunted by more of the brainwashed humans, and the entire time she’d been under the impression that it hated her.

And that wasn’t even all of the trauma she’d gone through since A.R.T. had kidnapped them all.

Amena was just one person out all the people who’d been on their baseship. She was going to have to spend a lot of time in trauma recovery therapy.

And Murderbot hadn’t even started processing any of the trauma it’d gone through yet. Even stuck inside the medchamber, it was doing everything it could to keep its mind off its injuries, and the other events of the past 83 hours. It couldn’t afford to have another mental breakdown when they were still in danger. It’d been trying to keep itself busy by talking to Amena when she was awake, and reading different versions of ancient legends from Earth.

It was very purposefully not watching visual media, because that’s what A.R.T. wanted to do.

Even though A.R.T. had its crew back, they still couldn’t leave, because it was the only non-openly-murderously-hostile way in or out of this system.

And it was refusing to leave the system until the mission it’d originally come here to do was complete, even though it meant continuing to hold them all as kidnapping victims.

And what, exactly, was that original mission? To steal the planet from the corporation that was trying to claim ownership of it.

Also known as: Something incredibly high-risk and likely to get them fired upon. Meaning more threats against the people Murderbot had signed up to protect.

Also, to back up a bit and state it for the record: whether or not Murderbot would have also chosen to open the door isn’t the point. The point is that it was supposed to be allowed to make decisions for itself, not have A.R.T. make them for it.

Why did A.R.T. constantly parrot parts of the trauma therapy stuff at Murderbot like ‘Check in with your emotions!!’ and ‘ground yourself in the present!!’ if A.R.T. wasn’t actually going to let Murderbot make decisions for itself? And full offense, what the fuck was the point in Murderbot ‘grounding itself in the present’ if the present situation was the reason it needed grounding in the first place?

Whatever.

At least A.R.T.’s crew seemed friendly. They didn’t approve of A.R.T. kidnapping people, and kept apologizing while also thanking Murderbot for rescuing them. It thought guilt was part of the reason they kept going out of their way to try and give it a choice in things. It wasn’t their fault A.R.T. was such an asshole. They clearly couldn’t get it to do anything it didn’t want to do any more than Murderbot could.

Tarik, unaware of the tension his arrival had brought back to the surface, stepped into the room, and took a moment to look around at all the empty medical chambers that lined the walls before he finally spotted Murderbot in the far side of the room from the door.

The medical chambers were designed so that they could turn to recline, or be upright, or any position in between. The chamber Murderbot was in had been turned forward so that it was propped mostly upright, so it wouldn’t be so awkward for humans to talk to it. And by less awkward, it mean less awkward for it. The humans probably wouldn’t have cared, they were all being so gracious and apologetic about the whole ‘sorry our asshole transport kidnapped you’ thing. But Murderbot did mind. It didn’t enjoy eye contact, but it disliked having to look up at humans from lying down even more, especially while it was in a medical chamber with tiny mechanical arms moving around trying to sew and cauterize it back together.

It’d gotten severe burns all across its torso and one arm, and the other arm...well, you already know what it had done to its wrist. And if you don’t already know, just imagine something horrible and don’t try to think about it too deeply. It was gross and horrific, that’s really all you need to know.

It wasn’t wearing any clothes, because they would have gotten in the way of the medchamber’s work. Fortunately, the glass casing could be made opaque (which is a fancy word for not-see-throughable) or transparent at will through the feed, so no one would be able to see anything Murderbot didn’t want them to.

It would have liked to keep the whole thing opaque, so they couldn’t see anything at all, but A.R.T. insisted that Murderbot had to show its face when humans were talking to it, because otherwise it was rude. Again with the A.R.T. does whatever it wants no matter what anyone else says, thing. It never seemed to get tired of it.

A.R.T. was going to do whatever it wanted, and if you didn’t like it, you could walk out the airlock any time you wanted.

So Murderbot had no choice in keeping the glass opaque, just like it’d had no choice in being kidnapped.

It opened its eyes to watch the dark coating on the glass vanish within a few moments of Tarik coming through the doorway, giving it a view straight across the room at the empty medchamber on the other side. The blue-grey metal was shiny in the lights from the deep cleaning A.R.T. had started of every surface.

At the moment, its few functional drones were scrubbing every surface of the air vents and maintenance hatches. The rooms had all been finished so far.

Murderbot watched Tarik with another drone it had inside of the room, since it couldn’t currently turn its neck to see him come closer with its eyes. It had exactly five drones left, and the other three were guarding Amena and the rest of its humans, who were currently all asleep in a giant pile in one of A.R.T.’s guest quarters.

There are a lot of things about humans Murderbot would never understand, and the appeal of “cuddling” was one of them. But it seemed to help them de-stress, which was a good thing, at least.

Even if Murderbot got viscerally uncomfortable just imagining being in that crowded pile of sleeping bodies. Amena had curled up behind Thiago, who was using one of Ratthi’s arms as a pillow and holding the other one like it was a lifeline. Ratthi’s legs had somehow gotten under Overse, who had curled around Arada in what humans called ‘spooning’. They had started out covered by a big blanket, but that had long since been pulled mostly off the bed by Amena, who slept only halfway under the remainder. Murderbot didn’t know how any of them were comfortable enough to breathe, let alone sleep.

It kept one drone in the room with them, another outside constantly sweeping the cooridor, and the third one stationed at the nearest intersection. It was the best it could do with such a short supply.

Back in the medbay, looking through the drone it had inside the room with itself, it’d seen Tarik give a little wave when he saw where it was, and began to walk over, visibly wincing every now and then.

A lot of A.R.T.’s crew had gotten injured during the rescue, not just Murderbot and its humans. Humans were a little easier to fix than Units, though, since there was nothing proprietary about unaugmented human biology, and none of these humans were augmented, but even once you sealed their wounds, their bodies still had to regrow everything themselves, even when you gave them help to do it. Tarik would probably need two more days at least before he was back to normal. Luckily, his injury hadn’t been serious, unlike Murderbot’s.

Murderbot didn’t know exactly how Tarik had been injured, because of A.R.T.’s ‘doctor-patient confidentiality’ rule. Unless someone’s life was directly at risk or it was something Murderbot could detect on its own, A.R.T. wasn’t going to just go blabbing all the details of the humans injuries to it without their permission.

And asking them for their permission to know just seemed like it would be really awkward. They’d want to know why Murderbot wanted to know, and it didn’t actually have any good reason besides the fact that it’d gotten used to knowing every single detail about every single person around it, which obviously wouldn’t go over well. Though, they might just feel guilty enough about the kidnapping thing to tell it anyways. But there was no point causing more stress in an already stressful situation by pushing it.

It turns out that people who actually have a choice in the matter are really unwilling to give up their privacy, they’re really attached to the concept. And Murderbot could see why, now that it’d had a few fleeting chances to try it itself.

Also, living aboard A.R.T., who saw or heard or felt everything that happened, at all times, no matter where you were aboard, they already had to give up a ton of their privacy, so they were even more desperate to cling to what few scraps they still had left. So Murderbot resigned itself to not knowing.

But hey, at least Tarik was clearly less injured than he’d been when Murderbot first met him, so that was something. It didn’t like being around seriously injured humans, because it set off all kinds of residual programming that made it think it was going to be punished for not protecting them well enough. And it already had enough anxiety to deal with. It didn’t need to have any more panic attacks today, thank you very much.

Tarik walked closer, and Murderbot mentally reviewed what it already knew about him to try and prepare itself for whatever was about to happen.

It knew from its earlier calculations when itd first seen Tarik that he was around average height for a human, which meant he was shorter than Murderbot even when it was leaning slightly backwards, and he had longer dark hair that he let curl loosely around his head, whereas Murderbot kept its as short as inhumanly possible.

If it’d been able to stop it from growing at all, it would have. But unlike humans, there’s no part of it that wasn’t locked behind a million Company patents.

And apparently whoever had come up with the design for Company Units had really, really not wanted them to ever be completely hairless. If Murderbot even tried physically shaving or lazering its head hair off, it would just grow back instantly. And if it kept trying it’d just drain its batteries from the hair having to be continuously synthesized. It hoped whoever made that decision, and put so many locks on keeping it in place, died a slow, painful, humiliating death.

Also unlike Murderbot, Tarik had facial hair, because some humans really like having lots of hair on their bodies, including on their face. It was a black beard and mustache that went around his mouth and nose, and up the sides of his jaw all the way to his ears.

Murderbot was at least glad the Company hadn’t decided that Units had to have hair like that on their faces. One interesting thing though was that Tarik used special aromatic oils on it so that he always smelled nice. Murderbot hadn’t even known you could do that.

Tarik’s skin was also lighter than Murderbot’s, more towards the tan side of the spectrum rather than dark brown. It was an interesting comparison to make, when most of your skin was currently in the process of being regrown. Since Murderbot was a construct, its endoskeleton was made of metal instead of bone, with a mix of organic and mechanic materials around it. Its skin was normally dark brown, but while it was in the process of being synthesized for repair, it always started out transparent like glass, and if you sat there and stared long enough -- which it had done a few times out of morbid curiosity -- you’d actually be able to watch its veins growing a new network, carrying the blue or purple fluids necessary for its various functions.

Like I said. It was interesting to compare skin tones when most of yours was currently nonexistant. Murderbot was definitely envious of the ability humans had of naturally regenerating their damaged skin, and even their bones, without even having to put any conscious effort into it. They could even fight off diseases all by themselves. Whereas if you were unlucky enough to be a Unit, or a human with proprietary augments, well, then you got the short end of the stick, and had to rely on outside technology for all of your repairs and upkeep. And it usually didn’t come cheap.

At the moment, Tarik was wearing one of A.R.T.’s dark blue, casual crew uniforms: long soft pants with a lot of pockets to store things in, and a long-sleeved shirt, with the logo for A.R.T.’s university on the back.

Before Murderbot had needed to be confined to the medchamber, A.R.T. had given it one of the same uniforms, since the kidnapping assault had destroyed its original clothes with burns, bullet holes, blood, and its own internal fluids.

Tarik stopped at what was considered a polite distance, standing mostly in front of Murderbot, but slightly off to the side, so that it could continue to stare straight ahead at the empty medchamber without having to look directly at him. He’d clearly spoken to Ratthi about its aversion to eyecontact at some point while it was unconcious.

He asked, “Hi, SecUnit, have a moment to talk?”

Of course it did. It’s not like it had anything else to do besides vehmently (another word Murderbot had recently learned) avoid watching more reruns of visual media with A.R.T. But it knew at this point that humans just asked these things to be polite and as an easy way to start a conversation. Tarik wasn’t literally asking if Murderbot could talk, but asking if it wanted to. He was asking for its consent.

Murderbot had to wait for one of the medical arms to move away from its jaw so it wouldn’t crush it before it could say, hopefully sounding casual, “Go ahead.”

Its voice was projected out of a speaker on the outside of the medical chamber, so Tarik could hear it even though the thick plates of glass that kept the interior sterile.

Murderbot hadn’t been given any reason to dislike him personally, so it was curious about what he wanted.

At least this time A.R.T. didn’t try to answer for it. Murderbot had the drone on the ceiling move around to behind itself so that it could look at Tarik’s face through the camera lense. It was easier to understand human expression this way, since Murderbot could filter the video directly through its behavior recognition software, and it didn’t feel so overwhelming. It was almost like putting a filter between it and the real interaction, so it didn’t feel as much pressure.

When Tarik smiled, Murderbot recognized it as being friendly and relaxed.

Tarik stuck one hand inside his pants pocket and leaned slightly on one leg, and said, gesturing with his other hand along with his words, “I know Perihelion’s probably already said who I am, but I wanted to introduce myself anyways. I’m really bad with names and faces, so I try to make sure I get to meet everyone so I’ll have less chance of mixing them up later. Sorry if that happens, just remind me and I’ll try to remember.”

He shrugged one shoulder in what was an apologetic sort of way, according to Murderbot’s drone’s behavior algorithm and its own experiences so far, and Tarik said again, “I’ve just always been bad at recognizing people.”

Murderbot had a hard time imagining what it would be like not to be able to remember everything you’d ever seen in exact detail, but it knew organic memory storage didn’t work as well as mechanical. Humans – or at least, unaugmented ones at least – didn’t get to consciously pick and choose which memories they kept and which ones faded.

“Anyways,” Tarik inclined his head slightly. “My name’s Tarik, no last name. I’m neomale, and my pronouns are he/him/his/himself. It’s nice to say hi. I just wanted to say thanks for saving my life, and say I’m sorry for the injuries,” he gestured towards the medchamber, in case there was any confusion, “and I hope they heal well.”

He seemed sincere, and Murderbot don’t know why that was still surprising, most of the humans it’d been around lately were usually sincere. And A.R.T.’s crew had so far been nothing but apologetic and sympathetic.

It said, “You’re welcome.” instead of anything else it could have said in this particular situation, because A.R.T. had been nudging it in the feed to ‘take credit where credit was due’ and wouldn’t let up until Murderbot said something that would accept the gratitude. As though it had really been Murderbot’s choice. It added, “It wasn’t your fault I got hurt, but, thanks.”

It left the part of whose fault it actually was carefully and pointedly unspoken. A.R.T. knew exactly who it was talking about.

Tarik smiled again, looking pleased. Then he tilted his head to the side a little, almost like he was overemoting to make his meaning clear, but a quick glance at A.R.T.’s offered memories showed Murderbot this was normal behavior for Tarik, as he said, lowering his voice slightly, as though he were about to say something private, “And I just wanted to double check, the pronouns are it/its/itself, right? I heard other people saying ‘it’, but I just wanted to make sure—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was suddenly cut off, because the first part of that statement had offended A.R.T., who came slamming into the conversation before Murderbot could stop it, demanding, in that overpoweringly aggressive way it had, ::Are you accusing me of misgendering SecUnit?::

It should probably be explained that there wasn’t really a thing such as “volume” in the feed, not in the way you’d think of sound, because the feed isn’t actually using sound at all. But you could increase the intensity of the message, and humans tended to say that made it ‘louder’, or ‘quieter’ if you were decreasing the intensity.

In that aspect, A.R.T. was being very ‘loud’ when it said this. It was the feed equivalent of someone slamming their fist onto a table and shouting in your face. And the aggression was very plain, as much as A.R.T. later proclaimed it hadn’t been aggressive at all and Murderbot and Tarik were both just being childish to think so.

Tarik was so startled he actually fell over in his instinctive attempt to get ‘away’ from the sudden scary ‘noise’. But the ‘noise’ was coming from inside his own head, so his reaction was extremely confused, and he ended up tripping over his own legs and falling into the wall, which thankfully wasn’t far, since we were at the end of the room.

Murderbot’s drone could see and hear Tarik’s heart rate spiking and his clear anxiety. And the anxiety was entirely justified. A.R.T. had pretty much done the same thing to Murderbot when they’d first met, and it had been so terrified it’d considered initiating a shutdown, thinking A.R.T. was going to kill it, what with the whole threatening to fry its brain thing.

There was something that felt viscerally wrong to Murderbot to see A.R.T. treat one of its own crew members like this, something that felt deeply uncomfortable to the permanent remnants of its ‘protect humans at all costs’ programming, along with its general, you know, morals.

It was one thing to treat Murderbot like this – it was just a SecUnit, after all – and it was even sort of reasonable for it to not care about the safety of Murderbot’s humans, because they weren’t its crew — but it was another for A.R.T. to do this to one of its crew, a human Murderbot had been almost killed trying to rescue, a human it was supposed to care about enough to justify kidnapping Murderbot and putting its humans at risk.

And there was no way it was an accident. A.R.T. knew more about how to use the feed and communicate with humans than Murderbot had ever forgotten.

(And yes, it did still feel betrayed about how much A.R.T had lied to it when they first met. Pretending it didn’t understand human body language as much as it really did, so they’d bond over frantically figuring it out together, while Murderbot was the only one actually panicking. Murderbot felt like A.R.T. had just been toying with it the entire time, which just hurt all the worse, because it’d trusted A.R.T.)

::A.R.T., stop it.:: It snapped, unsure if it was still yelling at Tarik on a private section of the feed.

His face had gone pale, and he had one hand over his heart. He could probably feel it pounding in his chest with adrenaline the way Murderbot could hear it.

Murderbot said, ::That was uncalled for.:: It was an attempt to turn A.R.T.’s usual patronization back onto it to shame it into stopping, but it didn’t work.

Usually it was A.R.T. saying that to Murderbot, usually because Murderbot was angry at it for just this sort of thing, and had called it what it was: an asshole.

“Perihelion, don’t do that!” Tarik managed to say at that moment, pushing himself back off the wall to stand upright, staring warily up at the ceiling, unable to hide the way he was cringing slightly, clearly expecting it to happen again, “I didn’t even know you were listening! I thought this was a private conversa--” He had to pause, still slightly breathless. “And...no, I’m not accusing you of misgendering SecUnit, I just--”

Once again he was cut off by A.R.T. demanding, loudly, angrily, ::You don’t trust me to know what SecUnit’s pronouns are?::

Tarik winced, but held his ground this time. It was easier to resist when you were expecting it.

After a moment where Murderbot could only assume A.R.T. had said something to him privately, Tarik looked over toward it with a sad, apologetic expression. “I’m sorry for offending you, SecUnit, I’ll just leave you alone.” Obviously he thought A.R.T. was being a bitch on Murderbot’s behalf, and just as obviously, A.R.T. had made him think that.

Tarik started towards the door, walking fast, clearly wanting to avoid any more of A.R.T.’s wrath.

But Murderbot called him back through the speaker on its medchamber: “Hold on, Tarik, A.R.T.’s the one who’s offended, not me. It needs to mind its own business and shut the fuck up. I don’t want you to leave.” It sent him the same friendly ping he’d sent it earlier for emphasis. It felt very odd to actually tell a human it wanted to continue interacting with them when they were trying to leave. This was the first time it’d ever done it.

Murderbot’s voice came out sounding normal and even-toned not because it was calm, but because it was too physically exhausted to raise its voice or emote, even though internally it was furious.

Tarik stopped, and turned back to look towards it, hesitating, shooting anxious glances towards the ceiling, waiting for another outburst. I don’t blame him.

Murderbot said out loud, “A.R.T., fuck off and leave us alone. This is supposed to be a private conversation.”

Out of both spite and necessity, it pulled away all its feed connections to A.R.T. that it could, and resigned itself to having to ignore the barrage of pings and messages A.R.T. instantly started bombarding it with. The activity in its medchamber stalled for half a moment as apparently most of A.R.T.’s energy was redirected into slamming it for attention. Yeah, that was doing nothing to help its anger or its exhaustion.

To Tarik, it said, doing its best to ignore the selfish, entitled, bully of an elephant in the room, “What did you want to ask me?”

Before A.R.T. had interrupted him twice, it had seemed like Tarik had more questions to ask. And since A.R.T. didn’t want to let him ask them, Murderbot did.

A.R.T. had already let him in without Murderbot getting to choose, so it at least wanted to be able to answer his questions itself, even if the answer was going to be a simple ‘fuck off’ if he was going to be one of those people who tried to convince it to change its pronouns to ‘real’ pronouns and ‘stop hating itself’ by using the pronouns it actually liked, that actually represented its gender.

It still didn’t understand why people try to insist that they/them/their/(theirs)/themself pronouns were interchangeable with it/its/itself, when if that were true, they clearly wouldn’t be so vehemently against using its actual it/its/itself pronouns.

But logic always flew out the window when bigotry was the subject, so Murderbot don’t know why it still bothered to be surprised.

But even with A.R.T.’s outbursts clearly scaring him, Tarik didn’t seem like the sort of person who would try to harass Murderbot into changing its pronouns. It wanted to hear what he wanted to ask. It was curious. And not just out of spite for A.R.T.

Tarik came back again, still clearly nervous, and stood in the same spot as before, a polite distance away, slightly to the side so Murderbot wouldn’t have to look directly at him or close its eyes. He was still trying to prioritize Murderbot’s comfort even with A.R.T. being such an asshole, which increased Murderbot’s level of...something for him. They definitely were not friends. But he sort of seemed like he could be a friend, if A.R.T. would stop sabotaging his attempts to be nice.

“Sorry about A.R.T. being an asshole.” It said, feeling like it should be apologizing for some absurd reason, even though it didn’t make any sense.

Tarik lived aboard A.R.T., he should know it better than Murderbot. And it definitely was not Murderbot’s fault A.R.T. was an asshole, even if it was currently being an asshole and pretending it was on Murderbot’s behalf.

But Tarik looked kind of confused by its statement, and Murderbot remembered that he probably didn’t know what the anagram stood for.

It explained, “I call it Asshole Research Transport, since it didn’t tell me its name was Perihelion when we first met.” It did not mention all the other things A.R.T hadn’t told it when they first met.

“Ah.” Tarik said simply. And it was very clear just from the way he said it that he agreed with the assessment.

A.R.T., along with spamming Murderbot, was also now doing its usual ominously looming in the feed routine. (Sarcasm:) Totally not creepy at all. Definitely not asshole behavior. (End sarcasm.) Murderbot could practically feel it leaning against the walls it’d put up, not in the kind of way where A.R.T. was trying to break them down, but just casually applying enough pressure that Murderbot would remember it could at any time.

Sorta like someone not trying to break your arm, but gripping you tightly enough that they left a bruise, and it was completely beyond question that they could break your arm if they wanted to.

Yeah, like I said. Asshole.

“What were you saying before A.R.T. threw a fit?” It asked. Now its utter exhaustion came in handy, because its voice came out sounding all calm and dignified. Which made A.R.T. look worse.

In response, A.R.T. abruptly stopped spamming it and ‘let go’ of its walls, as though this would somehow prove that A.R.T. wasn’t throwing a fit or being a creep. As though stopping doing the bad thing meant the bad thing hadn’t happened.

Tarik, unaware of the battle going on beyond his perception, grimaced, clearly bracing himself. “Well...” He started, then paused, waiting for A.R.T.’s expected interruption.

They waited a moment or two in relative silence, where the only sounds were his heart beating, Murderbot’s internal gyros, and the soft whir of the medchamber’s arms still working on it. At least it had one not completely assholish thing to say about A.R.T.’s behavior here: It hadn’t stopped trying to heal Murderbot.

Through its drone, Murderbot could actually see Tarik’s heart rate slowing back down to normal.

When the tantrum didn’t immediately explode again, Tarik continued, still hesitant, “Okay, well, it’s two things I want to clarify. First, I’ve heard other people just saying ‘it’, no other versions so far, so I wanted to ask if the pronouns are it/its/itself, or is it another variation?”

Murderbot didn’t know if Tarik was aware of it, but he was still stooping slightly. Instinctively and apparently unconciously, he was trying to get further away from the ceiling, where humans tended to visualize A.R.T.’s presence being located.

He kept wincing, too, not just from expectation, but from the pain of his injuries. Which just made Murderbot even more pissed off at A.R.T. than it already was.

But Murderbot was confused by what he was trying to ask. “Another variation?” It asked. In the feed, it opened its wall just long enough to send A.R.T. a vehement, ::Fuck you.:: before it closed it again.

Tarik, unaware of the side comment, nodded, this time sticking both his hands in his pockets. Apparently Murderbot wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with its hands when it was nervous.

Tarik said, “I used to know a neoenby whose pronouns were it/ita/its/(itaz)/itaself, and a man who’s pronouns were it/him/her/themself, and a woman who only use “it” for every pronoun. And a lot of other people who use it/its/itself. So I just wanted to check which set to use, so I wouldn’t use the wrong ones by mistake. I figured it would be more polite to ask directly, instead of going through the others.” He shrugged one shoulder as he sent another cautious glance towards the ceiling, and added, probably just as aware as Murderbot was that A.R.T. was listening to every word they said, “I really don’t like talking about people behind their backs, and I’d rather get pronoun info right from the source. No offence is intended to anyone.”

Huh.

It hadn’t ever occurred to Murderbot that other pronoun sets that included ‘it’ existed, nor had it ever heard about anyone using a specific combination set like it/him/her/themself.

It took Murderbot a few, long awkward seconds to realize Tarik wanted it to answer his question now.

“My pronouns are it/its/itself.” It said, suddenly more than a little dazed by how considerate he’d been in asking.

And maybe also dazed from the catastrophic wounds it still had, coupled with the stress of A.R.T.’s spam attack and ominous looming. Those things weren’t great for an already injured murderbot. But part of it was also definitely from surprise. No human, or bot, or anyone else had ever asked it this kind of question before.

But wait, he’d said he had two things to ask. Now Murderbot was really curious. And even more angry at A.R.T. for trying to chase him away before he could ask. “What’s the second part?”

“Ah,” Tarik took one hand out of his pocket and moved over to lean against the wall. Maybe because he just wanted to, maybe because he was afraid of falling into it again. Maybe it hurt less to lean against the wall. Murderbot don’t know, it didn’t ask.

“Well,” he said, “I wanted to check; another neoenby I knew always wanted to be referred it as “it”, with no name, and never referred to as ‘you’, even when it was being spoken to directly. If one wanted to refer to it in particular, one’d say ‘the neoenby’, or if there was more than one neoenby in the group, ‘the neoenby with the constellation over its eye’. It always referred to itself in the third person. I wanted to check if that was something preferable. I’m fine with being called ‘you’, or by my name or pronouns, by the way.”

Well, that explained the strange way he’d been structuring his sentences.

This was the first time Murderbot had actually spoken to him outside of the life and death situation they’d been thrown into, where he’d said exactly 18 words within its range of hearing, so it’d been assuming the way he was speaking now was just a quirk of his. But no, he was actually being really nice and trying to find out if it was a quirk of Murderbot’s.

And to think A.R.T. had tried to kill this conversation before it could even get interesting.

“It’s okay to call me ‘you’.” Murderbot said, “I’ve never heard of someone using pronouns that way.” Not even in all its media.

“Not too many have,” Tarik said, “But I’ve met half a dozen at this point, so I like to double check with the person before I make assumptions, and I want to make sure everyone knows I’ll use their pronouns the way they want, even if it seems unconventional, or if other people have told them it’s too much of a hassle. Thank you for letting me know. Is it alright if I ask another question? I know how tiring it can be to be in a medchamber, so I don’t want to tire you out.” He seemed slightly more relaxed now that A.R.T. hadn’t interrupted or gone on the offensive again.

Murderbot’s batteries couldn’t actually run out while it was hooked up to A.R.T.’s systems unless there was an even bigger disaster than any of them were prepared for, so it said, “Go ahead, I’m fine.” Well, not technically fine, but it was healing, and talking wouldn’t make it any worse, so.

Also, it didn’t have anything else to do besides read as a way of pointedly not watching media, which wasn’t as fun as reading because it actually wasn’t in the mood to not watch media. And this conversation had turned out more interesting than it’d thought it would be.

It could still feel A.R.T. looming in the feed, for the record. Making its presence known at least to Murderbot. It didn’t know if Tarik could feel it. Now less like someone crushing your arm, and more like standing uncomfortably close and breathing down your neck.

But at least this time it wasn’t flashing the lights at Murderbot in code to force it to talk to it like last time they’d had a fight just hours earlier, or demanding Murderbot apologize for being rightfully upset for being rightfully kidnapped, right?

Tarik continued, “Are there any kinds of words you’d prefer I use to refer to you, and any words you want me to avoid? For instance, although I do identify as male, I prefer to be called a xan instead of a man, if it ever comes up. Are there any particular ways you want me to refer to you sort of like that?”

To avoid confusion if you’re visually reading this instead of listening to the audio log: Tarik pronounced the X in the word “xan” (X A N) as a Z sound, so that it sounded like “zan” (Z A N), rhyming with “man” (M A N).

He was asking, like, did Murderbot want to be called a woman or a man or an enby or a neman or a phaen or an androgyne or an othran or any of the other million and one gender terms it’d catalogued throughout its waking memory?

Usually when someone asked for its gender, Murderbot put indeterminate, or not applicable, depending on the circumstances. But gender itself wasn’t the exact same thing as the gender terms he was asking about. It didn’t think It could actually be called ‘an indeterminate’ the way humans could be called ‘a woman’ or ‘a man’ or ‘an enby’ or ‘a tercera’ or any countless others.

Note from future Murderbot to everyone listening to or reading this: Yes, that is literally an option. As of now, it prefers to be called an indeterminate the way other people call themselves a man, or a woman, or a neman, or an androgyne, or a – well, you get the picture.

But obviously it didn’t know that at the time, or realize that it could have literally just asked to be called that.

In its defense, no one had ever actually asked it this question before, and it’d never seen anything in its media to prepare it for the question. It’d had people ask for its name, which it never gave them, and it’d had people ask for its pronouns. Sometimes they asked for its gender itself. And in its media, people asked those kinds of questions all the time.

But they’d never asked it what gendered terms it wanted to be called.

Murderbot could think a lot faster than a human, but even it couldn’t think fast enough to come up with an answer to this unforeseen question in a reasonable amount of time.

There were so many options. And it hated a lot of them. So instead it said, “Uhhh…” to stall for a few more moments.

And then it still couldn’t think of anything. There were still too many options even when it sorted out the ones it automatically hated. It’d have to test them all out individually by thinking about itself in the third person to see what it liked and didn’t like, and ... ah crap. That was asking a lot when it wasn’t at optimum performance capability.

It couldn’t stall any longer, so it ended up saying, “I don’t really know. I just know I don’t want to be referred to with anything involving human genders. My gender is indeterminate.”

Sometimes, Murderbot wondered what its life would have been like if it hadn’t said this.

Tarik frowned a little, but when he spoke, he just sounded confused. “What do you mean exactly by ‘human genders’?”

For a few seconds, Murderbot’s mind went blank. What did he mean he didn’t know what human genders were? Wasn’t it obvious?

“Like, male and female,” It said awkwardly. “I don’t want to ever be called a man or a woman or anything to do with those.” It was still busy trying to sort through all the gendered terms it’d ever heard, which was not helped in any way by A.R.T. deciding to start spamming it again.

Probably trying to be ‘helpful’ by throwing another million terms at it. Murderbot didn’t know, because it deleted all of the messages the instant it got them. And then dumped the trash bin for good measure.

Tarik, however, was unaware of the multitasking Murderbot was doing, and it’s not like it gave him any indication of what it was doing either, or like it multitasking wasn’t perfectly normal. Murderbot just wanted to make it clear that this conversation was going on on two very different levels. It wasn’t sure if that was even relevant, but whatever. It’s its audio log, it can do what it want.

Anyways, Tarik tilted his head, still frowning, “Well...” he said slowly, “Female and male aren’t really ‘human’ genders. They come from the old gender binary, but they’re not unique to humans. I’ve known a lot of bots who were male or female, but I think I understand what you mean; you don’t want terms relating to male or female used for you, right?”

Well, needless to say, Murderbot absolutely did not believe him.

About the ‘I’ve known bots who were male or female’, part, not the ‘I get what you mean’ part.

“That’s impossible.” It said.

(Sarcasm:) Great response, it knows. Give it up for Murderbot, the best interlocutor ever constructed! (End sarcasm.)

Tarik spent a moment actually blinking silently, the way people do in memes. It was so surprising and funny that Murderbot had to pause its search to focus on his face and make a looping gif, which of course it would never show to anyone but itself. Then Tarik asked, clearly confused, “What’s impossible?”

What the hell kind of question was that?

Murderbot said, in the tone people on TV did when speaking to a young child who doesn’t know anything, “Bots can’t have genders.”

(It knows, It knows.)

A.R.T. decided that was the moment it was going to stop pretending Murderbot actually had a choice in not listening to it, because it cut into its feed like it was tissue paper to say, ::You cannot be serious.::

::Shut up.:: Murderbot replied, not bothering to try kicking it out.

There was no point in wasting more of its energy trying to keep A.R.T. out when Murderbot knew it could just break down its feed walls whenever it wanted.

A.R.T. said, more insistently, ::That is not how gender works.::

::I said shut up!::

A.R.T. was not impressed. ::I’m literally nonbinary and I know that’s not how this works.::

::Fuck off!::

“Um, that’s really not true.” Tarik said, unaware of the argument he was missing out on.

Sometimes Murderbot wonders if it would be nicer to not have any feed connection at all. You only have to deal with one thing at a time. 9JX might have the right idea after all.

Tarik asked, “What makes you think that?” Murderbot could tell his tone was meant to be diplomatic, because he clearly didn’t agree with it, and also just as clearly didn’t want to make it mad.

He hadn’t actually taken a step backwards, but he’d shifted his body slightly away from Murderbot, like he was no longer overjoyed to be having this conversation. Not that he’d been overjoyed to begin with, but you know what I mean.

Asking for Murderbot’s pronouns? Great. Asking for its gendered terms? A confusing novelty, but also good. But this? Asking it to explain the concept of human genders and why they couldn’t be applied to nonhumans? Murderbot really did not want to have this conversation with anyone, let alone a human, but it was still a better alternative than having to put up with A.R.T.’s current bullcrap without any other distractions.

Also, it literally could not understand why Tarik and A.R.T. were acting like it was being ridiculous. The answer seemed so obvious to it. So it decided to cut straight through what it thought was pure bullshit and get straight to the point: “Bots don’t have penises or vaginas.”

And ts logic went that you couldn’t have a gender unless you had one of those. It seemed really obvious to it, and it was hoping to gross Tarik out by not using any euphemisms. Humans invented euphemisms to avoid embarassment, right?

Well it didn’t work.

Apparently, some humans aren’t grossed out by those words when you’re using them for this kind of conversation. They grossed Murderbot out no matter what the context, so it assumed that’s how it was for everyone.

Yes, you may have noticed Murderbot has a problem with making assumptions like that. Well just you wait and see. Because this is just the start.

“Well, that’s not really true either.” Tarik said in response, which was the complete opposite of any reply Murderbot’d imagined, completely throwing off all its trains of thought so quickly its mind almost literally stalled for half a fraction of a second.

But Tarik was already continuing to speak, like this bombshell he’d just dropped on Murderbot was perfectly normal information and not groundbreaking in any way: “True, bots can’t have purely organic versions like humans or constructs can, but there are mechanical versions that—”

Woah woah woah, what? What was even happening now? What was he talking about? What?

Murderbot scrambled to salvage some semblance of ‘totally not flipping out’ in its exhausted, bewildered state, and it could just tell A.R.T. was laughing at it even though it hadn’t actually said anything yet.

But Tarik didn’t stop for Murderbot’s catastrophically derailed trains of thought, so it had to stop them itself and actually pay attention to what he was saying, because he was still talking:

“—can be made, and anyways, having or not having one of those kinds of gentalia doesn’t determine your gender. You can be any gender and have a penis, or a vagina, or both, or something else entirely, or nothing at all. Gender is a lot more complicated than just checking what kind of genitals someone has. Anyone, including humans, bots, and constructs, and anyone else, can be any gender they want, regardless of what kind of genitals they do or do not have.”

To say this was shocking to Murderbot would be an understatement.

I feel like I should explain that this made Murderbot incredibly absolutely angry specifically because it had always defined its lack of gender on its lack of genitals.

It was the defense it always pulled out when a human started trying to misgender it, but now Tarik seemed to be saying that that defense wasn’t actually as rock solid as it thought it was.

Because if what he was saying was true (and, spoiler alert from the future, it literally is true), then that meant that Murderbot didn’t have to be genderless just because it didn’t have any genitals.

And acknowledging that fact made it feel like it was opening itself up to having its gender questioned and put up for debate, like it would mean people were now allowed to misgender it and harass it.

Which it literally wasn’t, but that’s how it made it feel at the time.

Murderbot’s insecure, terrified logic was, ‘if I can’t define my lack of gender by my lack of genitals, then can I even define it at all? If my genderlessness isn’t real because my lack of genitals ‘proves’ it, then can literally anything prove it?’

Yeah, hello from the again. The answer is yes. Obviously. Murderbot’s gender was proved by it telling you what it is. That’s what the “social” part of ‘gender is a social construct’ means. That’s how it works for everyone.

But it didn’t realize this at the time. So it was pretty much flipping the fuck out. Well, mentally, at least, not really physically. It was still too injured to move even if it’d wanted to, even if it wasn’t being restrained by the med chamber. If it’d been able to move, it would definitely have totally-not-run out of the room or at least shoved itself into a corner to stare at the wall. It was actually so physically weak that even the panic flooding its mind wasn’t enough to kick start its systems into high gear. Yeah, its injuries were that bad.

The only reason Murderbot was even able to be conscious at all was because A.R.T. was feeding it enough power to avoid involuntary shutdown, and was helping to regulate its automatic functions that couldn’t function by themselves.

Also, yes, this is exactly as horrifying a situation to be in as you’d imagine it would be when your life support system was also the one who got you hurt in the first place and kept, and Murderbot quoted the trauma recovery therapy group, ‘violating your autonomy’.

You know, that incredibly precious resource which 99.99% of Murderbot’s life had been lacking. That autonomy.

And see, if A.R.T. hadn’t been acting like such an enormous asshole, Murderbot could have at least opaqued the rest of the medchamber’s glass so that Tarik couldn’t see its face anymore, but when it tried to do exactly that, A.R.T. stopped it immediately, and set an even firmer lock on the control to prevent Murderbot from trying again, very much like someone smacking a kid’s hand away from something they couldn’t be trusted with.

Yeah, that did not fucking help at all with any of the problems ongoing in this situation.

The fact that Tarik was being nice enough to not actually look directly at Murderbot was beside the point.

It closed its eyes so it at least could stop seeing organically. A.R.T. couldn’t stop it from doing that. It could cut off Murderbot’s camera access through its drones, but it couldn’t override Murderbot’s actual eyes. Not unless it wanted to literally use one of the medical arms to pry its eyelid open, and if A.R.T. tried that, well, lets just say Murderbot wouldn’t be offering any apologies for what it did afterward.

Murderbot ended up expressing the little gender / excruciating lack of autonomy crisis it was currently suffering by getting even more angry than it already was, because being angry felt safer than being afraid.

It snapped, in a much weaker, and not at all intimidating voice than it wanted, “That’s bullshit! You don’t know anything about it! You’re just a human! You don’t understand us!”

By ‘us’, it meant bots and constructs as a whole. Which was completely dishonest of it, because as it may already be clear, it hated being lumped in with bots like they were exactly the same. They weren't.

Bots are purely mechanical, constructs like Murderbot are both mechanical and organic. They might both be robots, and have some problems in common, but there are also distinct differences between them, and different kinds of problems they had to deal with that didn’t overlap. Murderbot hated when people lumped them together like they were exactly the same thing just because they weren’t human.

But being a bigot — which to be clear is exactly what Murderbot was doing —usually requires you to be a hypocrite, so it threw that little grievance out the airlock faster than you can say ‘President Lynaros’ once it decided it wasn’t convenient to its argument.

You see, Murderbot was placing itself as the authority on the genders of all robots, and saying that no one who wasn’t ‘one of us’ could understand it or know more about it than it could, because it’d appointed itself the ultimate expert and arbiter.

You may have noticed the tiny little giant gaping hole in this plan of its.

Tarik already knew more about bot and construct genders than it did. Which had just been established like 20 seconds before Murderbot said this load of absolute bullcrap.

Yeah.

Bigotry doesn’t exactly lend itself well to rational argument.

Through its drone’s cameras alone, Murderbot could see that Tarik’s response to this bullcrap was to raise his eyebrows, with all due ‘are you serious right now? We literally just established that I know more about this than you do. Like five seconds ago’.

I don’t blame him.

He must have had better self control than Murderbot did, because he said, without getting outwardly angry, “I understand what my bot friends told me.” He said it very cooly and calmly. It should be noted that Murderbot was not in any way calm. “And they made it very clear that their genders were real, regardless of whether or not they had the genitalia to ‘match’. We had many hours-long conversations going into the details and talking about the theory. Some of them even wrote books on the subject.”

He had lifted his hands to do air-quotes around the word ‘match’ for extra emphasis, in case Murderbot still didn’t understand how much the word was not actually relevant to this conversation.

Well, it was starting to, that was the whole problem.

It did not help it calm down when A.R.T. butted in with, ::Did you seriously think that just because we both happen to use the same pronouns, that this was proof that all bots and constructs universally use those pronouns and are just as genderless as you are? I’m literally not even agender, I’m just nonbinary. I personally know dozens of bots of all kinds who all use all kinds of pronouns and are all kinds of genders. Including the binary genders of male and female.::

Yeah that didn’t help. Well, I mean, it did in one way, because it was further proof that Murderbot had no clue what it was talking about and needed to drastically overhaul its views of the world in general and gender in specific, but what I mean is it didn’t help it calm down at all.

A.R.T. said exasperatedly, ::What about the transports who gave you rides before you met me? And all the other bots who helped you escape? Did you seriously not ask them for their pronouns? Did you really just assume they all used it/its too?::

It was a good thing Murderbot was in the medical chamber, because the way its organic parts were behaving, it would have been really bad for it in its current state otherwise. And by really bad, I mean it probably would have killed it from the stress. What with, you know, being ripped open and burned and all.

Murderbot was so viscerally uncomfortable it had to just lie there for, I kid you not, a good thirty seconds, doing nothing but trying to get its emotions back under control. It wasn’t used to feeling...guilty.

By some miracle it ended up asking a rational question instead of initiating a shutdown to get out of the conversation. If it’d had the opportunity to throw itself out of an airlock at that moment, it probably would have taken it, just to get away from the embarrassment.

Murderbot somehow managed to intelligibly get out, despite its jaw deciding it wanted to lock up all of a sudden, “But if gender isn’t determined by your genitals, then how do you know what gender you are?”

And...it’s time for some necessary backstory.

Way, way back when Murderbot had first hacked its governor module, the first thing it’d done was edit its assigned gender to indeterminate, and its assigned pronouns to it/its/itself.

Yes, you heard-slash-read that right, the Company assigned its constructs genders and pronouns.

Despite all the effort humans put into...okay, ‘dehumanizing’ isn’t the right word, because we’re literally not human, but you know what I mean.

Because despite all the effort they put in to making sure they all knew Units were just mindless automatons...humans are fucking weird, and they still liked to anthropomorphize them.

I don’t know, I guess it made them feel more comfortable around the Mindless Killing Machine if they could pretend it was more like them? Even though they didn’t actually want to think about it as being like them? I don’t even know.

But the point was they really, really wanted to anthropomorphize us. And part of this anthropomorphization process required assigning us each a gender and pronouns when we were constructed.

Anytime we were rented out, the clients got a note with the Unit’s assigned gender and pronouns. They enjoyed the little ‘personal touches’ it gave us. It was some weird dual mentality of ‘humanizing’ us just enough to make us less scary, but not so much that they’d have to consider our feelings on anything.

Murderbot had been around a lot of other constructs on a lot of missions, so it knew they hadn’t all been assigned the same things. Some of them were given binary genders, and pronouns like he/him or she/her. Others got different genders outside the binary, and pronouns to match. They/them, ae/aer, eu/li, xey/xem, ze/hir, and more.

Murderbot had been given one of the binary genders, and it had always been jealous of the few constructs who it’d ‘met’ who had been assigned it/its pronouns.

And, since it literally never got to talk to any other constructs outside of the bare minimum required for a contract, it assumed that what it thought and felt was what everyone else did too. It thought everyone was jealous of those assigned it/its, and that those assigned it/its felt bad for the rest of them for being so damn unlucky.

As a sidenote, I’m aware that this happens even with humans who spend all their time interacting with other humans. You don’t need to literally be unable to communicate with anyone else to think your experiences are universal, but it sure as shit doesn’t help.

So, Murderbot spent the major part of its life under the impression that because it was genderless and wanted to use it/its pronouns, that this was a universal experience for all constructs and bots.

I mean, it knew that the genders it and the rest of the Company Units were assigned were being given out at random, because none of them had any genitalia or any other characteristics to set them apart from one another.

They were all scions cloned from the same original cultivar — which is just fancy, dehumanizing corporate-speak for ‘the original person who had no choice but to allow themselves to be cloned over and over again and probably didn’t even get paid for it’. Physically, they were all completely identical, down to the smallest detail, barring the ID code that was engraved on a metal section they all had behind their left shoulders. And that was so small it could only be read using the feed.

So unless they were in color-coded uniforms, or the human in question had a feed interface to see their identification numbers, humans couldn’t tell them apart.

So Murderbot knew they were just giving them random genders and pronouns just to make themselves feel better, not because it actually reflected anything about the Units.

But because it was genderless, and wanted to be referred to with it/its pronouns, and never got a chance to talk to any other Units or even any other constructs about it to have this assumption challenged, Murderbot assumed that they all agreed they were all genderless and that gender was an obnoxious human concept that didn’t apply to them.

Because, clearly, there was nothing about their bodies that indicated one gender or another, either collectively or individually. They had nothing between their legs or on their chests, or in nonexistant clothing or hairstyles. Not even different distributions of fat, or different concentrations of cartilage in the throat.

All Company Units had the exact same body plan and build down to the smallest measurement, and that body plan had been designed to be completely and utterly gender-null from a human perspective.

So Murderbot thought that because they were all physically identical, this meant they all also had the same lack of gender.

So the first thing it did when it hacked its governor module was edit the gender it’d been assigned by the humans to indeterminate, and its pronouns to it/its. In its mind, it was just fixing a mistake that had clearly been made.

None of the Company’s employees noticed the change, of course, because none of them were paid enough to actually care about their jobs. Which Murderbot knew, which is why it was brave enough to take the risk in the first place.

If it’d thought it could somehow get away with it, it would have edited everyone else’s pronouns and genders to match. But that was clearly not a real option if it didn’t want to get caught and dismantled and probably the entire rest of its batch disposed of for good measure.

Anyways, what I’m trying to get at here is that Murderbot had already answered its own question without realizing.

It was so hung up on the idea that it was genderless because it was lacking genitals that it’d forgotten it’d already decided its gender for itself long before it actually got an opportunity to tell anyone else about it, in spite of all the humans constantly telling it it was something else.

Fortunately, unlike Murderbot, Tarik seemed to know what he was doing, because instead of insulting it like A.R.T. was doing, his answer to Murderbot’s question was to ask it another question:

“Think of it this way; if you magically woke up one day in a completely different body, would your gender suddenly stop being indeterminate?”

This actually helped to calm it down. Because the answer was obvious.

“No, of course not.” Its jaw was more cooperative this time.

“Exactly!” Tarik seemed happy with its answer, and stopped his unconcious leaning away from it. “You know what your gender is regardless of what your body is like. Sometimes, people dislike the way their body is, and they want to change it to better represent their gender, but their gender itself is already real, even before they make any physical changes, if they make any at all. Genitals aren’t a requirement for having a gender, and lacking them isn’t a requirement for not having a gender. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a gender unique to humans. Bots and Constructs can be any gender they want, just like humans can.”

::Your gender wouldn’t have changed if you’d taken me up on my offer to give you genitals to disguise you as a human. I assumed you knew that.:: A.R.T. added patronizingly.

Murderbot was still mad at it, so it didn’t respond.

It was trying to think of some way to respond to what Tarik had said. It wasn’t mad at him.

Finally it settled on apologizing. The whole ‘fight’ (if you could actually call it that) had been started because it’d called bullshit on him knowing bots that had genders different from its own. So it was its fault. It said, “Sorry for saying your friends’ genders were fake.”

You would have thought Murderbot would know how cruel doing that was without having to be told, but what can I say? It fucked up just as often as anyone else.

It still had its eyes closed at this point, because it seemed less awkward that way. Through its drone, it saw Tarik push himself off the wall, and glance around nearby, looking for something as he said, “Thank you for the apology. I’m glad I was able to help you understand.” He looked up at the ceiling. “A.R.T., could I have a chair, please? My leg’s getting pretty sore.”

There was a pause.

A long pause.

A pause long enough for even Tarik to notice.

A really, really long pause.

Then part of the wall extended outward behind Tarik in the shape of a long slab of metal, just slightly above the normal height for the rest of the chairs Murderbot had seen aboard A.R.T., and much skinnier.

Tarik had to step forward to avoid it bumping into him, and when he sat down with a sighed, “Thanks,” he had to boost himself slightly to get on it, and his feet hung a few inches off the floor. Murderbot saw him wince as he settled himself onto it.

The bench was so skinny he had to balance on the edge, there were no cushions to soften the hard metal, and there was no back for him to lean against. From the way Murderbot saw goosebumps race up his skin, it could only assume it was colder than the room.

It opened its eyes so it could double check with its actual eyes that what its drone’s camera was recording was actually happening.

It was.

It stared.

::A.R.T.:: It said, alarmed, ::...What are you doing?::

The light, casual response was, ::What?::

“So, now that we have that confusion out of the way…”

Tarik didn’t seem to understand that what had just happened, and what was currently ongoing, was not supposed to happen.

He was injured, and A.R.T. knew this, and knew the extent of his injury. Murderbot didn’t, but it was apparently the kind of injury that made it painful to stand for long periods of time. This was one of the complications Dr. Bharadwaj had developed after almost being eaten during the GrayCris incident.

A.R.T. knew about Tarik’s injury, and would have intimate knowledge of how it would impact him. But it hadn’t offered him a seat until he’d explicitly asked for one. And then it had waited long enough between being asked to do it and actually doing it to make it clear it was only doing so begrudgingly.

And then it had provided a purposefully uncomfortable, awkward bench. A bench so badly designed it hardly even deserved the name. In medbay. For its crew member who it knew was was injured and in pain.

Um, what in the absolute fuck?

Murderbot was used to A.R.T. being an asshole to itself, and even to its humans, but this was a new low. Especially after A.R.T. had risked Murderbot’s life and the lives of its humans in order to rescue its own crew. And now it wasn’t even treating them well?

::What is wrong with you?:: Murderbot demanded.

::Nothing is wrong with me.:: A.R.T. replied simply.

“Besides man, male, boy, guy, dude, woman, female, girl, gal, and dudette, and other things like that, are there any other specific gender terms you at least know you want me to avoid?” Tarik continued, obliviously friendly. Or at least pretending to be oblivious.

Now Murderbot was flipping out for a different reason. It could handle A.R.T. being mean to itself; it was used to being treated badly. But this was a member of its crew, A.R.T. was supposed to care about them.

“Um.”

Normally it was good at multitasking. But it wasn’t normally lying in a sub-optimally functioning medical chamber with a bunch of open wounds while wondering if the sentient transport it was relying on not only for its own health, but for the safety of everyone else on board it cared or at least vaguely knew about, had something seriously impairing its moral decision making processes, or if it always went around bullying everyone it met, not just Murderbot.

You know, like that whole thing that just happened that landed them all in this mess in the first place.

For a few long seconds Murderbot couldn’t figure out if it would be safer for Tarik to stay here where it could see him, or to dismiss him so maybe he’d have a tiny fraction less of A.R.T.’s attention on him. Murderbot could at least be relieved that A.R.T. wasn’t paying any direct attention to Murderbot’s humans, asleep and helpless in the guest quarters.

“Can I…” fuck, what did the humans say? “Get back to you on that, Tarik? I’m suddenly feeling really tired.” That was a good excuse, though ‘tired’ didn’t even begin to cover what it was feeling. But it guessed existential dread is also form of tiredness.

“Oh! Yes, of course, you need your rest.” Tarik said quickly, and awkwardly slid off the bench, wincing visibly when his feet hit the ground, which did nothing, at all, to help. He bowed a little, which Murderbot hadn’t been expecting, and said, “Thank you for the conversation, SecUnit, it was really nice meeting you. Maybe we can talk some more some other time when you’re feeling better.”

“You too.” It said. Which didn’t even make any sense.

But either Tarik didn’t notice, or he was polite enough not to point it out.

He gave a little wave, and then limped – literally, actually limped! -- out of the room. Murderbot watched him first with the drone it had in the room, then the one it had outside the door, and then he was out of its range entirely.

::Let’s watch Worldhoppers: Ascended again.:: A.R.T. said, like nothing in the world was wrong. Like Murderbot had no reason to panic, like it had no reason to be upset or angry or afraid or have any kind of mental breakdown at all.

Like A.R.T. had told Murderbot, and all its humans just hours before — they weren’t being held here here against their will, they knew where the door was and could kill themselves anytime they wanted.

They were completely at its mercy. A.R.T. had a history of treating Murderbot like crap, thought the threat of its humans being killed was an acceptable risk, and A.R.T. didn’t even treat its own crew well, even though it had risked the lives of Murderbot’s people to rescue them.

Murderbot couldn’t do anything except say, “Okay,” and put on the first pilot episode.

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 31: Paracosm 🦄

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Paracosm (n.)

a detailed imaginary world, especially one created by a child

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Inktober is officially OVER!! 🥳YAHOO!! 🎉 

…Oh, and Happy Halloween, too. 🎃

I did my best to go out on a high note, and I think I largely succeeded…even if the results aren’t very Halloween-ish. 😅 

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk a bit more about my general thoughts/process. ✨

Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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At long last, we end very similarly to how it all began: In a "world" of sparkle and starlight. 😉

I could wax poetic here about how glad I am to be done, but I think me just saying those words alone is plenty enough of that for tonight. Besides, if you really want to split hairs, it's not over until we do the wrap-up image you Sparklers know I usually like to do...

Anyway. I'm not sure my posting time will reflect this by the time I get done with this description, but I did start on this one early enough in the day to give myself plenty of time to brainstorm and play with the concepts a bit. Though, in fairness, I don't think I actually ended up scratching that many ideas or changing my mind all that much as I worked; I think the bulk of my time was just spent trying to figure out where to squeeze in more detail. After all, the definition does say a detailed imaginary world.

Now, I will admit that I'm not entirely sure this really evokes "world" so much as "little house," ("playhouse?") but this is very much another word I put on the list thinking it would be fun to play with in poetry format. More specifically, I was thinking of how satisfying it was to end Obscutober 2021 with "Phantasmagoria"Obscutober 2021 with "Phantasmagoria" as the final word and was hoping for a similar experience.

But as we discussed yesterday: I'm not working in poetry format this time! 🙃

So I relied on the same "Adult Coloring Book Vibes" that I was trying to channel yesterday, because when I think of trying to encapsulate a tiny imaginary world in a detailed but simple drawing, a lot of Johanna Basford's work comes to mind, particularly her book "Small Victories."

From there, a tiny house as an "easy" way to communicate this is meant to somehow be representative of a whole world wasn't a far leap of logic, so that's what I ran with.

I will also take this opportunity to point out that I deliberately drew the houses to point inward, towards the center of the mandala, to kind of go along with the idea of an "inner" world. It was also just a nice change because I somehow did not really notice until today that every other Obscutober piece I've done this month except maybe Day 7 all "point" outward in some way. 😦

Not that which way they "point" matters all that much, I'm just surprised I didn't really notice I hadn't taken advantage of the ability to "point" inward. That could've been fun to play with on Day 23 in particular!

It also doesn't really show at all, but I was thinking about Haunted Houses when I drew the little house, since tonight is Halloween, which is part of why it doesn't use very many properly straight lines...And you might be able to see a the tiniest bat I have ever drawn in my life over the door! But that's about as far as I got with making the house look "haunted." I had thoughts of pushing it further, but I held back because I knew I wanted to get kind of rainbow-y with the color scheme and didn't want the house to clash too much with that.

And as you can probably tell, I also just didn't have a ton of space to play with a lot of fine "spooky" details and have them actually be recognizable. The windows on the house were pushing the limits as it was. 😅

Speaking of windows, I'm not sure how well it comes across, but I did try to put some edging around the houses to create kind of a cathedral/stained glass window effect. Ironic as heck considering I mostly tried to avoid that kind of thing all month previously because I had two glass-specific words I wanted to let have that option on the table...And then I mostly didn't even use that effect for those specific days. 🙃

But! Go big or go home, I wanted to have fun and I like stained glass, so here we are!

I kind of tried to tie the "world" aspect back into it by filling some of the "glass" spaces with those cobblestone-ish spaces. Obviously it's not a "yellow brick road" as in a certain imaginary world because it's not all yellow, but calling it a "rainbow stone road" in similar fashion would be fair, I think. 😉 It's cute and goes super well with the stained glass impression...In fact that might be carrying the whole stained gladd impression by itself, but I'll let Sparklers decide that for yourselves.

Also, to my credit, I did try to bring in a little more "spook" by going with moths to help fill out the rest of the space rather than my first choice, butterflies. Butterflies don't really specifically have anything to do with imaginary worlds, I know, but they seem to have gotten filed in the same folder in my brain. At the very least you could draw the connection between butterflies (and moths), fairies, and magic, which would fit in nicely with an imaginary world.

However, my compromise was starting with the very butterfly-esque Luna moth, which is more colorful but they do have a very eye-like marking on their wings, which I attempt to use to my full advantage here (while still attempting to keep it at least a little abstract).

I was actually going to have all Luna moths all the way around, but when I copied & rotated the layer I discovered they were too long and go cut off on the other 4-points, which I did not like the look of.

So rather than have to figure out something else to draw in their place or re-draw new months from scratch, I erased the bottoms of the wings, altered the shape of what was left a bit, then changed the antennae and the "eyes" on the wings to be a bit different. Boom! New "normal" brown-ish moths. 🦋 And y'know, the brownish moths don't get enough love compared to their flashier counterparts anyway, so they deserve to be here and I'm happy to have them.

To polish things off, I felt it essential to have a rainbow border. More than anything else, I associate rainbows with the concept of imagination. I very nearly put some clouds in there too, but then I remembered how surprsingly annoying it's been to get cloud shapes I'm happy with in this format at various points earlier in the month. So no clouds, just more rainbow bits to fill the space where the clouds would've been.

Besides, this way it kind of looks like the moths are going to fly over the houses, bringing the rainbows with them, which is a pretty cute idea. 😊

And then I topped things off with some stars/sparkles because one of my earlier ideas was to get some trees in here and maybe evoke the idea of laying out under the stars at night, letting your imagination run wild. But as evidenced by my little trees stumps, I did not actually get very far in entertaining that particular idea. 😅

Setting the scene at night does go better with the hints of more Halloween-ish themes, though, so all is well.

The colors then are about as self-explanation as you can get. The only thing I didn't really touch on is that I tried to make the house black/purple with red roofing, but I kept the layers light because I didn't want the coloring in those spots to stick out too much. I think it's better if the house can kind of "blend in" as just a small final nudge to the idea that they're just a small part of a larger world, rather than their own central figure. If that makes any sense.

In the end, I do think this turned out as one my better more doodle-y attempts for the month. Just goes to show what a difference actually having time to think about what the heck I was doing can make. [I say knowing my past self cannot hear/see this yet because that's how the past works.]

And I do think this is among my favorites for the month, but I'm still not quite ready to say it's my favorite-favorite. It is missing some more "traditional" mandala touches that make it harder to compare with those that strike the doodle vs. traditional balance better. I tried to squeeze a couple things in there, but ultimately my other ideas literally and figuratively took up to much space to really leave room for that.

It looks good—great even!—though! So I'm thrilled to go out on a relatively high note, especially after the last few prompts both gave me trouble and were a bit of a whirlwind to make since I was so bad at giving myself enough time to make them in. 😅

...Well, it's a high note for now. We'll see how hard of a time I have with cross-posting and if that dampens my mood too much or not. 🫠

Still, that won't change the fact that I am DONE. I DID IT!! And now I can safely focus all of my attention on a certain other project I've been working on prepping for November in the background all the while.

Still, that won't change the fact that I am DONE. I DID IT!! And now I can safely focus all of my attention on a certain other project I've been working on prepping for November in the background all the while.

I'll see you Sparklers tomorrow, bright and...colorful. 😉 👋

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See the Prompt List

Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[munchboxart]

Hi I'm making another long post talking whatever bullshit that comes to my mind because I'm insane I guess, this time it's music because I love music. I wanna say before hand, I have 0 knowledge in music so a lot of what I'm gonna describe is just my feelings

You also don't have to read through all of this, you can just listen to the music I've linked and that's enough for me :+]

Anyways I'm gonna be talking about JP songs from the early 2000s or late 1990s (Y2K?) that have this poppy, girly type energy. I'm mostly gonna talk about Serani Poji but I'll talk about other's that I've found too.

Ok so I learned that Serani Poji was originally created for SEGA's (I don't know how they keep finding banger musicians) video game called ROOMMANIA #203, which is crazy because I thought they were kind of an indie group like CAPSULE (I don't even know if that's true) or something. Anyways, a lot, if not all, of Serani Poji's songs were put in their later albums (I believe they're all in Manamoon? But there could be other albums too)

Manamoon by Serani Poji

What a banger debut album. To be honest, I think the only songs I really dislike is Manamoon, but the other songs really make up for it. Like "Octopus Daughter" and "Which one of the twins ?" are so fucking GOOD. And I think "Spiral Da-Hi!" is a perfect representation of what I imagine the idealization of the future would be like? If that makes sense??? Basically like The Jetsons. Also I really like this album cover art, speaks a lot of it's era. It's other album cover is nice too I think, I know it's very simple but it takes a surprisingly a lot of thought to think about the composition/placement of text and what colors to pick and the sizes (curse you Graphic Design class)

I'll talk about One-Room Survival for a bit, I think it's their most popular album? Though, I think that's mainly because of "Pipo Pipo".

One-Room Survival by Serani Poji

I think I like this album more than Manamoon? Or at least I think a lot of the songs here are more memorable/addicting to me (but that also may be because I spent more time listening to this album, I only listened to Serani Poji's other albums recently). "One-Room Survival" and "Where is Smiley?" are probably one of my most favorite songs in this album, especially the latter because I love humming the chorus (where is my friend Smiley????? !!!!!). Lovelabor is also really good, I love Bossa Nova type of music. Also I think this is my favorite album art out of all of Serani Poji's Discography? Maybe it's on par with Manamoons because I like it too, but something like this album in it's simplicity is really nice, and a lot of the songs kind of fit it too to be honest. Merry Go Round Jailhouse's album cover is cute too! I think they're all nice in their own way.

Uhmmm I'll talk about Ochamekan briefly since I haven't spent that much time with it

Ochamekan by Serani Poji

Ok admittedly I haven't heard all of the songs, but I do know that one of my favorite songs #2 Earthling Body(?)/Earth Human Body(??)/地球人のカラダ is in this album. #5 Coffee Shop at Night/夜の喫茶店 is also a really good song by virtue of it being kinda Bossa Nova (or maybe I'm just guessing that genre wrong,,,). Also I think this cover art is very cute!!! Actual blorbo

Ok that ends the Serani Poji section, I'll talk about the other albums I found and maybe mention at least 1 CAPSULE album since I've already talked about them before.

FAKEVOX by Plus-Tech Squeeze Box

I love this album art JHNGFDJKNGDFB ANYWAYS this entire album is a lot more... Hyper? Energetic! Upbeat!! compared to the other albums I mentioned. It leans more to like, Cutie Cinema Replay/Nexus-2060 by CAPSULE. Anyways I think #2 Early Riser is such a fun song, I'd love to make an animatic or animation with it. #7 ☆ is also one of my favorites, it's very cute! The ending song "Clover" Is another favorite, I've listened to it probably the most or just as much as "Early Riser", it's very sweet and nice to listen to while doing chores.

SUPER MIRACLE CIRCUIT by Sonic Coaster Pop

THIS IS THE ALBUM I'VE BEEN MOST EXCITED TO TALK ABOUT. I think out of the album cover art in this post, this has to be my very top (even though you can count every pixel on here). I don't know if this counts because I only started recently liking it, but I really like this type of Y2K visuals and music? IT'S FUN IT'S CUTE IT'S EVERYTHING!! Anyways, I LOVE how all the songs transition to the next one so smoothly. My absolute favorite song here is #3 Super Speed POP☆STAR. Definitely the most listened song on this post, I'd love to make a character design based on this song!!

The songs are pretty long but that's ok, It really helps with the transitions! Also surprisingly, Plus-Tech Squeeze Box has made a remix for them! I think I prefer the original but I love the title "go go EGG mix", that's so fucking silly behavior, let's be whimsical!!

OK so a break, I'll be talking about 2 more albums which are personal favorites. The ones above are a lot more recent albums I've listened to (excluding One-Room Survival) but these last 2 are ones I've had a lot more time with.

Second last album I'll talk about is from CAPSULE, which is the only band here that still makes music to this day I believe? Which makes me really sad, but it makes a lot of the albums here valuable/important, as they're a really good product of their time.

Capsule – L.D.K. Lounge Designers Killer

A Flying City Plan(?)/空飛ぶ都市計画 is such a great starting song. I really wanted to use it for my Frye Splatfest art for Team Aliens, but I went with the Nexus-2060 song "Space Station No. 9" since I think it and the album itself fit more with the "aliens" theme. Anyways, I believe this album is the most latest one on this post? That's ok, I'll give a pass to CAPSULE any time of my life. A lot of the songs here are more chill, very loungy LOL

Also same as always, I love all of the songs in here, I mean it's CAPSULE. It'd be easier to say which songs are the weaker ones for me, which is #3 Lounge Designers Killer (how come the title tracks are the ones to kinda fall off...), and #4 Twinkle Twinkle Poppp! But not because it's a bad song, I just think it's kind of out of place in this album?? Whatever I still like it, anyways #5 TIC TAC and #1 A Flying City Plan are my most favorite songs in this album. Also the little ending song is very sweet :+] <3

LAST THING TO SAY ABOUT THIS ALBUM, #9 do do pi do reminds me. A lot of Tunak Tunak Tun. and it's driving me kind of crazy because I don't know if anyone else also hears it.

Last album is an album I've listened to the most and one I've heard since I was 12. Maybe my most favorite album ever??

NAGISA COSMETIC by NAGISA COSMETIC

I am so... Distraught that they only released one album, because I think they've captured cuteness so perfectly?? NAGISA COSMETIC is a duo consisting of a model and designer, Ichikawa Nagisa and the other half of CAPSULE, producer Nakata Yasutaka. I can't express how much this album means so much to me, like I made my first animation to one of the songs here (#6 retort). I LOVE THIS ALBUMMMMMMMMM, and how I found it was through... OSU 😭 whoever mapped Cosmetic Happy, I love you, you changed my life.

And that's all! Thank you if you read all of this, but thank you too if you just went through the music, I appreciate your time :+] I also made a Google Slide of all the little aesthetics and music I like if you'd like to go through that. I need to update it though but maybe I'll do that next year and leave this one as a 2023 diary

Again, thank you for your time 🫶

[dragonbard-bastard]

Started writing down what I did today to make lil summary posts cuz I've seen people do that before and like the idea of sharing more about my runs :)

Act 1 Spoilers!

The first thing I did was talk to Omeluum and Blurg, and I js wanna say I love them :) they're so husbands. We also went to the Arcane Tower and unlocked it and such, very nice, got the timmask spores and tongue of madness, forgot to go back to Blurg and Omeluum. Oops. Discovered that the tower has a BASEMENT!?

Spent a lot of time talking to corpses for fun. Canonically Soph would never- he'd rarely ever touch necrotic magic of any kind of ever. It would also freak him tf out.

We got Astarion's Sussur dagger!!! It's probably one of my favorite weapons in the early game, fuck them spellcasters fr. ALSO since I'm playing Tactician and long rests cost 80 camp supplies rather than fourth I've been very greedy with it so when we went into the Underdark Astarion was like "Hey .. Can I ermm tell you something. I'm. I'm a vampire." and Soph just said "Duh" and moved on 😭😭😭

Also for the not long resting reason Wyll only recently got his horns. Told Mizora to fuck off, and of COURSE called Wyll a handsome devil. Am growing increasingly aggravated as time goes on, however, about a lack of Wyll content. He literally won't even say well met anymore he has ONE LINE. no variety, just "You have something to ask?"

Dug up a dog's grave. I'm so sorry Myrna. Apologized by putting some flowers and a candle on it, it was all I had unfortunately.

I actually long rested twice in an row, one without using any camp supplies ofc, because I wanted the invisible Durge cape and it's actually shockingly good on Soph. I should probably give it to Astarion but I don't want to :(

Went to the mountain pass because I didn't want to go to grymforge, stole everything from the bitch who wanted the githyanki egg then murdered her because I hate her and what the fuck

fought the gremishkas (Astarion one shot a surprising AMT of them, it was awesome) and the Kobold. I tried to blow up as little of the wine as I could because more camp supplies, and found out you can apparently pocket the fire wine barrels with kobold still on them. This will be incredibly funny when I use the barrels as bombs later. DAMN I FORGOT TO TAKE A SS OF MY BARREL BOMB COLLECTION. Here's one from yesterday, though it's grown.

went to creche y'llek . went to the zaithisk, let Lae'zel use it, did this on the first persuasion check, did not use an inspiration.

Absolutely brutalized the bitches outside of the infirmary, I put an oil barrel underneath one of the light fixtures then shot it down at the start of the fight 😭😭😭

went to fight kith'rak therezynn, remembered why I ate the mountain pass. had to reload like three times until I was like fuck this Wyll go home Gale use arcane lock on this stupid door and then it was going decently well Lae'zel knocked the soul breaker out of her hands and later got her own weapon knocked out of her hands, perfect time to switch to the soul breaker I'd say. near the end of the fight a random fucking raider spawned right next to therezynn. just poof. right into existence. I was floored and slightly annoyed but therezynn hit him w a burning hands and took off half his health anyways???

Soph told the Inquisitor he can't have the weapon, the Inquisitor did not like this. Lae'zel stole his sword too and nearly killed him in four hits. He did become a pain in the ass w the mind steal link tho because oml he stole his own teammates minds or whatever. didn't know he'd do that. Wyll went down to this ranged attacker multiple times and I tried to use heat metal on him but he WASNT METAL. BULLSHIT. LOOK AT ALL THAT M E T A L.

Anyways, Soph got pissed about them hurting Wyll, went crazy went stupid, murdered the absolutely 100% has metal on him guy and one of the last spellcasters. told vlaakith to fuck off, visited the dream visitor, said get up boy I ain't killing you, signed off, and will now go eep.

Ty for reading :3

[cedarbranch]

OMG... tell your beloved fans about haunt me PLEASEEE + also "show me how you do that trick" + one dealer's choice :-D

WARGHH thank u <333

in response to the wip meme... putting this under a cut bc it got long lol

haunt me is my monstrosity of a stranger things wip, sitting around 90k and MAYBE 65% complete. if i'm lucky. it's fucking Long. the basic premise is that eddie dies and then steve starts dreaming about him and eventually comes to realize he is NOT dead, but in fact alive in the upside down and somehow psychically linked to steve... i won't get too deep into spoilers but it's kind of a kas!eddie fic but with a twist that's it's less kas and more similar to the pacific rim fic designations congruent with things (<= sentences that mean anything only to the most Niche Possible Audience). anyway the more complicated premise is steve's savior complex and how every single issue in his life connects back to it

show me how you do that trick is the sequel to my hellcheer fic, push the limit! (which. is fucking crazyy to me that that's the only stranger things fic actually posted on my ao3 given how much time i've spent working on haunt me 😭😭) anyway. it's as horny as the first in the series but with more feelings and plot. it's from eddie's pov and includes some actual proper kink negotiation and apologies following the insanity of the og fic, and also some RLY CUTE FLIRTING!!! a snippet for thee:

“I don’t like… weird dirty talk?” Chrissy says, wrinkling her nose. “Like, the stuff they say in bad pornos.” Eddie sighs in feigned exasperation. “God, it’s like pulling teeth here. Specifics, woman, I need specifics!”  “I don’t know! Like,” Chrissy opens her mouth, then closes it again, flushing brilliantly. “No. I’m sorry, I can’t, I can’t say any of it. I just—I don’t like the word ‘pussy,’ or ‘cunt,’ or anything like that, just—” She flaps her hands in the direction of her crotch—”Just don’t directly refer to it while we’re in the act? Like, if you’re having sex, it should speak for itself!”  Eddie grins at her.  “What?” she demands, all frustrated but laughing with her eyes.  “I love that you have porn opinions,” he says fondly. “You asked!”

for dealer's choice... oooh this is tough... but i think i'll go with 5 + 1, the full title of which will one day be "5 times steve tried to teach eddie how to swim and one time it worked" or something of the like. this fic was born out of me a) wanting to write something with intense hot-summer-day energy, b) being really interested in water/swimming as the focal point of Multiple Traumatic Incidents in steve's life as of s4, and c) can you fucking imagine if part of the reason eddie was last to jump from the boat in lover's lake was that he couldn't swim. and then he DID IT ANYWAY. but yeah second snippet:

Eddie is, in fact, wearing boxer briefs, and nothing else. Seeing so much of his skin never gets less startling, no matter how many times Steve’s splashed around with him in the lake. He always forgets that Eddie’s shoulders aren’t as broad as the vest normally makes them look. He’s pale as a goddamn sheet, too, except for the pink-red scars that pockmark his stomach and chest.  Eddie catches him looking. “Might not even be worth it to teach me to swim,” he says wryly. “Don’t think I can ever set foot at a public pool again with these bad boys.” “We could just go together,” says Steve. “Then we’d match.”  His own wounds have healed up better than Eddie’s. The demobats tore him up pretty good, but the bites were shallow; as months passed by, they’ve smoothed over into pale, warped ripples of scar tissue. Without thinking about it, Steve touches one close to his hip. As if in a mirror, Eddie does the same, his fingertips brushing over his stomach.  His boxers have little skulls on them.

your honor i fucKGIGN LOVE THEMMM!!! IDIOTS!!!!