#can you really blame me for having feelings

[thankskenpenders]

Thoughts on two specific areas of the writing in Sonic X Shadow Generations

The best new 3D Sonic game in over a decade (or even two, depending on who you ask) dropped late last year. And I didn't write anything about it! Sometimes life happens. Well, I've finally sat down to finish Shadow Generations, and by now everyone has already been singing its praises for three months. This is the rare instance where the entire Sonic fandom, and even mainstream reviewers, are in agreement on something. The level design is the best it's been in a long, long time and the cool factor is off the charts, embracing Sonic's peak cringe era in an incredibly confident way. It's great. If you're even reading this post, you probably don't need me to tell you that. So I won't!

No, what I'm really interested in here is the writing. Because this is me we're talking about. But I actually don't want to talk about the main narrative of Shadow Generations, which is really solid little story about Black Doom trying to mold Shadow into his perfect soldier. No, I'd like to zero in on two other aspects of the writing here: the revisions made to Sonic Generations, and Gerald Robotnik's unlockable journal.

The updated Sonic Generations script

The new package mostly presents Sonic Generations how you remember it. There are some tweaks, but it's not a major overhaul. Graphically, I don't think the game has been touched much, if at all. I certainly can't notice any difference without a side-by-side comparison, despite playing it on a PS5. The most notable update is that the game's script has been rewritten by Ian Flynn.

Naturally, this caught my attention. Generations always had a nothingburger story, so with Ian rewriting Pontac and Graff's lame dialogue there was nowhere to go but up. (I don't like to pin the blame for those games' stories entirely on them, as a ton of it was dictated to them by Sonic Team, but, well, I don't think they're very good dialogue writers.) But it's less a complete rewrite and more like Ian was brought on as a script doctor for some minor touch ups here and there. Many lines of dialogue are completely identical to how they were originally written in 2011, and many others only have slight wording changes. Ian was clearly not allowed to request additional scenes or extend the ones that already existed. He has to match the original beat for beat so that they can reuse 99% of the cutscene animations. Don't expect it to be a whole new experience compared to the original.

Still, I think the new script is an improvement, albeit a minor one. Various things have been tweaked to maintain characterization consistency. Cream calls Sonic "Mr. Sonic" instead of just "Sonic." Instead of calling Sonic "buddy," Rouge uses the pet name "Blue," like she tends to do in things like the IDW comics. Espio doesn't have to remind you in the dialogue that he's a ninja, and he no longer has a line making it sound like he has some kind of soul reading power. I also like that Modern Sonic now actually has responses to what his friends say when he rescues them, rather than being silent like Classic Sonic. They won't blow you away, but they make Sonic feel a little more engaged with everything.

In general, the altered dialogue just seems tighter to me, and some of the more childish or trite wording of Pontac and Graff's script has been altered. Here, let's actually make a direct comparison, just because this stuff is interesting to me as a writer. Here's a couple lines from after the Egg Dragoon fight late in the game, in the original script:

Modern Eggman: Ooooh... I can't believe this! I was supposed to beat you this time. Modern Sonic: Aw, I'm sorry! I didn't get that memo. I beat you every time! [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat this guy every time. It's like it's our job or something!

This is a simple exchange. Eggman is mad that he lost. Sonic is unflappably confident because he always beats Eggman, and he explains this to his younger self. But the wording here isn't particularly good. Eggman's simple and direct wording makes him come off like a little kid who's mad because his older brother beat him at Mario Kart, rather than a mad scientist who just had his plans foiled. It's making light of the situation.

And I've never liked Sonic saying "It's like it's our job or something!" That doesn't feel like a thing Sonic would say, it feels like a thing an outside observer would say about Sonic. This is a frequent problem with so-called "MCU dialogue," where quips meant to echo the commentary of a casual, somewhat disinterested audience are inserted into the story itself so that the writers can be like "See? We get it. We're genre-savvy, too!" It also just reminds me of bad Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric lines like "Rings! It's like they're made for me!"

And then here's Ian's rewrite:

Modern Eggman: I recalibrated everything! This was supposed to be my time! Modern Sonic: Oh, please, keep dreamin', Egg-head. I beat you every time. [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat him every time. Our score card's flawless.

Eggman's still mad about his defeat, but the line "I recalibrated everything!" makes it more specific. He put all this work into the engineering side of his latest scheme and got tunnel vision, thinking if he got his creations just right there'd be no way he could lose. "This was supposed to be my time!" also turns it into a time travel pun, which is a bonus. He's still pitching a fit over losing, but it feels more like Eggman pitching a fit, rather than sounding childish.

And then instead of saying that beating Eggman is "like his job or something," Sonic says he's got a flawless score card against Eggman. He doesn't take Eggman seriously as a threat—at least, not to his face. He acts like it's all a game. But he conveys this in a way that feels truer to the character, rather than feeling like the words of a real world observer poking fun at the tropes of the Sonic series.

Is this amazing, A+ dialogue that blows me away? No. Again, it's not a completely different scene from the one we already had. Ian had to fit the beats of what was already there. He couldn't go all out and write an all new story confirming his longstanding headcanon that the Time Eater is a remnant of Solaris or whatever. But the wording here makes the existing story land a little better and feel truer to the characters in subtle ways.

But to me, the main change is that the Sonics and Tailses seem to have a more solid understanding of what's going on with the timeline and the Time Eater, compared to how idiotic they sometimes seemed in the original game. Which is good! No more standing outside Green Hill and wondering why it seems so familiar. Thank god. As part of this, yes, there are a few more references to past games in the dialogue, like Sonic briefly being confused about the fact that they're time traveling without the Time Stones, or South Island and Westside Island being acknowledged as the normal locations of Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Yes, ha ha, insert joke about how Ian loves references here. Look, it's Sonic fucking Generations. It's a game built entirely out of nostalgic references. Just own it! And, again, in this instance Sonic and Tails come off as less stupid when they make it clear that they do, in fact, remember their adventures from presumably less than a year ago in-universe.

Eggman, too, seems to have a better understanding of the powers he's toying with. Where in the original vesion his focus was simply on going back in time to undo his previous defeats and he seemed kind of oblivious to how much the Time Eater was actually fucking up the universe, here Eggman says he wants to use the Time Eater to give himself complete control over the entire timeline. Eggman also makes way fewer references to his own failures and shortcomings. Of course he won't admit that Sonic has defeated him time and time again. To him, he's never truly lost—Sonic just keeps delaying the inevitable total victory for the Eggman Empire.

So, yes. The new Sonic Generations script is better. It won't blow anyone away, but it's better than it was. It's been elevated from "kinda lame" to "fine." No, if you really wanna see Ian flex his ability to breathe new life into old Sonic stories, look no further than...

Gerald Robotnik's Journal

Hoo boy.

The story of what happened aboard the ARK has always been... a bit confusing, to say the least. Fans with encyclopedic knowledge of the script for every route of Shadow '05 may disagree, but it's the truth. We've had all the pieces to understand the story for a long time now, but that info was given to us out of order by a pair of unreliable narrators—Gerald, who became a vengeful lunatic shortly before his death, and Shadow, who was subjected to multiple rounds of amnesia and altered memories. Some of the ambiguity left by Sonic Adventure 2 was cleared up in Shadow '05, but that game also retconned in a bunch of new elements to Shadow's backstory (aliens!) that lead to further confusion. Not to mention the fact that that game had multiple routes and only revealed the truth about Shadow if you sat on the ultimate final boss battle for WAY longer than the fight would normally last. Or the fact that Sonic X made its own tweaks in its telling of the story. Or the fact that none of these things ever had the best English translations. I can't blame anyone who hasn't played those games in two decades for not remembering the truth about these characters and getting some details mixed up.

What we needed was something to piece together all of the info we have into one coherent backstory, told in chronological order. And thanks to Shadow Generations, we have that, in the form of an official journal tying together what we knew from Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow '05, and Sonic Battle into the tragic tale of Gerald's rise and fall.

Ian Flynn was the perfect man for the job here as the guy who started his career by tidying up the mess that was the first 159 issues if Archie Sonic. This is what he excels at: taking disparate bits of weird Sonic lore from multiple different sources, boiling them down to their most interesting elements, and connecting it together in a way that will make the audience see the dramatic potential he's always known was there. Rather than feeling like a cynical exercise in franchise building, going back and explaining things that never needed explaining so that people can add more bullet points to the wiki, he puts a new spin on things that retroactively enriches those past stories. The story here means something to the characters involved and gives us a better understanding of them as people, rather than as plot devices to motivate Shadow.

(And, of course, Ian didn't do this journal alone. He wrote the story, but I also have to give a huge shout out to Evan Stanley, who made the final product. All of her handwritten journal entries, sketches, and "photos" included throughout. The physical damage done to the journal over the course of 50 tumultuous years, passing from Gerald to Eggman to a certain special someone at GUN. The way Gerald's handwriting gets less and less legible as his mental state declines. So much love was put into what could have been a mere text dump in a menu, and it really elevates it to the next level. Congrats on officially getting hired by Sega, Evan, you've sure as hell earned it!)

The main idea the journal conveys is that Gerald was under a lot of pressure from a lot of different parties—GUN, the President, his colleagues aboard the ARK, Black Doom, even his own family—and boy did it get to him. The known incidents aboard the ARK mentioned in previous games are put together here to form a story where everything slowly spirals out of control as Gerald keeps compromising his morals to further his research, thinking he'll eventually find some way out of all this because he's a genius. I won't recap that whole story here (if you haven't already played the game and read the journal entries, I would highly recommend at least reading it on the Sonic wiki), but I'd like to highlight my favorite elements of the story, as Ian tells it here.

1) The Eclipse Cannon

Here's something that never quite made sense in Sonic Adventure 2: why does the ARK have a laser that can blow up the Earth built into it? It was supposed to be a peaceful research colony. Sure, Gerald went crazy and swore revenge on the Earth, but, like... when did he have an opportunity to go back up to the ARK and modify it? Did he have someone else do it? How? The ARK was raided by GUN and shut down! And then they arrested him, held him in prison for an unclear period of time, and executed him by firing squad when he was no longer useful! It doesn't add up. Shadow 'the Hedgehog '05 would give its own answer by introducing the Black Arms and saying that the Eclipse Cannon was always supposed to be a secret trump card against the Black Comet. But, like... we know that's kind of a bullshit answer, right? You don't need enough power to blow up a whole planet just to destroy a comet.

Well, the new journal retains what we already knew, but it paints a much more complete picture.

See, long before Gerald ever made a Faustian bargain with Black Doom, he had already made one with an even greater evil: the military. GUN gave Gerald much of the funding for the ARK, Gerald's personal utopian research station in space, but it didn't take long for GUN to start pressuring him to design them weapons. Gerald tried to get GUN off his back by personally contacting the President of the United Federation, and the President gave him an alternative: how about, instead, you just use your genius brain to figure out the secret to immortality for us, so our soldiers can be immortal? Gerald was initially sickened by the notion and found it completely absurd, like chasing a shadow... but given no other option, the sarcastically named Project Shadow soon began in earnest. (Maria would later put a more positive spin on the name after Shadow's awakening, pointing out that a Shadow can show us the direction of the light, like she says in the game itself.)

Of course, this search for the ultimate life form didn't go very well, and without any results on that front GUN kept hounding him for weapons. Gerald would throw them a bone here and there to get them off his back. His research on Chaos resulted in the Artifical Chaos prototypes, which he worried would be used for warfare but could at least theoretically be used for search and rescue missions in floods, in his mind. But that wasn't enough. So he gave them Chaos Drives to power their mechs. And that still wasn't enough. He's got Emerl. He'll give them Emerl. They're not impressed by Emerl. They'll shut the whole ARK down if Gerald doesn't give them something big.

Fine! GUN wants something big? Gerald builds a huge fucking laser cannon into the ARK. However, as a middle finger to GUN, Gerald makes it so powerful that it would destroy the Earth if it was ever fired at any target on its surface. In other words, GUN now has their ultimate weapon of mass destruction, fulfilling his contract, but they can never actually use it. Oh, the delicious irony. (And also Shadow will blow up the Black Comet with it in 50 years yada yada yada.) Is this perhaps extremely shortsighted and naive of Gerald, to believe that such a weapon would never actually be used just because of the risk? Of course. But hey, that's Gerald for you. And I love this as an answer.

(Also, this, uh, kinda echoes something from real life! Remember the bit in Oppenheimer where he says all nuclear war will become unthinkable, and Edward Teller responds "until somebody builds a bigger bomb"? Yeah, Teller went on to conceptualize a superweapon codenamed Project Sundial that would have been able to kill all life on the planet, as the ultimate deterrent for war. This was never made for obvious reasons, but hey, there's a basis for this sort of thinking outside of heightened sci-fi! There's a whole Kurzgesagt video about this if you're interested.)

2) The Biolizard

The Biolizard is, of course, brought up as the initial failed prototype of the ultimate life form, from before Gerald met Black Doom. We don't really learn all that much about it that we didn't already know, but I just love the way it's framed in the story.

As you can see above, we actually get to see a picture of Maria holding up the cute little salamander that would end up mutating into the Biolizard through Gerald's experiments. (Researchers want to figure out how to replicate salamanders' regenerative abilities for humans in real life, too, so this was a natural starting point for the project.) And then, after it grows to a monstrous size and goes out of control, Gerald has to lock it away in an unused sector of the ARK. He needs to keep the poor thing alive for his research into harnessing Chaos Energy, building life support systems directly into it, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Maria what happened. So it just becomes this first dark secret weighing on his conscience. The Biolizard becomes Gerald's Tell-Tale Heart beating beneath the floorboards of the ARK. I love that.

3) Lost Impact was the breaking point for the ARK

Remember the level Lost Impact in Shadow '05? The flashback level on the hero path where Shadow is running around fighting Artificial Chaos enemies on the ARK 50 years ago? Yeah, that wasn't just a random incident. That was important, as we now know due to its placement on the timeline.

See, Emerl's rampage aboard the ARK that was chronicled in Sonic Battle and Dark Beginnings set off a domino effect. Emerl riled up the Artificial Chaos, causing Gerald to lose control of them. They became violent, and so Shadow had to stop them, as depicted in Lost Impact. The thing is, that incident sent an SOS signal to GUN telling them that shit was going down on the ARK. Gerald didsn't fully understand the trouble he was in and assumed that he'd simply be reprimanded by the higher ups, or maybe face legal action. But, well... the next time he heard from GUN, armed troopers were raiding the ARK.

So Lost Impact was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just really like that detail.

4) Maria

And, of course, there's Maria herself. Maria has often been more of a symbol than a character, this perfect embodiment of everything that's good and pure in this world who gets killed to motivate Shadow and Gerald's revenge plots. But I really like the wrinkles this journal adds to her and Gerald's story, and their relationship. This is the most fleshed out they've ever felt.

For one, the journal leans into the idea of Maria's intellectual potential. The rest of the Robotnik family is all geniuses, after all, and she was proving to be a really bright kid. She excelled in her studies on the ARK, and she even helped design Shadow's jet skates and inhibitor rings. When Maria died, the world didn't just lose a symbolic personification of purity. She genuinely could have been a hugely influential scientist who did so much good for the world. That's what Gerald wanted for her. But we'll never know, because GUN killed her.

Speaking of her family, their presence isn't just mentioned for the sake of fleshing out the Robotnik family tree. It's mentioned that as Gerald struggled to find a cure for Maria's illness through his genetic research, he faced mounting pressure from his family. They didn't want Maria to be up on the ARK forever. They wanted Gerald to hurry up and find a damn cure, or otherwise just send her back home to Earth so she could be with her family again. She'd been up on the ARK for so long that Gerald's coworkers started thinking that she had been born up there. Eventually she gains a baby sister on Earth who she's never met. A rift forms between Gerald's two sons, and he's unable to really deal with it because he's so consumed by his work. There's this sense that the family is falling apart, and that everyone is dreading the possibility that Gerald will never find a cure and that Maria will just spend her final years up in space and die far away from her family, because Gerald just couldn't let go. If that happens, it'll break the whole family. But he can't stop now. So he just keeps working. Curing Maria is the only way to win his family back, in his eyes. It can't all be for nothing.

But my favorite detail regarding Maria is this one paragraph:

Maria is growing into a lovely young woman. It breaks my heart that someone as bright and energetic as her is diminished by disease. There are no visible effects, and I've caught my fellow researchers muttering to each other, doubting her illness. It is infuriating. I find all my reason and restraint vanishes when she's slighted.

This is SUCH a great addition to the story! It's always been true that Maria doesn't really seem all that ill, just looking at her in cutscenes. With this one little comment, Ian flips that issue on its head and turns it into a story about invisible disability. She doesn't act like she's in chronic pain, so she must not be, everyone thinks. And this really, really gets to Gerald, as does the pressure from his family. He's dedicating his whole LIFE to saving her, and they think she's faking it?! It's such a small addition, never referenced elsewhere in the journal, but it adds so much flavor to the story, as does the implied family drama. It grounds Gerald and Maria and makes them feel more like real human beings, rather than being pure archetypes. It's just enough info to let my imagination run wild filling in the blanks.

You also get the feeling that Maria being such a walking ray of sunshine was the only real source of joy Gerald had left in his life before Shadow was awakened, and the only thing keeping him from snapping under pressure sooner. All this stuff just keeps piling on, everything's spiraling out of control, but at least Maria is keeping her chin up, right? It makes so much sense that losing her would make him go off the deep end when it's framed like this.

It's just... man, I never thought I'd care so much about Gerald and Maria. But that's the Ian Flynn touch. After years of less than stellar Sonic writing that seemed to be embarrassed of itself, I'm so happy to have new games coming out that fully embrace the history of the series like this, making its world feel so rich and real instead of just serving as an excuse for a string of platforming levels. I don't even like Shadow '05, but I'll be damned if Ian and the rest of Sonic Team didn't make something amazing by "yes, and"-ing Shadow's cringe past here. Sonic has truly reached levels of "we're so back" never thought possible.

[beesandwasps]

Yeah, I’m sure the way to get the votes of people who didn’t vote for you this time because they feel your party is too far to the right is to first (1) do nothing they want (minimum wage increase? military budget cut back even slightly? following the science on covid? federal prosecution of Trump?) and then (2) blame them when they decide you’re not worth supporting. That’s the strategy the Democrats have been using for a long time now, and are already committing to follow for the next 4 years — Chuck Schumer has already said the Senate has to work together bipartisanly, when the Senate is majority Trump-Republican, so that Trump’s agenda will be the Senate’s agenda. Maybe you — and more importantly the Democratic leadership — should consider how well that strategy has worked in the last 3 elections before embracing it again.

If you want leftist votes, you move left. Biden and Harris funded and repeatedly publicly doubled down on a genocide, gave extra funding to cops when a strong majority of the party’s actual voters wanted their funding cut (which, incidentally, is going to be a problem, because Trump now has fully-funded and expanded police forces, which the FBI has been saying for years are full of MAGA types but which Obama and Biden refused to prosecute), expanded US fossil fuel production more than any previous administration (Democrats were actively bragging in the last week before the election that the US had become the world’s largest producer of oil!), and in the end took an anti-immigration stance, and your proposal to win back the votes they lost as a result of playing all these games is to say “those of you who disagreed with how we were doing things, when we had control and chose not to do what you wanted, this is your fault”. Demanding mindless uniform loyalty in exchange for nothing but a victory by a party you’re a member of but don’t agree with sure seems like a genuinely fascist move to me.

The Democrats keep chasing Republican votes, rather than trying to maximize turnout on the left — despite polls strongly suggesting over and over again that a majority of the population leans left and/or Democratic but isn’t voting. There are really only two possibilities: either the country really is majority right-leaning despite the polls and will not change in the near- or mid-term, so a rightward shift by the Democrats is the only possible way for them to ever get into office, or else the continuous shift rightward by the Democrats (and therefore the government as a whole) is a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by the Democrats refusing to try anything else. (The last time the Democrats campaigned to the left instead of the right was 2008 — and they won by a larger margin than any election since, with majorities in both houses of Congress. Every election since then, their message to the left has been “shut up, we can’t possibly promise you anything right now, we’d upset the Republicans”. As though the Republicans have, at any point, not found things to get upset about, even when they had to make things up to do it.)

If the former possibility is the case, and the Democrats have to keep moving right, then the only strategy which can possibly succeed is to just assume you are going to lose votes on the left and only poll right-wingers to see how you’re doing with them, and adapt your policies and messaging to their tastes. (This is pretty much what the Democratic Party has been doing already, give them credit.) In 2020, despite being picked specifically because he was the most right-wing national-level Democrat, Biden got only 6% of the Republican vote. In 2024, despite spending her whole campaign kicking the base in the teeth and embracing Biden’s right-wing moves (such as the Palestinian genocide), Harris only got 5%, but had lost so many votes because of the rightward shift that she lost the election overall. (All those latino votes you were so astonished you lost? They saw what Biden/Harris were doing and no longer believed the Democrats stood with them.) So this strategy is, so far, not just not working but is actively failing, and if this strategy is ever going to work, you have a very long way to go before it shows useful results. But if you’re going to follow it, then: shut up. You can’t curse us out any more and blame us for your failings; you’ve already written us off and you have no right to expect us to help you.

If the second scenario is true, and the Democrats are never going to win a stable majority by moving right, then absolutely everything the Democrats have done since about 2009 is completely wrong. You need to chase out all the politicians who endorsed Clinton and Biden over Sanders in the primaries and make sure not to nominate any of them ever again, perma-fire all the consultants who advised Clinton and Biden and Harris (to the tune of hundreds of billions each time, incidentally), refuse ever to give appointments to all the pro-war assholes who have run foreign policy in the last 32 years, and primary and vote out all the Democratic mayors who have been ordering protestors beaten up and teargassed. It’s going to be extremely hard work because none of those people can be trusted an inch or will be willing to go; I strongly believe that you’ll find it easier to just get everybody to jump ship and build the Greens into a major party than to clean out all the right-wingers in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party, but you apparently don’t believe that, so: good luck, you’ll need it.

[glossdebut]

everything i want (a take a bite drabble collection) | MYG

✧ PAIRING: yoongi x fem!reader (TAB!couple)

✧ GENRE: established relationship, fluff, smut, humor

✧ REQUEST: @joonary: hello my dear friend i am here to request something with dilf yoongi 😁 no other specifications go crazy and @beomcoups: I wanted to send you a request with Yoongi and you spend the day at the beach with this prompt "isn't that view beautiful"? It can be sfw or nsfw.

✧ SUMMARY: The best part of being with Yoongi, from the very beginning, was that nothing had to change for either of you. You could be married to Yoongi and to your job at the same time, build your career from the ground up and never sacrifice a thing. But this? Having a baby? It’s all going to be sacrifice. It won’t be just you and Yoongi anymore, living in your precious little workaholic love bubble. Everything is going to change.

✧ TAGS: pregnancy, different stages of pregnancy (conception, morning sickness, early labor, etc.), the smut is crazy but this is mostly soft, TAB!couple are in complete domestic bliss i fear, and they’re married!, yoongi and MC being each other’s voices of reason, TAB!yoongi’s murderous inner monologues make a comeback, rina cameo, baby penny <3, beach episode moment (warnings under the cut because… um…)

✧ WORDCOUNT: 7.6k words

✧ AUTHOR’S NOTE: blame MJ for this. and my m’lady anon for saying i’m always ovulating. *taps mic* min yoongi my womb is empty please call me.

P.S. thank you to tanni @yooniivrse for beta reading <3

P.P.S. i feel like this can maybe stand alone??? but parts of it might be confusing if you haven’t read take a bite in its entirety, so… do that, if you want!

✧ WARNINGS: vaginal fingering, oral (f. receiving), dirty talk, spanking, nipple play, hand/finger kink, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, yoongi calls reader a sl*t in bed but it is all extremely consensual, rough sex, unprotected sex (duh) (but wrap it before you tap it), creampie (double duh)

one —

Yoongi’s being a real good sport about it, but you know you’re being annoying.

Ever since both of you got home, you just… There are things that need to be done, okay? Like unloading the dishwasher. You can’t just leave that for tomorrow, that would be insane. And since you’re unloading the dishwasher, you might as well organize the kitchen cabinets. They’re a mess, and you’re putting away dishes anyway. Why postpone the inevitable?

And Pepper! Sweet, sweet Pepper. She needs to be fed, obviously. You’re not going to neglect your cat, are you? Your cat who has nobody else in the whole world aside from you and Yoongi? The two of you are responsible for a whole life—feline life! Feline life. 

This doesn’t have anything to do with what Yoongi’s eomma said tonight. Absolutely not. 

You are a grown woman. An award winning music journalist with a kickass career and a super hot, famous, rich man by your side. You’re not going to let Yoongi’s eomma get under your skin. You’re just fidgety. Who wouldn’t be after dinner with the in-laws?

You pause mid-kibble pour, staring down at the sparkly, significant thing wrapped around your finger. It’s been over a year, and sometimes you still can’t believe it’s true. Married. Husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Min.

The thought makes you relax, just a little. Yoongi is your better half in every sense. Your soulmate. And more than that, he has your back. There’s no reason why you can’t just tell him what you’ve been thinking. What you’ve been thinking for a long time now, really. 

As if he can read your mind, your husband sidles up behind you, wrapping his arms around you as you finish feeding the cat. 

“You wanna talk about it?” he murmurs against the back of your neck.

“No,” you huff, turning in his hold to loop your arms around his neck. “But I think we have to.”

Yoongi hums, dipping down to kiss you softly. “Okay. Let’s talk about it, then.”

With a sigh, you peel yourself away from your husband and head to the couch. This feels like a sitting down conversation. Yoongi sits next to you, pulling you into his body, your head on his shoulder.

“Y/N… You know it’s not a dealbreaker, right? Kids. You know that.”

Tilting your head up, you study his features.

Yoongi is usually so unshakeable. It’s rare that you see him truly nervous, not when it comes to you. Your relationship is so solid, you can’t remember the last time you saw him like this.

“Yoongi, of course I know that,” you assure him immediately, bringing a hand up to cup his cheek.

The two of you had the marriage-and-kids conversation not long after you moved in together. It was the logical thing to do, with how serious things were getting. The marriage part of the conversation was easy. Yeah, duh, you wanted to marry Min Yoongi one day. No shit. 

The kids part, though? That was a little harder. At least for you.

You didn’t know if you wanted kids. The cons far outweighed the pros, especially where your work schedules were concerned, and at the time, you weren’t sure if that would ever change.

Yoongi was amenable about it, though. He wanted what you wanted. Kids, no kids, whatever. You’re pretty sure those were his exact words.

“I’m not freaking out because I think you’re gonna, like, leave me or something.”

“Okay,” he says, visibly relaxing. “Then why are you freaking out?”

“I don’t know!” you groan, pressing your face into his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Baby,” he huffs. “This is our decision, not my eomma’s. Nothing’s changed.”

That’s the thing. That’s why you’re so restless.

“Maybe…” Fuck, you can’t sit still for this. So you stand, hoping you can force the words out if you’re pacing. “Maybe things have changed.”

It would be funny, the way Yoongi’s mouth pops open in a little ‘o’, if you didn’t feel like you were about to throw up.

“I just—” You rub your hands over your face, exasperated. And then you’re stopping in front of him, jabbing your finger at his chest. “You’re really annoying, you know. Paternal. Every time I have to watch you play with your brother’s kid I really want to smack you.”

“Paternal?” Yoongi snorts. His hands catch yours, interlaced fingers pulling you to stand between his open legs.

“Paternal,” you sniff. “Stop looking at me like that.”

Of course, that only makes it worse. He looks so fond, even though you feel more and more like you’re dying as you speak. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

“You mean how long has this been plaguing me?” you grumble, earning a laugh from him.

“Yeah, sure,” Yoongi says as he looks up at you expectantly.

You look down at your joined hands, swinging them back and forth so the warm lamplight catches on your rings. “Since we got married, I guess.”

Yoongi squeezes your hands to catch your attention, quirking an eyebrow at you when you glance up. “That long?” he asks, his voice tinged with disbelief. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure,” you mumble as your heart threatens to beat out of your chest.

“You’re telling me now,” he points out. He sounds a little unsteady, like he’s feeling just as jittery as you are, now that it’s all out in the open.

“Yeah,” you breathe. “I am.”

“You want a baby?”

You nod, bottom lip catching between your teeth. “I want a baby.”

Before you have a chance to react, Yoongi sits up, pulling you into a kiss with a hand on the back of your neck. Almost as soon as you melt into it, clambering into his lap as your lips slot with his, he’s pulling away. 

“With me, right?” he teases, squawking indignantly when you pinch his sides in retaliation. “Yah, I’m just making sure!”

“Yes with you, asshole!”

two —

You feel a little stupid.

Maybe it’s because you don’t know how to act now. Nobody told you that planning to have a baby would suddenly put so much pressure on sex, but now here you are, standing in the kitchen in a too-tight dress while you try not to burn dinner.

You never cook. That’s Yoongi’s job. But you don’t know what else to do with all this restless energy, don’t know how else to initiate the ‘okay, I’m ready, knock me up’ conversation.

You’ve talked about the important things. You’ve dealt with the birth control issue. You’re taking, like, vitamins and shit now. All that’s left is to… actually try, right?

Except you’re nervous as hell, have been since you woke up to the notification from your cycle tracker informing you that you’re in your fucking ‘fertile window’ (ew!), and you’re suddenly acting like someone you don’t even recognize. Christ, you wonder if Yoongi has been feeling like this, too.

Speaking of Yoongi… He isn’t home yet, and for a moment, you think it’s not too late to just get rid of all of the evidence. Do away with the self-imposed theatrics, order some takeout, and act like it’s just another night. It’s not like Yoongi would mind.

But you’ve already committed to these stupid fucking steaks. And candles. There are candles.

It is too late, anyway. Almost as soon as the thought begins to form in your brain, you hear the sound of keys jangling and a lock turning, and then your future sperm donor himself is slipping his shoes off at the front door.

At least, he’s trying to. He’s got one socked foot out, frozen in his tracks as he takes in the scene before him.

“Did I forget an anniversary?”

You scoff, eyes rolling despite the nausea building inside you. “As if you’ve ever forgotten anything in your life.”

“Point made.”  He kicks his shoes off the rest of the way, nodding his head in the direction of the candles on the table. “Wanna tell me what this is for, then?”

You shrug, poking at the steak sizzling in front of you with a pair of tongs. “I wanted to make you dinner.”

“You don’t do that,” he says, eyeing you suspiciously.

“Well, I felt like it tonight,” you huff in exasperation.

“Okay,” he says, rounding the counter. His eyes rake over your form shamelessly, now that he can see all of you. “And the dress?”

“A girl can’t dress up every now and then?”

“Hey,” he says, raising his hands in surrender. “Not complaining, believe me. Just curious.”

You know you’re being a little bit testy. Evasive. But it’s not your fault. Is there a good way to say ‘I did all of this because I want you to cum inside me tonight’? If there is, you haven’t found it.

Instead, you settle on, “I just felt like it.”

Yoongi hums, sliding behind you so he can wrap his arms around your middle. “Just felt like it, huh?” he mumbles. You can feel his lips on the back of your neck, and it’s dizzying how quickly your body reacts to his proximity. “No ulterior motives?”

“Nope,” you say. It sounds like bullshit, even to you. But how are you supposed to spin a convincing lie when your husband’s hands are on you? Hands that slide from hips to waist to tits as his mouth grows insistent at your nape, making you shiver.

“Shame,” he murmurs, nosing at the curve of your neck until his lips reach the shell of your ear. “I was hoping you wanted me to fuck a baby into you.”

“Fuck,” you breathe. Your legs are already growing wobbly beneath you, and he hasn’t even touched you. It’s pathetic, the way anxiety gives way to anticipation so easily.

Smoothly, Yoongi reaches in front of you to turn off the stove. It’s probably best that you skip dinner, anyway. Those steaks were going to be shit and you both know it.

You’re guided away from the stove, spun around so the small of your back is pressed against the kitchen counter. The room seems to shrink around you with the way you’re pinned under Yoongi’s gaze.

He kisses you, slow and deliberate, your legs growing even weaker at the way his lips slide against yours. You get lost in it for a moment, reveling in the way his body molds to yours as his tongue teases at the seam of your lips. But then he pulls away.

“Why don’t you tell me the truth?” His hands slide down your body to knead your ass roughly, causing the hem of your dress to ride up. “What does my girl want, hm?”

“Yoongi,” you whine, desperate as you reach down to palm him through his jeans.

“Nuh-uh,” he chastises, voice laced with amusement. He grabs hold of your wrist, bringing it up to his lips to press a gentle kiss against your skin. “You’ve just gotta ask, beautiful. You know I’ll give you what you need. I’m not a mind reader, though.”

Annoying. Also patently untrue, but whatever. The point of all of this—the dress, the candles, the dinner attempt—was that you wouldn’t have to say it. But of course, Yoongi never makes things easy for you.

“You already know, though,” you huff. “Don’t be mean.”

Yoongi huffs a laugh, fingers skating teasingly along the hem of your dress. “Okay, baby,” he concedes. “I’ll be nice.”

And then his hand slips under your dress, only to find that you’ve foregone panties for the night. “Shit,” he groans. “You’re gonna kill me.”

The anticipation of the day has left you dripping for him, the pads of his fingers sliding along your cunt with ease. You gasp when he thrusts two digits into you, moan when they curl against your front wall, the sensation sending you climbing up the counter.

“This?” he murmurs against your lips. “This is what you want?”

Suddenly, all of your anxiety from the day washes away. It’s stupid, you realize, to be so scared of just telling him everything you want. He loves when you tell him what you want, loves to be the one to fulfil every single one of your wishes. And right now, while your husband’s fingers fuck into your pussy in the middle of your kitchen, all you want is—

“Fuck me. Please, Yoongi. Need you to fuck me.”

“Yeah?” he growls. “Why?”

“B-because,” you whimper, cheeks flushing as you finally say the words. “W-wanna make a baby with you, wan’ you to give me a baby.”

“Fuck,” Yoongi hisses, nipping at your jaw. The pace of his fingers is slow and steady as heat crawls up your spine. You cry out when his thumb begins to circle your clit, your eyes rolling back in your head at the sensation. “There’s my good girl. I’ll give you what you need, baby, I promise. Just cum for me first.”

He doesn’t have to tell you twice. You’re so fucking wound up, and his fingers feel so good pumping in and out of you, it was only a matter of time before you unraveled for him. 

Wetness gushes around Yoongi’s fingers, the filthy squelch of his ministrations filling your ears. You don’t have it in you to be embarrassed by it. Not when you’re this close. Before you know it, your orgasm is washing over you, leaving you clenching helplessly around his fingers as he mumbles praise into your neck.

“Shit,” you breathe.

Gently, Yoongi withdraws his fingers. “Feel good?”

With a giggle, you nod, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. “Mm. We really need to stop using our kitchen for non-kitchen related activities, though.”

“Nah,” he chuckles. “Where’s the fun in that?”

As you catch your breath, you start to feel antsy due to the silence that settles between you two. Everything’s out in the open now, isn’t it?

As if he can sense the shift in your energy, Yoongi presses his forehead against yours, rubbing his hand down your back. “You’re in your head again.”

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, pouting.

“Don’t apologize,” Yoongi murmurs softly. “Just tell me what's wrong.”

You take a shaky breath, closing your eyes for a moment. Better out than in, you suppose.

“I just… There’s all this pressure now that we’re trying to have a baby. I guess I’m just worried we’re not… doing this right.”

“Right?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow at you.

“Like… It’s a big deal, isn’t it?” you say, glancing at your forgotten steaks further down on the counter. “Shouldn’t we treat it like one?”

Yoongi pulls back, eyes widening in understanding. “So… The dress and the dinner.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause, and you can’t help but squirm as he studies you for a moment. You desperately wish you knew what he was thinking, but you know Yoongi. He chooses his words carefully, always.

“Do you want to do things differently?” he finally asks.

Huh.

“What?”

Yoongi grins, chuckling as he reaches to intertwine your fingers with his. “Y/N,” he starts, squeezing your hand. “You are the woman of my dreams. It doesn’t matter when or where or how it happens, our baby is going to be made with love no matter what.”

Your heart pangs at that, lips twisting in a contemplative frown as you consider his words. Damn him for making so much fucking sense all the time.

“If you want to do the dinner and the candles and the rose petals and everything else, we can do that,” Yoongi says, pausing to kiss your nose. “I’ll take my time, fuck you nice and slow. Anything you want.

“But I don’t want you to feel nervous about this,” he murmurs, pressing more kisses into your skin until he’s nosing the underside of your jaw. “I could bend you over this counter and fuck you right here, and we’d still be doing things right, as long as it feels right to you.”

Yoongi’s right. You’ve been building up all of these unrealistic expectations for how this night should go, and for no reason. The anxiety that had built a home in the pit of your stomach gives way to something hotter, your eyes fluttering shut as his breath ghosts over your skin.

“I’m sorry,” you sigh, tangling your fingers in his hair as he mouths at your neck. “I don’t want anything to change.” 

“Quit apologizing,” he chastises with a bite to your skin that makes you gasp. “You know what you want. Always so good at telling me, too. So tell me.”

Here goes nothing.

“I want you to take off my dress,” you breathe. It feels like a good place to start. 

Tongue darting out to lick his lips, Yoongi’s gaze roves over your body. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Bedroom? Or here?”

“Bedroom,” you say, gently pushing him out of your space so you can hop off the counter. 

You barely get a chance to steady yourself before Yoongi’s grabbing hold of your hand. You can’t help but giggle at his eagerness as he drags you out of the kitchen, pausing only to blow out the candles you’d lit earlier.

Once he gets you to the bedroom, Yoongi spins you around so you’re facing away from him. You feel the evidence of his arousal against the curve of your ass as he slowly unzips your dress.

“So fucking pretty,” he murmurs, his breath warm against the back of your neck as your dress drops and pools at your feet. His hands roam over your body, squeezing and caressing everywhere he can reach. “How did I get so lucky, hm?”

Turning in his hold, you loop your arms around his neck with a cheeky smile, your naked form pressed against his clothed one. “Through a mutual disdain for square dancing, if I recall correctly.”

Yoongi laughs at that, gummy smile in full force even as he shamelessly fondles your breasts. “You don’t recall correctly,” he teases. “I had to put in a lot of work after that to actually get you, remember?”

How far you’ve both come since then. No more tortured longing. No more misunderstandings. No more fear of taking the leap. All that remains between you now is love. Plain and simple. 

“You had me from day one,” you insist, fondness swelling in your chest. “I didn’t stand a chance.”

It’s so gratifying, witnessing the way you can still fluster your husband after all this time. With pink cheeks, Yoongi ducks his head, attempting to hide a shy smile. “Aw,” he coos, wrapping his arms around your waist. “Do you love me or something?”

Snorting, you bite back a grin. “I do. Very much. And you love me.”

Yoongi hums in agreement. An errant squeeze to your ass, as casual as it may be, reminds you of where you are. Heat floods you all over again, a delicious shiver wracking your body at the reminder of what you’re about to do. As head over heels as you may be for Yoongi, you’d really like to get his cock inside you sometime this year. 

You catch his gaze, raising a challenging eyebrow at him.

“But you can fuck me like you don’t,” you offer. 

In an instant, the softness in Yoongi’s eyes shifts into something else entirely. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, his grip on your ass tightening.

“You’re sure?” he asks, voice so low and gravelly that your cunt clenches in response. You know him well enough to know that he’s giving you one last out, that his control is likely hanging by a thread.

But fuck, you want it. Want to be fucked within an inch of your life, because who knows the next opportunity you’ll have to get it like that once you’re with child?

“I can handle it.”

Yoongi scans your features for a moment, taking in your flushed cheeks and parted lips. The way your body responds to him without a second thought, willing to take anything he wants to give you. If he’s looking for uncertainty, he isn’t going to find any. Not anymore. 

He must be satisfied with what he finds, because before you can react, you’re suddenly on your back, gasping as you’re enveloped in memory foam.

“Spread your legs, baby,” Yoongi says, his hands on your knees roughly guiding your legs to part nice and wide so he can settle between them. “Show me that pretty cunt of yours.”

“Yoongi,” you whimper, fingers instinctively threading into his hair. It’s getting so long lately, so pullable. You might kill him if he tries to cut it anytime soon. “Want your cock, you don’t have to—“

Your pleas are effectively halted when Yoongi spreads your folds with his thumbs, looking up at you with eyes that are all pupil. “You’re this wet for me, and you think I’m not gonna get my mouth on you?” 

He doesn’t give you a chance to respond, surging forward to lick a broad stripe over your pussy. You cry out, back arching and hips kicking off the bed when his tongue flicks against your oversensitive clit.

“Fucking dripping,” Yoongi groans appreciatively. “Holy shit, Y/N.”

The whine that escapes you is pathetic, embarrassment and arousal warring inside you as you rock your hips forward. Luckily, Yoongi gets the hint, dipping down again to swirl his tongue over you.

It’s filthy and loud, the way he sucks and slurps at your pussy like he’s starving for it, can’t get enough. It doesn’t take long before your second orgasm is barreling towards you, thighs trembling on either side of his head as you squirm under him.

“Yoongi, fuck,” you mewl as he laves over your aching cunt, tugging hard at the strands of dark hair caught between your fingers to keep him from pulling away. “I’m gonna cum, like, any second.”

Yoongi hums, tongue lashing at your clit at a pace that almost drives you up the bed. Everything feels so fucking good, so overwhelming, that you can’t hold back any longer. 

You cum hard, a litany of curses and moans falling from your lips as Yoongi works you through it, only letting up when your hands push weakly at his head.

“You’re so worked up, baby,” he teases, although the way he palms himself through his jeans as he climbs over you tells you he’s just as turned on as you are. “You want my cum that bad?”

Your pussy flutters at his words, silently begging to be filled. Fuck. It doesn’t surprise you that your husband knows how to read your body this well, knows exactly how to push all of your buttons, but it still drives you crazy all the same.

“You’re worked up, too,” you huff as you snake your hand under his, feeling the way his erection strains against his jeans. He’s so fucking hard.

“Of course I am,” he agrees, chuckling at your impatience. He pulls his shirt over his head as he speaks, moving to deal with his jeans next. “I’ve got my girl cumming so easily for me, begging for my cock. Why wouldn’t I be worked up?”

“Then fucking do something about it,” you whine, mouth watering when his cock springs free in front of you. You need him inside you yesterday.

In a flash, you’re flipped over roughly so you’re flat on your stomach. 

“So fucking impatient,” Yoongi growls, delivering a sharp slap to your ass that makes you moan.

You feel the heat of his hand dip between your thighs, fingers sliding over your slippery folds, and you can’t help but push your ass back against his touch, knees spreading as wide as they’ll go.

“Look at you. You’re desperate for it.” He sounds almost amazed. You whimper when he slides his fingers from your core, replacing them with the blunt head of his cock. “Well since you wanna act like a slut, I guess I have to fuck you like one, hm?”

Yes. Fucking. Please.

“Please,” you breathe, arching your back prettily for him, wiggling your hips in a way that makes him hiss. “Want it, please.”

Yoongi teases you for a moment, rubbing his tip through your soaked folds, but then the warmth of his body disappears from behind you. “Nah. I changed my mind,” he finally says, smacking your ass once more. “Turn over. I wanna see your face when I cum inside this pussy.”

Oh.

You’ve never moved so fucking fast in your life. Within seconds you’re on your back, and Yoongi doesn’t waste any time either, slotting his body between your legs with ease. You both moan when he finally slides into you, one of his hands coming up to cradle your face.

Yoongi’s always been so patient, much more patient than you. He gives you time to adjust to the stretch of him, his thumb sweetly caressing your cheek as you look into each other's eyes.

But that’s pretty much all the grace you get.

Once he’s sure you’re ready, the first snap of his hips has you reeling, your eyes rolling back in your head. And then he’s fucking you for real, setting a pace that has you crying out his name.

“Fuckin’ love being inside you,” he grunts, his eyes fixed on where your bodies meet so he can watch the way his cock slides in and out of you. “Pussy was made for me, wasn’t it, baby?”

You don’t think you could speak if you tried, too high on the feeling of Yoongi’s cock hitting that place inside you that makes you see stars. Instead, you turn your head, craning your neck until you can get the thumb that was rubbing your cheek into your mouth.

You love Yoongi’s hands. Love how strong and capable they are, love how gentle they can be even when he’s fucking you this hard. You could live and die with Yoongi’s fingers in your mouth and you’d be a happy, happy woman.

Yoongi groans, his thrusts growing rougher as you wrap your lips around his thumb and suck. “There’s my good girl,” he praises. “Fuck, you’re so pretty, baby.”

You preen at the praise, looking up at him through your lashes as you moan around the digit. But then Yoongi’s using his free hand to hitch your leg around his hip, driving his cock even deeper into you somehow, and you’re pulling off of his thumb with a sob.

“Yoongi! F-fuck, it’s too much—”

“You begged for this,” he growls. His thumb, slick with your spit, travels down to circle a nipple, your breath getting caught in your throat when he adds his forefinger and pinches. “You said you could handle it. So take it.”

He keeps fucking into you, rough and relentless, and even though you’ve been reduced to a sobbing mess, it feels so fucking good. So you do what he says and take what he’s giving you.

Satisfied, Yoongi dips down to lave his tongue over your other nipple, sucking it into his mouth as your hands fly to grasp at his hair.

“Nnnghh, Y-yoongi,” you moan. “Feels so g-good.”

With one final flick of his tongue against your breast, he comes back up to kiss you, his mouth moving against yours with an urgency that takes your breath away.

“I love you,” he murmurs against your lips, pressing his forehead against yours. His hands come up to cradle your face again, wiping errant tears from your cheeks. “Love you so much.”

“Love you too,” you sob, using the much-needed reprieve to catch your breath.

“Taking me so good,” he breathes, thrusts growing erratic as he pants against your mouth. “Can’t wait to give you a baby.”

You moan, clenching around him in response. “Need you to cum,” you pant, delirious. “Please, Yoongi, wan’ you to fill me up.”

“Fuck,” he moans, eyes squeezing shut as if he’s pained. “‘M gonna. Gonna fill you up so good, baby. Do me a favor and rub your clit for me, m’kay my love?”

You do as you’re told, slipping a hand between your sweaty bodies. It’s not going to take much at this point, not with how desperate he looks above you. He’s a fucking sight for sore eyes, lips bitten and pupils blown as he tracks the movement of your hand.

“Shit, you’re so sexy,” he groans. “Gonna cum.”

You’re right there with him, both of you moving in perfect synchrony as you chase your release. All it takes is a few passes of your fingers over your clit before your vision goes white, a sob escaping your throat as you feel Yoongi spill into you with a groan.

You cling to him, arms wrapped around his neck as he presses sloppy kisses to your naked shoulder. “God,” you breathe, thighs shaking when you stretch your legs out.

You both gasp for breath, skin sticking together from the sweat that’s been created between you.

“Yoongi?” you mumble. He hums, lifting his head to look down at you. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he asks, brows furrowing in confusion. Then, he grins tiredly. “For giving you the creampie of the century?”

“Ew,” you huff, flicking his forehead weakly. “No, idiot. For getting me out of my head.”

You know he knows what you mean. That’s what you do for each other. Yoongi knows how to calm you down like no one else, and you know you do the same for him. It’s a perfect give and take. 

“I don’t know if this will be… If this is the time that’s gonna give us a baby,” you continue, lips twisting as your eyes water slightly. “But I can’t imagine a better man to be the father of my child. I just want you to know that.”

Yoongi softens, taking in your words. Wordlessly, he dips down, eyes fluttering shut as he kisses you tenderly.

“You are the most incredible woman I’ve ever met,” he says, his voice gentle. “I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else.”

The two of you lay there for a long time, bodies tangled together as you process everything that just happened. What it means for both of you.

The best part of being with Yoongi, from the very beginning, was that nothing had to change for either of you. You could be married to Yoongi and to your job at the same time, build your career from the ground up and never sacrifice a thing.

But this? Having a baby? It’s all going to be sacrifice. It won’t be just you and Yoongi anymore, living in your precious little workaholic love bubble. Everything is going to change. 

Funnily enough, nothing has ever felt more right.

three —

It stands to reason that you find out that you’re pregnant in the office of Look Here Magazine. Where else?

You had your suspicions this morning, when you rolled out of bed nauseous as hell. But you also had an important interview scheduled for this afternoon—surely, you were just anxious about that. But the interview went great, and you still felt like shit afterwards. 

And then you got sick. Like, really sick. In the bathroom of the store you’d stopped at to grab some ginger ale, hoping that would help with the nausea.

Instead of ginger ale, though, you watched with no small amount of shame as the clerk at the register rang up a pregnancy test for you, eyeing you with thinly veiled judgement. Whatever. Jealous bitch needs to get laid.

So here you are, locked in the single stall restroom at your office, staring down at two pink lines. Fuck.

You’re shaking like a leaf. You’re fucking giddy, of course you are, but holy shit. It’s real now. It’s real, and you’re at work, and Yoongi is at his studio, and all you want to do is call him and tell him the news. Because you’re overjoyed, but you’re also terrified, and when you get like this, he’s the only one who can make you feel better.

But you can’t. You don’t want to tell him over the phone. You want to see his reaction in real time, see the gummy smile you love so much, feel his warmth when he pulls you into his arms, kiss him stupid.

So instead, you pick your phone up with trembling hands and snap a picture, sending it straight to Rina. 

It’s five in the morning in Athens. You know she won’t see it for another few hours. But it still calms you down enough to clean up and exit the bathroom, returning to your desk on shaky legs.

★ ★ ★

You can’t wait, as it turns out.

It’s seven in the evening. You got off of work less than thirty minutes ago, and you’re already all the way across town, riding in an ostentatiously large elevator to get to your husband’s swanky ass studio. You definitely broke several traffic laws to get here so fast, but you don’t care. Who knows when Yoongi will get home? You need to tell him now.

When the elevator doors slide open, allowing you to step foot onto Yoongi’s floor, you start to feel sick again. For a different reason this time. 

You know Yoongi’s going to be just as psyched as you are, but still, what if he’s not? What if he’s scared shitless and all of a sudden he changes his mind about this? You both wanted a baby, but it sure as shit feels completely different now that it’s real.

You don’t know what you’re going to do if he has a change of heart. Fuck. Flee the country, probably.

You put one foot in front of the other, following the familiar path to Yoongi’s studio. Your heart races as you punch in the code you know by heart, gut twisting as the whir of the lock fills your ears. And then you’re stepping inside, slipping your shoes off at the door with the expression of a sighted rabbit on your face.

Yoongi spins around in his chair, eyes widening at your unexpected presence. “Hey,” he greets, visibly puzzled as he gets up to pull you into a hug. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Hey,” you breathe, heartbeat thrumming in your ears. But still, it feels nice to be in his arms after the day you’ve had. “I didn’t know I was. Sorry if I’m interrupting.”

“Nah, don’t apologize. I need a break anyway,” he says, pulling away to study your face. “Everything okay?”

“Um!” you squeak out, grabbing his hands to pull him towards the couch in the corner of his studio, sinking down on the worn leather. You stare down at the material beneath you. He really needs to replace this thing. “Yes? I think so. I hope so.”

“You’re scaring the piss out of me, Y/N,” he huffs, settling down next to you. Gently, his fingers grasp your chin, lifting your head so you’re looking straight at him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Swallowing thickly, you shift your bag into your lap, digging around in it for a moment until you can procure what you need. Shakily, you hold out two positive pregnancy tests for him to see. God, pregnancy is so gross. You’re holding pee sticks in your hand.

“I’m, um…”

“You’re pregnant,” Yoongi breathes, eyes widening in amazement as he stares at the little lines. Tearing his eyes away, he gapes at you. “You’re pregnant? We’re going to have a baby?”

“I think so,” you say, chewing at your bottom lip nervously.

“Shit,” he says, grinning so wide you can’t help but return it. “We’re going to be parents!”

Before you know it, tears are streaming down your face, even as you laugh in disbelief along with him. You never should’ve doubted him, not even for a second.

“We’re going to be parents,” you sob, still clutching the positive tests in your hand as you speak through your tears. “Can I put these down? It’s so gross. I peed on these.”

Laughing, Yoongi takes the tests from your hand and sets them aside, pulling you into his lap so he can kiss you silly. “Fuck,” he murmurs, breaking away with a sniffle. “I’m so happy.”

Fuck. He can’t do that. He can’t cry, too. You don’t think you can take it.

“Me too,” you say, wiping at your eyes. Then you smack his shoulder, sniffling yourself. “You can’t cry, stupid. You’re supposed to be the strong one.”

Another laugh bubbles up from his throat, nothing but fondness and joy in his watery eyes. “I think for the next nine months, you’re one hundred percent going to be the strong one,” he says, staring down at your belly with awe.

It’s crazy. There’s nothing there yet, but yes there is.

“Yoongi,” you whimper, mouth twisting as you try to hold back another wave of tears. “We’re going to be parents.”

“We’re going to be parents,” he repeats, swallowing thickly as he meets your eyes again. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” you agree. You’re delirious, so happy you think you could pass out. “I love you.”

Pulling you into a tight hug, Yoongi rubs your back soothingly. “I love you so much, baby,” he breathes as he nuzzles into your hair.

Nothing has ever felt more right.

four —

Yoongi is going to kill somebody. It’s only a matter of time.

He was close, in that stupid fucking airport. It was going to be that bitchy flight attendant. It was. She’d been testing his patience all goddamn morning, getting testy every time he asked for updates on his flight, and Yoongi was already barely hanging on by a thread. But then he could practically hear your voice in his ear. Don’t be a jackass. It’s not her fault your flight is delayed, you’d say. Because you’re his voice of reason when he can’t keep himself in check.

So the flight attendant was spared.

Then, it was going to be the snot-nosed little brat that kept kicking the back of Yoongi’s seat the whole way home. He had booked the flight last minute, unable to upgrade past economy. Which was fine. It’s not like Yoongi’s a snob!

He was just already pissed off. He wanted—no, needed—to be with you, instead of cruising at 35,000 feet, stuck in his very own personal saw trap. But you’d insisted he go on this stupid ass work trip, eviscerating every single logical objection he tried to make. You were impossible to reason with lately. 

So there he was.

In the end, the kid was spared, too. Only because throttling a child would probably look really bad for him, considering the circumstances.

The universe just seemed to be working against him, even after the plane touched down on the tarmac. Because of course! Of course it took him forever to find his stupid suitcase. Of course it took him even longer to get an Uber. Of course there was traffic on the way! Why not? What’s one more ‘fuck you, Min Yoongi’?

And of course, when he finally makes it, when he’s panting and out of breath, suitcase in hand as he searches wildly for the room number he was texted, the first person he sees is not you.

“Well look what the cat dragged in!”

Yeah, Rina might not make it. He’s sure you’ll understand.

Yoongi appreciates Rina, he really does. He tries to be there for you when you need him, but sometimes, despite his best efforts, he can’t be. It’s just the way life works. But Rina always steps in when she’s needed. Today is a great example.

That being said, Rina also has a tendency to step in when she’s not needed. Or particularly wanted. Like the entire past month, living in his guest bedroom to dote on you even though—apart from the work trip you insisted he go on—Yoongi has literally been working from home since month six, at your beck and call. 

Yoongi gets it. Rina is your best friend. He knows you’ve been elated to have her closeby this past month. But still, Yoongi would’ve paid for a hotel room for her or something. It’s been a little weird trying to, like, fuck his super hot pregnant wife knowing her best friend is just across the hall.

“Hi, Rina,” he says, deadpan even as he’s catching his breath. “Wanna point me in the direction of my wife?”

“She’s piiiiiissed at you,” Rina sing-songs, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

Yoongi’s eye twitches.

“Because I’m late?” he guesses.

“Because you impregnated her in the first place.”

“Great,” he says, choosing not to engage. He points at a door. “There?”

“Good luck, champ,” Rina says in response, waving him through. Like he needs fucking permission to see you. Don’t engage don’t engage don’t engage.

Huffing, he opens the door to what he can only hope is actually your room, closing it softly behind him.

“Yoongi,” you warble.

There you are.

Suddenly, it’s like none of the events that have transpired today matter one fucking bit. Not the frantic voicemail he’d woken up to, the delayed flight, the bratty kid, none of it.

You look like an angel. A very pregnant, very stressed angel, but his angel nonetheless.

“Baby,” he breathes. He’s by your side in an instant, carding his fingers through your hair. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“How was your trip?” you ask, leaning into his touch so sweetly. Man, he missed you.

“About as pointless as I thought it’d be. Just wanted to be with you the whole time.”

“Well, you’re here now.”

“Yeah. I’m here now,” he hums, pressing a kiss to your sweaty temple. “How are you feeling?”

You huff at that, staring up at him like he’s stupid. Or like Rina wasn’t lying when she said you’re pissed at him. 

“Like my vagina will never be the same again, thanks to you,” you grumble. “I can’t believe I let you do this to me. I’m going to make you pay, Min Yoongi.”

“Feel free,” he huffs, unable to suppress the small smile quirking at the corners of his lips. He can’t help it. You can be pissed at him all you want, he’s just happy to see you. “I’ll even remind you, if you want. Do you want me to put a date on your calendar?”

“Don’t push it,” you grit out, glaring daggers at him.

“You’re the only one doing the pushing today, baby.”

“God, I hope so,” you whine. “Get this thing out of me! It’s not fair that you get to be a DILF and I have to be all big and gross.”

A DILF???

“Baby,” Yoongi coos, doing his best to stifle the laughter threatening to break free. “You’re so beautiful, Y/N. You’re glowing.”

“It’s sweat,” you deadpan.

“No, I’m serious,” he insists, taking your hands in his despite the way you try to whack him away. Despite his amusement, he’s completely sincere when he says, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world. Don’t be like that.”

“Really?” you pout.

Yoongi nods sagely, squeezing your hands. “One hundred percent a MILF.”

You groan, whacking his hands away in irritation, successfully this time. “Make yourself useful and go get me some ice chips, motherfucker.”

He snorts, backing towards the door with a little salute. “Yes ma’am,” he says. “I’ll be back in a few. I love you.”

“I love you too. Asshole.”

As he slips out of your room, he swears he catches the corners of your lips turning up, although you try valiantly to hide it. 

Yeah. You’re going to be just fine.

five —

It’s been nine months—thirty six weeks, because apparently babies are measured in weeks for some reason—since Min Penny was brought into this world. Yoongi doesn’t think he’ll ever get sick of looking at her.

She looks so much like you, it’s crazy. Every time he says that, you’re quick to tell him just how wrong he is—that she has Yoongi’s nose, Yoongi’s eyes, Yoongi’s smile—but when he looks at her, all he sees is you.

He loves it. She’s perfect.

She sleeps every night in a crib that Yoongi built, surrounded by stuffed animals that you handpicked, in a home that you two have made together.

Yoongi couldn’t be happier. 

The three of you have spent the last week or so in Daegu, and Yoongi’s parents have had ample time to get plenty of pictures and shower Penny with gifts that she proceeds to shove in her mouth at every opportunity.

It’s time to head back home, but not before a little detour. 

The weather is perfect today, giving both of you an opportunity to celebrate Penny’s half birthday the way you’ve been wanting to. A little overcast, but not so much that there’s a chance of rain. Really, it couldn’t be any better.

Yoongi’s always hated the beach, but a weekend trip to Jeju with his family didn’t sound half bad when you’d pitched it. And now that he’s here, sprawled out on a blanket on Jungmun Saekdal Beach while you shovel Jolly Pong into Penny’s waiting mouth, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

When Penny grows disinterested in the Jolly Pong, you take a moment to adjust the little yellow sun hat you’d bought for her earlier and then lean back on your hands.

“Isn’t that view beautiful?” you sigh.

It’s so silly. You’re gazing out into the water, eyes sparkling as you take in the scenery in front of you. It’s beautiful here, it is. Yoongi hasn’t been to Jeju in a long time, and he’s sure the view is just as beautiful as you say. But all Yoongi can see is you. You, the amazing mother of his child. 

You’re radiant, glowing in a way that he’s never seen before. Even after all this time, you never fail to take his breath away.

“Yeah,” he hums, his hand curling around yours where it rests in the sand. “It is.”

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[bewaryofpity]

jack loves dry humping and you can’t convince me otherwise.

i think he wouldn’t let you on it straight away, maybe he’s a bit embarrassed about it because every time you roll your hips against his during foreplay, he needs to concentrate so he doesn’t get hard too fast and risk coming too soon.

but you love it just as much. you love when he gets all whimpery, when he grips at your hips while you grind on him almost to slow you down, when you kiss down his chest and he blushes so hard, when his cock twitches at your barely there touches. and that twitch against your core drives you insane.

you’re sitting on jack’s bed after having spent the entire morning out on the lake with his friends and brothers, and you wanted to fit a nap in your schedule since you haven’t really had time alone for yourselves. and well, when you have been walking around in skimpy bikinis, only a shirt covering your body if he was lucky, it was only a matter of time before jack couldn’t take it anymore and needed to relieve himself.

it did start as an innocent nap, but having you wrapped in his arms, ass touching his crotch, his hand travels up your chest on his own, fingers subtly grazing your nipples, was his breaking point. and when he feels your buds getting hard he knows you’re hooked.

“jack”

“y/n”

“hands off” but of course he doesn’t, instead he chuckles before turning you to face his front. his hands palm at you back and consequently bringing you closer to him, your chests touching through the thin fabric of your shirt and he starts placing small, delicate kisses on your neck.

“you’re always so horny”

“can you blame me when you look like an angel in this red bikini?”

“i hate you. we don’t have time anyway”

“i just need five minutes, baby” he says, offering you a cheshire smirk as one of his hands moves down to your ass, groping it, and then hooking your leg over his hip. you roll your eyes at his actions, but you cave in anyway, and push at his chest until he’s lying on his back and you get to straddle his lap.

his hands find your hips instantly, holding you down firmly while he sits up to put his lips onto yours in a heated kiss. his tongue laps at your mouth like a starved man and he’s so turned on his hips jerk upwards involuntarily, trying to alleviate the ache in his pants. you moan in his mouth as you feel his cock poking at your entrance through your bikini.

you don’t even think about untying his shorts or moving your swimsuit to the side, grinding on him like this feels so much better right now. you’re slow with your movements, just trying to feel his dick print sliding through your covered folds. and the sound his mouth makes as he trails down your neck, leaving wet kisses behind makes you more wet than you already are. as he bites at the valley of your neck, a loud moan escapes your lips, halting your movements.

you wait a second before resuming your actions, but this time you push at jack’s chest and his back makes contact with his bed. you bite at the collar of your shirt to suppress your moans when you begin to move your hips again, this time with more pressure and eagerness to satisfy the warmth in your stomach.

he looks at you through hooded eyes in awe, his hair is sprawled out on the pillow, messy and a bit dry from the lake water of this morning’s swim. the smirk on his lips is soon replaced by his mouth opening in a silent moan as the tip of his cock bumps with your clit, and you bite tightly into the hem of your shirt to stop any sound coming out your way. jack reaches up to remove your shirt and replace it with his fingers, pushing firmly against your tongue, and you suck on them eagerly.

and when he looks down where his hips meet yours, he sees the wet patch on his swim trunks, a mix of your arousal that keeps pooling and dripping from your core, and his precum, and he’s brought to the edge.

“fuck, wait” he breathes, but you don’t stop because he’s helpless beneath you, fingers leaving your mouth to grab at your hips, trying to slow your movements, and it just feeds into your arousal.

“just a bit more, jack, please” and you’re so close, his cock is twitching underneath you, your entrance is throbbing around nothing, and you can’t help but roll your hips faster, your orgasm imminent.

with one last bump of your clit against his aching tip you come, a desperate whine falling for your lips. jack is not far behind, reaching his own peak after a few more of your strokes, and he bites at his bottom lip to suppress a groan, but it comes out anyway as his cum oozes on the surface of his trunks.

you keep your movements steady, a bit slower now that your legs are aching and trembling post bliss, trying to milk every last drop out of him, turning you on even more as you see his cum spreading all over your inner thighs.

“we should do this more often” he says out of breath.

“what, making you cum in your pants like a teenager?”

“oh shut up, you’re no better”

you laugh at his teasing and his blushed cheeks, your hands feeling up his chest before you lean down to press a fleeting kiss to his lips, his hand coming up to hold you there, unable to part from you just yet.

[puddinrin]

IDIOTS EVERYWHERE! >TEAM THANOS X F!READER

summary: being the babysitter of literal grown men with your gorgeous wife se-mi

pairings: se-mi x f!reader (wlw because we all wanna be her bitch), platonic! thanos, nam gyu, min su & gyeong su x f!reader

warnings: man children

a/n: (name) is a fashion designer!

part one: lady boss! here

literal man child. all of them.

you think min su at least is more responsible than the other three

but no, boy can literally be utterly clueless sometimes

namgyu at 11.40 am

min su ask lady boss if we could bring allen into the apartment

dw u cute she wont get mad at u

"(name), nam gyu asked if they could bring the german shepherd from downstairs into the apartment." min-su asked, looking up from his phone after reading the message that was sent to him.

"sure. tell them to get its dog certificate from the owner and it can sleep in my room too." you replied, full of sarcasm as you and se-mi, who let out a snicker at that - prepare the coffee table for lunch.

min-su perked up, shocked that you agreed without any arguments. "really?!" you looked at him, baffled, searching for any signs he realised that you were just being sarcastic.

spoiler alert, he didn't. god bless this man and your patience.

thanos has a habit of holding the handle of your bag when going through a crowd

his brain shut down at random times

so he needs you or nam gyu or anyone else to make sure he don't face plant into a pole or smth

while nam gyu holds you by the back of your neck while he walks behind you

leading you to wherever you guys are going

you and se-mi love to spite the others by being lovey dovey with each other

can't help with how se-mi can't keep her hands to herself too

while you walk with the others, she has a hand on your waist or hip, keeping you close to her

she love holding your hands too

keeping your intertwined hands in the pocket of her black leather coat when it's cold outside.

"your hands so cold, baby." se-mi frowned as she held your hands, caressing your skin. she then intertwined your fingers together before putting it in the pocket of her black coat.

you smiled giddily as you couldn't help but feel flustered from her action. "let's get some warm soup later, the one you like." she suggested, rubbing your knuckles with her thumb.

"okay." you nodded, before holding her arm with your other hand, hugging it.

from behind, nam gyu dramatically gagged at the scene in front of him. "gosh, couples."

thanos groaned, slinging his arm around min-su's shoulder, pulling him to his side. "min-su, cutie. come on, hold my hand too."

"i refuse." he replied, trying to push him away.

you have to hold back se-mi from killing them

however, se-mi doesn't bother holding you back from jumping them whenever they get on your last nerve

she encourages you to send them to hell and have the devil personally give them a tour of it

especially when you're taking measurements for their outfits

"su bong, hold still!" you groaned, smacking his stomach. he let out a playful 'ow', holding his stomach dramatically. "so fierce, senorita."

nam gyu chuckled as he watched the scene before him, snacking on a bag of lays chips.

"don't blame me if your pants drop in the middle of your performances because i couldn't get the right measurement." you threatened lightly, circling the measuring tape around his hips.

thanos gasped, grinning as he clapped his hands. "the fans would love that, wouldn't they?!"

gyeong-su cackled, looking through the designs of outfit that you had planned for them on your ipad. "nah, you would blow up on X."

nam gyu laughed, brushing his hands against each other to get rid of any chips dust. "that would be great publicity for black stones wouldn't that?"

"oh my god, no one wants to see your weeny, choi su bong!"

se-mi didn't have to hold you back from killing them

but she had to hold you back from strangling yourself with the measuring tape hanging around your neck

they love taking pictures of you

they your personal paparazzi

especially thanos, nam gyu and se-mi

it could range from you looking like an utter goddess that graced the world to the most mememable picture of you.

their birthday posts and instagram stories of you is whole rollercoaster ride

> thanostone4u

liked by semilw, gyeongsuuue and 23k others

thanostone4u happy birthday to my highness

> thanostone4u's story

caption: came to support us or to make yourself at home?

> namgyu124's story

caption: girl complains i don't take enough candid pics of her 😒

> namgyu124's story

caption: she's missin slippers bcs girl threw them at me

> semilw

liked by namgyu194, minsublackstone, blackstoneofficial and 18k others

semilw my princess

> semilw's story

caption: she amazes me everyday

[seewetter]

How low can you go, discourse edition!

"Lawful evil" is a dungeons & dragons game mechanic, not a political analysis. You look silly.

"The person in the comic is correct" which person? They are both stick figures!

To have meaningful discussion about politics, including transfeminist politics, comics aren't suited as the main source of theory. Stick figure comics can cause you to have theoretical insights, they can communicate politics, but they mix entertainment and thought. They are easily digested, like a tv series that people binge watch instead of engaging with a text slowly and methodically.

Beth's* (*just the alias Talia gave her, I know) mistake, in my view, is to try and use the form of a frequently published (!) comic to try and discuss things that must be read "in the context of everything that came before it". In other words, complex theory made so bite-sized that an onlooker can easily misconstrue it as a stand-alone statement. Complex theory that sincere people can misconstrue and that bad faith actors can much more easily misrepresent than long-form communication.

The tags that Beth wrote and got screenshotted by the first commenter are not clear enough. "Comic" can mean comic strip (the individual page of the comic we see embedded in the first post of this thread) or it can mean comic as a totality (all green stickfigure comics Beth makes as a totality). And as a result, outsiders unfamiliar with the comics who don't read the backlog have to trust the comic author (a complete stranger) that these comics are sympathetic to transfeminism.

On the other hand, I think we can expect people to read a note like that and read a small sampling of previous comic pages to get a feel for how honest the author is being. It's not too much to expect people to actually sit down and make an informed decision about whether this comic advocates these ideas. An author would usually not leave a note like Beth did. People who "test the waters" to express their bigoted opinions do so wordlessly, leaving the audience to interpret. They want as many people as possible to read the bigotry with their guard down. "This comic is progressive, just check the backlog" is something bigots are only likely to say when they've been attacked and are defending their stuff. It's not something people say while publishing their work.

Personally, I think the comic page that is causing this strong reaction isn't very insightful. The message I'm taking away from it is "some people think the height of (trans) activism is to not have friends with privilege, to only assume the worst about the intentions of privileged people and to justify it with the veneer of liberation theory which does not support that reading". But here's the thing. It's a comic. It doesn't have to blow my min. It doesn't have to liberate. You and I and everybody else can be unimpressed by this page and we can move along with our day or read the backlog for better pages or ignore its existence. The strong reaction from user thegreenbisamurai is hyperbolic. But I think you, dear reader, now have sufficient context. I'm not assigning equal blame, I think blame firmly lies with people who make zero effort to engage with a post that explicitly asks them to engage with more. But I do think this discussion will always be absurd, will always have a sillyness to it, because

#you fuckers better not take this as a generally anti-transfeminist comic#this exists in the context of everything posted before it. you are fully equipped to understand this as a comic about a specific behavior

will never make sense as a request unless we really assume that people are expected to read an entire oeuvre before judging a stick figure comic.

The strong reactions (at least in this thread) appear to be "this comic f*cked up" or "the author is displaying a discriminatory idea to me". Basically various people who read the comic don't get the point the comic is making. Perhaps in part because "wow some people really are over-suspicious and separatist and then blame theory, huh" is not a message that particularly helps people unpack their own suspicions and separatist opinions.

"Privileged people always have bad intentions. It's only a matter of time till they strike and betray you. That's what we have learned from good theory books." is a much more common opinion than "Trans and cis people can't be friends. No more race mixing." Right? The comic aims very broadly at all these tendencies, likely even at tendencies not directly voiced by the stick figures! I mean just look at all the wild hills people try to die on because they have a doomer interpretation of some theory book. Uh, the list is endless! But I can see how the user thegreenbisamurai might feel that the comic lumps all these people together not because it is primarily critiqueing bad reads of theory (for an audience already accustomed to poking fun at both self-destructive hyper-suspicious mindsets and also used to poking fun at separatists) but because, if you don't know what the core critique is or what the audience of this comic believes, it can feel like its lumping every target of criticism together into a strawman group of bad people. Laughable bad people, easily mocked for their backwater beliefs, such as their hillbilly mistrust of cis and transmasc strangers, all of whom are quasi-racist redneck separatists who us civilized open-minded trans people do not take seriously.

That's why 4chan was mentioned, I think. Because 4chan comics represent that kind of "lumping together", strawmanning the Other without nuance. And in a way, Beth's comic does do that too! Like yes, it's written for people who poke fun at these tendencies, who've already agreed that they think all these ideas are bad. The comic doesn't feel the need to justify itself to parts of the trans community who feel these suspicions of cis people or transmasculine people. They are not the intended audience -- and yet the tags below the comic are sort of for them, aren't they. They are expected to have sufficient willingness to read the comic in good faith, to not attack a statement that is built on the unspoken assumption that they are wrong. And that their feelings are misguided, mistaken, and that some introspection is necessary to stop misusing theory to argue that suspicions of privileged people are justified. Which, to be honest, I wish that too! In a perfect world, I want people to just introspect about every opinion they hold, every emotional reaction they have. I want people to approach these comics in good faith and treat them with good humour and a grain of salt.

But for many people, this hyper-suspicion is dead serious. It's a defense mechanism. And their reading of theory is strongly shaped by the fact that these theory books gave them more information about worrisome things in society. That's one of their takeaways from transfeminist literature, because that's what they were looking for: things to watch out for, potential dangers.

I really don't think it makes sense to expect people to make that leap. I know there are trans people out there who have convinced themselves that no trans person has a happy relationship with their parents! That your parents can't love you and will always betray you. These are assumptions and sweeping assertions made from a raw emotional place. A place of stupidity. They can't be fixed by telling people to reconsider, because these ideas have some kind of "use" for people. I think it's important to remember how lonely some trans people are, how dependent some trans people are on the trans community -- how dependent some transfem people are on the transfem communities around them. How risky it can be (or feel) to reach out to a privileged person. Heck, I am hyper-cautious about it myself. Sometimes it's easier to delude oneself that these are iron laws of reality, that no one out there is happy among cis or transmasc friends or also comforting: being right, always, always being proven right eventually, and not having to bear the pain that reality is unpredictable and weird, preferring predictable patterns like that everyone will predictably betray you.

Bad takes? In my trans community? It's more likely than you...get it, it's a meme, I hate myself.

Anyway, I don't expect Beth to not make funny stick figure comics. I don't know if she has a financial incentive to post all the time, but she may have. And if there's a financial (or otherwise) incentive to post a lot, sometimes posters like that will express thoughts badly. That's the nature of how mass production works. If I make a comic every week, I may just not find the time to really make the message perfect. I know this. That's why I take Beth's comics with a grain of salt -- I smile at some when I come across them, I think others (like this one) are meaningless. There's even some I disagree with (I don't have examples for that, I'm not a regular reader).

But equally I don't expect people on Tumblr to be able to parse the meaning of a comic or to read a backlog of comics. Remember the Neil Gaiman revelations of the past few weeks? In the aftermath of that, there was a post going around that claims that Gaiman (on top of being a horrific serial abuser) ripped off a small author. But I've also come across a counter-claim, that some guy on the internet invented the similarities between Gaiman's Sandman story and the universe of this small author wholecloth. For clout! I say all this because I don't have the time "read the backlog". Maybe in a few years, I'll have the money and time to read the small author and compare her work to what I know of Sandman (which is from the tv series, never read the comics). But until then, I can only relate to it with ignorance. I don't know! The internet is full of green stick figure comics or posts making accusations. And we have to make ethical judgment calls. I think thegreenbisamurai's post is actually fairly subdued, the typical grumblings of someone who is unconvinced by an argument and finds it unfair (for pretty understandable reasons!). I also think Beth's comic is fine, nothing that needs to change about it. And I find Talia Bhatt's responses fine too! So in short, I don't really think there is much to talk about here.

But I do want to address summertimesadnessgirl's reaction.

"This is about Christianity, right?"

It is? How so? Ok, I've read the whole post and I guess I'll respond with more substance later...but, to employ a Christian rhetorical figure, what a hell of an opening statement!

"Look.

This isn't complicated.

It actually is possible for double think to exist which causes people to support ideology which ruins the lives of people they see every day and are "nice" to."

I think it is helpful to quote the people you respond to. When you don't quote them, you end up writing about niceness and doublethink and Christianity and talking about various things other people aren't explicitly talking about and it comes across like you are from another planet.

The thing summertimesadnessgirl is trying to say (I think) is that a person like Beth can be a transfeminist with hypocritical (transphobic, transmisogynistic) tendencies.

I take it that had summertimesadnessgirl clearly stated this, it would be far less confusing to read!

"They teach it to people who grow up in Christianity, for sure."

There are 2,000,000,000 people on this planet who grow up in a Christian tradition. Do you know how many German Catholics have committed themselves to continuous mass protests against a sexist, homophobic and transphobic church doctrine? Have you seen the uproar?

Ok, that's not the point though, is it. Chilean or German Catholics and Unitarian Universalists may be chill people, but current Catholic doctrine is monstrous yet "nice", and evangelicals like John MacArthur dare to say that we live on a "disposable" planet. Nietzsche had a point when he critiqued the Christian idea of love that masks hate. So I'll grant summertimesadnessgirl that you can convince good people to do evil things through something like a religion. You can convince people to define "nice" or "virtuous" in ways that are destructive and horrible.

"They teach it to people who grow up with white supremacy and bigotry."

I wouldn't be so sure. A lot of white supremacists know that they are evil. H.P. Lovecraft is the rare historical figure whose racism came from genuine ignorance about foreign cultures (his parents were mostly in mental institutions, he grew up alone next to a bookshelf full of books with racist propaganda about Africa and the Middle-East) -- and notably, Lovecraft came to regret much of his ideas and writings towards the end of his life. But like most racists know that they are just fantasizing the Other into existence. Putin's racist advisor Aleksandr Dugin knows that Russia doesn't really have "it's own reality", he just says that because it confuses people. The darling of the modern alt-right, Julius Evola argued for racial supremacy "on spiritual grounds" just because he knew nobody could argue with him on that terrain. Nazi Germany declared their neighbours, the French, to be subhuman and their culturally completely alien allies, the Japanese, to be "Yellow Aryans". Does that sound like a conclusion reached naively, through ignorance? Or does it sound like political calculation?

But okay, that's not the point either, is it. Yes, good people can internalize racial messaging. People can hate racism yet have difficulties interacting with racial minorities.

And yes, those observations do apply to this comic. A hypothetical version of the comic's author could promote hostility towards some important liberatory goals! It's possible.

I don't think so though, and I have reason to be wary of such accusations.

Separatism (Group A can't be friends with Group B) is historically associated exclusively with bigots. Even modern black supremacists like Gazi Kodzo, who argue black and white people can't befriend each other, are in bed with the alt right (Kodzo also believes that Hitler did nothing wrong, and his insistence that he's gay and a socialist don't really help convince me that his anti-white-black friendship stance offers any kind of helpful future to anyone)

Suspicions of ill intentions and betrayal are fine, but people who use these suspicions as preaching material and get mad when someone trusts other people are preventing our ability as a transgender movement to not remain isolated and politically removed from the gears that enable us to prevent our extermination.

The comics method that people should not read into theory and should instead be self-reflective is not some secretly bigoted opinion.

"It's part of lawful evil culture."

That's a 5. Oh, I'm so sorry. The wisdom check fails and you're going to have to roll for initiative. Look, I don't think these are drow you're attacking, I think they're just other trans people. Oh no! Your character won't be able to stop her attack. I'm so sorry.

"Lawful evil culture includes even people who engage in doing a behavior themselves on a regular and consistent basis and claim to love the behavior and then work to make the behavior illegal and punish people who make the behavior possible-"

Give me an example.

I hate to put people on the spot like this, but I think what happened here is this: summertimesadnessgirl had a (genuine, not joking!) epiphany and is articulating something worth articulating: that there are often people who seem to be on our side but then back legal efforts that go in the exact opposite direction. Example: Kyrsten Sinema, a bisexual activist whose radical ideas seem to have evaporated in her role as a politician in Washington. Example: overhyped New York mayor Cuomo, who spoke the language of progressive activism and intersectionality so well, that his sudden betrayal of Black Lives Matter activists was all the more horrific!

But without examples, people don't know what you're talking about.

Other examples may include Christian hate preachers like Jerry Falwell who are caught with male prostitutes (Falwell famously tried to excuse his behaviour and said something along the lines of "to understand evil, you have to explore evil").

But crucially, your examples need to work. Falwell is a bad analogy for this comic, because Falwell is a hate preacher who secretly betrays his hateful community. Cuomo and Sinema are bad analogies because neither are sincere, Sinema may have morphed into a monster over time, or perhaps both were always dishonest people just waiting to manipulate progressives for political gain. None of these examples, as much as they express the duality of speaking vs doing, are really examples of a well-meaning person passing a horror law!

Perhaps the closest analogy, in the legal realm, of genuinely well-meaning progressive people unleashing horror on minorities happened in Florida under Ron DeSantis, who passed some kind of anti-LGBT legislation that found a lot of support among liberals. But importantly, those liberals didn't realize what the legislation did in its entirety. It was framed as a support for parents, I believe, and quite a few liberals just didn't look at the proposal in detail.

Plenty of material for summertimesadnessgirl to pontificate about "lawful evil culture" and confirm that lawful evil culture works exactly as defined by using examples... but if these examples are unrelated to this comic, then...then why?

"Like homophobic and trans phobic people who vote to have rights taken away from queer people while crossdressing in their sex lives or having gay sex, or people who regularly use porn and vote to have porn censored and make the lives of people who are consenting adults legally producing porn difficult. Those things are a regular feature of the cognitive dissonance in lawful evil culture."

Some people want power. Bigots are quick to give power to those who support their bigotry.

The official biography of Jarosław Kaczynski (the right-wing former leader of Catholic supremacists in Poland) states that in university, Kaczynski went to gender consultation. So it's possible Kaczynski, someone who has done harm to queer and trans people at the highest level, is a closeted transfem. But what summertimesadnessgirl has to prove is that the Kaczynski's of the world aren't aware of what they are doing. That they go to gender consultation, get positive vibe about being trans and then join the leopards eating faces party through sheer cognitive dissonance.

That's what's so hard to believe about the argument.

Like I understand Kanye West watches porn and wants it banned. But I'm pretty sure Kanye West feels guilt at his porn consumption. He calls himself a porn addict. He thinks something bad is being done to him, he interprets the pleasure he feels through the frame of an evil industry that he blames for his feelings.

The Jerry Falwell's and Jarosław Kaczynski's of the world may crossdress in bed (I don't know) but they aren't simultaneously excited about promoting queer rights and also trying to get queer people killed. That's not how cognitive dissonance works.

"Lawful evil culture will argue that something the person does is fun and they like it, but it's a net negative for society, or that it's out of it's proper place, or some other thing."

Yes, but what does this have to do with this comic?

"There are a bunch of reasons they do this."

Yes, but how does this relate to this comic?

"But pretending that a group of people who follow all belief system that says "everyone in this group deserves this bad outcome" will not turn on you because they are nice doesn't work."

The comic differentiates between two types of groups: demographics (men, women, trans people, cis people, transmasculine people, transfeminine people) and agents of marginalization (transphobes, transmisogynists, etc.). You don't seem to? Should I believe that Kaczynski, a Christian nationalist, is safe to be around? Hell no, I'm not suicidal! Should I believe that my friend Xander, a trans guy who has never said or done anything cruel to me and whom I want to protect from his bigoted family, who does not follow a belief system that "everyone in this group deserves this bad outcome"... should I believe this friend of mine will betray me? That this is a law of nature? That I must be afraid of him, though he is a decade younger than me? Do I need to quiver in fear?

People are people. I've met transmasc genderfluid people who have treated me without the barest shred of consideration or kindness and projected their trauma onto me with zero consideration for what transfems go through and trans men who have been far kinder, who never hurt me in any way. There is no neat box that will quickly tell you who is safe, there are only (behavioural) red flags.

rationalize

[ID: Three panel comic with crudely drawn stick people

Panel 1: A leaf green person is talking to a grass green person with a hat and glasses.

Leaf: "And then Orange said that-"

Grass: "Orange"? Your friend is orange?"

Leaf: "Yeah?"

Grass: "Why do you have non-green friends? Don't you know about misoviridy??"

Leaf: "…I have plenty of non-green friends. I have grayscale friends, even."

Panel 2: Grass Green solemnly holds Leaf Green's shoulder.

Grass: "Look. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but every single misoviridy-exempt friend you have secretly hates you.

Leaf: "Uh. That is not true."

Grass: "It's basic viridist theory. Every single moment they're around you, they're thinking about it."

Panel 3: The grass green person tips their hat down.

Grass: "Look. I get it. You're naive and uninformed. You don't know better. But read "Pruning Greens." Then you will understand."

Leaf: "I already read that. It did not say the things you are saying."

Grass: "You will see. It is inevitable."

Leaf: "No I think you're just finding a new way to rationalize really unhealthy thought patterns here actually"

End ID.]

Start - Previous - Next

[nevadancitizen]

-> ROT IN PUREST GOLD

synopsis: you've been skipping through universes ever since you touched the source of the hexgates. through everything, you've never stopped searching for your viktor -- now, you've found him, and you just want to go home.

word count: 2.7k

ships: viktor/reader

tags: angst with a happy ending, fluff and angst, pre-established relationship

notes: inspired by purest gold by miracle of sound. and this is my first shot at writing viktor.. lmk if i got anything wrong ^_^

It’s been years since you saw Viktor. Many years – artificial years. Years spent close, away, at a distance but still observing. But they were never your Viktor. 

Viktor with the accented voice and the long face. Viktor with the work ethic of a hive of worker honeybees, tireless and continuous. Viktor with the eyes of pure gold – never pyrite or brass with a yellow twinge. He’s always been made of the purest gold.

None of them ever could’ve replaced him. With all these alternate universes you were hopping between, you met plenty of Viktors. Some came close, but none replaced him. It wasn’t their faults; they couldn’t compete with a memory. 

You were a variable, too, so you couldn’t blame them completely. You went by different names, had different stories. Anything to make this depressing, grueling trudge through many lives more tolerable. 

Some things made things less annoying, like cars. (Well, sometimes. Sometimes they were a nuisance.) Cars are one of the things you think your Viktor would’ve liked to study. To take apart, to put back together, to modify and make better. You could see him becoming a real torque dork while listening to Speedfreaks FM. 

Mostly because that’s what he insists on listening to when you drive him to his doctor’s appointments – both of which you’re doing right now. Well, this universe’s version of him insists on Speedfreaks FM, and insists on you not calling him a ‘torque dork.’ Differentiating the Viktors from each other gets really complicated really fast, but giving them numbers feels dehumanizing. (If you did, this Viktor would be V-24. You’ve been keeping track.)

You turn on your blinker and wait for an opening to drive into the parking lot. Beneath the chatter of the radio hosts, you can hear Viktor tap his slender fingers against his forearm crutch in the passenger seat. Another difference you’ve noticed – both his outward fidgeting and his different mobility aids. 

When your turn comes, you turn your car into the parking lot. You slowly let the car drift, your foot hovering above the brake in case someone needs to cross. 

You turn down the radio a few clicks. “You think you’ll need your wheelchair?”

Viktor is silent. You take your eyes off the road for a split second and glance at him. He’s looking out the side window, at the plaza’s tall buildings and a sign that says Pueblito Plaza. 

“Viktor?” You say. “You hearing me?”

You pull into a parking spot and put the car in park. Worry eats through you – you don’t know what’s happening. Why is he acting like this?

He’s turned in his seat, looking through the back window at the buildings. There’s amazement on his face and for a second – a split second – he’s there. He’s your Viktor. 

But he’s not. He’s not. 

Those eyes are not gold. They are topaz and they are citrine. They are the yellow-orange that accompanies the sunrise. Beautiful, yes, but not yours.

“Where… are we?” He asks, his voice soft and wonderful.

“We’re going to your doctor appointment,” you say. “With… what’s her name? The pulmonologist. And then you have a CT chest scan.”

“No – the nation,” Viktor says. “What nation are we in? I have never seen technology like this.”

He runs a hand over the console of the car, then over the glovebox. He opens it, then looks inside. Nothing but napkins from fast food places and a laminated copy of your car insurance. 

“What’re you looking for?” You ask. You turn the key, and the car shuts off. 

“The power source,” Viktor says, looking at the key in your hand. “May I?”

“Viktor, you’re not cleared to drive,” you say, your voice growing sterner and firmer. “The doctors said your legs are… too weak or something – I don’t know.”

You clutch the key (and the carabiner it’s attached to) tighter in your hand. The charms hanging from it jingle and clink together. A small cog and a toy that looks like a spark plug make a metallic click as they collide.

“What is that?” Viktor reaches out, but just barely stops himself from touching the spark plug toy. You pause for a second, then give him the entire carabiner. 

Viktor holds the spark plug toy up to his face, inspecting it closely. He lets the rest of the charms on the carabiner dangle freely. You watch him – watch his eyes. A spark of gold. A fleck of cooler color in a pool of a warmer, yellowish orange. 

He sets the pad of his thumb on the hex of the toy (the hex here is a piece of metal on a spark plug fitted for a wrench – not the hex you were used to, so long ago). He wiggles it back and forth, then spins it. The hex spins with a barely-audible metallic rasp, like a fidget ring.

“It’s very intricate for a toy,” Viktor says. “Who made this?”

“Wh… you did. You gave that to me,” you say softly. “Why don’t you remember that?”

A quiet question nags the back of your mind – is Viktor getting worse?

You silently beg that you’re right. In a twisted, selfish way, you want him to get worse. You’ve taken care of Viktor before. Watched him die in multiple dimensions. In some of them, he even died in your arms, his golden eyes fading and his hand falling from your cheek.

You know what it’s like to watch him get worse. You’ve done it before, seen it before. You know what to do, how to grieve. You don’t know what you’d do if this is… Viktor. Viktor for real. Your Viktor.

“Are you trying to stifle my curiosity?” Viktor asks, a teasing smile on his face, his eyes still on the toy. 

“You gave it to me… I don’t know, six, seven years ago?” You say. You turn so that your shoulder is leaning against the car seat, facing him. “A spark plug. It’s important to the engine. I don’t remember how. And now… I’m failing your test.”

Viktor puts the carabiner down on the console. He laughs, and he’s looking at you like… you don’t know how he’s looking at you. But it’s something familiar. Something long-lost that you’ve been yearning for. 

“How could I test you on something I barely know anything about?” He asks. His smile falters a little.

“Don’t bullshit me,” you say, smiling. (His laughter always manages to make you smile.) “You know everything there is to know about cars, trucks, motorcycles…”

Viktor’s smile turns forced and confused. His eyebrows furrow a little. “I… have no idea what you’re talking about…”

And then he says it. He says your name. Your real name, your true name – the name V-1 called you. The name the real Viktor called you. 

It goes through you like a cold shock. A baptism in electrified ice water. You want to put your hand to his throat and ask, “What the fuck? What the hell did you just call me? Who’re you talking about?” 

You want to… but you can’t. You’re frozen until Viktor places a hand on yours.

You jerk it away, cradling both hands to your chest and scrunch back against the car door. “Don’t touch me.”

And he says your name again. Again, in that tone that invites sympathy, but mostly pity. He’s pitying you. You’ve gone through this too many times, with too many therapists.

“You – Viktor,” you say, his name coming out in a gasp. There’s a lump in your throat and you feel almost nauseous. 

“You’re not… you’re not the real one,” you grind out. “You’re not my Viktor, so stop acting like it. In th– in this universe, you’re just a friend, and that’s it.”

Viktor is silent, his mouth agape. “My love –”

“Don’t! Please,” you say. The words escape you before you can do anything. “Please, just don’t. Who – who told you?”

“Who told me what?” Viktor asks. His voice is still soft and sympathetic and sickly sweet.

“That you’re… you were…” You slump against the car door. Your elbow knocks against the steering wheel.

You look at him again. Your eyes dart between both of his, looking, observing. They’re not gold anymore. Well, they never really were, but now they’re… they’re opaline – pearlescent. A whole kaleidoscope in a drop. This is something different, but, still… it’s almost like you can sense him. This is the true Viktor – your Viktor. 

“I was there, Runeterra, the core of the hexgates, and then… I wasn’t. I’ve lived twenty-three lives before this. My first memory of… here… is of my fifteenth birthday party. I had to grow up all over again. Make new friends, go to a child’s school. I didn’t have anyone. And you –” Your voice catches in your throat, on both anger and sorrow. “You left me here! You left me to do this all alone!”

“I would never.” Viktor’s cold hands meet yours. He cradles them both. “I would never leave you, my love. I’m so, so sorry.”

“But you did!” You grip his hands as tight as you can, trying to savor the feeling. Tears well at the corners of your eyes. “You left me with this… this rot. These gilded Viktors that look like you, act like you. And it hurt. Everything hurts.”

“I know,” Viktor says softly. “You’re hurting me, too.”

You blink, then realise what you’re doing and loosen your grip on his hands. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He breathes out a soft laugh, then brushes his thumbs over your knuckles. “It must’ve been lonely, all by yourself.”

“You have no idea,” you say, your voice breaking a little. You blink hard, and a tear runs down your face. “We went to an arcade, and I spent all my quarters on you. We went to a museum, and I bought you a small paperweight of a statue that was on display there. We went to this weird, exotic place – Great Britain, I think it was called – and we shared tea and scones. And, no matter what I did, it… it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t right. It… he wasn’t you.”

“I’m here now.” Viktor gives your hands a gentle squeeze – much softer than what you gave him. “How long has it been?”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” you say tearfully. “Time moves differently here. Maybe… sixty years? I’m not sure.”

“Sixty?” Viktor balks. “Oh, my love…”

His hands slowly, carefully, move away from yours. Cold fingers meet your jaw, and your eyes flutter shut on instinct, head tilting down into the touch. Viktor cradles your face, both his thumbs brushing back-and-forth over your cheeks. 

 “I dreamt of you,” you say softly. “Every night. And I thought of you every day. Just… thinking of you, every moment I could spare.”

“Surely that’s an exaggeration,” Viktor says. 

You shake your head and lean further into his touch. “I’ve waited so long… so long. And now you’re here, and I – I don’t know what to do.”

He moves his hands, the tips of his fingers splayed across the sides of your neck and his thumbs gently pressing into your temples. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” you sigh. “This is nice, though. Just… you being here is nice.”

You lean forward, placing your hands over his to ensure they stay in place. “It felt like eternity, waiting for you. Just waiting, and longing. None of them could replace you.”

You open your eyes, just the slightest bit, and take Viktor in. Good god, he’s Viktor. He’s your Viktor. No longer the purest gold, but something new. Something better. Something life-bringing and something with infinite mercy.

“That is flattering, coming from you,” Viktor says. “You could have anyone you want – anyone across twenty-four universes. And you chose me, in every single one? That is the highest praise I could receive.”

You breathe out a laugh as your eyes shut again. “Shut up.”

“Eh… if you continue to act like this, I don’t think I will,” he teases. In a softer, warmer tone, he adds, “Your face is getting warm, too. I can feel it.”

You groan and hide your face in Viktor’s hands further. Even though you act like you hate it, you’ve missed this – you’ve missed this immensely. His teasing, his compliments that make you feel like you hung the sun, the moon, and all the stars by yourself. 

“Maybe you’re just getting warmer in general,” you say softly. “Maybe you’re getting better.”

“I have gotten better,” Viktor says, his voice light. “In our universe… I… I have touched the Arcane. I have been healed, and I am a healer. A herald into a new, better world – not only for the Undercity, but for the whole of Piltover.”

You shift his hands so that they’re resting on your cheeks and open your eyes, looking up at him through your eyelashes. “That sounds nice. I’m… sorry you had to do all that without me.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Viktor asks. “It’s not your fault.”

“I don’t know. I just…” You sigh. “I blamed it all on you, and I was angry. Real angry. But it wasn’t your fault – it wasn’t anyone’s. I was angry and I took it all out on the memory of you.”

“Do you really think I care?” His voice is soft as he swipes a thumb over your cheek. 

“No,” you admit after a moment. “But, still…”

“You are occupying your mind with the past and what-ifs,” Viktor says. He draws a hand over your scalp, his fingernails lightly digging into the skin there. “Focus on the here, the now.”

You shudder and melt into his hands. Your eyes, though still closed, sting with a fresh wave of tears. 

“I missed you,” you choke out. 

“You’ve said that already,” Viktor says. 

“I can’t say it enough,” you say, your voice sticky and wet. “I was your champion in the arena. I was your personal knight. I was the chieftain of your armies. I was your tool, your instrument. And you were my everything.”

“You are my everything,” he says. His tone is so sincere and heartfelt that it makes your throat seize up. “Why would you ever doubt that?”

“I didn’t,” you say. “It–it’s just that, all these memories… I was so many people, and so were you. And some things blur together, and it gets hard to differentiate everything, and…”

You groan and lean into Viktor’s touch. You glance up into his eyes, still opaline. “Everything got so complicated so fast. I just wanted you – the real you.”

“It’s okay, my love.” His hands move to hold your jaw, to draw you closer. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“But I feel like I have to,” you say. “I just… I just want you back. I wanna go back to the Viktor I know. I wanna go home.”

“We can go home,” Viktor says. “I can take you home.”

“Then take me home,” you say, almost too quickly. “Viktor, please.”

“You don’t have to beg,” he says. There is no teasing or hidden malice in his voice. He just wants you home, too. 

Viktor’s hands slide to the back of your head, his palms almost cradling your skull. He presses his fingers down and tilts your head forward, towards his. Your eyes flutter shut as your forehead touches his. 

It’s white. It’s the bright, cleansing light of some sort of heaven. Heaven? Haven? You’re not too sure. You’re not sure you can bring yourself to care, either. Not when you’re here – not when your Viktor is in reach. Not when you can touch him, hold him, talk to the one you love. The one you’ve been pining for, fighting for, losing and winning for. From somewhere between sixty years and eternity, you’ve been wanting him. And now he’s here. Your Viktor is here. 

It’s unbelievable. Your Viktor is here. 

The memories of your past lives, the former realities you’ve lived, meld and blur into distinct feelings. Visual memories blend into base emotions. A warrior’s pride. A traveler’s wanderlust. A teenager’s excitement. A knight’s confidence and courage. A chieftain’s insecurity cloaked as hostility. 

They melt away into contentment. A gentle wave lapping at a quiet shore. Acceptance. 

You are healed. 

You are home. 

[enemiestolovershoe]

Backstage Comfort

Noah Sebastian x reader

Summary: Noah takes care of reader while being on her period. Matt and Folio wouldn’t be Matt and Folio when they wouldn’t tease Noah.

Words: 798

Warnings: Period and Cramps, Teasing

A/N: This was requested but I somehow deleted the request. I wrote another version of this with just reader and Noah. Click here.

The backstage area of the venue buzzed with pre-show energy. The hum of amplifiers being tested, the shuffle of crew members setting up, and the distant roar of an excited crowd all blended into a chaotic symphony. Normally, you thrived in this environment, feeding off the adrenaline of watching Noah and the rest of Bad Omens prepare for another killer performance. But today, you weren’t feeling quite as enthusiastic.

You sat curled up on a couch in the corner of the green room, clutching a small pillow to your stomach. The ache in your abdomen hadn’t eased all day, and no amount of ibuprofen or deep breathing seemed to help.

Noah walked in from the hallway, dressed in his signature all-black outfit. His dark eyes scanned the room, immediately landing on you. “Hey,” he said, his voice soft but tinged with concern as he crossed the room in a few long strides. “You okay?”

You managed a weak smile. “Just cramps. I’ll be fine.”

Noah frowned, crouching in front of you so he could meet your eyes. “You don’t look fine.”

“It’s just one of those days,” you admitted. “Don’t worry about me. You have a show to get ready for.”

“Yeah, well, you’re more important than the show,” he said simply, his brow furrowed. “What do you need? Food? Tea? Heating pad?”

Your heart melted a little at how quickly he shifted into caretaker mode. “I don’t think they have a heating pad in the green room,” you said with a small laugh.

“Then I’ll improvise.” He stood up, glancing around the room.

At that moment, Matt walked in, clipboard in hand and his headset slightly askew. “What’s going on in here?” he asked, his tone a mix of curiosity and teasing. “Why’s Noah looking like a guy on a mission?”

“She’s got cramps,” Noah said without missing a beat, turning to Matt. “Do we have anything warm she can use? Like a towel or something?”

Matt’s mouth quirked into a smirk. “Look at you, Dr. Caregiver. You thinking of adding ‘period expert’ to your résumé?”

Noah shot him a flat look. “Are you going to help, or are you just here to make jokes?”

“Both,” Matt replied, his grin widening. “But mostly jokes.” He turned to you, leaning casually against the doorframe. “You sure you’re okay? He’s not being too overbearing, is he?”

You smiled despite the ache in your stomach. “No, he’s perfect.”

“Perfectly whipped,” Matt muttered under his breath, earning a sharp look from Noah.

Folio wandered in next, a drumstick twirling lazily between his fingers. “What’s going on? Why’s Noah looking like someone kicked his puppy?”

“He’s trying to MacGyver a heating pad,” Matt explained, clearly enjoying himself.

Folio raised an eyebrow. “So, full boyfriend mode, huh? Let me guess—he’s already planning a tea ceremony and a hot towel spa experience for you.”

You chuckled at their antics while Noah groaned. “You two are so helpful,” he said dryly, heading out of the room.

“Always,” Matt called after him, winking at you.

When Noah returned a few minutes later, he was carrying a warm towel and a bottle of water. He placed the towel gently over your stomach, adjusting it with care. “Better?” he asked, sitting beside you.

“Much better,” you said softly, leaning into him.

“Need anything else? Tea? Snacks? Ice cream?”

“You’ve already done enough,” you replied, touched by his efforts.

“Too bad. I’m not stopping.”

Matt, who had taken up residence on the couch across from you, grinned. “You’re really setting the bar here, man. How’re the rest of us supposed to compete with this level of dedication?”

“You’re not,” Noah replied without missing a beat.

Folio snorted. “Okay, but if she starts expecting this every time, we’re blaming you for creating unrealistic standards.”

Noah smirked. “Good. You should all take notes.”

Despite their teasing, Matt and Folio made themselves useful, making sure the crew left you alone and bringing over a blanket they found in the equipment closet. Between Noah’s warmth and their lighthearted banter, the ache in your stomach seemed just a little easier to bear.

When it was finally time for the show, you felt well enough to join the crew at the side of the stage. Matt gave you an exaggerated thumbs-up as you took your spot, while Folio leaned over and muttered, “Let us know if Nurse Noah slacks off.”

Noah rolled his eyes, but his arm slipped protectively around your waist as he glanced down. “You good?” he asked quietly.

“Perfect,” you said, smiling up at him.

And as the lights dimmed and the first chords rang out, you couldn’t help but feel grateful—not just for Noah, but for the ridiculous, wonderful team around you who made even the worst days bearable.

Taglist: @courta13

[alessiathepirate]

Squid Game

THE SEARCH: Hwang Jun-ho x fem!reader

Summary: The search for Gi-hun takes its toll on her. Luckily, someone's there to help.

Notes: English isn't my first language. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made while I wrote this short story.

Warnings: swearing, mentioned death and guns, mentioned and/or referenced trauma and PTSD

●●●

She was dreaming again - that was the reason why she tried to avoid sleep ever since Gi-hun went missing.

--because she was always dreaming about him: him dying, him being alone, him being scared after all that trauma... And her dreams always pointed out her self-blaming - she wasn't supposed to leave him alone, she should be there with him...

Her dreams were troubled once again - with nightmares. She was dreaming about Gi-hun and the marble game, which he failed so he could save another player's life...

That was another reason why she was scared for Gi-hun: because she knew his own life wasn't important to him anymore. She knew it, because she felt the same way.

She woke up to someone shaking her awake. She felt hands grabbing her shoulders, she heard a voice calling out for her - yet she couldn't identify the person; not immediatelly anyway.

Tears were running down her face, blinding her; she could barely breathe; and she could still hear gunshots even though she was no longer asleep.

"Y/N..." she heard her name once more, this time clearer. "You're alright. It was just a dream. Y/N, can you hear me?"

She was shaking - God, she was shaking so badly she barely knew where she was or who she was.

Still, one of those hands gently touched her face, turning her head so her eyes could meet someone else's.

Her lips started to tremble.

"You're okay now. You're awake."

Her fingers wrapped themselves around the hand on her face.

"Jun-ho?"

Reality suddenly hit her and she could feel shame climb up her throat.

She stared into his eyes as he nodded, his lips curled upwards into a faint smile. She swallowed hard as she let go of his hand. Her fingers were still trembling, but she put her hands down and pushed herself upwards into a sitting position. Her blanket fell onto her lap.

"What time is it?" she asked quietly as she raked her fingers through her hair.

"It's almost midnight." Jun-ho said as he grabbed a water bottle from the small desk in the corner of the cabin; he gave it to her, then joined her on the floor.

As she drank she slowly looked around.

They were alone, although she could hear the henchmen, Woo-seok and Captain Park talk outside.

They were probably fishing, she thought. They needed something to do and the Captain needed a distraction after she almost punched him. He would've deserved it though, since he didn't want to look for the damn island late at night. He really should've said a thank you to Jun-ho, because he was the only reason why he didn't get a black eye.

As she put the bottle aside she noted a map and a marker on the desk, under the light of a flashlight. Jun-ho must've been working on finding the island and Gi-hun, when he noticed her trembling in the corner. She was really thankful for his help: for waking her up and for the search.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" she asked as she pointed at the map. "I could've helped."

"Because Woo-seok said you are barely sleeping." Jun-ho looked at her from the corner of his eyes. "And I agree with him."

She didn't want to meet his gaze.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." he argued and he sounded like a parent who's about to scold a child. "You barely eat, you barely sleep... I know you want to find Gi-hun more than anything, but you need your strength for it."

Her fingertips started to play with the edges of the blanket. She didn't say anything - she didn't know what to say.

Jun-ho was right, of course he was; but it was impossible to eat and sleep peacefully when guilt and fear was killing her from inside.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"About what?" she asked.

"You know what."

She knew - of course she did.

The nightmare was still being replayed in her head, again and again. She could see Gi-hun losing all ten of the marbles, she could hear the gunshots...

One of her hands shakily reached up to wipe away the tears.

When she took too long to answer, Jun-ho turned to look at her, and seeing her crying again made him regret his question.

"I'm sorry... we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." his hand landed on her thigh and before he could pull it away, her hand was on his.

She look up at him, her eyes glassy and her lips once again trembling.

"I dreamt that he died." she said after she swallowed. "That's all I can think about - what if he's dead? He's playing those stupid games again and I'm not there..." her voice sounded angry as she spat those last few words. "I'm not there with him and we promised, we promised that we'd never leave each other..." she took a deep breath. "Gi-hun saved my fucking life more times than I can count. And now I failed him... I'm failing him every single moment when I'm not with him." the tears were burning her cheeks as they ran down her face and landed on the blanket. "Why can't it be me who's in there..."

She was full on crying by then, her body was shaking.

It was a pain so deep and unbearable... And nothing could help. Her heart ached, her whole being felt numb and heavy.

She just wanted it to end - all of it.

Jun-ho let go of her thigh and put both of his hands on her cheeks, his thumbs wiping away the tears. He made her look him in the eyes.

"Don't say that..." he put some locks of hair behind her ears and then went back to wiping away the tears - since they just didn't want to stop falling. "It's not your fault. None of it. You had no way of knowing what would happen at that party."

Gi-hun didn't let her go in with him. He wanted her to stay in the car with Jun-ho. He wanted her out of danger's way.

She should've fought harder.

"And you didn't fail him..."

"Yes, I did!" she shouted. "I fucking did..."

Jun-ho held onto her tightly, not letting her wiggle away until he was sure she's fine.

"You played Russian roulette for him!" he argued.

She just blinked in surprise.

That was how she met him again - Jun-ho. He wanted to arrest her after she won the game of Russian roulette against the Salesman. And later, when Gi-hun arrived he almost shot Jun-ho for keeping her in cuffs.

"You played Russian roulette, so that guy - that Salesman - wouldn't go after him." Jun-ho repeated. "You didn't fail him. And he knows that. He almost shot me for you."

She continued to cry quietly and he let her. He let her cry it out as he pulled her close, so she could hide her face in the crook of his neck.

She wrapped her arms around him, letting the blanket fall between them, since she finally had someone to talk to, to be honest with. Someone who understood the concept of loss and uncertainity.

"Thank you..." she whispered as she felt his fingers massage her scalp.

"It's nothing." he said. "And I promise you that we'll find him. Okay?" he felt her nod so he continued: "But I need you to get some sleep for that."

"I'll try." she mumbled.

They changed positions. Jun-ho leaned against the wooden wall of the cabin, while she rested her head on his shoulder. Their knees were touching, and she was sure it had been a while since she felt this kind of comfort.

Right then, she needed him.

Her crying slowly died down and she felt like she could both breathe and think again.

"Jun-ho?"

"What's wrong?" she found the panic in his voice adorable - and it felt great to know that someone cared.

"Nothing's wrong, I just... never really apologized for handcuffing you to the bathtub."

She felt his chest rise as he began to laugh, and the sudden change of mood in the cabin felt nice.

"I handcuffed you first. You have nothing to apologize for."

She felt a small smile tugging at her lips.

"I also apologize for accusing you of being one of Them; and for trying to shoot you." she said as she remembered him sitting in the bathtub as she pointed his own gun at him.

Jun-ho chuckled. "I kind of did those first too."

She couldn't help herself - a small, barely there chuckle left her mouth too.

"Well then... thank you, for being here."

Jun-ho didn't answer for a while and she felt ashamed for being so outspoken. Yet a few seconds later he kissed her forehead and she felt a rush of sudden heat run through her whole body.

"Of course, I'll always be here - if you need anything..."

Jun-ho continued to stroke her head; gentle touches caressing her scalp, her neck and then later on: her back. Slowly but surely her eyelids became heavier and heavier - until she fell into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

Tomorrow she'd wake up with her head on Jun-ho's chest - and somehow her blanket would be over them, keeping them warm.

Tomorrow she'd wake up with a slight feeling of shame, yet she'd have a new reason to keep on going for.

Tomorrow Woo-seok would give her an all-smile thumbs up.

Tomorrow she'd continue the search with a new amount of hope, knowing she has someone who'll help her every step of the way...

[darlingdaisyfarm]

───୨ৎ praise that old man, girl!

a/n: i adore Stanley Pines and apparently im not alone because the amount of asks i got for nsfw with this man?? who am i to deny the people what they want?? also one anon asked for public sex with Stanley sooo here you go angel!

tags: nsfw, smut, vaginal and oral sex (f receiving), age gap, dirty talk, older man/younger woman, degradation + praise, size kink, dumbification, public sex, rough sex, breeding kink

You hadn’t exactly walked into the Mystery Shack with dreams of employment. Stan had hired you on the spot, half-serious when he said he couldn’t afford to be picky. “you got a pulse? can count to ten? good, you’re in,” while shoving a broom into your hands.

You’d been working here for a while now and Stanley Pines had somehow, against all reason, taken a liking to you. You weren’t like the other employees, you were sarcastic and always ready with a quick comeback. It didn’t take long for Stan to notice and he loved the fact that you didn’t take his shit. He loved how you could dish it out just as good as he could.

You genuinely liked your work. The old place had its charm and Stan, despite his grumpy act, was actually funny in his own way.

You were sharp, quick with the same kind of deadpan humor Stan wielded like a weapon. when tourists asked the weirdest and dumbest questions as “how does this yeti paw feel so real?”, you’d shrug and go, “oh, Mr. Pines wrestled the guy for it last spring! you should’ve seen him in the ring.”

And somehow, your nonsense never grated on him.

He’d grumble about you “driving him crazy,” but the truth was, he admired how you handled people, how you could spin up a lie on the spot and sell it with a sly smirk. Even when you worked him up, you had a knack for knowing how to make him laugh before he could stay mad.

Like the time you’d swapped the “do not touch” signs in the gift shop with ones reading “please steal this.” When Stan stormed out of his office, you barely flinched. “don’t blame me. Soos did it,” you’d said again and he’d folded his arms, sighing.

“Kid, you’re gonna give me an ulcer.”

“Then you’ll get to take a vacation, Mr. Pines.”

You had a way of making him feel younger, somehow. Not just the old man with a bad back and a million regrets. Around you, he felt like the guy who still had a chance to make someone smile. And god, he loved that.

Because, god, you talk back, crack jokes, get in his face with that stupid grin of yours. And he knows you know how to get under his skin. It’s annoying and hilarious at the same time.

You’re a disaster of a worker. He’ll admit that to anyone, but for some reason, Stan forgives you. every time. “who did this? who messed up the brochures?” and you always say the same thing “Soos.”

And fuck, he adores it, the way you lie so easily and confidently. He's not mad, but charmed by it. And maybe a little turned on too, but he’ll never admit that out loud.

“You know, i should fire you, right?”

“Yeah, but you won’t, cause i’m too cute, Mr. Pines.”

Stan had wanted to stay mad, but how could he? Every time you messed up, he found a way to let it slide, not because you were good at covering your tracks, but because you always knew just what to say, how to make him forget the shit you’d done. You made it all worth it.

The pick-up lines started a few weeks in. At first, they were awful, so bad that you’d nearly die of secondhand embarrassment. “you must be tired, ‘cause you’ve been running through my mind all day, doll,” he'd say with a lazy wink. and, of course, you’d always have something ready: “you should probably take a nap then, Mr. Mystery, you’re getting old.”

The first time Stanley tried to flirt with you, he didn’t know how it’d feel. He was always smooth, always had a line ready, but it always went wrong with you. “you know, i must be a snowflake ‘cause i’m falling for you.” but before he could even get the whole line out, you shot back, “snowflakes melt. Is that really how you want to end up?”

He’d blink, caught off guard, then chuckle. “smartass.”

But Stan, the bastard, he loved that about you.

He loved how you never pretended to be anything you weren’t. No frilly nonsense or sugar-coating, just honest humor that reminded him of his own shitty jokes. You didn’t back down, never tiptoed around him, and he couldn’t even be mad when you lied about the mess-ups.

His flirts were always the same, predictable, corny, but somehow, Stan delivered them with the precision of a seasoned performer. He would laugh at your attempts to flirt back what made you want to punch him and kiss him all at once. “you’re cute when you’re trying to be a romantic,” you say as you lean against the counter with a teasing grin. “but i’m still gonna need a drink to believe you.”

Stanley grew bolder though. “if I were a few years younger. . .”

“You’d still be a pervert?”

“Nah, just a smooth talker, toots,” he’d grin, trailing his fingers over a stack of papers as you walked past, brown eyes never leaving you

The more you two exchanged these ridiculous lines, the more the tension built. The fake flirting, the dumb compliments, it was a game to both of you and neither of you could stop playing.

The shack is empty, just for now. It's an early morning in Gravity Falls, the aroma of coffee that Stan insisted on brewing too strong fills the air. He was at the counter, organising some brochures for the tours, his usual tourist-trap grin nowhere to be found yet.

Tourists haven’t arrived yet.

You were running a little late today, again. Not that Stanley really cared, but he always pretended to. The man was predictable like that. By now, you’d learned that his bark was worse than his bite, though sometimes, you didn’t mind the idea of getting a little bitten.

You walk into the Shack with coffee in one hand and bag slung over your shoulder, the creak of the floorboards greeting you. Stan was leaning against the counter when you came, scribbling something on his clipboard, his back turned to you. And that’s when you saw it.

He wasn’t wearing his girdle and it was impossible not to notice the soft swell of his stomach beneath his shirt.

Fuck. You swallow hard, trying to act normal, but there’s no stopping the heat pooling low in your belly. Mr. Pines, all thick and broad, strong arms, messy morning hair, his belly curving under his chest, that's just too much

And while anyone else might have held back, might’ve thought better of sneaking up on their boss, you didn’t hesitate. The moment you saw him, your lips curled into a smirk.

He hasn’t noticed you yet.

Stepping closer, your let your hands slide over his clothes until your palms rested against the warm curve of his belly. He jumps immediately, his hand jerking across the paper, leaving a thick, jagged line of ink.

“What the— hey! what’re you doin’, kid?!”

“Just admiring my boss?” you grin wider, leaning into him.

Another grumpy “pfft. yeah, right.” comes your way when Stan moves to brush your hands away, but you just dig your fingers in harder, letting your breasts press against his back.

“You’ve been hiding this from me all this time? What a shame.”

His face burns instantly, bright red flushing up his neck. “dammit, don’t go grabbin’ me like that! i’m too old for—”

“Oh, come on,” you cut him off, crowding him against the counter. “you’re not too anything. in fact,” your fingers dip just slightly below his beltline, teasing. “i think you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Perfect? hah, are you outta your damn mind? Look at me! I’m no spring chicken, alright? i’ve got—”

“Got what, Mr. Pines?” you interrupt. “nice body?” your nails scrape lightly against your boss, earning a shaky exhale from him. “i like it. a lot.”

“Cut it out, kid, this ain’t the kinda body women go crazy for. You’re wastin’ your time”

You frown. “says who?”

He huffs in embarrassment. “C’mon, you've seen it. I'm too old and- and uh, rough around the edges?”

“Damn, exactly what i like,” his whole body stiffens under your touch. “big strong hands, broad chest and this belly, i want all of it, Mr. Pines.”

“You got a filthy mouth, y’know.”

“Oh, i had a good teacher.” you giggle, feeling him already getting hard. “you ever been touched like this, Mr. Pines?”

Stan exhales hard, irritated and flustered. “‘course I have, don’t talk like I’m some goddamn virgin.”

“Thats not what i meant.” your nails scrape, dragging slow over his belly, over the dips and curves.

He tries to change the tactics then. “listen, sweetie, i’m too old for this shit, alright? you- you deserve some young, pretty guy who—“

“Who what? who doesn’t look half as good as you? who can’t make me laugh the way you do? who doesn’t make me want to do this? i like it thick, broad, strong. You could just throw me around and have your way with me, Mr. Pines.”

Stanley fucking stops breathing. Hes hesitating because he doesn’t want to admit he’s just as fucking hungry for this as you are.

He runs a hand over his face, trying and failing to keep his composure. “You- you’re crazy, y’know that?” but you always knew how to get under his skin.

“Admit it, you’d miss me if i wasn’t here to keep you on your toes.” your fingertips graze his bulge once more and that's it. Stan’s breath stutters in his throat.

“Hot belgium waffles, you better be serious, sweetheart.” he’s already turning, crowding you against the counter, gripping your waist, your hips, your ass.

“Why wouldn’t i be?” you gasp after you say the last word when he palms your tits, kneads them roughly.

“You wanna be fucked like that? like a real man oughta do it?” he leans closer to your face. You nod too eagerly and Stan doesn’t waste a second “we better make this quick,” while his fingers already yanking at your clothes, dragging you onto the counter, pressing his mouth to yours.

Quick. Ha.

Stan kisses like he’s trying to eat you alive, pushing his tongue into your mouth. You moan, grinding against him, feeling the hard length of his cock pressing into your stomach

You should have known better. Should’ve known better than to touch him like that, to let your fingers linger on the soft curve of his belly as he stood there, all unbuttoned and exposed. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. Because the moment your hands landed there, the pull was too strong, and you knew that if you didn’t take it now, you’d burn up inside.

“You sure you want this, baby? ‘cause once i start, i’m not stoppin.” you nod, gasping for breath, and that’s all he needs. “good, i’ve been holding back long enough.” he gropes you, touches you everywhere, his hands roaming over your back, squeezing your ass.

“Fuck, these are perfect,” your bra is barely on you before he’s palming your tits, squeezing rough, thumbing your nipples, watching them peak.

He licks his lips, then leans down and latches on. Wet, sucking, pulling noises fill the Shack. You arch, whimper, push into his mouth and he groans. “needy little thing, ain’t ya?” he switches breasts, drags his tongue over the swell, teeth scraping before sucking your nipple into his mouth, rolling it, flicking it.

Stanley Pines, despite his gruff exterior, is a sweaty mess in front of you. A man that had given up, probably, on ever being seen as sexy. That’s what made it so deliciously easy to shatter him. To break that cold shell. Because he didn’t see it, did he? He didn’t see how much his body, his age, even his wrinkles, didn’t matter to you. You just want him to feel it. You want him to feel desired, so badly.

“Fucking hell, yer driving me insane, toots.”

You laugh breathlessly. “don’t be so dramatic, old man. You’re tougher than you look.”

“Oh, you’re gonna pay for that one,” he growls as he pushes you back against the counter, gripping your thighs.

His mouth is on you again, kissing down your neck, biting, his tongue leaving hot scorching wet trails that fill your stomach with butterflies. You grind against him, feeling the press of his cock through his pants.

“You want this, huh? want me to fuck you right here, where anyone could walk in?”

“Yes, i need you, Mr. Pines.” your hands grip his shoulders, pulling him closer.

Stanley presses his thick fingers against your underwear, circling your throbbing clit through your panties, drawing soft sounds from your lips.

“Already so wet. Hell, you’re gonna take me so good, aren’t ya? this tight little pussy’s gonna feel so fuckin’ good around my cock.”

You moan, your head falling back, your body arching against him as he works you with his fingers faster, harder.

“Please, please, please, need you!” then, out of the blue, or maybe because you're too lost to even care so you'd mumble everything that comes out of your mouth, you quietly admit. “Mr. Pines, f-fuck, ive touched myself to the thought of you—”

Stanley looks at you. “say that again.”

“I've thought about you, i fingered myself imagining it was your cock.” you say quietly, looking at him with little hearts in your puppy eyes.

“Jesus christ, you filthy little thing.”

“Stan—”

“Mr. Pines.” fuck. the way he corrects you, heat coils in your stomach, between your legs. “You wanna get fucked good, you use the right name.”

“M-Mr. Pines—fuck, please—” his fingers press harder, rubbing slow, teasing circles over your clothed clit.

“Soaked. And i ain’t even touched you yet.” you whine, pressing into his hands, your hips twitching. And that bastard laughs. “poor thing, you really need it, huh? sweetie, you’re lucky i’m not makin’ you beg for it.” yet, he forgot to add.

You’re about to retort, but then his fingers slide your panties to the side, spreading your folds, dragging through your wet slit.

“Fuck, baby, dripping all over my fingers.”

“N-need you—”

“Aw, yeah? that so?” he pushes a finger in your pussy so fucking slow, savouring the way your little cunt takes his thick digit, already imagining how perfect it'd be with his cock instead. “tight angel, fuck, so tight.” Stan manhandles you roughly, spreading your legs with his hands, kneeling in front of you, about to devour you whole. You feel his hot breath against your core and when he leans in and his tongue finally licks a long, slow stripe through your folds, you swear you see stars.

“Taste even better than i thought,” he groans, voice muffled against your pussy. His big hands grip your thighs, holding you open as he buries his face between your legs, licking and sucking like a man starved.

“Mr. Pines—oh my g-god—” Stanley keeps grunting and moaning, the vibration sending shocks through your body.

“Fuck, keep sayin’ my name like that. Can’t get enough of you, doll.” his warm tongue flicks your swollen clit and he slides two fingers into you, curling them, scissoring. Your hips buck against his face, but he holds you down with one arm across your stomach. “Stay still, princess, let me take care of you.”

You’re already close and he knows it, his fingers pumping into you faster, his mouth relentless on your clit. You fall over the edge with a cry, your thighs trembling as he works you through it, fingers still moving, tongue still teasing, until you’re begging him to stop from overstimulation, tugging his hair. Stanley pulls back, lips and chin glistening and grins like the filthy bastard he is. “cant believe i’ve been missin’ out on this.”

He stands, towering over you and you reach for him, fumbling with his belt. When the metal buckle clinks loudly in the quiet of the Shack, Stanley impatiently shoves his pants down to free himself.

Your gaze drops and your eyes widen. Jesus christ.

“Like what you see?”

“I’d be stupid not to,” you grin, reaching out to wrap your fingers around him, making him curse under his breath, his hips jerking into your hand as he grabs your wrist, guiding you to pump his hard length slowly.

But you two don't have much time so he holds your panties aside with one hand, lining himself up with the other and with a single thrust, Stan buries himself inside you, stretching you so perfectly it makes your vision blur.

“Fuck,” his hands grip your hips so hard you were sure there will be bruises. “you’re so fuckin’ tight and warm. Goddamn, sweetheart.”

Your response breaks off into a whimper as he starts moving, slow at first to let you get used, his hips rolling into yours smoothly.

“That’s it, take it, baby, all of me.” you let out a soft moan, looking down where you both connected and he grins, pressing his hand against your stomach, where the outline of him bulged beneath your skin. “look at that, i’m so fuckin’ deep, i can feel myself here. You feel it, baby? feel me stretchin’ ya open?”

You nod frantically, your head spinning with every relentless thrust as he stretches you in ways you didn’t think possible. You cry out, your nails raking down his back, your body arching against him as he sets a brutal pace, driving into you over and over again.

“Such a pretty little thing, lettin' an old bastard like me ruin ya.”

You can only nod, your needy voice lost to the pleasure as youre getting fucked that good, right here in the Shack, where anyone could walk in.

He’s watching you, watching your pussy stretch around his fat cock, watching the way you tremble. His big hands grip your thighs, spreading you wider, forcing you to take all of him.

“Bet no one’s ever fucked you like this before, huh?” he slams into you again, making the counter creak beneath you. Using his strong hands he keeps you in place as his cock drives in and out of your dripping, swollen cunt.

“C'mon, answer me, baby,” he growls, his hand sliding up to grab your jaw, forcing your glazed-over eyes to meet his. His cock buries deep, hitting that spot inside you that makes your legs tremble. ”didn’t ask for silence. you ever been fucked like this before?”

Your eyes are closed as you shake your head, whimpering. “n-no.”

“No, what?”

"N-no one’s ever fucked me like this, Mr. Pines—”

“Good girl, use your words,” Stan grips your chin and forces you to meet his gaze. “tell me how much you love this cock.”

“S-so much,” you manage to choke out between pathetic whines and mewls, your brain turning into useless mess. “i love it, i love you, Mr. Pines, don’t stop!” tears pricking the corners of your eyes.

“Poor thing, all those boys before me and none of ‘em knew how to stretch this perfect cunt open right.” he shifts his hips, grindings his cock against your walls, making you sob. “bet they didn’t even know how to fuck you proper, huh? didn’t know how to make ya beg?”

You shake your head and gasp, clinging to him.

His hand slides down your body, rough fingers rubbing over your swollen, sensitive clit. “owwh, they never even made ya cum, did they, sweetheart?”

“No, they didn’t, Mr. Pines.”

“Fuckin’ shame. all those useless boys, never knew what they were missin’.” his thumb circles your clit. “but don't worry, this pussy’s mine now, ya hear me? No one else’s. I’m the only one who can fuck ya like this, make ya feel this good.”

“Mr. Pines, ple-please. . .’

“Please what, sugar?” he pants, fucking you so deep you swear you feel him rearranging your insides.

You sob, tears spilling from your pretty eyes. “p-please, make me cum—” Stan doesn’t let up, not even for a second. His cock is buried so deep inside you that you can barely breathe and think, barely do anything but moan and take it like the filthy little thing you are.

“Aw, baby, you gonna cum already? just from my cock stretchin’ ya open like this?” you nod, your body tightening around him. “fuck, that’s right, sweetheart, squeeze me just like that. Never thought i’d get to ruin somethin’ so perfect.” his pace picks up, his cock pounding into you so hard you’re sure the counter’s going to break.

You were supposed to keep it quick. just a little pre-tour fuck as you both said.

But thirty minutes turned into sixty and sixty turned into absolute depravity.

The counter was first, but then Stan couldn’t stop. His cock is buried deep inside your soaked, needy cunt as his hands hold you while he thrusts into you.

"Fuckin’ christ, doll, this pussy’s gonna be the death of me."

You had your legs around his waist, arms locked around his neck, Stanley fucking into you so deep you felt like you’d pass out. But then he lifted you up, didn’t even bother pulling out, just carried you like you weighed nothing, still fucking up into you, and took you across the shack like a man possessed.

“Mr. Pines!” and “so good!” were the only words you knew.

“Thought we were keepin’ this quick, huh?” he grunts. “then why the fuck can’t i stop?”

You can’t even answer because your mouth is too busy moaning, gasping, babbling absolute nonsense while he splits you open, every inch pushing against your soft, sensitive walls, stuffing your tight pussy full.

You arch your back, sobbing, because you need it fast again, rough again, animalistic again. And he fucking gives it to you, by grabbing your thighs, folding you in half and absolutely destroying you.

“Fuckin’ filthy girl, letting an old bastard like me ruin this tight little pussy. Even dreamed about this, ugh, layin’ awake at night, fingers buried in that needy little cunt, wishin’ it was me.”

What can you say except loud “yesyesyes!” gasps? However, Stanley is satisfied with that.

“Yeah? bet you’re never gonna want anyone else fuckin’ you again.”

He doesn’t stop. Every display case. Every fake cryptid setup. Even the damn vending machine.

“You're so fuckin’ wet, doll, i could slide into this little cunt with no effort at all.”

Fake exhibits? fucked over them. That fake monster cage? Bent over it. That dusty-ass animatronic Stan managed to steal? yeah, he fucked you right in front of it, hands gripping your ass, hips slamming into yours so hard the damn thing started moving

Stan literally punched it to shut it up.

But did he stop? no.

“Shut the hell up, buddy,” he muttered to the machine, before shoving his cock back inside you and making you scream.

but the final round?

Staff room.

Both of you panting, sweaty, while he takes you from behind, balls slapping against your throbbing clit, the slick sound of skin on skin echoing through the empty Shack.

Or, well, not so empty anymore, because suddenly you hear the honk of a tourist bus outside.

Stan’s head snaps up. “oh, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me—”

His eyes dart to the stupid clock on the wall and he actually freezes for a second.

“We— we were supposed to open, like—shit, twenty minutes ago.”

“So? keep going.” you say lazily under him.

“Oh, you’re gonna get me in trouble.” but does he stop? does he fucking stop?

No, no he does not. Instead, he fucks you harder.

“I'm gonna make this quick, baby, gonna fill you up real nice, then i gotta—fuck—gotta get to work—“

But then— “uh, Mr. Mystery?”

fuck.

Stan’s body locks up and you both freeze. The voice is right outside the door. Stanley lets out the deepest, most exhausted sigh. “Uh, yeah?”

The tourist hums. “sooo i was wondering, when does the tour start? we’ve been waiting outside for a while.”

Stan closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “yeah, yeah, uh, give me five minutes, kid, i got, uh, got a bad back today, y'know? just need a second to—uhhh—” you clench around him, tight, so fucking tight and his words cut off in a groan.

He glares at you. you just smirk.

“You okay in there, Mr. Mystery?”

Stan forces his voice steady. “yeah, yeah, just—” he grits his teeth. “just need a minute to stretch it out.” he snaps his hips forward, stuffing his cock back into your cunt, deep and slow, forcing you to feel every thick, throbbing inch

You whimper, just to fuck with him because this old man is so funny when annoyed.

“Fuckin’ hell, stop that.” he growls under his breath at you.

But the tourist won’t leave.

“So, uh, what’s the official policy on taking pictures of the fake exhibits?”

Stan’s eye twitches, his hips jerk forward involuntarily and you let out a choked gasp.

The tourist pauses.

“Mr. Mystery? are you sure you're okay?”

Stan immediately shoves a hand over your mouth. “Told you, just back’s actin’ up, kid.”

The tourist keeps talking.

“What do you think the likelihood is of alien activity in oregon? because personally, i think—”

You clench around him again. Stan chokes on a groan, his cock throbbing inside you as he tries to keep his voice normal.

“Listen, kid, why don’t you, uh, go look at the gift shop or somethin’, huh?”

“Oh, but i wanted to ask about—”

Stan loses it

“NOT NOW, KID. TOUR STARTS IN TEN MINUTES. LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.”

“Ohh. . . Okay?” fucking finally, you hear footsteps and door creaking, that idiot leaving

Stanley slumps forward, forehead against your shoulder.

“Poor Mr. Mystery,” you tease, moving your hips. “just trying to do his job, but this damn girl won’t stop teasing him—”

“Ohhh, you thought you were so fuckin’ cute, huh?” the deep rasp of his voice sends shivers down your spine. His chest is pressed against your back, his weight holding you down while his cock still stuffed inside your ruined cunt. “moanin’ all pretty while i was tryna talk? teasin’ me in front of that dumbass tourist. Makin’ those fuckin’ sounds on purpose. Thought i wouldn’t do somethin’ about it?”

You yelp when his hand grips your hair, yanking your head back just enough to whisper against your ear. “you wanna act like a dumb little slut? then i’m gonna fuck you like one.” after that, Stan pulls out slowly, torturously just to slam back in.

You cry out. No, the sound you make would be better described as pathetic loud whine.

But Stan slaps a hand over your mouth, pressing you into the couch. “uh-uh, pretty, you don’t get to be loud now. you lost that privilege.”

His cock is so deep, stretching your cunt open, filling you completely. Every thrust is hard, brutal, messy, wet. Your pussy clenches around him, sucking him in, greedy for more as you whimper into his big palm. The couch creaks under you, the whole room still eerily silent except for the filthy, wet sounds of him using you.

“Aw, what’s wrong, baby? thought you liked teasin’ me. now you can’t even take my cock?” as you nearly fall from the fast rhythm. Stan laughs against your ear. “thought you wanted me to fuckin’ ruin you, huh? turn this sloppy little cunt into my personal fuckhole?”

You can't even moan as Stan snaps his hips up, hitting so deep it knocks the breath from your lungs.

“What’s the matter, princess? feelin’ a little too full?” his belly presses against your back, his size overwhelming you, his weight pinning you down, making sure you can’t run from him as he grabs your waist, pulls you back onto him, forces you to take every inch. “ this little cunt’s gonna take every last drop, huh? ‘cause that’s what you are, ain’tcha?”

His fingers grip your jaw, turning your head so he can look in your glassy eyes.

“Say it, sweetie. Tell me what you are.”

Your brows knit together. “m’ your dumb little slut, Mr. Pines. . .m’ made to take your cock—” words come out barely coherent through the lewd slap of skin-on-skin filling the room.

Damn right. His hand slides down, finding your clit, rubbing it fast. Your body jerks, overstimulated.

“Too much?” his voice is mocking. “too fuckin’ bad, baby. Shoulda thought of that before you started actin’ like a brat.”

You’re already close again, what is it now, your sixth orgasm? Eighth? You shake too hard in his hands as your cunt spasms around his cock.

“Gonna fill you up, doll. make you fuckin’ mine. you want that? lemme hear you beg.”

”P-please. . . ple, mhm. . .hhng . .” your words muffled against his palm.

“Please what?”

“Please—please breed my messy cunt, Mr. Pines—please, please—”

“Holy shit, baby, you want me to breed this little pussy? want me to fill you so full you’ll be drippin’ down your thighs all day?”

You nod frantically and Stanley feels you smile widely against his skin what makes him laugh. Such a dumb slut you are.

“Greedy little thing. y'know i gotta work today, right?” his cock throbs inside you, stuffing you so full you can feel him in your stomach. ”but fuck- fuck, baby, can’t help it.” his hips snap forward, burying himself completely as he cums, making you feel every pulse, every throbbing rope of his hot seed spilling inside you, flooding your pussy.

Your own orgasm hits so hard your vision whites out, your cunt clenching tight, squeezing him, milking him dry.

“Oh, that's it, baby, there it is. Good little slut.” you collapse, trembling, fucked-out and absolutely ruined.

Stan stays inside you, catching his breath, watching as his cum spills out, dripping down your thighs. He leans down, kisses your neck. “gonna clean you up, sweetheart.”

You blink up at him through tired eyes, dizzy. “with what?”

He smirks. “my fuckin’ tongue.” uh oh, you guess Mystery Shack is gonna open late today because even though Stanley Pines has a job to do, first he’s gotta make sure his messy girl is properly taken care of.

[atangledfate]

It wasn't that he trusted her as much as he knew where she stood in times of duress. Rouge might have been a thief, and a criminal but she was also still one of them. She didn't want Eggman or Starline to be in power anymore then they did. She was coerced into working with GUN and so had no real love of them either. Trust was probably to strong a word for how he felt about that bat. It was more of a mutual understanding. That and she'd saved there bacon to many times for them to hate her.

" it's always a risk to trust Rouge, and she's likely to have her own agenda. But even with all that said, she's bailed us out to many times for me to hold any harsh feelings..."

" What Miles said... Rouge has always done right by us when it counted. She has to play both sides, to keep Tower off her case but... if i ever needed her i'm sure she'd show. Besides... I'm about 90% sure she was who let the Chaotix know about Tinker. If we hadn't been there Shadow would have offed him..."

His eyes went to Kit who he knew would have harsh words about that decision.

" Some folks still say i shoulda let shadow do the deed. But i still stand by my decision... the real criminal was always Starline... i think we can all agree on that "

==============================================

Lanolin wasn't so sure she agreed with Blaze on her perspective. Based on what Surge and Kitsunami told her, and all the files she'd read. Starline was a cunning adversary, who was always 20 steps ahead of everyone else. The real question in her mine was why attack blaze? what was he after? did they just cross paths by mistake? how did he survive his fight with eggman? was it really starline or maybe some copy cat?

" If there is anyone i'd consider to be near as dangerous as eggman it was---is Starline. He created Surge and Kitsunami... nearly replicating Sonic's speed and Mr. Prowers intellect and more. I think we'd be foolish to assume this attack was some vain attempt to defeat you... "

" Alerting GUN is probably wise, even if we aren't on equal terms now. Neither of us want Someone like him running around doing who knows what. As for Surge... i can't keep this from her or Kitsunami... i just worry they'll break this deal and flee... with intent to settle the score. honestly i don't even blame them... "

She sighed and looked rather somber as she stared out the window to the group below.

" Both of them have put some amount of trust in me. I've grown fond of them both as strange as that sounds. If i kept this from them they'd never forgive me... and i'd betray there trust... No, Once Surge returns i'll tell them. I owe them that much..."

"I feel as though I should be concerned you trust Rouge so easily, though I suppose it'd be hard not to trust someone who's come through when the stakes were high." Belle would have to simply take Sonic and Tails at their word, though it did make her wonder why Rouge would continue to mess with the Chaos Emeralds. They just only seem to cause trouble to whoever holds onto them, at least it sounds that way from all the stories she's heard.

"Yes, so smart to trust a criminal. Look at how well letting someone who can be a danger as worked out so far? You let Eggman go so many times and you get people like me and Surge." Kitsunami knew his words could be seen as hostile, though they were. The fennec just didn't see how they could let someone like that walk around let alone trust them. Maybe he was also still holding a grudge against them.

"He is a threat, though I do feel confident in having doubts he's as dangerous as Eggman. To be honest I'm surprised he attempted to even fight me as while he had a strange device to amp his powers it wasn't enough to even have me worry." Blaze wasn't sure if Starline was over confident in that device, if he was attempting to get something else, or thought he was smarter than he is. Regardless, the feline didn't have a hard time dealing with him.

"That said, what makes Eggman dangerous is how he seems to have no limit in what he will do to win. If Starline ends up taking the same course of action then he may become that level of threat." Blaze will say Starline seemed far more calculated which made him easier to read in a combat scenario. "Perhaps we should consider telling President Thawne as well. I doubt even G.U.N would want him running around if he is alive."

"I hate to put it like this, though it seems like Surge will have to make a choice. Turn herself in to keep Kitsunami from being arrested or both break though G.U.N's forces and hunt for Starline. Regardless, it is wise to share this information with her, even if it'll cause conflicting feelings." Blaze doubt Surge would take to the news well that Starline might still be alive.

[corkinavoid]

Obsessed With You by Cosmicandy

Theater gothic/Phantom of the opera

(For some horrific reason I couldn't think of a trope)

DPxDC Phantom in the Opera

9/2 sat

Went to Gotham City Opera to see Eugene Onegin with B & Dames. The performance sucked ass (as modern takes on classics usually do), but during Tatyana's aria, some tech guy dropped a rubber chicken from catwalks right on stage. I bet it was on purpose since the lead's voice sounded much similar to the sound that chicken made. Wish I could shake the dude's hand, that was truly the crescendo of the whole scene.

15/2 sun

Came by GCO on the way to WE. Had some time to spare, so decided to go in and find the rubber chicken guy to thank him for the laugh last week. Thought he might appreciate the positive feedback since he was defo yelled at for the stunt. Turns out everyone blames it on a 'ghost'. Using 'Phantom of the Opera' as a cover story is poor taste, in my opinion, but on the other hand, it worked, and who am I to judge.

17/2 mon

Got curious and pulled up the records of GCO employees. No one matches the guy I've seen on the catwalks.

18/2 tue

Blackmailed Damian into drawing the guy. No match through the face recognition program. Should have expected that, really; the one cute guy with a sense of humor I meet (or see, actually), and he doesn't exist.

20/2 thur

Can't stop thinking about the rubber chicken guy. Might have to go back to GCO and ask about the whole ghostly rumor. Last time, no one bat an eye at the 'ghost' excuse, now that I think about it. Has it happened before? Is it a go-to explanation for any prank no one wants to take credit for?

26/2 wed

Visited GCO at night. Seen the guy, but the cam footage came back corrupted when checked downstairs. So maybe the fact that his hair was floating and glowing in the dark was not a hallucination.

27/2 thur

Definitely not a hallucination! Good news: got a sample. Bad news: after analysis, the data also came back corrupted. Weird news: the hair keeps glowing even after it's been cut off.

2/3 sun

The guy's name is Danny. Ghost story confirmed. I'm having a crisis.

4/3 tue

I'm not sure if I want to know absolutely everything there is to know about him or I want to forget everything I've already learned. But then, I've already got so far. Might as well commit to the bit?

8/3 sat

Was invited to see La Traviata tomorrow. Can I still call that reconnaissance, or am I in date territory?

10/3 mon

...it was a date. On an entirely unrelated note, Teddy Hyde ruined all my attempts at coming prepared.

18/3 tue

Heard a new rumor among GCO staff members. They suspect the ghost in their opera is having a crush on Red Robin. Not sure where they've got that idea, but it sure took them some time to notice.

19/3 wed

Damian keeps staring at me at dinners. Maybe I should take that portrait of Danny that he did down from the wall over my bed.

22/3 sat

Going on a date today, and this time, it's definitely a date! Feels like I should be having a crisis over dating a ghost, but somehow, I'm only having a crisis over outfit choices.

61/0° gBs

hEy, yoU're keEEpinG a DIary¡ aboUt Me!¡ ThAt"s cuTe FUCK OFF DANNY THIS IS PRIVATE INFORMATION GET OUT heHeheEhe no~

~•~•~•~

The thing is, I loved the song. And I loved the aesthetic. And I had such a goddamn hard time figuring out how to fit them together; I went through at least three different setups before deciding fuck it imma write silly boys being silly and wish for the best.

Dare I say it turned out cute as fuck, even though I still missed the mark on theater gothic aesthetic for the most part. Anyway, have a few pictures for general vibes!

[Just so you know, if you enter 'sex with a ghost' into google, the first few results will be the lyrics to 'Sex with a Ghost' by Terry Hyde, which is why Tim's research has been rather fruitless]

[ashtxrie]

we stay locked in

— alternatively, enhypen as (my) high school classes!

PAIR. high school! enhypen x gn!reader (rest under cut) GENRE. humor, high school au, blurbs WORD COUNT. 1.3k total NOTES. hello enhablr i am BACK. sorry guys this is alternatively known as a super self-indulgent enhypen as my classes this year so i don’t crash out in semester 2 post

이희승 — lee heeseung

philharmonic orchestra. he’s there for the vibes (and to fulfill his performing arts graduation credit requirement) but he’s secretly super invested in music theory. the type to say “i didn’t practice at all lol” the day of the audition but still eat that shi up anyway?? people tell him to stop the cap but honestly, he has the raw talent to pull it off as well so nobody really knows. he WILL be that person clocking people who use the restroom for the nth time in the middle of the firebird suite though, but man, sometimes people really do need that bathroom break for their mental and physical wellbeing. as his stand partner, he’s really good at covering for you if you make a mistake and even takes mutual blame for coming in early even though it was definitely your fault for taking a nap during your 5-measure rest... he’s that one student who gets to conduct the orchestra when the conductor is absent (or “sick” on a vacation to disney world) and the ensemble actually respects him enough to take him seriously.

박종성 — park jongseong

ap us history. we all know this man loves history; he would actually be the type to read the textbook for fun and not just search up summary pdfs or upload the whole dang thing to chat gpt! i feel like quizlet would be his best friend and would probably terrorize all his other friends to build their quizlet flashcard streaks with him. lowk he’s just in this class so he can flex random history facts on uninformed people I’M SORRY he secretly enjoys somewhat resembling the “umm actually!” meme. but honestly you go jay, being educated IS rightfully a flex. i feel like he’d actually talk to the teacher after class just to ask a clarifying question or just to confirm something totally random; he’d be like “was there really a u.s. entomological warfare field test called operation big itch?!” and the teacher would absolutely love him for that. on practice dbq days, he’s the best person to have on your team — you know you’re set when he gives you the look and little nod that communicates that he 100% got this. 

심재윤 — sim jaeyun

ap calculus bc... THIS MAN WILL GLAZE THE HELL OUT OF AP CALCULUS BC. just like how he is adamant about his physics glazing, math is no exception. tell me why he’s legitimately taking advantage of ten minutes at the end of class to get started on his homework? put that TI-84 AWAY and look me in the eyes. he’s the one classmate who’s super nonchalant and sporty and sits in the back of the classroom, but is secretly an academic weapon. “jake sim, wonderful work. you were the only one in the class who got 100.” HELLO??? good thing you always go over to him for a post-exam debrief, because he’s basically the answer key anyway. during class, he’d be quietly doing his own thing and joking around with the people around him, but the teacher lets it slide. everyone in the class is conflicted between loving and hating him, but he’s genuinely so nice and is always eager to help the people around him who need it — that still doesn’t stop the entire class from naming him their D1 opp though! 

박성훈 — park sunghoon

ap biology. the one who spites people who obliterate the curve. he’s also the best frq peer-grader though, he’s going off of vibes! if you mention anything remotely close to the answer key, you bet he’s giving you the point because people suffer enough already. sunghoon is surprisingly good at the labs though, he managed to not kill a single fly in the mendelian genetics lab and he’s super diligent at counting them too. your other lab mates had exhaled a bit too harshly one time and the sedated flies went FLYING across the lab table from under the microscope — you swear sunghoon’s eye twitched because he had JUST sorted them all by phenotype. he didn’t say anything to them though, and just started recounting the flies again because he’s just a chill guy like that. what people don’t know about him is that he actually scores high enough to potentially set the curve, he just chooses not to raise his hand when the teacher asks for top scores because he’s #taking one for the team. what a legend. 

김선우 — kim sunoo

advanced journalism. producing a newspaper? more like an excuse to know ALL the gossip and put everything under the name of investigative journalism. it’s literally his JOB to be on top of all the school events and the niche hobbies and passions that students have, and he absolutely loves it. combined with his social personality and strong writing, he’s for sure the editor of the “spotlight” category. and honestly, he’s the best the school has had in a long time. his feedback is always something to look forward to too — as one of his staff writers, your drafts are handed back with a colored pen circling a particular phrase you used, with the words “someone cooked here” or “OH YES GIRL” written in the margins. he brings the best food for after-school mandatory work days too, from donuts to chips to canned drinks — sunoo knows that the people need the snacks in order to gain enlightenment mid-article! his pages in the newspaper are also the most visually appealing too, this man knows how to use adobe indesign. 

양정원 — yang jungwon

ap english language and composition. with how diligently he uses duolingo, i have no doubts that jungwon will succeed in ap lang. imagine if he applies that study technique to memorizing rhetorical devices? he would be reading something completely random like the instagram terms of service and going “omg wait guys this is anaphora” like okay english king. and the effort he puts in shows in his results too. when jungwon checked his grades to see a 100% on the timed write while every one of his friends complained for a whole week about getting an 80, he knew he was locked IN. he participates a lot during class discussions too, so everyone knows who he is. as a fellow #taking one for the team legend, he always agrees to be the sacrifice to share out to the class the table group’s ideas. also — something not exactly english-focused, but he’s also so alarmingly good at time management. like how is he maintaining a solid sleep schedule and clear skin while watching alchemy of souls during his pomodoro breaks? the world will never know. 

西村力 — nishimura riki

ap chemistry. hear me out he signed up for this class thinking he could blow stuff up. he did not, in fact, get to blow stuff up all year — the blowing was done instead in the form of a huge blow to this man’s gpa. like what do you mean there’s solubility rules, polyatomic ions, vsepr geometric structures and their BOND ANGLES, plus gas law equations to memorize?! he went slightly delirious mid-semester and came up with insane, unhinged references just to drill all the content into his memory, from connecting acetate (CH3CO2-) to his “esteemed rizz mentor” heeseung (3 letter e’s in his name and he breathes out CO2!) and imagining his friends on a fucking seesaw to memorize the <90 and <120 degree bond angles. he tried explaining his logic to you (rapping out the equation for the van der waals real gas law?) and you just went along with it. he actually pulled through though with a B+ at the end of it all, but he swears to never have jake in charge of his course selection ever again. 

TAGLIST: @star-sim @boyfiejay @jlheon @jwsdoll @dimplewonie @suneng @en-gelic @mygnolia

[theocddiaries]

[At the psychiatrist's waiting room.] Robotnik: All right, hedgehog, you got your way. Shadow's going to therapy. She's gonna tell Shadow I'm the problem. It'll break up the family. And Stone will get the kid and they'll go back living with his grandmother and pick beans. Stone: Ivo, I like picking beans with my grandma. Shadow: It sounds fun. Robotnik: See? They're already against me, and this hell hasn't started yet! Dr Zweig: Shadow? Come in, darling. [Inside her office] Robotnik: All right, how much do you charge? Dr Zweig: If money is a problem, I charge on a sliding scale. I can go as low as $30 an hour. Robotnik: Keep sliding. Stone [places a hand on his shoulder]: Thirty dollars will be fine. Robotnik: Whoa, whoa, whoa. First, what are your qualifications? Dr Zweig: Well… [turns around to point at the wall full of diplomas] Robotnik: Oh, no. I'm not here to take a reading test. I wanna see some credentials! Stone: I'm sorry, doctor. He's just afraid you'll blame all our kid's problems on him. Dr Zweig: I'm not here to blame anyone. [writes 'mustached guy' on her notepad and underlines it three times] [In the next scene, Shadow is sitting in an armchair while the psychiatrist is sitting across from him.] Dr Zweig: Shadow, therapy can be an intense process. Shadow: Hm… Dr Zweig: We'll go deep into your subconscious and we're not going to stop until we've exposed the root of what's causing you heartache. Shadow: Hm. Dr Zweig: Don't worry. This is a private sanctuary where whatever transpires will be just between us. [At the window, Robotnik climbs up on a platform elevator and pretends to clean while pressing his ear to the glass.] Shadow [startles] Dr Zweig: Oh, that's just Murray the window washer. He comes every day at 12:00. Shadow [checking his watch]: But it's a few seconds before 12:00-- [The real window cleaner comes down, bumping into him without reacting, and Robotnik falls while screaming] [Stone thanks Dr Zweig before closing the door. The family walks out the place, with Sonic grabbing Shadow's hand] Sonic: Did you like it? Shadow: I-- Robotnik: Ever since you started therapy, all you can do is talk about yourself. Well, what about me, Shadow? Shadow: I just left my first session. I haven't even opened my mouth yet! Robotnik: You see? You see? "I just left my first session and I haven't opened my mouth yet." [Days later, Shadow and Sonic are having some snack at Stone's café. Robotnik walks over to their table, pretending indifference] Robotnik: Having fun, huh? Shadow: Yes. Robotnik: Still not tired of him? Shadow: …No. Sonic: Eggman, what do you want? Robotnik: Can't a man just check in on his hedgehog now??? [He stands there while Shadow and Sonic give him a look] Robotnik: Soooo… Shadow. Shadow: Yes? Robotnik: How's therapy going? Shadow: Fine, thank you for aski-- Robotnik: Yeah, yeah, have you talked about me? Shadow: Um, no, I don't think so. Robotnik: Tell me the truth! [The entire café quiets down and everyone looks at them] Robotnik [giggles nervously]: Hihihi, don't tell her I raised my voice, hihi. [pats him on the head and then hugs him by the shoulders while rubbing his arm and looking at the clients]: Happy family, see? Happy family! [Stone comes and takes Robotnik away by the arm] Sonic: Don't tell me if you don't want to, but you did talk about him, right? You're just messing with him? Shadow: No, I swear I haven't mentioned him once. Sonic: …Really??? Shadow: If it makes you feel any better, I'm as surprised as you are.

[wqlfstqr]

◟𖥻 blanket fort : harry potter

▰▰ pairing: harry potter x fem!reader

harry's stressed while staying at grimmauld place, y/n tries to distract him by planning a cozy sleepover night.

author: this is me begging for more harry appreciation like actually please

He's stressed. She knows. He has been in a bad mood the whole week, snapping at people, storming out of dinner and staying in his room most of the time to avoid everyone.

The thing is, she can't really blame him. Grimmauld place seems to have that effect on people, the place is dusty and dark, full of tension because of the war. This has taken a toll on everyone, but mostly on Harry.

She's seen Harry going against powerful wizards and defy death multiple times, but watching him crumble under the weight of the upcoming war breaks her heart. She knows that if anyone deserves a break, it's Harry. And she's determined to give it to him.

It's certainly difficult, it's not like she can wave her wand and make his problems disappear. She would if she could, but it's simply not possible. But maybe she can provide a distraction, something simple to get him to forget about his problems at least one night.

She's eating her dinner in between an order meeting, Sirius and Molly screaming at eachother for whatever reason, when the idea comes in. Her face lights up, and she practically wolfs down her food just so she can excuse herself from the table.

Harry didn’t have the easiest or happiest childhood, she knows that. And, as his best friend, she always makes sure to provide fun moments were she can make amends for everything he lacked for in his childhood. She's sure a blanket fort is a perfect way to keep doing that.

It takes her a long time because she hasn't build a blanket fort in forever, but after maybe an hour, she finally has a perfect fort that she knows for sure won't fall down because she begged George to use his magic to help her since she can't use her wand outside of Hogwarts.

She raids the house for pillows to have inside her fort, and she even ends up finding fairy lights, which is a total shocker to find on that gloomy house but at least it helps her to bring a comforting vibe to the fort. Then, after arguing with Kreacher for at least ten minutes, she was able to find some snacks and make some hot cocoa.

It's late in the night and everybody else has gone to sleep when she finally knocks on Harry's door, not even waiting for him to answer before she cracks the door open, slightly peeking inside. "Harry? come with me for a second, please"

She knows he's not asleep yet, so it isn't surprising when he replies. "y/n i'm not really in the mood for.."

He's not able to finish his sentence before she interrupts him. "Come on, humor me for just five minutes, I promise you'll like it. If you hate it, I'll let you sulk in peace, deal?"

Harry huffs, but he's immediately standing up from his bed. In the past few days, she's the only one he hasn't snapped at. Harry can't help it, she is far too sweet even when she's being pushy.

Before he knows it, she's already taking his hand and pulling him with her through the dark, guiding him up the creaky stairs. When they reach the room she has been staying in, Harry almost expects a half lecture about talking about his feelings just like the one Hermione gave him.

Instead, when the door cracks open and she pulls him inside, he stops short once he sees what she's made of her room. His eyes immediately fall on the fort, blankets dropped over chairs and tugged into corners, glowing fairy lights hanging from the edges, pillows piled in the middle making it look like some cozy nest.

"What is this?" Harry asks quietly, taking a tentative step towards it while y/n closes the door.

"a blanket fort, obviously." She replies with a grin. "we're having a no-war-allowed sleepover, the only rule is that we are not able to mention war at least just for tonight."

Harry looks at her, his face a mix between confusion and surprise. He wants to tell her that this is ridiculous and go back to being alone in his room, but then he sees her smile and his heart skips a beat. She worked so hard for this, only for him, so he doesn’t find it in himself to be the one ruining it.

"This is just ridiculous" he mutters, but he still steps inside and sinks into the pillows.

"You're smiling." she points out, feeling her chest swell with pride once she's able to see the first smile from him in weeks.

"I'm not." He says even though his smile only gets bigger when she settles down beside him.

He doesn’t even know how, but she pulls two mugs from behind the blankets and offers him one. The mug is still warm when he takes it, and he gives her a little appreciative smile when he sips and the taste of hot cocoa fills his mouth.

They fall silent for just a moment until Harry talks again. "Can you tell me what the order discussed today at dinner? Did they-"

"Ah-ah" y/n interrupts, holding up a finger with mock sternness. "What did I say? No war talk tonight, it's a rule."

Harry huffs, but he doesn’t try to push it, because he knows how determined she can be when she wants to. "So what are we supposed to talk about, then? quidditch? school?"

She wrinkles her nose playfully. "No. How about this? We're making stories about the people in the order. You know, the lives they would have if they were... normal people."

Harry stares at her, amusement flashing across his face. "Are you serious?" He asks, even though he's one hundred percent sure she is.

"No! Sirius is asleep." She jokes, this is obviously a joke she picked up from Sirius himself. "Come on, It'll be fun! i'll go first." her face lights up as she hugs a pillow against her chest. "I think professor Lupin would totally own a bookstore. A cozy bookstore pilled with all kinds of books, and he would have a cat or two."

He rolls his eyes, laughing when she falls silent and gives him a pointed look. "Okay, I'll try. Let's see... Molly would own a bakery." He begins. "She would spend hours trying crazy recipes and she would most likely end up burning some things around, but people end up loving everything she bakes. She doesn't let anyone go without a free treat."

y/n seems delighted as she claps her hands together. "Yes! that's totally spot on, see? I knew you could do it!" It's her turn now, so she pauses for a second before smiling again. "If Sirius wasn't stuck here, he would be some kind of rockstar. He would travel around, throwing crazy shows and even crazier parties. And you know he would totally own a motorcycle, too."

"He would." Harry laughs for a moment until he falls silent. She thinks it's only him trying to come up with some other story, but then she's able to see the moment his face falls, smile disappearing. "You know, if things were normal, my parents..."

He doesn’t have the strenght to keep going, but he doesn’t have to. She knows. If Voldemort didn’t exist- if the order were just normal people, Harry's parents would still be alive. He wouldn't be the chosen one. He wouldn't have to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

She wants to tell him something, anything to try and make everything hurt a little less, but she knows no amount of words could ever do that. Instead, she scoots closer and wraps her arms around him in a hug. At first, Harry being Harry, he stiffens but after a long second, he melts into her.

"I'm sorry." She whispers once his forehead falls on her shoulder. He knows she's not apologizing for anything she's done, but rather for everything he's endured.

For a while, they sit there, silently embracing eachother. She rubs soothing circles on his back, her heart breaking at the thought of not being able to do anything to ease the pain.

She should talk. Tell him something, but she knows Harry, he won't want to open up about his emotions. At least not yet. The last thing he needs now is more sorrow, he just needs a way out of it, if only for a couple of hours.

"You know" she starts, her voice light. She knows she has to do this for him. "Maybe in another life, Snape runs a hair oil empire. He's definitely the type to use that rubbish on himself. That's why his hair's so slimy."

Harry seems caught off guard at first as he pulls back to look at her, but then a laugh escapes his lips. "His slogan would be something like 'Smooth as silk, greasy as a cauldron bottom.' and he has the ad campaigns nailed down."

y/n laughs so hard that she has to cover her mouth, fearing that Kreacher would hear and appear just to scold them. "If Snape hears you say that, he'll make sure to leave you bald."

"Better bald than greasy." He jokes, and she's just glad to see him happy again.

And just like that, the fort is filled with laughter again, the heaviness retreating a little while longer as they share stories and joke about members of the order, allowing themselves to forget about the upcoming war for just a while.

Harry had forgotten how easy it is to talk to y/n, she's always able to see right through him and ease his pain. No matter what he's going through, she's always able to get a laugh out of him. Around her, Harry can just be himself- not the chosen one, just Harry.

She's laughing about some kind of childhood story she's sharing with him, and he just can't help but stare at her for a little too long.

"What?" She ask in between giggles when she caughts him staring.

He shakes his head, a soft smile grazing his lips. "Nothing. Just... Thank you."

She tilts her head a little. "Why?"

"For this. I didn’t realize how much I needed this." he admits, feeling lighter than he has felt in weeks. "you just- you have a way of making everything feel better."

"You deserve it, Harry. You deserve more than this." She smiles, taking his hand to give it a soft squeeze.

"You're amazing, you know that?" The way she looks at him when the words leave his lips, the shine in her eyes, it makes his heart race.

And he knows it then. He loves her. Always has, like it was something so natural for him to do that he didn’t even realize it until he has to sit there and watch the blush creeping on her face. He loves her.

"I mean, I'm pretty proud of this fort—" She starts, but her words are cut off when his lips meet hers.

It's unexpected, the feelings of his lips takes her breath away for a long second until she's suddenly leaning into the kiss. Time seems to stand still for Harry once he allows himself to get lost in that exact moment, in the way her lips feel so soft, sweet against his. So comforting.

It's in that moment that he realizes, this isn't just a distraction. It isn't just a fleeting moment to forget about war. It's more than that. She is more than that.

She's his anchor. When the world feels like it's falling apart, when the weight of it all feels unbearable, she's always there— steady, unwavering, like some kind of safety net. Always waiting for Harry to fall into the comfort of her arms.

When he pulls apart, y/n is ready for him to start panicking, but he doesn’t do that. Instead, he lets himself lean into the comfort she offers. He presses his forehead to hers, closing his eyes and relaxing to the sounds of her slow breathing.

"Stay." He says suddenly, and she's not sure if he's asking for her to stay tonight or just forever.

But anyways, she replies. "I wasn't planning on leaving."

And for the first time in his life, Harry believes it's okay to share the weight with someone.

[thatshadowcomic]

Lore/HC: Underlined text links to original post👇

[For Character answered QnA and general "asks" click here]

You're welcome to expand on my ideas in your own way, but please credit me so they don't mix up with my own HCs/design choices.

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Sonic & Shadow:

-Mobians hedgehogs "Anoit" their partners

-Sonadow children ideas

-related to the above, "WOULD sonic and shadow have kids?"

-Fave HCs/ what's it like living with rouge/ where's sonic live?

-Does shadow like/play any instruments?

-who likes to cuddle more?

-Sonic is an accidental flirt.

-Shadow's stripes will become more like the Black Arms emblem over time. His paws are already very similar... do you think his head stripes will change as he ages?

-Sonic grew up alongside Amy and other orphans/broken families. He cares for her a lot but can only see her as a sister-- the same way he sees Tails as his brother--so the idea of a relationship with her disgusts him. Maybe he sees Sonia when he looks at her?

-Before Sonic, Shadow and Rouge fell into a relationship. Shadow assumed they shared a deeper past, given how much Rouge knows and how comfortable she is around him. But really, Shadow didnt know what he wanted, assuming it just was this way. Rouge wasn't sure either, just trying to help Shadow in some way. That said, they learned a lot about themselves and eachother as they opened up-- but in the end deciding to return to just friends...Although it would take some time to feel normal again.

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Shadow & Maria:

-Shadow's has dissociative fugue

-baby shadow (shadow and maria)

-Why Shadow knows how to swim

-Maria would have been a menace

-Maria told Shadow to comb his white fur up, so he looks more presentable, teasing, "You have a little built in tuxedo! See? Such a gentle-hog." :)

-I think Shadow liked sleeping in maria's bed. It was probably of great comfort to Maria during her sicker days... He was always being watched, so when they gave him his own bed/room, it must have felt isolating and alone. Do you think he had to wear pajamas so he wouldn't leave any fur in her bed?

-Some scientists/maria used to pet shadow and fluff up his cheeks, to Robotnik's displeasure. Shadow only recently learned that's something you do to your pet... he kind of misses it though.

-This is canon: Abraham Towers (commander) and Shadow grew up alongside each other, though their time was short. Ab was terrified of Shadow, because he saw Doom helping Gerald. He would warn the other's that shadow was some kind of demon, but Maria only became more protective of Shadow. He wasn't just an experiment to her, he was a person. As she became sicker, Ab blamed Shadow. But 50 years later, he finally understands and is trying to build some kind of bridge with Shadow, even allowing Shadow to visit his baby granddaughter. Just like Shadow, he let his anger and pain drive his choices.

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AU ideas: Feel free to expand on these in your own way, just credit me for the initial idea, so it doesn't get mixed up as canon in my own HC lore lol.

-AU where Shadow is created on mobius

-Scene from the above AU where shadow is created on mobius

-Return to mobius/search for sonic's mom AU (idea)

-Return of Doom (AU where Shadow is copied and Doom controls shadow's old body)

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Other characters:

-Metal sonic in my HC

-more metal sonic HC

-Manic is Scourge, who'd been sent into a zone for safety during the first bombing, only be have been lost to the "other" Mobius. He got a little crazy after that... No one knows what happened to Sonic's sister. It's assumed she died in the first Eggman attack. (or you could go with trans sonic hc? Would be an interesting/wholsome moment between Sonic & Shadow when he reveals it.)

-Omega is basically metal shadow...

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