#considering I hate turn-baseds i sure do play a lot of them

[demento-mori]

hhhhhhhhhhhh i wanna keep playing omori because from what ive played so far the story and especially the horror elements seem really well done. I do not scare easy at all but that part with the door gave me chills.

But like,,, the thing is that the main gameplay loop is just so so so fucking dull,,,,,,, I would honestly prefer if the game followed the more traditional exploration based rpgmaker style rather than this dreary turn-based combat system.

And it sucks cos I really want to experience the game and the story but actually playing the game feels like a chore,,

[k3n-dyll]

☆Strawberry Crush

Warnings...18+, wlw, loser!Ellie, fem!reader, a few reader descriptions based on the song (lipgloss, nails - nothing body/skin/hair-wise), Ellie is...kind of a stalker, honestly?, porn with a plot, submasc!Ellie, domfem!reader, Ellie is really eager and awkward, sloppy kisses, food play? (strawberry juice is involved), fingering (r!receiving), face sitting, sixty nine

Word Count:3.2k || MDNI Banner Creds. || Donations 4 Palestine

Notes ☆ Kinda hate this but I've had this damn song in my head for fucking weeks and I needed to write something about it (Spotify link in title).Should have done this when my theme was red but fuck it

Ellie's green eyes flit carelessly over the obviously bruised and beaten-up avocado in her hand, turning the bulbous fruit around over and over again as if she's truly considering buying the pitiful thing. There's a slight feeling of mushiness to it that kind of makes the hairs on her arms stand up - whatever poor fuck decides to pick this thing up once she puts it back in its crate is bound to find nothing but brown sludge on the inside.

Each turn of the overripened avocado is accompanied by a 'subtle' look around the market, her gaze fixing to the door each time the little rusted brown bell at the top of the doorframe jingles.

It'd be so embarrassing if she mixed up the time.

Not that this isn't humiliating enough already. Pathetic, even. No one in their right mind drives thirty minutes from home to look this hard, and for this long at an avocado.

On about the fifth bell ring in three minutes she can feel herself getting impatient. Today was Monday, Ellie was sure of that - the farmers from downtown had surely brought freshly picked batches of fruit and vegetables already unless something had gone awry. Maybe she should just head home and stop acting like a fucking crazy person. It's not like the average person keeps on schedule to a T every week. And even if they did, it's worrying that Ellie even knows that schedule. At least this part of it anyway.

Ellie juggles with the thought for a moment but ultimately decides to leave, placing the unfortunate-looking avocado back in its crate. It's just then when that annoying little bell dings again. She knows she shouldn't get her hopes up and yet she can't seem to help herself, looking toward the farmers market entrance to discern who it was that triggered the movement of the brass bell.

The thought that she was just about to leave makes Ellie's stomach turn. She'd have missed you completely. But just like clockwork, every Monday morning, you're here. And just like clockwork, every Monday morning, she gets to see you.

Ellie has given herself every excuse as to why her little habit isn't creepy. She's just trying to hype herself up to actually talk to you, and somehow during that time she also managed to figure out the exact schedule for when fresh produce is brought to this specific market so that she could catch you every Monday doing what you usually do. Buying strawberries.

You like those a lot.

Or, Ellie assumes you do. Why else would you buy them so religiously? Every Monday you come to buy strawberries. Various other things as well but she's noticed you take your time with the berries in particular - inspecting the fruit in each little green basket for at least a few minutes before finding one or two little baskets to buy and take home with you.

Ellie's practiced how to approach you in the mirror in her apartment before leaving the house more times than she'd like to admit, cringing at every little stutter and awkward phrase.

"You come here often?" No. Who the fuck even says that in real life? "So you like strawberries?" Well, duh.

It looks so simple in shows. Her friends make it look like nothing. Then there's Ellie. Reciting cliche lines from movies.

Not that any of that really matters though. Normally by the time you've gone up to check out your items, Ellie has already managed to convince herself that she lost her chance.

Maybe next time

Next time, for sure. But definitely not this time, no. This time she's too distracted by how delicious you look; the sway of your hips, the pretty smile you flash to the staff, the glittery pink tinted gloss spread carefully across your lips.

Your nails are red today, coming to a rounded point.

Ellie's tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip as her mind wanders. Those nails would make such pretty streaks in her back.

For some reason, the thought that she may be shamelessly staring at you doesn't cross her mind. Until it's too late that is. Ellie's eyes widen in absolute terror when your gaze catches hers, face dropping back to the crate of avocados she'd been pretending to look through a moment ago.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She definitely can't approach you today. Not after you'd caught her staring - no - gawking at you so blatantly. In fact, getting out of this godforsaken market has shot to the very top of her priority list, a task she seeks to accomplish quickly, with her head downcast in shame and embarrassment.

It's just her luck that instead of effectively making it out of the door she stumbles over the dragging, unraveled white laces of the run-down sneakers on her feet, toppling to the floor if not for the similarly misfortuned person she winds up tackling.

"Shit! Sorry, sorry, I-I'm so sorry" she stutters out, cringing at the sight of once unbruised red fruit hitting the hard tile of the market floor. Her eyes meet yours and again she's frozen and embarrassed, a deep shade of red splaying her freckled cheeks and tips of her ears. You would be angry if it weren't for how cute she looked. You sigh.

"It's fine, really. Just...make sure you look forward next time you're walking, okay?" The soft, reassuring smile you offer her as you speak damn near melts her where she stands.

"Right."

There's a beat of awkward silence, Ellie nervousely tugging at her ring and pinky fingers as she gives you a small hesitant nod. "I should-"

"Maybe you could help me pick out some new ones?" You ask quickly, interrupting her, gesturing to the strawberry littered tile.

It's the first time she's spoken to you and given her clear anxiety, she likely wouldn't end up speaking to you on her own again. Ellie nods quickly, mouth slightly agape, though at this point she's lost all of her words. She simply picks up the dropped berries, some of which are now a little flattened and soft on one side from the impact, standing straight once they're all gathered to help you get new baskets.

"You okay?" You ask, as Ellie hasn't said much of anything in the past few minutes.

"Oh, yeah...sorry just...a lot on my mind" she murmurs, quieting back down again as she attentively unpacks your produce.

She doesn't even know how she wriggled her way into this situation. She'd thought for sure you'd call her a freak or a psycho when you let her know you were aware of her little routine. Instead, you just suggested that she help you with the rest of your groceries.

"It's a bit of a hassle trying to bring them up to my apartment alone. Plus...you kinda owe me for the tackle, yeah?"

You had feared the boldness of your invitation may give her pause but Ellie agreed without reluctance.

"A lot on your mind? Like what?"

"Like...how you don't seem unnerved about...y'know." Ellie murmurs, leaning up against your kitchen counter, the little giggle you give in response sending her heart rate up.

"I was honestly just waiting to see if you would actually come speak to me"

"Wait, really?"

You turn to her from where you were organizing things in your fridge, a small bowl of freshly washed strawberries in hand. You set it down, gently sliding the bowl out toward Ellie as an invitation to take one, which she accepts, twisting at the leaves until they come off of the top before biting into it. It's quite large, and very sweet she notices, a bit of juice dribbling down her chin as her teeth sink in, her hand clumsily going to guard any more from falling down.

"Yeah." you answer, to which Ellie raises a questioning eyebrow.

"You're cute, Ellie." you clarify, playfully rolling your eyes at her obliviousness. " And messy"

Before she realizes it, you're in front of her, holding a napkin to her now berry juice-stained chin and neck, readying yourself to pat her dry. Your lips are incredibly close, dangerously so, but she does her best to ignore it, popping the rest of strawberry into her mouth before gently taking your hand in hers to stop you.

"I can- "

"Just let me, okay?" You chuckle a bit, shaking your head. "You really don't know when a girl is trying to flirt with you, huh?"

Ellie blinks, staring at you as if you've just said something ridiculous, her fruit filled cheek almost making her look like a chipmunk in the moment. The insistence on cleaning her up, the invitation to your apartment in the first place, the fact that you don't even seem to question her infatuation with you. It all makes sense now. And she'd taken way too long to notice.

There isn't a thought process behind Ellie's actions this time, just impulse as she leans forward, closing the distance between you both and crashing her lips onto yours. A shiver of shock runs through her as you reciprocate, regardless of how unideal the kiss may seem - cold, sticky fruit juice now being shared between the both of you, creating a thin coat of strawberry and saliva on your connected lips flowing down your chins and slowly making its way to the collars of your shirts.

Ellie pulls back enough to actually swallow what's left of the strawberry and breathe out a quick "I'm sorry", though a part of her is too fascinated by the look of you with transparent red fluid trailing along your skin to be genuinely apologetic.

"I don't mind a little mess." You whisper in response, swiping your thumb along her chin to collect some of the juic. Something about the girl being so desperate to kiss you that she was unconcerned about the inevitable messy nature of said kiss put butterflies fluttering in your stomach. You keep her pressed up against your kitchen counter as you allow yourself to give in to your desires, only dethatching your kiss-swollen lips from Ellie's to press opened mouth kisses along the column of her throat, licking at the sweet red liquid that's almost managed to make its way into the loose, black wifepleaser she's wearing.

"Y-you don't think this is happening too fast?" she questions, despite her clear willingness to let you do as you please, her words coming out between heavy breaths, her entire face painted a rosy shade of pink.

"Would you like me to stop?" You ask, eyebrow quirked upward as you halt your advances and look at her.

Ellie shakes her head immediately at that, tightening her grip around your waist. She can't help but think that was an idiotic question for her to ask anyways. This is finally her chance, and she refuses to fuck up by overthinking everything as she has been up until this point. Your lips connect again with no second guesses this time, Ellie taking her opportunity to slip her hands underneath your top, pulling it over your head. Her mouth takes to your skin, sloppily lapping at the strawberry juice flowing along your neck and pulling your bra straps down enough to expose your breasts.

"Fuck, Ellie"

You slip your leg between her thighs while she's occupied with "cleaning you up" with her tongue, reveling at the way she whimpers and attempts to resist the urge to roll her hips when your knee makes contact with her clothed cunt. Her attempts prove futile, of course, the poor girl huffing and moaning against your skin as she grinds herself against your leg.

"So fuckin' needy, weren't you?" You tease, unable to help the amused laugh that escapes you at the sight of the girl humping desperately at your knee.

All Ellie manages in response is a nod, whining even louder when you press against her harder, the seam of her shorts pushing up against her clit at the right angle, her movements becoming faster and more erratic.

"G'na make me cu- fuck fuck" Ellie's muscles tense for a moment before releasing again, short, ragged breaths and muffled grunts punctuating her last few thrusts against your leg as she finishes in her boxers. Embarrassed, she buries her face into the crook of your neck, her already blushed face becoming redder at her unintended quickness.

"Shit...sorry" She murmurs against your skin, not sure if she should even look you in the eye right now.

You stifle a giggle and shake your head, running your fingers through her soft, auburn hair as a means to reassure her before lacing your fingers with hers. With your free hand, you lift her chin so that she looks at you.

"It's okay. Doesn't mean I'm finished with you."

The softness of your tone seems to soothe her, though the bashfulness still lingers on her features, green eyes casting downward regardless of your words. You press a quick kiss to the tip of her nose, and, fingers still intertwined, lightly tug her away from the kitchen counter on her wobbly legs over to the loveseat in your living room.

You lightly jerk your head in the direction of the sofa, letting go of her hand once she's seated. "Lay down for me baby"

Ellie, in all of her eagerness doesn't so much as hesitate, laying back onto the soft cushions, reaching out as if to pull you down with her. Instead of straddling her like she'd wanted you to though, you stay standing, a mischvieous giggle escaping as you lean down to kiss her on the lips once more before pulling back.

"What's wrong?" She asks, her brows furrowed in confusion.

"Nothing El. Just relax, yeah?" You murmur in response, hands now focused on slipping off your shorts. That's answer enough for her, Ellie's eyes widening a little bit as they fixate on watching your lower body, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as you pull off your shorts and panties in one go. You were soaked, and you make sure to let her know it, teasingly trailing a finger through your folds before pressing it to her lips, Ellie gladly sucking the digit into her mouth without instruction.

"Aw, look at that, I didn't even have to ask"

Ellie just nods, pink lips still caught around your finger. She's well aware of how pathetic she looks right now, but she can't bring herself to care at this point as she's too busy savoring the taste of you on her tongue, eyes damn near rolling to the back of her head off that alone. When you take your finger out of her mouth she whines.

"Wanna taste you more... please"

Her pleading pulls a chuckle from your throat, your finger gently running across her bottom lip as you speak.

"God, you're so impatient, baby. Does my sweet girl want my pussy in her mouth, hm?"

She nods vigorously, grabbing at your hand again to pull you toward her. This time, you oblige, allowing the girl to guide you to sit on her face, her slender hands catching around your hips. She licks a bold stripe along your slit before pressing a kiss to your clit, the amount of times she's thought about doing that exact thing noe finally coming into practice.

Ellie eats at you like a woman starved, lapping up every drop of your arousal, her lips latching around your swollen clit and sucking at it. The sloppy, wet noises coming from her mouth on your cunt, the muffled moaning and whining escaping her - it's obnoxious. But it's the sexiest thing you've seen ina while, her gaze never leaving you as she buries herself closer to you. "This what you wanted, isn't it baby? Spent so much time watching me 'n all you could think about - fuck - was having that pretty mouth pressed up against my cunt like this?"

Your teasing is condescening, your hand tangling into her short locks, forcing her head nice and close as you rut yourself against her tongue. The poor thing can't stop herself from squirming, pressing her thighs together, and for a moment, even detatching a hand from your thigh and snaking it down her own body to slip her hand into her shorts. You don't notice it at first, but when you do, it's clear to her you aren't having it.

"Nuh-uh, none of that, pretty girl." You lift up into a hover above her head, reaching back and wrapping your hand around her wrist to stop her. She whines again, her frustration obvious in the line that forms between her brows. "You wanna ask this time?"

"S-sorry, you're just so fucking sexy, I need you to touch me, please"

You have half a mind to make her wait longer. To pin her hands over her head and prop yourself back onto her mouth, but an idea comes to mind that you can't just ignore. You giggle, giving her a simple 'okay' and before she knows it you've shifted on top of her, settling yourself into a hover over her face again, but this time facing the opposite direction. She can't see what your doing, but she feels it when you start sliding her shorts and boxers down before leaning down and spitting on her already glistening cunt.

"Oh my fucking god..."

Ellie's thighs are shaking around your head already, her hands gripping at the fat of your ass as she pulls you back down onto her mouth. Your muffled cries of pleasure fill the apartment, the vibrations from her moans against you only serving to drive you insane. A thin layer of sweat coats your bodies as you chase a simultaneous orgasm, hips bucking and rolling against each others tongues with primal urgency as that familiar coil tightens within your lower stomachs.

"Fuckfuckfuck- coming, I'm coming" Ellie's mouth detatches from you as she's the first to go, her trembling legs clamping around your head and trapping you against her. She's shockingly quick to replace her mouth with her fingers, slipping them inside of you without warning. She's almost as despereate to have you cum on her face as she was to cum herself, and to her luck, you unravel above her soon after. Her mouth comes back to you are you finish, lapping up every single drop of cum you give her, fingers still lazily pumping in and out of your dripping hole.

It takes a bit to float back down to reality, your head resting limp on her thigh as you slowly start to catch your breath, twitching and shaking too much to actually move on your own. Ellie's not much better, her head plopped down onto the couch cushion, gently kneading your ass with her hands and pressing sleepy kisses to your inner thighs. When you're finally able to move, it's not much, only adjusting yourself enough so that your faces are level, nuzzling your body close so that you can both lay next to each other on the couch. There's a peacful silence between the both of you for a while, your foggy brains still processing how far you'd gotten with one another in the span of a few hours.

"So...you really like me then? Like actually?" Ellie breathes out, a hand lightly rubbing along your side.

You laugh and give her a playful punch to the arm, the fact that she even felt the need to ask that almost comical to you after everything.

"Ow! What was that for?" She asks, feigning as if the light hit actually hurt.

"Of course I like you, dummy" You murmur, kissing her cheek. "I've liked you the whole time"

Reblogs are appreciated ☆ tags: @half-of-a-gay, @porcelainmystery,

[fl3shm4id3n]

ʀᴇᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴜʀᴘʟᴇ

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐬, 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧. 𝐇𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐬. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬�� 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐜��𝐬𝐭𝐬.

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: ᴛʜᴀɴᴏꜱ (ᴄʜᴏɪ ꜱᴇᴜɴɢ-ʜʏᴜɴ) x ꜰᴇᴍ! ꜱɪɴɢᴇʀ/ʀᴀᴘᴘᴇʀ! ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

Tw: Squid Game 2 SPOILERS, smoking, slut shaming, criticism from the public, death, blood, Thanos having the hots for reader, reader is kinda based on Megan Thee Stallion.

A/N: I've been listening to Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat again, I got some inspiration.

Masterlist

You were know as the infamous rapper 'Cherry' due that signature bright red color you wore all the time. You were at your golden age, everyone loved you. Specially young women your age, probably due because you sang songs about women struggles and anything involving women. Everywhere you went, you got recognized. You asked to take photos, sign pictures and other kinds of merch that your fans had in hand. You didn't mind, you loved your fans. They were the reason you became famous in the first place.

But then, you began to get criticized, according to a much older audience you were vulgar and not very lady like. They also criticized your music and how it was a bad influence to the younger generation. Not to mention your music videos. They criticized those too, simply because you wore very provocative outfits and danced inappropriately. The final straw was when you were spotted smoking cigarettes outside a night club. You got criticized even more. You even got slut shamed for it. You didn't understand the hate you got, you wondered if you were a man, would they still treat you the same?

You began to loose deals, no one really wanted to work with you. Scared about their reputation, you understood their explanation. It just sucked that you couldn't do what you really love. At some point, you had considered in no longer making music. But your fans had encouraged you to keep doing music, some even suggested you move to the States. You thought about it for a while now. Moving to the States wasn't so bad, you knew they weren't as critical as they were here. So you've made up your mind and decided to move to the US. But there was a problem, you barely had any money. That was going to be a problem, and your savings weren't going to cover the expenses. You needed money and needed it fast.

So, here you were. Dressed in a green tracksuit with the number '013'. You were told you'll be playing some games and get a huge amount of cash. There was a lot of people, were they here for the money too? Interesting. You were explained the rules and even signed a consent form and all that. While you were getting escorted to the first game, but first you had to get your picture taken. As you waited in line, you noticed a group of people huddling over a guy with purple hair. You knew right away who it was, it was the one and only Thanos. You were a huge fan of his, you had wanted to do a collaboration with him at some point.

"Omg, is that Cherry?!" Someone said, making everyone in that small group turn to look at you. "It is!" Someone else chimed in. Then they began to try and get you to go over to take a picture. Even Thanos chimed in. "Hey, I don't mind one more person, come on." He encouraged, before you could say anything, the guard came over and had told the group that they couldn't take picture that way, they had to be individual. No matter how much they begged to make an exception. The guard said no, Thanos then told that after the games, he'll take pictures with all of them. They all agreed and processed to get in line to get their pictures taken. When it was your turn, you made sure your hair was descent then processed to do your signature pose. You wondered if you could get your picture printed.

As you continued to walk to the destination of the game. A girl behind you, better known as player 196. "You're Cherry right?" She asked. "The one and only." You responded, she kind of squealed in excitement. "OMG, I always wanted to meet you in person. I've been to every single concert of yours!" She said, you couldn't help but smile and chuckle. "You have?" She asked. "Of course. I love your album RED, I listen to it 24/7." She explained excitedly. "I wish I had my phone so I can take a picture with you. Maybe even follow each other on Instagram." She said, still very excited to be right next to her idol.

Once outside, you and player 196 were still right next to each other. You had a feeling that she'd be stuck with you for the rest of the games, you didn't mind. "Hey, Señorita." You heard someone say behind you. You and player 196 turn to see who it was. It was the one and only Thanos. "Don't you know who I am?" He asked, while walking along side you and 196. "Do we have to?" She asked. "I do. Thanos The Mad Titan." You responded, making Thanos smile. "Das right. We can get to know each other. Tell me about yourself." He said, directly at you. "Are you hitting on me?" You couldn't help but asked. "Oh yeah, he definitely is." 196 said in response.

"In the sea of faces, you caught my eye. My beauty, my flower blooming among weeds." He paused as he sang to catch his breath. "Red, orange, yellow, green. I'm a legend Thanos." He finished as he did his very known pose. You and 196 listened and watched as he continued to small rap. "Look at us in this blue-green. Now give me the green light." He paused, then look directly at you. "I like you!" He said, as he did the heart with his pointer finger and thumb, then wiggled his eye brow at you. You couldn't help but chuckle and feel your face heat up. "Do you even know who she is?" 196 asked. "Of course I do. The one and only Cherry." He said, but then he continued. "'I'd rather be a B.I.T.C.H 'cause that's what you gon' call me when I'm trippin' anyway'. Real Hot Girl Shit, Ah! " He finish his sentence with a quote from one of your songs and your catch phrase, as he then posed just like you did earlier in your picture. Making you chuckle. "I never thought thee Thanos listens to my music." You responded. "Of course I do. I know talent when I see it." He said. "Ya know, red really is your color. That lipstick suits you well." He said confidently. You couldn't help but smile at him.

Then the game rules were explained. It was green light, red light. It should be easy right. Then a guy began to yell and scream on what to do and what not to do. Who even was he. When the game started, he continued to yell and tell everyone not to move. "Freeze! Nobody move!" He yelled. You, Thanos and 196 stood still near each other. "Is he high or what?" 196 asked. "Nope. No one is like that when they're high." Thanos added. "Then he must be drunk or off his meds." You also added. You then heard a small bug fly by. You followed it with your eyes and noticed how it landed right on player 196. "What's that?" She asked, still not moving. "He knows you're a flower. There's a bee on you." Thanos teased. "A bee?!" She then began to freak out an move like crazy. You remained still, just watching her.

She stopped then turn to look at you and Thanos. "Crap, I just moved." She said as she chuckled. Then a gunshot was heard, followed by 196 getting her brains blown and falling right in front of you. Both you and Thanos got splattered in her blood and some brain matter. Even at that, you still remained frozen. Your eyes shifted to look down at her, seen a huge bullet wound on her forehead along with blood. The bee had come back and landed onto her cheek. The man yelled again. "Do not move!" He warned. You were frozen, you just witnessed someone getting shot. You wanted to scream, but you didn't. You feared that if you moved, you'd be next. Then people began screaming and running. Gun shots were heard and people were getting shot. Despite that, you still didn't move. You didn't want to die like this.

For the remainder of the game, you followed the guys instructions. It was obvious that you were scared, but you kept on going. You threw yourself across the finish line. Relieved that you were alive.

Back at the lobby, you were sitting on the floor near your bunk. Still breathing heavily, your hands were shaking. You were also slightly biting your extra long stiletto red nail on your pointer finger, nervously. You felt yourself slightly gag, you then covered your mouth with your hand. Feeling sick. Nothing came out, but your stomach was turning. You didn't even notice Thanos sitting next to you. "You okay?" He asked. You then uncovered your mouth. "I'm good, no worries." You said, still shaky. Thanos noticed and took your hand into his. Giving them small rubs and trying to ease your nerves. His hand were pretty warm and felt very comforting. You were more calm by his small kind gesture.

A bit letter, the same man began to argue with the pink men. Asking about the votes and all that. You weren't focus on any of that, you were more focus on what the hell you jus witnessed. The image of that girl was engraved in your head. You sure needed therapy after this. When the pink showed the amount of money in the piggy bank, your eyes were glued to the clear piggy. Seen that much money all together. Made your worries go away. All that money could help you get to the States and more. When you heard the more eliminated players, more money will be added. Was it bad that you wanted to stay for more? Who care if people will die, they're fucked from the get go. They'd either die here or out there.

When it came to the voting, a lot of people voted to stay. There was arguing with that guy. Claiming he played these games before. But no one really cared, people chose to stay and play. When it was your turn, you pressed O and given the O velcro patch to put on your jacket. When you headed to the O side, Thanos and some guy stood right next to you. "Good choice Señorita." He said with a goofy smile. "I need to the money, so. Either I get it here or I go back home empty handed." You simply said, almost cold. Thanos nodded his head, then wrapped his arm around your shoulders and pulled you close to him. "Just stick with me, I'll protect you." He said, very confident. He then leaned down and literally licked the blood off your cheek. You groaned, but didn't mind. You couldn't help but chuckle by his action.

"You a freak or something?" You asked, while you wiped the saliva off your cheek with the jacket sleeve. "Baby, I'll be whatever you want me to be." He said, with a smirk while looking directly at you. You couldn't help but slightly bite your red bottom lip. Almost as if you were flirting with him. "I like you, like really like you." He said. "You only just met me today." You added. "Pfft, so? The moment I saw you, I knew I'd like you." He said with a flirtious smile. "Maybe this is fate." You teased. "Ya know, maybe I didn't get all the infinity stones." He said. You raised your brow. "Oh? And why is that?" You asked. "Well, I do have purple, yellow, blue and green. But, there's one missing." He said. "And that one is?" You asked. Thanos then responded. "I just need red. Red is the Reality stone." He said. You tilted your head to side, waiting for him continue. "And Baby, you're my reality." He said with a wink. You couldn't help but roll your eyes and laugh at his corny line. "What? It's true." He said. Maybe being in these life and death games wasn't going to be too bad.

[stellar-haikyuu]

orange ☆ ennoshita chikara x reader

synopsis: reader is karasuno's second-year manager. during one of their morning trips to a tokyo training camp, something heart-fluttering with ennoshita happens. based on the song "orange" by spyair. details: fluff, ~1.4k words, gn! reader. i referred to characters based on how the reader would probably address them! takes place sometime during the season 2 tokyo training camp arc. warnings: none!

“I will spread my wings and take off straight ahead, Up to those beautiful orange morning skies. There’s only a second left, give me just one more, I beg — Every moment is precious to me like nothing else. I know…”

Although you normally hated waking up at the ungodly hours of the morning, you still buzzed with excitement as you stood in front of the rented school bus. 

You’ve lost count of how many training camps Karasuno has attended now, but each time, you see the team reach new heights. Playing against Tokyo powerhouses truly pushed the team further.

“Are all the members here?” Shimizu asks, walking up to your right. You do a quick headcount, scanning the endearing mix of sleepy and excited boys. “Yes, all twelve are present.” 

Shimizu nods and turns back to Hitoka, who is frantically running through a checklist. You chuckle at her diligence.

“It’s alright, Hitoka-chan,” you reassure the nervous first-year manager. 

“B-but, senpai! It’s- I can’t- the first aid kit,” Hitoka stammers, clutching her clipboard. You look over the checklist Hitoka held and see that the first aid bag is the only item left uncrossed.

Hitoka spins her head around to inspect each bag pile in the driveway. Some of the boys who notice the first-year’s conundrum ask her what’s wrong. 

You’re about to help Hitoka with her search, but that’s when you notice where the first aid bag is.

“Um, Hitoka-chan?” You can’t hide the giggle from your voice. Shimizu locks eyes with you, wearing an amused expression.

“Yes?!” Hitoka whips around immediately.

“You might want to look at the bag on your shoulder.”

Hitoka blinks for a moment before she looks down. She promptly falls to her knees, burying her face in her hands. This takes the entire team by surprise, causing even the sleepy members to startle. 

“It was with me this whole time! I can’t believe this- I’m so sorry! I should be more careful and aware, I caused you guys to worry for no reason and, and-” 

“Take it easy, Hitoka-chan.” You pat her back. “And just in case it did end up missing, there are always nearby convenience stores and pharmacies for supply runs.”

Hitoka quietly wails in frustration, then shoots her head up with determination shining in her eyes. “Okay! I promise to be more observant!” 

You and Shimizu exchange another look, sharing a soft laugh. “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” the third-year says warmly. “Now let’s help sensei and coach load all the bags.”

“Alright, everyone. Last chance for a bathroom break,” you announce to the team, barely suppressing your laughter as you see a few of them visibly consider if they need to go.

After helping Takeda-sensei ensure that nothing was left behind in the parking lot, you realize that you’re the last student to board the bus.

As you step on, you scan the seats. Hitoka and Shimizu are paired up front. Right, it’s their turn to sit together today.

You check the line of single window seats, but all of them are occupied, leaving you confused.

Wait, they always leave one empty for one of the managers…

You find it a little odd that Tanaka and Nishinoya are occupying the single seats in front, totally knocked out. But, whatever, you can take the back seat-

“Would you like to sit beside me?”

Startled, you turn to see Ennoshita looking up at you with a sleepy smile.

“Huh?” you blink.

He pats the empty seat beside him. “No one’s sitting here. Plus, you’ll be right behind Shimizu-senpai and Yachi-san.”

Hitoka looks up at the mention of her name. “Oh! Senpai, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize you didn’t have a seat left.”

You ruffle her hair gently. “It’s okay, Hitoka-chan. Don’t worry about it.”

Shimizu turns to them and puts a hand on Hitoka’s shoulder. “Yes, she’ll be fine next to Ennoshita.” Her gaze lingers on you for a moment. A subtle but knowing expression crosses her face before she turns away. 

What did that mean?

You sit beside Ennoshita, feeling a flutter in your stomach. You’re used to his presence, but being this close feels different.

“Uh, thanks,” you murmur. 

“No problem, I think the guys forgot that you normally sit there. They’re just sleepy-” The end of his sentence morphs into a yawn and he immediately apologizes.

“So are you,” you laugh. “Get a good sleep.”

“I will. You too.”

You both lean back into your seats as the bus starts to move. As the rumble beneath your feet turns steady, a comfortable silence settles between you. 

You glance out the window, admiring the first rays of sunlight painting the horizon. The orange reminds you of the fleeting beauty of moments like this.

Your eyes follow the trail of light, which falls on Ennoshita’s peaceful face. The sight makes warmth bloom in your chest and spread to the rest of your body. 

Before you know it, your eyes flutter closed.

“Shh, shh, be quiet, they’ll wake up.” 

A series of whispers break through your hazy consciousness, but you keep your eyes closed, wanting to go back to sleep as soon as possible. 

You’re confused when you realize that the bus isn’t moving and you can hear the birds chirping outside.

Maybe it’s a rest stop, your mind supplies. No one’s shaking you awake, even if you can hear footsteps padding up and down. There’s nothing to worry about, so— hang on.

You’re leaning far to your right, slumped against something warm, and there’s a light pressure on top of your head.

Before you have a chance to process everything, you hear a gasp, followed by a shushing sound. 

“Take a picture, quick.” 

“Idiot, my phone makes a loud sound.”

“What if we take one from the front and cover the speaker?” 

“Hm. That’s actually pretty smart.”

“Boys, what are you-”

To their credit, you only hear a quiet, muffled camera shutter sound. Then, you feel the weight next to you shift slightly.

“We’re not saving you if Ennoshita finds out and decides to murder you two.” 

Ennoshita?

“But they’re so cuuuute. I don’t care if I die at his hands for taking this picture.” 

“Dumbass, he’ll make you do extra tutor sessions because you got them in it. Now move dude, I need to pee.”

“Ugh. Don’t snitch on us.”

Suddenly, it clicks. You’re leaning on Ennoshita and he’s leaning on you too. You don’t know how to respond. Well, not that you have to—you’re busy pretending to be asleep, after all. 

“Tanaka, Nishinoya, enough. Don’t wake them up.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Things eventually die down after a few minutes, and you hear the hiss of the bus door closing. 

You suppose you don’t have to worry about going back to sleep, taking comfort in the warmth of the person next to you. 

You find yourself wishing for this moment to last forever.

A gentle hand on your shoulder wakes you.

“We’re here,” Shimizu says, coming into focus as you blink repetitively. There’s a grin on the senior’s face. Another look that seems to mean something.

“Oh…thanks.” You groan a little, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. Although you’re unwilling to detach from your source of warmth, you need to stretch and get up.

Wait…why is it warm?

You freeze. Ennoshita’s still leaning on your side and…one of his hands is holding on to your arm. 

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god-

“Ennoshita?” You tap his arm gently. “Hey, we’re in Tokyo.”

“Hmm?”

“We’re here already.” Your face heats up; your teammates sneak glances at the both of you as they pass by the aisle.

Ennoshita inhales to take a deep breath, but right when he’s about to exhale, his body stiffens and he sits upright. 

“Oh my, uh, sorry, I didn’t mean- did that make you uncomfortable?” Ennoshita rushes out an apology, flustered. “I didn’t know-”

“Don’t worry about it!” You chuckle nervously. Really, don’t worry about it.

“I slept way too well,” he rubs the back of his neck. It’s adorable how flushed he’s gotten.

“Well, if it means you’re well-rested, I wouldn’t mind if it happened again,” you say quickly, not realizing how bold the words sound until they’re already out.

Ennoshita’s eyes widen in response.

You feel a little sorry for Takeda-sensei who is still making his way off the bus. He awkwardly whistles to himself, trying his hardest not to eavesdrop.

“Um. Well…that’s if you want to,” you avoid making eye contact with him.

You end up looking out the window behind Ennoshita. The pale yellow of the morning sun feels bittersweet, a reminder that the moment has already slipped away.

But, you’re reminded that every day, the sun rises and falls.

“I’ll take you up on that offer, then.”

masterlist

[blingblong55]

What abt one where reader is the sunshine of 141, like after a tough mission she goes around base doing acts of kindness. like for example she goes to price and hands him a pack of cigars bc he ran out of his or something like that? Idk it sounds cute but idk how to write so pretty please do this for this thirsty child of sin

(◍•ᴗ•◍)♡

Golden-141

I've been wanting to write this one for a while now..so I hope you enjoy it!

F!reader, platonic! relationship. (remember that you can always discard the mention of female pronouns!!)

After one of the toughest mission 141 dealt, the guys were seriously our of energy. R/n decided to take this matter into her own hands. She hated to see her guys all quiet and tired. So for the past week she's been leaving gifts for them around base.

----

It all started with Price, he seemed to have lost his last sparkle of kindness. She went into the city and found a pack of cigars, the same ones he'd been talking about before the mission. "They are the best, wish I could have one right now." It was something that was meant to be forgotten. But its you, you just couldn't get past it, eventually when you found them, you hid them in his offices desk. That day he had to make some tough calls to some soldiers mothers. You knew not to bother him, so you left a note: "I know it's been a difficult one captain, so here's a little something for a cool ol'man like you. :)"

Once he sat on his chair he spotted the box, that was neatly wrapped, you even went through the trouble of finding wrapping paper with cigars on them.

----

Your next guy was Gaz, he had it somewhat tough. But you know better than that. He was after all a brother to you, so you know what had to be done. He had been talking about some old movie he enjoyed as a kid a few months back. You knew from the moment he talked about it that you have to find it.

And for months on end you went to every shop, whether that was in a country you were deployed in or your home town. After some search you found it. The day you decided he had to receive it, you looked all around base for him. Until you heard the boys walk into the chow hall. That's when you ran out and decided to get in his room to put the film on his TV. Once you knew the movie was seconds from starting you ran out and made Gaz chase you. It was rough on you, considering you had receive some injury while on the field. But it didn't matter as long as you made him smile.

When you two reached his room, the movie started playing. He paused for a second when he heard the main character speak. Then his eyes landed on you. "You remembered?" his voice so soft and clear. You nodded, "you said that was one of the few times you felt happy and I wanted to see you smile again." He walked up to you and hugged you.

----

Then soap came to mind. You thought so hard for what could cheer him up. There was so much he had told you since he met you. "R/n d'ya ever miss the pubs back home?" he quietly spoke one night, you looked at him. "Lots"

But the problem was that no one could leave base tonight. So you ordered lots of alcohol, with permission of Price of course. You made sure to make the chow hall dark and with hints of smoke. something you put price to. He had been in there all day smoking and puffin'. "I'm I done here?" he would ask but every time the answer was 'no.'

You made sure Ghost was the bartender and Gaz the guy always asking for more. Once everyone was in place, you walked over to soap who was talking to some soldiers. They had been asking stupid questions to keep him occupied. Another ask from you. "c'mere soap, Ghost is calling for a meeting." You covered his eyes, "this isn't a meetin' is it?" "nope...its kidnapping"

He walked inside and the smell hit him. "Surprise y'are back in SCOTLANDDD!!" you cheerfully spoke with a terrible impression of his accent. He turned to you and hugged you. "It may not be home, but hey, home is wherever, no" you shyly whispered against him. "Thank ya' r/n." "Anything for my big tiny fella. Now lets drink...Bartender!!" "Shut it" ghost responded.

----

Ghost didn't say much about what he enjoyed when off duty. Except that he loves Kentucky bourbon. So a week after he told you that there was one place he loved the drink it at, you started to call the place, asking for a bottle of their best Kentucky bourbon. You tried to give little information to buy their drink. And after much hesitation from them, they gave up and sent you one.

You had occupied him with some activity you needed to bail out of. Your excuse was your period was bitchin' around. He understood and took your place. You made him room all cozy, placed the bottle on his desk and left a note: "Hey L.t. what does an alcoholic like...kentucky bourbon! Please enjoy it, you deserve a taste of home :)"

You soon left his room, but later that day he hunted you down and hugged you. "How'd you know?" he softly spoke. "It was something you mention, I remember because you spoke about it with such kindness..thought..maybe he needs this." you answered.

----

REQUEST ARE OPEN!

[worriedvision]

The married life - Alhaitham

This takes place in a universe where it’s in genshin, but Alhaitham’s a CEO instead of a scribe. Gender neutral reader, this will have many parts. angst, initially only the reader has feelings for Alhaitham (this is not reciprocated).

--

You were in a secret relationship with Alhaitham, a good friend of yours. Neither of you wanted things to be public, and for a good while this worked out fine. To the public eye, you two were merely friends. Nothing special, no spark, and you worked together solely as business partners. 

Behind closed doors? You two were never really that intimate. You always loved him, you were ashamed to admit considering he didn’t seem to return this sentiment. The most you got from him was him allowing you to hug him, and even then it was rather rare. The moments you did hug him, however, more than made up for this. You didn’t know if it was your mind playing games, but it was like you could feel him returning your feelings. Of course, he never confirmed or denied this so you didn’t dare make another more.

Alhaitham never showed an interest in meeting other people. In fact, more often than not he always hated the mandatory meetings he had to go along to. The businessmen that only thought of instant profit as opposed to a better overall plan for their success in the future and the odd person trying to hit on him.

His roommate couldn’t help but laugh at his misery when he rambled about these problems of his. The man had a lot of people to choose from, why not just go out and find someone? Well, Kaveh knew Alhaitham wasn’t one for getting to know people better, and he also understood that given his prestige he wouldn’t be able to trust that the person wouldn’t be with him for purely monetary reasons. 

However, Alhaitham was very close with you. Behind closed doors, that was. Alhaitham cuddled up with you, something Kaveh didn’t think was possible for him. Kaveh was surprised that someone like you was happy with ignoring your obvious feelings for your dear friend in public, and he didn’t understand exactly why Alhaitham was so awkward. He vividly remembers one conversation you had in Alhaithams house, Kaveh in his room eavesdropping and hearing you both talking.

“Alhaitham, can I tell you something?” You ask, Alhaitham nodding as he sits across from you. “I think you’re a very attractive man.” You begin, clearly building up the courage to confess you love him. Kaveh slowly opens the door, watching as he decides to see what was happening. You were looking down at your hands, trying to figure out the words you wished to say. His heart ached to see you so vulnerable, and he rooted for you to act on these feelings one day.

Unfortunately, that day was not the day.

“I know.” Alhaitham states matter-of-factly. He didn’t even bother looking up at you, turning the page in his book as he took a sip of his tea. You, on the other hand, widened your eyes in surprise that he cut off your confession to him. 

“Oh, good.” You trail off, shocked at the reply. You weren’t fishing for a compliment or anything, but he didn’t even try to be humble about it.  You clear your throat, rubbing the back of your neck as you look away uncomfortably as Alhaitham continued reading his book.

“You could always wear a simple wedding band.” Kaveh states. 

“I fail to see the argument for that.” Alhaitham responds, looking right at his annoying roommate. “I do not have a partner, and even if I did I would have to demonstrate who I was married to for that plan to work, no?”

“Well...I have got an idea.” Kaveh starts, Alhaitham rolling his eyes before listening to him. “You are awfully close to _, right? Surely you could give them a ring, one that has, say... diamonds and emeralds?”

“You must be joking.” Alhaitham spits out, Kaveh shaking his head no.

“Emeralds suit your vision, and diamonds compliment the emerald. Gold would be a good base for the ring. Oh, and I would recommend a statement emerald that cannot be ignored.” Kaveh goes all out. He doesn’t know if Alhaitham will agree with him, but he was doing this for the sake of seeing how far he would go for you.

“I would only like a simple wedding band for myself.” Alhaitham hums out in thought. “However...I could get an extravagant ring for _... as long as they are alright with wearing such a piece.” 

“For you? I’m sure they’d wear anything.” Kaveh states. 

“What do you mean by that?” Alhaitham asks, raising a brow.

“I’ll let you figure that one out. Regardless, the choice is yours.” Kaveh rounds off, standing up. “You could always put out a statement describing your discomfort with so many people being interested in you.”

--

You were worried to say the least when Alhaitham told you to come over, stating it was an emergency. You were fearful his business had gone bankrupt, perhaps someone screwed him over? All that was on your mind was comforting your friend and long time crush, so you got his favourite wine and some binge foods before heading over.

You knock on the door, Alhaitham opening it with a relaxed look. 

“I came as soon as I got the letter.” You explain, placing the wine and food down on the nearest table before turning to face Alhaitham. You see him kneeling down, and you assume he’s tying his shoes. Rather odd, given he didn’t have any shoelaces on his footwear. “What can I help you with tonight?” 

Alhaitham stands up, pulling out a small box as he faces you. He opens the box, revealing a beautiful ring. As Kaveh suggested, it was a statement ring that embodied what you saw in Alhaitham.

“I want you to act as my spouse.” Alhaitham begins, once again factually. “I won’t ask for any paperwork to be filled in. You will wear this ring, if you agree to do so, and I will wear this wedding band. This does not mean we can become public, neither of us are ready for this yet.”

This was what a proposal should not have been. No feelings involved, no love, and you still had to hold back from cuddling him. You hadn’t even kissed him once, and you felt like you were only going to cause harm for yourself if you agreed to this. It was clear that he was simply fed up with the constant pick up lines and people asking him out on a date. You were somewhat glad he thought you would be the best candidate for being his fake spouse, but your chest hurt with the yearning for this to be a real thing.

Kaveh had been watching around the corner, and he felt similar sentiments. You deserved someone who loves you, someone who didn’t treat you like a business transaction. He knew you were clinging onto the hope that this could possibly become a public relationship where Alhaitham would be happy to be known as your partner, but he didn’t get any indication from Alhaitham that any of this was real. You always initiated the cuddling, Alhaitham seemed strange every time he agreed to these cuddles.

“This ring, it’s beautiful.” You gasp, stopping yourself from adding in ‘just like you’. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? This must be pricey, surely?”

“Consider it part of the agreement.” Alhaitham brushes off.  You glance over at the wine, suddenly feeling like you needed to drink it in one go by yourself instead of giving the drink to Alhaitham. the word ‘agreement’ certainly told you that Alhaitham didn’t feel anything for you at this point, and you had known him for too long for this to magically change. One last look at the ring, and you tell yourself to pretend you’re happy with the situation.

“...Very well.” You nod, slowly seeing the ring now resting on your ring finger. “I accept.”

[hughiecampbelle]

Succession Preference: Dating Baby Matsson

Requested: if you want to, could you write a preference of roy siblings x mattson!reader? - anon

A/N: I love thisssss my love!!! I hope you like it!!! Feedback is always appreciated 💜💜💜

Connor is as far from the Gojo deal as possible. He quite literally don't give a fuck who Lukas is which makes him perfect for you. You meet at the election party, pretty far into his campaign. He doesn't notice that you came in with your brothers crew, only that your glass is empty and it needs refilling. At the party Connor tells you all about his presidential campaign and what he's trying to represent. In turn, you tell him about this silly tech conglomerate company you work for. He just adores when you speak Swedish, telling him the best swears and phrases. From there you two text and call a lot, all behind your families backs. None of them even know you've begun seeing one another seriously until Lukas is signed as CEO and you're standing there, beside him, holding Connors hand. His family is furious, as is your brother, but neither of you care. Connor is funny and sweet and a bit oblivious, but what child of a billionaire isn't?

Kendall meets you after your brother invites them to Norway. You stay hidden, not really part of the deal, but he notices you anyways. Kendall claims it was love at first sight for him. He wanders, hoping to bump into you. When he does he's quick to start the conversation. You being related to Lukas, let alone his baby sibling, doesn't even begin to cross his mind, not until Lukas finds you out in the dark together, under the stars, huddled close. He makes it known he doesn't like what's going on and orders you inside. You do as you're told, not before you slip Kendall a paper with your number on it. He calls you the second he can and your relationship develops from there. After the deal goes through, you know your relationship will never be the same. He's hurt. Deeply. Pretending it didn't happen or ignoring it won't do any good. It definitely puts a strain on your relationship unfortunately.

Shiv is infatuated with you. From the moment she sees you standing by Lukas' side, she knows she has to talk to you. You make it pretty easy, seeking her out as well. You're not sure how it happened, only that it did and there's nothing your brother can do about it. You see one another a lot now that she's helping your brother. You joke that she's only doing this to see you which Lukas doesn't like at all. Especially since he's considering dropping Shiv, he knows it won't end well. In the end you're signed as CEO and Shiv puts on the facade that she couldn't be happier. You feared she would leave you, that your relationship would be ruined, but she's all smiles. Underneath she's furious. She hates Lukas. She can't hate you, she loves you, but she definitely isn't happy about this switch. You tried to tell her, warn her before she got her hopes up. He wanted to keep it in the family. Surely Shiv would know a thing or two about that.

Roman he's so handsome you and Roman are like two weird, off-putting peas in a pod. Based on these ideas which I love, Baby Matsson isn't at all like their brother. They're strange and weird and a teensy bit scary. He knew from the moment he saw you he wanted to be with you. You scared Frank and Karl and that made you deeply interesting. Your relationship isn't like a normal relationship. There's biting and play-fighting and saying things that only make him laugh. Lukas doesn't love that his baby sibling is with Roman of all people, but at least he knows you're his problem now while he figures out the Gojo deal. You're two strange, deeply faulted people who found one another in a stressful time in your lives. When he's not yelling at your brother in Norway he's sneaking off to be with you in the woods where you take away the stress, the nerves, the hurt. You're his rock through the funeral and even after the deal goes through, you sit with him at the bar and make him laugh with all the ways your brother could end up dead.

Bonus! Lukas fucking hates anyone being interested in you, but a Roy? Are you dumb? Are you blind? You could do a hell of a lot better than one of them, no matter how strange or off-putting you might be. He's got important work to do and you're getting in the way of that. Even before he died Logan wasn't too fond of the relationships you made with his child, but at the end of the day he couldn't stop you. He thought feelings got in the way of good business. So does Lukas. The difference between them is he can lock you away where they can't find you, Logan doesn't have that power. You're smarter than that though, telling him only after things are serious. You're an adult, you remind him, you can do whatever you like, including being with them. He can go fuck himself, a phrase that sounds too Roy-like.

[sloowoorants]

Thoughts After Watching Hannibal

About two months ago, I saw some Hannibal fan art on Twitter. It looked pretty cool, and I just so happened to have some free time, so I thought: why not watch the show? It's just a normal crime thriller, right?

I expected the type of show that's relatively light yet still intriguing, filled with sarcastic humor, starring a typical grumpy-but-genius protagonist. (This is vaguely the type of show that I’m generally into: Inside Job, Sherlock, House, Suits, Mr. Robot….)

I was so, so wrong.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for the bat-shit crazy fever dream of a show that Hannibal is: bizarrely artistic gore, incessant cannibalism puns, completely unpredictable romantic subplots, torturous sex scenes that feel like angry acid trips, a multitude of absolutely unhinged psychiatric conduct, esoteric cryptic dialogue which require five google searches and a whole thesaurus to understand, two lesbian murderers "milking" a guy for his sperm to inherent his family heirloom, long scenes of intense and unabashed eye-sex, clumps of dog fur sticking to sweaty bed sheets…and a literal fucking social worker crawling out of a horse, alive and breathing and everything, covered in whatever acrid substances come from a horse uterus.

I ended up watching all of Hannibal in a week, hastily devouring it in just a few sittings.

In no way am I a professional film analyst or critic, but after having stayed up for nights on end, every single one of them spent under my blanket binging episodes until devilish hours of dawn (and barely comprehending the plot from the sheer speed I was consuming the show at, but also from sleep deprivation), I have cultivated a skull full of thoughts on this blessed masterpiece, and I need to rant about it. Which is exactly what this post is.

I am going to separate this ranty-meta-ish thing (I think a “meta” is what it’s called? I’m not sure, I don’t use Tumblr a lot) into two parts: one, about the representation of morality in the show, and two, about the intimacy between Will and Hannibal. It’s not super well written, my grammar is a bit iffy, but I hope you still enjoy reading this, and remember to take everything I say with a grain of salt. After all, I am just some guy with unrestricted internet access, a keyboard, and a little too much passion for the media I love :)

Part One: Hannibal Lecter’s Morality

Hannibal loves art. There is no episode in the entire show where he doesn’t reference some artistic thing—He plays the piano, he plays the theremin, he frequents the opera, he draws, and he finds peace at the birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence. His love for art is why he kills, he transforms people he considers to be “inferior” and “ugly” and elevates them into art. He is acting out his own sense of justice, creating meaning from the meaningless.

In a way, he must have a certain degree of respect for his victims to do what he does. He could have just killed people and disposed of their body in a dumpster, but that’s not his style. Even if he doesn’t “care” about his victims in a traditional sense, there’s this unique honesty and attentive in his murders. Hannibal cares enough about his victims to make them art. And I’m not just talking about the way he displays their bodies, I’m also talking about his cooking, because a big part of art is also cuisine.

He follows a strict code of his own ethics, it’s almost like he’s acting out his “duty” to kill, to eradicate and transform the lesser “scum” of the world. To be killed by Hannibal is almost an honor, like being killed by God personally, skin to skin. Wouldn’t you feel a sense of divinity and fulfillment if God killed you with his own hands, knowing that he respects you enough to choke you himself, then turn you into an elegant display? Every kill of Hannibal’s is filled with passion – Which poses the question, does he kill out of hatred or not? When I think of violence fueled by hate, I think of sex or race based violence. But that’s not Hannibal. He kills victims he considers to be rude, yes, but is it a humiliation? Is it degradation?

This whole "elevate-swine-into-art" thing is also shown through the way that gore is generally portrayed throughout the show, and not just Hannibal’s murderers. It’s very interesting the way gore pretty in Hannibal. It’s often meticulous. It’s meaningful.

These murders are all aesthetically pleasing. For me, it creates a cognitive dissonance: on one hand, I know that these are painful, brutal murders, one the other, they’re kind of nice to look at, which makes me think—Have I ever for a second, while watching Hannibal, considered the crime scene to be beautiful? Have I ever viewed one of those scenes as art rather than gore? As an artist myself, do I understand Hannibal’s obsession with beauty? And if so, what type of person does that make me?

And I love the way this show makes us really think in Hannibal’s shoes, because of how unconventionally it portrays him as a villain. Usually, shows will provide villains with a backstory, but that doesn’t extend beyond just creating sympathy. In Hannibal, the villain is humanized. We understand him. We empathize. And what does that make of us?

Have I ever, in all seriousness, rooted for Hannibal instead of Jack Crawford? Have I ever thought someone deserved to die in the show? Have I ever looked at what Hannibal was cooking, and thought it looked delicious, despite knowing that its human flesh? Have I ever been annoyed at innocent patients of Hannibal, like Franklyn, because I viewed them from Hannibal’s perspective?

On top of that, Hannibal’s philosophy makes sense. I find myself agreeing to a lot of the things he says.

For example, this dialogue from S2e12 "Tome-Wan", when Will finds Mason Verger and Hannibal in his house, and Hannibal asks Will if he should kill or spare Mason Verger:

HANNIBAL: Murder or mercy?

WILL: There is no mercy. We make mercy, manufacture it in parts that have overgrown our basic reptile brain.

HANNIBAL: Then there is no murder. We make murder, too, it matters only to us. You know too well that you possess all the elements to make murder. Perhaps mercy, too. But murder you understand uncomfortably well.

Does Will only have the capacity for mercy because he has the capacity for murder? Does mercy only have meaning in the context of murder? Is our own compassion a reflection of our violence?

With that said, are the things that I believe to be evil still evil when I throw away my moral believes? Is morality only meaningful in my own perception? And if so, how much am I contributing to evil if I am the one judging it? Do I create the evil that I so adamantly detest? Does deciding what is murder and isn’t not murder require the ability to, and intrinsic understanding of, murder? Can the morality of life and death be so clear cut, separated into different categories?

These are the types of questions that the show makes me ask, which is part of the reason I love the show so much.

I also love how the show puts a dark turn on empathy. Empathy is way too often portrayed as one of the best traits of all time, many claim it to be the most important aspect of mankind, but Will’s empathy is what ends up making him go on a downwards spiral: He is drawn to the darkness because he can understand it. He chose to teach at the FBI academy because he gets to feel like a killer without actually killing.

It made Will miserable, being able to understand killers. It gave him all sorts of guilt and self-hatred and confliction, which was why he was so damn miserable at the start of the show. And on top of that, no one really cared about him, Alana only had a whole “professional curiosity” thing going on (yes, I know that Alana’s character is one-dimensional because Hannibal’s female characters are poorly written, but even with that in mind, I still think that a huge part of Alana’s affection towards Will was in fact just curiosity), Jack was constantly pushing Will past his limits, so the poor dude didn’t have any connections to anyone until he met Hannibal.

And after Hannibal clocks him immediately when they first meet with the whole “your  values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations” situation, Will experiences his first kill: Shooting Garet Jacob Hobbs. Ten. Times. Then he confesses to Hannibal that he liked the feeling of killing him.

But Will can’t let go of his morality, it’s the only thing he’s been able to hold on to this entire time. It’s his lifeline. He holds onto it so dearly because he needs to convince himself that he’s a good person, that he’s not a killer, and that he’s doing the right thing. Yet, he knows that letting that morality go would be so freeing. He wants to. Hannibal helps him let go of it, and we as viewers can’t help but be on Hannibal’s side, because Will’s corruption arc is so gratifying. We like it, deep down we root for it. And what does that say about our relationship with our own morality? Does our morality tie us down? Do we crave to be free?

Will’s killing style is different from Hannibal’s, though. He’s passionate, reactive, and he doesn’t care about the process of killing, or the display body (before you say “the firefly man”, I believe he was imitating Hannibal’s style instead of curating his own), as long as the person is dead. He kills them from a sense of righteousness, like a vigilante justice. Was it wrong for him to find a sense of pleasure in killing Garett Jacob Hobbs? Does finding pleasure in killing corrupt his righteousness? Is it worse to kill out of passion, or kill meticulously? Is Hannibal’s style of killing more respectful? Is Will brutal? Just because Will kills out of a more conventional moral judgement and Hannibal doesn’t, does that make him better than Hannibal?

Another way the show convolutes the concepts of good and evil is using religious symbolism.

For example, from S1e02, “Amuse-Bouche”:

HANNIBAL: Killing must feel good to God too. He does it all the time, and are we not created in His image?

WILL: Did God feel good about killing?

HANNIBAL: He felt powerful.

(Shocking that this line was from the literal second episode. This show got intense so fast.)

And Will’s quote from S3e02, “Primavera”:

WILL: God can't save any of us because it's...inelegant. Elegance is more important than suffering. That's his design.

Is God an artist? Does that justify what He does? Are we only creating taboo out of His works to comfort ourselves? What does it mean to view the world with a purely aesthetic vision?

It’s these quotes that really allow me to see from Hannibal’s perspective: To him, there is no ultimate purpose of the world, there is no end goal to achieve, just the creation of beauty, and that’s terrifying to think about. Even as an atheist, it’s hard to digest the belief that there is no purpose to anything. We spend our entire human lives looking for meaning. But Hannibal doesn’t see it that way. Life and death are just futile processes to create art, and there’s no bigger point behind it. The cycle of life is supposed to be art. In a way, he’s like the God (sounding like Hannibal here), giving people meaning by making them into art, just like how God designates meaning onto every creature he makes.

And the show has a lot of art parallels, not just with Hannibal’s murders. Here are some that I’ve noticed:

(Parallels, in order from left to right, top to bottom: Nude From Back by Picabia compared to a shot of Bedelia from the back, The Persistence of Memory by Dali compared to Will’s clock drawing, Le Double Secret by Magritte compared to how Will saw Hannibal after visual overload from light therapy, Ophelia by Millais compared to Bedelia sinking into the bathtub, Portrait of Pablo Picasso by Juan Gris compared to Will’s hallucination of himself falling apart in a mirror, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan by Ilya Repin compared to the cliff scene.)

I’m not the only one that has noticed these. Here is cool blog that focuses on artistic references in Hannibal, they’ve also noticed some of the ones I noticed: The Art of Hannibal.

Bryan Fuller probably didn’t do these on purpose while directing. But it still unintentionally solidified this theme artistic divinity. So I think Bryan must, to some extent, understand Hannibal’s obsession with making art out of death, because of the way art is subconsciously woven into the show. I don’t know though, just food for thought.

Anyways. Will, at the end of the show, while being cradled in Hannibal’s arms, both of them covered in blood that appears black in the moonlight, says to Hannibal: “It’s beautiful.”

And all that morality fleets and becomes insignificant in the face of aesthetics.

To Hannibal, beauty is moral. To Will, morality is beautiful. Have the lines begun to blur?

Part Two: Hannibal and Wills intimacy

“For [Hannibal and Will], two people who have been wandering their whole lives through a world in which they have not really experienced any viable form of connection with another human being—because they’re two extremely unusual people—and then they meet.”

-Hugh Dancy quote from SDCC 2013

Hannibal loves will. He drew him and Will as Patroclus and Achilles. He was ready to run away with Will in S2. He surrendered himself in S3 just because Will rejected him. And lets not forget the little twitch in his face when Francis attacks will. And when this dialogue happened (S3e12, “The Number of the Beast is 666”):

WILL: Is Hannibal in love with me?

BEDELIA : Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes. But do you... ache for him?

It is my belief that Will also loves Hannibal, although I understand that it’s not as agreed upon in the fandom as Hannibal’s love is. I think Will is just a little bit more reserved with affection, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love Hannibal.

But one thing is for sure—there is a lot of homoeroticism in the show:

So, whether you think the love is reciprocal or not, the show is still, to put it lightly, really gay.

Hannibal’s love for Will is dark, possessive, powerful. Will is the only one that is capable of understanding Hannibal, and Hannibal was willing to risk literally everything just for Will to connect with him. He goes to extraordinary lengths just to make Will a murderer.

But even throughout Hannibal’s ruthless manipulation, which Will eventually becomes aware of, Will still stays for Hannibal. Because deep down, Will was willing to give up his own innocence to have that connection. Because Hannibal was the only person that could really understand Will too, no one else would be able to accept his dark tendencies.

S2e02, “Sakizuke”:

WILL: I don’t know which is worse. Believing I did it, or believing that you did it and did this to me.

(I remember reading a really good post by endlessly fascinated on how Will was actually being manipulative by saying this quote. I can’t find it though. If someone finds it, please tag me!)

Will eventually grows just as obsessed with Hannibal, as Hannibal is obsessed with him. Proof: telling Jack that he wanted to run away with Hannibal, telling Hannibal that he can’t get him out of his head, and that his inner voice is starting to sound like him him, and the “where would I go?” when Hannibal tells him not to leave his side, and the “one could argue, intimately” when Chiyoh asks him how he knows Hannibal, and the “before you and after you” when Hannibal asked him where the difference between the past and the future come from…I could go on forever. Will has never felt so grounded before, not in the way when he’s with Hannibal, with him, Will can see his own reflection, and he’s never been able to see that before.

And oh, the love language between them is violence. Will tries to kill Hannibal (someone tell me how many times, I forgot), and Hannibal tries to eat Will and a plethora of other fucked up shit. But in my eyes, none of those were out of hatred. Both of them trying to murder each other is out of love, out of acceptance, and out of forgiveness.

S3e06, “Dolce”:

HANNIBAL: You dropped your forgiveness, Will.

HANNIBAL: You forgive how God forgives.

And, S3e03, “Secondo”:

BEDELIA: Betrayal and forgiveness are best seen as something akin to falling in love.

HANNIBAL: You cannot control with respect to whom you fall in love.

No one can control who they love, or who they forgive, which is why Hannibal forgives Will and stabs him in the same breath. He is forgiving, not letting go.

Will forgives Hannibal too. He forgives Hannibal way too many times, throughout all the manipulation of Hannibal. Think about just how much insanity he’s endured: drugged, gutted, encephalitis abused, hypnotized, framed for murder, a serial killer was sent after his family, had his brain literally almost eaten, and despite all that, Will still forgives Hannibal—it was not a conscious decision. We cannot control who we forgive.

If Hannibal is a fallen angel, then Will is God to him. And God is indifferent, sometimes even cruel. Like Hannibal said himself, good and evil has nothing to do with God. Will forgives Hannibal, but that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t want to hurt Hannibal; just like how Hannibal forgave Will, but still gutted him. In that moment, Will forgave indifferently, so he could get back to revenge. They both forgive like blades, they both forgive with pain.

Doesn’t God forgive through punishment? God will forgive you for your sins but you still have to go to hell, right?

Violence is a pillar of stability in their relationship, it’s how they understand each other, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the smile on Will’s gut a permanent reminder of Hannibal’s hurt, and all of Hannibal’s scars a reminder of Will’s hurt.

I see all of their trying to kill each other is affection. Hannibal doesn’t try to eat Will because he hates Will, he tries to eat to immortalize him, to keep Will as part of him forever.

And through that violence, Hannibal helped Will let go of his morality. Will had spent forever trying to repress himself—Molly was a failed attempt to escape into normalcy. Will definitely thought about Hannibal those years Hannibal was in prison.

S3e13, “The Wrath of the Lamb”:

HANNIBAL: When life becomes maddeningly police, think about me. Think about me, Will.

Will definitely missed the hunger, the violence. We can see this though the passionate way he killed the Red Dragon. He probably held Molly’s gentle hands and desperately wanted to feel something more. To feel something dangerous. Something that could simultaneously revive and ruin him. Molly never understood him the way Hannibal did, and he will never love her the way he loves Hannibal.

He did think about Hannibal when life became maddeningly polite. He probably fantasized about what they’ve done, what they could’ve done, and the feeling of freedom when he’s with Hannibal.

And Hannibal waited for him patiently, staying exactly where he was three years ago. And when Will eventually pushed them off a cliff together, Hannibal showed no sign of resistance, and just let them fall.

“I think [Hannibal]’s feeling that embrace and that’s the first thing that he’s feeling, and even as he’s plunging into the Atlantic, he’s first and foremost thinking about the man he’s holding onto and the man who’s holding onto him.”

–Mads Mikkelsen on Hannibal’s thoughts during the final scene

Their violence is something that we as viewers may never comprehend, but we can all understand their intimacy. Isn’t it what we all want, after all, to be seen?

Anyways...

Hannibal is a great show! 10/10, would recommend. Although, the lighting kind of sucks. Bryan, if there is a season four, please make the show brighter, for the love of God.

Thanks for reading this! :)

[niuttuc]

My Favorite Cards from 2024: Foundations

The year is pretty close to over, so let’s go back over the sets released this year (with new cards at least), and go through a few of my favorite cards from that release. I’ll group together stuff released together, in this case it’ll be the main Foundations set and the Foundations Jumpstart cards. Particularly welcome reprints might also get a mention.

I've been having a lot of fun with Raise the Past, and it's an excellent example of what new Foundations cards should be: a card that's simple, yet still powerful and at a rate we haven't really seen before. In the wake of Rally the Ancestors and Return to the Ranks. A mass of small creatures is a very white way to use the graveyard, and very fun.

A very splashy 3-drop, if you'll pardon the pun, Kiora has made an impact in quite a few decks. The base rate of a 3/2 that loots twice on etb isn't bad, but then the opponent has to deal with it anyway even if you've already gotten your value, because they can't just let you have a free 8/8 from your three drop. The looting helps to get to Threshold, wrapping the entire card into a nice package.

Doubling minor graveyard hate with fun copying and stealing effects is a good way to my heart. Abyssal Harvester does that, sadly it's held back by its fragile body on a creature that doesn't do anything until you untap with it. Still, I like the design!

Look at the kitty! It's like the cute dog but not an enchantment! I also love the cute dog, and I love cantripping bodies in the color that can best use them! A cat that'll make its way into plenty of my decks.

A lot of graveyard stuff in this list, but we don't see those kinds of rewards too often in blue, and a card every time is really good. Neerdiv does her best River Kelpie impression for half the cost and available in the command zone, and then she even enables herself!

I do not know why green got this card, but Spinner of Souls sure exists and is good! Not every green creature deck will reliably have creatures dying enough to make it worth the inclusion, but considering that Fecundity sees a decent amount of commander play, and Foster should see a bit more, there are definitely homes there. I do love an Evolutionary Leap. All of that on a body big enough it gets a chance in competitive formats? I'll take it!

Efficient engines that can both attack and draw cards at 2 mana are a really nice place to be in mono-white. Brigone is niche enough to get the counters with her own effect that she's not oppressive, and adds a nice tension between keeping her able to smack people with a lot of counters and getting cards to trigger her. Using her in other counter decks that don't rely on her Heroic effect is also possible, and makes her not just confined to those very few decks.

Twinflame Tyrant is the big mythic dragon for Foundations, and it passes the muster! Not oppressive without haste by itself, it pushes up an effect two mana from when we last saw it this widely on a body with Angrath's Marauders. It's simple, which is a plus, and impressive and gets people excited! Also an art that looks great in foil.

Sadly, I'm not the only one that likes Rev's design, and as a result she's currently at an unreasonable price. Moving past that, getting mana and cards out of every attack is very much something that's worth the four mana, and I do love stealing other people's cards. Being able to get up to three cards and treasures per turn in commander by attacking multiple opponents seals the deal on the design for me... If I can ever get some copies for a price I'd pay for a card in a commander deck.

I like Celestial Armor more than Maul of the Skyclaves, which it compares to. Targeted protection spells are generally too situational to warrant a slot in decks, so one that pulls its own weight by also being a decently threatening equipment in decks that would want that allow this one to be played. This in turn makes the game more interactive, because now players have to play around the possibility of the opponent running some protection spell. Everybody wins! Except the player who's removal spell just got fizzled.

Again, Archmage of Runes is simple, clean and effective. Combining two popular effects into one, not prohibitively expensive card, repaying the one mana more you spend on this compared to an Archmage Emeritus by the time you cast your first discounted spell.

A new Alesha! Who wouldn't love old lady Alesha, still turning sideways and still bringing back creatures to fight. Getting some potential immediate value compensates well the loss of some of the tricks of the original Alesha, but it's still a card I love being in the foundational set of magic.

Reprints:

Seeing this angel package return in Foundations is a welcome sight. Plenty of players love angels and that's a great entry point. Plus Youthful Valkyrie gets an ACTUAL printing this time which should help greatly with supply.

The vegetables package! Duress and Negate kinda HAD to be in the set, it avoids them having to reprint it in a standard set every couple years. Burst Lightning is a welcome surprise in this package of efficient base spells for standard.

In blue, we got the return of Witness Protection, which still holds some of the best trinket text in the game, beautifully tying together the design. Just for the sake of that, it deserves a place here. Brineborn Cutthroat is just a solid way for a flash deck to actually finish the game, and plays into the aspects of blue that appeals to many players (and gets it hated by many other players.)

Vampire Nighthawk more than any other card in Foundations sent a pang of nostalgia through me, and I wasn't even actively playing last time around!

Liliana, Dreadhorde General is a great card that sees play in plenty of commander decks and has seen play in standard, and seeing another reprint to keep the price low is very encouraging!

Scooze is back! I love Scooze! As long as it's not exiling my perfectly fair graveyard strategy, of course. Anyway, it's very funny that Scavenging Ooze started as a card from a commander precon and went on to become a "Foundational part" of Standard.

[jessmindspace]

Parallels: Con Char stuff WOOHOO

Just a bunch of random tidbits for The Merricks and Cris! Also included some doodles based off of Pinterest studies of the father/daughter duo for a lil something extra ;D

Harper's mom was born in Georgia, so she's got a Southern twang that Harper has as well. Harper's accent only comes out when she's upset, excited, tired, or if she goes back to the Southern States. It isn't very noticeable nowadays due to her and her dad moving around so much and living in different States.

Brent is from Florida, which is where he met Harper's mom, Crystal. This is a recent (see: today) epiphany I had since I can now officially call him a Florida Man 😂

Christina is from Ireland, and still has a very strong accent despite being in the States for several years. She uses a lot of slang and can be difficult to understand at times (when she's angry), which Brent will tease her about. She only becomes more indistinct when he riles her up.

Brent has a younger brother who was successful and became a doctor, and is the only one in contact with their dad (mom died when Brent was in his late teens). His brother and dad don't know about Harper or the marriage with Crystal that lasted for a whole two seconds, and Brent prefers it that way. He'll contact them around holidays but via very short phone calls or texts to let them know he's alive (maybe not well) and not in jail 🙃

Crystal didn't consider herself to be the best mother, but she did what she could with Harper until the girl's powers started to manifest. She had no idea what was going on since a lot of really unlucky things (or just uncanny/creepy things) kept happening to her whenever Harper got upset; she isn't the sort to believe in curses, but she did think something was Wrong with Harper (and probably a little scared of her), which is why she was so insistent on reconnecting with ex-husband Brent and giving custody of their daughter to him. She wasn't sure if the next "accident" would be something that she wouldn't walk away from 😬

Christina only works for Farran, the CEO of an up and coming pharmaceutical company geared towards superhumans, because she owes him. She won't say why or how (it's a very touchy subject for her), but she feels like she's indebted and won't be free of him until he says her debt is paid in full. She hates her job, but she's stuck, so she'll do it to the best of her ability.

Harper knows a lot of nifty card tricks and con games from her dad; she would play the shell game with her school peers and tricked them out of their lunch money before someone snitched and she'd be confronted by a teacher. She's also learned to be perceptive so she can spot little tells in others. She's very good at doing this with Brent, much to his frustration since he's the one who taught her to look for tells in others, just not him!

Brent's tychokinesis comes with a trade off; ex. he could get shot, but he'd be lucky enough where it wouldn't hit anything vital (though it'll still hurt like heck and he might have lost enough blood--but just enough!--to survive and get back on his feet in a week). He didn't realize this at first and was confused on why his luck seemed to run out or turn sour after long streaks of fortune. He can also "transfer" it to others around him, so he might get the brunt of the blow of "bad luck" while they walk away unscathed.

[ragingbookdragon]

My Lord! A Snappin' Turla!

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x Reader

Word Count: 1.2K Warnings: Explicit Language

Author's Note: New OC foks!! :) Thorne

**********************************************************************

It’s an ordinary Tuesday morning at the 141 base when Laswell walks into the room with a rather annoyed looking woman in tow. The guys look up from their breakfast and tea, to Laswell, to the woman, then back to their breakfast, and it’s only Price who breaks the silence.

“This her?” he asks and Laswell nods, shoving her forward.

“This is indeed. Introduce yourself.”

“I’d rather not,” the woman mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.

“There are a lot of things I’d rather not do and babysitting you is one of those,” Laswell retorts. “Introduce yourself.”

The woman rolls her eyes, lets out an exaggerated sigh and greets, “Name’s Snapper.”

At this, Soap looks up from his eggs. “Snapper?”

“That’s what I said, William Wallace.”

He ignores the swipe. “Why do they call you ‘Snapper’? Bonnie lass like you should be called something nicer.”

Snapper blinks, eyes hardening as she answers, “I once got attacked by a drunk guy who though it would be a good idea to stick his hand in my face. Three guesses as to what I bit off and how many.”

“And there goes my desire to ask you out,” Soap jokes and she turns to Laswell with a glare.

“I’m gonna hurt this boy’s feelings.”

“Play nice, niece,” she sighs and this time, Gaz looks up.

“Niece? You have a niece?”

“My wife’s.”

“Ah,” he nods and looks to Snapper. “Kyle Garrick. But everyone calls me Gaz.”

“I cannot physically believe you’re sticking me in a base full of men.”

Laswell rolls her eyes. “As much as I hate to actually admit this, you’re one of the best information specialists I’ve ever seen. The 141 can benefit from your help.”

“Men. I’m stuck on a base full of male soldiers. Who shit and fart and laugh loudly with no regards to their surroundings. Why would this be enjoyable for me?”

“Consider it punishment for hacking into the Pentagon and changing the official records to say that Clinton did in fact have sexual relations with that woman.”

Snapper glares at the floor. “You just can’t appreciate good humor.”

“I appreciate my wife not being beside herself in tears that her only niece is in federal prison.”

“Had to get your attention and entrance to the CIA somehow,” she griped.

Finally, Ghost meets her gaze. “You hacked into the Pentagon so you could prove you were good enough to join the CIA?”

She glares at him. “Yeah, kinda how you joined the army so you could find a family that actually cared about you.” She looks at them. “Anybody else want their feelings hurt or just the obviously PTSD-ridden, antisocial, masked freak?”

“You’re out of line, Snapper,” Laswell hisses and she turns her glare onto her aunt.

“I didn’t ask to be here. You could’ve put me anywhere else. You control where I go but you sure as shit don’t control what the fuck I say or do.”

The two glower at one another before Laswell shuts her eyes, breathes deeply for a few moments, then opens her eyes and looks at Price. “Her file is on your desk, her bags are outside the door. She’s a handful but she’s good. If you need me, call.” She turns to Snapper. “You piss me the hell off, I want to kill you, I love you, I’ll call you when I land. Goodbye.”

“You can’t just leave me here!” she shouts in return but doesn’t follow, instead she cocks a hand on her hip and looks at the four men at the table. “So…what’s on the agenda first?”

Price lets out a breath. “Manners, for starters.”

“Kiss my left ass-cheek,” she retorts. “I’m not letting a forty-five-year-old man tell me how to be ladylike.”

Soap and Gaz both snort into their drinks and Price falls stricken with a look of disbelief. “I’m thirty-eight?”

“Uh huh, and I’m the fucking Queen of England.” She gestures to them. “Have fun in your circle-jerk club. I’m gonna go wander.”

“No you’re not, lass,” Soap says, jumping up to grab her arm and she pauses, looks down at his hand, then back up.

“You wanna play this game with me?” Snapper asks coldly. “Because I’ll win.”

He points a finger in her face. “You keep your hands to yourself and your teeth off people.”

“I find I don’t like men telling what to do particularly pleasant. Let go or you’ll be two fingers less than you were five seconds ago.” He glares but lets her go and follows when she turns around. “I don’t need a babysitter. Fuck off.”

“This base has sensitive information you’re not privy to.”

“Yeah, like how you take the lieutenant up your ass every night?”

Soap stalls. “H-how?”

“I’m very good at what I do,” is all she tells him, then pauses and turns back to the table. “I want that one to lead me around.” Her finger is pointing straight at Gaz, who looks like he’s about to shit a brick.

He looks at Price in terror. “I do not want to be her friend.”

“Fuck you,” she barks, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m a great friend.”

Price glances between the two glaring at each other. “Gaz, give her a tour of the base.”

“Price—”

“That’s an order,” he adds and Gaz grunts, getting up from the table to follow her.

“C’mon,” he says, and she clears her throat with exaggeration, getting in front of him.

“Oh no, I’m not being led around like a dog.”

“I’m not treating you like a fucking dog,” he gripes, opening the door. “Just go.”

“Make me, princess,” she retorts and the two start arguing as the door shuts behind them.

No one breaks the silence for a few moments, then Price groans, lays his head on the table and swears. “Fuckin’ Laswell. When she said she had a specialist in mind, I thought it was gonna be someone enjoyable.”

Soap tipped his head side to side. “I dunno, Price, she seems like an…acquired taste.”

“More like sour,” he bites back, sitting up to run a hand down his face. “God help Gaz.”

“He’ll be fine,” Soap says. “What’s the worst that could happen? They hate-fuck?”

“Exactly. I’m too young to be a grandfather,” he says, looking at Ghost. “They’re not allowed to sleep in the same room. Ever.”

“Who fucking died and put me in charge of them?” Ghost snaps.

“Because I trust you.”

“You don’t trust me?” Soap asks, hurt.

“You’ll encourage them, Simon won’t.”

“But don’t you want Gaz to be happy?”

“I want Gaz to not be arrested for killing a CIA agent.”

“Think she might bite his head off before that happens,” Ghost says.

“She’ll bite somethin’,” Soap snorts.

Price grunts, rising from his seat, tea cup in his hand. “I’m going to my office. Come get me if they get into a fistfight.”

“Still questioning why I’m in charge of them,” Ghost gripes.

“Because I fuckin’ said so. That’s why.”

“Permission to not be nice to her.”

“Granted. Lethal verbal decimation allowed.”

“Copy.” Ghost rises, pointing at Soap. “You. Come on.”

“You?” he sputters. “I have a name, ya fuckin’ reprobate.”

As the two argue while they leave, Price leans against the table and frowns at his feet. “I need a partner…or a fucking hobby…or both.”

[inventors-fair]

Counterplay: Increment Commentary

There were a lot of mechanical variants this past week, and a lot of variations on the same mechanical aspects. Amassing, and card draw, and +1/+1 counters on green creatures... Yeah, there are only so many things you can increment in so many ways. I'm kind of surprised by the amount of variance even within those similarities, though, and it's clear that people liked forging their own paths! 

Decades of mechanics and precedent allow us to select what designs work best, how they work best, and what kinds of aspects of MTG will show up when we need them to be bigger and better. I think the one suggestion I would give generally would be to consider the play patterns based not just on your own imaginations but also experiences from limited, from standard interactions, from the world in which everything is a little bit reliant on everything else. There were big swings between ambitions and precedent, mechanically and flavorfully.

There were also arguable differences between what I consider precedent for increments and what's technically incremented, so keep that in mind. Some of this—actually, all of this, because I'm the judge—is my opinion for what I was looking for in terms of direct increments. So keep that in mind: my opinions are totally fine to hand-wave on that front. I'd like to think you're still here because you care about the parts where I say what I think works and doesn't work otherwise, but that's ego speaking.

See a card marked JUDGE PICK? That meant that I liked it enough to either point out something super specific about it or it was in the running for the podium before paring for space. Read on until you're accumulated all that knowledge.

@bread-into-toast — Sprout of the Hate Seed (JUDGE PICK)

Calling combat triggers "incremental" is technically true, but not precisely what I was thinking of for this contest. That goes even more so for the optional trigger there. But maybe I'm being too narrow with my internal definition of "will happen every turn" versus "may perhaps happen every turn," because some of those example cards did kinda get there. I think part of my internal view was considering that you were the one in control of the increment. BTW, all of this is me waxing and musing, so for you and your card specifically, I'll say that this card really got me thinking about what I wanted to mean by increment and what was unspoken. Kinda on me for that.

I do love this card in general, though, although I'd change that trigger to: "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, if it had a +1/+1 counter on it, create a token that's a copy of it. Otherwise, create a 1/1 green Saproling creature token." The reason is because it could be argued that the "it" in the second sentence could refer to the Saproling, or at least someone might be confused by it. Everything else is perfectly awesome for a Gruul design—swingy, big, potentially game-ending, and the kind of rare that would sway you in limited into these colors. Swell job!

~

@cthulhusaurusrex — Elvish Growthcaller / Embodiment of Growth

Big effects into bigger effects are incremental enough, sure. Transforming into Cathars' Crusade on a stick is pretty excellent, and with enough lords or other effects I think that this card could be absolutely powerful when it transforms. The design itself is fine and would be a snap-pick if you're anywhere near green and/or if you wanted to hate because you didn't have the right removal. Mechanics are fairly standard, and that's all good there. I suppose the world around it and the vibes are what I wanted more of, so let's talk about that.

What this card is depicting is the healing/lifegiving power of a young elf that transforms them into a leader amongst their people. This is one of those cases where I feel that "elves connecting to plants" could have used some kind of emotional crutch to separate it from... The word I'm going to use is "expected." This is all flavor talk, so feel free to skip it, because the only actual chance on the card I'd do is making the T in Trample lowercase. For flavor reasons, though, I don't yet feel that kind of surprise that I need to make these fairly straightforward mechanics feel fresh again. Is this an expected mutation among the culture, or a surprise gift of the world's magic? The flavor text isn't giving me anything new here, and its vague poetic styling needs to provide that sense of strangeness, transformation, or change.

~

@dabudder — The Hype

I get this card, for sure. Totally do. It's absolutely not what I was looking for for increments, as it relies on a lot of non-deterministic factors to do...well, anything. But man. The first thing that comes into my head is Throes of Chaos, but much different. I suppose you could search for The Hypes, get them into the graveyard or whatever, but once they're in the graveyard then you need at least one to get it going... And then, to what end? The hype feels kinda let down by having only one extra copy, but having too many would be way too wild. Chain together The Hype until you hit two five-mana-or-less combo pieces, what a deck. Isn't that basically how this deck would work? Geological Appraiser got banned in Pioneer for a reason.

The main point is that this card can only get so big before the hype dies down, unless you're using The Hype to win on the spot. Limited probably wouldn't use this card (although not every card is designed for it, so that's aight) except as a maybe one-off ramp. "Find your combo piece" is effectively all that you'd be doing in constructed effectively. Maybe the randomness being let down by The Hype copying multiple pieces is okay, but even then, this isn't the kind of scaling that's right for an increment contest. What happens at the top? Via the card itself, nothing much. It's hard to evaluate a card that effectively is designed around only itself without assuming the most broken intentions.

~

@feyd-rautha-apologist — Grassy Gnoll (JUDGE PICK)

I imagined this card to be a build-around sleeper hit for constructed. Pinging your opponents' creatures doesn't have to be massive to be effective, right? And if there are two of these things, well, you're in for a treat. It's the return of Temur Staticaster combo! That's all just hype, though. The narrowness of this card at uncommon meant that it wasn't exactly slated for a podium spot given the fact that we had an immense number of awesome cards. Still, despite the name being something that perhaps wouldn't pass the marketing team, I think this card's pretty wonderful.

And aside from that, there's not much of a second paragraph to add here. The "W" in "Ward" should be lowercase, so jot that down. I do want to say: I think that the shortening of a card name to "this creature" was a mistake on WotC's part. Later pronouns can increase text to decrease the following confusion, although this card clears it up enough with the "that" later on. All the same... Look, this card feels great—it eats, shoots, and leaves. Leaves you with an arrow in the back, anyway. I love hyenas and I love the vibes. What more can I say?

~

@frognarch — Avalanche Elemental (JUDGE PICK)

Conversely to the previous card, you could use "this creature" here and I'd be none the wiser. But! This is one of those copying effects that distinctly feels incremental, and by far stronger in limited for it. Evasion and copying and snowballing, well, that's pretty wild. The only question I have for limited power is whether or not the fact that it can get exponential is too much. Blocking the token copy can wear it down for the moment, but if you get a single copy to stay, the board's basically done for. Every turn, swing and swing and swing again. These days, though, a five-mana 3/3 is pretty low. Maybe the environment would redefine it? Hard to say.

I do really love this design, though. I'd replace the "and" with a "then," or just remove the comma from behind the word "combat." Those are the minor potatoes. As for the flavor text, I'm iffy on a couple counts. Firstly, that's not how avalanches happen so jot that down for your nerd notes. Secondly, though, that line of just "the snow fell" doesn't carry much weight with it for me. The card's intent is that these elementals are rising from the alpine and barreling down uncontrollably, but the flavor text makes it seem like the army just got buried in a particularly heavy storm. It speaks to the aftermath rather than the moment, and the card's energy is carried with that moment. Y'know? Gotta match the energy to the action.

~

@grornt — Mangrove Stalker

I'll start off by saying that it's a generally phenomenal design and you should keep this in the files. No notes there. I'll follow that up with the unfortunate part that it doesn't feel quite as incremental to what I was looking for for the contest. As soon as this comes out, you can pop it and get your benefit if you have enough creatures in the graveyard. Inversely, I was looking for a card that started the buildup itself and used itself as a requirement for bigger effects. There's the technical argument, and then the vibe argument.

I guess that this is a design lesson for me for contests. Most of the vibes were totally met, but this is a card that just doesn't hit that specificity for me. All of the values are subtle and I was actually hoping that people would be less subtle this week. I know, shocker! But if this creature got 'stalking counters' whenever you milled a creature or whatever, then drew for each stalking counter, that would be more in-line with the intended increment. And that would, in my opinion, make for a worse card. What happens when a good design clashes with the bespoke niche? I mean, you get me waffling for two paragraphs, that's what. 

~

@helloijustreadyourpost — The Book of Grudges

Multiplying your power as a punishing effect for attacking hurts a lot. Even though your creatures can't block, a single attack from your opponent the turn after you play this will create an additional four power on board, and then six the next turn, and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's a three-mana can't-block token. But we've all heard the adage "math is for blockers," and that really makes this card feel like it's doing more than it should be able to. Landing this early in limited is a game-ender without removal. Landing it late can change the parity immensely—if you have parity. I will say that the can't-block addition is the best choice for ability balance. (Or in this case, cannot-block. You should change that to the contraction.)

Personally, I'd do one of two things: either I'd limit the number of counters that can be placed on the book (which would be okay but not great for the contest, and would add a lot of text), or I'd make the creatures 1/1s. I am also curious about the flavor here, because I want to praise the subtle humor and the cool worldbuilding piece you've made here. Presumably, you have a group of dwarves on whatever world (I'm thinking Eldraine or Kaldheim) with a massive tome of their wrongs that incenses them to combat in a way that's more aggressive than thoughtful. Shortsighted and grumpy! That's a great way to use names and abilities together to create a sense of grounding without even needing art direction.

~

@horsecrash — Bubbling Brew

The design: super cool. The flavor: perfect use of those counters. The math: weird. Too weird. Hold on, I'm actually going to get out a deck and muck around and see how it feels. ... So, I just tried this in a Sultai midrange kind of deck. Played it on turn three. Turn four: basically no hand, played out a card. Turn five: lost a lot of life, but drew cards. Didn't want to play anything because of the life loss. Turn six: draw a lot, lost a lot. I basically didn't want to play any of the cards that I drew because that meant the next turn I'd be incrementally losing all of the other resources.

Quite frankly, I want this effect to be symmetrical. Smokestack-style. Standard can handle it. Or there has to be some other kind of way to mitigate the life loss, because you're discarding so many cards that you're losing basically everything you get at the cost of your life and eventually there's no way to play out all that you have so you just mill yourself or drain yourself. I think this was the first time I've actively played a card in a deck that it was probably intended for, and lemme tell you, it's worth for anyone to do for a card this ambitious. Pros: ambition, flavor, uniqueness. Cons: my life total :(

~

@hypexion — Ignition, Errant Arson / Cataclysm, Vengeant Inferno

The design is decent, but I'm left with a lot more questions than answers. Let's go through those first, because the second paragraph here is for sure going to be talking about the cool stuff you're doing. I feel that the increment-specific design is intended to be like Animar, in that your costs go down with the incremental uptick, so that's understandable. But it feels so localized, and this is a personal thing, but I think the intent of the contest was more universal to the board? Still, out of the technicalities, it makes a lot of sense to me with the buildup. The names are baffling me, though, because I can't place them at all. I assume these are chosen names, but they're... I don't want to say that they're "obvious" for the archetype. "Telling" is the closest adjective I have.

Mechanics are surprisingly in-depth, though, so let's have some fun. Firstly, menace plus potentially killing a small blocker is a great combo, and depending on how much an opponent is forced to block, that may be a perfect way to get those counters, discounting burn/combat tricks. Could even be worth making the front side a 3/3. "Non-player target" is also a great choice on the backside—accounting for Battles, I assume? The only wording choice on the back side I'd change would be to switch first strike and menace (see Kari Zev et. al); I thought "they" should be "that player" but I guess your wording is accurate as well! Both work even if I prefer "that player." The bombiness and dedication to the theme is on point, even if some of the details are evading me.

~

@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Tyvar, Hero in the Dark

Sorry about not saving this one the first time—I definitely saw it, and I went through the inbox a second time, and it just flew under the radar. So let's talk about it now! And part of that is me wanting to hear the thought process for this card, because as a mythic, it's possible that it's really good, but I'm not entirely convinced. Omen Hawker was the first card to come to mind, although this one is distinctly more powerful—but just as narrow. Here's the question I'm left with: in what environment would this be considered a mythic in terms of gameplay versatility? Where are the most activated abilities that one would want to do postcombat or during combat?

Maybe it's just me, but I feel that this would've been a fine rare instead of a mythic. The general design is fantastic, though, and it works quite well with the other Tyvar. And, I can see from the past precedent that Tyvar has a little bit of "activated abilities matter" from the past. Everything shows that you've done your homework here. I feel 'whelmed' by the overall effect, though. Attack, counter, make mana—that's all fine. Where do we go from here? Boasting is potentially valid, I suppose, but again, I would liked to know a little bit more about your vision. I'm imagine there was a lot build up in the process that maybe didn't translate into demonstrating this card's utilitarian strength. (Also: love the name, 10/10)

~

@melancholia-ennui — Creeping Misery (JUDGE PICK)

Yep, that's an alternate wincon for black, very much in the spirit of the contest. Once more we're delving into the world of black enchantments. Was there a particular reason we had six mono-black enchantments this week? I'm not creeping on anyone's misery here, but I find it fascinating. Anyway! Underworld Dreams is one of the first cards that come to mind when people think about BBB punishing enchantments, but this card's more along the lines of... Well, it's got quite a pedigree! Bloodchief Ascension, Fraying Sanity, and more... And yet it's not until you start to pick apart the card that you see how all these influences turn into something original. I think that it's reasonable to call this card more of a constructed build-around but the limited potential is there.

And in limited, you're going to have a lot fewer chances to save yourself and find answers if this hits the board, because things will be trading all the time. You only need one copy to lock someone out of the game, because everyone's going to be getting rid of creatures, especially you. Having that BBB restriction to prevent this from being even remotely splashable ensures that only dedicated decks can make it work. Obviously it's a pain in the butt to deal with for limited, but some cards are just like that. With our limited space this week, I still wanted to showcase this card for being overall just plain good. Pedigree matters sometimes, and this is a well-worded well-executed enchantment. Thumbs up!

~

@nine-effing-hells — Exponential Grower

I completely forgot what expend was for a moment there. For anyone reading this who also happened to forget, expending was the raccoon-themed mechanic of Bloomburrow where you expended X as you spend your Xth mana to cast a spell in a single turn. I think I understand expending as a mechanic that would be reasonable for Strixhaven! You have these students who are putting a lot of mana into casting bigger and better spells, so that's fair, or maybe Quandrix could just be that home, as they're a growth-themed school. I think reminder text might've been appropriate, though, because let's be real, expend was...not a memorable mechanic.

As for how this card works, I think incremental growth is a little bit problematic, because it essentially tops out at eight unless you're playing a massive EDH game, and this card isn't especially playable except in those unworldly dedicated decks, which have other and better options. Having a 16/16 trampler isn't bad by any means, of course, but in terms of incremental cards... Well, maybe I'm being too strict with the definition, because getting that 16/16 is pretty rad. I guess between the top-off and the expend stuff, this card feels decent—but that's about the limit. I'd like to see this card in a Quandrix-expend-Strixhaven world, and it's a fair design. Having the limit be pragmatic instead of mechanical doesn't feel great for this contest, but I wouldn't really change the design.

~

@piccadilly-blue — Press Gang

You said it yourself in your submission, so I'm not gonna go gushing over this card as a paramount of progress. It's good, though so liiiiiike... Anyway. Getting more and more power with your Pirate Army is going to get out of hand pretty fast, but not in a way that's not deal-with-able, considering, like... They're two creatures that can be fought against with the various tricks in black and white via combat and in green via big stuff. But, you have extra help with evasion to get your Treasures in these colors, so you're gonna have that going for you. Is it any surprise that this card's pretty much exactly what's reasonable for a set that would call for it?

The flavor text is good as well. I can see the head of a gang walking down the port with a sword in hand, smirking as they lead a hooting and hollering band of miscreants. It feels a little off that there's no Threaten effect with this card, though, and considering that there were other effects like that in the Ixalan era of piracy, I wonder if there was an opportunity to have that come up here? Maybe the flavor text could've been more in reference to bigger crews having more fun or whatever. I guess that's not the point, though, and again, not bad at all. Take a pat on the shoulder and don't check your pockets until your wallet and I are at least two states away.

~

@real-aspen-hours — Incremental Research (JUDGE PICK)

Remember to get your rarity on if you're doing text submissions, folks. But that's neither here nor there, because I imagined and hoped that this would be a rare card. Plenty of research goes into making this work for sure, and it's one of those things with high risk and high reward. After a certain point, there aren't going to be many spells left unless you're doing X spells. Where I really see this popping off is with extra turn spells. From mana values 5-10, there are a number of excellent ones. I guess that's if you're playing solitaire, though; normal burn/control/value stuff is fine too.

I think this card significantly rewards strong deckbuilding. It's possible for this to be playable in limited if you really work for it, even if it becomes not very useful after a certain point. But isn't that part of the flavor? You have to do your research, you have to really make it work, you have to use your knowledge. It wouldn't fit this contest, but I think this card could've been even stronger if you were forced to either add OR remove a counter from the enchantment. Still, that's messing with other powers, and doesn't help for this card for this specific contest. It's pretty good overall, and I like the choice of skill intensity.

~

@roxbot — Furnace, Fierce Protector

This card could be perfectly fine in the right environment. The major issue is that, for all intents and purposes, it's a french vanilla mythic that doesn't do anything but get bigger. It doesn't necessarily affect the board, but it plays into a couple of specific strategies, perhaps. Looking at what's in Standard right now, there's not a great comparison. The question of what this card does hangs over it. As I was reading it, I actually thought that these were oil counters and not charge counters at the beginning, and that's a whole other thing—what kind of deck do you have to build to make this work, really, and is it worth it just for this kind of body? I'm not entirely convinced, even in a set that would use an immense amount of charge counters.

Couple of wording changes, by the by. Names are usually replaced by "this creature" as of Foundations, and that would work best here. The "on permanents" should be "among permanents" in the first line. Rules things: if you have no charge counters out when you play this card, it'll actually die as a state-based action, because when the spell itself resolves the P/T check will see it as a 0/0 before the trigger goes on the stack. That's why cards like The Mimeoplasm are worded the way they are. Last note, "start" should be "beginning" there. Overall, I think there were a few tweaks, but the base judgement is that I feel the power level is too low and too narrow for the impact it needs.

~

@sparkyyoungupstart — Detesting Beast

I think that this card would be awesome in a multiplayer set or in a Commander precon! I also think that introducing the monarch mechanic in 1v1, for which you are designing, has led to several problems and I'm not gonna wax poetic about an issue that everyone and their cat has been talking about for the last thousand years. Anyway. Let's look at the design choices from THAT perspective. The general take: this card's fun and you're gonna be pretty detested by the end of the game assuming that nobody has removal for it. Nobody wants to be hit by this, and nobody wants to give you the monarch for sure. Everyone suffers. I like that. Puts a good threat out there.

All these synergies makes me really wish that you had actually gone and done a Questing Beast variant with three different mostly unrelated takes like how the original QB had done, though. I think part of QB's strength is the fact that it's just a pain in the butt for different reasons, as opposed to this card with has many reasons but one specific track for it to be awful. The only wording change is to change the 7s to "seven"s. I also like how damage to ANY opponent will yoink the monarch back, BTW, very subtle. I hate this card! I would love to play with this card.

~

@tanknspank — Rats' Nest (JUDGE PICK)

Very curious if you were going for Eldraine or Ravnica here, but either way it's a great use of the name and of the typal agenda. I think Army technology makes a lot of sense for increments overall as well, so I'm glad that folks were using that a lot this week. I'm okay with it being used here not just because having "amass rats" is an awesome thing to see on a card, but also because, yeah, it's just what this contest could want. Get a big enough rat and you're forcing your opponent to make the rat bigger. That's pretty great!

There's just no guarantee that this card's going to get going, and for that reason I wouldn't make a P1P1 out of this in limited. Not that you'll never have rats or that things won't die, but with the right kind of evasion and alternative removal, it makes it difficult for you to 100% guarantee that you'll find a large enough rat to make this card really pop off. It's not a bad rare; it's a slow rare for sure, but eh, what're you going to do. The general vibes are exact, the card's going to do what you want it to in a dedicated rat deck that's not one of the gimmick decks, and so we're all happy with what we see here. I'm really feeling more sewer-y Ravnican rat nonsense with this, but I couldn't tell you why.

~

@wildcardgamez — Benevolent Scalelord

Cumulative upkeep and bolster are two mechanics that I really don't see being that great together, even with the things that you use to make it...well, this. The reality is that cumulative upkeep isn't a great mechanic and wasn't that good even in its heyday; it's a 10 on the storm scale for a reason. Bolster is also one of those mechanics where you're stuck in a strange spot with the kind of creatures that you're able to put counters on, but that's one where I'm more of a personal meh-sayer. As it is, though...why is this a dragon hydra? What kind of weirdness justifies that? A dragon without flying could have hydra-ness in it, but if the two are coming together you bet I'd rather see a flying hydra than a grounded dragon.

The idea of big counters that transfer over to another creature upon death isn't a bad idea at its core. This particular card has a mishmash of strangeness that leads me to wonder why they'd ever be together for a premier set. I feel that the lesson to be learned here is to focus the backwards-looking lens on what should be returning rather than what would be good for a contest. On top of that, the excitement of ideas should reflect the best of both worlds rather than a compromise. Did this need to be a dragon at all? Could you have brought bolster to another creature type?

~

@xenobladexfan — Bloody Knowledge

"If you would draw one or more cards during each of your draw steps, instead put two deal counters on this enchantment. Then you draw X cards and lose X life, where X is the number of deal counters on this enchantment." is how I would word it. There are a few precedent-y cards to go with that, but this is a pretty convoluted card as it is. Drawing two and losing two, then four, then six, then eight... I mean, hey, that late in the game, you better be ready to make some sacrifices. I think that the addition makes some really rough deals out of this spell, but it's a mythic black card draw thing, so for standard sets it's as powerful as you're gonna get. Maybe 2BB would be fine, but that's pushing it just to keep things even.

I guess that the most important thing about this card to critique is the fact that it's pretty much a stripped-down flavor for bargaining, to the point where there's little meat left on the bones. Bare bones are good for chewing, but there ain't much blood in them any longer. Sometimes the basics are important, but there's zero context for what's happening beyond all the "give up blood for knowledge and power" spells that we've seen before. I think that this card needed a little bit more of a personal story touch for me to feel something beyond the good-mechanics. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with the tropes—it's me personally that's wanting more.

~

@yd12k — Sphinx's Grasp

I'm ashamed to say that I'd build around this card. It's a looping wincon, where you can play one, counter a spell, then hold up counterspells in your hand for the rest of the game and then just loop them once or twice a turn until you have literally all the power you could possibly need to strip them of their resources. As a limited card, nobody would play this. Constructed? Absolutely revolting as a wincon and I'd play four of them in a bounce-control deck. The gist is that this just isn't a good play pattern for constructed at all.

Even an uncounterable meta would have a difficult time if this were combined with literally any other aspect. Oddly enough, I'm reminded of Lullmage Mentor, although the ceiling for that card was significantly higher than here. But for that, it's a once-a-turn possible lock. This card is an active wincon that permanently removes further resources. I don't think that there's a world where I can really justify this card, as much as I like it.

~

@yourrightfulking — Invasive Briar

The give-and-take is interesting as a card. It's definitely not what we're looking for for increments. What's increasing, exactly, and by what? The lands that you get to put on the plants can be replayed if you draw into them, but nothing gets bigger the more that something happens. The more lands you play doesn't necessarily correlate to the increase in plants, and the growth of the plants isn't necessarily tied to the fact that you're playing the lands. Give-and-take is a different kind of technology here. I do like this card, though, so take that for whatever you will.

I actually really like this as a limited bomb, to be honest. You can drop this and then do absolutely nothing but play out the rest of the game until you can get a plant army going to annihilate your opponent with your spare lands. Like, that's a fine game plan that requires forethought and survival without being a brainless exercise in abundance. Multiples are a pain and can get overbearing quickly, but there are far more answers in constructed. I think that there are other ways to flavor this to make it a little bit scarier or funnier or more immersive, but that doesn't take away from the mechanical cohesion. Good card...for a different contest.

~

Have fun with myths this week! @abelzumi

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

96 for Long Death!

---

“No luck,” Eddie sighs. 

“Me neither,” Maddie frowns. That surprises Eddie. “He turned it off for me.”

“I have it,” Sophia says.

They both turn to look at her. Eddie feels slightly betrayed, honestly. He imagines Maddie does, too. But then he remembers all Sophia and Buck went through, together. Maybe he thinks she’s the only person willing to do the same batshit crazy stuff in Eddie’s name. Maybe he’s right. 

Sophia turns the screen to show them.

“Here,” she says. “He’s here.”

Maddie grimaces. “Alright. Let’s go.”

💧💧💧

If he had wanted to, Buck could have waited until Kim was home to kill her. 

It was easy to narrow down Kim’s neighborhood, based on her very active Instagram feed. Easy enough to find her from there. Buck hates that it was easy, actually. He hates that things he learned in the interest of keeping Eddie safe, of being a protector, have turned him into a predator. Someone dangerous. Someone vile. Because that’s what this will be right? A vile, horrible act. 

Buck knows that. 

He just had to keep in mind, she started it. She hurt Eddie first. She destroyed things. 

This isn’t all Buck’s fault. 

Although, deep down, he knows… It kind of is. 

He’s not sure how he wants to play this exactly. He can’t just show up at her work and what? Shoot her. That’s a surefire way to get caught. He can’t break into her house while she’s there. That is also ending in a 9-1-1 call and Buck’s arrest. He considers waiting behind her house for her to get home, and coming from behind as she unlocks her door. But again, that leaves a lot of risk. Anyone could see him. 

Instead, he thinks about where the police first found Eddie. Abandoned, near the Long Beach Marina, bleeding to death. Truck left in a parking lot not far away. And he thinks that’s fitting. 

Kim drives a Prius. Buck knows this because she’s posted it to her Instagram several times. It’s baby blue and the license plate starts with 2Y. He doesn’t know the full plate because it’s never fully visible, but he knows that much. That’s enough, he thinks. 

He ensures Kim is working. He calls the store and she answers. He hangs up without saying anything. He parks far enough away from the main sea of Long Beach Promenade parking that his license plates won’t be caught on any nearby cameras. 

Crime is hard, he’d once said. 

Time to find out. 

The sun is setting and he’s dressed in dark, concealing clothing. He walks to the Promenade parking, and scours the large, seemingly endless lot for the right vehicle. He finds four Priuses, but only one of them is baby blue. When he is confident no one is looking, Buck uses a knife to flatten two tires. She won’t be leaving here on time. Maybe he should have researched how to cut brake lines. But that comes with the risk of her crashing and hurting or killing someone else. He really doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt. Plus, when Eddie hears about this - there will be no way around that - he doesn’t want the image of her involved in a vehicular death. That’s just a little bit more fucked up than it already needs to be. 

So here’s the plan. Kim will be done work in approximately fifteen minutes, based on store hours. Maybe a bit longer, depending on how long it takes to close shop. Even now, as business is winding down, the parking lot is beginning to empty. People are leaving from a long day of shopping, eating, and generally hanging out. Kim will be one of the last out. Buck will wait for her to arrive. He will keep low, behind a nearby EV charging station, and wait. When she bends down to check her tires, he will approach from behind, inflict a fatal wound with his hunting knife, and walk away. Fast. He will book it away, actually. 

Kim will die. At home, Eddie will die. Kim won’t wake up. Eddie will. Whatever happens from there, happens.

Buck knows he could get caught. Go to prison. He knows this will fuck him up, haunt him, either way. He knows Eddie may be angry with him. Hate him, maybe. But he still has to do it. He has to do it, so he doesn’t find Eddie staked to death one day. He has to do it, so Eddie doesn’t have Chris taken from him if his parents ever find out there’s a vampire in the house. He has to do it, so no matter what happens with vampires, it doesn’t ruin Eddie’s life. He has to do it, because he loves Eddie more than he loathes the consequences. 

And that love is a hill he’s willing to die on.

It all goes according to plan. The parking lot empties. There are only a few scattered vehicles by the time he sees Kim walking towards her Prius. 

[moltenwrites]

Writing interview tag!

Ohoho this one is exciting! Thanks @the-letterbox-archives for the tags. Your answers were sick, it was a very interesting read. This one is a long one, but the goal is to answer a LOT of questions. A empty list will be at the bottom with the tags!

About me

When did you start writing?

Oo im not sure? I started “ seriously “ writing a couple of years ago when I took a writing class, but I wouldn’t say I was really a “ writer “ untill I started working on How Our World Ended a few years ago

Are there different genres or themes you enjoy reading other than the ones you write?

Oh 100% I haven’t been reading that much lately, but I mostly read horror and mystery. While I sneak in horror sometimes, I’ve never really been compelled to write a mystery story

Is there an author you want to emulate, or are compared to often?

If I’m honest, no to both of those. I have authors I love, but i have my own thing. And people don’t compare me to any author. Weither that’s good or bad is up to you I guess

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I write with my old, shitty Chromebook on my bed with my pillow propped up as a back rest. My PC keyboard is very loud and just not too fun to write with, and I despise writing on mobile. If I’m in the mood, I turn on some music and get to work

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

I’m gonna answer this question in two different ways, how I get inspiration for ideas, and how I get in the writing vibe. For the first, it’s honestly just seeing something I like and going “ I wanna do that “ or listening to a song while some grand story plays out in my head. For ACTUALLY writing, that’s tricky. I normally write late, but if a friend is up talking about whatever thing ive really liked as of late can help. Thinking ahead to scenes I’m excited to write helps, especially when I listen to music that I tie to those moments.

Did the place(s) you grew up in influence the people and/or places you write about?

I mean, I’m sure they did subconsciously somehow- but I tend to write in fantasy, and my suburban ass life doesn’t really lend to my ideas well. Though I will say, my moms fondness for museums has inspired Paintings a good bit

Are there any reoccurring themes in your writing? If so, do they surprise you?

Yeah, a good few. I’d say grief, and how it impacts people is the most prevalent theme across my stories. This is a bit surprising since I’ve ( fortunately ) not lost too many people in my life

Characters:

would you please tell me about your current favorite character?

Oo this one is HARD. I can pick my favorite for each story easily but OVERALL is really hard. I’m torn between Lars from Souls Collide, or The Artist from How Our World Ended. Both characters mean so much to me, and I’d say those two are the characters I’ve made with the most depth. Ughh this is difficult. I guess I’ll say Lars for now, just because of how prevalent and important to me he’s been

Also I know it’s not what the question is asking, but my favorite character that I DIDNT make is Sunny from OMORI

Which of your characters would you be friends with in real life?

I think I’d vibe with most of the souls collide cast, considering they were initially based off of people I knew. I also think I’d get along with Asim and Astera from Paintings, along with Lyra and Val from How Our World Ended.

which characters would you dislike the most of you met them?

Oh god most of them. I write TERRIBLE people. Samaueal would just kill me- I’d hate Nelios, he’s a dick, Ryder from Souls Collide was based off of a person I disliked in real life, Salazar is pretentious and WOULD kill me, Dimitri is the worst- I can go on. But the worst is Samaueal, considering he would just kill me for the hell of it

Tell me about the process of coming up with your characters?

It’s real weird. I either see something I like, and want to steal it in some way, so i base a character off of them. Asim and Astera are heavily influenced by Mary and Reginald from Cemetery Mary, Hart is inspired by Walter White, the whole council was inspired by the organization from Kingdom Hearts. But for characters I didn’t partially steal, it mostly just comes to me when listening to music. Some characters were also created out of necessity, and evolved far past that.

Do you notice any reoccurring themes/traits in your characters?

Yup. I tend to write certain types of characters very formally, my protags are often shaken by one particularly harrowing event, and they almost all have some sort of huge internal fight with themselves.

How do you picture your characters?

It depends! Most of the time, I imagine every character in the style I wanted Souls Collide to be, but for certain scenes ( especially fights with Res ) I see it in live action.

My writing:

what’s your reason for writing?

I have a whole lotta ideas and gotta get them out SOMEHOW.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment from readers that you find particularly motivating?

Literally anything positive anyone says makes my day. You all have been more supportive than irl friends. But the things that make my day are either people predicting what comes next in private circles, and for comments here, saying that people like a character or are interested in a story makes me beam. I will die if I ever get fan art ( in a good way )

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

However they wanna. You don’t have to see me any way, but I’ve tried to be a positive force here, so I guess that.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I don’t wanna sound egotistical, but my ideas are really cool ( at least I think so )

What have you been told is your greatest strength as a writer is by others?

I’ve been told that what I can do is impressive. I remember one specific interaction about the artist that was incredibly kind.

How do you feel about your own writing?

It depends. I’m incredibly proud of my recent work. I love how Paintings is coming along, and I think the laster chapters of How Our World Ended are the best things I’ve ever written. Anything over two years old is dogshit though, I was in physical pain rereading the first draft of chapter 4

If you were the last person on earth, would you still write?

Gonna be real, don’t think I’d live. But in the event I continued living for whatever reason, maybe? I don’t know, that’s a hard ass question.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, do you write purely for yourself, or is it a mix of both?

I write plots entirely for myself, but I try to thing about what issues there are with my plot from a readers perspective. Idk if that sounds crazy, but thinking about stuff from an outsider perspective can be helpful in editing.

Annnd that’s all, this took me life half an hour wow. Here’s the question list ( It’s unspaced so fellow mobile users can actually copy it all ) Thanks for reading it all, if you did, it’s a super fun exercise!

About meWhen did you start writing?Are there different genres or themes you enjoy reading other than the ones you write?Is there an author you want to emulate, or are compared to often?can you tell me a bit about your writing space? What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?Did the place(s) you grew up in influence the people and/or places you write about?Are there any reoccurring themes in your writing? If so, do they surprise you?Characters: would you please tell me about your current favorite character? Which of your characters would you be friends with in real life?which characters would you dislike the most of you met them?Tell me about the process of coming up with your characters? Do you notice any reoccurring themes/traits in your characters?How do you picture your characters? My writing: what’s your reason for writing?Is there any specific comment or type of comment from readers that you find particularly motivating? How do you want to be thought about by your readers?What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?have you been told is your greatest strength as a writer is by others?How do you feel about your own writing?If you were the last person on earth, would you still write?When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, do you write purely for yourself, or is it a mix of both?

Annnnd tag list!

@thatuselesshuman @ddgraywrites @jjoneswriting @revenantlore @aintgonnatakethis @yourpenpaldee @illarian-rambling @autism-purgatory @the-letterbox-archives @theverumproject @gioiaalbanoart @noxxytocin @joseph-hooser @mk-writes-stuff @yrndrgn @wyked-ao3

+ Open, as always

[youthereader]

Near Zero part 3.

PAIRING: cillian murphy as j. robert oppenheimer x fem!reader

SUMMARY: 1.9k words. Brought on as part of the Manhattan Project, your old physics professor sees you in a new light.

RATING: E; explicit smut, barebacking, semi-public sex, vaginal fingering, age gap (10+ years), angst, infidelity, period-typical sexism

A/N: Though based on real life characters, this is J. Robert Oppenheimer as played by Cillian Murphy, a fictional character. This is not intended to be historically accurate, merely written as entertainment. Thank you to @indulgence-be-thy-name for being the best cheerleader. Not a lot of plot this time but I thought the first time smut deserved its own chapter. Enjoy! 🖤

masterlist

The shame you feel is like a nausea that soon morphs into a cold rage. So cold that it burns you, making you isolate yourself all over again, despite the mixer being a genuinely enjoyable experience.

You barely wave when you see Mary one morning two days after Dr. Oppenheimer looked straight through you. You physically recoil at the idea of speaking to her or Barb for any length of time, shaking your head as you speed down the street with your pocketbook.

Luckily, no-one speaks to you, so you have no reason to speak, either. You wear your most non-descript clothes, not wanting any attention whatsoever. To be invisible on purpose is better than trying to be seen only to be rejected like the other day. He had made you feel important, and you, the idiot that you are, believed him.

If you thought about it long enough – and you have tried not to for years – you are lonely. You’re so lonely that it makes a unique kind of grief. You don’t recall a time when you didn’t feel like this. You can’t let yourself dwell too much, or you’ll combust. And you need to keep going. You need to work, to have a purpose. You can’t go home. It doesn’t feel like there’s a home to go to anymore.

Your guts churn every time you think Oppenheimer is about to walk into the laboratory. You consider faking illness, but you’re weak enough as it is to the men in your group; to give them more ammunition would be a mistake.

The cold rage stays there, and the work cannot get rid of it. You wait for your mind to clear, but it remains the same, equations forever swimming around, along with dark thoughts you would never name aloud. You stay at your desk many hours after everyone else calls it a day, and you walk home alone at night.

For three nights, it’s the same. The fourth night, you write basic chemistry equations to solve, ones you remember from high school, the movements so practiced that you don’t pause for minutes at a time, your hand hurting from how hard you grip the chalk. Your writing becomes less legible with effort, and you regret so many things when you step back, the board full. You should start again, write more neatly, empty the ashtray. You should leave, you should take a big sleeping pill and lie down.

You hear footsteps and know who it is before you turn around, your stomach dropping, your hands balling into fists at your sides.

“I hoped it wasn’t you.”

“No-one else here but me,” you reply, gaze slipping up to Oppenheimer’s face, and you swallow. “It’s always me.”

“The light was on, I-”

“Whatever you have to say,” you interrupt, turning back to the board, picking up the eraser. “I’m sure it can wait for tomorrow when you have a larger audience.”

You begin clearing it all away, hating that he saw your equations, your sloppy hand. You put the eraser back with an audible clatter. Your carelessness leads to it falling to the floor, but you don’t pick it up. You don’t care about whatever he has to say, either. It’s all just noise.

“Okay.”

He sounds defeated, and you shoot him a glance. It’s nighttime and he’s wearing his hat, like some kind of costume. He’s a phantom, prowling around his town. Of course he walked straight past you the other day, he has so much more to do.

“Why are you here?” you ask before you lose your nerve.

Your eyes lock and your heartbeat ricochets. He takes a couple steps, but you continue:

“I mean, you’re married, right?”

You haven’t met Kitty, but everyone knows her. You can’t avoid her if you know Dr. Oppenheimer. Mentioning her might be a mistake, but all of this already feels dangerous, bordering on idiotic. He could expel you, find some way to snuff out your career, too. You’re reckless, and you never have been before, so it’s hard to know when to stop.

“Yes,” he replies. His jaw tenses. “I came here because I was out walking. Again.”

“And you happened to see the light and decided to come up?” you throw back. It comes out as a petulant sneer.

“I was looking for you. I didn’t want to stay away anymore.”

Your face flushes. A week ago, his words would have made you swoon. Now, you grit your teeth.

“So you charm me, then you ignore me. And now you expect me to believe that you’re suffering some kind of… some kind of burden because of me? That you were sparing me?”

“We work together,” he says, and his tone is completely different.

He’s speaking to you like he does the men he argues with. You’ve seen it from a distance many times before. Even if you hadn’t, you’d heard stories.

“We… we work together?” you repeat, and you half-laugh. “So if I was someone’s wife, that would be preferable?”

“Yes, it would,” he says, and he watches you scoff.

His eyes never leave you. He’s determined.

“But you can’t say away?” you say.

“No.”

He takes the few last strides to meet you and reaches for your waist, hands catching you to bring you into a swift kiss. You close your eyes on impact, gasping, and he doesn’t let go, moving you both towards the desk. Your legs hit the wood and you take hold of his face, fingers splayed on his high cheekbones, opening your mouth to him as he conquers you with his hot tongue. You moan, the sound slipping out as his thigh presses between your thighs, pinning you.

He suddenly pulls back with a smack of your lips, his eyes searching you, his hands cradling your face like yours are his.

“You’re not seeing Richard?”

Your mind reels, his breath on your lips as you pant, screwing up your face in confusion.

“Feynman?” you say, and he nods. “That’s absurd-”

“You’re not?”

“No, I’m not,” you insist. You blink. “Were you jealous?”

You remember the mixer and how Feynman had joked around with you. He spent a lot of the night near you, but he was never friendly in that sense. You didn’t know if he was spoken for, but he never treated you like a potential target.

You are half-joking but see Oppenheimer’s eyes narrow ever so slightly.

“You were jealous…”

The thought of him being possessive of you is strange, and somehow flattering. It’s entirely foreign.

“You ignored me because you thought something happened,” you muse, and it doesn’t stop feeling bizarre. “You were that upset?”

“It was cowardly of me,” he says. “And it’s silly.”

“It’s so silly,” you agree, and he kisses you again.

He groans when you suck on his tongue, renewing your courage. The desire ignites in your belly, pulling you deeper down. His touch, beginning to show a kind of desperation, makes you wet, and you moan against his lips, feeling him press into the apex of your thighs.

He pushes you down, hands shifting up to your wrists, his whole front pressing into yours, his lips breaking contact to hover above you. His eyes are addictive in how they rove you beneath him.

“Are you still upset?” you tease, and he shakes his head, for the first time smiling.

“No.”

Your voices drop to whispers, and the intimacy of that makes you weak. You jut your chin at him.

“Can you take off your hat?”

He obliges, freeing your wrist for a second, before he’s back again, staring at you. You can feel how hard he is through his trousers that press into your crotch, your heart hammering. If someone were to walk in, there’d be no explaining this away.

“Come here,” you whisper.

He kisses you again, and you wrap your thighs around his narrow waist, your tongues tangling. He groans once more, and lets you slip out of his grip to help undo his belt, his fingers deftly pulling down his fly. You reach inside his pants to feel the hard length of his cock and he give a huff of a laugh against the corner of your mouth, pushing you back down, his hands slipping down your sides and then up under the bottom of your dress.

You shiver as his fingers glide up your thighs. Stockings are hard to come by, your bare skin breaking out in goose bumps all over.

It’s been a long time since a man touched you. It’s never been like this, so electrified. Your nerve endings alight when he meets the cut of you over your underwear, finding you soaking through the cotton. He grunts, pushing aside the offending material to reach your cunt, your gasp smothered by another rushed kiss. Your hands no longer attempt to stroke him, he’s distracting and precise, filling you with two fingers, as you ride his palm.

“Fuck…”

This isn’t a dream. If it were, you’d be awake already. When you fantasize about this, he never gets this far. You climb, his lips peppering your cheek as you rock, his thumb rubbing your clit, your body tightening. His teeth graze your jaw and your back bows.

“Come, my darling,” he whispers. “Come for me…”

You explode, vision whitening as he brings you off, your hands gripping his arms to keep you steady. You ride it out, thighs shaking as he pulls back to look you in the eye.

“How was that?” he murmurs, and he’s smiling again.

He’s so beautiful when he smiles. You kiss him instead of answering, still twitching deep inside. His fingers slip away, sticky on your thighs as he widens them.

In a rush, you lift your hips to pull your underwear down, while he rearranges his own to free his cock, and then he’s there, he’s right there –

He grunts as he pushes inside you, your arms wrapping around his neck to kiss him, to pull him back down. He rocks, filling you, and you both still, sighing.

“You feel incredible,” he whispers, and you grin up at him. “Are you alright?”

“Better than alright,” you whisper back.

He moves again, almost all the way out before slamming into you, both of you groaning. The delicious drag of him makes you tremble and moan, your head falling back against the desk as he picks up speed.

“Don’t finish in me,” you whisper, and he nods, his breaths turning to pants.

He buries his face in your neck, and you hold on for dear life, taking everything, feeling as if you are floating above your body with how reckless he becomes so quickly. He pulls back at the last second, kissing you, one hand gripping your jaw.

He comes, sweat on his forehead, and you pant along with him, dazed.

For several moments, you say nothing, resting together, still lying on the desk. He peels away, offering to help you up. You pull your underwear back on, and he tidies himself. You wait for the other shoe to drop, but he takes out two cigarettes, lighting them both and inhaling them before handing you one.

“Can I walk you home, now?” he whispers.

He’s so quiet, so utterly elsewhere in that moment that you stare at the side of his face, smoking, before he finally looks at you, hopeful.

“Yes,” you whisper back, exhaling.

Let me know if you like this one! Thank you for reading. 😘❤️

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Would you do a pic based on the song “Do you wanna be friends?” By Leanne Firestone as a Ken x reader? Like I feel like this song really could work for them. Like kens super all like “Oh stereotypical Barbie is so amazing” and reader just is like “oh. Okay yeahb I’ll support you” and just follows the song. Idk lol

Ough the unrequited love goes hard here </3

.........

"So...I take it that it didn't go the way you hoped?"

"Sadly..it didn't." Putting on his best smile, Ken sighed quietly as you both sat on the beach together. "I forgot it was girls' night and...she didn't want me there. Period."

You blinked. "She seriously said that to you?"

"Yeah."

"And..it didn't hurt?"

"I mean..she wasn't wrong. She could never be wrong. It's not my place to intrude on her night and I need to respect that. I'm just happy I got to dance with her and...almost kiss her after the party." His attempts to sound upbeat were forced, although he didn't want to concern you too much. "Simply being in her presence is enough for me. She's just so...amazing and beautiful and so smart. I'm glad we're boyfriend and girlfriend."

'It doesn't sound like she thinks the same...' Is what you wanted to say to him, but you decided to keep that to yourself. Instead, your shoulders remained slumped as he continued rambling about how "awesome" Stereotypical Barbie was.

It was nothing new to you.

You and him have been good friends for a while, although roughly 90% of your chats consisted of him gushing over Barbie nonstop; the remaining 10% were either him complaining about Tourist Ken or rambling about Beach-related stuff.

Obviously, you didn't mind talking to him and wouldn't dare shut him down. You actually enjoyed every moment you spent together, even if he can be a bit dumb and showy at times.

You just wish he didn't bring up Barbie's name in every single conversation...considering that she barely mentions his name whenever you talked to her.

It was unconventional at best for a Barbie to not be interested in her Ken, but that's just the way she is and he doesn't see anything wrong with that.

He wasn't getting the hint.

When you found Ken sitting alone on the beach tonight--in the spot where you'd normally practice you guitar skills--he looked awfully dejected and lonely. You immediately knew he tried shooting his shot with her after the huge blowout party with planned choreography and a bespoke song..

And ultimately missed by a mile.

"You know what she said to me earlier after that Beach accident, [y/n]?"

"What did she say?"

"She said I was "very brave"." Stars were practically shimmering in his blue eyes, his grin growing wider. "She thought I was brave! Isn't that awesome??"

"Yeah, it sure is." Nodding in agreement, you turned your gaze up to the brightly-lit moon in the sky. "You're a lot of things, Ken. Brave, funny, cool...she should seriously cherish those and not just shut you out because of "Girl's Night". I don't think that's fair to you at all."

The words came out faster than you could think, and your body tensed up as you watched his expression falter.

Maybe you've said too much.

"I..um-"

"Wow, that's...nice to hear, [y/n]. Thank you." He put a hand to his chest, looking at you with a gentler smile. "You're a great friend, you know that?"

"...right, we're great friends." You reluctantly agreed, forcing you own smile for his sake. "Do you mind if I play some guitar? This is my usual spot but-"

"Ohh, I forgot you had that...thing." Then he pointed to your acoustic instrument. "If you want me to leave I can-"

"No, no, you can stay! I'd hate to see you roaming Barbieland all night by yourself."

"Nah, I'm not really "roaming" aimlessly." He brushed off your worries, smoothing his hair out as though it was tousled by nonexistent wind. "I just sorta...wander around till I find a cozy spot. Sometimes I get lucky, but other times I imagine myself in her dreamhouse. I bet next time she'll let me stay over. Who knows? Maybe one day we can call it Barbie and Ken's Dreamhouse. Haha..wouldn't that be awesome, huh?"

At the end of his rambling, he had that same lovestruck appearance on his face as he rested his jaw on his fist, gazing at you.

That's the kind of look you wish he'd give you instead.

"Yeah, that would be cool." Once more, you agreed, before taking your guitar out of its case and placing it across your lap. "Well..I'm just gonna start practicing."

"Right. Thanks for listening, [y/n]. I'm just gonna sleep over here and dream of our future." He stood up and walked about ten steps towards a baby blue towel somebody left behind in the sand, laying down and curling up. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Ken. Sleep well."

Despite how uncomfortable he seemed, he had no problems dozing off as you heard light snores mere seconds after he closed his eyes. You saw a content smile gracing his lips and gazed at him for some time.

He never looked more peaceful.

"This one's for you.." You whispered softly, fingers gliding across the guitar strings as you began playing a song you've recently memorized.

Then you began singing ever-so quietly, closing your eyes and feeling the music flow through you.

""Do you wanna be friends?" I mean I wanna be more. But if "friends" is how I get to have you...then..sure. I'll be quiet in my pining. I won't tell you about the pain. I'll be silent in the night when I know that you're asleep..but I wanna ask you if you're awake.."

You weren't sure where you've heard this song before. It just popped into your mind one day and resonated with you so deeply, filling your plastic heart with a foreign feeling.

That being...the feeling of longingness. Pining.

Love.

It reminded you of Ken, and where your relationship with him currently stood...and possibly will remain for as long as you both lived.

You knew that he'd always choose Barbie over you at the end of the day, even though you've seen her reject him time and time again. He still kept chasing after her no matter what, always hoping she'll one day say "yes" to him staying over at her dreamhouse instead of shooing him away.

Eventually, he'd have to wake up and realize the truth.

Maybe then he'll finally see that you were the only one who ever gave him the time of day. The only one who truly cared about where he slept, if he was okay, etc.

The only one who truly loved him.

Perhaps in another life, it can be [Y/n] and Ken.

But for now, you just continued playing the guitar at him, even though he was off in dreamland, blissfully unaware that you were speaking to him through this song you were singing.

If only he knew your genuine feelings for him; although that may never happen since he's always calling you his "friend".

And if that's what he wanted out of this relationship, then...you'll have to settle for that. For his sake.

You'd hate to lose him.

"So we'll be friends, and I'll be okay. The world won't end if you don't love me, even if it feels that way..."