#discrepancy in an ask from

[sleepanonymous]

you don't understand, i want to make a thing so badly but i've forgotten how. creative burnout sucks. idk how to make words happen in a coherent fashion anymore beyond vague scenes🥲

The Basic Premise™️ of this snippet is Eli (Vessel) just had a messy breakup, so Zack (II) made him a Tinder profile to get him laid so he can "move on" but emotions happen because Eli is a wreck (read: he fell in love with her at first sight, about 6 hours before this scene)👍

“You weren’t kidding,” V mumbled as she stood in front of the open fridge door. Eli had no idea why it felt so personal— invasive, almost— to have her looking through his refrigerator. To make matters worse, he wasn’t exactly sure what she was seeing from his point of view leaning against the side of the fridge to maintain his indifference. He indeed had not been kidding when he said he didn’t remember the last time he’d been grocery shopping; the last time he had genuinely purchased groceries had been months ago. Going to the shop was Ashley’s thing, and on top of that, he’d only been off tour for a couple of weeks and was still trying to get back into the swing of cooking for himself instead of eating takeout for every meal.

“I’m serious, I don’t mind ordering us food—”

“I can make a mean grilled cheese,” V cut him off as she pulled a block of cheddar cheese out from the depths of the fridge. “Sorry,” she added to the fact that she’d interrupted his offer.

He was torn between wanting to shrug it off, tell her it was fine, or correcting her. “With what grill?” he asked after a long beat, staring blankly.

V’s expression instantly fell, matching the look of mild disdain on Eli’s face. “Don’t even—”

It was Eli’s turn to cut V off now, “You can absolutely make us some cheese toasties, but I do not own a grill for you to grill us some cheese.”

“I am not—” she began to laugh, and Eli fought the smile tugging at the corner of his lips, “I’m not calling them a fucking ‘cheese toastie!’ It’s grilled cheese!” she argued as she laughed, setting the block of cheese on the kitchen counter near the bread box.

Eli followed, taking a gander into his fridge for himself to settle the anxiety that there was no mold or mildew growing rampant on the shelves since he last opened the door yesterday evening. When he tried to close the door, V suddenly came back, squeezing herself under his arm and the fridge door to grab butter from its compartment, so he stepped backward instead.

“You are the only person in the United Kingdom calling them a ‘grilled cheese,’ darling,” he insisted, crossing his arms loosely.

“Oh, yeah, because British folk have better names for everything. Squirty cream, for example,” V stated sarcastically as she yanked butter from the fridge door, flicking a can of the aforementioned cream for emphasis. Eli’s jaw went tight to try to keep himself from smiling or laughing. On impulse, he reached forward to stop the door from closing as V walked away and grabbed the can, shaking it.

“What’s wrong with the name? It’s cream, it squirts,” he stated, stepping toward’s V and when she turned to look at him, or maybe explain the sexual nature of the name, Eli grabbed onto her jaw and tilted her head up so she was looking at him. “Open,” he told her, and V hesitated for half a second before doing as she was told, lips parting wide and sticking her tongue out; the jewelry there glinted in the sunlight from the kitchen window before it was drowned in white.

At that precise moment, Eli realized what he was doing, hand on her jaw as he watched her pupils envelop the gray-green of her irises, his body caging V between him and the kitchen counter. His gut reaction was to panic, to apologize, to step away from her, to apologize again. Anxiety had turned whatever arousal he felt from the spontaneous action sour, but he didn’t have time to react to that, either, as V half laughed, half gagged on the cream he was still squirting. He yanked the squirty cream can away from her mouth, and before he could form the apology in his mouth, V seized the opportunity with his loosened grip to turn her head and suck his thumb into her mouth, forcing even more froth out of her mouth to stream down her chin.

Okay.

Yeah, this was okay.

He was overreacting.

Be confident, he reminded himself, with V’s own voice in his head. Eli leaned in and covered her mouth with his, replacing his thumb with his tongue, making a mess of them both now; cream was dripping down her jaw, sticking to his chin, the oily sweetness clung to both their tongues. She was on her tiptoes, arms around his neck to keep herself steady, and Eli blindly set the can of squirty cream on the counter behind her before grabbing two handfuls of her hips and pulling her closer to him. The thought crossed his mind that she was wearing too many clothes, even if she was just in one of his t-shirts, and he also had the urge to bite her; her neck, her shoulder, perhaps the underside of her breasts? The soft inside of her thigh? But there would be time for that later, not now. Not after they’d done such a good job of leaving his bedroom to come to the kitchen and forage for food. So, reluctantly, Eli pulled away.

“Fine,” V sighed and opened her eyes to look up at him as her arms fell away. “Squirty cream.”

He tried not to laugh but a huff still escaped him as she lowered back to the soles of her feet. “Grilled cheese,” Eli replied, meeting her halfway.

[attleboy]

Can you give some tutorials on how to/how you draw Pomni? I struggle with drawing her hat. XD

oh yeah of COURSE!!! :D i've waiting for this moment... literally! i've most of this sitting around for like, a month but, idk, i worried it'd be like, egotistical(????) to post a pomni tutorial unprompted..? but now i have been prompted so the floodgates shall open!!! >:D pomni be upon thee

(here's goose's pomni expression sheet in case you haven't seen it yet)

and if you're interested in how i draw her with sharp teeth, i've already made a tutorial on that!! check it out here :D

[weekend-whip]

I was listening the whip of Skybound, so I'm into a pirate mood.What are your thoughts on Nadakhan and Soto? I wondered when their crew sailed, I was puzzled that neither Wu or Garm seemed to know anything about them. Although maybe they did it vaguely, maybe it happened before they born, besides that resolved itself, Soto took care of Nadakhan and sometime later he went looking for the Island of Darkness only to crash. Whatever, do you have any thoughts you can share of Cap Soto in Legacyverse?

Well, it's said that Captain Soto and crew sailed the seas and battled Nadakhan's crew about 200 years before the present day (a fact which was not affected by the Time Discrepancy), therefore actually making Soto and crew older than Garm and Wu are themselves (as Garm is currently 171 and Wu is 164). That means there's at least a couple of decades for Soto to fade from relevancy before the brothers were even born, leading to why they're not that aware about him.

Soto's quest into looking for the Dark Island becomes a much bigger plot point (the search for information on what happened to the place, as that was affected by the Time Discrepancy, leads to clashes between the Shark Army and the Order of the Ouroboros), and how his crew winds up opposing the ninja will occur differently than what originally happened too. It's a small-big thing but I'm excited for it to all play out <3

Can't speak too much on Nadakhan yet because I'm still grappling with that whole mess as we speak~

[cosmicdreamgrl]

.

[kindahoping4forever]

hi crystal, maybe you can help me out. for presale next week, do you know if the vip packages presale includes soundcheck or if it refers to something else (i saw something about a fof vip package?) i never bought soundcheck for past tours and would like to this time around, so i’m kinda wondering how to go about it. any help is super appreciated, thank you!!

Yes, the VIP packages (including the new FoF tier) are the soundcheck experiences! VIP Nation is the promoter that handles the soundchecks in North America (the only ticket buying experience I can personally speak to) and these are the differences in packages as per the VIP Nation website. (I don't believe pricing has been confirmed at this time.)

For TMHT I bought my soundcheck admission as an upgrade through the VIP Nation site (I'd already purchased a show ticket thru Ticketmaster and later decided I wanted soundcheck) but I believe most - if not all - venues also sell them as packages and/or add-ons through Ticketmaster/Live Nation as they're all the same company.

[tacticalprincess]

simon and könig being unable to stop bickering for a second, even when they’re balls deep inside of you. they’ve got you in an Eiffel Tower, könig’s cock filling your glossy pussy while simon stuffs your mouth. it took ages of convincing for them to even consider this position, but eventually they decided to put their discrepancies aside for the sake of you, their precious, spoiled little thing. it didn’t last very long though…

“jackhammer much, mate? you’ve got her choking on me over here.” simon points out, his heavy hand stroking your hair soothingly. könig’s using your hips as leverage, bucking into you at a rabid pace, each of his thrusts lurching your body forward and forcing you to take more of simon’s dick down your poor throat. “what happened to treatin’ the princess with care?”

“it’s okay, she likes it. isn’t that right, maus?”

your cheeks warm up as you hum around simon’s dick noncommittally. nothing gets passed the l.t though, and suddenly he’s gripping you by your hair, pulling your mouth off his cock.

“wait, you let him fuck your face?” he asks, sounding genuinely offended.

you wipe the line of spit that trails from your swollen lips all the way to his still hard dick, hovering just out of reach. you huff. “he’s more sadistic than you…” you say sheepishly in response, voice staccato from könig’s thrusts.

“you tellin’ me i’m the soft sex guy? the aftercare fuck?”

“‘s alright, mate.” könig reaches over your naked body to pat his comrade on the shoulder. “youve got boyfriend dick. happens to the best of us.”

[foldingfittedsheets]

When deciding who to work for there is a sliding scale of employers that goes from lil mom and pop shops up to corporate monoliths. I have worked at both ends of the spectrum and I can pretty definitively say that tiny businesses are hands down the most insane employers.

The sweet spot is a place that has like 10-20 stores; that’s the best possible work environment. They’ll be polished enough to have protocols that make work structured, but not so bogged down with bureaucracy that nothing can ever get done.

This story is not from that sweet spot. This story is from my time working at Oil and Vinegar. Now, like many little franchise stores, the idea was solid. There was on tap imported olive oil and vinegar and it was really delicious. Top shelf. Unfortunately, each location was like the Wild West because owners varied wildly.

My owner was the human embodiment of Mr. Krabbs. His eyes were just constant dollar signs. Throughout my training he informed me of the price of every single piece of equipment I touched and how much it cost to replace it.

He had cameras set up to watch us, and an app on his phone to access the live feed. He’d call us to ask what we were doing when he’d just checked a camera to make sure we were being honest.

Now, the trouble was he had two locations. His location further south did amazing. It was way more centrally located and got three times the foot traffic. The one I worked in was in the snottiest mall possible in Arizona and consequently the rent was through the roof.

It was not going well for my store. We didn’t get as much traffic, so there was only so much I could do in a day. I could dust, sweep, and wait for customers. I read a lot and was frank when he called to interrogate me. I always asked for additional tasks but he never had any. What could I do to prop up a failing business?

But this man was convinced there was some Secret Reason that the store I was in was doing worse. He crunched numbers, looked at staff, and eventually hit upon the most insane possible solution.

We used too much toilet paper.

We were probably stealing toilet paper! Bleeding him dry one single ply square at a time! How dare we need to use the bathroom?! His south location used half as much toilet paper as we did, we must be thieving little monsters!!!!

Friends. The south location was populated entirely by men. My location had three people on staff who had to sit to pee. It was so blindly transparently the source of the discrepancy but this man was convinced we were making off with toilet paper to bankrupt him.

So he implemented what he believed to be an entirely reasonable response to this base treachery. We were allowed to have one roll of toilet paper. At any given time, one roll was permitted to us. This was so transparently unhinged that we protested but he insisted. If we were low on toilet paper we needed to call him to drop off a roll that he brought from his home. Smiling jovially, he assured us he lived so close by that it would be no problem!

When we needed to call him often for more he started tearing his hair out. What were we using toilet paper for?! Why wasn’t his genius plan to stop our scandalous waste working??!

Finally, the manager, the only man on staff had to pull the owner aside and be like, “Look, man, their bladders are smaller. They need to wipe every time they pee. They need to pee even more on their period. Is this really the hill you want to die on?”

Yes. It was. The manager was fired unrelated reasons and denounced as a traitor. The toilet paper ration lasted until I quit and probably until the store closed six months later.

[wizardpink]

There is something so funny about the concept of Louis not knowing about Devil's Minion, Daniel sure as fuck not knowing about Devil's Minion, literally only Armand remembering it and STILL being so panic attack having, emotional outburst spewing, head over heels for Daniel that he keeps doing and saying weird shit that has the other two like "wtf is going on with him?" BABE YOU ARE IN THE CLEAR???? LIKE--

Yep, nothing suspicous going on here at all. Moving on, feel free to disregard.

[nightpool]

If you are an auditor, and you call up the chief financial officer of the company you are auditing and ask “hey when is a convenient time for me to come to your office to review the books,” and he replies “no, no office, parking lot,” and you say “okay I’ll drive to your office and you’ll come down—” and he says “oh no, not our parking lot, a different parking lot,” and you meet him in a parking lot 40 miles from his office, and he hands you printouts of the financial statements and drives away, how should you begin your audit? Which of the financial statements is most likely to contain red flags or discrepancies to be addressed? I feel like the answer is “the parking lot”? If I were auditing those financial statements, most of my questions would not be about technical accounting matters but “why are we meeting in a parking lot again?”

Here is a story about the CFO of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, William Smith, who was arrested last week for allegedly stealing $40 million from the nonprofit:

"Mr. Smith’s grip on the nonprofit’s finances was so tight that even the nonprofit’s accountant, charged with tracking spending, could not log into one of the group’s bank accounts. Only Mr. Smith had the password. He gave her the bank statements on paper and met her only four times a year, in the parking lot of a Honey Baked Ham store 40 miles from the office. […]

"Brian Mittendorf, a professor who studies nonprofit accounting at Ohio State University, said that the conservancy’s official documents show that it took steps to safeguard its finances — including oversight from its board of directors and annual audits.

"‘All these things sound as if it’s an organization with a pretty robust review in place. On the other hand, only one person can access the money, and provides paper copies in a Honey Baked Ham parking lot?’ Mr. Mittendorf said. ‘Those sound like the opposite of a robust governance mechanism.’"

As it happens, Smith allegedly altered the bank statements by “[removing] the payments to himself and [replacing] them with fake payments to other vendors.” I still don’t fully understand the parking lot, though? Like you can meet the accountant in your office to hand over the doctored paper financial statements; just unplug your computer first. I just feel like meeting in the parking lot sends a pretty strong message of “I AM DOING CRIME” that you might want to avoid, if you are doing crime.

[angelplummie]

TAKING WHAT’S NOT YOURS!

ART X TASHI X PATRICK X F!READER

part 1 part 2

this one is exposition and build up for the smut eventually! enjoy my princesses

tashi duncan stole from you.

in many ways, many times. the first was when she thrashed you in your very first college tennis tournament. you would always remember the sound she made, that war cry. it was like she had decapitated you or something. she stole victory from you that day.

then she did it again, and again, and again. every single time she played you, she beat you. you could annihilate everyone but her, crushed them all to dust. but she was the one person that would not be decimated. you didn’t speak off the court, didn’t look at each other twice in the halls of stanford. but she had this look on her face. this smug, knowing look. here to lose again? it said. and you weren’t some average joe shmoe tennis girl. you were really good. people that had no reason to bolster your ego had told you that, so you knew it to be true. you were fucking brilliant, and she had no right to look at you like you were dirt. you gave her a tough match, but still she looked at you like she knew she was going to win.

when asked about her, all you could say was “i hate that smug bitch.”

what she said about you you didn’t know, and not for lack of trying. you didn’t know if she even spoke of you at all. the thought made you angrier than when she beat you. once, when at the same party, she waved at you.“hi,” she said, and gave you that same i-just-beat-you look. she was taller than you, and craned her neck unnecessarily far to look at you. where did that stupid bitch get off?

she was this towering roadblock, the one thing stopping you from entering the upper echelons of tennis royalty. you had the fucking talent, you had put in the fucking time, you were so fucking good. but you weren’t stanfords sweetheart. you just weren’t. everyone knew you were good, but you weren’t the best.

from the matches you had watched, which was nearly all of them, you were the only person she played that gave her a run for her money. she didn’t sweat the way she did when she played you, the points were never so neck and neck. she should be threatened by you, and yet she looked at you like any other silly college floozy that was the best in her high school. tennis was your life, as much as it was hers. she stole your dignity in that way.

the next time she stole from you was patrick zweig. a sort of boyfriend, an in-between, getting there boyfriend. he could’ve been yours. you could’ve been happy together. but tashi duncan couldn’t have that.

you heard whispers about a night in a hotel room, a threesome, a twosome with a watcher, two guys jacking off on tashi duncan. they could deny, deny, deny, but whatever did or didn’t happen meant patrick zweig never returned your calls anymore. you could still recount the exact tonality and pacing of his answering machine message.

it was fine. it’s whatever. he wasn’t a forever boyfriend anyway.

but once a girl has sex with someone, she expects some degree of loyalty, some sort of goodbye. it wasn’t about him, he was cute, a good-not-great fuck, and never claimed to be serious about you. he didn’t matter. it was the fact she had him. together or not, she had him. he belonged to her. even after they broke up, everyone knew he never liked any of his other many girlfriends like he loved her. they used to walk around hand in hand, kiss, and it made you brim with jealousy. not because you gave any kind of fuck about him as a person, but because she got him instead of you. it was her. all her. she had stolen one more thing.

as time passed, your hatred burned just as bright. you practiced day in day out, hoping that somehow she could see you now, somehow she would know you were her equal.

then you met a boy. art donaldson.

you had known he was involved with her. the hotel threesome stories spared no details of the parties involved, despite factual discrepancies in other areas. but you figured, while she was dating his best friend, you were safe from the curse of tashi duncan. you allowed yourself to fall in love, softly, timidly. having met in american literature, you fostered a little spark. a love, barely the size of a candles flame, flickered in your chest. maybe, you had prayed. maybe him. maybe he was yours. you kissed at new years for the first time, and days later he met your parents. it was new, fresh, but it was love. you loved him.

and then she stole from you for the final time. in one foul swoop, she took everything from you.

it was the final of the college tournament. the two stanford angels playing each other for the victory. the court was red and packed, newly redone. you both wore white. whoever won this was guaranteed a shot at the open in the summer, and that was all you needed. you were so fucking ready. no one was better than you. no one. you had trained so hard, art could attest to it, hell, the entire school could attest to it. ask anyone who saw you around that time, they would’ve seen a scowl on your face and a racket on your back. those who had the pleasure of watching you play would’ve say it: you were fucking good.

that’s why it crushed you. across from her, at match point, advantage duncan, you watched as her knee moved independent from her leg. in between grunting and pelting, there was a crack, and tashi duncan was no more. a hush fell over the crowd as she cried, fell to the ground clutching her knee. you heard that. but you didn’t hear the ear splitting scream that came from your own mouth, couldn’t feel your body sprint, jump the net to crouch by her side. beads of perspiration rolled down her face, scrunched in agony. she bared her teeth like a cornered animal, and looked up at you through her squeezed eyes. her knee looked awful, so you stared at the rest of her. without thought you placed a hand on the top of her head. to comfort her you think.

it was so quiet. the only sound was her crying, her laboured breath stilling your heart to a lifeless thud.

“it’s ok,” you said,”you’re going to be ok, tashi.”

you remembered feeling an inexplicable sadness, a grief that you had never known before. you wanted to get rid of her pain, any and all of it. none of it came from you, you didn’t want her to have it. but that was so quickly forgotten. because as you moved to touch her shoulder with your shaking hand, it was eclipsed by another. a larger hand, the hand of a man. a pale hand. a hand you had touched before, even kissed. the hand of your man.

your eyes met, each with equal fear, horror and sadness. it was then that you knew that the curse of tashi duncan wouldn’t rest until you died. she would steal and steal and steal, even beyond the grave. he looked caught, because he was. he was caught. once you loved tashi you never stopped. he had raced into the court because she had fallen at a game he attended to watch you play, had touched her shoulder with the hand that had held you. he was not yours, as much as you needed him to be. his eyes twinkled with regret, but told you everything you needed to know.

your hand drew away with a flick, like it had given you an electric shock. you rose from tashis tortured body. his hand slipped to where yours had rested. this was all somehow not her fault, while being her fault entirely. you hated her so much it made your heart bleed. you didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. no whisper of her name, no nothing. from this moment on she was dead to you.

you didn’t bother looking over your shoulder to see if art was watching you leave. he wasn’t. the umpire boomed something through a mega phone, something like wait. but you were going home.

in the hall you bumped shoulders with patrick zweig. he was rushing to find her. he looked at you once to apologise hurriedly, twice to utter your name in recognition, and a third time to look at your back and wonder why you were so down. tashi was out. you won by default.

[weekend-whip]

so i was reading the compass post and i wondered does the origin of the element of time have to do with the celestial clock from the dark island and if it isnt will we get more info on what it is an how was it made

Yes and yes! Though the way the clock impacts the “approach of the Final Battle” is a lot different than how it went down in the show (meaning there’s no pointless sequence where they try to stop a clock with a helmet). But don’t worry, explanations are on the agenda :)

[lobsterfork]

this is actually wild i would love an answer to this because i'm not sure if i'm having a stroke or not

since there has been some debate…

[noxtivagus]

february's been so crazy so far

[greaterspawnislands]

ugh

[too-deviant]

ray bans.

with…ART DONALDSON!

contains…fem!reader, 18+ CONTENT!, handjob, p in v, public sex, this was written b4 the movie came out so excuse any discrepancies!

You blame the tequila.

Strong and sharp in your glass at the tennis luncheon your boss had invited you to, swishing around with every movement you made as you told an overexaggerated story to Art Donaldson. He didn’t pay a lot of attention, you could tell, but his eyes were so firm on yours that you needed to talk to get the nerves out. 

It was the tequila, not his eyes, that got you cornered in a bathroom too fancy to be anywhere but this cushy hotel, legs pushed back so far you felt a burn in the crease of your groin. Those dusty blonde curls buried between your thighs, perfectly calloused hands holding them apart so he could lap at you with perfect fervour. 

Your eyes were watering, and he gazed at you as you came down, rubbing up and down your legs until you were ready to push yourself down and onto your feet. You wiped the runoff mascara as best you could, but huffed at the stains around your eyes.

Art had grinned, slid his sunglasses from his collar and placed them perfectly over your eyes. You’d asked him when he wanted them back, and he’d just smirked. 

Which was how you found yourself scooting past old people in linen suits and straw hats, expensive bags and designer shades on their noses. Yours weren’t designer, but they were Art Donaldson’s, so you won. 

In this life you took your seat in the rows at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre — a doozy of a sentence to tell your Uber driver. In this life you slid Art Donaldson’s sunglasses over your eyes and waited patiently for him to sidle onto the court, slam himself a win, and meet you in the bar to take them back. 

His hits were precise, hard, fast. The muscles in his arms and neck pulled beautifully. You pulled the plush of your lip between your teeth, letting it go when he hit another, his grunt louder to you know. Clearer. 

But as your eyes pivoted back and forth across the court, his opponents moves much more confident and fluid than his, the life changed. Now this life was a tense strain in your neck, your fingers tight around the dress you wore just for today. In this life, Art Donaldson lost, and when everyone else was cheering for the winner, you were watching him storm away. 

It was quicker to manoeuvre through the crowds now that everyone else was leaving. You didn’t have to worry about bumping into people, because they were all bumping into you and there was a collective agreement that any and all shoulder shoving slash toe-stepping was okay for now. So you slid your way through, sidestepping through the rows of seats and going down a row every time you got to some stairs — ensuring that it wasn’t completely obvious where you were going. 

You made awkward eye contact with the ball boy but your confident smile put him at ease and he dismissed you completely, allowing you to slip around the back of the stands and into the locker room. 

It was much quieter in there, the noise of the crowd fading into nothing when the door closed behind you. Now you could focus on your surroundings, the sound of water dripping and heavy breaths. 

You parted your lips gently, “Art?”

Footsteps, and then the blonde man was rounding a row of lockers and meeting your sly gaze. His own was shrouded in barely covered anger and light confusion, the latter crowing over a bit more when you took steps to invade his personal space. 

“You came.” 

“Well…” You shrugged, lifting the glasses off your head and tucking them into the collar of his polo. Letting your hand linger on the planes of his collarbones, feeling the heat radiating from the skin beneath the cotton. “That was quite some game.” 

Art huffed, “I was in walkabout. Shit luck.” 

You leaned ever so slightly closer, running your hand down his chest to just above the waistband of his shorts. You admired the way he looked under the lights — the beads of sweat on his jugular, the happy trail you could feel peek out from under the hem of the shirt. Your other hand stayed propped against the locker, and he was quick to run his own down your wrist, cupping your elbow. 

“Well…I say we pick up where we left off, no? That make you feel better?”

You narrowed your brows at him in a silent question. His minute nod was enough. Then your hand was sliding beneath his waistband, dipping into his underwear — Tommy Hilfiger — and wrapping around the base of his cock. 

He sucked in a breath, fingers tightening around your other arm, jaw ticking and eyes firmly on yours. You didn’t break contact even when you squeezed him a bit and he let out a shaky groan. 

You dropped your other hand, hooked your fingers around this waistband. Pulled it back so you could lean forward, eyes glaring at where your other hand sat. Then, with a noise so sweet he might have exploded, you let a string of spit slide from between your lips. Art watched it fall, achingly slow, onto his shaft, and then held back a cry when you started to slide your hand up and down his dick. Wetting it just right. 

You looked back up at him, made him look back at you. You pumped your fist slowly, thumbing his tip and adding his precum to your saliva. The sounds were erotic on their own, and even you had to tense your thighs together. Art’s own legs shook from his standing position, but before he could drop his head onto your shoulder you were removing both hands from his body and smirking at his painful moan. 

With your right hand still wet from his cock, you printed a perfect print on the front of his polo and pushed him gently back. He walked, transfixed on your gaze, until his calves were hitting the wooden bench and he was being sat down. He stared up at you, pleadingly so, and you lifted the hem of your dress just enough so you could slide onto your knees on either side of his hips. 

With your crotches pressed together, Art couldn’t stop his hands from flying to your ass and squeezing. You grinned, and his smirk returned in full force. 

“Should lose more often.” He murmured, leaning forward and pressing his nose against your chest, the low cut of your dress feeding his carnal desire to completely devour you. 

You hushed him gently, pushing yourself up so you could slide his shorts and boxers down to his thighs. His dick sprung out beautifully, making another wet patch where it hit the bottom of his shirt. You used your hand, brought one of his around so he could pump himself while you reached under your dress and pushed your underwear to the side. Then you were shuffling forward and letting Art align the tip of his cock with the wet of your folds.

You didn’t waste a moment, bracing yourself on his shoulders and rolling your hips along his own. Your breathy moans accumulated to the steam you had now registered coming from the shower he had abandoned in favour of letting you take him like this. His huffs and puffs only increased as he began to control your movements, rutting into you from below. 

The creaky hinges of the bench cried with every hurried thrust, but the shower muffled most of your sounds. You gave into your urges and licked a stripe up the plane of his neck, bringing your hands around to grip hard at his back, creasing his already ruined shirt. His own mouth was suckling and nipping at your chest, hitting that sweet sweet spot just in time for your movements to get a little sloppy. 

Smacks of skin on skin fuelled the fire in your gut, and your fingers coiled around his blonde curls. His own movements stuttered, and you let out a guttural groan into the humidity of the room when you finally reached your peak, Art following not far behind you. 

You stood with effort, fixing your underwear and patting your dress down while Art panted beneath you. Then you patted him on the cheek, took his sunglasses back from his shirt and put them right back on your face.

“I’ll see you at the mixer next month.”

divider by @bunnysrph ��

[thenationofzaun]

The Vander/Silco Shitshow - generic, juvenile, and gimmicky slop

So, I think that Vander/Silco flashback was terrible. Tropey, careless, juvenile, clichéd bullshit that stripped away everything that made their season 1 story nuanced and poignant, while simultaneously ripping open a fat plot hole because the team got careless and did not catch the discrepancy between the story they'd written in their heads and the visuals that ended up on screen in season 1. This is just going to be a long rant post detailing the reasons I absolutely despised this flashback. Obligatory disclaimer that this is just my (strongly held) opinion.

1) The timeline plot hole

No, I'm not misusing the term. So a plot hole is an inconsistency in a fictional narrative that cannot be explained away by any plausible in-universe justifications. There are many moments of weak writing in Arcane that may be contrived, rushed, weird, convenient, etc. but aren't plot holes.

This Vander/Silco situation however. Oh boy. If you all remember, Season 1 opened with the bridge massacre, also known as the Day of Ash. Vander is shown cracking enforcers' skulls. He looks like this.

The sisters, seemingly recognizing him, ask him where their parents are. He gestures to their corpses, the sisters cry, Vander has his "violence is not the answer" epiphany, drops the gauntlets very dramatically to underscore this massive turning point of character development for him, then picks the girls up and leaves the bridge.

In episode 3, we are shown a flashback. Vander is trying to kill Silco in the river. He looks like this.

Let's compare this to how he looked like on the Day of Ash.

Yeah. According to the visuals shown in Season 1, the falling out of Vander and Silco seems to have occured in the past before the Day of Ash, evidenced by how much younger Vander looks. Unless Silco is a time traveller who jumped forward to the future to throw a molotov at the riot because he just loves violent extremism that much, or Vander took the time to shave his beard and apply heavy duty anti-aging lotion on his face before hunting Silco down, there are no plausible in-universe explanations for this inconsistency. Not to mention, if Silco and Vander were really as close as brothers and the sisters knew Vander, then it's impossible they wouldn't have known who Silco was.

Yet, in Season 1, that's exactly what we see - not a single sliver of recognition between Silco and the girls, nothing to imply they knew of his existence before episode 3. Not a single conversation between Jinx and Silco implied that he knew, let alone was close to, her mother. Nothing from Vi throughout the entire first season indicated that she knew of his past friendships with her mother and Vander. They acted like total strangers to each other.

Many fans already caught this inconsistency during the three-year gap after writers' comments online implied Silco was involved in the Day of Ash. We had hoped the writers would catch on to this discrepancy too and either iron out the timeline if they want to do serious flashbacks, or just avoid calling attention to it completely by not doing flashbacks of their falling out. Alas.

2) Leonardo Dicaprio pointing meme

Death to the everybody-knows-everyone trope and lines that only exist to invoke the "Leonardo Dicaprio pointing" meme. Throw them into a fucking fire. Boring, mind-numbing, clichéd, overdone garbage. Not every character needs to have some kind of half-baked relation with each other. Not every major incident needs to be tied back to the main characters. Not every single detail needs to be overexplained and justified and again, somehow tied to a main character. They are unnecessary, and make the world feel so much more claustrophobic and smaller than it should be.

"The enforcers actually commited the Day of Ash massacre because SILCO threw a molotov. Vander actually tried to kill Silco because of VI AND JINX'S mother. She knew both Silco and Vander personally and TOLD THEM to help her raise her kids. VANDER named Vi."

Bullshit like this really fucks with immersion, because it becomes clear very quickly that the world is only occupied by a small handful of real characters while the thousands of other people in it are nothing more than inconsequential set dressing and wallpaper. The story and world no longer feel real, vast, and immersive. And these forced "connections" between main characters are so obviously manufactured to generate "OUGHHH" and Dicaprio pointing reactions. Idk about anyone else, but it takes me completely out of the story when I can obviously tell the writing is trying too hard to blow my mind.

The girls' mom waltzing up to Vander and Silco and just. Fucking telling them to help her with her kids lmfaoooooooo. (OUGHH and they both really ended up raising her kids WOAGH😱🤯). Jinx's mom saying choosing a name is stressful because her child will feel stuck with it (GASP and Powder ended up changing her name WOOOOWW😱). Vander coming up with Vi's fucking name. (OUGHHHH HE REALLY WAS MEANT TO BE FATHER ALL ALONG WOADGHHGHDHDH🤯🤯🤯).

Fucking kill me. Arcane Season 1 was surprisingly good precisely because they DIDN'T, for the most part, resort to tropey bullshit like this. It had, for the most part, originality. Uniqueness. In fact all the strongest aspects of Season 1, aspects I loved, were deliberate subversions of overdone clichés. For Season 2 to resort to this kind of writing reminiscent of Disney slop is insanely disappointing.

I'm waiting for a character to unironically say, "What are we, some kind of League of Legends?" in Act 3 now.

3) "Ohhhhh so THAT'S why he did that!!!!!!!!!"

Also death to overexplanations and giving justifications for things that never needed justifications. You know what I was never confused by while watching Season 1 of Arcane? Why Vander adopted the girls. Why Silco adopted Jinx. Why both came to care for their girls so much, they were willing to sacrifice so much for them. I thought the reasons for those things were very clear and poignant in the first season. I never needed an extra on-the-nose justification for the adoptions in the form of, "they wuved yo mama". It's not only redundant, it's also one of the most tired ass tropes in fiction. To me, Vander taking in the girls and Silco taking in Jinx are so much more powerful if they really were just random guys with no real connection to the girls' parents.

But I've already seen some positive reactions to this flashback with "Ohhhhh so THAT's why Silco/Vander cared for the girls so much, now I understand😯🤯😓" mf what exactly did you not understand before??

4) Character motivations

The motivations of both Vander and Silco are made downright bizarre by this flashback. So Silco was hellbent on murdering Vi last season, despite being close friends with her mom whose death he may feel guilty for? Literally despised her and wanted to kill her the entire time with no hesitation lol. So Vander had that aforementioned dramatic moment of character development, dropped the gauntlets, realized violence wasn't the answer, and carried the kids to safety... then doubled back to violently hunt down and murder Silco? But not before shaving his beard and applying youthful lotion of course. Can't kill your bro while looking crusty. Then he failed to kill Silco so he just... went back to the kids and pretended like nothing happened? Lol.

Silco being close to, let alone loving, the girls' parents makes no fucking sense for his character. Vander knowing them at least makes sense, but casual friends would have sufficed. "I was lowkey crushing (?????) on your mom and also named you" just cheapened the entire Vander/Vi and Silco/Jinx surrogate father dynamic. Vander's motivation for killing Silco being yet another fridged woman is also weak as fuck. First Viktor with Sky, and now Vander/Silco. They really should have left this one up to our imaginations if this was the boring tripe they came up with.