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lamphous · 2 days ago
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not to make a long post longer, but here's the whole thing:
"The Abortion Absolutist" By Elaine Godfrey
Warren Hern has been performing late abortions for half a century. After Roe, he is as busy with patients as ever.
May 12, 2023
The sky above Boulder was dark when the abortion doctor picked me up for dinner. I had to squint to recognize Warren Hern in his thick aviator glasses and fur-trapper hat.
At the restaurant—a kitschy Italian spot along a pedestrian mall—Hern ignored the table the waiter offered us, pointed at one in the corner, and clomped over in his heavy hiking boots. He’d like to order right away, he said: the osso buco and a glass of Spanish red. How long will that take?
Hern spent the next two and a half hours of our dinner correcting me. A baby is a fetus until it is “born alive,” he told me as I chewed my bucatini. His dear friend, the Kansas physician George Tiller, was not “murdered” in 2009, he was assassinated. The activists who scream outside his clinic are not “pro-life,” they are fascists.
Pausing, Hern sighed. He is very busy, he said, and there are many things he’d rather be doing than talking to me. “But I can’t complain that the pro-choice movement has completely failed” at communicating, he said, “and then turn down an opportunity to communicate.”
I’d met Hern before, so I wasn’t surprised by his gruffness. The 84-year-old can be a curmudgeon—he’s obstinate, utterly certain of his position, and intolerant of criticism even as he dishes it out. Useful qualities, perhaps, for someone in his line of work.
Hern is now nearing his fifth decade of practice at his Boulder clinic; he has persisted through the entire arc of Roe v. Wade, its nearly 50-year rise and fall. He specializes in abortions late in pregnancy—the rarest, and most controversial, form of abortion. This means that Hern ends the pregnancies of women who are 22, 25, even 30 weeks along. Although 14 states now ban abortion in most or all circumstances, Colorado has no gestational limits on the procedure. Patients come to him from all over the country because he is one of only a handful of physicians who can, and will, perform an abortion so late.
During the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, when about 90 percent of abortions in America are carried out, the fetus’s appearance ranges from a small clot of phlegm to an alienlike ball of flesh. At 22 weeks, though, a human fetus has grown to about the size of a small melon. The procedures that Hern performs result in the removal of a body that, if you saw it, would inspire a sharp pang of recognition. These are the abortions that provide fodder for the gruesome images on protesters’ signs and the billboards along Midwest highways, images that can be difficult to look at for long.
Many of the women who visit Hern’s clinic do so because their health is at risk—or because their fetus has a serious abnormality that would require a baby to undergo countless surgeries with little chance of survival. But Hern does not restrict his work to these cases.
The phone at Hern’s clinic rings constantly these days. Since the overturning of Roe and the corresponding blitz of abortion bans, appointment books are filling up at clinics in states where abortion remains legal. Women who have to wait weeks for an appointment may end up missing the window for a first-trimester procedure. Some book a flight to Boulder to see Hern, who is treating about 50 percent more patients than usual.
These later abortions are the less common cases, and the hardest ones. They are the cases that even stalwart abortion-rights advocates generally prefer not to discuss. But as the pro-choice movement strives to shore up abortion rights after the fall of Roe, its members face strategic decisions about whether and how to defend this work.
Most Americans support abortion access, but they support it with limits—considerations about time and pain and fingernail development. Hern is reluctant to acknowledge any limit, any red line. He takes the woman’s-choice argument to its logical conclusion, in much the same way that, at this moment, anti-abortion activists are pressing their case to its extreme. Hern considers his religious adversaries to be zealots, and many of them are. But he is, in his own way, no less an absolutist.
In May of 2019, an envelope landed on my desk at work with a nature calendar inside. The photos—an arctic tern landing on a hunk of ice, a shock of mountain maple in the Holy Cross Wilderness, two sandhill cranes taking flight—were all credited to Hern. I’d interviewed him a week earlier for a short article about abortion-rights activism, and it amused me that a working abortion doctor was making wildlife calendars and express-mailing them to journalists. This past December, I flew to Boulder to meet him.
The Boulder Abortion Clinic is a single-story, yellow-brick building, partially hidden from the road by a wooden fence. Someone tried to shoot Hern once, back in 1988, so now the front windows are made of bulletproof glass. You have to show ID to gain access to the waiting room, and the blinds are usually drawn, leaving the whole place slightly dim. Stepping inside is like going back in time: The office is a maze of wood paneling, vinyl chairs, and faded green carpet.
The first day I visited, no protesters were chanting outside; it was a Monday, and they tend to show up on Tuesdays, which is patient-intake day. Hern’s staff sat me in an office near the front desk, where I could hear calls coming in. I listened as a receptionist told a patient named Lindsey that it was okay to be anxious; she paused a few times while Lindsey cried.
“The fee will be about $6,000,” the receptionist said. Late abortions are expensive because they are medically complex. For patients who need financial aid, the National Abortion Federation may cover some of the cost, and local abortion funds often contribute. The receptionist told this to Lindsey, and offered her the organization’s number. “You can do partial cash and credit card, yes,” she said. Often, if a woman cannot afford to pay for her hotel, her transportation to Boulder, or some part of her procedure, Hern will foot the bill himself, staff members told me.
Hern stopped performing first-trimester abortions a few years ago; he saw too much need for later abortions, and his clinic couldn’t do it all. The procedure he uses takes three or four days and goes like this: After performing an ultrasound, he will use a thin needle to inject a medicine called digoxin through the patient’s abdomen to stop the fetus’s heart. This is called “inducing fetal demise.” Then Hern will insert one or more laminarias—a sterile, brownish rod of seaweed—into the patient’s cervix to start the dilation process.
When the cervix is sufficiently dilated after another day or two of adding and removing laminarias, Hern will drain the amniotic fluid, give the patient misoprostol, and remove the fetus. Sometimes, the fetus will be whole, intact. Other times, Hern must remove it in parts. If the patient asks, a nurse will wrap the fetus in a blanket to hold, or present a set of handprints or footprints for the patient to take home.
I interviewed half a dozen of Hern’s former patients. Most of the women who agreed to talk had wanted a child. But they’d received serious diagnoses late in pregnancy: disorders with disturbing names such as prune-belly syndrome, trisomy 13, Dandy-Walker malformation, and agenesis of the corpus callosum. Some said they considered their abortions a kind of mercy killing.
“I put my baby down,” Kate Carson, who’d gotten an abortion at Hern’s clinic in 2012, told me.  She’d been 35 weeks into a much-wanted pregnancy when her doctor diagnosed multiple brain anomalies. Carson’s daughter, the doctor said, would have trouble walking, talking, holding her head up, and swallowing. “It’s euthanasia. That’s the kind of killing this is,” she said. “But I would do it again a million times if I had to.”
Amber Jones, who terminated her pregnancy at about 24 weeks in 2016, told me that her baby’s diagnosis meant he would not survive. Hern reassured her, she said, that she “shouldn’t be made to carry the pregnancy. That it’s bullshit, and we have the right to access health care.”
Carson and other patients described Hern as brusque. But they seemed to take comfort in that brusqueness, as though Hern’s fierce assurance helped them feel more sure themselves. “I wouldn’t say he has a great bedside manner,” Carson told me. But “the degree of respect that I felt from him was enormous.”
Abortions that come after devastating medical diagnoses can be easier for some people to understand. But Hern estimates that at least half, and sometimes more, of the women who come to the clinic do not have these diagnoses. He and his staff are just as sympathetic to other circumstances. Many of the clinic’s teenage patients receive later abortions because they had no idea they were pregnant. Some sexual-assault victims ignore their pregnancies or feel too ashamed to see a doctor. Once, a staffer named Catherine told me, a patient opted for a later abortion because her husband had killed himself and she was suddenly broke. “There isn’t a single woman who has ever written on her bucket list that she wants to have a late abortion,” Catherine said. “There is always a reason.”
The reason doesn’t really matter to Hern. Medical viability for a fetus—or its ability to survive outside the uterus—is generally considered to be somewhere from 24 to 28 weeks. Hern, though, believes that the viability of a fetus is determined not by gestational age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it. He applies the same principle to all of his prospective patients: If he thinks it’s safer for them to have an abortion than to carry and deliver the baby, he’ll take the case—usually up until around 32 weeks, with some rare later exceptions, because of the increased risk of hemorrhage and other life-threatening conditions beyond that point.
Even within the abortion-rights community, Hern’s position is considered a hard-line one.
Frances Kissling, the founding president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association for abortion providers, admires Hern and his commitment to women. But she has misgivings about his work. “Later-term abortions are more serious, ethically, than earlier abortions,” Kissling, who left NAF after a few years and went on to lead Catholics for Choice, told me—and only more so in cases that involve women who have not received any serious fetal diagnoses. “My ethics are such that I would say to them, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I cannot perform an abortion for you. I will do anything I can to help you get through the next two or three months, but I don’t do this,’” she said.
Hern bristles at the label abortion doctor. Too simplistic, he says. He will correct you if you use it. He is a physician, he says, who happens to specialize in abortion. Worse still is abortionist. He remains angry about a 2009 story in Esquire in which the author referred to him that way, again and again. It’s a pejorative, Hern says. He is more than his profession, he needs you to know. He is many things: an anthropologist, an epidemiologist, an adopted son of the Shipibo Indians in Peru. Abortion was never the destination for Hern, he insists; it was a detour.
As a child growing up in the suburbs of Denver, Hern dreamed of studying diseases in faraway places. During medical school, he worked as the unofficial doctor at a mining camp in Nicaragua, where he learned to speak Spanish. He spent six months in Peru, studying the culture and practices of the Shipibo. In 1966, the Peace Corps sent him to Brazil, where he learned Portuguese and trained under physicians who had started a family-planning association. Hern toured a maternity ward where one room was full of women recuperating from childbirth. Two other rooms held patients suffering from complications related to illegal abortions; at least half of those women ultimately died. This, he says, was formative.
In 1970, Hern accepted a job at the now-defunct Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C., where he led the effort to open family-planning clinics across the country and launched a voluntary-sterilization program for adults in Appalachia. Given the link between the eugenics movement and the early birth-control movement, the word sterilization can carry an ominous ring. Hern says, though, that his work was intended to give low-income people choices and reduce their financial hardship. “Families like these,” he wrote in The New Republic at the time, require housing, clean water, food, and sanitation. “But one of the most important needs is freedom from the tyranny of their own biology.”
In 1973, Hern was back in Colorado—the first state to decriminalize abortion in some circumstances—acting as a consultant for family-planning programs when the world shifted. Sarah Weddington, a lawyer friend of Hern’s from D.C., had won the Roe v. Wade case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and abortion was now legal in all 50 states. Hern wrote op-eds defending the decision and an explainer about the procedure for The Denver Post. One day, he got a call from a Colorado group that wanted to start a nonprofit abortion clinic in Boulder. Would Hern be their medical director? Of course, he told them. Absolutely.
The Boulder Valley Clinic opened in November of that same year. Hern designed the medical protocols and performed all of the abortions himself. Although one major battle for abortion rights had been won, a larger war was just beginning. Demonstrators began gathering outside the new clinic. Two weeks after it opened, Hern received his first death threat—a late-night phone call at his secluded cabin in the mountains. The man on the phone said he was coming for Hern. The doctor began sleeping with a rifle next to his bed.
In 1975, Hern took out a loan and started his own practice. He named it the Boulder Abortion Clinic—avoiding euphemisms like women’s care because he wanted patients to be able to find him. At the time, Hern had never performed any second-trimester abortions, for which the standard procedure then was to inject a saline solution into the uterus to induce labor. But Hern had read about another method in a textbook that explained how Japanese doctors were using laminarias to end abnormal or dangerous pregnancies. The method took longer, but it was safer. Hern studied the technique, ordered laminarias, and got to work.
Soon, Hern had published the first research paper on this multiple-laminaria method in American medical literature. Other clinics adopted the procedure, with modifications, and it’s been the dominant method for second- and third-trimester abortions for nearly 50 years. Hern and his staff carry out up to a dozen such terminations every week.
Hern was 34 when he performed his first abortion, a year before Roe v. Wade would be decided. A friend in D.C. who ran a local clinic invited him to come learn the procedure. Hern’s patient was 17 and in her first trimester of pregnancy. She wanted to be an anesthesiologist, he remembers.
Hern had learned how to do a dilation-and-curettage abortion in medical school, but still, he was terrified—and so was she. He recalls that after he finished and told her she wasn’t pregnant anymore, she wept with relief. He did too. “I was overwhelmed by the significance of this operation for this young woman’s life,” he told me. “This was a new definition, for me, for practicing medicine.”
But the work sometimes got to him. He would often retreat to his office to compose himself after an abortion. Partly, it was the high-stakes nature of the procedure. But he also needed time to process how the dead fetus looked, how removing it felt. Sometimes he’d sit in his office and think, What am I doing?
He had bad dreams too. In the 1970s, physicians did not induce fetal demise during abortion, and once or twice, during a procedure at 15 or 16 weeks, he used forceps to remove a fetus with a still-beating heart. The heart thumped for only a few seconds before stopping. But for a long while after, a vision of that fetus would wake Hern from sleep. He could see it in his mind, the inches-long body and its heart: beating, beating, beating. In one dream, Hern angled his own body to shield his staff from catching a glimpse.
Other people might have decided that this work wasn’t worth the haunting images, the pricks of conscience. They might have quit. But for Hern, the psychological stress of the work was the necessary cost of helping patients. He saw it as his job to carry some of the emotional weight. Over time, that stress became easier to manage. He stopped needing to compose himself between procedures. The bad dreams went away.
In 1978, Hern presented a paper before the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians in San Diego titled “What about us? Staff Reactions to D&E”—dilation-and-evacuation abortion—in which he concluded that, though medically safe, surgical second-trimester abortions are clearly more emotionally difficult for providers than earlier ones.
Some part of our cultural and perhaps even biological heritage recoils at a destructive operation on a form that is similar to our own, even though we know that the act has a positive effect for a living person … We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes.
I quoted that paper during a conversation with Hern, as we sat shoulder to shoulder at a bar in downtown Boulder. He was nodding before I finished. Many of his colleagues were annoyed by what he’d written, he said. The abortion-rights movement isn’t exactly eager to talk about these visuals, mostly because it gives fodder to the opposition. Hern’s comments about “destruction” still appear on a number of anti-abortion websites as evidence of the horror of the procedure.
But the point of his report was to be honest, Hern said, and he stands by it. Why not face the truth that abortion late in pregnancy is, at least in one way, destructive? He still believes that such destruction can be a profoundly merciful act.
Regardless of the circumstances of pregnancy, in Hern’s view, a woman’s life—her humanity, her wishes—isn’t just more important than her fetus’s. It is virtually the only thing that matters. That approach is diametrically opposed to the view of anti-abortion advocates, for whom pregnancy means motherhood and, often, self-sacrifice.
Hern understands that few share his total conviction. “This is a grotesque conversation to many people,” he said at the bar. “But this is a surgical procedure for a life-threatening condition.”
During that conversation and the ones following it, I prodded for cracks in Hern’s certainty. At one point, I thought I’d found one: Hern had told me about a woman who’d sought an abortion because she didn’t want to have a baby girl. I thought he had refused. But when I followed up to ask him why, I learned that I had misunderstood. Hern said he had done abortions for sex selection twice: once for this woman; and once for someone who’d desperately wanted a girl. It was their choice to make, he explained.
“So if a pregnant woman with no health issues comes to the clinic, say, at 30 weeks, what would you do?” I asked Hern once. The question irked him. “Every pregnancy is a health issue!” he said. “There’s a certifiable risk of death from being pregnant, period.”
Hern met the Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller at a National Abortion Federation conference in the late 1970s. The two talked on the phone nearly every week for 30 years. Tiller was the opposite of Hern—gentle, soft-spoken, churchgoing. “George was a normal person,” Hern told me once. “That distinguishes him from me right away.” Yet Tiller was murdered for doing the same work.
The phone rang at Hern’s house one morning in May 2009, and Jeanne Tiller was on the line. “George is gone,” she told Hern. An anti-abortion fanatic had shot her husband at church, where he was serving as an usher. Hern flew to Wichita for the funeral, and helped carry his friend’s casket down the aisle of the packed College Hill United Methodist Church. Sixty federal marshals stood guard at the service, he said. They told him that he would likely be the next target. Later that week, Hern performed abortions for all of Tiller’s remaining patients at his clinic in Boulder.
Thirteen years after Tiller’s death, Hern and I stayed up late talking in the restaurant of my hotel. Hern was speaking so loudly—about Donald Trump, fascism, and anti-abortion violence—that the bartender had begun to stare. Opposition to abortion has long been “the hammer and tongs to power” for the Republican Party, Hern was saying, “because of their allegiance to the white Christian nationalists and white supremacists.” Christianity, he told me, not for the first time, “is now the face of fascism in America.” That moral arc of the universe bending toward justice? “That’s the belief, but I don’t believe it.”
I asked Hern whether he ever worried that now, in a post-Roe world, he might have an even bigger target on his back. I wondered whether it was a bit reckless for him to be so outspoken with reporters like me. Actually, it’s the opposite, Hern replied. Being so vocal “increases the political cost of assassinating me.”
“That’s dark,” I said.
He simply shrugged. “This is what I have to think about.”
Suddenly, he remembered that he’d brought me something. He dug around in his coat pocket, and pulled out a fridge magnet he’d made from a photograph he took a few years ago near the island of South Georgia: penguins diving off an iceberg into the deep blue ocean.
Hern is known for presenting such gifts to people—and for regularly mailing out his latest published works. In addition to the magnet and the calendar, Hern sent me a copy of his poetry collection and his new book on global ecology. In the latter, titled Homo Ecophagus, he compares mankind to a cancer on the planet, writing that our unrelenting population growth will ultimately lead to the demise of every species on Earth. To view human beings as a scourge seems a rather ominous perspective for a man who ends pregnancies for a living. Could he see his work as, even subliminally, a form of population control? When I asked about that, Hern shook his head vigorously, waving my question away, as if he’d been ready for it. “Being concerned about population growth is consistent with the idea of helping women and families control their fertility on a voluntary basis,” he said.
Hern lives in a modest gray split-level cluttered with landscape photographs, Shipibo pottery, and mounted fossils. Some of the photographs were taken by his wife, Odalys Muñoz Gonzalez, who is 27 years his junior and whom he refers to as “mi amor.” Gonzalez is originally from Cuba, though they met at a conference in Barcelona in 2003. Back in Spain, Gonzalez directed her own abortion clinic. Now she works at Hern’s, performing nonmedical tasks and translating for Spanish-speaking patients.
Gonzalez sometimes worries that Hern comes across as too intense. “I always tell him, ‘Don’t look like Bernie Sanders,’” she told me, in her thick Cuban accent. Part of her hates that he can be so angry, so severe. “But another part of me loves,” she said. “Because how many people do you know that live with the level of passion that Warren does?” Still, Gonzalez wishes he would retire so that they could have more time to travel together and photograph wildlife.
During my stay in Boulder, I did occasionally look at Hern and wonder: Would I want you in charge of my complex medical procedure? Next month, he’ll be 85, and when he shuffles around the clinic in his turquoise scrubs and white lab coat, he looks it.
Younger providers have opened a handful of new late-abortion clinics in recent years. Some of these providers and others in the field argue that Hern’s abortion procedures take longer than they need to, and that his methods are out of date. Hern should have retired decades ago, these critics say. “Being 84 and doing procedures is problematic,” one physician, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about Hern, told me. (When I asked Hern about the criticism of some of his methods, he said he has always emphasized patient safety and will alter his procedures if they make the abortion safer. “If people don’t agree with me, I don’t really care,” he said. “I don’t give a shit.”)
Hern is working with two other doctors in the hope that eventually they will take over the clinic. But he’s hard to please. “I have to find the right people, train them, get them to know what needs to be done,” he says. “Finding physicians willing to do this work—who will do it well, do it carefully—is difficult.”
One morning during my visit, Hern and I climbed up the hill behind his house. The ground was muddy, and, thanks to a recent skiing injury, Hern was unsteady on his feet. I briefly wondered if this hike might bring about the end of one of America’s most famous abortion physicians. At the top of the hill, Hern pointed up toward a grassy crest of land above us called the Dakota Ridge. A big problem with modern society is that we’ve forgotten that we’re part of all this, he said, waving toward the ridge. The Bible says to “go forth and multiply and dominate the Earth and blah-blah, but that is exactly the wrong advice.”
He’s read the Bible a few times, he said. But he’s not religious; he’s spiritual. “The natural world, the forest, is my cathedral,” he said. To watch the sunrise, to see a wild animal, “just to be there, that’s a spiritual experience for me.”
And then, suddenly, Hern was connecting it all, drawing everything together: religion, Republicans, the Supreme Court, the future of American society. “These people believe stuff that’s out of the medieval times. The Pleistocene!”
He sighed. “I’m holding back,” he said, not holding back at all.
On my last day in Boulder, a few of the clinic staff gathered in the kitchen for an unofficial Christmas party. They’d finished the week’s procedures, and all of the patients had been sent home. Now it was time for eggnog. Gonzalez poured some into mugs, and the clinic administrator offered to spike it with a bottle of his homemade rum. They passed around a box of chocolate cupcakes that someone had brought in.
Hern congratulated his staff on a good year, and they listened, amused, while he explained that he wasn’t able to find any good Audubon calendars at Barnes & Noble for their annual staff Christmas gift. He made a joke that he’d already told me more than once: “I could just give you the calendars from last year to pass on to your Republican friends,” he said, with a laugh. “They won’t notice for about 300 years that they’re out of date.”
A dozen Christmas stockings hung on the bulletin board, each displaying a staff member’s name in glitter glue. Buttons were pinned on the board, too, including some emblazoned with George Tiller’s face. You will be greatly missed, one said. Someone had propped open an outer door for circulation, and a stack of papers near the phone rustled—instructions for how to talk to someone calling with a bomb threat. “TAKE A DEEP BREATH,” they read. “Questions to ask: When is the bomb going to explode? Where is it right now?”
Hern seemed not to notice the strange juxtaposition of it all—the eggnog and the abortions, the cupcakes and the bomb threats. The buttons with the image of his murdered friend and the fact of his own stubborn survival. Of course he didn’t. He has spent five decades living with these contradictions.
This was an interesting read. Surprisingly nonpreachy given the subject; and well worth the time.
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ladamedusoif · 1 year ago
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It might be the cold meds talking, but I feel like I need to have a ramble about writing - partly because I’ve seen a few “you write for YOU and whatever you WANT” posts over the last few days, some of which have been spot on and some not so much.
To clarify: this post isn’t about me. Or at least, it’s MOSTLY not about me. It’s just some observations about fic.
This is a lovely and important message. Ultimately, we do all write for ourselves. Of course we do.
But saying “write for you and only for you!” is easier when you’re someone who routinely gets hundreds of notes on a fic within the first couple of hours. Or when you’ve got a massive audience already. Or when you write something that seems to get more attention than anything else in terms of popular characters and tropes (ahem Joel age gap smut ahem).
Trends come and go in literature of all kinds, whether properly published works or fics. That’s par for the course.
But the problem is when it feels like only a certain kind of story gets any attention. When stories with real heart and love and care and feeling seem to be routinely ignored because they don’t fit the bill: they’re slow burns, they don’t involve popular tropes, but they’re proper stories that could exist without any connection to the fandom they’ve been written for.
And, worse, when the people writing those stories start to feel deeply disheartened and as if it’s just not worth it.
We talk a lot about anon hate (spoiler: don’t do it) and nine times out of ten that seems to be based on the idea of people writing potentially triggering or taboo topics saying they’ve received “hate”. (Sometimes this is actual hate and sometimes it’s genuine, considerate questioning around warnings etc.)
Thing is: the people writing the ‘unpopular’ stories get hate - genuine, real, nasty hate - too. This post isn’t really about me, but as an example: I’ve not turned on anon asks in months, because of the last shitfest. And I’m not alone, because I know what people have had sent into their inbox in response to the most inoffensive, sweet stories. It baffles me.
All this is to say - I wish people would be a little bit more open in what they want to read, and would recognise that “anon hate” isn’t just about puritanical prudes trying to “tell people what to write” as seems to be the general assumption. People keep trying to put a bit more diversity out there in the fic buffet, to write loving and carefully crafted stories, and for all the “write it for you” posts it still feels like it doesn’t matter. Like no one wants it. And that’s when writers start to think they’re awful, their ideas are bad, their style is weak.
Worse? They get shitty, mean-spirited asks and comments. (Even if it’s not “hate”. I’m still baffled by the people who say they couldn’t finish a one-shot of mine because there wasn’t a significant age gap between the Reader and the male character… but I don’t think that’s strictly hate, as such. Dispiriting, though.)
And what happens then? They stop writing. The stories cease. And the fic buffet becomes more and more one-note, more and more dictated by prevailing winds and a particular kind of purple prose style. And the readers - who might have found those stories if more people had engaged with them and reposted and shared them - wonder why no one seems to write for them.
A while back I wrote a tag that was something like “there’s room for everything”. Unfortunately, that “everything” remains a little limited, at least in terms of what actually seems to get picked up and gain traction. And “there’s room for everything” doesn’t mean that all writers are above reproach, either.
Try something new, people. Give a soft story a go. Who knows, you might like it.
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moonstruckme · 5 months ago
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hi maeee!! would you ever write reader x doctor! remus where they dated but then had a nasty break up? maybe reader shows up at the hospital and remus has to treat her and is all concerned and shocked? if not it’s okayyy i hope you’re well!! 🫶🫶
Thank you for your request sweetheart, hope you're well too!
cw: stitches, mention of blood
doctor!Remus x fem!reader ♡ 780 words
Remus opens your door with an apology on his lips. 
“Sorry about the wait, I had—” He freezes. 
You grin at him. It’s half grimace. “Hi.” 
“What…” Remus stares at you while his hand finds the wall as if on autopilot, picking up your chart. “You…you…” He skims it, but it feels like only half of his brain is working. “You hit your head?” 
You shrug, sheepish. You look unnervingly casual with dried blood caked on half of your face. “Sort of.” 
“What do you mean, sort of?” His voice pitches before he can stop it, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to master himself. 
“I mean, it wasn’t on purpose,” you hedge. “I fainted first.” 
He pushes out a breath. Walks towards you. “Alright, let’s see.” 
The cut is above your eyebrow, and Remus places his hands carefully on your forehead and your jaw, lifting the gauze up to see it. Gentle, professional touches. 
“Are you experiencing any dizziness?” 
“They’ve already said I have a concussion, if that’s why you’re asking.” 
“Oh.” That was probably on the chart. He picks it up again, reading more thoroughly. “And you’ve already had anesthetic, too?” 
“That’s what they tell me.” 
Remus doesn’t mistake your buoyant tone for nonchalance. You’ve always shrouded your anxiety in smiles and good humor. To someone who knows you, it only gives you away. 
“Alright,” he says, making a conscious effort to banish his own worry from his voice. He pulls up a stool beside your bed and starts gathering his tools. “I’m just going to get set up, and then we can start. You shouldn’t feel anything at all.” He glances at you, seeing you bring your bottom lip between your teeth. “Do you know why you fainted?” 
You sigh, and it comes loose. “Yeah. Dehydration.” 
Remus looks at you sideways. “How did that happen?”
“Okay, you can put away your judgy tone,” you say, lips quirking up slightly. “I was helping a friend move into her new apartment. It’s hot out. It’s hard to tell dehydration from exhaustion when you’re carrying that much heavy stuff, you know?” 
He makes a noncommittal humming sound, but you roll your eyes like you can hear his critical thoughts anyway. “Why didn’t you take a break?” he asks. 
“I didn’t want to complain.” 
Remus huffs out a breath, amused despite himself. “You always were terrible at that.” 
“Hey.” You sound on the brink of laughter. “Terrible at what?” 
“At asking for the things you need. You’re always so worried about inconveniencing anyone you forget about yourself.” 
He lifts the gauze from your wound, wiping the area clean before readying the suture needle. You tilt your head up at his touch, a cautious, sweet sort of smile playing on your lips. When your gaze finds his, it’s like the world softens. 
“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he tells you. The endearment aches in his throat, tender and familiar and far too intimate for whatever you are now, but if you notice you don’t show it. You close your eyes obediently. 
Remus likes to think he gives his best effort to all his patients, but he knows as he works slowly on your stitches that he’s being extra careful with you. His eyes stay on his work with laser focus, one hand splayed across your hairline to steady him. 
“Alright?” he asks you softly. 
You loose a breath, somewhat shaky. “Yeah,” you say. “You’re right, I can’t really feel anything. It’s weird.” 
“It might leave a bit of a scar,” he apologizes. “I’m trying to be as neat as I can, though.” 
Your eyes open, seeking his, but you close them again when he tsks at you. 
“That’s fine,” you say in a quiet voice. “I don’t mind if it does.” 
Remus’ breath sticks in his lungs a bit, an old memory suddenly coming to him crystal clear. You in bed, lit by moonlight coming in through the open window, tracing his scars with your fingers and your mouth. Exceedingly gentle, not because you thought you’d break him but because you wanted to be, whispering sweet words that etched themselves into his heart and never left. 
“It wouldn’t look bad on you,” he agrees. 
“Right by my eyebrow, yeah?” Even with your eyes closed, your face is still expressive, your other eyebrow lifting with the corners of your mouth. “I think it’d look pretty badass.” 
Remus has the terrible, fervent urge to kiss the skin beside that forming scar. He doesn’t know what he’s allowed, but he might just be desperate enough not to care. Maybe he’ll indulge after the stitches are done. 
“Yeah,” he says, lovelorn. “It probably would.”
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messiahzzz · 1 year ago
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i have seen several posts around that addressed how discouraging gale from taking the crown of karsus is “keeping him from realizing his true potential.” that tara is merely upset at his choice, instead of being utterly devastated at the loss of her little love. that it’s not a bad ending per se because to get there he didn’t need to sacrifice 7000 innocent souls in the process. gale isn’t continuing the cycle of abuse either, he still appears to love tav and does come back for them to offer them ascension. he wants them to be equal, so it can’t possibly be an unhealthy dynamic, right?
but what of gale himself, his own convictions, values, and everything he holds dear? everything flawed and human that shaped him into the person he is?
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player: are you saying you want to ascend? claim godhood?
gale: no, not like that. i don't want to join them. i want to better them. a god's powers, paired with a mortal conscience, a mortal heart.
gale’s motivation for acquiring godhood is that he will able to aid mortals in a way no other god has ever done before. he won’t hide behind pretense nor require blind devotion of his followers. he will understand and be able to empathize. he wholeheartedly believes that he will be different - he will act.
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gale: [..] the gods could aid us if they wished, but instead they cower behind ao. so let us act ourselves.
gale believes that by becoming a god he will kill two birds with one stone: aid mortals and acquire enough power to quash any of his insecurities and enemies in the process. that by ridding himself of every perceived flaw he'll finally feel like he will have enough to offer - maybe, just maybe he'll even be content. his flaws are merely holding him back from becoming the best version of himself, and by ridding himself of everything fallible, he will be whole. maybe this is what all of his suffering has led up to. maybe the orb chose him. maybe the reason he had to endure all the pain, isolation, and excruciating loneliness was so that he could realize that he was meant for something even greater. after all, power feeds ambition. and what is more powerful than a god? his convictions were certainly naive, he possesses enough knowledge to know better. don't get me wrong, part of him definitely wants to spite mystra a lil. but his intentions at that time were mostly pure. a reflection of his self-hatred and feelings of inadequacy.
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player: this is wrong, gale. that power will corrupt you, even if you can seize it.
gale: it won't, i swear to you. it's merely a tool - a means to an end.
once we meet gale at the party in his new godlike form, it is apparent that even with all the power at his fingertips, he has reached no greater knowledge about himself. his insecurities are still as present as before, he merely is less subtle in his compensation - repeatedly highlighting his grandeur and how dull life on faerun is compared to the wonders of elysium. it is also genuinely crushing to see how little he thinks of himself even now.
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gale: i was nothing. a drifting dust mote of a wizard, abandoned by my goddess, my powers lost, my reputation destroyed. and look at me now. i'm their proof.
any perceived dismissal of his Greatness™ is met with immediate disdain.
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gale: a bold decision to treat a divine being with such cold indifference.
nodecontext: aloof, annoyed you weren't impressed with him
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gale: you mortals do love to live dangerously, don't you?
nodecontext: the slightest hint of a threat - you've probably made an enemy here today. or at least, you've lost a friend.
he is still desperate to impress. emphasizing what an honor it is that a new-born god chose to bless their little soiree with his presence. gaze upon all his divine glory! gale has now become the embodiment of everything he criticized about the gods. his original intentions and plans are discarded and long forgotten. he assuages his erstwhile companions by telling them to simply pray to him, in case they should ever require aid. if they're lucky and their ambition pleases him, he might even deliver.
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player: what does the 'god of ambition' offer to his followers?
gale: i 'offer' them nothing. i inspire them to seize their destinies for themselves.
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player: interesting, so you help mortals help themselves?
gale: precisely. though that isn't to say i'm averse to the odd bit of direct encouragement.
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gale: [..] my aims are set a little higher than offering cursory blessings to just any half-decent spellcaster.
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gale: regardless, ethical quandaries are more the remit of my mortal devotees. they do love to talk, and faerun is starting to listen.
aiding "any half-decent spellcaster" is unbefitting of his status. he isn't concerned with questions of ethics and morality either. deeming such matters beneath his divine capabilities.
once gale has ascended and established his domain, what remains of the gale we knew? what of his mortal heart?
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minthara: your ambition is not cruel, but you fear that if you indulge it, you will lose yourself in the mysteries of the weave and unravel the world.
minthara: you are afraid of so many things, and it is that fear that keeps you true to yourself.
gale did lose himself and ultimately became one of his biggest fears. considering that his existence as a being of pure ambition leads him to constantly seek out greater heights, it isn't farfetched to believe that raphael's prediction will indeed come true.
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player[astarion]: ambition? finally, a god i can get behind...
gale: i assure you, this is merely the prelude to a far grander vision. elysium's in for something of a shake-up.
all that remains of gale is a thin veneer of the person he used to be. what he presents is a hollow echo of the old gale. he does retain some of his mannerisms and quirks, but he is definitely a lot colder and more condescending. if his personality already changed that drastically after a duration of only 6 months, what will he inevitability turn into when he has eternity at his disposal?
essentially, you are aiding gale in the eradication of himself. eradicating everything about him that made him into the loveable, charismatic, awkward, kind, buoyant person he was. everything about him that he perceived as defective, flawed, and lesser-than. before, his hubris was merely an expression of his own discontentment and low self-worth, but now he is hubris incarnate. all of his worst qualities have been amplified.
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gale: i am ambition incarnate. as indistinguishable from that most potent sensation as mystra herself is from the weave. and word is spreading.
nodecontext: palpable, almost unsettling excitement from him - hint of megalomania
he put his trust in tav, trusting their judgment and relying on them to nudge him in the right direction. after all, they had plenty of opportunities to show him that they are an ally worth following and confiding in. but in the end, the prospect of what he could be, the things he could give them, the enemies he could yet conquer, won over the desire to simply accept him and help him rebuild a life on solid ground. tav denied him the unconditional love he craves most out of their own selfish desires.
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tara: you were looking out for him. i expected better of you.
as i've already mentioned, gale desires nothing more than to be seen, accepted, loved, and valued. having a partner who wholeheartedly supports and believes in him is enough to make him feel content. most importantly - he just wants to live. to enjoy life with everything it has to offer. his ambition can’t be quenched because he hungers still. believing that only by acquiring more power will he finally be enough and reach said acceptance.
we see in his good ending that his own contentment was even able to influence and (temporarily) sate the orb's ever-present hunger:
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gale: [..] or perhaps the orb's hunger was fuelled by my own, and my contentment influences it in much the same way.
gale: that's how i feel with you - content. it's a rather unfamiliar feeling, i must say. not something gale of waterdeep ever craved.
it is devastating that he doesn't reach the same feeling of fulfillment if he chooses to pursue godhood, and is instead compelled to continuously surpass his own accomplishments. not being granted rest or reprieve.
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gale: i achieved everything we hoped i would, and still i'm not good enough for you?
gale pursuing godhood isn't evidence that he "has been evil all along" or that he "just waited to be unleashed" either. we can't diminish tav's influence in this outcome, they are after all an extension of the player. able to steer every companion toward a path of redemption or to enable them in their worst traits. fandom has already established that by letting astarion ascend you are actively supporting him in becoming the very thing he despises most, putting your own ambitions and idea of what you want him to be above his healing, this is no different.
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tara: the gale i knew wasn't like this. he recognised his mistakes. he was contrite. all he wanted to do was live.
tara: unfortunately, he fell into company that turned his gaze towards foolishness. yes, i mean you.
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player: gale is his own man, tara.
tara: false. he was mine. though now he belongs only to his own pride.
yes, the epilogue cutscene is beautiful and there is something bittersweet and romantic about his love for tav being one of the few emotions that remained a constant throughout the past 6 months. he didn't need to come back for them, but he did cause he loves them still. no matter how warped his definition of love may be now. while it is abundantly clear that tav ranks lower on his priority list than they did before, his commitment remains.
gale fears isolation, hoping to never return to the time when he was hopeless and alone, stuck inside his tower. by heading in this direction he is once again creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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tara: [..] if i pretended you hadn't turned tail on every lesson you set out to learn, i'd have no right to call myself your friend.
morena may as well have already resigned herself to her son’s death. elminster partly blames himself. for his lapse in judgment, as well as being the one who plucked him from obscurity in the first place. mourning the kind, bright-eyed boy who cried at the scorched roses in his neighbor's garden. tara won't be here anymore to care and look out for him either. he has lost his oldest and dearest friend, the one who witnessed his downfall from grace and never left his side. who believed him to be the finest mind AND the finest wizard she's ever had the pleasure to know. who was certain that he’d find a way out of any crisis no matter the circumstances. ...and if tav declines his offer to ascend with him? what does he have left?
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gale: yes, i am rather radiant, aren't i?
tara: don't flatter yourself, gale. you've debased yourself in ways i could never have fathomed.
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tara: goodbye gale, i hope the heavens are worth it.
gale’s godhood ending deals with the loss of humanity, the loss of oneself, and everything one holds dear. it is a devastating and bone-chilling narrative. it is a tragedy.
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gale: i hope you don't think less of me. great ambition should not come at the expense of what you already hold dear. i see that now.
if gale could see himself, he would be horrified at the losses he deemed necessary to get here. he would be horrified at what he’s become.
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the-shipper-center · 3 months ago
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How to know if you've been manipulated into believing you are an anti
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> Guilt by Association:
If you've been told that liking certain content automatically makes you a bad person or aligns you with harmful groups, that's a red flag. This tactic plays on guilt and can push you to reject things based on fear, not your own beliefs.
> Pressure to Conform
Have you ever felt like you must agree with a group or face being ostracized or attacked? Manipulation often relies on social pressure to force people into one perspective.
> Misinformation
If the arguments against proship rely on scare tactics or misinformation (like over-generalizing harmful behavior or falsely equating fiction to reality), that’s a sign that you may have been influenced through fear rather than facts.
> Silencing Nuanced Conversations
If you’ve noticed that discussions around proship/anti-ship in your circles discourage nuance, critical thinking, or even hearing out differing opinions, it’s likely you’ve been steered into a rigid belief system.
> Disconnecting from Your Own Likes
If you once enjoyed certain ships or fictional works but now feel uncomfortable or ashamed to admit it(without any clear personal reason)ask yourself if that shame was imposed from outside.
> Shaming for Thought Crimes
If you've been made to feel guilty or ashamed for simply thinking about a ship or idea, even if you’ve never acted on it, that’s a form of thought policing. This tactic implies that even private enjoyment of fiction is wrong and that you're only “good” if your thoughts align with a certain group.
> Cult-Like Group Dynamics
Does the community you’re involved in enforce strict rules about what can and can’t be enjoyed, isolating or attacking anyone who doesn’t follow the norm? Manipulative groups often demand loyalty to a single cause or belief system, punishing deviation with social exclusion, harassment, or cancellation.
> You Feel Conflicted
If deep down you still enjoy certain ships or fandom content but feel torn between your personal enjoyment and the pressure to conform, take this as a sign. Internal conflict often arises when you’re being pushed into beliefs that don’t align with your authentic self.
> Over-reliance on “Influencers”
If you’ve formed your opinions solely based on what online personalities or fandom influencers have said, you might want to rethink. Influencers can sometimes push their own agendas, and it’s important to critically evaluate their claims rather than blindly accepting them.
> Redefining Terms
Have you noticed how certain communities redefine words like “abuse” or “harm” to fit their agenda? Manipulators often blur the line between fiction and reality by changing definitions. For instance, enjoying a fictional ship doesn’t mean supporting real-life harm, but some people will try to convince you otherwise to gain control over the narrative.
> Fear of Being “Canceled”
If your fear of being attacked or “canceled” is driving you to adopt anti-proship views, then your stance is likely based on external pressure, not personal conviction. The fear of social backlash can force people into silence or compliance, even when they don’t truly agree with the anti-proship movement.
> Gaslighting
If people in your fandom spaces make you question your own enjoyment of ships, telling you that your feelings are “wrong” or that “you don’t realize how harmful that content is,” you might be experiencing gaslighting. They’re trying to make you doubt your own tastes and values, convincing you to adopt theirs instead.
> Virtue Signaling
Does your involvement with anti-proship ideas feel more about proving that you’re “good” or “moral” in the eyes of others? Virtue signaling often relies on outwardly showing alignment with the “correct” opinion without encouraging deeper thought.
> Isolation
If you’ve been cut off from friends or fandoms that are proship, ask yourself if this was really your choice. Manipulators often push you to distance yourself from people or spaces that don’t align with their views, isolating you in a controlled environment where your new beliefs are constantly reinforced.
> Moral Panic Culture
Have you noticed how anti-proship rhetoric mirrors larger societal moral panics, where certain ideas or interests are exaggerated to be dangerous or harmful? These movements often rely on fear-mongering, claiming that enjoying fictional content can lead to real-world harm, without concrete evidence to support it. Being swept up in a moral panic can make you feel like you’re doing the “right” thing, but it often stifles critical thinking.
> The “Right Way” to Fandom
If you’ve been told there’s only one way to enjoy fandom and that anything outside of those strict guidelines is wrong, you’ve likely encountered gatekeeping. Fandom is about exploring different interests, genres, and relationships. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to engage with fictional content, but manipulation tactics thrive by enforcing rigid boundaries and shaming those who deviate.
Vs the ACTUAL Antis - how they behave?
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In many fandom spaces, the term "anti" refers to individuals or groups who position themselves against certain ships, content, or fan activities, often on moral grounds. However, beneath the surface of this "moral crusade," many antis engage in harmful behaviors that revolve around bullying and censorship rather than promoting genuine discourse or protecting others from harm.
> The Focus on Bullying
Antis often claim their actions are about "protecting" people, especially minors, from harmful content. However, what they’re really doing is targeting and harassing individuals who enjoy certain ships or tropes they dislike.
Public Shaming: Antis will often single out and publicly humiliate individuals over their fandom interests, especially if they engage with “problematic” ships or tropes. This public shaming can include doxxing (releasing personal information), starting harassment campaigns, and rallying others to dogpile their target.
Harassment and Threats: Instead of engaging in productive conversation or respecting different views, antis frequently resort to sending hate messages, insults, and even death threats to people who engage in content they think is inappropriate. This extreme bullying behavior shows that the goal isn’t about morality—it’s about control.
Name-Calling and Labels: Antis are quick to label anyone who disagrees with them as dangerous or morally corrupt. They’ll often call people “abusers,” “pedophiles,” or “incest apologists” simply for enjoying certain fictional ships, even if those claims have no basis in reality.
> Censorship Over Discussion
Antis don’t engage in thoughtful dialogue or debate—they aim to censor and silence any opinions that don’t align with theirs.
Mass Reporting: One common tactic is organizing mass reporting campaigns to get fan art, fanfiction, or even entire blogs taken down. They’ll flag content they disagree with, often manipulating platform policies to enforce bans or removals, regardless of whether the content actually violates terms of service.
Policing Tags and Spaces: Antis frequently attempt to take control of fandom spaces by policing tags, platforms, and even fan events. They demand that certain ships or content be removed or banned, claiming that those things "shouldn't exist," and attacking creators who refuse to comply with their demands.
Gatekeeping: Antis often act as gatekeepers, deciding who is “allowed” to participate in fandom and who isn’t. They’ll dictate what types of content are "acceptable" and label any content or creator they disagree with as problematic, often pushing for full exclusion of that person or fandom from certain spaces.
> Hypocrisy in Morality Policing
Claiming to Protect While Harming: While antis claim they are trying to protect marginalized groups or young people from harmful content, they’re actually perpetuating harm by bullying, attacking, and driving people away from fandom spaces.
Attacking Minors: Ironically, many antis target the very people they claim to protect. Minors who engage with fandom content—whether they’re artists, writers, or just fans—are often harassed, attacked, and shamed for their interests, even if those interests are completely harmless. Antis frequently ignore the well-being of the people they supposedly advocate for, focusing instead on being “right.”
> Bullying and Censorship Aren't Fandom Values
At its core, fandom is about creativity, exploration, and community. It’s a space where people can engage with fiction in personal ways, often as a means of expressing themselves or processing difficult emotions. Antis, however, turn fandom into a battleground for moral purity, where bullying and censorship are used to force conformity.
If your fandom experience is being dictated by fear of harassment or being censored, it’s important to step back and recognize that this behavior is not normal or healthy. Fandom should be a place of joy, not a place of judgment. No one should be bullied for their fictional preferences, and everyone deserves the freedom to engage with media in their own way. Don’t let antis rob you of the freedom to explore and create.
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revelboo · 2 months ago
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I love your writing, do you think youll ever want to write for ratchet or bee again?
They’re both on my list to update along with TFP Soundwave!
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The Weakends Pt 7
TFP Ratchet x Reader
• Sterilizing tools and putting them away, it’s the silence that snares him. Glancing over, he vents as he realizes you’re slumped over in an exhausted sleep against a container, arms and cheek still wet with energon. And he wonders if he’s asking too much of you, more than you can give. Not Cybertronian, but still willing to help without being asked. You hadn’t uttered a single complaint during the chaos, moving almost like you could read his mind, scrambling where he needs your little hands before he can give the order. Now in the lull after, his servos are trembling again and he hates it. He’s only one mech and there’s so many lives counting on him. If it hadn’t just been Bumblebee critically injured, he wouldn’t have been enough. He’s lost companions before, but there’s so few of them now and he can’t fail any of them. Dropping a tool when the shaking gets worse and swearing in Cybertronian, he hates this weakness. “When’s the last time you took a break, doc?” Glancing over at the husky question and that stupid nickname Wheeljack had bestowed upon him, he realizes the noise woke you and you’re staring at him. “And I mean longer than an hour or so.”
• Fully expecting him to get angry or indignant again at your question, you lay your cheek on an outstretched arm and just wait for the outburst. For him to go right back to the gruff medic act and insist he’s fine. Instead he runs a big hand over his helm, head tipping back. When he finally looks back over at you, that expression on his face isn’t one you’ve seen before. It’s real and vulnerable, locking the breath in your lungs as he reaches for you almost hesitantly. And you push to your tired feet to let him curl his servos around you, lift you to his frame. “You’re one to talk,” he grumbles, running a servo against your cheek that comes away smudged with energon. He’s just staring at the smudge like he’s frozen. Like it scares him.
• “Bedtime, doc,” you say, patting your hand on his servos curled around you. That little touch breaking him from the worry by giving him something else to focus on. You. Grabbing a cleaning cloth, he carefully wipes your arms down, aware of the almost smile on your lips as you let him. Because you know him well enough to know he needs to take care of everyone else. “Alright, hands are clean,” you finally protest with a yawn, laying your cheek on his servos as his spark thrums. He just means to carry you to the makeshift bed on a corner of his desk, but you curl an arm about one servo, sleepy eyes watching him. Like you know he’ll keep working as exhausted as he is. “Stay.” It’s a quiet request, an olive branch extended to him. And venting tiredly, he climbs on his berth with you. There’s still so much to do, but as he settles you on top of his chassis, a hand draped over you, those things can wait. Because he does need this. So much it hurts.
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xervn · 11 months ago
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like a french girl 🎨
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part 1 - paint me | part 2 | art major ellie x dance major reader | ellie photo
ao3 link
summary: ellie had been struggling with finding the perfect model for her art final. that was until she saw you.
18+ MDNI | 2.2k words | tags; college au, pining, only a little explicit, no use of y/n, not proofread
disclaimer: not an art or dance major, don't shoot!
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Scribble, scratch, throw. This has been Ellie’s routine since she moved onto campus.
Why? Her professor told her that she draws the human body like it’s lifeless. Ranting about how they’re too one-dimensional and have no depth, her lines are too sharp or not sharp enough; flat and boring in looks and in feeling. 
Now listen, Ellie has nothing against criticism. She respects her professor and she’s aware that her drawings lack “vitality”. It’s been something she’s struggled with for a while now, an effect of some recent events and overall adjusting to college life. 
Ellie isn’t unable to grasp the anatomy of the body, in fact it’s the opposite. She knows the human body is complex and needs thorough observation. The way the sun hits the skin, the hairs on a knuckle, the creases of a smile. Wide, small, big, tall; no two bodies are exactly the same. 
Really, the imagery is so clear to her, but she finds it impossible to transfer the life and motion of the body onto a piece of paper without truly understanding the person. The way she sees it, every body has a story, and in order to make a good piece she needs to know that story.
Since art school is filled to the brim with inspiring, exciting, and vibrant people, she has, of course, tried to talk with them. She attempted to get to know the models, ask them general questions and hope something clicks. Unfortunately, that has yet to happen. She can’t really ask her friends either without it getting awkward. Imagine, “ Oh, hey guys! Can you guys get naked and pose in one spot for my homework?”   Hear how weird that sounds? Even though she’s sure Jesse would definitely be down, she values her eyes.
 Any “muse” she could possibly ever want was right in front of her, so why was it really impossible for her to find one?
 Well, because Ellie didn’t find anyone interesting enough. She’s not shallow or anything, it has nothing to do with how the model looked, Ellie has had several good-looking models. It was more about how she perceived them. It’s just that she hasn’t seen a model that made her ask questions like: “ How’d they get that scar?”  “ What does that tattoo mean?” Stuff like that.
The last interesting model she had was probably a fucking homeless guy she shared a blunt with outside a gas station many moons ago. Till this day, he might be one of her best pieces. There’s not a lot of moments like that here.
Nonetheless, Ellie saw this developing– extremely lame— personal requirement of hers annoying as shit. It’s holding her back big time, but she couldn’t help it even if she really wanted to.
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It’s practically useless to keep trying. The tiny voice in Ellie's head presses her to keep going, keep failing, but enough is enough. She is seriously burnt out and any more of this might kill her. The only thing that could help right now is a meaty slice of pizza and a blunt as soon as she thought of it.
Ellie clears out her desk, knocking the stack of crumpled paper into a conveniently placed trash can; a placement made from her constant trials and errors. She pushes up, and stretches widely, obnoxiously groaning like an old man by the end of it. She quickly tidied herself up, tying up half of her hair into a ponytail and throwing on a dark-green flannel shirt she had to sniff before wearing over her plain white tee. She takes a quick look into her floor-length mirror, making sure she looks presentable before grabbing what she needs to head out.
Just as her hand reached for the silver knob, Ellie felt this overwhelming urge to look back. God, she knows what she is going to look back at, but she really hopes she doesn’t. Unfortunately, her eyes land on her sketchbook, laid flat on the desk underneath a lamp’s warm light. She shouldn’t.
She needs a break. She knows she needs a break, but there is a twinge of hope, faith, lodged somewhere inside her. The same faith that’s kept her from dropping out every day for the past four months. Ellie groans as she drags her feet to her desk where she whisks up the brown book and shoves it in her tote bag with an accompanying pencil. She swivels back to the door and strolls out, silently praying her mood improves in the next hour.
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The cafeteria was surprisingly crowded, but Ellie managed to get her pizza without saying ‘fuck it’ to the line. Still, the thought of eating between this buzzing mess when she was in such a shitty mood turned her off. Thankfully, she knew that everyone would be everywhere but the upstairs balcony, especially during this chilly time of year. No sane person would eat out there, and she’s not particularly sane. Ellie saunters off to the balcony and sits herself at a small table facing the view.
It only took a glance around before she came to the realization that the view is not really a view. There’s only a dorm a few feet away, directly across. It’s a large brick-laid, generic building with wide windows. If it weren’t for the blinds, the view into a room would probably be good enough to read a label on something. Ellie’s freckled face grimaces at the thought, imagining what it’d be like if someone watched her rage as she messed up her homework over and over from this distance. Despite that, she thought it’d probably be a pretty good spot to live in. It’s close to the cafeteria and probably a lot bigger than her 1x1 dorm.
With a twinge of curiosity piquing her mind, Ellie glimpses over the windows, and for the most part, they are all closed.
All closed, but yours.
Yours doesn’t even have blinds. You’re on the 3rd floor and almost completely unobscured in a black camisole, sitting on your questionably roomy windowsill with a leg perched up. Ellie can see the fairy lights strung up in your bedroom, and a line of succulents closer to the window; ordered by size, which she briefly thought was cute. 
You aren’t facing the window, so she can only see your back. What she could see, though, is you doing your hair, occasionally swaying to what she can only imagine is music. Your room is high, but low enough for her to identify you if she had the pleasure of knowing you. Knowing you, reverberates in her head. Does she know you? Has she met you before? Amongst that babble, there is one more question she is slowly trying to gather an answer to. 
Time passes, most definitely shorter than Ellie would have thought passed. Her eyes have been glued on you the whole time, she even forgot about her, now freezing cold, pizza just so she could gawk at you. She still hasn’t seen your face yet, barely even a glimpse, but she already thinks you are stupidly beautiful just by the way you move.
From the graciousness of your movements alone, she thought there was no way in hell you didn’t know she was watching. At some point, your arms got tired, so you smoothly rolled your aching shoulders back; stretching into an arched, effortlessly perfect posture. Ellie’s eyes traced that slight curve of your back as if you’d disappear if she broke off from you.
There is no way it gets better from that, is what she thinks to herself, only to be shut up immediately after when she sees that perfectness of your back stay as you bend over and shift onto both knees to grab something far away, bringing your shorts in view. So short— so tight , they could easily be mistaken for panties. 
It was unexpected to say the least, Ellie could feel her face heating up and had to look around her to see if anyone else could see what she was seeing right now. Ellie wondered about the practicality of those shorts, wondered what exactly they were supposed to cover, leering at the plush of your ass peeking out. She thoughtlessly lets her jaw drop before muttering out a low, impressed, and barely over a whisper, “Well, fuck.”
You must’ve noticed your shorts riding up, since you quickly pulled them down after you grabbed what you wanted. Ellie clears her throat, internally scolding herself for being so gross— so perverted. Her brows furrow in embarrassment from all the dirty thoughts she brewed up in that moment. But for some reason, she still doesn’t look away. Well, there’s a list of reasons for her to look away, but she feels like ignoring it. 
Then a cold gust of wind bites past her face, clearly a sign from the universe that she should snap out of it, and snap out of it she does. 
What the hell happened to her? What is it about you that she keeps leaning into? Suddenly something clicks in her brain. After months of creative agony, something finally clicked. She has sat here completely fascinated by you and she couldn’t tell sooner?
In all honesty, to say she is just “interested” in you would be an understatement. Yeah, now she thinks you’re the perfect model for her final, but she wants to know you beyond just the drawing. A plus is that you just happened to be hot, and Ellie has never been attracted to a subject before, so the whole thing was new and exciting to her. Just the thought of drawing you made her remember why she loved art so much.  Ellie reaches for her tote bag sitting in an empty seat beside her, pulling out her sketchbook with more enthusiasm than she probably ever has. She sets the book down, opening up a blank page with one hand and tightening her grip on her pencil in the other.
She looks back up at your window, ready to sketch your life onto paper and..  Shit. You’re looking back.
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Today has been a good day for you, your teacher chose  you to teach the choreo you’ve been working on for weeks to your classmates. It was an obvious ego booster for you. You felt good and you wanted to look good too, even if you weren’t going out anywhere. It was just one of those nights. You wanted to experiment with your hair, thinking maybe you’ll do something new before your next practice. Dye it, cut it.. something.
It’s been a while since you started, and after several wrist and shoulder cramps, you were finally finished. You take a look into your hand mirror, peering at your reflection. You’re satisfied now, looking exactly how you’re feeling if you minus the dingy sleep clothes you’re in. 
♫ My heart, I never be, I never see, I never know. ♫
Grimes? Really? You pout, upset that your playlist didn’t magically read your mood. What you need is real 2000’s hot girl music. Britney Spears, Nelly Furtado, or Beyoncé for crying out loud.
“Alexa, skip!” You shout across the room, just loud enough for the device to hear. 
The stupid thing doesn’t even light up, so you call out a few more times but to no avail. Isn’t the whole point of that thing to be voice automated? You sigh and look around for your phone, and seeing it’s nowhere in front of you, you figure it’s behind. You twist your torso to find your phone behind you and luckily you do. As you pick it up, you casually glance out the window without any expectations. 
Did you see a figure in the blur as you looked away? You question your eyes, but you decide to take another look and just find out for yourself.
You peer back down and your eyes meet with someone else’s. The sudden eye contact between you and this woman instantly mortified you. Your heart sunk, and all you could do was raise your brows stupidly. She was surprised too, even in the dim light you could see her shocked expression boring back at you. Not only that, it went on for way longer than it should have. Any normal person would’ve looked away, but her eyes lingered on you before she hastily turned away. 
You’ve been sitting here, dressing up your hair, listening to your music without a care in the world. Far too absorbed in yourself to realize there’s someone outside your window. You slide off your windowsill and out of sight. Just as your bottom finally hits the wood floor, you feel the coldness of it against your skin and you’re immediately conscious of the fact that your ass was literally out at some point. 
The poor girl was trying to eat her food and you were bending over in front of your window like a harlot. It certainly didn’t help that she looked kinda hot. Did she? You peeked over your windowsill, hoping to get another look to really assess her hotness, but she was already gone. Whatever, maybe she didn’t see? But she looked embarrassed… embarrassed for you probably!
You hide your face in your hands and topple to the side, letting out a fake sob. Oh, god. You can already imagine Dina’s face when you tell her. You couldn’t help but burst out laughing at that thought. That was humiliating as shit, but it’s whatever. It’s not like you’ll see her again. 
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side note: if you have any tropes you'd like to see w/ this universe pls do drop an ask 🤭
click 4 more!
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burst-of-iridescent · 9 months ago
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No, Shipping Zutara Is Not Supporting Amatonormativity (Please Use Some Fucking Braincells For Once)
- a treatise by a severely pissed off aroace zutara shipper
since words don’t mean anything anymore (if they ever did on the esteemed piss-on-the-poor website), let’s start with a definition.
amatonormativity: the set of social assumptions that everyone prospers with a romantic relationship, thereby positioning marriage as a universal goal of adult life. amatonormativity forms the basis of several institutional structures that are built to cater to romantic bonds over all others, also manifesting in social pressure on individuals to find a romantic partner by pushing the false narrative that those who do not experience romance are automatically lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. it is usually characterized by the prioritization of romantic love over other forms of love, particularly platonic.
the anti-zutara argument based on this is as follows: wanting zutara to happen is amatonormative because it a) devalues zuko and katara’s platonic bond b) pushes the idea that men and women can’t be friends and c) doesn’t align with the themes of the show, as romantic love was never the point of atla.
i would like to take the time today to tell you that this is some fucking bullshit, for the following reasons:
one, this may come as a shock to some of you, but zutara shippers did not invent the concept of romantic love in avatar: the last airbender. you are more than welcome to criticize the pairings of suki/sokka, katara/aang, mai/zuko, yue/sokka, jin/zuko, jet/katara, and even kanna/pakku for perpetuating amatonormativity through their unnecessary romantic subplots. and if you don’t have anything to say about any of those pairings, then here’s a word for you: hypocrite.
zk shippers are not introducing the taint of romantic love into some kind of wholesome platonic utopia where it never existed. when we say zutara should have been canon, it is a statement that ends with the implicit instead of kat.aang and mai.ko tacked on at the back because if we were going to get a romantic relationship anyway, it might as well have been one that was well-developed, narratively impactful, and thematically relevant.
two, saying zutara is amatonormative is fucking rich when the main “romance” of atla is a three season long struggle to get out of the friendzone. aang’s desire to be in a romantic relationship with katara is one of his primary motivations throughout the show, and not once does either he or the narrative ever entertain the thought that just being katara’s friend might be enough. to the contrary, aang’s crush and the potential of its reciprocation is a fundamental part of how the story gets its audience to invest in both his character and the kat.aang relationship. they want you to want him to get the girl, and that’s the driving force of the ship’s development from start to finish.
you can see the influence of this in the way people defend why kat.aang had to happen: “aang would be crushed!” “it would break aang’s heart!” “aang deserves to be happy!” and that in and of itself is more amatonormative than any version of romantic zutara, as if this idea that aang is somehow doomed to a life of misery and loneliness just because he can’t be with the girl he likes isn’t inherently based on the assumption that platonic love can’t be as meaningful and satisfying as romantic love.
three, let’s be so fucking fr: a show written by cishet men in the early 2000s was not “subverting amatonormativity” by not making zutara happen, especially not when they went for the fucking olympic gold of romantic cliches — the hero gets the girl trope — instead. otherwise, why did the entire show end with an uncomfortably long liplock? if romance would’ve devalued zuko and katara’s platonic bond, then what the everloving fuck happened to their friendship in the comics and the legend of korra?
it is blatantly false to say that zutara shippers are the ones devaluing their platonic bond when the creators did it first. they evidently don’t view zutara’s platonic bond as equal to kat.aang’s romantic one, judging by their treatment of both relationships in the comics and LOK and the fact that they talked about kat.aang “winning” the ship war in the first place. because if the two relationships were of equivalent standing, why would there be a winner and a loser at all?
amatonormativity is baked into the DNA of atla, and while some people choose to reject this framework entirely (zk friendship >>> ka romance anyday), it is also not wrong for zk shippers to be annoyed at the treatment zutara received within the context of said framework. since the creators clearly thought a romantic relationship was better than a platonic one, they could at least have picked the couple that actually made sense instead of adding insult to injury by making that romance kat.aang. it is not amatonormative to acknowledge that zutara was not afforded the distinction it should have been in the eyes of those who wrote it, because it’s obvious that the decision to keep zuko and katara’s relationship platonic wasn’t to respect their friendship, but to position them as inferior to kat.aang.
four, detractors of romantic zutara often argue that their platonic relationship is inherently better & i’ve discussed before why that isn’t the case, but i also hate this argument because it’s perpetuating the very thing that aromantic people are trying to get rid of in the first place: the hierarchization of love. it is not the “gotcha!” you think it is to genuinely state that platonic love is better than romantic love, because it’s still buying into the idea that there’s some kind of order to categorizing human relationships. the solution to amatonormativity isn’t changing what form of love gets to be at the top of the list — it’s doing away with the hierarchy entirely.
i ship zuko and katara because canon already gave me their friendship. i already know what their platonic relationship looks like and that gives me more room for imagination in developing their romantic one because it’s a place canon didn’t go.
at the end of the day, friendship and romance are just different avenues of exploring intimacy. neither is inherently more valuable than the other, and neither is inherently more problematic. and if you truly believe in dismantling amatonormative beliefs, you would recognize that making a distinction between the two is only perpetuating the problem, not challenging it.
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vigilskeep · 6 months ago
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now that you finished inquisition, what did you think of it? like favorite things, least favorite, etc?
oh man okay
things i love about dragon age inquisition:
capturing the specific feeling of bonding with a group of people you have absolutely nothing in common with because u all had to go through something long and specific together
the maps can be so pretty and in places really calming and lovely to spend time in. it does make me want to explore and i have no explorer’s instinct
i love the war table and judgements i think those are really fun features
i like that approval for many major decisions applies to everyone regardless of who you bring to specific events/quests. it feels a lot less like you have to manage that really hard, as you sometimes do in the other games and also really noticeably to me in something like baldur’s gate 3. it’s irritating when i have to plan ahead and can’t take who i want to hear from
i like how attached you can get to little npcs who wander around
i loveeeee fighting dragons and how beautiful they all are
little puzzles <3
the collectibles are also mostly fine by me i am a magpie by nature. as long as i can find them, obviously, bc if i can’t they suck and this whole game sucks
the templar specialisation is fun and i enjoyed that part of combat a lot. wrath of heaven/spell purge combo is a power trip
i thought my character was pretty :) i defeated u in the end dai character creator. may you be as merciful when we meet in battle once more
i’m not a huge crafter but being able to tint things is rlly nice
blackwall’s romance is good
vivienne is there
they let me briefly tame a dragon at the end there
things i don’t love about dragon age inquisition:
some genuine cruelty in writing the dalish in a way that feels shockingly callous to the real world cultures the writers took inspiration from
never giving the dalish or the rebel mages any kind of voice of their own and making the player do all that work if they care, which i also feel limits my roleplaying creativity
refusing to let you challenge any of the often overwhelmingly conservative views expressed by other characters without receiving only derision and disapproval. inquisition is a game that punishes you at every turn for having your own opinions, in a way that could be interesting if it was willing to truly let you develop complex or antagonistic relationships with those characters, but ends up mostly just feeling mocking when nobody ever even tries to see your side, while simply agreeing with these people always rewards you with content. origins was capable of letting you engage in discussion, and da2 let you form rivalries that mattered; inquisition, despite starring some of the most intentionally controversial characters, does neither
the game engineering conflicts against groups like the freemen of the dales or the avvar that mean nothing to the player and range from vaguely to seriously upsetting in their assumptions about who it’s normal to just start killing en masse. it’s both boring and distressing
odd, for lack of a better word “casting choices”, like having the fantasy impoverished racial minority all be white within the party while the wealthiest and most privileged are characters of colour, or for a more in-world example having the elves express the most distaste towards elves and the mages express the most caution about mages. i don’t know that i quite have the vocabulary to fully discuss why these weird me out, but it all feels... disingenuous? and chosen to forestall criticism based on real world comparisons in a game series that i wish had the nerve to openly confront what it’s talking about if it’s going to try to make any of its conflicts feel relevant
most of the companions, and indeed most of the quests and time spent playing the game, feel disconnected from the main plot. it’s hard to feel any pressure when the game tells you we need to deal with the main plot “right now!” and “get there before corypheus!” when the bulk of the game is doing other things while you’re supposed to be doing that. the majority of companions could be cut without changing anything. and when you finally want to deal with the main plot you just click to start it. it’s not engaging
the game fails to fully expand dialogue for the player character options it provided, particularly notable with its confusing chantry focus when you’ve said for the dozenth time you’re not andrastian
the 2-handed weapon whirlwind ability sound effect is an exercise in creating the worst and most grating sound effect for someone to constantly hear
they didn’t let me romance vivienne
they killed my dragon :(
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excalibur-gone-missing · 9 months ago
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Paring: Tsukishima x fem reader
Requested: no
Genre: smut
Warning(s): cheating, unprotected sex, degradation
Summary: just smut
Word count: 837
Other works
Beta reader: none
a/n: I would greatly appreciate it if all of you could take a moment to comment on this fic. As an author, I find great value in your feedback, as it allows me to better comprehend my readers, and I thoroughly enjoy interacting with all of you. Constructive criticism is always welcome, so don't hesitate to talk about this fic or send me an ask.
[permanent taglist] [only for those interested, don’t fill the form otherwise]
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Tsukishima knows you like him. He’s aware that given the chance, you’d let him take you to new heights, letting him make you see stars. I mean, he’s already experienced your passion firsthand, so there’s little to no one to stop him from seeking it again, except perhaps your boyfriend.
Now, don’t get him wrong. Tsukishima isn’t one to tolerate adultery, especially when one of his friends does it. But for you, he sure can bend some rules. It’s not as if he’s in love with you; no, you’re not the type of woman he could fall for. But that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy the intense pleasure he feels when buried deep inside you, releasing all his pent-up frustrations.
He’s aware of the fact that you love your boyfriend to death, despite all his flaws. As a matter of fact, he also knows that your boyfriend loves you just as much. Who else would forgive a cheating bitch like you over and over, even after she says she would change? Could never be him, but it doesn’t matter to him at all. All he cares about is getting his dick wet, and as it seems, you are one of the best pussies in the city, so why should he not use you to your full potential?
“Does your simp of a boyfriend have any idea that you are getting your insides rearranged by me right now?” Tsukishima taunts, thrusting into you with such force that it leaves your mind reeling.
“N-no,” you stutter, your grip on his shoulders weakening under the intensity of his movements. With a swift motion, he flips you over on the bed, positioning you to his liking, and plunges back into your slick, eager flesh, continuing his relentless assault.
“Can’t fuck you like I can, now can he?” he mocks, feeling your pussy clenching his cock like never before.
“N-no,” you barely manage to answer, your mind going hazy with pleasure.
“Tell me, who fucks you this good, huh? Who fucks you so good that you are fine with cheating on your bitch of a boyfriend, you whore?”
“You, Tsuki- ah-,” you manage to utter, your words barely coherent as he hits spots inside you with a precision no other man has ever achieved.
“Yes, you cheating whore, scream my name. Let everyone know who fucks you better than your boyfriend,” he groans as he slaps you hard on your ass, making you scream even more.
“God, you’re squeezing me so tightly,” he groans, his member throbbing inside you as your walls tighten around him, creating a velvety ring at the base of his shaft.
The sound of intense skin slapping fills the room, mingling with your wild cries of pleasure, making him almost come to the edge.
“Creaming my cock so well like the slut you are, gosh you are one of the best pussies I have had,” he says gripping onto your neck to cut off your air supply, as your insides start spasming.
Sensing that you were about to come, the man immediately went to rub your clit, making your body tense up even more. Without warning, you spill out on his cock, milking both of your juices.
It doesn’t take Tsukishima much longer to spurt his load inside you. With some more thrusts, he empties himself fully inside you. Plopping beside you, he slips his soft dick out of you and scoops the mixture of both your cums leaking from your pussy and makes you lick it off his fingers, as you whine because of overstimulation.
After some time, he chirps up. “This will probably be the last time we fuck. Yamaguchi wanted to set me up with this girl, and I don’t want to do this while going out on dates with her.”
You look at him bewildered, “but what about us?”
“Huh?” he asks, clearly confused.
“About us, Tsuki, what will you do about the fact that I’m not with my boyfriend but you?” you ask.
“Maybe teach him how to fuck you for real. Also, if you think I would be in a relationship with you, you are wrong. You cheated on your boyfriend! I don’t want that shit in my life; I would very much like my partner to be loyal, unlike you,” giving you a look of disgust he continues.
“I fucked you because you are a good booty call, and are always available, but it’s time you get your shit together and stop involving me in your problems, plus it’s better if we don’t talk anymore. I don’t want my potential girlfriend to get insecure because of our past.”
With that, he collects his clothes and is out of the apartment in seconds, leaving you rethinking the decisions you had made and what exactly brought you to this place you are. What turned you into this cheating, lying woman, so much so that the boy you had called your best friend for the longest time ever, now looks at you with disgust.
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The end
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aziraphales-library · 22 days ago
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Hi mods!!! Thank you so much for the work you do 💛
I was thinking if there's fics you all wanted to add to the #mods favorites tag??
Here, have a cake for me to express my gratitude 🍰 some of my absolute favorites I found in this blog! 💛💛
Hello and thank you! <3 This ask prompted me to go through the tabs on my phone to bookmark and close the fics I've read. So, to add to the #mod faves tag, here are my favourites of the ones I've read recently...
Critical Upgrade (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tech) by Kirathaune (T)
Modern Office AU: Aziraphale likes his vintage computer equipment, but it's causing problems with his colleagues. Gabriel mandates an upgrade, and Crowley from IT is assigned to make it all work.
Our homeward steps were just as light by On1OccasionFork (T)
She flipped to the paperwork for the new gentleman, a Mr. A. Z. Fell. He was a retired literature professor, it seemed. He was slated to be in the room next to — oh, this could be a problem — Anthony.
Creative Writing for Creative Children and Panicked Nannies by munchmulch (T)
Unsurprisingly, it only takes a few moments for pounding feet to be heard from the hall before a harried looking man skids to the entrance of the room, halting with a jerk before actually stepping in. “Adam! You can’t just run off like that! I told you that they’re not going to want a bloo—“ he cuts himself off with a strangled sound, “blasted adult sitting in on a club!” --- Aziraphale is as prepared for the new school year as he can be-- what he's not prepared for is an awkward man in sunglasses who's about to pull Aziraphale into not only his own life, but the lives of Aziraphale's students.
Take Me to Heaven by TawnyOwl95 (M)
Aziraphale does not have a priest kink. His brother, Father Gabriel, is a priest, for goodness sake. It's just that Father Anthony isn't really like any priest Aziraphale has met before and he's thoroughly upsetting the carefully constructed habits Aziraphale has made to keep himself safe. When Father Anthony replaces Aziraphale as the conductor of St. Beryl's Church choir, they are forced to work together to get the choir up to snuff before Bishop Frances' visit. Aziraphale's attraction grows and it becomes harder to repress who he is and what he wants from life. A life he's starting to feel like he's wasted by trying so hard to conform.
The Garden of Temptation by tishae (E)
Anthony J Crowley is a gardener in the small village of Tadfield, making barely enough to get by. He rents a room, doesn't eat or drink much, but he's getting to live his 'passion', whatever that means. Aziraphale Godfrey, a professional antiques dealer, is engaged and he has no reason to be unhappy. He has a wonderful apartment, is taken care of, and only sometimes is he made to feel small and inadequate. When Crowley comes into an inheritance that includes a number of items that he's pretty sure are junk, he is way out of his depth, and readily calls up a professional to help him work through it. Turns out they both have a lot to unpack. or I wanted to write about sad Aziraphale becoming happy Aziraphale, so here we are.
The Parent Trap by illustrious_slimeman, nonbinarysharks (T)
Adam and Warlock are identical twins, separated as infants and each raised by one of their adoptive fathers. When a chance meeting at a summer camp brings them together again, they hatch a plan to get their helpless parents back together. In the process, they learn more about themselves, each other, and their parents' history than they ever imagined. --- This is based off of Melonsharks' Parent Trap AU and is a fairly faithful adaptation of the 1998 Lindsay Lohan version of the film but with a few changes here and there, a whole lot of new scenes, and accompanying illustrations courtesy of Shark! The fic is pretty much fully written at this point and will be updating every Saturday
- Mod D
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rubyboobidoo · 2 months ago
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mine | dark!sofia gigante x reader
sofia cant bear to live without you so when you threaten to leave her, she takes matters into her own hands
A/N: hi!! this is my first ever post eek - i got tired of refreshing the sofia x reader tag only to see like 4 posts 😔 if you have any requests or constructive criticism please lmk! (if you saw me post this days ago then delete it no you didn’t)
warnings: new writer, fem!reader, kidnapping, restraints, kissing, alcohol, pet names, suggestive material (17+)
the pulse of your own heart draws you from your sleep, your tired eyes met with the familiar sight of the dimly lit sitting room of the falcone mansion. you make a fruitless attempt to hoist yourself from whatever seat your on, only to be stopped by the restraints binding you hands at your back and ankles to the chair.
you can feel the warmth of the fire place just behind you, its flickering light casting shadows across the room, when a figure dressed entirely in black approached from your left. even in the darkest of rooms, you could recognise sofia.
she pulls up a chair in front of yours, elegantly crossing her legs as she sits.
tracing your jawline with her nail, "don't you remember?” she cocks her head “last night when you threatened to leave me... i couldn't bear the thought of losing you."
your mind can’t help but wander to the night in mention.
“sofia,” your lips tremble in the search for the right words “i can’t do this anymore. i can’t act like i don’t see the things you’re doing and i can’t act like they don’t bother me” with the little strength you have you turn in the direction of the door when sofia stops you, grabbing at your upper arm. you can feel her nails digging into your flesh as her gaze locks onto yours “y/n, you know i did this for us baby. i need you to understand that.”
the memories from that night seem hazy, slipping through your fingers.
she leans in close, her hot breath breaking you from your trance “so i decided we needed so alone time, just you and me.” you look up at her, tears welling in your eyes, the reality of your situation crashing down on you.
sofia straightens up, smoothing down her black silk nightgown. “oh don’t look at me like that, y/n. everything’s taken care of. now we can focus solely on us."
she smiles, but there's a coldness in her eyes "isn't that what you wanted, y/n? for me to show you how much you mean to me?”
“then why did you do those things sofia?” you practically spat.
“well we can’t have our perfect little life with monsters like my family in the way, can we?” she stands, sauntering to the fireplace and pouring herself a glass of wine from a bottle on the mantle.
“but they were your family-
“no. you are my family.” she turns to face you, eyes glinting dangerously in the firelight. "they were evil, just like my father. They deserved what they got." she takes a sip of her wine, tilting her head. "just like you deserve to be here with me, where you belong."
she sets her glass down, walking towards you with predatory grace and takes your jaw in her warm hand. it’s so strange how easily you can fall back into old habits, melting to putty in her palm.
“will you forgive me, princess?” before you can process a response you find yourself looking up at her through doe eyes, eagerly nodding.
she leans in, brushing her lips against yours in a tender kiss. suddenly, you’re overcome with need as the kiss becomes desperate. sofia’s lips move hungrily against yours. “please untie me sof, ‘wanna touch you” you plead.
she pulls away, seemingly satisfied with how easy you submit to her. she reaches behind you, unbinding you wrists before before working her way down the restraints at your ankles. as you wrap your arms around her neck, she guides you to your feet in a swift motion.
“i’m gonna take such good care of you, tesoro” she purrs, pulling you close against her “all you have to do is be mine.”
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villain-crown · 7 months ago
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challenge | @jegulus-microfic| words: 1210
critical care, part 7 (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 8, part 9)
a Jegulus nurse!AU
As soon as James set foot back in the critical care tower, it felt like everyone took one look at him and knew immediately that he’d fucked Regulus Black.
Which he hadn’t, by the way. 
He just desperately wished he had. 
They’d finished up their lunch with James dying to pull Regulus into a supply closet for some unsupervised quality time. Every sentence from that smirking mouth felt like his blood was being set on fire. But their breaks were nearly over, so he had settled for flirting more aggressively than he ever had in his life all the way back to the critical care tower elevator until James was so wound up that he was willing to be a bit reckless. 
“So what does a person have to do to get a goodbye kiss from you?” James quipped when they were alone in the lift with the doors closed. He was about a head taller than Regulus, and it felt good towering over the petite man. He braced himself with a palm against the wall just above Regulus’s soft black curls, looming above him and trying very hard to look cool. 
Regulus looked him up and down, evaluating him in that heated, challenging way that made James crazy. “Hm. Are you worth one?”
James stepped closer until he could feel the heat of Regulus’s breath. The Slytherin had to tip his head back entirely to look up through the lace of his eyelashes. 
“You tell me.”
And oh, it was so fucking close. The urge to pin Regulus against the wall right then and there was strong; to pull from his throat the filthy sounds he fantasized that the Slytherin would make when it was 2 AM on James’s bed. James was so there for it. But—
Ding.
“Oi! Reggie! Prongs!”
James sprung back like he’d been electrocuted when the lift doors opened swiftly and Sirius muscled his way in from the neurotrauma intensive care unit. He had the ICU transport pack slung over his shoulder and seemed to notice the tension in the air only after he’d inserted himself firmly between the other two nurses and the elevator door had started to close again. 
“What are you up to?” Sirius asked his little brother suspiciously. 
“Seducing your best friend.”
James let out a strangled noise as Sirius scowled. “Not funny, Reggie!” 
But Regulus just rolled his silver eyes in that maddeningly attractive way. “Oh relax, Sirius. It’s a joke, not a dick. Don’t take it so hard.”
Mate, you might witness your little brother getting dicked down right here in this elevator if he doesn’t stop talking.
“Reggie! No! Bad!” Sirius exclaimed, horrified, repeatedly hammering the doors close button like it’d make the elevator move any faster. “I know you don’t say that shit in front of our cousins! They just let you do whatever you want because they think you’re cute, you know. If they could hear what a menace you really were, you’d get away with a lot less.”
While this action was being carried out, James felt something being slipped into his scrub pocket. He shivered as Regulus’s fingers brushed teasingly against his inner thigh while his brother was distracted, but when James tried to meet his eye, he found Regulus’s face completely neutral. 
“That’s why I’m nice to them and a menace to you.”
Ding.
“Looks like this is your stop,” Sirius noted without answering as the elevator doors clicked open on the Slytherin floor. “Well, you’ve been a nightmare as usual. Thanks for that. Be sure to tell Snape we’ve sprayed for insects so he can’t float to our unit for another six months.”
“You’re so petty. And clearly pissed off that he passed his critical care certification first. Doesn’t that mean he gets paid more than you?”
“Not for long!”
“But for now.”
Regulus flounced out of the elevator, James’s eyes glued to his deliciously narrow waist. 
“UGH! He’s so annoying!” Sirius seethed in the background, jamming his finger against the doors close button. “I can’t stand that kid sometimes! Anyway…”
If he really was somehow telegraphing his intentions to absolutely rail Regulus, Sirius would have surely murdered him by now. Instead, his best friend was chatting him up about their latest prank as they wandered out of the elevator and over to the surgical ICU’s nurses’ station. James was trying very hard to focus on what Sirius was saying, but someone had to picture his younger brother in a variety of compromising positions and James’s imagination was certainly willing to take up the task.
“...and I know Snape thinks he’s got the upper hand, but c’mon. What are they going to do—fire all of Gryffindor…?”
He could see Regulus now, sinking gracefully to his knees in an empty exam room. Those stunning silver eyes would locked on his as he untied James’s scrubs, drew out his cock, and slipped it past his lips without breaking eye contact. 
“Prongs? Are you even listening to me?”
“What?” James asked automatically, feeling like a kid caught zoning out in class. These daydreams were starting to get a bit out of hand. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
Sirius didn’t look like he believed him. “Bullshit. Anyway, you know that Ravenclaw charge nurse, Pandora? I tried to ask her if she wanted to transfer her neurotrauma patient back up to their floor since they have the space, but guess what she said…”
A vibration from his pocket prompted James to fish his phone out while nodding supportively at all the right bits of Sirius’s story. The screen had lit up with a text, partially obstructing his background wallpaper of him and his parents beaming at the camera on their last vacation to the ocean. It was from a random number that he didn’t recognize, which made James nearly stow his phone again before he finally registered the words on the photo.
R.A.B: STD Screening Results.
James choked. 
“What’s wrong with you?” Sirius asked suspiciously, thoroughly oblivious to the fact that his baby brother had just texted James his sexual health paperwork.
“Nothing! Just, you know, about Snape. We should come up with a prank for him. Something really good.”
The surgical charge nurse brightened. “Oh! I had a really good idea for that! What if we…”
James looked over the text while Sirius spoke, rather impressed with Regulus’s efficiency. Judging by the timestamp, he’d gone in yesterday to have the screening done. He had tested negative across the board for any and all sexually transmitted disease or blood-borne pathogens. 
He had certainly tested negative for indecisiveness, which was actually sending James to his knees.  
[The only thing missing is a pregnancy test,] James joked, unable to resist teasing his thoroughness.
“...right, Prongs? Hello? Anyone there?”
“Oh!” James hastily stowed his phone, trying to remember the last thing Sirius had said. “Well, yeah, if you can get Frank Longbottom in on it.”
“I bet I could! I’ll get Alice to…”
A few minutes later, a new text came in.
It was another photo, which only made sense when James unlocked his phone and opened up the preview. On the vaguely recognizable Slytherin supply room countertop, a new, hospital-brand pregnancy test was laid out like a taunt. Someone had taken a sharpie and written one word on it in elegant cursive.
Negative. 
Negative for pregnancy, but positive for sarcasm. 
This fucking menace. 
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popatochisssp · 1 month ago
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Are any of your boys interested in/good at singing? I was listening to Nightwish’s Phantom of the Opera the other day and couldn’t help but think that Pyre would love an opera metal rendition of this musical
Ooh, singing, that's a good one! 👀
Sans (Undertale): He has a lovely singing voice, practically made for slow, sweet ballads…but he’s entirely too private and awkward to ever really use it. He might sing once or twice, just for you, but there can’t be anybody else around to risk hearing and he might need to be drunk to be convinced. Like really, truly, very drunk… Please, no recordings.
Papyrus (Undertale): He’s got the voice and the confidence, he’ll sing at the drop of a hat! If he has any flaws at all, it’s that he only has one volume setting on his singing voice, and it’s: LOUD. Full-on theater-kid ‘project for the people in the balconies’ belting it out, which is very fun and great for sing-alongs, but lends itself slightly less well to wooing endeavors. Alas!
Sky (Underswap Sans): He doesn’t mind singing and he’s got a good voice for it, plus a good grasp of melody and tempo, but he definitely prefers singing as a group activity rather than a solo one. Singing along to songs with friends at concerts and parties and even in the car is what he likes the most. Other times, the most he’ll do is just hum tunes that get stuck in his head.
Paps (Underswap Papyrus): Too shy and self-critical for singing, which is a shame because his voice is actually very nice. You might catch him humming absently to himself sometimes but he won’t know how to respond to any compliments or encouragement to do more. He might get a bit less embarrassed the more comfortable he is with you, but don’t rush him—fighting the good fight against lifelong anxiety takes time.
Jasper (Underfell Sans): Nah, he doesn’t sing…is what he says, but he’ll sing a different tune—literally—if you get him a little drunk first. Not a lot drunk, just enough to loosen the inhibitions, is all. He’ll rarely do anything more than sing along with any music that’s already playing, but his deep, raspy drawl lends itself really well to rock and country and the genres in between.
Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): He doesn’t sing, it’s unbecoming. Yes, he knows all the lyrics to way more musicals and emo bands’ songs than you would ever expect, but that doesn’t mean anything! …He actually has an incredible singing range and sounds good at any volume, from scream-singing all the way down to gentle serenading, but he’s sensitive to criticism and it holds him back.
Mal (Swapfell Sans): Doesn’t usually sing, but good at it when he does—he’s good at everything, or so he says. In this case, he’s right, he has a deep, pleasant voice and good control over it to sound exactly how he wants to. It generally doesn’t come up, but he’ll sing to woo you…or to win a bet or otherwise prove some kind of point.
Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): Probably not at the point confidence-wise where he can do it sober, but immediately willing to sing for you if you ask when he’s not. His voice lends itself best to love songs, the more heartfelt and deeply yearning the better, but he’s nothing if not a crowd-pleaser, so he’ll take requests if he knows what you want to hear.
Slate (Horrortale Sans): He has an excellent voice, plenty deep and lots of room in his chest for it to reverberate in, but he’s still pretty self-conscious about it. He’s prone to humming more, rarely anything specific, just pleasant tunes that pop in and out of his head…but he’ll sing for you, if you stay still in his arms long enough to hear it.
Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): A good singer, and he’s even managed to learn volume control, which is…both a blessing and a curse. He has a harder time now than he used to singing loudly, and his control tends to slip around the higher registers, so he’s prone to the occasional embarrassing warble or flat note. A little shy about that, but it won’t stop him from singing altogether.
Ash (Undergloom Sans): Has a nice voice for singing but not a robust one. A fair amount of vocal longevity, but not a lot of power, which results in someone who can sing for (or with) you for a good long while, but not very loudly or with any special flair. Still, that’s plenty to croon to you in dulcet tones when you’re alone, in romantic moments. Is any more than that necessary?
Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus): Sing? Him? Oh, no, he couldn’t… or well, he will if other people are singing but not…by himself, that he couldn’t do. His voice is pleasant but probably nothing to write home about, best suited for the humble stage of his own home, humming happy tunes while he goes about his chores and hobbies. He’s such a malewife house-husband that it borders on cliché, but it’s his ecological niche.
Brick (Horrorfell Sans): Nah. He’d love to, but his least-favorite injury being what it is, any sound he tries to funnel any further up than his neck…hurts. A lot. So no singing for him. He still likes music, though, and sometimes it’s an interesting challenge to try and sign along with what the artist is singing (if he’s not too busy head-banging). His version of singing, he’d guess.
King (Horrorfell Papyrus): What exactly about him gave the impression that he might sing? He’d like to correct it immediately, though he’ll try to take it as a compliment that you think his voice might be suited to singing. …You’re right, but you won’t find that out for a very long time, if ever. His low, sonorous voice, perfect for lullabies and sad songs, is only for a deeply-trusted few.
Merc (Horrorswap Sans): He doesn’t sing much, but he misses it. He tends a little monotone, but it’s hard to sing without emotion and inevitably, that creeps in. Which is slightly problematic for his condition, so he’s prone to humming, then singing, then getting a little too into it and having to stop. Looking forward to sorting that and being able to sing jubilant pop songs with wild abandon again.
Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus): Not really, but sometimes if (he thinks) he’s alone, he’ll put on some punk-rock screamo and sing along to it. Wildly embarrassed if caught at it and will deny and deflect, he was not, and who said you could come in anyway?! All a lot of fuss for no real reason, ‘cause he sounds good, always deeply passionate and putting his whole voice into it when he sings. Ah well, can't argue.
Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans): He’ll sing whenever the music takes him. ‘When the music takes him’ is usually when he’s relaxing with the radio on, or trying to be playful with you, but he’s not above karaoke on a dare or concert sing-alongs if opportunity knocks. He’ll sing a lot of things but perhaps surprisingly, his voice is best-suited to classic crooners, so for the sake of a manageable ego, try not to swoon.
Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus): He rides the edge of non-verbal most days, so singing isn’t really his forte or pleasure. Probably the most you’ll get out of him is a thoughtlessly hummed wisp of tune here and there, usually when he’s occupied with something and not thinking about it. Maybe a more deliberately-hummed love song for you, but those are hard to catch, since he’s most prone to them when he thinks you’re asleep.
Sunny (Gastertale Sans): He likes singing, definitely more willing than most to sing if there’s a catchy song on or if other people are singing around him. He has a good voice for it, not especially deep but fluid and melodic, nice to listen to. He struggles a little with tempo, getting to certain parts of songs a little faster or slower than called for, but hey, it’s not like he’s classically-trained.
Aster (Gastertale Papyrus): Loves to sing! He thinks it’s fun and likes the resonance of his own voice, so he’ll do it often—sing-songing a phrase, singing lyrics to you to be playful, or just because he’s enjoying a song. Not the best at staying on key and occasionally gets lyrics ‘wrong’ (read: rewrites them to make more sense to him), but he’s undeniably a good singer and pleasant to listen to.
Spectr (Transcendtale Sans): Unlikely to spend any time singing. Anything he could sing is just electronically-generated sound, you could just as easily listen to a recorded voice and get the same or better. …Which is not entirely true, there’s a depth of feeling and—for lack of a better word—soul in his deep, bassy resonance that no true machine could ever replicate. But good luck getting him to believe it.
PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus): Sure, he’ll sing, whatever you want! In actuality, he hums idly more than he sings, but will definitely do so upon request. He cheats a little—or as he might put it, ‘has fun with it’—and isn’t shy about sampling from clips and songs, or auto-tuning himself in real-time for effect. He likes making music and anything he can access to do so is really just fair game.
Xanth (Ascendswap Sans): He likes to sing! Whether or not he’s any good seems to vary, sometimes singing beautifully and other times, just a little…off, somewhere. It mostly depends on if he’s tuned in to the here-and-now, or if he’s thoughtlessly trying to harmonize with background cosmic radiation or something equally strange that he can hear but you can’t. Regardless, he doesn’t care what he sounds like, singing is expression, not perfection!
Piper (Ascendswap Papyrus): He loves singing and will take any excuse for it. He’ll break out the smooth, dulcet tones to sing you love ballads, to fill a silence, to make up a silly song about the cat that it can be furious at him over—anything! He’ll even sing to birds if the opportunity presents itself, with chirps and flutey whistles that make wildlife flock to him like he’s some kind of Disney prince.
Carmine (Underfell Fruition Sans): Sure, if he’s feeling it, any song that goes particularly hard might coax him to sing along with it—the kind of stuff that’s loud and fast and probably about sticking it to The Man. He’s got a good singing voice, but does tend to push it a little hard, so sometimes it’ll crack or blow out, and then he’s raspier than normal for awhile after he’s overdone it.
Tank (Underfell Fruition Papyrus): Unlikely to sing. He’s not in the habit of using his voice for anything but responding to commands and inquiries, so he never really developed any kind of musical aptitude. If he tried, he’d be very shy and very out-of-tune. With some space and support, he might graduate to some quiet humming while he’s occupied and he’d be pleased with that, especially if you tell him you like it!
Vi (Swapfell Fruition Sans): No, he doesn’t sing. That would draw far too much attention to him and make him look foolish, he won’t be doing that… At least, not like that.  A soft, breathy lyric when you’re asleep, or when you have your back turned to him, a vaguely tuneful murmur more like poetry than song… Maybe that he can do, if sufficiently…moved…by emotion. Don’t expect miracles, but maybe that.
Hunter (Swapfell Fruition Papyrus): No special enjoyment in singing, but he’ll do it freely if relevant, convenient, or in some way entertaining. His voice—warm, smooth, inviting—is just another part of his body to be used in accomplishing his goals, whatever they may be. He’s not the shy type and knows full-well when he’s good at something (note: this is very dangerous), so…don’t be surprised if he uses it for evil mischief.
Kohl (Descendtale Sans): Perhaps surprisingly…yes, he does enjoy singing every now and then. But he’s very selective about who gets to hear—new acquaintances need not apply, and for as long-lived as monsters have gotten, his definition of ‘new’ is long. Still, with a voice as deep and dark as the Underground itself, it’s probably worth the wait to hear him hum and then sing a few sensual, jazzy bars for you.
Bram (Descendtale Papyrus): Definitely, he likes to sing! He’s a teensy bit scattered, so he’s prone to trailing off if he forgets the lyrics, or trailing in if he started thinking about a song and picked it up out loud from whatever part he was at, but he’s a good singer with enough enthusiasm as to be contagious—so if you wanted to join in, he’d be absolutely thrilled.
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dangermousie · 3 months ago
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I was thinking about what my favorite cdrama OTP is for 2024 and - rather surprisingly even to myself - it is Fan Xian x Lin Wan’er from Joy of Life 2.
Now, JOL2 is my favorite cdrama of 2024 so far and it will take a sizable miracle to dislodge it in the coming three months, so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that my n1 OTP is what it is.
Except the thing is, JOL2 is not a romance centric drama at all. This is a year with some glorious romantic cdramas (The Legend of Shenli alone is what my dreams are made of.) JOL2, however, is not primarily or even secondarily a romance. In fact, Fan Xian does not even reunite with Wan’er eps and eps into this season.
So why?
I think it’s a twofold thing - one is when I love characters and narrative, their emotional entanglements, all of them - become more vivid and important. Fan Xian is in my Top 3 cdrama leads of all time (!!) so of course I am just generally more invested in his emotional life. But the other, bigger thing is that I just love what this ship does and has.
Wan’er is Fan Xian’s peace in the maelstrom, the person with whom that busy mind can rest. I keep thinking about that scene in her carriage where in the middle of plots and counterplots and countercounterplots you just see him stop and just relax. It makes me think of a quote from Busman’s Honeymoon which probably sums up my fave ship dynamic - it’s what Lord Peter says to Harriet: “you are my corner. I’ve come to hide.”
And I love how crucial she is to him. This is a man who can and has taken on royals and martial legends, who is able and willing to change the world. And yet he is trembling and utterly undone when he thinks he lost her love (in the aftermath of the truth about her brother coming out), he is stripped bare of defenses - or perhaps not because to be stripped of defenses would imply he ever had them against her and he never has. There is something so heady about how someone so self-sufficient needs her and how someone so competent is lost without her.
And then there is Wan’er. I have seen so much criticism of her - she is not a martial genius like Haitang Duo Duo, not a schemer like Eldest Princess, not a budding genius doctor like Ruo Ruo. But I think that is why I love her - because she does not have power (martial or political or genius) but what she has is steadiness and love and warmth. She also shares an understanding of loneliness with Fan Xian because for very different reasons they stood aside from life at a remove like looking through a thick window for a very long time. In the narrative they both escape that glass and join the world for good or ill - he is the reason for that freedom for her and she is a catalyst for his (though eventually there are many more reasons for him not to be removed - once you step out of the glass cage you can’t go back in, you acquire attachments.)
But also - she is just steady. In the world where people rarely say what they mean and mean what they say, where alliances shift and bonds are uncertain, she is one of the few people who puts him first and close to the only one who is always exactly what she is with him.
I think of that scene of her and Wuzhu. Where here is the one who killed her beloved brother and he’s weak enough that she can actually avenge him (that is the only opportunity and she knows it - Wuzhu is grandmaster level and she has no power) and yet - she does not on the off chance Fan Xian may need his help on the mission he’s on. She does not know if Fan Xian will need help. She does not know if Wuzhu would be able to get there to provide it. And yet the possibility of the possibility of protecting her husband is enough for her to forego her revenge in any meaningful fashion because much as she mourns her brother, much as she wants vengeance, she wants Fan Xian safe and protected more.
Fan Xian, for all his glib manner and fast talking, for all his devil may care attitude cares an awful lot about the people he sees as his. He has an enormous capacity for love (which I think is what ironically keeping him safe with the emperor; emperor knows he has so many levers he can pull to get Fan Xian back in line if he needs to.) And with Wan’er, Fan Xian has found someone who would care just as much for him back and I find it glorious.
I guess it turned into a shipper manifesto, huh.
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genderqueerdykes · 4 months ago
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Could you explain what being detrans is to me? I can’t find anything besides terf bullshit on the matter. I’m probably looking at it incorrectly but I genuinely don’t understand how someone could fake their gender for years and randomly decide to switch back, from my perspective as someone who’s known their (trans)gender identity since toddlerhood.
hello! yes i can!
detrans people are not "faking" their gender during the time they are transitioning. generally speaking, what happens is a person who thought transition was right for them finds out it is not. not every person who wants to transition or takes HRT finds out that it's right for them- there's no way to predict the changes that come with HRT, even if you're familiar with its effects. hormones affect everyone differently, and maybe someone starts undergoing HRT only to find out that it does not give them the effects its looking for.
many people socially transition and find that they do not being addressed the way they thought they would. many folks find that dressing, sounding and acting certain ways just aren't for them. again, nobody can predict what will happen during transition, and nobody can predict exactly how they would feel if they are seen or addressed by a certain way. sometimes transitioning to a gender that doesn't suit them makes them find an appreciation for another gender that they perhaps previously felt dysphoric or neutral about
many detrans people are actually still trans- many of which being nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, multigender, and more. there are so many reasons why someone may transition, some people even detransition to avoid transphobia. some people transition in very transphobic areas and find the pressure too much, and go back to being stealth or closeted. try not to assume that the person is "faking" anything- it feels real to them at the time. just because someone changes their mind does not mean they were faking anything
identity can and does change. i didn't know i was trans until i was 18 or 19 year old. not everyone figures out they're trans during childhood. i had to be told what the word transgender even was at my local college's pride group. i had never heard it before. this doesn't make me any less of a trans person, nor anyone else. detrans people are human just like anyone else. just because someone doesn't figure out their identity right away doesn't mean they're faking anything. just because someone changes their mind after finding out something wasn't right for them doesn't mean they were faking
there is nothing wrong with being detrans. the terves you see online are a small, vocal minority. in reality, i know many detrans people who are still trans or gender non conforming, way more than i've ever met who have detransitioned and become hateful towards trans folk. the topic deserves to be approached with grace, kindness and respect- it may be worth reading into these subreddits, as opposed to using tumblr for this one. these two subs do not allow transphobia, terf or gender critical ideologies:
r/detransition_support
r/actual_detrans
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