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liquid-luck-00 · 4 years ago

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My Life is One Complication After Another

Inspired by this post by @dolphin-ghost

Happy New Year everyone

Some cursing 🤬

Ao3 ~~~ Part 1 ~~~ Next

~~~~~~~~~~

Marinette has always been willing to give everyone a second chance. That may have been why she still had people to consider them as her friends. That is why when Lila started yet another lie about some celebrity she, Adrien, Chloe, and Juleka were holding their laughter and rolled their eyes.

"Honest Alya I'm like this" Lila crossed her fingers "with Bruce's kids." Alya must not have recognized the name as the liar gave a small laugh "oh, right Bruce Wayne, he prefers to only go by Bruce."

"Oh my God, Girl you have got to give me an interview for my blog!" Alya lapped up the story.

"Of course" Lila smiled, then looked over at Marinette "Anything for my best friend."

At this point, Marinette wasn't paying attention to the liar. Instead Mari was talking in low voices with her actual best friend, Adrien. They sat on the very back bench and Juleka and Chloe on the bench in front of them.

That was their normal, it had been since their eighth year. Now two years later it was routine, her classmates shunned her only talking with her for class assignments. Otherwise they ignored her and that may just have been the best outcome.

She, Chloe, Juleka, Luka, and Adrien were in the park working on a photoshoot. Adrien was behind the camera while Juleka and Luka were modeling. Marinette and Chloe were changing for the next set. When they came out Mari noticed several reporters around the perimeter. Security had them handled and she focused on modeling her creation.

However this wasn't the last she saw of the reporters. They were always at the school questioning the students. What they were asking she didn't know as she was never questioned.

Three weeks of spotting and avoiding reporters, with them swarming the school she needed to get creative in order to transform. Lila was of course bathing in the limelight and attention.

Mari was the last person out of the school as she was getting the homework for her three friends who didn't come today. The first thing she noticed coming out of the courtyard was the purple limo. Her honorary uncle came to pick her up. As soon as the door closed said uncle was crushing her in a hug.

"It's Rock' n to see ya Nettie" Jagged spoke, the hug muffling his voice slightly.

"Same here Jagged," wiggling out of Jagged's hug she reached over to hug Penny. "so what's with the escort?"

"A close friend of ours wanted to meet you and He and his son's are waiting at our room," Penny explained.

"Okay..." she hesitated exiting the car to head inside "but why? Is this a commission or what?"

After a silent elevator ride, Penny hesitated at the door before speaking. "We are hoping you could clear something up actually," as she opened the door.

Mari stepped in and noticed them. The eldest looked to be around mid to late thirties, black hair and bluebell eyes, dressed in a dark charcoal suit.

The youngest of the boys seemed to be a couple years younger than her, shorter than her by a head, tanned skin, short black hair, and jade eyes. A scowl on his face partially hidden by the collar of a black peacoat and slacks as he sat on the arm chair.

A boy around her age with chin length black hair and azure eyes, a red hoodie under a grey bomber jacket and black pants. He looked like he hadn't slept in at least a week, and if how he was holding the travel mug in his hands it was probably true.

Next to him was another boy who looked a couple of years older, black messy hair about 5 cm at the longest and a white tuff in front, cerulean eyes, a brown leather jacket and distressed jeans. He seemed familiar but couldn't place it.

The last boy also had long black hair but seemed to be layered and shorter in the front, sky blue eyes, a blue varsity jacket and jeans. He would either be the eldest or second, he had a bright smile but kept shooting a glance at Fang.

Speaking of which once she was in the room and she saw him, he charged at her, knocking her over. Mari was giggling as Fang rolled over and she was lost to the world as she doted on the crocodile.

"Nettie" Penny finally managed to get her attention.

"Sorry," she stood "but if it wasn't done we wouldn't be able to talk. Hello I am Marinette Dupain-Cheng it is nice to meet you." again she smiled.

"Bruce Wayne" the man introduced himself, "and my sons. My youngest Damian." he gestured to the boy with green eyes. "Next is Tim" gesturing to the boy with the mug who rose it in acknowledgment. "Jason is the second oldest" the boy with the white tuff gave a lop sided smile. "And my eldest Dick" whose smile seemed to become brighter.

She smiled nodding at everyone before realization hit. A quick snap of her fingers before pulling out her phone, opened up her texts and started typing, ending with a quick picture of Jason.

I think I just met your idiot friend

She put away her phone. Not even a minute later another went off.

The ringing stopped once, twice, thrice, and on the fourth Jason, spoke up. "Sorry I should take this."

"Go ahead this can wait a moment." Mari smiled.

As soon as Jason answered the phone "What the hell are you doing in Paris!?" everyone heard the caller as Jason was holding the phone an arm length away.

"How did you know... you?!" it dawned on Jason.

"Guilty," she smiled. "I guess you're not as big of an idiot as Roy made you out to be."

"Hey!" Jason called before turning to the phone. "What the hell did you tell her Harper!" By now Roy was on speaker.

"You can't prove what I said, ya know," she could practically see Roy's smirk.

"Video's however," she was now smirking.

"What!!" Jason seemed to freeze.

"Bug! No!" Roy was sounding like he was going to start panicking.

"I think I have a few saved," she tapped her chin.

That was when Bruce cleared his throat. "As amusing as this is we have business to discuss."

"Talk to ya later Mari." Roy bid her farewell. "Oh and Jason don't underestimate her." the call ended.

"Okay so how do you know Roy?" Dick finally asked.

"Oh. It was at a charity ball hosted by Oliver Queen," she replied nonchalantly.

"Was it the same one where a baby elephant ended up at the event. Following you the whole time." Penny asked exasperated.

"I still don't get how you think we had anything to do with that." Marinette finally sat down. She ended up sitting on the ground leaning against the couch next to Jagged, Fang resting his head on her out stretched legs.

"I have so many questions,” Tim finally added to the conversation.

"Tt. can we stop beating around the bush already," Damian was irritated and it showed. "Are you or are you not my biological sister."

He seemed ready to pounce, unfortunately that was dangerous in Paris. Especially as she saw an akuma right outside the window. The question asked now forgotten as she focused on the corrupted butterfly.

"Nope, Nope. I am not dealing with an akuma today." she stood up. Took a deep breath and let her anger and frustrations to the surface. The smile fell from her face. "If you want a puppet have a marionette" Kwamii Adrien is rubbing off on me.

The butterfly changed targets and was heading towards her, finally gaining the other's attention. She vaulted over the couch and made a beeline to her backpack. By then the akuma was close so she tossed the backpack over to everyone and rolled out of the way.

"Glass jar, unscrew it" she called out.

"How pathetic running from a bug." Damian moved quickly to catch the butterfly but it moved and found something in his pocket. He was engulfed in purple and then he stood there in evergreen armor with golden accents. A red and yellow cape and a pitch black sword in his hand. Pocket knife, the sword is where the akuma is.

"Screw it" she turned and with two quick jabs his two arms went limp. A third knocked him to the ground.

She picked up the sword and went to Dick who was holding the jar. She took the jar, broke the sword, and went to catch the butterfly. As soon as she screwed the lid on the butterfly began to turn white.

She let out the breath she was holding as she compartmentalized her emotions yet again.

"What the fuck was that!" Jason screamed and so did Dick, minus the curse.

"Where and why do you have one of those," Jagged asked.

Finally Damian shouted "Why can I not move? What did you do?" he accused.

"Okay so the butterfly was an akuma used by Hawkmoth, Paris’ villain, to manipulate anyone with strong negative emotions. These champions or Akuma are used to attempt to retrieve magical jewels from our heroes. The jar was given to me and a few others in my class, because our class is a hot bed for akuma, by Ladybug, one of the heroes." she gave a short and simple run down. "As for Damian, those were a series of pressure points,” infused with magic to-take down people easily, "it should wear off in a few minutes."

"Teach me please!" Tim begged.

"I dunno." she started to chew her lip and shift her weight.

"Roy's warning now makes a lot more sense," Jason hummed.

"Tt. adequate," Damian muttered softly, Marinette is sure she is the only one who heard.

"Okay so where were we?" she smiled turning and sitting back down with Fang.

~~~~~~~~~~

Taglist: @dolphin-ghost @unabashedbookworm @bookgirl14 @laurcad123 @mochegato @vixen-uchiha

#dc x miraculous #dc x mlb #mlb x dc #miraculous x dc #maribat #ml marinette #roynette #friend!adrien #bio!dad bruce #MLiOCAA

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ladysyrinx · 3 years ago

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Lucifer's Match: Dragon, not Lamb part II

Chapter 1

Reality sinks in

This takes place directly after the events of The Demon in the Attic

In my rising panic everything looks big and dark and overwhelming. My racing thoughts and currently in-charge lizard brain prevent me from thinking well enough to find the quickest way to my room, but somehow some part of my brain gets me there without me noticing how. I practically fall in and slam the door shut behind me, the noise setting all my nerves on edge and causing my heart to beat even faster. Shaking, blind with panic, I lean against the door, panting and releasing quiet, tremulous whimpers.

What am I supposed to do now? How can I possibly fix this? Am I going to die like MC? The game downplayed that, but the thought of being killed, of dying, has my heart pounding as if it believes if it just runs fast enough it can escape the danger and this whole terrifying mess.

But it can’t. I’m stuck here, stuck dealing with this. Because if I don’t, I’m not sure what Lilith will do to me. I know she’s not going to let me just not help Belphegor. And I have no idea what she saved me from, nor how, nor what she is capable of doing to me should I go back on my promise or not fulfill it to her satisfaction.

I stumble forward so that when I collapse, it’s face-first onto my bed. I begin sobbing and reach desperately around me for something to hold on to. My fingers find the plush softness of a pillow and I drag it to me, curling around it like a child. I feel like a child, lost in a world without any sight of guidance or parents or help.

I shiver and sob and whimper until some of the panic begins to ease. I remember that I’m an adult. I can take care of myself, and I will. I can figure this out, as I have many other complicated and difficult things before it. Maybe those were slightly less bizarre and with slightly lower stakes, but I succeeded nonetheless.

I can figure this out. And I will. Slowly I rise to a sitting position, still clutching the pillow to my chest as if it is an anchor in a stormy sea. I suppose, in a way, it is.

“Lilith?” I ask quietly, looking around. I know I can’t see her, but maybe, somehow, I’ll get a whiff of her presence this time? “Lilith, we need to talk,” I say, looking around slowly.

Nothing. I try to think through the tired fog the panic attack has left in my brain. I don’t feel anything like her. Or I don’t think I do, anyway.

“Lilith, you owe me some answers,” I say sternly. Can she hear me? Out of ideas for what to do, I just start chanting her name in a sing-song voice, feeling a petty desire to annoy her after everything she’s done to me.

I go into a weird, trance-like state as I chant her name, zoning out almost completely. “Li-lith Li-lith Li-lith Li-lith Lil–”

“Oh for goodness sake stop that it’s super annoying! What did you need anyway?” Lilith’s voice fills my mind grumpily.

I smirk to myself. Being annoying worked. “Why don’t you sit down so we can have a nice little chat, hmm Lilith?” I ask. I’m speaking aloud, but softly enough that someone outside couldn’t hear me. I still sound crazy, even to myself. In my unsettled state of mind I’m honestly not even sure I haven’t gone crazy.

“I have things I do too, you know,” Lilith grumps again. “I was just checking on Belphie after the conversation you had with him.”

“Well, if you want me to help your brothers you’ll have to cooperate, won’t you? And I have questions that I need answered if I’m going to help.”

She sighs loudly, and I know it’s only to make a point because Lilith is talking in my mind, she can’t breathe to sigh. “Fine. What do you need to know?” She asks.

I smirk to myself. Now we're getting somewhere.

~End chapter 1~

Part I ~ Next

Thank you for reading! Please consider subscribing:) the chapters before this are in the Obey Me section of my blog:) You can also search the hashtag Dragon not Lamb. I also love comments, reblogs, and hearts:)

Also, please don't repost elsewhere without crediting me. You can reblog, or give links to my Ao3 account or my tumblr. Thank you<3

#obey me #obey me fandom #obey me fanfic #shall we date obey me #obey me lilith #Dragon not Lamb #obey me shall we date #obey me mc #obey me gender neutral mc #obey me x reader #om lilith #mental health #panic attack

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the-modernmary · 4 years ago

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my best habit || aaron hotchner x reader (ch. 3)

Chapter summary: The morning after, and you and Aaron are getting back to your old routines, and you go to the BAU for the first time.

Warnings: mentions of smut, but nothing really explicit.

A/N: thank you all so SO much for reading this story!! i love that you all are enjoying it! icymi, i went ahead and put up an intro + blog rules that you can read here!! Please, please read these are they do apply to this story!

masterlist || read on ao3

And here we go again, we know the start, we know the end

Masters of the scene

We've done it all before and now we're back to get some more

You know what I mean

-ABBA, “Voulez-Vous”

~~~~~~~

You woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee wafting throughout your apartment. Still half asleep, you slowly blinked your eyes open and slid out of bed. You cursed to yourself as you stood up; your whole body was sore. A small grin grew on your face as you realized exactly why you were sore, the memories from last night coming back to you.

You walked out of your bedroom to your kitchen, where you were greeted with the gorgeous view of Aaron, hair wet and still in just the sweatpants he borrowed. Clothes from last night were scattered around the living room, untouched. “Mornin’,” you grumbled, rubbing the sleep from your eyes.

Aaron, on the other hand, looked wide awake. “Good morning. I hope you don’t mind, I took a shower and made some coffee,” he greeted.

“It’s fine, as long as you made enough for me,” you told him through a yawn, although it was unnecessary, considering you were almost positive that he prepared you some coffee already. Mornings after with Aaron weren’t exactly domestic, per say, but they were efficient and friendly. Both of you knew you had your lives to get to, and you were willing to help out the other one to make sure they succeeded. The routine worked, and you had grown to look forward to it.

Aaron just chuckled and pointed to your refrigerator. “Already done. You still take it iced with caramel syrup, right?”

If the fact that Aaron remembered your coffee preferences after so long made your heart skip a beat, you elected to ignore it. It’s not like it was a complicated order. Instead you just sauntered towards the fridge, brushing past Aaron’s bare skin on your way over.

Aaron turned to look at you as you grabbed the drink out of the fridge. Now that you were more awake, you could actually take in Aaron in all of his morning after glory. Even with it damp, his hair was fluffier and falling into his eyes, free from any styling product he usually used. His shoulders were relaxed and, you noticed with a smirk, broader than they were before. So he had been working out...

It wasn’t until you got to his bare torso that a soft gasp left your lips, your heart sinking to your stomach. There were nine, almost identical scars, all raised and seemingly staring right at you. You had been so distracted last night that you hadn’t noticed them, but now you weren’t sure how you didn’t see them. They looked healed, but they weren’t faded much, and they definitely weren’t there last time you saw Aaron.

“Aaron,” you whispered, unable to take your eyes off the thick white lines covering him. “What happened?” Almost as if you were in a trance, you reached out to him, wanting to run your fingers over the scars.

Aaron moved to the side quickly so that he was out of your reach, his eyes hardening. He immediately went into defensive mode. “Nothing that you need to be concerned about,” he said firmly, signifying the end of the conversation.

Really, he should have known you well enough to know that you would keep pressing him. “Are you okay?” you continued, your voice barely louder than a whisper.

Aaron walked towards his discarded shirt from last night, putting it on quickly so that the scars could be out of sight. “These weren’t meant to kill me,” he said finally, sadness seeping into his words.

That’s what made you decide to drop the topic. If the scars weren’t meant to kill Aaron, then they were probably supposed to be a torturous reminder, and based on his reaction, it was working. You also figured that it wasn’t just any serial killer who gave those to him, and bringing up his dead ex-wife's murderer wasn’t part of the lighthearted banter the two of you had perfected.

Clearing your throat, you quickly shifted the topic to fill the silence that was hanging over the two of you. You lifted yourself so that you were sitting on the countertop. “So... what time should I be at the BAU?”

Aaron finished buttoning up his shirt and was now reaching for his slacks, his back still turned to you. But his shoulders looked like they relaxed, even a little bit. He was grateful at the subject change. “As soon as you can. We want to try and wrap up this case as quickly as possible.”

“Shit, I still have to shower and get ready. You should have woken me up when you woke up,” you mused, taking a sip of your coffee.

Now fully dressed in the suit he wore yesterday, Aaron turned back to face you, the corners of his lips quirking up in a smile. “I tried,” he explained, slowly letting down his defenses again. “It was hard to tell with the covers you pulled over your head, but I think you told me to go fuck myself or something?” His eyes twinkled with amusement as he made his way back towards you, placing his hands on the counter on either side of you and standing in the space between your legs.

You just shrugged, taking another sip of your drink. “What can I say? I was spent last night and needed my rest,” you told him, feigning innocence.

If Aaron was trying to hide the pride in his eyes at your comment, he didn’t do a very good job at it. His eyes flickered back and forth between your eyes and your lips. “I should get going soon,” he mumbled, more to himself than to you. “I still need to stop by my house to get a change of clothes.”

You placed your coffee to the side of you so that your hands were free to cup the sides of his face. “Probably,” you agreed, but you were still leaning towards Aaron. “But you’re the boss. Who’s going to get you in trouble if you’re a few minutes late?”

Your forehead was pressed against his by now and your thumbs were stroking his cheeks. You could see the desire in Aaron’s eyes, which you were sure was reflected in your own eyes, but instead of taking you right there on the counter like you were hoping he would, Aaron simply pressed his lips to yours, just long enough to leave you desperate for more.

“As tempting as the offer is,” he murmured, his lips still brushing yours. “I really do need to get to work to prepare for our meeting today. And... I’ll need the time to field all the questions I’m sure Dave will have for me about my sudden departure yesterday.” He added the last part as an afterthought, as if he just remembered that the entire BAU was watching the interrogation from yesterday.

You pulled away from Aaron ever so slightly, raising an eyebrow. “They know you’re here?”

Aaron shook his head, much to your relief. You weren’t sure if you would be able to face his entire team if they were all aware you had been sleeping with their unit chief. “Just David,” he admitted. “And that’s only because he figured it out before I could even come up with an explanation. But he covered for me and told the rest of them you were just one of Sean’s old friends, so if any of them ask…”

His words trailed off, but you understood what he was implying. You raised your hands in faux surrender. “Got it, don’t need to tell me twice. And don’t worry, no more flirting in front of your coworkers. I will be the epitome of a professional law intern. I can be a good girl when I want,” you teased, and you were rewarded as his eyes darkened.

“The way you said that makes me think you can’t,” he told you, his voice low.

You laughed and leaned in to kiss him again. The kiss was slow and deliberate and you could feel his lips curling into a smile. Aaron’s hand reached up to cup the back of your head, pulling you in closer to him. There was an unusual softness to the kiss, and you were surprised to realize that you liked it.

You pulled away reluctantly, looking directly into Aaron’s eyes. “You should go to work,” you reminded him. “I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

Aaron stepped away from you and made his way to the door, patting down his pockets to make sure he had everything. You slid off the kitchen counter, watching his every movement. Aaron hesitated as he reached for the doorknob and instead of just walking right out, he turned around to look at you. “When you said yesterday ‘If you ever need somebody to help you pick up those broken pieces’... Did you mean it, or was that just to get a reaction out of me?”

His words were hesitant and vulnerable, which was so unlike him that it took you a second to respond. You realized slowly what he was insinuating: He wanted to keep seeing you. The thought made you happier than you had expected, but that was something to unpack way later.

You kept your voice light in your reply, hoping to calm his nerves. “A little bit of both,” you joked, and Aaron gave you a small smile. “But to answer the inevitable next question, I also would like to see you again and continue this. At least, that’s what I’m assuming what you were going to ask, considering the amount of times you said I was yours last night. ‘My cock whore’ is a new one.”

Aaron let out a breathy chuckle, nodding to himself. He didn’t say anything else, he didn’t have to. The two of you knew the rules to this relationship, and it was already coming back like it was second nature. So instead, Aaron just opened the door, leaving you with a “I’ll see you at the BAU.”

~~~~~~~

Luckily for Aaron, his house was on the way to the FBI headquarters, so he was able to change clothes and be in his office in only 30 minutes. He wasn’t there as early as he usually was, but it was still early enough as to not raise any suspicion, and nobody questioned it when he made a beeline to his office, giving general greetings to the people he passed.

When he sat down at his desk, Aaron really did have every intention to do the paperwork that was slowly piling up and consuming his entire office, but his mind was wandering too much to focus on bureaucratic red tape. Flashes of the night before sped through his mind.

He remembered the way Y/N begged for him to touch her and how good his name sounded coming from her lips. He remembered her face as she was pressed against the wall and the almost animalistic smile she had given him when he had his hand wrapped around her throat. He thought about how beautiful she looked as she was coming down from her orgasm, mascara tears running down her face, hair tangled and sticking in every direction, her chest rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath, and the adoration in her eyes as he muttered praises to her.

Aaron hadn’t planned on asking to continue the situation he had with her. Last night was supposed to be the only time, considering the amount of baggage that came with that relationship for Aaron. He and Haley had technically been divorced when he first met Y/N, but it was just barely and it just toed the line of being a full blown affair. Going back to Y/N now could potentially complicate everything and bring up feelings about Haley that he had buried. But Aaron couldn’t deny that being with Y/N was a welcome distraction. There was no pressure to be “on” all the time. He didn’t feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. He felt more at peace than he had in a long time.

“He needs to know you weren’t always so serious…”

A knocking on his office door shook Aaron out of his thoughts. His head shot up to see Rossi, who was leaning against the door frame with a knowing look in his eyes. “You know,” Rossi started before Aaron could even get a word out. He walked into the office and made sure to close the door behind him. “Pretending to do work is more effective when you actually have a file in front of you.”

Aaron audibly exhaled, gesturing for Rossi to take a seat, although it was just a formality; Rossi was going to talk to Aaron about the situation whether or not Aaron wanted to. Rossi leaned back in the chair and quirked up his eyebrows. “How was your night?” he asked, holding back his amused laughter.

“It was fine,” Aaron said in his monotone voice, but it was no use. Rossi just stared Aaron down, patiently waiting for Aaron to elaborate.

“Are you going to see her again?” Rossi pressed, and this time it was hard for Aaron to hide his smile.

Instead, Aaron just side eyed Rossi for a quiet moment. “I am,” he said finally before reaching for one of the files. He really did have to start on that paperwork, and maybe it would send Rossi a hint.

It did not. Rossi nodded approvingly at Aaron’s declaration of seeing this woman again and placed one of his hands on Aaron’s desk. “I’m glad. I think dating will be good for you. Getting back out there is healthy, Aaron.”

Aaron went completely still, thinking of the best way to respond to Rossi. “We are… not exactly dating,” he said slowly, ignoring the shock that flashed past Rossi’s face. For as close as Rossi and Aaron were, their sex lives didn’t come up in conversation much, and Aaron certainly didn’t have the reputation Rossi did. “And I would appreciate it if this stayed between us, at least until after the case. I know how quickly gossip spreads in this office, and I shudder to think what will happen once Garcia gets this information.”

Rossi chuckled and made a zipping motion over his mouth. “My lips are sealed. I am happy for you, though. Maybe she will finally be the thing to get you out of the office on time finally.” Rossi laughed to himself, like he had a secret. “Even if you’ll still be up all night. At least you’ll be de-stressing.”

A knock on the office door spared Aaron from having to hear any more jokes from Rossi at his expense. “Thank you for that pep talk,” he said sarcastically to Rossi before calling out “Come in!” and putting his Unit Chief persona back on.

Emily opened the door, blissfully unaware of the conversation that was happening between the two men just seconds earlier. “Sir, Y/N is here.”

Aaron cleared his throat, ignoring Rossi’s eyes burning a hole into the side of his head. “Good. We will meet in the round table room, go ahead and brief her. Dave and I will be there in a few moments. Thank you, Prentiss.” Emily nodded and left the room just as quickly as she came in.

Rossi tapped on Aaron’s desk as he stood up. “That’s our cue, but mark my words, Aaron. I will learn all about this mystery girl from you, even if I have to lock you in the interrogation room to do it.”

Aaron laughed ever so slightly at that and just nodded. “I will fill you in before it gets to that,” he promised, and was surprised to realize that he meant it. Somehow over the years, Rossi had become his closest confidant, and it was comforting to know that Rossi was encouraging of this new relationship, as unconventional as it was. “But right now we have a case to focus on.”

~~~~~~~

You knew that the FBI headquarters was going to have high security, but three checkpoints seemed a little excessive to you. Nevertheless, you clipped the shiny visitor’s badge onto the waistband of your pants and waited for the elevator to take you to the correct floor.

It was weird to be going to the BAU, even if it was just for a case. It felt like you were encroaching on Aaron’s personal and professional life, something you never intended to do. You were happy being blissfully ignorant about Aaron’s coworkers. You knew a few of your names and that was all you ever needed to know. Being at the BAU was mixing up the carefully compartmentalized lives Aaron and you had built.

The elevator doors opened and you cautiously stepped out, trying to find your way around. You really should have paid more attention to Agent Prentiss when she was giving you instructions. Luckily, you were in a building full of profilers and one of them noticed your inevitable look of confusion.

“Are you Y/N Y/L/N?” they asked, and you nodded quickly. “I’m Agent Derek Morgan. You can follow me, I’m one of the agents on the case.”

You followed Derek through the glass doors and to one of the desks in the bullpen. He said something to another agent- Prentiss, you remembered- before gesturing for you to sit down. “Would you like a coffee or water?” Derek offered offhandedly, but his eyes were scanning you up and down, obviously trying to profile you.

Following on your promise to be professional, you had put on a nice pair of grey plaid slacks and a satin button up blouse- an outfit you had worn to your internship and to court a million times. But Derek’s gaze seemed more than just surface level profiling. It felt like he distrusted you. And then it hit you. He was probably watching you in the interrogation room yesterday, as you shamelessly flirted with Aaron. Everyone you were about to meet probably saw it, and they were all going to try and figure you out.

It had seemed funny in the moment, when you didn’t think you would ever have to see these people again, but now? Not so much.

You idly considered taking Derek up on his offer, just to keep him from profiling you any longer, but that would just give him the opportunity to share his findings with the rest of the office. It was easier to keep him close. “No thank you,” you said finally, giving Derek a polite smile. Despite what they had seen yesterday, you were excellent at networking, and you knew how to charm a room. Getting these profilers to like you wouldn’t be too hard.

Derek studied you a little closer, but your eye contact was unwavering. “How do you know Hotch?” he asked.

Thank God Aaron had warned you about this. “I was friends with his brother, Sean,” you lied coolly. “I met Aaron through him and he was nice enough to let me interview him when my studies revolved around an old prosecuting case of Aaron’s.”

Derek looked like he wanted to ask you more questions, but you were saved by Jennifer gathering the team and you to meet in a conference room.

Despite the fact that you had met a good portion of them yesterday while being interrogated, everybody reintroduced themselves to you, albeit much friendlier. Now that you weren’t in handcuffs, the team warmed up to you quickly.

You also chose to formally introduce yourself to the team, considering that you were still probably just a file in their minds. “And I apologize for making your jobs more difficult yesterday,” you added onto the end, only half joking.

JJ- which Jennifer insisted you call her- gave you a comforting smile as she walked to the front of the room. “We understand. Interrogation rooms are designed to get those sorts of reactions.”

You were about to reply when the sound of footsteps caused you all to turn your heads towards the door. “Good, you started,” Aaron interrupted, making his way to the front of the room. “Y/N, glad you could make it.”

You just greeted him with a polite nod, before turning your focus to David Rossi, who was introducing himself to you. He had a good enough poker face, but you caught a mischievous glint in his eyes. At first, you were confused, but then you remembered that he knew Aaron came over to your place last night. Maybe he knew even more, which was an uncomfortable enough thought. You didn’t have time to focus on that at the moment.

You stood up to shake Rossi’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, really,” you said simply, your voice light and polite. You had been around the DC law scene long enough that you knew exactly how to get people to like you. “I’ve written about you and your books for my classes.”

Rossi tilted his head to the side slightly. “I didn’t realize my books translated to law courses,” he questioned, sliding into the seat next to you. You took that as your cue to sit back down.

Out of the corner of your eyes, you saw Aaron watching the interaction carefully, causing anxiety to bubble up in your stomach. He had never seen you in a work or academic setting, with the exception of that first meeting, but that hardly counted. He had read some of your academic work, would help you with the occasional homework assignment, and even let you practice your mock trials runs with him while he gave you pointers, but he had never seen you truly in action. The thought unsettled you.

“I’m in a joint degree program,” you explained proudly. You had to make an appeal to the school to allow you to do this joint degree, and you’ve busted your ass ever since. “On top of my JD, I’m getting my masters in Forensic Psychology. I’ve studied your past cases and examined the ethical implications involving your interrogation techniques, specifically when working with offenders with severe mental health issues.”

You regretted the words as soon as you said them. To anybody else, it would have been impressive. Even some of the other profilers were intrigued by the concept, but saying it directly to David Rossi was a whole different ballpark. To his credit, he just chuckled good naturedly, seemingly completely unbothered by your comments. “I can only imagine what they’re saying,” he joked. “Interrogations are very different now than they were back when I started in the FBI.”

“Rossi,” Aaron interjected, and that word was a simple warning. He was obviously trying to stop the conversation quickly. Tension hung in the air briefly as Aaron, Rossi, and you all remembered the unspoken secret the three of you were sharing. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotcner smut #aaron hotchner fanfiction #my best habit #aaron hotchner #hotch x reader #my writing

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dessarious · 4 years ago

Text

What Makes a Family? Pt10

AO3 Beginning Previous Next

“You need to take his Miraculous now. Honestly I’d be fine if he was just sitting out but his reckless behavior is causing problems and he won’t listen to you or anyone else when they point it out. “ Marinette just sighed at Kagami’s words as they walked into the living room. They’d all been taking turns since the fight ended to convince her of the necessity.

“You need to tell me who that boy is so I can go beat some sense into him.” Her Maman’s complaint just got a weak smile. She’d refused to tell them for that very reason.

“There’s no need, I told him to meet me tonight.” She could hear how tired she was which meant everyone else could too. She went over to sit between her parents and curled into her father’s waiting hug. “I’m fine Papa, I promise. And if I’m right, I’ll have my real black cat soon and this will all be over.”

“And who exactly is this person?” Chloe’s demanding tone was hiding concern, for a lot of reasons. Even so Marinette couldn’t stop the ill timed yawn that came out and it seemed to annoy the other girl more.

“My twin.” There was dead silence at that announcement. She was debating who would find their voice first.

“Seriously? Paris can barely handle one of you and you want to bring in a clone?” Yeah, Chloe is the one she would have guessed.

“She’s not a clone, and she’s technically my half sister so we don’t even have that similar of DNA.” Luka and Kagami were communicating with looks and she was too worn out to try and follow it. Chloe just huffed and crossed her arms while Marinette felt her Papa hug her harder.

“You have a half sister?” Her Maman’s tone was soft and that could be dangerous. Unfortunately, Marinette didn’t heed that little voice in her head telling her to stop.

“And a half brother, and apparently a bunch of siblings that are adopted.” She felt the impending explosion too late to do anything but burrow further into her Papa.

“This man has all these kids and just decided he didn’t want you?” She forgot how loud her Maman could yell. She didn’t do it often which made it far more terrifying when she did.

“It’s not like that. He didn’t know about me, and it’s all rather too complicated to go into when I can barely keep my eyes open. Grandpa Alfie?” The man had been suspiciously quiet but he was radiating the same tension as her parents.

“Yes Miss Marinette?” Yep, there was definitely some suppressed anger in that tone.

“Could you ask Mr. Wayne if he and Cass can come to Paris? Sooner would be better. The others can come too but I need her here.” He was frowning at her and she wasn’t certain why but it looked thoughtful.

“Of course, I’ll make sure they’re here by tomorrow.” That was the last thing she heard before she fell asleep.

------------------------------------------------------------

Alfred pulled out his phone to text Master Bruce with measured calmness, but inside he was livid. It was bad enough children had been given the responsibility of protecting Paris but watching one of them goof off to the point that he endangered all the others, multiple times, made him want to take Mme. Cheng’s idea and run with it. Given what they’d said during the fight about him harassing Ladybug he’d be more than willing to set the boy straight.

Alfred - You and Miss Cassandra need to be on a plane. Now.

Master Bruce - What’s wrong?

Alfred - You’ll be briefed when you get here, but it is incredibly urgent.

Master Bruce - Should I tell Cass about Marinette?

Alfred - Yes, that would be prudent.

Master Bruce - What about the boys?

Alfred - Miss Marinette is amenable to meeting them as well, but I’ll let you decide if you want to tell them now and have them all descend on Paris with you.

Master Bruce - It might be best to get it over with at one time. Selina wants to come too for some reason.

Alfred - I don’t see that as a problem, but I will ask Miss Marinette when she wakes just to be sure.

Master Bruce - We’ll be there in twelve hours.

Alfred didn’t bother to ask how many because he had a feeling it was going to be all of them. He did wonder at Miss Kyle’s interest, but she might just be curious to see Master Bruce’s newly found offspring.

“They’ll be here by morning. Probably with the boys as well.” He looked up to find Miss Marinette asleep. Mme. Cheng was frowning at him.

“Exactly how many are we talking about?” She was speaking through clenched teeth and Alfred could tell she was trying to remain calm. This was all a lot to process so he wasn’t surprised.

“Master Bruce, his fiance, and Miss Cassandra for certain. Masters Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are possibilities. I’ll do what I can to keep them from overwhelming all of you.”

“I thought Bruce Wayne only had one known biological son, so how exactly does Mari have a twin sister?” Alfred debated whether to answer Miss Chloe’s question, but Marinette would certainly explain it when she was awake anyway.

“Miss Cassandra and Miss Marinette share the same mother but have different fathers. So you are correct, until now Master Damian was the only one we knew about.” He could tell she was about to grill him further and kept going to prevent it. “Miss Marinette and I were interrupted and I would prefer not to disclose things to others I haven’t even been able to tell her. I’m also not certain what she would want to share with all of you so that’s all I’m willing to say on the matter at present.”

“I can respect that, and Mari definitely deserves to hear everything first.” She paused to look at the sleeping girl and sighed. “I guess she’ll be getting the siblings she wanted. I should go back to the hotel and prepare rooms, since I’m assuming they’ll be joining you there.” It wasn’t exactly a question but Alfred nodded anyway.

“Yes Miss. As soon as I know about the boys I’ll have an idea of room numbers and let you know.”

AO3 Beginning Previous Next

Ko-Fi

Tag List

@moonystars14 @ladybug-182 @elmokingkong @smolplantmum @jessigurl-design @trippingovermyfeet @its-salty-bug @whydoexamsexist @scorchdragon88 @alenee13 @lil-1254s-blog @sturchling @random-fandoms7 @fandom-writer642 @chylou34 @thewitchwhowaited @junarvion @laurcad123 @hakoirii @aestheticnpoetic @aegyobutpsycho2 @sassakitty @swiftie-miraculer13 @miraculous-simmer7 @peachedpocky @misslenamooney @shamefullove @user00000003 @18-fandoms-unite-08 @galla02006 @thestressmademedoit @toodaloo-kangaroo

#maribat #bio dad bruce wayne #Alfred Pennyworth #marinette dupain cheng #chloe bourgeois #sabine cheng #tom dupain #lukagaminette #luka couffaine #kagami tsuguri

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scarletwidowaf · 4 years ago

Text

Ghost Of You - chapter 3

A/N: i think that at this point, me being to lazy and tired to fix grammer and mistakes became a part of the story. Also im very sorry for the angst, im kinda winging it but hopefully stuff will be less painful soon 😅

The beautiful art is by the incredible @chloroformcandles ! Go check her works! Im honestly obsessed and even used her art as icons on both of my scarletwidow blogs.

Warnings: angst of course, mention of death (obviously)

Words count: 1391

ao3 * wattpad * Tumblr story index

------------------------

Ever since wanda joined the avengers she was trained in hand to hand combat.

Its not like she actually needed it, she always thought to herself and said it multiple times to the other female avenger and trainer, but Natasha always raised her eyebrow at her and smiled cockily at her in return.

One of wanda's favorite training sessions with natasha was when they were on the run. Steve Insisted they'll keep training as much as they can, even more than they used to as avengers. Natasha agreed, wanda did too but it didn't stop her from complaining every morning when the two women were already panting before the crack of down.

"You're too slow"

Natasha said, her hands holding the younger girl down on training mat.

Wanda tried to push the shorter woman down but with no use, natasha was small yet her grip was strong and her steady firm.

It was amazing that even when they were training and sweaty natasha still managed to look painfully hot. The older women smelled like vanilla and sweat and wanda had to admit that it wasn't a bad combination.

"Well its 5 am natasha, I'm barley even awake" she joked,.

wanda could see natasha holding back her smile. It was funny, really, that Natasha could hold the best poker face and go undercover without a hiss and without ever getting caught, but couldn't contain her smile when it comes to the younger woman.

"So lets make a deal, maximoff. If you can pin me down to the mat i will get you the coffee you like from the coffee down the street"

Wanda smiled.

"They do have a great coffee.. " she said. Natasha agreed, she liked their coffee and she liked the satisfied smile on wanda's face after she takes the first sip.

"I still don't see a reason for us to train combat" wanda grumble out. Natasha smiled at her and wanda's heart skipped a bit.

The younger woman knew she was getting into a dangerous zone with Natasha, but she couldn't help herself.

"I just gave you a reason maximoff. Im 5'3. If you cant take me down what would you do with stronger, bigger, rougher opponent?"

Natasha raised her eyebrow and moved to get up.

Natasha stood and held her hand out to the younger woman.

"You say that wasn't rough, romanoff?" Wanda asked faking annoyance.

"Barely" natasha smirked.

Wanda took the older girl's hand and got up as well.

"I will get that coffee" wanda said.

"Bring it on"

Natasha's smile was dangerously hot.

That was the problem about Natasha Romanoff, wanda knew that no mattar when, or at what situation, the older woman's smile will have a power over her, just like Natasha had.

And that was the only thought that crossed in wanda's mind when the two sat on wanda's bed in her crappy London apartment.

Its been a week since natasha came back and the two did their best to try and understand the circumstances they were in.

The good news were, that Natasha could come and go as she pleases.

wanda didn't knew where she was going when she left and natasha didn't say.

It could be counted as bad news as well.

At the few times when the two womem got frustrated, natasha would've leave, wanda would've cry and then natasha would come back and sit next to her, as close as she can.

The truth was that wanda missed being close to natasha, she was happy to have her around, to talk to her and hear her voice, but she missed her touch and her smell and having her around was getting painful.

Sometimes Wanda wanted to hug her and sob about everything.

And natasha wanted to be able to hold her, and hold her hand.

They missed each other, and sometimes it was too hard for them to be so close to each other without being able to touch.

"I went trough Agetha's book again" wanda finally said. Natasha put down the book she was reading, another novel wanda never heard of.

Wanda couldn't help her envy, because the book was something natasha could touch and hold and wanda wasn't.

"And?" Natasha said.

"I found something but i dont know how to perform it."

She confessed.

"Maybe we can go to someone who might know. Strange maybe?" Natasha said

"I dont think thats a good idea.. Ive been avoiding the other avengers ever since westview" she admitted

"Was it that bad?"

"Its just complicated. I brought vision back for awhile, well, kind of"

Natasha looked at her quietly encouraging her to continue

"I could bring him back but only there, i build these perfect life in there, nat, i had a family and a house and everything was so normal even when it wasn't"

"Why wasn't it perfect?"

"Because as real as it felt it was all a big lie. An illusion"

"Were you happy?"

Natasha asked.

"Yes" wanda admitted. Natasha smiled sadly.

"Then in was worth it, in a way" the older girl said.

"You weren't there" wanda said after a few moments.

The younger woman got up from bed. She wasn't able to sit still or look into the other woman eyes.

"I guess a part of your consensus knew that if I would've been there it wouldn't be perfect" natasha said sadly and got up as well.

"I doubt that there's any reality, fake or real one, that I wouldn't have been in love with you" natasha continued and wanda felt wetness on her cheeks. She was crying.

Natasha stood a few steps away from wanda, she didn't want to get too close and overwhelm the crying girl, but she couldn't stay away neither.

"I'm sorry nat"

"For what?" Natasha asked confused.

"For bringing you back. I just missed you so much and i was selfish.

I guess you were wrong natasha, I'm not a good person"

"I missed you too, every single day in the last 5 years."

Wanda looked up. Her eyes catching natasha's red ones.

Both women were crying. Natasha's cheeks were stained and her eyes were red, yet she was holding herself together pretty well. Probably as as a result of years of holding things inside and making her feelings.

"I blamed clint, you know?" Wanda confessed.

"We had a fight after i found out you were dead. I blamed him for not keeping you safe, and then left. I didn't spoke to him since then"

Wanda catch a glimpse of Natasha's book on the bed and wondered if the lead characters got their happy ending.

Natasha sigh, her hands massaging her temple.

"I dont know what they told you wanda. But i chose to jump. I could've let clint jump"

"You're lying, clint said-"

"That i had no other choice? Knowing him figured its better you wont know that, so you wouldn't be mad at me for doing that."

the two women were so close to each other that wanda could imagine natasha's hot breath and vanilla scent.

Natasha could see the small freckles on the younger girl's nose.

"You want to know why I don't deserve to go to heaven? Wanda" Natasha asked.

Wanda wiped her own tears.

"Why?"

"I'm selfish.

I could've let clint jump but i knew that I couldn't live with the burden and the pain so i left him to live with it instead.

I could let the world stay how it was after the snap, but I didn't. Not because I'm the honorable person you think i am, but because of you. I wanted you to get the life that you deserve."

Natasha smiled bitterly and gestured with her hands to the room they were in.

Wanda wanted to respond but couldn't. Her throat was dry and her head was aching.

"I should go" natasha said and before wanda could protest the older woman was gone and she was alone again.

After a few minutes of crying the witch took a few breath to calm herself down, before she went to her nightstand and took out a disposable cell phone.

"You're not selfish natasha, i am." She whispered.

The young witch typed a few digits and held the phone to her ear.

After a few rings she heard a familiar voice.

"Hey agnes, i need your help"

#natasha romanoff #black widow #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #scarlet widow #wandanat #wanda x nat #wanda x natasha #natasha x wanda

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laurelnose · 4 years ago

Note

Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there’s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #and a bit of #witcher book blogging #asks #anonymous

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carissimipaixao · 3 years ago

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So, I was tagged for this little game by @hikarry and, just like any unstable person, instead of sleeping, I grabbed my laptop and I’m going to do the game now 😌

1. Why did you choose your URL?

Well, I used to be shay-makes-my-luck and I had another secondary blog where I was posting, ahem, little thoughts and “cute” (read: cringy) poems or things to my crush who would never see those posts. It was called dearpaixao and eventually I recycled that name for my fanfiction blog. It sounded cuter and shorter than the first name, which also made me appear too “one-fandom centric”, if that makes sense.

I ended up taking a long break from fanfiction, in the middle of 2018. Complicated stuff going on, and I didn’t feel satisfied? Plus, I was constantly running into writer’s blocks.

When I came back in 2019, I feel somewhat “distant” from my old writing, style-wise and maybe even the person I was back then. But, I was still very much in love with dearpaixao. So, I decided to create carissimipaixao, where I would start from scratch! It’s actually as if you only added “[dear]est” to the previous username and then translated it to Latin.

My previous blog is still up, though as an archive. It’s embarassing, actually.

2. Any side blogs?

This blog is one! And, like I said, dearpaixao is still up, though for archive reasons.

3. How long have you been on Tumblr?

Probably since 2014? Officially began posting here on 2016.

4. Do you have a queue tag?

Well, not really? I have programmed a few posts (such as Six Sentence Sunday and WIP Wednesday), and I have contemplated programming fanfiction stories, as well. Though, since I also have to cross-post on AO3, I don’t really do it.

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

Dearpaixao (or, shay-makes-my-luck) was created because I wanted to begin posting Shay Cormac fanfiction. Sha[y]melessly. Then, this one was because I wanted to start anew, as if I was a completely different person as I was back in dearpaixao. Though, to this day, I wonder if I should’ve just continued on the same blog.

6. Why did you choose you icon/pfp?

It’s actually a photograph of the faceclaim I have chosen for my Glory and Carnations fanfiction! Her name is Mikaela Lupu.

7. Why did you choose your header?

Currently, don’t have one.

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

Fondness, my official first fanfiction for Lupin, with 123 notes 💖🥺

Previously, it would’ve been Raging Saints, which may be revamped soon.

9. How many mutuals do you have?

Overall, maybe between 6 and 8, but in terms of how close I am with them, then it’d be 2. They know who they are.

10. How many followers do you have?

Currently, 111 ohh angel number

My archive blog has recently passed 300, but I still wonder why people bother to follow that blog when it’s clearly inactive.

11. How many people do you follow?

210.

12. Have you ever made a shit post?

Nope.

13. How often do you use tumblr?

Well, I open it a lot when I’m bored, when I want to see what’s up on my dashboard. So, I’ll open it a few times throughout the day.

14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog?

I don’t think I have, no. Though, I think I’ve nearly had one recently, though with an Anon.

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog” posts?

If it’s interesting, if it’s helpful, if it may help me, then sure, I’ll reblog it.

16. Do you like tag games?

Yes. I love interacting with people!

17. Do you like ask games?

Same as tag games. I’ve done a few, I guess? Though, not as many as I actually would’ve loved to do 😂

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

Well, @latte-to-go deserves all the recognizition in the world for her writing and amazing plots! The thought she puts into everything? Stunning. A true role model when it comes to writing, outlining and planning stories/series. Do check out her work! She’s the reason I even created shay-makes-my-luck and, later, carissimipaixao!

I’m tagging, though no pressure: @peachy-is-obsessed @who-wants-chicken-nuggets @t0pidelaayy @mechanical-fingers @softthotanon

Whoever wants to do this, feel free to join in! And tag me if you do, eheh!

#tag game

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palmett-hoes · 4 years ago

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this was originally meant to be a response/follow-up to @i-did 's post about race in the aftg fandom (that you should read). i ran it by him first and asked permission to add, but then we decided it was too long so i should make it its own post

---

i want to talk about fandom's take on the twins' race because it's rather glaring in the fandom that andrew (and then aaron by necessity) are often portrayed as the only white characters on the team and i have to question why?

there's nothing in the backstories that would mean writing them as POC would fling them headlong into offensive stereotypes that the fandom hasn't bypassed over to make another fox a POC.

they have a history of addiction? but it's okay for matt and seth to be addicts and be brown.

they're violent? but it's okay for renee to be non-white and a former gang member.

they're blond and 'pale'¹? but allison can be a WOC and bleach her hair without saying it explicitly? renee can have white rainbow hair no matter the AU? neil can be a blue-eyed redhead and still be drawn darker skinned half the time?

'pale' in and of itself is a very vague word that's only brought up in the context of comparison to notably dark skinned nicky. it's completely relative, and multi-racial families where people look wildly different from each other exist (pretty commonly). or if you're prescriptivist how about the multiple ways a POC can still be a natural blond including but not limited to pigmentation conditions or being mixed race? similarly, i think less than a quarter of the FCs i've seen for andrew over the years have been natural blonds themselves.

so if our holdups aren't about racial stereotyping and they aren't about the incredibly vague character descriptions, then why are the twins always white when it's approached as a good thing that no one else is? when i've seen multiple different posts lauding the fandom for adding diversity where nora didn't write it, except for here?

to be completely, bluntly honest, it's because we as a majority-white fandom are uncomfortable when we are not the central characters. or maybe we are uncomfortable when people of color ARE the central characters. i don't think there's much of a difference.

we are comfortable writing and drawing nicky, the upperclassmen, then kevin (in that order) as poc because, simply, we use them as background characters. they are rarely the main characters of fics, or have their own storylines in them; it all revolves around andreil.

additionally, while i've used neil up to now as an example of the fandom being OKAY with writing POC, let's also admit that it's an,, imperfect representation, as he will often be racially ambiguous with no explicit ethnicity, he will be the lightest skinned of the foxes of color, and he will still have eurocentric features. also it's genuinely a toss up as to whether he's drawn brown or not, there are still plenty of white neils, much more than there are white dans and matts and renees (not an attack on anyone who draws white neils, simply a statement) and FCs and edits of him still tend to be white people.

he's a bit of a schrödinger's person of color, not really any one thing or another, very few people being willing to take a hard stance on him and do the work of taking that decision under consideration when writing and drawing him.

(quick shout-out here to @hi-raethia for making content about an explicitly chinese interpretation of neil).

(additionally, to be as clear about my intended message as possible, this isn't a statement on the politics of passing or undermining the ethnicities of lightskinned poc, this is about a lack of detail being put into making a character a character of color in any thoughtful, meaningful, or significant way)

so when i talk about the centralization of white people in fandom, neil gets to be included, perhaps with a footnote indicating that this is somewhat of a more complicated statement than it is with lily-white andrew minyard.

nevertheless, i feel comfortable saying that 75% of fandom content revolves around andrew and neil, major exceptions only being jerejean which are often stand-alone from the foxes, and the rising branch of kevaaron shippers. however both of those ships are actually subject to this exact same criticism, as ships between a a flat-out white character and a dubiously "non-white" character who can also be white sometimes. it varies.

conspicuously, content about the UPPERCLASSMEN tends to revolve around andrew and neil.

fics where the upperclassmen are the pov character are often outside-perspective fics on andreil.

HC posts about the upperclassmen, especially matt, will devote major portions to his time spent helping, hanging with, and thinking about andrew and/or neil.

secondary ships like danmatt or renison tend to be just that, secondary ships moving in the background of andreil-focused works. they get more of a,,, scenic shout-out than a storyline

it is only comfortable for us to write these characters as characters of color if they revolve entirely around white characters

so after all that? what should we do, as a white-majority fandom? what should YOU, specifically, as a white person, do?

i hate to talk about a problem without also talking about solutions, and i try not to carp on something i don't want to be an active part of fixing. public criticism without an action plan only leads to hurt feelings and guilt, and that's never my intention when bringing this up. my goal is to address a general problem, not anyone specific's personal failings.

in all honesty leaning completely into all of the foxes being people of color, though i think neat and i certainly support, is not the best solution, and would be more of a hollow action than anything else without addressing the underlying problems that lead to the development of this dynamic.

i think the best thing to do would be to 1. do some research on writing poc, usually by following some writing-specific blogs like @writingwithcolor or @pocinmymedia . look up the 'black best friend' trope and really spend some time tjinking about it. spend an hour seeking out a random assortment of blogs that interest you that are also run by people of color. checking through tags like drawingwhileblack or blacktober may be good kickoff points.

tumblr is great because with an hour of active work to find these blogs, you can then go months passively seeing content from them. try not to interact, actually, simply watch and listen and become familiar with general trends and concerns in different communities. remember that every blog is run by an individual person, not an elected representative of their race, and always keep this in mind.

you are teaching YOURSELF that people of color are individuals, they have interests and inner lives that don't revolve around whiteness, that don't revolve around YOU

at the same time, 2. challenge yourself as a creator to make more content about the upperclassmen, specifically. make art about them doing stuff as a group separate from neil and andrew's group. find a compilation of 'draw the squad' memes and draw/tag the upperclassmen only. make jokes where they talk to each other. write some meta about their character motivations. write a fic where andreil isn't even mentioned, it can be super short, you can even use a prompt generator.

as a reader, reread their backstories in the extra content. reread son nefes. use ao3's filtering system to read some fics about JUST the upperclassmen, few and far apart though they may be.

if we've decided that the upperclassmen are people of color then lean into that, and learn to CARE about them on their own merit, because they are the most underutilized characters in the fandom. we need to make content centralized around them to combat the fact that fandom centralizes whiteness

#txt #fandom #the foxes #dan wilds #matt boyd #renee walker #seth gordon #allison reynolds #my posts

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emachinescat · 4 years ago

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Amytal Sodium + Mac

A MacGyver Fan-Fiction

By @emachinescat

@febuwhump day 8 - “hey, hey, this is no time to sleep”

Summary: An increasingly desperate Jack struggles to transport a drugged and barely coherent MacGyver to exfil before it’s too late.

Characters: Mac, Jack

Words: 1,898

TW: drugs

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging! :)

Even though the exfil point was less than a mile from where Jack Dalton stood, it had never been farther. This day was rapidly reaching Cairo levels of suck.

Jack had arrived to rescue his missing partner after an op gone to hell to find the two, now very dead, domestic terrorists who’d taken Mac injecting some foreign substance into his bloodstream. Jack would later find out that it wasn’t the first dose they’d given him - that’s why Mac hadn’t had the opportunity to escape on his own.

Because whatever this stuff was, it messed him up.

The bodies of the terrorists had barely hit the floor when Jack was racing across the room to his friend. Mac had been tied to a sturdy, high-backed dining chair, slumped in his bonds. It took Jack two seconds to cut the duct tape on his partner's wrists and ankles, but Mac hadn’t even seemed to notice he was free. He was awake, but he was not there. His blue eyes had glazed over with a detached vagueness that sent fear sparking down Jack’s spine.

With great effort, Jack had managed to hoist a limp MacGyver to a facsimile of a standing position, and that movement had elicited some response, much to Jack’s enormous relief.

“J-Jack?” Jack fought the urge to cry at the sound of Mac’s voice, weak and lost and scared - it didn’t sound like his partner at all.

“I’m here, pal,” Jack said simply. “Let’s get you home.”

It was easier said than done.

Even with Jack supporting him, Mac couldn’t keep his feet under him for very long. He attacked his newest mission - getting to exfil without Jack having to carry him - with a determination that was one hundred percent on brand for Angus MacGyver, but determination could only get a person so far, especially when they had been drugged with what was most likely some dangerous cocktail of mind-altering drugs. Jack just hoped that whatever had been given to him, it wasn’t deadly.

“So, any idea what they pumped you full of in there, hoss?” Jack asked as he grabbed the back of Mac's belt to steady him for the umpteenth time. It didn’t help that the ground was steep and uneven with roots and rocks - these terrorists had set up shop in an retired, abandoned safe house used by the FBI in the mid-80s, which just so happened to be halfway up a mountain.

Mac’s answer, when it finally came, was not encouraging. It took him at least a full minute to understand and process Jack’s question, and then another full minute to formulate his response. Jack had already given up on the question, thinking that Mac either hadn’t heard him or hadn’t understood, but then Mac slurred, “Truth ssserum.”

Jack stopped moving for a second, pulling Mac to a halt next to him. It was mid-afternoon, yet already it seemed to be growing dark underneath the thick canopy high overhead. He studied his friend closely, taking in even in the dimness the flushed cheeks, sweat-beaded brow, and hazy eyes with anxiety pooling in his gut. “They wanted information?”

Mac nodded, a jerky, uncoordinated motion, and then he muttered, “Pr’bly something like Thiopental Sodium or Amytal Sodium …”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re just really salty right now, huh, kid?” Jack joked weakly, not knowing for sure what either of the drugs mentioned were, but knowing they couldn’t be good. He gripped Mac’s waist tighter as he lost his footing again, this time while standing still, and took on more of his partner's weight. It was a credit to how bad Mac felt that he didn’t protest being supported. He reached out his other hand and felt Mac’s head. It wasn’t hot, but it was reaching a level of warmth that didn’t set well with his overwatch.

“I think you’re getting a fever,” Jack remarked, trying to keep the worry out of his tone.

“Side effect of l’rge doses of Am’tal Sodium,” Mac explained.

Fear clawed at Jack’s chest. “Just how much of this stuff did they give you?” he demanded, even as he started moving again, now half-carrying, half-dragging a mostly limp Mac by his side. The blonde’s feet were barely moving anymore, his toes more often than not scraping uselessly against the loose dirt.

“Too much,” Mac supplied, very unhelpfully.

“Okay…” Jack breathed out slowly in an attempt to calm himself. “Well, what other side effects should we be looking out for? If they used it as truth serum, are you gonna be revealing all your deepest darkest secrets to me? If so, I’m game for a good round of truth or dare.”

“D’sn’t work like that,” Mac informed him, and Jack couldn’t help but crack a smile at the piece of Old Mac trying to shine through. “Truth serums are act--”

“Okay, I’m going to stop you right there, Einstein,” Jack interrupted. “I don’t think you’re up for a science lesson right now. Can you tell me what other symptoms I need to keep an eye out for?” By his best estimate, based on the map he’d checked right before he’d set out with a drugged Mac in tow, exfil was still quite a ways away. If they kept moving at this pace, they should definitely make it in time, but if Mac kept deteriorating, things would get much more complicated.

“Uh… fever,” said Mac, and Jack just grunted, not reminding him that that was the one they’d just talked about. “...confusion… I think? Headache…. Hallucinations, sometimes… anxiety… spasms ‘n diz-zy-ness--” he overpronounced the word like he was having to try extra hard to say it correctly, “--sleepiness, insomnia, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation--”

“Okay, okay, I think I get the picture,” Jack interrupted Mac’s breathless spurting of grim side effect after another. “Geez, you’re starting to sound like a commercial for Prozac or somethin’. How can it give you sleepiness and insomnia? That’s about as opposite as you can get.”

“Mmmm... depends on the person,” Mac said several long seconds later, his words sounding as if they were being pulled with great difficulty from deep within. Still moving, but slower now, Jack glanced over and saw that Mac’s eyelids were beginning to flutter, and suddenly all of Mac’s weight was on Jack. He stumbled, barely keeping them from taking a roll down a steep incline.

“Hey, hey,” Jack gently shook his friend, who stirred with a groan, “this is no time to sleep.”

“Tired,” said Mac simply.

“I know, bud, and I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get your scrawny ass out of these woods before we miss exfil, and I don’t know if I can carry you down this mountain. I need you to help me, even if it’s just a little, okay?” He paused, then added, “And anyway, you probably shouldn’t sleep until medical’s got a chance to look at you. It’s safer that way.”

Mac didn’t say anything, but he did make a valiant attempt to straighten up and bear some of his own weight, so Jack pressed on.

Five minutes later, the nervousness set in. Despite being exhausted and barely coherent, Mac gazed around furtively, whipped his head around at every snap of a twig, mumbled something about his skin crawling and chest hurting and he thought they were being followed. At one point, Mac tried to break away from Jack as if he were the enemy, and would have rolled down the rest of the mountain if Jack’s reflexes hadn’t been so finely tuned.

A short pause and a panic attack later, they were back on their way, Mac still shifty and scared but thankfully more docile. He nodded off again.

“Hey,” Jack reminded him with another jostle, “no sleeping, remember? Let’s get down this mountain first.”

Ten minutes after that, they had to stop for Mac to empty his stomach of everything he’d eaten in the past five years. Jack rubbed his back and offered soothing words as his partner hacked and gasped and sobbed breathlessly against the strain to his body, but there was no time for coddling after the fact. They were running out of time.

Mac really wanted to sleep after the toll that had taken on his system, but Jack prodded him awake, trying to distract him with mindless babble. The ground was slowly beginning to level out, and he could hear the chop of the helicopter blades several hundred yards away in a clearing at the base of the mountain - they were going to make it in time, if only just!

At this point, Mac had become so uncoordinated and woozy that he might as well have been asleep, as Jack was supporting him entirely. But still, every time his head dropped onto Jack’s shoulder or fell forward, Jack prodded him back to consciousness, desperate to keep his boy genius awake and semi-coherent, because what if he fell asleep and didn’t wake up again?

And then they were in the clearing, and Mac was trying to sleep again, and Jack shook him as the exfil team surged forward to put the fading kid on a stretcher. Mac blearily opened his eyes at the movement.

“Hey, Mac,’ Jack said softly as he kept pace with the stretcher with long strides. “Stay awake for a little longer for me, will ya? Just until we get in the air and the medics can take a good look at you.”

Mac studied his face with a serious, but baffled expression. Finally, he gave a tiny, clumsy nod right before he was lifted into the chopper.

“‘Kay, Dad,” he murmured, and Jack froze where he stood, heart pounding wildly in his chest. Mac had said that hallucinations were one of the side effects of whatever drug he thought he’d been given. Was Mac hallucinating now? Was he seeing his dad instead of Jack?

Or - and this idea was one that Jack found himself approaching shyly, as if afraid to acknowledge it in case it turned out not to be true - could it be that Mac’s defenses were down? Could it be that he saw Jack as a father figure, that maybe Jack had been able to fill in, in some small way, the void that James MacGyver had left when he’d abandoned his son?

“Dalton! We need to move!”

Jack shook himself out of his thoughts, swiped the back of his arm across his eyes, and followed Mac into the chopper. Medics were already examining him, and even though Jack was informed that they wouldn’t be able to know for sure what they were dealing with until they were back at Phoenix and could run more extensive tests, he was reassured that sleep was probably the best thing for Mac, now that his vitals were being closely monitored.

Jack sat down next to the stretcher, and grabbed one of the kid’s hands. To his surprise, Mac was still awake, barely clinging on to consciousness.

“Hey, man. You’re gonna get help real soon, okay?”

“Is it… ‘kay to sleep now?” Mac asked, his words falling over one another like someone tumbling in slow motion down the stairs.

Jack smiled warmly and brushed a strand of sweaty hair off of his kid’s forehead. “Yeah, son,” he said, not even realizing what he’d called Mac in this quiet moment - it just felt right. “Now, it’s time to sleep.”

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nighttimepixels · 5 years ago

Note

Is there a reason the story has gone without an update on AO3 for nearly a year?

Okay. I try... really, really hard to either have a positive/understanding outlook here, or to simply ignore and scroll on if I can’t.

But I’m frustrated with these messages. So... I’m going to be blunt, under the cut.

Why would you ask this?

Do you go and anonymously demand answers like this of any creator whose work you’ve consumed?

Genuinely, I want to know.

There is no kind way for me to read this. This is not something that could be easily lost in translation, or a slip of the wording where you accidentally sound a bit demanding in wanting to know when a next update is coming.

Is there a reason the story has gone without an update on AO3 for nearly a year?

Stars help me, what a miserable ask to wake up to this morning.

Is there a reason that... perhaps rather than reach out with a nice message, some words of encouragement, or even a hopeful ‘can’t wait for the next update!’, for a story you presumably enjoy? After all, you came to my blog from AO3 to ask this. You’re on anon, so I can’t say for certain whether you’ve commented something nice/encouraging before; it would be nice if you had, and I would thank you, deeply, for that. But it wouldn’t excuse this sort of message.

What reason do YOU think I need to have, to excuse not updating my free fanwork for ‘nearly a year‘?

Do you think I don’t know it’s been nearly a year?

Do you think that I, someone who fairly regularly answers questions about the characters in that fic, someone who draws those characters frequently, who is still active in the overarching fandom, am unaware of the WIP burning a goddamn hole in my drive?

Do you think it doesn’t eat me up inside, knowing it’s been that long?

...

Tell me something, anon.

What would excuse it?

Do I need to go into my mental health issues?

Do I need to shine a light on the minutiae of my life?

To go into my physical health struggles, to explain how I felt for two months straight like I might throw up in mere seconds while I tried to get proper goddamn nutrition into my body?

Do I need to talk about the complications in my family life, or the way that I took time to support loved ones rather than spend the time reworking an update? Do I need to reveal the countless wips in my folder as I struggled with burnout from trying to scrape some money from doing commissions because my health made it nigh impossible to work a traditional job, leading to creative stress bleeding into my personal creative time as well? Do I need to make a checklist of personal strides I’ve made in the past year, trying to get my life back on track, trying to figure out what I want to do, how to make even half a living and be less of a burden to those I care about most, how to scrape together money for a vocational school, how to survive if once my insurance runs out in less than a month now in this flaming garbage bin of a bourgeoisie-worshiping country, in the interim while I’m still training/in school & before I have a job? Do I need to dig up emotional bullshit I’ve gone through on the side of all those things that maybe I don’t feel like airing to the masses on the internet? Do I need to bow down and explain that I’ve also been trying really hard to make strides in my art, the thing that makes me a modicum of money on top of the fact that I enjoy it, in part so I can launch an original project that I’m really hoping people will like and might just help me make ends meet - not any time soon, gods know that, but at least in the long run? Do I need to patiently remind you of the global plague that’s been complicating things just a bit recently?

... Do I need to be more specific?

I’m so fucking tired.

But I’m a creator. I can’t stop. I won’t.

Goddammit, it’s in my bones, and I wouldn’t change that for a damn thing, no matter how exhausting it can get; no matter how I struggle with hinging my self-worth on my creative output; no matter how a couple shitty comments or demanding asks can shine a thousand overheated spotlights on those many, many things that the crappiest part of my badly-chemically-balanced brain already likes to whisper barbed reminders of to me.

Seriously...

Most of you... most of you are lovely, and I can’t express my appreciation for you enough. Many of you are outright wonderful - leaving a comment, or sending a nice ask, even though I’m slow to answer sometimes (or outright hoard the asks when they’re just personal encouragement, bc I’m busy trying not to cry).

Those of you that have left encouraging words or just said even a short sentence re: something that you liked about what I created... I wouldn’t be where I am, alive and creating, if not for you sweethearts.

And to you, anon, regarding why I haven’t updated in nearly a year?

The answer is: life happens.

And when I do update - which will hopefully be soon, bc no I haven’t given up on this fic, it won’t be because you, and a handful of others, have left impatient and angry comments or messages, here or elsewhere.

It’ll be in spite of that.

And it’ll be for the sweethearts out there that have been kind in spite of the wait - the wait that, trust me, I hate more than you do.

#night answers #personal #i'm sorry for this particular straw that broke my back on this topic #thank you to everyone else - seriously 99% of you are wonderful #but to those that send these sorts of asks #don't #just... stop and think #if you can't say something nice or supportive #then just don't say anything at all #Anonymous

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genderfluidlucifer · 4 years ago

Text

Response to being asked to give an opinion on Connie’s calout by residentevil-4

(Tw: CSAM, rape fic, incest fic, predatory behavior, racism, ableism, kink mention, nsfw mentions. Minors should probably dni.)

“Connie and I know each other irl and went to school together for 3 years, although they now live in a different state and have cut contact with me. We went to a private therapy school in Manhattan as we're both disabled and were deemed unable to attend public school. Even though we were pretty close, Connie didn't like having photos taken of them, so I don't have any selfies of the two of us; however, these are from our sophomore and senior yearbooks which at least confirms that we were in the same year at school. People who have seen Connie's selfies should be able to confirm that that is what they look like. First and foremost, Connie is not TMA. They are intersex and the two of us have discussed intersex issues both in person and online, but they are still decidedly CAFAB.” Ok so first off, I want to address this part of the callout. To be honest...was it really necessary to literally doxx Connie ehre? Because this textbook definition of doxxing. Yes Connie’s done some shitty things but I freally don’t think that what they’ve done warrants this level of doxxing. Or...even better, any doxxing. This feels like a really unnecessary breach of privacy, revealing sensitive information on Connie’s childhood that they choose to confide in you with. I really don’t agree with this aspect of the callout as it feels very invasive and bordering on stalkerish. Btw when I say bordering on stalkerish I’m not directly calling you a stalker Bonnie. Just so we’re clear. I am not defending Connie supposedly faking being TMA. Because faking being TMA is a very serious issue. HOWEVER since I don’t know Connie irl and to be quite frank it’s none of my business what the nature of their agab is. Were not close and I’m certainly not going to like lead Connie onto thinking we’re friends just to confirm this with them because that would be creepy. So to be honest I’m going to take this part of the callout with again of salt for now.

[ID: A cropped screenshot of a numbered list Connie posted to their blog hadrosaurs in response to an ask.

“3. I’m TMA And that’s completely irrelevant. I’m not accusing them because of their gender I didn’t even know their gender when they said that to me saying that they said that because they fucking said that and the reaction to it was incredibly alarming. Don’t fucking say that stuff to people.]

I mean I”m not a trans woman so take this with a grain of salt if you want but...I don’t see how this is really proof of Connie being deliberately transmisogynistic? Yes Connie gives iffy retellings of mistakes they’ve made in the past. I’ve seen that on their blog before and I won’t pretend it doesn’t happen. BUT here they sound genuine enough and to be honest a growing issue I’ve seen with callouts as of late is. A person confirms they in fact did not do the thing they were called out for. And then the people who make the callout choose to see it as proof of incriminating behavior anyways. To be honest it’s a big problem and it’s also incredibly unfair to the person being called out. If you’re so determined at that point to see the person as bigoted no matter what they say then of course anything they say can be seen as proof. So I’m going to have to pass on this bit of evidence. “Connie responded: “Final note: I have spoken extensively with several trans women about using TMA to describe myself. I will not be getting into discourse about that on this blog again. All that leads to is people demanding my medical records and calling me slurs. If you wanna have a thoughtful conversation about it direct message me cause it’s not happening again here.” Again this really doesn’t seem all that self incriminating. Connie mentions here that they’ve talked to rl trans woman about whether or not they can be considered TMA. Connie really doesn’t have to disclose that personal information to people for any reason. Yes even when people are e including this ask response in a callout. And considering lots of people DO get invasive about Connie’s medical history ans general personal life over matters like this? I feel their reaction is pretty understandable here. “Connie has constantly compared “exclusionists” (or anyone, really) to TERFs, even when the people in question are not transmisogynistic, trans exclusionary radfems, or are even transmisogyny affected themselves.

“ Gonna have to disagree with this part of the callout too. Lots of ace inclus blogs, even some run by trans women , have proven that the ace exclus movement was started by swerfs/terfs. But the blog that has the most evidence for this is courteousmingler on tumblr. I suggest you check out that blog’s archiving of the history of ace exclus rhetoric before rushing to call me a transmisogynist for disagreeing with this part of the callout. I looked through all of the evidence for Connie being racist and tbh as a black ndn it all feels incredibly flimsy. It’d be one thing if Connie was using their experiences to derail and invalidate the discussions about how black people are oppressed But they weren’t doing that there at all. This part of the post feels incredibly biased. And like OP is looking for things to be mad about. Going to have to pass on this list of evidence. Also uh I seem to recall that residentevil04 got called out for some questionable behavior as well. “Both me (insepsy, hi) and ezrat have had really weird spikes in activity on our Statcounters, both on the same day. (Saturday, 4/17/21) For both of us, majority of the pages looked at by these visitors have been related to or about Connie, or have been posts that Connie would find "problematic" such as the f slur untagged or something related to "panphobia"/aphobia. I’m sorry but...none of the proof of cyberstalking holds any water. Visiting someone’s blogs and rbing posts to disagree with them is not cyberstalking. Keeping tabs on urls that an abusive person who has harassed are using so you can block them (in this case with kyoshi) and warn your mutuals is not stalking. As a victim of rl stalking it’s...really weird to call this legit stalking at all. Much less claim that you have damning proof of it being stalking when no such evidence exists in the callout. Besides after Connie and nonbinarydave called out one of kyoshi’s buddies for sending a death threat hate anon to nonbinarydave’s toddler st4lker partly admitted to doing it a few times. Then other mutuals in kyoshi’s toxic social circle clearly began joining in. Making side accounts where they tried to spin a false narrative of nonbinarydave’s daughter being one of their alters (ableist as hell.) And also trying to do it in such a way that they thought would trigger nonibnarydave’s psychosis (also ableist as hell.) If you’re going to drag Connie for their mistakes and never let them move on from those mistakes then it’s only fair to do that to people you agree with who also do toxic/bigoted things. ALso the fact that your wording here suggests that you think panphobia and aphobia aren’t real makes me doubt this claim even more. Exclus and their allies are notorious for mislabeling inclus disagreeing with them as stalking. “connie said that they would release that info at a later time and the minor began to argue with them that they had a responsibility regardless of their complicated relationship with age. in this argument connie for a time kept their age ambiguous and at one point told the minor (who confirmed in a later ask that they were severely traumatized by adults) that they obviously weren’t traumatized. connie quickly deleted this ask and any mentions of it and the next post they reblogged was about how wrong it was to try and quantify or discount others’ trauma. on my old blog i @ed them in the replies and asked if they had just done that. connie admitted to it and said it was fucked up but quickly blocked + deleted my comment. i can’t remember whether or not connie apologized to the minor, they may have? but yeah. i thought that was pretty weird.”] I do agree with some of the concern here that adults shouldn’t over expose minors in discourse. I’ve been contemplating this for awhile myself. And trying to figure out how to take better steps to avoid including minors who are triggered by discourse in discourse, especially. HOWEVER I have one little issue with this addition to the callout. If that is the case then exclus and their allies need to practice this as well. You cannot ignore the fact that the reason a lot of minors are getting involved in exclus discourse is due to adult exclus and their allies forcing minors to pick a side in the discourse. Y’all are not at all exempt from this problem. I still remember an ex mutual of mine trying to convince a minor to agree that aces can’t face corrective rape. And based on how aggressive it got with me when I tried to avoid giving an opinion on the matter, I can’t imagine that it would’ve reacted better to the minor refusing to give an opinion or to the minor outright disagreed. Refusing to put these standards on exclus and their allies is both hypocritical and quite frankly very transparent. The claims about them glorifying dark topics on AO3 through their fics also seems unfortunately legit. I mean those asks of shaming people who ask their viewers to not romanticize or glorify abusive relationships in their works is very damning. I’m very disappointed to see that Connie has taken being an inclus to the point of validating antis anti culture wholeheartedly. I can’t think of much more to add to my opinion on that part of the callout. As for the issue of Connie interacting with pro shippers in the past, I do know that this claim is legit. I’ve seen it before and so has Breeze. This was why for a brief time we decided to stop following their blogs. Because it was triggering to have pro shippers put on our dash. And sometimes we just don’t feel it’s worth it to always let people we’re platforming know they’re rbing triggering stuff. So sometimes we just quietly unfollow and choose to not interact until we’re sure they’re filtering what they do and don’t rb in some way. I definitely don’t agree with that behavior. And if they’re still doing that I”ll deplatform again. “The anon asks: “A weird question but do you know any other stimboard blogs with your follow criteria? (No radfems, racists, fandom antis, etc.) I was hoping to find more through your “similar blogs” but a lot have no anti-antis for their DNI or allow truscum/transmeds and exclus. :(“

The user responds: “I know of @turtle-pond-stims, @outofangband, and @kinaesthetics! 🍂🍄" “[ID: A cropped screenshot of an ask sent by Connie from their now-deactivated blog, butch-with-a-tortoise.

Connie says: “hey anon I have safe stim blogs. dm me if you want them. And radfems/bigots aren’t allowed to interact. For my own safety (because the community is honestly terrifying) I can’t publicly say on my blogs that I’m safe for proshippers/kinky people but I try to spread word how I can.”] [ID: Screenshot of a post by evilwriter37, which reads, “I’ve been seeing posts about fandom police leaving ao3, and it’s like: Good. We don’t want you here anyway. Go find your own fanfiction site.”

The post is tagged “#Fandom #AO3 #Antis #Purity Culture” and has 87 notes. It was posted on December 21st, 2020.

There is a reply from main-to-outofangband-andothers saying: “there are Silm antis on that site who are against Russigon (Maedhros and Fingon) not because they’re cousins but because they’re both male (coded)”] [ID: A screenshot of an anonymous (though signed off as being from outofangband) ask sent to evilwriter37, which says, “Melkor and Viggo solidarity is ‘Look there’s nothing wrong with keeping my enemy chained up in my personal chambers at all times so please just focus on the war efforts and I’ll focus on the boy* in my chambers’ -@outofbangand.

*boy used figuratively @ antis”

The user responds: “Pfft!!! Hahaha! You’re absolutely right! (And Viggo does refer to Hiccup in canon as ‘my boy’).”] I can’t really say anything to refute this. Because these are all posts of Connie outright stating that they disagree with antis. And not only sympathize with anti antis but are fully against antis. Looks like very damning evidence. Although ngl I’m not entirely against kinky blogs as a whole? Just so long as they truly stay in their lane with their kink content. And don’t force it on others in any way. Or shame people who are triggered by their kinks. It is true that being entirely against kinky blogs no matter what is dipping your toes into swerf rhetoric. Tbh I’m not going to look at the rest. This is pretty much all I need to make a decision on whether or not I”ll continue platforming Connie. Though I will try to get some more perspective from people who I interact with as well. Because I feel better about making a more definitive decision after doing that. Also in general please don’t not try to get an opinion from me on how I feel about syscourse. A lot of the claims about Connie’s age weirdness and them using their alters as a shield feel like syscourse to me. Especially if this callout was written by one or several singlets. Singlets should never be trying to judge how legit someone’s system is ever. Even if their system friends encourage them to. You can call out a horrible person with a system without trying to insinuate that they’re lying about their alters in some way. Doing otherwise is ableist ESPECIALLY if you’re a singlet. Also in general the reason I stay out of discussions of judging how someone is handling their systems is because it’s syscourse and syscourse is triggering for my system and I. If this post was an attempt to get me to give an opinion on the validity of Connie’s system I don’t appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being dragged into such matters again, thank you.

In general there’s like a few parts of this callout that feel legit. Which is unfortunately cluttered with obvious bias and obsessive hatred of Connie. I’m not here to stan or coddle Connie. I know they are not a perfect person. Especially since no human being in the world is perfect. But I feel the way this callout was created was very sloppy since a lot of the evidence was messy at best. And some points were very hypocritical as well as there being some no true scotsman moments from OP. In acting like exclus never do any of the thing that they tried to call out Connie for. Which is behavior that I am not a fan of. This is why people need to be more careful about callouts and like make roughdrafts and have a more unbiased person helping them if they don’t feel they can do it on their own. I’m even trying to make a resolve to do better at that myself. So it’s not like I’m unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Anyways those are all my thoughts on this messy callout. And tbh I’m not going to get too much more heavily involved in this. Because I need to focus on more immediately serious rl stuff more often, like doing what I can to get out of the hellish landscape of a house I currently am stuck in.

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skateboardtotheheart · 4 years ago

Text

Alex vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda

hello, everyone! i’ve been working on a fic titled “Alex vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda” for quite a long while, and i’m finally biting the bullet and posting the first chapter. this fic is based on the novel "Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli! it will be very closely based on the book, as well as some things from the movie "Love, Simon", and you may find dialogue or details that you recognize from either version of Becky Albertalli's story! i have no rights to the novel/movie or the JATP characters depicted in this fic. that said, there are a lot of details that are changed, and you'll be able to spot those really easily. this fic will be crossposted to my AO3 and can be located HERE.

like i said, this fic has been a long time coming, and there is tons and tons i have planned for it. here on tumblr, i will be posting things like extra details, bonus content, and maybe some sneak previews! for now, let’s get into the fic!

SUMMARY: Alex Mercer is just like everyone else- only he has one huge ass secret. Nobody knows that he's gay, not even his closest friends and bandmates Luke, Reggie, and Julie. The only time he's ever mentioned it to someone, it was in an anonymous email chain with Ghost, another Los Feliz High School student. Alex can't risk coming out to anyone, but when his emails fall into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into a spotlight. Suddenly an already stressful junior year is all that more complicated as he juggles everyday drama, the school's annual band competition, blackmail, and trying not to lose his shot with the best guy he's ever met.

READ CHAPTER ONE BELOW THE CUT

Everything about this conversation is so out of the box of normal that I barely even register what's happening. Of course I'm the type of person who can't tell when this- something so crazy and awful and stressful and honest to God what the hell is happening- is going on. In my defense, Caleb Covington has never spoken to me before. I had no reason to assume that the first time he did, it would be to blackmail me.

We're taking a water break in the bleachers when Caleb saunters over. No greeting, no introduction- just words to send my entire junior year of high school spinning on its head.

"I read your email."

I swallow my water. "What?"

Caleb raises an eyebrow at me, and there's no other way to describe it but menacing. It's funny looking back on it all; I'd always heard Caleb was a really nice guy.

"I was in the library. And I read your email."

"You read my email?"

"Not on purpose. You really should have logged out of Gmail."

There's nothing I can do but stare at him, dumbfounded. What in the name of David Bowie is happening right now?

Caleb, thankfully, stops towering over me and takes a seat in the bleachers, a foot or so away. To anyone else, it might look like we're friends. To me, it feels like I can't breathe.

"Why the fake name?" Caleb asks, and my entire soul screams a wish that he would stop being so casual about this.

I want to tell him that the point of a fake name is to keep people like Caleb Covington from knowing my secret. Way to freaking go, Alex. He must have seen me sitting at the computer like the monumental dumbass I am.

"Would it interest you to know my cousin is gay?"

"Um. No, Caleb. It really wouldn't."

He still has his eyebrow raised and a small smirk on his face. If I focus hard enough- kind of impossible right now- I can picture Luke punching it right off his face.

"What do you want Caleb?"

This is the longest five minute water break of my life.

"Look, Mercer, I don't have a problem with it. It's not a big deal."

Yes, it really is. It's a huge monster of a deal. This is the biggest disaster since Luke slammed his fingers in a door and couldn't play his guitar.

"But. . ." Caleb drags out, and I can feel my leg bouncing quicker by the second. "It's pretty clear to me that you'd rather keep it all hush, hush."

I mean. Yeah. Kind of. The coming out thing doesn't scare me that much. Except it does. Because if people know then my parents will know and if my parents know then my whole family will know and if my whole family knows then I've become like a living, gay, everyone-finds-out version of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, and I'd rather die than have that happen. So maybe the coming out thing does scare me. But the biggest problem if people found out?

Ghost.

I have absolutely no idea what it would mean for Ghost if Caleb was going to tell anyone. The thing about Ghost is he's a pretty private person. I bet he wouldn't forget to log out of his email so people like Caleb Covington wouldn't see it. I bet there's a good chance he'll never forgive me if he finds out about this. So really, I have absolutely no freaking clue what would happen to Ghost- to us.

And I'm still sitting in these stupid gym bleachers, the pink hydroflask Reggie bought me limp in my hand, desperately wishing Carrie would call an end to this godforsaken water break. I can't believe I'm having this conversation with Caleb right now. Why couldn't anyone else have logged into Gmail after me? Why was I so impatient to see if Ghost had emailed me back that I used the freaking school computers? Why did this stupid school insist on blocking the wireless so I had had no choice but to use the school computers? But it had been one of those days where I couldn't even wait to get out of dance practice to check my phone in my car.

I'd emailed Ghost this morning, and it had been a pretty big email. I was desperate to know if he'd emailed back.

I must have been just staring at Caleb for a while because he cocked his head at me and said, "Don't worry, Mercer. I'm not going to show anyone."

I take a relieved breath. Then my hydroflask finally slips from my fingers as I freeze, and the sound echoes through the gym. I don't even look at the rest of the dancers when their laughs break out.

"Show anyone?" I ask.

Caleb leans in a little bit, smirk wider on his face. I feel sick.

"Did you- oh my god, did you screenshot my emails?"

"Yes, see, I wanted to talk to you about that."

"You took a fucking screenshot?" I hiss out, thankful I'd put my stuff farther away from the rest of the dance team today.

Caleb has the audacity to roll his eyes. "I've heard you're in a band with-"

"What the fuck does that have to do with- Let's go back to how you screenshot my email."

"Or you can shut up and listen to what I have to say."

Something about the way Caleb's gaze catches you, it's hard to do anything but what he says. Fuck.

"I believe we may be in a position to help each other out."

Jesus Christ, what 18 year old talks like this?

"Why the hell would I do anything for you?"

It's a stupid question, I realize as he stares at me calmly. Calmly. Like this isn't the end of my life. Whatever he wants right now, it'll be in exchange. I do this, and he doesn't broadcast my private emails with Ghost to the entire student body.

All this time and I really thought Caleb was supposed to be this nice guy. Fuck me.

"You're going to make me do whatever you want?"

Caleb tsk'd like the condescending bastard he clearly is. "Well, now. I'm not making you do anything."

"But if I don't help you, you'll what? Post my emails on the fucking tumblr?"

LosFelizSecrets. The bane of every Los Feliz student's existence. Ground zero for more gossip than anyone in their right mind knows what to do with. A school of almost 3,000 kids but if it's on the tumblr, most people know within a day. A complete and utter hellscape disguised as a blog.

When Caleb stays quiet, I speak again. "What do you want from me, Caleb?"

He sneers.

"Music of the Night."

Once again, I'm stuck staring at him. Music of the Night? That's what this is about?

"Your band is signed up, as is mine. The HGC lost to Dirty Candy last year, and I will not lose again this year."

Music of the Night is this competition Los Feliz holds every year as part of the music program. At the end of the year, there's this huge concert held at the Orpheum theatre in Hollywood. At the beginning of the school year, anyone can sign up. Then each band has 4 months to perform at school events, outside gigs and parties, and whenever they have an opportunity, really. During winter break, the student body votes on who the headliner of the concert will be. Last year, the headliner was Dirty Candy. Because they won last year, they're out of the running this year and are in charge of organization and things for the concert. This year, I was hoping the headliner would be Julie and the Phantoms. My band. Caleb and his band HGC has entered the competition every year, and he's never won. He's a senior, and I know this will be his last chance. I also know who his biggest competition is.

Us.

"So. . . what? You want me to sabotage my own band?"

I feel breathless and dizzy as I ask. Caleb just shrugs casually.

"Whatever you need to do. So long as it's my band that gets the votes. Like I said, I think we can help each other out. Think about it."

Caleb winks- he actually winks- and walks away. I stare dumbly after him. No way. No, I'm not doing this. I can live with being outed. Right?

But my thoughts travel to Ghost. Because he's a part of this, too. He goes to Los Feliz, and he's my age, and he uses a fake name, and he's not out.

Ghost isn't out, and Caleb has my emails.

Fuck.

----------

Any hope I have of forgetting about that stupid conversation clearly isn’t worth it. I have an hour before dinner, and right now I’m basically willing to do anything to avoid my family. Trying to talk to my parents is exhausting. You can’t just get away with telling them your day was good or bad. No, you have to ring out every excruciating little detail. Everything that happens in my or my siblings’ life, they want to know about it. In all honesty, I used to love telling them all that stuff. Now I can’t get away from them fast enough. Especially today. I’m barely in the house long enough to put my backpack in my room before I’m slipping out the back door and leaving again.

I try to drown out my thoughts with Axl Rose screaming into my earbuds. But my mind is stuck on Ghost, emails, and Caleb freaking Covington. Caleb wants to win Music of the Night. I can’t exactly blame him for that. Everyone wants to win it.

Except he’s blackmailing me. And by extension, he’s blackmailing Ghost. And that makes me want to hyperventilate a little bit. Maybe go scream somewhere.

But Axl Rose is helping. The familiar route of walking to Luke’s is helping. We don’t get much of a fall in LA, but the air feels a little crisper in mid October, and I can already see the houses that are getting ready for Halloween.

When I reach Luke’s house, I don’t even bother going through the front door. I just cut through his backyard and head through the backdoor right next to Luke’s bedroom. I hear them before I see them. Reggie’s laugh fills the air, paired with a frustrated groan from Luke. They’re sitting side by side on Luke’s bed, facing the small tv with some video game I’ve never seen on the screen. They look like they haven’t moved in hours. Luke pauses the game as soon as he sees me, waving, and I can’t help but smile a little bit. The guy won’t put down his guitar for you, but he’ll pause a video game or movie without a second thought.

“Great, you’re here! Tell Luke he’s shit at this game and he should let me play Mario Kart.”

I roll my eyes, “Dance was great, Reg. Thanks for asking.”

Reggie sticks out his tongue, and I crack a smile. This is the most comfortable I’ve felt all afternoon. I throw myself into the beat up bean bag chair Luke keeps in his room.

“Luke, you’re shit at this game and Reggie wants to play Mario Kart.”

Luke gapes at me, a betrayed gleam in his eyes, but I just shrug. Luke grumbles a bit as he gets up to switch out the game, and Reggie whoops in victory. I let out a soft sigh. I think I needed this. The chaos of Reggie and Luke playing whatever game, the strange mix of leather, Axe, and his mom’s Hawaiian Breeze cleaner that makes Luke’s room smell awful and entirely wonderful at the same time, and the familiarity of Luke and Reggie. Everything just fits right when I’m with them.

As Luke sets up the game, Reggie looks at me excitedly. “Alex, Luke hasn’t heard about le wedgie.”

I snort a little, “Ah, yes. Le wedgie. C’est une histoire touchante.”

I don’t know why Reggie bothered to wait for me to tell the story; he’s the far better storyteller between us. Maybe it’s just because I’m better at French.

Luke stares at me, “English, please?”

Reggie and I thought we’d be fancy and take something fun like French for our required language credits. Luke decided to take something actually useful and learn sign language. This story is stupid, and my reenactment is stupid, but it feels kind of perfect. Like Caleb and secrets are all things of my imagination, and nothing exists but this bedroom and me, Luke, and Reggie. Benefits of having known these dorks since elementary school, I guess.

About as they finish the second race in Mario Kart, Luke lets out a yawn. Reggie reacts so quickly I barely realize what he’s doing. He grabs a crumpled up Hershey’s Kiss wrapper from Luke’s nightstand and throws it into Luke’s mouth. Luke sees it just in time to clamp his mouth shut. Reggie sighs in defeat, but shrugs.

“Keep yawning, I’ll get you one of these times.”

“Why are you so tired?”

“Because I party real hard. All night, every night, baby,” Luke says, slamming Reggie’s bike with a green turtle shell.

“Alone in your room with your guitar. Some party that is,” Reggie retaliated with a bomb thrown in Luke’s direction.

As the race finishes Luke yawns again, and Reggie’s Kiss wrapper bounces off his cheek.

“I just keep having these weird dreams,” he explains.

I raise my eyebrows. “TMI, dude.”

“Not that kind of dream!” Luke tosses the wrappers at me, Reggie cackling beside him.

Luke starts explaining his dream- something about every time he started playing his guitar his cord had magically unplugged itself from his amp- and Reggie and I just share a look. We were used to Luke being in his weird, feels-the-need-to-analyze-everything moods. But even after all these years, it was almost like a movie, watching Luke get so weirdly passionate about things- music and otherwise. It made me glad that Luke was a brother to me by everything but blood. Partly because if he wasn’t, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from falling for him. And I have a strict policy about not falling for straight guys.

To everyone but me and Reggie- immune to him after knowing pretty much every thought that’s ever gone through his head since elementary school- there’s this pull to Luke. Like he casts a spell that has everyone in a 10 mile radius tripping at his feet and each and every girl swooning. Poor Julie is not immune to the spell, it seems. Lucky for her though, Luke doesn’t seem immune to her either.

It took barely a few weeks into the school year before I noticed Luke switching seats with Willie Meyers at lunch to increase the odds he’d end up right next to Julie. Then there’s that stupid, puppy-dog, love-sick look in his eyes that Luke gets every time he thinks Julie isn’t looking. And it’s not like Reggie and I haven’t put up with a pining Luke before, but everything seems a little different with Julie. It makes me think of Ghost.

Would I look like that if I saw him in person? Would he look at me like that?

If Caleb leaks my emails and Ghost hates me forever, I don’t think I’ll ever find out.

-----------

chapter one complete!

i'll let everyone know right now that i have no clear updating schedule for this fic; it's kind of hard to write and get down the way i want, so i'm not sure how long anything will take me. but it is summer break for me, so hopefully you'll all start seeing consistent posting of new chapters!

i hope you all liked this first chapter, or are at least intrigued to read some more. as i said in the starting notes, this will be cross posted to my AO3! Feel free to leave me a comment here if you would like, or head over there if you have any comments about the fic at any point! feel free to send me a message/ask on here if you have any questions or comments, too! my inbox is open any time <3

if anyone would like me to start a tag list, let me know and i’ll get that done right away!

this fanfic is definitely my baby, so i really hope you guys all like it as much as i do!

thanks <3

#jatp #julie and the phantoms #jatp fanfic #fanfiction #alex mercer #willie jatp #luke patterson #reggie peters #julie molina #willex #simon vs the homo sapiens agenda #love simon #alternate universe #willex fic #owen patrick joyner #booboo stewart #alex vs the homo sapiens agenda #AvtHSA

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callmeelle22 · 4 years ago

Text

Blue Dream II

Paring: Iris West x Barry Allen

Rating: E

Chapter Word Count: 6, 097

Summary: A series of sporadic dates between Iris and Barry turn into something more, a story in its own making.

Chapter I: Primetime

Chapter II: It's Cool; Summary: His response is to tilt his head to the side and gaze down at her, eyes tracing the length of her legs and the curve of her hips and the dip of her waist. He lingers on her cleavage and this time, when he meets her eyes, she feels it, the sensation like she’s been put on simmer, like he’s warming her slowly, easing her into her own combustion, sparking like the lyrics to this song, and then you, came to save the day and I must say, you may have done some more. (Read below or on AO3 linked on the chapter title.)

Chapter III: Anything

Chapter IV: Comfortable

Chapter V: The Way

Chapter VI: Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

Chapter VII: I'm in Love with You

Chapter VIII: Blue Dream

It's Cool

My escape from everything

Please say you'll be my nothing

And I will give you everything

Man, you are really something else

On Friday nights, Iris spends time alone. She lives in a relatively small apartment near Central City U’s campus where she makes peanuts as a teaching assistant while she completes her journalism master’s. Her weeks are long and arduous, what with attending her own classes and all but teaching the ones she assists. Her evenings are often spent eating turkey sandwiches with one hand and completing assignments with the other. And when those are done, she logs into her blog, What a Life You’ve Lived, and types up the stories people send to her. That part doesn’t make her tired; no, she likes being able to tell others’ stories, likes that they trust a woman they’ve never seen to tell their lives in a way that they might not ever see.

But it’s still why, on Friday nights, she pours herself an overfull glass of wine, fills a pipe bowl with some of the marijuana she gets from the dispensary by Linda’s place, and orders Thai food while she watches something from her Netflix or Hulu queue or sometimes she listens to music. She’s already showered, wearing a pair of green silk shorts and a matching tank top, pretty cream piping along the top of the tank and the hem of the shorts—she doesn't always dress like this when she’s home alone; she just likes the feeling of the silk on her skin when she’s high—and her hair is already wrapped and tied with her scarf when the doorbell rings. She frowns at the door because she’s only just ordered her pad Thai noodles and those spring rolls she likes, and there’s no way the delivery is there yet because she always sets the order for when she’s sufficiently intoxicated.

She figures that it could be her brother Wally or even Linda because they’ve both been known to drop by without calling. A touch annoyed, she goes to the door and swings it open, ready to go off for interrupting what they know is her self-care night. But then she’s stopped short, the music still playing in the background—you caught me at an awful time; see i just lost my smile—because it’s him.

Iris’s liquor-soaked memories don’t do him much justice because there he is, live and solid. He is tall, even taller than she’d thought as she stands in her bare feet. He’s lean, the dark jeans hanging off his hips and his plain gray shirt showing off the corded muscles in his arms. There’s a tattoo sleeve on his right forearm, a complicated bouquet of flowers that doesn't take away from the masculine energy he exudes standing at her door, his hands stuffed in his pockets. She can tell now that his hair is brown and a little bit messy, as if he constantly runs his hands through it. She does a quick scan of the rest of him: dark moles dotting the skin of his throat, thin pink mouth, the hint of a 5 o’clock shadow covering the cut of his jaw. It’s still his eyes, though, that gets her. It’s not only the color of them—somehow blue with hints of moss and gold or maybe they’re like moss with hints of gold and gray—but it’s the way he’s looking at her too. Like they're always searching, and that is what you helped me find; hadn't seen it in a while, looking for what she won't reveal.

She knows that her night set only just covers the swell of her ass and dips down in her cleavage. She knows that she’s scrubbed head to toe in her rosewater body butter. But he, he looks at her like he knows it too. Like he sees all of the tawny brown skin she’s not showing, like he’s seeing something, something more than the wide set of her full mouth and the whiskey chocolate of her eyes.

“Hey,” he speaks, and there’s nothing particularly memorable about his voice, but the tone of it is low, and it sends an involuntary shiver through her.

“I know this is weird,” he continues, “and you can definitely tell me to leave. But I didn’t have your number or even your name, and I’ve been thinking about you all week and…” He tapers off, and Iris lets her eyes travel up the length of him once more.

“Wanna come in?”

She doesn’t know what possesses her to ask—okay, maybe that bit about thinking of her all week helped—but when he nods, a smile easing on his face, her heart starts doing that seizing thing again.

She steps aside to let him in.

He sees the shoes she’d worn to work sitting by the door so he toes off his own sneakers beside them and Iris has to stop herself from acknowledging what they look like next to hers. Instead, she watches as he takes a look around. She’s proud of what she’s been able to do with a consignment shop and limited funds. The focal point is an overstuffed sofa in a light gray and its matching armchair; a multicolored rug with bold hints of sage and orange lies under the dark circular coffee table which is the same color as the bookshelf against her wall, the six shelves teeming with books, as well as the TV stand. She’s got some early artwork by a few Black local artists on her wall, a couple of her favorite quotes printed and framed next to them.

The room feels smaller with him in it. While Iris is no nun, it’s been months since a man other than her brother or dad has been in her home and it feels...strange. The air seems denser somehow, heavy—heavy with the cloud of tension that hovers around them, heavy with the knowledge that the print of this man is still one that she can feel in her body when she falls asleep at night.

She notes that his eyes track the grinder and pipe in plain view on her coffee table and when she faces him again, his eyebrow is lifted.

“Do you partake?” she wonders.

He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

“Will you tonight?”

His response is to tilt his head to the side and gaze down at her, eyes tracing the length of her legs and the curve of her hips and the dip of her waist. He lingers on her cleavage and this time, when he meets her eyes, she feels it, the sensation like she’s been put on simmer, like he’s warming her slowly, easing her into her own combustion, sparking like the lyrics to this song, and then you, came to save the day and I must say, you may have done some more.

He licks his lips. “Yes.”

He tells her his name is Bartholomew Allen.

First, she goes into the kitchen to grab another of the long-stemmed wine glass that the professor she works for had given her as a housewarming gift. Then she eases down onto the sofa before she spreads her arm in an invitation for him to sit too. She pours from the bottle of wine and hands him the glass; he takes it from her, fingers grazing hers where they’re cupped around the bowl.

“My name is Bartholomew Allen,” he says, sort of abruptly.

She blinks over at him, a corner of her mouth lifting. “Your parents named you Bartholomew?”

“It’s a family name,” he adds, and though there’s no hint of embarrassment in his voice when he says it, Iris sees the way his cheeks flush red.

It makes her smile. All she has are the hazy images of him in her head: the way he’d boldly walked up to ask her to dance, how the kisses he’d pressed into her skin had been sure and all-encompassing. There had been no blush to his cheeks that first night when he’d been whispering into her ear; though Iris does recall how the rest of him had turned this same lovely shade of red, like a tinge of wine under his skin, when she had grabbed his ass to push him deeper into her.

In any case, Iris hadn’t thought of him like this, blushing at something as simple as his name and this dichotomy endears him to her.

“But you can call me Barry,” he says after taking a sip of his wine, almost like an afterthought.

“Well, Barry,” she says, “I’m Iris West.”

He looks at her over the rim of his glass. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Iris.”

It’s atypical of her, she knows, inviting this man back into her house like this. Her police captain father would warn her that this is the way that women die. Wally would tsk at her with only slight disapproval, more specifically concerned with the fact that she hadn’t bothered to learn his name before she’d let him climb into her bed. It isn’t a habit of hers, one-night stands (or two nights, she supposes, after tonight) with pale-skinned men from clubs she rarely frequents. But that day, last Saturday, she had gotten an email from the professor of her Feature Writing course with harsh feedback on one of her assignments, and Wally, only in his junior year of undergrad, had canceled their dinner, and she hadn’t updated her blog in what felt like weeks and…

And she’s been in such a space of discontent lately, with the rigid monotony of her days, the school and work and school and work, and she has spent more time than she realizes alone. Her best (and really, her only) friend is in the stages of a building relationship and her dad is too. She’s got people, she does, but they seem so tangential these days. So on Saturday, she’d put on a dress that had shown too much of her brown skin and shoes that had given her more legs than most men know what to do with. And she’d walked down along the aptly named Bar Street, past the uh, I won't love a ho, after we fuck she can't get near me, only bitch I give a conversation to is Siri and the so when are you gonna tell her, that we did that too? until she’d come to the door of something sultrier calling out to her, as seductive and enticing as a siren, and she had answered.

Then, somewhere between her third tequila and her ninth or tenth song, hope that's cool; ‘cause i'm really not trying to, impose but I suppose that, i'm supposed to be here, with you, Barry had come to dance with her, with the long line of his body following her rhythm and the pleasing smell of the lemongrass on his clothes and—for the first time in longer than she cares to admit—Iris had begun to feel.

It explains why she let him come home with her a week ago. It explains why he’s in her apartment now.

“Iris?” She hears Barry call her name, and by the look on his face, she knows it isn’t the first time he’s tried to get her attention. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she nods. “Sorry about that. I space out sometimes.” She points towards her table. “Shall we?”

He looks at her a little unsure, as if he wants to say more, but he eventually just nods in agreement. “Sure.”

She leans forward and grabs the grinder. The first time she smoked weed, she’d been a freshman in college. As cliche as it sounds, she’d had a roommate from Colorado who’d brought a stash with her and had offered a hit to Iris once at a house party. She’d liked it immediately, had liked how her brain had cleared, as if someone had wiped away all the writing on a chalkboard, erasing the mounting pressure of being the first university college kid in her family, of being the example for her brother who was ten times smarter and twice as reckless; had liked how much lighter her body had felt, as if she was floating, lying upon a cloud or somewhere even lighter, even higher.

She’s not a heavy smoker, the practice delegated to her Friday night routine and only in the couple years since it’s become legal recreationally in Central City. Still, she can’t help but feel a little nervous right now as Barry watches her pull the small canister towards her and open it. She makes quick work of pinching out a couple nuggets of the blue city diesel she prefers and grinding it up before packing the bowl of the pipe. It’s a pretty thing, made of glass in a dark green with blue and orange swirls. There is the flick of the lighter, and Iris brings the pipe to her lips and inhales.

She can all but feel the smoke flowing through her body, unbending her spine and relaxing her legs, curling in her lungs and moving to her head, making the thoughts there—the stress of classes, the constant sting of loneliness, and even the simmering tension she feels with Barry next to her—start to scatter until they’re no longer noticeable.

She passes the pipe over to Barry, who takes it from her gingerly, the tips of his long fingers brushing her again. She shivers, but she doesn’t acknowledge it, instead leaning back onto the couch, her legs crossed in the seat, as she watches him. He flicks the lighter a couple of times before it lights, and then he fires at the weed and takes a hit. His skin shades the faintest hint of pink and then he pulls the pipe away from his mouth and coughs, a deep cough that waters his eyes.

“You okay?” she questions. He nods as he passes it back. They do this, back and forth, until Barry breathes the smoke in easier and Iris falls even deeper into the couch. That’s when the doorbell rings.

“It’s the food,” she says and Barry is on his feet before she can even make sense of it. “Wait, I have money,” she tries, standing, because this is a mom-and-pop sort of pace and they still do their own delivery instead of going through the more expensive, albeit convenient, routes.

By the time Iris has grabbed her wallet from her purse, Barry is grabbing food and saying “Thanks, man” to Tony, the tall bearded college student who normally delivers it to her.

“Oh what’s up, Iris?” he says to her when she peeks around Barry’s shoulder.

“Hi, Tony. Do I owe you the same?”

“Oh, your boy already got it.” He smiles, a dimple winking at her in his bronze skin. “Y’all have a good night,” he adds and then he winks at her for real before disappearing back downstairs. She backs up to let Barry in the door.

“Barry, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to. I’m crashing your night and I’m smoking your weed. It’s the least I can do.”

Iris hums, looking up at him. He’s sort of pretty, she thinks absently, with his eyes like gems and his pink mouth, his expression soft and earnest.

“Come on.”

Iris always orders way too much food, usually with the intent to eat off the leftovers for a couple of meals. It’s a spread, with walnut shrimp, a green/ginger salad, pad thai, Bangkok chicken, and several Thai spring rolls, so it's definitely enough to share. She inhales several forkfuls of noodles while Barry attacks the Bangkok chicken. They eat in relative silence, the music still playing in the background, with eyes are sad, i smile, i think you'll find, you need me just like i need you, yeah; but it's cool, we ain't gotta be nothing, it's true, i'd actually prefer it, yeah; it's on you, it's on you, it's on you.

It’s when they’re done eating, when Iris has placed the containers in the refrigerator and they’re both snuggled deeper into the couch, wine glasses close by, that their night really begins. Iris has packed another bowl and takes another hit. And with a lungful of smoke, she asks,

“What sort of music do you like to listen to when you smoke?”

“I don’t think that I smoke enough to know.”

She hands him the bowl and grabs the remote to the smart tv, pulling up the playlist she’d made for nights like this. It gets longer every couple of days, songs that catch her fancy, songs with beats that sing as much as the artists, songs that seep in like the weed does, running through her like the blood in her vein does. The song plays—and i'm not even gonna front, at first i was just tryna fuck, but you have got me so in love, so deep in love, so please be love—and Iris closes her eyes, savoring the mellow sound of the music.

She takes pulls from her wine glass as Barry smokes and then the actions reverse. They take turns, back and forth, until Iris feels her lids drop, sees the slight haze that covers everything in her sight. Barry is sitting at the other end of the chair, but Iris swears that she can feel him, feel the solid heat of him, feel the touch of him like prickles on her skin. When she gazes over at him, positioning herself so that her back is against the arm of the chair and her painted toes just miss Barry’s thighs, she finds that he’s looking at her again.

“What?” she asks.

He shakes his head, indicating nothing, and the movement is slow, stilted. But then he asks,

“How do you feel, about my showing up here?”

She shrugs. “Surprised,” she tells him. “That you wanted to come; that you remembered where I lived.”

Barry chuckles, a low, gentle sound. “I only remembered because of the wreath, the sunflowers.”

She doesn’t add this, though a surprise, is not one she dislikes. She likes his company, even if she can’t name why.

“Barry,” she calls, to grab his attention again, and the way he tilts his head in acknowledgment makes her think more intently on the words of this song—and I'm not even gonna lie, i wouldn't mind if we just lie, together 'til the end of time, if that is fine with you, it's fine with me—and she shakes her head at the thought.

“Hmm?” he hums, eyes never wavering.

“What made you come here tonight?”

She’s sufficiently high now. She’d been careful not to overstuff herself with food and both the wine and diesel have done their job. She feels both languid and like she’s soaring, all at once. The music helps and she’s waiting in anticipation as she waits for his answer.

It’s slow coming, his answer. Before he responds, he touches gingerly at her bare ankles, fingers skimming along the bones of one and then the other. His fingers are warm and Iris feels the light callouses there, shocked at the sensation of the roughened skin on hers, how the touch sends sparks up the lines of her legs. He brings one of her feet up on his lap, and it seems so small in his hands. He presses his thumb into her instep, glides it down to the heel, and back up. Iris lets out a moan, the sound inaudible over the music—definitely love, definitive love—but the tiny uplift of the corner of his mouth suggests he’d heard it, and he grabs her other foot and repeats the action. Then he says,

“I wanted to know if it was as good as my memory.”

He trails his fingers up her left calf, still kneading her right foot. “I kept thinking of you,” he tells her, “about the taste of your mouth and the grip of your slick, and I had to know if I was only drunk and making it up.”

It’s the sensations that make her respond the way she does. It’s the easy purr of keyboards she hears behind Jhene’s dulcet voice; it’s his touch, how it seems to reverberate through her entire body; it the smell of him, of the room: the fainting smell of the smoke and the rosewater butter on her own skin and what she imagines it’ll smell like mixed with the scent of him that she remembers, the notes citrusy and bright.

“Me too,” she tells him. “I woke up on Sunday and I could still feel you. You were gone and much of you was a memory, but the feel of you was still there and…”

(and I wanted you to still be here, wanted to make a lasting memory, a real one, that would keep me warm when school and wavering friendships couldn’t)

But she doesn’t say any of that. Barry has all but mentioned he’s come over to sleep with her again and she can admit that the thought does have immense appeal, even if it’s not the only thing she thinks she wants from him.

She leans up and moves her ankle out of his grasp; he raises an eyebrow at the loss of contact, but then she widens her legs and reaches for him, grabbing at his shirt to pull him on top of her. He comes willingly, hovering above her, holding himself up with one arm on the top of the couch. All Iris can think about is the weight of him on top of her, how guarded it makes her feel, how secure.

“Is this okay?” he asks, voice quiet against the strain of the music from the television set, though she’d been the one to pull him in. He presses his body down, and her legs part automatically, craving him there again. She can tell that he’s high, in the red of his eyes and in the slow ways he’s talking, weighing every word before he lets it out.

“Yes,” she responds, just as quietly.

This seems like a moment here, one Iris can’t make sense of, not knowing what he’s here for. But he’s looking at her like she’s something, like he sees her, and it’s, it’s electrifying.

So when he leans down and kisses her, she leans up and gives it back, letting his mouth work her over. Barry is a good kisser. He starts out easy, slow, just his mouth moving against hers. His lips are soft and he tastes like wine and, somehow, the sex she knows they’re about to have, and the thought makes her close her eyes as she gives herself over to him. He licks at the seam of her lips, bites down her bottom one, and then licks at her again, demanding entry. She opens for him, eyes fluttering closed as he takes full control of her mouth. He sucks on her tongue, and then her lip again, and then he’s back to working her over with his mouth, the kiss wet and sloppy, increasingly erotic.

He is hard between her warm thighs, the solid long length of him, and she has to touch him. She rubs her hands down his back, over his cotton t-shirt, and then up under, along his spine. He shivers on top of her but doesn’t stop kissing her. She keeps one hand running up and down his back, loving the feel of him beneath her palm, and she fingers along his torso with the other, light touches that make his belly clench, that make his hips flex into her. He hums into her mouth, a sound more like a low growl, and it vibrates through her body, moving until it pulses between her legs. She moans in response, and it is that that breaks the kiss. Barry pulls back to look at her, and she likes that he looks a little bit wrecked. He stares down at her, drinking her in, and she knows what he must see: her thighs parted, with the hem of her silk shorts riding high; one strap of her top hanging off her shoulder, her breasts heaving as she tries to catch her breath; her full lips puffy and likely red from his bites; her eyes wide and blown, the dark of her pupils slowly overtaking the brown of her irises. Even her scarf has half-fallen off, and she should care that her hair will be unmanageable tomorrow. But when Barry tilts his head with a question, she lets him take it off and toss it onto her coffee table, and then he leans up, eyes never straying from hers.

“Barry?” she calls but pauses at the look in his eyes.

He fingers at the bottom of her top. “Take it off,” he tells her.

She responds to the slight command in his tone, clenching her stomach muscles as she leans up just enough to pull her tank over her head. He’s kneeling between her legs now, looking down at her breasts sitting heavy on her chest, nipples puckered under his gaze. He hasn’t even touched her yet, and she’s ready. It doesn’t make sense, how responsive she is to him, but she is, even when he’s just there staring.

“Barry?” she calls again, and she thrusts her hips, infinitesimally. It makes him look away from where he’s trying to memorize the weight of her breasts, the smooth tawny brown color of them, the darker areolas, and even darker nipples.

“What are you doing?” she asks, when he doesn’t respond to her.

“Looking at you,” is his too calm answer.

She nods, but huffs out a little breath in annoyance. “Okay, but can you…” fuck me, is the obvious response, but it doesn’t come out as that; instead, it’s another thrust of her hips, her constantly swelling sex rubbing his hard thigh. Barry licks his lips and looks down at her.

“Can I what, Iris?”

“You know,” she says, and squeezes him with her thighs.

“Hmmm,” Barry murmurs. “I don’t know that I do.”

This time, she catches his gaze, noting the glassy look of his eyes, the color grayer in this light. Iris wants to moan at the sight of him.

“Don’t play with me, Barry,” she grumbles, hoping that if she imbues a touch of menace to her words, he’d go ahead and put her out of her misery.

“No?” He lifts an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to play with you, Iris?”

She can’t answer, because then he’s reaching down and parting her thighs wider, enough that Barry can slide the wide leg of one side of her shorts over and expose her pussy to him. She clenches when the air hits her, and then again when Barry slides the tip of his middle finger down the middle of her slit.

She moans, her breath catching at the end of it when she looks down to watch his pale digit disappear inside of her. He dips in and out and in again, and Iris can’t stop watching it. She’s already wet, and his finger is glistening.

“You sure you don’t want me to play with you, Iris?” he asks her, dipping his finger all the way to the knuckle. He brings it back out, and then begins to rub her own wet over her lips. Down the side of her vulva, up the other side. Parting her lips with just that one finger. Sliding in again to gather more of her slick and start his trek over again.

Beneath him, Iris is...a mess. The one finger isn’t enough; she’s too wet for it and she keeps closing around nothing. But her breathing is only growing more labored and she can't. stop. watching. It should be embarrassing; her shorts are soaked through and Barry is still fully clothed, but she can’t be. The look of his long, rough-tipped fingers playing in the pink of her pussy so wholly arousing that she literally thinks that she can come like this.

“No, I,” she tells him, panting. She licks her lips, tries again. “This is…”

“This is what, Iris?” he asks, his cadence still heavy, and honestly, how the fuck does him just saying her name get her off like this. “Use your words, baby.”

“Fuck,” Iris moans.

Barry has the gall to smile. “That’s one.”

“Fuck you,” she moans again.

“Yeah?” Barry questions and he leans down, pulling his dirty little finger out of her and wrapping that same wet hand—wait, how is his whole hand wet—around her waist. He hovers over her, lips just a breath away from hers. “You ready for me to fuck you now?”

She huffs out a surprised laugh. “God, you’re a little bit of a dick.”

“And you’re ready for it now, aren’t you?”

She gives up on trying to be coy. “Yes,” she nods.

Barry has to stand to get out of his clothes, and Iris tries not to whimper at the loss. He pulls his shirt over his head, and Iris sees that his sleeve of flowers extends to his shoulders. He pulls his pants and boxers down, slipping out of his socks too, grabbing his wallet to pull a condom out before tossing it back down on top of his clothes. She watches as he rips open the wrapper and pulls the latex out, pinching its tip and sliding the condom down his length. He’s long and swollen, thicker, maybe, than she remembers, and she finds herself enamored as she watches him touch himself, fingers caressing the thick head and down his shaft.

“Take those off,” he tells her and she didn’t even realize she still has her shorts on. She peels them off, tossing them to the side, and then Barry is between her legs again. He grips her thighs and spreads them, one knee digging into the sofa close to her chest, the other planted high up on his hip.

He rubs himself along her once, making sure she’s still ready for him, and with a hand gripping her waist, he slides into her. She can feel herself opening for him, stretching to make room for him. He pulls out, just to the tip, and then he pushes back in, deeper, harder, and Iris gasps out a long “oohhh.” He rocks up into her, long strokes, slow strokes, like he’s got all the time in the world. She hears herself, she hears them, the wet sound of her pussy taking him in.

“Listen to you,” Barry whispers as he reaches down and thumbs at her clit. “You’re so wet, baby. God,” he groans. “Do you always get like this?” He fucks into her harder, still maddeningly slow, but fuck if it doesn’t make her swell a little more, gush a little more. “Or is it us? Is it me that gets you like this? Dripping out of that pretty little pussy like this?”

“Fuck, Barry, shit.”

He leans down again, until his chest is brushing her. The action plants him deeper, and he fucks into her, steady, persistent. He’s so close that Iris doesn’t know what to do with herself. He’s holding on to her waist, pinning her down on the sofa, and his pelvis brushes her clit with every downward stroke.

“Bar-Barryyyyyy.” Iris throws her head back, eyes clenched tight as she comes with a low, drawn-out moan, her hips bucking frantically as she squeezes wetly around Barry.

He pulls out of her and starts to move the sofa cushions from the back of the chair. It gives them more room and Barry sits down until he’s half laid out, back against the arm of the chair and legs spread on either side of her, one bracing on the floor.

“Lay on your stomach,” he tells her, “and then push your legs under mine.”

She does as he says, still a little sluggish from her unexpected orgasm. This move puts her ass in the air, and Barry grabs at her hips to bring her back to him. She looks back as he’s lining himself up with her again, and then he’s bringing her down on him, opening her up for him again. They both moan at the contact this time, Iris still sensitive from moments before. But he seems even harder now, even deeper when Iris leans forward to grab onto the other end of the couch. He guides her for a stroke, two, three, until she catches onto his rhythm, and begins to fuck herself back on him. He’s so deep she figures she could feel him hitting the bottom of his stomach if she focused hard enough. She bounces on him, keeping up his slow pace, and he gives her a hard squeeze around the waist for her efforts.

“That’s it, Iris,” he murmurs. “Ride me slow just like that.”

She’s always liked dirty talk; there’s something fully stimulating about a man making it known that he’s enjoying being with you. But this, this is different, and Iris can barely stand how much she’s turned on by him talking to her like this.

“You feel so good, Barry,” she tells him.

“Yeah?” He juts up into her, faltering a rhythm, making her fall even deeper into the sofa, making him fall even deeper into her. “Tell me what it feels like.”

She licks her lips, swallows. She’s never…

“It’s just me and you,” he says, sensing her hesitation. He stills her hips and straightens his torso, bringing her up as much as she can. He turns her head so that he can see her eyes. He moves away the hair that’s fallen into her face and gives her a quick peck on the mouth. “It’s just us, okay?”

She nods, and moves back into the comfortable position, back to grinding down on his dick, squeezing around his dick.

“Shit, Iris, that’s it.”

“You feel good,” she tells him again, firmly. “You’re so thick, so hard, I can’t even…” She falls forward again, and Barry gives her one hard slap down her ass cheek. “Barry!”

He soothes the sting with the palm of his hand, rubbing in small circles.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet in my life,” she confesses, softly, truthfully. And that must have been what Barry was waiting for. He takes over, holding her hips in a death grip and he pounds into her. The slap-slap of his skin on hers is loud, the squelch of her wet, profane. She can feel her belly tighten again, the tell-tale sign that her orgasm is imminent. Barry’s is too, she can tell. His movements are more erratic, slow and then fast and then slow again until reaches out and presses a thumb to her puckered hole peeking back at him. That’s the end for them both. Iris screams out, her back arching deeply, just as Barry stills and empties into the condom, his dick throbbing against her walls as he does. She falls face forward into the sofa, still sitting on Barry, trying to catch her breath. It’s only then that she notices the music still playing from the television—infinite love, yeah; i've been wrong before, but this time I am for sure; it's you; something you did made me feel it deep in my core—and she asks for Alexa to turn the television off.

That throws the room into stark silence, except for the sound of their heavy breathing. She doesn’t know how long they lie there, but Iris thinks she could be almost asleep when Barry shifts up and out of her. She knows that she’s likely gonna have to deep clean the sofa tomorrow.

“Iris,” Barry calls moments later, and she turns her head to the side to see him standing beside her, his soft sex sitting on his thigh. He must have thrown the condom away already.

“Hmmm.”

He chuckles. “Come on, baby, let’s get you cleaned up and we can go to sleep.”

She nods slowly, and sits up, letting him take her hand to lead her into the bathroom. She tries, though she can’t say how much she succeeds, at telling herself that this, that this is nothing.

And it's cool

Think that we're up to something

But it's on you, it's on you, it's on you

It's on you, it's on you, it's on you

It's on you, 'cause I'm cool with nothing, yeah

'Cause even nothing is something

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bronanlynch · 4 years ago

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weekly (monthly?) media roundup

ok so I do want to actually do these on some sort of schedule but unfortunately, as you already know, brains,

listening: Malice in Wonderland by Fangbanger, which I found from a tumblr post that described them as band for “if you have a complicated relationship with gender, had a falling out with god, hate the government, or just think that vampires are neat" and y’know? yeah. my notes on this song from several weeks ago are that I might not know any of these people’s genders but I do know they’ve listened to MCR

youtube

reading: the new Cassandra Clare book, Chain of Iron. it’s boring and homophobic. in the first book of this series, we find out that the heroine’s brother is gay and in a relationship with a man who has no intention of ever coming out publicly because 1) the book is set in 1903 in England, it was literally illegal and 2) he’s trying to have a career in politics. the heroine decides that this means he’s ashamed of her brother and doesn’t deserve him, and she is present and active in their breakup conversation.

above is the relationship chart I made from the first book, it really hasn’t changed much except now the main guy and the main girl are married, the lesbians got back together and then broke up again, the main girl’s gay brother hooked up with one of her husband’s friend, who’s a Good Gay and therefore worthy of love unlike the Bad Gay ex who is constantly mocked by just about every character for. checks notes. caring about appearances and manners given that his life and career are based on those things. the brother and his new love interest break up because the brother still thinks he’s a bad person for ever having dated his ex. also the main girl has now platonically run off to Paris with her husband’s platonic soulmate who is allegedly in love with her but it’s really unconvincing that he’s not actually in love with her husband (he’s not for very stupid lore reasons, the whole ‘parabatai are magically prevented from being romantically in love, except for these two straight people, when historically parabatai pairs were two men’ makes my fucking blood boil)

you might ask why I still read these books even though they make me angry and the answer is the 1) the aesthetic slaps 2) some of the characters are fun 3) the premise has enough potential that it could be good if it was good 4) sometimes I need to get cathartically angry abt bad fiction bc it just. does not matter

watching: so many things that I’m gonna just. run through them real quick

Word of Honor: gestures vaguely at how it’s slowly taking over my blog

Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty: love a found family, eh about the politics, can’t believe I predictably got a new fave character within the last two episodes of the show because one of the main characters is betrayed by his second-in-command and I think treason is the sexiest part of a relationship

SamBucky show: in the original draft of this post I said that it was so boring that week (episode 3) that I completely forgot about it until I saw the draft below this one talking about how bad and boring it is. at least more happened in later episodes and they’re finally giving me some tasty queerbaiting but the premise and the politics are. wow. it sure is military propaganda

My Hero Academia: new season is fun, love a tournament arc. don’t love that they tell us right away that the double agent character is a double agent, it was more fun in the manga when you’re not sure if he’s a traitor or not for a pretty long time

Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun: new season is cute, there sure is some gender happening. there’s a tsundere bisexual catgirl

Backflip!!: I usually avoid high school sports anime for backstory reasons but my roommate wanted to watch it with me and oh boy these gymnasts sure are gay for each other huh

Joran: The Princess of Snow and Blood: my roommate pitched this to me as ‘cyberpunk but in the 1930s’ and there sure is dark lighting, lots of glowy neon stuff, and government oppression, which are the most important elements of cyberpunk apparently. not sure how I feel about it yet, because there’s a cool shapeshifting lady assassin with a revenge quest but there’s also a trans character who was revealed to be trans in a way that I personally did not enjoy. yes you can have transphobic villains but like. hmm. maybe the audience shouldn’t find out that someone is trans because the villain cuts his shirt away specifically to ~put him in his place. or maybe I personally am just sensitive to that but either way no thank you

on the other hand, the main character is sick as shit

The World Ends with You: god I love an anime about the power of friendship. I’ve only had these kids for two episodes and I would lay down my life for them

Nirvana in Fire: we’re only three episodes in and I did spend the first half of the first ep being like. oh god which of these people are actually important who am I supposed to care about here. and then by the end of the first ep I knew which ones I cared about and am now very afraid for their safety. do love the political intrigue though

playing: got through the first mission of Brigmore Witches. I love a good undercover mission, I wish I hadn’t been too afraid of like. alarms going off if I freed the other prisoners because I think Comrade Daud should do a jailbreak, and Lizzy Stride can call me anytime

also recently have played various ttrpgs including Firebrands, more Things, Eldritch and Terrifying, Link, and of course more Beam Saber (oh shit I meant to do my recap post for last session OOPS)

making: Zan and I made some real good chicken parm the other night, vaguely based on this recipe. by which I mean, we looked at the recipe to see how many eggs to use and how long to cook it and pretty much nothing else. the egg marinade step seemed unnecessary and I made the sauce the way I always make tomato sauce, which some day I should write down because it does in fact fuck. the secret is a shit-ton of oregano and basil and no chunks of tomato because fuck that. bad texture

Zan made the zucchini which also slapped, using some of the leftover bread crumbs

writing: I’ve posted a couple of things but most recently I wrote some rarepair femslash. this is the first fic for this ship on ao3 and the second ship in the f/f tag for this fandom that’s actually about the women in the show (as opposed to showing up in the f/f tag because it’s marked as “multi” or like. genderbent versions of the main m/m ship) but like. look at them. they’re terrible evil assassin women and they’re in love. anyway I’ve gotten over being embarrassed about having written a sex scene and moved on to wanting people to read my fic. there’s sparring as foreplay it’s a good time

#dreaming.txt #tuesday no problem extended universe

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