#every number is literally countless to someone who doesn't know how to count

[rhiannonsknife]

you are quite literally an angel sent down from heaven. i think i died and ascended all the way up to the pearly gates after reading your response

i know you mentioned this a little bit in your coworker!rhiannon drabble and i don't mean to be beating a dead horse but theres just something about teasing rhiannon while she's at work, especially if you're working with her, only a few feet away but impossibly out of reach

you keep sending her explicit messages, detailing every dirty thought that passes through your mind, and you relish in the way that her cheeks heat up the second she reads them. you also send her countless photos every time you go to the bathroom (or even sending a photo at your desk with your skirt lifted just enough for her to see your absolutely soaked panties) and you know from the way her eyes widen and her finger presses down on the image that she's saving every single one of them

coming over to her desk because she wants you to "help her with an email" after toying with her all day and she's whispering in your ear, telling (begging) you to stop being such a tease. of course, you "accidentally" brush a hand against her clothed cunt in response, enjoying the way she whines under her breath and glares at you with her bottom lip between her teeth

it eventually gets to be too much and she's beckoning you to come with her to the bathroom for a "feminine emergency", but in reality, you're getting down on your knees and pressing kisses to her dripping pussy

she's so close to cumming all over your face when you hear someone knock on the bathroom door and ask if you're alright in there. rhiannon looks down at you, wondering if you're going to stop, but you just give her a look and keep lapping at her cunt. she's desperately trying to croak out an answer in a way that doesn't give away that your tongue is inside of her, and all she manages is an "i'm fine!" before she's cumming all over your face, almost drawing blood with how hard she bites on her lip to stay quiet

and oh, she's not letting you off scott-free for all your teasing. she will be pulling out the strap the second she gets home and bringing you to more orgasms than you can keep count

-🪐

🪐 anon please don’t ever stop spoiling us with your genius thoughts. nsfw content. mdni.

i feel like office sex with rhiannon in general would be…something. in the beginning (before becoming a serial killer) she would not be as down to try, too worried about getting caught. but once she gains enough confidence?? suddenly, rhiannon is the one who regularly shoves you into the bathroom stall or starts feeling you up from behind when it’s just the two of you in the staff room…

but, anyway, once said confidence is established you make it your mission to tease her as much as anyhow possible!! you know you are rhiannon’s number one soft spot and you know exactly how to make good use of it…

right now, you’re on your knees before her, her skirt pushed up her thighs, her panties already stuffed in the pocket of your jeans (which is where you’ll be keeping them for the rest of the day).

it had started harmlessly enough. after waking up with her earlier this morning and making a point of entering the office separately to avoid any unnecessary and annoying commentary from one of your colleagues, you haven’t stopped thinking about her once. how could you when, the night prior, you’d spent hours in bed together? when you can still taste rhiannon on your tongue from how she’d been riding your face shamelessly?

so, obviously, you had to make your horniness her problem.

if you could, you’d literally send every single one of your useless coworkers out and ask rhiannon to eat you out right then and there, on top of your desk. but, since that was not an option, you had settled for the next best thing: texting her. every other minute, rhiannon’s phone went off. at first, she expected something work-related and her eyes went wide when she saw your message, telling her about how you couldn’t stop thinking about her in explicit detail.

and you didn’t leave it at that: you kept sending her messages, even used your bathroom breaks to send her pictures, too, pulling up your shirt or shoving your hand down your pants. you can see from your spot that rhiannon, despite her warning glares, looks at every single one of them and even saves them to her camera roll. once, you even called her desk phone from the bathroom, only to moan into the received or hold it to your own pussy, letting her hear how wet you are for her.

when she finally got up from her desk to beg tell you to stop torturing her already, you pushed it too far. or, at least, you’d pushed rhiannon over an edge that she must’ve been toying for a while at that point: as she pretended to point out errors in an email you’d written, she leaned over your shoulder from behind.

“i swear to god, baby, you need to-“ your hand pressing against her crotch shut her up. “quit” she gasped, her hips immediately rolling against the press of your fingers. rhiannon’s lashes fluttered and she sighed softly.

“bathroom” she had instructed once she finally gathered herself. “now”

and, who are you to deny her that?

and that’s, precisely, how you’d gotten yourself into your current position: kneeling before her, panties taken off and out of your way, mouth where it’s supposed to be: on rhiannon’s cunt. she’s dripping down your chin, at this point. your teasing must’ve really done it for her.

rhiannon is leaning back against the sink to balance her weight, one leg thrown over your shoulder, a hand buried in your hair. her head is tilted back a bit and she’s panting already, even though you haven’t done much yet. only mouthed at her pussy, licked broad strokes through her wetness, and pressed the tip of your tongue against her clit in a way that had her knees buckling. it’s been your teasing that got rhiannon to this point: wet and wanting. that’s all it takes for your girlfriend to be dripping down your chin.

you watch her when you start eating her out more purposefully; pushing your tongue deeper, applying more pressure in all the right places, watching the way rhiannon falls apart above you. she has to rest more of her weight back to avoid her knees giving out beneath herself right then and there and her breath comes in short pants.

“shit” she hisses, one hand running through her disheveled hair as the other pulls you closer. rhiannon shouldn’t want this. it shouldn’t turn her on to be eaten out in a place where all of your coworkers could hear if she’s not careful. you’ve locked the door, obviously, but that doesn’t mean the people outside wouldn’t be able to overhear her moans through the thin walls.

it’s a risk. a risk worth taking, because rhiannon tastes heavenly and looks her most beautiful as she’s shaking and visibly struggling with trying to be quiet. she’s rocking her hips, too, for an extra feel of your tongue lapping up her arousal. at home, in your bed, this would probably be a point where she’d be too frustrated with you. where she would toss you around and ride your face in order to get off. but that’s not happening here. (she will make up by laying you down, later, and fuck you with her strap until you’re a babbling mess, apologizing for teasing her like this in the first place…)

all rhiannon can do is lean back and take what you’re giving her as she tries to be quiet. her hand slams over her mouth once you bring your fingers up as well and push two of them into her while sucking on her clit harshly. she barely contains the whine, only trying to poorly cover it with an exaggerated clear of her throat just in case anyone is near the door.

you hope that there’s not: even as rhiannon tries to be quiet, her pussy certainly isn’t: you can hear how wet she is, as you pump your fingers in and out of her while your tongue flicks against her clit.

like this, it doesn’t take long until she’s close to cumming. you don’t have a lot of time so fortunately you know what it takes and what you have to do to make rhiannon cum quickly: you know where to put your mouth, where to bend your fingers, where to apply just the right amount of pressure. it’s not long until she starts getting tense and tighter around your fingers, walls fluttering.

it’s perfect, the way her body goes rigid in the pre-orgasmic bliss. you’re ready for her to stumble over the edge, already watching her eagerly. and then someone’s knocking on the door. you both flinch, instantly glaring at the other.

“rhiannon?” someone’s voice echoes. “are you alright in there sweet pea?”

rhiannon is still staring at you, panting: eyes wide, chest rising and falling rapidly. and then, she nods and you put your mouth back where you both want it. her eyes press shut tightly and she bites her palm as she musters up enough strength to speak without sounding like she’s currently getting fucked.

“uh-“ she rasps, eyes rolling back. “yeah, i’m alright. i’m alright. don’t worry lana!”

that’s all it takes. that, and another harsh suck on her clit. lana is still in front of the door; you can still hear her muffled voice, offering her help. but it’s white noise to the way rhiannon looks as she cums. her back arches and she puts her hand back over her mouth as she rides out the waves of her orgasm on your tongue. you’re lucky; she somehow manages to cum in silence. otherwise, you’re both sure, lana would’ve definitely heard…

you know by the way she later grabs you by the arm and guides you back to her car that you’re in for something when you get back home.

[pack-yr-romantic-mind]

theres literally countless accounts from people who have had their pets stolen and euthanized by PETA. do some damn research.

i've done research. what i'm finding is 1) people who say that their friend's cousin knows someone who this happened to 2) legitimate sources corroborating my claims 3) Sources with names like The Council for Market Based Solutions and Family Values telling obvious lies.

Like, you know stealing people's pets is illegal, right? You understand that? You know the one time it happened, PETA were hit with fines and lawsuits? Or like do you think people are going to the court and saying "hey, this major public nonproft killed my dog and I have evidence" but the judge is a radical ARA ecoterrorist ecofascist extremist leftist psycho who was paid off by PETA and she says "lol sucks to suck" and throws out the case?

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.

[trans-queen-administrator]

Hey, can I hear about your shatterbird thoughts? She's always been my favourite member of the nine :]

[@faultlinescrew]

Oh I'm about to type for entirely too long.

Alright so a chunk of this is kinda headcanon, but any of that is fully based on canon. I had a giant fanfic planned that was literally an expanded telling of Shatterbird's life from trigger to death, and some plot points there may bleed into this unconsciously.

Number one favorite thing about Shatterbird is that initially, she did nothing wrong. She was unwillingly dosed with a Cauldron vial, and her scream and subsequent exploding of Dubai wasn't her fault. She had no intention to hurt anyone, it was done entirely out of her control as she gained powers and she should not be blamed for her first time destroying a city. The thing is, that doesn't matter in universe. She's still going to be hunted down by countless capes because she killed an untold number of people with that scream. No one's going to just let her go because it wasn't her fault, because she's the only person who can be blamed. People want revenge for their loved ones, and I'm willing to bet that she had a sizable bounty. It's similar to the situation we see with Rachel, where she can't have a normal life because she killed someone in her trigger and her identity is public, but on a much much larger scale.

I think the guilt ate at her so fucking bad at first. She killed her dad, her friends, her sister, her mother, countless others, and as much as it wasn't her fault she's still the one that did it. There's no way she doesn't blame herself for what happened, but when does she even have time to mourn? She's fled to a desert, she's gotta be struggling with food and water, and she's being hounded at every turn by people who want her dead. What's she supposed to do, let them kill her so she can atone for what she did or something?

I just love what a tragic backstory this is. She's one of the most horrible people we meet in canon, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say she has one of the highest body counts on Earth Bet, but she started as someone innocent and desperately trying to survive. And as much as I love this backstory and will defend to the death that she did nothing wrong at this point, it doesn't excuse who she becomes.

Shatterbird laughed.  “There’s only two ways to recover from something of that magnitude, to deal with the fact that you inadvertently killed thousands and thousands of people, and hospitalized twice that many.  You break, or you become it.”

(quote is from the missing interlude)

This is the quote that puts her entire character in a nutshell. The biggest question to me is... when did she become it? She implies in that interlude that it was rather quick, and that she went to Britain so she could hit a big target, but the Tattletale clone calls this out as a lie. She was running, the desert that she'd been in for months was unbearably loud with all that sand, and I think she was sick of living on the run. She wanted society, structure, something to make her feel human. I think she's full of shit saying she went there to destroy it, some accident or desperate confrontation occurred (timeline fits well enough for it to be a result of the Simurgh's attack, but that's just one possibility) and she broke London just as bad as she broke Dubai. What do you even do from there? Any slim hope of clearing her name is gone, she just has to keep running and try to ignore the guilt. And she ran to America, where the Slaughterhouse Nine found her.

The recruiting of people by the Slaughterhouse Nine fascinates me, because most are unwilling to join at first. Unfortunately the alternative is to die. No one in Brockton Bay was jumping to be the lucky winner, and the only people we know nominated themselves are Cherish and I think Siberian. Shatterbird (ever notice how she's the only S9 member with no canon first name? drives me nuts) was dragged into the recruitment process with no say in the matter just like most everyone is. Someone in the Nine found her, thought she would be a good fit because of London and Dubai (and how would that feel, to have someone on the S9 see you as just as bad as them?) and even if she explains that was on accident... what does it matter? It never matters that it was an accident. It never will matter. It's just something that she can tell herself to keep her sane.

So she's doing the fun little tests, I'm actually very curious how she altered herself for Mannequin's since he always does the same test, she's a very vain person, but that's off topic. Atrocities, horrors, being hunted by the Siberian, and suddenly she's at the end. Her and someone else.

“That’s not really a test,” Shatterbird spoke, “There hasn’t been a round of testing since I joined the group where we didn’t whittle it down to one candidate.” “We could forego the final test, pitting them against one another.” Shatterbird turned to him, “Ah.  But, again, the last test where we had to go that far was… mine?”

And she kills them. Dubai, London, those were accidents. This was on purpose, maybe even the first time she's done it on purpose. She could either break and decide she couldn't live with herself as a member of the nine, or she could just as horrible as everyone sees her. All her choices were rigged, there was never much of an opportunity to get better since so many paths closed off to her, but she voluntarily chooses to get worse. What's the point in holding on to the fact that it wasn't her fault at the beginning? She's never escaping what she did, so she'll become the monster everyone sees her as. You break, or you become it.

And there's not much of the more sympathetic side of Shatterbird in canon (partly because her backstory chapter was removed). She's fully embraced herself as a mass murderer. She revels in the attention, the fear. She parrots Jack's philosophy as a way to feel better about what she's doing, and eventually she doesn't need to feel better because she enjoys who she is now.

I don't know, I rambled for a while there but it boils down to me being fascinated by the circumstances of her gaining powers, and the shift from innocent but hated/feared to making damn sure that fear is justified.

Ok, so moving on from the backstory analysis, other miscellaneous details. Fuck it, I'm putting every thought I have on Shatterbird in this post.

She's the Nine's primary recruiter! Woo, good for her. Notably, she recruits Burnscar. Mimi is in a similar position to Shatterbird's past self with the whole involuntary mass destruction, although on a lesser scale (it'll always be on a lesser scale, Shatterbird has the worst trigger event out there in terms of consequences and she didn't even trigger). Mimi was on the streets and trying not to use her power, and Shatterbird scooped her up into the Nine.

“I- before I knew it, the Slaughterhouse Nine had found me.  Shatterbird recruited me.  And now I’m stuck.  I’m trapped.  You know there’s a kill order out on me?  If I try to quit, either the Nine or the cops will off me.  So I keep going, I work for them, and it all just gets worse.”

It's a situation Shatterbird can very likely relate to, but she's perpetuating it and making Mimi suffer like she did. No sympathy, no helping someone get through it and avoid the pitfalls she fell into, she's dragging other people down with her like a crab in a pot. Worth noting that I believe she's still bitter about the hand she was dealt even if she's embraced where it led her to, she remembers how horrible it was to be forced into everything and she does not care if she inflicts it on others.

But if someone else willingly joins the Nine, she takes it personally. Cherie says Shatterbird hates her, and that's because Cherie chooses the life Shatterbird was locked into. She's bitter that she never had that choice, and so she makes sure Cherie understands what it's like by chasing her for days for her test, not allowing any rest or sleep. However, this could also simply because Cherie sucks and is an unpleasant person to talk to, and Shatterbird is stuck-up.

Another thing I like is Shatterbird's appearance of knowledge and elegance. She's trying to appear put together, confident, in-control, and to be fair she does a pretty good job, her costume and theming are great. But under that is someone violent and angry, she's keeping up appearances to everyone else but also to herself. The fact that she's always trying to keep up appearances, even when locked in a room and doomed to die with one Witness (haha get it) she's trying to make it look like she was calm and in control when her body is found, is what 100% convinces me exploding Britain was an accident. The Tattletale clone calls her out, and to me it seems like another attempt to seem in control by framing it as deliberate.

Anyway, my attempts to woobify a mass murderer aside, I also like that she was a spoiled rich kid before all this and her prim asshole attitude points to that. She quotes Edgar Allen Poe, she reads because it makes her feel better than others, she's just so pretentious and unpleasant and to be clear I love this as a character trait, it's fun and leads to her speaking in overdramatic ways.

“Then you should know, nearly-Tattletale, that I’ve spent too long in the company of monsters to be scared by words.”

She thinks she was soooo cool saying that.

I also want to look at the last few weeks of her life. She spends so much effort propping herself up as great and in control, only to be locked in a box and puppeted around against her will. Genuinely I cannot think of anything more humiliating and agonizing for her to endure. She has nothing to do but think as she's used as a marionette.

She had a long time to reflect on her life, to look back at how she got here and what she regrets.

But I think she spent it stewing in her rage, itching and planning to get violent revenge and keep hurting others to be respected. She's unwilling and unable to go back, she'll double down on this forever because this is who she is now. And because 99% of characterization for Shatterbird isn't in Worm anyway, I may as well toss in this minor AU summary by Wildbow. If she escaped, she would have started her own version of the Nine with Damsel of Distress and Trickster. There is nothing left to sympathize with or redeem Shatterbird by the time we see her in canon, she's simply past that point. Side note but Shatterbird + Damsel of Distress + Trickster as a team is perhaps the funniest combo ever and I really wish those 3 fuckers got to interact in canon. Weirdo assholes who dress up fancy and have a taste for theatrics as a murder crew, we were robbed.

I could analyze the Hookwolf interlude but I don't want to. I'm very annoyed that Shatterbird (still no first name) is the only member of the Nine to lose the fight against her recruit instead of appearing terrifying and unstoppable. How come Burnscar can solo Faultline's crew but 3 nazis can take out Shatterbird, who has way more experience? It's pretty uncomfortable to have the only member of the Nine who isn't white be the one that loses to nazis, while one calls her a slur in his internal monologue, in the interludes where everyone else on her team is introduced as a force of nature. I think we should just collectively agree to make this interlude not canon and un-retcon the Witness interlude. While I'm on the topic it's also a bit questionable to have Sophia and Shatterbird (no first name. I am annoyed by this) as the only named capes puppeted by Regent?

But that's not the topic I wanna explore. The topic is that Shatterbird is a great character and I wish that she had depth in the story itself rather than scattered through 20 different sources, because she's legitimately my favorite non-undersider in the story. There is a lot of potential to explore her, one could interpret her backstory in a less charitable way than I did just for an example, and I really think she's neat! She takes hurting someone in an accident and then becoming the monster people see her as, something we see a few times throughout worm, to its ultimate conclusion in terms of scale. That alongside her outer layer of intellectualism and pretentiousness, which I'm a massive sucker for as a trait, and she's just perfect. Did nothing wrong (citation needed). I love her and I do hope that at least some of the stuff written her makes someone appreciate her character more.

Ok! That was... 2.2k words about Shatterbird (no first name). Woo! If some stuff seems inconsistent between paragraphs here, it's probably because I wrote this in chunks over the course of a few weeks and my feelings at the time can influence my interpretation of things and my writing to feel different when read all at once and compared. If you think I'm woobifying her too much, cool. I think it makes her more compelling to examine how much we know was her fault and how much she shouldn't be blamed for, and making her have less agency makes her more tragic which I always like. If you actually read this to the end, thank you! Have a nice day!

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

WTNV Quick Rundown - Live Show - The Debate

One day, I'll actually get to attend one of these things. Until then, you and I can go through it like this together~ This show featured the guest voices of Kevin R. Free, Mark Gagliardi, Mark Evan Jackson, Jackson Publick, Hal Lublin, Annie Savage, and Mara Wilson.

We found a little piece of heaven here. It is black, smooth, oblong. It hums a soft but discordant note, and we are afraid to touch it. Welcome to Night Vale.

The Debate mention is, of course, the mayoral debate between candidates Hiram McDaniels (a literal five-headed dragon, wanted by the law for tax evasion) and the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In All Of Our Homes (FOW).

As a surprise, we are also told that Marcus Vanston will be running for mayor. He's pretty much just a jerk this entire episode (lol) saying things like how he basically used to own a dragon as a slave and other rich boy stuff. Anyway he gets turned into an angel.

We are told that Pamela is 'not' being soul-bonded with someone and forced to step down.

In Night Vale, mayors are chosen by counting and interpreting the loud pulses coming out of Hidden Gorge, but Cecil says they're allowing citizens to hear what the candidates have to say anyway.

NV's recorded history apparently only goes back seven years.

Hiram's wishes to 'break ground' for those who do not identify as human. He says that having multiple heads makes him a better candidate because they are all good at different things. Green Head is good at maths, for example. He also reveals he has debilitating claustrophobia. Hiram also says that he'll be less invasive of people's privacy and less inclined to try and run their lives, as he doesn't understand humans so doesn't care to do so.

The FOW's (who has a name but will not share it) says she will be a good mayor because she has always been and always will be by the side of every citizens (she's also set fire to countless homes) and knows them intimately. She is quite passionate about children and learning and wants to sell off people's unused possessions in order to raise money to fund school programmes.

Weather: “Promise to the Moon” by Jason Webley

The FOW mentions citizens by the name of Mike Numminen, Claire Franklin (who hasn't yet told someone called Eva she loves her) and Felicia Jackson. There is also somebody called Roberta who works as sales staff at the station.

Cecil owns a whole set of collectible jadeite bowls he doesn't use. Hiram has a hoard of rare jewels and gold in a mahogany chest in his cave. Marcus has a coffee table made of human bones.

Angels, all called Erika with a K, call both to worry about the tiny city under Lane 5 and to call upon Marcus. They're not legally allowed to be recognised as existing, so the conversations as brief. They are afraid. They also say that angels do not hear gender.

Diane Crayton calls with questions about helping NV's schools, concerned about centipedes crawling out of teachers faces, clocks which don't work, gun violence and declining graduation rates.

John Peters (you know, the farmer?), calls about how the Glow Cloud has been disrupting his farming by dropping dead animals everywhere. However, the Glow Cloud (all hail) has too much of a psychic grip on the town for anyone to do anything.

"Hi, this is Steve Carlsberg? And, um, my question is for Hiram. Hiram, –" "NO!!! NO!!! STEVE CARLSBERG!?! WE ARE OUT OF TIME FOR QUESTIONS GOODBYE!!!" I am begging you to look up this up on youtube it's so funny.

There has been an alarming humming, attributing to a mass of deer with time-travelling abilities which have appeared in great numbers (often displacing people in time and space), but is in fact coming from a vortex not dissimilar to the one which opened during the Sandstorm.

Hiram investigates and brings Kevin of Desert Bluffs through with him, much to Cecil's shock and horror.

Kevin is finally told Cecil's name and the name of the town. He mentions again how he and Cecil are so similar, especially in the eyes and the smile. He states that the FOW actually has a face, with deep hazel eyes, proud lips and an archaic jaw. This deeply disturbs her as she has never had a face.

He states again that NV has old-fashioned technology and how 'places like this' are usually covered in blood and other such things, but hey guess they do things different in NV! He's very enthusiastic about NV and wishes his intern, Vanessa, could see as he'd always talked to her about visiting NV. He says she's funny and enthuses about her greatly, only to reveal that she died many years ago during an...incident...

'Oh, dear, I’m sorry, no. Vanessa died many years ago. We’re all still very upset about it. Very upset about what we saw. Some of us never came back to work again. Some of us never left our houses again. Most of us never woke up again. I don’t like to talk about it much.'

He says that Stexcorp is recalling the deer and will be carrying them away by helicopter, having planned to introduce them slowly to do people's math problems and earn them extra work hours by shifting them back through time, but they got carried away.

Kevin also says that anyone affected can contact Strexcorp attorney Luisa Reyes as she is filing a class action lawsuit against Strexcorp. He then says he has to go and that he thinks the towns are connected by more than a two-lane highway.

"You are beautiful when you do beautiful things." Another nice little popular quote.

Cecil is quite terrified of Kevin, describing him as having blood-stained skin, with missing eyes and teeth like an abandoned cemetery.

Stay tuned next for a chasm of subjectivity and bravado between yourself and every other human being. Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

[sokkathebluewolf]

Has Azula really never killed anyone? That doesn't seem like her but it does seem like it could be an interesting plot point that she's been hiding the fact that she has from sokka out of shame or something

*sigh* 

Well, this isn’t the kind of ask I usually get on this blog, but I’ll answer as earnestly as possible. Preemptively sorry if I come off strong, but I’m going to assume you really haven’t read the whole story and thus some of its underlying themes and established backstories (or absence thereof) have gone unnoticed for you because of that.

Canon Azula, at fourteen years of age, goes out to track down her brother and uncle in war times. Canon Azula is not morally appalled by murder, not by any means, but unless you count Aang, who (because of LOK and because he literally came back to life) hardly really counts despite her very obvious intent to kill him, Azula’s canon kill count would be ONE (1), and it’s still someone who didn’t stay dead. Aang has canonically and consciously killed more people than Azula (and I don’t mean Koizilla, I mean Sozin’s Comet, the falling airship that crashed pretty hard against solid ground when he knocked it down. Were there survivors? Likely. But genuinely thinking no one would have died after that sounds extremely naïve). So, please, keep that in mind before thinking “that doesn’t seem much like *insert character name here*”. 

Gladiator Azula, at fourteen years of age, goes NOWHERE. Gladiator Azula didn’t have to track down Zuko and Iroh because they were a failure and a traitor, respectively. Why? Because Aang didn’t come back. There was no Avatar on the loose that Zuko and Iroh would fail to capture heaps of times. Therefore, if Azula doesn’t have to go find Zuko and Iroh by Ozai’s orders, Azula doesn’t fight the Avatar and friends, Azula doesn’t end up anywhere near Ba Sing Se. Someone else (General Tiang) takes Ba Sing Se in Gladiator with the power of the comet, because in this setting the Fire Nation wouldn’t have the opportunity to take it any sooner. I am pretty sure the comet-enhanced take of Ba Sing Se is literally stated in the first chapter: there are no aircrafts yet because Sokka hasn’t helped the Mechanist complete them, ergo, Ozai can’t rain fire from the sky even if he dreams of that. There are also no dragons, so the firebenders couldn’t use this grand opportunity for something gradiose like burning the entire world to the ground and had to settle for an old-school military strategic victory.

Gladiator Azula is established, then, to not have taken action in her younger years because Ozai had no need to send her anywhere. Gladiator Azula has seen no military glory when the story begins, she has taken no missions before the first one she has in the South Pole, a mission where her role was meant to be diplomatic, first and foremost. The first enemy she meets whom she just might have a pretty good reason to kill? It’s Sokka. And we all know how that turned out. Had she been a trigger-happy murderer like you might think she is (considering zero murders “doesn’t seem like Azula” to you), that’s where our story would have ended. Funny.

Therefore, had Gladiator Azula killed someone before Sokka was part of her life, it’d have to be a Fire Nation someone. I repeat, she had never dealt with anyone who could be considered an enemy of her nation before the South Pole. If she didn’t kill Huang Li for disrespecting her, if she didn’t kill Admiral Chan for trying to screw her over and instead bided her time until she could one-up him for good… do you SERIOUSLY think the way I’m characterizing Azula leaves room for her to have committed, what, recreational murder of her own people because she was frustrated she didn’t get any chances to join the war?

Throughout the story, Gladiator Azula has showed very little compunction about threatening people with death, or even talking about killing others when she’s in a really bad mood. This is done as a very deliberate and intentional contrast with Sokka, who has killed countless people and wishes he’d never have to do it again. Why’s that?

Because often in fantasy fiction, in many stories I’ve found (including ATLA), killing isn’t treated with the gravity and seriousness it deserves. Sokka has canonically killed plenty of people too, and yet it never seems to bother him in the least there. I’ve read at least two other fics that give him PTSD for the deaths he dealt through the war, and to me, that’s a thousand times more sensible than him being utterly unconcerned with what he’s doing or who he’s killing. I like my characters more complex than Liam Neeson in Taken. Want senseless killing with zero consequences? That’d be a good movie to go to for that.

Gladiator Sokka killed his first man in the settlement, chapter 2, remember? He hasn’t forgotten it even now, despite at the time he tried to ignore it and move on to his actual mission. What was the purpose of that? If it needs spelling out, the purpose of it was to outright contrast the Canon Sokka mentality of “it’s what needs to be done”, a mentality he shares in this story at first, with the eventual Gladiator Sokka mentality of “taking people’s lives destroyed me on the inside because I don’t think I deserved to live when they died”. All this to make death a lot less leisurely, recreational, inconsequential than it is in countless works of fiction. Do you shrug off real life deaths as though they were inconsequential too? Has any relative of yours died and you’ve thought it’s irrelevant? Or, like me, are you living in a tyrannical country where fighting back against said tyranny has resulted in meaningless deaths of young people who were fighting for a future that was stolen from them? People whose deaths have just become a mere number on a list of atrocities a tyrannical regime refuses to answer for? Yeah, that sounds hella dramatic, I know. But I like to take my storytelling and the themes I deal with in it seriously, and death is one theme I categorically refuse to take lightly. ATLA did try to take death seriously too, but they certainly failed more often than not for me, especially when their heroes cared about death only if the plot required it.

That Azula hasn’t killed anyone so far doesn’t mean she won’t ever do it in the story’s future. But it does mean that, by the time she does, it will affect her, as it rightfully should affect any human being who isn’t completely amoral and, if you’ve read any further than the first three arcs, I’d like to think you already know Azula has a conscience she tends to ignore but that is still there. Spoiler alert, said conscience becomes louder and harder for her to ignore until eventually she starts abiding by it.

In conclusion, no, Azula hasn’t killed anyone. No, I don’t find that implausible for a character who hadn’t gone to war the way her canon counterpart did, especially considering said canon counterpart has only ever killed ONE (1) person if you do count him, despite being involved directly in the war to the point of even conquering a city herself. No, there isn’t some secret death Azula is responsible for that she hasn’t told Sokka about, because if there were, she would already have shown signs of keeping that kind of secret (yes, Sokka kept secrets that weren’t strongly hinted at, but they WERE hinted at: Rhone for instance was teased all the way in chapter 41 despite he only showed up in chapter 113, and the reasons for his reluctance to go home were implied since chapter 3, even if he didn’t outright tell Azula about them until chapter 106).

I’m sure there are countless other stories that don’t deal with death the way I do. But this is how Gladiator does it, and this is how Gladiator will continue to do it, because it’s being written by someone who doesn’t think carnage should be dealt with as lightly as it often is. Yes, there’s death in this story, a fair share of it, and that share will only increase in later chapters (I literally just finished an entire arc about serial murders through the Capital?), but I won’t ever take it lightly and I sure won’t turn my characters into secretive murderers for drama’s sake, especially if said suggestion contradicts virtually every bit of characterization I’ve worked on and developed for Azula throughout six years of studying her character and writing it in this story.

(Also… hiding it out of shame? If you think it’s unlike Azula to not have killed anyone, do you really think it’s “like her” to be ashamed if she really had done it? Do you really think she wouldn’t have been proud to own up to her kill count before her conscience kicks in for good later on in the story? What reason would Azula possibly have to be ashamed of killing someone in the earlier stages of Gladiator?)

[bangtanficsforyou]

I am the kind of person who doesn't like reading the same story twice, because it just doesn't feel the same, you know? But in very rare cases, I do go back to some stories to have a re-read. While I don't want to make it sound like it's a big deal and definitely do not want to sound cocky but this is one of those stories that I have revisited, and when I say revisited I mean countless number of times. It's just that good.

This is probably the first story I've read by you and it's always such an interesting trope you know? Arranged marriage aus and that too CEO? Like hell, yes, count me in.

But, but, but, it wasn't anything like I was expecting it to be.

It's just so different and it took me by a huge surprise.

I remember reading, both of their views and was like "damn!" I just could sense the angst coming. Let's also get to their characters, because, I feel like they are so different yet, so compatible.

At various points, I felt angry at Jungkook, like really, really angry. Starting from the club incident, to not defending OC against Mia, and then spewing all that bullshit when he found out about the funds? Like he kept hurting OC and I was like mad.

But then that's something I believe the second read helped me understand. It helped me understand where Jungkook was coming from. He's just someone who wasn't feeling enough, who needs constant reassurance, and needs love. It's funny because I bet everyone, at some point bring their walls up, become distant, and rebel as a way to cope with their weakness. That's something that makes Jungkook so relatable. He is someone who acts on impulse, says things when angry, without giving a second thought, sometimes even intending to hurt the other person and again, it's something so many people do. It's just so human.

Then there is OC, sweet, calm, collected. It's so largely in contrast to everything Jungkook is. And that's exactly why they balance each other so well. But OC obviously has her flaws, I can't count the number of times I've screamed in my mind at her to just tell Jungkook that his actions are hurting her, but no, she stayed calm throughout it all with a smile. Untill she just couldn't. That's why I was so happy when she decided to be honest with her feelings, in the last chapter.

All of that being said, can we talk about the side characters? Seokjin, Junghyun, Seoyeon and literally everyone, like every character is so exceptionally written. I mean *chefs kiss*.

This story has such a perfect balance of everything and is honestly one of my favourites. I can't possibly compliment you enough about how amazing your writing style is and how that brain of your works, I mean to bring such amazing characters to life? Wow. I mean this part from the OC's POV "You’re marrying your childhood friend, the sweet doe-eyed boy whose hand you wanted to hold when he reached it out to you to play in the playground. Now you’ll be taking his hand and holding it for the rest of your life." And then this "At your lack of movement he thinks to himself, take it, please don’t break my heart again." I mean, phewwww.

I'll possibly stop rambling with a huge thank you for writing this masterpiece, will definitely come for re-reads (I read it again while writing the review😂).

Please Love Me (01) | JJK

Pairing: Jungkook x (f.) Reader

Genre/Tags: arranged marriage, childhood friends, CEO kids; angst, fluff, smut 

Warnings: seemingly controlling parents but not really, sexism, future pain and eventual smut (18+)

Word count: 13,000

Series summary: As the only unmarried Jeon and Kim children, your families propose a union to symbolize your unbreakable bond that spans generations. But despite developing an affection for Jungkook growing up, he never returned it; he never seemed to like you, actually. You’re okay with the proposal, but surprise surprise, he isn’t.

A/N: I had this in my head for months and I thank @hansolmates for that nudge to finally write this. I love arranged marriage aus and broke down this 48k monster into 3 parts to manage my emotions. This story is special to me and I love these 2 so much so I hope you enjoy this as much as I loved writing it (despite my tears). 

ALSO please check out this moodboard made by @jeonwiixard who’s been so sweet about her appreciation for this story :)

Part 01, Part 02, Part 03 (completed)

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He looks good.

The thought crosses your mind as you glance towards the front of the reception venue where Jungkook is happily chatting with your sister and his brother, laughing like old times, with your older sister pinching his cheeks like she always did. He must be blushing, you think, imagining 10-year old Jungkook and his flushed face when your then 17-year old sister called him cute after finally noticing his dimples.

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