#fairly sure its a feature not a bug

[pparadiselost]

the death of a wallflower.

university professor hinata shoyo x university student fem reader your crush on the hot new professor gets out of hand. warning(s): nsfw, unhealthy relationship dynamic (teacher x student), named best friend oc, reader has an unnamed ex, pov change for one of the scenes, non-virgin reader, use of american university setting minors do not interact.

XX UNIVERSITY

XX SEMESTER

WEEK 2

“no, like, our new professor is seriously so hot. like, forget-your-shitty-ex kinda hot. ugh, just wait till you’re in class! you have to believe me!”

minnie’s words echo like the foreshadowing of some porno as you gather yourself outside of the classroom. leave it to your roommate and self-proclaimed best friend to describe the newest professor at your university as “hot,” when most of the faculty are pushing 70 and have the self-awareness of a brick. you honestly have no reason to be this nervous before lecture, but while it might be the start of a boring week two of the semester for your scholarly peers, it’s your first day.

it’s also just your luck to end up with the world’s most horrendous stomach bug right before the semester started. after a few heated email exchanges and a lot of heavy-lifting from minnie, your advisor and dean begrudgingly excused you from classes until you were feeling better.

and now here you are. you took the liberty of showing up to class just a few minutes early to try and talk to your professor to see what exactly you missed, and maybe find a seat. you assumed at this point everyone had their unofficial “official” seats, and you were praying that you could score one somewhere close to minnie.

whatever.

you shake your head like a dog to clear whatever doubts tumbling around in your skull. you’ve dealt with your share of mean professors before, and between forcing yourself to go to class and puking on the floor and dealing with whatever screaming gripe they’ll give you now, you had sagely decided the latter was the better option.

you brace yourself, and you tiptoe into the classroom.

the door squeaks open, and you shuffle inside, almost scared to see what’s on the other side of the door. the classroom is empty, unsurprisingly, and the fairly sized classroom zooms in on a central point: at the professor’s desk. a bag is slumped next to it, and some papers are placed into somewhat neat piles on the desk. a projector illuminates the blackboard behind with its default display.

“ah, welcome in! you’re early!”

you nearly jump out of your own skin at the energetic voice that greets you. standing a few paces from the desk is a young man, dressed crisply in a white button down and formal pants. your eyes crawl up his physique, trailing over the undone button at his throat and the sleeves tastefully rolled up to reveal his toned arms. they’re all classically handsome features, but nothing to write home about—nothing a quick swipe on tinder won’t satiate. 

you step a bit closer. “uh- good morning… i’m a student in your class. i think i emailed you about this a while back, but i was the one that got really sick last week and couldn’t come in.”

you braced yourself for the tirade that you were so used to, the mountain of homework and make up lectures that were bound to be awaiting you. god, you weren’t some kind of study freak, but no one ever likes starting the semester on the wrong foot, especially when that wrong foot means making up a week’s worth of classes all across the board. 

except the tirade never really comes. the man laughs, “so that’s who you are! gotcha, gotcha. well, i can say for sure that it’s much better to see you in person rather than the little yearbook picture i have on my class roster. um… minerva, was it? she said she’d fill you in on the notes that you’ve missed.”

you perk up. “yeah, minnie’s my roommate. and she’s helped me catch up the best she can.”

“awesome! it’s good to hear students helping each other. i mean, that’s what having classmates and roommates is all about anyway,” he continues. you can’t help but notice the charm in his voice, the light rhythm that makes it feel like he’s dancing with his words rather than rambling. “reminds me of my own roommate. tall guy. super awkward. only cared about volleyball. he had this god awful middle part that chased away any girl that remotely found him attractive.”

you fight back a small giggle. he was funny. “i’m glad to say that minnie isn’t anything like that. if anything, i’d say she’s the opposite…”

“oh?” your professor quickly quips. “bit of a boy magnet, is she? i’m just messing with you. but yeah, like i said, it’s lovely to finally meet you. if you have any troubles, don’t ever feel scared to reach out to me. i’d rather that i know what’s going on than to be left guessing, and i promise you whatever ‘stupid’ thing you’re worrying about, i’ve definitely done dumber in my own undergrad years. sound cool?”

your eyes trail upwards again, from the outline of his small waist and broad chest. your mind wanders momentarily, wondering what his workout routine must be. you gloss over his smooth face, marveling at the smooth skin and the sunshine-like smile that tickles his mouth. he really couldn’t be that much older than you, despite being a professor, and if you saw him on the streets, outside of this academic setting, you would have never guessed him to hold such a position of authority with a face this young. his eyes are just like yours, lively but with a tinge of timidness that invites you to probe a bit deeper, a bit closer. and his hair: it’s the most beautiful, sensual shade of sunset orange.

it isn’t like your breath is being taken away in one fell swoop. rather, it feels like he’s coaxing it from you, stealing it away subtly so that you’re left to lean in, fiending for it like a fish caught out of water. 

your gaze meets his, and you’re shoved back down to the correct plane of reality. fuck—you were not about to be caught staring like a creep at your professor on day one on all days…!

you nod shakily. “it’s nice to meet you too, professor-”

“-hinata,” he finishes, beaming even wider at you. “although, i told the class they can call me shoyo if they want to. i’m still pretty new to the whole teaching thing, so being called ‘professor’ feels a bit weird.”

“ah,” your voice drops in volume a tad, “i’m personally more comfortable with ‘professor’, so i’ll stick to that, i think. if it’s okay.”

he holds his hand up in mock surrender. “totally chill. whatever rocks your boat. if you don’t have any more questions, then make yourself comfortable. i think minnie tends to sit… over there, if you wanna get settled down. i know you already got the notes from her, but i promise you didn’t miss much in the first week, so don’t sweat anything.”

“thank you!” you breathe, getting ready to turn on your heel and march to the area professor hinata pointed out. something inside your rib cage trembles as if shocked with electricity, an anticipation for a breath of fresh air that only the beginning of a new semester could bring. you don’t know what to call it exactly. it isn’t quite excitement nor is it giddiness, but a liminal middle ground in between all of it where dread, the need for poise, and opportunity intermingle.

“hey.” 

you glance over your shoulder at the sound of your professor’s voice. your professor grins at you, and in that split second, at you alone. his eyes twinkle fondly.

your breath catches in the back of your throat. 

“let’s have a good semester together, you and i.” 

the brown of his irises feel as if they’re going to swallow you whole. 

you tear your eyes away. 

…

…

…

“sooooooooo,” minnie practically slams your dorm room’s door shut and corners you in the small excuse of a room that you call home while at school. her eyes are brimming with the mischievous glimmer that you know all too well, and she stares you down with the most expectant look on her face. “isn’t the new professor hot? exactly like i told you?”

you dump your bag on the ground, crawling into your bed and immediately finding your place under the sheets. it’s been a long first day for you, and despite feverishly praying to whatever divinity was up above that the rest of your professors would be as kind as professor hinata was, it looks like your calls went wholly unanswered.

you massage the slight ache in your shoulders. “i mean, yeah, he’s an attractive man, and i guess he’s pretty nice. but nothing super out of the ordinary.”

minnie sticks her tongue out, and she pretends to boo you. she huffs her chest out and plants her hands squarely on her hips, clearly not impressed by your review of the new eye candy she’s scoped out. “you’re no fun! i bet you’re only saying this because you’re still hung up about that pathetic scum of a human being you call an ex. c’mon! the best way to get over a shitty boy is to simply find another one!”

something inside your chest twinges with a dull ache, and you flop back onto your bed. “as much as i would love to share your optimism, i don’t think hopping from one boy to another will make me feel any less shitty about this breakup.”

“well, you gotta give me something to work with! and besides,” she sidles up to the side of your bed, and she leans in close to your face, as if she’s whispering a secret to you. “professor hinata isn’t a boy. he’s a man.”

you hold back the urge to throw a pillow at your roommate. you’re grateful that you have minnie to get you out of your own mind sometimes, but at the same time, she better be grateful that she has you to ground her to reality. 

“he’s our professor, minnie!” you pretend to scold her, but you fail at holding back an exasperated smile. “i’m all for you homie hopping through whatever ligma sigma dickma frat you’ve got your eyes on, but faculty are strictly off limits!”

“hey, be nice to me!” she laughs back, reaching over to poke at your cheeks. “doesn’t professor hinata look super young though? like he can’t be that far off from our age. that doesn’t make it that bad, does it?”

you shake your head. “i don’t care how old he is! pursuing your professor is a huge no-no!”

“ughhhhh! i’m trying to find the silver lining for you here! i’d much rather you drool over your hot professor than mope around in bed over your ex all day, okay? besides, it’s not every semester that we get to have a class together AND have a professor that doesn’t dress like fucking paddington,” she groans dramatically. she’s basically swooning at this point, acting as if the notion of a new, handsome romantic prospect for her to chase after and you being disinterested is the end of the world for her. you’re used to this song and dance by now, and you know she’s being theatrical just to get on your nerves. 

it’s funny to you. minnie has a talent for making you laugh over the stupidest things. you barely stifle back a giggle. “leave paddington out of this! the poor guy has done nothing wrong.”

“you get my point!”

you settle back into your cozy spot on your bed, snuggling into your sheets. you don’t want to open up the can of worms that catching up on homework would be just yet, and as fantastical as minnie’s romantic endeavors could be, they make for a good distraction from all the responsibilities you don’t want to face yet. she glances at you lovingly, her fingers drumming against your rackety bed frame.

“but you do think he’s hot, yeah?” she starts. you snort.

“i said i found him to be an attractive man but nothing special, minnie.” you chew over your words, and your eyes flicker up to the white expanse of your ceiling. your mind conjures up images of your new professor, and the relief you had felt when he had treated you so warmly.

he was such a sunny young man, and true to minnie’s guess, probably not that much older than you were. most definitely fresh out of school and figuring things out for himself, your quick interaction with him before class felt more like talking to a classmate or a teacher’s assistant at best, rather than a well-educated professor trying to test his craft and wrangle throngs of antsy college students. you liked talking to him. 

“i’d say he’s more charismatic than hot,” you offer up. minnie guffaws at your answer, and it’s her turn to roll her eyes.

“fine, fine, i get it! you’re not going to bite at whatever temptation i throw at you. that’s my roommate for you, always the toughest nut to crack,” she sighs and shakes her head at you as if you’re hopeless, but you know she means well. there’s nobody else in the world who would care for you like this, go this much out of her way to make sure you don’t feel alone. 

it’s almost enough to dispel the thoughts of your new professor from your mind. 

almost.

your heart softens around the edges when your mind pushes the image of him alone with you into your mind. just that one cadence, no longer than thirty seconds at most, when it was only the two of you in that empty classroom, with no other soul in the room to shield you from the incoming stranger wedging his way into your life—just you and him, caught in that suspended moment.

he’s still so beautiful in your memory. 

“-anyways,” minnie’s loud voice jostles you from your thoughts. heat rushes to your face in embarrassment, as if you had been caught doing something bad red-handed. she doesn’t seem to notice, and you choke back your guilt on losing track of yourself over your new professor in favor of whatever minnie’s spouting next. she purses her lips in thought. “i’m feeling kinda peckish, so what do you say about getting takeout for dinner?”

“we have food in our fridge,” you curtly remind her.

she groans in utter defeat, flopping onto you over the side of your bed. “you’re such a goody two shoes! what in the world will ever get you to break?”

…

…

…

WEEK 4

what in the world, indeed. 

you fidget listlessly inside professor hinata’s office. you’ve never seen him with glasses before, but a pair is perched slightly crooked on his nose as he clicks at the big monitors on his desk, probably pulling up whatever answer you scrawled out on the google form he had sent out a few days prior. you’ve always been a little antsy whenever meeting with a professor in general, but make it a mandatory one-on-one meeting with a certain professor that seems to make your heart act up and you’re vibrating so hard that you might as well cause an earthquake.

“so…,” he starts, skimming your response, “i really like what you wrote here. think you can tell me more about what you have planned for your final project?”

you lick your lips and swallow, and you’re suddenly aware of how dry your mouth is. “uh, yeah. i’m sure minnie’s already told you most of it-”

you stop dead in your tracks when professor hinata raises a hand, cutting you off. you pause, a prickle of dread swirling in your stomach.

he smiles apologetically. “sorry, i really don’t like interrupting students. but this is your final project, and i want to hear your ideas. not minnie’s. i know you wrote that you two want to do it as a pair, and that’s fine. but your ideas are just as valuable as yours are, and this time is reserved so i can pick at your brain, not hers.”

“r-right…,” you murmur. your heart flutters the slightest bit when you realize he’s paying special attention to you, but you shut any excitement down immediately. you were a goddamn adult and a college student. what kind of person would you be if you couldn’t hold it together around your professor, who 100% without a doubt saw you as a pupil? you mentally scold yourself for finding your instructor’s undivided attention appealing.

“like you said,” you start up, your voice still quiet, “i thought it’d be nice to do a joint research thing with minnie, and we wanted to focus on our campus’ experience with single versus shared dorm life. we figured something like that would be easy to find professional data for on a much larger scale, so we can compare and contrast with our own findings.”

he hums to himself. you keep your eyes fixed on a point on the wall behind him, not wanting your eyes to wander. it isn’t like professor hinata always comes to class impeccably dressed in a suit and tie or anything, but he also has a horrendously good sense of fashion that makes you instinctively shy away a bit. he’s dressed nicely today too: in a sweater with a white button down underneath that peeks over the collar of the sweater and what should be loose black pants that fit tightly around his thighs. you hate yourself for noticing these details. 

“that sounds like a pretty solid plan to me. i like how far you’re thinking ahead. research like this usually takes a lot of time and energy, so it’s good to have a vision for what you plan to do at the end. do you have any thoughts as to how you’re going to collect data? i suppose reaching out to housing would help with pure numbers, but for tackling the more social and emotional parts, you’ll need to do that yourself.” 

you’re keenly aware of when he glances towards you, his gaze burning into you like a magnifying glass held up to the sun. god, you shouldn’t be so on edge around him, and yet something about how casual he is with you and just how sweet he is with you makes you that much more stiff. you don’t dare meet his eyes.

maybe it’s that vulnerable intimate one-on-one that’s making you so much more aware of his presence, or maybe it’s the close confines of his office, but you know you’re going to waver if you make eye contact with him. 

“minnie and i wanted to conduct physical surveys. we were planning on contacting the different r.a.s of each housing building and asking the school for the information to off campus housing managers. that way we can distribute questions as far as we can,” you recited stately. “we even considered maybe putting in a raffle reward for responses, which would incentivize people to actually respond instead of ignoring it.”

professor hinata whistles. “i’m impressed. you two have really thoroughly thought all of this through! you never fail to impress me with how much attention to detail you put with your schoolwork. i wish all of my students were as diligent as you were sometimes.”

you bite down on your tongue, and it takes all of your willpower to not let some kind of fucked up glee swell inside your chest. “thank you, professor. the idea was originally minnie’s idea, but i was the one that really did most of the work ironing out the kinks.”

he laughs heartily. “i can imagine. between the two of you, i can tell that you’re the more responsible one by a long shot. don’t get me wrong: minnie’s a wonderful student. but at the end of the day, it’s still you cleaning up her messes, isn’t it?”

“yeah,” you bashfully admit. you can’t even count the number of times you’ve been the one to pick her up from her drunken escapades or be the one to force her into bed after holding her hair while she pukes. as much emotional stability as she gives you, she does need a tad bit of mothering. “but she’s still a great friend. i couldn’t ask for a better roommate. we might have opposite personalities, but we balance each other out perfectly, i think.”

“that’s good to hear! it’s always nice to know my students are getting along. especially quieter ones like you.” he leans forward in his seat, almost as if he’s whispering a secret to you. “us professors aren’t allowed to have favorites, but it’s human nature to always root a little for the well-behaved underdogs.”

you swallow a bit more harshly. there’s a lump in your throat. you really, really need to do something about whatever you feel towards your professor, because you know deep down that it’s wrong to keep wanting his attention like this. he’s being friendly and watching out for you, because he knows you’re the plain mouse-like student amongst a sea of wild young adults carving their way in the world. he’s only helping you, only complimenting you because he’s genuine and wants to see you do well, and you’re hoarding that attention and craving it like a man starved.

“she’s done a lot to get me where i am right now,” you admit, wanting to deflect. “i broke up with my now ex-boyfriend over the summer, and she did so much to make sure i was doing okay. i know you probably don’t care that much about messy college student drama, but… she has my back until the end.”

he raises an eyebrow. “i don’t mind. trust me, professors love hearing about student drama as much as the students do. also if it helps me get to know you better, then it doesn’t hurt, does it? having more information, no matter how silly, is better than knowing nothing about you at all.”

“i mean, it really is silly.” you’re trying very hard not to look him in the face. your eyes flit everywhere but, looking at your hands, the neckline of his sweater, the peeling wallpaper, anything. “i really liked that guy, and he ran off and cheated on me. i caught him red handed and did the right thing by confronting him and immediately breaking things off, but it’s not like you can wake up and decide that you don’t like someone anymore, no matter how awful he was to me.”

“i’m sorry that happened to you. it’s never fun to feel betrayed by someone you trusted, especially romantically.” he taps his fingers together.

you wave him off, shrugging. “i’m a lot better about it now! it hurts every now and then, but i’m choosing to focus on myself. i did nothing wrong, and it’s better for me to have cut him off than to turn a blind eye. and minnie’s always inviting me out to all sorts of things to take my mind off of it too.”

“that’s good. i wish i could say relationships get easier once you become an adult, but… there’s no cheat key to things like love. you gotta roll up your sleeves and do the nitty gritty work.” he feigns rolling his sleeves up, and he shakes his head. a blur of orange flickers like candle light in the corner of your eye. “even full grown adults do terrible things to each other. but just like you said, it makes you appreciate the bonds that stay true to you even through your hardships.”

“clearly,” you breathe. your voice is airy, almost strained. god, he was just so easy to spill your heart to. why couldn’t your ex be like this? professor hinata is thoughtful, intelligent, and emotionally mature. you need to step away, need to keep your distance, but even your attempts to deflect yourself away from the growing attachment you have to your instructor only ends with him expertly spinning things into his favor.

he chuckles to himself and leans back into his seat. “my mom would always say that it’s better to be single and free than to be miserable and tied down. besides, you’re only in college! the big wide world is waiting for you! i promise you, there are far better guys out there that can treat you the way you deserve to be treated. one failed college relationship isn’t going to doom you for the rest of your life, okay? take this one from your prof.”

“i’m sure.” 

you don’t doubt his words. the little resolve, the sliver of morality lingering inside your turmoiled brain, is crackling. it’s wrong to lean this forward towards your professor, to grasp and grip at the stray straws you can see, and yet, it feels so good. the heady silence that settles over the two of you is reminiscent of your first meeting with him, back to the moment when it was only you and him in the same way it is now. 

but things are different today. he knows more about you. you’ve learned to trust him. he’s always respected you, but it’s clear that he treats you like an adult on equal footing with him rather than your other professors who act as if you were born yesterday. he genuinely cares for you.

you subconsciously steel your stomach, and you sneak your eyes upwards from the hemline of his sweater. your gaze trickles cautiously over his broad chest and his neck, over the detail of his lips and nose, apple-like cheeks, before eventually meeting his inquisitive one. you unintentionally let out a choked sigh, like the wind is being squeezed out from your lungs.

his eyes light up and smile at you, as if to say “finally.” 

you can’t breathe.

you want to lean in; you want to close that impossible gap that tenses and pulses between the two of you. what kind of tension is this? something so forbidden, so magnetic, so undeniable yet unavailable for the taking… it feels like torture, to see your meek reflection staring back at you in the wide sclera and captivating brown irises of professor hinata’s eyes, and to be able to do nothing about it. this was the devastating nature of attraction, knowing that your personal insanity might amount to nothing the very instant you handed your fate over to another.

knock knock knock. 

you nearly splutter over your own inhale before jerking away back into your seat. a loud knocking noise repeats itself around the small confines of his office, and you’re left stunned, your heart hammering like a death toll inside your tense ribcage. you drop your face down to the floor, not daring to tear your eyes away from anywhere other than the anchoring, humiliating safety of the ground.

“ah, looks like our time is up. it seems like the next student is here,” professor hinata explains, much to your simultaneous dismay and relief. this isn’t a line you can cross, and yet you crossed some kind of personal boundary you set up for yourself right there when you snuck a glimpse into your professor’s eyes. 

“i-i’ll get going. thank you for the meeting,” you stammer, hurriedly grabbing your things and almost stumbling over your feet to get to the door. “i’ll keep working on my project- and uh- i’ll reach out to you if i have any questions…!”

you don’t know what kind of face he must be making, not when you don’t have the courage to look at him again. you sprint out of the door, away from the tense sparks that lay dying out into fumes between the two of you, surely a machination of your deprived brain. the hallway echoes with the sound of your footsteps as you half-run-half-speed-walk away from the office, wanting to go anywhere else as quickly as your clumsy feet would take you.

how could you be so stupid? not only do you end up blabbing about a bad breakup to him, revealing that you’re single, but you’re idiotic enough to think that his goodwill is something you can entertain into something further.

you hate to admit it.

you’re falling in love with your professor. 

…

…

…

WEEK 7

“you should go out with me this weekend.”

“i’ll think about it.”

“pleaseeeeeeee? i basically have my outfit picked out, and i’m dying to get a matching one for you! it’s been so long since you let me dress you up, and i’m itching to do something fun with you for the weekend! please? pretty please? with sprinkles and oreos and whipped cream and cherries on top?”

you groan, tempted to slam your head into your desk. “minnie, i said i’ll think about it. i’ve already seen the five million instagram dms you’ve sent me begging to go to whatever frat party is being thrown.”

“it’s sig-chi,” she reminds you, as if that’s the important part. some of the students next to you shoot the two of you odd glances, and you flash a weak smile, inwardly apologizing for minnie’s obliviousness when it came to blurting your business. it wasn’t like the entire class heard, thank god, but the noise levels weren’t high enough where you could act a bit more stealthily. you wish it was, even if it was only to spare you from whatever social embarrassment your mostly well-meaning roommate was bound to put you through.

you turn your attention back to the work you’re trying to get done. you’re grateful professor hinata gives you time in class to work on your final projects. after that fateful instance in office hours with him where you came face-to-face with your feelings, you haven’t been able to really act normally around your instructor. fearing for your own sanity, you’ve done everything you possibly can to avoid interacting with him one-on-one. it’s not like something like that is particularly difficult to do, but your heart still skips a beat and lodges itself in the back of your throat when he catches you in the hallway, greeting you with a light “good to see you!” before squeezing past you.  

your cheeks sting with heat when you think about him. you bite down only your tongue, willing for the dull pain to ground you. minnie hums absentmindedly next to you, completely unaware of the hell that she’s partially responsible for, and she taps away at her phone. 

“hey, hey, look at this! isn’t this outfit sooooo cute? it would look perfect on you! and if i order it today, it should get here in time for the sig-chi function!” she sticks her phone screen in your face, and you instinctively recoil away. 

your blood runs cold when you see the outfit she’s showing you. it’s a cute sparkly little number, except for the fact that it would cover barely anything if you were to put it on. one wrong move in it, and your whole chest and ass would be out for the world to see. and that’s not including the already exposed midriff it would entail. “it’s cute, but- i don’t know if i could wear something like that…”

“nonsense! i can see you perfectly in it! it’ll be awesome!” she quickly cuts you off. “a cute but still slutty outfit is key to every good party! i bet you’ll have all of the guys in there chasing after you in this. oh, the color will sooooo make your eyes pop, and i think i can really make your features shine with a bit of my make up too…”

you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole. embarrassment prickles like red-hot thorns underneath your face, and you try to grab at minnie’s phone. “minnie! you know i don’t wear things like that!”

“exactly! it’s all the more reason why! i’m trying to help you make your debut on the university dating scene,” the girl responds as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “you’ll be thanking me once you have a drop dead gorgeous six foot something basketball player wrapped around your little finger. trust me, i’m the expert in these kinds of things.”

“that’s not the point!” you hiss. ugh, you should really know better than to talk reason into her during one of her frenzied rants. you have absolutely zero intention of actually going out to one of these sleazy frat parties, let alone wear a skimpy outfit in order to bait a boy! you need time and patience to heal your broken heart, not… her wild schemes. you would rather bite off your tongue than go through whatever public humiliation ritual is involved with flirting at a frat party.

“ladies,” a deep yet sunny voice cuts through your annoyed inner monologue like a hot knife through butter, “i hope we’re actually getting work done. you wouldn’t be goofing off in my class, would you?”

your blood turns into ice for the second time within minutes, and when you peel your eyes up from your desk, your fear comes true when you see professor hinata standing there. his hands are on his hips, and despite his teasingly scolding tone, he’s sporting a bright smile.

you curse yourself inwardly, and you’re mentally scrambling to make an excuse.

“professor! look at this! wouldn’t this look so good on (y/n)?” minnie’s a step ahead of you. you audibly splutter over your breath, and you shove your head into your hands. she giggles as she sticks her phone in your professor’s face, and you’ve never been more mortified in your life.

professor hinata’s eyes widen at the more-lingerie-than-actual-clothing that’s being bombarded into his eyes, and he coughs, waving his hand. “woah, i’m not sure if i’m the right person to be asking that, minnie! why don’t we save the party talk for after class?”

she pretends to be exasperated, and she jokingly rolls her eyes. “ugh, you two are hopeless! you have to help me out here, professor. i’m trying to get (y/n) to loosen up a bit and have some fun with me! isn’t it true that you feel loads better when you do a bit of dolling up?”

“well, yes, but it looks like (y/n) here isn’t too keen on that idea. take it easy on the party going, and let’s focus more on your final project. trust me when i say your deadlines will be creeping up on you fast,” he easily brushes minnie off. she smiles brightly and nods, and only then does she finally turn to her computer and start compiling her research.

you want lightning to strike you down and burn you to a crisp. you peel your head out of your hands, and your weary eyes meet your professor’s. he grins understandingly at you, and he reaches forward to squeeze your shoulder empathetically.

“...!”

you grit your teeth, your eyes widening like a deer caught in headlights as electricity courses through your body. the skin where his hand just was feels like it had been burned, thrown completely off guard by the sudden contact.

“are you doing okay?” he whispers. his voice is soft and quiet, coaxing you out of your panicked state. it’s a voice reserved solely for you, one that only you can hear, and your blood is being weighed down by figurative iron when your heart flutters. “take it easy now. don’t let her goad you into doing something you don’t want to do.”

your lips feel clumsy. “she means well. i’m fine. she talks big, but she won’t actually do anything without my express permission.”

he’s more of a danger to you than minnie will ever be. you wish you had the courage or brainlessness to blurt something like that, but the bitter revelation stays curled up into the flesh of your still tongue, burning and scalding you like the unspoken confession it is.

“that’s good to hear. take care of yourself though. if she keeps fretting over you, you’ll make me worry too, you hear?” his nose crinkles a little when he squeezes your shoulder again. did he always have freckles? or are you only noticing them now that he’s up close and you have nowhere else to focus except for his face? you hate it, hate this tension, hate the way you can’t control yourself despite knowing better.

you hang your head, forcibly tearing your eyes away from your handsome professor. you lie through your teeth. “i’ll be okay, professor.”

…

…

…

“ohhhhh, fuck…!”

shoyo double, triple, quadruple-checked to make sure that his office door was firmly locked around him. it would be the literal death of his academic career if someone were to catch him doing what he was about to do, and he wasn’t that keen on throwing aside his future just yet. 

he had made a beeline for his office the moment class let out. it took every bone in his body, every last bit of willpower he has ever known in his entire life to keep his sunny facade up and to make sure no one would see his mask slip. he can’t afford it, and yet he’s still gambling too riskily. he’s cutting it too close to safety to relax fully, but he can’t stop.

his cock twitches and strains in his pants, begging for his attention. he leans his back against the firm wooden door, his breathing shallowing as lewd images flash behind his eyes. fuck—he really should know how to control himself better than this, actually listen to the angel in his brain telling him that he should really quit being so attracted to his students.

correction: student. 

correction again: you.

his fingers unconsciously unbuckle his belt, and his pants drop down to his ankles. he grits his teeth, a strangled breath escaping his clenched teeth as he palms the prominent bulge in his boxers. it was one thing to ride out his delusions on his own, savoring the forbidden dregs of toeing the line between professionalism and a taboo romance. 

you played the part so well too. like a frightened doe that would run away if he moved too quickly, you were good at keeping your walls up and fending off his quiet advances enough. the push and pull had him reeling: part of him wanting him to do better and to act properly as a new professor should, and another wondering how much cuter you’d be bent over his desk and your pretty cunt stuffed full of his cock.

“...shit-,” he hisses as his hands slip underneath his boxers. it only takes a few strokes for his cock to fully get hard, and the cool air of the office hits his sensitive skin like a flurry of ice. heat courses through his body, and he feels awful.

he shouldn’t be doing this. he shouldn’t be getting aroused by his student and jerking off in his office, but here he was. the last straw was seeing your roommate pitch that damn slutty outfit. you looked so innocent and so sweet, clearly not a party animal, but how often did your roommate swing you around? did you get down and wild if pushed far enough? shit, was your good girl thing just a ruse to get brownie points with him?

“fuck- fuuuuck…!” he starts stroking himself, palm swiping from base to tip, squeezing his cockhead a hair. dull pleasure swirls deep inside of his stomach, and he moves his hips into his palm, the friction downright addictive.

he imagines you in that outfit, your tits and ass basically out for the world to see. maybe you’d let your friend drag you out to her silly party. maybe you’d act shy there too, skirting around the sidelines of the dance room, sipping nervously on your drink. maybe the alcohol would make your head buzz a bit and you’d get a bit bolder. maybe you’d let some douchey frat bro feel you up, that dumb bastard not knowing how good he has it by getting your attention.

shoyo groans under his breath. god, you shouldn’t be wasting your energy and time on stupid college boys. all they would do is exploit you and leave you for dead, even though you were clearly the best thing to walk into their lives. 

he thumbs over his weeping tip, moaning throatily as he presses into his slit. his chest rises and falls, the electric feeling making his knees go weak. touching himself never felt this good. nothing came close to that buzzing high of being deprived of you.

his mind doesn’t stop wandering. raunchy thoughts of you dancing floods his brain. he imagines you grinding up against him, your soft ass pressing up against his crotch. he’d buck his hips against yours, let the heat mount as his hands wander over your body, that skimpy outfit of you doing nothing to protect you from him. you’d glance back at him, feeling his strong chest up on your back, the muscles of his arms tensing when you pull him flush against you. your eyes would have that drunken haze to them, intoxicated off of whatever was in your cup and getting down and dirty with your professor. 

it reminds him of his own idiotic undergraduate days, ones he thought he matured past when he became a proper working adult. clearly not, if the thought of dancing with you and feeling you up has him furiously fisting his hard cock. 

he needs to be inside you. he doesn’t want to feel his hand on his cock anymore. he wants to ruin that pristine image you have. he wants to see you crying and moaning, going from his stellar unassuming pupil to some cock crazed slut, begging for him to fuck you harder, to fuck you deeper, completely at his mercy. he wants to see your clothes in tatters with nothing to shield you from his almost animalistic lust, for you to see him as a proper grown man who wants to pamper you as much as he wants to ruin you rather than some stuffy professor.

it’s downright problematic how much he needs you. it’s more than just wanting to fuck you. no, he’s a gentleman. he wants you to want him, even if it’s only to ease the guilt nagging at his heart. you’re too smart for your own good, and yet when you’re surrounded by all these bad apples nipping at your heels and waiting for you to stumble, it’s no wonder that you’ve become so holed in.

you simply need someone who’ll treat you right. who’ll make you shine. who’ll be a proper lover, someone that can actually step up to that mantle.

“hah- god fucking dammit…! fuck- fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck- shit…! fucking hell, god- fuck!” his grip on his cock tightens, and he thinks his body is going to break. the dopamine buzz in his mind is almost explosive, and he knows he can’t control himself for much longer. he's close, so close, egged onto the edge by fantasizing about the thought of his student in a revealing party outfit. 

what kind of scum did that make him? if his mind was any clearer, he might know, but it isn’t. all that his sex-riddled brain can make out is how badly he wants your body. he craves the weird sick satisfaction of being the one to stretch out your sweet hole with his girthy length, to fill every little bit of your womb up with pumps of his hot cum, to pleasure you so thoroughly that he’ll ruin sex for the rest of your life—unless it’s with him, of course.

you flicker behind his eyes again. your body trembles against his as he pretends he’s thrusting into you rather than his pre-cum drenched hand. your cunt quivers and tightens around him, and your face is stained with your tears. mascara runs down your cheeks, and your lipstick is smeared messily all over your mouth. your legs shake around his hips as he fucks into you, tip easily squeezing and abusing that sweet spot deep inside your body.

“what a pretty girl.” he’d praise you, take his sweet time making sure you get all the loving you deserve. “how could someone as pretty as you stay out of my sight for so long?”

the image of you in his mind bucks your hips back against him, and the pleasure that explodes around his cock has him weak in the knees. he’s so close, so close to giving you his seed, to marking you as his. he’s humping into you desperately, wanting you to feel that impeccable stretch, pierced and plowed by him, driven to madness by his infatuation.

“i’m here! i’m yours!” you pant out. you’re starstruck. smitten. everything he’s wanted.

“-kgh…!” 

warmth overtakes his entire body, and strong ropes of cum escape from him. he grits his teeth, clenching his jaw and willing himself to keep his moans to himself. he’s dead meat if he gets caught masturbating to the thought of his student in his office. cum spills out all over his office floor and coats his hands, spilling and spilling like the pent up frustration bottled away in his heart. he furiously strokes himself through his orgasm, and sparks fly in his brain, pleasure coursing through his veins like one giant shockwave.

he throws his head back, gasping for air as his cock sputters, the last drops of virile cum leaking out and covering his fingers. his cock slowly softens in his hand, and he sucks in deep inhales, the cool air soothing the heat enveloping his entire body. 

shoyo’s mind feels fuzzy and distant, like he’s been shoved out of this plane of existence temporarily. his limbs are weak, and his abs tense and coil in on itself as he forces himself to steady his breathing. his vision is blurred slightly around the edges, but the world emerges back into focus with each passing inhale and exhale.

he hasn’t even fully come down from his high, but he knows that the lack of guilt he’s feeling is wrong. he should feel bad, he should feel dirty, he should feel like he’s done something criminal. what professor jerks off to his student and doesn’t feel any sort of post-nut clarity? he swallows heavily, but the knot in his throat that should be there is nowhere to be found.

he doesn’t want to give his growing interest in you any more attention than it needs. the last thing he should be doing is fanning the flames, and just now, he fed the monster when he should be depriving it, starving it.

his gaze crests downwards, towards the pristine streaks of pearly cum all over his hand and the floor. he knows he’s beyond saving when he bitterly wishes all of it could have gone inside of you and your sweet pussy instead of being wasted on nothing.

“...let’s clean up,” he whispers to no one in particular. he hates the apathy he feels, reaching almost robotically for the kleenex he kept on his desk, not a single prick of guilt or wrongdoing stirring in his body as he moves clumsily through the aftershocks of his orgasm to rid the proof that he had even touched himself to the thought of you to begin with. you don’t have to know that he ever jerked off to you or the fact that his desire for you grows and festers like a rotten wound inside of his heart. because that is what it is in the eyes of everything that is moral and good: rotten.

but what you don’t know can’t kill you.

…

…

…

WEEK 10

you had dreaded the next mandatory meeting with professor hinata for a while now. you had done such a good job of keeping a low profile for a while now, only ever addressing your instructor when it was absolutely necessary and whatever interactions you needed so that he wouldn’t pick up on the fact that you were purposefully avoiding him.

you had also done a good job at keeping minnie’s eagerness at bay. your final project for professor hinata’s class was a very handy excuse to avoid going out to parties with her, and crunching the data also did an exceptional job at keeping you busy instead of moping about in your room alone.

you’d think at this point in the semester you’d have quit being so hung up over your ex and your general failure of a love life, but seeing that your romantic prospect was a crush on your professor that you were actively trying to get over for your own sake, clearly things weren’t looking great for you.

but this was something you couldn’t escape. you sit on your hands to keep yourself from more or less bolting out of professor hinata’s office. his eyes are glued to the monitors on his desk in good professor-like fashion, scanning over the work you’ve handed in for him to check.

you’ve done this song and dance before. you’ve been stuck in his office before, too scared to make eye contact with your professor out of fear as to your heart betraying you. you have to keep a firm grip on yourself, and you look at your professor but make it a point not to look at his face.

“man, i know i say this every time i look over your progress, but you really do outdo yourself. you deserve a pat on the back,” he remarks, smiling proudly as he leans back in his seat. “you’re definitely in a good place for where we are in the semester, and as long as you keep at it, i’d say you’ll easily get an a for your final grade.”

“thank you,” you quietly state. he’s dressed simply today, in a black turtleneck and jeans. it makes his bright orange hair stand out that much more, and you try with all your might not to stare too hard at the obvious outlines of his toned pecs and waist straining against the fabric of the sweater.

he looks good today too. you want to eat your own fist and curl up into a ball to cry. it was like for every step forward your determination took to keep yourself in check, professor hinata threw a screwball at you to make you take two steps back.

you wish things would go as smoothly as it did the last time you were here, vulnerable to his scrutiny and left with your own flimsy defenses. the same thick tension hangs in the air again, and you pray that you won’t act out of place.

“so,” his voice cuts through your thoughts, like it always does. he knows how to catch you right off guard, wedging himself right into the split-second crack in your judgment. “all i’ve got to say is that i’m excited to see your actual final all put together. your findings are going to be really interesting, and i’m also looking forward to comparing what you find against whatever conclusions minnie draws from the same data. i don’t mean to get so personal again, but the two of you are so different that i wonder if your findings will be that stark too.”

you inhale, fixing your eyes on a spot behind him as if it was ritual to ground yourself that way. “i won’t spoil too much of her stuff, but she also has some pretty cool ideas. she’s told me some things that i wouldn’t have thought to consider in her part of the project, so… just something to get you more hyped!”

he chuckles, the low cadence of his voice making your heart flutter a beat. “i’ll take your word for it. i hope she’s treating you well. i know that you know your bond with her better than i ever will, but i really hope her energetic personality isn’t too overbearing for you. you come to me if you have any issues, okay?”

“i appreciate it. but i’m fine, really. she’s a lot, i know, but she means it out of love,” you reply methodically. this isn’t the first time someone has scrutinized your relationship with her, often misconstruing her enthusiasm and your more quiet personality to her mistreating you. sure, you two don’t see eye-to-eye about everything, but you wouldn’t hold her so close if she wasn’t someone who would see things through thick and thin for you. 

he nods. “alright, i trust you. but it never hurts to be vigilant. take it from someone with a bit more life experience than you do: people can still hurt you and claim that it’s from a place of love. this isn’t to say that minnie’s a bad person, but you and i have something special. i want you to stay safe.”

something lodges in the back of your throat. your mind swirls dangerously, and you can’t think. special? you and him have something special? you almost laugh unconsciously; it’s like despite all the work you did to keep your heart under lock and key, he’s determined to burrow his way in there. 

you hate how easily you crumble. all it took him was one well timed sentence with that stupidly charming voice of his, and it made weeks on weeks of self-imposed deprivation disappear like dust.

“don’t worry, i’ve been doing a lot of work to take care of myself. do you remember that ex i told you about? after him, i did a lot of work reevaluating the people closest to me and whether or not i trusted them blindly,” you hesitate, pursing your lips and sucking your cheeks in a little. you comb over your next thoughts carefully. talking with professor hinata is a mental game of its own, and you feel like you’re playing against an impossible opponent. “there’s… definitely a more eloquent way for me to have phrased all of that, but… you get the point.”

“i do. god, you poor thing. how could anyone hurt someone like you like he did? i know i’m biased as your professor, but even then… you’re so bright and kind. he really fumbled. that’s my two cents.” his shoulders shake a bit as he laughs, the sound coming from somewhere deep inside of his chest. your stomach feels queasy, and every part of your body wants to swoon. your attraction to him is trouble. it’s fatal. 

you dig your nails into the flesh of your palms. the stinging pain does little to bring you back to your good conscience, but it’s something to focus on other than the hazy lapses in judgment that dance inside your mind. “it’s all growing pains. this is what being an adult means, doesn’t it? you said so yourself last time we talked. there’s bound to be someone better out there in the world.”

you don’t need to look at him to know that he’s looking at you. the office feels constricting and so much smaller than you remember it to be, as if the walls are actively moving in closer and keeping you trapped in there with your deathly charismatic professor. 

“yes.” his voice drops a bit in volume, and it sounds almost intimate. “yes, i did say that.”

something possesses you. it creeps in quietly, like a drop of ink dispersed into a glass of clear water. no, you shouldn’t say that; whatever was plaguing you had taken root months ago. whatever you were trying to save was just a remnant of the ruin in your head. you swallow thickly, almost like you were trying to press your logic, your goodness, your moral conscience back down into nothingness.

you lift your face. his sweet eyes are there to greet you, and they light up when you meet his gaze. his eyes are warm and welcoming, and you’re instantly entranced. he’s beautiful, insanely beautiful, and the brown color has you floored. you want to reach out and cup his face, and you want to just stare into his eyes forever. it’s like he’s a siren that’s called out to you specifically, tempting you to inch closer and to let him take you away, entranced forever. your lips start quivering. you can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t reflect and let out one last pathetic struggle to cling to what you know to be right.

maybe things would have been different then. maybe if you tried harder, you’d have picked the morally correct thing. maybe you’d walk out of professor hinata’s office unscathed, your relationship tense but still at the boundary it should be at, and you’d graduate and put your crush behind you as nothing more than a silly infatuation. 

but you don’t. some repressed part of your mind slips. the words tumble from your mouth before you can stop yourself.

“i wish it could be you.”

you instantly throw your hands over your mouth, your eyes widening in shock. regret flashes through your entire being, and your face burns with shame. professor hinata gasps softly, but he doesn’t say anything.

“sorry-,” you fumble, your stomach twisting into horrid knots. panic shoots through your brain, and you’re screaming internally at yourself. you want to say something, anything, apologize profusely, but the gears in your head won’t turn. your entire mental processes are overrun with nothing but sheer panic, and you feel like your brain has turned into a piece of useless metal. “i-i’m sorry…! i didn’t mean it like that- i wasn’t thinking… i just- i don’t know what came over me.”

“hey, hey, calm down.” he reaches forward, leaning over his desk, and a firm hand plants itself on your knee. you almost jerk away from him, like his touch would hurt you, and your professor can see the wild, feral fear in your eyes.

it’s one thing to deal with your illicit feelings on your own, but to accidentally blurt them and make them known to him? to professor hinata? the very object of your forbidden affections?

“it’s okay. it’s okay. i’m being serious, it’s alright. there’s no need to freak out.” his words cut into the blinding flurry of thoughts in your head. “talk to me, here. you good?”

you nod frantically, forcing a deep breath in through your nose. “i’m fine. i’m okay, i promise. i… please ignore what i just said.”

he retracts his hand. he swallows, and you can see his adam’s apple bob underneath the neckline of his turtleneck sweater. you should know better than to look into his eyes again, not when every time looking into his face spelled trouble for you, but when you stare up at him helplessly, he looks nothing like the bubbly, carefree professor you knew.

his pupils are blown wide open, and there’s a kind of intensity settling inside of his eyes that you’ve never seen before. his lips are parted just slightly, like he’s about to say something but the words are caught on the tip of his tongue. a shiver tiptoes down your spine. he looks like a man haunted, the once cordial candlelight-esque brown of his irises running big and reckless like a wildfire. 

you don’t recognize this side of him, but you don’t dislike it either. you lick your lips quickly, suddenly aware of your extremely dry mouth.

he lets out a deep exhale through his nose. “...i need you to listen to me.”

“i am,” you squeak back. your mind flashes back to minnie, to your superstar queen bee of a roommate. how would she navigate something like this? knowing her, she would navigate this gracefully. she could probably play it off as a joke and laugh around with professor hinata. she could bat her eyelashes and charm him, maybe pass this off as a bit of awkward flirting and walk away scot free. you’ve never had the same social grace that she manages to pull off so effortlessly. 

“i… i apologize if i’m reading too much in between the lines.” he sounds strained, as if he’s holding a part of him back. his eyes are locked onto you, honed in as if you’ll skirt away out of his sight. “but i don’t think either of us can ignore whatever it is we have going on. i want to make myself clear here. i am your professor, and you are my student. the mature, responsible thing for me to do as your instructor is to ignore your remark and to move on. if that is what you want, then i will let you walk out of my office. we can pretend nothing happened. everything that happened here stays between us.”

you pause, and you wring your hands together. you know that that’s the choice you should take. that your relegated role in this song and dance is to be the good kid and to never stray away from your place as a nobody bookworm with good grades and nothing special. and yet your mouth moves, “...is there another option?”

he clenches his jaw. he has to be at his limit, just as much as you are. you see the edge in his eyes, flaring like sparks, waiting for you to touch and him to come away burned. you don’t care. you’re hurtling straight at the point of no return, and you’re burning up, beautiful and flaming and waiting to be consumed into nothingness.

“i… we take care of this whole thing. but i want to make sure you want this as much as i do. i hope you understand the gravity of what this means for both of us. it’s very, very wrong for a teacher and a student to be in love with each other.” professor hinata takes a big breath in, and he shoves his hand through the wild tufts of his orange hair. “but if you are insistent on pursuing this route with me, so long as you’re willing to accept your responsibility, then…” 

he stops, and he whispers the last part, barely and only loud enough for your ears, “...i can’t say that i can refuse you.”

your hands curl into decisive fists in your lap. so this is where you are. these are the conditions that life has mercilessly thrown at your feet. your heart and brain are at odds with each other. your mind screams at you to think of your future, that your life would certainly be ruined if anyone would find out that you had an illicit relationship with your professor. and what about him? it would spell a certain social death for him too if he were to be found out.

but your heart begs. you’ve ignored its cries for basically your entire life now, always picking the expected thing, pushing down your own wants in exchange for the security and the safety of a quiet life. this is one time in your life that you’ve truly wanted something, truly yearned for it with your entire existence. how is it fair to deny this from yourself? haven’t you given enough up? you gave up sociability when making friends with minnie, gave up a chance at normalcy when breaking up with your ex, and now love with professor hinata?

“i know there’s a right answer, professor hinata,” you hang your head. uneasiness claws at your ribcage, but the desire bubbling up inside of you hurts even more. “but i’m sorry. i don’t think i have it in me to be good anymore.”

he waits a beat, and the silence hangs above you like the weight of a million sins. the laugh he lets out is airy, relieved. “i was hoping you’d say that. well… come here. let me have you.”

you don’t know how you don’t trip over your own feet as you get up. you walk over to him as if in a trance, looking down at your professor with shaking eyes. he looks so confident as he grins up at you, legs spread slightly in that old office chair of his, every part of him just as inviting and tempting as the day you first laid eyes on him.

you’re practically crawling into his lap, and his strong arms are around you. his mouth is instantly on yours, and you gasp, the feeling of soft lips consuming you entirely. this wasn’t your first kiss by a long shot, but it was your first kiss with him. and god, it was everything those stupid romance movies made a kiss out to be: electric, addictive, leaving you dizzy and giddy and reeling in his embrace.

you’re glad he’s there to hold you. you place your hands shyly on his chest, warmth pooling in your stomach when you can feel the strong tension of his muscles. you never realized you were this downright touch starved, basically melting into putty in his hands as he kisses you over and over again, the hushed sounds of your lips locked together and breathless pants filling the room. 

your head spins. this must be the charm of an experienced lover. his touches mold into yours, adjusting to you and making you feel as if you can put your trust wholly into him. his tongue laps at your lips, and you let him in, let him swirl his tongue deep into your mouth. you feel so full on the inside, your chest swelling with everything you’re repressed coming out now in droves. his tongue moves around yours, and your ears drink up the lewd sounds of your french kissing. 

his hands grasp at you firmly, memorizing your touch and the way your body feels under his palms. his thick thighs make for the perfect seat, and you cling to him as he kisses you. making out with him feels like an eternity but also as if no time has passed at all, whisked away into the special place meant solely for lovers, sincerely lost in your own world with him. he feels so good around you and under your skin, even better than the fleeting fantasies you might allow yourself to have.

a strand of saliva connects the two of you when he pulls away from you finally. your chest heaves as you gulp down oxygen, your fingertips shaking as you curl them into the soft fabric of his sweater. 

“you…,” he gasps, unable to tear his eyes away from your clearly shaken form, “you have no idea how long i’ve wanted to do that to you.”

heat nestles deep inside your stomach. it’s wicked and possessive, but you want to be special to him. and now you know that you are, your desire to have more of him is insatiable. something throbs and pulses within your core, and it’s pitiful just how weak you are to him after a handful of well-executed kisses. fuck having any kind of stupid romance with some dumb college boy your age: none of them could even dream of leaving you this stunned and your body itching for literally anything more.

you grasp at him. “please- please, more- kiss me again… i need it- i need more-”

“-shhh, i’ve got you, pretty.” he moves in so close to your face, his lips only a breath away from yours. you’ve never had someone kiss you so carnally before, his desire emanating off of him in thick waves. you’re probably no better, begging for your hot professor to make out more with you as if his tongue wasn’t down your throat mere seconds ago and as if it isn’t his spit that’s coating your lips thickly. 

it feels right. there’s no other way for you to describe him kissing you again. his lips move so gently against yours and yet brims with a kind of brutish need. it’s like he doesn’t want to scare you away but can barely contain himself, not when he has you right where he wants you. you don’t mind. you want him to be greedy, and you want him to take you wholly. 

you’re so happy, and you love it when his tongue is in your mouth, guiding your clumsy movements. it’s lewd kissing you’ve only seen couples do through the drunken haze of some seedy frat basement during a crazy party or in a raunchy porn video, and you get it. it finally clicks inside your head why people go crazy for these kinds of things, why people lose their minds when they’re unable to fully get a grasp over their own sexual needs. it’s like an awakening for you, as if some monster that had been caged in your heart is now breaking free of its restraints.

you moan shamelessly into professor hinata’s mouth. you need more. just kissing isn’t enough, only having his tongue in your mouth isn’t enough. the pounding between your hips won’t go away, and if anything, it’s getting worse with each passing second. he’s turning you on, and your body refuses to listen to you. but why should you hold back? he’s right there for you, and you’re willing to give yourself to him without any room for regret.

“please-,” you sound so needy, so desperate, so unlike any part of the removed personality you kept around your professor. “touch me more… i need you, professor-”

“-don’t call me that,” he whispers against your mouth. “shoyo. call me shoyo. i’m not your professor right now.”

“shoyo,” the name tastes like sticky sweet honey against your mouth, “touch me, shoyo.”

his hands snake down to your waist, and he looks at you expectantly as his fingertips slip under your shirt. you shudder when his fingertips press firmly into your skin and flesh, like a reminder of what you’re getting yourself into. “good girl. do you want me to go all the way with you right now?”

“yes! god, please, yes- shoyo, take me.” you bury your head into the crook of his neck. his calming scent floods your nose, and you think you’re going into heat. “i’ve never needed someone more in my life.”

something hard presses up against your crotch. he grunts, “that’s a dangerous thing to say to me.”

you let him lift your shirt away from your body, coaxing it gently over your head before tossing it somewhere onto his office floor. your body heats up, blood pumping under your skin. you prickle slightly against the cold office air, and you bite down a bit on your tongue. his hands crawl up the expanse of your stomach and up to your chest, and he looks at you as if he’s been starved.

“god, you drive me crazy,” he breathes. your voice catches somewhere in the back of your throat. you can feel the warmth of his palms hovering over your breasts, the thin fabric of your bra doing nothing to protect you from him. “to think you’ve been hiding from me this entire time, right under my nose…”

you gasp when he gropes you through your bra, his hands molding against your breasts. you fill his palms out so easily, and you grind down against his lap, sparks flying inside of your mind. you grip onto him again, breathing needily against the crook of his neck as he plays with your chest, letting you adjust to the feeling of his heavy hands on your body. 

he touches you so sweetly and so beautifully. not like the clumsy horny ways boys your age would, but with confidence and reverence, like he purposefully wants to take his time with you. you whimper when his fingers hook into the cups of your bra, and you let him yank it down to fully free your chest. 

your pussy throbs when his hands are on your bare breasts. he massages the soft flesh, chuckling softly whenever he hears you keen and choke out a breath into his neck. his fingers find your nipples quickly, and heat flares under your cheeks and inside your gut when he pinches at them gently, your body reacting faster to his touch than your mind can.

you grind down onto his lap, feeling his hard bulge in between your thighs. you need more, need something inside you. 

he grits his teeth when he feels you trying to hump his clothed cock. “careful, sweetheart. i’m trying to take my time with you.”

his hands move to your back, fully undoing your bra and letting it drop forgotten to the floor. you don’t care. you want him all over your body. you want his calloused hands all over your tits, pinching and teasing your nipples, filling out his hands with your breasts, like your body was made to match his. 

“i know-,” you sound shaky. you are shaky, barely holding yourself together. you clench your eyes shut as he plays with your tits again. pleasure surges downwards every time he plays with your sensitive nipples, rubbing his fingertips into them or just letting the skin-to-skin contact get to your head. “i just- i can’t- i can’t control myself anymore, shoyo-”

“i got you, i got you,” he laughs. if only you could know his own madness, the insanity that runs rampant in his mind knowing that he can have you in any way he wants. “shit, and i thought i’d take it slow. be a good gentleman for you. clearly that isn’t making the cut.”

you let out a small shriek as he lifts you from his lap, and the next thing you know, you’re slumped over his desk. your bare chest is against the cold wood of his workspace, and he hovers above your back, your ass against his crotch. you whimper into his desk, and your breath fogs up against the polished wood.

your cunt clenches painfully around nothing as he grinds his hips into your ass, his erection rubbing all over your thighs and butt. your saliva pools inside your mouth when you hear him groan and buck his hips into you, mimicking the motions of penetrative sex as he drinks up the friction. his hands hold firmly at your hips and waist, anchoring himself to your body.

he doesn’t need to do much. if you can already feel him this prominently, just how big was his dick? 

“i-i can feel so much of you already.” you glance back at him. the thrums of arousal inside you are almost unbearable. you don’t feel like yourself, only like a husk of person fiending for release. 

“yeah?” his grip on you tightens slightly, and he peers down at you. “fuck- have you had sex before? is this your first time?”

“no, it isn’t- i’ve had sex before- with a few guys on campus and mostly with my ex…,” you trail off, not wanting to think about it any further. “it doesn’t matter. it doesn’t count.”

he chuckles, shaking his head at your small joke. “can you feel how hard i am? how big i am?”

“yes,” you exhale. you want him inside you. you want him to take your pants off already and stick his cock inside your cunt. you want him to make a mess out of your insides, to take the weeks of pent up lust and to let it loose. you want your pussy to be ravaged by him, for him to not stop until you’re a wreck underneath him. “so big… i want it so bad…”

“am i bigger than your ex?” it’s a question posed dangerously, a blade wrapped in cloth. you dip your face down so that your forehead touches the wood. you nod shakily, glad that you have his desk to hold onto for support so that your knees don’t give out. 

he smirks. the ends of his mouth curl upwards into a cruel smile. it’s the satisfaction of a predator right as it’s about to sink its teeth into its prey, relishing the sadistic thrill of knowing that his influence, that his power remains on top.

“forget everything about that boy,” he spits the last word, as if it’s something bitter. “you feel me? feel this cock? yeah, i know you do. this is how big a real man’s cock is.”

you might as well have had the wind knocked out of you. his hands make their way to your pants, and you move with him, letting them fall by your ankles. your panties follow suit, and you’re left shivering with anticipation against his desk, fully naked. nothing can protect you from his wandering eyes now, and while you can’t see him, you can feel his gaze boring into your exposed cunt. 

you can feel how wet you are, your imagination doing the most in making you feel like you were going to overheat while making out with him. your slick drips out of your hole, and your cunt weeps, begging for something to fill you up and get rid of that incessant ache in your belly.

“turn over,” he commands you. any sense of the warm professor you used to shirk around is gone, replaced by an intensity entirely foreign to you. you comply, and you gasp when shoyo sinks down to his knees. his hands are on your knees, and he pries your legs apart to slot himself. you’re fully laying on his desk at this point, and his face is mere inches away from your hole.

“i-...” you don’t know what to say. you feel like you’re going to choke on your own breath, embarrassment at having a man so close to your pussy threatening to consume you whole. 

shoyo, on the other hand, is utterly entranced. the sight of your bare cunt has him bewitched. his cock throbs painfully inside of his pants. the little tease he got from you trying to grind down on him and then rubbing himself against your ass has done nothing but wet his appetite, and he knows how much he’s been waiting painstakingly for this moment.

your voice dies out in the back of your throat when he grabs your thighs, and before you know it, his mouth is on your cunt. he kisses your pussy, and you nearly buck your hips into his mouth. his tongue laps in between your lower lips sensually, coating his mouth in as much of your juices as he can. his grip on you is firm, making sure that you can’t wiggle away from him. he wants you to feel every single second of him eating you out, make sure you feel his tongue against every part of your hole.

his tongue captures your clit, swirling slowly around the sensitive bud. you clench your eyes shut, and the first shockwaves of pleasure shoot straight to your brain. “ah- shoyo- fuck-!”

he keeps kissing and sucking at your clit, determined to shower you with so much attention. he takes his time. he flicks the tip of his tongue against the bud, leaving you recoiling against the cool material of his desk, and he presses the broad of his tongue against it, letting you grind down how you want into his mouth. he mimics your movements, and you’re left gasping and mewling when he moves down. teasing your clit turns into broad licks up your slit, and your thighs shake and threaten to close around his head if it weren’t for his firm grip on you.

his tongue circles your hole, and he smirks into you when he can feel you quiver and clench around him. he’s snaking himself all over your cunt, lavishing each part of your pussy with a good dosage of love and spit. every time he drags his tongue against your slit, threatening to slip into your hole but not quite, you’re left reeling in the aftermath. you need something inside you, anything. you’re so horrendously turned on, and as much as the clitoral stimulation has you seeing stars, you need more.

“shoyo…” god, he loves it when you moan out his name. he just can’t get enough of the way the syllables roll off of your tongue, and you choke out his name, elongated the sound and clinging to his name as if he’s the only thing you’ve ever known. 

your pussy continues to drool for him, and he’s smacking his lips, drinking up every drop of your juices as if he can’t get enough. it’s a perfect reminder of how much he wants you. he thinks you’re perfect, a gift sent down from whatever divinity might be out there, hand-crafted to take his love and to love him in return. you taste heavenly on his tongue, your slick coating his mouth thickly. with each swallow, it’s like you’re becoming a part of him, and it makes him dizzy.

you tremble under his touch. he keeps capturing your clit the way you like it best. he teases you, lets you feel pleasure. the pleasured hums of his voice vibrate against your clit, constantly stimulated by his tongue and lips. the throngs of arousal inside your gut keep mounting, growing, twisting and coiling it on itself, keeling to be freed, to be let loose so you can cum all over his mouth as if you’ve lost all control of your body.

“feels good-,” your breathing shakes as you reach down, grabbing a fistful of his bright orange hair. the man moans in such a depraved manner against you, and you clench painfully, your pussy feeling as if it’s contorting into a way physically impossible from how sheerly aroused you are. “make me cum, please! ‘m so close- wanna cum- wanna cum in your mouth, shoyo…! you’re making me feel so good!”

“yeah?” he detaches himself momentarily. he licks his lips and swallows, chest heaving at your sweet taste overwhelming all of his senses. his brain is screaming for him to fuck you, but he doesn’t want to. he wants to see you feel good from just his mouth first, to coax one orgasm out of you so that your nerves are properly awakened. that would make fucking your pussy out on his cock so much more worthwhile. “am i making you feel good, pretty girl? enough to beg for it?”

you nod feverishly, even though you should know that he can’t see you. your drenched pussy speaks enough for itself. he’s too good at this, the experience under his belt shining through. there’s no stupid boy your age that would even think of doing you a courtesy like eating you out until you’re shaking, and here’s shoyo, eagerly lapping at your cunt without you even needing to ask. 

“cumming- gonna cum- please, please, fuck…! your tongue feels so good- love it so much when you lick at me like that…,” you whimper. your back arches against the desk, and your body twitches, wanting to ride his tongue and make a mess all over his mouth. shoyo doesn’t stop his relentless movements, and he continues to suck at your clit. 

arousal curls and unfurls like a pulse deep inside your stomach. you’re teetering on the edge, and you feel like you’re going crazy. your mind is turning into jelly, your wildest fantasies about your professor coming true right before your eyes, and your pussy can’t take everything happening to you. you shut your eyes again, gritting your teeth and bracing yourself for the orgasm that you’re sure is going to slam into you like a brick wall.

his tongue slithers expertly against your drenched cunt, and he presses a sticky kiss to your clit. your stomach curls inward at the intimate touch, with him pleasuring you as if it's his given duty as your lover, and that’s all it takes.

“shoyo!” you cry out, your thighs nearly wrenching themselves out of his hands. “i’m cumming- fuck! fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck-...! fuck me, fuck me, please! ah- i’m cumming…!”

he keeps on pressing his mouth all over your pussy as you cum on his mouth. red hot pleasure floods your entire body, sweeping you away from head to toe, and your thighs quiver like mad. your body feels so hot, so overwhelmed by a pleasure you’ve never had before, and your vision spins. you can’t think, not when every inch of your body has been tossed into overdrive so effortlessly by him, and your inner walls twist achingly. 

you wish it was his cock you were cumming on. you’re breathless and succumbing to how good it feels to have your hole ravished by his mouth, and he eats you out through your orgasm. he’s determined to swallow up every drop of your slick, and it’s not until you’re whimpering again and pushing his forehead back weakly that he detaches himself from between your legs.

“shit, you taste so fucking sweet,” shoyo groans. he sounds almost disappointed that you pushed him off of you, your slit tingling and desperate for something bigger. the lower half of his face is shiny with your juices and spit mingling together, and he licks his lips, making sure not to let a single drop escape him. “fuck- i could eat you out all day if you’d let me. pretty girl’s got a pretty pussy too.”

your hole flutters in excitement at his praise. heat and embarrassment at the sudden intimacy flickers underneath your face, and your head is still buzzing, not fully done with your sexual high. your chest rises and falls as you rest on his desk, splayed out for him to admire as he gets up from his knees and undoes pants. you can hear the shuffling of fabric and metal as he takes off his belt and pants. your mouth goes dry as you think about his cock and how big it felt when the two of you were grinding and humping each other for a split second, and now you’re finally getting him to fuck you on it.

he lets out a low, throaty moan as he takes the last of his clothing off, and his cock is nice and hard, drops of pearly pre-cum dripping from his tip. he’s aroused that it hurts, but there’s something about seeing you still recoiling from your orgasm, the rush of pride he gets knowing that he got you off using just his mouth, makes the pain of waiting a bit longer to fuck you so much more worth it.

“how are you feeling? you doing okay?” he asks you. he grabs his cock, stroking himself a few times from base to tip, his thumb sliding over his sensitive slit to spread his pre-cum all over himself. you nod wordlessly, starting to come back down to your plane of reality as you let him slide himself in between your legs again.

you freeze when you feel his cock against your slit, and he rubs himself up and down in between your lower lips. the dull pangs of arousal are bubbling up in your gut once more, and your slick is mixing with his pre-cum to coat his cock in a makeshift kind of lube.

“d-do you have any condoms…?” you eke out. it’s his bare dick against your body right now, and as intoxicating as the thought of taking him raw and letting him stuff every inch of your womb with his cum is, you still have to think straight.

he grabs at your hips, bringing himself flush against your body. a moan catches in the back of your throat when his tip grazes against your sensitive clit, and he chuckles to himself when he sees you twitch. “not at the moment. i’ll take care of you. can you trust me?”

there’s a lump in your throat, and some deeply dead part of you sobs out that you should be responsible. but you don’t care, not when you’re this close to finally having him inside you, not when he promises to take responsibility for you. you move your head, unable to fully meet his eyes, and you nod your head yes.

“good girl,” he laughs sweetly. “you ready for me?”

“yes! please, i want you inside me… want you to fuck me…,” you whine, your head lolling onto the desk underneath you. your pussy clenches at the thought of his raw bare cock rubbing against your insides, your walls clinging to every inch of his thick cock, and you’re so, so ready to take him.

he grips the base of his cock, and he lines himself up. he watches, enraptured, as your hole pulses around his cockhead. you groan needily as he fucks his tip in and out of you, just to watch your pussy cling to him, wanting to pull him in fully. you’re just about to whine and complain when he finally pushes himself in, and your breathing dies out in your chest as your walls stretches out to adjust to him being inside you.

“...fuck-! ah- you’re so big-,” your voice immediately starts slurring as he pushes past the resistance. it burns yet it feels deathly euphoric to have something stretching you out like that, to feel every bit of your pussy being invaded and stuffed out onto shoyo’s girthy cock. you’re coaxing him in effortlessly, and his fingers curl into the flesh of your waist and hips as he tries to ground himself.

he sucks in a harsh inhale through his gritted teeth, his eyebrows furrowing. you’re so tight and wet and downright heavenly wrapped around his length. he can’t stop looking between your legs, right where the two of you are joined together for the first time, but you’re squeezing and fluttering around him just right even though all he did was put it in. it’s taking all of his concentration not to waver and lose himself in the feeling. 

jerking off desperately by himself doesn’t even come close to how good your pussy feels. he could stay like this forever, feeling your velvety walls pulse around him, wanting to pull his cock in even further until he swears his tip is kissing the entrance to your womb. he takes in a deep breath, and he does his best to clear his head so he can start fucking you properly. 

“you’re so fucking tight… shit, did you want my cock that badly?” he manages out shakily. “fuck, it’s like your pussy’s milking me already, sweetheart.”

“mhm… it’s so, so big…,” you murmur, dazed. “never- never had cock like this before- you’re filling me up… feels like you’re in my stomach.”

“yeah? does it feel good?” he’s waiting for you to give him the all clear. your face is scrunched up, and as desperate as he is to start fucking into you like an animal, he knows better than to be a ruffian. your pleasure always comes first. that’s what real men do.

you nod weakly for what feels like the millionth time. your nerves are on fire, your previous orgasm only accentuating how much you can feel him pressed against you. his cock rubs just right against your sensitive walls, and you can’t imagine what actually having him thrusting into you is going to do to your body. “yes- so good- i’m gonna lose my mind, shoyo…”

“good answer.” he reaches over to move a strand of your hair away from your face. “i’m gonna start moving, okay? if something hurts or doesn’t feel right, you tell me right away. i’m here to make you feel good, and nothing else.”

your heart skips a beat. in a sea of fuckboys and idiot college boys that couldn’t care less about your well-being, someone like him feels less like a real person and more like a character straight from a fairy tale. “okay- you can fuck me- i want you to fuck me.”

he draws his hips back and thrusts slowly into you. you gasp, acutely aware of the sensation deep inside of you. your pussy revels at how he rubs against you, gripping onto his cock for dear life as he fucks his length in and out of you. it’s such a painfully slow pace, but you savor the feeling, savor the new stimulus of having your professor’s cock buried deep inside you. you want to commit to memory, because it’s unlike anything you’ve ever had before.

heat flares back up inside your belly again, settling and slithering in repeated coils between your hips. your vision blurs once more, and arousal creeps back into your mind, threatening to overtake every single one of your conscious thoughts. “faster, shoyo- wanna feel more of you- you’re torturing me…!”

“sorry- i can’t help it,” he laughs bitterly, his voice hushed and under his breath. “can you blame me for being obsessed with you? fuck- you’re so tight, hugging me like this… it’s like you were made to take me.”

your stomach curls in on itself at the sweet praise. you hate how easily he toys with your heart, how easily he can make you swoon and fall for him all over again, leaving you dancing and squirming right underneath the palm of his hand. literally. you swallow deeply, and it feels like there’s no inch of your body that the unbearable heat hasn’t spread to. 

“faster, please- i need you so bad!” you sob, nearing your limit. cumming from his tongue was only an appetizer, and you’re hungry for more. you’ve starved yourself long enough, and his slow pace isn’t doing any favors for you. you roll your head left and right on his desk, unable to control yourself.

“you want it? prove it to me.” his voice drops a few notes, and your cunt unconsciously clenches at how dark his words sound. it’s yet another potent reminder of the man buried inside of you right now, a real man who’s determined to make you his, prince and criminal, craved and craving, dreamy and filthy all at once. “look me in the eye then. look me dead on as i fuck you.”

you let out a loud moan. his words are fucking dirty, and when he rolls his hips into you, drinking up the excruciatingly addictive way your pussy clings to his dick, you think your body is actually going to give out on you. it’s not like he’s asking for you to do anything obscene or impossible, but there’s something so disgustingly erotic and intimate about him asking you to look him straight in his face—in his eyes—as he makes love to you.

the desk is warm underneath your body, all warmed up thanks to your body heat. it’s become your subconscious refuge, taking all of your thrashing as he had his way with you, and you don’t want to think about the sure mess you’re bound to leave in your wake. your breathing trembles as you forcibly turn your face towards his, ripping your wavering gaze away from the safety of whatever else you were staring at.

your eyes meet his, and he smiles at you adoringly. there’s no more running away from him, nowhere to escape to, your eyes locked together and dancing in his pupils. you’re rendered breathless again at the vibrant color, like your own life is being squeezed from between your lips. you can’t move, and your chest feels like it’s about to cave in on itself, your ribs giving out and your heart melting into a puddle of useless muscle and putty. but this time, strangely enough, you welcome the helpless feeling. he’s got you wrapped around his pinky finger, and you finally realize that you never stood a chance. 

that very first day, in that fatefully empty classroom, when you first met eyes with him, you were a fucking goner. you always were. always had been. and it was all his fault, all professor hinata’s fault. 

all hinata shoyo’s fault. 

“good girl.” he looks at you in a way only a lover would. his eyes soften around the edges and crinkles up as he grins. “don’t ever look away from me.”

“i won’t,” you promise. it’s the last thing you could dream of doing. not when you want it so badly, and not when he’s asking you verbatim. how could you deny him of the very thing he’s asking you to do? especially when it’s something that you’ve always been mustering up the courage to do? this is your big leap forward, your chance to prove to yourself that you can change.

he leans forward, and he lets you wrap your arms around his neck. you refuse to drop your gaze from his face, admiring every small detail of his features and letting yourself drown fully in the wide expanses of his eyes. he presses one last romantic kiss to your mouth, and that’s the last warning you get, the last bit of sweetness and gentleness you get. 

he draws his hips back, and he slams himself back into you roughly. you choke out a small moan, pleasure flooding your head. he doesn’t give you any time to recover from the recoil before he’s thrusting wildly back into you again. your hole is already slick and dripping wet from his teasing and your previous climax, and it makes it all the more easy for him to slide his length in and out of you, pace picking up speed and leaving you crying out as your surprise quickly morphs into electric pleasure.

“shit- so fucking tight- god, you’re going to kill me,” he grunts. you mewl and moan incoherently, clinging to him for dear life as he fucks into you over and over again. his tip prods against your deepest parts, and surges of pleasure climb all over your nerves. his hips slam against yours, and his balls slap against the curve of your ass. lewd, wet lovemaking noises echo throughout the small office, and it echoes even louder against your ears. 

it feels good, it feels so good. you never knew pleasure like this was possible, that it even existed. you thought you knew everything there was to sex already, but clearly not, if shoyo has you practically melting in his arms, your limbs numb and surrendering wholly to how good he’s making you feel. your walls keep fluttering around him, and every thrust has you crying out. 

“fuck- you feel so good- shoyo- shoyo, i’m losing my mind…!” you gasp. your nails dig into his back, and you claw at him like a feral cat. your thighs quiver around his hips, but he doesn’t let up his brutal pace. with each roll of his hips, it feels like he’s knocking the wind out of you. he’s determined to fuck you stupid, and it’s working. your grip on reality is slipping fast, with the throbbing pleasure in your head taking precedence over everything.

“go crazy for me then. you feel me inside you, don’t you? good. then you can feel firsthand how fucking crazy you make me.” he grabs your hips, and he angles them ever-so-slightly before ramming into you. you grit your teeth as a tense cry escapes from you.

the new angle has you seeing stars. you’re scratching at his back, your insides lurching and reeling and being stirred up like wild. “you’re so deep… so deep inside me! nnmgh…! you’re gonna make me cum so fast- make me cum again-“

“shit, already? am i fucking you that good?” his stomach is doing flips. you’re a sight for sore eyes, refusing to look away from him as if your life depended on it. his abs strain against him as he enjoys the experience of having sex with you, sex with the student that’s been dancing around him forever. you’re splayed out like a piece of art underneath him: all sweaty, breasts bouncing, legs spread with your soft cunt eagerly taking every inch of him.

your foreheads are basically touching when you nod your head. “yes! no one’s ever made me feel this good before- never had cock like yours-“

he almost laughs. oh, he’s bet you’ve never had anyone like him. what would your ex, your past flings know about pleasing women? all he wanted was to make you go crazy like this. he wants to sink you deep into pleasure, and he wants to make it so that you don’t ever think about other men after he’s done with you. he wants you in your entirety. he can’t do halfway.

“i told you already,” he purrs. his words drip off of his tongue like sticky syrup. “it’s because you’re having sex with a man this time. not with a boy. a real, grown man. someone that can take care of you. someone that can treat you right.”

it’s hard to think. he speeds up, leaving you fighting to keep your eyes open. the intense look in shoyo’s eyes are nothing like your own fucked out look, but at the same time, you’re sure the intoxicated gleam in his is the same as yours. is it love or desire that connects you two?

“most importantly…” his fingers dig into your flesh, securing your hips in place and leaving you at his mercy. you can feel your juices leaking out, coating your ass and making wet sounds whenever his hips smash into yours. he cranes his head, and his lips are almost on top of yours, threatening to close the gap and brush his lips across yours. “someone that can actually fuck you.”

oh fuck. you don’t stand a fucking chance against him. all of the sensations are rapidly racking up in your body, and with how deep he’s thrusting into you, you can barely hold onto yourself. you’re gonna cum soon again, you just know it. you feel the tightness inside your belly, and with how effectively he’s seducing you, whispering all kinds of lewd things and making sure that you keep your eyes locked on him while fucking you, you have nowhere to run away.

“i can’t take it- so rough- can’t take much more-,” you whimper. your mind is going blank, and all that you can think of is him. his body feels heavy and good on top of you, and having you scratch his back out of pleasure only spurs him on. he can feel you slipping and losing control of yourself, and he rocks you close to himself. he wonders if you can feel his heartbeat hammering in his chest, huffing short breaths as he keeps up his steady yet brutal pace.

he looks at you, and a smirk dangles off of his face. “yes, you can. you can take it. i know you can. you’ll be good for me, won’t you? let me make you feel good.”

your breathing hitches. it’s taking all of your mental strength not to topple over the edge right now. everything’s rushing too fast to your head right now, and all of your nerves are standing on edge, enthusiastically lapping up the pure euphoria coursing through your veins. but you want to make shoyo happy, you want to cum together with him, and as much as he said this lovemaking session was about you, you want to be able to match the pace he set.

“for you- just for you-,” you struggle to get the words out, the final syllables slurring together into a slight babble. so much for your usually well-put together, prudent academic facade. any trace of the well-trained, well-behaved student is long gone, replaced by a dirty, senseless, corrupted, and lascivious soul that lives and dies for shoyo’s love. “wanna be good- wanna be good only for you…”

“good. you’re mine. all mine,” he murmurs. the pleasure is sharp and dull all at once, all consuming and delicate, sinking you down into the murky waves inside the recesses of your mind only to drag you back to the surface, leaving you shuddering and grasping as if you had been drowned for real. shoyo likes it. he adores the reactions he gets out of you.

this is a kind of pleasure only he can give you. you’ve never had this with anyone else before, and he’ll make it so that you can’t find it from anyone else, not unless it’s with him. these faces you’re making, twisting in ecstasy and crying out with a voice like a songbird, are for him to enjoy only. they’re exclusive to him, only meant for his eyes, and he consumes it, fiending for more.

“shoyo- can’t- ‘t’s too good- i’m going crazy…!” you strain to breathe, your chest feeling inhumanly tight. parts of your brain light up like wired lights, blooming and flickering. you’re terribly close, and you know this one is going to take you whole and blow out any sense of being in your body. “shoyo- shoyo…”

“fucking christ- if you moan my name like that… you’ll make me want to do horrible things to you. so much more fucking worse than what i’m doing to you right now, sweetheart. this is just the start right here.” something pricks at your hips, and he digs his nails into your hips. he never thought himself to be such a possessive man, but he can’t deny the insanity that’s taken root in his brain for weeks now. it does something to him, to have his dick inside of you but to also hear you calling for him. him, him specifically, his name, emerging from your mouth as if he’s someone you revere. maybe at one point you did, but his yearning to have you turned him into something monstrous and all too human.

but perhaps that same madness overtook you and that was what brought the two of you together. shoyo finds it funny: the idea of something as sacred as love growing from something so depraved. and yet he’s fascinated by it, fascinated by the possibility that you’re no better than him, that your respect for him may just as easily be swapped for a kind of convenience to quell your own heart.

he doesn’t know what it all means. now isn’t the time for him to get philosophical. he’s balls-deep inside the pretty student he’s been pining over, and he’s so close to getting you to cum. wouldn’t that be a better reward than anything else he’s carefully built up? years of self preservation and swallowing down his personal desires for what’s “best” for his future be damned, he wants you. he wants you, he wants, he wants you.

you wonder if this is the end of your rope. you’re so close, so near the edge, and you’re clenching so desperately around his cock. you’re eclipsed entirely by the sight of your frightened and frantic reflection in his wide eyes, and you barely recognize yourself. so this is what you look like when you’re being mercilessly railed by your hot professor. your mouth is agape as you moan out for the male on top of you, face flushed and sweat beading your forehead like some kind of crown. 

“gonna cum- gonna cum! shoyo- just a bit more-” your tongue feels heavy in your mouth. your body isn’t yours at this point, having given up in exchange for the fire that burns your core, the snakes inside your belly hissing and twisting and pulsing. “i’m cumming- gonna cum- i can’t hold back anymore-!!”

“go ahead,” he whispers. his mouth itches to kiss you, to swallow up your wounded gasps. he wants to feel your body go slack again like he had done once before, to push you into that wonderful place where nothing and everything was real at once. he’s sure your body’s overrun with complex sensations and pure euphoria, and he loves watching you turn into a shell of yourself. “cum on my cock, pretty girl. you’ll be mine, won’t you?”

you barely nod your head, and shoyo’s drawing his hips back and snapping them back into you at a particularly rough angle. you tense up underneath him, back arching and limbs going stiff. your eyes widen, gaze still connected with him, and your body fully gives out.

“sh- shoyo…!” your voice is shrill as you sob out one final moan, and your orgasm grips the entirety of your body. it feels good, it aches, it throbs, and it demands so much of you. your velvety walls clamp down on his thick cock like a vice, milking him and clinging to him, and your climax refuses to give shoyo a chance to breathe. he digs his ankles into the ground and keeps thrusting wildly into you, wanting to keep the flare swallowing you up going for a bit longer. he grits his teeth as you squirm underneath him, and you can barely keep your eyes open. you want to clench them shut and throw your head back so bad, but whatever little control you have remaining on your conscious keeps them open, just for him.

you’re fighting against the currents swirling and whirlpooling inside your brain. whatever heat was bottled up inside your body rushes out, and you’re cumming all over shoyo’s girth. he’s keeping you stretched out, and your stomach feels like it’s going to cave in on itself. it’s nothing but pure bliss, the kind that makes you feel as if you’re floating, and you’re rendered breathless, each inhale precious and fleeting and almost incognizant. your vision swims, and tears settle on your waterline, just threatening to topple over. your field of sight is blurry, and yet even amongst all of the chaos, you can make out the dapples of brown in shoyo’s eyes, forever in tandem with him as if he were a planet in orbit around your sun.

you’re gasping for air, finally having gotten the release you had been chasing for what felt like an eternity. shoyo breathes heavily and raggedly, as if he had run a marathon, and he’s barely holding on himself. your insides are fucking massaging him, stroking his cock all over, squeezing and hugging and rubbing all up against his sensitive length.

“shit- fuck-,” he chokes out. fuck- he didn’t expect that seeing you cum would take so much out of him. his mind is teetering, and his muscles strain against him, his abs prominent. you’re refusing to let go of him, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can genuinely hold on for. he should be responsible, at least try to pick up the pieces of the mess that you two made, and pull out, cum into a napkin or a trash can or his hand or literally anywhere inside of your sweet cunt, but whatever resolve inside his chest whimpers as if he’s killing it when the thought brushes against his mind.

he wants to cum inside you. he has to. he needs to go that extra step, cement himself physically into you, promise to take care of you again and again for whatever happens next. he’s a real lover, someone who’ll take all of your brokenness and insecurity and fear and make them dissolve and melt away as if it were sugar. he’s sure they’d be equally as sweet to, so long as it came from you.

“god- fuck- take me- i’ll take care of you- take care of anything that happens next- fuck- just… just stay with me-,” he breathes out, body shaking. a cry catches in the back of your throat when he fucks himself in as deep as he can go, his cockhead pressing right up against your cervix. he buries himself into you, and he leans forward, capturing your lips in one last deep kiss, tongue swirling in your mouth and filling up your senses entirely with him.

your moans are muffled by him when you feel him cum deep inside you. something hot and heavy floods your cunt, pumping into you in generous spurts. it’s warm, and his cock takes on a second pulse inside of you, like a heartbeat as semen trickles into your womb and all through your cunt. your body feels hot, every inch of your pussy drenched and coated with shoyo’s cum. a few stray drops escape from you, but with him pressing his body flush against you and his cock still stuffed inside your cunt, most of the cum remains plugged inside you as he gasps for air, his high overtaking him.

“fuck… fu-uck,” his voice is gruff and airy. “god- you keep fucking milking me- shit, i came inside too- oh god…”

he nearly collapses on top of you, and his chest is on yours. the two of you lay there, breathing deeply and just enjoying the post-sex warmth of each others’ bodies. you’re still buzzing slightly, your head heavy as if you had just woken up from a long nap, but regular feeling is starting to seep back into your limbs. your body is pulling itself out from the haze, and while exhausted and quite literally fucked out of your mind, you’re regaining control over yourself as the minutes pass.

you admire shoyo’s form, the beautiful curves of muscle all over his back and shoulders, the lines on his face that could come only with age. it’s too early for you to worry, too early to really know the true consequences of your actions, and yet, there’s something bittersweet at the tip of your tongue when you look down adoringly at shoyo. morally, you know that this can’t continue. the best course of action you could have taken was to not fuck him, but now that you’ve gone and crossed that bridge, the next best thing you can do is to nip this in the bud and to avoid making a habit of this.

but you already know that you’re not strong enough to do that. you can’t go back, not when you’ve had a taste of everything you’ve already wanted.

you wrap your arms around shoyo a bit tighter, and you hold him closer to your heart. he buries his head into the crook of your neck, the shaky eye contact that you had kept up with him now broken. he inhales deeply and takes in your scent, and you wordlessly both celebrate and mourn everything that had built up and broken in between you and the man you had pined after for so long.

“...i’ll go buy some plan b for you.” he’s the first to break the silence. “there are some napkins in my office that i can clean you up with. you stay put. i… i lost control of myself there, and i don’t want you to strain yourself. do you think you can eat and drink a bit?”

your mind is nowhere near as clear as you’d want it to be, but you rasp out quietly, “yeah. i’m okay.”

“do you have any classes after this? fuck- i lost track of time too. i can write you a note and email whatever professor you have after me. i’m sorry- i really shouldn’t have gotten that carried away.” shoyo peels himself off of your body, and a whimper of protest dies out in your mouth. 

“i don’t have any classes. i’m basically free for the rest of the day, so you don’t need to worry about it. i- uh- i appreciate it though…” your arms feel cold and empty without him, and he maneuvers himself to grab a wad of napkins to position underneath your ass to catch the cum dripping out of you as he drags his now soft cock out.

you simultaneously feel empty and full all at once. his cum still undoubtedly lingers inside you, but without him physically in you, you feel as if something big has been sucked out of your soul. your stream of consciousness meanders to the idea of soulmates, and if this is what it must feel like.

you don’t know how to breach any further though. he’s immediately flipped his professional switch back on, cleaning both of you up without any further words, and you don’t think it’s proper though to keep demanding more from him. in his eyes, this might be nothing more than a bad lapse in judgment and not something he wants to keep pursuing in the same way you want to. 

a lump forms in your throat at the thought, and your heart shakes. your heart physically hurts. it aches and throbs as if it were torn apart, the stringy sinews and muscles begging for at least a bone to be thrown your way.

you hang your head, swallowing your despair back down the best you can. it’s not your place. it’s not your place.

he hands you an unopened water bottle, and you mutter a solemn word of thanks before cracking the lid and gulping a few mouthfuls down. he’s bent over and collecting all of your clothes, mixed together with him, and despite still being naked in front of him, you don’t feel any shame at all. this whole charade shouldn’t have felt as good and guiltless as it does, and you don’t want this to leave on the melancholy note that it is.

but as shoyo slips his sweater back on over his head and adjusts his hair, it’s hard not to mistake his professionalism for distance. you’re aware that you aren’t proper lovers, no boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, but what kind of sane human doesn’t yearn for a sense of connection and reassurance after something so intimate? all you want is to cuddle with him for a few minutes longer, have him smile sheepishly up at you as he peppers kisses onto your face, his big calloused hands holding you firmly.

you set the water bottle down. reality is never as clear cut nor as easy as fantasy is, and at this point, that should be a revelation you’ve carved into your heart by now. you steel your resolve the best you can, the one thing you’ve learned better than any other lesson your painful years of adulthood have taught you, and you reach for your own clothes.

you look messy with your clothes haphazardly thrown on and trepidation clinging like a fog to your psyche, and you’re ready to basically skitter out of his office as you always do and keep your head down until the semester ends. then you’ll be out of his hair and hopefully this would be nothing more than another minor heartbreak for you to get past. 

“where are you going? if you don’t mind staying put for a little bit longer, i’ll go fetch the plan b.” a hand lands on your shoulder as you prepare to leave, and you stop dead in your tracks. you look over, and shoyo looks down at you as if he’s confused. 

you hold your breath. you know better than to hope, and yet the flash of emotion that flies across your chest is undeniable. “you… don’t want me to go?”

his face immediately morphs into a deep frown, and his brows furrow. he looks horrified, as if you had picked out the worst words for the situation and spat them at his feet. “no! of course not. who do you think i am? why would i kick you out right after having sex? after harping on for so long about treating you right? gosh, you think so lowly of me. i was only cleaning up! here, there should be some snacks i keep stashed away in the second drawer over there. i’ll be zippity quick with the plan b run, i promise. get something in your tummy in the meantime, and then we can chat.”

chat? the word dangles above you like a loaded bullet. not everything is some kind of fucked up mental game, but it stuns you how he constantly manages to stay a step ahead you in everything.

you want to ask about what. about the future state of your relationship? about how both of your lives are going to undoubtedly be marked in a different way now because of this? about how the rest of the semester is going to go? about how you might never be able to muster the courage to show your face to society again, depending on how the conversation proceeds? there’s a whole slew of questions waiting to be asked, but when he beams at you, his smile more boyish and endearing than anything else, it’s like he simply melts away all of your anxieties.

it’s downright unfair, the sheer effect he has on you. but you don’t want it to stop, ever. you want him to continue confusing you and amazing you, leaving you questioning yourself and all of your worldviews. you don’t understand him, not one bit, and yet it feels like you know too much, used too much of your wiles to force him into showing his hand and leave both of you at some kind of stalemate. 

“what comes after that then?” that’s all you manage to blurt out amidst all of your fluctuating emotions. you don’t want him to leave, don’t want the beautiful man to slip away from your fingers after you only just got to keep him, no matter how short or necessary it might be. you’re not thinking straight, but what part of any of this came from logical thinking anyway? good behavior only got you so far, and good behavior isn’t going to keep him.

he grins, a smile that could rival sunshine even through your internalized storm. “that’s easy. you said you were free, yeah? i drop you off at home for a little bit so you can properly get cleaned up and get a fresh change of clothes. then i pick you up again, surprise you with a big bouquet of roses, and i buy you a nice dinner. dessert and drinks included. then i drop you back off home, and if you’re down for it, we do that a few times. then, y’know… i ask you out properly on our third or fourth date.”

your heart flutters in your chest. your heart has always been a caged bird, the last part of yourself you could never fully tame. stuffing it in a constricted box and ignoring it has gotten you only so far, and shoyo presses the key to the cage into your hand and coaxes you into unlocking and opening up the impenetrable door. your eyes widen slightly. it’s too early to get your hopes up again, but at the same time, when he’s stating his interest and desire to make something serious out of this, to actually take you on as a proper girlfriend and not as a one time fling, to go the whole nine yards and make it the romantic experience you’ve always wanted deep deep down, you think it’s only fair that you let yourself have this.

after years and years of repression, you’re getting your first reprieve. the first sign of spring after what felt like an unending winter, the long awaited gulp of water after wallowing in the murky depths, the fabled light at the end of the tunnel, a reminder that everything truly isn’t as hopeless as your twisted mind likes to make it, that you’re just as deserving of goodness and love and rightfulness as much as those around you, no matter how vehemently you once denied it against the very wishes of your heart. you’re done stifling your own desires, and while it won’t be something you fix overnight, you’re sure it’s shoyo that drew out those first steps.

“i don’t like ruining the surprise like this, but… i’m sure you don’t mind. still, do me a favor and act surprised when i do bring you flowers and take you out on a dinner date, okay?” he winks at you, laughing to himself. he looks so happy with himself, truly giddy like a boy waiting to ask his crush out. you don’t know how he can go in between being the cool professor you fell for and the man that charmed you so effortlessly, but you aren’t complaining. you want to acquaint yourself with every side there is to shoyo and to fall deeply in love with each and every part of him you discover.

you smile back softly in return. you play the innocent card, and you tilt your head slightly in a show of fake confusion. “don’t worry. date? what date? aren’t you running out to get me just plan b?”

“atta girl. you always catch on quickly. it’s that smart mind of yours,” he laughs again, louder this time. his voice reminds you of bells ringing in the morning sun. each syllable feels like he’s thawing you out, and it’s something to be venerated with every part of your soul. he approaches you to steal a kiss from your lips, and the touch is so sweet and gone too quickly. you want another, but you know he’ll be back soon and you’ll have as many kisses as you’d like, as many as he’d let you have.

he cups your face with one hand, and his thumb rubs over the apple of your cheek. it’s such a gentle touch, and yet it makes you feel weak in the knees, like your body feels a sense of magnetic attraction to him that makes you want him to hold you and nothing else. he leans down ever so slightly, enough so that he can look at you directly in your eyes again.

you don’t think you’ll ever get used to the way he leaves you breathless when he gazes at you, the intense look always leaving you stunned and glued in your place, the same split second that proved to be the first taste of the forbidden fruit. something bristles and hangs in the air, like electricity, and this time, you recognize it to be the anticipation of getting something you’ve wanted, like an excitement gripping at your throat, and the happiness of your heart beating not just for you but for someone else, for the very first time.

shoyo grins at you, at you alone. his eyes twinkle fondly.

“i love you,” he whispers without any trace of doubt in his voice.

your lips move, “i love you too, shoyo.”

you don’t blink. you won’t blink so long as he’s looking at you.

and you swear to never look away from those beautiful, beautiful eyes.

author's note: i owe @thomae a million thank yous for letting me write her idea! thank you thank you thank you so much for letting me bounce all of my ideas off of you and bothering you incessantly about this fic!! it ended up getting a lot longer than i originally intended (×﹏×) but regardless, i hope everyone enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it!! (´ ε ` )♡ please stay safe in the new year, and if you enjoyed my writing, you can show your appreciation by donating to the humanitarian cause in gaza!

[jupiterswasphouse]

WASP REVIEW - THE HIVE (and more) (HOLLOW KNIGHT)

[Image ID: The official artwork for the Hiveling, Hive Soldier, and Hive Knight, followed by a second image for the Hive Guardian, from Hollow Knight /End ID.]

Now this is one of my favorite bug games! I'm sure almost all of you are familiar with it, being the lore-heavy indie hit and highly prevalent, much deserved bugblr fan art fodder that Hollow Knight was. This is a very good one, and takes inspiration from many different species of terrestrial arthropods as well as other invertebrates and fungi. However, many of them are much, much different from their real world counterparts, in part due to their design style as well as the infection which has taken hold in Hallownest, which certainly calls into question how The Hive and its honey bee inhabitants fare.

First, as always, let's take a look at them visually! All the bees that you fight generally seem to share many of the same features. Black and yellow stripes, a generally darker upper half, and fuzzy bodies, as found in real honey bees (although you tend to be able to see more of the exoskeleton through the setae of a real bee), but they also are all missing the middle pair of legs (Which I've noticed is shockingly common in fictionalized depictions of bugs). Most of them also have somewhat accurate antennae that bend forward with an 'elbow' (the pedicel, which sits between the flagellum and scape, allowing greater movement control of the antennae) in the middle, the antennae not present in the Hiveling, and a pair of wings, as opposed to a real bee, which has two pairs, the wings not present in Hive Knight. Another thing I find notable about these guys is, they all have a fairly round body, fatter than the average honey bee, with no discernable waist nor separating point between the head and mesosoma.

[Image Sources: Jupiter's Wasp House, ie Myself, and Wikimedia Commons, Tanner Smida | Image IDs: Two photos of different, black and yellow honey bees, one on a light-skinned human hand and the other on a wooden surface /End IDs.]

Another two things that these bees lack, which real bees have, are ocelli (the three simple eyes on top of their heads), and a pair of mandibles (and seemingly other typical mouthparts). It is, at the very least, shown that the Hive Soldiers and Hive Knight do have mouths, although they're more like mammalian mouths but with a sort of sharp, angular outer edge. Also, strangely, the Hive Knight is also shown to be capable of spitting out Hivelings, which raises a few questions.

[Image IDs: Two in-game screenshots that show both the Hive Soldier and Hive Knight opening their mouths, the Hive Knight spitting out Hivelings rapidly /End IDs.]

The Hive Soldier specifically also has one big difference, as its metasoma splits apart into seven stingers. One in the middle, and six that spread out radially, seemingly partially retractable into the mesosoma. Whether or not the others have stingers is entirely unclear, as the Hivelings and Hive Guardians attack with their bodies, and Hive Knight (Already predisposed to lacking a stinger, being a male honey bee) attacks using some form of blade or lance.

[Image ID: An attack sprite of the Hive Soldier /End IDs.]

There is one more bee in this kingdom, which you have already seen in a previous screenshot, that being the Hive Queen, Vespa. She looks very different from the rest of the bees, having a more realistically (although far from perfect) segmented body, which sort of resembles that of a paper wasp's body moreso than that of a honey bee queen, although she maintains the fuzz, specifically around her neck in a way that is reminiscent of a fur coat or a rabbit's dewlap. She also has a teardrop-shaped head, an extra pair of (presumably compound, although they could be simple) eyes, and a notable lack of wings.

[Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Scott Bauer, USDA Agricultural Research Service | Image ID: The artwork of Hive Queen Vespa as viewed as a spirit, followed by a honey bee queen, artificially marked with pink paint, surrounded by other honey bees /End IDs.]

When she appears as a spirit, she's not too much taller than the Hive Knight, however, her carcass lays just in the background of the room in which you fight her dear protector, who does not yet seem to realize she's gone. In this form, her final physical self, she had grown too large to leave the hive, easily 5 times her original size or more. Again, honey bees do not get this big in real life, but it is true that queens are generally larger than their "subjects" by way of their longer abdomen.

[Image Source: Carolina Honeybees | Image IDs: An in-game screenshot of Hive Queen Vespa in the background of the room in which you fight the Hive Knight, followed by an illustration that shows the difference between a drone, queen, and worker honey bee /End IDs.]

Now, I've posted about this before, so I won't go on about it for too long, but I do have to call into question, out of curiosity, the naming of Vespa, given her name is not one that is entomologically associated with honey bees, but instead, their distantly eusocial relatives of the family Vespidae, genus Vespa, the hornets. Something tells me I have an idea as to why she was named this way, but we'll get to that later! It certainly doesn't make the species discrepancy any less confusing.

Finally, there is one more resident of The Hive, although this one is not a bee, but instead, a Hive-specific variation of an enemy that reoccurs all throughout the game. The Husk Hive shambles through the halls of The Hive, surrounded by and/or fused with a structure that is, itself, a miniature hive. The Hunter's Journal describes this enemy as follows: "Cowardly husk, its body colonised by hivelings | Did the hivelings build their nest around this sorry bug, or did the bug squeeze its body into their nest? Either way, they seem happy enough together."

The relationship between the Husk Hive and the Hivelings seems less parasitic and more symbiotic, as the Hivelings protect the Husk Hive and the Husk Hive flees from danger, attempting to remove the Hiveling's living space from locations which may prove to be dangerous.

[Image ID: The artwork of the Husk Hive /End IDs.]

With all the residents of The Hive out of the way, let's discuss The Hive itself.

Now, of course, being part of Hallownest, The Hive resembles something that's less like an actual hive and more like a human community, or, perhaps more accurately, a town or village built of one continuous building, containing mostly wide open areas, but also including areas of rest, with tables and chairs, and a locale or two that resemble the shelved rooms of a library.

[Image ID: An in-game screenshot of an area of The Hive which contains a table, chairs, lights, and shelves that contain tablets /End IDs.]

One thing you'll notice, passing through, however, is that the hexagonal structure that makes up The Hive, outside of the shelves pictured above, doesn't seem to resemble the cells of the prototypical honey bee hive. Not only are they elongated in a way that resembles the Rupees of The Legend Of Zelda series, they appear filled in and crystalline. Some of this unusual material glows, which appears to be what the lights of The Hive are filled with, as opposed to the lumaflies used in other areas of Hallownest.

It's possible that a lot of this is built of crystalized honey, as it is shown that the honey of The Hive can become very hard, very quickly. This is perhaps showcased best in the room, in which you find a bench encased inside of a large, already cracked glob of honey, hanging from the ceiling, which The Knight has to smash open as if it were made of glass. Several other objects in The Hive act the same way.

[Image ID: An in-game screenshot of the bench room of The Hive, in which the bench hangs up /End IDs.]

One thing that's completely unclear, is how brood spawning occurs in The Hive, with seemingly no cells that contain eggs or larvae. Furthermore, it's unclear how long it has been since the queen died, so depending on the time past, it may be implied that it's not just Vespa who held sole responsibility over populating the hive.

Perhaps, as is the case with a few Hollow Knight characters species as they mature in this universe, they don't follow the same lifecycle as a real honey bee, emerging as something close to their final form and molting into later stages should the hive need Soldiers, Guardians, or Knights. It can also be inferred that, maybe, the cells in which the young live in their initial stages are themselves living creatures, such as the Husk Hives and the Hive Knight.

Finally, I find it interesting that The Hive is walled off the way it is, in a similar way to how the nest of a colony of hornets would be, as opposed to the open, tree-hanging slab nests of real world honey bees, seemingly with multiple entrances apart from the ones entered in the game, and also partially subterranean, as evidenced by one of the lower entrances of The Hive.

[Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, Michael Apel, and wildalongtheway | Image IDs: A photo of an empty paper European hornet, Vespa crabro, nest on the inner part of a human-built structure of some sort, another photo of an empty honey bee hive hanging from a tree branch, and two in-game screenshots showing the upper and lower entrances of The Hive /End IDs.]

With all that said, it's safe to say that Team Cherry really respects their bees, but doesn't mind making them too inaccurate in the name of cool lore! It also provides a lot to think about. I know I've gone on a bit long, though, so I'll get to the point and give these g-

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER! - MANTIS YOUTH

[Image ID: The artwork for the Mantis Youth /End IDs.]

Ok, this one's outside The Hive, and by its name, not even a wasp, but I wanted to give these guys a quick mention. I always found these guys confusing, but it wasn't until it was brought up in conversation by Rev that I truly thought to question what they had going on.

For one, Mantis Youth? Mantises rarely fly in the first place, but their young don't even have wings in the real world. On top of that, they have a stinger, being literally described in the Hunter's Journal as delivering "stinging attacks", a stinger being a modified reproductive organ only found in wasps (if you haven't gotten the memo by the rest of this post, bees and ants are included in that). Plus, they don't have the same almost scythe-shaped forelimbs as the adult mantises, as well as all stages of real mantises, do.

If anything, minus the specialized forelimbs, with that sort of neck, they moreso resemble Neuropteran mantidflies. But otherwise, I'd say they're the closest thing to non-bee wasps we have in Hollow Knight!

[Image Source: Michigan Nature Guy | Image ID: A photo of a wasp mantidfly, Climaciella brunnea, on a green leaf /End ID.]

My only guess for why this happened, considering the mantises are unaffected by the infection, would be interspecies mating, but the mantises are, in lore, known to detest outsiders, as evidenced by the fact they completely disapproved of the love between the Traitor Lord's daughter and the Grey Mourner for the very reason of the Grey Mourner being an outsider.

But maybe this happened a long, long time ago, before they became their own long-standing and wholely independent tribe. I mean, having interspecies children with varied features isn't unheard of in Hallownest, the Pale King and Herrah The Beast had a child together, that being-

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER! (... AGAIN) - HORNET

[Image ID: The artwork for Hornet /End ID.]

Yeah, remember when I said earlier that the whole weird naming thing would come up again? This is it. The sibling of all the vessels, the half-Wyrm half-Spider, the gendered child (The White Lady's words, not mine), and the probably-still-canon-but-it's-unclear trainee of Vespa after she was thrown by the wayside by the Pale King in his neverending quest to win a Worst Father Ever Award.

Now does this explain why Vespa is called that? Honestly, not really? It's still confusing as to why they decided to name the bee hive queen after a very distant relative and our dear hopefully eventual Silksong protagonist after an insect genus that isn't on either side of her family. But one, certainly, at least, explains the other, as stated by a Team Cherry member here, Hornet and Vespa share a related name on purpose! So one of the two was named first, and they gave a related name to the other.

Now that THAT'S out of the way, though, it's safe to say I can't give either Hornet or Mantis Youth a proper rating due to the fact neither are true wasps, but I can absolutely give a rating to those this review was about in the first place, the bees of The Hive!

... Also please let there be actual non-bee wasps in Silksong.

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Overall: 5.5/10

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Leave your wasp review suggestion in the replies, tags, or askbox!

Next week's wasp has not been chosen yet!

[angstylittleguy]

Introduction: Dalton Richards

The awkward first meeting between Rory and Dalton. She discovers him having a "growth spurt" in an empty lecture room in their university.

tw: panic attacks

character context: Rory is a mind reader that is unable to control her ability. The voices in her head are constant and the emotions of the people around her are often inflicted onto her. Dalton is a size-shifter whose height is affected by his emotions.

word count: 2.7k

-> In Which Everything Goes Wonderfully Wrong masterpost link: Here

-> character introductions and moodboards: Here

Rory felt the familiar tingle at the base of her neck when she was changing classes at school. The hallway was crowded, students rushing to their next class or back to their dorm. Rory stood silent, rubbing at her neck, and looking around as people bustled past her, not giving her a second glance. It felt like she was in a swarm—or maybe she was like a light—the people acting as bugs that flew around her but never touched her. 

The burning sensation on her neck grew more intense, enough to make her wince as it felt like electricity crackled up her spine and settled somewhere behind her eyes. She looked around, searching for who could possibly be the cause of this overwhelming feeling. Someone at her school was like her. Someone with these unwanted abilities that made them feel like they couldn’t function in a normal society anymore. Someone who would understand.

Her eyes fell upon a male student wearing a beanie. He was sprinting at full speed down the hall, shoving people out of the way as he ran. The pain on Rory’s neck lessened as the boy got farther away, fading into almost nothing as he rounded the corner of the hall.

Rory sprinted after him. 

The hallway became less and less crowded as students found where they needed to be, so it was fairly easy for her to figure out which empty lecture room the boy had dashed into. Silently, she slid through the door and allowed it to close behind her.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see, but him lying on the floor and trembling was not one of them. He had his hand clutched to his chest as if he couldn’t breathe. His thoughts were going haywire, obviously in a panic and unable to pinpoint a single thought. All Rory could pick up on clearly was him repeating, ‘Control it, control it, control it.’

About to make her presence known and offer to help him, Rory was then stunned into silence as the boy suddenly began to change size, growing to fill the space of the room.  He reached both sides, pressing his hands against the walls as if he’s trying to stop the sudden growth spurt, but then he just folded in on himself as he tried to make himself as small as possible. 

(Calm down, calm down, calm down, you’re okay, it’s all okay, it’s going to be okay, its fine.)

Rory fell backwards on her back, staring up at him with wide eyes as she watched the room shrink around him. He tried to shift into a more comfortable position, quickly becoming too big for the small room. She looked to the door, ready to flee to avoid being crushed, but one of his overgrown limbs was draped in front of it, acting as a barricade. 

Rory laid quietly as she listened to his labored breaths. His eyes were squeezed shut, his jaw clenched, and his mind running at a million miles per hour. The burning sensation on Rory’s neck had faded, and she rubbed at it absent-mindedly, still too stunned to speak. 

The boy’s gargantuan hands reached to his head and removed his beanie, revealing a mess of brown hair. He was clenching it as if it were a lifeline, his knuckles turning white against the black fabric. When he opened his eyes, Rory watched his pupils settle on her miniscule form, shock and utter fear taking over his features. 

(No, no, no, no, no, no.)

Panic began to roar behind his eyes. 

(What is she doing in here? The room was supposed to be empty! Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh—)

“Um,” Rory tried, but she suddenly found her voice failing her. What could she say?

He studied her still, his heart pounding in his chest. Rory felt his panic welling in her throat thanks to her stupid abilities, and so they both laid there in anxiety-riddled silence. 

“What—? What are you doing in here?” The boy finally asked, his voice so strained and choked that it sounded like he was about to cry. 

Rory involuntarily flinched; his voice so much louder than she was prepared for. Her actions made him freeze, and he thought, ‘I’m scaring her, oh god, this is bad—’

A wave of embarrassment and fear washed over him and the realization that he was scaring her encouraged his growth spurt. His head banged against the ceiling and he was forced to tuck his legs in tighter to himself, further swallowing Rory into the room.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, trying his best to keep his voice as quiet as possible so as to not scare her again. “I—I’m not sure—”

A tear rolled down his cheek and he quickly moved to wipe it away. He’s so embarrassed to be trapped in this room, but what’s worse is that there’s a stranger trapped in here with him, watching his pathetic breakdown. He tried to block out the panic, tried to pretend that everything was fine, but his heart was pounding against his ribcage in such a ferocious way that he’s near certain she can hear it. The thought made the room close in further, and he wrenched his eyes shut, turning over on his side so that he could lay on the floor and pray he doesn’t get any bigger.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, hating the sound of his voice and the loudness of it all. 

“It’s okay,” Rory found herself saying. 

He opened his eyes to look at her. “It’s not, but thanks anyway.” 

“I’m Rory.”

He was certain he would have laughed at the absurdness of the situation if it weren’t happening to him and his world wasn’t crumbling apart right before his eyes. “Dalton,” he managed to wheeze out. “And… please don’t tell anyone.”

Rory recognized the fear in his voice. The uncertainty of who could be trusted with a secret so massive. It’s why she doesn’t tell people about her own ability unless she gets that static sensation on the nape of her neck. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

(Can I really trust her? What’s stopping her from running off and telling the first person she sees when she gets out of here?) 

Dalton glanced at the door that was now dwarfed by his leg. 

(I can’t keep her in here obviously, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her.  But what will I do if she tells? Where could I go? I’d have to leave—move cities—or just go hide out in a cave in the woods with the rest of the monsters where I belong.)

“You’re not a monster because of your abilities,” Rory said.

She felt the returning anxiety from Dalton scratch at her throat as he said, “Well, I sure don’t feel human right now.”

“Not feeling human doesn’t mean you’re a monster.”

He scoffed, finally tearing his gaze away from her. “Yeah, like you would know.”

“I understand more than you think.”

Rory pulled herself to her feet, and she knew that the fact that she was standing made Dalton nervous. 

“I’m sure. You look the type that turns into a dangerous monster every time you experience an emotion.”

The comment made Rory freeze. He’s the size of a bus because he was going through something moments before. She remembered what he looked like before he had grown, lying on the floor and trembling. Even now, his heart was pounding and his thoughts were a jumbled panicked mess. 

“You were having a—”

“Yeah,” he cut her off. “I get in my head a lot. It’s not that big of a deal anymore.”

She looked at his hands that were still gripping his beanie. Squeezing the fabric as hard as he could. He wanted nothing more than to disappear. 

“Do you want some company?” Rory asked. “It helps me when someone is in the room.” 

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

They both glanced at the door, it completely hidden by Dalton’s limbs. “I could probably move around and you can leave, but I’d have to pick you up and I don’t think I trust myself enough to do that.”

“That’s okay. I don’t mind staying.”

(I don’t want her to see, not when I’m like this. It’s humiliating and dehumanizing and I feel like a freak. How is she so calm about this? I’m—I’m huge! And she’s calmer than I am, acting like nothing is wrong. God, this sucks.)

“I can read minds,” Rory blurted. 

His face contorted. “What?”

“Think of literally anything in the world and I’ll prove it.”

His hesitance and doubt hit Rory like an invisible wave, but he still decided to indulge her. Dalton glanced at her hair and thought of the word ‘purple,’ his skepticism apparent even in his thoughts. 

“Purple,” she parroted, crossing her arms. 

They continued this back and forth until Dalton finally believed her. 

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Not when this is possible.” Dalton gestured to himself.

“I could tell you were like me when I saw you in the hall,” Rory explained. “I get this feeling on the back of my neck that feels like TV static.”

“And that’s why you followed me in here?” He asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t know this was going to happen, though. I was planning for a casual conversation.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

She shook her head. “I’m not disappointed. Just a little surprised is all. But I’m over it now. Besides, it’s kind of cool.”

“Cool?” Dalton all but scoffed. “This is not cool. It’s terrifying if anything. I’m—” he struggled with the words. “I’m a private person. I don’t like people to know what I’m feeling or anything like that. But with these powers—or whatever they are—it’s obvious when I’m happy, sad, angry, literally anything. I hate that I can’t have any privacy anymore. Besides, mind reading is way cooler, and it comes with way less emotional damage.”

Now it was Rory’s turn to scoff. “No, reading minds isn’t cool. I hate that I can’t give anyone any privacy anymore.”

“Well, aren’t we quite the pair.”

Dalton’s heart was still beating rapidly in his chest, but it was much less severe than it was before. 

“Do you get small too?” Rory found herself asking.

“I…” his voice trailed off. (Don’t want to talk about it.)

Rory was about to change the subject when he said, “I get small too, yeah. It depends.”

“Different emotions do different things?”

“Yep.”

(And sometimes they’ll switch up on you, so I can never tell what’s going to happen until it’s already happening.)

“I have good and bad days,” Rory told him. She sat back down on the tiled floor. “Never quiet days, though. Just sometimes less severe days.”

“How about today?” Dalton asked.

“Today’s a better day, I think. I can hear everyone in the classroom down the hall and upstairs, but that’s about it.”

“Everyone?”

“Yeah, it’s never a one at a time kind of thing. It’s everyone, all at once.”

Dalton was quiet. He adjusted his position on the floor again, trying to get comfortable. Despite his size, he was very aware of his surroundings, making sure he was a safe distance from Rory before moving. He watched her carefully as he tried to cross his arms under his head. 

“You’re the first person I’ve ever been around when I’m huge.”

(And hopefully the last.)

“Sorry you had to be the guinea pig,” he joked.

“You’ve been small around others before?” Rory asked.

She felt a sense of dread and lingering sadness tap at her spine. Dalton swallowed. “I don’t think anyone was aware, but yeah.”

Rory wanted to ask questions. How small could he get? How big? How long had he known about his abilities? Would he want to meet Bennett? But one look at the overwhelmed expression on his face alerted Rory that wouldn’t be the best idea right now. 

“What do you do to return back to normal?” Rory asked him instead. 

“I have to calm down, mostly,” Dalton responded.  His thoughts betrayed him as he thought, That won’t happen anytime soon, though. Not with her in the room.

“Oh,” Rory said aloud at the realization. “Am I freaking you out by being in here?”

Dalton seemed to jolt at her words. “It’s okay!” He was quick to reassure, turning over on his side so he could look at her better. His shoulder nearly brushed the ceiling. “It’s not your fault that you’re in here.”

Rory glanced to the door again, hidden behind his overgrown legs. If he could reposition himself, she could leave and he’d be able to focus on getting back to normal.

“Do you think you could move enough to unblock the door?” she asked. “I think if I weren’t here, you’d be better off.”

Dalton didn’t argue the fact that he would be a lot less anxious if Rory wasn’t watching his massive breakdown, but he still shook his head. “I don’t want to pick you up. I—I don’t know my own strength, and you’re so, you're so fragile, and—”

The thought alone was enough to send him into a spiral. His breath quickened and he began to grow. His shoulder pressed against the ceiling and he scrunched his eyes closed in an attempt to control the growth spurt. 

“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t worry! You don’t have to pick me up!” Rory quickly assured, holding her hands up in a non-threatening gesture. “What if, you just don’t move, and I’ll climb over.”

Before Dalton could voice that he thought that was an absolutely terrible idea, Rory was already clutching the oversized fabric of his shirt and pulling herself upwards. Dalton was stiff-still. He held his breath as she climbed up his front, not daring to move a muscle. 

When she reached the top, she balanced on his midsection for a moment and glanced over at his face. Dalton was beet-red. Oh my god, he was thinking, I can’t believe this is happening. Oh my god.

“See?” Rory said as she began her descent. “That wasn’t so bad!”

When she was safely on the other side and her feet were on solid ground, Dalton released the breath he was holding. “Are—are you okay?” He was too afraid to turn over to look at her, not when he couldn’t see exactly where she was standing.

“I’m all good!” She told him. ��Now, if you can just bend your legs a little, I should be able to slide out the door.”

When he didn’t move, Rory raised a brow. “Dalton?”

“When you get out, what are you going to do?”

(Is she going to run away? What if she tells people about me? What if she brings more people in here? What if—)

“What do you want me to do?” Rory asked him, stopping his spiraling thoughts of hypotheticals.

“I… I don’t know.”

Rory hummed at his response. “What if I waited in the hallway for you? I won’t say a word to anyone else while I’m out there.”

Dalton thought it over. He couldn’t think of a better alternative, and it would give him the opportunity to properly talk to her about everything once his head was back on right. 

He tucked his legs in closer to his chest, unblocking the door. “Okay,” he said.

Rory glanced at him one last time before cracking the door open and sliding out into the hallway. When she closed the door, she felt a wave of relief rush over her as Dalton released a trembling breath. 

Rory sat down in the hallway next to the door and put her headphones on. 

[mercurygray]

Merc, what kind of Historical Military Man gets the wheels turning for you? What are the markers of 'Oh, that one, that one is now mine'?

Nat, I'm going to be honest, this question provoked something of an existential crisis. so I went back through, like, 20 years of fandom favorites to see if there's a pattern.

Spoiler: there isn't, apart from a perennial need to be different. This is kind of long .

2001 (ish) - Lord of the Rings is coming out, and you are either a Legolas or Aragorn girl. I am deep in my 'not like the other girls' phase and decide Boromir is actually the superior choice here. (This leads me to watch A LOT of period dramas that are probably not appropriate for for me at this age, including Clarissa and Lady Chatterley's Lover.) It also leads me to the Sharpe books, which are great and awesome. Richard Sharpe doesn't necessarily do anything for me as a character, but that gets me into Hornblower, which gets me into the Aubreyad, which leads me to read a lot about the Napoleonic Wars in high school. Cliff-diving into a different historical period is now something I do every single summer.

I also spend about 5 years (2008-2013) writing a 225,000 word fanfic in which Boromir doesn't die.

2010-2015

Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) is really only in the army a brief while but who can say no to the blue eyes and the absolute vibe he has going with Mary?

During the Downton phase I decide to raid the library for other period dramas, again, and watch The Forsyte Saga. Soames Forsyte is not a man you love, but Damian Lewis has A Face and I know he was on Band of Brothers, which the library perennially never has a copy of.

2011

I finally watch Band of Brothers in its entirety my senior year of college and am a little disappointed I appear to be missing large parts of the story. (Future rewatches will explain that this is actually a feature of the show, not a bug.) My recollections of this are hazy, but I'm fairly certain my favorite character the first time I watched this was Lewis Nixon (Ron Livingston). He's dark-haired, he's funny, he's an absolute mess with a trust fund. Dick Winters (Damian Lewis) also has one hell of a face. He's a red-head, he's in charge of everyone else, he doesn't say much, and he is tall. I know there must be fic for this show but am also very, very sure it is shippy in a direction I do not want to read, so I do not go looking for it.

TURN - 2014-2017

Ben Tallmadge (Seth Numrich) is the guy to watch on TURN: he's a lieutenant, he's tall, he struggles with rules, but the entire fandom is also crazy about him and the leading queen bee in the OC end of that fandom is a real pain about it, so I decide I will not be writing for him no matter what it costs me to hold off admitting I want to. However, in the next episode we meet his best friend, Caleb Brewster (Daniel Henshall) who is short, bearded, dark-haired and chaotic. The moment he comes onscreen I love him. Sadly, no one is reading fic for him and this project is abandoned.

In Season 3, we meet the Marquis de Lafayette. Historical Lafayette is a tall, awkward redhead in need of a father figure who makes up for war experience with boundless enthusiasm. His letters home are adorable. Show Lafayette (Ben Wiles) is tall and enthusiastic. I love him anyway and I make it everyone's problem for, like, a year.

2016-2017 - Mercy Street

Henry Hopkins (Luke Macfarlane) is a military chaplain in a hotel-turned Union hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. He's tall, he's a little tortured, and he has a knack for putting others first. Wrestling with some past choices, his romance with Emma Green, the privileged daughter of the family who owned the hotel, is sweet and full of pining. I write so much fix-it fic for them it's not even funny. (I love this show because the female characters I love come pre-installed. Please watch this.)

2016 - Dunkirk

I see this movie three times in theaters and love it more each time. Collins (Jack Lowden) is a blonde RAF flyboy with a very adorable face. (Tom Glynn Carney is also a face I like but he's on a backburner for a bit.) I write a lot of fic about it and affectionately refer to this as my first Planes Go Zoom phase.

2020

Two weeks into the pandemic I decide rewatching Band of Brothers is a good idea and buy the book and the DVD set from my local secondhand bookshop like I am doing a drug deal in a parking lot. Two weeks after that I am writing a fanfic for Dick Winters (Damian Lewis) because I am a loon who likes men in charge and painfully slow burns.

2021

Still in the middle of a pandemic I decide to watch The Pacific, because I make good decisions, apparently. Hoosier Smith (Jacob Pitts) is a taciturn, wise-cracking friend of Leckie's who is joked about as being the pretty one. He is. Andrew Haldane (Scott Gibson) is quiet, unassuming, and in charge, and played college football for Bowdoin. Very dad energy. Extremely charming. Dead in three episodes as history intended. Fix-it fic incoming.

2022 Top Gun Maverick comes out. Jake "Hangman" Seresin (played by Glen Powell, who I loved in Hidden Figures and The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society) has a jawline you could cut something with and an attitude. My friends think I am mental. Second Planes Go Zoom phase coupled with Devotion, which comes out shortly after.

SAS Rogue Heroes comes out. I have been really looking forward to seeing Tom Glynn Carney in something else and he delivers. Mike Sadler is blond, extremely good at his job, not capable of suffering fools, and far too attractive for the desert.

2024

We do not even make it out of trailer season before I realize I still have a Thing (TM) for Callum Turner's face, which I have known since he was Theseus Scamander in Fantastic Beasts. Watching The Boys in the Boat before this all starts doesn't help - he has regrettably blond hair but thighs for days and shoulders you could hang the universe on. John "Bucky" Egan, is tall, dark-haired, incredibly generous spirited and nominally in charge. I want all of it. The rest of the fandom does too. I try to make peace with that and write anyway. Third Planes Go Zoom phase.

[baeleigh]

This has bugged me for a while but before i get into it i want to say up front that all kinds of representation for all kinds of people is incredibly important, this is just my opinion through my lense of my personal experience being trans and consuming trans content. I hope that would be common sense but i know if i dont write this someones going to get pissy with me for god knows what.

With that out of the way,

I have been trying to hunt out and consume as much trans media as i can (at least in genres and forms that i tend to enjoy reading/viewing) and one thing i see to an insane degree is trans women being portreyed with predominantly masculine features or even being played by cis men in drag. On one hand i think "hey ill take what i can get" but on the other i think thats a fucking low bar. Now i know that there is a significant portion of trans women with fairly masculine features, and i cannot stress this enough that there is nothing wrong with that, everyone is different, everyone transitions diferently and the end goals for everyone varies wildly.

My issue is that while i love that there is more trans rep in general the fact that most characters ive seen are portreyed in a very masculine way (especially if a character is explicitly stated as being on hrt/medically transitioning for years) it sometimes rough to consume as someone who places a lot of importance on myself passing. When most forms of representation portray who you are as the physical flaws that have tormented you for 20+ years it hurts. I dont want there to be less of these portrayals at all, i just want more rep closer to my experience.

While comics and art i push past because i want to enjoy the stories included, i cant say the same about movies. It irks me how almost anytime i hear about a movie with a predominant/main trans fem character its played by a cis male actor; i get they can do it well, ive heared people complement some performances greatly, but i mean... could they not hire a trans actress? I know theyre around ive seen them on screen, hire them. The disinterest i feel when i see that a famous cis male actor is portraying a trans woman is palpable. Hire more trans actors.

Now im sure theyre are plenty of examples of what im looking for, god i hope so. Hopefully ive just been unlucky in my search.

I would like to add that one of my fave examples of rep i feel resonates with me and the one that came to my head first is Olive from "My Dragon Girlfriend" by Fawndoo on webtoons, i freaking love her. Plz show it some love ❤️

https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/my-dragon-girlfriend/list?title_no=162918

Im aware that my post talks pretty much exclusively about trans fem rep and theres a reason for that: i am a trans woman and a massive dyke who prodiminanly devours lesbian romance fiction so honesly i have no leg to stand on as i have little to no idea what the rep is for trans men & enbys.

Anyway thats my personal experience with trans media. goodnight, sleep tight

[adamwatchesmovies]

Hereditary (2018)

Keen viewers will foresee the ending of Hereditary fairly early on. Having seen the film three times now, I’ve realized that's not a bug; it's a feature. The point is that you see the train coming but you can't move out of its way. With a superb performance by Toni Collette at its center, terrific, inventive cinematography and impeccable direction by Ari Aster (his feature-film debut), it's a joy to examine the filmmaking at work. It also happens to be horrifying.

Following the death of her estranged mother, Annie Graham (Toni Collette) attends a loss support group to try and cope. She’s been sleepwalking again and can't shake the feeling that something's... not right at home.

In class, Annie’s son, Peter (Alex Wolff) isn’t paying attention to his teacher's lesson, but he should be. The students are asked whether it’s more tragic for a hero to know they're doomed but be unable to change their fate, or be unaware of the misfortune awaiting them. This idea is what makes the ending of "Hereditary" work. There’s something about watching people slowly inching their way towards annihilation unsettling. With every passing second, you can feel the walls of their cage tightening. You’re an outsider, powerless to react and when the danger is as intense as it is in Hereditary, you’re glad to be nothing but an onlooker. In the most intense scenes, nothing could be more frightening than the characters turning towards you for help. Of course you would if you could. Annie, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), Peter and Charlie (Milly Shapiro) go through so much you don’t want them to suffer but your curiosity has also gotten the better of you. What’s coming will surely make your skin crawl and your hairs stand on end but you want to see just to be sure. Maybe things will go a different way. Or maybe they’ll go exactly how you expect they will.

Key images in the film fill me with dread just thinking about them. It makes me want to claw my eyes out so I don’t have to see them anymore, which makes me admire the filmmaking even more. The longer you look at this movie, the more things you notice. In many scenes there are symbols hidden in the background, there are things standing in the darkness, recurring images and foreshadowing telling you what’s incoming. It all ties back to that question posed to Peter. The more you see, the more you wonder whether you want the characters to know what you do or if you’d rather they stay ignorant of the doom that awaits them. The recurring theme of decapitation is on its own more than enough to give you the willies.

The performance by Toni Colette turns something you would normally passively watch into a reality you’re forced to confront. Her wails as she cries pierce your chest and wrap their fingers around your heart. Her panic as she pieces together what’s actually going on is palpable even if you don’t quite understand all of the “rules”. This film is quite good at giving you the minimum amount of information required and leaving the rest for your mind to fill in the blanks. If you're the king of person that won’t be able to sleep until you know everything that happened, don't worry. There are a few scenes that spell it out for you. Our lead is so good you’re likely to overlook how well everyone else does with their roles. Milly Shapiro, for instance. You’d never guess A) she was 15 at the time and B) that she’s a perfectly normal teenaged girl. Obviously they used prosthetics to make her look the way she does but she so subtly off you just don’t know what to make of her.

There are certain aspects of the film you could criticize. Hereditary is essentially a modern update on a couple of well-known horror films and a scene during the beginning makes it very easy for you to know this story’s final destination. This may detract from some of the fun but it certainly won’t take away the scares. In fact, it gets more intense, more terrifying upon rewatches because your eyes can focus less on what’s happening in the foreground and more on the stuff hidden in the margins. There’s a brilliant scene with a rolling ball every aspiring horror filmmaker needs to take note of. It's just one example of the many scenes ready to conjure up some recurring nightmares. (March 20, 2020)

[selfindulgenttiger]

Autism and Me

It took me an embarrassingly long time to catch on to the fact that I might be autistic. When friends and loved ones - people I understood and could relate to - were diagnosed, it somehow still didn't occur to me that I could be autistic too. It wasn't until my dear niece Skyler sent me the assessment that measures how much you might be camouflaging autistic traits - particularly in the social arena - that it clicked for me.

I think that's because I had faulty ideas of what autism looked like to begin with. It's not that I thought - as some do - that all people with autism are nonverbal or have severe developmental delays. But frankly, the portrayals I'd seen of autism in media were... male. And that's the problem - autism usually presents very differently in girls and women, but until fairly recently, there was no attempt to identify how exactly that was. Myriads of women have been overlooked for diagnosis because the description of the condition was based on the presentation in males.

Men with autism are typically presented in the media as being rigid, loving routines, blunt to the point of rudeness, having very narrow fields of interest but being experts in those subjects, and having little empathy and poor grasp of social norms. With no point of reference, how could I grasp that tactful, empathetic people with broad ranging interests and little ability to adhere to a schedule could be autistic too?

But after I took the camouflaging assessment and scored higher than the average for even autistic women, I decided to learn more. And here's what I learned: The current thinking on autism is that it stems from a failure of the natural process of pruning synapses in the brain as children grow. As a result, autistics brains are busier. One study showed autistic children's brains are 42% more active at rest than non-autistic (allistic) people. For many of us, that expresses itself in sensory issues and reduced emotional regulation. Looking back, that was the story of my childhood.

What is also challenge - for almost all of us - is social skills. They do not come naturally, and are often actually completely against our inclinations. I'm going to be frank. If you've ever seen me in a social situation, you've seen me camouflaged - basically "faking it." While I'm speaking to you, I'm consciously monitoring and adjusting my level of eye contact, my facial expressions, my body posture, my tone, every aspect of my being while simultaneously trying to actually keep up with what you're saying. I'm constantly thinking about making sure I pass as "normal" and its exhausting.

But though that presents challenges, I still view my autism as a feature, not a bug. Some traits I feel I have that are common among autistic women:

unceasing intellectual curiosity

a powerful need for justice and fairness

strong reasoning, logic, and pattern recognition

a natural skill for organization of information

the ability to think both deeply and quickly

close adherence to ethics and values

boundless enthusiasm for the things we're especially interested in

strong emotional empathy (cognitive empathy is a different story)

These things unfortunately can cause problems for autistics living in an allistic world, but in and of themselves, they are strengths, not challenges. All in all, my autistic traits are - or have become over time - positives in my life, or at least neutral. This process of learning that happened between suspecting I might be autistic and getting the formal diagnosis yesterday has been an affirming one, and now I'm proud to say I am an autistic woman.

[straightlightyagami]

rating my autism, or What It's Like To Be Autistic (for me, personally)

sensory issues: 0.5/10 worst feature. sucks ass. worst part is I cannot take exams if there are annoying sounds or smth. also cannot be in public places too long. cannot go to parties or concerts at all but idc. nearly impossible to buy new shoes and cannot wear most clothing. half a point for flex of being able to discern noises very well but that does not make up for it at all.

shit motor skills: 1/10 affected my life a lot more as a kid, but I still have trouble doing some daily tasks. also hate when I try to pour tea and it goes all over the place, or when I drop things or bump into things and everyone laughs.

special interests: 10/10 I have several that are pretty varied so it makes me appear knowledgeable and able to discuss a wide variety of topics. also fun.

rigid thinking: 5/10 it sucks being able to not understand directions unless they are extremely clear and specific and also needing clarifications for everything. but also I like that I have a fixation on ethics and the need for consistency in my principles. like from the pov of others it makes my life harder but imo it's a good thing. idk if it's in this category but I hate that thing where I get convinced I'm Not Allowed to do something for no reason and then have to text my mom 10 times asking if I'm Allowed to enter a store.

need for routine: 3/10 I used to be constantly having meltdowns when I was a kid but idrc as much anymore. mostly manifests in the form of me hating being in unfamiliar places or away from home.

speech problems: 2/10 if I could get rid of one autism trait I have it would be this. hopefully my political career is not doomed before its start /hj. 2 points for being mild enough to compensate for (at least in theory) with ridiculous amounts of scripting and practice.

alexithymia: 7/10 cannot tell what I'm feeling most of the time but also I'm fairly sure I just feel less than "normal" and it's usually nothing, which is fine because I don't want to bother.

problems with reading social cues and displaying Expected Behaviors: 4/10 hate being treated like I'm clueless but it's …somewhat(?) fixable for me by doing reading, observing, and practicing. it's doable but annoying that I have to put effort into things others don't. probably good that as a kid I was completely unaware of what people thought about me.

(in)ability to have Normal Relationships: 6/10 I can pretend but I really almost never can bring myself to care. I had a lot of friends (?) at some point but I sort of prefer being alone and find that I have a lot more time and energy if I have no obligation to spend it with anyone. part of it has to do with unrelated trust issues. tbh this one does not bother me as much as it bothers people who notice. I get the feeling I might be missing out though.

lack of empathy: 7/10 I don't really have affective empathy except some specific cases, but idc it's better like this. I have some cognitive empathy but I have trouble conceptualising that people might have fundamentally different views/experiences of things than me and it always catches me so off guard...

the pattern noticing: 10/10

AVERAGE: ~5.05/10 decent, some bugs that need to be fixed

[inventors-fair]

Broken Mirrors: Dead Lucky Winners

Skifsang Shanty by @bread-into-toast

This happens to me every week- I glance over a card, think “yeah that’s okay, but not a winner”, and move on- and then something tweaks in my brain a few minutes later and I got back to scope it out, and realize how it changes things. In the case of the shanty, I completely glossed over convoke the first time, and dismissed this as an overcosted spell that only cost 7 to fulfill the contest requirements. Convoke sells the flavor, though, of being a group of fishermen working together to cast this magic net, while also making the mana cost a whole lot more reasonable. Honestly, the only danger I can see here is that making the tokens allows you to chain additional copies of this for two blue mana apiece, but that seems more like a feature than a bug. 

Bringer of the Thirteenth End by @coolcoolcooltighttightight

I was admittedly expecting a relentless-style “you can have 13 of this in the deck”, and the flavor of cultists is also a fairly obvious choice there, but sometimes the obvious choices are just that for good reason. The tension here is interesting, because obviously deleting an opponent from existence is, y’know, pretty good, but you can’t afford to let a single one of these get removed if you wanna pull that off. The tutor is also crazy expensive, but it clearly exists as more of a failstate when you can’t dig them out any other way. I do wish they did a bit more? I’m not sure what, but vanilla 1/3s aren’t really a fun thing to have sitting on the board while you build up to instant death. I think the correct option for this deck is to add some blue and load it with clones so you have some breathing room, but the fact that you’re making me think about how to brew this means the card did its job!

Read ‘Em and Weep by @deg99

This is almost certainly the simplest of the top six this week, but it’s very elegant. The cost reduction throws back to Oskar and that whole New Capenna theme, and the idea of assembling a “run” of cards feels like a nice fun minigame. The exile clause is a nice addition to bump the power a little, since even at best this is a more expensive Tragic Slip. I don’t have much else to say, other than the art is cute and this would probably be a pretty solid pick for the new capenna draft environment.

[gossipsnake]

Bugging Each Other || Anita & Parker

TIMING: August 8, 2023 LOCATION: Lyssa’s Peak PARTIES: Anita (@gossipsnake) and Paker (@wonder-in-wings) SUMMARY: Anita invited Parker out to hike and search for insects in the woods. Unbeknownst to her, Parker is under the effects of an abnormality crystal. Anita is her usual self. Things go exactly how you would expect they would, featuring an unexpected guest star.

Anita wasn’t entirely sure why she invited this man to one of her favorite bug spotting locations. None of their online interactions had been remotely positive. They were neutral, at best, and frequently tapered off from neutral to negative at an exponential pace. Yet there she was, the early sunlight of the dawn creating golden shadows that danced across her features as she stood on the edge of a forest trail awaiting this irksome and questionably qualified curator. 

Maybe that was it - she wanted to see Parker in action and figure out just how well he knew his shit. After all, a novice curator without any professional training couldn’t possibly be more knowledgeable about insects than Anita was. And that wasn’t to say that intellect and formal education were corollaries, but Anita had dedicated every aspect of her life to this niche topic - she needed to be better at it than he was. 

Having done as much online stalking as she could, Anita recognized the tall blonde man immediately. He was also the only other person around, which given the time of day was a fairly dead give away as to who he was. “You’re late,” the idea of starting off on the right foot had crossed her mind, but she ignored it. 

—

Day 8. 

The Warden thought the conversations online were shaky but ultimately, Anita could’ve called herself either the garbage queen or even a fae at this point and Parker would’ve taken her up on an offer to go searching for bugs. Granted, this was before the incident with Felix and when he had the idea for how this would go in his mind, he wasn’t anticipating having to compensate for the plunge into abyssal, emotional depth he’d taken. No… that wasn’t correct, even now. It wasn’t a plunge, as though he got to choose to jump into the murky black tar that clung to his every thought, his every waking moment, every feeling on his skin, even some of the looks he gave. It was an edge. Or a pendulum. Fortunately, she had opted out of a graveyard. Unfortunately, Parker wasn’t as well-versed in Lyssa’s Peak. Even more unfortunately was as he arrived at the approximate coordinates she had left for him, trudging to the path from the car he parked a safe distance away on the off-chance something would happen, she decided to make a comment about how he was late. No wonder her roommate had left her, if she was like this all the time, the way she stood there with her arms crossed, her expression naturally glaring and vindictive and with a bite to her tone. He approached her, slowing to a stop and standing a foot taller than her and yet she carried herself with the authority of a woman demanding she speak to his manager. Not a great start and Parker’s dominant hand subconsciously began flexing and extending, opening, closing in a rhythmic gesture as he settled the immediate wave of frustration that washed over him. He didn’t want to turn around and wordlessly go back the way he came. “Apologies.” He muttered through gritted teeth, a false apology. He normally wasn’t late; he normally wasn’t many things he was that early morning. And he wasn’t about to explain why he was late, as the reason was both exasperating and embarrassing. Maybe if she was observant she’d be able to see the uncharacteristic dark circles that had rapidly accumulated under Parker’s steely blue stare and apply logic. Or maybe she could see his thick leather belt with its many pouches, daggers and the spiked iron knuckles that hung from a chain and wouldn’t press any harder. …The latter of which was definitely going to happen, if first impressions and conversations online were anything to use as references. “What specimens frequent this area?” He decided to ask, pushing through the formalities though he kept his eyes on her keenly.

—

Not that she would ever think to admit it, but Anita was a bit impressed by the fact that he didn't even bother to justify or explain why he was late. It fit with what she knew about the man - not one for niceties for the sake of niceness. He wasn't exactly what she had expected. He seemed unnecessarily angry and on edge. Having never met him before, however, Anita had no way to know if that was his usual posture or if was something reserved for this specific interaction. 

After taking note of his affect, the next thing she noticed were the weapons affixed to his belt. Were Anita not confident that she could hold her own against him they would have caused her concern - he came out to meet a strange woman in the woods and he came fairly heavily armed. It made her wonder what he knew about these woods. ”No specimens that warrant all that,“ she replied, gesturing towards the belt. 

In an effort to show that the daggers had no effect on her, Anita turned her back towards him and began to walk down the path towards the clearing she intended to bring him to. ”There's a fair amount of beetle species out this way. I like this area in particular because as you head further towards the peak you come across a variety of different micro-ecosystems which provides a fair amount of biodiversity.“ 

That was going to be part of her personal test of him, checking on how quickly he was able to identify the different insects they came across. Anita wasn't so snobbish to think that his lack of formal education constituted a lack of knowledge, but she was petty enough to hope that she would catch him off his game and prove that she was the true expert between them. ”Hopefully you got your beauty rest, we've got a bit of a hike ahead of us.“ 

—

He understood that he might’ve been a little bit over-prepared for something as seemingly innocuous as hunting for bugs that early morning but given everything that was in that town, let alone how unnecessarily on edge he constantly felt over the past week, Parker didn’t really consider any of it to be superfluous. She certainly didn’t seem to be intimidated by anything on his person as she willingly turned her back to him to lead him to wherever they were supposedly going, which… he didn’t really think that she would’ve been. Everything about her exuded confidence, a sense of intellectual superiority from how they’d talked online. So, he followed her, feeling the soft morning air on his bare arms as the sleeves of his blue Henley were gathered around his elbows, glancing around the unfamiliar environment. She mentioned beetle species and he wondered if she was being purposefully vague due to the assumption that she didn’t think he knew what she would’ve been talking about by mentioning specific suborders. Parker wouldn’t have put that past her, either and the thought sent another pulse in his hands, which gripped the thick leather of his belt tightly but briefly before loosening again. “Rest is rest; its appearance has no merit on anything. I’ll keep up, you needn’t concern yourself with that.” He remarked rather absently, though he didn’t want to think about how he hadn’t received much of any sleep the night before, beautiful or otherwise. Instead of lingering on that aspect, he continued on after her with the knowledge already cemented in his brain that he would most likely be sore after this venture, but ideally with a new specimen or two to add to his collection. “Are we talking about polyphaga?” He asked in an attempt to make small talk as they walked.

—

There was something about the cool August morning air that made Anita slightly homesick. Even the dead of summer in Maine never got quite as hot as her desert home but the feeling of the warm sun on her skin always pulled her back there mentally. But now wasn't the time to dwell on that, especially not with the present company. Instead she just continued leading them down the forest path keeping a diligent eye out for certain flora that she knew would be a prime host for unique insects. 

The mention of polyphaga was amusing, and thankfully with her back still towards him Parker wouldn't have seen Anita's slight smirk at the mention of the scientific name. “Given that 90% of beetles fall into that suborder... yes, I expect we will see many polyphaga. Around this time of year there are a lot of curculionoidea and tenebrionoidea.” 

It was interesting. Had their online interactions gone differently this meet-up may have been more of a meeting of the minds opposed to a competition. But that wasn't the case. Anita looked up at the tree cover above them, watching some of the birds dance around in the spotted beams of sunlight. ”You're not a local either, if I remember correctly.” Ameture bug enthusiasts usually had limited information on the insects of foreign ecosystems. “So, why insects?” It was a question she got asked all the time and while, in her younger years it had bothered her, Anita had grown to appreciate it. After all, it was nothing more than an opportunity to talk about one of her biggest passions. 

—

She was being smug and he, in turn, was thankful that she had her back to him otherwise she would’ve caught his lip curling slightly in disdain; if she hadn’t been vague in the first place, he wouldn’t have felt the need to specify, if only a little bit. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a specimen from pyrochroidae; it’s been a while.” Parker remarked rather quietly, one of his hands continuing to rest on his belt in its familiar place of safety and comfort while the other subconsciously flexed and extended his fingers in their rhythmic motion, giving him something to do silently as he dealt with any threatening swing of the pendulum in his mind. Tired, but ever-sharp blue eyes were narrowed, almost like a hawk scanning the environment for prey which wasn’t entirely inaccurate - Parker, raised in the bayous of Louisiana, wasn’t accustomed to these temperatures but the crisp morning air wasn’t unwelcome, seeming to do the trick to forcibly wake him up where he might’ve been lagging in certain mental aspects. “Why not insects.” He replied at first, perhaps a little too casually and it took him about a minute before he realized that she was either trying to engage in small talk or test him to see if he really was interested in the subject as she was. “Insects were my learning tools when I was a child.” He explained after the moment of silence. “I was… motivated by little else.” He opted to leave off the parts where his family, even his mother, chalked him up as a failure because of the limited scope with which he viewed the world. ‘You’re broken. But I don’t hate you for it anymore’, his father had said, late into their relationship and shortly before he died. “...” He breathed in, as though about to say something else but nothing came out except for a soft exhale and his mouth closed once more. “...You?”

—

His response was vague. Anita couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t care to talk about it or if it was because he didn’t care to talk to her about it. At least in their online interactions even when he was being a dick he was still talkative. It wasn’t as much fun without the tet-a-tet back and forth. “My grandfather had an extermination business. My father took me with him from time to time on jobs and before I even had words for them, I was captivated by insects. The curiosity grew until it consumed me entirely. Like most of the natural world, they speak to an inherent truth that people often try to resist: everyone has a place in their ecosystem and their value has nothing to do with their size but, rather, their contributions to that ecosystem.” 

Turning her head just enough to make brief eye contact, Anita continued, “Ecosystems are delicate. When creatures fail to fulfill their purpose within them, they fall apart.” It was one of the few absolute truths that Anita knew and she wondered if he knew it too. Sometimes it felt like that is what Anita had done to her own ecosystem - to her own family. She failed to fulfill her purpose, she left, and as a result things fell apart. 

As they turned a corner and approached a small clearing, Anita spotted a cluster of trees with decaying bark at their bases that should be home to a plethora of pyrochroidae and other similar beetles. Without pointing it out or saying anything, she changed course and headed towards them, dropping into a squat once she got close to them. “You spend much time out in the woods?” Maybe that was why he had an arsenal of weapons hanging off his hips. Maybe he knew what else was out here. 

—

Her answer was much more robust than his and Parker wondered, just briefly, if he was supposed to supply a heartier answer than the one he had given. The thought was brief because he was already under such a strong impression that he was being silently tested by Anita, scrutinized from every angle in an attempt to seem like she was better than him that he assumed her judgment extended to something as personal as why he had gotten into entomology. As he thought about it, then thought about thinking about it, he could feel himself threatening to fall into a spiral so instead, he pushed the thoughts aside and caught eye contact, keeping his eyes on her far longer than she had as they walked. They turned, he followed her without prompting and he continued to look around as he chewed on what she had said, about how fragile nature had a tendency to be sometimes and how one weak link could disrupt the chain. Part of Parker wondered if she was simply waxing poetic or if there was a hidden meaning in her words but the thought was discarded as they drew close to a selection of trees with their peeling bark. Wordlessly, as she crouched, he tread more lightly and took a few steps to a different trunk, blue eyes scanning the surface for movement, a place to gently pry the bark away. “I do.” He replied, again almost leaving it at that. ‘Man, she gives you one impression that she doesn’t care and suddenly you clam up. That’s not becoming, bro.’ “Being outside of town provides clarity. I don’t… get along well with humans.” Parker added, his delivery still blunt and objective.

—

There was something familiar, and therefore unsettling, in Parker’s prolonged eye contact. Anita was not naive enough to believe that the only dangerous creatures out in the woods were like her. She knew there was a perverse breed of humans that were objectively an evolutionary marvel, who had evolved to track and kill those like her. She’d known some in her time. Eaten most of them. 

Based on how their conversation had been going, Anita expected that Parker was going to end his response with those two words. Instead he continued, his response being the first real thing that he has said that piqued her interest. “I get along with humans but I don’t care much for them.” It was possibly too telling of a response but she could explain it away if necessary. “I feel that nature, these creatures,” gesturing to a cluster of bark beetles she had uncovered, “this is where I’m most understood.” 

“Can I ask a question without you immediately becoming offended by it?” Anita was going to ask it anyway, but she decided to preface it with that inquiry. In her mind it softened the question. In her mind it was a way to signify that she was asking without judgment. That’s how it came across in her mind, anyway. “Your temperament suggests you would make a fine scientist. Your ego suggests you would make a good one, possibly. Why no formal schooling?” 

—

Her response to his comment about people was unusual, to say the least. She wasn’t a fae, that much was obvious. Perhaps Parker should’ve said that he didn’t get along with ‘people’. Every once in a while, it slipped his mind that there were shifters, vampires (which he also assumed she wasn’t one because the sun was creeping into the sky and from his limited understanding, they couldn’t be in direct sunlight) and other associated beings in town. It was easier for him to separate fae from humans, from people who lived normal lives and weren’t interested in disrupting humanity for petty reasons. But he didn’t say ‘people’. Parker said ‘humans’, which was his mistake and now with the thought that maybe she wasn’t a human herself created a new wariness inside of him. He wasn’t afraid of her and likely wouldn’t ever be, but he could hear his father telling him that it was good to be prepared for anything, regardless of whether or not he was equipped to. And the Warden couldn’t say that he could relate - insects were just that, and he wasn’t an insect. They were beautiful, serving their purposes, whatever that was, feeling part of their environment. Parker was a machine, an automaton who didn’t fit in anywhere. He wasn’t created to fit into a grand scheme, a plan, a tapestry. He was genetically engineered to perform one function and he had long since accepted that about himself. It was this explanation that answered her question before he could formulate the words. “It… wasn’t considered important.” He replied rather quietly, once he clenched and unclenched his hands as he felt the initial wave of frustration wanting him to become incendiary towards her for prefacing her question with ‘don’t get offended’ pass over him. “To my parents, it was a teaching method. To the rest of my family, it’s a shortcoming.” He explained, his gaze softening as he approached her trunk to see what she had found; they may not have gotten along, but it was easy for him to set aside his pride when it came to observing insects, appreciating them. “I wasn’t designed for this. My father considered me a failure.” Everything Parker said was said in the same tone, flat and blunt though he could feel his insides wanting to burn up with irritation that his father thought of him like that so late into his life. ‘And I still do sometimes, boy.’ “So it’s a passion, but that’s it.” He acknowledged, looking sideways at Anita. “I probably don’t know as much as you. But I know enough to be considered an outlier to my family and the purpose of my existence.”

—

Finally, Anita thought as Parker provided more than a one-sentence response. It was proving difficult to keep pestering him about the like, two things she knew about it. Strained familial relationships, that was something. Unfortunately for her, it was something she related to all too well. Shit, maybe this was backfiring. It was easy enough to not empathize with him, but this was venturing towards sympathy. “Formal education wasn’t considered important in my family, either.” Anita decided to opt for the truth, content with acknowledging the distinctions in their paths. “My family does not give a shit about my degrees, my accomplishments. They think it all a waste.” She didn’t add the humanity context. They only felt that way because they could not wrap their heads around her choosing to live among humans. “My father is the only one who supports me, despite not understanding.” 

Maybe that last bit was unnecessary to add, but Anita wasn’t going to acknowledge that. Instead, she decided to move on. It was never in question but it was extremely satisfying to hear him admit she knew more than he did. At least he had some common sense. “And what is the purpose of your existence?” She worked hard to make sure that her tone sounded genuine, like a deadly robber fly presenting itself to the world as a harmless bumble bee. It seemed unlikely that he would continue to open up… but she wanted to see how far she could push this. 

—

As they examined the insects that skittered along on the bark, minding their own business, Parker didn’t think he was expecting… ‘Is it empathy or sympathy?’ His brother asked. ‘Like he can tell the difference.’ His father replied as the Warden remembered this conversation vividly as it happened decades ago now. Whichever one it was, he had little to say in terms of emotional value when Anita explained her own reasoning in an attempt to do either of those things. Usually, that was the part of the story where the two sides of the same coin would engage in some wholesome conversation about how they weren’t so different, how they could find things to bond over. Anita’s family apparently didn’t understand her, either. That was where it ended, though. They didn’t understand, but she still sought higher education. Her father was the only one who supported her; Parker couldn’t say the same about his own father. She got to do whatever she wanted to do. She didn’t speak like a hunter and she wasn’t a fae. She might not have been human, but then again, neither was he when he recalled what other people called him. Then came the main question, the one Parker never really had a sufficient answer for for some reason or another. He kept his half-lidded blue eyes on the insects astutely as he let the question linger in the air - he figured she didn’t like the pauses between conversation, but she wasn’t the only one vying for control in this scenario. There was also the likely possibility that she didn’t care; from their interactions so far, nothing about her indicated that she actually wanted to know. This was all small talk. They might not have been so different but they were different enough. And Parker didn’t benefit from having someone similar to him in the same vicinity. “It doesn’t matter.” He replied, standing back up and glancing over at the other trunk he had been examining before she found what they were looking for. He wanted to say ‘you don’t care anyway’ but then he would’ve gotten a ‘you’re right’. And he didn’t care that she didn’t care, it wasn’t something that elicited sympathy or empathy. ‘See, I told you he couldn’t tell the difference.’ It simply was. “Can you answer that?” He offered, turning to look down at her. It was a nebulous question, not one that most had the answer to, in his experience.

—

His response was expected and therefore incredibly boring. Anita had invited him out here to prove that she knew the most about the insects they had a shared interest in, but now she was eager to show that she knew about the humans they both had a disinterest in. She didn’t know whether or not he parroted her question back to her because he didn’t have any original questions of his own to ask or if it was a challenge. She took it as the ladder - a push to imply she maybe didn’t have one. 

Sure, it was a strange question to ask another person. But Anita wouldn’t have asked it if he hadn’t implied that he, or his family, believed that he had some specific purpose for existing. “I don’t believe I have one singular purpose for existing,” she replied with a shrug as she stood up and looked around the patch of forest they were in. “Just like those beetles that you’re watching,  I think we all play important roles within our own ecosystems. Some of us are much further up the food chain than others. Our purpose is just existence. What we do with what we are dealt, well, that’s not purpose - that’s choices. The paradox of free will.”

And as part of her own free will, Anita was starting to think of ways to end their interaction early. Maybe if she provoked him further he would be the one to crack first and leave? “After all, if we have free will, can we also have a pre-designated purpose for existing? Conversely, if we have a pre-designated purpose for existing… can we be said to have free will?” That was, admittedly, all Anita knew about the paradox of free will as she never did much philosophy beyond an intro class she took because some girl she wanted to hook up with was taking the class. But it was enough to sound good. “I’m team free will.” 

She had moved around a bit as she was talking, and right after topping off her brief rant a tree branch fell right near where she had just been standing. It startled her very slightly but she tried to maintain an unfazed effect in front of him. Had he not been around Anita likely would have looked up into the tree to see where it had fallen from, but she felt that not even acknowledging it was maybe the cooler way to play it off. “So, yeah, I clearly can answer that question.” 

—

The Warden hadn’t anticipated that by him passing the question off to her, placing the ball in her court, it was going to kick-start a lecture. Already quiet, Parker narrowed his gaze as she stood and looked around. Philosophy wasn’t something he held inherent interest for, and hypotheticals weren’t a currency he traded in. He believe in the butterfly effect, to be sure, but with the way his being taught about the fae from such a young age weaved itself around his ideologies, he had long since learned that whether people liked it or not, Fate was predetermined and while one could pull at the threads, the final tapestry would remain the same. So, in essence, it was as Anita had described it. “Why use five words when fifty will do.” He replied dryly instead of saying something conducive such as ‘we might agree’ or ‘I understand your point’. Those thoughts were alien to him on the best of days, and on his worst they inflamed something in his mind. Parker couldn’t stand mirrors, though he never understood why, even now. She spoke too much and then said that she could clearly answer the question but that wasn’t it, was it? Or was that it and she was trying to sound better than him, more superior to him again, as had been the case every time they’d started to engage in conversation? His hands clenched and unclenched as he felt tension start to ripple through his muscles; the pendulum was starting to swing again. And he was getting mad, which was why he wasn’t expecting it to mix with surprise as she moved and almost immediately after, a branch had crashed down where she’d been standing. Instinctively, he glanced up, his brow still furrowed but with a sharp eye darting around like a hawk trying to find its prey. “Stop talking.” Parker ordered, just as dull in his delivery as before.

—

By this point, Anita was beyond done with the conversation. It wasn’t even just because he was so annoying and generally frustrating -- it was because he was boring. Parker hardly even engaged with her and was evidently back to incredibly short responses. It wasn’t fun bothering him when he didn’t react to her. “Here’s five words for ya: stop being a little bitch.” Not her best comeback by any stretch, but it felt satisfying to say. 

Had she not been so focused on making a grand exit she may have noticed how his attention turned towards where the branch had fallen with a furrowed intensity. Instead, she turned to go back up the path from where they had come from and hopefully never have to interact with him again. Just as she started leaving, however, another branch fell and the end of it scraped against the back of her arm as she moved. “Ok! Seriously, what the fuck!?” Finally turning her attention upward, Anita tried to figure out what was going on but she didn’t spot anything particularly out of the ordinary and turned her attention back towards Parker, kinda hoping to see if he would get hit with a branch next. 

—

The flagrant insult, the choice of words, the fact that Anita justified the Warden’s behavior as him just being difficult for the sake of being difficult (which is exactly what Parker thought she was doing), flared the Warden’s temper and he resisted the strong, white-hot urge to give her a sharp backhand in immediate retaliation. His breath caught in his throat as one of his hands clenched so hard one could almost hear a bone cracking in the tension that wavered dangerously between the two and the inflammation of anger spiking into him was strong enough that he had to physically pull himself away from being so close to her. He didn’t realize that if he just waited a little longer, she would’ve gone through the liberty of removing herself first but as it was, he took the step back, his movements solid as though his iron-toed boots were glued to the ground. Whatever was in the tree had temporarily been completely forgotten as Parker struggled not to react viscerally to what was really such a shallow combination of words, so far beneath him, that he shouldn’t have felt the need to react at all. His nostrils flared with evident irritation and he tore his icy glare off of her back as Anita turned to skulk off, probably thinking that she had ‘won’ this invisible tug-of-war though Parker wasn’t ever competing with her over anything. He hadn’t been, he was content not to. He didn’t care. He just did his job and engaged in his hobbies and someone always had to– Anita’s voice punctured his thoughts and, brow still furrowed, he snapped his head to look in her direction once more where she herself was looking up at the trees again. He glared at her until she looked back at him, where his gaze drifted up towards the trees, much more slowly than before. Right, that’s what he was doing before she decided to turn this into a whole thing. Parker looked into the leaves once more, going from tree to tree, his expression shifting into one that much more closely resembled his default as he felt the pendulum in his mind settling once more. As he was turning more in the direction of where the first branch had come from - he assumed she reacted because she got hit by another one - his sharp eyes caught movement and one of his arms shot out, acting almost autonomously as his hand caught a branch that was aiming right for his shoulder. “It’s an agropelter.” Parker explained, dropping the branch casually and reaching for one of the small crossbow bolts that sat in a quiver on his overly-ambitious utility belt. “You must’ve been making too much noise.” He said pointedly.

—

Anita didn’t know the man in front of her well enough to understand his actions or predict his next steps. She hadn’t had the opportunity to really observe him to get a sense of his temperament. Maybe that was why it was more than a bit surprising at how fast his reflexes were when he caught the tree limb in mid-air. It was impressive and if it had been anyone else who had done that, Anita may have acknowledged that fact. Instead, her expression remained sour as she processed the word he used to describe the creature. It wasn’t one she knew - or had ever heard of before. Another thing that may have been impressive in anyone else. Not that she could really confirm that was the real name of the creature. He could have just been full of shit like she presumed. 

Before she could voice her objection to him, essentially, calling her loud; Anita’s eyes caught his hand move towards one of the weapons affixed to his belt. His attention seemed to remain on her as he spoke, creating serious doubt in her mind as to what he intended to do next. Without transformation, Anita had no weapons at her disposal. And based on his recent show of dexterity… she had a feeling he wasn’t going to miss whatever his target was. 

This was why she truly hated her human form. Anita hated that, as she stood there, all of her fleshy bits were so exposed and she had no natural defenses. It felt like time was passing so slowly as she waited for him to show his hand and she had two competing survival instincts swirling around her head. Turning to the Mojave would offer obvious physical protection, however, it would simultaneously put the life she had built in this town at risk. She didn’t know this man, or why he could catch that branch with such ease, or why he knew the name of the strange occupants of the trees above. She didn’t know what he would do if he knew her true form. So, against some of her better instincts, Anita remained planted there in all of her humanity with her focus dialed in on his weapon. 

__

What had happened, whether it was him catching the branch, stating what it was that was assaulting them or how he carefully reached for and retrieved one of the bolts from his compact quiver, it had finally sufficiently gotten Anita to stop throwing her weight around. Parker’s icy glare focused on her for a moment, gathering the bolt between three fingers before they darted up to the branches once more and he sent the bolt hurling through the air quicker than the human eye could perceive. The bolt disappeared into the foliage where a loud squeak of surprise and pain met his half-deaf ears. A pause, then something small with dark fur fell solidly out of one of the trees and landed on the ground, the bolt protruding from its chest. Parker didn’t need to approach the twitching, quivering mass of fur and flesh to know what it was, nor did he feel the need to put the creature out of its misery as it gasped for breath through a puncture wound in one of its lungs. “It’s a shame you’re insufferable; I would’ve enjoyed discussing insects with you further.” He said bluntly, clenching and unclenching the hand that threw the bolt in a rhythmic motion as he felt an unpleasant combination of anger and what might’ve been… ‘Pride? Do you feel pride?’ Walker asked. Whatever it was, it made the Warden’s body ripple with tension, the coiled spring that was his musculature still on edge from the agropelter and perhaps even what Anita could’ve done to him; Parker had no reason not to think that she was a normal human but nowadays, he knew better than to assume anything about anyone aside from spotting potential weaknesses in movement, deficiencies in behavior. He figured she was something of a fighter, at least if she could match her mouth in terms of meaningless insults. He didn’t want to turn his back to her, and yet… Parker said nothing further to her; as far as he was concerned, this interaction was over. It was over and he felt as though he’d wasted his time. He could’ve just left her to the agropelter; it might’ve taken one or two of her fingers if not just content with throwing things at her, but even when his mind was as annoyingly unstable as it was, pumped with all of those emotions and extreme reactions to things that shouldn’t have been reacted to, he was still a Warden. The agropelter was still a fae that could hurt someone. She didn’t need to know that. Crossing his arms with an irritable sigh, Parker turned and silently walked off. 

He was going home. This was a waste; all he got out of it was agitation and being needlessly insulted again.

—

Even with her eyes fixed on his apparent weapon of choice, Anita was sure that her reaction to him deploying the weapon, however small and slight that her muscles flinched, was noted by the man. It felt like a display of weakness though she was unsure why it felt that way. There was no question that he had hit his intended target, the small lifeless body of whatever woodland creature had been in the trees was indisputable evidence of that. Once again, something that she would have expressed openly how impressed she was had the act done by nearly anyone else. 

For a split second, no longer, Anita did wonder if she was being too stubborn. Through all of her interactions with the blonde curator, it was apparent that they had substantial commonalities yet she felt so intensely disfavorable towards him. His final comment reminded her why, however, and replaced any lingering positive impressions with a growing rage. 

As was her reaction to most circumstances of conflict, Anita immediately considered how easy it would be to simply swallow the arrogant man whole. Surely her mouth could open wide enough to accommodate his ego. Fortunately for Parker her curiosity, morbid or otherwise, told her that it would be more satisfying to get to know him better first. To draw out her inevitable victory and in doing so make the day she did finally vanquish him that much more satisfying. 

“I’ll be seeing you,” she finally responded as he began to walk away from her. “Small town after all.” She had no idea if he would take the statements as the threat she intended them to be, but as he faded from her view he similarly faded from her mind for the time being. Anita collected the deceased creature Parker had slain, intending to examine it further back at her lab, before walking off in the opposite direction. Sure, her car was back towards where he was headed but taking the long way back was worth it to not risk any additional interaction.

[lies]

Hey Lies - Could you expound a little bit on competitive birding? Or do know (and can share) a good website the describes the process? Not looking to compete, but I'm fascinated by the idea of it. Thanks and cheers - Jim

I'm not sure I'm enough of an authority to say much. I can tell you about my own experience, for what that's worth. After a cut because I'm not a monster.

Birding competitively means keeping track of species you've identified within a given geographic area and a given span of time, and comparing your total to those of other people or other groups to see who "wins". There's a fairly broad spectrum of ways people do it; it ranges from "I'm going to see how many species I can identify in a day in my local area" (a so-called "big day") to "I'm going to see how many species I can identify in the ABA area (North America north of Mexico plus Hawaii, these days) in a year" (the classic "big year" that is probably the most famous version of this kind of thing). There are people who do world big years, though I think that's a relatively recent phenomenon. The wikipedia article for Big Year gives a good overview.

One of the foundational texts of North American big year birding is Kenn Kaufman's Kingbird Highway. Journalist Mark Obmascik wrote The Big Year, a nonfiction account of the 1998 competition. A loosely fictionalized version of that book is the Steve Martin/Jack Black/Owen Wilson movie of the same name. I wish I could recommend the movie; I wanted it to be better. I mean, I wasn't the target audience, it turns out. I wanted a documentary. It's more of a goofy comedy that finds its humor in making fun (gently) of those wacky birders and their obsessions.

The annual Christmas Bird Count is competitive, in that different 15-mile-diameter count circles are low-key competing with each other to see which can get the most species, or whether they can get more species than in previous years in their own circle.

There are also more formal competitions that typically involve teams. The World Series of Birding is a one-day competition in the spring in New Jersey. Teams of three or more people compete to see how many species they can identify in the state in a day. I've never done it, but by all accounts it's pretty hard-core.

A one-day competition like that, or like a Christmas count, can be a fairly intense process. There's a lot of planning that goes into it, and luck. Like any competition, it is an interesting way to get an objective measurement of one's own performance and work toward improvement. If a big day is like a sprint, a big year is a marathon. You're trying to bird as effectively as you can, so your own skill and experience is an important factor. But you're also competing on the basis of how diligent you can be, how much time and energy (and money) you're willing to devote to it.

I suspect that the most widely-practiced form of competitive birding, or at least the form I'm most familiar with, is the county year ranking in eBird. eBird has a feature that lets you see the rankings of the top 100 users within given geographic area and a given time frame, sorted either by number of species or by number of complete checklists. Starting in 2018, when I first really got the bug, I've been paying attention to my county-year rankings in the county I live in (Santa Barbara) and trying to improve my position. In each of the years 2018-2021 I finished first. It probably helped that for much of that time hardly anyone else was treating it as a competition. 🙂

Last year (2022) was more competitive, in that there were four of us who were actively competing and sharing notes with each other and generally encouraging and pushing each other. I finished second. If you want to hear more about that you can watch the archived video of the Carpinteria Birdwatchers meeting where the four of us talked about our experience.

I've rubbed shoulders with some competitive ABA big year birders on a number of occasions, mostly because I go on a lot of organized pelagic birding trips, and competitive big year birders go on a lot of those trips. The relatively small number of sea birds that they can get on those trips are birds they can't get any other way. My sense from seeing big year birders in action is that they tend to be very serious about what they're doing. They're not much for chitchat when important birding could be happening. Which is fine; I'm the same way. Just not quite as much as they are.

I did a lengthy interview with Nicole Koeltzow, the winner of the 2018 North American big year competition, as part of another Carpinteria Birdwatchers meeting. I recommend watching that to get her perspective.

I'm friends with a local birder who is doing a North American big year this year. He's not spending the kind of money that some people do, where they're taking lots of plane trips to chase specific rarities, or spending tens of thousands of dollars to go to western Alaska to get Old World vagrants. So he's realistic that he's not going to be competing for the very top spot. But with some planning and multiple trips to some key locations (Texas and Florida so far this year), he's currently ranked 5th with 583 species.

I can obviously talk about this for a while. Let me know if there's more I might be able to share that you'd be interested in. Thanks!

[alt-controller-project]

Home console game research

DDR is not a home console

not for lack of trying though!

1] Wii Remote

Ah, the Wii Remote. Bane of TVs and walls everywhere because nobody uses that strap whilst playing tennis, Martha. The first to utilise motion sensitivity and tracking as a core component, the Wii Remote revolutionised how we could play games at home. It was fairly different outside of its specialised hardware, with a layout unique to that remote. This made the Wii Remote extremely recogniseable, something that the Wii as a whole enjoyed. Moreover, the motion tracking opened up a completely new dynamic - much like Hang On did for motorbike racing arcade games. Players could now play tennis and perform accordingly to how good they physically WERE at tennis. Playing Mario Kart Wii became much more enjoyable, especially with the steering wheel attachment.

Having said that, the Wii Remote did have some drawbacks. Every household that used a Wii broke a remote by accidently whacking it against something [or someone, Martha]. It also required a fair bit of space and good mobility especially for tennis, boxing and baseball. This problem was less evident in bowling, golf and Mario Kart which required less movement, but still more than a traditional controller. The sensor bar, typically placed atop TVs tended to fall off, but that wasn't as much an issue with the inherent design of the Wii Remote

In conclusion, the uniqueness and features of the Wii Remote contributed significantly to the Wii's popularity. The more physical nature of its games made it a littl emore of a threat, but gave the Wii's games a brand new dimension that hadn't been seen outside of arcades.

2] Dance Dance Revolution

DDR was the peak of human invention, and by god I want to own one.

Dance Dance Revolution took the standard D-Pad from a controller, and made the decision to upsize it - a lot. Its popularity at arcades helped popularise the rhythm game genre and broaden what could be done, leading to games like Just Dance [which I also adore]. The combination of 80's style visuals, extremely unique gameplay and well-known music made DDR an immediate hit despite its high cost and size. If the Wii Remote, Hang On and Time Crisis have shown me anything, its that gamers will happily exercise if you make a game out of it and DDR did this flawlessly. Sure, you can hang on to the back bar and just move your legs - hell, it's the optimal way to play. OR, you can really get into it, and start trying to dance. This allowed both players who exclusively wanted to see big numbers go up and casual players who wanted to, as the kids say, bust it down, get a comparable amount of enjoyment from the machine.

DDR did come with a few drawbacks though. It had a difficult learning curve, and it could hardly be considered a home console with an eye-watering price tag for any family without generational wealth. Whacking your hand on the back bar also really hurts.

3] Guitar Hero Controller

Guitar Hero is the second most-sold game on the Playstation 2 and made over 2000x its original budget. A generation of kids growing up on rock and metal played Guitar Hero, and that generation seemed to love it.

The Guitar Hero was a fairly unique controller - instrument controllers had been made before - but this was the most complex, and by far the most popular. The way it simulated playing guitar with the buttons and flickers allowed players to immerse themselves in the experience and feel like the rockstars they were watching. Guitar quickly sprang to public consciousness, but as the market became flooded by similar games - particularly ones with increasingly egregious monetisation [wow i am in no way used to this practice.], the franchise stopped being produced for newer consoles. A scene would also appear creating homebrew controllers - not nescessarily to remedy and major bugs or problems with the original controllers, but simply because it was fun, and they wanted to. Unlike the above entries, the guitar controllers - whether brand or homemade - weren't needed. If you were brave enough, you could theoretically play with your original Playstation controller, but this was rare due to it being far less fun and the guitar wasn't too expensive anyway.

4] Steel Battalion Controller

Someone at Capcom should have gone to the psych ward for this.

Steel Battalion was a mech game franchise for the Xbox, with some very 'unique' features, such as making the player reboot the mech's OS, using window wipers, a third game that did not happen and if you don't eject in time, the game clears your entire save. An IGN reviewer wrote that whilst some games wouldn't let the players into the mechs cockpit, Steel Battalion wouldn't let them out.

The reason for the frankly ridiculous amount of controller mass was to truly immerse the player in the game world. Whereas with some games you had to pretend you were the guy on screen, or with the Wii you could kind of play tennis, in Steel Battalion you WERE the mech's commander. It was more akin to flying a plane than playing a video game, and the punishments for screwing up were rough. Whilst you could play with an Xbox controller, it simply didn't have the 44 buttons needed to play the game. Although Steel Battalion got 'favourable' reviews, it was nominated for one of the most disappointing Xbox games.

The controller was simply too big to be practical, and the $200 price tag was emblematic of that. The game's features didn't much help convince possible buyers either

[eliast-94]

How Good is the quality of OSS

Understanding Software Quality

What makes great software? It’s not just fancy features or spotless code but it’s about creating tools that people love to use and that treat everyone fairly. In the fast-changing world of software development, the idea of “quality” means much more than just working code.

From a technical perspective, Amy Ko.jo, in Cooperative Software Development, highlights key traits like correctness, reliability, robustness, performance and portability. These are the building blocks for good software, helping it stay free of buts, handle unexpected problems and work across different devices. In this article, we’ll explore how these traits play a big role in testing and finding buts which are critical for building reliable systems.

But software isn’t just about machines or computers but it’s also about people using it. A major part of software quality is making sure it doesn’t unfairly harm or exclude anyone. For example, Amy J. Ko explains, biased data or algorithms can lead to discrimination like reinforcing harmful stereotypes. Fixing these biases is a key part of building software that regards everyone equally.

The Quality of Open-Source Software

Open-Source Software has sparked a lively debate about its quality. On one side, supporters say OSS creates better products because of the way it’s built which is by a global community of developers working together. As Oleh Romanyuk explains in FreeCodeCamp’s article on the Pros and Cons of OSS, open-source software is shaped by thousands of contributors each bringing unique skills and experience from different industries and technologies. This mix of perspectives makes it easier to spot and fix problems quickly, which means the software becomes more reliable and functional over time.

Data backs up this claim. The Coverity Scan Open-Source Report shows that OSS often has fewer bugs per thousands of lines of code compared to proprietary software. Why? Because open-source projects are constantly reviewed and improved by many developers creating a kind of “always-on” quality control system.

But the story doesn’t end there. A blog post by the World Bank, Quality of Open-Source Software: How many Eyes are Enough? points out that bigger proprietary software projects often beat OSS in quality. The reason you ask. Big companies have dedicated teams of paid experts and structured processes to find and fix complex problems. These teams don’t just fix the obvious, but they tackle the tough ones that require deep knowledge of the software’s inner workings.

This brings up a challenge for open-source software projects. They often lack the consistent funding and organized workflows that proprietary software teams have. As Amy K. Jo explains in Cooperative Software Development, software quality isn’t just about the code but also how the code is created. While OSS does a great job fixing simpler bugs through teamwork, the harder to spot issues may require the resources and expertise that only a well-funded proprietary team can provide.

So, is open-source software better? The answer isn’t so simple. OSS thrives on collaboration, bringing together diverse ideas and talents to create something great. But proprietary software benefits from structure, funding and expert teams. Maybe the real takeaway is this: quality depends not just on the software itself but also on the people and process behind it.

The Role of Quality Assurance in OSS.

Open source thrives on community collaboration - volunteers from around the world contributing their time, skills and insights to develop, debug and enhance software. However, because open source operates on a voluntary basis, challenges like varying levels of expertise, inconsistent time commitments and the “release early, release often” philosophy can make quality assurance difficult. For open source to maintain high-quality standards, developers, quality engineers and users must work together  to ensure the software remains reliable and functional.

Continuous integration tools like Jenkins are essential in this process. Projects like Pulp use Jenkins to automate testing, monitor results and catch integration failures early. This helps ensure only stable, well-tested code reaches the end users. Automated test frameworks such as Pulp Smash further strengthen quality by allowing contributors to write flexible, portable tests that identify regression swiftly.

Community Test Days also play a key role. Projects like Fedora organize test days, inviting users to propose areas for testing, document their findings, and collaborate in forums like IRC channels. These test days empower users to become active participants in quality assurance, ensuring critical issues are identified and addressed. Additionally, Bug Triage days, like Foreman’s Bug Day, give users the chance to prioritize and resolve existing bugs, reducing the backlog of unresolved issues.

Through tools like continuous integration, automated testing, community test days and but triage, open-source projects can ensure high quality and maintain stability even in the face of decentralized development.

Addressing Bias in Open-Source Software: Overlooked Quality in OSS?

Bias in OSS development specially when it comes to gender, continuous to be a significant issue. Women are underrepresented in OSS and they miss out on a valuable development and professional opportunities. As new jobs open up, many women lack the experience needed to apply which can only continue this cycle. According to researchers like Anita Sarma and Steinmacher,  these problem may be build into the very tools used for OSS development which creates barriers that discourage women from participating.

Their research focuses on tools like Eclipse, Git, GitHub, Jira and Hudson, tools that weren’t always designed with divers users in mind. Steinmacher explains, “If someone implements a tool without considering a diverse set of user, they may include such kinds of bugs which affect one gender more that the other.”  The team plans  to use GenderMag, a method developed by Margaret Burnett to identify gender-biased barriers in these tool.   

To truly improve the quality of OSS, addressing bias requires a deliberate effort from a diverse group of contributors who bring a variety of perspectives to the table. By prioritizing inclusivity in design and testing, OSS can create software that works for everyone not just a select few. Without this focus, bias can undermine the overall quality and fairness of OSS, reducing its effectiveness and limiting its impact. In the end, addressing bias is not just about fairness but also about improving the overall quality of OSS and ensuring it works for everyone.

References

Ajko, A. (n.d.). Cooperative software development: Quality. University of Washington. Retrieved from https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/cooperative-software-development/quality

Gibbons, S. (2021, December 29). What is great about developing open source and what is not? FreeCodeCamp. Retrieved from https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-great-about-developing-open-source-and-what-is-not/

Black Duck Software. (n.d.). Coverity Scan: Open source. Retrieved from https://www.blackduck.com/

M. K. (2019, May 28). The quality of open source software: How many eyes are enough? World Bank Blogs. Retrieved from https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/quality-open-source-software-how-many-eyes-are-enough

How Good is the Quality of Open Source software compared to proprietary software © 2024 is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International 

[magmaticmachine]

ok. disorganized silly MH/NiD crossover AU notes. crawling back under my rock now

- Ideya could act mechanically as health/stamina for visitors; both a delicate balance of ideals but also a psychic manifestation of the will to live? Functions as "regular" "blood" for residents of the Night Dimension. It's light, but they're still not really supposed to be losing it

- Residents of the Night Dimension take on features from MH monsters (I haven't drawn all of these yet, just a list of choices I'm fairly sure on)

NiGHTS - Nightcloak Malfestio

Reala - Dreadking Rathalos/Dreadqueen Rathian

Jackle - Sand Barioth

Puffy - Snowbaron Lagombi

Clawz - We're going off the script a bit. It'll be fun. What if a Nargacuga had blast powder

Wizeman - Old Fatalis

Gillwing and Gulpo continue to elude me. They're already beasts .-.

The Nightopians are a custom lynian species. I Love Cheating

- The Night Dimension is home to many countries; Nightopia was formerly a large territory that the Nightopians wandered freely and peacefully. After an ✨ancient evil✨ awakened, the Nightmaren rose up to conquer it and sowed chaos in their wake.

- What remains of Nightopia lies between the rest of the world of dreams, and the Nightmare frontier; a scattered collection of outposts, barely maintained campsites, and hidden villages of Nightopians and cohoots barely scraping by.

- Aluco Village. The village itself is nestled in a dense, old forest at the base of the highlands, a region prone to inclement weather and sudden storms. The Dream Gate lies at the village's center. Far to the northwest, a forbidden tower pierces the sky. It's said that from here, the eyes of darkness watch the whole world slipping by.

- Aluco's seclusion and hard environment acts as natural defense, though its continued survival still remains a mystery to outsiders. When asked, the villagers say long ago, a bright, burning star fell from the sky, and that the star guards them to this day...

- During the daytime, when their work is done, the Nightopians can be heard singing and plucking away at lutes, while bells chime in the wind. At night, they are joined by a lone, clear flute from up on high.

- NiGHTS was wounded during their flight from Nightmare, and fell from the sky, near the outpost. They now protect its inhabitants with their life. Though they generally act reclusive and aloof, they remain an agent of mischief at heart. Keep an eye on your valuables.

Weapons!!!

NiGHTS prefers the Hunting Horn, but can switch to Greatsword or Sword & Shield as the situation demands.

Reala can switch between Longsword, Hammer, or Dual Blades. No real favorite; just tools that get the job done.

Claris mains Switch Swag Axe >:)

Elliot...perhaps the Insect Glaive? Bug boy :)

you know that hedgehog is a Dual Blades user. there is no other option. Fast spinny critter...fast spinny blades.

[drewandareview]

Monsters University (2013)

Originally published June 22nd, 2013

In the Disney-Pixar relationship, Disney has often been a commandeering jerk.  When Toy Story was first released, Pixar was hardly credited in publicity.  When Toy Story was a success, Disney immediately guilt-tripped Pixar into making a direct-to-video sequel.  (This went on to become Toy Story 2.)  And when Pixar made more hits, Disney wanted to make more sequels.  But Pixar refused to make sequels until they had good ideas for stories, and it pissed Disney off.

Disney found a loophole in its contract with Pixar and out of spite and greed, decided to put into production sequels to Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo completely without the input of Pixar.  This was a line-crossing move that eventually resulted in the head of Disney being replaced and Pixar being bought by a newly-managed Disney.

Given this history, I was very nervous when Pixar decided to make Toy Story 3 anyway.  It seemed like a very Disney-influenced move.  Thankfully, it wasn't an abominable movie, but that didn't calm my nerves.  In fact, my nerves were worsened after the atrocity that was Cars 2.  So I think I was justified to be very uneasy when I learned a Monsters, Inc. sequel was in production.

This was especially troubling news because Monsters, Inc. didn't need a sequel.  The story had such a scope and resolution that it really wasn't open to any further developments.  Not to mention, Monsters, Inc. was (and is) one of my all-time favorite Pixar movies.  It would hate to see a movie I like tarnished by a needless addition.  I prepared for the worst: A sequel that doesn't stay true to the established characters and tells a story that doesn't live up to the original.

However, as promotional material for the movie began to be released, I started to think that maybe it wouldn't be so bad.  I was confident that it couldn't live up to the original movie, but at least it didn't seem like it had the ambition to given that it was a prequel.  It was also beginning to look like the characters wouldn't be sidelined.  But still, I knew it couldn't be a movie that fit into the Pixar canon of greatness.  My expectations were low.

After seeing the movie, it actually managed to exceed my expectations.  It featured the most dynamic cast of characters I've seen in a Pixar movie since Finding Nemo.  The ending was unexpected and engaging.  The background they gave our two heroes was interesting, Mike's being especially heartfelt.  It also featured what may have been the catchiest song I have ever heard in a Pixar movie (which to my extreme disappointment is currently not available to purchase).

It still wasn't a great movie.  I can't say the story was tremendously inventive and it didn't have the ambitions that Pixar movies are known for.  But I was astonished by just how much I had enjoyed the movie.  For an average movie, it sure was phenomenal.

That's when something hit me: This movie really didn't compare to other Pixar movies because it was nothing like any Pixar movie I had seen before.  Its purpose seemed less geared toward being its own movie and more geared toward supplementing the original movie.  It's intended to add a richness and depth to Monsters, Inc. that just wouldn't be there without the prequel.  

I had recently been fascinated by an idea I call "pre-expansion": Giving your characters and world cultural status before your movie takes place.  This process fosters an authenticity I had never even fathomed that a movie could have, and it very much excited me that Pixar would explore it themselves.  It's a new and unforeseen direction for them to take, and it's a relief to see evidence of the company still being fresh.

However, this pre-expansion idea seemed too avant-garde a territory for Pixar to intentionally explore.  I had my hope, but realistically, I was fairly sure that pre-expansion wasn't their reason for making this movie.  After all, if they really wanted to provide supplemental material, why not make it a half-hour film for a DVD?  It's not bizarre territory for them: They're currently making a half-hour Toy Story film.  If its purpose is to supplement the original story, giving it the status of a feature film is too distracting in its girth.  I was worried that the movie was another Disney-influenced decision that would culminate in a hefty cash-grab.

I also began to worry that these character backgrounds they added didn't fit with the characters they developed in Monsters, Inc.  Not to mention, I couldn't be sure that the original had any added depth.  I rewatched it to check for depth and consistencies.  As for depth... I can't say that Monsters University really added anything to the original movie.  Nothing accomplished in the prequel really seemed to enhance my Monsters, Inc. experience.  

As for inconsistencies, the ten-year gap between the movies allows a lot of flexibility, but there are still some points worth noting.  For example, Mike appears to be considerably distracted, disheveled, and even a bit unscrupulous in Monsters, Inc.  In Monsters University, Mike is a focused, organized and honest student.  What happened to Mike?  There were other facets like this that bothered me, but the argument "A lot can happen in ten years" is a very effective one.  However, this just further proves the needlessness of the prequel.

But there was one crucial line in Monsters, Inc.  At one point, Mike says to Sulley "You've been jealous of my looks since the fourth grade."  In Monsters University, the two of them meet for the first time.  How does that make sense?  This one error alone made me loathe the movie.  The fact that Pixar would ignore such a pivotal piece of information sent me the message that they didn't create a prequel out of love, but out of greed.  It especially sickened me that so many good ideas were wasted on a project with overall bad intentions.

But then I read an interview with the Monsters University director that specifically discussed this inconsistency.  The whole story department had known about that line and had tried working several drafts where Mike and Sulley meet in elementary school.  However, they felt skipping from elementary school to college cut out too large a gap in Sulley and Mike's friendship development.  They also didn't want to make a Monsters Elementary.  Eventually, the original Monsters, Inc. director and John Lasseter urged the Monsters University director to do what's best for the story, even in the face of a continuity error. So he made the prequel we have today.  To justify the line, he said "That's just something they say in the monster world all the time."

And you know what?  I can buy that.  But more importantly, I found just what I needed: That the people at Pixar really did put thought and love into making this prequel.  That alone made me feel much better.  And you know what?  So what if it's feature length?  Just because it gets a big theatrical release doesn't mean it has to be a standalone movie.  It just means it's getting a lot of publicity, and that's great.

However, I couldn't really label it as pre-expansion.  I personally didn't feel that Monsters University made its following movie any better than it already is.  Does that mean it's a failure?  No.  I like to think that Pixar at least tried to go for pre-expansion.  I just wish it had tied in a lot better than it did.

Critics keep saying that Monsters University doesn't live up to Pixar's lineup of hits and they're right.  But what Pixar did was explore a different kind of ambition.  One that doesn't shoot for the stars, but tries to polish the stars it has already collected.  I have an awful lot of respect that they would try something so bold.  And they succeeded.  It may have been flawed, but Monsters University had a heaping helping of entertainment value.  While I certainly hope to see more movies like WALL-E and Up out of Pixar, I'd also love to see them further explore this new kind of territory that fascinates me so much.

All in all, Monsters University was an adequate movie, an admirable experiment, and acceptable entertainment.  I'd say Pixar has given me another reason to be proud of being a fan.

[aaksconsulting]

Dive Into The World Of Web Graphics With Graphics JS

Dive Into The World Of Web Graphics With GraphicsJS, Creating stunning visuals for your website can be a daunting task. From selecting the right colors to deciding on the perfect layout, it takes a lot of time and effort. Thanks to GraphicsJS, you can now easily create captivating visuals that will draw in visitors to your site. Find out why this cutting-edge technology is revolutionizing the web graphics industry!

WHAT IS GRAPHICSJS?

GraphicsJS is a JavaScript library for drawing graphics on web pages. It is lightweight and fast, and it supports both vector and raster graphics. With GraphicsJS, you can create shapes, lines, curves, and images with ease. The library is also extendable, so you can add your own custom functionality if needed.

BENEFITS OF USING GRAPHICSJS

If you’re looking for a comprehensive and easy-to-use graphics library for your web projects, GraphicsJS is definitely worth checking out. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the key benefits of using GraphicsJS.

1. It’s free and open source GraphicsJS is released under the Apache 2.0 license, which means it’s free to use in both commercial and personal projects. Plus, being open source means that the code is available for anyone to inspect, so you can be confident that it’s well-written and trustworthy.

2. It has a simple API Even if you’re not a experienced developer, you should be able to pick up GraphicsJS fairly easily thanks to its straightforward API. All the main methods are clearly documented, so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting started.

3. It’s lightweight but powerful Despite its relatively small size (the minified version is just over 9kb), GraphicsJS packs a lot of punch. It supports all the major web browsers (including IE9+) and offers a wide range of features, such as gradients, shadows, animations, and more.

4. It’s constantly being improved The team behind GraphicsJS are regularly releasing new versions with bug fixes and new features. They’re also very responsive to feedback from users, so if there’s something you’d like to see added or changed, let them know! In summary, GraphicsJS is a great choice for anyone looking for a powerful yet simple graphics library. It’s free to use, it has an easy-to-understand API, and it’s constantly being improved. So why not give it a try today?

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH GRAPHICSJS

Creating beautiful web graphics doesn’t have to be difficult. With GraphicsJS, you can easily create stunning visualizations for your website or blog. Here’s how to get started:

1. Choose your graphic. GraphicsJS offers a wide range of pre-made graphics, or you can create your own from scratch.

2. Customize your graphic. You can change the colors, size, and shape of your graphic to suit your needs.

3. Add interactive features. GraphicsJS supports interactivity, so you can add features like tooltips and links to your graphic.

4. Embed your graphic on your website or blog. Once you’re happy with your creation, simply embed the code on your site to share it with the world!

EXAMPLES OF WHAT YOU CAN CREATE WITH GRAPHICSJS

With GraphicsJS, you can create a wide variety of graphics for your web projects. Here are just a few examples of what you can create:

-Logos and branding elements -Icons and buttons -Webpage layouts -Charts and diagrams -Animations and effects

TIPS FOR WORKING WITH GRAPHICSJS

When working with GraphicsJS, there are a few things to keep in mind in order to get the most out of the library. First, be sure to include the graphicsjs.min.js file in your project. Next, create a new instance of the Graphics class and set the width and height properties accordingly. Finally, add objects to the stage by using the addChild method.

GraphicsJS is a great tool for creating dynamic and interactive web graphics. By following these simple tips, you can make the most out of this powerful library.

ALTERNATIVES TO GRAPHICSJS

There are many ways to create graphics on the web. In addition to GraphicsJS, there are other libraries and frameworks that can be used to create interactive and animated graphics. Some of these alternatives include:

– HTML5 Canvas: Canvas is a low-level drawing API that is part of the HTML5 standard. It enables developers to draw 2D shapes and images on a web page.

– SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a vector graphic format that can be used to create scalable images for the web.

– WebGL: Web Graphics Library (WebGL) is a JavaScript API for rendering 3D graphics in the browser. It is based on OpenGL and allows developers to create interactive 3D applications without having to install any plugins.

CONCLUSION

Web graphics are a great way to add visual interest and appeal to your website. With GraphicsJS, you can dive into the world of web graphics with ease and create beautiful visuals for your site. Whether you’re looking for simple shapes or more complex animations, GraphicsJS has everything you need to bring your website’s design to life. So get out there and explore the possibilities that web graphics have to offer—you won’t regret it!