#generally I don’t like giving the bats powers but once in a while it can bring me massive joy

[cricketsintheaudience]

one thing the rwby crossover did not give us is the reversal of the clark carrying bruce trend which greatly saddened me. so I did it myself!

(interested in art like this? comms are open!)

[gay-dorito-dust]

Hi! I recently watched the new Gladiator sequel and I’m so obsessed with the emperors, they’re absolute cuties<3 I was just wondering if you could write some headcanons maybe about being married to both of them, of course it’s fine if you don’t write about polygamy

Have a great day

My freaky gingers! Fred and Joseph did amazing as Caracalla and Geta in my opinion, my freaky little sadistic ginger emperors.

Being wanted by one sibling meant being desired by the other.

Geta and Caracalla shared everything, for nothing could ever belong to one of them as the other was bound to grow envious and want the same thing for himself.

So let’s say you were originally planned to marry just Geta or Caracalla, but the pair would abuse their power as emperors and demand that you were to marry both of them instead.

‘It’s the will of the gods after all.’ Geta would say.

‘And we wouldn’t want to displease them now would we?’ Caracalla would add with a cackle.

You had no say whatsoever but to agree to marry the brother emperors, which many didn’t bother to bat an eye of how curious a case this was, but again they too were under the belief that this was the will of the gods for the emperors to share a spouse for the betterment of their rule.

Both brothers thrive for your attention to be on them and they’d do anything to have it wherever and whenever they can, and all you could do was give them the attention that they so desire.

Hold them close to your chest, cradle them there and let them hear your heart and your breathing to smooth them in knowing that someone did love them, for being there for them as a safe haven from the frequent scheming of the senate and the betrayals and the constant needed to look over their shoulders to make sure no one was going to stab them in the back.

So being with you and held so closely like they deeply desired when before ascending the throne, made it all seem worth while if it meant being gifted the love that they so sought after in those they considered a close confidant within the senate, or just in general approval from the public they rule over.

Marriage life with Geta and Caracalla wasn’t easy, you didn’t expect it to in the slightest as you were constantly seen between the two emperors, draped in the finest of silks and jewellery they could find as to signal your beginning to them both, to show that you were on equal footing as your emperor husbands as your counsel was the one they often followed more often then not.

Does this mean they are rid of the concubines? Probably not and whether or not this was an issue for you is up for debate.

If it is then you’d naturally be questioning the loyalty of your emperor husbands in a fit of embarrassment and shame, not wanting to look a fool within your own marriage, especially not in front of the Roman public nor the senate that would try to whisper words of infidelity about Geta and Caracalla.

‘Am I not your spouse? You forced me into marriage with the two of you and yet you both still seek paid comfort.’ You’d spat as though it was venom in my mouth.

‘My love-‘

You’d glare at Geta who stopped short in his tracks as Caracalla watched you both with eerily silence.

‘If you are to seek paid comfort, then don’t expect none from me should you continue this route of self indulgence.’ You say before leaving the room, not once looking back as you returned to your shared chambers. Again you wouldn’t want to look a fool when your emperor husbands run to the arms of concubines, you were above it.

Let’s hypothetically say you have concubines yourself in retaliation, they’d unfortunately all be dead on the orders of Geta and Caracalla in a fit of rage.

Your marriage isn’t pretty nor romantic in the slightest, and I’m not trying to make it out to be like that, just only that your marriage to them both could be full of hypocrisy and jealousy and sometimes accusations of cheating would arise also as a result.

It’s a mess and wouldn’t get sorted unless your three are clear headed and clam enough to talk it out like healthy lovers should. And when it does get sorted, you all act as though everything that had come to this point of peace didn’t happen at all, as soon enough you were back to holding the emperor brothers again your chest as they slept.

Due to being their spouse you naturally had a target on your back, so it would be of no surprise that you were to be the intended victim for an assignation attempt by shadowy figures hiding their identities in the background.

Shadowy figures that wanted you dead as to kill any sort of morale the emperor brothers had by taken what’s theirs.

Let’s say you survive the attempt, make no mistake that your emperor husbands would be by your side immediately, anger and fury written as clear as day across their faces as they had you pressed between the two of them, they’d whispered hushed words into your ears about finding who did this to you and killing them publicly to show their intolerance to attempts on their spouse.

Your emperor husbands would make sure you were constantly guarded no matter what afterwards, killing those who didn’t do their duty and replacing them with new guards that would keep you safe when they were with the senate, or in the study.

They become insufferably clingy and overprotective afterwards that it felt suffocating to be in the same room with them being so close to you, it was overwhelming and they’d even have people test whenever or not your drink and or food was tampered with as extra precaution.

You understood their worries to an extent but if it’s been a good while since the attempt, then you find it unnecessary to continue such tight and overbearing conditions they had put in place. So it’s best to speak with them about that for paranoia had overtaken them both with the ideas that you’d be killed or taken even if they were to even dare blink.

Being married to Geta and Caracalla was chaos incarnate, discord and mayhem disguised in gold, jewellery and expensive silks and lavished lifestyles; a perfect facade to cover the true nature of their own unravelling beneath the mask they’ve made to get by as rulers of a powerful empire ever known.

[thatnonameuser]

I feel like a lot of yandere can use Lilia's bullying to their advantage if they find out. Like, "oh! That mean old bat from diasomnia? Psh, elementary spell. I can remove it for you, but you'll owe me." Especially the extremely smart ones like the OB boys.

Another note: Platonic Yan vs Platonic Yan! Teachers removing another darn curse placed by Lilia; like maybe Trein who's knowledgeable in history like Lilia is and old spells. Or Crewel who has rare ingredients in his part of the school greenhouse for that nasty ancient potion that Lilia snuck in your drink.

For what I’m about to say, take no offense. 

Insert mocking tone here….You think Lilia ‘General of the East’ Vanrouge would curse you if he knew it could be removed easily?! That’s funny. Mocking tone ceased.

Lilia really wouldn’t waste his and your time with an easily broken spell. Plus, because Lilia’s been around long before the teacher’s grandparent’s parents were born and that the fae have been doing the darling thing for a very long time before it was widespread in the human nations. A lot of the old ways have fallen out of practice with many of the spells, potions and curses being lost to time. Mostly because they were either banned or lost from records. But hey, there are a good few that have survived the test of time. 

Night Raven’s connection to the Great Seven allows for some of the best and strongest spells to have survived to the present day. And along with those spells come cures. Each dorm at NRC has a manuscript of spells, both to entrap and to cure, that are protected under lock and key by the dorm leaders. So depending on the dorm, one might have the knowledge to cure what ails you. But that’s not to say that comes without a price. 

Listen. While it pains them to watch you suffer, they all, cough Azul cough, know an opportunity when they see it. And it would be so helpful if you cooperate with them, and maybe give them something in return? Maybe something you originally said no to?

They might or might not know whoever your attacker was. Some of the ones from more ancient families, specifically Leona and Idia, might be able to recognise it and put two and two together, but once again powerful and ancient spells are hard to come by so others might not.

Either way, you’ll be suffering one moment and severely indebted the next. 

As for the teachers….. Same packaging, different purpose. 

The teachers have an arrangement to all protect you from the yanderes, even if you actually want to be with one of them. So if any one of them notices that you’ve been claimed, willingly or otherwise, they’re all stepping in. 

Crewel, Trein and Sam are especially helpful for this. Crewel teaches you how to avoid or notice them and provides the potion cures. Trein does the research to handle the really old ones and dispels them for you. And Sam, can get you any and every magic charm, repellant or tool that can free you or prevent any recastings. 

Don't go to them too often though, because if they start to think you're in capable of looking after yourself, you'll be isolated in a whole new way.

Also don’t think Lilia won’t wise up to whatever anyone’s plotting. He will find any and every way around it. A lil idea that came up while I was writing this is Lilia negotiating with the teachers to make them stop intervening in the claiming process. Like how often they’ll get to visit, will they be able to walk you down the aisle, et cetera.

[mikewheelerlikesboys]

Will Byers has to have powers.

TW: slight mention of SA and grooming, not graphic

This post is going to be a little scrambled, I have a hard time construing my thoughts especially when they’re sort of intricate and long ones so just bear with me.

Will has to have powers, because what other reason would Henry have to kidnap and possess him? Brenner stated that he doesn’t just kill, he consumes, or absorbs. Henry told El he was trying to absorb her powers in Season 3.

We know it was Henry who kidnapped Will and not a Demogorgon because of 2 things

Telekinesis was used to unlock the door, which Demogorgons do not have, nor do they need for this specific act as we’ve seen them bust doors down numerous times.

Will was still alive, Demogorgons are shown to try to kill anyone they come in contact with, immediately, unless being controlled by the hive mind. Will simply would not have been able to survive one alone at his age. It wasn’t luck that he lived so long, it was a plan. He was being kept alive.

So going off of that, what possible reason could Henry have to kidnap a young boy and essentially hold him hostage?

The implications of Henry being a predator and the underlying themes of SA involving him with Will and also El is a whole other thing to get into, I do believe he’s somewhat of a metaphor for SA, given the vines when Will was found and “I felt it everywhere” paired with the scene of the shadow Monster possessing being very violating and him essentially grooming El, but they obviously need a more basic explanation for these things that the general public will understand and be able to swallow more, which is why we have the supernatural plot.

The only logical explanation for him kidnapping Will, holding him hostage, and keeping him alive, is that he was trying to either absorb Wills powers, or keep Will there with him to “join him” like he wanted to do with El.

This obviously doesn’t work because everyone and their mom goes straight to bat for Will and pries him from Henry’s grasp, so then in season 2, he tries a new way of consuming Will, becoming Will. Taking over his mind.

My theory is that by doing this, he was again trying to absorb Wills powers, I’m not exactly sure how yet, but to me it seems to be the only logical explanation for the possession. Henry only started using Will as a spy, or spying back, after he got hurt and realized Will was spying on him first, otherwise I don’t think he would’ve allowed Will to give so much information to everyone and make the drawings of the vines. So the original reason for possession was not to spy.

Then we have Will losing his memory, this shows that Henry is consuming him, he’s consuming his memories in a way, making Will essentially just an empty shell or vessel. It’s unclear if Will remembers the events of when he was possessed, or even if he remembers Bob much afterward. I believe the incident is only brought up 1 time in season 3 (I could be wrong though, please let me know if I am) when Will is talking about how Joyce got it out of him and then El closed the gate. So it’s obvious he knows he was possessed, but it’s unclear whether he remembers the things that happened while he was possessed or not. He also never mentions Bob after his death, we see the drawing on the fridge, but Will never mentions him. We know that in the hospital he forgot who Bob was, so there’s a very real possibility that Henry completely consumed the memories Will had with Bob, causing him to still not remember much of him once the possession is over. This would further prove that Henry was trying to absorb things from Will.

If he can consume memories, through possession, why not powers? He has no reason to want Wills memories after all, that wouldn’t benefit him. But if Will has powers, that would.

It’s only after everyone saved Will AGAIN, that he moves back onto trying to take Els powers in season 3.

So yeah, essentially what I’m yapping about is that if Will doesn’t have powers, there would be no reason for Henry to target him at all, which we know he did from the very beginning and into and throughout season 2, so Will HAS to have some sort of special powers, there’s not really any question about it in my mind, just like Byler it’s the only logical way the story can go.

[razorblade180]

Martial Practice 3

Early in the morning, Yanqing, Yunli, and March 7th arrived onto the Starskiff and met in the ring because of an anonymous group message.

March:Anyone else think this is a suspicious? Don’t tell me some weirdo caught wind of our fight and is challenging us?

Yunli:March, everyone was unconscious or hiding by the time we faced Hoolay. Also, we faced Hoolay! I hope nobody is dumb enough to attack us after that.

Yanqing:Hmmm. *looks at number* I can’t explain it, but I feel like I should know this number. I don’t think it’s any Cloud Knight on the ship. Regardless, keep your eyes peeled for anything.

Suddenly, a powerful pillar of wind struck the arena. Dust whipped around ferociously and disbursed to reveal General Feixiao.

Feixiao:Greetings, young friends. I’m glad you all could come.

March:I…have a bad feeling about this.

Feixiao:Haha, relax. I know I made the message sound urgent, but in truth it’s more time sensitive than anything else.

Yunli:Don’t tell me there’s still a few wolves skulking about in the shadows!?

Yanqing:If so, what are our orders? We’ll help in any way.

Feixiao:Wow, still recovering and willing to go back into the fray. Admirable and brash. I can relate. Fortunately however, I didn’t call you here because of a crisis. Soon we’ll be parting ways. Before that, there’s something I wanted to properly check. That’s why I asked for you three. What I’m about to say can’t make it back to Lingsha.

Yunli:So it is a fight!!?

Feixiao:Precisely. Yanqing, Yunli, I want you both to come at me the best you can. As for March, please observe from the sidelines. Part of training is observing after all. Watch carefully.

March:Don’t have to tell me twice! *runs to the sidelines*

Yanqing and Yunli:….

Feixiao:Whenever you’re ready.

The young sword masters couldn’t believe they found themselves in the same situation again. No one was even fully healed yet! Still, a chance to learn from the Merlin’s Claw; now who would dare pass up such an opportunity.

Yunli was first to close the distance in a single leap, swinging down Old Mettle to meet the war ax that could tear clouds asunder. Blow after blow, metal echoed like thunder. Feixiao could only smile. It wasn’t often someone could actually engage her in a contest of brute strength, and Yunli was giving her just that!

Feixiao:Very nice!

Yunli:I’m just getting started!

Feixiao blocked a side swipe with the body of her ax then slid backwards in the same act for proper spacing, aiming to swing right up the middle. Right as she was ready to send Yunli flying, Feixiao’s eyes shifted to see the blue streak flying at her. She quickly abandoned her ax in favor of her blades, smirking all the while as she blocked Yanqing; Yunli backstabbed out of reach immediately but her next move was hidden by the boy’s assault.

Flying swords swarmed around like insects but the real threat remained in their wielder. Sparks flew like chaotic fireworks as Yanqing kept pace against each blade strike. Left, right, low thrust, high parry, the boy showed his talents beautifully once again.

Feixiao: (Better be careful Jing Yuan. I might have to steal your pride for my troops at this rate.)

Yanqing:(She’s not even struggling in the slightest!)

Feixiao forced Yanqing to jump after trying to sweep his legs. In that moment, he realized his mistake and blocked hastily as she spun around once for momentum and slammed both her blades against his. The strike sent the boy flying too fast for his swords to keep up. However, Yunli was much quicker.

Old Mettle was flying right at Feixiao while the girl was already airborne with her left arm stretched out. She broke nearly all of Yanqing’s momentum by tapping and pushing him up as he flew by. This was more than enough for him to recover midair and land only few feet behind Yunli while Feixiao rolled out of Old Mettle’s way. Yunli ran to retrieve it while Yanqing closed in on Feixiao, who was trying to close in on Yunli!

March watched with batted breath as Yanqing’s flying swords made a curtain between Yunli and Feixiao long enough for her to retrieve her blade and instantly swat away the General. Both her masters lowered their stance and went in to attack but Feixiao suddenly dropped her weapons and put her hands up.

Feixiao:Okay. That’s enough.

The young warriors came to a dead stop, taking a breath in confusion. It was over already? Not only that, but Feixiao’s smile was rather cheeky and one of relief.

Feixiao:The two of you have grown a bit. That makes me happy. I can leave without worry.

Yunli:What are you talking about!? I know we’re all injured but a short battle like this couldn’t have given much about our abilities.

Yanqing:I-I can go a little longer.

Feixiao:Hehe, no need. As expected though. It looks like the both of you haven’t realized it. The youth sure is frightening sometimes. March, did you gleam anything significant?

March:*beaming with joy* Absolutely! I hadn’t noticed with Hoolay but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was happening then too!

Yunli:Enough with the vagueness! What the heck are you talking about!?

March:Master Yanqing was way more aggressive than normal. He got up close when Master Yunli’s attack was completely blocked and didn’t stop. And instead of going back after that, she got distant and calmly waited for an opening to help him instead of going for a giant blow. It’s almost like-

Yunli:We switched…fighting styles…

Yanqing:I mean- that’s natural in a group fight. If you don’t work together then everything goes wrong.

Feixiao:You’re correct. Teamwork is crucial, especially against a stronger opponent. However, the choices you made weren’t simply two people who know the value of teamwork. The two of you were being mindful and considerate of one another. Yanqing, did you choose close quarters simply to match Yunli’s pace, or was your intent to gain my intention fully so she can escape my ax and catch her breath?

Yunli:!?

Yanqing:I-I…. you’re formidable and strong! *red* Yunli’s sword is heavier than your ax and takes time to swing. You don’t leave openings to recover, so…I made one for her.

Feixiao:A clever approach. Yunli! Did you hold back on immediately countering simply out of watching the spacial awareness between your blade and Yanqing, or was it something else? Something more important? Be honest now.

Yunli:..*red* I stayed back because… I was waiting to catch him.

Yanqing:Huh!?

Yunli:Don’t act shocked! You said it yourself, she’s formidable! Not only is she quick but strong. If you landed too hard or wrong, there’s no telling if you would get up quickly. I…I didn’t throw my sword because she was open. I threw it to make time to help your butt.

Feixiao:Teamwork amongst soldiers tends to start with staying out of each other’s way, and ends at creating clear openings. What you two were doing is much more than simple teamwork. Your attacks, you actions, down to the thought process, it put each others safety first and considered weaknesses that had to be covered. That’s not something achievable between people holding grudges.

March:Grudges? General, you were still thinking about their fight at the Alchemy Commission!!?

Feixiao:Haha, of course! It was quite the spectacle after all. I had no doubt in the face of a crisis like Hoolay, talented people like you would put aside such personal matters. To do it here though, after the danger has passed, now that’s truly something to cherish. At that risk of saying too much, I’ll make this part quick. From where I’m standing you two are now proper rivals and not comrades; instead you’re friends who care about each other mutually. Take joy in that. It’ll make you both stronger in more ways imaginable.

Both of them fell silent, utterly embarrassed by how their actions were made known. They didn’t even notice it themselves!! All they could do his bow for Feixiao’ s lesson. The Lacking General laughed as she ruffled their hair before taking her leave. March could sense the awkwardness building between the two as they kept quiet.

March:…*pulls out phone* Huh, look at that! Masters! I’m sorry but I have to go now! Looks like Caelus and Stelle got tangled up in more of Guinaifen’s performances! *runs off* let’s grab lunch later!

Yunli:Honestly, could she be any more obvious?

Yanqing:Hehe, right.*rolling shoulder*

Yunli:….Hold still.

She walked behind him and gently held his right shoulder. Feixiao really didn’t know how to hold back. That sparring match really was moments from a visit to Lingsha. Carefully, Yunli moved his shoulder up and back until…pop! Back in place like it should be.

Yanqing:Th-Thanks. That feels much better.

Yunli:Don’t mention it.

Yanqing:…*inhales* Yunli-

Yunli:Don’t. I’m not dumb and neither are you. *blushes* So let’s not say anything we don’t already know. Not when I have to leave in a few days anyways…

Yanqing:…Then let me say this instead. Yunli, would you like to grab some breakfast with me?

Yunli:Going for my stomach now? How sneaky of you. *smiles* I’ll take you up on that offer. If you’re buying that is.

Yanqing:Of course. Try not drain my savings too much.

Yunli:Please, you would just put it towards more swords to buy and not use. This is a much better use.

They both shared a chuckle before making their way towards the exit. Softly, Yanqing felt a tug on his right sleeve. Yunli had quietly took ownership of it with her thumb and pointer finger pinching the cuff as they walked. Yanqing looked at her to see she was completely avoiding looking back, choosing to look straight ahead with crimson blush burning her cheeks. Yanqing felt his only face get hot as he turned his head back around in silence. Feixiao’s words rung in their head.

“Friends who cared about each other mutually.”

Next they saw her, they’d have to thank her for sparring them a little dignity.

[biblioflyer]

Nosferatu (2024) takes its Occultism at least as seriously as it’s cinematography.

Exhuming the Spiritual Assumptions

Spoilers ahead (naturally)

One of my guilty pleasures is The Exorcist Files podcast. I don’t really buy into its extremely Catholic spiritual warfare worldview. I am at least a little bit skeptical about the veracity of the stories being recounted. I am both Scully and Mulder on the occult. I find it endlessly fascinating and am very much willing to engage with believers seriously and respectfully but try as I might to develop any sort of consistent religious or spiritual practice, in my core I just don’t exist in the demon haunted world. I believe there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy but it’s all so very ineffable to me instead of inerrant.

Right off the bat (or as Matt Berry would say: BAT!) that leads me to my first complication, caveat, and interpretation. Namely that the very heavily Catholic informed worldview of the Nosferatu setting may just be the framework that the characters are using to understand what is happening. This being a variation on The Dracula tale more or less played straight, the audience also would tend to bring that assumption with them. However! I think the role of Willem Dafoe’s character is to push back on the reflexive assumption that capital E Evil exists as a supernatural force therefore Christianity is empirically correct.

Nosferatu weaves around a couple of assumptions largely by neither proving nor disproving them. The trope of a Vampire being repelled by the cross for instance is never tested. The people living in proximity to Orlok’s castle clearly believe this but for all we know they are only situationally free of his power because he has no specific desire to hurt them. Same with hallowed ground. The priests and nuns believe Orlok cannot threaten them but is it beyond question that Orlok actually wants to finish off Thomas?

A couple of recurring themes in demonology are legalism and the need for witnesses. Orlok covets Ellen but his mind has become fixated on dissolving her marriage to Thomas and her willingly giving herself over to Orlok. For the most part the Abrahamic religions treat evil as something that must be chosen. A good many millennia of spilled ink, schisms, and even spilled blood has centered around the question of what it really means to choose and the definition of informed consent. For Orlok’s purposes Ellen seems not to have had sufficient agency to properly choose as a legal child in her society but he could court her until she came of age to be legally and metaphysically responsible for her choices. Alternately it’s possible age was irrelevant and he instead simply lacked the means to bring her to him or go to her until he established a connection with an occultist who had the resources to arrange everything.

Regardless, to some degree Ellen must have agency but Orlok can leverage her by threatening her loved ones including Thomas. Once he escaped the castle, Thomas was more useful as leverage alive and given the belief of the exorcists that Orlok still had influence over Thomas, Orlok may even have subtly pushed him to return home to make it easier for Orlok to locate Ellen if she continued to reject his overtures and collected herself enough to shut out Orlok as she had up until Thomas’ departure. Orlok certainly didn’t put a lot of effort into ensuring that Thomas was really dead and one interpretation of Thomas’s experiences with the exorcists is that Orlok would have been aware that Thomas was alive and could track him down in the material world if he really wanted to badly enough.

Evil’s Prime Directive: Likes, Shares, Subscribes

Which does bring me to witnesses. In Christian demonology specifically while Evil hates Creation generally and Humans in particular, destruction and ruin for its own sake is rarely a primary goal. So while Orlok as an alleged disciple of Belial in life and probable demon incarnated into a body (more on that later) desires to reap Ellen’s soul and brings along an army of plague rats for good measure, there is no point to any of this without survivors to bear witness.

Destroying isn’t enough though, the true objective is to get people to doubt the existence of a just and loving God. According to some like Father Martins of Exorcist Files fame, through a lot of hand waving the real real objective, as dictated by an all powerful God, is to use Evil to remind people that little sins lead to mortal sins and thus they should stay on the straight and narrow and remain under the protection of God.

This is where my inner Crowley would say “And you call me the bad guy!” while Aziraphale throws up his hands and says “It’s ineffable but it must be good, because God is good.” Which is how the formerly henotheistic Israelites and their descendants wind up quietly reintroducing dualism into their monotheism by retconning most of their God’s more wrathful deeds as having actually been the fault of a certain ex-prosecutor turned eldritch terrorist and his gang of personified concepts of wickedness and a few pagan gods who got laid off when their pantheons underwent consolidation and “right sizing.”

Ahem. Sorry. I’m being cheeky, I actually think it’s all very interesting and as a consequence I lose patience with people who don’t understand the history of their beliefs but not because I want to refute them but because how is it not fascinating?

So since Evil’s prime directive is to have someone acknowledge how cool and awesome it is, Orlok wouldn’t view Thomas as a loose end. If Orlok doesn’t need to kill Thomas, then Thomas would be in some sense an accidental missionary. While the Romani hunt vampires and try to warn unwary travelers, their apparent willingness to try to, if not mollify then bait, vampires is useful. Their belief in a supernatural evil and the specific customs they have developed to protect themselves also separate the Romani from more “sophisticated” people whose lack of direct contact with monsters and overt magic cultivates a sense of superiority over superstitious peasants. The maintenance of plausible deniability is also a practice attributed to Evil.

Up to this point I’ve tended to describe Orlok in largely stereotypical demonic terms. The reason being that Orlok presents very different in many respects from more traditional representations of Dracula and even the more bestial depictions of vampires. Orlok himself identifies as “an appetite” when Ellen questions whether he is even capable of love. You are free to read melancholy into this if it suits you to humanize Orlok. I myself view him as a being with very little humanity and is more of a set of base urges with the ability to develop somewhat sophisticated plans to serve those urges but there is little to nothing about him that is able to stray too far from his hungers.

There’s one other scene where I think you could argue Orlok shows a bit of humanity and it’s perversely when he’s being maximally petty. That being when he insists on being addressed as My Lord. As an alleged disciple of Belial, this has a metaphorical meaning and a literal meaning. Belial is an example of one of those concepts that got personified over time as subsequent generations translated the original texts and added their own flourishes. Originally Belial was a description. A slur even. It meant to be worthless. So Orlok in pledging himself to Belial has in some sense given himself a cosmic demotion when his earthly rank was count. Which he would have almost certainly thought was also a divine mantle.

Being a vampire seems like the sort of thing that might seem like a promotion but there’s a lot of suffering that comes with it. More so than the classic Stoker or Anne Rice version. For starters to the extent he is even still the same person, he’s Damned with a capital D and that is portrayed as sucking a lot in the Abrahamic framework. Just the knowledge that they can never be in Heaven or in the presence of God is supposed to be a torment but that tends to get deemphasized because it’s not as relatable a motive for wanting to ruin the world when the audience is flesh and blood and maybe asks uncomfortable questions about global floods and why have a fruit bearing tree if you don’t want people to snack.

So let’s remember why Vampirism sucks in other ways:

There’s an argument to be had about whether he’s a damned ghost haunting his body that hungers for blood as a condition of his continued existence: the feasting upon blood and his other comorbidities being the burdens he must accept for extended life. Life beyond death in an embodied state for humans being a fundamentally unnatural state and thus requiring sacrifice to maintain the equilibrium of nature. So he makes periodic blood sacrifices and in doing so, is alienated from society still further as if being a literal corpse that cannot abide the sun was insufficient.

My own feeling is that the glimpses of Orlok the person may just be the semi petrified remains of the memories in that body, a body being used by an avatar of the Deadly Sin of Gluttony. The vacated body of a former disciple of Belial being a compromised vessel but one that allows more exercise of power over the natural world by virtue of being so alienated from the natural world and obligated by its hungers and nature to confine its activities to a fairly limited range: it can do almost anything it wants towards spreading terror and ruin but can’t take a night off to enjoy a play.

This entity likely being a demon and not being capable of appreciating art or beauty for its own sake. Orlok or the entity wearing his bones didn’t fall in with the wrong crowd and vaguely saunter downward. Traditionally Abrahamic demonology doesn’t allow for demons who are merely just kind of bratty and ask too many questions, blurry lines between good and evil tend to invite a return to henotheism or, gasp, polytheism. A thing other Christians have been accusing those who pray to Saints of for centuries. This is not me implying Catholics are polytheistic mind you, I don’t have any stake in delegitimizing Catholicism and even if I did, treating polytheism as a slur wouldn’t be the hill I’d die on.

A Chronicle of a Dim World but Not Necessarily Pure Darkness

I did say though that I think Christianity was possibly not empirically correct in Nosferatu but rather the framework that everyone involved was interpreting things through. Everyone except Von Franz. Okay I’m just going to refer to him as Willem Dafoe from this point on because he’s such a Willem Dafoe character. He doesn’t automatically assume Ellen is crazy nor does he blame her for anything. His comment about how she could have been a priestess of Isis in another age I think is very revealing about where he draws his ethical lines. I think it’s implicit that he doesn’t think it’s Ellen’s fault a malevolent presence latched onto her when she seemed to have a natural gift for walking the spirit realm in dreams but absent any tutelage or cultural context for managing this ability.

By the Christian paradigm, Ellen has messed up big time and probably irredeemably. Traditionally it’s not good to have dissolved your marriage and pledged yourself to a demonic being whom you then perform a pseudo sex act with. The Abrahamic religions, as traditionally practiced, aren’t very sex positive when it comes to women nor is there much of a concept of spectrums of consent and coercion invalidating sexual and spiritual relations. Traditionally practiced is a phrase doing a lot of work and oversimplifying a lot when it comes to thousands of years and billions of practitioners. Norms obviously varied quite a lot across eras and regions.

Dafoe taking up her cat and staring into the dawn though is rich in hopeful symbolism. Cats got a bit of a bad rep in certain periods due to their tendency to be looked upon fondly by pagans. On the other hand, they were often looked upon fondly by pagans. They’re often portrayed as wise and associated with magic. Plus, and this matters in the context of a plague spread by rats, they eat vermin. If the bodies are piling up, stray cats are on the side of the angels doing their part for humanity one meal at a time.

Given how much Ellen adored her cat, one could say perhaps it’s invested with a measure of spiritual power and is more than just a symbolic surrogate for Ellen. Regardless, I think the context points to Ellen’s sacrifice being both literal and metaphysical. She sacrificed her life and also nullified her sins too. So Van Hellsing, I mean Von Franz may be visually representing a spiritual intercession where Ellen has been snatched away from the Pit.

To get a little Gnostic, Willem Dafoe may be basking in the light of knowledge. He’s seen behind the veil, made testable assumptions, and proven them. Ellen is being taken up to Heaven, Orlok is back in Hell, and Hermes Trismegistus is proud of his star pupil. Although this is truly Ellen’s tale and Ellen’s victory while Willem Dafoe believed in her and kept the well intentioned white knights from getting everyone killed by interfering with an unorthodox solution they’d no doubt object to on the basis that it was super icky. Although in their defense, I consider myself a pretty enlightened 21st century man but I’d probably try to talk my partner out of it and be a bit of a pest if she told me we needed to get divorced so she could shag a demon to death to save not just my life but the lives of untold thousands.

In the finest tradition of horror heroines, Ellen was a hard woman making hard choices and in sacrificing herself she took a groomer demon of pestilence and hunger with her.

And maybe, just maybe I’ve over complicated all of this and it’s just a metaphor for how bad women have it with online dating where the astral plane is the apps and Orlok is a creepy dude who becomes obsessed after an underage girl is nice to him once.

Epilogue: Again, with all due respect to the character, this would have been my humble suggestion for a hidden bonus track on the soundtrack.

[wfagamerants]

Super Mario Wonder has been out for over a week now and I have beaten it 100% not long after release, so may as well discuss it, shall we?

Spoiler warnings in full effect, since I like to be able to discuss basically everything I’d like, just to clear that up right off the bat.

SMW is the first, for the lack of a better term, normal 2D Mario in over a decade at this point, so naturally, everyone was looking forward to seeing what they’d do next, especially with the step away from the NSMB series, which was really needed by that point.

The NSMB games are also by necessity, the main games to compare Wonder to, given for how long they have been the most recent incarnation of 2D Mario. On that note, this is not meant to be a hit piece on those games. All of them are fine and I am particularly fond of DS and Wii, however they did have problems and it’s hard to think of an area where Wonder isn’t just an unambiguous improvement.

Those improvements already begin in a rather surprising spot: the story.

2D Mario is actually a fair bit more varied in it’s set-ups than it can appear at first, Prior to NSMB it was really just SMB1 and Lost Levels that went with the Bowser kidnaps Peach plot, without much else surrounding it. SMB3 starts as a journey to turn the 7 kings back to normal, with Bowser only kidnapping Peach near the end as a last resort and World, while sticking largely to the base, takes place in a completely new setting. That’s not even going into SMB2 or the Land games, which are all breaks from what we see as the Mario norm in some way. New kingdoms, new characters, new villains and bosses, new a lot of things really.

Wonder in that regard really feels like a return to that. A whole new kingdom once more, with a new companion and NPC species and while Bowser is the big bad, he doesn’t engage in any royalty kidnapping and instead goes after a new power source, which transforms him and he stays that way all the way until defeated. It’s simple, as is typical for Mario, but it is a lot more refreshing than the very samey NSMB plots, which took until U to really add a twist to it and even then failed to do all that much with it, particularly with a level theme as neat as Peach’s Castle taken over by Bowser.

What surprised me even more was how every world had a bit of its own story going on, with the Poplins giving you an idea of what kind of trouble Jr and Bowser’s actions in general, were causing them. A particular stand-out for me was World 3, which doesn’t even have a boss and is instead treated as a series of trials, to obtain a Royal Seed that Bowser hasn’t gotten his hands on.

As with the main story, it never goes especially deep, but it goes a long way to make the Flower Kingdom feel like an actual world, in stark contrast to the Mushroom Kingdom of NSMB games, which was very much just a videogame world for function as a videogame world, doing it’s job and not much more.

The visuals have also seen a refreshing shake-up. Granted, even NSMBU got better about it by U, but even compared to that, I find the visual design of the Flower Kingdom locales to be substantially more appealing, not to mention imaginative. Fungi Mines in particular is full of designs I am a fan of and even a new level theme with its ruins, which isn’t the only time the game diverts and goes for something totally new.

In general, while the game holds true to most of the typical level themes, the aesthetics are so varied that they don’t even really feel that way. This is something you feel as early as World 1, while it functionally serves as the Grassland of the day, it rarely feels that way because the visuals change up enough to not make it feel like a static world theme. It also helps that the order has been changed a bit. You wouldn’t imagine how refreshing it is to not have the Desert be the second world.

The biggest visual highlight of the stages for me were the airship levels, genuinely cool and climactic, in a way that made me pause and just go ‘’woah’’ and I can’t say I feel that way a lot in 2D Mario, but this game brought that out several times.

Of course, the big show stealers are the characters themselves and yeah, everything people say is true. They look great, every animation is filled with personality and detail and there is even some nice stylization, like the sideways mouths for Mario, Luigi and the Toads, which help bring the models in line with the current style of 2D Mario.

Everyone and their grandparents has already made comparisons to the NSMB games and that’s because it is ultimately true. If anything this is one of the best things to point to where these games have different mindsets.

NSMB treated the models more like sprites than anything, going for something functional, with very little flavor, while Wonder is determined to fill its animations with as much charm as possible. Even little things like the characters striking poses when collecting a power-up or reacting to mooks about to get out of their shells, goes a long way in bringing those characters alive, instead of treating them like game pieces that carry out their function and that’s it.

In terms of music it has some stand-outs and the rest is at worst, easy on the ears, about what I expect and everything fits the mood of the stage well, no complaints.

More pressingly in terms of audio is that this is the first time we are hearing the new voices for several characters, most notably Mario. Luigi and Daisy and overall I think they all do a wonderful job, I’m already used to all of them.

It’s also just refreshing to have a set of fresh new voice clips this thoroughly across the board. Mario has never been a stranger to reused voice clips even early on, but by the Wii U era it became even more noticeable than usual and in past years, genuinely a bit distracting, so I am happy Wonder does not fall victim to that.

And then we got the gameplay, of course the most important factor of all and where I have plenty more to gush about.

A notable thing about Wonder is that it has some 3D Mario veterans on the team and to be honest, it shows.

There are some more overt inspirations, such as Petal Isles essentially serving as the hub world of the game, a Shadow Mario type wonder effect or being able to find (Captain) Toad on the overworld in exchange for rewards, as has been his role in the 3D games since 3D Land.

Even taking that aside though, while the game is fundamentally still 2D Mario as we all know it, many of its ideas and gimmicks can sometimes feel more like missions in a 3D Mario game, which I very much mean as a compliment. This is further underlined by stuff like the Wiggler Races, timed enemy gauntlets, Badge Challenges or Search Party sections. In general, there is a surprising variety to the kind of things you get tasked with, which is refreshing.

The characters control quite similarly to the NSMB games, even including nuances like Ground Pound canceling and because of it, control like a dream. The only major difference being that you can crouch walk and that the triple jump is gone. The latter was something I expected to miss, but the levels are designed in a way that never made me feel that way.

While almost everyone plays the same, badges do help bring in variety to make up for it. I stuck with Parachute for just being that fun and useful for me, but I did mess around with a couple and am eager to experiment with it and also play more with the expert badges. I can easily see a ton of replayability options completely new to the series, through them.

It does bring me to my first little gripe, which is the Yoshis being stuck to being designated Easy Mode options. I totally get wanting a full set of 4 for multiplayer, but a simple toggle would have been appreciated. Yoshi does play differently and is still fun, but I’d like a way to play him as a more normal character. Same moveset, but without Easy Mode-like benefits.

What I said about levels being more visually diverse also applies to the level elements. Sometimes it’s small things like the fountain springs in the very first level, but even beyond that the game is so full of new enemies and ideas that it feels a lot like SMB3, in terms of bringing in distinct level concepts one after another. It is miles above NSMB which granted, had plenty stand-out stages too across the series, but also a lot that felt samey, especially as the series went on and some gimmicks were repeated.

The power-ups also hold their own well. Elephant even once you get the initial whut factor out of the way is fun and really the star of certain sections, Drill has some really cool applications and the Bubble Flower is easily my favorite of them all. I love a power-up that has both offensive and platforming uses and this one, especially combined with badges, allows for some really fun stuff.

The Wonder effects are of course the star of the show and a contributor to every level feeling so distinct. The amount of different ideas they came up with and how well they all work, is truly astounding and it’s remarkable how few of them repeat. The balloon or rolling ball Wonder Effects would have been recurring gimmicks in other games, but here, you do them once and twice respectively and move on. 

All this combined makes for a remarkably fresh feeling 2D Mario, which was desperately needed and did a lot to elevate the game to something exciting and genuinely addicting.

The bosses are…a bit more of a mixed bag. I like that not every world has one and that does help with the risk of repetition, because aside from the final boss it’s all Bowser Jr. They could be worse, the Wonder effects do help a little, but it’s still full of the same kind of repetitive boss design the Koopalings get flack for, especially the spinning shell bits. They are serviceable, but that’s it and the airship bosses I don’t even count, they are fancy flagpoles.

The final boss though, I actually liked a lot, Bowser’s general state in this game was always going to make it stand out, but more than anything, it isn’t a rehash, it isn’t over in barely any time and it’s not another Bowser over the bridge. It’s new, it lasts long enough to feel satisfying, it feels right in difficulty, it’s just shockingly good.

Speaking of difficulty, that is a thing I heard a lot about when the game got into the hands of people early and to be honest….I don’t really see the supposed difficulty. It does want you to pay attention and that is good, but on the whole I find the game to be pretty breezy. Even the Special World and designated final reward level, were really not that tough. Not that that’s a bad thing though, it is a joyride kind of easy and not the braindead kind.

Haven’t really dabbled into the online or multiplayer, but do plan on that with a friend, so that’s gonna be fun to discover for my second run.

On the whole yeah, I love Wonder, major shocker. It really is a promising next step for 2D Mario, not being afraid to be wacky, full of character, legit fresh and exciting, a true evolution of the formular.

It’s not flawless, but it is an absolute joy and really, any platformer that lets me play as Toadette gets major brownie points out of the gate.

It’s Mario, Mario in his strongest form and I couldn’t be happier.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Disney’s Hades

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

So you’re trying to make a family friendly version of the Greek myth of Hercules for some ungodly reason. Right off the bat, you run into the problem of how he was conceived (Zeus can’t keep his dick in his pants) and that his arch-enemy is his dad’s wife and she’s constantly trying to murder him. None of that is gonna fly, so who can we have be the bad guy in this story?

How about Hades? Everyone hates him, after all.

Hades, lord of the dead and deal maker extraordinaire, is one of the freshest and funniest villains of the Disney Renaissance. He’s not quite the epic dramatic powerhouse that some of the other villains are, but once you see him in action, you are never gonna forget him.

Motivation/Goals: Hades is a guy who gets no respect among the other gods, and so to this end he decides to follow a prophecy that will allow him to free the Titans and wage war on Olympus. Despite being in Greek mythology and people like Oedipus and Theseus being household names in the film, Hades does not seem to detect the danger in following a prophecy that will inevitably lead to his downfall due to his hubris. Of course, if he was a little more self-aware we wouldn’t have a film, and that would be horrible.

To help stop the one thing that would ruin his plans (Hercules), Hades sends all manner of mythological monsters after Hercules, from his bumbling demon sidekicks to cameos from other myths to a rapist centaur. Of course, all of this just leads into the self-fulfilling nature of the prophecy. The movie may take a lot of liberties with Greek mythology, but the spirit is there with how Hades speeds up his own fate by trying to avoid the prophecy given to him in a manner similar to King Acrisius from the myth of Perseus. His motivations may be simply lusting for power, but it honestly suits the setting very well, because this sort of blind ambition is pretty common in Greek mythology, and it always leads to a fitting end.

Performance: According to James Woods, he was the only guy who didn’t audition with a generic deep, menacing voice. According to legend, he walked in tipsy and dropped “Name's Hades, Lord of the Dead. Hi, how ya doin'?" Whatever the truth is, the world is a better place for this more comedic, sleazy used car salesman take on Hades that really makes him stand out among other mythological villains even to this day. I think it definitely helps that Woods is evil in real life, so playing the Greek version of the devil just came naturally to him.

Final Fate: Much like the Greek hero Bellerophon, Hades tried to claim Olympus as his own but did not realize it was not his place, and so much like the Chimera-slaying hero was sent packing. He tries one last time to get a win on Hercules by taking Meg’s soul and trying to get Herc to sacrifice himself for her, but Phil’s boy ascends to godhood and not only caves in his face, but tosses him into the pool of spirits, who proceed to drag him down into the depths while Pain and Panic look on with glee. Don’t worry, though; he chimes in after the credits to let you know he’s okay.

Best Scene: I think the scene where he confronts Meg in the garden and the scene where he finally meets Hercules and gets him to give up his powers are both contenders, as both really highlight what a conniving, scheming bastard he is. The former scene gets bonus points for showing how utterly creepy, manipulative, and abusive he is towards Meg, and the latter gets props for ramping up that scummy used car salesman charm that makes Hades so delightful.

Final Thoughts & Score: Hades is not the very best villain of the Disney Renaissance, but he’s damn close.

Everything about him just sticks in your mind: His fun and creative design, James Woods’s fantastic performance, his slimy personality, his explosive outbursts… Maybe he’s not a dramatic powerhouse like Frollo or a brilliant takedown of toxic mindsets like Gaston, but he’s fun, and really, that’s what Hercules is all about: Fun. It’s a colorful, exciting, and heartfelt Superman-in-Ancient-Greece story, and a story like that needs a villain like Hades to bring it together.

What really makes Hades stand out among the crowd is how Woods is always down to play the blue bastard, no matter what. Animated series? Woods is there. Every Kingdom Hearts game? Woods is there, and you get to kick his ass. House of Mouse? You know that Woods is doing that. One could argue that maybe Disney should stop letting him come back and perhaps replace him with (as Schafrillas suggested) Bob Odenkirk, but you’ve gotta admire how committed he is to the role and how he’s always down to reprise it, even if he is a nasty, creepy douchebag. It’s one of those rare instances where the villain is more charming and charismatic than the actor.

What’s really great is that, while he’s relatively simple in terms of what his goals are, it manages to be pretty accurate to the sort of thing you’d see in a Greek myth (as I’ve already stated). People love to rag on how this movie takes so many liberties with mythology, up to and including making the traditionally stern but good Hades into a villain, but it’s all in the service of the story. And even still, the core themes and lessons of Greek myths are baked into this tale, despite it deviating from the stories.

Hades is an easy 10/10. He might just be the funniest Disney villain ever, stealing the show and being effortlessly funny in ways few other Disney villains are. Aside from Iago, he might actually be the most hilarious antagonist Disney ever created in the 90s. And the fact he’s managed to stay consistently great and funny while keeping the same VA across multiple forms of media? It’s nothing short of astounding. There have been a lot of evil or antagonistic Hades since, such as the one from Kid Icarus: Uprising and the one from the game Hades, but as good as they are they are all standing in the shadow of this goofy, conniving bastard.

[kindheart525]

The royal couple was on vacation!

That was what it felt like, anyway. They might as well have been. There was royal business for Heavenly Glow to attend to in the hippogriff kingdom but it was mostly an informal visit; there was plenty of time for leisure. For once in her life she was going to take it.

Sahar was absolutely enamored by the kingdom all the way from Harmonizing Heights to the beaches of Seaquestria. The salty sea air almost made her think of her fillyhood, when her parents would take her on the occasional trip to the sea. Then again, she was finding little bits of home in everything these days.

“Heavenly, look! A seashell, very beautiful!”

The Saddle Arabian mare frolicked through the sand, pointing out every little thing she saw like a filly at a carnival.

“Ooh! Inside is a crab!”

She gasped in awe, leaning down to marvel over her discovery.

“Don’t get too close, it will pinch you.”

Heavenly reminded her, generally unfazed by the sights around her. What mystified her the most was not the seashells or the hermit crabs but how alive Sahar looked, she was so beautiful when she was in her element like this.

“More beautiful things are in the water, I think! Fish and more creatures! Hippogriffs jump in water and become seaponies, they see everything. Very lucky they are.”

Then Sahar thought of something.

“You too are hippogriff? You can become seapony?”

“Yes I can.”

Heavenly nodded with a touch of pride.

“You are correct, there is much to see down there. So much you can hardly keep track of it all. All it takes to go is just a shard of the magic pearl. Mine is inside here,”

She brought a hoof up to the pendant hanging from her neck.

“Even ponies can go to Seaquestria, as long as they have a shard or know somegriff who does. It’s quite fascinating.”

“Somegriff I do know! You help me go to Seaquestria! All beautiful things I want to see!”

Sahar lit up as she practically begged Heavenly for the opportunity. While the hippogriff mare would have shot her down not long ago, she somehow couldn’t bring herself to say no this time.

There was nothing else to do anyway.

“Fine. But we must be out in time for dinner; my family is expecting us for an intimate gathering.”

Sahar rolled her eyes, Heavenly was always a stickler for schedules. But she was too excited to care much as she galloped into the water beside her. 

“Are you ready?”

Heavenly asked as she took Sahar’s hoof in hers.

Upon a gleeful nod from Sahar, the two mares were enveloped in a flash of magic as their back hooves were transformed into fins. 

Once they dove under the sea, Sahar was absolutely amazed at what she saw. 

“Wow! It is beautiful, Heavenly! Very lovely is the water, very blue!”

She swam around a bit, getting a feel for her new fins. 

“This is what flying feels like? To fly like the pegasus?”

“In a way, yes!”

Her wife’s excitement was rubbing off on Heavenly as her chest swelled with joy, a feeling she didn’t experience all that often. Not in this way. It was different than the power she felt while giving sermons, it was a different kind of divine feeling. Like freedom.

“On your back, it’s a fish!”

Heavenly felt something brush up against her wings as she turned around to see what Sahar was pointing out. 

Just as she spotted it, the tiny little fish blew up several times its size.

“Oh!”

Heavenly gasped in surprise, caught so off-guard that it took her a split second to react.

But something about the way that fish swelled up so rapidly was the funniest thing she had ever seen.

“Haha! Oh goodness!”

The seapony mare began to chortle, a joyful feeling she couldn’t describe building inside her.

This was the first time Sahar had ever seen her laugh!

“It’s like a little balloon! Look, it doesn’t even know what to do!”

She batted it lightly towards her wife who wore a mischievous grin of her own.

“Yes! It is like the sports ball!”

The two mares passed the fish around a couple times, practically rolling with laughter with each pass until they finally decided to let it go.

But their fun didn’t stop there.

For hours Heavenly Glow and Sahar explored the depths of Seaquestria, laughing and marveling at all the life that teemed within. Nothing else mattered but this moment, this was the most fun either of them had in ages. And they were thrilled to spend it with each other.

Sahar was the first to notice when it was getting dark.

“We are late for dinner? With your family?”

Normally Heavenly would have been angry at Sahar for distracting her; she would have leapt out of the sea and rushed to dinner in embarrassment. Just a few hours ago she was fussing over timeliness. But right now, in her state of euphoria, she felt something different.

She didn’t care at all.

“Eh! They will live.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Previous: Too Close Next: Lesbi-Antics

[lightyakami]

15 and 18 for the weird writers ask?

hello and thank you!! sorry, this took me longer than i'd intended!

15. do you write in the margins of your books? dog-ear your pages? read in the bath? why or why not? do you judge people who do these things? can we still be friends?

i love to write in books!! i always keep a highlighter and pen on hand when i’m reading. it makes the experience of reading much more tactile & it feels like you’re in conversation with the book. i don’t generally dog-ear pages, but i don’t care if other people do. the only thing i’m a bit neurotic about is breaking the spines of books because it causes damage over time. i’d much rather dog-ear a page than lay the book flat. 

18. choose a passage from your writing. tell me about the backstory of this moment. how you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. spicy addition: questioner provides the passage. 

oh this is such a fun question, thank you! i am going to pick this one from bargaining power:

“[Near]was thirteen, then. He was young and everything he knew about the world had come from the few years with his mother, which he has cut out with a scalpel and forgotten as best he can, and from the impenetrable walls of the Wammy House.

When he finally draws Light into the cold and the dark of the warehouse, he is eighteen.

He’s older. He’s different. He’s seen more things. His life is still quite constrained but he’s been through three different airports and watched the clouds from above. He’s drunk a glass of pink champagne with Anthony and Stephan and Halle and laughed at the texture of bubbles on his tongue. Once he’d sat at the edge of a beach in the dark with the black water lapping at his legs and his hands buried deep in the sand and he’d thought of nothing except the night dragging him deep into itself and he had known quite viscerally that he was owned by the earth and that he owned it in turn. The seasons have passed and he has been carried through them, sloughing off the old parts of himself and gathering new pieces.”

bargaining power was originally just the first half, which is about near being furious that L is abandoning his duties by being in love with light, but i felt that it presented an overly harsh image of near. i personally see him as being a really angry and somewhat cold person, but not a heartless one. for example: he definitely enjoys batting light around a bit while they play their cat-and-mouse games, but when light is actually dying there’s absolutely none of that. he just answers light’s questions very calmly while everyone else is (understandably!) content to let him writhe around disoriented and terrified — imo there’s a certain degree of compassion in the straightforwardness of that. so!! i pulled this out of the ao3 editor and wrote the second half, where he grows a little older and a little softer. something which fascinates me about near & which i wanted to draw upon is that he’s approximately the same age light was when the series started. in a lot of ways, they’re really similar people — very idealistic, very black-and-white in their thinking. in a lot of ways, death note is really a deconstruction of coming-of-age stories, and i think one of the great tragedies of death note is that light never really grows up. he spends his whole life from 17 onwards in a series of hotel rooms and then locked up in his own apartment, forming no meaningful connections even with the people he’s closest too, acquiring no new experiences whatsoever. i wanted to contrast that by giving near a different life. (and the suggestion that he won’t live the same way light does, in the future.) light closes himself off from the world, and near gets to allow the world inside of him. more very specific details: pink champagne was the first alcoholic beverage i ever had so i’ve always had a particular fondness for it. also i absolutely love beaches at night! i used to live next to one and found it genuinely kind of terrifying because you absolutely could not see where the sky met the water or the water met the ground — it was just this pure black space. but it was the sort of terror you wanted to be part of. anyway! that’s how near and light feel about getting older. the difference is light runs from it and near wants to join it. so that’s the little metaphor in this story. 

[zorkaya-moved]

“ this path you’re on… it’s gonna get you killed. you know that, though; don’t you? “ - gojo uvu (can be post or pre-relationship.. hehe)

@pyreign

Who is he to tell her this when he continues to push his humanity away and who lets humanity step before him? Who is he to tell her any of this? Who is he to read her like this and tell her such facts that she doesn’t speak about with many other people. Naturally, she knows her current path leads to death. Zarina is mortal, she is human, she is a sorcerer. Sorcerers die early; she doubts many of them live to the days of old. What about her? Her fate was sealed the moment she was witnessed by those of her family. The curse running through the Sokolov family was cruel and terrifying, marking either twins or just the daughter of every second generation. She was unlucky, but her brother’s line will be even more so. That’s why she cannot complain. 

Victor’s words of encouragement continue to echo in her mind, begging her to never let that deity of death take control and to never give up on her human life. If she will let go of this path, the ennui will swallow her whole, and it will be the end of her childhood promise. Hedonism becomes the only way, overindulgence, and sin. For such pristine appearance, she bathes in the darkness beneath the moonlight every night. Well, not as much since Gojo started to come over and remain here. He was getting too close, but it felt nice to be… known, understood, and seen. Even if it was someone who was rather obnoxious yet so distant from humanity altogether. He is so human, he can feel stronger than anyone and yet he is so distant from this humanity. She is so monstrous, she cannot feel as strong as he does and yet she is the closest to understanding human nature and how to remain a human through both cruel and wonderful means. 

“Naturally,” she admits to him without batting an eyelash. If anything, she lies back to how she was on the couch, her legs over his lap since he refused to move, and it was her house. They aren’t together, they aren’t dating, and they aren’t yet approaching that soft spot that will make her see him as the new light to live for. Right now, she has her hands bent behind her head while looking up at the ceiling. A thoughtful hum comes out as if they were not discussing a morbid topic. Who was now acting silly when speaking of dark moments? “However, this is the only path where I am in full control.”

He might laugh at this, she thinks. And yet, she continues to talk. Be it to herself or be it to him. She doesn’t think he’ll fully understand, but being so distanced for your own power could be understood. Even a little bit. Being close to someone who understood even a percent of what she’d gone through was better than nothing. He will also learn what type of person he calls his ally. There is no need to keep big secrets away from him. After all, if she loses control… he could kill her, erase her, and protect her family without knowing it. It was a fair exchange for being the only person who would have the ability to do it. It almost made her smile.  

“Do I know my decisions lead me to death? Of course. I am no fool, but if I stop now, I will lose the control I’ve reclaimed for myself,” she continues, thinking of that soul-eating boredom and that apathy induced by the curse’s presence. Zarina would glance at Gojo then, giving him a light smirk. “We live once, don’t we? Unlike you, I cannot experience… such strong emotions towards other people, and yet, I long for warmth,” now she looks up back at the ceiling, losing that smile. “For intimacy, connectivity. What I’m doing right now won’t bring me what I want the most, but this is better than being locked away. My grandmother lived like that for thirty years; there’s no way I’ll be locked away like some rabid dog that will suffer until another one is born to bear the curse and free them.”

A dark chuckle follows, and she brings her hand from under her head, looking over her nails. Sokolova isn’t asking for pity; she is speaking of what happened in her family. It may be dark and cruel, but she doesn’t care. She understands where they’re coming. Morana’s whispers didn’t work on her as long as she was in control. 

“If I die by indulging in what keeps me closer to humanity, then I sure will continue it. My family can move on without me and…” Suddenly, Sokolova pauses while placing her hand down on her stomach. A light frown on her face returns, lips pressed together. It’s strange; she isn’t usually this talkative about these things or even experiences such emotions. Is it because she trusts Satoru enough to be so casual and open with him? It must be it, or else she wouldn’t have answered honestly to his words. 

“...You do the same thing, don’t you? Push a side of yourself to the extreme and make it an exaggeration to hide away the deeper wishes. I’m the same, we’re not that different, but we are different in the reason ‘why’ we do it. Perhaps, I yearn for someone to stay with me so I don’t have to walk this path. But right now? This is the only way to retain my humanity and remember what ‘warmth’ feels like. As twisted as it is, it’s better than nothing,” on that note, she sits up, moving her legs off his lap to stand on the cold floor. Her pretty golden pedicure matches her golden manicure. Golden gaze then switches back to look at Gojo as she gives him another small smirk, but it lacks sharpness and shows more appreciation. 

“That’s why I don’t mind if you only come here for fun, for sex, for just a casual evening because your apartment might feel so alone. Your company is a new source of warmth to me, and I appreciate you bringing some change. I wonder if interacting with you will change my path or if you'll leave just like others do upon learning more about me.” Then, she gets up to get drinks and snacks for a movie night. She canceled her date when Satoru came over, which meant she’ll bring out those snacks that she found out he liked and her healthy snacks like baby carrots and cherry tomatoes. “So, if I die while walking on this path? So be it. Or are you asking because... You don't want me gone from your life too soon?” A glance over her shoulder, a hidden smile in her words. "Don't worry, I'm not planning on dying soon. I'm one stubborn bitch to ever walk the Earth. Death doesn't want to invite me to dinner ever."

[cozycottagetarot]

First Impressions Reading

Notes--

Hey, it's been a while!

I've been MIA for practically a year due to work, poor health, and school. Thankfully, I've recovered from the aftermath of working that job, I'm still figuring out my health, but my studies are almost officially over leaving me with time to get back into tarot reading once again (yay!).

I've kind of changed up my reading style so if you're familiar with my old readings I'd love to know what you think of this style vs my old style. I don't think it's that different, but who knows.

Anyways, I think that's all the housekeeping for today. The usual disclaimer is at the bottom, enjoy your reading!

Pile One

Hi Pile One! So just an fyi, I feel like what I’m picking up on in this reading is multiple first impressions? I know that doesn’t sound like it makes any sense. But your reading I feel picks up a lot on your person’s past at first and then a romantic/companionship first impression later? Like a friends-to-lovers kind of thing.

Right off the bat I feel like your first impression of your future spouse is startling. As I’m shuffling the cards are jumping out, I’m get startled, I’m trembling. But it’s not necessarily in a bad way. Looking at the cards, the ‘vibes’ are complex. The cards flip over but stay hidden in the deck. Oddly enough, it’s not the cards with negative connotations, but positive ones. Like your person hides the better parts of them… maybe in the name of vulnerability.

When you meet you can sense they're healing from something upon first impressions. Your person may have walked away from a lifestyle that many would desire or some kind of association with wealth that was actually killing them from the inside out. From your first one-on-one interaction, you can tell that the wild inside them that’s had to escape and survive gets triggered easily. It may show up in their work or their self-talk. You can see they’re trying to fight their inner battles, but they may need a friend to help them do so.

You may meet them at the end of a significant period of healing for them when they have to face the heavy stuff of their past. You may feel like their perspective of life, be it all of it or one aspect, isn’t very fair. I don’t want to say they have a pessimistic view of life in general, but maybe their life in particular. To you, one bad thing happening doesn’t mean the end of the world but for them it does. Initially, you might not think they care to hear what anyone has to say but that is untrue. They might simply be off in their own world as most of the people on the cards are looking down or turned away, yet their cards symbolise openness and communication. For some of you, your person may just be shy and it’s easy to pick up on in your first meeting.

When the time comes to show interest in a romantic/companionship relationship, they might approach the subject gently. They’d want to be your knight in shining armour (as in they want to take care of you even though you can handle it yourself), but they recognize that as much as they’ve made progress, they still have some healing to do. Once they’ve gone through the darker stuff, they have a much lighter energy to them. You can see it in their appearance, habits, speech and general demeanour. You may notice that they are more spiritual (by your own personal definition). For some you may drift apart briefly (a couple months) and when you reconnect you gather that they’ve become dedicated to growing and nourishing their peace. You may also pick up on a wisdom that they’ve gained from their healing journey.

Pile Two

Pile two, I am loving you person’s energy! This person is calm, cool and collected. They’re not one to tell out all their secrets and they are 100% in their power. There are a lot of hands in the cards as well as imagery of fencing to enclose something. Your person may quickly and easily give off vibes of being guarded as people may chase after them and what they offer.

Your person gives off vibes of being hardworking and they definitely are. However, you can tell they work so hard one of the first thoughts to cross your mind will probably have something to do with “they’re gonna burn out if they don’t relax”. Them burning out isn’t something that happens often tough and when they do, they hide it well. People, yourself included, may wonder how this person can juggle so many things at once so well. They’re resilient and indulge in their many tasks in moderation, even when it means pissing someone off. They know their limits and that’s something that will be evident to you when you meet.

Communication seems to be a big factor in how they make an impression. For pile one *spoilers* it appeared that one of the ways they get their impression from their person was based on what their person was saying. For you, it’s how they say it. Your person has excellent communication skills and has prominent leadership vibes. They may work in a position that requires them to lead multiple groups or teams, or at the very least, you can see they have the qualities of a good leader.

First impressions for you most likely show this person is well off, and honestly a bit of a person of desire. They don’t pay people much mind though. You can tell if you want their attention you have to show you’re genuine. People either want them in a romantic sense or for the material things they have to offer. For some of you, they may work in finance as a manager for company accounts.

Some way somehow, you may be able to tell they’re crafty… in a clever sense and/or as in literal crafts. They’re creative but in a practical sense. This person is the type of person who gathers ideas from EVERYTHING and can make an inconvenience work for them. You may also gather that they’re someone always looking for a way to improve themself.

From the first conversation(s) with them you can tell they think about their legacy and what kind of impact they want to leave behind.

Pile Three

Your first impression of your future spouse is less about them specifically and more about the general feeling.

I think for many of you, this person might come into your life when you’re least expecting it. They feel fated… You’ve got the Wheel of Fortune so it’s like meeting this person was going to happen regardless. They most likely will feel like the start of a new beginning. It’s not a prominent feeling, but you will be able to recognise that something inside you shifts.

Your person is someone who upon first meeting changes your perspective. For some, they may spark the desire to improve in some format. They may be older and/or wiser, but you can tell it came from hard work and hard life experiences. Yet there’s a gentleness to them, as though all the things they may have endured only made them softer. They may seem too good to be true. You or they may be going through a transition in life. An unbecoming, I hear. Some of you might need to make a decision and this person helps influence it.

Your feelings/impression of this person— You can tell this person is respected. They’re level-headed and a good communicator. They’re someone you can connect with on many levels instantly.

I feel like there’s not much to say about this person. It’s kind of a 'when you know, you know' type of situation. Meeting them is like an exploration of yourself as well as them. Generous and gentle, they may do a lot of volunteer work. There’s a homeliness to them and an unspoken strength. They’re someone you can lean on.

I know I’ve said it already but the energy of this person feeling like & being a fated new beginning comes through very strong.

They could also signify a fiery romance, adventure and passion. The energy they exude resembles letting loose and not caring what someone thinks. They may influence you in this way, inspire you to be authentically you. From the first meet, they’re a leap of faith.

No specific thing comes to mind because last minute I got the lovers. Just a heartwarming feeling for you all about this person.

Also, they’re physically attractive, not just by your standards though. Most people would see them and agree they’re pleasant to look at. (Someone tell me if that’s how they interpret physical attraction as well lol).

Pile Four

*Minor Language

Okay so meeting in a kitchen or the medical area immediately jump out at me. Of course, that’s not the only scenario in which you could meet but it definitely comes through the strongest. For some of you, this is someone you know and have been trying to outrun for a lack of a better word. You may think you’re polar opposites but I don’t think you are. Taurus energy comes through strong, so they may have strong Taurus placements. You and your person may be similar. But there’s definitely that vibe of ‘oh great, you again.’ kind of enemies to lovers.

Brief story time to help you paint the picture. The 'polar opposites but not really' remind me of my sisters. Both of them are a Taurus. They always clashed when they were younger. Sister A would complain about Sister B as if she didn’t do the same exact thing Sister A was pissing her off with. It was equal parts annoying and amusing. However, now that they’ve kind of ‘separated’ and both reshaped themselves in new environments, they’re closer than ever… but they’ll never admit it willingly. If you’re still with me, hopefully, this will help make the rest of the reading make more sense.

So I had to redo your reading because I couldn’t interpret the cards clearly the first time around. However, I was definitely picking up on the whole enemies or at the very least ‘mutual nuisances’ to lovers first time around. I had also picked up that this could be an LGBTQ+ relationship for a few of you.

You most likely have a prior impression of this person or you two just don’t click upon meeting. The first scenario comes through strongest so that’s the one I’m reading, but of course, interpret as you would like. In the situation where you meet again, you may be frustrated with them initially, but you two have to come to peace, most likely for a business endeavour or something career-related it seems.

I see you keeping your eye on them though. They seem trustworthy but you know what they were like in the past. If it’s a completely new person, you can pick up that they may be a bit of an ass. You might be very in your head about them after your ceasefire and at some point have to take a step back and assess yourself. Some of you might know this person from as far back as childhood. You might notice this person has actually grown a lot and come to the realisation that you have to hold them to a new standard.

Some of you, you may be jaded towards this person because they broke your heart. You may be exes or there may have been a third-party situation where they chose something else over you. It could be a person that was the third party, but it feels like it was you or an opportunity and they picked the opportunity over you. Maybe the same opportunity leads to them coming back to you better.

Your new forming impression of them seems to be one of reluctant admiration. Whatever successes you see them with now, they’ve worked hard to earn and you can see it. It’s in their work ethic the effort they make in how they carry themself. You’ll notice how intuitive this person is and/or how fast they think on their feet. They’re mentally agile and can handle what is thrown at them quickly and with ease. They could be very creative and adaptable or they may inspire creativity in you.

Disclaimer: All readings and tarot/blog games are for fun and entertainment purposes only. It is in no way meant to act as or replace professional advice of any kind. You know yourself and what’s going on in your life best so I ask that you trust yourself above all else. Finally please take only what resonates from the reading which may be some of it, all of it, or none at all.

[m1d-45]

I'm not sure if reqs are open, buy if you, can you please do something like this, but the reader is a teen? (15/16?) (Just like me irl lmao) (sorry if reqs are closed and for my blindness) ._."<3

still too young

a/n: straight up had no idea what to do for this one, so heres a vague assortment of headcanons about it. thank you for your request, and yes, they’re open!

word count: ~1.5k

-> warnings: spoilers for inazuma and the first sumeru archon quests, spoilers for albedo and razor lore, uhh people are unnecessarily rude to you, they kinda don’t see you as a person due to the nature of this situation—not all of them, but a major chunk. they’re simultaneously very obsessive and very lax. bad format.

-> lowercase intended!

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3

< masterlist >

right off the bat, things are going to be a lot different even as they’re very similar. when your main—who will be referred to as the favored for simplicity—finds you in the field, they still behave the same. theyre still going to be convinced that you’re the key to their god’s forgiveness, and though they’re surprised at your age, they don’t miss a beat. you’re too old to be so easily convinced, but you’re still too young to be wise enough to say no.

you’re tucked in the corner, a hilichurl’s club held tight in your shaking grip.

for the sake of this, we’ll say that you’ve been intentionally avoiding them, unwilling to taint your opinion of them. now youre cornered, and you doubt that teyvat can knit the bushes behind you tight enough to delay them. you don’t want to fight them, you don’t, but their weapon was still on display, shining in the early morning light as their shoulders heave with exertion.

they follow your eyes and dismiss it, carefully approaching you. the blessing of their god is lesser this time, but still powerful enough that they’re on the right track.

“hello,” they say, and introduce themselves. it’s useless, considering you know them already, but it’s not as if they know that.

when they prod for your name, you don’t answer, not even to give a fake one, and they frown. you do seem scared.. maybe they should try this from a different angle?

“i’m not here to hurt you,” they whisper, taking another step closer. “i promise.”

you’re too tired to think of resisting.

sumeru

• starting with this one first: no way in hell the akademiya is taking you seriously once it registers

• not a chance.

• the sages are welcoming(ish) at first, willing to allow this version of their savior—for who else could save them from their ‘god’s wrath?—to be… like this, but that must be because you want to better influence the young, right? you want to be relatable? this, all this is because you want to better be able to understand and talk to the newest generation, right?

• they’re like a corporation on twitter. that’s the nicest way to put it

• once they realize, through one mean or another, that no, you’re just young, this isn’t an alteration to your form, you’re being dismissed. you’re not their god, they don’t have to pay attention to you. they don’t have to pay attention to your odd sense of humor and whatever ‘based’ means in your eternally complex context. all they have to do is make you happy and keep you safe.

• (you’re not. to either.)

• to the sages of the akademiya, you’re a means to an end.

• if, by chance, you’re a tighnari / collei main, you’re a lot better off! they’re kinder, protective to a fault. you quickly become commonplace in gandharva ville, and integrate a lot easier. they’re probably two of the few to register you as the actual creator, but that’s mostly because theyre the ones who patch you up most often. it might take a while, but stick it out.

liyue

• more people who will laugh at you </3

• ningguang is the leader of liyue in every way that matters, and i just… i can’t see her taking a teenager seriously. you could lay out a 3-page, mla formatted—not that she’d recognize it—essay with cited sources, but she’d dismiss it all under the grounds of a minor grammatical error in line 4 of paragraph 5. oh, and it’s below the required word count for a report submitted to the qixing, so jot that down. you could use the words.

• in her mind, you’re just another task. something else to take care of, one that admittedly takes priority since you’re from their god, but still. she feeds you, makes sure you have clean clothes and aren’t sick, she keeps you safe, but it’s all hollow. keqing doesn’t care for you all that much—her creator’s on thin ice anyway—and though ganyu is kind, she can’t do much outside of bringing you a bundle of qingxin whenever you’re down(always). to the liyue qixing, you’re an assignment. one they can’t fail.

• if you’re a childe main, i’m sorry.

• if you’re a xiangling main, you have a chance at normality. she’s pretty strange but will be unlikely to turn you in or be harsh about it.

• if you’re a hu tao main, you also have a chance, just do your best to convince her not to bring you to zhongli. please.

• if you’re a zhongli main i’m sorry.

• can’t believe i almost forgot xiao, but i don’t feel i need to say much on the topic except for asking what color you want your shackles to be /hj

inazuma

• WOOO BOY

• R.I.P. to you, you had a nice run, good luck ever being able to leave the tenshukaku. the second the shogun sees you, it’s game over. to her, the people and environment are too inconsistent, too changing, too dangerous for somebody of your caliber. she’ll insist with iron eyes and a steel hand that you’re to stay there, where they can keep you safe. to her, the creator was the ultimate symbol of eternity—after all, what else is constant but creation? what else is certain besides the fact that new life will flourish, live, then die again?

• i’ll be one of the first to insist that ei =/= the raiden shogun, but it still stands that ei was still the one to give the shogun her commands. when she said to enforce eternity, her word was law, and when she says to keep you from leaving, she still carries that weight to her voice. what she says goes, and she says that you are to stay there.

• if you’re a kamisato main, rip.

• similarly, sorry to all the thoma mains.

• kazuha’s technically from inazuma so i’ll put him here: you have the best chance with him alone. the crux seem kind, but beidou is.. close with ningguang.

• if you’re a heizou main… play your cards right.

mondstat

• honestly? your best chance at living an okay life.

• they’re a nation of freedom! that isn’t to say they won’t vehemently press against you leaving the city—or springvale, if you’re smart about it—but you will have the most freedoms. they keep you from the kitchen and training grounds, but if you’re really interested then kaeya and jean might set up a very, very child-proof mock training set up for you. lisa also has a giant library, so guess what hobby you have now. sucrose and albedo may or may not let you watch—from a very safe distance with 10ft of protective barriers—and it’s a toss up as to whether diluc would even let you leave the manor, let alone mondstat.

• albedo mains are royally screwed. like you have a negative percent chance of ending up okay in this certain hyper-specific au. either he’ll keep you for evaluation and minor experimentation, or he’ll find out some way to keep you in the city / monitor your location. as a master(?) of khemia, he has a heavy interest in the creator. if you’re his chance to understanding it, them, and himself better, you are not leaving.

• quick fire: lisa mains have no chance, jean + noelle mains have an okay shot, and amber mains have a ~32% chance, diluc and kaeya mains are on the thinnest of ice. if you’re a diona main i have several questions but the only important one is who do you think she’ll turn you in to?

• if you’re a razor main 1) i love you keep up god’s work 2) you have one of the best chances! he’s not really involved with many people, just pray that lisa doesn’t find out about you. same goes for bennett, though he may be suspicious after a while and turn you in(his bad luck fades when you’re around sorry i make the rules)

• if you’re a venti main…. uh.

[honeysunai]

Hostess| Kyoya Ootori x reader

Part five - Sun and thunder

Pairing : Kyoya Ootori x reader

General rating : Fluff, enemies to love vibes

Word count : 4k

Summary: As only heir to your family you are bound to an arranged marriage with the third son of the powerful house Ootori. His cold behavior is only a mask for you to uncover when you stumble into music room number three.

Warning: Mention of blood and some bad volleyball description.

This other vacation day is an absolute bliss! No alligators, no chlorine filling your lungs, only the beautiful sun and a hot breeze. On the downside… Kyoya made sure that you had to share your vacations with your guests. This is why you’re in your most revealing bikini you had, you had to entertain your guest in some way and you still had to prove that you could be a better host than Kyoya.

You and Taishiro, one of your newest guests, were playing volleyball against Renge and another boy. Your team was clearly winning because of your past in this sport, five years of volleyball! You weren’t the best, but you were certainly a really good player.

Renge passed the ball over the net and you threw yourself to send it back, but failed miserably. You dropped onto the sand and Taishiro rushed over to you. You had to play your part.

“I’m sorry Taishiro, I missed this one.” You sniffed and he grabbed your hands in his. “No worries y/n! You did so great and it’s only one point, we can make it!” He smiled and so did you. You wrapped your arms around him. “Thank you Taishiro! You’re such a great guy! Isn’t he, ladies?” You turned your head to meet with a crowd of girls fawning over the two of you. Taishiro wanted to be more desirable to the female gaze, so this is the part you’re playing. He is a sweet guy, really, you don’t understand why he would need your help to get girls. He just needed a little boost of confidence, you thought.

You played your role so well that even Kyoya was looking at you– staring at you. The cold death stare as you let your guest help you back on your feet. He gives a feather light kiss to your knuckle without breaking eye contact and you blush. I wink at him as his cue to go see his new groupies and he does just that. They welcome him with sweet words and you laugh on the inside.

That stupid plan did in fact work.

But now, you’re missing a player. You looked around to find a replacement and all of your friends were busy, but your male guests were free. “Hi boys! Can one of you be a darling and play with me?” You wave at them, batting your eyelashes. One of the few boys stood up and dashed to you. “Thank you Asahi, you’re so sweet to play with me.” “It’s my pleasure!” He smiles with all his teeth. Asahi was tall and had long luscious dark brown hair. You’d say he was your type, you like tall pretty boys. “Are you any good at volleyball y/n?” He asks while putting his hair in a bun. “I was captain of my team when I was younger. What about you?” “I wasn’t captain, but I was the ace of my team.” He smirks proudly. “I just hope I can keep up with you, my darling ace.” You wink at him and his entire face becomes red. “I’m taking a break ladies, great match.” Renge’s partner smiles before leaving at once, now we’re back at missing a player all of the sudden. “I’ll replace him.” The deep voice you recognize all too well is heard from behind you and as Kyoya walks past you, he makes sure he bumps into you. Where was he when you needed a teammate?

The referee waits until both teams are ready. Kyoya was your opponent, he was in front of you and he was tall. You’d have to find a way to get through him to win. His gaze on you was intense, cold and determined.

“They can start!” Asahi shouts at the referee. “We’re going to win anyways.” He says to you in a low voice and you smirk. You will win.

For some reason, Renge became great at volleyball in an instant and caught you off guard when she served perfectly between you and Asahi. She was strong and fast… She too, played the game of the helpless girl to get the guy’s attention. Well played Renge, she even fooled you.

The referee’s whistle echoes and the point is theirs. You look over to Asahi and nod, this won’t happen again.

Renge serves again and you stay focused on her face, where she will dare to look. She makes eye contact with you and smirks. Direct hit on you! The ball hits your chest hard and you gasp when it hits you.

“Chance ball, Asahi!” You grunt and he doesn’t let a second be wasted to send it the other way as hard as Renge did, harder even towards Kyoya. He sends it to his teammates and she sends it back to him higher. Another direct hit towards Asahi, this time, and he sends it to you with ease. You smash it right in front of Kyoya and he falls onto his knees trying to retrieve the ball, but fails as it rebounds on the sand.

“Can’t keep up, clownfish?” You laugh.

“I can do this all day, goblin shark.” He spat and your blood boiled inside of you. He stands up and calls over Renge to talk about a quick strategy.

Asahi serves and you smirk as you see Renge struggling to focus on his next move. Asahi is unpredictable and that is to your advantage. The ball is up and when Renge figures the move of your teammate, it’s too late. Kyoya was on his toes and reacted before she could send it up in the air so she had enough time to send it back to your side of the court. It was all in slow motion just like in movies, Kyoya’s eyes met yours and your heart skipped a beat. It was the tension his gaze exudes towards you, the thrill of the competition. The playful smirk upin his face told you that he was enjoying this too. For the first time, he looked like a normal boy of your age and you found him so beautiful. It’s unfortunate he wasn’t like this at all times. But no matter what, you won’t lose to him, ever.

This intense exchange goes on forever until you have had enough and hit it right next to Kyoya’s head. The whistle blows and it’s your point. He doesn’t move and for a second you think you might’ve traumatized the poor guy. But he laughs, truly laughs.

“You’re trying to kill me?” Kyoya says while trying to keep his composure and you laugh too. You looked like two idiots, but you didn’t care, it was the first time you were laughing with Kyoya. You wanted to cherish that moment a little while longer. 

“You’re in my way.” You finally say and he snorts as if he was saying ‘yeah right’. Asahi gives you a high five and Kyoya’s jaw tense and his smile leaves his face once again.

The scores are equal and you won’t let yourself be beaten by Kyoya’s arrogance. You’re growing tired and your body doesn’t want to keep up with what you have in mind. Your opponents can see that and they are playing at their advantage by making you run everywhere. Kyoya hits the volleyball right in front of you, almost out of reach, but you drop in the sand to hit the ball back to Asahi who spikes it directly behind Renge hitting the line made in the sand. Kyoya walks over to you with a smirks on his stupidly handsome face. You were fuming. He crouches next to you still on his side of the field and laughs.

“Don’t be a sore loser, y/n” The whistle is blown and you look over to the referee– it’s in! That's your point!

“Can’t be a sore loser if I’m winning.” You smirked at your turn and stood up to tower Kyoya. “Great job Asahi!” You shout never leaving Kyoya’s gaze. By his expression, he wanted to wipe that evil smirk stained on your face.

After your sweet victory, you were looking at the sunset with some of your female guests. You were all sitting on a towel you’d put down to enjoy the view. They were nice girls and talked to you about the boys they had a crush on and you listened to them. You’d listen carefully to what they were looking for in a partner and you’d slide in the conversation offering advice. After all, even if they weren’t your friends, you’d still have to be there for them as you are their host. 

“Look at what we have here, one girl for each of us.” A deep masculine voice is heard behind you and your head snapped to see who it was. It wasn’t anyone from your school that you’d seen around, they were local boys and the way they were slowly approaching you meant only trouble. 

“Leave us alone, this is a private beach and you’re not one of our guests.” You warn the boys who are still  approaching you and your female guests. “I will gladly call the security and they won’t be as nice as I am if you do not leave.” You stood up and put yourself in front of the girls. One of them grabbed your arm and quickly let go of it.

“She said leave them alone!” Haruhi’s voice is heard and it gives time to the girls to leave the rock you were now stuck on. The small brunette had an urchin in her hands ready to throw it. 

“Is that your security?” One of them mocks. He grabs onto Haruhi’s shirt and drags her to the edge of the cliff. 

“Come on! Stop messing with him.” You tried to yank the guy off of Haruhi, but instead he drops her in the ocean. You loudly gasp before running to the edge ready to jump after her.

“Haruhi!” Tamaki’s scream is heard as he dashes in the water after your friend before you could.

“Looks like it’s only the four of us now.” One of the boys grabs you by your waist and pulls you closer to him. Without thinking your elbow moves and hits him in the groin, hard. It gives you enough time to get away. You can see some security coming up the rock you were on and you felt relieved that the girls alerted someone of our group to call them. Your feet hit a small crevice and you fall down the rest of the way. It was a short fall, but nonetheless it hurts. 

“Y/n!” Honey’s high pitched voice echoes in your ears and you see Kyoya dashing towards you before you can even see the small blonde. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, cupping your cheeks in his hands and you nod. “Are you hurt?”

“I might have scratched my foot and knees.” You grunt.

“And elbows.” Honey pants. You look at your arms and blood is dripping down them. You guessed your fall was more severe than you thought. 

“I’ll bring her to the infirmary.” Mori simply says and picks you up as if you weigh nothing.  

“Tamaki’s in the water with Haruhi! Go look for them please.” You begged your friends.

They all ran towards the water as you and Mori left for the infirmary of the beach resort. You saw blood dripping down his chest going downwards and you were afraid it might stain his swim shorts.

“I’ll ask my mother to make you a new pair of swim shorts, I bet you won’t want to go back swimming in them.” You tried your best to apologize and to squirm out of his grip so he wouldn't be covered in blood.

“Don’t worry about it.” He speaks holding you tighter to his chest and you blush silently as he man handles you.

You finally found the infirmary and he sat you down on the office table. The nurse is probably on break because there’s no one in this room and the tall man starts to look inside the drawers to get some rubbing alcohol and bandages.

He kneels in front of you and starts with your feet. He grazed the damaged skin with a cotton ball dipped in the rubbing alcohol. His touch is so gentle and yet you hold on to his shoulder to hold a hiss. He looks up and you can see that he’s worried he might’ve hurt you.

“I’m fine. It’s not everyday I get injured.” You joked and he lightly smiled. He does the same for your knees and your elbows before wrapping every single one of your injuries with swift and gentle movements. “Thanks Mori.” You smile at him and so does he. You kept silent when he was doing his ‘work’, but now you wanted to know. “Why did you volunteer to carry me here and to patch my wounds yourself?”

“You’re my friend. I have to take care of you, just like you would with me.” He softly speaks as he finishes to wrap up your elbow. Your heart melts, he was too sweet to you and deep inside your mind you wished a certain someone would be a little like Mori. 

“You’re a bit too heavy for me to carry around.” He chuckles at your joke. “But thank you again, for the help.” It was that simple with him, no argument, no teasing… Just plain simple, you liked that. 

“Anytime.” He stood up and towers over you even when you’re sitting on the nurse’s counter. His gaze never left yours and you couldn’t look away from him. “It’s a shame.” He speaks and he’s surprised that these words came out of his own mouth. 

“What is?” Your voice is only a whisper.

“That Kyoya can’t admit to himself that you’re pretty.” 

“You think I’m pretty?” Your surprise with his words.

“You are.” He softly smiles.

“Wait– What do you mean about Kyoya?” Oh my god– Does he know?

“He should tell you that you’re pretty. You’re engaged.” He says it as if it was nothing. You were shocked.

“You knew?” He nods. “How?” You were frantic, but never raised your voice. 

“Mitsukuni and I looked you up before you came into our club. Since you didn’t mention it, it wasn’t our place to do so.” You forgot how powerful their families are! Why didn’t you think about it before?!

“I guess it makes sense.” You hide your face in your hands.

“Are you unhappy with Kyoya?” He asks and you bring yourself to look him in his eyes. 

“No– yes? I don’t know.” You scoff and he pats your shoulder. “He’s infuriating most of the time and gets on my nerves, but sometimes, he’s kind and he cares. He made it clear that our relationship will only be for business, no feelings attached.” You explain.

“But what do you want?”

“Love, plain and boring love.” You laugh. “Just like my parents.” 

“You’ll find it, your old boring love.” He snorts.

“So will you Mori.” You smile.

Dinner was… something.

You sat next to Tamaki and you could smell the smoke coming from the blonde’s perfect ears. You guessed something had happened between him and his protégé. Because during this entire time Haruhi has been eating lobster like she hasn’t eaten in days while ignoring Tamaki who was scolding her. Haruhi was having none of it.

“If I wasn’t there to do something, y/n and the other girls would’ve been in so much more trouble!”

“You were being careless!”

“Now’s the time I excuse myself.” Kyoya pushes back his fancy chair and exits the room rather quickly.

“Can we enjoy a dinner together without yelling, please?” You practically begged the two idiots yelling at one another. They weren’t listening to you, it seems none of your other friends were listening to you as well. Honey quickly gave you a shrug that meant ‘at least you tried’ before ravaging his plate with more lobster. 

“I hate you!” As soon as the words leave the girl's mouth, Tamaki goes silent and turns back to face his plate. He is pale as if he saw a ghost. Haruhi storms out the dining room and you were hoping that her beloved prince would try to catch up to her, but he stayed silent as she ran away. Oh Tamaki…

The other’s finished their meal and went somewhere in the manor while you stayed with oh so silent Tamaki Suho.

“You don’t have to stay with me.” He is sulking, again, and it makes you sad. Tamaki is supposed to be the cheering type of guy who always puts a smile on people’s faces. It didn’t sit right with you to just leave him alone.

“I think you might need a friend for a ‘talk’ or a hug. Both are at your disposal.” You tried to make a joke, but failed miserably as no familiar smile crept on his lips. “What happened with Haruihi?”

“I told her that going after those boys was reckless and that she wasn’t thinking when she tried to be the hero. She’s too fragile! I don’t want anything to happen to her.” He almost raised his voice out of anger, but kept quiet.

“Haruhi is a lot tougher than you want to admit yourself.” You start and he sighs. “I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to be angry, you do. But she did save our guests' life, god knows what these boys would’ve done.”

“What about you?” He simply says finally looking you in your eyes. “You were left alone with them.”

“I gave the guy a hit he will not forget I think.” You chuckle. “I’m no fighter, Tamaki, but I’m not weak. I would do anything in my power to protect my friends or anyone in need. Haruhi did that to try and save me too.” You add. “It was reckless, but you have to understand that she wouldn’t have stayed there and done nothing. She’s stubborn and reckless, but that’s our Haruhi.”

“She could’ve tried to find me beforehand.”

“Tamaki… You’re trying to act like a father figure to her– hell you call yourself her daddy! But she already has a dad and she needs a friend. You’re acting like someone you think you have to be to get close to her, but you’re not bad when you’re yourself, Tamaki. I think you’re a great guy and I think Haruhi would love that guy too.” 

“But she said she hates me.”

“I would’ve said that to you too if you were yelling at me while I’m eating.” You snort and so does he. There he is. “I think you should apologize to her or at least talk about it without yelling.” His soft smile indicates that he understands what you're saying and you gently pat him on the back. 

“You mean that? Do you think I’m a great guy?” The purple tint in his eyes felt like it regained joy and you were proud of yourself to be able to cheer him up.

“The day I tell you otherwise is the day pigs will have wings.” He chuckles.

“Thank you.” You give him a quick nudge on his side. 

“Walk me to my room? A certain someone’s room is next to mine.” He nods and you both exited the dining room.

You keep rambling on about the lobster and how great it tasted, but realize that he stopped following you. You look back and he’s in complete shock in front of Kyoya’s open bedroom door. You rush towards him to see what’s got him so confused. You were perplexed as to why your fiancé and Haruhi were sitting next to each other on his bed. Kyoya wasn’t wearing a shirt… The tension between the four of you felt tense. Haruhi, as she meets your gaze, blushes looking away quickly shyly. It wasn’t like her to be like this. Did he tell her? Did they do something they shouldn’t have done?

“Are you all right?” Tamaki asks Haruhi, walking closer to her.

“I’m f—” Kyoya starts. 

“He was speaking to Haruhi.” Your words were sharper than a knife. Thunder raged outside as if you’d made it appear with your feelings. How dare he judge you for a televised kiss? But he’s half naked with Haruhi. The rage that you exude from your body was a clear warning for Kyoya to not speak until you ask him to. Tamaki shivers from this side of you and yells at Kyoya how he is not being a gentleman with his girl. Kyoya’s shocked gaze never left yours as he was being scolded by Tamaki. Your jaw clenched as tears welled up your eyes. You were so angry! Angry that Kyoya can’t keep it in his pants. Angry that he wanted Haruhi over his own fiancé. Angry that he lied and broke his promise to you! You turned around and rushed to your room hoping Kyoya would not come after you.

“Y/n–”Kyoya grabs your wrist to spin you around, but you yank off your arm from his grip. He was so fast and so stealthy you didn’t even hear him follow you.

“Don’t touch me!” The tears in your eyes finally slipped. “You’re an absolute asshole! You judged me for kissing Kaoru in a film, but you were probably going to do far worse with Haruhi. You asked for faithfulness and you can’t keep your word. I hate you Kyoya! I hate—” Your face hit his warm, strong chest while one of his hands is gently stroking the back of your head and the other one around your waist, holding you so close and so tight to him.

“Please don’t cry.” He whispers while tilting his head so his cheek wasn’t resting on your head anymore, it was his lips. “Don’t cry because of me, I didn’t  break my promise to you y/n.” The soft skin of his lips made your entire being burn. Was it his heartbeat or your own who was pounding in your ears? “I was changing and she thought it was her room. We just talked about how reckless she was being today.”

“It sounds ridiculous.” You scoff. 

“I know…” He sighs. “I swear on Tamaki’s head I didn’t do anything or tried anything.”

“You don’t like Tamaki very much.” A soft giggle escapes your lips as you sniff.

“I do in a very special way, but I swear it on yours then.” He chuckles.

“You don’t like me Kyoya.” You roll your eyes.

“More than you make yourself believe.” He whispers. You try to look up, but Kyoya only holds you tighter as if he was ashamed of what he had just said to you. What did he mean by that? Does he want to try? He probably said it to tease you again or to make you stop crying like a baby.

“You don’t have to pretend to care, Kyoya. No one is watching us.” Disgust was shown on your face, but your fiancé couldn’t see it.

“I know.” He keeps stroking your hair as if he was the one who needed it now. He needed comfort just as much as you did. You finally tighten your grip on him and melt into his body as if it was made for you.

After a while you both let go of each other and bid the other one good night and walked to your respective rooms. You finally rested your head on the silk pillowcase, but couldn’t manage to be a little bit tired. After your intense day, week even, you couldn’t even find sleep. You could only think about that stupid dinner date with your in-laws and what happened to day. What happened with Kyoya… The intimacy you shared with him. You needed to talk to him.

You pulled out your phone and tossed and turned in your bed trying to find the courage to call or text him, until your text tone went off. You quickly check your phone and your heart skipped a beat.

“Do you want to go walk around the estate?” - Kyoya

— 𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐬

✧ @gay-noble @vanicogh @hopeless-romanticnamed-s @idktbhloley @p1nkliquor @hellokittykuroo @batboob @kisskissshutmydoor @lemonrolls @hoku-killer @sunukissed @jessiegerl @lunalily19 @i7zha @asrainterstellar @arimoony24 @simp-lythebest @fan-g0rl​ @randobeetlehouse​​ @glomp-me @yeeyeebabe @maackiimoo @kaelysian @noendingtolove @luminaaz @thewendyslogo @eri0-0 @arielbillyboy16 @aangsupremacy​ @yuriklol​ @lillunna @lostsomewhereinthegarden @chocorenchin  @sukcama @bratb1tch @topmeyelena

[connorqtie]

guess whos back, back again, connor’s back, with some head(canons)

Anyways MORE HARBOR HCS ill do a mix of general and fluff here! suggestive one is gonna be next post!

as always, gn with no specific body type and race, sorry if this is short!

(unrelated but MY GOD pinterest tumblr dividers r so pretty)

a/n: in the background of the latest harbor official art, there are cricket bats in the background, so yeah he either used to play or still plays

Assorted fluff & general hcs:

- likes singing, especially when it’s for you. whether indie or a different song genre, he’ll be happy to sing a tune for you whenever.

- we know he’s an artifact hunter so he’s definitely going to share to you all the stuff he knows about a certain area when you guys go out to different places. please let him talk about them he has always wanted to spew out all this info to the person he loves dearly (aka you).

- he has ocean water powers so he definitely has a love for the sea & the ocean, speaking of which i believe he’s pretty good at beach volleyball.

- if you guys have seen the most recent harbor official art, he canonically watches competitive cricket. gives me a slight idea he either plays, used to play, or just likes watching cricket.

- likes to take you to motor rides with him. if you have your own motorcycle then you guys could have races every once in a while. if you don’t, he let’s you ride along with him. these times are also his ways of showing off his powers and how pretty they can be when traveling through a tunnel of water.

- cooking is a necessity to him, i think he’s a great cook and could make a good cup of chai if he’s in the mood to make one.

- he has tried sketching every once in a while, mostly still life, not so perfect but then again it’s a sketch and it’s mostly for remembrance.

- he plays the guitar. i shall not add more context.

[babblydrabbly]

Distracted (Peacemaker x Reader) Smut

Pairing(s): Peacemaker x F!Reader; Brief Javelin x Reader

Characters: Peacemaker/Christopher Smith, Amanda Waller, Javelin

Rating: M

Word Count: 3.5k+

Warning(s): Smut, language, mentions of blood/violence. Choking, cream pie, semi-rough sex.

Summary: Out on a Task Force X mission, Peacemaker notices you're acting... different. He generously offers to help with what's distracting you. Asshole.

A/N: What's this? Baby's first Peacemaker fic? Takes place before The Suicide Squad (2021). Metahuman!Reader has super strength/speed abilities. Also, what kind of vanilla name is Chris Smith.

---

"Again?"

Amanda Waller arched a brow at your perturbed expression.

"My apologies." She droned. "Am I not stimulating you with enough variety, [L/n]?"

You scoffed, folding your arms in deference. It wasn't about that— It was about the deliberately repeated pairings with Christopher Smith. The dynamic that was becoming a pattern. You never would have worked with someone like Peacemaker on the outside. As much as you appreciated the job always getting done with him, you still bumped heads with him too much on the way to the finish line. He was frustratingly serious and flippant at the same time.

You decided to shut your trap before Waller decided she didn't need you anymore.

"You've got one skillset useful to me, [L/n]. I suggest you get used to the prospect of being paired up with Smith on a regular basis— While you're still around."

You nodded when she dismissed you. You had gotten used to it. You were seeing so much of Peacekeeper you were practically partners.

So, you pointedly sat to next the one called Javelin on the helicopter out of Belle Reve, as far away from Smith as possible. You were about to spend over twelve hours with him— It didn't have to start right away. While Colonel Flag gave you all the spiel on the mission, you glanced over and saw Javelin toss you a nod.

"You're Team B," The thrower noted over the whir of the helicopter. "[L/n], yes?"

"Yeah," you said. Your eyes flitted over the muscular squad member. He looked more like a superhero in his light blue and yellow get-up than the rest of you. You personally kept the lower half of your face covered with a black hard shell mask— Your armor from before you were incarcerated (Yes, you've heard the 'Baby Bane' jokes from the others). Even if you had to get used to working with a bunch of weirdos, you could at least conceal your face from them while you did it.

"You move very swiftly." He complimented, and you didn’t know how you were supposed to take that.

"Thanks," You tried, "I like your... weapon of choice?"

Javelin held his namesake in his arms, his legs spread wide to accommodate it as he rested it against his inner thigh. The innuendo normally would have had you rolling your eyes, but today they lingered, and you wondered if he still looked as broad and muscular without the suit on.

You frowned. Without the suit on?

Were you still staring down at his thighs?

You supposed he was a goddamn Olympic athlete at one point. And prison didn't seem to stop him from his regimen. —There it was again. You blinked and looked away, thankful nobody seemed to notice. Javelin seemed content with the brief introduction, so you left it at that.

Okay, so maybe it had been awhile since you...

You reprimanded yourself. These were not recreational outings. As much as you liked feeling free every once in awhile, you were never in a position to consider doing something so stupid. The last few missions were some of the closest calls you had while on the task force, but now that your job today was more about recon, you could at least let your mind wander to the less... imperative things. You crossed your legs at the ankles in front of you and let mind drift for the rest of the trip.

But christ had prison been rough. And a little boring. You didn’t have to think about Javelin moving closer to you for long— Pressing up flush against you— Before you were imagining yourself against a wall— Hell, right here on this bench— hooking your legs around his waist as he thrusted into you. You pictured him going for two, three rounds, that stupid suit lying on the floor with your back on top of it. You pictured him going down on you too, a handful of his wavy blonde hair in your grasp as you pressed your thighs around his ears. You swallowed behind the mask, glad it was there to hide your face.

You get dropped off an isolated point a few klicks outside the target area, the rest of the team traveling further in to handle the bulk of the mission. You lug some extra equipment in a canvas bag— Guns, surveillance tech— already annoyed by the heat.

The heat of the jungle. Definitely not the heat you'd been feeling in the helicopter. You walked a half mile in total silence just trying to focus on the mission again.

"What's got your tactical suit in a twist?" Smith finally uttered as you got to your destination. You almost forgot he had dropped down the rope onto the ground after you. He stood out against the green around you in his obnoxious red shirt and white pants.

"Nothing." You lied, and you could tell from under his helmet that Peacemaker thought you were full of shit today. Great.

You set up inside a small building— An outpost long abandoned. Whatever organization you were taking down for Waller, they clearly had to downsize over the years. You kicked open the metal door, sending it flying off its hinges. Smith entered first, clearing all the rooms before you joined him. Upstairs, you begin setting up the equipment together. Peacemaker started with standing up a rifle by the window, aiming it at the road below.

You fiddled with a tablet; You went downstairs to put a sensor on the door frame and on the rusted gate blocking the road outside. They were supposed to warn you when any vehicles were approaching, but when you came back up, it lost signal. You did this twice; You batted at the little screen, vexed. There were probably signal jammers over at the main compound that could still reach all the way out here. You thought about how Team A was doing— So inevitably, your thoughts drifted back to the damn Javelin guy.

"Jesus!" You snapped. You were grateful when you didn't break the small screen in half with your strength.

"Okay. What the fuck is wrong." Came Peacemaker's voice from across the room. You stood there without turning around. You took a breath, tossed the tablet onto the bag at your feet.

"Nothing is wrong, Smith. Fuck off." You said. You reached up and unclipped your vest. Beneath it, you felt the cool air of the shelter hit your jumpsuit. You tossed the vest on the floor, then turned around. "When are they supposed to get here?"

He quirked a brow, as if proving his point. Since when didn't you remember the mission details? Rather than give him the satisfaction of thinking you were slipping you waved your own question away.

"God, never mind."

He scoffed. You watched him remove his helmet and gloves, setting them down carefully next to his own pack. He'd made his own area across the room from yours, another tablet showing him a view of the road propped up against the wall. Smith took a seat on the floor; The two of you were going to have to play the waiting game now.

In silence. The thought made you pinch the bridge of your nose right above where your mask stopped.

"You know, I've been at Belle Reve for four years now." You finally relented. You leaned back against your wall, folding your arms over your chest.

"Yeah? So?" Smith retorted. You rolled your eyes.

"So," God— You were really confiding in Christopher Smith. That's what it was coming down to. "I haven't had sex in four years. It's... not a big deal— Nothing's wrong. That's just what I was annoyed about earlier, you know? Consider me over it."

"That why you were ogling the Javelin in the copter today?"

Shit. Shit!

You dropped your arms. "You piece of garbage. You saw that?"

"I'm garbage? You're the one sexually harassing our fellow teammates with your eyes."

"I was not sexually— Nope. I'm done. You're ridiculous." You said. You reached down and went back to your tablet, busying yourself with it idly.

Peacemaker did the same. From the corner of your eye, you just knew he was doing it smugly.

"You know," He said after a few minutes, "If that's all you're bitching about, we can just get it over with."

"Excuse me?"

"You and me. Target's not coming in for another six hours, by the way. You don't need that much time do you, 'four-years-dry'?"

You stared at him from across the room. When you didn't reply, Peacemaker set his screen down so damn casually you consider just shooting yourself in the head.

"You're off your game. I'm not going to let you compromise our objective."

You threw your hands up. "There it is. You're like a broken record."

"What? Am I fucking wrong?"

"No, you're fucking crazy."

"Get over here." Smith instructed in a low voice.

The words shot up your spine, sending a very mixed signal to your brain. Directly across from you, Peacemaker was pinning you with an expectant look— One that was clearly a challenge. It pissed you off.

It was the look he used when he said you couldn't rip a guy's spine right out of his back— It dared you. And when you did succeed, you would shoot him an equally smug look in return. Your back and forths were always crass, always a test of who would back down.

You weren't normally so brutal when you worked alone, but something about Peacemaker brought it out of you. Whenever you were paired together, it was like your powers weren't something you had to hold back. They were something he was always prodding you to embrace. The jabs, the snark— It made you want to punch him in the face.

Standing up, you crossed the room. Smith didn't move as you stepped over his legs, as you leaned down to straddle his waiting lap. He simply watched you shift around until you're comfortably seated, your hands resting on his shoulders. He moved to place his own on your thighs but didn't do anything more.

"Well?" You said.

He shrugged, "Your call."

"What am I gonna do? Dry hump you?"

"Hey, if that's what it takes."

You sighed, running a hand through your hair. "Fuck."

Finally, you reached up, unclipping the back of your mask.

"Whoa, wait—" He started, finally reacting to this ridiculous situation, but you already had it off, in your hand.

"I—" He stared at you. You shifted, feeling nervous as you stared back. It occurred to you that you'd never seen him shocked before.

He blinked. "I've never seen your whole face before."

That wasn't true— was it? You tried to think. "What about in Cuba? We camped out for like three days. I had to take it off to eat at least."

"I didn't look."

"You didn't look."

"I don't fucking know! You wear that fucking thing everywhere. When you took it off to eat I assumed you didn't want me looking."

"Wow. How courteous."

"Fuck you."

"Well, isn't that what we're doing here?" You said, putting your hands on your hips stubbornly. Smith's were still resting on your splayed thighs.

"I can't wear this when we— How am I supposed to...?"

He snorted softly, "Don't tell me you're a romantic, [L/n]."

Nothing about this seemed romantic. Least of all with him. Still, if you were going to take the opportunity, you were going to do it your way. You looked him over.

He had a few tufts sticking out from wearing his damn helmet earlier. You reached up and brushed some of it back into place at his temple first. Smith blinked up at you, his brows pinching together.

"This okay?" You heard yourself asking him. He eventually nodded once, watching you as you placed your palm on the side of his face. Finally, you leaned down and caught his lips with yours in a long kiss. You squeezed your eyes shut, not wanting to know his reaction.

But you felt him return it. Slowly at first— Then he was kissing you back. You moaned somewhere in the back of your throat as he ran his large hands up and down your legs, his fingers folding to grip your ass tightly. You were already reacting, already so touched starved. His lips parted, and you felt him swipe his tongue across your bottom lip, over the front of your teeth. You opened for him, your tongue darting out to meet his hungrily.

You tugged at the front of his uniform. Without a word he reached down to pull it up over his head, the fabric dropping off somewhere beside you. You glanced down at his bare chest. You ran your hands over it, dragged your nails down his pecs experimentally. When you looked back up he was still watching you.

Your mouths crashed to meet again, this time with a fervor that threatened to split your bottom lip with every bruising kiss. You felt his hands on you again, pressing into your sides, your waist. He didn't move to take off your clothes, so you drew your hands to your own chest, pulled the zipper of your suit all the way down to your stomach.

He took the invitation, and you gasped when he roughly reaches in and cups a hand around your breast; He kneaded it, brushing his thumb over your nipple. His other hand worked at your shoulder, yanking the rest of your suit off of you. You reached back and tugged the sleeves off, finally exposing your upper body.

You felt the clasp at your back come undone, and Smith was tearing your bra off next. A muscular arm came around to scoop you up by the waist, bringing your chest closer to him. He leaned down, took one of your nipples into his mouth.

"Smith—" He bit you roughly, and it sent a shock of electricity up you. He palmed your other breast again, tweaked at your nipple until your back was arching into his touch. You squeezed your thighs around him.

Then he was back in your face again, bruising a kiss against your lips as you took a breath. Your eyes flew open when you felt the press of his fingers to your mouth. You shot a look at him, but didn't object when he pushed his index and middle fingers past your lips. You sucked them hungrily, your eyes fluttering shut again.

"Fuck," Peacemaker murmured, feeling your tongue swirl around the digits. You slurped sloppily until they were soaked, until he was pulling them back out with a light pop. He brought his hand down to the base of your suit, where the zipper stopped just above your pelvis. A pair of black panties peaked out from the V shape there, the same shade and material as your bra. You gasped when Smith finally pushed down past the layer of cotton, gripped his bare shoulders when you felt his wet fingers dip right into your cunt.

"Fuck," He said again, because you didn't need any help down there. "You're so fucking wet."

You expected to feel humiliation— To hear a joke about how it really had been while. But all you felt were his warm, thick fingers; He ran them up and down your slit, pressed them in small circles around the peak of you a few times. You cursed, your head falling back. Smith leaned up to kiss your throat, teeth dragging across the base of your collarbone. He bit you some more, daring to take your meta-human skin between his teeth. You cried out, your arm reaching to wrap around his head in pleasure.

Smith slid his fingers up into your pussy. He crooked them, scissoring them inside you. Your hips bucked, unable to resist meeting his short thrusts. You felt him grin against your neck. "Damn, baby."

"Shut up." You whispered, letting your hips rolling down to fuck yourself on his fingers some more. When he slipped in a third you moan loudly.

"Fuck! Fuck me." You demanded, yanking the short hair at the back of his head. A groan left Smith's lips, his head jerking back. Quickly, he removed his hand from your suit, pulling the rest of your clothes further down your waist. You lifted yourself off him, but Smith didn't wait. He picked you up and lifted you both off the floor. You grabbed at him as he laid you down on your back, his body between your legs. Then he was ripping off the last of your suit, tearing your boots off.

"Watch it," You snapped— If he fucking ripped anything you—

"Oh please." He huffed, and your thoughts stopped in their tracks as you watched him lean back on his knees above you, undoing his white pants. His cock sprang free from a pair of just as white underwear, his arousal already thick and ready. You stopped yourself from expressing how the sight of him made you even wetter.

He took a moment to drink in your face, a hint of that smug smirk forming. You growled, pulling him down by the neck again before he ruined the moment with speaking. Smith caught your lips again, his hand running down your naked body. He gripped one of your legs and nudges them apart, planting his knees between you.

Despite his earlier preparation, it was nothing compared to the feeling of his cock pushing inside you. You groaned as he entered you, your walls stretching around his length. Your back arched as you took him in, eyes rolling a little into the back of your head.

"Fuck— Chris—" You shuttered. His hands squeezed your thighs at the sound of his name leaving you. You heard his breath shake, his hips remaining utterly still as you got used to the size of him. Opening your eyes, you looked up to see him waiting for you; You nodded once, another moaning already escaping in anticipation.

It was like a brick wall knocking into you. Smith didn't hold back as he began fucking you— Knew you could take it— what with your powers and all. The idea seemed to drive him, and he began hammering into you, his hands moving to bracket your hips so he could fuck you better. Faster. Your legs wrapped around his waist.

Fuck— You couldn't think. You arched up off of the floor as you rolled your hips to meet Smith's. It felt like he could keep up this pace forever the way he wasn't stopping. Your breathing turned to panting, a high whine escaping you when he shifts just right— he picked you up again. You arched up into his arms, holding yourself up from around his neck as he fucked up into your soaking cunt. You bounced on his cock, a sheen of sweat blooming across your skin.

When you opened your eyes, Smith was still watching you intently— witnessing every little expression on your face while he fucked you. You could hardly discern what he was thinking. All you could focus on was him ramming you, the feeling of his cock hitting and stretching you out.

“Choke me.” He said, and you have just enough wherewithal to oblige. You wrapped your hand around his throat, pressing firmly on either side. You felt the tightness of his skin shifting under your touch. His pulse beat a fast rhythm in time with his rough thrusts. The strength of your grip was a little vice tipping Smith over the edge.

The look on his face, his eyes closed as he tried to control his breathing sends a jolt up you. You used your other hand to slip two fingers down between your folds. They found your clit, making quick work of bringing you to close to climaxing. You shuttered as you felt the tight coil of it building. Finally, with a cry you were coming, squeezing your legs around him as your hips rolling through every wave of it. Smith groaned, picking up the pace, fucking you through your orgasm until your walls were fluttering from the unrelenting stimulation.

“Going to—“ He warned, and you squeezed the hand around his throat harder, making his eyes roll up. You whimpered as you feel the hot spurt of him fill you, his hips finally locking as he pumped you with his cum.

You both took a moment to catch your breath, your hand releasing from Smith’s neck so he could take in a long gasp. His skin was reddened along his throat and chest. You saw the beginnings of your handprint bruising around his Adam's apple, your fingers a mark on his skin. You hung onto him like that, your arms back around his shoulders for balance.

“Fuck.” You finally said. Out of habit, you checked your watch to assess where you were on the mission. He took your chin in his hand, drawing your eyes back up to him. You saw that his hair had fallen back into his eyes, his face glistening with sweat.

“I’m not done with you.” He said. It sent a shiver through you. You felt your walls flutter again, some of his cum leaking out with his half-hard cock still firm inside you. You gasped as he pulled you off of him, guiding you down until you were turning around on all fours on the floor. You glanced over your shoulder, already craving the feeling of him filling you up with his cock again.

And fuck it, you two do take the whole six hours.