#haven't posted here in forever but hello

[zukkaoru]

[ID: the first image is a screenshot of a Tumblr Q&A banner. the heading is HSMTMTS and the subheading says “the final season Q&A” beneath that is a button that says “Ask a question”

the second image is a screenshot of an unsent ask that says, "c an we get gini endgame p lease pleasee i'm begging you pl" /End ID.]

still manifesting a season 4 gini rain kiss tbh 🙏

[celestial-kestrel]

It's that time of year again where Mari Lwyd starts to be talked about and shared around and an INCREDIBLY misleading post gets shared a lot. As someone who grew up with Mari Lwyd I wanted to clear some things up.

Also hello, if you are unaware who Mari Lwyd is. This is about the Welsh tradition of the horse skull who visits houses during the Christmas to New Years period in Wales asking for alcohol.

First off and probably the most important one:

Mari Lwyd is not a cryptid!

I can not emphasise this enough. She. Is. Not. A. Cryptid. There is no story or mystery about a ghost or zombie horse roaming the Welsh valleys. She's not even supposed to be a ghost or a zombie. It's just a horse skull on a stick with a guy under a sheet. She's a hobbyhorse and a folk character used to tell Welsh stories and keep songs alive. When people spread the misinformation that she's a cryptid, it's the equivalent of saying Kermit the Frog is a cryptid.

She is actually only one character in a wider cast of characters who go door to door or, in more modern times, pub to pub. The cast of characters can change town to town and village to village but there are some common ones I see time and time again. The Leader, the Merryman, The Jester and The Lady are just some I see regularly. Punch and Judy used to be more popular a few years ago but I haven't seen them in a while as their tradition has mostly fallen out of popularity. In most cases, almost the whole cast will be played by men. Even the characters are considered and referred to as female. Though this again depends and varies by which group is partaking in the Mari Lwyd tradition.

This point also goes onto my second point,

Mari Lwyd does not rap.

I think this comes from a very common misunderstanding of what rap is vs spoken word. Rap is a very specific style of music originating from the African American communities of the USA and has it's own structure and motifs unique to it. It's a lot more complex than people give it credit for as a style of music and just flippantly assign anything similar to it as being rap. If someone is talking fast or reciting poetry, it is not rap. Or anything that is an exchange of words between two people is not a rap battle. Mari Lwyd does not do rap, actually something that gets left out of these posts is the fact Mari Lwyd does not even speak. It's actually the Leader, who does all the speaking and song based banter between the house/pub owner for entry. Mari Lwyd just clicks her mouth, bites people and bobs her head around.

I think Mari Lwyd is a really beautiful and unique part of Welsh culture. She's not actually as wildly celebrated as a lot of the posts make her out to be. Actually, I think most Welsh people themselves learn about Mari Lwyd through the internet as well. Her popularity is increasing thanks to the drive of local groups wanting to keep the traditions alive and a renewed desire to document Welsh traditions before they're gone. Which is why it's such a shame that she's turned into something she's not to earn horror points on the internet. I think this is why it bothers me so much to see the misunderstandings of the culture and the folk tradition. Mari Lwyd's origin is very hot debated as well as how long it's been going on for. But I think it's thanks to a lot of traditions like this that the Welsh language and our stories weren't lost forever. Welsh culture is recovering as is the language. But it's still in a very fragile place. I think it's why it's important to document and correct information when it's spread.

Anyway, if you want to see the tradition in action, here's a lovely video from the Cwmafan RFC going to one of the pubs for charity. It includes the song exchange with the pub owner for entry and the whole pub singing and joining in once Mari Lwyd and the rest are inside.

As well with another video from St Fagan's showcasing the more traditional and door to door form with the larger cast.

[mattodore]

I would like to shamelessly and respectfully ask about the bed talk between Matthias and Theo.

your mind... yeah, i'll talk about this.

so on theo's part, he doesn't say much during sex. in the same way he has a lot of difficulty expressing his feelings inside his relationship with matthias, he also has a hard time expressing his desires. theo is... kind of mired down by shame and repression. like, even when theo is actively fucking men he's still repressing a lot of what he really wants and feels. it's interesting, though, because he definitely isn't shy about sex. it's just... he can't speak what he wants out loud, because then he might really get it, you know? and i think he's scared by how that would feel... like having it be that easy to get what he wants after all the years of shutting everything up inside his heart and burying it down so deep. honestly, theo has a hard time even making sounds during sex. he holds his breath, bites on matthias's arms, clenches his teeth... he's just always holding himself back. he can't help it, really.

matthias can sometimes get a few words out of theo if he's prompting them, though. he likes to make theo say please 🙄... and i think matthias will prod and ask theo if it's good, if he likes it, and theo will kind of nod and say yeah, yeah it's good... and i think during those first few times, that question makes theo flush real fast and get all teary. because it really does feel good... and i think theo needs that. and i think he probably... god, well... i think he sort of realizes that he's never really had anything as good in his life. not, like... not in a wow-matthias-is-a-sex-god way, but in a way where it's like, okay. theo is being treated well. time and care went into making sure he wasn't hurt. he's being listened to and matthias is carefully watching each of his reactions. when he says stop, matthias stops. and theo never had that before. so... it's very intense and it's probably both the hardest thing theo's ever had to say during sex while also being the easiest. the crying is an emotional release.

matthias, on the other hand... as you can probably already tell by, well... every other bit of information i've shared about this man... he's filthy. i do think matthias is more sweet with theo than he's ever been with any of his previous sexual partners, but nonetheless... he's still kind of nasty even with theo. i mean, one of his main character traits is his amorality and a complete lack of shame or guilt for anything he feels. so he's very uninhibited and you can definitely tell by the way he talks during sex. every word under the sun that you think is too perverse is probably going to be said while he's fucking someone. i think he really enjoys saying and doing things that society at large deem as Reprehensible... like, just in general. so. yeah, he gets off on saying/doing the things most would gasp and clutch their pearls at.

with that said, matthias does actually tone it down for theo's sake, because i think theo isn't necessarily comfortable with half of what matthias says lmao. but matthias still pushes theo sometimes, because he has this scary accurate sense of what theo needs, and he knows that theo desperately needs to have some of that shame razed from his skin... and what better a way to do it than by making theo realize the things he's so scared of can actually turn him on so bad it makes him shake? so... he talks a lot. it's sort of one-sided, but he's always asking rhetoricals anyway, so i think he's fine with that. however, he definitely doesn't like that theo doesn't make sounds often... tho that changes pretty fast when he starts having fun with it... 🙄 he sees it as a game, like, just where do i need to touch, how far do i push, what do i need to say, to make this little mouse squeak... HORRIBLE MAN.

but when matthias gets theo worked up enough that theo's too dazed to tamp the sounds down, matthias actually starts being incredibly sweet. lots of you're so lovelys and i'd never let anyone hurt yous (...) fall pretty fast from his lips. and he kisses theo alllllllll over. lots of cheek kisses in particular, because he really likes theo's cheeks. and, to clarify, it's not always dirty talk in the bedroom... sometimes it's just intimacy and matthias kissing theo and touching him and making him feel good. matthias's one redeeming quality is how well he takes care of theo, what can i say...

for specifics... hm. theo says: please. it's good. it's too much. more. harder. wait. keep going. switch. like, just little things to direct matthias, in a way... and he never says more than he needs to. he's very sharp and clipped.

matthias is harder to pinpoint specific dialogue for because he just says so fucking much....... like you can really tell that this man loves talking to himself by the way he talks dirty in theo's ear. but i'd say some common phrases are: do you want it? what're you gonna do for it? do you like that? hold still. open up. where are you going? feel that? go ahead and ask for it.

but waaaay down the line, when they've been together for a couple of years and theo's worked past a lot of his issues, i think theo actually becomes comfortable enough to do everything he wants. i think he starts to boss matthias around and take control more... and matthias has always liked when theo is mean, so theo kind of... plays with that a bit. i think he degrades matthias and matthias laps at the palm of his hand for it. matthias has always wanted to be challenged, so. later on, there's definitely a shift in their dynamic, sexually speaking.

[valerie-is-in-the-cupboard]

How the tables have turned - Lucifer x fem!reader x Adam

Hello! I had a few ideas involving Lucifer and this one is one of them. But also, prepare for a bit of Lucifer spam this week because this man is angst fuel (and you know how much I love writing angst). I promise I will return with some Alastor posts too after these few ones with Lucifer (and I also have a request I am currently working on). Hope you will like it <3 Words: ~2700 TW: angst

"Do you still love her?" you asked, your voice nothing more than a whisper, as you lay on your knees. Things with Lucifer haven't been so smooth lately, and your realisation that he still had feelings for his Lilith is slowly killing you from inside, despite your best efforts to hide it.

He stood in front of you, pinching the bridge of his nose while a deep sigh escaped him. He paused for a moment, debating on the right words to say. His shoulders slumped as he spoke, his voice filled with a mixture of defensiveness and guilt. "Of course. She was my wife, wasn't she?" He looked away, his eyes flickering as he avoided eye contact with you. There was a part of him that still longed for Lilith, a lingering ember of their past still burning within his chest.

You stared at the ring on your finger, the gold now feeling like a shackle rather than a symbol of eternal love. Doubts gnawed at you—was this really a promise of forever, or just a placeholder until Lilith decided to return? The thought twisted your heart, making you question everything you thought you knew about your marriage.

"But... You're married to me..."

He turned back to you, a pang of guilt stabbing at his heart as he saw the tears welling up in your eyes. He cursed himself silently for causing you pain, even If his feelings for Lilith were complicated.

"I know," he said softly, his voice filled with a mix of defensiveness and resignation. "But it's not that easy. We have a long history..."

"She left you... You and Charlie were out here struggling and she didn't give a fuck..." you spat at him.

His eyes narrowed slightly as you called him out. The mention of Charlie hit a sore spot, and he bristled at the mention of his daughter's struggles.

"You don't understand!" he snapped back, his voice rising in frustration. "She may have left, but the memories and emotions don't just disappear! You think I don't know about Charlie? I care about her more than anything else in this world."

"Then why the fuck are you doing this to me? Why couldn't you just deal with it and leave me out of this?" He let out a frustrated sigh, his grip on himself slipping a bit. He ran a hand through his hair, his expression shifting from defensiveness to resignation.

"It's not that simple," he repeated, his voice softer this time. "I never intended for this to happen... I thought I could move on, that my feelings for Lilith wouldn't still linger. But I was wrong. I never meant to hurt you, believe me." You got up, slowly making your way to the door. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed your arm, stopping you in your tracks.

"No, wait," he pleaded, his voice filled with desperation. "Please, don't go. We need to talk about this."

"I just want to go for a walk..." He watched as you pulled your arm away, frustration building up inside of him. He knew he couldn't force you to stay, but the thought of you walking out on him was almost too much to bear.

"Fine," he retorted, his voice coming out harsher than he intended. "Go ahead, take your walk. But this isn't over. We still need to figure this out."

You walked past him, slowly disappearing into the crowd of Pentagram City. Your mind was racing, as you erratically passed from one street to the other.

Eventually, you found yourself on a worn bench, its cold metal biting through your clothes as you tried to steady your breathing. The chaotic noise of Pentagram City buzzed around you, a harsh reminder that you were just one more lost soul in this damned place. You felt like a cruel joke, a stand-in until the real queen returned to claim her throne. Closing your eyes, you exhaled shakily, fighting the tears that threatened to spill.

"Rough day?" you jumped when you heard the sudden voice next to you. You looked up, being met with the mask of an exorcist, your eyes widening in fear.

Adam burst out in laughter seeing you so terrified. "Whoa there, honey. Take a few deep breaths. It's just little old me."

You knew everything that happened between Lucifer and Adam in the past, but somehow, despite you being married to his biggest enemy, Adam never seemed to have a personal problem with you. Yes, he treated you like shit just like he did with everyone else, but that was all.

"What... How did you find me?" you asked confused and he pointed at Heaven Embassy which was just a few meters away. You haven't even realised you were so close to it. You scoffed, your gaze returning to the ground as you tried to even your breath.

"Well, sweetheart, you're not exactly being stealthy, walking around in a huff like that. I just happened to spot you from up there and got curious. So, what got you all worked up? Bad day at work? Or is it something more, like maybe a little lover's quarrel?"

"It's none of your business, Adam..." you harshly said, a tear rolling down your cheek.

"Hey, now, I may be a lot of things: awesome, great, a sex master..." he replied, his tone a mix of banter and genuine compassion, "but I'm not heartless. You're clearly upset about something, and whether you want to admit it or not, I can tell it's not just some little disagreement. C'mon, spill the beans."

"Lucifer... he still loves Lilith... and I don't know how to deal with it..." you admitted, your eyes never leaving the shiny ring on your finger.

Adam's expression darkened at your words, his cocky attitude faltering for a moment. He clenched his jaw, a mix of anger and bitterness flooding his mind as old memories came back to him. He leaned back, a coldness in his eyes as he spoke.

"Ah, of course. It's always about those two, isn't it? Some things never change..." He paused briefly, his mind clearly elsewhere before shifting his gaze back to you. "I happen to know how it feels when your spouse clearly has feelings for... someone else..."

"Yeah… I'm sorry for what happened to you…" you said softly as you heard the pain in his voice.

Adam's expression softened slightly at your empathetic words. He let out a heavy sigh, staring into the distance for a moment before responding. "Don't worry about it, sweetheart. I've had my own fair share of heartbreaks, trust me. But it's not your fault." He shifted his position on the bench, focusing his gaze on you once more. "You love Lucifer, don't you?"

You were taken aback by his question, but, to your surprise, the answer didn't come as fast as it used to. "I... I do..." you hesitated.

He leaned closer, his expression curious and intrigued. "But... you sound unsure. Love's not supposed to have doubts, darling. Especially when you're literally wearing his ring on your finger." he pointed at it, his finger briefly touching yours.

"What's the point?" You sighed. "It doesn't matter what I do... I took care of him... I was there for Charlie when she actually needed her mother that was nowhere to be seen... And still, I am not enough for him."

Adam raised an eyebrow, hearing the frustration and disappointment in your voice. He leaned back, contemplating your words for a moment, before speaking again. "Let me tell you, darling, that's a sentiment I'm all too familiar with. But let me ask you this..." He paused, his eyes locking on yours. "Do you really want to be with someone who doesn't see your worth? Who doesn't appreciate everything you've done for them?"

You looked at him confused, taken aback by his words. "I..." you started, trying to find your words. "And what should I do? I have nowhere to go apart from Charlie's hotel and I really don't want to involve her in this..."

Adam studied your face intently, sensing the conflict and uncertainty in your emotions. He leaned in a little closer, his voice dropping to a softer tone. "You see, the problem seems to lie in the fact that you're feeling trapped. You feel like you have nowhere else to go like you're forced to stay with someone who takes you for granted." He paused, mulling over his own thoughts before continuing. "But let me ask you this... How would you feel if you weren't tied down to Lucifer? If you were... free?"

You thought for a moment, letting his words sink in. "I guess I would... leave." you finally admitted, sure of your words.

Adam nodded, a smug grin forming on his face. "There ya go. Good girl. Now, you understand what needs to be done, don't you?" He leaned back, stretching his arms behind his head, crossing one leg over the other. "Now, here's the fun part. Say you leave Lucifer, where are you gonna go? Heaven? Pfft, like they'd let you in."

You scoffed. "You don't make any sense..."

Adam chuckled, clearly amused by your confusion. "Oh, but I do. You don't really have a lot of options, now do you? Sure, your lovely Charlie's hotel is there, but you don't want to burden her with all this, right? And Heaven? They won't even open the gates for you. So, you see, you're in a bit of a bind." He leaned in closer, a sly smirk on his face. "But hey, guess who's got the solution for ya?"

"What... What are you suggesting?" you asked, your eyebrows narrowing in confusion.

Adam leaned back again, enjoying your reaction to his words. "Oh, it's simple, sweetheart. If you leave Lucifer, you're gonna need a new place to call home, right? A place where you're wanted and appreciated." He paused, studying your reactions before dropping the bomb. "What if you come with me?"

"What?!" You snapped. "I've heard how you treated Eve and Lilith! Like they were nothing to you! You think I want this?"

Adam's smirk faltered a bit at your outburst, his ego slightly bruised. He raised an eyebrow, a mix of defensiveness and irritation on his face. "And who told you all this stuff, hmm?" he retorted, leaning forward, his tone a bit defensive. "Sure, I might've had my moments, but I don't know where you're getting this 'treating them like nothing' nonsense. They were my wives, after all."

"Well, Lucifer said-" you began, only to be cut off by him.

"Oh, big surprise, Lucifer said that, huh? I suppose he's a reliable source of information, isn't he? The Fallen Angel himself, just feeding you all the truth out of the kindness of his heart." The sarcasm in his voice was thick as he rolled his eyes. "Tell me, darling, do you really think he's got your best interests at heart? Do you really think he won't throw you out the door as soon as Lilith steps back into the picture?"

"I..." Adam saw the uncertainty in your face, a flicker of doubt in your eyes. He leaned closer, sensing that he struck a nerve. "That's right, sweetheart. You're not sure, are ya? You've been second-guessing yourself, questioning where you stand with Lucifer. But deep down, you know the truth. You know that you're not his number one priority, that he's still hung up on Lilith." He paused, letting his words sink in before continuing. "And that's why you're sitting here, feeling lost and alone, right?"

You turned your back on him. You knew he was right... But running away with him? It felt a bit too much. "I could never leave Charlie… She needs me…" you whispered, the weight of your responsibilities pulling you back from the edge. Adam huffed, the flicker of annoyance crossing his face briefly before he masked it. He reached out, his grip firm but not forceful, turning you to face him again, the intensity in his eyes impossible to ignore.

"You're telling me you're willing to put up with Lucifer's bullshit just because of Charlie? You really think she'd want you to suffer like that?" He paused, his grip on your arm tightened slightly. "Come with me, sweetheart. I'll treat you better than Lucifer ever did."

You fidgeted with your ring, considering his words carefully. "Are you really going to bring me, a sinner, to Heaven, just for this?" you whispered, a bit unsure of his words.

A sly grin formed on Adam's face as you asked your question. "Oh, darling, I've got a little trick up my sleeve for that. You see, I have a direct line to the big boss himself, so to speak." He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I can pull a few strings, arrange things so that... well, let's just say that you could have a special little place in Heaven, all to yourself." He smirked. "Besides... you do miss your family, don't you?"

Your eyes opened wide, as your heart skipped a bit. "My family...? Are they there? You know them?" you desperately asked.

Adam chuckled, clearly enjoying the effect his words were having on you. "Oh, I know them alright. And they're all up there in Heaven, enjoying the celestial life." He leaned back, a satisfied smile on his face. "See, baby, I told you I could make that happen for you. A place in Heaven, all your loved ones around you... and a husband who'll actually treat you right. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?"

You sighed, thinking about it. But he was right. There was no point in staying just so you could be a replacement. You looked up at him, determination hinted in your eyes. "I need proof... Show me that they're actually there and I'll come with you."

Adam's smirk widened a spark of excitement in his eyes. He knew he had you now. "Smart girl," he said with a nod. "You want proof, I can give you proof." He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper once more. "But before we do this, I need one thing from you..."

"What is it?" you asked, suddenly feeling so vulnerable in front of him. He looked down at your finger, tracing the line of the golden ring.

"I need you to give me something... something that shows you're serious about leaving Lucifer behind." He paused, his eyes meeting yours, a hint of playful challenge in his expression. "Take the ring off."

You hesitated, the cool metal of the ring digging into your skin as a tear slipped down your cheek. This small circle of gold had once been a symbol of hope, but now it felt like a lie. With trembling fingers, you slid it off, feeling a pang of loss as you handed it to Adam, knowing this was the first real step towards a future you couldn't yet see.

"That's a good girl," he praised, eyeing the ring in his palm, "now we're getting somewhere." He stood up, offering his hand to you. "Let's go, sweetheart. Time to show you what you really deserve."

Lucifer paced back and forth in the living room, Charlie watching him silently, worry filling her more and more with every moment.

"Dad, I need you to tell me why she left... Did you have a fight again?" she asked. He stopped pacing for a moment, sighing deeply as he looked at his daughter. There was no point in hiding the truth from her anymore.

"Yes," he admitted, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "We had another fight. And it was mostly about... your mother."

When Charlie was about to speak, a knock on the door interrupted them. Lucifer ran towards it, hoping it might be you, but just as he opened the door he froze. He slowly picked something off the floor, silence filling the room.

"Dad, are you ok?" Charlie asked. "Who is it?" Lucifer slowly closed the door, a golden paper in his hands, your ring tied to it. The sight made his heart ache, the weight of your absence suddenly hitting him like a ton of bricks.

"Dad?" Charlie asked again, as he placed the paper on a table, walking away in silence. She quickly grabbed the paper, in order to read what was written, but her heart skipped a beat at the sight.

"How the tables have turned, fucker. "

Tags: @ratsematary @littlebluefishtail

[bengiyo]

Hello 👋

All of your favorite horniest sex scenes?

Hello! I've been busy, so this has taken forever to get to!

I don't always need the guys to bounce around on each other and gyrate enthusiastically for it to out as horny. Oftentimes, I find myself more drawn in by the building desire between the characters, and the explicit acknowledgement of release. I like when the sex feels like it's also revealing something to us about the characters. I've highlighted many of these before, but it's fun to revisit.

Ghost Host, Ghost House Episode 4 Couch Scene

I will never get over this scene, and especially the director's cut of it. These guys knew they liked each other almost instantly, and it was so rewarding to see them reach a place where they could express that. Bonus points for discussing the logistics of gay sex.

This show has been on Gaga and YouTube for a while, but it's also now available on Viki!

La Pluie Episode 6 Floor Scene and Episode 7 Bed Scene

I liked this scene so much that I wrote about it. Again, there's a lot of anticipation between these two, and you can tell how far it's built up because Patts has to dial it back down when Saengtai wants to stop. It's especially important to me because Saengtai does blow Patts in the next episode. If you're on iQIYI, there's an extended cut of that at the end of the video lists.

Mood Indigo: The Post-Funeral Scene

These two are so horrible for each other, but damn are their sex scenes compelling. Theirs are the kinds of scenes only possible between two people you know can never work long term. I was so glad that we got back to Haruhiko in Playback, and the first thing he did was blow Rio in a car. If you haven't seen the Novelist, and you're itching for hornier BL, it's right there.

The End of the World With You "You're Soaked"

From the same team as The Novelsit, we got to experience baby's first fuckboy in this incredible show. Again, I love when we get scenes with couples who aren't ready to work, because they're allowed to have raunchier sex. They get to amp the intensity of the physicality because they need to give a reason why someone was so caught up and missed the warning signs. I actually love the car scene later as a more romantic intimacy scene, but we're focusing on horny here.

Jack o' Frost Birthday Sex

A common theme here with the Japanese offerings is that people are allowed to have more interesting sex scenes right before they split. This is true even in Jack o' Frost. We get a really great oner from the leads that precedes their breakup and Ritsu's accident. I think this might be my favorite of this list because the actors have to build the entire scene together since there aren't any cuts.

Gameboys 2 Bed Scene

Cairo and Gav are one of my favorite pandemic couples we got on screen, and I was quite relieved for them when they finally got to have this moment. We also confirmed they switch, and I love that.

Wedding Plan: Namnuea Showing Off His Stamina

No list for me would be complete without including them. I really loved seeing two gay men go at it after clearing out all of their misunderstandings. They had already had sad goodbye sex. It was thrilling to see them having enthusiastic, athletic sex. This also leads directly to one of my favorite emotional payoffs for a closeted character of all time.

Kiseki: Dear to Me Reunion

The second couple stole this show, but damn if I didn't love the way these two played out sex across multiple years between their characters. These two really suffered, and I really love the way Taro Lin and Hsu Kai captured the changes between these two as Bai Zong Yi grew and matured. This really was a solid sex scene.

Love Class 2: Sungmin and Joo Hyuk

I just really wanna thank them for reassuring me that if Korea wanted to, they could deliver.

Sleep With Me Jeans Scene

I am not a lesbian, but I share their beliefs. This scene was so good. I loved that these two, who have different kinds of disabilities, were able to have a very fun sex scene. I really like when it's clear both characters want to be there.

Only Friends: Boston and Top in the Car

Despite my eventual disdain for this show, I was impressed with Neo and Force for giving this incredibly selfish sex scene between their characters. This entire scene is about injured egos, and it's a standout scene from this show. We won't discuss the rest of the show here.

Thanks for the ask!

[vincentbriggs]

Hello! Transfem person here. I haven't started HRT yet, but want to procure a 1730s menswear suit (actually decided based on your video). I would prefer not to wait for it if possible, since I don't know when HRT is going to be possible. I am, however, a little concerned about my bust size changing and affecting the fit of the waistcoat. Is that decade usually pretty forgiving in it's tailoring? I am also considering having the upper back tie like some later waistcoats to accommodate if necessary (even if it's not entirely historical), but I figured I would ask you.

Thank you!

Hello! Ooh yay! Not enough people do early 18th century, so I'm delighted to hear that! (Link to the 1730's suit mentioned.)

I think the fit would be affected, yeah. The sides of the waistcoat are easy enough to let out (and we have extant examples of waistcoats with an extra strip of fabric added into the side seam) but the curve of the front is pretty important to how it sits on you. But then, it is fashionable in that era to leave quite a lot of the top portion unbuttoned, so maaaybe you could get away with it not fitting as well, depending on what changed and how much?

Regarding the adjustability of waistcoats, some of the earlier ones actually do have lacing in the back! This red one is an especially nice example, and it's separate all the way to the top.

(c. 1740's, V&A) (Though you also do see ones with the back hacked up and a bunch of ties that were likely added by Victorians for their fancy dress parties.)

The breeches also have adjustable waistbands, of course, so I think the hardest part to alter would be the coat. The back vent is edge to edge, so there's no overlap to sneak a bit more width out of, and letting out the side seams would require re-doing those massive pleats, which were the part I found the most difficult when making my coat. But fortunately those coats were worn open a lot of the time, so even if they're not quite right when buttoned, they should still look ok unbuttoned.

It's very difficult to predict how the fit will be affected, since HRT is different for everyone and things keep changing years down the line. (One comment on this post talks about suddenly getting more breast and hip growth after 7, 12, and 14 years.)

I only have experience from the transmasc side of things, and alas, I very much did outgrow all my old waistcoats and coats. My 1730's suit needs alterations, because the waistcoat is a bit too small, and the coat seams could use a bit of letting out too. (I made those the year after top surgery, but my ribcage kept expanding and my posture improving for quite a while.)

I've been putting it off because alterations are boring :/ My pre-top surgery waistcoats are all way too small across the chest even though material was removed, because my posture was kinda bad and I didn't even notice it, and I expect that the opposite could also lead to the same sort of better posture from more confidence & comfort.

But bodies keep changing forever anyways, even without transitioning. Plenty of cis people can't fit into the things they sewed when they were younger, so we may as well make things to fit us now. Perhaps you could make the suit now, but use a not-too-expensive fabric, and then maybe alter it later, or make a newer and better one with the experience you gained from the first one!

Also I know you specifically said menswear suit, but I want to add the fun fact that women's riding habits in this era looked extremely similar to men's suits!

(Left: Maria Amalia von Habsburg by Franz Joseph Winter, right: Member of the Van der Mersch Family by Cornelis Troost.)

As far as I can tell, the main differences are that the riding habits have a petticoat instead of breeches, and are made to fit over stays.

(Empress Elisabeth Christine in riding costume, unknown artist.)

So similar, in fact, that this portrait of a young lady in a riding habit was misidentified as a young man!

Most of the petticoat is out of frame, but you can still see that it's not beeches, and the stays shape is pretty obvious. Very silly of Sotheby's not to notice!

I have no idea if you're interested in wearing a riding habit, and I'm not sure how difficult it would be to alter the somewhat looser men's coat to fit over stays, but thought I ought to mention it.

[music-orthemisery]

Pre-Folie Release Madness of (p)2- A Timeline

After spending a few days in cuckoo bananas world thanks to the video re: Patrick's best man speech, @grandtreeangel and I have some things to slide across the table.

Between October 19, 2008 and November 7th, 2008, FOB played a series of shows leading up to the release of Folie a Deux. Each show featured a Pete/Patrick banter moment that, when put together, creates a very...interesting narrative.

October 19th - Birmingham, England show

Pete making a Top Gun reference to the $20 bar bet scene while Patrick plays the Top Gun theme song.

The scene in question: "Total carnal knowledge...of a woman this time, on the premises"

October 22nd - London, England show

First live performance of Patrick's "Love Lockdown" cover

Please see @grandtreeangel’s post HERE for more context on this totally normal thing Patrick did.

October 25th - Lille, France show

OG "my little cabbage" moment Pete, in French, says to Patrick, "You are beautiful, my little cabbage."

October 27th OR 28th - Blog post

Pete posts this on his Tumblr . It says 10/27, but there's some disagreement on time zones so it may be 10/28. EITHER WAY...

Originally, this linked to a clip from the movie Love, Actually. In this scene, a man confesses his love to a woman who is married to his best friend.

There's plenty of debate about this movie, scene, and storyline in general, but we aren't here for that right now!!!

Let's just focus on the facts:

Woman. Married. To BEST FRIEND.

The man was the best man AND the videographer at the wedding.

This whole moment is done secretly. He confesses, they kiss, she goes back inside and tells her husband it was just some carolers.

In general, this whole story arc is ripe with longing and unattainable love due to a marriage keeping the man from being with the woman.

I...wonder what this sounds like...

October 28th - Toronto, Canada show

Love Lockdown cover where Patrick says, "That's for you, Pete."

Again, Patrick being very normal!!!

October 29th - Blog Post

Pete contributes an entry to Bill's "Mondayeyes" poetry club on friendsorenemies.com:

Credit to @alphadog's post for this HERE

The entire poem is quite impactful, but a few lines of interest:

"Where do you get off?" or more like "how"

and...

"You chose this"

When Pete uses quotes, it's noted that this indicates things that have been said to him.

There are scents and spells that keep us coming together, there are sparks that keep us forever

The art of keeping up disappearances

Also, big hello to some Rat-A-Tat lyrics

Whenever I could make the sweat roll backwards and your pulse stream in reverse

(Big thank you to @dykeandyhurley for sending this to me)

November 6th - Boston, MA show

Pete shares the story about Patrick's best man speech.

Huge props to @predoom for finding this moment!

If you haven't seen Top Gun (?!), the context here is very important:

The line "Ice, fire, or clear," is said in the scene where Goose dies.

Scene: "Ice, Fire or Clear!"

Also, it should be noted that, to Pete, he is Goose and Patrick is Maverick.

The fact that Patrick picks this quote to say to Pete...in his best man speech...at PETE'S WEDDING. A quote said when Maverick LOSES Goose.

AND...apparently no one else in the reception quite...get's it. Pete is the only one who does. That line was just for Pete. From Patrick.

Of all the lines in that movie, he picks that one, from that moment.

Then, of course...

We have "The Kids Aren't Alright."

Featuring the lyrics:

Stuck in the jet wash Bad trip I couldn't get off And maybe I bit off more than I could chew And overhead of the aqua blue

Along with Pete's annotation:

November 7th - Philadelphia, PA show

Patrick sings Lullabye.

Take a peek at this post for all of that mess.

"Well, Bronx was about to be born!"

Sure, sure. I'm not DENYING the relevance there. Just. Go look at the post, damn it. Trust me.

And then...?

Nothing. They take a break, Bronx is born, and then they play a show in Columbus, OH on December 1, 2008. This whole little back and forth ends. Folie a Deux is released on December 10th and...well...we all know what happens after that.

[haveateadude]

bleak horizons

summary *. ⋆ ⋆·˚ yeah, okay. maybe you're sad.

warnings *. ⋆ ⋆·˚ depression, self-harm, mommy issues (dw there's A LOT of fluff and cuddles and hugging and it all ends up alright) this is just talked about but it can still be triggering!!!!! pls take care of yourselves!!!!!!!! my dms are open :)

author notes *. ⋆ ⋆·˚ wasn't planning on posting this but i love validation. also, this is not like cannon ellie i guess?? i did a really bad characterization bc i used this as a vent and i just wanted comfort lmao. hope this still makes y'all feel seen or fucking something. btw this first part is really boring hehe, i wrote this when i was in a rush and in a train and i was tired and sad so i don't mind if it flops lol

i hate this so much idk why i'm posting this as my first pots. aghh. here u go ig. don't hate on me. bye.

(not proofread, sorry abt that)

pt1 — pt2 — pt3

you look so out of it

pull it together

we can love you

forever and ever

I've recently moved in with Ellie after weeks of looking for someone to move in.

I had checked other apartments, but this was the one that didn't smell like there was a corpse under my feet, hidden from the light beneath the floor and it didn't look like it was haunted by ghosts. The walls weren't chipping away, also, so that was a plus. There's no denying that getting used to living with someone else was difficult, but it was the only alternative to live away from my parents. Not to mention I had developed feelings for Ellie—she's beautiful, with those eyes and auburn hair, and her tattoos just make her look fucking badass.

After a few weeks, I settled in with her: we both have a routine, and established unspoken rules, and now it's comfortable living with her.

Tonight was a lovely night—I had already finished everything I had to do, and I didn't have an exam until next week, probably—until I got a call from my mother. I know I can't run away from this one. She always threatens to unroll me from college and take me home when I don't answer her calls. And I know she's capable of doing so.

“Hello?” I said as I went out to the kitchen, to take a glass of water.

“You know, most people say something sweet when they answer their mother.”

I roll my eyes, even if she can't see me. It was just a fucking hello.

“What happened, Mom?” I ask, not wanting to fight.

She takes a second to answer, “Well—I was looking at some resources and there are a lot near your area…”

She takes a second to answer, “Well—I was looking at some resources and there are a lot near your area…”

“Resources about what?”

“Therapy. Conversion therapy.”

It takes all of myself not to gasp, or cry. I don't know. I hear Ellie going out of her room, and walking towards the kitchen. I don't care if she's here; I haven't been caring about anything these past few days.

“Okay,” Is all you say. I don't know how to answer, or what to do. I leave the glass on the aisle with trembling hands.

“That's all you have to say?”

“I—I don't know what you want me to say.”

“‘Thank you’, maybe?” I stay quiet, I don't want to thank her, I don't want her to speak to me ever again. “You could also get therapy for, you know…”

“For what, mother?”

“The cutting. Your scars—I always thought they looked repulsive. No one is going to lov—”

I hung up before she could say anything else. I hate her. I hate my mother. I can't even believe she's a mother, let alone mine. I suddenly feel the need to hurt, and I hate to admit it, but my mother has always been right about the way they look—so I just shut my eyes and try to breathe. It always helps—deep breathing, that is. I have to remind myself that I'm clean. I've been clean for months. Maybe even a year, I lost count.

“You okay?”

Ellie's voice almost makes me flinch, already having forgotten about her. I open my eyes as she walks over to me and lays her elbows on the aisle, while I rest my back on the counter behind her.

I look at her, with a knot in my throat, “I'm fine.”

“Your mother…” She makes a pause, short enough to not make me go crazy, “Is she, like, a pain in the ass?”

I chuckle at that as I cross my arms, “Yeah.”

“If it gets too bad, you can talk to me. I don't mind. And my dad has some contacts, we can maybe scare your mother away.”

“It's okay,” I tell her with a smile. “I can manage.”

“I know,” She smiles, and I can feel my heart fluttering in my chest.

Before I say anything I regret, I go to your room with my door open—a technique I've acquired to avoid hurting myself.

I sit at my desk and look up conversion therapy first, I want to know what this is all about—I know that it's harmful to people in the community, that it leaves you screwed and fucked up. I don't like what pops up on my screen, so I close the tab and go to another one—where I search for therapy. The real one.

I went to a lot of therapy sessions, but my mother was always behind them, so I don't know if it ever was effective. I like this one a lot better. It should be helpful. It will help, I know that for a fact.

I'm having dinner with Ellie, which we normally do—today we ordered, since we were hungry and it always takes a little while to prep a meal—when I think to ask her about the topic.

“Do you know any therapy center?” I ask her. “Or the number of a therapist? Whatever.”

If she's curious, she doesn't show it. She stops chewing on her food, then looks at me; then continues to chew, and after she swallows she speaks, “Sure, I have some friends that go to the same therapist, so it's completely trustworthy, I guess. I can ask for the number.”

I wipe my mouth with the napkin on my side, “Yeah, that'd be alright.”

Ellie takes a sip from her cup and then looks at me, “You okay, though…?”

“I'm fine, just—you know, making sure everything's okay.”

She nods, “Got it—I was just asking.”

After my first therapy session, I ended up tired. My therapist—which feels weird to say out loud and even in my head—is a nice lady in her thirties who looks like a hippie.

I've realized I tend to lie a lot—I didn't talk about self-harm or my mother. Or anything else, really. Just about the movie Speak, and then almost cried when talking about the weather.

So, “Yeah, it went well,” is my answer when Ellie asks how it went, sitting in her car. She picked me up since I had taken my car to maintenance.

“Okay, then,” she says once the car engine starts. She connects her phone to Bluetooth, and we listen to music for a while. Ellie places her hand on my knee when I start bouncing my leg, which sends shivers down my spine and gives my brain something to think of that isn't any of my shit. “Do you want to go eat something?”

“Sure,” I accept. Her thumb makes little circles on my knee. I wonder if she knows what she's doing, her eyes are still fixated on the road. My heart does the flutter thing that it did a few days back again, and my core heats up.

She doesn't want you, I try to convince myself. She's your friend, she doesn't want you. She will fall in love with you, not your brain nor your scars, and when she finds out about the way you think she'll leave.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we ordered a plate together, since we always share and the food here comes in big sizes that we wouldn't finish if we ate it separately.

When we arrive at the restaurant, we order a plate together, since we always share and the food here comes in big sizes that we won't finish if we ate it separately.

“So, how's work?” I ask when we're waiting for our food.

“It's going well, I guess.”

“You guess?”

"I just hate my boss."

I furrow my eyebrows, “do you want to talk about it?”

“It's fine, he just sucks. But well, Jesse is postulating to—you know, be a boss; that fucker.”

I chuckle, “Well, I like Jesse.” I soon realize what I said, and my cheeks go red. “Not in a, uh, romantic way or anything. You know. Fuck. He's just nice.”

“Just nice?”

“I like you better than him,” I blurt out, which only adds to my embarrassment.

Oh, oh.

I like Ellie.

Fuck, yeah. You do.

Who am I kidding, I knew I did. From the start—from the first time she looked at me, for the first time touched my hand and spoke to me; for the first time she played guitar for me and made dinner because she knew how tired I was.

Ellie is flushed. I can tell.

“Oh, do you?” She asks with a grin.

The waitress comes with our food, and leaves the plate. I look at her, she looks at me at Ellie and then leaves.

I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and lay my elbow on the table, with my chin propped up in my hand.

“What if I do?”

She bites her lip, looks at mine and then at the food, “The food's getting cold.”

What the fuck. What the actual fuck. Did that actually happen, or was it my imagination? Holy shit. Shit! Fucking fuck.

It leaves me thinking, but my thoughts leave when I hear her laughter after I crack a joke.

We take the stairs up the apartment, and we laugh all the way up. We just laugh and laugh and laugh because she said something and now I'm almost falling to the floor from how much my stomach hurts.

“Stop,” I say when we get to our apartment door. I keep laughing because Ellie's laughing too and she can't open the door. “My stomach hurts.”

She looks at me and laughs. Idiot. I laugh, too.

“Hey!” We hear our neighbor say. “Quiet down!”

“We're sorry!” I exclaim back, as he closes his door.

Ellie giggles, “You're so fucking dumb, I'm not sorry at all.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“Oh, make me.”

And then—oh, god—and then, and then she looks at me as the curvature of my lips goes down, and then I kiss her.

I kissed her. I fucking did. Me, not her—not Ellie's brave and confident ass, but mine. The butterfly in my chest flutters harder when she kisses back. She puts both of her hands on my waist and deepens the kiss, while my hand moves from her cheeks to her neck, then finds its way to her torso.

Ellie manages to open the door without breaking the kiss, and then she shuts the door with her foot.

“We should—” I speak between kisses. “Ellie—couch.”

“Yeah, okay. Okay.”

Our tongues fight, but our souls mend and I find my way to her in every sense. 

[goquokka00]

Stray Kids on Weed

The Bangchan Strain In which the love of their life smokes the mary jane, and they give it a shot for the first time...

Bangchan | Minho | Changbin | Hyunjin Jisung | Felix | Seungmin | Jeongin

A Few Notes: This is purely just supposed to be funny and a joke. I've also never been high and while I am friends with those who have either tried weed or do weed on the regular, I only know so much. So please just bear with me and have a good laugh, okay? Okay. Love you guys ❤️❤️❤️

I have a very firm belief that Mr. Bangchan over here in the corner's first time ever even dealing with weed is through a joint. He gives me the vibe that if he ever did smoke, it would be from joints, and he'd be good at rolling in general.

He sees you smoking it from time to time, and this time, he wanted to give it a shot. Of course, with any first time smoking, he ends up going into a coughing fit. I mean, you're breathing in smoke, why wouldn't you cough the first time? Hello?

But once the initial high kicks in, I see Bangchan as someone who'd be very giggly. Like, anything and everything is funny to this mother fucker. The picture that has been hanging for forever on your wall that was honestly really beautiful is immediately the funniest thing Bangchan has ever laid his eyes on because, and I quote, "The bear be kronked."

It isn't just the picture. It's watching dance practices, his own music, texts he's had with you in the past, need I say more? And if he found something funny when he was sober, then you bet your ass Bangchan's pissing his pants laughing. One time you had him rewatch the video of Jisung twerking that the younger member had sent out to just the members specifically, and Bangchan was on the floor, struggling to breathe from how hard he was laughing.

I also have this feeling that Bangchan would end up being way more emotional. Since he doesn't really show emotion when he's sober, I feel like more of his emotions would come out when high because you're relaxed, and riding the vibe train to who knows where. But I'm not talking just being more susceptible to his emotions.

I'm talking the stereotypical "Teenage girl is on her period and literally can't control her emotions." Bro will literally hear one sad thing and start bawling, only to giggle a few minutes later because he thought he sounded funny and saw you laughing at him crying.

And don't even get me started on the stripping issue.

I have this gut feeling that Bangchan would find clothes...uncomfortable...when high. They're clinging to his skin, tickling his arms, his jeans just feel weird, or his sweats are too hot. And so he'd just take them off, right then and there. And I mean everything.

If you're not there to watch him, or if he gets into the mary-ja-mooch when you're not there, you're gonna end up walking into the living room to see Bangchan ass-naked and laughing at his schlong because of how it's moving.

By the time his high is finally dissipating, you're usually able to get him back onto the couch curled up with a blanket and some water. And once he's sober, you both agree that this strictly stays between you two and that the kids will NEVER find out about his.

Do I think that Chan would go back to smoking? Maybe, probably not? I feel like he'd only do it on occasion, maybe if he's had a really stressful day and needs a break, but I feel like since he always ends up like...y'know...he tends to keep it on the down low.

Hey! Firstly, thank you so much for reading this post, and I really hope you enjoyed! If you did, please like, reblog, or comment so I can see how I'm doing with writing and getting feedback! I hope you have a lovely day! Sleep well, stay in good health, and eat something if you haven't! ❤️❤️❤️

Taglist: @miss-daisy04 @kayleefriedchicken @wolfs-archive @stayyyyyyyyyyyy21 @wolfs-howling @rose-w-00-d

[writerpeach]

Academic (Anal)ysis

Oh My Girl Arin x m!reader

7200+ words

Part two of Classroom Copulation

---

Read on AO3

Read on AFF

Fresh out of teaching your first two university classes, the afternoon had been relatively calm, stress-free and mostly void of any students asking idiotic questions. None of your students dozed off during your lectures, a sign that meant they enjoyed their time spent in class, or at least pretended they did. Either way, it achieved your primary goal to ensure your students felt fulfilled, leaving with more knowledge than they started with. 

Your next class wouldn’t be for a couple hours, which gave you time for a full lunch, and a chance to catch up on grading papers, but also taking some relaxation for yourself. After finishing up your lesson plans for the rest of the week and putting a dent into grading, a soft knock at the door interrupted your progress.

Most days, you had an open door policy during office hours, encouraging any students to visit with you unscheduled. 

Only when you wanted to concentrate or when a student needed to spend time with you did you shut that door, and as far as you remembered, none of your students had scheduled anything today. That didn’t mean your students weren’t welcome, but you weren’t expecting anyone to show up until your official posted time, which didn’t begin for another hour. 

“Come in.” 

The mahogany door to your office swung open, and behind revealed a slender woman with raven locks wearing a strapless sequined dress, gazing up with the prettiest doe eyes and a pair of freshly glossed lips—one of your favorite students, Choi Yewon. 

“Good afternoon, professor.” 

That favoritism might have been because you were in a (very inappropriate) relationship with her, but the point still stood, Arin was a breath of fresh air, a sight for sore eyes. 

“Good afternoon, Miss Choi. What brings you here?”

Since the inception of your relationship, your office had been a sanctuary from further developing it with Arin. Whenever she visited, it was always under the guise of having difficulty with your classes, going over a graded test, or something narrowly related to academia. Mostly, it became an excuse to flirt around you without any other lingering students around. But you knew it wouldn’t stay like that forever. 

“Can't a student just say hello?" she asked, standing in the doorway and flashed a rather suspicious smile. 

“Of course,” you said, returning a rather muted smile of your own. “But my office hours haven't started yet.” 

“Oh, my apologies. I must have remembered your hours wrong, professor.” The way she smirked meant she didn’t, yet you wouldn’t dare turn away such a pretty face. 

“Would you like me to come back?” 

“No, of course not. You already came all this way, so please, come on in.” After further opening the door for Arin to enter, she slipped inside, and made sure to leave as little gap as possible between your bodies so you could breathe in her aromatic perfume. 

“Well, if you insist. I do have some time to spare,” Arin said, as she closed the door behind her and locked it. You knew that look, that glint in her eyes when she walked into your office. 

“Please have a seat, Miss Choi.”

Gesturing to your spacious red couch across the room, Arin sauntered over, taking a seat and crossed her legs. She took a look around while you remained in your office chair, unprepared for whatever facade she had for visiting. 

“Aren’t you going to sit next to me, professor?” she asked, patting the empty cushion next to her with those unavoidable doe eyes staring into your soul. “This couch feels a little lonely for just one person…” 

And just like that, the protective barrier you built up began to crumble. Because your office had been the last place that hadn’t been defiled, the last place that you hadn’t shoved Arin up against the wall and whispered in her ear all the sinful things you were going to do to her. Certainly not out of guilt, because banging a stunning girl like Arin would be worth sacrificing your livelihood. 

Against your better judgment, you took a sip of coffee and occupied the empty seat on Arin’s left. Her smile widened, and she immediately squeezed your thigh, a clear indicator that this was more than just a simple hello from a student when she looked up with that unavoidable gaze. “It’s so good to see you, professor.” 

You could easily lean in to kiss Arin, the shiny gloss applied on her mouth attracted your lips to her like a magnet, but there had to be at least an attempt to keep up the front that this was nothing but a friendly visit, that your student wanted a chat and nothing else. 

“Good to see you too, Miss Choi. Your classes going well?” 

With a nod, she scooted closer, and kept her hand squeezing your thigh, focusing every little bit of her attention on you. “They’re going…fine,” she said in an unconvincing tone. “I’m not failing any at the moment.” 

That last part piqued your curiosity, because if she performed as poorly in your class as she did her other ones, then well, her GPA would be doomed. Granted, Arin was a straight A student in your class, mostly due to your little arrangement, so at least she had some buffer built up there. 

“Do you mind if I get a little bit more…comfortable, professor?” 

A dangerous question, that In your mind—could mean anything. But whatever she had planned, were it even a genuine innocent question, you hesitated to say yes, but on the other hand, wanted to offer whoever came to visit you the highest degree of comfort. 

“Not at all, be my guest.” Hopefully, you wouldn’t regret offering that invitation. 

So after giving a courteous nod, Arin did just that, slipped her heels off, then carefully placed them out of the way. Next, she lifted her immaculate legs off the ground and rested them—right on your lap. 

“Much better.” 

If there was a modicum of shame left, it flew out the window when you became her footrest, not that you would be upset when every last inch of Arin’s legs became a feast for your eyes—and you were eating well. Not content with mere glances, you openly stared, and who could blame you when those beautiful, creamy legs never seemed to end, partnered with luscious thighs belonging around your head like earmuffs, and even her bare feet, which you adored kissing, drove you crazy. 

Her figure was nothing but flawless, and while there hadn’t been a single inch of Arin’s body that you hadn’t kissed, licked, or sucked—you still drooled over her praiseworthy legs, thankful every time she came to your class in a short skirt or tight little dress that fought for your attention. 

You had to face facts, because the only reason your clothes weren’t already in a heap, and you weren’t bottoming Arin out, was your own weird sense of self-preservation. That maybe, if you spurned her advances in the one place where you actually had the most privacy, that your job wouldn’t be in jeopardy. Like you hadn’t fingered her in the library with a hand over that pretty mouth, or like you hadn’t made her choke on your cock backstage in the theatre hall, and you certainly hadn’t pounded her against the refrigerator in the teacher’s lounge, praying every second no other professors needed a quick dose of caffeine. 

Again, you were (both) guiltless throughout every encounter, selfish in every manner. After all, why wouldn’t you be, 

when you had complete access to Arin’s body, free to explore it any way you pleased on a regular basis. Casting away the last bit of doubt aside, you rubbed Arin’s soft feet and kissed the tops of them, then moved down to her ankles, before caressing her smooth as silk legs all the way up to her thighs that brought unimaginable bliss when you squeezed them. 

“If I recall, don’t you have a class soon, Miss Choi?” you asked, and couldn’t resist roaming your fingertips up and down her perfect legs, those divine thighs a path to heaven in your hands. Brightly smiling, Arin tilted her head back in enjoyment as your hands brushed against her warm flesh, your touch driving her equally crazy. It was almost regrettable that her position didn’t let you kiss and lick those mouthwatering thighs, but there was no need to be greedy when they felt so good and pillowy soft. 

“You remembered. I do, but I’d rather ditch it. Getting dicked down by my favorite professor is a much better use of time. Wouldn’t you say?” Arin couldn’t hold back a smirk from forming on her lips, tossing out any subtlety in her words. 

“I thought you were just here to say hello.” 

“I was, but since I’m already here, I might as well make it worth your while…” Arin said, as one of her bare feet began to rub your inner thigh, moving dangerously towards your crotch. Before you could take your next breath, both of her feet felt up your cock, her toes teasing enough to make a bulge form in your pants. Powerless to stop her, you tried to stifle a moan under your breath, but failed, unable to hold back any thoughts while Arin massaged you through your pants, your cock stiffening uncomfortably so within mere seconds. 

“You’re getting hard already, professor. Doesn’t that feel good? When I tease your cock like this?” she asked, a question with only one answer. The increasing friction on your shaft only served to fill the lust reserves in your body, because, without a doubt—Arin wouldn’t be leaving your office without getting a proper dickdown.

“Yewon—“ 

“Yes, professor?” 

“That dress—“ 

“What about it? It’s pretty, isn’t it?” 

“It is, but—get rid of it.” 

“It would be my pleasure.” With no hesitance, she rose up and let herself be the center of attention, leaving you with a throbbing erection in her wake. Unsure where to direct your focus, your eyes wandered her body, from her thighs to her tiny little waist, to that teasing amount of cleavage, but eventually ended up drawn to her beautiful, angelic face and that vivacious smile. 

“This dress? You want it off me?” she asked, grasping the zipper of her dress, the gateway to releasing that burdensome barrier that opposed your desires. “Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the show, professor.” 

Despite your initial protests, your anticipation peaked as Arin began to zip down her dress, her lustful gaze welded to you. Being patient remained a struggle, considering how hard she left you, and the amount of exposed skin in your sight eyes didn’t make things easier. 

“Do you know what the best part of this dress is, professor?” 

“How good it looks on you?” 

Arin giggled as she touched her silky hair, running fingers through it. “No, while that’s also true, that’s the second best part.” 

Turning away, she began to tug down her dress, spiking your anticipation. Because now, all you could do was watch the meticulous reveal of Arin’s smooth naked back, and the hints of perspiration that had formed from the temperature in the room. You had to calm your strong urge to lick every last drop clean. 

“The best part is—”

As frustrating as it was to not be able to see those cute perky breasts, what would come next would make up for it. Arin hadn’t taken a single movement that wasn’t calculated, or that wasn’t made three steps in advance, and the lower her dress went, the wider your eyes grew. 

“How easy it comes off…” 

She slipped it down past her slender waist, revealing more and more of her body, until it fell off her hips, and gravity did its job. Finally, you were able to glimpse perfection in its purest form—that tight, bouncy butt barely concealed by a lacy blue thong wedged in between her plump ass cheeks. The true meaning of heaven, an ass so divine, it made it worth risking your tenure for. 

You’d risk everything for an ass like that. 

For now, Arin was always delighted to enable that risk, swaying her hips and shaking her enticing ass, as if to say you were making the right decision—even if at its core, it couldn’t be more wrong. 

“Cute panties,” you blurted out, saying the first thing in your head to keep yourself under control, otherwise you’d rip them off her body and bury your face in those flawless cheeks. 

“Thank you, professor. I wore them so you could take them off me,” she said, turning around just so you could see the grin on her features. But you were looking at so much more than just her pretty face, with her half-naked body proudly displayed, that only made the erection in your pants more unbearable. 

“Yewon, come here.” Without giving her a chance to reply, you grabbed her delicate wrists, and pulled her back onto the couch, causing her to fall on top of you until your bodies were pressed flat together. Apparently an unexpected move, given the look on her face, when usually Arin initiated every advance. 

“Professor…” 

Exchanging lingering glances, that was the last word Arin spoke before you cupped one side of her face, and dove into her warm, pillowy soft lips, tasting hints of strawberry on her breath. When your lips met, it stripped all manner of formality, no longer were you just a student and a professor, but two individuals consumed with lust, tired of holding it in, tired of hiding it. 

Much of Arin’s bare skin became available, a daunting task to keep focused on one spot, so your greedy hands freely roamed her body, groping as many different places as you could reach while your tongue invaded her mouth. 

Her lips tasted just like you remembered, sweet and addicting, a taste you would chase to the ends of the earth for. Eager for more, you bit down on her bottom lip, only for her to return the favor, nipping against your own, mirroring every bit of aggression. The more things escalated, the less it felt like you were in your office, liable to have anyone knock at the door and interrupt. 

Matching your fervor, Arin started to unbutton your shirt, using her fingers to tease your chest with every button undone, trailing downwards after a new spot uncovered. “You know, professor, maybe I should skip all my classes just to come visit you. Your office is very comfortable…” 

As much as you wouldn’t mind that, you couldn’t be held responsible for her grades deteriorating. ”Your education is important, Miss Yewon.” 

Her tongue slipped back in your mouth as the kiss deepened, lips pressed up against one another with much more desperation, much more saliva swapped. Arin ran fingers through your hair while you caressed her bare back, aching to map out her pale skin, moving lower, much lower, until you squeezed her ass and kneaded those delicious cheeks. 

“If you insist. But only because if I got kicked out, you wouldn’t be able to rail me every day.” Whatever her motivation for keeping grades up was didn’t matter, as long as it meant you would keep meeting like this. 

After breaking the liplock, you kissed the curve of her well-defined jaw, then moved towards her sensitive neck, making her even more hot and bothered—but you had to be careful not to leave any marks that she wouldn’t be able to cover up easily. The same couldn’t be said for Arin, who had the unfair advantage to do just that, opening your shirt up and left a barrage of wet kisses and lip prints on your bare chest. 

“Mwah, that’s much better,” Arin said, and you could see the temptation in her eyes to leave lipstick marks on your cheek, neck, or anywhere else plainly visible. But instead, she ran her fingertips up and down your lip-stained chest, then cupped your face with her cold hands. “I can feel how hard you are. Shouldn’t I do something about that?” 

“Later. Wanna taste you right now. Need to shove my tongue in your pretty little cunt.” 

You could see the disappointment in Arin’s beautiful eyes, because if she came all this way without filling her throat with dick at least once, it would be a waste. 

“At least let me get your cock wet, professor,” she pleaded, as she traced the outline of your bulge, and you could hardly deny her when she looked at you like that, licking her lips with seduction, plump lips that were absolutely made for delivering the best blowjobs imaginable.  

“Alright, fine. Show me what those cock sucking lips can do."

“At once, professor.” Not wasting any time, Arin unzipped your pants, pulled them down to your knees, and immediately fished your cock out of your boxers. While she stroked your length, her lips returned to yours, keeping her taste lingering in your mouth, earning you some much necessary relief. 

“This really belongs in my mouth,” she said, tightening her grip on your shaft, and pumped with more deft strokes. As she jerked you off quicker and made you moan, her parted lips continued to pin down your own, and her tongue tantalized the inside of your mouth. 

Delivering another wet, open mouth kiss, her lips then journeyed down your body, adding more smudged lipstick to your exposed flesh. Arin tugged off your pants down to your ankles as soon as she reached your waist, and divested your boxers, causing your stiff cock to spring to attention. “There we go, all for me.” 

With her gaze fixated on you, she flattened her tongue against the base of your shaft, and slowly dragged her way up, then planted a deep, messy kiss on the tip of your cock. Swirling her wet tongue around, Arin then flicked against your leaking slit, lapping up every drop, and alternated between tender kisses and soft licks. When she sensed you had your fill of teasing, her lips parted, enveloping your swollen cockhead that she gently sucked. 

You uttered no more than a groan, and leaned your head back against the couch armrest, watching Arin go to work. Her head bobbed while her delicate hands squeezed both thighs, nails digging in to your skin, and those sensual lips applied a deeper suction that hollowed her cheeks. 

“Relax, professor. Let me please you. Let me make you melt…” 

Her seductive eyes studied your every move, while her lips swallowed up more shaft, bottoming down to your base with ease as her throat relaxed. When she came back up, a sheen of warm saliva covered your shaft, and she repeated the journey, those hungry lips slurping on every inch that filled her throat. 

Arin maintained a steady rhythm and teased your balls, toying with them between her fingers, fondling them while your shaft became saturated with more saliva, spilling down the lips of her mouth. 

“God, Yewon, you make me feel so good,” you moaned, falling apart while Arin sucked you off and added as much stimulation as possible by playing with your balls, her lips testing your resolve. The way her head bobbed never stayed consistent for long, and varied from frantic to sluggish lazy strokes. But the way she held you down her throat didn’t, keeping you there for several seconds without any struggle, eyes on you for the entire ride. 

It all made you want to return the favor tenfold. With your cock plenty wet, you kept your eyes glued to how well Arin deepthroated your cock with ease, almost hesitant to stop her, not wanting the stream of pleasure to dissipate.

“Yewon, let me taste you now.” 

Arin complied, but not without a few more sinful slurps that drove you wild, as she released your cock with a loud pop that let you see how much your cock glistened under the lights. Momentarily, you stood up off the couch and gestured towards the armrest while you kicked the rest of your clothes away. She got your message loud and clear, swiftly getting on her knees and bent over, sticking out that perfect, plump ass to you that you couldn’t get behind any faster. 

Looking over her shoulder, Arin leaned more over the armrest, and pressed her thong-clad ass against your aching erection. Your eyes glazed over from the lack of blinking, wondering how such a delicious ass existed that belonged to such a pretty girl, another unanswerable question while you caressed her soft cheeks. Even if you couldn't help but lustfully stare at those covered cheeks, you'd have a stiff neck if you persisted. In one swift motion, you peeled Arin’s tiny thong off her hips, granting your eyes the blessing of that fully exposed ass, alongside her gorgeous, appetizing cunt. 

“Fuck,” you mumbled under your breath and didn’t waste a second in groping her ass, getting your fingertips in that soft delicate flesh, massaging it gently before outlining the curve of it with your needy fingers. Arin responded in soft moans while you began to pepper in little small kisses to her ass, kissing every inch you could touch. 

“Your ass is fucking amazing, Yewon. Have I ever told you that?” 

“You’ve mentioned it once or twice, Professor. And almost every time we meet,” she giggled, savoring your adoration of her deliciously ample buttcheeks. God, you could do this all day, those bare cheeks silky soft to the touch, lured in with no chance of escape, so you did what anyone who had ever seen Arin in a short skirt in person never had the chance to—and buried your face in that ass. 

You were more than content to suffocate there, nestled between the softest flesh imaginable that would make a pillow jealous, inhaling the sweet scent of Arin. But you couldn’t ignore your hunger, nor could you ignore that divine pussy, or those juicy lips that would give your taste buds a workout. One more inhale, followed by one more moment to rub your face all over those exquisite cheeks, and then you moved down to tease her inner thighs with kisses, alternating between each and gave them the individual attention deserved.

“Professor, you said you were going to taste me,” she whined, her growing impatience becoming more apparent. A little teasing never hurt, but when you had a decadent dessert offered up on a silver platter, it was only polite to dive in. 

Spreading her thighs for better access, you dragged your tongue up and down her slit, ending her desperation while coating your tongue with her sweet juices. The first morsel of her tangy taste left you dying for more, and with your hands still squeezing her tight ass, you traced her slick-trapped folds with your tongue, gathering up her nectar with a craving for more. Within seconds, that thirst would be quenched when you darted your tongue against Arin’s sensitive clit, and drank up whatever juices escaped her cunt, 

“So fucking delicious,” you hissed, as your tongue became more frantic, and explored the pink flesh offered up, taking a journey of pleasure with no destination. “I could eat you all fucking day.” 

“But then who would teach your students? Education is important,” Arin mocked, jerking back when you sucked on her swollen clit in response, which made her thighs quiver against your face.

“Just for that, I think I might fuck you. Harder than you deserve.” Not only for her benefit, but yours, because while you enjoyed every moment of devouring your slutty little student, that ache in your cock became harder to endure—you desperately needed somewhere to shove your shaft into. 

“I’m all yours, professor.” Like she was ever anything but, leaning into your touch, practically chasing your tongue while it slid between all that slippery flesh. Then again, your tongue and cock seemed to have different priorities on the matter, fighting for control of Arin’s perfect little pussy. 

Moments away from insertion, you wondered how sturdy the lock to your office was. If somehow, someone managed to break in and caught both of you naked in your office, both of your lives would inevitably be fucked, exponentially yours more so. Sleeping with your student was one thing, doing it in the relatively public space of the office you worked years to acquire was another. Almost without a , you’d lose your PhD, your master’s degree, and certainly your entire career. But honestly, you had no time to give a shit about that when you had the hottest student in your class who willingly offered her body up like the free coffee in the teacher’s lounge. 

The reality of it all made it hard to care about when you had such a round ass and tight little cunt inches away from your cock. You could see it in Arin’s pretty eyes, the need, the desire, the look of why are you still not inside me yet? A question you would ask yourself, and find an immediate answer when you pushed your shaft inside her heavenly cunt.

You couldn’t find words to voice your pleasure and just groaned when you entered Arin. Unfathomable bliss filled your body when your cock moved in slow plunges, those clinging walls squeezing tight, and urged you deeper. Neither of you spoke for several thrusts, because what was there to say, other than praise, how big you felt inside her, and how utterly drenched she was. That intense, audible wetness when you moved inside Arin’s wet warmth would make sure you planned in advance for next time, because red fabric stained far too easily. 

“Professor—“ Arin managed to spit out, a word without meaning, without any follow up, but you were happy to just hear her pretty voice while your hips smacked against those full, rippling cheeks as you began to bottom out her needy cunt.

Her pussy had never felt more incredible. Maybe it was the danger of getting caught that added an extra oomph to the end of your pistoning hips, or the three-day weekend that kept your bodies away from each other an extra day that made every thrust that much more pumped full of ecstasy. Not that you couldn’t visit each other, as you certainly ended up tangled in Arin’s bed sheets on multiple occasions and vice versa, but it dampened the rush. 

While Arin thoroughly enjoyed the thrashing you were giving her wet little pussy, being extra careless of how loud the smacks of hot flesh were, you couldn’t have been more preoccupied on that way that perfect ass bounced. Especially after a harsh spank or two that left a mark on her pristine buttcheeks, and for some extra stimulation, you slipped your thumb up her tight little asshole, feeling her clench tighter around your cock.  

Judging by the deeper moans let out, she was much more gratified when you simultaneously penetrated her two holes. If only Arin had the same glass dildo with her in that very first selfie sent—she’d never forget the look on your face when you mistakenly checked your phone in the middle of class. 

“This pussy is unbelievable, fuck—“ 

Arin couldn’t help but laugh at how quickly you were breaking down. “I know. You must love my pussy, and the way I cream all over you. But wouldn’t you rather have your perfect cock inside my ass? You've been staring at it nonstop since I walked into your office."

Caught red-handed, you couldn’t admit otherwise. Not that anyone could blame you when she wore such short skirts that hardly covered up her cheeks, or on the rare occasion—didn’t, and conveniently “forgot” to wear underwear. It was rather absurd that your cock wasn’t buried inside her ass with as much time as you spent gawking and worshiping it. But there was only one little problem. “A much as I would love to plow your ass, I don’t have any—“

“Lube? Check my bag.” 

One might have questioned why a student would keep a bottle of lube on their belongings, but not you. Not a second thought went by while you rummaged through her bag, moving aside books, notepads, lotions, and makeup pouches until you found your desired treasure. 

“Warm me up a little?” Arin asked when you rejoined her on the couch. Not that she really needed it, but moreso wanted it, and your tongue hadn’t gotten the action it deserved. Setting aside the bottle for now, your tongue took the same route, licking a long stripe up her wet cunt, and made a detour towards her puckered hole. This time, you refrained from any teasing, instead licking short circles around her asshole, then spread her fleshy cheeks wide to grant better access and plunged your tongue inside. 

“Professor!” 

Arin’s beautiful gasps filled your ears as you spread her cheeks wider and lapped at her asshole, using your tongue like a dildo, hitting every little nerve that caused a chain reaction of bliss, a parade of stimulation. You never took the same path twice while you tonguefucked her tight little hole, using sloppy movements to saturate the rim of her ass in saliva, and refused to let your tongue rest, not that a break would ever be necessary when Arin tasted so good. If her juicy cunt was a dessert, then for sure her ass was a buffet you could feast upon and never quite be full. 

“I wonder what people would think if they walked in right now to see my professor’s tongue shoved up my asshole.” 

“I think they’d be wondering where the back of the line was.” 

That small grin from her lips disappeared into an open mouth moan while you continued to tongue her sweet asshole, and dug your fingers into the soft flesh of her buttcheeks, keeping them spread wide as they could go to satiate your appetite.

“Mmm, fuck, that tongue feels so good. You really know how to eat a girl’s ass, don’t you, professor?” Unwilling to say a word that would interrupt your meal, you accepted her praise in silence and swirled your tongue in every direction imaginable, slobbering all over that tasty tight hole. 

“God, professor, you’re amazing. But I think I’m warmed up enough, don’t you?” With much reluctance you would agree, even if meant your tongue would have to leave her beautiful backside, but the main event would soon await. 

That didn’t mean you couldn’t enjoy one more moment filling your hands with Arin’s cheeks, as you admired her glistening asshole that would soon be reintroduced to your greedy cock. She sank down into the couch; her face pressed down and ass raised up, not wanting to be empty much longer. Naturally, it would be hard for anyone to stay idle with those cheeks between your fingers, with such a spankable ass at your mercy, and you had to pry yourself from fondling that ass, or you’d never stop. 

You weren’t in a rush when you lubed up your cock and slid two fingers inside Arin’s saliva drenched asshole, adding more slick liquid than necessary. A poor excuse to test that puckered hole once more, using the pretense of preparation to finger her tight ass, a preview of that intense clench that you’d feel more of later. 

“Fuck, don’t keep me waiting, professor. Need you in my ass, stretching me out like you always do. Stop teasing and fill me already.” 

Arin wanted it almost more than you did, and it was far too easy to keep her on edge, but eventually two fingers became one, until your last digit withdrew from her ass, leaving her restless with anticipation. All out of patience yourself, you didn’t dare dream of making Arin wait much longer, and guided your cockhead between those luscious cheeks as you nudged against her divine asshole. 

With little reason to prolong the inevitable, you caught Arin’s gaze when she looked over her shoulder again, eyes brimming with impatience. You took a necessary deep breath, one that Arin matched, and sank into her hot, tight asshole, already overwhelmed by that impossible tightness. One plunge wasn’t enough, and you didn’t stop until the tip of your cock disappeared, swallowed up by an ass sculpted by the gods, with the additional pressure such a mind-numbing sensation that made you throb like you never had before. 

“More, professor. More,” Arin pleaded, unsatisfied by just your thick cockhead penetrating her snug little hole, a request you had no intention to deny. For a moment, you pulled out so you could rewatch the way your cock slid inside her plump ass, and her body accepted you with ease, her snug walls gripping your cock much harsher than her cunt. 

“You’re so goddamn tight, Yewon, fuck,” you groaned with both hands firmly on those perfect pale cheeks, and pumped into Arin at an agonizingly slow pace, stretching her out more and more, and savored every last movement before you were even balls deep. Fitting your cock into Arin’s tight little asshole didn’t come easy, even after several deep breaths and relaxed muscles, but it was a struggle you would gladly take on, all in the name of pleasure. 

“Deeper, professor, go deeper. Please let me take all of you, stretch my little asshole.” 

She whimpered and groaned the more your girth impaled her ass, arching her back higher, and that constricting grip around your shaft intensified the deeper you went, further provoking you to fill her up to the hilt. Almost flush to the base against her firm cheeks, you watched the lustful expression etched on Arin’s face, taking note of her open mouth, widened eyes, and how her palms flattened against the couch cushions, desperate to be stretched wider. 

After a rather harsh movement of your hips, you lodged your cock deep inside her asshole until you were finally balls deep, immediately taking another thrust, then a third, experiencing such sharp pleasure that would only repeat itself as you buried yourself in those warm depths, opening her up to allow the deepest penetration manageable. “This what you wanted, Yewon? My cock all the way up this tight fucking asshole?”

Arin scrambled to grab onto anything, digging her fingers into the fabric of the couch.“Yes! Oh my god, you feel so good, so deep inside me. Keep me full like this, please—“ 

With a pleading look like that, you didn’t need any more persuasion. “Fucking slut. Look at you, dripping all over my couch. Gonna have fun explaining this to the custodian.” 

“I can’t help it, professor, you fuck me so well. You’ll just have to get a new couch, I don’t think cum is easy to get out.” 

“That depends how many loads I dump in you today.” 

“Oh? Were you planning on going for round two, professor?” 

“Yeah, Yewon. Thanks to you, I think my office hours are officially canceled today.” 

Arin would be pleased that only she could see you today, knowing the reason why any student entering your office during specified hours would be met would a locked door, while on the other side she’d be flat on her back covered in sweat, on her knees, or bouncing on your cock. 

Meanwhile, her greed got the best of her, and she began to fuck herself back on your cock, moaning with every push against you, eager to be split open even more. Even better than that, it freed up your hands, and gave free rein to slap that bouncy bubble butt, something you desired the moment she walked into your office. 

With much delight you gave a quick spank to both cheeks, not letting time pass without the soft flesh rippling, and slapped each cheek one by one, again, and again, and again, the sound growing louder with every smack. 

The slaps on her ass came in succession without delay, and each rippled her cheeks in a hypnotic fashion, filling the room with sounds of moans and whimpers. As your attention shifted to one cheek, each smack given turned the delicate flesh redder, and the only respite offered came in between harsh strikes when you massaged her tender cheeks. 

And you were just getting started. 

While Arin kept fucking herself on your cock and opened herself more, you gave harder and harder spanks on her delicious backside, contemplating how an ass could have so much insane jiggle, every smack generating more and more recoil on those luscious cheeks. 

“I love it when you spank me, professor. Spank me while I take your cock up my ass, spank me like the naughty little student I am.” 

Her ass rippled in a way that could only be described as beautiful, while a loud gasp or desperate cry for more left her lips following more reddened flesh. Arin had some of the best hips you had the pleasure to grab, and they never stopped moving as she slammed her cheeks down on your cock, ensuring you stayed embedded inside her puckered hole, and refused to let you leave that unrelenting tightness. 

The flesh of her ass became so red, so sensitive, that you had to cease for a moment just to savor the noises she made, and rubbed the sting out of one side, letting it return when you flattened your palm and smacked her thick ass like the crack of a whip. 

Looking down, both of Arin’s asscheeks were the way you loved them—bright red, tender, and plastered with palm prints. You would make sure they remained that way for days, as you doubled down, smacking either side of her ass in harsh succession, before grabbing her hips and reclaimed control of her ass. All those smacks on her rear combined with those thrusts she took inside escalated her arousal, making it easier to pound her ass. And you did so without holding back, fucking her into the couch the way she deserved, guided by the sounds of sweet bliss that left her lips. 

Arin was right—you would need a whole new couch after this. You could see how much of her arousal dripped down her thighs, already staining the fabric that matched the color of her sore buttcheeks, and that was before the thick load that would soon leak out of her. 

“Professor—“ Arin had trouble forming words, thanks to your cock repeatedly gaping her asshole and impaling her insides, melting away into bliss until it was all she could think about. “God, you fuck me so well, professor. But why haven’t you cum yet? Don’t you need to?”

Eventually, you would, but not until you spent enough time reaming her tight little body, firmly planted in Arin’s asshole, that she would dream about how good your cock felt inside her. “Because I’m enjoying your ass way too much. Gonna keep fucking it as long as I can until my balls get drained.” 

“Well, then keep fucking me, professor. Fuck me until you fill my tight asshole up all the way. I’ll be a good little cum dump. Can’t wait to feel that hot load inside me…” 

A pretty girl like Arin uttering such vulgarity like that drove you almost as insane as the ass you were pounding. Seeing her plump cheeks alone with their vivid red hue kept you going, and it was more than enough to keep you rock hard, even if your hips were at their limit. But you had enough stamina left to keep yourself buried in her ass, watching every little detail on her perfect, sweaty face etched with ecstasy. 

One more smack on her delicious ass became a lit fuse of unavoidable tension manifesting in your balls that meant every thrust now came with a countdown. But before you could reach the finish line, you kept your eyes glued to the heart-shaped ass your cock pummeled, chasing that edge while dancing on a tight-rope of bliss that you were bound to topple over at any moment. 

Not even a black hole could contain your combined lust, or all your built-up carnal desires to wreck Arin’s impeccable body, because sometimes—there was nothing better than ruining something beautiful. 

The sweat down her back, the way her disheveled hair clung to her naked skin, and the way she pleaded for you to cum, it all painted a highly detailed picture that you would put the finishing touches on by smacking your hips against her body one last time, then buried your shaft in that unforgettable tightness before you finally erupted inside her. 

While you spilled thick semen into her ass, you couldn’t tell who needed this release more—but given how much you throbbed as your shaft emptied in her asshole, you had never felt this euphoric, groaning in relief while filling Arin to the brim. It wasn’t even a challenge to stay there, barely moving a muscle as her tight hole milked your cock dry, prolonging your unyielding twitches and throbs. The real feat would be pulling out, because even after your climax ran its course, you wanted nothing more but to stay inside that warmth, cockwarming her ass for eternity. 

“P-professor…” Arin couldn’t say much, and your heavy breathing echoed her own. Every tired pant she made gave your cock a new twitch, like trying to empty more inside her body.

“Fuck, it feels so warm and thick inside me, professor. Wasn’t this worth canceling your office hours?” Way past your scheduled time, you hadn’t even remembered to put up a notice, but given your focus on destroying Arin’s ass, it was no wonder you hadn’t heard a single knock—hopefully nobody needed to meet up with you today, or maybe the cries of pleasure from inside spoke for you. 

“This ass is worth canceling everything,” you said, as you began to catch your breath. Reluctantly, you began to withdraw from Arin, one little inch at time, until you were no longer inside her, and intently watched your cum leak out from her gaped asshole in a slow drip that became a thick downpour that stained her thighs, your couch, and anywhere else it pleased. You were powerless to save your couch, but you didn’t care. A worthy sacrifice. 

Collapsing to one side of the cushions your body preferred, Arin came tumbling after, her sweaty body clinging against your own. “And having my professor pound my ass was worth missing class.” 

You moved hair out of her eyes, as the two of you exchanged tired smiles. “I guess I should be responsible and get ready to teach my next class.” 

As a pout formed on her lips, Arin kissed your bare skin, never yielding her insatiable hunger. “That’s no fun. When is it?” 

“In about forty-five minutes.” In actuality, you had an hour, but you’d need to locate a shower and figure out how the hell to make the smell of sex in your office disperse before then. And the stains on the couch would be a problem for a different day. 

“Perfect. Just enough time to rail me again. Because I’m not leaving your office without another load inside me.” 

“And you’re not leaving wearing those pretty panties either.” 

“Deal, professor. They’ll be waiting on your desk.” 

[thankssteveditko]

Sony's PlayStation 5 Presents Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (the third game in the series)

I beat the main story and have enjoyed my time with the game overall! I want to talk about spoilers and things that I liked and disliked in the story, so here's a post with some scattered thoughts.

(Hello! I haven't forgotten that this blog exists! Like I said, no update schedule, I will read more of the Lee/Ditko comics whenever I make time for it. I've actually been sitting on a mostly-complete version of this post since I beat the game in October, thinking that I'd finish the rest of the side quests so I could throw in thoughts on those. But... eh, I'll do that whenever the inevitable DLC rolls around. I just wanna get these thoughts posted.)

Spider-Cop No More

First off: they downplayed the cop shit!!! This was the first thing that really struck me about the game, and I'm stunned that they actually listened to criticism on this. I thought we'd just be stuck with it forever.

It'll never be completely gone, of course. Spider-Man is always going to leave criminals webbed up for the police to take to prison, hoping that they'll do their time and come out the other side as Productive Members of Society. That's just a thing I begrudgingly accept as part of the genre that will probably never go away. But Spider-Man is no longer repairing police surveillance networks. You're no longer beating the shit out of random drug dealers. Gangs of escaped convicts still wearing their orange jumpsuits are no longer terrorizing the streets of New York.

Instead, Peter and Miles are played more as firefighters. Sometimes very literally! They work with firefighters, they rescue people from collapsing buildings, they rush injured people to the hospital. In general there's a huge increase in the number of random onlookers present during the big action setpieces, and the Spider-Men frequently have to save them from harm. One of the major side quest lines is even literally about a cult of arsonists, and you'll routinely find burning fuel tanker trucks you have to extinguish with your webs. It's great! Love this for them.

I also generally liked the side missions in this. There's a lot of good stuff with the Spider-Men being neighborhood heroes willing to help out anyone in need, no matter the problem. Some of them can get corny, sure, but that street level stuff has always been the real heart of Spider-Man to me.

Gameplay

The gameplay's as fun as ever. That probably goes without saying. I will not be spending a thousand words explaining that swinging is fun.

In particular, I really liked the changes to the Focus mechanic. I never loved the way Miles' game made you choose between healing and doing your special attacks, but here your four specials have their own cooldowns, and the Focus meter is spent on either healing or finishers. It still offers that risk/reward element, but those vicious cycles where you can't do any real damage because you keep needing to heal aren't nearly as bad as they were before.

Personally I didn't turn off the swing assist or turn on fall damage, because the streamlined swinging never bothered me in these games, but I'm glad the options are there for people who want them.

Kraven

I liked Kraven in this! I liked the way they leaned into his Hunters being this weird death cult, and him wanting to go down in a blaze of glory against a worthy foe, to the point that he's actually disappointed anytime a foe can't kill him. It riffs on things people liked in Kraven's Last Hunt without being the exact same story. I like that Kraven's gang is renting out this manor or whatever and just being a complete terror to the wait staff. I liked the way Kraven hunting Peter's rogues' gallery clashed with Peter's belief in giving his villains second chances. I liked that they were willing to have Kraven kill off a couple of the minor villains from the first game to sell how dangerous he is. (I know some people hated this, but like, come on. We already fought the Sinister Six. They don't need to do that again.) I like the way Kraven pushed Peter to the absolute brink, turning him more and more aggressive with the Black Suit. Good stuff all around, even if the Hunter enemy types did wear out their welcome a little bit by the end.

The Black Suit arc

I think I liked the way Insomniac handled Peter's Black Suit arc overall, but there's a tradeoff here.

They REALLY lean into the body horror tentacle stuff, with Black Suit Peter basically just being a skinny Venom by the end. The sequence where you play as Mary Jane while the symbiote puppets an unconscious Peter's body around and goes on a rampage against the Hunters was REALLY great at selling how scary Peter is becoming, and it made me completely change my tune on the inclusion of the MJ stealth missions in the sequel. Having to beat an out-of-control Peter as Miles immediately after Peter beats Kraven was also really good. This is all cool!

BUT, the thing is... with the symbiote powers being so freaky from the start, it really pushes my suspension of disbelief when Peter and co. take so long to become wary of it. I guess when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider and given superpowers, and when you live in the same universe as the Avengers and the X-Men, your perception of what's "normal" is going to be pretty warped. But they buy the whole "organic exosuit created to treat Harry's illness" story WAY too easily lmao. How do the self-aware slime tentacles help with his illness, exactly?

And I'm not sure how I feel about giving Peter Anti-Venom powers in the last act. It feels like it's primarily a concession so that they can give players that branch of their skill tree back, but honestly, the designer in me thinks it would be really cool (if risky) to just permanently lock players out of Peter's most powerful skills past a certain point. Yeah, it'd definitely piss people off, but it drives home the idea that Peter's given up greater power because it's the right thing to do. It'd put you in his shoes! Instead he just gets the symbiote powers back, but it's fine because the Venom voice in his head is gone and also the slime tendrils that explode out of his body are white now, which means they're good.

I have to say it. I'm sorry. The glistening white goo... they turned Peter into the Amazing Cum-Man. I changed back to the Classic Suit after rolling the credits and forgot I still had the Anti-Venom skills equipped, so I just saw regular old Spider-Man exploding his white goo everywhere. Terrible.

Assuming Peter is just stepping into more of a supporting role to Miles and not fully retiring after the events of this game, I really hope the Anti-Venom stuff is gone. I get that he needed it to counter Venom, but that's not what I want for Peter Parker.

Miles

Miles is good in this, and I really like his arc where he struggles with whether or not he should avenge his dad by killing Martin Li. I like how all that plays out. Unfortunately, they don't quite stick the landing when it comes to making him and Peter feel like equals in terms of narrative focus. His arc is definitely the B-plot to Peter's for the middle chunk of the story, which I guess was kind of inevitable since they decided to do the Black Suit arc. But Miles does at least get a lot of moments to shine, and by the end he's very much taking the lead as the main Spider-Man.

Becoming the main Spider-Man also gets Miles a new, wholly original suit that ended up being super controversial, and honestly... I kinda like it? Or at least I like what it's going for, even if the actual design could still use some work. It's something totally unique for Miles, and I like spandex/streetwear combo suits like what the Spider-Verse movies have popularized. But showing his hair is really pushing the limits of his secret identity. He hangs around Brooklyn Visions WAY too much for his classmates to not recognize his voice and haircut. And I understand why people would be wary about it becoming his "canon" look moving forward. But I think it's got potential.

On the subject of Miles, though, I will say that while I liked Miles' side missions, it feels like he's often saddled with the game's broad, kinda touristy, kinda token attempts at Showcasing The Diversity Of New York, in a way that Peter isn't.

I like that Miles has a deaf graffiti artist girlfriend that he and Ganke sign with, and I like that there's a series of side missions that explore some local jazz history, and I like that there's a mission where Miles helps a gay classmate ask his crush to prom. I like all these things! I like Spider-Man being involved with his community, and that said community includes such a wide variety of people! I like that this game slows down to savor these types of moments instead of just being all action all the time! But when I step back, I notice some patterns.

Hailey doesn't have a big role in the main plot, especially when compared to MJ, but Miles gets a side mission where you briefly play as her with muffled audio to teach you what being deaf is like. There are no major queer characters in the story - unless you count Felicia showing up for exactly one mission to mention she has an unseen, unnamed girlfriend in Paris now - but you get a side mission where Miles helps out a gay couple at his school, who then never come up again. To put it very uncharitably, they can feel like Very Special Episode missions. It's like the devs going: we're going to give Miles a Gay Mission, and an Impaired Hearing Mission, and a Cultural History Mission, so that we can say we touched on these things, but we're gonna make them all optional and keep them far away from the full-blown Superhero Stuff like fighting costumed villains. Those flavors cannot mix. Meanwhile, Peter gets to have a whole elaborate subplot about teaming up with Wraith to track down fucking Cletus Kasady. There's an imbalance here, and I think it's part of the reason why Peter still feels like the "main" Spider-Man for so much of the story.

I think this was all written with admirable intentions, but as others have pointed out, you can kinda tell that this game was mainly written by some white guys based in California. These attempts at depicting various marginalized groups can feel kind of detached in the same way that Insomniac's map of New York doesn't quite line up with the real thing. But I dunno. I'm not really the one to dig deep into some of this stuff as a white woman from Florida. I would be curious to read others' takes on this.

Maybe I'm just being overly cynical about the writers' well-meaning but corny and kinda out of touch liberal politics because of the podcasts.

The podcasters

I wish Jameson was in this more! They psyched us out by giving him a full character model for, like, two scenes. I like him being MJ's boss, but I wish we saw inside the Daily Bugle offices to get more Jameson.

At least his podcasts are better than the ones in the Miles game, though. Him completely trusting in Roxxon was just too much for me. Here he condemns Oscorp for the symbiote shit, and he also gets some moments where he takes the ongoing crises seriously and isn't just ranting about the Spider-Men. He isn't just a conspiracy theorist crackpot here. Shit like his "fuck Spider-Man, we have a justice system for a reason" speech makes him feel more like a human being with a point of view, rather than just a caricature. Definitely an improvement.

Unfortunately, I still find The Danikast grating. I'm sorry, Ashly Burch. It's not your fault. The quirky heckin' wholesome millennial podcaster lady who catches you up on current events and then reminds you to drink 64 ounces of water a day in the same breath is just too much for me. At least she doesn't have any lines as bad as her throwing in a "damn" and then going (direct quote here) "That's right - no censoring! That's how REAL I'm being right now!" like in Miles' game. Instead they give her this, like, almost psychic insight into the main plot to try and make her the angel on Peter's shoulder. The second Peter gets the symbiote she's like "Wow, y'all. Have you seen Spider-Man's new black suit? Something's different about him. He's been giving me such bad vibes lately. #NotMySpiderMan" Also she's supposed to be this, like, underdog independent podcaster who started her show on a whim and has become the voice of the people... but she's got billboards plastered all over the fucking city. Which makes her feel like an industry plant lmao

Again, there's a detachment with the writing. This is, like, some middle aged white liberal game dev guys' idea of what a modern leftist teenager would think is a Cool Activism Podcast. Unfortunately, because Insomniac thinks Danika's a hero, Mary Jane's triumphant ending is that she quits her job at the Bugle to become a podcaster, too, delivering a thinly veiled monologue about the pandemic to kick off her new podcast literally titled "The New Normal." She's going to save the world with podcasting, because that's the highest form of activism, I guess.

Venom

So! Venom! Venom was... okay.

Surprising no one, Harry Osborn is Venom. Harry's okay both as himself and as Venom, but I'm not sure his arc is a smooth one. He starts out as Peter's comically perfect best friend who returns to reminisce about the good ol' days and hand him his dream job on a silver platter, and then later he becomes a little ball of rage over the fact that Peter gets his symbiote and can't/won't give it back. I'm not sure that pivot is handled the most convincingly. You kind of have to write it off as the symbiote messing with their heads, I guess.

When he actually becomes Venom, I'm... mixed on the execution. On the one hand, the cool factor is absolutely there. He's a very cool big monster, and Tony Todd is great in the role. But he also wants to take over the world and make everyone a symbiote, and aside from any lingering resentment towards Peter, that's really all there is to him. It makes for a good video game to have a bunch of symbiote enemies and creepy symbiote nests and symbiote tentacles climbing up the sides of buildings in the last act... but is that really what I want out of Venom? Probably not. But he sure does look cool as a big monster guy to fight, and I was happy he was briefly playable.

Suits

Part of me feels like there's something lacking about the suit selection here, but almost every suit I liked in the previous games is back, and also I'm the type of person to give Peter the Classic Suit the second I unlock it and use that for most of the game. So does it really matter for me?

Peter's selection feels dominated by the various live action movie suits, but I get that those are going to be some of the suits people want to wear the most. I wish he had the Peter B. Parker skin to go with Miles' Spider-Verse alts, though. No idea why it's missing. Really I think I mainly just want more of the Spider-Verse designs.

Also I've complained about how most of the original suits designed for these games make Peter and Miles look like they were bitten by radioactive Alienware products, but I can just, you know. Wear other suits.

Misc thoughts

Everyone's already made this joke, but it's extremely funny that the Avengers didn't help with the symbiote invasion. Took one look at that and decided it wasn't their problem

On the subject of other superheroes, I do wish these games would acknowledge the Fantastic Four more. Peter's close relationship with that team feels woefully underutilized in his various adaptations

I like the trope of a boss fight that's a heightened version of a personal conflict between two people who are close, where throughout the fight the boss is airing out their grievances while the hero tries to get through to them emotionally. That especially works for Spider-Man! But WOW has Insomniac played that card a lot of times by the end of Spider-Man 2 lol

They're teasing the addition of Silk, I guess? I'm gonna be honest, I don't know shit about Silk, but I guess it was inevitable that they'd give us some form of Spider-Woman at some point. Gotta work all those costumes in somehow, and they're not brave enough to let one of the boys cosplay as Spider-Gwen.

They WERE, however, brave enough to let Harry say he loves Peter. I liked that little moment. They presumably meant it platonically, but clearly ol' Yaoi Lowenthal knows what's up

Post-leak addendum

So, obviously, by the time I got around to finishing this post the big Insomniac leak happened. I wish the game industry wasn't so secretive that it took a massive, dangerous data breach just to get our hands on some very basic info that would be public knowledge if Insomniac was a film studio, but here we are.

We now know that Insomniac spent somewhere around $315 million making Spider-Man 2 - triple what the first Spider-Man game cost to make. A quote about this from a leaked presentation has been stuck in my head ever since I first saw it on Twitter. “Is 3x the investment in [Spider-Man 2] evident to anyone who plays the game?”

To be honest, I'm not sure it is.

I liked Spider-Man 2, but I'd probably say that overall I liked it about as much as the first game. It's certainly a somewhat bigger game, with marginally more realistic looking graphics thanks to the power of the PS5. But I think I could do without ray tracing and more realistic hair rendering and whatnot if it meant that these games didn't take like five years and hundreds of millions of dollars to make. I could not give less of a shit if the swinging animations were recycled between games. I'd be fine with them being shorter, too.

I like these games, but as we look at that leaked project lineup and realize that Insomniac is turning into The Marvel Game Studio, I think about how many smaller, more original games that those resources could go towards if they scaled back the Marvel stuff just a bit. How many Ape Escapes or Patapons or Gravity Rushes could get made for the budget of just one of these massive AAA tentpole games of Sony's, which are apparently barely even breaking even? How many could be made for the budget of the "smaller, cheaper" Miles Morales game, which somehow cost $156 million to make despite using an updated version of the same Manhattan map from the first game? Hell, how many smaller games could have been made with the $39 million that went into remastering the first Spider-Man game for PS5 a mere two years after launch? How many people will lose their jobs if any one of Insomniac's upcoming Marvel games underperforms - which, in this case, could mean selling "only" 5 million copies? And would hardcore PlayStation fans even accept those smaller games at this point, now that they've been trained to only appreciate mega-budget Prestige Games with cutting edge graphics and treat everything else with disdain? How much worse will this get as the graphical arms race continues?

I think I just miss Japan Studio. Fuck Sony. Uhh but anyway the Spider-Man game this post was supposed to be about was good, some writing complaints aside. 8/10

[meimi-haneoka]

Clear Card Trivia 3 ~ Sakura's journey of growth and self-understanding throughout Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

Hello and welcome back to my "Clear Card Trivia" series, a collection of informative posts where I delve into certain aspects of the story of Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card! ✨

The topic I will talk about today has been on my "to-do list" for long time. It's something I felt the need to talk about, and I won't hide the reason why: the desire to fully eviscerate this topic grew particularly after reading around certain criticism of Clear Card Arc. But also after listening to CLAMP's Twitter Spaces, particularly the ones towards the end of the story.

It's something that, setting aside my obvious love for the new characters, will always make me think that Clear Card Arc has been a very welcome addition to the series.

This post will delve into Sakura's growth throughout Clear Card Arc.

Sakura grew up considerably during the story, and had a character development that sadly not many people truly realized.

I'm not talking about an evolution of the character design which, despite changing and evolving throughout the story (as it's expected for a long-running serialization), kept depicting Sakura consistently with quite young looks...no, I'm talking about her mental growth, in relation to her self-knowledge and her relationship with her magic powers.

A journey that might almost feel "frustrating", because it is full of "up and downs", and Sakura sometimes seems to be taking one step forward and two back. Aside from the obvious practical reasons (the plot had to develop several other storylines simultaneously), it very much reflects the realistic growth of a pre-teen, which is never a straight line but is made of improvements and relapses.

Along the journey, I couldn't really avoid mentioning some bits of the development of Sakura's relationship with Syaoran, which will get its own deep and detailed post another day.

There's also an extra about the significance of the Clear Cards in the story, at the end.

I have to be honest, the post is very long, but I tried to insert visual elements to make it easier on the eye. If you're curious to know how the hell I found so much to talk about for this specific topic, follow me under the cut and dive into Sakura's journey throughout Clear Card (it's also a good way to review the story)! ✨

A Disconnected Beginning

Clear Card Arc starts in a very "festive" and happy way: everything is peaceful, a new exciting chapter of Sakura's educational life is starting with the beginning of middle school, Syaoran is back to Tomoeda, this time to stay forever with his beloved girl...everything seems so perfect. And precisely in chapter 1, before everything takes an unexpected turn, we have this scene here, which I consider the "true" beginning of everything:

Sakura says "I haven't been using this lately...well, that's for the better".

At the beginning of Clear Card Arc, Sakura seems to be feeling disconnected from her natural gift.

Despite she had to go on a quest to collect all the Clow Cards, which later she gave a new life to by changing them into Sakura Cards, we have to remember that Sakura was born with magic powers. They weren't bestowed on her by Kero-chan, nor by the contract with the Clow Book: she always had magic in her blood, and it apparently "woke up" on that fateful day she found the Clow Book in the library of her father.

At the beginning of this arc, Sakura seems to think that the purpose, the meaning of this natural gift which is literally part of herself, has been fulfilled by transforming all the Cards, and splitting Eriol's power as he had requested. Her words here seem to be suggesting a general idea of "if I have to use this key (therefore, my magic powers), it means something troublesome is happening, so it's better if I'm not using it because it means everything is okay".

And although we can't really deny that what happened afterwards is far from being able to be considered "peaceful", this scene here always left a bad taste in my mouth because there's almost a negative vibe attached to the idea of her magic, transpiring from Sakura's words. It's almost as if she's politely rejecting it.

Precisely after she places her Star Key in her jewelry box, probably hoping to never have to use it again, she has her first premonitory dream of the events that will shake her life afterwards. Almost as if her powers were trying to tell her "no my dear, this is you and you'd better come to terms with it as soon as possible".

Then, as we all know, the Cards turn blank. Sakura produces a new key while having another dream and a quest to fight and "secure" some strange phenomena happening around her begins, leaving her in a state of increasing confusion.

This is the beginning of the part of the story that I quite literally call "Sakura loses sight of herself".

At this very early stage of the story, she still doesn't know that she started losing control over her increasing magical power, and it is definitely not a coincidence that all of this began when she thought of shutting her main magic tool away in a box, hoping to ignore it forever. For plot reasons, this also happens simultaneously to Syaoran taking the spirits of the Sakura Cards away from her (because in the beginning, you had to be tricked into thinking he was up to something shady and was the real mastermind behind all the incidents).

Syaoran expected for Sakura to lose control over her powers, as his mother predicted a general period of trouble for her that could lead her to unhappiness, albeit without any clear indication of what could happen: Syaoran came to Japan knowing something was bound to happen to his girl and her powers, and that something was going to lead her to grief, but he had no idea about all the rest. So his uncertain and reckless approach, which ended up in some cases worsening the situation, is also somewhat understandable. He was acting like a worried, overprotective boyfriend at his wit's end.

The strange events, which Sakura materializes into a new set of Cards, surely leave her distraught and confused, not to mention the situation with the Sakura Cards and Eriol's missing replies, but I feel that what really destabilizes her core are the constant dreams she gets, sometimes even in the middle of her waking hours, making her faint on the spot wherever she is.

Premonitory dreams are a part of her natural gift that she began to express ever since the OG manga, but she never seemed to really understand them or take them seriously.

This time around, she keeps seeing this cloaked figure and this terrifying dragon, no one speaks a word despite her relentless questions and the cloaked figure seems to be wanting to take her newly made key away (Lilie!!! what were you trying to do!! *facepalm* she probably tried to pull her closer so she could talk to her), so it's just normal that all of that leaves her increasingly stressed and anxious, even though initially you never see her openly and verbally stating that, due to her overall positive nature ("I'll manage it, somehow" is part of her "everything will be alright" invincible spell, and this is indeed what she keeps telling herself in the beginning of the arc, even though in some occasions it turned out to be a double-edged sword, as sometimes it looked more like sweeping her fears under the carpet, to me).

"Something Is Not Right"

Dream after dream, Card after Card, Sakura begins to have these general feelings of discomfort and of "something is not right, here", as she openly states to Syaoran in this scene of volume 4, chapter 14. There's something about this situation that is pricking her sixth sense, and makes her uneasy, but she can't quite put her finger on it yet. All she can do is to keep "fighting" these phenomena happening around her, hoping to find out more along the way. She reiterates the same feeling of uneasiness at the end of chapter 15, after what I consider one of the most concerning side-effects of her poor control over her powers: Sakura seems almost "in trance" while she leads her guardians to the exit of the maze, and acts in a very uncharacteristic, cold way by shoving her bag in front of Yue to make him hold it for her. It's almost as if her magical sixth sense worked too strongly and warped her personality in that moment: an effect that has been mentioned several times in relation to powerful magicians like Clow, Eriol and later Kaito too, so it's not farfetched at all to attribute this one-off occurrence to her loss of control over her strong powers, which ended up affecting her personality too. Luckily, it didn't happen again in the rest of the story and the capture of this Card was completely changed in the anime (a wise decision imho, since the JP fandom is particularly fussy about the integrity of Sakura's character, and she needed to stay "Sakura" in order to do what she did at the end).

At the culmination of a "mini arc" (the visit to great-grandpa Masaki) characterized by uncontrolled visions of Nadeshiko, another frightening dream (one that ended up dragging even Akiho in, due to the synchronization) and Sakura for the first time ever confronting Syaoran about the things he's been hiding from her, we reach the following scene of volume 5, chapter 23.

"I Wish I Had A Mirror"

I always considered this scene extremely important, because for the first time Sakura spells out clearly the inner turmoil that's been gnawing at her soul ever since this ordeal with the new Cards started.

"The truth is...I'm the worst at understanding myself. And that is probably causing lots of concern to everyone." "I wish I had a mirror. A mirror that could reflect the real me. Then, I would probably understand how to not make everyone worry"

Here, Sakura clearly spells out the frustration of knowing, feeling in her bones that there's something wrong with her, something that she's not understanding about herself, and that something is causing problems, but most importantly, is causing her loved ones to worry about her. Let's not forget that not only Syaoran, but also Yukito, Touya, Fujitaka, Tomoyo, Eriol & his family have all been watching her situation in apprehension, each of them making decisions and moving discretely in a direction they felt was right (and admittedly, not all instances were so).

Sakura can somehow feel all of that, she can feel that it's related to something she still hasn't realized about herself. This tends to be forgotten because it happens in a relatively early part of the plot, but notice how this is the same problem Kaito suffers from. A quite stunted ability to understand oneself. Sakura and Kaito definitely have lots in common, when it comes to this specific part of themselves. Keep this in mind, because it'll be relevant later.

And then, the situation worsens.

Sakura's dreams start to terrify her, because they begin to show Syaoran's face under the cloak of the mysterious figure who's scaring her in her dreams. An apparent truth she cannot accept, she won't accept, even though she's still unsure about what exactly these dreams she's having are. Despite her boyfriend has been acting shady for long time, she decides to trust him and wait for him to talk to her about all the stuff he's holding inside, instead of putting him through the wringer. This also means, though, that Sakura will keep all her fears to herself, eventually bottling up.

Furthermore, Kaito starts to rewind time to fix a situation without a way out (in chapter 28, Akiho was on the verge of going berserk completely and unleash the artifact), creating an additional sense of confusion when Sakura can feel that her finger is numb due to strain, but she can't understand why (she had fought Kaito's time magic unconsciously). Whenever Kaito will rewind time, even later on, Sakura's magical sixth sense will try to wake her consciousness up more and more, giving her these vibes of "deja vu" or making her act in an apparently inexplicable way.

In the first part of Clear Card, Sakura sometimes literally looks like a soul wandering about in confusion, dragged by the events.

I wish to point out that this is not a flaw in the characterization, it is a precise design by CLAMP. Sakura IS, in this part of the story, confused and lost, overwhelmed by the events. She has no idea how to approach this matter other than "treating the symptoms" as they come. This happens because she's still, surprisingly, quite reluctant to embrace a fundamental part of herself: her innate magic power, which expresses itself mainly through her intuition. But we'll gradually get there.

Around chapter 30, before the big realization, Sakura's situation reached a point where:

- her Sakura Cards unexpectedly became blank; - almost everyday (sometimes multiple times a day) there's a new incident that she secures into new transparent Cards; - she constantly sees ominous dreams (in scattered order) with a cloaked figure acting in a questionable way and a scary dragon, and at some point she starts seeing her boyfriend under that cloak; - her boyfriend acts shady, Eriol doesn't reply to her messages; - there's a general feeling of "something is not right" with her magic and some stuff starts to not make sense to her (because Kaito rewinds time)

It is at this point that Sakura finally moves one (giant) step forward and connects all the "puzzle pieces" she collected (particularly, how much more "obvious" the creation of a Card became) and understands that she's been the one causing subconsciously each and every single incident that lead to the creation of a new transparent Card.

"I'm Angry At Myself"

And with Syaoran finally coming clean with her (because at that point he had no reason to keep things hidden anymore, as the thing he was trying to delay ultimately happened - and believe me, I'm sure he partly felt relieved to not need to lie anymore, as that took quite a toll on him too), Sakura can at last give an explanation to at least a part of the things that are happening. And she finally realizes that the doubt that was tormenting her was true: she DID, in fact, not understand something very important about herself, she didn't realize that it was her own power going out of control and that all the incidents that happened bore "her magic signature", so to speak. She failed to "tune in" with her magic.

For the first time ever, Sakura expresses anger at herself.

She will direct that anger (to a lesser extent) to Syaoran too, but I'll tackle that in a separate post.

This is a moment of deep reflection and regrets for Sakura: the poor understanding of herself, the poor "communication" between her heart and her magic powers brought to a situation where her most beloved person was putting himself in danger in order to protect her, while trying to not make things escalate. This is a very sensitive, beautiful and important moment, steeped in conflicting and complex feelings (and remember, Sakura is just a pre-teen. It is normal for a pre-teen like her to not understand herself, but there's just one tiny detail: she's not a common pre-teen, due to her natural gift, and she needs to take that into account). Eventually Sakura calms down, and after creating Rewind, her resolute face while hugging tightly Syaoran suggests that from now on she'll face this matter from another, more courageous and determined perspective.

Or at least, these were her good intentions. Because unfortunately, insecurities are hard to eradicate and in the central part of the story it's shocking to realize how far longer Sakura will insist in shutting away her emotions and refusing to listen to her heart (and intuition) fully.

"It's Just My Imagination"

Part of Sakura's anxiety might have been sedated with the revelation that the Clear Cards are produced by the girl herself, but unfortunately the true core of her problems was not solved at all and will only surface more clearly in the next 20 chapters.

Sakura actively starts having "premonitory bad feelings" when she sees Akiho in volume 7 chapter 34, a bad feeling that she does check with Syaoran, but quickly dismisses as "well, it's just my imagination". This will basically be one of the major problems preventing her from reaching the complete control of her magic. Sakura, knowing her magic potential, should've given way more credit to her sixth sense, but her anxiety, her insecurity and her crippled connection to her innate gift still pushes her to dismiss these "signs" as nothing really important or true. Timely as hell, a few hours later something bad will indeed happen to Akiho, where she completely loses consciousness for the first time and the clan/Association actively starts to absorb Sakura's power through the artifact implanted in Akiho. All of this was caused by the high concentration of magic that "triggered" Akiho's artifact (and here I have to sarcastically "applaud" Kaito, just like Syaoran he's another one who does stuff before thinking through, ultimately worsening the problem).

Once trapped in Akiho's artifact, thanks to her power Sakura can see the most horrifying glimpse of Akiho's past, when she was turned into a magic artifact, by living it on her own skin. And even though Kaito is forced to rewind time once again to save the situation, erasing these memories from Sakura's head, her heart (which is tightly connected to her magical sixth sense - I'd daresay her heart is straight up the source of her magic) DOES REMEMBER, pushing Sakura to act in an apparently irrational way, crying and hugging Akiho tight in empathy. Sakura is particularly shaken by this feeling, still in pain even hours later, but once again she doesn't understand where it comes from. However, she does express with Syaoran an intention to talk to him about it once she's able to put it into words, and in the meantime do her best with all the rest. At least, there's an intention to understand better this part of herself, but it's still soon to see actual results.

Aaand CLAMP really seem to be wanting to test Sakura in this arc, because at this point of the plot, they add the electrocution spell. 😅 No one seems to understand who caused it (it's not Sakura, nor Kaito, but now we know it was none other than Yelan!!) and Sakura's anxiety increases once again. The fact only Syaoran gets affected by it inevitably reignites the doubts in her mind, unwittingly reminded of that terrifying dream of Cloaked Syaoran she keeps seeing...but she stubbornly keeps telling herself "no, it's not like that, it's just a dream". It's undeniable that this situation where she cannot understand her foretelling dreams yet, and the way they show her scattered hints because her power is out of control, has surely contributed to Sakura's insecurity when it comes to trust her own intuition.

Her power is so out of control at this point, that even when Kaito shrinks her and throws her in a hole carved into a tree (landing in a "world" created with magic where he hopes she'll create the right Card) her dreams take over again (it's apparent by the "shaaan" sound and how everything turns suddenly pitch black, a common background of her dreams), showing her Akiho in the dress she was wearing when she was turned into an artifact and, inevitably, Sakura's biggest fear, "Cloaked Syaoran". Pay attention because these visions she's getting here thanks to her power match what will happen later on: what the talking flowers tell her here will turn out to be the beginning of the lyrics of the main theme of the "Alice in Clockland" play. This vision of Cloaked Syaoran seemingly "about to do something" to Akiho horrifies Sakura to the point of screaming in terror and creating one of the most unsettling Cards, "Break". It is after this very scary moment that Sakura starts to wonder very specifically for what purpose she is creating all these Cards. The purpose is actually more than one, but she definitely posed herself THE RIGHT question, as this brings her one step closer to the core of the problem and eventually embracing her own magic abilities.

Then, between chapters 43 and 45 we finally start to see some changes in Sakura: surprisingly, she begins to listen more to her sixth sense, first catching Yukito red-handed while activating a newly acquired magic, and then wondering about a strange painful feeling in her chest when her father tells her that lately she and Akiho became even more similar. We were all lead to believe that this was the foreshadowing of Akiho taking her place (cause everything in the plot at this point deceivingly hints at Kaito wanting to switch them), but she actually was getting foreshadowings of the "rewritten world", where Sakura would genuinely feel wrecked to know that someone important to Akiho was missing, precisely when Akiho would've become part of her family as her twin. In fact, in chapter 45, before falling completely asleep, she hears again the ominous "you won't be able to come back" (the Association's threat to Kaito), wondering WHO wouldn't be able to come back - somehow, Sakura knows that it's not directed at her.

"Just Tell me Honestly How You Feel"

And then, we reach another moment that I consider pivotal for Sakura's growth during this Clear Card Arc. The moment when she's on the verge of breaking down and finally lets all her feelings out.

Her anxiety over the dream with the Cloaked Figure reached the highest peak, so much that she finally manifests a Card, Mirage, that challenges her precisely with that appearance. While Sakura battles that Card (which at the moment she still believes it's an actual person), she seems resoluted to get to the bottom of this story, and to pull down that hood to know the truth. You can really feel that she's so done with all this psychological torture. The fact the real Syaoran appears right at that moment and she finds out the person she saw was just a Card is partly a relief for her, but also throws Sakura again in despair because who the hell is that person in the dream, then??

Syaoran, as the good and attentive boyfriend he is, can just feel that Sakura is stressing over something, so he brings her to his home to help her calming down. And to her umpteenth attempt at sweeping her negative emotions under the carpet, beating around the bush commenting over the tea with a fake smile, he cuts immediately her bullshit and just tells her : "You don't need to force yourself. Just tell me how you feel right now". When she hears that she's allowed to speak out her emotions with honesty, Sakura wears on her face one of the most heartbreaking expressions of the entire manga. She's literally about to break down in tears of exhaustion, as you can see it above. ☝️ Listening to her, gradually, Syaoran encourages Sakura to get out all that's been torturing her lately, particularly about the dream with the Cloaked Figure. It is a very difficult moment for her, because she has to relive the dream, and expose in front of him all the fears and doubts that were trying to tamper with her trust in him. Courageously, she goes through with it, even though her denial ("it's just a dream!") is so strong that she ends up creating another Card: "Dreaming". Sakura at first seems relieved to see the Card, in the hope that everything she saw was indeed a mere messed up dream and nothing else (see? she's again self-sabotaging her relationship with her magic) but Syaoran with his frankness is quick to bring her feet on the ground: the kanji on the Card show "yumemi", and the word can also indicate a "foretelling dream".

Although Sakura seems disheartened at first, her next dream with the Cloaked Figure is much more relaxed, so much that even the dragon doesn't particularly scare her anymore: our girl's intuition makes her correctly feel a sense of loneliness in this dream, which she attributes to the hooded figure, not realizing that it was more likely coming from the dragon itself (aka, Kaito). After all, in chapter 72, Lilie will confirm that her presence ended up distracting her from the one "character" she should've paid all of her attention to. Her intuition, despite being misattributed, ended up having a positive effect through the synchronization with Akiho: the girl will wake up with the same feeling of discomfort of her friend, and as if guided by hitsuzen, she will head to the garden where she'll find a sickly Kaito staring at the moon - most likely feeling the loneliness Sakura perceived in her dream. I like to think that in this scene of chapter 48, Sakura subconsciously helped Akiho comforting Kaito, by waking her up with the unresting feeling, precisely when Kaito needed it the most. Still not completely embraced her magical sixth sense yet, but a significant improvement.

The road between chapter 48 and chapter 52 is paved with lots of struggles, as the Mirror Sakura Card gets stolen by Kaito, Sakura runs the risk of being absorbed into Akiho's artifact again, she meets Momo for the first time and she's even given a hint about Kaito's plan (or what Momo thought was his plan, as he had benignly lied to her about that), but almost all of that gets rewound and erased when Kaito intervenes. Moreover, despite not remembering anything consciously, Sakura is left with a sense of unhappiness when she looks at her home, a remnant of her brief journey in the world of Momo's book which straight up threw her into despair, showing her what her life would be if everyone forgot about her. She also finds once again a Card produced out of nowhere, "Time": I'm convinced she produced this Card because her conscience was awake while Momo and Kaito talked in stopped time, and their conversation triggered her sixth sense to produce Time as a result. Needless to say, all of this worsens her state of mind once again, which leads to the other pivotal, and finally resolutive, scene of chapter 52.

Never Avert Your Eyes From Your Heart

We finally get to what I consider THE scene, the one that will definitively shake Sakura from her deadlock, from the anxiety that stunted her connection with her innate gift and her deepest emotions. And the one who helps her overcoming all her fears is, of course, the love of her life - with a honorable mention for none other than his mother Yelan!!

Chapter 52 got a very, very special place in my heart, because it's basically one giant parallel between SyaoSaku and YunaAki. The two pairings experience similar situations, but the response from one side of each pairing is quite different. Let's remind you for a moment of the part earlier in this post when I told you that Kaito and Sakura, for most of Clear Card, surprisingly have one thing in common: they don't seem to understand themselves well enough, and both have a tendency to look away from feelings that cause unrest to their hearts - anxiety for Sakura, love for Kaito.

Syaoran, always attentive and observant towards his girlfriend, notices immediately that Sakura is suffering, as soon as he sees her at school. Despite being unable to touch her to comfort her, he offers all of himself to support and listen to her concerns. Sakura is visibly and pleasantly surprised of how the boy could read behind her mask, that usual contrived smile with which she tries to dissimulate her emotions and not make him worry. A bad habit she's consolidated lately, but that Syaoran is gently determined to dismantle. After opening up with him (and this is where Sakura differs from Kaito - by having an established relationship made of love and trust with Syaoran, Sakura lowers her walls with him), she falls once again into the usual trap of "but maybe it's just my imagination" and I love to see how Syaoran is her anchor to the ground, making her see the concreteness of this situation: he straight up tells her "you produced a Card out of it, it cannot be 'just your imagination'. " And then, like a precious family gift, he passes on to her the priceless words of wisdom of his mother Yelan, an advice that not only Sakura, but also the other "lost soul" of the other paralleling pairing should listen to:

"People with magical power should never ignore the turmoil and stirring in their hearts, the so-called 'intuition'. And it’s not limited to people with magical powers. People should never avert their eyes from the changes in their heart."

This is a turning point for Sakura. These words seem to positively "break" something inside of her, showing her the correct path to follow. CLAMP beautifully portray this process of "embracing and assimilating" the words she's just heard, by making her place her hand over her heart. I love when they do that (they used the same visual when Akiho heard Kaito's true name, and 'wrote it' on the most important page of the book of her life). Sakura is truly grateful for the words Syaoran relayed to her, precisely what she needed to get out of her impasse with her feelings and magic. She knows she can always count on the support of her soulmate even in the darkest moments, and she's thankful for having him in her life.

From this moment onwards, Sakura will experience several instances where her magical premonitory senses give her signals through the "stirring" of her heart. Contrarily to before, she starts to actively take them seriously, listening, without dismissing them as the delirium of an anxious little girl. This allows her to activate the Siege Card in the fraction of a second, successfully shielding herself from Kaito's time magic, making her the first person ever who achieved that. This also leads her to effectively remember that she saw Kaito using magic, even when time was rewound by him, and contact immediately Syaoran to talk about it, planning how to move from that moment onwards. A little relapse on her bad habit is immediately dispelled by Syaoran, and our girl even goes as far as saying "there's something inside Akiho", even though she's not sure exactly why she's feeling that way. But it's an intuition she's having and she decides to not dismiss it anymore, with everyone trusting and supporting her in that direction. By listening more and better to what her heart tells her, Sakura also decides to not confront Akiho about Kaito and his magic, because she's well aware of the feelings Akiho got for Kaito and she doesn't want to potentially disrupt their relationship. So, she decides to wait for her friend to talk about it first.

Thanks to this better understanding of her own intuition, she also says in chapter 57 that she wants to meet the guardian of the book "Alice in Clockland" once more, despite not remembering if and when she's met her before. This also ultimately leads her to accept the role of Alice in the upcoming play scripted by her friend Naoko, because her sixth sense tells her that it's inevitable for her to do so. It's important to emphasize how the other characters support and encourage her to listen to her innate gift, at this point, without trampling over her self-determination like they did before.

It is a moment of big growth and character development for everyone.

The Ultimate Growth: Finding a Meaning and a Purpose

What happens afterwards is history: the fateful "Alice in Clockland" play unfolds, and Kaito completes his plan to push Sakura to create the Card he needs, exchanging his magic artifact (the watch) with Akiho's one (the book), in addition to activating the forbidden magic to rewrite the memories of everyone, to fit Akiho as part of Sakura's family.

Sakura's intuition will be crucial to wake her true self up while in Clockland, succeeding in beating Kaito's magic multiple times, till Syaoran comes in and gives the "final blow", cutting off the spell definitively.

And even when everything seems lost because Kaito successfully activated the fobidden magic, changing their memories and erasing himself from their existence, Sakura's magic and sixth sense keep making her say things she either already said or heard before in the "unrewritten world". Not only that, but even after meeting Lilie in a dream and forgetting her face (due to the strong influence of the forbidden spell), bit and pieces of that conversation keep coming back to her, and she listens dutifully to every single one of these "feelings". Kaito might have overridden part of their memories (only the ones concerning him, Akiho and the events connected to the creation of the Cards), but the experience, feelings and personal growth of each character were left untouched, that's why the chemistry between Sakura and Syaoran is the same as before the play started, but also Sakura's personal relationship with her magic is far better than before (an information that might have seemed random and unimportant is that now Sakura summons Mirror even just to chat, an indication of her completely changed perspective on her magic).

Now that Sakura finally embraced her magical power, all that's left for her is to find a true purpose for it.

A question echoes in my mind, "What am I creating these Cards for?". Sakura poses herself this question halfway through the story, and she finds the answer to it precisely at the end of the journey.

Her powerful magic intuition, combined with her immense empathy, leads her to realize that somebody is missing from their reality, and that person is the one Akiho loves. At this point Sakura is unstoppable: she wants to listen to the voice in her heart that's screaming "Go and help them!! Give the true happiness back to Akiho!", and everyone can only follow her lead as she assertively puts into practice what her heart is telling her to do.

Sakura in this final part of the story shines brighter than ever. She's more assertive and self-confident than ever. All of this is because there's something she strongly wants to do with her innate gift, as Eriol unequivocally says in chapter 75: her power grows exponentially again, but this time it's not out of her control - it is Sakura herself who's voluntarily boosting it, thanks to her strong wish. And that allows her to control it and use it exactly as she wants.

In chapter 79 her growth reaches the highest peak, by handling the resolution of Akiho and Kaito's personal problems in an admirable way (she steps aside for a moment to give Akiho all the agency she needed), but also finding herself in front of an uncomfortable dilemma, which leads her to an unavoidable reality: Sakura quickly understands that she cannot be on everyone's side and there are lines to be drawn at some point. She can't be a pure and oblivious girl forever. She needs to grow up. There are choices to be made, especially when dealing with real evil people.

And Sakura choses to go on with the people she loves, even if that means she has to "stain" her "moral record" a little bit.

Empowered by this strong wish to fix the situation, she literally gives life to a miracle, protecting her dear friend and her beloved from the grasp of their abusers, simultanously giving everyone their true memories back. The effort exerts her greatly, but what she achieved is by far the most important thing she's ever done with her magic power till now: she helped two dear people lost in a life-and-death situation. Her magical growth went along with her personal, mental one.

This is also the reason why the accusations of "the other magicians should've trained her" end up being in vain: Sakura's problem with her powers was mainly on a personal level, not on a technical one. This was a journey she had to mainly walk by herself, finding the right balance and confidence in her abilities, deep down in her heart.

No one could've done that for her.

Merely training the practical aspect of it would've just worsened the situation, because Sakura wouldn't have been truly "in it" with her heart and mind. She needed to go through this process of growth, before reaching this stage of self-awareness in relation to her magic powers. I truly feel this is the reason why CLAMP made certain choices inside this story. Again, as I always say, a good part of Cardcaptor Sakura does revolve around magic, but the main focus and linchpin of this story is and always will be the main character's heart, her growth and the interpersonal relationships with her loved ones.

This makes Clear Card Arc, in my opinion, a worthy sequel and a full-fledged part of the Cardcaptor Sakura series. I think those who decide to skip it or read it with a superficial approach miss a journey of tremendous growth for our beloved protagonist.

So much for those who kept saying "This is not Sakura's story".

How can all that ☝️ NOT be Sakura's story?

I'll let you judge. 😊

Extra: The Significance of the Clear Cards

I want to digress for a moment about a thorny topic: the significance of the Clear Cards in this story.

Sakura isn't always completely passive towards the events happening around her, but wonders several times during the story why all those Cards are manifesting like that. While the first and easiest answer is of course "because her powers are going out of control" (and this is something Momo herself questions Sakura about in chapter 50), it becomes apparent at some point that the more the story goes on, the more the Cards that are created by her are particularly relevant and connected to the events that will happen in the final part of the story.

I know this is a sore spot for many who complain about not understanding the purpose of the Clear cards. It's because people tend to compare this set of Cards with the ones Sakura captured previously. That's not the right way to look at them, because their origin and purpose are different and change throughout the story. Forget about the Sakura Cards, even though so many of these "Clear Cards" (which are never called so, not even once, in the story itself, but just "new cards" or "transparent cards") might look so similar in purpose to the previous ones.

First of all, the Clear Cards are an outlet for Sakura to vent in a healthy way her power in excess. Power that if kept inside, untapped and confined in her body, might have unpredictable harmful effects on her (<- probably the grief Yelan foresaw). God bless the Clear Cards for existing and allowing Sakura to vent out these bouts of uncontrolled power in a relatively safe way.

The Cards that Sakura produces in the beginning are sometimes reminiscing of the Sakura Cards, because her power manifests itself basing on Sakura's experiences, feelings, thoughts and wishes. The Sakura Cards are an important part of her life (before Syaoran took them, she literally acted like their "mom", keeping them alive with her power) so it's only normal that the first base for some of these new Cards would be a magic tool that she already knows. In this sense, it becomes easier to understand why many of the "captures" seem so easy, way too easy compared to what a reader would expect from a sequel: the goal of the capture here isn't to make her power and experience in capturing cards grow. She already had 2 arcs to do all of that. The capture of the Cards in this third arc becomes something new and unexpected: a "damage control" of a regrettable situation with Sakura's powers, while she learns to dominate them and enter into harmony with her supernatural abilities. The growth Sakura needs here is mainly a mental one. Performing her magical power aimlessly without having a true connection with it and a true understanding will only exacerbate the problem. This is the reason why, despite having a "capture" element, Clear Card derails from the previous arcs in the purpose of the capture. It's a pity that an element that should've brought freshness to the plot was in many cases received as an actual flaw.

In the beginning, as Sakura's power is completely out of her control, some Cards might look completely random too - they don't look based on Cards, thoughts or wishes (like Appear, Reflect, Action, etc.). But pay attention, because the more the story goes on, the more the Cards begin to become particularly specific to something that shook Sakura's heart in that moment, or referencing events/feelings that will become pivotal to the events Sakura will experience later. Especially regarding Kaito's plan. Many of the later Cards Sakura produces are a direct reflection of the feelings and wishes that Kaito infused in the activation of the forbidden magic, with the creation of "the story for Akiho", the one he wanted to absolutely have a happy ending for. Cards like Repair, Promise, Choice, Kindness, True and False, Synchronization, Rewind....many of them didn't even get to express their magical abilities in a "conventional way" (everyone expected to see Sakura literally activating them like she does with all the others), but it's just because at that point the Cards Sakura is producing are born following her premonitory intuition: thanks to the hints/speeches that those Cards give her in Clockland, Sakura little by little regains consciousness of her true self (it's a pity that many English readers will never realize all the times Sakura was about to "wake up" in Clockland, because the translation didn't respect the change in fonts of the JP text). Sakura wasn't supposed to "use" them in a conventional way (how do you "use" Kindness? You force people to be "kind"? 🤨 and what about Choice??), she was supposed to listen to them and let them guide her towards the truth. This is also the reason why all of these Cards bear the face of her loved ones. Think of them as tarots. Which is, incidentally, another use of the original Clow/Sakura Cards. I am basically sure of this interpretation because the kanji of some of those Cards I mentioned above are brought up during the climax: particularly when Akiho talks to Kaito in chapter 78, she uses two specific verbs, referring to Kindness (慈愛 - a kind of gentle and tender love) when she describes the love and support her family gives her in this rewritten world, and to Choice (選択) when she questions Kaito about his choice to disappear completely from her life. So to summarize, the last Cards Sakura produced "accidentally" weren't accidental at all, but were actually specifically produced by her power in reference to Kaito's plan, to help her finding the way out to a dire situation. This represents a very important indicator in the plot: at that stage of the story, Sakura started to listen more and more to her intuition and her sixth sense, finally quitting her bad habit of downplaying it ("maybe it's just me") but actually giving it credit and taking it seriously, trusting her instinct to lead her in the right direction. And this was, of course, all thanks to the speech Syaoran gave her back in chapter 52. It is also the case of the Rewind Card, which Sakura will ultimately understand the purpose of on her own, at the very end of the series. That's the moment where everything will become clear and make sense to her: "This Card, too...I created it precisely for this moment". The Clear Cards ultimately became the embodiment of her foretelling powers. Which then led to the birth of the first two consciously created Cards, Blank & Remind, which will become so important in the climax.

If we ever get a new arc in the next years, we'll certainly deal with a more mature Sakura, who's more in sync with her magical powers 🩷.

[nights-at-crystarium]

You know what, I assume that people always read my pinned, or notice the pointer "new reader? start here" in every new Fragments' episode. I might be deluding myself. So hi hello lemme TALK ABOUT MY COMIC.

Before I get too rambly (and I mean RAMBLY), here's a quick intro. Fragments is a comic focused on feels and slice of life, made by a queer guy, aiming to ~character study~ the main cast (Vivi, Raha, Alisaie, Feo Ul) and fill in the gaps in canon (or linger in canon moments that needed more air imo), the tone ranging from angst to fluff to meme. Good punches require a good windup, so please don't expect angst anytime soon :3c

The story's segmented (fragmented, heh) into episodes. Episodes 1-11 take place in ARR, you can enjoy them with no worry about spoilers. Episode 12 onward is ShB, with all the spoilers and lorebending.

My storytelling style assumes you haven't only played through ShB, but know it like the back of your hand, i.e. it's for nerds and thinkers. Of course there's plenty of silly moments that don't require any deep knowledge, but the overarching story does. Often I skip canon events, only hinting that they took place, simply because I don't wanna retell the msq 1:1, I've got plenty of original scenes waiting to be drawn. You're in for a treat if you like obsessing over emotional and moral implications of things. And, yes, this's a story about a morally grey mc. Don't expect to be spoon-fed "and this's why that thing's bad, kids".

Currently I've outlined all the main story beats up until post EW, so it's like, not being winged as I go. Yes I refine things here and there, but I know where I'm going. I'm going ham!!!! With the lorebending post ShB. Initially I didn't plan to, but the more I learned about Vivi and personally grew as a writer, the more courage I got to "divorce" from canon. The general xiv story may still be good wherever it's headed, but it's not suited for an established wolgraha, so I'm making food for myself.

Everyone imagines the lil scenes from their wol's life, I'm taking that a tiiiiiny step further. Fragments tells a cohesive story that's looking to be the longest project at least in our corner. I can and will hyperfixate on this for years.

I started out just like many others, being hit with ShB like a truck, I wanted to put a catboy under a microscope and rotate him forever. Although I'd already been drawing for decades, I didn't have the comic-making skills yet, or eloquence to write the dialogue, so I spent the first half of 2022 self-studying, just because I needed a mouth to be able to scream about my ship.

Vivi didn't exist prior to my obsession with Exarch. He was made for this, he started out as a reagent (or a foil, now that I know fancy writing terms) for a rich and fun chemistry, and keep myself entertained for years, first and foremost.

Me, a fool: okay let's make a guy that falls in love with Exarch in this particular moment, what kinda life must he have led to- Me: ....oh no

The chemistry quickly bubbled up and exploded in my face, involving not only Exarch, but other characters (first as a means to subtly tell about Vivi, then they also demanded their own screentime), and here I am, sitting with a massive script on my hands, drawing my blorbos every day. Thanks for enabling that btw.

I care about characters a lot. I ask a lot of whys and hows. I'm critical-minded and burned on many bad stories that did their characters dirty, and I wanna be an opposing example. What I'm doing is extremely ambitious and risky, yes, but I can only invite you to tag along and see if I stick to my word.

The internet's a cruel and unforgiving place nowadays, and here I am, pitting my passion against what feels like decaying humanity. I'm making this comic to keep myself happy above all else, being sincere and cringe because life's too short to be anything else.

Thanks for reading this, and if you haven't yet, read Fragments here!

[just-a-floofy-catt]

I feel like i haven't posted in forever again TwT

I found an old GlitterGolf idea drabble that I wrote after reading a really good fic about them buried in the depths of my phone so uh...

*throws it at you*

Omg a glittergolf fic with judgemental, sassy, hw2-esque Sun

So like, not only is there the trope of Monty disliking him and thinking hes annoying asf and a weird freak,  but now instead of being oblivious and nice, Sun returns the same energy, thinking that Monty is a selfish brute who shouldnt be trusted around children. Like, he'll make very off  comments about him and just spend the whole time scowling and trying to shoo him out XD

So, like, imagine there's a thing going on at the daycare.

Where, as almost like, a way to bring more business in and shit, theyve started having a daily thing where one of the glams will visit the kids there and do an activity with them for an hour or so. Usually its Freddy, sometimes its Chica, and rarely its Roxy. This is the first opportunity that Sun really gets to meet them, and it actually goes really well. Sun absolutely adores Freddy, has a new bestie in chica, and shockingly has some good banter and an unlikely friendship with Roxy.

However, theres a day where Freddy has to go for energency maintenence, and the others are all booked for parties.

Leaving only Monty free to do it.

Now, Monty has never done one of the shifts before, because he doesnt do well with the younger kids. Both because hes scary to alot of them, and because he also just doesnt really know how to deal with them. Maybe deep down theres even a deep rooted fear of hurting them 👀👀👀

(There definitely is)

But so he is absolutely NOT excited to go.

Despite the way that the rest of the Glams praise up Sunny and how great he is, Monty does not care and still views him as the same annoying freak he always did, despite not having met him yet.

So, he shows up and Sun opens the door all cheery being like "Oh hello Freddy! Youre a bit late i was worried you werent gonna show up and-"

And then he clocks that its monty.

"Oh."

He immediately glares down at him in pure, utter distain, voice filled with disappointment and mirth.

Monty stares back up at him with a huff, tense. If he had fur, his hackles would be absolutely raised.

Then Sun would be all like "ugh. Ew. why are you here", and Monty very bluntly explains that hes been forced to go and that Freddy is in maintenence.

Then Sun tries to shut the door on him XD

"Im sure the kids can go one day without a glamrock then! Ill let them know freddy is sick, thank you for telling me. Lovely to meet you, Montgomery!"

Monty stops the door by grabbing it stongly with his hand, scoring clawmarks into it.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

Sun scoffs at the damage

"Im the one taking over, dipshit. Im here to do my fuckin job"

The realization that hes truely stuck with Monty dawns on him, and he opens the door again, taking a deep breath.

"No swearing in the daycare..."

He spits it through gritted teeth and relents, turning his back to him and stalking away.

Then the cheery front goes back up and he completely changes XD

He introduces Monty to the kids as best as he can, but none of them really seem too interested, making him both snicker but also be incredibly frustrated that his dramatic intro didnt work.

(Also, to explain more character stuff, Sun is mostly in typical fanon form, and then uses all that hw2 sass mostly as a defence mechanism. Hes definitely got some mischief to him that he also uses it for, like banter with Roxanne, but for the most part hes a sweetheart. He gets easily frustrated with management and people that he doesnt like, but has alot of patience with activities like crafts and also with the kids. He is still like, painfully innocent and has his loopy childlike vibe, but just covers it up when he feels threatened. The best way i can describe it is that he acts like a playground bully when he doesnt like you. XD Still childish, but now just a more snarky, cold and mean version. Hes a bit cautious of some new things, although very curious. So he normally is a bit cautious around new people, but very welcoming and nice.

This is different for Monty, because of what he hears from the kids XD

Alot of them when mentioning him in passing, see Monty as scary and violent, so now thats how Sun views him. Alot of the kids see him as a threat, so now Sun does too. Hes protective of the kids, so of course hes jumped to judge someone he doesnt know based on whether the kids like him or not XD

Dont get me wrong, in some situations hed definitely try to show the kids the thing theyre scared of isnt so bad, but in the case of Monty, he has confirmation  that he can be angry and violent from the other glams and staff, so of course he still just sees him as bad lmao.

Like, the way he acts towards Monty is mostly because of mama bear instinct stuff. He sees him as a threat to the kids  so he doesnt like him.)

Enemies to lovers my beloved ✨️

But over time, Monty starts having to do it more and more, as inconveniences keep piling up, and Sun starts to kind of let his guard down, and the scathing defensiveness turns into teasing. He sees Monty actually trying to connect with some of the kids, and also after spending his whole life w Moon, understands that Monty is frustrated that theyre scared of him. He starts to see the good in Monty, and also pity him a bit.

Monty on the other hand, starts to admire how much Sunny cares about the kids, and steadily gets used to his upbeat and overly cheery demeanor. He no longer sees him as annoying, but instead, endearing.

And then theres eventually endgame GlitterGolf

[dreambunnynotes]

weekly note: december 10th

hello angels! i hope you're all taking good care of yourselves and having a lovely day. i'm excited for the week ahead, i'm going to try to go easy on myself this week while still making progress in order to build up better discipline! here are my goals for the week.

appearance and physical health:

find a way to romanticize an early sleep schedule to trick my brain into actually wanting to go to bed, oof. i'm going to try to make a post on this in case it helps anyone else out!

go to the gym at least once, and fight the perfectionist urge that says "if i miss it on monday or tuesday i shouldn't go at all" - i'll go when i have the energy and ability to!

drink way more water; girl the amount of crying i did this week it feels like i have to drink an ocean a day to catch up 😭 going to try to keep a water bottle by my desk and keep track of my water intake somehow.

studying and career:

figure out what i need to do to apply to the program and make a plan, including looking into bank loans and financial planning

work on sheet music arrangement for current song on guitar

get comfortable with all major scales, focusing on accuracy

look into what my favourite musicians studied so that i can make a more specific practice routine and remove barriers to practicing

mental and emotional health:

listen to what my heart needs! this past week i had some incredibly hard conversations that were very triggering and emotionally draining, and i can feel my little heart and mind are needing extra emotional rest right now. i am going to make sure i am connecting with people who bring me joy and not forcing myself to talk to people i don't want to talk to. i'm going to channel the sweet and caring energy of my departed best friend who taught me how to listen to my boundaries, and try to honour myself the way he did.

if i am feeling up to it, i am going to visit one of my friends who is in town for a show who i haven't seen in forever!

lets have a great week, friends!

with love, bunny❤︎

[kpopbestie96]

Meeting with you ex - Bang Chan

Hello lovelies, hope you enjoy this fun little short story. The photos Chan posted gave me inspo to write it. If he can be delusional, so can I! 😂 hope you enjoy it!

~~~~~~~~~

18+, cussing, flirting, she/her, y/n, fake text messages, photos of Chan from his Instagram

Italics means in thoughts

~~~~~~~~

You slide onto your couch after experiencing an amazing Sunday that you haven't had in over two months.

It was finally the first day you didn't think about him because Sundays where the days that you would spend together. You knew that forgetting about him would take some time and still have a long way to go.

You put your favorite show on and heard your phone going off, assuming it's the friend's group chat, wanting to discuss today's fun adventures.

But when you picked up your phone you saw it was the ex you thought you were finally forgetting about. Fuck...of course he would text today...of all days!

You wanted to ignore the message; your brain was yelling at you to just delete it. But your heart was curious to see he wanted, wanted to know if he was okay. Ugh...im going to regret this...

You typed saying hi before nervously tossing your phone on the coffee table. I can't believe I did that, you layed down on your couch, placing a pillow over your face as you yelled into it. Why did I respond?? Why??? I was forgetting about him!!

A minute went by before a ding went off, indicating another message came through from him. Although, you were hoping it was truly anyone else. Welp, let's see what he wants. Why must my curiosity do this to me.

"AAAAHHHHHHH", you screamed into your pillow again as you tossed your phone onto the couch next to you, hoping it disappears forever. Should I tell my friends? No...I won't hear the end of it...maybe after I'll tell them. That's if I even go...

.....

The next morning came, and you got little to no sleep, tossing and turning from the night before. The moment your alarm went off, you stared up at your ceiling contemplating if you should go. I'm just going to text him that I can't make it.

But when you went to the messages you saw the smiley emoji he put, probably excited to meet up. Well fuck...you quickly jumped into the shower and began to think what he could possibly talk about at lunch. Mentally preparing yourself for anything that comes up in the conversation.

Rushing around your house, after doing your makeup, you found a simple summer dress, that's a bit short, it sits right about your knees. It's white with small daisies placed all over with spaghetti straps. You paired it with some cute plain white sandals that have a small heel.

Right before heading out you looked at yourself one last time in the mirror as your nerves began to grow. The same nerves made your stomach turn as you followed the GPS to the café Chan recommend.

There's a spot, you thought to yourself as you turned into it and parking the car. You stared out into the open, gripping the steering wheel, as you kept repeating in your head how you can't do this. Fuck it, I'm leaving. But when you went to restart the car, there was this guilt mixed with nervous feeling swirling around.

I guess I'll go for a bit, you thought as you looked in the review mirror before grabbing your bag and heading in to the café.

A hostess by the front door immediately greeted you as you walked up, asking if it was just you today or how many were in your party.

"No, I'm meeting someone here. I think he might be here already." And as you said that your ex did in fact message you that he was sitting down outside on the patio they have.

"Oh, he's actually sitting down outside," you pointed as the hostess smiled.

"Go right ahead," she waved her hand as you nervously walk to him.

Your legs began to feel wobbly and their were butterflies in your stomach flying around as you could see his black sunglasses sitting on his black hat.

And why the fuck is he wearing a tank top? Is he trying to show off his muscles?? Is he trying to make me want him again??

The closer you got, the more you thought about running away. But, as you were about to turn back around, Chan moved his head up and locked eyes with you.

You stood in your spot close to the table, with your breath hitched in your throat. He couldn't help but smile, showing off his dimples, making you melt in your spot. Fuck this man...ugh...

"Hey y/n, glad you made it." He got up and went to hug you but stepped back before he realized what he was doing.

You could see how awkward this was becoming so you decided to just hug him and get it out of the way. Oh this was a mistake, you thought as he wrapped his arms around you. The familiarity hit you hard as you missed his hugs. They felt like a warm blanket on a cold day, after you've been outside. You felt calm/relaxed as you could feel yourself melting into the hug.

"Umm let's sit down," He said clearing his throat as he broke up the hug.

You nodded your head as he pulled out your chair for you. "Oh, thank you." He's really not going to make this easy on me.

He sat down across from you as you couldn't help but take in his jewelry. Seeing his earrings, the necklace he bought when you and him were on vacation. His bracelets and his ring that sat on his right index finger, showing off his veiny hands.

"Soo how have you been?" He asked shyly as you snapped your eyes up to meet with him. Man, he's so fucking gorgeous. Okay stay strong, you can do this.

"I've been good, just working a lot. I had off today, so that's nice. How have you've been?"

"Good, working a lot too. Staying busy..."

"That's good," you cringed how how awkward this conversation was going, while the waiter walked up to take your drink and food order.

"Oh, went back to Australia..." He brought up after the waiter walked away.

"How was that? How's your family?"

"Everyone is good, doing well. Missed Berry so much!"

"Glad everyone is doing good, aww I miss Berry too."

"Here, let me show you this video I took of her. She was chasing a butterfly." He took out his phone to show you the video and other photos he took while he was there. You felt a bit more relaxed, feeling like normal with him. It was a nice way to break up the awkward tension.

You even recalled a memory of when you went with him to Australia and Berry kept wanting to hang out with you, ignoring Chan.

Moments go by that you and him don't realize the food and drinks are already being brought out as you both smiled before taking bites of your foods.

I can't believe how well this is going, you thought. Even while eating, you both would shared a laugh as you joked like a old times. He even began taking photos of you like when you guys were together, making you do the same.

"Sooo should we talk about it?" He asked taking a sip of drink, fidgeting with the straw as you became quiet. The smile that once sat on your face disappeared as you sat back in your chair. I should have known...I mean this is one of the things I thought he would bring up, you stared at the ground wondering what to say before looking back up at him.

"Um...Chan...we had such a nice day," you tried to say simply. Let's hold off for now..."

"But, you don't miss this?" he asked while pointing between the two of you.

You shrugged your shoulders because it was you who initiated the break up. But deep down you missed him so much, your heart would ache for him. You would want to show up to his house but knew you couldn't.

"Look, I'm going to be honest with you," he sat up in his chair while he cleared his throat. Oh no, you thought as you shifted uncofortably in your seat. "I miss you so much. I missed this. Yes, I just wanted to come to lunch and see how you were doing but this made me realize how much I want you back."

You nodded you head because you knew what he meant. This lunch reminded you how much you still love him. "But we broke up for a reason...I just think..."

"Think about it, please...and we'll talk more about it," he said interrupting you. You nodded your head before he change the subject and had you laughing moments later.

After talking for a bit more, he walked you to your car to say goodbye. "Let me know when you get home."

"I will," you displayed a soft smile right before he wrapped his arms around you, making your body tense for a few seconds. I need to calm down, you thought as you brought your hands up and wrapped your arms around his toned torso, closing your eyes tightly. Wow, I really did miss you.

Neither one of you wanted to let go as you could feel the tears wanting to form. You wanted to cry out, yelling how much you missed him and want to be back together. But, you blinked your eyes to push the tears away, making you move your head up and locking eyes with him. Then, mistakenly, your eyes dropped to his pink pillow-like lips that you immediately regret looking at, making you shoot your eyes back up at his.

You could see him smirk, knowing you were caught. Fuck..."If you want to...you can just ask." He snickered as you could feel your cheeks become warm, mentally palming your forehead for becoming weak for him. Why must he have this affect on me???

"I-I don't know what you're talking about..." you said wiggling your way out of his hug and taking a step back.

"Really? I saw your eyes fall down to my lips," He had the biggest smile on his face, seeing the tips of his ears a bit red.

"I don't know what you're talking about..." you crossed your arms in front of your chest as you moved your head to the side, trying to play it off. Although, you knew he wasn't going to let this go.

"So you didn't do this?" He took a small step towards you, gently placing his right index finger on your cheek. You shivered under his touch and his cold ring that made contact. He slowly moved your head to face him as he moved his eyes down towards your lips this time before meeting your gaze again.

"I- I...uh don't know what you mean," you laughed flirtatiously as you playful pushed him away. You could feel your cheeks become warm as you knew what he was doing.

"Oh, I'm sorry, let me get closer," He said taking a huge step toward you this time, towering over, making you look up at him. Your bodies so close you could put a pencil in between you two and it wouldn't fall.

You mouth was a bit agape as your eyes were locked with his, feeling as if you were in a trance. "This," he said moving his eyes slowly down to your lips then back up at your eyes. You felt a knot in your stomach form as your pressed your lips tightly together from trying to keep yourself from smiling. Don't break, you can do this!

"I did no such thing..." you seductively said, catching yourself off guard.

He moved his hand up, pushing a strand of hair out of your face, making goosebumps rise on your arm. "So you don't want to kiss me?" He inched his head lower towards yours as you were losing breathing. You looked down at his lips seeing how close they are to yours. If you puckered your lips, they would immediately touch his.

Fuck....why...why! This man, I swear! You moved your eyes up to his, feeling his smile against your lips, "So you didn't move your eyes down to look at my lips, to want to taste them again?" He tucked his left hand in your hair as his right hand grabbed yours.

You could only softly nod your head yes as he closed his eyes, making you do the same as you awaited for it. Oh shit, oh shit, is the only thing you thought as you waited for the kiss. But you opened your eyes when you felt nothing happening, seeing him back away from you. "Guess I imagined," he shrugged.

"Christopher!" You yelled as he began to laugh.

"Hey, I didn't do anything," his laughed filled your ears as you couldn't believe he teased you like that. Can't believe him!

"You know what you did!" You pointed at him as you tried to hold in your laughter because you did find it amusing. Even if he made you almost break.

"I don't know what you mean," his tongue poked the side of his cheek knowing you love when he does that.

"That's it, I gotta go," you threw your hands up in defeat before digging in your purse for your keys.

"Thank you for coming, get home safe!" He said after calming his laughter down.

"I will, you do too!" You pretend to say in a angry voice.

On the car ride home, you could feel a smile spread across your face. The feeling of how close his lips were still lingered making you giggle to yourself. If someone looks into my car, they're going to think I'm crazy. Definitely not telling my friends about that.

As soon as you got home, you lied down on your couch and messaged Chan that you made it. I should don't it, but as quick as you were to think, the quicker you were to scrolling through the photos you took of him.

Maybe I should get back with him I missed him so much. And, we had a really fun time today...you thought as you saw a message pop up from Chan.

You sat staring at the screen, feeling your heart beating against your chest. Just do it, just say it! Your fingers began to quickly dance against your phone screen, not reading it back before you hit send.

Like the shy person you are, you quickly locked your phone and set it in the coffee table. You stood up, letting out some strange noise because of how nervous you are feeling. 'Its fine...I'm fine', you said out loud as you walked away from what you did.

* Part two of Meeting with your ex- Bang Chan (the end)

* Other Stray Kids stuff I made

* My stories on Wattpad and A03