#here are some weird things that i personally do

[teaboot]

just saw your new photo where most of your face is blurred but let it be known i have been under the impression you were Black this whole time. i swear to god i saw a post of you mentioning you were Black and it stuck with me cause your old pfp was a white girl or something and i didnt really get it but i obviously wasnt gonna question it. sorry if this is obnoxiously weird im working through this minor whiplash atm. have a good night whiteboy

😭😭😭

Oh my god. No I think I know what post you may have misread-

One time one of my ex-fathers made a racist comment and I called him out for it, to which he responded “Wow, I didn’t know you were Black”, which pissed me off, and I told HIM “I’m not Black, but I have Black friends, and I’d be a pretty shit friend if I let people get away with that crap behind their backs”.

This turned into a big argument where he accused me of “inventing things to be offended by” and saying that the problem with Liberals was that we were all looking to be offended by things that had nothing to do with us.

THAT pissed me off too, because in my opinion, it’s not about being offended, it’s about putting your money where your mouth is- if you care about someone, you don’t sit there and laugh along when someone is talking shit behind their back. And as a white person, we run into a LOT of other white people who talk shit about other races because they think you’re on their side and won’t call ‘em out.

Agdtggtyfgg sorry that was a tangent, I pissed myself off again

ANYWAYS I made a post talking about that, so I wouldn’t be surprise if you skimmed it at some point and misunderstood, because a few others apparently did the same and sent me hate mail calling me the N word.

But yeah I’m white. One quarter native if we’re being pedantic but I don’t know that side of the family or any of the culture so idk I’m kinda just white out here

[lilianne-tarot]

PICK A CARD: Your favourite things about your future spouse ✮⋆˙

✧˚. How to Pick Your Pile: Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and look at the images above. Which one pulls you in the most? Trust your gut! Once you choose the image, The number below your chosen image is your pile. If more than one catches your eye, that just means there’s extra tea for you, go ahead and read both!

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𝜗𝜚˚⋆ PILE I

Cards Pulled: High Priestess, the Chariot, Judgment, Justice, Knight of Wands and oracle cards

Okay, honey, welcome to this pile 1!! Let’s see into what you’ll be lowkey obsessed with when it comes to your future spouse hehe. Before I start this reading, I just wanna mention something really crucial here, UHM......... y'all are LUCKY AF. 😭😭like TF. Also for people who chose this pile, the person described here is sooo similar to the character of Sang Yan from the C-drama The First Frost. I haven't even watched that drama yet, just saw it all over tiktok and insta reels and it's soo crazy how I was constantly thinking about him throughout writing this. The way he carries himself in that drama and SPECIFICALLY HIS EYES. THIS PILE IS LITERALLY HIM. PERIODT.

First off, this person? Mysterious AF.

Like you know when someone doesn’t post on social media but when they do, it’s in black-and-white with a cryptic caption and you’re like “HELLO? What does it mean??” Yeah, that’s their entire vibe. The High Priestess is the main character here, and this person is dripping in silent depth. It’s not that they’re quiet, NO NO, they’re intentional. Everything they do feels like a sacred ritual, even if it’s just tying their shoes. You’re gonna love how they somehow make you slow down and listen more, not just to them but to your own damn intuition. I’m getting this image of you two sitting on the floor, legs touching, and you’re rambling about your day while they just watch you like you’re a rare eclipse. And they’ll say something like “You feel like the ocean right before a storm,” and boom. You’re ruined. Forever.

And OMG don’t even get me started on the emotional depth… because wow.

Yeah, I got CHILLS. Literal chills. ? Bestie, your future spouse doesn’t just love you, they DROWN in you. There’s a softness to them that feels ancient. Like they’ve lived a thousand lives and chose you in every single one. Their love language? Definitely some spicy combination of telepathy, forehead kisses, and knowing your exact comfort food without you saying a word. And yet, they’re not soft in the doormat way. HELL NO. Baby, this person moves. When they decide they want something? Game over. They’re a force. You’ll love how they’ll be gentle with your soul but a literal wildfire for your protection. Someone stares at you weird? They’ve clocked it. You’re nervous to speak up in a group? They smoothly redirect the convo so you shine. It’s that ride-or-die loyalty with a spicy side of “Don’t mess with what’s mine.”

Your future spouse has transformed by the time they meet you. Like… phoenix out of the ashes levels of rebirth. I’m seeing someone who may have had to break out of their own cycles, maybe even some shadow work that slapped, but they did the work. That’s something you’ll absolutely adore about them: their self-awareness. You’ll be so drawn to how they hold themselves accountable. They’ve probably been the villain in someone else’s story, and instead of playing the victim, they faced it. Shadow work? Check. Therapy? Likely. Apologies? Given when needed. They’ve done a full spiritual exfoliation, and now? They’re GLOWING. AND they treat you with such intentional fairness. They don’t play games, they don’t breadcrumb, and they sure as hell don’t ghost (WHEW. thank god cuz i hate that shit) What you’ll cherish most is how they show up for you, consistently. Every little action feels like, “I see you. I honor you. I’m choosing you, even on the messy days.”

And um, can we please talk about how HOT they are when they’re PASSIONATE??? Because the Knight of Wands is coming in LOUD with main-character energy and It’s giving “I’m dragging you into the hallway to make out because I missed you for two hours.” FJNIDNSBTRVIH There’s a bit of chaos in their passion, but like… the fun, flirty, seductive kind. You’ll catch yourself staring when they’re focused on something they care about, eyes lit, words flying, and it’ll hit you: “Damn. That’s my person.” Like they could be talking about some weird niche topic, idk, the ethics of time travel or why a band’s debut album was superior, and you’re just sitting there like, “Okay, philosopher.” It’s hot. It’s brainy. It’s unhinged. And it’s so them. (did i just describe my type here?) 

But here’s the real one, your potential most favorite thing? It’s how they love you through your shadows.

It tells me that they don’t just love your highlights, babe. They’re the one who knows about the parts you try to hide, and loves them deeper. You’ll feel so safe being raw with them. Like crying-on-the-floor-at-2am kind of safe. They’ll be the person who doesn’t try to fix it, they’ll just sit with you in it. You’ll finally feel like, “Oh. I don’t have to perform here.” Also, minor side message that just smacked me: they might help you release a generational wound. Yep. It’s giving “breaking ancestral chains with one good relationship.” I’m not saying they’re your healer (you’re healing yourself, boo), but they are a safe space that lets the healing happen. And the ocean symbolism? BABY. Their love is like the tide, constant, natural, overwhelming in the best way. You might not even realize how deeply they’ve rooted into you until one day they’re not there for a few hours and you’re like, “Why does the air taste different???”

Okay, a few more spicy psychic messages which I got throughout the reading I'll drop here before we close because the tea is still hot:

You’ll love their hands. Like, obsessively. Spirit keeps showing me images of their hands wrapping around yours, brushing your hair back, gripping your waist, yeah, you’re gonna be down bad. They have a “hidden” creative side. Music? Poetry? Painting war miniatures? IDK 😭but it’s something they keep private until they trust you, and once you see it? Prepare to melt. 🫠 They’re a consent king/queen. In the bedroom, in arguments, in making plans, they’re always checking in. Always making sure your voice is heard. It’s HOT. You’ll laugh together in the weirdest moments. Like cracking up during a serious movie or turning a grocery run into a full-on comedy sketch. The emotional intimacy? Unreal.

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𝜗𝜚˚⋆ PILE II

Cards Pulled: Death, Ace of Cups, Four of Cups, Five of Pentacles, Knight of Cups and oracle cards

OKAY BESTIE… buckle the HELL up. This pile??? This pile is literally a love letter from the universe, and it’s about your future spouse in a way that’s got me gasping and screaming into the void. Like, if you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to be truly chosen, truly adored, and truly transformed by love??? this is THAT reading. I’m already sweating more because the cards are kinds big ones as you can see😭 . This ain’t a crush. This is main character's energy meets divine rebirth through love. Also one side note: people who have seen traditional tarot cards would know HOW SIMILAR the Knight of Cups and Death cards look, like almost 85% similar (idk how useful this information was but let's just put this here because I got a little excited seeing this similarity😀✋🏻) . And your favourite thing about this person? Oh honey... it's EVERYTHING they awaken in you. But let me explain because DAMN it gets DEEP. 💀

this pile is all about how utterly devoted and obsessed he is with you, but in that controlled, sexy, lowkey psycho but make it romantic way. He doesn’t say much, but when he does?? It cuts straight to your soul. He makes you feel like the only person that’s ever existed. And when he touches you? The world fades.

Okay so first of all, this love is not soft-launch energy. Actually there’s no soft energy here. It’s not the kind of love where you post a blurry arm on IG stories and call it a day. No no. This is Death + Ace of Cups type of sh*t. This person literally drags you out of a fog you didn’t even know you were in. Like, imagine going through life feeling fine, maybe kinda meh, autopilot vibes, and then BOOM. You meet this person and suddenly, colors are brighter. Food tastes better. Music hits differently. You’re like, “Wait, am I ALIVE again??” Yeah. That.

You don’t just fall in love with them. You fall in love with yourself through their eyes. Because they see you in this way no one ever has before. They don’t pedestal you in some weird, unreachable way, but they mirror back your sacred power, your rawest essence. And you start to remember who TF you are. ✨ Like, you start off this journey feeling a lil rejected, a lil disillusioned (Four of Cups + Five of Pentacles energy… hello loneliness my old friend 😩), but through this love?? You rise. You blossom. You reclaim your power. The crown was always yours, you just forgot. They don’t give you your power back, babe. They just remind you where you left it. And that?! That is your favorite thing about them: they activate the version of you that had been buried under years of rejection, doubt, and disconnection.

Bestie, I’m not gonna sugarcoat, this is NOT some sunshiney, fluffy past you’ve been through. You’ve known the ache of being left out in the cold. Maybe you’ve been the one always giving, always chasing, always hoping for scraps of love from people who didn’t even deserve to speak your name. You’ve had your heart cold-stoned and ghosted and breadcrumbed, and you were probably starting to believe that maybe love just wasn’t in the cards for you. Enter: this person.

They don’t just walk in with roses and pretty words (though they absolutely do that too, Knight of Cups energy is full-on poetic simp vibes 😭). But more importantly?? They SHOW UP. When you expect abandonment, they stay. When you push them away, they lean in. When you flinch at love, they don’t take it personally, they just hold you through it. You’re not their project. You’re their equal, their mirror, their muse. And you’ll find yourself sobbing randomly, “Wait… this is what it’s supposed to feel like??” Because for the first time, love isn’t a battlefield. It’s a sanctuary. It’s not conditional. It’s safe. I’m not kidding when I say this person is the Knight of Cups in every form. So with this person prepare to also see the perfect blend of this combination. prepare for random voice notes at midnight because they saw a cloud that looked like your side profile. Prepare for forehead kisses, poetic ramblings, playlists that sound like your soul. But also?? It’s not performative. It’s not just vibes and aesthetics. It’s intentional.

They speak your love language fluently, even the ones you didn’t know you had. You like thoughtful gifts? Boom, they kept the receipt from your first coffee date and made it into a bookmark for your favorite book. You like acts of service? Baby, they’re doing your laundry and ordering your comfort food on a day you can’t get out of bed. You like words of affirmation? They’re sending full monologues about how divine you are. Honestly, at some point you’re gonna be like, “Can you STOP being obsessed with me for five seconds?” But also you’ll be like, don’t stop. Ever. 😭

Let’s circle back to that Death card because whew… this is the CORE. Your favorite thing about this person isn’t just what they do, it’s who they are and who they inspire you to become. You literally go through a soul transformation in their presence. They don’t fall in love with your mask. They fall in love with your shadow. With the parts you thought made you unlovable. With your mess, your moods, your madness, and suddenly, those parts stop feeling like flaws and start feeling like facets of your magic. And in turn?? You’ll start holding them that way too. You won’t be idolizing each other. You’ll be liberating each other. This love isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being real. It’s about death and rebirth. It’s about watching each other burn and saying, “I still choose you.” They are going to be your favorite revolution.

"Wear your power proudly and unapologetically" is not just advice, it’s what your future spouse pulls out of you. You’ve spent so long shrinking. So long waiting for permission. And this person? They’re gonna hand you the crown and go, “You were born royalty. Act like it.” And the best part? They don’t do it for clout. They don’t flaunt you like a trophy. They cherish you like you’re made of stardust and war paint. Your softest parts are sacred to them. Your weirdness? Worshipped. Your power? Encouraged. Like babe... you will feel both feral and safe in their arms. Do you know how rare that is????

Okay this is so random but it came through SO clearly, I’m getting this image of you hating Mondays your whole life, until this person shows up and suddenly?? You’re excited for the week. You’re looking forward to slow morning texts, coffee runs together, messy buns and “just 5 more minutes” cuddles before they leave for work. They re-sensitize you to the beauty of everyday things. And that is so underrated. They make your life feel like poetry again.

 Final random Favorite Things You’ll Obsess Over:

The way they say your name like it’s a prayer. Youll love listening to your name from them. Their ability to sense your moods before you speak. That would be their superpower, honestly. And also the contrast of their softness in private vs their strength in public.

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𝜗𝜚˚⋆ PILE III

Cards pulled: Six of Swords, The Empress, The Fool, Five of Wands, Ace of Swords amd oracle cards

OMG This pile? This is the rom-com-meets-healing-arc-meets-delulu-dream-guy-you-manifested-during-a-Lana-Del-Rey-retrograde kinda situation (don’t ask me how i came up with this😭). This is raw. This is “you didn't know you were starving ‘til he fed you” energy. Wow that was deep LOL.He LOVES the full spectrum of you. Your sensitivity, your rage, your need to cry during commercials, he eats it up. Encourages you to take up space. He celebrates your chaos. And the banter?? UNMATCHED.

So first off, let me just say this: I legit felt like I was watching one of those dramatic K-drama slow burns when I tapped into this spread. Like ep 1 is you emotionally limping out of some messy chapter of your life, and ep 16 is you soft-smiling while they brush hair from your face and say, “You’re safe now.” I’m crying just thinking about it 😭 but I digress—

Now let’s start peeling back the layers of this absolutely BONKERS beautiful energy: your fave things about this person? Oh honey. It’s not just their looks (although, side note, the way they carry themselves? That quiet “I know who tf I am” swag? Oof. HOT). But no, what melts you? What gets you twisted in the sheets and emotionally raw in the car at 2AM? It’s their consistency, their emotional maturity, and the fact that they’re lowkey your safe space after a lifetime of chaos. Yeah, I said it. The trauma you didn’t even realize you were still carrying? They help you walk that ish to the river and let it go. Six of Swords style. 🛶💧

And listen. This person doesn’t swoop in and fix you, don’t get it wrong. They don’t love you despite your wounds, they love you with them. Like “hand-in-hand with your demons” type love. They don’t run when things get messy. They lean in. You’ll sit there anxious and they’ll hand you a blanket and be like, “Keep talking, I’m not going anywhere.” THAT kind of presence? Yeah, bestie. That’s what you’re gonna worship. But don’t think this is some therapist in a man’s body situation either lmao. There’s a whole wild side to this person too, like, this person challenges you. HARD. Five of Wands energy was screaming at me like “YUP WE FIGHT BUT MAKE IT FOREPLAY.” 😂 They’re gonna debate you for fun, tease you just to make you roll your eyes, push your buttons not to be toxic, but because it turns them on to see you all passionate and fired up. The intellectual banter is chef’s kiss. Your fave thing about them? You never get bored. They don’t just nod along, they’re present. They got opinions, they got a backbone, and they’re not afraid to go toe to toe with you when you are acting up (and honestly? You love it).

This pile is all about liberation. Your fave thing about him is how he reminds you of who you are before the world made you smaller. He gives you permission to laugh too loud, cry too much, and dream too big. And he’s gonna do it all right beside you.

Now The way they see you… like, you're not just a person to them. You're a literal universe. The way they look at you when you’re ranting about something random? Or doing your skincare? Or just existing in oversized pajamas and a bonnet? They’re gone. Fully GONE. And because of that? You start to see yourself differently too which is honestly the best part. Like, your favorite thing about this person is how they love you into softness, into full self-worth. They speak to the parts of you that felt unworthy and whisper, “More. You deserve more.” You start walking different because of how deeply they hold space for you.

 Baby😩 This person is your reset button. The Fool here isn’t naive, it’s liberated. You’ve been carrying so much emotional weight from past relationships, maybe even from family crap, old fears, toxic exes, and here comes this person like… “Why are you still dimming your light?” this is literally them encouraging you to live a little, say yes more. Take the leap. Splurge. Cry. Yell. Make a mess. Be too much. They LOVE that you're extra. They don't flinch when you're chaotic. They jump off the cliff with you, giggling. (that one was a little exaggerated but nvm😭)

Like, your favorite thing about them is how much they let you take up space. Not just tolerate it. They encourage it. “You are worth every desire, every dream. Demand what is yours.” And this person? They believe in that. They fight for that. Ace of Swords slicing through the bs like “You’re not going back to that old version of you.” And I’m telling you right now, they’ll probably be the one who drags you to that dream vacation you were too shy to plan, or who makes you apply for the job you think you're not good enough for. They see your power. They know your value. And it becomes your favorite mirror. 💅

And YESSSS, there’s a sexuality to this pile too. Bestie. Don’t lie. I know you saw The Empress + The Fool and went 😏. SAME. This person? They worship your body like it’s art. Like a damn temple. And it’s not just hot passionate nights, it's playful, explorative, curious, FUN. That “I can’t keep my hands off you but I also wanna laugh in your neck while doing it” kinda vibe. 😭💦That alone could’ve been the whole reading LMAO. But here's the secret sauce: the emotional intimacy hits harder than the physical. It's the way they look at you when you’re vulnerable. When you’re quiet. When you’re in your dark. The Ace of Swords says this person cuts through the noise, you don’t need to over-explain yourself. They just get you. Like intuitively. You’ll be like “I didn’t even say anything” and they’re already making you soup or running you a bath or telling you to block that toxic friend. HOW DO THEY KNOW??? Idk, babes. Soul contract things. 💀

OH and one more image i saw, there's this moment I saw like clear as day: you're going through a rough patch emotionally. You're bawling, maybe imposter syndrome, maybe an old wound opened up, idk, but this person? They stop everything and hold your face and say something brutally honest but loving like: “You forget who you are. Let me remind you.” And it floors you. Floors. You. 🥹

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Thank you so much for reading all the way through! I hope my reading resonated with you and that you had a lovely time going through it. If you enjoyed it, please like and reblog, it really means a lot! Let me know which pile you chose; I absolutely love hearing your thoughts and feedback on my readings! If my reading resonated you, you may consider buying my paid reading as it would really help me out financially♡

Note: tarot cards provide guidance and possible insights into what could happen based on current energies, thoughts, and actions. the cards can highlight potential paths or outcomes, but they do not fixedly predict the future. this is a general reading so take what resonates!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The meritocracy to eugenics pipeline

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. After that, it's LONDON (Jul 1) and MANCHESTER (Jul 2).

It's kinda weird how, the more oligarchic our society gets, the more racist it gets. Why is the rise of billionaires attended by a revival of discredited eugenic ideas, dressed up in modern euphemisms like "race realism" and "human diversity"?

I think the answer lies in JK Galbraith's observation that "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

The theory of markets goes like this: a market is a giant computer that is always crunching all kinds of "signals" about what people want and how much they want it, and which companies and individuals are most suited to different roles within the system. The laissez-faire proposition is that if we just resist the temptation to futz with the computer (to "distort the market"), it will select the best person for each position: workers, consumers, and, of course, "capital allocators" who decide where the money goes and thus what gets made.

The vast, distributed market computer is said to be superior to any kind of "central planning" because it can integrate new facts quickly and adjust production to suit varying needs. Let rents rise too high and the computer will trigger the subroutine that brings "self-interested" ("greedy") people into the market to build more housing and get a share of those sky-high rents, "coming back into equilibrium." But allow a bureaucracy to gum up the computer with a bunch of rules about how that housing should be built and the "lure new homebuilders" program will crash. Likewise, if the government steps in to cap the price of rents, the "price signal" will be silenced and that "new homebuilders" program won't even be triggered.

There's some logic to this. There are plenty of good things that market actors do that are motivated by self-interest rather than altruism. When Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their Pagerank algorithm and revolutionized internet search, they weren't just solving a cool computer science problem – they were hoping to get rich.

But here's the thing: if you let Larry and Sergey tap the capital markets – if they can put on a convincing show for the "capital allocators" – then the market will happily supply them with the billions they need to buy and neutralize their competitors, to create barriers to entry for superior search engines, and become the "central planners" that market theory so deplores. If your business can't get any market oxygen, if no audience ever discovers your creative endeavors, does it matter if the central planner who decided you don't deserve a chance is elected or nominated by "the market"?

Here's how self-proclaimed market enthusiasts answer that question: all Larry and Sergey are doing here is another form of "capital allocation." They're allocating attention, deciding what can and can't be seen, in just the same way that a investor decides what will and won't be funded. If an investor doesn't fund promising projects, then some other investor will come along, fund them, get rich, and poach the funds that were once given to less-successful rivals. In the same way, if Google allocates attention badly, then someone will start a better search engine that's better at allocating attention, and we will switch to that new search engine, and Google will fail.

Again, this sounds reasonable, but a little scrutiny reveals it to be circular reasoning. Google has dominated search for a quarter of a century now. It has a 90% market share. According to the theory of self-correcting markets, this means that Google is very good at allocating our attention. What's more, if it feels like Google actually sucks at this – like Google's search-results are garbage – that doesn't mean Google it bad at search. It doesn't mean that Google is sacrificing quality to improve its bottom line (say, by scaling back on anti-spam spending, or by increasing the load of ads on a search results page).

It just means that doing better than Google is impossible. You can tell it's impossible, because it hasn't happened.

QED.

Google wasn't the first search engine, and it would be weird if it were the last. The internet and the world have changed a lot and the special skills, organizational structures and leadership that Google assembled to address the internet of the 2000s and the 2010s is unlikely to be the absolute perfect mix for the 2020s. And history teaches us that the kinds of people who can assemble thee skills, structures and leaders to succeed in one era are unlikely to be able to change over to the ideal mix for the next era.

Interpreting the persistent fact of Google's 90% market-share despite its plummeting quality as evidence of Google's excellence requires an incredible act of mental gymnastics. Rather than accepting the proposition that Google both dominates and sucks because it is excellent, we should at least consider the possibility that Google dominates while sucking because it cheats. And hey, wouldn't you know it, three federal courts have found Google to be a monopolist in three different ways in just a year.

Now, the market trufans will tell you that these judges who called Google a cheater are just futzers who can't keep their fingers off the beautiful, flawless market computer. By dragging Google into court, forcing its executives to answer impertinent questions, and publishing their emails, the court system is "distorting the market." Google is the best, because it is the biggest, and once it stops being the best, it will be toppled.

This makes perfect sense to people who buy the underlying logic of market-as-computer. For the rest of us, it strains credulity.

Now, think for a minute of the people who got rich off of Google. You have the founders – like Sergey Brin, who arrived in America as a penniless refugee and is now one of the richest people in the history of the human species. He got his fortune by building something that billions of us used trillions of times (maybe even quadrillions of times) – the greatest search engine the world had ever seen.

Brin isn't the only person who got rich off Google, of course. There are plenty of Googlers who performed different kinds of labor – coding, sure, but also accountancy, HR, graphic design, even catering in the company's famous cafeterias – who became "post-economic" (a euphemism for "so rich they don't ever need to think about money ever again") thanks to their role in Google's success.

There's a pretty good argument to be made that these people "earned" their money, in the sense that they did a job and that job generated some money and they took it home. We can argue about whether the share of the profits that went to different people was fair, or whether the people whose spending generated that profit got a good deal, or whether the product itself was good or ethical. But what is inarguable is that this was money that people got for doing something.

Then there's Google's investors. They made a lot of money, especially the early investors. Again, we can argue about whether investors should be rewarded for speculation, but there's no question that the investors in Google took a risk and got something back. They could have lost it all. In some meaningful sense, they made a good choice and were rewarded for it.

But now let's think about the next generation. The odds that these billionaires, centimillionaires and decimillionaires will spawn the next generation of 1%ers, 0.1%ers, and 0.0001%ers are very high. Right now, in America, the biggest predictor of being rich is having rich parents. Every billionaire on the Forbes under-30 list inherited their wealth:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/forbes-billionaires-under-30-inherited-203930435.html

The wealthy have created a system of dynastic wealth that puts the aristocratic method of primogenitor in the shade. Every scion of every one-percenter can have their own fortune and start their own dynasty, without lifting a finger. Their sole job is to sign the paperwork put before them by "wealth managers":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Yes, it's true that some of the very richest people on Earth got their money by investing, rather than inheriting it. Bill Gates's investment income growth exceeds even the growth of the world's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who never did anything of note apart from emerging from an extremely lucky orifice and then simply accruing:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

But Bill Gates's wealth accumulation from investing exceeds the wealth he accumulated by founding and running the most successful company in history (at the time). Doing work never pays as much as allocating capital. And Gates's children? They can assume a Bettencourtian posture on a divan, mouths yawning wide for the passage of peeled grapes, and their fortunes will grow still larger. Same goes for their children, and their children's children.

Capitalism's self-mythologizing insists that the invisible hand owes no allegiance to yesterday's champions. The mere fact that the market rewarded you for allocating capital wisely during your tenure does not entitle your offspring to continue to allocate wealth in the years and centuries to come – not unless they, too, are capital allocators of such supremacy that they are superior to everyone born hereafter and will make the decisions that make the whole world better off.

Because that's the justification for inequality: that the market relentlessly seeks out the people with the skill and foresight to do things and invest in things that improve the world for all of us. If we interrupt that market process with regulations, taxes, or other "distorting" factors, then the market's quest for the right person for the right job will be thwarted and all of us will end up poorer. If we want the benefits of the invisible hand, we must not jostle the invisible elbow!

That's the justification for abolishing welfare, public education, public health, affirmative action, DEI, and any other programs that redistribute wealth to the least among us. If we get in the way of the market's selection process, we'll elevate incompetents to roles of power and importance and they will bungle those roles in ways that hurt us all. As Boris Johnson put it: "the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for [big] cornflakes to get to the top":

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/28/boris-johnson-iq-intelligence-gordon-gekko

Which leaves the servants and defenders of the invisible hand with a rather awkward question: how is it that today, capital allocation is a hereditary role? We used to have the idea that fitness to allocate capital – that is, to govern the economy and the lives of all of the rest of us – was a situational matter. The rule was "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations": "The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it."

That's the lesson of the rags to riches story*: that out there, amongst the teeming grubby billions, lurks untold genius, waiting to be anointed by the market and turned loose to make us all better off.

In America, these stories are sometimes called "Horatio Alger" stories, after the writer who penned endless millionaire-pleasing fables about urchins who were adopted by wealthy older men who saw their promise and raised them to be captains of industry. However, in real life, Horatio Alger was a pedophile who adopted young boys and raped them:

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/horatio-alger-hundred-year-old-secret/

Perhaps your life was saved by a surgeon who came from humble origins but made it through med school courtesy of Pell Grants. Perhaps you thrilled to a novel or a film made by an artist from a working class family who got their break through an NEA grant. Maybe the software you rely on every day, or the game that fills your evenings, was created by someone who learned their coding skills at a public library or publicly funded after-school program.

The presence among us of people who achieved social mobility and made our lives better is evidence that people are being born every moment with something to contribute that is markedly different, and higher in social status, than the role their parents played. Even if you stipulate that the person who cleans your toilet has been correctly sorted into a toilet-cleaning job by the invisible hand, it's clear that the invisible hand would prefer that at least some of those toilet-cleaners' kids should do something else for a living.

And yet, wealth remains stubbornly hereditary. Our capital allocators – who, during the post-war, post-New Deal era were often drawn from working families – are now increasingly, relentlessly born to that role.

For the wealthy, this is the origin of the meritocracy to eugenics pipeline. If power and privilege are inherited – and they are, ever moreso every day – then either we live in an extremely unfair society in which the privileged and the powerful have rigged the game…or the invisible hand has created a subspecies of thoroughbred humans who were literally born to rule.

This is the thesis of the ultra-rich, the moral justification for rigging the system so that their failsons and faildaughters will give rise to faildestinies of failgrandkids and failgreat-grandkids, whose emergence from history's luckiest orifices guarantees them a lifelong tenure ordering other people around. It's the justification for some people being born to own the places where the rest of us live, and the rest of us paying them half our salaries just so we don't end up sleeping on the sidewalk.

"Hereditary meritocracy" is just a polite way of saying "eugenics." It starts from the premise of the infallible invisible hand and then attributes all inequality in society to the hand's perfect judgment, its genetic insight in picking the best people for the best jobs. If people of one race are consistently on top of the pile, that's the market telling you something about their genomes. If men consistently fare better in the economy than women, the invisible hand is trying to say something about the Y chromosome for anyone with ears to hear.

Capitalism's winners have always needed "a superior moral justification for selfishness," a discreet varnish to shine up the old divine right of kings. Think of the millionaire who created a "Nobel Prize sperm-bank" (and then fraudulently fathered hundreds of children because he couldn't find any Nobelists willing to make a deposit):

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/07/nobel-prize-sperm-bank-human-tragicomedy-about-eugenics/

Or the billionaire founder of Telegram who has fathered over 100 children in a bid to pass on his "superior genes":

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/tech/pavel-durov-telegram-profile-intl

Think of Trump and his endless boasting about his "good blood" and praise for the "bloodlines" of Henry Ford and other vicious antisemites:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/22/trump-criticized-praising-bloodlines-henry-ford-anti-semite/5242361002/

Or Elon Musk, building a compound where he hopes to LARP as Immortan Joe, with a harem of women who have borne his legion of children, who will carry on his genetic legacy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-children-compound.html

Inequality is a hell of a drug. There's plenty of evidence that becoming a billionaire rots your brain, and being born into a dynastic fortune is a thoroughly miserable experience:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

The stories that rich people tell themselves about why this is the only way things can be ("There is no alternative" -M. Thatcher) always end up being stories about superior blood. Eugenics and inequality are inseparable companions.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/20/big-cornflakes-energy/#caliper-pilled

[postgamevibes]

Morning Stretch

(Soft smut more suggestive nothing too explicit)

Summary: Will has a strict game-day routine. You're not usually part of it until one morning, curiosity gets the better of you. Once you're on the mat with him, well things bend in more ways than one.

*********************************************************

The sun hadn’t fully risen yet.

You could tell by the soft gray light filtering through the bedroom blinds, gentle and quiet, like the world was still holding its breath.

You were wrapped in warm blankets, eyes barely open, the smell of eucalyptus faint in the air. Will your boyfriend, your human furnace wasn’t in bed.

Again.

It was game day.

You groaned softly and rolled over, expecting to find the bed empty. But instead, you heard it:

A soft exhale, the creak of a floorboard, a low grunt.

Will was on the floor, stretching.

Again.

He had this whole routine early wake-up times, light snack, stretching in the living room before morning skate. You normally slept through it, only catching glimpses when he’d come back in, freshly showered, hair still damp.

But not today.

Today, for some reason, you couldn’t fall back asleep. Maybe it was the soft sounds of him in the other room, maybe it was the chill in the air. Maybe it was the fact that Will Smith was currently shirtless and very bendy on the yoga mat you bought for yourself and rarely used.

Whatever the reason, you were curious.

So you pulled on one of his sweatshirts, padded barefoot down the hall, and leaned on the doorframe like a sleepy cat.

Will was mid-stretch, one leg tucked under the other, arms raised overhead in a slow inhale. The sweatshirt you’d stolen had San Jose across the chest in faint letters, and the sleeves swallowed your hands.

He looked up, caught you watching, and smirked.

“Well, well look who’s awake.”

You grumbled. “How long have you been out here?”

“Hour or so.”

“On purpose?”

He nodded. “Game day.”

“You know it’s weird that you enjoy this, right?”

“Necessary,” he said, reaching for his toes. “Keeps me from feeling like I’m eighty by third period.”

You crossed the room, collapsing onto the floor beside him. “Teach me.”

Will arched a brow. “What, you’re joining me?”

You flopped dramatically onto your back. “I want to understand your pain. Also, I can’t touch my toes anymore and that feels like a personal failure.”

He chuckled, scooting over to give you space on the mat. “Alright. You asked for it.”

Ten minutes in, you were already regretting your life choices.

Will was sitting like a pretzel, somehow both relaxed and perfectly upright. Meanwhile, you were hunched like a gremlin, trying to copy him and failing miserably.

“Okay, now pull your foot up toward your hip,” he said, gently guiding your ankle. “Yeah, like that.”

You winced. “My body wasn’t made to bend this way.”

“You’re doing great,” he said, voice low and encouraging. “Breathe into it.”

You did.

He reached around, lightly pressing on your lower back to help you lean forward.

The touch wasn’t inappropriate just supportive.

But the way his palm settled there, warm and steady.

Yeah, okay. Maybe this wasn’t just about stretching anymore.

You peeked up at him.

He was close, really close.

“Is this how you always start your mornings?” you asked.

Will smirked. “Only on game days.”

“That explains the mood. You’re, like, centered and annoyingly calm.”

“Routine helps.” His voice was softer now, more thoughtful. “Wakes my body up, clears my head. Focuses me.”

“And what if I mess it up?”

He looked at you then, really looked, eyes dark and half-lidded in the low light.

“You couldn’t mess me up if you tried.”

The tension shifted.

Not sharp, not overwhelming.

But warm, pulling.

Like something small and electric moving beneath your skin.

He helped you into another stretch legs extended, chest leaning forward and this time, when he guided your posture, his hand lingered.

“Still good?” he asked, voice low.

“Yeah,” you said, breath catching.

“Sure?”

You nodded.

His fingers traced a line up your spine, with a featherlight touch.

Your body tilted forward more from instinct than form and when you looked back at him, his expression had changed.

Less instructor.

More something else.

You ended up lying side by side on the mat, legs tangled, facing each other.

The stretching was long forgotten.

Will propped himself up on one elbow, hand brushing a piece of hair from your face.

“You’re dangerous,” he murmured.

You blinked. “Me?”

“You come out here looking like that stealing my hoodie, acting all innocent then spend twenty minutes groaning on a yoga mat and expect me to keep it together.”

You snorted. “Groaning? I was struggling.”

“You were making sounds,” he said, inching closer. “And I have an active imagination.”

You laughed softly. “So what, this is my fault now?”

“Always has been.”

He kissed you then.

Slow.

Easy.

The kind of kiss that fit perfectly in the softness of morning no rush, no pressure, just heat and quiet.

When he pulled back, his thumb traced the curve of your cheek.

“I usually finish with a cooldown stretch,” he said.

You raised a brow. “Oh yeah?”

“Want to help me with that?”

You grinned. “Depends, does it involve lying flat on my back?”

“Among other things.”

You pulled him down by the collar.

“Stretch me, Smith.”

You were definitely not walking straight by the time he left for morning skate.

He looked smug.

You looked ruined.

But happy.

And when he came home hours later, still glowing from a win, he kissed your temple and said, “Best. Game day. Ever.”

You had no complaints.

[nineteenninety-six]

Maybe Robby's daughter is dating someone from Er? I imagine Robby being a jealous father. It's all a funny situation, haha.

Pairings: Frank Langdon x Reader, Michael Robinavitch x daughter!reader

AN: It's short, I apologise.

Your giggles are muffled against Frank’s lips as he tries his hardest to make the most out of the five minutes you had together. 

Your relationship was a secret one, kept between only the two of you, mostly out of Frank’s fear of your father’s reaction and despite your attempts to assure him that your father will be relatively fine with it, Frank feared his mentor's reaction. So aside from dates that were held far from the hospital and the chance of bumping into one of his colleagues being decreased, you had these little chance moments. 

You had initially only come to the hospital to drop some things off for your father but he was busy with a patient- but Frank was free and so he dragged you into a supply closet and pulled you into a kiss. 

“We’re gonna get caught” You murmur through kisses. 

Frank pulled away enough so that you could see him roll his eyes, “It’s been almost a year and we haven’t got caught, that’s not going to change now”

“That’s because we’ve never been kissing in the supply closet at the hospital” You remind him, “Quite literally anyone can walk in here.”

“And who’s gonna tell?” Frank shrugs, “The only person currently here who might be Dana and all I have to do is beg a little and she won't say anything.”

You stare at him for a moment before conceding with a nod, “Okay…you’re right”

“Of course I am” Frank winks at you before his hands cup your face and pull you into another kiss.

You lose track of time while you’re in the closet with Frank but it couldn’t have been longer than five minutes when the door is open, spilling white artificial light on both of them.

“Frank? Why are you-what the hell?!” Your father freezes in his steps, eyes wide as he catches you.

As you and Frank stare wide eyed at your father, he hurriedly closes the door behind him, trapping all three of you in the cramped supply closet.

“Robby…” Frank attempts to speak and explain but a heavy glare from your dad makes him retreat into his shell.

“Dad…” This time you attempt to speak, hoping that your dad would be softer with you and he is but it just means that his glare is less angry.

“What the hell did I just walk into?” Your dad crosses his arms as he looks at you and Frank for answers, “Does anyone want to answer?”

You and Frank exchange looks before you step forward figuring it would be better if you spoke since your dad was always soft with you.

“Frank and I…we’ve been seeing each other for a while now-“

“How long is ‘a while’?” Your dad interrupts.

You hesitate before you answer “…A year”

You’re pretty sure your dads eyebrows disappear into his hairline after he hears your answer.

“This has been going on for a year and what…you didn’t think it was important to tell me?”

“I was worried about your reaction” You admit, “Frank is your senior resident and I know it would complicate things.”

“Why do you think it’ll complicate things?”

You roll your eyes at your dad playing dumb, “Oh come on. You get weird with every guy I date. You act cold and standoffish and if you do that to Frank then it just doesn’t affect us! It affects everyone at the hospital if you get mean with him.”

“I can be professional” Your dad defends himself. 

“Sure but let’s not act as if you wouldn’t make it awkward”

Your dad doesn’t even attempt to look ashamed as he shrugs. 

“I do really love your daughter, Dr Robby” Frank speaks up as he steps forward, “And I apologise for uh-keeping it a secret.”

Your father stares at him silently for a moment before he turns back to you, "You chose Langdon, out of everyone?"

Frank makes an offended noise behind you at your fathers words.

"Would you prefer I dated Jack?" You ask, knowing your father's close relationship with Dr Abbot.

A frown forms on your fathers face at your words, realising that you were right.

"Can I speak to Frank alone?" 

At those words, Frank's hand darts out and wraps around your arm, squeezing it in panic as he stares at you with wide eyes, silently begging you not to leave him alone with your father.

"Sure" You chirp with a smile.

It takes a few tugs to free yourself from Frank's hold and the last thing you see before you close the supply closet door behind you as you leave is Frank's panicked and wide gaze as it flickered between you and your dad.

[mochaticat]

THE PAC-MAN SUIT LOOKS SO HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPP (no seriously bro you look absolutely awesome)

As you see, there are many things in this picrew I included--my most accurate depiction of me yet! So I decided to include some fun facts about myself since I don't really talk about myself much!

☆ Sweaty = i'm usually very nervous/socially anxious ☆ Pimples = i don't have much, but I do have clogged pores (and they're bad) ☆ Small eyes = papi calls me "mole eyes" ☆ Cherries = i REALLY love cherries <3 (it's also one of my nicknames) ☆ Hair = CURLS!!! ☆ Possum = i have the personality of one. enough said. ☆ Cinnamoroll = yes, i'm one of those cinnagirls--but i'm more sane and that's saying alot. ☆ Mabel = my favorite major animal crossing character! i love her and the tailor shop sm <3 ☆ Moomin = one of my comfort shows, it's so peaceful... ☆ That weird retro wallpaper = i get nostalgia from times i never lived in. that, and i just love how things were back then. it felt more real to me.

And uhhhhhh, that's a brief history on me (i'm never doing this again) and here's the tags:

@chae-3l @rei-z-tehlayzee @yourlocalleokinnie @shishigoesweeeeee

Starting a Picrew chain!!

Here's the Picrew :3

@notdifferentjustdivergent @edirazirollyx @quicklight-the-exister @huskersbar + anyone who wants to join! (/nf!)

[discountlittlebro]

His big brother is so cool, with wild black hair that dances just past his shoulders, cropped shirts and ripped jeans. He’s like something out of a magazine. Their parents hate his belly button ring and the stars that are permanently adorning his hip bones. Hate the way he comes home smelling of smoke and cheap alcohol. But his little brother thinks he’s the coolest person in the world! His big brother looks sooo cool and he has tattoos and piercings and that’s so bad ass!

He wants to be just like him. But his big brother is constantly calling him annoying, and sending him away. Never lets him hangout with his friends or go on their trips or to concerts with them. he’s accepted that he has to admire his brother, and his friends, from a distance. It isn’t until he bumps into one of his brothers friends around midnight that things start to change. He was half asleep, making his way to the bathroom to pee when he bumped into all muscle.

“Woah…kid brothers really growing up huh?” It’s the first sentence directed at him that isn’t an insult. It actually feels like it be something close to similar, the other man looking him up and down and whistling at his bare legs. “Ready to play with the big boys, huh?”

“I uh…huh?” He was confused, his face burning when he realized he walked out here in nothing but an oversized shirt and some boxers. The response he got was a chuckle, and a hand ruffling his hair. It sent something fluttering in his stomach.

He didn’t think much of the encounter until the next morning. His brother and his friend watched as he entered the kitchen, eyeing him so intently now. It sent shivers down his spine.

“Hey baby bro. We’re going to a show tonight, you wanna come with?”

And he’s positive he heard him wrong, his brother never invites him out. All he can do is stare for a moment, mouth slacked open. His brothers friend laughs, makes some asshole comment about catching flies. They both laugh, but this doesn’t feel like it’s at him this time.

“Come on, you’re with us today.”

They spend the hours before hanging out. They listen to loud music in big brothers room, dance and laugh, and they teach him how to smoke, how to take a shot. It burns and he’s not sure he likes it but they’re both being so encouraging he keeps going. And by the time his big brother is sitting in his lap, dragging a black eyeliner pencil against his bottom lash line, his brain is hazey he can barely think.

“There we go, now you’re ready for your first concert.”

“What…what should I wear?” He craves his brothers approval so badly.

“Don’t worry, kid. We got an outfit for ya.”

Maybe it should be weird that his big brother and his best friend are taking off his clothes, that they’re laughing to eachother about his cunt and the way his tdick is twitching, but he’s too high or maybe too tipsy to care. They end up dressing him in an outfit from his brothers closet and finally he feels cool. He looks like his brother.

The concert is fun, loud but fun. There’s not a lot space, and sweaty bodies keep bumping into him but his big brother comes to his rescue, sandwiches him between himself and his friend. It’s starting to make him claustrophobic, makes his heart race in his chest and he doesn’t even know how he’s supposed to react when his brothers friend is suddenly kissing his neck, when they’re grabbing his wrists and shoving his hands down their pants jerking themselves off with his hands. Nobody notices, too distracted by the music and their own sexual experiences or drugs.

“H-hey! This…this is weird…right?”

His brother laughs, throwing his head back and showing off his Adam’s apple.

“Nah, this is what guys do. This is normal. Don’t be a prude.”

“Yeah man, you gonna be a tease? That’s not cool.” His hips thrusting into his pliant hand. “Thought you were cool. Thought you were ready to hangout with us.”

“No! I am! I swear I am!”

His brother and friend share a look, their lips tugging into a smile.

“Yeah bud? you sure?”

He nods, he doesn’t want them to think he’s a loser. It’s just a handjob, it’s not a big deal. But not they’re dragging him away from the crowd and towards the bathroom, and he’s pretty sure they’re about to do more than handjobs.

[ckret2]

I wonder what Hikari would think about the reveal of why his dad REALLY adopted Kage. Those feelings are gonna be complicated as hell.

anon ur in luck ive got 11 pages worth of comic about how EVERYONE reacts to it.

(for context if anyone missed it, we're talking about this samurai jack AU here where when the emperor makes Aku he goes "well this thing is my son now" and takes it home, at which point This Thing ("Kage") promptly decides that Jack ("Hikari") is his twin brother.)

They're not finding out that the emperor didn't want to make Kage and was just trying to rid the land of evil until they're teens, at which point Kage's gotten more than a decade and a half of:

try to look less scary. no, even less scary. can you just look like your brother? look like your brother

don't tower over people, it's weird for a three-year-old. PLEASE stick to a human height. okay yes that's a human height but standing a foot over the guests intimidates them, don't do that.

new rules: when your brother is here don't be taller than him; when he's not but others are, don't stand taller than the shortest of your superiors or the tallest of your equals and inferiors. it's polite.

keep your claws to yourself. and your fangs. and your eye lasers. and your undead minions—just don't do necromancy in public ok.

do not start fights with people. stop fighting. NO FIGHTING.

why did you run instead of fighting that insolent bully who accosted you outside the palace

(making jack (and aku) look 17 is hard. we don't really get any good references for jack's transitional looks between 13-ish and adult.

making aku sound like a whiny teen while maintaining his canon born-talking-like-an-old-man-in-an-ancient-epic-poem speech patterns is hard too.)

(Aku: "sunshine /sarcastic")

Hikari is, of course, still a Good Guy. and being a Good Guy means Loyalty To And Respect For Your Family. In some of the dominant philosophies of the area/time—Confucianism, for instance—loyalty to your family, even when they're in the wrong, is a higher virtue than doing what would otherwise be the "right" thing.

and to him, his father and his weird shadow brother are equally his family, and he's watched them be at each other's throats for years, playing the unwilling referee like "okay but kage you WERE a jerk" / "father don't you think that was maybe a little harsh"

there's no neutral zone on this issue though. dad said "i didn't want to make you, i was just trying to destroy evil and instead got you." Maybe canon Jack would be sympathetic to the difficult position his father was in, but canon Jack isn't a teen who's viewed The Evil Shapeshifting Wizard Aku as his brother his whole life.

He's had to watch for years as their father's reprimands wore down this demon for whom being good—never mind good enough—is so difficult it's almost painful. Typically loyalty to your father is supposed to come before loyalty to your brother, but there's only so much an adoptive twin can take.

I think there's a lot of ways the emperor could end up revealing the truth—a deliberate confession to try to clear the air, or blurted out in anger during a fight—but however it happened and however the emperor meant for it to be taken, the end result's the same:

Kage runs.

history lesson! along with a set of several other classics, Confucius's teachings on politics/etiquette/philosophy/religion formed the backbone of Chinese culture for millennia—and leaked out to have a lesser influence on neighbors like Japan and Korea—and for 1500 years you couldn't get a government job in China without studying these texts for the imperial examination. the better a job you wanted the more & harder exams you took. imagine if ever since the middle ages, nobody in europe was allowed to be a lord, duke, senator, prime minister, anything, unless they had a PhD in plato's writings, and that's very roughly how china worked.

which means: 1) these exams are a big deal; 2) you're a very smart and important person if you pass even a few of the exams, much less all of them; 3) it takes a LONG time to work your way through all of them; and 4) there's absolutely no fucking reason for a Japanese prince to take them unless he wants an impressive-sounding excuse to get the hell out of the country for a decade.

also i basically made this whole post as an excuse to draw Aku sneering "filial piety" with as much venom and sarcasm as possible.

They don't know what they're doing. They're 17 and stupid.

But they're a package deal, you can't separate them. Except maybe with contrived plot events that force them apart in order to put them through unnecessary pain, grief, and character growth. Forget I said that last sentence.

Ever since they were born, Kage has had to live in/as Hikari's shadow; if Kage has to run away from home, Hikari will return the favor and shadow him. And besides, Hikari's a little bit fucking furious about this situation. Filial piety goes both ways; and if father won't respect one of his sons then he doesn't get the other one either. (he's kind of making up his understanding of filial piety as he goes.)

"hey puff why are they 17 years old?" asked nobody.

okay! so in canon we know Aku attacked when Jack was eight years old; and the talking dogs dated Jack as coming from 25 years before Aku's conquest, so I'm taking that to mean he's 25 years old; so that's a gap of 17 years that Jack spent training.

Aku is only a day old when the emperor traps him in that Hexxus-looking tree. He attacks the kingdom the same day he's unleashed, and rules it til Jack comes back.

So that means—both in canon and in this AU—Aku is 17 years old when he gets stabbed through the heart.

[thewardenisonthecase]

Leandra saw one of her children DIE a brutal death right in front of her. She lost one of her children, something that is any parent's absolute WORST nightmare, OF COURSE SHE'S GONNA SAY SMTHG A LIL FUCKED UP. But later on, if you talk to her in gamlen's house after Birthright, and you bring up how she blamed hawke, she even apologizes and says she blames herself.

People bring up the deep roads and how she "only" cared about the twins and not hawke going, but like. She says she can understand why Hawke has to go. Hawke is canonnically 5-6 years older than their siblings + they have been taking care of the family for quite some time now, so Leandra gets why they have to go + she probably believes they are going to be fine, but Carver/Bethany? They're only 20 and she doesnt want to risk loosing BOTH her remaining children in one go, and again, i think she trusts that hawke can handle themselves but not the remaining twin (also. considering that its one of the twins who already died, it makes sense to me shes more over protective of the remaining one). My brother and I are also 5 years apart, and my mom is way more protective of me than him bc he's the oldest and so she trusts him to be more responsible and take care of himself, this is why the standards of how she treats me and him are different. This is just smthg parents do my dude, it doesnt mean Leandra cares less about Hawke. HELL, when Hawke returns from the deep roads without bethany/carver, the first thing Leandra does is call them 'my baby'. like its not that leandra doesnt care about hawke, but the expectations for each sibling are different, and very much like how real parents work, and like i said, leandra probably knows she won't be able to convince hawke not to go + she knows why they're doing it.

(and also. i see some people giving leandra shit for not "doing anything" but she literally tells Hawke how she's gonna go petition dumar so they can get the estate back because she feels like that's what she can do for her family, to guarantee they have a home again.)

and then in act 2, Leandra is like super chill with Hawke??? She's hopeful for the future, even if she's still mourning her husband and child(ren depending on choice), she jokes about picking out a husband/wife for hawke (which sure can have any implications you want, but for me it does show she cares, TO ME) AND SHE LEAVES HAWKE A NOTE SAYING SHE IS PROUD OF THEM.

And then in her final scene (which i DO think actually happened. this is fucking fantasy land idc if 'oh shes a corpse' 'oh her vocal chords' this is a really important moment for both hawke and leandra and to me it did happen) when she is actively dying, she spends those precious few seconds worrying (i'll be with your father and carver/bethany but you'll be here all alone) and trying to comfort hawke. her last words to them are how proud she is of them.

I feel like. a lot of people just dont talk to leandra beyond the obligatory scenes? and then she gets this weird vitriol and i'm like god forbid she's a "flawed" (makes normal and human mistakes) person. she's not a perfect mother but truth be told, point me to who is a perfect mother because she doesnt exist. i do think she gets mor

[simplyaboy]

being the firsthand assistant to the famous and beloved pro heroes dynamight and deku isn’t exactly easy. the pay is definitely worth all the stress the two of them put you through, though.

you’re just some. . . unknown person with a minor healer quirk, not very useful but someone worth hiring. it soothes the ache of an injury—physically and emotionally. so they keep you around. you’re pretty sure they’re married, but you never ask, and they never say anything.

the two of them sort of treat you like some stray they picked up off the street. offering to eat with you for lunch, asking you to get them coffee or tea and telling you to grab yourself something, questioning if you wanna decorate your space which absolutely had to be in their office. it’s more of a work-roommate thing than just being an assistant and secretary.

what you don’t know is all the tabs they keep on you themselves. it’s okay, though! they’re like your personal bodyguards, even if you don’t know that, even if they have to do it from a distance or else they’d scare you off.

two pro heroes in the top five hero rankings who loom over you, yet act like puppies demanding attention in not so subtle ways as they slowly integrate themselves into your life. you won’t even notice when they start clinging to you like a second shadow, they promise!

besides, even if it does go sideways, katsuki can pin it on izuku; it was his idea in the first place. even if he wasn’t really against it and had thought of it the first time they met you.

a / n : i loveee making them crazy stalker freaks they’re both so weird!!!! i need to be sandwiched between them gosh!!! also i would lovee to be moots on here and on my main : @swtheartz ! pls go follow it <3

[firingstars]

neighborly advice | ch. 2

bucky barnes x reader

summary: you're dealing with the mental repercussions of blacking out and spending the night at your hot neighbor's house. your best friend asks you to two man with her, but it takes a turn for the worse.

warnings: timeline is somewhere around the middle/end of fatws, language, alcohol, eventual smut, past trauma, nightmares, no use of y/n, lightly edited, attempted assaulted, bucky basically breaks someones skull, mdni

word count: 4.2k

a/n: makeout scene next chapter

previous chapter | next chapter

The light that peeked through the curtains should be illegal. It was assaulting your eyelids and disturbing your sleep and making the pounding in your head ten times worse. You let out a soft groan, turning to your side to try and escape the day, moving your face deeper into the silk pillowcase. The scent of spicy sandalwood mixed with clean linen invades your nostrils, but also smelt faintly of a library. If you really focused, there was also smoke, gunpowder, and–

This wasn’t your apartment.

Sitting up quickly, your eyes widened as you looked down at the sheets beneath you. These satin, dark gray sheets did not belong to you. Nor did the matching mahogany nightstand and desk that were in this room. 

Your heart was thumping out of your chest as you shifted quickly off the bed and towards the desk, finding your jacket draped across the seat and your purse on the desk. Upon closer inspection, you saw there was more than just your purse. There was a folded piece of printer paper, a water bottle with perspiration dripping down its side, two pills on top of a tissue, and a key. 

Curiously, you picked up the letter first, scanning the contents of it quickly.

Mr. Nakajima and the bartender from Izzy’s trusted me to bring you home last night after you blacked out, but I felt weird about digging into your purse to get your key and going into your house. In case your head hurts, I left two Tylenol for you. 500mg. I left for work, so just slip the spare key under the mat when you leave. -Bucky

“Handwriting matches the way he smells,” you murmured, then froze. Were you going insane? You needed to get out of here, quickly. However, this throbbing pain in your skull needed to be taken care of and Bucky thankfully thought ahead and took care of that for you.

You had no idea what you would do to make it up to him, but you would have to figure it out somehow. You technically had all the time in the world seeing as there was an indefinite hiatus on your project until you found out how to get it started again, but that would have to hold on for now. Right now, you threw back those two pills and downed the entire bottle of water after realizing you felt more than dehydrated, and collected your things to march the hell out of there.

On the way out, you paused in the living room.

Just like his room, there was nothing in his living room. He had only been here, maybe a month and a half, but there was no sign that there was a person actually living here. There was a couch and a TV facing that couch, but other than that? There wasn’t anything memorable. No pictures, no awards, nothing of the sort. 

You stared, longer than you really should have. A strange tug pulled at your chest as you swallowed, and you forced the tug down. You tore yourself away from the sight in front of you, and went for the door.

“I need a shower,” you murmured.

Outside his door, you stared at the mat. You felt weird. It was weird to leave it there. What if, by some weird chance, someone saw her leave the key there? Or if there was some criminal that just happened to come by their apartment building that day while he was at work and decided to flip up everyone’s door mats? That was commonplace for people to hide spare keys. You saw it happen on the news all the time. Bucky didn’t have a lot in his house, but you didn’t necessarily go around and dig through his shit. Someone could ransack the place and it would be your fault. 

Paranoia ate at your stomach. You clenched the key tighter in your hand, then took one final tug at his door to make sure his door was securely locked before turning to go to your own apartment. You would return it to him later, when he came home. 

For now, you needed to soak in scalding water, call Leah, and figure out what the fuck happened last night.

You baked muffins. You hadn’t baked in who knows how long, and you baked muffins of all things. Horror, dread, and embarrassment mixed in your stomach the more Leah spoke, and even though Leah sounded just as distraught as you felt, it did nothing to ease the blow.

“I mean, if it helps, your neighbor is really hot,” Leah tried comforting you when you were on FaceTime with her.

“I know he is, but he doesn’t need to know that I think he is!” you shouted in retaliation, beating the ingredients into submission even harder in the bowl. 

Now, fresh out of the oven, the muffins felt like a death sentence. 

You’d woken up some time past twelve in the afternoon, learned the details from Leah at two, baked until four, paced around and stressed until six, deep cleaned the entire apartment until seven thirty, ordered food and had it delivered and polished off by nine, and your hot neighbor still was nowhere to be seen.

You shared a wall with him, and you heard him make noise that first night. There was no way that you wouldn’t hear him come in and out of his apartment. By the time that ten was rolling around, you were staring at the fine china that Mr. Lin gifted you with malice. Why’d he have to leave? Why did his children suddenly have to care about his well-being? Was it about inheritance? Fuck, these kids always worry about some kind of inheritance when the elderly are about to die–

THUD.

You perked up, blinking. 

Before you could even think about psyching yourself out, you moved. You grabbed the tupperware of four muffins– two blueberry and two chocolate just in case he didn’t like one flavor or the other– and his spare key before pushing yourself out the door. You knocked on his door before you could decide to turn around and leave.

For a second, you thought you’d heard wrong. There was no noise on the other side. Maybe he wasn’t home yet? The noise could have come from outside the window, or maybe you were just hoping to hear from him.

The door opened, and your mouth fell open. He was beat up, and badly at that. There was a deep bruise blossoming on the side of his face along with a cut on the opposite cheek, too. 

“Bucky?” you asked softly, voice laced with concern.

“You could’ve… uh…” Bucky cleared his throat, not meeting your eyes. “You could’ve left the key under the mat.”

You blinked at him, continuing to stare at the obvious wounds on his person. Were you supposed to act like his injuries didn’t exist? 

“I felt… I also felt a bit weird. A little paranoid about it. Never know who could just come in, you know?” you asked softly, holding the key out to him. He reached a hand out, and you realized his hands were almost always gloved, and dropped the key into his possession. 

“Oh. Thanks.” He nodded, then quickly added, “For looking out.”

“Right.” She nodded back, a little dumbly, but really, she could only stare at his face. Didn’t he just go to work? Did he get jumped or something? Did that thud— Was the thud the cause of this new injury that just seemed to blossom out of nowhere and paint itself on his pretty face?

“I’ll get going now,” he said, clearing his throat again, beginning to close the door. 

Your eyes widened in panic, and you sucked in a breath. You quickly slapped a hand on the door to stop him from shutting it completely. Bucky's eyebrows furrowed as he paused to stare at your hand for a moment before slowly dragging his gaze to look at you.

“I made too many muffins,” you lied. Why the fuck did you just lie? “Are you allergic to blueberries? Or chocolate?”

“No… I’m not.”

“Perfect. Did you want— Please, by all means,” you said, all but shoving the tupperware in his hands. “As a thank you for, um, sheltering me…? Yeah. Last night.”

Bucky stared at you with something that you could only discern with confusion or disgust. You didn’t want to stick around and find out which one it really was. The heat of embarrassment was beginning to creep up on your neck, to your cheek and ears, and you needed to leave. Now. Quickly. Before he could see it all over your face.

“Well. Sleep tight,” you choked out, turning on your heel, and you were never more grateful for the short distance between the apartments. You slammed the door shut behind you, your back hitting the door as you buried your face with your hands.

Self conscious. You were being too damn self conscious. 

It felt like he was not only staring at you, but through you. Like there was something that only he could see when he was looking at you, that didn’t make you uncomfortable, but made you feel heavy. It made you feel like shit, too, since he was obviously injured, and yet his voice was so tired and dreamy and God–

“Maybe I do need to get laid,” you whispered to the air as you slid down the door and onto the floor.

Which was exactly what led you into the club with Leah a few days later. Not something like Izzy's small bar and restaurant, but a full club. Flashy lights, loud music, bumping bodies with drunkards and people that wouldn’t remember a single thing tomorrow.

If you hadn’t blacked out earlier in the week, you might have been one of those people, too. Yet, even if that wasn’t the case, this would not be the time for it. After all, you had a mission. You were playing wingman for Leah. This was a two man; basically a blind date since you had no idea who Leah’s date’s friend was. 

He was okay, all things considered. You really didn’t know what his name was, though.

Derrick? Daniel? David? You should really pay more attention. All you could do was drown out his incessant chatter as you slowly sipped on the fruity drink that he had taken upon himself to order for you. You didn’t really mind it right now, it was a nice change of pace, especially since you didn’t want a redo of the other night and just wake up in another man’s apartment. You could only be grateful that you found yourself in a respectable man’s apartment.

You couldn’t really say the same thing about Devin who stood beside you at the bar, and wouldn’t stop talking.

“—and women these days just don’t put much effort into things, at least in my opinion. I mean, I’m all for being a gentleman, but there should be some kind of give and take, right?” Dylan sighed, looking at her, waiting for her reply.

“Is that so?” you hummed, and it was an automated answer. You briefly looked past him, finding Leah making puppy eyes at her date, watching him become pudding in her hands. A smile crept onto your lips as you brought your drink closer to your mouth. At least your best friend was having a good time. 

“Not you, though. You look great tonight. Don’t know if I’ve said that yet,” he said, flashing you a smile. He had meat stuck in his mouth from when they went to the diner earlier on in the night.

“Thanks.”

The conversation died down, albeit awkwardly, but you really couldn't care less. Saturday night, the club was buzzing with excitement around you. You were still having to deal with the fact that on Monday, you needed to clear your things from your desk at the research facility that you occupied, and then would have to start from zero. That, and things were still weird with Bucky. Maybe you could stage an intervention, run into him in the hall and ask him to coffee? That would be good.

“Looks like our friends are going to go dance.” Dean chuckled, leaning in close to you. He rested a hand on the small of your back, making you tense instantly. 

You cleared your throat, and twisted your body away from his touch to find Leah. Truth be told, she was weaving into the crowd with her date, smiling and having a great time. Like you should be having. Fuck her.

“Should we join them?” he asked, leaning in closer to your ear and making goosebumps rise on your skin. Goosebumps that told you to get the hell out of here. He raised an eyebrow at you, hands falling to your waist to lock you in place. He really didn’t get the hint the first time.

“Actually, let me use the restroom first. Drank too much,” you lied with a forced smile, and tore yourself out of his hands.

Except, you didn’t make it to the restroom. You went outside the building for some fresh air and some peace and quiet. You took your phone out of your pocket to shoot a quick text to Leah that you knew that she wouldn’t see until later. 

Me [12:52am]: sorry dude, cant stand him. i’m heading out. lmk when you get home

Leah wasn’t dumb, and you knew that Leah didn’t drink that much to begin with. She would be able to get herself home without any problems, and it was clear she wanted to get that man in her bed anyways. You closed the messaging app and went into Uber, seeing how long it would take to get a ride to the curb here. 

On a normal night, you could wait fifteen minutes. It was not a normal night. 

The anxiety filled your stomach, a make believe scenario of Declan coming to look for you in the restroom to find out that you weren’t there, then finding you out on the curb in the middle of the silent, late night New York street filled your mind. You could walk to the corner store a block away, grab a quick bite to eat, and have the ride be marked for pick up there.

You decided this would be the best plan and started walking.

The two-man started off at a little diner not too far from the club, but you and Leah sat in separate booths. While Leah looked comfortable and happy sharing a cheesy pizza with her guy, you were forced to listen to this man’s horrible week while he gave passive aggressive comments about how he couldn’t believe that women didn’t compose themselves on dates.

You didn’t necessarily care to make a good impression, but you were playing wingman. You really didn’t need this guy running over to interrupt Leah. He ordered a three meat, three cheese layered burrito with extra onions. You ordered a mini fucking garden salad which seemed to make him grin from ear to ear. This only made you extremely fucking hungry.

You shoved your hands into your pockets with a deep sigh. You didn’t drink enough alcohol to keep yourself warm against the late autumn air, and Leah also didn’t let you dress badly either. If anything, you were dressed by her. She came into your apartment and raided your closet for her outfit and yours. You were hating her a little more right now.

The sheer tights and knee high platform boots did little to keep you safe against the bite of the cold, especially with the cute mini black skirt you wore tonight. The tube top left just a sliver of midriff seen, and the leather jacket was cropped for aesthetics rather than the weather. Good for the club and for pictures. Not for the dropping temperatures.

“Fuck me,” you groaned to yourself, finding a rock on the pavement. You kicked it.

“That can be arranged.”

You gasped sharply as a hand found its way on your upper bicep as you were forcefully turned around. You were staring face to face with the man you abandoned at the club, and he looked ballistic. Shit.

“You just gonna ditch me without a single word? Seriously? I thought we were bonding so well,” he said, a slight snarl in his voice. 

“Get your hands off of me,” you snapped, tugging your arm back. His grip only tightened, making you wince in pain. He seemed to grin wickedly at your reaction. "Let go of me!"

“I bought you dinner. A drink. Complimented you on how you look— and you’re just gonna run away? That isn’t how this works, missy. Come on.”

“No!” you shouted, fighting against him. Your heart was thumping in your chest. You weren’t stronger than this man. You didn’t really do any type of athletics past high school. You walked everywhere since this was New York, and you had to walk up five flights of stairs every time you went home, but you vaguely remembered him saying that he did some form of martial arts.

He kept rambling on how nice he was to you all night, and how you would have to repay him by being just as nice to him right now. You couldn’t hear him though. You were frantically looking for a way out, trying to see who was on the street to help you before you got dragged into that dark alley that he was looking at and do whatever heinous acts that he was thinking of. You started shouting, and started praying for someone to hear you as your eyes begin to blur with tears.

The pressure on your arm disappeared as soon as you blinked. Suddenly, you were wrapped in the comforting scent of wood, cotton, and gunpower. A loud scream of pain filled the air, followed by a sickening crack.

“Bucky?” you whispered, chest heaving, eyes wide as you looked up at him. A protective arm was around you, holding you to his chest while his other hand twisted your former date’s arm in an unnatural position. He was on his knees immediately, crying out in pain. He couldn’t even fight back.

“Shit man!” another guy shouted, making you flinch at the sudden addition.

Bucky turned his attention to you, dropping the man on the ground unceremoniously. His warm hands were gently placed on your shoulders after he parted from you, and you immediately missed his touch. Missed being wrapped around him.

You looked back over your shoulder, finding the other man was bringing Dominic's hands behind his back. For a moment, you paused, eyebrows lacing together in confusion. Were you seeing this right?

“Is that fucking— Are you Captain America?” you breathed, mind reeling. 

“Hi there,” he smiled at you, giving you a nod. “This guy bothering you?”

“Oh.. Um.. Yeah, he— He’s been an ass to me all night," you stuttered, still shocked. What the hell was Captain America doing outside of a night club?

“Oh, not the one I’m cuffing. I’m talking about the bionic staring machine right there.”

“What?” you quickly asked, turning towards Bucky with even more confusion rushing through your mind. You couldn't be that drunk, right? No, the past few minutes were more than enough to sober you up immediately.

“Sam,” Bucky groaned, warning clear in his voice. Sam could only chuckle, shaking his head. 

“You heard him— name is Sam,” he introduced himself, standing up straight to hold a hand out to you. Bucky released his hold on you, and you shook Sam's hand, still blinking stupidly. “And I know this really fucking sucks, and I promise I don’t want to do this either, but I gotta bring this guy down to the station and get him properly apprehended and since you were the victim, I kinda need you to come with me.”

“Oh. Um, right,” you said softly. 

“But if it’s a little too traumatic right now…“ Sam trailed off slowly, empathy laced in his voice with compassion all over his face. 

“No. It’s okay.. I rather do it now, than have to relive it tomorrow,” you shook your head, looking down at the asshole beneath you. Your eyes caught his, who was already staring at you, eyes burning with anger and you froze. “Are you seriously staring up my skirt right now?”

“Wear some shorts when you wear a skirt then, slut—“

Bucky moved faster than the asshole could finish his sentence, slamming his gloved fist into the side of his skull and knocking him out. You and Sam stared at Bucky as he stood up, running one of his gloved hands through his hair before he looked at them with a frown.

“Well? Are we going or not?” he barked out. 

Thankfully, the presence of Captain America made the process with the cops easier than you thought it would be, and they didn’t grill you for a lot of information. They pretty much took everything as fact, which left a somewhat strange taste in your mouth. If it wasn’t for Sam, you were sure this may end up being a case that ends up benched for the indefinite future. You shoved the thought out of your brain. At the very least, Sam made the experience a lot more comfortable than it could have been.

As you were walking out of the station, Captain America called out your name. When you turned, you saw he was holding out a business card for you.

“This is my personal number. Add it to your phone, then put it on one of your speed dials. If anything happens, and I mean anything, just call me,” he said, earnesty written all over his face. You paused, still staring at the card. 

“You don’t have to do that, Sam. I’m sure you’re busy saving the world… or the universe, I guess,” you added with a small laugh, making him smile.

“Well, this is your universe, right? You’re one of the people I’m protecting.” Sam took one of your hands gently, and pressed the card into your palm, then closed your fingers over it. He gave you one more smile before he walked past you to open the door to lead you outside. “Do you need a ride home? I can take you.”

“Really? That would be really nice, actually,” you said with a soft sigh.

“No worries. My car is–”

“That's unnecessary,” Bucky’s voice cut him off, making the two of you stop and look forward. He was waiting at the curb, leaning against a shiny Harley Davidson, arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll take her home.”  

“Really, Buck?” Sam asked with a raised eyebrow. 

“She’s my neighbor,” Bucky said. Sam paused beside you, looking back and forth between you and him as something seemed to click in his head. Another smile began to creep its way onto his face. It was different from the charismatic, hero smile he had given her just a few moments ago, and Bucky scowled in response. “Don’t fucking start.”

“I’ll leave you two to it. Have a good night,” Sam told her.

“Good night, Cap,” you told him, and he paused. Sam’s smile turned into something warmer. He gave her a nod, patted her back, then turned to walk towards the parking garage behind the station.

“You’re just feeding his ego, you know. He only just picked up that shield,” Bucky said, raising an eyebrow at you. 

“I like him better as Cap than whoever took it last. Fuck was his name? Walter?”

Bucky snorted a laugh and corrected you. “Walker.”

“Yeah. Didn't like the dude. Especially with how he used the shield.”

He smiled at you just a little, and you could swear that this smile was also different. Soft. Maybe the dim lighting of the night was playing a trick on her. It was damn near two in the morning, after all. 

“Ever been on a bike before?” Bucky changed the topic, and looked behind him towards the bike.

“Uh… No,” you answered, suddenly feeling nervous. He blinked for a second. 

“Or I could call a cab,” he said quickly, glancing at you. Was it your outfit? Was he looking at your skirt? Fuck. “if it’s not comfortable—“

“I’m wearing shorts under this skirt!” you suddenly shouted, feeling your cheeks light up. “It’s just fucking black to be seamless so it wouldn’t stick out if it shows— do you want me to wear bright red shorts so everyone sees it?”

“I meant, if you were scared to ride."

“... Fucking kill me,” you whispered, closing your eyes tight. You wished the pavement would open up and swallow you whole. 

Bucky didn’t say a word, but you could hear him move and open the compartment of the motorcycle. Then, you felt the helmet slide over your head. When you opened your eyes, he was standing right in front of you, crouched down just a bit. The visor was already down, and you hoped to every God out there that it was tinted otherwise you were just blatantly staring deeply into his steel blue eyes.

“I only have one helmet. You’ll wear it,” he said, properly securing it on your head. He reached under your chin, fingers brushing against your skin. You couldn’t help but hold your breath as he made sure that the strap was on tight enough that it wouldn’t fall off, but not so tight that it would make me uncomfortable on the ride home. “I’m doing the driving, so don’t stress too much. If you’re stiff on the bike, it’ll make things hard for me. When my body moves, you move. Can you do that for me?” 

His voice was so soft, but his touch was even softer. Somehow, it felt like he was leaving a trail of fire against your skin wherever his fingertips brushed. Moreover, Bucky sounded like he was talking you through it. Especially that last bit. Could you do that for him? Lord, you would do anything he asked you to do. Did you drink more than you thought you did? Were you crazy? You could feel your legs going weak and shaky.

“Hey,” he said your name again, raising an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” you squeaked out, realizing you had forgotten to respond. “Yeah. I can do that for you.”

“Good,” he hummed, turning to mount the seat. You finally breathed, watching him scoot up on the seat to create some space for you. You hesitated for just a moment, then moved into the space behind him. Bucky waited for you to get comfortable, and you didn’t really know what to do with your hands. So you settled with what your instincts said– to slide them around his waist and hold him. “Do you mind if we stop somewhere to get some food? Haven’t eaten all day.”

“Please,” you whispered, and it sounded like the best idea you’d heard all day.

next chapter

[vergiltopia]

Random headcanons about Vergil pt. 2

★ Literally anything about him. I love him <3

Warnings: none!! have fun.

Note: I didn't know I had so many followers in here since I barely post, but this motivates me to be more active and post more here!! I'll try to be more active hehe :)

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖

★ Vergil is the type of guy who likes to hold your chin with his fingers and make you look at him like this, analyzing you with his icy orbs.

★ He hates when people touch his things without permission, or when they get too curious about him and get bombarded with questions. If you don't have intimacy, don't do it.

★ His fav ice cream flavor is definitely chocomint! “Oh but it tasted like toothpaste—” NUH UH IT DOESN'T! Mint in general is so Vergil coded btw.

★ A cat person, we all clap and agree, yet he adores big dog breeds and would be the type of owner who teaches them tricks and has a dedicated routine to them.

★ Touching him while talking is overwhelming and he tenses up, he will be like “I don't see the necessity of your hands while we speak, hands do not talk.”

★ He would play hard if he was gifted with a kindle, saying he prefers the real thing, to feel the pages and the smell of books, yet Vergil will quickly fall in love with it and find out it's actually very practical. Physical copies will always be his number 1, so make sure to always give them to him.

★ Not just because he's the tea man, but he doesn't like coffee flavor and caffeine in general, he doesn't think it's healthy. Vergil also doesn't like energy drinks (too old for this shit).

★ Talking about the tea man: he usually doesn't put sugar on his tea, and if he does, small quantities but it's rare. Vergil likes the pure and raw flavor, even if it's bitter. “Bitter as the lessons I've come to learn”, he thinks.

★ He takes the Yamato pretty much everywhere, so sometimes you need to previously ask him to not bring it together. His sword is the equivalent of a phone to him, you shouldn't leave your house without it.

★ Vergil doesn't know how to drive… I mean, he spent most of his life in the demon world, I don't think they have cars there.

★ Vergil actually has healthy food habits, he usually makes his meals at the same hour everyday, 4 meals a day, breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. He tries to balance them and eats only what he needs to, Vergil likes to keep a routine and regulated life, he believes that to be a stronger and powerful warrior you have to think about not just your behavior in battle but also out of it.

★ He has a serious problem with putting his coat to wash and complains about it for some really mysterious reasons, guess everybody has their own weird habits, even him.

★ Body hair. HE'S A GROWN ASS MAN HE DOES HAVE BODY HAIR, it just isn't so thick and since they're white it's very discreet, and it also grows more slowly than normal, specially on his chest and his arms, it's very thin.

★ Can learn new languages very quickly, he's fluent in a few human and demon languages, more likely in the demon ones. Yet, some human languages me thinks he knows: english, latin, italian, ancient greek and japanese.

Note: I already talked about the Vergil latin speaker in another post but I elaborated this a bit more… Vergil learned lots of latin thanks to books about how to exorcise demons, he constantly also learned several prayers in that language.

★ He doesn't like to eat in bed. The katana guy wants to keep it as clean as possible since it is where we sleep. He also doesn't spend too much time in bed, for Vergil this is literally only to sleep, so you will probably never find him rotting in bed, only if he's VERY ill and because someone forced him to stay.

★ Sharpens and cleans the Yamato blade every morning like a ritual, it's not like the sword REALLY needs that, yet this is his own little way to show respect to his legacy and keep his mind grounded with small habits.

★ Vergil doesn't like crowds, not only for the obvious reasons that HE'S AWKWARD, but also because they're overwhelming for his demon senses, he feels too much, senses too much, hears too much.

★ Has light sleep, he's always aware so it's really easy to wake him.

★ Loves philosophy, he's a nerd for it. I also think he's such a music nerd, bet Vergil knows how to read a score.

★ He's a good observer and learns a lot just like that, like a sponge that absorbs everything.

★ Knows how to draw a little, mostly pen gray scale drawings, he has his own sense of art and art style, though it's not really a hobby so Vergil doesn't practice or pay too much effort to it.

★ Very assertive about what he likes or not, usually he will go for the same movies/food/books/activities.

★ I'm sure if Vergil knew he was going to be a father, he would stay to take care of his baby. He would be a good dad if he knew earlier. I never thought and never will think that all of the jokes about his fatherhood make some sense or are funny (sorry) since he only discovered he was a father only at the end of DMC5.

★ For some reason, he prefers stairs instead of elevators.

★ Vergil adores baths in the bathtub because it's relaxing and therapeutic. In the shower he prefers cold water baths, usually more to motivate himself, it's more practical.

★ He seems like the type of person that's into crocheting or any other granny hobby.

★ Vergil is not a MasterChef, he can cook very simple meals since he had to do his own meals for a long time, they're edible, it's not like he mastered the art of cooking, he doesn't work with lots of condiments and spices, sometimes he even forget to put salt. Let's just say he's not very demanding with food.

Note: Vergil seems to have a palate as strong as him, he isn't easily bothered by bitter taste, he's the one responsible to eat the 80% (or up) cocoa chocolate if someone bought it by accident or received it as a gift, he seems to actually enjoy it.

★ Vergil probably ate some questionable things at some point of his life due to survival needs, think about it…

★ He types everything correctly when messaging someone, and he doesn't use abbreviations or slangs, also uses correct punctuation.

★ Mr Katana is very resistant to alcohol, Vergil isn't the type that likes to drink at all, he simply doesn't like the taste of alcohol, yet he enjoys a good wine, specially dry red wine. Though, the chances of seeing him getting tipsy because of it are almost 0. Besides, he makes sure to not overdo it and avoid ending up embarrassing himself in front of others.

★ Already said this a lot, but never said it here, sooo… VERGIL IS HAMMERHEAD SHARK CODED. He is shark coded in general, but his DT looks like a hammerhead shark so much I will never be able to unsee it.

★ Vergil is not rude or arrogant just because he's more closed and distant, he has his own way of speaking which can make him look like he came directly from a Victorian book sometimes. He's introverted at heart, and also finds lots of difficulties expressing his emotions facially, which can make it look like he's always angry.

★ Doesn't care about birthdays in general, especially his own. He won't celebrate it, he won't even say it's his birthday.

★ Vergil's lick when he's on DT can help to clean and heal a wound more quickly and efficiently thanks to his demon DNA. His tail will also give hints of how he's feeling, like a cat.

Important note: yes, he purrs on devil trigger if he's content, cause his growling turnout so low it turns into purring.

˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖

[hotpinkboots]

~~~

~"The Purge Event." (Pt. 1)~

(Dream BBQ!Ena x Reader

A/N: Some of the things the reader says are actually my out loud reactions when I was playing the game for the first time. I thought using what I said for a blind playthrough would make it more realistic (as in someone seeing The Purge Event for the very first time). Enjoy, darlings :D

Warnings: Brief talk of veins ew!!, mention of eating people (Purge Event), the general tone is that undertone where things seem fine but you feel really weirded out because something is wrong and you can't put your finger on what it is, anxiety, not good things happen oh no !!

Notes: This story can be taken as either a close platonic friendship, or a budding romance, whichever you prefer to think of it as.

~~~

"It appears that you're weirded-out! Is this correct?" Ena leaned into your personal space, hand rubbing her chin as she observed your expression.

You were definitely weirded out.

It had been your idea to come here in the first place. Everybody seemed to be talking about it. You figured it must be some cool secret in this bizarre world, but now that you were actually standing before the strange building, you had a gnawing gut feeling that this place was something freakish.

Your silence was long enough for Ena to decide that she should just go for it.

"Yeah, that's correct. I don't think- WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" You shouted, watching in horrified confusion as Ena began to pull her literal arm off.

She recited the toll for entrance. "Pay with body!" Said Ena, as though this were a normal Sunday afternoon for you. "That was the demand for entrance. Unless you have short-term memory loss and forgot immediately, or are possibly deaf?" She looked at you with still eyes and a half smile, waiting for you to laugh at her teasing.

You didn't laugh.

She kept tugging at her shoulder.

"OKAY, STOP," you grabbed her wrist to stop her. "I don't like this, and I don't want you here," you stated firmly, "I think we should leave. This isn't safe for you." You had just met her recently, and yet, you found yourself caring for her safety immensely.

Perhaps it was because she seemed so determined to get to "The Boss" that, at times, she was subtly desperate.

Perhaps it was because she was a hard worker, and did stupidly difficult tasks that she didn't get well-rewarded for.

Perhaps it was because everybody seemed to spit her name out (or something that sounded somewhat like her name) with disgust as though she were a war criminal.

No matter the reason, you cared for her deeply.

Ena smacked your hand away. She tossed her hands up in annoyance and snapped at you- or rather, Meanie tossed her hands up in annoyance and snapped at you.

"THIS WAS YOUR IDEA, FLESH-BAG, LET'S GO!" With that, she popped her arm off.

You wailed. "WELL, DON'T GIVE HIM THAT ARM, IT'S MY FAVOURITE! PUT IT BACK-"

Too late. She tossed it up in the air as though to prove a point, and gave it to the entity, receiving some sort of green drink in return. Ena had already drank half of it. You'd have to drink the rest to go with her, unless you wanted her to go alone.

You didn't want that.

You glared at her from the corner of your eye, nose flared in disgust as you drank the gritty green liquid. The bowl shattered the moment you finished.You could now see the entrance to The Purge Event.You resentfully walked to the sliding double doors alongside Ena, who spoke up playfully.

"You have a favourite arm of mine?"

• • •

The Purge Event was hellish.

You had been exploring for awhile now, and there didn't seem to be anything special happening. No grand event at all. Every room was the same, the dance floor flashed to the same beat that never changed, even the people were the same in every room. You felt disoriented. Something was terribly wrong. What was worse was that you couldn't put your finger on what specifically was wrong. Nothing bad seemed to be happening, it was just an endless labyrinth.

Ena, on the other hand, was in bad shape. You looked over to tell her you weren't sure what to do in this place, but stopped mid-sentence, staring in disbelief. Were those branches growing from her chest like she had been impaled, or some sort of internal organ system panicking and going haywire? She looked jittery, eyes flicking about from wall to wall, entity to entity. Her pupils lagged occasionally, getting stuck on a random spot, before looking where they intended to.

"Ena? Ena!" You stopped in your tracks. She stopped, too, swaying on her feet.

"What.." Ena mumbled breathlessly. The voice she spoke with should've been the voice that screamed furiously at the sky for bleeding acidic cheese dip onto her shoulders. Instead, it was frustrated and confused.

"You look terrible!" You fretted, reaching a hand out towards her worriedly.

Ena glared at you, shrugging your hand away. "And you think you look great?"

You were momentarily stung, but decided that your companion was being crabby because she was unwell, not because she actually thought you looked less than great. You looked at her seriously. "We need to find a way out. We never should have come here-"

"IT WAS YOUR IDEA," she reminded you once again, an undertone of anxiety in her voice.

"I know-"

"AND THE TAXI'S BUSTED. WE'LL NEVER GET BACK!"

. . .Oh.

That's right. How were you going to get out of here?

You stared at her unblinkingly, wracking your brain for a solution. You suddenly began to miss that strange desert-like land that you felt so unnerved in before. You never should have gotten into that Taxi.

Ena watched your expression. Her insides felt as though they were writhing anxiously. I pushed it too far, she thought, Why are they looking at me like that? ...I don't feel well.

Ena buried her face in her remaining hand. "Let's just go," she grumbled.

20 minutes went by - if you could even call them minutes. Time felt different in this world.Then an hour. Nothing was happening. Whatever "Event" everybody spoke about either hadn't begun, or didn't exist and this was just a bizarre state of being that would perpetuate until the end of time.

You had found the doors that you entered through, but they hadn't budged. You had searched through every room again. You had even reached a point where you attempted to punch a wall in hopes that your fist would go through to the outside. Instead, you just really hurt your knuckles.

What was more unsettling was Ena's silence. She was following you like a ghost. You kept looking over your shoulder to make sure that she was still following behind, not truly seeing her, just checking that she still existed near you and wasn't lost.

Suddenly, you felt a cold, trembling hand touch your back. You flinched and turned your head quickly, finally paying attention to how she looked rather than her mere existence, only to be met with a very ill looking Ena.

She looked far worse than she had earlier. The right side of her face was a sickly pale blue. The left looked as though somebody had dipped her in tar and left her alone in an empty basement to dry, matching the inky black of the formerly clear white of her eye. Those strange branches looked like misshapen veins that had been drained of blood. They caused her chest to crack like broken porcelain, and were causing a mess of her limbs. How she managed to walk was beyond you.

You began to exclaim in protective concern, but Ena spoke before you could.

"I..." She began tensely, bracing herself to use the energy to speak,"I am f-feeling sick in this...." Her red hand tiredly gestured around, as though trying to catch a word that had floated away from her mind.

Ena started over to put her thoughts together, managing a full sentence: "I am feeling sick in this...place."

Your heart sank, and you murmured her name worriedly, brows furrowed. You felt an ache in your chest knowing that this wouldn't be happening if you hadn't suggested this in the first place.

You weren't sure what to do or say, not having seen her in such a state until now. Ena definitely didn't know what to do, either. Escape seemed hopeless.

With what little power you had over the situation, you walked forward and hesitantly hovered a hand over her shoulder, silently asking if it was alright to touch her, to offer comfort.

She didn't respond to the offer, her one visible eye looking around, unfocused. "Everything is loud," she grunted, staying completely still, something unnatural for your constantly-moving companion.

You decided to rest your hand on her shoulder like you initially planned to. Maybe getting her to focus on the only stable thing here would help. "Hey. Look at me-"

"No," Ena muttered, looking for a way out, as though she were a caged creature with the bars closing in on her. You took a step closer, so she'd hear your gentle voice over everything else.

"Please?"

Finally, her pale pupils darted up to make eye contact with you. Standing this close, you could hear her breathing raggedly. Or perhaps it was the sound of lagging, loading, or the verge of crashing.

You moved your hands from her shoulders to the sides of her head, cupping your hands over her ears.

The overwhelming sounds hadn't gone away, but they were muffled. That felt better. Ena felt momentary relief, her eye locked on you.

"I know it's loud and confusing," you murmured to her soothingly, "But-"

"I'm not helpless," Ena mumbled against your comfort. She sounded humiliated.

You continued, ignoring her weak complaints. She didn't seem to truly be upset. Just embarrassed.

"....But, we're going to get out of here. You and I. Together." You paused to let your words sink in before continuing.

"Let me break it down for you: Music is loud, people are everywhere, and the dance floor is bright. You're more than capable of making it through those," you reassured softly, breaking the situation down to make it more bearable.

Ena felt worse. "Only three things are happening and I can't even overcome those-"

"No, that's not the point," you interrupted quickly, "Ena, I'm trying to say that it's going to be okay."

She went quiet. Her eye slowly drifted to the ground.

. . ."That was cheesy," she muttered, though you saw her mouth twitch upwards into a small smile.

"You liked it," you pointed out fondly. Ena attempted to stand up straighter and prouder. It didn't work well, but she was making an effort. "In that case, let's get to wo-... What is that?"

"What? What is what?" You turned around quickly, following her gaze.

Oh. That's what.

Thick pink goop was oozing grotesquely from the mouths of the creatures mounted onto each wall. Your heart sunk deeply into your stomach. The determination of the moment faded as the liquid began to rise to your ankles.

This could only mean one thing: The Purge Event was beginning.

You instinctively turned to Ena, but you only caught a glimpse of her before the lights went out all at once, plunging you into blinding darkness. Your chest felt tight with panic- panic that amplified into a shocked scream. You felt yourself being dragged away, though you didn't feel physical hands forcing you back. A shrill cry sounded in the distance.

That whistling . . . It sounds

Hungry.

~~~

~Love, HotPinkBoots

[grassie-13]

Nervously dipping my toes into some of the sotr casting discourse for a second (mostly just about Louella/Lou Lou)

I completely understand why people are mad about some/a lot of casting choices, I’m disappointed and surprised by a few, but a lot of people are using arguments that really don’t hold up and it’s annoying me😭

Thinking for a SECOND that the casting directors would go against film continuity is quite silly if you ask me. There was no chance they would cast Haymitch as anything other than white. I don’t know much about who are the casting directors and who’s involved in the casting process but I can imagine there are at least a few new guys since the original film, so take issue with the old casting crew and original film, the current film isn’t the issue here, it’s just trying to stay consistent with past choices.

Similarly, continuity is a big part of Louella/Lou Lou’s casting. She needed to look like Katniss (aka Jennifer Lawrence) to drive the Sweetheart thing home to the audience. Personally I did picture her as black, so I was surprised, but it’s the only thing that would make sense to do, especially since they need to make sure it’s visibly obvious to the viewer that she’s similar to Katniss, because they can’t have Haymitch’s inner monologue pointing stuff out the entire time.

Another reason people are pissed about with the Lou Lou casting is because they think that District 11 is only poc, which isn’t actually true. (Clarifying that I am talking about movies and movie continuity because I can’t remember what it says or implies in the books)

This is a picture of the people in District 11, and yes most of them are poc, but I think there’s a lot more white people than everyone seems to remember, and enough for it to not be too weird for Lou Lou to be white.

I’m not trying to say I like the casting choices, I have always pictured Louella as black, it makes more sense imo, I’ve seen so many posts over the months about the importance of her being black, and it was very jarring when I saw the casting, but it’s also a very understandable choice when you think about it.

You have the right to be upset, and everyone has the right to complain should they want to, but I do encourage that we have our facts straight when we try to talk about this stuff.

[theoriginalriffles]

my klance fic recs, as of may 2025 <3

organized lowest to highest word count! some of these I read wayyy long ago but hey, i'm here now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. also if you wanna beef with me about what i've noted as canon/canon divergence, go ahead. idk what i'm doing either.

three words, and i'm yours by Dreamicide // 2k // AU

writer's synopsis:

To help things along with finding ones soulmate, the first words spoken to one another are written on their wrists. So when Lance sees 'You're under arrest' on his skin, he decides to try and find his soulmate as fast as he can. He gets arrested. A lot.

my notes: the closest fic to crack i've ever genuinely loved. made me laugh out loud, short, sweet, and funny. warning for...sexual scenario? you'll see.

Meringue by UndimmableSparkle // 3k // Canon

writer's synopsis:

Team Voltron was visiting a planet where, traditionally, men wore dresses. Keith was unamused.

my notes: a short and sweet trans Keith story that focuses a lot on the team affirming him :) I love you trans Keith. warning for gender dyshopria.

be careful what you bottle up by saltedsquitch // 4k // Canon

writer's synopsis:

Cleaning the flight suits after battle was a chore Lance started picking up pretty early on. Their paladin armor was self-cleaning and repairing thanks to the magic infused in them by Alfor, but the flight suits underneath were almost normal fabric. Of course, they were a weird Altean fabric and thus different from any clothing the paladins would see on Earth, but still fabric nonetheless. And so, they needed to be cleaned. - Or: Lance goes to clean the paladins' flight suits and finds out Keith is hiding a serious injury, leading them to talk about Keith's feelings and role in Voltron.

my notes: a big ouch. but klance is the bandaid of love. warning for blood and injury.

on the line (stay with me) by hiuythn // 4k // Canon

writer's synopsis:

“I could show you,” Keith offers. “It’s quite the collection; kind of proud of it.” Lance laughs faintly. “How about we save it for—for the next time we meet in person?” “When’s that happening, by the way? It’s been a while.” “Meaning you miss us dearly, don’t you?” he teases. Keith grumbles at him, and he grins to an absent audience. “But, ah, I don’t think we’ll see each other anytime, um, soon, unfortunately.” “Things are getting busy on your end, huh?” Lance hums. His gaze slides down to his right leg. To torn skin and shredded muscle, white bone peeking out. To blood, to a soaked-through suit, to the pool under his shin painting the snow-dusted ground a stark red. He smiles weakly. “Something like that.”

my notes: THE klangst one shot. the fic that first connected me and my irl voltron friend so it will forever have a place in my heart.

close ain't close enough, till we cross the line by hoe637282 // 5k // Canon

writer's synopsis:

Lance flushes. "You're - ugly." He announces. Keith notes this is a stark difference from the observation he made earlier. "Okay." He picks up his knife, examining the wear on the handle. Hm, he really should get the hilt cleaned up one of these days. "Don't take that tone with me!" "Okay." "I don't think you're hot, Kogane. Stop it." Lance is standing now, straightening his back to appear taller than Keith (he still isn't, damn the height-enhancing properties of space whales) and pointing an accusatory finger at him. "Okay." "On god, across all the corners of the earth I've flown to, you're the- the ugliest thing I've ever seen." Keith blinks, slowly lowering Lance's hand from where it was jabbing in his face. "The earth is round." .^.^.^.^. In which Lance calls Keith hot and has a 3-day crisis over it.

my notes: it's literally them just being so silly and obviously in love. what more can you ask for??

He's My Stranger. by VulpesVulpes713 // 5k // AU

writer's synopsis:

Keith takes the train to attend the hell hole that is his private school, and though he's used to the weirdos and creeps who frequent the locomotive, apparently not everyone aboard is. There's a stranger on this train that Keith can just tell is a target. Already a group of older men have set their sights on the boy, who's not even aware of his surroundings, that's how zoned-out he is. So Keith, being the kind-hearted kid he is, takes it upon himself to lend his own defensive appearance to ward off creepers who may want to harm this oblivious boy, if only to keep the guy daydreaming peacefully. He takes his job very seriously. This is /his/ stranger after all.

my notes: protective punk Keith and cute innocent Lance. aka my beloved's for a modern AU.

Like Devo by surveycorpsjean // 8k // AU

writer's synopsis:

As rival jammers, they're rough, skating around the rink, giving bruises, bloody noses, broken ribs and snapped fingers- But when the cops show up, Keith grabs his hand and yanks Lance into the storm drain. And thats how they start dating.

my notes: this fic really nails them being snotty aggressive asshole young adults. brings back the team dynamics in a new exciting arena (roller derby!!!), with the romance happening hard and fast over fun vignettes. warning for an explicit scene, blood and violence.

Villanelle For Tellus by badhaircut // 10k // AU

writer's synopsis:

A meteorite lands on a nameless island in the Caribbean on the first day of summer. Keith’s job is to excavate it. A story of geological discovery, linguistic frontiers, and messages from the stars.

my notes: the one day yearn goes hard in this. warning for an explicit scene in here.

if the silence was a song by angstinspace // 14k // AU

writer's synopsis:

“It’s … Your show is on so late at night,” Keith tries to explain, as if Lance didn’t know this already. “I guess I was just wondering why that is.” A crackling silence answers him, and Keith’s stomach sinks. Did Lance hang up? Keith can’t exactly blame him. But then he hears Lance make a noise––a short huff of breath that might have been either an impatient sigh or a quiet laugh … Keith has no clue. “That’s the reason you’re calling? To complain about my time slot?” or, Keith starts anonymously calling Lance's college radio show and develops an unexpected crush.

my notes: ok so I actually had a crush on a radio host at my uni earlier this year so this one really hit for me LOL. very sweet and fun with a tinge of rough backstory, but you know they're gonna support each other through it.

Cores of Diamond by speaks // 25k // Canon

writer's synopsis:

Falling in love is easy, as it turns out. Painfully easy. All it takes is one smile, one tender unguarded second with the boy beneath Lance’s bravado, and that’s it. He’s done for. No questions, no bartering, no phase of denial. But if falling for Lance is the easiest thing Keith has ever done, then learning to express it is the hardest. So if he can’t say it, can’t put into words the way the entire world hinges around the moment Lance barged into his lifeㅡ ㅡwell then he’ll just have to settle for showing him.

my notes: omg the setup for their relationship BLOWS MY MIND. i'm super in love with the precanon events here. some angst but everything is okay trust. warning for an explicit scene.

There, Nestled Against His Pulse by hiuythn // 55k // Canon/AU

writer's synopsis: "Found you!" Lance says, vaulting over the back of the couch. He lands with a soft thump that bounces Keith up in his seat. "Hey, I've got a question for you. You don't have to answer it, but, uh, have you met your soulmate?" "No," says Keith, "I haven't." I shouldn't.

my notes: another big ouch by hiuythn. they just love almost killing my boys. rude. one of the best emotional depths i've ever seen in a soulmate au. so obsessed. warnings for blood and injury.

Dear Reader by heavily_caffeinated // 80k // AU

writer's synopsis:

"I find myself wondering, sweet reader, when exactly someone will take a shovel to the back of this racist statue's metal head and begin dismantling our university’s scandalous love affair with the most problematic donors they could possibly find. I’m looking at you, President Zarkon, kindly remove your hand from the Republican Party’s dick. This is a liberal arts college for God’s sake." When Galra University's Tumblr page, meant for football game updates and pleads for attendees for club meetings, is plagued by a mysterious writer determined to eviscerate every toxic part of the college, Lance is intrigued. When he becomes a leading character in the anonymous letters, well, he gets a little more curious. Lance becomes determined to unveil the writer and find out a) what is his problem exactly and b) does he really think Lance's eyes are that blue? A tale in which Lance is oblivious and pining for the hot nerd in the back of his Greek mythology class, Keith can wield a pen with deadly cruelty, and you, dear readers, suffer from the pains of dramatic irony.

my notes: this one is a hilarious comedy of errors that I was overall obsessed with. this author really knows how to write the groups dynamic!!

A King and His Fisherman by heavily_caffeinated // 85k // AU

writer's synopsis:

"Lance had watched Keith Kogane win a bar fight with a broken hand, rip open a keg with a knife, and complete a whole wretched ensemble of activities you definitely shouldn’t do with a beer in hand. And yet here he was, glittery Sharpie in hand, waiting to sign Lucy’s copy of Altea. Lance opened his mouth to say something arguably rude and not appropriate for their current audience. Until he remembered that he himself had either watched or participated in these activities and was now holding a four-year-old containing his DNA. So Lance didn’t have much of a leg to stand on either." When Lance runs into his ex-boyfriend at a children’s book signing, he not only finds out that Keith Kogane ages like fine wine, but he also apparently wrote his daughter’s favorite book. As Keith lingers in town, Lance frantically tries to keep his daughter from realizing that the writer is not only a person from Lance’s past, but a character in her bedtime stories as well.

my notes: second fic by hc on here but HEY I know what I like. this fic made me realize just how good of a dad Lance would be. the absolute perfect modern AU, sweet and lovely and the first klance fic I read since the show ended <3

Where The Apple Falls by europa_report // 145k // Post-Canon Divergence

writer's synopsis:

“My Abuela said it,” Silvio insists. “She said you have to wear the hat, because you have a pale ass so you’re going to get skin cancer and die before Lance even wakes up.” Keith looks between the children and the hat, too confused to glare, sweaty and horrid from pulling weeds beneath the scorching sun. “What?” “That’s wrong,” Nadia complains, and yanks her brother down to her level to whisper the correction in his ear. “Ooh,” Silvio amends. “Tía Veronica said you have a pale ass. My Abuela said you’re gonna die.” OR When Lance is fatally wounded during their final battle, the blue lion enters a deep hibernation with Lance inside. Unsure when or if he’ll wake, Keith is forced to wait and watch over him in the company of the people he fears most: Lance’s family.

my notes: this fic is an absolute masterclass in klangst - this one is actually what inspired me to pick up writing again. If you live for (near) character death like I do, READ THIS. the yearn is so so strong. also lance's family is written so sweetly I love it. warning for a few explicit scenes, violence, death, grief, the whole shebang.

Even The People In Your Dreams Will Lie To You by popering // 336k // Canon Divergence

writer's synopsis:

The team rescues Lance and Keith from their months-long imprisonment at the hands of the Galra. No one expects their missing paladins to be exactly the same as they were, but they're prepared to help them in whatever way they need. Lance seems eager enough to get things back to normal, but Keith won't even acknowledge them. The team is at a loss. How are you supposed to help someone who won't even look at you?

my note's: an absolute mindfuck of a fic, but I gobbled it down in only three days (while livetweeting the entire thing to my voltron IRL). really drags you in and gets you invested and then beats you the fuck up. so good. However bad you think the Galra can be, they are WORSE. warnings are many: self-harm, torture, non-consensual drug use, disordered eating, body horror, etc.

[yanadolls]

hii this is my first time requesting :3 could you write a short fluffy fic/hcs with chigiri and a reader with arthritis? I've got issues with it in my legs and i find the thing with his speed relatable. Sorry if this is too complicated x

CHIGIRI X READER WITH ARTHRITIS IN LEGS (HEADCANONS)

||| CONTENT: fluff, implied relationship, small story at the end

chigiri who has a soft spot on you once discovering you had arthritis that affected your legs, as he can relate to having pains in his knee given the tear in his acl.

chigiri who shares his kit and tape with you when you need it, pushing for you to take better care of your legs even when you feel fine.

chigiri who worries too much about your arthritis when the pain flares up for you, advising you to stay in bed and relax.

chigiri who brings you whatever you want and need during these times- whether it be ice, a heating pad, medication, or even your favorite snacks. he just wants you to feel better.

chigiri who will lay next to you and kiss your head, telling you that the pain is only temporary and will disappear soon enough.

chigiri who carries you on his back whenever he can when your knees feel stiff and don't bend as well as normal.

chigiri who goes with you to physiotherapy every couple months and waits the entire time for you.

chigiri who wants to help as much as he can. he feels bad that his lover has to go through so much when you didn't deserve it whatsoever.

chigiri who sees his younger self in you.

ᯓ★

"babe?"

chigiri pushed open the door to your bedroom, frowning once he saw you clutching your knee in pain. you had done some exercise a couple days prior, and now you were feeling the flare ups. the pinkette crouched down beside you, wiping the tears from your eyes with a small sigh.

"it hurts, hyo.." you sniffled, looking at him with watery eyes. it made his heart hurt.

"it's okay, y/n. i promise this pain will go away soon. let's get you into bed, alright?"

the typically sassy man gently helped you up and into bed, kissing your eyebrow before walking out of the room. soon, he returned carrying your favorite snack, along with his own personal kit. he set down the treat on the nightstand table before crawling onto the mattress, opening the kit.

"here.. lemme help. i have some stuff that'll make the pain go away quicker, or at least lessen it. take this."

he reached over to grab your water bottle before taking out a strong medicine for pain, dropping two into your hand.

"only two for now, you can have another two in 6 to 7 hours." he brushed the hair out of your face as you gulped down the water and pills.

as promised, in about 20 or 30 minutes after you took the medicine plus with chigiri's assistance, the pain soon lessened enough for you to relax a bit. it would most likely be there for the next couple days, but hey- at least you had your boyfriend to comfort you and help you through it. he carefully pulled you into him arms, so delicately as if he was treating you like a glass object, and pressed another peck to your nose.

"good. try not to cry anymore, hm? i'll be mad if you do."

of course, you knew he was just joking.

AN: TYSM FOR THIS REQUEST!! i'm sorry if i messed anything up >_< also for some reason the layout of the photos is appearing weird on laptop (at least for me)..so i’m sorry about that