#here have a painfully generic open starter

[bahamutgames]

Afterthoughts: Showtime!

Game: Princess Peach: Showtime! (March 22, 2024)

Console: Nintendo Switch

Hello hello!! I'm trying to wrap up some to-do list stuff before I go off and take care of some irl junk. And I'm pretty much done with commissions for the time being sooooo... Let's move on to some of the fun stuff: talking about video games!! And not just any video game, but a game all about the most beautiful pink princess in the medium, Peach!! OH I LOVE PEACH SO MUCH-

VERY happy I was able to get a copy of this game, as I was extremely broke when it launched. But my brother very generously bought a copy for the house, so you can consider this afterthoughts sponsored by them, I suppose!

Typical stuff, this is NOT a review! Just me throwing up my thoughts about the game so people can get my jumbled mess of ideas. If I ever talk about anything that interests you, please play it!

SPOILERS FOR PRINCESS PEACH SHOWTIME AHEAD!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED!!

Opening

So, yeah, I've played some Mario. I'd even go as far as to say that you could maybe consider me a Mario fan again. Maybe. And, well, I like Princess Peach. If you've been following me for a bit, you probably know I LOVE Peach! She's cute, she's pretty, and I think she's been PAINFULLY underused in the series the last few years. Did you know she's a powerful spellcaster? Why don't we get to see it more? I'm very thankful we're FINALLY seeing her be playable in more games again.

I was actually a HUGE fan of Super Princess Peach on DS, and I thought we were long overdue on a sequel for years. So naturally I was SUPER stoked when they showed that teeny tiny teaser a while back. Fast forward, and the game is here and... I love it! I actually think it may even be better than SPP! It's super cute!

Stuff I liked

So for starters, again it's SUPER cute! You'd probably expect as much from a game about Peach. But no it's REALLY damn cute! From the plot about a theater being taken over, to the framing of levels being stage shows, to Peach's outfits changing in each level. This game is ADORABLE! Easily up there with the recent Yoshi games as some of the cutest Mario games ever made!

It's also super good looking, I'm not a graphics expert but I think it's a damn good looking game and I think Peach's model and animations in particular look GREAT! The whole game is full of TONS of life even though it's all fake cause it's a stage show lmao. Even character designs are REALLY full of life and interesting. I'll admit I thought Madame Grape's design wasn't that exciting when I first saw it. But it grew on me and the Sour Bunch have some FANTASTIC designs! The enemies but ESPECIALLY the bosses. And Stella is also SUPER cute! Usually you'd worry new little marketable sidekicks like that would be annoying but no, Stella was fine! I like her a lot!

Speaking of the bosses, the gameplay in general of this game is REALLY good. I didn't play the demo but I remember people saying it was like a baby game. Which made me nervous. But now that I've actually played it, no I loved the gameplay. It's fairly simple and some levels you can just blast through like its nothing. But it's FUN and some levels are genuinely tough. I had a BLAST with some of these stages! And the different gameplay styles are all fun, I don't think there's any I genuinely disliked or dreaded having to do. Even slower and more boring stages like the detective ones are fun and cute! My favorite level types were the more action focused ones. But in particular I really liked Western and Ninja levels. I was really impressed by the fact they made stealth sections in a platformer that DIDN'T suck! But back to the bosses, they're REALLY good. I wasn't expecting anything too challenging but the snake, cat, and lion really did give me a bit of a run for my money! I was particularly impressed with the lion and cat, they were VERY creative and interesting boss fights. And of course, the final boss RULES. I CAN'T BELIEVE THE GAME ENDS ON A SHMUP TYPE BOSS FIGHT LMAO!! I think it makes sense because every level type is a new theme, but it was particularly great for me cause I LOVE Shmups! Put Peach in MORE on rails shooters/shmups in my opinion! The whole finale was SO good, and SO cool. It was surprisingly emotional and Radiant Peach is DOWN RIGHT GORGEOUS!!! I knew there had to be a special final boss super form and I was STILL so in love with it!

Speaking of special forms, the biggest high light of this game is obviously Peach's transformations! I'm LOVING how much we're seeing Mario characters get to change their outfits lately. Mario in Odyssey, Yoshi in Wooly World, and even Luigi in the LM3 multiplayer. It's a LONG overdue and welcome change! And seriously, seeing Peach in all these wonderful new costumes and outfits was, no questions, the best part of the game. They're all REALLY well made, I like that they're all so unique and not all just pink. It's nice to see Peach in different colors cause I was SHOCKED with how much she ate the Ninja costume. Green is SO good on her! I love seeing her in jeans, seeing her in hats, seeing her with different hair styles. It's genuinely LOVELY and I could stare at these costumes FOREVER! WHY IS SHE SO HOT!!! My favorites visually are probably Mermaid, Cowgirl, and Figure Skater. But that's not even where her new outfits end! I was FLOORED when I found out you can customize her main dress! THAT'S AWESOME WHAT THE FUCK!! During the game they give you new colors and patterns for Peach's dress so you can make her default outfit look a little more YOU. They're not all mind blowing changes, but it's cute and an extra feature they didn't have to include! I LOVED the gradient dress that went from white to bright pink.

Over all the game is just filled to the brim with life, a shocking amount of things to collect and do, and some REALLY fun and engaging levels! I was fully expecting to like this game, but personally it REALLY knocked my expectations out of the water!

Damn and another little bonus note, I didn't remember any of the music, but hearing the OST again while I write this. It's nice!! Assassin Disco is playing right now and that is GOOD!

Stuff I didn't like

But of course no game is perfect. I have a few nitpicks here and there. One is that, while I do like the Theets and I think they're noses being lights that emote with them is cute. They're something about them that's just missing that special punch? Like they're SO close to being perfect, but they just don't 100% land for me design wise. But I guess that's probably for the best since they have to have so many different designs through the game. I personally was also a little disappointed that the Sparklas were just fancier Theets. I think they maybe should've been the same species as Stella so they really stood out and I understood what made them so important compared to all the other Theets acting in the plays. But this is kind of a nitpick honestly it didn't ruin the game or anything.

Then there's the whole issue with the cover art. Yeah I really don't like it. I think the original looked cute! It's very VERY weird to have one Peach front and center that looks NOTHING like any other Peach on the cover or in game. And yeah it's just the cover art, but you see it a lot. It's WEIRD. And I'm grasping for stuff to say I didn't like about this game cause it was so good. I remember people being like "well it's GOOD she looks like this cause now she can actually emote" which seems to be the catch all argument against feminine designs or designs people dislike without having much of a reason to. And personally I'm starting to think it's kind of a bunk argument. Peach emotes just fine in this game! And I actually think they make her look INCREDIBLY cute! Any design can emote and be expressive if you actually let them emote and be expressive. But again that's a small issue, this LITERALLY makes no impact on the game lol.

Outside of small things like that. My main issue with this game is just that it feels a little short and repetitive. It's not THAT bad, you only have to play the same level theme 3-4 times to get the ending. But like, it just feels like there should be more. But at the same time, I really have no idea how you could fix this issue. There's already 10 different transformations, each with their own gameplay style more or less. It's kind of a lot! So I understand why they didn't make more and risk having some just not be good. I guess this type of weird stalemate issue can only be fixed... With a sequel... Please... Peach deserves it.

Final Thoughts

YEAH!! Princess Peach is back too it would seem! I kind of can't believe it, it really seemed like they just didn't really want to ever give her the starring role again. But I'm SO happy to see I was wrong! And personally I think they really knocked it out of the park here! This game was cute and fun way beyond what I was expecting. And I can genuinely see myself coming back to 100% it. I mean, ANY game that has Princess Peach in jeans is good in my book!

No but seriously, fun game! I loved this a lot!

===

And that's all I got on Princess Peach Showtime! Again I'm so glad I was able to play this eventually because I really didn't think I'd get the chance to!

Yeah as I said at the start I'm trying to wrap up stuff I'm doing so I can go deal with some OTHER stuff and get things prepared for next year (hopefully) in my life. Currently I've been playing my ASS off trying to beat a game that's completely brand new to me. It's part of a long running series I've actually never beaten a game from before so I'm excited to see it through.

I don't have much else to say as a closing, so you can just follow me on twitter if you wanna see what that game ends up being whenever I finish it!

That's what I have for you! Go out and play a game with a fictional character you're madly in love with!

[girlreviews]

Review #359: Radio City, Big Star

When I got to see Big Star in Memphis in 2022, they went ahead and played all three of their records more or less from start to finish. It was to mark the 50th anniversary of #1 Record. Time loses all meaning lately and death is all around us, but the point is, Radio City turned 50 in February 2024.

When I first fell in love with Big Star (see review #474) it wasn’t even possible to find their records. Anywhere. The only format available at that time was a reissue double album that had both #1 Record and Radio City on it. That was fine with me, and I found it at McKays when visiting my cousin before moving here. But I never super separated the two albums since I always heard them together. Based on ranking, and general popular opinion, Radio City is better than #1 Record. I really don’t know about that, but I do know that the tracks on it that are really good, are really fucking good, and that’s what gives it’s older sister a run for her money.

It opens with O, My Soul, which is… Well, what can I say. The drums really steal the show on this track. When I got to see Jody Stephens play this song, I damn near lost my tiny mind. He also messed up, so they started over, which meant that I got to hear it twice. I had waited long enough so I like to think that was just for me. This song can’t decide if it wants to be some kind of garage band banger or if it’s too lazy and just wants to take a nap. And you know what? That fucking speaks to me.

When I was turning 17, which is how old you have to be in England to learn to drive, I was offered driving lessons or a guitar from my parents. First of all, I wanted the guitar so badly, it wasn’t even a question. I also knew it was annoy the shit out of them that I would pick it over driving lessons. Driving lessons meant driving, which meant a car, which meant freedom. Except that I knew that it didn’t really. If it came from them, the lessons, the car, the anything, I’d really have no freedom and it would all be an illusion. So my wise teenage ass took the guitar, and remained so painfully committed to public transportation that we could do whatever we wanted (with a lot more effort), for real. I used to really lament that decision as all of my friends got their licenses and cars and I was stuck on the damn bus, but I knew what I was doing. I used to listen to O, My Soul to remind myself of why I did it, and to build up my confidence:

“I can’t get a license

To drive in my car

But I don’t really need it

If I’m a big star”

Love when a band references themselves, for starters. I kept this tradition up, though. I listen to this song any time I have a big meeting that I need to crush, an interview for a job, or just anything that I need to hype myself up (you’re really a nice girl, and I think you’re the most, and when we’re together, I feel like a boss). Yeah I sing it to myself about myself, what about it? It’s my very own Eye of the Tiger. I learned to drive when I was 24 years old, in London, with my lessons and car entirely self-funded. I have no regrets.

Mod Lang sounds like a T. Rex song. I’m into that. I hear The Byrds in this record, especially in September Gurls, which really is a Big Star classic and is a pretty compelling reason for this album to rank higher than its successor. It’s had more influence on pop culture than I had ever realized — for example. Katy Perry’s California Gurls was titled with that spelling because her producer was a Big Star fan and wanted to pay homage. It’s a really beautiful song, about Alex Chilton’s complicated love life. The three women he was involved with, or formerly involved with, that the song is about, all had birthdays in September. Chilton was very into astrology, as it turns out. That seems about right for him.

I have always had a real soft spot for Morpha Too. It’s so strange and simple. It feels like being dizzy and trying to walk a few paces. The harmonies are really striking and it just seems like a song that never really got finished. That’s how it sounds to me. I love it exactly how it is.

The record ends with I’m In Love With A Girl, which rivals Thirteen but is cute, rather than poignant. I had a man sing this to me once, on a roof. He stole my guitar and just had at it. It kind of makes my skin crawl to think of it (think Ken singing Matchbox 20 to Barbie). But, we all know how I feel about letting those kinds of things spoil songs for me, especially Big Star. Wilco’s Pat Sansone was in charge of this track at the 50th anniversary show and he was perfect, sang “gorl” and everything. All was right with the world. I was there, he wasn’t. The best part of this song is one single line repeated that serves as a bridge of sorts:

“All that a man should do

Is try, oooooh, oooooh

All that a man should do

Is try

Ooooh ooooooh”

Listen to it. It’s a beautiful sweet song. Please do not serenade any women with it on their (or any) guitar. Don’t be that guy. All you have to do is try, and trying doesn’t involve that.

[philcscphies]

who: open @moorbrookestarters​​ where: brinie bar

Shane wasn’t used to being the center of attention. In fact, his entire life had been an exercise in blending in, in drawing as little attention to himself as he possibly could. So, now, attending an event that was specifically geared towards celebrating him and his fiance... Shane wasn’t sure how to handle that.  “Oh, hi,” he greeted, turning to the person besides him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight.”

[avengedhq]

IT’S 2012 …

… Captain America sleeps under the ice, nothing more than a near-forgotten chapter in the history books …

… Professor X’s team of mutants work from the shadows, protected from a world that hates and fears them by their secret identities…

… the Justice League of America begin to come together, having each carried alone the burden of responsibility for the world for too long …

… the Avengers are a name unknown to any but the few who have seen Nick Fury’s top secret files …

… BUT THE FUTURE IS HERE. 

Or so is proclaimed by Stark Enterprises, in a grand invitation made to all of New York City to attend this year’s annual Stark Expo 2012. For the first time it will be held at their brand new Stark Tower, in the heart of the city, where Tony Stark himself has recently completed the renovations, using an Arc Reactor to make it the first completely clean-energy powered skyscraper in New York. Everyone in the city has been invited to the grand opening, to see for themselves what the future looks like.

Of course, for some, the future is something they already know, too well and too painfully, the memory of fallen friends foremost in their minds, even though they have found themselves now back in their own pasts. While most people haven’t noticed a change, falling back into the way things used to be with barely more than a flicker of deja vu, than unsettling dreams in the middle of the night… for others, this night could be their first chance to investigate why things have changed, and why they are the only ones who know that things used to be different.

WHAT CAN YOU FIND AT THE EXPO?

As always, the Expo is a mix of science and showmanship, boasting the latest of Stark Tech, including:

the Project eScape virtual reality room, the new Stark Industries virtual reality platform, through which users can go anywhere, anytime, and be anyone

the Stark Model 500 Flying Car, which can be taken for a test drive, under the careful supervision of a Stark Industries technician

Robot Arena, in this custom built arena, users can test the latest Stark Industries tech by pitting remote controlled robot champions against each other  

No-Grav Simulator, this no gravity simulation room reproduces the experience of space and takes visitors through a simulation of the plans for the Stark Space Station

The Iron Rollercoaster, the largest indoor rollercoaster in America, inspired by the exploits of the Invincible Iron Man

Holo glasses, please pick up your prototype pair as you enter to be guided around the Expo by the artificial intelligence interface known as J.A.R.V.I.S.

A.I. servers, the evening’s robotic hosts are ready to fulfill guests’ every need

Themysciran embassy showcase, a display of the finest bronze weaponry and Amazonian engineering kindly supplied by the Embassy of Themyscira

Latverian embassy showcase, a display of the country’s select cuisine and pioneering technology generously supplied by the Embassy of Latveria

The LUTHR fireworks show, to close out the night’s festivities, organised by the event’s sponsor, LexCorp  

The evening will also feature performances by superstar Darla Deering, as well as the up and coming rock sensation, the Iron Maniacs.

OOC Information:

Welcome to Avenged! We’re officially open for dash interactions, and we’re so excited you’re here. 

The Stark Expo event will run for one week (5/20 - 5/27) OOC time, and one day (5/20) in-game time. Use this as your chance to break the ice, get situated, and party like it’s 2012!

You are free to post non-event threads for the duration of the event, and you can continue replying to event threads as long as you’d like, but please don’t start any new event threads after it has ended.

Tag your event starters with #avengedexpo. Event inspo posts/edits can be tagged #avengedinspo.

As always, if you have any questions, just give us a shout. We can’t wait to get started!

[hopelesshawks]

We already talked about this in dms but like👀 Keigo and a female reader that he thinks is just all cute and shit. But nah she’s actually one of the best dancers in japan and specializes in badass and sexy dances

I went down such a rabbit hole picking out the choreo for this for zero reason 💀💀💀 but man am I here for it. For those curious what I pictured writing this it’s this dance at time code 7:27 choreography is by Jojo Gomez

It’s an 18+ one y’all, minors dni. Warnings for dom/sub dynamics, mention of reader having a vagina, fingering, hand jobs, light edging, light nipple play, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, minor praise kink

“So when are you finally gonna seal the deal with (y/n)?” Mirko asks Hawks one day as they walk their usual patrol route. It’s a quiet day and quiet days always made Mirko more likely to pry. “Seal the deal?” Hawks asks. “Y’know... Do the devil’s tango? Make the beast of two backs? Teach her the birds and the bees?” Mirko teases, wiggling her eyebrows and crowding into his personal space. Hawks rolls his eyes hard and shoves her out of his space, not that it deters her. “It’s not like that,” he tells his nosy friend but she just scoffs in response. “Don’t play like you don’t want to get all up on her, Hawks. You go to that cafe she works at every night after your shift and I’m pretty sure you don’t even like coffee,” Mirko points out. “I like coffee,” Hawks retorts mulishly. “No you don’t.” “Drop it Mirko.” “Oh c’mon! It’ll be easier if you just admit it.” “Fine! She’s adorable, you happy?” Hawks finally huffs, red tinting his cheeks. There’s a beat of silence before Mirko responds but it’s not quite the response Hawks is expecting. “Wait you think (y/n)... is adorable?” Mirko asks. “What do you mean? She is!” Hawks replies defensively. “Relax tough guy, adorable just isn’t the word I’d use to describe her,” Mirko shrugs. “How else would you describe her? She always seems kinda sleepy on her shift and she wears those big oversized sweatshirts,” Hawks elaborates but Mirko continues to look confused by his assessment of you. “Have you never seen her dance before?” Mirko finally asks. “She dances?” Hawks responds.

In Hawks’ personal opinion, Mirko’s reaction is over dramatic. She had stopped in her tracks and stared at him as if he’d sprouted a third head or announced an early retirement. “What?” he asks, even more defensive than before. Mirko heaves a sigh as if Hawks’ ignorance is her greatest source of disappointment. “I forget sometimes you live under a rock, Jesus Christ. We really do need to talk about you getting out more for things other than work and creeping on the sexy dancer barista you have a crush on. Why do you think she’s so tired every shift?” Mirko asks in disbelief. “She’s a student isn’t she? I assumed school stuff!” “You really are hopeless.” “Hey!” “She has rehearsal before her shift dummy, she’s tired from practicing.” “How do you know so much about it huh?” “Well for starters her group has literally won competitions so jot that down. And two we follow each other on Twitter.” “Why do I even ask you things?” Hawks laments. “Shut up, I have an idea,” Mirko suddenly grins. “Oh god, what the fuck are you planning now?” Hawks groans. “I think we should pay (y/n) a little visit during rehearsal, don’t you?”

Hawks follows Mirko through the halls of the university rec center with a growing sense of dread. She looks mischievous and that’s usually a sign that Hawks is going to regret whatever he just signed up for. After they round a final corner, Hawks can clearly hear music coming out of a room down the hall labeled rehearsal room B. Hawks and Mirko push through the door right as the song stops and immediately Hawks realizes that this was a mistake. Gone is your oversized hoodie, instead you’re in just a pair of sweats and a sports bra, covered in sweat and chest still heaving from whatever dance you and the two other girls with you had just done. Hawks should’ve just ignored Mirko and waited to look up one of your dances on YouTube in the privacy of his own apartment. “Hey (y/n)!” Mirko calls out cheerily even as Hawks mentally curses her out for dragging him here. Your gaze snaps over to the two of them and immediately you break out into a wide grin, the same one Hawks had been fawning over as cute and precious for the past several weeks. “What are you two doing here?” you ask as your friends grab water. “We were in the neighborhood and I remember you mentioning you rehearse around this time so I figured why not swing by?” Mirko replies and god does Hawks hate her right now. “You guys have perfect timing actually, we’re working on something to the song ‘Ride’ by Ciara and it would be really great to get an outside opinion on it. Would you guys mind sticking around to check it out? I promise it’ll be quick the other girls have something right after this,” you ask the two pros, giving your best puppy dog eyes. Hawks wants to politely decline, he’s having enough trouble keeping himself in check as it is thank you very much, but before he can Mirko is already agreeing and he doesn’t have the heart to shut things down when you look so excited. “Ah amazing!! Ok! Just sit at the front of the room and be our audience!” you beam and Hawks is helpless but to comply.

Hawks’ eyes trace over every inch of your body as you start the music and then get into the starting formation of the dance. Hawks can tell the moment you’ve focused in on performing your choreography because your whole demeanor and energy shifts. It’s commanding and confident and very, very sexy. He’s starting to understand Mirko’s reaction to his earlier description of you because the woman he sees before him now? Well adorable doesn’t quite fit the bill anymore. He’s already half hard in his work pants, much to his chagrin. What would the tabloids say if they knew he was getting this aroused in public? It’s not exactly befitting of the number two hero considering he’s supposed to be a role model for future generations. But could anyone blame him? The way you move your body and swing your hips is mesmerizing. At one point you slowly roll your body down to grind your hips to the floor and it’s impossible for Hawks not to imagine you using that same precise control to grind down onto his dick. He tries to focus on the music instead in hopes it will help him calm down but it only takes a second for him to realize the song is painting the very same image he’s trying desperately to clear from his head. He’s almost positive Mirko is smirking beside him but he can’t focus on her, you’ve captured the entirety of his attention.

Then the chorus hits and Hawks is really in trouble. You’re singing along. You’re singing “they love the way I ride it” and making direct fucking eye contact with him while you swing your hips in a slow, sensual grind and how can he not react to that? His wings flare and puff out instinctively, his cheeks going red, and his dick is now fully erect and leaking precum into his boxers. It would be mortifying if he weren’t too focused on your every move to truly remember his surroundings. Eventually the song ends and even though Mirko stands to go compliment you and your friends on a job well done, Hawks stays rooted in place. He doesn’t dare move as his painfully hard cock twitches in his pants. Sweat drips down your neck and god he wants to lick it off you so goddamn bad he barely even notices you saying bye to Mirko and your friends until the door is shutting behind them.

Hawks hasn’t even fully registered that the two of you are now alone in the room before he’s coming up behind you and wrapping an arm around your bare torso. You open your mouth to ask what’s up with him when you suddenly feel his erection against your backside. “Tell me you don’t want this or I won’t be able to stop,” he all but growls against the shell of your ear. “What if I do want it though?” you ask breathlessly as you shamelessly grind your ass back against his throbbing dick. The moan that crawls its way out of his throat in response is guttural, he genuinely can’t think of a time he’s ever been more turned on in his life as he wastes no time spinning you around to face him and pressing you up against the wall. “You knew what you were doing didn’t you?” he asks before dropping his nose down to run along your jaw. You shudder as he licks a long stripe up your neck, delighting in the salty taste of your sweat. “Maybe?” you hedge at first but then he bites the column of your throat hard enough you’re sure it’ll leave a mark and you can’t help but whimper. He draws back to look you in the eye, his pupils blown so wide they’ve almost completely consumed his golden irises. “Don’t lie to me little dove,” he warns. “I may have gone a little harder than usual because you were watching me,” you admit and it’s apparently the right answer as Hawks all but chirps his satisfaction before leaning down to press a bruising kiss to your lips that has you melting. One of his hands slides up to grasp and squeeze one of your breasts but even that is not enough for him and in the next moment one of his feathers glides in to swiftly cut your sports bra off entirely. You’re about to protest but the words die in your throat as Hawks starts pinching and twisting one of your nipples. “Does that feel good little dove?” he asks and all you can do is let your head fall back against the wall and nod your approval.

Hawks takes advantage of your head’s position to resume leaving marks on your exposed neck as his free hand snakes its way into your sweatpants and panties. As his fingers finally reach your dripping sex you feel him moan against the sensitive skin of your throat. “You’re so wet for me already,” he notes as he slowly slides a finger inside of you. “Want you, need you,” is all you can keen as he drags his one finger torturously slowly inside of you. “Want me that bad love?” Hawks teases and your answering nod is almost frantic as he inserts another finger and takes careful note of the way you squirm. “Use your words,” he commands. “I want you so bad Hawks please,” you beg but even as he uses his thumb to lightly brush against your sensitive clit he still doesn’t budge. “I don’t know, you were so naughty teasing me so much in front of Mirko and your friends. Do you understand how turned on I was?” he asks but you can only whimper in response. You jerk your hips forward in desperate search of more friction or movement or something but all that accomplishes is Hawks using the hand not currently buried inside you to hold your hips still. “I want you to feel how turned on your little show made me little dove. Can you do that?” he asks. “Y-yes,” you moan before obediently reaching one hand out to feel his hardened length through his pants. God he’s so big, and it only emphasizes to you how much you want him inside you. “Not gonna get much done from there, little dove, don’t be shy. I want you to feel me, feel the cock you’re so fucking desperate for,” he growls, slowly dragging his fingers in and out of you to emphasize his point. It’s so good but it’s not nearly enough so you fumble with the belt and button of his pants until finally, finally you can slip your hand past the waistband and into his boxers to grasp firm hold of his weeping cock.

It doesn’t take long for the two of you to find a devastating rhythm, your hands moving in sync to drive both of you towards your respective climaxes. Your moans echo around the small practice room and it’s music to Hawks’ ears. You’re close, so close, right on the precipice of orgasm when suddenly Hawks is leaning in to whisper into your ear a simple command: “Stop.” His hand stops moving and then he slowly extracts his fingers from inside you. You whine at the loss, pussy desperately clenching around nothing but you obediently stop your hand's movement. "Don't look so disappointed, I thought you wanted my dick," Hawks teases. "I do, fuck, I do," you groan. "Be specific. What do you want?" "I want your dick inside me, please Hawks I'm begging, I want it so bad," you whine. What a pretty sight you make squirming and whining for him. Hawks thinks he could watch you like this forever but even he is starting to get impatient so he decides to finally give you what you want. He shoves his own pants and boxers down low enough for his dick to spring out of its confines, the head flushed red and glistening with precum. Meanwhile his feathers push down your own sweatpants and panties as you watch him with half-lidded eyes, eager to finally feel his hardened length inside you. He has you wrap your arms around his shoulders and places his hands on your waist. "Hop up pretty girl," he commands and you eagerly obey, allowing him to lift you and then wrapping your legs around his waist to further support you weight. "Ready?" he asks. "God, yes Hawks please," you groan as he lines himself up with your waiting entrance. Hawks complies with an almost feral grin, wasting no time in shoving himself fully inside you. You groan as his thick length stretches you open but the slight burn feels so good as he fills you up. "You're doing so good for me, baby. So good," he praises and you practically purr your satisfaction. "P-please. Move," you moan and Hawks doesn't need to be told twice as he begins fucking into you in earnest. All words are lost between the two of you, the only language you need being the moans, groans, whimpers, and whines the two of you pull out of each other. As he drills into you harder and harder you rapidly feel yourself once again approaching climax. "Hawks I'm gonna-" you start but he cuts you off. "Me too baby, hold out a little longer and we'll cum together ok?" he ask. "Ok," you whimper, trying so hard to be good for him. Just a few long deep strokes later he finally gives you permission to cum and almost immediately you cry out his name, clenching and squeezing around him as he tumbles into his own climax. His groan is long and low as he spills his seed inside you and you relish each and every moment of it.

As the two of you finally come down from your highs Hawks carefully sets you back down on the ground. "Shit," he swears. "You can say that again," you laugh breathlessly. "Maybe I should invite you to more rehearsals from now on," you joke. "I'd much rather you give me a private show at my place," he replies easily. "I think I can make that work." "Good." "When would you like your first performance?" "How about now? You were just bragging about how much 'they' like it when you ride it. Time to put your money where your mouth is." "I'd like nothing more."

[tsuumu]

beautiful stranger.

oikawa x reader

a short piece in which oikawa tooru approaches you on a idyllic evening. it’s a little awkward though, since you’re trying to die.

word count: 3.3k

tw: indirect and direct implications of suicide.

your warm hands stay gripped onto the metal rails in front of you, applying enough force to watch your knuckles turn white. you find yourself doing it over and over until your fingers numb from the continued pressure. alone, you’re mulling over mundane affairs. you’d rather not be thinking about them but find this loop all too easy to fall into.

the shadow of the railing casts over a large canal, its water sifting freely, far beneath you. it laps over itself, slithers of fish break the transparent surface as they swim. some of their scales rise to kiss the sunlight in opaque relfections.

thin layers of petals scatter the ground beneath your feet that have slipped from overhead trees and continue to flutter down freely. glowers of dying sunlight seep through the shapes of them as they fall.

in this moment, autumn is alive.

it’s really lovely right now.

you’re here, all caught up in chasing that feeling of peace. safety in an open space. you have to cope with that fact that tranquility never comes easily for you.

there’s nothing that should be leaving you as deeply unsettled as you are. you’ve learnt to largely ignore feeling so overwhelmed, though it stirs and resurfaces times you wish it wouldn’t.

what’s bugging you is that you can’t quite get a grasp on your own life.

for starters, everything lacks coherent meaning. to you, there’s something constantly missing every single day. nothing purchasable, nothing attainable through hard-work and any level of perseverance. truly, it affects you so much so that even just standing here, feet glued to the very spot that is undeniably ‘lovely’, brings you nothing but unimaginable sadness.

earlier, you brushed it away as an off day but you know that’s not true. you’ve been feeling like this all the time.

it is, therefore, not at all abnormal to wonder: can a person have such thing as an off life?

you really don’t like to think about things like this too much. once you begin to muse over deep naysay you find yourself snowballing.

solutions are painfully unobtainable and it’s generally as productive as chasing pavements.

do i really enjoy being alone? or am i obsessed with the sensation loneliness brings?

“you know, if you stare long enough, you might end up wanting to jump in.”

at once, your vision snaps up, taken aback by the additional voice. you hadn’t realised that during your mindless lamenting, another person had quietly joined you by the evening canal-side.

fair skinned, dark eyed, chocolate curls brushed neatly over his features and cowlicks that bob against the light gusts of wind.

a boy offers you a smile, before shifting his feet towards the empty space to your left. you can’t seem to process him, staring at the empty spot he’d been in seconds earlier.

you’re not supposed to be here right now.

“i was totally kidding by the way.” he adds. “that was really dark, sorry.”

you’re silent in return, eyes casting back onto the running stream. the water is shallow and the fall long, so jumping in would certainly prove fatal. you know all of this too well. it’d disturb the fish who are just here to live, though, it’ll only be for a moment. they won’t know any better.

you don’t really know what to say. it’s troubling that he’s here and hearing it out loud disturbs you, like a direct call out. at no point were you prepared for any kind of conversation prior.

the two of you stand there in complete silence. it’s not particularly awkward, you just don’t know why he’s approached you so easily, talking to you like he’s known you well enough to make outlandish jokes.

asking directly for his intentions seems rude, so you’ll put up with it until he leaves.

“do you always come here?” the stranger pipes up once more, though his focus doesn’t leave the water. you breathe in deeply.

“sometimes.”

“oh, i see.”

his palms lay flat and he pushes gently off of the rails, only to fall back onto them with all his weight. he does it again, repeating the process over and over at a steady pace. you stay hunched over, keeping your distance. he doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest though, clearly absorbed in his surroundings.

“it’s like a set out of a movie, this place. seems like somewhere i’d ask my girlfriend to marry me.”

your tongue rolls around in your mouth.

yes. you think. his girlfriend would most likely be thrilled-over the top-squealing if he did. that’s entirely his business.

you really don’t care to hear of other people’s romantic endeavours.

is it out of jealousy? you don’t know. maybe.

this conversation is meaningless. you wish he’d go away sooner so you could have this time to yourself.

also, jealousy is an ugly word. you hate it.

he stops his movement with a exhale of air, tilting his head back to blink up at the warm sky. the last touches daylight mingle with the oncoming darkness, creating a deep tinge of orangey-yellow.

“when’s your birthday?”

‎a petal lands on the bridge of your hand, sticking to your skin.

“do you want my social security number?” you deject.

“what? no!”

“are you sure? really, i’ll give it to you.”

“no!”

“then why are you asking for my personal information?”

‎

he falls silent for a moment, before mumbling out a small: “just wondering.”

a tinge of guilt creeps over you at his apologetic tone. you admit, your answers thus far must make you seem like a completely unapproachable asswipe. you’re not at all. you just aren’t all that sure how to make small talk with strangers when you’re trying to part with the world by dinner time.

it feels like an unexpected guest at your very lonesome party.

“it’s (insert birth month).” you fold.

he purses his lips, face contorting a little.

“i see.”

he doesn’t continue down that path after your response. the both of you return to a mutual silence, staring into the portrait scenery ahead. the stream fills the soundscape pleasantly. fallen leaves have gathered at the base of your shoes, brushing over the tip gently with the turn of the wind. you observe them quietly.

“can i ask you another question?”

he seems a tad more timid now.

he definitely thinks you’re the type to blow up and give him an earful about minding his own business, doesn’t he?

you’d never raise your voice. in general, but also because it’d break the comfort of the scenery the world has so generously given you.

“sure.”

“do you believe in soulmates?”

‎the question is a little random but not impossible to answer by any means.

“no.”

“what?”

“i said not really.”

“you said no.”

“that’s the same thing.”

“...fair enough.”

‎he exhales out, sounding a little disheartened by your curt response. perhaps to him, you were a tough nut to crack; an ambiguity for him to understand. were all people like that? you weren’t playing hard to get, in fact, you’d answered every single enquiry he has had to offer. his efforts are amusing, though.

you raise a brow at him.

“i’m sorry, was that the wrong answer?”

for a moment, he doesn’t reply, stuffing his hands into his pockets, gazing down at the head of his shoe. pivoting his ankle, he draws small circles with the tip of his foot into the ground, into the dead leaves.

“not at all.”

“your expression says otherwise.”

“um, it was just a bit bleak, i guess.”

you let your arms droop way over the railing, fingers wading through the autumn air. you’d never really taken the concepts of soulmates to heart. it was romantic bullshit put out by somebody looking for a fantasy to indulge in. out of seven billion people, there could hardly be a singular person made for you. people aren’t born for other people. if that were the case, it wouldn’t be a rose-tinted fantasy. it would be suffocating. where’s the freedom in love?

“most people always answer like you these days anyway.”

“oh, sorry.”

he looks up at you, tilting his head.

“no, don’t be.”

back to a default mute, left with nothing but the faint chitter of overhead swallows and the odd rumble of cars passing by.

“tooru.” he states, after a while.

“what?”

“tooru. my name is tooru.”

“oh, okay.”

“oikawa tooru.”

‎your fingertips have become flushed. maybe you’d pressed a little too hard on that cold surface earlier. now that all your blood has come rushing back, the tingling sensation feels foreign.

his name slips of the tongue rather easily, don’t you think?

“nice to meet you, oikawa tooru.”

“it is nice, isn’t it?”

for the first time, your gazes meet properly and you offer him a crooked smile.

“i suppose so.”

off the side of the canal, almost right under the bridge, a small cluster of ducks have gathered. adult ducks tend to be considerably larger than its offspring —as is factual with any animal— so it’s easy for you to tell that there’s only one parent there, along with three of its ducklings.

people like to come to the canal to feed the ducks bread, though you’d heard somewhere that it’s actually quite bad for them.

you wonder. do ducks care particularly if one of its ducklings die? will it do something with the body, cry out, hurt?

or is grief exceptionally human?

“i don’t actually have a girlfriend, by the way.”

he sifts out his phone, tapping the screen and sliding it open. you watch him turn it to its side, before leaning over to take a picture of the depths below. you just watch.

“oh, okay.”

he doesn’t elaborate, focused intently on his current task. your attention returns to the shape of the birds, bobbing up and down rhythmically.

there’s only so much you can say about the canal. yeah, it’s beautiful. you don’t have the right vocabulary to describe the way it makes you feel. honestly, it feels abysmal to even try. you’re convinced though, that you’re in love with the way the water moves. you’ve always appriciated it whenever you walk past, told yourself jokingly that you could die there if you had to.

funny, that.

beautiful things tend to hurt in an unbearably amplified manner.

“say, tooru?”

“yeah?”

“if i climbed over the railing right now, would you stop me?”

you’re both fixated on the paddling now. his phone is back in his pocket, elbows propped up. he hums, taking his time to think over your question.

“most likely.”

your fingers meet one another and the tingling spreads to your palms.

“i’m thinking of jumping, actually.”

“oh.”

“yeah.”

“my joke earlier...”

“yeah.”

his fingers drum rhythmically on the slender poles under the rail top.

“then i’d jump right in with you.”

the corners of his mouth tug slightly at your perplexity, supressing a chortle. he’s not laughing at you, though. it’s more a gesture of understanding. this tooru doesn’t know you at all, yet he gets it. he gets it all too well.

you get that he gets it.

tooru clears his throat. “bad day?”

“that’s an understatement.”

“well, you’re not a bad person for feeling the way you do.”

by now, the ducks have swam away, you can make out the general shape of them, melding into the distant, mute colours of the bankside. the sky look minutes away from being set alight. time has never been your friend, you see.

“i feel crazy for trying.” you’re rather blunt about it.

“fair enough.”

“…is that all?”

“well, do you want me to tell you that you’re not crazy?”

you lull into silence.

“i don’t know.”

with that, you shift to angle yourself so that he’s in your immediate peripheral, the thought of gawking at him seems ridiculous but you want to look at him. you find it hard to do it up front for some reason.

“i’m no suicide expert, but it’d probably be lonely doing something like that by yourself. wouldn’t it be comforting to know someone’s falling with you?”

your fingers run absently across the jagged surface of the rails, the old paint has been chipped away at, after all its years of protecting. in all it’s history, had anyone else hitched themselves over this very rail?

were they asking for the same answers as you?

god. that’s awful. you don’t want to think about that.

you catch each others’ eyes for a second but you resign quickly, focusing as hard as you can on the flecks of black on your thumb.

“that would be selfish of me.”

“not if i’m offering.”

you scramble to look anywhere else, abruptly turning. you’re facing away from the canal, stomach fluttering a little as you fall onto the rail’s length.

in all your time by yourself, you’d never been given an irrefutable reason to ‘be’. it’d always been a live-for-the-day type of experience. if a day is good, you’re utterly blissed out by it, totally in love with life. if it’s bad, you have little reason to go on. nothing particularly interests you enough to dedicate your days persuing it. fame seems tedious, looks are temporary, a six figure career sounds like emotional jail-time, or a slow, schedule-filled trek to death. whichever description sounds more sufferable.

you see, in essence, we all get off at the same bus stop. some journeys are simply shorter than others.

“you’re guilt-tripping me out of it.”

“i’m not!”

you’ve never stopped to ask yourself what it is you want.

death interests you, you suppose. though, you don’t see the reason to wait around and pretend to ignore it until one day it drags you kicking and screaming.

“oikawa tooru, don’t you have better things to be doing than offering to jump off bridges with strangers?”

that coy smile tugs at his lips once more. nothing you say seems to phase him. it’s like he knows you. he’s thinking: yeah, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary for them.

“should i? you look at that water like it’s someone you hate. or love. maybe both. i got curious.”

“curious?”

“yes. and quite frankly, you’ve left me curious. practically starving. you haven’t even told me your name.”

“my name doesn’t matter.”

“boo. that’s not true at all.”

his tongue pokes out, tugging at the corner of his eye. you shake your head, genuinely unable to hide your amusement, turning to him properly this time.

and really, it’s like the canal side and oikawa tooru were made from the same stardust. he blends right into the picture, as effortlessly pretty as the rest of it.

the strands of hair out of place, a little disheveled from the breeze. the scarf buried into his nose, glasses a little misty from the heat of his own breath but when they clear, you see his eyes all too well.

you’d like to tuck those strands into place, they’re bothering you just a little.

“(y/n).”

your brows furrow a little.

really, this could all very well be some sort of fantastical dream. as nice as it all is, it feels painfully unreal. boys don’t look like that on autumn evenings or offer to die with you.

that’s it.

tooru must be a figment of your imagination.

no. wrong. not a dream.

this is a corner of your mind you haven’t ventured into yet, psychologically, some kind of safety net. a sliced off piece of reality you’ve come to hide in because you’ve utterly lost your mind. he is nothing but a part of you that makes you feel at ease as you come to terms with your self-destruction.

god, that bothers you more. you are crazy.

your hand extends, reaches out all on its own.

you just want to know if he’s real.

oikawa tooru glances down for a moment, he’s probably wondering about you, what’s left you in such a state. though, he’s happy to slide his palm against yours, latching onto it. he shakes once, twice. a little more. tightens his hold a bit.

the weight of his fingers as they brush lightly against your palm is fantastical. he’s so warm. you can feel it spread through you from the pads of your fingers.

he’s very real.

tooru has rather pretty hands.

the contact makes you feel kind of delirious, a produce of being utterly touch-starved. just a simple touch. you’re embarrassed to say it but it takes everything inside of you not to start weeping or hold on frantically in case he does disappear, do something bizzare that’ll scare him away forever.

hey, tooru. are you made of honey?

“well, (y/n), i’m offering you my life right now.”

the sun has set foot on the horizon, plunging in ever so slightly. as a child, the thought of night scared you, feeling largely betrayed by the sun’s farewell. now, it’s a unique kind of comfort to see the moon. it’s as lonely as those who lay their eyes upon it.

“i don’t want it.”

his fingers slip downwards against the dips of your palm.

“you don’t?”

“no, i mean... i don’t want death. not right now..”

you don’t even want to think about it anymore. funny, how things like that work. you were so sure of it. today was the day. your dark rendezvous. weren’t you itching for it?

this bastard.

this man you’ve never met. he clasps onto your hand once and suddenly he stops your nauseating rollercoaster of thoughts and leaves you wondering if, actually, you’d like to see the canal-side again tomorrow, or in fifty years.

who are you really, oikawa tooru?

“no?”

“yeah.”

“then what do you want to do?”

“stay right here, i think.”

your fingers curl, maintaining your hold on him. you should be shy or awkward about this whole ordeal but so you’re desperate for that warmth to continue.

you both stand there, facing one another, hands extended. it’s a little robotic looking. you’re pretty stiff but very sure this is what feels right.

to you, existence is based solely on feeling your way through stages of life. that sickeningly sweet innocence of youth. childhood memories that to you, are dwindled husks of gold, valuable in some aspects but almost meaningless in others. to laugh or to cry allows an individual to create a deep-set connection to the environment around them. it is no longer passing scenery but a moment in your life you once lived through.

that’s beautiful, isn’t it?

unfortunately, emotion provides both a living fantasy and the potential for agony. life is not sweet, nor innocent. it is what you make of it.

it is what your mind is forced to make of it.

and as much as one wishes they were as coddled and loved as they were children, life beyond those years is lonely, difficult and more than you were ever capable of.

were you weak? perhaps.

but maybe people aren’t built for life. we’re all weak.

and realistically, if you are unable to clamber over one obstacle after another -established by those before you- you’re doomed to fall behind.

that will hurt. you will hurt unforgivably because self-worth is no longer a beautiful gift of internal discovery and love but another way to be measured and downsized externally. a practice that leads to hatred. a desire to die.

that’s really where it all began for you. a romantic, a poet at heart, living inside your own, kinder world. that is until reality knocked on your door, invited itself in, just to set the entire thing on fire and leave you as vulnerable as the day you were born.

you aren’t allowed to hide. it comes looking for you eventually.

your stance on life hasn’t changed, afterall, you’ve spent nights mourning over how much it can hurt to live. to fall asleep exhausted with yourself, only to wake up and do it all over again. what you do know, however, is that droning, lonely feeling isn’t there right now. that ongoing, battering ruckus inside your head has ceased. tooru, the strange magician, has left you thoughtless and a little dumb.

you like being this stupid. for once, there’s nothing intrusive prodding the inside of your head.

it’s frightfully quiet, actually. you don’t know what you’re feeling right now. how much time has passed since he’d made that awful joke?

his gaze is on your lingering contact, before lightly pulling you closer, twisting his wrist down so you’re holding hands. your gaze moves to the bankside. you feel comforted. maybe it isn’t death, maybe all you want is a hand to hold.

probably not. that is a stupid, sappy thought. you’re still fanatic about ending your life.

you were so close to doing it, without even really understanding what you were doing. the canal scenery is overpowering, numbing, if you will. without oikawa tooru, you may well have kissed those fishs’ fluorescent scales with your own two lips, as cold as ice with some unfortunate early-morning runner discovering you by twilight.

“we can do that.” he hesitates. “if i’m honest, i would have been pretty scared to jump.”

“yet you still offered?”

tooru hums merrily in confirmation.

“why?”

“because you’re cute.”

you can’t believe your own ears.

“what? seriously?”

“yeah. originally, i wanted your number but things took a small turn.”

you burst out in gutteral laughter, free hand back onto the railing for support. for a moment, you look at him, shaking your head in utter amazement.

“you’re a piece of work, tooru, you know?”

“yeah, i know.”

he smiles back at you. the shadows cast by the setting sun only make him all the more enigmatic.

now that you think about it, you can’t figure this guy out at all. it’s like staring at a wordless piece of paper and trying to find something legible.

“how do you know i won’t come back and repeat all of this tomorrow?”

tooru tilts his head ever so slightly, observing you. his eyes flutter down to your lips, speaking like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“because you told me your name.”

“what does that have to do with anything?”

“well, now that i know that, you’re no longer just a beautiful stranger.”

you understood now. he hadn’t just offered you his life, he’d offered you him. by living on, you’d accepted graciously. he knows that if you visit the canal side again, you’ll only remember this moment.

a bad moment that he, in all his glory, turned into a good one. the day you two first met.

oh, clever boy. he saved you.

though you must say, oikawa tooru, you’re very much mistaken.

you are the beautiful stranger.

a tear runs down your cheek, a little warmer than you could’ve expected.

one turns into two, slipping more and more. eventually, you’re standing over the canal, hand in hand with oikawa tooru, sobbing quietly as the water runs peacefully below the both of you.

[annabethy]

42 ;)

#42 I’m going to save you from the terrible date you’re having,, percabeth

Annabeth’s sure her face looks incredibly pained right now as she stares her date in the eyes. She’s been on quite a few dates before. She thought she'd seen rock bottom by now, but no. This was rock bottom. Every two seconds her date was finding ways to insult her, and she was about one more comment from snapping.

“So, why did you decide to become an architect?” Luke asks. He leans forwards onto his elbows, and for once he looks genuinely interested by her answer. She truly doesn’t want to answer, but she knows that she’s stuck here for at least another hour if she doesn’t want to stoop to his level, so she doesn’t see any option other than to answer.

“I’ve just always been so interested by it,” Annabeth says, leaning forwards to match his stance. She smiles hesitantly when his eyes trail down the front v of her dress she had mistakenly decided to wear. She pauses for a few seconds, thinking maybe he’d have the decency to look away, but his eyes stay glued to her chest, prompting her to sit back up and pretend to scratch her neck just to block his view. “Ever since I was a little girl, I just wanted to be an architect, I guess.”

Luke clears his throat. “I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to do that though.”

“Uh—what?”

“Architecture is so… boring. Not only is it boring, but it’s for people that are good with math and have a big future ahead of them, and I just don’t get those vibes from you.”

Annabeth scoffs in his face.

“We’re both looking for something serious—“

“Never said that.”

“—so I’m going to be straight to the point. I want my wife to be someone there for me. I’ve a busy man, and I’m going to need your help so I can’t have you working your own job.”

Annabeth honestly didn’t think people like this actually existed. She’s met some despicable guys before; she was practically a magnet for them. But Luke had seemed like such a generous person, and she somehow thought that today would be enjoyable. She has never been more wrong.

“So what do you think?”

“I think…no?”

Luke furrows his eyebrows. “No?”

“Yeah, no.” She blinks at him, and she can tell that he expects a further explanation. She decides not to give him one.

“No one’s ever said no to me before.”

“Shocker.”

“What did I do wrong? It’s worked on a million girls before you.”

“Wow. A million. You sure know how to pick em.”

He stutters. “I just meant that girls love the idea of not having to work. You all want an easy life, and I’m offering you that.”

“I’m quite sure that no one wants that.”

“It’s a kind agreement.”

“It’s insulting is what it is,” Annabeth says. There’s a touch of humor in her voice because this could not actually be happening.

“I’ll make you an offer because I know that we both want this to work.”

Annabeth snorts.

“You can have a part time job.”

Annabeth rolls her eyes and straightens in her chair, ready to start scolding him loudly, not caring who hears, but before she gets the chance to, someone’s hand is settling onto her shoulder and squeezing. She jumps slightly, tilting her head back to see the person now standing directly behind her, and the face she recognizes but can’t quite pinpoint.

“Hey,” the guy says to Annabeth, looking as though he’s known her his whole life. “Sorry to interrupt but I just wanted to know what time you’d be home tonight.”

Annabeth blinks, her brain taking a minute to catch up with his words. “What time I’ll be home?”

Luke raises an eyebrow in what he thinks is a threatening manner. “I was in the middle of something here.”

“I just wanted to talk to my wife really quick,” the guy says, and Annabeth is sent reeling.

“Wife?” Luke asks weakly.

“Wife,” he repeats surely, smiling widely. He turns to Annabeth. “Also, dear, will you be bringing him home with you? Has he agreed?”

She’s about to open her mouth and state her confusion, but then the guy is winking at her when Luke glances away, and she suddenly gets his drift. “He’s getting there.”

Luke tilts his head like a lost puppy. “Getting where? I’m not getting anywhere with both of you.”

“Huh?” Annabeth pouts. “You said that you were serious about this though.”

“About what?” Luke looks thoroughly scared to hear the answer. Annabeth isn’t entirely sure of the answer herself so she looks to the guy with his hand still on her shoulder for guidance.

The guy clears his throat. “Threesome.”

To his credit, Annabeth thinks he looks quite disgusted with his own words.

“What the fuck?” Luke asks. He’s beginning to lean back in his chair, a precarious position.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you!” Annabeth says brightly. She pats the guy’s hand. “I wasn’t looking for a partner — I was looking for someone willing to help my husband and I. I love him, but after five years, it gets pretty boring if you know what I mean.”

The guy gasps. “We are not boring!”

“Then why are we looking for a threesome?” Annabeth challenges.

“Adventure?”

“No.” She turns to Luke. “You in or out?”

“Literally,” Percy adds.

Luke’s eyes go wide as he looks between her and the guy. He appears to be contemplating his existence, and Annabeth is very proud of the image her and this stranger have created. “Are you serious?”

Annabeth nods expectantly.

“Yeah, I don’t think this is going to work,” he says. He wastes no time before he’s gathering his stuff and practically running out, not even glancing over his shoulder to wave goodbye. Annabeth watches him go, surprised that it had actually worked. The two of them hadn’t exactly given an Oscar worthy performance.

The guy’s eyes trail after Luke until he’s out the door, and then he’s sliding down into the empty seat across from her a few moments later. Annabeth smirks as they stare at each other until he breaks the silence.

“So,” he starts, “you looked like you were getting stuck there. Thought you could use some help.”

She laughs. “And that’s what you thought of?”

“I didn’t really think about it before I set the plan in motion.”

“You should probably start thinking things through before you actually end up in a threesome…” She trails off in a silent question of his name.

“My own wife doesn’t even know my name,” he says, laughing and holding a hand out over the table. “I’m Percy.”

“Annabeth,” she returns. For the first time, she takes a moment to really look at him. Her breath catches slightly on his eyes that were a sparkling green. The crooked smile he was giving her made his face seem brighter in the dim lighting of the restaurant, and the quick flick of his eyes made her flush with heat.

“So, Annabeth, was I correct in assuming he was the devil reincarnate?”

“Painfully so.”

Percy chuckles, lacing his hands together in front of him and resting his chin on them. When he speaks, it’s gentle, for just the two of them. “Oh god. What did he say?”

“He wanted me to stay home and take care of his babies, or some shit.”

“Men,” he says, disgusted.

“You’re one to talk.”

“Yeah, but I like to think I’m different.”

“Oh yeah? How so?”

“Well, for starters, it seems that I’m the one on a date with you.”

“Is that what this is?”

“You tell me.” His eyes are dark but calm. She can tell that he won’t get upset if she rejects him. The way he composed himself was already a big contrast from the way Luke did. He kept his eyes on her face and his hands away from her. He gave her space — she was the one in control, and it was for her to decide what she wants to do.

“I couldn’t say,” she settles for, choosing to push him further. To see how he reacts. “You’re sitting in the middle of a fancy restaurant with me, but why are you here in the first place? Where’s your date?”

“Would you believe me if I said that I work here?”

She looks him up and down. He’s not dressed badly, but it’s by no means work attire. “Not a chance.”

“Well, I do. Kinda.” Percy chews on his lower lip. “I don’t work here, but I’m here all the time. It’s sort of my mom’s restaurant?”

“Wow,” Annabeth says, impressed. “A man who can cook.”

“I’m better with pastries, but I get by.” Percy chuckles. “But no, there’s no other girls in the picture.”

She notices that the smile hasn’t left Percy’s face for one second, and she has to admit she’s never been this intrigued by someone she’s just met before. Something in the back of her head tells her to use her common sense, but she’s been doing that all her life and it still ended with her on a date with Luke. She figures it couldn’t hurt to live a little for once.

“I don’t know how to cook,” she warns, “or pick my men, apparently.”

“It’s your lucky day! I can teach you how to cook, and this is, of course, for you to decide, but I think I’d be an awesome choice of yours.”

Her stomach flutters. “You might just have to prove it, then.”

“I can do just that,” he promises.

“So when’s this first date, then?”

“Did we not settle that this was an impromptu date?”

“You seem desperate.”

“You’re cute,” is all he says.

“I don’t think we want to start something where Luke was first,” she explains, fighting back the blush she can feel creeping up her neck. She grins at his appalled expression.

“You’re so right.”

“How about you teach me to cook for our first date?”

Percy brightens. “Now that I can do.”

And so she grabs her stuff, and he grabs his. He ends up dismissing her check, and when she tries to protest and put some cash down, he takes her hand in his and laces their fingers together instead. He had a gleam in his eyes, and Annabeth would be lying if she said she wasn’t excited.

They spend hours together in the kitchen, cooking everything Percy could think of. She almost burns his apartment down a few times, but he takes it in stride. The cookies come out warm and gooey, and it might be the best thing she’s ever made. By the time it reaches midnight, Annabeth is covered head to toe in flour and his lips are against hers. She doesn’t mind one bit.

[tiny-stack-of-knights]

AH SO I FINALLY FINISHED AN OFFICIAL REF FOR MY META KNIGHT GIJINKA AND? Not gonna lie I’m pretty happy with his design and stuff (:

I HAVE. SO MANY NOTES

So uh feel free to read them below the cut 😳

warning it’s a LOT

OKAY HERE WE GO

for starters, these are specific to my gijinka, buuuuut most of them also fit my general interpretation of him

- Meta Knight is not his actual name. It’s just the title he gave himself to sound cool.

- As such, he’s not technically a knight, just in spirit. A meta knight, if you will (:

- He takes his image very seriously. It used to be so bad that he would take literally everything seriously, and had a reputation for sucking all of the life and fun out of everything and anything. But, he’s softened up a lot since he came to dreamland. He’s actually a pretty fun guy nowadays (and maybe just a little chaotic, or, rather, enthusiastic when excited...)

- Because of his once dreadfully serious nature, his face is stone cold and “dead eyed”. Once he broke himself of his old habits and lightened up, he became humiliated by how stone faced he is, and it’s one of the many reasons he wears his mask.

- Speaking of his mask! He is sensitive to light, and his mask helps tone it down for him. He can go without it, but if he’s in a well lit area for awhile, he will start to get a migraine.

- As such, he has pretty good night vision.

- Yes...he is very bat like. That’s for a reason! My hc for my puffball gijinkas is that they have a lot of traits similar to their wing type. For instance, since Galacta has bird wings, they have some bird like features like sharp vision, soft feathers strewn about their hair, and squawking when startled.

- Yes, this implies that Meta makes cute bat-like trills and squeaks......(he also purrs. puffs purr, because they are basically just round cats)

- He is very kind and caring beneath his persona, which has become more and more evident. He is also incredibly protective of those close to him. He secretly worries he will lose them, and as such, he does everything to keep them around.

- Despite his agility, he can be quite clumsy at times. This has led to some...embarrassing injuries.

- He’s tiny! 5’0 with heels and 4’10 without them, but since he almost always wears them, he will tell people he is around 5’0 (but almost 5’1!)

- As a knight of sorts, he has a strong sense of chivalry (which is basically canon). It is hard for him to accept any sort of kindness, since he feels he owes something in return. He always makes sure to express his gratitude however he can.

- However, he is really bad at emotions and expressing himself. He suppressed most of them early on when he was painfully serious, and as he’s lightened up, he’s had to deal with actual emotions.

- He uses art and poetry to cope with this and express his emotions. He never lets anyone see it though.

- He also draws cute things. He loves cute things, but is still hesitant to let others know this, as he worries it will

- a) damage his reputation and

- b) confirm to him he is, very much, a rather cute little puffball

- There are many (often very specific) things he is fascinated by, and can talk on for hours on end. However, his more personal and less “serious” interests he rarely talks about to anyone he isn’t close with, and if they’re brought up in public, he often gets very flustered. (yes, he’s shy but he’ll never call it that)

- He loves sweets and has a passion for baking. He’s quite good at it, but not at cooking actual meals.

- Despite Kirby (and the meta-knights) thinking of him as their dad, he is absolutely horrid with children. Does not know how to deal with them. He gets very flustered (and often frustrated) if he ever has to watch them. Since he doesn’t really know how to deal with them, he kinda just treats them as he would anyone else. Because of his caring and protective nature, many still consider him dad-like.

- Oh yeah, Kirby is the exception to this since he is (usually) such a wonderful little dude. If left alone with the other puff, he can act like a semi-competent father. It is very rare that this actually happens though.

Okay, time for some darker headcanons, including a lot of post Mecha Knight stuff (‘:

Oh yeah I have a Mecha Knight gijinka too 😳

-He suffers from depression. This was one of the main reasons he used to be so dreadfully serious, and why he’s so used to suppressing his emotions. He used to use his knightly persona as a not-very-healthy way of coping.

-As a bit of a lighter note, after many years of care and support from his friends, he’s seriously lightened up.

-However, he still has days when it surfaces, and it often takes the whole day to get him back to a more functional state. Yes, even Meta Knight has to take mental health days sometimes (:

-He has a serious issue with abandonment. He worries nobody could actually care about him, and frets constantly that he will lose the people close to him. This stems back to when he got his wings, as many saw them as “demonic” and as a “bad omen”

-Because of this, he has a really low self esteem, which, again, is why he used to live through his knight persona primarily, and was so ashamed of his actual self.

-The Mecha Knight incident left him with serious mental scars, giving him minor ptsd through nightmares and panic attacks when strongly reminded of the incident.

-It also left him with a robotic eye and arm.

-During his fight with Haltmann Works, his non-gauntlet arm was severely injured. Instead of just trying to fix it, Susie gave him a shiny new robot arm. It was originally Haltmann red and black, but he repainted it and, with some help from his crew, slightly modified it to more of his style.

-He also had an eye replaced in order to be compatible with the “eye” that swerves around the mask. He’s been too scared to try rewiring or recoloring it.

-The Mecha Knight incident really set him back from all the progress he made.

-During the first few months post Mecha Knight, he hid himself, only showing up when needed. He became paranoid of him hurting his friends without knowing it, which furthered his isolation.

-Much like how he managed to learn to cope better with his depression, it took him a lot of time and help to get him back to where he used to be.

-And, to end this little segment on a happier note, as of the time of Kirby Fighters 2, he’s much happier than he’s ever been. He’s made a lot of progress, is much more open with others, and much more accepting of his soft side (:

I could honestly go on and on, I have SO MANY notes that haven’t made it into this post, including his backstory, his relationship with the other characters, and a few other miscellaneous details (I even gave him a more...normal name that he never uses cause its cute and why not). If anyone’s ever interested in more though, feel free to ask me, I do have anon ask on after all, and boy do I have a lot to say (:

God, maybe I put a little too much thought and psychoanalysis (and maybe just maybe a liittllleee too much projection) into my interpretations but? hey, I had fun with it

If you actually read all of this bullshit, holy shit thank you and I hope you had fun too (:

[kanyeweth]

#mintopoly-explainer

My co-creator hotel has mentioned Mintopoly! a lot (see here, and here for starters) in the short while this blog has been a thing, so I wrote a bit of an explainer on it. 

Mintopoly! is a crypto-themed online NFT game akin to idle games of old, like Cookie Clicker and A Dark Room, wherein you invest virtual Mintopoly! money into crypto world stuff (rigs, nodes, oracles, bots) to make more Mintopoly! money to invest into more crypto stuff (and so on) until you win (or get pretty close, anyway). The game takes place over rounds of 30,000 "blocks"— increments of 15 seconds — and the player with the highest amount Mintopoly! Money (₼) wins the round. Round winners will typically receive one of many types of Mintopoly! cards via airdrop, each of which provides valuable bonuses to your in-game investments, like a 10% bonus to one investment's production, or a 6% discount to the cost of another. Those cards can be bought, sold, traded, burned, or whatever else because they're NFTs and you own them and you can do whatever the hell you want with them because they're NFTs and you own them and you can do whatever the hell you want with them because they’re NFTs and and and. 

Also, the top 200 scoring players at the end of the round get a specific-to-their-final-spot amount of the in-game MM token, also via airdrop.

So what's the draw? Fundamentally, it's fun to compete, and even more fun to win. Even further than that, there are plans to let you use your MM winnings to craft/mint Mintopoly! cards. 

Even further than that, the game itself is... kind of addicting? It's got a Formula One-esque gameplay cycle to it, with ruthless optimization and maximum efficiency being the keys to success. It's a game of equilibrium and opportunity cost; misjudging when to stop buying Mining Rigs and move onto Validator Nodes, for example, could cost you an early-game lead. Buying Decentralized Exchanges until the marginal ROI is too low will put you behind other players in the mid-game. And, as I've so painfully learned, you can throw away an easy top-20 finish by hard forking too early (and/or too late).

We've all heard the buzz about how NFTs are going to be huge for gaming, but what exactly is the endpoint of their application? Well, let me tell you — if I could have sold my League of Legends and Fortnite skins safely and for real money after growing out of those games, I'd have done it in a second, but locked behind/within a centralized system, I never actually owned any of the in-game assets I paid for. NFTs offer a way out of that mud and into real ownership of digital assets, a market for which has been bubbling for years just waiting to be enabled. I mean, gold farmers for games like Ultima Online and WoW have been a thing for 20+ years. Venezuelan RuneScape players generated multiple times their country's average annual income from selling accounts during economic crisis (and had such a profound effect on the game's economy that when Venezuela suffered a nationwide electrical blackouts, RuneScape's trading market underwent a small crisis due to the lack of supply of in-game items). NFT games like Axie Infinity are just now realizing the potential for multi-million dollar virtual economies that have existed in games like EVE Online for years. All this demand has been pent up, hindered by market friction and terms of service regulations, but NFT and cryptocurrency tech might now provide a path to salvation.

Back to Mintopoly! All in all, we like to think it's one of many great first steps towards reaching the full potential of NFT technology within the video game space. Tokenizing digital assets with an open standard and allowing them to be traded easily and trustlessly blows the top off of a gigantic underground economy that's been in the shadows for decades. 

We await eagerly to see what the industry borne by these early forefathers has in store for gaming worldwide. 

— rrn

[empty-dream]

Yuuji is actually my most favorite JJK character and also one of my fav shonen protagonists. (Long babbling. Huge manga spoiler)

I think one of the charming points in JJK is that there is nothing actually new regarding plot points or characterizations, but they are slightly tweaked and played in an interesting way here and there. I could name a lot, but for starters, let’s begin with Yuuji himself.

Yuuji is basically your everyday shonen protagonist: Not straight-up pretty, kind-hearted, super friendly, has a specific girl type, rather dumb but genius at the physical stuff, usually rowdy, kinda underdog, and whose history is deliberately never talked about until faaaar later. But something about him and the nature of the series makes him rather different compared to other series’ main characters. First off, his goal. The stereotypical goals of popular shonen protagonists are usually to be the best at what they do, to eradicate whatever evil they face, or both. Sometimes the ambition may have underlying motifs such as wanting to be acknowledged or not being lonely, sometimes it does not. Yuuji, however, does not have that kind of wish.

His grandpa tells him to help people so he won't die alone before passing away. Borrowed ideal or not, for Yuuji that's already a solid goal. The goal itself is soon questioned as early as chapter 3 by Principal Yaga, and from there on the quest of helping people gets even more complicated. And since Yuuji's got noose on his neck, the goal becomes his stool to stay sane and move forward.

He admits that he is prone to be lonely. It's not some grand ambition. Yes, he’s the only one who can do it - become both Sukuna’s host and Jujutsu sorcerer - , and yes, if he doesn’t do it people will die. But at the core he moves because of the plain fear, of being alone and of guilt when he's all that's left. And this is established even before he swallows Sukuna's finger and gets pulled in jujutsu world, when he is still just a normal person. Those feelings, in fact, are why he ends up doing it and kickstarting the entire story.

So in a way you can speculate that while he obviously does think helping people is right and good, it's not that he finds helping people in itself as his #1 goal. Rather, it is a means to achieve his true goal: Not being alone in his death. His end goal is the way of which he will die, or in short, his death. I don't think the majority of people that age, or any age in fact, would answer that as their goal. The contrast of his sunny-dumb disposition and his rather sad wish really catches my eyes.

And the entire thing also becomes really interesting when Yuuji, who values people over everything, has to face Mahito, who disregards people as things. Then at the end of their fight in Shibuya, it is where Yuuji turning truly chilling. (It’s my favorite scene and panels btw, that’s stone cold. After Junpei, Nanami, Nobara and the countless humans that Mahito has cruelly transfigured and toyed with, there is no more reason or doubt needed. Yuuji accepts that what he’s doing is probably meaningless now. But whatever, killing Mahito is already as given as eating when hungry. Second factor is the relationship between the host and the demonic thing inside. In many typical shonen stories, the relationship tends to be bearable or even amicable in the end. Yuuji and Sukuna's, however, is played horrifically realistic. As mentioned, Yuuji is your generic naive guy. And Sukuna, the demon inside him, is an ancient, all-powerful, manipulative, ruthless demonic king. It’s made clear that Sukuna does not give a shit about Yuuji and will seize any and every opportunity to gain control and bring forth catastrophes. I knew that compared to more standard monster-inside-you in shonen manga, their case is bad. But holy shit it is THAT bad. Every time Sukuna fights, he enjoys causing destructions. Especially in Shibuya arc, where the fights are played painfully realistic with all the normal bystanders getting killed here and there and the whole district razed. I was like "God what will happen if Yuuji wakes up and sees this? He's not gonna be able to live with himself after this."

Which is exactly what happens. And get this, Sukuna specifically wants Yuuji to see the ruins, knowing full well his host would fall into despair. Earlier, Yuuji said he’d feel guilty for people whom Sukuna killed if he hadn’t been there to save them instead. Look at what happens. I cried when Yuuji just curled up all alone and wished for himself and himself only to die. This, when all he wants is to not die alone.

Third is the ‘memories that do not exist.’ Very sexy of Akutami to display Todo having made-up memories of him and Yuuji being brothers as a gag, then make it happen again with Choso but this time revealing it as a real issue: That those are literally made-up memories, implanted by something related to Yuuji, if not it being his own power. Yuuji, a not very brainy but very physically-inclined fighter, a cheerful guy who wishes to die surrounded by beloved ones, has something to do with inserting himself on people's memories. This is like if Naruto has the power of Bleach's Tsukishima. There is something very intriguing, and imo a bit disturbing, about that mixture. Fourth, by the way, why does Sukuna look like Yuuji, extra appendages notwithstanding? Is it simply because that's his host's face, or does his own face actually look like that by default? If it's the latter, doesn't that mean there is something deeper about their relation? Why is Yuuji of all people able to host Sukuna? And remember when Yuuji's grandpa wants to talk about Yuuji's parents before he dies? Who and where are his parents, anyway? How did they give birth to a guy who is so physically gifted he can actually run like a car without magic? And in the first place why does Yuuji's grandpa die alone? Who really are the Itadoris? Akutami-sensei opEN UP I HAVE QUESTIONS. Tl;Dr So yeah, it's not that Yuuji's so inherently different from other shonen protagonists, or he stands out like a sore thumb. It's just that the few existing differences do make him somewhat off compared to everyone else. And the more I think about it, the more I have questions about Yuuji, because as of this writing (Shibuya arc aftermath, Okkotsu appointed as Yuuji’s executioner), not much is known about him. But in contrast to the looming mysteries and the gloomy wish, the guy himself is naturally a cheerful, goofy and a very good person. The juxtaposition is just ... *chef kiss while crying*

[justmenoworries]

Fate: The Winx Saga - How Not To Reboot A Beloved Franchise

Okay, I think I speak for everyone here when I say: We saw this coming.

We saw this coming as soon as that godawful trailer dropped on youtube. But because I hate myself and because I wanted to give this pile of shit a chance, I watched it.

All of it.

It sucked and I won’t do it again.

The End.

....

Nah, I’m kidding.

Here’s why Fate: The Winx Saga sucked ass.

(Spoilers under the cut! Pfft, like anyone cares.)

The Story:

I suppose now you’ll expect me to tell you that F:TWS was a generic, boring slog-fest.

That it offered the most clichéd take on a Chosen One-story since Eragon and that it’s half-assed attempts to be scary through bringing in a zombie apocalypse made it even more painfully obvious just how hard the story was trying to be edgy and ‘’’’���’mature’’’’’’’’.

And, yeah, that’s pretty much how it went.

...Oh, I’m sorry, did you expect something fresh and surprising?

So did I when I watched this garbage.

The title says Winx, but honestly the story is more about Bloom than anyone else. At least they were faithful to the source material in one aspect, am I right fellow Winx-fans?

I hope you like Alfea, because you won’t be spending time anywhere else! Gone are the dozen colorful, unique worlds with their own eco-systems and culture.

Now we have The Otherworld, which is just earth, but with magic.

Oh yeah, and remember how each magic and non-magic users had their own, specialized schools to got to?

Cloud Tower, Alfea, Red Fountain?

Yeah, that’s all Alfea now.

Remember how Winx Club juggled great, charismatic villains and everyday teenage-drama in a way that made both seem interesting and neither obnoxious?

Fate fails miserably at that.

The subplot about the zombies- Oh, sorry, The Burned Ones ™  slowly invading Alfea couldn’t be more dry and uninteresting if it tried. You have hints of political intrigue in the background with the Solarians scheming and taking over in the end, but trust me when I say: You won’t care.

And since the character are either miserable, unlikable or both, you also won’t care about the teenage drama.

Because it’s every single teenage drama plot-line you’ve already seen in edgy reboots like Riverdale, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, etc.

To add insult to injury, season 1 ends with the villains and antagonists taking over Alfea with Solaria’s help, as if anyone would be baited into a season 2 after you just dragged us through a worse version of The Walking Dead.

I would say this is what you watch to lull you to sleep, but all the incessant whining and belly-aching wouldn’t let you.

And because this is the ‘‘‘‘‘‘mature’‘‘‘‘‘ reboot, there will be no transformations and no bright colors. Just some nice effects for magic and that’s it.

Because, you know.

No one watched Winx Club for those, am I right? /s

And because in modern, edgy reboots women can never just be friends, the Winx Club start out hating each other, until suddenly they’re the best of friends in episode 4, Stella included.

Cool, huh?

The Characters:

I’ll get straight to the point: The main cast is horrible.

Not acting-wise, the actors are doing the best they can with the script, but the way they’re written...

God, the way they’re written.

For starters, Stella is a Karen now. In the very first episode she attempts to get Bloom killed, then runs away to cry into Sky’s shoulder rather than apologize.

Flora was replaced by a white character named Terra, who the writers probably thought would be received well solely because she’s awkward and makes a lot of Strawman-Feminist statements.

Techna got straight-up written out.

Musa was white-washed and is a Mind Fairy instead of a Music Fairy now, because her being the Fairy of Music wasn’t ‘‘‘‘mature’‘‘‘ enough for this reboot.

Bloom is a whiny, spoiled brat who is willing to endanger absolutely everyone around her to get what she wants. And in the end, the plot rewards her for it.

Aisha is the only Winx Club-member who remains likeable, but she’s firmly planted in the supporting character-role.

Most of the Specialists got written out too. No Timmy, no Helia, no Nabu, no Brandon.

Sky is still there, but he serves mainly as a boy toy for Stella and Bloom to fight over, because that needed to be a thing, I guess.

Riven was changed from Jerk with a Heart of Gold who learns to be better to just a one-note jerk who never changes and never learns. He’s also not with Musa in this story. Even though their romance was by far the most engaging one in the original series, aside from maybe Aisha and Nabu.

We get a new character named Dane, but he’s just there to be either a bully-victim or a side-character for others to take advantage of. Did I mention he’s the only black guy in the main cast? Yeah. There’s also this really asinine running gag that he might be gay, to tease a possible relationship with Riven, but nothing ever comes off it.

The teacher-characters are all pretty much the same: Duty-driven, want to protect the ones under their care, but end up alienating them by not being entirely honest with them because they think their students aren’t ready for The Truth, blah blah blah, moving on.

The villains don’t fare much better.

The Trix got fused into one single character named Beatrix (haha, get it?) and she’s just... The Worst. And not in a  good way. She’s obviously supposed to be the Charming Bad Girl-type but you’re more likely to laugh your ass off every time she opens her mouth than be intrigued. Whoever wrote her dialogue clearly has no idea how teenagers talk. She hooks up with Riven and Dane for no reason in particular and it’s heavily implied these three are going to be the new Trix. Which is...no. Just no.

The headmistress’ secretary gets killed off in the third episode and doesn’t do much in the first two, so I have nothing to say about him.

Rosalind is a worse, female Darth Sidious who is trying so hard to get Bloom to join the Dark Side and I guarantee you, you will not care. The story also tries to present her as something of a well-intentioned extremist, but forgets to actually let her have a point in her murders and genocides.

Hey, remember when Winx Club characters were different and unique?

The writers of this reboot clearly don’t.

The Aesthetic:

Hey kids!

You know what’s better than bright colors and nice, comforting palettes?

Slapping a dull grey filter on everything and calling it a day!

If I had to list all the reasons why Fate’s lack of style is so heartbreaking and disappointing, we’d be here all day.

So I’m just gonna show you a few screenshots from both the original series and the reboot and let that speak for itself.

The Original:

The Reboot:

Honestly, what do I even need to say?

The reboot sucked out everything that made Winx Club Winx Club and replaced it with “YA-novel palette #17247845453″.

Thanks, I hate it.

In Conclusion:

Fate: The Winx Saga could have been a new take on Winx Club’s story.

Maybe even introduced new concepts and characters tat could have been just as iconic as the original ones.

It chose to be every reboot ever instead, made everything grimdark and fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of “Gray Morality”.

Do yourself a favor and re-watch the original instead.

It’ll be a much better use of your time.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: The Rose and the Thorn: Chapter 9 (Mafia AU)

Summary: While Rus is off meeting the other employees of Edge's business, Blue has his own business to attend to.

Notes: Oh, how to warn for this. Red is Not a Nice Man, no, and Blue is in way over his pretty little head. Hints of coercive sex? Nothing Mature-rated in this chapter, though.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Cherryberry, Mafia AU, Flower Shop AU, Violence, First Meetings

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

~~*~~

Read on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

As much as it pained him to watch his brother go, when Papy turned around to look at him Blue waved him impatiently on, painfully ignoring how much that strangely vulnerable glance reminded him of the long-ago first day he’d shooed his little brother into the small schoolhouse back in Snowdin.

What he really wanted was to scoop Papy up like he was still that small child and run, to carry him away from all this. Whatever that chat last night with the younger Fell was about, it confirmed his suspicions that his little brother was in far deeper than he’d hoped, and for the moment, all Blue could do was hope Papy was treading water.

Across the table, Red was watching him and despite that ever-present grin, his expression was unreadable as a blank page. Blue made a show of wiping his face with his napkin and pushing his plate aside. What little he’d eaten was churning uneasily as it incorporated with his magic until nausea threatened. Resolutely, Blue swallowed it down. He’d agreed to this, now he needed to see it through to the end.

“you done?” Red asked with mocking solicitousness.

“Yes,” Blue said. He let his starry eye lights glimmer, his own mocking buried beneath honeyed sweetness as he said, “Thank you so much for the breakfast. It was certainly—” He paused only briefly, then added, “generous of you.”

That razor grin widened, sharp enough to cut through bone, and Blue suspected his true emotions weren’t as buried as he’d hope. “oh, honey,” Red chuckled, “we ain’t even got to generous yet.” He stood up, groaning through a joint-cracking stretch and scratched lewdly at the back of his pelvis. “okay, baby blue, let’s go.”

Red led the way to the door and held it open, bowing exaggeratedly, “after you.”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” Blue protested, hanging back.

Another sharp grin, but the humor crumbled around it, those marrow-red eye lights going hard, “uh huh. go through the fucking door.”

Blue dropped his gaze and went. One of the Dogs who seemed to proliferate this place was waiting and he led the way, Blue nearly trotting along behind him to keep up with Red sauntering along behind him, his bulk filling in any space to retreat. Blue was well accustomed to being the shortest adult person in a room, but never had he felt so small, surrounded by all these Dogs and the sheer presence of Red, of these endless hallways closing in claustrophobically around him. He kept his gaze towards the floor, following the Dog’s flowing tail more than his stride.

The room he was led to was lit with hanging purple lights and filled with short tables topped with shallow plant trays. The rich smell of soil was familiar and for the first time in some while it did nothing to settle Blue’s anxiety, actually increased it. He shivered, feeling sweat breaking out beneath his unwanted new shirt as he covered his mouth briefly with his hand as nausea threatened again.

Red didn’t seem to notice his reluctance. He looked at the room with satisfaction, taking a puff off his smoldering cigar as he said, “not bad for a starter set. got everything you asked for.” He slanted a narrow look at Blue and it was far more appraising than it had been of the planting tables. “now. show me what you got.”

“You shouldn’t smoke in here,” Blue said thinly. “It’s bad for the plants.”

“always something with you, isn’t it, honey,” Red drawled. But he exaggeratedly tamped out his cigar on the bottom of his shoe and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

Blue didn’t dare look at him again, afraid it might come off as gloating. Instead, he stepped further inside, rolling up his sleeves as he inspected the offerings. The tools were all new, stainless steel reflecting violet light, and there was a pair of flower-patterned gloves along with them. Blue slipped them on, wondering sourly if there was a joke in that choice or if it was simply the first gloves whoever purchased all this found.

Squeezing a handful of soil into a moist ball confirmed it was the correct ratio of sand, silt, and clay, with a healthy dollop of manure that he could smell. Exactly what he needed; he could urge the plants to grow but that growth still needed nutrients and sunshine, or in this case grow lights. Blue took a moment to dig an even trench from one end of the tray to the other. Then he took a shaky breath as he chose the last needed element.

The seeds were his own, retrieved from the fire safe secreted away in his room. Not that he expected anyone to break into their home in search of them, but they were invaluable, irreplaceable. He couldn’t chance them being lost.

He poured out a small handful of precious seeds and sprinkled them into the rich soil, carefully covering them.

There was only one step left. Blue held a hand over the soil and closed his eyes, calling up his magic. Urging plants to grow was like a dance and Blue was leading, pulling that growth gently in the direction it needed to go, urging and coaxing those curling green buds through the soil, guiding as they greedily sought out the light above them even as their roots soaked up the delicious nutrients beneath. All down the row the narrow green stems broadened, forking into leaves as the bud formed and swelled, that glimmer of gold bursting out into the familiar pattern of five silky petals.

Blue closed his fist and broke the connection before he pushed them too far into withering, stepping back and panting out, “There.”

The entire tray was filled to overflowing with golden flowers, the color muted beneath the grow lights. It hardly mattered, it wasn’t for their appearance that Blue grew them and as Red stepped forward to poke at one with a broad, cracked finger, his eye lights gleamed greedily.

“not bad, baby blue,” he breathed out, “you got some real talent, dontcha.”

“So I’ve been told,” Blue muttered. He stripped off the gloves and pulled out his handkerchief, dabbing away the sweat dotting his forehead. “What are you planning on doing with them?”

“am i lettin’ you in on all my secrets now, honey,” Red asked, amused. He brushed a hand over the flower heads, sending them bobbling. “can’t imagine why you haven’t been growin’ ‘em all along. hell, even a little weed woulda gotten ya more capital than your pretty posies.”

“Whether or not I wanted to, I couldn’t,” Blue said shortly. “Cannabis isn’t legal for Monsters to grow.” Not that he suspected that would even slow someone like the Fell brothers down, but Blue had his own standards of business, ones that he was currently watching burn away with depressing haste. “Besides, these aren’t a drug, the euphoria is very temporary.”

Red snorted loudly. “all euphoria’s temporary, ’s the best thing about it. see, humies got this thing ‘bout not trusting drugs. but somethin’ homegrown like this? they’ll be all over it, honey, and they’ll bring the bills to pay for it, too, you watch.”

“You really think Humans will like tea better than the flowers?” Blue said doubtfully. Even for most Monsters, Golden Flower tea was something of an acquired taste. Certainly it brought on a sort of blissful relaxation, made all the more potent by Blue’s growing technique, but it was very limited. Even at the finest quality, the faint rush hardly lasted an hour.

“i know so.” Red reached out and tapped Blue’s nasal ridge with one finger, the sharpened tip prickling faintly against the bone. “all it needs ’s a market and that’s my job, honey. all you gotta to do is grow it.”

As if it was that simple. “If I spend all my time growing golden flowers, I won’t have time for my garden.”

“don’t you go worrying about that,” Red said dismissively. He started to walk away, out of the room, as if all this were signed and settled, leaving Blue behind, to what, fill each of these trays and trust it would all work out? Not likely.

“Our deal was you help me keep my shop,” Blue raised his voice, let it echo through the room, “You promised!”

Red stopped, slowly turning back to face him and suddenly Blue wasn’t sure that was what he actually wanted. He strode back and he wasn’t that much taller than Blue, but so much broader, looming over him with invisible height as he said, evenly, “so i did.” There was a folding chair by the table and as Red sat, Blue could only blink at the abrupt reversal in size. “you think i ain’t keeping my side of the bargain, honey? wanna file a complaint?”

“No,” Blue said bluntly, ignoring the desperate flutter of his soul, “what I think is we need to renegotiate terms.”

Red looked at him with hooded sockets. “do ya now.”

“I do.” Blue folded his arms over his chest, the bright material of his shirt muted in the artificial light, shifting it to flowers of a different color. “Things seem to have changed since our first discussion. For example, what is your brother doing to mine?”

The question bothered him, Blue could see it, a banked flicker of heat in those burning eye lights. That sign was the only one, none of his irritation showed in the way he sank down in the chair, spreading his broad legs wide.

“tell ya what, baby blue. you come over here and blow me,” Red cupped a rough hand at the slight bulge of his crotch and squeezed. “and i’ll find out.”

Oh. Blue jerked his gaze away a little too late, his breath coming in panicked little blurts even as his eye lights slid betrayingly back. Not that he would even consider doing such a thing, he would never—but he hadn’t forgotten the brief satisfaction of wiping away that smirk back at the shop.

Did Red actually want…?

There was a faint gleam of sweat on the cracked dome of Red’s skull, the room was warm from the lights, true, but that didn’t explain the slight flush on his cheekbones, the rising glow coming from beneath the crude grip of his hand and those eye lights were so greedily eager, so…so…

Blue lifted his chin and said coolly, “I don’t barter with my body. If you want oral sex from me, you'll need to get it the old-fashioned way.”

There was a mere taste of gratification from the way Red blinked, startled. “how’s that?” Red asked. He sounded reluctantly intrigued.

“By going first.”

As he watched, that smirk shifted into a true grin, savagely amused. Red pounded a fist on the table and laughed. “honey, you are something.” Then he ran his tongue over his teeth, leaving them shining and wet as they tip dipped in between the jagged edges. “all right. come over and spread ‘em, and i’ll show ya what i got.”

For one moment of pure insanity, Blue was honestly tempted; it already felt like he was caught in the swirling vortex of a drain and it would be so, so much easier to simply dive it and give over to the pull. It was the memory of his brother’s face, his uncertain fear this morning that held him back and Blue clung to it, his last bastion of morality as he said, evenly, “No, I don’t think so.”

That smile fell away. “no?”

“You told me yourself you don’t like to mix business and pleasure,” Blue reminded him. “and our business isn’t yet concluded.”

“no, it ain’t, heh.” Red shook his head and stood. “get to work, i’ll stop back later, see how you’re doing. mebbe we’ll chat more about your deal, then.” Before Blue could move, his chin was pinched gently between two sharpened fingers, his face tilted up and Red’s eye lights roved over his face, studying him. It did not escape his notice that gaze lingered over his mouth. The smell of tobacco on Red’s breath was sharp, bitter as he murmured, “i’m gonna look forward to wreckin’ you, baby blue.”

Then he let go and turned away, his boots heavy on the floor as he headed towards the door. Blue waited until Red was nearly to it before he called, “We’ll have to see about that, won’t we.”

Blue only wished he were anywhere near as confident as he sounded.

His own raucous laughter followed Red out the door and when it closed, Blue sank to the floor, covering his face with his hands and wished again that he could simply grab his brother and run, get them both as far away from this place as possible.

Then he wiped his eyes impatiently and stood, reaching again for the gardening gloves. The simple option was no longer available. All he could do now was try to keep up and hope that he could get his brother out mostly unscathed.

If only he knew how scathed Papy already was. That was a question for tonight. For now, Blue had work to do and he started sowing seeds even as he struggled to ignore a different sort of growth, the aching worry take root in his very soul.

tbc

[1zashreena1]

No Shame 15

Pairing: M/F,  OC/Priest!Diego (OR NOT) Jimenez [Starz Power] AU IMAGINE

Rating: PORN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Warnings:  Come get this matrimonial dick, power imbalance (that has shifted), soft daddy, yes he carries her over the threshold (technically), astronomical blasphemy, Diego’s pornographic mouth, old timey woman related bullshit, consent issues, set some time before 1900 in what will be present day Mexico.

Summary:  Remember the Zorro TV shows? And the movie? And also Beauty and the Beast? It’s like that but with Diego dick.

Word Count: 4000

A/N:  I guess I’m just gonna keep writing until it stops??  I am an atheist so please keep that in mind as I unintentionally mangle Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. This was prompted by an ask, you know who you are >.>

Tag a friend! @girlpornparadise​ @nicke0115​ @fleurfatale89​ @mandoplease​ @heresathreebee​ @chensingmachinee​ @kid-from-new-zealand​​ @xxidontwikeitxx​​ @demoncatstone​​ @allalngthewtchtower​​ @dirtynerdy98​​ @lettherebrelight​​  @revolution-starter​

Diego is calling for you. He sounds fearful. Why is he worried? One big hand cradles the back of your head, while the other is behind your waist, and his warm presence is curved over your body. Your first instinct is to reach for him.

"I am here, little girl. I have you. Come back to me. Yes, good, ahh, there she is." Diego’s big brown eyes settle more into focus with every blink. His brow is furrowed in concern despite the brave front of his tone. Your fingertips land lightly on his cheeks.

"I like it when you have the beard here, too." You murmur idiotically. He is so warm and his hands are so very big, I missed those big hands. "And then, when you have the beard, I like when you put it on me."

Diego's left brow rises steadily with each mussitated word that rolls from your lips. You brush that imperious brow fondly. Diego clears his throat softly to advise, "Zera. We are at the church. With your father."

Church? Why are we-- Oh no. The clicking of a jaw snapping shut echoes in the large space. Slowly, you turn to your left, vision passing over the painted ceiling, to see your father grinning broadly down at your burning face.

"Perhaps your husband should take you home now, Mrs. Jimenez." Daddy waggles his brows cheekily and you lose the last shreds of your composure. Cackling madly, you hide in Diego's broad chest while everyone giggles, even the priest chuckles conspiratorially. 

"Eep!" You yelp as Diego picks you up and stands. Arms shoot up to wrap around his neck, you hang on tighter than is strictly necessary, while he stalks down the aisle to the doors. He smells so good, the deep musk settles your stomach, and you nuzzle into his throat to murmur, "I missed you so much."

Diego misses the last step of the church entrance. 

Rosa and her mother titter loudly at his obvious floundering under your attention. 

Dante prances happily at seeing the two of you together. Diego does not pause to set you down, but rather swings you around to boost you upward with hands around your waist. It is a slight scramble, but you manage to seat yourself far forward in the saddle. The pommel digs into your abdomen pleasantly and you moan softly with memories of the last time you rode in this manner. 

Diego mounts competently only to settle practically on top of your arse. His weight crushes you further onto the saddle and you wriggle about unhelpfully. One thick arm clamps around your middle to hold you down in the most distracting manner possible. You whimper. Loudly.

Diego leans in to brush his lips over your ear with his husky command, "Say goodbye, little girl. You will be seeing no one but your husband for the foreseeable future."

"B-bye!" You squeak in gleefully mortified anticipation. The adults are laughing and clapping and cheering uproariously, you cannot help the devious smile that splits your face. Diego turns Dante toward home and digs in heels to urge him up to a canter as quickly as is safely possible. 

You grip his solid arm securely, lean back, and laugh joyously.

---------------------------

Diego spends the entire ride attempting to molest your neck and compress you backwards into his own big body. You give up all pretense to make obscenely loud noises while leaning into it and groping every inch of him within reach. His muscled bulk feels even better than your memories, by the time home is in sight you are dripping wet and beyond ready.

Diego dismounts quickly, but he still has to rush to catch you because the time of waiting has expired. Putting you on the ground is not an option seeing how your legs snap shut around his waist like a vise. Diego stumbles to the front door as (you assume, because neither of you is looking) a stable hand takes Dante. 

Your teeth skim down his throat and you lick the hollow in the middle of his collarbone. Diego moans raggedly, slams the front door open, and trips inside. Grasping him tightly, you squeeze and palm those broad shoulders, his rippling chest, bulging biceps almost as big as your own thighs. The sheer hulking mass of him makes you whine desperately, "I have missed you. So. Much."

"I am going to make you come until the only word you know is my name." Diego promises. 

Oh. Ohhhh yes. You nod quickly, rolling your hips and panting. A hand in your hair pulls your head back securely and Diego dives into the open space to lave your neck like an animal. The sensation opens a pit of pure longing deep in your belly. 

"Mark me." You gasp, "Mark me up. Mark me so everyone knows I belong to you." Who is speaking right now?? You have never wanted to be labeled in such a way, to have your connection to someone else displayed so brazenly. The ring should be enough, but it is not. It will never be enough.

Diego growls in response, the feral noise peaks your nipples, and bites the juncture of shoulder and neck hard enough to make you cry out. He stomps down the hall while you cling to him, but the next bite breaks skin on his incisors and you tear up. It hurts so very good.

"Please, please, please, please, please, plea--" It takes some moments to realize that the wispy begging is you. Diego dumps you backward to the bed where you bounce once, it makes your stomach roil. His big hands are ripping off his own clothing and you watch, entranced, as layers are shed to the floor unceremoniously. The vision of his bare chest is driving you to madness when you suddenly remember that you wore no underclothes.

"Diego?" He snaps his head upward to look at you in immediate response to your sweetened tone. Having such command over a man like this is intoxicating. Your hands creep downward to bunch up your skirts, the retreating hemline revealing your stockinged legs. The petticoats clear your knees and you spread yourself wide to his attention. You know the moment your bare cunt is visible because Diego chokes.

"Z-zera. Dios mios, jodeme." The rough groan makes you clench down hungrily. Diego is on you so fast it makes you flinch, his long fingers sink into the soft flesh of your inner thighs viciously. Your own fingers card into his thick hair as your husband dips down to lick you sensually. 

"Aaaagh!" You scream outright. Your back bows, your toes curl, and the new heels drop to the floor unnoticed. The heat of Diego's tongue is scorching on your bundle of nerves, his beard sears your entrance, and tears roll back into your hair as you have your first completion. The contractions of your inner muscles are blinding in intensity, shaking your legs and fisting your hands.

"Mmmmmm. Perfect, wet, delicious, little girl." Diego mutters as he rises above you, licking his lips salaciously. He offers you his right hand, broad and thick, you could not refuse him if you wanted to, and curls you upright just far enough that you can see your own glistening center. Diego issues one simple command, "Watch."

You watch as his beringed left hand parts your folds to stroke over your entrance. You watch as he spreads you wide with firm petting. You watch as three long fingers sink deep until all you can see is his gleaming wedding band submerged in your arousal. Your sobbing whimper is painfully high pitched because he is stretching you so gloriously wide open in preparation for that spectacular cock.

"Little girl, watch your husband pleasure you." Diego growls. The pull of his retreat is very good, but the thrust back inside rolls your eyes back and hitches your breathing. Every sinful texture of his leather-callused digits pushes you ever closer to nirvana. Diego crooks his fingers to rub that magical spot on your inner wall and you keen. He presses deep with each pass, matching the speed of your rolling hips until he drives you into another round of ecstasy. 

"Diego!" Your bark is as shaky as your legs. You collapse onto your back to gasp for air. Your nipples ache and your stomach quivers, the need to be stuffed full of Diego is growing more urgent by the moment. "Please," you whisper, "Please, I need you."

"Still capable of speech, niñita? Then you are capable of more. Lie back. Now!" Diego bites out as you struggle to process his reply. That hand resumes filling you at a punishing pace, but the addition of a beard rubbing your overly sensitized button of pleasure makes you babble nonsensically. Diego purrs happily as he licks you, the wet sounds are obscene enough to induce a third round of convulsions. He draws it out until you push weakly at his head.

"Dieg. Diego. Please." Your voice is small and reedy. He stands over you until your eyes crack open, then he puts on a show of cleaning your juices from his extremity. Ridiculous. So, so ridiculously good, you lament your husband's beauty with a sigh.

"Strip. Now. Your body is mine and I will have it!" Diego hisses, eyes narrowing with hunger. Your mind breaks into jagged little feeble bits and you rush to comply. Hands clumsy with bliss take far too long for Diego's liking and he rips the lacing out of your corset violently. It should frighten you, it only makes your knees buckle in ludicrous feminine swooning. 

Diego climbs up the bed to be on top of your quaking form, you urge him down needily. Sweeping strokes trace your hands over his strong frame, you are greedy and demanding. You squeeze and caress frantically, almost as if afraid you might awaken from this dream.

"You took my ring, you took my name, and you will take my cock until we are both replete. Now open wide, Señora Jimenez, your husband will not be denied." The glittering teeth remind you of the consequences of denying him and you shiver. Huge hands cup your face and force you to look into those bottomless eyes as Diego lowers the blazing heat of his nude body to yours. It takes no conscious thought to spread your legs wide and tilt your pelvis toward him.

"Diego," you breathe. He rolls his hips to slide his manhood through your slickness. "Diego!" You squawk. He lines himself up and teases you with fleeting brushes of the wide head. "DIEGO!"

Diego leans in close to fan you with his breathy demand, "A wife should tell her husband how she feels about him."

Oh.

OH.

Diego is flushed with desperation, brow furrowed in concentration, his lips drawn thinly taut, but his eyes are so painfully soft. Those gorgeous chocolate eyes swirl with emotions, they run deep and true. His adoration for you, his want of you, his hunger to have you, his need for your love. 

Your love. This man you love.

Cupping his prickly jaw, you lift your own chin to give him what he needs by uttering hoarsely, "I love you, Diego."

His expression crumples as he slides home deep inside of you, all the way to your heart. You feel so very full in every blessed way, surrounded by nothing but happiness, and your body spasms in joy. Your back bows, your eyes squeeze shut, and you sob blissfully to come on his cock. Diego holds steady until you start breathing again, then he begins the long, steady strokes that drive you mad.

"Very good, niñita. So very good. My perfect little girl." He rasps into your neck only to follow the praise with firm teeth and a rattling growl. Your legs shake as you convulse down around him, squeezing his erection tight with another peak. Diego licks up under your ear to burn the soft skin with beardly friction. More praise follows, "You love this, little girl. So hot and tight, so very perfect. Again niñita, let Father feel you again."

"Diego, oh. Oh yes. Yesyesyes, Diego…" Your high pitches trail off with the acceleration of his hips. Every time he bottoms out you squeak, the impact of his length against your womb pushes the involuntary noise out of you. Those long fingers secure your thighs and bend them back until your knees are at your shoulders, your aching breasts trapped between. 

As if he can read your mind, Diego leans down to latch onto a nipple. The strong suction incites a round of even stronger rippling of your womanhood. Your husband times his suckling to his thrusting and your eyes roll back rapturously. In less than a handful of strokes you seize up with euphoria yet again. Tears roll down your cheeks, your mouth forms his name but no sound is heard.

"Niñita, Zera, my little girl. My love. My wife." Diego seems to have lost all control; he rams into you voraciously and mumbles fervent Spanish into your skin. Your knees are hooked over his shoulders so Diego can watch himself disappear into your depths. The sight seems to break him and he curls you tighter yet, attempting to climb inside your skin with you. His bucking has become frantic, starving, gasping, reaching. You cup his cheeks to capture that wild gaze.

"Make me yours, my husband." The plea absolutely ruins Diego. He crushes you to his bulk and stabs deep to fill you to overflowing with quiet sobs.

"Mine, mine, Zera, my wife, niñita. Love you. I l-love you. Te amo, te amo." Diego does not release you and neither do you want to be free. He stays buried deep, crying weakly, anchoring himself to your body and heart. You stroke over his hair, his shoulders, before nuzzling his neck with murmured comfort.

"I am here. I love you, Diego. You have me, and I have you." Your voice is rough, harsh almost, but the sentiments are soft as velvet. Gradually, his hitching breathing eases, Diego pulls his softened length from you but catches your eyes with his distraught expression. 

"You promise?" He rasps, licking his lips nervously, "You will stay? Never leave me?" The aggrieved expression cracks your heart wide open. Diego is begging for you, broken and afraid, warily hungering to trust you.

"I promised. I do." The shaky flash of your left hand pulls an unstable chuckle from your husband. You laugh, too, as he bundles you both under the bedclothes. Diego tucks his face up under your chin and snuggles in deep, long arms locked around your torso, strong legs twined with your own.

"You did. And now you are mine, Señora Jimenez."

------------------

Hunger wakes you. Warily, you pull yourself upright in the waning afternoon light to assess your current situation. Diego, Excuse me, your husband is snoring next to your squishy body. One foot has managed to escape the quilt, but he tucked it under the wrinkled wad of your gown abandoned at the foot of the bed instead. The sheer adorableness of it makes you cry.

"Mmmph. Zera?" Diego slurs into the pillow. Your stupid sobbing must have woken him. In a play of perfect musculature Diego rolls over, one hand finds its way to your side, and he urges you down. His chest seems like a good spot, so you cuddle in enthusiastically. His question rumbles pleasantly, "What is it, little girl?"

"Hungry. I'm hungry." You sniffle unattractively. Please buy that flimsy lie.

"You are crying because of hunger?" Diego mutters incredulously. 

"There is s-so much. Right now. And I, I cannot seem to st-stop it!" You wail softly, twisting your hands in the sheet and trying valiantly to hide your tears.

Diego folds you into his big body awkwardly. His scent calms your wet gasping. You relax into his heat and allow your husband to pull you down to the pillows again. The gentle kisses to the crown of your head are new, as is the fluttery feeling in your stomach. This affection is not something you have seen between spouses, it is simply not done where you are from. But Diego has always been so with you.

"The last time you cried like this it was not the toy horse. Is it like that?" Diego murmurs into your still pinned hair. All you can do is nod in silence. Diego sighs quietly and squeezes you tightly, his rocky voice is gentle, "I would know what troubles you, niñita."

"I, I, I know not! This has just… been happening! Nothing triggers it and I have a sudden change in mood and it is making me feel crazy." The frustration is clear in your tone. There is nothing to be done about it, and besides, now you are irritated and very hungry. Your fingers spread wide over his thick chest as you ask, "Could we have food brought to us? I am not looking forward to leaving this bed."

Diego barks a sharp laugh and gropes your rear before replying, "Of course. You can have whatever you like, Señora Jimenez." 

You giggle as Diego flips you over onto your back, rubs his stubbled cheek over your upper chest like a cat, and then strides out into the hallway to summon a servant for food.

But naked.

Haha, butt naked. You are a married woman, that should not be so funny.

It is a glorious sight that makes you bite your lip and sigh heavily. Rosa's giggle is audible over Diego’s soft rumble, then her head pops through the doorway to grin manically at you.

"You are good? Yes, hermosa?" Rosa is disgustingly happy to have you back. She also seems very pleased to have their typical Diego back, what with the nude hallway crossing and such, as she gestures expansively to her own front while nodding exuberantly. She is clearly enjoying the view, you chuckle to yourself.

"Yes, Rosa. I am very happy to be home." The warmth of the truth of your wording shines through in your voice. This is home. It is my home. Rosa claps quickly and then disappears down the hall. Diego returns, the swaying roll of his confident stride has an obvious cause. You wonder briefly if that is ride-able.

"Stop!" You command suddenly. Diego freezes mid-stride and almost topples over from momentum. He blinks rapidly, looks down at his own burgeoning erection, then back up to you with a questioning eyebrow. Grinning, you direct him further, "Sit in the chair."

"And what if I do not?" Diego challenges archly.

"The better question is: What if you do?" The sly tone piques his interest, along with his manhood, and your husband does as you command. Now that is thrilling, you are very pleased with this development. It is a marvelous show to watch him pass you in profile and then sit where indicated. The defined muscles of his chest are cast in sharp relief, his solid torso thick, and that bobbing cock mouthwatering. The view from behind is rather pleasing, as well. Before he gets too far away, you dive across the bed and nip his right buttcheek. 

"Zera!" Diego turns on you so fast that you yelp involuntarily. Terror washes over your back, you fear you have gone too far. Burying your face in the silk bedspread to mutter apologies is probably the least effective way to beg forgiveness, but you cannot bear to see him angry with you. A massive hand cards into your curls and pulls you upright, but your eyes remain screwed shut.

"Look at me, niñita." Diego sounds soft, you want to believe in that softness.

"Please, please. I did not think, I-I simply wanted to, so I did so. It was not my intention to--"

"You have been away from me for only a week, how easily you revert to naughtiness. Father will handle this." Oh. OHH. Tentatively, you crack open one eye to find Diego smiling broadly. It is more an anticipatory baring of teeth than an expression of happiness. 

"Wh-what will you do?" The stutter of your words is not so much nerves as enthusiasm. Diego uses the hold in your hair to drag you off the bed and over to the previously indicated chair with him. You should be outraged at such treatment, however you are only a squirmy, giggle filled, panting mess.

He plops lazily in the chair and then pulls you into his lap to be spread wide. This position affords you no modesty; your bouncing breasts are in his face, your dripping center easily accessible, and your face cannot be hidden. Diego is determined to have all of you.

"Sit down." The smirky mandate is followed by large hands guiding your hips downward. Your knees are thrown over the low arms of the chair, a comfortable seat rubs you gently over his tumescence, but does not press him into you. When Diego pulls you low it fills you, when he eases the pull the muscles in your legs return to their relaxed state and glide you upward off of him. You grip his broad shoulders tightly and moan incessantly. Experimentally, he lightly punts your rounded pelvis upward, gravity completes the reciprocal action to sink you down onto his length. Leaning into your neck, Diego hisses knowingly, "Little girl, you are going to like this."

The crack of his hand hitting your left buttock echoes sharply, as does your shriek. It lifts you high into the air only to come crashing back down on that cock. Which also tears a shriek from your throat. Diego repeats this on the right side, then holds you down, fully impaled, to murmur, "Tell Father you like this if you want more."

"Yes! Yesyesyes! I want everything, I want you, give it to me!" You demand breathlessly. Diego growls a low groan and resumes the spanking-intercourse. Every stinging slap makes you gasp, but the drop down onto his rigid manhood forces a piercing cry from your lips. He is wide and thick and burning hot, an undeniable solid presence.

The sheer force of everything is stunning, he can be felt all the way up into your belly. The bouncing of your breasts is muted by Diego taking one into his sinful mouth and suckling rhythmically. It stretches your insides taut, your center clenchingly tight, and your spine ramrod straight as he drives you to completion with haste and surety. 

"Good girl. I feel you, so tight on my cock, I feel how close you are." Diego releases a nipple to praise roughly. He rubs the stubble of his cheek over your sensitive bud and it triggers your ecstasy. Diego holds your entire burning rump in his huge hands to anchor you down while your womanhood contracts around him. The waves of concentric bliss bow your back and you whine happily. He moans raggedly, too, "Very good, niñita. Take your punishment so well."

"St-stay. Like this. Stay still, keep me down on you." The choppy demand confuses your husband, but he does as told. I like this, you rather enjoy ordering him around, Maybe I can spank him, too. He liked when I slapped his thighs…  Diego shifts restlessly, bringing you back to the present. You grab a fistful of his soft hair and tip his chin upward so you can watch his face as you squeeze down around him deliberately. 

Those big hands morph into talons and Diego outright shakes under your onslaught. 

"Z-z-zera!" Diego buries his face in your neck to huddle under your mane. You ripple your inner muscles in a loosely defined pattern, tightening at your entrance and then slowly moving upward, loosening in the same order only to bear down on him in the opposite direction. It takes concentration to clamp your entire channel, but his howl of pained pleasure is it's own delicious reward.

Diego bites down on your neck sharply, his hands massage your rear. Your moan is deep and long, This feels amazing. His hips jerk and you ride the sudden motions to keep him buried to the hilt. Something inside him snaps, Diego snarls viciously and tightens his hold to bruising levels of force. In a stunning display of abdominal strength he takes you from underneath. It is actually painful to take him so deeply, but you are unable to inhale enough air to say as much. With each violent jab you yip, but the pain feels good. It feels good in a way you cannot explain to take him so far into you that he must be touching your soul.

"Please, please, I need you." The covetous gasping barely leaves your lips before Diego is nodding.

"Sí, niñita. Father is yours, take this. Take me." His rasp is soft and breathy, but his hands like iron as he fills you to overflow. Diego shudders, that big body is trembling, before he collapses and takes you down with him. 

After a beat of silence, you have a question, "Does this count as consummation?"

. . .

Diego is still crying with laughter when Rosa brings in the food.

[crystalelemental]

If you would have to rank every pokemon generation, in what order would you put them?

Oh man, that’s easy.

Gen 4 is the best one, with Platinum standing at the very top.  I really like the mythology, and how legendary Pokemon all feel super significant.  I like the balance of the games, and how difficult gym leaders can be in Platinum, while never making it a matter of it being hard to keep up in terms of level.  And HGSS are fantastic remakes in their own right, so like...it’s the best generation.

Gen 5 is next.  I actually think I like Black/White 1 more than 2.  I like the idea of the region having a lot of new Pokemon, but that’s all you get the main campaign.  I think that’s way better than modern gens giving like 50 actually new Pokemon, pretending regional variants are important, and mostly filling the region with old faces.

Gen 3 is next.  I’m torn between Emerald or FRLG at the top.  I play FRLG more often, but Emerald’s a really great third game overall, so they’re both winners.  I like the open feeling of exploration, and that there’s basically no plot.  It’s probably the best generation for a pure gameplay experience, because it lacks the flaws of earlier generations, but hadn’t shifted into frequent, lengthy scenes as a focus yet.  Also I think Gen 3 had the best roster of new Pokemon.  There are so many winners.

Gen 2 gets the next slot, but I am willing to admit that’s mostly nostalgia.  Crystal reigns above the other two.  Crystal is the best third game in a generation.  You got all the legends of the region in one, it took away one of the roaming Pokemon as a new scene, added a ton of new Pokemon you can get early on, and...honestly I just have the best memories for Gen 2 stuff.  I’d also say that, for just the main game, stat experience was better than EVs.  One issue of the remakes of the first two gens is that the original gens were based on stat experience, so you could beat Red with like level 60 Pokemon no problem because of how much higher your stats could be.  Without that system, the remakes do demand a bit more grinding to keep pace, which is a mild problem.  Plus, EVs can be unwiedly, and you can train stats that you wind up never using in later generations.

Gen 7.  Despite ragging on modern gens really hard, I do like Gen 7 as a story.  And that’s pretty much what does it.  I don’t particularly love the new Pokemon, and certain evolutions drive me absolutely insane (why does Morelull become an alien baby in a diaper?  Why is Toucannon the final form of the adorable Pikipek?).  The boss battles also suck.  2v1 is a stupid idea to artificially create difficulty; Gens 3-5 did it so much better.  The Z-moves are stupid and have no real place here at all.  They’re the most trivial thing ever for the main game.  Also, USUM does drag it down super hard.  God those games were a ruination.

Gen 1.  Despite being incredibly dated, buggy, and kind of a disaster, I have a hard time hating on Gen 1.  Sometimes it’s nice to go back, and just not worry at all about natures, or gender of Pokemon, or anything.  It’s the purest experience, in that there’s nothing but the Pokemon and their moves.  Granted, it’s obnoxious that nothing learn anything ever, and because of how a counter to each gym is placed right near that gym it’s pretty much a solved game, but it’s not so bad.

Gen 6.  The first generation I’d say I dislike.  Your friends are the worst.  The new roster was pathetically small, and it started that awful trend.  Despite having the best gimmick of modern gens with Mega Evolution, it didn’t show up until post-game, except for the Gen 1 starters and Lucario.  It was by far the biggest culprit of Gen 1 pandering, offered almost nothing novel despite having some great designs in the new Pokemon, and made zero use of its new gimmick for the actual game and instead expected people to focus on it for post-game, which doesn’t exist and is just “Get into competitive,” which was made minimally easier.  I don’t like this game.  At all.

Gen 8.  But god I hate Gen 8.  Now, I do admit, the characters are not that bad.  I also admit that Dynamax is the best integrated mechanical gimmick for any of the modern games.  It actually matters.  Though Gigantamax is a fucking joke.  But honestly?  It’s boring.  Forced EXP Share means the game’s over in like 10 hours of play with no resistance.  The game gives wild Pokemon at your same level so you never have to invest anything to keep up.  The main game’s levels scale like shit, right up until the League, where they start rapidly inflating.  The Wild Area is a complete disaster, being open but completely empty, and having the myriad Pokemon you can find be completely randomized in like 12 different ways, with no player control.  Daily events are locked in hard, and you’re forced to save before everything, so soft resetting for something you want is outright impossible without mechanical exploitation on the level of manipulating the system’s sense of time.  The aesthetic of the region is awful, I hate the fact that everything is based in corporate sports jerseys, or the gross-looking counter-culture that is Team Yell, who’s a pathetic rip-off of Team Skull.  Honestly, that’s my biggest issue with characters here too.  Hop is just Hau but less interesting, with a hint of Bianca’s uncertainty about what he wants to do sprinkled in but for dumber reasons.  Hop sucks.  He’s a few traits from different rivals throughout the series but done worse.  Gen 8 is the first time I would say that a Pokemon game is outright unfun to play.  I’ve tried three times.  The first time was kinda boring, so I tried a second time hoping it would feel different.  It didn’t, but after a while I decided to try with Pokemon I liked from the region, but couldn’t make it past the first three gyms.  Gen 8 sucks, it’s absolutely the worst of the bunch.  Because as much as Gen 1 can feel painfully dated, and as much as Gen 6 can be obnoxious with its cast, at least they can still be fun to play.  Gen 8 has never once felt fun to play, which is the biggest condemnation of it I can imagine.  More than any graphical issue or complaint levied against it, the fact that it’s just not fun is way, way worse.

[fictionz]

New Fiction 2020 - August

Drakengard 3 dev. Access Games (2014)

I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t sure I’d check out any new fiction in August. July really burned me out. But I was going along, riding out the summer heat by listening to podcasts in my air conditioned car, and the topic of Nier: Automata came up. It sounds like an interesting game and I intend to play it, but I found out it’s connected to the Drakengard series, for which I’d written walkthroughs of the first two games. I skipped the first Nier as well as the third Drakengard game and couldn’t bear the possibility of skipping those two stories before the latest (regardless of how loosely connected they seem to be), so I decided to complete my Drakengard journey and the Nier games will be next.

Have you heard of this Yoko Taro guy? He’s a nihilist and he wears masks. Drakengard and Nier mostly come from his mind, with the exception of Drakengard 2 which seems to have been directed by someone else. But that’s the outlier among the bleak and twisted games that comprise the series. The development teams have varied but it’s usually been Yoko Taro at the helm. As a result, there’s a throughline of subverting expectation and condemning humanity throughout. In his words:

“To be honest, I think I am making normal games targeted towards normal people,” he says. “But ultimately when I release those normal games, weird people find them to be weird games and enjoy them. Which probably means there’s something wrong with me.”

Drakengard 3 is painfully boring and repetitive to just observe in a playthrough on YouTube. Its art design looks rough, for starters, like a PS2 game ported past its prime. Combat is a little more engaging in action although some degree of tolerance for repetitive actions may be required. I got through most of it by spamming jump, down strike with a strong spear, dodge, and repeat. It only occurred to me near the end of the game that this highly effective combat tactic may not be the most interesting to watch, but it worked to get through tough enemies. What kills me about combat is the animation delays that leave the player character wide open to attack. It makes ground combat a huge pain in later chapters. I had to get by with that repetitive tactic built around down strikes with spears and dodging ad nauseam. I rarely stayed on the ground, which is a shame. I remember that being a fun part of the earlier games, in which a player could mow down scores of enemies without much difficulty as they unlocked stronger weapons. And in general it just feels... stilted? I've seen people bemoaning combat like this after games like DMC or Bayonetta have kind of shown the way. While I think this is a different type of game from those, it feels slow and outdated by comparison. Then the developers punctuate their game focused on melee combat by featuring a final battle that is completely unrelated to anything you did before that point, and feels like a cruel and unnecessary punch in the face. Life is unfair and so is this game. The protagonists are not likable people, just as the characters in the original Drakengard aren't likable. They’re mostly flat and sex-crazed. But they have a certain charm, like many stories featuring horrible murderers as protagonists. And as self-aware as the writer(s) of this game seem to be, I gotta figure that's by design. You're not supposed to be feel good about watching these people make their terrible choices and commit their atrocities. You're probably supposed to ask meaningful questions about society but the game stumbles a bit too often to achieve that. At best, it's a bloody take on themes from shows such as Seinfeld and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Look at the devastation these idiots have wrought.

[deniscollins]

Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise

Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being, which have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation. In Finland, paying higher taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools. Should the U.S. adopt the Finland’s version of capitalism: (1) Yes, (2) No?

Two years ago we were living in a pleasant neighborhood in Brooklyn. We were experienced professionals, enjoying a privileged life. We’d just had a baby. She was our first, and much wanted. We were United States citizens and our future as a family should have seemed bright. But we felt deeply insecure and anxious.

Our income was trickling in unreliably from temporary gigs as independent contractors. Our access to health insurance was a constant source of anxiety, as we scrambled year after year among private employer plans, exorbitant plans for freelancers, and complicated and expensive Obamacare plans. With a child, we’d soon face overwhelming day-care costs. Never mind the bankruptcy-sized bills for education ahead, whether for housing in a good public-school district or for private-school tuition. And then there’d be college. In other words, we suffered from the same stressors that are swamping more and more of Americans, even the relatively privileged.

As we contemplated all this, one of us, Anu, was offered a job back in her hometown: Helsinki, Finland.

Finland, of course, is one of those Nordic countries that we hear some Americans, including President Trump, describe as unsustainable and oppressive — “socialist nanny states.” As we considered settling there, we canvassed Trevor’s family — he was raised in Arlington, Va. — and our American friends. They didn’t seem to think we’d be moving to a Soviet-style autocracy. In fact, many of them encouraged us to go. Even a venture capitalist we knew in Silicon Valley who has three children sounded envious: “I’d move to Finland in a heartbeat.”

So we went.

We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous, but perhaps not in the way many Americans might imagine. What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. Our lives are just much more manageable. To be sure, our days are still full of challenges — raising a child, helping elderly parents, juggling the demands of daily logistics and work.

But in Finland, we are automatically covered, no matter what, by taxpayer-funded universal health care that equals the United States’ in quality (despite the misleading claims you hear to the contrary), all without piles of confusing paperwork or haggling over huge bills. Our child attends a fabulous, highly professional and ethnically diverse public day-care center that amazes us with its enrichment activities and professionalism. The price? About $300 a month — the maximum for public day care, because in Finland day-care fees are subsidized for all families.

And if we stay here, our daughter will be able to attend one of the world’s best K-12 education systems at no cost to us, regardless of the neighborhood we live in. College would also be tuition free. If we have another child, we will automatically get paid parental leave, funded largely through taxes, for nearly a year, which can be shared between parents. Annual paid vacations here of four, five or even six weeks are also the norm.

Compared with our life in the United States, this is fantastic. Nevertheless, to many people in America, the Finnish system may still conjure impressions of dysfunction and authoritarianism. Yet Finnish citizens report extraordinarily high levels of life satisfaction; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked them highest in the world, followed by Norwegians, Danes, Swiss and Icelanders. This year, the World Happiness Report also announced Finland to be the happiest country on earth, for the second year in a row.

But surely, many in the United States will conclude, Finnish citizens and businesses must be paying a steep price in lost freedoms, opportunity and wealth. Yes, Finland faces its own economic challenges, and Finns are notorious complainers whenever anything goes wrong. But under its current system, Finland has become one of the world’s wealthiest societies, and like the other Nordic countries, it is home to many hugely successful global companies.

In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows. According to the World Bank, doing business in Denmark and Norway is actually easier overall than it is in the United States.

Finland also has high levels of economic mobility across generations. A 2018 World Bank report revealed that children in Finland have a much better chance of escaping the economic class of their parents and pursuing their own success than do children in the United States.

Finally, and perhaps most shockingly, the nonpartisan watchdog group Freedom House has determined that citizens of Finland actually enjoy higher levels of personal and political freedom, and more secure political rights, than citizens of the United States.

What to make of all this? For starters, politicians in the United States might want to think twice about calling the Nordics “socialist.” From our perch, the term seems to have more currency on the other side of the Atlantic than it does here.

In the United States, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are often demonized as dangerous radicals. In Finland, many of their policy ideas would seem normal — and not particularly socialist.

When Mr. Sanders ran for president in 2016, what surprised our Finnish friends was that the United States, a country with so much wealth and successful capitalist enterprise, had not already set up some sort of universal public health care program and access to tuition-free college. Such programs tend to be seen by Nordic people as the bare basics required for any business-friendly nation to compete in the 21st century.

Even more peculiar is that in Finland, you don’t really see the kind of socialist movement that has been gaining popularity in some of the more radical fringes of the left in America, especially around goals such as curtailing free markets and even nationalizing the means of production. The irony is that if you championed socialism like this in Finland, you’d get few takers.

So what could explain this — the weird fact that actual socialism seems so much more popular in the capitalist United States than in supposedly socialist Finland?

A socialist revolution was attempted once in Finland. But that was more than a hundred years ago. Finland was in the process of industrializing when the Russian empire collapsed and Finland gained independence. Finnish urban and rural workers and tenant farmers, fed up with their miserable working conditions, rose up in rebellion. The response from Finland’s capitalists, conservative landowners and members of the middle and upper class was swift and violent. Civil war broke out and mass murder followed. After months of fighting, the capitalists and conservatives crushed the socialist uprising. More than 35,000 people lay dead. Traumatized and impoverished, Finns spent decades trying to recover and rebuild.

So what became of socialism in Finland after that? According to a prominent Finnish political historian, Pauli Kettunen of the University of Helsinki, after the civil war Finnish employers promoted the ideal of “an independent freeholder farmer and his individual will to work” and successfully used this idea of heroic individualism to weaken worker unions. Although socialists returned to playing a role in Finnish politics, during the first half of the 20th century, Finland prevented socialism from becoming a revolutionary force — and did so in a way that sounds downright American.

Finland fell into another bloody conflict as it fought off, at great cost, the Communist Soviet Union next door during World War II. After the war, worker unions gained strength, bringing back socialist sympathies as the country entered a more industrial and international era. This is when Finnish history took an unexpected turn.

Finnish employers had become painfully aware of the threats socialism continued to pose to capitalism. They also found themselves under increasing pressure from politicians representing the needs of workers. Wanting to avoid further conflicts, and to protect their private property and new industries, Finnish capitalists changed tactics. Instead of exploiting workers and trying to keep them down, after World War II, Finland’s capitalists cooperated with government to map out long-term strategies and discussed these plans with unions to get workers onboard.

More astonishingly, Finnish capitalists also realized that it would be in their own long-term interests to accept steep progressive tax hikes. The taxes would help pay for new government programs to keep workers healthy and productive — and this would build a more beneficial labor market. These programs became the universal taxpayer-funded services of Finland today, including public health care, public day care and education, paid parental leaves, unemployment insurance and the like.

If these moves by Finnish capitalists sound hard to imagine, it’s because people in the United States have been peddled a myth that universal government programs like these can’t coexist with profitable private-sector businesses and robust economic growth. As if to reinforce the impossibility of such synergies, last fall the Trump administration released a peculiar report arguing that “socialism” had negatively affected Nordic living standards.

However, a 2006 study by the Finnish researchers Markus Jantti, Juho Saari and Juhana Vartiainen demonstrates the opposite. First, throughout the 20th century Finland remained — and remains to this day — a country and an economy committed to markets, private businesses and capitalism.

Even more intriguing, these scholars demonstrate that Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being. These services have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation.

With Finland’s stable foundation for growth and disruption, its small but dynamic free-market economy has punched far above its weight. Some of the country’s most notable businesses have included the world’s largest mobile phone company, one of the world’s largest elevator manufacturers and two of the world’s most successful mobile gaming companies. Visit Finland today and it’s obvious that the much-heralded quality of life is taking place within a bustling economy of upscale shopping malls, fancy cars and internationally competitive private companies.

The other Nordic countries have been practicing this form of capitalism even longer than Finland, with even more success. As early as the 1930s, according to Pauli Kettunen, employers across the Nordic region watched the disaster of the Great Depression unfold. For enough of them the lesson was clear: The smart choice was to compromise and pursue the Nordic approach to capitalism.

The Nordic countries are all different from one another, and all have their faults, foibles, unique histories and civic disagreements. Contentious battles between strong unions and employers help keep the system in balance. Often it gets messy: Just this week, the Finnish prime minister resigned amid a labor dispute.

But the Nordic nations as a whole, including a majority of their business elites, have arrived at a simple formula: Capitalism works better if employees get paid decent wages and are supported by high-quality, democratically accountable public services that enable everyone to live healthy, dignified lives and to enjoy real equality of opportunity for themselves and their children. For us, that has meant an increase in our personal freedoms and our political rights — not the other way around.

Yes, this requires capitalists and corporations to pay fairer wages and more taxes than their American counterparts currently do. Nordic citizens generally pay more taxes, too. And yes, this might sound scandalous in the United States, where business leaders and economists perpetually warn that tax increases would slow growth and reduce incentives to invest.

Here’s the funny thing, though: Over the past 50 years, if you had invested in a basket of Nordic equities, you would have earned a higher annual real return than the American stock market during the same half-century, according to global equities data published by Credit Suisse.

Nordic capitalists are not dumb. They know that they will still earn very handsome financial returns even after paying their taxes. They keep enough of their profits to live in luxury, wield influence and acquire social status. There are several dozen Nordic billionaires. Nordic citizens are not dumb, either. If you’re a member of the robust middle class in Finland, you generally get a better overall deal for your combined taxes and personal expenditures, as well as higher-quality outcomes, than your American counterparts — and with far less hassle.

Why would the wealthy in Nordic countries go along with this? Some Nordic capitalists actually believe in equality of opportunity and recognize the value of a society that invests in all of its people. But there is a more prosaic reason, too: Paying taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated.

While companies in the United States struggle to administer health plans and to find workers who are sufficiently educated, Nordic societies have demanded that their governments provide high-quality public services for all citizens. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools.

There’s a big lesson here: When capitalists perceive government as a logistical ally rather than an ideological foe and when all citizens have a stake in high-quality public institutions, it’s amazing how well government can get things done.

Ultimately, when we mislabel what goes on in Nordic nations as socialism, we blind ourselves to what the Nordic region really is: a laboratory where capitalists invest in long-term stability and human flourishing while maintaining healthy profits.

Capitalists in the United States have taken a different path. They’ve slashed taxes, weakened government, crushed unions and privatized essential services in the pursuit of excess profits. All of this leaves workers painfully vulnerable to capitalism’s dynamic disruptions. Even well-positioned Americans now struggle under debilitating pressures, and a majority inhabit a treacherous Wild West where poverty, homelessness, medical bankruptcy, addiction and incarceration can be just a bit of bad luck away. Americans are told that this is freedom and that it is the most heroic way to live. It’s the same message Finns were fed a century ago.

But is this approach the most effective or even the most profitable way for capitalists in the United States to do business? It should come as no surprise that resentment and fear have become rampant in the United States, and that President Trump got elected on a promise to turn the clock backward on globalization. Nor is it surprising that American workers are fighting back; the number of workers involved in strikes last year in the United States was the highest since the 1980s, and this year’s General Motors strike was the company’s longest in nearly 50 years. Nor should it surprise anyone that fully half of the rising generation of Americans, aged 18 to 29, according to Gallup polling, have a positive view of socialism.

The prospect of a future full of socialists seems finally to be getting the attention of some American business leaders. For years the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has been warning his “fellow zillionaires” that “the pitchforks are coming for us.” Warren Buffett has been calling for higher taxes on the rich, and this year the hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio admitted that “capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people.” Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam, has put it perhaps most succinctly: He sees capitalism “slowly committing suicide.”In recent months such concerns have spread throughout the capitalist establishment. The Financial Times rocked its business-friendly readership with a high-profile series admitting that capitalism has indeed become “rigged” and that it desperately needs a “reset,” to restore truly free markets and bring back real opportunity. Leading captains of finance and industry in the United States rocked the business world, too, with a joint declaration from the Business Roundtable that they will now prioritize not only profits but also “employees, customers, shareholders and the communities.” They are calling this “stakeholder capitalism.”

If these titans of industry are serious about finding a more sustainable approach, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They can simply consult their Nordic counterparts. If they do, they might realize that the success of Nordic capitalism is not due to businesses doing more to help communities. In a way, it’s the opposite: Nordic capitalists do less. What Nordic businesses do is focus on business — including good-faith negotiations with their unions — while letting citizens vote for politicians who use government to deliver a set of robust universal public services.

This, in fact, may be closer to what a majority of people in the United States actually want, at least according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center this year. Respondents said that the American government should spend more on health care and education, for example, to improve the quality of life for future generations.

But the poll also revealed that Americans feel deeply pessimistic about the nation’s future and fear that worse political conflict is coming. Some military analysts and historians agree and put the odds of a civil war breaking out in the United States frighteningly high.

Right now might be an opportune moment for American capitalists to pause and ask themselves what kind of long-term cost-benefit calculation makes the most sense. Business leaders focused on the long game could do a lot worse than starting with a fact-finding trip to Finland.

Here in Helsinki, our family is facing our second Nordic winter and the notorious darkness it brings. Our Finnish friends keep asking how we handled the first one and whether we can survive another. Our answer is always the same. As we push our 2-year-old daughter in her stroller through the dismal, icy streets to her wonderful, affordable day-care center or to our friendly, professional and completely free pediatric health center, before heading to work in an innovative economy where a vast majority of people have a decent quality of life, the winter doesn’t matter one bit. It can actually make you happy.