#i guess like. either way this game goes - we can make an argument about how it's good for us

[cementcornfield]

oh god it's getting more and more complicated. so at first i was thinking we need to root for the steelers because we need them to secure the north and have nothing to play for when they play us, BUT now i'm seeing maybe we should root for the ravens so that the steelers still need to beat the chiefs to win the north, and we want to chiefs to lose that one (and bills to win out) so that they're motivated to play their starters against the broncos to fight for the 1 seed....

[kithtaehyung]

broken, pt. 2 (3tan) (m) | myg

title: broken (pt. 2) pairing: 3tan!yoongi x reader(f) series:masterlist | three tangerines | fireworks | house party | basketball | stay | sidewalk talk | friends | dalo | like that | anytime | sundress season | yoongi’s interlude | forfeit | flutter | video call | busted | broken (pt. 1) rating/genre: m (18+) ; angst , fluff , smut ; brother’s best friend au, implied age gap au summary: the championship game lights up... and everything goes down. note: not too much to say other than thank you. this part is definitely another very, very close one to my heart. please buckle up and enjoy the ride. warnings: [spice warnings under the cut] language, angst, tension, alcohol mention & consumption, fights, basketball!yoongi🧍‍♀️, cocky!yoongi, jimin😳, tense situations, did i say angst?, long hair yoongi, crying, bro😀, reader is a real one i don’t make the rules, arguments, the chains stay on(???), …bad boy yoongi😀👍, saying softhours puts some of this lightly, bro🥲, blood/wound mentions, hurt/comfort, there’s just a lot in here y’all idek, taehyung being the best ever, …angst. drop date: february 9th, 2024, 10:37pm est word count: 17.7k my god

smut warnings: cursing, choking, light slapping, breast play, angry s*x a ha ha, crying, multiple explicit scenes y'all istg don't perceive me lol, c*nt slapping, penetrative s*x, brat!reader, protected s*x, edging, consent king ofc :), rough s*x, b*cksh*ts and a lot of them, ...unprotected s*x (yeah it's here and y'all better be responsible or so help me!!!), f*ngering, or*l (m/f rec), brat tamer!3tan yoongi!!!, reader loses themselves for a sec, but yoongi is a king, pain k*nk whewwww, kissing, so much kissing lmfao, c*m play, slight bond*ge (yoongi hands), spanking, aftercare ofc :'))

-

-

There’s no way.

How the fuck is he here? When did that horrible excuse of a guy even join a team? Had he been playing intramurals this whole time? 

“No fuckin’ way.”

Your eyes find your brother standing rigid at your side, wrists tensed to hell and shoulders spiked. Did he not know he was playing, either? Judging by his smoldering question, you’re going to guess he wasn’t aware. 

“Were they always on this team?” 

“No.”

“I don’t remember them being on any teams.”

They? Them? So they recognize more from the court on that day you try to not think about. Shifting your vision, you start gauge reactions under sounds of the growing crowd. 

It’s Yoongi that looks at you first, eyes lowering to the hand you still have on your arm damn it you should be okay about that night already. But you can’t seem to let your limb go, your fingers covering it in a weak attempt at protection and resilience. 

The blaze in his eyes makes you shake. Even as you swallow your pleas for everyone to just go home, he doesn’t look away. Instead, he walks over to stand in front of your knees, motioning for you to scoot over one so he can take the end seat.

Normally, you would slightly question why he wouldn’t just sit next to you. But this time, you’re hyper aware of what he’s doing—and why. It’s so obvious that you wanna reach out and grip his sweaty hand. 

Yoongi absolutely sat there to shield you.

And your heart burns and burns.

If only he could do more, be more, show more. Because with a rattled ego and tainted mind, you’re already yearning for his touch, wanting him to whisk you out of here and bring you back to the comfort of his home—just like he did that night. 

God, he makes you dizzy doing absolutely nothing. 

“What’s the plan,” he asks, eyes on the court and palms between his knees.

“Dunno yet.” Your brother shakes his head before looking back, eyes narrowing at the laughs on the other bench. “But I might get my ass thrown out if we—”

“Play.” 

Immediately, all three of them snap their heads your way. Fuck, your arm is still… 

One person cannot have this hold on you. There’s no way you’re going to let him control your every waking moment, and your determination bubbles into your commands. “Play the game and beat his ass,” you seethe, holding yourself together and aiming daggers everywhere. “Just make it quick.” 

Yoongi gives you a look before Jimin snags him with an eyebrow raise. 

“And you’re paying me double.” 

Looking at the man beside you, it’s almost comforting seeing his attention fully on your face. If it weren’t for your ghost on the other side of the scoring table and your brother standing there, you wouldn’t hesitate to kiss him. 

But you only nod, getting a huff and a lopsided curve in response before you watch him lock eyes with your brother, “What do you wanna do?” 

After a long, resigned sigh, your sibling finally relents, “Fuck this shit up.” 

Good. Yes. This is what you want—for you and them. “Exactly.” 

Scanning around the tight circle, you notice that you have everyone’s attention. 

But one person seems to send a question without any words at all. In kind, you answer the same way, wings battering your stomach when all of them send thunder to the court with lightning in their eyes.

Yoongi scoffs through a slant, carrying the air of someone you never want to mess with in your fucking life. “The fuckin’ nerve.” 

Jimin hums, sliding a finger along his flexed to hell jaw. “Bold,” he adds. And his voice drop sends shivers when he turns to you,

“Don’t worry, love.” 

You stare.

“This will be over soon.” 

-

-

The game is… just a game. For now.

No one’s taunted hard other than a few smirks and winks, and right now it seems as if both teams are just being competitive more than antagonistic. Which relaxes you to the point where you’re cheering from the bench with the other players—and their coach that arrived late—jumping and yelling and clapping when things go in their favor.

Your brother’s slamming down dunks. Jimin’s been playing amazing defense with his quick reflexes and high stamina.

And Yoongi? Has gotten sickeningly sharp. All those late nights at the rec center are paying off in this championship and, when he scores a hard shot, the pride you feel launches you to your feet. 

“Nice job, b—” Oh fuck you almost shout something that should never be public knowledge. Holding your tongue, you quickly switch it up with a hasty, “Let’s go!” 

That was close. Way too close. 

Get it together. 

But you cannot help it right now. Seeing Yoongi facing off against the man you both wanna square up against? And making it look easy? The fluttering you feel in your belly grows double. Triple. Tenfold. His gestures, the way he acts like it’s nothing, his shrugs at their failed attempts to stop him—everything’s making you scratch proverbial walls and kick bench chairs. 

And it’s not just him—the whole team has been playing excellently. Each play seems intentional; every pass and movement is strategic. If you didn’t know this was a casual rec game, you would think they’re gunning for a real, prestigious trophy. 

However. 

When it’s starting to be very clear who the better squad is, that’s when things start getting more than tense. 

On a foul call, both sides start getting in each others’ faces. And you peg that as normal until someone on your team gets shoved and your brother immediately gets between the action. 

Both you and the coach shoot up from your seats. 

Shit, shit, shit. If there’s one thing your older sibling’s gonna do in this game, it’ll be finding any excuse to deck that man in the face. And once that happens, there’s no telling how many injuries are gonna walk off polished floors.

Thankfully, everyone separates without a ruckus, and timeout is called on your side. The crowd starts to yell in favor of either team, and that’s when you notice that Taehyung has been joined by Shiv and your friends. From the looks of things, all five of them are laser focused on you. 

You hold a quick thumbs-up before you’re covered by hot and sweaty men huddling around the bench. And you immediately agree with their coach when he barks, 

“I need you all to calm down.” 

“No can do, coach.” 

“Not if they aren’t.” 

Shit. All of them look fucking livid, not giving any shits whatsoever if they’re willing to talk back to their leader. What’s really been happening on the court? Has it been even more tense than you perceived? 

Oblivious to the context behind this matchup, their coach keeps yelling, “Look, I don’t give a shit if you have something to settle. Play the game and leave it on the floor. Understood?” When there’s charged silence, he yells it even louder. 

And a smattering of agreement comes out before all of you hear an even bigger yelling session booming from the other bench. When you look over, it’s quickly noticeable that they’re getting reamed over there, too. 

Jimin watches before speaking, and it seems like your coach’s pleas fell on deaf ears, “Fifteen went for my legs.” 

“Saw that. Let’s switch cus he can’t guard me.” 

“K.” Park swivels his head to address someone else. “You good to keep playing?” 

Your brother responds with a nod, wiping his never-ending sweat. “Yeah, I’m good.” 

Huh. Even though you know he’s mad, the man seems… Calm. Eerily calm. It’s reminding you of the way he acted after you came home from Yoongi’s. 

And you don’t like it one bit. 

But the timeout is over, and both teams eye each other on their walk back onto the court. As it continues, the gym erupts into life again, with a bit of back and forth shots racking the scoreboard up. 

And Yoongi keeps scoring. And scoring. And scoring. 

Which lands him in a bit of trouble when the same idiot from Dalo pushes him during a layup. After he manages to make the shot, Yoongi immediately flicks him off—which gets a whistle blown. Which also means he has to sit on the bench for a second because his coach is pissed. 

Ignoring the scathing remarks being thrown, he dumps himself next to you. And you immediately feel the heat roll off of him in waves, trying hard to focus on the game. “Don’t be stupid,” you jut out. 

“What?” 

“Don’t be stupid. These guys aren’t worth it.” 

“After what he did to you?” 

The way those words leave his mouth ice you over, flares spiraling through every fiber of your being. Your reaction is so visceral that you can barely get your response out, “Yeah, but…” 

Leaning on his knees, Yoongi wipes his forehead with a crinkled to hell jersey, excess sweat pinging onto his sneakers. The crowd is loud and the buzzers even louder, but they aren’t enough to drown out his bite,

“I can’t let that shit go.” 

“Yoongi.” 

“Sorry, doll.” 

“Please just—” 

Yoongi leaves the bench before you can finish, and you whip your head in a rush, hands jutting out in a desperate attempt to hold him back. 

Only for him to be just out of reach. 

-

-

After halftime, it’s a whole different game. 

From an outside perspective, it’s as if everyone was using the first half to sniff each other out, circling around each other before deciding how and when to go in for the kill. 

And Yoongi isn’t the only one that you’re starting to worry about. Jimin, your brother, and even Rohan and the other guys are on edge, playing hard and doing everything they can to keep their scoring lead. 

Both you and their coach know you can’t stop whatever’s going on out there. And you’re starting to feel yourself getting angry at how your brother and them are egging the guys on. 

Why are they taunting? What the hell is making them so bent on making the other team pissed? Yes, all that went down with you, but nothing else had happened since then. And they clearly aren’t listening to anyone telling them to calm down.

If they end up starting shit you are going to—the fuck! 

Yoongi gets straight shoved again as he goes for a layup, and you shoot up in your chair as he hits the back wall with a thud. While the players at your side are yelling and everyone on the court starts grouping in shouts, you stay rigid, solely watching Yoongi eye his attacker—the same idiot from Dalo.

Fuck everything, you wanna rush into the fray and throw hands yourself because that looked painful.

The only thing that’s stopping you is the chilling fact that Yoongi is… Grinning. 

Wiping his curved lips, he waits while the refs break up the squabble, still looking triumphant as he walks to the line to shoot his free throws. When both of them are made, he stares directly at your assaulter—as you finally call it like it is—and doesn’t stop even when the coward looks away.

A whistle blows, and the game continues to be close. Too close, too close, too close. A couple more timeouts let you see just how laser-focused everyone is, and you’re a little shaken when it feels like they forgot you were even occupying their bench. 

What the hell is being said on the court? Even Jimin is brimming with anger. 

But after a few back and forths, Yoongi passes to your brother for a hard dunk, basket ringing from his throwdown and shaking when he lands. 

Thank god. Those points are enough. They’re gonna win. 

All the pent up anxiety you’ve harbored all game releases as everyone starts cheering, and your pride soars as your boys stare down their opponents while the clock winds down.

It’s over. The game is over, nothing too serious happened, and you can all go the fuck home to eat dinner and celebrate. 

Your eyes catch Yoongi throwing a rudely lopsided curve across the court. Even when Jimin comes up to push him back in excitement, his expression doesn’t change. 

And you find that wildly, unfathomably attractive. 

Then, as it goes, your brother comes up and they all share quick daps, eyes ablaze and not letting the losers out of their sight. 

Well. All of them are infamous for a reason. You would guess their energy altogether certainly contributes to that. Because the aura you feel oozing from them fills the gymnasium all the way up to your knees. 

And the sigh you let out mingles with their coach’s shake of his head.

-

-

Things are still tense as they all shake hands—or at least offer hands to shake—with the other team. The atmosphere is even a little iced when they receive their trophy. 

But the way you’re currently being surrounded as your guys converse hides you from plain sight, so you feel heavily protected. Even Jimin, who’s usually cheerful even when exhausted, wields sharp eyes as he keeps glancing over his shoulder. 

Honestly? You wouldn’t know what to do without them. Both your brother and all his friends, good pasts or not, are great people. They didn’t need to shield you like this. But they’re doing it anyway, because they won’t give that lowlife another reason or chance to approach you. 

Yeah. Your older sibling knows how to choose his circle.

It’s making you wonder if… 

Nah. 

That’s still too big a reach. 

When it seems like all of them and their cheering squad are gone, everyone starts making their way over to the bleachers—and you’re acutely reminded of what went down under similar looking ones the other night. 

Your shivers are overshadowed by Yuri’s telltale screams to Rohan, “You were so good, baby! Are you okay?”

Reia and Dom shake their heads before focusing on you, the latter being the spokeswoman, “So what was all that for?”

“Don’t ask,” you sigh, knowing exactly what she’s referring to. “I’m just glad they won and that we can go home.”

“You’re not coming to Yuri’s?” Reia asks. “I thought we planned on that, no?”

Ah, shit. Earlier this week, you did make plans with them without really thinking about what day they were gonna fall on. But now you’re so mentally drained that you kinda just wanna go—

“Is anyone else starving? I’m hungry as fuck!” 

Right. Food. Adrenaline made you forget you were starving. Glancing towards your brother, you quickly remind him, “Yeah, me. And you’re paying.”

“Ah, shit, that’s right.” As he lets out a hard groan and deals with Jimin and Yoongi’s comments, your sibling relents, “Alright, where are we going.”

“Up to you,” you shrug, stealing a little look at the man you want to kiss like hell for his performance tonight. 

God, Yoongi’s so handsome. As Jimin leaves his side, he silently wipes his forehead of any excess sweat, hands and shoulders shining in the lights wait wait wait. Hold on. 

Walking over, you toss any care about who notices you out the window. And as he eyes your approach, you murmur with care and concern, “Is your back okay?” 

Blinking once, twice, the man nods. “Yeah, it’s all good.”

“You sure? That looked…”

Of course he decides that now is the perfect time to rake his sweaty locks back. Speaking so low that only you can hear, Yoongi reassures with a fist full of hair, “I’m fine, doll.” 

Motherfucker. 

Pinning down your urge to reach out and smother him, you only breathe relief. And before you move away to put some distance between, you whisper, “Thank you.”

Yoongi looks your way again. “For what?” 

Swallowing what’s left of your anxiety, you sigh. “For not getting into it out there. I was about to get mad as hell, but.. Looks like they were all talk.” 

“Mm.”

Honestly? It’s a miracle. The game’s over without any hitches or brawls? More relief starts blossoming in your chest, prompting a smile to grace your features. “You looked so good out there, by the way. I almost called you ba—”

“What are y’all talking about over there!”

Your mouth snaps shut as soon as you see your brother watching, but Yoongi is quick to fire off an insult, “The way you always take so long to pick something.”

“I picked already!”

“Then let’s go then.”

Laughing, you join the whole crew as you’re all the last ones to walk out. Your friends and Shiv parked in another lot since one side was already full, so you tell them you’ll meet at the restaurant.

Some other teammates decide to join, with jerseys being shucked off as everyone heads out the door. Immediately, body odor swoops into your nose, making you welcome the crisp, fresh air of night. 

Scratch that. You smell oncoming rain. 

Conversations cease, which only leaves the sound confirming your observation: booming, rolling thunder. Stopping at the edge of the gym’s awning, multiple heads turn up at the rumbles, watching lightning crack the sky. 

In front of you, Jimin shifts his head to the side. “Still?” 

And when you look at who he’s asking, you see Yoongi nod. 

Weird. 

But it’s not raining just yet, so all of you make your way into the lot and to your cars. As you do, you check your phone while making your way over, aiming a question at Tae, “You know where we’re going?” 

“Yeah, it’s not far,” he responds, fishing out his own device. “I think we’ve been there before.” 

We? Looks like things are progressing nicely over there. Since you’re lingering behind the guys, you start to take a small jab, “We, huh? Cute.” 

Lips spread as tight as his eyes, Taehyung parries. “Cute? Look who’s talking, miss whipped.” 

“You’re whipped.” 

“No, you.” 

“No, you,” you giggle out, reaching out to tickle Tae’s side and laughing as he flinches away. You chase him for a few seconds before you see his whole body freeze completely, asking a small question before going quiet.  

And when you slowly follow his line of vision, your heart freefalls to your gut, smashing it so hard you feel bile sting the back of your throat. 

The man from Dalo. And all the guys from the court plus some. 

Surround both Jimin’s and your brother’s cars.

Fuck. Oh, fuck, there’s so many of them, standing and waiting and unflinching in the bursts of thunder inching closer and closer what the fuck are you gonna do— 

“Taehyung.”

Your eyes shake. 

“Get her out of here. Now.”

And you’ve never screamed so loud. 

Every word rips out of your mouth before you’re promptly shushed by large fingers, icicles pinging around your heart and holding it down, “Don’t fucking do thi—!” 

To your horror, Tae’s already hauling you back, voice low and firm in your ear, “Come on.” 

“No! What the fuck—” 

“We’re leaving.”

“Please—!”

There are so many of them. So, so many of them. Panic drowns out your words and excess leaks out of your eyes, your own storm preventing you from seeing that your best friend is just as torn apart. 

“Babe, we have to go now.” 

“No, let me go!” 

They’re outnumbered. What if they have weapons? What if the police are called? What if something happens that you aren’t prepared for?

You’re screaming. Curses, their names, or whatever whatever you don’t even know what the fuck you’re saying because your toes are kissing the edge of madness. 

Dragged a good distance away, your yells devolve into incoherency, your nose and eye sockets smashing into Taehyung’s solid forearm so hard it hurts. 

Make it out, make it out, make it out. For the love of everything in the fucking universe and beyond it, make it out alive. 

Some movements and backs straightening are the last things you see before getting pulled around the corner.

And when Yoongi calmly rolls one of his shoulders, you feel a wick of your soul burn out.

Panic. Worry. Panic and more panic. The car ride that Tae paid for is the blurriest muddy water you’ve ever waded through.

Truthfully, you don’t even remember blankets being pulled over your shoulder. Where even are you? Oh, you’re in a bed. Whose bed are you in because this isn’t yours. But what does it matter anyway what does anything matter anyway nothing matters there’s nothing you can do you gotta get up and go back over there get up get up go—

As soon as you yank his bedroom door open, Taehyung is there, holding you back and pushing your frantic energy back inside. “Tae, if you don’t let me—”

“Do what!”

“I’m going back!” Wrestling out of his strong hold, you bolt down his hallway, head clanging as your shoulder bumps into a wall. “We need to go back—”

“Stop!” You hear running as you burst through the living room, whizzing past the glowing television. “We have to stay here—”

No no no. There’s no way you’re staying here when you need to be back at that lot. Who the fuck would call for help if anyone needs it? When they’re gonna need it? Your vision proves so blurry you can’t even find your shoes—

Arms wrap around your waist and you fight back with a scream, “Let me go!”

“Stop and just think for a second—”

“Why aren’t you with me on this, they’re—”

“Dumb as fuck!” 

Your friend’s quick comment is so sharp it cuts your breath. As you still in his firm but comforting hold, you finally stop to breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe as you’re turned to level a look with his eyes.

Eyes that are red-rimmed and so, so raw. “They’re idiots,” Taehyung grits out. “But they will be alright.” 

From the shake of his voice, you find that neither of you think that for sure. 

“I need to.. To…” Your breaths are ragged, energy spent and head dizzy from your quick exit from his bed. As you come down from your volcanic high, every weight the world places on your back proves too much. 

“You need to relax,” Tae advises, guiding you further back inside. And you don’t speak as he leads you past the couch, past the pictures on his hallway wall, and into the dark of his bedroom.

Maybe it’s over. Right? Maybe someone will answer if you ring them up. “Call. I need to call…” 

“Shh,” he soothes again, walking you backwards away from his door. When the bends of your knees hit his bed, Taehyung lets you down slowly until you’re sitting. “I’ll do it.” 

Brain fried from hyperactivity, you can only nod. 

Your friend steps away to fiddle with his phone, the light illuminating his beautiful features in the night. When he holds it to his ear, this is when you hear rain and the television in the living room, noticing that it’s playing a movie he watches for comfort. 

Shit. He’s going through it just like you are, and yet he’s still finding energy to calm your nerves? What have you even done to deserve him?

Guess you know how to choose your circle, too. 

Going unanswered, Taehyung lowers his hand, thumb rubbing the homescreen before gripping the device hard. 

Both of you are in the same boat. So steer when he can’t do it anymore. Soft but assertive, you rise to your feet, offering your embrace while calling his name, “..Tae.”

When he turns, the man wastes no time in dropping his phone to bring you in close. “It’ll be okay,” he murmurs, and you hear his words on your head but feel the trembles in his chest. “Okay?”

Feeble fingers grab at his soft shirt, and you bury into his scent while soaked and tired eyes shut. 

You want to believe him. You do. You do. 

But hope may be a bitch. 

So you don’t. 

-

-

Forever passes while you both lie still in his bed, with Taehyung holding you close and keeping you subdued with notes of honey and wood. You both try to have conversation, but it’s disjointed and manufactured, so giving up is a group effort. 

You’re about to give up on a lot of things before you both jolt at Tae’s phone vibrating. 

The world shifts quick as you both sit up, the call immediately being accepted and a low greeting whooshing at your side, “Hey.”

With bated breath, you hear Jimin on the line. “Hey.” 

“You okay?”

“Yeah, we’re all alright, but…”

We. We, we, we, all of them thank the fucking world. As your breath is held, Taehyung’s voice is solid, “Say it.”

“My eye is pretty fucked. Yoongi’s face is cut up and he’s got some nasty bruises on his—” 

You don’t even remember yanking the phone to your mouth. “Where is he.”

Jimin audibly pauses on the line before having the audacity to chuckle. Irked and feeling ire bubble back to the surface, you seethe, “This isn’t funny, Park. Where the fuck is he?” 

“With us.” Us. Shit. “In the car.” 

Oh. 

“Your brother’s here, too.” 

“Ah.” That means they’re all there. They’re all heading home. “Am I on speaker.” 

“Umm.. Yeah.” 

As much as you’re relieved they’re all okay, stockpiled anxiety transforms into anger, your limit striking the thundering sky. “Actually, you know what? Good. Now I can say you’re all idiots and immature as fuck.” 

It’s your sibling that responds first. “Hey, wait a damn minute—” 

“I waited long enough!” you scream, ignoring Taehyung’s wide eyes. 

You know you need to relax. But you can’t help what’s happening right now and all you feel is pain. “I know this shit isn’t new to y’all, but really? You didn’t need to do this.” 

“He was gonna—”

“All you had to do was play the game! Why’d you have to make them mad? Do you even know what could’ve happened back there?” Damn it, you weren’t supposed to cry during this part, not when you just want them to know they fucked up. 

And the response is dead silence. Because of course it is. But if they won’t answer you here, they’re gonna answer another, “Just tell me one thing,” you plead. “Is this gonna happen again?” 

That one your brother answers with finality. “They won’t be coming around anymore.” 

Gulping, you give Taehyung a glossy-eyed look before staring at his lit screen again. Trying not to let your voice waver, you accept his response, “Okay… Are you okay?” 

“Me? Yeah, the hits I took were weak as fuck. I’ll get home soon so if you wanna order in tonight we can.” 

“Fuck that.” 

“Huh?” 

What an idiot. “Bro, you don’t even know how fucking mad I am,” you accuse through gritted teeth. There’s no way in hell you wanna deal with their bullshit. Ignoring your pleas and staring harm in the face? Forget it. “I’m going to Yuri’s.” 

“What? Nah, come home tonight and we’ll talk.” 

“I just—No.” Taehyung has to grip your shoulder before pulling you into a hug. And you’re still steel in his arms because you haven’t been this upset in ages. “I’m not talking to any of you for awhile.” 

And you mean that. 

“…Fine. But go asap then. I don’t want you out late on your own.” 

So you gotta listen to what he wants but when it comes to what you say, it’s crickets? Goddamn, you’re furious. “…Of course you don’t.”

And you hang up before anyone can say anything else. 

-

-

You open the front door to your brother leaning against the hallway wall.

Both of you eye each other, one of you with a perfectly fine face and the other that isn’t so lucky because he’s a fool.

And no words are exchanged as you trudge your frustration to the kitchen. 

-

-

Ice. Bandages. Dinner. Anger propels you through it all.

Whipping up a quick but hearty meal, you let your brother patch himself up after demanding he showered. The smells of comfort food waft through your nose as things sizzle on the stove and, through the whole process, you don’t think about anything except how upset you are.

They’re all okay. But like Taehyung so abruptly put it, they’re all stupid. 

As you turn off your burner, you transfer everything to a bowl, sighing so loud it seasons the top with fire. When you approach the bar, your actions speak pretty damn loud—the dish clank shoving out a question from your sibling,

“Is there something you wanna say to me?” 

“There’s a bunch of shit I wanna say to you.” 

“It’s about Yoongi,” he asks, the absence of hesitation making your insides squeeze. “Isn’t it.” 

But luckily for you, your rage is so potent that it overruns your fear. As soon as your brother stands up and starts to repeat his question, your correction clangs through the room, 

“It’s about all of you! You say you wanna be there for me but what the fuck will doing this shit do?” 

Freezing, the man waits in shock as you keep going, “Yes, that guy deserves hell. I was so scared when he grabbed me at the club.” You stop to swallow. “But I had them both there and we left.”

Fuck, this is hard. Having to relive that shit is difficult but you need your brother—and all of them, for that matter—to know how hurt you feel right now. Mustering up enough bravery to get to the goddamn point, you finally squeak out, 

“If I lose them? Lose you? Because of something as stupid as a fight?” Your eyes search his, and your heart cracks when you see glassy sheen amongst his bruises. “What would I do then?” 

You expect silence. And silence is what you get. It’s drawn out, loud, and telling. “We know.” 

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he whispers, eyes lifting to meet yours with sincerity. “And we’re sorry.”

Another moment passes between the two of you, the food you made left uneaten on the counter and the rest sitting still on the stove. But you know your sibling will eat it all tonight, whether you’re there or not. 

And you step forward at the same time he holds his battered arms out. 

Freshly showered, he still smells like rain and exertion. But his heart beats under your chest, he’s present, and back home—things you need to stop taking for granted. 

But you’re still mad. And getting things off your chest has only made you tired, so you decide that it’s finally time to go before you circle back to other scary territory brought up tonight. “I’m leaving now,” you announce as you step away. “But just think about that.” 

“I will.”

“I’m serious.” 

“I will.”

Staring, you take note of his cuts and injuries, wondering how the others are faring even though you don’t wanna deal with anything else. Because it hurts too much, and if you see who you’re thinking about, there’s no telling what you’d do if you were like this with your brother. There’s no telling how you’d…

No. You choose to go the easy route this time. Everyone can simmer in their sore, swelling consequences while you have a night of de-stressing with your friends. 

So you leave to go pack without another word. 

It’s raining. 

Hard.

And even though your car is heading to Yuri’s, your heart is beating backwards. Tugging you somewhere else and not letting up. 

With a ping of chill, you can’t shake it. Braking at a stop sign close to your destination, you sit in silence, letting the rain pelt every side of your vehicle and wondering what the hell to do. 

Truthfully? Your brother looked like shit. But your body isn’t telling you to go back to the house, which can only mean one other place. And you know for a fact you don’t wanna talk to him, either. 

So fucking upsetting. They did all that for what? You can barely keep your thoughts in a row because they keep yelling at jostling each other just like everybody did on the court. If anyone had to fight the dipshit, it should've been you. 

Fuck! Your head connects with the wheel, an inner monster rumbling with the thunder because you’re so fed up with everything that happened. 

Your brain is the one yelling. But your heart is begging for it to listen. Go to Yuri’s? Go to Yoongi’s. Find shelter in that warm bed of hers and sink in her plushies to comfort you? 

A sigh. Maybe you can at least call him to tell him off one more time. He needs to hear what you told your brother because if you ever, ever lose him—

Your eyes burn. 

Yoongi: Outgoing Call

No answer.

Yoongi: Outgoing Call

Pick up. What the fuck.

Yoongi: Outgoing Call

…Turn the fuck around shit, shit, shit.

Curses flying, you whip your vehicle in a flash, heart pounding so loud it’s blocking out the storm. Which is morbidly impressive considering how horridly it’s pouring. 

Thinking in leaps, you pivot and make another decision. Tell her and make it all quick. 

Yuri: Outgoing Call

“Hello?”

“Hey, I’m not coming.”

“You okay?”

“I’m going to Yoongi’s.”

“Yoongi’s? Why?”

Ah, shit. Oh, fuck. She doesn’t know. 

Banging the steering wheel, you smash your teeth, stressed as hell from braving the rain in the dark and now snitching on yourself to someone else. 

Damn it. What do you say? What can you possibly even say when you’re so mad and stressed and conflicted and worried—

“Hello?”

“Because he’s the one,” you whoosh out, your vision quivering twice as much as it should. “And things went down after the game and now something feels wrong.”

“Oh, shit. Is that why y’all didn’t come to—”

“Yes.” When you say all this out loud, now it has weight. Horrifying weight on your chest and a block pushing down on the gas. You hear a bit of shuffling on the line, and you’re starting to get so anxious that you blurt, “Please don’t say anything. Please.”

“I won’t. Not about this.”

“Thank you.”

“Hang up, babe. Make it safe.”

“Okay.”

Go, go, go. Please, just get there. 

Letting up, you change your speed, hoping to everything good in the world that this feeling you have is only a feeling and nothing more. 

Yoongi: Outgoing Call

What a strange emotion, wanting his reason for not picking up solely being because he doesn’t wanna talk to you. That is an answer you can deal with. 

But you still can’t fight off the jagged pulses telling you it’s something else. 

After an agonizing drive, you finally see his complex, tensing harder the further and further away you have to park. 

Whipping into a spot, you screech into it before hauling your bag out, popping the trunk and desperately grabbing a plastic box you always keep inside. 

And the mad dash drenches you long before you seek cover, your bones shivering shivering shivering from the chill.

Yoongi has to be home. His car is here. 

But he still won’t pick up the fucking phone.

Skidding at his door, your knocks are rapid, knuckles singed from the ice cold wraps.

Answer, answer, answer. For fuck’s sake, he better answer. 

After a haunting moment of silence, you decide to call one more time, head wet and bones shivering as you press the phone to your damp ear. 

Finally. “Hello.” 

“Open the door,” you jump into commanding, hearing nothing other than a voice that sounds so crushed and low that it crumples you inside. 

“You’re here?” 

“Yeah, let me in.” Fuck, your teeth are clattering against each other, whether it’s from the rain, the cold, or anger, you can’t tell. 

But the reply you get is the coldest thing imaginable. And it sets your whole body aflame. 

“Not tonight.”

Hell no. Hell fucking no Yoongi is not going to get rid of you that easily. Not when you have a boatload of things to say and only one dock to dump them all on, “Yoongi, I swear to god—” 

“Not tonight—”

“—you don’t let me in I’m—”

“Go home—”

“I’m fucking staying out here until you open the goddamn door!”

Oh, you’re pissed. You’re so fucking pissed because this all could’ve been avoided if none of them were stupid. Or prideful. Or whatever the fuck boys decide to be when they can’t let something go. 

And this man still has the audacity to give you the stiff arm, silence on the line before he rasps out another short, “I’m serious.”

“No.”

“Go home.” 

“No!” 

He says your name. So, so softly, before a gut-wrenching, 

“Please.”

Breath shaken, you rest your forehead against chilly wood, hoping it quells the fire you feel rising from your rib cage. 

You can’t give up. Not when you have so much to say. Not when you have to check on him and make sure he’s fine. 

Not when you give into the strongest premonition that you need to be nowhere else but with him tonight. 

You will stay. Stay, stay, stay. Even if he doesn’t want to see you. 

Voice trembling in rage and concern and everything in between, you feel your eyes sear through when they close, mission boiling down to one more desperate choice, 

“…No.” 

You’re cold. And wet. But you will stand out here for as long as it takes him to let you inside—a night, a day, no matter what.

And for a moment. Or a few. You think he’s dead set on making you prove that. 

But you finally, finally, finally hear a sigh before a lock turn, and you try to prepare yourself for what you see but he opens the door and his face comes into view holy shit he looks like a wreck—

“What the fuck,” you grit out as you rush in with vision swimming, digging into your bag for the medkit you hastily stashed and swinging off your sandals because you gotta get something in the—

A hand grips you hard, tugging you back before you even register what’s happening.

As your feet stumble back onto linoleum, your gaze snaps to the ground. 

And your breath cuts like it’s your last. 

Shards. 

Pieces.

Thousands of wood and glass chips litter the entire open area of the living room. 

And realizing where they came from strikes like lightning. 

Fuck. Oh, fuck, what did Yoongi do?

“I told you, doll.”

You choke on a sob.

“Go home.”

Your breaths return before you straighten, tears flowing freely as you don’t know whether to start cleaning up the chaos or finally facing the one who caused it.

No, no, no. Get rid of it. 

Throw it out, all of it, all of it. 

A new fire roars to life, forging your steeling commitment as you wrestle out of Yoongi’s hold.

What did he do, what did he do?

Revving with smoke out of your ears, you burn a path to the kitchen, grabbing a trash bag before marching into the wreckage. Up go the biggest pieces first, chucked into plastic before the smaller ones follow.

Throw it all. This one, this one, and this one.

Yoongi isn’t even wearing shoes. He can cut himself up even more if this all stays where it is. 

Shit, this is everywhere. 

When you realize you’re gonna need a broom, you storm back into his laundry closet to yank one out and keep going. When you go to sweep, the sharpest voice cuts through your fingers.

“Stop.”

Your grit grips the tool even tighter. Because you won’t. Don’t dare look into his expression, either, because you know that one glance will melt every scream on your tongue. So you stay resolute and shoot rejection to the ground, “No.”

“Just go, please.”

“No.”

This hurts. 

This really, really hurts. 

Yoongi has never, ever said these things to you and it feels like a knife jabbing into the same spot over, and over again. You almost prefer three new months of no contact over whatever the hell this is.

But you have to keep going. Eyes clenching, lips wobbling, you must keep going. 

Because you came here for a reason other than this mess. And he’s gonna have to do better than this to kick you back out into the rain. 

“I got it.” 

“Let me do it.” 

“Your brother needs you.”

“Yeah, well, I already tore the fuck into him and I’m gonna do the same to you.” You harden your fist on the sweeper, tugging it more towards your shoulder with finality. And you gather all the energy you need to leave no more room for arguments, because Yoongi is going to listen, “So sit down.”

It hurts.

He wants to say shit. You know he wants to.

But he only breathes hard with eyes closed, following your orders and carrying his dark clouds to the dining room. 

When he finally leaves you alone, this is when you look his way. 

In sweats and a shirt, he appears fine. But with a deep pang, you notice he’s slightly limping. Judging from those knuckles, you wonder if they’re red from the fight or from hitting another wall of his apartment. 

Or from whatever the fuck happened around your feet.

Shit.

While he dumps himself at his table, you clean up the pieces of his rampage, mentally noting that one plan of yours has now changed. 

This one. These, too. A string here. A metal piece there.

You don’t know how long it takes you. All you know is that you’re burning inside, determined to clean everything and sweep this chaotic energy away. 

One more. Two more. Another one here.

As soon as you’re done, you lug the trash bag out of the front door and don’t give a shit what happens to it now.

Keep going. There’s more that you need to take care of.

The fuel inside of you rages on, anger conflicting with anxiety and past worries and sadness for something that didn’t even happen. As you spin, you vow yourself to keep pushing until you can’t anymore. 

Sniffling. Shivering. But staying strong because things could’ve gone a lot worse. 

Yoongi meets you by the table, messy, damp hair shielding his features. “You’ve done enough.” 

“I still need to—” 

“Just.” He looks away. “Go home, doll. I can’t do this tonight.” 

“Do what? I’m helping you.” 

That’s what you do for each other, right? You both help each other. But now you’re not so sure because Yoongi comes back with not an acknowledgement, nor a way of relenting. 

But ice. 

“Who said I needed it?” 

And in all the time you’ve spent with this man, this is the first time you’ve felt downright cold. “Yoongi, what?” Your eyes travel across his face, chest caving in when there’s barely any hints of vitality. “Are you serious?” 

“You think I’m joking?” 

“You’re kicking me out? What happened to saying you’d never do that, huh?” 

“I say a lot of things.” 

…Oh.

That hurt. That… That physically couldn’t have hurt any harder. 

Nodding, you look away, shaking your head in disbelief because you are on the verge of losing it. “You know what? You do say a lot of things.”

Walking away, you start rearranging pillows on the couch pushed askew. “Like how perfect I am.” Picking up his books from the now non-existent coffee table. “And how there’s no one else.” 

As you give the volumes a new home on his intact tv stand, you turn to face him again. “Those are just words, too, huh?” 

Yoongi kicks his head back with a smile, one that cuts instead of mends. “Nah… Not tonight.” 

“Not tonight what.” 

“We aren’t doing this tonight.” 

“The fuck we aren’t.” It’s his turn to walk away, with a slow head shake that you really don’t like. “Where are you going?” 

“Nowhere.” Yoongi shifts his head to the side, but not enough for you to fully see him. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want you to. “But you’re going home.” 

Something’s off. There’s something completely off but all you feel is sadness and rejection in your ribcage. “So this is how it happens, huh. Now I’m just like everyone else.” 

He finally faces you, miles away even though you’re just rooms apart. “You’re gonna go there?” 

“I am.” 

“Wow.” 

That’s what he comes back with? This is gutting you from the inside out and you have no idea what’s happening but now rage is flaring into your mouth, “You think I wanted to come here? After what all of you did?” 

“Do you even know?” 

“No! But how the fuck would I? You don’t tell me shit!” 

“That’s cus—” 

Your response sears over his floors, “I can take care of myself. But none of you told me about that dude from the court. None of you.” Breath shaken, you continue dumping out all your thoughts and previous concerns, “If I had known? That whole Dalo thing could’ve been avoided and I would’ve ran.” 

For a person that you’ve come to know as so warm, Yoongi’s entire aura freezes you over as you keep talking. “And today? You know how fucking scared I was? If I… I…” 

All he does is stare. Why isn’t he doing anything else? Is he really flipping the switch and choosing to legitimately let you leave this time?

Fine then. 

“You know what?” Giving up, you laugh—harsh, and breathy, and without any joy at all. “Forget it. You’re not even listening anyway.”

“I swear to—I just said not tonight.” 

Frustration from the game, fear from the ambush after, anxiety from not hearing from them. All of it coalesces into something you can’t even control anymore. Your buffer shuts off, the monster you created seizing the reins, “No, I get it. I do! You want me gone. Sure. See you in three more months.” 

Stunned, Yoongi huffs in disbelief, jaw working overtime. “Are you serious?” 

“Yes, I am. Trying to help you but it looks like you don’t even want that. So good fucking bye.” 

And it looks like he has a beast of his own because his next response to your last attempt has you reeling back in shock, 

“Who asked you?” 

Dark liquid drips onto your soul. 

You can only stare, unblinking and feeling like you’re in an entirely different universe. “Who asked me? Who asked me.” 

“That’s what I said.” 

Forget the question of who asked you because… Who are you even talking to? Who is this person standing in front of you because it’s not the Yoongi you know. It’s so jarring and hurtful and strange that you truly feel thrust into the middle of a nightmare. 

You’re gonna do it. You’re actually gonna leave this time. 

“You know what? Kiss my ass, Yoongi.” 

God, it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

It hurts.

You don’t even know where this is all coming from. All you know is that you’re angry and there’s no stopping the hot magma bubbling in your center. 

Silence fills the room.

And it rains. It pours.

But finally, you hold a sob back before burning a shaky path to his door, wrestling with the lock before yanking it open—

Only to have it shut back in your face, so thrown when you realize you’re getting spun. Air whooshes out of you before your shoulder blades connect with wood—  

And this is the goddamn breaking point. The walls you haphazardly built to keep you upright collapse and tumble. It’s so potent and blinding that you don’t even realize your hands are connecting with his chest in the weakest, saddest ways and you are outright screaming. 

“God, what the fuck! I told you to—We didn’t hear from you for hours and I—I didn’t know if you were okay—” 

“Whoa, hold u—” 

“I thought the worst and I—didn’t even get a chance to—I finally told you want I wanted and you—Fuck—” 

“Just listen—” 

“Don’t ever do that again! I don’t wanna lose you and today was so fucking scary and I’m not, fucking, leaving—” 

Your lips are smashed to hell, his lips bruising so hard you feel it in the back of your skull. And it’s a whole storm as Yoongi pins you against the door, leg wedging between yours and his hands gripping you like a vice. It’s intense. It’s overwhelming. 

“I swear to—” 

You don’t know what to do. What to do what to do what to do, and all your madness jangles as you’re yanked and slammed against another wall, breath leaping into his open mouth before you tug at his hair, digging anger through his shoulders. 

“Can’t fucking listen, can you?” 

“No,” you rip from your throat, shoving him back only to gravitate right back and lock lips again. 

And he rips at your clothes, tearing the front of your shirt so far your chest emerges on full display. Before you can even react to the cuts on his face, Yoongi’s hand clenches around your throat, making you gargle just how you fucking want to right now. 

“Shouldn’t even fucking be here.” 

“When has that ever stopped us.” You groan as you get rapidly led back into something hard, and you realize it’s the dining table digging into your ass. 

“He’s still home.” 

“So?”

“Shouldn’t you—”

“Then kick me out!” you taunt. “For real. Let me go. Fucking do it then.” 

Yoongi works his jaw before gripping tighter, making you groan and your gut flare into something primal. Nostrils flaring, he moves to grip your head hard enough to make your stomach flip but not firm enough to scare you. 

Never to scare you. “You aren’t gonna leave me alone.” 

Your eyes are ice. 

“Are you.” 

You solely watch in determination, breath harsh from your nose and billowing out like steam. Drilling your answer into his eyes, you charge the surrounding air enough to spark like the flashing sky outside. 

And Yoongi cracks like lightning. 

“Goddamn it.” 

Everything happens at once and in quick succession. Teeth grit to hell, Yoongi pulls you upward before fast stepping you to his bedroom, slamming you through the door before you shove him right into his desk. 

Things teeter and shake and clang with each impact, your storm disrupting everything in its path and creating a tornado of desire and thoughts in your brain. 

Something swirls and twists between your souls, tightening and condensing into emotions darker than midnight. And as angry as you are, it’s slipping into a dangerous mania, and you’ve never been this excited for anything in your life. 

“Stubborn.” 

“Coward.” 

Your back stings as you’re pushed back into his door, the wood smacking into the spackle of his wall. Rough lips smother yours as you claw at his shoulders, neck, hair, and you hear him growl into your mouth, 

“Want me to kiss your ass? Suck my dick then we’ll talk.” 

“Fuck you. I give better head than you anyway.” 

His words rival the deepest growl, “Prove it.” 

“Make me.”

Whirlwind. Storm. Tempest. At this point, it’s a whole goddamn high. Your body is thrumming and the only way to feed your anger is to channel it through actions. 

And truth be told, you need this. You both do. With all the high strung emotions that had nowhere to go until you collided?

This is liberation. 

You’re shoved onto your knees before Yoongi dives into his pants, and you’re already hungry and impatient enough to help him shrug his sweats down before he can do it himself. 

“Choke on it,” he commands, holding his dick and watching as you note how hard he already is. When you waste no time taking him in, you elicit the deepest groan you’ve ever pulled from him when you fling spit onto his length. 

Maybe his reaction is to your face. Because you’re still mad as fuck and you aren’t done letting him know that. 

With a passing thought, you realize that this is all new. But you’re welcoming it because it’s working. Only Yoongi can bring out this passion even in anger, or maybe the two of you were going to get to this point no matter what. 

“Fuck.” He steadies the bottom of your chin while you suck him off. “Uh huh. Got anything else to say?” 

You flick him off, and he hums with a rumble, his cock reacting and hitting the back of your prideful throat. 

“Fuck you, too, doll.” His talks devolve into hisses, grunts, moans when you slobber all over yourself, and your cunt is already dripping with your own slick. “There you go. Gonna take it all? Or are you gonna keep running that mouth?” 

And you pop off before taunting, “Find out, pussy.” 

And you’re swallowing him before he shoves you all the way forward, your body arching up in a gag but filled with him him him, your nose flat against his pelvis and his dick squeezing tears from your eyes and your throat overstuffed to hell and there’s no way he’s gonna forget this moment. You’re making damn sure of it. 

Another middle finger raises as you’re tensing around him, and you can barely hear him above you but you do know he’s massively pleased. Tears stream down your eyes when you’re yanked off, gasping for air and being pulled off the ground. 

“Holy fuck.” 

Throat hoarse, you attempt speech but it doesn’t matter anyway, because his lips steal them all. And your cunt is slapped with a whole palm, making you flinch and shoot out a whine into his kiss. 

Before you know it, your body hits the bed before he joins you, arms bulging as he rips your top open completely. You can’t even think straight as he teases your earlier efforts, “I’ve had better.” 

“Oh, you fucking—Shut the fuck up,” you growl, a moan leaving without permission as he palms your cunt again. Just when you think he’s gonna top you, Yoongi hauls you up, hastily leading you around the bed until your back connects with another wall. 

You love that shit. And you’re starting to think Yoongi is very, very aware of this fact. 

“Take those fuckin’ pants off,” he orders. “And hands on the wall before I put them there.” 

“Can’t make me do shit—”

Fingers grip your chin before Yoongi gets right into your face, primal instinct making you go on full alert. As his tongue prods his cheek, your whole lower body quivers. “I can. And I will, if you don’t behave.” Tapping your jaw in a warning, he hums. “Now do what I fucking say.” 

Holy shit, he’s not playing around. Which only heightens your desire to peaks previously unreached, and you’re shucking your bottoms off while he yanks his drawer open for condoms. Hurrying, you fling your clothes away before planting—

Yoongi smashes his whole front against your back—pinning your whole body against the cold, rough wall—before intertwining long fingers with yours. “Good girl.” 

Hitching your hips back, he sticks your ass out as you slip, and you feel his cock tease your entrance. Groaning, you grip your hands into fists as he continues to rub your cunt but never enter. Denying, denying, denying. Smacking your pussy and still not letting you feel him inside. 

And it’s maddening. “Please!” 

“Please what,” he asks, giving your ass a spank that has you flinching into the wall. 

And, without any shred of mercy, this goes on for longer than he’s ever held out. It’s so sickening that tears start flowing from your eyes, and you devolve into saying anything to get him to fuck your brains out. Between spanks on your ass, slaps on your tits, and aggravating kisses on your back, Yoongi doesn’t let you phase him for minutes. 

It’s when you choke on a sob that he finally, finally squeezes inside of you, checking for your nod before wrecking you completely. 

“Oh, fuck—” Your eyes shut tight as you try to keep yourself upright, hands pushing against the wall as your legs shift with every thrust. 

“This ass. Fuck.” Yoongi’s pace is relentless, hands bruising your hips and your cheeks smacking into his pelvis over and over and over. “It’s a goddamn problem.” 

You’re trying so hard. So, so hard to stay on the wall. But your hands are too sweaty; they're starting to slip with each attempt. “Bed,” you command. “Bed now.” 

And he obliges immediately, pulling out and yanking you back. Mouth to your ear, he both checks in while making your legs jelly, “You tapping out?” 

“Break my fucking back,” you rasp in return, hearing him growl in satisfaction before burying you facedown into his bed. As he plunges inside again, you grip at his sheets, driven to the brink and reveling in all the things he’s saying to you while feeling him in your stomach. 

Suddenly, you feel your arms pulled back, and you yell into his mattress as he buries himself even deeper. Everything you’re screaming makes no sense, but the phenomenal sensation you feel as you go limp renders you speechless anyway. 

Yoongi knows exactly what he’s doing as he pushes his thumb into your asshole, because you clench so hard around him that he chuckles darker than dark. Careening into space, you kiss the edge of euphoria before he inconveniently pulls out, launching a sling of insults from your mouth. 

“What was that?” 

“I said fuck you!” 

“Thought so.” 

Not done in the slightest, Yoongi hauls your thighs so flush against him that you have to use your fingertips for support. Just as you’re about to argue, he rams into you from a new and impossibly enticing angle and holy fuck it feels so good you want to weep.

“Put that fucking hand down,” he growls, smacking away the fingers you didn’t even know were on your mouth. “If you wanna talk shit.” 

“Fuck—!” 

“Uh huh. Let it out, baby girl.”

You’ve never felt this out of control. This wild. This out of body. Your head is yanked back, your back pressing into the front of his shirt before you feel him so far into your guts that you quiver. 

Now at the mercy of his tongue in close range, you hear his gravelly tone in your ear, “What’s my fuckin’ name.” 

“Asshole—” 

A hard smack to your tits has you crumpling with a whine. “Say it.” 

“I’ll say it if I wanna say it—” 

Another spank to your inner thigh and you’re gone. Eyes roll as he tweaks your nipple, and your words are almost garbled when he grips your chin from behind. “This what we’re doing? Hmm?” 

You laugh breathy before you taunt, “Uh huh.” 

“Mm…” Despite your laugh, you shake. “I wouldn’t do that, doll.” 

“Make me. Bet you can’t.” 

Tensed and veins angry, Yoongi grips both your tits before snarling, “That’s enough.” 

Swiftly, he shoves you down into the sheets, muscular frame pinning you as he strokes up into you just right. Again. Again. It’s all too slow and too effective and you’re trying to stay mad but all you can feel is perfection, your back arching at his thrusts and mewling at his low growls in your ear. 

“You wanted this.” Another thrust. “Talking shit.” Your jaw goes slack. “Pissing me off.” 

Your groan is downright erotic. Why why why? Just knowing you’re making him this mad flutters your cunt and, from the sinister chuckle shooting into your neck, Yoongi definitely felt that. 

“Fuckin’ thought so.” 

When he reaches to grab your breasts, the last thrust has you crying out in a flurry of pleasure. 

Every single thought is Yoongi, from beginning to end in a biblical cycle of debauchery. Exertion leaves you slick, sweat coating the expanse of your skin only to press into his bed, your mess your mess your mess. At his hands. The smacks of his cock. The rolls of his hips. Are you gone? Are you here? If he’s bruised then you feel like you are, too, and you welcome the temporary pain as Yoongi’s fingers dig ever deeper into your waist fuck one’s now pinning your head down. 

The moans you let out are unending, and your thighs shake when all you get in response is a laugh of condescension. 

“Look at you. Can’t even stay mad.” 

“Fuck you!” You’re close, you’re close, you’re close again. Release is at your fingertips, but Yoongi yanks himself out to rip it away from your outstretched fingers. “No!” 

“What, doll.” 

“Please!” 

“Nah.” 

Body sore, you’re flipped over with no mercy as something else presses against your cunt. 

Fucking hell, he’s eating you out now? Shaking, you feel Yoongi’s tongue swirl around your thrumming clit before he sucks, edging you to the point of tears and heartbreak. And it proves too much as you grab at his head, yank at his hair, because he lets up when you’re close. 

Every. Single. Time. 

Your madness spirals into your curses, and he relishes in your despair, continuing to lick and suck and slap your thighs with patience. “What do you say?” 

“Please!” 

“Mm. Not loud enough.” 

“Yoongi, please.” 

“Oh, we’re saying names now?” 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, it aches. It’s starting to borderline hurt. “I’ll be good,” you barter, beg, plead with a head spinning off its own axis. “I’ll do anything.” 

“Do it yourself then.” 

Later, when you look back on tonight, you’ll be embarrassed and shy to hell. But right now, you’re so over any shyness that you don’t hesitate, reaching down to rub at your clit and moaning when it’s so sensitive.

And Yoongi gets a front row seat. 

His groan is gutteral. And it doesn’t take you long to quicken your pace, bucking your hips and whining to the ceiling. You’re so so so close it’s right there—

Your hand is smacked away. And after you try to wrestle out of his grip, you are a flat out, blubbering mess. “Yoongi… Please…” 

“Nah.” 

This is torture. And you’re frightened at how much you’re enjoying it. “I’m so close.” 

“You’ll come when I say you can.” 

“Please! …Please..”

“You done being a brat?” 

“No! Fuck. Yes!” If you weren’t so far gone, you may have deciphered a tiny smile of amusement. But it won’t be for months later until you’ll realize that you were wrong. 

Because the menacing flash of teeth you see is much too wide to be anything other than pride. “The fuck did I say? Use your words.” 

You know you’re still upset. You know Yoongi is still upset. But for some reason, you feel closer to him than you have in awhile, and you wonder if lust and madness are two sides of the same coin. “Let me come. Please.” 

Yoongi finally obliges with something he hadn’t pleasured you with yet. And your vision blanks as you yelp at the sensation, his slick fingers pistoning into your folds so fast you’re arching so taut. From between your quivering legs, you hear one final command, 

“Then fucking come.” 

And you burst, so hard you almost feel like something threatens to spew from your cunt. But all you can do is shake and thrash under his grip, so erratic that you feel like Yoongi’s starting to pin you down. Gone, gone, gone, you’re sure the veins of your neck threaten to break through your sweaty skin. 

Then you feel his cock thrust inside of you, and you whip your head forward only to get your airway cut off. “Again,” he calmly repeats, flinging you back to the last time this happened. 

Only this time, there’s even less room for you to make any other choice. 

“I said again.” 

Your body cannot fathom disobedience, pulsing and milking his perfect fit. Over, and over, and over. You hear rumbling from a dragon above, feel breaths of steam whooshing as it watches you come undone. 

“Yoongi—” 

A light slap to your cheek is your only warning before your chin is tugged, lips smushing into yours to swallow your straining sobs. Fuck, fuck, fuck, your body is still thrumming, inundating around his cock until your emotions spill from your core. Toes. Fingers. Everything is straining and locking in place. 

“So fucking hot.” He rips your soul right out. “Shit.” 

You fly through time and space, gathering emotions and feelings and spiraling spiraling spiraling. Crying. You’re crying. Full on crying you’re so overwhelmed with everything truly you were so mean to him you upset him holy fuck you should’ve left when he told you to—

“Baby.” 

But you cannot stop crying, choke choke gasping on sobs. 

“Babe.” 

“I—I—” 

Your name stabs you with a crisp shot, coupled with a firm grip on your chin, snapping you back to lucid. And Yoongi’s eyes are frantically searching your own. “Look at me.” 

You do. Do you? You do. And his eyes… 

They’re not angry at all. It’s pure concern. Steadfast concentration. And something reflecting your soul. “Breathe.” 

“Oh, shit,” you whisper, coughing and reaching for oxygen you didn’t know you were denying. Air rushes back into your lungs as you inhale. 

“There you go. Keep going.” 

You do, gulping down air and hiccuping a breath or two. Your cheek is being caressed, you think. And with another pass, you know it is. 

“Relax for me.” And you hiccup a sob. “Breathe, babe.” 

You do, you do, you do. Yoongi kisses your forehead, your cheeks, your nose, and you breathe more and more through it all. “You with me?” 

“Always,” you answer, filter off because you are hanging by a thread and he’s holding the top. “Please don’t kick me out ever,” you hiccup. “Please, baby, I’ll do anything for you but I—could—never handle that—” 

You’re tenderly hushed before lips slide over yours, attempting to swallow your thoughts and your sobs and your oncoming tears. As you flood his bed with apologies, Yoongi keeps wiping them all.

“I’m sorry.” 

“Nothing to be sorry for.” 

“I’m really sorry.” 

“Babe.” 

“You told me so many times—” 

“Breathe, angel.” 

You blink at the change in name, and it makes you focus just a bit stronger. Floating down from the precipice. 

“I wasn’t kicking you out,” he slowly explains, kissing sweat from your forehead. His words feel like a calm, rock-filled river over your eyes. “I felt like an idiot and hated you seeing me like this.” 

“Like what?” 

“Just… Like this.” 

“You’re perfect like this,” you hitch out, not caring about what flows out of your mouth. “So perfect. Always to me. I just wanted to help you, baby, I’m so sorry—” 

He hugs you so tight more tears squeeze out. 

And so do more confessions, “I… I care about you. I think a little too much. If I lost you, I wouldn’t—be able—” 

“I’m here.” 

“So please don’t push me away.” 

“I won’t.” 

“I know you don’t make promises but—” 

“I promise.” Without an ounce of doubt, Yoongi places a firm, lingering kiss on your temple. “Promise. Fuck.” As he holds you tight, you feel him shake before you hear the tiniest sniff at your ear. 

Oh. He doesn’t need to be like this, too. You try to move your hand up between your bodies to comfort him, but your whole limb feels gelatinous. So you simply whisper, “It’s okay, baby.” 

You can’t tell how long you lie like this, with his beautiful weight on yours. But time is irrelevant when your mind is unwinding from hours of whirring, starting to finally accept the fact that everyone is okay and you don’t have to be angry anymore. 

“Come on,” Yoongi rasps, voice cracked and airy. “Let’s go.” 

“Hmm?” 

“Shower.” 

“Oh. Okay.” 

You’re so thrown and dizzy from what just happened that even getting to the bathroom is a blur. What you kinda feel is Yoongi holding you upright when your legs buckle, but you don’t remember when he leaves your side to turn the water on. 

As he flips on the light, your eyes squeeze until they adjust, and you watch as he tests the water while fully clothed. Air conditioning starts to give you a chill, but the shower warms up just in time because he reaches out to guide you inside. 

Wait. Is he not joining you? Bleary, you grab at his shirt when he steps away, eyes pleading. “Are you coming in, too?” 

Yoongi stops before he gives a shake of his head. “I’ll take mine when you’re done,” he says through a slight smile. “We’ll take care of you first.” 

That doesn’t make sense. Even in your depleting haze, you know something doesn’t add up. “You can join me now. I don’t mind.” When you try to lift his shirt, Yoongi visibly flinches when you brush over his ribs.

And all the murk around your head vanishes in a snap. 

He kept his shirt on that whole time. Not once did your positions allow you to see his upper body fully. And now he’s not gonna get in the shower or take his shirt off? 

Your voice lowers two octaves when you reach full clarity. “Let me see.” 

Unblinking, Yoongi tries to back away, “Don’t worry—” 

“Let me see it, baby,” you command, breath cut until he finally allows you to lift his shirt up holy fuck those injuries look so painful tears prick your eyes. “Oh, my god, Yoongi—” 

“I’m fine.” 

“You’re hurt.” You feel these wounds deep in your ribs, and you tell him to get your kit what the hell he fucked you while feeling those? 

Attempting to alleviate your stress, Yoongi decides to strip fully and step into the shower, ignoring your pleas to grab your med kit and promising you can take care of him when you’re done washing up. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, doll.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Promise.” 

And when his arms wrap around you, this is when you finally let go. Huge, chest-wracking sobs echo around tile, and Yoongi stays quiet through your cathartic release. 

There’s another reason you were so upset. And it has nothing to do with any of them, but with yourself. The main reason you’ve been so riled up and frustrated is because… This is technically your fault, too. 

But, unsurprisingly, he won’t let you take any blame whatsoever. 

“You got hurt cus I said to play.” 

“Nope.” 

“I wore the outfit that day.” 

“Doesn’t matter.” 

“And lost my friends at the club.” 

“No.” 

Sniffling in quick succession, you think about one other option. Some form of closure that can double as compromise. Voice soft, you suggest the last resort you have, 

“How about we share it.” 

Yoongi blinks twice before he clarifies, “You wanna share the blame?” When you nod, he huffs through the tiniest smile of confusion. “Mm. Then it’s our fault.” 

“Okay.” 

After shaking his head, he closes his eyes, molding his forehead with yours. “What are you doing to me.” 

A sniffle. “Wrecking your water bill.” 

His laughs join yours as you barely get your sentence out before giggling, and to feel him so close and present and here makes your worries slink down the drain. 

Hands trace down your arms, walking along falling rivers before creating ponds with your fingers intertwined. “Gonna clear me out someday.” 

“Duh.” 

He’s himself again. 

And after a whole night of chaos, you feel like yourself again, too. 

That’s all you both need to feel peace. 

-

-

You keep that tranquility carrying you through his room, peeking into his closet to grab the biggest shirt and sweats you can find before drying your head. 

But no matter how much water you can dry, your body will keep being washed in relief. And it’s the calmest feeling, watching as Yoongi does the simplest things near his bed. 

Your lips curve when he pulls up his pants; your heart beats when he grabs a tee. It’s in this moment that you admit that these outfits of his are your favorites, and you gravitate to him as he slips cotton over his damp head. 

“Come on,” you softly offer as you turn. “I’ll make food and get you some ice.”

Again, Yoongi just stares with a faint smile. But his eyes are alive again, so you’re more than fine if he just follows your lead without a word.

In the kitchen, you pause amongst the appliances, the cabinets watching as you utilize your phone to find a good recipe. “What shall we eat… Stew? Or, wait—” 

Looking up, you eye him in thought before choosing to focus on something else. “Actually, let’s figure you out first.” 

Opening yet another tab to add to your hundreds, you type away before selecting a good starting point. “Okay, let’s see. You’re breathing fine, so no bruised ribs. Umm…” 

Scroll, scroll. 

“It looks really bad there, though. You sure you can move right?” 

Despite asking, you go right back to your phone before Yoongi can even respond. Scrolling and clicking and reading again. 

Scroll, scroll. 

“Okay, so no bruised ribs, and according to this you don’t have any broken bones. And nothing fractured, either, thank god—”

“I love you.” 

Time bursts.

Your chest glows. 

Everything starts to beat, beat, beat in slow motion. 

And you don’t even feel like you’re in the room anymore. “…What?” 

You need to hear it again. You need to need to need to, because if you heard him wrong, you will check yourself and bolt right out the door. 

His eyes. 

Despite the battlefield on his skin, they are dripping, and sparkling, and full. The whole world suspends as he stares right into your soul, caressing it with his wounded hands and cradling it in his bruised arms. 

No matter how hard the moon will try—for years, and years, and years more—it will never outshine this single, shaken, solidified admittance. 

“I love you, doll.”

You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to fucking do. 

Why is Yoongi saying this now? Why is he choosing now of all times to make you the happiest person in the universe? 

No. 

Happiness isn’t even close to what you feel and you’re pretty sure you’re crying but nothing makes sense and your vision plunges under sunlit waters. 

“And you don’t have to say anything. I know I don’t deserve to.” 

What?

“I can’t be everything you want. Or need. Or whatever the fuck I’m trying to say. But I just needed you to know because I can’t fucking fight this shit anymore—” 

You lunge forward before he offers his last syllable, careful to avoid his wounds and not mush his face because he would do the same for you. 

And it’s all too much tonight. The lingering fear, the dying anger, the floods of relief, the joy. You can’t stop your sobs from coming out in bursts, your whole body wracking with overwhelming emotion as he grits into your skin,

“Goddamn it, I—”

“Yoongi—”

“—so fucking much.”

Yoongi loves you. He’s here. He loves you, loves you, loves you and the beats of your heart pulse orange and blue, blue, blue. 

Nothing will ever compare to this moment. Nothing. You will bottle this one up in a jar to place next to all the others you have stored, and when you are lonely, or hurt, or even when you’re doing just fine, you will uncork it to surround yourself with this memory and know that everything will be okay. 

He loves you. 

Fuck, he loves you? 

You choke out his name with a sob, and he squeezes you even harder. When you can’t reply with anything else, he buries his face in the crook of your shoulder, his tears taking root and blossoming into beautiful vibrant fruit all along your rib cage.

He loves you.

Why can’t you seem to say it back? What the fuck is wrong with your tongue?

Maybe it’s because saying it doesn’t feel like enough. Like it’s laughable that there are words for this feeling because they don’t nearly represent what you harbor in your very being for this man. 

There’s no way any words are enough. Not for him. Nor for you. Because right now, Yoongi needs something more. And you’re going to give him more than everything. 

“Yoongi, I—”

He captures your lips in his, and you let him push you against his counter and consume you everywhere he wants to. Between his claims, your sobs have room to breathe. Which makes for a horrible showing of your attempting to say what you want to. “I… I can’t… Yoongi—”

Fingers press into the back of your head, a forehead smushing into yours and shutting you up completely. “I’m sorry,” he says, words rolling down the tracks your tears have walked. “I won’t ever be able to say that enough.” 

“Baby,” you hiccup, resting a hand over one of his. “It’s okay.” 

“It’s not.”

“It is.” You squeeze his hand, feeling the lovely digs of his knuckles in your palm. His scent wafts around you like an embrace, and you know there’s nothing quite like it. At all. “You’re okay, so I’m okay.” 

After he plants a warm kiss on your temple, you feel his hands ball into fists at your ears. “I just—fuck.” 

There’s no telling what he’s thinking about in that brain of his. But you need him to know that there’s nothing more for him to be sorry for. All you care about is that he’s present, responding, and himself. 

“Babe,” you whisper, still not believing those three words coming out of his mouth. “I’m here.” 

“I know.” He sighs, smushing into your lips and holding you so tenderly, yet so tight. As he laps at your tongue, you’re more than sure he can taste your rainfall. 

None of this is real. Because you can’t believe it at all. Even as Yoongi continues his journey across your neck, your shoulders, your jaw, your face, you still can’t piece together that this is truly happening.

When you feel him hard on your pelvis, you remember that he didn’t get the same release you got earlier. But you’re not gonna be the one to suggest going again, all of this will be what he decides. 

And what Yoongi decides is to pull you closer, breathing you in while you do the same. His kisses are never ending, and your hands roam languidly along his shoulders, his hair, stretching across the expanse of his back. One that has held the weight of the world and then some.

His name leaves your mouth in a sigh, your back arching as softly as the kisses being planted along your breasts. 

“If you only knew,” he whispers, laughing to himself as he wraps an arm around your side.

“Knew what?���

“Nothing, babe.” You gasp into his next rough press to your lips. “You’re so—fuck.”

You said you’d let him lead. But as Yoongi starts to walk you into his bedroom again, you think about his injuries and feel more concerned after knowing they’re there. So you quietly stop him as you reach his bed, “Are you sure?” 

“I’ll be alright, doll,” he whispers, lowering you down and smiling so tranquilly your heart lurches. “As much as I think you enjoyed the first time, this time will be better.” 

Giggling, you fight the heat from searing your cheeks as you smile. “You enjoyed it more than I did, I think.” 

“I don’t think so.” Yoongi smirks, getting up. “Lemme get a cond—” 

“It’s okay,” you halt him with a hand, and he freezes. 

Full stop. No movement. Not even a breath. “...What?” 

“We don’t…” You swallow, stomach fluttering at his expression. “We don’t have to this time.” 

Because Yoongi’s eyes have not left your face. “You sure?” 

Then something causes you to smile. Knowing that if there’s anyone you want to do this with, it’s this man right here and now. There’s genuinely no one else in the world with whom you would wanna share this experience, and the fact that he’s still asking makes you emotional.

Cradling his face with the most tender touch you can imagine, you confirm, “Just for a little bit.” And you add something you think he needs to keep hearing. “I trust you.” 

Gulping down any extra emotions spilling from your heart’s chalice, your words come out a little wobbled. “And I want to, if you want it, too.” 

“I want what you want, doll.” 

“Then it’s okay.”  

Clothes on or off, you still feel so shy underneath him. 

But this time, you vow to shove those feelings of unworthiness to the side. Because you are fully invested in this moment above all others. And Yoongi deserves more than you can give. 

When he slowly tugs his sweats from your legs, you’re already choking back tears. As he climbs on top, you await the connection you never in your dreams would’ve imagined. 

And when Yoongi stares at you one more time, you know exactly what he’s asking. 

“Yes, my love,” you wisp into his skin, craning up to kiss him and swallowing his last slice of doubt. Knowing you’ll say it again and again and again. 

His brows pinch as he kisses you—slow, purposeful, understanding. Then he positions himself, and you can physically feel his hand brush your cunt as he does so. If he ever asks if you felt him shake, you will deny it. But only for a year or two. 

As soon as you feel him—only him, solely him—you swell with a current of emotion. And it pulls you all the way under when he’s fully sheathed inside. 

“Holy fucking shit.” 

“Yoongi—” 

“Fuck.” 

Simply having him inside, with no barriers or obstacles in between? You’re already close. There’s no early explanation, but you already feel overwhelmed enough to come. 

No no no. You want this to last forever, so you wait for Yoongi to gather himself because he appears to be fighting, too. 

Chuckling, you ask, “You good, baby?” 

And your lover snaps his gaze to your face, bangs sweeping across your cheeks and eyes unblinking. “Yeah, just...” He stares at your inquisitive expression before whooshing out a harsh breath. “Just this is about to make me bust.” 

You burst into laughter before admitting you were just thinking the same thing, and his slow grin makes you want to cry. “We’re not good at this.” 

“No. You’re too good at this. I can’t even move.” 

“Yes, you can,” you whine. “You wreck my shit all the time.” 

Feeling a twitch more prominent than ever, you giggle as Yoongi puffs out pained amusement. “Doll, if you keep talking like that, I’m pulling out.” 

“Okay, okay,” you surrender, loving how out of sorts he seems. He’s fighting for his life and you’re enjoying the hell out of it. 

“You’re a little too perfect right now.”

Maybe one day you will agree with him. But that day is far from reach, your head shaking in quiet disagreement.

“You are.”

“Nowhere close,” you whisper.

His nose brushes against yours. “Say that again and see what happens.”

“Is that what you tell all the others fuck!”

His shove up your cunt makes you see stars. “What did I fuckin’ say?” 

“What—”

Another launch has you careening through space, lip bitten and suppressing a hearty whine. “You think there’s someone else?” Again. “Hmm?” 

Again. 

You’re so dazed and mind-fucked to pieces that your speech is barely audible. But your chin is grabbed as you’re snapped straight, and your eyes try their hardest to focus on slitted ones above. “You’re gonna regret saying that.” 

You just laugh, whine pinging sharp into the ceiling as he shoves forward so hard your whole body shifts upward. “Oh, yeah?” 

Yoongi doesn’t respond with words, thrusting up again and sending you twisting and winding towards the edge unbelievably fast. “Uh huh.” 

“Make me then,” you gasp out. “Make me really sorry.” 

The sound Yoongi makes comes from deep within his stomach, the rumbling hum shooting right into your veins like liquid fire. 

And the full-on attack he bursts into renders you completely speechless. Everything Yoongi does pulls you deliciously in all directions—his thrusts, his chain hitting his chest, his grip on your wrists, the way he snags your chin. Everything. 

“Taking me so well like this.” 

“I—”

“So fucking tight.”

Fuck fuck fuck it’s habitual for you at this point, and you unhinge your jaw a split second before he smacks the side of your face. Desire lowers your lids halfway as you feel empowered, and you don’t even recognize your voice as you order him on the spot. “Do it again.” 

Yoongi doesn’t stop his pace as he keeps his eyes on you. 

“Do it again,” you growl, fully limp and a groaning mess when he does exactly what you want. 

Fuck, the pain feels good. So good that you reach up and choke him out. But the back of your head is grabbed before you feel hungry lips smash into yours. You feel your wrists pinned again by one large palm, air chilling for a moment before a hot mouth captures one of your nipples. “Oh, fuck, Yoongi!” 

“Uh uh.” 

“Please—please—” 

You’re still tensing as he devours your chest below his shirt, strokes now slower but just as powerful. 

Your arms still haven’t been freed, but there’s something about being under his control that has you loving this position. Without question. Maybe it’s the fact that you can see him now, losing himself just as he saw you washes in the throes of passion. 

And he licks, sucks, lolls his tongue all over your tits, whispered praises sinking through your bosom as he keeps a grip on your wrists. 

“Baby,” you gasp. “I’m close, I’m—” 

“Shit.” Air whooshes over you before you feel your arms freed and him yank himself out, and you freeze as he unloads right on your stomach, a sharp cocktail of pride and shock in your gut. 

Holy fuck, Yoongi was that close? Did he hold out as long as he could? Shit, he’s breathing so hard his jewelry shakes as it dangles. 

You’re still so surprised that your arms are still locked into bends, and he glances up at you from his kneeled state. “Fuck,” he laughs, and is that… Is Yoongi shy? “Thought I could hold out.” 

“No, no, it’s fine,” you assure through your own tiny chuckle. “Oh my god, I promise.” 

He leans down to plant a heart fluttering kiss on your lips, but you hate how he looks pained on the way down. 

Those hits he took… Now you kinda understand his perspective. Because now you want to avenge him in five hundred thousand ways—almost half as many ways as you want to show him how you feel. 

“Stay there, beautiful,” Yoongi orders as he moves to get off the bed, wincing in passes. “I’m not done with you.” 

Damn. He looks even more exhausted than before. “Baby, are you sure?” 

But Yoongi walks right to his bathroom to retrieve a towel, and your eyes may as well transform into hearts when you watch him come back to you. So handsome, even now. Even when he’s simply holding a washcloth, hair completely mussed, soul sparkling and face bruised. 

As he sits to clean your face before moving to your stomach, you can only observe his eyes. So experienced. Calm. At peace. When they drift to yours, it’s instinct that has you shying away. “What, love.” 

Another reason to crumble inside. “I just… nothing,” you whisper. 

And Yoongi finishes with the cloth before tossing it somewhere. “Tell me,” he says, lying down on the ribs with more damage. “I wanna know.” 

“Come on this side,” you tell him, and he obliges without a word. “It’s a secret.” 

“A secret?” 

“Mmhmm.” 

Yoongi settles before lifting your chin, rubbing an affectionate thumb over any tears still persevering on your cheeks. “I can keep those, you know.” 

Smiling, you fold way too easily. “Okay, I’ll tell.” 

When he leans in, your nervousness and excitement to tell him almost spoils your ability to do so. Like someone gifting a present while wanting to say what it is before it’s even opened. 

“I love you, too,” you whisper, tears sprinting to your ducts as Yoongi freezes. When he looks at you, you can’t help but choke on a sob seeing his eyes get as red as the marks on his cheek. “And you deserve more than I could ever give.” 

His eyes hold the heavens and the seas. 

You’re right. Just saying it isn’t fucking enough.

You’re already liplocked again before you can think, saltwater on your face and you don’t even know whose eyes it came from.

Determined, Yoongi starts kissing a trail from your lips to your jaw, and you start to cry as he makes his own journey down the expanse of you. 

All of you.

Is this what it feels like? Is all of this actually, genuinely real?

You hope so, because you feel devotion in each press of his lips, and every touch will be remembered in its own right. Its own pocket of time.

Every single stop.

It almost feels divine when his mouth reaches your folds, lapping at your essence and swirling around your clit. When you say his name, Yoongi says nothing, instead palming your thighs and eating you out like he has all the time in the world. 

Swelling, you already feel close. 

But the way he gets you to fantasia is so natural that you slide into your quivers seemlessly. The transition into your heaven flows like a stream, and your waves engulf his tongue and coat his mouth without trouble. 

This is what it feels like. What it feels like with Yoongi. 

And you wanna keep making love until only sleep can take you from him.

Your hands jut into his hair, gasping as he keeps his pace, and no matter how you squirm he is dead set on holding you down until holy fuck you’re coming again. 

How? What’s happening to you? This constant stream of release is shocking you to the point of crying out, and Yoongi groans into your orgasm and prolongs it with the whole press of his tongue.

“Holy fuck, baby—!” Another wave overcomes the next, and you outright quake in his hands, eyes rolling and vision blinking white. Muscles lock as you can’t keep up with the pleasure, and you’re mercilessly let go only for lips to descend on yours.

Your tears spill into your ears as you kiss him back, wrapping tired arms over his shoulders and raking in deep. 

“Fuck.” And you feel his cock lodge against your entrance, and you’re amazed how hard he is again. 

Does he want what you want? Is he ready again? 

As Yoongi quietly gets up to get a condom, you’re amazed that he wants to keep going after everything that’s transpired. But, if he feels like you do, he’s ready to keep going until the sun comes up three whole times. 

When he sits next to you, your better half appears shy as he bites the wrapper. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”

“Oh, I already know.”

“K. But god, I fuckin’ want to.”

You bite your lip to hold back your smile, remembering what he said a long time ago and bringing it back full circle for the next thing you both wanna try. “One day.”

Yoongi only grins. 

And for the next hour, your lover, your secret, your home gives you everything he has, and you come for him more times than you ever have in your life.

Every time, he drags your pleasure out, expertly tearing you down with his movements and building your confidence up with his words. He tells you you’re perfect, and he disagrees when you disagree. When you find tears on your face, he kisses those away, too. When you feel along his silver, he simply watches you in silence. 

No sadness, doubt, nor anger to be found. 

After you physically can’t do any more, Yoongi lies at your side, silent as you play with his hair. You do your best to stay still, not wanting to accidentally push into any of his injuries that you’re gonna beg him to get checked in the morning. 

Once he’s healed? That’s when you’ll never let go. Because you want to crush him into you completely. Mold into him, just so he can feel the brevity of your highest affection. 

“I’m sorry for yelling,” you finally whisper. “But I really was so mad at you. All of you.” 

“I know.” 

“I don’t wanna lose you.”

“It won’t happen again.” 

“That’s what you said last time.” 

Yoongi stares, seeming to withhold something from you before he palms your cheek. “They were gonna follow us home if we didn’t, babe,” he reveals, snapping your heart back in two. “We all knew that.” 

“Oh, fuck.” Everything hits you at once: why they stayed, why you and Taehyung had to leave. Why Tae didn’t bring you straight back to the house. And the burns at your eyes match the searing in your gut. “I didn’t… I didn’t think about that.” 

When you start to cry, Yoongi sits up and hangs his head between his sweats. “You don’t need to think about shit like that,” he murmurs, sounding defeated as ever. “But we talked after you told us off. We won’t hide that from you anymore.” 

Sniffling, you whisper out a thank you. But you don’t want Yoongi to feel like he has to distance himself, so you untangle him—slowly, gently–-before bringing him into your chest. 

After dealing with all that and the tempest in his living room, this man still let you in. From the looks of things, there’s a lot that he had been fighting, and you’re more than appreciative that he opened his door. Not knowing how to put these feelings into words, you say the first things that come to mind. And for some reason, they feel heavier on the way out, 

“Thank you for letting me in. It was raining really hard.” 

Yoongi stiffens hard before holding you closer. 

“Babe?”

No response. Just another batch of weighted quiet. 

Worried, you tilt your head. “Hey. Look at me.”

If he stays right where he is, you’ll have to respect that decision. But he ends up pushing himself up, and as soon as you see moonlight catch on a falling tear, all your instincts reach for him, “Oh, fuck, come here.”

You surround him with everything you have, wanting every single bit of warmth birthed from his love to fill his space instead of yours. Whatever he needs, you will give. “It’s okay, baby,” you whisper, holding him so close but not nearly close enough. 

Never close enough.

His face is buried in the crook of your neck, and you will let him live there whenever he needs to. “I’m not mad anymore, okay?” God, you hate how he’s still so silent. You get it, but you hate whatever made him default to this state. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”

After light rain fills the room, your soul breaks at a sniffle, and you crush your love even tighter.

“This isn’t about that, doll,” Yoongi finally whispers, burying wet eyes further into your shoulder. “It’s just…”

It’s what? What’s he thinking about? Hopefully it’s not anything—

“It’s so fucking better when you’re here.” 

When you choke out a sob, his body locks, words pouring from nowhere and everywhere. “I sleep better. Eat better. Fuck, I even feel better even if nothing else changes.”

“Yoongi…”

“It’s true.” Sighing, he sniffles again before letting his weight drop onto you in resignation. Or relief. “I mean that.”

“Then… Those three months…”

“One day, I’ll tell you everything,” he offers, making you wonder what the hell he’s been through in the past. And if it has something to do with that guitar he smashed to pieces. “But from now on, you can be here whatever you want.” 

Many things have shifted tonight. As if an earthquake had upturned everything between the both of you, only peace has settled in its wake. A peace you had never felt before. As you brush fingers through his hair, you joke, “So I can come to those parties you host, too?” 

“Those weren’t my idea, by the way. Jimin made me.” Kissing your shoulder, Yoongi continues to admit, “He was worried. And hoping you would show.”

Oh. That’s news to you. 

“I knew you wouldn’t. But.” He exhales before nestling in further. “I did hope to see you, too.” 

“It’s okay.” You rub the back of his neck, your fingers feeling nothing but warmth and the softness of his clothes. “It would’ve been too obvious.”

“What would’ve.”

“That I wanted you all to myself.”

“You already have that.”

When you stiffen, your words are tiny. “You know what I mean.”

Yoongi laughs soft, taking one of your hands in his and bringing it up for a kiss as you blurt, “My brother was the one that invited me. To come to those, I mean.”

The way he blinks is comical. “Huh.”

“I know.” It’s your turn to bring his hand close, kissing along his knuckles before you stare out the window behind him. “It makes me wonder if he knows.”

“What if he does?”

You snap your eyes right to his. “Does he?”

Yoongi watches your lips linger on his fingers before he tells the truth, “No.”

“Okay. But you’re sure I can stay?” 

“Who do you think you bought those groceries for?” 

Oh. Wait. “What?” 

Grinning so sly, Yoongi reveals the plan he had all along, “I get you for a week, right?”

Oh. Holy shit. You cannot quite possibly deal with what this man is saying. That whole time you were shopping for his list… No wonder he was already done with dinner when you got there oh you’re gonna get him back for that. 

Light bursts from your center as you grit out through a grin, “You sneaky little—” Pulling his tilted mouth in for another kiss, your heart pulses little pink stars as he leans in with a laugh, and you meet lips again and again until he slowly, reluctantly stops. 

“One day,” he murmurs out of nowhere, and you flick your eyes to his. “I’ll be better.”

Of course he will. You have no doubts. But, just like he always does for you, you’re gonna start offering the same reassurance out loud, even if he knows it’s there. 

And you can’t contain your little laughs at your own joke, despite him just staring into your face right after you crack it, “Don’t make it just one day, silly.” 

Even if you’re very serious, it’s in your nature to lighten things up. Especially after hearing such wonderful news for what’s coming. Clutching a little bit of his shirt, you whisper with complete devotion, 

“We’ll make it as many as we can.”

You hate how you feel him freeze, knowing what that means, what plaguing little thoughts are embedded in that tiny shift. 

Yoongi’s still hesitant to accept.

Because you are, too. In many ways. But this man has been picking you up and making you stronger day after day—in both his presence and absence—that you can’t help but fight to do the same. 

Does he ever think about you? Does he know that you’ll always be with him? No matter how close or far apart you are? You hope so. Because it’s so true that your heart is searing that promise into your soul, branding it as a reminder to reciprocate all this genuine love you’ve never been given before.

He loves you?

You still can’t accept that as fact.

…Maybe one day.

You chuckle to yourself, deciding to keep talking because Yoongi is still so very quiet. “At least. Until the day I get to meet my cat,” you huff in triumph. “Then I’m running away with her.”

It’s a perfect strike of a match. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” You pretend to pout. “But I’m starting to think she ran away already and you won’t fess up.”

Yoongi laughs so suddenly you flinch. After a playful scoff, he tries to make you feel better, “She’s still here!”

“Lies.”

“How much are you betting, doll.”

“How much are you willing to lose, babe.”

“This much,” he finally says, pinching your sides and hissing laughter when you scream. “Maybe I’ll make you leave after all if you’re gonna be a problem.” 

“You did threaten to kick me out before.” 

“Huh? When?”

“That day I showed up,” you remind him through a chuckle. Thrown back to that first night, you start to see all the parallels between then and now. And how vastly different things have become. “Said you were gonna kick me out for hustling you.” 

The glorious laughter from the depths of his belly makes you grin, and you cringe when his brows pinch in both laughter and pain. “I should’ve!” 

He needs to get those hits healed. “You really should’ve.” 

“Played me from the very start. You happy with yourself?” When you nod, Yoongi shakes his head. “Course you are.” 

“You love it.” 

“I do.” Your eyes meet, which proves dangerous for you because he bites his smirk before pulling you in for a kiss. “Thought I was gonna say it, huh.” 

“No!” You lie. Because no, you certainly were not! “…Maybe.” 

“Guess what.” 

Suddenly paranoid, you give him a look, already expecting to be tricked again. 

But Yoongi captures your lips without warning, curling your toes into sheets you’re now achingly familiar with. After a few passes, he shifts above, planting a hand at your side and letting his chain slide against your chest as he slots a leg in between yours. 

Yet again, you think about that first night, that first time. The first of apparently, surprisingly, wonderfully unexpectedly many. 

Who would’ve thought rain and a broken ego would bloom into something good? Who would’ve believed a person so close to your roots would be your home? 

As he lets up with one last slow stroke of his tongue, you whisper, “What were you gonna say?” 

At this, Yoongi spreads closed lips, taking his time planting a peck on your nose. “I just fucking love you, doll.” 

Oh. He’s a menace and the most annoying tease on the planet. 

When you can’t do anything but flee into his chest, Yoongi immediately laughs, forcing you back out of your little shell. “You can’t hide now, babe.” 

“I can!” 

Leaned forward in your struggle, you give him no choice but to swoop his head into your neck. Which backfires on you immensely because he decides it’s the perfect time to rasp deep against your ear, “I love fucking you, too.” 

His name flies out of your mouth in disbelief and embarrassment, and his heightened amusement puffs into the burning column below your chin. 

This is the moment something comes over you. Slams into you. Washes you in present nostalgia like lingering footsteps on a balcony. 

And it hurts. It really, really hurts. 

Instead of laughing along, you come down from your high, squeezing him like the pillow that couldn’t replicate his warmth for months. “I miss you.”

After a second, Yoongi questions, “How? I’m right here.”

You know that. You do. But with every hello there’s a goodbye, and you don’t want that this time. Especially now that your heart knows that his beats the same. 

Breathy and shaken, you rest your head in his chest, hoping he doesn��t hear but does at the same time, “I still miss you.”

Strong fingers weakly press into your sides, and while you can’t see him, you know for a fact that his smile is gone. Because he also knows goodbye is coming again, and you can’t stay here forever as long as this is all a secret. 

You feel a sigh wisp over your head before words that make no fucking sense follow it out, “I can’t do shit like this anymore.” 

…What?

No. No no no he can’t be done just like that you both just confessed everything you need to fight say something anything anything—

“I wanna do this the right way.” 

Oh. 

Yoongi’s chest… It’s shaking. 

Pushing yourself up, you search his eyes for answers. “What are you saying?” 

When he looks at you, there’s a fire in his eyes that wasn’t there before. Or maybe it has been there all along, and he only needed a spark to set it ablaze. “I’m saying I’ll tell him, doll. Just me.” 

Oh. Oh, shit. Didn’t he say not yet? Didn’t he say he needs more time? He said he’d figure it out what is with the sudden…

Your tears are automatic as Yoongi roams his gaze from one eye to the other, and he’s swallowing before taking a step. A step you didn’t think he’d make. One you didn’t have the courage to take yourself. 

When he utters the words, your soul lets rain fall just as the storm resides.

And right as moonlight shines through his blinds.

“I’ll tell him everything.” 

-

-

tbc. :)

-

so... how did it go! | join the server!

a/n: so. here we are, over two years and 250k+ words later. thank you for sticking with me if you're still here, and thank you for being the most amazing readers a writer could ever, ever ask for. if you can interact or let me know what you enjoyed/like, i would be eternally grateful. these two parts took all of me, and i'm gonna take a break for a little bit before starting on the next part. a/n 2: thank you for also being here despite the highs and lows! things have really weighed on me for awhile, which prevented me from working on this part forreal. but my mental feels a lot lighter now, and i am ready to keep running with y'all. so thank you for your support and encouragement, no matter how you show it! ++ feedback box: ⇥ of course, any reblogs/comments/messages are appreciated! ⇥ for the ones that are too shy to reblog with a review, comment on this, or send a message, i went ahead and made another anonymous form where you can send in what you think! ⇥ no emails collected, no need to put in a username. it’s literally just a comment dropbox :D feedback can be as short/sweet or as long as you’d like! ⇥ here! ++ more links: ⇥ masterlist  ⇥ three tangerines masterlist

[biowaredisasterbisexual]

I’m sorry. I can’t. I try not to get involved in fandom foolishness too much. But egad, the vile treatment of Neve because she romances Lucanis if (AND ONLY IF) Rook romances neither of them is…horrific.

How, BisexualDisaster, you may ask?

1) A lot of critiquing that Neve is uncaring, unempathic, not supportive.

2) At least one claim (getting a lot of agreements in the notes) that Lucanis only gets together with Neve because it’s “easy.” She doesn’t “fix” him so he can just go on being I guess broken somehow?

3) A lot of references to her being too sexual.

4) Insinuations that she’s the type of woman you hook up with, but not the type you marry.

5) Insistence that because she is cynical, she isn’t overtly emotive in the way they would expect, she is unfeeling.

I just…..it’s awful. Why is it so awful? Well, let’s break that down point by point.

1) This is completely contradicted by canon. She goes out of her way for just about every companion to help them, even ones she isn’t super close to. She provides a sounding board and emotional support for Taash and Bellara explicitly in their quest lines. People are disregarding everything she actually says and does in the game to cast her in a role that seems entirely based on sexist and racist stereotypes.

2) There’s no basis for this either. Moreover, this is a truly troubling way to view mental health and healing. Lucanis is not a broken toy or a fixer-upper home. He doesn’t need someone to “fix” him. Nor is he too traumatized to make his own romantic choices. This argument infantilizes him, diminishes his own agency in his healing, and is sexist to boot. It’s ableist, misogynistic, and shitty.

3) This is such a common racist belief about WOC that I hardly know where to start. We are all hypersexual, and if we aren’t we are frigid and prudish and angry. I can’t even. What’s wrong with you all?

4) I’m inclined to agree that Neve isn’t a homemaker, but good grief, how tradwife can you get? I’M not a homemaker. My husband did the bulk of domestic labor in our relationship before he became disabled. Not every relationship needs to look like Leave It To Beaver, and insisting it does is wildly sexist. Oh, and this is also relying on the stereotypes of WOC all being sex-seeking ladies about town to boot.

5) This harkens to two stereotypes. The first is sexist: that women are expected to be outwardly emotive and fawning. That’s neither accurate nor fair. The second is racist: this is a subtle version of the Angry Black Woman stereotype. That WOC aren’t sweet and nurturing and only demonstrate Negative emotions.

This is ridiculous. It’s awful. It’s racist, sexist, and ableist all at once. In an effort to, what, make it so that if you don’t romance Lucanis with your Rook he can’t be with anyone else? It’s not a competition between Rook and Neve or Lucanis if your Rook is romancing them, because your LI CHOOSES ROOK. No one is stealing anyone from your Rook. It’s only if you romance neither that they get together, and the weird possessive idea that if you don’t have Lucanis no one should is deeply troubling.

Is your favorite movie Swimfan? Is it because it made you feel seen?

JFC.

Get it together, people.

Sincerely,

A WOC married to a sweet white man who knows how to cook

[funnier-as-a-system]

Hiii. Not sure if this even counts as a question to be fair, nor is this a funny suggestion, but like.

For my final project in college I'm kind of making a game concept about plurality (as a system host myself) and uhm long story short I guess.

I made two characters-alters, one of which is female and the other is male, and the teacher who curates my project was like (super paraphrased) "I'm getting some romantic connotations here and I think we shouldn't show people that you can literally date yourself, cuz that seems super unhealthy" and he then backed down a bit and was like "well it's not really normal so maybe think about that some more".

And so like. The concept I'm making is based on the complicated relationship between me and my co-host. I am heavily basing the characters on me and that co-host, I am heavily using the issues we had in our relationship, to hopefully be able to show people who are new to plurality that you shouldn't treat your alters the way me and my co-host treated each other before, because THAT is what was unhealthy.

All of which is to say, right now I am married to that co-host and I'm very happy about that, but my teacher's words quite hurt me. Like I literally don't even understand what could be so unhealthy about in-system dating. How rare even is that? Is my perception of in-system dating just that skewed, since nearly all our alters are in a relationship with each other? Most importantly, am I faki-

(Also, by saying that, the teacher inadvertently recommended me to make it a gay ship. Lol? I wish I could make one of the characters an enby like me and avoid the issue entirely, but I can't) (My husband The Co-Host said that the teacher is just rude)

There's nothing inherently unhealthy about intrasystem dating. I've found most people who claim it's "unhealthy" actually mean "I find it weird and I can't distinguish between my personal discomfort and something that's actually bad." – a frustrating argument, but one we're familiar with, and one that should largely be ignored unless you're looking to engage in an educational discussion with someone who holds this view. Others claim it is unhealthy because it "encourages division/dissociation between headmates", but this is largely based on the idea that headmates having any sort of personal identity or self-identification gets in the way of achieving final fusion, which has its own flaws as an argument, including final fusion not being the goal or healthiest option for all systems, as well as ignoring that [harmful] dissociation may increase if a headmate does not have any sort of personal identity to distinguish themselves from the rest of their system with. In short, the arguments against intrasystem dating tend to boil down to "I think this is bad for you because it doesn't fit into what I think people should do", which only shows one's own close-mindedness.

Since plurality is an unfamiliar concept to most people, they don't have the experience necessary to distinguish between genuine red flags and something niche that just takes time to get used to the idea of. Intrasystem dating is niche, but it's no more inherently unhealthy than other kinds of niche dating, like t4t partnerships. The same argument has been used against polyamorous relationships for being similarly uncommon and going against what people expect of relationships (particularly romantic ones), but those are not inherently unhealthy either; it goes to show that people will reuse the same arguments against any kind of relationship they do not approve of, rather than taking a step back and considering for themselves if a particular relationship dynamic is inherently unhealthy. While intrasystem dating can be unhealthy, it is not inherently so just due to the relationship dynamic.

When backing down, your teacher said intrasystem dating is "not really normal", and that truly is the crux of this argument. People do not like that which does not fall neatly into their understandings of "normal", and think anything that isn't normal is automatically bad. This is untrue. I would say to hold strong to your original vision for your project, not just for yourself/ves, but because refusing to fall in line and pretend to be "normal" is how we achieve progress. Even if your teacher doesn't change his mind, your work may introduce the concept to someone else, making it less unfamiliar (more familiar) and more normal to them, leading to more people understanding and accepting not just systems in general, but intrasystem dating specifically.

Speaking of, to answer your question, while intrasystem dating is uncommon, I don't believe it's especially rare – I could name several of our headmates right now who are in a polyamorous partnership with each other, as well as a handful of other couples. We've known many other systems who have had some or all headmates dating each other. It's not the most common topic to talk about in the community, but it is certainly a topic frequent enough to be brought up from time to time.

Your teacher was rude and incorrect. I have sympathy for the hurt you feel because of his pluralphobic words, and I hope you're able to feel better about this incident soon. Remember, staying true to yourself will almost always feel better than hiding who you are for the comfort of others, so if you feel safe enough to go for it, push onward and continue your work with all its authenticity and intrasystem dating included. I wish you luck in your game development and your final project!

[pbaz7]

Paige was with him.

- what the fuck

Paige was one of the top players in the country in high school. From Minnesota. She could’ve gone anywhere she wanted. UConn wanted her bad—but then she kinda just… disappeared. Didn’t commit anywhere on signing day.”

- oh my god

The confusion hung in the air until Geno cut straight through it. “Paige is here unofficially on a visit,” he announced, his tone gruff, leaving little room for argument. “She’s just here watching the game today since we can’t do anything official with her during the season.

- oh shit? But she’s 22?

Azzi’s eyes flickered back to Paige just in time to see her take a deep breath, her shoulders squaring as if she had already braced herself for this exact reaction.

- I am SO INTRIGUED

They all jumped at the chance once they heard she was transferring.”

- transferring from where? What?

Geno didn’t waste time. “I need you to make her feel comfortable on this visit.”

- you sure about that geno? They may get a little TOO comfy…

“I mean it,” he said, his tone softening to the best of his abilities. “She’s been through a lot, and this isn’t exactly an easy situation for her either.”

- what the fuck happened to her

Paige chuckled, nodding slowly. “I guess that’s not entirely wrong in a sense.”

- TELL ME NOW

Notre Dame

- FUCK ND.

Paige hesitated. “That’s not really my scene,” she replied, shrugging slightly.

- I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS CURIOSITY TELL ME NOW

Azzi's grin widened. “That gives you too much control over the situation. If you’re going to be on my team, you need to learn to let that control go... just a little bit.”

- damn control dynamics already (you can take this whatever way you want and you would be right)

Caroline leaned in a little closer. “Yeah, because you want to sleep with her.”

- bingo

She wore bright yellow pants that caught the light and a slightly oversized black t-shirt.

- that overtime fit was so cute (hot)

You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But what happened during your senior year? You kind of…”fell off the face of the earth” in KK’s words.”

- YES ASK THE IMPORTANT QUESTION

Then, with a quiet breath, she simply replied, “Car accident.”

- oh my god my poor baby

After a pause, she continued, her voice quieter now, almost reflective. “It wasn’t bad for me. I just needed to stay close to home to help my family out.”

- this is horrible omg

But I think you just called me pretty.”

- I mean did she lie??

“I don’t mind,” Azzi finally cut in, her voice coming out a little too smooth, a little too sure. She adjusted the keys in her hand, turning toward Paige now.

- of course she doesn’t mind

The silence returned, heavier this time, until Paige exhaled quietly. She glanced over at Azzi, studying her for a moment before finally speaking again. “You wanna come upstairs?”

- damn that was quick

Azzi tilted her head. “What goes on in your head all day?”

- this I would like to know

Paige nodded and Azzi watched her closely, trying to gauge her reaction. “I’m going to be a little bold with this, so if I have the wrong idea, please tell me.”

- ok?

Azzi hesitated for only a second before asking, “How many people have you slept with?”

- damn, 0-100 with this 😭😭

Paige chuckled, the sound quiet, knowing. “It’ll be more than just one night.”

- so few words but so much flirting

Paige didn’t hesitate. “Doesn’t matter,” she said simply, her tone steady as she guided Azzi back until the bed hit the back of her legs.

- is she not like… curious at all?

Paige noticed where Azzi’s eyes had landed, so she spoke before Azzi could ask. “Car accident,” she said simply, her voice unreadable.

- oof

Paige hummed against her skin, the vibration making Azzi swallow. “No, I know I am.” She nipped at Azzi’s collarbone before pulling back just enough to meet her eyes. “And based on the way you’re looking at me right now… you know it too.”

- she’s such a menace

At the contact, Paige sucked in a small breath, and without a word, she gently took Azzi’s hand, guiding it back up to her shoulder.

- ):

Her eyes caught the faint scar near her hairline in the mirror, a reminder of a past she usually kept tucked away.

- my poor sweet baby

Paige chuckled softly, the sound slightly affectionate as she spoke. “We just had sex, Azzi. I can hold you.”

- lowkey cuddling is so much more intimate than sex I get you Azzi don’t worry babe

Azzi’s breath evened out against her chest, signaling that she was starting to drift off, and Paige willed herself to follow shortly after, the steady rhythm of their breathing a lullaby that eased her into sleep.

- what the fuck you can’t finish there I need more answers

UM GIRL I NEED MORE ANSWERS NOW.

I need full psychoanalysis, I need a full Paige’s senior year history lesson and everything in between, I need to know why she’s going into college now and what’s been going on at home, and I need to know the teams reaction and whatever the fuck happens when she gets to uconn… please please update with part 3 soon I have so many questions

- 🫂🫂🫂

you sure about that geno? They may get a little TOO comfy…

literally

I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS CURIOSITY TELL ME NOW

curiosity killed the cat

Caroline leaned in a little closer. "Yeah, because you want to sleep with her."

- bingo

bingo we got action

that overtime fit was so cute (hot)

you get it

damn that was quick

you know what they say about lesbians

is she not like... curious at all?

like i said curiosity killed the cat

omgg i need to come up with so many answers 😭😭

[theonethatwatchesalotofshows]

Tbh, I never bought the realism” or “accuracy” argument. The Game of Thrones writers claimed that the explicit rape/sex scenes scenes were there for “realism” but if they were truly concerned with realism they would’ve shown women with body hair. 

In an interview, Sydney, the actress who plays Cassie, said she was supposed to have more sex scenes but turned some of them down (she was trying to assure the viewers that she doesn’t do nude scenes unless she feels it’s necessary) . That’s just crazy to me, her character is already objectified so much and the network/producers wanted there to be even more nudity. I’m not really surprised though as this is HBO and their whole thing is gratuitous nudity.

When I watch, I wonder, who the show is for, and what message they’re trying to get across. The show is about teens but it’s for ages 18+. Teens can’t even watch a show that claims to represent their experiences (though I know for a fact that many teens watch the show). So either the show runners intended to appeal to a younger audience (teens) or they wanted adults to watch a show about teens being sexualized. Either way it’s problematic.

I also find almost all of the characters on Euphoria unlikable, and have a hard time rooting for them despite their sad backstories. I know people loved Maddy back in S1 but she acted like a typical mean girl, there weren’t many layers to her character. Unlike Alexa who plays Maddy, Zendaya is a good actress, and her character seems to be the most developed, yet I still find it hard to root for Rue. Why did she even become a drug dealer? Her motivations are unclear. One of my biggest problems with the show is that relies too much on telling instead of showing. The narrations and voice overs are tiresome. This is unrelated, but how can anyone take Astray seriously? He reminds me of Carl from Shameless.

As far as Drake goes, the man has a history of dating underage girls. He texted Millie Bobby Brown, the actress from Stranger Things, “I miss you” and gave her “boy advice” when she was about 14/15 (typical grooming behavior). There is a YouTube video of him kissing and hugging an underage fabulous on stage https://youtu.be/Fp5b9dW1nrA

Again, I had this in my inbox for two years so not sure what this is responding to but I agree. Yes, it's realistic that teens have sex and take showers naked, that doesn't mean we have to see it in a very detailed graphic way. Guess what teens also go to the toilet so if these directors were so concerned with "realism" they would also show that lol. And these characters should not be teens I agree 100%. Like was it so hard to make them 19-20? Would it change the story THAT much? The only thing it would change is that it wouldn't be so shocking anymore and shock value is all this show is running on. I didn't even know the thing about Drake but that's gross omg, it makes the whole thing even ickier.

Don't insult my boy Carl 😭 at least he has a personality.

[kiawren]

For the ask game 💜

💜/Purple:

What would your f/o do if you got into a argument? Would they eventually apologize?💙/Blue:

Your f/o is having a bad day.. How do you cheer them up? (+ Reversed for the other way around !)

🧡/Orange:

You and your f/o are going on a roadtrip! Along the way you stop at some corny tourist traps. How does it go?

Hi Opheliaaaaa :):) :)

I answered purple here😁😁💜💜💜

💙/Blue: Your f/o is having a bad day.. How do you cheer them up? (+ Reversed for the other way around !)

If kiawe's had a bad day he's probably stressed about his dream of studying dance abroad, like the finances and whether he will get accepted or he's worried and unsure about the future, like should he even be pursuing this? I don't think he'll feel negatively when he's tired, cuz it means he trained hard that day and he'd feel rewarded. But him being worried about his future is mentioned when I answered 💜 and also is actually shown in the game where he gets laid off from his part time job that helped him save up to study abroad and he requests for MC to battle him cuz he says "I don't feel like dancing by myself right now..." and "it seems like nothing ever goes right..."

AND I FEEL SO 😭😭😭😭 CRAZY THING IS HE HAS TO GIVE YOU MONEY AFTER YOU BEAT HIM IN BATTLE CUZ THAT'S HOW THE GAME WORKS (AND OTHER NPCS COMPLAIN LIKE NOO MY POCKET MONEY.. SO IT'S AN ACTUAL THING THEYRE AWARE THEY HAVE TO PAY YOU).. LIKE WUAUWHHGRHG...IM Crying. . Anyway yeah so wren cheers him up by offering to battle him, or dance with him. Cuz I guess wren has tried to learn the basics of fire dancing, so either they do basic moves together or Kiawe continues teaching him. If wren feels like Kiawe really isn't up for doing this stuff though and he just wants to rest, he's really great at just offering a listening ear and advice if he wants. And a hug 🥺....

But yeah wren will just start saying all the things that makes them believe Kiawe will make it and why he's awesome and why they love him and why they wholeheartedly think he'd definitely reach his dreams, and it's okay if he feels like he won't but they can face it together and wren will always be with him to see it realised or overcome the challenges together 😊

And of course Kiawe will feel like he's burdening them by needing some comfort or assurance and wren is always saying it literallt does not bother him like at all not even a little bit and he can always seek comfort in them... Sorry I'm looking through my recordings of the battle with him and I'm his words are so heartbreaking 😭

LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE SINGLE 'SORRY' AS THE ONLY WORD ON THE TEXT BOX LIKE HES SO GUILTY ABOUT IT LIKE KIAWE SHIT THE FUCK UP. SHUT UP 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 IM SO HEARTBROKEMR I FORGOT HE JUST STRAIGHT UP SAUD "Sorry." STOP IY

Wow this next question looks fun and cute and wholesome and happy

🧡/Orange: You and your f/o are going on a roadtrip! Along the way you stop at some corny tourist traps. How does it go?

OH ABSOLUTELY ALOLA HAS LOTS OF TOURIST TRAPS LOLLLL honestly i can't think of specific ones but it's literallt pokemon hawaii so of course. Well if it's akala island kiawe would know some better places around the area with less people we coukd watch them from. Like at Royal avenue and the battle royale probbaly there's lots of tourists there. Maybe they'd be like Buy this Legit mask and Legit Pokeball the Masked Royal owned 😆

But I think primarily it's melemele island? Like the shopping district at the beachfront has prices so marked up.... So it's fun to pass by but not buy anything and maybe make fun of the tourists getting mid food when mallow cooks the same food but nicer and much more affordable at her locally owned family restaurant on akala.

Also some of the tourist traps would probbaly be like Check out this REAL scale that tapu lele dropped which is SO rare And it's like a piece of Plastic or like. This Genuine Flute that when you play it tapu koko will come But like not now you have to silence your surroundings and your heart yeah. And it's hilarious. I think the tapus are not fond of tourists especially tapu bulu he probably trashes their hotel room idk how but yeah

Kiawren generally just doesn't go to these places, but yeha it would be really fun to observe.

Wait i forgor to answer for the reverse part of the Blue question. I guess spending any time at all with Kiawe is my comfort, especially distracting myself by watching him train or talk about his day or his pokemon or alola or his culture I mean selfshipping is already what gets me through bad days so it literally means anything he does will be a comfort for me so yeah. He honestly doesn't need to do anything just breathe and smile

[gust-jar-simulator]

Okay time for unhinged crossover logic.

There are two Links I like to subject to vampire drama: Four (I really need to invent a tag for those rambles) and Wild. To sum up the way I write them fast and dirty, the methods are as follows:

Four: In Four Swords Adventures, the split Links explode into force gems (crystallized life that is also money) when they die, and in either that game or Four Swords can be resurrected by sacrificing force gems. In addition, the Four Sword itself feeds on/must be powered up by force gems. Therefore, considering how closely tied his existence is to the sword by this point, Four must feed it (and by extension himself) life force or suffer consequences. He can improvise to a limited extent by feeding on elemental magic, or living blood, but none of it is as efficient as force gems.

Wild: After being killed by magic lasers that may or may not have been able to infect his body with Malice like a horrible STD, his brain got completely rewired by Sheikah tech. An argument could be made that he's a cyborg on some level, the Shrine of Resurrection flooding his veins with nanobots or any other sci fi method of keeping a corpse breathing. As such, like other forms of Sheikah tech, he is vulnerable to infection by Malice and the call of the Blood Moon, and might be able to literally cannibalize Guardians to repair himself as well as drain energy from shrines and towers.

(Also as a side note, considering the horrors of teleportation tech, the Sheikah database has likely memorized what makes Wild and how he was put together, and could theoretically generate another one of him if he dies again.)

Where am I inputting my crossover logic?

I've been sitting here for the past hour thinking about the concept of diablerie from Vampire: The Masquerade. To distill it to the essentials, diablerie is the act of a vampire drinking another vampire's blood to the point of final death, consuming even the soul. This has advantages in that you obtain their power level and abilities. A major disadvantage, however, involves the "consuming the soul" bit- if you're not strong enough, the vampire you ate could overwhelm your consciousness. Uno reverse is a bitch.

Diablerie also happens to be addicting, because getting a little sippy of life force is nothing compared to the pleasure of completely consuming a soul.

I started my idea of vampire!Wild with a singular image in my head: Wild's face and arms smeared with bluish fluids, sucking on a broken hose yanked from the undercarriage of an upturned guardian.

The thing is, most every guardian in the game has been infected by Malice. Wild is absolutely the type to investigate new things via biting and ask questions later, and he can successfully eat monster parts (as well as monster essence) without many complications. We've all tried to cook guardian parts into an elixir at least once. But I can't help wondering if it's like the difference between mineral iron and organic iron- chewing on metal won't give a human any nutrition, but we can get the iron we need from meat. Maybe Wild's augmentations can filter out the consequences of eating raw hinox liver, but they might be vulnerable to Malice that has adapted to the shape of a magitech electronic virus.

I love the idea of his normal instincts (food heals) getting influenced by magitech input (cannibalize broken tech), and it's not like he has commendable impulse control that would second-guess the urge to drink robot coolant. Stuck in the middle of Hyrule Field with the last of his kebabs gone, why not try it?

Have you ever been so thirsty that you go for a sip and then start chugging because the water feels much better going down than you expected, jaws practically latching onto it like a stubborn wolf?

I keep thinking about it. I keep thinking about the idea that if Wild feeds on guardians to fuel his own internal systems, he's insanely vulnerable. And if he goes too far, is the infection something that would burn out? Would he just have his own private Blood Moon event, ripping through the countryside until he finally blacked out, or would the virus puppet him past the point of consciousness? I don't think the Sheikah really understood the concept of firewalls or antiviruses. Why would they need any?

Four, by contrast, is less vulnerable to any kind of corruption (barring, perhaps, dark magic) but much more vulnerable to the pitfalls of being a well-adjusted civilized human faced with the urge to devour life energy. Starving even though he's eaten a three course meal. Thirsty even though he's drank an entire bucket, or tried to. The human body doesn't have the signals necessary to covey your sword is starved for energy, wires are bound to cross in confusing and ugly ways. Headaches, weird cramps, until finally the sword he reshaped starts altering him in turn.

Hylians eat with their mouths and kill with their hands. A sword eats and kills with the same organ, but the base instinct of magic could get the point across well enough. If he won't eat by stabbing, maybe he'll eat if the magic makes his Hylian body more effective- steel claws and steel fangs, the better to gut monsters with. Or people. It's not like the sword has preferences, it just has hunger. Symbiosis is a two way street: Four made the sword, infused it, empowered it. The sword, in turn, broke him down and remade him. They're the same creature with the same needs, now. He just needs to realize it before the hunger gets out of control.

The thing is, he's used to fighting dark magic. Depending on your take, and if you utilize the manga, he could find a lot of comfort in the presence of dark magic. If they suspect they're becoming some kind of demon, or infected with some demon urge, Shadow would be their first thought. If they were to confide in anyone about dark urges, who better than the demon who asked them to indulge those in the first place? They miss him. He'd comfort them. He'd soothe whatever burning need this is.

If you don't want to use the manga, dark magic is still a comfort in that it's a preferred target, uncomplicated and simple. You don't have to worry about the morality of attacking a creature made of shadow. It's fine. It's quite possibly the only fine target to have.

Whenever I think about the possibility of vampire!Four losing control, I come down to two options. He's an extremely controlled person by necessity, considering the state of his brain. He thinks twice about literally everything he does. It would take quite a lot of pressure for him to drop that control, past the point of manageable and straight into "you cannot afford to be afraid to injure him, because he's Ruthless and Not Listening". With Wild, preferred prey would be Sheikah tech followed up by whatever the Malice wants dead. With Four?

He's going to find the nearest source of dark magic and bite the fuck out of it, either because Shadow is safety Shadow can fix this, or it's okay to rip and tear a thing this dark, I can let go and be a monster to a thing like this.

In other words, Twilight is in danger. Dark is also in danger, he's just not typically close enough to bite.

I'll come back to this at some point, but I wanted it out here.

[aenslem]

can we just take a moment and appreciate the fact that young puts the weapon down to use his fists, it needs to be physical for him, he needs to feel rush when he hurts him, and I love it, I am here for this, I am here for these two being wild about each other, it's just beautiful

if he wanted to kill rush, he would just shoot him, he does not want to kill him like 'kill him', but he wants to beat him so much, he wants to feel rush's life in his hands, that way he can have some control over whatever they have going on between each other, this 'need to beat you' mode is so good, I absolutely enjoy it

yeah, there are better things to enjoy in life than watching how two idiots on screen would fight, but there are some sports where people pay to watch those things, I just chose to enjoy it between a space drama, mostly caused by one of the jerks above

I am trying to imagine what their relationship would be like if the show was not cancelled, and they did become more, um, 'friendly' I guess I can call it friendly, less physical, which obviously sucks for me, I enjoy them getting physical. I think even when they are on good terms young would not be able to not be aggressive with rush in some ways. it would not be life threatening like in this scene, and rush would know it, but their arguments would be heated, and I think young would use his strength, maybe pushing rush to a wall a little too hard, stopping him by holding his arm a little too hard, I think whenever young would realize he is losing an argument he would try to get into rush's personal space, it's the way he shows his strength, he can't win with his mind, but he can win by force. he knows it, but also, I think he would not do it intentionally all the time, with rush it's always unintentional, heated and brought to the point where you can't control yourself and you give into it and act on impulse.

I think it would start with less and less aggression in fight, and more enjoy outdoing\outsmarting the other one. like playing a chess, like, you can be smart as rush and win, but you also need to be a good strategist, so young does have something to offer here, he can challenge rush, and I think he has the chance to win a game. so they would be around each other as if they play a chess. the more they would play this game the more they would want to win, they would make the other one learn some new tricks to win, I think they would make each other better by learning thing or two from one another, and by the end of the show they would actually enjoy having an argument, having a talk, maybe one day they would just talk, you know, like normal people, and it would not end up with one accusing the other one in sabotaging something, or lying, or whatever.

rush just crawling away, and young trying so hard to not finish what he started, you can see he wants to beat him more, but he is tired of this as well. have you seen a man who is so tired by trying so hard to not kill smb? love it

they are trying so hard to control things, but they can't even control themselves

as if it is not about control and power for you, man. when he offers rush to work together in 'darkness' he looses his shit and the talk goes the wrong way, just because young wanted rush to report to him, not him consulting his actions with rush. you want to control this man, but he is like a force of nature, you both are like two hurricanes meeting at some point and you either collide and become even more dangerous together or destroy each other and everything around you.

oh, and let's appreciate this screencap here, idk, I just love it, because I love men suffering, also robert carlyle has pretty hands there

he ain't wrong here. young does something on impulse and then regrets, he can be calm and strategic, but when it comes to something he cannot control, something like rush, he is all about emotions, bringing out the worst in him, and causing to act based on impulse rather than thinking about his actions through, he does it after, and it usually ends with regret, as we saw in 'justice'. yay my fav part <3

anyway, idk where I was going with this but here we are

oh and you know what I love about young? he is a man of force, using fists instead of words, but he actually listens if you talk to him, and even if he does not always understand it he tries and is not opposed to explore something new and learn and stay on an ancient ship with 10 more people and the man who framed him for murder just to find out what lies beyond it all. you may say it's because he feels responsible for those people, and yes, he does, but I also like to think that it's not just responsibility, but young just wanting to go to unknown places to see wonders of the universe.

[readingsquotes]

....now most cancel culture legends are about "woke" university students allegedly silencing older, more powerful people. Why did the university become the focal point of the panic?

There are a couple of reasons. Worrying about the young is standard for any moral panic. It allows people not to reflect on their own practices. The people who freak out about people freaking out online online, are doing the same thing they're accusing other people of. But somehow it's supposed to be different. Creating an artificial gulf between your own behavior and those you criticize is essential. That's why a lot of moral panics tend to attach to the young.

The second reason is there has been, for almost 70 years now, an infrastructure set up in the United States to drum up moral panics about the leftist youth. It started with conservative foundations and think tanks, but now includes institutions such as the New York Times. They dedicate enormous time and resources to sending a reporter to Brown University to stick a microphone in a 19-year-old's face, so they'll say a slightly ill-considered thing. The anecdotes are very easy to get, because they have built an anecdote factory around our colleges. These stories do quite well. Certain outlets, like the Atlantic, specialize in these stories.

A lot of the time the people that are accusing the left of "cancel culture" are conservatives who are often the first to censor and silence, but for real. 

Some people engaged in this "cancel culture" discourse think of themselves as liberals, or at least libertarians. But the problem they describe seems to call for an intervention, right? Then you get people like Gov. Ron Desantis obliging by saying we have to "stop woke." That's how the contradiction gets shuffled under the table. It's like a three-card Monte. If you get people scared enough of cancel culture, they want the state to do something about the universities. It becomes an excuse to declare that campus is a "problem" that needs to be brought under control. This is a reassertion of dominance and control. In the case of the universities, it usually goes through either state power or donor power.

With the panic over cancel culture, the power people are afraid of is amorphous, like shaming power. People can yell at you on Twitter. Students can heckle you during a speech. A book's mere existence can make you feel guilty. But the response to this is actual censorship: banning books, banning student protests. How do people not see the hypocrisy here?

My argument is that the whole discourse is there so that you don't see the hypocrisy. If "cancel culture," as a discourse, attracts you, you do not see the contradiction. You claim the only way to correct course is to censor people. The whole language game exists to conceal that contradiction. Concepts like "identity politics," "wokeness," etc. are necessary to justify this behavior. It allows people to say they're censoring to protect the liberal values of the Enlightenment. That is the magic of this term.

One apocryphal story from the political correctness panic that has resurfaced for the cancel culture panic is that they don't teach Shakespeare in college anymore. I was an English major back then and read so much Shakespeare, and you can look at syllabi now and see students still do. Why does this silly myth persist? 

There's so much wrapped up in that. They pin the worry on campus identity politics, but aren't worried that people barely read Shakespeare because they take so few English classes. Instead of talking about why so few people take English classes, they just say there's no more Shakespeare being taught. Who they say it is instead is still Alice Walker, though I don't know when I last saw Alice Walker on a syllabus. I guess they just don't update their material all that often. This really comes out of a white identity politics. This comes out of an anxiety that started in the 1980s, about the university slightly starting to look a little different from the university people remembered from their youth. There are other people and other cultures around. It's like the "great replacement" theory, but for the canon.

[greeneyesclosed]

Okay. Alright. I'm going to preface this rebuttal by saying that I have nothing at all against the writer of this post, or Ashley's character herself. Genuinely, I love this game and it's characters, and I love Ashley just as much. I think she and her brother are both deeply terrible people, of course, and this is indeed what the game is about, but I DO love them.

That out of the way, this entire post stunned me with its confident, grandiose incorrectness. At times it reads like it's satirical. I'm not entirely sure it's not satirical, honestly, and I would be entirely willing to accept that it is, but I'm like, PRETTY sure it's not. So I'm going to tear it apart. No hard feelings.

I think the first thing we need to do here is address the bonkers couching going into the opening paragraph here. I think you can often tell how confident someone actually is in an argument by the amount of qualifiers they'll give before making it, and oh boy, do we have some qualifiers here.

Because of that, I want you to read it with an open mind; if you hyperfocus on one or two smaller details I might've gotten wrong or are fallaciously interpretated, and either use that to discount the whole essay or go into the comment section and immediately try to debunk my interpretation of that event, that'll make it obvious to me that you're not trying to seriously engage with the core of what I'm trying to say.

This is a hell of a thing to open with. Like, I usually don't start my literary analysis with "if you think I'm wrong about anything specific, and you try to tell me this, I'll consider you completely disingenuous," but go off, I guess.

Because unless quite literally everything I've said here is wrong, I feel confident in saying this: Ashley Graves did nothing wrong.

It's kind of difficult to properly emphasize the magnitude of hubris going into this statement. Like, just to rephrase this, the thing being said here is that the argument being made is somehow holistic, and can only be disproved in its totality. The claim here is that the argument does not hinge on anything. That's... not actually possible. The core of logic is that all arguments hinge on premises, and if any of those premises can be shown to be false, the argument fails. But I'll steelman the point here: OP is going to present multiple arguments, and unless all of them can be disproved, their greater point will remain. Unhinged burden of proof, but you know? Sure. I'll take that challenge.

With the couching out of the way, let's see what you've got for me.

First of all, TCOAL plays with a lot of different taboos- demon summoning, cannibalism, incest, murder- but the game goes through great lengths to muddy the moral weight of the siblings' actions. Every single action they commit is portrayed in the most neutral possible light- killings were done in self defense (with one notable exception), or done to people who greatly wronged them, cannibalism was a necessity to survive (also with one notable exception), incest is shown to come from a marked improvement in their relationship- leading me to believe that this game is taking a hard morally nihilistic stance. Else, they'd be shown to suffer for their actions, when in reality, the literal exact opposite is happening; they are being rewarded for it. This isn't necessarily glorifying the actions, but instead showing that even the worst of actions can potentially be excused, but whether or not you do is up to the reader. Hence, nihilism, or at the very least, skepticism (as noted by Lisafication). There's an existentialist reading of this too, but I think much of that is contingent on the events of chapter 3 so I won't get into that here.

We're starting off with a series of really weird equivocations, and a misunderstanding of what nihilism, like, is. Let's start with a really easy shots o take at this point: saying "the cannibalism was necessary to survive, with one notable exception" is incredibly misleading. There have been two instances of cannibalism so far. One was necessary to survive, and one decidedly wasn't. Claiming a full one half of the incidents constitutes an "exception" comes off as almost deliberately deceptive.

Alright, real point: that's not what nihilism means. Nihilism, in this paragraph, is being equated to the existence of karma. The idea that if you take immoral actions, you will be punished for it by the world. This is, first of all, demonstrably untrue, and second of all, completely unrelated to nihilism. Nihilism is a moral philosophy suggesting that there are, in fact, no morals. A nihilistic narrative would be completely unconcerned with the morality of its characters, and therefore wouldn't even feel the need to demonstrate that terrible actions can be justified. By implying that the narrative is making moral arguments for the things Andrew and Ashley do, such as the first instance of cannibalism being necessary for survival, you're disproving the idea that it's nihilist in nature.

It contrasts this mostly nihilistic perspective on interpersonal taboos with the deep societal ills that drive people to commit such actions. Evil exists at every level of analysis here, but curiously, the only thing that are shown to do direct harm to others without having a justification of some kind- be it self-defense or retaliation- are those societal ills. There is no (morally) good reason to quarantine people, starve them, and harvest their organs. There's no good reason to burn all evidence and then put a hit on the ones who did escape. There's no good reason to extort sexual favors from someone in exchange for food. These are deep structural problems that force people to either retaliate/lash out or enable people's most exploitative or abusive habits lest they just let themselves die.

I don't like where this is going...

And thus, the obvious evils become much less obvious. The game makes a point of subverting the obvious or the well-known when it comes to morals, and I think it does so when it comes to everything else, too. Outside of those societal ills (so far, ch3 might have something else to say), every situation where someone could obviously be shown as the bad person in a situation is immensely more complex than it first appears. So much so that I'd argue that displaying said complexity and subverting simplicity to force/encourage people to analyze things deeper is one of the central themes of the game.

Right, okay, there it is. I probably should have expected this argument, but that doesn't make it any more sane.

So like, no, other characters doing terrible things in the game doesn't make it okay for Ashley to do terrible things. Yes, TCAL is a dark game, filled with all kinds of characters doing exceptionally bad things. This does not diminish our ability to call all of those bad actions bad, does it? Like, is the claim here that at a certain point, everything just sucks so much that it's not fair to say Ashley has also done terrible things? We don't have a limit here.

So why, exactly, does he blame so much on her? It's because Ashley is the world's most convenient scapegoat, and the game is well-aware of this and displays it in ways both obvious and not. First off: the title screen has Ashley wielding the cleaver, establishing that she’s the violent one. It's covered in blood, too, implying that she's the one more driven to kill. The reality of this is the opposite; Andrew is the one with less hesitation to inflict violence on others, the cleaver is his weapon, and most of the kills in the story are done by him (and fully justified). Ashley might push him to do these violent acts, but… does she?

I'm actually going to skip through directly quoting the vast majority of the text following this paragraph, because it's all basically the same argument. The thing being said here is that Ashley is not fundamentally a violent person.

The main argument here is that Andrew commits more abject violence than his sister over the course of the game. This is true. I've actually noted this before, that Andrew is much more violent than he lets himself believe. What isn't true is the idea that this somehow excuses the people who Ashley does directly kill: the other warden, and both of her parents.

Yes, you're correct. Andrew Graves is not a good person. This is not an Andrew apologia post; he also does terrible things over the course of the game, and not all of them are a direct result of Ashley's influence. But the entire argument following this point just straight up ignores the multiple murders that Ashley racks up over the course of the game, often to Andrew's direct protest. Like, you could make the argument that Andrew kills Ms. 302 because he at least thinks it's what Ashley would want, right? Ashley kills both their parents in front of Andrew's eyes, as he freaks out over her doing that. There is NOTHING being influenced about her decision there. She just, like, kills two people. On purpose. On her own.

Honestly, this entire line of argument can be completely discarded due to the obvious omission of any violence that Ashley herself commits. Like, no attempt is even made to explain Ashley's murders they are simply ignored so that Andrew's can seem more out of place.

And what happens when Ashley tries to make him take responsibility for all this violence? To point out that she didn't force him to do anything and that he chose to do all of it, including lock Nina in the box?

I'm sorry, I know I said I wasn't gonna directly quote much in this part, but I NEED to respond to this directly, because what? I'm sorry?

If that's how you read that scene, I don't even know what to say. It is NOT Ashley heroically holding Andrew accountable for his misdeeds. It's the second most obvious scene of direct manipulation we see in the entire game. Ashley deliberately brings up the most traumatic moment in Ashley's life not to make him take responsibility or something, but to taunt him. She is lashing out because she (unreasonably) believes Andrew may have been unfaithful to her, and wants to punish him by making him relive the worst thing she ever did to him. If that scene of extremely obvious manipulation and abuse came off as just on Ashley's part, I don't know what to tell you.

I acknowledge that this isn't the most charitable framing for Andrew, and maybe too charitable for Ashley.

I'll say.

Let's move on to the next actual point, since I think the points for the excusability of the 302 scene have been pretty firmly rebutted by now.

Next up is the Nina situation. This one is obviously cut and dry- Ashley manipulates Andrew into killing Nina because she wants no competition between the two of them. It's not Andrew's fault and Ashley was an evil abuser from the jump. Obvious, right?

Pretty much. A little hyperbolic- we could drop the word "evil" to make this come off as less judgmental, but that was what you wanted, anyways.

No. It's really not.

Oh. Do go on?

It's pretty strongly implied that Ashley was mistreated by people her whole life. The Lemon Cupcake scene shows this in more detail, about how people always neglect or ignore her birthdays, but she also says that nobody likes her because she's weird and loud in the Nina flashback too. But unless something big happened in between the two flashbacks, none of this behavior indicates particularly maladaptive or even strange tendencies on Ashley's part. She's a needy, bratty child, and the closest thing to a friend she has- Nina- wants to take away the one thing from her that's a source of comfort and emotional validation.

Oh no. I can feel where we're going here, This is a Poor Little Meow Meow argument, isn't it?

It's not entirely rational, sure! But it also -makes perfect sense-. NOBODY treated her well throughout her entire life; it's strongly implied that Nina never did either, given Nina's reaction to Ashley being there and the lower left-hand painting past the Questionable door showing her being distant from the two of them. We can also see a star bouncing off of her head, and stars represent closeness in this game, so it shows there was an attempt made somewhere along the line, it's just not clear as to who made the attempt.

Okay, I'm gonna stop playing the "I don't know what's coming next" character here, and be honest: this argument, the attempt to defend Ashley's extremely clear murder of Nina, is the most unhinged part of the post. That was always going to be the case, I suppose, because it truly is hard to defend the indefensible, but the effort is appreciated. Even though it does catastrophically fail.

So, first of all, I need to state the obvious: Ashley's actions being understandable doesn't make them defensible. You would think this is clear from the jump, but a huge amount of the post following is going to hinge on that idea.

OP has correctly observed that TCAL has tightly-written characters, and that all of them have reasons for their actions. The immense neglect that Ashley experienced throughout her childhood shaped her into the person that she is today! This is, and I mean this genuinely, just good character writing. People, even bad people, do things for reasons. However- and I can't believe I unironically have to say this- that doesn't excuse Ashley from being an abusive, cannibalistic murderer.

Second of all, I want to go into what's actually being said here:

But it also -makes perfect sense-. NOBODY treated her well throughout her entire life; it's strongly implied that Nina never did either...

No it isn't. This is unequivocally not implied. The only things that you could even construe as an implication of this would be that Nina was surprised and perhaps a little miffed that Andrew brought his sister along to what she assumed was a date, and that she was... far away from the both of them, in the Questionable scene? Neither of these constitute a shred of evidence. Shit is just being made up here.

At the very least, Nina's reaction of disappointment fed into Ashley's preconceived notions of how people treat her, and how she deserves to be treated. Although, from what has been directly stated, rather than implied, Nina was nothing more than an innocent victim in this scenario; I don't mean to take that away from her.

Oh, okay, So OP immediately acknowledges that the extremely weak evidence that Nina mistreated Ashley is directly stated to be untrue. That's good! I sure hope they don't immediately proceed under the assumption that Nina mistreated Ashley, perhaps even grossly.

"But she didn't care when Nina died?" So? If Nina treated her like trash for most of her life, why should she care? She didn't expect Nina to die. It was just an acceptable consequence.

Nifty!

Jokes aside, this point is fucking heartless. I have also been mildly mistreated by people over the course of my life, but I would probably be distressed if my actions resulted in their death, especially if they were the friend of someone I considered close. Like, would you not? That's concerning.

Andrew, meanwhile, was the one who told Ashley that they had to lock Nina in the box to keep them in there. He's the one who looked for and found the stick to keep them locked in. You could say he was coerced by an abusive person into hurting someone, sure, but you'd be wrong. Cataclysmically wrong, even. Like, if you actually think that a seven year old girl (nobody wears overalls past the age of seven) can have anything approximating an abusive dynamic with her as the perpetrator with someone both older and stronger than her, you frankly have some issues with women you need to work out. That's simply not how abuse dynamics work at that age.

Alright, what the fuck are you talking about? At this point we are COMPLETELY off the rails. First of all, you don't get to just make a quip about overalls and pretend you've canonized the ambiguous ages of Andy and Leyley. I would put them around 10 and 12, personally. Second of all, you can't just say "young Ashley would have no idea how to manipulate someone, because she's young" while ignoring the EXTREMELY clear scene after they bury Nina where she manipulates Andrew. She literally says to him, says, aloud, that she'll tell everyone what he did if he doesn't do what she says, and proclaims out loud with her voice that she's going to use this to force him to stay by her side. You're just ignoring the single most openly manipulative scene Ashley gets in the entire game, which occurs with her at that age, to insist that Ashley has NO idea how to manipulate someone at a young age, and that she couldn't POSSIBLY be abusing Andrew!

I'm skipping a huge chunk of reiteration here. I think we can consider the points against Nina's scene to be dealt with.

As much as the game frames Ashley as a manipulator- and much of the fanbase uncritically accepts- she is given shockingly little in-game control over many of the actions committed. Even in the case of the Hitman- as a good friend of mine pointed out- the only choice the player is given is whether or not to check the closet and be killed; an impulsive decision leading to a swift and unceremonious end. In the end, Andrew is the one given the choice to kill the hitman, and we can consciously choose whether or not his reaction is panicked or measured. No such choice is given to Ashley, as most of her reactions are impulsive and spontaneous rather than planned. This is not the makings of a standard "manipulative evil bitch" trope. She's pretty consistently portrayed as someone with poor impulse and emotional control who loudly and aggressively states her intent in every single scenario she's in.

What?

By now, OP is beginning to come off as deliberately deceptive. I don't know how else to explain this. In order to make this point- that Ashley is not a manipulator because she has little ingame control over her actions- you have to just fucking ignore that the most important choice in the entire game, the PRIME choice that determines whether you end up on the Decay or Burial route, is Ashley deciding whether or not to deliberately manipulate Andrew. That's what's going on in that scene. If she trusts him, their relationship improves. If she continues to manipulate and mistrust him, it decays further. This entire paragraph ignores that completely. COMPLETELY. I don't even know what to say.

And you can still call what she says and does manipulative despite that, sure, but at what point are you just pathologizing relatively normal (if extreme and highly emotional) social interactions for the sake of fitting into a narrative you already held?

Ah, yes, right, of course. I had forgotten how normal it is to tell your brother that if he ever leaves you, you'll tell everyone about the murder you made him commit. Sorry about that, I'll try and keep it in mind next time.

Okay. A lot of the following is about Mrs. Graves, and I think Mrs. Graves is a piece of shit, so I don't think there's a lot I disagree with here. Yes, it's unquivocally a bad thing for Andrew to accept his mom's offer. This is because she's a terrible person who, unlike Ashley, doesn't even care about Andrew in addition to being a terrible person. No issues here.

But no matter what ending was picked, things could be better. They could've been better all along. Compared to chapter 1, their dynamic in chapter 2 is already much healthier. Their banter is less venomous, and while they still poke and prod each other in ways that aren't exactly great, they don't get into the same violent fights we saw in the 302 room. By all accounts, what happened in that room was an outlier. Even when they find themselves in their parents' house, where they stand to do the One Thing That Means They Would Never Be Normal Again, Ever (ignoring the fact that this is already a lost cause by then), Ashley doesn't get into any fights with Andrew in the same way she did back in the apartment. All she wants is affirmation and security. She doesn't even lay into her mom like she lays into Julia over the phone, even in their private conversations.

I don't disagree that their time in the Coffin was probably an outlier in terms of how horrible they become- in fact, I think this is more a defense of Andrew than it is Ashley. I could make a whole post about how people misconstrue the 302 scene as Andrew having a hair-trigger temper and a proclivity to violence, when in fact it comes after months of Ashley prodding at him, and being in one of the highest-stress situations I can imagine, but this isn't that post. This is all fine. Yes, they have a slightly healthier dynamic than most people realise, but that doesn't excuse the obvious abuse coming from Ashley.

We’re led to believe that she’s still getting worse because the actions she’s taking are more extreme, but her attitudes and behaviors are much, much different. The actual actions they're taking are so obviously the right thing to do (both morally and practically) that I don't think it's until they eat their parents that you should make a double take and go "Wow, maybe these goblins actually are kinda fucked up," because until then, well… everything is justified! Perfectly so! Even then, eating their parents serves a purpose, even if not a mentally healthy one.

I don't... think that... Ashley going about murdering and eating two people with a smile instead of a frown actually makes her a better person...?

I don't think I need to make any further points on that one.

Look, this is getting overly long, and I think I've very firmly established a lot here. Most of the remaining post is either iterations on the Poor Little Meow Meow argument, or just claiming that it's okay for her to abuse Andrew, because she's worried he might leave her, which is batshit enough on its face that I don't feel the need to debunk it.

Let's just conclude, okay? My brain is tired and my hand pain is flaring up.

I see this attitude a lot in fandoms for fucked up characters, where people feel the need to excuse the actions of a bad person before they can appreciate them as characters, or identify with them as people. I think this is misguided. At some point I'll make a post like this one for Andrew, where I go through all the arguments for why he, himself, is merely a poor little meow meow being abused by his sister and rebut them, because Andrew is a bad person, and he is fucked up, and you don't need to excuse his actions to like him.

Ashley Graves is a terrible person. Andrew Graves is also a terrible person. I love both of them incredibly deeply. There is no moral conflict here.

Go drink some water <3

Ashley Literally Did Nothing Wrong, Fuck You, Fight Me

Alt title: Ashley Graves: The most convenient scapegoat in the world

I'm going to espouse a take here that will no doubt be controversial, as you can tell by the title. This is a take I've created from my hollistic understanding of the events of the game, and isn't dependent on any one single point I make in this essay. Because of that, I want you to read it with an open mind; if you hyperfocus on one or two smaller details I might've gotten wrong or are fallaciously interpretated, and either use that to discount the whole essay or go into the comment section and immediately try to debunk my interpretation of that event, that'll make it obvious to me that you're not trying to seriously engage with the core of what I'm trying to say. Because unless quite literally everything I've said here is wrong, I feel confident in saying this:

Ashley Graves did nothing wrong.

Moreover, I think Ashley is on the level of people like Rossiu, Shinji Ikari, and Skylar White as far as people who are mistreated by their fandoms goes.

At first this was going to be an essay about how I don't think the demons are evil, using textual and thematic evidence to show that they're just part of a system that deals mostly fairly with humans and doesn't have any nefarious plans, or at least nefarious plans that stand to fuck anyone over. But then I realized that, goodness gracious, that is boring as shit to write! But I looked at what I had written already and realized that I could write something else with it: something better. I could sum up a lot of the points made in my prior essays and elaborate upon them in much more detail, showing why I think certain themes are obviously present within this game. And here, I intend on doing that.

I've spoken a lot before about how Ashley is a scapegoat for all of Andrew's worst habits; and to a lesser extent, her mother's. The game makes it seemingly obvious that she's the bad one, and generally just a Very Not Good person. It shows her and her brother committing many different acts that are, under most moral systems, wrong, and implicitly implies that she's the reason that Andrew ever did those things. It implies that she's corrupting him, that he could be better and refuses- or is unable to- due to her poking and prodding. But… is that the truth? Is that how their relationship actually works, in practice? I don't believe so. I think I've made it obvious by now that I believe the exact opposite!

I'm going to start off by tackling the morality behind their actions, especially relative to the world they're in. Specifically, I'm going to tackle how the game presents the morality of their actions from a thematic point of view, and any statements it may or may not make.

First of all, TCOAL plays with a lot of different taboos- demon summoning, cannibalism, incest, murder- but the game goes through great lengths to muddy the moral weight of the siblings' actions. Every single action they commit is portrayed in the most neutral possible light- killings were done in self defense (with one notable exception), or done to people who greatly wronged them, cannibalism was a necessity to survive (also with one notable exception), incest is shown to come from a marked improvement in their relationship- leading me to believe that this game is taking a hard morally nihilistic stance. Else, they'd be shown to suffer for their actions, when in reality, the literal exact opposite is happening; they are being rewarded for it. This isn't necessarily glorifying the actions, but instead showing that even the worst of actions can potentially be excused, but whether or not you do is up to the reader. Hence, nihilism, or at the very least, skepticism (as noted by Lisafication). There's an existentialist reading of this too, but I think much of that is contingent on the events of chapter 3 so I won't get into that here.

It contrasts this mostly nihilistic perspective on interpersonal taboos with the deep societal ills that drive people to commit such actions. Evil exists at every level of analysis here, but curiously, the only thing that are shown to do direct harm to others without having a justification of some kind- be it self-defense or retaliation- are those societal ills. There is no (morally) good reason to quarantine people, starve them, and harvest their organs. There's no good reason to burn all evidence and then put a hit on the ones who did escape. There's no good reason to extort sexual favors from someone in exchange for food. These are deep structural problems that force people to either retaliate/lash out or enable people's most exploitative or abusive habits lest they just let themselves die.

And thus, the obvious evils become much less obvious. The game makes a point of subverting the obvious or the well-known when it comes to morals, and I think it does so when it comes to everything else, too. Outside of those societal ills (so far, ch3 might have something else to say), every situation where someone could obviously be shown as the bad person in a situation is immensely more complex than it first appears. So much so that I'd argue that displaying said complexity and subverting simplicity to force/encourage people to analyze things deeper is one of the central themes of the game.

So why, exactly, does he blame so much on her? It's because Ashley is the world's most convenient scapegoat, and the game is well-aware of this and displays it in ways both obvious and not.

First off: the title screen has Ashley wielding the cleaver, establishing that she’s the violent one. It's covered in blood, too, implying that she's the one more driven to kill. The reality of this is the opposite; Andrew is the one with less hesitation to inflict violence on others, the cleaver is his weapon, and most of the kills in the story are done by him (and fully justified). Ashley might push him to do these violent acts, but… does she?

Her reaction to the death of the first warden is one of utter shock.

And her expression afterwards?

This is not the look of someone who enjoyed the fact that someone killed for her sake. This is not the look of someone who finds joy to be had in violence. It's not even the look of someone who is apathetic towards violence. It almost seems to express shame or guilt, but at the very least, she's timid over it. At the very least, it's an "oh shit, he actually had to do that for my sake" face. Not a "haha, I am making him worse!" face.

Not to mention, not only does Andrew kill the first Warden without a care in the world, he proactively kills the 302 lady to eliminate all witnesses, and because he believes Ashley would want him to. But Ashley actually grills him for it; she didn't want the 302 lady to die, although she hardly had good-person-reasons for it. But that's not my point. The point is that she is not the violent one between the two of them.

The door doesn't open in response to violence, remember?

The game intentionally misleads us.

And what happens when Ashley tries to make him take responsibility for all this violence? To point out that she didn't force him to do anything and that he chose to do all of it, including lock Nina in the box? She lashes out, hits him a few times… and then he goes to strangle her, and doesn't let go until she acknowledges that he has no reason for her to be around. He literally doesn't cease his threat to her life until she acknowledges she's useless to him.

I acknowledge that this isn't the most charitable framing for Andrew, and maybe too charitable for Ashley. After all, she wasn't indignant. She was mocking him. She found it hilarious. But I have reasons for that charitability that I'll go over towards the end. But even with that charitability in mind, I don't think my reading is too off base. Defaulting to laughter or mocking in stressful situations is just what Ashley does. She's not indignant about it; she just finds it hilarious that people keep pretending to be better than her, when they're not.

Andrew killed the 302 lady and used Ashley as a scapegoat to justify it; this is indisputable, stated in the text during the dream. This alone validates Ashley's point of view. There is no interpretation of this event that doesn't paint Andrew as every bit as unscrupulous as Ashley, and thinking she corrupted him into this- when it was both one of the first actions he did on his own in the story and something he explicitly uses Ashley as a scapegoat for- is just ridiculous. It's frankly unreasonable. She has every right to be sick of being used as a scapegoat. And at the very least, whether or not you accept the idea that Andrew only let Ashley go once she acknowledged that she's useless to him, he's still so taken aback by his misinterpretation of Ashley's desires that HE goes to strangle HER.

This is NOT Andrew triumphantly standing up to his abuser. This is both of their masks slipping; Andrew revealing how violent and insistent on keeping up his internal narrative that he is, and Ashley revealing that she's getting tired of being blamed for everything.

And then, when he finally lets her go… she hugs him, and acknowledges that she's happy that Nina is gone, which makes little sense at the face of it. Why would that be her first response to being let go, when it was ostensibly what made Andrew so upset to begin with?

I think, to her, it's a conciliatory gesture. As chapter 2 showed us, she's more than willing to take responsibility for violence to relieve Andrew of stress over it, as evidenced by her finishing off their parents. This is an earlier instance of that; by acknowledging she was happy that Nina was dead, she took responsibility for it. She willingly framed herself as a bad person here, so Andrew wouldn't have to be.

She let herself be the scapegoat, because it's all she ever knew. She put the mask back on.

This alone is enough to challenge the idea that Ashley 'corrupts' Andrew in any meaningful way. How, exactly, can you define it as corrupt when society itself is twisted enough to force these actions to survive? In a more sane world, a lot of their actions would've been bad, sure, but they're also actions that the siblings probably wouldn't have done in a more sane world. Ashley's actions aren't making Andrew worse, they're helping to ensure their survival. You could say that this is still corruptive in its own way, but at that point it seems like your reasoning is motivated by having already had that narrative rather than making a good-faith reading of their dynamic.

At no point did she actually make him worse; he was already like that and just used her as an excuse.

Next up is the Nina situation. This one is obviously cut and dry- Ashley manipulates Andrew into killing Nina because she wants no competition between the two of them. It's not Andrew's fault and Ashley was an evil abuser from the jump. Obvious, right?

No. It's really not.

It's pretty strongly implied that Ashley was mistreated by people her whole life. The Lemon Cupcake scene shows this in more detail, about how people always neglect or ignore her birthdays, but she also says that nobody likes her because she's weird and loud in the Nina flashback too. But unless something big happened in between the two flashbacks, none of this behavior indicates particularly maladaptive or even strange tendencies on Ashley's part. She's a needy, bratty child, and the closest thing to a friend she has- Nina- wants to take away the one thing from her that's a source of comfort and emotional validation.

It's not entirely rational, sure! But it also -makes perfect sense-. NOBODY treated her well throughout her entire life; it's strongly implied that Nina never did either, given Nina's reaction to Ashley being there and the lower left-hand painting past the Questionable door showing her being distant from the two of them. We can also see a star bouncing off of her head, and stars represent closeness in this game, so it shows there was an attempt made somewhere along the line, it's just not clear as to who made the attempt.

At the very least, Nina's reaction of disappointment fed into Ashley's preconceived notions of how people treat her, and how she deserves to be treated. Although, from what has been directly stated, rather than implied, Nina was nothing more than an innocent victim in this scenario; I don't mean to take that away from her.

"But she didn't care when Nina died?"

So? If Nina treated her like trash for most of her life, why should she care? She didn't expect Nina to die. It was just an acceptable consequence. You can say "That's not how normal kids act!" all you want, but there's a level of spite and apathy that comes with intense bullying and emotional neglect that I don't think you really understand unless you've been there to the extent someone like Ashley has implied to be.

Andrew, meanwhile, was the one who told Ashley that they had to lock Nina in the box to keep them in there. He's the one who looked for and found the stick to keep them locked in. You could say he was coerced by an abusive person into hurting someone, sure, but you'd be wrong. Cataclysmically wrong, even. Like, if you actually think that a seven year old girl (nobody wears overalls past the age of seven) can have anything approximating an abusive dynamic with her as the perpetrator with someone both older and stronger than her, you frankly have some issues with women you need to work out. That's simply not how abuse dynamics work at that age.

Andrew wasn't entirely responsible for it either, mind- he was just a kid who should never have been saddled with this kind of responsibility. But that's not my point; the point is that it enables other people, Andrew included, to use her as a scapegoat to avoid his own responsibility. All this scene does is retroactively justify any preconceptions you might've had about them from seeing their adult selves first. But the moment you start digging, it becomes much less obvious who's really culpable here. Andrew was, as evidenced by the blood oath scene, fully aware that he held the advantage over her in strength, and managed to give up nothing when making the oath while he made Ashley swear to silence. He was fully aware that he could've chosen to do better, but he refused, and instead opted to reinforce Ashley's insecurities for the sake of exerting control over her.

I've said before that the 302 lady was murdered without any input from Ashley, but this is also relevant on a meta-level because it's done without any input from the player, either. Both of the murders in chapter 1 were like that, whereas all that we, the player can choose to do in that chapter is either solve puzzles, or hilariously, die. The only person with control here is Andrew, the character, and this is reinforced by the fact that we have no control over him for much of the Nina flashback, too. He locks her in the box regardless of our input, even though Ashley spends a lot of time trying to convince him. The main difference between the Nina flashback and the scenes in the apartment is that Ashley had absolutely no idea that any of that was going to happen in the present, whereas it's something she wanted with Nina- which isn't that big of a difference when discussing how much agency she really has.

As much as the game frames Ashley as a manipulator- and much of the fanbase uncritically accepts- she is given shockingly little in-game control over many of the actions committed. Even in the case of the Hitman- as a good friend of mine pointed out- the only choice the player is given is whether or not to check the closet and be killed; an impulsive decision leading to a swift and unceremonious end. In the end, Andrew is the one given the choice to kill the hitman, and we can consciously choose whether or not his reaction is panicked or measured. No such choice is given to Ashley, as most of her reactions are impulsive and spontaneous rather than planned. This is not the makings of a standard "manipulative evil bitch" trope. She's pretty consistently portrayed as someone with poor impulse and emotional control who loudly and aggressively states her intent in every single scenario she's in.

And you can still call what she says and does manipulative despite that, sure, but at what point are you just pathologizing relatively normal (if extreme and highly emotional) social interactions for the sake of fitting into a narrative you already held?

We see Ashley's status as a scapegoat for people to use to pretend to be normal reach its most blatant with the parents. This time it's pretty cut and dry to anyone that doesn't already have it in their mind that Ashley is evil and unforgivable. Mrs. Graves explicitly brings up the possibility of a normal life without Ashley to Andrew in the basement, and claims that Ashley was at fault for shutting her out. She would've been a normal parent otherwise, right? Well, no; the game wastes no time in showing that this wasn't the case in the Burial ending.

From when Ashley was a baby, Mrs. Graves was already tired of her shit, and too emotionally exhausted to be a parent. Despite her attempts at blaming Ashley, she would've never been a normal parent unless Ashley was a golden child in the same way that Andrew was. And yet Ashley didn't even deny shutting her mom out. She didn't deny the chance to be used as a scapegoat; it was all she ever knew. The fact that Mrs. Graves had the audacity to claim that she was a saint when she was never prepared to be a parent for a child who didn't make it easy, and when she was willing to sell out her children and let them die for a life insurance payment is absolutely astounding.

This alone should've been enough to recontextualize everything we supposedly know about how responsible Ashley really is in all of this, but bad parents have a knack for being great at manipulating both family members and everyone viewing from the outside, including the people playing the game.

And almost including Andrew.

Andrew almost accepting the mom's offer is the single most tragic moment in the game, by far.

Dandy said it best in his video essay: By Ashley leaving Andrew alone with their parents, she showed that she is capable of changing. That she is capable of getting better. She showed that she loves and respects Andrew enough to be able to put aside her usual role as the scapegoat and allow him to make the decision that was for the best for both of them. And make no mistake, it was for the best; if the mom really DID sell out the siblings, and given the two of them were already on the run for supposedly being dead, there was no hope of any of this ever working out. They saw through the conspiracy and knew the truth of how the quarantine operations really worked. They were an active threat to one of the most powerful entities seen in the setting so far, to the point where they had a hitman sent after them.

Mrs. Graves had every reason to sell them out again, for their presence in a public setting was more than enough to put everyone in their family in danger. Mrs. Graves had every reason to believe that the normalcy she wanted was nothing that could ever be grasped again so long as her children were alive, and as such, it was clear that she had nothing to offer either Andrew or Ashley. Ashley trusted Andrew to see through their obvious manipulations and lies, and understand that the parents had nothing left to give them. She trusted him to love her more than the false promises their parents could give.

…And yet. In spite of it all.

In spite of her love, in spite of clearly displaying that she can grow up and become a person that causes him less stress, and in spite of Ashley showing that all she wants now is their safety and security…

Andrew can still choose to consider Ashley the problem. He can still choose to use her as the scapegoat he always has.

He can still choose to see her as the one thing that caused him to be this way, that stands in between him and normalcy, when she, not once, forced him to do anything.

Were he to accept Mrs. Graves' offer, this would've been the single most tragic moment in the game. It almost was, and still stands to be, because he ignores every indication that things could be better for the sake of his own narrative, and a narrative echoed by much of the fandom.

But no matter what ending was picked, things could be better. They could've been better all along. Compared to chapter 1, their dynamic in chapter 2 is already much healthier. Their banter is less venomous, and while they still poke and prod each other in ways that aren't exactly great, they don't get into the same violent fights we saw in the 302 room. By all accounts, what happened in that room was an outlier. Even when they find themselves in their parents' house, where they stand to do the One Thing That Means They Would Never Be Normal Again, Ever (ignoring the fact that this is already a lost cause by then), Ashley doesn't get into any fights with Andrew in the same way she did back in the apartment. All she wants is affirmation and security. She doesn't even lay into her mom like she lays into Julia over the phone, even in their private conversations.

We’re led to believe that she’s still getting worse because the actions she’s taking are more extreme, but her attitudes and behaviors are much, much different. The actual actions they're taking are so obviously the right thing to do (both morally and practically) that I don't think it's until they eat their parents that you should make a double take and go "Wow, maybe these goblins actually are kinda fucked up," because until then, well… everything is justified! Perfectly so! Even then, eating their parents serves a purpose, even if not a mentally healthy one.

Maybe she’s calmer because she’s in control over the situation, but if the calls she made to Julia are any indication (independent of the theory that she didn’t actually say those things), were she unchanged as a person, she still would’ve lashed out at their mother over how much more useful she is to Andrew than their parents were, or something of that nature. Something about how nothing their mom offers could compete with what Ashley gives. But she makes no such claims. She feels no need to prove anything to her parents, or to reaffirm her place in Andrew’s life even in the face of her mother challenging it (or at least implying such a challenge). Regardless of her insecurities, she’s changed. It’s hard to see, but she has.

And then Andrew can ignore that and consider betraying her because he refuses to believe that she's willing to make their dynamic work, when she shows many different indications of being willing to concede as long as Andrew stops giving her mixed signals.

A friend of mine put it best, and I'm pretty much quoting her word for word here, because of how strongly I agree with it. When I look at Ashley, I find very few actual "flaws." I see familiar wounds.

The Burial ending, despite being triumphant and not nearly as "dark" as some people think, is still very, very sad. A lot of abusive dynamics are characterized by someone having to fight every step of the way to get what they need from the other person, usually some kind of emotional validation or relief. This is what happens between Andrew and Ashley for most of the game: Ashley wants Andrew to treat their relationship as special, to acknowledge there's something to it beyond just him going through the motions. And yet for most of the game, he refuses to, especially in chapter 1. And then, in Burial, when he does…

She's confused.

A lot of people view this as her being afraid of losing control over Andrew, since her "Andy," who she can push around, is gone. Andrew has changed, and the same tricks wouldn't work. But that's not what that is; it's not about control, it's about her finally getting what she wants from him without having to fight. She still thinks about using sex as leverage to keep him around, but that's because she's never understood what it's like to have someone actually want to be around her. And I speak from experience; when you no longer have to fight for every little bit of emotional validation or relief, when you no longer have to keep checking your messages to keep an argument going so you can finally be proven right, when you no longer have to force yourself to let go, to stop engaging, the reaction isn't happiness. It's not relief.

It's confusion. It's discontent.

Because something you've tied so much of yourself up in to is no longer there, despite it being more peaceful, it still feels wrong. The dynamic still has to be this way in your mind, because you've never known anything else. You latch on to whatever you can in order to justify that, and your actions are still heavily biased in favor of maintaining your place in that nonexistent dynamic. This isn't manipulation; it's trauma. And the fact that Ashley almost immediately understands that Andrew is changing is nothing short of a miracle. By consolidating past and present Andrew into a single person rather than splitting them into two, she showing that she can actually heal from that trauma. And all Andrew had to do to enable this is to acknowledge that she CAN change, that things CAN be better, and that everyone who claims to be better than her is full of shit.

I've analyzed the events of the story in a way that may seem needlessly antagonistic to some characters, and overly charitable to others. But I have to ask you, that if you disagree with anything I've said:

Where does that disagreement come from? What about my narrative clashes with your own? -Why- does it clash? Is it because the game presents your interpretation as obvious, whereas mine is not? Is it because you've experienced someone like Ashley before in your life, and you know it when you see it? Maybe you strongly identify with Andrew, and view his status as a doormat with no agency to be obvious? Or did you just accept the narrative that much of the fanbase has taken at face value, without further analysis other than building on top of it?

I don't believe these things to be contrarian; I've held most of these opinions since my first or second playthrough. I don't believe what I do because you don't, I believe what I do because I understand what Ashley has been through. I've experienced a lot of the specific traumas she had, such as deep feelings of isolation and being deprived of the emotional validation I need from the people who need to give it. I know what it's like to be misunderstood, to have who and what I am taken for granted, and to be terrified of being abandoned by the people I need the most. I see what I do because I understand.

And I want to give her that understanding that nobody gave me.

Maybe you should think about it. Why do you take it for granted that Andrew is a doormat who is strung along by Ashley? Why do you find it so odd when the trope of a woman corrupting a good man through leveraging sex is drawn into question? Why is Ashley seen as crazy, when all of her actions are so straightforward and rational? How is she corrupting him, when the single most needlessly violent act in the whole story- outside of the Nina flashback- is done without her influence? Why is Ashley seen as the abusive one when Andrew both threatens and resorts to physical violence and witholds emotional validation?

Weirdly personal tangent aside, Ashley and Andrew are two of the most well-written characters I have ever seen. They're not written like archetypes who interact with each other through a series of tropes; they're written like real people who's words and actions have astoundingly human motivations. They come from places that we can understand and relate to.

And just like people, they deserve respect. In spite of all they've done, they deserve love.

But make no mistake, Ashley is not the one stopping that love from happening. She just has the audacity to still want it in spite of everything telling her that she doesn't deserve it. We're led to believe she wants too much, but all she ever wanted was the bare minimum that she was never given.

And she has every right to be mad about it.

[ulfie-by-osmosis]

ships ask game with argyle and jonathan go

anon I hope you know I love you. (question list)

who hogs the blankets? Jonathan, usually.

who texts/calls to check how the other's day is going? Oh this one is Argyle for sure. We have three seasons' worth of evidence that Jonathan is egregiously bad at checking up on/ catching up with even people he cares about. Meanwhile my man Argyle was asking after Jonathan at Jonathan from the get-go. Argyle, no doubt.

who's the most creative when it comes to gifts? This one could be either of them - although I think Jonathan has a tendency to be serious with his gifts whereas Argyle allows himself to get silly with it.

who gets up first in the morning? Again, either of them depending on their mood.

who suggests new things in bed? Argyle is canonically pretty open-minded but rarely takes charge of anything, whereas Jonathan is bossy and knows what he wants but would rather die than voice it out. So.. I guess it goes like Jonathan mumbling a suggestion and Argyle picking up on it before Jonathan can retract.

who cries at movies? BOTH OF THEM, DUDE! They are both BIG SOFTIES. extra teary if they're stoned while watching.

who gives unprompted massages? I think this one obviously goes to Argyle lol. (Not that he doesn't respect personal space, I just think he's the type to go into De-stress Mode around his loved ones)

who fusses over the other when they're sick? Argyle is more of a stress-er, whereas Jonathan doesn't outright fuss over Argyle, but orders him around regarding meds and rest.

who gets jealous easier? definitely Jonathan Argyle isn't super possessive, and is too comfortable with his trust in Jonathan to feel jealous per se - though he might occasionally feel like he's somehow not enough, or that Jonathan could do better. Jonathan can be pretty possessive (and resentful, as we've seen in prev seasons), but something about Argyle makes me think that Jonathan is less uptight about other people around him.

who has the most embarrassing taste in music? Their music tastes are top-notch. sorry. But also embarrassing to some degree lmao.

who collects unusual stuff? Argyle is likelier, although he doesn't seem like someone who collects things. Jonathan has definitely at least once had a collector phase but with, like, insect wings or some shit.

who takes longer to get ready? Probably Argyle - Jonathan canonically does not make an effort to look nice unless forced aggressively prompted to do so.

who is more tidy and organised? I know Jonathan is really methodical when it comes to photography, but his messing up his work schedule practically caused S1, so if anyone it has to be Argyle.

who gets more excited about holidays? Visibly? Argyle!

who's the big/little spoon? They take turns but Argyle is usually the big spoon.

who gets more competitive when they're playing games/sports? Argyle if he's really into it - otherwise neither of them care enough to be competitive.

who starts the most arguments? Jonathan snaps faster, Argyle pesters harder.

who suggests that they buy a pet? Argyle.

what couple traditions do they have? Marijuana, babey!

what tv shows do they watch together? They're weirdly attached to cooking shows. Nobody can interrupt their Food TV Time. It pays off when Jonathan recreates recipes for group dinner though.

what other couples do they hang out with? Not a couple, but I think Jonathan-Argyle-Steve-Robin would be a great grouping after the initial friction. Even better if they live together.

how do they spend time together as a couple? Mostly trying to process whatever god-awful horrors are being thrown their way. Also using Jonathan's camera to record the stuff argyle crafts - usually goofy, but sometimes they distribute little tutorials for the cash.

who made the first move? Jonathan, after a lot of doubt and deliberation, kisses Argyle one day after a particularly genius idea of Argyle's that nearly got them both killed. A little anti-climactic because Argyle recognises the intention but decides to brush it off as a platonic, spur-of-the-moment action. Don't ask me how they figure it out.

who brings home flowers? Argyle! When he is in the mood.

who is the better cook? Jonathan - not only does he know how to make "fancy" stuff for cheap AND have it taste delicious, he legitimately has the better cooking sensibilities out of the two of them.

[robertogreco]

Here’s another now-deleted watch forum post, made by me in July 2022. The watch above is an H. Moser Venturer Red Gold and Vantablack. Note too that after posting it someone made a good case that the referenced Wristwatch Revival video is clickbait and the tag line “Even Rolex Refused to Fix it” is almost certainly not correct.

Brand Disloyalty

Something that I find interesting about watch collecting and watch enthusiasm is a certain talk about heritage that often feels more like a version of brand loyalty than anything else. I get that when purchasing something expensive it makes sense to consider whether or not a company will exist in the future, especially with regard to the length of the warranty. But as we saw in that recent Wristwatch Revival video, beyond a certain timeframe these companies will feel no obligation to support the owner of a watch. Loyalty tends to go only one way and it’s a marketing scheme. There is nothing wrong with liking what a brand happens to be doing at the moment. This is how I feel about Timex and Oris, but there are parts of both of their histories where they produced watches that are of no interest to me. And if their design, builds, pricing, policies, etc. change to something I dislike, my attention to them will come to an end. These are businesses and I don’t owe them anything. I also don’t feel the need to root for them either.

This is also why I’m particularly fond of the few brands that don’t feel compelled to put their name on their dials. Why do I need to advertise the brand of the watch company that I gave money too?

Somewhat related to the above is the argument that certain watch brands own old designs and should be the only ones that benefit from them. Sure, patents exist, but they also expire, and if another company can produce a design that is no longer patented for significantly less and/or with some different look or approach, then I don’t feel we need to be loyal to the owner of the now-lapsed patent. The public domain is important. What a brand did decades ago doesn’t necessarily mean anything about what they are doing today. 

These thoughts might make more sense when considering that I’m also not really into professional sports teams either. I love sports and enjoy watching a good game (mostly fútbol), but I find serious commitment to a local professional team baffling. I’m more inclined to root for the team that is playing better or more beautifully or intelligently (not including loophole exploitation). I also feel no commitment to teams, which nearly always (in the US, at least) have private owners who falsely promise a positive impact to the local economy to sucker municipalities into funding their stadiums. Even worse is when owners move the team from one city to another. I lived in LA during the glory years without NFL teams. I was there when the Rams departed to St. Louis (they are back in LA again now lol) and the Raiders returned to Oakland (now they are in Las Vegas lol). I guess we did have a professional football team still in the Trojans, but they were tied to the university, not the city. Blah blah blah.

What does it mean to be a fan of the Rams? What does it mean to be a fan of the American brand Hamilton? What does it mean to be a fan of Smiths now? And what about brands owned by massive conglomerates? Or brands with new owners or new leaders? Etc.

Anyways, real loyalty goes both ways, and I find nothing of the sort in business whether in sports, watches, or otherwise.

***

Here are some of the comments I made on the post in response to comments by other forum members:

/.

Yes, that talk of family, and to a great extent even community, within a workplace is very similar and coercive.

I’ll be a repeat customer in the same way as you – good experience and satisfaction with a product – but will drop a brand as soon as that changes. I might even go back to a brand I’ve left if something has clearly changed for the better.

I don’t recall ever having you in class? ;)

Now that you speak of nomadic youth, my nomadic adulthood might explain my confusion about sports fandom to some extent. And now that I think about it a bit more, I can be a fan of fans, my favorite being my experience with the La 12 (Boca Juniors fans) at La Bombonera and in other stadiums around the greater Buenos Aires area. It’s all about their energy and their songs.

//.

Thanks for the great “ramble”! I too remember the treatment I have received both in the lack of need to look for assistance and the assistance that I have received when things don’t go well. As I noted in my reply to [redacted], going with what I know and have been happy with (or avoiding what I know to be bad) makes a lot of sense when I don’t have time to think more about something.

I’ll admit that I don’t have experience with watch ownership (or any other luxury ownership) and thus with watches as a store of value. But I imagine that I too would be grateful for resale value in tough times. 

That is an H. Moser in the photo, one of the Vanta Black models. One of the things I love about that brand is their irreverence, but I also know I will never own an H. Moser given the prices they go for, so maybe I don’t really understand. Maybe a better example would have been Serica, which I love, in part, because they so minimally include their name at the very bottom of their dials. From what I understand, that was in response to feedback that they received after their first trial model, the W.W.W.

I totally agree with what you say about the discreet signifiers that come in the form of materials, shape, etc. Maybe that is even more snobby than wearing a name brand, and if so, then maybe I am a snob. :)

///.

PS: Regarding the value of Rolex watches, did you happen to see the article on “The Historic Value of Rolex Watches” and this chart from it?

I really enjoyed everything about that article (particularly that specific graph that answers a question I had been wondering about, though I would also like a line for the Upper 1% Income and the Upper 0.1% income) and it contains a passage that really resonates so much with me and that might also explain the perspective that I am coming from:

I enjoy simply looking at watches, test-wearing one from time to time... I don't need to own every single piece I like. You also don't need to hang every painting you see in a museum into your living room. In the same way you don't have to put every watch you see on Instagram into your watch box. As in another sentiment: There is the right partner for you, so there also will be the right watch for all of us. And the good news is that this seems to have been true for at least the last 50 years. Let's embrace that!

As I have noted elsewhere on [redacted] a few times, I get immense pleasure from reading and learning about watches and assembling a digital collection (just images downloaded from the web and not NFTs! LOL) of thousands of watches that I appreciate for one reason or another. I don’t think I would get nearly as much pleasure from collecting them beyond a few watches (I still have just the one). That comes from one of the parts of my upbringing that I have held onto tightly (unlike a lot of other parts of my upbringing that I have discarded), a sort of frugality and practicality that makes me averse to most luxury products and averse to accumulation. I know the rush that comes from making a purchase, but I also know how quickly it fades for me. I am nearly certain that with each additional watch purchase beyond a very few, the satisfaction that would come from owning it would diminish. So, rather than chasing them I will learn about them and leave the chasing to those who find greater pleasure than me in the chase.

////.

Oh, fascinating! Thanks for pointing that out [about the unreliable nature of the Wristwatch Revival title]. I really wonder how that refusal story came about. Maybe it had more to do about offering to replace more parts (instead of just service and repair) than the owner wanted?

The part in the second video where you talk about getting the equivalent of a new vintage watch through servicing and parts replacement is something that I hadn’t though about. Rolex of Theseus!

[canmom]

This an interesting angle. I've never been particularly taken with trying to determine True Art from False Art on the basis of specific qualities of the piece.

(I did ok-ish but not exceptionally on the AI art quiz, probably with a slight bias for misattributing human pieces as AI ones - like many other respondees, I found the Impressionist pieces hardest to distinguish, since they very much play to the AI's strengths.)

There are many different ways you could describe "art" as a human activity, I'm sure there's a post somewhere where I make a list, but a really big one is its communicative function - one purpose of art is to somehow pass on some aspect of our 'inner world' to another person, through a lossy and limited channel.

That a signal can be easily imitated doesn't mean it doesn't carry contextual information. For example, I could ask a yes/no question of enormous emotional importance - "should I take the shot", "has the baby been born", "will you go out with me", "am I a good girl" - and be answered with either "yes" or "no". It would be trivial to generate a machine which randomly substitutes for this communication - that's basically all a magic eight-ball is.

The amount of information that can be contained in an image of a given size and colour depth can also be calculated. For example, the number of fullscreen images that would fill my current monitor at 8 bits per channel would be 2^(3440 × 1440 × 24) ≈ 3 × 10^35788372 - about 15 megabytes uncompressed. It's a number that seems astronomically huge, though effectively the amount of information is much less than you'd calculate since all the likely pixels are correlated. The same goes for other art forms, like novels (encoded as, say, UTF-8 strings or PDFs) or pieces of music (encoded as sound files, MIDI, MuseScore files, etc.). The exact number is complicated, you end up getting into Kolmogorov complexity and shit like that, but the point is that it's finite.

If we want to claim that all the information about a human life that Hofstadter describes (grief, despair etc.) is in there somehow, we're claiming that this finitely many bits is adequate to capture all the nuances of a human life. I don't know that that's true!

This, however, doesn't really seem to align with how we interact with art. Human production and exchange of "art" is a social act - I would describe it as being continuous with "play". When we observe a piece, we are opening a communications channel - at least a one-way channel. The person on the other side sends some information into the channel, and we process it somehow.

Since it is a lossy channel with limited information, we must infer various things about the other mind on the opposite side of it. If I show you an artwork that I made, we might have a conversation about how I did it, why I made the choices I did. If I feel something looking at the work, I might imagine that you felt something similar, and designed the piece to evoke it intentionally (a guess that will often be wrong but sometimes still productive). I might also look at what specific choices you have made, compare them to the choices others have made in the same medium, etc etc.

We form these inferences on the basis of experience - the more you learn about making art, the more you learn to appreciate other peoples' art and vice versa. And we project these experiences, usually plausibly, onto other artists.

(Perhaps I am saying all art is in a sense performance art? Seems like a tasty soundbite, though I'm not fully sure I wanna commit to it.)

I'm not meaning to claim that a computer couldn't simulate this kind of 'how did you make it' interaction too. This line of argument was anticipated by Turing in his original 1950 paper on the 'imitation game' that someone links in the comments above, where he describes a poet undergoing a viva voce test interrogating their word choices, and argues that a computer might be programmed to give convincing answers to such a test. I imagine he's right - for a paper written in 1950 he makes some surprisingly sharp predictions for how future AIs might be made, such as the idea that an AI could be built to be 'educated' like a child. (He also thought the evidence for ESP is 'overwhelming', but hey, can't win 'em all).

A lot of the context around art would be quite easy to forge, had you a mind to. For example, suppose I go to a film screening, and someone is introduced as the director so we can all clap them. Did they really direct it? I don't know! You could totally send an actor. Less conspiratorially, if someone says they made an artistic choice for x or y reason, they could be lying about it, or misremembering, or most likely oversimplifying a complex and inscrutable process down to a simpler story.

At some point you have to take something like that on trust, or else simply accept that being lied to about it is part of the game you're there to play! (c.f. Oshi no Ko.)

Anyway, the sudden arrival of a new process that can produce, at least sometimes, near-indistinguishable output to various types of communication, throws a spanner in the process. If we're feeling uncharitable, we could call it something like a DDOS attack, stuffing the channels with spurious inputs that don't fit our design assumptions. I think that goes too far, though. AI gen doesn't preclude communication, but it does need we need to think differently about what is being communicated.[1]

So to consider that last question, if art is like a game, could you train an AI art to produce art that is meaningful to humans only by 'playing against' itself, like AlphaGo Zero? I don't think this is so likely. The rules of Go are strict and well-defined; the rules of what humans find meaningful are inseparable from the history of interacting with other humans, which is why art constantly evolves. Training an AI on existing human artworks is training it to compress and interpolate/extrapolate that dataset; training it to optimise for "making novel art that expresses something in a form that its interlocutor could understand" requires it to be interacting with someone.

You could imagine a training process with an "artist" AI and a "critic" AI (a sort of more sophisticated GAN, where the adversary is optimising not to distinguish human/AI art but to judge it on aesthetic grounds) - but how would you get the "critic" AI? Whose taste would it express?

Admittedly, the developers of image generators are constantly refining their models in response to users, so they are being optimised to appeal to someone, not just interpolate existing artworks. But I think it would be very hard to remove humans from the equation entirely. And the present means of providing feedback to the AI are very crude.

For an AI to learn from interacting with other AI (and the world), I feel like you'd need a whole new process that isn't about minimising loss against input-output pairs. Romantically, I imagine it would be closer to how humans learn from life, but I don't really know what will 'work' in the end.

below: some other remarks that were excised from the main post.

[1] We can view AI image gen as another channel for communication between humans, with its own set of inferences to make. If someone shows me a picture they've generated with AI, there's no point asking why they painted this bit that way, but I might approach them more as a curator and ask why they chose this generation over others, or how they went about prompting it.

The AI artists who go to the trouble of finetuning their models with LoRAs for a specific end goal, or using more involved processes with multiple stages of generation, probably have most to 'say', either through the work they generate or how they'd discuss it. (I find it very endearing when someone trains an AI to serve up a hyperspecific fetish.) And the more I know about how AI images are generated, the more I can probably have a productive conversation.

In this light, the "problem" of AI is mostly one of deception, insofar as it tries to look like something else and thereby tell a misleading story. That's probably a big reason why why it brings the rancour it does, although it doesn't explain all of it. It's not (usually) a forgery of a specific human's work, but it is designed to forge spurious communications in this channel in general, so the channel is 'noisier' - and this could be thought to undermine many of the contexts, i.e. the operating narratives and social games, which are why we exchange art in the first place. Over time, we'll presumably end up renegotiating the 'games', and spawning new ones, as humans always have.

And of course, the issue of provenance and plagiarism in art - particularly when prestige and money get involved - long predates AI and is full of all sorts of bizarre contortions when you look at it closely.

More intriguing is whether there is some possibility for "real communication" between humans and AIs - that is, could there be an AI output that does respect the 'rules of the game' in some way. This is harder to imagine! Like, if you ask why we aren't solipsists, we could point to how much we resemble other humans and say, all things considered, seems very unlikely we aren't the same type of entity. But I only know 'what it's like to be' a human. Conversely, while I know a reasonable amount about how AIs work, the attention mechanism and latent-space vectors and so on (thanks 3blue1brown), the analogy isn't so clear anymore, so I don't even know how I'd determine whether there even is a 'what is it like to be' under all the 'noise' of communications aggressively optimised to fit the patterns of something a human might say. If there is, it's probably very alien to all of my experience.

Ironically I feel like the current model of 'AI', which teaches us to regard any generated output with suspicion of having 'nothing behind it', would make it harder for any 'real', agentive, subjective-experience-having AI to make itself known to us. But perhaps it's good that we're forced to sharpen our criteria of what we're looking for out of these things.

Anyway, all of this is probably just idle imaginings, because nobody can figure out how to make anything like enough money to justify the exorbitant costs of training and operating AIs, so at some point this whole speculative bubble will go up in smoke and whatever AIs continue to be in use will likely remain about as good as they are today, or stupider - at least until the next 'AI summer' when a new paradigm emerges.

Thinking about that that "slop accelerationism" post, and also Scott's AI art Turing test.

I also hope AI text- and image-generation will help shake us loose from cheap bad art. For example, the fact that you can now generate perfectly rendered anime girls at the click of button kindof suggests that there was never much content in those drawings. Though maybe we didn't really need AI for that insight? It feels very similar to that shift in fashion that rejected Bouguereau-style laboriously-rendered pretty girls in favor of more sketchy brush work.

But will we really be so lucky that only things that we already suspected was slop will prove valueless?

As usual with AI, Douglas Hofstadter already thought about this a long time ago, in an essay from 2001. Back in 1979 he had written

Will a computer program ever write beautiful music? Speculation: Yes, but not soon. Music is a language of emotions, and until programs have emotions as complex as ours, there is no way a program will write anything beautiful. There can be "forgeries"—shallow imitations of the syntax of earlier music—but despite what one might think at first, there is much more to musical expression than can be captured in syntactical rules. There will be no new kinds of beauty turned up for a long time by computer music-composing programs. Let me carry this thought a little further. To think—and I have heard this suggested—that we might soon be able to command a preprogrammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar desk-model "music box" to bring forth from its sterile [sic!] circuitry pieces which Chopin or Bach might have written had they lived longer is a grotesque and shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit. A "program" which could produce music as they did would have to wander around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after a human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe. In it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear, anguish and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it would have to be a sense of grace, humor, rhythm, a sense of the unexpected and of course an exquisite awareness of the magic of fresh creation. Therein, and therein only, lie the sources of meaning in music.

I think this is helpful in pinning down what we would have liked to be true. Because in 1995, somebody wrote a program that generates music by applying simple syntactic rules to combine patterns from existing pieces, and it sounded really good! (In fact, it passed a kind of AI turing test.) Oops!

The worry, then, is that we just found out that the computer has as complex emotions as us, and they aren't complex at all. It would be like adversarial examples for humans: the noise-like pattern added to the panda doesn't "represent" a gibbon, it's an artifact of the particular weights and topology of the image recognizer, and the resulting classification doesn't "mean" anything. Similarly, Arnulf Rainer wrote that when he reworked Wine-Crucifix, "the quality and truth of the picture only grew as it became darker and darker"—doesn't this sound a bit like gradient descent? Did he stumble on a pattern that triggers our "truth" detector, even though the pattern is merely a shallow stimulus made of copies of religious iconography that we imprinted on as kids?

One attempt to recover is to say Chopin really did write music based on the experience of fighting through the maze of life, and it's just that philistine consumers can't tell the difference between the real and the counterfeit. But this is not very helpful, it means that we were fooling ourselves, and the meaning that we imagined never existed.

More promising, maybe the program is a "plagiarism machine", which just copies the hard-won grief, despair, world-weariness &c that Chopin recorded? On it's own it's not impressive that a program can output an image indistinguishable from Gauguin's, I can write such a program in a single line:

print("https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gauguin,Paul-Still_Life_with_Profile_of_Laval-_Google_Art_Project.jpg")

I think this is the conclusion that Hofstadter leans towards: the value of Chopin and the other composers was to discover the "template" that can then be instantiated to make many beautiful music pieces. Kind of ironically, this seems to push us back to some very turn-of-the-20th-century notion of avant-garde art. Each particular painting that (say) Monet executed is of low value, and the actual valuable thing is the novel art style...

That view isn't falsified yet, but it feels precarious. You could have said that AlphaGo was merely a plagiarism machine that selected good moves from historical human games, except then AlphaGo Zero proved that the humans were superfluous after all. Surely a couple of years from now somebody might train an image model on a set of photographs and movies excluding paintings, and it might reinvent impressionism from first principles, and then where will we be? Better start prepare a fallback-philosophy now.

[egg-on-the-run]

How about relationship headcanon’s and yes there’s cute stuff but what about realistic shizz? The good, the bad, the ugly. The stubbornness that with time one learns the art of compromise for.

I've only ever been in one relationship and tbh it was very like relaxed??? We never argued much so I hope this isn't super unrealistic.

Leonardo:

Never tells you why he's upset. It's always a guessing game and the worst part is half the time he is not upset with you

He'll have an argument with Raphael and give everyone the silent treatment while he's huffing (and it is huffing) and you spend an hour trying to figure out what you did wrong

Leonardo's confrontational about things that Do Not Matter but avoids conversations about things that are actually important

Like yeah he'll tell you if some silly habit kind of annoys him but it takes a long time for him to confess that PDA makes him a little uneasy

That's another thing: PDA is a minimum with him. Yes he will put his arm around you, yes he will hold your hand. But please no kisses in front of his family he just doesn't vibe with it

He's very nervous about a lot of things, very nervous about going on dates, doing things with you for the first time. You do have to take things slow with him and it takes a while to perfect the art of reassuring him without making him feel patronised

His love language is acts of service and quality time.

Sometimes that quality time is napping because he's prone to overworking himself

Adores it when you take control of things. LOVES being babied and taken care of

Call him something like "sweetheart" and he becomes putty in your hands

His ideal date is he makes dinner, you buy dessert. You both do the dishes together and watch a movie afterwards 💙

Raphael:

Hahaha get ready to rumble.

King of arguments, fool of never being able to apologise

You will bicker about everything to the point where everyone is like 👀👀 but the second anyone else says something? You are both wildly protective of each other

"God you're such a prick" "Yeah screw you Raph" "Casey I swear to god if you ever say anything like that ever again I will kick you so hard in the dick you'll give yourself a blow job" "Raph you're s/o is scaring me" "Casey I'm going to put your head through the wall."

Raph likes to pretend arguments just Did Not Happen. He doesn't expect you to apologise either so at least you can't call him a hypocrite, but he just prefers moving past things. It's over now. Don't bring it up again.

And yes this does cause more conflict sometimes. But you cannot date Raph and not be stubborn. If you put your foot down firmly enough he will give in and do his best to talk about things. He doesn't necessarily like doing it, but you're both stubborn and both very much in love and he's always willing to try

Much more into PDA than Leo. Likes to hold you against him, leans on you, plays with your hair. He just constantly likes to be touching you in some way, even in front of everyone

You can pull the "because you love me" card at any time

"Can you make me some coffee?" "I'm in the middle of playing a game, why would I make you coffee?" "Because you love me."

He doesn't mind it as much as he pretends to

His love language is physical touch and acts of service: lots of cuddles, he holds all your stuff, walks you to and from work

His ideal date is just him trying to teach you how to fight

Lots and lots of gym dates, exploring sewer tunnels and the city together, him letting you win at wrestling ❤️

Donatello:

Leonardo's bad at confrontation sometimes, but Donnie? If you stabbed Donnie he wouldn't complain

Donnie is very insecure in his ability to please. So he works overtime and stresses himself out. If something is bothering him you will never find out because he would rather suffer in silence than even risk upsetting you by bringing it up

His thought process is something along the lines of he interrupts you once so he thinks he just shouldn't speak. He has not connected the dots but he's certainly jumped to conclusions

It takes a very very long time for an argument to actually happen because if you try to talk to Donnie about something he will just Immediately Agree With You, even if he doesn't

But when an argument does happen he says a lot of mean things to get under your skin and you will play the very same cards when things get heated

As time goes on you both get better at having discussions rather than arguments. But when a fight happens you can go days without speaking to each other

Very protective. Likes to know you're safe. Yes it's doting and sweet, but it's also a little annoying having text him "yes I'm still at work darling" every hour

Donnie is also an "actions speak louder than words" kind of guy. No saying sorry, but he makes you a little gift and slides it across the table. No words exchanged, but you know he's sorry for what he did

Mixed feelings about PDA. Sometimes he's more than happy to let you sit on his lap, other times if you try to hold his hand he flinches

Baby is a little touch starved. He gets overwhelmed very easily and shuts you out. Some days are better than others but again, he just doesn't tell you

His love language is gift giving and loves making you little trinkets and toys to put on your desk. But he adores receiving words of affirmation

His ideal date is both of you info dumping in your room while eating pizza. It's so simple, it's so easy. Usually whenever he starts to ramble he forgets a lot of his insecurities with touch and will let you hold him 💜

Michelangelo:

King of communication. He just does not like to argue, fighting upsets him and when you're angry with him he gets a little afraid

Even if you are very frustrated he takes you by the hand and sits you down. He has it down to a routine, there's no problem you can't solve together

It takes a good while for you to break down his walls. He puts up a very fun loving, easy going front to please everyone and even when you start dating it's difficult for him to be completely open

But when he shows you his deep emotions once he's very comfortable showing them to you again and again

Needs lots of reassurance, not with regards to relationships but with regards to himself. His brothers still treat him like the baby of the family, still make him feel stupid. You treat him like he's capable of whatever and he just bursts into tears because you have complete faith in him

You do, however, understand that his brothers treat him like the baby because sometimes he acts like it

He can be a little too high energy and sometimes you just need space and he doesn't understand that it's not his fault, you're just tired.

You have a code for when he's being too affectionate. He loves PDA to the full but it is overwhelming: a squeeze on his knee tells him to calm down a little

He's such a people pleaser that you have to make most of the decisions with everything. Where you want to eat, what you want to do, it would be nice if he took control a little more.

His love language is yes and. Jk jk he praises you 24/7, pet names, compliments, worships you. Loves physical touch as well obviously

His ideal date is something arty. He takes you to find a blank wall in the tunnels and you both just spray paint 🧡

[zenkindoflove]

Let's not get it twisted. Not even attracted/like to each other is also canonically bullshit.

From Elain's actions we know she:

-couldn't stop staring at him when the mating bond snapped even as Nesta dragged her away

-was drawn out of her room for the first time when he arrived at the HOW in ACOWAR

-Lucien blushed at something he discovered at the end of the bond on Elain's side when he reached down it

- Feyre saw Elain take a half step towards Lucien when he was leaving for the continent, a scene that is unambiguously written as romantic

- She couldn't stop looking at him when he showed up on the battlefield.

- Elain only stormed away to the kitchen in ACOFAS when Feyre began to tease Lucien about being an acolyte to Vassa.

- and of course the getting quiet around him in ACOSF could be for many reasons and the interpretation that she feels attracted but isn't ready/fighting that attraction is just as valid as the point than she isn't. And I lean towards she is because DUH. How could you NOT and he's her MATE. Also setting up romantic tension. It's not a hard guess to make. This dynamic happens in romance novels all the time.

Lucien's side - which is the biggest if you think he's not attracted to her than you are being purposely obtuse

- ACOMAF - the entire throne scene and the sisters being made is more than evidence he is drawn to and cares for Elain even before the mating bond snapped

- his pages and pages of inner monologue when Feyre slips into his mind where he thinks she's the most beautiful female he's ever seen, even more beautiful than Jesminda, who is the only one he has ever loved.

- his constant worry about her and putting her needs before his when she is clearly depressed.

- believing in her so much he goes in a suicide mission to the continent because of a vision she had.

- the half step scene from his POV. Again it's basically word for word like I scene you would see in a historical romance regency novel.

- fighting his way across a battlefield just to make sure she's safe.

- the fact alone that Lucien acts DIFFERENT with Elain, more tentative and polite is clear he doesn't want to fuck it up because he wants her.

- and then just to not make this super long both the novella and ACOSF show him longing for her. LONGING. It's deeper than "attraction". He can't stand to be in the same room as her because he feels so much for her and he knows she doesn't want to be with him, at this time, so it PAINS him.

Like the reality is there is so many reasons to ship Elucien. Not just the potential but what has already been built up and seen, even questioning why people would is disingenuous at best and being an asshole at worst.

Like I get why other people ship what they ship. And I don't go around telling e/riels not to ship their ship because what do I care. It's not my thing. And Eluciens really don't give a shit either. We have our canon ship that is 99% likely to be end game because SJM loves both Elain and Lucien and she loves mates.

However on every platform on the big old Internet, all I ever see are e/riels trying to tell Eluciens why their ship isn't canon which is just plainly an idiotic argument. You can't say two characters who are mates aren't canon. You can claim they might not be end game but this kind of goes to the whole critique that too many in this fandom have never been in fandom before and don't even understand the difference. The conflation of fanon being canon on that side of the ship war is also just blatant evidence of that fact. I think it's great so many people who have never shipped or been in fandom before are discovering it, but please educate yourselves a little bit on fandom culture and history.

Just the fact that they go into @acourtofthought ask box on a daily basis to "disprove" Elucien or try to convince Eluciens not to ship (which why do you care) really speaks to the entire weak foundation and insecurity that side of the aisle has in their ship. I promise, bbs, if you just embrace fanon and not actually cling to canon and endgame for your ship, you're going to be so much happier. Canon is not needed for every ship. When it's very clear and obvious that it should happen in canon then yeah. Which is the case for ships like Feysand, Nessian, and Elucien. It is everything. But this narrative is not in your favor and you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Which I think you know given the obsession with stalking Elucien blogs on the regular. Like I'm not gonna take E/riel moments in canon away from them and claim they don't exist because it doesn't affect my couple's end game. But I think given that Elucien's moments absolutely do affect E/riels end game in an obvious way is why this entire ship war dynamic exists in the first place.

Anyways, you always are fighting the good fight, @acourtofthought . That you even entertain these asks on the regular is mind blowing. Cause you absolutely don't have to.

Genuine question, but why do you want Elucien together if they aren’t in love? They aren’t currently attracted to each other right now. They can’t even be in the same room.

Is it just the potential? Or promise of the mating bond or something?

Because I shipped Elucien too when they were declared mates. But by ACOFAS, I didn’t understand why suddenly SJM decided to have them not even interact. If they ever have a conversation I might jump back over to elucien, but so far-there’s nothing between them.

And we know there can be mates that aren’t good romantic pairings. Like Rhys’s parents. All signs are currently pointing to the fact that Elucien is also one of the incompatible pairs.

Idk I just don’t understand why I should keep rooting for them if there hasn’t been any development on the page? Am I missing something??

Genuine question: Why would I want to read a love story that starts with the couple already being in love? Were Claire and Jamie from Outlander in love at the start or was she in love with and married to another man? Where she married Jamie and STILL wasn't in love with him? Were Daphne and Simon in love at the start of Bridgerton? Was he not FORCED to marry her even when he didn't want to ever marry or have children? Were Elizabeth and Darcy infatuated with one another at the start of their book? You have no canon evidence that Elain isn't attracted to Lucien. The only canon evidence we have of anything is that Elain didn't want a male or a mate. Just like Nesta didn't want a mate in her book. But guess what? Those things change. Those are just hurdles for a character to overcome. By the end of her book Nesta proudly called Cassian her mate but she got into a fight with him over it at first. Yes Elain "shrinks back" from Lucien but why are you defaulting to one possible answer "she's not attracted to him"? When you look at SJMs style of writing, isn't it more likely that Elain withdraws from Lucien because he sees her too clearly and that scares her? When Feyre tells us that Elain has even Az beat for secret keeping, isn't it possible that Lucien is the one person who can see through the secrets Elain hides and it's intimidating? Because he might see that she's not as fine and content as she'd have the others believe? Something she wants them to keep believing as she's possibly worried about disappointing them? (Rhys's words). You're right, there are couples who might not be right for one another, evidenced by the example you provided with Rhys's parents. Rhys's father was cold and vicious. Does that sound like Lucien? Rhys's father immediately stole Rhys's mother away the second the bond snapped and married her that night. Does that sound like what Lucien did with Elain? Rhys's mother pleaded with his father to ban wing clipping but he refused. Has Elain asked anything of Lucien that he was unwilling to give her? I like Elucien because neither has to be anyone different if they end up together. Elain doesn't have to struggle with cruelty bothering her as she would if she ended up with a torturer. She doesn't have to hide in the shadows as she would if she ended up with Az. She would get to enjoy balls and party and socializing in a way she wouldn't if her partner was Az who prefers his alone time. She'd get to share her love of nature with someone who the author also confirms is happiest in nature. I like the thought of Elucien because it's so clearly written on the wall that they are right for one another though it's normal that Elain isn't ready to face that yet as she's still processing trauma and figuring out who she is as a fae female. Or maybe she does realize it and it's what scares her, she already suffered rejection and a broken heart from Graysen, I don't imagine she's prepared to run into someone else's arms who has the power to hurt her. My guess is SJM hasn't had them interact because the second Elain and Lucien have a real conversation, it's over for both of them. Their hearts will be gone, flying into the palms of the other. It's more exciting to read about all that in their own POVs rather than someone else's. You don't have to root for anyone you don't like. Hell, Elucien could be endgame and you still don't need to root for them. But I grow a little tired of people acting clueless as to why Elucien's still love the idea of them together and why it's really not a problem that they aren't talking right now.