#i have like a singular mutual who does so

[diaiisms]

my revival back into dl is stupid selfshippery that i’m forcing all of you to look at <3

at the time of writing my birthday is in 44-ish minutes so i did this shitty whinter comic(?) thing bc yeah he is very dear to me <3

(doodling on phone is hard >:/) || also ignore my shitty handwriting.

[fans4wga]

26 July update from WGA's Chris Keyser

From the WGA: With SAG-AFTRA now on strike and new levels of solidarity across all Hollywood unions, we are witnessing the spectacular failure of the AMPTP’s negotiating strategy. In this video, WGA Negotiating Committee Co-Chair Chris Keyser lays out what this moment means and how we move forward. To learn more about the WGA strike, visit https://www.wgastrike.org.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Fellow members of the WGA East and West. It's been a while since our last video and quite a bit has happened in the meantime. So on behalf of the negotiating committee and leadership, I wanted to give you an update on where we are and what the near future at least is likely to bring.

We've been walking side by side on picket lines in New York and Los Angeles for a little over 12 weeks now. Only now we're joined by thousands upon thousands of members of SAG-AFTRA who, like us, have finally had enough.

This is the endpoint and the fruit of the AMPTP’s game plan. For 11 weeks, they negotiated with everyone but us. They claimed it was just practicality, that they could only do one thing at a time, which is not normally a point of pride. But events have made clear what we knew from the start: that not only was it a strategy, it was their only strategy. Negotiate a deal with a single guild and impose that deal on every other guild and union in Hollywood, whether it addresses the needs of those unions or not, all with the implicit threat: if you want more, strike for it.

Wow. It’s their 2007-8 playbook applied to 2023 as if nothing has changed, as if the accumulation of economic insults and injuries inflicted on us over the past decade would be borne in perpetual silence, as if the giant of labor had not awakened. But it has. And you only need to look as far as the front gates of every studio in LA and New York to see the evidence.

Two unions on strike willing to exercise their power, despite the pain, to ensure their members get the contract they deserve. For us, that means addressing the relentless mistreatment of screenwriters, which has only been exacerbated by the move to streaming; the continued denial of full MBA protection to comedy variety and other appendix A writers when they work in streaming; and the self-destructive unsustainable dismantling of the process by which episodic television is made and episodic television writers are paid.

It means addressing the existential threat of AI and the insufficiency of streaming residual formulas, including the need for transparency and a success-based component. All of these will need to be addressed for there to be a deal because in this strike it is our power and not their pattern that matters, not their strategy. Their strategy has failed them. Now they're in the midst of a streaming war with each other, an admittedly difficult transition. And as they face the future, their interests and business models could not be more different from Disney to Sony to Netflix to Amazon.

We root for their success, all of them. They root for each other's failure. We are the creative ammunition through which they will succeed. They are each other's apex predators. And yet, in a singular shared dedication to denying labor, they have shackled themselves together in what increasingly seems like a mutual suicide pact, as the 2023-24 broadcast season and the 2024-25 movie schedule and its streaming shows disappear, melt away week by week.

So what does this mean? What does it mean going forward? How do you play chess against an opponent who insists on screaming checkmate at every move regardless of how the board looks and the game is going?

You stay firm, you stay resolved, because our cause is no less existential than when we started and our leverage is increasing every day. Alone we withheld our labor with the support of our union siblings and the Teamsters and IATSE and the Crafts, we were able to delay the vast majority of production. Now with SAG-AFTRA on strike, those few studio projects that remained have also shut down. And it's not just the obvious delays. If this strike drags on, it's the actors with conflicting obligations and the directors and the double-booked studio facilities and release date chaos that the companies must now also contend with. Some of their most valuable product could well be delayed for years.

Add to that, no promotion of movies or television shows and famous faces on the picket lines and social media speaking directly to their customers. For the tech companies and the mega corporations, that should be their nightmare scenario: WGA and SAG-AFTRA side by side. Our bargaining agenda may not be identical, but our cause is the same. Our army of labor, defending labor has increased 17-fold in the past two weeks alone.

Even so, even with all this wind at our backs this negotiation won't happen overnight. It's not because the negotiations themselves are so complex. Once the companies fully engage, it could go very quickly, but because their strategy of many decades has just fallen apart and they didn't see it coming, and it's going to take them a minute to regroup, 'cause the companies have things to work out internally, and saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes. So either together or separately, as their divergent interests might suggest, they will come back to us, despite their understandable concern about how they've navigated this transition to streaming, which is on their heads and not ours; and their worries about costs and their worries about Wall Street; despite this being a season of doom and gloom, none of them are walking away from the riches of this business, and certainly not over the equitable minimum compensation to writers.

They didn't get the deal they wanted; that's fine, it happens all the time. They're not taking their ball and going home over it. And since we know they come from union families themselves, and since they've denied that “even-in-Hollywood-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me” ugliness of threatening to starve us out and leave us homeless (which we assume they understand also means making our children homeless,) they will come back to us. Although I will say they took a long time to deny that statement, longer than I would have had it been ascribed to me.

But what does it matter? You can starve a labor force slowly or quickly. The effect is the same. It's not like day rates for comedy variety writers and endless free drafts for screenwriters in exchange for a single paid one in four-week mini-rooms isn't cruelty. It's just cruelty written in contract language instead of a press quote.

So what can we expect from the companies as all of this plays itself out? They will try to convince Wall Street that taking a strike, prolonging it unnecessarily, losing their content stream in the process—that all of that is just smart business and no reason for investor concern. We will be talking to Wall Street too, and reminding them that for all these companies, all of 'em including Netflix, the bill, the price for making nothing, will eventually come due. And Wall Street is listening already. Here's Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush on Yahoo Finance the other day: “I think the studios are completely wrong on this one. Content is their lifeblood. They're feeling really foolish about this."

Wall Street isn't the only one listening. We've been talking to union pension funds too about the risks the companies are taking. We talked to CalPERS, the largest public pension plan in the country, talked about the loss of programming and the cost to the industry, and we heard strong support from its board for our struggle and the promise that the companies will be hearing from them, from CalPERS, and demanding answers on behalf of its 2 million members.

To us, of course, they will continue to plead temporary poverty, but we know the drill. These companies support billions into the streaming wars and taken short-term losses these past three years, because they know that to the winner will go the spoils. We're patient, will they share that with us when the time comes? What are the chances?

Since 2017, the last time the studios negotiated with us outside of COVID, the big six companies alone have made $150 billion in profits off our work, while they slashed our pay and degraded our working conditions. Maybe if they had shared a tiny piece of that then, made $1 billion or so less, this year wouldn't seem so costly. As it is, there is no iron law that these companies are entitled to record profits every year, and it isn't some great travesty if their shareholders or their CEOs get a slightly smaller slice of the massive profits we helped create if some balance is restored.

Look, no one denies that corporations exist to make a profit and no one wants our employers to be profitable more than we do, but the singular pursuit of corporate profits to the exclusion of their social and human cost is a real problem in this country—it’s a real problem. A corporation's bottom line is not the same as the world’s, and there is nothing in our studio's bottom lines today that accounts for the quality of our lives or for our dignity, for the comfort of our retirement or the security of our families. Their numbers have no conscience, but the people who report them as victories ought to.

In their refusal to recognize that, these companies have also extracted an awful price, which is laid at their feet and for which they are responsible. Losses to the economies of New York and Los Angeles and everywhere that film and television are made, terrible losses that mount every day, thousands of people out of work; not just us, all the crews, the crafts, the janitors, the drivers, the businesses that thrive when Hollywood thrives, the restaurants, the stores—for what? For nothing. So they could avoid coming to the table to negotiate the deal they will one day give us. Measured today that is the painfully mixed legacy of our employers, weighed against every beautiful piece of work we have made with them.

And if history is a guide, they have only temporary stewardship over a kind of national trust, which is Hollywood. Our story, our sometimes conscience, our public conversation, our diversion of the worst and best of times, our greatest export, the repository of our imagination. They have some obligation to more than just their shareholders to behave accordingly.

Unfortunately, it seems big tech, mega corporations, and some of the people who run them, as the saying goes know the price of everything and the value of nothing. So they have built a business model that no longer works for human beings who cannot be paid minimum for 10 to 20 weeks a year and make a career out of that, be paid for one draft of a screenplay that demands a year of labor, be paid a few episodic fees for a show about which to take years to decide be paid a daily rate.

And now we have a first glimpse of what they offered our actor colleagues. We are not 170,000 Willy Lomans to be used and then discarded. We know what the companies believe they have the power to do. We know what they think machines can do and do without any of us. Oh yeah, we've seen the writing on the wall and it's plagiarized.

The thing is this: the difference between what you CAN do and what you SHOULD do is the greatest single difference in the world. Knowing that is the only real protection we have against a dystopian future. And if the companies sometimes forget that, writers will do it for them.

I can't know exactly how long it will take this revolutionary moment, and you've heard again and again what is happening today has not happened in 63 years, but I know that's not always how it feels, revolutionary and defining, even though we celebrate that on picket lines together, which is the right thing to do. That's not always how it feels when you go home at night. I know how tough this is: to strike, to hold the line. I know it gets tougher every day even with SAG-AFTRA marching beside us, how hard it is to face the uncertainty of when it will end, when we'll get back to work, how we'll pay the bills. I know it's hardest for those who've just gotten started, for those for whom the world opens doors more reluctantly, battled their whole life just to get here; but hard too for those struggling to maintain their long careers, who find work tougher and tougher to come by, or those with families with children or parents to take care of.

These companies understand the cruelty of what they're doing. It's their plan to starve us just a little, to exact as much pain as they can so that we wish more for the pain to end than for the better life we dreamed up. That we're more afraid of the uncertainty of the present than the certain devastation of the future. It's societally acceptable economic torture inflicted by management on labor every day, then blamed on labor for daring to fight back, for refusing to be complicit in its own mistreatment.

Here's how I know that's not going to work. Not with us, not with the writers, because we haven't come all this way, fought to have these careers in the first place, all the adversity, and marched together for all these months, only to let it slip away on our watch—because there is no point in rushing back to jobs that may not be there in a year or two anyway. Because the business, as the companies have twisted it, is now untenable, unsurvivable for so many of us, because even success is not enough to keep going, because this guild is younger than it's ever been and more diverse. And this young diverse membership knows from hard personal experience the system is broken and that it will not be fixed unless they fix it. And those of us who came before them will not let them down, because we and the writer's guild are the beneficiaries of all those who came before us who gave up everything for us.

Like the writers of 1960, the year I was born, who struck for 22 weeks and who gave away all the TV residuals for all the movies they had ever written so that we could have a health insurance and pension plan and residuals from that date forward. $15 billion flowed to writers and their benefit plans because of that sacrifice. Because writers are brave, because now it's our turn.

So what's our job? Even as we welcome SAG-AFTRA to our side, we are still responsible for our own deal, and so we must remain focused and diligent. We must continue to march, picket signs in hand. But we should also remember this and with pride, that before there was SAG-AFTRA, before even the Teamsters and IATSE and the laborers and the electrical workers and the musicians and the plasterers came to our side, there was the writers. Alone then, we looked at the blank page and began to imagine the future. With no net but each other we typed the words, what if?

And then we took a step into the darkness and found that it was light. And then we were joined by the crews and the drivers and the actors. The actors got a bit more fanfare when they showed up, but that's okay, we wrote the script. The WGA, still small, not alone anymore after all these decades. Hollywood labor has finally linked arms and found its voice, and that voice says enough. There is no road to longterm prosperity that burns a path through your own workforce. We are not your enemies. We are not merely a cost to be borne. We are your partners and your greatest asset. And we are, as you acknowledge yourselves, irreplaceable, but by accident or design and it doesn't really matter anymore, the business you are running no longer works for those who work for you.

What is the point in continuing to deny that? Why deny it when everyone else in the business to a person tells you it's true? Do you think it's a coincidence that two unions are on strike against you for the first time since Eisenhower was president? You can't exactly accuse us of being quick on the trigger. The effect has a cause, it has a cause. And there is no profit in insisting on the answers to the past for the questions of the future.

But if you want instead to invest in something that will reap you fortunes, I have a tip. And if you are visionaries, envision a solution, not a stalemate. Because this isn't a war we're in, it's a negotiation, it's just a negotiation. There is no face-saving here for either side, because there is no winner or loser. It's just a deal. And when you come to remember that again we will be here as we have been here all along.

And at this point with 170,000 writers and actors aligned against your intransigence, that is as generous as I can be, as close to an olive branch as I can offer. But if you insist instead on the same threatening rhetoric, on saying you would rather starve us than pay us, I would remind you of this: You are fighting for a dollar, we are fighting for survival. We are fighting for our home: writing is where we live, and we will defend that home with a bravery and stamina and ferocity that you will come to understand someday, which is why you cannot break us. You cannot outlast us, you cannot.

And not just because we have the will, because we have power. Nothing in this business happens until we start to write. And we will not start to write until we are paid.

Union now. Union forever.

[preciouslandmermaid]

💐💐💐

imagine being a kindergarten teacher who meets reid

maybe its thru JJ, maybe you've got Henry in your class, and she kindly, warmly strikes a friendship with you after Henry moves into 1st grade. and its a little unorthodox but jj and her husband are always willing to help out (when their schedules can allow) with school events and so yeah, you become friends.

and when jj introduces you to her friends/colleagues - there is of course a little bit of an intimidation factor (because hello...they are fbi) but penelope makes you feel so welcome (because of course she does. and you tell her your students would love her. and she offers to teach a tech class and youre like ok they're five but yes let's do it) and morgan shamelessly flirting, and emily being hot and intimidating and then there's reid, quiet, awkward, wont-shake-your-hand reid.

but there's something to it - a mutual nerdiness, perhaps, or how reid doesn't make you feel "stupid" just because you're an elementary school teacher and not a professor at a college (despite the fact that in many places you need a least a master's to teach).

imagine weeks later when you run into reid at the coffee shop. completely random. the sky is gray, uninteresting, and promising rain. he surprises you by remembering your name before there's a shy yet earnest quip when he says he's got an "eidetic memory." and you laugh warmly and spencer thinks its one of the best sounds he's heard all morning.

and it goes slowly from there, but it moves naturally, like a caterpillar forming its chrysalis

(when you tell reid this, somewhere after the 4 month mark since you've long stopped counting individual dates, he says; "did you know the word comes from the greek word 'khrusos' - which means gold - because of the gold color or metallic sheen of some pupae".

and in that moment, that singular moment, you admire the honey-gold tint of his eyes in the late afternoon sun spilling luminescence across the sidewalks and across shiny car windshields and think that you could already see the shape and color of whatever butterfly that was going to burst from its cocoon).

one time you refused to come over his apartment because "the kids used glitter today" and you didn't want to get it all over his place. so he came over instead, and you watched the iridescent sparkles swirl down the bathtub drain together.

imagine spencer reid laying his head in your lap, something heavy and unspoken between you, shaped in the spread of his fingers across your hips, in the erratic pulse of his heart pressing into your shins

the school doesn't celebrate Halloween, but they have an annual "trunk or treat" where people CAN dress up and trick-or-treat out of the trunks of their cars and spencer starts helping you, decorating the trunk with fake cobwebs, and skulls, and eventually diving into convoluted themes that you're not convinced kids aged 5-10 are totally going to get.

"it's jaws." he says, holding a shark head made of paper mache, "you know, the 1975 film? you said we couldn't do slasher horror movies because they're too gory for the kids but i'd argue that this movie stands alone as a great horror film with how Spielberg creates consistent tension throughout the whole film considering we don't see the shark until an hour and twenty-one minutes into the run time."

(the kids don't really get it, it's true. "sharks aren't monsters." they would say, or "sharks aren't scary." or "is this from Baby Shark?" but you and spencer have fun, passing out candy, sharing small looks to each other--so that makes it all worth it).

imagine something soft, sweet, something quiet shared over coffee with spencer. something gentle amidst all the chaos, the heartache, and stress of his day-to-day job.

"I don't know how you do it," you tell him, "seeing the worst of what the world has to offer day in and day out."

his long fingers stroke the underside of your jaw, "i don't know how you manage a room full of fifteen 5 and 6-year-olds." he pulls a face. "especially with the germs."

imagine bringing spencer lunch at the office - earning the knowing, sly looks from his friends and team, knowing you can't hide against a room full of profilers and knowing it doesn't really matter anyways.

:) ok that's all i got. <3

[simpjaes]

hear me out.. experienced boyfie! hyung line w an inexperienced virgin!reader 🫠🫠 (you have no idea how long it took me to spell inexperienced..)

hyung line + experienced boyfriend to inexperienced/virgin reader.

warnings: virginity loss, lil bit of pain

jake:

boyfriend of exactly two weeks. he loves fast and hard, so upon realizing that his very own sweet girlfriend from college is avoiding his sexual advances because she's a virgin, he loved you even more. like marriage worthy, man wants to make you his wife.

he's the type to be obsessed with being the first and, hopefully, only man to get his dick in you. of course, he wouldn't push but he would make sure you're aware of how badly he wants to make you feel good, and how good it would feel for him in turn. saying things like "love, it's no rush but i can just imagine how tight you are-" and "i bet you get so wet." and "what if I just eat you out? maybe that would help?"

imagine you finally letting him at least engage in foreplay? maaaaaan, he would go insane. thigh fucking, dry humping, mutual masturbation, giving head, begging you to go down on him too.

by the time you'd finally let him hit, it would be because you're entirely in love with him too, and you swear you see little hearts in his eyes when he slides in for the first time. doesn't matter how experienced he is either, bro gets off like three pumps in because you really are so tight, and so wet.

jay:

"please baby? i'll go slow."

jay did not, in fact, go slow. In his defense, he did start off slow but the second he bottomed out it's like his body moved on its own and his brain went numb. Given, after a little while he'd come back to himself and apologize over and over again in your ear, through moans and little sighs. apologizing but like, also not stopping for a second.

"feels good, baby? yeah?" and he'd just answer for you like "yeah, look at you, totally gone for me."

i don't think Jay would be able to contain his horny level once he's in you, and his apologies are genuine. you'd probably whine a little bit until, well, it does feel good and you suddenly realize why people like fucking so much.

cue you wanting to get railed by Jay constantly, and who is he to say no? His libido is just as high.

free use boyfriend AND girlfriend.

sunghoon:

a perfect boyfriend, doesn't attempt to make you nervous. Because if he did, you might back out.

100% jerks off to you every. single. night. especially when you let slip that you want to lose your virginity to him on your anniversary.

he's seeing stars at the exact same moment you're seeing them, solely because the idea that you're giving yourself to him makes him feel soft and mushy. plus, like, feeling a virgin pussy squeeze and quake around his cock :( seeing your little winces? he's immediately kissing away the singular tear drop that falls and praising you for taking all of him.

he'd give you sweet lil whispers of "tell me what feels best for you, babe." and a lot of "i love yous" and "i've got yous"

by the time sex is fairly regular though? He gets a bit more rough with it, and you're definitely in love with the way he can switch from being a big soft boyfie to being an absolute mad man in bed.

Heeseung:

plays off the innocence HARDCORE.

no joke, he says shit like "So innocent, pretty girl is gonna let me fill her up?" and "you can hold on to me, i'll make you feel so good." minutes before he dives in.

and man, he would live up to all of that when it actually happens. You do, indeed, need to hold onto him with how deep he plunges himself into you. he doesn't let you adjust, praises himself and you, and is instantly throwing you into orgasms you didn't even know you could have.

it's very messy and probably not ideal for someone's first time but it sure as fuck locks you in. you've never seen heeseung act so fucking hot or so fucking into you like he is when he's rubbing your clit and bumping your cervix with the head of his cock.

maaaaaaybe sort of gives you the idea that sex is supposed to hurt before it feels good, and when he realizes that he feels guilty, apologizes, and eats you out or something. then when you tell him you kinda like the pain he's like "that's my girl"

[narutouzumakiarchive]

what are your thoughts on the “kishi based off naruto and sasuke off him and his brother so it’s weird and morally wrong to ship sasunaru.” IMO I’m like…you know what else is weird? kishi making the two characters that are supposedly based of him and his brother kiss accidentally and not only did they accidentally kiss but that scene is replayed multiple times in the manga and anime. So yeah…

Well I many thoughts.

For starters, the interview in question (and I'm still not sure of the source) states that the bond between Kishimoto and Seishi, his brother, was based on the aspect of feeling mutual pain.

Now let's look at another interview, from Kishimoto the lying liar. In it he states that his wife might secretly realize that Hinata isn't the real model for his wife because his wife is quite strong, which the interviewer noted was kind of like Sakura. Isn't that interesting.

In this interview he also implicitly acknowledges the implicit similarity between Sakura and his wife based on the particular aspect of strength. And yet, sasusaku's wouldn't use this interview as an indication that Sakura was in a romantic relationship with Naruto. Nor would they claim that Kishimoto (who frequently acknowledged that Naruto was a reflection of him) was writing a manga in which his wife (Sakura) was romantically in love with the analogue of his brother (Sasuke) Why?

Because while fiction is a reflection of life, it is in no way an exact representation of life. People in real life are complex multi dimensional beings and have complex and multi dimensional relationships; in other words, people and relationships have dimensions and depth that extend beyond one singular aspect, especially characteristics that are as common and generic as strength, and shared feelings of pain. Thus, Naruto and Sasuke, who also have additional depth in their bond beyond feelings of shared pain (let me know when brothers have feelings of uncertainty regarding the nature of their relationship btw) aren't a perfect analogue of Seishi and Kishimoto.

But I also want to note that they never extend this logic to the reverse. For example, Naruto and Sasuke are explicitly likened to Izanagi and Izanami, who in the Japanese mythos Kishimoto drew inspiration from, on the basis of perfect complementarity, were married. Surely, according to their logic, since basing the fictional dynamic between Naruto and Sasuke of of one aspect of the dynamic between two Gods who were married means that Naruto and Sasuke had romantic feelings for eachother, right? And yet something tells me those hypocrites who are triggered by Naruto and Sasuke would disagree. Because even they can intuit that fictional depictions don't necessarily have a perfect 1 to 1 relationship with the things they derive inspiration from.

But, additionally I need to add that Kishimoto could say that Naruto and Sasuke are the most brotherly of brothers and that it would be a crime to ship them — he could even have them end the series affirming they were like brothers — and it still wouldn't matter for two reasons.

One, intent does not equal impact. It would not matter if Kishimoto intended for Naruto and Sasuke to have a brotherly dynamic if what we were shown in the text is NOT a brotherly dynamic. People put a lot of stock in information from interviews, but while that paratext can help enhance our understanding of the text, ultimately, it is seperate from the text and the text is king — in other words, the purpose of a system (in this case, the Naruto text) is what it does.

But let me talk about a funny example first before I discuss Naruto and Sasuke. In 2009, Folgers Coffee released an infamous commercial that made the relationship between a brother and sister take center stage.

Now I suggest you watch the video for yourself, but for people who want the TLDR: It received a ton attention and backlash as a result of the very obvious incestuous undertones.

Now the video was obviously meant to depict the dynamic between a normal brother and sister. I mean, taboo themes in a commercial for a brand that has consistently utilized rhetorical appeals to wholesome conservative family values makes for bad business. And yet, despite the commercial making it obvious that the main characters in the ad were brother and sister by having them explicitly indicate as much, that line didn't do much the quell the underlying tension that viewers picked up on when watching the coy flirtation and intense gazes.

Which brings me back to Naruto and Sasuke. Most people that interact with media do so casually. Many are looking for simple minded entertainment. They aren't going to comb through the internet to look for cherry picked interviews to discern the nature of Naruto and Sasuke's relationship. They'll simply look at what's presented in the narrative to do so, and what the narrative presents is that of an overwhelmingly romantic dynamic between Naruto and Sasuke.

Romance is a "social structure that's biologically potentiated." This will receive more elaboration in another post, but at its core much of what we consider to be romantic has been shaped by shared socioculturally produced conventions (that can be specific to particular cultures/societies or more globalized). And when it comes to determining what is romantic in a narrative, the shared conventions and expectations are further mediated by the values that the text promotes.

People who interact casually with Naruto won't see Kishimoto's interviews, but they will see things like...

The classic romantic kiss/almost kiss intimate moment in the rain

Sakura stating that all she wants from Sasuke is acknowledgement in an explicitly romantic context (which is an example of a convention/ideal being promoted in the text as romantic), Naruto internally identifying with Sakura in this regard, and Sasuke giving Naruto the acknowledgement that he wants but not Sakura

Naruto getting tingles in his lower parts when thinking of said acknowledgement from Sasuke

Sasuke thinking about his kiss with Naruto and Naruto's dream during what he believed to be his final moments, and indicating it was one of the many reasons why his body decided to move on its own to save Naruto, a moment that was explicitly paralleled with Haku's sacrifice for Zabuza's dream a mere few chapters later, the same Haku that was implied to have subtextually romantic feelings for Zabuza [and a quick interjection, acknowledgement of what is presented in the text does not equal promotion. Moral critiques are important and just as valid as more stylistic analyses BUT they are distinct things. "Haku was never implied to have feelings for Zabuza because that's gross" is not a meaningful analysis]

Naruto making a proposal that significantly resembles the structure of shinju (double suicide), (a concept that has great significance in Japanese and Western popular culture, hello shared cultural conventions, hello Chikamatsu Monzaemon, hello Romeo and Juliet) a concept that was invoked by Omoi at the beginning of the volume that Naruto's proposal was in. This concept is promoted as a romantic value in the text via Omoi, and of course, is accords with popular sociocultural understandings of what we know to be Romantic.

And make no mistake, Kishimoto was intimately aware of the history of the romantic convention he drew from.

Naruto being Sasuke's tether to humanity in the same way that Rin was Obito's tether to humanity as well as Naruto being visually framed in Sasuke's memory in the exact same way that Rin was framed in Obito's memories in back-to-back chapters.

And there's more, but there's no need to continue because even just these moments highlight how far beyond the het dynamics Naruto and Sasuke are in terms of mutual, romantic implications. Naruto and Sasuke's dynamic is shown as romantic which it why it wouldn't even matter if Naruto and Sasuke weren't intended to be romantic.

Now, the second reason why it wouldn't matter if Naruto and Sasuke were intended to be non romantic brothers is that.... they aren't brothers. Like the most surefire way to make a bond be brotherly is to make the characters related. [And not have their first pivotal interaction be a classic "accidental kiss" ship bait moment that was iconic enough to be recycled by their kids who are now love interests.] And further, the trope of two people (gay people in particular) who aren't siblings but have a unique, powerful and intimate bond that's metaphorized and/or euphemized as sibling-like doesn't inherently negate romance.

But let me provide an example. There's a show called Breaking Bad, centered on a man who ostensibly turns to a life of crime in order to protect his family, but he's not important here. In the show, we're provided with the backstory of the primary antagonist in Season 4, Gus Fring. And the viewer gets to see that the reason Gus decided to devote his life to getting revenge on the cartel was because the loss of someone that was particularly close and precious to him, a man named Hector.

Within Gus' backstory, there's really only one scene of note that implies the two are gay. When a previous antagonist named Hector crudely pees into the pool, in the presence of Gus and Max, and is chastised by a fellow associate, Hector remarks that the two men won't say anything because they like what they see and makes suggestive kissing noises at them.

But there's something interesting about the way Max describes the relationship between himself and Gus. He explicitly states that he knows Gustavo like a brother. Hell, the name of the business that he planned to start alongside Gus was called Los Pollos Hermanos (translated in the show as The Chicken Brother's) and even the episode in which their story is expounded upon is named "Hermanos." And yet, many viewers picked up on the romantic subtext between Max and Gus, subtext that the showrunner confirmed was intentional. In the viewers minds, the subtext wasn't wholly negated because they knew eachother like brothers.

And that's because, the metaphor of the sibling, is often merely utilized to invoke desirable traits of idealized siblinghood (like friendship and trust) while setting aside the biological limitations of actual sibling bonds. Hence, in Japanese and Western media, this invocation of the sibling-like bond often occurred (and still does) in tandem with romantic subtext, and this is especially common in gay narratives when characters are trying to understand the nature of their feelings.

But this is a nuance that is lost by people that only chronically consume battle shonen. If you showed them the scene of Max talking about his dynamic with Gus they'd decry the people who dared to call it gay and make some fake deep statement about how people want to undermine pure brotherly bonds by making everything romantic. Because only in the Naruto fandom will people complain about you bringing up the fact that maybe it's gay to think about a kiss when you're about to die or to feel special butterflies when you're acknowledged by your rival. They'd combust if you tried to explain that idealized characteristics present in particular relational categories (like friendship and brotherhood) can overlap.

And if you go back to the interview, in which feelings of intensely shared pain are regarded as brotherly, you'll see that Kishimoto notes just that. He states that feelings of brotherly love and friendship are the same exact thing. Which means that in the period when Sasuke considered Sakura a nakama, something that obviously ended after he left the village, according to the very same interview that narusasu antis foolishly claim debunks our ship, it would mean that Sasuke also had fraternal feelings for Sakura as he did for the rest of Team 7 and thus was morally wrong. But you can't expect logic from het shippers.

Which brings me to my final set of points. I've already reached the 30 image limit so I can't post more images on this post (and will probably save it for another ask) but my post this far has only adressed the demographic that genuinely believes in the narusasu are like brothers argument. But, you need to understand that a significant portion of the people that push that argument don't even believe in it themselves, and I'm not joking. Search any narusakusasu account or popular "poly Team 7" art post and I can guarantee that at least 7 out 10 times, if you click on the profile of a someone with a cherry blossom and tomato emoji pair and search "incest" or "brother" on their account, you'll find a post of them speaking negatively about narusasu. It's almost funny how consistently it turns out to be true, but again, I'll address that in another post (along with the behavior of naruhina's because they tend to use different argument against sns). The point is that their issue with narusasu has never been about "moral wrongness" but about the fact that Sakura (and Hinata in the case of SasuHinaNaru's) isn't involved in their dynamic.

In fact, many Sakura stans are multiSaku's that have no problem shipping her with every man that ever breathed in her vicinity (Madara, Sasori, Itachi, Kakashi, etc.) and even the ones that didn't (Shisui).. I mean they're even publishing reworked fanfiction, [see this ItaSaku novel]. And yet they only bat an eye at Naruto and Sasuke. That's why ultimately, you shouldn't take them seriously, because they aren't looking to engage with you in good faith. They just want to undermine narusasu while stealing our tropes for their ship.

But since the word of Kishimoto is law to them, just bring up any one of the interviews in which Kishimoto's mocked Hinata, Sakura NH and SS, like him calling Sakura detestable, or his reaction to someone liking Hinata being "so you like girls with big boobs," or him initially agreeing that SS and NH were unrequited, or him stating he didn't know if Sasuke and Sakura would last, or him stating that Hinata isn't a regular heroine that stands at the main character's side but the type that watches him from the shadows (when her entire goal during the manga was to stand by Naruto's side), him laughing at an interviewer that stated Sasuke dealt with Sakura by leaving, or Kishimoto stating that he didnt have any devotion to the love story between Naruto and Hinata and he didnt plan to write it until Studio Pierrot suggested it, or Kishimoto stating that he avoided writing the reason for Sakura's love because it would sound too contrived, or — well, you get the point.

[loviingpedri]

you got a fetish for my love. - pedri

prompt: obsessed pedri is everything.

fwb; not an established relationship



warnings: grammar issues, kinda toxic tbh, explicit/suggestive content (no in-depth details, minors dni), cursing, not proofread,

credits to owners for all images

and there he was, at your door again.

you honestly felt bad for the man.

one call. that was the only thing he needed. he would be at your house within minutes just by a singular phone call.

and you knew he would always answer. because his fear would be that if you would leave him.

standing in your mirror as pedri hugged you from behind. he was admiring every detail of you.

your hair, eyes, eyelashes, lips, teeth, jewelry. he loved every part of it.

and you would imagine you were returning the favor for him.

he wishes.

you reapplied your lipstick. his favorite shade.

thinking to yourself, “what makes pedri so obsessed with me?” staring at yourself more, you knew why he wanted to be nearer. brushing out your hair with your fingers, pedri gently touched the strands.

you knew what he wanted. you wanted it as much as he did. can’t deny his appetite.

every time he visited, the guilt consumed you. both of you couldn’t get enough of each other. you took a deep breath and sighed as he was kissing your jawline, moving his lips down to your neck. he deserved better. someone who could love him. someone who had all the time in the world for him. someone who wasn’t just a fuck buddy. you tried to tell him, but one thing that goes into one ear, goes out the other.

every time you try to push him out, he comes right back. there wasn’t any point of blaming him. it was a situation that neither of you could escape. he’s got a fetish for your love.

as he pulled down the spaghetti strap of your shirt, his voice sent shivers down your back. “if i were you, i’d do me too.” his whispers made your ears ring. it wasn’t a good idea to continue this situationship. you felt like you reached your limit to this. you craved for something more. for real love.

you couldn’t blame him for this. it was a mutual decision made. to you, it was like an automatic vow that you couldn’t catch feelings. it was embarrassing to admit that you failed. you were hooked to his body, like he was hooked to yours.

taking you over and under and twisted up like origami.

“i’m so obsessed with you. the way you walk, the way you talk.” knowing he was smiling while casually doing what he does best, you didn’t wanna push him out anymore.

pedri figured out he was getting under your skin. you usually played hard to get, but something changed in the air.

the rumors among your friends that you were doing each other was already insane. you didn’t want it to be public, but your mind was changing as pedri’s hand was on your shoulder.

you weren’t expecting to catch feelings for him. or were you just trying to sympathize?

feeding pedri’s fetish was done. but what if it was the opposite. all along, you thought it was him who was addicted. what if you had a fetish for his love? it was a valid explanation to why you couldn’t stop calling him. it also explained why you felt lonely when he wasn’t with you. the tables have turned. you couldn’t take it anymore. you were hurt by the thought of him leaving now. the pressure was growing, a need to open your mouth and talk about it.

“pedri,” you spoke low as he was gently rubbing your arm, trying to get comfortable cuddling. “can we talk about something?”

“of course, what’s on your mind?” he kissed the top of your head.

“what if we took things seriously? no more playing around? we can’t keep doing this forever.” the silence was killing you. you were feeling anxious for his response. what if you were just imagining things? what if you only thought he was hurting, but it was only your imagination. what if this was his plan all along?

“maybe.”

[neo-percs]

PASS IT:: (mark Lee)

WARNING:: smut, riding, smoking (weed), oral (m!receiving), overstimulated, hair pulling, high sex, mutual pining, unprotected sex, creampie.

SUMMARY:: agreeing to teach your friend how to smoke weed was one thing, blowing smoke into his mouth to soften the blow was a whole different thing.

WORDCOUNT:: 4.5k of pure smut with no plot.

A/N:: the grammar in this is atrocious and I’m not reading anything over for spelling mistakes or anything like that so my bad yall😭🤞🏽

The warm lights that engulfed your bedroom lit by one singular small lamp on your desk had set a peaceful mood for the night as your rolling tray and wraps sat on your bed and the feint music playing leaves you utterly relaxed as you are; sitting next to Mark who's been watching you try and roll your blunt. Your lips twitch as you hold a laugh as you feel his eyes burn into the side of your face. "Is there something you need?" You ask as you pick up your lighter letting the flame engulf the sealed blunt.

"How do you smoke without hurting your lungs?" He asks, pointing down at your hands. You laugh at his curiosity "over time really I just got used to it, but there are ways to have smoke hit your throat softly" you say nonchalantly as you finally light the blunt letting smoke emit from the head your lips attach to the opposite end. "How? I've seen people just smoke weed to the face" he asks with a slight curve in his eyebrow.

Letting the smoke fall past your lips you look over at him who looks absolutely immersed in the topic of conversation. "Shotgunning, you blow smoke into someone else's mouth and they inhale" you say absentmindedly as you continue to smoke. "You wanna try it? You can say no, weed isn't for everyone" you shrug. Mark took it as a challenge, he's never been one to smoke weed but he wasn't exempt from the idea, he's been to many house parties and seen his friends get high off their asses but he was more likely to get drunk than high.

"Yeah" he nods moving closer to your side of the bed, his back presses against the headboard. He looked almost eager to do it. "Don't hold it in for too long or you might actually end up burning your throat" you say before taking a long drag inhaling your hand reaches to his jaw almost startling him as he meets your eyes, leaning in until your noses graze each other's Mark's lips part as his eyes flicker from your eyes to your lips.

Blowing the smoke past your lips he can feel the warm smoke hit his lips as he follows your instructions inhaling the smoke. Pulling away slightly you can feel your eyes becoming heavy with a sense of calmness rushing over your body. Letting out a soft high Mark watches the thin cloud of smoke disappear into the air.

"Can we do that again?" He asks as he feels the tension grow thick inside the room between the both of you. "Mhm" you only nod taking a bigger hit from the blunt than last time the slight burn in your throat was nothing to you as you pull closer to Mark not realizing how your lips were grazing his as you purse your lips against his already parted one's blowing in the smoke.

As your eyes meet you can see how his pupils expand in size as he holds his breath. Pulling away resting your hand in your lap lazily as you feel your body buzz and you could feel your body becoming heavier and your breathing becoming more heavier. "Is my body supposed to feel like this?" Mark slightly slurs, making you grin at the slight drop in his voice.

"How does it feel?" You ask as you look over at him who looked absolutely high, low eyes that looked red, his hair becoming more frizzy than before due to his head being pushed against the headboard. "Heavy" he says, making you laugh and nod, earning a small laugh out of him as well. "Do you wanna keep going or are you done?" You ask not wanting to push him too far beyond his limit.

"Keep going" he says breathily, the words making your stomach churn with an unknown feeling coming over you. "Okay" you say, feeling your cheeks flush with heat. Continuing with your previous advances a few more times and each time becoming more touchy than the last as you both never rip your eyes away from each other.

Mark hadn't realized how pretty you were until you got so close and it made him feel things that were like an unknown territory for him. "Can I...try it on you?" He asks as he hears how hoarse his voice has become and almost loses faith in it. Your eyes flicker back and forth between his brown ones that looked heavy and red, nodding slowly.

The blunt now in his grasp and between his lips he takes a drag out of it, moving closer until you feel his thigh press against yours. Mark meets your gaze as his hand reaches out to cup your cheek almost as if he was going to kiss you and he makes your heart beat soar.

Your noses press against each other as you part your lips Mark moves closer to the point your lips are grazing. Blowing the warm smoke against your mouth you inhale deeply as your eyes never leave his. Exhaling you don't move an inch as you can see Mark's pupils are blown out and dark.

He was too enamored with how good you looked close up to even realize what's going on around him. "This was a bad idea wasn't it?" You whisper against his lips he can feel your breath against his skin giving him goosebumps. "Really fucking bad" he agrees huskily. "We shouldn't be this close...right?" He asks this time, making the corner of your lips twitch to fight a smile. "We shouldn't but I don't think either of us want to move '' you shake your head.

"What are we supposed to do?" He whispers feeling tense as his breathing becomes heavier. You don't answer. You just move closer, your legs slowly hook over his thighs until you're perched in his lap. Your bottom lip gets caught between your teeth as his hand move to your waist. Finally gathering the words in your mind "I don't know what we're doing, but I don't want to stop" you finally answered.

Mark raises his hand to cup your jaw as his thumb glides against your cheek. You shutter at the feeling of his warm hand on your cold skin. Shuffling until his back is pressed firmly against the headboard Mark debates if he really wants to go through with this.

But the look on your face, eyes low and red, glossed over, your hair sticking up and against the sides of your face. And your lips, they looked so soft and sweet. Mark then fully decided he wanted to close the gap between you and he had no room for hesitation. His nose brushes against your as his breath is labored over your skin sending goosebumps.

With his lips sealed over your Mark reached over to the small lid of a candle and presses the burning tip into the glass letting the smoke disperse again into the hair joining the never ending cloud that seemed to have grow within the walls of your bedroom.

"I think I know why Johnny told me to never let you smoke" you say just above a whisper and it has marked eyebrows peeking up at the piece of information. "Why's that?" He asks truly wanting to know what you meant although he could care less about what Johnny said in the moment he was hooked on your every word.

"Because you look so fucking good like this" your lips brush against his making Mark twitch within the confinements of his pants. Closing the gap Mark steals the breath from your lungs kissing off the taste of your chapstick that had been left on your lips and the taste of weed. The kiss was slow and experimental, slowly turning more confident his hands travel to grip your thighs to ground himself.

Without realizing your hands grip his hair as you let out small moans against his lips not parting away from each other too much, Mark was starting to think he was addicted to the small sounds you make. His hands guide your hips to grind against him. "Fuck" he groans against your mouth gripping your shirt tight pulling away his eyes latch on to the sight of you dragging your warmth against his covered cock making him catch his bottom lip between his teeth.

"Feels so good" you whine as your hips press down harder hoping to get all the friction you can. Mark presses his forehead against yours, gasping heavily at the pleasure that overcomes him in waves. "Wait- I don't wanna cum like this" he huffs you pull away feeling slightly edged as the feeling of built up pleasure begins to fade and you almost whine at the loss.

Moving out of Mark's lap you could see how painfully hard he looked. The look on his face showed he was so wrapped up in his own pleasure and it made your mouth water. "Can I suck you off?" You mumble, Mark can only nod dumbly at you as he anticipates the warmth of your mouth wrapped around his cock and it turns him on beyond belief.

Your hand slides against his Jean clad thighs, Mark can’t help the twitching of his legs from the feather light touches on his skin poking out from the rips in his pants. You smirk as your fingers undo the button and zipper. His boxers peeking out the gap of his opened pants, pushing his shirt to bunch at his chest Mark holds it there showing off his feint abs and a small happy trail that disappears within his pants.

“Fuck you’re so hot” you say under your breath earning a small laugh from him. His eyes look almost irritated yet he seemed almost too joyed with his current situation to care. Your fingers dig under the elastic waistband tugging it down his hips awkwardly before he lifts them as an aid to get them off faster. Kicking them off his ankle they fall onto the wooden floor with a small shuffling sound.

Your eyes drag over him, his hair a mess with puffy lips and red eyes, his shirt bunched up in his grasp tightly, his cock resting against lower stomach, almost begging for attention. You don’t miss the way his breathing slows down and is more audible and shaky. Moving lay on your stomach Mark almost shys away at your deep stare but he resorts to confidently pulling your hair into a makeshift ponytail.

You smile at him before pressing a harsh kiss to his tip, reacting almost instantly with a hiss at the sudden feeling. His tip was blushed and sticky with precum, you could feel yourself salivating at the thought of taking him down your throat. you wet the palm of your hands with your tongue before taking his dick into your fist, slowly jerking and teasing the tip with your thumb. Your other hand resting on his thigh you feel him twitch the squelching sound of your spit and precum rubbing against his dick makes your thighs clench.

The feeling of you rubbing his tip against your tongue having sent a shiver up his thighs you had a pretty firm grip on. His fingers pull at your hair a little tighter leaving a small sting that excites you. Mark likes this view of you hovering over his lower half, he could only imagine how good a view it would be with his cock stuffed down your throat.

Puckering your lips you press small kisses and his base and up his shaft until you reach his blushed tip, licking a stripe of saliva against his slit had his thighs quiver "fuck" he groaned feeling your lips envelope his tip slowly taking him in your warm mouth,your hand still at his base jerking him off Mark closes his eyes as his hand pushes your head down furthe.

He's big. thick. and the stretch that comes along with taking him in your mouth is a plaguing reminder. but you don't mind it too much, you like the thought of him when he's all deep in your throat, and you can feel the tip of him hot and heavy in the back of your throat. it makes you gag, and choke, and your eyes get cloudy with tears to the point they spill over, but it's worth it. It's worth it without fail.

you keep your nose pressed into the skin of his pelvis until you physically can't, pulling off of him with a loud pop. your cheek is wet with tears, and your chin is slick with spit, the two coalescing at the tip into a sticky mess.

the sight makes him twitch in your hand, because this is what he's been thinking about all day. this was his selfish wish, to see you below him with this expression. eyes all doe-eyed and desperate.

he can't help but to reach out and rub the callused pad of his thumb over your parting lips, pressing the salty digit flat against your tongue, and retreating it in the same breath to hook it around your cheek.

Flattening your tongue against the underside of his dick you dragged up against the vein running up to the tip, he let out a rich moan that ended with a groan "shit". His head was thrown back and his breathing was labored.

you rubbed your thighs together as warmth between your legs became stronger and stronger. You could, feeling the tip nudge the back of your throat while your nose was nestled tightly against his pubic bone. While your eyes were closed tight to focus on relaxing your gag reflex to not ruin the tight feeling for him. Mark let his hand guide your head to bob while you hollow your cheeks, Mark was losing his mind at the feeling.

Breathing through your nose you could barely breath as Mark bucked his hips into your mouth, losing himself in the feeling of your warm mouth. Spitting on his tip you use your tongue to spread it, earning a moan as his pats become tugs when your lips wrap around his and you push your head down relaxing your throat you feel tears well up in the corner of your eyes.

Pushing your head down further you relax your throat taking him deeper until your nose hits his pelvis. Tears cloud your eyes as you almost gag, pulling your head back just a bit you take a deep breath through your nose and begin to bob your head.

You moan as you feel him buck his hips into your throat. "Feels good," he said as you continued to take him in your mouth slurping and bobbing your head, all without hands you were heaven-sent. The feeling bubbling at the pit of his stomach doubles every time “don’t stop” he groans, making you speed up your pace as his balls are greeted with a squeeze from your hand. He was approaching his orgasm as his hips buck into your throat relentlessly you gag with each thrust. Tears spilled past your lashes and down your saliva-covered cheeks.

The groans made your pussy ache so you clenched your thighs closed. Sounds of groans buzzing in his chest you couldn't help but let out gags and moans at the fucked man below you tears pricked your eyes again but you blink them away and continue taking him. He felt so good your warm and wet mouth was doing it but when you hollow your cheeks. Your hand that was at his base continued to move leaving him to buck his hips into your warm and wet cavern.

You gag as he repeatedly lets his tip meet the back of your throat yet you never pull away. "You take it so fucking- good" he slurs feeling himself twitch, your moans muffled sending vibrations to his dick making him shutter. a string of profanities leave his lips. he's close, and you can tell by the way he begins to fuck into your face with a level roughness. to guide him there, you begin to hollow your cheeks and narrow your throat, using a single hand to massage his balls.

he can feel you start to get antsy, and when you start to scratch and claw at his thighs for air, that does it for him. with a final, lazy thrust, he releases the entirety of his load down your throat, keeping you pressed down on him until he's sure every last drop has been emptied into your mouth.

Pulling your head away Mark looked down at you seeing your spit mixed with his cum on your cheeks, chin and lips, your breathing was in shambles as you cleared your throat letting your hand touch your jaw that had been aching. Mark's eyes darken looking at you and wiped away all the fluids on your face.

“Fuck” he breathes heavily making you smile as you pull away from his lap, your hand presses against the mattress holding your weight as you lean to press a chaste kiss to his lips. Slowly pulling away Mark chases your lips. Smirking once more as he pulls you by the back of his neck to meet him to close the gap.

lips smacking against Marks, his lips tracing your, you feel his tongue lick a stripe against your bottom lip begging for entry and granting him that your tongues brush against each other tangling together you moan against his lips completely intoxicated on the feeling.

Without breaking the kiss Mark pushes you on your back gently as his hands travel down past your navel to the hand of your shorts his fingers mimic yours pulling your shorts and underwear down past your hips you lift your hips letting him shed the pile of fabric somewhere in the room.

Not wanting to, Mark pulls back from the kiss shedding his shirt as you follow suit with your bra as well. His heavy hands grope your naked breasts, his lips wrapping around your nipple as his free hand pinches the other. Your head falls back at the small waves of pleasure coming over you. You moan at the feeling of him growing hard against your upper thigh.

Groaning as he leaves messy kisses across your chest you grow impatient, your hand slithers between the both of your body’s wrapping around his cock. Pressing his tip against your folds Mark lets out what sounds like growl as the wetness that sticks to his cock. He felt dizzy yet confident as he grinds his hips against yours, the sticky sound of his cock making friction against your aching pussy makes your eyes fall shut letting out a breathy moan.

Mark’s eyes never leave your face as he adjusts himself, pressing himself slowly into your walls watching your thighs jerk together around his waist. The burning feeling against your walls as he fills you to the brim as your fingers gripping at the sheets waiting for it to subside. “Fuck you for being so big” you sigh as the feeling fades and the pleasure builds, liking how much he stuffed you with his cock. “Should I be offended or happy?” He teases.

“Just fuck me” You groan hoping needs are met. Mark doesn’t answer, only pulling out until his tip is just barely inside before thrusting back into you gently hoping not to hurt you. The both of you are moaning at the feeling. Mark dropping his head into your neck sucking on your skin hoping to paint red spots all over the bare and empty space as a plaguing reminder of this moment.

“Is sex supposed to feel this good while high?” He rasps as his pace becomes steady with the sound of you gushing around him and skin on skin fills the air that isn’t clouded with smoke and moans. You whimper at the harsh thrusts that make your headboard smack against the drywall. Legs caging Mark’s hips bringing him deeper, you thought you could see stars as your jaw slacks letting out a string of curses.

One hand balancing his weight over top of you Mark presses the other to your lower stomach as he meets your eyes “do you feel me?” He asks as his hips snap roughly into you pounding you against the mattress. Only dependent on movements you nod eagerly at the repetitive wave of pleasure that crashes over you and slinks back.

“Fuck, Mark” you chant his name with praise hoping this feeling would never go away. “That’s it, just like that” he coos at your already so fucked out expression; brows scrunched together as your eyes could barely stay open, messy hair and swollen lips. “Feels so good” you whine as you look down to see where you two are connected, gasping at the sight as strings of slick sticking to marks pubic bone as he thrusts eagerly to make you finish.

“Yeah? I just wanna make you cum. Can you do that for me?” He asks although it was rhetorical he was going to make you finish first with no doubt in his mind. You can only moan breathily as you nod in a euphoric daze of pleasure. His hips drive into yours as Mark builds an intense pace, you feel him in places any other guy you’ve slept with wished they could reach.

Your choking on your words as your eyes roll to the back of your head as Marks nails dig into your thigh clutching you close not wanting to let go. The sounds you make, how you look, and smell; it was all so overwhelming for Mark, yet he wouldn’t stop. Letting his head fall into the nape of your neck leaving wet kisses across your skin.

The tight feeling in the pit of your stomach doubles each time you feel his cock sink into you, your hand grasping his hair as the other rakes down his back leaving behind red trails in the shape of your nails. “Fuck you feel so good” he moans and you would do just about anything to earn that sound from him again. Like music your ears you clench around him loving the sounds you get out of him.

Your fingers grip his faded blue hair tightly as you feel his hips drive into your thighs as the wet smacking sound coming from between you sloshes loudly. Had it not been for how fucking good it felt you would’ve been embarrassed. But you don’t. You can only moan as your head falls back against the pillow watching the ceiling fan as it was still.

Mark holds your waist when the pleasure makes your legs start to shake and you squirm under him, helping you maintain that sloppy but rewarding pace that had splotches of white appear in your vision. “God—fuck” you whine as you feel Mark position his hips that hits your walls with undeniable wave of pleasure that makes you almost scream. “Mark- please” you beg, though you had no idea what it was that you wanted Mark pulls away from your neck pressing his lips over yours.

A sheen of sweating growing on your skin making you both stick together. Tears prick the corners of your eyes at the gut wrenching feeling of his cock hitting all the places you need it to. Your makeup is smeared and ruined and there was no coming back from it now. As your hair sticks to your face Mark shifts his weight onto his thighs as the two of you are no longer chest to chest, grappling onto the back of your knees he pulls what is almost deadweight over his shoulders.

Kissing at your calf and ankle as he pounds you into the mattress. Your eyesight blurs to the point you can only focus on Mark as the growing intensity at the pit of your stomach feels like a knot that’s slowly starting to unravel and if pulled hard enough would snap. “I’m so close” you moan as reach for his hands that hold onto your thighs using you at this point as his own leverage to get off.

Your fingers interlock “cum all over my cock, you can do that hm?” He says his pace becomes unforgiving, Mark can feel himself getting closer to the edge of an orgasm and he refuses to dive off that cliff alone. He needs you to finish first or all of these efforts would seem to be all for nothing. Mark refuses that outcome as his free hand slithers between your thighs his thumb presses against your clit rubbing harsh circles that makes your head spin.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck! It’s so much” you babble out with a string of curses the feeling of extra stimulation has your thighs quivering as your lungs burned. You realize sex with Mark Lee was better than any drug you could get your hands on, choking out a gasp as that awaited feeling of a tingle runs through your body making your jaw slack, Mark roughens his pace as his cock twitches at the vice grip you have around him. Moans sync almost like song as Mark is set off by you finishing brings him own release.

The orgasm is life changing, it leaves him short on breath as he grips tighter on your hand, like an artist prepping a canvas with white paint mark spills his load into you weakly thrusting into you letting the creeping feeling of overstimulation die out. Your eyes shut tightly hoping this level of pleasure not slips your mind. Mark pushes your legs off his shoulder only to lean into you peppering kisses across your collar bone and neck before pressing one single chaste kiss to your lips.

“Fuck what Johnny said we should’ve done this a long time ago” Mark says with an attitude now remembering what his older friend had said in regards to consumption of drugs and it makes you snort. “And we still come to the conclusion of what the fuck are we supposed to do now?” You gripe feeling yourself beginning to sober up. “I like this, and I want to keep doing this if you’ll let me” Mark says his voice his hoarse and not as loud as it should be but his confidence was somewhat hidden away.

“I’d like that” you whisper as the warm feeling sprouting across your chest has you pressing a palm to your chest out of concern. “Let’s clean up, and then we can talk about it okay?” He says with a comforting tone and a grin to match. God Mark Lee could do just about anything with that goofy grin on his face and make you weak in the knees.

[itaerae]

we can't be friends — zb1

pairing: zerobaseone x reader

synopsis: heartbreak is inevitable, but not everyone is able to move on.

word count: 1k

warnings: mild profanity, mentions of infidelity, drinking, angst, unrequited love, major character death ! (not proofread)

author's notes: i haven't been here in a while, i missed you all !! apologies in advance for the angsty comeback ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

—

jiwoong can't remember the last time he was able to think straight; the memories of you clouding his thoughts. jiwoong wonders where it all went wrong. ten months ago he would get the phone call that haunts him 'till this night. nightmares, he'd awaken with cold sweat dripping down his forehead; the event playing in his mind like a broken record. he remembers your ever so serene expression, the way your skin was already cold to the touch, the feeling of holding you in his arms one last time. looking down at the shot in his hand, he catches a sight of how a singular tear hits the surface of the glass. "fuck." the singular tear lead jiwoong into a sobbing mess.

zhang hao wonders if you've been well. after all, it was his fault for being in this situation. but what was a man supposed to do given his future or his first love. he catches himself staring at your contact on his phone often, too afraid to hit the call button. do you still think about him too ? do you even still remember him ? he can't erase the last time he ever got to see you, standing so close yet so far away. he wishes he could've gone back and wiped those tears off your face. truth is, zhang hao can't move on, not until he finds a way to reverse what he's done.

hanbin knows that he couldn't have done things differently, even if he tried. he couldn't make you view him as more than just a friend. was this just the consequence of growing up together ? he can't help but wonder why you were so blind to see that he's been here the whole time. he wants you tell you, he really does. but hanbin can't muster up the courage to tell you about his feelings; seeing the way your eyes, heart, and mind focused on another guy. hanbin knows it's wrong to wish the worst upon someone, yet the sting in his heart convinces him more than the rational thoughts in his mind.

matthew was at fault, he fucked up, he knew. he didn't deserve to feel this way, he couldn't help it. two weeks ago he was living the life; a stable career and the girl of his dreams. a week ago, he traded the latter away. he didn't mean to, you'd caught him off guard. matthew looked around the room; there in the mirror, he looked at himself. the red mark, still stinging, served as a reminder to matthew. he'd never been so disgusted with himself, choked sobs threatened to rise up his throat; but he knew he didn't deserve to cry. not anymore.

taerae wanted this breakup and you did too, it was mutual. or so he thought, until he couldn't stop thinking about you; often catching him self reminiscing the times you two shared. this was something he should be over, after all, he was the one who initiated it. yet taerae couldn't understand the way his heart clenched when he saw you again a year later, your hand intertwined with someone else. taerae was never a jealous person, so why did he feel this way now after he'd let you go ? it shattered him to see the way you didn't even look back at him, maybe he was hoping for too much.

ricky had rejected you when you first confessed your feelings to him. he wasn't interested at all and you understood. he thought all was good between you two. eventually ricky noticed you weren't around him as much anymore, he didn't want to admit it; he felt a sense of longing. he missed the way you'd take time to greet him or walk with him to classes. he missed the way you'd ask about his day, mad at himself for all the times he pushed you away. ricky didn't want to admit it; he wished he hadn't rejected you, disappointed in himself for not realizing sooner.

gyuvin couldn't help but feel guilty; he was already in a relationship, however his heart told him that he still wanted you. gyuvin had admired you from far away for so long, he felt sadness for his girlfriend; but she wasn't the one he desired. gyuvin wasn't sure why he was with her in the first place, the guilt eating him up near breaking point. it was you who had taken over his mind and heart, it had always been you. he was frustrated with himself, one day he'll manage to tell you the truth; for now he would have to resort to his current life. it was selfish of him, he knew. but what his girlfriend didn't know can't hurt her, right ?

gunwook was crushed. for a moment, he really thought he had you. he'd been yearning and was over the moon when you had confessed you liked him too. that quickly ended. gunwook didn't mean to eavesdrop on you and your friend and quite frankly, he wished he hadn't. it stung, your words crushed him more than he ever imagined. he was so sure that your relationship was solid, it felt surreal. with a heavy heart, clenched fists, and tears threatening to spill; gunwook listened to your last words, confirming he was nothing but a bet to you.

yujin liked you ever since he was little. in his eyes, you were the perfect babysitter; you also happened to be his older sister's best friend. yujin would see you around often, how couldn't he catch feelings for you ? maybe it was a bit delusional of him, but he thought surely you must've liked him too or thought fond of him, why else were you always around ? after years of waiting, yujin finally decided today was the day he wanted to tell you. he sat on the couch, anticipating your arrival, only to have his heart dropped seeing your arm interlocked with a guy. he felt all sort of emotions, betrayal was the biggest one. he was angry at you, angry at himself; yet he couldn't do anything but smile weakly as you introduced this new guy, blood pounding through his head.

taglist: @kpoprhia, @wonswife, @doobinnies, @chewryy, @watamotee33, @sstephenzz, @yuma-is-mine, @suneonu

[wolfiesmoon]

Dark chocolate

Reo x fem!reader

He could have anything he ever wanted, but the one thing he can't buy with money is your heart (can you tell this is yet another nerd girl x popular boy nuisances to mutual crush fic)

HAhah my blue lock debut🥳🥳🥳i'm making back to back fandom debuts

@noomon since you asked to be tagged (* ´ ▽ ` *)

It almost feels like he gets a new confession every day. It's safe to say he is very popular with the girls at this school. Even if it is for mostly shallow reasons.

Day after day, he receives a letter in his locker, asking him to meet behind the gym or something like that.

But the thing is, he isn't interested in any of these people. So he doesn't even give them the time of day.

The only one he's interested in is you, a girl in his class. But what is he to do when you never give him the time of day?

To you, Reo is a massive nuisance. You have no idea what made him like you and you don't care. Because the last thing you want is a stuck up rich boy as your boyfriend.

You came to this school to study and nothing more. You're not here to date or whatever else school isn't meant for.

(One exception is your singular friend.)

But no matter what, he never seems to give up on chasing after you. Even though there are far more beautiful and willing girls for him to date.

"Girl, just give him a chance. He's only got eyes for you." your friend nudged you as the two of you were eating lunch.

"And give in to him? Are you crazy?" you said with a straight face, continuing to eat.

"Oh, sorry. I only forgot that I'm friends with the most petty stubborn person in the world." your friend rolled her eyes, not understanding why you keep on rejecting Reo. He's rich, he's popular, so what's the hold up?

"Seriously, you're not 'giving in' to anything if you accept his confession."

"But I am losing my pride and my dignity. By the way, your food's getting cold." you replied simply, already getting a bit annoyed that your friend won't shut up about him.

"Girl, I lose hope in your romantic future every day."

"Good."

.

"Hi." he greets you at the school gate, as he does every day. And you ignore him, as you do every day.

"It's rude to ignore someone, you know that?" he joined you by your side and you just subtly rolled your eyes. You don't have time for this today, you have an early library study session to be getting to.

"My answer is no." you crossed your arms.

"I didn't even say anything, though." he gave you that stupid wide smile that you hate looking at so much. It's annoying how... uhh, above average his looks are.

"Would it kill you to stop bothering me?" you finally asked what you've been wanting to for the past few months. You have no idea how it took you so long to be harsh and honest about your feelings.

"What? I'm not bothering you." you had no idea if he was actually this dense or just pretending to be. You don't know him all too well, after all. But considering the fact that he's a student at this prestigious prep school, you think it's the second one. Unless his parents bribed the school to let him in.

"Seriously? Just leave me alone. I am not interested." it kind of felt good to admit that out loud. Directly, with no sweetened phrases to lessen the blow.

He looked away for a second. "Sorry, it's not that easy."

You looked puzzled. His tone didn't suggest arrogance or smugness. It was a quieter and thoughtful tone, something that doesn't seem fit for a stuck up rich boy.

How... strange. No, wait, what do you care?!

"You're... different. Unlike any other girl in this school." the strange tone still remained.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." you sped up your steps, leaving him behind. You missed the worried look that crossed his face for a moment. To you, those words must have seemed like empty flirty comments.

But he meant it. You're a challenge to win over. To win over. Not take. You're the one girl in this school who won't just throw herself at him and somehow, that made him fall for you beyond belief.

Seeing as all you do is study and occasionally share a few words with your friend, he had a feeling boys weren't a priority for you from the very beginning.

But he'll make one boy a priority for you. Himself, of course. And he'll go through any means to achieve that goal.

.

"Girl, valentine's day is almost here!" your friend shook your shoulders, taking your attention from the notebook you were dutifully reading.

"So?"

"So, I am TOTALLY making chocolates for my crush and you should join me." she shook you again, making you furrow your brows in annoyance.

"Why? I have no one to give chocolate to."

Your friend smirked.

"No. No, absolutely not." you immediately shot her down, already knowing who she was talking about.

"Oh come on, you can still spend ungodly amounts of time studying while having a boyfriend. A hot rich boyfriend, at that." you weren't sure if she was doing this out of free will or if Reo was bribing her with copious amounts of money to get her to say this.

You sighed. You had a feeling your friend was going to be extra stubborn about this for the entire week leading up to valentine's day if you said no right now.

Your best choice was to resign to her and make chocolate for Reo.

And besides, you can just leave the chocolate on his desk anonymously if you come to school early. They don't mean anything to you, anyways.

"...Fine. But don't get any ideas, I'm only doing this because you would annoy me if I didn't." you raised the notebook back up, indicating the end of the conversation. You watched your friend jump with glee out of the corner of your eye.

.

"You should totally make dark chocolate for him." your friend suggested out of the blue as you were collecting the stuff you need to make chocolate.

"What does it matter?" you sighed, wondering what stupid reason your friend had this time.

"Dark chocolate seems more luxurious, don't you think? And besides, I heard that Reo isn't big into sweets. I'm sure he'd enjoy something healthier." she reasoned, seeming proud.

You pulled out your phone. "Hey, what are you looking at your phone for?!" your friend asked, offended that you aren't looking for the perfect meltable chocolate with her.

"Oh, nothing, just looking up the most sugary kind of chocolate." you shrugged.

"Damn, you're evil. Mikage-san's fallen for a baaaad one." your friend hit you lightly, feeling a little bad for Reo.

You looked at the meltable white chocolate on the store shelf, then at the meltable dark chocolate right next to it. You have no idea what possesed you in that moment, but your hand instantly reached for the dark chocolate.

You had to ignore your friend's smirking throughout the rest of the shopping trip.

.

"There! Ahh, these look so cute! All those tutorials helped out A LOT! My crush will totally fall for me after eating these!" your friend kept on gushing at the chocolates the two of you made.

"Mine are very sloppy." it was just a simple observation on your end, but to your friend it must have sounded like a discouraged comment.

"It's okay, girl! I'm sure he'll love them regardless of how they look!" she hugged you, patting your back encouragingly. Sadly, you don't have the heart to tell her that you'll just drop them off anonymously without a care in the world.

But, somehow... that seems wrong to you. Should you do that?

Dammit, this is all messing with your head. Who cares about Reo?! You're just doing this to appease your friend, nothing more.

.

"So, the day is finally here, huh?" your friend surprised you from behind just as you were about to leave the chocolate on Reo's desk.

"W-What are you doing here so early?" you quickly hid away the little box of chocolates, trying your best to act normally.

"Oooh, are we nervous?" your friend smirked.

"Speak for yourself. And answer my question while you're at it." you retorted, clearing your throat. That was far too close. But, how are you going to get rid of this chocolate without giving it to Reo directly and convincing your friend you did all at the same time?

Maybe you should just give up and do it. But your pride just won't let it happen. Not like this...

Later that day, you walked past Reo as he was receiving chocolates from two other girls. However, his eyes were on you the entire time. He seemed to be looking at you with expectation and you grit your teeth at the fact that he is, in fact, correct in expecting a valentine's gift from you.

As you turned the corner, your friend was waiting for you behind it. "What are you waiting for, girl? He's all alone now."

The girls that gave him the gifts seem to have already left. Oh no, this isn't good at all.

"Listen, I-"

"Oh hell no, you are not running away this time. Now go out there and make things happen!" your friend pushed you out from behind the corner, with you almost bumping into Reo.

"Hi!" he greeted you, a little more cheerfully than usual.

"Hello." you forced a smile. You silently took out the chocolate and handed it to him. You watched his eyes travel down to the chocolate and then widen.

"Wait... for me? Seriously?" He took the chocolate out of your hands, smiling happily. His cheeks seemed to be turning a pretty shade of pink, too.

His face isn't half bad when it looks like that, you must admit. Though, that doesn't mean anything. Reo's just handsome in general, that face is meaningless to you.

"Don't get any ideas. I'm only doing this out of obligation." you ignored the daggers being shot at you from behind. You can already imagine the earful you'll get from your friend.

"That just means I'll have to try harder, though." he gave you a big, wide smile. The kind that you've never seen on a guy in real life before. But to be fair, you don't look at guys all that much.

Still... Why is your heart beating so fast right now?

oh my god this turned into a whole essay LMAOOO

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

Okay, no, y'know what? I've made a post about this before, but it's making me mad again and I think this bears repeating: the scene leading up to Stayed Gone is NOT proof that Vox is just as bad to Val as Val is to him, and claiming that it is plays into very real misconceptions about abuse. We don't know everything about their relationship, but THAT SCENE SPECIFICALLY features EXCLUSIVELY Val as the aggressor. Yes, Vox yells at Val, but he doesn't throw anything. Yes, he manipulates Val, but hE'S DOING IT TO STOP HIM FROM SHOOTING UP A GODDAMN BUILDING I THINK THAT'S A PRETTY GOOD FUCKIN REASON!!!!!!!! The only thing Vox does in that scene that I would consider a genuine red flag is grabbing and throwing Val after Val brings up Alastor. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING ELSE he does is in response to something Val did. In fact, how about I give a play by play of the scene???

Vox enters Val's room to get him to stop breaking Velvette's shit

Val starts yelling at Vox

Val throws a glass directly at Vox's head, which Vox casually dodges

Val continues yelling

Val breaks Vox's phone

Val starts threatening to shoot up the hotel

Vox tells him to stop, but Val doesn't listen

Vox yells in Val's face to get his attention and then manipulates him into not shooting up a building

Vox tells Val he can shoot the lowest earners

Val brings up Alastor to intentionally piss off Vox

Vox grabs Val and throws him because Val didn't tell him where Alastor is sooner

The two watch the hotel

Val gets mad at Vox for not paying attention to him

Val starts taunting Vox about Alastor

Vox gets mad at Val for taunting him

Valentino is ABSOLUTELY in the wrong here!!!! I'm sorry he just fuckin is!!!! This is not mutual abuse like so many people love to say, this is Vox reacting apropriately to some really fucking awful behavior from his partner. The one, singular instance of Vox being abusive is immediately followed up by Val CONTINUING TO MAKE HIM ANGRIER BECAUSE HE THINKS IT'S FUNNY. Just because Vox isn't taking the abuse lying down doesn't mean it isn't still abuse oh my GOD- yes, Vox grabbing Val because Val didn't tell him about Alastor is bad. No matter how angry you are, you shouldn't throw your partner. I am not trying to excuse that one singular thing. That was a shitty thing to do. But everything else Vox does in this scene is justifiable. Fighting back against someone who is endangering both you and themself isn't abuse, and people claiming that it is can be seriously damaging to victims. Using this scene as proof of StaticMoth being equally toxic is borderline victim blaming. I'm sorry it just is.

Aaaaaaand just to reiterate because I don't feel like arguing in the comments; I am talking EXCLUSIVELY about this one scene. I am not saying you can't ship StaticMoth, and I am not saying that Vox is 100% exclusively a victim in their relationship. We don't know enough about their dynamic to tell. What I AM saying is that this scene isn't the slam dunk for mutually toxic StaticMoth that everybody seems to think it is, and continuing to claim that perpetuates some legitimately harmful mindsets. I try not to get this serious with my Hazbin analysis, I really, truly do, because these characters aren't real people and getting upset over how they're being treated is pointless because they have no feelings. I'm only making this post because the mindset a lot of people seem to have regarding this scene is one that can ALSO lead to problems for real people. It's the mindset that leads to people not taking victims seriously if they fight back, the mindset that makes it harder for real people suffering real abuse to come forward. If you want a more in-depth look into why exactly this is harmful, I highly, HIGHLY recommend Princess Weekes' video on mutual abuse. It's very well researched and made by somebody with a lot more experience writing these types of breakdowns then I have.

In conclusion: STOP USING THIS SCENE AS PROOF STATICMOTH IS MUTUALLY TOXIC PLEASE I AM LITERALLY BEGGING YOU S T O P -

[kerubimcrepin]

An analysis of That One Moment from Wakfu OVA - Book 2, Ush

Technically, this post is a part 4 of my liveblog, but still...

Today we will be talking about the interaction that I am most mentally ill about in the entirety of Wakfu.

Before I go completely off the rails: I think it's cute that despite everything, Keke still cares a lot about Ecaflip and Ecaflipus, and Atcham still cares about killing people for wronging him.

Things have changed after six centuries, but they're still just themselves. Anyway.

There is so much happening here. SO much. Let me break it down point by point:

The most obvious one: by addressing them as kids, he pulls his "I am roleplaying as your father for these strangers who don't know anything about our weird familial situation, and you will obey me" card. This is important because:

Kerubim and Atcham know how much Joris cares about the Brotherhood of Tofu and their opinions of him, to the point of going a little bit crazy at the thought of offending Yugo and Adamai.

So, even if him pulling the "I'm your dad" card is a bit egocentric, they can't say anything about that openly — because Joris would be so, so sad if everyone in this room knew he lives with his dad for 600 years now. He'd be so mad too, because "papychaaa, chaaaoncle stop embarrassing me in front of my friends!"

We KNOW Kerubim cares about not embarrassing Joris — because in the Dofus MMO he won't shut the hell up about his 20-30 dead loved ones from 200 years ago, says a Singular Thing about Atcham, and absolutely nothing about his very much alive son/fake dad, at best managing a little "we all want someone small in our lives..."

In my opinion, while some families are built on mutual roasting, the Crepin-Jurgen household houses three people with very fragile senses of self-esteem, so anything resembling roasting is usually light, exclusive to when they're all alone, and never about things that they actually hate about themselves ("short, weird, ugly, hypocrite, weak, overthinker"; "ugly" (some bald jokes allowed, but it depends on the mood); and "narcissist who kept his son in a hazardous environment for the first 7 years of his life and gave him 30 mental illnesses").

Besides the fact that Keke and Atch care about Joris making friends, — for the three of them (but especially Joris and Atcham), feeling belittled is the easiest way to ruin a relationship irreparably. If you insult them, it's just over. And I don't mean it in a funny-haha cutesy way. Sometimes, people actually dislike when they are insulted repeatedly about something they legitimately hate about themselves, and, y'know, hate everyone who hurts them this way? And you will not believe it, but people who actually care about them know and respect that. Because they love them.

So yeah, the three of them are all creatures of pride, and they respect that about each other, — which is why would never put each other in a position where they might get laughed at. (like suddenly revealing the Dad Roleplay and "600 years of living with his dad" sort of interpersonal lore)

However, being creatures of pride, I don't think Kerubim and Atcham are happy about Joris doing this. Especially because of the next point: Joris uses his position as their roleplay-dad and Asocial Son/Nephew Who Needs To Impress His Friends to essentially force them to let him go into a battle alone. Essentially, this line is translated as "you have glass bones and paper skin. you can't follow me because I said so, and you can't protest without looking weird." into Normal Human Tongue.

Joris does this for a very simple reason: they are weak (though so is he), and he's scared — he loves them! It's normal that he doesn't want to see them be hurt! Even if they have multiple lives, but they're not infinite lives, and it doesn't make every time they die NOT scary and traumatizing! He wants Kerubim and Atcham to go and rest, and he's also excited that they're finally meeting his friends.

However, unlike them, he only has one life — and they hate to see him hurt just as much, if not more, considering how much more danger he's always in:

They would really rather not leave their p'tit Jojo Joris alone with things they know are dangerous, — like Ush, — while Joris is weakened. No matter how much he wants to fight Ush one-on-one.

So, they refuse and even joke about him in the most subtle and funny way: using his own little game to make fun of him, and completely refuse his offer of leaving to rest in Sadida Kingdom, — coupled with an overexaggerated little shrug, and rubbing their statuses as so-called "sons" and "father" in his face.

These three come up with very elaborate rituals to communicate things that take normal people like ten seconds.

[total-dxmure]

i'm super late to react about the tlou casting debacle, however you all know that i have strong opinions.

i'm sure that the actress who has been cast is incredibly talented, however i'm still extremely disappointed.

abby's looks are incredibly important to the entire storyline of the second game, and i had hopes that they would do her complexities justice. the writers used her stature and build as a serious plot device and let me tell you why:

she's taller than ellie. she's stronger than ellie. she's better trained than ellie.

does this stop her from continuously pitting herself against the woman? no. she is quite literally a cornered, feral animal. showing teeth and aiming for the jugular. it is not tenacity that we are seeing in ellie. it is pure, unadulterated rage. it singlehandedly burns her up from the inside out. nothing exists for her anymore except a singular goal and that is wiping out everyone who not just had a hand in killing joel but also had any relationship to those people. she's hunting them like prey.

we are supposed to look at abby and be scared. we are supposed to look at abby and think her capable of possibly besting ellie. we are supposed to see her, towards the beginning, as the "big bad evil guy". most of us are completely blind to the parallels when we're knee deep into the game because we love joel.

but that's when the shift happens. when you suddenly see abby in ellie's shoes. she's someone who just wanted to avenge the death of her father and all of his comrades.

though it was too late to save joel, ellie is murdering countless people in the name of someone she loves. she resented him for what he did to save her, and yet when faced with a similar situation she jumps head first into it without hesitation.

abby and ellie both had complete and utter tunnel vision. abby, who wanted to avenge her father and find the fireflies. ellie, who needed to make everyone pay for what they did to joel. both of them destroyed their own lives in their pursuits.

one of the most, if not the most emotional scene in the entire gameplay is the final showdown between abby and ellie. we see a weak (emaciated) abby fighting for her life against a strong, now incredibly skilled ellie. the role reversal is breathtaking.

this is why abby's looks mean so much. it is a testament to the absolute soul crushing sorrow that the both of them endured. most of which were mutually inflicted onto each other.

abby could have taken advantage of ellie's weaknesses and killed her in that theater, just as ellie could have done with abby.

ellie ends up turning into the very person that she hates most and her worst fear comes to life. she ends up alone.

the worst part of it all is that we know that joel wouldn't have wanted her to take any sort of revenge. she was living a happy, simple life with dina. the kind of life that joel had wanted for himself and for her. she can't even play guitar in order to feel connected to the man that had become her father.

he had died without her forgiveness. she is forced to live with that, all while being unable to forgive herself for what she has done.

and not to break anyone's hearts even more, but did anyone else catch the flowers that ellie put on joel's grave? blue hydrangeas. in the language of flowers they mean "forgiveness and regret".

[justporo]

BG3 Winter Holiday Challenge

It seems many of you are ready to head into winter time in Baldur's Gate! So, we present you with:

Firstly, we have to thank and give credit to our mutual friend @bearhugsandshrugs who not only showed us the ropes with setting things up with AO3 (it's really not... intuitive) but also always offered help and also also originally organised a BG3 Promptmeme Challenge for Kinktober (the collection for that can be found here) that was also an inspiration for this challenge and started setting things in motion!)

What is this about? You might've seen the post two days ago about the creative challenge my lovely friend @the-littlest-raindrop (thanks for doing this with me) and I came up with to bring some warmth and fluff into December time. We provide you with 12 different prompts to get you into the festive mood.

When does this start? Start your fluff engines, we start posting on December 1st up until January 1st!

How can I participate? See a prompt that immediately gives you an idea for a drawing or a drabble? Let's go! No matter if you're a writer or an artist or want to fill a prompt in any other creative kind of way (so say: a drawing, a drabble, headcanons, a cake?). Just keep in mind it's a fluff challenge! Feel free to fulfill as many or as few prompts as you'd like: all of them, three or only one. Post your content with the hashtag #BG3HolidayFluffle23 and mention the prompt you used! This challenge is also available as a collection on AO3 (all say thanks to @the-littlest-raindrop for setting this up, and once again @bearhugsandshrugs for teaching us, you both rock), so you can also head over there to share your writing fills!

Any rules? Keep it lighthearted and fun, this is about fluff! You're welcome to use OCs or more than one character as long as it includes at least one BG3 character. The prompts are also in no particular order.

What else? Depending on how this will go we might organise some masterlists to collect the entries, but we can't promise. For now, we really just wanted to get the (snow)ball rolling to spread some of the festive goodness! Also if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me or @the-littlest-raindrop!

And NOW, we come to the best part:

✬THE PROMPTS✬

✶Twinkling Lights✶

Wintertime is full of beautiful lights - be it shining stars in the crisp night air, candles or fairy lights put up as decoration, or the glamour of fireworks. It might be nice to look at all of these together with your partner or set them up yourselves.

✶Snow & Ice✶

Dropping temperatures means a chance for frosty precipitation. What a wonderful thing to enjoy with a lover (albeit with a few extra layers for warmth!).

✶Gifts✶

The Holiday season is the time for giving. Exchanging gifts with your partner is a tradition as old as the season itself. Will you have to keep the gift receipt or not? 

✶Mulled Wine/Hot Chocolate✶

There’s nothing quite like curling up with a nice warm drink on a chilly evening. The only thing better is sharing it with someone you love.

✶Delicacies✶

Don’t you have some cheese around? The holidays are usually filled with indulging in various delicious dishes and treats. It’s up to you if you simply want to share them with a loved one or even dare to prepare them yourself.

✶Holiday Spirit✶

The holidays mean a lot of different things to people. To some, it’s a time to be thankful and unwind. To others, it means stress, and a frantic rush to get everything organised. How do your lovers fare this time of year? 

✶Mistletoe✶

The seasonal flora with a singular association: kissing! Whether it’s someone planning a romantic surprise, or pure happenstance, when lovers find themselves beneath it, there is only going to be one outcome!

✶Chosen Family✶

Not everyone is lucky enough to have family around this time of year. That’s why it’s important to spend time with the people that matter most in your life, creating bonds just as strong as the familial kind.

✶Ornaments✶

Putting up decorations to set the right mood is a very common thing around the holiday time. Maybe you even take the time to make some of them yourself with the help of your partner.

✶Winter Markets✶

There’s always plenty of shopping to be done, especially this time of year. Taking the time to venture out on a cool winter’s eve to see all the treats and treasures is a time-honoured tradition, one that can also be enjoyed hand-in-hand with someone dear.

✶Getting Cozy✶

Sometimes during winter time when it’s too cold and stormy to venture outside, there’s really nothing better than to put on your comfiest socks and get nice and warm at home with someone to keep you company.

✶New Beginnings✶

The end of the year can be the start of many new things. It offers a chance to reflect on the past, while ushering in a future that is yours to shape for the better. What might this mean for lovers? Only time will tell.

We hope all of you have a lovely winter time and have fun in joining us in this challenge! Lots of love! <3

So, once more big thank you to @bearhugsandshrugs for the help and the inspiration!

And thank you so much again, @the-littlest-raindrop for doing this with me, it's been a pleasure and a joy this far!

[aheavenofhell]

I feel like some may be deliberately ignoring the “but I don’t want to go back to Heaven” line and lemme explain why it’s important.

Aziraphale is offered this promotion to supreme archangel, right? By the Metatron himself. This is a VERY big deal, EXTREMELY serious. This is word directly from the Almighty.

And his first reaction is to refuse (something that doesn’t exactly align with the whole “Aziraphale is a manipulator” idea).

Aziraphale refuses the Metatron until the Metatron makes it explicitly clear that he can bring Crowley with him.

This is important, because Aziraphale chose to defy Heaven in S1 for Earth, for humans. While Crowley’s company may have had a part in it, really who’s to say they couldn’t just find another way to hang out when eternity started? His motivations in S1 didn’t revolve solely around Crowley.

The Aziraphale in S2, however, is ready to surrender life on Earth with just a singular condition. This is a big leap from where he was in S1, denying he and Crowley were even friends, to S2, where he is ready to admit that he needs him. That their relationship is more than a mutually beneficial arrangement or the result of having no other immortals to converse with.

So why the “rejection”?

Well, first off I think it’s a bit unfair to call it a rejection. For it to be a rejection, they would have to turn down the idea of their relationship. They didn’t, they just disagreed on the terms of that relationship.

Second, although Aziraphale has made these significant character developments, he is still Aziraphale. Naive, and under the impression that he can make things better for everyone—including Crowley. It could be just like old times, but even better. His motive here was not to fundamentally change who Crowley is, but to move them into a situation where they are safe to be together and he can feel like he has a purpose.

I don’t know if Crowley actually thinks Aziraphale wants to change him or not. I can definitely see that being a thing, but it’s not actually brought up. Instead, Crowley reminds him what Heaven is actually like—the reason he doesn’t want to be there. Not just because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to.

The lack of compromise here ends up making sense from both sides. Aziraphale functions the way someone who grew up deeply religious and just can’t quite pry away from their faith does. Constantly ashamed, justifying the actions of an unjust God, unable to find meaning outside of what he’s been taught is the meaning. A recipe for self loathing, for always going back because it’s all you know, of course you still pray every night, long after you’ve stopped going to church. Ask a fundamentalist Christian if Abraham would’ve been justified in killing Isaac, and when they answer ask why. You will sample some of what I am talking about.

In contrast, Crowley has completely broken off from that illusion. His own moral code is more important to him than Heaven or Hells’. He has spent thousands of years trying to get Aziraphale to see through the manipulative tactics that keep him in check. He watches Aziraphale torment himself with this idea of goodness, what it is and how he has to represent it. And by the end of S2, he is still stuck in that same rut.

Neil utilized the metaphor of an abusive relationship (Nina/Lizzy, Aziraphale/Heaven) but whichever way you look at it, it’s the same. Psychological conditioning designed to break down the spirit into obedience.

And despite all this, despite the fact that Aziraphale is actively clawing his way through processing all of this trauma on his own, he still doesn’t give in to Heaven before he’s promised Crowley.

He goes back, yes. But there was no character regression. It was still development. He’s just not all the way there yet.

There would be no S3 if he was.

[mana-jjk]

jjk manga spoilers !!

if you aren’t caught up to the most recent chapters, you will be spoiled and i refuse responsibility because i’m just vibing my life away

something i use to kind of sway back and forth between inuokko is when i thought they’d get together.

i think it’s mutually agreed that the dynamic between toge and yuuta in their first and second year does have a slightly different vibe. not in a bad way, just in a mutual transition in their dynamic and relationship. of course, that’s just what we can gleam from a handful of pages.

first-year inuokko is definitely more of an awkwardly sweet, teenagers in love for the first time, trying to figure out who they are and how they interact. there’s room and space to grow, a singular year that only acts as an introduction to what is to come.

second-year inuokko is more of an established confidence, knowing each other as friends, fighters, and everything in between. they’re no longer the youngest generation of the school, now they’re established not just between themselves, but also in their lower class men. more than that, they’re also exploring the effects of new trauma and how that impacts who they are.

i’ve seen this characterization of first-year and second-year dynamics being turned on their head. yuuta transitioning from shyness to confidence, toge from being the reliable figure to learning how to rely on yuuta. that’s why it’s so hard to pinpoint where they would get together, because both dynamics are really sweet and strong. i think that’s why inuokko has remained so strong over the years.

lately though, i have been thinking about that in particular. trying to understand these characters and where their dynamic takes off because it sets the tone for a lot of the major events that take place.

toge losing his arm, yuuta in shibuya, killing yuuji, the reunion, and most definitely the recent manga chapters.

as much as i like to think about them in terms of an established relationship, i truly think that inuokko wouldn’t be successfully established until during or after. in other words, i think their strongest coming together comes after their first year, after yuuta returns from being abroad.

yuuta as a character is one that desperately craves connection. that is a defining characteristic that drives his motives throughout jjk 0. he’s lonely, he wants to feel a sense of belonging if with even one person.

however, the issue is that he is transitioning from several life-changing events that allow no time for process or recovery.

in less than a year, he was responsible for multiple injuries and deaths in classmates and sorcerers investigating them. he was sentenced to death, had the sentence lifted, and was sent to a school for sorcerers. he was immediately targeted by getou, faced several life-threatening situations, and even if just for a moment, thought that the tentative friends he made were dying by getou’s hand. he then proceeds to try and sacrifice his life to murder the absolute crap out of getou and then loses the remnants of the only friend he had for years. this is not to mention the bullying, being ostracized by his family, and being uprooted to a completely different environment.

even if yuuta grew up in a completely different world than the others, his relationship with human interaction is extremely poor. during this time was the only opportunity he had to finally grieve rika’s death.

that’s why it’s so vital that he’s not immediately jumping into a new relationship. even though i don’t see the dynamic between yuuta and rika as inherently romantic as they got older, it was the closest thing either of them had. (i say this because rika often conveyed a mentality of a little girl as a spirit, they might have loved each other as kids, but their mentalities are too different now).

yuuta needed to take that time to enjoy companionship platonically in order to develop emotionally. even more so, he needed to learn how to cope and live in a healthy and productive way. with the loss of rika came the loss of any power he had, a newfound freedom and disadvantage he had to work himself through again.

going to africa was essential for that reason !! he needed to learn how to navigate himself without placing too much dependency on any one person. it kept him from self-sabotaging, but also granted him the opportunity to learn that there were people willing to wait for him.

so that time in africa with miguel wasn’t just time to hone his physical and cursed abilities, it was an opportunity to grow into a more stable mindset before taking any other steps forward.

with that being said, yuuta is absolutely insane. like, i’m sorry but if you don’t agree, talk to the wall because i’m not budging on this. mr. okkotsu did grow into a more confident and self-assured person, but it doesn’t completely erase the traumatic experiences that developed him into the person he is today.

rika was and very much still is an extension to the kind of love he understands and conveys. becoming a monster for those you love, gladly and willingly, to sink your teeth into the viscera of their soul and hold tight. because otherwise, they might just slip away.

we see the frantic energy that rika used to utilize in protecting him not gone, but transitioned into a more clever application in yuuta’s actions. i see this especially in his speech that i discussed about gojo a while back. in how angry he was about toge’s arm. in the way he took on the culling games by himself as atonement.

rika always was a reflection of the darkness inside of yuuta. one that allowed him to pretend like he was helpless, when in truth, he always held a strong capability for the violence.

rika vs. yuuta’s bullies

yuuta vs. getou

he consumes darkness in order to protect the perceived light in his life.

it’s less that he needed to be sent away to address that, and more that he needed time to accept that.

we see a confident yuuta, not because the darkness has disappeared, but because he has learned to control and weaponize it.

his desperation for connection is still very prominent in his character, you can see it especially in how he lashes out in regards to gojo. it’s not that he’s especially angry with everyone else, and more that he needs them to feel these connections on the same level.

there’s visual relief in how he expresses himself when toge, maki, and panda audibly extend their support. he needs to have that tangible desperation and need returned in full. if loving means becoming, the boy who consumes curses will do beyond what is necessary.

in that, you can see an almost contradiction to the similarities between yuuta and yuuji. two boys cursed with immense love for their friends.

yuuji who consumed a finger to protect those around him, who set out on this life to save others and guide them to a proper death. who lost his friends, his mentors, everything and everyone who mattered most. who now straddles the line of life and death all in sacrifice.

yuuta who cursed his childhood friend, who consumes curses to absorb their abilities. who set out on this life to avoid the pain of loneliness and find connection in his lonely world. who somehow managed to not lose any of his friends. who chose to take the only casualty he suffered, his mentor, to sacrifice himself to bring him peace.

they’re so similar and yet so inherently different because of one key characteristic. where yuuji’s actions are selfless, yuuta’s motives have always been selfish.

he brings yuuji back to life, not because he cares too much about killing him, but because gojo and his classmates care about him.

he takes on the culling games because he feels guilty about not helping his friends before.

he kills his mentor’s best friend body snatcher, not because it’s right, but because he doesn’t want gojo to do it.

selfless actions, selfish reasons.

and yuuta knows it.

he accepts it, he embraces it, he doesn’t even try to hide it.

as a first year, he might have shied away from acknowledging it. flustered and avoided eye contact, tried to explain himself in a way that conveyed something good and positive. tried to not see himself a monster.

but he is a monster.

only monsters could possibly survive the blood-soaked remnants of his childhood and teenage years.

he’s a monster, and it only took a year of training for he himself to realize that, to embrace it.

because being a monster means that the people you love don’t have to be one.

and the cherry on top is that he picked the one group that would know that, would see him, would love him not just in spite of it, but because of it.

maki figured him out from day one, and panda doesn’t exactly have the importance of morals high enough to care.

toge is the biggest surprise, because his characterization might lead you to think that he would be heartbroken by the choices yuuta would make.

but it isn’t compassion that defines toge so strongly, it is acceptance.

his ability to not see past the viscera and gore covering his soul. his ability to watch with utmost vigilance and choose to move forward regardless. he wipes the blood streaking his cheeks, not to pretend it never happened, but to share in it. to share the responsibility.

to be a jujutsu sorcerer is to not hold life in the highest regard. instead, it is to learn how to live past the bounds of morality and personal responsibility. it is to understand that you walk a gray line that forever tips into an unending darkness.

second year yuuta is one all too aware of this, who knows it far more intimately than any person raised in this society. and in spite of it, he choose to dig his nails into the edge and tip back. trusting, knowing his friends are only a breath away.

he needed the time to understand that more than anything else.

lmfao i consider myself the biggest toge lover, but i also love yuuta very much. he’s so batshit and it’s so enjoyable to me. i think they should hold hands and stuff ! 1,700 words of me just rambling about them - now it’s mana pls stfu hours

[nanabansama]

if tsukasa is wrong and ignores the rules is that why he defeats any puzzle he fights but how can there be mistake in his existence ??

Hello! I'm a little unsure on what you're asking but generally speaking I assume Tsukasa's power comes from the entity inside of him, not necessarily because he has a blatant disregard for rules. If that's all it took, then Hanako should be a lot stronger...

Note that Tsukasa has seemingly had the ability to grant wishes for people since he came back from the Red House. This wish-granting power is eerily similar to both the entity he made exchanges with and Tsukasa's powers as a supernatural.

Tsukasa has always granted wishes arbitrarily. At least, to some extent.

He says he grants wishes of the heart. The heart is generally depicted as a passionate, unruly thing, opposed to the logic of the brain. Kinda like the ego, superego, and id. In this case, Tsukasa is focusing entirely on the id, which is irrational and driven by pure desire. His methods are very extreme, showcased best by how everyone he's granted the wishes of so far regretting it. (Shijima, Kunishige, Amane, Mitsuba...)

In the case of Amane, his superego is him holding back while his id is the violent urge to murder his brother.

In any case, my armchair Freudian psychoanalysis aside, I've long held the theory that Tsukasa's wish-granting powers as a supernatural are related to the entity and that he's had them in some form since he was alive.

My favorite point of evidence in favor of this is that the entity uses the honorific -kun with Tsukasa ("Tsukasa-kun") while Tsukasa uses the honorific -kun when first talking to Mitsuba.

(...just trust me he's saying "Mitsuba-kun" in the right image ok just check your copies of Volume 4 ok)

The singular bump in this theory I've encountered is that Tsukasa specifies he exclusively grants supernatural wishes (in contrast to Hanako) while the alive Tsukasa granted Kunishige's wish, who is definitely not a supernatural. The entity also had zero problem granting the wishes of Tsukasa--a human. And for that matter the wishes of an entire village of people.

For this I have two explanations. One, Tsukasa is arbitrarily paralleling Amane just cuz. And two, something about the nature of Tsukasa's death changed the rules by which he was allowed to grant wishes. Neither is really a satisfactory answer, but they work well enough.

For one, we've already run into issues concerning Tsukasa's powers, like the fact that it's established Tsukasa needs a human to spread rumors, AKA Sakura, but she's doing it in exchange for a wish. You could logic this away by saying Sakura is a supernatural, but then why would the characters falsely explain only humans can do it in the first place? Also, Sakura is not confirmed to be human or supernatural. In fact, given her dialogue in Chapter 92, it's safe to assume she's not quite either?

Essentially, what I'm saying is, none of this makes any damn sense in the first place.

On that note, I struggle to understand how much this is Tsukasa actively granting wishes and not the entity spurring him on. Are they simply in agreement on this? It's possible. After all, Tsukasa seems obsessed with learning Amane's true wish after failing to grant it the first time. He also expresses an interest in people breaking rules, and says if that's enough to break the world then it's better off broken. Frankly, while this is all rather evil, it does strike me as more of a Tsukasa perspective than a purely Pit God one. It makes sense to me why he might think this way, after everything he's been through.

Tsukasa is truly the willing puppet of this entity...their mutual special interest is granting everyone's deepest darkest wishes... (/end theory)

Anyway I totally rambled there but feel free to send another ask if I didn't quite answer your question.