#i just have such a different view of the world and am so much more and differently emotionally affected by things

[inuxi]

that ask was rude of me, i should've just blocked you instead of telling you about it, i'm sorry. i'm aroace and sex+romance repulsed, and i guess i thought alastor was gonna be something i could enjoy for once like everyone else gets to without feeling like i'm intruding on a conversation i have no right to be part of. i'm on ios so i can't use browser extensions to actually get rid of all the alastor ship posts like i want, and i'm not sure my problem even has a solution short of just giving up trying, because so far i have found exactly zero blogs that are 1.) still active at all, 2.) still post about Hazbin, 3.) aren't actually 12 years old, and 4.) don't post about fucking Alastor ships. i got so excited seeing such good, recent art i haven't nuked yet considering how old every other post i can still see is, and i'm not kidding when i say i sent that ask through tears. it was rude and unacceptable either way, and i'm sorry.

i've blocked over 200 different people and i'm not exaggerating that number even a little bit. i would rather put a gun to my head and pull the trigger myself than see them so much as breathe next to each other ever again. i am so. so so so so so sick of searching and searching and searching and finding nothing.

the thing i've learned from alastor's aroace representation is that not only is the world as a whole not made to accommodate me, fandom space isn't either. i am an alien on a planet i was never made to fit into, and i don't even get to escape that through fiction like everyone else does. no amount of filtering and blocking and searching will bring into existence a community for me that simply does not exist, and it is futile for me to try. that's what this fandom has taught me.

i think the chances of me sticking around in this fandom are slim, so at least it won't be an issue for anyone else anymore. i think being excluded from conversations about an aroace character sting a lot more than just not being represented at all to be honest.

Okay, listen.

First of all, Alastor is officially an Ace, NOT an aroace. That means he can still be interested in any romantic things or finding a couple. No one is stopping you from seeing him exclusively as an aroace. But shaming people who don't share your point of view is a bad idea.

Secondly, I am an aroace artist myself. Romantic and sexual themes are virtually non-existent in my art. I can joke about it, but almost all of my drawings explore completely different things. And you come to me and try to talk about how hard it is to feel socially comfortable being an aroace? I understand your worries, but, again, trying to shame other people because they don't share your point of view is NOT a healthy coping mechanism.

Third, I have done THREE drawings in all my time that include a romanticized Alastor. Two of them were collabs, and the third was asked to be drawn by people. And these three drawings made you give up on my art, which you said you really liked?

The community is too heavily oriented towards romantic and sexual themes, it's true. People like us are often uncomfortable in that environment, that's also true. But aroace people can't just come in and ban others from having fun just because we don't find that fun or interesting.

Man, I'm not even Alastor's artist! What the kind of Alastor shipper am I? And you picked me out of a thousand people to block? Oh my God, that's as funny as it is sad.

In case you haven't looked at my art, I am a Lucifer artist. I very rarely draw Alastor, simply because I don't find him interesting enough. And because of that, I find it so funny to be labeled an “Alastor shipper”

[dark-twist-fairytales]

staring at some old posts like 'i have regrets'.

[peapod20001]

I actually do have very complex thoughts about many different things, it’s just a bit challenging to connect the inner voice to the outer voice sometimes </3

[t-t-p-d]

idk but sometimes i just sit around and realise life isn't that bad after all

[valeriehalla]

I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.

I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:

the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and

the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.

Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.

Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.

In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!

And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”

That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.

Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.

It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.

The vibe with “Saki” is different.

It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.

There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.

So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.

The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.

Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???

Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????

[that-jack-kline-bestie]

.

[inkskinned]

no, actually, where is the whimsy?

my ex had a best friend named larry who asked me once: what do you think comes after irony?

we were at the bar where larry worked. it was a quiet night, and he'd hopped over to sit with us on the patron side. i swirled the lemon around my limoncello martini.

earnest positivity, i said, while my ex said, art self-destructs.

i stared at my ex. he stared at me.

his argument was the cinemasins argument: look how bad media is becoming! look at the loopholes and the dumb shit!

it was roughly 2011. galaxy print was still in. at the time, i had a favorite shirt that was a wolf howling at the moon. it got ripped in half in the wash and i honestly still mourn it. i dressed like effie stonem, because everyone did. and irony was the name of the thing. men liked MLP "ironically." the internet liked the kind of crass, "anti-mainstream" vibes of things like fuck romance, touch my butt and buy me pizza. we put cats in sunglasses everywhere, which was because we only liked things in irony.

and media had the same vibe in it: anti-hero white men would be "hard to love" and then storm off the scene. nobody was just earnestly trying to save the world: they were jaded, angry, unoriginal. mad you even asked them to try to help.

my ex ends up not being wrong. cinemasins becomes super popular. a lot of people start viewing media with this lens that is the cruelest, most jaded depiction. it's wrong for your character to have unexplained powers, even if the entire movie is about how strange it is she has unexplained powers - that is still considered a "loophole." characters make thoughtless, panicked choices? loophole. characters are actually kind people, despite hardship? loophole. features a woman doing literally anything without assistance? loophole. movies become hyper-aware of scrutiny, and now irony rules the media.

which means you go to a movie, and the character has to turn to the screen and say "beats me!!" or one of the side characters has to have some kind of quip like "are you seriously telling me that you think this is normal?" because nothing can happen in earnest. like a sitcom laugh track, we now anticipate the fourth-wall break: the moment that the media acknowledges it is telling a story. the media has to apologize for itself, or else someone like my ex rolls their eyes.

but here's the thing: i wasn't wrong either.

the difference might be that i am (and always have been) so soft-hearted that any crack in the light of this world will spear me into the ground. and i was the poet in the relationship. (he thought that was the same thing as being naïve and stupid). i was making things daily. i knew how all of us artists are driven by some strange desire to evolve. he notably liked to critique art, not to create it.

so yes, i've made things that are bitter and angry and even ironic. i've made long, sharp poems with all capital letters, and i've made poems about how the silence stretches out like a song. someone wrote once that we will spend our whole lives just circling the place we grew up. i think it's more that we spend our whole lives trying to remake a home. i think it's that as we age, it becomes less exciting to build the castle on the beach - we become aware of erosion, of windforce. we realize what we really want is to come home to our dog, castle or not.

and while art in the foreground is mired in white male violence and irony, and aggression, and not taking anything seriously - i don't think that's true of all art. i think more and more artists are leaning in to the things we love. the world has changed so much. they have taken so many things from us. the only thing we have left is love. at the bottom of the moving box - all we get is the faint sense that we have to appreciate what little we've got. i can't enjoy this stuff ironically anymore: what room do i have for irony? if it makes me happy, that is an amazing thing. there are so few happy places left for me. i want to be happy because of how leaves shiver beside each other like nestling birds. i want to be happy because of the color pink, and how magenta doesn't exist. i have spent so much of this life suffering, i have earned my right to a gentle ending. if nothing matters, i get to assign meaning to the nothing. i get to create meaning. i am an artist first and foremost, which means creation is my thing.

where is the whimsy? wherever i fucking put it. because if this is my last fucking chance to do any good in this world - i want to do it earnestly. i want to write things that make you happy. that make people feel heard and seen. what comes after irony has to be positivity.

it was close to my 21st birthday. in 7 years, i would end up writing a book about this relationship, which is hopefully coming out somewhere around May 2024. i come back to this bar scene in my memories a lot. i keep thinking of how pale my ex was. the look that crossed his face. how i looked back at him. how for a moment, both of us couldn't recognize the other person. like the gulf between us was a suddenly wide and cavernous thing. like we were alien to each other. he never took my opinion seriously, and he always seemed surprised whenever his manic-pixie-dream-girl ever broke free of the plot. like in the whole time we were together, i wasn't human enough.

this knowledge: where he said nothing comes after, my only instinct was what comes after is love.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Controversial opinion among Dune book fans maybe, but I loved the changes they made to Chani's character. Making her a fedaykin who is already an experienced fighter before Paul arrives was a brilliant choice. Dune Part Two is a war movie, and this puts her at the center of the action, side by side with Paul, and gives her a much more active role than she has in the book.

We got a hint of where things were going in the beginning of Dune Part One. The first thing we ever know about movie Chani is that she's a fighter. She serves as a voice for the Fremen, telling us the story of their struggle from her point of view. I wrote here about the difference this change makes compared to other adaptations of Dune, what a perspective shift it is to have the world of Arrakis introduced not by an outsider, describing it as a dangerous but valuable colonial prize, but by one of its native inhabitants, who tells us before all else that it's beautiful, her home that she's fighting to liberate. I am so, so glad that the second movie followed up on this characterization.

I never found Chani and Paul's love story in the book particularly convincing, because why would this woman, who already has a prominent and respected place in Fremen society, even give the time of day to her deposed would-be colonizer, let alone fall in love and have children with him? Without a compelling reason for Chani to love Paul, she ends up feeling like a prize to be won, and "indigenous culture personified as a woman to be wooed (or conquered) by the colonizing man" is a trope we've seen and don't need to repeat.

But as soon as you tell me it's a barricade romance I get it. Cool cool cool, I know exactly what this relationship is now and it makes sense. Movie Chani doesn't respect or even particularly like Paul when she first meets him, and she doesn't think he's the fulfillment of any prophecy. She comes to respect him, and eventually love him, through his actions. He's brave--sometimes recklessly so. He fights well. He's willing to stick his neck out on the front lines with the other Fremen fighters. He can (after a little help) hack surviving in the harsh desert environment. He's not too proud to learn from others. He seems to genuinely want to be her equal in a common political struggle. All these qualities make sense as things she values.

Fighting side by side as equals is just about the only way I can see movie Chani falling for Paul. And it fits perfectly with the film's pattern of reversals that Paul's capacity for violence would initially be one of the things Chani likes about him, only for her to be repelled later when she sees what he becomes.

And as for Paul, well, he's had people deferring to him his entire life. Someone who doesn't take any shit from him is probably refreshing. He seems to like people (Duncan, Gurney) who challenge him and engage in a little friendly teasing--and aren't afraid to go a few rounds in the sparring ring.

It's easy to speedrun a romance when you're spending all your time together in mortal danger fighting for a shared political cause. Especially if you then start winning in a war your people have been fighting for decades. Are you kidding me? That is the perfect environment for intense battle camaraderie to turn into romantic love, and lust.

It makes sense that this version of Chani never believes Paul is any kind of messiah. Of course a character like movie Chani wouldn't believe in or trust some outside savior to liberate them. She's been working to liberate her own people for years. The more Paul invokes the messianic myth, the more he starts sounding once again like someone who plans to rule over them, and the more uncomfortable Chani becomes. In this way she becomes a foil to Jessica, the two of them representing the choices Paul is pulled between. It's a great way of externalizing the political and philosophical debates that often happen within characters' heads in the book.

And of course this version of Chani would leave Paul at the end of the film. It's not just the personal, emotional betrayal--although that stings. What common cause does she have with someone who just declared himself emperor and is sending her own people off in a war of conquest against others? Given the important role she plays in Dune Messiah, I am super curious to see how they get her back into the story, but girl was so valid for being willing to just gtfo. Given that she has the last shot of the whole movie, I'm sure she'll be back somehow, and I can't wait to see what they do with her character in any future installments.

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Demon King Headcanons

You have accepted the Demon King’s marriage proposal!

I wasn't planning on writing a second part, but some of you gave me ideas and I decided on short headcanons instead. The image of a big, buff, evil Overlord lovingly doing house chores for their human was too tempting.

Content: gender neutral reader, monster romance

[Main Story]

The proposal, as you quickly found out, came as a surprise to everyone. Not even the King’s loyal butler knew of such intentions; he’d assumed they were finally going to destroy everything and everyone at once. To him, the dramatic scene of you and his Lord enveloped in flames was anything but a romantic confession. It was your final battle. So one might imagine the poor lizard’s confusion when the Demon King returned with you following behind. “S-sir?” He questioned meekly. The armored creature nodded at his servant. “It has been done. We’ll plan the wedding upon our arrival home.” The what? His baffled expression must’ve given him away, because the Demon continued: “What’re you gawking like that for? Didn’t I ask you earlier how humans forge a bond?” The butler stumbled to search for his words, swallowing dryly. “Well y-yes, your Majesty…I just didn’t expect it to be anything more than curiosity.”

The same speechless reaction repeated itself all the way to the Kingdom. Soldiers, diplomats, other monstrous entities of the unknown Land, they all greeted you in disbelief. So much, in fact, that you began to poke fun at their hesitant response: “I am his mortal enemy”, you’d announce with a dramatic bow. “Spouse! We talked about this!” the Demon Lord would quickly correct you, flustered.

Truth be told, you're not quite sure what made you accept this ridiculous offer. Perhaps a mixture of intrigue and disillusionment. The city you've dedicated yourself to stood no longer, burnt to a crisp along with its corruption and crookery. In a way, the monster had unshackled you from a responsibility you no longer wanted to bear. And if that wasn't enough to convince you, well, the sight of the Ruler himself kneeling before you certainly sealed the deal.

Although it may take a while for you to accept the idea that your worst adversary had actually been infatuated with you this entire time. Were there even any hints? During your last battle you nearly died. You'd crawled out of an enormous crater on your fours, bones shattered and ligaments torn. When you pointed this out to your groom-to-be, he stared at you in horror. "I had no idea humans were that fragile. I was trying to adjust my strength so as to not do any harm." You could only nod, patting away the sweat beads forming on your forehead. Uh huh. Maybe it's better you didn't experience his full range of attacks.

Ever since the devastating revelation, he's been extra careful when handling you. Sometimes he'll awkwardly hover his large hands above you, with a concentrated frown on his face. "What the hell are you doing?" you ask, eyeing him suspiciously. "I'm trying to be gentle." he'll answer. "You're not even touching me." Fair point, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

The Demon King will often ask you about customs from your world as a way to make you comfortable, just in case you get struck by the occasional homesickness. His Realm is very different from what you're used to, after all. Lamentably, his own years spent in the human world were not too fruitful from a cultural point of view. He was either busy stalking you or devouring the souls of the innocent. Now that he has nothing else to worry about, he will gladly listen and even do his best to actively participate.

You wake up shrouded in thick smoke. Overwhelmed by heavy déjà vu, you rush down the grand stairs, searching for the source of the fire. Are you being attacked? Enemies of the Demon King? You elbow yourself against the kitchen door, similar to when you left your home to find the city ablaze. The Demon Lord turns to face you, visibly overwhelmed and exhausted. You gawk at the scene unfolding before you and remember to close your mouth, mainly out of politeness. "It's too small. I'm afraid I cannot use it", he reveals timidly, holding a human spatula between his fingers to showcase the impractical size difference. You glance at the disastrous attempt behind him and manage to deduce he'd been trying to make breakfast. In an unspoken agreement, he steps back and allows you to take over.

"I'm surprised you let him burn down the kitchen", you mention to the butler once you get a moment to yourself. The scaly servant sighs, and theatrically lifts his clawed hands in hopelessness. "Pointless to argue with him when he's like this, (Y/N). In my entire life serving the Family, I've never witnessed a more stubborn leader." He points to the lavish portraits adorning the walls with a faint smile. "And, to put it frankly, he's obsessed with you. I've never seen him in a more deplorable state. Marrying a human?! The shame, the outrage!” he cries out. “No offense intended to you, of course. You must understand." You hum in agreement, a tad uncomfortable, yet sympathetic. "M-maybe it'll tone down after the wedding?" you suggest as encouragement. "Oh, no, I suspect it will only get worse", he bemoans in return. Then, he promptly straightens his back and resumes his duties.

You go on your own way, not wanting to burden the lizard in his work. As you cross the hallway, you find the Demon King himself scanning each room, somewhat agitated. He notices you and his features soften. "I was wondering where you'd vanished." You approach him with the words of the butler still ringing in your ears.

[yieldtotemptation]

CRASH ft. Wonyoung

wonyoung x male reader smut

11k words

When she wanted to be (and it was often), Jang Wonyoung could be a real fucking bitch.

If you were to ask her, she’d probably say the same about you.

And yet, that doesn’t stop her from calling you in the middle of the night, slurring about some shit with her manager, telling (not asking) you to come pick her up.

You’re inclined to recommend that she fuck off and find her own way home.

But of course, you don’t. (You never do).

-

“Sorry boys, my ride’s here!”

There’s a collective groan of disappointment that ripples through the crowd that’s formed up behind Wonyoung; each face falling one after another as they realise that ultimately none of them get to be the lucky suitor that takes her home.

Moths around a flame, unable to do anything but watch as she sashays through the neon haze towards your car. Hips sway with a drunken grace, a dangerously short skirt dances around her thighs, high heels strapped to her feet make her legs seem endless.

It’s a view, that’s for sure.

It probably makes the pain of rejection a little more bearable, makes them forget that they’re being abandoned on the sidewalk with all the rest of the has-beens and ‘who the fuck were you again?’

Her ‘co-workers’, technically. Some you recognise, most you don’t. But they’re all basically the same insecure douchebag in a different shade of overpriced streetwear.

You’d probably be doing the world a public service if you were to steer your car onto the pavement and run them all down.

It’s an idea you entertain a little. Doing it would really ruin her night.

That’d almost make it worth the dent it would put in your brand-new car.

Still, you can’t completely blame the gaggle of potential casualties, not really.

It’s Wonyoung.

Girls like her are the reason they invented the word ’idol’ in the first place, because calling her ’pretty’ or ’hot’ is like calling the Mona Lisa ‘a nice portrait’.

It doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Like the starlet she is, Wonyoung waits until she’s at your car to make her grand exit. A turn to her adorers and a final goodbye: a casual flick of her wrist, a sweet, flirty smile and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it wink that’ll have them deep in their group chats ranting about how they definitely had a moment with the Jang Wonyoung.

You just roll your eyes. You’ve seen that wink a hundred times.

You know exactly how much it’s worth.

After all, it’s your car that she’s climbing into, slamming the door behind her like it’s her name on the registration; leaving behind her new fan club with nothing but their dicks in their hands and their heads swimming with fantasies of what totally could have happened.

You’re no better though, are you? The second she slides into the passenger seat, you’re judging the shortness of her skirt, eyes greedily tracing the length of her thighs, all the way up to a hint of lace that’s destined to be ruined later.

You’re not subtle. And in that outfit, she’s not either.

“What took you so long? I swear to God I’m going to punch the next guy that asks me ‘how much of a baddie I really am’.”

No thank yous, no pleasantries, not even a look in your direction.

To think that you used to be impressed by how quickly she could drop the act: gone is the sugary sweetness that she’d fooled those simps with back at the club; the pretty, airheaded, ‘lucky Vicky’. As fake and useless as the glasses resting on the bridge of her perfectly shaped nose.

Next to you is the real Wonyoung, the one that you’ve become intimately familiar with: intimidatingly smart, unfathomably hot, and all too aware of how dangerous a woman those two traits made her.

“Why is this car black? I thought I told you to get the red?”

You glare at her. The gall on this woman.

“What are you waiting for? Drive.”

Barely a minute in and she’s setting a personal best record for time taken to piss you off; impatiently kicking off her heels, tossing them over her shoulder and into the back seat (of again: your car, not hers).

You can be just as childish: you slam your foot down, pedal to the floor, wheels screeching, and you peel off into the night. The acceleration forces Wonyoung back into her seat, scrambling for her seat belt, yelling, “What the fuck?”

Now she’s looking at you. You’re casual, offering, “Oh, sorry, did I scare the passenger princess?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Yeah, and you’re welcome,” you grumble, slowing to a more reasonable (legal) speed as you turn onto the highway. “Remind me, when was it that I started operating a taxi service for wasted idols?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” She rolls her eyes, puts her hands together, bows her head down low. Rich, coming from someone who’s never had to genuinely apologise for anything in her life. “Didn’t realise washed-up trainees had such precious schedules.”

It’s a low blow, her go-to insult for you. Nothing you’re not used to; it’s been years of this, after all.

Years of Wonyoung, the living reminder of your biggest failure, making your life her personal pet project. Years of her smugness, of her flaunting her success in your face, of her demanding more from you, demanding better.

Years of you pushing back, pushing her, and somehow always ending up in the same place, the same bed, the same tangled mess of sweat and spite.

To think it all started when you saw her across that shitty practice room and one of you (you forget who, though it was probably her) said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and it was pure hate at first sight.

“Couldn’t get literally anyone else? Don’t you have friends?” You throw the question out there, keeping your eyes on the road, and not down at her legs, crossing and uncrossing, teasing and taunting.  It’s a herculean task—she’s practically ninety percent leg anyway; so fucking easy to admire, so right wrapped around your waist.

“Trust me, I tried. None of the girls have their license, I definitely can’t call someone from the company, and the last time I tried to get a taxi the fucker recognised me and threatened to leak my address. So that leaves me with you,” Wonyoung sighs. “The last resort.”

“Wow, what an honour,” is your reply. You’re still not looking—not sneaking glances at her stomach, as she stretches in your passenger seat.

As an exercise, you pretend she doesn’t exist. Pretend that the hem of her shirt isn’t rising up, peeling back to grace you with a glimpse of her midriff, that waist, her abs tight and exerted after a night spent out on a dance floor.

It nearly works—for a second, you forget you’re supposed to be annoyed at her.

Right until Wonyoung laughs. Not that fake, high-pitched giggle that she knows you find so grating. No, this has an edge to it, a bite that she reserves just for you. “Don’t pretend like you weren’t waiting for me to call. Or were you in the middle of jerking it to my fancams again?”

There’s the memory, the one loss in territory you haven’t quite recovered from. (A reminder: be less blasé about what you choose to name your saved playlists.)

You fire back with, “Yujin’s actually, but nice try.”

“Whatever, pervert.” Your attempt at a riposte doesn’t work, it’s dismissed, leaving Wonyoung satisfied that she’s won this exchange.

As for her prize, she does what she always does—gets touchy with your property.

She busies herself, fiddling with the touchscreen on your dashboard—’What the fuck is this playlist?’ and 'Why do you listen to this group? You know all those girls are absolute bitches, right?’.

“Stop that.” You reach over to slap her wrist before she starts getting too ambitious and messes with the temperature controls again.

"Hey!” Wonyoung yelps, recoiling, and then pauses. You turn to her, see her annoyingly flawless features scrunch up in disgust as she asks, “What’s that smell?”

You curse under your breath as you realise what’s coming. Wonyoung’s frustratingly sensitive when it comes to scents; she’s got a nose like a bloodhound—and a penchant for sticking it in the parts of your life she doesn’t belong.

She’s gone as far as 'gifting’ you every perfume you’ve owned, every body wash, every shampoo, even your fucking laundry detergent.

Just another way she’s tried to take over your life.

You give your own car a whiff, if only to see if this is just another case of Wonyoung being a brat.

It doesn’t smell bad at all.

In fact, it smells sweet. Too sweet.

“Ew, seriously, what is that? Is that you?”

You’re too slow—she’s got your forearm now. For someone that looks so delicate she’s got a grip like a vice. She brings your wrist up to her nose, sniffing, making her way higher up your arm.

“Let it go, Wonyoung.”

She’s not listening at all, unbuckling her seat belt, leaning over the console, pulling herself closer to you, pushing her body against yours. Whatever little respect Wonyoung had for your personal space is gone; her nose is on your neck, her breath hot against your skin.

“It smells like…” She pauses, getting even closer, taking a deep inhale as she tries to place the fragrance. “Why do you smell like a whore?”

Her voice is low, coloured with a barely noticeable slur. You can feel it: the powder keg about to explode, Wonyoung getting ready to go from zero to a hundred. So, you deflect, “Sure you’re not smelling yourself?”

“Fuck you, I don’t use that cheap shit,” she snaps. “You fucked someone tonight, didn’t you?”

You don’t reply. It’s not like you owe her one, anyway—she’s not your girlfriend, you’re not her boyfriend, you two are…

Rivals, mortal enemies, fuck-buddies, friends-with-benefits (except without the whole friendship part).

(Take your pick, call it whatever you want, or in Wonyoung’s case: don’t call it anything at all.)

“Who—who was it this time?” Wonyoung’s fingers tighten around your arm, and there’s that spark in her eyes.

Every chance she gets, she’ll insist she gives so few fucks about your personal life, but one mention of another woman and she’s diving right in the mud, for once not hiding the fact that she may actually give a shit about you.

It’s probably why you do it.

“Who’s the slut dumb enough to spread her legs for you?”

Now it’s your turn to avoid her gaze, to pretend that having her this close isn’t doing wild things to your heartrate. You make an unforced error: “None of your business.”

“So you did fuck someone.” Her hand moves down your arm, dragging her fake acrylics across your skin until they find purchase in your thigh, digging in hard enough to make you flinch. “You fucked someone I know didn’t you. Who…” She’s reading you, trying to find the answer somewhere in the stress lines of your face. “Hyewon. Yena. Yuri. I swear if it was fucking Eunbi, I’m going to—”

“Going to what?” You challenge. You know this game. You’ve played it before—every damn time she gets like this (and you know where it leads). “Going to lie to me about your own personal survival show back there?”

Wonyoung scoffs. It’s a throaty sound that seems almost foreign coming from her—too impolite, too uncouth for the elegant, refined image she’s painstakingly cultivated. But she makes it anyway, because she’s had a few too many drinks and you’re the only one who’s around to see her like this—raw, unfiltered. “Those losers? I’m not like you, bringing home every pair of tits that strokes your ego.”

“Good to know that I’m special then,” you smirk, but she’s not smiling back.

No, she’s just looking at you, in that annoying, Wonyoung way. It’s those big, doe eyes of hers that you’ve seen do so much damage before—make men bend over backwards, light themselves on fire just to get her to look their way. “You wish.”

You push on, push her just a little bit. “Drop the act, Wony. I wasn’t your last resort—I’m the only one you even considered. You needed your daddy—isn’t that what you were calling me before?”

“I never said that.”

“Wony—”

“And if I did, I’ll never say it again,” she declares, before emphasising. “Never. Again.”

But you know her better than that. You know her lies just as well as she knows yours; it’s in the quickness of her response, the defensiveness—the vulnerability.

“I doubt that,” you say, making the most of the tiny crack in Wonyoung’s armour. “I remember you screaming it. Had you cumming like a fountain—ruined a perfectly good set of sheets, you know?”

“You’re disgusting,” she hisses, but she’s got the same memories in her head—that same night, so similar to this one (so similar to every night before).

The fighting, the fucking, the endless cycle of pushing each other’s button until one of you snaps.

“And what about you? You got here awfully quick for two in the morning,” she says. Her hand’s still on your thigh, less nails, more fingertips now, tracing patterns through the denim of your jeans. “Couldn’t bear the thought of me with someone else, could you? Lie to me—tell me that you weren’t waiting to get your hands on me again.”

Your denial dies before it even makes it past your lips—your own body turns traitor on you, provoked by her hand rising higher. There’s a smile as Wonyoung finds what she was looking for, the proof in the stretching of your jeans, the outline of your cock begging for more of her attention.

“At least this part of you is honest,” she muses, fingers dancing around your growing stiffness.

You grit your teeth, doing your best to keep the car steady, managing to grind out, “Please. It’s like you said, any decent pair of tits does it for me. Even your tiny ones get the job done.”

Her hand freezes on your thigh—you’ve hit a nerve, hit that dark part of her that’s so desperate for validation. “You think you can replace me? Find someone else to fill your sad, lonely nights?”

She’s closer now, her breath against your neck, her fingers drumming a beat right over where the head of your cock is. It’s a heady feeling, one that you hate and crave all at once.

“Was she even good?”

You know what she’s really asking: Was she better than me?

And you know the answer: How could anyone be?

But you don’t say that. You don’t need to. Instead, you reply, “It’s not a competition.”

“Everything’s a competition.”

Wonyoung’s hand relaxes, nails retreating from your thigh, leaving you flustered and fighting against the constraints of your own jeans. She settles back into her seat, having done her damage.

And for a moment, silence reigns inside your car, allowing you to actually focus on the road. Not that it really matters, you know the route to her apartment by heart—you could drive it blindfolded if need be. It’s just a welcome distraction to avoid dealing with the state she’s left you in.

The quiet survives a beat, two, and then Wonyoung’s squirming, shifting in the passenger seat.

And then she does it again.

And again.

You should keep your eyes ahead—you need to keep your eyes ahead.

You know exactly what you’re going to find if you look over at her.

That’s the problem with you and Wonyoung. You know each other too well. Your likes, your dislikes. What gets you off. What makes you mad.

What drives you fucking wild.

And yet, because you’re a sucker for punishment, you still risk a glance, and see Wonyoung, leaning back in her seat, her hand sliding up her own thigh, so casually drifting up her soft, bare skin, higher and higher.

The skirt rises, inch by torturous inch, and it’s those panties—the same set that was around her ankles the last time you had her bent over your couch, swearing she’d hate you forever. The same set that’s probably already soaked, just waiting for you to rip them off again.

You have to tell her to stop, to keep her hands to herself, to not do this to you, not now. Not while you’re trying to keep you both on the fucking road. But your mouth is dry, and all you can manage is a choked, “Wonyoung—”

Her fingers have slid past the hem of her skirt, now playing with the lace that’s the only barrier between her and open air. She’s biting into the plumpness of her bottom lip, staring at you, expecting your full attention, even now. There’s no subtlety with her, there never is, it’s one of the few things Wonyoung’s bad at.

You swallow hard, finding your voice. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Making myself comfortable,” she says, a little breathy now, as her fingers slip under the lace. “You got a problem with it?”

There’s the flash of skin, a gasp as her fingers find purchase between her folds. She’s so wet that you can hear it—the slickness of her arousal, the quiet sound of fabric sliding against her skin.

You’re straining, gripping the steering wheel so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t snap in two. Her hand’s dipping lower, her finger sliding inside herself; not deep, not yet, just teasing. Enough to make you want to pull over, to grab her and throw her on the hood of your car, to show her exactly why you’re the only she thinks about when she’s lonely and desperate.

But you don’t, despite the way your body is begging for you to do something, anything, to ease the ache in your cock.

Because if you stop, it’s over. You know how this ends—or rather, you know how she’ll want it to end. She’ll want you to apologise for even being in the proximity of another woman, she’ll want you to beg for her forgiveness so that she might bestow upon you the privilege of touching her again.

If you’re lucky, she just might let you. But only if you play her games.

So you drive faster.

You push the speed limit, weaving through the mostly empty streets.  You’re racing to a finish line, except all that’s waiting at the end of it is the taste of Wonyoung on your tongue, the feeling of her wrapped around you, the sweet victory of making her scream.

It’s hell—ignoring the sound of her pleasure, the wetness of her fingers working in and out of herself. There’s glimpses of her in the corner of your eye, she’s still watching you. She’s enjoying this, loving every second of it.

“What’s wrong?” She asks, oh-so-innocently, even though she doesn’t expect an answer—she just likes to hear her own voice. “Getting distracted? It’s a long, long way back to my place. No one can blame you if you need to give up and pull over.” 

Wonyoung’s getting bolder now, pulling her skirt up to her waist, parting her legs for you, so you can see her hand moving faster, her hips rising to meet her own touch. So you can hear her, hear the fucking sound of each stroke of her fingers inside her, punctuated each time by a wet slap of her palm against her cunt, reverberating through the car, taunting you.

“You want it, don’t you?” She throws the question out so casually, like of course it’s only natural for her to be fingering herself in your car, of course she should be doing everything in her power to make you want to drive into a fucking wall. “I can tell, you’re so desperate to touch me. Definitely going to die if you don’t fuck me soon. Maybe even right here, right now?”

Your foot slips and the car swerves a little—it’s not much, but it’s enough to let her know that you’re losing focus, that she’s winning.

“Careful,” she laughs. “You wouldn’t want to crash before we get to the fun part.”

“You can’t wait until we get back to your place?” You finally ask, the question burning in your throat.

“No. You need to be reminded that you’re-ah-mine,” comes Wonyoung’s answer. “You’re going to fuck me anyway, so why not-mmph-why not save us both the trouble and get started on my own?”

“You don’t own me, Wonyoung.”

To that, Wonyoung raises a carefully sculpted eyebrow.

It’s not even worth a proper reply. Without a word, Wonyoung reclines back into her seat and snaps open the buttons of her shirt, nonchalantly revealing the swell of her breasts, the darkened peaks of her nipples.

No bra—they’re just there. Right there, in your face—those tiny, round, perky tits that you’ve had in your hands, that you’ve had between your teeth, that you’ve covered with your cum more times than you can count.

She’s not shy about it—never has been—arching her back, pushing her breasts out even further. It’s the confidence from knowing every other idol (hell, every other woman in the world) would sell their soul to have a body like hers. So why the fuck not flaunt it?

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s true,” she says, reaching up to her chest. A palm finds her tits, pinching and rolling the sensitive nubs, making them nice and red and swollen for you.

She’s moving faster now, grinding down on her own hand, teeth sinking down into her bottom lip so deep you’re surprised she hasn’t drawn blood. Her breaths are getting shorter and shorter, she’s so close, she’s so fucking turned on, she’s so hot it hurts.

Her eyes remain fixed on you; seeing you struggle only makes her hotter, spurs her to circle her clit faster. She’s drinking you in—the tightness of your jaw, the way your eyes can’t decide whether to keep on the road or on her, the way you swallow, trying (and failing) to keep it together.

The worst part of it all is this wicked smile that’s settled on her lips; thoughts of wiping it off her face with your cock flash through your mind. She’s just so fucking smug about it, so sure of herself.

And maybe she should be.

“Admit it,” Wonyoung purrs. “Admit that you need me.”

“Why would I? You’re just a convenient hole to fill.” It’s not true, of course. You’ve never believed it; none of the hundred times you’ve said it to her before—and she’s never once been fooled.

Wonyoung is back in your ear, “You’re a bad liar.”

Her hand’s returned to your thigh, teasing closer and closer to where you really want it to be. You grunt a weak, “Wonyoung, if you think that’s going to work—”

But she doesn’t listen (she never does).

She reaches for the bulge in your pants, far too quick for you to stop her from wrapping her fingers around you, from taking a hold of you and squeezing.

“See?” She whispers, thick with satisfaction, feeling you throb in her grip. “You’re already about to burst. You can’t resist me. No one can.”

You’re not backing down. You’ve got your own pride to think of, after all. “Save it for your fan club.”

Wonyoung’s never been one to take no for an answer. Her hand moves with purpose, sliding over your zipper and giving it a forceful tug. The sound rings through the car, and it’s an out of body experience; it’s all in slow motion as she pulls out your hard, aching cock.

Fuck.

“Last chance to pull over.” Wonyoung takes a hold of you, fingers curling around your cock with a firm grip that leaves no room for doubt—she’s not letting go until she gets what she wants.  “Who knows what will happen if you keep driving like this. Wouldn’t want to ruin these expensive leather seats with your cum, now would we?”

“Not a fucking chance.”

“Your funeral,” she answers, her smile widening into a full-blown grin as she starts to move, stroking you, her hand gliding up and down your shaft with familiar ease. “Or ours, I guess.”

She’s not making it easy—there’s the slow, deliberate pumps, her thumb circling the head, her fingers teasing the sensitive skin. It’s so natural for her, so goddamn good. 

“Are you sure you can handle this?” Wonyoung’s question hangs in the air, joining the sound of her fist pumping your cock, the squish of her own fingers plunging in and out of her cunt. It’s a taunting metronome, the more you try to ignore her, the tighter she squeezes, the fastest she strokes you, the louder she moans in your ear. “Are you sure you can handle me?”

“I’ve done it before and I can do it again,” you grit out. “You’re going to be the one begging for it in the end. Like always.”

She huffs, and you’ve found your mark. “Oh, really? You think you’re so much better than me? You think you can just ignore me like that?”

“Better than you? Easily,” you answer. “You’re just a pretty face and a pair of legs that can’t keep itself shut.”

That makes her stroke you harder, tighter now, firmer, she’s trying to make this hurt. “Is that what you tell yourself?”

“What gives you the impression I even think about you at all?”

“Oh, I know it keeps you up at night—thinking about me, wondering if I’m thinking about you, wondering if any other slut can make you feel the way I do,” Wonyoung’s leaning on you, chin propped up on your shoulder, a devil in your ear. “You hate it, don’t you? You hate that it’s my cunt that you can’t get out of your head, that it’s my pretty lips that you need so badly around your cock.”

"Are you sure you’re not just projecting, Wony?” You ask, glancing down to her hand between her legs, her fingers deep in her folds, her cunt dripping with juices and making a small puddle beneath her. “Look at how wet you are at just the thought of having my cock back between your pretty lips again.”

“Fuck you.” Wonyoung’s panting, short harsh breaths. There’s no conviction in her voice, no denial to be found—this dance of spite and lust has her so fucking heated. All of it—the hate, the competition, the push and pull: it’s all just foreplay. “You’re nothing to me. Nothing but a back-up plan, a toy I play with when I’m bored.”

“Now who’s a bad liar.”

“Go fuck your—”

You don’t let her finish her insult. You’re tired of the back and forth, the games, the fucking power plays. You take your hand off the steering wheel, grabbing her by the hair, wrenching her head up to meet your eyes.

“What the fuck do you think you’re—” Wonyoung’s mistake is opening her mouth in protest—you push her face down onto your cock; not giving her a chance to argue, not giving her a chance to do anything but suck you dry like the skinny little slut she is.

She chokes, hacks a cough as you plunge your cock down her throat, her nose meeting your waist, and it nearly has you emptying into her mouth then and there.

Turns out, she’s right.

You do need this. Need to feel her perfect, pouty lips on you again, her teeth grazing against your skin, her tongue giving in and worshipping you like she’s never done with anyone else.

You keep a hand wrapped up in a fistful of her hair, but you don’t even need to hold her down—she doesn’t fight you, doesn’t even make the slightest noise of protest. No, she just takes it; never mind how much her eyes water, her mouth drools.

“Fuck,” you’re moaning before you can think better of it, and just like that, you’re conceding the smallest victory to her.

And it makes her smile around your cock.

You grunt in response; buck your hips, feed her your cock, make her gag (make her regret it).

You don’t ease up, because if there’s one thing you know about Wonyoung (one thing you know about fucking Wonyoung), it’s that the most insulting thing you can do to her is to take it easy on her.

Just fuck her face and behold the sight of Wonyoung taking your cock. God, her pretty lips wrapped around you, her throat bulging at your length, her teary eyes staring up at you with a mix of defiance and something that’s eerily close to adoration.

It almost makes you forget that you’re supposed to be driving, and it takes a honk from a car behind you and a smile and a curt nod from Wonyoung to remind you of the world rushing by outside.

You pull your eyes back to the road, both hands on the steering wheel to right the car back on track, barely escaping death by deepthroat.

Wonyoung laughs around your cock, a muffled sound that sends vibrations up your shaft. You try to ignore it, but she’s already seizing the opportunity, taking full advantage of the distraction to push down on her own accord, to take you deep—to start properly sucking.

You swerve again.

Her mouth is absolute heaven, pure and simple—she’s a fucking master at this. Your cock’s been in her mouth so many times before that she could probably write an instruction manual on exactly how to make you come unglued.

Too much all at once—you’re groaning now, unable to help it. She’s not even trying that hard; just taking your cock between her lips, sliding it all the way down her throat, a few gentle licks here, a swirl of her tongue there, but it’s more than enough. It’s what keeps you coming back. No one else feels like this—no one else has mapped out your cock like she has—every inch, every vein.

It’s the rhythm that she’s got down to a science: how fast to take you, how much pressure to apply, when to break from her pace to keep you teetering on the edge.

You can feel her eyes on you, scanning you for any sign of weakness—this is precisely where she wants to be. Like this was her decision—like everything leading up to this was part of some messed up strategy to provoke you, to make sure that your cock ended up in her mouth.

You don’t get a chance to dwell on that thought, not when Wonyoung’s teeth is at the base of your cock, her cheeks hollowed out, her tongue doing these little flicks that make your toes curl.

And there’s the question in her eyes: ’is that all you got?’.

Fuck it—risk taking your hand off the steering wheel, it belongs in her silky, dark hair. Make her eyes widen, make her take you deeper, kiss the back of her throat with the tip of your cock, force these divine fucking sounds.

The noises when she gags around you, when the spit is hacked up and drooled down your cock; she’s so sloppy, so filthy.  

And she takes it, takes all of it.

Push her down before pulling her up by the hair, choke her, gag her, have her slobber all over your cock, make her feel you.

Wonyoung takes and takes and takes.

It’s fucked up how you’re treating her (how she’s letting you treat her); she’s an idol for fucks sake. But that’s the last concern you have on your mind—all you can focus on is how fucking good it feels to do this to her, to have her fighting for air around your cock, fighting to keep her eyes on you as you fill them with tears.

Wonyoung’s not giving up though—she’s timing it, timing you. When to relax her throat to take you deep. When to suction her lips. Where to dart her tongue to find that sensitive spot along your shaft.

She’s battling back, in her own way, just as determined as you are to not lose this war of wills. But in the end, you’re the one in the driver’s seat.

“Mmmph,” she’s the one moaning now, moaning around your cock. Shivering in your lap, body jerking and trembling; you can tell her fingers are still buried in her cunt, playing with herself.

She’s so fucking shameless, so fucking pretty, even like this—cheeks flushed, makeup smeared, eyes watering.

You want to kiss her, but that would mean separating her lips from your cock. You want to tell her how much you hate her, but the words won’t come out—they’re stuck in your throat, lodged between your grinding teeth.

“Wait—fuck.” You realise you’ve missed your turn, a split second too late. You jerk the steering wheel, needing both hands as you pull a sharp U-turn. The tires squeal as you try to correct your error, Wonyoung’s mouth around your dick scrambling your brains.

She pulls her lips off from your cock with a hollow ‘pop’. “I thought you could handle me?”

You try to reply—try to form a single coherent thought—but the chance slips by as Wonyoung’s back on the offense, back throating your cock so quickly that your vision swims.

A deep breath is what you need to keep it together. You’re barely thinking straight, holding onto the steering wheel for dear life, doing everything you can to keep yourself from giving up (giving in to Wonyoung’s mouth).

But it’s hard. So fucking hard.

You’ve blown far past any normal speed limit, trying to keep from spinning out with every one of her enthusiastic bobs—it’s by some divine benevolence the car hasn’t completely flipped over by now.

Wonyoung’s relentless, her mouth’s a fucking black hole, sucking you in, stealing every thought from your mind until there’s nothing rattling around your skull but the feel of her wet, warm lips on your cock, and the obscene sounds of her fingers sawing in and out of her pussy, fucking herself.

You’re almost there, and Wonyoung knows it. You can feel it in the suction of her lips, in how hard she’s working you over. It’s the sweetest kind of torture—knowing that she’s got you right where she wants you, that she’s got you on the edge and you can’t do anything about it.

You’re not going to last much longer.

Neither is she.

So you drive. You drive like your life depends on it, because maybe it does. Maybe the only thing keeping you sane is the promise of your eventual release, of filling her mouth with her cum, of pulling her onto your lap and fucking her cunt raw until she screams your name.

“Come on, you can do it,” she’s taunting you now, lathering your cock with just her tongue, dragging it along your length, licking you all the way from your balls to your head. She’s giggling as she steals the pre-cum from your tip, the fucking bitch—like she’s got all the power in the world.

You can see her apartment building in the distance, a beacon of light in the darkness.

You’re almost there.

You reach for the garage remote, mashing the button as you get closer and closer (you’re going to break it). The gate sluggishly opens, and you make a sharp turn to swerve into the dimly lit building, not bothering to slow down.

You can’t, not when Wonyoung’s balancing your cock on her tongue, her hand now squeezing at your base, stroking so fast, so erratic, determined to have you cum in her mouth as soon as fucking possible.

“You’re going to cum for me, aren’t you?” she asks, expectantly. “Cover me in it, give me what I deserve—show me how much you need me.”

The car’s screeching to the closest parking space, the sound echoing through the garage, as you skid between parallel white lines.

You’re cumming before the car’s even completely stopped.

It’s explosive; a white-hot heat searing through your veins, a roar in your ears as you shower Wonyoung’s perfect face with ropes of cum. She’s still jerking you off with her hand, her mouth hovering around the head of your cock, slurping up every drop she can get.

“All mine,” she chants, greedy for it. You pulse in her hand, your cum spurting over her cheekbones, across her nose, painting over that tiny dark freckle above the corner of her mouth.

She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even blink; she’s a statue, a goddess demanding her sacrifice. Her grip is ironclad, stroking you through your orgasm, not stopping until you’re drained, until your cock is twitching in her hand and there’s nothing left but a sticky mess plastered across her big, wide grin.

You feel the last of your orgasm pulse out of you, dripping down her dainty fingers. She licks her lips, smearing your cum across her cheek with her thumb before she sits up straight, basking in her victory.

“Fuck, Wonyoung,” you manage to get out, your chest heaving, your hand finally loosening its grip on the steering wheel.

“Mm-hmm,” she nods, not looking away from you, not breaking the eye contact that’s holding you in place. “I knew you couldn’t resist me.”

She’s not done yet—she still has to take her victory lap.

Wonyoung pulls herself off you, giving the tip of your cock a parting kiss as she sits back in her seat. She lifts her legs up—those endless stretches of porcelain skin—one after another, slow, dramatic, placing her bare feet on the dashboard.

Her skirt rides up, and with a stretch she drags her panties up her thighs, along her calves, and off her feet; the lace is soaked with her juices, leaving a trail of stickiness as she reveals herself to you.

The panties disappear somewhere into the backseat of your car, another spoil of war, and she spreads her legs wide, so wide, making sure you have a perfect view of her gleaming cunt. You can see her clit, peeking out from between her folds, and it’s all you can do to keep your hand from reaching over and taking over.

But this is her show, isn’t it? This is all for her, all about her getting off. And she’s fucking drowning in it—fingers in her cunt again almost immediately, so wet, so hot, so shameless in your car, so confident in her ability to get what she wants from you.

Her hips rock up and down, she’s fucking herself in front of you—for you. She’s daring you to look away, challenging you to deny how fucking hot she is.

You can’t.

“I’m going to cum now.” It’s a low hush, confident. “Watch me. Don’t move. Just fucking watch me.”

Wonyoung’s eyes are crystal clear, staring deep into you with the look of a girl who’s gotten everything she’s ever wanted in life. It’s that look she gets right before she shatters, and you know she’s there—right fucking there.

Her other hand reaches up, cradling your cheek, needing some connection, needing you to be with her. It’s not enough to just simply cum, she needs you to see it, to be a part of it in some twisted way.

“Just look at you,” Wonyoung says, like she’s not the one that’s covered in your cum, that’s not bucking her hips into her hand, working herself into a frenzy, like she’s trying to tear herself apart. “You can’t keep your eyes off me, can you?”

And she’s right—you hate her, you love her, you want to fuck her, you want to strangle her—it’s all a jumble of emotions in your head.

“That’s it—keep looking at me—don’t fucking take your eyes off me—fuck—yes—I’m going to—”

The only warning you get is a strangled gasp as Wonyoung cums, feeling it through her entire body, forcing her to keel over by just the force of it, making her fall into you.

Her hand on your cheek drags down to wrap around your neck, anchoring herself to you, pulling herself closer so she can smash her mouth against yours.

She’s kissing you, really kissing you, mouth open and hungry, all teeth and tongue, sloppy and wet. She’s marking her territory now, claiming you as she cums, and fuck, you can still taste yourself on her lips—salty and bitter.

Wonyoung’s hand is still working her clit, prolonging her bliss, and then she’s climbing on top of you, straddling you, grinding down on your half-hard cock as she rides out the last of her orgasm.

Her thighs are sticky with her juices, her skirt riding up so high that you can see the bare, plump skin of her ass, and you’re fighting the urge to just push it aside and plunge your cock inside her—

But she’s not giving you that satisfaction—not yet.

Her climax dies right on top of you—her hips rolling on her fingers, her body living and dying on the last embers of pleasure.

Finally, Wonyoung stops, collapsing against your chest, and you let out a deep sigh, feeling the weight of her body pressing down on you. She’s a mess, a fucking disaster, and you hold her tight, your arms around her impossibly tiny waist, your cock coming back to life between her thighs.

It’s intimate, almost kind of romantic in a way that’s entirely fucked up, considering, well everything. You’re both a mess of cum and sweat, panting against each other, intertwined together in the driver’s seat of your car, the garage lights flickering overhead like some kind of sick mood lighting.

Wonyoung laughs.

“You’re all sticky.” She leans back, taking her finger and swiping it across your cheek, coming away with a glistening strand of your own cum, a rope that must have strayed from her face and onto yours.

There’s a glint in her eyes, a dirty little idea, and before you can even react, she’s leaning in again, her tongue tracing the line of your jaw, collecting the rogue drops of you.

She rolls her hips down and over you as she does it, stirring your cock back to attention, because apparently she’s not done with you yet.

“You’re a fucking bitch, Wonyoung,” you reply, but there’s no venom behind it. You’re just stating a fact: the sky is blue, the sun rises in the east, and Wonyoung is a bitch.

It’s just the way she is.

You can feel her smirking against your neck, you can picture the look on her face—like she’s already won. It’s infuriating, really, and you’ve got to even the score.

“What are you going to do, take me upstairs and punish me?”

“No,” you say, the word sticking in your throat like it’s made of honey. “Not upstairs.”

“Here?” Wonyoung looks around your car, doing a terrible job of feigning shock (as if she doesn’t know what you’re about to do to her). Yes, she’s a horrendous actress, but it would take an Oscar worthy performance to mask the heat radiating from her thighs, her cunt dripping down onto your lap. “What makes you think I’d let you?”

“What makes you think you have a choice?”  

A press of a button has your seat sliding back, giving you just enough room to lift Wonyoung up, hoisting her above you like she’s a trophy you just won. Congratulations, here’s your Grand Prize—Wonyoung’s tight body, yours for the night (yours for every night).

She can’t do anything but be held by you, have her hips positioned, her cunt aligned with your cock—in your hands, at your mercy, under your control.

“Wait, wait—fuck—”

And then you slam into her.

“Daddy!”

That word. That filthy, devastating word is fucked out of her mouth, a gasping scream as you bury yourself deep into her.

You’d do anything to hear it again.

You don’t bother with gentleness or foreplay—this isn’t a romantic reunion after a long day apart. It’s your hands on her narrow hips; hers doing its best to brace herself on the roof of the car, the window, anywhere she can get a grip.

“Say it again,” you grunt, pulling her back down on you, so hard that she bounces back up, only to be met by another thrust.

“Fuck you,” she spits out, but she’s moaning with every thrust, tightening around you each time, her body betraying her words.

“Fuck you, who?” You’re laughing now, the sound thick and low in your throat as you watch her squirm in your grasp. “You’re going to need to be more specific than that, baby.”

“You know who,” she says, her eyes flying open, glaring at you as she catches her breath. “You always know who.”

“Then say it.”

“Fuck you, daddy.”

“That’s fucking right.”

Her legs are trembling around your waist as you drive into her, her nails digging into the threads of your shirt. She’s begging you for more—harder, faster, deeper—because that’s what she wants from you, that’s what she needs from you. It’s always been like this—no soft embraces, no tender kisses. Just more, more, more.

You wrap your hand around her throat, not enough to cut off her air, just enough to remind her who’s in charge, who’s giving it to her. You lean in, so close her eyes cross, and whisper in her ear, “This is all you’re good for, you know that?”

Wonyoung’s response is to tense her muscles, clench her cunt around you, buck her hips to slap her ass against your thighs. Another battleground in your endless fight for dominance. Fighting for control, trying to dictate the pace, to set the rhythm, to be the one doing the fucking and not the one getting fucked.

And fuck, she’s tight.

Her cunt, her waist, her body. God, it’s like she was built for this.

Designed to fit perfectly in the palm of your hand, to be filled by your cock, to have her skirt hiked up to her waist like a flag of surrender. You’ve got her right where you want her, where she’s always been, where she always will be.

“I fucking hate how good you are at this,” she gasps, the confession spilling from her lips.

You laugh, “I fucking hate you too.”

She’s kissing you again, fingers in your hair now, scraping the back of your scalp, as she rises and falls on your cock. Reflex has your hand tightening around her throat, feeling her pulse quicken beneath your thumb, making her choke out another ‘daddy’.

You’re fucking her like you hate her, like you’re trying to punish her for every sharp word and cold shoulder she’s ever thrown your way. And she’s taking it like she loves it, like she’s been waiting for this all night, all year, all her fucking life.

Wonyoung looks so fucking good, so perfect riding you like this, it’s starting to piss you off. Her hair’s framing her face in perfect waves, not a single strand out of place, even though you’ve had your hands all through it, your fingers tangled in it. Her makeup’s smudged—you can see the tracks of your cum on her cheek—but she wears it like a fucking badge of honour—and like all things, it looks good on her.

It’s like the universe took one look at her and said, ‘nah, she’s too pretty to let any of that shit ruin her.’

But you’ll try.

Keep going—keep fucking; each moan into your mouth, each push of her tongue against your own, each graze of her teeth against your skin—tells you you’re getting there.

Like you’re trying to fuck out all the spite and anger that’s been building up between you, like you can somehow purge it from your systems and just be left with the good parts.

(It’s never that simple.)

“Wonyoung—” you start, but she cuts you off.

“If I could just have your cock without the rest of you—without your stupid mouth, without that fucking look on your face—fuck yes, just like that—without all the bullshit and fighting—fuck, fuck, fuck—”

You don’t believe her, of course—you’re not just a cock to her, the same as she’s not just a pussy to you. But you let her have her fantasy, let her keep pretending she’s just using you for a good time.

“You’re such a bitch,” you murmur, making her chuckle in your ear, her teeth finding the sensitive skin of your lobe, biting down and making you hiss.

Wonyoung’s confession: “Only because it—gah—makes you fuck me harder.”

And it does—it makes you want to show her, prove yourself to her, make her feel it the next day and every day after. Fuck her until she’s nothing but a trembling, whimpering mess, until she’s begging for you to stop. Until she’s begging for you to never stop.

You’re both getting sloppier now, Wonyoung’s hips stuttering as you pound that spot deep inside her, the one that makes her see stars and scream your name, the car shaking with the force of your fucking.

It’s a badly-kept secret you’re keeping from the world outside—the car’s rocking, the lights inside are on, making no efforts to hide what the two of you are doing (doing to each other).

If anyone looks closely enough, if the security cameras in the garage get curious and zoom in, they’ll see your silhouettes; her body arching back, your hips thrusting up and into her.

They’ll see Jang Wonyoung, the princess of the industry, getting fucked in the front seat of a car like some common whore.

And she’s loving it. The danger, the thrill of being seen, the risk that anyone could walk by and hear her moan your name, her voice strained by your hand on her throat. It’s the fact that she’s letting you do this to her, that she’s letting you fuck her like this, even when she’s telling you she fucking hates it.

This moment—Wonyoung—right here, is what you live for.

You want to save it, to bottle it up and keep it with you forever. You want to remember how she feels, how she tastes, the fucking sounds she makes when she’s just about to cum. You want to replay this in your head every time you’re alone, every time you’re with someone else—because even though there might be someone else, they’ll never come fucking close to her.

And then you get an idea.

It’s a terrible idea, one that’ll surely end in disaster—like all the best ideas.

You hold down on Wonyoung’s hips, stopping her mid-thrust, and she’s whining, letting slip just how good you’re making her feel.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she snaps, taking short, sharp inhales, replenishing all the oxygen you’ve fucked out of her.

You ignore her, reaching for the dashboard camera that’s been silently facing outside, towards the wall of the garage. It’s been switched on the entire time, waiting to record the car crash inside—you and Wonyoung tearing each other apart.

Wonyoung’s scared. “Oh no, don’t you fucking—”

But she can’t stop you. You’re already spinning it around, pointing it directly at her cum-covered face, her sweat-drenched body.

“Smile for the camera, Wony.”

Her mouth opens, but she can’t muster the words. You’re fucking her again, the camera watching everything, capturing every moan, every slight quiver of her body. It’s a side of her nobody gets to see—the side you’re most familiar with.

Wonyoung at her most honest, when she’s undeniably yours.

Just her—getting used (using you)—and fuck, there’s nothing more worthy to be captured and preserved for all eternity.

Her eyes dart to the camera, then back to you, her mind racing a mile a minute. You can see the gears turning—she’s trying to figure out how to get out of this, how to win back some ground, but she’s lost.

You’ve got her, and she knows it.

You’re fucking her, and she has no choice but to follow—whether she likes it or not.

“Fine,” she says, the admission torn from her throat as you push back into her. “But if this leaks—if you ever show this to anyone, I’ll fucking kill you.”

You just laugh. “You really think so little of me? Like anyone would believe it anyway.”

And you mean it. You’re not that stupid. But the thought of having a permanent record of this moment, of Wonyoung, begging in high definition—it has you hooked.

You can’t help but add, “But we’ll always know it’s there, won’t we? Forever.”

Wonyoung narrows her brows at you, but she doesn’t protest anymore. Instead, she does the opposite. She starts to lean into it.

She tips her head back, arching her spine so that her tits are pushed up, giving the camera a picture-perfect shot of her body, her chest, the stiffness of her nipples—everything.

Jang Wonyoung—always the performer.

A free hand runs through her hair, flinging it back over her shoulder, and she starts to roll her whole body; fucking herself on you in a way that’s so deliberate, so fucking pornographic.

“God, I fucking hate this.” Wonyoung puts it on public record, eyes never leave yours as she performs for the camera—or for you, it’s hard to tell.

“What’s that, baby?” You tease. "You hate how good this feels?”

“I hate that it’s you,” she says, the words forced out between gasps. “I hate how fucking hot you are.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

You’ll never understand it. How someone you despise so much, with every fibre of your being, can fit so perfectly around you, feel so downright incredible on top of you. It’s a cruel joke that the universe decided to play on you both.

But you play along, let her ride you like it’s her fucking birthright, lock you in some petty staring contest, keep your mind filled with nothing but the tightness of her cunt.

You’re both panting now, sweat slicking your skin, making it easier for her to slide up and down on your cock. Her small tits bounce with every movement, and you can’t help but reach out to grab one, pinch it hard, making her wince, making her gasp.

“Fuck—you should quit whatever the fuck you’re doing,” she says, trying her best to form complete sentences through the pain, the bliss. “Work for me.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know.” Wonyoung looks down at you and you can see it on her face: the fucking slut is dead serious. “Manager, bodyguard, assistant. Whatever I can do to keep you close so you can fuck me like this whenever I want. If Yujin can have her drummer boy, it’s only fair that I get you.”

“Why the fuck would I want to spend all day waiting on you?”

She corrects you: “Spend all day inside of me.”

There’s your fantasy—mornings fucking Wonyoung in some hotel room, drinking all the juices from her pussy in the car on the way to work, having her suck your cock backstage at some concert, making her scream your name every night before going to sleep.

And then waking up and doing it all again.

There’s no hiding the smirk on your face. “Go fuck yourself, Wonyoung.”

Wonyoung mirrors your grin, that wild, cock-drunk look in her eyes. “Why would I do that when I have you?”

“No.” You’re pulling her close, holding her body tight to you, making her feel it. “You’re mine.”

That word again—'daddy’ on her lips, turning into a desperate cry as her thighs tense on either side of you, her hands locking behind your neck. She’s holding on tight, because you’re not giving her a choice, you’re not giving her anything but what she’s begging for.

You watch her face in the reflection of the car window—the way her mouth hangs open, the way her eyes flutter shut and then open again, searching for something, anything to keep her grounded.

"Fuck me like I’m yours,” Wonyoung pleads. “You own me? Then fucking treat me like you do. Treat me like I’m your fucking whore, daddy.”

It’s too much, all of it. Wonyoung: her face—those lips, her body—those fucking legs, her voice—the way she says your name, how she calls you daddy, like it’s a fucking curse. You’re so close to the edge now, so close to cumming again, cumming inside her. You can feel the beginnings of it, the tension coiling in your balls, the white creeping into your vision.

But she’s still talking—and so are you, you realise.

One of you cries out—holy shit—answered with a—so fucking good—followed by an exchange of—fuck yous—and—I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

It keeps going, this fucking, this using, this hating—whatever this is.

“I fucking hate you—”

“Hate you too—”

“Hate how good your cunt feels—”

“Hate how big your cock is—”

“Hate how perfect you are—”

“Hate how much I want your fucking cum—”

“Fucking slut—"

“Daddy—”

“I’m going to—"

"Please!"

And that’s it.

It’s over—your cock pulsing deep inside her, Wonyoung’s cunt clamping down around you, and you’re cumming—together—tightening and writhing and calling each other every name under the sun, except maybe the one that actually matters.

Wonyoung’s head falls back, losing control of her own body, the camera catching every glorious moment as she cums, her orgasm ripping through her in a scream that you feel in every inch of your body.

You kiss her—her tits, her neck, her jaw, her lips—claiming her, making sure she feels every drop of you. You hate her, you love her, you hate that you love her, you love that she needs you, you hate that you need her.

And all the while the camera keeps rolling, capturing your sweaty, heaving chests; capturing you filling her, spilling out of her, giving her the cum she so desperately pleaded for. It’s so much more intimate than any kiss, any love confession, any of that romantic shit she sings about.

But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

It’s every twitch, every shiver, every little pulse of your release flooding her. How she tenses and clenches around you, soaks you with her wetness, drowns you in her tight, drenched heat.

And she keeps calling you it—whispering it—‘daddy’—over and over again, even as she’s coming down from the high, even as she’s gasping for air, even as she’s forcing her tongue into your mouth.

Wonyoung slumps against you, your cum dripping out of her and down your cock, staining the leather of your car seats. You can feel the stickiness of it, the mess you’ve made together. It makes you want to do it all over again.

To make her say it again, to make her scream it again.

“You’re so fucking mine,” you murmur against her neck, kissing her collarbone, tasting the salt of her sweat.

Wonyoung just nods, too exhausted to argue, too satisfied to care. Her hand finds yours, weaves your fingers together, and you hold onto her, tight. It’s sickeningly sweet, and yet, despite your best efforts, the insult, the quip to break the spell doesn’t come.

Because in the end, you don’t want to kill the moment—not when it’s so perfect.

You don’t want to ruin it with talk of the real world, with the harshness of the light that’ll be waiting outside the car door.

You stay there, parked in the garage of her apartment building, the headlights dimming down to black. The air is thick with the smell of sex and sweat, the taste of it lingering on your tongues. It’s a bubble you’re both loath to burst—because once it does, once it pops, you’re just Wonyoung and some guy she fucking hates again.

“Thank you, daddy.” Wonyoung’s breathing slows, her grip on you loosens. She’s drifting off, the stress of the night and the alcohol finally claiming her.

You don’t know how long you sit there, the two of you tangled together. It’s quiet except for the occasional hum from her, a cute little sound that she’s probably unaware she makes. It’s soothing, almost sweet.

But reality has a way of crashing in, doesn’t it?

You know you can’t stay here forever. You know you’ve got to get her upstairs before someone sees, before the cameras (the dangerous ones, the ones you don’t own) spot you. Before the rest of the world catches up.

You ease her off your cock, she whines, her eyes struggling open. “Take me home,” she mumbles, still not fully coherent.

“Already am, baby,” you reply, gently untangling her body from yours.

With a bit of effort, you manage to get her into an almost presentable state—straightening her skirt, buttoning her shirt, dabbing the cum that’s pooled between her thighs. She watches you as you do it, through a hazy gaze, still recovering from being fucked into oblivion.

It’s an act. Partly at least. A way to save face—pretend that it’s only the exhaustion, that she doesn’t really need you, doesn’t really want to be taken care of like this. Doesn’t want to nuzzle her head into your shoulder, or hug you tight, or have you kiss her on the forehead and tell her that you’ve got her.

Tomorrow she’ll yell at you for it, probably call you an overbearing asshole for treating her like a delicate flower. Make fun of you for going soft, for totally falling under her spell.

(And sometime even later, in a moment when she’s all quiet and feeling vulnerable, right after you’ve fucked each other and hated each other and ended up holding each other for the millionth time, Wonyoung will say:

“You’re the only one who can keep up with me.”

You’ll know what she means right away; you’ll kiss her again and you’ll answer:

“I know.”)

Because despite the fact that when she wanted to be (and it was often), Jang Wonyoung could be a real fucking bitch, you’re also kind of in love with her.

And, if you were to ask her, she’d probably the same about you.

[isa-renee]

how to explain to my vaguely-conservative-usually-a-republican aunt that she is literally a socialist

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[yeahxsurexokay13]

ideal weekend, lando norris

summary: while fans stress about the fact that, following their breakup, the actress won't be there to witness the driver's first ever f1 win, y/n gets asked about her ideal weekend off in an interview and accidentally manifests it [actress!reader]

warnings: i think only very bad editing (i tried) and me bringing up yet another footballer i feel affection for for literally no reason

fc: madelyn cline

started this as something completely different from what it ended up being but i think i like it. i'd love it if you let me know what you think tho (((:

y/n.y/l

📍miami

Liked by rudeth and 1.059.326 others

y/n.y/l yet another victim of a @/maxverstappen1 win. had so much fun but i think i'll just stick to acting 🙃🙃🫠 thank you @/redbullracing for having me!!! <333

view all 2.071 comments

username at a red bull event? what happened to once a mclaren girl always a mclaren girl????

username this event was basically work for her ?? you ppl need to stop taking everything so personally omg

username professional SUPER FAST driver, part time actress ❤️ by author

username you're in miami the same week of the miami gp. coincidence? i think not 😌😌

username GORGEOUS GORGEOUS GIRL

redbullracing Glad you had fun Y/n! Maybe we should start considering you for a guest appearance in our garage 😉

mclaren Thanks for the offer, Red Bull! But we've already got dibs on her 😉

username UM I HOPE THIS ISN'T A JOKE ??

username don't play with me like this admin!!

mclaren Don't worry. We won't hold this against you 🧡

y/n.y/l ily guys 🧡🧡🧡

username Ok cool now go finish season 4

username Why are u in Miami shouldn’t u be filming obx 4 😪

y/n.y/l side quest

username not the Y/n x F1 content I was hoping for but at this point I'll take what I can get

maxverstappen1 Next time I'll give you a head start. Enjoyed having you with us, Y/n 🫶

y/n.y/l there will definitely not be a next time but thanks tho!!!👍🏼 always a pleasure seeing you ❤️

username pretty 🩷

username Why is Max literally this🧍🏼‍♂️❤️ by author

landonorris Um what's this?

y/n.y/l 😶 not what it looks like

username seeing you two banter like this makes my heart ache 💔

username i'm never moving on from y/nlando sigh

username OBX S4 WHEN QUEEN

29 April 2024

mclaren added to their story

y/n.y/l

Liked by maxfewtrell and 1.890.345 others

y/n.y/l me and FORMULA 1 RACE WINNER lando norris

view all 3.830 comments

username JUST WHEN I THOUGHT TODAY COULDN'T GET ANY BETTER OMFG

username formula 1 race winner lando norris has a nice ring to it 😉 ❤️ by author

username What a race, and what a win for Lando!!!

username IM LOSING IT YALL I JUST CHECKED OUT OF CURIOSITY AND BRIGHTON ALSO WON TODAY Y/N MANIFESTED HER IDEAL SUNDAY

username minus the relaxing part lol i know for a fact bestie was stressing in that garage

carlossainz55 It's great to see you back at a race! Missed having you around! ❤️

y/n.y/l thank you carlitos ❤️ wish i could've got to see you up there with lando

charles_leclerc ouch ? 🫤

y/n.y/l noooo, i didn't mean you!!! x

maxverstappen1 ouch?

y/n.y/l i did mean you. sorry /:

username are we back in 2022 and i didn't realise?????? not complaining at all tho

mclaren You and FORMULA 1 RACE WINNER Lando Norris look amazing! 🧡 ❤️ by author

username admin definitely ships

username children of divorce rise !!!!!!! ❤️ by author

username u think u're so funny liking this @.y/n.y/n but we're actually hurting we want our mum back!!!

username seeing you celebrate with lando was everything 🥹🥹🥹

username when i tell you i sCREAMED !!!!!!

username Everything in the world has been healed due to this post

oscarpiastri Awesome that you could come watch. Missed you ❤️

y/n.y/l missed you more pastry boy ❤️❤️

username we were robbed from this friendship !!!😪

username can't believe how emotional I am seeing you two together at his big win

francisca.cgomes ❤️❤️❤️ ❤️ by author

username just realised i am not as over y/nlando as i thought i was. in fact i am not over y/nlando at all.

username well seeing you with FORMULA 1 RACE WINNER Lando Norris just hit me right in the feels💔

landonorris Thanks for being there to share the moment with us ❤️ ❤️ by author

landonorris Also I think after this you might now have to come to every race ever

y/n.y/l clearing my schedule as we speak 🫡

username i am so ready to be delusional

05 May 2024

[notanactressyayy]

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭. | natasha romanoff

. ݁₊ 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦 . Natasha and you were the only 'constant' in each other's lives. poor you, to think you could get over her so easily.

. ݁₊ 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 . smut! i am not responsible for your content consumption! — making out, g!p Natasha, guided masturbation, orgasm denial, unprotected sex (p in v), choking, swearing, homesickness, fluff, reconciliation.

. ݁₊ 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑠 . english isn't my first language (🇧🇷) so i apologize for any spelling errors. been in love w Nat for a damn long time — i've been away for a while, but turns out i can't really live without her. i miss my red so much :(

Natasha Romanoff rarely had the chance to see the same face twice. She saw a lot of people throughout her life — as a spy, as a superhero, or simply as Natasha. The thing is: it was unlike she would return to a place she’s been before. It wasn’t uncommon for her to be on the run. Thus, she traveled around the whole world, and saw thousands, millions of different faces. Destiny made sure not to let her cross paths with the same individual again. It wasn’t only the diversity of people that she witnessed, though. This woman saw the world. She knew life’s ups and downs, and at some point in her life, she just got used to the idea that it would forever be like this: boring. Boring experiences, boring women, boring men, boring relationships. Nothing was ever exciting, thrilling. It felt like she was advanced in time, and the rest of the world wasn’t following her. This wasn’t a complete lie, she got her maturity at a very young age, which made her pay the price now, in adulthood. 

For a spy, the most important thing is to learn not to be caught off guard. But it seemed like life was never on Natasha’s side. And this time — it felt good. Oh, it felt so good. 

At first, she didn’t want to get high hopes. It would be just another temporary friendship to help her pass time, nothing more. However, you managed to surprise the red haired Avenger in the best way possible. When she decided to spare a little time of her life and get to know you more, it was really mind-blowing the side of herself she discovered. She never thought she could actually be.. giddy. Like a silly, hopeless romantic girl. That is what she became whenever it was time to see you. She got excited. Actually excited. She couldn’t see through you, read your emotions or body language, like she did with other people; It was a natural thing, sometimes she didn’t even mean to do that. But you, something within you, kept her at bay. Like you effortlessly turned Natasha into a normal woman. Somebody who could love. Somebody that wasn’t raised and enhanced to be a killer. Not that you went through anything like she did, but you weren’t naive. You showed her that people didn’t necessarily have to be traumatized to be aware of things, of reality, of the surroundings. And for her, you’re the most beautiful person in the whole world. Inside and out. She adored you. 

Opening up was never easy. Revealing the broken parts of herself wasn’t like having a simple chat. But patience is a virtue and thankfully, you followed that say just fine. Little by little, the secrets came out. Most of the parts you already knew — it’s not like she wasn’t a worldwide known superhero. What you mostly had to acknowledge were her feelings, the point of view of the little girl who was experiencing it all, and becoming a strong woman, with built up walls around her heart. Doing that was no problem. Natasha couldn’t be more thankful. 

She couldn’t be more infatuated. More in love.

She’d always remember that one day: in the bar with her team, and you — chattery, music, tons of drinks and laughter. Stolen glances. Stomach butterflies, wild. The moment Clint pulled Laura a little closer to himself, and Tony kissed Pepper’s cheek. How she used that as an excuse to pull you into her lap. Your breath getting labored. Eyelashes gently fluttering, to the point she could count them. Your gentle yet tight grip on her shoulders. Your goddamn eyes staring right into hers. And the part where everything would change: her own bodily reactions to all those little details about you. When you restlessly shifted on her lap, quietly gasping when something poked you through your dress. Eyes going wide at the bulge showing on her black jeans. 

From that point on, you belonged to her.

Or so, she thought.

The sex was great, but she was in conflict — she couldn't tell if the only reason for it to be that enjoyable was because you were both tipsy, almost drunk, or if it was really meant to be that way. It felt right, yes, to have you in her arms like this — naked, piles of discarded clothes laying by her bed.. the sound of your quiet snoring as you cuddled into her. It was also a relief to her. To have someone care for her, desire her, after so long, after forever. The night had been amazing. She was a mature woman anyway, wasn't she? She could sort her feelings out without messing up everything.

Wrong. By the morning, everything would change.

You stared at her as she got up and got dressed again, eyes still a little blurry from sleep, eyebrows ceasing into a small confused frown. "You're not staying?" you'd ask, sitting up and leaning against the headboard, bringing up the sheets to cover your unclothed body. "Ugh, my head hurts like hell,"

"Got things to do." she simply answered, cradling the side of your face and kissing your forehead. You could swear the look on her face was.. apologetic. She tilted her head towards the nightstand, where some aspirin and water waited for you. "Take these. I'll text you later."

"Okay.." you mumble, disoriented. As she leaves, you reach out, shoving the aspirin in your mouth and downing the pills with water. Was there something you were missing? Because all you could remember was how good her hands felt on you, the way they wrapped around you neck while she—

You shook your head, lying down again, and closing her eyes. All the fun and pleasure you had been given from the previous night was slowly vanishing and being replaced by a feeling of uncertainty and confusion. Natasha was an enigmatic person, okay, but you thought you knew her better. She had no reason to leave you just like that, especially when she had already vented about all her past experiences, flaws and failures. Nah, it was probably nothing, you were overthinking. Perhaps she indeed had something important to take care of. You closed your eyes as fatigue took over, and slept for a little bit more.

Natasha went back to her apartment — one of her apartments, and for the whole day, her thoughts ran like crazy. Her emotions were all over the place. She had just fucked her best friend, the one person she felt comfortable and at ease with. She considered her feelings carefully; this.. dinamic, between you two, had not been platonic for a considerable amount of time. But not being platonic doens't necessarily means being romantic. It could either be love, or lust. What happened the day before was carnal, once the two of you were way too much in a drunken haze to actually feel anything.

And, like always, Natasha didn't want to think about falling in love. She felt scared just by thinking about this. It was a new territory, one she wasn't willing to deep dive in. So she took her phone and deeply sighed, opening her chat with you.

"Yesterday was fun. But I need some time. I don't think this can work. Hope you're doing okay. xx"

That text just completely shattered you.

You had no idea what you did wrong. It was not like Natasha was pushing you away forever — but while being with her, the only thought running through your mind was: I wanna be with her. I wanna explore this with her. And Natasha didn't give a single sign that she thought the opposite. You felt... disappointed. With yourself and her. For hoping.

Yeah, getting involved with an ex kgb Avenger killer spy probably wasn't the best idea.

You wouldn't simply forget everything you shared together, so the easiest way here not to create a big tension was.. being fake. The two of you weren't stupid, you were aware of the unspoken feelings going on. But what happened that night should not happen again. So your friendship was what prevailed. A friendship like the start. But obviously, with a few changes. Natasha and you didn't lose touch — on the contrary, you were closer than ever. You spoke and flirted (a lot), but with one small rule, a rule that you subconsciously added to this.. situationship. No feelings involved. It would be singularly that. Friends, some casual hookups, and nothing else.

It didn't last, because that's not what you both wished, longed for.

Little by little, this turned boring again. Not that you were the boring one and she just didn't realize this before. Far from that. The thing was: Natasha and you were supressing your feelings, consequently, supressing all the thrill, the delicious tension that hanged in the air whenever she, once again, crossed paths with you. The russian wanted nothing more than just grab you and kiss you hard, pour all the emotions that she kept bottled up throughout her life into the kiss. But unfortunately, she couldn't. She had a duty to fullfil, as someone born, destined to save the world.

And with all of this, you and her settled a distance. You with your previous and trivial life, and her, saving little girls from bad guys, and bringing down cats from tall trees. It was truly shocking: one day, you lived for Natasha Romanoff. She was your everything and everything you'd ever want. In a blink of an eye, it ended. You followed your paths, like two completely different people, with different purposes.

Right person, wrong time.

Fool her, to think she could get over you that easily. Poor you, to try and put that inside of your head as well.

Sometimes, when normally doing daily tasks, you would catch yourself thinking about her — when you were going to watch TV and put your legs on the coffee table, instead of simply sitting. It was an habit of hers. Or when eating something with peanut butter. It was her favourite late night snack. When it rained. She liked to watch the rain. With somebody else's hands on you. It wasn't right. It was never right to have somebody else touch you. You were constantly thinking about your life before things with her changed — the memories brought comfort, a sense of nostalgia.. at some point, you weren't living in the present anymore. Just faking. Faking your feelings. Pretending it was okay to let her go.

This woman ruined you for everything and everyone else.

Natasha could relate to that. In a life that could be resumed in one word: a 'whirlwind' of a life, and you were her only 'constant' among all of this... she couldn't bear this anymore.

So she made an important decision.

The decision was today.

Today: she'd take you out again, praying that, if not reconciliation, she wanted at least to say everything she had to say. Because if life taught her one thing, was to make choices that she wouldn't regret in the future. And it was damn right she would regret choosing not to meet you tonight.

Sitting in the stool of the bar, in a more secluded corned, her eyes followed your figure as you approached — purse hanging on your shoulder, dress exposing your back and a little bit of your waist, eyes so awfully soft and gentle as you looked at her. It wasn't fair. A pang of guilt hit her hard. Oh, she regretted letting that go. She wanted you to be mad at her. But you were not. She shakily rises to her feet to kiss your cheek as you stand in front of her, thankfully not stumbling. Your eyes lock again, already in a trance. Just like that other day.

"How are you doing?" you ask. Natasha could cry. She missed that voice everyday. "Did I take too long? I'm sorry."

"No, no. Don't worry." she swallows hard. You both sit on the stools by the countertop. When the bartender comes, the redhead dismisses him. She wanted the two of you sober for this. "I'm... so much better now that you're here, honestly. How about you?"

"Amazing." you chuckle, tilting your head to the side and watching her. She didn't change a bit. Hair braided, black jeans, leather jacket. That was your Natasha. "I didn't expect you calling me here, to be honest..—"

"Me neither." she admits, in a whisper. Her tongue darts out to moisten her lips, eyes involuntarily starting at your mouth. She sighs and looks into your eyes. "But I had to... I can't get you off my mind."

Her sincerity never fails to amaze you. With each second that passes, the butterflies in your tummy return, to remind you of the past — feelings and sensations resurfacing. You bite on your bottom lip and look around the bar, quickly scanning to see if there was anybody paying attention to the two of you. Maybe a few eyes here and there, which didn't linger. Everyone else was too busy minding their own business — and it's not like you'd care if someone was staring anyway. Natasha turned some heads. You felt greedy for that. You were the one having her. The only one having her.

"You live in my head rent free, Natasha." you tell her, voice having a sultry edge to it. You slowly stand, walking closer.

You take her hands and open her arms — making it possible for you to straddle her thigh. She tenses almost immediately. Her head tilts up to stare into your eyes, arms circling your waist to keep you close, where she wanted. You shake your head when you see a small frown between her eyebrows — lips pressing against that small spot, coaxing a little exhale of hers. She missed you. Everyday. Every minute. She wanted that respect and care all the time.

"What are we even doing here?" she whispers, so quietly you almost can't hear it. Her hands cup your waist and gently roam up and down your sides, palms brushing against your bare skin every now and then, all thanks to the waist slits of your dress. Your face leans closer to hers, noses bumping — the smallest of touches, making you both crave what you once had. "Why didn't I just invite you to my place right away?"

"I don't know. Why didn't you?" you raise one eyebrow, fingertips caressing her jawline. Her hands give your waist a squeeze — and you almost moan. She swore she could hear it. It replayed in her head, the beautiful sounds you made for her. She wanted to hear them again. She was going to make you sound like that again.

It wasn't just a physical thing — your body and mind craved her touch, her presence, so much that just the mere thought of being on her bed again got you soaked. She felt something wet through the rough fabric of her jeans, and that got her brain spinning. She fell for you hard. So painfully hard.

"Let's get out of here," she groans, hands firmly grabbing your thighs and lifting you up — wrapping your legs around her waist and carrying you out the pavement. Her hardness pressed right against your core — you blushed, hiding your face on her shoulder, wrapping your arms around her neck.

In a heartbeat, you were back at your house.

Your place, because it was the fastest way, when taking the cab. No words were exchanged, not yet. The aching, burning need had to be taken care of first — before properly talking. Your back hits the wall hard as Natasha pushes you against it — her body trapping you between herself and the hard surface — hands hardly, possessively holding you by the hips. Desperately, even. Making sure you wouldn't slip away from her grasp. Her lips dance with yours, tentatively, yet naturally, tongues tasting one another after what felt like centuries. She felt so good, tasted so good.

"Nat..—" you moan against her lips, having her bottom lip trapped between your teeth, then releasing it. Your forehead against hers, eyes soft and filled with desire. Your hands hold her cheeks, traveling to her jaw. Needily, you press kisses to the side of her throat, breathing shaky, heart hardly thrumming. "I never stopped thinking about you..."

"Yeah?" she hums, grabbing the hem of your dress and lifting it up, bunching the fabric by your hips. Her fingers hook around the elastic of your panties and pull them down, pooling around your feet — making you gasp, and pull away from her neck. Eyes wide open. The air hits your heat, making you needier for her.

You almost mewl.

"God, I need you." Natasha utters. She grabs you again and smashes her lips against yours once more, now with so much more passion, more need, more anxiety. Her bulge presses against your now unclothed wetness, coaxing a tiny cry of need out of you. You breathlessly pull away from her, reaching down and fumbling with the buttons of her jeans — until she stops you.

"No—"

"Quiet." she shushes, maneuvering you back, until your body hits the mattress. She climbs onto the bed and stays in a kneeling position, hungrily taking you in. Messy, needy, all for her. Sober, like she wanted planned from the first time. "That dress goes off."

Her voice is commanding, yet not harsh — and her eyes betray her a little. Her eyes are almost pleading, that it is clear how much she needs this. To have you all to herself, to show you how much she wants that. Her underwear becomes even more tight as she sees your trembling fingers, pulling the dress over your head and tossing it aside, lips parted. Just by her look, you can tell she wants the bra off, too. So you reach behind your back and grants her silent wish, breasts now exposed to her sight.

"There you are..." she moans to herself, shamelessly taking in the sight of you. You're a work of art. With her hand, she coaxes your knees open, and parts your legs. "My... you're so wet. So perfectly wet."

"You're still with a lot on.." you quietly complain, feeling hot and shy at the same time. But her gaze is enough to wipe away the confusion from your eyes. She had a plan.

"Touch yourself for me." she breathes out.

Your eyes briefly widen with the unexpectedness of this statement. You had certainly done this before — touched yourself thinking of her — but the idea of showing this, while she watched, never crossed your mind. But it wasn't an unpleasant idea. It was actually... hot. Sensual. They darken, pupils blown wide as you make yourself comfortable against the pillows, eyelids fluttering as your legs spread a little more, palm resting on your stomach, then moving down. Deliberately, it reaches your sex, a shakily sigh leaving your lips when your middle and ring finger collect some of the slick coat covering your sensitiveness, using it to slowly rub your clitoris, getting you to gasp louder.

"Natasha..." you whisper, eyes falling close, thoughts wandering.

Wandering back to the start — when you first discovered your feelings for her, then the climax, when you both got in bed due the alcohol — then the aftermath, when you needed her so much, felt so alone at night, that your fingers were the only solution. Little wet sounds echo within the room as you rub circles on yourself, applying just the right amount of pressure, that it doesn't take long for the pit in your stomach to manifest itself.

"Faster." Natasha rasps out, taking her jacket and quickly throwing it away. She pulls her tank top over her head, then undo the buttons of her jeans — leaving the bed, just so she can get rid of all the uncomfortable fabric, and climbing it again. She crawls closer to you — eyeing you as you worked on your pussy, her hands caressing your thighs, adding to the stimulation.

"Please...!" you whimper, doing as you're told — rubbing yourself faster — slipping one of your fingers inside your entrance, almost cumming, that quickly. "Please, I need you..!"

"I need you too," she moans to herself, and harshly grabs your wrist, pulling your hand away. You moan loudly in protest — Natasha wouldn't tease you. Not today, when you both needed each other so much. She discards her undergarments, finally — groaning as she's set free. Your eyes lock on her hard length, which was practically hitting her abs now.

"Put it inside me." you beg, grabbing her shoulders to pull her closer. She hovers over you, bracing herself on her forearms, on each side of your body. Your fingernails gently graze her back. Natasha was feeling so much, so much more than she ever felt. Your eyes were sparkling so much, like you were crying — shimmering with the depth of your adoration for her. You grab her cheeks and press your lips to hers, in a gentle peck. Knowing her past, she didn't have to explain her reasons for what had happened. She was scared before, and you respected. "Go on. Love me."

She couldn't wait no longer. She lowers her forehead to your shoulder and places her hands on your hips — her chest against yours, as she lined herself with your hole, effortlessly pushing inside. Stretching you out, like she once did. Having the chance to hear that delicious sounds again.

"You're mine... shit," she groans, rolling into you gently, getting you used to the feeling first. You're so tight, so perfect around her. Natasha's overwhelmed. Her hands press against the base of your throat, squeezing firmly, yet leaving enough room for air. She's so hot. "That pussy is mine. You're mine. You're all mine—"

"Yes," you moan, wrapping your legs around her middle. You wouldn't take long to come tonight. Maybe she'd make you come over and over. She rocks into you, pace not too slow, not too fast. Just right. The right tempo to bring you both the pleasure and connection you so much needed. "Mhm.. fuck, Nat, missed your cock,"

"You're gonna take it over and over—" she comments — kissing your shoulder, roaming her hands up your body, her right palm cupping your breast and giving it a firm squeeze. Your head lolls back, mouth opening to allow a satisfied moan out. "I'm never fucking letting you go again,"

She accelerates, pulling almost all the way out just to slam back into you again — feeling her climax approach. She moves her mouth close to your ear and moans — her own sounds now mixing with yours.

"Natasha...! Fuck, you feel soo good," you gasp, a wave of pleasure washing over you as you get closer. She takes the hint immediately, cupping the back of your knee and pushing it up, allowing her a better angle. "Ah, gimme more,"

"My greedy girl," she groans, her head tilting back. Her cock twitches inside of you — precum already painting you white. She glanced down at where your folds swallowed her, eyes darkening impossibly more. "You're so goddamn tight... 'm not gonna last, moya krasivaya malysha,"

"Okay.. 'ts okay... Cum with me..." you beg her, tangling your fingers into her red strands of hair, pulling her down more, so her forehead rests against yours — the eye contact increasing the intimacy of the moment. She didn't know what to expect now. Didn't know what to think. Only that she had to fill you up.

"C'mon.. nhg, darling.. c'mon.. cum around me," she encourages, feeling her own legs shake as her orgasm washed over her.

She grabbed your hips hard and slammed into you — once, twice, three times, filling you up with her hot release. You squeezed your eyes shut as your body shuddered forwards, breasts pressing against her own as a long, strangled moan flowed out of you, nails digging into her back, pressing her body against yours as you finished. Your walls clenched around her cock, swallowing her more, not allowing her to pull away just that. "God.. I love you!"

Natasha blinks, not sure if she heard right. Her heart squeezes in her chest, arms wrapping around your body. Her back hits the bed and she flips you on top of her, still inside of you — but now, her member softened. The adrenaline was running wild, but you had calmed down a little bit. Just a little. Because this time, it wasn't pure sex. It was lovemaking.

Your face is buried in her chest as she brings up the covers, creating a cocoon of warmth around you. She buries her face into your hair and inhales deeply, staying silent. Just to process things.

"I love you, too. So so much." she murmurs into you hair. She felt terrified to say this. But once you're someone who she already showed her scars to, it's not that bad anymore.

"You do?" you ask expectantly, feeling tired, drowsy. Natasha smiles at that. She feels her eyes burning with heavy emotion. She nods.

"Yes... I love you so much." she confirms, softly stroking her hair, brushing some strands away from your sweaty forehead. "And I want you to be mine. Will you be mine?"

"You're asking me to be your girlfriend after the sex?" you chuckle quietly, but happiness was evident in your voice. Now you could sleep at peace. The first night of rest you'd have in a long time. In the arms of the woman you cherished, worshipped.

Natasha had won now. She was so fucking relieved. All because of a phrase.

"Of course I will, you idiot."

"I'm never, ever, ever letting you go again." the room is messy, smell of sex lingering around you. But now things were sorted out. By the morning, you could have a more direct, serious conversation. For now, you'd rest together, wrapped up in each other's arms, like it was always meant to be.

[aquamystic]

what kind of trope will your next relationship be like?

hiiii! i am back again trying to help you romanticize your life because reality kinda... sucks sometimes SO let's bring some cool romantic tropes and see what your next relationship will be like!! remember that it is mostly to have fun and - again - to appreciate the beauty of our life!! 🌷 basically, if your next love story was a movie, what kind of trope would it be?

it will not speak to everyone so just let it go! 🧚🏻‍♀️

choose the picture you feel most called to or that sparks a memory! 💫

pile 1.

enemies to lovers. hot passionate tension. strong disgust yet incredible chemistry. constant fighting and feeling like fate is against you. you both have tempers and you enjoy annoying the others, especially when it comes to what you believe in. there is some opposition between your views on life and that creates exciting debates. slowly, you will both realize your feelings but all this tension and an external situation will make you deny all those feelings - although the sexual tension is hard to ignore. your lover is fiery, aggressive, hot, passionate, fun. before completely exploring all this chemistry, you are separated by fate and you try to convince yourself that it does not matter, that you do not care - but you do. it feels like you have not been able to really live it, to fully enjoy it and it feels bitter. but you will start to fight for it because you will both realize that this potential is rare to find and that it can’t just go to waste. the electricity when you touch them can’t be ignored and just forgotten. so you fight for it. they might help you heal your inner child, let you loosen up a little and well, they will appreciate you in your worst state because they will be very much aware of your WORST side but you will realize that someone loves you in your worst and that feels very healing.

pile 2.

age difference or one of them has not lived as much as the other. spiritual experience. soulmate kind of love. adrenaline. feeling complete - finally. perhaps someone who is of a different ethnicity. one of the two is younger or less mature but brings so much energy and life to the older / more mature one who gets to share all his experiences. very passionate and loving. love at first sight even. something is preventing them to reunite but the younger one is ready to rise above society’s expectations that appear dull and dumb. risking everything together and going on crazy adventures. also, impossible love because of hierarchy : a royal, a servant or a boss, a subordinate. discovering what life really is about together. your love story will feel like a hurricane, you or your person will just storm into your life and destroy every conceptions and representations you have of love and even of life. one of the two is very unpredictable but they have a heart of gold while the other feels very much broken (i was listening to the shining by the neighbourhood and the lyrics stuck for this group). one of the two could feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and bam, here arrives this little ball of energy who lives life to the fullest. very refreshing love, like a breath of fresh air.

pile 3.

i hate everyone but you and everyone hates me but you. two people against the world. no one can defy us. the other is their home. could also be a third-party situation : one of them is the conventionally attractive love interest you are supposed to fall in love with but this other person… there is something about them you can’t deny. they are better than most humans you know. they are all you care about. the decision is taken but others do not agree with this. you are a powerful queen, rich and destined to compromise for your country. but there is this one person - enemy of the nation, old friend of lesser condition - that you feel is your real lover deep within. they are your home. the solution to your loneliness. the remedy to your broken heart. feeling guilty because of all those expectations on you. but you can’t listen to them, you want to feel selfish and listen to your heart. maybe you will break their heart at first - or the other way around - and you will have some time apart before reuniting. maybe they are a childhood friend you lost too, someone you hurt. but after this loss and hurt, you will be regretting and when you see them again… wow, all the anger, frustration and love will resurface. it will take some time again but at the end, you will be together and it feels like life is finally complete.

[muletia]

[tfp] obsessed!optimus prime x human!reader

summary: you had to go on a business trip. optimus doesn't take it too well

cw: obsessed!optimus, hardcore pinning, angst, i wanted to practice writing dialogues and it shows lmao

word count: 1800

an: i want you guys to know that i am reading EVERY reblog and comment from you swirling my hair and kicking my legs like a schoolgirl

you are so real for that anon

When you, out of your own free will, expressed the desire to join him on patrol, Optimus was overjoyed. You rarely got the chance to be together, just the two of you, always consumed by work or saving the world. And although Optimus wouldn’t dare ask you outright to accompany him on patrols (because the last thing he wanted was to make you feel uncomfortable), he deeply longed to spend more time with you alone. He knew he was feeding only his own illusions, fueling the machinery of madness, but by this point, he couldn’t stop. Not when you sat comfortably on his seat, gazing at the views outside the window, visibly content with your outing together.

He wanted so badly for this to be your everyday reality. Maybe then he could finally find some relief from his fixation, maybe you would even save him.

"Hey," you started, and his entire attention focused on you. "Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while."

Oh.

Did your feelings match his? Did you feel affection for him as well? Had you noticed his suffering? Or maybe you wanted to reject him, once and for all, to make him understand that his passion was an illusion, that no matter how much he wanted it, the two of you could never be together — too incompatible, too different. That he had developed this coping mechanism, exhausted by the war.

But before Optimus could spiral further, you crushed his hopes.

"The company I work for is sending me on a business trip," you sighed, clearly dissatisfied with the news. "It’s supposed to take two weeks, but you never really know with these trips, especially since they’re sending me across the continent."

"I understand," he replied, his tone not betraying the turmoil within. "What does this business trip involve?"

"Oh, shoot, sorry! I should have explained that right away," you laughed casually as if you hadn’t just delivered news that shattered his spark. "Business trip is assigned by an employer for training sessions, conferences, exhibitions, and other boring stuff. Kind of like a mission, but without explosions, action, or danger."

It was good to hear that you’d be safe, though you would truly be safest only at the base, under his watchful optics.

Pessimistic, ugly thoughts churned in his processor. Of all the things he expected to hear from you, this wasn’t one of them. Suddenly, he feared being alone, feared his own dreams. Because he knew you wouldn’t be there to comfort him after a nightmare, and nothing else could bring him peace.

"I am sorry to hear we will not see each other for two weeks," he said, "but I am confident you will do exceptionally well on this assignment. You are dependable, unyielding. You can handle anything."

"Oh, thank you," you answered, a bit flustered. You hadn’t expected a compliment. "It just makes me sad to leave Jasper. I don’t say it often enough, but I have a wonderful time with all of you. With you."

"Likewise, [Name]. When are you leaving?"

"The day after tomorrow. Tomorrow after work, I’ll say goodbye to everyone else."

So soon. Too soon. He’d hoped you wouldn’t leave until next week, to at least give him time to mentally prepare for the separation, but you denied him that luxury. Not that any amount of time would have prepared him for this.

Slowly, subtly enough that you wouldn’t notice the change, he reduced his speed, prolonging your shared drive.

"I’m not sure I’ll have time to write," you warned. "Unfortunately, they’ve given me a really tight schedule. But! If I can, I’ll write to the kids. Oh, and expect some souvenirs — I’ll bring something back for you all."

"You do not need to spend your valuable time searching for trinkets. But if you insist, I will cherish anything you bring me."

"Aw, don’t worry—it’ll be no trouble." You waved your hand dismissively. "You do so much for me, for the kids, for the whole Earth without asking for anything in return. You deserve something nice."

"I do not protect your planet for glory or offerings."

"I know, I know. That’s very noble. And amazing. So many years, sticking firmly to your values."

He eagerly soaked up your praise, allowing himself, if only for a brief moment, to forget the world around him, to forget his duties, unfulfilled promises, fallen brothers and sisters. He’d never describe himself as 'amazing', nor did he believe the praise his own kind gave him about his greatness. But for you, he could believe it. If only for a moment, a few seconds, so that you’d leave on your mission thinking warmly of your time together and of him.

"Thank you, [Name]. Please know that I value your words tremendously."

"Oh," you blushed, "that’s nice to hear."

Embarrassed, you quickly changed the subject, unaware that Optimus was watching you closely, curious about your reaction. For now, he pushed thoughts of your departure to the back of his processor, wanting to fully enjoy your presence. You recommended songs from the country genre, one of his favorite discoveries on Earth, which he promised to listen to later. He knew well that this would lead to more daydreaming, imagining a future that would never be. Because no matter how hard he tried, his tomorrow would not be entwined with yours. His desires would forever remain mere fantasies born out of desperation, longing, and sorrow.

A week had passed since you left. In the lives of the Autobots, not much had changed because of your absence; they went on with their chaotic schedule. The kids, however, missed you. No more evenings spent helping them with their homework, working on your reports, playing games, or simply chatting. The worst part was that no one really knew what was going on with you. You rarely messaged, didn’t have time to talk, and when you did, it was just to say, "I’m alive, it’s boring, I’ll message you on Thursday." Life continued, despite how much Miko wished she could play games with you instead of doing her homework.

Everyone managed to adapt to your absence.

With one exception.

At first glance, it seemed like Optimus, the bot with whom you shared the closest bond, hadn’t been affected by such a drastic change. Nothing in his behavior indicated any longing. He didn’t express his opinion on the matter, didn’t ask, didn’t demand. As always, he buried his feelings deep within, playing the role of a diligent leader, hiding from everyone the nightmares running through his processor, now even more intense because of your absence.

He was withering, quietly and alone.

Until now, he had been content simply watching you. He had established a routine, unhealthy as it was, that kept him going. He knew that most of the time when he returned from patrol or a mission, you would be at the base. Even if you came every other or every third day, Optimus knew that eventually, you would show up. It gave him a sense of stability amidst the chaos surrounding him. But now? Maybe two weeks wasn’t a big challenge for you, but he was done after one.

Now, he wanted to be more than a passive observer. He craved physical contact, to hold you close, to feel your heartbeat against his metal. He wanted to know you were alive, to feel your pulse under his digit, to listen to its rhythm, to understand how your chest moved against his metal. He wanted to feel, taste, touch, enter.

He kept glancing at the spot on the couch where you usually sat with your laptop on your lap or spent time with the kids as if hoping that if he looked just one more time, you would materialize there. That everything would return to normal, that he wouldn’t suffer so much, that you would give him the daily dose of antidote he needed to function without plunging deeper into despair. But no matter how many times he looked, you weren’t there, and wouldn’t be for another week.

At some point, however, someone noticed their leader’s miserable mood.

"I can’t quite figure out what kind of bond you have with that woman," Ratchet said, pausing his work to look at Optimus. Before his friend could answer, he continued, "But she’ll be back soon. And whatever she’s doing, she’ll do it well. She’s tough."

"Thank you, old friend. I have no doubt in her abilities. But I would feel better if she were stationed closer to the base in case of a Decepticon attack."

"Mm-hmm," the medic scoffed. "Sure, that’s all it’s about."

Optimus had no response to that. He wasn’t surprised that Ratchet noticed his infatuation, but he would prefer that his friend not delve into the details of their relationship. At least, not yet. Not while Optimus himself was a wreck.

"Hey, hey! [Name] messaged!" Miko yelled.

The Autobot leader immediately approached the platform, finally abandoning his conversation with Ratchet, aware that it would only spark more suspicions. But he didn’t care anymore, not in such an important moment.

He stood directly behind Miko, with Bumblebee and Bulkhead beside him, equally curious to know what you had been up to over the past week.

"She sent photos, too! Look!"

Miko turned to show the messages to the others but paused when she noticed Optimus’s helm close to her.

“Whoa,” she whispered, surprised that out of all the bots, he was the one standing the closest. She swallowed, but her confidence quickly returned.

Holding her phone firmly, she displayed a close-up selfie of you. You were smiling, though the bags under your eyes betrayed that you were sleep-deprived, probably exhausted.

Optimus felt the accumulated stress, pain, and longing of the past week slowly dissipate. Everything was fine with you. You were alive, pushing forward with a smile on your face, happy to simply exist. Admiring your photo didn’t compare to seeing you in person, but it let him vent a little easier, granting him a brief respite from worry, gnawing at him from within. It was enough. For now. For a moment.

“She sends her regards to everyone,” Miko went on, “Oh, and she also asked Ratchet to take a break and mentioned she already bought a gift for Optimus and can’t wait to come back. Hey, I want a present, too!”

Optimus couldn't be certain if another week apart wouldn’t inflict even more damage on his processor and spark, or if longing would eventually consume him entirely. But he knew he was already lost, that you held sway over every aspect of his life. He was wrapped around your finger, tethered by a leash you didn’t even realize existed. And he didn’t mind one bit.