#i know LOTS of weird shit until you actually ask for weird shit specifically so this is the best i got

[immoralimmortals]

🙃 on the ask game!

🙃(tell us a weird fact)

It is largely assumed that the "Eraserhead Baby" (the baby from Eraserhead) is a puppet made from a cow fetus, but this is unconfirmed.

[sugrhigh]

BOY NEXT DOOR 11 - ( c.s )

part ten

summary- you and your roommates live beside a bunch of senior hockey players, one of them being the infamous team captain chris sturniolo. he’s effortlessly flirty and undeniably attractive, but he’s also a pain in your ass. you find that you have to fight between lust and hatred as you finally get to know the boy next door, whether you want to or not.

warnings- swearing, starts fluffy (borderline cringe but get over it) and then smurtyyy baby ITS THE FINALE so enjoy

a/n: wow, a chapter coming to a close. you may get an epilogue…you may not…only time will tell. thank you to anyone who has supported me in general and especially on this specific series!! i had such a fun time with this concept and appreciate yall sticking it out with me fr <3

you’re really regretting your promise to chris now. it’s a day later and there’s less than an hour until the game, which is heightening your nerves like nothing else. you smooth your shaky hands over your sweatshirt, continually glancing over at your bed.

his jersey rests there, crisp and clean. it smells like him too; you picked up on the familiar scent when you were holding it in your hands earlier.

he left it in your mailbox, shooting you a vague text before heading up to the arena. though he didn’t tell you what he put in there in his message, you already knew. and you’ve been wrestling with how you want to play this ever since.

you got so comfortable wearing his stuff, especially to games, that it kind of feels weird not to. but you have a feeling that a lot more people know about what happened than you initially expected, which scares the shit out of you.

you suppose you have to get a little uncomfortable, though. it’s been so long since you’ve felt this way, since someone’s excited you, or even hurt you like this.

and it fucking sucked to be so disappointed. but you never ever thought you would bear witness to chris sturniolo saying his first real i love you, especially to you. it was maybe the one thing he could’ve done to convince you, because it was just so unexpected.

you already knew you loved him, so getting that confirmation from him first was huge.

you blow out a breath, still so antsy as you twist around, watching your reflection with a fierce intensity. nothing you’ve tried feels right, and it’s beyond frustrating.

just put it on. what’s the harm?

you’re tearing your hoodie off a moment later, tossing it to the floor as you reach for his jersey. it slips over your head perfectly, wrapping you in subtle hints of his cologne as you adjust it on your shoulders.

you can’t help but smile slightly as you glance in the mirror; if you ignore reality enough, it almost seems like you’re the same person you were a month ago; a blissfully ignorant girl supporting the boy she cared about.

cares about, your brain autocorrects you.

you never really stopped. you wouldn’t have gone over to his house yesterday in the first place if you truly had.

“hey, are you almost—” ramona stops dead in her tracks when she looks up from her feet, seeing you standing in the number 3.

you’re immediately ashamed, for whatever reason, like she caught you doing something wrong. part of it does feel wrong, and you’re about to say so. but then she smiles, like really smiles, and clasps her hands together happily. “finally!”

the reaction shocks you, to say the least, and you know it’s written all over your face. you shake your head a little, trying to find some way to ask her what she possibly means by that.

mona rolls her eyes at you playfully. “what, you thought i wouldn’t support you?”

you shrug, mouth still parted in surprise. you’re kind of smiling though; you’re happy she feels this way, you just weren’t necessarily expecting it.

plus, you didn’t actually tell them how you felt when you gave them the rundown last night after the bars, so neither of them could’ve known what you were experiencing. for the most part you were acting like it was strictly business or something, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

“i don’t know what i thought, to be honest.” you finally say, shifting around on your feet uncomfortably.

“why didn’t you tell me?”

you sigh and mess with your hair a bit. “because it’s not, like, official or anything, and i’m still not even sure i want to wear this to the game. i was just putting it on, i guess.”

she nods, and you’re waiting for her to say more, but she doesn’t. ramona just walks over, pulling you into her arms without another word.

you’re once again stunned, but in a pleasantly unanticipated way. you’re beyond tired of crying, but these tears are different. they’re happy, because you can feel your heart mending, and mona knows that too.

“you took the time, and i think you’re ready to forgive, angel. i can see it every time i look at you, that you’re still thinking of him, and that’s okay. he’s clearly been a fucking wreck, and i honestly believe he loves you because he would never utter those words if he didn’t.” she laughs into your hair slightly, and you can hear the emotion in her voice.

despite everything, you let out a breathy chuckle too. “you’re amazing, you know that? i really lucked the hell out with you.”

she pulls away, still smiling despite her shining eyes. you dab at your own, trying your best not to ruin the makeup you had so carefully applied half an hour earlier.

“i love you forever. cass and i just want to see you happy and i think being with him is what you want. so if it really is, you should wear it.” ramona gives the jersey a little tug.

you know you’re going to now, and you decide you don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. it’s between you and him, and if the people you trust most support you, then nothing else matters.

“i…i will. and thanks, really. you always help clear my head.” you nudge her a little with a grin.

“of course,” she wraps a hand around your arm so she can start pulling you toward the door, “now hurry up, because we’re on the verge of being late and cass is waiting!”

being away from the rink this long makes the lights somehow feel a hundred times brighter. they’re beating down on you as you and your roommates make your way to your seats, the same ones that you’d become accustomed to ever since that first game.

it’s been a while since you’ve felt quite this many eyes on you, and it’s insanely unsettling. you focus on navigating the steps below you, because you know if you don’t you’ll fall and make yourself look even worse.

it’s at least loud, considering they’ve got all the music going for warm ups. you’re glad you can’t hear the crowd of students whispering about how pathetic you are, or how stupid you’re acting.

maybe it’s true, but you’re beyond that now. you’re willing to get hurt again, even though you hope with all of your heart that the day never comes, because you’ll regret it forever if you don’t try.

people make mistakes. but they only get one chance to make it up in your book, and this is chris’s chance.

so you square your shoulders and try to wear the jersey with pride as you guys finally arrive in the front row, even though it’s difficult to act confident.

fake it till you make it, or whatever they say.

your eyes find him skating around almost immediately, like they’re just naturally drawn in his direction. you suppose that it shouldn’t be surprising, at least not after watching so many games.

the way he moves is different; he’s smooth, always one step ahead, like he’s playing an entirely different game. it’s easy to spot, because he’s somehow the most fluid and the most aggressive on the ice.

you watch as chris skates back to the blue line, circling their half of the rink while they all take practice shots. that’s when he looks over at your section, and you can see the relief wash over his face when he spots you.

he nods, and you can see a devilish smile forming on his face as he snaps the puck into the net once again. it makes you uneasy when the rest of the team starts to glance at you as well, only to look toward one another after like some sort of signal.

you try to shake it, pretend like your gut is completely wrong, and for a couple minutes you can. they stretch and do more drills and everything seems normal, or as normal as it can be right now.

until they all slow down, gathering around the bench one by one to create a warped huddle. the opposing team is skating off of the ice now with five minutes left of warmups, and you’ve never been more on edge. mona and cass aren’t paying enough attention, so when you look at them in alarm, they’re purely concerned.

“what? why does your face look like that?” cassidy questions.

before you can even begin to explain the weird feeling that’s settled in your bones, the entire BU team breaks as the lights shut off. you can hear the confused murmuring of the fans over the music, which is fading out slowly now.

each of them line up, getting into position as if they’ve practiced a hundred times, forming a pyramid shape in the middle of the ice. chris stands alone in the front, and there’s a microphone in his hand, and—oh god, fuck.

seconds later the spotlight flares over to shine on him, and even though you know there’s no way he can actually see with it directly in his eyes, it still feels like he’s looking right at you.

you watch him gulp nervously, and you’re just as terrified of whatever is coming next.

“uh—hi everyone. i’m your captain, chris, and i wanted to thank each and everyone one of you for coming out tonight.” he starts off, trying to brush away his fear.

though the crowd is still obviously confused, they’re applauding regardless due to their special recognition. on the other hand remain completely still, trying to avoid panicking so publicly.

“what the fuck is he doing?” mona whisper shouts in your direction, and all you can do is shrug even though you know where he’s going with this.

somehow, you can just feel it in your gut.

“seriously, you guys are beyond amazing. you’re the reason playing here is so incredible,” chris smiles charmingly as the noise dies down, pausing dramatically for a moment before continuing, “but i’m actually standing out here tonight like an idiot because there’s somebody in this crowd that i need to apologize to.”

your stomach falls to your feet, and you can’t do anything besides stare out across the rink at him. he’s looking your way again, brilliant blue gaze still able to pick up on exactly where you are, and you feel a shock course through your veins.

“i did wrong by her, and i’ve been kicking myself every day since. she’s the most radiant and passionate person in every room, and she’s also the only reason i’m even here in this arena today. the truth is that i love her, which is why i think it’s time to turn the tables and embarrass myself a little bit to prove that. plus you guys get a heck of a show in the process.” he jokes, earning some apprehensive chuckles in response.

chris clears his throat, trying not to let his voice crack. despite what you think, he actually can see you through the brightness, which makes his heart leap to his throat. “so to the girl of my dreams, i’m sorry. and i hope this shows you that i meant it when i said i’d never stop fighting.”

every single part of you is screaming in a way you can’t explain; you’re completely entranced, but in the same way that people can’t look away from a car crash.

the audience chatters as the lights go out again, but it doesn’t take long before ain't too proud to beg starts playing to cut them off. you recognize it immediately, and now you can’t help but crack a smile.

this was the song you listened to most when you’d drive around in his car, singing along together with the heat blasting on your way to nowhere in particular. you can’t hear it anymore without thinking about him.

the stadium ignites in a dreamy red glow, and each member of the team begins skating in slow circles, kicking their feet out lightly to the rhythm. chris remains up front, gliding around as if he’s walking on clouds.

he tries not to look at you too much, because this moment is about putting himself on display, but his attention darts to you every couple of seconds. you’re clearly stunned, but he sees the small grin on your lips, and that lights the fire he needs to go all out.

“i know you wanna leave me, but i refuse to let you go,” chris begins, voice surprisingly strong as he glides around, “if i have to beg n’plead for your sympathy, i don’t mind ‘cause you mean that much to me.”

you can hear people starting to sing along, and you amaze yourself by joining in for the chorus as well. cassidy and ramona sway beside you, both shaking you lightly as they try to contain their shrieks of delight.

“ain’t too proud to beg, and you know it, please don’t leave me girl.” he belts out, unable to contain his happiness when he sees your reaction.

his team continues to dance on the rest of the ice, leaving the middle for him as they goof off, each adding their own personal flair to the simple choreography. you laugh when you see connor and ben doing the robot at each other, simply because they look so damn stupid.

“ain’t too proud to plead, baby baby, please don’t leave me girl.” chris holds the mic between both palms, shaking his hands in prayer as he skates backwards suavely.

the beat swells as the jazz blares through the speakers, and they all line up across the center of the ice. there are tears in your eyes as chris joins them, arms all linked over each others shoulders as they begin a rockette kick line.

despite how insanely unsafe it probably is to do on skates, they’re all killing it. the whole stadium is roaring now; laughter, cheers, chanting along, you name it. you’re amazed, eyes flashing along with the glowing atmosphere.

having him serenade you with this song, in front of all of these people, is something you never thought possible.

there’s an exhilarated expression on his face, still completely focused on you as he sings his heart out, and it makes you completely weak. his defined features are as striking as ever, cheeks flushed slightly from the adrenaline of it all.

he’s the same handsome boy you thought you knew, and yet here he is, surprising you again.

you’re bouncing around as the song nears the end, only for chris to come skating forward from the others so he can slide on his knees across the rink, headed your way. it’s so dramatic and so fucking silly that you’ve got a stitch in your side from laughing.

for a moment you just look at each other, separated only by the plexiglass wall, and everything else in your mind quiets. you no longer hear the anxious thoughts, or the crowd, or even your friends screaming beside you.

chris’s chest heaves as he finally relaxes, lowering his outstretched arms so that he can shrug bashfully, as if he’s asking you what you think.

you shrug back, but you’re beaming so hard that your true feelings are on display regardless. you can see his matching teary eyes, and truly for the very first time, neither of you care about anyone else.

he’s fucking whipped, and he’ll tell everyone in the world without a second thought. you’re certain of that now, and so is he.

finally, chris pushes himself up and holds the mic back to his mouth, one arm out as he waves to the sea of people. “thank you everyone! get loud tonight, and as always go terriers!”

they all skate off the ice, and you see his friends embracing him in excitement as they head back to the locker room. chris takes one final look over his shoulder, and you give him a wave of encouragement.

he disappears and your attention finally turns to your friends, their mouths still hanging open from the rather electrifying show.

“i can’t believe…i mean he just…” cassidy tries to form a sentence, but ends up pressing a hand to her lips instead.

“that kid is so fucking in love with you, wow.” ramona giggles to herself.

you’re about to object, but you know she’s right. and after that display, there’s certainly no point in arguing about it, because then you’d just be giving some shitty explanation.

before you can even start babbling, your phone vibrates in your pocket and you freeze again. you know who it is, but your heart is pounding against your ribcage as you check anyways.

chris

we’ll talk after?

it's the first text from him in weeks that you’re going to respond to, the first of many you suppose. that makes you smile as you type out an answer.

y/n

only if you win :)

and he does. he does win. in fact, chris went out there and played probably the best game of his entire career.

a hat trick, which he’s never done in his life, all for you.

the team is electric, and he knows the party will be coming back to his place as they all rage in the locker room after the game. it was incredible, and this moment with them is great, but the only person he wants to see is you.

so he slips into the hallway, already dialing your number as the door finally swings shut to contain some of the noise.

you pick up on the first ring.

“i won.” chris states immediately, and he can hear the grin in his own voice.

“you did.” you respond.

it’s a lame attempt at being coy, and you both know it. he leans his shoulder up against the wall, shaking his head even though you can’t see it.

“three goals was pretty impressive, huh? probably worth talking to me over, at least in my opinion.” chris teases, and your laugh gives him butterflies.

you glance over at your friends, who try to look busy as you all wait for the bus, though it’s very clear that they’re trying to eavesdrop. “i can’t disagree there, captain.”

he snorts before he can help it. “so does that mean you’re coming over?”

it seems like an eternity before you answer, even though it’s maybe five seconds total. “yeah, i’ll see you at home.”

when chris confronts the locker room once more he tries to part ways with everyone graciously, but they can see through him. he can’t get out of there quick enough, and yet everyone is just as excited to watch him leave.

none of them have ever seen him like this. he’s never seen himself like this, and despite being horrified of that in the past, there’s nothing holding him back anymore.

he tries not to get too antsy on the drive home, and you’re buzzing equally as much as you chat with your friends.

chris keeps working himself up even thinking about being close to you, about actually getting to belong to you. he’s missed having you in his hands, in the most innocent and sinful ways possible.

he beats you back by a few minutes, so he hangs around in the front yard like a dog, kicking at the dirt to try and distract himself.

by the time you come walking down the street, laughing along with cassidy and ramona, he feels like his heart is going haywire. your face coming into focus under the street light only makes it worse, because you look so damn perfect.

when you catch sight of him your expression transforms immediately; you’re somehow more visibly timid, but he can also tell that you’re dying to speak.

“‘sup chris?” cassidy nods, arms crossed over her chest as she turns with ramona toward their house.

“pleasure to see you ladies again.” he charms, giving a little two finger salute.

they both giggle and wave him off, whispering amongst themselves as they leave the two of you alone. its just like his first time ever laying eyes on you, because he’s equally as entranced as he was three years ago.

“hey.” he takes a couple steps forward, hands still in his pockets.

you can tell he’s actually a bit reserved, which surprises you. chris has always been good at reading you, at calling you out, and it’s hard to believe that he can’t pick up on the fact that you’re so far beyond gone.

“hi there.” you smile and get a little closer, and he almost falls to his knees.

a few more paces forward and you’d be face to face, so close that his nose would probably brush against yours. so he moves, one foot at a time, just to give you the opportunity to say no.

but you don’t, and you know that you never will, so you ask him the one question on your mind. “do you really want to talk?”

chris blushes for what seems like the millionth time, shaking his head slowly.

“what do you think?”

he’s towering over you a bit now, stopped only a couple inches away to keep some semblance of space. you don’t want it, and he doesn’t either, so you reel him flush against you by the waistband of his sweats.

“i think you should tell me you love me one more time.” you tease, drinking in the intoxicating smell of that goddamn dior.

chris leans in the rest of the way so his mouth is hovering over yours, even though it’s suffocating to do so. “i love you. i’ll say it as many times as ya like, princess.”

your stomach is flipping. you can’t help it anymore.

so you kiss him. you wrap your arm around his torso and you pull him as close as possible and you just fucking kiss him.

he’s already melting into you, hand tangling in your hair instinctively to tug. it’s sloppy, heated, everything you’ve been holding back for weeks. tasting your signature chapstick is enough to get him all bothered, to the point where it’s embarrassing.

it’s the start of something new, all while you’re standing in the same fucking driveway where this really began.

you pull away completely breathless, though you don’t wait to slip your hand into his. chris stumbles slightly over his feet as you pull him along, a little taken aback by the change in pace.

“what, can’t keep up?” you joke as you ascend the porch with him in tow.

he finds his balance quickly, though, hot on your heels now. his palm comes down to slap your ass playfully as you’re headed through the front door and you shriek out a laugh.

“i do just fine, thank you very much.”

he’s quick to reattach himself to you, so quick in fact that you’re barely able to close the door behind you.

it’s honestly hard to even get up to his room because of how much he’s all over you; kissing your neck from behind, running his hands over waist, dragging his fingers up and down every part of your body.

chris has missed you for too long to let any second go to waste. you’re giggling in between tiny little breaths of pleasure, attempting to hold them back some, but he wants to hear more.

you carelessly stagger into his room and he kicks the door shut behind him before breaking away. chris finally takes a moment to pause so that he can turn you around and admire you.

“you know what you do to me in that jersey, seeing you out there wearing my name.” chris growls, sliding his hands underneath the synthetic material to grip your warm skin.

you push your hips to him harder, smirking when you feel his hard-on press against your lower stomach. “mhmm, you gonna do anything about it before everyone gets back?”

his hands travel higher at this, skimming up the sides of your body as it bunches up around your chest. you get the message, so you lift your arms to help him take it off only for him to toss it to the floor a second later.

“fuck ‘em…i wanna take my time with you.” chris brushes your hair over your shoulder gently.

you try not to shiver. the anticipation is killing you as he cups the side of your neck, forcing you to retreat slowly until your legs meet his bed. his chest rises and falls heavily while he looks at you, familiarizing himself with every detail again.

you take the next step and sink down, laying your back against the mattress. your hair is like a halo around you, and chris shakes his head slightly.

his knee comes in between your legs to make room for himself, and you’re turned on just watching him devour you with his eyes.

“y’look like a fuckin’ angel.” he sighs, planting his arms by your shoulders so he can hover above you now.

you tilt your head, daring him to capture your lips again. “you gonna treat me like one?”

“long as you act like one.” he taunts back.

without a second thought you fasten your legs around his waist, pulling him right against your core so you can really feel. those tight little yoga pants don’t hide your warmth, and chris lets out an involuntary groan.

“fine, have it your way.”

he shifts his weight so he can wrap one hand around your throat, and the pressure is so enjoyable that you place your own palm over his to let him know it.

your other one travels to the back of his head, gripping his roots as his mouth connects with your neck harshly.

he’s leaving his mark again, not caring how childish it is to be putting hickies in this spot specifically. chris wants everyone to see them, to know that it’s real this time, and you’re his.

you selfishly don’t care either. neither of you have said the words yet, but you’re together, and it excites you that everyone will be able to look at the proof.

he lingers in every spot, working his way to your collarbone as he rocks against you. you’re a whining mess, his hard bulge rubbing against your center perfectly, and it only gets worse when the fingers around your neck move to squeeze your tits.

the fact that your bra is unlined makes it even more arousing, the lace brushing against your hardened nipple as he pinches one between his pointer and middle.

“missed you so much.” he grumbles, his hot breath fanning across your skin while he drags his lips down further, sliding his body through your legs, “you were driving me insane.”

the kisses he presses against your stomach makes you tense slightly from the sheer amount of butterflies. chris gets closer and closer to the top of your pants, lowering his body far enough to kneel at the side of his bed.

he finally abandons his position briefly so he can look up at you through his lashes. you’ve never seen a prettier goddamn sight.

“tell me you need me, baby.” he challenges, and you’re dying to have him touching you again in any way.

“i need you, chris. so bad, please.” you beg, squirming slightly to try to get closer.

but he keeps you where you are, slowly pulling the silky material down your hips, mouth trailing along every part of you as he goes. you gasp at the sensation, only unhooking your ankles for a second to allow him to fully tug them off.

he doesn’t hesitate before he clutches the outside of both of your legs and tugs you toward his face, keeping them planted around his shoulders as his elbows dig into the mattress.

“that’s what i thought.” chris smirks, leaving more tantalizing kisses up the middle of your thighs.

your breath hitches the closer he gets, his stubble scraping your skin slightly as he ventures on. your fingers tangle in his roots when his lips finally trace along the seam of your panties, which are already humiliatingly damp.

one of his hands reaches further over your hips to shove them to the side, and feeling his fingers brush you even slightly makes you shudder just a bit.

“fucking do something.” you’re the one pleading now, though not as publicly.

chris’s laugh fans across your wetness, and goosebumps crawl their way up your skin.

“been waiting for those words.”

finally, he presses his lips against your core and you mutter a soft incoherent curse. his tongue slips out to glide across the delicate skin, for just long enough that your back arches off of the comforter.

he groans and you feel it vibrating right through you. chris has been craving you for so long, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be in this position again.

he’s already completely pussy-drunk, because his plan was to draw it out, really make you tick. but he can’t hold back; he got a taste and now he’s eating like it’s his last time, nose bumping your sensitive bud as he teases your entrance.

“shit—chris!” you cry out, gripping his hair harder in your knuckles.

he murmurs again in appreciation, because he’s always loved the feeling, and you quiver slightly from the sensation. it’s too much all at once and yet it’s never enough.

your legs instinctively tighten around his head as he works his tongue up and down fully, making sure he hits every tender spot over and over. it’s magic, however he does it.

you can feel the climax brewing in your stomach as your toes curl slightly, and chris notices your body beginning to shake more frequently.

it was gentle at first, but he’s since picked up the pace, forcing you to grind down on his face as he clutches your around his head. his fingers slide over a bit more, applying pressure to your bundle of nerves in consistent circles.

“oh fuck, gonna make me cum baby.” you barely manage to get it out between moans.

hearing you call him baby only spurs him on, his own erection begging to be freed as continues to work your cunt.

the combined pressure has you whimpering in satisfaction, head thrown back which you know is effectively messing up your hair. your eyes are screwed shut now, lips parted because you can’t seem to stop making noise.

“that’s it, sweetheart. you love my mouth so much, huh?” he pauses only for a second to goad, fingers still deliberately switching paces to draw out the ecstasy.

but then he buries his face again, flicking over your clit at the fastest speed of the night. it’s probably the most intense he’s ever been and you gasp, your breath catching in your throat before a loud whine escapes.

the stimulation is finally too much and you can’t hold back, muscles constricting as you reach your high.

chris doesn’t stop for the entire ride down, though his tongue does grow lazier as you finish for the first time of the night. he doesn’t want to let go of you, finally breaking his contact with your core only to press his wet lips against the inside of your thighs once again.

“jesus christ.” you pant, finally releasing his fluffy hair from your grip.

he chuckles slightly, peppering kisses across your legs until he’s content. “m’not done with you yet. strip.”

even though you’re still hazy from the first round, you’re surprisingly quick to follow direction. you arch your back more and unhook your frilly bra, chucking it somewhere behind you.

chris finally stands back up from his spot on the floor, and you make quick work pushing your underwear down your hips and kicking them off as he watches.

“look who’s finally listening.” he jokes with a grin.

you roll your eyes, and then a new impulse takes over; you want him to know who he belongs to now. so you sit up with him in between your legs, which surprises him enough that he’s still for a moment.

you take the opportunity to mess with the hem of his tee, slowly sliding your palms underneath and up his stomach.

“i showed you mine.” you hint, ghosting your lips over his now-exposed torso.

this time chris is the one obeying, pulling his shirt the rest of the way for you. his dick is right up against your chest, clearly straining through his sweats at this point.

you let your hands wander back down his body, nails skimming along his happy trail until you reach the top of his pants. he’s quick, yanking them down with his boxers and shoving both further away on his floor.

“really wanna ride you.” you whisper, palming him just enough.

he groans at the gentleness of your touch; he’s extra sensitive now that he’s completely exposed. precum is already leaking from his tip, so you swipe your thumb across it and his hips buck a bit in response.

you slide the slick across his shaft, pumping slowly because it’s your turn to provoke him.

“i’d literally do anything you asked.” chris can hear how weak his voice is as he caresses your hair, and he’s genuinely concerned that his eyes have permanently become hearts.

you look up at him, craning slightly to rest your cheek in his palm, and he swears he could cum right then until you pull your hand away.

“lay down.” your voice is low, sultry, and he’s hypnotized.

all he can do is move on your command, shifting past you to sprawl out across his bed, erection slapping against his waist. he barely has time to settle on his pillows before you’re crawling his direction, tossing a leg over his lap so that you can straddle him.

chris hisses out a prayer, hands going to your hips as your wetness comes in contact with his. you’re hovering, enticing him even more as you lightly slide against his base.

“quit—aahhh—teasing me.” he hums, grinding his own erection up against you harder to try and help himself out.

“can’t handle it?” you smirk, even though the truth is that neither of you can bear the torment of taking it slow.

“you’re a lot to handle.”

you know he’s messing around, but your palms press against his shoulders nonetheless so you can lift yourself a bit higher, which makes him whine in protest at the loss of contact.

you shake your head slightly, a patronizing grin finding finding its way to your face. “better get used to it, pretty boy.”

then one hand wraps around his pulsating cock, pressing his swollen head against your lips before you sink down onto it in its entirety. chris whimpers out a muddled sentence, and tight swears fumble out of your own throat as he stretches you out.

chris is overwhelmed by the rush of having you wrapped around him. you haven’t even started moving; you’re just letting him take it in, the same way that you are as he floods your senses.

“so goddamn perfect for me, fill me up so good.” you praise, finally starting to rock your hips at a grating speed.

the compliment gets to his head, and he didn’t think it was possible for you to turn him on more than you already do. he’s rutting into you seconds later, matching your pace instinctively just like you knew he would. you’ve never been bare with him like this, and you lean into the thrill as much as possible.

the passionate tempo helps ease you into his size, though you’ll admit you’ve missed the delicious sensation of having to break yourself in.

chris chokes on his breath, his fingers digging into your sides hard enough now to leave a bruise. “holy shit.”

his words spur you on and you start to really bounce, skin slapping skin as you both try to contain the sounds of pure bliss falling past your lips.

you spread your legs even wider, which allows you to feel every bulging inch of him pounding into you. your nails rake down his abdomen, leaving little lines of red in their wake.

he can’t get enough of the way you fold around him, and it finally crosses his mind that there’s nothing protecting you.

“condom.” chris grits through his teeth, not slowing his momentum despite what he just said.

“buy me a plan b after, need you raw.” you reply quickly, voice pinched as your chest heaves.

you’ve never been careless like this, and it definitely won’t happen again. but right now, having nothing standing between the two of you is all you’re craving. he’s relishing it, truly being skin to skin.

his hands travel to clutch the curve of your ass, helping slam you down so he can hit the right spot, and even now it’s still not close enough. he adores you too much; it’ll never be enough, because he’s always going to want more.

he’s gasping at this point, trying to keep his eyes open just so he can watch you in all your glory. it’s dim in his room and you’re perfectly backlit, tits bouncing as your hair flits around your face.

you’re the most gorgeous thing he’s ever laid eyes on.

every stroke feels better than the last, and your stomach flips each time he drives himself into that sensitive area. you’re clenching hard now, tugging on his cock rhythmically to the point where he’s twitching inside.

“oh-h my god, fuckin love you. my pretty girl.” chris groans, addicted to the excitement of saying it out loud.

that familiar fire burns in your gut, somehow more fierce than the first. you’re tensing again, trying not to get too careless with your pace as your whimpers grow in intensity.

“m’close—i can’t…” you stutter, brain jumbled with incoherent thoughts.

he props his own legs up slightly, using the last bit of his strength to buck into you. he draws out every last second, because he’d live right here forever if he could.

“give it to me, princess, don’t hold back.” chris prompts breathlessly, his vision blurring as his climax rapidly approaches.

your hips connect sloppily a few more times and it crashes over the both of you at once. the room echos with pants and moans of gratification, a thin layer of sweat painting your skin as you come down from your second orgasm of the night.

you feel him release too, painting your walls in a divine warmth that you’re not used to. you’re so strung out that even the tiniest bits of friction you’re still receiving have you gnawing on the inside of your cheek to control yourself.

finally both of your movements slow to a stop, letting the moment settle for a moment as you catch your breath.

you’re closer that you were before, practically chest to chest with him aside from your hands, so you tilt your forehead to his and give him a gentle peck.

“i’m obsessed.” he mumbles against your mouth before you pull away.

you smile, slowly shifting off of him so you can force yourself into the crook of his arm instead. “you’re just figuring that out now?”

“i always knew, trust me.” chris banters, wrapping his bicep around you to pull you tighter against his side.

you sigh as he presses a kiss to the crown of your head. “so this is real? we’re actually together?”

“if you’ll have me, but i’m yours either way.”

he’s so open, so quick to admit how he actually feels, and it’s everything you’ve been waiting for.

“good, because i’m kind of in love with you and i’ve never been a sharer.”

he chuckles at this, and it already feels so natural. everything has fallen into place, and you're just glad you’re not wasting any more time not experiencing this.

“but you’re not fully forgiven until you buy me that plan b, seriously.” you poke his side playfully and this time you both laugh.

“i think i can make that happen.” chris responds sarcastically, unable to fight the permanent smile that seems to be taking over his features.

every part of him is so content, and it’s the most alive he’s ever been. you bring him to life.

he’s not sure he’ll ever understand how he got lucky enough to fight his way back into your world, but he’ll never take it for granted.

it’s always been you, the bewitching girl next door.

@fawnchives @55sturn @luverboychris @teapartyprincess4two @pinksturniolo @mattinside @stonermattsgf @impureals @chrisactualwife @fikefries @riasturns @mattybsbitch @mattsmunch @sturnifyed @julessspoetry @beijhe @gnxosblog @braindead4l @orangeypepsi @ponyosturniolo @cupidsword @rainydayenthusiast @sturnvvz @wurlibydominicfike @poopydroopt @bernardsleftbootycheek @trilliwarner @rubyjanexxx @reallykaz @neatcarrot767 @kirby0strombolli @bunnysturns @junnniiieee07 @hrt-attack @sturnssmuts @stunza @beccaluvschris @asturniolos @slutz4sturniolos @mattslolita @alorsxsturn @sturnrc @chrissystur @kellsbells-18 @realqueenofpepsi @snowysosturn @secretfangirly @x0x0bunny @amelia-sturniolo3 @pvssychicken

[yournightmary]

more streamer! ellie hcs? or maybe college roommate! ellie pls🙏❤️

content warning:: modern!AU, that’s literally it

AN:: I wanted to combine those things but I actually have no idea how college works so… tried my best:) Really short but I had no idea what else to add.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Ellie started streaming the first day of college. She thought that if already she plays video games might as well stream it and maybe make some money.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ She literally woke up in the morning, went to classes that she didn’t understand, then to her shitty work at some convenience store and then, when she was practically dead, she would stream.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ At first it was hard to get any viewers that would stay and actually watch, since she streamed around midnight- maybe even later. But someone posted a clip from her stream on tik tok and she kinda blew up? Like not really, but started getting enough money to quit her job.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Definitely a faceless streamer- she was scared that someone from her classes would recognize her and make fun of her. And because she talked shit about almost everyone on campus (not dropping names, she’s not that stupid)

⇢ ˗ˏˋ She’s had a GIANT crush on you since the first day when she stumbled into you on campus. It was literally like a scene in a movie, your books fell to the ground and she helped you pick them up. But before she could introduce herself or do anything, you were already gone.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Talks about you to her chat. Has like a stupid nickname for you (because she doesn’t know your real name). Literally tells them everything, where she saw you that day, what you were wearing- and if you smiled at her or something like that? Oh god, that’s all she’s yapping about on stream.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ One time she was sitting in class behind some random guy she didn’t know and she peeked over his shoulder, just because she was bored, only to see him watching some clips of her stream on tik tok. She actually went MIA and didn’t stream for a good week or two because she was too scared of being recognized.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ After that she became a lot more careful about what she’s saying on stream. Stopped talking about specific people (except you), about her classes and professors.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Always gets so awkward and nervous when someone asks what she does for work. If she was too vague it sounded weird but if she was too specific people could find her account. So she chooses the first option and just says she does stuff in the internet (almost everyone who asked thought she does OF or something like that)

⇢ ˗ˏˋ A good few months passed before she finally got the balls to talk to you (after getting bullied by her chat). It all went well, surprisingly to her… until you asked if she’s a streamer. That girl literally had tears of anxiety in her eyes!! But you told her that you think she’s really funny and you watch her in your free time and she calmed down.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ She kinda forgot about the fact that she yaps about you every time she streams… you didn’t remind her for her own good. Definitely stopped mentioning you after she found out you watch her.

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Don’t worry, she went back to it once you started dating:)

⇢ ˗ˏˋ Invites you to sit with her when she streams, since she doesn’t have a face cam. Or maybe even streams some stupid multiplayer games with you.

I might make something special for halloween but no promises 😈

[inbabylontheywept]

Hey, so for context it's 3:45 AM where I am, and I'm stark awake at this hour because I had to take a nap yesterday due to eating a meal I really shouldn't have that is still wreacking havoc on my intestines. I'm definitely going to regret sending this ask HARD once the sun comes up, but I've been doing a lot of unadvisable shit on the internet over the past 3 days so why not add this to the pile.

I'm kind of having a weird emotional thing right now over your last post because it's just too ridiculous to be true, and I'm realizing the majority of your blog is probably all creative writing not intended to be taken seriously, but I've believed everything you've claimed to be a true story up until this point? And now I'm faced with either being a gullible fool, or an asshole for saying this if it IS all true, and I have to ask or I'll never know? I shouldn't be letting this get to me but it is.

So please, I ask sincerely and with no intention of being a jackass, are your life stories actually all true, or are they supposed to come across as obviously exaggerated or wholly fictional? I'm sure I could piece it together if I lay in bed and thought about it for an hour or two, but I think I'll just take the L and ask outright because fuck it.

But THEN if it truly is just a creative writing blog, would you keep the bit going and claim it's all real when it's not? Like, do you see why I'm going crazy? I am a very gullible, easily lied to person and that has lead me to be on high alert, but I almost always jump at the wrong things and come across as a distrustful asshole, so?? Will you assume this ask itself is LARP because of all the specific details I tacked on, which are intended to garner a sense of sincerity? I'm realizing I may have been playing checkers with someone playing chess all this time and I'm wigging out man

So, I'll start with the small stuff first:

The camp was in Prescott, AZ, in the mountains, over labor day weekend which is in late fall. I don't know the actual temperatures as numbers, but the people at the camp spent more time being cold than hot. The camp organizers also did bring a ludicrous amount of the pink sauce. I don't think the campsite itself was ever intended to provide potable water, just utility water for the showers and dishes and other non-for-direct-consumption tasks. So in that area, the camp people overprepared because Arizonans don't fuck around with dehydration.

I'm also pretty sure they had some water available, they were just very careful with it. I think there were a few diabetic kids, and they were making sure they wouldn't have to subsist on the weird gatorade like everyone else. Maybe. I don't honestly know.

But that's one story, and the thing that you're really asking is, are all these stories fake? Is it all just creative writing? And the answer to that is a soft no.

As a writer, I'm pretty strongly influenced by Patrick McManus. A lot of my stories are told in the American Tall Tale style - which is exaggerated, and dramaticized, but tells a story that is true nonetheless. I am going to keep the specifics of the exaggeration and dramatization between myself and God, but I would look at my stories and say that they're each more than 80% true. I hope that relieves some of your stress.

I wouldn't call what I do creative writing exercises. But I also wouldn't encourage you to take them 100% seriously. Both because I talk a big game, and because they are, at the end of the day, just funny stories. I certainly wouldn't want you to lose any more sleep over them.

You aren't a jackass for expressing incredulity. It's part of my style, and I welcome it. I also wouldn't call you a gullible fool for believing things in the past. We're good, you and I, and I've enjoyed having you as a reader. I hope you keep reading. Just, maybe not at 3:45 AM. Take care of yourself, Babylon

[hareofhrair]

Edith Finch and the Unreliable Narrator

Oh you thought I was done losing my shit over that game? Nah I’ve just been letting it ferment a while. This is just part one because I need to sleep, I’ll hit you with the rest later.

What Remains of Edith Finch has been analyzed pretty thoroughly through the years since its release, but none of the analysis I've seen has ever quite done it for me, in part because I think they are all overlooking an incredibly crucial element of the story.

This is a story about unreliable narrators.

It's not just a cheeky reference that House of Leaves is one of the books found throughout the Finch house. It too is about nested unreliable narration, and I believe is there to draw attention specifically to this element of the game. Edith is not telling us the truth. The stories she reads are not telling her the truth. The result is a matroyshka doll of contradictions and carefully unexamined clues.

Here's a few of the more blatant contradictions, just to prove my point.

Grandma Edie is wheelchair bound. Yet in the retelling of Edith's final night in the house, she sees Edie standing unassisted on the porch. But eh, it's difficult to see. Maybe she had a walker. (Edit: nah that's totally a walker forget this one)

So how about this little nugget.

We are given explicit dates for when Lewis died, when Edith and her mother left, and when Edie died.

Actually, we're given two explicit dates for when Edie died.

We have Lewis's date of death from his tombstone, as November 21, 2010. Edith specifies it was exactly a week after this (November 28) that her mother informed Edie they were leaving, and that same night they fled the house, leaving Edie alone. Edith claims Edie was found dead by nursing home carers the next morning, November 29.

The date on Edie's tombstone is December 5th. A solid week after Edith claims she died.

Here's one of my favorites. Walter is hit by a train that should not exist. The real life Orcas island does not have a train, but in most games I would simply write that off as artistic liberty.

But having a train on an island that small at all does not make sense. Furthermore, even if there were a train, why would the tunnel pass directly under a residential home? Having lived near train tracks, if it were that close to the house at all, the entire family would have been very aware of it, and yet it seems to have caught Walter by surprise. And where is it now? Did they shut it down after Walter was hit? And why would Walter take a sledgehammer to a random wall in the inexplicable tunnels below his already subterranean secret bunker, instead of just going up stairs? Was he afraid of going back through the house? And more importantly:

How does Edith know about any of this?

She had no idea Walter was down there.

("After Barbara died he got as far away as he could" is another lie btw. Walter didn't enter the bunker until he was 16, eight years after Barbara's death, the same year Dawn was born)

So what did they tell her when he died, in 2005, when she was about six years old? Maybe they hid it from her, she's a small child, maybe she just didn't remember. What did they tell her at literally any time after that when she presumably asked about Walter's grave in the family plot? She knew Walter existed, she played in his bedroom. Did she never ask where he was? What happened to him? She has a mysterious uncle she's never met, and then one day out of nowhere there's a new grave for him out back, and she doesn't ask for any explanation about that?

Walter's letter doesn't say he was hit by a train.

I bring this one up not because it's a particularly blatant contradiction, it's actually a pretty fuzzy one with a lot of weird, circumstantial explanations. But it leads into one I think is really important.

When Edith arrives at the house, she informs us the power has been cut off.

But after she leaves the bunker, lights begin turning on.

Eventually culminating in Edith's room being fully illuminated.

This is also the point at which she stops talking about investigating and wanting to find out the truth and switches to "Maybe there is no truth, actually! Maybe it was all just a self fulfilling prophecy and none of these bizarre situations mean anything! You should definitely NOT come here and dig deeper into it."

This is the point at which I think Edith switches from more or less honestly repeating unreliable stories she has no way of verifying, to straight up lying to us, in an effort to discourage her son from ever coming here. There's no answers here, she assures him. Stay away.

People who try to handwave this as a mundane situation, either caused by hereditary mental illness (some real ableist takes about that out there btw yall, yikes) or simply a string of unrelated tragedies highlighting the randomness of death, the complicated ways we grieve, and how sometimes when people die they leave behind unanswered questions that we simply have to live with— Are neglecting the aspects of the story which are blatantly fantastical.

This "string of unrelated tragedies" has been haunting this same family for over 500 years. To the degree there are multiple books written about the curse, by presumably non family members. A man sailed a house across the Atlantic for pete's sake. Even looking at just the deaths since the Finches arrived in America, you cannot tell me that's a normal amount of tragic, unnatural deaths. And Finches have apparently been dying this way and at this rate since the 1400's. You're really going to tell me that's just bad luck? If nothing else, the fact that the family hasn't died out yet with a death rate that high is proof of something unnatural.

How about the fact that Edith's mother was SO alarmed by Edie trying to give her that history of the family, that she got into a physical altercation with a 93 year old, then fled the house, literally just grabbed her kid and booked it, abandoning literally everything she owned, including mementos of her dead husband and children. And then she never came back for them.

If this was a simple case of Dawn and Edie having a personal disagreement, even a pretty intense one worth cutting someone off for, you would think at some point in the seven years following Edie's death, she might have wanted to come back and pick up her stuff!

What was it about Edie trying to give Edith that book that made Dawn change her plans from "we're going to move out" to "we are leaving immediately with the clothes on our backs and never coming back?"

Why does Dawn think Edie's stories killed her children?

And why does Edith never enter the library?

Once we're shown that final evening in the house, it's clear that Edith has known the secret passage into the library from the start. And yet, in the "present" of the game, she never enters it. We only see the inside of the library during her flashback.

You would think, of all the answers Edith might want, the biggest might be what was in that book Edie tried to give her. And if it's anywhere, it's probably still in the library.

But it doesn't come up. Edith, very carefully, I think, completely avoids the subject.

Let's talk about Milton for a minute.

Milton's story is the shortest and contains the least actual details about what may have happened to him. He simply disappeared. Important note, he's not the only one. Barbara's boyfriend also "just disappeared." If I had a nickle for every mysterious disappearance that's happened in this house, I'd have two nickles! Which isn't a lot, but hey, I think maybe any mysterious disappearances are unusual, let alone two.

According to the writers, Milton is the king in their other game "The Unfinished Swan," which is a surreal fantasy that takes place in a magic kingdom. Kind of rules out Milton having just fallen in the lake and drowned during a mental health episode, doesn't it? Kinda makes it explicit that something not normal is going on here, doesn't it?!

Milton's murals are in every secret passage in the house. He knew them all. He knew the house better than maybe anyone.

And when he disappeared, his mother's response was to seal the doors of all the bedrooms. Why? What did she think happened to him? What was her rational for this?

And even more bafflingly, Edie's response to this is to drill peepholes.

Dawn's response to her son's disappearance is to turn her dead relatives bedrooms into sealed tombs. Edie's response is to insist she be able to see into those tombs. And this was apparently an acceptable compromise to Dawn.

Notably, the one exception is Walter's room. There's a peephole under construction in the garage that was presumably for this room. But why did Dawn save that one for last? What made it such a low priority? The fact that there wasn't a memorial in there, because Walter was under the house instead?

Hey, I actually misled you a bit back there. I said she sealed up the bedrooms. That's not completely accurate.

She also sealed the library.

The library where Edie tries to give Edith the family history, that final night in the house.

How did Edie get into the library? I somehow doubt a wheel chair using 96 year old crawled through that secret passage.

Among the bedrooms Dawn sealed, one of them was Edie's. She didn't seal her own or Lewis's or Edith's rooms, so she clearly didn't expect them all to abandon the rooms they were using and sleep in the living areas. So where exactly was Edie sleeping?

Hey, so I actually misled you a bit there, when I said the library was the exception to Dawn only sealing up the old bedrooms.

There's a cot in the library.

Someone was sleeping in there.

During the flashback, Edith doesn't acknowledge it, so why is it there? What is it meant to imply? Was Edie sleeping down here instead of her bedroom upstairs? Sure, I could buy that, stairs are clearly an issue for her.

Except, remember, the door was sealed. Only accessible by crawling on all fours through a cabinet that's maybe 2ftx2ft.

The only remotely plausible scenario is that there is another, more elderly-accessible passage into the library, presumably (since there's no space for it anywhere else) somewhere in the HUGE portion of the third floor we never get to see, and which Dawn and family decided to build a shanty town on top of instead of live in. And that in the couple of minutes between when we hear Dawn and Edie arguing in the dining room and when Edie appears in the library, she booked it up two flights of stairs and down again. Plausible!

But Occam's Razor provides a much simpler explanation.

Edith is lying.

I think it's time to talk about the books.

The books that fill the Finch house are a constant, looming presence. And I do mean constant. There is nowhere in the house that they are not. They're in the secret passages, they're in Walter's bunker, they're in the basement— Literally everywhere.

A lot of the titles are repeated, over and over, and I think this one can safely be chalked up to the realities of making a video game. The amount of work it would take to make that many unique books, the hefty chunk it would add to the game's file size-- The impact it would have on the framerate alone, trying to render all the damn things! So I don't think it's surprising or particularly meaningful that the books repeat as often as they do.

But see, the thing is, they didn't just make one set of books and copy paste it into every room in the house.

Instead, every room gets its own, bespoke book collection, featuring a mix of repeated titles and books seen literally nowhere else.

You go back and read that paragraph up there about how resource intensive and insane it would be to make all the books unique, and then tell me the fact that they DID make them all unique (albeit in a slightly more practical fashion) doesn't mean anything.

So let's talk about some of the titles on display in the Finch house.

I already mentioned House of Leaves, a story about unreliable narrators and a house that grows an impossible hallway that can't physically fit in the space it occupies. I'm gonna talk some more about that later when I get to the maps, just you wait. It's one of the books that appears repeatedly through all rooms.

Other books seen throughout the house include: the Necronomicon. The King in Yellow. Infinite Jest. Gravity's Rainbow. The Weird. And three separate stories by Jorge Luis Borges.

The Necronomicon and The King in Yellow, as well as being allusions to the eldritch mythos of Lovecraft (which is its own whole bag of cats) have something in common with Infinite Jest. They all feature what you might call cognitohazards. Meaning, something that poses a danger to any person who has perceived it. By reading the Necronomicon, you irrevocably bring yourself into the awareness of Lovecraft's eldritch beings. The King in Yellow features a play, which when seen induces madness. Infinite Jest features a film which when viewed causes the subjects to lose all interest in anything other than watching it, eventually leading to their deaths. Additionally, they are all three named after the cognitohazard they feature, meaning it's impossible to tell if the books on the Finch's shelves are the stories that feature these things, or the things themselves.

Gravity's Rainbow and The Weird are two of many books featured in the house which are experimental and surreal or straight up part of the genre known as weird fiction. Defining weird fiction is sort of a debate on its own, but it's a relatively modern genre, applied retroactively to stories as far back as the 1930's but which experienced a resurgence (called the New Weird) in the 80's and 90's. To try and roughly describe it, it's a genre of supernatural fantasy and horror which features transgressive, experimental, and non traditional elements. Lovecraft is considered a writer of weird fiction. He described it thus:

"The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

What Remains of Edith Finch is, itself, a work of weird fiction. And that's not me talking out of my ass, the writers have said as much in interviews.

Which would then imply, by it's very nature, an element of the supernatural.

Just an element that you don't dare look at.

[witchpassing]

interview_3aC

I got into piloting during the Third Generation. For the historically illiterate, that’s before the breakpoint, not after. Summer Offensive, Chelsk Offensive, ‘81, ‘82… All that shit.

When you say pilot now, people get a certain mental image. It wasn’t like that, back then; end of the day, a G3 frame is basically just another kind of tank. Hot like hell inside and full analogue control. You had to think five, six, seven seconds ahead sometimes, because that’s how long it’d take you to string together the inputs for what you were doing next.

I was good. I mean, I’m good at my job now, sure, but… you should’ve fuckin’ seen me then.

... Anyway. Long and short of it is, I got unlucky. Everyone does, sooner or later. Coterie railcannon caved in part of my cockpit, crushed my leg to dogmeat, and that was that. A few years later, they’d have amputated, plugged in a spare, and sent me back in, but this was ‘83, the tech wasn’t there yet. We were hearing about it, you know, shit on the grapevine about the brain-machine barrier, weird tests underground out in Lysk, but I don’t think any of us really believed in it.

I wanna say I knew what was coming, but I didn’t. Nobody did.

So. Cockpit breach. Fucked leg. They did a lot of work, got it to where I could walk on a good day, but it was obvious I wasn’t gonna cut it any more. Took my pension, checked out, spent eight years in the worst dyke bars I could find. Don’t really wanna talk about that part. That’s not what you’re here for, anyway.

So I’m a few years down the line, losing my mind somewhere in Sengrade, and I get a call. It’s this guy I used to know, I never really nailed down what he did, Information maybe, and he’s telling me about this program they’re spinning up over in Lysk, and sure that rings some alarm bells but what am I gonna do, say no? I don’t even need to hear the specifics, he’s trying to tell me it’s the next big jump in frame tech, it’s gonna win us the war, whatever, I’m already halfway onto a train.

The job turned out to be the Fifth Generation. Not only was the brain-machine barrier real, but they’d smashed clean through it. I said a G3 is basically a tank, right? So I was expecting an iteration on the form. Sharper, sleeker sure, but at the end of the day just a prettier-looking tank.

Well, I was dead fuckin’ wrong. Seeing something that size move that way, it’s… I don’t think I can put it into words. Go find a poet or something. Ask them what they think about Gen 5.

… Didn’t come for free, of course. The neural throughput on a machine that size will cook an unprepared brain like a fuckin’ egg. You need to be dosed to the gills on a whole cocktail of ten-syllable shit to take it for more than a few minutes, and the drugs make you weird. Horny, mostly - I’m sure you’ve heard about that - but you’re also looking at impaired impulse control, difficulty with long-term thinking, emotional disregulation, mania… Plus, there’s something in the cocktail or the link or both that is bastard habit-forming. You see them counting the hours between sorties. They adjust to the hyperstimulation, get calibrated to it, and then everything else is just too god-damn quiet.

Think maybe it’s carcinogenic, actually, but you didn’t hear that from me.

So, yeah. Weird. Command doesn’t want weird operating superweaponry. Weird doesn’t make sound tactical decisions. Which means all the shit that makes somebody a functioning soldier - the long-term decision making, the impulse control, the ability to give a fuck about the rules of engagement - it had to be outsourced.

The term they used at first was “special consultant”. Then “special consulting officer”, once we hit field testing. It wasn’t “handler” until later.

The first crop of us - I’m just gonna say handlers, I know how you’re gonna wanna spin this, I get it - were all ex-pilots. G3, mostly; Gen 4 didn’t leave a lot of material to work with. I guess the idea was we were the closest you could get to a G5 candidate’s frame of reference, but it was pretty clear within the first few months that that was bullshit. Some of us took to it, some of us washed out. A lot couldn’t take the wetwork, which I guess I can sympathise with.

Me, I handled it fine. Better than I should’ve, maybe. Being a tanker didn’t do shit for me, but my dad, he was a dog trainer, and… Yeah, well, you get the idea.

… No, no. The other kind of wetwork. You know what I mean.

…

The leg? Ha. Yeah, they offered me a prosthetic. ‘Course they did. But, call me a hypocrite, whatever you want - by that point I was six months in and I knew with total fuckin’ certainty I didn’t want the link. I spend enough of my time helping the military put their shit into peoples’ bodies, you know? I don’t want it walking home with me.

… No, I don’t understand why they keep signing up. Early days, sure, nobody knew what it did to you back then, but there’s been leaks, people’ve talked - hell, I’m talking right now. You can find our burnouts in any dive in the country, or what's fuckin' left of them. The candidates now, they know what we do to people here, and they just keep coming, and coming…

Though, you know… I think sometimes about the first time I saw a Gen 5 machine take off, that first day on the program. The way it moved against the blue-black of the sky, like it weighed nothing at all. And I almost get it.

[meanbossart]

do you have any thoughts on cazador as a character? personally i really loved the parallels between him and astarion & the way that the master/spawn relationship is used as an allegory for cyclical abuse. the scene with cazador’s master’s skull where you find out that he was once victimized in the exact same way that he later victimized astarion was really a lightbulb moment for me re: what vampirism represents in this game.

BOY DO I, i don't think much of it hasn't already been said, though. He's a tragic character in his own right of course, not that that takes away from the awful man he is.

Me and my boyfriend make fun of him a lot, we call him "the best BG3 character" as a little inside joke between us and come up with ridiculous scenarios of things that might have occurred throughout those 200 miserable years the spawn had under his command lol. Maybe he had a month where he was really specific about the shoes everyone wore, maybe once every other decade he had a weird week where he tried to be "nice" only to become frustrated when his efforts weren't immediately met in kind by the rightfully-terrified spawn, maybe between all the torture and horrific-ness he just did some plain weird shit like making someone crouch by in his fainting couch and wait by open-handed for grapes that he dramatically chewed on and then spat right out since he can't actually eat them lmao

And that's hysterical but I think we also started doing that because when you meet Cazador, when you first hear his voice and see his demeanor in person your immediate reaction is probably somewhere along the lines of "THIS is the clown you were so scared of, Astarion?"

And the answer is, of course, yes. This embarrassing little man stuck in a cage of his making instills fear beyond comprehension in Astarion and all his siblings. This man who undoubtedly showed all these spawn, inadvertently, the strangest, most arguably "human" aspects of himself at some point or another during these two centuries they had together is also an absolute monster. And i really like that! I think its far more effective and fitting for his story than if he was, lets say, a Ketheric type.

(this got very long so, more under the cut)

Look at Ascended Astarion in the epilogue now, for example. Everyone agrees that he's an absolute fucking dork - and I think we all also agree that he will go on to destroy the lives of many people beyond repair, especially his own, until the day he is killed.

In the topic of vampirism as an allegory for abuse, I both agree and also don't, at least not exactly - i just think it's deeper than that. I've spoken about this in another post but i find it incredibly refreshing how, to me, it seems like Baldur's Gate 3 has no interest in painting vampirism as sexy or fun past a surface level. It's a curse that nobody asks for unless put in a situation where they feel as if they have no other way out, and it shapes and haunts you for the rest of your undead existence.

Even if you enjoy its benefits at first, that has a time limit. You will see your family and loved ones die, you will see culture evolve while you stay perpetually the same. You will experience so much hurt and pain because the only thing that makes life truly sweet is knowing that it is finite, and eventually it will wear down all of your humanity. And since you can't die unless you are scorched by the sun, staked, or dismembered, you must live with the knowledge that you will never have a peaceful death - and since you won't have a peaceful death, you better not die - and if you don't want to die, you better not be weak - and if you don't want to be weak, you must seek out power at all cost and slash things like love and friendship out of your life.

And what is funny, is that in his attempt to be more like a mortal - to eat, drink, walk the sun, such incredibly simple desires - Cazador (and Astarion, if he ascends) is accidentally only drawing further away from the person he supposedly once was, because that fear of weakness has already utterly corrupted his soul.

That's quite a grim way to look at it, of course. But I genuinely think that it is the natural conclusion of something like immortality.

That's why I quite like that, even after Astarion has found happiness, even after he finds his peace, he still doesn't exactly embrace being a vampire - because It's not something he should be expected to embrace. I think it's a very unique take on the trope.

I also want to leave here this message written by his character writer, which really got me thinking about him on a deeper level since i saw it months ago. It is specifically about the sexual aspect, but I think it branches beyond it too, when you think about it.

[kimulus0check]

can I ask for specific hcs? (ex trans characters or sth like that)

I want to make this to what I personally see while also keeping it to character I can. Like for example I don’t think mean little teenage boys from the 90s to early 2000s know what demiromantic means nor are going to know that theres more than two genders. Much less grown ass men who canonically have Facebook. Just a pet peeve

Hyperspecific or weird headcanons

Bill Dickey

•He is a dictionary definition of a sociopath or has antisocial personality disorder; but has never been to the doctors to be diagnosed. He wouldn’t even think there’s anything wrong with him either nor would think he would have any symptoms, even when they heavily show up a lot.

•symptoms of antisocial personality disorder are characterized by: those with antisocial personality disorder tend to lie, break laws, act impulsively, and lack regard for their own safety or the safety of others. Which we see him do by lighting himself on fire to intentionally burn down the comic shop and everyone in it.

•His overall lack for empathy for others is very prominent from the beginning to the end of the comic series.

•He is not gay, but he isn’t straight either. His hatred and Blanton misogyny towards women compared to his almost religous idolization fictional men is something that speaks for itself.

•Deep down he is aromantic. Though I doubt he would find out about this for himself until he’s seventy-five years old or dead in the grave. He dreams and yearns for sexual intimacy but doesn’t want to actually achieve it with a person in real life. He sees sex more as a social status to achieve than something you do with your partner in a romantic relationship.

•my most extreme head canon I mentioned in my general head canon post was that his parents are divorced and his mother has full custody of him and his sister.

•His father used to be very abusive to him and his sister but neither of them really registered that ‘violence and beating each other is bad’ and that’s why they are so violent towards each other and just physically aggressive in general. Also gives a reason why we never see his father.

Jerome Stokes

•is neurodivergent, more specifically having verbal stimming and stutters when trying to say the letter B. Jerry is more high-functioning on the ASD spectrum.

•Hates having his clothes wet, some clothing material like polyesters or cotton and can’t stand certain smells and lights because of sensory issues. But with his friends or if had partner was around him when he was having sensory problems he would mask and try to thug it out even though he is having a mental breakdown internally.

•It would take a lot for him to even open up about his feelings because he emotionally shuts himself off when his with the club members to get less hurt when they shit on his interest in fantasy or get into fights verbal and literal fights.

•Lives with his mother and father but they’re very religious and conservative so they don’t support his fantasy hobbies at all but let him indulge thinking “it’s just a phase”. They don’t really know how to live with the fact he is neurodivergent, specifically his mother. His father works a job with long hours so he is rarely home, if he is home he’s not awake half of the time. So his mother helicopters him and coddles him when he doesn’t need to be.

•The most open minded person of the group, but will follow in the clubs behaviors because he doesn’t want to be excluded or not have friends despite the ones he has right now are god awful.

•Has definitely was sent to Christian camp over the summer in middle school. His mom has found some of his fantasy porn stash in his closet and thought he was going astray from god.

Josh Levy

•Josh is a collective turned organized hoarder and over consumer. He canonically stated in the comics how he lost the passion in his hobbies and now just grasps at any collectibles he can find just to have them.

•sort of a sudo-masochist. Like he would never enjoy pain for his own pleasure but he’d know when he’s miserable and is aware what he does isn’t healthy, but continues to do it because he’s already in the deep shit of it.

•speaking of shit, the fact he only eats certain food products because they have collectibles even though he hates the food and has horrendous bowel movements on the regular makes him so much more sadder because he is willing to borderline torture himself just to collect.

•He comes from a Jewish family and a very religious family at that.

•he has naturally curly hair but he doesn’t shower almost at all so his curls turn into a greasy oily slick mop of a ponytail.

•moles and birthmarks all over his body.

•secretly closeted gay, and has probably online dated with men but will die in his grave than come out to his friends or loved ones.

Pete Dinunzio

•Pete is seen to have some anger issues in the pilot and in the comics like bill, but his anger derives from a sense of justice and fairness (though only when it benefits him).

•lives with a very strict and intense father and a couple older brothers, along with his more lenient mother.

•closeted gay but is homophobic to out gay people because he can’t process his own turmoil and eternalized homophobia. (his family is catholic Italian New Yorkers they probably don’t fuck with gay people.)

•Pete is impulsive and vain. Not thinking about the consequences of his choices like the other boys but his hobbies do take a toll on him more differently than the other three. when he gets older he thrives in an environment where they enable his worst habits and addiction to the point where he is a assistant producer in snuff films, horror porn, etc.

•you could hold the argument where Josh has a similar path in his career as swell, but Josh is only and editor while Pete is a co-producer. Having a higher job title and embedding the fact that this is no longer a new he hobby but apart of who he is in the worst way possible to where he is taking sexual advantage of the women who work for him.

•He wants to be covered in tattoos when he’s older with full sleeves and everything, but in his later years has a couple of five to eight tattoos scattered over his body.

•this is very much a stretch but I think he warms up to people like rigby from regular show. (stay with me-please) He is very distant and mean at first but if he warms up to you he will grow to be very loyal towards you.

[ya-what--ya-erster]

Listen to me ramble about amputee Soda okay. BE WARNED THO ITS A LIL GORE-Y FOR A SEC THERE

I’m no longer waiting for someone to ask me. Let’s talk about Soda okay. Specifically my dear and beloved amputee Soda (which is an hc that I found in my notes from when I first read the book in 7th grade btw).

SO! Since it is apparent unspecified in the book what event Soda rides in. Bareback. Because I said and as a country person I would know. Rule of thumb for this post is as a country person I would know.

So obviously in the book Soda had to stop riding (because he tore his ACL I believe) BUT I have made it more tragic.

Instead, due to a series of events, Soda’s leg is absolutely *shattered*. Like. Bones sticking out shattered. Terrible, disgusting, think ten times the worst injury you’ve ever seen. (To continue on, the series of events which I mentioned is that he gets hung up and kicked, comes off the horse and lands on the leg weird, proceeds to be knocked to the ground and stepped on at full bucking force twice, and then additionally is stepped on by the pickup man’s horse that is throwing a fit. This is a goshdamn dangerous sport and this is all fairly possible. I want to say rare but honestly shit happens)

And obviously the exact second anyone sees it they know it’s all over. His family is worried for his life.

And his life doesn’t end but his career as a bareback rider who had *just seconds before his injury* qualified for the NFR (National Finals Rodeo for yall who have no clue what I’m talking about. Go watch a rodeo holy shit).

None of his family, him included, actually know how it works to be lacking a limb.

What they learn is that it’s expensive. That goshdamned prosthetic is expensive. But they want for Soda to be able to continue on with his life, so they take that chunk out of their bank account and do this for him.

It takes Soda a long time to figure out how to walk good. And he suffers awful phantom pain, especially after waking up from a gore-y nightmare about the accident that’s printed to the back of his eyelids.

but again things continue on. So yay for that!!!

now for just the bullet points cause I can

-he’s absolutely torn about not getting to ride anymore

-he can fight still. Ask the soc whos ass he kicked at the rumble. Maybe he’s not too fast but bro can pack a punch or six

-Darry and Pony try to be sympathetic to the fact that Soda still can have a hard time (mentally) but they really just don’t understand until they loose their parents. Because until then Darry and Pony had never truly lost anything, and Soda had.

-soda can’t bring himself to go to rodeos anymore because it makes him so so sad

-is the Ultimate Annoyed because yeah sure girls flirt with him a lot but after the accident all the flirting feels like sympathy and he don’t need that from them

-is even more drawn to Chet than before because Chet is still an absolute BITCH to him (just. Just a little. It’s guy flirting but soda can’t see that) and it makes him unreasonably happy

-like their first interaction after the accident goes like: “Hey, grease!” “Yup.” “I’m gonna kick your ass to Canada if you don’t get the fuck out of my sight” “ain’t ya gonna be nice to me cause a this” “I’ll keep it as a souvenir if you keep talking”

-but then they fall in love ofc

-the leg is names Angelica by the way.

-he wears long pants to cover it up even tho everyone knows about it, and compensates for that covered skin by Never Wearing A Shirt

-he absolutely uses it as an excuse for everything. Like sometimes it’s reasonable but sometimes it’s like “soda can yo pass the peas?” “No.” “Why” “Angelica.”

-at first he was really self conscious but after a good while he gets used to it and isn’t as bothered

-“Do you need help-“ “YOU CAN KISS MY ASS!”

-(I’ve written this part into the thing I’m writing but) Chet: is there anything you can do with just your hands? Soda: YOU

-two bit had hidden Angelica as a prank on more than one occasion

-soda also uses crutches instead of Angelica sometimes

-“you have two feet for a reason!” “HOLY SHIT ITS A MIRACLE!”

-“I’m gonna kick your ass.” (Proceeds to swing angelica unthreateningly in pony’s direction)

-“WATCH THIS!” (Stands for .5 seconds without Angelica and then has to get stitches on his head from falling down the porch steps)

“Don’t do horses kids” whenever anyone asks what happened (in reality tho he probably talks to people about how dangerous rodeo is. He tries to talk Chet and Dally out of competing but they won’t listen)

-“I’m not clumsy at all.” (Falls. Stitches again cause he hit the table)

-(has his leg showing) twobit: “you’re gonna scare the kids” soda: “what kids?” Twobit (joking): “Me.”

-“I’ll shove it up your ass no hesitation.”

-talks to Angelica casually to annoy Darry

-he let two bits little sister paint the “nails” on Angelica because “she wants to be pretty”

don’t question me for hells sake I did my research best I could and I know a lot about rodeo and stuff so like. Kindly correct me if I’ve been offensive but babe. On the topic of is this accident possible I know. I am aware. I have seen shit. Nothing this bad but this similar. Also go watch eight seconds it’s a true story people ACTUALLY HAVE DIED so don’t come after me on that bit. Hope you enjoyed.

BUT TALK TO ME ABOUT IT I BEG YOU

[ryuichirou]

Who would bathe with their lover and who wouldn’t? If they would, would they prefer baths, bubble baths, or showers?

I wanted to start by saying that I really appreciate everyone’s supportive messages, thank you for your asks! I’ll get to them later, I need some breathing time.

And thank you, Anon, for this ask as well! It’s kind of perfect for today because I wanted to talk about something more lighthearted and fun. Sorry for making you wait, as always.

What I learned while writing this post is that I can picture pretty much everyone in a bathtub with their lover lol I should keep in mind that “would” and “should” are different things, aaah…!! How come I never draw this kind of scenario..? Anyways!

Riddle – I think this is a secret wish of his that is so secret that even he isn’t quite aware of it. Vulnerability, comfort, relaxation – all of those things would be very good for Riddle! Plus, he never normally has bubble baths, and he would probably be very cutely excited about it. But if you asked him, he would be against it – sounds like a waste of time and water to him, not to mention how inappropriate it is.

Ace – he finds the idea too embarrassing, but he still might end up sharing a bubble bath with certain someone at some point… while complaining about how lame it is and also blushing lol In general though, I think he would prefer to do it in a shower.

Deuce – he would be even more embarrassed than Ace because he never imagined himself in a “bathing with someone” scenario. He would also prefer to do it in a shower, but he would still be super embarrassed the entire time. I think he and Ace are the type of boys to stand together awkwardly until someone (usually Ace) acknowledges the elephant in the room.

Trey – he would, and he probably fantasises about having a bath with Riddle. But he is more into the whole washing routine than in lying in a bubble bath, cuddling and playing in the water… Trey would rub his back, wash his hair, maybe even clean his ears, maybe even… brush… teet-

Cater – he loves the idea, so in theory, he would! He finds it romantic, hot, fun And surprisingly magicammable; even though when he does take a picture, he probably is going to feel like he wants to keep those private… for a couple of weeks, and then he’ll add them to one of his “what I did this month” compilations~

Leona – kinda? He wouldn’t mind if his lover washed him, I think. He would fall asleep in a bathtub while getting his back rubbed and ears massaged, but whenever he would wake up, he would complain about this thing (a bathtub, it’s called a bathtub) being too small for two of them, and how this was a stupid idea.

Ruggie – he would also consider it a waste of time and water, but if he is getting paid to wash someone- Ruggie, this isn’t about you and your lover anymore! Anyways. I think he wouldn’t mind having a quickie in a shower because this is actually both fun and efficient!

Jack – another one who is too embarrassed, but also he probably would feel kind of claustrophobic in a bathtub with someone else. He should do it though, imagine him getting comments about his tail looking 5 times less floofy when its wet omg. In general though, I think he is a part of the shower squad. It’s too easy to picture him with Deuce after their club activities…

Azul – weirdly, I think he would, but he needs to be very close with that person. I think despite always doing 1000 things at once and having a lot of plans, Azul enjoys long baths, and it’s kind of his “me” time that he treasures. But he would also share it with Idia, for example… he would actually force Idia into doing something like this once lol

Jade – both of the tweels prefer pools because staying in water for a long time without actually swimming feels very weird, and with Jade specifically, I think he isn’t super into bathing with someone. He wouldn’t mind sitting by the bathtub and taking care of someone for shits and giggles, pretending to be a butler of sorts you know, but this would probably just a part of the bigger game Jade would be playing in his head.

Floyd – like I already said, he prefers something bigger and comfier than a bathtub (for his subjective eel self), but unlike Jade, I can picture Floyd sharing a bathtub with someone more easily. I think he would be more into all the stuff that comes with it: bubbles, a ducky toy… He would be more into the bath itself than into his partner, wouldn’t he? I guess that defeats the purpose lol He would also splash around so much that his partner (very likely Riddle) would start yelling at him, and then Floyd would get some soap in his eye and it will sour his mood forever because it hurts… Doesn’t sound like a fun time for some reason wow

Kalim – technically, he’s been doing it all the time ever since he was a kid! Jamil very often accompanies him whenever he takes a bath and, of course, does a lot of back rubbing, hair washing and other stuff for him. They don’t do it as often as they used to nowadays, but Kalim loves it whenever they get to do it: he always considered bathing together to be like a playtime, but at the same time, cherished moments together with your favourite person.

Jamil – while he probably shares soooome small percentage of nostalgia for this kind of thing, for the majority of time he considers this to be another manifestation of their unequal status, which is ironic because this is the opposite to how Kalim feels about them bathing together. He also loves his own privacy, so in theory he would say “NO”  to something like this. But let’s be honest, it’s very deeply engraved in his brain… he would.

Vil – would on a rare occasion whenever he wants to treat himself and his lover. Bath salts, candles, quiet music, sparkling wine; he would put a lot of effort in creating a perfect atmosphere for relaxing with his man. He knows it’s cliché and he knows it’s cheesy, but sometimes a thing becomes a cliché because it genuinely makes you feel good, okay?

Rook – of course he would. It’s not his go-to usually, but he would never refuse an invitation + he prepared a couple of bubbly baths for this exact purpose in his life. Sometimes he creates bath bombs and different kinds of salts during his science club activities; because you know this is exactly what the rest of the science club members need: to hear him singing about how he is about to take a bath with Vil or something.

Epel – I think he would refuse because he would consider it embarrassing (wow, are all freshmen too shy to take a bubble bath with someone?), buuut once he’s in, he’s in! He’ll pout for exactly 5 seconds, and then he’ll get super into it and start splashing around and giggling. Who are you trying to fool, Epel? You’re clearly into this lol

Idia – wouldn’t; it sounds like a nightmare to him. He doesn’t like spending more than ~a minute for anything shower-related anyways, god bless super powerful S.T.Y.X. showers! And standing/sitting there with his naked boney ass with someone else..? This is just the worst case scenario. Who does he think he is, a BL protag? A romcom hero? I will stop this rant because otherwise the rest of the post will just be Idia’s 1000 reasons to never bathe or take shower with someone. Azul doesn’t agree with you, Idia.

Ortho – he would and he really really really really wants to!! He is working on a gear that is perfect for that! But if we’re talking about real!Ortho, the answer is still yes: he is nostalgic about the time he used to take baths with Idia together and they spent over an hour playing with mecha toys and ships and stuff. He will use this nostalgia talk to pressure Idia into doing it with him again, even though this time he clearly isn’t interested in sinking little robots and plastic ships.

Lilia – another person with a nostalgia… even though bathing with a loved one isn’t really his style, he would still get super excited about bubble baths. He would add so much of this stuff that there would be not a single centimeter of space that is not covered in bubbles. Everything will be so foamy and white and sweet smelling, and his lover won’t be able to find Lilia… Only if he listens to where his laughter is coming from very carefully… It’s hard to tell whether it’s a romantic thing for Lilia or is he just being childish at this point.

Silver – in theory he would, but he would get concerned that he’ll fall asleep. He doesn’t like long baths because they always make him very drowsy. This is why he would probably prefer a shower, but a short and cold one to keep himself awake, so… um… not very romantic? I guess he needs another person to guide him and wake him up from time to time for this to work.

Sebek – aaaand another freshman that is way too embarrassed to even think about it, but this one is so embarrassed that he’d get ANGRY if someone even suggested this! Of course, he did share a shower with Silver a couple of times, but there was nothing sexual going on! And this 100% isn’t some kind of cope because he kept staring at him..! Jokes aside, I think he would do it if he was really into someone, because he finds water a very pleasant addition to an already pleasant thing. And of COURSE if Malleus invites him to do something like this, he would die of happiness and agree immediately; this isn’t even a question.

Malleus – I think he would enjoy something similar to what Vil is doing, but he wouldn’t prepare it himself. He prefers to just waltz in and see how his lover already did everything: the bath, the water, the salts, the bubbles, the music, the refreshments, all those things. But also, even though Malleus is a spoiled prince, he doesn’t necessarily need all those bells and whistles – just plain water with nothing else but his lover’s body would suffice because what he really craves is bonding and intimacy. He has some precious memories of being with Lilia like this, but it was a looong time ago. Nowadays Lilia just says that both of them wouldn’t fit in a tub… Then fill a pool with bubbles, Lilia.

[gallusrostromegalus]

AEIWAM : what are the divisions specialities actually ? Like obviously the 4th heal and the 11h fight but like. The 9th? Do crosswords?

BOY AM I GLAD YOU ASKED BECAUSE THIS IS SOME OF THE BEST RETROACTIVE WORLD BUILDING I HAD TO DO AND I'M PROUD OF IT.

So in canon, almost none of the guard squads have "specialist" jobs, mostly because it's not terribly important to the plot, and because the court guards were essentially formed as an ad-hoc mercenary gang to protect one city specifically, but since Yamamoto didn't have to remain loyal to any noble family specifically, he kept getting pulled in as an arbiter and more and more responsibilities heaped upon him until the Court guard squads were acting as a De-Facto government, until the old man got pissed off with being involved in everybody else's business and rounded up a gang of nerds to do that for him so he could go do sword stuff. Seriously, everything about the administrative Bullshit in Soul Society makes sense when viewed through the lens of 'this shit was made ad-hoc out of what was available by people who only kind of knew what they were doing.

So the main government of Soul Society functions approximately like so:

Royal Guard:

Only technically part of the government, the Royal guard consists of The Monk who is responsible for making sure nobody steals any more of the soul king's body parts, and the four people he chose to help/didn't want left unattended in the Spirit World: The Guy who makes Zanpaktou, the Guy who can (theoretically) heal the Soul King, the lady who can literally mess with the fabric of reality and the lady who can create new souls. They spend nearly all their time in the Royal Realm trying to prevent the universe from unrevealing further, and don't really have administrative power so much as if any one of them decided to, they could wreck house of anyone in the spirit world, so if they say something, the central 46 listens and obeys.

Central 46:

The Highest Administrative level, sets society-wide policies, mediates disputes between provinces, wrangles the noble houses, assigns aid and designs social programs. It's comprised of 46 sages and other wise people appointed by the 46 as they die off. IN THEORY "Let a bunch of academics and philosophers who presumably know what they're doing make policy" isn't *that* bad an idea by itself, but it got coupled with "Also, to make sure these guys aren't being bribed or politically pressured, let's keep them in near-total isolation :)" and that's when things got weird.

The Central 46 does try it's best to maintain a peaceful and prosperous society, but it's got to strike a weird balance and the isolation sure does not fucking help maintain a cognizant worldview.

Noble Houses:

So the soul society, by the way they measure time*, only JUST got out of a major warring states period because magical Germany invaded and the guy that lead the army also managed to get The Mandate Of Heaven, but a lot of those formerly-warring states are still around, especially the ones that stole pieces of the soul king. They're not governmental bodies, but the families have shitloads of money, private armed forces and political influence. Think of the worst possible combination of magacorporation, mercenary army and royal dynasty. The are, unfortunately, still a political force to be reckoned with.

*Badly.

Provincial Governors:

So the Soul Society is divided up into Districts like so:

(Embiggen to actually see the damn thing)

The Seireitei is in the center, with the districts counting out until the central 46 got to the outer edge they could theoretically get forces and/or emergency food to in under a month and declared everything after that "District 80" AKA "You're on your own" No taxes are collected in the 80th district and people who don't want to deal with the soul society government often try to strike it on their own out there.

Each of those little rectangles is a district, and each of them has approximately the same number of people living in it- the lower districts are densely populated and, due to their proximity to the Seireitei, well-developed. The districts generally get less developed and less densely populated as you get farter from the center, but this varies wildly by the competence of that district's Daimyo or Governor. West 51 is a much more developed district than it's position would dictate, because it's Daimyo is canny and made good use of it's mineral resources and position in inter-mountain shipping. South 14 Should be one of the nicest districts, but their Governor is a moron who keeps picking fights with the neighboring districts like he's allowed to annex them, and the district has been sanctioned from hell to breakfast over it.

Gotei-13 / Court Guard Squads:

Sort of the executive branch of the Central 46, founded out of Yamamoto's gang of criminals he rounded up to deal with the Quincy invasion back when Rome was collapsing. So the court guard acts out the orders of the Central 46, and *theoretically* has authority over the noble houses and provincial governors, but they are pretty much constantly dancing on the edge of another warring states period, so things can get... tricky.

ALSO DID NOT HELP that The Monk who guards what's left of the Soul King came down from the Royal Realm and foisted a bunch of trans-dimensional responsibilities onto them but the Specific duties of the 13 court guards in AEIWAM are as follows:

(It's worth noting that the order of the court guard squads was determined literally by the order that the 12 criminals signed the agreement with Yamamoto to protect the seireitei, not the order of importance)

Division 1: ADMINISTRATION Oh god there is so much coordination to do between the central 46, the running of internal affairs, recruitment, training new shinigami, coordinating assignments that take more than one division's input. securing and distributing funding, etc. It's main jobs are: assigning work based on policy from the central 46, running the Shinigami Academy, and actually running the Gotei-13.

Division 2: SPY SHIT Gotei-13 is a shady-ass organization with a lot of enemies and that's not about to change. The second division is responsible for keeping an eye on the provinces and noble houses and anything else of interest, "Handling things quietly" for the Gotei-13, and preventing the Central 46 from being corrupted or assassinated. The Shihon Clan has historically held the captainacy of the 2nd division as part of the compromise Yamamoto struck with the noble houses at the founding of the court guard squads to end the civil wars- that each of the 4 noble houses would hold a captain's position, until the noble houses fell apart or the court guard did. This gave the Shihon clan a GREAT incentive to undermine the shit out of other noble houses, and Yamamoto gave them his blessing to do so. Ironically, the Shihon clan was one of the first to collapse.

Division 3: INTERNAL AFFAIRS Law Enforcement, but specifically the Seireitei and shinigami/martial court/jail. The court guard kind of lives and dies by how much it's respected* and it's essential the Gotei-13 follow strict ethical standards and also a tight adherence to authority lest one of the squads break off and start a civil war. Accepting Bribes and Defying Orders are much more severe crimes than say, excessive collateral damage. The 3rd division is responsible for investigating complaints, mediating disputes between divisions, and generally making sure everyone is behaving properly. *By the noble houses, Daimyos and central 46. The average civilian? not so much.

Division 4 Medical This division was actually the FIRST established, even before the court guard really became Squads. It was Chigiri and her pack of field surgeons that commanded Yamamoto's respect and gave him the idea of letting the other criminals have minions too. 4th divison is responsible for maintaining the health of the court guard- not just emergency medicine, but vaccinations, post-service medical care, and civil sanitation- keeping the streets clean and water safe is the #1 way to prevent deaths. Until recently, this meant a lot of trained medics were doing a lot of grunt work, until Zaraki, a guy from districts where Dysentery is still the #1 killer, successful argued a proposal to Unohana that her medics should be managing other, less-in-demand squads doing the labor, which would get the jobs done a hell of a lot faster, and not back up triage as much. Unohana, who had previously not *trusted* other squads to do the work reliably, finally relented and accepted some damn help.

Division 5: Rukongai Affairs The 5th division is responsible for coordinating efforts between the Gotei-13 and the Provincial Governors- Hollow Eradication, Disaster Relief, additional armed forces to help local police, Helping distribute grain to mitigate famine, etc.

Division 6: External Affairs Responsible for representing the Gotei-13 to other groups and dealing with Noble House Bullshit specifically. While Noble House Bullshit is 95% of what they do, but technically, they're also responsible for handling diplomatic relations with the Beastfolk in the eastern districts, Las Noches after the winter war in the west, Any Kami that might come through, and Hell, if they ever get a line open. The Kuchiki family has held the 6th Division captaincy for generations as a peacekeeping measure between the gotei-13 and the noble houses.

Division 7: Incoming Souls The reason the soul society doesn't reunite people with their families when they die is that they do not actually have control over who reincarnates as themselves (and if they retain their memories), who is reborn as a baby in the spirit world, and what district they get assigned to- that's all decided at the moment of a Soul's death by Hell, using a Metric the Shinigami can only guess at. That said, the 7th still can do a lot- Souls that had to be cleansed with Konsho go through the 7th division and are escorted to their assigned districts. Other, non-hollowfied but odd case souls will end up in the pocket dimension that serves as the queue into the afterlife- people with high spiritual power, animals that achieved personhood in the world of the living and other nonhuman persons, and somtimes spirits who were almost certainly supposed to go to a different afterlife all come through. The 7th division is also charged with keeping a running tally on important statistics like the relative balance between souls, who got hollowfied and why, collecting data on who goes to hell when konsho is prefromed on them and why, and other data to try and work out Hell's metric backwards.

Division 8: Income and Funding The court guard squads are... kind of taxpayer funded. The Daimyos collect taxes from civilians, they pay those taxes to the central 46, and the central 46 disburses some of that money to the Gotei-13, but the truth is, for all the duties they're expected to preform, they're wildly underfunded. So the court guard has had to get... inventive to make sure everyone gets paid and they can do what they need to. Investments in industries, ownership of weird land grants, taking out loans, selling merchandise and straight-up schmooze have all been used by the 8th division to make sure the bills get paid. Shunsui is, by that measure, the best captain the division has ever had- he's shrewd and had astonishingly good luck when it comes to finances so there hasn't been a pay strike since he took over. Probably his best idea was handing the branding and product design of the Gikon to the Shinigami Women's Association- that one paid mad dividends.

Division 9: Information Services The ninth division is most famously home to the Seireitei's first and most largely-ciculated newspaper, but it's also the records office, PAYROLL, library, document archives, data collection and data analytics. Also, tech support. Also also: manage all the arts programs, propaganda and festivals. This is why Kaname was load-bearing to Aizen's plan.

Division 10: Living World Affairs The 10th division was responsible for monitoring the living world- mostly keeping track of hollow appearances, but also: what the remaining Quincies are up to, reporting back on useful technological advancements, any other weird shit that turns up there, and keeping track of all the Shinigami on deployment to the living world (mostly 10th division but the post-war population boom means every division's having to chip in now.

Division 11: Emergency/Heavy Deployment Every time the Gotei-13 had to do some heavy lifting, it's the 11th division's job. Mass outbreak of hollows? 11th's job. Emergency Dam repair to prevent a flood? 11th division muscle time. Daimyo got funny ideas about conquering a neighboring district? 11th division. Funcking Quincies again? 11th division. Rampaging Kami afflicted by a terrible curse? you know who to call. This was the SECOND Division to be founded, because the actual sentence that came out of Yamamoto's mouth was "Chigiri, you and your gremlins put my guts back in, Yachiru, round up some assholes and DEAL WITH THAT FUCKING THING." and the 11th's prerogative and hiring practices have not changed since. Since the 11th's work is more intermittent, there are long periods between jobs for them, and it's only recently they've been allowed to pitch in on regular maintenance and rehabilitate their reputation as a bunch of lazy degenerates.

Divison 12: Supplies (more recently, Research and Development) Prior to Kisuke Urahara's weird science boner, the 12th Division's primary job was the manufacture and supply of everything the Shinigami would need to do their jobs. Uniforms, Gigai, medical supplies, communicators, rations, Gikon, the actual buildings in the Seireitei, bedding, Protective gear- if a Shinigami received it for their job, it was made by the 12th division. Despite previous captain Kirio Hikifune being the most accomplished chef in the history of Soul Society, it's Mayuri that has made the most profound mark on Soul Society Cuisine with the fast-prepared, acceptable-tasting and surprisingly nutritious meals he developed to deal with the mass influx of souls after WW2, and the franchise distribution centers combined with his attempts at children's educational programming mean that Mayuri occupies a cultural niche in Soul Society not unlike Krusty The Clown.

Division 13: Magical Research, Kido Corps Until recently, the Kido Corps was a seperate division governed under the purview of the central 46, and the 13th division was doing it's research into Hado, Bakudo and Haikido independently, but as the two organizations worked increasingly closely together, they began to share more until the catastrophic events of Turn Back The Pendulum left the Kido Corps severely depleted and without leadership, at which point Yamamoto persuaded the central 46 to let the 13th division absorb the rest of the Kido corps and take on their work.

So that's how the government in Soul Society is SUPPOSESD to work.

[neowinestainedress]

Hey! Could I ask for some drabble/fic if you're comfortable with it? Bf haechan can't keep his hands off of her gf's body. All day sensually rubbing her nipples, belly, clit, even with her clothes on. It gets her aroused and she returns the favor by rubbing his body on the sensitive parts too. She just doesn't know that he's so eager to breed her until one day he did a number on her and promised to make her boobs lactating and her belly swollen soon. Only then she realizes how nasty and messy he actually gets every time they fuck. At the end of the day, he lays you down on your back and puts a pillow to support your hips, believing it could help you conceive better. Love your work.

w!: unprotected s*x, breeding kink, pregnancy talk, fingering, handjob, nipple play, dirty talk, aftercare

a/n: this took me longer than i wanted to but i received two breeding kink asks in a row and i didn’t want to make a copy of one another so i needed a break in between. anyway, i hope it was worth the wait!

“Why are you so touchy?” You ask, tilting your head to the side to look at your boyfriend that’s laying on the couch with you, his hands not leaving a single spot of your body untouched. 

“What? I can’t appreciate your body?” Haechan pouts, lightly squeezing your boob and making you laugh. 

“No, ‘course you can,” you say, closing the book you’re reading and keeping the mark with your thumb, “it’s just you’re all over me lately. More than usual, and your usual is already a lot.” 

Haechan shrugs, going back to caress your belly until his fingers craze your covered clit through the fabric of the thin shorts you’re wearing. 

“Oh, yeah, I had to imagine this is where it was going,” you giggle. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he whispers, starting to rub his fingertips in circles. 

“About fucking me?” 

He shakes his head, and nervously bites his lips. “Yeah, but not really. It’s more specific…” 

“Oh, what is it?” 

“Nothing, just go back to reading,” 

You frown, confused he’s hiding something from you. Usually, he’s pretty upfront about everything that runs through his mind, so how weird could this be? But you shrug it off, enjoying the feeling of his hands on your clit and nipples. 

“Fuck it,” you groan when the feeling gets stronger, and you carelessly slam the book on the coffee table before turning around to face him. Your hands quickly find their way in his pants, moving under the hem of his underwear to grab his hard dick. “Just touching my boobs got you so hard?” 

“It’s not my fault they’re so pretty,” he says, eyes falling on them, perfectly pressed against the tight top by the bra, “… and so full.”

“What?” You ask, not sure you heard right, but he shuts you with a kiss. 

Another frown forms on your face, and you start thinking that he might have a sudden passion for boobs so the hand that’s not stroking his dick moves up on his stomach until it reaches his sensitive nipples. 

“Fuck,” he moans, head falling back. 

“Oh, sensitive, aren’t you?” 

“Shut up,” he grunts but you only chuckle at his flustered expression. 

You think you’ve solved the enigma, but you have no idea how far from the solution you actually are until a few days later Haechan’s fucking you, legs on his shoulders and cock slamming inside you. 

“Wanna breed you,” he confesses, and from the temporary shock on his face you know he didn’t mean to say it out loud, but his secret is out so he decides to be honest. “I’m sorry, but I really want you — fuck — want to see you carry my baby.”

You’re a bit taken aback, mostly because your brain is already far gone from all the fingering, and touching, that this new information mid-sex it’s the last drop. 

“Do you want to?” He asks, hips slowing down just a bit. “Want to be the mother of my children?” 

“I do, I — shit — yes, I want to,” you whimper, a bit surprised this is even up for discussion. 

“Fuck, babe, I love you so much,” he groans, kissing you messily as he goes back to the fast rhythm of before, leaving you breathless. 

You should’ve known, from how messy he is, how happy he was the first time you let him fuck you raw, how he sucked at pulling out (because even if you were on the pill you were pretty forgetful and thought that could save you), how messy he actually was once you two were done, pumping his fingers into your swollen cunt to push all his cum back in, and lastly, how unbothered he was when you forgot the pill.

“I want it so much, want to see you all full of me, want to see your boobs grow and be full of milk,” he groans before his hand cups the right one, touching it gently as he leans down to suck the other nipple, making you arch your back and moan louder. “I’ll take care of you, massage you when you’re sore.” 

You can only whimper and cry as you feel overwhelmed with pleasure, yet you can’t help bucking your hips into him, eager to feel more. 

“Gonna give you another load, babe. Gonna make sure you’re full of my cum, so much it overflows,” he says, voice hoarse as his hips snap faster in and out of you. Want my cum?” 

You nod swiftly, feeling close to the edge again, looking at him with watery eyes. 

“Beg me for it, beg me,” Haechan moans, voice pitched and face contorted in pleasure. “Beg me to make you a mommy.”

“Please, Hyuck, please, breed me,” you plead, nails sinking into the skin of his arms when you can’t control your body anymore. 

“Fuck,” he groans, “come with me,” he urges, rubbing quick circles on your clit, triggering your orgasm and consequently triggering his too. 

“What are you doing?” You ask when he grabs a pillow from the end of the bed and gently places it under your hips, pushing some cum back into you with two fingers, making you bite back a whimper. 

Haechan smiles, leaning close to kiss you. “Heard it helps conceive,” he confesses shyly, a red blush spreading on his face. 

“You don’t get to act shy after you just confessed a breeding kink and probably even succeeded considering how forgetful I am of the pill,” you joke, wrapping your arms around his neck. 

“Maybe it’s your unconscious telling you something,” he says, caressing your belly, making you look down. 

“Maybe,” you smile, sighing happily. “Maybe we could also go for another round later, just to make sure we succeed.” 

© neowinestaindress; all rights reserved. do NOT repost, modify, or translate any work from this blog on any other platform and claim it as yours. you can find my works on ao3 (neowinestaindress) and wattpad (winestaintedress_; currently inactive).

[saphushia]

do you have any fic recs for dp/dc? ive been interested in reading good ones but its kinda hard to shuffle thru them all.

oh fuck yeah you know i do. i'm just gonna make a list of good ones until i get bored or tired lets see how long this gets lmao

also personal preference wise i'm not big on the danny-gets-adopted fics so u gotta ask someone else if u want recs of those ones lmao

⭐= my absolute favorites all fics are gen unless a ship is listed make sure u check fic tags for CWs b4 reading 👍

=ONESHOTS=

⭐It all Started at a Convention tim meets danny at a tech convention and they have a surprisingly nice afternoon together. and then tim comes to a realization about some things danny said...

A Monsterous Kind of Love [tim/danny] tim's a vampire. danny's a full ghost. tim gets to kill a few hunters in a frenzied rage to keep danny safe. as a treat <3

You've Got My Heart (I've Got Your Soul) [tim/tucker] congrats tim! you met your soulmate! why's he trying to kill you. hm. maybe you fucked up, buddy

Of loss, longing and long duration. [danny/bruce] of danny falling in love with bruce, breaking up with bruce, and proceeding to still be adored by all bruce's kids, past and present.

You Are a Monster (But So Am I) [danny/duke] duke's not a monster fucker- he's not! he swears! it's just this one, specific, really pretty eldritch snow monster-

If I had a nickel for every billionaire that tried to kidnap me, I’d have two nickels- which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice bruce is very tired. it's not his fault he accidentally kidnapped some teenager. aka danny's very bad wierd and stressful afternoon.

=ONGOING=

If You Give a Bat a Burger danny's just trying to lay low while keeping gotham's spirit infestation under control- of course nothing ever is simple for him. meanwhile, the bats all have their hands full with what seem to be unconnected cases, but nothing's ever simple for them either.

Rooftop Express [danny/jason] danny is bored and starts his own version of doordash in gotham. red hood keeps putting in orders so he can see the cute delivery boy <3 what do you mean he's a halfa

⭐Bus to Nowhere danny's adventures being a homeless teen in gotham on the run from his parents and the GIW. he's called dumpster tommy now, and he can't seem to stop befriending criminal and attracting vigilantes desperate to help him

An Interesting Family Tree [danny/tim] danny left the league of assassins years ago, but he can't seem to keep his nose out of it when he finds out red robin's being targeted by them. (canon divergence of tim's search for bruce in the red robin comics, where danny joins him. don't need to read the comic to read the fic)

⭐Grave Promises after an identity reveal gone wrong, danny has no one to turn to. no one, except, maybe, the hero who got stuck in the ghost zone years ago, who became danny's friend, danny's mentor, before they finally got him returned to his timeline. nightwing.

Our Empty Graves [jason/danny] danny, mute, injured, and on the run, is saved from a tight spot by red hood. he quickly becomes jason's problem, and jason makes the mistake of becoming endeared to this snarky shit.

Night Circus [dick/danny] dick hits it off with danny, a circus performer who just came to gotham. dick's thrilled- aside from the fact that circus gothica seems to be connected to the string of robberies that's suddenly hit gotham, and the bizarre thief dressed like the grim reaper...

Secretary Danny danny accidentally gets himself hired as the personal secretary of tim drake, wayne industries CEO. he's surprisingly ok with this, actually. and he's scarily good at it.

ok it's late i need to go eepies now have funnnn <3

[undertheopensky]

Forging Tired

Whumptober Day 26: Working To Exhaustion

Characters: Four, Blue, Sky

Trigger warnings: None

Read on Ao3!

---

Sky doesn’t realise it until after dinner, but Four hasn’t banked the forge fires.

“I’m not done yet,” Four waves at the admittedly intimidating pile of repair work yet to be done. A couple of plates from Time’s armour probably need to be replaced entirely, they have such large holes in them.

“It’s getting real late. Don’t stay up too much longer, you need to get some sleep.”

“Nah, I’m fine. Body’s not tired.” Four flexes one arm and gives him a grin that looks so much like Wind Sky’s eyes cross.

“Maybe not,” they sure hadn’t done much physical stuff today, just run around the village resupplying and gathering information, “but your brain still needs rest.”

This time Four snorts. “The brain is fast asleep, but that’s okay, we don’t need it for this.”

No one asks any more why Four sometimes refers to himself in the third person or plural. At best, he’ll pretend you didn’t say anything, and at worst, he’ll look at you like you’re the strange one. The closest they’ve gotten to an explanation is an offhanded, sympathetic “Yeah, we get it,” when Time first told them to stop asking about his timekeeping, because it was a holdover from a quest too traumatic to describe.

So, slightly weird, probably a Quest Thing, doesn’t seem to affect him day-to-day.

That said Sky’s a little concerned about him working with hot metal with his brain asleep.

“Are you sure? We can wait another day or two before setting out, I’m sure Time won’t mind. We don’t want you exhausting yourself over this.”

Four makes a rude noise, which is out of character enough Sky blinks. “I think I know my limits well enough, featherhead. Besides, forging’s not that hard. I wanna take advantage of actually having all my damn equipment for once, and goddess knows we probably won’t be here long. Our shit needs a lot of maintenance done. Don’t worry about the noise. The forge’s been soundproofed since we were little. Go away and sleep, featherhead, you need it more than us.”

He shoos Sky from the forge, polite but implacably firm.

Sky can’t exactly argue. Four is the smith here, and he knows himself best. If he says it’s fine, Sky will just have to believe him.

And as promised, as soon as the heavy door swings closed, the sounds of the forge muffle to almost nothing.

---

With Sky finally gone, Blue feels the tension ease out of him. Finally, some peace and quiet. He loves his brothers, and he supposes the heroes they’re travelling with aren’t TOO bad, but sometimes he just needs time alone in the quiet with his own thoughts and his own projects. There’s not a lot of privacy on the open road, or in a head crammed full of four distinct people.

Vio struggles with it, too, Blue knows, as he sets up the next few pieces of metal to heat and shovels fresh coke into the fire. But unlike Blue, the nerd is soothed by late nights spent reading or taking the darkest hours of watch, where Blue needs to do things to calm the itch in his brain. Armour and weapons maintenance is great for that - but it’s not always quiet. And waking everyone up with his activities would very much defeat the point.

Then, once he’s got things set up, Blue sits down at the bench with pliers and wire.

The worst thing about Sky’s mail is that the links are an eighth of an inch larger than standard - than literally everyone else’s. Blue had had to make a winding rod specifically for his damn mail, and has to double check every time before starting repairs to make sure he’s pulling from the right patch of spares.

If he had more time, he’d just make him a mail shirt from normal links. Standardise them across the board, and improve Sky’s resistance to piercing claws. But he doesn’t - they don’t - and besides that when this is all over Sky will be going back to his home in the clouds with its stupid mail measurements and its barely-there monster attacks and he’ll have no use for the close-set rings of modern mail and they’ll never see him again -

The forge fires burn hot enough that Blue can pretend it’s the air making his eyes sting.

Mending mail is busywork, stuff to keep his hands occupied while he waits for things to heat. It needs doing, and if he does it here then he can rivet the rings shut properly instead of the temporary road fixes (shit he needs to check Twilight’s mail he knows he put in a patch at one point but doesn’t remember riveting it in, need to do that before they leave) but some things can only be done at the forge. Like the plates of steel he’s got resting to the side, waiting to be turned into a new piece of Time’s armour.

He should probably get started on that actually so Blue puts aside the mail and reaches for his tongs. A lot of this is just shaping, forming the metal to the exact dimensions and curvature of Time’s body, and then adding buckle straps and point anchors so it can actually be attached. This is the loud part, metal-on-metal ringing and echoing in the enclosed stone room and making his vision swim just a little. He has to pause to blink it away. Does his head actually hurt, or is it just more echoes from the hammer?

Doesn’t matter; he’s got work to do. Blue checks the first piece for fit and moves on to the second; best to get this heavy work done before he gets tired. Working the steel cold takes more effort, but makes it less brittle in the end. Kind of important, that the metal sheets guarding someone’s body don’t shatter under a stiff blow, turning them from a defense into a hazard. You can get away with working horseshoes and stuff like metal fittings hot and then quenching them down, but it’s not worth it with plate armour.

Once he’s got the base curve in place, he checks the lines he drew earlier before his vision started to wobble, then hunts down the blunted chisel he needs. This is the fiddly bit. Blue sets the metal down on the wooden block with the groove specifically for this task, lining it up with the drawn lines, and starts hammering out the ridges.

It’s time-consuming, but the raised metal redirects weapons to less vulnerable points. Blue’s seen a sword swing into an arm then slide off into empty air, instead of an armpit or elbow, because of these ridges. They’re useful.

Time didn’t have any, originally. And while he can’t say for sure - Blue suspects that if he’d had them on his armour that first time a moblin got the jump on him, its spear wouldn’t have slid past the plates into his side quite so easily.

Four’s been quietly upgrading it piece by piece ever since.

The vambrace is harder, more of a curve to force the steel into, but he’s long practised at getting stubborn materials to cooperate. Once it’s done, and added to the pile he’s making of Time’s shit, he pulls the pattern steel Red had spent all day folding and forge welding from the fire. Already the basic shape of it is there: the tapered tip, the length of the blade, the narrow throat and tang. Once it’s finished, it’ll be a dagger for Hyrule. His current one has been sharpened so many times it’s thin enough to use as a lockpick, and they want him to have something good-quality to replace it, something that will last him.

(Will last him beyond this time of portals and black blood, because getting new equipment in his time is so, so difficult and they never want him to go without ever again, and one knife isn’t much in the grand scheme of things but it’s something they can do, and they’ll do their goddess-damn best work on it for him.)

It still needs some more shaping before it’s ready to go under the whetstone, though, so Blue tucks it back in the fire and picks up Wind’s knife, the one with the loose hilt. How the sailor expects to get anything done when he has to hold his entire hand at right angles to keep the thing straight Blue doesn’t know. Apparently he’d been stuffing it with fabric scraps to stabilise it, which, great, now Blue has to dig them all out before he can decide if the hilt is at all salvageable.

It doesn’t help that his fingers are a little shaky. Shit. Maybe he needs a water break.

He sets the dubiously-fixable knife aside while he drinks. He doesn’t feel thirsty. Dry-eyed, maybe, and his throat aches from the forge air, but the water doesn’t really help. Still, hydration’s important.

A sudden clank makes Blue drop his cup, water scattering on the floor as he spins. The fire flares - oh. A coal had - split, or settled, and the still-dull blade of Hyrule’s dagger had shifted and struck the edge. It looks about ready to go again anyway, so Blue grabs it - with tongs! He’s not an idiot! - and starts hammering an edge into it.

As the blade flattens out and becomes more knife than bar of metal Blue takes care to bevel off both edges neatly. He flips it, to make sure he gets both sides, then flips it again to even it out. He wants the balance on this thing perfect, and if it takes a bit of fiddling, all the better. That way he knows it’s good. Blue holds it up, eyeing the straightness of the blade from the side, and then down the length of it, and nods to himself, moving to set it. Good. He’ll let it cool a little before heating it again, and -

Blue stumbles. The blade clangs down on the bench he’d meant to set it on gently, spinning away from the tongs and fortunately not hitting any part of him with the still red-hot metal. Fuck, he’d forgotten to pick up his cup. It’s a good thing it’s so hot in here that all the water evaporated off or he might have slipped. Fuck.

He checks the blade - fuck, he dinged it - puts it back in the fire, then picks up his cup to set it back beside the water barrel. The metal handle is painfully hot under his fingers. Although - he could do with more water. His eyes are stinging again.

Blue drinks, long and slow. The water tastes metallic, or maybe that’s just the forge air coating his tongue. It settles uneasily. Doesn’t matter - his stomach will get over it.

He fixes the dent made when he dropped the half-made dagger, hammering until metal fills the gap and then hammering it out even again to repair the edge. He also spends more time carefully squinting at it to make sure it’s still straight, so long that the metal goes dark and cold.

Then back in the fire it goes.

Blue gets back to mail repairs, working rings into place, then riveting them shut with scraps from broken links. He considers, as he works, if the long-handled riveting pliers could be made to fit into their tool pouch. They can’t bring along the whole forge, that would be silly, but this one thing? They already carry the cutting pliers to make links with so it’s not like they need anything else for the rivets, and it doesn’t need heat treatment -

He pinches a fingertip with the pliers and swears loudly, shaking it and resisting the urge to shove it in his mouth - his hands are covered in oil and coal dust. Squinting at it - no real damage - he shakes it one more time and picks up the mail patch he dropped. It stings a little, to apply enough pressure to hold the metal fabric. Actually -

Checking the dagger, he pulls it from the fire and rests it on the anvil to cool. This is always time consuming, heating and cooling the steel to normalise it before the final edge can be put on. Heat it, then cool it, then heat it again; all part of ensuring the blade isn’t brittle and will hold its shape and its edge for as long as possible. It’s familiar in a way so ingrained he can almost touch it, watching the metal change colour. Fading from yellow, through red, down to the still blisteringly-hot but normal appearance of steel.

Blue blinks, and finds himself sitting on his preferred stool, metal still cooling in his tongs. Shit. When did he sit down? He’s wasting time, here. Back in the fire, back to work, fingertip still throbbing faintly.

Half the plates on Time’s tassets got ripped off during the fight with the iron knuckle, which are fiddly and annoying but not hard to replace. Once he’s got them shaped and punched Blue is tempted to just hand the lot off to Time for the old man to stitch them in place. Teach him to get distracted watching Twilight’s sword form. Shit, there’s so many of them, too. Time’s lucky his leg was in few enough pieces that Hyrule and Warriors could put it back together.

Blue hammers out scale after scale. Get the curve right; adjust the tongs, hammer out the part they’d hidden; set the edge, set the ridge, set it aside, and grab the next one. He piles them up on the metal workbench; they’d be less annoying to work with if he could just pile them in a coal shovel and dunk them in the fire to soften them, but even if they’re small they’re still armour and he needs to keep them as supple as possible.

And speaking of it’s time to pull the dagger again. The tongs grab it, fumble it, dump it back in the coals, then grab it agin. Blue is very careful as he sets it on the bench. He has no desire to set his own boots alight. This is the last cooling phase, though, so he can let the forge fire die down. Finally. His eyes itch and ache in the hot, dry air. He’d rub them if he wasn’t - still - covered in forge leavings.

Punch the holes for Time’s tasset scales; set them in his pile to deal with in the morning. Finally get the hilt off Wind’s knife and decide it is salvageable, actually, if he glues in a wedge of cedar to fill in the split that was letting it get loose in the first place. How did Wind even do that? Rewrap it in leather strips and it’ll be done; another job for the morning. When his hands aren’t so shaky. He’s getting glue everywhere, ugh.

…does he need to pull the dagger again? No, wait, it’s already on the bench. Does it need to go back in the fire? …no, he already decided it was done. He reaches to grab it, half-intending to measure it up for the hilt and crossguard, but hesitates at the heat radiating off it. Right. Fresh from the forge. Doesn’t look hot, but definitely is. He’ll leave it for an hour or so.

Blue shakes himself, hard, feeling the pull of it in his neck and his forehead. His head aches, behind his eyes. There’s a fine grey fuzz at the edges of his vision. Right, with the forge fire dying, he needs a bit more light. Where’s Vio’s lantern…?

By the too-pale magical light, Blue works, and works, until there’s nothing left to do but wind more wire into chainmail rings and weave them into the cuts and gashes left by enemy claws and weapons, tamp down rivets and move to the next section until he needs to wind out more rings -

It’s endless and monotonous and he can feel the screaming under his skin finally starting to cool, as the fire burns itself out.

Something they do need, he thinks as he pulls out the temporary patch he’d put in Twilight’s mail tunic, is a store of fully-finished rings. Hammering out their linking points and punching rivet holes is best done on an anvil. Then, as long as they have a stock of scrap wire for rivets (inevitable, they’re constantly damaging mail), the cutters and the riveting pliers, they can do repairs that are just as strong as the original work itself. Once they run out of wire, well, that’s more of an issue. The drawing plate is much too heavy to bring along with them.

Blue seals up the last ring in Twilight’s mail and sets it aside, then hops off the stool to go in search of the metal rods he needs to make wire. He knows they left a whole stack of them somewhere.

In truth, most forging doesn’t require a lot of raw strength. The weight of the hammer and the drag of gravity does a lot of the work, and all you need to do is direct it. Blue’s got more muscle from wielding a warhammer, honestly. The exception, he thinks distastefully, is wire drawing. That does need some force, since you’re dragging a piece of metal through smaller and smaller holes, not stretching it so much as drawing it out longer and longer and thinner and thinner, and of course it’s metal, it doesn’t want to do that.

Blue finally finds the basket of rods on a low shelf behind a huge box of half-finished nails - Red’s doing, surely - and carries it to the draw plate. There’s certainly no moving the thing to anywhere else. It weighs more than he does at least twice over, solid iron plate set into a heavy stone base.

Choosing a rod, Blue hammers out a quick point, feeds it through a hole that’s just a little smaller than its current size, clamps it, and starts to pull.

His eyes burn. His head aches. His fingers sting, all the little places where slips and cuts and burns have piled up over long hours. Without his mind keeping track of eight timers at once, it’s free to focus on the physical, and oh, he feels so heavy -

Blue breathes deep, metal and coal dust and ash, and feeds the wire into the next hole.

---

Sky is unhappy but unsurprised to find the patch of floor allocated to Four empty.

Weak morning light streams through the curtains. It’s just enough to see by as Sky checks that Legend’s unmoving form on the bed is just due to stiffness and exhaustion, not something more worrying, and tiptoes around scattered bedrolls. Twilight cracks an eye as he’s stepped over.

“A’right there?” he checks, voice low.

Sky smiles. “Just seein’ who’s up.”

Twilight grunts and to all appearances goes straight back to sleep. For all he wakes with the dawn on the ranch, he does enjoy his sleep, when he can get it.

Sky empathises but he’s got a mission.

Through the shop windows he spots Wild outside, running through the carefully prescribed stretches that kept his scars limber. Once he was done with those, he’d be all up in Four’s kitchen, eager to make food more complex than could be managed over a simple campfire. Four even had an oven, which Wild had been very excited about.

Still, breakfast will come later. The forge door still stands closed, just as it had last night after Four kicked him out. Moving slow, Sky eases the heavy door open, hoping to find him passed out in a corner somewhere.

Instead Four is sitting upright at the workbench. The winding rod in his hands is familiar, though he’s moving far slower than usual, and his hands shake when he reaches for the pliers.

“Four, have you slept at all?” Sky asks, disappointed.

“Huh?” Four turns to look at him, and there’s a distinct pause before recognition flickers. “Oh, Sky. I’m nearly done with your mail. Or…” He squints at the links on the table. “No, mail’s finished. Spare rings. We’re always running out.”

“Sleep, Four,” Sky stresses. “Goddess - have you been working all night?” He eyes up the frankly ludicrous pile of mending that now sits on the other side of the bench from where it started, separated into neat piles by owner. And Four is still going - slowly cutting rings off the spiral, one by one.

“‘M fine.”

He changes tacks. “Four, c’mon. It’s time for breakfast. Wild will sulk if it gets cold, you know he will.”

Four blinks at him, visibly hazy with exhaustion, and finally, slowly, drags himself to his feet. He looks worse, upright. He’s pale and a little haggard, swaying slightly just standing in place. Goddess. He’s going to be an utter wreck today, and they’re supposed to head out for the Castor Wilds later. Maybe Sky can convince Time to wait until after lunch and Four will revive some after a nap -

The smith’s feet tangle. Sky lunges to catch him -

Four catches himself with a quick shake of the head. “Phew, close one,” he mutters. He brushes past Sky into the rest of the house, steps suddenly quick and sure. “C’mon, Sky,” he calls over his shoulder, “help me keep Wild from dirtying every pan I own, I do not want to do dishes today.”

He still looks distinctly unwell over breakfast, but the shake in his hands, the sway in his step, the dull slowness of his eyes and responses - all that is gone like it was never there. He even smiles and keeps up with the conversation. Sky doesn’t know what to make of it.

(In the back of his mind, though, he wonders.)

[planefood]

Autism and Isolation, discussing my experience and my characters

I think i've said here before that my robot characters represent my experience growing up disabled where I live. My characters being robots specifically were made to represent feelings of being made to feel less human in some way due to it. While all my characters in that story are on the spectrum and represent different parts of my experience, I used Mikey as the cover of this post because he represents a certain part of myself that makes me incredibly attached to him (there's a reason I say I like writing him so much, despite him not being the main protagonist). He's the part of me that understands I need help with things but is too afraid to ask leaving me in horrible positions, he's the part of me who screams in public when I feel trapped, he's the part of me that could probably never live by myself, he's the part of me who's scared and vulnerable. Among other things. But also he's the part of me who, like many of my peers, feels isolated in everyday spaces and autistic spaces alike due to peoples perceptions of what autism "should" be, these same people welcome fidget toys and stimming with open arms turn around and think its okay to call me the r slur or infantalise me or make fun of until I cry. But I only cry because I thought i'd be welcomed in those spaces with my autistic peers and I cry because I told my younger self it would get better and people would be nicer to us once we were an adult with like minded people. These same people who, despite being open and proud about supporting neurodiversity still think its okay to use the word autistic as an insult against me. I feel like while people appear so much more accepting of disabled people with these small gestures than I was when I was growing up, I still feel like an outsider in these spaces but this time it feels like I've hit a wall. Like a, "who will support me if the people who are meant to don't?" it leads to a lot of insecurity and self loathing, it makes me feel like I'm not autistic in the "right way" and there's just something wrong with me as a person. I wrote these into Mikey, which makes him seem like he has a 'thin skin' to people like Tandy. Mikey, in my story, is often left behind or teased by other characters in my story even the ones who are also on the spectrum. They also struggle with their own battles with facing ableism and self hatred due to it but don't realise the first step to tackling that is unpacking how they treat others around them. You'll never be able to love your true authentic autistic self if you throw ableist rhetoric at people around you. That includes saying shit like "I'm autistic and I don't act like that guy does whats their excuse" or "I'm not making fun of them because they're autistic they just act weird" I'm low support needs autistic, I've seen how people treat high support needs autistic people and its even more sickening, other low support needs autistic people like to pretend they don't exist or throw them under the bus to make themselves more appealing to ableists: "See autistic people don't actually act like that, support me because I can mask" or even trying to say autism isn't a disability. My characters and writing while being a representation of myself being disabled is also a scathing criticism of the cruelty I see in the world at large, the cruelty I see in other people in ND and disabled communities and the cruelty I see within myself. I get scared about my future with how people treat me, but when I have characters I can write these struggles into it makes it a little easier. I know there's people who love me for who I am and there's people out there who love you guys for who you are too.

[whysojiminimnida]

Remember When I Said Taehyung Might Not Be As Gay As We Thought?

Don't judge a man by his milfy wardrobe, he looks goooood.

It was... awhile ago. Maybe as far back as 2021 although I do not feel like link-searching it. It's in the archives if I didn't kill it.

Granted, there was a lot going on, then. There's still a lot going on and until now I had no desire to ever - EVER - return to this hellsite. Because Taekookers are fucking weird, yo. And some of y'all got a lil bit up in my shit too as I (fuzzily) recall. Which: it's whatever. I'm extremely unsocial, don't even answer my own DMs. And it's not personal, so I get it. I don't need or want to defend myself, but I will protect people I care about. With my absence, if necessary.

OT: I also totally kicked the big C while I've been out so that was nice. Yoongi the cat is pleased that his noms will continue uninterrupted. I will be in wigs for at least another year. It's all good. Oh LOOK at what we have here. Don't come at me for publishing this, I will explain.

I got it from actual media days ago, okay, and also: there was no expectation of real privacy. Keep reading. Or don't, I'm not telling you what to do.

ANYWAY. I had to come back, mainly to say TAENNIE IS REAL I TOLD Y'ALL IDK WHY NOBODY EVER BELIEVES ME BUT HERE WE ARE. I'm gloating. Honestly, it's so rude, I'd apologize if I cared. But I am rude and snorfling into my cheerios about this. Tae just made me so damn happy, is all.

LET THE MAN BE BI OR HETEROFLEXIBLE OR EVEN STRAIGHT IDC. Jennie clearly makes him happy. Look at his "I'm going to Paris to see my girlfriend" face!

And in that very specific jewelry look, no less. Foundrae. Again. Still. Hm.

Here's what I can tell you based on my limited third hand no sources no receipts this is probably utter bullshit usual disclaimer: It's a soft open, kids. This whole "oopsie we just so happened to get caught taking a lil walk in public with our managers in tow during which date at least one of us signed several autographs, what a surprise" is in fact a soft open for what will likely be a public confirmation PRETTY DAMN SOON. It might happen before I get this thing published, actually, depending on when I get it up. If it's before May 22 at noon my time, no idea. If after, well. Guess we'll see. Jennie's supposed to show up at the screening of HBO's The Idol that day, screening at the Grand Lumiere at 10:30 CEST. One wonders if she will arrive alone, or bring a plus one. It's a big ask, and if he does it they're probably getting married, that's how big a deal it would be. So I'm not holding my breath, but.

This seems like a reasonable prospect for a plus-one viewing. Might not be the only one but... Jennie's IN IT so.

I'M NOT SAYING THIS IS GONNA HAPPEN. I think it would be a fucking POWER move if it did, but I also do not necessarily expect that it will. It COULD. It... MIGHT. It might not. Either way they're a thing, I'm telling you. They are, have been, a thing. For awhile. And it is apparently quite serious - like up to and including talk of engagement serious.

Remember when a bunch of folk thought that one gummy bear dude was going to jail for "hacking" Jennie's phone only there's been no actual movement on any "investigation"? Yeah. Trickle truthing, they call it. Give 'em a little bit, let them deny it and yell and chew on it for awhile before you give 'em a little more. But c'mon, nobody's wearing half the love-themed couple pieces at Foundrae for no damn reason.

Seriously they got the whole collection almost and both have been seen wearing them almost exclusively. For a year.See airport pic above.

Look, I don't have inside info on Taehyung. I do not. I ain't hang with his friends and I don't know him personally. Never met the guy. But I know a PR move when I see one and this is exactly that.

We all know how toxic stan culture can be. Some ToadlicKKers (and a few of us house elves) are certifiably bonkers, if stan twitter is anything to go by. And the guys, the company, they expect a whole meltdown. They know this is not gonna make half their fans happy. I mean the tkkers have a point in that it looks like they wanted to be seen. BECAUSE IT'S A SOFT OPEN. What Taejen/Taennie/Jenhyung and the companies also know is that based on historic shipper behavior, this is gonna come back on Jimin, Jungkook, maybe Rose' and Lisa. And by extension, the other members. Maybe not as much due to their respective distance, but still. I bet by the time I finish this it will have already started.

Oh look there it is. Fuck those bitches, really.

Good LORDT. I'm not adding the audio, if y'all are that hungry for psycho hose beast Jimin hate hie thee to stan twt.

But, totally off-topic kinda...

... wouldn't it be cool if Jennie, who speaks great English, was hanging out with Troye Sivan and was like "so you know my boyfriend tells me that his bffs..." I'M JUST SAYING NETWORKING IS COOL AND FRIENDS OF FRIENDS GET THINGS DONE OKAY.

You know that girl has the scoop. If Tae knows it, she knows it. Oh heeeeyyy Troye.

Also OT: I love that Taekook have been hanging out a little more lately. It's refreshing. I genuinely think having Jennie in his life has been good for Tae in several ways. And you know, I'm kinda surprised Taennie has lasted this long. I didn't honestly think they would. It warms my decrepit, sad old heart a bit. Turns out I have a lot more to say so IDK IDK, if I feel okay about it I might be back. Right now I'm just waiting for the official Taennie nod and the continued total meltdown.