#i know i don't make posts about her often but that's just because i'm writing a josh focused story rn so i'm trying to get as much analysis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prettycoolgirl · 1 month ago

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young rich & in love

pairing: dbf!logan howlett x f!reader. summary: sunday night football with your dad and logan, who knows what’s gonna happen... a/n: hey, my comeback has arrived!! i haven't posted fanfic on here in sooooooo long but hopefully, this makes up for it, i've had this idea in my head for weeks and finally decided to write it (saveeee me old man logan). please lemme know if i made any errors i hateee proofreading 😭 tyyy <33 also feel free to send me concepts! warnings: 18+, smut ofc, age gap (reader is in her 20s). implied panty stealing. oral (m receiving). small daddy kink? definitely more warnings… word count: 2.7k

It was your Father's and Logan's daily Sunday routine of watching football games together yet today was different. You walked past the living room and saw Logan sitting on the couch, with a beer in his hand, eyes focused on the screen as he watched the game. Your dad was in the kitchen getting snacks and a couple of more Coors, leaving the two of you alone in the room. Logan caught you just in time and smiled, his eyes lingering on you. "Hey, why don’t you come and watch the game with us," he said.

“As much as I would love to hear you and my dad constantly screaming at the TV, I can’t I gotta get ready for my date tonight with Jacob, sorry” you smiled slightly. Quickly Logan's smile faded at the mention of your date. He tried to hide it, but you could still see a hint of disappointment in his eyes.

"Oh no need to be sorry bubs, and How’s he treating you?" he questioned.

"He’s been treating me well I guess." you said stating the last part quietly, deep down you knew you weren’t telling the truth, the truth is that he’s been flaking on dates between you too because he “doesn’t feel well”, yet your friends send you photos that same night of his Instagram stories where he’s out partying with friends.

Logan’s eyebrow raised upon hearing your response. “What do you mean ‘Well I Guess’” He asked. “You don’t sound so sure about that baby” He drank a bit of his beer looking into your eyes.

That nickname he used so often with you, always seemed to have an effect on you. For context, You always had a crush on Logan, you thought it would have gone away with it just being a ‘stupid teenage crush’ but no it wasn't. The crush on that man had gotten stronger the older you’ve gotten. You hoped he had some sort of crush on you at all. Some days you would notice all the side glances he would make when you exited the house all dressed up or even when you would kiss Jacob goodbye when he dropped you off at home.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it Logan.” you tried to reassure him.

You knew Logan was hard to try to convince him of something. He knew you were keeping something from him, and he was going to get it out of you.

“I know you too well, Something’s bothering you, You know you can talk to me. I won’t tell your old man.” He put his beer down on the coffee table and turned closer towards you.

“Tell me the truth bubs. Is he not treating you right? You shouldn't be dealing with that baby” he said using that nickname you loved, putting his hand on your thigh rubbing it&keeping eye contact while smirking.

Your heart races at seeing him rubbing his thumb over your thighs. His goddamn smirk too.

“He’s ju-”

You were interrupted mid-sentence by your dad walking into the room.

Logan moved his hand back to himself, grabbing his beer and clearing his throat. Your dad entered the room, with his snacks laid out on a big plate and another six-pack of beer. "Oh, you gonna watch the game with us? I thought Jacob was taking you out." your dad asked settling down the plate and beers in front of the two men’s seats.

"Uh no sadly not, I'm still going out with Jacob tonight," you said, a hint of irritation in your voice. "So if you guys don't mind me, I need to go get ready. This hair and makeup is not gonna get done by itself." You shot a glance at Logan, his expression unreadable, before quickly exiting the room.

As you left the room, you swear you felt Logan's eyes on your back piercing right through you as you walked upstairs toward your bedroom. In your bedroom You fixed up your hair a bit and walked back and forth through your closet trying to pick what you were gonna wear but thoughts of Logan’s hand rubbing your thigh just kept invading your mind. The thought of him just alone made you wet. God the affect that man had on you. No matter how much you try to ignore it, more thoughts of him rushed back in and so did questions. Was he jealous? Why did he look disappointed when you mentioned your boyfriend, Jacob?

You could not let the thought of your dad’s best friend cross your mind anymore, you had to finish getting ready, either way, Jacob told you yesterday to be ready by 4 and time was approaching. You previously made the plan to get fucked tonight, Jacob had to appreciate what he had. You slipped into your mini skirt that matched perfectly with your shirt—sitting at your vanity, applying your everyday makeup. As you moved on to applying a final coat of lipgloss, you heard your phone buzz. You picked it up and felt your stomach drop as you read the message from “jacob <3”

"Gotta raincheck tonight I’m not feeling well again, sorry bb"

He did it once again for the 4th time, yet this time he promised he wouldn’t cancel still yet he did. Anger filled you, you had spent so much time getting ready, just for him to cancel like always. You’re ready for nothing, no plans, no nothing. You were pissed. You began to type up some utter bullshit “oh okay feel better soon love you<33.”

He quickly replied by liking the message with a thumbs up.

Not even a “Love you too” What the fuck, Fuck him, Fuck this Logan was right you shouldn’t be dealing with this. Enough was enough. You were done with his bullshit. Your plan of at least fucking Jacob one more time was not going to happen at all and you needed to get laid lord knows how long it's been. You decided were gonna get some drinks from downstairs and try to forget about Jacob.

As you walked out of your room and down the stairs, scouraging through your dad’s liquor drawer. You heard the voices of your dad and Logan floating through the air, watching the football game. You suddenly had an idea. If Jacob couldn't appreciate you, maybe it was time to play a game with someone else who might appreciate your presence more.

Discarding the drawer you began to walk into the living room walking past your dad and Logan. You could tell Logan was trying hard not to stare at you with that skirt. “oh, is Jacob here?” your dad said.

“No, we’re not going out anymore. He’s not feeling well so I figured I’d just watch the game with you guys” You smiled knowing damn right it was a lie, sitting directly on the couch near Logan.

Your dad looked over at you with a mix of surprise and a bit of concern on his face. “Really? Everything alright with Jacob?” He asked. Logan seemed to tense up even more as you sat down right next to him, your legs almost touching his.

“Yeah, he said he’s just gonna stay in and rest up,” you replied as your dad simply nodded in acknowledgment.

Meanwhile, Your dad's eyes were glued to the screen, not noticing the tension in the room. As the game continued, you tried to act natural, pretending to be interested in the players' moves while secretly glancing at Logan. He stole a few glances your way, his eyes roaming over your short skirt, before quickly looking away. You could feel his gaze burning into you, and you couldn’t help but secretly enjoy the attention.

As the first half of the game finished and halftime began, your dad got up and announced, "Well, it's halftime. I'm gonna go use the restroom real quick. I'll be right back." He gave you two a quick smile before heading out of the room.

As soon as your dad left the room, the tension in the air thickened. You were suddenly alone with Logan on the couch, the only sound was the faint commentary from the TV.

From what you could tell you saw Logan fiddling with the remote of the television before he said, "This damn remote won't work. I can't hear anything!"

"Give me it, lemme try," you offered, pointing to the volume control on the TV box.

Slowly, you bent down to turn up the volume trying to put your skirt down a bit, taking your sweet time. "How's that?" you asked, looking directly at Logan for a response.

He swallowed hard as he caught sight of your ass falling out of your mini skirt. His eyes try to balance between the TV and your exposed skin. "Yeah, uh... yeah, that's better," he mumbled, trying to maintain his composure. Once you sat back on the couch, you casually glanced at him and saw him adjusting his jeans and squirming where he was sitting. You couldn't help but smirk as you looked quickly towards the TV, knowing full well the effect you were having on Logan. Your plan working all accordingly.

Your dad came back from the bathroom and, seeing how uneasy and squirmy Logan was looking, asked him, "Logan, you okay buddy?

"Yeah, I'm good," Logan muttered.

The game resumed, with the atmosphere was heavy. Both of you were distracted; the game was on, but neither of you watched. Your dad was completely oblivious to the tension you both were building.

Logan kept replaying the image of you bent over, eyes staring right at him. His mind soon began to wander to thoughts about only you. He knew the game wouldn’t be over for a while.

Once 20 minutes had passed, Logan had enough and decided to excuse himself to use the restroom.

”I’ll be back gotta use the restroom,” he said while getting up.

“Are you sure? Man, you're gonna miss the game.” your dad asked Logan.

“yeah, it’s fine.” he quickly replied walking by.

You stayed downstairs with your dad to watch the game. Already getting tired of just watching the game, you decided to go to your room and work on some assignments, using it as an excuse. You bid your dad goodnight and told him you might not come down again that night.

"Alright, kiddo," your dad replied. "Goodnight, and don't stay up too late. Oh, and can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, Dad. What is it?" you asked.

"Can you knock on the bathroom door and call out to Logan? He's going to miss out on the rest of the game if he doesn't come out soon," your dad replied concerned.

"Yeah, no problem," you smiled assuring your dad.

You made your way up to the bathroom, your footsteps a bit quicker than usual. You knocked gently on the door, but there was no response.

"Weird," you muttered under your breath. Feeling a mix of curiosity and growing worry, you turned away from the bathroom and headed toward your room instead.

As you entered, your eyes widened in shock and surprise. There, standing before you, was Logan, going through your underwear drawer.

"You perv," you exclaimed, jokingly lightly smacking his shoulder.

He visibly jumped, caught in the act. His face reddened as he frantically tried to come up with an explanition.

"Shit, look, it's not-" he began, his words stumbling over each other in his act to explain.

You cut him off, "Oh, it's exactly what it looks like, Lo.”

He was too stunned to speak.

You crossed your arms, in annoyance, and said, "So you're the reason my panties have been going missing?"

Logan's eyes widened, his guilt evident. He tried to protest, "No, no, look, you don't understand-"

But you interrupted him again, "But I do. I've seen the way you've looked at me, and those sneaky touches on my thighs... I've seen it all, Logan."

Logan's face flushed with embarrassment, and he quickly closed the drawer. He looked at you, the evidence of his actions clear.

"I... I can explain," he muttered, shifting uncomfortably.

You raised an eyebrow, giving Logan a skeptical look. "Explain then," you said, leaning against the wall, and crossing your arms.

Frustration and lust appeared on Logan's face as he replied, "You know what, no. You teased me all damn night. I deserve this at least. You were trying to get me killed out there.”

“What teasing are you even talking about?” you acted oblivious.

“You realize what you were doing out there is so wrong. Don't try to act all innocent now.”

“I'm sorry, I don't know what you’re talking about Logan," You started smirking.

“You know exactly what I'm talking about,” Logan growled, his voice low. "You were bending over out there, practically flashing your ass at me. You knew what you were doing, didn’t you? Getting me all hard in front of your old man huh?”

“I was just trying to fix the volume for you.” Still trying to keep the innocent act up.

“Bullshit baby,” he said eying your mini skirt.

Logan's eyes darkened with desire as he walked closer to you, backing you against the wall. "Don't play dumb. You know exactly the effect you have on me." His voice was low and husky.

"Walking around in these tiny outfits, bending over every chance you get."

As you locked eyes with Logan, your steady gaze holding his, you repeated your question, "And what are you gonna do about it?" You slowly knelt before him, your face now inches away from the button of his jeans.

Logan's gazed down at you, hand going to caress your chin. He took a step closer to you. "You know what I wanna do, outta teach you a lesson," he said, his voice hoarse with lust.

Within seconds you pulled his pants down, dragging his boxers along with them letting his dick spring freely out.

"Suck on it."

Obeying what he said you started coating his cock with your spit. Logan groaned softly as your lips wrapped around his thick shaft, your tongue swirling expertly. His hands tangled in your hair, guiding your head as you bobbed up and down. "Fuck, just like that baby," he breathed, trying to keep his voice low.

“Ah, fuck.” Hearing him moan made you love pleasing Logan with his cock in your mouth. That alone made you soaking wet.

He grunted as he felt the head of his cock hit the back of your throat, your lips stretched wide around his girth gagging a bit, eyes watering. "Shh, careful now," he whispered urgently, glancing at the door. "We can't make too much noise with your dad right downstairs."

Logan's eyes widened in shock and arousal as you carefully moved your mouth off his throbbing erection, your voice breathy as you said "It's too much, Daddy." He shuddered at the forbidden words, his cock twitching with need even as his mind reeled.

His hands shook as he watched you wipe a strand of your spit off your hand, the sight sending a jolt of desire through him. He quickly glanced at the door again before grabbing your chin and forcing you to look at him.

"Fuck, baby, you can't say that out loud. Not ever."

Gripping on your chin tightened as you wrapped your lips around his hot, hard flesh once more. His voice grew strained as he hissed, "Faster, baby… just like that... Oh God, harder...harder... I'm not gonna last... not with you sucking me off like that..."

Logan's words tumbled out in a desperate, breathless rush as you worked his throbbing cock with your mouth. "This is so wrong... but fuck baby, your mouth feels so good... I can't think straight... shit, I'm not gonna last... oh fuck, I'm gonna..."

His voice rose to a hoarse scream as his orgasm crashed over him, his hips bucking wildly as he fucked your mouth without warning. "Fuckk!" he groaned, his cock pulsing violently as he erupted into your mouth, painting your throat with thick ropes of cum.

He panted, trying to catch his breath as he came down from his high.

"Your dad's gonna kill me," he said shakily, his body still trembling from release. He quickly tucked himself back into his pants before pulling you up into his arms.

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hiveswap · 10 months ago

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Summary of The Cat of The Year poll atrocities of 2023/2024

I'm sure that most people on this side of tumblr have seen the Jellie vs. Nefarious Anglerfish poll going around with like 60k votes at this point, and I'd really like clear up some of what happened since I was around for the whole thing.

Url blocked out for op's privacy. They have already left but don't look for it if you haven't seen it/don't harrass them if you already have.

1. The previous round (preparation)

I discovered the poll in its previous round, needless to say she beat Jort's ass severely. This was around the 3rd of january, meaning that this round finished before jellie's passing with only about 7k votes. Op did add their own piece of propaganda from their main:

...which was FINE. (except for stuff we'll see later) Of course running a poll while biased isn't ideal but I for one didn't even know they were the op until much later. I also added my own piece in a separate thread, and they didn't interact with it at all. There was no drama.

2. The Finale

Jellie unfortunately passed away right before the starting of this poll, which was the catalyst for what happened next. Op did exactly as last time and added a slightly more mean spirited encouragement to vote for the other contestant. This is the point where I believe that i fucked up personally.

I added this thinkpiece accusing op of associating all mcyters with Dream (who we all hate for the record) despite them not alluding to him at all. This is because tumblr has a history of disimissing all mcyters as... everything that dream was been accused of. Op did allude to not caring for mcyt. but they didn't say what i accused them of. This is important to point out because this reblog of mine is still being spread. Jellie was in the lead at the time, but not by the time i woke up next morning.

I won't be including anyone else's additions because I don't want to put blame on any specific person. Just felt like clearing up mine.

3. The Fuckening

Some time later op made this post to their personal blog:

which is insanely shitty because, as other people have pointed out, the "lame ass youtube cat" didn't die to inconvinience op or ruin their fun, and people would have probably voted for her anyway because jelly is universally beloved in the mcyt community. This isn't anti democratic. This post was added to the poll with a caption saying op should not be running this poll, and it took off. Op later went on to say that this was a joke:

This apology was not taken well by people, (including me) because "you were not meant to see it" isn't an apology and they still very much made fun of someone's pet dying. Safe to say this did not make the drama stop and only added fuel to the flame. I believe this was the point where the conversation of mcyt fans being unjustly sent hate to was reignited.

We should discuss that! it's a real thing that happens often and is equal to childish bullying. However, in this case, OP was the only one getting sent hate to my knowledge. The notes were mostly saturated by mcyt fans, and even now i can only find one or two hateful stance towards us under the whole 20k notes post.

4. Conclusions

Op posted a second apology to the catoftheyear blog to try and calm people down (i believe this is comprehensive and a lot better than the previous one) The blog was deactivated shortly after, so i only have my phone screenshots of it that i also added to the poll itself at some point:

(Edit) Here's proof that op did not write the justification they got criticised for, from the notes of the original poll:

This apology didn't get seen, or get accepted by enough people, so op made this statement on their personal:

Needless to say I am deeply dissapointed (and guilty) that it's come to this. Yes, op said tasteless things that made us all angry, but telling a human being to commit suicide is worse than being insensitive about a stranger's pet dying. Even after I posted about the blog being decatived i had someone come into my notes to wish that "they never find happiness" i mean wtf. This isn't like shipping where we can do whatever without the content creator's input. this is fucking harrowing and i can't imagine how i'd feel if this was done in my/my pet's name especially after losing them as recently as a week ago.

I hope no one from hermitcraft who is on here (let alone scar holy shit) learns about this like they did with previous lighthearted tournaments. If you truly respect the creators you claim to be a fan of as people, you do not tell people to kill themselves over them. And finally, let Jellie fucking rest, guys. she had a long, good life. I hope op can come back and also avoids behaving like this if they ever wish to do so. I'm angrier at mcytblr, though.

#catoftheyear #jellie #tw animal death #tw suicide bait #hermitcraft #goodtimeswithscar #adding to main tags so people see this instead of the poll itself with no context on how it ended #If this breaches containment and gets used as a reason to hurt mcyt fans i am going zo eat whoever is doing that #catoftheyeartournament #jellie the cat

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bunnys-kisses · 4 months ago

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hello! i stumbled upon your blog and i must admit i LOVE the bakery theme. can i get a berry trifle and coffee with oscar piastri please? thank you so much!!!

bakery menu

want to submit your own order! check the original post for all the information & prompts! as for this prompt, i am loving that people are into the whole rivals idea. i love writing rivals for f1, it's like the soap opera aspect of f1. it's very funny.

berry trifle ('wrong, try again') + coffee (rivals) served to you by oscar piastri (formula one!)

cw: smut/pwp, (failed) rivals au, driver!reader, driver!oscar, a dash of breeding kink, unprotected sex, references to masturbation, cowgirl position,

okay, oscar didn't hate you. despite what the press had been alluding to after hungary, oscar didn't hate you. in fact, he had respect for you, you were breaking barriers for women in the field.

but by god, did you light a fire in him.

when he first met you, you were in the semi-baggy driver's clothes. the fabric didn't give you much shape. so oscar just thought you were the cute new driver.

that was until you attended an event for ferrari with leclerc, the dress-code did not include the driver's suit. that was when oscar got a good look at your figure. there was a strength to your form that could clearly be seen by the lack of full sleeves on the dress you wore.

oscar didn't know he was attending the gun show!

but that only made his carnal craving for you grow deeper.

"she's turning a lot of heads." charles remarked before he took a sip of his drink, "i told her that if she really worked on it, she could get some hefty sponsors."

"or a date." lando remarked as the three men watched you talk your way through the room. eventually lando said, "i'd smash." before he downed his drink and got up to get another one.

charles looked to oscar and asked, "what are your thoughts on her, piastri?" he was genuinely curious, oscar was quiet about you.

oscar sighed and made a face, "i want to crush her on the track." he turned to the other man and shrugged, "i don't care if she's a woman, i'm here to win."

you beat him in belgium. you also beat norris, leclerc, and verstappen. you held that trophy over your head while the national anthem of your home country played. oscar swore that he saw tears in your eyes.

there was a buzz about you over the course of the summer break. oscar took it as an opportunity to invite you to england. all driver's ran in the same circles and oscar was just extending an offer for you to get out of monaco for a week!

"i promise, it does get sunny... sometimes." he said to you over the phone. he didn't admit but when he heard you beautiful voice on the other end of the line, his hand was already around his cock.

he was in anticipation for your visit and was more than happy to pick you up from the airport. you threw yourself at him and laughed.

"you were right, it is hot!" you were wearing a light sweatshirt, "i honestly thought you were fuckin' with me. you must be cold, mister australia!"

he scratched the back of his neck, and his eyes went wide when you hastily took off the sweatshirt, exposing more of your body to him. he didn't know that ferrari made such tight tank tops.

oscar's plans to really cement you as a rival failed upon impact. he thought this trip was going to be really getting to the core of you and cementing himself as you rival. but, instead you were helping him make breakfast because you 'felt bad' that he was doing 'everything'.

it was two eggs in a pain and couple of sausages.

you lingered around him, he noticed by the second day you smelt like his body wash when you got close enough to him. you were all bright smiles, soft gazes and tight little tops.

oscar ended every night with his cock in his hand, idly masturbating until his legs cramped up. the sick little kink he often let his mind wander about was the breeding kink.

his dream was two seasons with you at mclaren (sorry, lando). you in the bright orange across the paddock. then halfway through the second season, you start feeling unwell. you'd be too stubborn to take a pregnancy test, but with the amount of tests drivers have to take, it wouldn't be long before you were confronted by the fact that oscar got you pregnant! then you start a bright new future as mrs. piastri, and lando can come back (yay, lando!).

that was why his plan to make you his rival failed, because his need to get his cock wet overrode everything else.

it took a week before you two started sleeping together. you could only drink, laugh and play so many video games before you led him back to his bedroom like a siren.

it was met with giggles and bad jokes. hands touching skin and finally the clothes were shed.

oscar liked you on top, as did you. you liked having the control of your movements as your pussy was a vice around his leaky cock. you were on birth control (duh), but the other driver didn't need to know.

he honestly thought he was taking you raw.

"tell me who's going to win it all this year?" you asked as you rolled your hips. his cock was snug in you, you had to admit, the other driver was packing some heat between his legs.

and he wasn't afraid to use it.

oscar rubbed his thumb against your hip and said, "yeah, number eighty-eight for mclaren." he smiled cockily.

"wrong, try again." you said as you laughed and tapped him on the nose, which made him groan. you bent over himself as you rocked your hips and kissed at his face. he looked visibly relaxed.

"oh c'mon!" he laughed as he tried to set the pace himself. but you placed your hands on his chest and anchored yourself. you were not letting him take control.

you leaned in to kiss him again. the air conditioning in the room prevented it from getting too hot. but, oscar could see the slight sheen of sweat on your naked body in the afternoon light.

"you don't think i'll beat you?"

you shook your head and continued to move up and down on his cock. you pushed the hair out of your face, "oh, don't be silly, piastri." you playfully slapped his toned chest, "we all know i'm going to beat you." then flashed your press smile.

words like that made him want to breed you even more. but, he kept those thoughts to himself. he didn't want to risk losing such a sweet pussy in his close proximity.

it'd be hard to win championship when you were carrying the other driver's baby!

you rested up against his chest and rolled your hips. you had taken his cock to the root and it nudged against you with each thrust of your hips. you could feel his balls up against your pussy.

"shit, fuck. you feel so good."

"i bet you say that to all the girls you bring back to this place." you laughed as you really worked at riding him. you panted heavily as you moved against him.

he ran his fingers through your hair, "nah, nah. no girl's as pretty as you." oscar's plan slipped through his fingers, he wanted you more as a wife then a rival.

"well, aren't you sweet, oscar."

the two of you continued to fuck in the afternoon light. the pleasure pumped through your body as you rode him. you knew you weren't going to last long, that was one thing you could admit about oscar.

he was a good fuck.

the bed squeaked a little bit under the both of you. oscar's orgasm hit him hard and he finished inside of you in a huff. his nails dug into your hips as you continued to ride him till you found your completion.

he looked in a bit of a daze as you continued to hump against him. you felt the sweat on your back and oscar's strong chest under your nails, your short nails scratching against the skin.

"shit, oscar." you groaned as you reached your climax.

you were both out of breath. you didn't know what to do after you stopped your movements besides just giving him a firm pat on the chest. you panted, "good. good."

he laughed, "excellent. now c'mere."

you soon laid out on his chest and linked your fingers with his. your legs tangled together as you laid there trying to catch your breath. it was almost intimate.

you kissed at the other's collarbones, "so what do you say, piastri? another round and then we can get some dinner?"

that evening you called charles up, you were seated on the balcony of the flat with your legs kicked out on the small table.

"leclerc residence, charles speaking." he yawned on the other end.

you replied, "it's barely eight o'clock. you're getting too old." with a hint of laughter in your voice. in all fairness you were a little tired too.

"glad to see you're alive in england. how's oscar?"

"good, good. our little mission is a success." you beamed on the other end, "oscar will be as docile as your little leo."

charles chuckled on the other end, "if he is, he's going to need more training. i don't get why you didn't start with lando? he was into you too."

"yeah, but oscar's accent got me first." you sighed, "i mean, eventually the two will tear each other apart." you shrugged.

"or tear you apart." charles remarked.

"i'm not too worried there, leclerc. you men are quite funny sometimes. i'll tell you everything when i get back."

your teammate replied, "whatever, just don't come crawling back to me when they both catch on and you've got cum coming out of your ears."

formula one was a man's world, but if you could keep a man like oscar piastri on his knees for you. then maybe you had a chance of winning the championship.

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sleepyangelkami · 28 days ago

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I'm posting this from my phone so please bare with me guys.

"ew, you write y/n as a baby."

okay, so. I understand that the way I write might not float everyone's boat which is so okay !! But yk what you could do...? Scroll !! There's no need to hate. I really apologize if the way I've written my readers in x reader fics is harmful in any way. However, I'm not going to stop making the character they're with baby them and look after them. The beauty in all of this is that none of it is real. Life can be hard and life can be way toooo much and at the end of the day you might js wanna read ab getting babied. People baby their partners all the time whether you're male female any other gender none of this matters. I write female y/n and if you have a problem with the characters babying her but at the same time you're posting matt sturniolo (I apologize if I spelled that wrong) and saying omg cutie baby 🥺🥺 it's the same thing !!! It's so normal and people are making it weird. If you want to read badass!y/n then write badass!y/n. People get so hung up on writing shy readers and saying it's weird. It's how a lot of people feel and I'm personally really shy irl which is why everything on my account is fake !! Kami isn't even my real name ! You guys need to stop spreading hate towards people and if you don't like their work whether it's cringe or even a little weird then please just scroll

"ew innocence kinks are for p*edos."

Oh my. More often than not innocence kinks are usually submissive people loving the chase and getting dominant people to spell it all out for them. Not only that but sometimes people suffer from childhood trauma (me !!) and they read things that make them get to relive the part where their 'innocence' was 'taken' from them in a gentle way and not by abuse of power. Also, some people just have innocence kinks !! And that's okay as long as you're two consenting adults. When did everyone get so judgemental !! I've seen stepcest, ACTUAL incest and more prominently pain kinks and knives kinks guys innocence kinks really are not the worst problems out there ! I understand that some people take them too far which is not okay and under no circumstances would I ever support someone taking advantage of someone else who doesn't fully comprehend what's going on. But yk what this is?? Mere fantasies. They don't exist, it's just what people like to read so please leave us alone 🩷

And finally, "why is y/n such a pushover omg?"

Wanna start off by saying I don't condone cheating ever !! And I would never write a fic where the reader gets back with the character after they cheat. With that being said, the only fics I have ever seen of that (very VERY few) they have put trigger warnings at the beginning to let you know what you're reading. And for the people who say that the reader shouldn't go back because their partner yelled at them... Guys PLEASE !! I understand that yelling isn't something that should be excused, you should never put your partner in a position where they are scared or feel uncomfortable. However, I also know for a fact that everyone reading this has at one point in their lives yelled at someone. Being loved isn't about loving someone with happy rainbows there's gonna be bad days which I find realistic enough. Partners argue, sometimes relationships even take breaks and people get petty and people yell but you know why?? Cause we're human !!! It's in our nature if we're angry or annoyed or whatever it may be. Of course this behavior shouldn't be excused if it's constantly on show. Although denying the fact that you'd ever get back with someone after they yelled at you during an argument is a little bit childish. I don't mean hate to anybody whatsoever I'm just saying that you're dating a human (hopefully) not an alien (you'd be surprised on Tumblr I actually can't rule that one out) they have emotions and while sometimes they can be misplaced... It doesn't mean they're a bad person for it.

This isn't meant to harm or send hate to anyone !! I've just seen so much hatred spread across Tumblr and it's really upsetting. People should learn to support one another and if you don't like the content, scroll ! Once again this is hate to nobody enjoy ur day/morning/evening/night lovelies !!! 🩷🩷

(sorry for the ramble angels)

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reds-skull · 7 days ago

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CW FLASHING IN THE VIDEO (3rd from the bottom)

This is it. 3 months in the works, the comic (and video) are finally done.

A little over a year ago, I uploaded the first work in Revenant AU, Ghost's origin comic. I never thought I'd write a whole series for this, but I'm so glad I did. I got a whole new hobby out of it, haha.

I already began working on part 2, but this for me marks the start of it. I'm really excited to get back into this world!

Under the cut there are some comments on the comic I thought some people might be interested in (don't wanna make this post longer than it already is lol). I will upload the frames from the video separately, with comments on it there.

Bottom line is, thank you for letting me just go wild with this :)

Okay, I'm mostly gonna talk about the part where Fate shows Makarov the 141+Farah. Makarov doesn't see the Fate of people as literal images, he often has to interpret odd symbolism in the flashes he gets from the Weave of Fate.

I decided to go for a style I saw in a collection of calling cards in MW3, mainly from this one:

You can really see it in the faces and pitch-black cel shading.

I'll be going in order of appearance, starting with Farah.

Obviously, each of the "flashes" shows the Reaping of each person, Farah being crushed under rubble. Behind her is a helo of green gas, which symbolizes the Russian experimental gas. The motifs around her are more interesting imo - they're taken from the Urzik flag (and yeah apparently it's "Urzik" and not "Urzikstani"... according to the wiki at least). Wings, plants (feels to me like a pomegranate and some sort of crop, but I couldn't find what it is specifically), and a moon, upside down.

I'm skipping ahead a bit, but I've had the idea to make a drawing of Gaz in the Hanged Man pose since I started the AU basically. I tried sketching it once, and it went bad so I gave up lol. But I decided to come back to that here, and add some sort of tarot connection to all of them. I know practically nothing about tarot, googled the meanings of each, they fit well enough, I called it a day lol.

So Farah is the Moon, upside down.

Price is next, showing him taking control of the brain of someone. I didn't use the flag of the UK for the 141 (it'd be kinda boring...), instead I took the Taskforce 141 logo, and broke it down to different elements.

I took the laurels for Price, both framing his illustration and sitting above his head like a crown. I decided he will be the Emperor.

Next up is Gaz, the Hanged Man of course. Gaz gets both the wings and the stars (I changed mine to 4-pointed because... I like them better). Pretty clear why, both symbols relate to the sky. The illustrations kinda follow a rough day cycle, if that makes sense. Farah being night, with the moon. Price with his golden and purple color palette, twilight. Gaz being sunrise, and Ghost and Soap, day. This is why Gaz has a sun behind him.

Ghost was fun because he's the only inhuman one out of the group. I'll let you think what that implies, that even in Fate's Weave, Ghost is an outlier... Ghost gets the skull, and the card "Death". That one was easy, but what I did add is blood flowing down the skulls, like tear tracks...

Soap, the problem child, gave me the most issues as always. For once, it wasn't his fucking face, it was the flames behind him, and overall contrast and readability issues. Soap's illustration is probably packed with the most "hidden" details, though they're obvious if you've read the fic and Konchar's side story. The headless man behind Soap is Konchar himself, holding 4 chains with dog tags on them. The 4 soldiers from Soap's squad, who he killed before Soap was Reaped. Soap's pose is from the moment he came to his senses, after getting shot in the head and destroying a large part of Verdansk. He has 4 swords, pointing at him and downwards, so his card is 4 of Swords, upside down.

Between Soap and Ghost is a circle and a triangle. I'll explain that in the post concerning the video, since that's where I got that from.

If you read all of this, thank you so much! There will be another post for you to read in a moment lol

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buckys-little-belle · 8 months ago

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Hi!! I love your story’s and am always looking for little and daddy Bucky story’s!! I was wondering if you could do insecure reader who’s bigger. She has bigger thighs a bigger tummy and face. Could you do reader is scared to sit on buckys lap or for him to pick her up and carry her around the house. She’s too scared she’s heavy and will crush him and his legs. or that he will drop her because she’s too big. She also never cuddles and sleeps with him in his room always sleeping in her room after he puts her to bed because she’s scared about her breathing or how she sleeps.

Bucky gets her to tell him why and then comfort. Just fluff fluff fluff. If your not comfortable writing this I totally understand!!! If you do could you ad paci use? Thank you!!! Sorry for the rambling…

Strongest Man Alive

Bucky Barnes x Plus Sized!Little!Reader (She/Her Pronouns Used)

Notes - This is not my best work, and has been in my drafts for MONTHS, it's something cute, and a little angsty at the beginning, but it does get super fluffy at the end. It's a little bit different than my usual writting style, so I apologize for that, but I do hope you like it and if not I'm so sorry! I hope I did this ask justice, and I hope everyone is having a good week!!! <3

Warnings - Talks of reader being self conscious for being 'bigger', kept very vague as she uses the words "heavy" and "squishy" to describe her body type instead of more concrete descriptions, the use of a pacifier is very brief as it's something I'm not used to writing, though I would be willing to continue, mentions of reader eating food "snacks" and "sandwich" though never specified, FLUFF at the end, but there is a moment of angst, I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS A COHEARANT STORY, it's from the drafts and I gave it a once over and I think it's 'good enough' so I apologize if it's terrible <3

SFW - Please keep all interactions with this post, and this blog, SFW.

. ☾ . ☆ . ☽ . ☆ . ☾ . ☆ . ☽ . ☆ . ☾ . ☆ . ☽ .

Y/n often spent their time at the Avengers tower sitting, standing, lingering around Bucky Barnes. It wasn't on purpose, the man just seemed to be the other half of some magnet imbedded deep in Y/n's heart. He just had some ability to pull her towards him.

Maybe it was the way he cut her sandwiches into perfect triangles, or the way his hand always found hers when she got scared. Maybe it was the way he seemed to be reserved around anyone but her that made her feel so connected to him.

He never sulked but always seemed to walk around with a frown stuck on his face, only ever changing it to a smile when she walked by his office or stopped by his room.

As much as Y/n felt like she was pulled to him, Bucky felt it multiplied by 100. His hands always aching to hold hers, his chest always feeling heavy when he began to think about her needing something and him not being around to help her.

The whole tower knew about Y/n's regression. Wanda and Peter often joined in, hanging out in little space and colouring in books Tony had provided, watching whatever new animated movie had just come out and sleeping over in makeshift tents in the living room.

Often other Avengers would help supervise activities, Steve loved playing action fighters in the common areas, Nat loved cuddle puddle on the couch, and Thor was always ready for a park day. Bucky on the other hand liked to stay in the shadows, buying stickers for the group of littles, making them lunch and dropping it off.

Bucky only stuck around if Y/n asked him to hang out with her. "Bucky can you hold my hand?" She had asked him when at the park, he of course grabbed her hand and helped her up the jungle gym.

"Bucky can you open this please?" She had whispered during a movie, her baggie full of snacks too difficult to manage on her own. He opened the baggie and held it in his own grasp, handing her a piece of candy anytime she had finished the previous one.

"Bucky will you colour with me?" She had yelled her ask one day when he was passing by the kitchen, Y/n sat at the island with markers scattered across the marble. He silently sat down and diligently coloured the page she had given him, helping her chase markers that had fallen.

He knew she was comfortable asking for what she wanted, and he knew she wasn't afraid of him ... so, it made his chest tighten every time she asked him to grab something from the top shelf instead of asking to be lifted like Wanda and Peter often asked.

He also felt off every time a little would come running out of their room after a nightmare, rushing into someone's room for a cuddle, yet Y/n's door never opened and neither did his.

Bucky was sure it was his fault she didn't seek him out for cuddles, he thought he had done something wrong when she never asked for a hug. Was it his arm? Was she scared he would turn on her? He couldn't figure it out.

That is until he realised she never asked anyone for a cuddle, or a hug. Nat, Wanda, and Peter would be all comfy on the couch and Y/n would be sat on the chair, a small frown on her face yet she never tried to find a spot next to her friends. And when she scraped her knee on the playground she declined Thor's offer of a "healing" hug.

"Y/n?" His voice was quiet but direct as he called out into the playroom, Y/n sat on the softly coloured rug, her stuffed animals scattered about.

"Hi Bucky!" She smiled, her pacifier tumbling out of her mouth and onto the ground.

"Hi." He sat down across from her, quickly pocketing the fallen pacifier before sought out the, now, dirty thing. "What are you playing?" His hands brushed a stuffed teddy, Y/n tilting her head in confusion as she looked around her.

"'m just dressen 'm up." She smiled at him, grabbing a stuffed unicorn and brushing it's fur back into place, shuffling closer to Bucky as she gathered a few other stuffed animals.

The moment her knees hit his she shifted back, so Bucky shifted his towards her again. Like clockwork she moved and left a small gap between them. "Y/n?"

"Mhm." She looked back at him, her smile one he could easily read through.

"Am I scary?" He asked calmly, not once loosing eye contact as she shook her head 'no'. "Do I smell?" He asked, this time with a laugh.

"No!" She giggled.

"Then why do you run every time I touch you." Instead of answering she bowed her head, hands running over the stuffed animal anxiously. "Why don't you hug Wanda or Peter?" He was worried that all the questions would make her want to run, but as she huffed and leaned into his space slightly he continued. "I know Thor was pretty sad when you declined his hug the other day." That one wasn't a lie, the man had gone on a rant about how he thought he had done something wrong, how he was sure Y/n hated him.

"I jus', I don' want them t' be mad." She admitted, huffing at the end of her sentence. "'m jus', 'm heavy, an' squishy. Wanda and Pete aren't heavy an' squishy." She admitted, eyes locked on the wall, the stuffed unicorn held a little closer to her body.

"What do you mean Baby?" Bucky asked, confused as to what she was alluding to.

"It's harder t' pick me up." She finally looked back at him, tears beginning to gather along her waterline. "And cuddling wif me wouldn' be th' same." She shrugged, trying to play it off like she wasn't bothered by her own words.

The tightness in Bucky's chest didn't ease up with his answer, his worry only growing. He had hoped it was an easy thing to fix, yet knowing Y/n didn't hug her friends, or him, because she felt too big made him hurt. "Baby," He began, not giving Y/n a second to doubt him, he picked her up and sat her in his lap. "you aren't 'too heavy' to pick up." He hated how quickly she curled into his chest, how clear it was that she was missing human connection. "I'm the strongest man alive, and you saying that you're too heavy is going to bruise my ego a bit, Baby." They both laughed, a few of Y/n's tears hitting the fabric of Bucky's shirt.

"I thought Steve was th' strongest man alive?"

"I let him win when we arm wrestle." Bucky admitted, causing Y/n to break out into a fit of giggles.

"'m gonna tell him!" She stood up, bolting for the door.

"Oh no you don't!" Bucky ran after her, lifting her off her feet in the middle of the hallway, Y/n pausing with a gasp, bracing for the two of them to fall, yet laughing along with Bucky as jostled her around, threatening to take her new colouring page off the fridge if she told anyone his secret.

After a pinky promise and some juice Y/n began to trust Bucky a little bit more. She let him pick her up at the playground, and gave him a hug before bed every night. She still worried her hugs were 'bad', that maybe no one would want to hug her because she wasn't 'little' but Bucky never once complained, instead asking for hugs in the morning too.

It took her a while to truly trust that Bucky wasn't lying when he said his back didn't hurt after picking her up, but eventually she became comfortable enough to run and jump into his arms, something she had always dreamed of doing.

It wasn't until a month later that Bucky woke up at 4 am to the sound of Y/n's hurried footsteps rushing to his door. Light creeping in from the opened door she didn't close as she ran to his bed. The sound of soft cries and whispers of "Nightmare" filling the usually quiet space.

Instead of letting her think too much about how she 'should' be cuddling, Bucky just scooped her up and tucked her into his bed, letting her know he'd protect her, and her stuffed animal. He liked having her in his room, it made him feel at ease knowing she was close.

After a few months of staying in Bucky's room, Y/n began to get out of her shell a bit more, hugging Wanda and Peter, and eventually accepting Thor's 'healing' hugs. She finally joined in during the weekly cuddle puddle, laughing along side Nat and her friends as they all got cozy on the couch. And for the first time ever she let someone else, the second strongest man alive, Steve Rogers pick her up. A pride filled movement the man would never forget.

Even though it took her a little longer than everyone else to be comfortable hugging and snuggling, she was happy to finally be apart of the group in ways she wasn't before. Bucky, the man who still often stayed in the shadows, helping from a distance, couldn't help but feel a little lighter every time he saw his girl get over her worries, knowing if anything got to be 'too much' she'd come running to him.

#buckys little belle #anon #age regression #little!reader #age regression fic #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x little!reader #bucky x little!reader #bucky

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adripakoffee · 29 days ago

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I don't post on here often and by that I mean I'm on here once a month to look at writing prompts but right now I'm thinking of Anya from Mouthwashing, and Tumblr is better for long form posts. Apologies if this rant isn't super clear, I'm on pain meds right now.

CW: S/A, SUICIDE, OVERDOSE, MOUTHWASHING SPOILERS

Anyway, Anya very well may be one of the most doomed characters to ever doom. Firstly she's trapped in a relatively small space ship with 4 men, who she has to keep alive and healthy along with giving them periodic mental wellness checks (which she, herself never gets). Two of these men don't take her seriously at all because she probably doesn't actually have a medical degree and is just someone the company hired to cut corners. If that wasn't all ready awful, the co-captain, Jimmy, has been assaulting her since at least the start of this voyage that's been going on for 100+ days. She falls pregnant because of this and while this isn't where her spiral started, this is where it gets worse. She originally plans to kill herself with the Captain's gun, but decides against it since she can't get to the gun without Curly's help anyway.

Speaking of Curly, he knows what's been going on, she told him about Jimmy a while before the crash. Every time, Curly says "I'll do something about it," or "I'll fix this," but the most he does is keep Jimmy away from Anya when they're working. Anya seems fine with that for the most part because I think she assumes Curly will report Jimmy and have him arrested when they land (he won't, at this point in the game he'd defend Jimmy for anything because "he sees the best in people. He loves to say "our worst moments don't define us" and apparently that extends to r@pe). So at this point, she's biding her time until they land.

Back to the gun, when Curly finds her holed up in the cockpit, she tells him she's pregnant. He's a little taken aback but he tries to reassure her that it's fine and he'll fix the "situation" with Jimmy. He says he can't let her kill herself because he does actually care about her. One of his flaws is he cares about everyone so much he can't imagine compromising one of them for any reason. Anya tells him she wasn't going to hurt herself, though she thought about it, she just hid the gun case so Jimmy couldn't kill her instead. She's so convinced Jimmy just wants to kill and torment her when the sad truth is, he couldn’t care less.

In all of Jimmy's "take responsibility" hallucinations, Anya barely shows up. Swansea, Curly, and Daisuke do, but he can't bring himself to even recognize what's happened to Anya is also solely his fault. He doesn't care at all.

Speaking of which, what seems the straw that breaks the camel's back for Jimmy is Anya telling him that she's pregnant because he crashes the ship pretty sure after. And this really seems like a spur of the moment action because if he'd planned this he could've done it much earlier after the news of the company closing reached them.

Curly says Anya should've waited for him to help her tell Jimmy about the pregnancy, but that doesn't matter because he is put out of commission like (I forgot if it's a day later or the same day) later because he's in the cockpit when the ship crashes.

Now Anya has no hope, Jimmy knows she's pregnant, the seemingly one line of defense she has against him can't leave his bed, and they're stuck in space. She's terrified because not only because of that, but because Jimmy is captain now and because of the way the ship is set up, you need the captain for a lot of things. Jimmy being captain also means if he finds the gun case, he now has the code to open it.

Anya, being the ships medic, is tasked with keeping Curly alive and giving him his meds. It's really difficult for her, A. because Curly is hard to look at, B. because unless he's full of pain meds, he's making noise, and C. because that was her friend and one of the only people she felt safe around and he's been reduced to this. And from her perspective, this is his fault, Curly crashed the ship.

This situation is stressful for everyone, Swansea has reverted back to alcoholism and never drops the ax he has, Daisuke is slowly losing hope and also starts drinking, and Jimmy won't stop yelling at her. He's so pissed at her the entire game, more so than everyone else. She was already scared of him but before there was at least a light at the end of the tunnel. Now there's nothing to look forward to because she doesn't think there's any way out.

She, at some point when he's sober enough, confides in Swansea who then tells her that she's gonna be the one to get out of here. He has the one last working cryo pod set aside for her specifically and refuses to let anyone into the room where it is. Unfortunately, at this point, her anxiety concerning Jimmy is so bad, she's convinced he'd do something to the pod too.

So then Anya locks herself in the med bay with Curly and all the rest of the ships medicine (- minus the Isopropyl which she probably left for Daisuke and Swansea) and overdoses by Curly's bed. Curly was awake the whole time she went through a probably painful death. She also, as maybe a final revenge, took the last of the pain meds that were meant for Curly. And she dies right next to him.

That's where her story ends. She felt so trapped and scared by her r@pist that got her pregnant that she killed herself next to the one person who could've done something, but instead, from her perspective, trapped her with said r@pist.

She died probably hoping that Daisuke or Swansea would make it out, not knowing they died soon after.

TLDR;

So from her perspective: A guy she's been friends with for years starts repeatedly assaulting her and she's stuck with him, then he gets her pregnant. Her other friend who she tells says he'll do something about it (he won't) and she has no choice but to trust him. Then the guy she told crashes the ship they're all on and fails in taking himself out. Now she's trapped with her r@pist and she tells someone else who does actually try to do something but she kills herself instead.

Anyways guys, I'm just missing my wife, the end.

#mouthwashing #rant post #mouthwashing anya #mouthwashing curly #mouthwashing spoilers #mouthwashing swansea #mouthwashing jimmy #mouthwashing daisuke #video games #indie games #i miss my wife tails #please play this game #anya mouthwashing #long post #is this a #character analysis #?#idk #content warning

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holdmytesseract · 8 days ago

Text

moodboard by @chennqingg | divider by @jiyascepter

Soothing Your Aches

Jotun!King!Loki x fem!Æsir!Queen!Reader

Summary: Your caring husband is always there to soothe your aches - no matter when or where.

Warnings: protective!Loki, pregnancy stuff, nudity, bit of suggestive smut, fluuuff

Word Count: 1,7k

a/n: This lil' oneshot is based on an idea from @eleniblue ! I just had to write it, because it's so sweet! Also, I'm so sorry it took me sooo long to get this posted... Hope you like it nevertheless. 🥰

Ice Flower AU Masterlist ❄ Loki Masterlist ❄ Masterlist

"Have you seen the queen?" Loki addressed one of your personal guards, Ivan, as he was rushing down the corridor towards the throne room; emerald green cape flying behind him.

Ivan nodded. "Yes, my king. Your wife was searching for you. I told her you were out in the city." The king of Jotunheim nodded. "Where did she go?" "I saw her going into the direction of the royal chambers, your majesty."

Loki snorted, "I just came from there, Ivan. She isn't there." and gritted his teeth; feeling the anger - caused by his worry, rise within his body. The king just couldn't help himself. It was the fault of his instincts to protect what was his - like so often.

Loki took a deep breath; trying to control his temper. "You have one job, Ivan! Keeping an eye on the queen and her safe whenever I'm away is the only task you've been burdened with - and you fail." The king shook his head, while Ivan obediently lowered his head. "I apologise, my king, I-" The young Jotun tried to explain, but got immediately interrupted. "She is pregnant, for the Norns sake! This isn't just about my wife anymore!"

Ivan swallowed visibly; fear reflecting in his ruby eyes. Loki still tried to keep his anger at bay; knowing that this was the first mistake of your guard. He tried to have mercy.

"I-I know, y-your highness, b-but-" Ivan got interrupted once more. "You are dismissed for today. Now get out of my sight, before I change my mind."

The guard knew that this was his king showing forgiveness and mercy, so he bowed, "T-Thank you, m-my king." and quickly left.

Loki took another deep breath, before he decided to ask one of the maids about your whereabout.

"Tola," his deep voice caused the blond haired maid, who was currently cleaning his presence chamber, to jump slightly and shriek up. "King Loki! Apologies!" She curtsied. "You scared me a bit." Loki shook his head. "I should apologise. I didn’t mean to scare you... Do you know where my wife is?" She nodded. "Sure, my king. Queen Y/N told me that she was going to take a bath in the royal bathing chamber. I offered my help, but she wished to be alone."

A relieved breath left the Jotun's lips. "Thank you." Tola curtsied once more. "Of course, your highness." With a curd nod, Loki turned on his heels and left again; his feet leading him straight towards the bathing chamber.

He could already smell the scent of your soaps and rich oils miles away. It caused him to smile.

Once he entered the bathing chamber, warm, wet air and slight steam welcomed him - alongside your beautiful voice humming an old Norse song.

It's been a long day for the king and all he wished now was to spend time with you and especially to take care of you, as well as the growing offspring within your womb.

Loki quickly started to undress, until he wore nothing more than his loin cloth. Sure, he could've joined you completely nude, but the king didn't wish to 'pressure you' into something. He wanted to take care of you - and if it would include making love, he wasn't going to complain. If not, Loki was more than alright with it.

Smiling, he rounded the corner to face the big pool you were in; leaning against the edge with your head tilted back and eyes closed. One hand held onto the edge, while the other was cupping your swollen belly; gently stroking the wet skin.

Loki watched you for a moment; admired the absolute stunning woman he had married.

"I hope you don't mind if I join you, my queen?"

Your eyes immediately flew open at your husband's words and you looked over; meeting his beautiful ruby eyes.

You smiled.

"No, of course not. In fact, it is highly appreciated. Please do join me, my king." Loki ran a hand through his now damp curls and proceeded to step inside the water and swim over to you.

You welcomed your husband with open arms, of course, given the fact that you hadn't seen him almost the whole day.

"Hello," you whispered against his lips; crossing your arms behind his neck. Loki smirked; wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you as close as your almost five-month-bump allowed. "Hello, Flower." The gap between the two of you quickly melted away, as your lips moulded perfectly against Loki's.

After exchanging several much needed kisses, Loki settled behind you against the quite comfortably built pool edge; pulling you back against his bare chest.

"How are you feeling today, love?" He asked in a gentle voice. His hands came to rest underneath your belly; supporting the weight of your bump. "Honestly?" You sighed. "It could be better. The muscles in my back hurt, just like my feet do. I have stomach cramps already the whole day and felt very dizzy this morning. That's why I decided to take a bath; hoping it would relax my muscles and ease the pain at least a bit."

Loki nuzzled the wet skin of your neck and pulled you even closer against him. "Apologies, Flower. I hate to see you in pain and struggling." Your husband's lips trailed a path of soft kisses from your shoulder up to the shell of your ear. You couldn't help but smile; feeling the butterflies within you running wild. Wild for this man.

"Can I do something for you, my queen? I wish to help." Your smile even widened. Loki was the best husband you could've wished for. "Especially since I am the one to blame for this..." You could practically hear the smirk and playfulness in his voice - and giggled. "Don't say this like we both didn't wish for it to happen." "Well... Point taken." A deep chuckle rumbled through his chest, before he breathed another kiss on the side of your neck.

"Now, how can I help, Flower?"

"Hmm..." You thought; being already way too lost and addicted to his touch. You barely saw him today, after all... "Perhaps a massage later? But for now, just hold me, please. I enjoy your warmth and touch-" You felt a nudge against your abdominal wall and bladder, causing you to smile. "Just like the twins," you completed your sentence.

Loki hummed behind you; thumbs starting to trace a pattern in the naked skin on the underside of your bump. "As you wish, my darling."

After the bath, Loki wrapped you up in a big, fluffy, warm towel, and even carried you back towards your shared chambers.

"There we are..." He said; gently kicking the door shut with his foot. You just smiled with your head tucked in the crook of his neck; inhaling his scent. Loki set you down on your spacious marital bed and pressed a sweet kiss on your lips, before he quickly crossed the room in order to tend to the fireplace. The fire was still burning. Loki just had to make sure it was enough to keep you warm.

"Are you warm enough, my queen?" You nodded; giving him a loving, but definitely drowsy smile. "Currently, yes. Now come here, please..." Loki smiled, "In a moment, Flower." and winked, before he vanished in the bathroom, in order to fetch the best massage oils in the whole kingdom. You received them from a healer on Asgard.

Your husband took the comfortable chair, which stood a bit offsides and actually served as an extra seating possibility in front of the fireplace and sat down beside your side of the bed. His free hand inched closer to your body, while he threw you a smouldering look.

"May I unwrap you, Flower? I heard you are in need of my hands." Mischievous, naughty scamp, you thought with a giggle. "Please do, dear husband."

Loki helped you to free your upper body of its confines, but made sure that your legs and feet were still covered in furs and keeping you warm.

"Turn on your side for me, my love." You did what he said; presenting him your bare back. It was a bit of an awkward angle, but there was no other way than this for a massage. You couldn't turn on your stomach - for obvious reasons.

"There we go." Loki squeezed some oil on his big palm, made sure to coat his other palm as well and then started to gently massage your uptight muscles. "Mhhh..." You sighed as he worked on a particular tight knot. The king chuckled lowly. "Your reaction tells me that I must be doing something right. Does it feel good?" You giggled; nodding. "It always feels good when you touch me, my king. No matter the situation." "Thank the Norns then that I enjoy touching you very much. No matter the situation." You could practically hear the smirk on his lips. "Win win situation, sweetheart."

After Loki massaged your sore and aching back, you felt way better and relaxed - but your husband wasn't finished yet.

"Would my lovely wife turn on her back again? I think there are cramps who need to be eased as well..." You smiled; following his instructions once more.

The king's eyes travelled from your face down the length of your upper body; lingering on your bump for a moment longer, before his ruby eyes returned to meet your Y/E/C ones.

"You are stunningly beautiful, my queen. Absolutely radiant. Perfect, for me." You couldn't stop your cheeks from redding at his words. "Thank you." Loki leaned over to kiss you lovingly, then began to gently rub the oil in the skin of your belly as well.

You never thought that it would feel this good, but it did - and the babies seemed to enjoy it as well. You could sense it. "They pretty much enjoy the touch of their father," you giggled; looking at Loki. He smiled; nodding amusingly. "I can positively feel it, yes." You giggled again. "Now shush, my queen. Rest and just enjoy," he teased you a bit. "Yes, my king." You took a deep breath and closed your eyes; trying to be calm. You were kinda surprised that it worked that well.

In fact it probably worked too good...

"I'm relieved to see that this seems to help you." Loki got no response. "Flower? Love?" Frowning, he lifted his head - only to see that you slept in. The king smiled; placed a gentle kiss on your forehead and made sure to tuck you properly in.

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#jotun!loki #jotun loki #jotun loki x reader #jotun loki x you #loki x reader #loki laufeyson #loki #loki x female reader #loki x you #loki fanfiction #tom hiddleston x reader #loki fluff #loki x y/n #loki laufeyson x reader

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rosemaeridream · 8 months ago

Text

lecturer!aeri x reader (M)

Mature content (18+)

lec!aeri masterlist

warnings: college au, lecturer!aeri, student!reader, fingering, mentions of strap, light smut, dom!aeri, slight power imbalance, technical age gap but no references to it

A/N: DO FUCKING NOT START RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR EDUCATORS. I DO NOT CONDONE IT IN ANY WAY. for context, i'm not american so when i say lecturer, you say professor, i was never gonna post this because 1. don't sleep with someone who could fuck up your education, 2. i have more and more thoughts about this every day so i can't find a place to stop it at, 3. i'm pregnant with lecturer!aeri's baby, she makes me genuinely crazy 4. i was considering making this a long form-piece but oh well look where we are now

word count: 2.3k

Tell me why I wanna write lecturer!Aeri x student!reader, like imagine Aeri pulling you aside before you can walk out of the auditorium to 'talk about' the email you had sent her the night before - something about your further readings and extended material, blah blah blah -and her gaze keeps dropping to your body or your lips, and she's smiling the whole time - happy to talk to you more about the subject because it's her profession, it's definitely nothing to do with imagining you pushed up in the stairwell 20 metres away with her hands down your pants.

She's been watching you from a distance, noting your schedule and when you’re on campus, ‘accidentally’ bumping into you at coffee shops or in the library when you’re studying. she always gives you tips, “oh, you should add a second critical study here” or “read this, it’s much better than the shit they assign you”. In the back of your mind, you know she’s interested in you - she downright looks like she wants to fuck you every time you’re alone - making eye contact with you when you sit down the front of the lecture theatre, gives extra praise when you answer questions, even going as far to say ‘good girl’ in front of the entire lecture after you offer your opinion on a more complex topic. (literally gagged myself thinking about that)

Then she starts pulling you aside more often, still under the guise of helping you with your coursework, but it’s all so intimate - sometimes you show her parts of your assessment on your phone, and she’ll slide her hand up your arm to steady it so she can read, or she’ll practically back hug you, looking over your shoulder, her breaths on the shell of your ear. Her eye contact is on 100%, 100% of the time, making you flush red whenever you talk to her. Eventually, she asks for your number, saying that your emails get lost in her inbox due to being the coordinator of her subject, “if you need anything from me, just text me”

You end up using her number this one time after you’re panicking over an assessment, and no one else you’ve asked has had the answers to. You’re sure she’s busy, the previous lecture she had mentioned to everyone that she’ll be unable to take questions this week due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’. But she texts you back almost immediately, answering so precisely that it’s almost as if she was waiting for that specific question. It turns into a back and forth that just doesn’t sort of end, mostly about the curriculum, but sometimes parts of her life, or your own get sprinkled in there - she’s visiting japan next weekend to see her parents, your favourite artist just released a new album that you like to listen to while you study, ect, ect.

Then there’s this one question that’s ‘too complicated to answer over text so she asks to meet you at the library. She sits in a secluded part where no one really goes - you never question it, just thinking that she chose this spot because it's quiet, or that you shouldn’t be seen getting extra help from the person who will no doubt be overseeing the marking of this assessment.

For the first 10-20 minutes, you actually work on the material together, the essay word count growing slowly. Then Aeri reaches over to take a paper from the other side of you, and her face is like a breath away from yours, and your mind goes fucking blank. Unable to do anything else, you act on impulse and straight up kiss her. I mean- when someone that hot is that close, the only natural response is gonna be to start making out with them, right???

She's sorta stiff for the first two seconds, while you’re still processing what you’ve just done, but then her hand is on your jaw, pulling you closer and parting her lips to lick into your mouth. And oh my god. Oh my god. You’re a changed person, she’s literally ruined the thought of everyone else for you.

After a minute or two you go back to your work, Aeri sort of just laughs it off, but it’s clear that you’re not paying attention the rest of the study period - you get like another 100 words into your essay but its such a struggle when Aeri’s reading over your words and all your thoughts are on panic mode - her breath yet again tickling your ear whenever she suggests edits.

She doesn’t bring up the kiss, so nor do you, pushing the thought away and pretending it never happened. Except when you’re watching a pre-recorded lecture of hers, and you’ve just woken up and you’re hot and bothered and fuck, Aeri’s voice and the way her glasses sit on her nose as she talks and makes extended eyecontact with the camera, forces you to shove a hand down your pants and fuck your leaking cunt while imagining that it was her fingers instead. The thought of Aeri’s mouth on yours and everywhere else makes you cum hard, your laptop sliding off your bed as you recover, forgetting about the lecture and falling back asleep.

Unbeknown to you, Aeri’s pretty much been doing the same thing for the past couple months, getting off on the thought of your innocent eyes widening as she pounds her strap into you. Sometimes it makes her feel so dirty, that she’s fantasising about someone she’s meant to just grade their work and offer feedback, but my god, whenever she catches you staring at her, or biting the end of your pen, deep in thought, she just can’t help herself.

You’re at a bar one night, your uni acquaintances having sorta ditched you alone, drunk, not at all mentally there, so the bartender asks if they could ring someone for you - and the first responsible person in your mind isn’t your best friend or your mother, it’s straight up Aeri. She arrives in a bustle, worry pinching at her brows as she sweeps you away to her car… asks for your address multiple times, but you’re so out of it and half asleep that she does the most realistic thing and just takes you to her own home. Literally takes all of her restraint not to do something with you, let it be letting you grind one out on her thighs or to just kiss you senseless. Even though she’s 100% sure that you’d like it, given the way you’d just kissed her randomly a couple weeks ago, you’re still her student, not some conquest. However she does allow herself to sleep in the same bed as you, perfectly happy to take advantage of your drunk cuddliness, pleased when you curl into her side, head mushed into her chest.

You wake up disoriented and embarrassed, until you see that you’re in bed with Aeri and suddenly everything is so much worse and you’re panicking - why are you in bed with your lecturer??!?! Then Aeri wakes up and she's so much more welcoming than you'd ever think she could be, rubbing your back and explaining the situation until you calm down. After that you fall into this sort of odd routine where she makes you breakfast, and discusses your courses, slowly leading into your other interests and hobbies. For some reason, in her own home, the knowledge that she’s your lecturer starts to fade until you’re both just chatting and learning about each other like you’re close friends.

And on the inside, Aeri is definitely not fantasising about yanking your pants off and eating you out on the kitchen counter. Making you whine and scrabble for something to hold while she mercilessly holds you down.

After that instance, you text her a lot more often, coming to her for life advice as well as help with coursework. Aeri’s beyond happy to help, always texting you back within 10 minutes of your question, which you never think is strange, even when you’re sure she’s giving a lecture to another class right now.

You start having lunch with her when you’re on campus at the same time. She’s adamant that you don’t eat together in cafe’s though, making sure to take you to quiet spots where no one else finds the both of you. At this point, you know she’s doing it on purpose, waiting for you to show any kind of sign that you want her. It’s always you, you, you. In lectures she’s always meeting eyes with you, always choosing you to answer, to the point where some of your friends in the course have started to notice, joking that you’re the teacher’s pet, or that she has a crush on you.

And Aeri refuses to make the first move. If she’s going to have you, you have to show her. Her touches don’t go past your mid thighs, hands always stopping at your hips if she’s resting them on your body. It’s making you crazy - the brush of her fingertips against the side of your breasts when she grasps your arm, or when she forcefully turns your head back to your work by gripping your chin when you’re getting distracted.

Finally you break, you’re in a small rooftop garden that barely anyone knows exists, talking to her animatedly about one of your hobbies, while she just smiles at you happily, prompting you with questions to keep you talking, when she reaches out to brush a crumb off your lips, no doubt from the cake she bought you. She’s been subtly flirting with you the whole time, eyes flicking to your lips or your body as they always do, and her slight touches on your wrist or arm whenever she’s explaining something. So when her thumb rests on your lip for a second longer than it should, your instincts tell you to wrap your mouth around it, flicking your tongue against the tip. You guess it makes her crazy too because the next moment you’re in her lap, gasping into her mouth and pawing at her jacket to try and get it off.

Aeri doesn’t even have the patience to get you naked, pushing your pants halfway down your thighs and almost ripping your panties at the lack of constraint that she has. She doesn’t even react when she feels your soaked pussy, just sliding her fingers through your folds and licking further into your mouth. There’s a moment of silence, then the wet squelch of her fingers inside your hole makes you groan, cutting off the kiss.

If there were anyone else near the rooftop, they’d for sure hear your moans and fucks and Aeri(s) and pleading, but you’re lucky that she’s thought this all out. Your hips stutter in her grip and she’s already calling you ‘good girl’ and ‘pretty princess’ and praising how your ‘tiny pink pussy took her fingers so well’.

And shit. You’re gone.

University is so much harder now that all your study periods are taken up by Aeri and her fingers and her mouth, sitting down next to you while you have your laptop out and slowly pulling your attention away from your work. You know it’s bad, but who fucking cares when you know Aeri will make up for it later, whether that be via letting you suck off her strap, then having you sink down till you meet her pelvis, fingers threading through your hair as you try not to cum straight away, or promising to edit your essay before you hand it up.

You’ve got all the storage and soundproof study rooms mapped out in your mind whenever she’s around. Your parents have noticed that you’re out a lot more, but they just assume that you’ve found some good friends at uni and you’re making the most of your early 20s, not that you’re getting pounded in a storage room or cockwarming a strap while sleeping over at your lecturer’s place.

Sometimes you ask her to wear her glasses while she’s fucking you, loving that her sweaty bangs get caught up in the frame and that they fog up after awhile, even going as far as pushing them back up her nose for her while she’s slamming her strap into your soaked hole.

She’s never gone as far to ask you to call her Ma’am or Ms or Professor, but sometimes Aeri likes to play up the whole dynamic, calling you a slut and mocking you for whoring yourself out for a grade even though it's anything but at this point. She knows it gets to you too - your pussy tightening around her fingers whenever she does it, reassuring her that it’s within your limits.

Aeri is altogether pleased about having you all to herself. She’s always thinking about you, buying/giving you clothes to wear, smiling to herself when you’re halfway up the lecture theatre in her hoodie, gifting you a coffee whenever you meet up on campus, taking you on trips far away from the uni so that you can spend time together like a real couple - kissing in public, letting her hold your hand, feeding you at restaurants, etc.

Your instagram page is literally filled with pictures she's taken of you - sometimes your friends ask you who your photographer is to hook them up, and you stumble your way through a conversation trying so hard not to reveal who it is. Her’s often has pictures of you, but never enough to fully identify you. A picture of her hand holding someone else’s, the top of your head in a city skyline shot or your fingers in the background of her lunch.

You find yourself with her more often than not, at her apartment, sneaking into her office at the university, eating with her, showering with her, sleeping with her (in more ways than one). You’re practically living with her at this point. Honestly, Aeri just accepts your neediness, fully prepared to let you officially move in whenever you decide to.

And the way she fucks? Well, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

i am begging someone to tell me to post more about lecturer!aeri because i am so incredibly down bad

#!! dreamy’s pieces #giselle x reader #aespa smut #uchinaga aeri x reader #kpop imagines #kpop oneshots #giselle smut #idol x reader #aespa imagines #kpop x reader #aespa x reader #giselle x fem reader #lec!aeri

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anominous-user · 6 months ago

Text

Double Indemnity, Veritas Ratio and Aventurine

This was originally a part of my compilation post as a short analysis on the Double Indemnity references, linking to this great thread by Manya on Twitter. However, I've recently watched the movie and found that the parallels run much deeper than just the mission name and the light cone itself, plus as the short synopsis I've read online. Since there isn't really an in-depth attempt at an analysis on the film in relation to the way Aventurine and Ratio present themselves throughout Penacony, I thought I'd take a stab at doing just that. I will also be bringing up things from Manya's thread as well as another thread that has some extra points.

Disclaimer that I... don't do analyses very often. Or write, in general — I'm someone who likes to illustrate their thoughts (in the artistic sense) more than write. There's just something about these two that makes me want to rip into them so badly, so here we are. If there's anything you'd like to add or correct me on, feel free to let me know in the replies or reblogs, or asks. This ended up being a rather extensive deep dive into the movie and its influences on the pairing, so please keep that in mind when pressing Read More.

There are two distinct layers on display in Ratio and Aventurine's relationship throughout Penacony, which are references to the two most important relationships in the movie — where they act like they hate/don’t know each other, and where they trust each other.

SPOILER WARNING for the entire movie, by the way. You can watch the film for free here on archive.org, as well as follow along with the screenplay here. I will also be taking dialogue and such from the screenplay, and cite quotes from the original novel in its own dedicated section. SPOILER WARNING for the Cat Among Pigeons Trailblaze mission, as well.

CONTENT WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF SUICIDE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

To start, Double Indemnity (1944) is a film noir by Billy Wilder (and co-written by Raymond Chandler) based on the novel of the same name by James M. Cain (1927). There are stark differences between the movie adaptation and the original novel which I will get into later on in this post, albeit in a smaller section, as this analysis is mainly focused on the movie adaptation. I will talk about the basics (summaries for the movie and the game, specifically the Penacony mission in tandem with Ratio and Aventurine) before diving into the character and scene parallels, among other things.

—

[THE NAME]

The term "double indemnity" is a clause in which if there’s a case of accidental death of a statistically rare variety, the insurance company has to pay out multiple of the original amount. This excludes deaths by murder, suicide, gross negligence, and natural causes.

The part of the mission in Cat Among Pigeons where Ratio and Aventurine meet with Sunday is named after the movie. And before we get further into things, let's get this part out of the way: The Chinese name used in the mission is the CN title of the movie, so there's no liberties taken with the localization — this makes it clear that it’s a nod to the movie and not localization doing its own thing like with the mission name for Heaven Is A Place On Earth (EN) / This Side of Paradise (人间天堂) (CN).

—

[SUMMARY OF THE 1944 MOVIE]

Here I summarised the important parts that will eventually be relevant in the analysis related to the game.

Insurance salesman Walter Neff, wounded from a gunshot, enters his office and confesses his crime on a dictaphone to his boss Barton Keyes, the claims manager. Much earlier, he had met Phyllis Dietrichson, the wife of Mr. Dietrichson and former nurse. Neff had initially wanted to meet Mr. Dietrichson because of car insurance. Phyllis claims her husband is mean to her and that his life insurance goes to his daughter Lola. With Neff seduced by Phyllis, they eventually brew up a scheme to murder Mr. Dietrichson in such a way that they activate the "double indemnity" clause, and the plan goes off almost perfectly. Initially, the death is labeled a suicide by the president of the company, Norton.

Keyes finds the whole situation suspicious, and starts to suspect Phyllis may have had an accomplice. The label on the death goes from accidental, to suicide, to then murder. When it’s ruled that the husband had no idea of the accidental policy, the company refuses to pay. Neff befriends Phyllis’ stepdaughter Lola, and after finding out Phyllis may have played a part in the death of her father’s previous wife, Neff begins to fear for Lola and himself, as the life insurance would go all towards her, not Phyllis.

After the plan begins to unravel as a witness is found, it comes out that Lola’s boyfriend Nino Zachette has been visiting Phyllis every night after the murder. Neff goes to confront Phyllis, intending to kill her. Phyllis has her own plans, and ends up shooting him, but is unable to fire any more shots once she realises she did love him. Neff kills her in two shots. Soon after telling Zachette not to go inside the house, Neff drives to his office to record the confession. When Keyes arrives, Neff tells him he will go to Mexico, but he collapses before he could get out of the building.

—

[THE PENACONY MISSION TIMELINE]

I won’t be summarising the entirety of Aventurine and Ratio’s endeavours from the beginning of their relationship to their final conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth the same way as I summarised the plot of the movie, so I will instead present a timeline. Bolded parts means they are important and have clear parallels, and texts that are in [brackets] and italics stand for the names of either the light cone, or the mission names.

[Final Victor] Their first meeting. Ratio’s ideals are turned on its head as he finally meets his match.

Several missions happen in-between their first encounter and the Penacony project. They come to grow so close and trusting with each other that they can guess, understand each other’s thoughts, way of thinking and minds even in high stakes missions. Enough to pull off the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Aventurine’s E1) and Stag Hunt Game (Aventurine’s E6) and come out on top.

Aventurine turns towards Ratio for assisting him in the Penacony project. Ratio's involvement in the project is implied to be done without the knowledge of Jade, Topaz, and the IPC in general, as he was only sent to Penacony to represent the Intelligentsia Guild, and the two other Stonehearts never mention Ratio.

Aventurine and Ratio cook up the plan to deceive Sunday before ever setting foot on Penacony. Aventurine does not tell Ratio the entirety of his plan.

Aventurine convinces Topaz and Jade to trust him with their Cornerstones. Aventurine also breaks his own Cornerstone and hides it along with the jade within a bag of gift money.

[The Youth Who Chase Dreams] They enter Penacony in the Reverie Hotel. Aventurine is taken to the side by Sunday and has all his valuables taken, which includes the gift money that contains the broken aventurine stone, the jade, and the case containing the topaz.

Aventurine and Ratio speak in a “private” room about how Aventurine messed up the plan. After faking an argument to the all-seeing eyes of Sunday, Ratio leaves in a huff.

Ratio, wearing his alabaster head, is seen around Golden Hour in the (Dusk) Auction House by March 7th.

[Double Indemnity] Ratio meets up with Sunday and “exposes” Aventurine to him. Sunday buys his “betrayal”, and is now in possession of the topaz and jade. Note that this is in truth Ratio betraying Sunday all along.

Ratio meets up with Aventurine again at the bar. Ratio tells Aventurine Sunday wants to see him again.

They go to Dewlight Pavilion and solve a bunch of puzzles to prove their worth to Sunday.

They meet up with Sunday. Sunday forces Aventurine to tell the truth using his Harmony powers. Ratio cannot watch on. It ends with Aventurine taking the gift money with his Cornerstone.

[Heaven Is A Place On Earth] They are in Golden Hour. Ratio tries to pry Aventurine about his plan, but Aventurine reins him in to stop breaking character. Ratio gives him the Mundanite’s Insight before leaving. This is their final conversation before Aventurine’s grandest death.

Now how exactly does the word “double indemnity” relate to their mission in-game? What is their payout? For the IPC, this would be Penacony itself — Aventurine, as the IPC ambassador, handing in the Jade Cornerstone as well as orchestrating a huge show for everybody to witness his death, means the IPC have a reason to reclaim the former prison frontier. As for Ratio, his payout would be information on Penacony’s Stellaron, although whether or not this was actually something he sought out is debatable. And Aventurine? It’s highly implied that he seeks an audience with Diamond, and breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone is a one way trip to getting into hot water with Diamond. With Aventurine’s self-destructive behaviour, however, it would also make sense to say that death would be his potential payout, had he taken that path in the realm of IX.

Compared to the movie, the timeline happens in reverse and opposite in some aspects. I will get into it later. As for the intended parallels, these are pretty clear and cut:

Veritas Ratio - Walter Neff

Aventurine - Phyllis Dietrichson

Sunday - Mr. Dietrichson

There is one other character who I feel also is represented in Ratio, but I won’t bring them up until later down the line.

For the sake of this analysis, I won’t be exploring Sunday’s parallel to Mr. Dietrichson, as there isn’t much on Dietrichson’s character in the first place in both the movie and the novel. He just kind of exists to be a bastard that is killed off at the halfway point. Plus, the analysis is specifically hyper focused on the other two.

—

[SO, WHAT’S THE PLAN?]

To make things less confusing in the long run whenever I mention the words “scheme” and “plan”, I will be going through the details of Phyllis and Neff’s scheme, and Aventurine and Ratio’s plan respectively. Anything that happens after either pair separate from another isn’t going to be included. Written in a way for the plans to have gone perfectly with no outside problems.

Phyllis and Neff —> Mr. Dietrichson

Goal: Activate the double indemnity clause by killing Mr. Dietrichson and making it look like a freak train accident

Payout: Twice or more of the face value of the life insurance ($100,000)

Main Actor: Walter Neff | Accomplice: Phyllis Dietrichson

During the entire time until the payout, Phyllis and Neff have to make sure to any outsiders that they look like complete strangers instead of lovers in an affair.

Step-by-step:

Neff convinces Mr. Dietrichson to sign the policy with the clause without him suspecting foul play, preferably with a third party to act as an alibi. This is done discreetly, making Mr. Dietrichson not read the policy closely and being told to just sign.

Neff and Phyllis talk to each other about small details through the phone (specified to be never at Phyllis’ own house and never when Neff was in his office) and in the marketplace only, to make their meetings look accidental. They shouldn’t be seen nor tracked together, after all.

Phyllis asks Mr. Dietrichson to take the train. She will be the one driving him to the train station.

On the night of the murder, after making sure his alibi is airtight, Neff sneaks into their residence and hides in their car in the second row seating, behind the front row passenger seat. He wears the same colour of clothes as Mr. Dietrichson.

Phyllis and Mr. Dietrichson get inside the car — Phyllis in the driver’s seat and Mr. Dietrichson in the passenger seat. Phyllis drives. On the way to the train station, she makes a detour into an alley. She honks the horn three times.

After the third honk, Neff breaks Mr. Dietrichson’s neck. The body is then hidden in the second row seating under a rug.

They drive to the train station. Phyllis helps Neff, now posing as Mr. Dietrichson, onto the train. The train leaves the station.

Neff makes it to the observation platform of the parlour car and drops onto the train tracks when nobody else is there.

Phyllis is at the dump beside the tracks. She makes the car blink twice as a signal.

The two drag Mr. Dietrichson’s corpse onto the tracks.

They leave.

When Phyllis eventually gets questioned by the insurance company, she pretends she has no idea what they are talking about and eventually storms off.

Phyllis and Neff continue to lay low until the insurance company pays out.

Profit!

Actual Result: The actual murder plan goes almost smoothly, with a bonus of Mr. Dietrichson having broken a leg. But with him not filing a claim for the broken leg, a witness at the observation platform, and Zachette visiting Phyllis every night after the murder, Keyes works out the murder scheme on his own, but pins the blame on Phyllis and Zachette, not Neff.

Now for Aventurine and Ratio. You can skip this section if you understand how deep their act goes, but to those who need a refresher, here’s a thorough explanation:

Aventurine and Ratio —> Sunday

Goal: Collect the aventurine stone without Sunday knowing, ruin the dream (and create the grandest death)

Payout: Penacony for the IPC, information on the Stellaron for Ratio, a meeting with Diamond / death for Aventurine

Main Actor: Aventurine | Accomplice: Veritas Ratio

From the moment they step onto Penacony, they are under Sunday’s ever present and watchful eyes. “Privacy” is a foreign word to The Family. They have to act like they don’t like each other’s company the entire time and feed Sunday information through indirect means so that the eventual “betrayal” by Ratio seems truthful to Sunday. Despite what it looks like, they are closer than one would ever think, and Ratio would never sell out a person purely for information.

Step-by-step:

After Sunday takes away the bag of gift money and box, Aventurine and Ratio talk in a room in the Reverie Hotel.

Aventurine establishes the Cornerstones’ importance, and how he lost the gift money and the case containing the Cornerstones to Sunday. Ratio turns to leave, saying “some idiot ruined everything”, meaning the Cornerstones were vital to their plan. (Note that Ratio is not wearing his alabaster head while saying it to said “idiot”.)

Aventurine then proceeds to downplay the importance of the Cornerstones, stating they are “nothing more than a few rocks” and “who cares if they are gone”. This lets Sunday know that something suspicious may be going on for him to act like it’s nothing, and the mention of multiple stones, and leaves him to look up what a Cornerstone is to the Ten Stonehearts of the IPC.

Ratio points out his absurd choice of outfit, mentioning the Attini Peacock and their song.

Ratio implies that without the aventurine stone, he is useless to the IPC. He also establishes that Aventurine is from Sigonia(-IV), and points out the mark on his neck. To Sunday, this means that Aventurine is shackled to the IPC, and how Aventurine may possibly go through extreme lengths to get the stone back, because a death sentence always looms above him.

Aventurine claims Ratio had done his homework on his background, which can be taken that this is their very first time working together. (It isn’t, and it only takes one look to know that Aventurine is an Avgin because of his unique eyes, so this comment does not make sense even in a “sincere” way, a running theme for the interaction.)

Ratio mentions how the true goal is to reclaim Penacony for the IPC, establishing their ulterior motive for attending the banquet.

Ratio asks if Aventurine went to pre-school in Sigonia after saying trust was reliant on cooperation. Aventurine mentions how he didn’t go to school and how he doesn’t have any parents. He even brings up how friends are weapons of the Avgins. This tells Sunday that the Avgins supposedly are good at manipulation and potentially sees Ratio possibly betraying Aventurine due to his carelessness with his “friends”. Sunday would also then research about the Avgins in general (and research about Sigonia-IV comes straight from the Intelligentsia Guild.)

Ratio goes to Dewlight Pavilion in Sunday’s Mansion and exposes a part of Aventurine’s “plan”. When being handed the suitcase, Ratio opens it up due to his apparent high status in the IPC. He tells Sunday that the Cornerstone in the suitcase is a topaz, not an aventurine, and that the real aventurine stone is in the bag of gift money. This is a double betrayal — on Aventurine (who knows) and Sunday (who doesn’t). Note that while Ratio is not officially an IPC member in name — the Intelligentsia Guild (which is run by the IPC head of the Technology Department Yabuli) frequently collaborates with the IPC. Either Aventurine had given him access to the box, or Ratio’s status in general is ambiguous enough for Sunday not to question him further. He then explains parts of Aventurine’s gamble to Sunday in order to sell the betrayal. Note that Ratio does not ever mention Aventurine’s race to Sunday.

Ratio brings Aventurine to Sunday. Aventurine offers help in the investigation of Robin's death, requesting the gift money and the box in return.

Sunday objects to the trade offer. Aventurine then asks for just the bag. A classic car insurance sales tactic. Sunday then interrogates Aventurine, and uses everything Ratio and Aventurine brought up in the Reverie Hotel conversation and their interactions in the Mansion, as well as aspects that Ratio had brought up to Sunday himself.

Aventurine feigns defeat and ignorance enough so that Sunday willingly lets him go with the gift bag. After all is said and done, Aventurine leaves with the gift money, where the Aventurine Cornerstone is stored all along.

Ratio and Aventurine continue to pretend they dislike each other until they go their separate ways for their respective goals and plans. Aventurine would go on to orchestrate his own demise at the hands of Acheron, and Ratio… lurks in the shadows like the owl he is.

Profit!

Actual Result: The plan goes perfectly, even with minor hiccups like Ratio coming close to breaking character several times and Aventurine being sentenced to execution by Sunday.

This is how Sunday uses the information he gathered against Aventurine:

• Sunday going on a tirade about the way Aventurine dresses and how he’s not one to take risks — Ratio’s comment about Aventurine’s outfit being peacock-esque and how he’s “short of a feather or two”. • “Do you own a Cornerstone?” — Ratio talked about the aventurine stone. • “Did you hand over the Cornerstone to The Family when you entered Penacony?” — Aventurine mentioned the box containing the Cornerstones. • “Does the Cornerstone you handed over to The Family belong to you?” — Aventurine specifically pluralized the word Cornerstone and “a bunch of rocks” when talking to Ratio. • “Is your Cornerstone in this room right now?” — The box in the room supposedly contained Aventurine’s own cornerstone, when Aventurine mentioned multiple stones. • “Are you an Avgin from Sigonia?” —Aventurine mentioned that he’s an Avgin, and Ratio brought up Sigonia. • “Do the Avgins have any ability to read, control, and manipulate one’s own or another’s minds?” — Aventurine’s comment on how friends are weapons, as well as Sunday’s own research on the Avgins, leading him to find out about the negative stereotypes associated with them. • “Do you love your family more than yourself?” — His lost parents. “All the Avgins were killed in a massacre. Am I right?” — Based on Sunday’s research into his background. • “Are you your clan’s sole survivor?” — Same as the last point. “Do you hate and wish to destroy this world with your own hands?” — Ratio mentioned the IPC’s goal to regain Penacony, and Aventurine’s whole shtick is “all or nothing”. • “Can you swear that at this very moment, the aventurine stone is safe and sound in this box?” — Repeat.

As seen here, both duos have convoluted plans that involve the deception of one or more parties while also pretending that the relationship between each other isn’t as close as in reality. Unless you knew both of them personally and their histories, there was no way you could tell that they have something else going on.

On to the next point: Comparing Aventurine and Ratio with Phyllis and Neff.

—

[NEFF & PHYLLIS — RATIO & AVENTURINE]

With the short summaries of the movie and the mission out of the way, let’s look at Phyllis and Neff as characters and how Aventurine and Ratio are similar or opposite to them.

Starting off with Aventurine and Phyllis. Here is where they are the most similar:

Phyllis is blonde and described as a provocative woman. Aventurine is also a blond and eyes Ratio provocatively in the Final Victor light cone.

Phyllis was put under surveillance after Keyes starts figuring out that the so-called accidental death/suicide may have been a murder after all. Similarly, Aventurine was watched by Sunday the entire time in Penacony.

Phyllis never tells Neff how she's seeing another man on the side to possibly kill him too (as well as how she was responsible for the death of her husband‘s previous wife). Aventurine also didn't tell Ratio the entirety of his plan of his own death.

Phyllis puts on a somewhat helpless act at first but is incredibly capable of making things go her way, having everything seemingly wrapped around her finger. Aventurine — even when putting on a facade that masks his true motives — always comes out at the top.

Now the differences between Aventurine and Phyllis:

Phyllis does not care about her family and has no issue with killing her husband, his previous wife, and possibly her daughter Lola. Opposite of that, Aventurine is a family man… with no family left, as well as feeling an insane level of survivor’s guilt.

Really, Phyllis just… does not care at all about anyone but herself and the money. Aventurine, while he uses every trick in the book to get out on top, does care about the way Jade and Topaz had entrusted him with their Cornerstones, in spite of the stones being worth their lives.

Phyllis also uses other people to her advantage to get what she wants, often behind other people's backs, with the way she treats Neff and Zachette. Aventurine does as well (what with him making deals with the Trailblazer while also making a deal with Black Swan that involves the Trailblazer). The difference here is Phyllis uses her allure deliberately to seduce men while Aventurine simply uses others as pawns while also allowing others to do the same to himself.

Phyllis makes no attempt at compromising the policy when questioned by Norton. Aventurine ends up compromising by only taking the gift money (which is exactly what he needs).

The wig that Barbara Stanwyck (the actress of Phyllis) wore was chosen to make her look as “sleazy” as possible, make her look insincere and a fraud, a manipulator. A sort of cheapness. Aventurine’s flashy peacock-esque outfit can be sort of seen as something similar, except the outfit isn’t cheap.

Moving on to Ratio’s similarities to Neff… There isn’t much to extrapolate here as Ratio is more of a side character in the grand scheme of Penacony, however this is what I’ve figured out.

Neff has dark hair. Ratio has dark purple hair.

Neff almost never refers to Phyllis by her name when speaking with her, only as “baby”. The few times he refers to her as Phyllis or Mrs. Dietrichson is during their first conversations and when he has to act like he doesn’t know her. Ratio never calls Aventurine by his name when he’s around him — only as “gambler”, sometimes “damned” or “dear” (EN-only) gambler. Only in the Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode does Ratio repeatedly say his name, and yet he still calls him by monikers like “gambler” or, bafflingly, a “system of chaos devoid of logic”.

Both Neff and Ratio committed two betrayals: Neff on Mr. Dietrichson and Keyes, and Ratio on Sunday and Aventurine. With the former cases it was to reach the end of the trolley line, and with the latter it was on a man who had put his trust in him.

As for the differences…

Neff is described as someone who’s not smart by his peers. Ratio is someone who is repeatedly idolised and put on a pedestal by other people.

Neff is excellent at pretending to not know nor care for Phyllis whenever he speaks about her with Keyes or when he and she are in a place that could land them in hot water (the office, the mansion when there are witnesses). His acting is on the same level as Phyllis. With Ratio it’s… complicated. While he does pull off the hater act well, he straight up isn’t great at pretending not to care about Aventurine’s wellbeing.

Instead of getting his gunshot wound treated in the hospital like a normal person, Neff makes the absolutely brilliant decision of driving to his office and talking to a dictaphone for hours. Needless to say, this is something a medical doctor like Ratio would never do.

Now here's the thing. Though it's very easy to just look at Phyllis and Neff in the movie and go "okay, Aventurine is Phyllis and Ratio is Neff — end of story" and leave it at that, I find that they both take from the two leads in different ways. Let me explain. Beginning with Aventurine and Neff…

Neff is the one who hatches the plan and encourages Phyllis to go through and claim the double indemnity clause in the first place. He is also the key player of his own risky plan, having to fake being the husband to enter the train as well as fake the death. Aventurine puts himself at great risk just by being in Sunday’s presence, and hoping that Sunday wouldn’t figure out that the green stone he had uncovered wasn’t the aventurine stone.

Adding onto the last point, Neff had fantasised about pulling off the perfect murder for a long time — the catalyst was simply him meeting Phyllis. Aventurine presumably sought out Ratio alone for his plan against Sunday.

Neff makes a roulette wheel analogy and talks about a pile of blue and yellow poker chips (the latter in the script only). I don‘t even have to explain why this is relevant here. (Aventurine’s Ultimate features a roulette wheel and the motif is on his belt, thigh strap, and back, too. And of course, Aventurine is all about his chips.)

Neff has certain ways to hide when he’s nervous, which include hiding his hands in his pockets when they were shaking, putting on glasses so people couldn’t see his eyes. Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back when he’s nervous: Future Aventurine says that "they don't know the other hand is below the table, clutching [his] chips for dear life", and in multiple occasions such as the Final Victor LC, his character trailer, and even in his boss form in the overworld you can see that Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back. And he is also seen with his glasses on sometimes.

Neff says a bunch of stuff to make sure that Phyllis acts her part and does not act out of character (i.e. during their interactions at the market), like how Aventurine repeatedly tries to get Ratio back on track from his subpar acting.

Neff is always one step ahead of the game, and the only reason the plan blows up in his face is due to outside forces that he could not have foreseen (a witness, Keyes figuring out the plan, the broken leg). Aventurine meanwhile plays 5D chess and even with the odds against him, he uses everything he can to come out on the top (i. e. getting Acheron to kill him in the dream).

Even after coming home on the night of the murder, Neff still felt that everything could have gone wrong. Aventurine, with his blessed luck, occasionally wavers and fears everything could go wrong whenever he takes a gamble.

Neff was not put under surveillance by Keyes due to him being extensive with his alibi. After witnessing Robin’s death with eyewitnesses at the scene, the Family had accepted Aventurine’s alibi, though he would be under watch from the Bloodhounds according to Ratio.

Neff talks about the entire murder scheme to the dictaphone. Aventurine during Cat Among Pigeons also retells his plan, albeit in a more convoluted manner, what with his future self and all.

Continuing with Ratio and Phyllis, even with their personalities and motivations being quite different, they do have a few commonalities.

Phyllis was a nurse. Ratio is a medical doctor.

Her name is Greek of origin. Veritas Ratio, though his name is Latin, has Greco-Roman influences throughout his entire character.

The very first scene Phyllis appears in has her wearing a bath towel around her torso. Ratio loves to take baths to clear his mind.

Phyllis was instructed by Neff to be at the market every morning at eleven buying things. Ratio is seen in an auction house with his alabaster head on so no one could recognize him.

Phyllis mostly acts as an accomplice to the scheme, being the one to convince her husband to take the train instead. She is also generally seen only when Neff is involved. Ratio plays the same role as well, only really appearing in the story in relation to Aventurine as well as being the accomplice in Aventurine’s own death. Even him standing in the auction house randomly can be explained by the theory that he and Aventurine had attempted to destabilise Penacony’s economy through a pump and dump scheme.

With these pointers out of the way, let’s take a closer look at select scenes from the film and their relation to the mission and the pair.

—

[THE PHONE CALL — THE REVERIE HOTEL]

Before the murder, there is a scene with a phone call between Phyllis and Neff discussing the plan while Keyes is in the same room as Neff. Neff has to make sure that Keyes doesn’t think of anything of the phone call, so he acts like he’s calling a “Margie”, and says a bunch of stuff that sounds innocent out of context (“Can’t I call you back, ‘Margie’?” “What color did you pick out?” “Navy blue. I like that fine”), but are actually hinting at the real plan all along (the suit that Mr. Dietrichson wears.)

In a roundabout way, the conversation between Ratio and Aventurine in the Reverie Hotel can be seen as the opposite of that scene — with the two talking about their supposed plan out loud on Penacony ground, a place where the Family (and in turn, Sunday) has eyes everywhere. Despite being in a “private” room, they still act like they hate each other while airing out details that really do not make sense to air out if they really did meet the first time in Penacony (which they didn’t — they’ve been on several missions beforehand). It’s almost like they want a secret third person to know what they were doing, instead of trying to be hushed up about it. The TVs in the room that Sunday can look through based on Inherently Unjust Destiny — A Moment Among The Stars, the Bloodhound statue that disappears upon being inspected, the owl clock on the left which side eyes Ratio and Aventurine, all point to that Sunday is watching their every move, listening to every word.

Rewinding back to before the phone call, in one of the encounters at the marketplace where they “accidentally” run into each other, Phyllis talks about how the trip was off. How her husband wouldn’t get on the train, which was vital for their plan, because of a broken leg. All this, while pretending to be strangers by the passersby. You could say that the part where Ratio almost leaves because Aventurine had “ruined the plan” is the opposite of this, as the husband breaking his leg was something they couldn’t account for, while Aventurine “being short of a few feathers” was entirely part of the plan.

—

[QUESTIONING PHYLLIS — THE INTERROGATION]

This section is going to be a little longer as I will cover two scenes in the movie in a more detailed manner — Mr. Dietrichson signing the policy, and Phyllis being questioned — and how they are represented in the Sunday-Aventurine interrogation and the prior conversation between Ratio and Sunday in multitudes of ways.

Going about their plan, Neff has to make sure that Mr. Dietrichson signs the policy with the double indemnity clause without him knowing the details, all the while having Phyllis (and Lola) in the same room. He and Phyllis have to pretend that they don’t know each other, and that this is just the standard accidental insurance process, instead of signing what would be his downfall. To sell it, he gets Mr. Dietrichson to sign two “copies” of the form, except with Mr. Dietrichson’s second signature, he’s duped into signing the accident insurance policy with the respective clause.

You can tie this to how Ratio goes to Sunday in order to “expose” the lie that the suitcase didn’t actually contain the Aventurine Cornerstone, as well as there being more than one Cornerstone involved in the scheme. Ratio must make sure that Sunday truly believes that he dislikes Aventurine’s company, while also making sure that Sunday doesn’t figure out the actual aventurine stone is broken and hidden in the gift bag. The scheme turns out to be successful, as Sunday retrieves the two Cornerstones, but not the aventurine stone, and truly does think that the green stone he has in his possession is the aventurine.

This whole scene with Sunday is also reminiscent of the interrogation scene in the middle of the movie, where Phyllis was questioned by the boss (Norton) who was deducing that Mr. Dietrichson's death was a suicide, not accidental death. Neff, Phyllis, Keyes and Norton were all in the same room, and Neff and Phyllis had to act like they never knew the other. Phyllis acts like she knows nothing about what Norton insinuates about her husband and eventually, Phyllis explodes in anger and storms out the room, even slamming the door. Her act is very believable to any outsider.

Now back to the Ratio and Sunday conversation. One glaring difference between the movie and here is that his acting isn’t great compared to either Phyllis nor Neff. It never was throughout the Penacony mission. He even comes very close to breaking character several times, and is even defending Aventurine in a somewhat aggressive manner during his one-on-one conversation with Sunday, as in he literally tells Sunday to see a shrink. It’s very different from the way he was acting in Herta Space Station — like Ratio cares about Aventurine too much to keep his hands off.

It's also worth pointing out that Neff doesn't speak a word when Phyllis was being interrogated. Similarly, Ratio is silent throughout the entire scene with Sunday and Aventurine, with his only “line” being a “hm”. When Aventurine calls him a wretch to his face, all he does is look to the side. In fact, he can only look at Aventurine when the other isn’t staring back. Almost like him uttering a single word would give them away. Or his acting is terrible when it has to do with Aventurine, as he has no issue doing the same thing in Crown of the Mundane and Divine (Mundane Troubles).

So, Sunday finds out about the Cornerstones and reveals them to Aventurine, and reasons that he cannot give them back to him because Aventurine had lied. Note that in that same scene, Aventurine attempted to use the two murders that had occurred beforehand against Sunday to retrieve his own cornerstone. Similarly, when it was revealed that Mr. Dietrichson did not know about the accident policy and that the so-called “accidental death” was not, in fact, accidental, the insurance company refused to pay out the money.

Unlike the movie, this was all planned, however. The double-crossing by Ratio, the gift money being the only thing required for Aventurine’s real plan. All of it was an act of betrayal against Sunday, in the same manner as the meticulous planning as Mr. Dietrichson’s murder — To sign the policy, get him to take the train, kill him on the way, and to have Neff pose as the husband on the train until the time is right to get off and lay the body on the tracks. A key difference is that they could not have expected their scheme to be busted wide open due to forces outside of their control, while Ratio and Aventurine went straight down the line for the both of them no matter what.

From here on out, we can conclude that the way Ratio and Aventurine present themselves in Penacony to onlookers is in line with Neff and Phyllis.

—

[“GOODBYE, BABY” — FINAL VICTOR]

And now for the (in)famous light cone, Final Victor. The thing that truly kickstarted the Ratio and Aventurine ship in the fanbase, and the partnership between the two in general. It’s a direct reference to the final confrontation between Neff and Phyllis in the movie.

I’ll fire through all the similarities between the two scenes.

During the respective scenes, Aventurine and Phyllis both outsmart their partner one way or the other: Aventurine with his one-sided game of Russian Roulette, and Phyllis hiding her gun underneath the cushions until Neff turned away.

The guns are owned by Phyllis and Aventurine, not Neff and Ratio.

Phyllis couldn’t bring herself to fire any more shots after she realised she truly did love Neff. Ratio could do nothing but watch as Aventurine did what he did — he couldn’t even pull away if the LC animation is anything to go by him struggling as Aventurine firmly keeps the gun to his chest.

Neff says he doesn’t buy (believe) that Phyllis loved him. She then goes “I’m not asking you to buy […]”. The LC description has Aventurine ask Ratio “You don’t believe me?”, while in the LC animation Ratio straight up says “You expect me to believe you?” and Aventurine answering “Why not, doctor/professor?”

The visual composition of the LC and the scene are nearly identical, from the lighting to the posing to the way Aventurine looks at Ratio — Aventurine and Ratio are even wearing different outfits to fit the scene better. The background in the LC is also like the blinders in the movie, just horizontal.

In the shot where Phyllis’ face is more visible, the way she looks at Neff is strikingly like the way provocatively looks at Ratio. Even their eyes have a visible shine — Phyllis’ eyes brightly shining the moment she realised she really fell in love with Neff, and Aventurine having just a little light return to his eyes in that specific moment.

And now the differences!

Neff holds the gun in his right hand. Aventurine makes Ratio hold his gun in his left.

Neff is the one who takes the gun from Phyllis‘ hand. Aventurine is the one who places the gun in Ratio’s hand and fires it.

Three gunshots are fired. In the movie, Phyllis shoots the first shot and Neff the second and third. Aventurine unloads the gun and leaves only one bullet for this game of Russian Roulette. He pulls the trigger three times, but they all turn out to be blanks.

Phyllis does not break her façade of not smiling until the very last moment where she gets shot. Aventurine is smiling the entire time according to the light cone description, whilst in the animation, it’s only when he guides the gun to his chest that he puts it on.

So, you know how Neff meets Phyllis and it all goes off the rails from there. The way Neff goes from a decent guy to willingly involve himself in a murder scheme, having his morals corrupted by Phyllis. His world having been turned upside down the moment he lays eyes on Phyllis in that first meeting. Doesn’t that sound like something that happened with the Final Victor LC? Ratio, a man all about logic and rationality — a scholar with eight PhDs to his name — all of that is flipped on its head the moment Aventurine pulls out his gun in their first meeting and forces Ratio to play a game of Russian roulette with him. Aventurine casually gambles using his own life like it’s nothing and seemingly without fear (barring his hidden left hand). All or nothing — and yet Aventurine comes out alive after three blanks. Poetic, considering there’s a consumable in the game called “All or Nothing” which features a broken chess piece and a poker chip bound together by a tie. The poker chip obviously represents the gambler, but the chess piece specifically stands for Ratio because he plays chess in his character trailer, his Keeping Up With Star Rail episode and his introduction is centred around him playing chess with himself. Plus, the design of the chess piece has golden accents, similar to his own chess set. In the end, Aventurine will always be the final victor.

Furthermore, Neff had deduced that Phyllis wanted to kill her husband and initially wanted no part in it, but in a subsequent visit it was his own idea that they trigger the double indemnity clause for more money. As the movie progresses though, he starts to have his doubts (thanks in part to him befriending Lola) and makes the move to kill Phyllis when everything starts to come to light. It’s strikingly similar to how Ratio initially wanted no part in whatever Aventurine had in mind when they first met, but in the subsequent missions where they were paired up, he willingly goes along with Aventurine's risky plans, and they come to trust each other. Enough so that Aventurine and Ratio can go to Penacony all on their own and put on an act, knowing that nobody in the IPC other than them can enter the Dreamscape. The mutual respect grew over time, instead of burning passionately before quickly fizzling out like in the movie.

Basically, in one scene, three shots (blanks) start a relationship, and in the other, it ends a relationship. In the anan magazine interview with Aventurine, he says himself that “form[ing] an alliance with just one bullet” with Ratio was one of his personal achievements. The moment itself was so impactful for both parties that it was immortalised and turned into a light cone.

—

[THE ENDING — GOLDEN HOUR]

The ending of Double Indemnity that made it into the final cut has Neff continue his confession on the dictaphone until he realised that he wasn’t alone in the room. Keyes had come inside at some point, but none had said a thing, only listening to a dead man speak of his crime. When Neff sees Keyes, they talk for a moment, Neff says he plans on fleeing to Mexico. Keyes does not think he will make it. He tries to leave, only to collapse at the front of the elevator, Keyes following just behind him. Neff attempts to light a cigar but is too weak to do so, so Keyes does it for him.

Parts of the ending can still be attributed to the interrogation scene between Sunday and Aventurine, so I’ll make this quick before moving on to the conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Ratio and Aventurine’s final conversation together. Once Sunday mentions how quickly Aventurine gave up the suitcase, he inflicts the Harmony’s consecration on him, which forces Aventurine to confess everything that Sunday asks of. In a way, it’s the opposite of what happens in the movie — where Neff willingly tells the truth about the murder to his coworker. Aventurine does not like Sunday, and Neff is close to Keyes. Ratio also does not speak, similarly to how Keyes didn’t speak and stood silently off to the side.

Post-interrogation in Golden Hour, Ratio worriedly prods at Aventurine and asks him about his plan. He then gives him the Mundanite’s Insight with the Doctor’s Advice inside when Aventurine tells him to leave. Throughout Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Aventurine gets weaker and his head starts to buzz, until he falls to the ground before he can hand in the final gems. Similarly, Neff progressively grows weaker as he records his confession. Keyes says he’s going to call a doctor and Neff says he’s planning to go to Mexico. And when Neff collapses near the elevator, they talk one final time and Keyes lights Neff’s cigar as the other was too weak to do so himself.

—

[OPPOSITE TIMELINES AND DEVELOPMENTS]

Remember how I said the way certain events happen in the movie and the game are mostly opposite and reverse of one another?

The Final Victor LC is the first meeting of Ratio and Aventurine, and Neff killing Phyllis is their final meeting.

Between that first and last meeting between Phyllis and Neff’s whirlwind romance, their relationship becomes strained which ultimately leads to Neff not trusting whatever Phyllis has to say at the end point of the movie. As for Ratio and Aventurine, the exact opposite had happened, to the point where Ratio trusts Aventurine enough to go along with his plans even if they went against his own ideals. The basis of the mission involved Veritas Ratio, whose full name includes the Latin word for “truth”, lying the entire time on Penacony.

Aventurine is sentenced to the gallows by Sunday after his unwilling interrogation. The movie starts and ends with Neff willingly confessing everything to Keyes.

It bears repeating, but I have to make it so clear that the trust between Ratio and Aventurine runs incredibly deep. Being able to predict what your partner says and thinks and plans in a mission as critical as the Penacony project is not something first-time co-workers can pull off flawlessly. All the while having to put on masks that prevent you from speaking sincerely towards one another lest you rat yourselves out. You have no way of contacting outside reinforcements from within Penacony, as the rest of the IPC are barred from entering. To be able to play everybody for fools while said fools believe you yourselves have handed your case on a silver platter requires a lot — trust, knowledge of the other, past experience, and so on. With Phyllis and Neff, the trust they had had been snuffed out when Neff grew closer to Lola and found out what kind of person Phyllis truly was on the inside. Phyllis did not trust nor love Neff enough and was going behind his back to meet with Zachette to possibly take Neff and Lola out. And the whole reason Neff wanted to perpetrate the murder was due to him being initially taken by Phyllis' appearance, which single handedly got the ball rolling on the crime.

Now then, how come trust is one of the defining aspects of Aventurine and Ratio’s relationship, when Phyllis and Neff’s trust eventually lead to both their deaths at the hands of the other? Sure, this can be explained away with the opposite theory, but there’s one other relationship involving Neff which I haven’t brought up in excruciating detail yet. The other side of Ratio and Aventurine’s relationship.

—

[NEFF & KEYES — AVENTURINE & RATIO]

Here is where it gets more interesting — while Phyllis and Neff are at the centre point of the movie, there is another character to whom Neff has a close relationship with — Keyes. It’s also the only relationship with no pretences, at least, until the whole murder thing happened and Neff had to hide his involvement from Keyes. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but feel there was something more to the two than meets the eye. I knew that queer readings of the film existed, but I didn't think too much of them until now. And though Aventurine and Ratio parallel Phyllis and Neff respectively, the fact that they also have traits of their opposite means that it wouldn’t be completely out of the question if parts of their relationship were also influenced by Keyes and Neff on a deeper and personal level. Let me explain.

Keyes and Neff were intimate friends for eleven years and have shown mutual respect and trust towards one another. They understood each other on a level not seen with Phyllis and Neff. Even after hearing Neff confess his crimes through the dictaphone (and eventually standing in the same room while Neff confessed), he still cared for the other man, and stayed with him when Neff collapsed at the front door. The only reason Keyes hadn’t deduced that it was Neff who was behind the murder was because he had his absolute trust in him. Keyes is also Neff’s boss, and they are always seen exchanging playful banter when they are on screen together. Neff even says the words “I love you, too” twice in the movie — first at the beginning and second at the end, as the final line. There’s also the persistent theme of Neff lighting Keyes’ cigarettes (which happens in every scene where they are face-to-face), except in the end where it’s Keyes who lights Neff’s.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Mutual respect, caring too much about the other person, the immense amount of trust… Ratio says he’s even the manager of the Penacony project (which may or may not be a lie), and despite their banter being laced with them acting as “enemies”, you can tell that in Dewlight Pavilion pre-Sunday confrontation that Aventurine genuinely likes Ratio’s company and believes him to be a reliable person. From the way he acts carefree in his words to the thoughts in his head, as seen in the mission descriptions for Double Indemnity. Their interactions in that specific mission are possibly the closest thing to their normal way of speaking that we get to see on Penacony.

Not to mention, this is the way Neff describes Keyes. He even says (not in the script) “you never fooled me with your song and dance, not for a second.” Apart from the line about the cigar ashes, doesn’t this ring a bell to a certain doctor? “Jerk” with a heart of gold?

After solving the puzzle with the statues, Ratio jokingly offers Aventurine to join the Genius Society. Aventurine then goes "Really? I thought you’ve given up on that already", and then Ratio says it was, in fact, a joke. Solving the puzzle through brute force has Ratio telling Aventurine that the Council of Mundanites (which Ratio himself is a part of) should consider him a member. In the movie, where the scene with the phone call with Neff and Phyllis reiterating details of their plan happens, Keyes actually offered Neff a better job (specifically a desk job, as Keyes’ assistant). The two pairs saw the other as smart, equals, and were invested in each other’s careers one way or another.

Because of all this, the character parallels for this side of the relationship are as follows:

Aventurine - Walter Neff

Veritas Ratio - Barton Keyes

With the way I’ve talked about how Aventurine and Ratio take from both leads in terms, it does fit to say that Aventurine is Neff, and Ratio is Keyes in this layer of their relationship. Since we’re on the topic of Keyes, let me also go through some similarities with him and Ratio specifically.

Keyes says the words “dimwitted amateurs” in his first on-screen conversation with Neff. You can’t have Dr. Ratio without him talking about idiocy in some way.

Keyes almost only appears in the movie in relation to Neff, and barring a single interaction in Neff’s house, is also only seen in the office. Same with Phyllis, Ratio also only ever appears regarding Aventurine.

Keyes genuinely wanted the best for Neff, even offering to celebrate with him when he thought the case truly had been busted wide open by forces when Zachette entered the picture. You could say the same for Ratio, as he hoped that Aventurine wouldn’t dwell on the past according to his response on Aventurine’s Interview, as well as telling him to “stay alive/live on (CN)” and wishing him the best of luck in his Doctor’s Advice note.

Whether or not you believe that there was more going on with Neff and Keyes is up to you, but what matters is that the two were very close. Just like Ratio and Aventurine.

—

[THE ORIGINAL FILM ENDING]

Something that I hadn’t seen brought up is the original ending of Double Indemnity, where Neff is executed in a gas chamber while Keyes watches on, shocked, and afterwards leaves somberly. The ending was taken out because they were worried about the Hays Code, but I felt it was important to bring it up, because in a way, you can kind of see the Sunday interrogation scene as Sunday sending Aventurine to his death in seventeen system hours. And Ratio doesn’t speak at all in that scene, and Keyes doesn’t either according to the script.

Another thing that’s noteworthy is that Wilder himself said “the story was about the two guys” in Conversations with Wilder. The two guys in question are Keyes and Neff.

—

[THE NOVEL]

With the original film ending covered, now it is time to bring up the novel by James M. Cain. I bought the book just to read about the differences between the adaptation and the original source material, and to list a few more similarities and opposites I could gather. For this section alone, due to the changes in the (last) names of certain characters, I will be referring to Walter Huff (Neff in the movie) as Walter, and Mr. Dietrichson as Nirdlinger. The plot is pretty much the same as the movie’s apart from a couple of changes so there isn’t a need to recount everything.

From my two read-throughs of the novel, these are the following passages that stood out to me the most. Starting with Aventurine:

Walter, as a top businessman of the company, knows how to sway a deal and to get what he truly wants with what the other gives him. Aventurine is the same, reliant on his intuition, experience and whatever information he has on the table to claim the win. Him luring out Sparkle in Heaven Is A Place On Earth and his conversation with Acheron in the Nihility is indicative of that.

• "But you sell as many people as I do, you don't go by what they say. You feel it, how the deal is going. And after a while I knew this woman didn't care anything about the Automobile Club. Maybe the husband did, but she didn't. There was something else, and this was nothing but a stall. I figured it would be some kind of a proposition to split the commission, maybe so she could get a ten-spot out of it without the husband knowing. There's plenty of that going on. And I was just wondering what I would say to her."

Phyllis, like in the movie, had been hiding her true intentions of talking to Walter in their first conversations, always saying things that she didn’t actually mean. In a similar vein, Aventurine consistently says stuff but almost never truly means any of it, which is all part of his façade.

• "And I could feel it again, that she wasn't saying what she meant. It was the same as it was the first afternoon I met her, that there was something else, besides what she was telling me. And I couldn't shake it off, that I had to call it on her."

When discussing the murder plan with Phyllis, Walter makes this comment, kind of like how Aventurine seems to operate in a way where he has a plan, but is ready to improvise and think fast when needed.

• "And then it's one of those things where you've got to watch for your chance, and you can't plan it in advance, and know where you're going to come out to the last decimal point."

Remember the roulette wheel line from the movie? In the novel, the gambling metaphor that Walter makes about the insurance business goes on for two paragraphs, mentioning a gambling wheel, stack of chips, a place with a big casino and the little ivory ball, even about a bet on the table. Walter also talks about how he thinks of tricks at night after being in the business for so long, and how he could game the system. Needless to say, insanely reminiscent of Aventurine.

• "You think I’m nuts? All right, maybe I am. But you spend fifteen years in the business I’m in, and maybe a little better than that, it’s the friend of the widow, the orphan, and the needy in time of trouble? It’s not. It’s the biggest gambling wheel in the world. It don’t look like it, but it is, from the way they figure the percentage on the oo to the look on their face when they cash your chips. You bet that your house will burn down, they bet it won’t, that’s all. What fools you is that you didn’t want your house to burn down when you made the bet, and so you forget it’s a bet. To them, a bet is a bet, and a hedge bet don’t look any different than any other bet. But there comes a time, maybe, when you do want your house to burn down, when the money is worth more than the house. And right there is where the trouble starts." • "Alright, I’m an agent. I’m a croupier in that game. I know all their tricks, I lie awake thinking up tricks, so I’ll be ready for them when they come at me. And then one night I think up a trick, and get to thinking I could crook the wheel myself if I could only put a plant out there to put down my bet." • "I had seen so many houses burned down, so many cars wrecked, so many corpses with blue holes in their temples, so many awful things that people had pulled to crook the wheel, that that stuff didn’t seem real to me anymore. If you don’t understand that, go to Monte Carlo or some other place where there’s a big casino, sit at a table, and watch the face of the man that spins the little ivory ball. After you’ve watched it a while, ask yourself how much he would care if you went out and plugged yourself in the head. His eyes might drop when he heard the shot, but it wouldn’t be from the worry whether you lived or died. It would be to make sure you didn’t leave a bet on the table, that he would have to cash for your estate. No, he wouldn’t care."

Returning home from the murder, Walter attempted to pray, but was unable to do it. Some time passed and after speaking to Phyllis, he prayed. Aventurine presumably hadn’t done the prayer ever since the day of the massacre, and the first time he does it again, he does it with his child self.

• "I went to the dining room and took a drink. I took another drink. I started mumbling to myself, trying to get so I could talk. I had to have something to mumble. I thought of the Lord's Prayer. I mumbled that, a couple of times. I tried to mumble it another time, and couldn't remember how it went." • "That night I did something I hadn’t done in years. I prayed."

Phyllis in the book is much more inclined towards death than her movie version, even thinking of herself as a personification of death. She’s killed ten other people (including infants) prior to the events of the novel. Something to keep in mind as Aventurine had mentioned several times that he attempted to kill himself in the dream, plus his leadup to his “grandest death”. Just like Phyllis, he’s even killed at least a few people before, though the circumstances of that were less on his own volition and more so for the sake of his survival (i.e. the death game in the maze involving the 34 other slaves where he was the winner and another time where he murdered his own master). Instead of Phyllis playing the active role of Death towards everybody else, Aventurine himself dances with Death with every gamble, every time his luck comes into play. Danse Macabre.

• "But there’s something in me, I don’t know what. Maybe I’m crazy. But there’s something in me that loves Death. I think of myself as Death, sometimes." • "Walter, The time has come. For me to meet my bridegroom [Death]. The only one I ever loved."

Moving on to Ratio:

Walter says several times that it’s hard to get along with Keyes, and how he says nice things after getting you all worked up. A hard-headed man to get along with, but damn good at his job. Sound like someone familiar?

• "That would be like Keyes, that even when he wanted to say something nice to you, he had to make you sore first." • "It makes your head ache to be around him, but he’s the best claim man on the Coast, and he was the one I was afraid of."

Keyes sees Walter as smarter than half the fools in the company. Ratio can only stand the company of Aventurine in regards to the IPC.

• "Walter, I'm not beefing with you. I know you said he ought to be investigated. I've got your memo right here on my desk. That's what I wanted to tell you. If other departments of this company would show half the sense that you show—" • "Oh, he confessed. He's taking a plea tomorrow morning, and that ends it. But my point is, that if you, just by looking at that man, could have your suspicions, why couldn't they—! Oh well, what's the use? I just wanted you to know it."

After going on a rant about the H.S. Nirdlinger case (Phyllis’ husband) and how Norton is doing a horrible job, he ends it by saying that it’s sheer stupidity. “Supreme idiocy”, anybody?

• "You can’t take many body blows like this and last. Holy smoke. Fifty thousand bucks, and all from dumbness. Just sheer, willful, stupidity!"

Phyllis’ former occupation as a nurse is more elaborated on, including her specialization — pulmonary diseases. One of Ratio’s crowning achievements is curing lithogenesis, the “King of Diseases”.

• "She’s one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles. […] She’s a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would."

As for the murder scheme, they talk about it a lot more explicitly in the novel. Specifically, Walter mentions how a single person cannot get away with it and that it requires more people to be involved. How everything is known to the party committing the crime, but not the victim. And most importantly: Audacity.

"Say, this is a beauty, if I do say it myself. I didn't spend all this time in the business for nothing, did I? Listen, he knows all about this policy, and yet he don't know a thing about it. He applies for it, in writing, and yet he don't apply for it. He pays me for it with his own check, and yet he don't pay me. He has an accident happen to him and yet he don't have an accident happen to him. He gets on the train, and yet he don't get on it."

"The first is, help. One person can't get away with it, that is unless they're going to admit it and plead the unwritten law or something. It takes more than one. The second is, the time, the place, the way, all known in advance—to us, but not him. The third is, audacity. That's the one that all amateur murderers forget. They know the first two, sometimes, but that third, only a professional knows. There comes a time in any murder when the only thing that can see you through is audacity, and I can't tell you why."

"And if we want to get away with it, we've got to do it the way they do it, […]" "Be bold?" "Be bold. It's the only way."

"I still don't know—what we're going to do." "You'll know. You'll know in plenty of time."

"We were right up with it, the moment of audacity that has to be be part of any successful murder."

It fits the situation that Aventurine and Ratio find themselves in extremely well: For the first point— Aventurine would not be able to get away with simply airing out details by himself, as that would immediately cast suspicion on him. Having another person accompany him who not only isn’t really a part of the IPC in name (as the IPC and The Family have a strenuous relationship) but would probably be able to get closer to Sunday because of that means they can simply bounce off each other without risking as much suspicion with a one-man army. Which is exactly what Ratio and Aventurine do in the conversations they have on Penacony. Secondly — they knew how Sunday operates: as a control freak, he leaves no stone unturned, which is how he became Head of the Oak Family, so their acting required them to give off the impression that a. they hated each other, b. Ratio would go against Aventurine’s wishes and expose him in return for knowledge, c. there were only the two Cornerstones that were hidden. This would give Sunday the illusion of control, and lead to Sunday to lower his guard long enough for Aventurine to take the gift money in the end. The pair knew this in advance, but not Sunday. And thirdly — the plan hinged on a high-level of risk. From breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone, to hoping that Sunday wouldn’t find it in the gift bag, to not telling Ratio what the true plan is (meaning Ratio had to figure it out on his own later on), to Sunday even buying Ratio’s story, it was practically the only way they could go about it. “Charming audacity”, indeed.

An interesting aspect about the novel is that the ending of the novel is divergent from the movie’s final cut and the original ending: Phyllis and Walter commit suicide during a ferry ride to Mexico. The main reason this was changed for the movie was because of the Hays Code, and they wouldn’t allow a double suicide to be screened without reprecussions for criminals. There’s also a bunch of other aspects that differentiate the novel from the movie (no narration-confession as the confession happens in a hospital, less characterization for Keyes and instead a bigger focus on Lola and her boyfriend, the focus on the murderous aspect of Walter and Phyllis’ relationship instead of actual romance, Walter falling in love with Lola (with an unfortunately large age gap attached), etc.)

As for the ending, this wouldn’t even be the first romance media reference related to Aventurine and Ratio where both the leads die, with the other being The Happy Prince and San Junipero (in relation to the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth reference), which I normally would chalk up as a coincidence, though with the opposite line-of-thought I have going on here (and the fact that it’s three out of four media references where the couple die at the end…), I think it’s reasonable to say that Ratio and Aventurine will get that happy ending. Subverting expectations, hopefully.

—

[THE HAYS CODE — LGBT CENSORSHIP IN CHINA]

I’ve brought up the Hays code twice now in the previous two sections, but I haven’t actually explained what exactly it entails.

The Hays Code (also known as the Motion Picture Production Code) is a set of rules and guidelines imposed on all American films from around 1934 to 1968, intended to make films less scandalous, morally acceptable and more “safe” for the general audiences. Some of the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” include but are not limited to…

(Don’t) Pointed profanity

(Don’t) Inference of sex perversion (which includes homosexuality)

(Don’t) Nudity

(Be Careful) Sympathy for criminals

(Be Careful) Use of firearms

(Be Careful) Man and woman in bed together

What does this have to do with a Chinese gacha game released in 2023? If you know a little bit about miHoYo’s past, you would know that pre-censorship laws being upheld to a much stronger and stricter degree, they had no problem showcasing their gay couples in Guns Girl Z (Honkai Gakuen 2/GGZ) and Honkai Impact 3rd, with the main three being Bronya/Seele, Kiana/Mei (admittedly the latter one is a more recent example, from 2023), and Sakura/Kallen. Ever since the Bronya and Seele kiss, censorship in regards to LGBT content ramped up, causing the kiss to be removed on the CN side, and they had to lay low with the way they present two same-sex characters who are meant to be together. They can’t explicitly say that two female or male characters are romantically involved, but they can lace their dynamics with references for those “in the know” — Subtext. Just enough to imply something more but not too much that they get censored to hell and back.

So what I’m getting at is this: The trouble that Double Indemnity had to go through in order to be made while also keeping the dialogue of Phyllis and Neff as flirtatious as they could under the Hays Code among other things is quite similar to the way Ratio and Aventurine are presented as of now. We never see them interact outside of Penacony (at least up until 2.2, when this post was drafted), so we can only infer those interactions specifically until they actually talk without the fear of being found out by Sunday. But, there’s still some small moments scattered here and there, such as when Aventurine goes near Ratio in the Dewlight Pavilion Sandpit, he exclaims that “the view here is breathtaking” (he can only see Ratio’s chest from that distance) and that Ratio could “easily squash [him] with just a pinch”. Ratio then goes “If that is your wish, I will do so without a moment’s hesitation.” Not to mention the (in)famous “Doctor, you’re huge!” quote.

It’s not a coincidence that Ratio and Aventurine have three explicit references to romance media (Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince), possibly even four if you take the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth as a reference to Black Mirror’s San Junipero. It’s not a coincidence that the storylines or characters of said references parallel the pairing, from surface-level to deep cuts. It’s not a coincidence that the CN voice actors were asked to “tone it down” by the voice director when it came to their chemistry. It’s not a coincidence that Aventurine has only flirted with (three) men throughout Penacony, even referring to a Bloodhound NPC as a “hunk of a man” inside his thoughts, all the while ignoring Himeko and Robin when it came to their looks — women who are known across the cosmos with a myriad of adoring fans. There are so many other so-called “coincidences” related to the two that you could make an iceberg just based on versions 2.0-2.2 as well as content miHoYo themselves have put out on social media. They absolutely knew what they were doing, and were trying to get their point across through subtle means — the extent they went to with the Double Indemnity reference while also keeping it under wraps from a “surface” level point of view is proof of this — the implications are there if you take the time to look for them, and are simply hard to ignore or deny once you do find them.

—

[CONCLUSION]

This was supposed to be short considering the other analyses I’ve seen were also pretty short in comparison, but I couldn’t get the movie out of my head and ended up getting carried away in the brainrot. I hope you could follow along with my line of thinking, even with the absurd length of this post, and the thirty-image limit. I tried to supplement context with some links to videos and wiki pages among other sources wherever I can to get around it.

I will end it with this though — the love in the movie turned out to be fake and a farce, going off track from what was a passionate romance in the beginning because of the murder scheme. Meanwhile, the whole reason why Ratio and Aventurine can pull off whatever they want is because of their immense trust in one another. What was initially shown to be distrust in the Final Victor LC grew into something more, for Ratio, someone who would have never put faith into mere chance and probability before this, put his trust in Aventurine, of all people.

TL;DR — (I get it, it’s over ten thousand words.)

Not only is the relationship between Neff and Phyllis represented in the deception and acting side of Ratio and Aventurine, but the real and trusting side is shown in Neff and Keyes. They have a fascinating, multi-layered dynamic that is extremely fun to pick apart once you realise what’s going on underneath the bickering and “hatred” they display.

Many thanks to Manya again for making the original thread on the movie. I wouldn’t be here comparing the game and movie myself if it weren’t for that.

By the way, I really do believe that Shaoji totally watched this movie at least once and really wanted that Double Indemnity AU for his OCs. I know exactly how it feels.

—

Other points I'd like to mention that didn't fit anywhere else in the main analysis and/or don’t hold much significance, have nothing to do with the Penacony mission, or may even be considered reaching (...if some of the other points weren’t). Just some potentially interesting side bits.

Phyllis honks three times to signal Neff to go for the kill. That, and the three gunshots in the confrontation. Aventurine is all about the number three.

The height difference Aventurine and Ratio have going on is close to Phyllis and Neff’s.

Phyllis had killed her husband’s previous wife and went on to marry Mr. Dietrichson, pretty much taking the wife’s place. Aventurine killed his previous master, and had taken certain attributes from him like his wristwatch and the rings on his hand and the “all or nothing” mantra.

When calling Ratio a wretch (bastard), Aventurine smiles for a moment. This is exclusive to the EN, KR and JP voiceovers, as in CN, he does not smile at all. (Most definitely a quirk from the AI they use for lip syncing, but the smile is something that’s been pointed out quite a few times so I thought I’d mention it here.)

Sunday specifically says in the CN version that he knew of Aventurine's plans the moment Aventurine left the mansion, meaning that he realized he had been played the fool the moment Ratio and Aventurine talked in Golden Hour

In the description for the "All or Nothing" consumable, teenage Aventurine says this specific line: "Temptation is a virtue for mortals, whereas hesitation proves to be a fatal flaw for gamblers." According to Ratio, this is Aventurine's motto - he says as such in Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode. Note that in the anan interview he explicitly says he does not have a motto, and yet Ratio in the video says otherwise. They definitely have to know each other for a while for Ratio to even know this.

A big reason why Neff even pulled off the murder scheme in the first place was because he wanted to see if his good friend Keyes could figure it out, the Mundane Troubles Trailblaze Continuance showcases Ratio attempting to teach the Herta Space Station researches a lesson to not trust the Genius society as much as they did.

In Keyes’ first scene he’s exposing a worker for writing a policy on his truck that he claimed had burnt down on its own, when he was the one who burnt it down. Ratio gets into an Ace Attorney-style argument with the Trailblazer in Mundane Troubles.

Neff talks repeatedly about how it won’t be sloppy. Nothing weak. And how it’ll be perfect to Phyllis, and how she’s going to do it and he’s going to help her. Doing it right — “straight down the line”. Beautifully ironic, considering what happens in the movie, and even more ironic as Ratio and Aventurine’s scheme went exactly the way they wanted to in the end. Straight down the line.

#honkai star rail #double indemnity #veritas ratio #aventurine #golden ratio #ratiorine #an attempt at analysis by one a-u #relationship analysis #you know what‚ i guess i can tag the other names of this ship #aventio #raturine #you could make a fucking tierlist of these names #um‚ dynamics (yk what i mean) dont really matter here in the analysis just fyi if youre wondering its general enough #also if you're wondering about the compilation thread - its not done. it'll take a while (a long while.)#this post was so long it was initially just a tumblr draft that i then put into google docs. and it ended up being over 2k+ words long #is this a research paper‚ thesis‚ or essay? who knows! this just started as just a short analysis after watching the movie on may 5 #final word count according to docs (excluding alt text): 13013 - 43 pages with formatting #i wish i could have added more images to this‚ 10k words vs 30 images really is not doing me any favours…#plus‚ i hit the character limit for alt text for one of the images.#if you see me mixing up british and american spelling‚ you probably have!#oh yeah. if any of the links happen to break at some point. do tell. i have everything backed up #there also may be multiple links strung together‚ just so you know.#I link videos using the EN and CN voiceovers. Just keep that in mind if the jump between two languages seems sudden.#I had to copy and paste this thing from the original tumblr draft onto a new post because tumblr wouldn't let me edit the old one anymore.#Feels just like when I was finalising my song comic…#(Note: I had to do this three times.)#I started this at May 5 as a way to pass the time before 2.2. You can probably tell how that turned out.#Did you know there is a limit to the amount of links you can add to a single tumblr post? It's 100. I hit that limit as well.#So if you want context for some of these parts... just ask.#I'm gonna stop here before I hit the tag limit (30) as well LMAOO (never mind I just did.)

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prythianpages · 4 months ago

Text

Dandelions | Headcannons

azriel x green witch | these headcannons focus on Az and you starting a family, introducing the children.

a/n: This has been sitting in my drafts for months so I decided to finally just post them. I have so many ideas for this series since I love it sm but writing them out has been a struggle. Maybe, I can write some of these out just as I did with the first set of HCs.

warnings: mentions of pregnancy/child birth, fluff, dad Az

After the little incident with the aphrodisiac that awakened certain desires in both you and Azriel, you realize you both are ready for the next step...finally starting your family.

As much as Azriel wants a family with you, he is worried about you due to his Illyrian blood and does not want what happened to Feyre to happen to you.

But worry not because that's where your witch abilities come through! There is no witch lore in acotar so I'm just going with my own lore, please bear with me lol.

"How do you think my mother had Thea?"-Luckily for you, your mother has had experience with having a winged baby.

It's a little ritual that gets Az a bit too hot and bothered. Needless to say, after it's done, the two of you have lots of fun trying to have a baby.

You don't notice your pregnant at first.

There's lots of signs such as plants following you everywhere you go, your cat being more affectionate, your spider making elaborate webs everywhere.

You don't notice because you're used to the attention from nature and think nothing of it. What you do notice, however, is how clingy Azriel's shadows become.

Those inky tendrils love you and there's always a couple around you but you start to notice more and more. They help you and keep you safe. If you're going to trip, they stop it. If you need to reach for a cup on a high shelf, they grab it for you. They even force you to walk down the stairs instead of run like you usually do.

Around this time, Azriel starts to feel sick so you attribute the shadow attention to that. Maybe, they just want you close to their master?

Azriel thinks he has food poisoning since he wakes up nauseas and has felt overall, tired and drained. The inner circle has noticed him become more clingy and emotional but no one dares to tell him anything. Meanwhile, you don't question it because you love clingy and emotional Az.

It's one morning during training that Azriel can't hold it in and throws up. He then explains to Cas that he doesn't know what's happening and is starting to get worried.

"Mother's tits!" Cas figures it out immediately. "You're pregnant."

"I'm pregnant?" Cas grins and gives Azriel a big bear hug. "We're pregnant!"

"Who's pregnant?" You call out, looking at Nesta curiously. She shakes her head at you and then you look at Az.

The shadows that hovered by your side parted from you briefly, revealing what they had been protecting for the last couple of weeks. "You're pregnant." Azriel breathes, eyes focusing on your stomach.

Those shadows that have been by your side flutter toward him and that's when they let Azriel hear it--a second heartbeat. When the shadows carry the subtle change of your scent to him next, he faints.

Protective Az comes at you full force after your pregnancy is confirmed. He hovers over you a lot and when you need to go the forests to pick pick out some herbs and ingredients for your potions, he doesn't let you lift a finger.

It often leads to you sitting on the soft grass while he collects what you need with a frown, your own fingers itching to do it yourself. The frown doesn't last long as the sight of Azriel on his knees picking herbs makes the love in your chest swell and he always picks the prettiest flower to place in your hair.

Though he's happy, he can't help but be anxious over whether the ritual worked or not, despite your sister's (Thea, the seer) reassurance.

It's not until you have a check up with Madja that he allows all anxieties subside as she not only confirms that your baby is healthy and has wings but that your womb has accommodated for them.

There's nothing but excitement now and Azriel eases up a bit on his hovering, letting you pick your own herbs and travel among Prythian's forest. Never alone though.

Your relationship with your family has always been a little rocky. You loved your mother and sisters but did not see eye to eye with them on many things...and your dad...well, your dad was hexed into a lizard. But the news of your pregnancy brings you closer to your mother and sisters.

Though your mother gave her approval of Azriel, she is not fully trusting of him, as if she's waiting for him to fuck up and give you a big "I told you so." He's always respectful toward her, even when she keeps nagging at him for a lock of his hair (that you keep reprimanding her for.)

Ever since learning you were carrying his babe, Azriel likes to rest his head on your shoulder or chest while one rests on your stomach. So imagine his delight when you start showing and when he first feels the baby kick, he'd be so happy, it'd bring him to tears because his dream of starting a family with the one he loves is finally coming true. (Like with any acotar male, I also think the sight of your bump would make him feral.)

The inner circle is also so happy for you both. Though your sister told you, you were having a girl, Cassian insists on calling your baby "Azriel Jr" and after she's born, you joke that he manifested it as she takes after Azriel a lot.

Now, here are some HC's of their children <3

Melaina

Melaina's name was inspired by the goddess Melinoe.

Mel inherited her father's shadows. Some of the shadows that had clung to you all throughout your pregnancy remained by her side, multiplying every year. You suspect it has to do with the ritual you performed to ensure a safe birth.

At first, Azriel still had control over them and would use them to keep your daughter safe but given that you and Azriel are really protective over her, the greatest danger Mel ever faced was tripping over one of your rugs.

Az calls Mel "my shadow" since the moment she knew how to crawl, she loved trailing after him like his shadows do.

Once she's older, she gains control over her shadows and since she can sense things that others can't through them, it's no surprise to you that she later becomes a death witch.

Mel's hobbies include reading about poisons, walking her pet scorpion throughout Velaris and crafting dolls from recycled material. She enjoys using her shadows to bring her dolls to "life" and torment her cousins, especially Cassian's twins. When she was young, she'd beg Azriel to play dolls with her.

Mel can be a little menace but despite this, you and Azriel are so endeared by her that she can do no wrong g (though, you both do have your boundaries and when it comes to punishments, it is surprisingly you that has to carry them out)

It's no secret that Azriel isn't fond over his Illyrian heritage but Mel is interested. She asks to train in Windhaven like he had done but it's an immediate no from the both of you. The three of you come to a compromise and allow her to join the little army of Illyrian warriors (that consists of Nyx and Cas's twins.)

When Mel starts school, Azriel goes through it, not wanting to accept that his little girl is growing up. You can read more about it here.

Mel loves going to school but she does run into some trouble with some kids who want to tease her because she’s different (with her shadows, wings and witchy heritage) The mean kids at school realize that they can't go after Nyx or Cas's twins bc they'd lose any fight and seeing as Mel is small and a girl, they underestimate her.

Instead of letting her cousins take care of her troubles with the mean kids at school like they’d be happy to, she does it herself and ends up in the principal’s office often for threatening to hex her classmates.

It’s not until she becomes older and learns some spells/tricks that she actually places hexes on them. No one picks on her bc they learned their lesson but if she saw anyone getting bullied, she’d stand up for them.

When Mel begs Azriel to allow her to become a spy for the Night Court, he denies her, not wanting her to live the same life he does. But on one mission, she follows him and he reluctantly acknowledges her powers and abilities. He also realizes that as much as he can push her away or deny her, she'd find a way to become a spy anyway.

Mel admires her father so much, she wants to be like him.

She meets Eris's son through her job as a spymaster of the Night Court, which causes a bit of chaos amongst the two courts, even more when she starts to fall for him. If you ask her, she'll deny, deny, deny...

Alora

When Azriel's shadows begins to get clingy again (I feel like the mating bond would overwhelm with the urge to protect you and be by your side, therefore his shadows would follow suit), you start to suspect you're pregnant.

As your further along in your pregnancy, you begin to experience some things similar to Mel. With Mel, you were able to understand Az's shadows since that was her power. But with this baby, the further along you get, the more romantic you become.

Your dreams consist of going on multiple dates with Azriel and bringing others together. You often wake up really emotional, crying as to why Azriel hasn't taken you out on a date.

Azriel is a fast learner and increases his romance with you, which sends you over the moon.

Since this baby gave you lots and lots of dreams, you and Azriel decide to name her Alora. Lor for short.

She comes a bit earlier than expected and though it nearly gave Azriel a heart attack, you both like to joke that she was simply too excited to see the world.

Lor does not have wings and takes more after you but has Azriel's hazel eyes. She's so curious about the world.

If we're talking about vibes. Mel gives off Wednesday Addams meets Louise Belcher vibes and Lor gives off Enid Sinclair meets Tina Belcher vibes.

Her hobbies include writing romance novels or in her journal, gazing at the stars with her pet bunny, and giving free tarot readings under the school bleachers.

Lor is very sweet and an empath, always making sure everyone is happy. It's why one year, she insisted you helped her buy Azriel's and Mel's shadows beds so they have a place to sleep in. Once she's of age, she becomes a love witch.

She also might've set your father, who had been hexed into a lizard, free one day...

She can be naive at times, choosing to see the good in everyone.

Mel takes advantage of this and likes to mess with her but the moment someone messes with her little sister, it's over for them. (Since Lor is a love witch, I can see her trying to bring two fae together and it backfires and Mel has to save the day.)

Since Mel and Lor aren't too far apart in age, they were sure a handful growing up. Azriel learned a new type of stress with them. Lots of "Can you tell Mel's shadows to stop breathing in my direction?" "Hey, that's, my shirt! And you turned it pink!" "What did I say about leaving your toads all over the floor??" "May your next crush be as slimy and gross as slugs!"

Lor is the first to catch on to Mel's crush on Eris's son and of course, she wants to meddle. It only stirs up more drama though.

While Mel got sent to the principal's office for hexing her classmates, Lor would get sent there from trying to meddle into her favorite teacher's love life.

As she gets older, she's not really interested in training like Mel was. Yet, Az insists she joins to at least learn self defense. She puts this off as much as she can until, one day, Az drags her to the HOW so she can learn from the Valkyries.

It's there where a pretty Valkyrie catches her eyes and suddenly, Lor is at every training session.

(You can read a bit more about Lor through this one-shot here.)

Dimitri

Not liking even numbers, you ask Azriel for another baby and who is he to deny you?

Other than Azriel's shadows being clingy and overprotective much like their master, the pregnancy is smooth sailing. Nothing seems out of place, neither you or Azriel experience morning sickness.

Since you seem so connected to nature, you suspect this baby will follow into your footsteps. The two of you decide to keep the gender a surprise until birth.

Lor was ecstatic when she found out she was going to have a new sibling and though Mel denied it, she was too. They both hoped for another sister, having had enough of boys with their reckless cousins.

Azriel is also convinced it's a girl, even though his shadows snicker at the thought. But when Madja places a baby boy in his arms, Azriel is shocked to the core.

He's such a girl dad that he doesn't know what to do at first, feeling overwhelmed and underprepared (even though he's such a good dad.)

It's after this birth that your mother finally gives her full trust to Azriel. It's like she senses his slight unease and in a vulnerable moment while Azriel stares at his son, she gives him a pat on the back and praises him for being a good father and mate.

Azriel blinks, thinking he's dreaming. He'd never say it out loud but those words from your mother meant the world to him.

So welcome Dimitri, the "earth lover."

He does have wings and takes more after Azriel in physical appearance but in terms of personality, he takes after you.

He's a heartthrob bc c'mon, he's Azriel's son.

His hobbies include volunteering in the Spring court to help restore parts of the forests (I imagine that must take years to recover from), hiding away from the girls who madly crush at him at school, and training with his father.

While his older sisters would be sent to the principal's office often due to stirring up trouble, he'd be sent to receive awards and for being a good samaritan.

Because he loves nature, he has many pets throughout his youth, his first being two sugar gliders, followed by a toad. I feel like your house is a zoo at times.

Growing up, he liked messing with his sisters and hiding bugs in their backpacks or room. It was hard to mess with Mel due to her shadows but he's smart and quickly learned a way around it.

His little pranks bring Mel and Lor together. They once placed a hex on him, turning his hair pink, after hearing him be a bit cocky of all the girls crushing on him at school. But it backfired because it only made him more "dreamy" to them.

Though he's the youngest, he's very protective of his older sisters. They have a strict policy that they can mess with one another but def have the "the only one who can torture my sibling is me" mindset.

With these three, your house is never quiet and if it is, it is not a good sign. Hexes, spells, insects, galore! It certainly doesn't help when your mother visits, teaching them new curses and rituals.

Though sometimes they make you want to pull your hair out and Azriel's hair turn gray with their shenanigans, you two adore them and wouldn't trade your family for anything else in the world.

Bonus: I was watching Bob's Burgers & Linda gave me such Green Witch reader vibes so here's a link to some HCs based off the show lol.

a/n: hope you enjoyed these! I am not done with writing about Az x Green witch so some of these may turn into fics. I actually got the idea of writing about a love witch when I thought of Lor and that's how the Cas AU came to be.

(I'm already toying with the idea of Lor setting your lizard of a father loose and causing a bit of mayhem.)

series tag list:@fxckmiup, @aria-chikage

#azriel x reader #azriel x you #azriel x y/n #azriel fanfic #azriel headcanons #azriel x witch!reader #acotar x reader #acotar fanfiction #azriel imagine #azriel acotar #azriel fluff #az!dandelions

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