#i need these big explanations for what would happen

[whinlatter]

sorry if you've discussed this before, but do you think ginny's quidditch talent came out of nowhere? it's a common criticism I see about her but I feel like that kind of overstates how much of a quidditch "star" she was at the beginning, like she was consistently described as good but not great until partway into hbp and I also think it makes sense she'd keep it a secret from her teasing brothers. but maybe they're right and I'm just biased towards defending ginny

thank you for the question, anon!

the short answer is - no, i think it's (just about) plausibly rendered in the books. i think the series gets away with it because:

the story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy aka peak obliviousness in corporeal form, so we see what harry sees (and harry notices big fat nothing)

there is an entirely adequate narrative explanation for ginny's sporting skills that most readers not operating in bad faith* can put together, as you suggest: ginny comes from a sporty family who are all good at quidditch; she is of middling-to-good seeking ability when she first joins the team in ootp; she then has a good few months flying several times a week where she would necessarily grow in confidence and experience, leaving her perfectly able to blossom in hbp in a high school sport where she is competing against other children. fine and dandy in my book.

also quidditch is a broadly dumb and pointless plot so ginny being good at it is just a fun extra that we don't need to deep too much because - let's be real - quidditch is a waste of page space.

*i say this because, most of the time, these takes come from those who don't like hinny as a pairing. which is entirely their right and prerogative! it personally doesn't float my boat to spend my days doing worst faith readings of the text in order to make the case against canon ships i don't like, but as this is a race to the bottom - we are all adults dissecting children's books written by a nasty spiteful woman rotting in her mouldy castle spouting slurs, after all - who am i to judge.

(i also suspect the 'ginny is good at quidditch out of nowhere' takes have enjoyed such a long shelf-life on eg. reddit because the films are still most people's primary reference for HP takes so complaints about them then get cast back on the books - and, in the films, ginny does in fact rock up in film 6 like she's mbappé, if mbappé had the charisma of an extraordinarily soggy bath mat.)

with that said... could it have done with a bit more foreshadowing? yes, probably. people who don't like hinny as a pairing and prefer another are never going to be convinced - that's fine! but here i am, a paid-up hinny supporter, and even i think ginny's character development is sometimes wanting, to a frustrating and problematic extent. good writing (usually) means showing not telling, and it's weird and lazy of jkr to be so slapdash about revealing this and other character details about ginny and other (often female) characters. i think it's particularly striking that jkr underserves characters (again, usually women) who exist to serve the emotional development of characters (usually men), rather than the mystery plot(s) that drive hp as a series. (wanted! tonks' personality! last seen making fake pig noses and being the only auror mad eye moody mentored as his successor, for no plot reason!)

while i'm not a die-hard adherent to the chekhov's gun principle, i think one of the strengths of many novels du jour - especially the nothing really happens postmodern novel that crowds the bookshop shelves these days - is that their conventions allow authors to add colour to characters without each tiny detail being pregnant with meaning and in service of a driving plot that must be marched forward at all times. that can be really nice! as readers, we like to get a sense of characters as well-rounded living breathing people who go for a wee and take the bins out and stick on an album because it slaps every now and then; in these novels, we're also happier with the idea that things can happen to characters beyond the protagonist that don't directly impact the plot or demand the protagonist knows more than their own very limited vantage point. you have more room to play with character as a result.

jkr, ofc, isn't that kind of author. jkr is in fact an author for whom everything about her characters serves the plot. this, after all, is the brain that brought you 'remus lupin' the werewolf, and named the bad-guy-turned-good-guy in a book using a big black dog as a red herring omen of death 'sirius black'. jkr wants her audience to notice clues and remember little details about characters because they might be significant later on. this is entirely her wont and - lupin and sirius aside - she's often very good at it. the hp books are all standalone mysteries, and, when they land, those mysteries slap. ginny being the culprit in CoS is a genuinely satisfying resolution to the whodunit plot: this was reflected in critical reception at the time and was part of the reason why hp was able to be marketed as a children's book adults would also enjoy thereafter. there are also very satisfying foreshadowing and mystery plots that straddle the entire series and that reward the reader with reasonably good pay-off at the series end. (my favourite is the foreshadow within the foreshadow - e.g. regulus black barrelling back from ootp in DH, but then regulus' plot turning out to ultimately exist to foreshadow snape's own double agent status... delicious).

for my part, it's also what i want out of the fiction i read and the stories i try to write. i want everything to mean something. i want the weather, clothing, setting, body language etc to all do heavy lifting. i want character work to do work. it makes it fun for me to write and (i hope) it can it a bit more fun for the reader.

the problem is that while jkr is good setting up some mysteries, she is bad at others, and the romantic plot is one she falls down (a bit) on. she sets herself up for this: she wants to be a plot-centred mystery writer, so she does have an obligation to do better in how she deploys character details. jkr does to try to write the harry/ginny romance like a mystery, with little hints throughout the series up to the reveal of harry's feelings for ginny in HBP. (even ginny's full name is nominative determinism, finally revealed in DH once the reader has been told her place in the plot - ginevra, so guinnevre, the hero's queen). and while i will never not tire of pointing out to all of reddit that harry/ginny didn't come out of nowhere, and there is some satisfying foreshadowing knocking about here and there, i think it's fair to say that the harry/ginny build-up is not as satisfying as it could have been because jkr is basically lazier about the clues that ginny is the character harry will ultimately fall for, while she is much better at dropping clues for the series' central plot. that ginny ends the series with no real resolution of the primary tensions that motivate her other than her love of harry is probably the most acute example of this. but there's lots about her character where jkr phones it in a bit in fleshing her out or taking it to any logical conclusions or interesting plot directions. a smattering of examples:

ginny is the character who spends the entire series demanding to be included and not underestimated ends the series... with no real major role in the battle other than causing harry panic, while all other central characters receive a satisfying narrative arc that speaks to their central motivators across the series as a whole. (for an interesting discussion of what should have happened with ginny and the horcruxes, see here. i didn't even pay @saintsenara to write this!)

there are lots of shades of colour to ginny's character that are introduced pointlessly. i have previously talked about my beef with arnold the pygmy puff. we know ginny is popular but we know nothing of her friends who are all faceless plotless nobodies. we know ginny supports the all-womens quidditch team in a way that implies a nascent feminist politics after a childhood being excluded from playing a sport she loves by her brothers - yet we know nothing of it. we know ginny loves the one wizarding band that seems to exist because she has a poster of them on her wall and it just.... is something we just get told about her. now, all of these suggest ginny is a good time gal and a right laugh at the pub. and that's nice! i too am fun at the pub! but why does it matter? it wouldn't, in another series. but in a series where Everything Matters, it really stands out.

now..... i don't think all of this is an unsolveable problem for those of us writing fanfiction about ginny or harry and ginny as a couple. i don't think this makes ginny an inherently bad character. i hope the amount of life i have wasted thinking about this character is testament to this (...) and i personally find trying to cook up some fleshed-out characterisation and a satisfying arc for ginny, and for female characters more generally, from the crumbs of the original source material to be a very rewarding way to pass the time and a fuck you to a woman who thinks she can gatekeep womanhood while writing some astonishingly antifeminist fiction. i think harry and ginny are a deeply compelling and eminently plausible couple, and i think i return to writing about them as much as i do because i think they have a ton of potential as narrative mirrors and as characters with a rich well of tension but also devotion between them. as i say a lot, i think one of the things the harry/ginny pairing does refreshingly well compared to other romantic lead couples in YA fiction is show a couple that, at heart, genuinely get on very well, have a laugh together and enjoy each other's company in completely mundane lovely day-to-day ways (laundry and taxes u know). i think that's a striking and refreshing dynamic that i like to spend time fleshing out and playing with and writing about. but i can also see that there is an inconsistency in jkr's character work here, particularly her character work writing female characters, of which ginny is among the most acute examples.

[jullbnt]

I really enjoy all of this too :D

Aonuma's comment about nostalgia was also because he genuinely seems to think more freedom = better games, so he doesn't understand why some fans like me prefer the old Zelda formula when it was more "restrictive" in his opinion.

I still prefer to keep the timelines separated but what you're saying makes sense, I better understand how it could work! I like the idea that the merging would be the result of very careful planning by the gods/goddesses that would take millenia, it's kind of fascinating (you're right "just" was a bit of a stretch). Don't worry my take is probably very confusing too, it has time travel and a whole crazy fourth timeline ^^

It's definitely been a while since SS, though I always found the time scale in BotW a bit ridiculous (10 000 years since the first Calamity just sounded like an alternate way of saying "a very long time ago" to me). Oh you didn't like the dragons in BotW? I love seeing them flying over Hyrule, I always stop to watch them. At least they're way better than the ones in SS, I still think they looked kind of terrible 😆

Yes Faron is the Water Dragon in SS and Lanayru is the Thunder Dragon, which never made sense to me (especially with Farore's Flame still being green and Nayru's being blue). The opposite would have been better in my opinion. It's a real pain in my side because the dragons play a big role in my story and I want them to be the same ones from SS (with an explanation for the way they changed), so until I find something not too convoluted to explain the swap I just ignore the inconsistencies… Anyway even with their elements swapped I think it's hard not to see the link with SS, especially with the sacred springs being on the map (sure SS only had two, but still). And if the dragons don't talk it's simply because they play no role in BotW ^^

I don't mind when things are a bit vague because it allows us to theorize, but I still think something as big as Rauru claiming to be the first king when he is not should be explained, that's way too confusing. What you said could be the case, but then I would have loved an explanation from Rauru himself. It didn’t need too be very detailed, just that he founded this new version of Hyrule on the ruins of an ancient kingdom with the same name.

(Also the new timeline we got in TotK Master Works is very confusing, it really makes TotK look like some kind of reboot. The events of Skyward Sword are never mentioned, the Secret Stones replace the Triforce, and Rauru is confirmed to be the first king of Hyrule. But maybe it could work with your theory, the gods/goddesses could merge the three timelines and then start all over again in this way. But I really wish they wouldn't kind of erase previous lore this way).

I think it's a bit different for the Oocca and the Minish, since both TP and MC had the excuse of being released before Skyward Sword and the official timeline (and they weren't sequels to other games). I won't argue about MC though, I think it never really fit in the timeline because it's too different from the rest.

In TP the entire story wasn't about the Oocca and they weren't the ones to seal Ganon, to name the Sages, to be the first rulers of Hyrule… Shad only theorized that they were the real creators of Hyrule, and since no one travels through time to see it happen there's a possibility that he just got them mixed with the Skyloftians.

Hyrule in game is the size of Kyoto, but I think we can assume in reality it would be a lot bigger, maybe even like a continent. I mean I can't imagine having a desert, a jungle, a volcano, and a few snowy montain chains cramped up together in such a small area ^^ Hebra alone could be the size of the Alps or something like that. But I agree, it would definitely be nice to know what's happening outside of Hyrule!

Yes the stones are blank power modifiers, I just find it a bit… lame. But my major issue with them is that I don't see how owning one makes anyone a Sage. As I said in previous games Sages had important roles and had a more spiritual aspect to them than just being warriors with magicial abilities (that's more like being a Champion from BotW). Usually the Sages all need to be awaken by Link for their shared power to be effective, which is something I like a lot. In TotK you can go straight to Ganondorf and fight all the bosses without the help of the Sages or with only half of them if you're good enough, and since I've seen people do it with only one heart we know that Link is canonically perfectly able to do so. That makes the Sages useless (the same could be said of the Divine Beasts in BotW, but it's less lore breaking. Though the fact that you can beat Ganon without the Master Sword is another story).

It's as if OoT Link didn't need the Sages to seal Ganondorf in the Sacred Realm and could confront him any moment after fighting all the bosses in a row. That would basically ruin Ocarina of Time.

I know about On'nen, I've actually read a bit about it to better understand Zelda lore and Demise's curse (though I may not have gone as deep as you). I'll definitely check QuestWithAaron, that sounds very interesting (thanks!). I didn't know gloom was Shoki though, I didn't understand why it was not malice anymore in TotK so that's a good point. But I think it confuses things even more between TotK Ganondorf and BotW Ganon for people who don't know Shintoism, which isn't ideal.

I still don't think Ganondorf with a secret stone would be more powerful than Ganondorf with the Triforce of Power. TP Ganondorf has just as many reasons for his resentment to grow after being exiled to the Twilight Realm, but he still can't break the Master Sword and he has a piece of the Triforce. I was really expecting an explanation for that later in the game, especially after Ganondorf recognizes Link and Zelda at the beginning and mentions Rauru (I was so excited about this, it felt big). That's one thing I hope I can better explain in my story.

Btw in French malice is indeed called "rancœur" (rancor) and gloom is "miasmes" (miasma). I'm not sure the official reason for weapon durability in BotW was malice, but it could be a good way to explain it!

Haha the Zonai being evolved Remlits is a fun idea ^^

__

You're welcome! Yes something like Croifluances could work, though I prefer Confluances. It sounds closer to Crossflows so it could be a good idea! For Mipha it would be Cour Sainte Mipha (saint is masculine). Cour might not be the right word though, in French a "cour" is an open space enclosed/surrounded by buildings (more like a courtyard actually!). The French translation went with Parc Mipha, and I could also see something like Promenade.

Yes games centered around the non-Hylian races would be interesting. Though I think what I would love to see most in a future game is a Gerudo King that is not Ganondorf and is portrayed in a positive light.

OoT and MM are my favorites so I completely agree, I want to see something like that again. The subtext and depth of these games were unlike anything they did since, I really miss it ^^

Hi, sorry if this is a bit rude. 😅 I guess that I was just wondering. How would Jabul Waters, Zora Cove, & Crossflows Plaza be named in French?

I'm trying to give Jabul Waters an interesting name that works to go with my hc & I came up with "Jabuleaux." And Google Translate tells me that Crossflows Plaza would be Place des Flux Croisés. And, I'm seeing that Anse is the term to refer to a cove &, if that's true, then would Zora Cove be Zoranse? At the same time, somewhere else, it said that Anse actually means beach.

And, I believe that a town by a swamp would have cher, quier, bren, brin, or Hor- in it?

I'm sorry if this is weird... 😅

Hi! Don't worry it's not rude or weird at all! I offered to help and I'm happy to do so :D

Did you check the official French translations? I had a surprisingly hard time finding the French version of the map online so here's a screenshot I took myself:

Jabul Waters = Eaux de Jabule (this one only appears when I zoom out)

Zora Cove = Baie Zora

Crossflows Plaza = Place de l'Estuaire

In case you didn't know the Zelda Wiki often lists names for places or characters in various languages in the "Nomenclature" section of its pages. It's very helpful especially if you're searching for the original Japanese names. If we look at at the different names for Crossflows Plaza we can see that a literal translation from Japanese would be something like "Exchanging Place". I checked the Jisho dictionary and it seems to be an accurate translation, though "Place for Cultural Exchanges" would be more meaningful.

It's not exactly a good name in English so it makes sense that the localization team would come up with something like Crossflows Plaza instead, which in my opinion does a very good job of stating that this is both the place where the river meets the sea and where the two Zora tribes traditionally meet each other.

Other European languages all settled for variations of "Estuary Plaza" ("Place de l'Estuaire" in French), which is fine but looses the "cultural exchanges" aspect of both the original name and the English translation.

I've been trying to come up with a French translation of "Crossflows Plaza" but it's not that easy. To me "Place des Flots Croisés" or "Place Flots-Croisés" would sound better than "Place des Flux Croisés", but I still find it a bit weird ("flot" meaning flow, tide or stream). "La Croisée des Flots" is another option if you agree to get rid of Plaza/Place (it means "the intersection/junction of streams"), but I don't think it works very well as a name.

You could also mix words to create a name the same way it was done in English, something like "Place Croiseaux" (croiser/cross + eau/waters). If any of my French speaking followers is feeling inspired, please share your ideas! :)

(I just thought of "Place Cruciflot" and found it too funny not to mention 😆 maybe it sounds too much like crucifix)

In French we also have the word "confluence" that has the exact same meaning as it does in English: either the meeting of two rivers or a gathering of some kind. So to me the most obvious translation would be something like "Place des Confluences" or maybe "Place Confluence", as it would preserve the dual meaning, but it's not very fancy or creative. Maybe we could simply change the spelling to something like Place Konfluans, the same way "Village Côtier" (Seaside Village) is spelled "Village Kothié" (Seesyde Village). But it doesn't look like a French word anymore so I'm not sure that's something you'd like.

As for Jabuleaux, it can work but I prefer the official translation "Eaux de Jabule". Same thing for Zoranse, we would say "Anse Zora" or "Anse des Zora". The official French translation is "Baie Zora" (Zora Bay), which I think is more appropriate given the size of the sea inlet (in my understanding an anse/cove is a small baie/bay and isn't very deep). I think maybe it should have been bay in English as well instead of cove, but I might be wrong! Also I believe "anse" isn't used as often as "baie" and might be confusing for most people, so I would go with "Baie Zora".

I'm not sure where you found this information about swamps and town names? I didn't find anything to confirm it but I might not have looked in the right places.

French towns are often ancient and their names can derive from other languages such as Celtic, Occitan, Flemish, or regional dialects, so that's a very difficult question and I'm not sure I can give you a satisfying answer ^^

I still did a little search and found an Old French word for swamp, "palud" or "palu", that still appears in some town names such as La Palud-sur-Verdon, Saint-Pierre-la-Palud, Lapalud, etc. (today we say "marais" or "marécage"). You might be right about "bren", it could be something like muddy in Gallic.

There's also "vign" or "mign" (from Celtic), as in Mignéville or L��vignac, or l'Île de Migneaux on the Seine river (this one's in my city!).

Near where I grew up is a town named Hazebrouck, it literally means "hare swamp" (brouck/broek = swamp in Flemish). For a bit more French flavor you could maybe use -broucq or -breucq instead of -brouck.

I think the vast majority of French people have no clue about all of that (I didn't except for the last one and it's more Flemish than French), so I'd say don't oversweat it ;)

And that's all! I hope you'll find this helpful ^^

[s4ndg3m]

my bg3 character, sepher, who is of course a red dragonborn barbarian berzerker. initially i wanted to romance that vampire twink but instead lae'zel has romanced ME. (very politely adds polyamory mod to game)

[toytulini]

if you draw enough monster ocs, when you go back to drawing a human character, it feels like "sameface syndrome" everytime, by virtue of their face being. human.

[memento-morri-writes]

I've been thinking a lot about how Rook's reunion with his former mentor, Zara, is going to go, and since I can't predict what the DM is going to have her do or say, I can only dwell on what I know is going to happen. Which happens to include taking off the illusion ring that's been hiding his injuries from her. So have a snippet of the description I have planned for that moment:

tw for description of (mostly healed) injuries

He hesitates, twisting a ring on his finger. Looking at it more closely, she can tell it’s very finely crafted, and must have been very expensive. A large emerald is set into the band. Rook sighs, and pulls the ring off his finger in one quick motion.  Immediately she’s struck by the difference in his appearance as the illusion melts away. He looks awful. His warm, healthy skin fades to a dull and sickly grey. There’s huge bags under his deeply sunken eyes, and his cheeks are hollowed, as though they have been carved out by an overeager sculptor. He looks like he’s recently risen from the grave.  While he was thin before, now she can see his ribs under the skin, and his collarbones are exaggeratedly pronounce. Thin white lines left by dozens upon dozens of recently healed cuts are scattered across his body. On top of that, faded bruises cover most of his visible skin, a mottled mosaic of purple and yellow. They’re clearly days, maybe weeks old, and she can only begin to imagine what they must have looked like when fresh. Bandages are barely visible under his shirt, wrapping around his back, hinting at even more injuries.

[astro-is-a-bigot]

Hi! I assume this post is about us but reading back through our post (had to do this because of amnesia and wanting to recall exactly what I'd typed) and I realised that I had made a complete misstep in anger, encouraging "flooding his inbox and notifications with hatred" which is so non-specific and not helped by my follow-up statements making it seem as if I would be okay harassing Astro on the same level or even worse than what he is done. This is such a big mistake I will likely private that post - but I'm currently thinking about how I can do that without making it look like I'm erasing those actions.

Note that the following explanation doesn't excuse that, but I will use this to articulate my stance properly.

Like firstly... I completely forgot that death threats were a thing someone might send to Astro. Straight up. I don't know why. I was more thinking along the lines of, "you suck!!" or "get off the site!!" which are kind of mean but definitely nothing along the lines of wishing Astro death. If I had wanted that I would be out here advocating for doxxing-- Which is absolutely not what I want!! As I've been trying to articulate in my follow up posts, I want him to be deplatformed - specifically from Tumblr! Xe can go exist on Reddit for all I care, it's whatever.

And my follow up being, "wouldn't this be wishing violence on Astro?" was so brushed off in my response that, again, it did not come across well. But when it comes to harassment, there's often people who will try to make out like the actions of people banning someone and getting kind of mean towards them is on the same level as the harasser themselves - which completely ignores the context.

The reason sending a bigoted hate towards someone is not necessarily equivalent to sending hate judging someone's morals is - as I believe I've tried to articulate - the difference between upholding bigotry and dismantling it. So while there are lines you don't want to cross, I can't say I'm going to be sympathetic to a bigot if they get sent some mean messages. And this point can easily become frustrating to explain when in one breath people will state to victims "just block the harasser", and yet someone sending a mean message to the harasser themselves results in the critique "you shouldn't be doing that!!" I address this in this post with the following:

[Harassers] also like to define what is "being a good person" because they're betting on you holding yourself to that. They count on your good graces to make you complacent because they tell you, "you wouldn't want to stoop down to our level, would you?" But you know what happens when you don't let the shitty person define for you what being moral is? You get shit done.

In general, I also made the assumption that others would have the same restraint as what I do (I personally have Astro blocked and would never catch myself getting in a back and forth with xem), but that's not what most others do. They don't leave an ask stating, "get off the site" and proceed to block Astro, report him, etc - he insults the other to bait them into starting a reblog chain, and they often fall for it. That is absolutely the kind of behaviour that feeds a troll. (Which I wanna note I still blame Astro for that because I'm not here to victim blame people. If someone gets emotional after being misgendered and sexually harassed, I don't see it as being "on them" for being baited. Especially since it's never okay to sexually harass someone, even if they were "asking for it". Ew.)

So that's a very long explanation of everything, but I hope it clarifies my views. And if you need further elaboration I will provide it. But I'm very sorry to everyone for being so aggressive and completely blundering my initial posts. I hope that doesn't stop others from seeing my point and helping to kick Astro off the site because, it must be said, the one thing that absolutely stops harassers from engaging with their behaviour is when you take away the means to do it...

So yes, deplatforming is very practical behaviour that does not feed the trolls! And if that requires making documents or blogs archiving bad behaviour and calling for action, that is not (contrary to how it appears) "feeding" the behaviour. It is, in fact, necessary to communicate and coordinate as a community to counteract harassment.

friendly reminder that no, death threats are not okay. no, not even to someone that "deserves it". who the fuck are you to determine that. you are not doing some Good Thing even if you see them as a Bad Person. that's a real slippery slope. it's not gonna make them want to change, either, bc why would you change for someone who's saying you should die. this is also about telling people to kill themselves btw. and don't try to justify it bc there's genuinely no way to that doesn't circle back to "it's okay when i do it" and/or "it was justified bc they're Bad™". hope this helps. 👍🏾

[abyssalreds]

gege needs to retire his character death note and hand it off to asagiri i swear 😭

[theokusgallery]

What do you think Nick and Sunny's ethnicities are?

I've always somewhat headcanonned Sunny as Japanese-American, and Basil as having at least one European parent, both living in Europe, and an American grandmother. I have no idea where that second headcanon comes from. It's probably me projecting my own French-ness onto my favorite little blorbo -- another explanation is that OMORI seems to be pretty explicitely set in the USA, but Basil's parents are said to travel frequently and Sunny's never seen them in his life... and since it's easier to travel in Europe in my (limited) experience, my brain might've just made the association. Sunny being Japanese-American is a pretty popular headcanon because of his chara-design so I don't feel like I have to explain that one.

Anyway, they both live in France for plot reasons.

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[iraprince]

gonna show u guys a little opalescent highlight hack i threw together today

rainbow gradient above your main figure (i usually have all my main figure folders/layers in one big folder, so i can clip gradient maps + adjustments to it!). liquify tool to push the colors around a bit. STAY WITH ME I KNOW IT LOOKS STUPID RN I'M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS

THEN: set it to add/glow (or the equivalent in ur drawing program), lower the opacity a bit, and apply a layer mask. then u can edit the mask with whatever tools you like to create rainbow highlights!!

in this case i'm mostly using the lasso fill tool to chip out little facets, but i've also done some soft airbrushing to bring in larger rainbow swirls in some areas. it's pretty subtle here, but you can see it better when i remove the gradient map that's above everything, since below i'm working in greyscale:

more granular rambling beneath the cut!

u could also just do this with a brush that has color jitter, but what i like about using layer masks for highlight/shading layers is how simple and reversible it makes everything. i can use whatever brushes i want, and erasing/redoing things is super low stakes, which is great when i often approach this stuff with a super trial-and-error approach.

example: have u ever thrown a gradient w multiple colors over an entire piece, set it to multiply etc, and then tried to erase it away to carve out shadows/highlights? it's super frustrating, bc it looks really good, but if u erase something and then change ur mind later, u basically would have to like. recreate the gradient in the area u want to cover up again. that's how i used to do things before figuring out layer masks!! but masking basically creates a version of this with INFINITE undo bc u can erase/re-place the base layer whenever u want.

anyway, back to rambling about this specific method:

i actually have TWO of these layers on this piece (one with the liquified swirls shown above, and another that's just a normal concentric circle gradient with much broader stripes) so i can vary the highlights easily as needed.

since i've basically hidden the rainbow pattern from myself, the colors in each brushstroke i make will kind of be a surprise, which isn't always great -- but easily fixable! for example, if i carve out a highlight and it turns out the rainbow pattern in that area is way too stripey, i can just switch from editing the mask to editing the main layer and blur that spot a bit.

also, this isn't a full explanation of the overall transparency effect in these screencaps! there's other layer stuff happening below the rainbow highlights, but the short version is i have all this character's body parts in different folders, each with their own lineart and background fill, and then the fill opacity is lowered and there's multiply layers clipped to that -- blah blah it's a whole thing. maybe i'll have a whole rundown on this on patreon later. uhhh i think that's it tho! i hope u get something useful out of this extremely specific thing i did lmao

[talaok]

Sunbathing

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

Summary: you’ve decided to sunbathe topless, or as your husband Joel would put it, you’ve decided to torture him.

Warnings: needy Joel, kind of sub!joel, unprotected p in v, premature ejaculation, creampie, oral sex (f receiving), come play.

a/n: i sunbathed topless for the first time and well this wrote itself

"You've seen my boobs before babe" A soft laugh bubbled up your throat as you turned your head left.

He wasn't even pretending not to be staring.

"Not like this"

You smiled, "what does that even mean?"

"not out... here"

You lowered your sunglasses to see him better, tilting your head to ask for further explanation

Yes you were outside, by the pool of the beautiful summer house you'd rented, but you didn't get how that made any difference, they were the same boobs he'd seen hours prior in your bed.

"I'm not used to not doing anything about them"

"ah" you hummed "is it that hard?"

You didn't even need to look at the smirk painting his face to regret your choice of words.

"yeah babydoll, it's real hard"

You only needed to lower your gaze a little to asses his statement.

"You're incorrigible"

"And you're torturin' me darlin'"

"How am I torturing you?" you laughed "I'm just taking advantage of the privacy we have to get a good tan"  

"and besides, I seem to remember how hard it is for you to see me with the whole bikini on too"

He sat up, the sunbed squeaking as he faced you.

"It ain't my fault if my wife's so pretty it hurts"

"you get so dramatic when you're horny" you chuckled, rolling your eyes.

He smiled, letting his gaze wander all over your body for a good minute, before getting back at your face

"nothin's gonna happen is it?" his tone was full of hope nonetheless

"no baby" you shook your head

He sighed, dramatically letting his head fall to his chest

"I'll have a swim then"

"have fun honey"

__ __ __

"darlin'?"

Not even ten minutes had passed, and that scene from the Barbie movie with the "Ken! Go for a walk or something" line couldn't not pop into your head.

"yes?"

He was standing right next to your sunbed, dripping wet and blocking out the sun.

"don't ya need sunscreen?"

A soft smile pulled at your lips.

Ten minutes, that's how long it took for him to come up with that.

"I put it on already"

He wasn't gonna give up, not on the first try.

"how long ago?"

"an hour, I think"

"the sun's real strong now doll," he said, drying his hair with a towel before throwing it on his bed "I think it's best if you put some more on… I can do it for you if you don't feel like it"

You chuckled, looking up at him, but he stayed in character, continuing to look oh-so worried about your safety.

"Somehow I knew that offer was coming"

"'m just worried about my wife, 's all"

he'd crouched down, taking your hand in his

"mh-mh" you hummed, sarcasm tracing your tone

"can't have you get sunburt now, can we?"

"no, we can't" you played along, smiling at him

"'f course" he murmured, leaning down to leave a soft kiss on your lips as he grabbed the sunscreen.

"I'm so lucky to have such a caring husband"

"I'm the only lucky one babydoll"

He gave you one more kiss, before he leaned away and got to work.

He squeezed some cream into his hand, but to your surprise, his hands didn't land where you'd expected them to-

Only his eyes were betraying him. They were only on one, or actually two things even when it was your legs he was massaging.

The coldness of the cream and his hands felt good against your warm body, so much you couldn't help but hum appreciatively.

"feels good?"

"yeah baby" you breathed as his hands made their way to your thighs.

It always amazed you how hands so big, rough, and strong were able to be so gentle and soft on you.

You couldn't deny the shivers running up your body when his fingers reached your inner thighs, getting close to your core.

"what's that?" your husband was smirking like a cat, as he dedicated himself much too long on that spot.

"I didn't say anything"

If he thought this was gonna work, he was wrong. It was too hot, and you were too relaxed to do what he so obviously wanted to do... although you both knew how much you liked seeing him desperate...

He still didn't touch your boobs, no, next were your shoulders, then your arms, and then... when he felt on the brink of exploding, when he couldn't stop himself anymore, he squeezed a generous amount of sunscreen in his hands, and oh so gently started massaging your tits.

He couldn't stop a soft groan from fleeing his lips.

It felt amazing- of course it felt amazing, but you didn't wanna give him the satisfaction, and this was mostly for him, not for you, so your eyes remained closed as you pretended like it was nothing.

But that only lasted so long, because Joel could endure just about 30 seconds of that before he was bending down, and his mouth was sucking your nipple.

"Joel!" you gasped, your eyes snapping open just in time to see him climb onto you to straddle your waist, and then go right back to groping and licking and sucking your nipples like it was his life long duty.

"baby you're all wet" you tried complaining, but the smile on your lips was everlasting.

He looked so damingly cute like this, looking up at you with those big doe eyes as he worshipped your tits.

"so are you"

And yeah so what if you were- there's only so much a woman can do in front of this.

A soft laugh spilled from your lips as your hand went to find a place in his hair, your back arching to offer more of yourself to him.

"I don't even know how good it is for you to be licking sunscreen"

The look he gave you made it very clear he didn't give one single fuck.

And just when you were about to protest again, his teeth had gently bit your nipple, and a moan had spilled from your lips.

he took that as an incentive to go further, his hand slowly sliding down your belly, between your bodies, until it was seeping underneath your bikini bottoms.

"babe-" you stopped him, your voice breathless

His hand stopped on your mound as he groaned in frustration.

You could feel his rock-hard cock on you since the moment he straddled you- the man was desperate.

"please doll" he murmured against the soft skin of your chest in between kisses "Gimmie something-anything” he pleaded “Have mercy on your poor husband"

Your response was mixed between a laugh and a moan

"I can take care of you if you want"

He shook his head, his teeth grazing your nipple "Need to feel you darlin’"

Again, a soft giggle rumbled from your chest

"’S too hot to have sex here baby"

His hand had gotten out of your bikini to reach the other on your waist.

"the pool- the ground? fuck- anywhere you want sugar, just tell me where"

His clothed hard-on was rubbing against your core now, and fuck but once again you’d succumbed to Joel and his goddamn irresistible neediness.

"bring me back into the house"

It was like he’d been waiting his whole life to hear those words.

In a haze of kisses and lust, he’d picked you up, letting you hold onto him by wrapping your arms and legs around his body as he hurriedly walked into the house.

He didn’t make it far enough to encounter a single surface- and perhaps that was because he’d stopped looking and placed you against the wall the moment he’d passed the threshold.

His mouth was on your tits again, his cock was out, and his fingers had pulled your bikini to the side.

He said nothing as he slowly began entering you, the only sounds in the room being your moan as you threw your head back, and the groan he emitted, muffled by your skin.

“Oh fuck” you cried once he bottomed out.

Your husband was a very gifted man.

"'m not gonna last"

He sounded like the mere act of talking was taking all of his energy, and yet he was thrusting up into you like it was a matter of life or death.

"'s ok"

"I've been hard since you took your top off" he murmured, his breath fanning over your chest “you-you-jesus”

Your left hand passed through his hair, softly soothing him.

“‘S alright baby, don’t wait for me”

“You’re too fuckin’-” he tried to speak, but he was interrupted by yet another groan

“What?” you taunted him, a smirk pulling at your lips “what is it baby?”

His eyes were wide with desperation as he looked up at you, as his mouth stole languid kisses from your tits.

“Too hot- too goddamn perfect”

You bit down a grin at that, still stroking his hair

“I love you baby” you breathed, his cock reaching the deepest, most fucking amazing spot inside you in the meantime.

The moment those words left your lips your husband was fucked- the only words he was able to mutter were a series of -fuckshitgoddamn- before he inevitably reached his peak, filling you up with rope after rope of come that never seemed to end.

He remained like that for a little while, buried inside you, eyes closed, mouth still connected with your boob, until you left a gentle kiss on the crown of his head, and he woke up from his heavenly trance.

He let out a soft groan as he slipped out of you, and took his time letting you down.

You were smiling at him with that soft smile that melted his insides right up, and he couldn’t help but lean in and kiss it, kiss you like you were a soft delicate thing that he was scared of breaking.

“I love you more” he promised, kissing you again, even if you were smiling.

“Feel better now?”

You said it like he was a kid with a stomach bug, and he couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Yeah darlin’” he murmured against your mouth “thank you”

“You don’t have to thank me” you laughed, but he was already shaking his head

“Yes I do”

And without further explanation, he’d dropped to his knees.

He slid your bikini to the side once again, looking up at you with only adoration in his eyes.

“Baby you don’t have to” you tried to reason with him, but his mouth was already latched to your clit, and your hand had already flown to his hair.

He remained on your bud long enough to make you desperate, and then he started focusing on your whole core, his tongue lapping between your folds with what could only be described as feral hunger.

His come was everywhere, and yet he didn’t care, he was happy tasting the mix of your fluids, because that’s how Joel was- a nasty nasty man- only for you.

So much so that you felt his tongue enter your hole, simulating what he was doing just minutes before with his cock.

“Fuck-babe-”

Your moans were breathless, more like whines, like prayers.

You were looking at him as he was looking at you and Jesus... He looked fucking heavenly.

His hair all tussled from your fingers, his blown-out pupils, his never-stopping tongue-

“Joel” you cried, but he didn’t dare speak a word as he went back to your clit.

“Shit-baby- god!”

You had to tighten your hold on his hair as your orgasm crept up your body- and it was as you heard him groan with pleasure, as he sucked your clit into his mouth like a man starved, that it all came crumbling down, and you felt your body light on fire as your climax took over.

You were moaning and crying into the air for a good minute before you were sane again.

Only Joel hadn’t stopped eating you out for a single second, and even then, he looked like he had no intention of doing so

“Baby-baby” you whimpered, having to literally pull him away from your core.

He was smiling like a kid, and you couldn’t help but follow suit.

He put your bikini back in place, and then stood up, his hands lingering on your waist

“You’re crazy”

He couldn’t help but kiss you before answering,

“You make me”

[abandonedandforgottentimes]

Many of the younger ccs speaking up about Wilbur's manipulation is INCREDIBLY concerning, and I don't think they'll be the last. I think it's also a big indication that it happened to Tommy too, and that he'll take a while to respond. People demanding an immediate response need to remember that he was likely a victim of it too, he just may not have been aware of it.

I mean, Wilbur's ADMITTED he relied on Tommy for his mental health when he was still a minor. That is NOT something adults should ever do and it has always been odd to me. It also makes it very hard for the minor involved to leave the friendship, since they see themselves as responsible for the older person. I don't think I need to really go into how unhealthy that sort of thing is, it isn't an uncommon occurrence and lot of people will have a better explanation than me. But it is something to keep in mind, that Tommy may feel responsible or have been groomed to excuse the behavior.

The library stream is another example of the manipulation, and I'm surprised no one is talking about it. Tommy literally talked about how uncomfortable he was at Wilbur's house. It was cold, he had no blanket, he didn't want to keep staying there, he would rather be out in public at night in a strange place. Then Wilbur just shows up out of nowhere and tells Tommy he's misremembering/being dramatic and pretty much shuts him up, gets him to stop talking shit about him. Everyone's exasperation with Tommy in the situation (being a minor alone and uncomfortable and uncertain of what to do, far from home with nowhere to go), helped Wilbur pull Tommy back in and convince him to go back to his house, especially since it was passed off as Wilbur being caring.

It was obvious to me during the stream that Tommy was telling the truth and Wilbur was the one lying, but I figured he was just being defensive because he didn't want all that online. Now we know that he had a LOT more to hide about his living situation that he didn't want being spilled, and manipulators/abusers don't tend to like it when someone goes and starts talking about the truth. They want to downplay it as much as possible, and Wilbur showing up in person to shut Tommy up and make fun of him for not wanting to stay with him, make it more lighthearted, is incredibly telling and I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone point that out.

There are so many other things I found odd throughout the years that finally have a proper explanation to them, but that's just a few examples. I'm not going to get too much further into it. Wilbur isn't who we should be focusing on, I just needed to get that out to move on from it.

I do think pointing out that Tommy has openly been manipulated is important because it may cause him to take a while to respond openly to all this while he processes. If Wilbur treated so many of his ex-friends badly it's safe to assume he did it to all of them, and we need to give everyone involved time to stop and think about the situation. A lot of people want Tommy to respond immediately, but he will need time to do that and it's only fair we give him the space to do that properly.

I also think it is so, so incredible that Shelby has given so many people the space and bravery to come forward. I believe there will be more people speaking up soon, they just need time. Support her and other victims!

[chunksworld]

Role Model

NewJeans Hanni x Male Reader | (Tags: Smut)

A/N: A sequel to Double Fantasy. Thank you Kaede for the beta read as always.

————————

“Never have I ever…..” Danielle looks around the room with suspense, tapping her palms on her thighs as if to mimic the sound of a drum roll. You make your way back to the circle and sit down with the rest of your friend group, another can of beer in hand as you impatiently wait for the blonde to speak,  “…..made out with someone here!” You almost spit out the beer you were about to take a swig of but managed to keep your composure. You catch Minji staring at you for a split second before looking away immediately. It’s great that you’re both intoxicated already because there’s no other explanation for how your cheeks flare up. Jeers and whistles follow Danielle’s remark and you can only be thankful that some of your friends do raise their hands up, particularly some of the couples sitting with the rest of the group.

It’s only been a month since you and Minji have made it official—a decision you two contemplated even after you already took her out on a date (and despite having plenty of sex during that time). Sure, hooking up is one thing but committing to a relationship would be a venture much riskier than anything you have ever done especially since you are both graduating in a few months. How would everyone react when they find out that the two people that hate each other with their guts are fucking each other like wild animals at every given opportunity? Well, you two got your answer much quicker than expected when her best friend who also happens to be her next door neighbor, Hanni, caught you leaving Minji’s place way past midnight as you usually do—and this wouldn’t be that big of an issue as you were just about to put your cap and mask back on but she already saw your face as you two opened your doors at the exact same time.

It took everything in her power not to scream in shock as everyone else was already asleep at the time which is something you’ve always thought to be the case. It didn’t take her that long to put two and two together and everything was a blur and you soon found yourself sitting on Minji’s cum-stained bed having to be interrogated by an obviously flabbergasted Hanni Pham at 2:30 AM. Despite her modest stature, no one else looked as intimidating (and cute) as her in her pajamas. At least the scent of sex was quickly taken care of but she couldn’t hide her disgust at the sight of your combined juices on her best friend’s bed. She quickly looked past it though because her burning questions were more important and you two had no choice but to come clean, explaining everything that’s transpired over these past few months. With every revelation, her jaw seemed to be dropping lower and lower to the ground. 

Everything was a bombshell revelation for her; the fact that you two were having sex right next door and that she didn’t hear any of it, the fact that you two pretended to despise each other. But what seemed to shock her the most was that you two are actually dating. It took her a while to process everything—and by “a while” I mean she sat there opposite you two in silence like you’ve just been told off by a very disappointed parent for thirty excruciating minutes (in some ways, Hanni was indeed sort of the parent of the friend group). Thankfully, she agreed to keep her mouth shut about everything and very sternly told you to wear protection in the future because she “doesn’t want to have to babysit yet” to which you obliged. It was peaceful again after that but you knew you had to be more careful in the future because the rest of her friends will absolutely not keep something like this a secret.

“Wanna leave this party already? Can’t wait to ride that thick cock.”

A text, and it’s from the woman sitting directly in front of you—your girlfriend. She didn’t even need to send the text because you could already see in your eyes how badly she wants you. She’s been eye-fucking you for the past hour and it’s absolutely making you hot and bothered. She might as well pounce you in front of everyone if she could. It’s a side effect of her being drunk and with how she’s constantly readjusting her shorts, it’s obvious that Minji wants this night to end with her getting fucked into her bed again. A request that you’ll gladly oblige since this game is already starting to bore you anyways.

“Sure.”

To avoid any suspicion, she leaves first after bidding farewell to everyone. Followed by you twenty minutes later after “accidentally” spilling beer all over yourself. It was a quick getaway like clockwork, having to excuse yourselves plenty of times already from group gatherings just to satisfy your intense libido. It’s a great thing that Danielle’s place is only a five minute drive from Minji’s dorm because you can’t wait to get out of your pants. You excitedly made your way up to her room, disguise and all. Knocking on the door, you expected her to pull you in by your neck and makeout with you but what greeted you was her and Hanni sitting on the bed instead. What the fuck? There was certainly tension in the atmosphere—and silence? This is peculiar; it’s always pandemonium whenever those two best friends hang out—whether it’s Minji teasing Hanni for butchering her Korean or Hanni begging her not to do anything stupid. “Oh, you’re finally here.” Speaking of which, your girlfriend walks over to you and grabs you by your hand.

“Remember when I told you that we have an open relationship?”

Right. 

When you two were establishing the ground rules for your relationship, she made it clear that you were free to see other people. It definitely surprised you as you didn’t think Minji was that type of woman. But then again, you didn’t think she would be so willing to get dicked down by the person she hated the most and yet here you are. Of course you complied with her request. It’s the 21st century after all, so who cares about traditional dating norms? Plus, it’s not like she doesn’t have friends that you’d just like to get to know better and the freedom she gives is a welcome one. But that also meant she’s free to fuck around with other guys, something that bothered you for a while but eventually came to terms with. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Hanni wants you for the night. Sorry I couldn’t tell you through text earlier, didn’t wanna be rude or anything.” How can she be so casual about the entire thing? Especially when this is actually the first time the rule is being put to use. And for it to happen so early into your time together astounds you. Has she been dying to share you with her friends even when you were just casual fuckbuddies? Perhaps, but that’s a question you’ll continue to ask for another day. “You’re not actually about to turn her down are you? Don’t even lie and tell me that you haven’t thought about fucking her.” She’s not exactly wrong and as if she reads your mind, “She’s not a virgin if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Minji! I-I don’t want to force him. I just had a crappy first-time with my ex and you always talk about how good he is…..” Hanni’s face turns a darker shade of red with every word spoken and you would’ve almost called her “cute” if it wasn’t for the circumstance. Minji was right, she tends to babble whenever she’s nervous. “If he’s not okay with it I can just—“

“I accept.” You would have to be insane to refuse such an offer. It’s Hanni Pham out of all people. She probably has just as many admirers, maybe even more than Minji. To say that you haven’t let your thoughts run wild whenever she wears an outfit that exposes all of her prominent features would be a big lie. Just like the outfit she’s got on now; a white crop top and shorts, with the varsity jacket the only thing preventing her from exposing more skin. Fuck, she looks so tempting. You really have to get out of your pants sooner or later because the way Minji riled you up earlier isn’t calming your senses anytime soon.“Is there anything specific you want me to do? I’m pretty sure Minji’s already told you how wild we can be.”

“I want you to teach me how to have sex—well, I want you to teach me how to have sex. Properly.” There’s a glimmer of desperation and want in her eyes, her eyes telling you what she can not say directly. Hanni is, and forever will be, your girlfriend’s best friend. But with how tonight is shaping up to be, you might just want to keep coming back for more. “Let’s just take it slow, if that’s fine with you.”

“Don’t worry! He’ll take care of you, right?” Of course. You’ll have to ease her into your world—into you and Minji’s world. Your girlfriend always loved to lead the way every time you fucked her but a change in dynamic with Hanni’s got you even more riled up than you already are. Minji wraps an arm around your shoulder and the way she casually hands you off to her best friend as if you’re a puppy is extremely astounding. When she mentioned that she wants to keep things open between you two, you didn’t think it would include you taking on the task of teaching her friends such a sinful and dangerous act. But it’s not like you’re complaining, one glance over to the short but petite woman in front of you is enough to make you salivate. She takes your silence as an affirmative and is already dragging you two out of her room. “Great! I already placed a condom in your backpocket.” You immediately reach for the back of your pants and sure enough, the aluminum-wrapped piece of contraption is there.

“Have fun! And try not to make too much noise please, I’ve got an exam tomorrow I need to study for okay? Love you both!” A flying kiss is sent to your direction before slamming the door in your face. And despite the confidence you exceeded just mere minutes before, now you find yourself on your backfoot. It’s suffocating, it’s tense, and you don’t know whether you want to just drag her to her room and pin her against the wall or if you want to show some restraint like she told you to. Maybe it’s because you’ve never really known how to take it slow: in life and in bed. Everything is rushed, as if there’s a billion things that need to be done. Maybe things can change for one night only. But Hanni is already one-step ahead of you, gently dragging you by your sleeve towards her room. Her room smells nice, lights turned way down low to a dark shade of red, and her sheets folded up nicely. She notices you scanning her room and before you could get the chance to tease her about being so prepared you find yourself crashing on her bed with her on top.

Excitedly, you lean close to her face to capture her lips but a hand pushes you gently away from her. “S-Sorry, no kissing.” As if to not deflate your ego she quickly interjects, “But you can leave hickeys if you want instead.” That sounds good enough for you, kissing her would bring a whole host of new feelings that you definitely don’t want to explore any time soon so you opt for her irresistible neck instead. She strips away her varsity jacket, leaving her in just her crop top and shorts that are starting to feel warmer by the second. This exposes more skin for you to taste and you dive lower down to her clavicles and collarbones, making sure to leave red marks. Her hands aren’t idle, creeping slowly underneath your shirt as soft moans start to come out of her lips. You eventually take over, flipping your positions so that you’re now on top of her. You find both of her hands and intertwine them with yours, pushing them above her head as you devour her body and leave as much of it red as possible.

“I want to see more of you.” Hanni finally says something after a few minutes and you obey her commands. Your beer-soaked shirt comes off first and joins her varsity jacket on the carpeted floor, Hanni’s eyes immediately darting towards the expanse of your upper body and her wandering hands drag themselves towards your shoulders then down your chest. She’s eyeing you like a piece of meat to devour the same way you are doing to her. You don’t give her much time to ogle however as your lips find their way to her neck once again. Even biting her lips does very little to muffle her moans as you continue to leave mark after mark on her collarbones, drinking in the way she calls for you, yearns for you. A hand makes its way down to her toned tummy and you almost apologize with the way she hisses, “C-Cold….” She mutters, eyes closing and tongue sticking ever so slightly out. You really, desperately want to have a taste of her lips at this very moment and to have them slotted against yours but rules are rules. Even though the way they glisten under the warm, red lights of her room makes it extremely tempting to do so. You distract yourself, you have to. One hand is already fumbling with the straps of her undershirt while the other makes its way further down to her thighs, massaging and appreciating their softness and fullness. The motion causes her to jerk and slightly arch her back off of the bed and you immediately take a step back. Shit, were you being too hasty?

“Sorry, tell me if I’m moving too fast for your liking.” 

You take deep breaths when you pull away as you desperately try to keep your hormones in check and be a gentleman for once but still eyeing her almost naked body in front of you. Hanni shakes her head and wraps her arms around your neck to bring you closer to her again, burying your face on the crook of her neck as you inhale her floral scent. “It’s fine. It’s just—it’s just that it’s been a while since I’ve had a guy touch me down there. Her nails slowly drag their way down your back as you place soft pecks on her neck. “You can touch me wherever you want, I’m yours for tonight.” You hate the way a guttural groan escapes out of your mouth, having been given the green light to completely let loose. You don’t wait this time, yanking her undershirt to reveal a pair of soft and round breasts, perfect for her body size. The absence of a bra surprises you but it’s a welcome one at that. Meanwhile, you work on expertly unbuttoning her denim shorts and they’re thrown off somewhere in the room with hunger and you don’t miss the wet patch already forming on her panties. Interestingly, she doesn’t close her thighs out of embarrassment. In fact, there’s a smile. As if she knows she’s got you right where she wants you.

“Fuck, Hanni. I’m gonna treat you so good tonight. That I can assure you.” You carefully place a pillow behind her, instructing her to sit by the headboard as you remove the final obstruction. It’s at this moment that it truly hits you that Hanni Pham is in front of you, completely naked. Forget winning the lottery, the fact that your girlfriend is allowing you to fuck her friends is a price worth more than anything on this planet. For all the times you imagined how she’d look underneath her clothes, it still doesn’t beat the sight of the actual thing. The way she is curvy and thick at the same time in the most perfect combination possible; she may only be nineteen but she’s certainly grown into a full-fledged woman—one that’s made all of the guys crazy for her. You don’t even hesitate to spread her legs wide, her thighs already soaked when you make your way up to drink in as much of her essence as you possibly can. She’s already quivering under your touch but your strong arms keep her in her place as you continue to taste as much of Hanni Pham. But nothing compares when you finally stick your tongue out and take an experimental lick of her folds, a finger expertly playing with her clit to increase her pleasure.

Hanni is biting her lips so hard that you’re sure it’s bleeding already. You would’ve told her that it’s okay to moan freely because she’s not that loud to begin with but when you start to lick more hungrily and aggressively, plans quickly change. She grabs a pillow to cover her face and stifle her moans, and it’s fortunate that she did so because the sound she makes when you finally stick your tongue inside of her is loud enough for Minji to definitely hear. Knowing her, she will be proud of how well you are eating Hanni out like it’s your last meal. It’s truly heaven right now though, the way she tastes, the way she sounds, and the way her thighs are about to crush your head that you can’t help but reach down to your sweatpants and boxers and pull them down just enough to reveal your aching cock, slowly stroking yourself as precum slowly drips out onto her bed. But tonight is about her and you want to make sure that you’re doing a great job so you don’t even care that your face is drenched with her essence already. You begin to alternate between your finger and tongue, an act that causes her to take exasperated breaths and silent moans as her mouth opens wide. “Cum for me, Pham. I wanna hear you.”

It’s clear that she loves being told what to do because at your command, she starts getting tighter and tighter around your fingers and tongue—her pussy throbbing wildly. So much so that she’s writhing and clinging to the sheets so hard they’re surely going to be ripped off the bed soon. “Hmph! C-Cumming!” It’s all you hear from underneath her pillows when she grabs your hair by the fistful and pushes you closer into her, allowing you to drive your fingers deeper inside her. Thirty seconds. That is all it took for her to come completely undone, arching her sweaty body completely off of her bed and to moan your name shamelessly out loud. Now, you’re really hoping that everyone else is deep asleep because that wasn’t silent at all. Not that you’re going to complain, if everyone wants to know how good the popular girl on campus is being treated, let them. Your face is even more drenched at this point and you are just lapping up every single drop of her juices as she recovers from her mindblowing orgasm. You pull away, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand then proceed to lay down beside her. There’s a few fleeting minutes of silence and you’re more than happy to stop here for the night if it’s already too much for her but clearly Hanni is not done yet (which is honestly a great thing for you because you don’t want all of your cum to end up on the shower tiles instead).

Just like what you did to her, she instructs you to sit by the headboard as she crawls her way towards you like a cat. “I wanna return the favor.” It’s no surprise that you are already leaking with precum, your cock swollen and throbbing the minute Hanni pulls your sweatpants and boxers together down. It’s been a while since you’ve had sex with Minji due to how busy you are and you could really use some relieving of tension down there. An audible gasp can be heard from her at the sight of your length, probably wondering how it manages to fit inside her best friend—your girlfriend. She grabs a hair tie off her wrist to turn her hair into a ponytail then uses a finger to swipe at the precum continuing to drip out of your cockhead. You don’t know if she’s teasing you but that look of satisfaction on her face as she brings that finger inside her mouth like she’s eating ice cream is downright erotic. “Need that mouth on my cock, Hanni. Please.” You may be the one in charge but she’s got you wrapped around her fingers much like Minji does at this very moment. Once done with her “snack”, she forms a fist around your cock, beginning to pump you at a leisurely pace and now you’re the one closing your eyes and groaning her name

Hanni scans your expressions to find the perfect pace and soon, she’s fondling your balls as well. Are you sure she doesn’t know how to have proper sex? Because the heavenly touch of her fingers and the way she’s cupping your heavy balls suggests that she wants you to explode all over her face even though you want to save it somewhere else. Now she’s dictating the pace and before you can tell her to slow it down a little, lowers her head down to your cock and slowly but surely behind to take you inside her mouth inch by inch. It looks like if there's one thing her ex taught her, it’s how to give a blowjob because her gag reflex is essentially nonexistent as she takes you all the way to the back of her throat. The feeling is electrifying and numbing both at once; her mouth is nice and warm and cozy—a toe-curling experience that can only be described as fucking amazing. 

“Your mouth takes cock so well, shit.” She hums with your cock still inside her mouth, forming a vacuum to increase your pleasure and another groan of her name leaves your mouth. You really want to facefuck her now and have her mouth overflowing with cum, the imagery causing you to throb continuously inside her and you will have to regretfully pull her away from you soon before it gets messy. It only takes a while before a burst of precum inside her is what finally leads you to leave the confines of her mouth before it’s all too late. As much as those lips of hers look great glazed with a load of yours, she deserves better. One last kiss of your tip before she gets up on her knees and you’re noticing her thighs glistening much more than before. “I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I’ll ask for your services.” That you have to agree with, though you find it interesting how she’s making it sound like you are her male escort. Again, not that you’re complaining. “Now, fuck me will you?”

You quickly search your sweatpants for the condom, hurriedly ripping the packaging and placing it on your drenched cock before walking back to the edge of the bed where Hanni is sitting. “Right, so how do you want me?” You stand proudly in front of her, your cock clearly showing where it wants to be: inside her. While she contemplates, you stroke your cock back to hardness which wasn’t difficult considering her naked sight in front of you. She doesn’t say anything else but instead makes you sit on the edge of the bed like her. She then walks over to straddle your lap, and you don’t even have the opportunity to ask her what she’s planning when her tight heat is already sinking down on your cock. That action is enough for her to drop her head onto your shoulder as she tries to get acclimated to the size and feeling of your cock inside her. “Fucking hell, are you sure you’re not a virgin?” It wouldn’t be surprising if she lied to you all this time because not even eating her out and fingering her is enough to loosen her up—or maybe you’re just too big for her small and petite body. Either way, you needed some time to recover as well. Think about something else because the way she’s grinding her hips on your cock is downright heavenly. It’s only fortunate that there’s a thin layer of rubber in between you two in case your orgasm comes without any warning because she’s clearly an expert at this too. Do you even need to teach her anything, really?

“Y-You’re bigger than my ex! Didn’t think—fuck—didn’t think dicks can get this large.” They do, especially when it’s her that’s being fucked but you’re so lost into your own pleasures that you forget to respond. You’re not one to accept and respond to compliments well, especially when a beautiful woman is bouncing on your cock and using you as her personal dildo so you keep your mouth shut. Despite your size, Hanni eventually does get used to it because she’s slowly transitioning from grinding into bouncing when she holds on to your shoulders for support. And you can’t help but stare at the way her tits jiggle mesmerizingly in rhythm every time she comes down hard on your cock. Since she’s already given you a green light to have your way on her body, you lean down to capture her left nipple on your mouth while fondling the other. That action causes her to clench tighter around your cock and it only encourages you to suck on her tits harder, tongue swirling around her nipple. You repeat this motion with her right nipple to make sure it receives the attention it deserves. You just can’t get enough of her because even when you’re done with her breasts you’re placing kisses and licking her everywhere, each acreage of porcelain skin is marked by your kisses and you’re going to make sure that she has a hard time covering it up tomorrow.

You didn’t know when exactly it happened but your thrusts now elicit a strong reaction from her, nails taking down your back and leaving scratches that will surely sting once you get in the shower later but you must’ve hit a spot that not even her ex or her dildos could reach because she’s downright screaming and having to bury herself on your neck to lower down the volume. Quickly taking advantage of this, you start thrusting upwards in response to her bounces and she’s basically cursing and moaning your name by this point as her sweaty body clings on to you. 

“Tell me if you’re gonna cum, Hanni. I’ll make sure to give you the best one you ever had.” A whisper to her contrasting loud moans as you leave kisses on the side of her head and eventually, her forehead. No verbal response but you can feel her nod against your shoulders and that’s when you knew it was time to bring it home. You wrap your arms around her waist tightly and try to hit that spot again and again. Cries of pleasure reverberates around her tiny room and she’s shivering against you as her orgasm overtakes her again. A much stronger orgasm that has her pussy squeezing tightly around your cock but you manage to hold on despite dying to cum inside her.

You hold on to her arms to prevent her from falling backwards, patting her back gently and fixing any disheveled hair caused by the mess. “D-Did you cum, too?” A shameful ‘no’ leaves your lips and you’re scared that she’ll think that she’s not a good fuck, that you were just forcing everything you were doing for the past thirty minutes when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Hanni pulls away from her neck to look at you in surprise, then it hits her. “You want to cum in my pussy, don’t you? Fine, I’ll just take a morning pill.” You’re glad Minji briefed her already, because the one place you don’t want your cum to end up in is a twenty dollar condom. If it was quick for you to put the condom on then it’s even quicker to take it off as you briefly get her off of you. Her slick has caused it to shrink around your cock but it doesn’t matter as you snap it off and throw it in the trash. Pull her down to your lap again, this time it is easy to sink her back down to your cock and you quickly get to fucking.

The lack of latex makes for an extreme sensation that has you moaning and groaning as you fuck her for the second time. But that’s not enough as you lift both of you from her bed and carry her in your arms, causing her to tightly wrap your limbs around you as gravity aids you in fucking her. It’s the perfect position because you get two handfuls of her ass while she bounces on your cock and because she’s somehow louder than before as you are basically splitting her in half. Every single thrust drives your tip into her cervix and you’re sure she’s seeing stars by the way she’s clinging on to you for dear life as you fold her up like a lawn chair in this position. It’s so easy to manhandle her, the way her light body just bends to your will and you’ll definitely give her a much bigger load now that you are fucking her raw. The loud slaps of skin fill the room as you continue to fuck up into her, not even waiting for her to come down before you thrust again. There’s no way you’re absolutely lasting longer than ten minutes this time because of how you prevented yourself from cumming twice already so you end up jackhammering into her, the tension in your balls increasing by the second as you are ready to unload. 

“Cum in me!“ is all you hear before the overwhelming sensation and tension finally snaps, the first rope of hot cum causes a smaller, second orgasm from Hanni. It’s fucking euphoric and blissful, the way each rope takes away all of your frustrations—filling every single space inside her womb, the way it coats your cock and drips back down to your balls and to her floor with how much you came inside her, the way it completely takes over your body, causing you to fall back down to her bed and bring her with you. “Cum for me again, can you do that for me?” A faint voice from Hanni as she gyrates her hips to match your thrusts. It’s not like you were planning on doing anything different. You can’t stop, won’t stop pumping into her despite both of you being oversensitive and sure enough, you find yourself unloading inside her for a second time five minutes later as if you didn’t already cum inside her. This fresh load replaces the previous one and soon, her sheets are soiled with cum as well. You haven’t cum this hard and this much in a while, the prospect of fucking your girlfriend’s best friend making you hornier than you have been before and it’s showing.

It’s a sticky mess once everything finally settles down, with her finding it difficult to get off of you with how much semen you’ve unloaded inside her that she’s definitely going to need that morning pill. A mess between her thighs is what you have to show for it once she does and you’re absolutely spent when she lays down beside you. “Fuck, that was hot.” Surprisingly, she still has the strength to get off her bed and collect both of your clothes while also cleaning herself up in the process. Right. This is not Minji’s room and it would be even more scandalous if other people find out you just had sex with your girlfriend’s best friend. She quickly throws you your clothes and you work on putting them back on. “You’re as good as advertised, I’ll definitely recommend you to Danielle.” Danielle? Her varsity jacket and shorts are worn in a hurry, along with her crop top and bra. “She hasn’t had good dick in a while, you see.” She grabs your phone and makes you unlock it, tapping furiously at the screen for a few seconds before handing it back to you. “I just saved her number so you won’t get spooked when she messages you for her dick appointment. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut about you and Minji.” It’s a great thing that you’re already fully clothed because she’s dragging you by your arms and out of her dorm. “Ok, see you! I’ll keep in touch with you again.” You don’t dare to ask any questions at this point so you decide to walk back to Minji’s room again. 

“Wait!” But she stops you on your tracks, this time that shy and nervous expression making its appearance on her face once more. “And uh, I forgot something.” She grabs your phone again and taps on the screen furiously like she did earlier, and as you were about to take it back from her she grabs you forcefully and places a kiss on your lips.

Smooch.

“I also added my number. Maybe I’ll ask Minji if we can share you in more ways than one.” Then a wink, then you feel a gust of wind hitting your face after she closes the door.

What the fuck?  

[deputyrook]

In Her Absence: Lucanis/Rook/Spite.

A03 link! Female Crow Rook x Lucanis. Lucanis POV.

Takes place when Rook is in the fade prison, because 1) I love angst and am a big softie; and 2) I wanted to try to work out the logistics of what the team did in Rook's absence, and how they managed to reach her.

---

In the four days that Rook’s been gone, the Veilguard has devolved completely into infighting.

Taash wants to know why they can’t just “break into the fade and pull her out.” And no one really wants to hear Emmrich’s overly technical explanation as to why that’s not feasible, least of all Taash, who’s grieving and angry. Davrin keeps saying that it should have been him instead, which isn’t helping, and no one even wants to think about what’s happening to Bellara right now. 

Harding is dead. Bellara is kidnapped by Elgar’nan and Maker knows where. They’re a mess as a group, angry and hurting. And Rook...

Rook’s gone.

Neve is the only person who remotely has their shit still together, and for that at least, Lucanis is thankful. 

Because he absolutely does not have his shit together. Maybe the others can’t tell, since he’s not arguing or yelling or breaking down, but his thoughts are spiralling so badly that he’s barely said a word in three days. All he can think about is Rook.

He loves her. He loves her. And she’s lost somewhere, trapped and alone, and they have no plan whatsoever on how they’re going to get her back. 

He never told her. It’s tearing him up inside. The thought that he might never hear her voice again. Never hear her make some stupid pun, or hear her teasing, or hear her give them all one of her legendary pep talks. Never hear her laugh again-

“Lucanis,” Neve’s voice is firm, dragging him out of his despondency, “You need to focus.” 

How can he possibly focus? “You’re right,” he says instead, voice tight, because Neve is right. Standing around brooding isn’t getting them any closer to getting Rook back. What he needs to do is act- but how?

Solas is a God, and even he couldn’t break out of that prison. This isn’t the kind of problem Lucanis can solve with a dagger. He can’t stab at the prison walls until they crumble away- but Maker knows if that could work, he would stab until his daggers shattered and his body collapsed. 

What is he supposed to do? What can he do? How can he help them, when all he knows how to do is kill things?

No. Spite says to his left, his voice hard and determined, No! We will find Rook. Won’t leave them there. 

Neve puts a hand on his shoulder, and gives it a squeeze. 

“When has Rook ever been content to sit and wait to be rescued?” Neve says, and he lets out a long, even exhale, because it’s exactly what he needs to hear. “I’m worried too. But Rook would chew off her own leg to escape a trap. If there’s a way to get out, she’ll find it. Have some faith in her. In all of us- and in yourself.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs, voice quiet. After a moment, he adds, “…Someone should let Viago and Teia know.”

That, at least, is a burden he can bear. 

But the days stretch into weeks. Elgar’nan seizes control of an already broken Minrathous, and even Neve has a hard time keeping herself together after that one. 

Lucanis is in no place to offer comfort. Without Rook’s leadership and steadfast optimism, the lighthouse has gone dark, leaving them all ships to smash into a rocky coast. He won’t soon forget the way Viago’s eyes widened when he told him what had happened to Rook, nor the look of horror that flashed across his face before his expression settled into stony devastation. 

Strangely, it’s Spite that keeps him from falling apart completely. He refuses to accept that Rook is gone. Every time that Lucanis’ mind whispers to him that this happened because he wasn’t good enough, and that he’ll never see Rook smile at him again- Spite cuts him off with an angry, defiant hiss of NO. 

Rook is strong. Rook is smart! Rook will not allow herself to die in a prison. She would not let you die in prison, either. We will not let her. We will find her. We will find her!

He repeats the words in his own head, holding onto them like a buoy. Right, yeah. She’s good at prison breaks. It’s enough to make it through the day.

Sometimes- although Lucanis would never admit it to the others- he realizes that Spite is the one who has been moving his body,  keeping him working while he’s been stuck in his mind, ruminating and aching with missing her. It’s been Spite that’s forcing him to eat, to bathe, to sleep. Spite is keeping him alive. 

Will not let you do this to us. Rook needs us.

It’s that thought that ultimately gets Lucanis to snap out of his despair. 

It’s not over yet. He agrees, finally. Rook needs us. 

Finally! Spite snaps back.

---

First, they try to make a copy of the dagger. Something that will be able to slice through the fade prison, so that they can cut Rook out of it. That’s how Solas left, after all- by tricking her, and stealing the dagger to cut himself free. 

But a dagger of pure lyrium isn’t exactly easy to replicate. Brilliant as they are, Emmrich and Neve can only do so much. So after days of meticulous work, they end up with a dagger that looks identical to the real thing, but doesn’t actually work. Great.

Next, Emmrich hypothesizes that in order to get to Rook in the fade, they’ll not only need to figure out how to access the fade prison, but also to figure out where the prison actually is, physically within the fade.

It is, apparently, not as simple as yelling out “ROOK? CAN YOU HEAR US?” from the top of the Lighthouse, which has been Taash’s strategy. Spite, too, is ready to start just travelling through the fade, for as long and as far as he needs to until he finds her. Lucanis is doing what he can to support the group, cooking the meals and making sure Emmrich and Neve are able to stay on their feet.

Word gets to them that Solas is in Minrathous, keeping the rebellion alive. The news poisons Lucanis so thoroughly with hate that he nearly can’t stomach it. Spite has been so determined to save Rook that Lucanis almost forgot how it felt when he was really, truly spiteful. 

Hearing Solas is pretending to be a hero in Tevinter, after consigning Rook to take his place in a prison? Yeah. That’ll do it. The things he’d wanted to do to Illario after his betrayal had left him conflicted. He is not remotely conflicted about what he wants to do about Solas.

What they want to do. Spite agrees with him on this one. He hurt our Rook.

Finally, Emmrich and Neve work out a real plan, with the help of the Veil Jumpers. It’s based largely on luck, but it’s something. It’s a sliver of hope. It’s enough to keep them all going.

First, they need to find a spot where the veil is particularly thin, where the fade peaks through the seams of reality. Then, they need to use an artifact of the Veil Jumper’s to do… magical, fade, location-y… stuff. Emmrich actually uses a bit of Rook’s blood for this part, located on some stained clothes that Assan had dug out in her room. 

Blood magic. Ordinarily, Lucanis would be opposed. But no one says a word against it. They are all desperate for this to work. 

The first day they try it, it doesn’t work. They make some adjustments, and try again.

The second day, it doesn’t work. They make some more adjustments, and they try again.

On the fifth day, Spite says it in his ear, voice sharp with excitement.

I can smell her- I can smell Rook!

Lucanis’ heart feels like it’s about to burst from his chest. He’s yelling, “Rook?” into the rift before he can stop himself, but the team’s caught on already that this isn't like the other times they’ve failed to make their plan work. The rift is spitting and spasming sparks of magic, and they can see through it in a way they’d never been able to before. They can see a light in the rift.

Emmrich seems to throw caution entirely to the wind, rolling up his sleeve and plunging his arm into the rift. The energy is wild, unrestrained, and they’re all calling out to Rook, reaching and trying to get to her.

“I’ve- I’ve got her!” Emmrich yells out, and Lucanis swears he can see Rook’s wavy form on the other side of the rift. Like looking through a fishbowl, or the walls of the Ossuary.

He reaches in too and grabs her hand with Emmrich, and they yank. Rook stumbles out, collapsing onto the ground.

“Varric’s dead,” she says, voice hollow and wobbly.

Neve shoots Lucanis a confused, concerned look, but he’s too relieved to care. He’s grabbing at her shoulders, pulling her into a tight embrace, and his throat feels like it’s closing up on him. Tears prick at his vision. She’s safe. She’s alive, she’s free, and she’s safe. She’s back with them.

They all want to hug her, and make sure she’s actually, really okay. But Lucanis gets to first.

Told you. Told you, told you! Spite repeats, ecstatic, She’s back!

“Are you okay?” He murmurs, pulling back and looking her over critically, trying to see if she’s been hurt or if anything has changed. But no. It’s just her. Like not a day has passed.

Rook nods slowly, and Lucanis smooths a hand down her hair, before cupping her cheek in his hand. All he wants to do is hold her, but he can’t be that selfish and drag her away from the others. Not yet, anyway. 

Pulling back, the others take the moment to rush in, making similar careful assessments and doting over Rook. The last few weeks have been almost unbearably difficult. There’s been little to celebrate. But this is joy again. Hope. With Rook back, not everything is completely fucked.

Davrin pulls her into a crushing hug, and Taash joins in, and they’re all hugging and crying a little. The trip back to the Lighthouse is a blur, with Rook thanking the Veil Jumpers and swearing to them she’ll get Bellara back.

How she can already be so determined, so ready to act, Lucanis will never know. He is, as he has so often found himself, in awe of her ability to forge forward, the light cutting through the swathes of dark that seem to surround them.

Spite is just about ready to try to crawl out of their skin in impatience, but they have work to do first. They all brief Rook on what has happened in her absence, and learn- horrifically- that she’s somehow been brainwashed into believing Varric has been alive, for months, by Solas.

Not for the first time, Lucanis feels anger and spite bubbling in his veins and vows to himself that he will not let Solas get away with hurting Rook. God or not. He finds it hard to fathom why he would mess with her head like that, if he wanted her to succeed in at least stopping Ghilan’nain. It reminds him too much of the mind games that his captors would play on him when he was in the Ossuary, tormenting and confusing him for no other reason than to break him down. Was that what Solas had tried to do to Rook, too? To break her down mentally, so she’d be easier to manipulate and trick?

It seems to take forever, but finally, Lucanis gets to see her alone. She’s lying down when he enters her quarters, her eyes closed, but the words spill out of him before he can even consider leaving her to rest.

“I cannot believe we found you,” he says, voice soft. All of the fear he’s felt for weeks, the doubt and the despair that Spite had helped him just barely keep at bay… the relief, now, is making him lightheaded. 

“I’m a little surprised too, honestly.” It’s a testament to the gravity of the situation that she’s not trying to make light of things. The words aren’t meant as a joke. 

“I thought I’d never see you again,” he admits.

“And I didn’t think I’d ever get out of there,” Rook tells him in turn. It leaves him cold, to think of her there, alone and believing she might never be found. “How do I know if I really did? This could be... more of the fade.”

Lucanis realizes then, that he’s never seen her vulnerable like this before. Emotional, yes, but lost? Frightened? Rook has always been the solid centre of the group. Unmoving, unyielding, steady. Utterly dependable. 

It’s almost surprising that she’s not actually invincible. She’s so consistently been their guiding light. But more than shock, more than anything else-

He wants to protect her. He wants to hold her until her worries melt away, to chase away the horrible memories of the last several weeks and see her smile at him. He wants her to know that he won’t let anything hurt her. He wants to kiss her until she feels safe and warm again. 

So he does. Kneeling down in front of her, holding her hands in his own, Lucanis reassures her she is real. There’s so much he wants to tell her, that he’s been praying he’ll get the chance to say. But now that Rook’s in front of him again, he can’t seem to find the words for everything he’s been feeling.

So he kisses her. So, so gently. And when he keeps kissing her, pressing her back against the chaise as she wraps her arms around his neck? It seems Spite is right there with him, because the wings unfurl right in that moment, curling around them both protectively, like he wants to help shield them from anyone in the world who might try to hurt them.

[i6eyes]

%% jean kirstein bf hcs !!

pt 2

contains: sfw and nsfw, implied fem!reader (no y/n), established relationship, soft jean teehee, jean’s horse cawk, nothing too graphic tbh

— who knew a fucking stallion will be the one who's going to bring me back from the dead .

sfw

omg omg he's soo tall right

definitely puts his arms around your shoulder, and kisses u on your temple or forehead too

the sweetest !! i feel like he would be so so attentive to u

oooh u did a double take at the dress u guys walked passed by earlier in the mall? woah it's suddenly in ur bed the next day !! :OO

he's a nice cook ! can cook but the best, his expertise are mostly breakfast foods but he can cook you lunch and dinner as long as he has a recipe

oh he'd be absolutely smitten !!!! i luv big scary men being total sweethearts to their s/o

if ur trying some shoes, he'd be the one to do all of the work ! he'd kneel down, take off your shoes, puts on what you chose on you, will be the who's going to take it off too, then will tie or buckle your shoes up for you

or or or, he'd be out alone and he passes by this little store filled with trinkets and stuff. safe to say, he walked out of the store with a silly little keychain he knew you'd like

^^ one of his love language is acts of service

he loves spending time with you. specially the moments where you two just chill and share some occasional kisses here and there

his favorite thing to do is have you lay on top of him while he's laying down and make you talk about your day !! he'd play with your hair and caress your nape and back while you do so :((

he's obviously attractive, but he doesn't know how much

there's so many simple things that he makes attractive

his attentiveness. you'd be in the grocery then he'd suddenly disappear for a while, only for him to come back with arms full of chips and snacks. "these are your favorites, right?" he said while dumping them in the cart, not even waiting for your answer.

oddly specific but the way he leans on every door way. you know the thing where people place their hands on top of a doorway? that, but he subconsciously does it everywhere. omg imagine he fetches you from your house for a date and the moment you open your door, boom! there's jean, towering you with a smile on his face.

he knows how to slow dance, like the ones in the movies where the main characters would suddenly dance in their living room, to which, he did with you!

slow dancing in the living room with jean :(

if you're still in school and he sees you struggling with a subject or school work, he'd help you as soon as he could, specially if it's something he already learned before. but! if that's not the case, he'd take his time to learn what you're having problems with and try to come up with an explanation to make you understand better

he's so lame (affectionate)

nsfw

oh boy

he's not the stallion for nothing

easily one of the biggest cock in the aot verse

usually, i'd be realistic when it comes to sizes, but jean is at 7-8 inches.

hhhhhhgggh, king of dick prints. he's naturally big even when soft, about 5 to 5.5 maybe. < he's a grower

he's such a big man, his proportions are perfect, of course he needs a big fucking cock to go along with it

he keeps his happy trail no matter what happens. he knows it's attractive and knows that you love seeing it on him

^^ up to you whether you want him to shave or trim, he's fine with anything as long as he keeps his happy trail

wide athletic shoulders that he puts your legs at while he's eating you out our splitting you open with his cock

this man's proportions are actually making me insane i don't know how to put my thoughts into words anymore

his hands are big, but not huge or ginormous. it's pretty and rough looking at the same time. his fingers are longer than most men's but are thick enough like the ones most are familiar with when thinking about a man's hand.

his nape is sensitive, simple touches like brushing his hair back will make him shiver. hickeys also show more easily on his neck, just suck on it lightly and there's already a blooming red mark left in its wake.

oh my god, touch his torso or the bottom of his stomach (ehem, close or at his happy trail) and he's gone. it's starting to become an actual problem because there would be completely innocent moments where you touch those places because you need to get pass by him and he'd just suddenly pop a boner on the spot.

*taps mic* soft dom

he absolutely loves praising you, it's an unconscious thing he does

you'd be on your knees, sucking in his cock on your mouth as much as you could, and he'd groan while keeping your hair out of your face using a hand while the other caresses your cheek, wiping away the tears that lay there.

^^ "there we go, knew you could do it.", "fuckin' natural at it.", "think you could take me a little deeper? uh huh? yeah that's my good girl."

im in shambles

he's SOOOOO good with his fingers my GOD.

he knows what it takes to make you cum with his fingers, he has an actual technique it's crazyyy. doesn't prioritize in making it fast or hard or whatever, whether you like it like that or slow, he will follow his own lead on what he thinks will make you feel spineless.

knows the fingers inside you, palm on your clit thing. has made you squirt using it on multiple occasions

while he adores missionary because he loves seeing your face and folding you in half with your legs beside your ears, doing it doggy will always make him carnal

he has a thing for your backkk. he'd grab the one side of your shoulder while he's hitting it from the back, sometimes he'd bruise your hips with his grip instead

will slap your ass. not really in a sub/dom dynamic. he just likes the way he sees his handprint on your ass while you're writhing beneath him

stroke game is unmatched !!!!!!!!!

he doesn't rely on his size alone, this bitch is actually prepared and knows his shit y'all

even if he doesn't or can't push all of him in, he'd work with what he's able to put inside you and god does he do it well

during missionary, expect him to put a pillow under your hips despite his size and knowledge. he want to make you feel the best at any given time

while he doesn't mind if you're a loud moaner or what, he LOVES hearing you whine.

if you're a whiner, boy is it a good time to be ALIVEEEEEE

he founds it so cute and hot <3

[abyssalzones]

can you tell us about your interpretation of the better world universe!!!! especially curious how stan/mystery trio works into it

hell yesssss I definitely can. ABW is maybe my favorite niche gf thing and probably the only "AU" I care about but that may be due to the fact that it's an AU that exists in the canon and we know so little about it. so it has an established foundation that you're left to fill in the details with yourself... it's like a poke bowl to me. you can put anything in there

and since I felt like it here's a bonus pic of them living their best lives pestering ford

[explanation-y stuff under ze cut because I got very longwinded]

as for specifics of how I see everything working out, there's a few key points that establish why things happened differently from canon, the most important being:

Stan agrees to hide journal #3 somewhere

Ford reunites with fiddleford and they begin working together again

both of these are already confirmed in canon, the first being the most obvious "schism" between timelines. literally everything in ABW is the way it is because stan made a different decision. kind of crazy in terms of its implications: I feel like that moment in the basement is a really good example of how stan gets so few opportunities to shape her own life (while ford is in the picture...) because of her role as the 'black sheep' twin. it's not exactly a premeditated decision to push ford into the portal, it's her acting on feelings that have been bubbling unaddressed under the surface for 10-something years at that point, and only then does she have any sort of power over the "narrative" of both her life and the story itself, something that from her pov has been ford's story. and in the canon timeline, she says no.

so like, what the hell made her say yes in ABW's timeline? this question kind of haunts me because I feel like it has to be entirely dependent on what the inside of stan's head looked like at the time. it's possible something influenced her, but overall I think it's more interesting if ford did and said all the exact same things up until this point and it really was entirely dependent on stan's decision internally.

so stan says yes, goes on a big trip to the other side of the world somehow, and buries journal 3 somewhere probably never to be found again. yay! but, uh, going on a trip like ford was suggesting would... take weeks. that would leave ford alone again. and not to have my established thoughts informed by new material or anything but bill did give him 72 hours.

so, next order of business: how in the fuck would ford convince fiddleford to rejoin him??? I'm unsure between journal 3 and tbob's information how ford may have tried to reach out to him but it seems like fiddleford was pretty adamant about staying away from that guy, out of guilt or fear of bill/the portal or both. I don't think logically it would just be a matter of ford calling him enough times or finding out where he lives- and I think that's kind of getting away from the point of why ABW is the way it is too. if stan is suddenly making decisions that are influencing ford's life, I think it would be similarly interesting if fiddleford also possessed some unique autonomy in this scenario.

aka I think ford got fucked up badly (possibly involving losing an eye) and fiddleford found him half-dead while trying to burn his house down. [mabel voice] romance!

to clarify: I don't think fiddleford is obligated to take care of ford. a major part of him leaving the project was finally making the decision to leave a situation that was hurting him, that he'd been staying in entirely because he still cared about ford and felt on some level he could still help him (which gets broken with "I don't need you!") and I think that's a very reasonable decision on his part. but I also do have to think about all the times ford has been "the hero" in situations where fiddleford ends up hurt and helpless because of something traumatizing. I think it'd be fascinating to see that reversed and have fiddleford actively making the difficult, messy decision to take care of that guy even when they're on miserable terms. and so begins like a solid week of these two desperately trying to look out for eachother in a nightmare scenario where one of them probably needs to go to a hospital + keeps getting possessed off and on and the other is going through the worst addiction/withdrawal cycle of his life irt the memory gun. yay! (part of the reason this even works To Me also is heavily informed by the lack of secrets: if fiddleford is actively dressing that guy's wounds he can't really keep it all to himself anymore. crushingly intimate perhaps...)

stan gets back eventually. such is the context of this pic

from there it's a nebulous grab-bag of things I think could happen up to the foundation of the institute.

how do all three of these incredibly fucked up individuals get along? well they don't but then they do.

how do they get bill out of ford's head without performing amateur brain surgery? idk. my best guess is a fiddleford and stan bonding trip into ford's mindscape that potentially helps answer the first question. possibly utilizing the memory gun. shrugs.

what's up with that one picture you drew of parallel fidds holding the memory gun up to ford's head? well. okay that one might or might not be something that actually happened but the idea was just that ford is coping badly with a few specific things and I liked the idea of fiddleford "holding onto" something for him to remember and work through later when he's ready to deal with it, it's an interesting reversal of how he's normally more of a memory sink.

from the point in canon about them stabilizing the portal so that bill can't use it to get into their dimension anymore onward, I think it just becomes a matter of them living the lives they could've always had in canon without realizing it. hence "a better world." some cool tidbits I like to think about:

stan gets to transition much earlier (late 1990's perhaps?) and probably starts going by "lee" instead

she's also the institute's CMO and is mostly in it for going on business trips abroad with ford. and the money. obviously.

the institute probably also legitimately changes the world on a sociopolitical scale outside of just interdimensional travel since their research renders them uniquely untouchable and all three of them are trans (I'm cartoon logic-ing a little bit here just let me have this one)

ford is the eccentric bill nye esque face of the company, fiddleford is the backbone. that isn't to say ford doesn't do anything as I think he'd always moreso be in it for the science than the fame (though it is nice to be more than comfortable financially) but it's an open secret fiddleford keeps tabs on literally everything, he's still very security-oriented.

the northwest family now has a more prominent ongoing rivalry with the pines family that could be very funny to think about. they've taken all the LOGGING JOBS with their damn SCIENCE

part of the reason I thought ford should lose an eye is because I think having him wear an eyepatch would be a neat way to parallel stan's "role" as mr. mystery visually! stan wears an eyepatch for no legitimate reason to keep up appearances as a schlocky tourist trap host, but it also alludes to her being more than she seems under the surface. ford's eyepatch does sort of have a legitimate reason to exist, but he also could just wear his glass eye and it would probably be less "conspicuous." he chooses the eyepatch instead because it's part of his image as Stanford Pines, Founder of Oddology, and because it keeps him safe. there's also a little residual scarring there from damage to his eyelid/tarsal plate which could easily represent him hiding the more "damaged" aspects of himself under his successes. ouch.

I'm unsure if ford and stan would ever feel comfortable getting back in touch with their parents. I know a lot of people go that route with fan material but I don't think they should have to. I think they're much happier now having healed the rift between them on their own and getting to live successful lives for themselves, rather than to prove something to their father.

that being said I do think fiddleford gets in touch with emma-may and his son again and they end up on better terms with time and a Lot of effort. tate's family is now composed of his father, mother, "uncle" ford (in the ye olde gay closeted sense of referring to your dad's partner as an uncle), and auntie lee, and I like to think they go out on trips to the lake together often :]

also ford and fiddleford tie the knot unofficially (in the eyes of the government anyway) in 1990. owed to stan somehow getting "ordained" as a rabbi. don't ask me how.

the pines twins start visiting the institute from a younger age than they do irt visiting stan in the show-- but they're only permitted to come along on heavily-supervised interdimensional excursions once they turn 12. cue antics!

anyway, hopefully this extremely longwinded and loosely structured mess helped answer your question. I like ABW sooo so so much you guys