#i played ever new level and i need them to do the same

[thetorturedbolter]

can someone please inform dan and phil that golf with friends has like four or five new levels because i need them to revive that series more than i have ever needed anything in my entire life

[connormoving]

im like umm ummm. idk. i feel quite unfulfilled but idk what i want

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

Counterintuitively, Jason trafficking drugs himself, and the way he treats drug dealers in general is actually one of the core reasons I do believe he has a real moral backbone.

In Lost Days we see him mention that he killed his small arms teacher because the smack he was dealing was poisoned. In Nightwing (2016) Annual #2 Jason is particularly violent towards their enemy because he cut his heroin with other substances, leading to his mother's first overdose. In Under the Red Hood, his most important rule is 'no selling to kids', and he is specifically employing people who do sell drugs to adults.

Playing a bit of Headcanon Jazz here - listening to the notes Jason doesn't play as much as the ones he does - It feels really notable to me that dealing drugs is not enough to get on Jason's shit list. On some level Jason thinks it's okay to deal drugs. Even more importantly: Jason doesn't at all imply that drug users are at fault - nor that they need to have the choice to use taken from them 'for their own good'. Heck, I can't remember any instance of him saying that doing drugs is a bad thing.

He has lived with and cared for someone struggling with an addiction that she died to, which would have made it really easy to take him in a 'no leniency, no tolerance, kill all drug dealers and burn all the crack so no one can smoke it' road. Yet that's the opposite of how he's operating.

And I'm putting all that together to get a Jason who firmly believes in harm reduction and that when it comes to drugs, people have a right to risk; they have a right to choose to use. I don't think it's too much further of a stretch to say that he thinks that those who do use should be supported by infrastructure ensuring that their drugs are uncut and properly dosed and that they should have safe places to use and well funded rehab options if they want to quit.

This whole thing is so important to me because it lies completely outside of his emotional conflict of 'I wasn't avenged'; it's proof that there was more to Jason's talk about running Gotham differently than simply killing people.

Factually, there are a huge number of criminal activities that could be used to improve the lives of vulnerable people.

I firmly believe that no government has the right to detain, imprison, deport, et.c. people fleeing violence and persecution in their country of origin. A criminal organization that genuinely had their best interest in mind who could provide access to new identities, jobs, housing, and paperwork for cheap could save and change hundreds of lives. Sex workers, especially survival sex workers who want to quit and move on to a new job, could benefit enormously from protection from the cops, and from landlords kicking them out, and the ability to get criminal charges purged from their records, and lots of other stuff. People who use street drugs need a lot of the same things, as do people who need access to medication but for whatever reason can't get prescriptions the legal way.

This is all stuff that is already a staple of organized crime - they just do it in ways that are insanely abusive and exploitative.

It makes sense that Jason would look at that and think he could make it work! Honestly I'd love to read a comic about him trying! He could be the pinnacle of Be Gay Do Crime! Sadly though, it's very unlikely we ever will, especially because his term as a drug lord was so incredibly short to begin with. Under the Red Hood, a tiny snippet of Robin (1993) and Green Arrow (2001) #69 - #72 is really all we get, and none of those really got into the politics of his organization either.

Tho, there is a tiny snippet we possibly see in Seeing Red, my favorite Jason run ever, and I will take any excuse to talk about it so here we go lol!

This is a comic in which Batman gets some things wrong about Jason, and might be straight up lying to Green Arrow in places too, so I don't think we can take his word for it when he says Jason is driving up the trade. Especially not when Jason hasn't given a single flying fuck about collecting wealth for himself in basically any other appearance ever.

Is he using drugs as a trading good to some capacity? Yes, that's a minor plot point here, however, I think justice is very present in his reasoning. I think Jason is being selective with which shipments he's keeping - testing each and destroying the stuff that's extra dangerous, making sure that what's getting used is as safe as it can be. Plus, he might be reducing the supply so that drug trade can't expand, while considering complete elimination to be flatly undesirable, since it could force users to go cold turkey, something that can be dangerous, or at least very painful.

Now, obviously this is still headcanon territory, we never really see into Jason's head about this specific topic, but I do feel like it's a reasonable way to fill in that gap!

Anyways, this is why I've never felt like Jason's disagreements with Bruce's methods were purely about his own emotional desires. There's too much else surrounding that which he clearly also cares about.

[st4rpiece]

nipple piercings pt. 1

NSFW

characters: luffy, zoro, and sanji x fem! reader summary: the monster trios reaction to your new nipple piercings content warnings: established relationships, nipple sucking, breast play others: lowercase intended, not proofread, pictures from pinterest

_____

Monkey D. Luffy

you had recently gotten them done, so while they healed, you wore thin clothing instantly drawing luffy's attention. he was immediately fascinated by your new piercings.

he'd probably poke at them with a childlike curiosity, his eyes wide with wonder. "wow, these are so cool! do they hurt?" he'd ask, genuinely intrigued. surprisingly, as you explain the sensation and the reason behind getting them, luffy would listen intently, absorbing every word.

as the days went by, luffy would occasionally bring up the piercings in conversations, always with the same level of excitement. "babe, show me those cool piercings again," he'd say, his eyes sparkling with interest. he'd honestly never get tired of seeing them.

your first time fucking after getting them ignited a side of luffy you rarely saw in bed. luffy was extra careful and attentive as his hands trailed up your body before resting on your breast. his calloused hands cupping them as his thumb softly ran across the piercing, tracing its outline.

"does it feel good?" you nod, back arching, pushing your breast further into his hands. without warning he'd roughly flick the piercings, soaking in your reaction with a mischievous grin.

"i wonder how they taste," he'd say before leaning in to give them a teasing lick, his warm breath sending shivers down their spine. the saltiness of your skin mixed with the metallic taste of the metal bar tasted so good. he licked, sucked, and bit, giving your nipple the attention they deserved.

Roronoa Zoro

zoro would have a more intense reaction to your new piercings. you quickly ran to go show him the minute you and nami returned back to the sunny. you found him resting against the headboard of your shared bed.

his eye opened the second you entered the room, waiting for a kiss (something you always do after returning to him) instead you just stood there at the foot of the bed with a mischievous grin.

"what?" he'd asked, instead of answering you lifted up your shirt and showed off your new piercings.

he would stare intently at your bare tits and the contrasting silver bar with a playful smirk on his lips. "didn't think you had it in you," he'd tease, his voice a deep rumble laced with arousal.

"come here, i want to get a better look," the second you are close, he would pull you over his lap in a straddling position. while his hands rested on your hip, his eyes never left your breast. he wanted nothing more than to take them into his mouth and hear how you sounded to a new sensation. but first, he had to make sure you were okay. be began throwing questions at you.

did it hurt?

how much did they cost?

and lastly, how sensitive are you right now?

once he knows that you are okay, his grip on your waist will tighten, pulling your body closer.

without reserve, his lips would pepper you with kisses trailing from your neck down to the piercings, giving them a gentle tug with his teeth. causing you to grip his hair releasing a moan from the sensation, one he hadn't heard before.

"mmh, i like that," he'd grunt against their skin, his breath hot and tantalizing. "these suit you well, baby." his voice husky as he lifted his eyes wanting to watch your reactions closely as his fingers tugged and pulled on one while his mouth bit and sucked on the other. his eyes darken with lust as he takes in the pleasure written on their face.

Vinsmoke Sanji

before parting ways with nami you tell her to send a message to sanji about you needing him in your room. you sat on the bed, nervous and excited ready to show sanji how you spent your evening.

sanji, ever the romantic, would be utterly captivated by your new piercings. "holy shit baby," his eyes would widen in surprise and admiration, a very noticeable blush spreading across his face. "how did you manage to make yourself even hotter," he'd say, his voice filled with genuine awe.

"may i?" you nodded, even though you were still pretty sore, you craved his touch. he'd gently cup you breasts, his fingers brushing over the piercings with a feather-light touch. loving the contrast between your soft warm skin against the cool metal bar.

his touch would become more confident, his fingers teasing the piercings with a mix of tenderness and desire. causing you to let out a kitten-like moan. which further turns him on, "i want to make you feel incredible," he'd whisper, his breath warm against your skin.

his lips would follow the path of his fingers, kissing and licking around the piercings, his touch sending waves of pleasure through your body. "look at how swollen these bud are," he says, pinching your nipples harder.

"sanji," you managed to moan out.

"hold on my love, i'm just getting started," with lips still attached to your breast, his hands toy with the band of your shorts, dipping inside skimpy underwear.

_____

I just wanted to thank everyone for reading and liking my work >.<. it means a lot!!

I'm working on part 2 atm still, I hope you guys enjoyed this one!!

in the meantime, feel free to check out my kid one shot >.<!

[hubbvrd]

Can we have more dad joe plsss🥹I thoroughly enjoyed that!

Father daughter day | JB9

summary — in which Joe and his daughter spend an afternoon together as father and daughter

pairing — joe burrow x his daughter

words — 2246

*. ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

"And you're really sure I can go?" y/n asked again as she reluctantly let her husband Joe help her into her jacket.

It was Saturday afternoon and y/n was meeting up with her friends for a little girls' day out, which had definitely been lacking since she and her friends had each started a family with the Bengals players.

Joe gave his wife a serious but loving look. She had repeated the question countless times over the last twenty minutes, to which Joe had given her the same answer every time, as he was doing now.

"Yes, you can do that. You deserve the day with the girls and besides..." he paused briefly and looked down between his legs at your little daughter, who was standing between Joe's legs grinning broadly and holding on to the fabric of his jogging bottoms, looking up at him.

She was the spitting image of her father, so the question of whether she and the famous Joe Burrow might be related didn't even need to be asked.

"...besides, are we going to be alright or Butterfly?" he asked as he looked lovingly down at his daughter.

Because Harper had been nicknamed Butterfly ever since she had grown up in y/n's belly. According to Joe, the little one had never made her presence felt like a kickboxer or a soccer player, but had been very gentle against y/n's touch, which had felt like a butterfly to him - which was somehow really the case.

Harper nodded her head vigorously, causing her little pigtails of blonde hair to swing wildly back and forth. She had a pretty good head of hair for her three and a half years, which was often a source of despair.

Because Harper hated sitting still and having her hair tamed, so y/n and especially Joe - who found it particularly difficult to be strict with his little butterfly - had difficulties.

"Yes mommy, you can go and have fun. Daddy and I have fun too! Lots of fun!" little Burrow giggled and gave her mother a big grin.

Her mother's mouth twisted slightly and she seemed to think for a moment. Joe, who was able to decipher this face immediately, nudged his little daughter gently on the arm, who immediately understood what her father wanted.

"But not as much fun as you, of course, mommy. You'll do more fun things."  

Joe nodded in agreement and he and his daughter put on the same warm smile, causing Y/n to giggle softly.

"I know you'll have a lot more fun than I will, but next time we'll all have twice as much fun together, yeah?"

Y/n squatted down to be at eye level with her daughter. The little one's blue eyes gleamed with joy and excitement, which y/n could completely understand.

Harper was a daddy's girl through and through, who could never get enough of spending time together and especially alone with her father.

"Both of you be nice and don't get into mischief, will you?"

Harper began to nod wildly, so that her pigtails began to bob up and down wildly on her head. "No way, mommy. You know that."

Joe agreed with his wife, too, because what choice did he and Harper have? After all, they couldn't tell y/n what had already happened when the two of them had been alone a few times.

After all, one or two flower pots had been broken in the garden when Joe had tried to teach his daughter how to play football.

Or once the two of them had played hide and seek in the house, where Harper had jumped out of hiding and scared her father so badly that he had pulled down a mirror, which had broken and the two of them had literally raced to the nearest furniture store to get a new one so that y/n would never know what had happened.

After y/n had said goodbye to her daughter and husband with a kiss and a hug each and the front door slammed shut a few seconds later, Joe and Harper held their breath for a moment and listened.

It took a few seconds for the muffled sound of the car door closing, the engine starting and the car pulling out of the driveway, then it was completely silent and Joe and Harper were alone.

"Okay, what do we do?" Joe grinned as he rubbed his hands together and then lifted his daughter up with a sweeping motion, who squealed softly and then buried her hands in Joe's hair, giggling and giving her father a new and funny hairstyle.

In fact, Harper gave the best head massages for her three and a half years, which Joe especially loved when he was lying on the sofa and Harper was watching her favorite show and tossing her father's hair in her mind.

"Pizza!" Harper exclaimed enthusiastically as Joe carried his daughter into the open-plan living and dining area.  

"I think that's a good idea." The quarterback set his daughter down at the kitchen island and began looking for the flyer for his favorite pizza place in the drawer next to it.

Pizza was more or less an integral part of Father Daughter Day, because if there was no pizza, it wasn't an official Father and Daughter Day.

After a quick browse through the flyer, the two quickly decided on a pepperoni pizza, which was also ordered within seconds.

Now it was just a matter of waiting for the pizza to arrive, which would take a while as the pizzeria had just opened and had countless orders coming in.

While Harper fiddled with the creased corner of the rather battered flyer - as it had already been opened and closed countless times - Joe quickly connected his cell phone to the music system in the living room.

And before long, "you've got a friend in me" from Toy Story was playing from the speakers.

Toy Story was their favorite movie series and Harper especially loved the music to countless Disney movies, dozens of which she knew by heart and sang whenever she felt like it.

When the first notes of the song rang out, her blue eyes grew wide.

"How about a dance, Butterfly?" Joe grinned and lifted his daughter back onto the floor before holding out his hand to ask her to dance.

Giggling, the three and a half year old grabbed her father's hand before the two of them began to dance slowly around the living room.

Harper tried to follow her father's steps with concentration, her forehead slightly furrowed and the tip of her tongue hanging out of her mouth.

In fact, Joe often caught his daughter with her tongue hanging slightly out of her mouth. She did this almost every time she concentrated.

Whether she was outside drawing with chalk, learning something new, pushing her peas back and forth on her plate or on the sidewalk so hip that she didn't touch a groove in the stones.

When "Let It Go" came on next, Harper ran over to the couch table, where she grabbed two remotes and handed one to Joe.

Because not a single song could top "Let it go", so every time the song came on - no matter where they were - the two of them put on a little performance.

Just like now, the two of them stood next to each other on the sofa - it was their shared stage - where they bellowed the lyrics loudly into their microphones and had so much fun that they sang all kinds of songs until the pizza delivery man who rang the doorbell interrupted their little performance and more or less brought them back down to earth.

"The best pizza in the world," Harper mumbled, placing her hand on her small stomach, which was now clearly filled with pizza.

Only the white box and the pizza crust - which Harper didn't like - suggested that she and her father had just eaten a large pizza together.

"Oh yeah, but don't tell your mommy," smirked Joe, who put his arm around his daughter and gently pulled her closer, so that Harper rested her blonde mop of hair on her father's stomach and sighed with pleasure.

"Mommy's pizza is great, but not as great as the pizza here, but that's our secret too, I promise. Because we're secret agents with lots of secrets," Harper whispered as she hiccupped slightly.

Smiling, Joe gently kissed the top of his daughter's head. Sometimes he couldn't believe what a wonderful daughter he and his wife actually had.

Harper was a really sweet and adventurous girl who loved to explore the world and get up to mischief.

"How about a little power nap?" asked the quarterback, who had clearly shoveled in too many slices of pizza, as he felt the tiredness rolling over him slightly while his stomach was filling up quite heavily.

"No, Daddy. Secret agents don't do powenaps. Besides, you still have a job to do."

Before Joe could say anything back, Harper had already jumped up and run out of the room.

Every now and then the little girl would move as fast as a bouncer, so that you only had to blink once and she was gone.

Joe heard her running up the stairs and fiddling around quietly in her room for a moment, she seemed to be looking for something.

While his daughter was in her room, he began to remove the pizza box and the traces of salami and cheese from the sofa with a wet cloth, before grabbing a few blankets and cushions, which he spread out on the floor and began to build a small cave to make it a little more adventurous and cozy for the two of them.

He also picked up one or two new children's books that he had recently bought, such as a flashlight and a string of lights.

Just as he had finished and was proudly inspecting his work - the cave was a little crooked and didn't look like it would hold up for too long - Harper stumbled back into the living room.

"Wow, Daddy!" she enthused, carefully stepping closer to her father as she examined the cave.

"Secret agents need a good hiding place, don't they?" he asked, smiling as he looked down at his daughter, who was holding a small suitcase with a picture of Anna, Elsa and Olaf on it. "What's that?"

"Grandma gave it to me yesterday. There's something great in it, come and I'll show it to you in the hiding place."

Her warm little hand carefully slipped into her father's hand before she pulled him into the cave with her, where the two of them made themselves comfortable among the countless cushions in all different sizes and colors.

Harper opened the suitcase and revealed its contents to her father, which consisted of countless colorful children's nail polishes.

"Wow, that's a lot of colors. Grandma had a hard time choosing, huh?"

"Yes, but this way I can always wear something different!" Harper grinned proudly and picked out two colors.

Purple and turquoise.

"Daddy can you do my nails for me?" With her sweetest look, she looked up at her father, a look she knew she could completely and easily look around her father's finger, because Joe could never resist that look.

"Of course, but I have to tell you that I'm not a pro at it."

In fact, he had never once picked up the nail polish himself before, his wife Harper had always painted his nails while he watched.

But it couldn't be that difficult, could it?

"I always want to alternate purple and turquoise," Harrer told her father as she placed her hands on the small case and Joe opened the small bottles to carefully paint his daughter's nails.

This actually worked quite well, so that he only accidentally painted the skin around the nails a little bit a few times, causing Harper to giggle quietly.

"Wow, Daddy!" Harper gushed a few minutes later as she looked at her colorful nails. Her blue eyes shone and a broad grin adorned her face.

"Did it turn out well?"

"Yes!" Harper exclaimed enthusiastically, briefly blowing on each nail to get them dry faster - she had seen her mother do it. "Can I ask you something, Daddy?"

"Of course, anything you want, Butterfly."

Joe's voice drifted softly through the cave and the pillow rustled slightly behind him as he sat up slightly.

"Can I do your nails too?"

Again, Harper put on her look that Joe couldn't say no to.

But did Harper even need that look?

Before Joe had become a father and a child had asked him if he could paint his nails, he would have said no for sure. But now? Now he didn't even have to hesitate and so, barely fifteen minutes later, he had purple turquoise nails, just like Harper.

And after the two of them had finished their little nail painting session, they had snuggled up together in the den.

Harper's head back on Joe's stomach, while he had his arm wrapped around her and in his other hand was holding one of the new books he had bought and was now letting his daughter read.

And it wasn't long before they both fell asleep with a contented and happy smile on their faces, reviewing the successful father-daughter day in their dreams...

[discountlittlebro]

Prince brothers??? Hello???

Older brother who is poised and put together, level headed and excelling in his lessons, good with words and can talk himself out of almost any bind. Ofcourse hes good in combat too if it should come to that, but he rarely has to resort to that. He’s so smart and knows so much and is the kings favorite son.

Younger brother who is messy and always late, who would rather be outside and playing than doing this lessons, which he’s falling behind in. He’s rowdy and loud and short tempered and often finds himself running his mouth and getting into scuffs with low lifes in the kingdom. Messy hair and scrapes all over his body.

Big brother who constantly has to pull him from fights where’s Hes definitely outnumbered and going to lose. Big brother who adores his little brother and wants to keep him safe but he’s such a brat and always rolling his eyes or making faces while his big brother talks.

“I don’t need you taking care of me all the time! I can handle myself, golden boy. Fuck off.”

“Would you stop acting like a brat for five minutes? You were not winning that fight, they outsized and outnumbered you.”

“Oh my gods! I would’ve been fine! I train with the knights, i can handle a few jerks with no real training. Why are you here anyway? Don’t you have some fucking meeting or something to be at? Shouldn’t you be by daddy’s side as his shiny little prince?”

Little brother scoffs, shoving past his big brother only to be pulled back the collar of his shirt and pinned to the grimey, alley wall. His wrists are wrapped easily in one hand and pinned above his head.

“Let go! You big jerk!”

“Stop it! I’m just trying to look out for you!” Big brother who pressed his forehead to his little brothers, forcing eye contact. “Why are you always so difficult? Just listen!”

“Go away!! Just leave me alone!”

“I can’t! I’ve tried, and I can’t. You don’t even…you have no idea…how hard it is..”

The younger pauses his squirming, looking up at the other with confused eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

The older Prince sighs, closing his eyes and keeping his forehead pressed to the other, his free hand finding its way under his brothers button up and squeezing at this hip.

“There’s something wrong with me, I know it. But you’re all I think of. My pretty little brother, with all your quirks and bad habits, you consume me. The restraint it takes to not take you…and everyday it gets harder.”

Little prince who is frozen in confusion, the fingers squeezing his hip new and foreign. This is different. This isn’t like when they train in the corridor together, or even like any of their scuffles they’ve had in the past. It feels…different. Realization starts to dawn over him.

“Are you infatuated with your fucking brother? Are you serious? That’s…oh my gods hilarious! The perfect son, the smart one, the one everyone fucking adores!” He laughs when his brother moves back and stares at the floor, face red.

“Do you touch yourself to thoughts of me?”

“Every night.” Older brother leans down, and buries his face into the younger’s neck. “Will you indulge me, little brother? Let me know what you sound like, what you taste like? Atleast once, just for my fantasies.”

His brother always was good with words, and now he was using them to make his head spin.

“I…we probably…shouldn’t…”

“Nobody will know. It can be between us, like when we were kids and you snuck extra cookies into bed. Or that time I covered for you with that stray cat. I miss that, when you would come to your big brother for everything? When you clung to me so desperately? You used to follow me like a puppy, surely you wouldn’t start to bite now, would you? Would you deny me the one thing I’ve ever asked of you?”

“I…that’s not fair it’s not the same I-“ his words are caught in his throat when his brother bites into the flesh on his neck. He couldn’t stop the little whimper that fell from his lips, his wrists were starting to go sore in his brothers grip.

“Stop running from me. I want to get along again, don’t you want us to get along?”

The hand on his hip has dipped down and past the waistband of his trousers. His brothers fingers, his mouth, touching and tasting him in ways he never imagined. He sounds so desperate, truely pleading for his little brothers affections again.

“Big brother…please.”

[lostintransist]

The Second Duchess

Y'all, Noona's brain worms got me again. AO3 | This will be two parts. | This will end bitter. A/B/O dynamics, vaguely victorian, there will be an actual ghost in part two, odd power dynamics.

When John found you, a foreign lady, visiting a neighboring earl, he thought he had found redemption.

His first wife had been designationless, like you. He and his pack, Johnny, Simon, and Kyle, had ill-treated the first duchess. Her final words, left in an open letter, lingered over them all, even now.

You were supposed to be better. Every tale of you spoke of your bravery, your dedication, your loyalty. I found them all to be lies. When my corpse haunts your memories, may you think on it with more fondness than you ever did me.

The people who claimed the right of parentage over you had sent you to a foreign court in the hopes that someone would take pity on you. Foolish attempt really. No one at home wanted you; no one here would either.

All your life you had been discarded. Set aside for your lack of designation, you learned to cope. The scarred skin at your neck where your gland had failed to grow in the womb became your favorite place to decorate. If not with necklaces, then with art. You had learned how to paint on your body and create wreaths that wound round your neck; you set new standards because you could not do much else. If people were going to stare, why not give them something to look at?

Running wild became your favorite way to use your lack of designation. You could ride a horse side saddle or sitting forward like a man. You could ride better than most men in either seat. The stable hands at home got used to a horse disappearing for a few hours. You always stabled the horses you used, fed them, and brushed them. They stopped complaining after they saw how well you cared for the animals.

You hired art teachers and painted nude bodies. Music teachers taught you how to listen to the lewd songs sung in the taverns and play them at dinner parties. Languages were mastered; the curses were the things you memorized first. The cooks blustered when you demanded to be taught, but when you threatened to hire someone to teach you they quickly gave in.

The maids taught you on the sly the cant and candor of the working class. When they told you of the needs in the community you worked directly with the women who headed each group in need. Connections were gathered like coins in a purse and guarded like a hen over her chicks.

Without quite knowing how you became a woman of influence. A whisper or a word in the right ear and you could turn the tide on harmful policies. If you declared a business untenable for their use of child labor or the way they treated their workers the working class would not patronize them again.

That same level of leverage never breached the bubble of the aristocracy; hence, how you found yourself shipped away to start again.

The weeks warning your mother had given you had been enough for any in your contact to fire off letters to kin and foe alike of your coming. Even letters to foes told of your abilities to conquer changes.

Dock workers had a penchant for overindulging in your country. Men overindulging left women and children bereft of comfort and stability. You had been working at the underpinnings of fact before you had been shipped off.

No one noticed where you wandered, even here in this new country. No one cared. Just this morning you had sat down with the head of the laundress of the city to see what pieces you could shift. Their letter had arrived first, and tending to their needs would become your first priority. They needed childcare.

Children often needed tending and older children needed to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. An aging governess or two could be convinced to play school teachers and a maid without a reference could become a tender. Most of the legwork would arise from connecting with the women who would care for and teach the children. The juxtaposing issue would be where to house them and the children during the day. The price per child needed to be reasonable to the laundress and enticing to the governesses and the maid.

Censure, while a familiar disrespect, never became easier to bear. It bit at your flesh like the slap of hands. You had been relegated to the piano in the corner of the room while the other women partook in after-dinner sherry.

You hated sherry. You hated all alcohol really but sherry most of all. It tastes of lies and disappointment in its syrupy sweetness. Shuttering those memories, you focused on playing through a key change and into a jaunty tune; lewd would be a more accurate word, for the song you had learned down at the docks.

All these thoughts swirled through your head as your fingers played without you. Being so deep in thought you failed to notice the men had rejoined the party.

The knuckles rapping the top of the piano before your eyes brought you back to your body. Your motions paused the last notes you played lingering in the air. It is doubtful anyone was listening to you anyway.

A broad man leaned against the piano. His hair was cut short and sprinkled with gray. A neatly maintained beard, sun-kissed wrinkles around his eyes, as well as the fine cut of his coat completed the look of a lord. Being unfamiliar with this county’s aristocracy you offered a demure smile.

“Can I help you, my lord?”

“Where did a thing like you learn a tune like that?” His voice is rich and cadence firm.

“It is astounding the things musicians will teach you for the right incentive.” Settling your hands back to the keys you began to play a medley of your favorite drinking songs.

“Why do you not hide it?” His voice is as a surprise as it is unexpected.

Decorum meant different things here. Like it being acceptable to ask about one’s secondary gender.

“Why would I hide something I am not ashamed of, my lord? I am not causing harm to others by existing,” you lift a brow as you glance at him quickly.

He stared at the paint ringing your neck. The style of dresses here, that your great aunt had draped you in despite your protests, involved low necklines and off-the-shoulder sleeves. The corset cinched around you held up the dress. You had painted flowers and vines. Now, if anyone stared overlong you could assume they were observing your skill with a brush and not the scar where your scent gland should be.

Transitioning into a light, airy tune that has been well accepted by “higher” society you stole glances at the lord. You had yet to be introduced, but his dismissal of decorum intrigued you. Not many men approached you for a chat, even less without being introduced as an oddity first.

“Would you take a turn around the room with me?”

And there went your interest. Like with anyone who did not conform to society’s standards, you were propositioned every so often. Pursing your lips, you don’t look at him again.

“If you can gain an introduction before I depart for the night, I will consider it.” Focusing back on your fingers you played around a key change into a moving piece.

This bit of music sounded a bit like weeping when you played it.

He would not find your aunt anywhere near this room. She had consumed a fair amount of dairy in the soup course and would be leaving rancid deposits for the maids to clean in the morning. Once she felt well enough to travel she would send someone to collect you to the carriage. No one else here could claim acquaintance to the point of introductions.

As you predicted the lord could be seen drifting from person to person questioning and pointing toward you where you played still. All shook their heads and peered around for your aunt. Nearing forty minutes later a maid approached you, hands clasped neatly in front of her white frock.

“Ma’am, your aunt awaits you in the carriage,” her voice is mouse quiet even as her eyes dart to and for.

“Thank you for telling me. Can you inform the butler I will need my things?”

The notes lingered before dying, suffocated under the volume of conversation. The lord noticed though. As you slipped around seats and finally into the front hall, he followed. The aged butler held out your shawl, gloves, and hat.

One glove on and buttoned at the wrist you started on the other one when he appeared. The lord gave a near-silent dismissal to the butler. When you turned you found your hat and shawl held hostage.

“My things, my lord,” your hand extended for your things.

“While I was not able to obtain a formal introduction, I wanted to introduce myself. Duke John Price, at your service.”

Plucking your bonnet from his hand, you hum. Duke Price glared at you as tied it in place.

“How wonderful I avoided the misfortune of being introduced to a duke then being as lowly as I am, hmm?” You glanced at his face.

His sun-kissed wrinkles are now plucked with frustration.

“Will you be returning my shawl or shall I brave the night with bare shoulders, Duke Price?”

You let the title remind him of his place in the scheme of life.

The blue of his eyes reminded you of the center of a flame, scorching in its heat. You saw the decision in the tilt of his head. Standing stiller than the statues you saw dotting this land, you did not fight when he settled the shawl around your shoulders.

“Travel safe. I look forward to our upcoming introduction,” Duke Price held to the end of the shawl as you stepped back.

“Must not have much to look forward to in this country,” you let derision drip from your tone.

One more step back and you are free. A hand behind your back finds the doorknob and you are out. Now the footmen are looking to the door as you descend the stairs.

“What kept you?” Your great aunt’s voice bites from the dark of the carriage.

“It took some time for the butler to gather my things,” you lie. Climbing in and sitting forward on the bench to peer out the door window, Duke Price watches you from the door.

Sliding back the darkness hides you from view.

John fired off a letter before the sun had risen. I have found her. I will return when wed.

It took weeks before he secured your acquaintance. He tried though, gods, the way he tried. You would have laughed if he didn’t disrupt so many damn meetings.

A local Chaplin had agreed to offer room and board to the two governesses and the two maids who would be watching and teaching the children. A different church, whose Bishop agreed, would serve as the care space and classroom. The two churches would have no fees, but negotiating the prices that would remain fair for the laundresses and the women caring for the children became the sticking point.

The women all raised their voices. It was as if they could shout a little louder than their neighbor they might be clearly heard. In times like these, you were grateful for your nose blindness. Someone had once explained that the overlapping scents of anger reminded them of a barn fire, acrid and dense.

You finished finalizing the numbers on your page before standing. Snatching up your mini abacus, because math in your head forever alluded you, you placed it in a pocket of your skirt. Both hands lifted your skirt. Once your feet could move freely, you stepped onto the chair and then onto the long table where the discussion had devolved.

Both boots planted firmly you released your skirt and shoved fingers in your mouth to whistle. The piercing sound cut through all of the noise. All of the women sat down and glowered at each other, and you.

Movement at the door of the room tipped your annoyance into rage. Duke Price stood in the doorway. This was the fourth meeting he had appeared in.

“The Duke of Price has two seconds to be gone from this room or he will be funding this project for a year.”

Your pointed glare and sharp words caused all the women at the table to turn and do the same. These were proud women. They would not accept charity, and the offer of it would be seen as offensive. The duke narrowed his eyes and stepped back into the shadows.

“Close the door, my lord. If you are incapable of such a feat one of these lovely women would be happy to assist.”

The iron lock clicking into place turned all eyes back to you. Pinching your fingers to the bridge of your nose you shut your eyes and took a deep breath.

“Here is the pricing that accommodates everyone. The women handling the children will not need to cover room and board, which will reduce their incoming monies. In turn, that reduces the burden per child for the laundresses. Now, you must decide among yourselves,” you open your eyes and scan the laundresses now, “If you wish to pay a per child fee or a flat fee. Tally your votes and inform me of your decision. This scheme will begin on the first.”

The women who handled the dirty laundry for the city nodded and rose. They spoke among themselves as they exited the room.

The older governess, Brenton, if you recall correctly spoke up now. Her white hair gleamed under her dowdy cap.

“Who will be supplying the learning materials? The pay for watching the children will not cover that.”

You climbed down as you thought over how to obtain the needed materials.

“There is an irksome lord that I will make pay for the displeasure of my constant annoyance.”

All four women shared a look. They had worked under several lords and ladies and knew this would be a formidable task.

“Well,” Miss Brenton clapped her hands twice, “We will leave you to your trial ma’am. If we can be of any assistance before our work begins, please reach out.”

“Thank you. I know this is going to be an odd period of transition for all of us.” Settling at the head of the table as the other stood, you gestured to the door. “Miss Brenton, if you don’t mind, could you play chaperone for a moment?”

“Must say, I am interested to see how this plays out.” Tucking her skirt back down Miss Brenton sat back down.

Pulling out a clean sheet you began to note down the needed items, chalk and chalkboards, readers, nappies, blankets, cribs, the list went on. The click of heavy-soled shoes stopped at your side. Paying it no mind, you continued. A second sheet joined the first, transferring a list of vendors that would help funnel money to the bottom where it was most needed. Some were spouses of the laundress, others were brothers, fathers, or uncles. All were low class and would provide solid work.

A total of three sheets filled you ensured each was dry before stacking them. Folding them into neat thirds, you turned and handed them to Lord Price.

“You are a difficult woman to make an acquaintance of,” he took the papers held in proffer. “What is this?”

“The bill.” Standing, you let the chair legs scrape against the floor. “Miss Brenton, can I interest you in having company on your walk home?”

The shrewd woman looked near apoplectic at your handling of a duke.

“This is a lengthy bill.”

If you didn’t know any better, you could have sworn there was a hint of a smile in his voice.

Lord Price’s eyes were upon you when you finally let your head finish turning. No smile graced his lips. Shame. For all he had made your last few weeks as painful as a throne in the thumb, he was nice to look at.

He wore a blue today. His eyes shone with the gold stitching on his jacket and vest.

“It has been extraordinary lengths you have gone to bother me; this seemed a fair request.”

Neither gaze shifts when Miss Brenton choked on air.

“Consider it done,” Duke Price tucked the list into his inner coat pocket. “May I join you ladies on your journey?”

“Of cour—”

You cut Miss Brenton off with a hand and a sharp look. Turning that sharp look on the lord, you speak your piece.

“No. I do not know what your intentions are with me, and frankly, I am tired of finding you amidst my business. The only men who pursue me do so for my,” you gesture to your scarred neck, “eccentricities.”

A string attached to your stomach could not have pulled tighter than if it were looped to a kite. This conversation made you wish you could skitter into a hole, a church mouse hiding from god. This would be the sixth time you had told a man no.

The duke huffed a laugh.

“I have enough eccentricities roaming my home. What I seek is a chance to see if we would get on well.”

His blue eyes left heated trails as they worked across your face. Goose flesh rose on your arms. Chest and further down where you dare not think of the flesh continued to rise. Every bit of you reacted.

“Why?” The question is breathy, haunted with questions.

Duke John Price held the sword of Damocles at your neck. The blade yearned for a taste.

You spent your days in the shadows. Confronting men who could take what they wanted was the only time you thought you knew what it was like to be whole. Acid bullied the back of your nose.

“I am in need of a wife. Someone who has the skills to manage others.”

He is not done. You don’t care.

“Choose any of your fashionably young countrywomen then.” Ripping your eyes from him, you stack your papers and close your ink well for travel. “There is a full troop of them yet unwed who would kill for the chance to lay in a duke’s bed. They have all been trained to manage households.”

The string in your body is cut. A tangle now lives in your chest.

“Miss Brenton, was it?”

“Yes, m’lord.”

“Can you give us the room for a moment?” The kind command would take more fortitude than the aged governess possessed.

A beseeching look to the matronly woman did not save you. Her wrinkles quivered as she slowly stood.

“I can give you three minutes m’lord.”

He inclined his head as if accepting a toast from a royal.

As the door swung shut you formed a plan. Stepping to the opposite side of the table, for distance and a barrier, failed. The toe of your boot caught the leg of the table. Papers fluttered from your hands as your knees cracked against the stone floor. Duke Price was there in an instant. He lifted each paper, laying it neatly in a stack.

Tears pricked at your eyes. You hadn’t moved from your fallen position. Head hanging to your chest you held back from weeping by the breadth of a string.

“Why will you not leave me be?” The words are harsh, strangled by the tightness in your throat.

“When hunting foxes, one strategy to attempt is sending them to ground. Where do they hide when they can no longer run?” His demeanor was cool, his voice soothing. “You run in circles, managing to better every bird, twig, and rock you brush against in your escape.”

Sniffing, you set about finding a handkerchief to wipe your face; you refused to face the laundress’ if they knew you used your skirts as rags.

A blue handkerchief in a gloved hand drifted below your nose. Lifting it, careful to not touch even his glove, you dab your nose.

Somehow you had managed to drip ink into the crease where your nail becomes flesh. Gloves hurt your hands after a time. You had managed to work around wearing them. No one noticed. No one ever noticed. And if they did they didn’t care to police a grown woman who had no prospects.

“I have a pack, they are wonderful and I would burn the world for them. I need a wife who can see. I am looking for someone who notices the needs overlooked, connects with those unheard, and sends war captains on impossible journeys. If you had allowed an acquaintance between us weeks ago, I could have courted you slowly.”

Duke Price holds out your papers. They crinkle in your delicate grip as you press them to your breast.

“I do not believe you.”

His cloth pressed to your nose cannot prevent all the vile feelings filling up your bones from injecting themselves into the words.

No one wanted you. Even the one who had lied in word and deed to make you believe he did.

Brokenness allowed you to see because you could not smell; that did not make you valuable.

“And what would make you believe me?” He curls nearly in half to peer up at you.

A duke is on his knees, craning his need to get a look at you. What the hell had this world turned into?

Sniffing again, you straighten. Plans. You can make plans.

“A contract. Legally binding even in marriage. Make it two. One to court me and become engaged and the second retaining my rights to leave this country unhindered, if I so desire, if marriage were to come to pass.” You study him now. The wheels are turning in his mind.

“And what of the consequences of reneging on either contract?” A single brow is lifted in your direction.

“I imagine your solicitor has worked with you a long time, my lord. If he does not think of something suitable, I would be happy to revise and return it for review,” you lift a brow in response.

Games were easier. The rules never changed. Once understood, you could slide below notice and return to living life and helping where you could.

The man before you lifted both cheeks into a full smile. Your heart dropped into your heels still below your butt. He had a beautiful smile.

“They will be at your door for review before the week is out.”

“You have not yet gained an acquaintance, my lord, it might be rejected at the door,” you gave him a saucy wink and a watery laugh.

“I think a contract will be introduction enough.”

He held out a hand. You shook it, grip firm. Twice it bobbed before he turned your hand over and laid a kiss on your knuckles.

Catching sight of your lifted brow from his position he threw you off balance, again.

You had been to sea. Once only, were you out during a storm.

Then you had clung to the railing until a man in a slicker had slid a rope around your waist and helped haul you below deck. That wild energy that had commanded you to land came now. This time though? You longed to dive below the waves. If only to see if the storm could touch the seabed below.

Solicitor Allchin sat stiffly in the sitting room of your great aunt’s home. He wore black as if born to it, hair flounced the appropriate amount to show he would be fastidious and dogged in a task.

Your nails, trimmed short, bite into the fabric coating the arms of the wing-back chair. The crazy fool had actually done it. Two contracts lay strewn on the tea table before you. Unable to continue to read, they had been thrown down.

“Allchin?”

The man startled at being addressed. He had been taking surreptitiously deep breaths. If anyone believed you to be afflicted with no scent gland upon meeting you would call them a liar.

“Yes ma’am?”

“What is your opinion of Duke Price?”

You refused to call him John. It felt like ceding ground in a war you didn’t intend to entrench in.

“He is a fair man, mostly. Cares well for those that he considers his, discards those he doesn’t.” Allchin spoke firmly. Confident in his honesty.

“Thank you. That will be all. I will return these with any adjustments within three business days.” Standing would be beyond your power. If you rose the only thing you would manage is the three steps to vomit in an oriental vase.

“Ma’am,” Allchin rose, tugging his coat neatly into place. “If I may? I have a question.”

“You may not.”

Rage fluttered in your chest with hummingbird wings; it stung your eyes, water filling them.

Allchin nodded once and saw himself out. Lifting the paperwork, you read what you could. He had tilted everything in your favor. If you agreed to an engagement you could keep it quiet until the bans were read. Either party could break the engagement and you would receive a settlement for cover “pain and suffering.” You would retain full autonomy and legal status as a person in the event of a marriage. Property bought or sold in your name would remain yours.

Working itself out seemed to be working in Lord Price’s favor.

Someone, and if you ever found them you might actually hurl them down the stairs, had told your great aunt about the visit and the paperwork.

“What is this I hear about an offer?”

The testy old woman had called you to her office like a child. She opened and shut a fan in one hand. Open. Shut. Open. Shut.

Blinking slowly, you release a breath.

“I did not think you could hear at all anymore, Aunt.”

Slam. The fan cracked against the edge of her desk.

“Do not test me, child! Have you had an offer?” Her frail voice betrays none of her age as she shouts.

Disdain drips from your canines like blood from a throat you clenched between your teeth.

“I lost my childhood to bigotry and hate. I will not lose my adulthood to it as well. Any business between myself and any man who might make an offer is none of your damn business. Only those who care about my welfare are welcome to that knowledge.” The temperature in the room changed, flashing cool before heating up with a rage you knew waited to boil over.

Turning on a heel, you stride from the room.

Any calls from your aunt fall on deaf ears. You lock yourself in your room and squirrel away the paperwork. Not well enough.

One of the maids must have found them. Word reached you as you were fitted for a wedding gown that your aunt had offered a hefty reward for the person who could pry the information from you. You thank the young woman pinning the skirt and ask after her children. She smiles as she tells you of her daughters and their clumsy attempts at stitches.

Masterlist | Part 2

[perseidlion]

Streaming in Kaos

Well, it happened. I can't say that I'm surprised that KAOS has been cancelled by Netflix. I am a little surprised at the speed at which it was axed. Only a month after it aired, and it's already gone.

That has me wondering if the decision to cancel was made before the show even aired. We have to remember that marketing is the biggest cost after production. If the Netflix brass looked at the show and either decided (through audience testing, AI stuff or just their own biases) that it wasn't going to be a Stranger Things-level hit, they probably chose at that moment to slash its marketing budget.

That meant there was pretty much no way that KAOS was ever going to hit the metrics Netflix required of it to get a season 2.

What makes me so angry about this (other than the survival of a show relying on peoples' biases or AI) is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you decide before a show is ever going to air that it won't be a success, then it probably won't be. If you rely on metrics and algorithms and AI to analyze art, you will never let something surprise you. You'll never let it grow. You'll never nurture the cult hits of the future or the next franchise.

Netflix desperately needs people behind the scenes that believe in stories and potential over metrics. Nothing except the same old predictable dreck is ever going to be allowed to survive if you don't believe in the stories you're telling.

The networks and streamers have a huge problem on their hands. They need big hits and to build the franchises of the future to sustain their current model (which is horribly broken.) But people have franchise fatigue and aren't showing up for known IPs like they used to. The fact that Marvel content is definitely not a sure thing anymore is a huge canary in the coal mine for franchise fatigue. People aren't just tired of Marvel, they're tired of the existing worlds both on the big screen and the small one. Audiences are hungry for something new.

It is telling that the most successful Marvel properties of the last few years have been the ones that do something different. Marvel is smart to finally pull out The X-Men because that is a breath of fresh air and something people are hungry to see more of.

There's pretty much no one behind the scenes (except for maybe AMC building The Immortal Universe) that is committing to really taking the time to build these new worlds. Marvel built the MCU by playing the long game. That paid dividends for a solid decade even if it's dropping off now. That empire was built not with nostalgia for existing IP (don't forget the MCU was built with B and C tier heroes) but with patience. Marvel itself seems to have forgotten this in recent years.

Aside from that, I think people really want stories that aren't connected to a billion other things. That takes commitment on the part of the audience to follow and to get attached to. People WANT three to five excellent seasons of a show that tells its own story and isn't leaving threads out there for a dozen spinoffs. We're craving tight storytelling.

KAOS could have been that. Dead Boy Detectives could have been that. So could Our Flag Means Death, Lockwood and Co, Shadow and Bone, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Willow, and a dozen other shows with great potential or were excellent out of the gate.

If you look at past metrics, you only learn what people used to like, not what they want now. People are notoriously bad about articulating what they want, but boy do they know it when they see it. Networks have to go back to having a dozen moderate successes instead of constantly churning through one-season shows that get axed and pissing off the people who did like it in a hamfisted attempt to stumble on the next big thing.

The networks desperately need to go back to believing in their shows. Instead, they keep cutting them off at the knees before they ever get a chance because some algorithm told them the numbers weren't there.

[jeondesu]

ೀ⋆ 🍂 SKZ + WAYS THEY SHOW “ I LOVE YOU ” !

── ✧ ˚. ꒰ pairing ꒱ ˒˓ ot8 x gn!reader ˒˓ established relationship genre: fluff warnings: not many… just some mentions of food & kissing <3

this is an old repost from my deleted blog !

방찬/BANG CHAN.

chan is the most perfect boyfriend you could ask for. he’s the type to never let you lift a finger when he’s around you. whether it be fixing a broken pipe in the house or carrying all of the groceries; it wasn’t a problem for him at all. he may get consumed in his work sometimes but that didn’t mean he spends less quality time with you. he’d call you throughout the day to check up on you and tell you how much he misses you. he’d share what he was working on and update you on small things. always smothering you once he comes home— no seriously, he does not let you breathe. he’d pepper kisses all over your face whilst having you wrapped tightly in his arms. the warmth of his loving embrace made you feel the safest and utmost protected.

리노/LEE KNOW.

lovesss taking you out on fun interactive dates. movies, bowling, mini golf, fruit-picking, and candlelit dinners were a just a few to name. minho enjoyed going to small family owned restaurants, he loved desserts and would order a milkshake with two straws on each side. you’d be playing footsie under the table like little kids, teasing you while staring into each others eyes trying not to burst out laughing. he loves you just as much as he loves his cats and that’s saying a whole lot. he has a picture of you playing with soonie and dori as his lock screen, it was probably the cutest pic he’s ever taken of you. he calls you and his cats a little family >\\< he loves the way they all get along with you and it affirms even more that you really are the one for him.

창빈/CHANGBIN.

constantly showers you with dozens upon dozens of compliments. could write a full-fledged novel on simply everything he adores about you. he’ll write sweet notes from time to time and leave them in random areas for you to find. your relationship with him always kept you guessing, he was so full of pleasant surprises. he noticed the littlest details about you and could practically read you like a book. he knew immediately when you were in a slump, it became his personal mission to cheer you up. is super touchy feely with you but does it with the most pure intentions. pressing feathery kisses along your hands and the insides of your palms, then trails further up your arm. he loved seeing how flustered you’d get by it, only wanting to keep doing it more.

현진/HYUNJIN.

treats you as his artistic muse. his deep infatuation with you fed his inspiration with new ideas constantly. his paintings were a reflection of his mind, his most inner thoughts and emotions. almost every painting he’s done was inspired by you in some way, shape, or form. art and photography are one his favorite hobbies so naturally he’s going to always wanna snap pictures of you. whenever you two go on dates he takes pics of you without you knowing, smiling to himself and thinking how lucky he is to have you. he tells you often how much you mean to him, he was a very vocal partner. you didn’t need to ask for reassurance because hyunjin would just give it to you anyway. it was like he could read your mind, he understood you on a intuitive and spiritual level.

한/HAN.

he is completely and authentically himself when he’s with you. your relationship is the most easy going thing in his life, he couldn’t imagine life without you. he loves that your humor is the same and you’re both always goofing off. he feels most accomplished if he can make you laugh until your stomachs start hurting. almost everything was a joke to him but the love he had for you was definitely not. he share’s everything with you, his clothes, favorite snacks, deepest secrets, nothing off limits for him. never stops talking about you with the other members, every little thing reminds of him you so he has to announce it. he could be doing something serious and then one of your inside jokes would randomly pop in his head, smiling like an idiot to himself. he was so proud to have you as his lover and best friend.

필릭스/FELIX.

the most sweet, nurturing, individual in the universe. put a million heart emojis next to your contact name and never fails each time to get a stomach full of butterflies every time he’s with you. hears a song that reminds him of you and instantly sends it; will make monthly playlists for you too. he gets lost in your eyes all the time, can’t help but feel his heart beat out his chest by your ethereal beauty. you could be having an in-depth conversation with him and he’d zone out from just looking at you. he can’t stand being away from you when he’s gone and gets real sad and lonely if he can’t hold you >.< will send you LENGTHY messages of what he loves most about you and how much he wants to be with you. if he can’t physically be there, he’ll do all he can to still feel like he’s right beside you.

승민/SEUNGMIN.

thoughtful gestures were his love language. he would notice your shoe is untied as you’re both walking and stop everything he’s doing to fix it for you. will do anything you ask him to at the drop of a hat. does chores and tasks around the house when you aren’t feeling up to it, he never complains about it either which you love. lots and lots of hugs and kisses !! he especially loves hugging you from behind and resting his head within the crevice of your shoulder. he’d kiss your knuckle before dancing with you in the kitchen and acting like an old married couple. the two of you would be slow dancing and lock eyes, your lips would collide as you both sway to the melody of the song. it was soft moments like these that proved seungmin owned all of your love.

아이엔/JEONGIN.

very much into showing PDA and lots of it. doesn’t really care about what the other members think when he touches or kisses you in front of them. likes to give you unexpected forehead and neck kisses, intertwining his fingers with yours while doing so. he bought you a necklace with his initial on it as a gift and you never took it off since the day he gave it to you. whenever he’s gone for long periods of times that necklace would get you through it all. he’d also buy matching couples pajamas and plan a night in where you do face masks and watch movies (^o^). late night cuddling was his forte; you’d be all tangled up in bed together and he’d leave short series of pecks to your cheek until you lull asleep in his arms.

[alotofpockets]

Flirting & friendzones | Leah Williamson x Arsenal/Swiss!Reader

Where Leah is a flirt and you are scared to give in to your feelings

Woso masterlist | Words: 1.6k

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Moving to a new club always brought some nerves with it, but luckily your national team captain and close friend Lia Wälti had been at your new club for years. Through her you had met some of her teammates for quick moments on the field during national team games over the years, but you didn't have much more of a connection with them. 

While that connection wasn't there, you had kept one secret from Lia, and that was that you had a crush on her best friend Leah ever since she first introduced the two of you on the pitch years ago. You had never acted on your crush on the England captain more than following her on Instagram, but now you'd be playing at the same club as her, which brought a whole different wave of nerves your way.

You were welcomed at Arsenal with open arms, as Lia had ensured you. Each and everyone of your teammates, and the staff members made you feel right at home. Lia had helped you secure an apartment before you had arrived, so you had your own space right away. 

After your first training, Lia invited you to come hang out and Beth and Viv their place. A regular hangout spot according to her, especially since they just got a new puppy. Lia drove you home from training, and told you she’d pick you up in an hour to head over to Beth and Viv’s.

An hour later your doorbell rang, but when you opened the door it was Leah instead of Lia. “Hey, Lia had to run some errands before heading over to the girls, so she asked me to pick you up instead.” Leah had taken the request to ‘pick you up’ to a whole new level as she started flirting with you. 

“You look great by the way.” She started while you walked over to her car. Just a simple friendly comment you thought, but still the blush rushed to your cheeks. “Thank you.” You said before quickly getting a step ahead of the blonde, to make sure she wouldn’t notice your blushing.

Of course Leah noticed right away and would now make it her mission to see you blush. “I mean it, you clean up nice. Haven’t seen you outside of football kits in person.” You reach the door and she opens your side for you. “Seems like a great date outfit too, if you even need a dinner date to wear it to, you know where to find me.” She left you frozen in place with her comment, and closed your door only to get in on the other side with a big smirk on her face.

“So, how has London been treating you so far?” You started telling Leah about your first week there, happy to no longer be the target of her flirting. At least that is what you thought until she followed up with, “Good to hear! If you ever need a tour guide, I am more than happy to volunteer.” On its own it wouldn’t be flirting, but the way she looked at you while you said it, gave the sentence a whole different meeting. 

“I really appreciate it, but Lia is showing me around already.” You said as you got out of the car, as you arrived at the girls' house. “Always Lia, huh?” She acted hurt. “Well, if she ever gets too busy, give me a call.” You walked up to the door quickly, “Oh look at that, we’re here.” You say as Beth opens the door. Darting inside without even saying a proper hello, propping yourself up between Viv and Kim who were already cuddling with Myle. 

Beth turned her attention to Leah, “Damn, what did you do?” She shrugs her shoulders, “Nothing.” In return Beth raised an eyebrow towards Leah, but she didn’t push further. Instead she turned her attention to you. “Glad you could make it. I see Myle made a new friend already!” Myle had gotten comfortable in your lap and started taking a nap there only moments after you had sat down. “She’s very cute.” You comment while looking at the pup lovingly. “I understand why everyone wants to hang out at your place.” You joke.

The conversations between everyone started flowing freely, and you felt immediately accepted into the group of girls. Leah continued her flirting with the rest of the girls around, which piqued the interest of the girls, though they didn’t say anything. Only the occasional chuckle when you would turn Leah down again.

It was hard having to say no to the woman you had been crushing on for years, but you had just joined a new club and she was co-captain of it, as well as Lia’s best friend. It didn’t seem right to act on your feelings, even though Leah was acting on them plenty. You came here to play football, you kept reminding yourself. 

Half an hour later Lia arrived, carrying in a few bags of groceries. “Sorry, it was quite busy at the store. What did I miss?” Some of the girls looked between you and Leah and wondered if they should poke some fun at the situation, but before they could, you answered her question. “Nothing much, we were just talking about how cute Myle is.” 

Lia, who had handed the groceries over to Viv, sat down beside you with a smile on her face. “She really is adorable. I’m glad to see you fit right in, I was worried about leaving you out here on your own.” It really did feel like you fit right in. 

“You don’t need to worry,” Leah interjected smoothly. “she wasn’t alone. I was here to make sure she’s well taken care of.” Her comment earned her a loud chuckle from Vic, who hurried to the kitchen to hide her laughter. Lia shot her best friend a look. “I’m sure you were, Lee.”

After dinner, Lia drove you home. “I am so happy you’re feeling at home already. How are the girls?” She asked while exiting the parking space. “Yeah, they’re really kind. I couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome.” Lia was truly happy you found your spot within her little family at the club. 

She turned to you with a smirk. “What?” You asked instantly, already not liking the look on her face. “Don’t what me.” She laughs, “I was just going to ask what about Leah?” The slight blush that creeped up to your cheeks should’ve said enough. “Leah has been kind too, very kind.” Lia chuckled at your expression. “Kind? That girl has been flirting with you since the moment you arrived.” Your eyes widened, Lia had noticed. 

“Relax! Why do you think I introduced you all those years ago? You are literally perfect for each other. Back then I didn’t tell you my reasoning, because I didn’t think it would be fair to try and set you up with someone that lived in a different country.” She let that set in for a moment before she asked again, “So, what about Leah?” Her smirk grew again.

“Leah is great. I think I’ve kind of been pushing her into the friendzone though.” Lia stopped the car. You hadn’t been paying attention, not that you knew the roads yet, but you knew that you weren’t at your place or Lia’s. “It’s a good thing that Leah doesn’t easily give up, go shoot your shot.” You sent her a confused look, “Right now?” She points to the building ahead of you, “Yup, right now. That’s her place right there. Her car is here already, so she just got back as well.” She unbuckled your seatbelt, “Go!” You shake your head at her but get out of the car anyway. “Call me when you need a ride back.” 

You walk up to Leah’s door nervously, but knock nonetheless. When Leah opens the door, Lia decides to drive off. “Oh, hi, come in. Finally done with Lia?” You roll her eyes at how her flirting turned right back on. 

She walks you into her home, and you get right to the point. “Can we talk about today?” Leah’s face turns serious, feeling like she might have messed up. “Oh, I’m sorry if I was taking it too far. I thought there was a vibe, sorry if I read that wrong.” You shake your head, “No, no don’t worry. Actually it was me wanting to apologise. I was kind of pushing you towards the friendzone, because I didn’t want to mess anything up with Lia or the team.” 

Leah’s lips curve into a smile again, “But now you’re throwing me a ladder to come back out of the friendszone?” Her tone is hopeful. “If I’m not too late, yeah.” The blonde shakes her head, “Definitely not too late.”

Now that the big conversation was out of the way, you finally felt like it was okay to sit down. “You know Lia has been rooting for us for years?” You nod remembering the conversation in the car. “Yeah, she told me on the way here. I had no clue that this had been her intention all along.” 

Leah sits down beside you, “You know, I’ve liked you ever since we met when our teams played against each other that time Lia introduced us.” Your cheeks heat up again, “I have liked you since that day too.” 

Her eyes light up, “So, can we give this a try?” Her tone was hopeful again. “Yes, I’d like that.” With that, Leah closes the distance and presses a gentle kiss to your lips. When you pull back, both of you are smiling. 

“Want to stay for a while? I can drive you home wherever you want to go home.” You smile, “Yeah,” You’d love to spend more time with Leah. “I’ll text Lia and let her know that I won’t be needing that ride anymore.”

-----

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[cxrrodedcoffin]

｡⋆୨୧˚ 𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ˚୨୧⋆｡

Cooper Abbott x Fem!Reader

Likes are always appreciated but reblogs and feedback keep artists going!

Summary: You weren’t too keen on your new stepfather to start, but as he and your mother grew further apart, you found yourself pulled to him more and more, and when things reach a head, you become closer than ever before.

Word Count: 6k

A/N: if you have a good relationship with your mother congrats but i don’t so this one’s for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

TW: stepdad!cooper, age gap (reader is in their mid 20’s + cooper is mid 40’s), nondescript references to parental verbal & emotional abuse, virgin!reader, fem + afab reader, reader referred to as girl, perv!cooper, slight voyeurism, f masturbation, mention of m masturbation, dacryphilia, daddy kink, breeding kink, choking, fingering, oral sex (m + f receiving), unprotected sex (wrap it b4 you tap it always), penetrative sex, pet names (sweet girl, pretty girl, sweetheart, babydoll, baby), creampie, cheating, praise, hickeys, size kink if you squint, spit kink, degradation (whore), aftercare, mentions of murder

Rating: R, 18+

——

When your mother introduced you to her fiancé Cooper Abbott two years ago, you couldn’t stand him. He was shady, dipping out of the house at all hours of the night, and full of himself. He was confident, often to a borderline cocky level, and you wanted nothing to do with your new step father even after him and your mom tied the knot. His kids were sweet enough, but they were only over on the weekends and with their mother the rest of the week, not leaving much time to bond with your new step-siblings.

You avoided him as often as you could, picking up extra shifts to get yourself out of the house more often, dodging whatever awkward attempt at bonding he had in mind for you that particular day. It’s not that you thought he would make a bad father, he was great to his existing kids, but you didn’t feel like you needed a grown man to father you, having already been an adult yourself for a short while.

Cooper took to you right away, the urge that rose in his chest the first time he saw you frightening him. It wasn’t anything like the urge he felt when he was scoping out one of his kills, no, it was the polar opposite. He had this carnal desire to protect you, to keep you safe from all outside forces threatening your happiness. He knew you didn’t feel whole, could sense that there was something missing deep inside of you, that same something he was missing, a hole in his chest left there by the tumultuous relationship he shared with his mother. He wondered if he had been wrong about the woman he chose to marry, and as time would tell, he was correct.

As the months went on you slowly found yourself warming up to him more and more, almost startling yourself out of your chair one night when you realized you’d been absentmindedly smiling as he went on about the latest fire call his station had been on during family dinner.

That night, two weeks ago, when his foot brushed yours under the dining room table and instead of pulling away, you played footsie with him for the remainder of the meal, lingered in your mind, the faint knowing smile on his face between bites making you wonder if there was something more to it. You began to test the waters, leaving a pair of your panties in the washing machine so they’d end up in his next load of laundry to see if he’d return them or not, leaving your bedroom door cracked when you changed, “accidentally” leaving your vibrator on your bed when you knew he’d be coming down the hall to see it in passing.

He fell for every single one of your traps, lingering in the hallway to peer through the crack in your door, blood rushing to his dick at the sight of your bare breasts when you lifted your shirt over your head, the panties you’d left in the washer mysteriously never popping back up in your underwear drawer, your vibrator magically shifting positions every time you left it out.

It was mostly innocent at first, just a silly, taboo flirtation that gave the two of your lonely souls an entertaining game to play, but with your mom out of town for work, Cooper was ready to see if your little antics were really just a game.

He loved your mother, at least, he thought he did. After their wedding he began to see the sides of her that had tormented you most of your adolescence. Her controlling and narcissistic nature that she hid so well around strangers began to rear its ugly head the longer he was around, and he was just about at his limit. He’d never let your mother onto even an inkling of his dissatisfaction, an expert at keeping secrets and manipulating her into believing he was the happiest man alive, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

He became acutely aware of the way she treated you, and it stirred a rage inside of him that could only be quelled by his latest kill. He saw parts of himself in you, the part of himself that was once a scared young boy, facing all of the trauma his own mother inflicted upon him. He wanted nothing more than to protect you from her, to put his skills to use and butcher her the way he did the rest of his victims, but there were too many risk factors to consider. She was too close to him, too connected legally and socially, it would be traced back to him immediately, and he couldn’t risk going to prison and leaving you all alone in that trauma-ridden house.

-

“I’m going to the grocery store, I’ll be back in an hour.” Cooper called up from the bottom of the stairs, pausing for your acknowledgment. You shouted a short “Okay!” from your bedroom and waited until you heard the slam of the front door behind him.

You wanted nothing more than to feel his hands all over you, but you knew that couldn’t happen. Cooper was respectable, a family man by all accounts, you were sure he’d never betray your mother like that. But you wished he would every time he flexed his muscular arms while carrying groceries in from the car, every time the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and every time his hand brushed against your lower back when he walked past you.

You were hungry, needy in a way you were almost ashamed of, and you knew Cooper wasn’t satisfied either. You’d heard him panting and groaning by himself through your bedroom wall when he thought he was alone in the house one too many times for him to be getting any from your mother. Their bedroom being right next to yours left very little to the imagination and you hadn’t heard the bed creak in over a year.

Honestly, after all the shit she’d put you through, you weren’t sure if you could say you’d never betray her either. Your apathy toward her had grown stronger with every nasty word she’d sent your way and as you got older, you stopped letting yourself feel bad for holding it against her. No mother should speak to their child the way she spoke to you, and despite your compulsion to keep the peace as long as you lived under her roof, you didn’t care to protect her anymore.

Despite all of your desires, you resigned to lulling your urges every quiet moment you had alone with yourself, your trusty vibe in hand as you imagined Cooper on top of you, touching you in all of the right ways. Today was no different, your cunt already dripping from the image of Cooper walking down the hallway, toned torso dripping wet with a towel wrapped around his waist after his morning shower. When he said he’d be leaving, your stomach flipped at the opportunity to take care of your little problem, opening the drawer of your nightstand the moment you heard the door shut.

You quickly rid yourself of your clothing, shirt and shorts in a messy pile on your bedroom floor as you pushed your underwear down your legs, the fabric catching on your bedpost as you attempted to fling them to the floor. You propped yourself against your pillows, reaching underneath them to pull out the shirt you’d stolen out of Cooper’s dirty laundry and held it to your face, breathing in the intoxicating scent of his cologne and natural musk as the soft fabric brushed against your nose.

You didn’t have time to savor the act this time, with only an hour to work with, each of your actions needed to have direct intention behind them. You pulled the shirt over your frame, the loose fabric grazing over your sensitive nipples, another surge of arousal pooling between your thighs. You pulled the toy out of your drawer, the sleek aluminum weighty in your hand as you guided it to your center, using the rounded edge of the silicon head to spread your arousal up to your clit before turning the suction onto its lowest setting.

The soft hum of the small toy filled the room, echoed by your uninhibited whimpers as you held the suction against your clit, each targeted pulse of air drawing a breathy moan from your heaving chest. You dropped your head to rest on your shoulder, taking in his scent from the shirt again as you tried your best to remember the way his hand felt on your lower back, to imagine how that feeling could translate to other parts of your body, firm pressure against your hips, your ribs, your breasts, your throat.

Your thighs began to tremble as your release drew impossibly close, your finger pressing the button on the toy to up the intensity and send you into a toe-curling orgasm. You cried out his name again and again, tears pricking in the corner of your eye as your hips bucked, dropping the toy from your sensitive cunt as the feeling of overstimulation started the set in.

“Fuck.”

The exasperated sigh and sound of rustled plastic hitting the floor quickly ripped you from your post-orgasm haze, eyes shooting open as you scrambled to pull your comforter over your body.

Cooper was pissed, but not for the reasons you thought. He was mad at himself for not being the one to make you come, for not reading into your signs enough to be the man you needed him to be and make the first move. He needed to be in control, and watching you do it all yourself, with only the thought of him there to help, made him sick to his stomach.

“I-I’m sorry, I thought you’d be out longer.” You tried your best to justify your actions but you knew it was useless, this looked bad, was bad, no matter what way you tried to spin it.

“I went to the corner store instead.” He cleared his throat and picked up the small plastic bag and bundle of fresh flowers off the floor, turning to walk out of the room. His footsteps down the hall reverberated so loud you wondered how you could’ve been so lost to not hear him walking toward your room earlier. You laid your head in your hands to sulk for a moment before pulling yourself together, figuring it better to be an adult about the situation than pouting like a child.

You walked to the bathroom down the hall, messy toy in hand and a look of shame on your face. There was no point in shutting the door, Cooper had already seen your vibrator doing exactly what it was made for, a glimpse of you washing it in the sink wouldn’t kill him. The water ran hot and you got to work, thoroughly rinsing the soap suds off when you felt hands on your hips, toying with the hem of your shirt, or rather, Cooper’s shirt.

You looked into the mirror, his brown eyes meeting yours in the reflection. “I’ve been looking for this.” He started to lift the fabric, exposing your stomach before quickly dropping it and taking a step back. Your face dropped in disappointment, wishing he’d have taken what was his.

Cooper wasn’t exactly a particularly moral person, but nevertheless he didn’t feel great about your age gap or the power imbalance involved with being your stepfather. He couldn’t let himself do anything without your express permission, not when there was so much risk involved.

“You can touch me, if you want to.” You spoke softly, avoiding eye contact while turning the tap off and reaching for a clean towel to set your vibrator on to dry. Cooper didn’t hesitate, his hands returning to their place on your hips before slipping under his shirt, rubbing over the curve of your waist and taking in how soft your delicate skin felt against his palms. Your eyes fluttered shut, reveling in the feeling of his large hands on you like you’d fantasized about countless times before.

“Look at me, pretty girl.” He gave a soft squeeze to your sides, waiting for your eyes to meet his in the mirror, a warm smile greeting you when you finally did.

“What are you thinking about?” He questioned, continuing to run his fingers up and down your waist. Your breath hitched just slightly, trying to put your months of built up fantasies into words and failing miserably.

“You, I want you.” You breathed out, too shy to say the things you really wanted to. He saw the way you shifted on your heels, trying to close the gap between his chest and your back. He looked so beautifully intimidating like this, tall stature looming over yours like an animal stalking its prey, the lion and the lamb. He took the hem of the shirt in his grip and slowly raised it over your head, never breaking eye contact.

The sight of your bare breasts made him groan almost animalistically, ready to devour you. It’d been so long since he’d been with a woman so supple, your body an apple ripe for the picking.

“Where, sweetheart?” His lips met your temple, placing a chaste kiss before making his way down your neck, lips ghosting over your sensitive skin, eyes still locked with yours all the while. He sucked and nipped at your skin, leaving a trail of blooming bruises in his wake. You watched him, entranced by how expertly he mapped your pulsepoint, your hand moving to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging lightly and whimpering when his teeth grazed the sensitive spot just below your ear. You were so lost in him you weren't sure what way was up or down, let alone what he had just asked you.

“You make the sweetest sounds babydoll, can you use that pretty voice to tell me where you want me to fuck you? I’d gladly bend you over this countertop, or carry you to my bed, I just want your first time to be comfortable.” The tail end of his statement had your eyes widening like a deer in headlights, feeling like your deepest secret had just been exposed to the world.

“H-how did you know?” Your voice was shaky, unsure of yourself as you wondered if your virgin status was really that painfully obvious to others.

“I heard you the other night, on the phone with your friend.” He was so nonchalant, as if it was the most normal conversation in the world to be having with your stepfather. Your body relaxed slightly, releasing tension you didn’t even know you were holding.

“My bed please, I don’t want to think about my mother while we do this.” You held your fingers in your opposite hand, nervously fidgeting with your digits as you dropped your head, staring at the sink. You knew you didn’t have an obligation to feel bad for her, but guilt panned in your chest nonetheless. Cooper’s hand found your chin, lifting your gaze back to his. You were too good for her, too good for him if he was being honest with himself, but you made him want to be a better person for your sake, and he wanted nothing more than to help you lose that unnecessary guilt he knew you were carrying.

“Trust me sweetheart, I’ll make you feel so good you’ll forget all about her, want her to be the furthest thing from either of our minds.” His voice soothed you the way your favorite songs do, and a heat rose over your cheeks thinking about all the ways he could do that.

You almost had the wind knocked out of you when he took you by the waist and perfectly executed an over the shoulder carry, playfully slapping your ass before making his way down the hall to your bedroom. You let a moan slip, and you would’ve been embarrassed if it hadn’t been for the way his shoulder tensed underneath your stomach in response.

“You like when I manhandle you?” Cooper teased, carefully tossing you down onto your plush bedding. You nodded, rubbing your thighs together as his gaze drifted over your body, sizing up his prey. You relaxed against your pillows, the stuffed animals either side of your head framing your innocence like a halo. Cooper began to undress, watching the way your features became more reactive with every article of clothing he removed, until he was in nothing but his boxers. You gulped, seeing the outline of his member through the thin fabric and growing nervous, trying to imagine how he would fit inside you.

When he finally slid his underwear off, your lips parted in a soft gasp, mesmerized by the blush pink hue of his leaking tip, your eyes following the length of the prominent vein on the right side of his shaft. He was thick, intimidatingly so, and your mouth started to water thinking of how small your hand would look wrapped around it. Before you knew it you were on your hands and knees, crawling to the end of the bed and looking up at him with pleading eyes.

“Can I try?” You asked, voice too innocent for Cooper to take.

“Only if you really want to, honey.” He smiled down at you, caressing your cheek. You nodded eagerly, returning the smile as you repositioned yourself, bent forward to lean on your elbows and knees, his cock right at your eye line. You brought your hand to his length, just holding the weight of it in your hand for a moment, looking it over to properly memorize it. Cooper found it easy to be patient with you despite the way his body was begging for you to do more, finding your curious nature incredibly endearing. Opening your mouth hesitantly, you began by kitten licking the tip, the salty taste of his precum lingering on your tongue. You didn’t know what you expected, but whatever it was, this was better. You swirled your tongue around his head, exploring the contours of the taut skin before taking him into your mouth, feeling the way he twitched ever so slightly in response to the warm heat. Cooper groaned, his hand making its way to the back of your head, not pushing but guiding your shallowly bobbing head.

You worked your way further down his length, slowly feeling your throat adjust to the intrusion with every gag it gave, your mouth dripping with saliva. Cooper nearly lost it when you experimentally hollowed your cheeks, the added pressure of your suction drawing your name from his lips. He began to shallowly thrust, making you gag even harder as you took in two thirds of his shaft, tears welling in your eyes. You did your best to adjust, but it was no use, your throat unable to adjust to the depth he held you at. Your tears broke your waterline, leaving grey mascara streaks in their wake and you knew you must look a mess. Your shallow breaths were growing harder to take, but you wanted to keep going, you needed to make him come.

Your throat spasming around him felt incredible, and it took everything in Cooper to stop himself from forcing you to take him the rest of the way until your nose hit his stomach. He knew he’d get you there eventually, but that wasn’t the goal today. The image of your beautiful face, all smeared with messy makeup and covered in spit was something he never wanted to forget, taking a mental image as an effigy of your transformation into his perfect little slut. He needed to taste you, to know how sweet an angel like you must be. He gripped your hair, gently easing his cock from your throat, a thick string of saliva stretching across the empty divide between his tip and your lips. You panted, sitting back on your heels and catching your breath as you looked up at him, a small seed of worry planting itself in your mind. Cooper could see it, that light in your eyes dimming ever so slightly.

“What’s the matter baby?” He was genuinely concerned, worried that he’d gone too hard on you.

“It’s nothing, I’m just, I-I don’t know how it’s gonna fit.” You stumbled over your words, embarrassed by your confession. Of course you knew scientifically how it would, vaginas can stretch enough to push a baby out, of course it could stretch to fit a penis. But after seeing one in person, having him in your mouth and not being able to take it all in, and thinking back to how you could barely fit two of your own fingers inside yourself, the rational part of your brain had long since resigned itself from this topic.

“I promise it will, I know just how to get you ready so it only hurts a little, okay?” He leaned down, inches from your face, waiting for your nod of acknowledgement before pulling you into a kiss, his tongue pinning yours down in a subtle show of dominance before pulling away, just admiring you for a moment.

“You are so beautiful.” He sighed, cupping your face in his hands, calloused thumbs wiping away your tear stains. Your cheeks grew hot again, never knowing how to take a compliment but appreciating his praise beyond words, especially with how messy you’d gotten.

“Lay back for me, sweet girl.” He kissed you on the top of your head, gently nudging your shoulder and you followed his instruction, returning to your previous position against your pillows. He took your ankles in hip grip, spreading your legs to situate himself on his stomach between them, his face inches from your now impossibly wet cunt. He looked up at you, locking eyes before flattening his tongue against your hole and licking a flat strike through your folds up to your swollen clit, eliciting a gentle whimper from your trembling lips.

“Never had a girl as sweet as you before.” Cooper praised, and he wasn’t exaggerating. He couldn’t get enough of the savory sweet mix of your arousal, so intoxicating he thought he might get drunk off of it. The compliment made you want to hide, your thighs attempting to close out of instinct. His strong hands ruined their plight, forcing them to stay spread and using his thick forearms to anchor you to the bed. He dove back in, practically muzzling himself with your cunt, lapping hungrily at your weeping entrance. Your hands clutched desperately at your floral sheets, looking for anything to cling to, too scared to hurt him with your iron grip.

His motions moved upward, plush lips framing your clit before swiping quickly over the sensitive nub with the tip of his tongue. You cried out, chest rising off of the bed momentarily as your body fought to process all of the new sensations it was experiencing. Cooper hummed against you, his eyes gazing over your mound to watch the way you reacted to the vibrations the action sent through you. You were a moaning mess, all whiney pleases and breathy cries, wriggling against him. When he pulled away moments later, you groaned in frustration.

“Patience, babydoll, I’m going to start stretching this little pussy out to get her prepared for me.” He slapped your inner thigh, returning back to your clit as his fingers traced the tight muscles around your entrance. When you were properly worked up again, lost in the feeling of his tongue on your clit, he inserted his middle finger, your wetness allowing it to glide in with ease. He curled it inside of you, rubbing along the contours of your warm, velvety walls. You whimpered at the feeling, bucking into his palm to encourage him to add another. He did so, his pointer joining with slight resistance, the size of his fingers providing more stimulation than your own ever could. He pumped them in and out in tandem with the rhythm of his tongue, feeling your tightness ease up around him the longer he repeated his movements. You could feel a pressure building in the pit of your stomach, one slightly different than what you were used to.

“More, please.” You moaned, bucking your hips once more, causing Cooper to smile against you. He did as you asked, his index finger joining the other two inch by inch, your muscles stretching slowly until he was up to his knuckles inside of you. He held the digits still for a moment, waiting to be sure you were ready before pulling out and thrusting them back in, curling them to hit the spongy patch that his fingers could only just reach. You felt like you were hurtling toward the edge of a cliff, moments away from losing all control when he began sucking on your clit, the added pressure causing your vision to go blurry.

“Daddy!” You cried out, back arching and thighs clamping around his head and fingers clutched so tightly you thought your sheets might rip in your grasp. Cooper slowed his actions, working you through every wave of your orgasm until you relaxed into the mattress, releasing him from between your thighs. When your mind finally cleared you realized what you had done, frantically sitting up to look at him.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from, I just got so overwhelmed, I-I wasn’t thinking.” You rambled on, overexplaining in hopes that he wouldn’t be disgusted with you.

“Oh sweetheart, it’s more than okay. You want me to be your daddy? Gonna let Daddy take care of you?” His full lips and stubble both glistened with your slick, and you almost wished you could take a photo to capture the look in his eyes. He pushed himself up by his forearms, crawling up to hover over you and tilting his head as if waiting for a response, until you realized what he wanted.

“Yes, Daddy.” You looked up at him, big doe eyes still glazed over from your afterglow, and something shifted in Cooper. The urge was back, something primal in him that needed to be as close as possible, to not only be inside you, but to own you. He hung his head, fighting back against it.

“I’ll be right back, I need to get a condom.” He sighed, prioritizing your comfort over his desires, or so he thought.

“Cooper, wait, do we have to use one?” You grabbed his arm to stop him from getting out of bed, and his eyes lit up at your words.

“You don’t want to?” He questioned, a bit caught off guard.

“I want to feel all of you, I don’t care if I might get pregnant.” Your eyes darkened and he swore he saw something more behind your eyes, like you weren't letting him in on a dark secret, but he thought better than to push it.

“You’re going to be the death of me.” He let out a slight laugh, shaking his head before grabbing one of your pillows and asking you to lift your hips, placing it under your ass. The added cushion had you more relaxed, your nerves about his size starting to dissipate. He hooked his hands behind your legs, pushing your knees up to your chest to give him a full view of your pussy, ready and waiting for him. He lined up his hips with yours, his cock laying against the apex of your thigh.

“Are you ready, sweet girl?” His voice was soft, strained slightly with pent up desire but holding nothing but love otherwise. You nodded, an eager “Yes.” pulled from your now-sore throat. He looked into your eyes, taking his cock in his hand and rubbing it through your folds to properly coat it in your slick, taking a few seconds to slap the head against your clit just to hear a couple more of those pretty little whimpers he loved so much before having to see you in pain. He lined up his tip with your entrance, pressing into you at an almost agonizingly slow pace, pausing when he saw you grimace in pain.

“I know sweetheart, but it’s just one big stretch then it’ll feel good, I know you can do it.” He soothed, his hand finding yours to intertwine your fingers. You nodded, your free hand moving to rest on the back of his neck and pull him down into a kiss. He continued to push forward inch by inch, swallowing your winces and whines until he was finally seated fully inside of you, stalling his hips to allow your tight walls to adjust around him. He pulled away from the kiss when your sighs of pain subsided, squeezing your hand.

“Move, please.” You gave him the go ahead, and he wasted no time, pulling out carefully before thrusting slowly back in, your mouth dropping in a gasp at the new sensation, a burn so good you didn’t know whether to moan or cry. The more he repeated the action, the louder you became, all semblance of pain turning into a pleasure you’d never felt before, feeling like he was made to fill the emptiness inside of you.

“God, you’re so tight babydoll, taking me so well.” His praise had you on cloud 9, but his gentle pace was only doing so much and it was starting to feel like you had an itch you couldn’t scratch.

“Harder.” You moaned, voice tinged with frustration by the teetering level of stimulation.

“Only if you ask nicely.” He retorted, slightly taken aback by your demanding tone.

“Please fuck me harder Daddy, I need it.” You gave him your best puppy dog eyes, still glistening with tears from earlier and he melted, content to answer your prayers. He dropped your hand, bringing his grip to your neck to apply firm pressure to the sides of your neck, careful not to press against your windpipe as he slammed his hips against yours, the slapping of skin and both of your moans filling the room.

“Is this what you wanted, baby?” That cocky confidence that you had once hated was starting to come out, but this time, it made you clamp down around him. You nodded as best you could, starting to lose your focus as your mind went blank, your orgasm building quickly. Cooper saw the way your eyes glazed over and groaned, knowing he finally had you just the way he wanted you.

“Open.” His hand gripped your chin, fingers pressing into your cheeks to force your mouth into an ‘O’ shape, your tongue instinctually lulling out of your mouth. Before you could blink his spit had landed on your tongue, slipping to the back of your mouth until you swallowed it with a needy moan. You kept your mouth open and Cooper repeated the action, watching as a drop of it dribbled out of the corner of your mouth.

“Only your first time and you're already such a whore.” He laughed, his hand returning to your throat. His other made its way into the tight space between your bodies, rubbing firm circles over your sensitive bundle and nerves, your hips rocking to meet his thrusts.

“Only for you.” You were so close, and you knew he was too, the way his moans were becoming more desperate, his brows furrowed underneath the strands of hair that had fallen in his face, and the feeling of his cock twitching with every thrust.

“You’re mine, gonna keep you forever, sweet girl.” His words made your head spin, and as he hit the soft spot inside of you one final time, you were gone, hearing gone fuzzy and stars erupting behind your eyes, all coherent thoughts gone from your mind, too overwhelmed with euphoria. Cooper didn’t slow down in the slightest, racing toward his own orgasm at an unstoppable pace. Your sensitivity was at an all time high, walls fluttering around him at an unwavering pace, the pressure against your clit making you want to cry as it almost crossed into pain territory, until it morphed into another growing orgasm.

“Come on babydoll, give me one more.” He encouraged, his torso pushing down against yours in almost a full mating press, more skin on skin contact than you’d had in your entire life.

“God, Cooper, please, need you to put a baby in me.” You didn’t care what he thought anymore, too close to your third orgasm of the night to give a single thought into what his potential judgments would be.

“Whatever you want, filthy girl.” He gave one final slamming thrust inside of you, his thumb swiping quickly over your clit to drag you over the edge with him, thick ropes of cum coating your contracting walls. You were both beyond spent, his dead weight on top of you oddly comforting until your legs started to cramp. He eased out of you, the empty feeling pulling an involuntary wince. He laid next to you, his arm snaking beneath your waist to pull you flush against him. He kissed the top of your head, letting you rest for a moment before helping you sit up.

“You should pee, I don’t want you getting a uti.” He helped you up onto shaky legs, holding your waist as you walked down the hallway together, each step you took feeling like a fawn learning to use its limbs for the first time.

You did as you were told, sitting in silence as he wet a washcloth in the sink next to you.

“What did you go to the store for, anyway?” You asked, genuinely curious but also trying to fill the silence.

“The flowers, I wanted to surprise you, after the comment you made the other day at the farmer’s market.” You recalled a compliment you’d paid one of the flower vendors that day, after your mother had made an offhand one to them about how wilted their stock was. You’d done that a lot throughout your life, it was just second nature at this point, trying your best to leave a trail of positivity behind your mother’s constant criticism.

“Thank you, you really didn’t have to.” You looked down at your hands to hide your embarrassment.

“Look at me.” His voice was firm but caring, and when you looked up, you realized he was right beside you. He held your chin with one hand and used the other to wipe the damp washcloth over your cheeks, washing the faded mascara off of your skin.

“I wanted to. I think everything we just did is pretty decent proof that I care about you, sweetheart. Don’t ever doubt my motivations.” He wiped the last of your makeup off, cleaned himself up and let you finish before washing your hands and spending the rest of the evening together in your bed, snuggled up and discussing all the things you could do with the remaining days until your mother returned home and you had to actually deal with the complicated nature of what all of this meant for the two of you.

—

tagging some angel moots: @babygorewhore @xxbimbobunnyxx @hereforthehitsbaby

please comment or message me if you’d like to be added to my cooper abbott taglist <3

[anim-ttrpgs]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

[huggywuggysuppy]

once you finish Empires S1 i'd like to hear your thoughts about esmp1!gem. she's genuinely one of my favorite characters to analyse because she is so nuanced and interesting in so many ways anywhere you look at her. her twisted determination to achieve peace at ANY cost, her rigid thinking and neurodivergency, her relation with symbols like her tower or the end and the moon, or her genuine wish to be a good person and so many other things. there's so much that is impossible to grasp at first (<- <- me, lesbian who is really normal about her favorite gem)

She's right.

Essentially, Gem understands the role a wizard PLAYS in a story. She's never the cause of something, but she sure amplifies both the problems and the solutions. She's morally gray, she's playing both sides, but nobody ever challenges her on that because of course Gem's helping the heroes too -- they need artifacts! She's a plot device, a questgiver, a weapon. She's the voice of reason, the straight man in any comedy duo, yet makes the same questionable decisions as anyone. She's experimenting, she's out of her comfort zone, she's having the time of her life. Wizard Gem is, ultimately, a real wizard.

That's the short answer anyhow. Longer analysis, well, I'm so glad you asked. I can't talk about character without diving into the content creator metanarrative (feature not a bug) so let's get into the noodles! What about Wizard Gem makes her so fantastic?

Wizard Gem is a catalyst.

From the beginning, Gem is mixing up dynamics and forcing new inspiration by opposing what's static. The way the rest of the Wither Rose Alliance sort of? Molds? Around her. How Sausage and fWhip are beefing until the day she alliances with Pearl and suddenly the four are besties. How she adds moral nuance to the villain side, both by mixing relations with the hero side, and just by insisting the Wither Rose are seeking peace, really, they're trying their best! This stops things from being so cut and dry and basic. Instead of Xornoth's vain forces against the heroic bumbling fish people (with the plant and animal empires in between), there's all sorts of messiness and drama. And Gem's aware of this, of how she's changing things, and so the effect is amplified.

On a CC level, even her origins are experimental. Gem was originally planning a more naturey plant wizard, but since Shubble, Katherine, AND Pearl, were plant based (& arguably Joey too) she adapted into amethyst and rocks. And it turned out amazing! That foundation of experimenting made it easier to take larger risks both content and character wise. All the empires folk enjoyed the lore centric storytelling: only getting deeper into it through the season, but Gem especially paved the way for embracing rp and outfits and items and fun.

But back to C! As the Wither Rose alliance progresses, terrorizing the server included, Gem maintains her peace loving stance. Taking on the role as fWhip's (and later Sausage)'s PR managers is genuinely so important to me. She never really stops them from doing bad things, but she's always discouraging them and talking them down one or two degrees. Ultimately loyal to her alliance, she's also taking responsibility for the consequences. Helping out Jimmy behind the scenes to lessen the blow, both for him but also herself.

At her core, Wizard Gem wants peace.

For herself and friends at least. Unfortunately, the Crystal Cliffs aren't in a bubble, so she keeps having to save the world anyway. She dreads conflict at best and fears it at worst. Her concerns are her kingdom, her neighbors, whatever magic / building she's invested in right now, and maybe a light shenanigan here or there. She'll help fWhip get out of trouble because they really do love each other, he's always helping her out too in his own ways (ex: making her stuff,) and she'll protect the realm so the problems stay far away from their doorsteps. When things do eventually fall into her lap, she definitely deals with them. Just... not 100%. Enough that they stop breaking the peace for now.

Let's be honest, Wizard Gem is firmly in denial. She's down for burying the corruption and letting it claim whole towers of her base. Often she'll just accept whatever another player brings to her: buying Scott and Katherines plush, whatever weird scams Lizzie tries on her, etc. When Scott gives her the Elsa curse, she hangs out in the nether, takes Shrub’s dodgy Xornoth cure, and stubbornly "it's fine"-s her way through avoiding a real solution until fWhip drags her to Katherine. It's telling that her (short-lived) corrupted evil version is more confident, while others become hyper or angry. This isn't laziness: it's fear. She doesn't want to step on any toes and start any conflicts. You can see it in how she talks to Jimmy and fWhip: giving them what they need not to win, but to end things.

This is how Gem maintains the story role of a wizard: she's always trying to stop things, so she's never starting new things, only making them better or worse. But how does Gem get away with it? She's simultaneously one of the most invested players in the lore, yet playing a character who'd rather be anywhere else. That dichotomy is entertaining, sure, but there's something else here.

Wizard Gem is loyal, curious, and moral. Just... not obviously.

Gem is unfathomably loyal. While she plays both sides, she's always standing alongside her allies in battle and all her actions are ensuring they're safe. She may be exasperated, yet treats her immediate alliance members with kindness. How fWhip drags her into things, but he never asks her to, it's always Gem CHOOSING to follow him because what else is she gonna do? Let him do it himself? How Sausage makes her laugh with his absurdity, even when they're fighting. How she's always a little uncomfortable, even in her great empire, except in the quiet simple moments with her allies between schemes.

(Still can’t believe roseblings isn’t canon. Like fWhip’s line about how he blew up relations with Scott because he messed with Gem, "it's okay fWhip I'm fine now," their tones, ohhhh devious work. They don't need to be canon, nonfamilial platonic relationships and all that, but STILL. I'm only human.)

(EDIT: nevermind they’re canon !! big win for the girlies)

Gem's also invested in magic and learning more about it, and she learns to trust and share that with others. The Crystal Cliffs Academy demonstrates growth: from solving problems herself when they’re too big to ignore, to actually addressing things at the source. Explicitly, the goal is to strengthen other empires magic knowledge so less crises happen. That’s preventative instead of reactionary. Even choosing the Ocean Queen as her first student is intentional: not an ally, causes a lot of medium scale ruckuses, in text Gem sensed her using transformation magic that wasn’t hers and wanted to guide Lizzie towards at least controlling it. Start of season Gem would’ve just kept handling any crises herself.

Essentially, Gem is trying SO HARD to be good. As anon said, she has a sort of rigid thinking (again, fun contrast between CC experimental and C rigidity) that creates this fantastic mix where she's staying true to the Wither Rose because she loves them and wants to keep them safe as their friend, but also trying to act for the greater good as a wizard, even though she'd rather focus on her own things. It's not a stable point of view, and is constantly challenged, creating the amazing series of events that we get to see unfold.

Also, Wizard Gem is straight up cool.

Regarding imagery, Wizard Gem has a distinct style that’s so fun to build and draw and write about. She's magical and otherworldly (dragons, the end) but also ethereal and magnificent on a human scale (towers, the moon.) Amethyst itself is inherently unique: something about forming deep under pressure, growing slow and beautiful, sought after as thrones and paths alike. These aesthetics have infinite storytelling potential, and look cute doing it.

And all these things are carried into Gem’s imagery as a whole! Losing her eye to and getting corrupted by the end portal in Life Series, building dragons and towers and villages all across her mc worlds, often using the moon in builds like her hc10 lighthouse. She’s solidly the moon in shinyduo sun/moon dynamic (while they both employ sun/moon all the time, Pearl builds and lores solidly more sun, let alone their comedy dynamic.) Even the struggle between embracing/chasing excellence versus holding herself back out of fear: that's Gem in every world! Emp1 is combining a lot of Gem's themes into one single character. And turns out she's really awesome!

This character wholeness lets Gem maintain her signature exasperated excellence over the other players. Like PVP prowess and building skill, she's an expert here too, and delightful to watch and interact with. Wizard Gem is amplifying everything, trying to keep her loved ones safe, learning that she needs to make peace herself, all while staying true to her beautiful masterful self.

Finally, CC!Gem is delighted to roleplay like this.

Every time she turns to the camera to give disclaimers and talk about her character, there's an infectious joy and "I can't believe this is my job." She often compares it to D&D, which ohh the parasocial brainrot is taking so normally, but also there's an unapologeticness to it. If you don't like her character / the roleplay / etc, stop watching, whatever, this is fun for the rest of us. Her and other CCs have talked about the crippling pushback from playing antagonistic characters -- and there's no shortage of that in emp1, she has to put disclaimers on the RP portions! But unlike Life Series where she's constantly fighting demons (it's own post, really) Wizard Gem is having too much fun to care. I think that's why emp1 hits different, at least for us Gem girlies. She's taking this seriously, and she's having the time of her life.

I originally posted about Worldhopper/Watcher Gem because that adds an extra layer of spice to her in all series, but it's still really awesome by itself. Summoning the dragons from ANOTHER WORLD? Hello?? Don't think I missed her using the nether portal to change skins either. Giggling during convos with Xornoth, undaunted by the Empires Crown, the list goes on. One day someone will assemble all her characters into the same room to compare notes and that someone will either be me or Geminitay herself.

In short, Empires S1 Gem is a Wizard. She's a catalyst, she ultimately wants peace, she's loyal curious and moral, she's straight up cool, and she's having fun. And isn't that just the most magical joy of all?

Anyway, accepting empires fic recommendations in reblogs / directly into my inbox. What a privilege to get to watch so much great art. Thank you for reading!

[artsekey]

Disney's Wish

Look, Disney's Wish has been universally panned across the internet, and for good reason.

It’s just…kind of okay.

 When we sit down to watch a Disney film—you know, from the company that dominated the animation industry from 1989 to (arguably) the mid 2010’s and defined the medium of animation for decades—we expect something magnificent. Now, I could sit here and tell you everything that I thought was wrong with Wish, but if you’re reading this review, then I imagine that you’ve already heard the most popular gripes from other users across the web. So, let me focus in:

The biggest problem with Wish—in fact, the only problem with Wish—is Magnifico.

Whoa, that’s crazy! There’re so many things about Wish that could’ve been better! The original concept was stronger! The music was bad--

I hear you, I do. But stay with me here, okay? Take my hand. I studied under artists from the Disney renaissance. I teach an adapted model of Disney’s story pipeline at a University level. I spent a ridiculous amount of time getting degrees in this, and I am about to dissect this character and the narrative to a stupid degree.

First, we need to understand that a good story doesn’t start and end with what we see on the screen. Characters aren’t just fictional people; when used well, characters are tools the author uses (or in this case, the director) to convey their message to the audience. Each character’s struggle should in some way engage with the story’s message, and consequently, the story’s theme. Similarly, when we look at our protagonist and our antagonist, we should see their characters and their journeys reflected in one-another.

So, what went wrong between Asha & Magnifico in terms of narrative structure?

Act I

In Wish, we’re introduced to our hero not long into the runtime—Asha. She’s ambitious, caring, and community-oriented; in fact, Asha is truly introduced to the audience through her love of Rosas (in “Welcome to Rosas”).  She’s surrounded by a colorful cast of friends who act as servants in the palace, furthering her connection with the idea of community but also telling us that she’s not of status, and then she makes her way to meet Magnifico for her chance to become his next apprentice.

Quick aside: I'm not going to harp on Asha as a character in the context of Disney's overall canon. Almost every review I've seen covers her as a new addition to Disney's ever-growing repertoire of "Cute Quirky Heroines", and I think to be fair to Asha as an actor in the narrative, it serves her best to be weighed within the context of the story she's part of.

As Asha heads upstairs for her interview, we're introduced to the man of the hour: Magnifico. He lives in a tower high above the population of Rosas, immediately showing us how he differs from Asha; he’s disconnected from his community. He lives above them. He has status. While the broader context of the narrative wants us to believe that this also represents a sense of superiority, I would argue that isn’t what Magnifico’s introduction conveys; he's isolated.

Despite this distance, he does connect with Asha in “At All Costs”. For a moment, their goals and values align. In fact, they align so well that Magnifico sees Asha as someone who cares as much about Rosas as he does, and almost offers her the position.

… Until she asks him to grant Saba’s wish.

This is framed by the narrative as a misstep. The resonance between their ideals snaps immediately, and Magnifico says something along the line of “Wow. Most people wait at least a year before asking for something.”

This disappointment isn't played as coming from a place of power or superiority. He was excited by the idea of working with someone who had the same values as he did, who viewed Rosas in the same way he does, and then learns that Asha’s motivations at least partially stem from a place of personal gain.

Well, wait, is that really Asha's goal?

While it's not wholistically her goal, it's very explicitly stated & implied that getting Saba's wish granted is at least a part of it. The audience learns (through Asha's conversation with her friends before the interview) that every apprentice Magnifico has ever had gets not only their wish granted, but the wishes of their family, too!  Asha doesn’t deny that this is a perk that she’s interested in, and I don't think this is a bad thing.

So, Is Asha’s commitment to Saba selfless, or selfish? I’m sure the director wanted it to seem selfless, wherein she believes her family member has waited long enough and deserves his wish granted, but we can’t ignore the broader context of Asha essentially trying to… skip the line.

Then, we get our first point of tension. Magnifico reveals his “true colors” in snapping at Asha, telling her that he “decides what people deserve”. This is supposed to be the great motivator, it’s meant to incite anger in the audience—after all, no one gets to decide what you deserve, right? But unfortunately for the integrity of the film and the audience's suspension of disbelief, at least part of Magnifico’s argument is a little too sound to ignore:

Some wishes are too vague and dangerous to grant. Now, there’s visual irony here; he says this after looking at a 100 old man playing the lute. The idea that something so innocuous could be dangerous is absurd, and the audience is meant to agree.

... But we’ve also seen plenty of other wishes that might be chaotic—flying on a rocket to space, anyone? The use of the word vague is important, too—this implies wording matters, and that a wish can be misinterpreted or evolve into something that is dangerous even if the original intent was innocuous. His reasoning for people forgetting their wish (protecting them from the sadness of being unable to attain their dreams) is much weaker, but still justifiable (in the way an antagonist’s flawed views can be justified). The film even introduces a facet of Magnifico’s backstory that implies he has personal experience with the grief of losing a dream (in the destruction of his home), but that thread is never touched on again.

              What is the audience supposed to take from this encounter? If we’re looking at the director’s intent, I’d argue that we’ve been introduced to a well-meaning young girl and a king who’s locked away everyone’s greatest aspiration because he believes he deserves to have the power to decide who gets to be happy.

              But what are we shown? Our heroine, backed by her friends, strives to be Magnifico’s apprentice because she loves the city but also would really like to see her family's wishes granted. When this request is denied and she loses the opportunity to be his apprentice, she deems Magnifico’s judgement unfair & thus begins her journey to free the dreams of Rosas’ people.

              In fairness, Magnifico doesn’t exhibit sound judgement or kindness through this act of the film. He’s shown to be fickle, and once his composure cracks, he can be vindictive and sharp. He's not a good guy, but I'd argue he's not outright evil. He's just got the makings of a good villain, and those spikes of volatility do give us a foundation to work off of as he spirals, but as we’ll discuss in a bit, the foreshadowing established here isn’t used to the ends it implies.

              While I was watching this film, I was sure Magnifico was going to be a redeemable villain. He can’t connect with people because he's sure they value what he provides more than they value him (as seen in “At All Costs” and the aftermath), and Asha’s asking for more was going to be framed as a mistake. His flaw was keeping his people too safe and never giving them the chance to sink or swim, and he's too far removed from his citizens to see that he is appreciated. Asha does identify this, and the culmination of her journey is giving people the right to choose their path, but the way Magnifico becomes the “true” villain and his motivations for doing so are strangely divorced from what we’re shown in Act I.  

Act II:

His song, “This is the Thanks I Get!?” furthers the idea that Magnifico’s ire—and tipping point—is the fact that he thinks the people he’s built a kingdom for still want more. Over the course of this 3:14 song, we suddenly learn that Magnifico sends other people to help his community and doesn’t personally get involved (we never see this outside of this song), and that he’s incredibly vain/narcissistic (he's definitely a narcissist). I think feeling under-appreciated is actually a very strong motivation for Magnifico as a character-turning-villain, and it works very well. It’s justified based on what we’ve seen on screen so far: he feels under-appreciated (even though he’s decidedly not—the town adores him), he snaps and acts irrationally under stress (as seen with his outburst with Asha), and he’s frustrated that people seem to want more from him (again, as seen with his conversation with Asha in Act I).

              But then… he opens the book.

Ah, the book. As an object on screen, we know that it's filled with ancient and evil magic, well-known to be cursed by every relevant character in the film, and kept well-secured under lock and key. But what does it stand for in the context of the narrative's structure? A quick path to power? We're never told that it has any redeeming qualities; Magnifico himself doesn't seem to know what he's looking for when he opens it. It feels... convenient.

I think it's also worth noting that he only turns to the book when he's alone; once again, the idea of connection and community rears it's ugly head! Earlier in the film, Amaya-- his wife-- is present and turns him away from taking that path. In her absence, he makes the wrong choice.

This decision could make sense; it contains powerful magic, and if it were framed in such a way that the people of Rosas were losing faith in Magnifico’s magic, as if what he can do might not be enough anymore after what they felt from Star, going for the book that we know contains spells that go above and beyond what he can already do would be logical. Along the lines of, “If they’re not happy with what I do for them, fine. I, ever the “martyr”, will do the unthinkable for you, because you want more.”

            It would keeps with the idea that Magnifico believes he's still trying to help people, but his motivation has taken his self-imposed pity party and turned it into resentment and spite.

 But, that’s not the case. Instead he talks about reversing that “light”, which has had no real negative or tangible consequences on Rosas. Everyone had a warm feeling for a few seconds. Again, it’s meant to paint him as a vain control freak, but… he hasn’t lost any power. The citizens of Rosas even assume the great showing of magic was Magnifico.

Act III

              Then, we get to the consequences of opening the book (and perhaps my biggest qualm with this film). The book is established as being cursed. Magnifico knows it, Asha knows it, and Amaya—who is introduced as loyal-- knows it. The characters understand his behavior is a direct result of the book, and search for a way to save him. This is only the focus of the film for a few seconds, but if you think about it, the fact that his own wife cannot find a way to free him of the curse he’s been put under is unbelievably tragic. Worse still, upon discovering there is no way to reverse the curse, Magnifico—the king who built the city & “protected it” in his own flawed way for what seems to be centuries—is thrown out by his wife. You know, the wife who's stood loyal at his side for years?

              It’s played for laughs, but there’s something unsettling about a character who’s clearly and explicitly under the influence of a malevolent entity being left… unsaved. If you follow the idea of Magnifico being disconnected from community being a driving force behind his arc, the end of the film sees him in a worse situation he was in at the start: truly, fully alone.

              They bring in so many opportunities for Magnifico to be sympathetic and act as a foil for Asha; he’s jaded, she’s not. He’s overly cautious (even paranoid), she’s a risk-taker. He turns to power/magic at his lowest point, Asha turns to her friends at her lowest point. Because this dichotomy isn’t present, and Magnifico—who should be redeemable—isn’t, the film is so much weaker than it could’ve been. The lack of a strong core dynamic between the protagonist and antagonist echoes through every facet of the film from the music to the characterization to the pacing, and I believe if Magnifico had been more consistent, the film would’ve greatly improved across the board.

I mean, come on! Imagine if at the end of the film, Asha—who, if you remember, did resonate with Magnifico’s values at the start of the film—recognizes that he's twisted his original ideals and urges him to see the value in the people he’s helped, in their ingenuity, in their gratitude, & that what he was able to do before was enough. Going further, asking what his wish is or was—likely something he’s never been asked— and showing empathy! We’d come full circle to the start of the film where Asha asks him to grant her wish.

Pushing that further, if Magnifico’s wish is to see Rosas flourish or to be a good/beloved king, he'd have the the opportunity to see the value in failing and how pursuing the dream is its own complex and valuable journey, and how not even he is perfect.

 The curse and the book (which, for the purposes of this adjustment, would need to be established as representing the idea of stepping on others to further your own goals/the fast way to success), then serve as the final antagonist, that same curse taking root in the people of Rosas who’ve had their dreams destroyed, and Asha works with the community to quell it. Asha’s learned her lesson, so has Magnifico, and the true source of evil in the film—the book—is handled independently. Magnifico steps back from his role as King, Amaya still ends up as Queen, and Asha takes her place as the new wish-granter.

This route could even give us the true “Disney villain” everyone’s craving; giving the book sentience and having it lure Magnifico in during “This is the Thanks I Get!?” leaves it as its own chaotic evil entity.

All in all, Magnifico's introduction paved a road to redemption that the rest of the film aggressively refused to deliver on, instead doubling down on weaker motivations that seem to appear out of thin air. Once the audience thinks, hey, that bad guy might have a point, the protagonist has to do a little more heavy lifting to convince us they're wrong.

Look at the big-bad-greats from Disney's library. There isn't a point in the Lion King where we pause and think, "Wait a second, maybe Scar should be the guy who rules the Pridelands." Ursula from the Little Mermaid, though motivated by her banishment from King Triton's Seas, never seems to be the right gal for the throne. Maybe Maleficent doesn't get invited to the princess's birthday party, but we don't watch her curse a baby and think, Yeah, go curse that baby, that's a reasonable response to getting left out.

What do they all have in common? Their motivation is simple, their goal is clear, and they don't care who they hurt in pursuit of what they want.

Magnifico simply doesn't fall into that category. He's motivated by the idea of losing power, which is never a clear or impactful threat. His goal at the start seems to be to protect Rosas, then it turns into protecting his own power, and then-- once he's corrupted-- he wants to capture Star. The problem is, there's no objective to put this power toward. Power for power's sake is useless. Scar craves power because he feels robbed of status. Ursula believes the throne is rightfully hers. Maleficent wanted to make a statement. Magnifico... well, I'm not really sure.

[alittlebitofloveliness]

Darry does not parent anyone in the gang except Ponyboy. No, not even Soda, and definitely not Johnny or Dally.

I’m going to be honest and say I genuinely don’t understand where the idea of Darry being the ‘dad’ of the group, or some kind of father figure to Dallas or johnny of all people comes from, because it’s so explicit in the novel and even the movie that he isn’t (I haven’t seen the musical but from what I understand there's some sort of rivalry between Dallas and Darry there, so there probably isn’t any paternal dynamic there either). To claim Darry is a father figure to ANYBODY- even Ponyboy- is completely antithetical to his character. Darry is twenty years old. He’s a big guy, who has respect from most greasers, and he is the LEADER of the gang, looks out for all of them the way a brother would, but he does not PARENT any of them.

Even after the Curtis parents’ deaths, when he gets guardianship of both Ponyboy and Soda, the only one he actually attempts to parent is Ponyboy- and he clearly struggles with it. It’s not just the main source of tension between him and Ponyboy,  it’s the ONLY source of it. Canonically, Pony and Darry got along fine before the Curtis parents' deaths, were close even, because Darry is good at being an older brother. He always has been, because he is used to it and it doesn’t carry nearly the same level of responsibility as guardianship does. Darry never had to be a parent before, let alone to his brother, and he’s flying blind trying to figure it out. He doesn’t know what limits to impose that seem fair but not stifling, can provide materially but doesn’t know how to provide emotionally, because he’s a new parent who is struggling to raise a teenager instead of a newborn, and has no experience for what he’s doing. Darrel Curtis is DROWNING trying to figure out what being a parent means when he has only ever looked at Pony as a little brother instead of a dependent. He’s not happy. He’d never give his brothers up, but this new role is killing him, and it’s plain for anyone to see. 

This brings me to my next point: Darry is so overwhelmed trying to parent Ponyboy, it never even crosses his mind to try parenting Soda too. This isn’t even my interpretation- it’s textual. Soda doesn’t get hollered at, Darry doesn’t really care where he goes or what he does, and he never punishes him the way he punishes Ponyboy. It doesn’t help that Soda and Darry are closer in age than he and Ponyboy are. Soda is almost seventeen, he has a job and is street smart in a way Pony isn’t. Darry doesn’t have to worry about him as much so he doesn’t, because Soda could survive on his own if he had to, whereas Pony couldn’t. It would also be harder for Darry to discipline Soda if he wanted to, given Soda’s age and his agency, but again, Darry doesn’t want to. Soda doesn’t need raising, because he’s already been pretty raised, and Darry couldn’t handle raising him. Darry can already barely handle raising Ponyboy, and Soda has a tenuous role in the house as he plays confidante to both of them. Soda and Darry’s dynamic is pretty solid because their dynamic is still that of brothers, there’s been no upheaval in their relationship, and so there’s no major friction either. Besides that, there’s the fact that Soda is helping raise Ponyboy, not being raised himself. It’s a joke I’ve seen a few times that Darry plays ‘dad’ and Soda plays ‘mom’ to Ponyboy after the Curtis parents’ deaths, but there's an element of truth to it. Soda handles Pony’s emotional needs, gives him advice, reminds him he’s loved, where Darry provides discipline and material needs. Now, we see clearly in the novel this creates an unhealthy dynamic in the house and in Pony’s relationship with both his brothers, making him ‘hate’ Darry and idolize Soda, but it remains true nonetheless. Darry doesn’t know how to parent, so he follows the traditional social ‘script’ of what fatherhood meant in the sixties, and the rest of the household molded to fit the new Darry into the mold he cast himself in. But despite Darry’s best efforts and Soda’s help, Darry proves over and over he’s not good at parenting, and definitely isn’t filling the role of Pony’s parent let alone his father- and it all culminates with The Slap. 

Now, knowing this, having read the book and seen, even through Pony’s biased narration, that Darry’s attempts at parenting Pony are a bit of a dumpster fire, it’s plain to say Darry isn’t playing dad to anyone else in the gang. If he was he’d be harsher to them, strict with rules he’d expect them to follow (Darry does not like to be disobeyed and he definitely doesn’t like his authority challenged), and cognizant of their whereabouts at all times. He doesn’t do this with any of them though, because he ISN’T trying to parent any of them, and even if he was no one in the gang would let him. Steve is too self-sufficient, Johnny is too independent, and Dally is too Dally for it to ever happen- even if the small age gaps between the characters wouldn’t make the attempt almost comical. Darry is, only ever has been, and only ever will be, a brother to them. It means he can offer up the couch and share food and look out for them while they look out for him in return, without ever being responsible for them. Yes, Darry is superman, he’s the oldest of the gang, seen as dependable and protective. He’s the guy everyone goes to when they get in trouble, a symbol of safety, but not because he can fix things the way a parent would. Dally didn’t call Darry from the phonebooth as a scared kid looking for a parent’s comfort, he called him as a reckless kid looking for a brother’s help to hide his misdeeds. Johnny doesn’t crash on the Curtis’ couch as anything but a kid staying at his friends turned family’s house. He looks at Darry as someone protective, but not as a father figure. In fact, he probably sees better than anyone (except maybe Soda) that Darry isn’t a great guardian, having heard Ponyboy’s rants and seen firsthand how the dynamic in the house has shifted. 

Darry Curtis is everyone’s brother, but no one’s father. He never will be. The only person he ever attempts to parent is Ponyboy, and he’s not good at it. That’s the whole point. Darrel Curtis is a dependable guy, a smart, cool, tough-as-nails gang leader, but he is also still a twenty year old kid, in over his head, who leans heavily on his friends despite his pride, and who is greatly unequipped for the level of responsibility that has fallen onto his shoulders. To portray him as a person who is able to parent a gang of delinquent teenage boys almost his own age is disingenuous and out of character.

Darry Curtis is no one’s dad. That’s the whole point. 

[losing-it-lately]

Would you consider a Remus Lupin x reader where reader is an animagi probably like a smaller animal maybe like a cat or something and Remus has them falling asleep on him and not realizing it’s reader until he’s openly talking about his feelings toward them and the reader in animagi form is like 👀👀👀

Remus Lupin with an Animagi!reader

wc: 0.7k

remus lupin x reader fluff

not exactly as per the request, but i hope you enjoy it :)

Soft and warm and happy. You were everything that Remus Lupin felt like he didn't get in his life. And even when he didn't know it, you still brought an unfiltered joy into his life.

The Gryffindor common room had seen some recent changes, the biggest one being Remus’ new companion, a scrappy, furry little thing that hung on his shoulder or in his sweater. Cats had always been allowed in Gryffindor, but a small kitten was a new update.

He had found you lingering around the whomping willow; playing and dancing around the tree’s various attacks. With your soft wispy fur and your long whiskers, immediately he was enthralled. Not to mention, he had needed something to keep him going after his transformation the night before.

So you two became a pair, a loved pair. Little first years would surround Remus asking to pet you and James and Sirius would use you for pranks and Remus would let you sleep in his bed. He really loved you, even when you were gone, he would patiently wait.

But what he didn't know was that you were never actually gone.

You were intelligent, for sure. And you were loud, and fun, and crass, and all the things that made people laugh loudly and smile unabashedly. Remus saw something bright and spunky in you and the way you’d light the people around you. And whilst your otherwise silly jokes made people assume the least, your unrestrained time in the library and constant practice and yearning for your curiosity to be satisfied resulted in an early animagi status.

Though intensely illegal to practice that kind of magic underage and without recognition from the ministry, becoming an animagi fulfilled a part of yourself that otherwise you wouldn't have ever felt complete without. When you first transformed into that small tabby, the world around you went silent. You felt different and the same, you were content.

So you continued, spending time in your new form doing whatever random tasks you wanted to do. And eventually, you picked up a companion who unbeknownst to you, knew both sides of the coin.

Remus had started taking you into account on the sorting ceremony of that year. You had accidentally turned up late and took the first empty seat you saw, the one next to him. The both of you had never spoken one on one until that moment, and he swears that he didn't know what a proper laugh felt like until you uttered that first joke; even better, he didn't know what an angel sounded like until he heard your laugh.

Then, he would see you in the library, in his potions class, in the gryffindor common room, it was like you were everywhere, until you weren't.

He stopped seeing you as often and assumed that maybe, maybe he wasn't as down bad as he had been before, maybe he was getting over you. And then you sat next to him in potions and all of his feelings came tumbling back.

Remus rushed to his dorm room with his face blushing all different colours and his fingers picking at his scars. He was spiraling and didn't know what he could do, until he saw her: his little tabby rolling on his bed, waiting patiently.

He scooped her up, letting her eyes match his at eye level, and started confiding.

“I don't know what to do,” he stuttered, his hands engulfing her arms. “I need her so badly, she's perfect for me.”

You were confused to say the least, purring and distracting him from whatever ailed him. It was unbecoming, watching Remus ramble about his dream girl, until he mentioned your name. Your eyes widened, and you jumped out of his hands. Sometimes being smart isn't enough and in this case, you had no idea what to do. You scampered back out of his line of vision and into your room, transforming back and realising you had to do something, you had to make a move.

All week, Remus waited for his tabby to come back, and come Hogsmeade, he went out to buy her some treats. Mid his store run, you found him, looking between aisles for various different snacks.

“I want to talk to you,” you smiled and he felt his world turn a little faster.

Remus abandoned the snacks and you led him outside, to a bench. He felt something shift inside him as you stared into his eyes.

“I really like you,” he burst out, his normal composure almost disappearing now that he was this close to you. You softly laughed and he felt his heartbeat quicken.

“We should go and share a butterbeer.”