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anominous-user · 6 months ago

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Double Indemnity, Veritas Ratio and Aventurine

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

[THE NAME]

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

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

—

[SUMMARY OF THE 1944 MOVIE]

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

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

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

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

—

[THE PENACONY MISSION TIMELINE]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Veritas Ratio - Walter Neff

Aventurine - Phyllis Dietrichson

Sunday - Mr. Dietrichson

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

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

—

[SO, WHAT’S THE PLAN?]

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

Phyllis and Neff —> Mr. Dietrichson

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

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

Main Actor: Walter Neff | Accomplice: Phyllis Dietrichson

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

Step-by-step:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They leave.

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

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

Profit!

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

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

Aventurine and Ratio —> Sunday

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

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

Main Actor: Aventurine | Accomplice: Veritas Ratio

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

Step-by-step:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Profit!

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

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

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

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

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

—

[NEFF & PHYLLIS — RATIO & AVENTURINE]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now the differences between Aventurine and Phyllis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neff has dark hair. Ratio has dark purple hair.

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

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

As for the differences…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phyllis was a nurse. Ratio is a medical doctor.

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

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

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

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

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

—

[THE PHONE CALL — THE REVERIE HOTEL]

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

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

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

—

[QUESTIONING PHYLLIS — THE INTERROGATION]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

[“GOODBYE, BABY” — FINAL VICTOR]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now the differences!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

[THE ENDING — GOLDEN HOUR]

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

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

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

—

[OPPOSITE TIMELINES AND DEVELOPMENTS]

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

[NEFF & KEYES — AVENTURINE & RATIO]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aventurine - Walter Neff

Veritas Ratio - Barton Keyes

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

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

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

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

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

—

[THE ORIGINAL FILM ENDING]

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

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

—

[THE NOVEL]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on to Ratio:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

[THE HAYS CODE — LGBT CENSORSHIP IN CHINA]

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

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

(Don’t) Pointed profanity

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

(Don’t) Nudity

(Be Careful) Sympathy for criminals

(Be Careful) Use of firearms

(Be Careful) Man and woman in bed together

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

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

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

—

[CONCLUSION]

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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bunnyb34r · 9 months ago

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I love when mods start vague posting like "we're gonna start banning yall if you keep acting like this" and "this" is CLEARLY the actions of one or two specific people but they can't/won't just outright say "hey UserXYZ knock it the fuck off"

Live for this petty shit

#it was well deserved too bc we shouldnt be shunning inexperienced people coming in asking for advice and clearly #wanting and asking how to do better like fuck head #i have very very specific thoughts on this one person but im not gonna say em bc it sounds so unhinged out of context and id have to #reveal what group im talking ab and i dont want to like somehow have them see this and get mad #bc like im sure you're a nice person and i dont want beef but god you're insufferable on (group) agsgdggdgdgd #it's just so funny bc this is the second time in a month or two that the mods have come on to be like hey UserXYZ you need to chill.#and the last time they were like listen we're getting complaints ab certain users. so you know who you are. act accordingly #AGDGGDGD LIKE id fucking be livid id get myself banned for it i stg #i just love how every niche group has its own drama like the doll hair drama saga (that was INSANE) Like wow what a world #marquilla

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knaveofmogadore · 1 year ago

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there are two wolves inside of u. One of them says you can't homage silver age comics without having aliens casually wandering around solving crime. The other says that aliens are a complicated thing to add to a superhero story if you don't have 40 years to make them make sense in a world that's already asking people to take a leap of faith and that they make people ask infuriating questions like "why can't the alien just fix it?" and that also adding aliens as a background set dressing in a sci fi universe not about the aliens makes people wanna kill and eat you

#messages from knave #I've fostered some weird embarrassment around sharing my creative endeavors since going through a rough patch so you're gonna have to ask #if you want literally any context on what the fuck I'm talking about

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ame-to-ame · 1 month ago

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life can be a literal nightmare sometimes even when ur trying ur best to have fun and do well </3

#i love saying something without thinking abt it and completely missing something an ND person would get #and everyone has a reaction and ur sitting here trying to backtrack and feeling like every time you open your mouth it's a deeper grave #knowing that your friend is going to literally go talk to some other friend abt ur situation and ur gonna be helpless abt it #the thought makes me sick #i know my narrative is going to be taken away from me again #the whole thing has been. a nightmare #it feels so unfair when she said that she felt that way because what do you mean. what do you mean. the whole time i #i have been trying to make sure you're comfortable. i ask what you want. i ask if things are okay. i worried so much about you not knowing #it's not for my lack of asking and trying. i involved you in every decision making process. i tried to know what you wanted how you felt #but when you decided to pull the rug you didn't think how it would implicate me. there was no communication no trying #i had no say no context nothing just guilt and blame from other people for making you upset and not knowing why and i was expected to just #sit there Shut up and take it #and i did. i did. i did what you asked i did what you wanted #i made myself so small to the point it started to kill me #god. I've left you fucking alone. and still i have people telling me to avoid things and places bc of you.#how much smaller do i have to make myself?#i just know that by the end of the talk my friends have between Each other. the space I'm allowed to exist in will get smaller.#I'm going to have to behave in a more palatable way. be more quiet. live more quietly. die in a corner quietly.#I'm expected to ask for help from them but i can't have a breakdown in front of them because they can't take it.#I'm expected to rely on others but i can't ask them about this topic. i can't even talk about it.#it's good that i have. other things to keep me occupied. because or else this is suffocating. i don't want to be living like this #delete later

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neverendingford · 1 year ago

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#tag talk #“I'm gonna spend all of today with you!” sorry you're 24 hours too late Ive already started dreaming of murdering people with my bare hands #should have picked yesterday when I wasn't uncontrollably seeing bodies dripping blood from the ceiling #anyway guess we go stone-faced today and question every single intention and context because I do not have the energy to figure out reality #please don't like this please don't respond obviously I can't stop you but I just want to complain I just want to scream #I just want to yell into the void can you give me that? I just need emptiness to scream into.#I don't want to scream into a pillow I want to scream into the endless sky.#I do not want to fill a vessel with my vitriol I want to dissolve it into a solution of sunlight and burn away the hatred I feel #I want to kill and maim and hurt. I want to be killed and be maimed and be hurt. I want to dissolve into nothing and make it all stop #I just want to be home I just want to be home I just want to be home I just want to be home #if you wanted to spend time with me you shouldn't have let me rot this long. if you move me I will crumble into punky wood full of woodlice #if you wanted to talk to me you shouldn't have left me alone inside the caverns of my fucking brain for so long #if you wanted me to be kind you shouldn't have asked for my fucking opinion #I will be normal again in a week but I am crumbling under this stress I am breaking and eroding and rotting away from the inside #it's super fucking cool how I can have the exact same experience seven years later that I did when I graduated.#congratulations you're now too old to hang out with your friends because they're two years younger than you and you're an adult now #congratulations you have to hang out with your peers who you've never connected with and always been seen as a freak to them #congratulations everyone is separating off into their friend groups and you're kicked out of your old ones so now you're alone #yeah this is a great graduation party you just sit in a corner and do nothing except wait for people to give you stale social niceties #everyone goes off with their friends and you're left to sit on the couch and read a book all alone #you'll never be invited and inviting yourself is rude so you just sit in the corner talking to yourself and fighting as your brain spins #growing up means growing out of what you know without ever having anything to grow into #growing up means being given responsibilities you've never been taught how to manage and you have no ability to learn on your own #growing up means all your support structures are yanked from beneath you because you're old enough to do it on your own now #thrown in the deep end because you should have learned to swim by now. everyone else did. why didn't you?#come on. everyone else can swim already. just try harder. stop faking it. you're just lazy. just ask for help - no I won't give you any #oh hey why are you so sad? you don't have any valid reason. stop trying to kill yourself you're literally fine just ask for help it's easy #fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck

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pomefioredove · 4 months ago

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a private meeting

summary: yuu makes a list of the top five cutest third years. the following conversation type of post: short fic characters: cater, trey, leona, rook, vil, idia mentioned, lilia, malleus additional info: romantic?? platonic?? idk, reader is gender neutral, reader is yuu, this is more for character interactions. and fun

"I'm sure you're all well aware of why we're here,"

The eight gentleman standing around the dark, candlelit room look between each other.

Leona yawns.

"How long is this gonna take, exactly? I was dragged outta bed for this,"

Vil glares. "Hush. I wanted to deal with this matter in the quietest manner possible, without disturbing the prefect. Sevens know what happens when your egos go unchecked,"

"Look who's talking,"

Another glare, but Vil chooses not to waste any more time.

"Two nights ago, the prefect hosted a slumber party for Ace Trappola, Deuce Spade, Jack Howl, and our own Epel Felmier,"

"I remember that," Lilia says, rubbing his chin. "Sebek was invited, but refused in case someone attacked Malleus whilst he was away."

Malleus shakes his head.

"During this event, the prefect created a list of the top five "cutest third years", as we all know. And, to avoid any childish squabbling, I've gathered you all here to open it as an ensemble. Rook?"

A slim, folded sheet of notebook paper appears from the dark of Rook Hunt's pocket. He holds it up, as if presenting it to the heavens.

"Where did you even find that?" Trey asks, adjusting his glasses.

"Facile! It was buried under a stack of homework assignments in our dearest Trickster's bedroom," the blond says merrily.

"Logistically speaking, that's almost too easy. Are we sure it isn't a fake?" Ortho pipes up.

"Ortho?" Vil asks. "What are you doing here?"

The boy giggles in an electronic chime. "Idia is hiding under his covers and won't come out, so I'm here in his place!"

"...Alright,"

"I don't know what he's so nervous for," Vil goes on. "When I am already guaranteed to be in the first place slot."

Leona scoffs, kicking back with his feet on the table. Vil glares again.

"How rude,"

"He's not wrong. You are the most beautiful here..." a smile creeps up Lilia's face. "But, as I recall, you said cutest third years, not most beautiful. And if anyone is the cutest, it's me."

"Oh, spare me," Leona sighs. "Let's just get this over with. Open the damn thing."

"You're not the least bit curious, Leona?" the fae asks, batting his large eyes.

"Don't patronize me. And no, I'm not. I couldn't care less,"

Lilia smirks, but says nothing more on the matter.

He turns to his tablemate. "And what say you, Malleus?"

Every person in the room falls silent, and then turn to the prince sitting at the furthest corner of the table with his hands folded in front of him.

He hasn't shared a single thought all evening.

"...The contents of this list make no difference to me," he finally speaks. "My feelings towards the prefect will be unaffected."

Rook sets a hand over his heart. "Quelle beauté! I am moved! Not even the strongest of winds could make your friendship bow,"

Leona groans as if he's in agonizing pain.

"Open it!"

"Okay, hold on. Isn't this like, a major privacy violation?" Cater says. He doesn't sound eager to see the results, either.

"I would hate for someone to read my private thoughts to a room full of people."

"He may have a point. This was a list made between friends at a slumber party. Taking it out of that context could be disastrous," Trey agrees.

"There's a 96% chance this will end in conflict!" Ortho chimes in, merry as ever. Leona sighs.

"Can I just leave?"

"No," Vil snaps. "Rook, open it."

"Rook, don't,"

"Rook!"

The poor man observes the conflict slowly unraveling before him, and he sets the folded sheet of paper on the table.

"Now, now, do not squabble! Let this be a chance to celebrate our bonds with the lovely prefect!"

"I agree with Rook," Lilia smiles big. "We should all agree that no matter what is on that list, we'll leave it after tonight and move on."

Vil sighs. "Yes, yes. You're all right. We can't let what they wrote at a private slumber party affect our relationships with them,"

"No matter what, we leave them out of this. Agreed?"

Everyone in the room nods.

"Alright. Rook, read it,"

Rook reaches behind him, the anticipation building, and... is met with a cool wooden surface.

The note seems to have disappeared into thin air.

Before anyone can express their obvious confusion, an evil cackling pulls their attention to the doorway.

Vil gasps.

"Grim! Put that down!"

The small direbeast, now holding a crumpled piece of paper in his paw, smiles wickedly.

And then, to everyone's horror, he eats it whole.

Leona is the first to react, storming over and lifting Grim by the scruff of his neck. "Seriously?!"

"Fufufu. Looks like someone cared, after all," Lilia chuckles. Vil rolls his eyes.

"Hey! Not my fault you guys were so loud! You woke me up from my nap over a stupid list!" Grim says, crossing his arms.

A brief silence follows, and then a sigh. Leona drops him and he lands on his feet.

"Perhaps Grim is right," Ortho says. "Instead of worrying about the numerical grade the prefect assigns you, you should focus on the unique and special aspects of your individual relationships!"

"How eloquent!" Rook coos. "Oui, you are right! Sometimes it is best to let secrets remain secrets."

"Something about the way he says that tells me he already knows what it said," Leona grumbles.

"Ohoho. A fascinating mystery, non? Did I sneak a peek before tonight, or am I just as clueless as you?"

The prince rolls his eyes.

Vil sighs. "Ortho is right. Now I feel ridiculous for getting so worked up over what amounts to a joke at a slumber party,"

Everyone grows quiet, seemingly reflecting on themselves for the duration of the brief silence.

Lilia's giggles change the melancholic mood of the room.

"Perhaps Malleus had the right idea all along. It doesn't matter who the prefect thinks is more attractive; they're still a wonderful friend. How wise- I'm very proud,"

Malleus beams.

"Yeah yeah," Grim grumbles, turning to the door. "I didja a favor, anyway. None of you weirdos were number one."

He leaves, and he takes the peace and reflection with him.

Slowly, everyone turns to each other.

#twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #cater diamond x reader #trey clover x reader #leona kingscholar x reader #rook hunt x reader #vil schoenheit x reader #lilia vanrouge x reader #malleus draconia x reader #queued

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itsmarsss · 6 months ago

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Vulgar Display of Power [Miguel Diaz x fem!Reader] (Cobra Kai)

You can never fucking beat him in a fight and it's getting frustrating.

Request: omg more miguel please!!! smutty if u can xx already dating if you want? Fic title comes from my (second) favorite Pantera album. Word count: 4,350 Warnings: SMUT. established relationship, theres plot but it only serves to justify the sex lol, i use present tense in this, degrading, first time sub!miguel kind of, handjob, fingering, oral sex, penetration (p in v), semi-public sex (i guess? no one's around but the location isn't exactly private), a lot of use of pet names (baby, babe, love, mi amor), so much swearing. obviously no one is a minor here I don't mention much context but can be read as hs senior year or later, doesn't really matter. if you're a minor kindly keep away from my blog and this fic please

“Fuck!” You yell out as Sensei Lawrence announces Miguel’s win. In turn of your frustration, Miguel sports a grin that playfully mocked you.

Now don’t get it twisted, you’re not a bad fighter. You’re not even a good one- you’re great. The best, except for…

“Diaz! Good one.” Sensei Lawrence praises.

“Nice, dude!” Hawk comes to fist bump him.

Tory comes to you. “Girl get it together! You’re better than that!”

“I’m fucking trying.”

Miguel hears the two of you talking and decides to insert himself into the conversation. “Come on, it’s not a big deal.”

“I say this with love but it is a big deal and I’m gonna find a way to beat you.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

[. . .]

“Hey,” you hear Miguel call from behind you, turning around for a split second to look at him before getting back to packing your stuff to leave the dojo.

“Hey.”

“So, are we still on for tonight?”

“Yeah. I just wanna go home first and take a shower.”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Hey are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something seems… weird.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, babe,” you tell him, bringing a hand to his face and lightly tapping his cheek.

“You sure?”

“Yes! I just said it is!” You realize you blew up at him for no reason, immediately feeling bad for it and apologizing, not managing to look at him. “Sorry.”

“See? That’s what I mean!”

“I really am sorry.”

“Okay, but something’s clearly wrong.”

You stay silent, and he walks up to you, cornering you so you’d face him.

“What’s going on?”

Honestly, you don’t want to tell him. Because it would sound stupid. Because it is stupid. You don’t even exactly know why it had gotten so under your skin this time.

“It’s fine. I’m just a bit off today.”

“You don’t have to talk about it, but you don't have to lie either.”

“Fine. You wanna know what’s wrong? I’m frustrated because you keep beating me.”

“What?”

“Every single time we’re picked to fight I just can’t fucking beat you. And yes, I’m glad you don’t go easy on me, cause that would be like a million times worse, but I'm frustrated with myself. You’re the only one I've never fully beat in a match. The closest I’ve ever gotten to that was a tie.”

“Well most of the time it ends up in a tie.”

“Yeah but none of the time did it end with me winning.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset about this.”

“Of course you don’t. I just feel like if I still can’t beat you then have I really been getting better?”

“What? That’s nonsense, babe. You know that, right? Of course you’ve been getting better. We all have.”

“See I told you it would be stupid. I don't even know why I'm feeling this way.”

“That’s okay. We can just sort that out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll ask sensei for the keys.”

“What?”

“We’re gonna stay here and fight and we’re not gonna leave until you win.”

“That’s really not what I was trying to get from this-”

“What, are you scared?” He knew just how to tug on your strings.

“Oh fuck no.”

“Then we’re doing this.”

“But what about the date?”

“We can go tomorrow. If you need my help today, I'll help you today.”

“Okay.”

[. . .]

“Alright, ready?”

You only nod your head yes, too focused to even speak.

“Okay. Round one.”

You get a couple punches in, but he’s faster than most of your hits. He wins..

You huff, annoyed. “Again.”

“Again.”

“Okay that’s it. Again.”

This time, determination runs through your veins, as tired as you were. Every single moment of feeling weak or inferior or as though you were seen by others as basically the female equivalent of Miguel, and not yourself, not someone capable of being better than him in any way, channeled into this round.

And you won. This time, you fucking won.

“Wait that’s three,” you realize.

“Yeah! You won!” Miguel celebrates.

“What?”

“You won, babe!”

“Oh my God. Holy fucking shit. I won?!”

He laughs, coming up to you. “You did.” He places a quick kiss on your lips, but you’re taken over by the adrenaline, pulling him back to you by the collar of his shirt when he went to pull away, tangling him into another kiss, deeper and more passionate this time around. “That was hot,” he comments, as you finally did let him part ways with you to breathe, your bodies still flushed together.

You feel your cheeks burn at his comment. “I just kicked your ass,” you joke.

He doesn’t even seem fazed by the comment. “Yeah you did,” he grins.

“I did not expect that to unlock some sort of loser kink in you.”

“Hey! That’s not what this is!”

You lift an eyebrow, amused.

“What, you’re telling me it’s a crime if my insanely hot girlfriend looks insanely hot while kicking my ass?”

“Should I kick your ass more often then?”

“You’re welcome to.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Shut up,” he retorts, finally having enough of the playful bantering, unable to wait a second longer to have your lips on his again.

Miguel pulls you even closer to him- if that were even possible- by pulling on your waist, not wasting a second more before diving in again, pulling you into a kiss that is much more feral this time around. His actions scream that he wants you, and the high from having reached your goal and beat him in the last round mixed with the lust forming in you from seeing him so affected, so attracted to this, it feels good.

You suppose some people would maybe come into an issue if they found themselves in your place. Men aren’t exactly known for being great at dealing with women being better than them in… well, anything. But Miguel acted genuinely proud of you. Hell, he’d canceled your date night to help you with this because he realized it was important to you. And more than being supportive, he was turned on by your display of power.

His kisses start trailing out of your lips, to your jaw, to the space below your ear. “You did so well, love. You should get something in turn, huh?”

Your mind was getting a bit foggy. Still, you join in playing his game. “I suppose I should. What are you gonna do?”

“Whatever you want me to,” he breathes out. Oh. That was definitely new.

“Whatever I want?” He only nods, looking up at you, waiting to be told what to do. Holy shit, that was hot. “That sounds good.”

“Just tell me, please, I’ll make you feel so good, I promise,” he pleads. It was almost pathetic. You decide you’d never get enough of hearing him plead like that. You loved the times in which he was more dominant, but you could definitely get behind this too, no issues whatsoever.

You pretend to think. “I don’t think I will.”

“What? Why not?”

“I want you to guess.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I- Uh- Ih-” he takes a deep breath. He liked that. You smiled. “I can do that.”

“Good boy,” you try, hoping he didn’t find it weird.

Apparently, he didn’t. “Fuck. Fuck,” he lets out in almost strangled sounds, wordlessly dropping himself to the floor. He looks up at you with doe eyes, as if pleading for permission. You smile at him, signaling everything was okay. You cage his jaw with both your hands, and he closes his eyes for a moment, letting you play with his hair.

“You look so pretty like this,” you coo, and he feels it down his spine, his eyes fluttering open.

“Sit.”

“What?”

“Sit,” he repeats himself, but it isn’t demanding. Not this time.

“I heard you.”

“Sit, please, baby.”

You grin. You didn’t know you’d like this this much. “Of course, baby.” You sit down on the bench, legs closed. He parts them confidently, eyes not leaving yours as he does so slowly, positioning his body between them. With his face mere inches from yours, he looks up at you again.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” He guesses. His cheeks red, he clearly looks embarrassed. It turned him on and it turned you on too.

You nod eagerly, signaling he’d guessed right. He smiles and closes the distance between you, pulling you down and attaching his lips to yours. It starts out slow, tender, experimental- testing the waters. He grows eager pretty fast, though, kissing you harder, his hands traveling to either of your thighs and planting themselves there firmly, squeezing in a way that makes you gasp slightly in surprise.

He pulls away just to tease you about it. That’s the kind of little shit he is.

“What was that for?”

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Not this then?”

He squeezes your thigh again and you try to act unbothered.” He notices though, pleased with himself.

“Oh shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He pulls you into a kiss again with no warning, more feral than before, his hand traveling upwards, inside the legs of the shorts you were wearing.

“Take it off,” you pant out, a stern tone overtaking your words, and he complies without questioning. You smile, pleased with that. You lift your hips slightly for him and he throws the shorts somewhere on the floor behind you.

He stares at your underwear for a few moments, as if lost in a trance. You laugh. “Hello? You here?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.”

“Used to what?” You move a hand to caress his face.

“The fact that I’m the only one who gets to see you like this.”

“Aw, do you like that, baby? Does it turn you on?” You ask, your tone almost mocking him.

He only nods his head yes, looking embarrassed.

“That’s good.” You make a show to slowly take off your shirt, a sudden surge of confidence running through your veins at his words, discarding it along with the shorts behind you. His eyes widen and he mumbles a few words, the volume of his words so low you couldn’t make it out for the life of you, before he just surges forward again, not aiming for your lips this time, but for your jaw.

“What was that?” You manage to breathe out as he continues his trail of kisses along your jaw.

“What?”

“If you’re gonna talk you’re gonna let me hear it. Got it?”

“Oh-okay.” He continues to place quick, slight pecks along your jawline, but you know exactly what he’s doing.

“You’re not distracting me from that. I wanna know what you said, baby. Wanna hear you.”

“I said- I said uh-“ he gulps. “It’s dumb.”

“That’s okay.”

“I just said ‘fuck me’.”

You let out a small laugh. “Oh. It was dumb,” you mock him again, and you can see he didn’t expect that.

“What?”

“I though you wanted to fuck me,” you joke.

He doesn’t take it as a joke. “I do. I do I just meant- it was just-“ oh. This was for real.

“I know, love. I was just teasing you. Okay? You’re being so good to me.”

His eyes almost sparkle at the praise.

“You know I think I changed my mind.”

“What?”

“Maybe I should fuck you.”

“What do you mean?”

You look down on him and smile, a genuine sweet smile. “Get up.”

“But-“

“I thought you said you’d do whatever i wanted you to,” you fake-pout.

He doesn’t say a word before standing back up. You do the same, keeping your body flushed to his. You slowly turn the two of you around, cornering him until the back of his knees hit the bench and pushing him to sit down on it.

Standing in front of him, you tilt your head to the side as you take in the view. He looked disheveled as ever. You loved it. “I think you’re wearing too many clothes.

“I- I can take it off.”

“Yeah I think you should.”

“What… what do you want me to take off?”

“Let’s go with the shirt first, baby. How about that?”

He nods furiously. “Yeah I can do that,” he takes his shirt off in a millisecond, throwing it with your clothes on the floor.

“Oh, you look so pretty,” you coo, stepping closer to him and lifting his chin up to look at you. You make your way around the bench to be behind him, and you can see him gulp in anticipation. Fuck, you were loving this a little too much. You trace his biceps with your finger. “Your arms, I love your arms, you know that? So big and strong,” you exaggerate, and he quirks an eyebrow at the suspicious comment. This doesn’t sound like it was getting to a nice praising place. “And your body, I mean your abs. Your thighs, your thighs are so pretty, baby,” you crouch a bit, still behind him, wrapping yourself around his back so you could snake your arms to his thighs, still only tracing them with a single finger. “So how come you lost to me like a bitch?”

That seems to remind him very well of what was happening.

“It- it was one time.”

“One time you lost to me. But you’ve barely ever won, have you?”

He stays quiet.

“Come on, baby, talk to me…” you pout, snaking your arms around his torso and kissing his neck.

“N-no.”

“Did you like that you lost to me baby?”

Quiet again.

“Did it turn you on?” You whisper in his ear and you can feel him take in big a breath. .

He couldn’t even look at you .

“Oh, pretty boy, I wanna hear your voice!”

He gulps again. “It- it turned me on,” he confesses.

“I never knew you were into this sort of thing.”

“Me- me neither.”

“Do you like it when I’m stronger than you? When I tell you what to do?”

You remove yourself from his body entirely, and he whips his head at record speed to look at you, desperate for your touch again. You circle the bench once again, standing in front of him. You grab his jaw and lifts his head up to look at you, your other hand messing with his hair. “So pathetic. I’ve barely done anything to you and you’re this hard.”

You finally sit yourself down on his thighs, legs on either side of his torso, and he immediately and instinctively grabs your ass ‘for support’ as he’s always insisted with a grin.

“You’re so fucking pathetic you’ll do anything I tell you to. Won’t you?” You pout, tilting your head.

“I’ll- I’ll do anything you want.”

“That’s a good boy,” you mess with and pet his hair again. You loved it when it was just long enough for his curls to appear.

He shivers. “Can you say it again?”

“Oh, no can do, baby. You’ll have to keep being a good boy to earn it.”

“I’ll- I’ll be a good boy, okay?”

You nod silently, your arms draped around his neck, and you pull yourself closer to get access to his face. You kiss along his jawline slowly, paying extra attention to the spots just under his ears, which made him shiver like crazy. When you find it sufficient, you move down to his neck, and he lets you, tilting his head to the side. You kiss down his neck, trying your best to not leave any marks. He’s still shivering now, and you know him well enough to know he’s okay, but can’t resist teasing him a bit more.

“Oh no, baby, you’re trembling! Is everything okay?” You feign ignorance. He doesn’t reply. “Aw are you too horny to speak to me? Is that the issue?” You mock.

He lifts his hips for some friction, an involuntary tell that he was enjoying this too. “Aw, do you like it when I’m mean to you? Huh?” You lift his chin again. He begrudgingly nods his head yes. You smile and move your hand from his chin to his cheeks, squeezing both off them. “Does my baby like it when I’m in control? When I handle you like this? When I call you names?”

He tries to reply, but can’t really with you squeezing his face like that.

“Oh I can’t hear you baby!” You let go of his face. “You’re gonna have to say it again.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I- I like it when you’re mean to me.”

“I know, baby boy. I can feel it.” With no other warning, you palm him through his shorts. He was impossibly hard. Knowing he was liking this was for sure improving your confidence. The moment your hand meets his crotch his breathing becomes unsteady and he thrusts his hips up again, wanting more. You start kissing along his neck as you keep feeling him up through the shorts, and then he is gone. He lets himself let out delicious moans you would play on repeat if you could, tilting his head back to grant you better access to his neck. He wants more, and you know he does. But you want to hear him say it.

After a few minutes, he does.

“Please take it off.”

You press a gentle kiss to his neck, containing a grin. “What are you talking about, babe?”

“My shorts, take them off, please. Please, take them off.”

You press a quick peck on his lips this time. “You beg so pretty, baby. I think I’ll need more of that.”

He looks confused.

“Anything I tell you, right?”

He nods.

“Good. Eat me out.”

His eyes widen at the bluntness of it all. And then he realizes what you meant by needing more of his begging: you weren’t going to solve his little problem all that soon.

“I- yes. Yeah.”

You pull yourself off of him and he stands up as quickly as humanly possible, grabbing your hand and yanking you to Sensei’s office, rushing to move everything that was on his desk. You catch his drift and pull yourself up to sit on it. You’re so enthralled you don’t even really have the time to rethink what you’re doing and where you are. Miguel gets himself on his knees, and the sight of it from above is breathtaking.

“Are you sure you wanna be on your knees? They’re gonna hurt.” You ask him, seriously this time.

“I don’t care,” is all he says, dismissing the thought. He pulls you closer to the edge of the desk, and you let yourself lean back on your elbows. He brings a hand up your thigh and takes off your underwear, you lift your hips up to help.

He brings both his hands to your thighs, slowly pulling them apart, opening your legs.

He wastes no time before diving in, startling you when, in a second, his head is between your thighs while his hands squeeze them hard and his mouth is suddenly on you.

He moves his tongue up and down your clit, occasionally circling around it. Now and then he takes a long lick, from your hole to your clit, letting out a moan from time to time as he tastes you, and he picks up on the shaky breaths and loud moans you let out at that (and the way your hands fly to his hair, slightly pulling it.)

He moves his tongue to your hole, licking and kissing around it before getting it inside.

It makes you almost want to scream out his name.

“Oh my god. You’re being so good to me, baby. Please don’t stop-”

You can feel his smile.

He takes one of his hands off of your thigh and moves it to thumb at your clit as he keeps fucking you with his tongue. The feeling is heavenly, but you can’t help but want more.

“Your fingers.” Is all you say, and he gets it.

Normally in a situation like this he’d be teasing you in some way, but right now just the thought of upsetting you with that and having you leaving him to finish himself off, or something down that lane, got him quiet.

He changes what he’s doing, going back to flicking your clit with his tongue, and slowly inserting one of his fingers. You decide you want to tease a bit more. “That all you got?” You challenge him, knowing exactly what you’re doing. He inserts another finger, not taking the care to do it slowly this time, and he pushes them deep inside you, curling them upwards to make sure you felt it.

You let out a moan that’s so pornographic you’re almost embarrassed at it, but you can feel him grin at it, pleased with the reaction. He keeps on, but at a slow pace. In other instances, you didn’t mind some slow, passionate sex. You loved it, even. But right now you wanted to be fucked.

“Harder.”

He pulls his head up to kiss you. You let him. As you make out, your taste still on his tongue, his fingers thrust harder, deeper inside you, making you moan into his mouth, which Miguel seemed to enjoy a little too much.

You can feel yourself brimming an orgasm, and your words become nonsense as he keeps on, your noises becoming so higher-pitched you can barely register you’re the one making them.

“Fuck I’m gonna cum. Baby, I’m gonna cum. Holy fucking-“

It hits you suddenly, killing your train of thought. Your body trembles as he keeps thrusting his fingers into you, letting you ride out your high. He laps it all up gladly, but you pull him away, your clit oversensitive.

That doesn’t mean you didn’t want more.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes, baby. You were such a good boy. But I want you to fuck me now.”

Miguel was still not used to you being this blunt. And honestly neither were you, for the matter. The words just kept coming out.

“What- what do you want me to do?”

You get close to his ear and whisper. “Whatever you want, baby.”

His eyes widen. Whatever he wants.

He pulls you off the desk and wordlessly takes you back to the locker room. He leaves you for a second to retrieve a condom from his bag. A prepared man, you’d say.

You manage to take a better look at him and laugh. He furrows his eyebrows together. “What?”

“You look so fucked out right now.”

He rolls his eyes at you and takes off his shorts, kicking them away. He goes to pull his boxers down but you stop him, stroking him in an agonizingly slow pace. He lets out a groan. “Please stop, I’m not gonna last.”

“Oh poor you.” You yank his boxers down. His dick is so hard it must be painful. And all from losing a fight and being called mean names. He walks the two of you backwards until your back is against a wall. He puts the condom on and looks at you for a green light.

“Go on, baby.”

He nods, pressing his cock into your hole slowly, letting you adjust to the intrusion.

“Fuck.” You breathe out.

“Was that a good fuck or a bad fuck? Does it hurt?”

“I’m alright. It was a good fuck.”

“Okay.” He hikes up one of your legs to his waist, and you think he’ll be content with that position, but he hikes up your other leg too, pressing your back even more firmly to the wall and supporting your weight by holding firmly onto the back of your thighs.

“Woah what are you doing?”

He doesn’t bother responding, thrusting into you experimentally.

“Holy shit.”

That is enough for him. His thrusts become harder, deeper, faster. He hadn’t realized just how desperate he was until now.

Hitting the spot inside you that made you see stars with every thrust, it doesn’t take long for his breath to quicken and his thrusts to become sloppier. “I’m gonna- can I-“

Was he trying to ask for permission to cum? Holy fucking shit, that was hot.

“Shh, it’s okay baby. You’ve been so good. You can cum.”

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” he chanted.

You laugh as his desperation, but it quickly turns into a moan, with Miguel eager to cum and fucking you so hard now you can’t even understand how he could still hold up your weight while doing that. Bless you universe for giving you a strong, strong boyfriend. But all of that didn’t matter now, because he was fucking you so good you could feel the familiar sensation of an orgasm building again.

“Please don’t stop.” That was the first time you begged him for something the whole time.

“I won’t, mi amor.” Oh, that broke you. That one pet name didn’t come out all that frequently, so when it did, you felt giddy on the inside.

With a few more thrusts, both of you reach your high, and at that point Miguel did have to pull you down, although your legs currently trembled so hard it was a little difficult to stand, but he helps you out after tying the condom up and throwing it away.

“Holy shit,” you finally let out.

“Holy shit,” he agrees.

“What were you saying about your loser kink again?”

“Will you shut up about that?” He smiles.

“Was I too mean to you? I might’ve gotten a little carried away."

He looks down to the floor in embarrassment as if he hadn’t just fucked you into oblivion. “I liked it.”

“That’s good baby. So, shower?”

“Yeah you stink,” he makes a disgusted face, plugging his nose and everything just to irritate you.

You roll your eyes at him.

A/N: pls be kind to me and cut me some slack i've never posted smut before 😭 i promise ive had sex before 😭 fighting for my life lmao

#cobra kai #cobra kai imagine #miguel diaz #miguel diaz x reader #miguel diaz imagine #miguel diaz x you #cobra kai x reader #johnny lawrence #eli moskowitz #hawk #tori nichols #mars writes #miguel diaz smut #miguel diaz x reader smut

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archangeldyke-all · 1 month ago

Note

jinx teasing sev and saying that she wouldn’t be able to survive a week without kissing r bc she’s “whipped”

sev takes that to heart and in fact does try to prove jinx wrong, but the second she sees r’s sweet and confused face at her dodging the kiss she breaks and apologizes and promises to make it up to her bc lets be honest sev wouldn’t be able to go even a day without kissing her precious gf

GOD i'm gonna make this roach verse.

i'll give a vague explanation below the cut so people who aren't familiar with that fic and still want to read this blurb can have context

men and minors dni

ok all u need to know is that sevika and reader had a whole enemies to lovers thing when reader got hired as jinx's (age 11ish in this blurb) nanny. they're madly in love now, and sevika has learned to tolerate (love) jinx too.

what sevika doesn't know is that you've been in on it from the start.

jinx was teasing you, about the kisses you're always pressing on sevika's cheeks and the way you're always tucking her loose hairs behind her ears, and you got flustered and blurted "at least i'm not as bad as sevika!"

jinx, of course, cackled and agreed with you, then she asked, "you think you can get her to buy us jericho's tonight?"

you giggled and ruffled her hair. "probably. you wanna have some fun with it though?" you asked.

which is how you're here.

jinx made a bet with sevika that she couldn't last more than a day without kissing you. sevika, of course, took the bait-- desperate to prove jinx wrong without thinking through the consequences.

consequences being, of course, your pout when she dodges your kiss at lunch. (jinx is hiding her giggles behind her hand. sevika is hiding her own pout behind hers.)

you try again when she helps you and lock clear the plates after the gang eats. (jinx tags along, carrying a singular fork as her version of 'helping'-- just to see if sevika fails on her bet) sevika ignores your attempted forehead kiss, making a u-turn and practically running back out into the bar.

and then, you bring out the puppy eyes.

standing just outside of jinx's room while she 'reads her books' you confront sevika. she cringes the moment she sees you, and you just sigh. "sev..."

"baby, c'mere." she sighs, wrapping her arms around you, folding immediately. if you focus, you think you can hear jinx hyperventilating from holding her laughs in her room. "i made this dumbass bet with jinx that i could go the whole day without kissing you, and i didn't get the chance to let you in on it without the brat around." she pouts. you blink up at her, trying to make your eyes as big as possible.

before you can speak, sevika darts down to kiss you. you can't help but giggle against her lips. when she pulls away, you finally sigh.

"i guess that's alright."

"it's not." she kisses you again. "i felt like i was stubbing my toe each time i dodged you." she pecks you once more. you start to giggle. "what can i do to make it up to you?" she asks.

in her room, you hear jinx's muffled "fuck yes!"

you just bat your eyes at sevika. "wanna take me to jericho's for dinner tonight?"

sevika nods. "do we have to bring the brat?"

you chuckle. "duh. it's her favorite, she'd kill us if we went without her."

"fine." sevika sighs, kissing you one last time before turning around and marching away-- off to do whatever job silco's got her on today.

jinx's door flies open, and the girl comes flying out, cackling manically. "we did it!"

"i told you we could." you say, ruffling her bangs. you pull her to your side and start walking the pair of you toward the stairs. "c'mon. dinner's not 'til late and i'm hungry. wanna share some flamers?" you ask. jinx nods, giving you a quick hug before darting off and scrambling down the stairs toward the kitchen.

taglist!

@fyeahnix @lavendersgirl @half-of-a-gay @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner

@shimtarofstupidity @chuucanchuucan @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther

@sevikaspillowprincess @emiliabby @sevikasbeloved @hellorai

@glass-apothecary @macaroni676 @artinvain @k3n-dyll @sevsdollette

@ellieslob @xayn-xd @keikuahh @maneskinwh0re @raphaellearp

@iamastar @sevikitty @mascdom @nhaaauyen

@mirconreadzztuff22 @veoomvroom @lushh-s3vik4s @katyawooga @lesbodietcoke

#sevika #sevika arcane #sevika imagine #sevika x reader #sevika x you #soft sevika

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silentcryracha · 2 months ago

Text

1k special love week: 1. Bang chan

Pairing: bang chan x reader

Context: part one of eight for my Special Love Week in celebration of 1k followers (🤍). Drabble based on 3 prompts which are 'loves when + kink + sex position'.

Warnings: 18+ only, very minimum buildup, it's 99% smut, one shot, see prompts, fingering (f receiving), intercourse p in v, non protected (but they're married), talk of cum & its consequences (breeding kink hello?), pet names (baby, my love) , a couple uses of the word daddy

Word count: 2.4k

Prompts: Bang Chan loves when you get needy + Dom/sub & Breeding Kink + missionary (+variations)

ps: There could be grammar errors. Do NOT repost on other socials. Leave feedback if you feel like it, otherwise enjoy! ♡︎

Masterlist

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Chan loves it when you're needy. Anytime, really. It may be sexual but it also can not be. Being needed is a love language to him. He loves to help, to be the person you go to when you need something. May be something silly like moving a piece of furniture (strenght kink hello?), something more serious like an advice.

Of course he's into it because he cares about you and he loves you, but let's be honest here, it also does feed his ego in some way. That especially comes into play when this neediness is paired with horniness. Then it's over, for both you and him.

You know he likes to be more dominant most of the times, but even then, at the end of the day, it's really you who has him wrapped around your finger.

"Channie are you busy?" you ask, maybe even with a slightly exaggerated whiny voice.

He turns his head a bit to look at you from his seat at the living room table where he'd been working on his laptop for hours.

"Kind of, why baby?" he answered back, promptly welcoming you with one arm as you walked up to him.

"I was wondering if you could give me a massage?" he smirked , squeezing the flesh of your waist sightly.

"Just out of the blue?"

"Actually I think I strained by back a bit from cleaning today" you chuckled, but his smiled dropped so fast it was almost comical. A mixture of worry and annoyance taking its place.

"Did you move the couch by yourself again?" he scolded, standing up and quickly closing the laptop's screen simultaneously. "You hurt yourself last time too. I told you to call me if you needed help"

His tone was becoming a bit intimidating, but you knew he just wanted to help, and especially for you not to get hurt.

You wrapped your arms around his neck, putting your doe eyes on to try and sweet talk yourself out of it.

"I didn't 'hurt' myself! I just got tired, alright? It happens" you shrugged, but you could tell he wasn't happy.

"It happens but if you did as i told you and asked me for help, it wouldn't have" he responded, then added "Now go lay down, I'm gonna get some aloe."

That's when dom/sub dynamic jumps out. When Chan gets annoyed, fake or to play, you automatically obey. It would be a lie to say that you didn't know where this whole situation was gonna go the second you started it.

"Yes" you tried your best to suppress a smile as you walked in your shared bedroom, turning on the warm colored night light.

Then you laid on the bed on your belly, arms hugging the pillow on which your head rested.

A couple of minutes later Chan walked in the room. You didn't quite see him, as your face was turned the opposite way, but you felt him climbing on the bed, straddling your legs.

"Take the sweater off, or it's gonna get sticky" he says. You get up enough to comply, placing it on your breasts, then laying back down.

"Warm it up a bit, please" you asked softly, knowing that the aloe was going to be super cool against your warm skin. It was the chilly autumn season, after all.

"Yeah" he reassured. You heard the sound of the bottle popping open and close, then being discarded to the side.

"I'll try my best" he spoke again, rubbing his palms together to warm up the gel, "But you didn't listen and hurt yourself, so you gotta handle a bit of cold. It'll feel better." His tone was pretty neutral, but the scolding was clear.

"You're not gonna let this go, are you?"

"Do you want the massage or not?" He stopped his movements. You sighed.

"Sorry"

"That's more like it" it was subtle, but you knew him well enough to know he had a stupid smirk on his face. Unfortunately, you were so down bad, that it turned you on even more.

Suddenly his hands touched the skin of your shoulder blades, making you gasp a bit.

"Are they too cold, still?"

"No, it's good. I was just surprised" you chuckled. At that point he started the actual massage, skillfully using his thumbs and other fingers to put pressure.

"Relax, alright? Just tell me if it hurts" you nodded at the best of your abilities due to your position, without replying.

Chan kept working, starting from your upper back, then going back and forth between places. You were in fact so relaxed, your eyelids were almost falling shut. Until he got to your shoulders, which got you instantly back to earth, hissing.

"Tough spot?" He asked. You hummed in agreement, making the pressure of his fingers slightly less forceful but still going.

"I can tell" he paused, "How about here?" he moved his thumbs up, at the nape of your neck.

"Mmh, yes. Feels really good" you answered, feeling almost floaty. So much that you involuntarily started sighing softly.

"Does my baby feel better?" His buttery voice, just a tad bit condescending, sparked something in your stomach.

"Uh uh" he chuckled, now using his palms to caress you, all up and down your back, waist, sides.

"Good. 'Cause the gel is completely dry." And despite that, his movements didn't stop. They just changed the intention.

He lightly traced the tip of his fingers around, giving your goosebumps and sometimes eliciting a small giggle because of tickling.

"Are you sleepy?" He asked sweetly. You shook your head no, looking back at him. He was smiling, but his gaze sharpened as he looked at your face.

"Yes, you are" he teased. You tried to hide a cheeky smile, shaking your head again. You were just trying to be childish, shaking your whole body along with your head.

But your cute butt shaking like that right in front of his eyes and dangerously close to his crotch, kind of sealed the deal. He looked down, then back up at you.

Then, suddenly, slap!

You yelped in surprise as both of his hands came down to slap your ass. He laughed.

"No? Show me, then." He challenged. You didn't need to be told twice.

You managed to roll over on your back, with him still hovering over you. His eyes immediately went to your bare tits, but you didn't let him enjoy the view as you pulled him down towards you by his hoodie.

You started kissing, quite passionately right from the get go. But as much as Chan liked to make out, he wanted to get comfortable.

So he paused, taking off his hoodie quickly, as well as his tracksuit pants and boxers, all in one go. In the meantime, you also discarded your sweater, then taking off your own pants and panties.

When finally you were both naked, you immediately went back to kissing. Chan wrapped one arm around your torso, pulling you towards him, as he worked to get the sheets over you two.

You gave him a questioning look at first, not immediately understanding what he was doing.

"You got goosebumps all over" he explained, also getting between your legs.

"Thank you baby" you mumbled, kissing him again sweetly.

You spent several minutes humping each other and making out, with a little biting and sucking, both probably more tired than you cared to admit.

You properly started to lose it when Chan grabbed himself and slid the head of dick around your drenched pussy, including your sensitive clit.

"C-channie please" your finger pads pressed into his shoulders hard as you whined.

"Please, what?" He replied, voice low, eyes glassy and fixated on yours. Lips plump and slightly agape.

A few strands of his hair had started to get damp and stick to his forehead from the head of your bodies, the adrenaline, and probably also because of the heavy duvet.

He looked so fucking good, enough to make you go stupid.

"Please get inside me" you chocked out, "I need it so bad, please baby" desperation dripping from your words.

"Where does my baby need me? Here?" Two of his fingers slid right in your pussy, no resistance whatsoever by how completely wet you were all over.

You whined a bit, trying to get him closer with your arms.

"N-not enough" you sobbed, "I need your cock, please baby, please"

"Since my love asks so nicely..." He leaned down, placing his plush lips on yours in a sweet kiss, distracting you from the moment in which he actually did enter you.

You both sighed and moaned, in ecstasy. You both liked to get freaky, even a bit rough. But missionary, and all its variations to be honest, were your favorites.

In that position he was dominant, in charge of the work. And you were laying there, needy and desperate, like he wanted you. Not to mention the easy accessibility to your tits, waist, legs, ass.

But let's be real, the actual reason why you both loved that position so much it's because it's intense. Romantic, passionate, creates a close connection, and you have each other's faces right there to kiss. What's better than that?

Maybe the fact that he can go deep...like really deep. Especially when he gets into it and puts your legs over his shoulders, or just keeps them spread at his sides.

Not to mention...that the position itself adds greatly to Chan's whole (and obvious) breeding kink. Just the thought of him spilling his seed inside you, and possibly keeping it there as long as possible, just gets him gone.

Chan was keeping his hands on the side of your face as he went back and forth, inside you, at a fast and rough pace.

His mouth alternated in between giving you kisses and spurring you on with his dirty talk.

"How do you feel, my love?" He panted, "Does your Channie's cock make you feel good?" His voice was so erotic and full of tease, it drove you crazy.

"Mmh- y-yes...'so good daddy" you were so out of it you barely realized the word that slipped from your lips. It wasn't the first time, but it wasn't usual.

He chuckled faintly, still going hard on your abused pussy. He leaned down again, starting to kiss and lick the side of your neck, near your ear.

"Your daddy, uh?" He teased, whispering, "That's right. Daddy 'll take care of you"

All that teasing was getting your even more flushed and lightheaded than you already were, your pussy clenching in involuntarily agreement. Chan groaned at that, chuckling wickedly because he knew what he was doing.

"I..." You whined.

"Ssh, I know, it's alright. You close baby?" You nodded, nuzzling his shoulder with your face.

"Good, good girl" he kissed your head, "Come for me"

Didn't take anything more than that for you to reach your high, your hole clenching around his length, and you shivering from the aftermath and intensity.

Chan slowed down but didn't stop, allowing you to gently get off, except that you started grinding on his crotch.

"You wanna come again?" He smirked, short of breath. You nodded, but it wasn't enough for Chan.

"Say it" he ordered, "I wanna hear my little cum slut say that she wants to cum again"

"Ffuuck yes, I-i'm a little cum slut that wants to cum a-again" you exclaimed, suddenly reinvigorated by the new chase to your second orgasm, to which you were already so close.

"Whose?"

"Yours! Your cum slut, your baby, your everything" you responded, desperately. Chan groaned at that, his pace getting faster.

"Yeah, that's fucking right, my love, my whole world" he mumbled, kissing your lips.

"Can I come with you, mmh? Can I, baby?" You nodded frantically, cupping his face in your hands.

"Yes, please come with me, I wan' it" you slur, "Want your cum inside me, fuck" you gasped as he hit a particularly good spot, just above your cervix.

"Fuck yes" he moans, "Want my cum? Wanna make me a real daddy? So everyone knows who you belong to?"

Your legs clenched around his waist, your heels pushing his butt further into you, if that was even possible.

"Yes" you answer, "Wanna be filled up, carry you around with me everywhere"

That was the last drop for you both to orgasm. Him for the first time, and you for your second. Chan groaned deeply, stilling inside you as his seed sprayed your warm walls. While your own pussy pulsated, wet and sticky.

You remained hugged for a good while, him softening inside you. His breath became so quiet and regular that for a moment you thought he had fallen asleep.

"Channie?" You whispered sweetly. He hummed back, making you smile. Your fingers started to lightly scratch his scalp and caress in between his short hair.

"Now, I'm sleepy" he mumbled, hugging your body tighter.

"You can rest, love" you reply.

"Gotta clean you up" he replied back. So at that point you moved delicately, hinting at him to get off of you. You got up, on slightly wobbly legs and almost jumped for how cold the floor was against your hot feet.

You went into your shared bathroom and grabbed a towel, wetting it a bit. You then came back, finding Chan laying on his side, his hand resting on where you should be, waiting.

"Get the covers back a bit, baby" you say, and he complies. You delicately clean his lower area, including his abs which were full off little droplets. Did you squirt a bit? You didn't even realize.

When you were done you went back in the bathroom, and cleaned some droplets of both your juices that had trickled down your thighs. Then discarded the towel, and peed before coming back into the bedroom.

You picked up all the clothes, putting back on the panties and the sweatshirt.

"Baby do you-?" You were asking if he wanted to get redressed, but his eyes were closed and his mouth pouty. He fell asleep. You smiled warmly, just picking up the boxers and putting away the rest of the clothes.

Then you climbed up on the bed, putting one foot then the other in each hole of the boxers, then trying your best to slide them up. Chan did wake up for a slight second, realizing what was happening, and promptly arched his hips to allow you to pull the fabric up all the way.

After that, you reached your arm to turn off the bed light, and then finally you were back hugging your husband, falling asleep quickly as well.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

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mr-ribbit · 10 months ago

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gonna rant again bc im seeing a lot of trans women on my dash having to carry the heavy lifting to argue for their basic respect and a lot of other queer people who want to ??? get mad about that apparently. for the record as usual: im tme, im not speaking for anyone besides myself and my perspectives, but I am trying to reach out to fellow tme people to level with y'all from inside the house.

i thought we all got past the 'calling people gendered terms when theyve asked you to stop' thing in like. 2012. i swear we were allllll on board with not calling women dude anymore, nerfing sir and ma'am, neutralizing collective terms for groups, and all of that was like, during the onceler era. that's how we got off-putting shit like folx into the mix - remember???? why are we here again.

to those who I've seen claiming that they REALLY genuinely don't want to offend anyone, and that theyre trying to understand the dude thing, and they don't want to be seen as transmisogynistic when they aren't: ok. let's talk about it. step one, stop sending that really loaded anon to a trans woman you don't know, and close that in-group hatepost with 100 replies from people name-dropping trans bloggers they don't like. try to open your mind and assume for the duration of this post that I am not cynically trying manipulate thousands of tumblr users into making Bro the next big swear word, but a fellow queer human being who thinks you're all being pretty intentionally obtuse about an upsetting trend in our community

to be clear: this post is about the issue of trans women being called bro, dude, man, etc., particularly in recent tumblr discourse about transmisogyny, and the backlash they face if they get upset about it. this is also maybe moreso about the shitty ass excuses I see tme people make for why they supposedly can't stop doing this.

so let's go through some of the things I've been seeing people say they don't understand, supposedly in earnest, about this issue

"I DIDNT USE DUDE AS A MASCULINE TERM. I CALL EVERYONE BRO. MAN IS A GENDER NEUTRAL TERM"

I'm not actually going to exhaust my list of reasons why dude/bro/man are not strictly neutral, but you should be pretty aware that all words have context. Dude might be seen as neutral in many contexts, sure, but 'woman who is frequently called a man by others' is a situation where the context adds extra meaning to your words, just like calling someone "sweetie" might be neutral in some cases, but if you've got the context of knowing that's your coworker who's half your age, it's a bit less neutral. If you're not capable of reading that context and being tasteful about when you say dude, then you need to at least be ready to respond gracefully when someone asks you to stop. This is the part I'd rather focus on.

"BUT I DIDNT MEAN IT THAT WAY. IM NOT TRANSPHOBIC"

I think you should consider broadening your perspective *beyond* your intention behind the word. people may already understand that you meant the word neutrally and therefore didn't have transmisogynistic intent, but that's not really the entire scope of what people are saying. if that's your only concern, you're just trying to clear your record, not actually listen to what they're saying.

there are lots of words people don't enjoy being called, and in most cases, when they say 'pls don't call me that', people respect that and move on. even if the word isn't a slur, if it hurts someone's feelings, we all as a society have agreed that it's pretty shitty to keep calling them that. if your friend asked you not to call them 'buddy' anymore because their dead grandparent called them that, or something equivalently personal, you'd probably respect that instead of telling them 'but I call everyone buddy!!' right? even if you didn't really understand why it bothered them so much?

there is a prominent tendency for trans women to be denied this privilege, and when they ask not to be called dude or bro, people don't seem to respect this request as much as they would in other situations. when I accidentally use a gendered word and someone tells me they don't like it, I try to respond with something like "my bad, I didn't mean it as misgendering but I can see you were still bothered by it, so I'll try not to keep saying it. sorry!" and most people are willing to accept that. when trans women ask people this favor, a lot of people get VERY defensive, and treat the request as inane or unfair, instead of just apologizing and moving on. this is why people are upset when this happens, and it's why people are calling your actions transmisogynistic

also like you might not be doing this, but a lot of people DO use dude and bro in an intentionally gendered way to make trans women uncomfortable. it's a power play bigots use to talk down to them or otherwise maliciously harass them. do you know what arguments they use to defend that behavior when called out on it? 'oh I call everyone that' 'dude is gender neutral calm down' 'dont overreact its just a word'. by acting like this, youre all just giving credence to those same arguments.

"WELL THEY SHOULDNT GET SO MAD AT ME WHEN I DIDNT MEAN ANY HARM"

they can get as mad as they want!! also, are you sure they're 'mad'? or are they just expressing their feelings about a negative topic to you, and it makes you feel bad, so you have to make them out to be unreasonably emotional? how do you think they should have phrased 'dont call me that' to better spare *your* feelings?

also like, in most cases, these women do not knowww you. if your main response to someone saying you disrespected them is to say "I didnt mean it that way, I meant it in a friendly neutral way", well that's NOT YOUR FRIEND! she has no idea what your opinions are or what you think of her!!! she has no reason to assume you only upset her in a friendly way and not a bad unfriendly way! but she did get upset, and she did the one thing she can do which is *tell you what upset her* and your response is to say "well actually you shouldn't be upset at all"??????

and another thing:

it's not just the issue of using the word 'dude', it's because you're coming off extremely dismissive of women who have asked you to stop doing something that harms them, and because your argument is basically that they just shouldn't be so bothered by it. or that they're stupid, irrational, or otherwise crazy for telling you that it bothered them at all, just because you Technically used a gender neutral word according to Your Rules. be honest, does that seem fair? If people were calling you something that bothered you enough to ask them to stop, and they responded like this, how would it make you feel?

focusing solely on your intent and what the words mean when you use them is the same thing as saying "just get over it". no woman should need to Prove to you that 'dude' is gendered for you to care about what she's saying. the fact that you're asking people to do that sucks and makes you look bad, which is why people are arguing with you and calling you a misogynist.

especially those of you who are only doing this with trans women who are actively arguing with. you're wielding misgendering as a cudgel and we can all see it, grow up please.

#discourse cw #transmisogyny cw

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ariestrxsh · 4 months ago

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⚠️ content warning: ⚠️ smut, humiliation, degradation, sneaking around, use of sex toy, edging, ruined orgasm, enemies to lovers, bratttamer!matt, mean!matt, roughdom!matt

📝 author's note: 📝 here are parts one and two. i'm sorry i kept you guys waiting so long for part three. please enjoy and please read the other two stories for build up and context. :)

✍️ Summary: ✍️ After staying the night in a heated sexual encounter with your arch nemesis, Matt Sturniolo, the two of you now have to keep up the charade in front of his brothers.

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hatef--k part three

The rest of the night was calm. Matt helped me move my laundry along, gave me back my clothes, and apologized for being a dick. "Hey, I'm sorry about hiding your towel and shit. That was kinda the meanest thing I've ever done to you," Matt smiled, probably recalling what it led to. It was actually the first time Matt had ever apologized to me for anything.

"Don't be sorry. I liked it. And if you're sorry, that's kind of a turn off," I looked up at him with a twinkle in my eye and a devilish grin plastered on my face, still riding a high from the incredibly passionate sex we'd just had.

"But you seemed legit mad," he looked at me, confused. "Well, I was mad. And I liked it. Both things are true. That's part of the game, isn't it?" I rhetorically asked. Matt smirked at me.

He knew exactly what I was talking about. It was just the first time either of us had really acknowledged the dynamic for what it was. If Matt and I really didn't like each other, we'd feel indifferent in the other's presence. But the only difference between disliking someone and hating them is passion.

Matt still did little things to frustrate me and tease me the rest of the night, like constantly moving my phone in random places, or tapping me on one shoulder but standing behind me on the opposite side. I'd roll my eyes at him and slug him in the arm, but there was something about the banter that was more playful than before.

"Did you wanna sleep with me in my bed tonight?" Matt asked, avoiding eye contact and fidgeting with his rings. "Why the fuck would I wanna do that?" I asked, but I was smiling.

"Because you're a little whore, and you might want something to rub up against while you're dreaming about how I just fucked you," Matt teased me, tickling my side. "Only if you keep your hands to yourself, perv," I joked back.

I fell asleep next to Matt in his bed that night. We did try to keep our hands to ourselves, but there were a few times in our slumber where I felt him poking me in my backside with his cock, and I did find myself mindlessly rubbing up against his hip bone like a dog in heat.

Finally, around 9 a.m. the next day, I woke up to the sunshine pouring into Matt's room, and I rolled over to greet him. He looked like he had also just woken up, and his eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the brightness.

"You know, I was joking when I told you I thought you were gonna rub up against me in your sleep, but you actually did it. Fucking whore," Matt teased me in his morning voice and let out a mean chuckle. "Yeah, and when I told you to keep your hands to yourself, I meant your hard on, too, perv," I rolled my eyes at him and smiled, intoxicated by the sleepiness that lingered in his words.

We heard a few noises downstairs, indicating someone had just walked in the door. Matt and I looked at each other wide-eyed, and I immediately jumped out of his bed, grabbing anything that was mine or anything that indicated I might have slept in there and booked it to Nick's room.

I frantically threw the blankets and pillows about on the bed to make it look slept in, splashed some cold water on my face in the bathroom, and stepped out to see Nick ascending the stairs in a white t-shirt, jeans, a leather jacket, and sunglasses. He always looked like a movie star. "Oh, hey. Good to see you awake. And alive," Nick laughed, stopping in the hallway. "Yeah, good to see you too," I lied.

I was definitely hoping to get another round with Matt in before either brother got home.

"Is Matt up yet?" Nick asked, motioning towards Matt's closed bedroom door. "Hmm. I don't know. Haven't seen him since last night," I lied again. Nick glided across the carpet and made his way to his room. "Jesus, was the bed comfortable? It looks like a tornado hit in here while you were sleeping," Nick joked, looking at the sheets in complete dissaray. "No, your bed was great!" I lied once more.

I had no idea if his bed was comfortable or not, considering the first time I'd stepped into his room was two minutes prior.

"I slept fine. I guess I just toss and turn a lot," I nervously laughed. Matt abruptly opened his door, startling me. My face grew hot, and my breath grew shallow. I could hear my heart thumping quickly in my chest, afraid Nick would pick up on the sudden energy shift between Matt and me.

"Hey Nick," Matt said, rubbing his eyes. "Good to see you guys didn't kill each other while we were gone," Nick said. "She tried, actually. Good thing I'm a light sleeper," Matt joked. "Move out of the way, freak. You're blocking the bathroom," Matt said, pushing past me. "Make sure you spend extra time in there. You look like shit," I responded rudely.

"Was he mean to you?" Nick asked after Matt closed the door behind him. "Not anymore than usual," I nonchalantly said. I don't know, Nick, do you consider your brother throwing me up against the wall and choking me and calling me a slut while he fucked me, mean? Because I don't know how to answer any of your questions right now.

Nick was one of those people I never lied to, but in just the past five minutes, I'd fabricated all my answers. I didn't like the act of lying, but I got excited at the idea of having a secret that nobody knew about besides Matt and me.

My phone, placed strategically on Nick's nightstand, started buzzing. It was a call from the company who was working on my water issue. "Hello?" I picked up the phone. "Hey, miss. Your water is back on, and it's all good to go. Sorry for the inconvenience," the man said over the phone. "Oh, no problem. Thanks for the update," I responded, staring Nick in the eyes, and I hung up.

"Damn," I fake sighed. "They said it's gonna be at least another day until I have running water in my apartment." Why stop lying now? "Don't worry about it. Why don't you just stay here another night?" Nick suggested, which was exactly what I was hoping he'd say. "We'll just have Matt drive you over to your apartment and get anything you need," he told me. I like the way you think, Nick.

"Oh, yeah. Matt will love that," I said, rolling my eyes but also smiling because I loved pissing him off. "What will I love?" Matt asked, walking out of the bathroom and past Nick's room. "Hey Matt, my water's still out, and Nick here, just offered to have you drive me over to my place real quick, so I can pick up some things I'll need to stay here another night. You don't have a problem with that, do you?" I taunted him, batting my eyelashes and smiling.

"I'd rather shoot myself in the foot, but I'll do it for my wonderful brother here who loves to help people by volunteering me to help them," Matt slapped Nick on the back and gave him a look. "Let's go, brat," Matt rolled his eyes and motioned for me to come towards him. Matt pushed the front door closed on me as I trailed behind him out to the yard. "Fuck you, Matt," I muttered.

Once we were outside and Nick couldn't hear us, Matt turned around, held me by my neck, and said, "What the fuck did you just say to me?" I loved the feeling of his fist tightening around my throat while he spoke to me through gritted teeth. "I said, fuck you, Matt," I repeated. "I'm gonna make you pay for that one later," he smirked, loosening his grip and getting into the car. Jesus, way to make me instantly wet, Matt.

I hopped into the passenger seat, Matt connected his phone and started playing some music, but as soon as he pulled out of the driveway, I disconnected his phone and started connecting my own. "What the fuck!?" Matt yelled, pushing my hands away from the display monitor.

"Hey, both hands on the wheel," I smiled, tickling his side and causing him to swerve. "You're gonna make me crash," Matt barked at me. "You're gonna make yourself crash. You focus on driving. We're listening to TV Girl," I said, putting on 'Cigarettes out the Window.'

"Whatever. At least it's not as annoying as some of the shit you listen to," he rolled his eyes. We pulled up to my apartment. "Wait here. I'll be just a few minutes," I told him. I didn't need much, just a pair of lounging clothes, since all the laundry over at the Sturniolos' was either gymware or my work clothes, so I picked out a tank top and shorts to sleep in. And my vibrator. God, I needed my vibrator. I knew it would be risky, but in case I didn't get to fool around with Matt that night if everyone was home, at least the vibrator was a less risky route.

As soon as I went to reach for it off the top shelf in my closet, I felt a presence come up behind me, and I immediately whipped around. "Jesus, Matt. You scared the fuck out of me," I said embarrassed as I tried to hide my vibrator behind my back. "What do we have here?" Matt said walking up to me as if he were going to hug me, but he reached around my waist and grabbed my vibrator from behind me. "Is this what you use when you think about me?" Matt teased me, examining it.

"Shut the fuck up, Matt," I rolled my eyes at him. "You know, the funniest thing happened when I walked in," Matt whispered. I looked at him inquisitively, unsure of what he was going to say next. "I turned on your faucet, and your water is just fine," Matt replied.

"I know. They called me this morning. I lied to Nick," I admitted, looking away from him. "Why'd you lie?" Matt asked, raising his eyebrows, thinking he already knew the answer. "Oh, you know, trying to save a few bucks on my water bill this month," I giggled and bit my lip.

"Bullshit. I think you were gonna prance around my house, wearing this little white tank top with no bra and these little shorts," Matt said, pointing at my clothes on the bed, "and I think you were gonna tease me all fucking night, and I'm sure you were gonna plan for me to catch you using this on yourself, huh?" He held my vibrator in front of my face. "Anything for me to fuck you silly again, huh? Are you that desperate for my cock?" Matt replied in a condescending tone. God, he was turning me on.

"Stand fucking still, you cheap little whore," Matt ordered me while he pulled down my bottoms, including my underwear. He stood behind me, his hot breath hitting the side of my neck. With one hand, he held my arms behind my back, restraining my wrists and with the other, he turned on my vibrator. Having been stripped down to nothing but my t-shirt and having Matt hindering any movement of my arms while he studied my favorite sex toy brought me to a whole new level of humiliation, and I couldn't get enough of it.

He rested my buzzing toy on my cunt, and I immediately felt my knees grow weak. He leaned in and whispered, "You're such a naughty girl. Lying to Nick. Telling me to go fuck myself. Running around my house being a little tease." I looked up at him lingering over my shoulder and let out a few soft whimpers. "You like making me angry, don't you? You love being punished when you misbehave, huh?" He cooed, and I bit my lip and nodded. "What would Nick say, knowing you lied to him so you could have another chance to get dicked down by me, huh? What do you think he'd think of you, hmm?" He teased me.

I felt the vibrations torturing my clit, reverberating throughout my being, and inching me closer to the edge with every word Matt gruffly whispered in my ear. My moans became more fervent and more desperate. "Please, Matt. I'm so close," I softly responded.

"Well, isn't that a damn shame?" He said, letting go of my wrists and turning off my vibrator, ruining my orgasm. "Put your clothes back on, whore. We should get back before Nick wonders what's taking so long," Matt smirked at me and handed me back my toy.

taglist: @sturniolo-girl @st9niolos @theyluvme-2315 @luvs4matt @mattsbrowser @ribread03 @slutforsturnioloss @inlovewcock

part four posted here 💖

#sturniolo smut #sturniolo triplets #sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo #matt sturniolo smut #matt sturniolo x reader #sturniolo fanfic #matthew bernard sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #matt sturniolo fic #matt sturniolo x you #ariestrxsh #hatef k

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anim-ttrpgs · 8 months ago

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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.

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0nlythrowharrybeaux · 4 months ago

Note

I miss brewer harry🤭

Perhaps we're due for a little check-in 👀

Read the full fic "Trying"** if you haven't already

Warnings: fertility concerns (very brief mention), daddy kink, oral sex/throat fuck (m receiving), unprotected sex (p in v), use of sex toys/accessories, edging, anal play, forced orgasms and overstimulation, ruined orgasm, squirting, breeding kink, dirty talk

WC: 3.7k

As much as you two wanted a baby together, Harry was a bit happy that it hadn't happened just yet. The mere act of actively trying for it was bringing you two close in a new way that had him falling for you all over again. He'd thought about you as a mother before but now it was noticeable and tangible. He could picture it so clearly.

"What?" you inquired as a nervous giggle bubbled from you and he chuckled and shrugged.

"Nothing. Just...looking." he said simply and you smiled and continued with securing the ties on your sleeping shorts into a little, messy bow. Your top half was still bare, but he wasn't just looking at your breasts. You noticed how his eyes trailed down to your tummy.

You were a little nervous that you hadn't gotten pregnant yet. You'd been trying for like three months! Harry had gone to the doctor the year prior, before you even talked about trying and he was fine. But you hadn't checked on that yet. You wondered if you should. Maybe you had fertility issues that you didn't know of.

"You're fine, baby." Harry reassured you as he hugged around your midsection. You swore he could read your mind. He then smooched a kiss to your temple. "There's like a very specific window for this and if we miss it, it's not happening." he reminded you and you nodded.

"Right..." you responded as you interlocked your fingers with his.

"It'll happen. Besides, if it happens now we're having Taurus baby. Famously incompatible with Aquarians." he reasoned and you chortled.

"That shouldn't be a problem unless you're planning to be romantically linked to our child." you said and he scoffed.

"Jesus..." he scowled, "S'not just in that context." he said as he squeezed your fingers with his and you giggled.

"I know. Just being an asshole." you confessed.

"You know, the other day, when you were chopping up a papya for me?" he inquired and you nodded. "It just hit me how much love is inside of you. And how that would make you such a great mother. Like I know you hate chopping fruits, particularly that one." he said and you hummed in agreement.

"Smells like puke." you mumbled, "You're nasty for eating it as much as you do." you grimaced and he laughed.

"Alright, we can agree to disagree." he said, "But you know, you still did. I didn't even have to ask you to. You just knew." he said and you smiled, "You have an instinct to nurture and dote on and it's so fucking beautiful." he said before kissing your cheek. "When it happens, you're gonna be so good at it." he reassured you.

You pried his hands off of you and twirled around. You got on your tiptoes and kissed him deeply. He was slightly taken aback but quickly wrapped his arms around you and gave you a nice bear hug as your mouths moved together in perfect harmony. Your hands slithered up his nice, firm biceps. Then, those broad shoulders of his. Then up his neck and finally you were holding his face. He started to accelerate the speed of the kiss and your lips twitched up in a grin.

"Easy, daddy." you whispered and he smiled.

"Sorry, baby." he murmured with the most pussy-clenching rasp. "You get me really excited."

With your bare chest pressed against his, he could feel your nipples hardening as you got aroused from your steamy kiss. Your tongue darted out over his bottom lip before he opened up and let you slip it into his. He moaned as your slow and searing kiss grew more and more lewd by the second. Harry's arms released you and instead his hands gripped your hips before letting them slide back towards your ass.

"Yeah, daddy....you're getting so big and hard for me." you praised quietly. Your right hand slid down his brawny chest and chiseled abs and finally reached over that growing bulge in his boxer briefs. You palmed over his bulge a few times before reaching between his legs to fondle his balls too. You could feel it twitch as it came alive. He moaned as you slid your hand inside and guided his half-hard cock upward. "I like it when your tip comes out the top of your briefs. You're so fucking big." you mumbled happily and he smiled before kissing you deeply again.

Just moments later Harry's cock was at full mast. He was dying from your index finger just barely grazing over his tip every now and again. It was starting to make his pre-come bead at his tip.

"Fuck, get on your knees f'me." he ordered and you grinned before pulling away. Harry slipped out of his boxer-briefs before sitting on the edge of the bed with spread legs, his thick erection standing straight up. You loved it when he was so hard that it twitched and stood higher. Your mouth watered at the sight of him so you just went after him without another moment to lose. "Oh shit, baby...." he groaned as he watched your cheeks hollowing out as you sucked his tip, drawing the pre-come up and out of him so that you could get a taste of him. "Shit..." he moaned lowly as he brought his right hand up to your head and wove his fingers into your hair.

"Take more." he said as he gently pushed you down and you relaxed your jaw to get him in deeper. When he was in the back of your mouth you started to stroke what didn't fit as you bobbed your head up and down his cock. His cock was so slippery with your drool and his own arousal. You gagged when he pushed you down a little more, "Shhh...just a little more." he appeased you, it almost felt patronizing. "Relax, baby." he reminded you and you breathed in through your nose and relaxed your throat so that he could get deeper. And boy did he...you were stuffed.

"Fuck yeah. Good girl." he praised you as he started to gently thrust up into your mouth and down your throat. He took a slow pace so that you could properly breathe between each one. You could feel yourself getting all sticky between your legs as your slick started to pool into the crotch of your shorts.

You loved it when he fucked your mouth. You loved the flavor of him on your tongue and the scent of his skin. The weight of his big, fat cock in your mouth...it did ungodly things to you. The vibrations from your muffled moans tickled down his cock causing him to sink in a little deeper. Your eyes were brimming with the tears collected in them from him triggered your gag reflex with each thrust. After a few more they inevitably spilled down your cheeks as you choked around him and tapped his thigh and he pulled you up by the hair.

"You're alright, baby. Breathe." he cooed as you started coughing a bit. He smiled down at you as you took a nice deep inhale. "Alright?"

"Yeah." you assured him with a pleased smile. "Need you." you said softly as you glanced up at him with those pretty, glassy eyes.

"Alright, baby." he smiled and helped you up and out of your shorts before you climbed onto the bed, "How do you want it?"

"From behind." you said and he smiled.

"Mmmm...s'gonna get so deep." he said with a delighted smirk and you nodded.

"Yeah. That's what I want. I wanna feel it tomorrow and the next day too." you said as his lips hovered over yours. Your foot ran up his calf quickly before you tangled your leg with his.

"Yeah, baby? Do you need daddy to pound the horny out of you?" he asked and you nodded.

"Please, daddy." you implored, your desperate gaze met his. He smirked and quickly flipped you over onto your tummy.

His big, warm hands ran up your thighs and gripped your butt before he landed a sharp smack against you. You gasped at the unexpected sting and then you felt his lips smooch down where he spanked you. And then he did it to the other side and your fingers dug into the bed covers to get through the stinging sensation. Your grip loosened when it started to subside.

"You're dripping for me." he hummed and you bit your lip as his fingers tickled over your labia for a moment. "M'gonna get the wedge pillow. " he said and you smiled.

"Yes, please." you hummed and felt him get off the bed. After a few moments you heard him return.

"Hips up for me, baby." he instructed softly and you wiggled around until you were able to arch up high enough for him to slide the wedge right beneath your hips. He already reached part of your g-spot in general, but when he was fucking you from the back and you were angled this way with the cushion, he reached it perfectly. He didn't even warn you before he pushed into you forcefully making you choke on a moan as he squeezed your hips.

"So fucking tight..." he mumbled as he held still to let you adjust for a moment. You felt so fucking full. You swore that he was in your tummy.

"Move! Please, move." you begged and groaned as he slightly drew his hips back and then thrust back in before grinding into you. "Fuck daddy, right there!" you gasped as his tip collided right against your spot. With each grind of his hips you felt a tingle zap through your entire body. Harry then pulled out and sunk in again to deliver a toe-curling thrust. The sounds that left you were obscene. Suddenly you heard a soft buzz and moaned. "Baby..."

"Grabbed your Pebble too." he said and you shook your head.

"You're gonna fuck me up." you mumbled and he smirked.

"Good. Lift a little and get it on your clit." he instructed. You did as he requested, the ergonomic shape of the pillow and toy you were using allowed for the toy to fit perfectly over your clit. The thing about this toy was that it was a sucking toy, the incessant slurping against your clit always pulled orgasms from you with an unbelievable ease. It drove you crazy every single time, you'd always end up squirting and were left a trembling mess. "I know s'hard with this toy but I want you to put off your orgasm as much as possible, okay? I can feel it if you come without permission." he reminded and you bit your lip but nodded.

"Yes, daddy." you responded as you got the toy into the best position and you tensed up as your clit got sucked into the opening.

Harry smirked as he saw your body tense from behind and your hot little muscle squeezed around his cock with the added stimulation. He retreated almost to the tip before mercilessly plunging back into you over and over again as you whined and whimpered for him to keep fucking you. He loved how your fists would clench the bed sheets hard as your walls started to throb in perfect time with his heart beat. It helped him keep his pace until you started to just squeeze, your legs started to stiffen up a bit and he smirked.

"What did I say?" he asked as he stilled inside of you and your body relaxed for a moment before your hips jolted a bit when more of your weight rested on the toy again, causing your clit to feel the sucking even more intensely.

"Sorry, y'just feel so good." you mumbled and he smiled.

"You feel good too, baby. So warm and wet f'me. You've got the most welcoming little pussy." he hummed as he kneaded your ass and then sightly pulled your cheeks apart to get a better look at your other little hole. He had tried to open you up there before but your nerves always got the best of you and you could never get past the second plug. He let a little wad of spit trickle down over it and he lived for the way you whined when he rubbed his thumb against it.

"Gonna let me get in there?" he asked and you chuckled, "Obviously not today, another time. For now s'just gonna be my thumb." he warned as he pressed against the tight muscle just a bit, "Relax, love. Just relax." he encouraged you and continue grinding his cock into you while he pushed his thumb into your bum until he had it in all the way and you whimpered at the full feeling. You were absolutely stuffed. Your toes were curled and your fists clenched as he played with both of your holes. "As much as you say you don't like it...your body says otherwise. You're absolutely drenching my cock." he chuckled, "You're such a little slut for me." he hummed as he thrust in hard and you whimpered, "Let me use you how I see fit." he spoke so deeply that it made you even wetter, "Want me to put a baby in you..." he mused and you moaned as he started to grind against you, getting that spot with every gyration of his hips. That, added with his thumb inside of you and then the fucking sucking toy on your clit, it was getting to be way too much.

"I-I'm gonna come!" you warned him and he chuckled and pulled out of you quickly leaving you completely empty. He saw your body relax and he just squeezed your hip reassuringly.

"That's good, just relax a bit. Let it pass." he encouraged you and you were truly trying your best but your stomach was still tensed tight despite your limbs having relaxed a bit as the peak of your pleasure started to fizzle out.

"Please...it's too much." you pleaded.

"You can take it." he assured you. You knew very well that you could take it but you liked to get whiny because he always babied you just a bit but still had his way with you. You just loved the extra attention he gave you to get you to comply with whatever things he wanted to do with you. He lined himself back up to your drippy opening and eased back in and you sighed in relief. He felt your warm, velvety walls start to flutter when he bottomed out against your g-spot again before he started to hump against you. His tip was prodding and rubbing into that deliciously sensitive spot inside of you as he rolled his hips into you from behind. You were trying not to drool from how good it felt. Your skin was covered in goosebumps as you tried your hardest to stave your orgasm off. "Good girl, you can do it, my love." he assured you with a light chuckle as he felt you trying to not let his movements push you over the edge.

"I can't...I can't..." you cried pathetically. The stimulation to your clit was just about to have you coming undone at any moment. You were trying your hardest not to think about it, "Please, daddy! Please let me come!" you implored. Even if he didn't give you permission you were going to come regardless. He chuckled as your walls fluttered around his girth erratically. "I need to come, please!"

"Go one then." he hummed patronizingly and just like that, the feelings peaked and you started to shiver. All of the wonderful tingling sensations and butterflies started swarming out from your tummy and through your limbs. But suddenly, Harry pulled out of you and while your orgasm continued due to the toy, the best parts of it that came from his cock fucking into you started to fizzle.

"Harry..." you whined as your hips twitched a bit. You felt him kiss the small of your back before he smiled against you.

"A little punishment for being impatient." he said and you felt so annoyed at him.

"You're being mean." you huffed.

"Am I, baby?" he asked and you nodded. "M'sorry. I'm gonna make you come really hard, I promise. Wanted to make you squirt, but you're just a little needier than usual today." he said.

"I'm ovulating." you mumbled and he paused for a few seconds.

"Oh..." he finally exclaimed and you hummed, "I didn't know that." he said.

"Took a test before you got home." you informed him. "S'why I was feeling a little nervous. Because if we...do it tonight and I don't get pregnant then...something might be wrong. With me." you explained quietly. A solemn feeling settled between the two of you and Harry swallowed thickly as he grabbed your hip gently and pulled the pillow from beneath you.

"Baby." He said softly and you reached beneath your body to pull the toy away from you and he grabbed it and turned it off. "Hey, hey, hey...look at me, my love." he hummed and you sighed as you rolled over and he hovered above you and kissed your cheeks. "I love you." he said with a smile, "No matter what, we're gonna be fine." he assured you.

"Promise?"

"Promise." he smiled and you smiled slightly. "Now, can I make you come?"

"For real this time?"

"Yeah, baby. For real." he chuckled.

You opened your legs for him and he slid back inside of you. You hummed in delight as he bottomed out inside of you. Your nails dug into his back and scratched down hard in response to the force of his thrust. He was effectively rearranging your guts, completely stealing your breath away.

"Get your clit for me, love." he said and instead of reaching between your bodies, you grabbed the toy and he smiled as you got it back on and slid it back between your bodies. You gasped as your clit got sucked into the opening and then Harry started to speed up his thrusts. His eyes met yours and he smiled. "This is the one, baby. Gonna knock you up." he hummed, "Fuck, you're gonna be so gorgeous with our baby making your tummy grow." he said and your eyes squeezed shut, "Nuh-uh, look at me. Look at me while I breed your needy little pussy, baby. You want it so bad, don't you?"

"Yes, daddy! Please, give me a baby!" you whispered as your tummy started to feel warm with the pleasure swirling deep inside of you. It was starting to spread throughout your entire body.

"I will, my love. I'm gonna come so deep in your pussy, there'll be no choice but for it to catch." he said and you looked at him with an impatient expression in your eyes. "Oh fuck, your little cunt is so good!" he panted.

You felt like you were on fire, your body was growing tense, the feelings of your desire, lust, love, and pleasure were blossoming to unmanageable amounts. They were going to burst from you. You could feel it literally swelling inside of you, a pressure that was familiar and made for the best orgasms.

"I'm gonna come!" you gasped and he groaned.

"Yeah baby, come for me. Make a mess all over my big, fat cock." he grunted as he pounded into you until the most lewd moan broke from your throat and then moments later he felt the first gush of you squirting against him. His lips turned up in a smile and your eyes fluttered closed as you also smiled wide in relief.

"Fuck! Thank you, daddy!" you panted, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! But please, come inside me. Please fill me up!" you mewled.

He lowered himself further as his thrusts grew harder, he was fucking more cum out of you. You couldn't help the shrieks that escaped you as his hips pummeled into yours until you were squirting again from the endless stimulation. Your legs were shaking and your nails digging into his ass as you held him as close as possible.

"Fuck...here it comes, baby. Gonna give you so much cum." he groaned as he started to grind into you before he froze and started to cum. His hot, creamy load erupted from his twitching tip that was buried deep inside of you. He moaned so fucking pretty, it made you dizzy.

"Fuck daddy, I can feel it filling me up...." you smiled happily as he completely stopped and smiled down at you before dipping down and kissing you deeply.

Your lips met his eagerly and tenderly as your bodies started to come down from those incredible highs. He wasn't growing soft all that fast, so he carefully turned you onto your sides so that he could stay inside of you as you kissed each other languidly. Honestly, it had been a while since you had actually made out with your husband and it was nice. He was holding your thigh to keep your leg draped over his hip and he was rubbing up and down it. Your hand was perched over his firm pectoral. You loved his brawny chest so much. Slowly, your kiss started to simmer down and soon he was pecking all over your face as you giggled quietly.

"I love you so much, baby." he hummed quietly.

"Love you too." you whispered happily. "I'm sure this one was it."

"Think so?" he asked quietly and you nodded.

"I do." you confirmed happily, "We'll see in a few weeks." you shrugged and he smiled and kissed your lips quickly.

"Oh you'll be seeing something in a few weeks... a positive test." he assured you.

He was so optimistic, you could see it in his eyes and in turn that made you feel optimistic about your chances to get pregnant this time. You both wanted it so badly that there was no way it wouldn't happen. You giggled and kissed him again.

"Then we'll need to do as much as we can to ensure that happens. You're in for a long night, Mr. Styles." you smirked.

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