#in any case mostly they just have communication issues | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hannieehaee · 1 year ago

Text

TOO MUCH

18+ / mdi

summary: after a few weeks of constant overtime work slouching over a desk, you feel as if your back is about to give out on you. fortunately for you, your best friend seungcheol is a professional masseuse! unfortunately for you, you're unsure of how you'll keep your crush on your best friend at bay while on his massage bed, ass up and oiled up.

content: masseuse!seungcheol, friends to lovers, pining (act surprised), touch-starved reader, inexperienced reader, very uninformed view of what being a masseuse is like oops, afab reader, smut, fingering, oil is involved, oral (f receiving), penetrative sex, etc.

wc: 7.9k

a/n: as someone who's had horrible back pain ever since i was a child, this is based on mostly real events </3 also not 100% proofread

masterlist

support me through a one-time tip! <3

Your back was killing you.

It had been weeks since you'd gotten some proper rest, having made the terrible decision to take on some overtime at work, not knowing that your supervisor would get so used to the extra help she would continue to schedule you more hours week after week, thus destroying your back in the process. You knew that you could simply say no, but the extra money was helpful. You had wanted to start saving up a little more so you could finally move out of your shitty neighborhood, so the situation kind of worked out. The money would also go to paying your student loans, meaning you really couldn't miss this chance for an increase in income. It was kind of a win-win situation, except your poor back was the sole loser.

Your job didn't involve too much movement, no. It was mostly office work, which required you to sit on your hunched back for 10 hours per day, only allotting yourself for three quick 15-minute breaks and a 30 lunch break in which you would still be hunched over as you ate. You knew it was a bad habit, but sitting there for so many hours, you'd forget to sit up straight as you looked into the computer screen, and even if you fixed your posture while working, your back was just not built for standing still for such long periods of time. There was really no saving your back from its stiff fate at this point. These work hours also didn't allow you time to even work out or stretch in order to keep your body at least a little active and maybe prevent your pain a tiny bit.

Your best friend Seungcheol constantly scolded you over your bad posture. It wasn't like you actually had bad posture, okay? You weren't constantly hunched over, nor were you carrying all your weight on your shoulders. This was a recent development resulting directly from your increased work hours. But Seungcheol, being a masseuse, always noticed the slightest changes in your physique, claiming he could spot a sore back from a mile away, with yours being a very obvious case. He could notice your head standing a little lower, digging into your shoulders more and more as the days went by. He also took notice of your constant wincing and your futile attempts at rubbing your own shoulders whenever the soreness got too annoying.

He pitied you, really. He hated seeing you in pain. Being your best friend, he felt it as his duty to try and relieve it in any way he could. On top of having most of your free time being taken over by work, he hated to think that you were also in pain during the few hours you spent away from the office. He had communicated all these concerns to you over the past few weeks, trying to convince you to let him give you a massage in order to relieve the pain, but you'd consistently refused. He was unsure as to why, and being denied a proper reason made him want to keep on insisting until you finally allowed him to rid you of your discomfort.

"One massage won't fix my issues," you'd argued over and over again. To which he simply responded by saying he could just give you a standing appointment every week! He was very insistent on helping you, wanting to relieve you of at least some of the pain. But you were even more insistent in denying him. You were too busy to use up the little bit of free time you had going to the spa Seungcheol worked at. You also didn't think a massage would really be the ultimate solution, despite how badly your sore shoulders begged for relief. Yeah, sure, a massage might alleviate the pain for a bit, but it would simply come back after another week at the office. That, and the fact that the spa Seungcheol worked at was only open during your work hours, meaning you'd have to either haul ass over there during your thirty minute lunch, or take time off. Both were huge no's to you. There were just far too many reasons as to why not take him up on his offer, you argued both to him and yourself. But you knew these were simply excuses. Your main reason had been something you'd kept deep within yourself. You were starving for his touch, but scared of how your body would react to it.

You were generally an averagely touchy person with friends and family. Not overly touchy, but arguably an appropriate amount. It had only been a little over a year or so since you'd begun to feel a bit strange at the lack of intimate touch you'd experienced thus far in your life. While all your friends had experimented and had fun during college, you were a little shier and more reserved, rendering you a bit behind the rest of the herd in that area. It wasn't very noticeable to all. It wasn't like your friends were aware about how sexually frustrated you'd grown over the years due to your lack of experience, but you'd still tried to keep it a secret how unaccustomed you were to more intimate forms of physical touch. Even something as innocent as a massage from a friend. You'd be as touchy as any friend would expect, but still felt a slightly strange sensation when it came to any mention of more intimate activities. You'd somehow grown used to a lack of touch, despite being best friends with the touchiest person alive. You usually avoided being too physically affectionate with Seuncheol anyways, having harbored a small crush on him when you'd first met and wanting to avoid any of your emotions getting in the way of a friendship you treasured so much. You'd known that a massage from the man would be a huge nono, all things considered, which was where all your denials stemmed from.

You had been friends with Seungcheol since college. You had both shared a major, meaning that you kept bumping into each other day after day, attending almost all the same classes freshman year. You had taken a quick liking to each other, befriending one another almost immediately. Despite having had a crush on the man at first sight, you were content with the friendship that had blossomed instead. You'd even ended up joining Seungcheol's little friend group, being friends with most of them even to this day. This unexpected closeness during your first year led you to coordinate your schedules the following three years, thus seeing each other literally every day you were on campus. Even now, having recently graduated college, you were still best friends, meeting up constantly. Despite sharing a major, you both had ended up in drastically different places after college. You had gone for the corporate route while Seungcheol suddenly developed a passion for physical therapy, eventually becoming a massage therapist. At the time, however, he worked at a luxury spa downtown, being known as one of their best masseuses and singlehandedly earning the establishment an increase from a four-star rating to five stars just from the quality of his work alone.

You had visited Seungcheol's work before, quickly deciding it just wasn't your vibe. The place was nice and perfectly polished, but upon seeing a few of the masseuses' skills in action, you realized it'd be better for your friendship if you avoided such intimate contact with one another. Yes, you knew massages were not inherently intimate, but being oiled up and felt up by someone who was as close to you as Seungcheol just didn't ring like a good idea to you. It also didn't help that the massive crush you had on the man in college seemed to be resurfacing as of late. You believed to have gotten over it a few months into senior year, but you didn't want to risk reviving it under any circumstances.

However, despite your constant rejections, Seungcheol continued to beg you to let him take care of your problem, and denying him was something that pained both you and your back. So you now found yourself with two issues; back pain, and a very pouty Seungcheol.

"Fuck, my back is killing me," you repeated for the millionth time in the past five hours since you had woken up. You had intended to enjoy your rare day off, even waking up a little earlier than intended so you could make plans with your roommates, but your plans quickly died on you as soon as you woke up, body stiff as a rock and your soreness worse than ever.

"We get it! You're in pain. So go do something about it!", whined your friend Seungkwan in return, not even bothering to look at you from his phone, "It's bad enough I had to cancel my plans to stay here and take care of you. Just go get oiled up by Cheol and stop making this my problem!"

If there was anything Seungkwan was, it was direct. He was right. Your pain was getting out of hand. And the longer you waited, the worse it would get. Except he didn't know about your calamity to its full extent.

"Listen, I don't even have the money to afford his fancy spa. Have you been there? One day is worth a whole day's pay!"

"Please. It's Seungcheol. He'll get you in for free. Hell, he'll even pay you to go."

"I don't have time to go!", another excuse. A few more and Seungkwan might even begin to crack the code behind your insistent refusal.

He suddenly straightened up from his laid-back position, staring directly in your direction, "All the solutions are there. You're the problem. It's like you want to be in pain! I could literally call him up right now and he'd drop work to come help you. Just get the damn massage!"

This is how a lot of your conversations went lately. Well, the very few conversations you could have nowadays due to your heavy workload. You'd occasionally even have to bring work home even after having been there for half the day. Your eight hours of sleep a night were not even pleasurable anymore, as you felt stiff as a rock the moment you attempted to lay down. The only comfortable stance, ironically, was hunched over in front of a computer. It was like you'd frozen into that pose, feeling immeasurable pain any time you attempted to move any other way. You'd tried pilates, stretches, yoga. Nothing worked. Maybe Cheol's massage really was the only solution, but it'd been so long since you began denying him you now felt a little silly going back on your word. That, and your other obvious issues.

"I'll be fine, Kwan! Just leave. You don't have to take care of me, I just need to lay for a bit."

"You'll lay there all day, I know you. Your life's become a constant state of sleep and work. Maybe you should just quit," he suggested, seemingly moving on from the Cheol topic. Finally.

"Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how much debt I have to pay off? I don't wanna be paying this off for the rest of my life. I'd rather suffer for a few years now and just get it out of the way," you reasoned, although not sounding very reasonable even to yourself. What's the rush?, a voice in the back of your head would sometimes whisper, but you'd just ignore it.

"Fine," he tsk'd. "Rot in your own misery, I'm going out with Kyeom and Soonie. If I come back and you've morphed into a rock, don't say I didn't warn you," and with that, he announced his departure, going forward with the plans you had made with your friends before your back had gotten in the way.

You knew your friend was kidding, but the unbearable pain would sometimes have you wonder. Should you just go to Cheol? What was the worst that could happen of you just let him touch you? His touch would be purely platonic, you were sure of that. But you feared that it would rekindle your feelings even more, and maybe that your high-strung self would not be able to handle such touch from him without finally snapping.

You were weak. This wasn't much of a secret among your friend group, or anyone really. Which is why you now found yourself walking through the doors of Seungcheol's spa. You had spent about an hour rotting in your own misery, as Seungkwan had put it, before deciding to power through your pain and drive down to where you knew Seungcheol was currently working a shift. You hadn't called him, not wanting to give him the wrong impression. You weren't planning on booking a massage today, no. You couldn't have even if you wanted, knowing that the spa Seungcheol worked at was a bit renown in town and that their bookings went weeks back. You had just wanted to give it another try. Maybe visual learning would convince your stubborn self to accept Cheol's help for once.

You entered the establishment, already knowing exactly where to go to find out about Seungcheol's whereabouts. You walked to the receptionist, opening your mouth to ask for assistance before being rudely interrupted.

"Sorry. We're booked for the day. Our next open bookings begin in December. Try again then," the conversation had ended before it began, causing you to close your mouth right back up.

Once more, you opened your mouth to speak, maybe respond in equally passive aggressive tone as the girl had, but you were rudely interrupted once again, except this time it was by a warmer, more welcoming voice.

"Y/N? What are you doing here?", you could not see him from your angle, needing to turn around to face the source of the sound, but you could instantly hear the smile in his voice, clearly both happy and shocked to find you here of all people.

You turned around, now facing the boy. He was wearing his usual 'uniform', which really just consisted of some tight black slacks and a matching black short-sleeve top tucked into his pants. You'd forgotten how well his uniform fit him. It must've been one of the reasons why his massages were rated so high, you thought.

"Hey, Cheol ..." you smiled awkwardly, having been caught off guard by the man. You'd meant to surprise him, not the other way around.

"I wasn't expecting you. Did you call? Did you make an appointment?!", his eyes widened at the possibility, looking past you and at the receptionist as if to confirm his inquiry.

"No, Cheol. I told you I didn't want a massage. I came to see you, actually," well that was half true. You had wanted to see your friend in his element, maybe even convince yourself of finally taking him up on his offer. You had just wanted to see if you could handle that type of touch from your best friend considering your situation (re: a recovering case of touch starvation with a mixture of 'I might kind of maybe still have a bit of a crush on my bff').

To be completely honest, you were somewhat afraid. You'd hadn't felt any form of intimate touch in a long while or, well, ever. And to have it come from your best friend would only open up a can of worms you had wanted to keep under lock and key ever since meeting the man. Every excuse you'd given thus far to reject him bad been true, but had also been just that; an excuse. You knew that Seungcheol's treatment would help you lessen an issue that had now grown past your own personal ability to manage on your own. Which is why you were now here, willing to give it a try. You had self control, right? What was the worst that could happen if you let your best friend get his hands on you, your bare back as he rubbed it with oil? You'd deal with the logistics later, now you just wanted to see exactly what your friend was offering you.

"Me? What's up?", he had begun to walk you towards his rest area, away from the mean receptionist as he continued conversation with you.

"Well, I, uh, I was thinking about your offer ..."

"Really?! You wanna do it? I can clear up my schedule! Just let me talk to Stacy real quick and-"

"Cheol!", you had to physically hold him back from walking back to the reception to rearrange his day. He seemed way too excited to help you out.

"I haven't decided yet, Cheol. I was just thinking, well, wondering if it'd be okay for me to maybe shadow you for a while or something? Just to see what it'd be like?"

To any outsider you must've sounded like an idiot, somehow worrying over something that was arguably the most relaxing experience a person could possibly have. Ironically. What people didn't understand was the effect Seungcheol could have on a person. Specially a touch-starved, heavily emotionally invested, weak individual such as yourself. Denying your crush on Seungcheol was really the only defense you had left at this point. You could admit to your fears of being touched by Cheol, chalking it up to your lack of experience at being touched in general, but you could not even admit that your crush had maybe, perhaps, possibly, creeped back up a while back. It didn't help that no one you knew was aware of your sensitive state when it came to intimate contact. This was intel you hadn't even let your best friend in on. Maybe if it had been someone else, you would've accepted the massage already. You knew it didn't have to be an intimate interaction, it was just the fact that Cheol would be doing it that made it seem that way to you. But you knew his feelings would be hurt if you denied him and went to someone else. You'd dragged it out for far too long, making such a simple thing way too complicated.

Cheol easily agreed to your request, seemingly excited to even have you around his workplace at all. It was cute, really. He let you know that his next booking would start in ten minutes or so, so you waited with him during his break. Despite not receiving a massage for yourself, he provided you with a robe to change into due to the humidity most of their rooms tended to have during a session.

"Are you sure it's okay that I'm here? Won't the client mind?"

"Nah. She's a regular, she tends to forget her own name five minutes in," he winked at you. Well, that was reassuring ..

The massage began soon after. The woman, probably in her early 40's, walked in, gave Seungcheol a friendly greeting and proceeded to lay down, barely even acknowledging your presence in the back of the room. Cheol gave some weak excuse of 'she's in training, just showing her the ropes' to justify your presence, earning an uninterested hum in acknowledgment from the woman before she had begun taking off her robe and gotten on the bed in preparation for her awaited session. She was't fully naked but had very thin underwear on, meaning you could practically see every detail from her back. Her face-down position gave you a perfect angle to her almost-bare ass as Seungcheol prepared the oils he had set on the table beside him. There was also some incense burning in the room, along with some steam to help with ambience.

The massage began very slowly, allowing Seungcheol to deliver very soft touches as he spread the oil around her back. He even went as far as the back of her legs and ass, reaching as far as her feet. The first few minutes simply consisted of him spreading the oil around. You hadn't known Seungcheol gave full body massages til now. Before having started the session, Cheol had told you 'Pay close attention. This is what I'll do to you when you agree.' Had he meant he'd be running his hands up and down your entire body? The thought made you shudder, almost missing the show in front of you.

His next movements were harsher, but in a clearly pleasurable way. He began to knead roughly at the woman's shoulders, making her groan at the pleasurable pain. He did this for a while, clearly having found a point of tension in that area. His thumbs focused on specific areas of tension that you were familiar with; the same areas you'd known your back had knots in. Even just seeing it made the sore parts of your back beg for release of tension. When he moved on, he targeted the upper center of her back, just below where her breasts were located on the opposite side of her body. He rubbed at the sides, sliding his hands up and down the length of her back as he massaged expertly. He continually used the extra strength of his thumbs to pressure and rub at the sore spots. He didn't even have to ask where it hurt, it seemed like he could just detect it on his own. This was clearly exerting the woman, as she moaned and sighed at the feeling of Seungcheol's hands on her. It was clearly exerting Seungcheol too, who was letting out groans from his own efforts.

You imagined yourself in her position, wanting to be the sole receiver of his touches and sounds. You felt ashamed, but the act was making your body heat up. You knew it was purely innocent, and with the purpose of relaxation, but you couldn't help yourself. You wanted to blame the humidity in the room, or maybe the cozy material of your robe, but there was only one culprit; Choi Seungcheol. You had been right to believe that his touch would be your undoing. Simply hearing him was enough to make you lightheaded. You had lost track of where the massage had went, only thinking about the man in the room now. You cursed your vivid imagination for the images it was putting in your head just at the mere sounds coming from your friend.

The massage continued for a while, eventually sending the woman into a deep slumber. Cheol kept re-applying oil to her back throughout the session, even lowering his hands all the way to knead at her ass and the back of her legs during some points. That made you extra lightheaded. Not just at the thought of Seungcheol touching you in the same way, but knowing he'd have the magic touch able to release the tension trapped all over your back. You couldn't blame the woman for the sounds she made or the way she fell asleep due to the pleasure. You could only imagine your own reaction at Seungcheol doing the same to you. Even just seeing the way he rubbed at the skin had your back aching for the same release of pressure from the tightest spots on your back.

You were still slightly affected by the time the woman had woken up and left, leaving you and Cheol alone in the room, promising Seungcheol she'd be back soon as she exited. He approached you with a smile, clearly proud of having shown you his skills in action.

"So, what did you think?"

"I, uh, you're really good, Cheol. I'm surprised."

"Surprised? I've been telling you I'm the best for months! C'mon, there's no way you don't want a massage after seeing that," he rebutted, smirking with confidence.

You remained silent for a second, pondering as to whether or not you should move forward with this. He was right. He was clearly talented at it, and he really just wanted to help. Your aching back was begging for it, and so were the other aching parts of your body. But you didn't know if you could hold back without embarrassing yourself at your best friend's hands on you in such an intimate way.

Your best friend must've taken notice of your silence, speaking up again, but in a more serious yet sympathetic manner.

"Listen. I know you can be a bit .. shy about these things. If it helps, we can just set up at my apartment? I have a massage bed there too! It would just be the two of us. C'mon, what do you say?", he gave you puppy eyes as he usually did when asking for something.

He was always hard to deny. And in this vulnerable moment, with your back begging for relief and your body aching for his touch, you weren't surprised when you found yourself muttering a 'yes' in affirmation.

A few days passed. You and Cheol ended up having to coordinate your days off. It had actually been almost a full week until you were able to see each other again, which for you meant yet another week of grueling pain you had to put up with. You were really beginning to consider putting an end to the overtime you'd been working. Maybe after the massage you could begin to work less hours in order to lessen the pain. Maybe even take Cheol up on his offer of getting a standing appointment to lessen the pain more and more and prevent it from coming back again. It was something to think about. But now you had better things to worry about. Those things taking form in the man standing on the opposite side of the door in front of you.

You had agreed on today, a Saturday night, in order for you to come to his apartment and receive the dreaded massage. Cheol had worked all day today, which made you feel a bit bad about making him basically step back into his work duties but this time at home. He reassured you it was more than fine, reasoning that you'd worked all week and he had just wanted to work around your busy schedule. You appreciated his efforts to work with you, having always known Cheol to put your comfort before anything else. Which was yet another reason why you felt badly at receiving this favor from him. To anyone else it might've just been a massage, but you knew that to Cheol this was a service he was used to getting paid for, a talent which he put effort into. You felt like both like a leech and like a source of annoyance due to this whole ordeal.

You put all your thoughts aside and knocked on the door, knowing it was now time to forget about all your worries and just let Seungcheol take care of you. He opened the door almost immediately, almost as if he'd been waiting on the other side of it, ear against the door while your internal monologue went off in your head.

"You're here!", he smiled widely at you, ushering you in.

"You invited me, Cheol. I wasn't about to ditch you."

"But you thought about it, didn't you?", he kinda had you there. You did consider it, but you knew your best friend would've tracked you down sooner or later anyways.

"Listen, I know you're nervous, but there's nothing to be nervous about! I'll take care of you. It won't be awkward, I swear," despite having never told him of your lack of experience with touch, you always assumed he had some idea of it. He didn't know the full story, though. Not about the fact that your issue with the massage was being touched by him; the former source of your desires.

"It's .. it's fine, Cheol. I'm not nervous, I promise. Just don't know what to expect, that's all."

"I'll guide you through it. I set out the massage table for you in my room. I have the oils ready too. Oh! Did you bring a bikini to change into?"

Right. Last time you spoke he had asked you to bring either a bikini or some comfortable underwear. He's said something about needing your body as nude as possible ('within your comfort zone!', he'd quickly added) in order to give you a full massage. He also said the oils he used had a tendency of staining and leaving their strong fragrance on most fabrics. It was usually spa policy to provide customers with robes and such for their sessions, but being located in his home at the moment, he'd asked you to just bring your bikini directly.

You didn't feel any type of way about this, surprisingly. Having known Seungcheol for years, he'd seen you in a bikini as many times as you'd seen him shirtless and in very tiny swim trunks. The one thing, however, was the thought of him touching your bare skin, but it was too late to back out - not that you wanted to anyways.

"Y-yeah, it's in my bag. Did you wanna start right away or ..?"

"Yeah! Go get ready and I'll start preparing the oils for you. I'll also light some incense for ambience," and with that, he left you alone in the living room so that you could change without interruption. He went into his room to prepare things, closing the door to allow you some privacy.

You had chosen your skimpiest bikini. Not for any inferior motives! But because you knew Cheol needed access to your bare skin as much as possible. Your lower lower back had been killing you lately. Even more so than your shoulders, due to sitting all day every day. So you wanted to give him room to take care of that without any clothing getting in the way. You hastily got changed, deciding that you'd already waited long enough and that it was time to get this over with.

'Are you ready?", you heard Cheol ask from his room a few minutes later.

Ok, it was time. Anyone else would've been ecstatic at the thought of their crush rubbing all over their body, or at the idea of a free full-body massage. But you were too high-strung for your own good, which only increased your anxiety over the whole thing. However, you were now here, almost in the nude, only one door away from the man who would rid you of your pain and replace it with pleasure.

You stepped into the room without verbalizing a response, immediately meeting eyes with an expectant Cheol, who was organizing his oils as he awaited your arrival. He'd outdone himself, really. He had lowered the lighting in the room, lighting a few candles and some incense in order to turn up the spa ambience. The place smelled divine, and even the temperature was perfect. You could already feel yourself getting relaxed.

"Cheol, holy shit. This is too much. You didn't have to go so out of your way. This looks like an actual spa!"

"Only the best for my best friend," he gave his gummy smile in return, eyeing you as he directed you towards the massage table that was standing in the middle of the room. "You ready?"

"Yeah," you breathed out, accepting his stretched hand as he helped position you on the table.

He laid you face down on the table, but with your head turned to the side, as to not squish your features against the flat surface, "Try not to think too much, yeah? It'll feel so good, I promise. I'm gonna get rid of all tension in your body," the way he'd said it sounded promising, almost hinting at something more.

Without much warning, he began to softly run his hands up and down your body, going from your shoulders all the way down to your calves, almost as if sizing you up in order to come up with a game plan for your massage. Even that feather-like touch had you flinching a little. You'd never been caressed like this before.

"Shit, you're very high-strung. Even more than I thought," he chuckled in response to your body's reaction to such light touch.

"Cheol ..." you whined.

"Sorry. I'll start now, okay? You're gonna feel a little warm in a second. I'm gonna oil you up so it's easier for me to massage you, yeah? I picked my favorite scented oils for you."

You were thankful for the warning, because the warmth you felt immediately after made you swoon internally. You almost moaned out loud at the feeling of his hands lightly rubbing the oil all over your body. You were already affected and he hadn't even begun. It didn't take him long to actually start, however. He began with your neck, almost wrapping his hands all around it, but not closing them in on it. His thumbs were focusing on the lower part of the back of your neck, rubbing at spots you hadn't even realized were that sore.

"You're so tense, Jesus Christ," he was right. You could feel instant relief at his touch, pressing your body further into the soft material of the cushion of the table in pure relaxation.

He rubbed that area for a while, seemingly trying to target the knots located there. He then moved onto your shoulders, beginning to rub a little harder. He began to dig his thumbs into the problem areas, going extra hard at any points of tension. With this extra strength, also came his vocalization of his efforts. His groans of exertion began to fill the room, making you feel even more lightheaded than the massage itself.

"Shit, Baby. You're so fucking tight here."

The wording itself was killing you, but the way he touched you while doing it made you melt into the table, afraid you'd begin to vocalize your pleasure through the form of moans or whines. So far you'd been able to get away with soft breaths and maybe a gasp or two. But you knew that the moment you let go, you wouldn't be able to control the way your body would react to his touch. You were slightly terrified of what would come the lower he went down your body.

Then he threw you yet another curveball.

He leaned down, halting his movements for a moment, and put his mouth a few inches from your ear, "I can feel you tensing up. It's okay, I'll take care of you. You can relax for me."

You saw that as a green light to let go, whining a tiny 'uh huh' in response as he continued his movements.

He went lower and lower, now rubbing your lower back; the area right before the slope of your ass began, but he was quickly approaching it. Every area he had touched so far, he had undone. You felt like your back had been liberated of the huge weight it had been carrying for years. You were whining and moaning at the pleasure he was giving you, and also at the feel of his hands on your body. You felt yourself get wetter by the minute, having started to feel moisture down there from the moment he began massaging you. You were ashamed, but his touch so close to your biggest point of tension was driving you insane. You wanted him to forget about the massage and just flip you over.

"Okay, baby. Now I'm gonna do your ass, okay? Trust me, I know it sounds dumb, but a lot of people carry a lot of tension here"

He was right once again. As he massaged the muscle, you felt tension you didn't even know you had finally unwind. He repositioned you a bit, asking you to lift one of your legs to the side and let it hang a bit off of the side of the table. This angle lifted up your ass a bit, and disconnected your crotch from the table. You were slightly embarrassed, knowing that if he looked through a certain angle he'd be able to see you glisten with desire for him, but you chose to ignore it and hope for the best. Cheol was already helping you so much.

He continued for a few moments, occasionally going down and rubbing lightly at the back of your thighs and calves before coming back up to your lower back and butt. But he suddenly stopped at some point. You could've sworn you heard an intake of breath.

"Hey .. I'm gonna try a special technique. Is that okay?"

You were almost completely gone in pleasure by then, eyes becoming heavier by the minute. You didn't even have to think before saying yes.

You felt him lean his body more over the table, and also a bit over the lower half of your body. He was still just massaging your lower back with one hand, while making you bend your leg a little higher than before. You weren't sure what he meant by special technique, but you were down for anything had in mind. Except you hadn't expected what he would do next.

Having bent your leg forward, he had given himself the perfect angle of your pussy from behind, deciding to let his hand slip between your legs and run his fingers lightly over your folds. You gasped at this, repositioning yourself a bit to give him even more access. He took this as a welcoming sign, starting to run his hands up and down your pussy, stopping once in a while to rub at your swollen clit.

"Baby .. You're so tense here .. Let me help you? Yeah?" He said this as he continued to increase the intensity of his movements, rubbing more and more at your clit.

"Y-yes. Fuck. Please, Cheol ..." you whined, giving him permission to do whatever he wanted to you.

You yelped at his next movements. He had shoved his fingers inside with no warning, leaning down to kiss softly at your ass while he fingered you. The speed of his fingers wasn't too fast, but it was deep and calculated, dragging across all the places you needed him most. He was right, you did feel tense there, but his movements were relaxing you like nothing else could.

"Is it working, baby? Am I making you feel good?"

You'd buried your face into one of your arms, but still managed to squeak out a "yes!" in affirmation.

"Just 'yes', baby? We can do better than that, don't you think? I think I have something to rid you of all your tension ..." you could hear the smirk in his voice as he said this, feeling him finally remove the tiny piece of fabric between your legs.

He positioned his body a little further over the lower half of the table, lowering his face to the space between your cheeks in order to get his tongue on your pussy. He began to lick and suck softly, keeping a pace similar to that of his fingers just a few seconds ago. The pleasure was blinding you, causing you to lightly grind against his face, wanting as much pleasure as you could milk out of him. He seemed to like this, as he lifted his hands and placed them on your hips, guiding your grinding against him and taking on an even better angle.

All that could be heard were the moist sounds of his tongue on your heat and your cries of pleasure. The massage had been fully forgotten. All you could think about was your best friend's tongue and the way his groans against your pussy were making you lose your mind. It seemed like this was bringing him as much satisfaction as it did you.

"Ch-Cheollie! Right there! Fuck!", he'd begun to suckle at your clit, wanting you to finally reach your high and bring you as much pleasure as imaginable.

"Cum all ove' my face baby! wann' taste that pretty pussy," his words were muffled. He seemed physically incapable of separating himself from you.

You came almost immediately, loving the vibrations of his groans against you. You fell completely limp, being rendered a shell of yourself. The whole thing had felt like an out of body experience. From the massage to the life-changing orgasm. You were convinced there was no greater pleasure than what you'd felt in the past half hour. But Seungcheol seemed to disagree, instantly pulling you towards him and sitting you on the table, your body now facing his.

He had untied your bikini top earlier into the massage, which you hadn't minded since you were facing down and away from his view anyways, but now you were grateful he had. He was making direct eye contact with your tits, almost as if pondering as to what to do with them. He seemed to reach a decision, however, and attacked them with his lips with intense fervor, licking and biting at your swollen buds. He had you moaning out in pleasure again. It was as if he'd studied your body without you knowing, being an expert in all your weak spots.

He made out with your tits for a while, making your eyes roll back at the feeling of his tongue against your sensitive nipples. When he pulled away, he instantly began undressing himself at record speed. He had just been wearing shorts and a loose top, which made the process pretty quick. Immediately after getting himself nude, he positioned you so that you could wrap your legs around his waist from your position sitting on the table. He dragged you as close to him as possible by your legs, pressing your chests together.

He looked down at you while running his hands up and down your back, which was still slightly sticky with oil. He seemed to be in a trance, just looking at you with an endeared expression in his eyes, "You're so beautiful. Your body's so ... fuck. Can't believe you've been in pain for so long, baby. When I could've been taking care of you all this time," he had began to kiss along your neck and clavicles as he said this.

"Cheollie .." you breathed out, tilting your neck to the side to allow him extra space to kiss.

"Can I take care of you, baby? Let me get rid of all your tension?", he'd started grinding his bare hips against yours, having pushed open your legs in order to allow himself to drag his dick against your cunt.

Even just the weight of his cock against you had you whining, burying your face in his neck, not knowing how to react at the stimulation. You'd already felt the most pleasure when Cheol buried his tongue in your cunt, or so you'd thought. But that did not hold a candle to the feeling of his fat head as it nudged against your folds. You began to whine and writhe against him, hands digging into his arms as he ground against you. Until he nudged your head away from his neck, wanting to face you. He halted his movements altogether and looked into your eyes for a few moments, a small smile gracing his lips. His eyes began to lower, now staring directly at your lips. Your eyes mirrored his. It was a tender moment in the midst of what had just now been a mess of grinding bodies and oil. When he finally kissed you was when you truly felt relief. No massage could have compared to the bliss you felt with your best friend's lips against your own. The softness of the kiss didn't last much, however, as the movements of his hips picked back up and the kiss began to become more moist by the second.

Cheol took advantage of your soft gasps at the feeling of his cock against your cunt to slip his tongue in your mouth, expertly massaging yours with his. This went on for a bit, allowing for Cheol to stimulate you with some kissing and dry humping, further preparing you to take him free of pain. He was a little larger in size than average, and with the very limited experience he had asserted you to have, he wanted to prevent you from feeling any pain. He had wanted tonight to be nothing but pleasure for you, knowing how badly you've been needing some relaxation, and maybe with the slight ulterior motive of finally getting with his pretty bestie.

He unglued himself from your lips, chuckling at the way you whined as your lips followed his, "Baby, I'm gonna fuck you now, yeah? Wanna see you fully relaxed. That okay?"

"Mhm. Yes, Cheollie. Do anything you want. Trust you," you mumbled in response, head filled with air as you barely caught your breath from the overload of pleasure you'd felt tonight.

With that, he began to enter you, bulbous head showing a bit of a fight in entering your tight walls. You both let out a moan of relief when he finally bottomed out, almost as if you'd both been craving this for a while. He fucked you with a passion only someone who wanted you the way you wanted him would. You'd thought you'd reached the utmost pleasure when Cheol had you cumming against his tongue, but nothing could ever compare to being full of him as he praised you through every thrust, calling you every possible adjective to describe your beauty.

"B-baby! So fucking good. So pretty for me .. Gonna fuck you all night. Gonna fuck you to sleep. All mine now," he began canting in and out of you with even more intensity now, making sure to hit that spot with every thrust.

"Cheollie!"

"I know, baby. Gonna cum for me? Gonna let me fill that pussy up, aren't you, pretty?"

It didn't take long for you to cum, already feeling an overwhelming amount of emotions at every type of pleasure Seungcheol had delivered to you tonight. He followed soon after you, yelling out your name at the tightening of your walls around him. He breathed heavily as he leaned against you for a minute or two, only then moving away from you in order to get a towel and begin to clean you up.

"Sorry .. was that too much?", he smiled sheepishly as you seemed to wince when he attempted to clean you up between your thighs.

"No! It was perfect, just ... not really used to it, that's all."

"Okay, baby. If you say so. Now let me take you to bed!", with no warning, he picked you up and brought you over to his bed, completely ignoring the mess he'd caused on his massage table after having fucked you on it. He laid you down, cocooning you into his blankets before rushing to the other side of the bed and holding you in his arms.

He turned to look at you as he cradled your body against his, "Do you feel better now? Still sore?", the question seemed genuine.

"No, Cheollie. I feel amazing. I've never felt this good before, actually."

"That good, huh? I told you I was the best! But don't worry, baby. Gonna keep your appointment every week like I promised. Gonna keep you in my bed every time you're feeling sore, yeah, baby? Don't even have to ask, I'll be waiting for you," he chuckled at himself as he said this, but being completely serious.

"Will you give me your special treatment again?," you giggled against his lips.

"That's for you and you only, baby," he replied as he closed the gap between you once more.

a/n: ok i mightve made reader a lil extra overdramatic this time but u guys have to understand. my back hurts like hell. so pls sympathize w reader bc shes lowkey my soul sister in that area 😭

#seventeen fanfic #seventeen x reader #svt fanfic #seventeen #svt #svt x reader #seventeen smut #svt smut #seventeen imagine #seungcheol smut #seungcheol imagines #seungcheol fanfic #seungcheol x reader #scoups fanfic #scoups smut #scoups x reader

6K notes · View notes

hellenhighwater · 10 months ago

Note

Hi Hell, I wanted to get your thoughts on something. My friend who has been vegetarian for close to 30 years is thinking about becoming vegan. His main reason is that the pain and suffering of an animal in the large majority of the animal product industry is not worth the enjoyment he gets from cheese, milk, etc. He hypothesizes that most people are not vegan due to lack of education about the industry’s methods, and because eating meat is so normalized. I mostly agree, but something about what he’s saying makes me feel bad. Maybe because I don’t see myself ever becoming vegan, due to how much I love certain foods, but I like to think of myself as an empathetic and moral person. So I think I just feel quite selfish.

He is a very analytical and logical thinker, and says he wants to find more anti-vegan arguments before deciding for sure, but can’t seem to find many. What do you (and your followers) think? I was thinking you aren’t vegan, but I don’t actually know.

This is very much not my lane, but if you want my two cents then for me it comes down to a few things.

One: there is a basic mass of food that any human needs to consume in order to stay alive. That can be plants, it can be animals, it can be animal byproducts. For the a significant proportion of commercially produced food, there is a negative impact. It's hard to quantify; in some cases it is certainly direct, quality of life issues for animals. In other cases it's more broad environmental impact from commercial farming, or quality of life for the human laborers involved in harvesting etc. It's hard to come up with any objective measurement for harm when comparing individual animal suffering vs human quality of life vs large scale environmental issues. There's plenty of information out there on some of the vegan diet staples and how increases in farming things like quinoa have enormously detrimental effects on their native communities, if that's something your friend is not already aware.

Two: There is a degree of this that is just...unavoidable. Things eating other things is the way living creatures survive, and on a systematic level there's not a ton we individually can do to change things--and on a practical level, there's only so much you can afford to spend on food, and organic, cruelty free stuff is more expensive. There is a level of privilege in being able to choose to spend your money in that way that is not always an option for everyone.

I'm not vegan. I'm not vegetarian. I care deeply about animals, and I'm aware of what commercial husbandry looks like--it's pretty terrible. I still eat meat. I try to do so as ethically as I reasonably can.

I don't have an issue with eating other animals. It's a part of nature. To me, I see the obligation more to do our best to try to get meat (or byproducts) that have been raised as well as we can manage. Free range eggs are pretty easy to come by, if you live in the country. Same with locally made cheeses and butters, even farm fresh milk--some places have self-serve milking that allows cows to roam in pastures and then be milked at will. Price and availability will vary by where you are, but it's more and more common; as more and more people start to care about how the people and animals involved in making our food are treated, better options become more available.

It also should be noted that the animals involved in farming are almost universally completely domesticated. There's no alternative for these animals and their progeny except for life in human care. These breeds require human aid for their own health and safety, because we have been breeding them for (in many cases) thousands of years to rely on us and to develop traits that will not aid them in the wild. If everyone decided, tomorrow, to become vegan, then these animals would need to remain in human care for however many thousands of generations it would take to breed them back to the ability to survive without us, or we would have to sterilize them en mass and terminate these breeds through lack of reproduction. It is not an option to just release these farm animals into the wild. Domesticated animals require human care. Some of them, like pigeons, have gone feral when we abandoned them, but they are not like their wild cousins, and it shows.

Because of the selective breeding involved in domestion, most of these animals are producing byproducts--eggs, milk, honey, wool, etc--in quantities that they do not need. While some species have been bred to do that to their own detriment, most heritage breeds are fully capable of producing more than they need of these things, and there can be true symbiosis between these animals and their human caretakers. Some of these things they need to have removed for their own health. It's an ancient bargain--we keep them safe, and warm, and healthy, and protected, and they give us that which they have in abundance. The problem isn't the animal product, it's how it's produced commercially.

So yeah--veganism is one option, but it is, in my opinion, a narrow scope at an issue that is far more nuanced. I think it's equally ethical to aim for a diet that focuses on local, ethical farming practices--for growing crops, for caring for meat animals, for beekeeping, for chickens and sheep and whatever else we need. We've spent longer than any of us will live making these animals part of our world--discarding them and what they can give us is not going to benefit them. We just have to learn how to treat them respectfully.

861 notes · View notes

monstersandmaw · 9 months ago

Text

Male kelpie (dad-bod, single father, biker) x plus size f. reader - Part One (sfw)

Background info post on the Full Moon Motorcycles group here Oats Appreciation post here

Featuring a plus-size, bisexual, not very confident reader, and a divorced, Scottish, single-dad, biker kelpie with a soft-dad bod and a heart as big as his bike’s engine (possibly bigger).

CW: there is a very brief moment where a character (not Oats!) insults the reader for her size and uses some fat-phobic language towards and about her, unaware that she can hear him. If you’re sensitive to that, it is brief, but you can skip from “…you caught the conversation drifting over from the other guys who’d arrived just ahead of you.” to the paragraph beginning, “After some deep breaths and a check in the mirror…”. Also, if you squint, there’s a passing moment that could possibly be interpreted as the reader having some potential issues with food, but it’s not intended to be a big deal and it’s only for about two sentences. Still putting it in here too, just in case.

Wordcount: 7562

You pushed open the glass door of Full Moon Motorcycles and willed yourself not to feel self-conscious or out of place.

Having both an older brother and a mother who rode motorbikes had at least given you a fair bit of familiarity with bikes and the general ‘biker culture’, but it was mostly the fact that almost all the ‘biker girls’ you saw posing on social media were slim and toned, which you were decidedly not.

From the utterly foetid takes in the comments section of the one post your brother had shared on his page with you in it, you’d also got the impression that the biker community was not particularly kind to any woman with a waist over 25 inches. It probably wasn’t the case, but your one experience with it had been enough to make you very wary.

And yet, as you made your way towards the bike shop’s counter and the older man with floppy, greying hair and warm brown eyes looked up, you were greeted with an open, welcoming smile.

“Hi there,” he said, standing up with a grunt from the comfy chair where he’d been sitting in the corner near the shop’s antique cash register. “What can I do for you?”

You smiled shyly and glanced along the wooden countertop before returning your gaze to him. “I’m looking for a present for my brother, but I’m kind of on a budget…”

“Gotcha. We’ve got some silly key fobs there,” he said, indicating a rotating display rack at one end of the counter, with mottoes that ranged from funny to explicit, “But if they like working on their bike themselves, you can’t go wrong with some maintenance supplies… Not the most glamorous but I promise they’ll be grateful to you all the same.”

“Could always tie a festive ribbon round it,” you said, and he chuckled and nodded.

“That’s the spirit.”

You eyed the reasonable price of the fobs with some relief, and then followed his gesture towards the various bottles of chain degreaser and the like, and a few other useful tools and kits that were stacked on shelves on the back wall to the right of a door that presumably led into the back and store rooms.

The right hand side of the shop had the counter and some shiny, new bikes that had been parked in a row around the perimeter of the space, and the left hand side was more open with a bench or two against the brick walls, and some red, mechanics’ tool-chests tucked against the back wall. A number of leather two- and one-piece suits hung in racks at the furthest end though, with helmets on shelves and a few rows of t-shirts, jeans, gloves, and boots displayed too. There were oil stains in the centre of the polished concrete floor, and you suspected that tinkering took place there outside of the shop’s usual opening hours.

The whole vibe of Full Moon Motorcycles was friendly and cosy, with a slightly industrial, grungy note for some flavour.

In short, you loved it.

“There are also some fun helmet covers –” the older man chuckled, and added, “A number of the regulars here have them, and there are also some earplugs, or perhaps a tough phone case and mount? A chain care kit? There are some vinyl stickers too, and t-shirts, socks, neck warmers, balaclavas, mugs, helmet care kits, thermals…”

Laughing, you held up your hands for him to stop, and he started to chuckle too.

“I’ll let you browse in peace, sweetheart,” he said, his whisky brown eyes twinkling. Even his un-looked-for endearment came across as kindly instead of creepy, and not many men could pull that off. “You just holler if you have questions and I’ll be happy to –”

The door opened behind you and he broke off as his attention was snagged by the arrival of a heavy-set guy in dark jeans and a softly-worn, black leather jacket. He held a black helmet with a tinted visor in his large hands, and he looked more than a little wind-blown and rumpled.

Incongruous with his rather roguish-dishevelment, a lock of his long, thick, slightly grizzled, black hair was held back by a little hair-clip with a Barbie-pink, fabric bow. It didn’t fit with the dark scruff of stubble on his jaw or the piercing green-blue eyes at all, but he seemed completely unfazed by its presence.

“Oats!” the older man exclaimed with obvious joy, clapping his hands. “It’s been a while, my boy! How was the trip to Scotland? You make it round the NC500 this time?”

The ‘boy’ looked to be in his mid to late thirties…

“Ach, no’ a chance this time, Hank,” the man chuckled with a heavy, Scottish accent lacing his rich, rough baritone. Exactly where in Scotland he was from, you couldn’t tell, but it was lyrical and attractive all the same.

“Ah, next time, next time. And is Natalie well?

“Oh aye, my wee Loch Ness Monster is doing just fine. She’ll be terrorising her mother for the Christmas holidays. I came straight from the road though — clutch started playing up just south of Birmingham.” He grimaced, but even that looked charming somehow. “Sort of hoped you might find a minute to take a look at it for me if I left the Old Girl here. No rush though.”

“No problem, Oats. We’ll get her running properly again in no time. Bet you’re missing little Natalie already,” Hank added sympathetically.

“Ah, you have no idea,” the man, peculiarly-named ‘Oats’, sighed ruefully, shaking his head.

“See she left you with a parting gift though,” Hank snorted, pointing at the bow hair clip.

With a slight frown to his dark eyebrows, Oats reached up and patted at his head until he found it, and then he laughed. It was a loud, delighted, full-bellied sound that reverberated through the space while it lasted, and he left the hair clip where it was with no trace of self-consciousness as he lowered his hand again. “Aye, that she did. Surprised it survived the journey down with my lid on and everything. Oh –” His unusually pale green eyes landed on you, watching him and lurking near the rows of t-shirts on the back wall, and he went still.

Those sea-grey eyes raked you up and down, clearly noting the way your black leggings clung to the curves of your thighs and hips, and the black hoodie, which maybe went some way to hiding the softness of your stomach a bit, and he swallowed visibly. He looked… hungry. That was not the usual reaction you had grown accustomed to from men, and you let the flare of heat lick up your insides for just a moment, daring to hope that maybe he did find you attractive.

“Sorry,” he said in your direction, with a soft, dusky smile. “Didnae mean t’interrupt.”

“It’s fine,” you managed to croak back at him before returning your attention, however reluctantly, to present options for your brother while the older man, Hank, hobbled out around the corner of the wooden counter to chat amicably with the man. You couldn’t hear what was said as the two chatted in lower voices, but it was evident that they were good friends. While they talked, however, you couldn’t help noticing that he stole occasional sidelong glances in your direction, and you felt your face warm pleasantly.

‘Oats’ was certainly an unusual nickname, but then again, almost everyone who rode with your brother also had their own nicknames for one reason or another. As you browsed, you wondered what Oats had done to earn that one. He certainly looked like a snack to you, but you vowed not to let your attraction to the stranger show. Awkward situations (or worse, silences) tended to arise when you let that happen.

He had a tanned, outdoorsy complexion, and longish, black hair that was tied back in a low ponytail that brushed below the collar of his black leather jacket. It looked like it had a tendency to flop into his face when not restrained by that out-of-place pink bow. He filled out the jacket very well, and clearly had a soft paunch, and his thighs looked frankly delectable in those thick, indigo jeans. You prayed you wouldn’t have to see him fully from the back if he turned around, to witness the way he filled out the seat of his jeans too.

Fuck. Concentrate.

Bike gifts for brother, not delicious-looking stranger you’re never going to see again.

“Well, I shouldnae hang about, I suppose.”

Oats’ voice cut through your musings in front of chain degreasers and you jumped a little. Glancing back over at him, you offered him a smile when he too turned to look at you one last time, and a slow, charming smile crept onto his handsome face.

“See you,” he said with a dip of his head. Before he strode from the shop though, he let his eyes roam once more down the length of you and he bit his lower lip, almost regretfully, then turned away abruptly.

Oh yes. He absolutely did fill out the ass of those jeans beautifully.

Quite honestly, you weren’t totally sure what you ended up getting your brother for his birthday. You took whatever it was to the counter in a daze, your mind replaying over and over the way he’d looked at you.

“Must say,” Hank said conspiratorially as he fished your change from the antique cash register and slid it across the polished, wooden counter towards you. “I’ve never seen Oats quite so taken with someone, miss.” He chuckled, his kind, whisky-brown eyes glinting. “You take care now.”

Swallowing, you nodded and left the shop, hoping perhaps to find Oats waiting for you outside on the street, leaning against his motorcycle, but life was not a movie, and wherever he was, he was not lingering in the hopes of seeing you. In fact, the street was completely deserted, so you crossed, clambered into your little hatchback, and drove home with the feeling that you’d let a pivotal moment in your life pass you by.

Your sour mood persisted like a raincloud for the whole week, but by the time you were driving over to your brother’s on Saturday for his birthday ride, you were trying to pull yourself out of it. You had your own helmet with you, secured in the back of the car, and beside it was (now wrapped) the present you’d got him. In fact, it was a chain care kit, and, although you hadn’t noticed at the time, Hank had thrown in a free keychain that said ‘In my defence, I was left unsupervised’ which was very on-brand for your brother. You had planned to go back and thank him for the freebie as soon as you could, but your brother’s birthday ride had been planned for that Saturday, and work had been hell that week, so you’d not had the chance.

Predictably, Alex wasn’t in the house when you rang the doorbell, so you followed the sound of metallic clinking and laughter, and went round the side to find him tinkering with his mad little Honda Grom in the garage, while his two best mates — Eggs and Sparky — were lounging around and either making unhelpful suggestions or lewd comments.

“Yo!” Sparky grinned when he saw you, sitting up straighter and almost falling off the mechanic’s tool chest he was leaning his weight against. At Sparky’s exclamation, your brother sat up and banged his head on the handlebars of the short little Grom with a curse.

“Hey,” you mumbled in Sparky’s general direction. “Happy birthday, Alex.”

Alex scrambled upright and came over to hug you, probably smearing grease and dirt all over your armoured jacket, but since it was black anyway, you didn’t mind too much. Alex was about as opposite to you as it was possible to get — straight up and down like a beanpole, and tall. You took after your mother, inheriting all her thick curves and soft edges. Soft heart too.

“Thought this might come in handy,” you mumbled when Alex released you and you held out the brown paper bag stamped with the logo of Full Moon Motorcycles.

His eyes lit up when he saw the logo, and he tore into it like a chipmunk after a peanut, grinning in delight when he’d dismembered it, and in particular he showed off the keychain to his mates. Eggs snatched it and tried to claim it for himself, but Alex was having none of it, and the three of them scrapped and goofed around while you sat down on an old, metal stool in the corner and waited for the other two of your small party to show up, with a cool, curdling kind of dread in the pit of your stomach when you heard one name in particular. Nooner.

Within an hour though, you were all out on the road.

You took the pillion seat behind Alex, and warded his mates off at red lights when they came for his killswitch to immobilise him. A while later though, Alex zoomed off down the open road that would take you all out of town and towards the somewhat famous biker cafe, ‘Elusive Neutral’, that sat nestled amongst the fragrant heather of the rolling hills surrounding the old market town.

The sky was a gorgeous, autumnal blue and the weather was perfect, neither too hot nor too cold, and as your brother’s Yamaha flew along the winding A-road that was every biker’s dream, you cracked a smile and gently tipped your head back. As much as it had scared you when you’d first ridden behind your mother all those years ago, you did love the feeling of being out on a bike. Not that you were actually brave enough to want to try and learn yourself though. Something always held you back, made you wary and unsure, and then you inevitably felt down about that too. God, you wished you had Alex’s wild confidence.

Nothing good ever seemed to last for you though, and when Alex’s R1 had purred into the car park behind Eggs and Sparky, and you’d hopped off to let him reverse more easily into a space, you caught the conversation drifting over from the other guys who’d arrived just ahead of you.

“…if he didn’t have his fat sister with him, we could have fucking ripped it up along those twisties.” That, of course, had come from Nooner, named for the fact that he rarely stuck to two wheels and always pulled wheelies, or ‘nones’, whenever he got the chance. Out of all of your brother’s friends, he was the one you liked the least, for… obvious reasons.

“Talk about killing the vibes, huh?” Eggs replied, trying to suck up to him, as ever. “More like ‘crushing’!”

The reason Eggs had earned his nickname was that he’d lost a bet and shaved his head when they’d all been about sixteen, and he’d looked like a boiled egg til it grew back. You wished you had the sass to remind him of that every time his spine seemed to crumble in favour of earning a half-hearted snicker out of Nooner.

When Alex joined you, he caught the crestfallen expression on your face and frowned, but you shook your head and walked away from them, heading for the cafe alone.

“Can’t wait to shove some cake in her fat gob already,” Nooner added as an aside to Eggs, and your vision blurred as tears welled along your lashes. Why did people have to be so cruel? To trample all over someone else just to feel a little taller themselves?

You vaguely heard what sounded like Sparky’s voice countering the comment, but you didn't stick around either way. If you mentioned it to your brother again, he’d just say it was banter with the guys and not to take it to heart. Easy for someone who's never been on the end of that kind of comment to shrug it off, after all.

You ducked straight for the toilets when you got inside the airy, modern cafe, not even bothering to look around or find a table first.

After some deep breaths and a check in the mirror to see that you hadn’t turned your eyeliner into a panda cosplay, you headed out again and made for the little bar that doubled as a counter for people who were there solo to sit and eat instead of taking up a whole table to themselves. None of your brother’s friends joined you, and when you glanced back over your shoulder, you saw that they’d settled themselves around a table in the far corner and already had a number for a server to bring their food order over. They hadn’t even waited for you.

“Fuck them,” you hissed through gritted teeth, taking a seat at the bar instead. The stools were made of old tractor seats, and they were surprisingly comfortable, and as you leaned your forearms on the countertop, the young woman behind the counter came over to you with a smile that made you feel a little better.

“Hey,” she said. “What can I get for you?”

You ordered a hot drink, and then took out your phone while you waited for her to make it for you.

For half an hour or so, you sat scrolling through social media and sipping your drink and telling yourself this was your brother’s day and not yours. He did come over a couple of times, but you declined to sit with his friends, and because he’d never had any real reason to doubt you before, he took you at your word when you told him you were happy enough where you were. “I don’t want to get in the way,” you said, and he believed you.

Patting you on the shoulder, he left you for the third time, and you looked down into the dregs of your drink with a heavy sigh. “This sucks.”

Outside, the sound of more bikes arriving made your ears perk up, and you wondered idly what they rode. Elusive Neutral had once been an old cattle barn, but it had been completely redone and the walls on two sides had been replaced with vast picture windows that showed the sweeping expanse of moorland beyond, and a small sliver of the car park at one end. Craning your neck, you saw a group of maybe five or six bikers draw up, some on hipster looking cafe racers and others on racy sports bikes. There was even a Ducati Panigale among them, and behind them followed an old, battered, blue pickup truck.

The door opened a little while later, and you glanced over, eyes drawn instinctively by the movement.

Above the general chatter and merry chinking of china in the room, the energy of the new group of bikers rose like a cloud of dizzy mayflies; buzzing and excited and full of joy. You watched them all with interest from your perch at the counter.

The first through the door was an absolute Amazon of a woman, with her long black hair restrained in a thick braid, and shoulders the width of a barn door. She was lean and tall, and in her biker gear she looked… incredible. Her face was strikingly handsome, but until she glanced down at the woman walking beside her, her features were hard and glowering and unspeakably stern. She held the door open for one of the others to follow her inside, but when she locked eyes again with the brunette by her side, her whole expression melted into unguarded adoration. Your gut twisted briefly with jealousy.

It wouldn’t matter to you who looked at you like that, if only someone would.

You looked away, and by the time you glanced back at the bikers, the whole group had filed in from outside. There was a guy with golden-brown skin and beautiful dark brown eyes who had his arm wrapped possessively around the waist of a pale, skinny guy in black jeans and a moth-eaten, black jumper, with his long hair tied back in a bun, and behind them came a strikingly attractive guy in a manual wheelchair, flanked by a very short biker with slightly anaemic looking skin. You wondered fleetingly if the guy in the wheelchair had ridden a motorbike there, and if so how, before you realised he was probably the most beautiful person you’d ever seen, with long, flowing red hair and dark green eyes, and the kind of mouth that was made for laughing, and for kissing.

Jesus, was it an unwritten rule of being a biker that you had to be unfairly attractive? Even Hank, who you recognised with a start of surprise coming in behind the guy with red hair, wasn’t unattractive, in a bulky, older man kind of way.

The guy walking with him though… he truly made your stomach swoop.

It was Oats.

You looked away before he could spot you, sitting alone at the bar like some pathetic creature waiting for cocktail hour to begin. It was lunchtime on a sunny, autumnal Saturday though, and there you were sitting alone because you didn’t fancy sitting with your brother’s loser mates.

God, the way Oats had looked in his tough-looking leather jacket, with his eyes crinkled mid-laugh at something the guy in the wheelchair had shot back at them over his shoulder… You bit your lip and stared into the bottom of your cold, empty mug like it would divine some kind of solution to your situation for you.

The new group didn’t seem to notice you while they filed up to the counter, jostling and joking, and when they drifted off to another corner of the cafe, you turned back to your phone, trying desperately to resist the almost overwhelming urge to keep turning over your shoulder to watch them.

Before too long however, you startled at a soft tap on your shoulder, and you looked around to find Oats himself stepping back to a polite distance and smiling down at you like he’d found a treasure in an unexpected place.

“Hey there,” he said in that rolling, Scottish accent that did unspeakably indecent things to your insides. “Sorry if I’m intruding, but you were at Full Moon last week, right?”

Mute for a moment, you nodded, and mustered up a slightly dazed smile for him.

“You… here alone?” he asked, eyeing the currently-empty seats to your left and right. In fact, someone had only just gathered up their belongings and left.

“Kind of?” you croaked, letting your eyes slide over to the table where your brother and his friends were hunched over one of their phones, snickering at something. “It’s… It’s my brother’s birthday today. I… tagged along as pillion, but… you know… I’m kind of a spare part really.”

At that, Oats’ dark eyebrows knitted into a scowl and he looked across the room at them before returning his attention to you. Then, his unearthly, almost prismatic, silver-green eyes took in your empty cup and he grinned. “Can I get y’a top up?”

Your instinct was to refuse, but you bit your lip. This didn’t feel real. A cute, handsome, courteous guy was actually taking an interest in you.

“Sure. Thank you.” And the smile that spread itself across your face telegraphed your delight in a way that was impossible to disguise with any kind of suave grace.

Oats, however, seemed equally delighted, and nodded. The barista came back over and he leaned his weight on the counter to talk to her. He seemed to have that enviably easy manner with everybody, and he even charmed a free slice of cake out of her too with what felt like no effort at all.

“Chocolate? Or something else?” he asked you.

“Pardon?”

“Cake.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine,” you said, but he frowned.

“You sure? I’m gonna have a bit of their chocolate cake. It’s so good, it’s practically a sin.”

“I…” you faltered.

He didn’t pressure you though and shrugged easily, turning back to the barista. “Gimme two forks with that, love. Just in case.”

“No problem,” she beamed back while she bustled about, and Oats eyed the empty bar stool next to yours.

“May I?”

You swallowed your nerves and nodded. “Please.” And then, because apparently a demon of confidence had temporarily possessed you, you eyed his slightly helmet-flattened forelock and said, “No pink hair clips today?”

He guffawed loudly enough that your brother actually glanced over and frowned when he saw you talking with a stranger.

Oats snorted and shook his head. “No, not today. My daughter is still up in Scotland with her mother.” He fixed you with a more serious look and said, “She and I divorced, before you get the wrong idea about me flirting like this with a beautiful woman.”

The compliment caught you so off-guard that you just froze for a moment, but when the heat of a blush filled your face, you looked away and he chuckled.

“I’m not normally so forward, but I’ve been kicking myself for not talking to you when I first saw you in Full Moon. Hank was telling me just this morning what a muppet I’d made of myself for walking away like that.”

You looked behind you at the group of his friends and then turned back to him. “Won’t they think you’re being rude, ignoring them like this?”

He shook his head and smiled. “They’re probably all taking bets on how quickly you’ll shoot me down.”

“What? I’d have to be an idiot to do that.”

At that, his face split into a huge, handsome grin and he shook his head just a little. “Lucky me,” he said. “You ride?” he added, eyeing your jacket that was obviously a motorcycle jacket.

You shrugged. “Pillion. I’ve never ridden myself, but my brother lets me come out with him sometimes.”

Oats nodded, and then, as the barista set down his coffee, your top-up, and the plate of decadent chocolate cake with two forks, he said, “I’m Euan, by the way, but everyone calls me Oats.”

You introduced yourself, and then said, “Oats?”

He snorted and nodded. “Not the worst nickname, for sure.”

“Can I ask where it came from?”

Oats nodded and shunted the plate towards you first before leaning his elbow on the bar and watching you while he spoke. “I think it’s because I’m a dad, but I’m always prepared for most situations, and when it comes to my Natalie, she’s always hungry. I’ve usually got about a thousand granola bars stashed away about my person —” he said, cutting himself off to pat conspicuously at his jacket pockets. Pulling a slightly dog-eared crunchy bar from his breast pocket, he wielded it like a magic wand at you and said, “Case in point.”

“Hence, Oats,” you said, eyeing the healthy brand name on the packet.

“Exactly. Like I said, it could be worse. See the tall lass over there with the dangerous scowl?”

You didn't need to turn around to know which of his friends he was talking about, but you did anyway. “Yeah.”

“We call her Pixie.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not,” he chuckled, stowing the granola bar back into his pocket and taking a huge scoop of the chocolate cake with his own fork.

“What do you ride then?” you asked.

“Triumph Bonneville T120,” he said with almost exactly the same intonation and fondness as he’d just said ‘because I’m a dad’, and you couldn’t help smiling. “Can’t be doing with all these glitzy sports bikes and the like,” he added with a laugh, setting his fork down and blinking slowly. His lashes, you noticed, were thick and dark and enticingly long.

Laughing, you smiled. “Don’t say that too loudly — my brother rides an R1.”

“Nice,” Oats grinned back. “But nothing could entice me away from my girl.”

“I’m surprised you’re here, flirting with me then,” you said. Evidently that confidence demon was still lurking.

Again, Oats laughed, though it was more of a low whicker this time, and it rolled right through you and lit you up all over. God, how long had it been since someone had laughed like that for you?

“There are… exceptions,” he said in a rumbling murmur. “Tell me about yourself?” he asked, and you did.

You spent the next hour at least talking in an easy back and forth with him while he charmed a few more refills from the barista and a lot of answers out of you, before one of his friends sidled up shyly and waited for a lull in your conversation.

“Sorry to butt in,” the small, unbelievably beautiful woman said. She was the one who’d been on the receiving end of the adoring look from the Amazon, ‘Pixie’. She had chocolate-brown hair falling in thick ringlets around a gorgeous face, and, you were pleased to note, she had wide hips and a softness to her that a lot of the biker chicks you’d seen online didn’t have.

“Coco,” Oats beamed. “Meet my new friend.” He introduced you by name, and Coco smiled at you, holding out her hand.

When your palms connected, you felt a warmth rush through you and you felt like your heart skipped a beat. The feeling like you could tip forwards and drown in her endless, dark brown eyes almost unseated you, but she let go of you and stepped back with a pretty smile on her Cupid’s-bow lips. “Pleasure to meet you. Just wanted to tell Oats that we’re thinking of heading off soon. Ariel has a photoshoot he wants to get to in an hour or so, and Demon’s keen to get going as well.”

Oats nodded, and you tried not to let your stomach drop down to your boots at the thought of all this coming to such an abrupt end.

Coco turned her head sharply to look at you just as the feeling hit, and she smiled faintly. “You could always stay here though, Oats,” she added with a pretty smile. “We’re only going back to Full Moon, and Demon clearly has no intention of lingering there…” She shot a meaningful glance back at their table. Demon, the guy with dark hair and tanned skin, was seated with the guy he’d entered with now draped in his lap, his skinny legs dangling as he sprawled languidly back against the guy’s muscular chest. Demon whispered something into his ear before he clearly bit the shell of his boyfriend’s ear, which made him sit abruptly upright and flush a vibrant pink.

Oats laughed again and shook his head. “Fuck me,” he chuckled privately. “Never thought I’d see the day. You guys go on. I’m… I’m very much content here.”

“I can see that,” Coco smirked, and walked away.

When she was out of earshot, you turned to Oats with a hot flush of your own in your face and said, “Don’t stay if you don’t want to… I’m sure my brother will be leaving soon anyway…”

Just as you said that, and before Oats could reply, Alex reappeared at your side and jutted his chin in Oats’ direction. “You good?” he chirped at you.

“Fine,” you replied. “This is Oats. I met him at Full Moon Motorcycles when I was buying your birthday present.”

“Oh,” Alex replied, holding out his hand for Oats to shake. “Good to meet you, man. You tell her what to get for me? If you did, it was a good choice.”

“No,” Oats said carefully, his grey-green eyes sliding back to your face even while he shook your brother’s hand amicably. “No, whatever she got you, it was all her.”

“Oh, cool,” Alex said. “Listen, sis, we’re gonna hit the road in a while. Nooner and Eggs want to hit the twisties for a bit, but I can’t really do that with a backpack, so Sparky said he’d give you a ride home, if that’s ok.”

You swallowed. “Um…”

“I can give her a lift,” Oats replied after a swift glance in your direction. “She’s already got her own lid, and there’s room on the Bobber’s double seat for both of us.”

“I don’t know, man,” Alex said with a wary frown.

“Your choice,” Oats shrugged easily, looking at you and holding his hands up just a little.

For a fleeting moment, you weren’t sure, but the idea of wrapping your arms around Oats’ thick middle and sitting astride his gorgeous bike kind of decided it for you. Besides, it was a long time since you’d done anything truly just for yourself; simply because you wanted to. You nodded at your brother. “It’s fine. You go ahead.”

“You sure?”

Nodding to reassure him, you smiled again and Alex backed up a pace. “Cool. Text me later, ok?” he said as he retreated towards his friends, clearly trying to hide his excitement at not having a passenger for the great, twisting section of A-road they were heading for.

“Will do. Have fun, and don’t crash!” you called after him. “Or get a speeding ticket!”

He waved a hand over one shoulder without looking back, and you laughed and returned your attention to Oats. “Brothers.”

“Bikers,” he replied. “You try telling that to any of that lot though —” he gestured towards his own group of friends who were now filtering out of the door. “You ready to head out too or do you want to stay?”

You did want to stay, but the seat wasn’t that comfortable anymore, and you wanted to move around a bit. “No, I’m good to go,” you said and prepared to slide off the stool, but Oats stepped down first and held out his hand to you. You didn't need helping down, and his playful little smirk told you he knew as much, so you rode out the last of that demonic possession and let your fingers slide across his palm and he steadied you off the stool.

“Thank you,” you smiled.

“Pleasure.”

You picked up your helmet from where you’d stowed it on the floor at your feet and straightened to find him waving casually across the room to the good-looking guy with the ethereally pretty boyfriend. Before he stepped away from you and made towards the door though, you cleared your throat and said, “Oats?”

“Mn?” Looking down at you, his entire attention honed in on you, like you were the centre of the universe, and you swallowed back a sudden welling of emotion.

“Listen… Thank you… for… coming over to me today. Like I said, it’s my brother’s birthday, and he was here with his friends, and he only included me so I didn’t feel completely left out, but…” Accursed tears washed over your eyes for a moment but you blinked them away furiously and ploughed on regardless. “I’m really glad I came along today anyway,” you finished rather pathetically.

His full, beautiful lips curled into a gentle smile and he blinked softly and exhaled. When he spoke, his voice was low and his words private, as though you weren’t standing in a busy cafe surrounded by people and the cheerful clatter of coffee cups and laughter. “I’m really glad I did too. I wasn’t going to, you know? I was going to stay at home and edit a boatload of raw photographs for a client, but Demon convinced me to come out. I guess I owe him.”

“‘Demon’? For… For the speed?” you asked, wondering how he came by his nickname.

“For the horns,” Oats replied in deadpan humour. “Have a look if he’s still there when we go outside. You ready?”

You followed him out of the cafe with a nod, and just as you took a deep, indulgent breath of fresh, heathland air, Oats’ group of friends filed out past you on their bikes. The one named Demon was in the lead, and the nickname made immediate sense. Sitting astride a blood-red Panigale, with his boyfriend clinging on behind him like a limpet, the guy had pale, curving horns fixed to the crown of his helmet.

“Yeah, that tracks,” you said, and Oats waggled his dark eyebrows.

The Amazon had a Yamaha R1 like your brother’s, but hers had a pearl-white wrap that made it look almost spectral, and riding out in front of her was Coco on a yellow and black Honda Hornet.

The telltale red plait told you that the guy in the wheelchair was on a modified Kawasaki, with unusual struts at the back that looked like they would come down when he stopped to stabilise him instead of having to take his legs off the foot pegs, where they were currently Velcro-ed in place. Watching the whole group file out was Hank, standing beside a battered old pickup. In the bed of the truck, you could just see that the red-headed biker’s wheelchair secured in place.

Hank waved the last of them off, then glanced over at Oats. The older man lifted his nose just a little, as if he too was enjoying the fresh, moorland wind that whipped across the car park, and he nodded once at Oats, and then at you to your surprise, before clambering stiffly up into his pickup and closing the door. It shut with a raucous yelp of rusty hinges.

You stood there and watched Oats’ friends all file out, all waving at Oats as they passed, before they set off down the road in a roar of revving engines to leave a lonely looking Bonneville waiting patiently near the stone wall of the car park nearby.

“Yours, I presume?” you said, nodding at it.

“Yup.”

“She’s a beauty,” you mumbled, self-consciousness prickling at the sides of your neck for the silly comment.

Oats beamed though, his sea-foam eyes lighting up as the crinkles around his eyes and the slight dimples in his cheeks creased under the force of his obvious pleasure. “Thank you. She’s my pride and joy. You ready? Oh, wait, you should put your address into my phone before we get going,” he laughed.

You nodded, taking the offered phone from him. Your fingers brushed against his warm skin as you took it, and a tiny thrill passed through you that you did your best to quash. With your address plugged in and a route home waiting to be followed, you handed it back to him and looked up into his handsome, rugged face as he smiled.

“Cheers. Let’s go,” he said, and you trailed along beside him over to his bike, heartbeat thudding in your ears with your nerves.

He swung a leg over and turned the key, then pushed the bike upright and nudged the side-stand in with his left foot before flicking the switch and bringing the bike to life. She growled beautifully, the low, thundering rumble of her engine sounding far more visceral and primal than your brother’s sports bike did. Perhaps it was the design of the lower-slung Bonneville, with its visible parts that made you think of a Steampunk aesthetic, but you instantly preferred it. Plus, the double seat looked way more cushioned — and less precarious — than the one you’d perched on to get to the cafe that morning.

Oats got himself comfy while you slid your helmet on, then he looked over his shoulder at you and nodded, so you took that as your cue and got settled on the pillion seat behind him. The footpegs were already down. The pulsing purr of the machine beneath you was almost enough to distract you from the fact that you were entrusting your life to a relative stranger, whom you’d never seen ride before, and as you climbed on and rested your hands politely on his shoulders, you felt a shiver travel through your whole nervous system.

“Do whatever’s comfortable for you, obviously,” Oats said over the noise of his bike, “But if you want to hold my waist — if you can actually get your arms around my middle, that is,” he chuckled self-effacingly, “— feel free. Totally up to you.”

“Thanks,” you yelled back, and, because apparently that pesky demon of confidence was still kicking around, you hugged his torso.

It was wonderful.

Slowly snaking your arms around his middle, you felt your chest press against his back and you caught the way he inhaled slowly and tried not to wonder what it meant. It felt so good to hold him that you had to remind yourself it wasn’t a hug. It was to keep you in place while a gorgeous stranger drove you home on his equally gorgeous bike. With a final thumbs-up to check you were happy, to which you replied with a nod of your head and tried not to clack your helmet against his, he pulled away and your heart leapt for the sheer joy of it.

Where the R1 was built for sleek speed and bursts of power, the Bonneville was build to be enjoyed, and oh gosh, did you enjoy every curve.

And not just the curves in the road, either.

Oats was soft, but he was solid, and the urge to rest one hand on his thick thigh was almost overwhelming, until he took the corners at just the right pace to be exhilarating without you having to worry about your safety, and you clung on instead and laughed behind the safety of your visor.

It was all over way too soon, and as the Bonneville chugged into your road like a steam train and halted outside your poky, terraced house with its quaint little kitchen garden out the front in the postage-stamp of space between the pavement and the house, your heart squeezed painfully in your chest. Please don’t let this be it, you thought desperately.

You went through the motions of getting carefully off the bike without staggering or falling, and again, Oats held out his hand to help steady you. You gripped his fingers gratefully and when you gave an extra little squeeze to his hand at the end, you could have sworn he answered with one of his own and a throaty chuckle.

He dismounted too, which surprised you, and you wondered if you were going to have to ask him inside. As much as you wanted that in principle, you desperately didn’t want it to happen today because the house was a mess: laundry was still hanging up all over the place, and you’d cooked a curry the previous night and it was definitely still lingering in the air.

Oats took off his helmet but left his bike idling, which went a little way to reassuring you, and when you looked more closely at his expression, you thought you saw a hint of something familiar lingering in the corners of his eyes. Was he nervous?

Swallowing thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing behind the thick, 5 o’clock shadow that looked like it lingered pretty constantly no matter the time of day, Oats took a deep breath, held it, and then smiled at you. “Fuck,” he exhaled, and laughed. “I’m… very rusty at all this.” He held his helmet in both hands before him, toying with the strap.

“If I gave you my number, would you maybe like to meet up again?” you asked, taking pity on the man.

“Very much,” he said softly. “Like I said, Natalie is with her mum for the holidays, and apart from a wedding I’m covering next week, this is a pretty slow time of year for me. I’m free… mostly whenever.”

The reminder that he had a daughter with someone else did make you wonder what you were letting yourself in for. Children weren’t really something you had any expense of, since neither you nor your brother had shown any parental inclinations yet, and you weren’t particularly close to your cousins who had small kids.

“Ok, let me give you my number and we can figure something out.”

That done, he slid his phone back into his pocket and zipped it up, biting gently at his lower lip for a moment. “I know it’s bold,” he said, “But may I kiss you?”

Your heart skipped and soared. Breathless, you looked up at him and whispered, “Yes.”

His tiny, gentle, lopsided smile heralded the kiss’ approach, and he took your jaw delicately in one, leather-gloved hand as he leaned down and brushed his lips against yours. They were soft but insistent against yours, and you answered with a little moan as your eyes fluttered shut.

He groaned, pulling you closer with a low growl so that you were pressed flush against him for a moment before he stepped back and exhaled roughly. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Thank you. I’ll… I’ll see you soon?”

You nodded, feeling like you were floating inches above the ground.

You watched him re-mount his bike and adjust himself a little once he was settled, then he revved it playfully for you, and rode away after a final look back at you. He flipped his visor down as he pulled away, and you watched the bike and its rider disappear down the road.

‘Soon’ couldn’t come soon enough…

I really hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please consider showing your support by reblogging. It really is the best (and totally free!) way to help the artists and writers whose work you enjoy.

Masterlist | Ko-fi (tip jar) | Patreon

#oats the kelpie #monster romance #kelpie #male kelpie x female human #full moon motorcycles #supernatural biker group #plus size female reader #plus size reader #male kelpie x female reader #male monster x female reader #exophilia #monster boyfriend #dadbod monster #dadbod #single father monster #monster dad

553 notes · View notes

communist-ojou-sama · 10 months ago

Text

I hate having to drag these kinds of discussions into the public in front of nonblacks but it seems like the constant shameless behavior on this site has forced my hand, so let me be very clear about this:

In the past, anti-imperialists on this website have rightly made the analytical point that all citizens within empire to some extent reap its benefits even second- and third-class, and how this is especially true in the case of a global website like the US.

In response, a clique of mostly bourgeois black bloggers and their enablers have weaponized their identities to silence critiques of black USian complicity in US imperialism and any analysis of the specific ways in which all USians benefit from US imperialism.

As a result, it's become necessary to make my own voice clear as a black communist. This narrative of total and infinite black USian victimhood is false. It is lazy. It is perverse, and it is shameless. If any of you were true black nationalists, true pan-Africanists, then you would put anti-imperialism before your own personal feelings and look at how the movement of black people toward the middle class, which has been substantial over the past few decades even as we remain the poorest demographic, has come first of all at the expense of people of our own skin color in the global south, or how as much as the auspices of choice are constrained, the informal economies that keep the poorest black communities above the absolute depths of destitution are intimately related to the drug trade that US uses to sow chaos and mass murder throught Latin America. But you all (and I'll do you the grace of not naming names) aren't ready to have that conversation, you just want to weaponize white guilt against anyone who pisses you off and invoke the suffering of our venerated ancestors to win internet arguments. Fucking shameful.

My nonblack followers should feel free to reblog this if they feel comfortable doing so. I have long felt this issue has needed to be addressed.

816 notes · View notes

rreskk · 8 months ago

Text

HEADCANONS: Fem!reader in a relationship with the Holy Trinity

MICHAEL DE SANTA – - “Ah, I’m sorry honey. The movies on.” His love language depends on how much quality time interferes with his own interests. While it may seem neglecting, you’ll come to understand that he’s in his own world. And he makes up by gifting you presents – unwanted or not – trying to reamend the many times he’s bailed on dates, etc. - He may have been a charming man at first, but being in a relationship with Michael really highlights his unfamiliarity with intimacy and connection. He’ll find it hard to communicate his wants due to that barrier between short-term desire and long-term love. You’re usually the one to make a move and give him a foundation to build his trust on. - Michael loves to be glamoured with your compliments and praises. One time he bought a new suit and showed you. After commenting on how handsome he looked, it encouraged him to dive deeper, attempting to drink and eat healthier products but also wear more fitting outfits. You make him look more presentable as you provide support and comfort. - He is a father! When dating a father, here comes responsibilities like parenting advice, and what NOT to say. You’ve experienced how dysfunctional he is. Michael knows he’s a troubling father and he listens to your advice – to an extent. He’ll mostly always add a little twist that completely destroys the meaning of your words, but it’s the consideration that counts. And maybe the tearfulness of his children after. And you annoyance because he dismissed your advice. But hey, that’s Michael! - “You’re dating a movie producer, honey.” Michael will always find a way to be prideful. In all cases where you find a flaw, he’ll shrug it off by mentioning how successful he is (in these flaws), making it sound like a good thing by paradox-ing whatever the hell he’s done – whether that’s criminality or being a selfish ass. -Surprisingly vanilla in the bedroom department. The typical rose petals on the bed and his infamous boxer shorts for when sexy time does occur. Though vanilla, it’s charming because it’s Michael. It’s more bonding he focusses on. Because he’s a bit estranged romantically, he tries to ensure sexual activity is maintained. - He invites you into this nostalgic journey. Allowing him to reminisce really brightens his mood. Even more if you engage and ask questions. It may boost his ego, but he’ll assume you are genuinely interested. - Out of the trio, due to his maturity (even that?) and experience, he’s the most likely to keep you out of the criminality, and so he should! Michael protects you from any dangers and will seclude you from his own issues.

TREVOR PHILIPS – - “What do you mean you were busy?” The most clingiest. He’s very dependant when you earn his trust. Everything has to be outwardly expressed, whether that’s a doctors appointment or Jerry from down the road talking about his heater breaking. Trevor won’t even be interested but he’ll feel safe knowing due to his trust issues. You may get interrogated a lot when you forget to tell him certain things, but if you apologise MEANINGFULLY, he’ll forgive you. Maybe… (The grudge stays there though). - He does carry this intense aura around him and it gets a bit uncomfortable. Trevor has got something constantly making him angry or sad, so you’ll have to deal with this baggage, even if that’s listening to him rant or holding him – as requested. It’s better to say nothing because if you try and be rational, he’ll assume you are devaluing his feelings. - “Why are you closing the door? Leave it open. Ain’t no one here except me.” Trevor does not understand privacy and boundaries. You could be going to the bathroom or wanting time to yourself and he’ll demand you leave the door open. For no reason. He just like hearing you shuffle around. It makes him feel less alone and more safe. However, it can be annoying for you since you are forced to deal with his smell and intensive clinginess. - Very touchy and physical. Trevor has a high sex-drive and will crave bedroom time A LOT. From quickies to a passionate 3 session afternoon which leaves you both gasping for water and the bible. He does make you feel loved though. Not an inch of your skin has been left cold. He has touched you all. One way or another… - Unfortunately includes you in his drama a lot. Trevor doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut, let alone his impulses. And he gets into situations all the time. You are either a target of revenge or a cover-up. No in between. SOS babe, you’re in some trouble.

FRANKLIN CLINTON – - He treasures normality out of them all. Franklin craves a normal relationship where you do your own thing, and he does too. Independence is key. However, sometimes you’ll wonder why he hasn’t messaged in days after he left the house last Tuesday. It can strain a bit of your relationship as you don’t share much details about your everyday life, so you have no idea about the activities he gets up to. Vise versa. - “You need a ride out?” Franklin is also observant though. He sees you getting ready and offers you a ride. He sees you looking for something, offers to look. He sees you frustrated, he offers a solution. Despite being the youngest, he’s got a heart of gold towards the people he loves. - You don’t have to prove your self-worth by being sexually active. Franklin is open-minded enough to understand boundaries and feelings. Just because you’re distant that day doesn’t mean you hate him, and he knows that. Just because you haven’t been sexually active in the past month doesn’t mean you hate him, he knows that too. - Franklin tries to keep you out of his business but sometimes information slips. He can trust the wrong people and get into some trouble, causing you to be a target of revenge. He tries to be private but he’ll talk to people he’ll deem “trustworthy”, and sometimes they can be the wrong people. - Takes you out a lot in dates. You’ll visit new diners, movies, bars, discos. Whatever. Franklin loves quality time and will ensure you are taken out every week. That’s how he bonds. You can share memories and moments together, whether that’s funny memories or romantic, or maybe sad. He finds value in everything. - The people he surround himself with can strain the relationship. Criminals and gangsters. He’ll invite strange people home and you’ll have to deal with their antiques. Franklin shrugs it off as it’s “business”, but you’ll always find the strangers invading your personal space and privacy. Dangerous strangers as well. It puts you on edge.

278 notes · View notes

raven-at-the-writing-desk · 7 months ago

Note

In the manga version of Twisted Wonderland, it seems odd that the characters speak in Japanese but can't pronounce Enma Yuuken's name correctly. For instance, when Yuuken first met Ace and Deuce, they had trouble pronouncing his name even though they were speaking Japanese. I also wonder whether English exists in Twisted Wonderland. I am quite sure that English exists, but I don't know for sure. What do you think?

Well, remember: just because the characters’ dialogue is written in Japanese or English for us, the viewers, does not mean that the characters in-universe are communicating in Japanese or English. The language is most likely written this way for ease of understanding outside the meta of the story. Writing dialogue and speaking in a made-up language for accuracy’s sake would mean no audience member can understand what is going on.

How do we know this? Well, Enma-kun’s name is very obviously Japanese but the Twisted Wonderland characters have very non-Japanese names and do not seem familiar with his culture. Yet somehow they know perfect Japanese and speak to him in it without any issues??? But simultaneously Japanese food (Floyd’s favorite food is takoyaki) exists in Twisted Wonderland and no one has issues with knowing what it is or how it is said? And then in the light novel, Yuuya wonders if he is actually speaking Japanese, because even though he appears to be speaking and hearing his native language, he notices that the mouths of those he speaks with do not “match up” with Japanese. That just doesn’t make sense.

The light novel tries to alleviate this discrepancy by telling us that there is a “translation spell” placed over the school, so that is probably the magic that is letting them communicate in spite of a potential language barrier in-universe. However, there are also instances when Yuu travels off campus (which has yet to be officially depicted in the manga or light novel), such as hometown events or even book 6. In these cases, there are still no communication issues noted despite NRC’s translation spell no longer being present. I think this continuity error exists because there’s just a certain level of suspension of disbelief the audience has to have without thinking about the complexities of how novel language in another world works; very few isekai go to the trouble of completely developing a new fantasy language.

I’ve mentioned this before a number of times but I will reiterate here: I’m sure that Twisted Wonderland must have its equivalents to our languages in some capacity . For example, Rook speaks bursts of French and the citizens of the City of Flowers/Fleur City also speak French. The language, however, is never referred to as “French” (since “France” does not exist in Twisted Wonderland); in fact, it is given no name at all. There are many other borrowed words which would imply the existence of TWST language equivalents. Takoyaki exists so there must be a twisted Japanese language. Based on this logic, there must be a twisted English too. The Queendom of Roses is often equated to Britain, so perhaps that’s where “English” is spoken—though it could also be a more common tongue too.

TWST also has its own languages that don’t exist in our world. These are mostly different kinds of fae languages, such as the tinkering bell sounds of pixies or the animalistic snarls and grunts of nocturnal fae. There’s quite a spread here!

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst manga #twisted wonderland manga #twst light novel #twisted wonderland light novel #notes from the writing raven #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #question #Yuuken Enma #Enma Yuuken #glorious masquerade spoilers #book 6 spoilers #Rook Hunt #Kuroki Yuuya #Yuuya Kuroki

176 notes · View notes

actual-changeling · 4 months ago

Text

i love all the UST to RST arcadia fics but i look at them and see the most uncomfortable situation ever.

mulder is having fun playing house and it's kinda cute, but scully? if we go with this being their first case back on the x files (and i'll always go with that) they have solved exactly none of their issues.

the "you're making this personal" is a month old at MOST, and scully probably has to struggle with the thought that the only reason mulder is her 'full-time' partner again is because diana ditched him.

(which is funny in a dark and painful way)

after weeks upon weeks of mulder basically being a rude stranger that no longer trusts her—someone she can no longer rely on—he just, what, expects her to bounce back and pretend none of it ever happened? 'cause that's what they usually do?

but this was not usual. this was mulder taking his love confession and twisting it into a knife to repeatedly stab her with. "your science saved me and made me a whole person" yeah great! love that. would be a shame to use it against her a few weeks/months later.

"your science is wrong" after she more or less repeated his speech and the strong implication that he no longer abides by what he told her.

"you've given me no reason here [not to trust diana]" after she did what she always does—giving him the facts. if i start talking about the "you're making this personal" line we will be here for an hour so i won't. we all know it's there and what kinda damage it did.

all that and more. refusing to trust her. ditching her. walking away from her. and, knowing them, they did not come together and talk it out.

so we have scully stuck undercover as his wife in a freaky murderous suburban community and mulder is getting his ya yas out doing what he does.

he touches her and she immediately shrugs him off, steps away from him, and she looks at him with raised hands and a glare that says "back off". early season 5 scully would be having the time of her life but by now she very much hates it.

whenever mulder initiates something personal, she plays along just enough to keep them as a team going but is visibly uncomfortable. we know what it looks like when she's happy and relaxed in his presence and this ain't it.

and these are from the BEGINNING of the episode. it doesn't get any better. it's work and she is treating it as such, she won't risk a case because of her own emotional situation.

mulder is. trying to get them back on track. i can give him that much. but as we see in monday and agua mala, he is STILL keeping shit from her (not giving her an explanation in monday, for example) and comfortable ditching her.

personally, i don't think arcadia is the turning point in their relationship that a lot of fics write it as. doing so is perfectly fine, don't get me wrong, i love reading them.

i just don't see any major progress between one son and arcadia that indicates they actually talked about some shit. playing house with mulder is about the last thing scully wants to do at that point, and yet she does it without complaint.

arcadia, to me, is mostly about two things: mulder being forced to acknowledge that they can't just ignore it & he screwed up and scully (very very slowly) beginning to rediscover how to be comfortable around mulder again. i don't think his frequent jokes are particularly helpful, they don't lighten the mood, they make it worse, if anything.

somewhere between arcadia and alpha, and then alpha and trevor, they readjust, and while cc never showed us (bc he is a fucking coward) i am 100% certain they actually managed to talk.

in trevor, there is none of the tension we see in arcadia. they're comfortable joking and flirting as usual, he does his lovesick puppy impression when she talks about spontaneous human combustion. they're them again.

not perfectly so, that takes them longer with the whole biogenesis thing disrupting their balance again, but we have the baseball date and that episode in general (thank u david for ur service).

anyway this got away from me, but my point is that scully should be allowed to need longer to trust mulder again after how horribly he treated her. she's allowed to hold a grudge and be upset, angry, sad, whatever she wants.

let that woman scream a little, she desperately needs it.

#alex watches x files #txf #the x files #x files #dana scully #fox mulder #scully x mulder #mulder x scully #msr #txf meta #msr meta #i GUESS id didnt mean to write any of this but here we are

119 notes · View notes

am-i-the-asshole-official · 8 months ago

Note

Aita for telling my partner they need to be better at communicating during sex?

NSFW ask, but this has been an ongoing issue for a while and I’m very frustrated

My (19M) partner (21NB) is my first true sexual partner. They’ve been with other people in the past, some good experiences but mostly bad. I on the other hand have dated before and have had pseudo-sexual relationships (just touching) but my partner is the first person I’ve properly done the horizontal tango with

That being said, with my just-touching exes, we’ve always been extremely careful about communication in the moment. My most recent ex and I had the stoplight method even when we weren’t being kinky. It was reassuring to be able to check up on her and for her to be able to do the same. Maybe we were playing is too safe, idk, but that’s what I became comfortable with during sex

With my current partner, however, this has never been the case with their exes. I think I might be the first partner they’ve had that actually took time before making any sexual advances to ask them what they like and how I can make them happy because in the moment when I did, they looked confused.

Being horny young adults, we did eventually sleep together, and during the act, I realized that neither of us had checked in on the other outside of the initial “is this okay?” when removing clothes (I was the one who asked) so I slowed my roll and asked my partner if they were with me. They were not. They sputtered and said that I brought them out of the moment, and I became really really concerned that they had been disassociating the entire time because of previous sexual trauma. I told them I wanted to stop, they did not, so I rolled off and whispered into their ear while (and I apologize for not finding a better way to describe this without being overly graphic) I was straight jorkin’ em off. They were happy, they fell asleep, and I felt awful.

About half an hour later they kicked me out because their mom was coming home from a New Years Eve party (it was my 19th birthday which also hurt), but that’s not relevant, I just need the timeline in place.

We’ve done more sexual things since then and every time I try to check on them, they get weirded out. I stopped doing it in the moment so overtly and changed tactics to asking “what can I do for you” and “what do you need baby”, and this seems to get the job done. However, afterwards when I ask actually ask them how they were feeling, they would say that “the afterglow’s ruined” (which is wild because we’ve been together for six months and I’ve never finished -> I am a pre-op transman and my partner is AMAB, aka has told me that they don’t know what to do with my parts and once joked that sex would be easier if I had a dick, for context)

The last straw was tonight (March 4th) when they came over to my place and we started making out. I wasn’t really feeling it, so I tried to back off and shift to just lazy kisses, but my partner didn’t stop so I pulled away and said: “not tonight, baby”

They said: “if you weren’t in the mood, why did you kiss me?”

I said: “because I like kissing you?”

They said: “you should have told me you didn’t want to do anything. I don’t want to get the wrong idea.”

I said: “I’m sorry, I should have. I thought I wanted to, but I changed my mind. Can we go back to watching anime?”

They said yes and we watched another episode of a show (dungeon meshi!!) before I finally asked them why they don’t check in with me the way I do with them

They said: “I don’t like talking during sex. Ruins the vibe”

I said: “Okay, so can we find a system that lets the other know how we’re feeling when we don’t want to talk? Like how I use signs when I go nonverbal?”

They said: “I don’t see the point. If you don’t want to fuck, just push me off.”

I got mad and said: “What is wrong with you? I don’t want to push you off, I want to talk about it!”

They told me I was getting worked up and left. It’s been two hours and I feel like total shit for pushing the subject when they’ve expressed that they don’t like my expectations for sex. Am I too high maintenance?

TL;DR, I annoyed my partner by asking too many times for them to talk to me during sex, they got pissed and left my house. Atia for asking too many times?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

169 notes · View notes

jacquesthepigeon · 2 months ago

Text

I have personally seen cases where kids grow up as complete strangers to their heritage especially as is the case with my own cousin in California but that involved multiple factors

1) My aunt was isolated and practically estranged from boricua communities. There is a large latino population in California, yes, but it’s mostly Mexican, not a problem, but it’s drastically different from boricua culture. I cannot describe to you how sad it was to see her express relief at being around her people during holidays for the first time in over a decade.

2) Assimilation and shame was heavily encouraged. My aunt’s MIL, from Mexico, went as far as having her name legally changed to its English equivalent. Over the years since my aunt’s move to the states, there have been multiple incidents where she drastically exaggerated the state of the country and our living conditions (all way before the infrastructure, particularly electricity services, got noticeably Bad) based on sensationalist news articles. It got to the point where she called all of us “idiots” for staying.

Bringing it back to ML

According to a 2019 census, there were 71,500 parisians who reported being born in China, a figure that doesn’t account for descendants of chinese immigrants. That is a far cry from leaving Sabine isolated from her culture. She has ample resources to find and participate in a community of fellow chinese immigrants within the city.

In regards to assimilation and shame, just look at her fucking design and hobbies holy shit. It clearly doesn’t apply to her. As for her english (french?) name, it is a fairly common practice for people from various asian countries to adopt an english name. I’ve seen multiple explanations for this ranging from confucian self naming practices being influenced by exposure to western cultures all the way to workplace culture and convenience. In Sabine’s case, because her chinese name is so similar to her western name, I imagine it’s simply a matter of avoiding the headache of constantly correcting people on the spelling and pronunciation of her chinese name. It sucks that it’s something so many immigrants and even tourists have to do to be addressed respectfully but that’s also worth exploring within the narrative.

Which brings me to why it’s important that we recognize the crew’s intentions and POV when discussing how these characters and dynamics are written. They’re not considering any of these and countless other factors that affect how immigrants and their children interact with their own heritage. They want to be praised and lauded for being “inclusive” and “diverse” simply for commodifying a cultural aesthetic. They have no real concern for the people they’re profiting from or their lives and complexities.

So let’s assume for a moment that despite not being affected by any of the factors that I mentioned influenced my own aunt’s lack of educating my cousin about her culture, that’s still an issue that should be addressed specifically in regards to Sabine’s decisions in raising Marinette rather than pushing the blame onto Marinette for “not expressing interest” and learning on her own. The last few times my cousin has come to visit, we do our best to accommodate her and make her as comfortable as possible but when she inevitably lets it show that she is uncomfortable and would prefer to step away from the situation, my aunt has the nerve to shame her for not liking or participating in her culture. I assure you, my aunt was the only one blaming my cousin as we were all silently judging my aunt as she’s obviously the one responsible for it getting to this point, as we have been doing ever since we knew she wasn’t teaching my cousin spanish. So assuming this is the case with Sabine and Marinette, where Sabine had the means to teach Marinette at the very least the basics, and now Sabine is somewhat resentful of Marinette not figuring it out on her own, that is something that definitely needs to be addressed with close attention and care.

But they won’t.

Sabine is not a chinese immigrant in the interest of other chinese immigrants

Marinette is not a white-passing diaspora child in the interest of other white-passing diaspora children

There is no diversity or representation in this show that isn’t meant to turn them into props to make white men look better, be they fictional or real

That is the issue, not the existence of borderline caricature-esque immigrants or white-passing POC in the real world possibly getting representation. It’s not about them, never has been.

77 notes · View notes

willthespy · 1 month ago

Text

SHORT SOLANGELO ANALYSIS FROM MY NOTES APP

(except it’s mostly in response to fandom)

Honestly, I’ve heard some reasons why people hate Solangelo. And don’t get me wrong; I don’t care that you don’t like a ship, but some of you are ignorant (and biased) and trying to find reasons to hate it.

One i’ve seen is that «they have no shared interests» etc, etc. Since when was that an issue? It wasn’t an issue with any other ship, so why is that an issue with the one canon/main mlm ship we have. And even if that wasn’t said with homophobic intentions, which it definitely doesn’t have to be, it still is odd that it is fine with your ship to have them not share common interests, but when it’s the ‘same case’ with Solangelo or some other canon ship it’s not?

Besides, nobody said they didn’t have any shared interests and nobody said they need to have shared interests. «Nico doesn’t like Star Wars. He hated it.» Oh, sweet gods. He watched all those movies for a reason, first of all. You’re saying he doesn’t like Will even after doing all that??? You’re using that as reasoning??? And even if he didn’t like it at all (gods forbid someone has an opinion not based around/biased by their relationship) that is okay. Especially for neurodivergent people I’ll say that it is okay to be in relationships and still have different interests than your significant other. Same interests ≠ madly in love whatsoever.

In fact, from a sociological/psychological/WHATEVER perspective, a lot of neurodivergent people tend to prefer it if someone doesn’t have the same interests. Yes, this depends per person, but that’s something I’ve noticed happens a lot.

The «they hate each other» argument is used, referring to their banter, and I love (read: hate) how those same people still like Percabeth. Like, okay, now give me the real reasons you don’t like it, without grasping for fake ones that don’t actually match up with your idea of a relationship. The bias is biasing.

I think the most important part of Solangelo is the fact that they can let their guards down around one another. They always have those walls up around others - though in different ways - and they don’t always have to be like that in front of each other. They’re also there to protect and care for the other, much unlike the fanon idea where Will often only cares for Nico. They aren’t there to fix one another, they’re there for each other.

Note that they still both have some walls up in TSATS! That doesn’t make their relationship any less real, but I think that is also very much to be expected from characters who have actively had to deal with trauma. And even then, even without knowing everything, they still care and are there for each other, no matter how frustrating it may be to be out of the know.

They’re also not «complete opposites». In TSATS we literally read that they have more similarities than meets the eye (which can be read as the light-darkness symbolism.) They balance each other out and they’re ALLOWED to argue. Did you guys know that? It’s important to me that you know that.

Did you know characters/people can argue and then solve the situation/argument using healthy communication? Shocking, I know.

I do think the start of Solangelo wasn’t smoothly written whatsoever. Will was kind of used as a puppet and obviously put there ‘for Nico.’ Do I think Will should get more character separate from his relationship/his father? Yes. Do I think he has no character at all? No. But also… It’s a children’s book. You can’t expect the best written character in history from a book written for middle schoolers.

They wouldn’t be the first canon ship with a bad start, so I’m not too fed up about that. If I would ask for anything, I’d like a book/short story about Will as a character (his backstory/just anything) or just a story in which they grow more in their relationship and as separate characters (though not broken up).

My point mostly is this; if you really don’t like it, you don’t have to interact or read or do anything, really. (Yay!) Don’t use the Solangelo tag for your hatred. Especially not if it’s an unproblematic ship.

#solangelo #nico di angelo #will solace #tsats rant #kinda…. that feels like wrong tagging #tsats #the sun and the star #pjo #pjoverse #pjo fandom #pjo hoo toa tsats #pjo hoo toa #rrverse #pjo rant

64 notes · View notes

alpaca-clouds · 2 months ago

Text

Solarpunk Game Ideas: CRPGs

Here I go on with my ideas for Indie Solarpunk games, that are not some sort of building sim or farming sim - and of course I cannot do this without mentioning CRPGs.

Mind you, despite what you might think given that over the course of the last year I have barely played anything but a certain CRPG (BG3), CRPGs are actually not really a genre of game I am super into, even though some of my favorite games are CRPGs. But as a genre in general I usually like faster paced games a lot more. It is just that when I hyperfocus on something that usually is a result of me getting obsessed with a character from it - and that is more likely to happen with a CRPG than with a metroidvania.

But how to do a Solarpunk CRPG?

The Issue:

Look, there really are not any CRPGs right now that are in any way Solarpunk. And I would argue this goes again back to the issue that people struggle with telling stories within a Solarpunk setting, as they are too set in the idea that a) Solarpunk needs to be an utopian setting (or a setting that pretends to be utopian) and b) that utopian settings will not allow for any conflict whatsoever. Additionally there is of course also the issue that most CRPGs do involve violence in form of fighting, which is what a lot of people struggle with - even though some amazing indie games like Disco Elysium have shown very well, that you can do a CRPG without a combat system.

So, let's go over some ideas for Solarpunk CRPGs.

Idea #1: Off-Brand Princess Mononoke

If you follow me for any time, you might know that to me there is no movie or piece of media that is more Solarpunk than Princess Mononoke. And thankfully we can easily build a sort of CRPG around it, either with a similar historical setting or just a fullon fantasy setting. Because remember: Solarpunk does not need to be Science Fiction!

No matter whether you go with a historical setting or just a full-on fantasy setting, the idea is fairly easy: The player character has a magical problem and they need the help of some sort of spirits. As they travel to the place of the spirit, they find out that the spirits are in a war with some group of humans, that are encroaching of the home of the spirits, because they try to access some sort of ressources, driving the spirits nearly to extinction. The player would have the choice in the end which side to join - or whether they will try to broker peace between spirits and humans.

Bonus: You'd have several choices how to play the game - but it is not a clear cut "good" and "evil", especially when the humans might have good reasons to need the ressource.

Idea #2: A SciFi Conspiracy

This idea is very much for a somewhat shorter game. Think a bit more like "Shadowrun Returns". Something that has more like 15 to 20 minutes of a runtime.

We go with the idea I brought up in one of the other ideas before: We have a Solarpunk world, that runs on mainly anarchist principles, and there are some arguments going about over some of the security mechanisms. (Anarchy can after all not properly work, if some people have weapons and others don't have - but you cannot undo the existence of weapons.) Our main character is part of some security force, that mostly are just trained to deescalate situations, but are in some cases allowed to use force.

And when a group of pro-capitalists or maybe even actual fascists start a conspiracy to take over the government, and they already have some co-conspirators in all positions. And the main characters need to navigate this with a mixture of diplomacy and violence, with the player getting a fairly good influence on how this plays out.

Idea #3: A Natural Disaster

Let me take one approach, that is inspired by one of the most Solarpunk movies, that is not by Ghibli: Misaki no Mayogai. That movie takes place after the Tohoku earthquake and is very much about mutual aid in the community.

And here is the thing: No, CRPGs do not need to have combat. So this is an idea for a CRPG without combat. We have a natural disaster of some sort. Honestly it does not matter. An earthquake, a flood, a vulcano... Can be anything. It just did destroy a lot of stuff in a big area. And the game is very much about rebuilding after this disaster, about people helping each other through mutual aid, and then building something better from it. It could feature a society going full Solarpunk if you want to (like a positive post-apocalypse) or just something getting a bit better. Build back better and such.

And if you are interested in creative Solarpunk endeavors, I would love to invite you into the Solarpunk Creatives community! :)

#solarpunk #lunarpunk #game idea #indie games #indiedev #solarpunk games #scifi #clifi #climate fiction

65 notes · View notes

imreallyonthishellsite · 4 months ago

Text

facts abt my post canon bsd au (mostly atsushi and ada centric)

◇ takes place 4 years after everything with the DoA and Hunting Dogs is settled

◇ atsushi grows his hair back out so it's a little past his shoulders

◇ sigma joins the ADA

◇ fukuzawa retires but still comes around to check on his kids former employees and is on standby in case of any future disaster

◇ kunikida and ranpo agree to co-lead the agency. kunikida takes care of most of the paperwork and employee affairs (pour one out for kida) while ranpo keeps an eye out for cases that could be DoA level threat

◇ everybody gets therapy 🥳🎉!! that government hush money compensation check for being attacked by the Hunting Dogs was partially spent on a getting therapists who could actually help them with their issues (pour another one out for the therapists bc the shit they have to deal with...)

◇ genderfluid atsushi (he/she/they), agender dazai (he/him or it/its), nonbinary sigma (they/he)

◇ kunichuuzai canon. dazai and kunikida got together first, then kunikida and chuuya and finally after many schemes dazai and chuuya talked abt their feelings for each other and got together shortly after

◇ atsushi joins a local community college because she realized she can do stuff for herself outside of working. he's studying literature

◇ kyoka and kenji tried to go regular school for a short while before they realized that that they hated it, so kunikida toutered them helped them get a GED (public school couldn't handle them anyway)

(Idt its that bad but just in case) tw: implied w33d usage, implied paranoia, implied hallucinations.

◇ reason why atsushi was finally sent to therapy was bc they were convinced to get high to help their anxiety (one guess who convinced them) and had a bad trip. they got extremely paranoid, mentioned times he would hallucinate and had several concerning statements about himself. when he sobered up the agency said they were going and she only agreed to go if dazai went and surprisingly dazai agreed to go.(dazai planned to go one session and was somehow conned by his therapist to continue going)

◇ found family dazai, atsushi, Kyoka

◇ but also blood family bc wow dazai and atsushi are half siblings!! (Their dad was a hoe, I'll get into in a separate post)

◇ atsushi's orphanage gets shut down (ada birthday gift for atsushi) and gets a documentary made due to the horrific treatment of the children there

◇ sparring buddies chuuya and atsushi

◇ kyoka, kenji, aya and q friendship

◇ after being turned into a vampire akutagawa has sharper canines than the average human and while his lungs are slightly better he carries any inhaler with him just in case

◇ atsushi has more control over his ability in the future and can now shift into his full tiger form on command and communicate with byakko

◇ dazai is also working to control his ability more and can now shut it off for a few minutes before it kicks back on

◇ byakko is a sentient ability similar to arahbaki. she has been around for centuries and has had many different hosts, one who was the author of The Book.

◇ how did they defeat fyodor? Uhhhh he got eaten by rats, turned into one, the tiger ate him and bc of ability bs he stayed dead next question

◇ dazai also has slightly long hair and now uses a cane

◇ tanazaki sibs finally work on their codependency issues

◇ yosano and tachihara go to lunch every few weeks to talk abt shunzen and bond

◇ akuatsulucy canon

◇ sigma and ranpo bet on random shit together and ranpo is surprised at how talented sigma is at betting

◇ ranpoe are long distance relationship atm but poe is making arrangements to move to yokohama

◇ mori steps down as head of mafia for...reasons and kouyou swifty takes charge of the pm (it was supposed to be chuuya but he threatened to leave the whole city and dazai agreed to help sooo kouyou)

◇ atsushi and lucy take edibles

◇ atsushi and yosano both hate being called angel. If you do it it's the fastest way to lose an arm

☆

ive got nothing else to add to this atm so I might make second part one day. this was made before the recent chapters and wildly ignores canon and is built off of most of my headcanons. Bye 👋🏽 👋🏽

66 notes · View notes

matan4il · 10 months ago

Text

Daily update post:

Today, people in Israel are really loving Germany. If you're wondering why, it's related to SA's lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ. While the US, the UK and Canada all said that SA's accusation against Israel is baseless, Germany is actually putting its money where its mouth is. Instead of just saying the accusation is not rooted in reality, Germany has asked to join the lawsuit as a third party on Israel's side, protesting the misuse of the convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide. For the record, in the wake of the Holocaust, Israel was one of the countries pushing for the adoption of this convention, and one of the first to sign it. It's unbelievable poetic justice, that it's the Germans now coming to the defence of the Jewish state.

Yesterday, an independent Palestinian terrorist attack was carried out, one Israeli was injured, 3 terrorists were eliminated as they were breaking into a Jewish community. The man who was injured had identifies the cuts in the barbed wire fence, was hit by bullets, but was able to alert Israeli security forces, who stopped the attack. Two of the terrorists were 16 years old, the third was 19 years old. Firearms, knives and an axe were found on them. Here's CCTV footage of them while they were breaking into the community:

As the international coalition's forces have moved from defensive to offensive measures against the Houthis (the Iranian funded terrorists from Yemen), Israel is preparing for possible retribution carried out against our people, especially the southern city of Eilat.

The Israeli hostages in Gaza have not had their medications for 99 days. The Red Cross has refused to take these meds from the families, saying that while Hamas doesn't allow it, they can't pass anything to the hostages anyway. Now there's talk about Qatar possibly forcing Hamas to allow it, maybe as a part of some deal. We'll see. There's a lot of cases where reports from Qatar say Hamas have agreed to this or that (mostly in terms of agreeing to a new hostage deal), and then it turns out it was just the Qataris' suggestions to Hamas, being reported as if Hamas had accepted them. Against this backdrop, the Palestinian Red Crescent has reported it continues to provide ambulatory, mobile medical services to Palestinians who can't make it to hospitals, including giving them their meds.

Meanwhile, SA is proving once more that anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism, because it is being used to hurt Jews worldwide, by removing the Jewish captain, David Teeger, from the national cricket team under the excuse that there are anti-Israel protests against him.

Blinken says that Saudi Arabia is still interested in normalization (meaning, a peace agreement) with Israel. I'm going to be honest, I don't think it's a coincidence that it took the Saudis this long to say it. If Israel had folded, and stopped its war against Hamas, I suspect the Saudis would have taken this to mean that Israel is not strong enough to be an ally against Iran. The fact that the war continues, despite international pressure to stop (and effectively surrender to Iranian-funded Hamas), gives moderate Arab states hope that an alliance with Israel against Iran won't fail them and crumble at the first sign of trouble. I believe that's something that hasn't been talked about enough, how moderate Arab countries have been watching this war with Hamas, and how destructive it would be, if Hamas would have won. And any scenario where Hamas still exists and rules Gaza, even in a limited capacity, would be understood as their victory.

Jewish students at Harvard are suing the university for its longstanding failure to fight antisemitism, including in allowing antisemitic material to be taught in class. This is a reminder that the issue was never Claudine Gay specifically, there's a much bigger problem at hand in Harvard and other western universities, and her resignation is just the first step. I'm glad Jewish students are taking this initiative, to force Harvard to take more steps.

The Israeli Air Force has drawn this imitation of the yellow ribbon, worn as a part of the call to release the Israeli hostages, in the skies of Gaza (pic taken from inside southern Israel):

This is 71 years old Uri ben Tzvi.

I got to watch an interview with him. Uri survived the Hamas massacre on Oct 7 at kibbutz Be'eri, he and his wife hid together for hours, including 3.5 hours during which terrorists were rampaging through their home. Two hours later, they were saved thanks to their son, an IDF officer in an elite unit, who managed to make it out of his own home, and join security forces. But Uri recounted how almost any noise makes him jump now, and how almost all of his age group was wiped out. When he goes to the dining hall (kibbutzim are communal, everyone eats meals together), his friends that he used to sit with are no longer there. He insisted that Oct 7 was a kind of Holocaust, as Jewish kids were once again hiding in closets, terrified for their lives.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #israelunderattack #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish

191 notes · View notes

funhouse-mirror-barbie · 4 months ago

Text

My problem with Sallie May—a discussion of representation:

There’s been some discourse around Sallie May lately that’s gotten me thinking more about her. Not really as a character, but what her purpose is in the narrative and how she’s treated by the fandom and the show’s creators.

Sallie May is an interesting case study in representation without depth, and I wanted to talk a little more about what that means.

OPINION DISCLAIMER—I’m gonna be talking about how I personally view lgbtq+ and queer representation and what I consider to be well-rounded representation vs. empty or shallow representation.

Also. I am only one member of the queer community—I don’t speak for all lgbtq+ people, and I am DEFINITELY NOT trying to talk over other’s experiences. My opinions are my own, and if you agree with me, cool! And if you don’t agree with me, that’s great too!!

Also also. I don’t think I should have to say this but, this is NOT a personal attack on ANYONE involved w/i the production and creation of Helluva Boss. This is my own analysis, b/c I like to talk about media and the ways we interact with and interpret it.

So, with all of that out of the way, if you’re interested in my analysis, let’s talk about Sallie May!! (TLDR @ end of post)

First do want to make it clear that my issue is not actually with her like…existing. Or with her general characterization. Mostly because, even with Hell’s Belles, she still doesn’t really have a very strong characterization to begin with, and isn’t a fully-fleshed out character.

In her initial appearance she was a bit-character, bordering on just being a straight up background character. She had three lines in her debut (and to date, ONLY) appearance in the show proper.

Until Hell’s Belles we knew next to nothing about her other than that she likes violence and also that she has a neighborhood body count? Which. I don’t know if they were trying to imply that she’s a serial killer, I doubt that was the intent. Or maybe they were. I can’t know.

Regardless, I honestly believe they didn’t really think the implications of that writing decision through at all. There’s a very real and very harmful “trans serial killer/murderer” trope in media, and while the impact is definitely lessened by the vast majority of HB characters being violent murderers—it still feels weird having the only trans character we’ve seen at this point be literally INTRODUCED to the audience by the fact that she’s a murderer, and to then be given NO further information on her.

Luckily, we DID get more information about Sallie, even if it was still very little and surface level. In Hell’s Belles we learn that Sallie May and Millie used to be a lot closer, and that Sallie May felt left behind when Millie moved to the big city.

In the short, Sallie May expresses her frustration with having to pick up the slack around their family’s ranch, and that she’s been lonely without Millie there. Millie and Sally have a little heart to heart and are able to make up, and the short ends.

This is a nice little piece of backstory, and does give us slightly more insight into Sallie May and what her life is like, but because the episode is a short, we still really don’t get to know her as a person.

Like Millie, Sallie May doesn’t have any real depth. We only know starter information about her, like that she cares about her family, and that she’s violent.

But unlike Millie, Sallie May is a minor character. She has (at the time of my writing this) appeared in ONE episode of the actual show, and one short. She is a minor character, and the ONLY transgender character in the show with a name and lines.

So. Okay. Why does literally any of that matter??? Who cares if Sallie May is an under-developed minor background character??

Well, in my opinion, it matters because the show-runners frame and treat Sallie May as if she is a main character, without actually writing her—or any trans character for that matter—as a main character.

This really rubs me the wrong way, because it comes across as tokenism.

In my opinion since she was introduced, Sallie May has become a token transgender character—an excuse for the HB writers to not write or develop more transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse characters and stories, because they already have one.

I worry that, if anyone rightfully points out that HB is severely lacking in gender-diverse characters and storylines, the creators and fandom will point to Sallie May as “proof” that they do have representation.

If HB is as radically queer and LGBTQ+ friendly as it claims to be, why do we only have ONE named trans character in the show’s 5 years of existence?

Due to all of the above, I find I can’t agree with people who praise the show for its representation, because of how stunted it is. I just don’t think I, or anyone, should have to read sources outside of the narrative to learn important parts of a character’s identity.

I feel this very deeply as a lesbian and nonbinary person—I understand that most of the women characters in Helluva Boss are sapphic, but I ONLY know that because of the HB Pride Print that came out just this year. I have not actually gotten to SEE any of these character’s sexualities fully represented, and it’s because of this that I struggle to see myself represented in HB in any way.

I do need to clarify that what I am NOT SAYING is that no one can feel represented by Sallie May, or that if they do, they’ve been tricked somehow by writers into thinking they got more representation than they actually did.

Sallie May is a very popular character, and because of that I honestly would like to see more of her. I want to see more of her because she’s the only trans character on the show, and I want her to be properly developed.

I talked previously about how I enjoyed Hell’s Belles, but wished we had gotten to see more of Sallie and Millie’s relationship in the actual show. Their relationship has a lot of potential to show the unique ways in which siblings interact and navigate conflict, but we only got to see a few seconds of them interacting in Sallie’s debut. The short gives us an idea of what Sallie’s personality is like, but it’s so brief that I still don’t feel like we really KNOW her on a deeper level.

To me, three lines + one short with a brief backstory doesn’t feel like the sort of amazing representation that fans of the show laud Helluva Boss for.

As a series that often boasts about its queer and trans rep and inclusivity, I can’t help but feel like Sallie May should either have been a main character from the very beginning, or that she shouldn’t have been trotted out like some sort of bastion of trans representation, when the only indication she is trans is her horns/white roots.

And yes. As a genderqueer gay I KNOW that it can be extremely tiring to have all of our stories revolve around our struggles and ONLY be about being LGBTQ+. I also want to see a variety of stories about queer people like me going on adventures and getting to do things that don’t revolve around our struggles. But I also want to still actually see myself represented.

Not just know outside the story that, “oh that character is nonbinary, but it will not be mentioned in the narrative in any way and will not ever be important in the context of this character I’m supposed to see myself in.”

Madeline Maye talked about this specifically in her critique of Helluva Boss, and her pointing this out was kind of what made me realize that, yeah. Anyone watching Helluva Boss for the first time would probably have NO IDEA that Sallie Mae is a transgender woman.

It also made me realize that the only reason I knew that Sallie May was trans was because her VA, Morgana Ignis, who is also a trans woman, tweeted about it, and the official Helluva Boss Twitter retweeted it.

The original tweet is hidden now (Ignis has since left Twitter—idk why, I genuinely hope it wasn’t due to harassment—that’s never okay) but I was able to confirm that this was the case based on the HB wiki, and the official HB’s retweet still being up:

The only confirmation we’ve ever had that Sallie May is transgender has been outside of the show—either from social media Q&As and the show’s wiki or merch—

Sallie May has a LOT of merch. Like a lot, this isn’t even all of it. And yes, SOME of the merch is from the recently released “Hell’s Belles” short, but the vast majority of it is from the 3 years since her initial introduction.

The vast majority of it is also highly sexualized, and highlights Sallie’s penis through her swimsuit. Now, I’m aware that Morgana Ignis requested this, and I honestly don’t have too much of an opinion on it. I’m not a trans woman, and I’ve seen multiple opinions from trans women on this design choice for Sally’s merch. I’ve seen some trans women say that they liked and felt represented by this choice, and some say that they felt objectified and that it made them dysphoric. This is one of those situations where I don’t think everyone can be pleased—like I said at the beginning of this post, LGBTQ+ people are as diverse in their opinions as we are in our identities and self-expression, and I think everyone’s feelings regarding Sallie’s portrayals in the merch are valid.

I bring it up because, other than the wiki explaining that Sallie May has “male horns”, this is the only other way to confirm that Sally is trans, as it is never acknowledged in the story. I bring it up because I don’t think merch should be the only way an LGBTQ character’s identity is validated.

I assume that all of Sallie Mae’s merch is because of her popularity, but I also can’t help but wonder if this has contributed to the impression that Sallie is a main character, when, in the narrative so far, she is still a minor one.

I don’t believe that when she was originally created to be a “token trans” character, but since her introduction, there have not been any main characters that are transgender, nonbinary, or genderqueer.

We’ve only had one other trans character with a speaking role—this imp:

Who is FTM. He seems to know Blitz from a while back, and talks Blitz into staying at the party. Then he watches him drunkenly make out with random people with another (I assume) trans imp who is probably MTF:

(Also—as an aside, this scene kinda bothers me?? I don’t THINK this was the intention at all, but having a VERY CLEARLY drunk off of his ass Blitz, who can’t meaningfully consent at this time, being watched, and almost like…leered at by two of the only visibly trans characters in the show…it feels gross. Like why are two of the only other confirmed trans characters voyeuristically watching a drunk man who can’t consent making out? It would be one thing if we had a story full of different trans characters who acted in all sorts of different ways, but at this time these two are 2/3rds of the show’s ENTIRE trans rep. With the other 1/3rd being introduced to us as a serial killer. Like. Guys. What is it that you’re trying to say?)

Apparently Sallie May’s VA has stated the below on Social Media, and stated that there’s a lot more coming for Sallie May in the future. And that’s great!!! I really really want to believe that.

But I look at the above and can’t help but wonder…if this is the case, why did it take three years for her to get another appearance? In just a short? Why wasn’t she given more focus and importance from the very beginning, in her introductory episode? If her original appearance wasn’t representative of her and Millie’s relationship then why did they even write it that way???

I want to believe all of the above—that Sallie May actually WILL get to become a main character. But I look at the way she’s been barely portrayed, and the way that she’s basically been used to just sell merch, and it makes me sad.

I would love to see more of her, more of any trans characters that aren’t 2 second background characters, but I honestly have a hard time believing we ever will when the episodes take as long as the do to come out, and the when the episodes focus so heavily on shipping pre-existing pairings.

As a lesbian, I would love to see Sallie May get a girlfriend, but given Spindlehorse’s track record with lackluster sapphic pairings and representation, I don’t have much hope of seeing that either.

I just. If you managed to get all the way through this heinously long post, thank you for reading. If you didn’t, that’s very fair (lol) and I’ve got the tldr for you here—

TLDR:

—My issue with Sallie May is not actually with Sallie May at all. It’s with the fact that we don’t get enough of Sallie May, or any trans characters, for that matter.

—You can, of course, feel represented by any character, but I think it’s important to ask yourself how you are being represented, and if you are actually being represented.

—Not every queer/trans/lgbt story has to explicitly be about being queer. The stories in which we are represented should be as diverse and vibrant as all the members of our community. But, I still want to actually be able to tell and to see that the characters are lgbtq+. If a character is a lesbian or sapphic, I want to see her show an interest in other women. If a character is transgender I want to see that acknowledged by the narrative, whether it’s the character mentioning their transition or just saying they’re trans. I want to SEE myself and other queer identities. Not just know that they’re there.

#helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critique #helluva boss critic #representation #queer representation #queer rep in media #funhouse convo #media criticism #media critique #queer representation in media #my worst fear is that people will see this—go ‘HEY SALLIE MAY IS GREAT REP!!! WHY DO YOU HATE HER???’#and completely ignore the MULTIPLE times I explicitly said that the issue was that we don’t get enough of Sallie May #that she’s a minor character that is treated as a main character by the fandom and show #and that that could potentially hinder us getting more of her or of any trans characters for that matter #and that I WANT TO SEE MORE OF HER AND WANT TO SEE HER DEVELOPED

59 notes · View notes