#in retrospect . you didn’t see it because he wasn’t dealing with it at all.

[sallytwo]

i liked ben krieg for all of s1 but compared to other characters (like ford bridger etc) he wasn’t super interesting beyond being funny and awesome. and then i swear to god. a company of ice and profit. that one episode recontextualizes everything about his character and then you just leave him and its supposed to be a hopeful end. but god it’s so tragic. all of it.

[kesujo]

Chapter 3 - Miss Adorable

Previous chapter here.

It wasn’t even the full week before Seojun had his first encounter with another succubus.

It was immediately obvious that she was a succubus, evident by the fact that he saw her arrive not at the front door of the residence but landing on the balcony of the bedroom he was replacing the bedsheets for. What was especially startling was that it seemed like a mini-Taeyeon had landed on the balcony, her big eyes peering at him in curiosity, her wings folding back and disappearing back inside her body.

“Hello,” Seojun greeted the demoness as she stepped through the sliding glass door. Here stood another strikingly beautiful female, although her beauty laid mostly in her soft, friendly features; Seojun knew he was fortunate to have been offered the deal Taeyeon gave him, and this was just confirmation of the fact. Immediately, his mind jumped to what her naked body would look like, his eyes flickering to the soft curves of her chest and down to her hips, flickering back up at the realization that doing so was rude.

Fortunately, the mini-Taeyeon didn’t seem to mind, in fact giving him a luminescent smile. “Hello! It’s nice to meet you. I’m Yeoreum, you must be Taeyeon’s newest servant.” Her cutesy, bright voice stood in contrast to Taeyeon’s stable, confident voice. From his preconceived notions of what a succubus would be like, and because Taeyeon fit them so well, Seojun had just figured that all succubae were like her: calm, collected, oozing with an aura of sexiness, and carrying about her enough confidence to make a rabid wolf whimper. However, in just her greeting, Seojun could tell that his assessment was wrong, thankfully not disastrously so since Yeoreum seemed just too friendly. Which, in retrospect, was a ridiculous thing to just now realize, because of course succubae would have different personalities, just as humans did.

“In a few days, yes. It’s nice to meet you Yeoreum, my name is Seojun.”

Yeoreum laughed, waving her hand dismissively at his overly polite mannerisms. “There’s no need to be so formal! Is Big Sis Taeyeon home right now?”

“Yeah, I think—”

“Oh Yeoreum, you’re here?” Seojun turned at the sound of Taeyeon’s steady voice, seeing Taeyeon at the entrance of the bedroom. “I see you’ve already met Seojun.”

She nodded animatedly, strolling up to the man and slinging an arm around his shoulders. Seojun jumped slightly at the contact, trying his best to not let the pleasant feeling of her smooth skin or the pleasant smell of her hair brushing against his cheek. “Yep! We’re best friends already. Right, Seojun?”

“A-Are we?” he asked back, his laugh laced with traces of nervousness.

Yeoreum’s soft, red lips pulled into an adorable pout. “Whaat? What do you mean ‘are we?’”

Taeyeon laughed, clearly amused at the younger succubus’s antics. “He only learned about succubae a few days ago, give him a break.”

“…And you’re making him your servant already?”

“Yeah,” Taeyeon replied. Yeoreum turned her head to take a good look at the man whose shoulders her arm was slung around, Seojun looking back with an awkward smile on his face. Taeyeon, on the other hand, had a contemplative look on her face. “You know what, I think I’ll treat you. When did you last feed?”

The younger succubus shrugged, retracting her arms. “Two weeks ago, probably?”

The mention of the topic flared up Seojun’s imagination, images of this happy-go-lucky, adorable specimen of a female naked, of her perky tits and pink nipples shaking vigorously as she bounced on his cock, her face contorted in pleasure, her tongue lolling out, moans coming out of her parted lips in an uncontrollable stream of ecstasy flashing into his mind.

“Oh, I’m sure Seojun will give you more than your fill. But first, what did you come here for?”

The younger demoness pouted again, jumping forward and grabbing the arm of the bemused Taeyeon. “Can’t I visit my Big Sis when I miss her?”

Taeyeon laughed, her eyes sparkling with a joy Seojun had never seen before. He could understand why; Yeoreum was so adorable in every way, from her mannerisms to her voice to even her choice of clothing, Seojun couldn’t help but smile. To think just last week, he was some random nobody who spent his twenty-something years without having a girlfriend; now, he was in the same room with two top-class beauties who seemed to actually want him there. The very idea seemed to jump straight out of some poorly written porno, but here he was, in the presence of two dazzlingly attractive young-appearing women he would’ve never even dared to dream of having any kind of relationship with.

“Aww, you missed your Big Sis?” Taeyeon cooed, her mellowing facial features showing that she finally gave in to the barrage of cuteness Yeoreum was assaulting her with, wrapping her arms around the smaller succubus. “How have you been? Still getting used to everything? Did you discover your Trait yet?”

“Oh!” Yeoreum’s eyes lit up with excitement, an adorable, toothy smile aimed at Seojun’s mistress-to-be. “I didn’t tell you yet because I wanted to show you, but it finally manifested! I’ve been practicing these last few years and was hoping to show you.”

Taeyeon laughed, unable to help herself from patting the head of the animated female. “Is that so? Well, luckily for you, I have just the opportunity for you.” The two sets of eyes moved to Seojun, who in turn felt a spike of anxiety and anticipation. “You probably can’t tell, right? That he’s a delicacy?”

Yeoreum’s nose crinkled as she tested her nose but to no avail. She shook her head, another pout forming on her lips. “I can’t…”

The smile on Taeyeon’s face stayed as she replied, “It’s fine, you’ll get there. Take some time to acquaint yourself with Seojun’s kind of scent, you’ll regret letting such delicacies slip between your fingers. But I doubt you’ll ever find anyone as great as Seojun.” Hearing Taeyeon so proudly boast about him created a swelling sense of pride inside the albeit embarrassed man—but at the same time, hearing the praise be for something that he, for all he knew, had absolutely no control over gave him mixed feelings. He once harbored jealousy towards those actors and idols with great genetics that granted them handsome faces and great bodies, but now Seojun felt like a hypocrite. Through little effort of his own—in fact, less so than those celebrities, as they had to work hard to maintain their great bodies despite having good genes—he gained the benefits of attracting Taeyeon simply for … what, happening create the type of semen that massively appealed to succubae?

But above all, hearing the boastful way Taeyeon talked about him to Yeoreum gave him a confidence he, the loner guy that he was, never felt before. It felt almost dangerous, the amount of confidence that was ballooning in his chest, and Seojun reveled in it. Screw all those complicated thoughts about ‘not deserving this’; he worked plenty hard up until this point in his life. And really, who was he to complain about the great sex he’s been having with Taeyeon the past few days, and now with Yeoreum? Just the thought of her long eyelashes fluttered shut, her plump lips parted slightly, her round tits jiggling at the fierce motion of her fucking herself with his cock made it twitch in anticipation.

“When was the last time you had an orgasm?”

Yeoreum contemplated that, an action too cute considering the question being posed. “I don’t know, maybe a decade or two ago?”

“And you know how infrequently I orgasm, right?” Yeoreum nodded, unsure where the conversation was going. “Well, the first time we fucked, Seojun brought me to orgasm.” Yeoreum’s eyes widened, her eyes landing on Seojun. He shuddered, again feeling the predatory look directed at him, but this time from eyes not from Taeyeon, but Yeoreum. Hearing those words, something about Yeoreum changed; whereas before her facial expression carried primarily an innocent excitement, now hidden within were hints of arousal and desire.

“Do you want a taste?”

Yeoreum, with her face turned towards Seojun, nodded with such a brilliant display of excitement that Seojun felt nearly blinded by it. “Yeah! May I?”

Seojun suddenly froze up. Wait. Right now? Right here? In front of Taeyeon?

He had gotten used to Taeyeon, although he would be lying if he said that having sex with her still didn’t make him feel anxious about his performance. But at least with Taeyeon, he had the confidence Taeyeon instilled in him over the few sessions they’ve had. It was mere minutes ago that Seojun met Yeoreum. Could he please her? What if he didn’t and embarrassed Taeyeon? What if he did so badly that not only Yeoreum regarded him with disgust, but so did Taeyeon? What if she ended up abandoning him? He couldn’t have that. This was the best thing that’s ever happened in his life—he wasn’t about to let himself lose it.

“Mmhm. And don’t by embarrassed or anxious, Seojun. Just pretend Yeoreum is me.”

Taeyeon’s comforting words helped appease his anxiety a little, but what truly did the trick was the adorable way Yeoreum skipped up to him and guided him onto the bed, saying with an addictively excited tone, “It’ll be more comfortable on the bed, come on!”

A smile sprouted on Seojun’s face: Yeoreum was giving off very strong dongsaeng, young-and-energetic-junior-at-work-who-was-assigned-to-shadow-you kind of vibes, so much so that Seojun was startled when she entrapped his legs between her slim, milky-soft thighs. Her butt was planted on his legs, a few inches in front of his knees, her arms at the hem of his shirt, already moving to pull it off. “Wha—?” But Seojun caught himself, unfortunately not before Yeoreum caught on to what he was saying.

“What do you mean?” she said, giggling in a criminally adorable manner, “Of course we have to be naked for sex!”

Hearing the word from such a cutesy voice was jarring, but that sharp juxtaposition somehow made it all the sexier. “Right.”

Hearing the stiffness in his voice, Yeoreum’s smile shifted into a gentle one. She patted his shoulder gently after removing his shirt. “Aw, don’t be shy~” she insisted, caressing his significantly more built arm—something Seojun had spent next to zero effort in the past few days to obtain. “Let’s do it comfortably, OK? Unlike Big Sis Taeyeon, I like more normal things.”

Taeyeon scoffed, eliciting another giggle from Yeoreum. “Well, excuse me.”

“Sorry Taeyeon, love you!” Yeoreum exclaimed, making a big heart with her arms directed at the smiling older female.

“I’m just going to go into my office and brood about how weird I am.” It was Taeyeon’s turn to pout, Yeoreum’s smile growing only wider in reaction.

“Noo, staay~” she insisted, reaching out to her while remaining on Seojun’s lap. “You’re not weird~”

“You want me to stay and watch you have sex with someone? Are you sure being an exhibitionist doesn’t qualify you as being weird?”

The younger succubus burst into a twinkling laughter, her eyes disappearing into black crescent moons. Everything about the laughter, from the pleasant sound of it to the way her face brightened, transferred over to Seojun like a contagious virus. “Don’t say that! You’ll give Seojun weird ideas!”

“It’s OK Yeoreum, I don’t think you’re weird even if you are into exhibitionism.”

“I’m not!” she whined, “See Taeyeon? You’re already giving him weird ideas!”

“Well, he said that he liked that, didn’t he?”

Both of their gazes fell onto him suddenly, causing Seojun to stammer from the sudden attention from both sets of beautiful eyes. “U-Uh, did I? No, I didn’t, but I don’t mind.”

Hearing that, Yeoreum perked up. “OK, so are you ready?”

Seojun didn’t even realize until then, but that brief exchange greatly eased his nerves. Was it an intentional ploy from Yeoreum, or did it happen by chance? Seeing the excited gleam in her cat-like eyes and the confident, playful smile on her cherry-red lips made the prospect of fucking the second insanely attractive female of the week seem suddenly less daunting, and it was then that Seojun decided that Yeoreum’s bubbly, friendly, cute personality just naturally put the people around her at ease. “Are you?”

Seojun tried for a bit of confidence, and hearing Yeoreum’s sly reply, he was thankful it paid off. “Come here and find out.”

Seojun acquiesced, reaching forward and pulling the frame-hugging, midriff-exposing top she was wearing off, leaving her in a white bra that, unfortunately, did a fantastic job covering her womanly bits. “Damn, your body feels so nice,” Seojun commented, his hands gliding over her silky-smooth skin, reaching around her arms and unclasping the bra that was holding her mounds upright. As he let the piece of undergarment down, so too did Yeoreum’s breasts, the pink nipples sitting atop each mound candidly pointing at the mattress they were seated on. “And your boobs are bigger than they look.” Seojun’s hands traveled to her supple boobs, feeling the marshmallow-y texture of the twin mounds in his palms and fingers.

Enamored with the softness of her breasts, Seojun’s hands stayed on them, eyes locked onto Yeoreum’s malleable mounds under the assault of his hands. Seojun could feel a rush in equal parts of serotonin and arousal, Yeoreum’s soft sighs and mewls of approval only aiding in it. “Your hands … you’re so rough … but it feels so good…” Her eyes were lightly closed, her lips pressed together, her fists clenched at her sides, her chest moving with the rhythm of her deepening breaths.

“Hmm, I can at least tell that your tits are ready,” he said, capturing both erect nubs between his fingers and gently squeezing them. Yeoreum let out a cute yelp, her back arching into his hands. Everything about her was soft, from her skin to her voice even to the way she reacted to his hands, yet another stark contrast to Taeyeon. With Taeyeon, even if she played the role as the submissive, Seojun always knew in the back of his mind that Taeyeon was the one in charge; with Yeoreum, it was different. Her entire body submitted to him easily, as if it was only natural.

“Seojun…” her whine still kept her cutesy tone, something that surprisingly turned Seojun on even more. There was just something about the adorable demoness maintaining her cuteness while her sexy body squirmed under his touch that was immensely appealing to him.

“Look at these cute little pink buttons, just waiting to be pressed,” Seojun continued, his fingers playing with the peaks of both mountains. It was addicting, not just feeling Yeoreum’s boobs inside his hands but also listening to her soft sounds of satisfaction.

“Stop teasing mee…” she pouted, her eyes opening and capturing Seojun’s gaze. His eyes flickered towards her big, dark-brown orbs, immediately enraptured in the longing expression on her face. Maybe it was the contrast between the adorable pout on her face and the sexy body of the woman sitting on his legs, or maybe it was the adorableness of the pout itself, but Seojun found himself obliging to Yeoreum’s silent request.

“Do you want it?”

Seojun’s domineering side came out naturally, or perhaps it was Yeoreum herself who drew it out. Despite most definitely being older than him, her youthful appearance instilled inside Seojun a feeling of superiority, the natural aegyo in her every action only promoting his desire to be in control. Thankfully, Yeoreum was more than happy to oblige.

“Yes!”

She reached forward to the hem of Seojun’s pants, but he stopped her before she could do much else. “Nuh uh,” he teased her, “Did I say you could do that?”

Yeoreum retracted her hands, a guilty look befalling her face. “I’m sorry…”

Seojun couldn’t help but break character for a bit, a smile stretching the corner of his lips apart. “Let’s do yours first.”

Before he could even move, Yeoreum’s tail whipped out from behind her and tore the cloth cleanly off her legs, casually tossing the bisected clothing to the side of the bed. And there was another sign of Seojun’s enhancements; although he couldn’t react to Yeoreum’s speed, his eyes could follow her movements whereas before they couldn’t. “Oh, or you can just do that.”

Yeoreum giggled, scooching closer to Seojun. “Sorry, I’m just a little impatient. You can feel how wet I am, right?”

Seojun nodded, biting his lip in an attempt to contain the moan at the feeling of her wet folds rubbing her secreted sticky fluids onto his upper thighs. Although this was the first time feeling a woman’s wet folds rubbing against his leg, Seojun couldn’t help but feel like it felt better than it should’ve felt. Was it just him? Was it something to do with Yeoreum? “Just from Taeyeon’s description?”

It was Yeoreum’s turn to nod this time, the cute, opened-mouth smile never leaving her face. “What can I say? I’m an excitable person.”

“All this excitement,” Seojun retook control of the situation, his arm wrapping around her slim waist and his hand cupping her shapely ass, his index and middle finger reaching down and sliding along the slippery tissue of her entrance. Yeoreum yelped again, her cat-like eyes trained on him as another wave of pleasure washed over her small, sexy frame. “Just for me?”

She nodded, not losing an ounce of the adorable excitement she carried with her since the first moment of their encounter. “For you! Are you going to take responsibility for making me this excited?”

Again, Seojun was hit with another reality check: with Taeyeon, she always seemed so different while having sex than when carrying herself elsewhere. It wasn’t precisely that she lost her sex appeal when they weren’t fucking, it was just that Taeyeon tapped into that side of her more during sex. What this did to Seojun was establish a notion that a person completely changed during sex, to the point that he found himself copying Taeyeon in adapting the same type of personality change while doing the deed. However, Yeoreum lost none of her cuteness, but somehow added onto it a layer of sexiness that caused his arousal to flare higher and higher. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

Yeoreum giggled again, the beautiful noise resonating inside Seojun’s mind like an addicting song. “Well, are you going to just touch my pussy with your fingers, or are you going to impale it with that throbbing cock you have still hidden inside your pants?”

What was especially startling about the inquiry was the way Yeoreum’s playful, cute tone didn’t disappear in the slightest, even while saying such filthy words. “Why don’t you remove my pants and find out just how much my cock is throbbing and how ready it is to violate your tiny pussy?”

In a slight break of her cutesy character, Yeoreum bit the corner of her strikingly red lower lip in anticipation, her dark tail whipping out from behind her and stripping Seojun of both his shorts and boxers in one stroke, the two pieces of clothing tossed to the side. Yeoreum finally broke eye contact with him, her eyes drawn to the swollen tip of Seojun’s dick already oozing with a sliver of precum. “Oh, can’t waste this,” she chirped, her right hand reaching down and collecting the viscous bodily fluid between her thumb and index finger, swiftly bringing it to her lips.

Her eyes went wide as her tongue greedily lapped up the appetizer.

“Now you can tell why I was so quick to make him my servant, right?”

“Yeah … oh my…”

Hearing Taeyeon’s voice suddenly reminded Seojun that she was still in the room, but the casual way she and Yeoreum addressed each other calmed the embarrassment that he started to feel.

Yeoreum’s eyes snapped back to Seojun’s, that hungry predatory look reappearing in her gaze. “And you have more of that?”

Seojun, in part thanks to Yeoreum’s excessive friendliness, was already feeling comfortable enough to repeat her words from minutes before, “Why don’t you come and find out?”

Yeoreum giggled again, in such a cute and playful way that one might’ve never guessed she was naked, sitting inches away from a man’s fully erect penis. “I would be glad to. Don’t mind if I do~”

Seojun’s hands went to cup the soft skin of her butt in his hands, spreading her cheeks apart as she closed in and lowered herself onto his manhood. Her lips parted, a deep breath entering her lungs as his dick slipped between her soaking wet pussy lips and into her hot core.

Immediately, Seojun could feel it: the hotness of Yeoreum’s vaginal walls squeezing his dick, his entire body shuddering at the feeling of the sensitive sex organ pushing through the impossibly tight canal his cock was submerged inside, and the copious amounts of Yeoreum’s honey being slathered along the length of his shaft. After feeling his cock fully submerged inside the mewling succubus, Seojun could already start feeling his breath shortening. “Fuck,” he groaned, half in lust and half in confusion as to why he was already brought to this state.

“Do you like it? Do you like my pussy?”

This time, her whisper was much more sensual. Her slim arms were wrapped around his nape, her gaze gaining a fervor, rotating her hips against his groin with purpose. A smirk had now overtaken her features, but there was still a playful edge to it. “Yeah, fuck, you feel so good.”

It wasn’t long before Seojun could feel something strange. Not the sinking-feeling-in-his-stomach kind of strange, but a confused kind of strange. As both Yeoreum and Seojun’s intensity increased and his vision from before came into fruition, he found that the ecstatic pleasure he was feeling was seemingly increasing without bounds. It wasn’t even that he was reaching his orgasm faster, it was just that with every connecting stroke, the pleasure from the action increased. Seojun could feel his body tense and shudder more and more with every bounce until Seojun could barely even focus on the ordinarily incredibly distracting pair of bouncing tits in front of him. “Fuck, what…?”

“What do you think?” Although there was a clear strain in her voice, the cute edge returned to her voice.

“Wh-Wha…?”

“You can feel it, right?” Her playful, teasing voice paired with the cute smile on her face drew a chuckle out from Seojun.

“Wha—ah, shit!” Seojun jumped when he felt her foot press against the part of his leg that had been smeared with the first traces of the younger succubus’s arousal.

“How about that?”

“What—what is that?”

“That’s my Trait. I can make anything my bodily fluid touches feel more pleasure. Like this.” With that being her only warning, she reached down and took his hands, peppering his palms and fingers with kisses. When she was done, her gaze landed back onto his, the smile returning to her face. “I noticed you staring at my boobs: try feeling them now.”

Seojun obliged, cupping her ample bust inside his hands. And, sure enough, the surge of euphoria he felt at the touch nearly pushed a moan out of his mouth. “Oh, shit,” he instead murmured, the second wave of ecstatic pleasure joining the one that already existed from feeling Yeoreum’s hot core around his cock.

“Does it feel good?”

“Fuck, yes, I never thought feeling boobs could feel this fucking good.”

It was like that initial feeling of entering Yeoreum, that initial spark of pleasure, fantasy and desire being transformed into reality, only that feeling never faded. The feeling was kept at a sustained high, even growing and building with each resonating slap of her ass onto his groin, each synchronized thrust inside her building that feeling of pleasure. The pleasure shooting through his body grew and grew, as did the impending orgasm that was building inside him. Her mouth widened to a smile, the playful glint in her eyes never leaving despite a cloud of lust starting to overtake them. Their movements sped back up, the room soon filled with the wet sounds of Yeoreum’s butt against Seojun’s crotch and a musky scent of sex.

“Seojun…” Yeoreum’s whine carried about with it a musical quality to it, as if she was singing. Her slim legs were wrapped firmly around his waist, her jiggling boobs being held in place and kneaded by Seojun’s hands, her core repeatedly penetrated by his hardened member. With each stroke, Seojun could feel his dick became more drenched, and with every layer of bodily fluid coating its surface area, the pleasure increased. “Oh, you’re so rough!”

“This is another benefit of having a servant: his stamina and strength, especially during sex, is much greater than that of normal males.”

“Then, I-I need to learn to make one myself soon…” Yeoreum panted, her eyes closed and her lips parted.

“Mmm fuck, here comes,” Seojun’s warning came only a fraction of a second before the tension inside his body released all at once, a thick stream of the viscous sustenance flowing directly into the smaller succubus’s body.

“Oh … Oh!” Yeoreum’s body shuddered violently against Seojun’s, the high-quality semen shocking every nerve in her body and then some. “Oh-Oh my god!” Yeoreum yelped, the absorption of Seojun’s load shocking her lewd body into orgasm.

Although he was already half-way done with his orgasm, the sudden crash of more invigorating juice assaulting his shaft pumped his body with more adrenaline. The pair moaned incoherently, Yeoreum enjoying the delectable meal while Seojun felt his orgasm intensify midway through, his hips desperately pumping into the fleshy chamber, convulsing and squeezing his dick like it was attempting to draw out every last drop of semen from his balls. It was only after Yeoreum’s orgasm subsided that Seojun finally felt the euphoric high dwindle down.

The cute, younger succubus took a second to catch her breath before dismounting Seojun.

“Not bad, right?”

She nodded, evidently not done yet as she kneeled at the edge of the mattress whose bedsheets Seojun had just cleaned. “I want more,” she said, pulling her hair back with one hand while the other casually rested on his leg, her big eyes staring up at him, her mouth opened into the adorable toothy grin she sported. “Oh! I almost forgot!” Yeoreum turned around, facing Taeyeon nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t just orgasmed in front of the older female. “What did you think? Of my Trait?”

“It’s really interesting. You can do some really interesting things with it, I can imagine. But I think it’s best used in combination with multiple people; maybe I can introduce you to Jessica, a friend of mine.”

“Hm…” she nodded thoughtfully, a second later offering, “Then, why don’t you join us?”

“I need to wait a bit longer with Seojun, but I can still help.”

Although Seojun was confused, Yeoreum squealed in delight and turned back around, her hands landing inches away from his damp crotch. “What…?”

“Just sit back and let me do all the work, OK?” Yeoreum gave Seojun one last dazzlingly bright smile before lowering her head. Taeyeon’s hand came up from behind, keeping her hair out of the way as Yeoreum’s tight, warm lips embraced the perimeter of his dick, her hands gently caressing the base of his shaft and his balls. Seojun’s body yet again filled with a crackling sensation of pure ecstasy, his groans drowned out by the loud slurping noise made from Yeoreum’s blowjob.

Even to Seojun, a man who received his first blowjob just days ago, he could tell the chasm of difference between Taeyeon and Yoereum: every single motion Taeyeon made, every lick, the angling of her head, the unobstructed ease at which she blew him, even her facial expressions were precise and meaningful. Yeoreum, while no amateur, was noticeably wetter and sloppier; however, Seojun wondered if it was meaningful as he could feel the saliva coating his shaft turning the blowjob into a more and more pleasurable experience.

The added factor of Taeyeon sitting to the side, keeping her hair out of the way and guiding Yeoreum as she bobbed up and down, each up-and-down motion infusing Seojun with more arousal. However, he didn’t even have time to adjust to it, feeling Taeyeon gently place a hand on his leg, shortly afterwards feeling a second wet tightness clamp around his member. Yeoreum let out a surprised moan, the reverberations coursing out from Yeoreum’s mouth and directly into Seojun through his reproductive organ. The two jumped almost in unison as Taeyeon’s tail, transmogrified into Seojun’s dick, plunged deep into Yeoreum’s greedy pussy.

“Fuck,” Seojun groaned, his fists tightening and his muscles clenching, Yeoreum’s lower half moving in accommodation to the sudden, but welcome, intrusion.

“Mm, that’s a good girl,” Taeyeon cooed while Yeoreum’s blowjob grew increasingly wilder, “Take in both of those dicks like a proper succubus. Think about how it’ll feel to get double the load, with Seojun’s dick both in your mouth and in your pussy.”

The thought spurred the younger immortal on even more, the fleshy, wet cavern tightening at the tantalizing prospect, her mouth swallowing the final few centimeters of Seojun’s penis. Seojun let out another string of swears, feeling Yeoreum’s soft lips briefly touch the base of his cock before coming up most of the way, shortly after plunging all the way back down. The combination of feeling his cock hit both the back of Yeoreum’s throat and brushing against the cervix at the end of her tight pussy was enough to bring Seojun quickly to the brink.

“You like that, huh? You like feeling my Seojun’s cock penetrate two of your holes at once? Does thinking about swallowing his load with both pairs of lips make you want to cum as well?” Yeoreum managed a nod, her actions growing more savage at the sultry goading of Taeyeon.

From Seojun’s vantage point, the sight was certainly one to behold. Her already small face was made smaller by the fact that it was a good few feet below from him, her dainty hands caressing his balls and upper thighs, her cat-like eyes focused intensely at the perfection of her craft. However, it was hard to appreciate the sight with how overwhelming both the impending orgasm and the immense pleasure flooding his every sense and thought, Seojun eventually conceding access to the sight to better focus on the sensations of ecstasy and pleasure he was feeling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” A breathy moan puffed out of his lips, the tightening sensation peaking just over the edge of his willpower. He desperately held it back, wanting to revel in the blissful feeling of the combined fucking of Yeoreum’s face and her vagina, but it was a sudden, sharp, drawn-out moan from Yeoreum that did the trick for him.

His groan turned into a grunt, another wave of semen erupting from his dick like water from a broken dam, flooding into both of Yeoreum’s awaiting warm caverns, her throat flexing impressively as it took the thick, salty substance in stride while her other entrance was yet again flooded with the white fluid. Yeoreum’s own body, tingling to the max with a euphoric high, became overwhelmed with the sudden influx of the addictive substance inside her body, a second orgasm wracking her small frame as it shook and vibrated with the cadence of the cataclysmic release. Her orgasm lasted long after Seojun’s subsided, at which Yeoreum removed her mouth from his cock still reeling from the feeling of her juices washing over its length.

“God, oh god, I haven’t had anything this warm and thick in so long…” Yeoreum panted, her head hanging inches from Seojun’s penis, her chest heaving and her hands resting on his upper thighs, her legs spread and her cheeks spread, her body still shaking from the orgasm Taeyeon had promised her.

Taeyeon just smiled triumphantly at the mewling female before her. “See? Now you understand why I made him my servant, right?”

It took Yeoreum a few more moments to calm down, and when she did, Taeyeon retracted her tail, reverting it to its original form before disappearing back inside her body. In conjunction, the warmth of Yeoreum’s firm vaginal walls disappeared, his penis finally allowed to start softening. “Yeah…” she wistfully conceded, sitting on her hind legs and looking back into Seojun’s eyes. Although he had just orgasmed twice, his eyes couldn’t help but fall back onto her ample breasts, casually hanging at her chest, the pink buttons on each mound noticeably less firm but still maintaining their cute, pointed shape. “You need to teach me how to make my own servant so I can go find one of my own.”

“I told you, it’s not really teachable,” Taeyeon reminded her, reaching for her hand and gently patting the back of it, “it’s something you learn the more experience you gain controlling your life force.”

“Wait, life force?”

Taeyeon nodded. “It’s what we call it,” Taeyeon told Seojun nonchalantly, “Demons, I mean.”

Seojun was reminded again about the concept of ‘demons’, plural, implicating the existence of other supernatural beings. But after encountering two succubae, Seojun found the idea surprisingly palatable. “I see,” was the mortal man’s reply, satisfied with Taeyeon’s simplistic response for now.

Yeoreum sprang up onto her feet, again showing off her white teeth to Seojun in her adorable, toothy grin. “Thanks, Seojun! I haven’t had a good orgasm like that in multiple, multiple decades.”

 “Oh; um, no problem!”

Yeoreum giggled at Seojun’s failed attempts to mask his sudden embarrassment, using her tail to pick her shirt off the ground. When she put that on, she proceeded to scan the room only to find her messily bisected shorts. She picked it up, sheepishly smiling at Taeyeon. “Big Sis Taeyeon, do you mind if I borrow one of your clothes?”

Taeyeon laughed, agreeing to her request. Yeoreum stayed for a bit longer, enjoying dinner alongside Seojun. When he asked about it, Yeoreum revealed that she liked eating even though her body didn’t need it because her illness in her mortal life rendered hospitalized and stuck eating bad hospital food for most of her life, so when Taeyeon came and healed her by turning her into a succubus, she took advantage of her healthy body to eat as much delicious food as she could find. Seojun found this incredibly endearing and was actually a bit sad to see her go that night, but the feeling only lasted so long when Taeyeon grabbed his hand, gaining his attention.

“It’s time for tonight’s part of the ritual.”

That night, Seojun was once again reminded of how much he loved his life.

In case you were curious, Yeoreum was the first request; if you want female idol of your choosing to make an appearance on in this story, please go to my crowdfund page!

Next chapter here.

[rustycopper4use]

Ok, uhm....I've seen someone make a request for poly Ozzie x Fizz x Reader in which the reader is Blitzø's brother, but I got a better one for you! How about (poly ofc) Ozzie x Fizz x Male Reader who is Striker's older brother? Like, maybe he heard about what happened in greed ring and came to apologise on his brother's behalf and maybe offer his services as bodyguard?

Fizz x Ozzie x Male reader!

sorry I went a little bit off the rails but I hope you like it!!

At the beginning you were close to fizzaroli as kids.

 you first met him at one of his shows, and you would try to see all his shows. And ended up dragging your younger brother striker to them, much to his protests.

  You would spend hours with fizzaroli, him being the only sense of affection in your life. Giving your family’s old fashioned values. His was the escape from it all.

 Your father resented the wasted time spent with some lowly circus clown, he would try every thing to make you to stop seeing him. After awhile he even turned Striker against you, which in retrospect wasn’t hard he idolized him. 

 In the ended up with you sneaking out the house everyday to see the goofy imp.

 However that was until the fire. You had been only been able to talk to him when you actually came to the circus.

 So one day you went to see him, with a small birthday gift you’d be able to pay for.

 only to met with ashes, and burnt remains of childhood memories, it was hauntingly void of life still fresh with smoke.

 And you never heard from him again.

  You left the gift in the remains. It became a regular thing, you’d leave a small gift every year on his birthday.

  A way to remember him, maybe you’d just like the sadness that came with it rather than the bitter empty feeling in your cold aching chest. 

 Or you’re still in denial, waiting for the day he’ll somehow come back and it’ll be some big cruel joke.

  After that you replaced that time with meaningless jobs, helping dad around the farm. 

  While your younger brother took up kill for hire, you would be along aside for protection, an extra set of hands. 

 This new attitude brought a sense of pride to the rest of the family.

 Your relationship wasn’t the same with your less than functional family. You weren’t ever close to your father or brother but, it got even more distant. Opting for only talking when needed.

  One day striker came back from a job beaten bruised, and burned.

 As you fixed him up, he whined about his failed attempt, he brought up an all to familiar name.

 “Y’know that lowlife clown was such a brat to deal with, and his pathetic friend Blizto-“

 “Are you talking about fizzaroli?”

 “-Wait no, Fizzaroli’s alive?.”

 “Look I don’t care if you had a soft spot for that thing, I had a job and I’m gonna go through with it.”

 “You never thought to tell me he was alive!”

 “Of course I didn’t, Dad and I knew you were going to act like this, you became a better demon because of us.”

 “Get out.”

 Striker gets to door before turning back towards you.

 “Im not gonna give up this job because you’ve grown weak.”

 “Oh I know you won’t.”

 He left.

  You weren’t sure what to do now. Striker was a stubborn person, he wouldn’t give up till Fizzaroli’s head was on a stick.

  Luckily for you. you were just as petty as the snake.

 For the next few days you looked for opportunities to work at Ozzie’s. You came across for a listing for a personal bodyguard for Fizz. 

 You got scheduled for an interview, part of you dreaded seeing him again.

 You headed down(up?) to the lust ring. The gorgeous neon lights, against the calming rain.

  The Ozzie’s club was nothing short of a spectacle. And the start to your new life.

  Ozzie was apprehensive on hiring someone with relations with the demon that kidnapped Fizzaroli in the first place. 

 But Fizz reassured his worries, he knew you weren’t like him.

 The start of this job was- not exactly awkward, but there was this weird air around you three. A few weeks in and you’ve finally settled in, you grew comfortable with the duo and life finally felt back on track.

 You still felt guilt for what your brother did, you would always give gifts to fizzaroli as a form of an apology, a better change than what you did for 15 years. You also get into the habit of going above what was asked for even at your own expense.

 Even when Fizzaroli explained he didn’t blame you, it was your brother’s actions after all. You settled for buying him flowers every other day.

  The two would flirt with you, fizzaroli being more bold, knowing exactly what makes you tick and that special spot that makes you melt.

  Ozzie on the other hand, had a different approach. He took on a more romantic strategy, he learned very early on that his voice was your weakness, a few praises and you were a goner. 

 When striker found out he was pissed. His own brother fooling around with blue blood, how did you turn out like this.

 Every time he would show up you always up lovey-dovey just to rub salt in a wound.

  Fizzaroli adored it when you’d get riled up and your southern accent would slip. He would purposely push your buttons lovingly just to hear it.

 Every time Fizzaroli would want attention you’d always make sure to hold his face given it’s the only part he can really feel now.

 Ozzie was the only one that Could cook, and that still didn’t change with you around. Sure you weren’t as bad as Fizz but still.

 Fizzaroli would call you a cowboy (affectionately)

[silversoulstardust]

[punk hazard/dressrosa arc spoiler heavy lawlu rambling]

recently I saw a video that was comparing luffy to naruto and the fact that luffy is not a hero when compared to naruto because naruto saved people even when the people that needed saving refused it (ie uchiha sasuke) but luffy? luffy saved countries on his selfish whim and all the other people he saved, he waited until they asked for it. he waited nami to ask for his help and robin to tell him she wanted to live.

except you know who? trafalgar law.

we could tell that law was planning on a suicide mission when he went to punk hazard on his own. he sent off his crew to zou and was wandering alone to find out more about the SAD factories and knew he risk angering doflamingo by destroying it. during that time, he saw an opportunity, formed that alliance with the strawhat and marched on to dressrosa.

retrospectively looking at it, there was no doubt that he was using the strawhat crew. he was putting them all in an unprecedented amount of danger by stepping on doflamingo's turf, the risk he wasn’t willing to put on his own crew that he sent away much earlier.

law definitely felt guilty over it.

at least for a little bit, when law watched luffy almost got his ass handed to him by doflamingo when law was helplessly restrained on the flower hill at the new king’s plateau and was making a fuss for the others to let him free despite his heavy injury until robin who could see through law’s intention and action had to say it: “luffy is here because of his own free will.”

after the deal at greenbit fell through and law found out doflamingo had been manipulating the press, he tried to break the alliance. threatened to kill luffy once luffy uncuffed him. but luffy just shut him up and lugged him all over the place like a sack of flour over his tiny shoulder and fought doflamingo till the end.

one could argue that luffy did that because rebecca asked him to, but revenge against doflamingo was also one of the things that occupied law’s the most since he lost cora-san. he just didn’t directly ask luffy to beat the shit out of doflamingo on his behalf. yet luffy did it anyway.

so back to the whole naruto vs luffy comparison at the beginning of this post? at least there’s one exception where luffy helped someone against his will and acted like a goddamn hero. and it is towards the damsel in distress that is trafalgar d water law.

[nerdieforpedro]

Just like the Picture

Dieter Bravo x gn reader

My entire masterlist and blog are for readers 18+ MDNI. I do not consent to my work being used in AI, recommended on TikTok, borrowed or plagiarized.

Summary: Moving into your new apartment went well. Your new landlord seems pretty chill. You see him a lot though, why is that?

Warnings: Non-consensual voyeurism, masturbation (mentioned but not in detail), edibles, weed use, erotic paintings, food mention

Word Count: 936

Notes: Written for the Roll-a-Trope Writing Challenge presented by @burntheedges . I have it in just under the wire. 👀 I wasn’t not sure I’d be able to write something or not, but I’m glad I was. My trope was “landlord Dieter” so here we are. Not beta-ed, I dunno what I wrote so all mistakes are mine.

Main Masterlist/ Dieter Bravo Masterlist/ Writing Challenges

Dieter sometimes wonders how exactly he ended up staring at his media setup in his office. His apartment on the top floor is one of the penthouses that allows for more room. He has four different screens, all active and his gaze is switching between them. He’s sitting in just his robe, rolling some special herbs and spices into his usual blunt. His favorite show is about to start.

You.

It was an easy deal to strike with his cousin who needed a few hundred bucks as his car always stays in the impound. Dieter told him not to ask any questions, just install the cameras and show Bravo how to access them. He did, his cousin had his money and Dieter had the set-up complete. The only reason Dieter gave as he knew his cousin may blab to someone about the cameras being installed, was that the apartment you now reside in was a model apartment to show potential tenants. It took Dieter’s cousin off his scent and it took months before Bravo would finally rent that unit out. 

You moved in six months ago, one of Dieter’s last move-ins. He gave you a tour of the building, amenities, and the unit himself. Usually, he leaves the office manager to do the tours, but they always make sure to at least introduce new tenants to Dieter before touring them. He quickly told him that he would handle things from here. A piece of gum was popped into his mouth as he offered you one as well. You giggled and took a stick of Doublemint from him. His palm touched the small of your back as he led through the building. You’re so comfortable with him, you really shouldn’t be but Bravo is grateful. That way, he won’t feel bad about his late-night viewing. 

Dieter Bavo made sure to be there for the day of your move-in, assisting where he could and providing jokes where he could. He bought lunch for you, some burgers, fries, and a lemonade. Eating on your new leather couch, Dieter finds himself to be enamored with you. He’s thankful he didn’t see anyone move in with you and no other names on your lease besides yours. He leaves and bids you a good evening, though he’s glad to be taking the elevator up to his apartment to view more of you. Over the first month after you’ve moved in, Dieter notes that you have a routine after you get home from work:

Watching you move around your apartment, drop your work bag and keys. 

Sit down to read. (That’s your third book this month. Maybe he should read while you’re at work. What book is that?)

Watch TV later. (Changing the camera angle he can see what show you’re watching, the Glenn guy is everywhere. Dieter has stubble too, maybe not as much, but enough to give a good burn.)

Undress and apply your lotions after your shower. (In retrospect, maybe he should have put one in the bathroom, but he wasn’t sure if his cousin would be able to find one of those waterproof cameras. Maybe he’ll rub that decadent cream on your legs and back one day too.) 

Pulling out your special bog of toys. (Investing in a quality bag to store your nightly enjoyment in is self-care as far as Dieter is concerned. He may need to check out that brand of lube, he’s heard about it, but hasn’t bought it because he’s familiar with the one he uses.)

In the second month, Dieter now not only masturbates watching you but also thinks about whether you like edibles. You’ve commented that you’re not a fan of smoke, no matter cigarette or weed. He could offer you some edibles to try out though, fruit flavors to start. Bravo makes it a point to ‘run into you’ around the building. At the pool, workout area, and mailboxes. You comment that see him often and maybe you should have lunch again, this time you’ll buy. Dieter insists that you don’t and more burgers are had, in his apartment. It’s an open concept, has a lot of light and you see his easel near one of the windows. 

Dieter’s too busy sipping his lemonade and trying to figure out if he’s going to offer grape edibles or apple flavor. He hears you gasp and ask, “What is this?” He now recalls what’s over there and scratches his exposed belly as he stretches an arm upward.

“What I imagine you to look like when you come. What do you think?” Bravo smiles as he walks over to you. Your eyes are fixed on the incomplete painting. The furrow of your brows, placement of your legs, and the surrounding color match those of your sheets, how would he know all of that?

“It’s fairly detailed. You even got my mole and my scars, those edibles help with that?” You both laugh and you take one apple and one grap from Dieter’s palm, chewing them both. 

“Maybe. No other questions thought, most would have a different reaction to this.” His surprise has you walk over to the couch and lie across it. It’s bizarre for sure, but endearing in a way. Plus the toys are only getting the job done but so well. Bravo moves his way over and stands before the couch above you, his breathing quickening as a bulge forms beneath his pajama bottoms. His large palms land on your thighs as he bends down to eye level with you.

“Wanna see if you can have me make that face for you Dee?”

[satninroses]

Reader accidentally flashes elvis her bare pussy (not just a flash but she doesn’t even realize she is just sitting there completely exposed to him). elvis debated whether to tell her because he didn’t want to make it awkward (and he secretly is enjoying the view and complete cluelessness of y/n just basically spread out) but then he thinks in case she realizes it would be way weirder if elvis just hadn’t have told her.

Over Exposed

(A/N): Hi! Busy week this has been 🙃. I know I haven’t been super active and I apologize! Between transitioning from part-time to full-time and home life, there hasn’t been much me-time lately. I promise I am working on requests!! I love you all very much and I appreciate you all sticking with me and my inconsistent schedule.

Note: This one probably isn’t good. Long story short, I wrote two versions to this story and didn’t really like either of them. It’s a little messy but please understand that I am just having an off week. Things should get better with this next request. (hopefully)

Summary: You accidently flash Elvis and it causes a stir.

Pairing: Elvis Presley x Fem! Reader

Word Count: 2,245

Warnings: Swearing, Flashing, Mentions of Smut (But not really any smut), Implied Male Masturbation, It’s a little rough.

You traveled around with Elvis and the Memphis Mafia as a personal assistant. You could do paper work, you could pick up Elvis’ jumpsuits from the dry cleaner, you could even make food whenever they didn’t want to go out. You were basically their Jack-of-all trades.

You enjoyed your job a lot. Not only was the pay good, but you got a lot of perks like being in the presence of Elvis Presley himself. He was never rude to you, he always treated you with respect and kindness. There were days where he would be on edge from stress and dealing with fans, or nosy press, or himself, but he would still treat you with kindness.

Today was no exception. The Colonel called you and him into a meeting the night before a big press conference. He had requested that you were both up bright and early, which wasn’t your favorite but, you could handle it. You went to bed sometimes around 7 P.M. that way you could wake up with enough time to shower, do your hair and makeup, and paint your nails. In retrospect, you didn’t think that your clock would malfunction and go off at 8:30 and not 7.

‘I want to see you both in the lobby at 8. I do not want to be late, understood?’ You nodded enthusiastically and wrote it down in your notepad. ‘(Y/N), I want you down here a little earlier. We need to go over the plan once more before my boys big day.’

You thought it was cut and dry. Go to bed early, do your morning routine, go down to the lobby. Apparently not.

“God damnit!” You shouted angrily. You threw the blankets overboard and hopped out of bed. You stripped away your night dress and hopped in the shower. (I know showers take a minute but you will never understand how concentrated on cleaning yourself you are when you don’t have a 5 minute time limit.) You washed away all of the dirt from your body from the previous day and brushed your teeth.

You washed and conditioned your hair, washed yourself, and hopped out. You grabbed the nearest towel to yourself, not knowing that it had probably already been used, and scraped any and all moisture off your figure. You threw the door to the bathroom open and began to rush around your room for some clothes.

At the bottom of the basket in the corner of the hotel room, you pulled out a white button up blouse with large flow-y sleeves, a black pencil skirt, a pair of silk-lines pantyhose, and some black heels.

You ran back to the bathroom to apply some quick moisturizer and makeup. You rubbed some kind of face cream all over, applied some subtle eyeliner, some red lipstick and a little bit of mascara. You grabbed your purse off the bedside table and practically teleported downstairs.

In the lobby, things weren’t much better. Colonel was pacing and muttering angrily to himself. Elvis and Jerry sat on a couch and went over the game plan. Some of the other Mafia members were at the hotel shop grabbing some snacks for the ride.

“Where is that woman! I told her she needed to be the first one downstairs and she’s the LAST!” Colonel had finally snapped, drawing attention from the other hotel guests. “Damnit, give her a break! Everyone has an off day. It’ll be fine.” Elvis had replied defensively. “I’m sure she’ll be down in just a second.”

Right he was! You stumbled in the hallway, clothing a little uneven, hair wet, and a stressed out look on your face. “I’m so sorry Mr. Presley! I-I didn’t keep track of time I’m so sorry!”

Elvis chuckled and stood. “Darlin’, It’s ok. Happens to the best of us.” Colonel had overheard the conversation.

“Things like this do not happen to people like her. She should have known better.” He finally turns to acknowledge you. “Do better. Your job is on the line.”

Elvis’ amused expression turned to one of disdain. “You don’t make the rules here. Anyways, Billy said the limo’s here. Let go.”

You nodded and followed after him at a brisk pace as to not anger anyone else today. Once you, Elvis, Colonel, and the rest of the mafia had made it outside, a valet driver stepped out and opened the door for all of you. Elvis placed a hand on the small of your back. “Ladies first.” You smile sweetly at him and nod your head.

You throw your purse in one of the seats and and begin to step in. The roof of the door was a little bit shorter to your - or anyone else’s- liking. You bent down in front of Elvis to get it not realizing the show you were putting on for him.

Elvis eyed your bare cunt as you bent down to get in. His eyes are glued to the way your pretty snatch looks so moist and soft.

He practically waged a war in his mind to get himself to look away. He can’t be hard before one of the biggest conferences in his career.

One by one, him and the rest of the mafia get in and take their seats. Jerry sits to the right of you leaned against the door while Elvis sits to the left of you with his thick legs spread. The rest of the mafia fills in some empty spots.

“(Y/N). Can you add something to my agenda?” He speaks lowly. You nod and retrieve the notepad and pen from your purse. “Yes Mr. Presley! What would you like added?”

“We’re gonna go out to to eat after this conference. I want some BBQ. What do we say fellas? Do we want BBQ for dinner tonight?” Some of the mafia utter a few ‘Hell yeah’s!’ You nod and add it to lined paper before turning to look at him again. “Any thing else Mr. Presley?”

“Yeah.”

“What would that be?”

“Stop calling me Mr. Presley. You can call me Elvis.”

You turn to him and blush. “Sorry…” You looked away bashfully. “S’alright doll.” He replies softly. You smile at his words and turn to look at him again.

After about 10 minutes of quiet ambience and small talk between the guys, you had finally arrived at the convention center. Elvis pushed his sunglasses up his nose and nodded at everyone in the car. Colonel was the first to exit. He stood by the car door and let Elvis out. The screams of fans, flashes of cameras, loud voices asking his questions filled everyone’s senses. You followed out after Elvis and everyone in line behind you got out in an orderly fashion. Colonel shut the door and followed the group.

“Mr. Presley! When will your newest single be out?”

“Soon.”

“Mr. Presley, is it true that you were spotted outside the international hotel with a woman? Who was that woman? What relationship does she have to you?”

‘Gosh, I could never be a celebrity. People are just so nosy’ You thought to yourself. Awaiting Elvis’ answer, the interviewer tried to block his path. The colonel caught wind of this and pushed his way up to where you and Elvis were. “We have places to be. That was his personal assistant (Y/N). Move along now.” For once in your life, you could thank the colonel for such a heroic act.

Once you guys pushed through the crowd, Elvis leaned down to you. “(Y/N). Put something on my agenda please.”

“Sure! What would you like to add Mr. Pre- Elvis.” You corrected yourself before he had the chance too. He chuckled at you and clapped a hand on your shoulder. “Good girl. Anyways, I need you to figure out who that guy was back there. Send Jerry or Billy to him and have them tell him to never do that again.”

You nodded. “Yes Elvis, right away.” On the notepad, you wrote ‘Find scary guy. Have Jerry give him the what-for.’

Once you guys had made it to the resting rooms in the convention hall, everyone sat down to relax. Going from the car to a room shouldn’t have taken as long as it did or be as stressful as it was however, if you’re traveling with Elvis, that’s sure to be a huge factor.

Once you set your stuff down, you made your way over to the rest of the mafia. “jMr. Schilling? May I have a word with you?” Jerry’s head shot up at your quiet request and he nods his head.

“What’s up (Y/N)?”

“Mr. Presley has requested that we find out who the gentleman was that got in the way earlier. He would like you to have a word.”

Jerry nods his head. “You got it. We’ll give you guys some time to get ready. We’ll be back soon. Come on guys! We’re going out”

Jerry and the rest of the mafia exit the room leaving you and Elvis. Colonel had made his way out to talk to the organizers of the event a few minutes before.

Finally. It was quiet. You could relax for the first time since this morning. You sat down on one of the lounging chairs and crossed your legs. Elvis would be back from the restroom in a second so it’s better to be ready to cover the plan once more before the conference. The door to the bathroom opens and out walks Elvis.

He sauntered to the other couch before collapsing with a groan. “Wish we were back at home. It’s a little too cold out here.” He commented. You giggle and clasp your hands together. “This feels just like when I was younger. It feels good to get out of the Tennessee heat.”

“Hey, watch it!” He pointed a accusingly at you. You let out a little laugh and a quick apology. You felt less tense around Elvis. You felt like you could loosen up a bit. You stood from your spot on the chair and looked at him. “Do you want anything from the minibar?”

He nodded his head. “I’ll come with. Might find something I like.” He stood as well and you both walked i got the second room of the suit to the fridge. You opened it and immediately felt a sense of relief. You could detox with a little drink.

“Doll, could you get me the Pepsi-Cola from the bottom shelf?” You nodded and bent down.

Elvis had forgot about the incident from earlier, when you were in the same position. Your skirt lifted a little bit to reveal your pretty ass and pussy. He gulped harshly. He could feel his pants tighten at the sight.

“E, I don’t think this is Pepsi! It’s some other one. Do you want me to look for something different?”

Not wanted the moment to end, he denied your offer. “No, I swear it was back there, look more in the back.”

He could slap himself for the way he had been acting but he really couldn’t help it. He’s always wanted to fuck his cute little assistant and now she’s in a position where it could happen. Bending down to reach the bottom of the fridge mean that more of your body was exposed to his eyes. He wasn’t expecting you to bend down further just… keep bending down. The skirt rose higher to completely uncover your ass and cunt. He caught a better glance at it this time around than

He found your obliviousness almost laughable. Could you not feel.. the air or the coolness hitting your ass? Now, as a decent human being, it would be instinct to tell you and let you know that he wasn’t mad. However, a small part (which was slowly turning into the majority) of him enjoyed the view. He wanted nothing more than to keep you there and fuck you before the conference.

In the midst of his daydreams and fantasies, you stood up and handed him a cold bottle of Pepsi- Cola. “You were right. There were some in the back. Sorry about that!” You spoke sheepishly. You took in his appearance. You noticed the look in his eye that screamed animalistic.

“Elvis? Are you ok?”

Your soft voice broke him from his trance. His eyes gazed down at yours and they widened. “Yeah! Sorry darlin’. Something caught my eye is all.” He spoke quickly. You nodded your head and smiled. “That’s ok! However, the guys will be back soon. We should go over your responses, alright?”

This would be fine if he wasn’t painfully hard. He looked down quickly and turned so his back was to you. “Yeah that’s fine. I gotta use the can again. I’ll be fast.”

You nodded again. “I’ll be on the lounge chairs waiting for you!” You said enthusiastically.

He slipped into the bathroom and locked the door. He put his hand on the counter and the other on his forehead. How was he gonna get this all out before everyone got back? Why does he feel both guilty and not about this? Whatever the reason for his feelings were could wait. He needed deal with his erection first.

He sat on the side of the tub and pulled himself out from his black slacks. He signed in pleasure before rubbing his hand over the tip.

“God damn her. She’s gonna be the death of me.”

(taglist: @mt12209 @myradiaz @presleyenterprise @18lkpeters @austinsmutler @ccab )

[khaleesiofalicante]

“You know when you do something wrong but you don’t know what you did wrong but you just know you did something wrong?”

“Uh,” Jace said. 

“What did you do?” Izzy asked. 

“That’s the thing! I don’t know,” Alec sighed. “But I know I must have done something wrong.”

“Yeah, but how do you know you did something wrong?” Izzy demanded. 

“I dunno,” Alec sighed again. “Magnus has been acting weird.”

“Weirder than usual?” Jace raised an eyebrow. 

“I think I hurt his feelings,” Alec frowned. 

“What did you do?” Izzy hissed, hitting his side with her purse.

“Ow! Nothing!”

“Well, you must have said something mean.”

“I didn’t say anything mean. I just-I just told him to cheer up.”

“You told him to...cheer up.”

“Well, not exactly,” Alec scratched his beard. “I asked him if he can at least pretend to be happy while y’all are all here.”

“Alec,” Izzy groaned loudly. 

“What?” Alec groaned back. 

“That’s not a sensitive thing to tell someone with depression, bro,” Jace tutted and shook his head. 

Alec winced at that. 

In retrospect, Magnus did shut down after Alec’s odd - and apparently insensitive - request. 

“I would kill a man if he talked to me like that,” Izzy muttered darkly. 

“I was trying to help!” Alec said helplessly. “It’s all your fault! You guys are the ones who made a big deal out of this!”

“Whoah, bro, don’t blame the downfall of your marriage on us,” Jace put up his hands. 

“It’s barely a marriage at all,” Alec mumbled. “Excuse me.”

He went downstairs to find Magnus in the kitchen, doing the dishes and listening to music.

“Magnus,” Alec cleared his throat, and then was suddenly wasn’t sure what to say. “I can do the dishes.”

“It’s alright,” Magnus said over his shoulder. 

“I like doing it,” Alec explained. “It’s part of my routine.”

Magnus put down the dishes carefully and nodded as he wiped his hands. “Alright.”

“I…I understand that not speaking to other people is part of your routine,” Alec said a little awkwardly. “I’m sorry I pushed you. It was insensitive of me.”

Magnus raised an eyebrow. “Isabelle?”

“Jace, actually.”

“Huh,” Magnus said and nodded. “I accept your apology. Goodnight.”

“I only did it because I wanted to help,” Alec said quickly. “My family can be prying assholes sometimes. If they saw you…If they didn’t see you…I told you to pretend to be happy because I didn’t want them to bother you about it.”

“I see,” Magnus said. “Thank you for the explanation.”

“I was forced to invite them, because they were all in the city at the same time,” Alec went on. “I won’t invite them again.”

“This is your home too,” Magnus pointed out. “You are allowed to invite your family over any time.”

“Right” Alec cleared throat. 

“Your family is lovely,” Magnus told him. “Besides, I think The Chairman enjoyed all the attention.”

“He really did,” Alec chuckled and rubbed his face awkwardly.  “Are we good though? No hard feelings?”

“Alec, you put up with my father for a decade. The least I can do is get through dinner with your family.”

“Yeah but my family can be intense.”

“And my father is not?”

“Not really.”

Magnus chuckled and shook his head. “Goodnight.”

- From the Arranged Marriage AU

@tu-vieja-steve - thanks for all the love and malec feels. This is for you.

[whats-amata-you]

Man it’s weird being trans. Like yeah I did always know, I did my googling waaaaaaay back in middle school and found the gender vs sex rabbit hole when I was like 11 on ye olde 2004 Wikipedia, I prayed for years for god to let me be some kind of intersex that just looks female so I wouldn’t get boobs or periods, I asked my Texan dad to call me “sir” instead of “ma’am” when I was maybe 7 and he did for a week before he realized I wasn’t going to get sick of it.

But I didn’t always KNOW. I grew up under this weird kind of rock made of autism and whiteness and being middle-class and non-denominational Christian, so I was brought up believing everyone was basically the same, and then there were The Weird Ones, but The Weird Ones were usually fine as long as they weren’t being “in your face” about things. I knew that there were men and there were women and there were intersex people, I knew what was expected of men and what was expected of women. But I didn’t know how the cishets ACTUALLY saw the queers. I didn’t know the consequences of being born in a female body but insisting on being a boy. I didn’t know what my transness would actually cost if I pushed too hard for it.

And no,I didn’t try, because I didn’t know it was an option, obviously. But I’d never seen trans people anywhere before, never heard of them outside that Wikipedia article, never saw them referenced in media (we only got PBS until I was 16 and by then I was disinterested in almost anything outside my hyperfixations). I heard about gay people, and how it was wrong to sleep with someone of the same sex, but it was the lukewarm distaste of casual homophobia that just “doesn’t want to see it.” The biggest cost I actually saw to queer people was just… people not wanting to see them kiss their partner. As an aroace kid, I didn’t understand why that would be a big deal for either side.

I’d only heard of HIV and AIDS in dry, clinical explanations in sex ed. “It’s a sexually transmitted virus so use a condom every time, it also spreads via needles so don’t do drugs. The virus works like this and destroys your immune system so even a cold can kill you. You cannot get it by breathing their air or touching them or using a toilet seat or whatever, it has to be bodily fluids and usually not saliva. It’s incurable and fatal.” In retrospect, I learned WAY more about HIV/AIDS than a lot of kids did back in the late 90s and early 2000s, so that’s a mark in favor of Washington state (or maybe just that particular school district). But I never, not even once, heard queer people of any type and AIDS mentioned in the same sentence. I never heard of “the AIDS crisis” or its impact on the queer community until after I graduated high school and met a queer or two on the internet.

My old mentor Orion would probably have been shocked and appalled. She must have lived through and seen so much that I never knew about up until the last couple years, actively chasing down this elusive thing called “queer history” that I’d never known existed until I created a tumblr account in 2017.

I’m an aroace gay gnc trans masc enby. I could fill an entire book just explaining all the different aspects to my own queerness that I’ve found over the years. Most of it is just stuff I found words for, not things I didn’t already know about myself. And I never, until 2017, had any clue what any of it actually means in the context of society, culture, or politics.

I dunno what to do with that. I’m gonna chew on it for a while longer.

[lithiumfae]

Scarred and Half a Man, Chapter 1: Of Impressions and Delusions.

chapter 2 here!

subtle slut shaming sorry y’all

5.5k words

One could call him a pessimist if they were to hear him say that he can count on the fingers of one hand the number of men that have had a positive impact in his life. This is not to say that he is that much closer to the female gender.

Human relationships are complicated. But they are even more complicated to have with people that you see as competition or perpetrators of violence against you.

Starting with the man that was supposed to polish him into a fine gentleman, his father. In retrospect, Severus never got to experience the harmless innocence that most children enjoyed. Very early on in his life he noticed that his father did not think very highly of him as a person. And with this sentence alone you can safely assume the type of individual his old man was. Because, of course there are very few people that had the luck of growing up with near perfect parents, but the amount of children that can say their father saw them as barely deserving of respect at the young age of seven is even lower.

Thinking back to the time in his life where he was growing up, the first few years of his life, he thinks that he always knew he was different from the rest without his mom needing to tell him. His father was only heartless when it came to dealing with them, the anger was never directed at Muggles. He had been a gifted wizard even before he was aware of the existence of an entire secret society filled with people in possession of magic powers. Violence had been a part of his life for so long that he can recall events as early as when he was five years old where his mother would show him what she could do, all while hiding from his father and making him promise that he wouldn’t tell a soul about the secret times they shared. He is pretty much sure that all the affection he had ever received had been in the confines of four walls with only himself and the other person present, no witnesses.

Subconsciously, he is convinced that him being the receptor of love and care causes other people great shame in exchange for the warmth their actions provide to his heart.

His father could go days, sometimes even weeks without uttering a single word to him or his mother. In comparison to the unmeasurable anguish his friends Lily’s own father felt when he spent only a couple hours away from his family.

His first concept of love was a transaction, if he wanted affection he had to perform very well. If he didn’t do so, he wasn’t deserving of it.

But as he got older even the faintest of smiles that Severus thought he could sometimes see on his father’s expressionless face faded away to never be seen again.

Every summer he went back home after spending months at Hogwarts, his father would be nastier each time around. Instead of being at awe at how brighter his brain got as the years passed, his father noticed his body getting bigger, and that–for his cruel mind, meant he was capable of withstanding more physical abuse. The more he understood the Wizarding community, the less cautious about his aggression his dad became, he no longer cared if people talked about the bruises Severus would sport out in public. At times it seemed like he felt some sort of pride when people were aware of the things he put him through.

So, the man that he should love the most never made him feel anything but fear.

It is worth mentioning that Severus was never victim of just one man at a time, when his father could not reach him, the infamous marauders did not think twice before taking his father’s place.

There was never a time out for Severus. It was one thing after the other.

When he met them, Lily Evans was his best and only friend at the time. Right after the incident the first train ride he shared with the marauders didn’t mean much to him, he thought they were brainless annoying brats just like the ones back home. He could have not been more wrong. It would be only his luck that just after one not so nice encounter four boys would decide to start a years long fight against him. He admits that he wasn’t polite to them but to his judgment his rudeness did not deserve to be punished. Because to him what teachers called bickering, was a punishment.

Those first two years he lamented picking up a fight with boys that the entirety of the school admired, minus the Slytherin house of course. He was never seen as the victim because in their minds, professors and students alike, victims do not retaliate. He was not the perfect victim, and that was the start of his demise. If he was so scared of the marauders, then why did he have the strength to fight back? That was what everyone thought. Naturally, if you so much as said a nasty word against the people that made your life a living hell, it was a fair fight and you were not a victim.

At the start of all that, he found comfort in the thought that he had Lily. Lily believed him, and she disliked them just as much. Looking back, he should have known that it would not stay that way for long.

While Severus looked a lot like his mother, with the long-ish raven hair and the shape of his face, James Potter was perfect looking. Not even the anger and resentment he felt for the boy was enough to make him capable of denying his charm. Everything about him reminded Severus of the handsome actors Lily’s mother would gush about whenever he visited. His naturally gifted athletic frame, the curls that gave him an air of softness and of course the glasses. Not to mention the hefty amount of coins in his family's account at Gringotts.

Perhaps it was consequence of his father’s treatment from an early age that allowed him to quickly accept the fact that it did him no good to dwell on things he could not change about himself or his life. So instead of crying himself to sleep every day like he did for the first weeks at the school, he decided to bury those conflicting feelings deep down. After all it was easier to act like he did not care as much, than it was to mop around like he would have liked to do.

Do not get it twisted, he did feel bad most days but he thought it would be a better idea to put all his attention on what benefited him. And that made him stand out where the marauders could not compete.

It took him only a few months to become the best at subjects the rest had nightmares about.

The ego boost and did wonders for his self-esteem. He finally had something over the marauders. It was not an achievement that anyone really cared about. But the one thing his father had miraculously managed to teach him was that he needed to think about the future. And what better way to start working on his future than to make connections the same way his father had done, which was the reason why they had not died of starvation. Turns out that knowing the right people could someday help you much more than being handsome could.

So that is exactly what he did.

He befriended Lucius Malfoy. He befriended Evan Rosier. He befriended Mulciber. But he also befriended Regulus Black, Sirius Black’s younger brother.

He would never admit whether or not he did it knowingly, or if it was something that just happened. He was closer to Regulus than to any of the other members of the Slytherin gang. There was no denying that the boy was softer, nicer, and slightly more forgiving than the others. If Lucius proposed the idea of harassing unsuspecting Muggle born or mixed blood students, Regulus would not actively participate, instead he preferred to just watch as everything unfolded. Severus was not stupid or delusional enough to say that Regulus was a good person, he was bad news. That much was clear. But it meant a lot when a pure blood wizard that was part of the Slytherin house chose not to be the one at the other end of a wand cursing wizards that were closer to Muggles that he was. He always thought Regulus had at least a square inch more of a heart in comparison to the others.

That being said none of them, not even himself, had a bleeding or compassionate heart. Life was hard and they all realized that very early on.

He supposes he could relate to Regulus in a level that was not possible with the other fellas. Exceptionally skilled in things that to most people sounded pointless, overshadowed by greater men, both trying their hardest to avoid being like a man in particular in their families, and both conflicted with the definition of what meant to be a man.

Both of them also had a weakness that made the others look at them with slight weariness. For Regulus it was his treatment of house elves and for Severus it was his love for Lily.

The same Lily that could drop dead any day and none of the boys would care about.

Even with all the similarities they shared he did not manage to make an impact in his life. The man that had been the closest thing to a true friend was still not enough.

Then they all graduated and it was not long before Regulus walked right into his death. He was gone and Severus was not sure he felt something when it happened.

After his passing, wizards from both sides started to fall like flies. James Potter, his beloved Lily, a few of his comrades, and the incomputable number of muggle borns and mixed wizards. The narrow passageway that led to his heart closed itself after Lily died. All this time he had thought himself to be a cruel man without an ounce of empathy but he found that after learning of James's passing, he felt a strange emotion in the pit of his stomach, he could not quite explain it. Not even to himself.

Two of his bullies were gone, another one was sent to Azkaban for life, and the last one was also gone, not quite literally but Severus had not seen him in almost a decade.

So why did he feel absolutely no joy?

Perhaps he was also mourning the last remains of his childhood and adolescence. Although he was not the one to murder the Potter’s he felt like it was all on him. After all he was the one that had alerted Voldemort about the prophecy. How foolish he was for doing that, he did not stop to think for not even a second, that of course he would not hesitate to also get rid of Lily if he saw fit. He failed to realize that out of everyone in his faction, he was the only one that had a personal vendetta against James Potter. To the rest, the entire family needed to be gone.

In his most weak and therefore, sincere moments, he admitted to himself that he had never actually believed Voldemort would kill James Potter. Or maybe that is just something that he likes to tell himself so he does not feel like a total monster.

Truth is, Severus Snape does not truly know himself. Even now he does not know if he is the villain he was raised to be, or the antihero. After all, the only person he can confide in is Dumbledore. And like most of his peers knew, Dumbledore was not one to fall victim to his more empathetic side. It is also not a secret that to Dumbledore, people are just means to get to the point he needs to reach. But because said point is, or at least was at the time, to defeat Voldemort they all turned a blind eyeto his sadistic and emotionless side. If he could not talk about his raw feelings to the one person that knew him best. How was he supposed to admit to himself what he really felt?

Severus had always been a prisoner of his mind, while most people are controlled by their heart.

The day Lily left this world, Severus cried all the tears he had refused to let fall the entirety of his twenty one years of being alive. She had gifted him only a couple years of platonic affection but a lifetime of grief.

Then Dumbledore had offered him a position at the school, to have him close and to ensure he did not go out to look for comfort in the wrong place like Severus already did in the past. Gone was the part of him that helped him not get hung up on things he could not change. He was more of a ghost haunting the school. He did his job, he taught his lessons, and he just about managed to breathe every day. Enough to keep going but not enough to make him feel anything other than boredom and despair.

It was like any man that set foot in his life found a way to make him miserable, intentionally or not. But his aversion to men meant that he related to women in a way no other men could. McGonagall shared her candy with him whenever he let her complain about other male professors, he did not do much other than let her tire her tongue. Who would have thought that being a listening ear could mean so much to women.

They were definitely not extremely sweet to him, but they were not unnecessarily rude either. They could coexist at the very least.

He was also willing to admit that he felt something akin to appreciation for Professor Sprout. And whenever she required his stoic face to scare students that were being a little too lax with her, he provided his presence.

They were strong and intelligent women, not only in physical strength and their skills but also their characters were not at all weak. They were respected by most. Men and women alike. They were everything his male peers lacked, he felt like they were his equals.

So it was not difficult to imagine why he felt this way about her.

Oh, her.

Ten years had passed since the death of the Potters. And that meant that if their son had shown signs of magic, he would be seeing Harry very soon. And given his track record with luck, it was only natural that the first little child he noticed amongst the first years, was him. And oh, how much did he resemble Severus’ nemesis. Down to the glasses and the unruly hair. Although he felt like he had just been punched on the chest, he did not get to mop for long. Because soon enough he decided to grace the other professors at the table with his gaze. And he saw her.

The new Astronomy professor he had not had the chance to meet when Dumbledore introduced her to the rest of the staff.

From the get-go he noticed how utterly out of place she seemed. She was smiling at the scared students that would sit down to be sorted, while the other professors chose to keep a serious face. And because of that weird connection scared children felt to women that somehow resembled their mothers, they would look at her to calm their nerves. A smile was better than a frown. Even the stuck up little Malfoy, who already knew the in and outs of the Sorting Hat Ceremony, smiled at her looking for comfort.

In an alternate universe that would have been enough to tug at Severus’ heart. But this was no fairytale, and instead of making him feel any sort of wholesome emotion, he was annoyed at the way the older students were looking at her. The seven-year students were barely old enough to use magic outside school, yet he could see how in their undeveloped brains they saw themselves as worthy of a bloody Professor. It was like James’ entitled personality had stained the school walls and was seeping into the older boys’ heads.

Severus was not the only one who noticed them staring. But opposite to him, the other professors were quietly giggling to themselves, they seemed to think it was something cute and deserving of laughter. Even Dumbledore could not contain his laugh when he was giving his final speech, it was like it was amusing to everyone but to Severus. And because nature was always in need of balance, if the boys wear in awe at her, the girls were trying to implode her with their minds. Thankfully that was not something that was taught at Hogwarts so she was not in danger of exploding any time soon.

From her first day at the castle she was an event.

Even though Severus prided himself in not succumbing to earthly weaknesses, he could not deny her beauty.

She was a woman, meaning the perfect image all men saw in their heads when they heard the word woman. The longest hair he had ever seen, shiny and light, every time Filch opened the doors to the Great Hall, the breeze lifted her hair. Rosy cheeks that resembled those off children that just got finished running around, along with her manicured hands. She was a sight for sore eyes. The kind of pretty that left you breathless, because not only was she beautiful in appearance, she was also extremely kind and sweet to anyone that talked to her.

Severus hated everything about her.

To his judgment she could not have been more brainless by applying to be a professor at a school filled with promiscuous teenagers when she was only twenty five years old. Because no, of course boys did not see a problem with flirting with a professor because they were “of age”. They were barely eighteen for fucks sake! But at least she did not indulge in those actions, she did not pay them any mind. Severus felt like majority of, if not all, the older students that applied to her class did it just to be around her and to have an excuse to do so.

If we were to talk about her relationship with Severus we would have to mention the way she always started the conversation, and how Severus made sure to end it as fast as possible. Her smile pissed him off in a way no insult did. Because they were not fake nor forced, they were genuine and that somehow was worse.

He was not deserving of innocent smiles and compliments, and he knew no professor thought the opposite. So who did she think she was to break the norm? She was infuriating. She had taken to calling him by his first name, she never said Snape. Just Severus not even Professor Severus.

And because it was Hogwarts and they always managed to acquire a new curse that would haunt them for the rest of the year, chaos ensued soon enough.

A troll attacked muggle born Hermione Granger. Dumbledore sent him back to the Great Hall to check on Quirrell, of course he did not do that. By the time he reached the bathroom both Quirrell and McGonagall were peaking inside, he moved Quirrell to the side so he could also see what was happening. The brat himself and his two other friends were standing over the unconscious troll. What were the odds of the famous three being involved with the creature? The other two professors left after McGonagall finished scolding the children, Severus remained on the spot for a while longer.

He must have let time fly over him because when he decided it was prudent to go to Dumbledore‘s office someone had already arrived to check up on him.

The woman.

One of her hair clips was hanging on a strand of hair, about to fall off completely. He quickly noticed her robes looked as if she had not ironed them that morning, they were all crumpled up, even though it was the end of the day it looked like she had just woken up, she was all over the place. When she saw him staring at her robes, she smiled and said. “The children were holding onto me for dear life,” it was meant to be an explanation but it did not clarify anything. He supposed it did not matter, for their were all silly questions that did not need an answer for the moment being.

“Right…” he replied.

“Headmaster asked for you and Quirrell said you stayed back so I offered to come fetch you,” she was still panting, clearly exhausted from walking over there in a hurry.

“All is well, I was not in need of a knight.”

And because she never took anything to heart, instead of being offended by his rude tone she only laughed as if he had just cracked a funny joke.

She then walked the few steps that were between them and the bathroom. Even though he had been expecting the screech, his ears still ringed when she let out a wail, disgusted by the monster inside the bathroom and noticing the slimy goop all over the walls. “Did you fight it, Severus?” She asked.

“Clearly not,” it was not clear, he was just being a prick for no reason.

“Was it professor Quirrell? Oh, how brave of him,” at that Severus snorted, slightly appalled that she thought that wimp was capable of defeating a troll.

“Were you not there when he fainted right next to the tables the students were sitting at? He did not fight this troll, don’t be silly.”

“I don’t know, sometimes scaredy cats surprise us with their bravery. Don’t you agree?”

After hearing her words he took this as an opportunity to make a jab at her. “No, in my opinion we all are as tough as we look.”

“Funny of you to say that given how this giant of a monster is currently laying down on the floor after being defeated by a much smaller human. Whoever it was that won against him”

What was it with her and her obsession with arguing with him?

The childish side of his brain did not enlighten him and did not help him understand that that was never her intention, just that he was annoyed by everything she said. In his mind his anger was not unfounded.

The reality was different.

The first ever real argument they had was after Quirrell had done what he knew how to do best. Be extremely off putting.

After the troll attack on the school grounds, the headmaster came to the conclusion that the best plan to put into action would be to have a male professor supervise all the classes that were led by female professors. As soon as he said those words, Severus thought that there was no way that McGonagall and Sprout were going to accept it. And he was right, they refused it. They argued they were completely capable witches and that they did not need a chaperone. But of course she accepted. Because of course she needed protection, like the damsel in distress she was so keen on impersonating.

Luckily for Severus he was not the first option since he was not present when they assigned her a guardian. It had been Quirrell the one tasked to overlook her class.

But not so luckily for Severus, the man with the turban had managed to fail at his job remarkably fast. On the first night she went with her to the astronomy tower. He had disappeared not even mid way through the class, then he came back at the end. Surprisingly enough she was not as much of a people pleaser as Severus thought she was. Because as soon as the class was over she dragged Quirrell to Dumbledore‘s office.

She had basically told on him.

Quirrell also managed to weasel his way out of a scolding, given his excuse made sense. Severus had arrived when Quirrell was getting ready to leave the office so he did not get to hear his excuses, but if Dumbledore let him go easily then why would he care enough to question his decision. By the time their conversation had ended it was nearing three in the morning, and because Severus did care to a certain degree what people thought of him, he offered to walk her to her chambers.

“He went missing before I even had a chance to get my books out,” she said, still fuming.

“I suppose he got scared, he seems like the type,” he replied, being dismissive as always. He did not truly care. After all, his intention for going to Dumbledore’s office was to discuss the events that took place the week before. Now that Harry was at Hogwarts Dumbledore wanted him to keep an eye on the brat, there were some things plaguing his mind and he wanted to discuss them with the Headmaster. Annoyed because Dumbledore had kicked him out and told him to go to sleep, he was not interested in the conversation she had started.

To that she said, “He doesn’t get to be scared when he was supposed to protect the kids at night,” noticeably exasperated she threw her hands up. “What if something happened while he wasn’t there?”

“I imagine you would have been more than capable of protecting them yourself, because if you are a professor you should be,” did she genuinely need a man to help her do everything. Merlin, she was even weaker than Severus had first thought she was.

“I’m talking about the possibility of a bloody troll attacking us! How am I meant to defeat a troll?”

Severus would like to blame it on the lack of sleep that having Lily's child in the same vicinity as him caused him, or even the general negative feelings that he had grown accustomed to, but for whatever reason he was not in the mood to baby her and say – Oh no! It must have been terrifying! She was a grown woman for god's sake! So bitterly, he told her, “I was not aware that you needed a man to do even the tiniest of tasks that a Hogwarts professor should be able to fulfill. Do you also ask Quirrell to pick up the quills you drop?”

And apparently during that specific night she was also not in the mood to let his rude words slide the way she always did, “you do you know that it is not part of your job to be a fucking prick?”

“Meaning?”

“I’m only upset because his absence put the children and myself in danger.”

“Your lack of strength and your need to always be rescued is, to be truthful, laughable,” Her lips opened in shock. More often than not he was rude to her and she could count with her fingers the number of times he had passed the opportunity to provoke her. But this was her breaking point.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh, come on. I know beautiful women tend to not be the brightest but I trust you to have a brain, even if it is the size of a bloody almond,” he stopped walking. “You are not actually angry because he did not do his job. What really upset you was the fact that he was not at your beck and call.”

“You are the rudest man I have ever met!”

“Are you perhaps not used to men not falling at your feet?” He smiled, but the upward tilt of his lips held no warmth. With that sentence he was talking about Quirrell but also about himself.

After hearing Severus' words she promptly screamed. He had finally accomplished a mission he was not even aware he had. He had driven her mad. At the start of their argument she had taken a couple steps back, as a way to shield herself. But she closed the distance between them and got in his face.

“Ever since I set foot in this school you have been nothing but rude to me. Everyone else has been welcoming but your presence makes my stomach turn!”

“Then I advise you to avoid paying attention to me.”

“I do not understand you.”

Severus felt like every word she uttered was a calculated arrow she was shooting at him. How did this woman manage to light his nerves on fire with everything she said? “I do not remember asking you to try.” He fixed a strand of hair that fell on his face before saying, “But if you really cannot sleep at night because of me, I will let you know that I dislike you because you are one of those people that uses their smile to get places.”

“Maybe if you tried smiling once every other week you would also get places,” what infuriated him more was how he noticed even now, when she was being mean, she still managed to be respectful. Because he knew that if someone had said the words he said to her, he would have hexed them. But he would rather die than to admit that.

“And if by places you mean alone with Quirrell in his office, then I think I will pass. Thank you.”

Being honest, he had not intended to allude to any promiscuous activity; he just wanted to be as annoying as she was. He had clearly crossed the line. Her lips opened in shock once again, but this time around her eyebrows also furrowed.

Severus always found new ways to surprise himself. He invented new spells when he was a teenager, he was the brightest potions master Hogwarts had ever had, and apparently now he was an expert at making women cry. Simply an outstanding skill.

But because he was loyal to the image he had crafted, he did not allow himself to feel bad. Although he let her have the last word.

“You truly are a despicable, sad little man.”

His first idea was to spew extra insults that popped into his head a second after she said that, but he thought better of it. He was not going to lose his composure in front of an insignificant childish brat.

So he turned around and started walking to his chambers instead, leaving her behind to deal with her suffocating tears.

Since he had been working at the castle for a long time now, he knew something was coming his way.

A couple hours after, at strictly seven in the morning he was summoned to Dumbledore‘s office. On his way there he thought of walking all the way up to the highest tower and throwing himself down, he already knew where this was heading to. Quirrell and himself were the only male professors at the school, because of course the ghost did not count. At least to him.

Quirrell failed as a chaperone, so that meant he was the only other available option.

You see, on the very rare occasions he felt guilty about something it was because his own words and actions left him trapped in situations he did not want to be involved in. And this time around it was no different. Whether or not he had refrained from outright insulting her he would have still been stuck as Quirrell’s replacement, but if things had not gone the way they did, the both of them could have at least pretended like they had a great relationship. Now everything was going to be as awkward as humanly possible.

… and it was his fault.

Just like he predicted, Dumbledore said the exact words he had been expecting. All with a frown on his face.

“I do not want to hear it, Severus,” was the way Dumbledore chose to start the conversation.

Severus sighed, “I apologize. I imagine you've summoned me to tell me I am to replace Quirrell,”

“Yes. Although I am sure you know I am not the one you should be apologizing to,” his long, thick, ivory hair made him look like an exhausted gnome. All disapproving and old. “She was only scared, after all it is her first year teaching.”

“I apologize for the inconvenience, it is on me.”

“So, am I to be present every Wednesday at midnight?”

Now it was Dumbledore‘s turn to sigh, “I know we have never been the closest, but I would like to tell you that I do notice whenever you choose to ignore my words.”

“Wednesdays at midnight?”

“Wednesdays at midnight.”

[readerinsertsaremyguiltypleasure]

Hi!! P, 13 for Billy! Angsty but with a happy ending, please! Thank you!

Here you go, anon. 💕

This one is set while Billy is still a Marine.

P. Fighting/almost breaking up 13. 'What happened to us?'

----------------------------------------------

It all started with a really shit day. One of those days where everything that could go wrong did go wrong and all you wanted to do was to crawl into bed with your boyfriend and have him hold you for a while.

But you couldn’t. Because your boyfriend was thousands of miles away, in a desert somewhere in Afghanistan.

So, when you logged on to your scheduled Skype call, your mood was already dismal.

Usually getting to see Billy in any way you could was enough to brighten your mood, but today the low-quality picture and clunky signal just served as an unwelcome reminder of how he wasn’t there with you.

You needed him, and he wasn’t there. Just like he hadn’t been there all the other days you had needed him over the past several months. And all the months of his last two tours.

You were immensely proud of him for his service and would never ask him to quit the Marines for you… but it was hard being left behind. It was lonely.

In retrospect, you should have sent him an email and rescheduled your Skype call, claiming to be sick or something. But you had thought you could power through. You had thought that Billy would make you feel better.

You had thought wrong.

He had quickly noticed your sour mood, which only made his own mood sour in turn, and soon you found yourself in a heated fight while Skype kept freezing on your angry expressions.

‘Is it too much to want to enjoy this time together?’ said Billy in an angry whisper. He didn’t have the luxury of yelling, something that satisfied your petty side. ‘After all the shit that goes on here, I think I deserve a break and a chance to chat with my girl.’

‘We’re not together, Billy,’ you reminded him. ‘We’re on whole different continents. I love you and I’m proud of you, but you can’t expect me to always be okay with that.’

‘You’ve never had trouble before.’

You let out a bark of disbelieving laughter. ‘I’ve never let you see it before,’ you corrected. ‘I can’t count how many times I have cried myself to sleep because I missed having you next to me. Every Valentine’s Day and birthday and Christmas. Every shitty day that would have been made better with just one hug from you.’

‘That’s not my fault,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I had already signed up when we got together. You knew what you were getting into.’

‘So I’m not allowed to miss you?’

‘No.’

You stared at the screen in shock. That had not been the answer you had been expecting.

Billy seemed to realise his mistake straight away, and he groaned as he scrubbed a hand through his hair. ‘That’s not what I… Look, my tour is over in a few weeks. Then none of this will matter.’

‘Unless the tour gets extended like the last one.’

Unless you don’t come home at all, you didn’t say.

‘Then we’ll just have to deal with it,’ he sighed. Something caught his attention and his gaze drifted to above the camera. He let out an annoyed growl and then looked back to the screen. ‘I gotta go. People are waiting to use the computers.’

You nodded, knowing that there was nothing you could do about it. You weren’t going to deny other people the chance to talk to their loved ones just because you and Billy were fighting.

‘I… I’ll see you soon.’

When the call ended, you finally let the tears fall down your cheeks.

----

Billy didn’t get the chance for another Skype call after that, and the only communication you had was emails which were kept short and succinct.

Only a few more weeks to go. I know.

Mission went well. I’m glad.

Got overlooked for the promotion again. I’m sorry.

Frank says hi. Hi Frank.

What happened to us?

That last message went unanswered.

But you would get your answer soon enough you supposed. By some miracle, Billy’s tour hadn’t been extended, and he was probably already on his flight home.

The thought made you equal parts happy and scared. You had missed him so much and couldn’t wait to see his face in person again… but what if this fight was not something you could both get past? What if the next time you saw him was also the last time?

It was those thoughts that had you stress-cleaning, and you were just about done with the kitchen when someone knocked on your front door. You almost ignored them but decided better of it when they knocked again.

‘All right, I’m coming,’ you grumbled as you made your way to the door.

Your annoyance disappeared the second you opened it.

There, on your doorstep, was Billy, dressed in a suit and holding his duffle bag in one hand and flowers in the other.

‘Why didn’t you use your key?’ you asked dumbly before you shook yourself out of it and stepped aside to let him in.

He gave you a small smile as he passed you. You caught a whiff of his cologne as he did, and your mind finally caught up with the fact that he was really there in front of you.

He was home.

Billy put his bag on the floor near the wall and then turned back to hold out the flowers to you.

You took them silently, and then immediately chucked them away as you launched yourself at him, wrapping your arms around him as tightly as you could.

‘I’m so glad you’re okay,’ you cried into his shoulder. You could deal with the fight and the distant emails and the unanswered questions later. Right now, all that mattered was that he had made it home again. ‘I’m so glad you’re home.’

Billy’s arms wrapped around you, making you cry harder. ‘Me too, baby,’ he whispered, and he pressed a kiss to your temple. ‘It’s so good be back for good.’

That had you pulling away, but Billy didn’t let you get very far. He only gave you just enough room to be able to look up at him. ‘For good?’ you asked, hope welling in your chest.

Billy nodded and reached up to wipe the drying tears from your cheeks. ‘I’ve finally got enough saved up to get out. I’ve been emailing the bank, and I think I can get a small loan to set up Anvil at last.’

Anvil had been his dream for a while now, but you hadn’t realised it had been so close.

Your smile could have rivalled the sun at that moment. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ you said.

You wanted nothing more than to kiss him senseless, maybe drag him straight to the bedroom, but the fight still lingered at the back of your mind, telling you that he might not want that.

Something must have shown in your eyes, because Billy suddenly cupped your cheeks and crashed his lips to yours, dispelling every one of your doubts.

You would get past it. You were going to be okay.

You clung to the collar of his shirt like it was a lifeline, even after the kiss ended.

‘I’m not leaving you ever again,’ he said, voice suddenly more serious than you’d ever heard it. ‘No more missed birthdays or holidays.’

You shook your head, feeling silly for the things you’d said all those weeks ago.

‘I’m sor-’

Billy cut off your apology with another kiss, this one less impassioned and more tender.

More loving.

‘Me too,’ he whispered once he had pulled away again. He rested his forehead against yours, and you both closed your eyes, relishing in the fact that you were both together.

You were both still together.

‘You asked what happened to us,’ he said. ‘The way I see it, the only thing that happened is we became stronger than before. Because now we know we can get through anything.’

Tears pricked at your eyes again, but you didn’t let them fall.

You couldn’t agree with him more.

[justinelark]

"Identity Porn"

Identity porn is a trope where character A doesn't know who character B really is. One example is that Lois Lane knows both Clark Kent and Superman and doesn't realize they are the same person. Another example is in the movies "The Shop Around the Corner" and "You've Got Mail," where the characters are corresponding anonymously with someone who they know and don't like in real life. I love the dramatic irony of it all. Eventually the characters will find out, and then what??

SidClaude: I Know Everything You Don't Want Me To by whimsicalmerkeet, E, 10660 words The NHL decides the players need anonymous pen pals to deal with the quarantine. Nobody likes the idea, but Claude Giroux finds more in his partner than he expected.

My comments: At first neither of them knows who he's writing to, but Claude figures it out. open up your plans, and damn, you're free by vaguelyfamiliar, T, 14392 words No, Sid doesn’t genuinely think it’s his childhood celebrity crush Steve Yzerman making him mixtapes and leaving chocolates on his desk, but he has no idea who it could actually be. Hilary knows he’s gay, Claude hates him, and everyone else hardly talks to him. My comments: AU in which Sid and Claude are both interns for the 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings learn not to look at you with scorn by ologist, M, 4559 words Claude Giroux has a ridiculous crush on Sidney Crosby. Clearly, the only way to resolve this is to woo him anonymously. SidGeno: I thought SidGeno would be very tricky to do because of Geno's English but these brilliant writers have figured out a way!

Academic Dishonesty by iBear, T, 10437 words For years now, Geno has managed to keep his two lives separate. Academics and hockey rarely intersect, and with his very specific interest in Russian military leadership in World War II, he doesn't expect the streams to cross. Ever.

Sidney Crosby always does break expectations.

there is a lake in me by hauntologie, E, 21812 words In retrospect, Flower can totally understand why Geno didn't tell Sid who he actually was. Sid is incredibly persuasive when he wants to get laid. My comments: Geno unexpectedly wakes up in the body of a woman. This story features Sid keeping a logbook of stats on his sexual encounters. Someone New by getoffmyhead, E, 25233 words Zhenya knew he’d messed up when Sid’s eyes darted over to him, and his face didn’t brighten with fondness. Sid always seemed pleased to see him and responded with the most sincere smile.

Instead, Sid’s eyes found Zhenya with a puzzled squint, and Zhenya’s blood ran cold. He knew what Sid was looking at—a total stranger. Sid didn’t know why the stranger was speaking to him.

Zhenya had been around Sid long enough to know how this would go. Once he figured out he definitely did not know this guy, Sid would nod with a tight, fake smile at the stranger. He would never break his stride, politely but firmly indicating that he had somewhere to be. He would exit the stranger’s presence as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.

Except that wasn’t what happened. Sid’s steps slowed, feet turning to approach Zhenya directly. “Hey,” he said with a smile—not the profoundly fond one that brightened his whole face in an unmistakable expression of delight at seeing Zhenya. This smile was something sharper, more focused.

[azikarue]

Life in Color : Chapter 26 : Pirate

King, Queen | FFN Rating: K+ | FFN Link ❖ “It’s a shame you have a moral compass now; we could be making a killing off of these parts.”

King rolled his eyes at his sister’s rueful remark. He shot a look her way, but she wasn’t paying attention, too busy running her fingers along a tray of attack rings like they were precious jewels. King recognized them at once as her personal collection of favorites from their parts-hunting days, all carefully packed in a custom case. They were one of the last things they’d placed in the storage unit before closing it up. King hadn’t thought he’d see them again so soon.

Though, he hadn’t thought a company like BEGA would come along and lock away all beyblading parts and components behind a membership, either.

“Pack a box and come on,” he ordered, already feeling agitated from the cramped space and his own intentions hanging over his head.

Ever since their stint with Dr. K and their loss against the Bladebreakers, King and Queen had done their best to give up their old ways and battle fairly. King, especially, found himself exhausted by all the dishonesty and the tangled web of lies and half-truths they’d been fed to further Dr. K’s agenda.

In retrospect, he realized that he’d lost sight of the reason he began beyblading in the first place when he started focusing on the parts he had, instead of how far he could push himself in battle. He knew it came from the days when he and Queen used to gamble their own parts in an effort to build the beyblades of their dreams.

Back then, that was the only access they had to top of the line parts. By the time they could buy them on their own, they’d gotten too greedy and preferred to steal what they wanted. It took battling Tyson to make him realize that the parts weren’t what made them good – it was all the battles they fought as they built their collection and the opponents who forced them to level up.

With that realization, the whole BEGA takeover immediately rubbed him the wrong way.

They were putting too much weight on the pro title, handing kids membership cards and telling them that was all they needed when, in reality, it took years of hard work and discipline to reach the top. Refusing to sell parts to anyone without a BEGA ID made things even worse because it made buying parts feel like a luxury. Kids were waving their BEGA cards around and stripping entire shelves of blading gear because they could, but most of them hadn’t fully mastered their beginner blades yet.

Not only that, but it happened too fast. King had learned the hard way what happened when you blindly trusted a loser with an ego making big promises. The ‘moral compass’ Queen made fun of hated seeing a bunch of kids taken advantage of.

And if Tyson wasn’t backing BEGA…

Well, King didn’t consider it a good sign.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Queen sighed. She had a cardboard box in her arms and a bored expression on her face. King knew she thought he was blowing the BEGA thing out of proportion, but at least she agreed to help. Even if part of the reason she did was because she’d get a suped up blade out of the deal; her own case of parts was on top of the box she was carrying.

King sifted through a few more boxes until he was able to put one together that had a decent variety of parts. He closed it up, wincing at the grating sound of cardboard scraping, and hoisted it onto his shoulder. With a nod of his head, Queen followed him out of their storage unit. Her foot only tapped a little bit waiting for him to lock it up.

Back out on the streets, they turned in unison and headed towards the nearest subway station. When they’d gotten the storage unit, King purposefully chose one a handful of stops away from their apartment. He didn’t want it to be inconvenient, but it felt less tempting to pore through their stash of amassed parts if they weren’t right down the street. And, with the reputation they’d garnered for themselves, it was safer to keep most of their parts away from home.

Over the past year of walking the straight and narrow, they hadn’t made a single trip out to the unit, though they paid for it monthly. Instead, they honed their skills with the beyblades they had, replacing parts as needed with the handful they kept laying around.

Carrying the boxes through the city, now, felt illicit.

Queen didn’t seem bothered. When they took their seats on the train, she plucked a lethal-looking attack ring from her collection and twirled it around in her fingers.

“Stop frowning, King,” she said without taking her eyes off the attack ring. “We’re not doing anything illegal and BEGA isn’t combing the streets of Tokyo for unaccounted-for parts.”

King’s frown, ever-present these days, deepened as the doors hissed shut. “Technically, we’re in possession of stolen property,” he said, keeping his voice low even though the only other people in their car had headphones on. “In case you forgot how we have so many parts in the first place.”

Queen just laughed and said, “If you want to get technical about it, they’re winnings. We didn’t steal anything.”

“Tell that to all the kids who ever begged us to let them keep their beyblades,” he shot back, angry at her flippancy. To Queen this might be an amusing jaunt into their past habits, but King felt like they were taking steps backward on a slippery slope. “If all you’re looking to do is get your kicks on a power trip and make other bladers miserable again, then I can do this without you.”

Anger flashed in Queen’s eyes.

King balled his hands into fists on top of the box in his lap and leveled her with a fixed stare.

“I mean it,” he said. “If you want to face off against somebody, make it the cocky bladers who hold their precious BEGA memberships over other people’s heads. I don’t even care if you ask them to put their parts on the line once our stores run low. But these—,” he paused to rap on the top of the box and make sure he had Queen’s attention, “—are for anybody who needs parts but doesn’t have access to them.

“The sport of beyblading isn’t something some company can buy and sell as it pleases. If BEGA wants to limit parts sales to its members, I’ll sell them to everyone else myself at a fraction of the cost.”

Queen sat in stunned silence for a minute. “A fraction?” she asked and raised both of her eyebrows.

“We got them for free,” King reminded her with a halfhearted glare. If there weren’t going to be certain risks and costs involved, he wouldn’t charge at all.

His sister laughed and sat back in her seat.

“You had me at ‘put their parts on the line’,” she said, tossing the attack ring in the air and catching it in her fist. “There are plenty of gullible losers out there buying parts because they have a magic card that lets them. I’d love to take them down a peg.”

King sighed. At least she had spirit. Maybe her own moral compass would come with time. In the meanwhile, there were just as many struggling beybladers out there as there were gullible losers, and he would do whatever he could to get them the parts that they needed.

[nflstreetsanimereviews]

A Retrospective on Sword Art Online's Aincrad Arc

What you’re about to read was originally going to be a review of the first volume of the Sword Art Online series. Then after reading it along with the second volume, I realized that they were so interconnected that it only made sense to combine the two into one review. After that, I had a realization–most people reading this have probably already watched the SAO anime. Meaning that reading this would pretty much be redundant since it’s a pretty one-to-one adaptation. Even if you liked the anime, there’s no payoff in reading the light novels, since the anime has the superior version of the Aincrad arc. Needless to say, this review became more of a slightly below-surface-level view of Sword Art Online as a series, Reki Kawahara’s growth as a writer, and what you would be better off reading if you wanted to learn more about Aincrad. Please excuse the title, I couldn't think of anything better to name it.

Believe it or not, it’s been almost eleven years since Sword Art Online first aired. For those who don't remember, it was a huge deal when it aired. It was probably the biggest anime back in 2012. It was also the most panned, with many calling it overrated or saying it just plain sucked. While some of the criticisms were over the top, it was understandable why many didn’t like SAO–there were many better anime that aired that year that only got a fraction of attention it did. Many of SAO’s plot points, especially in the second half of the show, were rightfully slammed for being inconsistent about Asuna’s personality and the way it handled Kirito’s and Suguha’s relationship. After a while, it became ‘cool’ to hate on SAO. After all, it was a mediocre-at-best anime that became immensely popular despite said setbacks. I’ve always had a soft spot for SAO–for a series that wasn’t that good overall, it does maintain to keep being interesting, which at the very least is what you want. With that in mind, I decided to re-read the first and second volume to see how it holds up, years later after the hype.

For those who’ve already watched the first season of Sword Art Online, the first two volumes cover roughly the first half of it. It begins with Kirito, our protagonist, playing the game Sword Art Online, a Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG). The game is played on a device called a Nerve Gear, a state-of-the-art VR headset that simulates all five senses. For Kirito and the ten thousand players that were able to log on and play SAO, they’ve just unwillingly signed up to be trapped in the game’s world (Aincrad). The game creator, Akihiko Kayaba, states that he’s holding them captive until they’re able to reach the 100th floor of the game’s map and that anyone who dies in the game also dies in real life.

I don’t think it’ll come as much of a surprise when I say that this book isn’t good. With all of the knowledge and lore I know about the Sword Art Online series, SAO volume 1 is alright–but on its own, it’s flimsy and hollow. After the big reveal that Kirito and everyone else in the game are trapped in there, there’s a two-year time skip, which in my opinion is a huge mistake. What the reader knows of SAO and Aincrad from this volume is almost at an elevator pitch level, assuming that this is their intro to the series. For now, we almost know nothing about the world around us–we just know about how powerful and cool Kirito is.

Most of our perspectives on this are warped because most of us already knew about Sword Art Online from the anime, which had a completely different pace from this. It’s why I’m including the second volume in this review as well. This volume skips most of the world-building and spends an extensive amount of time showing us what ends up being the final boss fight, along with Kirito and Asuna being together, although we as a reader don’t know that much about her or why she fell for Kirito in the first place. Funny thing is that the Aincrad Arc part of the anime takes parts from other entries in the light novel series–from Volume 8 (which is a collection of short stories, like Volume 2), Material Edition 1 (which I don’t even know is translated into English officially), and Progressive Volume 1 (written four years after the first volume was published, and is a ‘spin-off’ that expands on the Aincrad arc). To put in perspective how much this volume is lacking in detail, the anime adaptation only uses material from the first volume in episodes 1, 8-11, 13, and 14. That’s a whole lotta gaps! Compare that to the second half of the anime–the Fairy Dance Arc. It adapts from volumes three and four chronologically, and it shows in an obvious decline in plot quality. There are other reasons why that is, but that’s not relevant here.

I mentally tried to put myself as a reader that didn’t know anything about Sword Art Online before opening this book, and this was the interpretation I got: This volume leaves a lot to be desired. We know that Kirito is perhaps the most powerful person in the game. We know that Asuna is in love with him. We know that many have gotten used to life in Aincrad and have given up all hope of returning to the ‘real world’. But we don’t get to see them transition into that. All we get is the tail end, where life is already settled in. It zaps most of the fun out of it. It straight up didn’t make sense how THIS became popular enough to be animated in the first place–it is, until I did some more research on how this light novel came to be.

—

At the beginning of the afterword for Sword Art Online Volume 1, Reki Kawahara, the author writes “The volume of Sword Art Online you hold in your hands now was my first novel, written for the Dengeki Game Novel Prize in 2002.” He actually never submitted it, due to it being too long to enter, and instead published it online. The web version of Sword Art Online, which ran from 2002 to 2008, had popular support, but it wasn’t what got it published as a light novel. He won the Dengeki Novel Prize in 2008 with his story Accel World, allowing himself to finesse his way into also have SAO published as well. So basically, what we’re reading is the most juvenile writing that Mr. Kawahara had to offer. Due to it being not how he got his foot in the door, SAO was left on the back burner for Accel World. That being said, the web novel had LOADS of content, which made it more feasible for Kawahara to be able to publish both it and Accel World at the same time, even if the writing quality wasn’t up to Kawahara’s now-seasoned standards.

—

The second volume of Sword Art Online contains four short stories–stories that were sorely missing from the first volume. For the theoretical person in my head who has only read the first volume, and knows nothing else about the SAO universe, this volume gives some life to Aincrad and the society that formed in-game.

The first story, titled The Black Swordsman, starts on the 35th floor of Aincrad. Our hero runs into Silica, rescuing her from a mob of NPC monsters. Kirito and Silica go on a quest to revive Silica’s Tamed Monster, Pina.

This story introduces the concept of ‘Kirito, the older brother’–something that those who’ve seen the later half of the first season of Sword Art Online know full well about (many would claim that they know ‘too much’.) While Kirito admits that he’s helping her because she reminds him of his real-life sister, their relationship is nowhere near as weird. I have to say though, there were still some ‘sus’ moments. The one that comes to mind is Kirito saying “Level is just a number”. I cringed at least a little reading that, even if the context is way less insidious than expected.

Other than that, it was an alright story about the difficulties of being a young girl trapped inside Sword Art Online. While Kirito is also young (he’s only two years older than Silica), he’s had years of prior gaming experience before SAO, along with also being a beta tester. Silica, being only thirteen (and a girl), for better or for worse, has a constant stream of fellow players wanting to play with her. Her naivety gets her into trouble, being only saved by Jes-...I mean Kirito. This story also gives us a more in-depth look at the mid-level players of SAO. Silica, being ‘mid’ herself, doesn’t fight on the frontlines, and instead makes her living exploring already cleared dungeons in the lower levels of Aincrad. It’s a pretty good gig if you want some excitement in your life, but aren’t crazy (or strong) enough to be on the front lines. Probably beats subsisting on apples and being harassed by Army assholes in the Town of Beginnings.

The second story, titled Warmth of the Heart, features our hero with the blacksmith Lisbeth, who both go on a quest to the 55th floor to obtain a new mysterious metal–a metal so rare that it has not been dropped in-game yet.

This story was by far the worst. I feel bad for Lisbeth, because the entire reason for her existence is to be another girl to pine after Kirito. Yes, as you would expect, Kirito’s Law1 is in full force in this story–Lisbeth, swept by the enigma that is ‘Kirito’, falls for him in no time. Are there really no other honorable men in Aincrad other than Kirito? Well, of course, there’s Agil and Klein, but they’re adults. Lisbeth, while older than Kirito, is still a teenager. Not that age has ever stopped someone in Sword Art Online, but you’d think that there’s at least one other Japanese teenage boy stuck in the game that is as honorable, or even as nice, as Kirito. Guess not, considering that most male players in the game that aren’t Kirito and friends turn out to be huge sickos most of the time. Guess being trapped in a video game world with little hope of ever coming back gets to you after a while. Cabin fever did a number on more than a few men in Aincrad.

Anyways, back to Lisbeth–this story kinda rubs me the wrong way due to the way it establishes her character–someone who will only feel unrequited ‘love’. In scare quotes because it’s a ‘love’ that comes from being stuck with him for a day. Replace her with any other female blacksmith, and the story would’ve gone the same. Because he’s Kirito, and you’re supposed to want to be with him forever. It isn’t like Lisbeth is bland or anything. From what little we know about her, I like her. It’s just disappointing that her purpose (for now) is to be a side-piece of Kirito’s theoretical harem. She’ll never get what she wants because she’s not Asuna. Her fatalist interpretation of Kirito’s and Asuna’s relationship combined with her inability to move on traps her in Kirito’s ‘friendzone’, for a lack of a better term. Needless to say, this story doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test.

The Girl in the Morning Dew is the third story, featuring Kirito and Asuna shortly after they got married in-game. They come across a little girl named Yui, who collapses near the two while they’re venturing out to a remote part of the forest on the 22nd floor to look for a rumored ghost. Yui, not a ghost, nevertheless lacks a Color Cursor, something that every living object has in Sword Art Online. Kirito and Asuna, never one to not help someone in need, help Yui try to find where she came from.

Out of all of the chapters, this one is the best by far. The worldbuilding is a good thing to see. I mean, we gotta know about Aincrad first if we’re expected to care about it. A lot of the chapter is set in the Town of Beginnings, the starting town in Sword Art Online. It’s still the most populous town in all of Aincrad two years after the ‘game’ started. Most people who still live there are those who’re afraid to go outside the town’s walls. There’s also the Aincrad Liberation Force (known as the ALF, or simply as ‘The Army’), the largest guild in SAO with more than a thousand members, who make the starting town their base. It was nice to come back to where it all started, since Kirito stayed in here for all of one day the first time he was here.

This chapter delves into the conflict within the higher rungs of the Army and offers a very interesting insight into what happens when leadership breaks down. One faction of the ALF has turned to ‘taxing’ (extorting) the citizens of the Town of Beginnings–who’re probably the least well-off out of all of the people trapped in Sword Art Online, considering most of them haven’t even left the town. In typical SAO fashion, these ‘taxers’ are unnecessarily evil–they would take candy from a baby and laugh about it. Another victim of cabin fever. Caught between this is an orphanage run by a woman named Sasha, who houses twenty kids that’re stuck in SAO without a parent or guardian. There’s a lot about The Army that could be expanded, but since this is a series about Kirito, all we need to know is that they’re the closest thing Aincrad has to a form of government. Did you know that ‘The Army’ is actually a combination of two guilds, the ‘Aincrad Liberation Squad’, a front-line clearer guild, and ‘MMO Today’, a mutual aid organization that aimed to spread info about Sword Art Online and resources equally. 

The final story, titled Red-Nosed Reindeer, is also the earliest story chronologically, taking place in December 2023, almost a year before Kirito and everyone else finally broke out of Aincrad. The story is also the only one where Kirito is the lone narrator.

This story hearkens back to an earlier time in Kirito’s Sword Art Online playthrough, when he briefly joined the ‘Moonlit Black Cats’, a small guild whose camaraderie was a welcoming surprise to the lone-wolf Kirito. Kirito hides his actual power level, pretending to be only two or three levels higher than the rest of the guild, while in actuality he’s Kirito, the all-mighty slayer of bosses and wooer of around half of the women he talks to. Nevertheless, things go horribly wrong one day when one of the members accidentally sets off a trap in a labyrinth, ending up killing four of the guild members and driving the remaining member to suicide. This memory still haunts Kirito months later, believing that he is the reason why the Moonlit Black Cats were killed. He’s especially guilty about Sachi, who Kirito was mentoring and teaching sword skills to.

While it’s woefully the shortest, Red-Nosed Reindeer is easily better than the first two stories. It’s the only insight that we get to see of the ‘early days’ of Sword Art Online, with all of the other stories in the book taking place in 2024, the year after. Our visit with the Moonlit Black Cats is only brief, getting only a little bit more than the cliff notes on them, but at least we got to meet them.

—

These four stories add some flair to the Sword Art Online universe, but still leave a lot to be desired. Aincrad is a vast and wonderful world, filled with ten thousand people’s stories–two volumes are better than one, but there’s still tons of meat on that bone. Mr. Kawahara agrees as well, regretting that the Aincrad storyline is only solved in one volume. To correct this, he started the Sword Art Online: Progressive series in 2012.

The Progressive series starts from the very beginning. I mean, the very beginning. The first volume only covers the first two floors. Kawahara, in his afterward for the first volume of Progressive states that “I wrote the story [Sword Art Online] as a submission for the Dengeki Novel Award, so I had to finish the story with the game being beaten, right in the very first installment.” Wow. So that explains why it was wrapped up so soon. The first volume quite literally was what he was going to submit in 2002. In a sense, it’s actually very cool, since what we’re reading is pretty much the first thing he wrote. One of the payoffs of reading the series is seeing the growth in Kawahara’s writing.

Continuing on, he also says that “Later on, I wrote a number of shorter prequel stories that filled in gaps (see Volumes 2 and 8), but they’re more like little episodes, and don’t focus on the meat and potatoes of the players advancing through the game.” Okay, so we did read Volume 2, but I’m not going to read Volume 8. This review is already long enough as it is. Moving on, I’m so glad that he gets that what supplements he wrote are substandard, especially for a great concept like Sword Art Online. They just don’t quite scratch the itch for people like me.

Moving backward, it’s pretty absurd to see an author so freely critique and criticize his most known and successful work. It was popular enough to have people begging him to write more when it was a web novel. It was somehow impressive enough to have it published as a light novel, which then had an anime adaptation that blew up in popularity, and since then has had several sequels and even a spin-off. It’s a staple ‘starting anime’ to this day, nearly a decade after it aired. It makes me respect him a lot to admit what he really thinks, and try to ‘rectify’ it in a sense. The Progressive series contains many ret-cons of the original novel. The biggest to me is when Asuna and Kirito meet–in the first volume, Asuna and Kirito are just kinda together forever already, and we’re supposed to care about it–but in Progressive, they meet a lot earlier. On the first floor. This change is for the good, because we get to see their relationship from the start. We get to see them slowly become lovers, rather than be dropped off via timewarp to literally a week before they get married. There are also characters from the original novel, like Agil and Kiabou, along with new ones.

So, is it worth it to read the Sword Art Online series? To be quite honest, I think it’s only worth reading the Progressive series, and that’s if you’re into the concept of Sword Art Online. I’ve only read the first volume of the Progressive series, and while it's miles better than the original series, it still wasn’t great. That’s only the first volume though. Kawahara has written a total of eight Progressive volumes–usually releasing them once a year. The funny part is that the SAO light novel series didn’t have an original arc until 2017. The guy got 18 volumes of content from what was basically something he wrote for fun. I know light novels aren’t the longest things, but that’s a lot of words! So basically, this arc up to the Alicization arc was already written by 2008, and Kawahara was only able to write new arcs when the light novel caught up to where his web novel was when the series was originally published. That’s quite a mind boggle. It also pieces together why it became big enough in Japan to warrant an anime adaptation. Since there was already a web novel, Japanese readers had the opportunity to read past where the light novel is, if they didn’t ready before reading SAO. The context it was released makes it suffer from poor-quality writing and bad pacing, but those gaps could be filled by the web novels, which were only ever released in Japanese. The light novels began being translated into English in 2014, two years after the anime aired. Most of those who bought the light novel had already watched the anime. This means that my theoretical person whose first experience with SAO is with these light novels was likely a larger minority than I originally thought. Sword Art Online really is a weird series!

It might be worth a read of the main series–only after you’ve read all of the Progressive series that is. I mean, it’s up to you. The anime series has adapted the light novels up to the end of the Alicization Arc. You could either watch it or read it. That is, if you wanted to in the first place, which I highly doubt.

‘Kirito’s Law’ is a slight deviation from the more well-known ‘007’s Law’–basically, any woman who interacts with Kirito for more than four hours has a fifty-fifty chance of falling in love with him. Unlike ‘007’s Law’, these women pass away ten times less often. These two terms were made up by me at the time of writing this.

[thinkingmystic]

Pricey truth

I was so happy to see that Good Omens has been renewed for a third (and final) season. I’d prefer three good seasons to four seasons where you wish the last two hadn’t happened (cough Sherlock cough), and I’m curious to see how dear Crowley and Aziraphale end up. 

How I envy the young, who get to see their version of SuperWhoLock actually get some action, whereas all the actual SuperWhoLocks got was a lot of flack for daring to interpret obviously queer storylines as queer. After all these years (it was the tenth anniversary of some Sherlock season recently), I still hold a special little grudge that we had to settle for subtext. But, with difficulty, I digress! 

I have such a soft spot for Aziraphale, because 1) Michael Sheen is adorable and 2) Aziraphale reminds me of myself. His decision at the end of the second season? I understood it perfectly. Like him, I tried (and failed) to change the system (institutional religion) from within. For my trouble I received a prodigious amount of trauma. I haven’t been able to set foot in a church in years, and Lord if I didn’t try to love the institution as best I could.

In retrospect, I wasn’t just trying to change the institution from the inside - wasn’t just trying to take the love of God and remove the ts and cs happily slapped on by the church for, I fear, the most banal reasons - money and power. I was also trying to change myself. My queer, neurodivergent self. I feel so silly now for having as much faith as I had that the organisation built on the premise of loving people and loving God would also love and accept myself and others like myself. So I see in Aziraphale’s decision my own, taken many years ago: that I would make it work; that surely the grace of God would carry me through.

Reader, it did not. At least, not in the way I was hoping it would. 

How I wish I’d had a Crowley to try to dissuade me. Now I am the Crowley, my own inability to enter a church (the building or the concept) so similar to his actual aversion to holy ground (remember those little jumping steps he did when he went to save Azi in the church?) Asking a few questions - questioning things in general - having an opinion that someone higher up than you doesn’t like? Anathema to the institutional church. 

These two remind me so much of The Hierophant and The Devil cards. Aziraphale embodies the faith and tradition (and faith in tradition) that is The Hierophant. There is a way to do things and there must be a good reason for doing them! says The Hierophant. Yes, there’s wisdom there, but that wisdom is a gateway - not the final destination*. Crowley gets The Devil, not least because this card is a perfect inversion of The Hierophant - notice the similarities in structure (the central figure, the apprentices, the oppressiveness). Crowley is still shackled in his own way to heaven - a kind of bereavement, a resentment - which he deals with by being debonair and pretending not to care. Which makes the ending of the second season all the more poignant - he risks caring, in a very obvious, if doomed, way - and his answer is rejection. 

I understand that perfectly, too. I was never going to get what I was looking for in church - but I wouldn’t have rested until I’d tried. 

The card I’d pick for them as a couple is The Lovers. A rather obvious choice, but: The Lovers echoes The Hierophant and anticipates The Devil: two apprentices, a central figure presiding**. Not just a card about love (although it is that, too) - it’s a card about choice. About choosing to follow your truth beyond what is “accepted”, even if by extension that forces you to reckon with what choices were beyond your control. That’s a path we have to be willing to walk if the truth is at all important to us.

Our truth is (and I’m sure Aziraphale and Crowley’s will be, too). 

As we enter a new year (I’ll write more about that next time), I pose this question to you, dear Reader: What is your truth? Phrased another way, what can’t you bear to lie about any longer? 

---

*I suppose God is the final destination - “The World”, and then as a mirror.

**Our conscience? 

---

This was originally posted on my Substack.

[altschmerzes]

book club with gav! book 2: reputation

reputation by sarah vaughan

i picked this one up from the bookstore because i recognized the author, having watched and..... decently enjoyed the netflix limited series 'anatomy of a scandal' which was adapted out of another of her books. i didn't want to just read anatomy of a scandal because i'd watched the series, and i wanted to enjoy a New Story. i liked the look of it, it seemed to be dealing with some elements that i find really compelling - courtroom drama, political drama, social and journalism media, etc. reputation on the whole is something i'm a little obsessed with. thought all that sounded cool.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: gang it is not good. this is not a good book. the writing style was in DESPERATE need of an editor, with details that seemed irrelevant peppered all over, overstuffed bloated sentences that confused what was being described and why, etc. it also had a habit of utilizing a narrative trick that i think can be very fun if it's used effectively and sparingly. (i've used it myself actually, and i try to apply the same approach - use it sparingly, and make sure that it works enough to justify it.) it's this sort of like- there's probably an actual literary term for this, but it's like. retrospective narrative commentary on what's happening, 'i.e. i wouldn't know until later how bad of an idea that was, it was naive of me to trust him, at the time i believed him, this would come back to bite me when, etc'. this book used this so fucking often that it didn't just foreshadow future events including twists, it just. flat out told you what they were all going to be, leaving you able to predict beat for beat what was going on like 75% of the time. the povs were ineffectively deployed, and half of them didn't need to exist. the timeline jumping was fun for me but i can see that it would be hard to track if you weren't specifically watching it like i was. i didn't like the characters. any of them. the protagonist was infuriating and not in a fun way. and the overall promised thing that was the most compelling about the dust jacket - the way it stated the protagonist "is a liar" played out in the most boring way possible. the most interesting information came at the very, very end in the last, extremely short portion of the book that was effectively an epilogue, and it wasn't set up well.

now. in order to contextualize my thoughts about this book it is necessary to like..... go into a plot synopsis. it’s an EXTENDED plot synopsis. so that and my thoughts will be below the cut. general cw for this book that it's a murder mystery, so there's that, and this discussion of it will include brief and nondescriptive references to a mentioned suicide (we don't even know the character, he's related to a very small side character), revenge porn and nonconsensual nude pictures that are nonconsensually distributed, and some discussion of sexual assault/predatory relationships.

plot summary! so the plot of the book can be summarized this way: protagonist, emma webster, is a member of british parliament. she's a labour mp. she's an advocate for women's rights and feminist issues specifically, and has a current agenda about an anti-revenge porn bill. because of her advocacy, she sees a LOT of online harassment and threats of a truly vile nature, and some twitter threads and social media posts are included in the book. i love this sort of thing (the media threads), but i wish they'd done more with it. she is divorced and has a 14 year old daughter. her ex-husband is remarried to a former friend of hers from when she was a teacher. she is working with a specific journalist on this revenge porn bill. she lives part time in a home in her constituency, and part time in a home she shares with two other female mps close to parliament in london. events go down as follows, though i'm not 100% clear on the timeline, because this book had 45 plots. - protagonist is getting threats, she thinks her daughter is unaware of them, is mostly brushing them off while also being super intensely freaked out about them - daughter is having trouble at school: she's being bullied by an ex-friend who among other things has an instagram making fun of her - protagonist has a particularly angry and frightening interaction with a scary man from her constituency who's mostly mad he thinks she doesn't care about veterans issues because she doesn't talk about or campaign on them - threats she's receiving amp up, she starts to get texts direct to her mobile - she is freaking out constantly about her security and whether she’s safe at home. thinks every man she sees is going to throw acid in her face, which is both reasonable as a fear (genuine heightened threat to female politicians) and unreasonable as a fear (white women who consume too much true crime and think every single person in the universe is personally trying to serial kill them specifically complex). - she fucks the journalist and then immediately is like hm i should not have fucked that journalist, immediately ends the relationship and basically ghosts him, they don't even work together professionally after that. - the morning after she fucks the journalist she finds out daughter has taken secret nudie pics of her ex friend in order to teach that ex friend a lesson about...... being a bully and also too proud of her body? i guess???? and sent it to the boy her ex friend likes. the police are involved. it could be a child porn charge bc both girls are 14. the boy is 16. - this is gonna be really fucking bad for the protag and for daughter if it gets out to the news, especially given protag is campaigning against revenge porn and uh... well... this is similar enough it's gonna be hugely bad. - protagonist is obsessed and anxious to pieces about the possibility of this leaking - the daughter isn't actually charged, she just sort of gets suspended from school and then sent to another unit in the school for problem studentsTM. literally this is all of the consequences the daughter sees for her behaviour. that’s the whole thing. - threatening texts are persisting, protagonist thinks Angry Man Constituent is stalking her, bc he is, we see this in... his pov for some fucking reason - journalist lets protagonist know that he's been tipped off about a story involving the daughter that they can't print for legal reasons but if she works with them, they can spin it well - protagonist flips shit - she then concludes journalist is also stalking her. his paper posts pictures of her taking the trash out and is like She Seems Stressed! she takes this as an indication that he personally and specifically is stalking her and hates her and wants to take her down and ruin her daughter’s life, thinks there is a coded message in the article about her daughter. - journalist turns up dead (he's badly hurt in her home, dies in hospital) - protagonist goes on trial for his death - she initially tells the cops and her friends and Everyone that she came home and found him at the bottom of the stairs. turns out this was a lie. she pushed him. trial is basically on whether it was murder or self defense. - trial occurs, she is acquitted, important detail we learn is that the journalist got a message from a FB account he thought was her inviting him to the house. big part of the trial was that he was just There when she got home and she thought he was there to like. attack her or smth. - things we learn after the trial in the last like, 40-ish pages of the book: - the angry man constituent comes to the trial and yells at her when she's acquitted that his son (a vet) has died by suicide, and is then arrested and given a non-contact order - the threatening texts were not coming from him, they were coming from her daughter's ex-friend now-bully's mom? i guess? - her daughter is the one who sent the message inviting the journalist to the house in her mom's name. she wanted to talk to him, convince him not to run the story because she figured it was on her to handle the situation for some reason. - journalist got "x-rated" photos from a former university lecture section tutor of protagonist from when she was like 19 and in a sexual relationship with him (a pretty predatory one it seems) that will destroy the former tutor now-professor and political pundit's reputation (which would be a good thing, he sucks). this will also be devastating for protagonist (bad, yikes, bro, no). he wants to offer to protagonist that if she will work with them on that story, which will also prop up the point they're making together about her anti revenge porn bill, he will bury the thing with the daughter entirely. - this is what he was coming to talk to her about that day, and this is why she pushed him down the stairs. because she did. it's made clear in the last bit that she very much did Panic And Murder Him. - the reason the daughter didn't get there in time to be there first, why the protagonist got there first and this all happened, and there was so much confusion over who invited him there and why and all that, is that her train was delayed bc of. the constituent's son's suicide. whoof. - the step-mom knows what the daughter did. - none of this....... ever comes out i guess? it all kind of fizzles. that's it that's the book.

oKAY. now for: my thoughts.

fuck this book sucked so bad.

it was so distracted. it could not decide what it wanted the plot to be, or what it wanted the twists to be, or what they wanted to focus on, and it made all of its contents so much more muddled because of that. i was so thrown by the angry man constituent because literally the only relevance he actually ended up having to the story was as a direct case representation of the way the protagonist was being harassed and stalked and that his son's suicide was what delayed the daughter from getting there before the protagonist got home and found the journalist there. WE GOT HIM AS A POV CHARACTER. WHY? WHY DID WE NEED THAT???? all the stuff with the daughter was so unclear too? everyone here is an unreliable narrator which is fine but the way that they were unreliable was so like....... confused and muddled and nonspecific. did the daughter and the protagonist drop the ex-bff when protag got elected and ice her out? did ex-bff stop talking to the daughter for no reason and then get mean to her For No Reason? i have genuinely, honestly, really no fucking idea. and it's all like this. two characters will have wildly different perceptions of an event or a string of events, and there is NO clarity on which of them is right. which like, i'm struggling to articulate my issue with this, because that's a narrative choice you can make, but i think it does a disservice when we just... all of them are like this? they're all the same amount of unreliable, which makes it completely impossible to tell who actually IS unreliable, and there's just no way to know what actually fucking happened in this fucking book. i like an unreliable narrator. i don't like not knowing what the hell happened in a book like. On The Whole. there's no follow-through. there's no contextualization. there's no way to anchor any of it to reality. it made me nuts.

the protagonist was self-centred, sanctimonious, boring, and non-committal. there was nothing likable about her, either as a person or as a protagonist. she took so little action in her own life, and there was like... the lying that i was promised in the dust jacket didn't pan out in any kind of interesting way. she lied about finding the journalist at the bottom of the stairs when really she pushed him, but this is revealed so fast it barely matters, and the rest of the book has two small instances of what seems to be her misremembering minor interactions with other characters and saying something didn't happen when it did, and then being Seen As A Liar because she. lied about the initial finding the journalist. and then i guess not disclosing the things with the pics of her and her ex-tutor but... it just. didn't pan out in a way that was at all interesting. everyone else also sucked but it was never clear how much? the daughter's step-mom was like everyone thinks of me as the Other Woman and it's not fair 😠 and the journalist was doing some shitty journalism things though nowhere near as much as protagonist thought and the daughter did some shitty things too and never had any kind of sympathetic impression to me.

there was what i referred to often as like, milquetoast girlboss feminism all over this book. it was STEEPED in it. the whole thing was like, a thesis on how dangerous it is to be a female politician, which, yes! this is SO true! but it had nothing to say about that reality except that it exists, and there was also like... idk it felt very like, this is a perspective and landscaped shaped by White Girl True Crime in a lot of ways? she was obsessed with her own risk and this was never examined in any way. a lot of it was legitimate and real and a lot of it wasn't. she thinks every single person she interacts with is out to get her- specifically every man, which okay, i can get that. but also like... it caused her to lash out at everyone she knows, freak her daughter out, be unreasonable and cruel to her roommates. she had a simultaneous need to think she was two seconds from being murdered at all times and also to act to everyone around her like everything was fine, while also expecting them to take every concern she had immediately seriously at defcon 1. this was never unpacked. she wore a well behaved women rarely make history shirt in the second paragraph, talked about The Trolls all the time, and the book quoted harry potter in the daughter's section. it made weird and uncomfortable choices with race, when it engaged with race at all. just. overall hm.

here is an example of the way that race is dealt with here, in a section where the protagonist is about to be cross-examined by the crown prosecutor.

lot going on HERE huh! and it is all completely unexamined. yikes!

and then there’s this - the only other time when a character is identified as a person of colour. it’s a very uncomfortable thread where the like. it girl, most popular kid in school who the protagonist's daughter's friend abandoned her to suck up to is the only other identified character of colour in this book aside from this prosecutor and the daughter is repeatedly - REPEATEDLY - referred to as, and i’m directly quoting here, “an english rose.” she’s just so pale and thin you see. that’s why she’s so bullied, you see. because she’s so so so white. and so so so sooooooo thin. qualities well known to cause bullying in high school students- anyways. here’s the description of the most popular girl in school. who the daughter’s friends abandoned her for.

once again! YIKES! LOT going ON here! let’s unpack some of it shall we! (putting aside some of the... cringeworthy attempts at a grownass woman trying to emulate the slang of current day 14 year olds. i know it’s been eleven years since i was 14 but “bae-girl” is Nothing and im embarrassed for her just reading it. a lot of her Teen Talk has sounded good and natural but this is NOT it and her texting slang was atrocious.)

anyways. so. idk how it plays off to have your protagonist’s redheaded extremely pale skinned “english rose” daughter set up to be the target of social ostracism and bullying because her friends all chose trying to get close to the school’s super popular It Girl, who is described Like That. i think Not Good! not that there are never school hierarchies that fall down these lines but way these descriptions are presented and the language around them plus the whole “you an author are making up the social landscape here and are making some questionable choices villainizing a “confident, mean, hard” brown girl in contrast to the sensitive and delicate extremely pale white girl”” thing is like……. there are choices being made and i don’t like them.

and then there’s the ex best friend herself. who the daughter took the creepshot of and sent it to the boy the exbff likes. who is described like this (content warning for some SURPRISE! fatphobia as well!)

Flora hated her for this. She hated her for being so comfortable with her body. Despite her rounded tummy and the fat bulging over her bra, she liked herself enough to parade around the changing room, her double-Ds shoved up, her head tilted to one side.

i would like to remind the court at this time that this is the same ex-bff who is apparently basing a large part of her bullying campaign on how So So So THIN this girl is. because you know. the fat girl bullying the thin girl for how thin she is - another famously common high school social dynamic. you know how fat girls rule the school and thin girls are just so- sorry i can’t even stick the landing on that sarcastically lmao. again. not that things never shake out this way but 1. this is an author making choices and doing zero critical engagement with them, 2. this is playing into some bad shit and i hate it.

there are so many other things i could get into here. i have so many examples of sentences that were written so, so badly. i have so many specific moments that sucked ass. but i would keep going forever if i didn’t stop, i just want to leave on one last note: it’s not that the protagonist was a shitty person. it’s not that bad things happened and no one saw proper consequences. it’s that like- it’s that none of it was intentional. she sucked and i don’t think she was supposed to, at least not that much. i was promised a protagonist who was a liar. that was not what i got. i got ONE lie and two instances where she seemed to either mildly misrepresent or misremember a specific conversation she had. i got Poor Protagonist, She Told One Little Panic Lie And Now EVERYONE Thinks She’s A LIAR! Poor Baby! i got milquetoast girlboss white girl feminism that was completely uncritically presented. i got ‘everyone is out to get me all the time’ and this was given as a perfectly reasonable thing to believe and act on not ‘the real danger she faces has warped her worldview and she either needs some serious help or to find another career, as it is causing her excessive amounts of distress and she is lashing out at everyone in her life without consideration for their feelings or experiences or fears. ugh.

anyways. forthcoming are the two (2) shining lights from this book aka moments that were so fucking ludicrous they made me laugh hysterically. but that’s a separate post that i’ll make in a moment.

[flydotnet]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled).

Papa’s a liar.

New fandom, new bazillion questions I ask myself about whether or not this is even worth finishing - and thenI do anyway because I'm stubborn and my card looks prettier with one more character on it. I'm not sure how I can still stress myself out over my characterization being at least serviceable when - and I counted - this is the fourth time I'm writing a new fandom with this card alone*. At this point, it's just to cause myself issues. Anyway! I love Twilight/Loid. He's the best spy of Westalis but he's also the dumbest idiot I've ever seen. My man buys his daughter a dog first because she wants it and then because something something Operation Strix. It was also funny to remove like 70% of his agency but that's because I'm a horrible person. And also it's fun. The prompt itself wasn't very fun up until I realized I could use "Crutches" as in both the actual item and emotional crutches - aka Anya and Yor, who are absolute units at disarming a spy, apparently! Have I mentioned I love this manga yet? I hope I don't regret this fic man

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Break a Leg, See If It Brings You Luck

Summary: It’s a good thing the only bullet he took was in the leg. It’s an easy thing to take care of and hide for the most part – far easier than on the chest or back, at the very least – as long as one finds a way to justify the slight limp it may carry with it, they’ll find themselves doing just fine.

Except this just had not to be an ordinary gunshot wound. No, the bullet just had to strike in right the perfect way to fracture the femur.

This is going to be a very long month.

Fandom: Spy x Family Characters: Loid, Anya and Yor Forget, the whole fam’s here (with a cameo from Bond too!) Ship: The eternally mutually pining TwiYor, you know how it is

Wordcount: 2.5K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version.

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Getting shot at is nothing new. It comes with the job, one could say: dismantle a smuggling network, or fight off human traffickers and you have a good 90% chance to get attacked with firearms in retaliation. In fact, it’s an exception when you’re not – which has also happened to him, of course – so you must be prepared to patch up a gunshot wound in case thing take a turn for the sour.

He’s not above admitting, at least to himself, that he’s sometimes not been able to avoid bullets as well as he should’ve. Most of those times are so long ago that the details of it are starting to lose their edge (kind of like him, at the moment, and he still has to take care of that issue too…), but they’ve all reminded him that, in the end, they’re simply bigger flesh wounds: they merely require a bit more tending to than your regular scratch or cut.

A bullet fracturing the femur is a new one, though, even to him.

 What’s also new to him is the dependency that comes with such a fracture. Despite his best efforts, he didn’t manage to pretend like it didn’t exist in front of his fake family. He should’ve seen it coming, in retrospect, considering how much of his edge he keeps losing in front of both fake wife and fake daughter – but to Anya’s credit, she seemed to have realized on her own even before he could lie to her about this not being a big deal.

Sometimes, he wonders about the sharpness of this little girl’s instincts. For a child whose grades in school are nothing to write home about, she’s able to get through most of his smokes and mirrors, as if she could read what he meant to hide behind them. It’s… surely just his edge getting dull, though. What else could it be, huh? Surely this child who he found in some dump-like orphanage that barely deserves the name of one doesn’t read minds.

(If she somehow does, then Twilight must apologize, because exposing such a young girl to spy affairs could be considered child cruelty, he’s certain).

 At least, it’s perhaps the easiest gunshot wound in the world to explain. After all, breaking a leg can happen for a wide variety of reasons and he doesn’t have to blame a crazed patient to get away with it. It made him look somewhat stupid when he had to tell both Anya and Yor that he had tripped in the stairs because they had just been washed and he had conveniently forgotten about that, slipping on a step and tumbling down the stairs. (As long as neither of them sees the bullet-shaped hole under the cast, it’s fine).

On the flipside, it’s handicapping him more than a regular bullet hole in that area. A bone takes longer to heal back to usable capacity than flesh and skin. That’s not even getting into the fact it’s his right leg that he can’t walk with: it means he’s even limited in his movements. A broken arm, as bad as it is, at least doesn’t prevent him from running and shooting; a broken leg, on the other hand, severely limits his options for walking and, by virtue of doing so, also prevents him from using his arms when moving around.

Crutches are a pain. How did he even forget?

 Having to use both arms to move an immobile leg means he can’t even take care of chores at home, despite those being the only thing he has to worry about at the moment, aside from Operation Strix: WISE, for once, gave him time off from his usual missions, albeit only because he physically can’t handle them, he’s sure). He can’t cook dinner, he can’t walk Anya to school, he can’t walk the dog—

 “Papa, can I walk Bond today?”

He jumps – he really needs to stop losing himself in thoughts, this is smoothing his edge – and faces a concerned-looking Anya.

“We should wait until your mother is home, Anya. You’ll get carried away by his strength.”

“Mama said she’d come back super late from work today,” Anya replies.

That’s true, yes. Yor proposed to stay home and take care of housework for him, but he refused. His broken leg shouldn’t impede on her professional life. Still, this is an issue, and the fate of his undercover operation relies on Bond being happy… Right!

“I could ask Franky to take care of Bond.”

“Yay, Uncle Scruffy to the rescue!” Then Anya freezes. “But, Papa, how are you gonna use the phone? You can’t stand up and use the phone at the same time!”

Dammit, she’s right… Well, partially, at least. He’s not that powerless, is he now?

“I assure you, Anya, I can maintain my balance on one foot and use the phone with my available hand.”

“That sounds dange’ous, Papa.”

Well, it’s not like he didn’t portray himself as a klutz no later than yesterday, he supposes.

“It’ll be fine.” She looks around for a moment, then walks to the phone. “What’re you doing, Anya?”

“I’m calling Uncle Scruffy!”

“What did I just—”

 Anya, ever the free soul, grabs a chair and, with every single fibre of strength in her tiny body, puts it next to the phone.

“Papa?”

He sighs as he grabs the crutches at the foot of the couch.

“How do you use a phone again?”

With an annoyance he can’t even bring himself to hide (he doubts Anya would be convinced he doesn’t hate having to rely on sticks to walk around anyway), he gets up, sighing. Walking on those things is more tiring than it should be allowed to be.

“Let me at least input the number before you try calling at random, Anya.”

 This is going to be a very tedious month, he can already tell – and it’s only been two days.

  If you put it in a certain way, this entire fiasco benefits Operation Strix. Sure, it’s at the detriment of every other mission WISE is on, which means it’s detrimental to the peace between East and West because he’s stuck on pretending to be a psychiatrist (driven to work by his wife, of all things) and paperwork duties; but it means he can decipher documentation that may’ve taken longer to getting understood and he can watch over Bond. After all, the dog is part of the family, so taking care of him and making sure he’s well-fed and happy is of primordial importance.

(Maybe less so than Anya’s grades or his cover as a psychiatrist with patients so violent one has to wonder how it’s even possible, but important nonetheless).

Anya seems happy that “Bond has a friend”, at least, and to be fair, at least, the dog doesn’t ask about if he should be moving around the place, unlike Anya and Yor and every single one of his fake and real workmates. Maybe, if he could talk, Bond would ask to; but as it stands, Twilight doesn’t speak dog and Bond doesn’t speak human, so it’s fine.

 In that way, it makes interacting in woofs a much better thing than constantly telling Yor that, no, he’s fine, just moving slowly compared to usual (and not having his hands free for most of it).

 Do crutches really make you look that much like an invalid? When he listens to her, Twilight can’t help but think he’s actually lost his damn leg when, no, Anya just keeps asking if she can draw on his cast –he keeps telling her no, but each time comes out with less strength than the previous one, it’s a war of attrition and the child is winning – and it’ll be fixed. He’s not even tried walking on the damn thing (from experience, it only works when you’ve got enough adrenaline to cover up most of the pain).

Since coming back home with that gunshot wound (which, he’ll admit, he did underestimate quite a lot), Yor has been more insistent than ever on handling any chore that isn’t cooking, insisting she must get the groceries and see Anya off every day to school, among a shopping list of things Twilight isn’t even sure they’ve actually done at (Loid Forger’s) home like dusting bedsheets outside.

Yor’s help at home, as excessive as it is at the moment, is good for Operation Strix: it makes their fake marriage seem this much more realistic to outsiders, as Yor is regularly seen shopping for groceries with or without Anya, while giving him more time to gather intel for other WISE agents. These past few days, he’s been able to crack about a dozen ciphers that had been bothering the agency, catch three secret correspondences between Ostalian pro-war factions and repair very exactly fifteen tears in Yor’s and Anya’s clothes.

This is less of a net negative than expected; Twilight’s sure of it.

 Still, he should set things straight with her again, and he has the perfect opportunity: Anya is sleeping at Becky Blackbell’s mansion today, which she referred to as “a mission for Papa’s peace” (she really must love spy cartoons), so it’s only Yor and him at home tonight. He was supposed to have a side-mission, but it got cancelled due to those same unforeseen circumstances that have been biting at him all week – and no matter how much he tried to insist, Handler refused to let him take care of it. Training to be able to conduct an operation while having one leg amputated really had no use, it seems.

Yor is also available, which is very convenient, in this case. They decided, like most of the time these days, to order something and eat it at home. To his misfortune, and almost as a bad omen, as soon as he goes to grab his crutches from the side of the couch, Yor picks him up like a glass statue of some kind and sits him to the table, going as far as to slide the other side to put his leg on another chair.

This really isn’t starting the right way.

 They both pick at their dish until, finally, he decides enough is enough. He won’t be dependant on human crutches, be it a young girl or a strong woman who can absolutely bench-press over twice his weight.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with doing everything around home, Yor,” he tells her in almost a clinical tone.

She, however, stares right back to him like it wasn’t obvious.

“But you’re…”

“Partially incapacitated, I know. I wish to assure you, this isn’t as cumbersome as it looks.”

She looks down, eyes fluttering and cheeks reddening.

“But, Loid… I’ve seen how frustrated it’s made you to… have to compose with this.”

“It’s nothing I can’t manage, I assure you.”

A heavy silence settles between the two of them, only broken by bites of food and sips of water. It’s a deeply uncomfortable one – which Twilight rationalizes as silence never being a good sign for spies. Something about calm itself being a sign a threat is hiding beneath the surface. Yes, something like this, not about how he seems to have let Yor down or made her feel uneasy… (Uncertainty is also a lethal enemy).

 In the end, she breaks the silence, fiddling with the hem of her red sweater (which matches her eyes oh so well – no time to think about that, Loid).

“I don’t mind, you know… In fact, I really like it! I’ve always liked helping people, I suppose, but it feels… different, when it’s you.” Her cheeks grow red as a poppy. “U-unless you really mind, of course! Then I can just let you be or wait until you really need something from me!”

Loid sighs. How is he supposed to say no to this, really? This is going against everything he’s ever learned, and yet he finds himself walking headfirst into it. Dangerous business, really. (The blur of mask and reality should worry him much more than that).

“I’d usually prefer handling myself, but if you say it doesn’t bother you, then I don’t think I can quite go against it.” He clears his throat to regain some seriousness. “Albeit, I don’t want it to be a burden on you. Think of yourself first.”

“Oh, of course! You’ll probably still have to at least help with dinner, but don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything else!”

She didn’t quite get what he meant, he’s pretty sure, but she’s got the spirit.

 Crutches really are a spy’s worst hurdle to overcome.

  There’s this one sentence that keeps getting on his nerves, no matter how he thinks about it.

Oh, no, let me take care of this for you!

And there’s this other sentence that triggers… something within him that he doesn’t quite get, but which doesn’t feel bad per say.

Oh, no, Loid, let me take care of this for you!

 …wait. They sound the same.

 Yor is nothing if not well-meaning (and a special brand of impossible not to stare at) but having to rely on her has felt horrible all week and he’s not sure of how much longer he can last with her insisting to do anything for him, from cooking to taking care of Anya, without forgetting driving him up to work (and that still stings). The feeling grows worse with each day passing too: like a poison, it sinks into every last cell it touches, no matter how unrelated, and it makes hard to focus on ciphers and intel gathering.

Loid Forger’s a lucky man, Twilight supposes, to have such a caring spouse ready to help him with so much for something as little as a broken leg and what it causes. Loid Forger, in fact, must absolutely relish in being able to take a break from violent patients and working graveyard shifts every single night of the week. Twilight? Not so much.

He thinks.

Maybe.

 Okay, truth be told, he needed the break from the late-night, about-to-get-shot-multiple-times missions. He had already thought about it even before getting shot in the femur, but this has only confirmed his need for a breather, no matter how short. This, of course, comes at the price of his peace of mind, because he shouldn’t be taking it easy while WISE is going through such an intense staff shortage, but it does come with the main perk of not wavering on his feet so frequently.

Relying on civilians still doesn’t sit right with him but considering he too can’t sit properly at the moment, it may sound hypocritical of him (who is he kidding? He’s always a hypocrite, it comes with being an undercover agent and like a second nature to him). Some part of him doesn’t even hate it, per say; being able to spend time with Anya and Yor, not having to manage everything, taking his time… It doesn’t sound so bad. It goes against everything he’s ever known, but it feels… maybe not quite right, but quite agreeable. Or, at least, less uncomfortable than anticipated.

He’s even sure letting Anya draw on the cast was a good thing for Operation Strix. It makes him look like a good family man, which he needs for the sake of the mission.

 This… might not just be about Operation Strix, though.

Just might.