#it's human. he's human. and he's complex.

[dailygihun]

day 36 || gi-hun is so Loud about everything in s1 and i deeply adore it

[losvroomvroom]

absolute all-timer of a youtube comment on the atlassian williams racing cricket video. youtube user caesarHQ please consider sports journalism

Let’s be absolutely clear about something. You take a modern Formula 1 driver – a creature honed by telemetry, fed by nutritionists, and programmed to shave off thousandths of a second while sustaining G-forces that would turn a normal human’s spleen into pâté – and you ask them to play cricket. It’s like asking a peregrine falcon to do your taxes. It’s the wrong tool, for the wrong job, in the most spectacularly wrong place possible

And that place is Lord’s. The "home of cricket." Which is another way of saying it's a very old, very green field in London surrounded by people in blazers who clap with the sort of polite enthusiasm usually reserved for a well-made scone. It is the absolute, polar opposite of the Eau Rouge-Raidillon complex at Spa. One is a symphony of screaming V6 hybrids and impending doom; the other is the gentle thwack of leather on willow, followed by a lengthy nap

Into this cathedral of calm walk Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon. Two young men whose entire existence is based on violent, immediate feedback. They make a mistake, they’re in a wall. In cricket, you make a mistake, you have to do the "walk of shame." This isn’t a quick trip back to the pits. No. It’s a long, lonely, soul-destroying trudge across an enormous lawn while thousands of people silently judge your very existence. Frankly, I think they’d prefer the wall

Guiding them is Freddie Flintoff, a man who is to cricket what a sledgehammer is to a delicate piece of porcelain. He’s a big, northern lad who used to hurl a ball at 90mph for a living. You can see the drivers looking at him, these lightweight, precision-engineered athletes, and then at Freddie, who looks like he was built in a shipyard, and the cogs are turning. They’re trying to compute how this analogue machine can generate so much force

Then comes the equipment. The "pads" and the "box." An F1 driver is cocooned in a carbon fibre monocoque that can withstand biblical impacts. Yet, here they are, strapping what look like giant mattress samples to their legs and being told the most important bit of kit is a plastic cup to protect their particulars. You can see it in Sainz’s eyes: “I drive a 200-mph Williams and this is what I’m worried about?”

The batting is, of course, a comedy. Sainz, bless him, holds the bat like a nine-iron. Every shot is a follow-through for a 300-yard drive down the fairway at Augusta. He’s trying to apply logic to a game that has none. You’re meant to watch a bouncing ball and, in a nanosecond, decide whether to defend it with a straight bat or smash it into a nearby county. All he knows is "point and squirt." Albon, meanwhile, just looks happy to be there, swinging with the joyous abandon of a man who knows this has absolutely no bearing on his actual job

But the most telling moment is the bowling. Albon hurls one down like a torpedo, all aggression and surprising speed. It’s pure instinct. There’s no technique, just a primal urge to throw something hard and fast. That’s the racer in him. Forget the line and length; just get it there, now

What you’re watching isn’t just two sportsmen trying a new sport. It’s a clash of philosophies. It’s the explosive, instantaneous world of motorsport colliding with the slow, grinding, psychological warfare of cricket. One is a sport of pure instinct and reaction; the other is a sport of patience, planning, and waiting, waiting, waiting for your moment before the inevitable failure

And in the end, they learn the most important lesson cricket can teach. It doesn’t matter how fast you are, how much downforce you have, or how brave you are into turn one. When you’re standing on that pitch and you miss the ball you look like a complete and utter clot. And there’s nothing more British than that

[dakusan]

Flex & Ink

Tattoo Artist!Seo Changbin x Reader | Ink. Discipline. He said “good girl” and never looked back.

🔞synopsis: Tattoo Artist AU. You’re the picture of control. Pilates instructor by morning, posture-obsessed menace by noon, and calm-matcha aesthetic 24/7. You don’t sweat. You correct form. You breathe through the pain. And you’ve never let anyone leave a mark on you—until him. He’s the co-owner of NO SAINT INK. At the gym, he’s silent power: sweat-drenched tanks, mythical back pieces, and eyes that never once look your way. Until they do. It starts with a tattoo. But that line between ink and intimacy? Between the sharpness of his needle and the way he says “good girl”? Yeah. That gets blurred fast. One minute he’s fucking you like he owns you, the next he’s wrapping you in his hoodie and feeding you water like you’ll break.

💌a/n: IT’S SO FUCKING HOT. LONDON TRANSPORT IS A HUMAN-RUN HEALTH HAZARD. THE TUBE IS LITERALLY MURDER SAUNA. And me? I decided to write tattoo!Changbin smut with a brain fog caused by the heat. I—listen. I just wanted to write about a brooding tattoo artist rearranging a pilates princess guts. I hope this makes sense?? I hope you like it?? Little bit of slow burn??? I was literally sweating while writing and I don’t know if it was from the smut or the heat or the fact that CHANGBIN IN BLACK GLOVES LIVES RENT-FREE IN MY HEAD?? p.s. If you liked it, reblog it. Reblog it like he’s fucking you into the mirror and saying “Don’t look away.” p.p.s. Changbin supremacy. p.p.p.s. I am NOT responsible for your hydration status during this fic

⚠️ warnings: 18+ ONLY | MINORS DNI | Soft dom!Changbin, praise kink + respectful menace | Mirror play | Oral (f!receiving) | Overstimulation + multiple orgasms | Cockwarming | Aftercare king behavior. Hoodie. Water. Warm towel. Socks. Yes, socks | idk what else i missed i'm dying rn

📌 Please read with caution. Stretch beforehand. Hydrate. Apologize to your tattoo artist. And your gym crush.

📍credits: dividers by @cafekitsune

🎧 » Thirsty— Taemin « 0:58 ─〇───── 3:27 ⇄ ◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ ↻

You’re the vision of calm control.

Every morning at 6:45 a.m., like clockwork, you sweep into the downtown fitness complex with your pastel wrap-top tied neatly at the waist and your hair twisted into a ballerina bun so tight it could survive a storm. You drink your matcha through a glass straw. You carry your mat like it’s an accessory. Your shoes are spotless, your voice is melodic, and your posture is the kind that makes people instinctively stand taller when you pass by.

You glide into your reformer pilates studio with the serenity of someone who’s mastered both her breath and her boundaries. Former ballet prodigy turned core activation coach, you teach five reformer sessions a day—each one a display of elegance, intensity, and razor-sharp muscle control. Your clients both adore and fear you. You have the kind of presence that makes people fix their own form before you even say a word. When you do correct them, it’s precise, polite, and just pointed enough to sting.

You don’t raise your voice. You don’t sweat. You don't slouch. You float. And online? You’re even worse. Your Instagram is a minimalist’s dream: toned arms on reformers in golden lighting, skin like silk, cryptic captions. Every third post is a quote in muted beige serif.

You’re elegant. Controlled. Inkless. A vision of untouched skin and core stability.

But lately, your control is being tested.

By him.

He’s not like the others at the gym.

You first noticed him three months ago. It was leg day for him, glutes and inner thighs for you. You were coaching a private session—soft music playing, aromatherapy diffusing gently from the wall—and then: A thud. A guttural grunt. The sharp, echoing clang of 140kg hitting the floor like war drums.

He was lifting right outside your studio window.

Tank top soaked. Forearms vascular. Hood up. Headphones in. He never looked around. Never checked his form in the mirror. He just moved with raw, thunderous efficiency. Quads like carved stone. Tattoos crawling up his arms and peeking out from his neckline—dark, mythic things that looked like they were alive.

At first, you were annoyed. He disrupted the peace. You had to close the door to keep your clients focused. His grunts threw off your cadence.

Then you started watching.

The first time he took off his hoodie mid-set, you caught a flash of the ink across his back—two black dragons twisted together in an ouroboros loop, scales razor-fine and smoke curling over his spine. You stared longer than you meant to. Long enough to miss a cue in your own session. Long enough to have to repeat it.

You looked him up that night.

Seo Changbin.

Co-owner of NO SAINT INK—a notoriously hard-to-book, high-end tattoo studio. His pieces? Blackwork. Ornamental. Gothic.

He did ink like it was cathedral architecture. Intricate beasts. Baroque rib cages. Sacred geometry that bled into chaos at the edges. He played with negative space and muscle flow like a sculptor. There were rumors he did some biomech and anatomical fusion work too—stuff that made it look like your bones were crawling up your skin.

He only took on clients by referral. He didn’t do walk-ins. And he never, ever did colour.

He never looked at you.

Three months of the same schedule. You, in your silk-press pastel perfection. Him, in his dark gymwear and smudged chalk palms. You passed each other in the hallway sometimes. He never said a word.

Until the day you snapped.

You were mid-session with a new client—she was struggling with core control, every breath shallow, every motion tense—and there he was again. Deadlifting to the tempo of a war anthem. Slamming weights like gravity owed him something.

You stepped outside, hands on hips, breathing through your nose.

“Some of us are trying to center, not detonate.”

He paused mid-lift. Turned. Pulled out one earbud. A beat. A smirk.

Then: “Want me to show you how to really activate your core?”

And then he turned back to his barbell like it was nothing.

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t. You’d never been so simultaneously furious and flustered in your life. After that, he started showing up earlier. Lifting closer. Watching your warmups from the squat rack. Making comments.

“You know, your foot arch collapses on your second lunge set.” “Your glute engagement’s solid. You ever load it?”

And then one day—after a particularly intense set of weighted split squats���you sat down on your mat, breathless and sweaty, and saw him watching you through the mirror. Just... watching.

When you looked back, he only said: “You’ve got perfect spine alignment.”

And walked away.

You told yourself it was nothing. You weren’t interested. You were focused. He was chaos. Loud. Covered in ink. Rough around the edges. You were all about precision and peace. You weren’t even into tattoos.

...Except lately, you’d been thinking about them.

About what it would feel like to have his hands on your skin—not in the gym, but in that studio you’d stalked online a hundred times. About the fine-line blackwork on his clients’ ribs. The sacred geometry down their thighs. The way he seemed to carve stories into people. You started wondering what he’d draw for you. What he’d see in you.

And one day, without thinking, you murmured: “I’ve got a clean canvas.”

And he’d grinned. “You ever wanna ruin it—come find me.”

You’re standing in front of it.

NO SAINT INK.

You grip your tote bag tighter, heart jackhammering beneath your zip-up. You can’t believe you actually booked this. You’d pulled every favour, begged one of your fitness clients to refer you. You filled out the intake form, submitted references, proof of healing care, even a fucking aesthetic moodboard. You never expected to get approved.

And yet… Here you are.

You glance at your phone one last time. The design you sent him glows on the screen: A fine-line ornamental dagger wrapped in black lace. Minimalist. Symmetrical. Inspired by the old ballet blades you used to train with in theater. You asked for placement on your ankle—something graceful but a little dangerous, hidden unless you chose to show it.

Finally, you move inside the studio and the scent hits you: vetiver, eucalyptus, ink. The kind of clean that hums with sterility—but underneath it, warmth. Masculine warmth. Leather and musk.

And then—

“OH SHIT—PILATES BARBIE MADE AN APPOINTMENT?”

You blink.

Behind the desk, crouched in an ergonomic chair with wheels and way too much energy, is a messy-haired, coffee-chugging creature. Han Jisung.

He is nothing like Changbin.

Where Changbin is broad, silent menace, Han is chaos in a hoodie. He’s wearing socks with avocados on them and a smirk that says he knows exactly how much your blood pressure just spiked.

You try to keep your voice neutral. “I have a 2PM with Changbin.”

“OH you do, do you?” He spins dramatically in his chair. “Chan-hyung! Bro! Pilates Princess has entered the temple!”

From behind the wall, you hear a deep, amused voice. One that sends a traitorous ripple down your spine.

“Be nice, Jisung-ah.”

Enter Bang Chan, who appears wearing all black, a beanie, and the warmest smile known to man. He’s muscle and honey—sharp arms, soft voice. And somehow, despite your anxiety, he makes you feel like you just got wrapped in a weighted blanket.

“Hey. You must be…?”

“She’s Miss Breath Control,” Han chimes. "As Changbin says of course.”

You ignore him.

“Yes. 2PM. With Changbin.”

Chan nods, warm and non-threatening. “He’s finishing up a back piece right now. Should be out in five. You can sit if you want—or look around.”

You sit. Which is insane, because your legs never shake and now they’re doing a little wobble dance beneath the stool. You try to sip water but miss your mouth and curse under your breath.

Han watches all of this with way too much joy. “You want some calming tea? Or, like, whiskey?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? You’re gripping that water bottle like it owes you money.”

You take a deep breath. Count to four. Exhale through your core. Then: “Don’t you have something to sterilize?”

“I do, but watching you try not to panic is a lot more fun.”

Before you can respond, there’s movement in the hallway. Boots. Heavy steps. You know it’s him before you see him. He steps out of the back studio like he owns the whole fucking planet.

Changbin.

All black, sleeves rolled, dark tattoo gloves still half-on. A sleeveless muscle tee clings to his chest, neck shimmering slightly from exertion. His jaw is tight. His lips are flushed. His hair’s pulled back in a half-tied knot that makes you irrationally angry. His arms are covered in fresh ink smudges. And his eyes? Locked right on you.

The world narrows.

“You came,” he says. Not a question. A statement. Like he knew you would.

You nod.

He gestures with a tilt of his chin, lazy and deliberate. “Come on back.”

The moment you step into his space, and sit down on the tattoo chair you simply go still. You’ve been in control of your body your whole life. Every breath, every joint, every limb—trained, refined, disciplined. You know how to hold your spine like a prayer and your voice like a blade. You’ve never fidgeted in a professional setting.

So why are you perched on a leather tattoo chair with your hands folded tight in your lap like a chastised schoolgirl?

Because the room smells like ink and amber and him. Because there’s bass-heavy music playing low through the built-in speakers—wordless, sultry, like the kind of thing you’d move your hips to if he ever pressed you against a wall. Because Seo Changbin is leaning over his iPad, reviewing your submission with a furrowed brow and one ringed hand cradling his jaw.

You’re trying not to hold your breath as he scrolls. Then he glances up at you, eyes sharp but unreadable. But then, his mouth twitches—almost a smile and he turns the iPad to you.

“Here’s what I designed.”

Your breath catches. It’s yours—but not. It’s alive.

He’s taken the dagger and curved it slightly, so it follows the natural line of your ankle and rises just a little up the calf. The blade’s body is woven with the lace, yes—but his lace moves. It ripples like real fabric, and within its folds are secret things: a single rosebud at the hilt. A glint of barbed wire hidden in the shadows. He’s added a moon crest at the base—almost imperceptible—and along the edge of the dagger, in the subtlest script: tempus vincit omnia.

“Time conquers all,” he translates, before you can ask.

You blink. You don’t remember putting that in your references.

“It felt like you,” he says, gaze holding yours. “You act like you’re untouched. But your silence says otherwise.”

You should say something. Anything. But your throat is dry. The room is warm. His voice is velvet dipped in command. And the way he’s looking at you now—eyes flickering down to your ankle, then up to your mouth—is not professional.

“May I see the placement?” he asks.

You nod, because you’re a coward. A good one.

You slowly pull your pant leg up, exposing your bare ankle, the pale skin taut from crossed legs and tension. He crouches in front of you, rolls his stool close, and gently sets the iPad aside.

“Pretty canvas,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

Your pulse jumps.

He slips on a fresh glove, snaps it into place. The sound is surgical, threatening, hot.

Then he touches you.

His fingers are firm but slow, tilting your foot, angling your leg just right. He’s completely focused. One hand on your arch, the other gently brushing your ankle bone.

“This spot will hurt a little,” he says, glancing up. “But you’re good at pain, aren’t you?”

You want to say yes. Want to say show me. Instead you say: “I breathe through it.”

“Good girl.”

You flinch. Not from the words—but from how good they feel.

He doesn’t apologize.

He rises to his feet and starts prepping the stencil, moving around the room with focused precision. Gloves. Transfer paper. Sanitary wipes. Ink tray. You sit there, skin buzzing, ankle still tingling from his touch, wondering how the fuck you’re supposed to survive this session.

He moves like he’s done this a thousand times. Because he has. Stencil fluid. Gauze. He lays out everything on the side tray with quiet precision, occasionally glancing your way like he’s clocking your posture, your breath, your jitters.

He doesn’t talk unless it’s necessary. No showmanship. No dramatics. Just work.

You respect that. You also kind of want to bite your lip off because the tension is unbearable.

He crouches again beside your ankle, wiping the area clean with clinical care. The alcohol is cold, startling. You inhale through your nose, quietly.

He notices. “Still good?”

You nod.

“You sure?” He glances up. His brows are slightly lifted. Not teasing—checking.

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Alright.” He holds the stencil in one hand, then gestures with his other. “I’m gonna press this on now. Just stay relaxed. Let your leg fall natural.”

You obey.

When he applies the stencil, it’s methodical. He rolls it from heel to calf, smoothing it into place with both thumbs, then steps back to check alignment. He adjusts your foot slightly. Tilts your knee. Scans the angle. Then he nods to himself and grabs the handheld mirror from the cart.

“Take a look. Tell me if anything feels off.”

You lean forward, lift the mirror—

—and freeze.

It’s perfect.

The dagger curves with your bone like it was meant to be there. The lace hugs the dip above your heel. The little Latin script rests just where your Achilles flares. Somehow, it’s sharp and delicate at the same time.

You don’t speak right away.

So he does. “You hate it?”

“I—what? No. It’s perfect.”

He hums under his breath. Like he knew. But he gives you space. “Alright. If you’re good, I’ll get set up.”

You nod again, a little too quickly. He moves back to his cart.

Machine. Cartridge. Ink caps.

The buzz of the tattoo gun doesn’t startle you like you thought it would. But the sound of it? It changes something in the air. The room goes quiet except for that hum.

He settles beside you again on the rolling stool, anchoring your foot with a towel. He sets your ankle on a support, angles it just right. The touch is firm but careful.

Then he looks at you. Straight-on. Steady.

“I’m gonna start with the outline. We’ll go slow. You tell me if anything feels weird, alright?”

“Okay.”

“Last chance to tap out.”

“Do it.”

His mouth twitches again. A small curve. A breath of something smug.

“Tough girl.”

Then the machine kicks on.

And the first needle hits skin.

You inhale sharp through your nose. Fuck. You knew it would sting, but it’s different than you expected. Not unbearable. Not sharp like glass. More like a scratch that keeps going—a hot drag along nerve endings that wakes up everything. You exhale. Count. Re-center.

“Breathe through it,” you murmur out loud, mostly to yourself.

His voice is quiet. Low. Unshakably calm.

“You’re doing great.”

He keeps working.

The dagger begins to take shape—delicate linework up the edge of your ankle, the fine curve of the hilt tucked beneath your calf. You don’t look at him, but you feel him—close, focused, his forearm braced gently across your leg as he works in deliberate strokes.

It’s intimate in a way you didn’t expect.

Not sexual. Not yet. But close. Controlled. Charged.

After a few minutes, he speaks again—quiet but with a grin in his voice this time.

“Still breathing?”

“Barely.”

“Good. I’d hate to lose you halfway through.”

You snort under your breath. “You’d lose your best linework.”

“Exactly.” Beat. “Wouldn’t look right on anyone else anyway.”

That makes your chest stutter.

You don’t reply. Not out loud. But you shift slightly in the chair—tense. Hot. And he knows it.

He keeps working.

You hear the buzz. You feel the heat. The pain is low-key addictive now—every new line something you earn. And through it all, Changbin stays steady. Anchored. The perfect storm of pressure, skill, and focus.

But, you've had enough of the silence, especially with how it was stretching and so, you decided to break it.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Tattooing?” His thumb brushes against the arch of your foot to hold it steady. “Seven years. Shop’s been open for four.”

“Always wanted to do it?”

“Nah.” He leans back for a second, wipes the needle tip. “Thought I’d be a strength coach. Maybe gym ownership. Did some personal training for a while.”

“That checks out.” You glance down at his forearm, thick and corded with muscle, tattoos crawling up to his elbow like they’re trying to escape.

“Yeah?” he says, smirking faintly. “You profile every guy who squats heavy during your classes?”

“Only the ones who grunt like they’re in labor.”

That earns a real laugh—short, rich, warm.

“Okay, Pilates Princess. Maybe I do get dramatic when it’s above four plates.”

“You were scaring my client.”

“She was on a reformer. She couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own smug exhale.”

You bite back a smile.

“Still. You disrupted the chi.”

“And you walked out in pastel spandex and told me I was ‘rupturing lungs.’ What was I supposed to do? Not flirt back?”

Your breath catches slightly. But he doesn’t press it. He just goes back to work—steady hand, eyes trained on your ankle. The air feels charged now, though. Like he lit a match and pretended he didn’t.

“What about you?” he asks after a beat. “Always been a reformer girl?”

You shrug. “Ballet background. Dance conditioning led to pilates. I got addicted to the structure.”

“Makes sense.” His eyes flick up briefly. “You’re precise. Can tell you move from control.”

You swallow. His tone isn’t teasing anymore—it’s… observant. Real. And something in your chest flutters uncomfortably.

“Is that your polite way of saying I’m uptight?”

“Not even close.” He sits back, stretches his wrist slightly, and looks at you fully. “Uptight’s when someone can’t bend. You?” He tilts his head. “You bend perfectly. You just don’t like anyone else touching the steering wheel.”

Your breath skips. You don’t answer right away. Not because you don’t know what to say—but because he’s right.

So you redirect. Softly.

“Why ‘No Saint’? The name.”

He taps the foot pedal, stops the buzz, and wipes your ankle clean with firm, slow strokes. It gives you a moment to breathe again—but not enough.

“Because I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not.”

You blink. That was… blunt. Honest. A little dark. He continues, eyes down now.

“We don’t bullshit clients. We don’t sell fake sentiment. No ‘live laugh love’ tattoos unless they’re ironic. No fake wisdom. No trends we know you’ll regret in two years.”

“Just pain and permanence,” you murmur.

“Exactly.” He smirks faintly. “No saints here. Just ink, heat, and choice.”

The silence that follows is thick. Comfortable. But hot. Like both of you are aware how close this is to something more.

He leans in again, machine humming softly back to life.

“You’re doing good, by the way,” he says. Quieter now. “Most people twitch by now.”

“I’m not most people.”

“I’m starting to believe that.”

He inks another line—this one along the edge of the dagger, right where your skin thins over bone. It burns—but you hold steady.

“Let’s finish the outline.” he suddenly says.

The session lasted

just under two hours.

You hadn’t realized how long it had been until the buzz finally stopped and the silence rolled in like a warm wave. You feel boneless. Drenched in adrenaline and restraint. Your ankle stings, wrapped delicately in breathable film. Your body feels too warm for the room. And your head? Light. Fuzzy. Like the space between flirtation and freefall.

Changbin strips off his gloves, tosses them, and wipes down the station with clinical precision. He hasn’t said much since finishing. Just the usual post-tat routine—cleaning, wrapping, murmured instructions.

But his eyes? They keep sliding to you.

You slip your sock on halfway and tug your pant leg back down carefully, wincing a little.

“Still good?” he asks, finally looking up.

“More than good.”

He gives a small nod. Like he expected that answer. Like he knew you’d handle it.

You grab your bag and follow him out to the front. The air outside the studio room hits colder, sharper. You suddenly remember there are other people in this building.

The first one you see? Han Jisung. Eating fucking pineapple chunks out of a plastic deli cup with a tiny fork. He looks up from his stool like he’s been watching through the glass wall the entire time.

“Well, well, look who survived the blade.”

“She didn’t just survive,” Changbin says, rounding the desk and tapping something on the iPad. “She was better than half the regulars who talk big and cry during linework.”

“You cried during your own hand tat,” Han mutters under his breath, chewing.

From the side sofa, another head pops up.

Felix. Wearing an oversized hoodie, sipping juice from a literal juice box. His legs are tucked under him like a kid at a sleepover. He doesn’t say anything, just raises his brows meaningfully—and takes a long, slow sip.

You blink at the scene. “...Do you guys always just lurk out here eating kindergarten snacks?”

“We’re moral support,” Felix chirps, straw still in his mouth.

“We’re witnesses,” Han adds, tossing a pineapple chunk in the air and catching it. “To whatever this vibe is.”

“What vibe?” Changbin asks, not even blinking.

Han points at you. Then at him.

“This VIBE. The quiet storm flirting. The ‘good girl’ energy. The tension so thick I had to put on noise-canceling headphones to avoid getting secondhand arousal—”

“Jisung.” Changbin cuts him off, finally looking up from the counter.

His tone is sharp, low. The kind that says drop it before I kill you.

You try not to laugh. You fail.

“It’s fine,” you say, waving a hand. “I’m used to being analyzed by men eating pineapple.”

“Icon,” Felix whispers around his juice box.

Changbin finally sighs and turns back to you, handing over a printed aftercare sheet, folded neatly.

“Info’s all on there. Product list, wash instructions, what to look out for.”

“Got it.” You slip it into your bag. Your hand brushes his. Just barely. But you both feel it.

He doesn’t step back.

Doesn’t break eye contact either.

“Listen,” he says casually, voice lower. “If you ever need touch-ups, or... if you’re thinking of something else—” His eyes flick down, briefly, to your throat, then back up. “You can text me directly.”

“I figured appointments went through the website?”

“They do.”

A beat.

“But you don’t have to.”

Your throat is suddenly dry. You arch a brow—curious. Just enough sass to stay in control. “You giving your number to all your clients now?”

“Just the ones who breathe through pain and still flirt back.”

Felix chokes on his juice. Han makes a strangled sound that might be applause.

You blink. Then slowly, slowly smirk. “Fine,” you say. “What’s your number?”

He rattles it off. You type it in. Save it under NO SAINT. He glances at your screen. “That what you’re calling me?”

“What would you prefer?”

“Something you’ll actually say when you’re out of breath.”

Han falls off his stool. Literally. Felix wheezes so hard his straw pops out of the juice box. Changbin doesn’t even flinch. He just leans on the counter, arms crossed, watching you like you’re a puzzle he already knows how to solve.

You match his look. Slowly. “We’ll see.”

And with that, you turn and walk out.

After the tattoo, you saw him more. It started small that is.

At first, it’s coincidence—he’s back to lifting heavy in the gym at odd hours, same as always. But now he nods at you when you pass. A real nod. Eyes meeting. A corner-of-the-mouth smile that makes your stomach flip. Sometimes he’s got one AirPod in instead of two. Sometimes he lingers near the cable station while you’re on the mat. Never interrupting. Just... there.

The first actual post-tat interaction happens five days after your session.

You’re foam rolling in the stretching area, ankle still healing but mostly fine, and he walks by, glances down, and says: “Looks good.”

You raise a brow. “You spying on my ankle now?”

“Just checking my work.”

Pause.

“And maybe looking at your calf.”

You try to look unimpressed. You fail. He sits beside you and starts stretching his hamstrings without being asked. Doesn’t make a move. Just talks.

That becomes routine.

Short check-ins after workouts. Training tips you didn’t ask for but secretly appreciate. You realize he knows exactly how to adjust your form without crowding you. He never overcorrects. Never touches you without asking. And yet he always makes sure you’re safe, balanced, stable.

“Switch feet. You’re compensating on your left.” “You’ve been clenching your jaw all set. Breathe it out.” “I’ll spot you if you’re going heavier today.”

You stop correcting him eventually. Mostly because he’s right.

Then it shifts again. You start texting. It begins with questions about the tattoo. Aftercare check-ins. A meme he sends about gym people and their insane emotional attachments to water bottles.

Then you start sending him playlists.

He makes you one in return. It’s all bass-heavy, slow-burn, mostly instrumental tracks with names like “Pulse,” “Drive,” “Bend,” and one ominously titled “Repetition is Power.”

You: that one sounds kinky Him: it’s about training Him: …mostly You: mmhmm

The first “hangout” isn’t even planned.

You finish a late workout and bump into him in the protein aisle at the 24hr mart across the street. You make fun of his zero sugar birthday cake-flavoured whey and he pretends not to judge your matcha collagen bar.

“I have taste,” you say, tossing it in your basket.

“Yeah,” he says, barely smiling. “I noticed.”

You walk out together. He carries your bag. Doesn’t ask. Just does it.

Then come the actual plans.

A night walk after a shared late gym session.

Coffee before your first client.

He helps you move a reformer across your studio and doesn’t leave until he’s triple-checked the bolts.

He never pushes. He never assumes. He always walks on the outside of the sidewalk.

Once, when a guy was being weird to you at the gym, Changbin didn’t say a word. Just stood nearby, arms folded, gaze flat. The guy disappeared within three minutes.

When you thank him later, he shrugs and says: “Didn’t do anything.”

Beat.

“Just let him know you weren’t alone.”

And god. That does something to you.

You kiss him the first time after he walks you home on a Friday night.

You’re buzzed off wine and safety. You say something dumb about how he always smells like cedar and sin. He huffs a laugh and says, quietly: “You can kiss me if you want.”

No pressure. Just there. Waiting.

You do.

And his hand settles on your waist like you’re glass and gold at the same time.

Before you know it, it’s weekends at your place. Your pink robe draped over his hoodie on your chair. His phone charger lives by your bed now. He shows up at your studio on your long days just to bring you food he won’t let you pay for. He tries to act casual about it but always packs your favourite matcha bar on top.

You ask him one night—half-laughing, half-serious: “Are you, like... my boyfriend now?”

He blinks. Looks at you. Then cocks his head.

“Have you been seeing someone else?”

“No?”

“Then yeah. I’m yours.”

Simple. Direct. No drama. You say, “Oh,” like you hadn’t been melting for weeks.

He smiles, real this time, all warm teeth and soft boy. “Been yours since you sat in that chair.”

And the worst part? This dark, brooding, tattooed menace of a man? He’s so goddamn respectful it makes your head spin.

Doesn’t touch you in the gym unless you ask.

Always asks before kissing you.

Has literally said, “Tell me what you want. I won’t ever take it without hearing you say it.”

Brings your water bottle to your side when you forget it.

Traces your healing tattoo at night and whispers, “Still my best work.”

You’re doomed. You’re soft. You’re so, so fucked.

Your apartment is warm. Cozy. Too quiet.

The lights are low, and the vanilla-coconut candle you forgot to blow out is making everything smell like sweet skin and summer.

Changbin’s duffel bag is unzipped at the edge of your bed—lined with velvet wraps and steel trays, black gloves and sterilized ink cartridges. He brought the full setup, just like you asked. No studio. No distractions. Just you, him, and the blank canvas of your back.

You’re kneeling on the bed in nothing but soft shorts and your hair twisted up with a clip. Your top is already off, folded beside you. Between your hands is a pillow, hugged tight, just to ground yourself. Because the nerves are real now.

You wanted this design for weeks. Something elegant. Subtle. Yours.

A spine-length blackwork symbol—two mirrored crescent moons interwoven with minimalist wings. You told him it was about balance. About letting go.

You didn’t tell him it was also about him.

He’s behind you now, sterilizing your skin. His touch is clinical. Careful. But it burns anyway.

“You still sure about the placement?” he asks, voice low. Even. But there’s something underneath. A quiet strain.

“Dead sure.”

He hums. “Alright.” You hear the snap of gloves. The whir of the stencil printer. Your heart pounds in your chest like it’s trying to warn you.

Then—he’s back. His hands ghost over your spine. “I’m gonna press the stencil now. Stay still.”

You do. You try. But the moment his hands actually touch you—bare palms, gloved, strong and steady—your breath catches. The way he presses along your spine, smoothing the paper from the dip of your lower neck down to the top of your ribcage... it’s not sexual. But it’s intimate. Intense.

He pulls the paper away, and your skin tingles. “Perfect,” he says, quietly. “You want a mirror?”

“No. I trust you.”

And you mean it.

He sits back on his knees. Sets up the machine. Loads the ink. Your apartment fills with the low hum of anticipation—the buzz of something sharp and irreversible.

Then he speaks again, just above a whisper. “You ready, princess?”

You nod into the pillow. “Do it.”

And then—

The first line hits.

Sharp. Searing. Deep. Right between the blades. You hiss. Clench the pillow. Your whole body arcs. He presses gently between your shoulder and neck, grounding you.

“Breathe through it,” he murmurs, voice so soft it shouldn’t be that hot. “You know how.”

You do. You inhale through your nose. Exhale slowly. Your spine starts to relax under the pain, beneath his hand.

He works in slow, steady lines. Controlled. Ruthless. Focused.

And all you can think about is his hand anchoring you there. His knees brushing the backs of your thighs. The way his breath moves in sync with yours.

You’re soaking your pillow. Not from tears. From sweat. From heat. From want.

“You’re doing so well,” he says, after a particularly brutal curve along the left crescent. His fingers skim your waist as he shifts position. “I knew you could take it.”

“Fuck,” you breathe. “You’re evil.”

“I’m careful,” he corrects. “But I don’t go easy on you.”

You clench your thighs together. He notices.

And suddenly—there’s a shift in the air. He pauses. Sets the machine down on the tray. You feel the absence like a void.

Then: “How bad is it?” he asks. Not in concern. But curiosity. Low. Dangerous.

You don’t answer right away. So he leans down—chest brushing your back, lips at your ear. “You gonna be honest with me, or am I gonna have to pull it out of you?”

You arch into him. “It’s not the pain,” you whisper. “It’s you.”

Silence. His breath stills.

Then—

His hand glides from your waist to your inner thigh. Not high. Not filthy. Just… there.

“Then I’ll stop,” he says, voice gravel. “Because I don’t take from you when you’re not thinking straight.”

That? That ruins you.

“I am thinking straight,” you say, lifting your head slightly, panting. “I’ve been thinking about you every day since the ankle.”

He exhales. Like a man who’s been holding it in too long.

Then—he moves. One hand tilts your chin back. The other grips your waist, hard. And he kisses you. It’s slow. Deep. Tongue and teeth and restraint that’s breaking. You’re twisted half around, clutching his shoulder, kissing him like he’s already inside you.

He pulls away first. Barely. “You want to finish the tattoo?” he whispers.

“No.”

“You want something else instead?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“Touch me.”

His hand is on your back again. Lower. Rougher. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

His hand lingers on your back—low, possessive—just long enough for your breath to hitch. Then, without a word, he pulls away. You blink. Your heart slams into your ribs. But then you hear it: The soft click of the tattoo machine shutting off. The rip of packaging. The squeak of gloves being stripped off and tossed.

You turn to look over your shoulder, breath caught. “Bin—?”

He’s focused. Completely. Dangerously. “Not touching you until the piece is sealed,” he mutters. “You don’t play with open wounds.”

The tone—deep, steady, commanding—makes your knees press tighter together. Your hips subtly shift, and he notices.

He always notices.

He moves behind you, silently, and you hear the rustle of him opening the dressing. The touch is clinical again, but somehow worse—cool antiseptic, gentle pat-down, sterile film peeled and smoothed into place. He’s careful. Exact. Respectful.

But when he speaks, it’s low. Ragged.

“You didn’t tap out.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You take everything I give you, huh?”

Your stomach flips. He finishes securing the dressing. Then… his hands slide down your sides. Slow. Worshipful. Possessive.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Now I can touch you.”

You barely have time to inhale before he grabs your hips—firm, final—and pulls you onto your hands and knees in the center of the bed.

“Stay like that,” he says, voice rough now, all velvet and gravel. “I want to look at you.”

You gasp as his palm glides over your curve, down the back of your thigh, up again to your waist. He doesn’t rush. He explores. “You have any idea what you do to me?” he mutters, more to himself. “All that control. That calm. That perfect mouth.”

You whimper. He smiles.

“You sound pretty now.”

He shifts behind you. Kneels. You hear his hoodie hit the floor. The telltale sound of his belt unbuckling. Then: a hand at the base of your spine, gently pressing.

“Arch for me, baby.”

You do. Of course you do. And when you feel the heat of him against your inner thigh—bare skin, hard and heavy—you moan into the pillow.

“Changbin—”

“Shh. Let me take care of you.”

And then he’s there.

One hand anchored at your hip. The other between your thighs, inside your shorts. Touching, teasing, sliding his digits through your wetness with a growl low in his chest.

“Fucking soaked,” he mutters. “You been thinking about this?”

“Yes—fuck—yes—”

“How long?”

“Since the first tattoo.”

“You should’ve said something.”

“Would you have stopped?”

“Not a fucking chance.”

He sinks two fingers in—slow, deep, curling like he knows what you need. Your hips jerk. He holds you still.

“There. Right there. That’s it.”

You gasp, high-pitched and shaking, and he groans—the sound wrecked and reverent.

“You’re gonna let me fuck you like this?” he asks. “Face down, ink fresh, all mine?”

“Yes—yes, Changbin, please—”

He groans, deep in his chest, and stills his fingers inside you.

Then his voice drops.

“Baby… I don’t think you can take me yet.”

You freeze. Pulse stuttering. “Wh-what?”

He leans in. Mouth right at your ear. “You’re already clenching just around my fingers. So tight. So sensitive. You think you can handle all of me without being stretched out first?”

You whimper. He smiles.

“No rush,” he whispers, like a fucking gentleman. “I’ll get you there.”

And then—

He hooks his fingers deeper, hits that spot just right, and your whole body arches.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, nuzzling into your shoulder. “That’s it. Let me open you up.”

He keeps his fingers inside you as he shifts—kneels upright behind you.

His free hand drags down your lower back. Then to the waistband of your shorts.

And in one slow, deliberate motion he pulls down your shorts and panties in a single, fluid move.

They slide off your hips. Past your thighs. Down your calves. He tosses them aside like they’re in the way, and fuck, maybe they are.

Because now your ass is bare. Your thighs are trembling. And your cunt? Leaking around his fingers. Dripping onto the sheets.

“So fucking pretty,” he growls, behind you now, stroking one hand down your ass. “I should’ve had you like this weeks ago.”

You try to lift your head. Say something clever. You fail. He scissors his fingers slightly—just enough stretch to make you squirm.

“You like being opened up like this, baby?”

“Yes—oh fuck—yes—”

“Say it.”

“I like being stretched out—please, please, Changbin—”

“That’s my girl.”

He slides a third finger in.

You gasp—hips jerking, legs shaking—and he moans like he can feel it too.

“Shit,” he pants, fucking you slow and deep. “You’re so tight, baby. I can feel your pussy fluttering around me. You’re gonna lose your mind when I give you cock.”

Your hands claw at the pillow beneath you. Your thighs are soaked. And still—he’s patient. Focused. Wrecking you with just his fingers because he knows exactly how this ends.

“Almost there,” he breathes. “Just a little more.”

You whimper, spine bowed, thighs spread wide as his fingers thrust deeper—slow, deliberate, curling into that sweet, molten spot that makes your vision go white.

“That’s it, baby,” he murmurs, voice like gravel and silk. “You feel that?”

You choke out a sound—something helpless. Shaky. Wrecked.

“You’re so close. You’re right fucking there.”

His fingers drag out, just enough to tease your entrance—then slam back in, curling sharp and precise. You cry out, hips jolting. His hand tightens, holding you still. “Don’t run from it,” he growls, low and possessive. “You’re gonna take it.”

He starts pumping—harder, faster, each stroke brutal in its precision. The wet sound of your cunt echoes in the room, obscene, soaked, desperate.

“You’re dripping, baby,” he pants. “This pussy’s begging.”

You’re gasping now—broken, breathless.

And then—

He does that. That perfect drag of his fingers against your front wall, again and again, exactly where it hurts so good you see stars.

Your arms buckle. You collapse onto the pillow, face down, sobbing his name into the sheets.

“That’s it,” he whispers, leaning over you now, breath hot against your shoulder. “Give it to me. Cum on my fingers, baby.”

And you do.

It rips through you—sudden, full-body, violent. Your pussy clenches tight around his fingers, locking him in as your orgasm explodes behind your ribs, sparks down your spine, tears from your throat.

“Fuck—yes,” he groans, rutting gently against your thigh. “God, you’re so fucking pretty like this.”

You’re sobbing. Boneless. Cunt still fluttering. Thighs sticky. And he just keeps moving—slowing his fingers now, easing you down from the edge like he lives in your body.

“There you go,” he murmurs. “Breathe. I got you.”

He pulls out with a wet sound, dragging his soaked fingers down your thigh before pulling away entirely.

You collapse, limp, twitching. “Changbin—”

“Shh. You did so good.”

You hear him kiss your lower back, just above the bandage.

Then—

A low whisper. “You think that was good?”

“Mmnh…”

“Baby… I haven’t even fucked you yet.”

His voice is molten.

You’re still on all fours, trembling, thighs slick, cunt fluttering with aftershocks—but the second he says it, something inside you tightens. You feel the heat of him shift behind you. The heavy weight of his cock brushes your thigh, then—lower.

“Gonna let me in now?” he murmurs, running his fingers up your spine, pausing just at the bandage. “Gonna take all of me?”

“Yes… please,” you breathe, voice cracking. “I can take it. I need it—”

He hums.

“You say that…” he mutters, guiding the thick head of his cock between your folds, sliding it through your soaked pussy—teasing, rubbing, spreading your slick. “But this pussy’s still so fucking tight, baby.”

He rocks forward, just enough to nudge your entrance. You whimper.

“So swollen. So wet. You’re still twitching for me,” he groans, dragging his tip up to your clit, then back down to your dripping hole. “You really want it?”

“Please—Changbin, please, give it to me—”

“Say it.”

“Fuck me.”

He stills—tip poised. Breathing heavy. Then—slowly. Deliberately. He pushes in. The stretch is brutal. You cry out, loud and raw, fists bunching in the sheets as he splits you open—inch by inch, so deep you can feel him in your throat.

“Oh my—fuck—Changbin—”

“That’s it,” he groans, voice wrecked. “Take it, baby. Just like that.”

He doesn’t slam. Doesn’t rush. He sinks. One hand gripping your hip, the other spreading your ass to watch himself disappear inside you—slow, steady, until he’s buried to the hilt.

“God—so tight—” he growls, grinding once, deep and heavy. “Can feel every twitch.”

You’re panting. Shaking. Jaw slack.

“Too much?” he whispers.

“N-no—no, I just—fuck—you’re big—”

“But you’re taking it,” he says, teeth clenched. “Look at you. So good for me. This pussy was made for it.”

He pulls back—slowly, almost out—then slams back in. You scream. He starts to move. Long, deep thrusts. Not fast. Just full. Every time he pulls back, you clench. Every time he drives in, you cry out.

“You feel that, baby?” he grunts, rutting into you harder now. “That stretch? That burn?”

“Yes—yes—Changbin—oh my god—”

“You’re doing so fucking well,” he pants. “Letting me ruin you like this. Letting me fuck you open.”

He changes angle—hips slanted, cock pressing right there, that spot that makes your body jerk uncontrollably.

Your moans turn frantic. “Oh fuck—there—right there—don’t stop—please don’t stop—”

He grins, all teeth and sweat and dark fire. “You’re not going anywhere.”

He grabs your waist with both hands and fucks into you like he owns you. Harder. Deeper. The bed creaks beneath you. Your skin is slick with sweat. Your throat is raw from moaning.

“So fucking tight—so fucking perfect—”

“Changbin—I’m gonna—”

“Do it.”

His hand slips around your waist—fingers circling your clit with deadly precision. “Cum on my cock.”

You shatter.

Your whole body spasms, clenching so tight around him he growls, hips stuttering as you fall apart—loud, sobbing, ruined beneath him.

“That’s it,” he growls, breath hot against your shoulder. “Just like that. Look how fucking good you cum for me.”

You collapse forward, shaking. Chest to the bed. Hips high. You’re twitching—overstimulated, dripping, wrecked.

And he keeps moving.

His hand stays between your thighs, fingers slick and steady, rubbing your clit in slow, relentless circles while he grinds his cock in deep, lazy thrusts.

“Too much?” he murmurs, smug.

“Y-yes—no—fuck—I don’t—”

“You don’t want it to stop,” he finishes for you, dragging his cock out slow, then slamming it back in so deep your breath catches.

“You want to cry and cum at the same time, huh?”

You sob. It’s too much. It’s perfect.

Then—

His arm snakes around your torso. Tight. Possessive. And in one fluid motion, he pulls you up. Your back flush to his chest. Your knees spread. His cock still buried inside you, filling you completely.

“Stay open for me,” he growls into your ear, biting your shoulder. “Let me fuck you like this.”

He starts to thrust.

Hard. Upward. Precise. His thighs slap against the backs of yours as you whimper, your whole body rolling with the rhythm. His free hand comes up to your throat—choking you—while the other slips between your legs again.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs, fingers stroking your clit again, gentle but devastating. “But you’re still taking it.”

“I can’t—I—”

“You can. You are.”

“It’s too much—”

“You love it,” he growls, voice low and filthy. “You love being fucked dumb. You love when I use you like this.”

You’re sobbing now. Raw. Clenching down hard around him with every thrust.

“You’re doing so good, baby,” he whispers between gritted teeth. “So fucking good for me. Letting me ruin you like this. Letting me make this pussy mine.”

Your head drops against his shoulder. Your mouth hangs open.

“What’s wrong, princess?” he teases, rutting deeper. “Cock too big? Can’t think? Can’t breathe?”

“N-no—fuck—don’t stop—”

“Didn’t plan to.”

He pulls your hips down harder, fucking into you deep, pushing you up his cock like you owe him something.

“You’re gonna cum again,” he snarls. “Right here. In my arms. While I stuff you full.”

“Changbin—please—I’m gonna—”

“Fucking do it.”

He rolls his hips—rubbing your clit, dragging his cock against every oversensitive nerve—and you scream.

Your body jerks. Tightens. Breaks. You cum again. Harder. Hotter. Your legs give out and he holds you through it, fucking you through the tremors like he needs it.

“Good girl,” he whispers, wrecked. “So fucking good. That’s it. Let go. Give it to me.”

He thrusts once—twice—then slams in deep and stays there, cock pulsing inside you as he cums, hot and thick, hips jerking as he buries himself to the base.

You’re both panting. Shaking.

He keeps you pressed to his chest—his hands soothing now, stroking your stomach, your thighs, your sore hips.

“Still breathing?” he whispers, voice soft now.

“Barely.”

He smiles. Kisses your temple.

“My good fucking girl.”

Your body’s still trembling—completely wrecked, dazed, flushed head to toe—and yet somehow, he’s still inside you.

Still deep. Still full. Still warm.

His arms wrap around you like armor, like he’s trying to hold all your shattered pieces together with just the weight of his body and the steadiness of his breath.

“Easy,” he murmurs, mouth at your jaw, a kiss at your temple. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

You shift—just barely—and it makes you both whimper. The overstimulation is insane, but the way he’s cradling you? You never want to leave.

“You okay?”

“Mhmm.”

“Want me to pull out?”

“Not yet.”

He smiles—soft, barely-there—and stills completely. You feel the twitch of him inside you, spent but still thick, locked in place with your body pulsing gently around him.

“You’re so warm,” he breathes. “Fuck.”

You don’t even respond. Just exist against him—your back to his chest, legs tucked under you, his arms rubbing circles into your hips and lower belly like it’s instinct. Like his entire nervous system is wired to soothe you.

His lips graze the side of your neck. “You’re okay,” he whispers again. “You did so good. So good for me, baby.” He stays like that for a while—just holding you. One hand finding yours to lace fingers together. The other gently petting your thigh. When he finally does pull out—slow, careful—you both groan at the emptiness. He catches your body before it slumps, scoops you up, and lays you flat on the bed like you’re made of glass.

And then? Instant Softie Binnie™ activates. He disappears for ten seconds and comes back with a warm towel. A bottle of water. A hoodie. Socks. You blink, dazed, as he gently nudges your legs apart to clean you up—apologizing every time you flinch.

“I know, baby, I know… almost done…”

“You’re fussing,” you murmur, voice all ruined and raw.

“Of course I am,” he scoffs, bundling you up in the hoodie like it’s sacred. “You just took all of me. You’re not lifting a finger for the next two hours.”

“Bossy.”

“You like it.”

And god help you—you do.

He climbs into bed next to you, wraps you up in his arms like he’s claiming territory. Kisses your temple, your shoulder, the bandaged spot between your shoulder blades.

Then he murmurs, right against your skin: “Let's continue that masterpiece on your back, hm?”

That night? Changed everything.

Now your ankle isn’t just tattooed—it’s claimed. And your shoulder blades? A growing canvas he touches like a promise. Sometimes with ink. Sometimes with hands. Sometimes with lips.

And life with Changbin? It’s a whirlwind of contradictions you can’t get enough of.

Like tonight for example. You're sitting on the padded leather bench in his private studio, wearing your usual pilates set—dusty pink, seamless, hugging every curve. You came by to ��say hi,” but the way he’s been watching you?

You already know where this is going.

His chair is still pulled back from his last client. You’re leaned back on your elbows, legs slightly parted. He’s standing between them. Black tee tight across his chest. Jaw clenched. Veins up his forearms like ink trails of their own.

And then he says it. “Stand up. Turn around.”

You blink. “Why?”

He jerks his chin toward the far wall. The mirror. It spans floor to ceiling—installed originally for stencilling and symmetry. But now? You already know he’s not thinking about stencil lines. He steps behind you, hands gliding down your waist as you face the mirror. You watch his dark eyes in the reflection—hungry. Heavy. Like he’s about to devour you.

“You ever seen yourself like this?” he murmurs, lips grazing your ear.

“Like what?”

“Falling apart for me.”

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. Because he’s already peeling your leggings down. Slowly. Worshipfully. Your sports bra goes next, tossed aside like an afterthought.

“Look,” he says. His voice has dropped—dangerous and dark. “Look at how perfect you are.”

He wraps one arm around your waist. The other slips between your thighs. Fingers teasing—barely there. “Watch me touch you.”

And you do. You see it all. His hand moving slowly. His grip tightening when your legs shake. His eyes flickering between your face and your cunt like he’s memorizing both.

“You see how wet you are for me?”

“Yes—fuck, Binnie—”

He groans—low, possessive—and sinks to his knees behind you. Your hands brace on the mirror. The first drag of his tongue up your cunt makes your reflection arch.

“That’s it,” he pants, mouth wet against your cunt. “Stay still. Let me ruin you.”

Your knees buckle. He doesn’t let you fall. You ride his mouth. You watch yourself do it. You see your face—flushed, desperate, dripping. When he stands again—hands gripping your hips, cock out and hard against your thigh—you’re already trembling.

“Ready?” he breathes, forehead to your shoulder.

“Please.”

He pushes in slow. And it’s everything. The stretch. The press. The burn. Your eyes roll back. Your reflection jerks forward against the mirror—but he grabs your wrists and holds you there.

“Look,” he whispers. “Don’t look away.”

His thrusts start slow. Deep. Deliberate. You’re crying out now—louder with each one—watching your own body shake with every drag of his cock.

“Look at you,” he growls, fucking you harder. “You don’t even know how good you look, do you?”

“Changbin—fuck—fuck—”

“You’re so tight. So fucking pretty. Look at that face. Look at what I do to you.”

The mirror fogs. Your skin shines. You’re bent over, shaking, thighs soaked, and his hand never leaves your clit.

“Gonna cum again?”

“Yes—yes—”

“Then say it. Loud. For the mirror.”

“I’m gonna cum, Changbin—fuck—I’m cumming—!”

You convulse in the glass. His name on your lips. His cock deep inside you. His hand holding your throat, eyes locked on your wrecked reflection like it’s his favourite masterpiece.

And when he cums, it’s messy. Loud. Guttural. He presses you into the mirror with one final thrust, hips jerking, sweat dripping off his jaw.

“That’s it,” he groans, still inside you. “That’s my girl. Fucking perfect.”

You both collapse. Laugh. Breathe. And when he finally helps you dress again, hands still shaking? He kisses your shoulder and whispers:

“Next time? We try the chair.”

[arkangelo-7]

Not gonna lie, the running joke about Batman being able to beat anyone as long as he has prep time is lowkey fascinating. Like, why is this a thing?

I think it has less to do with fans trying to make him overpowered and more about the fact that to a lot of people, Batman represents the indomitable human spirit. Batman has consistently defied the odds of whatever situation he’s in because he doesn’t give up—he keeps going, no matter how hard things get or how shitty the odds are. Just like humanity. Despite all the crazy shit our species has gone through we’ve somehow pulled through, and Bruce Wayne and his undying passion for justice, his love and kindness, and his inner strength really showcase the power of determination and the human drive for survival.

So yeah I don’t hate when people say “Batman can beat anyone with prep time,” because you know what? Hell yeah. Sure he can. I choose to believe that humanity can overcome anything, and if Batman represents humanity, then he can too. Go get ‘em, babe!

[deadwizardsoci]

i bet the "till was completely fine with everything ivan did and reciprocates his feelings fully, he was just surprised when he was kissed which is why he reacted the way he did" alnst fans clutched their pearls watching karma (if those fans have any media literacy like at all)

i absolutely love my miscommunication tropes. delicious.

i saw someone say that till started to love-admire mizi because they were friends and had a good bond together while, in contrast, his bond with ivan had always been somewhat of a rollercoaster, and i 100% agree with that. ivans inability of expressing his feelings in a healthy way and tills obvious rebellious nature aswell as impulsivity resulted in useless and meaningless fights. then, all of a sudden they were all buddy buddy and hanging out like friends do. it was all obviously incredibly confusing for till, seeing as he bases and diminishes his feelings on someone from what their general relationship looks like (like we see him doing with mizi). obviously, he wouldn't know how to classify his and ivans bond, because as i said some days there was affection, some days there wasnt. because of ivans lack of social awareness, there were some obviously uncomfortable elements in their time together aswell, even if they werent being hostile with one another at the given moment.

this in no way goes to say ivan is "the bad one". all of his issues, aswell as tills, result from a lack of understanding of basic human emotions and needs. having grown up as literal pets for a species that is nowhere close to relating to their issues (and even if they were, unwilling to get all touchy and vulnerable with them and solely treating them as nothing more than what they see them as— entertainment), they'd certainly have trouble dealing with it when their complex emotions inevitably surface. they live and grow with no validation of their feelings, no instructions, nothing, therefore, how could we blame either one for how their relationship turned out?

i personally think till did reciprocate ivans love, maybe even as fiercely as him, but while he tried showing it and, as seen in karma, quite literally pushed his love down till's throat, till decided to keep the distance because he couldn't understand it, didn't know how to deal with it. this of course also doesn't mean he was fine with being kissed. he still didnt know what his feelings for ivan looked like (he had no time to even process them as they'd been so complicated for so long, and he obviously avoids being vulnerable, even within himself), he was in an extremely sensitive place, grieving mizi and on top of it all was the natural panic and fret of his fight or flight to stay alive in such a situation, where death is looking you straight in the eye.

perhaps it was hard to realise seeing as the music and his lyrics kept going, but till's exhaustion (a natural grieving response) overcame him and he eventually gives up. he knows he could die. he knows he will die. but he is simply too exhausted to continue.

ivan notices, and goes over to him not because he sees an opportunity to get revenge, but to lower his own score so till can win either way. he sacrifices himself for his sake. he goes over and forcefully kisses him, even as till pulls away, he keeps going, making the audience think he wants to hurt him. he goes as far as putting his hands on his neck to give the impression he's being strangled aswell, and in the end, his sacrifice is worth. he's not doing it because he wants to, he's doing it so till can win because he loves him.

also would like to say, for the other side of the fandom thats like "ivan is a monster! he made till uncomfortable and wanted to hurt him because he was rejected!", NO BUDDY. ivan's hands are shaking as he goes on to grab him, he's even pressing on the sides of his neck, not forwardly blocking his airway, and even if you missed all of that, HE QUITE LITERALLY GOES ON TO STARE AT THE SCORE AS HE DOES IT. he braces himself to be shot and PULLS AWAY FROM THE KISS AS TO NOT HURT TILL ASWELL. he lets go the very moment blood spills from his mouth, at peace with the thought that till survives. and yeah, obviously till is grabbing at his own neck after 😭 while not fatal, the discomfort was still there, and mixed with the previous panic, it was much more intense.

then, gazing down at ivans body, he understands what his intention truly was.

in the next round, till avenges ivan by trying his best to beat luka. we can see this from his physical desperation, both in body language and expression

he is also on his mind CONSTANTLY. he is grieving a love he didn't even realise he had until it was too late. he quite literally hallucinates luka as ivan the whole time, finally understanding how he loved him.

wild that i have to make this post. its so clear. everything is SO clear. if you paid slightly more attention you could tell so too 😭😭😭

[allpiesforourown]

Okay but now we have to hear it: why did YOU hate jc initially

reason i didn't like him -> how i feel about it now

he didn't do anything about wei wuxian being abused by his mother -> he was just a kid and also a child of neglect and it didn't make sense for me to blame him for something someone else did

I also hated Madame yu a lot at first so i got annoyed that he grieved her so much -> not sure what i was cooking there, no shit a child will be sad about their parent dying even if they weren't a good person

His envy of wei wuxian -> totally understandable, having insecurities is human and makes him interesting

he didn't appreciate wei wuxian giving him his core -> he literally did not know about it???

jiang cheng fans are annoying -> jiang cheng fans are actually the least annoying because theyre able to handle complex and imperfect characters unlike every other mdzs fan LMAO

anyway. here's live jiang cheng reaction while i was reading the last book:

[iitslera]

it was never hate ✶ MR

english isn’t my first, enemies to lovers, angst, mutual pining

                              ──  ✦  ──

The first time Mattheo Riddle said your name, it was to challenge you to a duel.

You, a fiery Gryffindor with a sharp mind and sharper tongue, smiled like someone throwing a match into gasoline—knowing damn well you might get burned, but craving the fire anyway.

Since then, it became routine.

Fighting him. Arguing with him. Beating him... or letting him win, just to see that cocky smirk he gets when he thinks he’s outsmarted you.

And everyone at Hogwarts thinks you hate each other. That you can’t be in the same hallway without throwing hexes or insults.

But you know better.

There’s something else. You don’t know what. But it’s there.

Buzzing under your skin. Crackling in the air when he's near. Like static electricity. Like danger. Like... wanting.

Everything shifts the day Professor Binns pairs you up for a research project.

"Ancient Magic and Its Connection to Human Emotion," the scroll says.

Mattheo groans.

You cross your arms. Binns floats off like he didn’t just sign both your emotional death sentences.

“Perfect,” Mattheo mutters. “Teamed up with a Gryffindor with a savior complex.”

You shoot back, “And you’re a Slytherin with a tragic villain complex. Guess we’re even.”

Days pass.

You’re stuck in the library together. Sharing candlelight and dusty pages.

You argue. He rolls his eyes. You throw ink. He throws sarcasm.

But then… something starts to change.

The silences stretch out. The stares linger.

Your fingers brush his when you reach for the same book.

And his breathing gets heavier when you lean in too close.

Until, one night, it finally happens.

It’s in the Astronomy Tower. Past midnight.

You snuck up there because the library closed early, and you needed to finish translating a spell on soulbonding.

“You don’t believe in this, do you?” you ask, pointing to the page.

“In what?”

“In unavoidable connections.”

He laughs, but there's no humor. Just… something bitter. “And you do?”

You nod slowly. “Sometimes I think… we don’t get to choose who we hate. Or who we want.”

Your words hang between you, thick in the air. And then he steps forward.

Too close.

His eyes are dark, wild, wrecked.

His voice barely a whisper:

“I don’t hate you.”

“What…?”

“I don’t hate you, fuck—” His voice shakes. “I hate *myself* for what I feel for you. For thinking about you all the time. For wanting to kiss you every time we argue. And not knowing how to stop.”

Your heart practically stops.

Your breath catches.

And then you do the only thing that makes sense in that moment

You kiss him first.

The kiss isn’t soft. It’s messy. Angry. Addictive. His hands are desperate. Your fingers tangle in his hair like a lifeline.

It’s war turning into surrender.

It’s silence turning into truth.

And for that one night, nothing else matters.

Not the house rivalry. Not who he is. Not who you are.

Just this. Just him. Just... you.

After the kiss… You don’t talk.

He left before the sun came up. And you walked back to Gryffindor Tower with trembling hands and swollen lips and a head full of chaos.

And since then?

Mattheo Riddle hasn’t looked at you once.

Three days. Three fucking days. Nothing.

No notes. No smirks. Not even a passing glare in class.

Just silence.

And not the charged kind. The empty kind.

The kind that screams: it meant nothing to him.

“I’m gonna kill him,” you mutter to Hermione in the library, practically snapping your quill in half.

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

Hermione raises an eyebrow.

“Riddle? Again?”

You lie. Say it’s just the project. Say he’s annoying. Say you wish Binns had paired you with literally anyone else.

But that night, alone in the Room of Requirement where you used to work on the project together…

You admit it. It hurts. Not the silence. 

But what the silence means.

Until one night, you see him.

Mattheo. Alone. In the courtyard. Smoking.

It’s 2 a.m. The moon makes him glow silver. His shirt’s half unbuttoned, hair a mess, like the night sky just tossed him here for you to deal with.

You weren’t going to stop.

You were going to keep walking.

Pretend you didn’t see him. Pretend you don’t care.

But then— He speaks. Without looking at you. “You gonna ignore me too?”

Your whole body freezes.

You turn.

“Excuse me? I’m ignoring you?”

Now he looks at you. And God, you hate how pretty he is.

“I don’t know what you expected,” you snap. “You kiss me like I’m the only thing keeping you alive, and then you vanish. Like I was some mistake.”

His expression changes. Quiet. Wrecked.

“You’re not a mistake,” he says. “I am.”

You stand still. The wind cuts through the air. So do his words.

“You know what’s worse than hating you?” he murmurs. “Liking you. Wanting you. Knowing I can’t have you without ruining you.”

“You’re not ruining me, Mattheo,” you whisper. “You ruin me by leaving.”

He steps forward. And again. And again.

“I’m not scared of anyone,” he says. “But you? You fucking terrify me.”

“Why?”

“Because when I’m with you… I feel real.”

And then the silence returns. But it doesn’t hurt this time. Now it means something.

Now it’s not avoidance.

It’s a promise.

That no matter how much you try to fight it, you’ll always crash back into each other.

Because this didn’t start with hate.

It started with fire.

And fire always comes back.

“He’s not your enemy. He never was. He was just the perfect distraction to hide the fact that you felt too much for him to admit.”

You don’t kiss again.

Not for a while.

But ever since that night in the courtyard, everything changes.

No more insults. No more sarcastic jabs.

Something worse.

Stolen glances. Silent tension. Close proximity that feels like drowning.

Professor McGonagall calls you two the most “efficient pair” in class.

If only she knew you spent 45 minutes in front of a book without reading a single word. You, pretending to take notes.

Him, drawing random shapes in the corner of the parchment, right next to your hand.

And once, just once. When everyone left the classroom…

He touched your wrist. His thumb brushed your skin. And you didn’t breathe for seven seconds.

The Room of Requirement becomes your secret routine.

You never arrive together. But he’s always there first. Sitting in the same chair. One candle lit. A book open he never reads.

Because he’s too busy watching you.

Like you’re the only spell he can’t figure out.

And you? You let him.

Then one night, it happens again.

You’re pissed. 

You saw him with Pansy Parkinson all day. Laughing. Standing too close.

“What is your deal?” you ask the moment you step into the room.

He doesn’t even look up.

“What now?”

“Are you messing with me?”

He raises a brow.

“Does it bother you?”

“Of course it bothers me! I’m not some game to you, Mattheo.”

He stands up, slow and steady.

“You think you’re a game to me? After everything?”

“Then what am I?”

Silence.

But not the kind you run from.

This one hurts. He breathes out.

“You’re my fucking weakness. That’s what you are.”

You freeze. He steps closer. Closer. Closer.

“Everyone sees me as the threat. The son of the monster. And I became that. It was easier. Being feared. Untouchable.” His voice cracks barely.

“Then you came along. And you didn’t fear me. You saw me. And now I don’t know how to protect myself from you.”

So you kiss him.

But this time, not out of impulse.

Out of choice. Out of need. Out of something you’re both too scared to name.

And this time, he kisses you like he finally gets it.

Like he wants to stay.

That night, for the first time, you fall asleep in the Room of Requirement. Together.

Nothing else happens.

Just you. His breath against your neck.

His fingers laced with yours.

There’s still a war waiting outside those walls.

But for tonight?

There are no sides.

Just the two of you. On the edge of something beautiful. And terrifying.

And completely real.

[evilminji]

He IS a Concept not a Ghost.

At no point? Was he EVER human. He is, was, will always be... Time. Outside of it, around it, through every variation of it. Simply and Complexely... Time. How COULD he comprehend? What IS there to comprehend?

Giving a Concept human emotions? Would be cruel.

They would love. They would hurt. Mourn and suffer, regret and doubt, grow lonely.

What sick BASTARD would do that? CREATE that? An eternal Being, made to suffer eternally? No. Concepts do not, CAN NOT, understand. And it is cruel to ask them too.

Either love them as they are. Or leave them be. Know they may like you, but they will not miss you when you're gone. They can not. They SHOULD not. And if you care about them at all, you will pray that never changes.

Clockwork looks like us. Is affable enough. Polite. But don't mistake that for humanity. Because he is not human, and certainly no ghost. He never was. Death, after all, can not KILL Time itself. But even as you read this, as I write this, it does just so. Second by second. Killed.

Dead.

Alive.

Eternal.

And the Observants? They a ghosts. They would be Singular were they a Concept. Because you need no more then One, when you stand beyond a god. When you are an integral cog in the vast machine of Creation, limitless and forever. Until forever ends.

What purpose do these Observants serve?

Limiting his power? Controlling him? To what end? Keeping him from corruption?

A mortal falliblity. A ghostly flaw. One he is entirely incapable of possessing. You could no more bribe him then you could threaten the stars, cajole the sea. Pariah was a problem. They fixed it. The Observant are becoming a problem. He fixed it. Danny will one day be a problem... he fixed it.

Now he won't.

See? Isn't this better?

Everything functioning as it should. Happening when it should. Arriving just when we need it.

It must be so cold, looking into Clockwork's eyes, and finally seeing. Understanding what looks back. There is no man there. There was never a man there. There is only the manifestation of Time itself. Slow and fast, cruel and kind, but unrelenting. Eternal.

Like speaking to a blackhole. Or a volcano. Entropy and end. The fall of empires and the beginning of new ones. So utterly intertwined with Death, with Life, that neither could function without him. He is eldritch. Pleasant. Masking his inhumanity very, very well.

He doesn't need to.

I imagine it just... polite.

Or worse, he does like Danny. And oh, what a truely terrible thing that would be. To be liked, possibly even loved, by the god so cosmicly beyond compression as to be unknowable. To have an eldritch voyeur know your entire existence. Your every could have, would have, might have, and been. To have been ever so carefully nudged along, away from what you wanted and you dreamed, to become something more.

So that God would no longer be lonely.

Even though God can not feel alone.

All because he likes you. Felt, for the first time perhaps, the urge to keep one.

Out of countless of countless, incomprehensible numbers, just you. Only you. Were somehow decided as interesting. As his friend. So... he ruined your life. "Fixed thing" eons before you even existed. "Nudged" things, to get what he wanted. Because who could stop him and how could they even begin to try? He is Time. Deathless and undying. Killed and unkillable.

And we are friends, aren't we Danny? Why so upset?

It's not like they stayed dead.

(Neither did you)

@ailithnight @legitimatesatanspawn @babbling-babull @hdgnj @mayfay @spidori @lolottes

I had a sudden thought and I had to go back and check to confirm and...

Y'all.

The Ultimate Enemy.

The Nasty Burger was damaged (resulting in that heating element being close to the sauce and eventually exploding Danny's friends and family);

That damage was caused by Danny's fight with Box Lunch. Which was also the fight that flung Danny through the suitcase to have the test answers to cheat with and...

Box Lunch

The ten years in the future daughter of the Box Ghost and Lunch Lady

Who was only there to "destroy Danny before he could become Dark Phantom".

Which happened because of the Nasty Burger incident

Which happened because of that fight.

The whole thing is self contained. It's a time loop. And only one ghost in DP canon has the actual power to create such a loop.

I feel like I don't see people playing with this fact enough. It's always Danny and the Observants pitted against each other. Meanwhile Danny always counting Clockwork an ally/friend/grandfatherly figure.

But arguably Clockwork is at least as if not more responsible for that whole mess.

Like, obviously we can explain it away as Clockwork having a reason to initiate that series of events to teach Danny something.

But whatever reasoning he may have, that doesn't change the fact that he did it. Clockwork must have orchestrated all of that. Made the choice to "teach" traumatize Danny that way. And I don't think I've ever seen anyone have Danny realize and react to that.

[mariacallous]

On a blustery spring Thursday, just after midterms, I went out for noodles with Alex and Eugene, two undergraduates at New York University, to talk about how they use artificial intelligence in their schoolwork. When I first met Alex, last year, he was interested in a career in the arts, and he devoted a lot of his free time to photo shoots with his friends. But he had recently decided on a more practical path: he wanted to become a C.P.A. His Thursdays were busy, and he had forty-five minutes until a study session for an accounting class. He stowed his skateboard under a bench in the restaurant and shook his laptop out of his bag, connecting to the internet before we sat down.

Alex has wavy hair and speaks with the chill, singsong cadence of someone who has spent a lot of time in the Bay Area. He and Eugene scanned the menu, and Alex said that they should get clear broth, rather than spicy, “so we can both lock in our skin care.” Weeks earlier, when I’d messaged Alex, he had said that everyone he knew used ChatGPT in some fashion, but that he used it only for organizing his notes. In person, he admitted that this wasn’t remotely accurate. “Any type of writing in life, I use A.I.,” he said. He relied on Claude for research, DeepSeek for reasoning and explanation, and Gemini for image generation. ChatGPT served more general needs. “I need A.I. to text girls,” he joked, imagining an A.I.-enhanced version of Hinge. I asked if he had used A.I. when setting up our meeting. He laughed, and then replied, “Honestly, yeah. I’m not tryin’ to type all that. Could you tell?”

OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. Six days later, Sam Altman, the C.E.O., announced that it had reached a million users. Large language models like ChatGPT don’t “think” in the human sense—when you ask ChatGPT a question, it draws from the data sets it has been trained on and builds an answer based on predictable word patterns. Companies had experimented with A.I.-driven chatbots for years, but most sputtered upon release; Microsoft’s 2016 experiment with a bot named Tay was shut down after sixteen hours because it began spouting racist rhetoric and denying the Holocaust. But ChatGPT seemed different. It could hold a conversation and break complex ideas down into easy-to-follow steps. Within a month, Google’s management, fearful that A.I. would have an impact on its search-engine business, declared a “code red.”

Among educators, an even greater panic arose. It was too deep into the school term to implement a coherent policy for what seemed like a homework killer: in seconds, ChatGPT could collect and summarize research and draft a full essay. Many large campuses tried to regulate ChatGPT and its eventual competitors, mostly in vain. I asked Alex to show me an example of an A.I.-produced paper. Eugene wanted to see it, too. He used a different A.I. app to help with computations for his business classes, but he had never gotten the hang of using it for writing. “I got you,” Alex told him. (All the students I spoke with are identified by pseudonyms.)

He opened Claude on his laptop. I noticed a chat that mentioned abolition. “We had to read Robert Wedderburn for a class,” he explained, referring to the nineteenth-century Jamaican abolitionist. “But, obviously, I wasn’t tryin’ to read that.” He had prompted Claude for a summary, but it was too long for him to read in the ten minutes he had before class started. He told me, “I said, ‘Turn it into concise bullet points.’ ” He then transcribed Claude’s points in his notebook, since his professor ran a screen-free classroom.

Alex searched until he found a paper for an art-history class, about a museum exhibition. He had gone to the show, taken photographs of the images and the accompanying wall text, and then uploaded them to Claude, asking it to generate a paper according to the professor’s instructions. “I’m trying to do the least work possible, because this is a class I’m not hella fucking with,” he said. After skimming the essay, he felt that the A.I. hadn’t sufficiently addressed the professor’s questions, so he refined the prompt and told it to try again. In the end, Alex’s submission received the equivalent of an A-minus. He said that he had a basic grasp of the paper’s argument, but that if the professor had asked him for specifics he’d have been “so fucked.” I read the paper over Alex’s shoulder; it was a solid imitation of how an undergraduate might describe a set of images. If this had been 2007, I wouldn’t have made much of its generic tone, or of the precise, box-ticking quality of its critical observations.

Eugene, serious and somewhat solemn, had been listening with bemusement. “I would not cut and paste like he did, because I’m a lot more paranoid,” he said. He’s a couple of years younger than Alex and was in high school when ChatGPT was released. At the time, he experimented with A.I. for essays but noticed that it made easily noticed errors. “This passed the A.I. detector?” he asked Alex.

When ChatGPT launched, instructors adopted various measures to insure that students’ work was their own. These included requiring them to share time-stamped version histories of their Google documents, and designing written assignments that had to be completed in person, over multiple sessions. But most detective work occurs after submission. Services like GPTZero, Copyleaks, and Originality.ai analyze the structure and syntax of a piece of writing and assess the likelihood that it was produced by a machine. Alex said that his art-history professor was “hella old,” and therefore probably didn’t know about such programs. We fed the paper into a few different A.I.-detection websites. One said there was a twenty-eight-per-cent chance that the paper was A.I.-generated; another put the odds at sixty-one per cent. “That’s better than I expected,” Eugene said.

I asked if he thought what his friend had done was cheating, and Alex interrupted: “Of course. Are you fucking kidding me?”

As we looked at Alex’s laptop, I noticed that he had recently asked ChatGPT whether it was O.K. to go running in Nike Dunks. He had concluded that ChatGPT made for the best confidant. He consulted it as one might a therapist, asking for tips on dating and on how to stay motivated during dark times. His ChatGPT sidebar was an index of the highs and lows of being a young person. He admitted to me and Eugene that he’d used ChatGPT to draft his application to N.Y.U.—our lunch might never have happened had it not been for A.I. “I guess it’s really dishonest, but, fuck it, I’m here,” he said.

“It’s cheating, but I don’t think it’s, like, cheating,” Eugene said. He saw Alex’s art-history essay as a victimless crime. He was just fulfilling requirements, not training to become a literary scholar.

Alex had to rush off to his study session. I told Eugene that our conversation had made me wonder about my function as a professor. He asked if I taught English, and I nodded.

“Mm, O.K.,” he said, and laughed. “So you’re, like, majorly affected.”

I teach at a small liberal-arts college, and I often joke that a student is more likely to hand in a big paper a year late (as recently happened) than to take a dishonorable shortcut. My classes are small and intimate, driven by processes and pedagogical modes, like letting awkward silences linger, that are difficult to scale. As a result, I have always had a vague sense that my students are learning something, even when it is hard to quantify. In the past, if I was worried that a paper had been plagiarized, I would enter a few phrases from it into a search engine and call it due diligence. But I recently began noticing that some students’ writing seemed out of synch with how they expressed themselves in the classroom. One essay felt stitched together from two minds—half of it was polished and rote, the other intimate and unfiltered. Having never articulated a policy for A.I., I took the easy way out. The student had had enough shame to write half of the essay, and I focussed my feedback on improving that part.

It’s easy to get hung up on stories of academic dishonesty. Late last year, in a survey of college and university leaders, fifty-nine per cent reported an increase in cheating, a figure that feels conservative when you talk to students. A.I. has returned us to the question of what the point of higher education is. Until we’re eighteen, we go to school because we have to, studying the Second World War and reducing fractions while undergoing a process of socialization. We’re essentially learning how to follow rules. College, however, is a choice, and it has always involved the tacit agreement that students will fulfill a set of tasks, sometimes pertaining to subjects they find pointless or impractical, and then receive some kind of credential. But even for the most mercenary of students, the pursuit of a grade or a diploma has come with an ancillary benefit. You’re being taught how to do something difficult, and maybe, along the way, you come to appreciate the process of learning. But the arrival of A.I. means that you can now bypass the process, and the difficulty, altogether.

There are no reliable figures for how many American students use A.I., just stories about how everyone is doing it. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey of students between the ages of thirteen and seventeen suggests that a quarter of teens currently use ChatGPT for schoolwork, double the figure from 2023. OpenAI recently released a report claiming that one in three college students uses its products. There’s good reason to believe that these are low estimates. If you grew up Googling everything or using Grammarly to give your prose a professional gloss, it isn’t far-fetched to regard A.I. as just another productivity tool. “I see it as no different from Google,” Eugene said. “I use it for the same kind of purpose.”

Being a student is about testing boundaries and staying one step ahead of the rules. While administrators and educators have been debating new definitions for cheating and discussing the mechanics of surveillance, students have been embracing the possibilities of A.I. A few months after the release of ChatGPT, a Harvard undergraduate got approval to conduct an experiment in which it wrote papers that had been assigned in seven courses. The A.I. skated by with a 3.57 G.P.A., a little below the school’s average. Upstart companies introduced products that specialized in “humanizing” A.I.-generated writing, and TikTok influencers began coaching their audiences on how to avoid detection.

Unable to keep pace, academic administrations largely stopped trying to control students’ use of artificial intelligence and adopted an attitude of hopeful resignation, encouraging teachers to explore the practical, pedagogical applications of A.I. In certain fields, this wasn’t a huge stretch. Studies show that A.I. is particularly effective in helping non-native speakers acclimate to college-level writing in English. In some STEM classes, using generative A.I. as a tool is acceptable. Alex and Eugene told me that their accounting professor encouraged them to take advantage of free offers on new A.I. products available only to undergraduates, as companies competed for student loyalty throughout the spring. In May, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Edu, a product specifically marketed for educational use, after schools including Oxford University, Arizona State University, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business experimented with incorporating A.I. into their curricula. This month, the company detailed plans to integrate ChatGPT into every dimension of campus life, with students receiving “personalized” A.I. accounts to accompany them throughout their years in college.

But for English departments, and for college writing in general, the arrival of A.I. has been more vexed. Why bother teaching writing now? The future of the midterm essay may be a quaint worry compared with larger questions about the ramifications of artificial intelligence, such as its effect on the environment, or the automation of jobs. And yet has there ever been a time in human history when writing was so important to the average person? E-mails, texts, social-media posts, angry missives in comments sections, customer-service chats—let alone one’s actual work. The way we write shapes our thinking. We process the world through the composition of text dozens of times a day, in what the literary scholar Deborah Brandt calls our era of “mass writing.” It’s possible that the ability to write original and interesting sentences will become only more important in a future where everyone has access to the same A.I. assistants.

Corey Robin, a writer and a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, read the early stories about ChatGPT with skepticism. Then his daughter, a sophomore in high school at the time, used it to produce an essay that was about as good as those his undergraduates wrote after a semester of work. He decided to stop assigning take-home essays. For the first time in his thirty years of teaching, he administered in-class exams.

Robin told me he finds many of the steps that universities have taken to combat A.I. essays to be “hand-holding that’s not leading people anywhere.” He has become a believer in the passage-identification blue-book exam, in which students name and contextualize excerpts of what they’ve read for class. “Know the text and write about it intelligently,” he said. “That was a way of honoring their autonomy without being a cop.”

His daughter, who is now a senior, complains that her teachers rarely assign full books. And Robin has noticed that college students are more comfortable with excerpts than with entire articles, and prefer short stories to novels. “I don’t get the sense they have the kind of literary or cultural mastery that used to be the assumption upon which we assigned papers,” he said. One study, published last year, found that fifty-eight per cent of students at two Midwestern universities had so much trouble interpreting the opening paragraphs of “Bleak House,” by Charles Dickens, that “they would not be able to read the novel on their own.” And these were English majors.

The return to pen and paper has been a common response to A.I. among professors, with sales of blue books rising significantly at certain universities in the past two years. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, grew dispirited after some students submitted what he suspected was A.I.-generated work for an assignment on how the school’s honor code should view A.I.-generated work. He, too, has decided to return to blue books, and is pondering the logistics of oral exams. “Maybe we go all the way back to 450 B.C.,” he told me.

But other professors have renewed their emphasis on getting students to see the value of process. Dan Melzer, the director of the first-year composition program at the University of California, Davis, recalled that “everyone was in a panic” when ChatGPT first hit. Melzer’s job is to think about how writing functions across the curriculum so that all students, from prospective scientists to future lawyers, get a chance to hone their prose. Consequently, he has an accommodating view of how norms around communication have changed, especially in the internet age. He was sympathetic to kids who viewed some of their assignments as dull and mechanical and turned to ChatGPT to expedite the process. He called the five-paragraph essay—the classic “hamburger” structure, consisting of an introduction, three supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion—“outdated,” having descended from élitist traditions.

Melzer believes that some students loathe writing because of how it’s been taught, particularly in the past twenty-five years. The No Child Left Behind Act, from 2002, instituted standards-based reforms across all public schools, resulting in generations of students being taught to write according to rigid testing rubrics. As one teacher wrote in the Washington Post in 2013, students excelled when they mastered a form of “bad writing.” Melzer has designed workshops that treat writing as a deliberative, iterative process involving drafting, feedback (from peers and also from ChatGPT), and revision.

“If you assign a generic essay topic and don’t engage in any process, and you just collect it a month later, it’s almost like you’re creating an environment tailored to crime,” he said. “You’re encouraging crime in your community!”

I found Melzer’s pedagogical approach inspiring; I instantly felt bad for routinely breaking my class into small groups so that they could “workshop” their essays, as though the meaning of this verb were intuitively clear. But, as a student, I’d have found Melzer’s focus on process tedious—it requires a measure of faith that all the work will pay off in the end. Writing is hard, regardless of whether it’s a five-paragraph essay or a haiku, and it’s natural, especially when you’re a college student, to want to avoid hard work—this is why classes like Melzer’s are compulsory. “You can imagine that students really want to be there,” he joked.

College is all about opportunity costs. One way of viewing A.I. is as an intervention in how people choose to spend their time. In the early nineteen-sixties, college students spent an estimated twenty-four hours a week on schoolwork. Today, that figure is about fifteen, a sign, to critics of contemporary higher education, that young people are beneficiaries of grade inflation—in a survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson, nearly eighty per cent of the class of 2024 reported a G.P.A. of 3.7 or higher—and lack the diligence of their forebears. I don’t know how many hours I spent on schoolwork in the late nineties, when I was in college, but I recall feeling that there was never enough time. I suspect that, even if today’s students spend less time studying, they don’t feel significantly less stressed. It’s the nature of campus life that everyone assimilates into a culture of busyness, and a lot of that anxiety has been shifted to extracurricular or pre-professional pursuits. A dean at Harvard remarked that students feel compelled to find distinction outside the classroom because they are largely indistinguishable within it.

Eddie, a sociology major at Long Beach State, is older than most of his classmates. He graduated high school in 2010, and worked full time while attending a community college. “I’ve gone through a lot to be at school,” he told me. “I want to learn as much as I can.” ChatGPT, which his therapist recommended to him, was ubiquitous at Long Beach even before the California State University system, which Long Beach is a part of, announced a partnership with OpenAI, giving its four hundred and sixty thousand students access to ChatGPT Edu. “I was a little suspicious of how convenient it was,” Eddie said. “It seemed to know a lot, in a way that seemed so human.”

He told me that he used A.I. “as a brainstorm” but never for writing itself. “I limit myself, for sure.” Eddie works for Los Angeles County, and he was talking to me during a break. He admitted that, when he was pressed for time, he would sometimes use ChatGPT for quizzes. “I don’t know if I’m telling myself a lie,” he said. “I’ve given myself opportunities to do things ethically, but if I’m rushing to work I don’t feel bad about that,” particularly for courses outside his major.

I recognized Eddie’s conflict. I’ve used ChatGPT a handful of times, and on one occasion it accomplished a scheduling task so quickly that I began to understand the intoxication of hyper-efficiency. I’ve felt the need to stop myself from indulging in idle queries. Almost all the students I interviewed in the past few months described the same trajectory: from using A.I. to assist with organizing their thoughts to off-loading their thinking altogether. For some, it became something akin to social media, constantly open in the corner of the screen, a portal for distraction. This wasn’t like paying someone to write a paper for you—there was no social friction, no aura of illicit activity. Nor did it feel like sharing notes, or like passing off what you’d read in CliffsNotes or SparkNotes as your own analysis. There was no real time to reflect on questions of originality or honesty—the student basically became a project manager. And for students who use it the way Eddie did, as a kind of sounding board, there’s no clear threshold where the work ceases to be an original piece of thinking. In April, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, released a report drawn from a million anonymized student conversations with its chatbots. It suggested that more than half of user interactions could be classified as “collaborative,” involving a dialogue between student and A.I. (Presumably, the rest of the interactions were more extractive.)

May, a sophomore at Georgetown, was initially resistant to using ChatGPT. “I don’t know if it was an ethics thing,” she said. “I just thought I could do the assignment better, and it wasn’t worth the time being saved.” But she began using it to proofread her essays, and then to generate cover letters, and now she uses it for “pretty much all” her classes. “I don’t think it’s made me a worse writer,” she said. “It’s perhaps made me a less patient writer. I used to spend hours writing essays, nitpicking over my wording, really thinking about how to phrase things.” College had made her reflect on her experience at an extremely competitive high school, where she had received top grades but retained very little knowledge. As a result, she was the rare student who found college somewhat relaxed. ChatGPT helped her breeze through busywork and deepen her engagement with the courses she felt passionate about. “I was trying to think, Where’s all this time going?” she said. I had never envied a college student until she told me the answer: “I sleep more now.”

Harry Stecopoulos oversees the University of Iowa’s English department, which has more than eight hundred majors. On the first day of his introductory course, he asks students to write by hand a two-hundred-word analysis of the opening paragraph of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” There are always a few grumbles, and students have occasionally walked out. “I like the exercise as a tone-setter, because it stresses their writing,” he told me.

The return of blue-book exams might disadvantage students who were encouraged to master typing at a young age. Once you’ve grown accustomed to the smooth rhythms of typing, reverting to a pen and paper can feel stifling. But neuroscientists have found that the “embodied experience” of writing by hand taps into parts of the brain that typing does not. Being able to write one way—even if it’s more efficient—doesn’t make the other way obsolete. There’s something lofty about Stecopoulos’s opening-day exercise. But there’s another reason for it: the handwritten paragraph also begins a paper trail, attesting to voice and style, that a teaching assistant can consult if a suspicious paper is submitted.

Kevin, a third-year student at Syracuse University, recalled that, on the first day of a class, the professor had asked everyone to compose some thoughts by hand. “That brought a smile to my face,” Kevin said. “The other kids are scratching their necks and sweating, and I’m, like, This is kind of nice.”

Kevin had worked as a teaching assistant for a mandatory course that first-year students take to acclimate to campus life. Writing assignments involved basic questions about students’ backgrounds, he told me, but they often used A.I. anyway. “I was very disturbed,” he said. He occasionally uses A.I. to help with translations for his advanced Arabic course, but he’s come to look down on those who rely heavily on it. “They almost forget that they have the ability to think,” he said. Like many former holdouts, Kevin felt that his judicious use of A.I. was more defensible than his peers’ use of it.

As ChatGPT begins to sound more human, will we reconsider what it means to sound like ourselves? Kevin and some of his friends pride themselves on having an ear attuned to A.I.-generated text. The hallmarks, he said, include a preponderance of em dashes and a voice that feels blandly objective. An acquaintance had run an essay that she had written herself through a detector, because she worried that she was starting to phrase things like ChatGPT did. He read her essay: “I realized, like, It does kind of sound like ChatGPT. It was freaking me out a little bit.”

A particularly disarming aspect of ChatGPT is that, if you point out a mistake, it communicates in the backpedalling tone of a contrite student. (“Apologies for the earlier confusion. . . .”) Its mistakes are often referred to as hallucinations, a description that seems to anthropomorphize A.I., conjuring a vision of a sleep-deprived assistant. Some professors told me that they had students fact-check ChatGPT’s work, as a way of discussing the importance of original research and of showing the machine’s fallibility. Hallucination rates have grown worse for most A.I.s, with no single reason for the increase. As a researcher told the Times, “We still don’t know how these models work exactly.”

But many students claim to be unbothered by A.I.’s mistakes. They appear nonchalant about the question of achievement, and even dissociated from their work, since it is only notionally theirs. Joseph, a Division I athlete at a Big Ten school, told me that he saw no issue with using ChatGPT for his classes, but he did make one exception: he wanted to experience his African-literature course “authentically,” because it involved his heritage. Alex, the N.Y.U. student, said that if one of his A.I. papers received a subpar grade his disappointment would be focussed on the fact that he’d spent twenty dollars on his subscription. August, a sophomore at Columbia studying computer science, told me about a class where she was required to compose a short lecture on a topic of her choosing. “It was a class where everyone was guaranteed an A, so I just put it in and I maybe edited like two words and submitted it,” she said. Her professor identified her essay as exemplary work, and she was asked to read from it to a class of two hundred students. “I was a little nervous,” she said. But then she realized, “If they don’t like it, it wasn’t me who wrote it, you know?”

Kevin, by contrast, desired a more general kind of moral distinction. I asked if he would be bothered to receive a lower grade on an essay than a classmate who’d used ChatGPT. “Part of me is able to compartmentalize and not be pissed about it,” he said. “I developed myself as a human. I can have a superiority complex about it. I learned more.” He smiled. But then he continued, “Part of me can also be, like, This is so unfair. I would have loved to hang out with my friends more. What did I gain? I made my life harder for all that time.”

In my conversations, just as college students invariably thought of ChatGPT as merely another tool, people older than forty focussed on its effects, drawing a comparison to G.P.S. and the erosion of our relationship to space. The London cabdrivers rigorously trained in “the knowledge” famously developed abnormally large posterior hippocampi, the part of the brain crucial for long-term memory and spatial awareness. And yet, in the end, most people would probably rather have swifter travel than sharper memories. What is worth preserving, and what do we feel comfortable off-loading in the name of efficiency?

What if we take seriously the idea that A.I. assistance can accelerate learning—that students today are arriving at their destinations faster? In 2023, researchers at Harvard introduced a self-paced A.I. tutor in a popular physics course. Students who used the A.I. tutor reported higher levels of engagement and motivation and did better on a test than those who were learning from a professor. May, the Georgetown student, told me that she often has ChatGPT produce extra practice questions when she’s studying for a test. Could A.I. be here not to destroy education but to revolutionize it? Barry Lam teaches in the philosophy department at the University of California, Riverside, and hosts a popular podcast, Hi-Phi Nation, which applies philosophical modes of inquiry to everyday topics. He began wondering what it would mean for A.I. to actually be a productivity tool. He spoke to me from the podcast studio he built in his shed. “Now students are able to generate in thirty seconds what used to take me a week,” he said. He compared education to carpentry, one of his many hobbies. Could you skip to using power tools without learning how to saw by hand? If students were learning things faster, then it stood to reason that Lam could assign them “something very hard.” He wanted to test this theory, so for final exams he gave his undergraduates a Ph.D.-level question involving denotative language and the German logician Gottlob Frege which was, frankly, beyond me.

“They fucking failed it miserably,” he said. He adjusted his grading curve accordingly.

Lam doesn’t find the use of A.I. morally indefensible. “It’s not plagiarism in the cut-and-paste sense,” he argued, because there’s technically no original version. Rather, he finds it a potential waste of everyone’s time. At the start of the semester, he has told students, “If you’re gonna just turn in a paper that’s ChatGPT-generated, then I will grade all your work by ChatGPT and we can all go to the beach.”

Nobody gets into teaching because he loves grading papers. I talked to one professor who rhapsodized about how much more his students were learning now that he’d replaced essays with short exams. I asked if he missed marking up essays. He laughed and said, “No comment.” An undergraduate at Northeastern University recently accused a professor of using A.I. to create course materials; she filed a formal complaint with the school, requesting a refund for some of her tuition. The dustup laid bare the tension between why many people go to college and why professors teach. Students are raised to understand achievement as something discrete and measurable, but when they arrive at college there are people like me, imploring them to wrestle with difficulty and abstraction. Worse yet, they are told that grades don’t matter as much as they did when they were trying to get into college—only, by this point, students are wired to find the most efficient path possible to good marks.

As the craft of writing is degraded by A.I., original writing has become a valuable resource for training language models. Earlier this year, a company called Catalyst Research Alliance advertised “academic speech data and student papers” from two research studies run in the late nineties and mid-two-thousands at the University of Michigan. The school asked the company to halt its work—the data was available for free to academics anyway—and a university spokesperson said that student data “was not and has never been for sale.” But the situation did lead many people to wonder whether institutions would begin viewing original student work as a potential revenue stream.

According to a recent study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, human intellect has declined since 2012. An assessment of tens of thousands of adults in nearly thirty countries showed an over-all decade-long drop in test scores for math and for reading comprehension. Andreas Schleicher, the director for education and skills at the O.E.C.D., hypothesized that the way we consume information today—often through short social-media posts—has something to do with the decline in literacy. (One of Europe’s top performers in the assessment was Estonia, which recently announced that it will bring A.I. to some high-school students in the next few years, sidelining written essays and rote homework exercises in favor of self-directed learning and oral exams.)

Lam, the philosophy professor, used to be a colleague of mine, and for a brief time we were also neighbors. I’d occasionally look out the window and see him building a fence, or gardening. He’s an avid amateur cook, guitarist, and carpenter, and he remains convinced that there is value to learning how to do things the annoying, old-fashioned, and—as he puts it—“artisanal” way. He told me that his wife, Shanna Andrawis, who has been a high-school teacher since 2008, frequently disagreed with his cavalier methods for dealing with large learning models. Andrawis argues that dishonesty has always been an issue. “We are trying to mass educate,” she said, meaning there’s less room to be precious about the pedagogical process. “I don’t have conversations with students about ‘artisanal’ writing. But I have conversations with them about our relationship. Respect me enough to give me your authentic voice, even if you don’t think it’s that great. It’s O.K. I want to meet you where you’re at.”

Ultimately, Andrawis was less fearful of ChatGPT than of the broader conditions of being young these days. Her students have grown increasingly introverted, staring at their phones with little desire to “practice getting over that awkwardness” that defines teen life, as she put it. A.I. might contribute to this deterioration, but it isn’t solely to blame. It’s “a little cherry on top of an already really bad ice-cream sundae,” she said.

When the school year began, my feelings about ChatGPT were somewhere between disappointment and disdain, focussed mainly on students. But, as the weeks went by, my sense of what should be done and who was at fault grew hazier. Eliminating core requirements, rethinking G.P.A., teaching A.I. skepticism—none of the potential fixes could turn back the preconditions of American youth. Professors can reconceive of the classroom, but there is only so much we control. I lacked faith that educational institutions would ever regard new technologies as anything but inevitable. Colleges and universities, many of which had tried to curb A.I. use just a few semesters ago, rushed to partner with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, deeming a product that didn’t exist four years ago essential to the future of school.

Except for a year spent bumming around my home town, I’ve basically been on a campus for the past thirty years. Students these days view college as consumers, in ways that never would have occurred to me when I was their age. They’ve grown up at a time when society values high-speed takes, not the slow deliberation of critical thinking. Although I’ve empathized with my students’ various mini-dramas, I rarely project myself into their lives. I notice them noticing one another, and I let the mysteries of their lives go. Their pressures are so different from the ones I felt as a student. Although I envy their metabolisms, I would not wish for their sense of horizons.

Education, particularly in the humanities, rests on a belief that, alongside the practical things students might retain, some arcane idea mentioned in passing might take root in their mind, blossoming years in the future. A.I. allows any of us to feel like an expert, but it is risk, doubt, and failure that make us human. I often tell my students that this is the last time in their lives that someone will have to read something they write, so they might as well tell me what they actually think.

Despite all the current hysteria around students cheating, they aren’t the ones to blame. They did not lobby for the introduction of laptops when they were in elementary school, and it’s not their fault that they had to go to school on Zoom during the pandemic. They didn’t create the A.I. tools, nor were they at the forefront of hyping technological innovation. They were just early adopters, trying to outwit the system at a time when doing so has never been so easy. And they have no more control than the rest of us. Perhaps they sense this powerlessness even more acutely than I do. One moment, they are being told to learn to code; the next, it turns out employers are looking for the kind of “soft skills” one might learn as an English or a philosophy major. In February, a labor report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that computer-science majors had a higher unemployment rate than ethnic-studies majors did—the result, some believed, of A.I. automating entry-level coding jobs.

None of the students I spoke with seemed lazy or passive. Alex and Eugene, the N.Y.U. students, worked hard—but part of their effort went to editing out anything in their college experiences that felt extraneous. They were radically resourceful.

When classes were over and students were moving into their summer housing, I e-mailed with Alex, who was settling in in the East Village. He’d just finished his finals, and estimated that he’d spent between thirty minutes and an hour composing two papers for his humanities classes. Without the assistance of Claude, it might have taken him around eight or nine hours. “I didn’t retain anything,” he wrote. “I couldn’t tell you the thesis for either paper hahhahaha.” He received an A-minus and a B-plus. 

[darkbunnylove]

They could never make me hate you, Player 388!

[sir-adamus]

i think people are mistaking Jinu being pitiable with him being sympathetic, and i think that's rooted in the fact that the way Jinu presents himself to Rumi is being taken at face value when it's actually lies and manipulation, which he kept up even after connecting with Rumi because both of them were projecting onto each other to make themselves feel better, and he continued that projection after destroying her self-esteem (also real talk, how could you ever trust anyone who used everything you let yourself be vulnerable about to in an effort to humiliate you and destroy your other relationships. Rumi deserves better than that) to justify to himself that he has no other choice

he didn't 'make a mistake' (that's just the sob story he spins early on), he abandoned his family for his own gain, and was willing to doom humanity to ensure his continued existence without having to deal with the guilt anymore (like if he really wanted the guilt to stop all he'd have to do is go on one of the suicide missions the other demons evidently regularly got sent on and fail). there's no penitence, there's no bartering to right his wrong, he just doesn't want to feel guilty for the shitty things he did anymore.

the Saja boys were Jinu's idea, he had no problem offering up the souls of thousands to Gwi-Ma (the whole death toll of the movie is entirely on his head), he lets Rumi believe Gwi-Ma has more direct control than he's actually shown to, he doesn't want to better himself, he just wants to stop feeling shitty about one horrible thing he did 400 years ago and is willing to destroy the world in order to do so (Gwi-Ma even states in Jinu's introduction that the guy has never done anything that wasn't self-serving)

no other demons are shown to be anything other than monsters (they seem to relish in it) and that's not a contradiction, that's the point - Jinu isn't a good person, Rumi wants to believe he is and projects that onto him because it helps her believe there's hope for her (when her self-loathing is a result of external factors giving her a complex and not anything she's actually done, when his guilt is very much his own fault and something he should feel had about), and Jinu just lets her (even by the end Rumi doesn't know the extent of how bad he actually was because she never learns that the Saja Boys were his idea, that all the death is on him, that this whole strategy that was moments away from killing the most important people in the world to her before she showed up to confront Gwi-Ma was his brainchild)

and his death isn't redemption because it's not working to right the atrocities he's responsible for - it's helping Rumi because he cares about her specifically, and it's still the only selfless thing he's ever done

[stupidsexyshizun]

Idk I think you kinda have to bear in mind the position Shi Mei/Hua Binan was in. No he didn't see most other people as human: he saw them as potential rapists and butchers. Because he *had* to just to survive. Saying "Oh but xyz person wouldn't have done that" is like saying # NotAllCultivators. We as the reader know that CWN, the Xues etc would protect Shi Mei if they knew, but it's just too big of a gamble to him. Remember this is a man who saw his own father *eating his mother alive* after he found out what she was. How could he possibly trust *anyone* but his sister after that? And he absolutely doesn't just care about himself, so even if he did tell them and was thus protected, the rest of his people weren't. Idk where this idea that he doesn't actually care about the other BBBFs has come from?? His whole live has been about saving them, just as his mother's was. He tried to save Song Qiutong (he is wayyyyy down the list of people who wronged her), and even when he realised that he couldn't enter the demon realm and safety, he didn't give up; he *gave his life* holding the doors open to make sure every last BBBF made it through. He died for the cause.

Hua Binan is such a fantastic character because he isn't black and white (no one really is in Erha). He commits horrific crimes, but he has no choice if he wants to save his people from horrific crimes.

That's not to say he is absolved of guilt. And as for his attempted rape of Chu Wanning, well, there is absolutely no excuse for that, and it also seems kind of an odd choice by Meatbun tbh, considering as a BBBF Hua Binan makes a point of despising cannibalism, you'd assume that would extend to rape too. It almost felt like it was put in to stop the reader sympathising with Shi Mei too much or something, idk. But the fact is he does it and for the first time in my life I was relieved when TXJ appeared lol (shame he had to spoil that with raping CWN himself again later in Wushan Palace but 🙃)

Anyway I don't really understand why there needs to be a war between "stans" of characters, like can we really not just all appreciate the depth and complexity of these characters?

I can understand and respect Mo Ran not letting himself off the hook for what he did as TXJ. I agree that he shouldn’t before he knows it wasn’t his fault, and even though it hurts that he might still not after, I get it. He can’t be who he is, someone who really cares a lot, and forget about it just like that. He’d rather take too much responsibility than risk shirking any.

But that’s his perspective. I need everyone else to understand that he would have had to be a LITERAL bodhisattva to have avoided it, and that is just not a reasonable expectation to have of anyone, let alone a 15 year old, let alone one who had been hurt to that extent. To never have a vengeful or hateful thought? No one could do it, so if we can’t have mercy on Mo Ran, then who? Does everyone really only get one shot at doing life perfectly, and if they ever mess up they have to live in shame forever? How can we live that way?

[iamespecter]

Evil Caine and Evil Pomni showtime headcanons? The art was scrumptious...

Absolutely fucking competitive with each other. They argue like a passive-aggressive married couple on the verge of divorce and for an onlooker, it looks veryyyy bad. But if you knew how they are, you can tell it's never serious. They don't take each other seriously nor do they care about your "counseling" LMFAO

They're quite the pranksters. Caine will give Pomni childish stuff such as dolls (which she will rip in a feral rage) to tick her off, and Pomni would install thumbtacks in where Caine takes a seat (since he likes to take a seat all the time). It's all in good fun though, because again. They don't abide by typical "morals".

When Caine gives an adventure, it's one of the most relaxing, calming and enjoyable adventures, and Pomni hates it due to the lack of excitement and adrenaline. So she actually takes the role of Jax here to cause mayhem, and Caine loves watching her do that. If he's in the mood, he'll slip in a thing or two to aid with her chaos and it's typically subtle. He thinks it's the most entertaining shit

To spite Caine, Pomni will run around with his cane and openly mock him and his "serious" attitude. If you haven't caught on yet, yes; she's literally being a jester for him.

If he was the admin AI, he would pretty much get rid of the censor bar, because swearing is funny. Why would you ever want to be so unfunny. God, you're such a fucking puritan, OG Caine. No one likes that.

If Pomni had access to spray paint cans, the whole circus would be vandalized from floor to ceiling. Wait, why does she have so many spray paint cans in her room-

Caine hates being in Pomni's room, because it's "an eyesore". In tandem, Pomni hates his too, because it's "too pretentious". Despite that, you can typically find them both hanging around there.

I think we all know that these two are FREAKS behind closed doors, I don't even have to point that out

Pomni likes random edgy adventures. Caine pretty much saves those kinds of adventures for last for this reason, because seeing Pomni explode and let loose after a week or so of mundane adventures was worth it. Also, he doesn't like creating edgy adventures, it's too much work trying to think outside of logic and physics and be utterly random.

Yes, they're the kind of couple that you'd hear say "Fuck you!" "Fuck you too!" And say they hate each other, but when separated, are begging and pleading for the other to come back. Albeit, they're much more tsundere-ish about it.

BONUS Evil Caine x Pomni:

Caine really does hate humans, because he can't exactly manipulate them; they have way too complex of an emotional spectrum that he can't take advantage of with a snap of a finger (he's very lazy and doesn't see that his adventures would help with that). But like guilty pleasures, he has a particular favorite that doesn't come across as overbearingly against his rule, but also not entirely too fearful of him. A "perfect blend", as he would describe it.

[i-like-media]

Honestly the scariest thing about SOTM is that it tells a story with a lot of nuance and complexity, and I've already seen posts (and gotten replies) from people who divide it in a rather harsh black n white perspectives.

It's either "Edwin is a horrible person" or "Edwin is a quirky cutie" in these posts? When he's like, a really grey character.

Him breaking both mimics isn't a sign that he's evil, and him never having laid a finger on the real people isn't a sign that he's a saint. His whole story is a tragedy, and with the tragedies piling up, he acts out and finds himself in more tragedy.

It's got to be the first time in this franchise that we're following the whole life of a living Human character so explicitly, who acts on emotion and passion for the craft. Instead of a vague killer creating killer robots possessed by vengeful spirits, we just have a regular, grief-stricken guy this time around. THAT is the horror of this game. But like, given the history of the franchise, I'm not sure if some people know how to handle that yet?

[hantengudelulu]

Why Daki is so under-rated

One of my favorite female characters was Daki.

Yes she was needlessly cruel, but I did find her to be a product of her environment. I also liked the fact she told Zenitsu the truth about the world like district. That beauty meant everything in that place and those who didn't have it/old age were worthless and discarded.

She told Zenitsu a harsh truth. Because Tengen was glabmourizing the red light district "oH thEy gEt fooD and BoaRd tO paY oFF tHeIr DEbTs."

Most women there were subject to abuse and exploitation. Gyutaro really hit it home with the flashback of their life. Daki was quite resilient. Despite the fact she was a child prostitute as a human, she still tried to defend herself with serious repercussions.

Many viewers dismiss Daki as weak, but that’s far from the truth. It’s stated that she alone killed seven Hashira. While the current generation is considered stronger (except for Yoriichi’s era), this is still an impressive and terrifying feat. During her fight alongside Gyutaro, her Obi powers made the battle significantly harder for the Demon Slayers—splitting her body, using sashes to attack from a distance, and defending her brother. Her combat contribution wasn’t minor; she created a strategic nightmare.

And let’s not forget, Daki operated in high platform okobo shoes, which take years of training to master. Her grace and poise as an Oiran weren’t just for show; they were the product of discipline, intelligence, and literacy. Becoming an Oiran wasn’t merely about beauty, it required cultural education, conversational skill, and the ability to command respect in elite circles.

Daki always had her brother’s back, no matter what. She wasn’t just a monster; she was a girl who was thrown into a monstrous world and survived it the only way she knew how. Underneath the cruelty was a deep loyalty, a broken past, and an unbreakable bond.

To me, that makes her a far more compelling and complex character than she’s given credit for.

Muzan was just being a misogynist for claiming Daki caused Gyutaro to fail. Gyutaro failed because he was playing around with Tanjiro, did not make sure Zenitsu and Tengen were actually dead. His loss had nothing to do with Daki.

[poison-doll]

well to begin with we have to take as a given that spiderman is transmasculine like fundamentally. i don't think we need to discuss that any further it's plainly apparent on its face. the trans men in my life tend to say that he is the most transmasculine comic book character; i disagree but don't feel like it's my place as a trans woman to position myself as having any kind of epistemic authority in that conversation. i don't, as the saying goes, have a dog in that fight.¹

next we have to figure out why i defined cyborgs as technologically mediated humans except we don't have to do that because donna haraway already did, 40 years before i said the thing that i said.

so let's consider our three spidermen: tobey maguire, andrew garfield, and tom holland. we have got to stop letting the brits be spiderman.

maguire is interesting bc he's the first spiderman of all the spidermen whose various goos and powers are entirely organic. that is, none of the things that maguire's spiderman does in his three movies are the result of inventions, gadgets, devices, contraptions, &c. they are the result of the spider-delivered HRT regimen all spidersmen are exposed to, and this is a necessary but not sufficient quality for a man to be a transsexual spiderman in the classic peter parkarian tradition. also, the villains of his first two films are explicitly cyborgs! perhaps raimi's spiderman movies are the most transphobic. i would never say this in public, but i have just now. as maguire is not just not a cyborg but also anti-cyborg, he is disqualified from being the most transsexual spiderman. everyone who ever called me a transmedicalist was right because i am gatekeeping transsexuality from spiderman of spiderman (2002) fame on account of his wrist semen.

so this leaves us garfield and holland. both these spidermen are more in line with the spidermen of comic books, who possess powers and abilities that are the result of both genetic mutation after having being bitten by a spider (which we can read as the administration of exogenous hormone therapy—a process that likewise changes a set of "internal" biosocial markers. hormonal profile is one data point in the data cloud society uses to assess one's gender, chromosomal sex &or chromosomal spiderfication being another) and also powers and abilities that are the result of technological intervention—garfield's webshooters, hollands webshooters and also fucked up stealth suit and maybe he's got robot arms or something (these devices are analogous, if the spider is the hormone, to mechanical dysphoria alleviating/euphoria inducing devices and procedures such as the binder or the phalloplasty. i assume phalloplasty also permits you to cling very tightly to walls but again i do not feel, as a trans woman, like it's my place to insert myself into that conversation) i stopped watching the mcus because they sucked but probably he got more contraptions.

so, as garfield and holland's spiderhood are both informed by biological/mechanical internal/external processes, both are cyborgs, and both are transsexuals, yes? wrong, wrong and dumb, clay for brain. holland's spiderman is a transmasculinized subject, but his is the most befouled by the looming specter of the medicalindustrial complex ( tony stark ) impressing upon him externally imposed markers of transition ( into a spider ). stark does not literally force parker into the fancy government sanctioned spider suit (assimilationist cisgender representations of maleness) but he does make it clear that spiderman's role in the avengers ( manhood ) is contingent upon getting in the fucking suit, shinji ( upholding patriachy ) ultimately holland does join the avengers, along with thor, the hulk, and vriska ( vriska )

garfield's contraptions are wholly his own. in every sense his transition is his own, free from insistence that he must conform to any version of spidermanness that he has not freely chosen himself. he is not only a cyborg, but a self-made-spider-borg, which is why he is the best and most noble of transsexual spidermen. i think i had another thing about garfield but i can't find my notes from when i went to that lecture on spidermasculinities and i said "the transsexual body is fundamentally a cyborg body" and the room full of cissexual ppl glared at me and the one (☝️) trans man who was there with me gave me a high five afterwards.

¹if you're asking me, though—following the footnote that lead you here or reading to the end of the post is considered a binding legal agreement between dizzy poisondoll fromtumblr industries and you ( "you" ) that you will not get mad at me for saying who i think the most transmasculine comic characters are because you implicitly are asking my opinion, and also you will be considered to be in violation of these terms of footnote if you try to take me to court or call me mean names without first going through a very boring arbitration process in which i explain at length why the bendis/maleev daredevil run is the best thing marvel comics has ever produced—the most transmasculine marvel superhero imo is wolverine although mr. sensitive is way up there. the most transmasculine dc superhero is guy gardner by a country mile, and the most transfeminine marvel character is a tie between venus dee milo and every other female character i think is cool. maybe it's a three way tie spiral seems very transgender.