#it's just bad. like it's a bad movie. it's bad writing

[lovethebluebox]

Hahaha no. Trump is not going to censor the documents he put in that stupid Bible he was selling and the epitome of 'Communism Bad evil totalitarian dictatorship' works of George Orwell. Not when Amazon released a special audiobook version of it last year and the movie adaptations of these books were funded by the CIA during the Red Scare.

If you guys truly care about censorship, I need you guys to go to the Marxist Internet Archive and Anarchist Archives and save what you can as PDFs to your hard drives. You don't have to agree with them, or even like them, but if you believe censorship is bad, that also applies to political beliefs you disagree with and may even morally object to. Librarian rule, we are not archiving according to our own personal feelings. It's important to have as many written records as we can get our hands on, even if it's just to use them as primary sources to properly understand their arguments and debunk them. Yes, that includes works by Mao and Stalin. You're allowed to read Mein Kampf in high school for this exact reason. At the very least we should be able to do the same with communist leaders too.

The thing about Republicans is that they're predictable. We've been hearing them rant about feminism and wokeness and CRT and Marxism and the alphabet people for years. And we even have a blueprint of things they want to ban, anything that's happening in Florida should be viewed as what Republicans want to do in the rest of the country. Look up the books that are banned from Florida schools, look up the resources in the 1619 project. While you're at it, go to the CIA's website and download whatever declassified documents you can, you never know what they may reclassify again.

You want to know what kind of documents are most likely to be lost?

Local history.

Please I'm begging you guys, get in touch with your town's cultural centers, historical societies, pride centers and university librarians. Ask about Union Strikes and Queer history and the Indigenous people who lived there before you. You'll learn a lot of cool local history and they'll be more than glad to help. You do not have to do this archival work alone.

i have a folder in my computer called "just in case" where i have important documents saved, like the constitution (since trump REMOVED IT from whitehouse.gov) and books that might get banned

im obviously going to add more, if anyone has any reccomendations please let me know. just wanted to share because i think its a good idea going into these next 4+ years.

EDIT i've also added a clip of elon doing the nazi salute because its taken down a lot of places and likely will be removed everywhere. as well as screenshots of what happened when you searched "presidents in order" (it did not show biden) and "president from 2020-2024" (it showed trump) but have since been fixed

[blubunz]

What about older Leon wanting to breed his hybrid because he needs to calm his bunny's heat 😤

Been wanting to write this too oml🤩🤩❓️❓️ like imagine you being so needy that you can't sit still, and it gets on Leon's nerves so he just pins you down and gives you what you want :D

Anyways I wrote a little something based on this um hope u enjoy :³

Tags: degradation, breeding, riding, slapping, oral (m receiving), hair...uh– ear pulling.

You've been bothering him lately, hugging him and attaching to his side at all times. You keep rubbing your head on his thighs as you kneel on the floor and him trying to watch his movies, and when he gets you up to his lap, you sniff his neck and keep humping on his thigh.

He eventually has enough and pins you down, Leon promises you he'd get you pills to calm your heat down, since it's so late as of the moment, but you can't stay still. You promised him you'd be good, but you have limits too.

"Enough, brat." Leon pins you down and peels your bottoms off, he gives your ass a hard smack, the sound echoed in the living room as he repeats the motion over and over, making you cry and sniffle, yet your cunt has never leaked so much, the pain brings you a twisted form of pleasure.

"Wanna be bred, hm, bunny?" He sneers, grabbing your wet cheeks and pinching them together to pucker your lips. "Wanna be stuffed full? Want me t' breed you?"

You whine and nod continously, hips humping up to his bulge straining against his pants.

"You've been a bad girl, though." He grabs a fistful of your ear, dragging you over to his lap. Leon's aware your ears aren't meant to be played with, but he couldn't care more, fumed by your behaviors.

"Maybe if you do good, I'll fuck that tight pussy of yours." Leon unzips his pants and his cock springs out, standing tall with the tip an angry red.

You little bundle of fluff called a tail just wags so excitedly as you pump his cock, pupils blown wide and hungry. Your juices make a wet spot on the couch where you kneel as you swallow his cock down your throat.

You moan, eyes roll up and and drools running down your chin as you clumsily slobbering all over his cock. Leon groans, grabbing your ears and bobbing your head up and down on his cock.

You cry out more as Leon tugs on your ears so roughly, even though, you relish in it, throat tightening as you try to swallow some of your saliva mixing with his cum.

"Fuck, fuck! That's it, bunny! God, look at you drooling like a whore. Is it good, baby? You miss eating this cock?" He moves his hips up to sync with your head movement, his head tilts back against the couch.

Leon fucks your throat until he stops and forces your head down, shooting white hot streaks of his seeds down your throat, and you eagerly gulp every drop. As Leon lets go, you keep slurping his cock, cleaning up every drop of cum, that's enough to make him hard once more.

Leon slaps your ass, making you jolt and let go. Leon grabs your cheeks and pulls into a rough a kiss, tilting your head to dive his tongue deeper down, tasting himself on your tongue.

He pulls you seated on his lap mid-kiss, positioning his tip against your dripping heat, feeling your juices down his shaft.

He thrusts up into you without warning, elicting a gasp from you. Your eyes filled with lusts tongue sticking out as amyour hips move on their own, bouncing on his cock in no time.

"Yeah, ride it, slut—fuck, pussy's eating me s' good..."

Leon groans, his cock fits in your pussy just right, not too tight or too loose — it's just perfect.

It's crazy how wild you're acting at the moment, Leon knows about heat, but he never seen it go this far, how you're bouncing as if you belong in a porn film, how your tits bounce along with your movements.

It's too much for Leon, he's not that young anymore, but it also feels good how his cock is twitching painfully inside you, hard and slick enough for you to use like a toy.

You're babbling nonsense, and Leon can't make out anything except for his name on your lips. He grunts out your name too, eyes squeezing shut before opening to reveal his crossed eyes, just as lost in pleasure like you.

His hands tighten on your thighs, digging into the plump, thick fat of meat while you bounce and hump. You moan higher and louder when he circles your clit and bites your nipple, sucking it like a newborn baby.

"Oh god, Leon!" You whine, your hands groping his own chest as the clapping sound of your ass slap against his thighs grows louder and louder.

Your ear and tail twitch, keep muttering and pleading for him to cum inside you, and fuck, Leon couldn't agree more to that idea, chasing that sensation of filling you up.

"Yeah? You want it, bunny? You want me to shoot my thick cum inside, huh? Huh?" He huffs out, biting your shoulder enough to break your skin. "Want me to give you baby bunnies, hm? Give ya not just one, but hundreds of them." He's eggxatrirating, you may be a bunny, but he's not, but he plants that thought inside your head, down to your pussy and you gets tighter, gritting your teeth while you rut against his cock.

"Yes! Yesss! Want it sooooo bad, Leon! Need your cum! Pleasepleasepleaseplease—" The way you beg him like this looks so fucking cute, and Leon groans, shooting deep inside you with his babies, filling you up in no time.

You cry out in pleasure and cum too, then lying limply on his cock as your body twitches in pleasure.

Leon turns you both around, bending your body by pinning your legs on either sides of your head, he hasn't taken his cock out yet, his cum still warm deep inside your pussy.

"I'm keeping my words, baby, gonna pump you until it leaks out in chunks." He whispers, and resuming his pace. The night is still young.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

How do you write a positive character slowly being more and more pessimistic? Example: Character is a sunshine at the beginning of the series but after something happened, they became less and less positive. How does the process look like?

Writing Notes: Negative Character Arc

Character Arc - the path a character takes over the course of a story.

A character’s arc involves adversity and challenges, as well as some changes to the character, and ultimately leads to resolution.

Character arcs generally progress in tandem with traditional three-act story structure.

Most protagonist character arcs start with the inciting incident that sets up the stakes and central conflict facing this character.

The way the arc progresses from there depends on what sort of story you are telling and how the character functions.

Negative Change Arc: As the name implies, a negative change arc involves a character starting out as good or benevolent and descending into evil or ill fortune over the course of a story.

Some Related Tropes

Face–Heel Turn: A good guy turns bad.

Fallen Hero: Not all villains are born. Some are made, and none are more tragic than this trope. As the name implies, the Fallen Hero used to be a hero before turning bad. They may even have been an Ideal Hero or another equally optimistic archetype, up until the moment when they suffered something bad enough for them to lose all faith in good and idealism, be it the loss of a loved one, too many good deeds coming back to bite them hard, betrayal by someone they trusted the most, too much distrust from those who should have been allies, or some other faith-shattering event. It might even be a drawn out process of seduction to The Dark Side or fall from grace. What they choose to do about it determines what they become:

If they retreat into themselves and fight evil mercilessly to dull the pain, they become an Anti-Hero, though if this fight is motivated by vengeance, they may run the risk of becoming like the very monsters they have sworn to destroy.

If the loss of faith with humanity and/or society and government makes them decide to do something drastic to "fix" it, they become an Anti-Villain, most commonly a Knight Templar or Dark Messiah.

Alternately, if they just jump off the slippery slope and embrace chaos and the destruction of humanity as the only solution to their pain, they'll become a straight up cackling Card-Carrying Villain. Especially those who only became a hero for fame and glory, rather than for any good cause.

Or they'll be a fusion of the second and third examples and decide that killing/destroying everything is the ONLY way to save EVERYONE from the pain/pointlessness of existence, often becoming a Straw Nihilist and an Omnicidal Maniac.

They might withdraw from society, become a hermit or drunkard, and ignore the ongoing state of the world. If the current generation of heroes meets them, the fallen hero will mock how their deeds are useless. Most likely, however, they will help the new heroes in the hopes that they won't suffer the same fate.

Or they can ditch all of their once good qualities and become a Complete Monster.

The Tragic Hero: A longstanding literary concept, a character with a Fatal Flaw (like Pride, for example) who is doomed to fail in search of a Tragic Dream despite their best efforts and good intentions. This trope can work as a protagonist or an antagonist. As an antagonist, their goals are opposed to the protagonist's, but the audience still feels sympathetic towards them.

The Protagonist's Journey to Villain: A plot in which the protagonist, who starts out well-intentioned, turns into a monster.

Used to Be a Sweet Kid: This applies when a villain or other dark and troubled/troubling character was not so as a child.

Examples

The Shining. It starts off with Jack being a happy family man, albeit with a dark past, until the influence of the hotel drives him to madness and monstrosity.

The Lorax (2012): A good portion of the movie sees the Once-ler telling Ted his backstory, how he went from a kind-hearted, free-spirited inventor to a Corrupt Corporate Executive character trope who causes the extinction of trees due to his greed. However, the Once-ler in the present day really regrets his actions and sincerly helps Ted to restore the trees.

The title character in Carrie (1974, and its film adaptations) is a kind-hearted, but socially outcast teenage girl who spends the first half of the book getting slowly beaten down and pushed to her Rage Breaking Point by her classmates, the school faculty, and even her own mother. The second half is about the massacre she commits as a result when what happens at the Senior Prom makes her snap.

Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: Lucifer, once God's brightest angel, lies defeated and resentful after his jealousy toward human beings and power-hungry tendencies drove him to fight (and lose) a war against Heaven.

Arguably the central plot of Breaking Bad, which follows the journey of Walter White across five seasons from sympathetic, kindhearted chemistry teacher and family man suffering from cancer to a fairly loathsome Villain Protagonist. Gets briefly paused halfway through the fifth season when Walt, having reached the top of his empire, having taken his operation global realizes that he has made more money than he could ever hope to spend and far more than he even set out for initially. This leads him to decide he is out of the game, make amends with his former business partner by giving him the money he's owed and try to start over fresh with his family. Then his DEA agent brother-in-law finally figures out he's a drug dealer, causing him to slip back into his criminal ways and his moral degradation resumes. Even if he won't physically harm them, he's perfectly willing to throw his family under the bus to save his own skin like making a false confession tape implicating Hank or in Jesse's case, teaming up with skinheads to have him killed when he becomes too much of a hassle.

The Favourite (2018): Arguably the case for Abigail. She starts out a kind-natured Fallen Princess after her father gambled away both the entire family fortune and herself, so she sets out to join her cousin Sarah at Queen Anne's court in hopes of getting it back. However, as she is sucked into the world of politics and abused consistently by everyone around her, Abigail adapts to their cruel, underhanded ways alarmingly quickly, playing nice around Queen Anne as an antidote to Sarah's personality, faking tears when people push her too far, drugging Sarah's tea, seducing a Lord, marrying him and then all but dumping him once she gets her title back. Her cruelty finally culminates in getting Sarah officially banished from Court and intercepting her letters to the Queen, leaving Anne heartbroken, blatantly cheating on her husband in front of him, and finally stomping on one of Queen Anne's beloved pet bunnies (whom she views as surrogate children) until she nearly kills it. Queen Anne is not amused.

Les Misérables: Inspector Javert is on the side of good and law, but he is so inflated with extreme self-righteousness that, when confronted with Valjean's nobility, he has no choice but to kill himself.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Archdeacon Claude Frollo is a compassionate man in the beginning, but after seeing Esmerelda, he goes mad with lust and slowly becomes evil, desiring to either have her for his own or kill her if she won't become his.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians short story "The Diary of Luke Castellan" shows this off with the titular Luke, a villain-turned-hero who used to be a very sweet kid. Or, as in this chapter of history, a sweet teenager. He's brave, protective, and caring towards his little adopted family, to the point that he closely resembles the later hero of the series, Percy.

In The Witcher as seen by the flashbacks to his childhood with his "Ma" Visenna in the finale episode of Season 1, Geralt was once an adorable little Momma's Boy full of optimism. Completely unlike The Stoic Deadpan Snarker Knight in Sour Armor character trope he is in the present.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

There are so many possible causes as well as directions you can take your story in with this idea. Choose which of these tropes you would like to incorporate into your writing, and also found some examples for inspiration. More information and examples in the links above, hope this helps!

[jesin00]

That point from a few reblogs ago that says "Y'all are allowed to hate stuff without trying to make it a sociological, moral or political problem" is true in general. If you like movies that suck, or your fetish squicks me out, or you write stories about ships I hate or whatever, that's fine.

I still say astrology is actually bad.

Astrology is essentializing and it's a failure of basic epistemic hygiene. It puts people in boxes according to irrelevant circumstances at birth based on no evidence. It encourages/excuses discrimination based on those circumstances.

Astrology is less dangerous than biological determinism just because nobody in power is trying to encode it in law right now, not because it's actually a different kind of thing.

it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

[loganbcrnes]

hi would you mind writing a imagine of logan and f!reader cuddling on the couch watching horror movies? 🥺

oh my.. this has been in my inbox since 2021 LOL so uh enjoy sjjsjs ----------------------------------------------

Safe in his arms - Logan Howlett x female!reader no warnings.

The wind howled outside, rattling the windows of the small cabin, but inside, the crackling fireplace cast a warm glow over the living room. The couch, worn but comfortable, had been claimed by Logan Howlett and you, tangled together under a thick, knitted blanket. The TV flickered, casting eerie shadows as the horror movie played, filling the room with tension.

Logan shifted slightly, his arm draped over your shoulders, pulling you closer. His body was solid, radiating warmth, and despite the gruesome sights on screen, you felt safe tucked against him. You had both gone back and forth about what to watch tonight—he had rolled his eyes at your suggestion of a horror film, but you had caught the slight smirk he tried to hide.

“You sure you wanna watch this, sweetheart?” he murmured, voice gruff but teasing as a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the speakers. His fingers absentmindedly traced circles along your arm, the roughness of his calloused hands contrasting with your skin.

You nodded, gripping the blanket a little tighter. “I can handle it. Besides, you’re here to protect me, right?”

Logan huffed a chuckle, shaking his head. “Damn right I am.”

Another jump scare sent you flinching into his chest, and he exhaled through his nose, amused. “Maybe we should’ve gone with somethin’ else,” he mused, but his other hand settled on your hip, grounding you.

You tilted your head up, catching the smirk playing at the corner of his lips. “Are you saying you’re scared?”

He scoffed. “Of this?” He nodded toward the screen, where the protagonist was making a predictably bad decision. “Nah. Seen worse.”

That much was true. Logan had been through more real horror than any film could conjure, but here, in this moment, he was just a man lounging with his girl, watching something ridiculous.

At the foot of the couch, your two cats, Shadow and Whiskers, were curled up together, their tails twitching occasionally in response to the sounds from the TV. Shadow, the more curious of the two, would occasionally flick an ear toward the screen, while Whiskers remained blissfully unaware, purring softly in his sleep.

The movie progressed, each scene growing darker, the tension coiling tight in your stomach. Another scare sent you nearly jumping off the couch, but Logan’s arm tightened around you, keeping you in place.

“Easy, darlin’,” he murmured, his lips ghosting your temple. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna get you while I’m here.”

You burrowed further into his chest, the steady rise and fall of his breathing soothing against the eerie silence of the movie’s buildup. “I know,” you murmured, voice barely above a whisper.

For a while, the two of you just sat there, entwined, his fingers running absentmindedly along your arm, your waist. Every once in a while, he’d make a low sound of disapproval when a character made a dumb choice, and you’d giggle, feeling lighter despite the sinister atmosphere onscreen.

When the credits finally rolled, you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. Logan shifted beneath you, stretching his legs out with a satisfied groan. “Well, that was somethin’,” he muttered.

You tilted your head up to look at him. “Did you like it?”

He smirked, thumb brushing lazily against your side. “Eh. I liked watchin’ you react more.”

You playfully smacked his chest, and he let out a deep chuckle, catching your wrist and pulling you back in. His lips found your forehead, pressing a slow, lingering kiss there before he mumbled, “You tired?”

You hummed, already feeling drowsy against his warmth. Shadow stretched out lazily before curling back into a tighter ball, while Whiskers twitched his paws in his dreams.

Logan adjusted, shifting so you were even more comfortably nestled against him. “Get some sleep, sweetheart,” he said, voice softer now. “I got you.”

And with the fire crackling low and the storm still whispering outside, you let yourself drift off in his arms, safe in the warmth of his embrace, the gentle purring of your cats filling the cozy silence.

[solxamber]

Trash Novel Chronicles: My Knight is Too Loyal || Sebek Zigvolt

You wake up as the villainess in a novel that had to be written as a joke. The heroine is trying to ruin your life, but if you refuse to acknowledge her, then it’s not happening. Right? …Right??

It doesn't help that your knight, Sebek, is annoyingly endearing.

Series Masterlist

You were finally done.

After a grueling week of unpacking, assembling furniture that came with instructions written in an eldritch language, and resisting the urge to commit arson when you realized your kitchen had exactly one electrical outlet, your new apartment was finally livable. Spacious, well-lit, and with an actual window that didn’t face another building? A true luxury.

With a sigh of contentment, you set your trusty roomba loose to clean up the dust bunnies while you kicked back with your favorite pastime—reading an absolutely garbage webnovel.

This particular one had come highly recommended in the “so bad it’s good” category, and hoo boy, did it deliver.

The plot, as far as you could tell, was this:

Prince Malleus (overpowered second male lead) was best friends with the villainess (actually cool).

Sebek, loyal knight, was also sworn to protect the villainess. He liked her. They were childhood friends. He was ride or die for her.

Enter the heroine, who spawned out of nowhere, latched onto Malleus, and immediately decided that she needed Sebek’s loyalty so she could get closer to him.

She then proceeded to sabotage the villainess at every turn, and somehow no one thought this was weird.

The villainess, kept fighting back—until she got poisoned on Sebek’s watch.

Sebek, devastated, exiled himself in disgrace.

And then the Duke of the North (where did he come from???) married the heroine.

You had to put your phone down because you were WHEEZING.

How. HOW???

How was this woman out here killing the prince's best friend and still pulling a wedding out of it?? Who was writing this? Why did Sebek go into self-imposed exile when the obvious answer was to punt the heroine into the sun???

You wiped a tear from your eye, clutching your stomach. "Exiled himself in disgrace—oh my god, bro, what are you doing—"

Feeling the desperate need for a snack to recover from this literary war crime, you got up and made your way to the kitchen.

At that moment, your roomba—your once-trusted ally in the battle against dust—made a choice.

It bumped into the precariously stacked pile of moving boxes you had yet to sort through.

You turned just in time to see your doom.

A full avalanche of books, kitchenware, and your entire collection of novelty mugs came crashing down on you.

Your last thought before the world faded to black?

"Should’ve never trusted a roomba."

There were several ways you expected to wake up. A soft ray of sunlight filtering through your curtains? Sure. The soothing sound of birds chirping? Ideal. Maybe even a hangover if past-you made bad decisions? Understandable.

What you did not expect was to be jolted out of unconsciousness by the auditory equivalent of an angry airhorn.

“LORD MALLEUS, SHE'S STILL UNCONSCIOUS—PERHAPS SHE HAS FALLEN INTO AN ETERNAL SLUMBER FROM WHICH SHE WILL NEVER—!!!”

“Sebek,” another voice interrupted, eerily calm in comparison. “It will be fine.”

Sebek?

Like. The Sebek?

Your eyes snapped open like a possessed doll in a horror movie, and standing in front of you were none other than—drumroll please—Malleus Draconia and Sebek Zigvolt, looking like they had been ripped straight out of that godawful webnovel.

Sebek was vibrating with fury, looking a split second away from detonating like a nuclear warhead. Malleus, meanwhile, seemed vaguely relieved that you were awake.

Your brain struggled to reboot.

You looked down. Fancy dress? Check. Lace gloves? Check. Suspiciously villainous vibes? Check.

Oh no.

OH NO.

You were the villainess.

Malleus, in his infinite patience, took your absolutely deranged expression as a cue to explain, “The heroine tripped you, and you lost consciousness.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

You covered your face with your hands. “So now I have to deal with that dumbass?”

Sebek immediately whipped out his glove, preparing to slap someone into another dimension. “THIS INSOLENCE CANNOT STAND. I SHALL CHALLENGE HER TO A DUEL AND—”

“Sebek, no.”

“—VANQUISH HER FOR DARING TO—”

“Sebek. Put the glove down.”

“—BESMIRCH YOUR HONOR, MY LADY—”

“Sebek. No.”

Malleus, amused, simply observed as if watching an entertaining stage play. Probably because his solution would be to turn the heroine into a very apologetic pile of ashes.

Sebek begrudgingly reabsorbed his rage (for now), but he was still seething.

Malleus, after ensuring you were probably not about to die, excused himself and left the room. Sebek remained, arms crossed, radiating enough protective energy to function as a personal bodyguard and a security alarm.

You sighed, rubbing your temples. “Sebek, from now on, I’m just going to ignore her.”

Sebek visibly short-circuited.

“You—you're just going to let this blatant disrespect slide???”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“Yes.”

He looked like he had been personally betrayed by the laws of honor and decency, but after a long moment, he reluctantly agreed. Probably because you had the final say in this.

As soon as he left the room, you immediately face-planted into your pillow and let out the most guttural, despairing scream of your life.

Then, with great suffering, you dragged yourself up, because it was officially time to make a game plan to survive this absolute trash novel.

You did not want to go to this tea party.

In fact, if given the choice between enduring this or being launched via medieval trebuchet into the ocean, you would’ve chosen the ocean. At least drowning would’ve been fast.

But no. Your father insisted.

Something about “maintaining your standing,” and “showing the nobility that you are still strong,” and “not letting some lowborn upstart make a fool of you.”

As if the heroine had any power over you besides the supernatural ability to generate plot conveniences. As if you weren’t already suffering enough in this stupid novel, trying to survive a romance plotline with all the grace of a cat thrown into a bathtub.

And thus, you found yourself seated at an expensive table, sipping lukewarm tea, pretending to be interested in whatever the hell the noble ladies were talking about while resisting the urge to flip the entire table over and walk out.

To make matters worse, Sebek was having an existential crisis.

Not that he’d admit it, of course. But the way he was standing, practically vibrating with tension, scanning the tea party like a very aggressive meerkat—yeah. It was bad.

Sebek was on edge.

At any given moment, his gaze would dart from one thing to another, as if expecting a chandelier to drop on your head, a poisoned biscuit to be slipped onto your plate, or a rogue assassin to emerge from the hedges wielding a butter knife.

You finally had enough.

Turning toward him, you gripped his shoulders. Firmly.

“Sebek.”

His eyes snapped to you.

“Buddy.” You gave him a little shake. “Friend. You need to chill.”

“I AM PERFECTLY COMPOSED—”

Shake, shake. “Sebek. Chill.”

Sebek blinked. For the first time in history, he shut his mouth.

And then—oddly enough—you saw pink.

Like, an actual blush. A faint, barely-there dusting of color across his cheeks, the kind you’d associate with a lovestruck noble maiden, not a half-fae knight who could probably break your spine with his bare hands.

For a moment, you wondered if he was overheating. Should you dunk him in ice water?

But miraculously, Sebek actually calmed down.

At least, he stopped looking like he was about to tackle a waiter for breathing too close to you. That was progress.

And just when you thought you could finally coast through the rest of this miserable tea party in peace—

You saw her.

The Heroine.

She was across the garden, standing under a carefully curated arrangement of roses, twirling a delicate teacup in her dainty hands, looking exactly as picturesque as a main character should.

And she was batting her eyelashes at Sebek.

Like a lot.

Like some kind of malfunctioning Victorian doll trying to send Morse code with her eyelids.

Sebek, for his part, was slowly backing away. It was clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

Unfortunately, his retreat only seemed to embolden the heroine further. As if she had mistaken his disgust for shyness.

Sebek Zigzagged.

She Zigzagged.

Sebek took a sharp left.

She matched him, too fast, like an NPC with broken pathing.

And that’s when you decided enough was enough.

With the most subtle movement possible, you lifted a hand and motioned for him to come to you.

Sebek sprinted.

Like, full-speed, knocking over at least one butler in the process sprinted. By the time he reached you, he was breathing hard, eyes wide like he had just escaped something truly horrifying.

“Sebek,” you said, voice casual, “Stick by my side.”

"UNDERSTOOD," he immediately responded, standing directly next to you like a sentient stone wall.

And thus began the worst tea party of the heroine’s life.

For months, the heroine had followed the same battle strategy.

She’d make small, calculated jabs at you—little insults hidden under layers of fake concern, “Oh, you look rather pale today, are you unwell?” or “That color looks so… unique on you! Not many would be bold enough to wear it!”

The old villainess would always take the bait.

She’d snap back, argue, cause a scene. And in the process, the heroine would look like the poor, innocent victim just trying her best to be kind.

But you?

You ignored her.

And that? That was unacceptable.

The first attempt was a comment about your shoes.

She tilted her head, voice sickly sweet. “Oh, those shoes are… interesting. Are they custom-made?”

You blinked.

That was it. Just blinked.

Nothing more.

Then, without breaking eye contact, you turned to Sebek and pointed at the cake.

"Sebek, do you want some cake?"

“OF COURSE—”

The heroine twitched.

The second attempt was a jab at your hair.

She giggled, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear, voice dripping with faux innocence. “Oh dear, your hair looks a little tangled today! Perhaps you should try this new serum I discovered—”

You did not react.

Instead, you casually picked up a sugar cube, inspected it like it was the most fascinating thing in existence, and dropped it into your tea.

Then you slowly turned away.

Like she was scenery.

Like she was part of the background.

The heroine’s eye twitched.

Then came the third and final straw.

She physically stood in your path.

Like, full-on NPC blocking a hallway in a video game levels of obstructive.

Waiting.

Wanting you to react.

You did not.

You simply stepped to the left and walked around her.

As if she were a particularly annoying potted plant.

That was it.

That was the moment.

The moment she realized you were not playing her game.

And she SNAPPED.

In a last-ditch effort, she actually grabbed at your dress like a cranky toddler in a tantrum. Unfortunately for her, you were faster.

With all the grace of a trained assassin, you sidestepped her so effortlessly that she nearly tripped forward. For one horrifying second, she flailed—arms windmilling—before catching herself.

Then, with a furious huff, she turned bright red, grabbed her skirts, and stormed out of the tea party.

Absolutely. Defeated.

The entire garden was dead silent.

Then, softly, Sebek cleared his throat.

“…Does this mean I can have another slice of cake?”

You took a victorious sip of your tea.

+1 point for you.

This was a mistake. A grave, sweaty mistake.

Sebek, in all his knightly wisdom, had decided that you needed to learn self-defense. That was fine in theory. In practice?

You were dying.

It had started simple—stance, grip, footwork. Except your stance was wobbly, your grip was weak, and your footwork consisted of tripping over absolutely nothing .

Sebek, ever the determined instructor, refused to give up on you.

“Again!” he barked, adjusting your posture for the hundredth time. “You must hold the blade firmly!”

You tried. You really did. But the moment he stepped back, the sword dipped dangerously in your grasp like it was actively trying to escape you.

Sebek sighed through his nose. “You need to engage your core!”

“Sebek,” you panted, struggling to lift the sword back up. “I have a core. It just doesn’t want to engage.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose like a disappointed tutor watching their pupil fail basic math.

“Again.”

You half-heartedly swung the sword. It wobbled like a particularly useless noodle.

Sebek looked physically pained.

After several more embarrassing attempts—including a particularly tragic one where you almost dropped the sword on your own foot—you finally gave up.

You collapsed onto the ground, dramatically splaying out in the dirt like a knight who had perished not in battle, but in sheer spiritual defeat.

“I can’t do this,” you groaned, flopping an arm over your face. “I’m not built for the knight life.”

Sebek’s shadow loomed over you, exasperated. “You’re giving up already?”

“Yes.”

“Unacceptable. A true warrior never surrenders!”

“Well, I’m not a warrior, Sebek. I am a delicate aristocrat. My hobbies include drinking tea and not getting stabbed.”

Sebek crossed his arms, preparing to argue—but before he could launch into a speech about honor and duty and the sacred art of not dying, you simply muttered:

“That’s why you have to be my knight forever.”

The complaints instantly stopped.

Sebek didn’t say a word.

You assumed he had accepted your logic.

You didn’t see the way his back straightened slightly, or the way his expression softened into something oddly pleased. You definitely didn’t catch the way a smug, satisfied little smile flickered across his face—like a knight who had just secured his lifelong oath without even trying.

Instead, you remained on the ground, still dramatically sprawled out, waiting for him to launch into another lecture.

But nothing came.

“…Sebek?”

“Hmph.” He turned, suddenly far too content to argue. “If that is the case, then I suppose there’s no need to force you into training.”

You squinted up at him. “Wait. That’s it? You’re giving up?”

“I am merely accepting my duty,” he said smoothly. “After all, a knight must always protect their charge.”

You stared.

Suspicious.

Sebek was never this agreeable.

But, ultimately, you were too tired to question it.

With a sigh of relief, you let yourself fully relax into the grass, already looking forward to a nap.

Meanwhile, Sebek stood guard over you, looking far too smug for someone who had just lost an argument.

This was supposed to be a normal afternoon.

A nice, quiet, peaceful moment of watching Sebek ride his horse like he was leading an army into battle while Silver sat on his, perfectly relaxed, looking like the human embodiment of a soft exhale.

Meanwhile, to your right, Malleus and Lilia were having a debate that was growing increasingly unhinged.

"I'm telling you, Malleus," Lilia said with the confidence of a man who had never once been stopped from committing a crime. "If you want someone, you simply steal them away! That’s romance!"

Malleus, who had the power to obliterate reality with a flick of his wrist, rubbed his temples like a deeply tired office worker. "Lilia, that is not romance. That is abduction."

Lilia waved him off like he was swatting at a fly. "Semantics."

You turned your head just in time to see Malleus pinching the bridge of his nose, which was deeply funny because what did he even have to be stressed about? He was practically untouchable. And yet, somehow, Lilia was succeeding in emotionally exhausting him.

You had no idea how to contribute to this conversation, so you simply accepted that your afternoon would be full of crimes against logic.

But then Lilia’s sharp, ancient gaze zeroed in on you like a sniper locking onto a target.

"So," he said smoothly, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Have you decided who you'll take to the ball?"

You blinked.

The ball? Oh. Right. That was a thing.

You mulled it over for a second, tapping your fingers against your knee.

Logically, Sebek was already glued to your side at all times. He was practically your own personal security alarm, complete with flashing lights, blaring sirens, and the sheer, undying volume of a man who had never whispered in his entire life.

Taking him would be easy.

"I'll probably take Sebek," you said casually.

There was a beat of silence.

Then—

Lilia’s smile widened.

Not just any smile. A knowing smile. The kind that said, I have seen civilizations rise and fall, and yet nothing amuses me more than whatever is about to happen next.

Malleus, previously neutral, now looked deeply, deeply intrigued.

You squinted at them. "Why are you both looking at me like I'm a stray dog that just solved a math problem?"

Before you could demand answers, Sebek and Silver came back.

And Lilia—menace incarnate—immediately turned to Sebek and declared, with the utmost delight:

"Sebek! You've been chosen as their escort for the ball!"

Silver looked politely interested. Sebek—

Sebek crashed.

Like he hit an invisible wall.

For a second, he just stood there, expression frozen in a mix of shock, honor, and the sheer terror of being handed a social situation he wasn’t prepared for.

Then, in a grand act of buffering, he stiffened, clenched his fists, and proclaimed with all the force of a man declaring war:

"OF COURSE! AS YOUR LOYAL KNIGHT, IT IS ONLY NATURAL THAT I ACCOMPANY YOU!"

And then—before you could so much as blink—he turned on his heel and stomped off, as if he had just been given an urgent mission from Malleus himself.

The moment he was gone, you turned back to the three remaining culprits—only to find all of them looking at you like you were the underdog in a sports movie who had just pulled off a game-winning shot.

Lilia’s grin was downright diabolical.

Malleus was observing you like a scientist who had just discovered a new species.

Silver nodded, as if he had been let in on a joke you weren’t privy to.

Your eye twitched. "Okay. WHAT."

Lilia clapped you on the back like a proud father. "Oh, don’t mind us," he said airily. "We’re simply excited to see how this unfolds!"

Malleus inclined his head. "Indeed. It will be most… fascinating."

Silver hummed in agreement, eyes twinkling with something dangerously close to amusement.

You stared.

Sebek was still stomping off in the distance, probably preparing himself for battle against an imaginary threat.

Meanwhile, these three looked like they had just bet on a winning horse.

You were so bored.

As someone who had once lived in the glorious era of internet, memes, and instant entertainment, being isekai’d into a medieval fantasy novel was actual hell.

Your choices for passing the time were:

Sitting at a tea party listening to Lady Whatever gossip about how her second cousin’s neighbor allegedly married his horse (scandalous).

Shopping, which involved pretending to care about embroidery while avoiding getting guilt-tripped into buying a hat the size of a carriage wheel.

But today? Today was different.

There was a theater performance. And you were going.

Sebek, of course, was accompanying you, because you weren’t allowed to go anywhere without your personal security system.

The two of you arrived, found your seats, and settled in as the play began.

It was a forbidden romance between a noblewoman and her loyal knight.

You squinted.

That was it? That was the forbidden part?

What, was it slightly inconvenient for them to date? Were they going to act like this was the most tragic love story of all time when the biggest obstacle was mild disapproval?

You were expecting a real problem—an ancient family feud, a cursed bloodline, maybe even a dragon kidnapping someone for fun.

But no. It was just a noble and her knight, staring deeply into each other’s eyes while the orchestra swelled dramatically.

You side-eyed Sebek, about to make a snide comment.

And that’s when you noticed. Sebek was sweating.

His jaw was clenched. His hands were gripping the arms of his seat like the very concept of upholstery had personally insulted him.

And most importantly?

He was actively avoiding looking at you.

On stage, the knight fell to one knee, passionately declaring, “My lady, I have sworn to protect you—but in truth, my heart has belonged to you from the moment we met.”

Sebek’s grip on his seat tightened.

You turned back to the stage, more confused now.

The noblewoman gasped, placing a delicate hand on her chest. “Sir Knight, I—!”

Cue dramatic embrace. Cue Sebek looking like he was experiencing an existential crisis in real time.

For the next twenty minutes, Sebek refused to so much as glance in your direction.

The show ended with a completely unnecessary death scene (the knight got stabbed protecting the noblewoman from a bandit with the world’s worst aim), and as soon as the curtains fell, Sebek practically launched himself out of his seat.

You walked out together, the evening air cool against your skin.

Sebek, still refusing to look at you, was marching forward with the kind of stiff, overly formal movements that meant his brain was short-circuiting.

You raised an eyebrow. "Are you good?"

"I am perfectly fine," he said, a little too quickly.

You shrugged, brushing it off. Sebek being Sebek. He was always like this.

You didn’t notice how his hands twitched at his sides.

Or how, for one painfully fleeting moment during the play, he had imagined what it would be like—just once—to take your hand, without the excuse of duty.

But only Sebek and the dark theater would ever know that.

Festivals were supposed to be fun.

Supposed to be.

But for Sebek, this was nothing short of a battlefield.

The night had started normally enough. Malleus, Lilia, Silver, Sebek, and you had all arrived together, the festival in full swing around you. Lanterns glowed softly in the trees, music played from all corners of the square, and the air was thick with the smell of food—grilled meats, sweet pastries, roasted nuts. It was the perfect evening for a carefree stroll.

And then, suspiciously quickly, things took a turn.

“Ah,” Lilia suddenly said, snapping his fingers. “I just remembered—I must go investigate the historical significance of festival games.”

Silver, who had been mid-bite into a fried pastry, blinked. “What?”

Lilia was already gone.

Malleus nodded sagely. “Indeed, I must also depart. There are… matters of great importance I must attend to.”

You stared at him. “You’re about to go stare at gargoyles, aren’t you?”

Malleus did not dignify this with an answer.

Then came Silver’s turn. He at least tried to make it convincing.

“I, um—” He paused, brain clearly short-circuiting. “I have to—”

Sebek, ever the loyal soldier, stepped forward. “SILVER, WHEREVER YOU GO, WE SHALL—”

Silver immediately put a hand on Sebek’s shoulder. “No. You both stay.”

Sebek froze.

Suspicion bloomed in his sharp green eyes. “Why?”

Silver looked at you. Then back at Sebek. Then at you again. And then—like a father setting his son off into the world—he simply patted Sebek’s shoulder and said, “Have fun.”

Then he left.

Just like that, you and Sebek were alone.

You turned to Sebek, shrugged, and grabbed his hand. “Alright then! Let’s go have fun.”

Sebek ascended into a new state of panic.

One: You Held His Hand.

His hand.

Which was now holding your hand.

He was a knight. A protector. His hand had wielded swords, raised shields, sworn loyalty—

His hand had never done this.

“W-Wait, I—!”

You, completely oblivious to the fact that you were literally ruining him, simply smiled. “Come on, let’s get food first!”

And just like that, he was dragged into the festival.

Two: You Fed Him.

Sebek had prepared for many things in life.

Betrayal? Yes. Combat? Absolutely. The burden of responsibility? Without question.

But he had not prepared for you pressing a warm pastry into his hands and saying, “Try this! It’s really good.”

He stared at it like it was an enemy.

“I—this is unnecessary! I should be watching for threats, not—”

Then you, with absolutely zero hesitation, took a bite from your own pastry, hummed thoughtfully, and then just—just held it up to his mouth.

Sebek froze.

“…What,” he said, voice dangerously unstable, “are you doing?”

“Letting you try mine.”

Unacceptable.

UNACCEPTABLE.

This was wrong. You were a noble, he was your knight. His duty was to protect you, not to—to—

To have feelings.

To want things.

But you were still holding the pastry up, completely unaware of the sheer war happening in his mind.

So, with the slow hesitation of a man walking into a death trap, Sebek leaned down and took a small, precise bite.

…It was delicious.

…This was still unacceptable.

“See?” you said brightly, taking another bite yourself. “Tastes better when you share.”

Sebek almost dropped dead on the spot.

Three: The Smile.

Oh, that smile.

You were leading him from stall to stall, still holding his hand, still treating this like a perfectly normal outing and not the absolute nightmare it was for his fragile, suffering heart.

And every time you turned back to him—every time you laughed at something ridiculous, or smiled when he grumbled about stall vendors trying to scam you, or simply looked at him with that casual, easy warmth—

Something in him broke.

Not in a bad way. But absolutely in a way that would jeopardize his purpose. In the way that made him want to 1v1 the entire world just to make sure you always smiled like that.

Sebek was not meant for this.

He was a knight. A warrior. A protector.

He was not meant to look at you and wish, with every inch of his being, that he could hold your hand not because of duty, but because you wanted him to.

The ball was going well.

Which, frankly, was a miracle.

You were three glasses of wine in, the music was pleasant, and—most importantly—there was no heroine in sight.

Malleus was at peace, sipping his drink like an ancient dragon who had finally hoarded enough gold. Lilia was across the room, very seriously trying to convince a noble to invest in bat jousting (“Picture it, my dear baron—tiny suits of armor, high-speed aerial combat, think of the prestige!”). Silver was half-asleep at the table, so still that he was practically furniture.

And Sebek? Sebek was eating with the sheer intensity of a man who had never been allowed to sit and enjoy a meal in his life.

You were basking in the rare moment of peace when—

She arrived.

The heroine waltzed in, all curls and delicate elegance, scanning the room like she owned the place.

Immediately, you activated Ignore Mode.

But then—

Then she spoke.

“I challenge you!”

You blinked.

Challenge me to what? A duel? A political debate? A staring contest??

And then, with the smuggest expression known to man, she stepped aside to reveal her new(?) knight. You choked on your drink.

Because her knight—

Looked like Sebek.

Like, exactly like Sebek.

Same height, same build, suspiciously similar armor—but the worst part?

His hair was green.

Like she had dyed it.

You nearly dropped your wine.

You turned to Sebek.

Then to knockoff Sebek.

Then to Malleus—who was so absorbed in his perfect night that he hadn’t even registered the incoming disaster.

Then back to fake Sebek.

Sebek, who had been peacefully eating his steak, suddenly froze.

“WHAT IN THE GREAT SEVEN—” His chair scraped across the floor as he stood, eyes wide with pure fury.

The heroine beamed. “My knight will prove his superiority over yours! A true battle of skill and honor!”

You were still stuck on the hair.

"DID YOU DYE THIS MAN’S HAIR GREEN?!"

Fake Sebek smirked, folding his arms. “A knight should be willing to make sacrifices for his lady.”

Sebek looked ready to commit several war crimes.

“This is an INSULT!” He stepped forward, eyes blazing, voice booming. “YOU THINK YOU CAN MATCH ME WITH A PALE IMITATION?! I—”

Oh, hell no.

You had already suffered through so much stupidity in this world. You were not about to let Sebek engage in a battle of the bootlegs just because the heroine had gone completely off the rails.

You grabbed Sebek’s arm.

He whipped around like an enraged storm god. “MY LADY, I MUST—”

“No,” you said flatly. “Not worth it.”

“But—”

“Sebek.”

“She—”

“Sebek.”

“She dares—”

“Sebek. Please.”

His jaw locked. He looked like he wanted to argue. Like he needed to argue. But then you let out a long, exhausted sigh and said,

“Just dance with me instead.”

Sebek stopped breathing.

The entire ballroom faded. The heroine? Gone. Bootleg Sebek? Who? The audience of nosy nobles? Irrelevant.

All that mattered was that you—the person he had sworn to protect, the one he had dedicated his entire being to—had just asked him to dance.

He swallowed thickly. “O-Of course.”

And so, you took his hand and led him to the ballroom floor.

Sebek was stiff at first, like he was concentrating too hard on being perfect, but as the music swelled, he relaxed into the rhythm, his movements smoother, more natural.

And as he guided you across the floor, one hand firm at your waist, the other clasping yours, Sebek couldn’t help but stare.

You were laughing softly, still tipsy, the golden chandeliers casting a warm glow on your skin. The silk of your gown shimmered as you moved, and your smile—

Gods. Your smile.

Sebek knew, without a doubt, that he would do anything to keep it on your face.

And you?

You had no idea.

Because to you, this was just a dance.

But to Sebek—

You looked like a dream come true.

It was finally here. The moment where, according to the absolute literary war crime that was this novel, you were supposed to get poisoned, collapse dramatically, and set off a chain reaction that would end with Sebek exiling himself like a tragic Shakespearean protagonist.

Except this time?

You knew it was coming.

And you were about to flip the script so hard the author would feel it in whatever dimension they were in.

The heroine, as predictable as ever, had invited you to yet another tea party—probably hoping that by the time the poison kicked in, she'd have a perfect view of your untimely demise. You, of course, had accepted with a sweet smile and a mind full of schemes.

Now, seated at a pristine garden table with floral arrangements worth more than some small villages, you watched as she made her move. It was almost laughable how obvious she was. Her eyes flickered towards the maid as your tea was poured, the subtle anticipation in her expression so transparent you were honestly a little embarrassed for her.

You daintily lifted the cup, swirling the tea, inhaling its floral scent. Then, you pretended to take a sip.

Then, you threw yourself into the most dramatic, gut-wrenching, Oscar-worthy performance of your life.

Your body convulsed. Your hand flew to your throat. You gasped, choked, wheezed like a dying fish, and flung your arms out as if desperately grasping at the heavens themselves. You knocked over a plate. A fork clattered to the ground. A lesser noble screamed.

And then, with the grace of a Victorian woman in a corset two sizes too small, you collapsed onto the ground, limbs twitching for good measure.

Chaos erupted.

Ladies shrieked. Servants scrambled. One elderly duke fainted in the background. Even you were impressed. If this world had award shows, you would’ve already been giving an acceptance speech.

And then.

You heard it.

A chair screeching against stone. The heavy, unmistakable clang of armor.

Oh.

Oh, no.

You had made a critical miscalculation.

Sebek.

Sebek, who had been standing behind you the entire time. Sebek, who had just witnessed his charge collapse in agony.

Sebek, who was now standing over the heroine with his sword at her throat.

The entire tea party came to a screeching halt.

The heroine was frozen in terror, because Sebek wasn’t just angry—he was absolutely seething. His hands were steady, his grip unwavering, but the rage in his eyes? The barely-restrained fury crackling in the air around him? That was the look of a man seconds away from turning this entire tea party into a medieval execution.

“How dare you,” Sebek growled, his voice low and deadly, “I swear upon my honor—you will not leave this garden alive.”

You were so close to victory. So close. But no. No, Sebek had to go and initiate an actual murder.

The heroine, pale as a ghost, opened her mouth—probably to sob out some terrible excuse—but Sebek applied just the tiniest bit of pressure with his blade. A thin line of blood beaded at her neck.

The heroine whimpered.

Sebek narrowed his eyes.

Oh, he was fully committed to this.

Then, from your position on the ground, you made a small choking noise.

Sebek snapped around so fast he nearly decapitated her anyway.

His fury instantly shifted into sheer, unfiltered panic.

“My lady—!” He abandoned the heroine entirely, dropping to his knees and scooping you up into his arms as if you were seconds from death. "Stay with me!" His voice wavered, as if sheer willpower alone could force you to keep breathing. "You will not die here, I swear it!"

Okay. Maybe you should have accounted for this.

Before you could get a word in, Sebek scooped you up like a sack of potatoes and booked it inside.

The moment he deposited you onto a chaise lounge like a damsel in distress, you sat up and gave him your best sheepish grin.

“Sebek, I—”

But Sebek did not look relieved.

Sebek looked furious.

"You mean to tell me," he began, his voice escalating, "THAT WAS A LIE?!"

You winced. “Sebek, I—”

"You were NEVER in danger?! NEVER TRULY POISONED?!" His entire body was vibrating. "YOU—"

His voice kept rising.

He was pacing now, movements erratic, his heavy boots thudding against the floor. His breathing was uneven. His hands were shaking.

Gods. Gods, you felt bad.

Before he could work himself into an early grave, you grabbed his face and pulled him close.

"Sebek," you said firmly. "Breathe."

His breath hitched.

You could feel the tension in his jaw, the way his entire being was still radiating panic and betrayal.

Slowly, his breathing evened out. His hands, still clenched at his sides, relaxed.

"I'm sorry," you murmured, thumbs brushing lightly against his cheeks. "I should have told you."

Sebek swallowed hard, staring at you like he had just walked through hell itself.

"I could never bear to lose you." His voice was raw, barely above a whisper.

And then, as if exhaling the weight of the entire world, he bowed his head slightly and said, “Forgive me for my insolence.”

Before you could even process what that meant—

His lips were on yours.

Soft, hesitant, yet utterly consuming.

It lasted one perfect moment—

And then reality kicked in.

Sebek stiffened. His eyes snapped open.

"I— I HAVE OVERSTEPPED— I APOLOGIZE—"

And then.

Sebek fled.

Full-speed.

Out the door.

Down the hall.

Possibly into another plane of existence.

You sat there, dazed, stunned, blushing so hard you were about to burst into flames.

-

You were losing your mind.

Malleus, on the other hand, was having the time of his life.

He sat there, sipping his tea with the serene patience of a man who had definitely seen this coming, while you paced back and forth in front of him, unraveling like a badly-knitted sweater.

"It was just stress!" you declared, throwing your hands in the air. "Right? I mean, high emotions, near-death experience, classic knightly panic—textbook impulse decision!"

Malleus hummed, his expression one of deep, profound amusement. "Oh?"

You pointed at him like you had just presented irrefutable evidence in a murder trial. "YES. Right?! That has to be it!"

Malleus took a slow sip of his tea. "Or…"

You froze.

Malleus paused dramatically—like he was a host on some medieval reality show about to drop a major plot twist—then said, "Perhaps he has feelings for you."

You made a noise. A noise that had never existed before, somewhere between a gasp, a wheeze, and the sound of a tea kettle violently exploding.

Malleus raised an eyebrow, watching as your soul actively left your body.

"That’s—" You flailed. Actually flailed. "That’s absurd!"

Malleus nodded sagely. "Yes. Very absurd." He took another sip of tea, his tone so dry you nearly threw something at him.

You began pacing again, hands on your head, thoughts spiraling into the abyss.

"Maybe—maybe he thinks he has feelings for me," you reasoned, grasping at straws like your life depended on it. "But really, it’s just—devotion! Yes! Classic knightly devotion! It’s not romantic, it’s duty! He admires me, respects me, honors me—"

"—Kissed you."

You choked.

Malleus was smirking now. He was actually enjoying this.

"Okay, but," you continued, desperately trying to dig yourself out of the emotional pit you had fallen into, "what if—what if it was just a slip-up? A moment of weakness? What if he didn’t mean it—?"

Malleus tilted his head. "Then why did he run away? Why did he not apologize?"

You stopped dead in your tracks.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Because he did run away. Full speed. Maximum acceleration. Like a man who had just realized what he had done and could not face the consequences.

Your hands slowly lowered from your head.

Malleus set his teacup down with a soft clink. "I would say that is not the behavior of a man who does not have feelings for someone."

You sat down in the nearest chair, staring into the void.

Malleus observed you with quiet satisfaction.

The way you were actively short-circuiting before his eyes? The absolute catastrophic mental gymnastics you were performing to deny the obvious?

Oh, yes.

This was better than theater.

Meanwhile, Sebek was also suffering.

And Lilia was having the best day of his life.

Sebek was pacing, marching back and forth across the room like he was preparing for battle, arms gesturing wildly as he ranted to no one in particular.

"I—I do not—I cannot—" His voice cracked slightly before he squared his shoulders, forcing himself into a state of denial so powerful it could deflect magic. "IT WAS MERELY A MOMENT OF TEMPORARY EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY!"

Lilia, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, was vibrating. His hands were clasped in front of his mouth, his entire body shaking as he barely contained his laughter. His eyes gleamed with pure, unfiltered joy.

"Ah, young love," he sighed dramatically, swaying slightly as if overcome by emotion. "So passionate! So tumultuous!" He clutched his chest. "So full of suffering!"

Sebek whirled around, offended to his very core.

"It is NOT love!" he practically roared, and Silver, who had been trying to stay calm, rubbed his temples like a tired therapist dealing with a particularly stubborn client.

"Sebek," Silver said, voice steady, soothing, rational. "You kissed her."

Sebek's eye twitched.

"It was an accident!"

Silver raised an eyebrow. "How do you accidentally kiss someone?"

Sebek flailed. "IT WAS THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT!"

"Mmhm~" Lilia hummed, practically swaying with delight.

Sebek turned to him, pointing like he was about to declare war. "STOP—STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!"

"Like what?" Lilia grinned. "Like I just witnessed the most entertaining thing to happen in centuries?"

"YES!"

Lilia cackled.

Sebek turned back to Silver, desperate for support, but Silver was already shaking his head.

"Sebek," Silver said patiently. "You’re in love."

Sebek physically recoiled. His entire soul left his body for a second before it returned, but not before his brain short-circuited.

"NO!"

"Yes," Silver said simply.

"Preposterous!" Sebek thundered, arms flailing again. "I am a knight! Her protector! I have sworn my loyalty to her! I would give my LIFE for her—!"

"Yes," Silver interrupted, nodding. "Because you love her."

Sebek froze.

His mouth opened. Then closed.

Then opened again.

Nothing came out.

Lilia, who was practically incandescent with joy, clasped his hands together and leaned in, eyes twinkling with amusement.

"Oh my," Lilia purred. "He's realizing it."

Sebek visibly malfunctioned.

His arms tensed, his jaw clenched, his brain clearly trying to override the obvious conclusion with pure willpower alone.

And then, because he had absolutely no idea what to do with himself—

Sebek turned on his heel and sprinted out of the room at full speed.

Lilia howled with laughter, throwing himself back onto the couch.

Silver simply sighed, rubbing his temples again. "You know he's going to deny this for at least another week, right?"

"Oh, let him struggle~" Lilia giggled, delighted beyond words. "This is better than theater."

The heroine was losing her goddamn mind.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She was the main character. She was supposed to triumph over adversity! She was supposed to defeat her rival, claim her rightful place at Malleus’s side, and bask in the admiration of high society as they all realized how special and wonderful she was!

And yet—

You.

You, the person who was supposed to be her greatest adversary, her foil, her dramatic counterpart—

Did. Not. Care.

Every time she tried to one-up you, every time she schemed and plotted and prepared some devastating social maneuver to put you in your place—

You ignored her.

Not even with thinly veiled contempt. Not with cold, calculated disdain. No.

You ignored her like you would ignore a particularly unimpressive rock on the side of the road.

Like a piece of furniture. Like she was a background character in her own goddamn story.

She had thrown everything at you.

She had made subtle barbs about your outfits—Oh, what a… bold choice of color. Not everyone could pull that off.

You had simply nodded and thanked her before returning to making googly eyes at your knight.

She had gone out of her way to outshine you at every event—grander gowns, more dramatic entrances, carefully curated conversations that should have drawn everyone’s attention to her.

You?

You barely registered that she was there.

She had even dyed her own knight’s hair green for fuck’s sake.

And you had just—

Ignored it.

You hadn’t even looked surprised. No scandalized gasp, no pointed glances, no passive-aggressive remark about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Nothing.

The absolute indifference nearly sent her into a breakdown right then and there.

But still—still—she had held out hope.

Because there was one final, tried-and-true method to defeat a villainess.

Poison.

A noblewoman’s tea party. A carefully laced cup. A gasp, a choke, a dramatic collapse.

It was foolproof.

Except—

Except you had pretended to drink it.

She hadn’t even noticed at first. She had simply sipped her tea, waiting for your inevitable demise—only to watch you pull off an Oscar worthy performance.

And now?

Now the entirety of high society hated her.

Not because they actually cared about you, no—

But because attempting to poison someone at a social gathering was just so terribly gauche.

It was uncivilized. It was desperate. It was cringe.

And worse?

She had failed.

One noblewoman had sighed, shaking her head. “Poisoning your rival? How utterly common. If she were going to do it, the least she could’ve done was be subtle.”

Another had tsked, “Imagine—spending all that effort trying to destroy someone only for them to sit back and make googly eyes at their knight instead.”

That one nearly made her explode.

Because that? That was the worst part.

Through all of this, you weren’t even fighting back.

You weren’t scheming. You weren’t plotting revenge. You weren’t even paying attention to her anymore.

No.

You were too busy pining over Sebek.

At first, she thought it was coincidence. A weird little side note in this battle.

But no.

She saw it everywhere now.

You, brushing your hand against his as he held a door open for you. You, laughing at something he said in that ridiculous, overly loud voice. You, looking at him like he was the most precious thing in existence while he continued to act like a knight-shaped golden retriever with too many feelings.

It was infuriating.

And now, after everything, after all the time and energy and sanity she had lost trying to make you engage, she woke up one morning and realized—

She had lost.

Not in some grand, cinematic battle of wits. Not in an explosive confrontation.

No.

She had lost in the most humiliating way possible.

Because you never even considered her a threat to begin with.

She had spent all this time clawing her way to the top of a rivalry that only existed in her own head.

And the person she had chosen as her nemesis had treated her with the same level of importance as a salad garnish.

It was over.

She was done.

She picked up a pen, wrote a letter, and signed it with the exhausted resignation of a woman who had fully accepted defeat.

Lady,

I give up. I’m leaving. Enjoy your ridiculous romance with your ridiculous knight.

—Heroine

Then, without any fanfare, she packed her things, walked out of her estate, and left the country.

And you?

You didn’t even notice until a servant handed you the letter over breakfast.

You blinked at it, took a bite of toast, and read the whole thing while casually sipping your tea.

Then you folded it neatly, set it aside, and promptly forgot about it.

Sebek Zigvolt was avoiding you.

Not in the dramatic, storming-off, I-shall-never-speak-to-you-again way that some lovesick noble might after a scandalous incident at a ball. No, that would have been too easy.

Instead, he had apparently decided that the most rational way to handle his predicament was to maintain a perfect six-foot gap between the two of you at all times.

Like some sort of ridiculous, self-imposed restraining order.

You noticed it immediately, of course, because how could you not?

The first morning, you stepped into the drawing room, still slightly groggy from waking up, and found Sebek already there, standing so rigidly that he looked like he had been installed into the floorboards.

“Good morning, Sebek.”

Sebek, a man who had never once in his life failed to respond to you immediately, took a full three seconds to react, his head snapping toward you like a marionette whose strings had been yanked too hard.

“MY LADY!” he barked, far too loud for this early in the morning. “GOOD MORNING TO YOU AS WELL!”

Then, before you could say another word, he pivoted sharply and took three steps back.

Three big, deliberate, backward steps.

And then?

He stared past you.

Not at you. Past you.

Like he had suddenly developed an intense fascination with the wall.

And this? This continued.

For three. Entire. Days.

At breakfast, he sat exactly six feet away from your chair and stabbed his eggs with the precision and fury of a man attempting to exorcise a demon from his plate.

At social events, he positioned himself like some tragically lovesick ghost, haunting the edge of the room with a tormented expression, still very much guarding you but now also acting like being within arm’s reach might cause him to spontaneously combust.

Even in casual conversations, if you took a step forward?

Sebek took a step back.

And the worst part?

He was so obvious about it.

Like, if he was actually trying to be subtle, you could at least pretend it wasn’t happening. But no, this man was out here moving like an NPC whose pathfinding AI was breaking.

By the third day, you had reached your limit.

You had tolerated his weird little knightly existential crisis long enough.

So, that morning, when you saw him standing—once again—exactly six feet away, rigid as a lamppost, pointedly pretending that the tree outside the window was the most interesting thing he had ever seen in his life, you snapped.

“Sebek.”

No response.

“Sebek.”

Nothing.

You took a step forward.

Sebek immediately took a step back.

You took another step.

Sebek tried to escape.

Absolutely not.

With all the swiftness of a person completely done with this nonsense, you closed the gap, stepping right into his space, and before he could even think about scrambling backward like some flustered fawn, you grabbed his face and squished his stupid, handsome, stubborn cheeks between your hands.

Sebek made an absolutely incomprehensible noise.

“W-WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! THIS IS HIGHLY—!!”

He was spluttering. Stammering. Eyes darting around wildly like he was searching for an escape route despite the fact that you were holding his actual face.

“Sebek,” you said, exasperated, thumbs pressing into his cheeks as he failed spectacularly to regain any of his usual knightly composure. “Do you like me?”

Sebek, in his infinite, ridiculous wisdom, chose the absolute worst possible response.

“I—! I AM YOUR KNIGHT! TO ENTERTAIN SUCH FRIVOLITIES WOULD BE A DERELECTION OF DUTY!”

You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and then, with the patience of someone trying to explain basic math to a particularly dense brick wall, you groaned, “Sebek, we are not in a play. Do you like me or not!?”

Sebek made a noise somewhere between a strangled honk and a dying animal.

His entire face turned so red that for a moment, you were genuinely concerned that he might be about to pass out.

Then—

He nodded.

It was tiny, barely perceptible, like he was afraid saying it too loudly would cause the heavens to smite him on the spot, but it was there.

And that was all you needed.

Before he could start raving about duty or oaths or whatever dramatic monologue he was preparing, you surged forward and kissed him.

Sebek froze.

Completely, entirely, utterly still.

For half a second, you worried that you had broken him.

But then—

Sebek kissed you back.

With the fervor of a man who had been waiting his entire life for this exact moment.

It took thirty full minutes to convince Sebek that you were, in fact, not in a tragic, forbidden love story.

Ten minutes of him pacing, ranting about duty and propriety, gripping the air like an overdramatic stage actor monologuing in the rain.

Thirty minutes of you, standing there, patiently waiting for his brain to catch up to reality.

"Sebek," you said for the fifteenth time, arms crossed, exasperated but fond. "We are not in a Shakespearean tragedy."

Sebek opened his mouth to argue, paused, frowned, then slowly closed it.

You could see the war happening inside him. His knightly instincts were screaming about honor and responsibility, while the part of him that had just kissed you—twice now—was standing in the corner, sweating profusely.

He inhaled deeply, squared his shoulders, and nodded.

"...Very well," he said, stiffly, as if forcing himself to accept that the universe had, in fact, allowed him to be happy.

You smirked and reached for his hand. "Great. Now come on, we’re late."

Sebek made a dying noise when you intertwined your fingers with his.

When you arrived, Malleus, Lilia, and Silver were already gathered in the garden, basking in the afternoon sun.

The moment you and Sebek showed up—hand in hand—Lilia's entire face lit up.

"Ah-ha!" Lilia cried, delighted, spinning toward the others with a mischievous flourish. "Pay up!"

Malleus sighed, deeply, as if betrayed by fate itself. Silver grunted, reaching into his pocket.

And then, right in front of you, the two of them handed Lilia actual money.

You blinked. “Wait. What just happened?”

Lilia grinned, tucking his winnings away. “Oh, just a little wager~”

You narrowed your eyes. "What kind of wager?"

Lilia, positively glowing with mischief, said, "I bet that you two would get together sooner rather than later."

Malleus, looking far too composed for someone who had just lost a bet, adjusted his sleeves and said, "I, on the other hand, estimated that it would take at least another year."

Silver sighed. "I thought it’d take two."

You gawked. "YOU WERE TAKING BETS ON THIS?!"

Sebek was mortified.

"YOU GAMBLED ON OUR HONOR?!" he thundered, appalled, offended, visibly vibrating.

Lilia cackled. “Oh, relax, dear boy! I was simply invested in your happiness!"

Sebek looked like he wanted to die.

So, naturally, you turned toward him, leaned in, and kissed him on the cheek.

Sebek stopped yelling immediately.

You could physically see the protest die in his throat. His entire body locked up, his ears turned red, and his eyes darted away as if you had just knocked the ability to argue right out of him.

Malleus, entirely too amused, hummed. “Curious. That seems to be an effective method of silencing him.”

Lilia beamed. “Oh, I love this development.”

Silver, utterly exhausted, rubbed his temple. "I don't even know why I bother at this point."

You just laughed, perfectly content, sitting beside your knight and the people you loved.

Masterlist

Can't believe this is the 15th part already!

[writeriguess]

Hiiiiiiiiiii I was wondering if you write for Dabi (bnha) and if so could you have a super oblivious reader? He has strong feelings for her and she feels the same way, but she doesn't have a lot of self confidence and is so convinced he couldn't love her that she doesn't notice the signs that he *does* at all. Shigaraki or Dabi himself have to spell it out for her. I hope you're doing well c:

author's note: Yes of course I write for Dabi <3

Burning

The first time Dabi realized he had it bad for you, he almost laughed at himself. Him? Catching feelings? What a joke.

But the joke was on him, because now he was stuck with it—with you, this annoyingly sweet, absolutely clueless little thing who had no idea how deep he was in. He'd tried to make it obvious. He stuck around when he normally wouldn’t, let you ramble about whatever nonsense filled your head, stole you food when you forgot to eat. He even softened his usual sharp tone when he spoke to you, which, coming from him, was practically a love confession in itself.

And yet, you remained completely, infuriatingly oblivious.

"You gonna keep starin’ at her, or are you actually gonna grow a pair and say something?" Shigaraki drawled from across the room, idly scratching at his neck.

Dabi clicked his tongue, tearing his gaze away from where you were sitting on the worn-out couch, nose buried in a book. "Mind your own business."

Shigaraki just smirked. "It is my business when I have to watch you pine like a damn schoolboy every day. It’s embarrassing."

Dabi scowled, but before he could snap back, you looked up. "What’s embarrassing?"

He didn’t miss the way your gaze flickered to him, then away just as fast, like you couldn’t possibly believe he was the topic of conversation. He clenched his jaw.

"Nothing," he muttered. "Shigaraki’s just talking out of his ass again."

You smiled, and something about how soft it was made his stomach twist. "You two are always bickering. It’s kinda cute."

Shigaraki barked out a laugh. "Yeah? You think that’s cute? What about Dabi stealing food for you every damn day? Or how he only ever watches your stupid movies when you put them on? Or—"

"Shut up," Dabi growled, but the damage was done. You were blinking at Shigaraki like he’d just spoken in a foreign language.

"Wait… what?"

Shigaraki rolled his eyes. "Holy shit. You seriously didn’t notice?" He gestured vaguely at Dabi. "This idiot’s practically in love with you."

Your lips parted, but no words came out. Dabi felt his face heat—though whether it was from anger or something else, he wasn’t sure.

You stared at him like you were trying to process some impossible equation. "But that’s… no. That doesn’t make sense."

He scoffed, forcing himself to lean back against the couch, arms crossed like he wasn’t seconds away from combusting. "And why’s that?"

"Because you’re you. And I’m just… me."

Dabi’s jaw ticked. "You say that like it means something."

You looked away, fingers twisting in your lap. "It does. I mean, you could have anyone. Why would you…"

He let out a slow breath through his nose. "You really are a dumbass."

Your head snapped up, eyes wide. "What—"

"I don’t do this kind of thing, alright? I don’t stick around. I don’t care about people. But you—" His voice dropped, rough with something raw. "You got under my damn skin, and now I’m stuck with it. So yeah, I like you. I thought I was making it obvious, but clearly, that was giving you too much credit."

You opened your mouth, then shut it again. Then, after a moment, you let out a shaky laugh. "You are making it obvious. I’m just an idiot."

Dabi smirked. "Yeah, but you’re my idiot."

The warmth in your gaze made something in him settle, just a little. Finally, finally, you got it.

Shigaraki groaned. "Thank God. Now can you two get out of my sight? I’m gonna throw up."

Dabi didn’t look away from you as he flipped Shigaraki off. Because for once, he didn’t care about anything else.

Not when you were looking at him like that.

But of course, nothing was that simple. Because while you finally realized how he felt, you still couldn’t seem to believe it.

The next day, Dabi caught you staring at him, eyes narrowed, as if trying to puzzle something out. When he raised a brow, you quickly looked away, face heating.

It happened again at dinner. And again when you were sitting together, watching some dumb show you liked. Every time, you’d glance at him like you were trying to see what Shigaraki had pointed out, and each time, your expression would shift into uncertainty, like you still couldn’t quite accept it.

Dabi sighed. "Are you gonna say something, or just keep staring at me like a creep?"

You flinched. "I’m not staring."

"Yeah, you are."

You fidgeted. "I just… I’m trying to understand."

Dabi frowned. "Understand what?"

You bit your lip, hesitating. "You really like me?"

He groaned. "Are we seriously still on this? Yes. I like you. I want you. Do I need to spell it out more? Want me to tattoo it on my forehead? Because at this point, I might as well."

Your face turned red, but you still looked doubtful. "I just… I don’t get why."

Dabi dragged a hand down his face. "You ever think maybe it’s not something you have to ‘get’? Maybe you should just accept it and stop making this harder than it needs to be?"

You still looked unconvinced, but after a moment, you exhaled. "Okay."

Dabi narrowed his eyes. "Okay?"

You nodded, a small smile tugging at your lips. "Okay."

For the first time in weeks, Dabi felt like he could breathe. "About damn time."

You laughed softly. And when you leaned just a little closer, Dabi figured maybe this whole feelings thing wasn’t so bad after all.

Feel free to request <3

[fatphobiabusters]

Normally that's fairly true, after all fat people function as an acceptable target in many media but it's easier to ignore in other places. But its not just one scene or one joke.

Matilda is pretty bad as far as fatphobia goes. See Roald Dahl was very much a "outside appearance reflects morals" and he has very upsetting idea of what a bad person should look like vs a good person.

The main character Matilda a thin child is abused by her fat father, his thin vain wife and her fat brother. Then she goes to school where she meets a thin feminine teacher who eventually adopts her. At the school a big fat and muscular woman torments the children. This fat child here. In that scene? is the only nice fat person in the movie. There were multiple times to have even minor characters fat but none was taken.

This is the same man that wrote Augustus Gloop after all. Unless there's a character I haven't heard of I can't think of a good kind or nice fat person from his work. (Other than the above child forced to eat chocolate cake until he vomits, and that's only because he snuck into the kitchen to steal some of the mean butch woman's cake. He's a fat joke. Haha fatty couldn't help himself. )

I personally am nostalgic for the movie, I was neglected like the main character (not as bad) and read a lot. But fat children weren't the type of children Roald Dahl wrote for. He didn't write for fat kids, the visibly disabled, or non white kids.

Peopld could debate if "well it's for kids so they need it easy to tell whose good or not" and that's ripe with the very biases in his writing.

I wouldn't say everyone who enjoys Matilda is fatphobic but many many people didn't examine these aspects, they internalized it without realizing. They perpetuate fatphobia. I take a slightly less extreme approach than mod worthy here.

People are capable of consuming problematic media but the first step is to know it's problematic.

-mod squirrel

[vettelsvee]

hiii!! 2 with oscar please?😭

YOU WANT THAT BOOK? I'LL BUY YOU THE WHOLE SERIES | Oscar Piastri

Oscar Piastri x Girlfriend!Reader

SUMMARY: Oscar takes you to a bookstore and, after he sees you fingerling over a saga, he decides to buy it for you (without knowing it was about fictional versions of Formula 1 drivers) ↳ REQUESTED: Part of VEE'S F1 PROMPTS LIST (VOL. I)! Feel free to request anything you want <3 Hope you liked it anon! 💖

WORD COUNT: 1891

WARNINGS: Brief mention of drugs, mentions to Dirty Air saga (spoiler free) with not much knowledge about it

VEE'S NOTES: Was I expecting posting a fic today? No. Did I have to write something to distress after the pretty bad exam I made today? Yes! Now writing this and thinking about Teacher!Seb fics has made me feel in a better mood (ngl I'm pretty disappointed with myself). Anyways, hope you like today's fic and remember that, if you did, feel free to comment me your thoughts and, also, reblog as it helps me a lot! Thank you so much for reading <3 ↳ MAKE YOUR REQUESTS | TALK TO ME! | FORMULA 1 MASTERLIST

The moment you crossed the doors of the bookstore, you felt like you were at home.

Maybe it was the scent of vanilla and coffee, or perhaps the instrumental music playing softly, just like the one you were used to listen to at home in the afternoons while spending hours lost in a book and its story. You were so excited that you gripped Oscar’s hand tightly, your heart pounding faster than usual at the movie-like moment you were living.

"Alright…" Oscar began, his gaze wandering in every direction, completely absorbed by the towering bookshelves surrounding you both. "I’ve taken you to a bookstore, so I think my job here is officially done."

You stared at him in disbelief before rolling your eyes.

"Osc, you don’t just take your girlfriend to a bookstore. You stay with her the whole time to live the experience, you know… that whole reader's boyfriend thing."

Now it was Oscar’s turn to roll his eyes, though he couldn’t help but smile as you spun around and rushed toward a nearby table. Despite having little to no interest in reading, unless it involved race reports or it was Mark Webber’s biography, he loved the passion you had for books. Though, much to your dismay, he had never actually finished any of your recommendations even you insisted on him a lot.

"Yeah, okay, sure. You lead the way, Mrs. Bookworm…"

You weren’t listening. Instead, you were completely lost, eyes darting from one book to another, unable to stand still from sheer excitement. The overwhelming number of stories in front of you didn’t help either.

Then, it happened. The moment you spotted the book you had been searching for longer than you cared to admit, you let out a small squeal. Oscar jumped at the sudden sound, hurrying over to you only to find you clutching a red book, turning it over in your hands, inhaling its scent like it was some rare artifact.

"Oh… my… god…" you whispered.

Oscar glanced at the cover. Throttled. His eyes flickered to the camera and polaroids, especially the one in the center, which showed a red car eerily similar to the one Charles had driven a few years back when he first joined Ferrari.

"Oh…" Oscar muttered as realization hit him. "So it’s a Formula 1 book…"

Do Formula 1 romantic books exist?, thought Oscar, a bit in disbelief.

You turned to him, shoving the book in his face.

"It’s not just a Formula 1 book! It’s THE Formula 1 book! Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted it for?"

"Since before we started dating, or after?" he teased, smirking. "You’re dating an actual Formula 1 driver, and here you are, thrilled to read a love story about one."

"Noah Slade is different. Very different, actually."

"Oh, so I guess this Noah guy is gonna replace me now, huh?" Oscar feigned offense.

"Well… I like you more. A lot more. And… I don’t know… you’re you. No one could ever compare, so…"

It wasn’t just you who turned red. Oscar did too, lowering his gaze while you pretended to read the book, using the pages as a shield to hide just how flustered you were.

This wasn’t how you had imagined telling Oscar you loved him for the first time.

"Well…" you tried to speak, clearing your throat, but Oscar cut in.

"Are you getting it?"

You opened your mouth but hesitated. It was a limited edition, and also very expensive. If you bought this one, you’d have to get the rest of the series too, but you were broke because, of course, you had impulsively bought five books just last week.

"Uh… I don’t know…" you murmured.

He studied your face for a few seconds, and without thinking too much about it, he stepped closer and grabbed the book from you.  

“What are you doing?”  

“Buying it for you,” he said casually as he walked toward the checkout.  

“Oscar, don’t you dare!” you shouted, rushing after him and snatching the book from his hands to put it back on the shelf. “You don’t have to—”  

“You want that book?” he asked. You nodded timidly. “I’ll buy you the whole series.”  

You stumbled, nearly falling as you tried to stop Oscar from grabbing Collided, Wrecked, and Redeemed.

“Oscar, you can’t just buy me an entire series just because…” you whispered, trying to keep up with his hurried steps.  

“Oh, no? And why not?”  

“Because… Because…” You opened and closed your mouth, struggling to find a reasonable enough answer to make him stop. “Because… It's too much money, Osc, that’s not right!”  

Oscar laughed. You knew perfectly well that your boyfriend was a millionaire, and even though he was very careful with his money and his expenses, buying four books wasn’t much of an expense for him the way it was for you.  

“Besides, you already spend so much time around the Formula 1 world. I don’t think it’s necessary for you to spend even more time listening to me obsess over fictional drivers and talk about them nonstop.”  

“Don’t worry, love, I’ll be more than happy to hear you ramble about those cheap copies of us,” Oscar scoffed, smiling at the cashier as he handed over the books.  

“You’re impossible,” you muttered, giving up as the woman started scanning the books.  

“And yet you love me…”  

Your face burned instantly. Not knowing how to respond, you focused on watching Oscar swipe his card and chat briefly with the cashier about you, his girlfriend, before taking the paper bag with the books inside.  

“Boys nowadays should be more like you, son,” the woman commented to Oscar, beaming. Then she turned to you. “And you, sunshine, enjoy your books and your wonderful boyfriend as well!”  

You nodded shyly. Oscar bid the woman goodbye and headed for the exit, holding the bag in one hand while placing the other on your back, guiding you outside before wrapping an arm around your waist.  

You couldn’t stop wondering what you had done to deserve such a thoughtful and attentive boyfriend like Oscar.  

“So, I guess now you’re going to try to make me read this series… Dirty Air, am I right?”  

“Oh, absolutely,” you said, finally looking at him and pushing aside that lingering shyness, the feeling that you didn’t deserve such a gift. “I’m convinced you’re going to fall in love with Santiago Alatorre.”  

“Santiago Alatorre?” Oscar repeated, curious. “Wait, wait… Are these characters, like… completely fictional? Or are they based on any of us?”  

You chuckled softly, carefully taking the bag from Oscar because you were excited to carry it yourself.  

“Well…”  

“Oh, come on. Don’t act like you don’t know, because that’s already an answer in itself.”  

You bit your lip, unsure whether to tell him the truth. It was obvious, really, but you felt… weird about him discovering the fantasies the author had written based on some of them, and moreover the fandom surrounding those stories.  

“Okay, fine…” you sighed, giving in. “Yeah, some of them are based on you guys.”  

“And?”  

Oscar raised an eyebrow, though he wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to know more about what was written about them.

“What do you mean and?”

“Who each of us is who. If there are supposedly four main characters…”

“Oh, yeah, about that…” You played with your hands, mentally trying to stay calm and not go into full fangirl mode, like you always did whenever Oscar talked about something that excited him. “So… Noah is supposed to be Charles, at least physically and in terms of teammates… but his personality and life are much more like Max’s. You know, toxic father and all that…”

“So, this Noah guy is a menace? Like Max back during the 2023 season?”

“No, no! I guess he’s… ambitious, let’s say.”

“And the others?”

“Liam, the one from the second book, is a bit complicated,” you commented. “People see him as Pierre, and some others as Mick, but to me, since he’s German, he’s kinda like Nico Rosberg mixed with Seb’s personality from his Red Bull years… or at least the way teenage girls see him, like a playboy type. I think you’re too sure what I’m talking about”

“And not just teenage girls I must say,” Oscar added.

“Then there’s Jax, who is one hundred percent Lewis,” you continued. “Jax is Liam’s teammate, so it makes sense, you know… what I explained to you earlier.”

Oscar nodded, understanding very little but happy to see you so excited.

“And the last one, Santiago, the one I mentioned before, is Carlos,” you blurted out with a growing smile. “He’s Spanish and Charles’... I mean, Noah's teammate! And, well… they say he’s really cute, so I hope to read the first three books as quickly as possible to get to his.”

“I’m starting to think that, from the way you talk about him, he’s going to become your newest addition to you not so short fictional crushes list,” Piastri laughed.

“Oh, absolutely. You know I have a thing for the good guys, and according to the TikToks I’ve watched, Santi is exactly that.”

“I can’t believe you’re fantasizing over fictional versions of my rivals,” Oscar said, tilting his head as he laughed.

“Don’t be dramatic, Osc. Why do you think I like Santi so much from what I’ve seen? Because he’s supposed to be as much of a sweetheart as you!” you exclaimed. “But I promise that no matter how much I talk about these guys after tonight, once I start the first book, it’ll just be some kind of substitute for you or whatever ridiculous thing you’re imagining.”

“You know what?” You tilted your head. “I think you should write one of those Formula 1 romance books based on our story.”

Your eyes widened in shock, unable to believe what your boyfriend had just said.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean it. You should do it,” Piastri shrugged. “I know how much you love writing, and seeing how happy these books make you… Plus, I’m curious to see what kind of terrible personality you’d give me. You could make me the typical egotistical guy who constantly gets into PR trouble for, I don’t know, smoking weed? Like what happened with Zayn and Louis from One Direction. You told me about that once, right?”

You bit your lip, trying to hold back your laughter and look serious, but it was impossible.

“Bold of you to assume I’m not already writing a fanfic about us and posting it on Tumblr.”

Oscar’s jaw dropped.

“What?”

You laughed again.

“No, Y/N, that’s not funny. You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking…”

“Do you really think I am?” you teased, raising an eyebrow, feeling quite pleased that you had finally confessed one of your best-kept secrets, one you had been dying to tell him even you felt a bit ashamed.

Oscar stared at you, his mind struggling to process the information.

Were people actually reading a story about his life, possibly with real details, and thinking it was completely fictional?

“What exactly are you writing about… us, Y/N?”

You just giggled, took his hand, interlaced your fingers with his, and kept walking.

“I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to check out jellyastri81 on Tumblr and find out for yourself.”

[drdemonprince]

Your recent sex lib article is great, and it's something I think I've had to do in myself, because of myself. As someone who's only recently been able to experience sexual encounters, your article made me question whether the act of touching foreheads could be considered a sexual act, and if so, where would that line be, if there even is a line? Also do you have a good guide for people wanting to get into that mindset/sphere? Thanks!

My dear homie, may I introduce to you (if you haven't met her yet) a lovely little lady called Sex Neutrality

Sex neutrality is the idea that sex is neither especially bad, nor especially good, and in fact is not a distinct and sacrosanct part of life that needs to be firmly separated from all other modes of existence. There's no need to draw firm walls between what is sexual and what is not, because sex isn't any more powerful, damaging, forbidden, or special a part of life than anything else like shitting, cooking, cuddling, conversing, making art, fighting, or anything else.

As I've written in previous articles about asexuality, any activity imbued with the right intentions and a spirit of desire can be sex. Writing doofenshmirtz x perry roleplays with a buddy can be sex, if that's how both of you see it; getting a foot massage can be sex, or it can just be a foot massage. Wearing a thong, getting tied up, kissing, talking in sultry voices in the darkness together -- it can be sex if you want it to be. Or it can just be a fun thing to do with a cool buddy.

I personally see a lot of erotic hypnotic potential in the good old forehead touch. Touching two foreheads together calls forth the sexual ritual in the Coneheads movie, or even the docking of brain-braid thingies from Avatar. And a single finger to the forehead can send my mind spiralling off and my eyes rolling up into my head in a cloud of submission and self-erasure, if the moment and the person to right. To me, things can hardly get more sexual than that. But to someone else? Well, it might just be a little rub on a vein. Doesn't matter. Sex isn't some special thing. Might as well argue over whether a pop-tart is a sandwich. There's nothing sacred about sandwiches, it's just a cool part of life.

[goodlucktai]

could you please do prompt number one with the a team duo? (raph and leo!!!) i just think leo is in need of big brother love sometimes <3 prompt number one: "Shit. Shit, shit, shit, c'mere." (btw, ur writing is amazing im literally blown away every time!!! tysm for all the writing u do)

dialogue prompts

1. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit, c’mere.”

x

Something bad happened to Leo in the prison dimension. In the minutes—the minutes—between losing him and getting him back, something bad happened to him.

“This isn’t right,” Casey had said that first night in the medbay, staring at the X-rays on the illuminator as if he could change them by wanting it hard enough. “These breaks aren’t new. They can’t be.” 

“He wasn’t running around with a spiral fracture in his tibia before the alien invasion,” Donnie replied tersely, more high strung with every second his twin remained limp and unresponsive on the infirmary bed. 

Mikey was glued to Leo’s side like a miserable orange barnacle, Splinter rarely venturing more than two steps away at a time. April had been torn in two with worry for Leo and worry for her mom, and had only been convinced to leave when S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N pinkie-promised to feed live updates to her phone at the top of every minute. 

If Leo had woken up even for just a minute back on Staten Island, it would have been a reassurance his family could stack all their hopes on. Instead, the brother they dragged out of the void had about as much life to his limbs as a ragdoll. His head lolled in Donnie’s hands like something out of a horror movie—and Mikey’s breaths started to shudder, and Raph thought for a fleeting, hysterical second that the world had ended, after all—and then Donnie found a heartbeat. He showed a weeping Mikey where to find it, their fingers pressed in the soft hollow of Leo’s throat where the carotid artery pulsed loud and clear. Raph kept his own hand there for the entire trip home. If that stubborn heart stopped he didn’t know what he would do. He didn’t know what he would do. 

“But the bone has already formed a hard callus,” Casey said. “I know sensei and my uncles healed faster than mom and Aunt April did but still. Leo shouldn’t have reached this stage of healing for another week at least.” 

Donnie’s face, already stormy, reached a level of dark anger Raph had never seen before. He studied the charts on the wall without speaking, memorizing them. Ninpo sparked around his fingers like he was only barely resisting committing violence, and only because the desired target was well beyond his reach. 

“What does that mean?” Raph asked hoarsely. His hands were squeezed tight between his knees so no one would see if they started to shake. 

“It means that either Nardo broke his bones in about eight different places a week ago and no one noticed,” Donnie said in a brittle deadpan, “or that monster put its hands on him in the prison dimension and Leo healed from it somehow.” 

“But he was only in there for like, for like ten minutes,” Mikey warbled. He sounded heartsick and confused and too young to carry the weight of the world on his shell. “We got him right back out, we—we didn’t leave him in there long enough for all that.” 

“I have a theory,” Donnie said, and then didn’t say anything else. He dragged a chair over to Leo’s bed with an unholy screeching sound, tucked his head against his twin’s at what couldn’t have been a comfortable angle, and started to tap around on his phone. 

“Okay,” Casey said at length, recognizing an immovable object when he saw one. He turned to Raph instead, a child-sized soldier whose mission wasn’t quite finished yet. “Raphael, could I look at your eye?”

He had finished cleaning Raph’s eye and patching up his shoulder and moved onto wrapping Mikey’s hands when Donnie surged up from his chair so suddenly that everyone in the room jumped. His phone crunched into two distinct pieces in his hand, military-grade case and all, and he flung them away. 

“Woah, hey,” Raph said, “Dee, are you—” 

“I ran diagnostics on Leo’s gear,” Donnie said. It was his flat, toneless voice, the one that meant he was feeling so many things he had to shut something down to prevent a total systems failure. “The timestamps didn’t make any sense. So I ran them again. And again. And everything seems to be indicating that Leo was in the prison dimension for over three hundred hours.”

No, Raph thought. He stared at the shape of his little brother in that bed, at the vivid black and blue bruises on his face—noticing for the first time the faint yellows of much older ones around his neck. 

Horror crept up Raph’s throat. 

Please, no. 

“What?” Mikey blurted, sounding as hysterical as Raph felt. “What? No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t have. It was only—”

“For us, thirteen minutes,” Donnie said bleakly. “For Leo, thirteen days.”

Since then, Raph has learned a lot more about temporal differentials and post-captivity recovery than he ever wanted to know. Donnie made four different PowerPoint presentations that the entire family was forced to sit through. All of them are budding experts on several subjects that they might otherwise not have been, studying as feverishly as undergrad students cramming for a final, desperate to be helpful. 

So this is Raph’s fault. He knew better.

If he’d taken even a second to think before following the unmistakable sound of a turtle falling out of bed into Leo’s room, before lunging over to the crumpled-up form of his little brother on the floor, he would have recognized the blackout for what it was. He, of all people, should have seen it. 

The episodes are few and far between, but only because Leo is rarely left alone when he’s awake, and sleeps even less than he did before. It’s easier for him to keep his head straight when he’s ensconced in a turtle pile, or curled up in Splinter’s lap for reruns of really bad soap operas that he mumbles along to in Spanish, or keeping Mikey company in the kitchen, taste-testing everything that gets pushed his way (handily supplementing all the meals he only picks at, Michelangelo is a genius for discovering that work-around). 

It’s when he’s asleep and the nightmares come knocking that they have to worry. If Raph had known he was in here taking a nap, he would have made sure Leo had company. He probably would have curled up around the slider himself, giving Leo’s highly strung subconscious a hand,  soothing him back to sleep before the bad dream could dig its hooks into him and yank him awake. 

But the sleepiness probably hit him in a sudden burst, the messy pile of pillows and stolen purple blanket too tempting to resist. He must have curled up to rest his eyes and drifted off. 

And he woke up alone, in the dark. The shape of someone much bigger than him looming above everything else. Raph knew better. He did. Of course a cornered animal was going to bite. 

“Fuck,” he breaths out, white hot pain shooting up his arm from where Leo had buried his teeth a moment ago. It hurt, but it had nothing on the way his heart was breaking. 

He’d seen Donnie lash out like this a few times before, overstimulated and fully ready to bite whoever was stupid enough to put their hands on him, but not since they were kids. Mikey used to handle all fits of temper by hiding in his shell and closing the little hinge to keep everyone else firmly out, grumbling ticked-off turtle noises until he was left alone. 

When Leo was little, on the other hand, he wanted attention when he was feeling bad—he wanted to be picked up and held and would cry and pout until he got his way. Whether he was feeling upset or angry or scared, the solution was always more or less the same.

There’s no recognition in his eyes now. Leo has never looked at Raph this way before, even when Raph was the Krang’s puppet, even when Raph had him dangling by a strangling grip on his throat—even then, Leo didn’t look at him like he was a stranger. 

He had to fight like this in the prison dimension, didn’t he? He had to tear survival out of that place piece by bloody piece.

Raph hates that he had to do that and loves him for it in equal measure. 

“It’s okay, Leo,” Raph murmurs. “You did just right, okay? You stayed alive. However you have to do that is okay. You got mixed up just now, but it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have scared you. Raph’s so sorry.”

Leo is staring at him, eyes wide and glassy. All the gold in them is edged out to black, pupil swallowing iris whole. There’s blood on the corner of his mouth. He smacks his tongue, tasting it. Like the worst version of giving him ice cubes to hold or peppermint to smell, it grounds him, bringing him back to the present moment. 

Raph watches Leo realize where he is and what he’s doing, sitting on the floor in the corner of the room with blood in his mouth. 

“Raph?” he says, small and scared and sixteen years old. 

“It’s me, I’m here,” Raph says, too fast, “you’re safe, Leon.” 

Leo’s eyes drift lower. He clocks the teeth marks in Raph’s arm and starts to cry.

“Shit,” Raph says, scrambling forward frantically on hands and knees. “Shit, shit, shit, c’mere.” 

Leo spills willingly into his hug, like it’s ten years ago and he’s had his heart broken by an argument with his twin and nothing on earth could possibly console him but he was willing to let Raphie try. 

Except Raphie knew all the tricks. Raphie knew that tearful little turtles just needed to be squeezed tight and rumbled at and snuffled until they couldn’t help but giggle. 

It isn’t such an easy fix this time. Leo’s shoulders shake like he’ll never stop crying, his wet sticky face smearing salt and blood where he has it crammed in the crook of Raph’s neck. He clings as if he’s half-afraid something or someone is going to wrench him away. 

Not in this lifetime. Never again. 

“I’ve got you,” Raph tells him. Heart settling now that his little star is in his arms, safe and sound. They could come back from anything as long as they had this much. “Raph’s always got you. Don’t be scared. Don’t be sorry. We’re okay.” 

[wisteria-lodge]

Wait the wiki is bad? I use it all the time 😭 I thought the whole point is it's community-run so people should be able to fix any mistakes (and since it's a huge community that's been running for very long it seems quite robust and strict on verifying information) I do get that it has info from the videogames which most people don't regard as canon, though. But when it does it tends to note it as such, and they still consider the books/movies a higher "plane" of canon.

I love reading the wiki, but I do have to do a lot of follow up and sifting if I'm using it as reference. In tends to throw in the video games, JKR interviews, *actor* interviews, and Pottermore content, and sometimes it's organized and clearly marked, but a lot of times it isn't... and that has definitely slipped up my co-writer (whose knowledge of HP isn't as crazy as mine) a few times. Unless you already have a really solid grasp on everything, it's easy to get confused. Like here's someone who wrote into me, asking about a sentence in the Narcissa page that was 1) Poorly written 2) wrong.

The other problem with the wiki is that since it's community run, every page tends to be written by fans of that particular character. This is especially obvious with the villains. Like read through the Lucius Malfoy, or Severus Snape pages. There is so much there that's bending over backwards to give them a positive edit. There's a lot about Lucius' elegant dueling style (no source) and his skill with potions. Like the actual detail is 'Lucius Malfoy mentions having a potion collection in Book 2.' I don't want that extrapolated into 'Lucius Malfoy was a model student who got into the Slug Club because of his skill with potions.' Like let me write my own headcanons! It starts speculating that Lucius got Voldemort monologing on purpose in the graveyard to buy time for Harry!

Snape's page says that one of his skills is writing poetry. He wrote a rhyming logic puzzle in book one, which I would say is not the same thing. It also says he communicates with floriography, which is a reference to a fan theory about how the plants he lists in Book 1 are a coded message about Lily. Like *I* know that. But then the wiki just cites Book 1. That's not in Book 1.

This is actually so common that co-writer @niche-pastiche and I have an in-joke when we attribute any flattering/creative interpretation to Tom Saunders, Wasp Scientist.

Tom Saunders is a New Zealand biologist who named a species of wasp after Lucius Malfoy because:

"People see wasps as villains, as the 'bad guys.' But the truth is that the vast majority of wasp species are either neutral or beneficial, from a human standpoint. Just as Lucius Malfoy is pardoned after separating from Voldemort's allies, I'm asking people to pardon wasps in order to restore their reputation as interesting, important creatures."

Like I get that you like wasps, and Lucius Malfoy, I do too. But that's not info that's in the books.

(It is Pottermore stuff, but I honestly count Pottermore as tertiary canon at *best.* Like every once in a while it'll be a cool detail, but JKR is *not good* at worldbuilding, so most of the time, instead of explaining things... it just makes everything more confusing. And I think that all of this has the end result of accidentally gatekeeping newcomers who want to engage with the material. Like the person who sent that ask.)

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #7410:

Those people are playing with fictional dollies in a corner of the internet where blocking and ignoring has long been a thing. If you're in a position where seeing a pair of fictional drawings kissing will give you psychic damage AND you can't ignore it after rolling your eyes or making an "ew" face (something people often but don't expand on because why bother?), maybe that's your problem, not other peoples', and you should avoid those tags etc, like the rest of us. It's also very telling that people in certain fandoms are totally okay with certain kinds of abusive ships, but simply go after people writing the "wrong" kinds of abusive ship, but as soon as any other kinds of ships are present, they will flip out. They'll yell at someone for shipping the Lannisters, while concurrently reposting fanart of Will bleeding to death where Hannibal, who has a knife in his pocket suggesting he did the deed, is holding him adoringly. Drawing gore is somehow fine, but a ship where the characters are eighteen and nineteen is the devil's spawn, even though both in real life are bad, and on paper, neither character is being harmed. They are concepts, dollies, not real people.

Like, "bad ship" has no meaning - it's become a stupid matter of "my fictional thing is fine, yours crosses the line, even though technically, it's just as bad, or not bad at all" because... It's all. Bloody. Fiction. Yet nobody's going to bat an eyelash if someone watches the Saw movies, or if someone is a horror aficionado and loves horror movies in general, but so many people, especially younger kids, have issues with sexual content in particular. It's just a rebrand of Christian puritanism and moral paranoia. Everything and everyone is a pedo to them. They look at new media through the lens of "I must ensure this show, person, etc isn't a pedo". Yeah, there are creepy people on the internet, some people get off on certain stuff. It doesn't mean everyone who draws an age gap ship is a creep - just like how everyone who likes gore isn't a murderer, even though there are, indeed, people who get off on murder. There are kinks for literally everything. I mean, there's an entire website devoted to celebrity feet for Christ's sakes. But for some reason, nobody ever looks at fictional depictions of non-sexual abuse (or even anything else), and wonders if someone is getting off on that. But a lot of people still are. Nothing is sacred.

If someone is posting graphic content of something in a tag, they should be tagging it. With scenarios like that, MAYBE (emphatically) you could make a case for it being "harmful". But even then, this is the internet. Fandom spaces are not like Club Penguin, they do not have a responsibility to assume the burden of parenting or making someone's individual choices for them or clearing out as soon as a minor is in the space, and there's an inherent knowledge that we all will, at some point, run into things that gross us out because fandom spaces are a melting pot of different ideas.

And you have a right to be grossed out by a lot of stuff. There's a lot of disturbing, weird, icky shit out there. But it's not about harassing the people who make it, who have shown no signs of actually being a bad person. It's about putting the onus on yourself, like an adult, to avoid the content. There's no use in self-harming by seeking stuff out, going into certain tags, etc when there's a high chance you'll see something that squicks you. Because at the end of the day, you are responsible for your own content consumption and browsing, and you are responsible for understanding the risks of being in certain spaces. If someone is unable to understand this, and cannot exercise self-control, they shouldn't be in those spaces, possibly online at all.

Signed, a very, very bone-tired fandomgoer of 40+ years.

[alittlegiraffe]

Hello! Can you please write 5 times Eminem gets jealous when other men become interested in the reader? (He hasn't confessed to her yet) The reader is also very oblivious to his feelings because he is a celebrity and she is not and doesn't understand why he is acting like that.

Title: About Damn Time

1. The Time You Went on a Date with Some Random Guy

You kicked off your heels and flopped onto Marshall’s couch with a dramatic sigh.

“How was it?” he asked, not looking up from his phone.

You shrugged. “It was… fine?”

Marshall scoffed. “That bad?”

“No! He was really nice. Funny, smart, great job…”

“Sounds like a fuckin’ Hallmark movie.”

You rolled your eyes. “You asked.”

He muttered something under his breath, then finally looked at you. “So, you seein’ him again?”

“Maybe?” You frowned. “He said he’d call.”

Marshall exhaled sharply and went back to his notepad, gripping the pen way too aggressively.

“Dude, what’s with you?”

“Nothin’.”

You shrugged it off, not noticing how his jaw clenched when your phone buzzed.

2. The Time You Got Hit On at the Studio

You were at the studio, leaning against the console, when one of the engineers—some new guy—struck up a conversation.

“So, Y/N,” he grinned, “you ever think about getting into music? You’ve got the voice for it.”

You chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think—”

“She’s not here for that,” Marshall interrupted flatly.

You blinked at him. “I mean, I could answer for myself—”

“We workin’.” He shot the guy a glare. “You got somethin’ else to do, or you just here to talk?”

The engineer held up his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Didn’t mean anything by it.”

After he walked off, you turned to Marshall. “Okay, seriously. What was that?”

He shrugged. “Nothin’.”

You narrowed your eyes, then shook your head. “You’re weird, man.”

Marshall just muttered under his breath and went back to work.

3. The Time You Got Too Close to His Crew

You’d always gotten along with Marshall’s friends, but lately, you’d noticed Proof had taken to throwing an arm around you like you were one of them.

At a party, he laughed as he slung an arm over your shoulders. “Man, you put up with way too much of Marshall’s bullshit.”

You smirked. “Someone has to.”

Marshall, standing a few feet away, clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth might crack.

Later, he pulled you aside. “You and Proof got somethin’ I should know about?”

You snorted. “Uh, yeah. We’re gonna start a rap duo and take over the world.”

Marshall didn’t laugh.

You rolled your eyes. “Dude, it’s Proof. Your best friend.”

Marshall muttered something under his breath and took a sip of his drink. You just shrugged, completely missing the way he glared at Proof for the rest of the night.

4. The Time You Wore That Damn Dress

Marshall had never actually choked on air before, but apparently, tonight was the night.

You showed up to an event in a fitted dress, hair and makeup done, looking—well. Different.

“You good?” you asked, amused, as he coughed into his drink.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. You, uh. You don’t usually wear stuff like that.”

You smiled. “You like it?”

He scoffed. “Don’t matter what I think.”

You rolled your eyes. “Well, clearly it does if you’re acting all weird about it.”

“I ain’t actin’ weird.”

You stared at him for a second, then shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

Marshall took a deep breath, forcing himself to look away. If one more guy looked at you like that, he was gonna lose it.

5. The Time You Almost Kissed Someone Else

It happened at a party. Some guy leaned in, and for a split second, it looked like you were gonna let him.

Marshall didn’t think—he just moved. Before you could react, his hand wrapped around your wrist, pulling you away from the guy and out the door.

“What the hell, Marshall?” you asked as he dragged you outside.

He ran a hand over his face, exhaling sharply. “You don’t wanna kiss that dude.”

“…Why not?”

He looked at you like you’d just asked if the sky was blue.

“Are you serious?”

You nodded, completely lost.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Then, before he could second-guess himself, he grabbed your face and kissed you.

+1. The Time He Finally Did Something About It

Your brain short-circuited.

Marshall Mathers was kissing you. Marshall.

When he pulled back, he exhaled sharply. “You get it now?”

You blinked. “…Wait. You like me?”

Marshall groaned. “Oh my God.”

“No, no, I’m just—Since when?”

He rolled his eyes. “Long enough.”

You processed that. Then, finally, finally, you grabbed the front of his hoodie and yanked him back down for another kiss.

When you pulled away, breathless, you grinned. “You could’ve just told me, you know.”

Marshall smirked. “Yeah, well. You weren’t gettin’ the hint.”

No. But you got it now.

[watermotif]

i remember once reading your tags about how your perception of writer’s block was changed by a book/author….? I’m struggling with it at the moment so if you have advice 🤲🏽

I typed up such a long answer and then tumblr ate it AGH but here we go again. What it really boils down to is dont start wallowing in your writers block

It was this anthony bourdain quote, which I read at a point where i was spending more time complaining about writers block than actually writing

My writers block came from the fact that i saw it as this incredibly intimidating task, that everything i write has to be perfect and irreproachable in every way etc. Basically putting so much pressure on myself that i just didnt write at all. Which is silly! Like, what a privilege to be able to sit at my desk for hours and whine because i cant get a sentence right, you know? & meanwhile the world is going up in flames. I'm very good at pitying myself and wallowing (lol) but i remembered that if i keep going like this, i will never write anything and only complain. Which scares me more than the idea of writing something bad! You can edit and improve bad writing but you cant edit a nothing. So I try to stop agonizing about talent & focus on sticking with the habit instead. (It's like that fka twigs quote hard work beats talent when talent doesnt work hard etc)

This hanif post is also something i think about a lot. If this is what i decide to do with my limited time on earth then i need to take it seriously and so on

Of course all of this doesnt mean that i find it easy to write! I still complain about it, i still find that sometimes it feels like pulling teeth, sometimes it still feels high stakes. Every day is different! When i struggle with starting i find that marie howe exercise helpful. But it's also okay (and necessary) to step away from it when it doesnt work. Do anything else, go for a walk, make something with your hands, watch a movie etc. It will come back to you, even if it's days, weeks, months later!

And then of course there is this poem by marge piercy. The real writer is one who really writes!

Hope this is somehow coherent ^_^ Good luck with your writing❣️

[dross-the-fish]

What are your most favorite and your most hated, adaptations of Erik, Adam, and Hyde.

Favorite adaptations of each For Adam, just due to the sheer lack of competition the Musical version of the creature. I kind of hate that he's a reanimated corpse of a specific guy. That's my least favorite way to start the creature's origin but the rest is pretty close-ish to the book (except for the end) and the performance from the cast album is really good. We get a lot of insight to his mindset through the songs that most adaptations don't get across. Least favorite: I almost want to say Robert DeNiro's version from the 1994 movie because the movie he's in so soooo bad but honestly he himself wasn't awful. He had some good moments. I'm going to have to give it to the Once Upon A Time creature. He's not even a proper "Adam" and they do nothing of interest with him or with Frankenstein as a concept. Hyde: Favorite Adaptation, kind of difficult because I like some that are not actually good, exactly. I liked what Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman did with him overall but could have done with out the scene of him and the invisible man. The musical is a guilty pleasure but I don't really view it as a faithful adaptation and tend to separate it as its own thing. I also really like Le Testament du docteur Cordelier or "The Doctor's Horrible Experiment" if you want the English language title. is probably among the most faithful and it's a genuinely very good film. Least favorite: Once Upon a Time again. This series should never have touched gothic literature or universal films. How are you going to write a Hyde who's upset that Jekyll killed his love interest. What the fuck even is that. Erik: Favorite adaptations. There's the Lon Chaney classic. Despite how much it deviates from the book I also do really like the 1990 mini series with Charles Dance.

Least Favorite: Christ there's a long list of really really bad adaptions but I'm going to put the version of Erik that exists in Love Never Dies. Holy christ, not only did he learn NOTHING from his redemption arc but I think he may actually be WORSE than before. Also am I supposed to believe Erik, the phantom of the opera, the genius composer, wrote "Bathing Beauty?" are you shitting me?