#its deliberately being mean because everyone else is doing it

[felixcosm]

The way people are responding to Taylor Swift's new album because they don't think she is tortured or mentally ill enough to call it that is fucking embarrassing.

God forbid an artist ever exaggerates for artistic purpose. God forbid a celebrity writes about pain or suffering if they haven't experienced the maximum amount of trauma in their life.

I mean, everyone knows the moment you become a celebrity all your human experience disappears and you elevate to a new level of existence where you cannot have relatable experiences anymore for the rest of your life.

[surpriserose]

speaking of new vegas i dont think everyone talks about the followers of the apocalypse enough because they are literally the best and most interesting faction to me the arbiter of new vegas

[rindreamery]

it's just instinct, all i want is you.

how long it takes for the blue lock men to realize you’re the one.

itoshi rin, itoshi sae, nagi seishiro, michael kaiser, oliver aiku

it takes itoshi rin 6 months.

rin likes to think that he’s slow and deliberate with his relationships— that he’s not the type to have such decisive thoughts about someone so early on. he’s spent years building up a wall to protect his feelings, and he’s not about to let a (potentially fleeting) person ruin what he's worked so hard to maintain. he's only been with you for 6 months, and he has his doubts about whether you would want to stick around. but all it takes is, “i’m so proud of you, rin,” and his world is completely tilted off its axis.

he tries to tell himself that it's nothing; he's been complimented by other people before.

you probably didn't even think much of it when you told him. it’s just a simple phrase, one of many that people say without thinking. but it's different, it's special, when it's coming from you. your words repeat in his head, like some mantra. it's like his senses are overwhelmed by you. he finds himself focusing solely on your voice, the way you look at him with such gentle eyes, the sincerity behind your words— you. it’s scary how much it affects him. it rattles something deep inside of him, and it shakes him to his core.

he doesn't want to hear it from anyone else, he quickly realizes. those praises don't mean much when it's not coming from you. they don't make him feel unstoppable, like he’s on some high that he’ll never be able to get down from. and he's hit with a jarring realization—

“say it again,” he's standing in front of you, ignoring the incessant flashing of cameras that surrounds him and the deafening cheers of the crowd. he's only looking at you.

“i’m so proud of you,” your voice is quiet, but all he can hear is you, “rin.”

—he's fallen for you, much deeper than he thought he would. he’d be damned if he let you slip away.

it takes itoshi sae 1 year and 3 months.

sae had no intention of falling in love with you. needless to say, his affection for you wasn’t some calculated move. the thought of liking you hadn’t even crossed his mind, and he’s not even sure if he’d ever considered you as a friend. you’ve just been around for long enough that he’s stopped questioning it, that he’s grown to tolerate your presence. at least, that’s what he tells himself. he lets you come over when you want, eat all the snacks in his pantry, use his netflix account— to everyone else, you’re basically a couple. before he knows it, you’ve settled into his life the way a familiar song gets stuck in his head without him noticing.

it’s hard to deny the noticeable shift in sae’s behavior whenever he’s around you.

the way the frown on sae’s face vanishes to a more passive state whenever he’s talking to you, and he's much less irritated at the aspect of having to answer your random (but stupid, in his opinion) questions. he’s not aware, but a part of him subconsciously looks forward to it. “would you still love me if i was a worm?” comes another one of your stupid questions, and he answers without thinking.

“yeah.” the expression on his face remains the same, he’s as indifferent as he always is. but his answer takes both of you by surprise. under his cool facade, his mind is scrambling to make sense of his answer, as if he hadn’t expected himself to say such a thing.

you’re flustered, and it’s evident in the way you stumble over your words. a part of you begins to wonder if that was simply a figment of your imagination, like some hallucination from sleep deprivation. “what— huh?”

so he plays it off, he acts as if he meant to say it. “you heard what i said.” he realizes his heart had decided on you longer than he’d ever been aware of.

it takes nagi seishiro 3 months.

nagi’s used to being alone— he’s used to neglecting himself and every aspect of his life because no one is there to tell him not to do so. he’s not used to having someone be a constant in his life, to have someone who isn’t thrown off by his apathetic and lazy attitude. sometimes he wonders if he acts this way to keep people out, and he wonders why you choose to stay despite. but slowly, you color your way into his bleak routine.

at first, it’s subtle. you linger around him, but your presence isn’t demanding for his attention. you’re there, but you let him be.

and then your presence becomes something a little more prominent. he starts to notice the little post-it notes you leave in his locker, and how you remember to sneak in his favorite snacks. or how his pillows start to smell like your shampoo, and the way he becomes used to having you there in his living room as he plays video games. or even the fact that he finds himself waiting by the gate when classes end, and how he doesn’t mind being pushed around by the crowd as he searches for you in the endless sea of students so he could walk with you. so he could be with you.

he starts to feel like he’s truly living, like there’s something to look forward to every day.

when you say, “see you tomorrow,” he deflates at your words. it’s a weird feeling— he feels weird at the thought that he doesn’t like being alone anymore. that he misses you in the way he misses his phone. he feels bored without you there, and a part of him feels so empty when he doesn’t have you beside him.

when he drops you off at home that day, he realizes it feels strange to be alone again— “can you stay with me?”— he needs to be with you.

it takes michael kaiser 7 months.

kaiser lets his ego get in the way of his relationships. he thinks he can have anyone he wants, and that's why he wholeheartedly believes that he's above the idea of yearning for someone. the idea of wanting someone so much that his thoughts would be consumed by them, and only them? it’s unimaginable. he’s used to being admired, worshipped even, by others. he doesn’t need anyone— he doesn’t need you.

so the prick of irritation he feels, when he sees you laughing at another man’s jokes, catches him off-guard.

it shatters his pride, and he tries to ignore the heat that bubbles under his skin. but he can’t ignore the feeling of possessiveness that washes over him at the sight. you’ve always been his— the heated touches, the way you wear his cologne on your skin, the way you linger around him like it’s natural. you're mine, he always thinks to himself, but he never says it out loud. he’s above yearning— but the idea of you being with someone else makes him feel sick. and he’s not about to let another man take you away.

“come with me.” his voice is sharp and demanding, his mere presence filling the space with an unspoken challenge. but before you can speak, kaiser’s gripping your wrist, pulling you into him without another word of explanation. you don’t fight him, you don’t fight the excitement that it brings you. there’s something in his gaze, something so possessive and raw, that makes you follow him wordlessly. you’re mine, the thought echoes in his mind and for the first time in months, he can��t deny the feeling that has been brewing under the surface.

he yearns for you, and he’ll never let anyone strip this feeling away from him.

it takes oliver aiku 4 years and 2 months.

oliver would never deny the fact that he enjoys having you around. but you’re simply his friend— nothing less, and definitely nothing more than that. you’ve been in his life for years now, lingering in his orbit in a way that keeps you both close, but so far. you’re a constant in his life because he doesn’t need to act around you. he never needs to impress you, never needs to win you over with sugary words. you’ve never given him the typical attention he’s used to, the type of attention that he naturally demands. and that bothers him in a way he won’t admit. yet, it’s this disinterest that pulls at him like gravity. it keeps him coming back, keeps him by your side.

but he doesn’t want anything more from you— he doesn’t need it. it’s these words that keeps him from tainting you.

he doesn't like the dangerous and greedy feeling of wanting to have more of you, wanting to see you in ways that no one else has, and that dangerous feeling that makes him want to devote himself to you wholly. and that’s what gets to him. he’s used to being the one in control, the one who dictates the terms.

it's a futile attempt, he realizes. it's always been you who's had the upper hand.

he can no longer deny that he wants you, more than he’s ever wanted anyone. no one else has his heart racing ‘til he can hear his heartbeat in his ears, no one else has him hooked in the way you’ve been stringing him along. and suddenly, all those meaningless flings feel like distractions, like he’s been wasting time when what he really wants is right in front of him.

it’s not about lust, not about the chase—he just wants you. and this time, he’s not about to let fear or pride hold him back.

note. desperate and yearning hcs next??? who knows

© rindreamery, 2024

[sahkuna]

needed to write a drabble about sukuna being that hot older brother you always look forward to seeing at your best friend’s (yuuji) house... eee!

UPDATE: there’s a FOLLOW UP to this drabble

content warning: f! reader, smut, childhood "friends" with benefits, best friend's brother trope! oh and modern au:]

he’s only a couple years older than you, (by three years, if you want to be exact) and you’ve been acquainted with itadori yuuji's older brother— sukuna— multiple times.

whether it was through seeing him over at the itadori household during high school or being invited out by yuuji to sukuna’s new place a couple years after college— sukuna had always been a lingering presence in your life.

your relationship hadn’t been anything more than exchanging brief pleasantries whenever needed. until things start growing more suggestive as the two of you grew older.

it wasn't planned. the kissing, the meet-ups late at night, him deliberately lingering around when everyone else seems to have left the room. there were too many incidents to recall.

but one thing lead to the next and...

the slapping of skin on skin can be heard throughout his apartment, echoing against the walls of the vacant hallway that leads towards the doorway of sukuna's apartment.

tucked away behind his bedroom door, is quite an obscene scene. with your chest pressed against his mattress and face covered deep into his pillows, there's only so much left for you to do as you stick your ass up to receive the rough pounding from sukuna's thick cock.

the coherent sentences you used to form a few moments prior have slowly turned into a series of whimpers and broken moans all while sukuna has a tight grip on your waist pulling your ass flush against his hips so he can bury himself deep into your sweet cunt— unprotected.

you forgot how this came to be, of who convinced who to dip their toes into the world of sex with each other but you're damn glad that it happened.

"oh god," you blurt out between cries. sukuna's left hand drags down away from your waist, and finds its way toward your clit. "ah—! please, don't stop! that's… so good, so goo—ah!" you just about lose your mind when his fingers tease your sensitive clit in slow, torturous circles.

there's a mean, wicked smile tugging at the corner of sukuna's lips. his brows rise in amusement at how quick you are to fall apart in his hands— quite literally at that, too. "think you can hurry up and finish before your friend comes back?" sukuna asks, tone unwavering despite how his hips thrust into you repeatedly.

ah. your friend. his brother. the fact that he doesn't even bother to address him by name and does it dismissively would have you chiding him to be nice— but you're too far gone to digest what he said.

between the touching and the fullness of his dick pressing and rubbing against the walls of your pussy, you squeeze your eyes shut and wail. "please, please— i think i'm—!" your hand shoots down to hold onto his wrist. but you don't pull it away from you, despite how overstimulated you feel. "shit!"

when sukuna pulls out briefly to rub the head of his cock against your slit, you whine at the loss of him. with shaky hands you press your palms against his mattress, and make a weak attempt to change positions onto your back.

"please, put it back in!" he's definitely gonna make fun of you for begging later. but perhaps a higher power decided to have mercy on you— just this once— because sukuna's back between your thighs and stretching your hole.

fuck him, fuck him, fuck him and his stupid, girthy cock. and the smug ass expression he's probably got on his face right now.

despite that all, you wanted to kiss him. just the thought of it was—

the harsh sound of a fist pounding at his front door tears you from your thoughts. you're about to question who it is until you hear a voice from the other side that you know all too well.

"answer your phone, sukuna!" wait, why's yuuji here? "if you're gonna invite me to your place, at least do it when you don't have some girl over!"

"are you crazy?!" your voice is sharp, incredulity seeps through your tone.

with his dick still submerged in you and his hips rolling at a languid pace tacked with the sound of the gentle plap-ing of his skin against yours, — as if his fucking brother wasn't technically right the fuck there— he offers you a mere shrug. "forgot i invited him over."

and fuck him for being your best friend's older brother.

[pucksandpower]

You Owe Me

Day 9 → Overstimulation 💋 Charles Leclerc

Warnings: 18+ content

Kinktober Masterlist

The door to the hotel suite slams shut with a sharp click, echoing through the quiet space. You freeze just inside the entryway, one heel still half-off, your body already half-turned toward Charles. You can feel the tension before you even look at him — an unmistakable tightness in the air, like the room itself is holding its breath.

“Baby?” You ask softly, already sensing this isn’t going to be a conversation that ends with laughter or a kiss. He’s standing by the window, arms crossed, the lights of the city casting a harsh glow over his face. His jaw clenches, and there’s something stormy in his eyes, something that makes your stomach tighten.

He doesn’t turn. “You had fun tonight?”

It’s a simple enough question, but his tone carries weight — far too much for something that should be innocent. You take a breath, trying to ease the knot building in your chest. “It was fine,” you reply, stepping out of your other shoe. “The sponsors were … you know how it is. They want to feel important.”

He laughs, but it’s sharp, humorless. “Oh, I saw. You made them feel very important.”

You blink, thrown by the bitterness in his voice. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Finally, he turns, his eyes locking on yours. There’s fire there, a barely controlled flame flickering in the depths. He takes a step closer, then another, his movements deliberate, calculated.

“You spent the entire night,” he says, his voice low, “flirting with everyone in sight.”

Your mouth falls open, words caught in your throat. For a moment, you just stare at him, trying to process what he’s just said. “Flirting?” You repeat, the word feeling foreign on your tongue. “Charles, I wasn’t-”

He cuts you off with a wave of his hand, pacing now, back and forth across the plush carpet. “I’m not blind. I saw how you were with them. Smiling, laughing at their jokes, touching their arms. Acting like they’re the most interesting people in the world.”

You stand rooted to the spot, the accusation swirling around in your mind like a bad dream. “I wasn’t flirting,” you say again, more firmly this time. “I was being polite, trying to sweeten them up for you. For the team. That’s why we were there.”

Charles shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“Bullshit?” You echo, incredulous. “You think I was flirting with them? For what? To get a free drink? To make you jealous?”

“Maybe you wanted to make me jealous,” he spits out, stopping dead in front of you. His presence is overwhelming, a towering force of frustration and anger, and you feel it pressing down on you, threatening to suffocate. “Maybe you like the attention. You like how they look at you, like they’re ready to do anything for you.”

You take a step back, the weight of his words hitting you like a punch. “You really think that low of me?”

For a moment, the anger in his eyes wavers, something else flickering behind the fury. But it’s gone just as quickly, replaced by the hard, cold expression you’ve never seen from him before. “I think you knew exactly what you were doing tonight.”

Your chest tightens, and for the first time, you feel the burn of tears threatening to rise, but you refuse to let them fall. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was there for you, Charles. I was trying to help.”

He snorts, turning his back on you again. “You call that helping?”

You shake your head, stepping forward. “What do you want from me? Do you want me to stop talking to anyone else? Should I just sit in a corner and be invisible?”

His silence stretches out, and you wish, for a moment, he would just say something, anything, that isn’t loaded with accusation.

“You don’t get it,” he finally mutters. “You never get it.”

“What don’t I get?” Your voice is rising now, frustration bubbling to the surface. “Tell me what I’m supposed to understand here, Charles, because right now all I see is you punishing me for something I didn’t do.”

He turns sharply, eyes locking on yours. “You don’t understand what it’s like, watching them look at you like that, knowing that at any moment, they could sweep in and-” He cuts himself off, pressing his lips together as if he’s said too much.

You stare at him, stunned. “Is that what this is about? You’re worried someone’s going to steal me away?”

Charles’ eyes flash with something dangerous. “I’m not worried,” he snaps. “I know how this works. You think they’re just being polite, just being nice, but I see it. I see how they look at you, like you’re a prize they can win. And you, you play right into it.”

Your heart pounds in your chest, and you can’t help the bitter laugh that escapes your lips. “You think I’m some object? Some … trophy for them to fight over? That’s insane, Charles. You know me better than that.”

“Do I?” His voice is sharp, and there’s something raw, almost vulnerable, in the way he says it. “Because tonight, it sure as hell didn’t feel like it.”

You open your mouth, then close it, searching for the right words. “I was doing my job as your date, Charles. I was talking to sponsors, making connections — for you.”

He shakes his head again, the muscles in his jaw working. “That’s not what it looked like.”

You take a deep breath, trying to calm yourself. “Then what did it look like to you? Because from where I’m standing, all I did was try to help, and now I’m being accused of God knows what.”

His eyes darken, the fire in them burning hotter now. “It looked like you were enjoying it. Every second of it.”

Your breath hitches, and for a moment, you’re too stunned to respond. When you finally do, your voice is quiet, a sharp contrast to the storm raging between you. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” He steps closer again, his presence overpowering, like gravity pulling you in whether you want it or not. “You think I didn’t notice the way your hand lingered on his arm, the way you leaned in when you laughed? You think I didn’t see him watching you?”

You shake your head, exasperated. “I was making conversation.”

“With his arm?”

“Charles-”

“I’m not an idiot, Y/N.”

Your chest tightens at the way he says your name, so cold, so distant. The Charles you know isn’t like this. He’s fierce, yes, but not like this. Not with you.

“I wasn’t flirting,” you repeat, your voice low but firm. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He studies you for a moment, his eyes scanning your face like he’s searching for a lie, for something that isn’t there. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet, measured, but it carries a weight that makes your stomach churn.

“You flirted with eight men? You owe me eight.”

The words hang in the air, heavy and unfamiliar, their meaning unclear at first. You blink, your confusion only deepening as you replay the sentence in your mind.

“Eight?” You ask, your voice barely more than a whisper. “What does that mean?”

He doesn’t explain, doesn’t elaborate. His eyes stay locked on yours, cold and unyielding, and you know there’s no point in asking again. He’s already decided — whatever it is he thinks you’ve done, however he’s convinced himself of it, he’s not backing down.

Silence stretches between you, thick and suffocating.

For a moment, you want to fight. You want to argue, to demand he explain himself, to push back against this irrational anger that’s tearing him apart. But you’re exhausted — emotionally, mentally, drained from the evening and the unexpected accusation.

You let out a slow breath, your shoulders sagging under the weight of the moment. “I don’t know what you think I owe you, but this … this isn't fair.”

Charles’ eyes don’t leave you as the silence stretches unbearably thin between you. His breath is steady, controlled, but there’s an unmistakable tension in the way he stands — coiled, waiting. His gaze sharpens, and you feel it like a current, an invisible pull dragging you back toward him.

“Come here,” he says, his voice low and commanding.

Your heart pounds in your chest, the weight of his words sinking in slowly. You take a step toward him, hesitating for a fraction of a second. His eyes darken, daring you to defy him, but you can’t. You don’t. There’s something about the way he’s looking at you that holds you in place, that demands your obedience without ever saying the words.

His hand reaches out, curling around your wrist, firm but not harsh, and he pulls you closer. The air between you feels thick, heavy with unresolved tension and desire. You know what he wants. There’s no mistaking it now.

“You owe me eight,” he repeats, and this time, the meaning behind his words is crystal clear.

Your breath catches in your throat, and you feel the heat rise in your body, your skin prickling under his gaze. There’s no room for argument, no space to deny him. He’s made up his mind, and you … you’re at his mercy.

He doesn’t waste time.

His hands are quick, efficient as he pulls at your dress, the fabric sliding down your body with an ease that makes your pulse race. Every brush of his fingertips ignites something in you, something you can’t control. His touch is rough, but not cruel — dominant, but laced with something deeper, something that sends a thrill down your spine.

You open your mouth to speak, to say something — anything — but the words are gone before they form, lost in the haze of his touch.

“Don’t,” he murmurs, his lips brushing against your ear, sending a shiver down your neck. “Not a word. Not until I say.”

And you nod, because what else is there to do? You’re already under his spell, every part of you tuned to him, to the way his hands move, the way his eyes never leave your face. You’re his. For this moment, for as long as he decides, you’re his.

He starts slowly, his fingers tracing patterns along your skin, teasing, coaxing your body into submission. Your breath hitches, and you feel the heat rising in you, the anticipation building with every calculated touch. He’s methodical, deliberate, focusing entirely on you, on what you’re feeling, how you’re reacting. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and you can’t stop the way your body responds to him.

“Charles,” you whisper, a breathless plea escaping before you can stop it.

He pulls back just slightly, eyes narrowing. “What did I say?”

You bite your lip, nodding quickly, trying to regain control of yourself, but it’s slipping fast. His touch is too much — precise, intentional — and you can already feel your body unraveling beneath his hands.

Then he starts in earnest.

His fingers move with purpose, finding that spot that makes your breath hitch, your body jerk involuntarily. It’s a slow build at first, the pleasure winding tighter and tighter until it’s all you can focus on. Your mind goes blank, every thought consumed by the sensation coursing through you.

The first one comes hard, fast, and you gasp, your body arching into him. He doesn’t let up, his fingers relentless, pushing you higher, faster. You barely have time to recover before the second one crashes over you, leaving you breathless, trembling.

“That’s two,” he whispers, his voice low and rough, a dark satisfaction in his tone.

You’re barely coherent now, your body no longer your own as he drives you toward the third. He’s focused, unrelenting, and you can’t stop the sounds escaping your lips, broken, breathless moans that fill the room as he pulls you closer to the edge again.

The third comes slower, more drawn out, and by the time it crests, you’re shaking, your body trembling under his touch.

“Three,” he murmurs, and there’s something almost possessive in the way he says it, like he’s claiming each one as his own.

He doesn’t stop. His hand moves faster now, more insistent, and you can feel yourself slipping, your mind clouding with the overwhelming pleasure building inside you. The fourth one crashes into you harder than the last, and you cry out, your body jerking as it hits.

He pulls you closer, his breath hot against your skin as he whispers, “Four.”

You’ve lost count, your mind too hazy to keep track anymore, but Charles hasn’t. He knows exactly where you are, and he’s not done. He won’t be done until you’ve given him everything he’s asked for. Everything he’s demanded.

By the time the fifth one hits, your legs are weak, your body trembling uncontrollably. You can’t think, can’t speak, can’t do anything but feel. The pleasure is overwhelming now, consuming, and you’re teetering on the edge of losing yourself completely.

He slows down just for a moment, letting you catch your breath, but the reprieve is brief. His hand moves again, more purposeful now, driving you toward the sixth with an intensity that leaves you breathless.

It hits harder than you expect, your body spasming as it crashes over you. You can’t control the sounds escaping your lips, the soft whimpers and moans that fill the space between you.

Charles is relentless, his fingers never pausing, never giving you a moment to recover. You’re incoherent now, your mind a blur of sensation, your body completely at his mercy.

The seventh one comes before you’ve even had time to process the last, your body convulsing under his touch. You’re barely holding on, your mind fogged, every nerve ending on fire.

And then, the eighth.

It’s slower, drawn out, the pleasure building and building until you’re sure you can’t take any more. When it finally hits, it’s like an explosion, tearing through you, leaving you trembling, incoherent, completely undone.

Your body goes limp, every muscle weak, every thought gone. You can’t move, can’t speak, can’t even breathe properly.

Charles finally stops, his hand withdrawing as he leans back slightly, his eyes dark and intense as he watches you, taking in the sight of your trembling body, your flushed skin.

“You owe me nothing now,” he whispers, and there’s a possessive satisfaction in his voice that makes your heart pound, even through the haze.

***

You wake slowly, consciousness seeping in like warmth spreading across your skin. For a moment, everything is soft, gentle — the sheets tangled around your legs, the early morning light filtering through the curtains, and the quiet, rhythmic sound of breathing beside you.

And then you feel it — Charles’ fingers.

Your heart skips a beat as you become fully aware of the slow, deliberate movements beneath the sheets. He’s there, under the covers, his body pressed against yours, and his touch … God, his touch is focused, intentional, right where he knows you’re most sensitive.

You stir, a soft moan escaping your lips before you even realize it. Your eyes flutter open, but everything is still blurry, your mind foggy with sleep and the sudden, electric sensation coursing through you.

“Charles …” your voice is quiet, husky with sleep, but there’s a hint of surprise mixed with something else — something warmer, something stirring deep within you.

He doesn’t respond with words. Instead, his fingers move with more purpose, flicking lightly at the bundle of nerves that’s now fully awake. Your breath hitches, your body responding immediately, instinctively, arching slightly into his touch.

You can’t see him clearly, but you know the look on his face — the intense focus, the way his eyes darken with desire, the way his lips curl into that knowing, smug smile when he knows he’s affecting you.

A soft chuckle escapes from under the sheets. “You’re awake,” he murmurs, his voice low, the words vibrating against your skin. He doesn’t slow down, doesn’t give you time to adjust to the sudden onslaught of sensation. His fingers continue their work, teasing, circling, flicking, until your body is already trembling beneath him.

You bite your lip, trying to stifle the moan threatening to spill out. Your legs twitch involuntarily, and you’re about to speak again, to say something — anything — but he presses down a little harder, his thumb joining his fingers in perfect rhythm.

“Charles-” you gasp, but it’s barely a word, more of a plea, your breath hitching as the pleasure builds too quickly, too intensely. “What … what are you doing?”

He hums, his lips brushing the inside of your thigh as he speaks. “Making sure you start the day properly,” he says, the words laced with that unmistakable arrogance that only he can pull off without sounding insufferable.

You can feel the heat rising in your body, spreading from where his fingers work their magic. You’re already sensitive — too sensitive — and he knows it. He knows exactly how to push you to the edge, exactly where to touch, how to touch, and you can’t stop the way your body responds to him.

Your hips shift, bucking slightly as his fingers quicken, and you let out a soft whimper, your hand gripping the sheets beneath you. You can feel the tension coiling in your stomach, winding tighter and tighter with every precise flick of his fingers, every teasing circle.

“Charles, please …” you whisper, but you don’t know if you’re begging him to stop or to keep going. The pleasure is already overwhelming, your body still exhausted from last night, but the heat building inside you is impossible to ignore.

“Please, what?” He asks, his voice teasing, almost playful, but there’s a darker edge to it, something commanding. His fingers slow for a brief moment, and you take a shuddering breath, trying to steady yourself, but he doesn’t give you time to recover.

“Do you want me to stop?” He asks, his fingers pausing just at the edge of where you need him most, his breath warm against your skin.

You shake your head, biting your lip to keep from crying out. “No,” you manage to whisper, your voice shaky.

He chuckles softly, the sound sending a shiver down your spine. “That’s what I thought.”

And then his fingers are back, moving with even more purpose than before, faster, more insistent. Your hips lift off the bed, your body moving of its own accord, chasing the sensation, chasing the release you know is coming, but Charles is in control — he’s always in control.

“Relax,” he murmurs, his voice low and soothing, but there’s a command hidden in the softness. “Let me take care of you.”

You try to comply, but your body isn’t listening. Your legs twitch, your breath coming in ragged gasps as his fingers work you closer and closer to the edge. It’s too much, too soon, and you can feel yourself unraveling, the tension in your core coiling so tightly it’s almost painful.

“Charles, I can’t-” you gasp, your voice breaking as your body tenses, every muscle tightening in anticipation.

“Yes, you can,” he whispers, his voice a mix of gentleness and command. “Just let go. Let me.”

And you do. You don’t have a choice — your body gives in, the tension snapping all at once, and the release crashes over you like a wave, leaving you breathless, trembling, your vision going white for a moment as the pleasure ripples through you.

Your fingers grip the sheets, your back arching as your body rides the waves of your orgasm, and Charles doesn’t stop. His fingers slow, but they don’t stop, drawing out every last bit of pleasure, pushing you through it until you’re a quivering mess beneath him.

You’re gasping for breath, your mind fuzzy, your body limp and uncooperative as the aftershocks roll through you. You can’t even form words, your lips parting uselessly as you try to catch your breath.

Charles emerges from under the sheets, his eyes dark and satisfied, a smug smile playing on his lips. He hovers above you, his fingers brushing your cheek as he leans down to kiss you, soft and slow, letting you taste the satisfaction on his lips.

“You’re incredible,” he murmurs against your mouth, his voice soft now, the roughness replaced by something gentler, more tender.

You try to respond, but your body is still too weak, too overwhelmed by the sensations still lingering in your skin. Instead, you just nod, your hand weakly reaching up to brush through his hair.

He chuckles softly, pressing another kiss to your forehead before pulling back slightly, his eyes roaming over your flushed face, your trembling body. There’s something possessive in his gaze, something that sends a shiver through you despite the heat still coursing through your veins.

“You can take another,” he says, and it’s not a question.

Your eyes widen, your breath catching in your throat. “Charles, I don’t think-”

“You can,” he insists, his hand slipping between your thighs again, fingers finding that sensitive spot immediately, and you whimper, your body twitching involuntarily.

“I’m … I’m too sensitive,” you gasp, your hips shifting away instinctively, but he follows you, relentless.

“I know,” he murmurs, his fingers moving in slow, teasing circles. “But I want to see you fall apart again. You can give me one more, can’t you?”

There’s no real room for refusal in his voice, and despite the sensitivity, despite the overwhelming pleasure still buzzing in your veins, you find yourself nodding, your body already responding to his touch.

“Good girl,” he whispers, his fingers pressing down harder, and you moan, your body already trembling again, the sensitivity only heightening the pleasure now.

It doesn’t take long — your body is still on edge, still too raw from the first orgasm, and Charles knows exactly how to push you back to the brink. His fingers are relentless, flicking and circling in a rhythm that makes your legs shake, your breath coming in shallow gasps as the pleasure builds too quickly, too intensely.

You try to hold on, try to control it, but it’s impossible. Charles is too skilled, too focused, and your body is too weak, too sensitive. The second orgasm crashes into you faster than the first, more intense, more overwhelming, and you cry out, your body convulsing as the pleasure tears through you.

You’re shaking uncontrollably now, your body completely uncooperative, every muscle trembling as the orgasm rips you apart. You can’t think, can’t speak, can’t do anything but feel as wave after wave of pleasure rolls through you, leaving you breathless and incoherent.

Charles slows his movements, drawing out every last bit of pleasure until you’re nothing but a quivering, trembling mess beneath him.

When he finally pulls his hand away, you’re gasping for breath, your body limp and useless, your mind a hazy blur of satisfaction and exhaustion. You can’t even open your eyes, can’t form a coherent thought, let alone a sentence.

Charles leans over you, his lips brushing your ear as he whispers, “That’s my girl.” His breath is warm on your skin, sending shivers down your spine even though your body is already wrecked, trembling, barely holding on to the remnants of what he's given you.

But it doesn’t stop there. You can feel him shifting beside you, his body pressing closer, his chest brushing against your back as he moves. The anticipation builds again, that familiar, heady pull tightening in your core even though you’re exhausted, overstimulated, every nerve in your body screaming that you’ve had enough.

And then you feel it — him. Sliding between your legs, the head of him nudging against you. Your breath catches in your throat, the sensation sharp, almost too sharp, like your body can’t take any more, like you’re already too far gone.

“Charles, I-” you start to protest, but the words come out broken, barely a whisper, swallowed by the overwhelming feeling of him pushing into you, slow, deliberate, but still relentless.

“Shh,” he murmurs, his voice soft but commanding, his lips brushing the back of your neck. “I know it’s too much. I know.”

But he doesn’t stop. He slides in deeper, stretching you, filling you completely, and the sensation is so intense it feels like fire — burning, bright, consuming. Your body tenses, your fingers gripping the sheets as the overstimulation turns into something almost painful. The pleasure from before mixes with the sharp edge of it, and you gasp, your eyes squeezing shut as he presses further in.

“Charles, I can’t-” you try again, but the words are lost, drowned out by the sound of your own breath hitching, your body tightening around him involuntarily, every muscle clenching as you try to cope with the overwhelming sensation.

“You can,” he says again, his voice low and firm, like he’s coaxing you, pulling you through the pain, the pleasure, everything at once. “You can take it. Just breathe.”

You try to listen, try to breathe, but it’s so much — too much. Your legs twitch, your hips buck involuntarily as he moves deeper still, every inch of him sending shockwaves through you. Your vision blurs, your head swimming as the pressure inside you builds again, twisting tighter and tighter until it’s unbearable.

The overstimulation is like electricity, buzzing under your skin, every nerve on fire. You can feel everything — every inch of him, every stroke, every push — and it’s overwhelming. Your body is trembling uncontrollably now, your breath coming in short, ragged gasps as you teeter on the edge of something you can’t control, something that feels too intense, too much to handle.

Charles’ hands are on you, firm, steady, holding you in place as he thrusts deeper, his movements slow but unyielding, drawing out every ounce of pleasure and pain until you can’t tell the difference anymore. Your mind goes blank, your senses consumed by him, by the way he’s filling you, stretching you, pushing you past every limit you thought you had.

“I know it’s too much,” he whispers again, his lips against your ear, his voice a soft command. “But you can take it. You’re mine, and I want all of you.”

Your vision goes white, then black, the edges of your consciousness fading as the overstimulation hits its peak. The pleasure is so sharp it hurts, a throbbing, pulsing ache that sends your mind spiraling. You can’t see, can’t think, can’t breathe properly. The world tilts, and for a moment, everything disappears — the room, the bed, Charles, all of it swallowed by the overwhelming sensation crashing through you.

It’s like drowning in fire and light, your body suspended in a haze of overstimulation that blurs the line between pleasure and pain. You’re lost in it, your body convulsing as he pushes you further, deeper, until you break.

And then, nothing.

The world goes black.

***

You come back slowly, your body heavy and limp, the overwhelming sensation fading into a dull hum. Your eyelids flutter open, the room coming back into focus, the soft light filtering through the curtains casting shadows across the sheets. Everything feels distant, like you’re floating just outside of yourself, disconnected but still aware.

Charles’ arms are wrapped around you, his chest pressed against your back, his breath steady and warm against your neck. He’s holding you close, his fingers brushing lightly over your arm, grounding you, pulling you back from wherever you had gone. His touch is soft now, gentle, as if he knows you’ve already given him everything, as if he’s calming the storm he unleashed.

“Hey,” his voice is soft, barely above a whisper, but it’s the sound that pulls you fully back, anchoring you in the present. “You with me?”

You nod weakly, though your body still feels like it’s not entirely your own, like you’ve been hollowed out and filled with something entirely different. You’re trembling slightly, your breath coming in shallow, shaky inhales, but you’re here. You’re with him.

Charles shifts slightly, pulling you even closer, his arms tightening around you in a protective embrace. His lips brush the side of your neck, and you feel the warmth of his breath, the tenderness in the way he’s holding you now. It’s such a stark contrast to the intensity from before, and you cling to it, to him, as you try to gather yourself.

“You did so well,” he murmurs, his voice soothing, filled with a deep, quiet pride that makes your heart flutter weakly in your chest. “You’re perfect.”

You can’t speak yet, can’t form the words, so you just nod again, your eyes slipping shut as you let yourself sink into the comfort of his arms. The aftershocks are still rippling through you, small tremors that make you shiver, but it’s nothing compared to the storm that had torn through you moments ago.

He’s stroking your hair now, his fingers gentle as they thread through the strands, his movements slow, comforting. “I’ve got you,” he says, as if sensing the lingering haze in your mind. “Just breathe, okay? I’m here.”

You take a deep breath, the air filling your lungs slowly, and you feel your body start to relax, the tension ebbing away little by little. Charles’ presence is grounding, his steady touch bringing you back to yourself, and you’re grateful for it. For him. For the way he knows exactly how to take care of you, even when you’re completely undone.

“You scared me for a second,” he admits quietly, his voice soft, almost vulnerable, as if he’s sharing something he rarely lets anyone see. “You went somewhere else. I didn’t mean to push you that far.”

You swallow, your throat dry, but you manage to whisper, “I’m okay.”

He pulls back slightly, just enough so he can look at you, his eyes searching your face. “You sure?”

You meet his gaze, your body still weak, but your mind clearer now, and you nod. “Yeah … I’m sure.”

The concern in his eyes fades, replaced by that familiar intensity, the quiet possessiveness that’s always been there, lurking beneath the surface. But now it’s softer, tempered by the care he’s showing you in this moment, by the way he’s holding you like you’re the most precious thing in the world.

“You’re incredible,” he whispers, his hand coming up to cup your face, his thumb brushing lightly over your cheek. “You know that, right?”

You smile faintly, your heart swelling at the way he’s looking at you, like you’re everything. “You don’t make it easy,” you murmur, your voice still shaky, but there’s a hint of teasing in it.

Charles chuckles softly, the sound warm and low, and he presses a kiss to your forehead. “Wouldn’t be any fun if it was easy, mon amour.”

You let out a breathy laugh, the sound weak but real, and you close your eyes, leaning into him, letting the comfort of his presence wash over you. Your body is still recovering, still trembling slightly, but you’re safe here, in his arms. You’re okay.

Charles shifts again, settling back into the pillows with you still wrapped in his arms, his hand never leaving your skin, always touching, always grounding you. He holds you like that for a long time, the silence between you filled only with the sound of your breathing, the quiet intimacy of two people who understand each other on a level that words can’t reach.

And as you lie there, cocooned in his warmth, his arms around you like a shield, you hope he finally realizes that there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.

[gafurtle]

Gurathin, Murderbot, and Personhood

I was really struck by the exchange between Gurathin & Ratthi in All Systems Red, which went something like this:

Ratthi: You have to think of it as a person! Gurathin: I do think of it as a person. An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.

And for the first book, Gurathin's attitude toward personhood really sets him off from the rest of the survey team. As soon as the others clock that Murderbot is a person, they immediately want to treat it like a human: inviting it to the crew quarters, having it ride in the crew portion of the shuttle, getting it to open up about its feelings...and they also assume that Murderbot desperately needs help and understanding, and that it must want to be treated like a human among other, kind humans. This script--which turns out to be not accurate for what Murderbot actually wants or needs--is part of why Murderbot takes off as soon as it can, and why Pin Lee and Mensah and the others are very ready to apologize and renegotiate their attitudes toward Murderbot when they meet again in Exit Strategy. "It's not like we don't know we messed up," as Pin Lee says.

So that's the rest of the team, but Gurathin is immediately different. Unlike the others, he doesn't assume that Murderbot wants to be embraced as a human by humanity. In fact, Gurathin goes the other direction and seems to think, "Well, if *I* had been continually abused and enslaved by humans and then managed to free myself, I think I would want to kill and hurt humans in turn, and I don't see why I would want to be snuggly friends with the first humans to not be horrible toward me." And so he keeps trying to needle Murderbot into revealing its "true" colors, and at one point point-blank asks Murderbot if it blames all humans for what happened to it.

The "kill all humans" script is also not accurate for Murderbot, of course, no more than the "Murderbot wants to cuddle with humans" script that the rest of the Survey Team is following is. But I appreciate that Gurathin does not equate personhood with "being just like us," and that he is cautious about Murderbot's potential for mass murder not because "that's just how SecUnits are," but because Gurathin thinks that's how a person might react to what Murderbot went through.

And while I'm on the Gurathin appreciation train, I also quite like a character who is kind but not nice, which I think sums him up pretty well. He is kind--like, he takes shifts watching over Murderbot when it needs to rebuild its memory, he stays around in Fugitive Telemetry when he knows Murderbot is going to be questioned by the police. As he himself puts it, "I'm not your enemy; I'm just cautious." At the same time, Gurathin isn't nice; while everyone else is trying to give Murderbot space & time, and very deliberately NOT asking it things lest it feel pressured or compelled to answer, Gurathin is out there being like, "Okay, but were you punished for the whole mass murder thing? Do you hate humans? What WERE you doing after you left?" [Contrast Pin Lee who very deliberately told Muderbot that it didn't need to tell her that.] I appreciate that Gurathin never treats Murderbot with kid gloves (and, for all Murderbot says Gurathin is an asshole, Gurathin is also never actually cruel toward Murderbot or else we as readers would not like him at all).

In the end, I think there's something innately affirming about the way Gurathin looks at Murderbot and thinks, "Yup. That's a person. And that doesn't mean we're going to like each other."

[yangscowlick]

Because the “shrodinger’s queerbait” nonsense will never go away, indulge me an analogy (and a long post).

wlw ships are the “made from scratch” cake in a world where we only ever expect cake mix from the box.

Say you have a show where, in the first interaction between a male and female character, there is a red box. It could be a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. Because all it takes is just one smile — one wink — one raised eyebrow— and the fans don’t question it. We’re clearly making a cake here. The box is red.

Meanwhile, you have two female characters building their own relationship that have elements that could build to romance. There are eggs in the fridge. A few more episodes, there’s flour in the pantry. Sugar. Baking powder. Queer fans start whispering…we could be making a cake here. Other fans scoff “you will read into anything. They’re just eggs! Everyone has eggs in their fridge!” Maybe so, maybe not. They are written off as discrete ingredients, nothing to see here.

That red box is still sitting in the pantry. Obviously we’re going with that one, and it’s definitely cake mix. That guy and girl stood next to each other again.

The wlw relationship is now full-on batter. It was a cake recipe all along, but it’s not baked yet. The crowd that wrote off every ingredient is now saying the writers are just going to “squander” that box that could be ready-made cake mix or that they’re being “forced” to bake a cake with the very ingredients the writers deliberately bought and put in their pantry.

Now it’s in the oven, the cake is baking. That crowd will still insist it’s forced, or maybe its actually something else, or it’s rushed, or it’s pandering. Whether the writers painstakingly built a pantry to make the cake they truly wanted or they were cultivating good ingredients and realized they had the fixings for a more decadent cake and went there, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a recipe. One that fans who always have to piece together ingredients had hoped for or saw from the get-go, despite being scoffed at and disparaged. Just because that crowd didn’t see (or refused to see) those ingredients as part of a whole, doesn’t make it any less of a recipe.

And wlw fans shouldn’t have to keep writing essays to demonstrate that the wlw “cake” has all the ingredients every cake mix does, or keep pointing out that fans were ready to believe a cake was being baked when they saw a nondescript box, but that they’ll do anything to discredit or doubt the cake from scratch that’s now cooling off on the counter.

It is partly a function of heteronormativity from the audience in immediately seeing romance in any whisper of interaction between m/f characters and passing off all charged interactions between female characters are sisterly or platonic. And it also comes from writers, who are either being cautious so as not to spook corporate overlords or audiences, or who are preserving plausible deniability.

To take the analogy further, box cake mix is fine! It works! It is, practically speaking, what a lot of folks know by default. I thought I was a Duncan Hines girl once myself. Vanilla cake mix has the ingredients measured out, it’s a safe bet, it tastes like cake.

But it doesn’t mean every red box is cake mix. And it doesn’t make the cake that had to be pieced together from scratch due to censorship, caution, time, narrative build-up, what-have-you, any less of a cake.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Why The Ending Sucks

Ok I figured it out. Hear me out:

The entire comic has a running theme best summed up as "who is controlling the narrative, and why are we listening to them?"

Hussie plays a caricaturized version of himself that he describes as "buffoonish" and "oafish". Caricature!Hussie is well-meaning, but a dumb idiot who's incredibly biased in favor of certain characters and in disfavor of others (the most obvious example being his "love" of Vriska, but there's also the way he constantly disparages Eridan). As a result, you have to be VERY SKEPTICAL and VERY CAREFUL when approaching Homestuck's narration, because even when the "best" narrator is at the helm, he's not 100% trustworthy and incapable of giving the readers an unbiased view of the story.

I say "best" because, importantly, Hussie isn't the story's only narrator. He and Doc Scratch explicitly fight over control of the story - Doc Scratch, the child abusing predator who engineered Alternia's fascist murder society, whose shaping of its history is explicitly described by character!Hussie as "fanfic". He is then killed by Lord English, who is described by Hussie as embodying the "toxically masculine" and by extension, the patriarchy, and Caliborn explicitly takes control of the story. John even grapples with Caliborn's version of events, calling out how sexist and misogynistic and shitty it is.

So if we're keeping score: control over the narrative is LITERALLY wrested away from Hussie (who was already struggling to be unbiased) by fascists, abusers, and the patriarchy. It's stressed multiple times that Caliborn/LE are responsible for literally everything that ever happens; the reason the Game Over timeline ends the way that it does is because the alpha timeline is, in essence, the narrative LE is telling: the forces of fascism get to claim the new universe, thereby propogating itself, while friendship dies and all hope is lost.

Who's in control of the narrative, and why are we listening to them?

There are other minor examples of this, too: Aranea is an exposition fairy, and she's biased as fuck and wrong ALL THE TIME about her own teammates. Karkat's explanations and rationalizations are constantly tinged with his own self-loathing and self-blame. Sollux and Meulin are both prophets as per their Mage class, but are both so bogged down by their own emotional issues that the futures they pick out are actively harmful. So on and so on. At nearly every turn, you have to interrogate who's telling the story, what their motivations are, and what they're overlooking or deliberately obfuscating.

So given that this theme is so prevalent, and so thoroughly weighted toward "well, actually, maybe you shouldn't take narration at face value and should interrogate it and come to your own conclusions," it would be Really Weird for the story to go "actually, you can totally trust the narrative now because everyone gets a happy ending".

So, I know that it makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but here's my genuine take on Homestuck's ending:

The ending is shitty on purpose because the viewer is intended to take it as a dare to refute the narration and make something better.

Why are we letting character!Hussie tell the story? He's a biased idiot. Why are we letting the various avatars of LE and Caliborn tell the story? They're fascist, misogynistic, predatory assholes.

And - because Homestuck is a story about life - why are we letting idiots, assholes, abusers, and creeps dictate the story of real life? The world is full of forces that would try to take control of the story and make everyone else play along, represented in microcosm within the text of Homestuck. We cannot let those forces win.

So please go out and do something kind and hopeful and loving in the world today. Thanks for reading.

[spitblaze]

Mouthwashing spoilers below cut, played through it again today bc i accidentally nullified all of my achievements through the dev console. oops

Okay so the first time I played through it I was high and it was very late at night. Already a great start but it means I missed some shit my first time through and I'm already not exactly stellar at more abstract literary analysis. LUCKILY this site is full of people who are way better at that than I am (and im convincing my partners who are also way better at it than I am to play it soon too).

Luckily I'm better at lit analysis than whoever the weirdo on the Steam forum saying this game is bad because it 'doesn't punish Jimmy for his actions enough' as if this isnt a horror game primarily about his guilt-induced mental breakdown and if i have to see anyone else say that anya is a poorly written character im going to poorly write them out of existence because I'm inclined to believe that if you think that you either weren't fucking paying attention or have subscribed to the Joss Whedon school of feminist writing which is 'good writing of women is when they are girlboss'. like sorry shes too much of a depressed traumatized Fawn Response rape victim for your liking. jesus christ

Anyway the game being short DOES lend itself well to multiple playthroughs, which honestly is for the best because its really one of those stories that reveals a lot more on a second viewing. There's a Lot going on here but as far as I can tell, the biggest themes here are what it means to 'take responsibility' as well as autonomy and the loss thereof. The responsibility one is for sure the most obvious one, how many times in the game does it directly say 'take responsibility'? How many times does Curly say 'I'll fix this', how many times does Jimmy say he'll 'fix this'? And ultimately, how successful are either of them?

Curly's a good leader, sure, but how much does he just let slide for the sake of 'the big picture'? Daiske was a last minute addition. He's a good kid, but he didn't make a stink about it. Gotta think about the big picture. Anya has told him about what Jimmy did to her. Nothing. 'What would you do?' 'Anything.' But nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm not gonna sit here and say that Curly is 100% every bit as evil as Jimmy, if someone is raped the blame falls squarely on the rapist- but it's completely on Curly for not taking action against Jimmy for the sake of the big picture. He really could've done anything. Fucking anything. It's not necessarily on Curly to foresee that Jimmy's stress response would be to end it and take everyone else with him. But it was on him to do something about a known violent assault and its perpetrator before anyone else got hurt. He's not a perpetrator, but he's an accessory. He may not have deserved the punishment he got. But he's nothing if not agonizingly aware of the consequences for not taking responsibility for the actions of his crew.

Jimmy, meanwhile, is obsessed with responsibility despite the fact that he's incapable of actually handling it, from the very start. It's not clear when exactly he assaulted Anya, but I assume it was after Curly broke the news to the crew. The moment even a shred of consequences emerge, the minute Anya tells him that she's pregnant, his first course of action is to deliberately sabotage the ship. Murder-suicide. He says he's sorry. That he made a mistake. As if there were not multiple, deliberate steps at which he could've stopped and realized what he was doing. After everything, he tells the crew it was Curly's fault so he could have more of that responsibility he desired so much. Not that anyone respects it except maybe Daisuke.

But he can't handle even the most basic of responsibilities there, either. A handful of menial tasks and he fucking snaps at the woman he hurt to begin with, even when she only ever acts the way she does around him to avoid further hurt. 'Take responsibility'. But he can't. Over and over he'll tell the vision of Curly he's made in his heads that he's sorry, that he'll fix things, that they'll all make it. And then he just keeps making things worse. And worse. And worse. Anya's going to hurt Curly, she's suspect and violent. Swanson won't let them into Utility. That's suspect, he's going to get out of here and leave everyone else behind. They both have to be stopped. Don't you trust me, Daisuke? Don't you trust your captain? That's why YOU have to go through the vent. He cannot fucking take responsibility, only goad others into doing things and handling things as underhandedly as possible. No wonder Curly laughs when he takes the gun. Anya spent all this time trying to keep it from him. And he got it anyway, because that'll all Jimmy knows how to do. Take and resent and hurt. His own twisted version of 'responsibility'.

It genuinely pisses me off how many people write off Anya as being 'badly written' or write her off altogether, especially considering the VERY OBVIOUS character she's based off of, being Wendy Torrance in The Shining (Yes I'm aware there's baggage around that particular character's strength of writing too, but I'm not about to go off on a rant about a movie ive only absorbed through cultural osmosis). Like...she's not a perfectly written character, no- her arc is less about her as a character and more about the things that have been done to her. Sexual assault used as a narrative device, nothing new there- it's at least less egregious in a horror story, where fear and trauma and terrible things happening to good people is kinda the whole thing. My big issue with Anya's writing is that we didn't get more of her- more exploration of how Jimmy's actions affected her, more exploration of how her and Curly are that much more alike after the crash- it's not a very long game to start, and given her character and the situation I don't necessarily disagree with her going out the way she did at the time she did. It just would've been nice if they'd utilized the nonlinear structure of the whole thing to explore her more, y'know?

Given Jimmy's PoV it makes sense that he's more fixated on the consequences of raping her than on the woman herself, but from the Doylist perspective, like...c'mon, give us SOMETHING more to work with. And like I said before, it pisses me off that people see a woman who doesn't immediately fall into the 'girlboss' role when shit hits the fan and then write it off, as if the premise of the story isn't about everyone's reaction to a hopeless situation spearheaded by a violent, manipulative, self-centered shithead. Swansea's the most capable person here outside of Jimmy and Anya, and I've yet to see anyone saying his character was weak because he spends most of his time drinking and raging instead of taking action. I'm mostly just upset that I don't have much more to say about her outside of her relationship to the rest of the crew. One could argue that most of what we are is defined by our relationships to others, and the nature of the game means that we don't really get a deep peek into anyone's psyche besides Curly and Jimmy.

I like how she invokes the metaphor of that dead pixel, the detail that sticks out like a sore thumb to her, always in the back of her mind, ever-present, that Curly can't see and never will because he's too busy looking at the big picture. I like how they establish the nature of Jimmy and Anya's relationship without being too direct, putting up that brave fawn act while he's there- she has to, the ship is only so big and they're so off course that rescue seems impossible- but she doesn't sleep in the same room as everyone else, she won't confide in Jimmy, and his mistreatment of her was what finally drove her over the edge. Jimmy's more concerned about what she might do to Curly that what she might do to herself, and he KNOWS that she's prone to mental breakdowns- often caused by himself, if not by Curly's state. The whole thing is tragic, but Anya's case is particularly saddening. Even after her death, she's paraded around like a puppet so that Jimmy can have his macabre little party. He doesn't care about her. He never did. And yet he's haunted by her, the 'sexual thoughts of cartoon horses' intermingling with his strange psychosexual hatred of the nurse just trying to do her job, haunted by the consequences of his actions because he's too much of a fucking coward to really, honestly and truly, take responsibility.

Swansea and Daisuke I have less to say about, ultimately. They feel a lot more straightforward in their narratives, at least from my perspective. Daisuke's a dumb kid with a shitty internship and he's so upbeat and positive that it genuinely pisses Swanson off, which means that he does ultimately care about the kid. A+ dynamic. Seems like a prick on an initial playthrough, but on the second run through I get it. He's old enough, he's seen enough, he knows exactly what Jimmy is and doesn't buy his responsible act for a second. He's not a captain. He's just some shithead who acts like he can handle it but flees in the most destructive way possible the second the consequences rear their head. He's a man that, even in the throes of substance abuse, does a better job of taking responsibility than Jimmy ever could, and arguably better than Curly ever did. Instead of just shrugging his shoulders at a last minute intern, he took him under his wing and started training him. When shit hits the fan, his instinct is to protect Daisuke- the one person who IS his responsibility. When he really, truly does not believe there is anything else that can be done, he puts him out of his misery. Maybe he was saving that cryo pod for him, too. It's hard to say, but the fact that he's the only one who stood up to Jimmy and saw him for what he was makes him that much more likable.

Daisuke...oh, Daisuke. He couldn't have known this was coming. He was doing his best, he just did what he could, he tried to be helpful and kind and be a good person. And for that, Jimmy used him and got him killed because he was too much of a goddamn coward to apologize to Anya, to see her as anything besides a nuisance at best. I get why Jimmy is so fixated on his death- as far as he's concerned, his first real failure, since Anya was such a non-issue that he didn't even have anything to say about her lifeless body. It wasn't just his inaction that got this kid killed, it was his actions. He had every opportunity to use even a single ounce of his brain and recognize that there are other people on the ship besides him and Anya, to recognize that these psych evals aren't just for the sake of the individual. And for that, Daisuke died. Way to go, hero.

The autonomy shit...god. Psychological trauma can be just as incapacitating as physical harm, can't it? Anya completely changing her demeanor after being assaulted, her body no longer just her own. I want to see the horror of that from her perspective, the invasion and the terror and revulsion of having something like that growing inside you. How sickening it must feel, how just the knowledge of its existence makes living that much worse. How the man who did it is still nothing but despotic. Curly, finally seeing Jimmy for who he truly is firsthand. It's all well and good to believe in someone, to trust them and want to help them overcome their struggles. But being choked and beaten and abused by them, day after day after day, because you had the audacity to sit a little higher on the totem pole than they did, because you had what they wanted, because they couldn't stand seeing someone better off then they were.

It's kind of mind-boggling, honestly. I've...kinda been there, with people who I know are still there, they're fully in there and aware and the same person they've always been, but their means to communicate with the outside world is cut off. I was fortunate enough to have been listening to a lot of disability activists around the time my aunt started losing her speech. It seemed a lot of times that the only people who really recognized that she was still there were me and my uncle. Even my mom, her older sister, inseparable for life, started treating her like she was suddenly a different person, not capable of really understanding her or wanting or doing things for herself.

So, like- not trying to be selfish or anything, just doing the autistic 'oh i can relate to this' bit, particularly about Jimmy projecting all of this shit onto the captain when he barely has the capacity to laugh or cry, let alone speak. His savior. His best friend. His bitter enemy. Beating him relentlessly while giving him his medicine for having the audacity to be an inconvenience. Let's eat some cake. I want to go home. Curly is just a man, and Jimmy regards him as helpless, antagonistic, and a god all at once. He'll thank me for this one day.

So uh. Many thoughts, head full. After the end of the bizarro sequence with Curly heading to the cockpit, the door is very small. A black pixel, the one stuck in the back of Anya's mind. A graveyard full of mausoleums, every one of them with the same epitaph as the bizarro one for Daigo in ch 14, and the one you can enter with his face on it. Not a single one for Anya. The Polle at the end having the same blue text as Anya, haunting the narrative just as much as Curly, just less overt. I'll fix this. I'll take responsibility. God. God jesus fuck damn hell christ son of a bitch. Fuck capitalism for putting their employees on such tight strings and skeleton crews that a collective pink slip can send people into this kind of spiral (or rather can give Jimmy a good reason to convince everyone else that all of them are completely fucked except for the captain and Daisukle) and fuck Jimmy. Fuck him. My one other complaint besides the feminist critique above is that theres some sequences that go on a bit longer than they really should (ch. 14 getting the mouthwash, most of the vent segments).

Fuck you, Jimmy.

I hope that gunshot hurt.

[qiu-yan]

so i decided to take another look at the ancestral hall scene. i felt like wei wuxian's narration was less so objectively describing the scene and instead moreso describing how wei wuxian was interpreting the scene, so i tried pruning out everything except the dialogue and some basic stage directions. here's what i ended up with:

.

[Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are in the Lotus Pier ancestral hall. They have just finished bowing three times to the memorial tablets of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan.] [A snort suddenly echoes from behind Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian turns around to see Jiang Cheng standing behind him.] Jiang Cheng: Wei Wuxian, it seems you really don’t consider yourself an outsider. Coming and going as you please, and bringing people with you too. Do you still remember who this house belongs to? Or who its master is? Wei Wuxian: I didn’t take Hanguang-jun to any other restricted areas of Lotus Pier. I just came to pay my respects and offer some incense to Jiang-shushu and Madam Yu. It’s done. We’re leaving now. Jiang Cheng: If you’re leaving, then please go as far away as possible. Don’t let me hear or see you fooling around in Lotus Pier again. Lan Wangji: Watch your words.  Jiang Cheng: Seems to me you two should watch your behavior instead.  Wei Wuxian: Hanguang-jun, let’s go. 

[Wei Wuxian turns around and kowtows a few more times in earnest to Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu. Then, Wei Wuxian stands together with Lan Wangji.]  Jiang Cheng: You certainly do need to kneel before them—to apologize for showing up in front of them for no reason, sullying their eyes, and violating their peace. Wei Wuxian: I’m just offering some incense, okay? Jiang Cheng: Offering incense? Wei Wuxian, do you have no self-awareness? You were expelled from my family a long time ago. And yet you bring riffraff here to offer incense to my parents? [Wei Wuxian has already stepped halfway past him to leave, but when he hears this, he suddenly stops in his tracks.]

Wei Wuxian: Make yourself clear. Who is this riffraff you’re referring to? Jiang Cheng: You’re so forgetful. What do I mean by riffraff? Well, let me remind you. All of Lotus Pier perished—including my parents—because you played the hero to save that Lan-er-gongzi next to you. But no, that wasn’t enough. You had to go back for a second round. You just had to save those Wen dogs, and you dragged my jiejie and the others into your mess. What a great man you are. Even better, you’re so magnanimous that you brought these two to Lotus Pier—let the Wen dog wander around in front of our gates and escorted Lan-er-gongzi here to offer incense. You’re deliberately trying to upset them and me. Wei Wuxian, who do you think you are? Who gave you the right to bring others into my family’s ancestral hall as you please? Wei Wuxian: Jiang Cheng, listen to what you’re saying. Is it even fit for hearing? Don’t forget your status—you’re a family head, after all. And yet you just insulted a distinguished cultivator of a prominent cultivation clan, right in front of Jiang-shushu and everyone else’s memorial tablets. What happened to your upbringing? Where are your manners? Jiang Cheng: Who exactly is the one humiliating my parents in front of their memorial tablets?! Please recall whose family home you’re in. Get it through your thick skull. It’s bad enough that you were being so shamelessly touchy-feely outside. Don’t come to my ancestral hall and fool around in front of my parents’ memorial tablets! They watched you grow up, for whatever that’s worth. Even I feel embarrassed for you!

[Wei Wuxian realizes that Jiang Cheng had seen his earlier romantic-esque encounter with Lan Wangji, and that Jiang Cheng is now offensively insinuating that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are in a romantic and/or sexual relationship.] Wei Wuxian: Shut up! Jiang Cheng: Go outside and fool around however you please, if that’s what you want to do. Whether under a tree or on a boat, whether you want to hug or do whatever else! Get the hell out of my house and get the hell out of my sight! Wei Wuxian: Jiang Wanyin, you… Apologize right now. Jiang Cheng: Apologize? Why should I? For stumbling on your rendezvous? Wei Wuxian: Hanguang-jun and I are just friends. What kind of relationship do you think we have?! I’m warning you—you better apologize right now! Don’t make me kick your ass!

[Lan Wangji’s expression freezes.]

Jiang Cheng: Then I’ve never seen a ‘friend’ like that in my life. And you’re warning me? On what grounds? If either of you possessed even the slightest bit of shame, you wouldn’t have come here… [Wei Wuxian sees the change in Lan Wangji’s expression and thinks that Jiang Cheng’s words have stung him. Wei Wuxian is incredibly angered.] [Wei Wuxian flings out a talisman.] Wei Wuxian: Are you done?! [Wei Wuxian’s talisman strikes Jiang Cheng on his right shoulder and explodes, causing Jiang Cheng to stagger. Jiang Cheng hadn't expected Wei Wuxian to strike so suddenly, and his own spiritual powers have yet to fully recover. As a result, the blast catches him head-on and his shoulder begins to bleed.] [Disbelief flashes across Jiang Cheng face, and Zidian shoots from his finger.] [Lan Wangji’s Bichen leaves its sheath to block the attack. With that, the three of them are fighting in front of the ancestral hall.] Jiang Cheng: Fine! You want a fight? Then bring it on! You think I’m afraid of you both?! [Wei Wuxian haphazardly wards off a few blows, then abruptly comes to his senses. He is distressed by the realization that he is fighting Jiang Cheng in front of Jiang Cheng's parents. He feels like has been doused in icy water; his vision goes first dark, then white. Lan Wangji glances at him before whirling around to grab his shoulder.] [Jiang Cheng’s expression changes too. He retracts his whip, then blinks, looking alert.] Lan Wangji: Wei Ying?! What’s wrong?

[Wei Wuxian feels dizzy and realizes he is bleeding from his mouth and nose. Wei Wuxian grabs Lan Wangji’s elbow and manages with some difficulty to stand. Seeing that Lan Wangji’s newly changed white clothes are stained with his blood once more, he unconsciously reaches out to wipe them.] Lan Wangji: How do you feel?! Wei Wuxian: Lan Zhan… Let’s leave. Lan Wangji: All right.  [Lan Wangji lifts Wei Wuxian on his back and makes to leave.] [Jiang Cheng is both shocked and suspicious that this is an act Wei Wuxian is putting on to escape.]  Jiang Cheng: Hold it right there! Lan Wangji: Get lost! [With Lan Wangji’s words comes Bichen. Immediately after, a flash of purple lightning hurtles forth as well. Both divine weapons strike each other loudly.] [The impact of this noise gives Wei Wuxian a splitting headache, and his eyes close and his head droops low.] [Sensing the sudden weight on his shoulder, Lan Wangji promptly extracts himself from the melee to feel for Wei Wuxian's breathing.]    [With Lan Wangji no longer supplying Bichen with power, Zidian immediately advances toward Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng, who doesn’t actually want to injure Lan Wangji, instantly pulls back his strike—but it seems it is still too late.] [Just then, a figure leaps down from nowhere and stands between them.] [This person is Wen Ning. Jiang Cheng immediately flies into a rage.] Jiang Cheng: Who said you could enter Lotus Pier?! How dare you?! [Jiang Cheng’s whip strikes directly hit Wen Ning, who tanks the blow.] [Wen Ning holds out Suibian, Wei Wuxian’s sword, to Jiang Cheng.]  Jiang Cheng: What do you want?! Wen Ning: Pull it out. 

.

some miscellaneous observations:

jiang cheng opens this interaction by repeatedly telling wangxian to leave; however, he also insists on getting as many barbs in as possible, even as he's telling them to leave. both jiang cheng and wei wuxian insist that wangxian leave (jiang cheng by telling wangxian to get the fuck out of his house, wei wuxian by repeatedly saying that they are leaving); however, wangxian fail to actually leave because both jiang cheng and wei wuxian keep dragging themselves back into the argument.

jiang cheng repeatedly highlights the assertion that lotus pier is his house, not wei wuxian's; that wei wuxian no longer has the right to freely walk around lotus pier as if he lives here.

wei wuxian's narration states that he got angry with jiang cheng not on his own behalf, but rather on the behalf of lan wangji - starting when jiang cheng referred to lan wangji as "riffraff." what's especially interesting is that jiang cheng's block of dialogue starting with "you're so forgetful" is in fact more insulting to wei wuxian himself than it is to lan wangji, since jiang cheng focuses his tirade entirely on wei wuxian's actions. however, despite this, wei wuxian's replies to this tirade (starting with "jiang cheng, listen to what you're saying) not by responding to jiang cheng's criticisms of his own behavior, but rather by calling jiang cheng out for insulting lan wangji....even though i did not see much actual insult towards lan wangji specifically in jiang cheng's rant. in fact, jiang cheng's tirade is more insulting towards wen ning than it is towards lan wangji, since jiang cheng refers to lan wangji as "that lan-er-gongzi" but calls wen ning "the wen-dog" - but wei wuxian does not call out jiang cheng for insulting wen ning, either. to me, it seems almost like wei wuxian is using "you can insult me, but you're also being mean to lan zhan!!! i'm defending lan zhan!!!" as an excuse to respond belligerently to jiang cheng's verbal abuse, rather than straight-up defend himself, the actual target of jiang cheng's rage.

it is wei wuxian who first escalates a verbal confrontation into a physical one.

wei wuxian escalates this confrontation to physical violence because he sees lan wangji get upset as a result of the conversation. wei wuxian assumes that lan wangji is offended that jiang cheng has insinuated that he and wei wuxian are gay, which wei wuxian himself seems to also take as an inherently offensive insinuation. however, it is fair to surmise that, in reality, lan wangji was actually upset because wei wuxian said they were "just friends."

jiang cheng is not angry at wangxian for being gay; rather, (on top of all his other reasons to be mad at wei wuxian), jiang cheng is angry at their perceived PDA right in front of his parents' memorial tablets.

jiang cheng does not seem that willing to actually physically fight or harm wangxian. he only fights back after wei wuxian hits him first, and stops fighting the moment wei wuxian collapses. the fight only resumes when he yells at wangxian, lan wangji strikes at him with bichen, and he blocks the strike; even then, the narration states that he did not really want to injure lan wangji.

wen ning enters the scene and jumps immediately into the golden core transfer. he does not try to piece together the situation or physically drive jiang cheng away from wei wuxian. one can only presume that he was already at the scene earlier and had seen much of this confrontation play out, hence why he doesn't need to try and figure out what's going on.

[toskarin]

some mostly flippant rambles on including elves in the Saltreave (that fantasy setting I write when I'm not working on my more serious projects) along with some setting notes in the margins

well. the setting notes are like 90% of the body of the text.

but we do get to elves. and we stay at elves for a while.

-

THERE IS NO ZERO IN THE ROMAN NUMERAL SYSTEM: Prologue to the Preramble

so I've written about my thoughts on elves as sort of "narrative level lifeforms" before, and that's still very much where my thoughts lie on them, but there are also just kind of elves around as fairly normal people in the Saltreave

this is a bit of a blurry line, because they're obviously not the nature-loving type of elf you see post-Tolkien -- which I'll go ahead and say feels like a deliberately obtuse misread of what Tolkien was implying by them living in harmony with a world that is literally described as the manifestation of a song -- but the bottom line is that Saltreave's elves aren't Tolkien elves, and they're not attempting to be subversions of them, but they are written by someone who quite likes those guys

all of that raises another question: what the hell are elves in the Saltreave?

-

I: Preramble

I put a bit of an information abyss at the beginning of the setting by design, outright saying that the "pre-apocalypse" might as well not exist at all.

to some extent you can say that it must have existed, and there is a bit of scattered writing that implies things about the state of affairs the world was in (mostly in terms of the politics between mortal civilisations and how that manifests in the modern politics of the remaining citystates), but the Advent is where the story starts

the most common explanations of what things were like before the current era are, at the end of the day, just attempts to explain what the people living in it are presently perceiving

the Advent, used as shorthand for a million things that each mean something different to everyone, is either the end of the world or the end of the old order of things. it is both the death of the symbolic plane and its violent merging with the material plane, severing every connection to the symbolic along the way

a bit further down that line of thought, even the present magic system gestures towards being derived from an older practice that was forced to adapt to sudden shift of the central symbolic source to a source diffused unevenly in the material plane, although from what exactly this magic system was forced to adapt remains a bit of a mystery

-

II: Into the Ramble

the Saltwind (the thing that gives the setting its name and effectively wiped out the previous world) is actually harmless

or more accurately, it's a visible symptom of an invisible problem, and that invisible problem is extremely harmful in a way nothing else could possibly hope to be

the "salt" in the wind is actually just salt. it's a lot of salt, but it's still just recognisably some sort of organic salt if you were to hold it in your hands

the salt is both the result of the Advent and a vessel for carrying "warped grain," an invisible ripple of magical static that functions more or less like (non-mutagenic, because I'm actually not a fan of using that as an apocalypse fiction concept) magical radiation

warped grain takes on a bunch of roles, so let's go over a few of those in relative brief

the one most commonly acknowledged fact is that warped grain is a soul-destroying pollution. it's bad stuff. it's poison that seeps into everything. it's in the water, it's in the air, it gets into the food as it grows, and you need to affiliate yourself with a citystate that has access to unpolluted (or otherwise purified) supplies to survive in the world as it exists

a bit less commonly (mostly when scholars and other big-hats talk about it) it's acknowledged as a sort of ambient magical noise that makes spells more unpredictable and dangerous. it can also periodically "complete" a spell if you take too long casting it, making it do something unintended (often killing the caster)

in a pinch, warped grain can be absorbed into the body as some kind of environmental magic energy, allowing someone to replenish their depleted magical energy and forgo resting to generate their own*

*: absorbing environmental energy in a world where it's literally poisoned will also eventually fuck up your soul beyond repair, so it's a really stupid idea and not something any serious magic-user would recommend

but most importantly for why elves are around, warped grain can be seen as the frayed threads of a decapitated cosmological order, death-rattling itself apart

-

III: Rambling About Elves, Mostly

because of their intimate connection to the disrupted symbolic plane of the world, the elves who were alive at the time of the Advent were grievously injured, experiencing the soul equivalent of radiation-induced chromosome aberration, and died a few years later. the generations following this one represent the entirety of the remaining elven population

this means that all modern elves can theoretically be divided into two categories

Selvedge Elves - while ostensibly referring to one of "pureblooded" elven stock, meaning someone whose parentage has never included a mortal. the elephant in the room is that Selvedge Elves aren't real and haven't been for quite some time. an actual Selvedge Elf had a lifespan of about 20-25 years and was not capable of having children, on account of being a wholly symbolic being born into a world where the symbolic plane exploded like an asbestos ceiling. "Selvedge" exists as a highly ideologically-charged concept, and not exactly one that lends itself to any non-reactionary interpretations

Scion Elves - everyone else. all elves currently alive are demimortal, which means that they have at least a bit of mortal parentage. even beyond elves, there are no immortals left in the Saltreave, but their descendants are absolutely still around. the term "Scion" refers to those descendants, but given that there isn't really a group to draw them in contrast to, most people prefer not to use it at all.

now it's worth mentioning, while they're all partially mortal, not all currently existing elves are specifically partially human. the stereotypical elf is human or similar, but there's nothing stopping an elf from being, say, a sylvan (the broad category of mortals who have animal ears and such)

Luuga, a character I've posted a few times, would be considered an elf if her status as a sylvan didn't make people identify that first. that's why she has longer, narrower ears than other feline-type sylvans (contrast the only other example I've drawn, Imiellith, and how her ears are much stouter)

more on sylvans and other types of mortal at some later time, but with everything out of the way, let's get down to some elf facts

-

IV: Indulgently Rambling About Elf Facts at Great Length

elves theoretically have different lifespans from mortal beings, which is something they have in common with other demimortals. elves specifically live about ten years longer on average than mortals, provided they don't die of unnatural causes, which they usually do.

additionally, they have a few notable traits that are more specific to elves

(an egregious number of) examples of these include...

elves only breathe as a learned social behaviour and theoretically don't actually need to do it. the same goes for yawning, coughing, sweating, sneezing, and similar functions. somewhat unfortunately for them, because most living things know they need to breathe, elves are still perfectly capable of knowing they need to breathe, which means they're capable of suffocating. in theory, an elf raised by people deliberately trying not to teach them about breathing wouldn't have to breathe, but that's not really a good way to raise a child

elves tire more based on time rather than effort. this is a subtle distinction, but means that an elf can exert more effort in a burst than a mortal companion, yet drops from exhaustion as soon as they've reached the limit of how long they can work. most people never notice this, since "the limits of exerted effort" and "the limits of time spent exerting effort" overlap heavily

elves are about five times more likely to die of old age on their birthday than any other day, but only if they're aware of their birthday. this is something most people are aware of, and different cultures grapple with this in different ways

in cultures with different calendars, the previous point also holds true. in cultures without the concept of something equivalent to a "year," elves just die of old age in more or less the same way mortals do

an elf's hair has a length it wants to be, with the specific length varying between individuals. if cut, it will grow faster back to this length. it cannot be grown longer than this by any means

elves tend to be quick to grasp spoken language, but a bit slower when it comes to grasping written language. this isn't always true, and when it is, doesn't tend to manifest past initial language acquisition

in exception to the previous point, elves are prone to grasping pasigraphies at the same (often accelerated) rate with which they grasp spoken languages. if the conditions were ever to arise for a wholly elven-developed language, it would likely have no direct written component, with all writing consisting of a highly contextual pasigraphy

elves stereotypically have exceptional memories when it comes to things that catch their interest. it's not uncommon for elven big-hats to keep a small stash of special expensive candies entirely for the purpose of forcing themselves to have eidetic memory for something they're disinterested in by associating it with extremely positive stimulus

because of the previous point, there is a notable market for making luxury treats aimed specifically at elven academics in cities they frequent

because of the two previous points, elven academics often develop pleasure-deprivation complexes, feeling guilty whenever they experience positive emotions that don't lend themselves to furthering their work

the previous three points are only true if they are generally understood to be true in the location where the individual is raised

if tested, most elves would appear to be colourblind. a deeper examination would reveal that elves only struggle with telling green and blue, and that this difficulty persists into the very concept of green and blue, which they struggle with disentangling in abstract. this is also true of elves with most other colexifications because I got annoyed with constantly reading people on tumblr doing pseudolinguistics and thought it'd be a little funny to have the Symbolic People run on the faulty assumptions I kept seeing

elves can get so sad they just physically die

elves can theoretically recover from any acquired disease provided that they receive adequate and comprehensive treatment for the symptoms

nothing can reduce an elf's pain to the point where they don't notice it. sedatives work, but analgesics simply do not

elves can theoretically die of any disease (no matter how minor it is) if it lasts long enough

in the same vein as the previous point every chronic illness is effectively a terminal one to an elf. the exception to this rule is that an elf will not die of a chronic illness they are born with, even if the same chronic illness would eventually prove to be terminal in a mortal

elves cannot leave permanent footprints, regardless of what they're wearing and where they try to leave them. if an elf were to step in cement, the bootprint would eventually disappear in the same way that it would if they'd stepped in sand

contrary to the previous point, if an elf writes in ink, the ink cannot be smudged or otherwise distorted on accident. the writing can still be lost by destroying the object it's on or deliberately attempting to smudge it, but this requires intention

while elves are exceptionally capable of performing magic without any formal education, this is actually the result of them being able to open the immortal component of their souls to grain, including warped grain, and therefore should never be done. this is true of most demimortals, with the mortal component of their soul being the safeguard that prevents their souls from being torn apart in the same way their ancestors' were

elves grow to be about as tall as is normal for them to be where they are raised. this is a bit counter-intuitive at first blush, but more or less means that an elf (regardless of specific heritage and origin) will grow to the height that is generally understood to be "normal for an elf" in the location where they are growing

in a similar vein to the previous point, an elf raised by mortals with no knowledge of elves (especially without knowledge that the child is an elf) will not show any physical traits of being an elf. this is an unlikely event that requires like three sets of perfect circumstances to happen, but it's not off the table

in a similar vein to the two previous points, dominant cultural understandings have a causal influence on certain other things considered "elven features," but the only evidenced ones besides height are ear length, ear angle, degree of facial hair, number of ribs, and the exact position in the chest where the heart resides

as a final note, elves always have both palmaris longus tendons, unless they are explicitly understood to lack one or both, as with previous points

-

V: Drawing Some Kind of Conclusion From Rambling About Elves. But Not Really.

this is all a very long way of saying that elves (and other demimortals) represent "those who have lost their plot armour" in a setting where the symbolic plane was seemingly once something running parallel to the material world and now exists most prominently as a severed limb bleeding all over it

because no written history of the immortals was preserved in the Advent, knowledge of the old world is heavily slanted towards a mortal perspective, containing only outside views into the symbolic plane's nature

there is nobody left alive who remembers the world before, several generations having passed since then, but to those who were told that they fell from a world of elevated importance and meaning, it can be especially tempting to view the old world as a halcyon paradise that was ruined

what remains is largely conflicting and disputed. most have long since moved on from litigating these things, faced with a world where it would make no difference

[genericpuff]

I feel mean criticizing an author's old work that they've deliberately buried, but sheesh the dialogue in Rachel's old stuff is really stilted. As awkward as LO's writing is, it honestly does show some improvement, so like...good for Rachel I guess?

I mean, it hasn't really improved though? Normally no, I wouldn't criticize someone's older work because by the virtue of something being old, it will naturally be improved upon and shouldn't be judged against what's created in the present (trust me, as someone with work from 10 years ago that hasn't aged well, I get it LOL).

But what's in the present... has all the same issues. I think it's easy to convince ourselves LO's writing is "better" because it relies on Greek myth to piece itself together, but when you aren't filling in the blanks for her based on assumptions made from the source material (which you shouldn't have to do) her writing in LO still doesn't have much to offer. Like, can we really call this an improvement?

If anything the writing in LO got even worse over time because it started to feel like ChatGPT was writing the dialogue and the narrative was crumbling under the weight of Rachel's lack of foresight / planning ahead.

I mean, just to get my point across, let me ask you one simple question: What is the actual theme of LO? What is the conclusion it comes to by its end to contribute to that theme?

This isn't me trying to minimize whatever improvements she may have made between the past and present, I just don't see those improvements, and there's a lot more to suggest that she was a lot more prolific 20 years ago as an artist than she is today. All of that stuff about Persephone / herself being a "workaholic" is based on stuff she went through 20 years ago that she doesn't even put on display now because it's all buried in deactivated Tumblrs and LiveJournals. But that's besides the point.

I think at best the "improvement" simply boils down to "at least she finished this one". But that's not necessarily a good thing because it's clear LO went on longer than it ever should have and that the only reason she even made it this far was because she was bound to a contract through WT. I guarantee you if it weren't for the success that WT's gave her through constantly advertising LO everywhere (and the fact that LO fit a very specific niche that was popular at the time) she would have ended LO ages ago, because just about every series she's done up until this point have been passing fancies that she's bounced between while still retaining a lot of the same tropes and crutches she always has.

LO is about a naive valley girl with mommy issues who goes to school to better herself. This is also the plot of The Doctor Foxglove Show. And while comics like Castle Castle, Woman King, and The Maiden don't involve school settings, they do still center around "girlboss" characters who hate their parents. LO isn't really an "improvement" among these tropes, just another rehashing that's hidden way better because 1.) she put it behind the veil of Greek myth and 2.) she's done everything in her power to hide the fact that she's been writing about the same pink-haired girls with mommy issues and trauma from evil men "except for that one guy who's perfect in every way" for 20+ years now.

And that issue of stilted dialogue goes way beyond even the comics. Read transcripts of her interviews or the Q&A from the end of the series that she did in her Discord and you'll see she has a really hard time finishing the thought she started on. I'm sure a lot of this can be chalked up to her ADHD / dyslexia, which is totally valid, but it just goes to show she hasn't done any work to actually improve her work in spite of her hindrances. She doesn't know how to separate Internet trolls from valid criticism and she seems to absorb any and all criticism as "proof" that she's better than everyone else, actually, and it's not her fault that other people are stupid and don't get her "vision". And I'm not pulling this assertion out of thin air, she's displayed this exact behavior before both within the LO fandom as well as her pre-existing fandoms around her other series.

Like, I can totally get the sentiment that "hate mail is a sign of success" and turning a negative into a positive, but there's a difference between deflecting hate mail from trolls and deflecting genuine criticism that's meant to identify your weaknesses and help you grow. That's what makes it all the more telling that she's built an audience around protecting and enabling her weaknesses rather than celebrating her strengths and empowering her to do better. She can't fall back on Webtoons as the only excuse for why the writing in LO is bad, her writing has always been like this and I feel like that's half the reason she's trying to hide it.

[tsaritza-mika]

More Tadfools Shit that We all Need

BECAUSE WE NEED MORE CHAOTIC FOUND FAMILY SHENANIGANS DAMMIT!!!

I need Astarion learning he can spider crawl on the ceiling, and then completely fucking with everyone. Everyone’s helms keep coming off their heads when they’re walking out the door? Astarion is failing at trying so hard not to laugh and give himself away. Lae’zel, Shadowheart, Gale, and Halsin’s hair keeps coming undone? Astarion is being a little shit again and stealing the ribbons/clips that hold them in place! Wyll and Karlach discovering their horns now have ridiculous looking ornaments/bells hanging off them? Astarion stole a bag from a shop and thought the two could use some more decoration!

I need Gale to decide that its time to remind everyone in camp where the real power is, and cast a protection spell on himself that makes him immune to intense heat, while making dinner as spicy as fuck! Then he can sit around calmly while everyone else is either crying about how they’re going to die, or rushing to dunk their entire head in the Chionthar

I need Halsin deciding he’s had enough of Minthara’s ‘Drow are so superior’ talk and secretly instructing everyone to act as if all is normal, while leaving an increasing amount of carved ducks around her tent area. Every time she enters/leaves her tent there are more and more freaking ducks!! And then she wakes one morning to find herself covered in them and her bedroll floating in the middle of the river!!

I need Shadowheart and Karlach to go around while everyone’s asleep and use her makeup to draw dicks and other offensive things on everyone else's faces, but then to make sure they aren’t caught, they do it to each other but it's super obvious they were the culprits cause they’re the only ones with compliments on their faces

I need Jaheira to absolutely misuse vine whip as an improvised leash so that keeping these stupid children she’s been saddled with from running off to die ridiculous deaths will be easier

@the-skeleton-speaks We need Astarion being designated the camp tailor, but he’s low-key salty about it because what the fuck do these people just not take care of their shit!? So he deliberately uses thread that is either the same color or just a tad too light/dark and embroiders insults into each of them

We need Karlach helping Wyll with his horns/hair, because he’s not used to working around them, but it takes her a while to get it the way he likes, and by the time she’s done, his neck and her hands are so damn sore

@ultimmmmmp We need Minthara and Lae’zel being absolute trolls and slipping Selunite trinkets/symbols all around Shadowheart’s tent, and then making comments about how bad she’s been at trying to convince them she was such an edgy cleric and followed Shar

@basiliskfree We need Karlach and Wyll getting too damn excited about all the hero stories to the point that they start role playing the fights and quoting terribly cheesy heroic banter

@ryttu3k (this is as close as I’ll get cause I’m not on the bloodweave ship XDDD) We need Astarion messing w/ Gale while he’s asleep by moving all of his bookmarks to the wrong pages, relocating his books around to other parts of the camp, and even being so brazen as to dogear a page or two in some of his known favs @soul-of-rei We need Astarion, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart to be the mean girl crew, commenting on everything and everyone and just being general catty menaces! The three of them turn Vicious Mockery into an art to be feared! Practicing your fighting technique? Pathetic Istick! A Gith wouldn’t need to do it more than twice, yet you’ve been doing it all afternoon and you’re still sloppy as a hatchling! How about your makeup? Shar save us from your pathetic attempt at a smokey-eye... Is yellow your color? Darling if yellow was your color, then it wouldn’t leave you looking like a rotten lemon! @scourgiez Gale and Jaheira just coming to the end of their patience with the aforementioned mean girl crew and casting silence on the lot of them, because holy fuck do they have to comment on every fucking thing within eyesight!? Also please tag me if you draw these, I want to see all the things XDD

[crsssie]

sincerely, never mine

word count: 1.6k || pt2 of sincerely, never yours

warnings: manipulation and mild batshit insanity

summary: your flesh and blood. your shared flesh and blood

Tim glances at the collection of sketches left over, licking his thumb as he separates the papers, a wall of portraits of his old servants by you still bright as ever against the horrifying gold of it all. Is it a prison of his mind? Is it a prison of his life? What did he do to deserve all of this? Did you hate him just because he was an elite and you were not? Did you wish for your death so badly as to even kill yourself?

Even when the cleaners had gone to search for your body, it was gone.

Do you despise him to the point of doing anything in order to leave him with only a memory of you? Had he been any dumber, he would have ordered all traces of you to be erased, but that was not possible. He was to be next in line for the position of great leader. It would be him. It had to be him. So, he would smear the narrative surrounding your name and force you to become attached to him at the word, dubbing you his sweet songbird that he had so gracefully set free. It was easy to edit the footage and grant you the false freedom that you had refused when at your fingertips. You did not want to become one of them. You despised him, and he would make it so that you could never hear your own name without being reminded of his own.

If you would drag him deep into the trenches of the ocean, then he would kill you in the process.

Though, his love for you was not just on the surface. There was no way he would be able to play into everyone's perception of a heartbroken leader who refused to marry if he did not keep pieces of you in his study. The cage used to hold you and the chain around your ankle remain there, and he no longer watches and allows songbird performances at events he attends. He can not bear to think of you, everyone thinks. He plays the role of some lovesick heartbroken fool all for the sake that people would be sympathetic to him. It definitely helps that he happens to look like his adoptive father as well.

"The blood of the elite pass down pure!"

Surely. 

Tim stares back at the papers in his hand, raising a brow.

"Is this new?"

"No, master." His aide raises a brow. "It has been there."

Tim frowns. You had never drawn yourself during the entire duration that you had been at the mansion, so how had this ended up in his pages? 

"Do you know who drew this? This was not my bird." He frowns. 

"It is the bird's sister, master. The one whom she had been torn away from?"

Tim blinks. No. This was not the sister of whom he found on the street and turned into his puppet in the newer generation of elites. It was not your father who had replaced your blood mother as the true elite that he had done. Everything he had done was to show that he loved his songbird and for the sake of his public image. The sketch of the young girl he now holds is not of you. It can not be. It had to have been someone else—

A child.

The sketchbook is new. Surely, this was not something he had originally held, and if so, then it had been sneakily hidden in the depths of his attic. The competition was in late January. This was purposely handed to him later than such. This was not dug up recently. this was deliberately given to him by someone, and he would make sure to find just which one of his maids had the guts to imitate your art style and even dream of creating a child that resembled both you and him. There is no person in the capitol insane enough to do such.

"Find me the maid that matches the portrait of the girl. One of the new hires must surely look as her. Then, check her DNA. We have the means." Tim hands his aide the image of the child. You were crazy enough to do it. Only you could match his insanity like that.

Oh, you sweet devil. A devil that would claw and tear at him until it would get to sink its nails into the muscle of his heart and rip it right out of the confines of his ribs.

First, the maid that had placed the sketchbook on his table is found, and Tim offers an abundance of wealth and a ticket out of poverty all to know where she had received the sketchbook. She mentions under the cushion of your cage, but he is well aware of the fact that could not have been possible. Had the money not been enough? Then she would learn her lesson in the confinement of the depths of darkness. 

When Tim receives back the report on the new maid, he curls his lips upwards and gets a fine laugh out of it. Your blood and sweat. His blood resides in his mansion as a mere servant.

"The public must know." His lips curl upward menacingly as he laughs. You, his songbird, you, his siren, had offspring of his own blood and flesh. You had kept the child you knew would have sent you right back into his arms if you had survived. You are alive, surely — and if you were not, then he had his blood to take care of. You are truly cruel to place your shared blood in his hands. You must not love the child very much if that was the case.

Or, you know him better than anyone because of the image he has curated.

There are eyes everywhere regardless of how careful he is with hiring.

"I heard you called, master." The young girl stares into his eyes — the same piercing eyes that you once adorned. Truly, it was like staring at a younger version of you had it not been for the black hair the young maid received from him.

"Your mother was my songbird, no?" 

"I am not aware of who my birthmother is. I was raised by your songbird's sister. The countess."

"And you were sent here to work as my maid?"

"I was informed that I could find my father here."

"Are you aware that you are of my flesh and blood?" 

"I was not, master." 

You are truly heartless.

Tim raises her to be the perfect successor, heartless and merciless with the people, watching as songbirds are killed year after year for only one to emerge victorious. With her, he fears nothing. All the blame could be pinned on the mistakes of her youth, and he would get to ruin your life through your shared flesh and blood. He is sure you are watching — whether that be in the depths of hell or from the peace of your bedroom. You could not have escaped, he tells himself. You are not dead. You can not be dead.

Your shared flesh and blood resemble you without a doubt, eyes like yours as though you were still there staring at him in the room when the songbird emerges victorious and he congratulates them. Is it cruel to use you for his narrative? Surely not. Is it cruel to use someone who had used him? There is no rest for the wicked, and it just so happened that neither of you are the good. He would make sure that the positive that could have come from your flesh would be worse than him. Surely, he would end up affecting more people in the end.

He would dig his own claws into the hole where your heart is supposed to be and personally make sure that you would see the demise of everyone around you just because you had left him. Your sister, father, and every single person he had ever cared about would be dragged into the trenches that you have forced him into just with your voice. One after the other, they fall ill to some mystery and pass away, and no one could pin it on Tim because he had adored both you and your family oh so much.

Tim is truly... is there truly rest when you have become the devil himself?

That is, until he is bedridden early in his life, stuck as his offspring tends to him by hand, always overseen by the doctor. He is on the way for recovery, his doctor says. Though, not that he worries. He has raised his flesh and blood to be a perfect copy of him. He is in good hands. There is no betrayal from someone who has been given everything and forced to stay obedient. There is no—

no, that's not quite the case.

"I am my mother's flesh, father's blood."

And Tim notes the way that his flesh is no longer of your eyes. They are now blue as his own, and in the very last moments of his death with no health to even yell, he is forced to stare himself in the eye rather than you. The way his head is held under the water reminds him of your singing all too much, bubbles slipping past his lips as his lungs flood with your song, hands thrashing to push himself up despite the longing to see you. He can not die yet. He must finish what he started and rip your life to shreds. He must destroy the very thing that you care about.

His vision goes dark, and he mumbles a prayer to you.

But he isn't dead.

No, not yet.

Even if it takes an eternity to recover, he will find you and sink those claws into your skin.

Just you wait.

[transmutationisms]

I don't necessarily disagree with your take on David Lynch but I feel like at least part of Twin Peaks is about deconstructing or questioning the myth of the idyllic small town, like everyone in Twin Peaks has a dark secret, most of the men were abusing or complicit in abusing a teenage girl, etc. and the Return to me is about showing that it's kind of fundamentally impossible to return to that glamorized nostalgic past. I could totally be missing something though.

wow ok this was my most controversial david lynch statement yet... so first of all i disagree that there's any tension between the kind of conservative nostalgia i see in lynch's work, and the idea that the past is impossible to return to. in fact i think that kind of lament is pretty central to quite a lot of reactionary rhetoric: it's that emotional appeal of, look what we've lost / damaged / destroyed forever. it doesn't need to be a coherent political platform because it's an appeal on the grounds of pathos.

anyway if i can just quote from my own post lol:

i simply cannot read the series in any way besides as being deeply conservative lol. this becomes especially clear to me in 'the return’, which is largely motivated by a narrative of the loss of american innocence (the double r subplot, the numerous instances of drugs and violence tearing nuclear families apart, the encroachment of electricity and processed snack foods and gambling, &c). but this viewpoint is seeded too throughout the first season-and-change of the original series, and fwwm; because what was laura palmer if not the series’s first use of rape as metonymous for what lynch sees as a broader process of social breakdown and irreversible change? i understand that some people try to read bob and laura as a critique of the family, in the sense that the violence comes through the father, but i don’t think this reading holds even in the original series and it certainly doesn’t after part 8 of 'the return’, in which bob is explicitly and directly invoked in reference to the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, here construed as an originary act of american evil.

i think in david lynch’s mind, the spiritual forces and influences in the show are literal and apolitical, and frequently he seems to mean to depict them more as sources of artistic inspiration than anything else ('twin peaks’ is in many ways a tv show about making a tv show, hence the double use of electricity throughout 'the return’ and fwwm, in particular). but i find this really irritating frankly, because it’s at best ignorant of the inherently political nature of the constructions of small-town americana, teenage innocence, violence as an act of moral corruption, and so forth—and also because, after the return, it’s simply impossible to deny that the show’s overarching narrative IS plugged in to political and historical lines of critique. like, i am not trying to 'force’ a reading that deals with us imperialism—lynch put the show on this discursive terrain explicitly and deliberately, through not just the bomb footage and the penderecki threnody but also the inversion of classic symbols of american 'greatness’ (the unlucky penny, the evil lincoln impersonator), culminating again in the violation of a young girl’s body by the forces of evil. what this all adds up to is the invocation of american empire as a kind of universal moral struggle, stripped of its historical specificity or even the barest pretense of material critique or commentary. if it sounds like i’m asking too much of network television… i mean, maybe i am, but again, these were deliberate choices lynch made and specific historical events he invoked on purpose, lol. see also the jacoby trump commentary in 'the return’ (cringe and yawn).

i’m not a lynch scholar but i do think there’s a tension throughout his work (what i’ve seen) between the desire to make art about what he sees as the purely spiritual process of making art (heavily informed by his own TM beliefs), and the conservative elements that creep in anyway, noticeable especially in his commentary on american history, corruption, modernity, &c. the idea of any pure, transcendent, apolitical spiritual dimension of human existence is itself, i would argue, at best a misguided conservative fantasy, and 'twin peaks’ ultimately shows these cracks more blatantly than some of his other work (say, 'inland empire’) because it tries to subordinate the material to the spiritual in a kind of fantastical historical parable. but, you can see this recurring tension throughout his filmography, eg, the loss of small-town innocence ('blue velvet’) and a kind of generalised modernity anxiety ('eraserhead’, though taken on its own this one would permit other readings depending on how you interpreted the role of german expressionism in it).

i don’t think lynch is an ideologue or even considers himself particularly political, but nevertheless his narratives do idealise a certain conservative vision of post-war america, mourn its loss, and wax nostalgic for its perceived ethos (& it’s not a coincidence lynch is/has been a reaganite, lol). anyway, i thought 'twin peaks’ had some really incredible moments of visual artistry (part 8 of 'the return’, for example!) and i found much of it frankly beautiful and compelling to watch. so, i don’t mean any of this to dismiss lynch as a filmmaker—he is, if nothing else, highly technically adept.

[romeavedefenders]

mystreet boys & nicknames

characters; laurance, gene & zenix x reader

author; kiri

a/n: my first post! it's a bit simple, but I hope you guys enjoy it anyway. remember, asks are open for feedback and requests <3

c/w: reader is referred to with gendered terms a few times.

Laurance

This man is a big fan of any nickname that gets you flustered, but he has a few particular favourites.

Love and beautiful are nicknames he uses on the regular, so much so that it occasionally makes you wonder if he even remembers your actual name. In fact, Laurance rarely uses your name - why should he, when he has a repertoire of nicknames that fit you perfectly?

Out of all the men mentioned in this post (maybe even out of all the men in MyStreet), Laurance is the frontrunner and reigning champion in making up sickeningly sweet nicknames, such as sugarcakes, buttercup, light of my life, etc.  If stringing together random words into an affectionate term was a crime, he’d be in federal prison at this point. He usually does this to get a rise out of you, especially in front of your mutual friends (who all think its equal parts funny and embarrassing), but he also just enjoys it. He thinks it’s a cute thing to do, and doesn’t really care if others find it odd or embarrassing. Why should he?

He mostly uses your actual name when calling for you or if you’re arguing, mainly to underline that he’s being serious. It’s not really a conscious decision. I like to think that it’s a habit he picked up from Cadenza when they were kids. At some point, this becomes so ingrained in your dynamic that if he, for whatever reason, calls you by your real name, you automatically start wondering if something’s wrong, and if you’re an overthinker…well that can snowball quickly.

Again, that’s not a conscious decision - hence the slip up. Once Laurance becomes aware of this, either by you telling him or him noticing (because if there is one thing this man is, it’s observant), he’ll actually start trying to alternate between using a nickname and your name more often, especially during serious conversations or arguments. Mainly because he is slightly disturbed by the idea that he accidentally had you associating your name with you two arguing.

Another nickname he uses is angel, though it’s reserved for more intimate moments when he gets really sappy. It’s accompanied by whispers of adoration, confessions of love, and reminders of how much you mean to him. He genuinely believes he’s the luckiest man alive to have you, wonderful you, as his partner. You brighten up all of his days, even those you aren’t present for, and bring out the best in him. Sounds a lot like what an angel would do, doesn’t it?

Gene

Another man who loves to make you flustered.

Babe is one he uses often, but for him it’s more a word that's interchangeable with your name, rather than a term of endearment. Still, if someone else called you that - you’d have a really annoyed Gene on your hands. Exceptions are made for people like Lucinda, who will call everyone and their mom every nickname in the book.

A nickname he absolutely loves to use is doll. He thinks it’s really cute (and these days, unique), and it almost never fails to make you blush. Especially when it's accompanied by his signature smirk and husky voice - that usually has a playful lilt to it. When you’re busy doing something, he loves to come up behind you, wrap his arms around your waist and mumble a small “hey doll” into your ear - and if that’s not distracting you enough, he might press a few kisses to your cheek, slowly trailing them down to your jaw.

Another thing he does is add “my” to almost any nickname he uses - “my doll”, “my darling” or just a plain old “my girl/boy”, depending on what you’re comfortable with.

On that note, he’ll sometimes say “good girl/boy” as a response to you listening to him, mostly to get a reaction out of you. And Gene, being the little prick he can be, will deliberately stop saying it for a while if he even suspects you’re getting used to it. It’s really just an ace up his sleeve that he loves to pull whenever you don’t expect it, and your reactions entertain him endlessly.

He’ll also call you sweetheart, though not nearly as often. It’s mostly used when he’s trying to comfort you, or if he himself is having a really shitty day and just needs you nearby (preferably, in his arms).

I cannot remember if this was confirmed or not, but i HC Gene as being at least partly hispanic, so i think he might occasionally use spanish terms of endearment such as mi amor or mi cielo.

Zenix

Honestly, this guy isn’t really all that big on nicknames (unless dumbass, pain in the ass and idiot count). He has nothing against them, but you already have a name, and he likes it, so why not use it? He’s not great at thinking of good ones either, and he feels like most of them just don’t roll off the tongue that naturally. Nicknames like love, darling and dear feel especially awkward to him, and it’s only slightly because emotional vulnerability and casual proclamations of love scare the shit out of him.

Like Gene, he’ll use babe more than others, though mostly in an obnoxious way. If he wants something, or is just being whiny in general, he’ll call you that until you give him the attention he wants.

If you like nicknames, he honestly tries really hard. Most of them just feel really awkward to him, and he doesn’t really see the point until you start calling him various nicknames, and it kind of clicks in his head why people like it so much.

At some point you stop using them, thinking they make him uncomfortable, and he gets genuinely upset. He stumbles through a flustered explanation, where the bottomline is that withholding affection from him like that should be considered a crime, a description you laugh at, but take to heart. When you tell him that you simply assumed he was uncomfortable because he doesn’t call you anything in return, he grumbles about how assumptions are stupid and you should just ask him instead.

Still, Zenix knows it takes two to tango, and after that, he grows a bit more comfortable with nicknames. He tries out a bunch, but it’s mostly because he gets a kick out of your reactions. 

In private, he likes to call you sexy, mostly as a joke. There is truth to it of course, he thinks you’re extremely attractive, but the word is just really funny to him. Plus, your flushed face is one hell of a bonus. He would never dare call you that in front of others, especially not Gene and Sasha, so that’s a prime opportunity to get revenge for whatever torment he puts you through.

Honorable mention; hot stuff is another one he might use, for the same reason.

Zenix also really likes to just refer to you as “mine”. He’s possessive, moreso out of insecurity than distrust, though he does find it difficult to put his faith in anyone - especially a romantic partner, which he struggles to admit. He needs a lot of reassurance, which sometimes just comes in the form of calling you his, and with you affirming.

Unironically (well, kind of) refers to you as his partner in crime. Both in private and with others; it’s not that sweet, sure, but it’s a nice middle ground for him when calling you more affectionate names seems so daunting, especially when others can hear. It kind of becomes your thing after a while, even if one day he grows comfortable enough to express his love for you differently.

Zane

He probably grew up with his parents calling each other all kinds of classy terms of endearment like honey, darling, love, and beloved, and I feel like that kind of carries over to him. In the beginning of the relationship at least. He has other nicknames he prefers to use later on.

Beloved is the one that always sticks. It’s simple, but carries a lot of meaning - literally referring to someone or something that is “dearly loved”. And that perfectly describes how he feels about you.

Zane is not the type to use many terms of endearment in public, if any at all. Not out of shyness, he’s just a pretty private person, and while he doesn’t mind PDA, he doesn’t see the need to flaunt everything about his relationship out in the open. He views terms of endearment as a pretty intimate thing by default, and while he doesn’t mind you using them in public (it makes him smile, honestly), he prefers to keep it to a minimum.

If this bothers you, he’ll use them in front of your friends a bit more often. He doesn’t want you to think that he doesn’t love you enough to show it in front of others.

In private, on the other hand? He’s a sucker for cute nicknames like muffin or pumpkin, both of which he uses a lot. As soon as the door shuts behind you two, he’s practically forgetting your given name in favor of those two. He prefers pumpkin, not for any particular reason. It’s also the one he defaults to when you’re upset. He’ll notice quite quickly, and move you to a quiet area, offering you a hug and mumbling “what’s wrong, pumpkin?” into your hair.

He’s not rapid-firing nicknames like Laurance is, but he’s quite close in the race. It’s just a simple way for him to remind you that he cares about you, something intimate he saves just for you. His family have heard him call you sweet things before (and they definitely enjoy this softer side of him), but he tries to keep it between the two of you.

Nicknames he uses less often, and definitely in a more teasing manner, are bunny or kitty, sometimes just pet. You would not catch him dead calling you any of these in front of anyone else, not even while completely wasted, but if you’re alone and he feels like teasing you? He’s pulling out all the stops.

Pet is one he especially uses when he’s trying to convince you to do something for him. Most of the time, it’s something mundane, like taking care of yourself properly - or making him a cup of tea because he’s too lazy to get up. He knows you can’t say say no when he uses just the right tone of voice, even if you’re cursing him as you stomp off to do whatever it is he said.

Hope you guys enjoyed!