#its like i can feel the anxiety building up and up and it is crippling me
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dream-launch · 2 years ago
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So far behind in uni work and have done absolutely nothing for the past near two weeks of break I love wasting time
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inukag-archive · 8 months ago
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Hi, I’m looking for fics where Kagome and/or Inuyasha deal with depression/anxiety. I like longer stories but one-shots are totally fine too. I would prefer stories from before 2019 so there’s no Yashahime influence. Also please no sessrin in the recs. Thank you so much!
Hi anon, thank you for the ask! Most of the fics we could find that fit your criteria are one shots, but there are a few longer stories sprinkled throughout. In order to provide more reading material, we split the list into stories written in 2019 or earlier and stories that were written after 2019 but contain no references to Yashahime (characters, plot, or otherwise). There shouldn't be any SessRin references in any of the fics either.
This is a difficult subject to search for without having read a story in its entirety, so we strongly encourage anyone who knows of any others to leave more recs in the reblogs/replies!
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[2019 or Earlier]
He Just Wouldn't Stop by @artistefish (G)
Just because she's back doesn't mean there aren't scars. Some wounds take more than time to heal, and some never heal at all. A post-canon look at an unexpected repercussion of Kagome's three year absence.
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Guilty Hero by Eggry (T)
The city is recovering after a crippling war against Naraku. But while time moves on, Inu-Yasha doesn't. Plagued with guilt over a terrible deed, alcohol is his only escape from the nightmare of reality. At their wit's end with him, Sango and Miroku are on the verge of giving up until Kagome Higurashi arrives to take him under her wing.
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Sleep, My Dear by Stars_Sky_See (T)
Kagome was quickly adjusting to her new life with the help of her now husband. Life had all around been easier since her return and everyone was grateful. However, life wasn’t so merciful, with every two steps forward there was always one step back.
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The Ghosts of Suicide Forest by @splendentgoddess (T)
Aokigahara, known by some as Suicide Forest. It is a place of mystery, beauty and death. Roughly 100 people go there annually to commit suicide, but why? The better question, though, is can Kagome find and rescue Yuka before it is too late?
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Broken Glass by SleepWalkingChickens (M)
Growing up is hard, especially when things are changing. Kagome is plunged into a new world, complete with new problems. The past is hard to let go of and baggage builds up. Unravel it and you’re met with truth. Can love win over Inuyasha's sins?
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It Goes Like This by @witchygirl99 (G)
It goes like this.
“Hey! I haven’t seen you in a while!” Kagome exclaims, smiling at him. Her eyes are dark brown and beautiful, captivating.
Five different answers pop into his head, all of them friendly and inviting for conversation. It’s not what comes out.
Inuyasha isn't the main character of anyone's story. With Kagome, that feeling starts to change.
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[Post 2019 w/ No Yashahime References]
Pictures of Happiness by @memilylove (M)
The loss of his high school sweetheart changed more than Inuyasha realized. With the encouragement of friends, he finally gives himself another shot at getting help. The path is not easy, but he soon finds that perhaps there is a point to all this. Is it really possible to be happy again and to find that you love another?
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Other Reasons to Stay Awake by @ajoy3fanfics (NR)
Kagome suffers from PTSD after she returns to her side of the well
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Shattered by My-Crazy-Awesome-Sox (T)
Oneshot: Leading a double life has got to be stressful. What happens when it all starts falling apart for Kagome? Everything has been pent up for too long, and now it's all crashing down around her. For anyone who's ever had a breakdown...
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A Horse With No Name by @roseheartwhitefox (T)
The story of what happened to Inuyasha after Kagome disappeared when the well closed for 3 years, heavily referencing the episode "The Old Sugarman Place" from "BoJack Horseman". I feel as if after everything that happened and Kagome disappeared, Inuyasha would need time to grieve the loss. This is that story. Deals with themes of depression, loneliness, and loss. 
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Stay by @akitokihojo (G)
He nodded again, pulling away to gently press his forehead to hers for a moment. "I get it." Inuyasha breathed before leaning back to look her in the eyes. "But, one of these days you'll understand that no matter what happens, I won't take a damn thing back. You'll see that I don't want it back. I feel like my heart's safer with you, anyway."
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Kagome's Unwitting Depression by @cstormsinukagblog (M)
Kagome sees something that she isn't meant to see, and it kind of breaks her. Can she and Inuyasha repair the damage before she gives up hope?
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Breaking the Habit: Rewrite by @kstewdeux (M)
After being separated for six years, Inuyasha and Kagome are reunited on her side of the well. TW: SI, Mental Illness.
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The Voice Inside My Head by @fawn-eyed-girl (E)
When Kagome returns to the Feudal era a week after a particular nasty fight with Inuyasha, he realizes something’s not right. Is it too late for Inuyasha and Kagome—have the years of fighting broken them apart for good? Or will they be able to find a way forward, together?
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Feel free to add your own recs in the comments or reblogs! Check our Masterlist of previous lists to see which topics we've covered.  After reviewing our submission guidelines, send us an ask (here).
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cipheramnesia · 1 year ago
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Evil Dead Rise makes for an interesting entry in the series, in that it sits somewhere around avoiding the shortcomings of Evil Dead 2013, but missing some of the better choices as well.
Overall, it's a good entry, not great, but good. Just off structure we have a solidly made film, everyone handling their roles well along with the Evil Dead lore (such as it is), which results in something that feels of a piece with the general setting (in particular the fairly unique nature of Raimi's "deadite" entities), with an interesting twist to the setting. If you liked the original Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2013, you'll feel right at home. If you're more a fan of Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, you'll probably find it mediocre but enjoyably gory.
Of the structural shortcomings, it's broad references to the original trio of movies feel forced, and unnecessary. The chainsaw and shotgun feel out of place and it would have been better served with trying to locate something more original and iconic - although it's hard to think of anything more iconic than a chainsaw in the horror genre. Regardless, leaning too heavily on these references took away from its shot at being its own movie. And in much the same way as Evil Dead 2013, it dwells too long on its opening suspense and dramatic build-up. However, as a credit, this first act is handled substantially better, with the cast being much stronger overall and a competent layering of the backstory into the script.
A throughline of the Evil Dead movie is human connections, whether it is love or family, as well as finding ways to live with deeply wounding personal trauma. Even the cartoonish Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness are distinguished by a kind of passage through death or confrontation with the self, or both, which evokes the underlying deeper ideas of how we are human, and what we leave behind as we grow and change. And in all of these films, what ultimately serves to keep the protagonist(s) alive is some form of human connection pulling them back from the brink of or literal death, giving them the motivation to claw back an inch and survive, become more human, push the literal demons which easily represent metaphorical torment back.
When it comes to the nature of gore and horror movies, it's common for it to be dismissed as unnecessary or gratuitous. However, in well made movies gore is the paint to express passionate, wild emotions. The cathartic release of watching demonic entities get torn to pieces reflects the feelings of overcoming our own inner conflicts. Gallons of blood overwhelm and and threaten the protagonists in these films, and it's in no way an excess insofar as it can capture the feelings of struggling in modernity whether anxieties, depression, or trauma.
If we look to the original series, Ash is faced with the more common worries of 80s movie audiences, burgeoning sexuality mixed in with genuine feelings of caring and wanting to be a more significant partner to his lover. He's faced with the idea of becoming a monster to her, of losing his mind, metaphorical emasculation and being literally crippled, and of course the looming specter of death which always haunts sex. In Army of Darkness, one could similar imply the new worry is growing up, becoming an adult, taking on bigger responsibilities than mere partnership, and facing down his own past mistakes.
While in 2013 the more specific looming worry is addiction and more generally the way we sometimes gradually drift apart from friends in high-school and college. The addiction itself can be seen as a false representation of that part of the past, something that seems wonderful if you can forget the parts of it which hurt. And in similar ways, I would suggest Rise evokes the modern anxieties over reproduction. A newer fear under a form of capitalism where income dwindles away while prices skyrocket, the two protagonists' source of security and comfort and hope one by one are taken by a cruel and malevolent force which seems to mock them as they're consumed. It ravages bodies and even when brutally ripped apart it seems impossible to destroy.
However, Rise is lacking in two substantial thematic elements which keep it from hitting quiet as high a note as it ought to. One missing piece is that there is not quite any kind of death or confrontation of the old self, which is a substantial set piece of all the films. In this case, I think Rise could have slipped around it, but nothing filled in the gap. The transition from victim to defender of the main protagonist consequently feels slightly less potent than it should, although strong performances and excellent scripting make this a minor quibble. More significantly is the failure to utilize the literal crippling of the protagonist in context of the larger theme of the movie. In Rise our main protagonist is both pregnant and is trying to protect a child - two elements which could have served as enticing stand-ins against the other movie's dismemberment of the protagonists. Unfortunately, it fails to utilize either element in a way that felt more effective than a basic part of the plot structure - which is fine, and the result is a good movie which could have been great.
Minor odds and ends. I remain frustrated Evil Dead 2013 didn't get a chance to continue, as it had huge potential. I quite appreciated the way Rise implemented its demons in ways that matched with Evil Dead's history, and continued the idea that there are several different Necronomicons, each with distinct personalities. While I wish the chainsaw and shotgun hadn't been used for callbacks, I also enjoyed them because I'm an easy mark for that shit and I love chainsaws.
Final thoughts, nice to have a trans actor in the cast but you're telling me you set an Evil Dead movie in a city and a high rise and still couldn't find more than one person who isn't skinny and white in the whole movie - come on. And there is already a demonic zombies take over an apartment building movie, it's called Demons 2, it came out in 1986 and is a giallo movie (so it is le problematique in some ways) but also Evil Dead Rise needed to look at that movie and try to top it, which it did not accomplish.
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laurie-stark · 14 days ago
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Chapter I: Secret's Keeper
A/N: RAHHHHHHHHHHH Cherry Bomb is finally yours. Thank you to everyone for the tremendous support and excitement leading up to the publication. You guys loving Laurie means more than I can express.
A special thank you to w1steriaa_for being Laurie's biggest cheerleader and also the best proofreader ever. Guys, please go give Amber's works a read bc she is so immensely talented and I could not have done this without her.
see you guys in two weeks for the next update! lots of love, m<3
Word count: 2.8k
Cherry Bomb Masterlist
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Seven in the morning was an ungodly hour to expect a fourteen-year-old to pay attention to ninth-grade algebra. The bell had just rung and I was already sitting in the same spot I had been since January. I may be my father’s daughter, but Pepper Potts drilled punctuality into me like it was my life’s blood. And I’d grown up watching how stressed she would get every time Dad ran late for an event or press conference. Being Tony Stark’s personal assistant was hard enough, so I decided when I was still pretty young that being early was another way of being kind. It was the least I could do.
My classmates started to file into the room and take their seats. Despite it still being early in the morning, the New York City summer heat was well on its way. And it was only May. Being on the fourteenth floor of a really old building didn’t help either. But hey, I was not one to complain. I was just happy to be at school at all.
Kidding, of course. That was horseshit. It was mornings like these, when the humidity made it feel like I was underwater and I’d only gotten four hours of sleep because I had been studying for the history test I had next period, that I truly cursed my younger self for wanting to go to real school so badly. Being homeschooled made the most sense when I was younger. Dad was hardly ever in one city for longer than a month and he had crippling undiagnosed separation anxiety to me. So, I spent my childhood following him around the world. It was nice though. I had complete control over my education and my dad did a pretty good job of being involved, as much as a billionaire harlot with a small gambling addiction could. Naturally, Dad spent the most time on science stuff with me. He’d work in his lab on weapons, and then eventually the Iron Man suits, while I did spelling and math and science. It was nice, nearly perfect. As I got older, I think I began to realize my dad was definitely working overtime to be a better father than his was. And he was a really, really good dad. 
Homeschooling also meant that I had a lot more freedom and flexibility than the other kids my age. And where some kids do hard-core dance or varsity one sports, I would bother the Avengers over their intercom. So basically dance, if Tony Stark being a dance mom equated fighting by his daughter’s side to protect the people of New York…You get the gist. I was a registered agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a couple of years. It was never anything crazy, I just helped where I could. It started eight years ago, with Loki. Nick and his team knew virtually nothing about controlling the Tesseract and he thought me and my abilities would be helpful. They weren’t. So, Nick found other uses for me. 
The Battle of New York left me fairly shaken up and my parents were super against any active participation during missions. In between my schooling and singing lessons, I would help with the preparation: scouting locations, hacking enemy mainframes, anything that let me feel like I was truly a part of a team. I was always desperate to impress the adults in my life, to show them that I could be useful and worth something. That feeling sparked when I first met Nick Fury and it never truly went away. 
I liked being an agent. I liked being in on all the secrets, I liked helping people, and I loved working with the Avengers. Nat, Steve, Clint, Bruce, and Thor became family. Suddenly I wasn’t a lonesome only child whose only friend was her dad and his assistant. I was the guy in the chair, the one handing out coordinates and fallback plans. I had a purpose. 
Sokovia changed everything. I still had nightmares about what happened a year ago. I’d wake up in a sweat, feeling the phantom grip of metal fingers around my arm. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sounds of screaming people I couldn’t save because I froze up. They died because I wasn’t strong enough. Dad put his foot down after that. He told me that what I was doing wasn’t good for me and he’d be a terrible father if he let me continue. He was right, but I was still angry about it. 
Real school was our compromise. If I wasn’t allowed to go on missions anymore then I needed someplace else to have a social life. It was pretty good timing too because I had just wrapped up the eighth grade curriculum. It took a lot of convincing and three PowerPoint presentations to finally convince my dad that being a normal kid in a normal school would be beneficial for me. He got me into Dalton and the rest was history.
However, what wasn’t history was the test on that very subject that was surely going to kill me next period. I spent the remainder of my math period going through my flashcards and study notes. I wasn’t alone, nearly half of the class was in the same boat as me. And if they studied as much as I had, then we were all fried. 
Halfway through my history test, I knew I was screwed because all I could think about was lunch. Every factoid about Greek history was clouded with fantasies about turkey avocado sandwiches. There was a little French sandwich place just down the road from my school and it was my favourite. The owner was a true French man from a town just outside Paris and he let me practice my French with him. I spent at least two lunch periods a week being ruthlessly criticized by a middle-aged man, but that made it more authentic. I wasn’t super fluent, but I knew enough to hold a conversation, or at least get through a conversation with Emery. But French was not going to help me pass this history test and I was beginning to recall all my knowledge of Percy Jackson as a last resort. 
Forty-five minutes later, I gathered all my dignity and shame and walked my test up to the front of the room. I handed it off to my history teacher, who gave me a grim smile. My classmates seemed to be just as stone-faced as I was and I think we were all hopeful that our teacher would curve the grade. 
I rocked on the balls of my heels outside the classroom door, waiting for my two best friends to finish their tests. When I first started at Dalton, making friends was a challenge. Quite a few of the student body had been attending the school since kindergarten, so their relationships had been forged nearly a decade ago. I didn’t have an abhorrent amount of friends; I knew enough people to say hi when we passed in the halls or have someone to sit with in the cafeteria. I would have been content with just that, but I was fortunate enough to have made two wonderful best friends. 
Like many of the numerous friendship pacts, Brianna Sinclair and Meredith Camden had been best friends since their preschool days. We met briefly during freshman orientation, but it was first-semester theatre class when we really got close. Brianna and I were both huge theatre nerds and she was quick to sit at the desk next to mine. She was a redhead with the spirit to match the fiery hair. She loved performing and astrology, and she was definitely the epitome of an Aries. It wasn’t long before she introduced me to Meredith and we all became happy chums. 
Meredith Camden was perfect. She was the only freshman I knew who was already planning her senior year class presidency. And, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and I don’t even like girls. Meredith was a true stunner, from her long, silky coils to her perfectly smooth dark complexion. She was kind as well. Even though I met Brianna first, Meredith was the one who really made me feel welcome at Dalton. At first, I was apprehensive about making a trio out of an already tight-knit pair, but Meredith always made sure I felt included. And soon enough we were as thick as thieves. 
Post-test stress had kicked in while I waited for the girls. I used my thumb to rub circles into the centre of my palm, switching back and forth between my hands. When I caught a glimpse of red, my back straightened. 
“How bad was that?” I asked.
Brianna swung her ponytail over her shoulders. “That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” she huffed.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Meredith chimed in softly. “Everything that was on there was in our notes.”
“I was up until like three in the morning studying and I still think I failed,” I said as we began to walk towards the stairs to our next period. 
“Well studies do show that quality of sleep greatly impacts test performance, maybe next time you should prioritize getting a good night’s rest and study more in the morning.” 
Brianna rolled her eyes playfully at Meredith’s info dump. 
I smiled at her. “I’ll give that a try.” 
We squeezed through the flood of students walking around us and I slunk back behind the girls to give us some more room.
“So what are we doing today? Shop along Park? I think Madison Beaucard is having people over. Oh, we could go to the flower market, I have been dying to get my hands on fresh tulips now that they’re in season.” Brianna’s hands were flying around as she talked. 
“Right now?” I asked.
“No, stupid,” Brianna teased.  “After school.”
“Be nice,” Meredith chimed in. Brianna shot a playful look at the other girl.
“We finally, finally finished the renovations on the indoor pool yesterday so you guys could come over to test it out!” Meredith offered. Her family had been chipping away at that project for as long as I’d known her for. 
Brianna tugged on Meredith’s arm excitedly. “Oh my gosh, yes! We are so doing that.” She turned around to face me, still hanging off of Meredith. “You in, Laur?” 
I smiled but heaved a high. “Sorry Bri, I wish I could, but my family is gonna want me home right after school.”
“Of course, how silly of me,” Brianna feigned an English accent. “It’s Wednesday.” 
“Are you sure your Dad wouldn’t miss you just for one week?” Meredith pouted. 
“I’m sorry dude, it’s out of my hands.”
“Ugh, your parents are no fun.” 
I smiled inwardly. “You know I’d be hanging out with you guys in a heartbeat if I could.” 
To Meredith and Brianna, Wednesdays meant I had “family time” immediately after school each week. If it were any other day I would have happily tagged along for shopping or swimming or whatever new activity Brianna found on Instagram was. But Wednesdays were always signed off. 
The truth was that I had training at the compound. Although my dad was firm about pulling my involvement with S.H.I.E.L.D., he allowed me to go Upstate once a week to do drills with Nat. Natasha Romanoff had been training me in hand-to-hand combat since I was seven or eight. She said it was important that I knew how to protect myself. At first, it was just for fun, but with how defenceless I’d felt in the last few years,  I started to get more serious about it. 
There was also the small matter of superhuman powers that I had very little control over. They showed up when I was seven, pretty soon after my father was kidnapped and held hostage overseas. They say it was the trauma and intense emotionality that triggered my powers being awoken. But my knowledge of the powers ended there. My father absolutely refused to let Nick Fury or his team study me or study the things I could do. Which, if I was honest, was a good call on his part, but it did leave me living with a lot of questions. From what we could tell, it was some sort of gravitational and elemental manipulation; the product of experiments my birth mother ran on me as an infant. I tried not to think about that too much, though. I just knew that when I feel things too hard, the powers can get out of control. It was pretty scary, and really confusing as a kid. But thankfully the Avengers found an expert.
Wanda Maximoff has been a great help in the last few months. Training with Nat became also training with Wanda after Ultron and the destruction of Sokovia. Her powers are very different from mine, but she approached me after she moved into the compound to see if I wanted her help. I remember I had woken up in the middle of the night to my bedroom at the compound looking like a storm had passed through. I must have been having another nightmare and set myself off in my sleep. After I did my best to put the room back in order through tears, I found myself on the roof of the compound, looking out at the stars. Wanda found me sitting out there. Turned out she was having similar dreams. She asked me about my powers, I asked her about hers and soon enough she was offering skills and advice and suggesting I start honing in on training. It had been about a year since then and my control had gotten a lot better. But of course, this was all a humongous secret I was keeping from my friends. One secret wasn’t too bad though. 
“I was thinking we haven’t done our monthly movie marathon sleepover this month,” Meredith pointed out as we took our seats. The three of us had history and English class together this semester. “Laurie, is your place free?”
And there was the other shoe. Secret superhero shenanigans weren’t the only thing I kept from Meredith and Brianna. I was also under strict orders to pretend that I didn’t exist. Or rather, pretend that Laurie Stark didn’t exist. 
Sometime after the battle of New York, probably during all the stuff with the Mandalorian, my dad asked Nick Fury to erase me from existence. It was a safety thing. Somewhere between aliens and terrorists attacking our house over and over, my dad decided he needed to take a more proactive role in my general safety. Hazards of the job, he called it. I understood, I guess, but it just meant there were even more secrets to keep. I was enrolled in school as Laurel Potts. My private social media accounts were under that same name, and I even carried a fake learner’s permit with the alias. I always felt really guilty when I had to turn down bringing friends over or lying about why they had never met my parents, but the secrets kept me safe. And they offered me freedom. Win some, lose some. 
“Sorry guys, our kitchen is undergoing a huge reno,” I blurted out the lie. “My dad has been super into…dutch ovens?”
I could tell they didn't believe me but they shrugged it off. Guilt panged at my heart and I rubbed at the centre of my palm again. When it was just me and my dad and our small world, I could be anything. And as much as I loved being out in society like a normal teenage girl, I wished I could live it authentically. 
The girls snuck a look at each other they thought I wouldn’t see. I could almost hear the best friend telepathy going off. They were definitely thinking I must not want them around. With their backs to me, I felt my shoulders begin to tense. My girls had never once made me feel out of place since starting at the Dalton, but I had never been oblivious to the fact that three was a crowd. 
I turned away from my friends when our English teacher pulled the class’s attention to the front of the room. We started our lesson on writing comparative analysis essays, but the only thing I was analyzing was the body language of the girls beside me. The pinch of my thumbnail against my palm was enough to bring me back to the present, and I forced myself to focus on worrying about that rotten history test instead…
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selkiefinalist · 1 year ago
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weekly freakout: 8.26 edition (wherein i feel real bad for myself for no reason)
friends i have to find some more effective way of handling the crippling anxiety of writing this fic. or a way to balance what still needs to be done against my desire for it to be finished, and come to terms with the fact that it’s going to take as long as it takes, regardless of my hope that it would be done/published in early october.
so here’s where we are. it’s currently the longest thing i’ve ever written. by the time it’s done, i have this fear that it will just be this wild mess, tangled vines dangling off a wrecked bridge. there’s so much still to rough out, if i’m going to do it justice. can i have that done in the next five days? i don’t know. I wanted to have the whole month of september for editing, which felt sooooo luxurious as a concept. and now i’m sure that i’ll still be drafting while editing, which is fine - it’s fine. it’s just not how i envisioned it or whatever.
and idk. i’m committed now to the main concepts - how not? and just determined to finish as-is. but, like. what if the premise sucks. the world-building is so light, i don’t know if I’m gonna pull it off.
and also also. what if the writing also sucks? i keep swinging between very different styles and then trying to hit that sweet middleground of show versus tell, i always have this impulse to have so much subtext but i never know if it’s too much, what if i haven’t left the breadcrumbs placed where the birds can even find them? idk a hallmark of fic is often openly confronting pretty sweeping emotions or emotional scenes and i’m like: what if these emotions happened but the only way you know is because someone gently touched a button on their coat as the last light slipped from the sky or whatever.
so then i’ll end up with 50k (60? please no, god help me) of fic where the core concepts suck, where the structure sucks, and where the writing also sucks, six months of writing down the drain!! all that time i could have been doing literally anything else. like cleaning the fish tank. running. sleeping.
and also this is supposed to be fun. an enjoyable process. I know it’s part of growth or getting better, honing the skills or whatever. but what if instead of growth and getting better, i just…don’t? what then ahahahahahahahahaha
okay anyway. currently sitting at 38k and part of my despair is i thought the rough draft would come in around 40k and i am now at a point where i have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of writing left, and i write SO SLOWLY right now that i can’t just bang out an extra 10k in two weeks, like that’s another month almost of effort. someone send me that ‘girl help i am once again attempting things above my skill level’ post, i am its living embodiment right now, despair despair blah blah.
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welldrawnfish · 7 months ago
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This really shouldn't be as prevalent as it is. Even learning about ways to fight against this stuff fills me with so much overwhelming *welp guess they win* dread I've been wanting to make a comic about this weird ominous foreboding feeling in the air when it comes to the economy. All this tech integration and enshittification of our own property. This policing control of what works where. The big one for me is when I got a kuerig and wanted to go with third party reusable pods. You think it stops here? It wont, It'll be cloud integration next, then you have to buy only XBrand devices that work on your cloud controlled kitchen. And with everything being internet connected, its a rapid pace now. Alot easier to push out planned obsolete-ism when you just need to push out the software update that chugs the device to a frustrating unusable crawl vs building a sturdy device that takes 20 years to clunk out. Prices keep going up an AI is posed to take so many jobs, costs wont go down, we are past that arent we, that lie, *Oh save the company money and costs go down for consumer* I cant put my finger on it, theres so many comics i want to make about it, im gonna try reading this gentlemans books if i can you know... get past the crippling depression and anxiety that comes with thinking of what feels like the unstoppable future. Like I guess what I need to know is. Whats the solution here? Not just to forced products and ownership, not just increasing costs to just live and access basic necessities, not just the obvious outsourcing of all our livelyhoods to AI while companies will continue to raise prices. Not just the clear and obvious indentured servitude of the working class in all regards. Whats the solution to all of it? To The digital feudalism? Capitalism failed, what happens next? Cause they can control the lawmakers
So they can control the law enforcers
So they can control us staying in the system.
Because outside of sharpening the guillotine only thing I can think of is everybody collectively decides to quite this game. We made up the idea of money. Maybe we all need to stop playing pretend.
Unauthorized water
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It’s not clear when General Electric started boobytraping appliances with DRM. I first encountered it in January when Shane Morris tweeted about his fridge refusing to accept the $19 generic filter he replaced the GE $55 filter with.
https://twitter.com/IamShaneMorris/status/1220367934947758080
The fridges use an RFID detector to distinguish original GE filters from generic replacements, and engage in lots of anti-owner trickery, like memorizing the IDs of previously used filters and refusing to accept them.
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/unauthorized-charcoal-ge-fridges-wont-dispense-ice-or-water-unless-your-filter-authenticates-as-an-official-55-component/159552/41
Morris isn’t the only one ourtaged that his fridge is plotting against him. One (anonymous) owner was so offended that they created a site dedicated to warning off potential buyers and explaining to other suckers how to bypass GE’s lockouts.
https://gefiltergate.com/
There’s a good reason for the anonymity. Under Sec 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, showing how to bypass an “access control” to a copyrighted work (eg RFID-detecting code in the fridge) is a potential felony, carrying a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine.
This is quite the moral hazard. Manufacturers have learned that if they design their products so that any use that hurts their shareholders (like buying third party parts) requires bypassing DRM, it becomes a felony to use your own property to your own advantage.
Which is why we’ve seen DRM creep into all manner of devices, from insulin pumps to tractors to car engines to Iphone screens. “Felony contempt of business model” is the statute that every monopolist has dreamt of, and with DMCA 1201, they have it in their grasp.
Back in 2011, I wrote a short story about this for MIT Tech Review’s first sf anthology, called “The Brave Little Toaster” (in tribute to Tom Disch).
https://craphound.com/news/2011/09/28/the-brave-little-toaster-from-trsf/
The issue only got worse, and so last year I published “Unauthorized Bread” as part of my collection “Radicalized” (it’s being turned into a TV show by Topic):
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/
The metastasis of DRM into every product category shows that when business apologists talk about the sanctity of property, they mean the sanctity of CORPORATE property.
If the manufacturer gets to override your decisions about the things you buy - and felonize any attempt to wrest control back - they property ceases to exist. We become tenants of our devices, not owners.
It’s digital feudalism, in which an elite owns all the property and we get to use it in ways they proscribe. The difference is that today, our aristocracy isn’t even human.
It’s the immortal, remorseless colony organism called the Limited Liability Corporation, to which we are mere inconvenient gut flora.
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okamirayne · 8 months ago
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thanks for letting us back into the BTB universe. I can't wait for the next update when it comes, and Im still super geeked for your original stories when they are ready! People love the worlds you build and I know I can't wait for more! Ive been reading your works for yeeaarrss now, and I love how you've blossomed in your writing and inspired so many!
Gosh, thank YOU for stepping back into that universe @virginhawks. 💜🥰 It wouldn't be without its readers. It would be stuck up in my head or saved in a file on my laptop with no one to share the madness with. That's why I so insanely appreciate the feedback and engagement from readers like yourself. Gods Bless you tenfold for that. 😍
Im still super geeked for your original stories when they are ready! People love the worlds you build and I know I can't wait for more!
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Oh god, I can feel the overwhelming surge of FEELS upon me...seriously, one day there will be words to express how it makes me feel when someone expresses interest in my original works...that day shall come...
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This day I ugly cry into my teacup instead. But they are happy tears. So thank you, lovely. 😘💕
Ive been reading your works for yeeaarrss now, and I love how you've blossomed in your writing and inspired so many!
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💕 I appreciate you so much. Thank you. The crippling anxiety I've been feeling just got wrapped in a weighted blanket, which is much better than the straitjacket. 😅 😘💕 Immense gratitude coming at you, luv.
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slyshyfoxy · 10 months ago
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9 Jan 2024
Hiii its me, today is jolyn yu birthday and it is a celebration day for her but i think i need to clear my head on stuffs because i just feel weird and not motivated and think there was some past concerns and fear that i am facing, i think one of them might be school, as my results ain't great now, and i have to go to school tomorrow, and honestly i think i just fear? and don't really like the people in my school, but also honestly, that will change in a few years time where i will go and work and it will be better, i think what it really matters is the person i can only depend on is myself. I just need to continue with my goals on what i want in my life and set what is right for my priorities then i won't feel so negative and heavy anymore. I think first thing first is, i am not gonna force any relationships anymore, i am just gonna be myself, the things i need to do first i will do first, like tomorrow i have to attend school and get attendance i will go get it then i will go ssdc and then gym at night no matter what. Think i dont have to think what others will think of me, as in the end i also die alone, and what matters is what i have in the end of the day, i shouldnt be betraying myself to let others be happy. And recently, i realise i have been helping other people for their food and other stuffs, which honestly, i dont want to LOLOLOL. Like if i dont feel like it i shouldnt force myself to do it at all. The actions i am taking for tomorrow, (Necessary) Going to school = because i need to get my attendance = my grades are shit, it shouldn't drop so much anymore. 3 months in school next time = my grades are shit, better work hard and stop thinking about useless things.
Going ssdc= because i want to fulfill a promise to myself, that time the heartbreak cause me not to be able get my driving license at all and that was what i regretted , i want to show myself that i am able to get whatever i want to get. CHANGE TO PRIVATE ! Gymming = because i want to lose weight if not i am not pretty anymore. And kinda fat and i think gymming will make me feel better about myself too. Going to work = because of the pay and especially to build up my working experiences and tolerance, if not next time i cannot have money to travel and all already. So hang on, and promise yourself u can do it. Ya from now on, I just gonna be me. Many times, i have survived, and I think the most important thing is to keep my vibration high and happy, cause i realize that if i don't, i can't really do a lot of things. Basically to take care of my mental health, like being happy and staying present, and to look forward no matter what. Dont look backwards anymore. Exercise, work, study, play. Just remember these and ur life will be better, now basically need to focus on my driving and losing weight. And then start doing my report for my grades. That will do.
Don't worry so much, you'll be fine, dont torture ur mind in anxiety everytime. Why not just relax it? Take it as it is, not like the whole world will come crippling down if u take a few days off or getting to ur goals slowly, as long as you take the significant steps to do it you'll be fine. Have fun a little too. And also take care of your health. Don't over do things.
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voraciouspangolin · 7 months ago
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This alienation unironically can and does push disabled or disenfranchised people further towards spaces like 4chan. The whole Doomer narrative really appeals to normal ass cishet white men and boys a lot, because they find community in other men like themselves that feel a general angst in their lives that they can't exactly pinpoint. They genuinely *do* feel wronged or oppressed by society. By things like "SJWs", feminism, progressivism. They're lonely, insecure, desperate, they lack meaningful real life community to share their struggle with. Perhaps they genuinely Are opressed by society on a class basis. There genuinely *is* a crisis for men; a lack of role models, a lack of acceptance, a lack of love.
4chan fosters a space where the major purpose of posting becomes to further fuel the poster and the viewers' internal nihilism and cynicism about life. About how things will never get better because there is something inherently wrong with them, they pin their angst and loneliness on physical features and traits, they say "I will never get a girlfriend/a job/friends/success because of my physical features, because x and y and z."
They create these severely enabling spaces where they imbue themselves with these... horrifically desolate ideas.
These kinds of ideas can appeal to disabled folk. Because people who have disabilities can point to a part of themselves, and wield all the internal ableism they contain to then say "this. This is why I am alone. This is why people do not like me. This is why my life will never be good." And... unlike those aforementioned men and boys who tend to gravitate towards purely metaphysical and pseudoscientific things like bone structure indicating one's chances of "procuring a mate" or etc. because then they have a tangible thing they can attribute their misery to, disabled folks genuinely experience oppression and hate, our lives genuinely are bleak and... oftentimes feel hopeless. Because of a tangible part of ourselves that we cannot be seperated from. It is incredibly lonely to be disabled, it is isolating.
I am a weird, neckbearded, fat trans guy with chronic illnesses and fatigue. I do not spend a lot of time outside, I do not spend a lot of time interracting with real life people. My own perceived social ineptitude that I feel within myself is so... tangible. I can feel it in the air when I try to talk to normal people. In a different world, where I didn't intentionally choose to pursue politics and naturally built myself up to the recovery-focused leftism that I embody, where I didn't go to therapy and worked so hard to build up tolerance to my constant crippling social anxiety and feelings of rejection, I can 100% see myself getting sucked into nihilist, doomer spaces.
All of this to say... be kind. To yourself, to the people around you. I understand that being kind or neutral towards random 4chan weirdos is hard. I'm not saying you should be accepting of whatever horrific ideologies and rhetoric spawn from 4chan and its adjacent spaces. I'm saying that... its better to not immediately pin someone as a 4chan incel with the saddest life just because they look the part. And, even... allow yourself to feel empathy towards people like that, towards incels n shit. I will never converse with these people out of fear for my own mental health and wellbeing, but I still do think about it. I think about how fucking sad they all are, and I feel for them.
I feel guilty about it, sometimes. Bc the people I'm feeling for exist in The space where actual material harm is plotted against people in my own spaces. But... I think it's good to recognize their humanity beneath all the self hatred, insecurity ridden edginess and hatred. I believe everyone has the ability to change. But escaping addictions like 4chan is incredibly hard. So... it's best to try and prevent yourself and the people around you from falling and spiralling into blackpill doomer bullshit. Simply by being kind.
trust me when you imply that all people who have struggles with going outside and interacting with society are 4chan incels you’re swinging and not hitting a single one of them. you’re just kicking the shit out of your disabled friends and followers
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razzdrgn · 2 years ago
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fucked up how american culture and society drives people to isolation and loneliness as its major indicators of success
drive your own car live in your own house work in your own office
like. what if i want to take public transit and talk to the nice people on my way to work? what if i want to live in an apartment building and play games with my neighbors on the weekends? what if i want to work in an office where i can send my coworker a meme turn around and watch him stifle a giggle?
im sick of feeling alone let me be social and part of a community i have crippling social anxiety but powering through it is better than the unbearable unceasing loneliness of "the american dream"
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spicedraws · 2 years ago
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Any other pikmin ships ya like? (asides from Loualph lol)
Oh God… You're asking a complete weirdo that- 😭
I don't know if I can talk about ships much without feeling like I'm gonna be burned over a fire for my sins- Hhh but if I'm ever gonna get over my crippling social anxiety I guess it's best to embarrass myself!
I'm sorry don't read this unless you're prepared for the unhinged ramblings of someone who pretends they aren't ship obsessed…
Loualph is the only thing I actually fully ship, I just feel like they complete each other really well. It's a chef's kiss, 💋 though that doesn't mean I don't enjoy seeing others and haven't thought about them.
I think Charlie x any of the other Kopaits can be cute (Charlie with D especially. I love seeing people's different interpretations of that scraped character.)
…But If I'm being honest with y'all there is a reason I haven't been able to ship Charlie. So- if Olimar wasn't already happily married I'd ship him with Charlie LOL. I just feel like it could be a very quality couple. Look, If they became close they could share each other's passion and become unstoppable! They will be rival bff lovers… One of my fav kinds of ships. They would constantly be building each other up whether if its intentionally with comforting each other or unintentionally from having their silly who is the better captain bickering.
I can imagine Charlie trying to be all brave and cool until Olimar gives him a smooch and he just MeLts-
Also since Olimar is apparently terrified of rubber duckies. I could imagine them having some deeply overly dramatic and emotional moment where Charlie is getting him to hold his rubber duckie for the first time. Meanwhile you just see Louie in the background questioning both of their sanity. (Chaotic gay ships just bring me so much joy I'm sorry my tastes are complete shit *sobs*…)
basically what I'm gathering from this is that I wanna ship Charlie with Olimar… but Olimar is a married man with a family so I don't- why am I like this frick. I love Olimar so much I just wish his wife actually had a personality and name, also had her own design not just Olimar's clone with makeup. Even more than his wife though I really wanna see more of his kids c'mon Pikmin!
Also I think it'd be funny and cute to find Shacho someone (I know he's married too but off of what I've seen the "happily" part is missing)
WAIT I ACTUALLY DO SHIP SOMETHING ELSE I FORGOT
I ship the Hocotate ship with the SS Drake because I just think it'd be a really fucking funny and unhinged ship.
Also Brittany... I just wanted to bring up her existence cause she's epic lol.
… whelp *crawls back into the shadows*
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catb-fics · 2 years ago
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I've given up on reddit...everyone is so fucking negative and disrespectful...like stfu, no one cares about what you have to say. Also vegas has been quiet since this news came out...let's hope it stays that way.
And I'm fed up of people saying "Van has the biggest ego"
1) you don't know who he is, no one in this fandom really does, you can't judge someone on what they decide to purposefully put out into the world...because 9/10 its not going to be the real them...and that's okay!
2) what's wrong with having a big ego? Would you rather him be struggling with anxiety? Self confidence? Because let me tell you, struggling with those things is a HORRIBLE way to live. So why don't we just let the man live, be himself and shut your mouth because its not "constrictive criticism" it's disrespect and straight up mean.
Also alot of people come across as "having a big ego" BECAUSE they are struggling with something personally. So literally be the fuck quietttt.
I'm fed up of the Internet preaching about mental health but then being shitty to others, have we literally not learned anything about the amount of poeple in the public eye TW⚠️ taking their own life?
(This is not aimed at anyone I've seen here on tumblr...strictly reddit)
Anywayssss VAN MCCANN IS BACK BABY. And I am so happy he is back in the studio, doing what he loves despite everything. All I can hope is he is okay physically and emotionally💗 sending love, strength, good health, hugs and positive vibes his way🌠
👆👆👆 THIS THIS THIS 100% 👆👆👆
Couldn’t agree more lovely, unfortunately there are some shitty comments and Reddit does tend to be toxic. Also the band’s ig page too 😢 Someone even posted a horrible comment on Sardy’s post yesterday but thankfully it looks like it’s been removed today. People are cruel and love to bring others down rather than building them up unfortunately. I hope Van is feeling on top of the world if he has seen that awesome compliment as he deserves it. I hope it has given him a huge ego boost, a lot of the time people who seem outwardly confident really struggle with crippling insecurities. He is a super-talented guy and he should be very proud of that fact! People don’t compliment enough - if you think someone is wonderful tell them - make them feel good! ❤️
And yeah I am hoping Vegas keeps out of it too, he seems to revel in the band’s demise and it boils my piss 😡
This is so sweet too, sending all the happy, positive vibes to all the lads, I am beyond ecstatic to hear that Van is back. Wishing him all the love and every success! Now I am just impatient as I want to see him! ❤️❤️❤️
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pinnithin · 2 years ago
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work got me down as usual so i gotta ramble
a master sergeant who works in my flight apologized to me yesterday for something i didnt even take offense to. long story but its annual award season so a lot of our time right now is spent workshopping the award packages from our squadron so they'll be competitive at the wing level. and this guy wrote one for an airman who'd done really well this year, but due to a misunderstanding it looked like he'd plagiarized the previous year's, and we discovered this in the middle of the meeting in front of the other flights and it just kinda made us look dickish.
anyway, i didn't really care, because i didnt do it. felt bad for the airman but she'd earned a pretty significant early promotion like a week prior so it was probably fine if the award got tossed (it didnt - they let us rework and resubmit it). but in the end nobody died, nobody got hurt, whatever. it wasted like 3 hours of everyone's time but we're salaried so its not that big of a deal. the master sergeant in question was not present at this meeting to defend himself, but my superintendent called him to give him a piece of his mind because he made us look like assholes in front of the other flights. i didnt get into it because i didnt really care.
this week rolls around, the guy catches me to apologize and explain that it was a mistake and he thought he was copying valid bullets from past awards (common practice - theres only so many ways you can explain that a guy inventoried a warehouse real good). he told me he felt like shit all weekend because of it and he dreaded coming to work this week after "putting us through that" in front of the squadron. and i was like, man. thats a really small silly thing to feel like shit over.
and i was all "man its okay, they let us resubmit it, mistakes happen, nobody got hurt etc etc" and he was like no but you still had to defend your reputations in front of the other flights and my mistake put you in that situation and i was like, really? thats what youre upset about? MY reputation? you realize i dont care what any of these people think about me, right? and i didn't even make the mistake - that was you! and if people think im a jackass because one of my guys made a mistake that was easily fixable then thats their problem. there are way more important things to worry about.
he looked relieved and then got really quiet and was like, how are you like that?
like what?
how do you just let this stuff go all the time? i beat myself up all weekend over this and youre just... fine about it?
this isn't the first time someones asked me this, albeit more casually like "youre so chill LT i wish i was as chill as you" yknow but he seemed like genuinely concerned and i had to pause for a second before being like. therapy? its therapy. im like this because im in therapy.
i mean its also the constant exhaustion and being jaded and desensitized to this hellish war machine, but i can cope a hell of a lot better with it. i have to actively work at it to maintain a healthy mindset or ill go berserk. this is not my natural state i had to build this.
this guy is ten years older than me, has been in the air force for, i wanna say 13 years? crippled with anxiety and guilt over, what, embarrassing (not really) his boss? i just felt so fucking bad for him.
and theres so many people here who are like him, who hold themselves to these impossible standards because of the weird mind games this brutal industry puts everyone through. i have met more people with work induced neuroses in the three years here than ive ever seen anywhere else in my life, and im sure i have a collection of my own that im blind to as well. this job is merciless and will grind you into dust with no remorse if it means making the jets fly faster.
like, duh, its the military, what did you expect. obviously working for the business that kills people will mess you up. but it still sucks, right? ive met really good people here who have been irreparably damaged in their service and they wont even get help because theyre too afraid to damage their career in the job that hurt them in the first place. it sucks. it sucks to see.
not just people who've been here a long time, literally everyone i know here deals with some kind of trauma (mild though it may be for some of the newer kids, youre still getting shipped away from your family and everything you know for a job you might not even like, in a cruel profession, and thatll upset anyone just a little at least). i know people who've been here 3 months who are like this is the lowest ive ever felt. i know people who are 3 months from retirement who are like i put my life into this job and all it did was chew me up and spit me out.
once again. military. it should be obvious. i can still be sad about it though i think. maybe nobody whos a good person voluntarily joins the military, so maybe we all kind of deserve it, but i think we're still allowed to be kind of upset about it.
i have one year left. i have complicated feelings about it. ive also been irreparably damaged here, but at the same time im at the point where i really like the person i am and i would not be that person without having to go through the fucking pits of hell in this shitty ass job. i know part of it is because of my own efforts to unfuck myself after i got horribly fucked over and had a nervous breakdown in mid 2021, but now i kind of have that point of reference to ground me? like anything i do from now on has never been as hard as that part of my life was. and i dont think i would have taken therapy and recovery as seriously if i wasn't dealing with ptsd. so i dunno.
im not sure where im going with this its just like. fuck this place. fuck this fucking job. i only care about the people ive met here and i feel like im abandoning them by getting out next year, but if i stay inside a burning house i'll die too yknow
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yanderenightmare · 4 years ago
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ooooooooooohhhhhhh bully!bakugo pleaseeeeee feed me! like I don't know if you do underage things like school, but you can keep it sfw
yandere bully ! BAKUGO KATSUKI
goodiebag WARNINGS: abuse, anxiety, bullying, paranoia, NONCON elements, stalking, manipulation, profanity, anger issues, arson mentions, trauma
TIP-JAR
PART TWO
IN CASE OF FIRE: PUSH ALARM
In many ways, Bakugo was her morning alarm clock.
A shrill shriek of a sound she wanted nothing more but to ignore and rake at her ears until she grew deaf. An impact, taking a toll on her whole day. Something to regret. And something to dread the next morning.
Something that follows her, haunts her, hunts her in the hours she’s without it and blares like sirens or howls from some great monster when it’s caught her.
Alarm clocks can’t push her to the ground though, that’s where Bakugo deviates.
And he’s always pushing. Toppling her books with a flick of his wrist. Pushing and squeezing and pulling at her like a rag doll. Pushing her into the wall. Pushing screams to come bursting from her lungs. Pushing tears to well up in her eyes. Pushing her sanity.
And now, pushing his knee in between the space of her thighs. Grinding her up against the wall in the barren hall of an empty school. Pushing and digging callous fingers into her thin uniform. Messaging the tender ticklish flesh of her midriff and keeping her in place. Pushing and seizing her breaths with his wicked grin. Teeth sharp and deadly and way too close to her neck.
“Let go!” She screamed. And the echo that reverberated throughout the hallway should have sent every packed classroom to flood the tight space.
But it was a field-day, which meant no classes and everyone outside enjoying the sun.
Except for her and Bakugo.
Cocking his chin in impish humour. He grinned too widely for it to be excused for mere casual bullying.
“Or what?” He coaxed. His breath fanning over cheeks. Wafting into her nose, making her entire face contort. “You’ll tell on me?”
He manipulated his voice to sound childish and whiny. Pouting at her. Yet the sheer maroon look of sadistic thrill was hard to put any mask over.
“Ha? You think this school is gonna give two shits worth a damn about some fucking nerd like you over their top student?”
He was too wrapped up in his frenzy to pay the weak fists banging on his chest any mind. Barely even registering them before they relented. Turning soft and careful, defeated upon his words, as they dragged sloppily down his stomach. Stopping where he’d hiked her skirt up around her hips.
She looked down. The realisation of her situation settling.
Not settling like an explosion, but like dust after the fact. Just like it did every time Bakugo trapped her in a corner.
She didn’t know why she even bothered fighting anymore, knowing how she always gives up.
Her breath hitched and hiccupping as she forced herself to bargain with her bully.
“What do you want, Bakugou?” It was more of a sniffle than a sentence. Meek and feeble and delicious.
But it was wrong in its essence.
“Katsuki.” He growled. His nose touching hers briefly, making her screw her eyes shut in pure crippling fear.
Another thing an alarm clock couldn’t. Come to think of it, perhaps he was rather the sound of bones breaking, or clothes tearing. His laughter like gunshots, and every move he made an explosion that left the ears bleeding and ringing.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you for you to get it through your thick skull. It’s Katsuki.”
His grip on her waist tightened. And she was sure his claws would rip yet another one of her thin white shirts.
The disgusting instruction left her baffled each time. How he would force her to call him by his given name as though they were good friends as opposed to predator and prey.
“Say it.”
His features were blank in expectancy. Cold despite his fingertips warming.
“Come on! Fucking say it!” Spit flew as he barked his command as he pushed her just a smidge further into the wall.
Her whole body shook. Kept in place by the hold he had on her, but still trembling violently like a leaf caught in a storm.
“Katsuki...”
It was barely audible, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was rather overcome with satisfaction instead.
“Good.” He seemed subdued.
Calming down as his fingers relented their building fire. Cooling yet nowhere near comfortable.
“Good girl.”
It was close to a purr of some sorts and it made her stomach fold and topple in on itself, as he stroked a stray curl from out of her face. The action only resulting in even more locks of hair falling before her eyes as she shook her head as a means to swat his hand away. Where her own hands were too busy in their position on his chest, in a means to keep him at bay. But it was of little use as his face closed in on hers.
Leaning, towering, suffocating.
“Baku-”
Fear of what it looked as though he was about to do crippled the notion of it being ridiculous. But the protest was weak, even as her nails dug into the hardness of his chest.
Her voice overpowered by his, despite it being only a ragged whisper.
“Kiss me.”
Her suspicions where answered, but it only aided in her dread.
“Ba-”
She shifted her head to the side to avoid him. Panic consuming her.
But his large encompassing hand was quick in finding her cheek. Cupping it in its callous palm and forcing her to face him yet again.
“Are you deaf? I said kiss me!” He roared. The sound once again blaring like thunder from the gods in her ears.
However, despite his lips coming to attack her and the threat of his sharp fangs that could easily bruise her, she continued to push at him. Trying to pry him off her and run like the prey he had made it clear that she was.
“No.”
It surprised him to say the least.
Small, weak protests he could brush of with a shrug was nothing he wasn’t used to, but firm acts of retaliation was new.
Granted, he’d never tried kissing her. Always settling for feeling her ample supple flesh in his hands and seeing that sweet look on her face. Feeling his pants grow tight and jacking of in the school showers when no one was there to see him in the downright pathetic state.
“No?”
His brow quirked. His mouth a firm line until it once again sprung into his signature smirk.
“How about this? Kiss me and I’ll stop.”
Her eyes softened at that. Growing large. And he swore he could see her ears draw back.
There was no doubt she was surprised, intrigued, tempted.
“That’s right.” He drawled.
His thumb rubbed across her bottom lip and she was too consumed by his offer to mind.
“I’ll stop following you around, pushing you, calling you names. I’ll stop it all.”
He drew closer, to her ear. Lips ghosting her temple. Relishing the moment when he felt her shiver because of it.
“And all I ask in return is a little kiss.”
Pulling away, he looked content at first, but soon his features turned malicious once again.
“But... if you refuse... I’ll tell everyone about what a little slut you are. About how you love sucking my cock like a good little cumdumpster.”
She looked horrified at that. Her tears finally spilling over.
“But I-” She stuttered but he paid her no mind.
Already knowing whatever she was about to say.
“Who’s gonna believe you? It’s my word against yours. What are people gonna think? Huh? You think you’ll have any friends left after I run that rumour? Nah... you’ll have no one... and by that time, you’re gonna be begging me to kiss you.” His voice was frenzied.
And it must have purely because he was so lost in that craze, that he didn’t notice her leg coming to kick him in the groin.
She was thoroughly disgusted. Mostly with him, but also with herself to even having considered demeaning herself like that.
“Fuck you.”
His hold relented at the assault. And despite it being a mere temporary act, one he soon recovered from, it was enough for her to start sprinting.
“Fuck me?” He had to laugh.
And she was right. The noise really did sound like gunshots being fired at her as she ran for her life.
“That’s what the whole school’s gonna think you did come tomorrow!”
Falling onto the floor. His arms and legs spread like a starfish he couldn’t stop cackling, as though mad. Excited and thrilled, even with the stinging pain still spurring in his ball-sack. Heck, maybe even because of it.
This was fun. This was very fun.
His voice mellowed down.
“I’m gonna get you… one way or the other…”
Good thing he knows where she lives.
Good thing she didn’t live too far away.
Good thing she hadn’t kissed him.
Good thing he wasn’t forced to become a liar when continuing to force her to do as he wished.
Good thing there was plenty of broom-closets in the school.
Good thing she couldn’t do shit to stop him.
TIP-JAR
PART TWO
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jeminy3 · 4 years ago
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old archie x maxie (hardenshipping) doodles i never posted, from 2017 or 2018. they were related to some of the doodles in this post.
I have a lot of unpublished drawings of these guys, and i never did elaborate on my headcanons for them. The truth is, I was (and still kinda am) very anxious and embarrassed about this fixation, probably because it centers around villains and “woobifies” them, but also because after playing and researching more into ORAS, i discovered that my personal canon was contradicted by actual canon and i felt invalidated.
For the sake of posterity, I’ll summarize my old headcanons below. (It’s still pretty long, ugh)
A grunt in Team Magma’s hideout says that Archie and Maxie “used to be on the same team.” In canon, this probably implies that they worked together on New Mauville, Sea Mauville, or another unnamed project, depending on how old they are and how long ago those projects started and ended.
However, like many other fans, I thought this meant they used to be in Team Rocket together, and I elaborated an entire backstory based on that:
+ Maxie and Archie were part of a group of Rocket recruits attempting to start a branch of Team Rocket in the Hoenn Region. The project failed because soon after they arrived, Giovanni was defeated in Kanto and officially dissolved Team Rocket, causing a schism to form within the Hoenn team over whether to give up the project or not. This eventually lead to the team splintering into two factions, one lead by Maxie and the other lead by Archie, which eventually grew and rebranded themselves into Team Magma and Team Aqua.
-Maxie and Archie met and connected enough to start dating, though they were emotionally dysfunctional. As problems arose and the Team began to splinter, their relationship also broke down and their separation was very messy.
Maxie clung to the ambition of staying in Hoenn and building up the Team as a paragon of human industry, pushing away Archie and anyone else he deemed as “not useful.”
Archie also wanted to make the Team work, but not in the way Maxie and his side wanted, at the expense of nature. Archie felt hurt and betrayed as Maxie pushed him away and disagreed with him, making him contradict and lash out at Maxie even more.
This all culminated in a huge fight between Archie and Maxie and their respective sides, involving both Pokemon battling and actual fist-fighting. Local authorities were called in, causing the teams to scatter, but not before Archie and Maxie promised to face each other again, reforging themselves as bitter rivals.
-- Maxie
+ Maxie is (the pokemon equivalent of) German/Japanese, and was born on Cinnabar Island. His birth name was Maximillian Matsubasa Von Brandt, but he prefers simply “Maxie”. He IDs as bigender, asexual and demi-homoromantic.
His father is a Kanto businessman named Masaru Matsubasa. His mother is from somewhere in or near Kalos, named Melissa Von Brandt. They were both wealthy and successful business people who frequently left on business trips, Masaru travelling between Kanto and Johto and Melissa to her home country.
Maxie was often left alone or with a nanny at home. He was well-provided for and self-sufficient, but he was lonely and emotionally stunted. He had a passion for geology and engineering, and showed interest in contributing to helping Cinnabar’s local issues, which were often tense because of the limited land space. Homelessness and unemployment were high, and development plans to alleviate these were stymied by parties who lobbied for the preservation of the local Pokemon wildlife by any means.
Maxie’s parents were skeptical of his choice in career but still supported him, if only half-heartedly. This lead Maxie to study Cinnabar’s volcano, which he found to be very much active and possibly dangerous. He developed a plan to build in and around the volcano in such a way that it would utilize extra space inside the mountain for housing/businesses and its magma for natural energy to power the city, possibly circumventing its eventual eruption.
He presented this plan to Cinnabar’s city council, but was practically laughed out of the meeting for such an ambitious and dangerous idea, especially by the wildlife parties. This damaged his reputation and caused him to be fired/demoted from his job. His parents reprimanded him, regretting their decision to support him.
Lost and disgusted with his life, Maxie found recruitment with Team Rocket and left Cinnabar to join their efforts on the mainland. When he presented his research to their higher-ups, they were impressed enough to pass it along to Giovanni himself, and Maxie ended up contributing to the construction of some of their underground lairs, like in Celadon City.
This also made him a prime candidate for the Rocket Hoenn project as a lead engineer and scientist, and he joined the project with high hopes.
+ His interest in Pokemon was soured by his past and usually only extends are far as his ambitions, which means he views Pokemon only as things that can be useful to whatever projects he’s working on, otherwise they are a nuisance. After becoming the leader of Team Magma and having to train a personal team to defend himself with, he warms up to Pokemon a bit more.
+ Maxie plays up his confidence and genius, but does have moments of crippling self-doubt and anxiety. Deep down, he’s socially awkward and has trouble expressing his feelings, tending to bottle things up until they spill out in moments of anger.
+ Maxie used to be a semi-heavy smoker in his youth to cope with his anxiety. After becoming the leader of Team Magma, his health was suffering and his grunts were visibly uncomfortable around him, so for the sake of his own health and that of his team, he quit, with help and advice from Courtney and Tabitha.
+ Maxie hates his parents and hasn’t contacted them since he left Cinnabar, which was over ten years ago by the end of ORAS events. He avoids them to the point that he uses a forged identity in Hoenn, named “Maxie Stormfront.” ‘Stormfront’ is a reference from one of his favorite metal bands, the Doom Hounds, because he is a nerd.
+ Years later, Cinnabar’s volcano did erupt and destroy the town, displacing its human population. Maxie has mixed feelings about this – he’s not sure if it’s righteous karma for the City Council rejecting his plans, or a sign that his old plans were doomed to failure and he was better off leaving Cinnabar after all.
-- Archie
+ Archie is (the pokemon equivalent of) Black/Hispanic and a Hoenn native. His birth name is Archibald Rodriguez. He IDs as a cis man (or trans?), pansexual and panromantic.
He was born to his father, Alexander Rodriguez and his mother, Alicia Fuentes (Rodriguez after marriage) in a small fishing town on one of Hoenn’s coasts, with its fishery being its only major industry. Most of its residents are middle-class or poor, and few members pursue an education after high school, usually joining the local fishing industry.
In his youth, Archie didn’t care much for school or work, preferring to spend his days playing with the local water Pokemon and his friends, Matt and Shelly. However, this exposed him to the effects that overfishing and pollution had on the local wildlife, and he eventually grew to want to pursue a career as a Veterinarian, specifically for water pokemon.
His parents didn’t believe he would be successful and his town had few resources to help him. The most he could do was research at the local library and a then-primitive internet.
Worse, his town was outright apathetic to the damage their industry was causing to the local wildlife because they depended on its capital to survive.
+A possible traumatic memory involves a young Archie nursing a sick Magikarp back to health for weeks, only to later discover it trapped in the nets of the fishery his father worked at, doomed to become food/products. When he attempted to cut the nets and save the Magikarp, his father restrained him and reprimanded him, claiming “it’s just a fish, boy! They’re all just stupid fish!”
Eventually, Archie was a depressed drifter in his 20s, unable to hold onto work and unable to afford to leave to a larger city. He often fought with his abrasive father and his mother was coddling, but unsupportive. This made Archie a prime candidate for Team Rocket recruiters as they arrived on Hoenn, promising a way out of his backwater town, decent pay, and a career where he’d be appreciated and be able to work with Pokemon to change the world.  He joined as a lowly Grunt, but was talented and well-respected within the Team.
-Archie has limited contact with his parents since he left home, only calling them once a year or so.
-Archie doesn’t like being referred to as his full name, it feels pretentious and brings back uncomfortable memories of his family.
+I used to headcanon Archie and Matt as biological brothers because of the “bro” thing, but I’m not sure about keeping that. If so, Matt’s name would be short for Matthias Rodriguez, because their parents liked pretentious names.
-Like some of his dialog implies, Archie is kind of depressed, pessimistic and cynical deep down, but hides it behind his boisterous, reckless attitude. At his worst, he’s downright bitter, uncaring of his own life or the lives of humanity in general, in favor of Pokemon.
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deadinside-butstill-horny · 4 years ago
Text
The Night We Met
Part One - The Night We Met
Pairing: Javier Peña/ Female Murphy!Reader
Words: 5.3k
Summary: Murphy's sister travels to Colombia after realising Steve might not quite be A-Okay and meets the Javier Peña.
Content Warnings: 18+ Smut-ish (I wouldn’t wanna read it out to my mom), dry humping, dirty talk in Spanish which reader doesn’t understand so does it really count?, gratuitous love of the black shirt from the torture scene.
AO3
MASTERLIST
Author Note: So here is my return to writing! The word count got away from me but I loved every second of it. Always after prompts, so drop me a message on here if you'd like to see anything in particular. If it's in my wheelhouse, you'll definitely see it.  
Pedro in the black shirt in this scene is what inspired me to write this, I can’t lie. 
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If you were brutally honest with yourself, this spur of the moment decision may have been a mistake. 
Other people could make these choices and not have that nagging feeling in their gut from the second they booked their fuckin' airline ticket. You had attempted to grab life by its metaphorical horns and go and sort this shit show out by yourself, but after your momentarial bravery was used up, all that was left was a crippling anxiety that threatened to send you into a full scale panic attack if you thought too hard about the fact you were following your big brother to Colombia.
Yes, Colombia. You, a U.S. national with no particular interest in hunting Pablo Escobar, had decided to vacation in sunny, crime ridden Bogotá on a whim. 
You were fuckin’ dumb. 
Sarcasm aside, you weren’t actually here on vacation, you were going to check on Stevie. Your brother, one of the DEA agents assigned with taking down Escobar. 
You’d been worried about him for a few months, it had sounded like he was dealing with heavy shit in South America, you knew that was the job, but he was still your brother.
His calls had gotten less and less frequent until he stopped returning them all together and the only reason you knew he was alive were your pep-talks with your sister-in-law, trying to help her keep her shit together, but hell, you weren’t a therapist or a miracle worker. So when Connie rang asking to stay at your place you had obliged and she had returned to Miami a mere shell of her former self. 
After a mammoth amount of prodding over the course of two days you managed to wring the truth out of her, not the nuggets of information she had given you over the phone in hushed whispers during her time in Colombia but the whole messy story; the communist Elisa Alvarez, Steve’s kidnapping and the cold edges your brother was developing. 
It was all you could do not to book the tickets there and then, but you held out and supported Connie in the ways Steve couldn't have, taking care of Olivia when you could and just trying your hardest to be there for her. Your presence alone seemed to be enough to help her through the days that followed.  A week and a half after her return, you booked your flight to Colombia in secret. 
You had to check on Steve. 
He hadn’t answered a single one of your many many calls. You packed light and told Connie the morning of, and whilst she didn’t like it, she understood. You supposed that a part of her was relieved to know her husband would have someone in Colombia that wasn't there to kill him. 
So here you sat, two hours into your flight to the paradise destination; Bogotá. Your brother's address scrawled on a scrap piece of paper in the one hand and a glass of cheap whiskey in the other.  The alcohol did little to to calm your nerves, this was a dangerous place for a cop, let alone a fuckin’ clueless civilian. 
When the plane finally touched down, you stood from your seat emptying the last few drops of whiskey which had tried to evade you onto your tongue, you picked up your backpack and queued to leave the plane.
The second you left the aircraft the humidity hit you like a brick wall, it was like all of the fresh air had been sucked out of the atmosphere. On a normal evening you would appreciate such a warm climate, but now the heat meant frustration to your tired brain and it only added to your baseline levels of anxiety as your hairline and upper lip were drenched as you walked through the arrivals gate.
Cards on the table; you didn’t have much of a game plan, you spoke no Spanish and stuck out like a sore thumb. You had the address but no means to get there, you didn’t relish the idea of getting in a taxi as a woman alone in a foreign country, but with little to no other options you went to hail one of the cabs that sat outside the airport.
Your fears turned out to be for naught, well not quite naught as the man had raked his eyes across your body for a large percentage of the trip in his mirror, but he had the good grace not to kidnap or murder you, which for you meant it was a successful journey, how low you had set the bar was just occuring to you.
After paying the gentleman he dropped you outside what appeared to Steve’s apartment building. You take a moment on the pavement to recollect yourself ready for your reunion. Peeling your denim jacket off, you decide instead to wrap it around your waist, tying the sleeves securely. With a harumph, you grab the handle of your suitcase, and drag it behind you. Your success thus far gives you a second wind of determination.
Though apparently dumb luck can only get you so far, because after heaving your suitcase up a flight of stairs and rapping on the door of apartment 20 until your knuckles ached, it began to dawn on you, you had no clue if this was even the right building.
“Fuck.” you mutter to yourself, you should’ve rang Connie or tried Steve again when you landed, but you’d been so single minded in carrying out your plan all common sense had apparently abandoned you. So with a million different scenarios of things you could’ve done better playing out behind your eyes you dragged your suitcase to the small lobby of the building, where the front door stood.
You huffed and dropped onto the bottom step in surrender, not quite sure where to go from here. 
Weeks of anxiety and worry finally took their toll on your body as reality set in, and as it did so you couldn’t help but laugh at the sheer stupidity of the situation you’d put yourself in. A light chuckle escaped your body as you held your face in your hands,you rubbed at your eyes as a way of refreshing yourself before sighing and leaning back.
You must have sat with your head in your hands for around three hours before anyone of note arrived, you had received strange looks from residents in their comings and goings as they stepped around you, your expectant looks turned to disappointment when you realised they weren’t Steve. In fairness, you, a gringa sitting on the stairs at 2am, most likely wasn’t a daily occurrence to these homeowners.
By the time he came through the door, your eyes were closed and your head was leant on the bannister, trying to get what little rest you could. Your eyes opened a crack to see a man and a woman enter the building and turn right, the man had his arm around her as he stared at you in confusion, the look was so quick you may have missed it if you blinked, but they were talking in low whispers of Spanish and from the looks of things he didn’t give you a second thought. 
So you extended him the same courtesy and shut your eyes once again, you heard the metal jangling of keys going into the lock, the sound of smacking lips and then the door was closed. You figured that was the end of it, instead you heard hurried footsteps coming towards you, your eyes shot open as he rounded the corner.
“Estás bien?” The man questioned. It took you a moment to realise he was talking to you, as you took him in you were struck by your stupidity, how could you have dismissed this man so quickly even in the throes of a mental breakdown. His chocolate brown eyes bore into your own as you realised he was waiting for a response. 
“Uh… no hablo... español?” you pretty much asked him, cringing internally at your butchering of the most basic sentence of this gorgeous strangers language, his lips quirked at your mumbles making his mustache raise on one side with his smirk. Now, you’d never been a fan of a mustache, Steve and your father had both taken to styling their facial hair in such a way, and as a rule of thumb they were a big no-no. But my god. This man made that mustache his bitch and that bitch worked for him.
“You’re American?” He questions, smirk dropping along with his eyebrows in confusion as his brain processes the information.
“Oh thank god and Jesus fuckin’ christ above. You’re American!” Your timid nature had given way to pure unadulterated relief. “Stevie, Steve Murphy, he lives in this building, yeah?”
“Yeah… Stevi...Steve lives here- I’m sorry, who the hell are you?” He asks with a puzzled look and a shake of his head, there’s an air of distrust about him for some strange reason. 
“I’m Y/N Murphy, I’m his sister.”
“Sister? Mierda... does he know you’re here?” 
“Nope,” You pop your P as you shrug at the man before you with false nonchalance. “He’d have to answer the phone to me or Connie to know that now, wouldn’t he?”
“Steve.” The stranger sighed, annoyed. 
“Sorry, who are you?” You asked, yourself becoming more bemused by the man by the second. 
“I’m Steve’s partner, Javier.” He held out his hand which you were more than happy to take in a shake, his tan hand was soft yet strong as it held your own captive within it. “C’mon in I’ll give him a call, God knows what time he’s planning on getting back.”
“Uh, I don’t want to interrupt…” You mumble, waving your free hand vaguely towards where you knew the woman was waiting for him, making him smirk once again. 
You were beginning to think that the sarcastic raise of his mouth was just his default resting face.
“You’re not interrupting anything.”
Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘cause I’d think it to. This is how people die in America, let alone fuckin’ Colombia, but if it's a choice between dying at the hands of a gorgeous man who seems to know your brother or a stray that wonders in through the non-descript lobby door then you’d rather go out with a nice view, even if he did have a girlfriend.
If you had to gamble, you’d say you had a damn good chance of making it out of this apartment alive. 
So you nodded and used the hand he hadn’t released yet to pull yourself up into a standing position. He wasn’t particularly tall but he still towered over you, your eyeline gave you a great view past his black shirt which was unbuttoned quite liberally, you assumed that was courtesy of the woman he’d entered with. 
“Thank you,” you nodded at him with a genuine smile of relief. He didn’t reply, only grabbed the handle of your pull along suitcase before extending his arm towards his apartment and motioning to wordlessly say, after you. 
Now you know how people say when you can feel a stare? You had the sensation before, but as you leaned over to pick up your backpack from the bottom step, you felt his eyes laser focus on your denim clad ass. You turned your head in disbelief and found his eyes still lingered there for a moment before meeting your own. Unbelievable. Part of you was flattered, the other part was bemused that he had a beautiful woman in there waiting and here he was ogling you.
You rolled your eyes, instilled with a new confidence as you turned and walked towards his apartment, you felt his eyes follow your form once more. 
Steve’s hot partner was an ass man... Good to know. 
...
As it turns out Javier’s girlfriend, or what you we’re starting to think was more of a one night stand, was not happy with the situation at all, you came to this discovery as Javier pointed you to the sofa before beginning arguing with her in hushed Spanish, the beautiful woman huffed and sent a dirty look your way before storming out and slamming the door behind her, with enough power to make it shake in its bearings. You raised your eyebrows at Javier from your seat. He shook his head with a sigh and began lighting up a cigarette, he turned and offered you one. 
“No thanks, I quit.”
“Woman with an iron will?”
“Not quite,” You whisper, shaking your head.
He smiles before clearing his throat and moving over to pick up his landline. Javier presses a combination of buttons, before putting it to his ear and blowing the smoke from his lungs. His eyes met yours as the phone rang, he gave you reassuring wink. 
“Murphy? … Yeah…  you need to get back to your place now... You’ve got a guest.... No … come find out why don’t you?” Sarcasm dripped from his lazy tone, his voice was so smooth. It was like chocolate on gravel, you could listen to him talk for hours, which led your mind down that deep dark hole of what he sounded like during more carnal acts, he’d be a talker, for definite, what with all that confidence and swagger. “‘Kay… I’ll see you soon.”
Shaking your head you centred yourself, it had been a dry patch for you. You needed to calm down and not throw yourself at your brother's partner, even if he just so happened to be the first man you had any interest in to show you attention in months. 
“He’s on his way,” He confirmed what you already knew but you liked hearing him speak so you nodded in thanks. An awkward silence filled the air for a few moments, as you two perfect strangers shared one another's company.
“Drink?” He offered pointing at the bottle of whiskey on the counter.
“God, yes.” You all but moaned at the offer. Javier chuckled, and grabbed a second glass from his cupboard, before pouring you both a generous serving.  He walked around the back of the sofa, and passed you the glass of liquid gold and took a seat next to you. Close enough to initiate something, but not touching, quite a respectful distance. 
Initiate something? God Y/N, get your mind out of the gutter. This poor man had only invited you in because you were his partner's sister and he was doing the decent thing. 
“Uh… The television work?” You ask, pointing at the empty screen.
“I didn’t realise you could speak Spanish…” His voice was dripping with false surprise, mocking your earlier attempts at the language, though he reached across and switched the box on with the remote, he began flicking through the channels so quickly he almost gave you a headache.
“Oh yes, I’m very proficient, I just didn’t want to intimidate you earlier. Hola Señor Javier.”  You say continuing his ruse. He chuckles at your words, it's a deep warm noise that shakes his entire frame. You were definitely thinking about adding Javier’s voice to your top ten list of favourite sounds. 
He flicks through the channels, for a few seconds before sighing and dropping the remote in your lap. Taking your assignment seriously, you sit up, bringing yourself a few inches closer to the man next to you, purely accidentally of course and begin flicking through the channels as Javier had done moments before, though 3am TV scheduling left a lot to be desired. 
News, News, Colombian QVC, News, News, Soap opera. Bingo!
“Ah, now we’re talking.” You mumble, eyes stuck on the screen of the Colombian Soap opera playing. The two of you sat in silence once again as you slowly sipped on your drinks watching drama play out. 
You watched in silence for around ten minutes, not understanding a single word of what was being said. The scene was on two latino actors sitting in a bedroom. The woman was sat on the bed being confronted by the man in a serious tone. 
“What is she saying?” You question narrowing your eyes at the beautiful woman's tone. Javier, who had been watching your reactions the whole time as you got into the awful tv show scrambled as he tried to listen and translate the woman's words.
“Uh… her dads an alcoholic and she’s trying to support her son… that guy didn’t know about the son... I think… she was happy living a double life without the worry and she wants him to forgive her and start over…”  Javier translated, giving you the general cliff notes.
“Oh shit,” You gasped at his words, but your attention diverted to the screen where the two had continued their heated argument and began kissing or rather where the man was devouring her neck, “I’m getting vibes that he might be open to forgiving her.” 
You chuckled at your own joke, as did Javier. Though this time when his body shook his bare elbow touched your own. 
How was he so goddamn warm? 
All he was wearing was a black button down shirt. One that looked to be the wrong size it was so tightly fitted- not that you were complaining about the view. My God, were you horny today.
You took a gulp of your drink, trying to refocus for the third or fourth time this evening, trying so desperately to reign in your inner school girl and focus on the television, though that didn’t help as the actors were now eating one anothers faces on a bed. The silence was thick with tension, though that could’ve been entirely on you; one innocent touch of a man's elbow and you’re a blushing mess.  
Get a grip Y/N. 
The silence dragged on as you pretended to watch the soap opera you had absolutely no understanding of in a futile attempt to ignore the man next to you. You can only imagine what he thought of your levels of focus on the tv, as you stared at the box in the corner of the room like it was the greatest cinematic masterpiece of all time and you were getting ready to write a full-scale analysis on the work of art. 
Javier broke the tension in the room by finally asking the question that had been on his lips all evening.
“You came all the way to Colombia... Why?” Javier grabbed a cigarette off of the coffee table, placing his drink where the carton of smokes had been. He lit the stick and waited for your response, honestly, you were thrown. The question had come out of nowhere whilst you were still trying to analyse why exactly this man had such an effect on you when he was doing nothing but being a good host.  You hastened to think up a half coherent reply before you just answered truthfully. 
“Steve stopped answering the phone, I mean he’s always been shitty at checking in, even when he was in Miami. When he got here we’d have a catch up every week or so, we all know how dangerous it is for you guys over here, so we joked about calling it ‘the alive check’. For the last couple of months, I was checking in with Connie more than Steve but he’d still pick up once every week, without fail. Then four weeks ago the fucker stopped answering my calls all together and Connie showed up on my doorstep with Olivia in tow last week.”
“Look, you coming down here probably makes more problems than it solves, Steve’s a big boy if he doesn’t call to check in, it's probably ‘cause he’s busy...  He’s-” Something about Javier’s dismissive tone rubbed you the wrong way, call it sleep deprivation or blame the weeks of stress, but you were tired of being called paranoid. You were not an overbearing mother hen.
“My brother always answers my calls. Or at least he used to. I can’t begin to understand what you guys are going through, but I’m not losing my brother to some piece of shit Colombian drug dealer.” 
Javier raised his hands in mock surrender, cigarette still in mouth. “He’s actually more of a drug lord slash narcoterrorist, but-”
“How is he?” You interrupt Javier’s attempt at diffusing the situation with humor, turning to him on the sofa. You rearranged yourself, bringing your leg up so your knee touched his thigh as you gave him your full attention,  you plucked the smoke from between his lips and held it between your two fingers as you spoke. “Tell me Steve’s fine. Tell me I’m worrying for nothing and I’ll get back on that plane and leave tomorrow morning."
You take one drag and offer it back to him, he accepts it, deliberately looking you in the eyes as he places the cigarette in his mouth, attaching his lips to where your own had been seconds earlier.  He takes it from his mouth and stubs it on an ash tray that rests on the arm of the sofa, his focus is single minded on his task. The pressure in your lower stomach is mounting as you stare at the tanned man before you who is carrying out a menial task that has you more turned on than you’d ever admit. 
When the red tip is extinguished thoroughly, taking much longer than you thought it needed to, Javi turns to you, his mahogany eyes have you pinned in your tracks. You found yourself admitting they were gorgeous for the second time this evening, they were the type of brown you could never quite describe, they had so much depth, not quite a chocolate, not quite coffee, they were rich and deep pools. They reminded you of the forest, not the green leaves but the earthy brown, the strong beams of wood that held everything up around it.
Javier's hand emigrated forward slowly, your eyes followed the movement in your peripheral but you didn’t dare look away from the pools of molasses as he reached to grip one hand at your denim thigh, his eyes roamed your face for any sign of this being an unwelcome approach and when he found none his other hand began its climb to rest on your jaw, just below your ear.
You couldn’t say if you moved towards him or if he advanced on you, all you knew was he was on you now as the tips of your noses rubbed against one another.
“Quiero saborearte…” He whispered so lowly you barely even heard it before he leaned in that last inch and captured your lips in a single, chaste kiss. Your lips connected and you realised the heat you had felt from his arms had been nothing. Fire coursed through your veins upon contact, surging through your blood and going south to a pressure that built in your lower stomach. 
Your hand shot up to land on his collarbone, before you could even really consider your own actions you pulled apart until your foreheads were the only thing touching.  He was intoxicating, you could lose yourself completely in this man, he somehow smelt like cinnamon, whiskey and sweat, a combination you’d never thought would send liquid fire through your central nervous system.  You’d give anything to taste him properly, but this was wrong. So so wrong. This was your brother's partner, this was inviting complication to your door, when you were just here to check on Steve. You were here for Steve.
You were here for Steve... 
“... This isn’t a good idea.” You all but whisper, closing your eyes. Regret pulses through your veins at your self imposed restraint. 
“Never is.” He leaned forward and captured your lips. You didn’t have any fight left in you, exhausted and at wits end you embraced your spiral into stupidity instead and your hands glided across the clammy skin of his neck to grab at his short ink black hair. You wrapped your fingers around it to drag him closer to you, your lips clashed, all teeth at first but you didn’t care as his tongue began to fight against yours for dominance. 
He tasted as good as you imagined, he was the right combination of sweet and bitter, with undertones of whiskey and tobacco on his tongue. Your response to his assault on your mouth told him it was go time, Javier pulled you into his lap and his hands lowered to your ass. Your body was flush with his own as your breasts pressed against his chest, you could feel every solid line of his lithe body against your own. 
You licked at his honied tongue, before withdrawing and pulling his bottom lip into your mouth and sucking on the soft plush skin. His mustache tickled your upper lip, a sensation you weren’t used to but could so easily grow to love.  This made him tighten his grip on your backside in response and he let out a throaty groan at the meat he found there, Javier was definitely an ass man, you felt his bulge pressing against your core as you both began grinding against each other in earnest. You felt like a horny teenager as you grinded on a man you barely knew. 
You felt him grip at the bottom of your tank top and begin to lift it, except he stopped, and began to rub patterns on the stomach he exposed. Javier’s mouth descended from your lips to begin to suck and lick at your throat. Your eyes rolled into the back of your head at his work as pleasure rippled throught your body. His hands slid the length of your body to grab at your chest, which conforming to every stereotype was heaving, he palmed your breast blindly as his face was still buried in your hair, sucking and kissing along to your ear, before he raised his mouth a mere inch and whispered  “Te follaré toda la noche niña.”
He said it with such surety that your body convulsed in on itself without even needing to know what the man above you was saying. You could only hope it was absolutely filthy and profanity ridden, because then at least, the sentiment would be shared. He bit at the lobe of your ear before his hands left your breasts and travelled to the hem of your tank top, getting ready to pull it over your head.
It was strange to say that you remembered your brother was on his way here as a man tried to take your t-shirt off, but that’s just the way it went. You knew if that top came off, dry humping would be the most PG action of the night and if Steve turned up and found you mounted on his partner, he probably wouldn’t be too thrilled. 
You couldn’t stop yourself from stroking the man's hair whose face was planted in between your tits as his hips rose against your own pushing his hardened length up against the seams of your jeans, you gasped as he hit that sweet spot. You let out a noise that sounded like a wail. You wanted nothing more than to lie back and let this man have his filthy way with your body. And you know, from the hour you’ve spent with this man it would be phenomenally filthy. The kind of sex that would ruin all men for you, but no. You had to be a good sister. Like a fuckin loser. 
Sighing, you threw your body sideways before you could change your mind and ended up on your back. Javier followed you, caging you with his frame as he covered your body with his own.  Gripping your face like he was a starving man and you were the only sustenance he’d ever need. It would be so easy to get lost in him, to give in to that magic tongue but you couldn’t let this go any further so you placed a hand on his chest.
Taking your cue he paused his tongues assault on your mouth and stopped, resting his forehead against your own. You were both breathing heavily trying to come back down to reality, his eyes were no longer the chocolate brown you’d been comforted by when you met, but rings of obsidian staring into your soul. You wanted this man, my god you did. But this would make more problems for Steve.
The two of you stayed that way for a while, foreheads and bodies pressed against one another until both of your breathing evened out. The silence dragged, heavy in the air as you two strangers both waited for the other to break it. 
“...Is Steve okay?”
“...No... He’s been fuckin’ mess ever since Connie left.” Javier sighed whilst closing his eyes and breathing deep. You raised your hands from his chest, which was difficult as he was crushing his body to yours and cupped his cheek, you joined your lips once more, much like the first kiss. This was sweet and there wasn’t a carnal appetite behind it but rather an understanding. 
The loud knock on the front door startles you both as you’d been so wrapped up in one another you’d not heard the steps leading to it. The two of you split apart like a pair of guilty teens caught in the act. You both stared at each other for a second before he nods at you and walks to the front door whilst rearranging his bulge discreetly in his jeans, this was something you pretended not to see as you sat back up right on the sofa. You had only a moment to fix yourself, as you pulled your tank top from where it was hooked by your breasts and ran your fingers through your hair so you didn’t look like you’ve just had the ravaging of a lifetime. 
Javier pulled open the door and you clutch your hands into your lap, not quite sure what kind of reception you were about to receive from your brother. You hear the two men greet one another in hushed whispers, you couldn’t make out Steve's voice much until you hear his voice clear as day “...what the hell was so important it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
You stand from your spot on the sofa and quickly realise the button on your jeans is undone; if you’re honest you don’t even know how he managed to do that without you noticing, even though it's not the time you take a solitary second to commend Javier on his artistry of disrobing a woman. Turning quickly you pull the rivet back through the hole and swing around as Steve crosses the threshold from the hallway.  
Steve looks from you, to Javier and then back to you once more in complete surprise. It takes his brain a hot second to process that you’re here in front of him and in Colombia before he rushes you. Clutching you tight and hugging you to his chest. You hear something that sounds suspiciously like a sob leave your brothers chest before he collapses into you. The front door and Javier’s bedroom both in rapid succession, giving you the privacy you knew your brother would need after breaking down like this.
You couldn’t support Steve’s weight with your considerably smaller frame and the two of you fell to the ground as you held your broken brother. His body shook with silent sobs as he buried his face in your shoulder.
You said nothing as you held him and stroked his hair. In that moment you thanked your every instinct that screamed at you to come to Colombia. 
This had definitely not been a mistake. 
Part Two
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