#kudos if you can tell what’s going on in any of these drawings

[soothedcerberus]

My comic process is “”organized”” chaos

[floofiestboy]

Aoyama's Let's Talk Day 2025 Translation [Unofficial Sources]

EDIT: [2025-02-01]

The official transcript has been released. Please refer to my translation of it here instead.

Yesterday was Aoyama’s yearly Let’s Talk Day, a day when a lucky few audience members chosen by lottery have the chance to ask him questions. While the Q&A hasn’t yet been officially released, I’ve translated tweets about the questions asked. I can’t guarantee that they’re 100% trustworthy, but generally most questions were posted by multiple unrelated users.

In cases where different users reported slightly different answers for the same question, I consolidated them to the best of my ability. All source tweets at the end. Without further ado: 

Q. When Gin travels to other countries, does he stay at hotels, or does he have safe houses? I want to know whether he uses hotel-provided amenities like bathrobes.  

A. He sleeps in his car or stays at Organization-provided lodging- the Organization has apartments all over the place. He does also stay at hotels. The FBI still hasn’t discovered them. He does wear bathrobes! He has long hair so I imagine it’s tough to wash.

Q. What sports does the England-born Akai play aside from Jeet Kune Do?

A. He learnt Jeet Kune Do from his father, so has no interest in sports other than that. But I think he might be good at cricket since he’s English. Maybe baseball in America.

Q. Does Hiro have any experience with martial arts?

A. He learnt some at the police academy. He has no other experience, but he’s decently strong- weaker than Kyogoku though.

Q. As you were a guest on Kōhaku Uta Gassen [T/N: A music show that traditionally airs around New Year’s in Japan] this year, do you have plans to write a case based around it?

A. I doubt NHK would let me (haha) I did think a music show case might be fun, but they’d probably still bother me about it.

[Questioner: What if you changed the name? Like, a West vs. East tournament.]

I’ll think about it.

Q. Will the Kuroba family and Kudo family meet each other in the future?

A. Is that something you want to see? I’ll think about it.

Q. What will Momiji do now that Heiji and Kazuha are dating?

A. I don’t think Momiji will give up? She’ll do her best.

Q. How can you think up so many different characters?

A. I don’t know (haha) Maybe because I’ve seen lots of different manga, dramas, and movies. 

[Questioner: So they just pop up in your mind.]

Something like that.

Q. Do you plan to write a story where Chihaya and Furuya meet?

A. Ah, so Chihayafuru, you mean (haha) It sounds interesting, so I’ll think about it.

Q. What can you tell us about this year’s movie at this point?

A. When I told Rikiya Koyama [T/N: Mouri’s VA] that Kogoro is the main character this year, he told me he was nervous. Once he was done, Takayama-san [T/N: Conan’s VA] told him he sounded cool. 

Q. What’s the best part of this year’s movie?

A. I can’t say, but I think you’ll be shocked.

Q. What’s your favourite case so far?

A. Ran GIRL & Shinichi BOY. I love it.

Q. How did Kogoro manage to become a detective without deductive abilities?

A. He doesn’t have deductive abilities, but he’s good at shooting and judo. And he has Conan around. Everything works out.

Q. Was Nakamori Aoko born in September?

A. When is good?

[Questioner: Since Kaito was born on the 21st, maybe the 12th?]

 I’ll think about it. I haven’t decided, but since Kaito’s birthday is June 21st (6/21), maybe September 12th (9/12) makes sense.

Q. What kind of things does Ran talk about with her karate club friends?

A. What would you like?

[Questioner: Romance talk!]

I do think they chat about that. Everyone would be interested to hear about how things are going with Shinichi. If a scene like that ever comes to mind, I’ll think about including it.

Q. What is Furuya’s family situation like?

A. Secret, as I haven’t decided for certain just yet- it might still change.

Q. Will you ever draw the moment Kazuha fell for Heiji?

A. Do you want to see it? I might.

Q. At Abeno Harukas, Heiji confessed and was holding hands with Kazuha, but did Heiji initiate the hand-holding?

A. Yes. I don’t know if I’ll ever draw that though.

Q. At Kōhaku Uta Gassen, were there any artists you enjoyed other than aiko, B’Z, and Fukuyama-san?

A. Ah, I can’t think of anyone but them. But they were all good. B’z was amazing. It was all dark in the audience seating, but when I thought “oh, something is moving,” it was truly amazing by the end. B’z is my choice! (haha)

Q. Do you have any plans for a spinoff featuring Hattori?

A. Like Zero’s Tea Time?

[Questioner: More like Hanzawa-san.]

What’s the difference between Zero’s Tea Time and Hanzawa-san? Did you want a spinoff? There’s no plans for one right now.

Q. Are there any characters you plan to have romantic developments for in the near future?

A. Kansuke and Yui, and Juugo and Chihaya… aside from that [glances at the moderator] that character… if I say who it is, we’ll get flamed online, so… (haha) 

[The audience goes abuzz]

Well, yes. I can’t tell you right now (haha). Let’s leave it at that.

Q. What’s the plan for next year’s movie?

A. I can’t say, but they do already have it planned.

Q. Who will be the star of next year’s movie?

A. I can’t say, but it’s already been decided as well as the stage.

Q. I’m from Hokkaido. Do you have plans to draw any famous tourist spots in Sapporo? 

A. Hakodate was recently the stage, so it would need to be some time in the future. Any recommendations?

[Questioner: Suzukake Park, Oodori Park, Sapporo TV Tower.]

Ah, got it, I’ll think about it.

Q. We know that Azusa has worked at Poirot for at least one year, but how long has she worked there in total?

A. I don’t know. Maybe since she was in high school. Oops, I just said whatever.

Q. Any plans for a movie set in Tottori?

A. Not at this time. I’ll think about it. I did try to incorporate the Tottori dialect once, but I was told it was incomprehensible. Tottori dialect is pretty hard. If we do a movie here, I’d like it to use Tottori dialect.

Q. It seems Momiji won’t give up even now that Heiji and Kazuha have gotten together, but will Iori continue to serve Momiji in the same way? Will he ever leave due to his old work?

A. He’ll be by her side forever. I think he’ll protect her until the day he dies.

Q. What would you want to eat at a Conan café? 

A. Naporitan spaghetti. I have childish tastebuds, so I also like Hamburg steak and hamburgers.

Q. I like aiko, so I want to hear the behind-the-scenes details about your talk with her on Kōhaku Uta Gassen.

A. During our preparatory meeting, I asked whether I should say “Funya!”, but I was told I couldn’t (because it’s from a different agency.) [T/N: Not familiar with this myself, but maybe it’s some idol’s catchphrase or a reference to a show.]

[Questioner: After meeting aiko, did any murder case ideas come to mind?]

No (haha) It would be sad to kill her off. Maybe a case with a singer involved… I’ll think about it. Aiko was cute.

Q. Kurayoshi’s phone number area code is an important plot point in Conan, but will the city be involved in the future?

A. A coincidence. Kurayoshi residents will get mad at me otherwise.

Q. What did you do for New Year’s as a child?

A. Usually my family would ask me to visit a shrine with them, but I’d stay at home since it was too much of a pain. These days, I always go for my health. [T/N: In Japan, it’s tradition to visit a shrine on the first day of the new year.]

Q. What’s Inspector Ayanokouji’s personal life like? What are his hobbies?

A. He feeds Maro-chan. Hobbies… I wonder. He does like Maro-chan. What would you like?

[Questioner: Something like archery.]

Archery? Well, I’ll think about it.

Q. Do you have any plans for a triple date with Heiji-Kazuha, Shinichi-Ran, and Kyougoku-Sonoko?

A. I hadn’t thought of that before, but I’ll think about it.

[Questioner: So you don’t plan to think about it.]

Sorry (haha). 

Q. Any information on Akai and Amuro’s chat nine hours later?

A. I can’t say. It’s a truly mysterious tea party (haha)

Q. In your Professional interview, you were eating curry, but is there any other food or snacks you like to eat while working?

A. I only really eat cheap stuff, so (haha)  I’m really into the beef don mini-pack from Yoshinoya- it’s a pretty small portion. It’s healthy and good. Also, curry from Coco.

Q. The Saitama prefecture is right next to Tokyo, but has never made an appearance. Any plans for Saitama prefecture police to appear?

A. Yokomizo did show up in Saitama at first, but he did move to Shizuoka, so (haha) I tried to have him go back, but I was told that then it just seemed like he never moved at all. I’ll write about Saitama eventually. I’ll think about it.

Q. What does Kazuha like aside from aikido? 

A. She likes Heiji… (haha) I think she likes cooking just like others like her would. Do you have any thoughts on what she might like?

[Questioner: What…]

[Moderator: Well, that’s what they wanted to know in the first place.]

I’ll think about it.

Q. I’m from Taiwan. Conan has only ever gone to England in the manga. Will he ever go to another country in the manga, not the movies?

A. It would be tough while he’s still Conan, as he doesn’t have a passport. His only choice is for Kid to stuff him into a suitcase, but I can’t use the same trick twice (haha) I’d like to go to Taiwan one day.

Q. Akai and Amuro infiltrated the Organization and know about Sherry, but don’t know of the existence of APTX4869?

A. They do not. There’s a reason why the details of her research and her family isn’t well-known in the Organization, but that’s secret. Even parents wouldn’t tell their children about it in the Organization. 

Q. Do you plan to introduce any new Organization operatives?

A. What would you like?

[Questioner: Amaretto!]

I'll think about it.

Q. Do you plan to draw Shinichi and KID facing off?

A. Shinichi. You mean big Shinichi, huh? I’d love to. (haha)

Q. What last name do you like, or would like to have?

A. Kudo! (haha) Since Kudo Yuusaku as portrayed by Matsuda Yuusaku was cool. If I can, I’d love to become one! (haha)

Q. Did you decide that Heiji would confess on a tall Osaka building even before the Abeno Harukas tower was completed? [T/N: It opened in 2014]

A. I decided after the Abeno Harukas tower was completed. But I did know from the start that Kazuha’s mother would make an appearance to include a twist.I wanted everyone to think that he’d confess to her mother by mistake. 

Q. Who’s stronger between Kogoro and Ran?

A. That’s quite the question (haha) Kogoro is strong! But, Ran is catastrophically strong too (haha). I think it’s hard to say? But if they fought against each other, he’d probably hold back against Ran. Since he’s her dad.

Q. You can really feel the cultural differences between Kyushu and Tokyo. Do you plan to write a case based on that?

A. I’d like to.

Q. Do you have any special tidbits for us aside from what you’ve already told us?

A. Kansuke and Yui and Koumei’s childhood will appear in the movie. Take a good look at the illustration I drew for the Conan Tanteisha store as well. 

Q. Anything you’d want to incorporate into Tottori’s Mystery Tour? Tourist spots and restaurants you’d recommend?

A. I’d like them to make use of Tottori’s Odaiba, crabs, and apple-pears.

Q. Who’s the tallest among all your characters?

A. Date and Gin! Kyougoku is a little shorter, but those three are the tallest. Kazami is too tall in the anime. He should be the same height as Furuya. [T/N: One source also claimed he said that Gin is taller than Date.]

Q. Will Miyano Shiho and Kudo Shinichi ever star in the same case?

A. Ah, I can’t tell you that. Whoops, I almost let something slip (haha)

Sources

https://twitter.com/hrksdc/status/1875104017174639079

https://twitter.com/brainwashednerd/status/1875109428812460351

https://twitter.com/yuki_det_con/status/1875121186411348179

https://twitter.com/Flambe4869/status/1875236194071834928

https://twitter.com/nyarura73/status/1875104933978206521

https://twitter.com/mskAK25/status/1875125288943989101

https://twitter.com/furu_rei0/status/1875126654412177457

https://twitter.com/44_mcs/status/1875132311219634602

https://twitter.com/44_mcs/status/1875119113670144425

[guardianofnightmares]

Forbidden

At that moment Bumblebee finally realized that he couldn’t keep the paranoid thoughts locked inside his processor anymore.

He desperately needed to speak to his friends, consequences be damned. He had to make sure that he’s not glitched in a processor. That what he got himself into was a right course of action for any good-natured Bot.

... or, rather, for any sensible Prime.

Hence why, after making a deep inhale, a minibot finally forced the dreaded words out of his intake:

"... is it wrong that I feel... bad for the prisoners? That I... periodically... h-help them?"

----------

Hello everyone, long time no see). Can hardly believe it's been a whole year since the last @blitzbee-week event and man, was I glad to participate in it once more. All of works were submitted on time to an event chat, but, unfortunately, I am uploading them here only now (full-time job drains me up).

Anyways, here is my first drawing from BlitzBeeWeek event Promts List. I think it will be fair to mention that this and next couple of my works will be dedicated to my fanfic called "TFA: Icarus". I will leave a link [here] for anyone interested to give it (and an existing teaser) a try. And yes, I am, in fact, going to finally upload first chapters pretty soon, it's happening, guys))). Thanks a ton for everyone who left their kudos there throughout a year, you have given me courage to put this behemoth of a story on paper and actually work it through.

As for the current entry for an event, I will provide part of a draft to one of chapters which is related to a depicted scene. It'll be "hidden" under a cut line for anyone wishing to get a more... fleshed out picture of what's going on here. Hope you'll enjoy reading it)

----------

“Bumblebee… are you listening to me?”

It was beyond confusing for Ratchet to see a younger Bot acting so out of touch with reality. He’s hunched over a console, helm resting in one servo while a wielding tool was twirled slowly in digits of another. Bumblebee looked so tired, clearly not caring about a task at servo, nor about an advice coming from his elder friend.

White and red Autobot knew how cheerful Bumblebee got each time they met via video calls, clearly waiting for a chance to talk to old teammates, even if these calls didn’t last long. That’s why him being so silent and lost in own thoughts was that much more worrying to witness. 

Upon being prompted again, the young bot finally raised his optics, the weight of his gaze almost making Ratchet flinch in surprise - to think that a recently promoted Prime was capable of behaving so out of character was indeed an alarming sign of change. 

The truth was, the minibot couldn’t help but to act all secretive, as if he’s done something wrong. 

Because, all things considered, he has. 

Minibot was well aware of what his actions could lead up to. All those rendezvous and revelations were such a dangerous subject to talk about, something that surely could lead him to being court marshaled if he’s caught by anybot. And what’s even worse - Bumblebee wasn’t certain whether telling friends what’s been troubling him was a good idea. 

Surely they’d not rat him out… but would they continue interacting with a yellow Autobot if he shared said secret with them? Wouldn't it be more mature of him to leave mechs oblivious (in order to protect them) and let his fears to silently fester in his processor?

... yet, to his shame, a minibot felt his resolve to keep his intake shut breaking upon seeing a haunted expression on Ratchet’s faceplates. Bumblebee wished he hadn’t looked up into the wise optics of his, those that seemed to read him as an unlocked datapad. How could he play it cool when a medic was looking at him in such a manner?

“…kid?” Now Ratchet was truly worried for his companion. He wasn’t even certain he’s ready to hear an explanation, but knew in his spark that he had to get to the bottom of a problem for minibot's sake.

At that moment Bumblebee finally realized that he couldn’t keep the paranoid thoughts locked inside his processor anymore.

He desperately needed to speak to his friends, consequences be damned. He had to make sure that he’s not glitched in a processor. That what he got himself into was a right course of action for any good-natured Bot. 

… or, rather, for any sensible Prime. 

Hence why, after making a deep inhale, a minibot finally forced the dreaded words out of his intake:

“… is it wrong that I feel… bad for the prisoners? That I… periodically… h-help them?” 

… a fleeting moment or relief at voicing his concerns instantly evaporated, changed to regret once he saw Racthet’s optics widening beyond usual capacity and heard Optimus sputtering and coughing on his energon ration off the camera. 

Such reaction made Bumblebee hide his helm between shoulder pauldrons in a clear sign of dread - so much for the support coming from teammates it seemed. 

“What?” Optimus asked after standing up from a table he’s sitting next to, the stool screeching audibly after a mech span in it. “Help them? What do you mean by that, Bumblebee? Are you alright? Do they… force you to do something for them or..?”

Minibot didn’t answer any of those questions. Wasn’t able to do it under the searching gaze of an elder mech’s optics which seemed to pin him to his own stool. Bumblebee felt like energon was going to freeze in his lines and tubes from a rising horror. Time seemed to stop for him, not unlike inner mechanisms in a frame of his. He couldn't utter a single sound, words swimming in a jumbled mess that was his processor.

What could he possibly say in his defense, now that his teammates knew of his secret? That there was a proper reason for him to feel pity for the inmates? That he was the only one to keep those mechs alive because nobody else did? That perhaps, Primus help him, all this time they were held in prison, somebot tried to take them out of game by starving them to their deaths?

A yellow Bot clearly hasn’t thought the conversation through, just as he always did, hasn't prepared himself for such a reaction even, and now that mistake was biting his aft. 

But then… then minibot heard something that immediately tore him from a panicking state he got stuck in. 

“I’ll take care of it, Prime.” Ratchet announced in a calm tone, breaking the tense silence which settled over the video call. Bumblebee was so stunned that he didn’t register those words right away, looking dumbly at warm optics of a mech on the other side of a call line. 

“But-“ 

“Optimus.” Medic cut off his commanding officer in a stern but good-natured manner, showing that he knew what he’s doing. Trusting the judgement of an older Bot, red and blue mech nodded to him and stepped away from a console, giving both of his friends some room to talk to each other. 

Young Prime could hardly believe what he’s been witnessing in front of him. Afraid to hope that his situation might’ve not been so dire after all. Baiting his breath, he watched red and white Bot turning to him again and leaning closer to a screen.

“Bumblebee, tell me, what’s happening back on Cybertron.” Ratchet asked his young friend, trying to look as non-threatening as possible, ready to tentatively listen to everything minibot’s about to say. 

And that’s when Bumblebee understood, felt it in his spark which gleefully thrummed in his chest that his old teammates were not mad at him - only worried for his well-being. Said realization made the built up over orbital cycles tension leave his frame and gave him courage to answer as honestly as he could.  

“You don’t know even half of what's going on, guys,” He stated after a breath moment of silence, then scooted on his chair closer to a screen as well and continued speaking in a hushed tone as to not to be heard by anyone else on his side of a video call. 

While retelling the recent events, which took place in Tripticon Prison, young Prime couldn’t help but periodically glance at a screen to his right side, a list of main convicts taking up most of its surface. 

Their stern gazes seemed to burn a viewer with hostility. Evil, cold, sparkless optics on unsightly faceplates. That’s what fellow guards always tended to whisper to each other either in fear or in bold mockery while walking down the hallways.

But to Bumblebee the very same pairs of optics, those he'd looked into more times then any of the local mechs, more then his friends even, told another story. Each time he saw Decepticons, bound and stripped of their weapons, there was no rage in their expressions, nor malice or contempt - only an eternal tiredness, hopelessness... and resignation with Fate.

Warframes. Mighty mechs being brought to their knees and stripped of their pride. Truly a sight which made minibot feel more miserable then three inmates he tried to take care of.

“Bossbot… Ratchet… please, come back here as soon as you can," Recently promoted Prime finally said as a conclusion to his speech. "I… I am afraid I won’t be able to handle this situation on my own anymore.”

[chickenkurage]

"The Author" (Reality Warped AU)

This is the villain.... "Alan"

He's not that scary yet XP...... Anyways, lore!

· • —– ٠ 📜 ٠ —– • ·

Summary/Synopsis:

Imagine sitting at your desk, writing the ending of your own book. When all of the sudden you wake up in a world that you literally made! Goodness this is an author’s wet dream! At least that’s what Alan is supposed to feel, until he remembers what kind of person “Alan” is in his story….

Where Alan Becker, the author of Animation vs Animator and his standalone Animation vs Minecraft (kudos to Mojang) was suddenly sucked in his own book, now he finds himself in place of his self insert character named “Alan”.... He’s supposed to be glad because he’s meeting his own creations (his own characters! Can you believe that?!), until he remembered he’s the “supposed” villain of the story.

Oh well, he can change things up right?

Ugh, right…. He is the villain, and being a villain means it’s hard to gain your character's trust (why did he even write his character as a villain?......a right because he couldn't think of any other villain, so naturally he wrote himself as one.... ugh).

· • —– ٠ 📜 ٠ —– • ·

LORE:

“Alan” in this AU is the villain, the creator of victim, The Chosen One, The Dark Lord and The Second Coming: The Chosen One’s Return. He was the worst out of the worst, he only thought of them as some play toy. Telling them what to do, and such. He was the fucking worst, at least to their point of view…. Actually, scratch that, he was the worst to everyone’s eyes. Even the Color Gang hates Alan (and somehow, they were the “chillest” out of them all). They were so used to Alan treating them like dirt at this point. Then all of the sudden he’s all kind now? What games is he playing?

Alan Becker is just an author, a really well-known author that created Animator vs Animation, originally a story he created as a teen then he tweaked it a little bit when he got older (his writing was atrocious, it clearly needed some work). But nevertheless, he was proud of his work, he even gained a fandom because of it. Met a lot of people too, and friends too! As a child, he always wanted friends on his own computer, always fantasizing how he would be with them and how fun it would be. So naturally he made a story, and that story became a sensation years later. He really should be thankful for his family and friends for giving him a push to actually publish it. After losing his interest in drawing (he clearly was not improving) he decided to just hone his writing skills better, after all a lot had said he was better at writing than drawing. And somehow, he’s glad he actually continued it. So, tell him, why the fuck did he suddenly wake up in his own story?!?! Not only that, but he also has no face?! Oh god he has no face (actually it was his fault for not really going in depth on how “Alan” looks like, now he suffered the consequence of losing his own face).

Now he's stuck as his own self insert character, forced to play a villain role, before deciding, fuck it and fed his characters kindness and love, because for the life of him he cannot act like an asshole; he feels too bad............ Naturally, he also knew how the story would end, and it won't end on a good note. So thankfully, acting kind will MOST PROBABLY change their ending... Hopefully, oh god out of all books he gets sucked into, it's his own book which probably has so many plot holes?! Someone please save him now!!!

· • —– ٠ 📜 ٠ —– • ·

Here is your well-deserved lore everyone! We finally got another Alan who isn't crazy, turned crazy, evil, a terrorist need I say more? - S

[melrodrigo]

lunch - t.c. drabble

Tara Carpenter x Fem!Reader

Summary: You want to recreate Lunch with your girlfriend.

A/n: This was purely for my entertainment. Tell me ur favs from the album?

It was Billie Eilish’s fault.

It definitely wasn’t yours, turning on the new HIT ME HARD AND SOFT album and skipping to Lunch for something to listen to while you watched your own girlfriend make lunch. You’d been more than obsessed with the snippet she let out recently, and Tara had suffered the consequences.

The rays peeked through the window and reflected her brown hair, making it a shiny auburn—a color you adored. Tara in the sun was something you couldn’t believe you were around to witness, almost daily at this point, watching as her dark brown eyes sparkled and shone. The tan skin that would turn olive at the right angle, and lips that brightened with the sun.

You couldn’t lie—the vibrations of the music mixed with Tara’s tied up hair and pink cheeks were enough to have you feeling some type of way.

It definitely didn’t help that she was lip syncing and swaying to the song ever so slightly, smirking a little whenever she looked up and caught your eye.

You make your decision in a split second. It’s the easiest thing you’ve ever done you think, coming up with this stupid plan.

You saunter over to Tara, trying to act nonchalant. She eyes you a little but lets it go when she sees you stop at the head of the kitchen table and sitting down.

“If I could, I would totally eat you for lunch.” You lean over to wrap your hands around your girlfriend and whisper in her ear, trying (and failing) to sound sexy.

“Gee thanks, what a charmer you are.” Tara says and hides the soft smile that comes naturally.

Luckily for her, you could only see one side of her face, the lopsided smile hidden on the either side. You let out an unimpressed huff.

“Okay but for real I totally would.” You try again, snaking your head and letting it rest in the crook of her neck, peppering the tender skin with light kisses.

Tara hums a little and continues cooking, continuing to sway to the music. She’s made up her mind already, but it’s nice to see you beg and grovel a little more.

“I love it when you cook.” You mumble against her, gripping her waist and urging her to turn around.

She gives up on trying to make food a few seconds later when she can tell you aren’t going anywhere.

You draw her in, cheeky smile while you stare at her lips shamelessly. Those perfect lips, tasting to you like how ambrosia would to a mortal; it’s near fatal. She fits right in between your thighs, her small frame easy to maneuver.

Tara was insecure about her height. Something you tried to show time and time again was nothing—in fact, you enjoyed the height difference a little too much to admit—always made Tara moody on a particularly shitty day.

“God, I love you.” You tell her, eyes finally shifting up to her eyes. Her eyes twinkle; you know you’re close to getting her to crack.

“You’re so desperate.” She whispers, leaning into you. It isn’t meant as an insult, and you don’t take it as one.

It was merely the truth; and you hated that she knew it.

“You need a seat? I’ll volunteer.” You sing along, letting go of one of Tara’s hands to point to your face, giggling as Tara rolls her eyes.

The sight of the brunette getting closer is enough to get you to stop.

“Still hungry?” She asks, and you think you might just die. It takes everything in you not to salivate openly. She’s tilting her head, a sign she’s decided she’s won.

So maybe you really owed Billie Eilish a kudos, you think as Tara stands up and drags you out of the room.

“Thank god Jojo Siwa invented gay pop.” You say, laughing a little nervous. It was a bad habit of yours to joke when you got excited.

It seems to fall on deaf ears, the girl in front of you not paying attention to any of the words pouring out your mouth now.

“What-what about lunch?” You gesture to her unfinished cooking wildly, knees buckling against her frame pushing you against her bedroom door.

“Fuck lunch.”

[butmakeitgayblog]

Jumping in on the CI appreciation. The dynamic is just so fun and deceptively beautiful as messed up as they are. You are a great writer and have a unique way of captivating a reader. Kudos and much success however you choose to pursue your talent! Speaking of… have you written or plan on writing that blowout fight scene (post hospital release) where Lexa draws the proverbial line so to say?

CI fight 😈

///////////////////////

This is the stupidest you've ever felt in your life.

Which is saying a lot, considering the sheer amount of reckless and dumb shit you have done.

But this absolutely takes the cake you decide as your hired nurse wheels you into your lounge room, the sheets already turned back on your couch-turned-makeshift bed and the mountain of your wife's borrowed pillows that are already fluffed to within an inch of their goddamn life.

Your hip kills every time you try to stand on it and your back feels like it'd gone one too many rounds with a baseball bat, and thanks to the four fractured bones in your wrist, you can't even deal with it on your own with the use of a crutch or cane. So instead, you hang on to this fucking stranger and woddle over like a toddler, sweating through all three herculean steps it takes until you can sink down into the godsend that is your new recovery zone.

You wave her off with your good arm once she gets you settled. Tell her you're fine and to stop fucking hovering because you didn't even really need a nurse to move in with you to begin with.

But your wife had insisted and left no room for argument, and well... You're not very good at telling her no when she's upset.

So here the hell you are.

Your grousing is hushed by the sweeter notes of your wife's voice when she comes trailing in behind you with that familiar sharp clicking of her heels.

She apologizes for your lack of manners and tells RN Whats-her-name she can go get settled in the guest room that she'd already showed her - you suppose she must have gotten the grand tour at some point while you were still laid up in the hospital.

Ass out in a gown and perpetually high as a kite.

Not your finest point in life.

Not the lowest either.

At least the drugs made it a good time...

Your temple throbs when your 'guest' excuses herself and snaps the doors shut behind her, making you groan and reach to rub at the bandage taped to the side of your head.

Fingers quicker than yours catch you before you can do any damage.

"Don't," Lexa warns you in a whisper more gently than you had expected, considering she's had to remind you three times already today.

You murmur your sorries and pout because it hurts, but can't help but breathe lighter when she slips into the space between your legs.

Rather than settling in your lap as you'd foolishly hoped for, she perches on the edge of the coffee table instead. She smells so good and her gorgeous face is so serene when she gets comfortable and looks at you dead in the eye.

But then she folds her fingers together and she leans her elbows on her knees, and you already know you're in for some kind of ass chewing.

Fantastic.

She levels you with that 'wife look' she gets. The one that tells you that she means business.

Nobody warned you about that when you'd agreed to this whole 'marriage' thing.

"So," she breathes, only pausing to lick her kissable lips, "Welcome home, Darling."

You snort a laugh through your nose that still hurts where it's swollen but the good drugs kinda help you not care. "Thanks for having me, babe. Nice place you got here," you say in sarcasm-dipped words.

She merely hums and gives you a narrow-eyed grin that feels sexy and distinctly lethal.

"Yes. I've missed you in it. I've missed having you here. With me."

That softens you. Lulls you into a false sense of security.

"I missed you too, baby."

"Good. Then," she says in a quick breath that sounds not unlike ripping off a bandaid. "I wanted you to know that I've taken the liberty of finding a buyer. Well, a few of them, really. All predictably salivating over the collection. But I supposed it'd be appropriate that we talk about the logistics of this before moving forward. I'm open to deferring to your expertise in this field when it came to numbers because, frankly, I'm more than willing to just give the fucking things away. So, we should talk about this."

You smile, because you're an idiot, and you think it's hilarious that she's talking to you like one of her clients. But you also smile because you're a little high off your medicine, and she's really just so pretty, and because not one word of that made any sense.

"What's... 'this'? What're you— Talk about the logistics of what?"

"Selling your cars," she answers with an easy nod, like it absolutely should've been obvious.

The silence that rings through the apartment feels loud in your ears... before you burst out laughing right in her face.

"What?" you choke out and chuckle, because you must've heard that wrong. "What are you talking about?"

"Just what I said, my love." She reaches out boops the tip of your nose with a patronizingly scrunched smile. "You know I don't like repeating myself."

"That's cute, Lexa," you titter and swipe at the hand that's already so far out of reach.

"Oh I'm not kidding, Clarke."

"Okay. And I'm not selling my cars."

"No, actually, you are."

You scoff and use the shoulder that isn't currently trussed up in a sling to push you hair off your neck so you can see her better. Or... something.

Because all you really see is the calm of her smile. Those eyes that are sharp. Hollow. Unyielding. And if you'd looked beyond the swell of anger that suddenly bursts through your chest, you might've seen the whispered-smoke of terror that hid in their depths.

But you do not.

Instead you focus all of your righteous indignation and stubbornness that burns white hot. You give a derisive laugh, and shake your head, and level her with a cold stare of your own.

Making sure she hears your every word, loud and clear.

"No. The fuck. I am not."

It almost feels like victory when her smile falls away.

"Clarke," she says with a deathly click to your name, "I want those deathtraps gone."

"Lexa—"

"I don't care."

"Lexa—"

"Stop saying my name, because whatever comes after it, I promise you, I do not care."

"Well I don't really fucking care either," you spit just to get a rise out of her, "because I'm not doing it, and I don't give shit what you say, Alexandria."

Her jaw ticks to the side as her eyes flash with hellfire.

She hates that name and you know it but right now you just want her to be every bit as angry as you are.

"Okay," she says so quiet you barely hear her over the hammering of your heart as she pushes on her knees to stand up and hovers over you for a moment.

And you think it's a victory because it feels like a victory...

Until it does not.

Because she just nods.

And keeps nodding.

Just this slow up and down of her head, her eyes empty and her face cold, but not in the way that you fell in love with.

This only fills your chest with dread.

So it's a shock when she straddles your hips, planting one knee on each side and sinks down to sit in your lap. Her weight is comforting after your stay in the hospital, if not a little painful in the way it twinges your fucked up leg. But you don't even let yourself flinch because God you've missed this. You've missed her, and her scent, and the way she practically drapes herself over you.

Your good arm wraps around her waist and digs fingertips into the soft dip of her spine, pulling her flush against you. You soak up the flutter of her lashes at the feel of your breasts pressing against hers; the way she fidgets not to grind down like her body's muscle memory is obviously screaming at her to do.

Instead she stares at you through those dark hooded eyes, now so beautifully filled with emotions that make your heart pound out a more pleasant rhythm than before.

"I love you, Clarke," she says. Whispers.

And your breath catches in your chest.

Same as it does each time she says those words, so fleeting and so rare as they are that they pierce straight through the mushiest parts of your heart. Because you know she loves you. You know it in every single thing she does. But there's just... It's just... Nothing will ever rival these moments when she lets them slip out, so unguarded and vulnerable with you.

And really... that should've been a warning.

"And I love you, pretty girl," you whisper right back instead, grinning as she preens under the praise, so lost in her beautiful face you don't even remember there exists a world beyond her.

You watch her throat dip in a thick swallow, her hands smoothing up the length of your neck. She cups your cheeks as her eyes trace every line of your face... as if she were committing this moment to memory.

She shakes her head. Sadly.

"I adore you," she says again, softer still and with more conviction. "Everything. I adore everything about you, Clarke. I love you more than I have ever loved anything in my entire life. And I'm always going to love you, no matter what."

When she kisses you then, in that moment, it's possibly the softest, purest thing you have ever known. She kisses you like it's the only thing she needs in this world and you hope she knows it's the same for you. Because her lips pillow and give under every caress of your lips, and her tongue slipping against yours feels like the only home you've ever known. It's one kiss among thousands you've shared. But you know you'll think of this one for years to come, and honestly if fighting gets you loving like this then you should really make a mental note to call her by her birth name more often...

She breaks the kiss with a sigh, and a shuddering breath against your lips.

"I love you. So, so much... I just want you to always remember that."

You barely have time to blink out of your haze when she extracts herself from your arms and your lap and your lips, and stands up on shakey legs.

She lets out a deep breath and smooths her hands along the front herself, rigidly primping herself free of any creases you might've left.

Her chin rises in that regal arch as she looks down at you and nods once again.

"I'll have our lawyer draw up the divorce papers in the morning."

Your hand snaps out when she turns to leave and catches her shirt cuff before you even have time to think, gritting your teeth to try and bite back the sudden shock of pain that slices up your arm and explodes through your shoulder.

"Wait, what the fuck did you just say?" you practically yelp.

Her icy glare drops to the hand that holds her, jaw flexing as she watches how bad you tremble.

"Let go of me."

"Uh, no—"

"If you don't," she cuts in, enunciating with lethal precision, "I'll have to rip my arm away, and that will hurt you more, and I don't want that. Now stop acting like a child, and let go of me."

You grit your teeth and fist her cuff harder through the cold sweat of pain. "I guess you'll have to hurt me then, because I'm not letting go until you repeat what the hell you just said."

"You heard me perfectly well, my love."

"No, I don't think I did."

"Then you'll figure it out tomorrow, won't you."

You let out a strangled sound and collapse back on the couch - both from the pain and the sheer terror ripping through you. "Lexa, what is this? What are you playing at? Why are you doing this?"

"I'm not playing at anything, I'm telling you that I'm not doing this with you ever again, Clarke," she says in her crisp business voice. "The hospitals. The sitting at your bedside. The wondering if you're ever going to be able to paint again. Watching you limp around for weeks, just to turn around and do it again. I'm done."

You roll your eyes at her dramatics. "Oh my god, are serious? It was just an accident—"

"One that could've killed you."

"It wasn't even my fault."

"That's not the point," she nearly growls, all fire and fangs. "This is your third accident in four fucking years. I can't keep doing this."

"And what exactly is 'this'?"

"Waiting around to lose you!"

Your ears ring at the volume of her shout.

You swallow as she takes a moment collect herself.

Feel the lump grow in your throat as she mindlessly fiddles with the diamond on her finger.

You know it's a habit that calms her when she's feeling particularly out of control. A tick she picked up and never seemed to kick somewhere around the third year you were married.

"I trusted you," she starts again, sounding calmer. Less shaken, but still frayed at the edges. "I told how I feel about you. I told you I wouldn't— Couldn't... survive without you."

"So your solution is to divorce me now?" you scoff. "Tell me, how does that makes sense?"

"Because I have loved exactly two people in my life, Clarke... And this way? At least I won't have to bury one of them."

It's like a bucket of goddamn ice water has just been upturned over your head.

You can't help but stare at her, dumbfounded.

Because you are... so fucking stupid.

Your heart twists and it pounds and for a split second you wonder if you're having a heart attack, or if maybe this is what they mean when they talk about broken heart syndrome. Because nothing has ever hurt this bad. Nothing has ever devastated you as much this tidal wave of guilt. Nothing has ever scared you; made you feel this kind of shame so deep in your bones.

And when she drops her hands like she's given up and turns toward the door, you almost feel like you're going to throw up with the way your stomach clenches in a fresh wave of terrified dread. You want nothing more than to pop up and run over to her and explain and just fix this, but your hip and your leg and you just—You just...

You did this.

You did all of this.

"Okay," you damn near yell, sounding distinctly like a wounded animal to your own ears.

She pulls to a stop and snaps back around, "Okay, what?"

"I said... okay."

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I'll fucking get rid of them," you bite right back again, desperate and annoyed and shaking so badly it's making your shoulder ache.

She stares at you, placid and unmoved.

"All of them?"

You grit your jaw and blow a breath out. "All of them... The dangerous ones at least."

She clicks her tongue and starts to turn away when you yell—

"You have to compromise with me here!"

She wheels back around with thunder in her eyes and a snarl already twisting her lips.

You know you have never needed to talk faster in your life.

"The ones that aren't street legal, they're gone, okay? Nothing that is actually dangerous stays. But I'm not getting rid of the ones that are perfectly safe, and, Lexa, I'm not getting rid of my grandfather's car. It's the only thing I have from my fucked up family that means anything to me, and it's mine, and it's not fair of you to even consider making me get rid of it."

"You hate that fucking thing—"

"I don't hate it, I love that car! That car changed my life! That car got me you."

You watch the rage bleed out of her as she slumps at the shoulders.

She runs a hand through the controlled chaos of her hair.

"That car did not get you me, Clarke," she strains out in a sigh, sounding tired and beautifully frail. "We're married because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. Because I fell in love with you. Because I'm in love with you."

It makes your heart squeeze tight all over again.

"Maybe, but you wanted that car before you ever wanted me—"

"That is not true," she cuts you off in a hush of a whisper.

She stares at you with eyes clouded with devastation and hurt, and for the life of you, you don't know how to fix it.

You never seem to know how to...

The air between you feels frozen for a long moment before she seems to make up her mind about something all at once.

She shakes her head as she crosses the room in quick, elegant strides and drops to her knees right in front of you.

"Listen to me," she says, and tenderly - so tenderly - takes your least injured hand and folds it into her own. "There are so many things I regret about my life. But making that bet, and losing it, are not included. Half of the reason I ever even wanted that car to begin with was because of how attracted to you I was whenever I saw you in it."

Your scoff is loud enough to give your concussion addled brain another headache. "You are such a liar, Lexa."

Your belly swoops when she flits that damn eyebrow up in challenge.

"While I appreciate your assessment of my moral virtues," she practically purrs, "on this, darling, you happen to be wrong... All that windswept blonde hair? The way you looked like you owned everyone and everything in those shaders that you'd so carelessly slip down before pulling away?"

You wonder if you even still have those sunglasses as she bites her lip and lets her eyes run the length of you.

You'll have to check the next time you can walk properly.

Maybe have them make a reappearance at your next brunch date.

Just for old time's sake.

The hand holding yours squeezes gently.

"You were so damn cocky. The way you'd throw that thing in park and hop out. You'd just toss your keys at the doorman like you didn't care about anything. I hated it so much," she laughs with a rueful grin that slips into something entirely more fond. "And yet I could never seem to make myself stop staring at you, darling."

Even after all these years of marriage, the thought of younger her having wanted younger you...

You shift at the throb that weakly pulses between your thighs.

"So... You made the bet because... you thought I was sexy in my car?"

"I made the bet because I thought you were entirely too full of yourself," she corrects, "which I still believe. But I wanted the car because I'd envisioned getting fucked in it more times than I could count."

God you love it when she gets vulgar.

She reaches up and brushes a curl away from your forehead.

"It just took me a little while longer to realize that the person I had been imagining fucking me was - annoyingly - very much you."

You know your smile is kind of dopey right now rather than the teasing slope that you're aiming for, but later when you look back on this moment, you'll definitely blame it on the drugs.

"So our marriage is based off you wanting me to top you in my grandfather's car?"

Her faces pulls up in distaste. "No. It's based off the fact that you are—"

She pauses and exhales something from deep in her chest, her eyes closing under the weight of whatever it is she's feeling as she finally trembles out,

"That you are everything to me."

You really really really kind of hate that you're injured in that moment, because when she opens her eyes they glisten with a lovely wet sheen. And you just want nothing more than to scoop her up and hold her in your arms. Because it's where she belongs. It's where she's always been meant to be...

"You're everything to me too, baby," you say because she is and she should know it, and you really need to remember to say it more often. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Lexa, I didn't— I didn't mean to..."

She nods when you can't find the words and kisses the bruised ridge of your knuckles.

Rests her forehead there for a moment as though in prayer.

When she looks at you again she's already pulled herself back together.

That's part of why you love her so much.

Always unbreakable.

Except... when it comes to you.

You have no idea what to do with that knowledge, but you know you'd give up anything just to keep it.

And you love her so much that it makes you smile. It makes you smile, because you just want to see her smile at you again. Always.

"Hey," you say, tossing in a lazy wink because you know she hates it. "You totally had a crush on me."

She rolls her eyes. "You're an idiot."

"You had a cuh-ruuuuush on me."

"Clarke. I am married to you—"

"Still," you snort. "Loser."

Her sigh of resignation is so weary it fills your heart close to bursting with how much love you have for this woman.

Because she doesn't fight you on that. Just leans her forehead against yours and nods, kissing your lips soft enough to not make the cut on them bleed again. Her nose brushes against yours in a sweet moment of aching tenderness, and when she pulls back to look at you beneath the fall of her lashes, the whole world is once again nothing but her.

"We'll go through each one together," she says somewhere between a question and a statement.

You nod in agreement, just to be safe.

"Anything remotely questionable, goes."

You heave a sigh but dutifully nod again.

"That means anything without the right mirrors, or proper turning signals. Engines that might blow up for no reason. Anything that was recalled decades ago. Anything with brakes that have a habit of failing... Anything that doesn't have fucking seat belts."

As her list grows you mentally tick off a good two-thirds of your collection.

You glance at her lips and remember how they feel against yours first thing in the morning, and simply nod again.

"Fine. But also? You can't just start threatening divorce every time you want me to do something, you know," you murmur still, because while you're compromising here... you really feel the need to remind her that she's not domesticating you or anything.

She doesn't seem remotely affected by your pout when she just shrugs and grins and leans forward.

You feel distinctly like a puppy on a leash when she pecks a placating kiss to your lips.

And then another to the tip of your nose.

"We'll see."

[antimony-medusa]

I just have vauge thoughts about Fandom, and Creator Notices, and Boundaries, and I'm just gonna ramble for a second here.

Okay, so you end up really liking a show or event to the point that you want to make something for it, generally you want to show it off. You want to share it with other people who like the show or event, and have them go !!!!!!!. That's fun, that's normal. We all want to be enthusiastic about [show/event] together. That's our starting point.

Enter social media and official actor/streamer/writer accounts.

Now fan artists, a good portion of the time, can make their art and then thanks to the wonders of social media, they can go straight up to the actual people who made the show and show their art, and have them go !!!!, and get the actual creators to like it. Maybe not if they're drawing hard gore or NSFW, but if you're drawing a soft canon family moment, or a cyberpunk au, or behind the scenes look illuminated, or kick-ass character design, you can get a creator notice.

Fan writers, by and large, do not get creator notices. This is because looking at art takes two seconds, and reading a fic takes between ten minutes to ten hours. Creators can be out there scrolling art in a way that most of them, frankly, do not have the time to devote to Ao3 searches sorted by kudos. And I think among writers there's a little bit of a sense that that's unfair, and writing is just as much as art as visual art is, so we should be getting creator notices, and we should all act as though we might get a creator notice at any time. On all platforms. Cause what we're doing is real art, right? And we all saw the art get retweeted?

And this sense that creator notices�� cause we've all seen them happen with art— spreads until we all think that they could happen at any time. Thanks to the wonders of social media. And very rapidly, the "you can get a creator notice" turns into "the highest honour is a creator notice", and we're all gunning for that, and you SHOULD be gunning for that. You should be looking for the creator to weigh in on your art. You should make sure that there's nothing in your work that the creator doesn't like. If you're an artist, you shouldn't be playing with gender in your art, or draw them being tortured, or anythign NSFW, and if you're a writer, you need to make sure that you don't have anything "weird" in your writing. In practice, let's be honest, this just turns into demonizing NSFW work and saying that anything we don't like is NSFW. Looking at you the "you can't draw the streamers with boobs" discourse.

Anyways, I think going after creator notices is a bad idea for many reasons— a, let them rest, b, bad atmosphere for the fandom, c, let's be honest, an awful lot of fandom stuff is weird from the outside. Let it stay in the fandom.

First thing is like, there are only so many hours in a day. Fan artists can tag their people but it's SO much of a huge and rude demand on someone's time to ask them to read your fic and tell you if it's good. That's the request you make cautiously to your beta reader, and then everybody else on this planet earth gets to opt in to your work. Do not TTS stories to people, do not hand them copies at cons, like— if they want to find it they can find it.

Second thing, creator notices hovering over the fandom like a sword is not a good attitude for creativity. Fan work is supposed to be transformative, it's about taking the original work and going "oh but what if they didn't die" and "what if they lived in space" and "what if they were a family" and "what if they kissed". Gunning towards a creator notice at all times takes you from an independent person following your creativity to a contractor working under someone else's vision. All the time.

Trying to adhere to the source material isn't bad in essence, there's a spectrum of "how do you feel about canon" in fan work that ranges from "trying to hit all the same beats just with a twist" to straight up adversarial attacks, and all of that is fine and part of what fan works are. But if the only stuff that gets written is the stuff that we think the creator would approve of, a) that's stifling to both creativity and people who have an adversarial relationship with canon, you shouldn't start to be branded as "weird within the fandom" cause you're mad at a plot arc b) you very rapidly run into the issue where you're adhering to someone else's morals, and sometimes you don't agree with random person's morals. Anne McCaffrey famously said that fan works were okay as long as you didn't make any of the dragon riders gay. I guesture at you about that. Sometimes a creator is way more comfortable with NSFW stuff than you are, that doesn't mean you should feel forced to make NSFW stuff for their approval! You shouldn't have to 100% agree with someone's vision for an art piece to be able to roll up and go "yes but I think there should be like 50% more evicerations in here" and acting like the creators are the ultimate authority in fan spaces is a bad atmosphere for making fan works.

Sure, absolutely, showrunners get to decide canon. But the whole point of fandom is that sometimes I have a better vision for my story, and maybe I don't want to think about what the creator says at all. If I'm not gunning for the creator's approval, let me stay in my little circle with the creator blocked and adding more pregnancy to the QSMP, or whatever. Follow your bliss.

Third thing, like, okay. There has been a move in fan circles, and especially in mcyt circles, to say that if we just cut the NSFW stuff out, everything we're doing isn't weird, and the creators can look at it. I honestly think this is a failure of both imagination and perspective.

If you have written someone being vivisected, it's gonna be a trifle weird for the actor of that someone to come into contact with that. It is doubly weird if you're depicting a character who shares the same name as the actor. Is it bad to write the vivisection? No, this is fandom, we get to do terrible things to characters here, and that's not for the actors, that's for the audience of two hundred people who saw the words "Schlackity vivisection cannibalism necromancy" and said "clear my schedule, I know what I'm doing tonight". Awesome, continue with the gore.

And like, again, this isn't just NSFW. You can have something that is the fluffiest most platonic story in the world, and I'm saying look at me, look at me honestly, consider this; isn't it going to be just a little bit weird for a grown-ass man to open up a story where they've been aged down to four years old and they're lost and sad and their friends are their family and rescue them and there's cuddling and petting and snackies and pet names and they get their blanket and suck their thumb and take a nap. Look me in the eye and tell me that's not gonna be weird for an adult to read that about their character who shares their name. Okay? We're all on the same page here? Awesome. Is it bad to write kidfic? No. Kidfic rocks. I am your target audience, I am clicking through. I am leaving a keysmash comment. It is also, like, look at me here, focus— it's weird if you're outside the fandom. Platonic? Yes. for the actors/streamers? No. And that's because it's not FOR outsiders to the fandom, it's for the fandom. It's for people who rotate the characters so much that they go 'wouldn't it be sooooo cute if they were babies wouldn't it be adorable', it's not for the actual guys who had a meeting with an accountant today.

MCYT in particular has a horrible practice of saying that because everything has to be for the streamers, nothing can be NSFW unless they've approved it specifically, but somehow everything else is cool? I cannot express to you how much stuff I've read and enjoyed that even the smallest amount of thinking about should let you know that we keep that stuff away from the guys driving the block men around. Fine to write it, I say again, go for it. Please completely divorce yourself of the idea of a creator notice for it at the same time.

Should we show the streamers porn? No. We also should not show the streamers the thing where they're physically abusive parents of their friends. We should not show them the stuff where they're babies. We should not show them things where they're bigots. We should not show them things where they have hybrid instincts that tell them to kidnap someone. Really not sure about showing them a story where they're a cop who takes bribes. Like come on now. Really, as soon as you diverge from canon you're getting into stuff that's probably going to be weird for the crdeators. And that's why again, we don't show it to them, because it shouldn't be for them, it should be for the other people who are like "oh you're doing something fun with the character there, awesome" and click through. Weird for the creators, because it's for us.

Fandom should not be for for the creators. We can make stuff for the creators ocassionally, but I really think it's healthier for the fandom, and probably a lot less weird for the actors/streamers/writers, if we stop acting like what we make is all for them and should be shown to them. Some of it is just for us! That's fine! Make it for the people who have an rss feed for "autistic technoblade" on Ao3! Make it for the people who show up in your inbox asking about your "Philza gets arranged married to a different QSMP guy every week" au! ! Make it for the people who have three spellings of "charlie slimecicle" followed on Tumblr! Make it for the people making helsmit fancams! Make it for the fifteen people who suscribed to you after you posted that fic about the various wilbur bursonas kissing each other! Make it for the people who have Puffychu art saved to their phones! Make it for the fandom!

Leave the creators alone, make the fandom for the fans.

[myokk]

HOLA! ❤️ First of all, dropping some kudos because I love you and your art so much (basically my blog can be your side blog too at this point!) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Second, from the character ask, I'd like to know about 3,4 and 20 for both Eloise and Leo 😁

Hope you have a wonderful day/night!

HOLA MI ITALIANA FAVORITA💓​ I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR ALL OF THE YAPPING I'M ABOUT TO DO🤭​ will this get you to finally visit me🥺​

I'm going to answer these for Eloise SINCE I already did 3 for Leo & I have someone asking me about 4 for Leo as well🥺💓

3) What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

This is a tricky answer…just bc my evil gremlin mc in the game has NOTHING to do with Eloise in my writing. I guess I would say her name? I was just thinking of what would be the most British sounding name I could think of when I started playing in December🙂‍↕️

But then my imagination took hold of me…I started thinking about Eloise’s backstory…and when I thought of how all of her family dynamics/how she grew up would influence her personality I started to be really dissatisfied with the game and the lack of choice we have while playing. SO I gave up on the game completely after the restricted section quest and started to use my free time to write my fic in January🥹🫶 but her backstory, personality, and role in my story are definitely the most interesting things about her to me!!

Bonus: my first ever drawings of her in January!!! Bad quality bc it’s an insta story screenshot😆💓 (I redid one for my fic🤭)

4) And reverse, which one of the four things did you struggle with the most?

Hmmmmm😭😭 I think her personality is what I struggled with the most and continue to struggle with as I write!!!! I always want her to feel like a *real* person with flaws, but ALSO convey to the reader why they should love her as much as I do. I think I’m successful bc I get comments/messages a lot from people telling me how much she resonates with them (and she’s some people’s favorite???😳💘) but I STILL CANT HELP BUT FEEL INSECURE ABOUT IT !!! It’s so hard sometimes keeping in mind how she is and how she thinks, and I never want her to be wishy-washy or doing things out of character for her. It’s a fun challenge but a challenge😭💓 (also her appearance changes like crazy in my art but whatever I’m learning😆)

20) bonus: share any additional thoughts, art, favorite scenes, anything you’ve been waiting for a chance to ramble about.

DES YOU REALLY WANTED ME TO YAP WHEN YOU SENT THIS MESSAGE😆😆😆😆😆

I really, REALLY want to yap about the foreshadowing and scenes I’m working towards in my fic BUT IVE ONLY TALKED TO LIKE ONE OR TWO PEOPLR ABOUT MY PLANS ( @choccy-milky & @kay9leo 🤭🤭) AND I DONT WANT TO SPOIL ANYTHING EVEN THOUGH I DONT HAVE MANY READERS😆😆😆😆😆😆😆 maybe in the future…

This is me redrawing the chess scene from my fic bc I’m really dissatisfied with how Seb looks in the original (he’s probably my LEAST FAVORITE TO DRAW BC IT’S IMPOSSIBLE !!!!!!!)

And ummmm….hmmm Eloise is DEFINITELY not a self-insert character to me, but I DID give her aspects of myself. Things like…we have the same birthday (January 31) and eye color (dark green), and I tend to overthink a lot and can be in my own head maybe too much, but I’m ALSO a lot more assertive and gremlin than she is😆😆😆😆 I love the fact that she’s so soft and sweet💓💓💓 & I just want to wrap her up in a big hug and never let go of her🥺🤲

(Imelda is my self-insert tbh…and this moment in my fic was ME😤:

At the sight of Imelda's worried face her throat contracted - Eloise found she couldn't speak - and she burst into tears again. They were rolling, hot and salty, down her cheeks and she hid her crumpled face back into the crooks of her arms. Imelda immediately wrapped her arms around Eloise, and she melted into her friend's embrace. Hands gently stroking her hair as she cried and cried and cried, murmurs whispered in soft Spanish to the top of her head.

She was overwhelmed, desolate, lonely.

I feel really bad for Eloise at this point in her story, but I also find it really interesting to keep poking her to see when she finally snaps and decides that she NEEDS to stand up for herself and what she wants. She hasn’t quite realized that she’s the only one who’s ultimately in charge of her life & I’m really really enjoying watching her become the person she’s meant to be🥹🫶🥹🫶

[ravneski]

Desecration

Kokushibo x Fem!Reader

They take what they can't have and bathe in the sacrilege.

this has also been uploaded to ao3 (kudos and comments there would be appreciated <3) link here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46981597

warnings: smut, cunnilingus, fingering, menstrual sex, dubcon nearing the second half of the fic, mentions of pregnancy, implied breeding kink, religious imagery, sexual violence, strangling/choking, fisting

word count: 5.4k

Fate was a cruel thing.

Dragging her eyes from the floor, she cursed herself for not staying alert, for not paying attention to which room she had mindlessly entered. The Upper Moon One’s aura pervaded, thick as well-trained metal. She stared and he stared back, six eyes unreadable but nostrils flared, shark in water detecting what slicked her fukusa.

“One day.”

Since she had started bleeding. She tensed. “What of it?”

“It will… be painful.” Kokushibo’s golden gaze bored into her.

“There are worse pains,” she dismissed, face blank. She made to turn.

“Are you going to Doma?”

She graced him a near unnoticeable nod.

“Will you… spread your legs for him?”

Centimetres away from him in a flash too quick to be perceived, her veins frosted. “Doma tells me you opened your own for Daki.”

Their gazes swept one another, rising and falling as the moon did, but nothing as renewing as moonlight enveloped either. “Mourning her?” she drawled.

“I utilised her for… what her job dictated she do…”

Her upper lip curled in disdain.

“And you,” Kokushibo continued, knuckles white from the clasp on his sword’s tsuka, ���are no different… from me. Go… to your whore.”

She laughed at that, but the mirth was dry sand, rigid as though hardened by unremitting waves. “Doma isn’t my whore.”

“Then what… is he? Your lover?” he replied, derisiveness worn like armour.

“You tell me,” she said after a moment, gathering herself. “You know his body as well as I, do you not, fornicator?”

A vein throbbed at the side of his neck. “You never hesitated… to run to me when you were bleeding… yet now you spare… time for aimless ambling…”

“Say what you mean.”

Even in the gentle light of the Infinity Castle, Kokushibo was but a shadow. The dark side of the sun, she thought. He knew only his shadows, and she found herself drawn to be engulfed by the same fate. His expression held solemnity it was never without, but by now she saw the veneer. As he inched closer, the fractures in his mask seemed ardent.

“Can Doma not taste… your flow?” he asked, interest sincere. “The one that follows the moon’s cycle… is it beyond his reach?”

“He likens it to wisteria,” she admitted, reluctant as she was, “and talks of the mere touch burning him.”

“One man’s bane… is another man’s ichor.” The suggestion in his voice rang sharper than any demon slayer’s blade. She made up for his mishap, his nerve to close their distance and his barely veiled want, by widening the space between them again.

“It’ll be such ichor to him if I allow him to draw blood from my womb,” she pointed out.

“Will you?”

“Will our lord let me?”

“Mutinous thing,” sneered Kokushibo. “When have you cared… for our lord’s boundaries and laws?”

“No more than you.”

His hand, wrapped around his sword’s tsuka, twitched. “I remain constant.”

“Then leave.”

After a second of hesitation, one he tried with fervour to conceal but seeped through to his countenance, the constriction of his pupils and the scorch in his irises, Kokushibo stayed where he was. “You bleed heavier than… last time,” he noted. 

“Do you observe through your Transparent World every time I shed?”

He shook his head. “You misunderstand… I smell it. It permeates.”

And he was the only one who could detect her moonblood. Besides herself, and their master, but Kibutsuji Muzan was swamped in more crimson than she could ever spill.

She pivoted, but Kokushibo grabbed her wrist, iron and impetuous. “He’s angry,” she said as her excuse to leave, searching the old samurai’s face. “The boy who bears your brother’s mark and wears your brother’s earrings is making mincemeat of the lesser Moons.”

The mention of his twin left him cold. “That person will… not miss you,” he wagered. “You have time spare.”

He melded, still, to her wrist, unyielding; the shock of his skin pressing hers reignited what she had long assumed abandoned, a stinging ache that rippled between them as waves in storms devastated ships, naked and exposed. Ghosting the pallid paper of her flesh, his nails were a parody of humanity, short and plates plain. Kokushibo coveted what he could not have. For one to receive, one had to give. The human body had to be sacrificed to exceed its feeble limits, its brittle mortality. His façade was flimsy, and with the right amount of force it would shatter and out would come the demon that he had sold his soul to become.

His gaze drifted to her abdomen, which she had clutched in fruitless instinct, before once more locking with her. “Let me,” he said.

It took little time to think over her answer, as much as the sour wrath in her stirred. She acquiesced, and his hands wandered beneath the silk of her clothes.

She was undignified in this bestial position, but Kokushibo lacked the temerity to penetrate her through his cock. She could not bear to meet his face; ignoble though the stance of coitus more ferarum was, it provided sanctity, a way to avoid the intense blaze of those six unblinking eyes. Wooden floor scraped and pricked at her elbows as she used them to support herself. She focused on the crevices of the floorboards, the cracks resembling abysses with their infinite black hollows, wondering how much hot red had rolled into them and festered over the centuries.

Her robes were hoisted up, impudently close to the tender swell of her breasts but secure enough to not reveal them, welcoming him, exposing more than flesh when her heart jumped from the warmth of his invasively close breath. Kokushibo explored her, parting her like petals; when her folds had become so wet she didn’t know, nor wanted to, but his fingers trailed them, tentative as though she were made of glass and he feared breaking her. Sticky with her flow, his digits climbed up to the flushed bud and grazed it with their course tips. Betraying her, her hips gave an involuntary buck.

This was decadence, she mused. For the both of them. They would consume the other in every way but literal, the same way he had. Muzan was a blight impossible to efface and stained them even now.

His tongue skimmed the plush of her inner thighs, scraping at the dark cardinal smearing them. The organ roused an acute jolt from deep inside her as it slid in, blood and arousal mixing and gliding to form an easy lubricant. The electric reaction of her body wasn’t quite arisen from satisfaction, but neither was it spawned from pain; it curled and coiled as an endless serpent, a visceral sensation of a latent guilt and a repressed thrill.

Heat unfurled within her, a spark of life, but it wasn’t enough. Grinding her teeth together, she turned herself around, lying on her back. Their gazes tangled, a flash of resentment shared between them; overwhelming the cramps of her womb convulsed something keener, a wretched desire too close to impalement. She raised her thighs for him anyway, as easily as the gates of hell would open for them both, and let the mongrel feast.

The flat of his tongue pressed against the nub at the top of her sex. Long fingers, svelte and elegant enough that they seemed unfitting for a sword-wielder, moved inside her in a focused rhythm, the squelch of sloughed tissue and blood resonating as her body relaxed, sucking him in deeper. Kokushibo’s tongue carded the lips of her quim, dragging down to near his fingers then slithering back to her clitoris, which rose like the opening flowers under sunlight’s grace. Her hips played and rutted to the tempo he dipped in and out of her with, stomach crawling as much as it flipped as she thought of how he had arrogated her with such facileness. Raking the tatami, she searched for a modicum of anchorage over herself, some dose of stability.

She was pitiful, but so was he, and equally deviant. They were deformed, her kind. Demons were death, but they dreaded finality so. She was no exception. Was that widespread fear, lurking in the caliginous heart of every demon, an innate one? Did each of them know there was no salvation in death for their forsaken souls, but only the expecting flames, searing and everlasting?

Once, she had encountered a god, beautiful and bright and unequalled, and underneath layers of false flesh the scars from the conflict, eternal in their retribution, still burned like the sun. If the fires of hell were real, she had felt their touch already, and her cells had never forgotten it.

They were monsters unspeakably damned. Hideous and acrimonious, most couldn’t give reason for why they continued to live other than base instinct, that primal hunger that gnawed and gnawed, impossible to sate. They were greedy to their finest fibre. It was why they were territorial beasts. Sometimes they mated, the odd few, those who dared, foolish and tainted, but it never lasted. Eventually they cannibalised each other, skewing bones and mangling flesh until there was nothing left. The hunger grew too great, too indomitable. Demons could not kill demons through any other means. She summoned the guts to look down at the one on his knees, submerged betwixt her thighs, lapping at nutrition, lifeblood, that which symbolised renewal and viability, and thought there was something poetic about fucking functioning as death.

“He’ll never find the amaryllis,” for those six eyes saw so much, what others could not; she waited to see who those eyes belonged to, the samurai or his lord. “He—” then she stumbled, his two fingers pressed against a hard edge inside her. Drowned into silence by the waves of venereal indulgence.  

“A woman’s hatred… is a sort of devotion,” mused Kokushibo from between her legs.

She lowered her gaze to him, gripping his dark mane to lift his head away from the hot throb of her cunt, though his fingers stayed encased. Pliable, he made a pretty picture painted in her. “Devoted to you?” she ridiculed.

“To him.” His tone was dull.

“I would rather kneel to Ubuyashiki’s Pillars,” she growled. “Your nonsense is bovine. Hold your tongue.”

“Many of our kind would sacrifice themselves to… see our lord live, but you would… throw away your life to see him die.” When Kokushibo tilted his head, the thick, ropelike tendrils of his hair swayed, midnight black percolating into glossy crimson. Strands stuck to the viscous gore around his mouth and he pulled them back. “Do you not… think that is a form of devotion?”

Her jaw clenched in indignant ire.

“Your enmity for him will never… be enough for him to kill you.”

“Does this come from one traitor to another?” The gumption of him to look inquisitive, as though he understood nothing, persuaded her to continue, treading on dangerous grounds. “He was your enemy. And I know you became a slayer to imitate your brother, not out of integrity or duty, but did you never once feel the slightest antagonism towards that person? How can you serve a remorseless man who has slaughtered and devoured thousands after once claiming you would put an end to him?”

“Do you revile him for… his carnage?”

Kokushibo was a mess of slick red, a deceitful embodiment of the rivers of Sanzu. Besmirched by her, flaunting thick fluids and stringy sombre clumps, with the gleam of something darkly holy when her blood caught in the fortress’ ochre illumination, but his features were peeled back into a snarl, teeth whetted and splenetic. Claret dressed between them dribbled past his mouth and down the strong, arrogant angle of his jaw; he was too monstrous to be divine, the beast vespers was sung to ward against than to revere, closer to a wolf than a deity as half a dozen eyes narrowed in synchrony and she recalled the time when he had been her sword, and wondered if this blood was of a wound from where he had turned his weapon on her.

“It’s pointless to wage war against a calamity,” she conceded, then groaned as he stroked that spongy bump at the top of her wall in repeated, lazy beckons, the flick of his wrist and the hook of his fingers.

Grotesquely prurient, ichor in the tiny cracks of them, his lips flitted upwards. “Have you… capitulated to him?”

The question gave her pause. Did she submit? After a millennium chained to her lord, she knew she would never be free of him, that his grasp was indefinite and all-consuming, larger than she could fathom. The gods, if any existed, had surely abandoned her long ago, deserted her to his clemency. But Kibutsuji Muzan was not merciful. Cruelty was in his very appellation and thrived in his every word and action; under his dominance, even those who escaped him through his noxious curse perished in agony, humiliating and revolting, when they uttered his name.

“No.” Her finger smudged scarlet as it traced his jaw.

Riled by her answer, Kokushibo tasted the watery flow that clung to his own fingers. “So learn your place,” he chastised. “Besides, where was your… guilt when you feasted on the defenceless child that… carried rare blood in its body, which now… rests in your gut?”

She smiled, despite his nerve. If she was wilful, she was not alone.

“You bleed a constant rage…”

Waning as the moon did, jilted by the inimitable sun, the smile faltered.

“It ebbs and flows… endlessly in your veins. Are you… not weary?”

His bones trembled as her nail lengthened and sliced into his gristle-coated skin, which split with the proficiency of soft carcass under the butcher’s carving knife. Close to his left bottom eye that it seemed like a rose tear trickling, his blood mixed with hers, finer and more lurid. She lifted a rouge fingertip to her lips and gave a languid lick. With the thorn and bristle of marechi, he withered her, but he lacked its lure. She swallowed him, “And you taste of the storm,” and his fury mingled with hers.

Eyes dark, Kokushibo pulled back. “Your contumacy will not… kill you,” he warned, as if he hoped repeating his admonition would cause her to change. Though he was not a man to indulge in delusions.

Her hand snared in his hair. “Then what do I do with this anger?”

“He is your master,” and she loathed the reprimand of his tone, smooth and ugly.

“He is yours,” she corrected, defiant against his caution anyway, claws pricking at his scalp as her lips thinned. “Is there fulfilment for you in being his lapdog?”

“Akaza retains… that responsibility,” he responded dryly.

“Then what are you?”

“His servant.” The kanji in his eyes, indurated sable that whispered of unfaltering centuries of loyalty, fealty cut regal by the blade, gleamed in the flickering flaxen light of the lanterns. So are you, it rebuked.

She shifted, threading his locks between her fingers. “His ever-faithful Upper Moon One. The strongest of his subordinates, staunchly dutiful to our master,” the word was spat, but eased as she continued with a malicious lilt, “spread for him. Taken by him. Ravaged by him.”

Kokushibo’s eyes flashed. “Why does he allow a woman like you… to roam untethered?”

Oozing furrows were dragged out across his roots. “When did questioning that person become your position?”

“I... am his associate.”

“Is that what you tell yourself when he’s wedging his cock down your throat?”

Rivulets of red ran from his scalp where his hair lay matted, his beautiful strands spoiled by the knots they were weaved into. She reached out, a hand around the thick trunk of his neck, and wrenched him forward until their noses were near touching. Releasing its tight grip around his oesophagus, her hand crawled upwards, spiderlike, stopping its pilgrimage at a flame which befouled his pale flesh. The mark stretched from the right of his sharp jaw, down the side of that strong neck to his collarbone, her fingers descending beneath the white rim of his relic kimono. She brought her lips to his ear, fingertips dancing over the crimson crest as she felt his pulse, faster than it ought to be for a being of tenacious stoicism. Against the shell of his ear, as all his eyes shifted right to follow her, she crooned in a whisper, “Samurai-sama.”

Kokushibo turned to stone, scarlet trickling down his chin and splashing her naked calves. Then he recoiled, swift as a blade sheathed, pulse spiking further and noble face hardening. Her gaze dropped to between his legs, to where the carnal ache of him protruded through the obsidian layers of his hakama.

“A woman like you ought to have her tongue cut,” he snapped.

“Well,” as she began to play with herself, Kokushibo traced every movement with captivated attentiveness, the arch of her back, the heave of her breasts under her robes—with his Transparent World her clothing could be no obstacle, but, whether principle or that men like him preferred the notion of undressing those they lay with, unwrapping their prize, he never indulged in perversion of that kind—the glisten of arousal garnishing her, the cruor dripping out to nestle in the creases of her lips, “I’m certainly glad your tongue is intact.”

While he regarded her with contempt under long lashes, the heat of his groin did not dissipate, a rapt need to slide between her. His breaths were heavy, chest she knew was bedecked with fierce muscle rising under the affluent fabric of his clothing. She paused. “Doma…” she started.

The moment that name was out of her mouth, her curiosity, storm’s gale she had never been able to overcome, was assuaged as his expression soured like fruit gone grossly rotten. Nobody in the Moons would pull out the false diviner from under the sun if he were to be struck by it.

Kokushibo rested his chin atop her imbrued mons. “What kind of slut lies with… a man and speaks of another… male she’s bedded?”

“Don’t insult me if you lack virility where your subordinate doesn’t,” she hummed. “At least I’ve never been reamed open by our master. How much honour did you have, mighty swordsman, when he sodomised you against your will?”

Tapered teeth glistened as Kokushibo glowered.

“You’ve always been undeserving of what I gave you.”

“Perhaps, but… our blood still call to each other.”

Such was devastation’s path. In fleeting wonder, she pondered how many had died to their hands over the distorting centuries. “Then you defile me. We are contaminated by the other. We are filth.”

Kokushibo healed, each gash she had carved into him during irascible delectation repaired by regenerating skin, his hair smoothing out the knots from heady red.

“Filth resonates with filth,” she told him as he pushed her to the floor and tore apart the rest of her kimono with insolent dare, for though her womb had quietened it was not yet silent. “Our blood endure a murky stream,” as he left cochineal fingerprints across her breasts, exposed to him as he lowered his lips to one and suckled with neither care nor violence, but with a rhythm that had her racked in a feverish shiver.

“In a just world, I’d see you… swell and distend with… the weight of my seed,” Kokushibo murmured against her teat, flicking his tongue against it and watching it erect. She blanched.

When his fingers entered her this time, they were not kind, but curled with purpose. They buried deep within her, pumped in and out in time to how he toyed with her nipples, one clasped between the serrated ends of his canine teeth and the other caressed by the hand not thrust within her, rolling it as he kneaded the fullness of her breast on his palm. Stuttered breaths seeped from her open mouth as she smarted from him, yearned in earthquake-like shaking, the coil in her stomach tightening as she clenched around him. 

“We bleed sacrilege,” she gasped, and soaked him in her exhilaration.

Sudden warmth ensconced her as he withdrew from her breast, a string of vermilion saliva snapping, and hid his face in the crook of her neck in a jarring imitation of affection, but it came not from the abrupt facet of affinity and nor was it born of the gratification that had just flown through her, a gentle current now turbulent with terror. Her gaze sidled over the steel thew of Kokushibo to the figure in the corner of the small room. His aura was as weak as it had been when their paths had first met, devoid of killing intent or bloodlust. A chilling resemblance to the Upper Moon demon marked him, but he was distinctly human—and distinctly dead, she reminded herself; yet here he was, defying the laws of the universe once again, and that scared her more than those sixty years after coming across him—with his hanafuda earrings and his soft maroon eyes, connecting with her own.

Cold terror dredged upwards like the pull of limbs from seaweed’s shackles, a fear that had never been conquered despite the centuries separating that night and now. Kokushibo took notice of her stiffened limbs, but in his fatalistic arrogance assumed it was his doing and continued rubbing at her clit in concentrated circles, still resting at her neck.

The Sun Breather stepped forward, face resolute in its emptiness. Vacant gaze, hollow expression. In life, he had never smiled, so Kokushibo had told her. She wondered if a person like Tsugikuni Yoriichi had ever had anything to smile about.

“Leave now,” she whispered to the apparition’s brother. “You’ve fulfilled your purpose.”

Kokushibo’s fangs left her neck and he frowned down at her, bemused. “Stay,” he said, moving his hands up to the slope of her shoulders as if in preparation to hold her in place.

“Stay?” Humouring the lingering note in his request.

“Beneath me.”

“Would you have me like that?”

His hakama rustled with his movement, the grind of his hips, the hardness of him taut and desperate to break free as it rubbed against swollen lips hidden under a thatch of raven hair. “How many men have… had that pleasure?”

“Not Doma,” she confessed.

“Not Doma,” he agreed in pride, then, embittered, “feminised by your wiles… Let me take you as… you should be taken. Under me.”

“Will he kill me then?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Yoriichi ventured another step, only a centimetre but enough to make her skin smoulder with memory. No, she would not die. Not to her master’s cells, not to the Sun Breather’s ruby sword. Across a thousand years, a single opportunity had come to her, a scalding escape, but Yoriichi had failed to take her head.

Years upon years later, here she lay, a man aneled in her blood looming over her with hungry eyes and hungrier cock while a universe beyond her comprehension played games with her.

Although the unworldly dimension of the Infinity Castle protected them from day’s influence, she and the other demon suddenly tensed in unison nonetheless. All Kibutsuji’s mutant creations felt the surface of dawn, a knell within the fibre of their bones to warn them of their only predator. It came with a hounding instinct to run, even if one was safe from the sun’s culling reach. To run and run until the blest recitals of matins was inundated with unfolding nightlight.

As daybreak erupted in another realm, Amaterasu’s sacred child faded, though not before his lips opened and moved with the motion of talk. Nothing audible departed from him. Her heart pounded against the confinement of her chest. Kokushibo finally realised she was glaring past him and turned to follow, greeted by a void corner. When he looked back at her, he discovered no one under him and muttered her name beneath a churlish breath.

“What reason have you to remain? Leave,” she repeated, by the fusuma. Sweat mellowed her body, throbbing from the aftermath of multiple climaxes, but a darker heat piqued within her as she scrutinised his ensanguined form, the wet mess of his face and hands. “You won’t send me to the gallows, Kokushibo, but something worse. Go.”

He towered over her in the blink of an eye. “I don’t… understand you. Women—”

“You don’t need to.”

Bold, he outstretched his hand and splayed his palm in the valley between her breasts, feeling the hammer of her heart. “Do not think me cunt-struck,” the fingers there decayed from paramour’s caress to the scuttling perfidy of insect legs, straining for prey as they made way down a breast and sullied it shimmering cardinal. He groped at her, the roughness men didn’t care enough to reign in. Their teeth nipped and nails scratched. Always squeezing and grabbing. “You will not treat me… like one of your whores, disregarded… once I’ve made you come,” and he placed emphasis on those final words, conceit blatant.

Kokushibo was an animal. The closest of the Moons to Kibutsuji in terms of power. It was only natural, in all the unnaturalness of demons, that he should be so mutant and repulsive, so it puzzled her that she found him beautiful. It, she supposed, was the beauty of a thing ethereal, or perhaps transient; a sacrificed animal, immolated by an unknown force. He was the bleeding lamb, the shot and limping cur, that which was so harrowing it could not be turned away from, the morbid fascination that stirred delight in the sickest minds.

Still, as the lamb bolted from the hand that reached to console it, and bodies withered and mortified from the undertaker’s embrace, his beauty spilled into evanescence. Butterfly wings broke when touched. He mouldered and came to fester a violent, disturbing darkness. While she dwelled on this, he made his move. Pushing her down, mounted above her with the full weight of his strapping form, shoving three virulent fingers inside her.

She pelted him with a livid glare. “I’ll defer when that man dies.” For she would not submit now. That went unspoken, but he heard it. Perhaps his samurai teachings to adhere to greater strength was the only reason his cock remained clothed. 

“Do you… crave death so badly?” Covering her body with his own, he slotted a fourth finger in. The delicate lining of her womanhood stung, his nails nicking as they danced inside her.

“Are you killing me?” she mused. Viridian claws slashed at his violet-ebony kimono, finding purchase in his broad shoulders. Mordancy dripped from her tone like how blood trickled down the hard ridges of his torso.

“Death will not give you peace.”

Perhaps it wouldn’t, but this life was far from pleasant. Though she shook her head at him, Kokushibo drove into her with vigour, the scourge of a whip. She shoved at his chest, his moonlight skin sickly pale, but he did not budge and, in some irreligious depth of her where she ached for this, the intemperate madness of sinners who trod the thin line of destruction and endurance, she was glad for it.

“Stop this,” but her words sounded empty to even herself. He didn’t, because he was a man who took what he wanted and obeyed the whims of only one other beside himself. Audacious, apathetic, awful, he inserted his thumb, then pushed the entirety of his fist inside her. A snarl tore from her throat, and his other hand came to close around that. He did not squeeze, but the mere presence of him around her neck was the potent pressure of a noose. Wet slaps rebounded in her ears as he twisted his fist, drawing his knuckles against her. She burned as if ablaze as she stretched to accommodate the violation.

Why was he here? What had he come for beside the sweet, metallic taste of cunt and the clench of red insides? It was something born of a selfish motivation, she figured that. No different or better than her. Though someone of his station should not act on self-serving wants.

Farther Kokushibo breached. To her unease, her body did little to prevent him. “I thought this was altruism?” she hissed.

His thumb pressed against her jugular, some vile punishment for opening her mouth. It marked her with a hue of cerise, an eager bruise blossoming under the skin. “This is not amity.” By the drag of a craven’s fingertips, veneration was rescinded. “It is… contrition. Yours.”

Bellicose blood smeared her, slewed down the inside of her thigh, not her moonblood, but thinner, of a greater, brighter constitution. Venous, drawn from a wounded and maimed creature, dismal and writhing like a worm on a hook. The hardness of her cervix turned friable. There was a knife—or a sword, she thought wryly, and wondered if he would fuck her with his disgusting katana if he could—in her cunt and it stabbed its way to where no foreign intrusion should have. She spasmed, wrenched out the arm of the hand clasping her smarting neck and suddenly they were both bathed in sticky red, tepid as it gushed from Kokushibo’s socket. It reeked. Not of them, but of him, the laden scent of Kibutsuji. Vessels for his violence, clawing at each other like rabid dogs, fuelled by the instinct to tarnish and impair, the need to rip apart with teeth and talons. They were nothing if not that man’s vestigial reflection; as Kokushibo hollowed her out and the sordid point of his nails pricked at the firm, barred organ of her cervix, it was not the samurai that penetrated, but his lord. A maggot burrowing away, carrying a corrosive disease. There was sin in their veins and it ate at them.  

“Warm my bed,” said Kokushibo, too frustrated to be a growl, too stark to be a plead. A demand, one which she spat at him for, all noble airs abandoned. He flinched as if her saliva cauterised. She hoped it did, hoped that his patience was a manacle and not frangible thread. She had seen what monstrosities cultivated within sullied wombs; the devils seized out of broken hellmouths in downpours of black ichor; the thousand deaths endured in pregnancy, in childbed, in motherhood. That was not a desirable end. It was not true death, but something beyond it, worse and unending, and men were baleful enough to inflict it on any wench they deemed deserving.

Depraved in the way ruby tainted rare moons, Kokushibo gouged her in repeated blows, battering the closed pale-pink neck of her uterus. She wept as his cursed touch shed more of her flesh than her own body could. A malevolent torrent of something she couldn’t put a name to raged within the leaking fissures of her. Here, raising a hand that trembled as it pressed his cool cheek, she was close enough to delve out his awful eyes, to slit his neck, to divaricate his limbs. Close enough to devour him.

But she wouldn’t. An insidious weakness.

When she yanked his savage fist out of her, she freed herself of her cage as well as gaoler. Torn from her insides, the pear shape of her womb, hot and rosy, and aperture of her cervix. Arteries and veins fell like tears, burst like shattered mosaic. She threw the poison in her system to the floor, where it soaked the wood with her diseased red, and relished the surprise on his face.

Kokushibo scanned the consecrated blood daubing him, then his gaze scraped her, fibrous sclera and aureate irises glowing, pupils blown. All they were was blood. They rotted with it, congealed and decayed until there was no trace of who they had been, only the stench of who they had slaughtered. They were their victims’ legacies, harbouring so many ghosts.

Crucifying agony dulled with each passing second. Already her body was repairing itself, working against her as it always had, cancer regenerating within her. Kokushibo rose and she stepped back, bare before him like an offering, though she was not sure what virgin oblation she could be when she had already been eaten; she could not consume him when he had consumed her, and from that she knew he was desecration. Vitiated in the spoils of him, she fled to ensconce herself within the umbrage of endless slanting corridors, praying they would guttle her too.

[choicesficwriterscreations]

June Creator of the Month: Thosehallowedhalls

Please welcome this month’s Creator of the Month is @thosehallowedhalls.

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists. The writer or artist is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page. Past COTM's can be found here.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog Masterlist

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played?

I can't remember exactly. 2021, I think? Laws of Attraction was on its tenth chapter.

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined in January of this year. I was upset with Crimes of Passion 2, so I wrote a couple of stories about it. I had deactivated my old Tumblr long ago, so I had to open a new one.

3- How did you pick your blog name?

I love old buildings - the history, the ambiance. I tried hallowedhalls, but it was taken, so I added the article.

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!

I… have zero recollection of this post. But I'm big on nostalgia and mourning past times, so the fact that this was my first post tracks.

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both?

I write fanfiction. I've been teaching myself to draw, but I'm not anywhere near close to sharing what I do.

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

I started writing fanfiction way back in… 2010? For about four or five years. Then I stopped until December 2023.

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Crimes of Passion on both counts.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?

That would be The 2 AM Christmas Tree Farm, inspired by The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I do still like it, but I would tighten up the writing a bit. I had barely written any fiction for several years at that point, and the lack of practice shows.

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created?

I keep going back and forth between The 2 AM Christmas Tree Farm and Home Without. Both are angsty short series.

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I was taken aback by the comments on The 2 AM Christmas Tree Farm. I'd posted it on AO3 a few weeks before, and had gotten a handful of kudos and one comment, but within 24 hours of posting it here, I had several lovely reblogs. It was a welcome surprise. Stories with fewer comments… I guess Home Without. The first chapter got quite a bit of love, but by the time the final chapter rolled around, fewer people were interacting.

11- If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

I love a balance, but I'd say angst with a happy ending. I enjoy the breadth of emotions angst lets you explore.

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

There are bits and pieces of me in all of them. Emma has my sarcasm, and Raine has my need to look for the best in people. There may be more, but if so, it wasn't done intentionally.

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

Perfectionism. Like I said before, the lack of writing practice shows. I know that the only way to get better is to keep writing, but I hate seeing the gap between what I do and what I want to do. Catch-22.

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

My Sebastyan x Emma fic, Of Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies. There are only a couple of chapters left, but I've been struggling with it for a couple of months now.

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first?

Oh, hell no.

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

So many writers have influenced my writing throughout the years, including authors I do not currently read. The Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Nora Roberts, Jane Austen, Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole… I could go on and on. Fanfic writers… There are a lot, but off the top of my head, @inlocusmads, @coffeewithcutcaffeine, @gaiuskamilah, @aria-ashryver, @jerzwriter, @dutifullynuttywitch, @aces-and-angels, @petalouda85, and @storyofmychoices. I know there are more.

17- Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series?

Home Without. I'm a sucker for good pining, and I'd love to see all that mutual longing play out onscreen - not to mention that reunion.

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art?

I do. I'm currently working on a horror short story, a MG novel, and a dual timeline mystery that's still in the research stages.

19- What other hobbies do you have?

Reading, non-fandom writing, drawing, learning new things (especially languages!), going on walks, and drinking enough coffee to alarm medical professionals anywhere.

[baldurs-gape]

You have been perceived.

Oh Nonnie, trust me, I know. I have spent the last couple of days alternating between the sheer panic of having been perceived and also the deepest desire to know why?! There's over 2000 Bloodweave fics out there. Just how and why did Shores end up being the one he picked?! Especially with those tags. I almost feel compelled to profusely apologise that he had to read those with his own eyes. But then I remember that while the story is my sin, I'm not to blame for him noodling around on AO3. And if he did have a sneaky read, I bloody hope he was polite and at least left kudos.

Anyway. More importantly. You sent an ask and so you shall have a ficlet of thanks for finding my little corner of the fandom and interacting.

Mortal Hands

The room at the Elfsong Tavern was the height of luxury compared to the road the party had been on for so long. Various exclamations of relief and gratitude mixed with sighs and grumbles about who gets which bed. Perhaps the one Astarion picked wasn't ideal but as least it was in the corner, he could see the entrance to the room and, if needed, could probably make an escape route through a window. Without any discussion or ever question, the bed next to his was left empty for Gale. It took a few minutes for their wizard to drag himself in, looking more haggard and tired than usual. Obviously the message from Elminster about seeing mystra hadn't gone down very well. He looked ready to crash face first into the pillow and not resurface for tenday or so.

"You're going to get the bed filthy," Astarion drawled as he watched Gale blink at the bed with confused longing. "Get cleaned up. You can thank me when you're awake again."

A pout. The great Wizard of Waterdeep, the Chosen of Mystra, an archmage of great renown was pouting at Astarion like he'd just told him he can't have a second helping of pie and custard. That was just rude. Being the more mature of the two of them, Astarion rolled his eyes in response.

"Must I do everything? Come along." For all his griping, Astarion was up and leading Gale towards the wooden tub he'd spied earlier. It didn't take long to arrange for it to get filled with steaming hot water and he barely had any time to grab Gale by the arm and hoist him back before the other got in. "Were you raised by boars? You get in there like this and you'll be sitting in your own much. I should call you a filth wizard."

"But-" Gale began and was cut off with a hand gesture.

"Sit."

Thankfully Gale sat and actually looked grateful for it. His eyes closed as Astarion went about drawing a couple of buckets of water from the tub. Towels, a bar of soap from his own pack (pilfered from Raphael's rather decadent bath) and Gale's shaving kit.

First things first, Astarion bullied Gale into stripping, frowning at the bruises that were revealed. Not to mention that his wizard looked more slender than before. They were going to have to pay more attention to supplies it seemed. Once naked, Astarion picked up a bucket.

"Close your eyes and hold your breath."

"Wha-" The word morphed into a splutter as Gale spat water out. He was dripping and glaring, and it really shouldn't have been such a good look on him.

Not missing a beat, Astarion set about washing him from top down. Working shampoo into Gale's hair, he listened to the soft exhales, watched as Gale's shoulders slumped, head tipping into the touch. Astarion used his fingers to find tangles and gentle teased them out. Half a bucket rinsed the suds out. Next was the unsightly scruff of beard. It had been much better maintained but the shadowcursed lands hadn't exactly afforded them much opportunity for personal care.

"Is this really necessary?" Gale asked even as his hands settled on Astarion's hips to steady him in his lap. "Surely it can wait."

"You'll feel better. We'll go see Mystra tomorrow and tell her where she can shove the crown."

"She doesn't care about looks."

Astarion raised an eyebrow. "I don't care about what she thinks. I want you to feel good about yourself."

As he spoke, his hands worked gently over the scruff, cleaning it and working up another nice lather. Reaching for the razor, Astarion waited a moment, knowing all too well that Gale would try and speak whether he had a sharp blade against his skin or not. Sure enough, he was right.

"She won't be impressed by a bit of grooming. Not even hunting down a bit of magic would impress her."

"Do you know how much effort I'm having to put into not making a comment about Mystra and grooming?"

Gale sighed. "She's a goddess. She doesn't need to worry about things like grooming or wind blowing a wisp of hair out of the way."

Rather than say anything, Astarion stared at him and shook his head before taking a gentle hold of Gale's chin. The aim wasn't to get rid of the beard, just to tame it and return it to its more usual look. He felt the moment Gale realised the meaning of his words and his jaw flexed. In response, Astarion tightened his grip a little to keep him quiet.

Once satisfied with his work, Astarion used a towel to wiped him clean before reaching for another lotion. Yet another thing he'd lifted from Sharess' Caress, it was something to keep a beard softer. Rubbing it into Gale's facial hair felt oddly meditative and Astarion got lost for a moment in the feel of the hairs against his palms. It was only when Gale's head fell forwards before jerking back up that he realised they were both drifting.

"Only a little longer," he murmured and got up.

The last bucket of now tepid water was used to wipe the worst of the grim off Gale. His arms and legs were lifted on command and Astarion did his best not to laugh too much when he worked on cleaning ticklish feet and Gale squirmed, nose scrunched up.

Finally satisfied, Astarion nodded to himself and gestured at the tub which was warm but no longer scaling.

"Get in."

The groan Gale let out as he sank into the water came from the soul. Knees bent, he sank in until his shoulders were under the water, eyes closed. Astarion flipped a bucket upside down and sat on it behind him. Starting without a word, he let himself play with Gale's hair, fingers digging into his scalp as it turned into a massage. Deftly he moved down to his jaw, knowing that Gale had a tendency to grind his teeth which left him aching and frustrated quite often. Once his mouth was slack, Astarion returned to playing with his freshly tidied up beard, touching for the sake of enjoyment.

Under his care, Gale all but melted. He sleepily nuzzled into Astarion's palm, resting comfortably against it like it was the world's most decadent pillow. The trust of it had Astarion's throat tight. Nobody before Gale had put so much faith into him. The assumption that he would hold Gale, keep him above water and allow him to rest was the purest form of love Astarion could imagine.

"Come along, before you become the Wizard of Watersleep."

Drying a half awake Gale off, Astarion led him to the bed where Gale happily burrowed under the blanket. There was just one problem. Sleepy brown eyes stared at him imploringly. Astarion found it almost impossible to resist.

"Let me quickly get cleaned up. Then I'll join you."

Never in his life had he washed himself quicker. It was still too long. By the time he returned to Gale's side, the wizard was already asleep, blanket clutched to his chest in lieu of another body to hold. Somewhat disappointed, Astarion sat on the edge of the bed to watch. The dip in the mattress didn't wake Gale fully but he did snuffled and shuffled towards the edge of the bed, making more room. Taking the invitation, Astarion curled up next to him, smiling to himself when the blanket was kicked away in favour of Gale wrapping around him more securely than a mindflayer's tentacles around a head at feeding time.

Rest was quick to draw Astarion into a trance. It had been a long road and they weren't anywhere close to being done just yet. But at least he had Gale and Gale had him. That was going to have to be enough when they faced the monsters of their past in the next couple of days.

[orangepanic]

I'm probably going to regret this later.

I had a good friend say to me recently that she's not reading any more books by white men. Clearly she was looking for congratulations. Instead, all I could feel was sadness.

To me, the point of pushing for diversity and representation in media is exactly that. Diversity, and not just to put points on a scoreboard or get kudos from your socially-minded friends but because you actually care about broadening your mind. For too long, too few people's perspectives and experiences have been overrepresented in history and popular culture, which limits our thinking and perpetuates the kinds of marginalization and discrimination that hurt society as a whole. We need to actively, aggressively correct that. But to me that means a process that is additive, not subtractive.

Add books to your reading list by people from different backgrounds and cultures, or that center characters who aren't like you. And "aren't like you" should be broad. Read a different genre than you'd normally pick up. Read about somebody older or younger than you, someone whose brain works differently, or someone who grew up in a different part of the country, even if they might look like you on the outside. Do this, but don't only do this to the point that reading becomes a chore or a performative action, or to the point where you're now cutting out other perspectives entirely. I hear so many sad stories these days about how little people read, and I think part of that is because there's been a push for reading as a requirement, as education, and that only certain kinds of books are okay to read because they contribute to this goal. That's such crap. Read what you want because it is fun! But then also add to that experience with new, different books. You never know what else you might like (looking at you, native Hawaiian vampire story). Growing your reading pie isn't about "no more of this" but "yes, more of that."

And the same can be said for fandom. Fandom has always been as space for people to explore different kinds of characterizations and relationships that aren't heavily reflected in popular culture. That's largely why we have transformative works. But lately I see this almost puritanical push in fandom for everything to check certain boxes when the whole point of fandom and fan creations is to make shit up. Don't see enough hairy-chested mlm werewolves on screen? Draw your favs as hairy gay werewolves who kiss! And if you've never thought about your OTP as werewolves, be open-minded enough to explore it, or to read someone else exploring it just to see how it is and stretch your brain a bit. Maybe you'll like it, or learn about werewolves. Maybe you'll hate it. Either way, support each other.

And like the books, this process should be additive. Push yourself to be open to more ships and interpretations of characters and canon. Also, curate your fandom experience, and if you explore something and it isn't for you, that's okay. It's for somebody else. And the fact that it contains no werewolves doesn't make it wrong, or boring, or toxic, or anti-werewolf, or something you need to tell the creator not to make anymore because you want to be seen in online spaces as coming out against what is unpopular so that you, by reflection, will look popular. If you do this you're looking for the fandom equivalent of kudos for saying you'll never read a book by a white man, leaving everything from Neil Gaiman to Tolkien on the table and thinking that makes you look progressive instead of sad and small and like you're trying desperately to sit at the right table in middle school. In short, fandom isn't a zero sum game any more than reading is. And real diversity in fandom means adding in the content and perspectives and characters we're missing, both on and off-screen, (and not just the ones you like, but the ones you might not) as well as not weeding out the ones that we already have. We can have more together, not less.

[allwormdiet]

Gestation 1.5

I wonder if Taylor's night is gonna get any better

This is actually a really good passage for the building tension. Lung's not gonna kill our protagonist in the fifth chapter of the novel but she doesn't know that. She can see her options narrowing down and her chances getting slimmer, she doesn't know there's like, a million plus words more to her story. This could be it, and this really sells it.

Okay actually I'm gonna circle back to something I totally missed in 1.4, which is the mild comedy in Taylor hacking multiple EpiPens in her kit as a teenager with, I'm gonna guess a modest allowance? You can tell this was written by someone who hasn't had to put up with US healthcare, that's minimum like $600 bucks of medicine, and frankly I don't think it's going to be any cheaper when the predominant pharmaceutical company is run by a Nazi.

Sweet of her dad, and also I cannot imagine facing down a hitter like Lung with nothing but a can of pepper spray, Jesus Christ that's stressful. This never comes up in the retellings, Taylor has cast-iron balls to pull this stunt.

Kudos on this, it's such a cool descriptor, and again: huge props to Taylor for staring this down and not running like hell.

Side note, either Lung's eyes are a magnet for violence or else Taylor is compelled to target the eyes. Maybe both. See if it keeps happening with either of them I guess.

Something something Jurassic Park reference, also do we need the reminder that he has an accent

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH IT'S THE CAVALRY BABY

Listen I know I'm a little spoiled here and the bias is showing but I already love these kids, look at em! They decided to swing at Lung for the sake of the girl who'd already pried him off their backs, they didn't need to save her but they did. I can't wait for them all to break my heart one way or another, it's gonna rule.

Grue is real as fuck for his costume, it's so cool.

Also I desperately want to know what the conversation was like for the Undersiders to decide "yeah fuck it let's put up our dukes against the head of the ABB." Who voted in favor of that?

The "but yeah" really sells the underlying youth of the character, btw. Gonna go out on a limb and guess there's a lot of kids who feel like they need to hold themselves like adults (and then don't really know how) in this story.

Squad squad squad squad

Quick and dirty introduction to the team, good enough start as anything, also lmao at Taylor just standing there with jelly legs trying to process this and completely unable to make words happen. Poor girl

"Certainly least" my ass, kid's got style.

Can Tattletale actually stop herself from talking? Not like in a power sense I mean in a needing to be smart way. I assume she can but it's not out of the question that she just cannot put a lid on it. I've known people like that.

Also an effortless display of trust and teamwork. Tattletale says boogie and Bitch is on it immediately.

So the fox parallels just start immediately, okay. Everyone always compares her to a fox, or makes her fursona a fox, or describes a vulpine grin, and I figured that was drawing on the text but I didn't think it came up literally in the first chapter she appears.

There's a couple different emotions I feel at this last paragraph. Per usual I feel bad for Taylor because this truly just has not been her night, she gets like half a W against fucking Lung but gets scared half to death, saved by villains, and then mistaken for a villain as well. Awful way to start a career.

On the other hand, Taylor, honey, you're terrifying and used a bunch of venomous and painful insects in order to break up a gang meeting, you're in all blacks and grays with big ol yellow eyes, your entire aesthetic screams villain, this is at least partly your own fault.

On the third hand, knowing full well how important the Undersiders are gonna be, and how feared Taylor is gonna be as a future villain, it's not hard to look at this like. Well what's so bad about them being villains, and what's so bad about being mistaken for one. Obviously it's a matter of morality and perspective and stuff like that, Taylor seems to only now be dipping her toes into moral flexibility, but the gift/curse of future knowledge means there's something, I dunno, a little sweet about this encounter.

Current Thoughts

Tired. Dragging my hands down my face rn. Last one for tonight.

This was a cool sequence. Rough introduction to the Docks and ABB aside, the fight between Lung and Taylor was super cool, a great feeling of the momentum shifting between the two as Taylor's bugs stop being able to keep up with the fire, the desperate play with the pepper spray, and being just. Fully backed into a corner until she's saved by the cavalry. If this is how the fight scenes keep going for this series then I think I'm in for a fun ride.

Also yaaaaaaaaay the team has been introduced, I can't wait to find out how much of the perception of them I've gotten through fanworks and my own half-baked osmosis is going to contrast with their canon personalities. Grue being all serious and Tattletale being a smirking know-it-all literally described as fox-like feel like solid indicators, if nothing else.

Next chapters tomorrow. It's Armsmaster right after, right? See what he's like.

[volterran-wine]

got any thoughts on the newest Nosferatu?

𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐬𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐮 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒

I love that you simply assumed I had watched this movie dear Anonymous, I take it as a compliment. Sorry for taking a little while to get to this, for the movie was not out until last night for Norway.

I was of course at the first screening in my town with 10 other people filling the theatre. Without going into details; I loved it. Eggers is now four for four when it comes to his work in my eyes, this one might become a favourite for many Eggers fans to say the least.

But you asked for thoughts;

So, below is a mini Review/Rambling about Nosferatu by Robert Eggers, with SPOILERS.

TW for mentions of SA and CA.

Where to even begin.

First I would like to say I am so glad this is not a 'sexy vampire' movie, at all. I was hoping for that gut-wrenching, folkloric horror that these creatures are supposed to be.

Usually I would make a list of pro's and con's for just about any media I consume, but for this one I just cannot do that. The only complaint I have is the fact that my theatre was so empty yesterday it was terribly cold and the Dolby Atmos System was a little too loud with too few bodies to ricochet of off.

I think I will have to do this in sections.

𝐀 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 & 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞

At one point I attempted to keep track of how many classic horror moments that were being introduced in the movie―I soon lost count because Eggers somehow managed to make every single one of them work so well. You can tell the man simply loves his job. From the attention to folklore, to historical accuracies and homages to classic horror cinema, you will find all of it in this movie.

𝐂𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲

Another part of the movie that is so dedicated to blending beautifully done modern shots with ones that clearly is lifted out of the dreamlike sets from older Hollywood movies. It is a visual delight for the eyes. Combined with the wonderful styling and costuming of the characters, it easily becomes a highlight alone.

If the movie had been terrible I would have said the look of the movie was beautiful enough to overlook it.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬

I have had my doubts about Miss. Depp a couple of times, but I have not seen possession scenes like that in a good while. Hereditary comes to mind, and that is a compliment. Hoult plays being a husband being politely terrified so well I want to cast him in all my Gothic fantasies from now on.

Also, Willem Dafoe laughs maniacally while setting fire to an old house, raving about alchemy and the course of life and death while a thousand rats are his co-starts.

How can it get better than that?

Kudos to Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson for being outstanding side characters I felt so terribly bad for.

𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐲 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞

The fact that they worked with scholars and linguists to help reconstruct and invoke the long dead Dacian language for this movie makes me want to cry.

I have also seen people of Romania being quite pleased about the attention to detail when it comes to their culture and history. Seeing as though I am no expert on that topic, I will leave that to them to gush about. I am simply glad Eggers is giving 150% effort on this movie.

When 'Strigoi' was mentioned I quietly cheered though.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦, 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 & 𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐞

We all know that Vampires and the act of drawing blood is a sexual metaphor―it has been that way for centuries. Vampire media is inherently about the desire for the forbidden and dark we are supposed to reject.

Nosferatu draws on those topics, but it frames it through a lens of what abuse does to person when it is experienced at a young age. The story of this movie is just as much about rape and what it does to a person. It follows you as a shadow, and you never quite know when the next bout of abuse can happen. The movie portrays the terror and guilt someone can harbour, and how it in turn can effect you for a long time after the fact...

There are sadly many real life Count Orlok's.

The movie shows how this is an ugly thing, the fact that pleasure and abuse can exist in tandem and there is not such thing as the perfect victim. Nosferatu tells the story of how frightening and freeing it can be to drag the darkest pits of abuse into the light.

It is the only way to kill it.

𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬

Please go see Nosferatu.

(I will recommend looking up a tigger warning list due to the nature of the movie. There is a fair amount of gore and body horror + themes that may be triggering,)

[olderthannetfic]

I think something just clicked for me about the whole Anti vs. Proship debacle.

Both sides view "media consumption" as an expression. Antis say that reading or watching or playing something is an expression of a person's innate moral compass. According to them, when you read Black Butler fanfic you are expressing your approval of child being in a romantic relationship with a demon in real life.

And proshippers rebutt that with the fact that reading, watching, and playing things is an expression of your trauma or sexuality. They get a lot more nuanced, but to them if you read Black Butler fanfic, you're expressing your own anxieties about or experiences with a type of relationshp that you know is wrong in real life, or maybe you're expressing that you think it's kinda hot in fiction (but mostly the trauma, they're *really* keen on trauma as a an excuse for liking things).

But I don't consider being a passive audience member as an expression. Writing fic or drawing fan art is an expression of what I think is hot or interesting in canon, kicking headcanons back and forth on Tumblr is an expression of how I feel and think about canon, sharing recs is an expression of what I like and what I think my friends will like, leaving comments on a fic is how I express my thoughts to the author, even a kudos or Tumblr like is an expression of the fact that I appreciated something. But simply reading fic is not how I express anything. The bare fact that I enjoyed a fic or canon is not a social interaction or an expression of any kind.

Having thoughts or feelings about what I read and watch and play is not how I express things about myself, I have to share those thoughts on Tumblr or through fanworks to express them.

And thoughts and feelings shouldn't be counted as expressions of something deeper. Your thoughts and tastes are the things you express (if you choose to), they are not themselves public expressions of deeper traumas or moralities. No one knows what you're thinking unless you tell them, and going through life as if everyone can read your mind is a pretty horrible way to live.

--

Eh. A lot of the "proship" side just thinks antis are idiots, not that anything is necessarily about your sexuality or trauma. Those are just things you say to rebut "You have no right to like this" if you don't have the balls to say "I do what I want!"

[ijhyo]

CHAPTER 4

what was supposed to be a fun weekend away with friends turns into a sinister game of hide and seek where their lives are on the line. trapped in a lake house cabin with only six hours on the clock, can y/n figure out who is behind the mask and manage not to get caught all before sunrise?

PAIRING. soobin x gn reader ; beomgyu x gn reader ; yeonjun x gn reader

GENRE. college au ; mystery ; thriller ; escape room ; angst ; horror ; humour

WARNINGS. character deaths (quick, act surprised) ; injuries ; blood ; swearing ; stabbing ; guns

WORD COUNT. 7k

A/N. FINALLY! she is here! after 300 years the final installment of the here i come series is out GOD BLESS. never have i been so happy to finish something in my life. very big thank you to everyone who continued showing interest in this fic even though this chapter took forever, this is truly for u I LOVE YALL! some of u have kind of guessed the killers so kudos to you, big brained people. i cant think of anything else to say just here you go, thank u, enjoy!!

TAGLIST. @tsupuffs @ren-chib @yjwfav @mykalon @junityy @iyeonjuni @fallingforhoon @fairybinie @enhacolor @cheorei @jjhmk @acciomylove @yeonjunsgf777 @soobin-chois @chosoluvr @odxrilove @soobisms @strawbrinkofdeath @etherealcherrie @maemarahuya @1-800-ryujin @wisecheesecakecloud @fairyofshampgyu @i-haewon @cottontvil @minthicons @bettyschwallocksyee @glyxiebear @calumsfringe @luvrboygyu @clyspm @celestialgyu @fallingforya @gyumie @ihsmarat @wooseoft @tatansoobin @wccycc @hello0i @prodsputnik @yotser @yhawnnzz @najaemin138 @ljnfav

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When you come to, you are laying in a bed, an overhead light shines glaring harshly in your eyes. You blink blearily, trying to get used to the brightness of the room and getting your vision to focus.

Movement catches your attention at the foot of your bed. You see Lia moving around the room, picking up your dirty clothes to do the laundry because you always forget to put them away, humming under her breath as she works.

Saturday was always laundry day.

After you got out of bed, you would be the one to take out the trash and go shopping for any groceries you needed. By the time you’d get back, Lia would have already finished with lunch.

You’d watch a movie or two, maybe play a game if you could convince your roommate, and order take out for dinner.

Right about now, she would tsk her tongue and throw a dirty shirt at you, telling you that you need to start cleaning up for yourself. You’d roll your eyes fondly and promise to be neater. Lia would accept it even though she doesn’t believe you and the process would be repeated all over again the next week.

You wait for the shirt to hit your face. It never comes.

Instead, the illusion is shattered when your eyes finally focus on the person you saw and see that their back is way too broad to be your friend’s and that, looking around curiously, this was not your apartment.

Everything comes rushing back then.

The game. The killers. Lia.

You’re laying down comfortably but you feel dizzy. Raising a hand to your head, you feel cotten where your temple should be and find that pressure causes a sharp sting to shoot up to your forehead. You let out a low curse at the pain and the other person finally takes notice of you.

He moves to your side, relief written on his face. “Oh, you’re awake, thank God.” You try to place the boy in your memory but draw a blank. “You passed out sometime between the lake and here and didn’t wake up for half an hour. I was starting to get worried.”

Yeonjun, your brain supplies when all the recent events catch up to you.

Now that you could see his face illuminated properly, pretty seems like an understatement. His dark hair is pushed back, revealing his forehead and you didn’t think that could be attractive, but here you are.

Yeonjun is still watching you. You clear your throat. “Um, thanks. For helping me.”

“You’re welcome,” he says smiling. “You looked like you needed it.” You suppress a scoff. If only he knew. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

His sudden question snaps you back. He has his hand up in your direct line of vision. “What?”

“I’m checking if you have a concussion. I dressed your wounds as best I could with zero first aid training but I need to make sure you won’t pass out again on me.”

His fingers are really pretty. You blink. “Oh. Three.”

Yeonjun smiles, satisfied. “Okay. Good, that’s good.”

He walks around the bed and disappears behind through a door. You use this opportunity to look around the room Yeonjun put you in, not finding it familiar at all.

Knowing that it is not far from Soobin’s lake house, you think that this house must be on the same level of extravagance, or at least close to it, but this room gives no indication of that. It’s smaller than the bedroom you were going to spend the night in before but still larger than the one in your apartment.

There is indications of use around; a t-shirt hanging on the back of a chair; shoes spilling out of the closet; and the faint smell of cologne lingers in the air. It all seems so boy that the only conclusion you draw is that this is Yeonjun’s room.

The boy in your returns with a glass of water that you accept gratefully. You hadn’t realised how thirsty you were until you downed the drink in seemingly one gulp. Yeonjun watches amusedly as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and you feel your face heat.

“Where are we?” You ask, holding the glass in your hands.

Yeonjun looks around the room in thought, humming. “About ten minutes away from where I found you.”

“Do you live here?”

“Nah,” he denies easily, taking a seat ay the foot of the bed, being careful to avoid touching your legs, “I’m just house sitting. The family that lives here is away at their other vacation house. In Japan.”

At your stunned look (you’re pretty sure that your mouth is open wide), Yeonjun nods hugely. “I know. Rich people, am I right?”

You scoff. “You could say that.”

It goes quiet. Yeonjun watches you curiously, his heavy gaze makes you avert your eyes to the glass in your hold. You clear your throat. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”

He winces. “Can I?”

You shrug, feigning nonchalance, before launching into your recount of the night’s events. You watch his face as it goes from curious to shocked before finally settling on what is a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

Which, sums it up pretty nicely.

“That’s…Fuck, I-I don’t even know what to say. Who would do that?”

It feels oddly reassuring hearing this surprise from someone who has zero knowledge of the fucked up party you were just at. You inhale sharply. “Don’t know yet. But I’m gonna find out.” And you were. You couldn’t sit here forever.

“And the rest of your friends? You said you think they’re…” Dead. The word hangs between the two of you, too scared to be spoken aloud for fear they might be true.

“Well,” you start decisively, “they might not be.” With that, you swing your legs over the side of the bed, holding back a cry at the pain that erupts from the sudden movement.

Yeonjun’s hands shoot out to steady you, eyebrows creased with worry. “Woah! What are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” you grit out, pushing off the taller boy.

“You’re quite literally not. You might not have a concussion but fuck, Y/N, you’ve been stabbed. You can’t go out there. You need rest.”

Continuing out of the bedroom, you find yourself in an enormous foyer, almost as grand as the Choi family’s. “I need to make sure my friends are okay. I need to make those bastards pay.”

Your path is blocked by a very tall wall standing in your way. You roll your eyes, knowing that he used the fact that he doesn’t need to limp to pass you. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that?” Yeonjun stands defiantly, arms crossed and displeasure clear in the hard set of his jaw. You are getting quite sick of boys telling you no.

You stop in your tracks, thinking.

Then, “Do you have any knives?”

2 HOURS LEFT

The trek up the hill is hard with your injuries and takes longer than it should have had you been in full strength. The ground is soft beneath your feet, gives way every few feet and you have to readjust yourself carefully to avoid slipping.

A knife, so graciously given to you by Yeonjun, is hidden under your shirt. You walk in a way that it won’t accidentally nick your side. It feels awkward but it works.

Nearing the house, light spills out into the night, the grand chandelier still on. It is jarring almost, how the trees go from being cloaked in darkness to being bathed in bright light.

The front door is deserted.

You feel the warmth from the fireplace rather than see it, noting how it is still on, despite everything. That someone was stoking it.

You enter cautiously. Hand hovering over where the knife is, you stalk your way back into the kitchen and the sight of your altercation with the seeker leaves a sour taste in your mouth. The kettle remains strewn across the floor, a puddle of water mixed with blood spilled across the wooden floor.

Heart hammering loudly in your chest, you approach the door to the wine cellar, hand clutched to your waist. You know there is a possibility that the seeker could be there, could jump out and surprise you at any moment, but now that you have your own weapon to defend yourself, you wouldn’t let that fear stop you from finding Lia.

A crash.

Your head whips around frantically at the sound. Straining your ears, you listen carefully for any indication of where the noise came from. Quietly, you duck behind the kitchen island into a crawl. The knife nicks digs into your stomach but you ignore it, focusing on controlling your breathing so as to not bring attention to your location.

There is a slam as something collapses against the ground.

“Get away from me!”

Your heart stutters.

Soobin.

The sound of heavy footsteps gets louder with every passing second as someone walks closer to your hiding spot. Peaking your head around the side of the island, you try to get a glimpse of who it is, but the wall of the kitchen obscures your view. Clenching your teeth, you steel yourself to take the risk and reveal yourself to see who it is.

Slowly moving from your crouched position, you rise to your feet and are greeted by the back of the boy you have liked for two years, the boy who went through all this trouble just to try and create a night you’d enjoy.

“Soobin.” Your voice cracks around his name. Tears well in your eyes and threaten to spill.

He turns and your heart soars. “Y/N?” Relief washes over his features as he takes you in. He barely gives you time to respond before he crosses over to you and engulfs you in a massive hug.

Immediately, your shoulders relax and all the tension in your body melts away when his arms wrap around you. “Oh my god, Y/N, I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so worried, you just disappeared and I couldnʼt find and there was blood everywhere I, I thought—”

Pulling back slightly, you press a gentle hand to his face to stop his rambling. “I’m okay, I’m okay.” His eyes search yours and he nods numbly, bringing a hand to cover yours.

Soobin laughs mirthlessly. “Some game night, huh?”

Your chuckle comes out wet. “Not exactly what I had in mind, no.” You chance a look over his shoulder, expecting to see one of the seekers pop out and ruin the moment. Focusing your gaze back on Soobin, you graze your eyes over his face, going through a mental checklist of injuries. There’s a cut above his eye and dried blood crusts his cheek. Aside from that and a split lip, he’s fine. You exhale in relief. “They didn’t get you,” you breathe, more of a statement than a question.

He’s in front of you, face beneath your fingers, real and alive.

Soobin nods once. “They tried to, but I got away in time.”

“That’s good. Have you seen Beomgyu? Lia?”

“No, I’m sorry,” he admits solemnly and you feel your heart constrict. That doesn’t mean anything, you remind yourself, stopping yourself from thinking the worst. He must read your mind because his eyes rove over your face and he kisses his teeth. “Y/N…” he warns carefully, but your mind is up.

You tell him as much, but he’s still against it. “You don’t have to do anything, Y/N. The doors are open–we could leave! Get out of here right now.”

While what he is saying sounds appealing, there is nothing more that you want than to get as far away from this house as possible, you couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that without your friends. “I came back here because I couldnʼt leave you guys. I found you and I’m not leaving until I find the others. I’m not leaving without them.”

There is a possibility that you are in over your head. That even if you did manage to get past the seekers, the chances of you finding your friends alive was slim. You know that’s what Soobin is thinking, that he’s just trying to be rational. You expect him to argue, but instead he just sighs. Glances up at the ceiling. Locks eyes with you again.

“Okay.” Even though he agrees, you can tell he’s still apprehensive. “But I’m going with you.”

You nod, offering him a grateful smile that he returns. Your mind flits through the faces of the other people who were at the party, a drop in your stomach when you remember all the people who died. “What about the others? Yunho and Wooyoung?”

At the mention of their names, Soobin’s eyes darken and his jaw sets.

Cocking your head to the side, you ask, “What is it?”

It takes him a moment to respond, a myriad of emotions passing on his face as he considers whether to tell you whatever it is or not. He comes to a decision when he inhales sharply and pinches the bridge of his nose. You watch him curiously. “They…fuck. They’re the seekers, Y/N.”

You blink owlishly. “What?” you question, barely above a whisper. There’s no way. It can’t be. You saw them, you, you played with them, you might have even gone as far to say you could have become friends. They couldn’t have…

But Soobin’s mouth is set in a hard line and suddenly the room seems too small. “But how could they…in the screening room, they were with you. How could they…?” You can’t get the question out but Soobin understands anyway.

His face softens as she shakes his head. “They joined us later, before I found you. And then, after you left, so did Yunho. He came back as the seeker and killed Jongho right in front of us, and we all ran. I saw Sumin’s body at the top of the stairs and I was just attacked. It’s them. They’re behind all of this.”

You feel sick. Bile creeps up your throat and threatens to spill out, but you swallow it down.

Shutting your eyes tight, you exhale shakily. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that your best friend was missing.

Squaring your shoulders back, you lock eyes with Soobin.

“I’m getting Lia back. And those bastards are gonna pay.”

His eyes widen in shock at your concoction but he recovers quickly. Nodding once, he grabs one of your hands and leads you out to the living room where the couches have been turned over and the coffee table lies on the carpeted floor in pieces, splinters of wood littering the ground.

You chance a glance at Soobin. He really put up a fight, huh?

“How are your parents going to feel about you trashing their house?” you ask, going for a joke.

He responds with a cheeky grin. “Great, if I never tell them. I’m sure I can convince them to spend a couple winters in Jeju and they’ll be none the wiser.”

Whether or not he’s kidding, you can’t tell. The thought of his family owning yet another holiday home—in Jeju no less—is…strange. You think that if you try to comprehend just how rich Soobin is, steam would start coming out of your head. You personally had never travelled further than the places you’ve lived, let alone had houses purely for the purpose of visiting during specific seasons.

But this must be normal for him as he doesn’t even bat an eyelash. Okay. Cool. You’re just going to assume that Soobin has a house in every major city of Korea at this point.

The two of you barely make it past the staircase, past Isa’s lifeless body that has since turned a ghostly pale yellow, when a voice yells from behind you, thick with malice and so raspy it sounds as though it ripped through their throat, “Soobin!”

Simultaneously, you and the boy in question’s heads turn, hands still clasped together, and come face to face with the seekers. Masks still donned with the same cloak they’ve been wearing all night, you wonder who is who.

One of them steps towards the two of you, and you surprise yourself by planting your feet firmly in place. “Soobin,” he says and with a chill down your spine, you find that it is, in fact, Yunho, his voice familiar to you after all this time. Why he’s decided to ditch the voice modulator, you don’t know. Your eyes narrow.

Next to him, Wooyoung practically seethes. Closing the distance between you, he stalks over, knife brandished like a sword, crying, “We’re going to fucking kill you—!”

BANG!

Wooyoung stops in his tracks. His head drops to the center of his chest where you notice a pool of red spilling through the cloak and spreading outward. At the same time he drops the floor to his knees, you turn to look at Soobin. With a gun in his hands.

ONE HOUR LEFT

Soobin gives you a sidelong glance out of the corner of his eye. “Make them pay, right?”

You swallow, your heart hammering wildly in your chest. Right? That is what you said, this is what you wanted, but—fuck. He has a gun? Has he had one this entire time? He knows how to fire one? The knife pressed against your stomach burns against your skin.

Soobin doesn’t acknowledge your apparent discomfort, he doesn’t even look at you. Instead he watches Wooyoung clutch his chest desperately, blood seeping through his fingers. Watches Yunho rush to his friend’s side, distressed as he yanks off the mask from his face. Watches as his friend’s name falls from his lips in between a string of “no, no, no, no”s that sound something between a plea and a prayer.

He watches all of this impassively. His face barely twitches. He looks almost bored.

In the past night you have seen more people die and be killed than you would care to count, and yet, seeing the boy you’ve cared about for years put a bullet in someone so easily, without so much as a flinch, makes something ugly curl in your stomach.

Revenge is what you wanted, but something about this feels wrong.

Yunho crouches over Wooyoung and removes his friend’s face, brushing the shorter boy’s hair away from his forehead. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” he repeats, a mantra as he rips off a piece of his cloak to press against the wound, over the sound of Wooyoung’s laboured wheezing. He turns to glare at the both of you, something heady and full of hatred. “What is wrong with you?” he cries out, voice thick with anguish.

You find yourself wanting to defend yourself, to tell him that you didn’t do anything, that you never knew Soobin would do that. But you stop when you remember that they hurt your friends, they hurt you; you have the wound on your your leg to prove it and—

Oh, god.

You’re going to be sick.

Masks thrown to the side on the bloodied floor, you can see their faces clearly. Soft light rises from outside as the sun makes its ascent over the horizon—Has it really been that long since this fucked up game started?—and casts a glow across their features. Their unmarred features.

You slammed a kettle of boiling across one of their seeker’s faces; you burned him. And yet, here they stand, skin as smooth as a baby.

Eyes blown wide, you exhale shakily, “It’s not them.”

“What are you talking about?” Soobin asks through a scoff. You take a step away from him, hands trembling at your side at your revelation.

“I-I hit one of them. Neither of them have any scars or anything. It’s not them. Soobin, they’re innocent.” He looks at you for the first time since firing his gun, one that is calculated, like he’s assessing you, and has his jaw clenching. He’s never looked at you like this before.

From the ground, Wooyoung laughs mirthlessly through gritted teeth, catching your attention. Blood spittles from his mouth and you wince. “You think this fucker doesn’t know that?”

Yunho nods in Soobin’s direction. “He’s the one who knocked us out and put us in these clothes to frame us and forced us to pretend to be seekers. He threatened to hurt that Beom—”

With a tired sigh, Soobin rolls his eyes and aims his gun at the two boys. “This is tedious.”

Two shots.

One through Yunho’s head and another to Wooyoung’s chest, right where his heart is.

The shots rings out in the expansive living room, reverberating in your ears. You think you flinch, but you can’t be sure. Not with how your body feels as though it’s been doused with cement. You can’t move.

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?”

Your mind was spinning. Soobin just shot two people. Two innocent people. Two innocent people who just accused him of—oh, god, you can’t keep the bile down anymore.

You heave.

“Oh, don’t tell me you believe them. Those guys?” Soobin asks disbelievingly, waving the gun around like it’s like a toy and not a weapon that just killed two people.

“You shot them,” you say, arms shaking at your sides.

“Yeah. After they killed my friends.”

“I just told you they didn’t!” Your voice cracks around the last syllable and Soobin’s face softens. He takes a step towards you, arm reaching out for you, but you step back, putting as much distance between the two of you. “Don’t touch me.”

He tries to stop you by saying, “Hey, don’t be like that,” but you just shake your head, trying to wrap your head around the last few minutes, but you find that you can’t. Nothing makes sense.

Nothing about the boy you liked being a gun carrying murderer makes sense. Nothing about the weekend that was supposed to be a fun time with your friends turning into a bloodbath made sense. The whole situation was making your head and you were so tired.

You just wanted to leave and go home to your tiny apartment with your best friend and watch a movie and complain about your classes over beer. You wish Soobin never planned this stupid party in the first place.

Your heart stutters in your chest.

I planned this whole thing for you.

The room tilts, like the world has been shifted on its axis. Moments from the night start slotting together like puzzle pieces in your mind as you recall the way Soobin wanted you to hide together at beginning of the game, how he just so happened to find you after Sunghoon was killed, how even though he claims to have gotten into a fight with the seekers, he barely has a scratch on him.

How he killed Wooyoung and Yunho despite you telling him they weren’t the seekers.

That ugly thing in the pit of your stomach grows and spreads throughout your body wraps itself around your throat.

Tears prick your eyes, sick and disbelief clawing up your throat. “You…” The words lodge themselves under your tongue.

Soobin’s face morphs just then.

Gone is the look of boyish care you have grown so familiar with, that you have fallen in love with, and is overtaken by a smug, snakelike grin. The sight chills you.

He claps. Actually applauds as he looks at you with something akin to pride. “God, you’re so smart. I knew you’d get it, you know? I always believed in you,” he admits, awe lacing his voice. Checking his watch, he whistles. “And with forty-seven minutes to spare! Wow. Your intelligence is one of the things I like about you, you know?”

What the fuck was happening right now? Was he confessing to you? Right now?

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You were fucking timing me? Why the fuck would you do that?”

“For you, obviously.” He says it matter-of-factly and it gives you pause. “You know,” he starts, walking around the base of the stairs with the air of someone giving a seminar, “when I told the guys that I knew you’d figure it out, they didn’t believe me. I said ‘That Y/N? She’s smart, she loves riddles. She’ll put two and two together.’. But they were adamant that the stress of the situation would be too much for you to handle and you wouldn’t be able to think clearly, blah blah blah. Psych majors. You know how they are.” He says it like the two of you are in on a joke together.

You want to wring his neck.

“And I guess they were right, kind of, but you pulled through in the end. Just like I knew you would.” Soobin flashes you a smile that before tonight, would have left your knees weak, but now the sight just makes you angry.

The fact that he thinks you should be flattered that he apparently thinks highly of your deduction skills in a situation he orchestrated that ended with so many people dead makes you sick. He bet on you.

With the seekers, you think abruptly. It has to be.

Your mind works quickly, trying to figure out who they really are and you gasp at your revelation.

His smile widens and you have half a mind to punch it right off. “I think introductions are in order, don’t you?”

As though summoned, two dark figures walk towards the both of you from a secret door in the walls of the living room. The seekers. One of them pushes someone along roughly—Beomgyu, your brain supplies—, a knife pressed against his throat.

A wave of relief washes over you as you lock eyes. “Y/N,” he exhales, breathlessly, eyes raking over your body. “You’re okay.”

“So are you,” you nod, voice dripping with relief, then you wince. “All things considered.”

He chuckles at that. “I suppose it could be worse.”

“Shut up,” the seeker holding Beomgyu snaps, the same voice modulator that has been tormenting you for six hours crackles.

The other one regards you lowly, through the black eye holes of the mask they don. “Y/N!” they announce dramatically, but Soobin raises a hand to stop them.

“You can ditch the voice now, guys. She figured it out.”

“God dammit!” they curse, ripping the mask off in an angry huff. “I can never have any fun around here.”

Finally, the identities of the people who have made your night a living hell is revealed to you. The boys standing in front of you are two you have only seen in pictures, heard about through anecdotes, the who, up until six hours ago, you had so wanted to meet.

Taehyun and Kai. The fucking seekers.

“What the fuck?” Beomgyu curses incredulously, staring at the faces of boys he used to pass in the halls at school.

Earlier that last night Soobin had told you that his two best friends were away at a yacht party.

We were having so much fun but you just had to go and rock the boat!

Jesus Christ.

You hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now, it clicks in your mind perfectly. You barely hold back a scoff. What a terrible clue.

Kai’s mouth spreads snakily across his face, in an unnerving imitation of a smile. “Hey, Y/N. Nice to finally meet you.”

You snarl.

Off to the side, Soobin is practically vibrating in place, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a little kid. “You figured it out, right? I was worried that telling you about the yacht party was too much of a throwaway comment and then there was the issue of trying to find a way for Kai to slip in something about a water or a boat—Have to thank you, Beomgyu, for that stunt you pulled. Really appreciate it.”

Your childhood friend physically recoils at that. Taehyun grunts and presses the knife against his throat deeper. Beomgyu winces.

Shaking your head, you turn and confront Soobin. “So what was the point of all this? You guys killed all these people for what?” A tremor goes through your hands so you ball them into fists at your side.

Soobin cocks his head to the side innocently. “For you, Y/N. You love game nights. You love riddles and puzzles and mysteries, so I came up with the biggest one just for you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Beomgyu exclaims. “You’re telling me that you did all of this, killed all of your fucking friends because you have a crush?”

Behind him, Taehyun shrugs noncommittally. “People who experience traumatic events together are inexplicably bonded for life.”

A beat.

“You were trying to fucking trauma bond with me?”

“You make it sound so simple,” he complains, waving the gun dismissively. “I made rules, people, there was structure. You know the order people died was the order they knew each other? Of course you did, you probably realised. But what you didn’t know is that Beomgyu—” he points the gun at him— “was supposed to go first. But you guys screwed it up! How the hell do you guys even know each other?”

“Your mom introduced us,” Beomgyu hisses defiantly. Blood trickles down his neck in response.

Soobin squints his eyes as if bored. “Real mature. Anyways, I saw you two talking in the kitchen at the beginning of the night so I had to do some emergency rearranging. So, in a way, Sunghoon dying first is kind of your fault. Granted, he would have died anyway, but, you know. Semantics.”

The same sweet boy who used to walk you to class and take you out for coffee after stressful exam weeks, the same boy who helped you out with homework and made you feel like the sun was bursting in your chest by smiling was the same one who hurt you, your friends. And he didn’t even feel an ounce of remorse for it.

“Fuck you,” you spit menacingly but you are just brushed off.

Soobin waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Plenty of time for that later. Now, we have to address the elephant in the room. The elephant, of course, being Beomgyu. Killing him now would mess up the order and I’m kind of a stickler for the—”

He doesn’t get to finish because out of the corner of your eye, Beomgyu elbows his captor in the stomach hard. Taehyun keels over, releasing him and you spur into action. Surprised, Kai takes a moment to recover before he is slashing at Beomgyu’s arm with his knife. Beomgyu hisses in pain, clutching his shoulder.

Rushing to Wooyoung’s body, pain flaring up your leg, you pry his knife from his fingers and say a silent apology in your head. “Beomgyu!” you yell. He turns to you and after a split second decision, you throw the knife in his direction.

Miraculously, he catches it by the hilt and, before you can blink, he’s lodged it in Kai’s throat.

The first seeker splutters, hands flying to press against the wound but it proves futile. Blood gushes from his neck like a burst pipe. Kai chokes as blood gets into his throat, coughing up red.

It’s a gruesome sight but it fills you with satisfaction, watching as he, too, succumbs to the same death he subjected your friends to.

Kai let's out a final wheeze before he falls to his knees, one arm reaching up to Beomgyu who watches on, face blank and chest heaving. Finally, Kai’s body goes limp and hits the floor with a thud.

“Well,” Soobin starts with a clap, turning to Taehyun, “guess I owe you that island.”

His friend grunts weakly, still recovering from Beomgyu’s assault. “You shouldn’t bet against me,” Taehyun admonishes when he rises to his full height.

Soobin nods sagely, chuckling. “I have learned my lesson.” Beomgyu steps back towards you and you reach for him instinctively. Soobin tracks the movement and something downright evil sparkles in his eyes. “Tell you what,” he says, addressing Taehyun, though his eyes never leave you and Beomgyu. “Do one more thing and I’ll throw in another.”

“An island?” you question incredulously. This was just getting ridiculous.

Taehyun shrugs. “It’s part of his inheritance. But now, it’ll be part of mine.” He stalks closer to the two of you causing you to back up to the stairs, nearly tripping over Isa’s body.

Knife pointed, he draws nearer menacingly. He’s after Beomgyu, you know. In some twisted form of logic you know that he won’t hurt you, not with Soobin right there.

Beomgyu tries to stand up straight but you can see the pain clear on his face as he clutches his injured arm. Taehyun grins at that, and lunges—

A wine bottle swings against his head from behind.

Taehyun’s body stills. He crumples to the floor in a heap of black fabric, head hitting the ground with a loud thud.

“Fuck rich people,” the assailant spits, chest heaving and your heart squeezes.

Lia.

She notices you and she lets the bottle drop from her grasp and the two run to embrace the other. All the tension you were holding in your shoulder eases, your body physically sagging against hers in relief.

You don’t even realise you are crying until damp spots start forming on her shoulder. Tears rack through your body at the feeling of your best friend in your arms, alive just like you believed she would be. Her grip around you tightens as she clutches the back of your shirt as though she fears you’ll disappear if she lets go.

“They attacked me in our room when I was grabbing my book, then tied me up and left me in the cellar. Told me that it wasn’t my turn yet. I tried to loosen them but whoever tied them used some kind of fucking boats knot. Broke one of the bottles and cut the rope with a glass shard—and my hand, too.”

It is her only injury, you note when the two of you finally pull apart. She has ripped off the left sleeve of her shirt and wrapped it around her hand as a makeshift gauze. It is stained with a giant blotch of blood but she’s alive.

She nods to Beomgyu appreciatively and he responds with a two finger wave. As she takes in the scene, all the blood and mess and bodies littering the floor, you see how her jaw tightens and eyes narrow. When they settle on Soobin, she spits in his face.

He recoils in disgust and wipes it away with—he’s got to be fucking kidding—a handkerchief from his pants pocket.

“You fucker,” Lia sneers.

He merely rolls his eyes. “Oh, great the band’s back together,” he drawls unenthusiastically. “There’s still twenty minutes left of the game, can we wrap this up?”

Aiming his gun between Lia and Beomgyu he pretends to ponder who he’s going to kill next. Lia stares him dead on, defiance dancing in her eyes and you have never been more in awe of your friend before.

“Y/N?”

Everybody’s heads whip around to the front door where Yeonjun stands in the threshold, confusion dancing in his eyes as he takes in the scene.

He came.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Soobin exclaims haughtily, arms going up in annoyance. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

“The guy who called the cops,” he reveals, jutting out his chin as he walks towards you. “They’re on their way.” The last part is directed more to you than Soobin and you have never been more grateful to see a boy you just met.

“Good,” you say nodding, eyes narrowed as you stare down the boy you used to look at only in administration, “you’ll be dead before they get here.”

Soobin has the nerve to gasp in faux shock, clutching at his heart as though you’ve wounded him. “Okay, ouch. That’s hurtful, babe, how could you say that?”

“You tried to kill me. You made me think my best friend was dead.”

He holds up a finger to stop you and you have half a mind to slice it off. “Point of correction: I never tried to kill you. I would never hurt you, Y/N. I did all of this for you! I ruined my favourite holiday house for you! Now I’m stuck with Jeju and fuckass Tokyo. Do you realise how much I’m giving up for you here and you think I’m the bad guy?”

“You’re insane,” you say incredulously.

“Insane for you.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Oh, come on.” He sounds like a petulant child. Which, you suppose, is exactly what he is. “I killed for you! You think, what, fucking Beomgyu can say that? You think you’d be happy with some asshole from across the lake with a terrible dye job? No way, baby! I’m it!” By the time his spiel is over, his arms are outstretched on either side of him, chest heaving like he’s just ran a marathon.

Lia grimaces. “Did you just fucking quote Gone Girl?”

“Ben Afleck rents out his L.A. house to us, of course I did.”

“What the fuck, man?” Beomgyu expresses, face pinched.

“And this isn’t a dye job, dickwad, this is literally my hair.”

Your best friend turns to Yeonjun and stares like he’s an idiot. “Time and place, dude.”

“Y/N. Baby.” You feel yourself cringe at the pet name. He holds out his hands and takes a step towards you. “You can’t tell me you don’t want this.” Soobin’s voice takes on a sickly sweet lilt, one that would have had you melting if you didn’t find out he was a psychopath.

Thinking about your friends, a wave of protectiveness and a pang of guilt pass through you. They’re here because of you.

With determination coursing through your veins, you step forward. “You’re right.” Behind you, your friends all verbally express their shock. You ignore them. “This is what I want.”

Soobin’s smile drops into an ‘o’ shape as he inhales sharply. When he glances down at the space between the two of you, he is greeted with the sight of a knife—Yeonjun’s knife—sticking out his abdomen.

“Huh,” is the last thing he says to you.

“Go to hell,” is the last thing you say to him.

Hand still on the hilt, you withdraw the knife only to stab him again. And again, and again, and again.

Over and over until you lose count, you plunge the knife into his body, piercing his skin. Blood splatters all over your face and front but you don’t care. You are moving on pure rage at this point. Rage at this boy who turned your favourite thing in the world against you, who put your friends in danger, who has more money in his left pinky than you’ll ever see in your life.

Finally, you slow, and watch as his eyes roll to the back of his head. His body falls to the ground and, for the first time since Sunghoon died in front of you, you smile.

A real, genuine smile spreads across your face as you turn to take in your friends.

“You look like shit,” Lia comments, her own grin growing on her face.

You lift a noncommittal shoulder, teeth bared. “You should see the other guy.”

Beomgyu laughs at that, hearty and full, taking over his whole body and the rest of you aren’t far behind.

Turning to Yeonjun, you find yourself growing shy. “You came.”

“I couldnʼt in good conscience let you walk into a murder house, now could I?” he asks with a tilt of his head and an easy-going grin.

You huff out a laugh and gesture to your blood covered body. “I’d hug you but I’m kind of a mess right now.”

“I don’t know,” he drawls, eyes raking over you appreciatively. Your skin flares wherever his gaze lingers. “I think the blood and guts is working for me.”

Somewhere next to you, Lia fake gags. “Oh, god, Y/N, your new boyfriend is gross.”

“Shut up, Lia,” you admonish without turning to look at her.

Yeonjun chuckles good-naturedly. “How about we reschedule that hug? Possibly after a shower. Preferably over breakfast.”

Feeling your cheeks warm, you nod. “I’d like that.”

“Great. I’m craving pancakes and I could use a hug, too.” You turn to see Beomgyu standing with a cheeky grin on his face.

There is a low grunt from behind you. Slowly rising to his feet is Taehyun having recovered from the wine bottle to the head. Steps staggering, he glares daggers at Beomgyu. “The only hug you’ll be getting is one from death. I’m getting that island—”

A bullet lodges itself in his head and he falls back, eyes blank. Soobin’s gun in hand, Lia stands with it aimed out in front of her.

You don’t even know when she grabbed it.

She exhales heavily. “I needed that.”

Despite everything, you laugh. “So. Breakfast?”

Everyone grunts in affirmation and starts talking over each other about where they should eat when they get back to the city. Obviously, you need to wait for the police to arrive so that you can give your statements. Someone needs to talk to everyones’ parents, let them know what happened. But you’ll cross that bridge when you get there. Together, of course.

Trauma bonded and all that.