#like - first of all - they are doing the same thing about blue candidates and especially biden

[krysmcscience]

This really do be what it feels like existing around American politics rn, damn

[mikareo]

megumi doing smth pls

⌗ THIRTEEN YEARS ₊ ˖ ་. megumi fushiguro x fem reader (2.6k)

⊹ ⠀⠀ 3 times megumi wants to tell you he loves you, and the 1 time he does.

contains; attack on titan au, marleyan!megumi, eldian!reader, aot spoilers!!! (season 4), forbidden lovers, fluff, angst, kissing, major character death, cannabalism? (titans), annie cameo! author's note; here u get an old draft (psa none of this will make sense if you haven't watched attack on titan!!!!)

i. what is love at first sight

it's almost human instinct; knowing which people are more likely to have good fortune. some are simply born with an advantage— these people having the freedom to walk along the river bank, skip flattened rocks down streams, and laugh with their peers. with families who shop in the market together, hand-in-hand with woven baskets strewn over their shoulders, and all the time in the world to live their lives to the absolute fullest as true freelancers facing the rising sun that sees tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

but in the truth of it all...the sun doesn't shine on everyone.

there are countless amounts of souls who aren't as blessed as marleyans like megumi. souls entangled with the devil herself, ymir, a woman who singlehandedly birthed the 'race from hell'...which he's never fully agreed with. everyone he knows refers to eldians as humanity's sin, but it's not their fault their biology is simply different.

humans are humans, right? they've done no wrong by being born. especially the warrior candidate he's been staring at for the past hour from a distance. you can't be that bad. after all, you're beautiful.

okay, yes. he has a little crush. he can't help it! one day, he was minding his own business on a walk home from the lab, when gojo had the bright idea of sneaking a peak at the warrior training. that's when megumi first saw you and his world stopped. sure, you were covered in mud and crawling through trenches with a rifle strapped to your back; but that didn't make him any less awestruck. since then he's hidden himself in the same bush, week after week, just to get a glimpse of your face.

"she's a cutie. you've got good taste." okay, creepy.

megumi rolls his eyes, glancing up at his mentor who's the only person who knows of his little secret. "don't you have women to harass?"

"ouch, sassed by a ten year old. i see how it is." gojo chuckles, ruffling his black hair and crouching down to the younger boy's level. "you see her out there? she's killing it. i heard she's the top contender for the female."

"i hope so." his blue eyes are locked on you, watching as your focused expression turns to determination whilst helping your teammate off the ground. "she'll have a better chance of living that way."

"...and maybe your family will let you meet her."

ugh, his family. since he was six, the zenin's have raised him with their questionable values and ideals. as the leading researchers in the modern world, they've revolutionized how eldians are studied! at least that's what he's been told. to be frank, he doesn't care about the right or wrong battle they've propagandized to the rest of humanity. all he cares about is knowing your name and telling you how pretty your eyes are.

"i want to talk to her, at least once." his voice is quiet, but gojo hears.

"why? you wanna tell her you love her?"

he hates him so much.

"no!" megumi exclaims, pushing back the older man in defense. his cheeks are bright red from embarrassment and he can feel the flames emitting from them. "i just want to be her friend, that's all. why do you always make things so weird?"

it's amusing to gojo how his little friend is so flustered. usually megumi is a shy boy, keeping to himself and avoiding contact with his peers; but whenever the conversation topic is you, he seems to perk up...and gojo loves to tease a lovestruck kid.

"don't worry," he smirks, "you'll understand your feelings when you're older. you don't need to tell her quite yet that you love her."

love you?

"just shut up and let me watch." megumi grumbles, resting his head in his hands as you're jumping up and down after being praised by your captain. he wishes he could make you that happy one day. "it's not love, i'm serious."

he'll understand what love means when he gets older. for now, he'll just imagine confessing.

ii. what is love that is forbidden

you're a lot more annoying than he thought you'd be.

after having been selected as the new female titan, your ego is boasting with energy and won't stop boasting no matter how often megumi tells you to zip it. though he was excited to meet you, his thirteen year old self now wishes you'd give him a moment of peace. instead, you insist on following him around whenever and wherever you can and yapping his ear off with comments on everyone and everything about your day. please, just give him a break.

"uh, fushiguro..."

he sighs with exhaustion. "what?"

"i think i locked us in here."

dammit.

"you forgot the key?" he asks.

"i forgot the key." you confirm.

of course you did.

with an exhausted grumble, megumi settles himself on the cold, cement floor of the supply closet you'll both call home for the next few hours. it's both of your days off, but he'd wanted to prep his supplies for his training on monday; to which you, of course, invited yourself along for the ride. you'll stay out of the way. it's fine, he can just ignore you. that's what he told himself...though, it's impossible for him to ignore you.

it's likely that no one will visit the storage room until the evening time— with most of his colleagues at home with their families, cooking a warm meal with lamb and stew. it's also uncommon for any of the researchers to be in liberio on their off days. megumi's just the special kind that doesn't think he'll be plagued by breathing the same air as eldians.

"mind if i join you?" he knows you're asking a rhetorical question and you know he'd never reject you.

with a small plop, you take a seat next to him. he's used to your warmth by now— considering you to be an essential part of his every day, despite how much he enjoys complaining about you— and leans his head against yours. it's obvious that you're sleepy. though, you never indulge in conversations about your training, megumi is well aware of how overworked you are. he can't imagine fighting in wars at this age, especially wars in which you're fourteen meters tall and smashing through brick walls; which is why he tries his best to be there for you when you need him.

your life is a battlefield and he's the peaceful conclusion.

"you know..." the sound of your voice is faint, a great contrast to your usual noise and megumi can tell something is wrong. "when they find us here, they're going to think i kidnapped you."

"i mean what else would the zenin heir be doing with a titan shifter?" you start to choke on your words and he instinctively wraps his arms around you. "you don't need to comfort me, fushiguro. we both know i'm going to be punished after this. you can't apologize and make everything okay like usual."

to your surprise, his pointer finger touches your cheek and gently wipes away your running tears. "...fushiguro—"

"it won't always be like this." he interrupts you, cupping your face as if you're a rare gem that he can't afford breaking. "when i'm in charge, i'm going to change things. you won't have to do this anymore. i won't let them do this to you anymore!"

the two of you are a mess on the floor, crying in each others arms, and wishing that the world was a better place. "you still have thirteen years left. please...please keep fighting for me. i promise i'm going to save you."

"fushiguro..."

"call me by my first name."

"...megumi."

you're beautiful. he wants to kiss you so badly, but he knows now isn't the time. he wants to hold your hand in public, but he knows you'll be berated for doing so. he wants to tell you he loves you, but he's too afraid.

megumi fushiguro is a coward.

...but he's a coward in love; and one day, when he's taller and stronger, he's going to be able to tell you that. he's going to be able to protect you.

iii. what is love that is hopeless

"hold still." megumi's voice is soft, his fingers of the same gentle malice as they tend to your open wounds that haven't quite healed yet. with titan steam wafting from the slashes scattering your forearms and shoulders, they blow into his face in a fury of pain. "dammit, i said hold still."

his brings both arms down to your shoulders, heart breaking at the sight of you wincing in retaliation to his force, but carries on. there's no telling what you would've gotten yourself into if he hadn't insisted he care for your wounds; after making it publicly known that he's to be the only researcher allowed within your vicinity after your tireless warrior missions, none of the other researchers even attempt to get near you. he hates how often you put yourself in harms way in order to save your comrades. you're too brave. you've never been just a warrior of marley, but more or less a warrior of all people.

"i've been sitting here for an hour already, megumi." you roll your eyes, swinging your legs over the metal rims and turning to face your very pissed off best friend. "i'm tired and i'd like to get at least an hour of sleep tonight."

his expression is somewhat terrifying. if you didn't know megumi was such a scaredy cat, you'd be intimidated by his reddened cheeks and eyes of fury. it's almost as if he's an inflamed torch held against fluorescent lighting, pasty and saturated in fear and exhaustion. "i need to make sure you're okay."

"well, i have another plane to catch at dawn," you deflect his concerns. "there's some issue i was assigned to when i landed this morning. i guess one of our enemies isn't afraid of titans yet."

"you're not going."

he's firm in his statement. megumi doesn't like how his colleagues take advantage of you and your abilities. they're working you to skin and bones. if they were the ones checking up on you after every battle they'd know so, but they wouldn't treat you with as much care. his only wish in the world is to keep you safe, which he's doing an awful job at as of yet. "i don't want you getting more hurt than you already are."

"as if it matters." you scoff, leaning towards him in an attempt to get him to back off. "i'll just give 'em a little taste of my titan and they'll run away like mice. it's easy, 'gumi. trust me—"

"life isn't a game!" he's furious.

"well mine is!" you're angry as well.

why don't you get it? why can't you just run away with him?

"i only have four years left! four years, megumi! i don't care if i die tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that. i'm going to either way. you don't have that problem. you don't understand."

without warning, his lips are on yours in his best attempt to stop you from spouting all of his fears and worries from your mouth. he doesn't want to hear it. he just wants to pretend none of it is happening, and you're going to be okay. you are going to be okay. he'll make sure of it.

it takes a moment for you to respond until your intertwined in a feverish kiss that sends his medical supplies clanging to the floor— but megumi doesn't care about order, all he cares about now is being as close to you as possible. he's dreamt of this moment for years. what you taste like...feel like...sound like. he knows you're his soulmate. what he doesn't know is why it's taken him so long to kiss you.

but before your connection can move forward and become something more, your touch is gone.

"i'm sorry, i can't do this." there are tears creeping from the corners of your beautiful eyes. "i—"

he calls out your name as your figure dashes out the door, wishing that he was able to confess. he wants to tell you he loves you so badly; except he doesn't have the bravery he needs. with four more years left, megumi has two things on his agenda.

1.) find a way to save you.

2.) tell you he's yours forever.

iv. what is love everlasting

he's finally become a monster like the rest of them.

from the first time he saw you, he told himself he'd be your savior. he made countless promises that he'd find a way for eldians and marleyans to live in peace, that he'd find a way to save you from this shitty war; only to be the very person to lock you in chains, awaiting imminent death as the next female titan will be born.

megumi wanted to be brave. he wanted to stop being such a coward, but some people just aren't capable of changing so much— and what a disappointment that is.

"hey, fushiguro?" when did you stop calling him by his first name? "can you keep a secret?"

he's not supposed to be civil with you. his orders are to chain you up, inject the child, and watch as she devours you; but you're his weakness. he can't resist you. "of course i can."

a smile graces your lips. it's not a smile of happiness or joy...it's one of anguish and pain. "i wish i ran away with you. i should've run away with you. even though we only had four years, we could've been happy."

why are you saying all of this?

now of all times?

you should've told him years ago! you should've let him know your secrets before he let them change him! before he distanced himself from you and became distracted with his work!

"...megumi..."

"yes?" he's desperate to hear you.

"...i don't want to die."

a thought crosses his mind. it's a scene in which two main characters beat all odds and escape the chains and prisons they've faced, running off into the sunset, never to be seen again. this scene has a happy ending, one where there's a small and intimate wedding with no witnesses except the meadow's flowers. he lifts your veil away from your eyes and murmurs sweet nothings as you kiss him to start off your forever. his heart wants that to be true. he wants that to be true. it's too late, though. you have no time left. your thirteen years is up. his thirteen years of knowing you is up. it's time to say goodbye.

"i can't save you." he's struggling to get his words out while maintaining his composure; and your heart breaks as his promise does as well. "i'm sorry."

he's a monster.

you hang your head, nodding and accepting your fate as he makes his way down the stairs. seeing you like that, knowing what your fate is, almost causes megumi to pass out from lightheadedness. he knows he shouldn't be worrying about himself. after all, you're the one who's about to die. he has a whole lifetime to continue living, and your lifetime was a mere twenty-six years.

gently, he takes the newest warriors hands and tells her what he's about to do. the blonde girl nods along to his words, trying her best to ignore your radiating hopelessness as she's about to become the next you; and megumi injects his needle into her neck.

he wants to look away so badly as she grows into a pure titan with eyes locked on your frail body, but he doesn't want it to end like this. there's gotta be something that he can do to help you. anything to save you from this fate; but to no avail, he's powerless. so powerless that the only thing he manages to do is mouth three seemingly meaningless words as he locks eyes with you.

"i love you."

⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⊹₊｡ reblogs are greatly appreciated! ˚₊⊹

[icaruspendragon]

Hi! A while ago I saw one of your tiktoks about how northern democrats typically view people from Appalachia, and it really made me re-examine some biases I had and I deeply appreciated that. I'm from New Hampshire, and basically this primary season we were completely ignored by democratic candidates because of some issues with the DNC and our primary being labeled "unsanctioned". It was weird to not feel supported or valued by my party for the first time ever, (especially when NH tends to get a lot of attention) and it reminded me of your tiktok and how you mentioned that republicans tend to reach out to people in the south while democrats tend to ignore them as a lost cause. Because I saw that happening here with an insanly disproportionate republican presence in my state leading to the primaries. I know the comparisons aren't equal, but it helped drive home the message for me and gave me just a taste of what you explained so clearly in your tiktok. I understand if you choose not to post this, but I really wanted to thank you for opening my eyes and helping me face some biases I didn't know I had.

hello and thank you (for re-examining your biases and for writing me this message). i'm gonna use this as a chance to restate some of the things i mentioned in the video you're talking about.

i'd like to start this by saying i know appalachia and the south aren't perfect. there's racism and homophobia and bigotry. being someone who is marginalized or minoritized in appalachia/the south isn't always easy. but appalachia/the south doesn't have the monopoly on bigotry. america is rife with it. it's something marginalized folks all over the country have to face. and when northern dems act like racism and homophobia and bigotry are things that don't occur in their state simply because it's a blue state, they're doing an incredible disservice to the marginalized people that live in their communities who are facing the results of bigotry.

the folks living in appalachia/the south are heavily stereotyped as nothing more than ignorant backwood cousin fucking hillbillies, and while there are people that live here that fit that bill, appalachia/the south is not a monolith.

appalachia is region that spans from mississippi all the way to new york. the south (depending on who you ask) consists of 17 different states. and here's a little fun fact about the south for ya: according to the 2020 census, out of the 41.6 million black people that live in america, 38.9% of them live in the south.

so when that entire region is written off, forgotten about, and treated as a lost cause it's not the bigots that are being left behind; it's the marginalized people that live here that are being written off. the very same folks democrats and liberals love claiming they care about are the ones being left behind.

one of the reasons republicans have such a strong hold on appalachia/the south is because they put in the work to earn the trust of the voter. work that democrats just don't do. so of course republicans are gonna get the vote, they earned it.

other reasons for the stronghold existing (that people never wanna talk about for some reason) are: gerrymandering, voter suppression, lack of state funding that leads to lack of education, general lack of education, high poverty rates, lack of internet access. i could go on and on.

there are so many marginalized people that live in this region that are working themselves to the bone and trying their damndest to make appalachia/the south a better place for EVERYONE to live and when high falutin yankees act like every single person that lives here is the racist uncle you have to ignore at christmas, they are discrediting the work being done to try and change the region for the better.

allow me to say this again: when appalachia/the south is written off as nothing more than a home to bigots, it's not the bigots being written off, it's the people affected by bigotry.

there are people fighting to make these areas better. we are trying. so please, please stop writing us off.

we are not a lost cause.

[medusapelagia]

25 The soulmates program

written for @steddieangstyaugust (prompt: Soulmates ) and @augustwritingchallenge (Prompt: Scientists ) @aug-kissed (prompt: First Kiss) Rating: Teen and Up Relationship: Steve/Eddie TW: no one Words: 901

“So, in this experiment, we’re trying to determine if it’s possible to find the perfect soulmate without even knowing them. We interviewed all our volunteers and found a perfect couple. This experiment is the hardest we have ever made. Not only do the two candidates come from two very different social classes, but this is a homosexual couple.”

The audience gasps loudly.

“I must specify that one of the volunteers declared to be gay and the other was open to a homosexual relationship.” The scientists show a PowerPoint presentation pointing at some statistics, “As you can see they don’t have the same interests or hobbies, they live very different lives, but looking at the diagram you can see that they have the same opinions about relationship, friendship, and commitment. You can see that our first subject, Steve, gives very high importance to family and relationship and commitment, and our second subject, Eddie, is just a little bit under on the commitment but they have the same level of importance given to family and relationship. So they are here, after a few dates, to tell us how it worked out for them. Please welcome them.”

The two boys who get into the conference room couldn’t have been more different: one wears a shirt and a pullover over a pair of dark blue jeans, a pair of squared turtle glasses, and a very soft smile, the other is dressed all in black, with a leather jacket, a pair of high boots and some black jeans ripped at the knee revealing a huge skull tattooed on the right knee and black nail polish.

“So, Eddie and Steve, right?” The scientist asks, looking at his file.

“I’m Eddie. He’s Steve.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. So. How did our experiment go?” the man inquires with curiosity, pushing his glasses with one finger.

They both start talking at the same time, before laughing and begin a little dance of “You go first.” “No, you go first.”

In the end, it’s Steve who grabs the microphone, “Hi everyone. I’m Steve Harrington. I signed up for this experiment because I was tired of dating the wrong person and I thought that maybe someone who didn’t actually know me could help me understand what I was looking for.” he turns toward Eddie with a soft smile, “If it wasn’t for this experiment I don’t think I would have ever go out on a date with someone like Eddie. Nothing wrong with him, but as anyone can see we’re not exactly similar.” he chuckles before giving the microphone to Eddie.

“Yeah. That’s right. I would have never looked at someone like Steve to have a stable relationship. I mean, he doesn’t know Metallica and doesn’t play DnD which is like the first thing I ask everyone I date. But yeah. I signed up for this experiment to prove to my buddies that there’s no way you could find a soulmate thanks to some calculation and look at me! I’ll have to buy a lot of beers this year.” He smirks.

“So we must assume the experiment went well.”

Eddie and Steve share a look, “What do you say? Should we tell them?” Eddie asks, playing with a lock of hair.

“Tell us what?”

Steve beams when he grabs the microphone, “We’re engaged. We’re still working on the specifics, I live in Chicago he lives in Los Angeles, but yeah. We are going to get married.” 

“That was unexpected, especially from you, Eddie. Weren’t you against marriage?”

“Have you seen him? Since the first time we kissed after our first formal date, I knew I couldn’t let him go.”

“Remind us of your first date. We sent you each other's description and asked you to meet at the local mall, isn’t that right?”

Steve brushes some hair away from his face, “When I saw the description I was really in doubt. I didn’t think Eddie could have been the right person for me, but I decided to give him a chance. We met at Starbucks. Drink a coffee or two and by the time we leave the coffee shop I was already in love.”

“I was lovestruck as well. Surprised that someone so hot was still single and looking for flaws I didn’t find, so we just chatted and as soon as we left the coffee shop we kissed. I think we both tasted like burned coffee but it was the best kiss I have ever had. And so here we are. Proving that the program can help you find your soulmate.”

The audience applauds, and then Steve and Eddie leave the conference room, hand in hand, until they are far enough from the conference room they look at each other, “What do you think?”

“They totally eat up all that shit. Great work Stevie.” Eddie replies, giving him a high-five.

“You weren’t half bad either, Munson.” Steve replies with a wink, “Now let's make sure they transfer the money to our bank accounts.”

“Can believe your parents agreed to our little plan.”

“It’s their program. They want people to believe they can actually find their soulmate thanks to this program so… it’s a win-win, right?”

“Still convinced about the wedding?”

“I always wanted a big ceremony. I can give you a couple of months of my life before asking for a divorce.” Steve winks, “Now let’s go. This place stinks of stupidity.”

[aqricus]

SHAMELESS ! feat. bachira meguru

V SAYS . . . “bachira is greedy, especially when it comes to you, and he doesn’t care who knows about it.”

+ WC . . . 4.7k

+ sfw material. suggestive. character aged up 21+. fem reader. bachira is a little off his rocker. heavy(ish) makeout session. bachira likes lipstick prints. just take it, i’m too tired for real editing.

@m-ikage i can no longer be saved.

if there’s one thing you’ve come to learn about bachira, it’s that he’s selfish.

ever since your paths briefly intersected years ago when he was nothing more than a daredevil candidate for the national team with a tenacious streak and wild eyes housing an adrenaline-starved monster, he’s been self-centered. you’ve watched him from the sidelines, even if he wasn’t always aware, eyes analytical and inquisitive as you witnessed him storm the field with enough brazen confidence to shave four years off your life. it was evident from the jump that he preferred hoarding the ball, relying on his own abilities and viewing other players as experiments for his own personal gain rather than as teammates. you didn’t need to be perceptive to notice that the intense hunger for victory and superiority that flowed through his veins was palpable.

but, above all else, he’s selfish when it comes to your attention.

having been the first person to earnestly return his confession without regard to his idiosyncratic personality, he clung to you, craving to be showered in affection and reassurance that you do, indeed, still share his feelings. meeting and befriending like-minded individuals among blue lock was beneficial to healing his social detachment, but having a romantic partner was entirely different. the warmth that seeped beneath the old scar of loneliness was brand new to him. it was silken and ticklish, caressing the tips of his ears with heat every time you touched him, each word of praise or sentiment from you swaddling his brain in a honeyed varnish that left him tugging obnoxiously on your sleeve or whatever limb is closest just to ask you another question.

it’s intoxicating, leaving him desiring more and more of your touch, of your attention, of your time. he’s borderline obsessive, perhaps, in the passing—envious, bachira might also claim—opinion of certain teammates of his, but when you’ve always indulged his touchy-feely behavior, could you truly blame him?

even now, it's the same.

loose granules of cinder crunch beneath the sole of your sandal as you shift your weight from one leg to the other. the jumbled chatter and buzzing conversation swirling among bachira's team as they mingle a little ways away has dulled to nothing more than white noise as you focus your attention on rooting through the mess of miscellaneous items stashed in the bag slung over your shoulder. it's light, the straps not pressing too heavily into your shoulder. light . . . very light. almost too light, you notice with a furrow in your brow.

"something the matter?"

you glance up at the sound of a familiar voice to witness bachira separating himself from the sea of color-block jerseys with a slight, inquisitive tilt of his head and an easy upturn of his lips. you return his smile and shake your head. “no, i’m fine. i just thought my bag seemed a little lighter than i remember. it’s probably nothing.”

he hums and extends his hand without breaking eye contact, seeking your own as if out of habit. “you sure?” his fingers lace through yours. the pads are calloused from countless hours spent honing his chiseled physique and bear a slight chill against your skin. he lifts your hand and sandwiches it between his own as if attempting to shield it from the cool breeze wafting through the scenery. “mm, could just be nerves, y’know.” he muses. his round eyes spark with energy as he squeezes your hand between his own, energy practically rolling off him in waves and prickling along the light dusting of hair blanketing his arms. “i hear the team we’re gonna play is pretty tough!”

“yeah—”

“isn’t it exciting?” he exclaims abruptly, and your eyes soften.

whereas most people would be wracked with nerves when preparing to face a team rumored to be one of the most formidable on the field, bachira has always welcomed such challenges, rivaling them all with a ferocious tenacity and a drive to succeed. and, after spending all that time meditating in complete stillness and sharpening his mind’s focus before boarding the bus, it’s only natural that he’d be buzzing with such energy and enthusiasm. “i spent hours watching footage of their plays, so i know them like the back of my hand now. one of them is super good at dribbling, but i’m still better.” he boasts with a proud grin. “man, i can’t wait to crush them on their own turf! hey,” he leans forward until the tip of his nose is just shy of bumping into your own, gaze trained on yours in a moment of sobriety. his golden irises glimmer as he inquires, “you’re staying for the whole match again, right? you’ll be waiting for me?”

“of course,” your laughter is quiet, but his eyes sparkle, anyways. “i wouldn’t be anywhere else. i even brought—” your sentence is cut into silence when you’re struck by a moment of clarity, and your eyes widen as you finally recall the item absent from your bag. “my camera!” your hands wrench away from his with a gasp, and he makes a small sound of surprise at the sudden absence of warmth that engulfs his hands. the bite of your fingernails into his triceps when you grip at his upper arms is blunted by the polyester material of his jersey. but he doesn’t seem to mind, eyes instead darting feverishly over your own to analyze how dire the situation truly is. “i was gonna take pictures!” you lament to your boyfriend, a whine pitching your voice. “i was gonna be right up front, too! i wanted to print them out and put them in that scrapbook i bought. oh, my—how quickly do you think i can run?”

“pictures . . ?” bachira echoes, but his tone is remarkably less perturbed than yours and so low it can barely be classified as a murmur, as if the idea of you being his own personal photographer was too outlandish to process. ignorant to the way the cogs in his brain are rotating on overtime, you release your death grip on his arms with a groan and whirl around to face the cluttered rows of parked cars stretching nearly as far as the eye can perceive. but, bachira doesn’t seem even remotely interested in assisting you, all of his attention transfixed on the small wrinkle of frustration creasing your brow and the way the artificial light glistens off the fresh film of sparkly gloss overlaying your lips when you pensively press them into a line.

you’re unaware of the way his attention is trained on your side profile despite the intensity of his gaze, pupils constricted with a razor-sharp acuity that most would consider to be borderline predatory. his expression is completely neutral as his gaze sears holes into your temple, which would most certainly make the situation that much more unnerving and disconcerting—if you were paying enough attention to notice, that is. it’s as if his mind has stalled, suspended in limbo as he processes your words. “you . . . were gonna take pictures of me? and print them out? like, with ink and stuff? and put ‘em in a book?”

“why wouldn’t i?” you shift your attention back to him with little care for the off-putting way he’s surveying you, more aghast that he could even be so oblivious to how photogenic he appears whenever he’s focused on the game than anything else. granted, this would be your first time capturing snapshots of his time on the field with an actual camera instead of your phone; however, you both know that this definitely wouldn’t be his first time being photographed on the field. after bearing witness to the incessant clicking of shutters and obsessive fawning from the team’s fan base more times than you can count, you can say that with full certainty.

you hook your thumb beneath the strap of your bag and slide it higher up on your shoulder. “i take pictures of you all the time on my phone, as do your fans.” you explain casually, eliciting the pucker of his lips into a tiny ‘o.’ “i can promise you that there are at least a hundred people out there right now with personal photos they took of you taped to their wall. they . . . wait, you knew that, right?” you blink.

of course, he knew about his fans. after having numerous photos of himself and body parts shoved in his face, all vying for the opportunity to have his name scribbled across them in scarlet ink until his wrist ached, it’s impossible not to be aware of the spike in popularity that accompanies being a member of such a distinguished team. however, to have you, someone perched upon a golden pedestal of admiration and reverence in his mind, find such delight in his abilities that you wish to immortalize them is far different, and it makes his heart swell with pride. you really do like him, it seems. 

the suggestion of such a sentimental gesture only nourishes the pre-existing, vivid gleam of excitement alight in his eyes. plumes of fiery adoration seep through the depths of his gaze, bleeding all the way to his irises and trickling down his sternum to cause warmth to pool in his chest. this time, when he smiles, it’s unrestrained, and he does little to mask the faint flush of rose that scales the tips of his ears.

the thrum of his heartbeat now slightly more noticeable to him, he reaches for you. your attention shifts back to him at the feeling of his fingers curling around your upper arm. “is something wrong?” he wants to coo at the innocuous twinkle in your eye—so attentive yet unassuming, so blissfully ignorant to the underlying touch of mischief to the toothy grin curving his lips as he shuffles a step closer. 

sometimes, you tend to forget that bachira is romantically stunted from having dedicated himself to advancing his physical prowess, this exposure to a brand new situation causing his emotions to fester and swell without a proper outlet before finally manifesting in his own . . . interesting ways. even now, instead of attempting to vocalize his appreciation, his fingertips tingle with the urge to pinch your cheeks, to ensnare you in his arms and smush you against his chest until you have to fight for breath, to just engulf you until you feel him as intensely as he does you. he’s an ardent lover—always been, but that’s part of why you adore him so. 

“baby,” it’s the teasing, crooning lilt in his voice that you recognize as his hands start to drift toward your waist, a warning you’ve learned to identify that’s usually succeeded by some type of embrace or grip you end up having to struggle to escape. it lures you deeper, closer into range, his hold on you barely more than a whisper over your skin until the distance between you is short enough for it to snap shut around you, ensnaring you with an iron strength he has no business having.

he bears a playful glint in his eye and a ticklish touch to match, but you know better. “no, you don’t,” you laugh, palm pressing flat against his stomach to edge him back a step. “meguru, i need my camera.” you lean closer to place a chaste peck against his cheek, which, admittedly, was your first mistake. “you need to be with the rest of your teammates right now.”

your second mistake is lingering to offer him a warm smile. while bachira is sweet to you, you should know by now that he has no problem playing dirty. he tilts his head, teeth vanishing into a closed-lipped smile. “mhm!” however, as soon as you relax, he’s quick to take advantage of it. one of his hands clamps down on your hip before you can turn away, keeping you pinned in place. “but, only if you give me my kiss for good luck.” you’re not surprised at his attempt to bargain with you; although, with how firm his hold is on you, it’s less of a compromise and more of a demand. “it’s tradition.” he reminds you cheekily.

while that much is true, you both know that you would be more than willing to indulge him and uphold your little pre-game ritual, which means that, considering the way he’s taking extra precautions by holding you still, whatever is coming next most certainly entails more than one kiss.

still, you decide to give him the benefit of the doubt, knowing that utilizing all of the time allotted for warming up his muscles is quite valuable to him—your third mistake. “that’s correct,” you agree. “but, i’m wearing lip gloss, and you’re about to head inside, so we have to be careful.” with that, you clasp your hands behind your back and tilt your chin to plant a brief kiss on his almost comically puckered lips. 

but, it’s not enough for him. the retraction of your head is calm, a sharp contrast to the desperation in his touch as the hand resting on your hip abruptly flickers up to cup your jaw and halt your withdrawal. “me—” your gasp of surprise is interrupted by the sealing of his lips over yours once more. the motion is uncalculated and uncoordinated, more spawned from a yearning for close proximity than anything else, but you don’t particularly mind. the press of his lips to yours is firm, the tip of his nose smushed against yours in an endearing display of inelegance that causes the corners of your lips to quirk upward into a small smile. his fingertips are alight with a lively heat that dances over your skin as they adjust into a more comfortable position, and you giggle against his lips at the ticklish caress of his thumb over the hollow of your cheek.

the moment you slip from his hold and start to turn away from him, regret begins to settle in, and you find yourself wishing to return to the warmth of his body when the crisp evening air rushes to engulf the ghost of his touch. regardless, you need to hurry up. unfortunately—or fortunately, whichever you may decide—you only make it a few steps before you feel the familiar weight of his hand on your shoulder once more, spinning you back to face him. 

the silent inquiry twinkling in your eyes is met with a spark of something ravenous, insatiable, puddles of vibrant gold sharpened to an acute point that pierces directly to your core. despite the secluded area of the parking lot and the clear inattentiveness of his teammates, you feel exposed—vulnerable—as if bachira’s gaze alone is intense enough to feel as if you’re being riddled with countless stares from every angle, each watchful eye stripping you down to your bare skin. it’d be unsettling if you were any less involved with him; but, as you relax in his hold, you’d figure you’re well-accustomed.

“meguru,” you chuckle, “i have to go.”

but, he wants more. one more kiss—no, two more, or perhaps three more if fortune deems him worthy. bachira knows you like the back of his hand—knows how to talk to you, where to touch you, and how to kiss you to sap your knees of their strength and leave you pliant enough to refashion your will to align with his. “one more, promise.” his voice is sticky-sweet, but his vow is empty, devoid of even a modicum of truth. it always is when it comes to your affection. just spend five more minutes with him in bed, give him one more kiss before you bid him farewell and head off to work, just let him hold you for one more minute—lies, all of them.

although, when you recognize his attempts to pour a year’s worth of reverence and adoration into such a simple gesture, you can’t quite find it in yourself to protest. so, you allow it, acquiescently tipping your head to connect your lips in a single kiss. but, just as you anticipated, he has no intention of releasing you just yet. every small, unhurried shuffle you take backward, he takes one forward, closing the distance you try to gradually squeeze between you. his presence is inexorable, curling around you and encompassing you entirely until there’s nowhere you can look—nowhere you can reach—that isn’t already occupied by him. he trails after you as if his body is operating on autopilot and all brain activity has idled, unabashedly—obsessively—pursuing you with the intent of stealing a kiss with every footstep if manageable. 

you can feel your resolve weakening with every brush of his lips, heart fluttering and limbs growing cumbersome as you try to focus on placing one foot behind the other. you know you’re a goner, as does he. any long-term resistance is futile. but, it isn’t until the tip of his tongue sweeps mischievously over your bottom lip that you cease motion altogether. your muscles tense, and your eyes widen as you sharply break the kiss, voice a tad breathless when you anxiously object, “wait—”

but, even if he hears you, bachira doesn’t seem to care. you’ve always been more cautious about monitoring the affection you two show each other in public, constantly worried about intimate photographs being snapped and stamped along countless tabloids and magazines with both of your names smeared across the headlines like a stain. you enjoy the privacy you’re afforded, something he can understand. but, he also reasons that it isn’t quite a good enough reason to keep his hands off you. he’s positive his extroverted nature plays a major role in his thought process, but in his mind, it’s quite straightforward—you two are together, and he will not allow anyone to influence that.

it doesn’t matter how envious certain fans may become or how much his manager may gripe about such a “distraction,” every external force and nagging complaint dwindles to white noise with the press of your body against his. you’re all his—his pretty girl, his sweetheart, his girlfriend, and he knows that there exist those who would cheat and steal to experience a fleeting slice of the treatment you lavish bachira with on a daily basis. why wouldn’t he want to show you off? 

with that, he tilts his head forward one final time, enveloping your lips in a kiss far deeper and far more torrid than any of the previous ones. you tense, a small murmur of surprise slipping from your throat, when you feel the slick tip of his tongue delve between your lips, coaxing them further open to allow him unrestrained access to every nook and cranny. his kisses are always energetic, overwhelming in the best way that leaves your knees wobbly and your brain buzzing from oxygen deprivation—this one is no different.

it’s as if you have to switch off conscious control of the rest of your body in order to focus well enough to maintain the fervent movement of his lips against yours. you know that if you fall behind, he’ll be quick to seize the advantage, and that is something you cannot afford right this moment. bachira is shameless with his affection, and only god knows how he’ll utilize any inch of surrender you offer.

you blindly scramble for purchase to balance yourself and manage to curl your fingers into the material of his jersey. the tight pull of the fabric into your fist is met with the feeling of his lips twitching into a grin against your own. contrary to his typical touchy-feely behavior, this time he doesn’t make any move to steady you, and your ears burn at the thought of him actually deriving amusement from your dependence on him after previously demonstrating such resistance. bachira is nothing if not impish—you knew this; yet here you are, hopelessly entangled in another one of his countless ploys contrived to submerge you in the same desire that courses through his veins on a nearly daily basis. he made sure you’d be fighting an uphill battle the moment you allowed him to lay his hands on you; and now, that’s crystal clear to you.

although, you aren’t sure whether the heat coalescing in the pit of your stomach is one of indignation or carnality.

“bachira!”

your heartbeat spikes.

someone’s acknowledged him. someone sees you.

all you can muster is a spark of strength, but it’s enough to break the kiss and retract your head. your stomach flutters at the sight of a strand of saliva webbing between your and bachira’s lips, and you hastily smear the back of your hand across your mouth to disconnect it. oh, god, please let it at least be someone meguru knows. the heat brewing beneath your clothes is almost stifling, the new twinge of desire at the apex of your thighs even more so, and you promptly swivel your head toward an empty area of the parking lot. it’s safe to say that you’re still reeling from your boyfriend’s bold ministrations, so you’re certain that one glance at your face will incriminate you. you exhale slowly. i can’t be seen like this.

you’re embarrassed to have been noticed, to say the least; but, bachira clearly is not. he reacts without any sense of urgency. his eyes twinkle as he observes you, watching you lean closer to rest your cheek against whatever part of him you can reach first. she’s warm, he notices as he lifts a hand to cradle the back of your head, his pinky grazing the nape of your neck. how sweet. his giggle is quiet, an unnervingly sharp contrast to his prior actions. you’re so cute; it makes him want to eat you up—to swallow you whole and keep you all for himself. tempting. instead, he tucks you against his chest and nonchalantly turns his head toward one of his teammates who has detached from the main group and is now standing a few yards away with his hands planted on his hips.

he doesn’t appear ruffled in the least at having caught bachira’s tongue shoved down your throat—more exasperated than anything else. “hurry up,” he advises, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at where the rest of his team is still mingling. “we’re leaving in a few minutes.” 

“yeah, ‘m coming!” bachira calls back, as ebullient and carefree as ever.

his teammate starts to turn back, only to glance over his shoulder at the last minute. “and, wipe your face, too. the paparazzi will eat you alive.” he gripes.

wipe his face? you quizzically lift your head from its place nestled against him, only for your eyes to pop wide with horror at the sight. “meguru!” you gasp. his lips are framed with visible fragments of glitter from your lip gloss, saliva having trickled down to the point of his chin in rivulets of tacky translucence and kaleidoscopic shards. his jersey is a bit wrinkled from where you’d been clutching it, and you clumsily run your hand over the creases to try to smooth them out. “oh, my god, i totally forgot about the lip gloss. i—” you reach into your bag for a clean tissue or napkin—anything, really—and fish out a wadded napkin that seems otherwise untouched. “here, use this to wipe it off.”

“and let it all go to waste?” bachira lifts his chin a bit and touches his fingertips to his bottom lip with a cheeky grin, and your heart almost stops when he angles his face toward the more populated area of the parking lot. “don’t wanna. the color brings out my eyes.”

“what are you talking about? it’s clear—” your teeth close on the tip of your tongue, tension already beginning to stack in your chest. this isn’t new behavior by any means; he’s always had a strange fondness for having your lip prints stamped across his skin, whether it’s his cheeks, throat, or chest. and, it’s not that you don’t like it, no—it’s just that there cannot be a worse moment for him to decide to keep them.

“meg,” you reach for his face to squish his cheeks between your palms and turn his head back toward you, and his lips pucker at the fire in your eyes. “your fans will literally crucify me if you walk out there with lip gloss all over you. they’re insane.”

“ah,” you can tell he isn’t enthusiastic about having to adhere, but he accepts the napkin from you, nonetheless. “fine. but,” his toothy smile returns. “you gotta make it up to me when we get home, m’kay?”

“what do you mean?” your eyebrows furrow, perplexed. “you mean more kisses? i mean, of course, you can have more—”

but, you fall silent when he shakes his head. “nope. ‘s not all i want.” you don’t get the chance to ask for clarification before he’s inclining his head until his face stills mere inches from yours. your eyes flicker down to the space between you when he raises a hand to tap his forefinger against his cupid’s bow. you can’t bring yourself to avert your eyes, his gaze pinning yours in place. “i told you, i liked how it looked.” your stomach flips at his words. “sent a real good message, too.”

“but, you’re making me wipe it off.” he reminds you, as if the blame lies with you instead of his fans. you do like seeing your lip gloss on his skin; it proves that he’s yours. you just don’t want to have to deal with the consequences if photographs spread; because, while he’s not an actor or musician, he still has his own share of unsavory, possessive fans. “so, you gotta make it up to me by givin’ me some more after i win. one for each goal i score—and i get to leave it on.”

your brain idles for a split second. “that’s . . . what you want?”

“mhm,” he nods. “a favor for a favor. so,” he leans forward, bumping his forehead against yours. “we have a deal?”

you’re quiet for a moment, mulling over his words, before dissolving into soft laughter. to make a trade such as this, bachira truly is odd. but, you tilt your chin up to place a chaste peck to the tip of his nose. it’s cute. “we have a deal.” you agree with a smile. “now,” you press your palms against his abdomen to ease him back a few steps. “i’m getting my camera. your team is waiting for you.” this time, he doesn’t object and lets you go, but you can still feel his eyes fixated on your back as you begin your trek through the rows of vehicles. 

“actually . . . i changed my mind.”

you turn back at the sound of his voice to spot a roguish grin playing on his lips.

“the color. i want red, instead.”

[whatsnewalycat]

Designated Person | Chapter 3

Pairing: Francisco "Catfish" Morales x F!Reader

Chapter 3: Puzzle Pieces

Series Summary: When posting bail for Frankie Morales, your former employer and former lover, you unwittingly designate yourself as his third party custodian during his pre-trial release. Your often tumultuous relationship with him is given a new set of rules and put to the test. Can the two of you co-exist peacefully, or will you crash and burn?

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Word Count: 8.2k+

Content / Warnings: Reader POV, nannying, infant / toddler, infidelity, past romantic & sexual relationship, flashbacks, awkward conversations, first date, first kiss, platonic (???) cuddling, confrontation, argument

Notes: Yeeehaw hi, friends. I don't know that I've mentioned this previously, but "reader" is like mid-to-late 20's for the purposes of this story, so there's a bit of an age gap there. And there was a power imbalance with their relationship to begin with and stuff so I'm just putting that out there. This chapter gives big "Bike Scene" by Taking Back Sunday vibes if you're into that lol. That's all I have for now! Thank you for reading.

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Finally, it’s quiet. 

You’re not sure if it’s a full moon or what the fuck is going on, but today has been particularly hellish in the Howard household. 

The youngest two children, Ashton and Jaxson, are four and three, respectively. Which can be great when they play together, or when you find activities for the three of you to do while the oldest is at school. But then there are days like this, when neither of them want to do the same thing and both of them want your undivided attention. You can barely finish appeasing one before the other starts crying. 

To add to the chaos, when the eldest Howard child, Emmaleigh, came home from school, she promptly stomped up the stairs to her bedroom, then slammed and locked the door. As Jaxson tugged on your shirt and screeched for you to continue reading names of different species of whales pictured in his animal encyclopedia, you tried to coax her out of the room to tell you what was wrong, but she wouldn’t budge. 

On days like this, by the time Marla gets home, you’re essentially a bundle of nerves with knotted muscles. 

You take another peek into the family room, where Ashton and Jaxson are settled into the cushy microfiber sectional watching Finding Nemo. They both seem content and neither of them notice your presence, so you tiptoe up the stairs to the main level, into the kitchen. 

With a heavy sigh, peel the electric blue post-it note off the dull, cream colored vinyl countertop. The message, written in Marla’s neat, rounded hand, reads: OK to DoorDash dinner. 

“Thank fucking god,” you mutter under your breath, then pad over the dark hardwood floor to a laptop sitting open on the dining room table. As you place an order for food from a local burger joint, you mentally give thanks to Marla again. Not only will dinner from Emmaleigh’s favorite restaurant lift her spirits, but it takes a load off your mind. 

You’ve nannied for about a half a dozen families, and Marla is the most easygoing mom you’ve dealt with by far. Generally speaking, you’ve found your families with two or more children are less rigid than families with one child. You think that Marla is especially lax because she’s a single mother and, as the founder and CEO of an adult toy company, a bona fide hashtag girl boss. She knows that her children can be a handful and isn’t immune to giving in to their demands for junk food and screen time. 

Your last job, with the Morales’s, was much more structured. Angie had very specific instructions, typed up the night before and automatically emailed to you at 6am each morning. Of course, you could have pinpointed her as type A during your interview, when she pulled your resume out of a color-coded accordion file of potential candidates, followed by a pre-printed list of questions she used to jot down your responses. 

Her shiny red fingernails were long and pointed to sharp tips that clacked against the tabletop of a local coffee shop. Round, brown eyes with little flecks of gold looked up from her questionnaire to you as the interview came to a close. 

“The hours are 7 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday. My husband gets home at 4, but I would need you to stick around and make dinner while he helps with Sarah.”

“Oh, ok,” you nodded, frowning in confusion at the overlap. 

She leaned forward slightly, as if letting you in on a secret, and explained, “He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. I love the man but he’s useless in the kitchen.” 

You chuckled at this, grinning, “I get that a lot, actually. I just don’t usually get an extra set of hands to help me with the kids.” 

“He’ll stay out of your way, don’t worry,” she winked, then took another cursory glance at the questionnaire before telling you, “Well, you’re definitely the most qualified person I’ve interviewed. I think you’d be a great fit for us. What do you think?“ 

“Is- is that a job offer?” you stammered. After your last family’s mom was laid off a month prior, you were abruptly out of work. This was the break you desperately needed. 

Her cherry red lips curved into a disarming smile and she nodded, “But, if you need time to think about it-”

“No,” you interjected, almost a little too forcefully, then softened and added, “I’d love to.” 

Before noon on your first day working for the Morales’s, you had grown attached to Sarah. The six-month old baby had a chocolate soft serve swirl of hair right at the top of her head like a crown, and it wiggled like jell-o every time her big bobble head would sway and jostle. Her deep brown eyes were round and expressive. Whenever you had one-sided conversations with her, she'd coo and babble in response, raising or furrowing her eyebrows, like she was contributing even though she couldn’t understand a lick of what you said. 

After laying her down for a nap, as you tiptoed down the hallway away from her bedroom, a picture frame hanging on the wall caught your eye. You stopped to examine the photo of Mr. and Mrs. Morales from their wedding day.

Angelica’s pearly, knee-length dress hugged her hourglass shape. A white tulle shawl hung over her shoulders and draped down her arms, rhinestones scattered across the fabric. Her jet black hair was loosely pinned back, save for a few strands of long, wavy bangs left to frame her heart-shaped face. Her makeup was done up as fiercely as it was that morning and during your interview. Razor-point black winged eyeliner painted on behind her long, black lashes. Perfectly arched eyebrows. Her alluring lips were shiny and red, just like her fingernails.

Who you assumed to be Mr. Morales wore a fitted black suit, but no tie. He had bronzed skin and broad shoulders that pulled his posture straight. The man’s brown hair showed the beginnings of curls, his sparse facial hair trimmed close to the skin, save for a pronounced mustache. He had a strong nose and chin. His dark brown eyes and dimpled smile made your stomach flutter. 

The happy couple stood next to each other on the steps of what looked like either a church or a courthouse. Mr. Morales had one arm tucked behind his bride, whose hands were clasped around a small bouquet of white lilies. Both leaned their heads towards the other while they faced the camera and flashed the kind of practiced smile reserved for professional photographers. 

Blood rose to your cheeks when you realized you were staring at the groom and attraction was pooling between your thighs. You glanced around self-consciously, then down at the floor as you made your way to the living room. 

For the remainder of the afternoon, time worked like a garrote, twisting around your neck, tighter with each minute that drew you closer to 4:00. 

When he came home, you were participating in tummy time with Sarah. She babbled and blew spit bubbles at you, careening her wobbly baby head around to focus on your smiling face. The heavy door to the garage opened and slammed shut. Your heart skipped a beat when he ascended the stairs and looked around, doling out a polite smile and wave to you. 

“Hi there,” you greeted, then asked Sarah in baby talk, “Is that your daddy? Do you wanna go see him?” 

She cooed. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” you chuckled, then rolled to your knees and propped her on your hip as you stood. 

“How was she?” he asked, tilting his head with a smile to Sarah. The dulcet baritone of his voice reverberated through your chest. You swallowed hard as you realized that he’s so much more handsome in person. 

“She was great! Woke up from a nap about an hour ago, then she ate 8 oz from her bottle. Did a little tummy time, as, um, as you can see,” you handed her off to him. As you did this, his hand slid over yours accidentally. It was rough and warm and made your stomach flip. Your heart was thudding like you had just run a marathon. 

He nodded at Sarah, copying her wide dimpled smile, then met your eyes, “Ang said you might need my help while you cook?” 

When he made eye contact with you, all the air left your lungs and your brain short-circuited. He blinked in anticipation of your response, causing you to snap out of your daze, stuttering, “Y-yeah, sorry, um- yeah,” you winced in embarrassment, “She wanted me to make dinner when you got home, said you could help with Sarah while I do that.”

When you looked back up again he was smirking at you. That did not help the state of your composure. Your face was like a heat lamp and you averted your gaze, “I can get started on that now.” 

While retreating into the kitchen, you pulled out your phone and found the recipe Mrs. Morales sent to you. He followed you into the kitchen, sans baby, heavy work boots clunking against the fake honey oak linoleum flooring. You tried to act as normal as possible when you turned to the fridge and he was already there, bending over to get a beer out of the crisper and asking, “You want one?” 

As desperately as you wanted to say yes, abso-fucking-lutey yes, it was your first day with this family, so you declined. 

“Do you drink?” he questioned further, still hanging over the open drawer in the fridge when he peered up at you. 

You nodded, “Yeah, but…” 

He fished out a second beer, then pushed the crisper closed with his foot and stepped away from the fridge, chuckling, “I think you need it.”

Teeth clenching your tongue flat, you fought the urge to tell him to shut up. You approached the open fridge and retrieved the necessary ingredients before nudging it closed with your hip, “I don’t know. I don’t want your wife to get mad at me. Um, drinking on the job and all.” 

While you told him this, he twisted the cap off of one bottle and put it on the counter next to him, then the second, which he placed on the stovetop for you. As he stepped back and leaned against the counter to face you again, he said, “I won’t tell on you, don’t worry.” 

Your heart was in your throat attempting to strangle you. You turned around and flashed a joking eye roll at him as you accepted the bottle, “Sure.”

He winked, grabbing his beer as he pushed off the counter towards the living room, calling back, “Let me know if you need anything.” 

“Um, yeah, same,” you laughed nervously. 

Frankie slams the passenger side car door shut and you put the car into drive, “How’d the meeting go?” 

His seatbelt locks in place with a click. He stretches out in the seat that’s now constantly set to his preference: slid as far back as it can go, reclined to a wide, obtuse angle. His knees settle far apart and he looks out the window, pressing his fingers to his lips as he shakes his head. 

Your nostrils flare at this annoying lack of response, but you try again, “I already ate, do you need me to stop anywhere for you?” 

He doesn’t move when he mumbles, “I’m fine, thanks.” 

You roll your eyes and turn the radio up in an attempt to dampen your irritation with his brooding. 

After arriving at home, both of you trudge inside to your separate bedrooms. You strip off your day clothes and replace them with a baggy, tie-dyed t-shirt and a pair of black cotton shorts. Your skin still feels too tight, muscles too tense for comfort. 

Fuck, you want a beer. Or a lay. Or both. Some kind of release. 

Your phone buzzes from your nightstand, so you grab it and find a new message notification from Tinder. 

> RORY:  > You free tomorrow night? 

With a grimace, you toss your phone onto your bed, then exit your bedroom to find Frankie rummaging through the fridge for something to eat. He has also made a wardrobe change into lounge wear, retiring his hat for the evening, sporting a pair of gray sweatpants and an old, weathered Metallica t-shirt. 

“Did you change out of your crabby pants, too, or are those on under your sweats?” you tease. 

He scoffs and glances over at you, “I’m not crabby.” 

“Sure you’re not,” you tiptoe past him into the living room, where you collapse onto the couch and turn the TV on. 

Flipping through Netflix for a while gives you little inspiration. The chair in the dining room groans as Frankie sits down to eat whatever he was able to find. You holler to him, “Whadda you wanna do tonight?” 

“Besides get hammered?” his response from the dining room table is muffled by the food in his mouth. 

“Obviously,” you snort.

“Mmm,” he hums, pauses for a beat, then sighs, “Fuck, I don’t know.” 

You scrunch your nose up and try to brainstorm ideas. Immediately your mind plummets into the gutter, reminding you how fucking hard he made you cum on Monday. The memory electrifies your skin and sends your heart racing in your chest.

It was so fucking reckless. 

Reckless and perverse and so fucking hot you wanted to tear your own skin off afterwards. 

Whatever the opposite of that is. 

“Do you wanna do a puzzle?” you call back to him. 

At first he snickers, “A puzzle?” But then another moment passes and he asks, “What kind of puzzle?” 

“I have a few. Let’s see,” you squint up at the shelf on your wall that’s lined with boxes of board games and puzzles, “Freddie Mercury, pandas, space, or gnomes.” 

You hear him chewing as he soaks in these options, then he says, “Freddie Mercury.” 

While he finishes eating, you clear off your coffee table and pull the box down from the shelf. 

“A thousand pieces? Goddamn,” he sits down on the floor across the table from you, dusting his hands off before sifting through the box of puzzle pieces. 

“We don’t have to finish it tonight,” you tell him as you scoop some into your hand and pick through them, “Try to find the edge pieces.” 

The two of you isolate all the jigsawed pieces with at least one flat side and spread them, shiny, printed side up across the table. As you click a few together, Frankie’s cell phone rings. 

When he pulls his phone out of his pocket, your eyes flick to the screen and see Angie’s contact photo. It’s a selfie they took together while on vacation in Australia, their smiling faces shiny with sweat and rosy from booze. Your stomach knots. 

“Hey,” Frankie answers. 

His dark eyes scan the room and meet yours. You immediately drop your gaze to the puzzle pieces and hum to yourself as you blatantly eavesdrop. 

“Yeah, does that still work for you?” 

There’s an indistinguishable soprano response from his wife. 

“Let me check,” he says to Angie, then holds the phone to his shoulder and mumbles to you, “Hey do you think you could give me a ride tomorrow morning at 10?” 

You nod without looking up at him. 

“Yeah that works,” he tells her, shortly followed by, “Ok. Yep. Love you, bye.” 

A stake plunges through your heart. 

He puts the phone back in his pocket and resumes his thorough examination of the puzzle pieces, eventually mumbling, “Thank you, by the way. For giving me a ride.” 

“Sure,” you glance up and flash him a quick smile. When you turn your attention back to the puzzle, you ask, “Are you excited to see Sarah?” 

“Yeah,” his voice is lifted and warm, and you can tell he’s smiling, “Fuck, I miss her so much.”

What you want to say is I do too, because it’s the truth. That attachment you had to her never really went away. But it seems pointless. 

“Are you guys doing anything or just sticking around the house?” you ask. 

“We’re gonna go to the zoo, then Ang is gonna throw something together for dinner,” he clicks two puzzle pieces together and hums thoughtfully to himself. 

“Is she still super into penguins?” 

He chuckles, “Yeah. Last time me and Ang took her, she started screaming every time we tried to leave the exhibit.” 

You laugh and shake your head, “Every goddamn time. I always had to bribe her with ice cream.”

“She’s so stubborn,” he grins and sits up on his knees to lean over the puzzle and get a closer look, “Just like her mom.” 

A weight pulls at your stomach. You feel obligated to ask, so you do, “How are things with you and her mom?” 

He’s quiet as he contemplates this, staring at the shiny pieces, thrumming his fingers against the table. With a sigh, he answers, “I don’t know.” 

You try to keep your breaths metered, as to not give away the thudding in your chest. Adrenaline-spiked blood whooshes in your ears. 

Frankie continues, “Things were better when I got arrested, but, you know…” 

Your eyebrow raises on its own accord, but you don’t comment. If things were better, why was he doing blow and driving drunk? Nope, none of your fucking business. 

Not my chair, not my problem. 

“I’m kind of nervous about it, actually,” he admits quietly, “Spending time with her and all that. I really want things to work.”

“Why?” your mouth asks before your brain can tell you to shut the fuck up. 

“She’s my wife. And- and the mother of my child,” he scoffs and shakes his head, “I love her.” 

The sharpness in his tone drives the stake in your heart down further. Your eyes flick to his and see that he’s studying your face, stare hardened to steel. Those three words eat away at you. What he said was: I love her. But you know what he wanted to say was: I love her. 

You nod in response, dropping your gaze back to the puzzle. Your body moves autonomously, clicking a few puzzle pieces together, scanning for matching patterns, while your mind plays it over and over. 

I love her. 

I love her. 

I love her. 

Static buzzes in your chest. Your throat feels tight, so you clear it, then tell him, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick you up afterwards.” 

“Why not?”

“I have a date,” you inform him, glancing up to gauge his reaction. 

“Oh,” he murmurs, then frowns, “That shouldn’t be a problem.” 

Silence settles over the two of you. It’s just the scrape and click of puzzle pieces across the tabletop and hums of contemplation. You notice the way he seems to get buried in his thoughts, pressing his fingers to his lips, gnashing his jaw back and forth. A sick satisfaction roils inside you. 

You decide to call it a night when the edge of the puzzle is put together. When you sink into your bed, you open Tinder and send a response to Rory. 

< ME: < Definitely. What’re you thinking? 

The message is opened immediately, and he responds. 

> RORY:  > Wanna get dinner? 

< ME: < Yes please :)

> RORY:  > Pick you up at 6? 

< ME: < It's a date

The BBQ place Rory takes you to is busy and loud, its high ceilings making plenty of space for every noise to ricochet off the wood paneled walls down into your eardrums. You’re seated across from him, resting your chin in your palms, elbows pressing into the wobbly table top as you listen to him talk about his job as a personal trainer. When you shift in your seat, your legs stick to the black vinyl upholstery, and you wince at the sensation.

Your eyes trail his rigid biceps that pull his t-shirt sleeves taught. A faded black tribal tattoo peaks out from beneath the white fabric. From the shirtless pictures on his Tinder, you happen to know he has a whole collection of douchey tattoos lining his sun-tanned, muscular body, but you might be willing to overlook that. 

You mark his tattoos down in the “things you don’t like” column in your brain. 

Rory is conventionally attractive in a very masculine way, his face all hard angles with a dimpled, squared off jaw. Straight, white teeth are almost always visible behind the peak of his thin, bow-shaped lips.

He seems like the kind of person that has a standing appointment with a hairdresser that knows exactly how to trim his hair into a close, neat cut without him giving instructions. You’re willing to bet he takes a shower at exactly 6 AM every day, then applies just enough product to make his golden brown hair stand at attention. He probably food preps and has like six hard boiled eggs or something equally rich in protein for breakfast each morning. 

Every part of him seems disciplined and routine. Stable. You mark that down in the “things you like” column. 

When he asks you what you do for a living, you tell him, and he asks how you got into the nannying business. 

“Growing up, I took care of my younger siblings all the time. I’d babysit for the neighbors and stuff, too. It just naturally evolved after I graduated high school,” you tell him, meeting his stunning hazel eyes with an easy smile.

“Do you have a big family?” he crosses his arms on the table and leans in. The off-kilter base of the table responds, shifting towards him. 

You nod, “I have an older brother and three little sisters. My brother, Ben, is two years older than me. My sister, Marlene, is four years younger. Then there’s Leah, who was born two years later. And Rachel is the baby, who came a year after Leah.” 

“Five kids,” he marvels, “Wow. No wonder you had to help out so much.” 

You smile politely at this, although you know your role as their caregiver had more to do with your parents’ active social calendar than the sheer number of children. 

“Do you want kids?” Rory inquires, his brow furrowing in a way that tells you the answer is important to him. 

“Oh, definitely,” you respond, take a sip of your water, then continue, “I don’t know about five, that seems like overkill, but more than one for sure.” 

This seems to please him. His lips curl into a smile. 

“What about you? Do you have any siblings? Want any kids?” you stab the ice in your glass of water with the straw, then return your eyes to his. 

“Two brothers. I’m the middle child,” he rubs his hands together and smirks, “And, yes, kids are no doubt a priority for me.” 

You smile and nod in acknowledgment. Mark it down in the “things you like” column. 

His eyes linger on yours and you feel blood rush to your cheeks. The waitress appears with two trays of food, placing them on the table. As you eat, you find out that Rory was born and raised close to where you were, in another coastal town off the Gulf of Mexico. He was transferred to Kissimmee about two years ago as part of a job promotion. 

“What brought you here?” he questions, then picks up the ribs on his tray and tears a chunk of meat off the bone. 

You shake your head, “Moved here with my ex-boyfriend. He was from the area originally. I needed to get the fuck out of my hometown, so he suggested moving here.” 

You kick yourself for mentioning your self-exile from Ruskin, and hope to god he doesn’t ask why you needed to leave. First dates are no place to recount the ruthless campaign ran against you until you couldn’t take it anymore. 

“What happened with him?” 

A sigh of relief expands your lungs. You answer, “Fell in love with his high school sweetheart.” 

“Wow, that blows,” he frowns, “Been there. Cheated on. It feels terrible.” 

“That it does,” you mutter, pushing kernels of corn around the white plastic bowl on your tray, “He told me about it when it happened, at least. And they’re really happy together. Got married and had kids and all that.”

“No offense, but he’s still an idiot,” he declares with conviction, “I mean, who would do that to someone as gorgeous as you? Besides, cheaters are all scum.”

The compliment warms your insides. You smile demurely and bat your eyelashes at him outwardly, while inwardly you make a mental note to never mention your past with Frankie to him. 

After you finish eating, Rory pays the check and drives you back to your house. The living room is illuminated through the window facing the street. When he puts the car in park, he glances up at it and frowns, “Do you live with someone?” 

“Yeah,” you chuckle nervously, “I have a roommate. They must’ve come home while we were out.” 

“Can I walk you to your door?” His voice is low and sultry. 

You bite your bottom lip and nod. 

He tells you to stay put as he comes around the car to open your door for you. As you walk side-by-side up the cracked sidewalk that leads your house, his hand finds the small of your back. There’s a nervous energy pulsing through your veins, thickening with each step. 

When you reach the foot of your porch steps, he turns to you, meeting your gaze and holding it, “I had a really good time tonight.” 

You face him, and his hand slides to your waist. A tingle spreads across your chest and heats your cheeks, “So did I.” 

His eyes flick to your lips. He leans in. You mirror the movement, eyelids fluttering closed as his lips meet yours. He tastes like peppermint and smells like conifer trees. The kiss is mechanical and his hand is stiff at your waist. It doesn’t awaken anything hungry within you, but it’s nice. 

When you pull away, you look up at him through your eyelashes, “Goodnight, Rory.” 

“Goodnight,” he smiles wide, big white teeth taking up half his face. 

When you open the front door and step inside, Frankie is mid-movement, sitting down on the couch. 

“Hey,” you call as you lean against the closed door and pull off your wedge sandals. 

“Hi,” he responds, sitting up straight. 

It amazes you how much the one syllable says. The slightly panicked upward inflection, the tensing of his shoulders, how out-of-breath he seems. He rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward, hands clasped together, knuckles white.

You drop your purse on the ground, “You getting anywhere on the puzzle?” 

He hums and nods, “I’ve assembled quite a few mustaches.” 

You tiptoe across the carpet and kneel down opposite him, scanning the clumps of puzzle that he’s managed to complete. It entrances you immediately, your fingers and brain working in tandem, making the world fade into the background. Some time passes before you feel Frankie staring at you. You look up at him and meet his eyes, “What?” 

“Nothing,” he shakes his head and smirks. 

You blink at him and raise your eyebrows, “Bullshit.” 

His smirk breaks out into a smile that tugs at your heart, the way his eyes crinkle into crescents and his cheeks dimple. He drops his gaze to the table and taps his lips, then shrugs, “You just look really nice. That dress was a good choice.” 

“Thanks,” you mutter, returning your attention to the puzzle, ignoring the flutter in your chest. 

“How was your date?” he asks, trying to seem disinterested, even though his shoulders hunch up to his ears and his jaw clenches. 

“So good. I think for our next date, we’ll get married,” you tease, glancing up to flash him an amused smile. 

“Hilarious,” he rolls his eyes. His knee starts bouncing and he inquires, “Have you been seeing him for a while or is this a… recent development?” 

“It was literally our first date,” you raise an eyebrow at him, then shrug, “He was nice, though. We have a lot in common. I’ll probably see him again.” 

He shifts in his seat, but says nothing, so you don’t say anything, either. You find a few more puzzle pieces that correspond and click them together. 

“How was the zoo?” you inquire, looking up to search his face, noting his far-away eyes and pouting lips. 

“Good,” he answers with strained positivity, “We’re gonna do something next Saturday. Not sure what yet.” 

“That’s good,” you tell him. Your voice is dripping with an overly ripe kind of sweetness that seems disingenuous and repulsive. By the way he blinks up at you with a droopy, blank expression, you’re certain he senses it, too. Blood rises to your face and you bite down on your tongue, pulsing your teeth against the soft muscle, savoring the sharp pain the motion causes.

You take a deep breath in, exhaling through slack lips that make a buzzing pbpbpbp sound, then ask, “What do you wanna do for dinner tomorrow?” 

He frowns, “Whatever you want, I don’t care.” 

“Good talk,” you mutter under your breath, then rise to your feet, “Do you need to use the bathroom before I take a shower?” 

Frankie shakes his head without looking up from the puzzle. His fingers press against the pillowy flesh of his lips. You feel an urge to scream at him, to push his buttons somehow, anything just to get him to react, but you drop it. 

Once you’ve showered and changed into comfier clothing, you return to the living room and find Frankie laying on his side, curled up on the couch, a pillow wedged between his cheek and his hands. Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang is playing behind the opening credits of Pulp Fiction on the TV. You approach with caution, “Do you mind if I join you?” 

“Not at all,” he answers and goes to sit up. 

“You can stay there, it’s fine,” you tell him. He relaxes back into his previous position as you grab a blanket and pillow from a wicker basket next to the TV, “Want a blankie?” 

“Fuck yeah.” 

His enthusiastic response brings a smile to your face. You grab another blanket and drape it over his body before settling into the opposite end of the couch and stretching out. He seems stiff when you pile your legs on his over the middle cushion, so you pull your knees up a little further, closer to your body. 

“I wanna ask you a question but I want you to know it’s ok to say no,” he says in a somber voice. Your heart immediately starts sprinting. 

“What?” you furrow your brow and look over to meet his eyes, but he’s staring at the TV with a blank expression. 

“Will you cuddle with me?”

Your stomach flips upside down. You search his face in question, unsure what to say. No, probably. The two of you literally just had a conversation about keeping your relationship platonic less than a week ago. What the fuck? 

He finally glances at you and sees the confusion. His forehead creases and his foot starts bouncing under your calf. 

He elaborates, “I’m freaking out right now and I think it would help. No funny business, though, I swear to god. I just…”

As he trails off, his eyebrows part and face softens. He shakes his head like he can’t explain it further. His eyes are shiny in the light of the TV and he looks like he’s tearing up. You’ve never seen him cry. But the panic can do weird things. You’re well acquainted with the panic, unfortunately. 

You swallow hard and nod, “Y-yeah, that’s fine.” 

There’s a momentary ruckus while the two of you scoot and reconfigure. Your back settles against his chest and one of his arms tucks under your cheek. The other wraps around your belly, drawing you close, “You comfy?”

“Yeah,” you answer. 

“Are you sure this is ok?” he asks. His voice is low and shaky. It vibrates against your skin and sinks down into the marrow of your bones. If you’re still enough, and keep your breaths shallow enough, you can feel his bass drum heart pounding in his chest at a bpm familiar to you. 

“Yeah, it’s fine, Frankie,” you assure him, enveloping his hand at your belly with your own. He takes a deep breath and the exhale tickles your ear.

On the TV, Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega are chatting about hash, but you can barely pay attention. 

Frankie’s warmth is a sedative. It always has been. Much to your disdain, you hope the feeling is mutual. And you think it could be, because his thudding heart seems to slow. His body relaxes against yours. 

And it’s so unfair how he can make you feel like this. How, one second he makes you so nervous you could puke, or so frustrated you want to scream in his face, then the next he’s holding you and it’s like your soul is finally resting here with his. 

You think about your date with Rory. He was a gentleman and seems like he’s stable and nice enough. The kiss was fine, good even, but not electric. And that’s fine, because in your experience, first kisses are almost always lackluster. 

Your first kiss with Frankie was like lightning, though. 

Months passed working for the Morales family and you came to be more comfortable with Frankie being around while you cooked dinner. Your conversations were mostly functional, about Sarah or things around their house. But you found him charming and your crush only grew more intense. 

Sometimes you would watch Sarah on Saturday nights so he and Angie could go out on a date. One of these Saturdays, they came home at 1 AM, and Angie was hammered. 

She stumbled up the stairs and plopped down on the couch next to you. Her black hair was mussed and she was all giggly. She said something in Spanish to Frankie, and turned to you, “Do you wan’ chicken strips?” 

“You- you don’t have to feed me, that’s ok, Mrs. Morales-” you stammered, going to stand up and get ready to leave.

“Oh hun, call me Angie, I’m begging you,” she grabbed your arm, “And stay, please! Chicken strips! Come on, hang out with me.” 

“Um…” You glanced around to gauge Frankie’s reaction, but he was in the kitchen preheating the oven, so you nodded, “Sure, ok.” 

“Yay!” Angie clapped, then sprawled out on the couch and propped her heels up on your leg, “Do me a favor, hun, take these off for me?” 

You chuckled and examined the shiny silver clasp of her stilettos, working to undo the strap across her foot as she asked, “So what’s your deal, are you single, do you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, what?” 

“Ang, come on,” Frankie chided from the kitchen as he pulled a few beers from the fridge. 

“What? I’m just asking!” she scoffed at him, then tilted her head at you with a hazy drunk smile, waiting for you to answer. 

You managed to unclasp her shoes, despite her wiggling, and they thudded to the floor one by one.  

Frankie walked past, handing an open beer bottle to you, then another to her, before sitting down on the loveseat. He kept glancing over at you and Angie, then up at the TV, which was playing King of the Hill. 

“I’m single, yeah,” you sighed and took a sip of beer, “Unfortunately.” 

“Hey, nothing wrong with that, girlie. Enjoy it while you still can.” Angie said, then set her full beer bottle on the ground and groaned, “Oh my god I have to get out of this fucking dress. I’ll be back, don’t go anywhere.” 

She marched off into their bedroom, swaying gently as she walked. This was all very amusing to you because you had never seen her be anything but intimidatingly perfect. 

You pulled out your phone and scrolled for a bit, sipping at your beer while waiting for her. Every once in a while, you found yourself looking over at Frankie, who was picking at the label on his beer bottle with his eyes glued to the TV. 

A shrill beep from the oven indicated it was preheated. He rose to his feet and walked down the hallway to their bedroom. You heard the click of the door closing, then he returned to the living room and asked, “She’s passed out, do you really want chicken strips?” 

“No, not really,” you chuckled, tucking your hair behind your ear and dropping your gaze to your beer bottle. 

“And you don’t have to stay or anything like that, no pressure,” he advised. 

You glanced up at him and got caught in his dark, warm eyes for a moment before you shook your head, “No, I’ll stay and finish this, if that’s ok.” 

“Of course, make yourself at home,” he assured you with an easy smile, then sat down in the middle of the couch, just a foot away from you. 

And you fucking knew what you were doing by staying. That’s the worst part. Attraction hung thick in the air between your bodies. It dampened your skin and condensed inside you. 

Every so often in the weeks preceding, you caught him staring at you, and vice versa. More and more, the eye contact lingered just a bit longer than appropriate. Just long enough to make you wonder. It seized your heart and pumped all the blood in your body between your legs and up your neck. 

The prospect of his affection was on your mind all the fucking time. Every time he’d laugh at one of your jokes, or brush up against you in passing, or find a reason to touch you intentionally, you wanted it to last forever. 

But you didn’t initiate anything. You were content admiring him from afar, wondering if his lingering looks meant he wanted you, too. He was at least fifteen years older than you, married, and your fucking employer. There was no way in hell you would risk your livelihood by making a move on him, no matter how tempted you were. 

If he pursued you, though… that would be different. And you desperately wanted him to. 

“I’m sorry about Ang,” he said, leaning back against the couch, “She drank a lot tonight.” 

You chuckled and shook your head, “Totally fine. We all have to let loose every once and a while.” 

He hummed in agreement, and your eyes flicked to his, and they were so intent on your face that your heart started racing. 

“And how do you like to let loose?” he rumbled, his gaze dropping to your mouth. 

Your lips parted. You managed to quirk a brow and breathe, “Are you sure you wanna know?” 

Frankie sat forward, taking your beer and setting it on the ground. You could smell his whiskey-soaked mouth. The woody scent of his cologne. His hand rested on your knee. A shiver jolted across your skin and you swallowed hard. 

“I think I might know,” he murmured, sliding his hand down further, setting his thumb into motion against your tender inner thigh, leaning closer. 

“This is a bad idea,” you warned him in a whisper, but brought yourself closer to his beckoning lips, insides coiling tight, begging for you to just fucking do it. 

“Terrible idea,” he agreed, brushing his nose against yours, bringing his hand to your chin, holding it as he took the plunge and pressed his lips against yours. 

The kiss was a slow peck that lingered with heat, and when he peeled his lips from yours, murmuring, “Sorry-” you grabbed onto his shirt and pulled him back in, all hot-blooded and eager, savoring the softness of his pillowy lips, the harsh liquor burn on his breath. You couldn’t help but whimper as his tongue rolled wet against yours. He renewed it with hungry urgency, cupping your cheeks, pulling you closer, both of you completely lost and breathless. 

You tried to sit up, to get closer, to crawl inside him if you could, but knocked over the bottle of beer with a sharp clink. Both of you jumped apart at the disruption. 

“Shit,” he hissed and stood up, striding to the kitchen. You stood up, too, trying to catch your breath and regain your composure. The spell was broken. The weight of what just happened crashed down on you all at once. 

You snatched your purse up off the floor just as he came back into the room with a wad of paper towels. 

“I’m sorry-” you faltered. 

He shook his head, “No, no, don’t worry, it’s fine.” 

“No it’s not fine, you’re-” your eyes darted to the closed bedroom door where his wife was sleeping and whispered, “You’re married. And- and- I work for you, I’m an idiot. I just have a stupid crush. An- and I won’t do it again.”

“Hey, no, don’t-” his voice was pleading and soft. He reached out to you but you shook your head and dropped your eyes to the ground, crossing your arms. 

“I have to go, but I’ll see you on Monday, ok?” you pushed past him to leave. 

The whole drive home, the whole next day, you were so fucking mad at yourself. You had never done something like that with your employer. It was unprofessional and wrong. 

Yet… 

The kiss consumed you. It’s all you could think about. You wanted it to happen again. You wanted it to go further. It set you on fire and the flames felt fucking exquisite. 

And now, as Frankie is holding you, nuzzling against your shoulder, and you feel whole and calm and safe like you can’t with anyone else, you wonder for the millionth time if you’ll ever find this with someone who loves you back. 

You drag the silver tines of your fork across the barest section of your ceramic plate just to watch Frankie squirm at the ear-piercing squeak. Family dinner again. A stalemate for who goes first again. 

“I’m gonna keep doing this until you start,” you advise, then make the noise happen again, “I can do this all night.” 

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, sending his cap onto the floor behind him, “It’s just gonna start a fight.” 

“I don’t give a shit,” you blink and prop your chin up on the heel of your palm, “Not saying anything will also start a fight, so…” 

Frankie just swings his head back to neutral and stares at you, his arms crossed, elbows resting on the table. 

You scrape your fork against the plate and smirk at him. 

“Jesus fucking Christ fine,” he groans, running his hands down his face before crossing his arms again. His eyes meet yours and he opens his mouth to speak, letting it gape for a moment, then admits, “While we’re living together, I think maybe…”

He snaps his mouth shut into a straight line and drops his eyes to your picked over plate. You rub the tines back and forth against the ceramic rapidly, “Just say it, come on, Franklin.” 

He glares at you, half joking, and scoffs, “You know that’s not my name,” then he reaches across the table, trying to snatch the utensil from you hand, “And I’m gonna take that goddamn fork away-”

“The fuck you are,” you laugh as you pull it away from his reach, then try to coax him to complete his thought, “While we’re living together, you think maybe…?”

“I think maybe we shouldn’t have other people over,” he tells you quietly, sitting back in his seat with a sigh, meeting your eyes for a moment before dropping them to the table. 

“What do you mean by other people?” you search his face. 

“Dates, you know, like,” the muscles in his face tense as he clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth together. 

You drop your fork on the plate and cross your arms, “Like the guy I went out with last night? Like you don’t want me to date other people while you’re living here? Really?”

“Like I don’t want to hear you getting fucking railed-”

“This is my fucking house, Francisco, and we are not dating,” you bite off, “Just because you’re jealous doesn’t mean I have to be abstinent-”

“I’m not asking you to take a fucking vow of celibacy, I’m just saying I don’t want to see or hear that shit when I’m here,” he argues. 

“Because you’re jealous,” you state. 

“Sure,” he shakes his head, “Whatever.” 

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite,” you spit. 

“What?! How?” he barks, throwing his hands up at his sides. 

“Do you know how many times I had to see you and Angie kissing and holding hands and making fucking goo-goo eyes at each other?” you grind out, shaking your head in disbelief, “But I can’t have people I’m dating in my own house? Ok, Frankie.”

“That is not the sa-”

“Bullshit,” you lean into the word as you hurl it at him, then scoff and tell him, “When I went to Australia with you guys, I heard you fucking her every single night. Did you know that?” 

His eyes flick to yours. He’s scowling like a sullen child. 

“Then you would wait until she fell asleep and- and you would come to me,” you feel the pain from this buried memory surfacing in your chest, burning behind your eyes, “And you smelled like her, and I was-” a sob bubbles up your throat. Tears roll hot down your cheeks, and you meet his eyes so he can understand, “I was so fucking in love with you, Frankie.” 

His face softens and his shoulders sag. 

“So I really don’t want to hear how uncomfortable my love life makes you while you’re living here,” you sniffle, then wipe your eyes with your hands. He searches your face, but doesn’t say anything. You bite down on your tongue and hold it for a moment, then ask, “Did you ever think about how it was for me? Seeing you two together?” 

His adam’s apple bobs in his throat. He shakes his head. 

“I didn’t think so,” you mutter, looking down at your half-eaten plate and pushing it away with a sigh, “I won’t have sex with anyone when you’re here. But I’m not going to ban people I’m dating from my own house just for your sake.”

He nods, “Ok.” 

Both of you stew in this silence, soaking in the words that were exchanged. It’s not uncomfortable, just heavy with the weight of the conversation.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Frankie looks up at you. 

You search his somber face, “Tell you what?” 

“That it hurt to see me with her,” he presses his elbows into the table, clasping his hands in front of his mouth, “I mean, obviously, I should have known, but…” 

“I didn’t wanna lose you,” you shrug loosely, gather all of your guts in a bundle and tell him, “If I told you, it would come down to choosing between me or her. And… you’ll choose her every time.” 

He sits with this information, staring down the hallway to his bedroom, but so much further. His chest expands with a deep breath, and he exhales, “I’m sorry for hurting you.”

You fight the urge to comfort him and tell him it’s ok. Instead, you nod in acknowledgment. 

“I was really shitty to you for a really long time. And- and you’re right. I’m a fucking hypocrite,” he furrows his brow and rolls his head on his shoulders to look at you, “Why did you even agree to this?”

“To be fair, this is not what I thought was going to happen when I bailed you out,” you chuckle, then release a heavy sigh, “But, I mean… I probably still would have done it if I knew. I care about you. And I want you to get better.” 

The corners of his lips curl upward just a little, eyebrows lowering as he murmurs, “Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” you smile warmly and wait a moment before stretching the smile out wider, “Ralph is gonna be so proud of us.” 

Frankie laughs, his dark eyes folding into crescents, and nods, “He’s gonna put a gold star on my worksheet tomorrow.” 

You push your chair back and stand up, yawning as you stretch your arms towards the ceiling. 

He gets to his feet, too, grabbing his hat off the floor and putting it back on before piling dishes from the table into a stack, “You going to bed, or you wanna puzzle it up?” 

“I’m down to puzzle,” you grin, “As long as we don’t fall asleep on the couch again, my neck is fucking killing me.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” he snorts, taking wide strides to the sink, “I’m gonna do the dishes, but I’ll be there in a minute.” 

With a nod, you tiptoe into the living room and kneel before the coffee table, examining all the fragmented parts of the puzzle still left to put together. Slowly but surely, it’s starting to resemble a bigger picture. 

You’ve always found puzzles to be comforting. 

Something about the heap of jigsawed pieces when you open the box. All of them broken and indistinguishable in their own right. How you put them together, bit by bit. Proceeding even when it seems impossible. How, eventually, they all come together to make something beautiful. 

[ Next Chapter ]

[tigreblvnc]

BLUE LOCK MATCHUP EXCHANGE — @isadollie

Your match is...

— Reo Mikage

✦ FIRST OF ALL, Reo is confident and a natural leader, he would have made the first move towards you and quickly made you feel comfortable.

✦ Okay, Reo would probably want to invite you to every restaurant you pass by.

✦ Shopping, shopping, SHOPPING!

✦ Especially for clothes!!!

✦ Because he loves your style and wants to contribute to it with his own touch.

✦ He might be a bit clingy deep down, but that's because he always has something to tell you and he loves spending time with you too much.

✦ He will learn to leave you alone in your moments of solitude...

✦ ... only to come back with tons of project ideas and gifts.

✦ The future doesn't scare him, on the contrary, ambitious as he is, he will show you the way to go and clear the path as you both progress together.

✦ I read that he is an ENTJ and that's an ideal match for any INTP/INFP. When you are scared, he reassures you, and when he is too buried in work, you know how to remind him to take a break and enjoy your time together.

✦ Look look look!! I read this description about Gemini and Leo: "Geminis and Leos make an ideal romantic pairing! Leos bring a bold energy, while Geminis match it with a free-spirited vibe. The match-up needs plenty of communication and patience to make the most of their emotional relationship."

✦ Do I have to add more? It confirms you're the best couple ever.

✦ Even when I look on the internet, Gemini and Leo are always like ☆~10/10~☆ AAAAAH

✦ I stan okay?

✦ Back to the matchup now...

✦ Reo is typically the one who executes your plans for you and he does it well, so you could rely on him and take a load off your shoulders.

✦ On his side, he appreciates your honesty and the fact that you know what you want: there's nothing worse for him than a wavering and indecisive person.

✦ Even though he is very direct in his approach, he would know how to temper you when you start to lose your composure a bit, and that includes comforting words and taking care of your needs.

✦ For me, Reo is not the type to go out of his way for people, he even prefers it when it's the other way around, but for you, he would learn to be attentive to your needs and remember your tastes to buy you expensive things.

✦ As with Nagi, he'd like to carry you on his back when you're sleepy.

✦ Reo is very future-oriented but knows how to keep his feet on the ground. He's good at bringing others back down to earth too.

✦ Besides, I can easily see him as the type who stays with the same partner forever because once he has found the right person, he never looks elsewhere again.

✦ And most importantly: he is definitely the one to confess first!!!

✦ He would do it in an ultra-direct and somewhat clumsy manner but without beating around the bush.

✦ "Anna? Go out with me." Yeah. Like REALLY.

✦ And you can be sure that he would be overprotective. The type to ask how your day went, what you learned, what you want to do this weekend... He can't stop.

✦ I imagined a trip to the amusement park, which might not be your thing at all but Reo would have deliberately chosen it because he thought it would be a great way to show you how to let go and enjoy the thrill.

✦ After all, he knows all about the thrill in football!

✦ Typically the boyfriend who takes you to all his matches and training sessions to show off in front of his teammates.

✦ His best reward? You cheering for him and welcoming him at the end of the day with a fresh drink.

✦ Nothing is better for him than to be acclaimed, especially by someone he respects and loves.

✦ After that, heading to a restaurant, of course!

✦ The little cuteness between you? Couple accessories!!

A word about your match: I don't know why I had Rin in mind when I first read your info, but Reo is definitely a better candidate since he's so much more talkative and caring. Hope you enjoyed it :)

© JAE-PUDDING 2024 | INTERESTED IN A MATCHUP EXCHANGE? CHECK THIS.

[ntls-24722]

Might be a weird question, but you know how humans tend to anthropomorphize animals and objects and such like in fiction?

Either by just giving them human language and thoughts, or by also making the animals/objects stand on two legs or an upright pose and more human like anatomy in the case with furries and such?

Or even give themselves features of animals like my sona with deer ears and legs and a long tail and such?

Or in ancient Egypt with the depictions of gods with animal heads

Or heck even just furries and fursonas

On Bolur, in any era, do the homo mousike ever anthropomorphize animals or objects in their art and stories? How would a Debu/Zebraman/elf fursona look like? How would they visually anthropomorphize other things in their art and stories?

I think about these things sometimes (when it comes to alien life/spec biology in general)

OOOOH. I LIKE THIS QUESTION A LOT.

So first: Yes, they anthropomorphize their animals and objects! Definitely now when their collective histories just began, but especially so in Zebraman culture all throughout their history, when their entire lives are centered around their animals (recent update, I need to flesh it out). Just about every zebraman god is animal-based because of it, and zebramen have way more societies focused on stewarding the land and its animals.

Debu anthropomorphize objects slightly more than other homo mousike - when nothing around you is your size, you relate to the things that are, and generally those things were the things made for you. They give them faces and have these masks or collective objects dedicated to concepts or people, or a particular figure is embued with a spirit of their own.

As for fursonas...

Ok, here on out, I'm gonna be calling them pycnofiberies, since everything here will be based on the night cloe. This is the debu Dog so I think this is a good candidate for furry-ization, and just for simplicity I'll use the night cloe for the zebrapeople anthros, too.

So, first thing off the bat - the most obvious anthromorphization for debu is sizing everything to their just like we do, it's just more obvious now that they're huge. The front teeth are usually really bunched together and seperate from the others on Bolur and while fusing together into beaks or tusks is common, the teeth are often seperate, like they are in night cloes. Debu often fuse them together to make them resemble tusks more ( since gaps in teeth are kind of uncanny to them) and add a beard, even if it's just stubble to their anthros, the same way we add our hair. They also add a mouthglow! In cartoons, Debu mouthglows sometimes are neon colored rather than just white as an exaggeration of the minute color differences in actual mouthglows, either to tell apart individual debu, as stylization or to be more obvious to the yellow-blue colorblind zebrapeople. (which is why yellow and green dyes are so rare - the species that develops the most dyes don't percieve greens and yellows very well.)

Also, a hump, in the same way we add boobs to everything regardless of the boobage in the actual animal. Humps in debu are attractive in both sexes, and are usually added regardless of the intent on making a character attractive.

And of course, for expressions, the nostrils are exaggeratedly large, no matter what animal it's on.

There's also the exaggeration of facial discs in night cloes the same way ears are in our furries, sometimes so extreme the edges jut out from the face. There's also a feature in a lot of "mary sues"/"gary stus" where the claws are overgrown - in Debu cultures, gods are often depicted with overgrown, curved hooves to demonstrate their age and "mythical-ness", as it's an occurrence in elderly debu but not a very common one. So, to show power, alongside a brightly glowing mouth, mary sue cloesonas have great, curved claws. There's also the "beastars" style hands, where they'll give their hooved hands to animals with little other animalistic detail.

Then there's cloe-girls and "angels"

Debu recognize facial discs as the ears of a cloe, but don't put them at their ears, they put them at the same place they see them - around the eyes. They have the same catgirl ear inaccuracies as us!

There's also angels, winged debu. They have the same gig as us where they just slap cloe wings on there without regard to homologous structures.

Now onto zebrapeople anthros!

Zebramen do the same thing as us, making their pycnofiberies stand on 4 or 6 legs rather than all 6 or 8 (depending on the -pedalism). Zebraelves though, as they are equally hexapodal as they are octopodal, do a mix of both, sometimes relating to sex - "drone" and "queen" pycnofiberies (they project their genders/sexes onto non-eusocial animals too) are often more hexapodal than their worker counterparts, as queen zebraelves are sometimes restricted to hexapodality on account of sometimes being too gravid to walk on all 8's, and drones just generally being found on cloeback or on the ground, where zebraelves usually assume a hexapodal posture. "Taurs" are also very common.

There's also the arm situation when it comes to night cloes specifically, because cloes generally have "plantigrade" forearms, while zebrapeople have "digigrade" forearms; their arm appears to have a second joint. Just like how we deal with digigrade legs in our furries, pycnofiberies have it either-or.

So - this is corny? (just because of the focus on stripes, the one thing that zebras are known for) but a beauty/aesthetically pleasing convention in zebrapeople is the "stripe continuation" comparable to how we like facial symmetry. It's attractive to them to have... geometric integrity with their stripes, which is why monobrows are seen as more attractive than broken brows. It's more exaggerated in zebraelves because their black and white stripes are more common, and they serve more of a purpose than they do in zebramen. Following this, cartoon zebrapeople's faces often are depicted with very simplistic X's, swooping stripes, or are made with "one line". So, abiding by toony laws, so are their pycnofiberies!

Their pycnofiberies have their eyebrows either following or coming off from a continued line, and their lip/nasal area is generally colored black, too, or the color of whatever follows the line. Night Cloes must be super common pycnofibersonas for zebrapeople the same way wolves are common fursonas, because wowza those facial discs follow stripe continuation really nicely.

(sidenote: i think zebrapeople would CONSTANTLY have weird looksmaxxing fads relating to the the geometric integrity of their stripes too, the same way looksmaxxing circles started fretting about canthal tilts and shit. it would get racist fast. just like us :') )

And, they do cloe-girls and angels the same way as us.

[gentil-minou]

hi! I hope you’re doing ok! I’ve never written an ask before so I have no idea how to do this, but you’re one of the only people I follow who is posting about Palestine, so I wanted to ask. And as a brown person I’m really worried rn.

Elections are next year and I’ve seen so many saying that people should vote for Biden because he’s at least better than Trump which is… I don’t know what to say, but it’s completely absurd. This is going to be my first time voting and all I get from people is the same “lesser of two evils” rhetoric. It’s genuinely disheartening to see that these are the only options that are shown to people. I was wondering about what you think of what’s happening, and whether voting third party seems possible

I’m sorry if this was rude to ask you, but thanks for taking the time to read this!

It's not rude, I'm glad I made you feel safe enough to ask this!

I only have one answer for you: Do not let anyone tell you who to vote for or make you feel like an evil person if you choose not to vote for the person they want you to.

Vote, definitely vote!!! Especially in local elections, those are the best ways to get people you want in power and they are in charge of a lot of important changes.

As for the presidential elections, I've had so many people I thought I admired or at least felt comfortable around attack me for my choice not to vote for Biden. I've had people claim I was spreading "pro-Trump propaganda" (which is just ridiculously bad faith in all ways), tell me that I—a queer POC—am anti-LGBTQ, and tell me I'll be deported.

They do this all while ignoring and invalidating the very real anger and hurt the Muslim and Brown populations of the US are dealing with, all because their comfort is being threatened. And instead of pressuring the party that's doing that harm and try to listen to why we feel so betrayed by Biden, they double down and attack us. In fact, they are showing their true colors. They, like Biden, only ever pretended to care about us. So I am going to vote for people who actually do care about me, even if they say I'm going to "waste my vote"

Here's the thing; as long as you vote for who you feel the most supported by, as long as you go into that voting booth and step out feeling good about your vote, then you are not wasting it.

Putting this under a read more cause it's getting long

Personally, I'm voting third party. I've had my eye on the Socialist Party but am also keeping an eye out for the others and whether or not they stand out to me

At this point, unless the DNC decides to put another candidate forward, which they most definitely won't, the Democratic party has lost me forever. I'm lucky that my Dem representative has at least shown they're on the right side of history, but I don't think I will ever vote for the Dem party again. I've forced myself to do it for the last decade and I've been disappointed or betrayed every time, so no more.

I agree this two party system is a joke and we are all being made to be a part of it when no other democratic nation has something like this. Even other countries say our "progressive" party is just centrist. And that just doesn't reflect my values.

Liberals and "vote blue no matter who" are going to tell you that you're wasting your vote by voting third party, but in actuality they are the ones supporting a flawed system that only benefits itself, not the people. The more people who vote third party, the more the dems will be pressured to put forth progressive candidates like AOC or Rashida who are actually on the left. By voting third party, you are saying you won't stand by a broken system any longer

does this mean Republicans might win and we get another trump administration? Yes, probably, but here's the thing: when you look at the last 3 years, and I mean really look at it, have things improved all that much under biden? I, as a queer poc can't say that it has. Both are evil, one just pretends not to be. At this point I see no difference between Trump and Biden. Both don't give a shit about me.

The lesser of 2 evils is still evil, why vote for them? Why would I vote for either of them?

Why would I reward anyone who support genocide and cheers for it? Both Trump and Biden openly do. Their only difference is Biden is a better actor.

If my people were the ones being slaughtered (and they were. For a long long time they were), would I be okay with sitting back and letting these parties walk all over me? No, I don't think I would be.

The fact of the matter is that change does not come fast or easy. These things take time and pressure and a refusal to give in. Voting for Biden after all the horrible things he's done the past couple years is just rewarding a system that is fundamentally broken. You can keep trying to chug along on a broken wheel hurtling you towards doom, or you can take the time to force it to change.

I do believe the younger vote has a big chance to change things, to pressure our government to actually support its people, not just the white ones with money.

Ultimately you get to decide who to vote for. Use your right to vote, don't ignore it and don't waste it by voting for someone you don't actually believe in.

[my-plastic-life]

A(nother) Feudal Fairy Tale: Behind the Scenes

Welcome to the behind the scenes footage of creating my Azone Pure Neemo Character Kagome Higurashi! To see the photo gallery, click here!

Step one: Make sure the outfit can be made. Because this will all be in vain if that can’t be done. Once again, I consulted my dear friend Elenpriv and asked if she could make a second Kagome uniform (she’d made the one for the Barbie body) for a Blythe body (Azone Pure Neemo doll bodies are identical to Blythe, or at least very close). She said yes! WOO!

Side note: Azone has made several outfits for their dolls, including a lot of sailor style school uniforms. They’re perfect - but none of them are green! There is a dark blue/navy one, a black one, I think a red one... all kinds of options, but not a green one. Dang it! LOL

Anyway, next up was finding the perfect doll candidate. I didn’t want to use one of the actual character dolls because, well, they’re already a character from another series lol. So my first step was looking at all the 1/6 scale dolls with black hair. Creating a doll without a reroot was ideal.

There were several options to choose from, but even though they had black hair, there were some other issues.

For one, Kagome’s face is more “pointed” than round. I felt this particular face/head shape was too round.

I did start with her, but the slightly smaller mouth just didn’t say Kagome to me lol, especially when I kept looking at these pictures for reference:

So on to the next candidate! This one is nice, she has a nice face shape and a wider mouth:

I like her, but... her eyes don’t go quite high enough, I don’t think. And I need a template, since I can’t draw to save my life, so I wasn’t going to remove the eyes and start from scratch. She also has a side part, and try as I might, I couldn’t get the bangs to shape properly to hide it. I kept her on the back burner just in case, though. I looked into a couple of other ones like these two:

But they both have dark brown hair, not black. And the second one has too round of a face as well.

I went back to my original choice and attempted to style the hair. Well, one thing about Azone dolls - their hair is saran. That means it doesn’t work with heat very well, and it’s hard to style (or dye, apparently). At least, that’s been my experience. Nylon hair works much better, and is much more heat-resistant.

So at this point, I figured I’d have no choice but to do a reroot. Luckily for me, I’d already done a complete reroot with Olivier Mira Armstrong. So this would be my second one!

But I still needed a doll. As I looked at option number 3 more, I absolutely loved her face. The shape was right, and she had the wider smile. All of these dolls would have the same issue of needing their eyes repainted due to how their irises are compared to Kagome, so I wasn’t even looking at that.

Well, I didn’t want to buy one of these dolls (they’re designed for collectors, so they’re not just cheap play line ones you can get off a shelf - plus they’re all from Japan, which raises the price tag) just to “tear up.” So I looked in my stash and discovered I had two of one doll, and it happened to be the one with that face! So here’s the winner:

Her hair is actually the same color as mine in real life lol. That’s super hard to find... but not with Azone! They’ve designed several with that hair color, to which I say hallelujah. I’ve seen maybe two Barbies with that hair color. Come on, Mattel, get with it!

Anyway, the first step was to make sure I could pull off the reroot. I’d repainted Kagome’s face before (plus Sango’s, which is pretty much the same except for pink eyeshadow as well), so you’d think I’d be an expert at that. (More on that later).

I cut the hair off and then used small needle nose pliers to pull out the rest. Azone doll heads, it seems, don’t have glue on the inside - the hairs were all kind of weaved together inside the head. And there was one large piece where the part was that kind of held it all together, so I was left with a larger hole than I liked when I got all the hair out. But I did use some Loc-Tite to close it, just to be safe, and it seemed to be okay.

Next I painted the scalp black to match the hair she’d be getting. Of course, I forgot to use acetone to remove the original paint, and then I forgot to seal the black paint. So during the reroot process, it kept chipping away. Oops. I’m still new at this lol. Fortunately, you can’t see any of that with the final product.

So, during this rerooting process, I kept reminding myself of how I had to go back and add more hair to Olivier a few times because I’d made it too thin. So this time I went all out, even though most rerooters say you don’t have to plug every single hole (even though the factory did)... there’s a head in here somewhere LOL.

Once I was finished with all that hair, it was time for the boil wash. It never fails - whenever I do this, loose hairs that didn’t get plugged always come out. I need to figure out a method to prevent that, as well as prevent the hair from becoming a big stringy mess during the reroot process.

Of course, I probably should have taken a batch of hair and cut it so it didn’t wind up this long because I knew I’d have to cut it anyway:

Anyway, once the boil wash was done, it was time to do the bangs. Bangs have always been tricky for me. I don’t know how I managed to give my Anastasia Steele bangs without much of an issue... but perhaps it was because I used the method in this video, which I repeated for Kagome. I got them cut into shape (and again, they have such an odd shape compared to other characters - they’re almost triangular whereas all the other girls have straight bangs), then used the method in the video to get them to lay flat. When the face was done, I used some of my Volks doll hair spray to help the bangs stay in place.

Speaking of the face, that came next (I cut the hair first to make it easier to work with, with the intention of styling it later). Another difference between Azone dolls and other dolls I’ve worked with (particularly Barbie and Disney Store) - their eyes are stickers. Maybe other dolls are too now, but these particular stickers come off very easily if you rub them with a toothpick. Which I tend to do quite often when painting doll faces/eyes because inevitably some paint will stray from the brush and go where I don’t want it.

But I did use this to my advantage because the doll I chose had eyes with lashes that were pointing outward a little too far to match Kagome’s shape. So I used my toothpick to remove them, giving the eyes a more rounded appearance.

My original goal was to just draw over the eyes already in place, essentially changing the color from light brown/gold to dark brown. Well, Azone doll eyes have large pupils and smaller irises, and the white parts are smaller yet. The Inuyasha art style is different, with a large white part going from the top to the center of the eye, surrounded by a little bit of black and an almost horseshoe shape made up of two different shades of the iris color. Yeah, I studied that a lot. :D Plus, in many instances, Kagome’s eyes don’t look perfectly round, but more oval/oblong. But I did have to work with the shape of the sculpt/eye socket of the doll, so I tried to give her the appearance of having the “taller” eyes with the shape of the iris. And then there was the fun issue of getting those eyes even and the same size! I literally painted over the entire original eye with white paint, then went back in with the blacks and browns. I did discover that watercolor pencils will color on acrylic paint, so that helped me sketch out the design and go over it with paint again. It took some time, but finally, the face was ready! Mod Podge sealer applied!

The next step was styling the hair. You’d think I’d have it down by now, but noooo. Kagome has the most complicated hair of all the Inuyasha girls, I think. Sango and Kikyo have simple hairstyles and straight bangs. Kagome has triangular shaped hair all the way around. It ends at a point in the back, as do the bangs. Sigh.

So I got the hair trimmed into the proper shape using a layering method, which made her look like she stuck her finger in a light socket in the process. :D Once I was satisfied with the shape/length, I attached the head back onto the body, which already had the uniform on. Success!

Except...

The hair looked too thick, and a few people confirmed this when I showed it to them. Yeah, I was so worried about not having to add more hair later that I actually added too much.

It was also too long at this point as well. So then I was frantically trying to figure out how to salvage the situation without completely starting over. Some people suggested using a razor to thin it out. Yeah, I think they meant a straight razor like a barber uses, because my Dollar Shave Club razor didn’t work very well...

Then someone suggested shearing scissors. I’d previously purchased a hair styling set with two types of scissors (one of which was shearing) and combs. I’d never used those scissors before, because I didn’t know how the heck they worked. So I dug them out and used a practice doll to see what they did. And they did what I needed them to! Instead of cutting the length of the hair, it just cuts pieces to thin it out.

So I took these shearing scissors to the hair and made it a lot less bulky. Then I used my curling iron (and a spray bottle to get the hair completely soaked to be safe) to help shape the hair in the back. Of course, that’s easier said than done... there’s that pointy shape at the end, but the primary view will be from the front, so I had to be wary of that as well. And I didn’t want to cut too much, either. Kagome’s hair is most often seen above the waist, about mid-back under her green collar. It’s definitely shorter than Inuyasha’s. I was afraid I’d cut it too short when I applied the curling iron, but I took some of the curl out a bit and it seems to be okay now. Whew! I really didn’t want to have to redo all that... why didn’t I just send the head off to be rerooted professionally? Because I hate the post office and don’t trust them not to lose the head, and these dolls are, again, meant for adult collectors, so they’re not cheap. No way was I risking losing it. Plus, I wanted more practice anyway, and it did save me money. A professional reroot is worth it, but for this doll, I wanted to do it all by myself (except the uniform because no way can I do that lol).

So, finally, after playing with the hair a bit, I added some of the Volks spray and mousse (used to prevent flyaway strands), and she was ready! Woo!!!

But she wasn’t done yet! She still needs her accessories. :D She’ll be sharing her backpack and bike with my Barbie size Kagome, but I wanted to give her a bow for sure and maybe even some better arrows. Well, what luck - hubby got me a 3D printer for Christmas! And I managed to find a 3D print file for Kagome’s bow, arrows, and quiver on Etsy! These were cosplay size, but the seller was able to size them down for 1/6 scale for me. (The seller has since closed her shop, so I can’t post the link here, unfortunately.) Those little arrows were super delicate, but they look better than my first batch! Well, the arrow heads do, anyway. My first batch was the perfect size all the way except the arrowheads, which I attempted to replicate out of Crayola Model Magic. And it didn’t look good lol. So now I’ll probably try to print some more heads and glue them to the Barbie ones so they look better.

But first, let’s get the Azone one done, shall we? Because these were all 3D printed, they were one solid color and needed to be painted. Well, that was easy. I’d kept notes of all the colors and color combinations I’d used for my other dolls, so I just dug those out again and got to work. I glued some thin twine around the quiver like before, as well as a strap to go over Kagome’s shoulder. The bow string is made of black thread.

(Notice how she has her finger pointing to guard her aim! See - interchangeable hands!!!)

I painted one arrow head to look like a sacred arrow. :D We attempted to print probably six or eight arrows, but some of them fell apart because they’re just so fragile. The heads survived, though, so they’ll be good experiments for the Barbie arrows lol.

So, remember how I said Azone dolls are meant to have their hands changed? Yeah, that made for some awesome posing. Kagome can actually properly hold her bow and arrows now! (Okay, the Barbie can too, but removing those hands requires heat and more muscle since they’re not designed to be removed like that.)

I’d originally planned to give Kagome a 26cm Obitsu body. The Inuyasha doll is about 30cm, so 26cm would be about right for Kagome if we’re going in terms of actual height. The Barbie is technically a bit tall, but I’m still satisfied with her. Plus she has the proper skin tone to match the Inuyasha doll. The Azone dolls have two skin tones - flesh and white. Both are much more pale than the Inuyasha doll, so she’d wind up looking more like Kikyo in the long run. Same with Obitsu bodies.

Anyway, why didn’t I go with the Obitsu body? Well, all would have been fine if the shoes had fit. :D Obitsu feet are wider/larger than Azone, despite the bodies being almost identical in height. So with her socks on, the shoes would not go on the Obitsu feet. So back to the original Azone body! But hey, she’s a “true” Azone Pure Neemo Character Series doll now - all the character dolls have either Pure Neemo Flection (this one) or Emotion (more articulation but significantly smaller/thinner) bodies, so this makes her accurate to the series. And she’s not really meant to go with the Inuyasha doll, honestly; she’s my interpretation of another doll line that I love. And many of those dolls only have character made from the series, not all of them. There are a few exceptions like K-ON! and Love! Live! Sunshine! But mostly, it’s just one character like Nezuko and Asuna.

Size comparison to the 12″ collector doll and the Barbie size Kagome I made to go with him:

So for that reason as well, I am not going to make more Azone dolls lol. Or at least, I don’t plan to... we know how that goes LOL. But for right now, I’m content with my Azone Kagome! She may not be perfect, but I’m proud of myself for doing everything completely on my own (except the uniform). It makes her even more special!

[kaigarax]

Of Knowing and Understanding

Sabo x Reader

Quote: “Fall in love with all the little things someone does.”

We are reflections of everyone who we have loved.

Sabo, someone who had certainly loved and lost didn’t always understand the meaning of the phrase. But how could he have understood the saying when he lay unmoving upon a raft, uncertain of who he was?

The strange saying had followed the young Revolutionary through his adolescent and developmental years; almost like an unwanted companion that always lingered in the breeches of his mind. Of course, he knew what the saying meant but that wasn’t the exact same thing as understanding it.

Now, in the beginning of Sabo’s official adult years, he found himself maybe beginning to understand what the strange saying might have meant after meeting you.

At first, you had been just another girl in a town that would soon pass him by. Sabo had been sent to this town, in the middle of the East Blue, in hopes of discovering some information when he stumbled across you for the first time.

Information, especially for an underground revolution, was an utmost priority. A task assigned only to the highest of those in the Revolutionary Army. Rumors of the underground Secret Keeper being on this Island had passed through the ears of the Revolutionary Army which was how Sabo suddenly found himself on your home Island.

The rumor was shaky at best and truthfully Sabo wasn’t all too sure he would likely find who he was looking for in the first place. Especially here, on this backwater middle of nowhere Island. The Secret Keeper was supposedly a figure who knew much about the World Government and had escaped years before. Some believed they were still a member of the Navy while others theorised that it might be a Yonko crew member or Shishibukai. All rumors had something to do with a notorious group of people, the only question was exactly who?

There was no way someone as renowned and infamous would be hiding here. But who was he to defy direct orders?

Sabo had begun by a scout from the outside. Curiously watching the villagers of this small town to see if anything suspicious was happening. To see anyone that didn’t quite fit in and to cross names off his long list.

You happened to fall into the category of potentially suspicious people.

Or at least that was what he told himself when he decided to approach you first.

The Revolutionary made a show of (re)sailing into town that morning. The townspeople flocked to him, curious about the strange newcomer. He supposed that not many new people came in and out of the small town. Out of all the faces of the townspeople, Sabo noted that you were not among them.

It was early into the evening when Sabo entered the tavern.

Taverns were great places to gather information, likely a place where the Secret Keeper would hang out. Though Sabo doubted that there would be much juicy information here in this small town. It wasn’t likely for the tavern to be the place where he uncovered the identity of the Secret Keeper but it was the best starting place he could ask for.

Another newcomer to the town, that Sabo had learned of, sat in the back of the room with their hood up. The Revolutionary concluded that the cloaked figure wouldn’t be handed out in the small town for very long - which made him a candidate.

There was also the new bartender that calmly kept watch over everything. Something with control over the environment and happened to know everyone here. Another candidate to keep an eye on.

And lastly, there was you. You were the center of attention with your small little band. With your voice that draws the attention of everyone towards you and a smile that makes it seem as if the person you’re looking at is the only other person in the world. Despite what every logical bone in Sabo’s body was saying, he knew that for certain that he would have regretted it forever if he didn’t at least say hi.

You, in all your elegance and glory, smiled in a way that Sabo would never forget.

Getting to know you could have easily been written off as trying to gain the trust of the people living there. As an attempt to get more information. Sticking around you was another story.

Being around you made Sabo forget about all the troubles and pressures. Pushed them to the back of his mind.

He was suddenly just a clear headed young adult experiencing a summer romance. Not a commander in the Revolutionary Army.

Never once in Sabo’s life had he regretted joining the Revolutionary Army. The idea of fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves made the boy feel like his life was worth something. It got his blood pumping and kept him in shape. But sometimes it did feel like… too much. Like a rubber band stretched too far.

Sometimes it was nice to be someone who had forgotten about needing to find some secret mythical agent. It was nice to just sit on a picnic blanket on a date with someone you wanted to know more about. It was nice to be able to do something that made you happy without feeling guilt about it.

Sabo was never able to enjoy his time with you. Instead he had to keep an eye and ear away. Making sure nothing suspicious was happening elsewhere.

Being on the Island for a month had begun to dwindle the Revolutionaries’ determination. He had even started to question if this ‘Secret Keeper’ fellow was even real. There was no way that someone that important would have stayed on an Island this long without Sabo even finding a smidge of a clue.

Yet he had continued to stay.

---

“Hello?” You waved a hand in front of the blonde’s face, “anyone home?”

Sabo smiled, “no, but if you have a message for the owner of this body I’d be happy to leave one for you.”

“Oh? And is there a limit to the kind of messages that you deliver?” You asked, tapping your fingers together and taking a seat directly across from him.

Sabo swallowed.

You leaned in close, your face barely inches away from his own.

“And what kind of message do you plan on leaving, Miss. (Y/n)?” Asked Sabo.

“What kind of message would you like me to leave?” You asked, your lips ghosting over his own.

Sabo’s eyes fluttered closed.

There was a long moment of silence as Sabo waited. His breathing slowed and time seemed to freeze.

And he waited.

Then there was a snapping of a camera.

You laughed, “hey, it looks like you’re back, Sabo!” The boy snapped his eyes open with a flush on his cheeks. The printing of the photo ended with a click as you flashed Sabo a smile. You gave a quick look at the blank photo before shaking it up and down twice and tapping your fingers together.

“(Y/n).”

“Yes~” You asked, trying your best to feign innocence.

Sabo had smiled mischievously. leaning forward and towards you in an attempt to snatch the photo. You leaned back and ended up cornered between Sabo and the ground. He grabbed your hands and pinned them above your head.

“It’s not nice to take photos of other people without their permission.” playfully scolded Sabo.

You nodded.

“And are you going to do it again?”

“Maybe~”

Sabo’s free hand moved down to tickle you.

“S-Sabo! I’m sorry!” You exclaimed between laughs.

He paused, “and have you learned your lesson?”

“Yes! I promise!”

“And what won’t you do again?”

You pondered playfully, “humm?”

Sabo raised a brow.

“Okay! I won’t take photos of people without their permission!”

“Good.” hummed Sabo before snatching the photo of him from your hands. You pouted. It was cute.

You picked up your camera again, giving it a quick look to make sure that it hadn’t been damaged anyway before tapping your fingers together, “can I at least have that photo of you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“How do you know you don’t like it?” You smiled, “you haven’t even looked at it yet!”

“I don’t have to look at it to know I don’t like it. I was making a weird face when you took that photo!”

“It was a cute face~”

“You can have a photo of me when you ask nicely.”

“So then Sabo,” you tapped your fingers together, “can I have a photo of you?”

“How about we take one of us together?”

‘SNAP!’

The printing of the film ended quietly with a ‘tick’.

The sky looked absolutely beautiful today and Sabo just couldn’t resist snapping a photo. Beautiful sunsets and sunrises were common when one lived a life on the ocean but it didn’t mean that one just suddenly stopped enjoying the beautiful sights. In fact, it made the Revolutionary want to capture each one more. There was a special and different moment in every day that was worthy of being remembered. There was always a part that would forever linger in the recesses of your heart and mind.

Sabo pulled the photo out before shaking it slightly.

“You know, shaking the photo like that doesn't actually make the film come out faster.” said Koala, leaning on the ledge of the balcony above Sabo. The girl’s hair hung over her shoulders and framed her face in a playful way.

Sabo smiled, “I know.”

“If you know then why do you do it?”

“Hum?” Sabo tapped his fingers together, pondering for a moment, “I guess I don’t really know why I do it.”

“Well that’s lame.” Koala sighed, “so are you excited to head back to the East blue? It’s where your from right?”

Sabo nodded.

“How long has it been since you’ve been there?”

“Eight months.”

“Oh? What mission did you head to the East Blue for?”

“I was looking for someone.”

“Ah, right! The Secret Keeper!” Koala smiled, “did you ever find him? I can’t remember if you’ve told me already.”

Sabo shook his head, “no, I never found the Secret Keeper.”

“That’s a shame. You know, I don’t even think the Secret Keeper is real. Or at least they’re not a single person. But at least you got to leave base for a while. Weren’t you gone for two months when you went on that mission? It gets so mundane here sometimes, doing the same things over and over again.” Koala sighed, “I can’t wait until we get to head to the New World!”

“You’ve been there before, right?” Asked Sabo.

“Oh course! I’ve told you so many times before!”

“Would you tell me again?”

---

“What ya got there, (Y/n)?” Asked Sabo, taking a seat across from you.

You opened your mouth to answer but no words seemed to come out. You eyed your mug for a moment before smirking and saying, “guess.”

“Ale?”

“Nope.”

“Juice?”

“Wrong again.”

“Lemonaid?”

“Isn’t that a kind of juice?”

“Oh, I guess it is.” Sabo sighed, “well, I’m stumped. What is it?”

“You only guessed three times!” You exclaimed.

“And three is the total amount of guesses that I’m going to take. So tell me what’s in your mug.”

“Water.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Boring!”

You rolled your eyes playfully, “sometimes it’s the boring things that make all the difference.”

“So why are you drinking water out of a mug?”

You eyed Sabo curiously, “what’s wrong with drinking water out of a mug?”

“Well, most people prefer to drink water out of a glass. I mean,” Sabo pointed to a pair of individuals two seats over from where the two of you sat, “those two are drinking water out of glasses right now. Mugs are usually reserved for alcoholic beverages.”

“I guess it’s because my family was never able to afford glass cups. They’re rather expensive on this side of the world. And even when we could afford glass cups I suppose we had just grown used to drinking it out of mugs.” you tapped two fingers together before holding the mug out to Sabo, “do you wanna try it?”

“Sure.”

Sabo’s hand lingered against your own as you handed the mug to him. Your hand was softer than Sabo's but he supposed that was what came from a nice and comfortable life here in the East Blue.

Your eyes seemed to sparkle as you watched Sabo take a sip of the normal water.

---

“So what do you think, Sabo?” Koala asked.

Sabo didn’t respond.

“Sabo?”

“W-what?”

“I asked what you think.”

Sabo grinned sheepishly, “about what?”

“Nevermind.” Koala looked over to Sabo, “hey, what are you drinking?”

The Revolutionary smiled to himself, tapping his finger together, “just water.”

“In a mug?” Koala shrugged, “Anyhow, are you ready for tomorrow?”

---

Meeting you had always been such a strange moment in Sabo’s life. So many things had just seemed different. The world seemed to have operated differently from how he had believed it had. Even after just entering his official years as an adult, there was still so much change that had occured in his life.

The last time Sabo had suddenly felt displaced in a world where he belonged was when he first joined the revolutionary army. Just a boy floating in the middle of nowhere; uncertain of where he belonged. Someone who seemed to know so little about the world and understood even less of it.

Those two moments, while similar, were life changing in vastly different ways.

Sabo had known what kind of a life he wanted to live when he joined the Revolutionary Army. He had known where in life he wanted to go. With you, he didn’t understand everything he had been feeling. He didn’t know where his life might have been heading and where he wanted to end up. But he had finally understood something very important.

Perhaps he hadn’t understood it directly after meeting you, but it came to him eventually.

He knew it to be true because he had learned it from you.

We are reflections of everyone who we have loved and who we have lost.

Fall in love with all the little things someone does.

[datastate]

9, 19 (even tho I know already ehe) aaaand 32 :3

9: do you have a "type"? if so, what is it?

i have felt romantic attraction three (3) times in my entire life, so i fear there isn't yet enough data for this to be conclusive... but i will say! i've never fallen for a blonde person, fiction or otherwise. which is more than my good sibling kid of streets fame can say <3

for a more serious response though, my standards are depressingly low & i feel it's a bit amusing that so few people have really been considered in my mind as actual candidates for a romantic relationship - even before i develop romantic attraction, i've sometimes tried to decide if it's worth pursuing based on a few different factors... though i'm shy to put the details of that here. romance has never been a very important part of my life, but in terms of wanting a long-lasting relationship, it is the most viable option for most who do experience romantic attraction more often than i, and i'd want to be prepared if the question does come.

& for all the jokes, aesthetic attraction plays a very little part in whether or not i'd want someone as my partner. many people pursue me based solely on appearances, and it's certainly made clear to me how shallow it feels to have that as a significant point of interest.

19: describe your fashion sense. do you "dress gayly"?

HOW RUDE...!! ...i may dress gayly, but that is BESIDES THE POINT!!

aheem. in any case. my wardrobe is primarily filled with reds, blacks, and dark purple/blue hues. i typically prefer clothing with a more formal feel to them, often long-sleeved, and i rarely go without wearing my gloves! i do have a few short-sleeved shirts which have fanciful designs on them or where the sleeve hangs nicely... i need to get a new vest, though. and i'd love to buy more skirts (or loose pants that hang like skirts)

in the past, i used to wear much simpler styles. jeans with a leather jacket, hoodie, or a flannel. i still have my first girlfriend's flannel in my closet bwehehe... it's been there for years.

but of course...! when i'm at home, i typically opt for what is the most comfortable, so i end up reusing the same few outfits if i know i'm not heading out that day :P it's usually simple formal black pants & whatever soft shirt i have around.

as many of my friends have claimed... i dress & speak as though i'm... "a victorian dandy" ... devastating.

32: tell a funny story about something really gay you've done.

haggardly lights my cigarette... 🚬

you've already heard the story of my first gf and i taking literal weeks to kiss each other on the mouth, during which we'd meet after school every day in a secluded spot between school walls, just in front of the student council room... so i shall choose another!

when i was a young dyke, see, there was this lovely girl (soon to discover. they're not a girl. but that's unrelated) i'd met during summer courses (to get academic credits early) and quickly grew fond of. we had a bit of a thing going on here, and they eventually invited me to the "anime club" (& book club + the origami club that they started up. but that's unimportant right now) since i stayed after school anyhow in the library to finish work/etc. and they wished to spend more time with me.

when i went to the anime club, it was primarily their friend group. i was extremely nervous of being the only one who didn't know them, especially as i'd transferred late to the school; but they quickly warmed up to me, and throughout the year, we all came to realize we were gay or trans in some manner.

one person's realization was. through her crush on me, which i somehow didn't realize i was the cause of when i saw her instagram & announcement she was bisexual & her sudden uptick in calling me "honey."

the time it actually registered for me that "oh! this is not just a joke about everyone in this club being gay girls!" was when we finished the final episode of death note. after discussing it, she said that she loved my words & picked me up, twirled me around, and carried me out of the classroom "bridal style" -- my friend stole some flowers from one of the planters to put in our hair when she finally set me down in the courtyard. i was so embarrassed, but it was very fun <3

anyway. dn is gay but not for the reason people think. it's because i permanently associate it with one of the most flustering moments of my entire life, during which i accidentally put my face in her tits multiple times 👍

[xeilon]

Why? No! No! Valeria!

I've seen people speculating about who is her before, how she must have been a fellow Dax soldier to Teshin, who lost her life protecting the Orokin against the Tenno, or, perhaps one of the Golden Lords themselves, massacred, with him being able only to watch.

However, I don't think she would have been any of those things, in fact I don't think she died during the fights at all.

I came up with this theory while rewatching the Duviri Paradox trailer and especially from the comment made during the Devstream, that Teshin will be an important character to the Duviri plot.

So, I'm gonna start at the end, saying it now, evidence under the picture, that this lady IS Valeria herself, or at least the person who is meant to represent her in Duviri.

And I hear you saying: "You lost your mind!"

And all I have to say to this is "I've been non-stop thinking about a character that was name-dropped once, and was relevant for 10 full seconds with literally 0 information on her other that her name, FOR 2 WEEKS, OF COURSE I LOST MY FUCKING MIND. "

Now, having that covered, the promised evidence:

The Yuvan Theatre

The first time we hear about the Yuvan theater is during the War Within quest. Teshin describes it like this:

"A Yuvan theater, long abandoned. In ages past, I would have stood guard as the young and exotic were paraded through the mountain pass and marched by the viewing pane. They'd barter here, the Orokin. Withering and coughing as they prepared for their Continuity."

Part of the ceremony was described by Ordis like this:

"A harpish voice sings a song they've prepared in my honor. Its title the same as mine: 'Beast of the Bones'. I feel the crowd pulled inward, enraptured by the brutal verses, the sickening chorus."

Teshin, as a guard of the Golden Lords, would have had every chance to meet, talk, and have a close relationship with one of the singers of the theater, especially considering his own interests.

He gives us advice about our choices in a poem, one that he starts quoting even under the veil, he talks in riddles and verses, he believes having your mind be as sharp as your blade is a must, it's not at all out of character for him to be fascinated by this part of the Orokin's culture, and to seek out someone who can tell him all about it.

Faces of Duviri

Duviri is full of new, and old, faces, however only a few of those were important enough to appear in the trailers. Dominus Thrax, Bombastine, Teshin, and the singer who entertains Dominus.

In Duviri Dominus clearly meant to represent the Orokin, ruling above all, while everyone else is hoping for him to look at them favorably, and don't make their lives miserable. I believe Duviri is a world meant to torment those who entered it, most obviously by ridding the world of color.

The Drifter also has to parade around as the person, who he despises the most - Dominus - and Teshin? Well, he has to listen to the singing from far away.

(Interesting how the only 2 "places" that naturally have color in Duviri are Teshin's cave, and around the opera singer.)

(Even more interesting, is that if you go close to the Lone Guardian in a Conjunction Survival mission, you can hear her singing.)

The young and exotic

Another interesting thing in Duviri is how the citizens are the ones who look like the Orokin. Blue skin, one arm longer than the other, clothes inspired by Ancient Greece...

If Valeria looked like the singer in Duviri, then she must have been a perfect candidate for Continuity, wouldn't she?

And when the Veil started working on Teshin, the first thing it reminded him of were the lines of the Litany of the Dax that tell you to be patient, and do nothing, and just see how things turn out.

The Veil

A strange thing about the Veil is that it doesn't make you focus on a bad memory, but it very specifically turns memories "inside out".

When the Drifter got theirs the Veil would have had a much easier time reminding us of all those time when the Lotus abandoned us, when Margulis lied to us, but no, it instead started rewriting our memories of Margulis, to fit better with Ballas' fairy tale.

This tells me that memories seen by the Veil are fake, even if they are based on truth. However, Teshin was fighting against the influence of it, so there's a good chance that what he says is based on truth.

But... what does he say exactly?

Why? No! No! Valeria!

Why? Why would he ask "why" like that when the Tenno are killing the Dax and the Orokin around him left and right. There isn't really a question there, and even if there was, wouldn't that be angry? That "why" just sound... I don't know... not one said in the middle of the battlefield, but when something catches you completely off guard.

The whole thing sounds more like "I refuse to believe what you just said to me" rather than "how dare you kill her / oh no, she's dead".

"I-I can... see her... Tenno... why???"

Now, this is where things turn VERY good. Can you HEAR the amount of focus put on the word SEE?

This line to me obviously was said when the Tenno killed the Orokin, that used Valeria's body as their own. But something was out of place, which is that Teshin associates her with VOICE, the opera singer who he listened to for years while on duty, and he knows when "she" dies that he only SEES her at that moment.

He is confused at that memory, he was confused when it happened, knowing that Valeria was dead, yet seeing her die again, in the hands of the Tenno. And that's what the Veil can use, turning him against us. However, just like how the Drifter could tear down their mask, because of the absurdity of what they were hearing, that Ballas was the one who loved and saved them, well, Teshin too knew and felt how absurd all of it was, the anger and broken trust in the Orokin, hearing the voice of the one who gave Valeria the Kuva clashing with false memories.

And so he broke free, just to then fall into the Duviri, where a familiar tune started playing in that very moment.

[kyogre-blue]

Djdjjd oh yeah I remember that, I squinted at Diluc like "are you trying to throw me off the trail? Even if it weren't p obvious it's Venti, I'd literally just need to pick up a book and see the discrepancy?" Then I remembered that this is Mr "between eating a cryo slime alive or joining the fatui I'd prefer to be crushed to death by a meteorite" So subtle is, hm, shall we say, Not his middle name. But! If Diluc could indeed be subtle, that could have been the set-up to a diversion so you'd start looking into to what Diluc may be hiding instead of any possibly-the-wind-god-in-disguise candidates! (yes I know it's a typo but I like yarn-spinning :3)

Oh glad to know there was buildup to Azhdaha bc when I played Zhongli's second quest I did feel like the dragon came all but completely out of left field haha... like was I supposed to feel sad when I didn't get the backstory until the very end and Zhongli was so unemotional abt it? Like yeah I know Zhongli's Just Like That but idk, Venti's desesperate "no, listen to me!" still lives rent free in my brain (like yeah he literally says "you don't have to listen to me" in the end cutscene and it's a direct contradiction so they changed the text in the subtitles, but the delivery was amazing. Venti sounded so pained, I'm not even mad about them leaving the soundbit in) and compared to that Azhdaha just felt like an inferior copycat of Dvalin :/ ik I have the bad habit of comparing every region to Mond, but...

Also I had seen a lot of fans talking abt Guizhong so I came out of the quick-start lantern rite expecting her to at least get mentioned on his story quests lmfao, silly me. Though I may have just been inatentive bc there was like. 0 incentive in archon quest to explore liyue and I had been actively holding back on exploring bc I felt salty about being used like a cheap rag by EVERYONE throughout the ENTIRETY of the archon quest (except for Xiao and the adepti I guess, thank u funny pompous supernatural animals u kept it real) so I was like "you're asking me how do I find this region without an absentee archon? well I wouldn't be able to tell you bc I'M NOT GONNA FIND OUT. Bitch." I feel a bit dumb though because I DID do The Secret of Nantianmen before the Zhongli quests but I have absolutely no recolection of the infodump. Like, straight up, reading through the screenshots with the weird blue haired girl and not getting even deja vu. I remebered the tree bc it's blue-veined and huge and there was a hecking seelie I lost like twice on the branches, but not anything abt the dragon rip.

Djdjdj fair, I have heard THINGS about inazuma and raiden ei (especially from my sister, who's behind me in story despite starting several months earlier bc she's vehemently avoiding inazuma lmfao) but idk, I guess I just like picking up the shiny bits and holding them to the light. Sure, there's stuff I dislike about every region! But there's stuff I like about every region too! I try to focus on that :) reading your posts is super interesting for a more critical perspective though! (And yknow it's actually refreshing for someone to actually give the sideye to Zhongli, instead of the 1000th "haha venti cares more about getting drunk than Mondstadt" abyssmal take)

Wow though, the archon quest ending without removing the sakoku decree is REALLY awful though—I was already feeling like they were pushing it too much by forcing you to do both raiden story quests to unlock literally ANY inazuma characters, but they're pushing it even MORE? And is it me or does Inazuma have, aside from NPC-itis, a subset of the same problem in liyue that it's hard to get attached to the characters? You're basically forced at gunpoint to get close to Ayaka, and Thoma left a. rather bad first impression, shall we say, by leaving you stranded in Ritou with no way to get out. and by act 3 we've barely even met the major players in the war, like Gorou (I like him bc he's fluffy and obviously cares abt his men, and I've had him for a couple of months so I was excited abt finally meeting him, but still) Sara and Kokomi. I was more interested in Kazuha bc I thought the prologue did a fairly good job setting up who he is, what he wants, what he believes in (plus I outright cackled at his intro by beidou djdjdj) but he's literally not even relevant in his own region's archon quest? Straight up vanished until the very end of act 2? Why?? And now you tell me that literally none of what he tells us in the prologue ends up ever being relevant? like what the heck was hoyo thinking :/ that many red herrings with no payoff should be illegal

I have been told (cannot confirm) that Zhongli actually emotes in other languages, but the EN dub is... hahaha.

Anyway, there's a few things here that I've thought about a lot.

One, Genshin has a really bad habit of only giving you context AFTER the climax, which renders the entire quest preceding it just floating meaninglessly in the wind and leaves the actual climax with no impact cause you haven't gotten the context for it yet. Venti's quest is like that (as much as I enjoy it), Zhongli's quests are largely like that, Inazuma archon quest is like that, etc. This is a really obvious tell for the writers being too amateur to pace/structure their story correctly, the writers having no time to do a second draft to fix the pacing issues, or both.

Two, Azhdaha is a massive writing disaster not just in terms of the quest's pacing (let's spend the entire time on tracking down some miners... what is buildup or foreshadowing), but especially in terms of its message and implications. A developer interview video explicitly says that Azhdaha is meant to be a nature vs human progress aesop. And it ends with... "nature" (Azhdaha) being sealed away while suffering endlessly ("A thousand years of pain!") and going "no, you're right, I totally deserve to be sealed away, do it," while the humans learn nothing and face no repercussions for the damage they have done for now generations. (Seriously, there are multiple instances where Liyue's mining caused supernatural problems. It just keeps happening.)

Is this how you do a nature aesop. Is it really.

There is also a throughline in Genshin about the gods doing third party racism on behalf of humans. You get to Azhdaha and he is basically tortured by reckless human expansion and yet it's all his fault and he's the only one who faces consequences. You get the oni in Itto's quest, who have to make bizarre concessions to live with humans. You get the vishaps being a sentient race and the original native population of Teyvat, but due to the gods, they've been forced into the underground and mutated due to contact with the Abyss. Even Dvalin, while it's still okay with him because that's not the focus of his story, we never get the people of the city acknowledging him as more than a monster, which would have been nice, since the whole thing was kicked off by them rejecting him.

I really don't like it because people don't need to be coddled like this. They should be made aware of their mistakes and learn to be better.

Three, Inazuma is a hilarious mess.

See, every nation's story is about the archon. The archon is the most important character and the one we're supposed to care about the most. They're the heavy weight banner that's both meta as fuck AND emotionally appealing. Venti is obvious, but even Zhongli is like... the one actual character in Liyue, who is around the most and has the most complexity and impact.

But then we get to Inazuma. Ei is the final boss, so we can't buddy up with her. We don't even see her except in two boss battles, and then she dumps out her backstory in a poorly integrated animation and the story ends.

And then, the very next thing, is we go on a date with her around town. She likes sweets! She doesn't know what fiction is! She needs you, the player, you stud, to teach her about life! Isn't she so waifu?

And a good chunk of the player base went, "excuse me, what the hell."

The writers really wanted you to go "so maybe she caused a civil war and untold suffering with her negligence and selfishness, but have you considered... I love her??" And that's fine and normal. Fans do that, I do that. Insert Legend of Galactic Heroes meme.

The problem was that the writers did not bother writing Ei into the archon quest enough for people to feel anything for her. They did the opposite, they wrote a whole lot about how much all these NPCs are suffering. So naturally, what people care about is those NPCs and their suffering.

Which Ei's story quests entirely skip over. It's just never addressed.

This gets pretty funny if you look at Sumeru because the writers were obviously aware of the issue, and they tried to patch over it.

You see Nahida a lot in the Sumeru archon quest. She's around for a bunch of the stuff going on. The thing is, Nahida is SO able to move around and do her own thing that it begins to cause dissonance with the narrative they give her (CAGED BIRD METAPHOR). We're concerned later that she got "caught" by Dottore, but this doesn't correlate with freeing her from the Sanctuary of Surasthana. I believe we don't even discuss it until after Dotorre? Because before that, she's just too able to do stuff, so it doesn't really feel like she's locked up.

But the Sages sealing her is then treated like their worst crime (even though they just inherited the situation lol). It's not that they're encouraging people go insane from forbidden knowledge or causing so many scholars to have emotional breakdowns from the pressure or mistreating the desert people. Oh no, we're against them because they were mean to Nahida. But Nahida... was cool with it basically? She could travel around, she could talk to people, she was too fine for this to be impactful even if logically it wasn't nice.

Don't even ask why we're so set on making her the archon ruler. I don't think we even ask her if she wants to do that.

The writers made Nahida present in the story a whole bunch, but they didn't really make her a good character. If anything, her presences raises a whole lot of questions while not contributing much.

(It worked tho, people are totally up in arms about their "radish daughter.")

It's similar for everyone else in Sumeru. They're around a whole lot. But the emotional core of the story is still pretty much entirely NPCs. It's Dunyarzad, it's Setaria, it's the kid whose keeper grandpa was taken, it's Rahman. They're the ones who actually care about what's going on and emote about it.

People say Sumeru is better writing, but imo it's just longer. The core issues are pretty much all the same, just dragged out and more tedious.

[the-teddy-bear-butch]

and here I am again, being a menace in your inbox. 1, 3, 4, 6, 11, 13 for run away (crying to your soul)

Hello again! Fun fact, I fully believe this fic to be my worst fic even though it’s my most popular 🤪

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I saw a TikTok about Steve getting Vecna’d and his song being Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears For Fears > I started thinking about Vecna songs > what the fuck would Robin’s be? > oh Robin would be such a good candidate to be Vecna’d actually > looking for Robin gets Vecna’d fics and not finding many > “fine I’ll do it myself” > spontaneously writing my first fanfic fucking ever and proceeding to dive face first into the worst case of brainrot I’ve ever had to date. Hallelujah

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

Cheating again, this is technically in an unfinished chapter so sneak peek ig hehe

Nancy had revenge tattooed on her heart, black ink that sank deep into the muscle, turning it hard and blackened and cold. Her wrath was all encompassing. A bullet, chilled lead, sat heavy in her pocket, carved with one, singular name: Vecna. She would kill him for what he had done to her hometown, but especially for hurting Robin. And she would survive the encounter on ice cold rage and spite alone.

In conclusion: Nancy Wheeler shoot me please <33

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

Again dialogue is one of my weak points help omfg

“There is a suspicious number of love songs,” she teased.

Nancy hid her face in her hands.

“Robbie—“ she whined, cutting herself off. She seemed to be struggling for words.

“‘Crush On You’ by The Jets? ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ by ABBA? ‘True Blue’ by Madonna?” she listed, wiggling her eyebrows. Nancy dissolved into a flustered mess.

“It really seems like you’re trying to say something, princess.”

She was so certain of it, Robin realized. Their shared moments over the past few days played over and over in her mind, and she came to a pair of conclusions.

She liked Nancy Wheeler. And Nancy Wheeler liked her back.

“Robbie, I’m going to kill you,” Nancy groaned, shoving the other girl away.

Robin smirked, flopping back on the bed.

“I was hoping for another k word,” she teased.

I really like writing these bitches just being soft for each other. Silly gay people. They fill me with cuteness aggression and I’m shaking them violently

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

Well for one, this is legitimately the first fic I’ve ever written. I spontaneously hopped on the fic writing train late late late July this year with this fic, and it’s still ongoing. I think it’s messy and the pacing is weird and it’s unbeta’d but it’s kind of charming like that I guess, and I like to think you can kind of see how I fell into the characters and developed my writing style as the story goes on? Idk, it has the same energy as ugly-cute animals, like pugs.

11: What do you like most about this fic?

Stop making me be nice to this flaming piece of garbage 🔫

But in all seriousness, like I said, I think you can track my development as a fic writer over the past several months, and I really enjoy the dynamic between Robin and Nancy through this whole thing. I also think my music choices are very Big Brain and Correct.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

I have an unofficial fic playlist that I used just for writing vibes, as well as the mixtape Nancy made for Robin in one of the later chapters! Basically a lot of 80’s music and Maya Hawke with a couple other songs sprinkled in because they were favorites at the time or just the vibes were fitting. Specific shoutout to “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat as Robin’s Vecna song, and “Seventeen” by Janis Ian being runner up. I did a bit of research in queer music artists of the 80’s because it was important to me that, whether or not she knew it, Robin’s Vecna song was by a queer person/band! Also special shoutouts to this playlist and this playlist, which are just favorite songs and work really well for me to write to. (I have the best music taste, actually, btw, and I don’t have an ego about it—)

[dallasareaopinion]

Happy Memorial Day and a hodge podge of hodge podge

First of all I am as guilty as anyone about why we celebrate Memorial Day. I do know some who will spend the day in remembrance of our veterans, however we seem to forget what the day is all about. Many of us myself included will be with family, friends doing out door activities that have more to do with celebrating the first weekend of holiday summer than paying tribute to all those who gave their lives for our freedom. So I do want to take this moment to ask anyone reading this to stop and have a moment of silence remembering them especially any family members. Also do not forget to thank a veteran at all times, yet especially during this weekend for their service.

I do hope you get a chance to spend time with family and friends because I always believe the people in your life should be important to you. And if you get a chance at any gatherings you attend to ask the host to dedicate a moment of silence and prayer for our fellow citizens who sacrificed all for us to enjoy this and every weekend.

We were driving across Texas again for the 200th time it feels like (and I don’t think I am exaggerating)  and it was getting to be sunset. This was right past Abilene headed east. And it really struck me the color of the sky or general ambience of twilight or just the general configuration of the light. I do not know how to describe it, yet looking around seemed somewhat rare. It was definitely still light out, but the color of the sky or the general looking through the atmosphere was so unique. It wasn’t hazy, yet the wind had been blowing the whole day so there was quite a bit of dust in the air which I think leant something to the color of the day as it came to a close. It was blue, but not sky blue, darker, but not dark blue. I love to drive so I have seen quite a bit in my travels, yet this was a very unique color that permeated around us. I even mentioned to the better half to look around since she had been reading at the moment. She acknowledged the uniqueness and went back to reading so maybe it isn’t that big of a deal, but for about 15-20 minutes before true dusk set in and after the glaring afternoon soon this moment seemed very special to me. I wish I was a color palette aficionado so I could give you a reference, however no such luck. It wasn’t bright, too light yet it was light and surreal. You could still see for a distance, but it the sun did not feel as if part of the picture. Anyway as life goes on and in your travels you run across moments like I had. It never hurts to have a few moments so unique in your life that it makes you want to drink it all in and keep it in your memory.

Okay I am too the point where I do not know what to say about the election. I fear Trump may win, not because he is the better candidate, but because the economy is hurting people much worse than Biden realizes. People are beginning to feel the ravages of inflation to the degree where they do not want to spend or are having trouble paying their bills. It is subtle now in the national press, but out in the heartland people are hurting. You can see it in people’s eyes when they shop. They are still shopping which surprises me. This maybe because they do not want to deal with the reality of where they stand financially I do not know. Yet if you look closely you can tell the stressors are developing. Trump was President at a good time until the pandemic came along and people remember that. What the do not remember is he had nothing to do with it. And yet these same people are blaming Biden for the current problems. There are too many intricacies involved with our economy for any President to have immediate impact on the economy. Sure there are some things they can do, or try to use political power to get Congress or the Fed to enact laws or policies that have some effect on the economy, but the nuances of that are too much for many people. What affects the pocket book is very straight forward to the average Joe. Can I eat and can I pay my bills? And can I get what I want when I want it? I won’t get into the depths of people need to plan for their day to day lives along with their future, but in our immediate gratification culture when the dollar gets stretched, someone  needs to be blamed and Biden is starting to be the end result of the blame game.

Honestly I am not a fan of how he is handling the economy, but Trump still scares the crap out of me. And worst of all, people are forgetting he will kowtow to the uber rich in any real policy he invokes as President such as more tax breaks for them than you. I ask how many people remember Trump’s tax cuts expire for most of the country in the next couple of years except for corporations and the ultra rich. And he just made a call out for oil companies to give him a billion and he will throw away Biden’s green energy initiatives. And none of the people that support him realize in the long run how much this will hurt them. I am not going to vote for Biden or Trump, someone needs to do something different and fast or are worst nightmares are beginning to materialize. I did see a headline where the Libertarians booed him at their convention so it does make you wonder if he has the popularity to win over everyone not a Democrat or Republican to obtain enough votes to win, yet if Biden doesn’t get credit for doing something for the economy soon, Trump may win votes due to general ignorance.

And talking about general policy issues, I do not think I ever finished my 2024 platform for a fictious third party or independent bid. I need to go back and revisit where I left off and finish that up if needed.

And yes sports fans it is fun being in Dallas right now. Today is Sunday May 26 and the Stars won last night to even up their series. And even though headed on the road, they still have a good chance to move on. And the Mavericks play at home tonight after taking two in Minnesota.  And there are quite a few Mavericks fans over celebrating if you ask me. We are one minute away from being down two games to zero and in dire straights. I certainly hope the Mavericks come out with serious intensity tonight and play like they are down two games because momentum is fickle and we do not want to give any to the Timberwolves. It is so hard for the players game after game once you start getting this close to a championship. Fans are going crazy expecting their team to win, yet for the players every step you get closer to the dream, the next won is harder to make. So sure being up two games sounds great, but winning that third then fourth are twice as hard. The intensity and the strength needed to win the next game grows exponentially. The players and teams that understand this are the ones that win the championships. I hope the Mavericks and the Stars are at that point right now.

Time for dinner and to start gearing up for those said games.

Cheers