#like just tell me its not achievable instead of screwing it up
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uh oh. i can feel the ‘i need to dye my hair’ brainworms creeping up on me again
#the talkies#idk what i wanna go for though#im just sick of my hair being so coppery#mom said if i wanna go for the sun-bleached brown look ill need to go to a salon#but i had such a bad experience last time that i swore i would never spend money at a salon again#i literally asked for chocolate brown hair with no red understones#and i got dark dark brown hair with plently of red undertones#and paid $300 for the privilege lmao#i was so unhappy with it#like just tell me its not achievable instead of screwing it up#anyways will i attempt to box-dye my hair a few shades lighter? remains to be seen
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Scullery Maid
INFO: Tangerine x feminine!reader, domestic fluff, approx. 1k words
A/N: he has bewitched me!! he's living in my mind rent-free and I can't get him to leave!!! 😩 also YES this was inspired by the "honey where's my super suit?" scene from the incredibles (will gladly write more for tangerine and wife btw)
Find my masterpost here!
Your husband likes to refer to you as his “trophy wife”.
It’s a term of endearment, mostly. He loves nothing more than showing you off any opportunity he gets, not just waxing poetic about how gorgeous you are, but also praising your achievements and your brilliance to the high heavens.
He likes to spoil you as if you were a real trophy wife, too. He’s often away for work, but always comes home with flowers and other gifts. Your walk-in closet has a whole section dedicated to luxury bags that have only been taken out to wear once or twice. You have more jewellery than you know what to do with. Your shoe collection looks like it belongs to a millipede with an expensive taste.
(Sometimes you think your husband is a bit like a bird, bringing home fancy trinkets just to impress his lady.)
With the plush life you’re living, only working because you want to, you might have most people fooled that you were really a trophy wife. But trophy wives don’t spend their Saturdays washing blood out of their husbands’ suits, you think.
You don’t feel like a trophy wife with the sleeves of your sweater rolled up to your elbows. Feet shoved into faded Momonga house slippers. Glasses on and unwashed hair pulled back into a messy bun. Not a “messy-but-cute” bun. No, just messy. You feel more like a glorified maid.
You run the shirt under cold water, but the blood is dark, old, and crusted. Silently you pray that the hydrogen peroxide will do its work. If you can’t manage to get the stain out, you’re going to have to take it to the dry cleaner. You’re always rotating through the ones you visit: you don’t want them to start asking questions if you bring in the fifth bloodstained shirt that month.
From somewhere else in the house, you hear your husband call out your name.
“Over here!”
Padded footsteps on the hardwood floor make their way over. He quickly appears in the doorway to the scullery while fixing the cufflinks on his pristine white shirt. You turn off the faucet, leaning against the edge of the sink with your hip as his soaked button-down lay crumpled within the basin. His hair is wet and slicked back. He just got out of the shower. “Do you know where my red Cesare Attolini suit is?”
You give him a blank stare. “What?”
“The red one, love.”
You rub the bridge of your nose, slightly lifting your glasses, eyes screwing shut with a frown as you try to remember. (As if you even know which suit he’s talking about.) “Uh… I think it’s at the dry cleaner’s?”
He blinks. “Which one?”
“Baby, I’m not keeping track of every suit you own,” you tell him as you fix your glasses on your face, not even trying to hide your exasperation.
He puts his hands up defensively. “Just asking. I’m packing for Tokyo.”
You sigh inwardly. Tokyo. It’s a “business” trip, of course. Crossing your arms, you slightly tilt your head to the side and ask, “What time’s your flight?”
“At ass o’clock in the morning,” he grumbles, mirroring your stance. Your husband still hasn’t crossed the threshold onto the tile floor of the scullery. Likely because he doesn’t want his West Ham socks to get wet. He clears his throat and shakes his head. “It’s at 3.30, I’ll go pick up my brother around 2.”
“Early dinner and early to bed, then?” you ask, crossing the distance between you and meeting him at the doorway instead.
He smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Sounds perfect.”
You already know that he’s not going to get much sleep before his flight. You’ve seen this routine play out more times than you care to count. But you don’t say anything, instead choosing to enjoy the moment while you can. Reaching out to fix the collar of his shirt, you ask, “Did you settle on names for the job?”
His face lights up. “I did. I’m Tangerine, my brother is Lemon.”
It’s hard to suppress the snort. So you don’t. “What, like the fruit?”
“Yeah. Tangerines are sophisticated. And my brother is sour, like a lemon.”
A recent memory crosses your mind and you place your hands flat on his chest. “Did you pick “Tangerine” because of Lunar New Year?”
He casts his eyes to the side, the way he does when he’s about to lie. “No.”
“Right.” You don’t have the energy to tease him about it, but you take enough satisfaction in knowing that he would get riled up if you did. Instead, you nod and give him a smile. "I like it," you say before leaning in to kiss him. “It’s cute.” You taste the mint toothpaste on his breath and feel his arms wrap around you.
He hums into the kiss. “Always happy to win the approval of my beautiful wife.”
Only your husband — known as Tangerine, for now — would look at you in your current state and still want to carry you off to the bedroom. With a low and sultry voice, you whisper to him, “You know how you could win even more of my approval?”
A hand moves to give your butt a playful squeeze, and he’s already kissing the underside of your jaw. “Enlighten me, love,” he murmurs against your skin.
“Buy me Momonga merch when you’re in Japan.”
Tangerine pulls away with a disappointed look on his face.
“There’s this limited edition plushie that’s sooo cute. They don’t sell it anywhere else, I already checked. Please, baby? Pretty please?”
He sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, of course. Whatever.”
You grin, knowing you’re getting a suitcase full of Momonga merchandise when he’s back. You put your arms around his shoulders. “Good.” You give him a peck on the lips. “Were you done packing? There’s something super important we still have to do.”
“And that is?”
“I think we need to test our new mattress again before you go. You know, just to be sure.”
“You’re right. That is super important.”
While you let Tangerine practically drag you to the bedroom, you vaguely remember that you left his shirt in the sink. Ah well. That’s a problem for later.
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Overthinking Sylvie’s Strategy
So, I know the Gio&Molly vs Sylvie fight in Ep2 was mostly about getting the protagonists to show off their personalities and powers . . . but I think if you read (way too far) into the strategy Sylvester uses it tells you a surprising amount about him.
Start at the start. Sylvie overhears our heroes talking about how they’re villains. Instead of sneak attacking them while he has the drop on them, he starts a dialog, to confirm they’re actually bad guys (and maybe to satisfy his own desire for drama and/or indulge in his sense of invulnerability). Gio responds by confirming he’s a criminal, calling Sylvie a kid and initiating combat.
It’s kind of overshadowed by what he does later in the fight, but the doc is pretty reasonable early on; I get the feeling he’d have been even more willing to talk things out if dealing with Indus’ stupidity and Mera’s manipulation hadn’t shortened his already-short fuse and made him Done with Trying To Talk To People.
Sylvie’s first move is to use sleep pollen like he did with Indus earlier; unlike all his other attacks, he doesn’t call its name when he uses it, probably to minimize the chances that his targets will figure out what it does in time to stop it. This is a 10/10 opener, with the potential to harmlessly incapacitate enemies and end fights before they start.
When that fails thanks to Molly’s quick thinking and Gio’s creativity, he follows it up with Counting Sheep. This is another solid decision, and unlike the last one, it actually works out for him: his minions swiftly swarm and overwhelm his opponents.
Pictured: Flawless Victory.
Note that – as far as I can tell – Sylvie has basically won at this point. Molly and Giovanni have no way to stop the sheep before they nibble and poof them into unconsciousness; all he has to do is stay the course.
And then our boy screws up. He banishes his own army – or maybe incinerates them, the animation isn’t clear on that point – in order to confront a twelve-year-old girl with her worst nightmare, while having no idea what that nightmare is or how he’d be able to use it.
He also picks this point to sacrifice his vantage point, achieving no obvious gain. I don’t think Jello did this on purpose, but it fits very well that Sylvie literally gives up the high ground for no reason – while forcing his opponents onto a different patch of high ground – at the same time he’s metaphorically doing that.
Let me psychoanalyze the psychoanalyst: what the hell is the good doctor thinking when he unleashes (almost literal!) hell on the adorable cosmic brownie? What’s going through his head when he passes up sure victory for the chance to re-traumatize a child?
Well, it’s possible that Counting Sheep drains stamina faster than it appears to (though he doesn’t seem winded after using it). It’s also possible that he’s worried about one of them using ranged attacks on him, and feels the need to end the fight ASAP. The magic system in EE is intentionally kind of loose and vibes-y, so there’s an endless list of possible excuses.
That said, I think the most likely answer to “what was he thinking?” is “absolutely nothing”. This whole thing looks like a (legitimately!) clever synergy-exploiting strategy he thought up a while back, rarely or never got to see in action, and is just unreflectively executing on even though a more humane approach would have straight-up let him win.
I didn’t notice this until the Youtube comments pointed it out, but I think it’s neat Gio never calls Sylvie a kid again after he finds out the doc has issues with it (except that one time he does it to signal that he’s putting on a show for the cops). He’ll mock you mercilessly, and maybe steal your stuff, but our glorious pink-haired overlord will not use That Word You Dislike to describe you once he knows you dislike it.
Anyway, back to the fight. Sylvie tries to negotiate with his prisoners in the Flame Vortex, since apparently his Psychology PhD never taught him that confronting people with their literal worst nightmares might make them unreasonable and/or push them to extremes. Gio escapes with Molly; Sylvie doubles down on the Nightmare Fuel; Gio responds by thwacking a ball of yarn at him.
This is another point at which – again, as far as I can tell – Sylvie has basically won. The fact that Giovanni resorted to such weird and desperate measures suggests Gio & Molly don’t have any better ways to attack or escape from their current position. All the alleged genius needs to do is take cover behind an exhibit and let his summons finish the criminals. Instead, he cancels his own winning move (again!) so he can summon Dr Beefton, escalating (again!!) in a way that doesn’t actually help him (again!!!).
Like, seriously, what was the plan here? There are a lot of words you could use to accurately describe Sylvie’s colleague/alter-ego/fursona, but ‘agile’ and ‘nimble’ aren’t among them; if Gio and Molly had decided to hold onto their high ground on general principles after Sylvie (apparently) fainted, or if they’d sprinted off in different directions instead of trying to stand their ground, what would he have done then?
From here on out, the beef revolves around Beefton. This tells us very little about Sylvie, except maybe in terms of how much frustration he’s repressing, and what being powerful means to him.
Pictured: What Peak Performance Looks Like
So, what does all this say about Sylvie? He’s clever, willing to hear people out, and merciful when he can get away with it; however, he makes dumb or pointlessly cruel decisions under pressure, and follows a prescribed plan instead of adapting to the enemy; will escalate when surprised or provoked, even when it’s counterproductive, choosing moves which feel strong instead of ones which make sense. In summary, he’s the world’s smartest dumbass, and (at least in this part of the story) acts more like a stereotypical cop than the actual cop character.
He’s getting better quickly, though. I think a lot of this is symptomatic of him being new-ish to fights, and especially new to fights where people get hurt and/or which last more than one move . . .
Yeah, it shows, and not in a good way.
. . . since he gets more flexible and responsive when fighting Mera . . .
Pictured: Character Growth
. . . though, uh, apparently not enough for him to realize that he could demoralize her and/or broker a truce by offering to remove her Epithet with the amulet if he wins.
Out-reasoned by the tweenager; that’s embarrassing.
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I posted this as a reply to someone on YouTube under a video about the 8 Passengers situation. Thought I'd share it here because why not.
I feel like I should put a trigger warning here as this post discusses child abuse, but now that I think of it my whole blog probably needs a trigger warning...
Post:
I was also badly abused growing up and this is something I'm just now starting to come to terms with. My parents were divorced when I was five and my father claims he tried to get custody of my siblings and I, but the truth is he didn't want to be a single father and having three little kids to take care of would have gotten in the way of his drinking and partying lifestyle. I never knew my mothers side of the family because she's pretty much been estranged from them since before I was born. But I remember when my sister died from a drug overdose the whole side of my dads family were suddenly so sad about what we went through growing up and would say things like "We tried to give you some sense of normalcy. We always invited you to Christmas and the holidays." As if they were doing us some kind of favor for letting us come to family gatherings.
The worst part is I didn't have to wonder if they knew. I knew they knew because I remember being very vocal about what was happening to us our entire childhood. But every time I tried to tell someone it seemed like they would either turn away and pretend they didn't hear me or make some kind of joke like "Oh yeah, that's your mother. She's crazy. Ha ha ha." or a dismissive "Well, she's the only mother you're ever gonna have, so you gotta love her." or what I feel is one of the most damaging things you can put in an abused child's mind, "I know it may not seem like it, but she loves you in her own way." No one seemed to be worried back then.
The other worst part is instead of being understanding about the ways the abuse has effected us and maybe trying to help us get our lives together, these same people who turned a blind eye to it now have the audacity to judge us for not being "successful", their definition of success being having a great career, lots of money, nice house, nice car, nice marriage with three perfectly behaved, straight A students. We're supposed to be perfect like all of them pretend to be. Just supposed to magically not be affected by any of the abuse and neglect we suffered growing up so that they can pretend it never happened so they don't have to feel guilty about the fact that they knew we were living in a house with a raging alcoholic without food and clean clothes half the time and they did nothing about it. It wasn't *their* responsibility to protect us. Now that we're adults its *our* responsibility to fix ourselves and stop "playing innocent", blaming the family and making them look bad. The only reason we can't is obviously because we're just too inherently defective. Because of course we are. We're "just like our mother". We have her genes. And the kicker? I'm constantly told to "rise above my raising" while also being told I'm "screwing up" my niece because I can't afford to take her out to eat all the time and shit like that. Literal mind fuck.
And yet, the most bizarre part is, the more progress I make in my recovery, as I have been diagnosed with several mental health issues including a severe anxiety disorder (AvPD), the harder and harder they seem to want to come down on me. Like it's not enough that I've spent years in therapy trying to get my life straight, that I'm raising AND homeschooling my sisters child, whom she abandoned long before she passed away. It's not enough just that I survived that hell and I'm still here and I'm not an addict or in jail or on the street. I'm just not getting better fast enough, and that annoys them. They don't want to hear about my recovery because they don't want to acknowledge how fucked up I actually am, and how much work its taking to even try to achieve some sense of normalcy, let alone have a "successful" life and career, according to their standards. My very existence is a stain on the security blanket of lies they wrap themselves up in so they can sleep at night. And they really don't like that.
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Giraffe's Eye View | Prehistoric Planet REVIEW (and Rant+)
Hey there people of today and robots of tomorrow! It is I, Clark, here with a fun fact about myself.
I.
LOVE.
DINOSAURS!
Granted, so does everybody else on the planet, but how can you not? They've been a part of our imagination for so long, an enigma of time we can never fully understand, a chapter of a long forgotten history when titans trekked across the planet, and the inspiration for hundreds of great movies, television shows, video games, comic books, and theme park rides! Ask anyone and they'll tell you the exact moment they fell in love with dinosaurs. For some it was seeing the original Jurassic Park in cinemas back in 1993, shaking in their seats as the T-Rex erupted from its enclosure! For others it was when catching reruns of Walking with Dinosaurs on TV, rooting for Big Al as he desperately tried to survive a harsh world. Maybe Barney stole your heart when you were younger, following him into the Land of Make Believe where he'd remind you that any dream is achievable. Or maybe you're into really obscure crap like Hallmark's made-for-TV movie Dinotopia, the 90s cartoon Denver the Last Dinosaur, Phil Tippet's stop-motion short Prehistoric Beasts, any of the follow ups to Walking with Dinosaur, there's so much dinosaur media out there that it'd take me 65 million years to cover them all! It's why today I'll be covering just one.
I remember how frustrated I was when I first saw trailers for Prehistoric Planet. Not because it didn't look good. On the contrary, it looked incredible! The effects felt like the natural evolution of Walking with Dinosaurs, crafting creatures as realistic as one can make'm. On top of that it featured narration by David Attenborough, the main man behind Planet Earth who can somehow say 'arse' without making it sound silly. Not only was he narrating over footage of breathtaking beasts, he was narrating over a score by Hans Zimmer! Y'know, the guy behind the music of The Lion King? Yeah, that guy! No doubt he was brought over by Jon Favreau, the Iron Man and Elf director turned this show's Executive Producer. If I were to guess, he brought all of the knowledge he accumulated while working in Simba's Pride Lands to the time of ancient reptiles. Unlike that piece of Hakunah Makaka though, I was actually excited for this! So what was the problem?
Apple TV+. This show was exclusive to a platform I didn't have run by a company I barely tolerate. It was bad enough they were hording all the Peanuts specials and Wolfwalkers, but now this? Why did everything I enjoy have to be taken by Steve Job's Apple Store of Doom!? For that matter, why was this service even called Apple TV+? Heck, why does every streaming channel end with a plus now? Disney already annoyed me when they named their service that instead of something more creative like 'The Disney Vault' or 'The Digital World of Disney', now every other company was trying to ride their coattails. Just wait, when we're inevitably charged for going to a public bathroom, they'll call the program Toilet+! In any case, my salvation came via a Pizza Hut gift ad given to me by my family last Christmas. After using the $25 gift card to buy one pizza, the Hut's app offered me a month free trial of Apple TV+. Having a real 'screw it' moment, I elected to try out the free month.
Which is pretty stupid in hindsight considering I got Wolfwalkers and the other two Cartoon Saloon movies on DVD that same Christmas and I already owned Blu-Ray copies of the classic Peanuts Holiday specials. Remember folks, I never said I was smart, I only said I liked dinosaurs. As such, what did I think of this show?
Happy to say; it delivers what the trailers promised. This show is what happens when you mix Walking with Dinosaurs with Planet Earth, Attenborough's narration being a highlight as per usual. He brings a level of class to anything he's commenting on, even a Deinocheirus taking a massive dump. Insert obligatory Jurassic Park joke here.
AND FOR ANYBODY JUMPING AHEAD: NO! THE SHOW ISN'T CRAP. THIS IS JUST FOR A JOKE!
It's also to help illustrate a weird point about this show: they do not shy away from the dino love-making or crap-taking. It's Dinos After Dark! Granted they showed this kind of stuff back on Walking with too, but it was just as disgusting there. Especially since the Deinocheirus eats where he poops. If you're thinking of enjoying a tasty bowl of popcorn while enjoying this, I'd recomend you wait until after Episode 3 aka Freshwater.
Those of you who have seen the Planet Earth series will recognize the naming convention here. Instead of going through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous to see how dinosaurs evolved over time, this show sticks to the late Cretaceous while showing how far stretched the dinosaurs war. A pack of Secernosaurus struggle to find water in dunes made out of gypsum, we find out the Tyrannosaurs could beat you in a swimming contest, a troupe of triceratops are forced underground, one episode even sees how dinosaurs survived the cold.
I was actually super eager to see this episode, as a friend and I argued over the logistics of over-grown reptiles surviving in a snowy landscape. A quick Google search revealed that these early drafts of birds were indeed warm blooded, so I could totally buy them enduring the cold. Even if they couldn't, it looks freak'n cool! Pun intended, of course.
Really my one complaint about this series is how tame it is. When you watched Walking with Dinosaurs, or really any nature documentary, it's hard to guess what's going to happen. Will the baby antelope escape the hungry lion's claws? Will that one panda find a mate before the season's over? Will future generations have the privilege of ever seeing a rhino again? Most importantly, how did the people holding the camera get these magnificent shots? One cameraman working on Planet Earth had to live in a literal mountain of crap for weeks while filming cockroaches. Thinking about it gives makes my skin crawl. Even then that's nothing compared to the massive undertaking that is filming snow leopards. Not to say I want any people producing this to be in actual danger, but the Walking series at least simulated this aspect by having the creatures interact with the camera. Saliva would coat the lens after a T-Rex roared at it, it'd be knocked over after a adolescent Indricotherium charged at it, that sort of thing. This makes what's happening on screen feel natural. Here it all feels too choreographed and planned. There's no real edge. Still, I'd take this over any of the newer Jurassic Park movies any day. This doesn't make it feel my braincells are being smothered with a pillow before getting repeatedly kicked in their metaphorical crotches.
In conclusion, dinosaur lovers will surely love this. The effects will leave you speechless, David Attenborough's voice is a welcomed boost of nostalgia, and the variety of dinosaurs on display should satisfy any paleontology fan. That is assuming this all is accurate, which is getting harder to judge these days. Just wait, come tomorrow some bone-digging bozo is gonna say T-Rex was actually more of a giant woodpecker or somethin'. Until that happens, take a trip back and enjoy watching how life survived this Prehistoric Planet.
By the way, wanna read more rants against streaming services? Then check out my review of Spy x Family to see me complain about Hulu while gushing over how cute Anya forger is. Until then, may the glasses be with you!
NEXT TIME ON GIRAFFE'S EYE VIEW...
#clarktoon crossing#giraffes eye view#dinosaurs#dinosaur#prehistoric planet#apple tv+#streaming#rant#review#tv review
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Goals Vs Systems
I was seated next to a businessman who was probably in his early sixties. I suppose I looked like an odd duck with my serious demeanor, bad haircut, and cheap suit, clearly out of my element. He asked what my story was and I filled him in. I asked what he did for a living and he told me he was CEO of a company that made screws. Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job.
This was my first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal. The system was to continually look for better options. And it worked for this businessman, as he had job-hopped from company to company, gaining experience along the way, until he became a CEO. Had he approached his career with a specific goal in mind, or perhaps specific job objectives (e.g., his boss’s job), it would have severely limited his options. But for him, the entire world was his next potential job. The new job simply had to be better than the last one and allow him to learn something useful for the next hop.
Did the businessman owe his current employer loyalty? Not in his view. The businessman didn’t invent capitalism, and he didn’t create its rules. He simply played within the rules. His employers wouldn’t have hesitated to fire him at the drop of a hat for any reason that fit their business needs. He simply followed their example. The second thing I learned on that flight—or confirmed, really—is that appearance matters. By the end of the flight, the CEO had handed me his card and almost guaranteed me a job at his company if I wanted it. Had I boarded the flight wearing my ratty jeans, threadbare T-shirt, and worn-out sneakers, things would have gone differently. Throughout my career I’ve had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways. To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game.
If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure.
The systems-versus-goals point of view is burdened by semantics, of course. You might say every system has a goal, however vague. And that would be true to some extent. And you could say that everyone who pursues a goal has some sort of system to get there, whether it is expressed or not. You could word-glue goals and systems together if you chose. All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system. For our purposes, let’s say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. Language is messy, and I know some of you are thinking that exercising every day sounds like a goal. The common definition of goals would certainly allow that interpretation. For our purposes, let’s agree that goals are a reach-it-and-be-done situation, whereas a system is something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life. Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day you probably can’t tell if they’re moving you in the right direction. My proposition is that if you study people who succeed, you will see that most of them follow systems, not goals. When goal-oriented people succeed in big ways, it makes news, and it makes an interesting story. That gives you a distorted view of how often goal-driven people succeed. When you apply your own truth filter to the idea that systems are better than goals, consider only the people you know personally. If you know some extra successful people, ask some probing questions about how they got where they did. I think you’ll find a system at the bottom of it all, and usually some extraordinary luck. (Later in this book I’ll tell you how to improve your odds of getting lucky.)
“Consider Olympic athletes. When one Olympian wins a gold medal, or multiple gold medals, it’s a headline story. But for every medalist there are thousands who had the goal of being on that podium and failed. Those people had goals and not systems. I don’t consider daily practices and professional coaching a system because everyone knows in advance that the odds of any specific individual winning a medal through those activities are miniscule. The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not. Buying lottery tickets is not a system no matter how regularly you do it.”
On the system side, consider Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. It’s apparent that his system for success involved studying hard, getting extraordinary grades, going to a top college—in his case Harvard—and developing a skill set with technology that virtually guaranteed riches in today’s world. As it turns out, his riches came quickly through the explosive growth of Facebook. But had that not worked out, he would likely be a millionaire through some other start-up or just by being a highly paid technical genius for an existing corporation. Zuckerberg’s system (or what I infer was his system) was almost guaranteed to work, but no one could have imagined at the time how well. Warren Buffett’s system for investing involves buying undervalued companies and holding them forever, or at least until something major changes. That system (which I have grossly oversimplified) has been a winner for decades. Compare that with individual investors who buy a stock because they expect it to go up 20 percent in the coming year; that’s a goal, not a system. And not surprisingly, individual investors generally experience worse returns than the market average.
I have a friend who is a gifted salesman. He could have sold anything, from houses to toasters. The field he chose (which I won’t reveal because he wouldn’t appreciate the sudden flood of competition) allows him to sell a service that almost always auto-renews. In other words, he can sell his service once and enjoy ongoing commissions until the customer dies or goes out of business. His biggest problem in life is that he keeps trading his boat for a larger one, and that’s a lot of work. Observers call him lucky. What I see is a man who accurately identified his skill set and chose a system that vastly increased his odds of getting “lucky.” In fact, his system is so solid that it could withstand quite a bit of bad luck without buckling. How much passion does this fellow have for his chosen field? Answer: zero. What he has is a spectacular system, and that beats passion every time.
Excerpt From: Scott Adams. “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life.” , Chapter 6: Goals Vs Systems
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COMPLETED: LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
I did it, I beat the "story". While I had some fun, it ultimately felt like "work". I want to make a pass at grabbing all the collectables, but we'll see...
At this point I've played enough to ask the question: Is this a good game? Yes. Yes, it is. The graphics have a charmingly simplistic nature--which is the way of LEGO games--but the environments are very impressive: at times realistic. Besides the typical class system there's also the opportunity to buy class boosts which is an impressive addition. There's a story...from the movies. And while the voice acting is questionable at times, the movies were not well known for performances. There are tons of things to do, replay value, variety, and tons of extras.
But then there's the other question: do I like it? Not...really. Being a good game isn't the issue. I just couldn't connect with this. The production was so focused on delivering a large galaxy of unique planets with movie-accurate aesthetics that it didn't have time to give much love to the main-line stories. I could respect this if there was hope that the side quests were going to be meaningful, but LEGO games have never been known for their meaningful side quests. They're fun and make a 12 hour game last 50 hours. But they're more interested in being silly than meaningful.
This is why classic LEGO games worked. They took irreverent approach to retelling a familiar story. If you're familiar with the story, you don't need the story retold verbatim--instead you give some silly pantomime with LEGO-humor and people can laugh at the differences. Lord of the Rings succeeded with voice acting but cause it was taken from the film--so the story stayed true to its source. Skywalker Saga steps outside the story with unique voice acting. I was too distracted with how they got off track and what they left out to care about what they achieved.
Anyway, some new observations: one, you can spam jump unlike what I thought earlier. I don't know why Hoth is screwed up. That's about it.
To my surprise, I enjoyed playing the original saga most. In the Complete Saga I prefer the Prequel Trilogy. The films tell a better, more epic story, and so the levels are more fun to me. because Skywalker Saga expands on the original stories with open-world gameplay, it actually makes the original stories a bit more epic themselves.
I was less impressed with the sequel trilogy. The Force Awakens is just goofy nonsense. That's JJ Abrams style. He likes to ask the questions but not answer them, which leads to a lot of wacky dramatic cliffhangers that are usually doomed to fail. Maybe I should blame his writers...doesn't matter. JJ Abrams makes disposable trash. It's entertaining, and connects with people, but it's like painting an ocean on the bottom of a kiddie pool. Anyway, Force Awakens is fun but it's a total retread and is more concerned with reintroducing you to your grandpa then breaking new Star Wars ground or significantly advancing the story and universe. Cause of that, many of the levels feel like retread: Oh I'm on a desert world, oh I'm in a Cantina, oh I'm blowing up a death star...
I was more looking forward to The Last Jedi--the best of the sequel trilogy and one of the best movies overall. But it doesn't translate well into a game. The opening works, obviously, but while following around Skywalker and facing one's nemesis across the galaxy is good cinematic storytelling it doesn't make for exciting gameplay. You mostly just walk around places. Oh well, still a great movie.
And then there's The Rise of Skywalker. Dumb. Just dumb. I feel like the goal of this film was to make as little sense as possible to prove Star Wars could make money whether it tried or not. It's really sad that this is how we end the "Skywalker Saga". There's a lot of great shows, like Andor, to help elevate the franchise. I'm hoping that this acts as the "end" of Star Wars' timeline so no one needs to watch it to make sense of any other media. But I don't know, Endgame made Thor 2 important--so there's that.
Because I didn't like the movie, there was no point in which Rise of Skywalker felt fun for me. It was just a final endurance boss preventing me from saying "I win". By the time the credits rolled I was already looking at my phone for random articles.
So here I am, this is where I wanted to be. The story is "out of the way" and every class and planet is unlocked. Do I want to keep playing? Before I got here I thought yes, of course! I want to take this to the end! But now I'm just thinking of all the games I really want to play. I didn't love this enough to 100% it, and I didn't even 100% the Complete Saga (which I do love).
My daughter wants to explore, so maybe I'll switch back to Oddworld for myself and then she and I can do bonus missions together.
--UPDATE--
Well good thing I didn't post this yet. I'm done with this game. Maybe if my daughter wants to play, we'll play. But for now I'm done.
I tried to do side quests at Utapau and had not a great time. While the level seems to be pretty accurate to the film on which it's based, it wasn't very fun to get around. Sometimes I could only use a single ladder or other platformy way to climb to higher sections, but it wasn't fun to get up there and if you made a mistake hopping across rooftops, you had to do it all again. I ended up doing it alot. Also, there are missions that require you to travel to different planets to fulfill. I really wasn't interested. Maybe if this game was just "here's the Star Wars galaxy, have fun" I'd be ok with it. But having to go through the unexciting story aspects to unlock all the planets creates a barrier to that.
I respect what they did and accomplished, but I'm not loving it.
#Zach's Game Journal#COMPLETED#LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga#Xbox One#Game Pass#Video Games#Gaming
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Day 5
Progress and terror.
Listened to chat and went back for Margit. Noticed I had 13k runes on my first death.
It.
Was.
On.
I had to vanquish this one. It was a lot easier now that I’ve had practice with so many other creatures. But man... Screw those agonisingly long wind-up attacks. It’s like SIR I see the arm. I see you’re ready. Just DO IT already. But I learned already, look at the hands and they will tell you.
It took a while though. He liked to punish your punish with some light daggers?? Am I supposed to punish or not?! What do you want me to do?!
Then the castle.
Oh gosh the castle.
Got severely owned by a knight in a trap room. I’m not sure what it is about hat moveset, but I cannot manage. So instead I took advantage of its one weakness. A door. They apparently forgot to tell it how to walk around doors!
Unfortunately this set the theme for the rest of the castle. Fear of everything around every corner. Despite being able to whip into shape every other enemy with a couple of hits, the knights instilled a fear deep inside me.
It was slow, but steady. The loss of my sanity was going quite splendidly as the scenery bent my mind and twisted my resolve. Everything was so massive, imposing. It was all perfectly built with tall straight walls and yet there was something twisted. Something close to insanity. At every edge there was a sheer drop into oblivion. Despite how tall or proudly they built the walls, they could not come close to matching the size and power of the erd tree. Yet it seems like they had committed to the fools errand of controlling it.
Deeper into the castle I went until I reached the heart of it. The true twisted nature so readily apparent in the enemies themselves. A being who’s original form could no longer be discerned patrolling the dining hall upon its several legs. I was too shocked by the sight and size of it to stop and count how many arms there were sprouting from what could be described as a ‘back’. I recall what the strange sorcerer said to me, they graft the limbs of the tarnished to themselves. I shudder a bit. Out of fear and horror that a sentient creature might lose themselves to such a degree.
Eventually we make it to the final Grace and face the master of this keep. Godrich.
Despite the numerous arms sprouting from his back he only wielded two great axes in his right arms.
Something about this fight felt easier than Margit. But that ease of combat was short lived as he cut himself to graft the head of a dragon to his arm
First was the wind, and then the fire. Like a raging forest fire he engulfed the arena in flames. What was once a simple fight spacing out the swings of a few axes turned to me running like a fearful mouse looking for any hole to hide from the fire.
Eventually though, he would succumb to the bloodloss. I have to admit, Reduvia feels a bit too strong. Whether it’s because it let’s me continue to be active when I’m too timid to get stuck in, or the fact that it can multi-hit when I punish a long attack. I feel like it’s a crutch more than a tool.
Regardless. With such a triumphant achievement I decide it is time to seek revenge on the mace wielding invader from days ago. It was not as easy as I had imagined. I had forgotten all of the openings from the last encounter but the effectiveness of my whip shined bright.
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I kinda want to elaborate on the tags I left on the OG post, apologies if this doesn’t make sense bc I wrote it at 3 am last night when I couldn’t sleep, but feel free to call me out if it makes no sense/is absolute ass.
I also think that the cheating plot line of s3 becomes way more understandable (not right, understandable) if it’s with a close friend (ie Sean) instead of Manny. Like Craig realizing, yes he loves Ashley, he cares about her, maybe he Was in love with her, but thinking about how he interacts with Sean when he realizes he likes him he sees how he can’t open up to Ash in the way he wants to be able to. She doesn’t get him the way Sean does, he likes that Sean doesn’t push him to talk, it makes it easier for him to. But how can he dump her for a guy without crushing her? Especially for the guy she cheated on Jimmy with. That adds a whole extra layer of awkward.
He doesn’t want to hurt Ashley, and what does it matter anyway? It’s not like Sean can reciprocate Craig’s feelings. So he sits and stews in it. Distances himself from Sean in hopes the feelings go away, and he’s all in on Ash, while also sabotaging their relationship in little ways, hoping she’ll leave so he doesn’t have to leave her. He doesn’t WANT to lie to her, he wants her to be able to be happy with someone who returns her feelings, but he can’t dump her. Partly because he doesn’t want to hurt her, but more selfishly, she is a distraction and he doesn’t know what he would do without her support, even if it’s sometimes executed in ways he doesn’t like.
Sean realizes that he’s into Craig when he realizes that he misses Craig the same way he misses Emma, and that it hurts to see Craig spending all this time with Ashley, when did he become second place to Craig’s girlfriend? Why did he stop making time for him? Why did seeing them together make his stomach turn, this isn’t the first time his friends have spent less time with him after they’d gotten girlfriends. Its normal and yet it feels completely different this time around. Sean is the first to swallow his pride and ask to hang out with Craig, who hesitantly agrees.
The hangout is awkward. The two of them sitting on Joey’s couch, silently watching some reruns of a show neither care for. Sean is desperate to achieve some sense of normalcy. He asks how Ashley is, and Craig insists they’re great. Offering no detail, and opting not to bother asking Sean about his love life in return. Another few minutes of silence and Sean bursts. He demands to know why Craig’s being so weird. Craig deflects, says that it’s a two way street. Why didn’t Sean reach out either? They go back and forth shifting blame as to why they’re barely friends anymore until Craig’s wall breaks first. Of course he broke first, he always does. He walks away from Sean, if he doesn’t face him he doesn’t have to look at Sean’s disgust when he admits that he thinks he loves Sean the way he’s supposed to love Ash. The way he used to love her before Sean screwed everything up just by existing. Sean stands there in shocked silence, and eventually Craig turns around, he wants to beg Sean to say something, anything. Call him a selfish screw up so he can finally start actually getting over the guy he never dated. He doesn’t, though. Sean stays silent and still, his mind racing. Eventually Sean rushes closer, Craig flinches slightly and apologizes, even he isn’t sure if he apologizes out of fear or for possibly hurting Sean’s feelings by flinching as if he’d hurt him. Sean shakes his head and kisses Craig. It’s clumsy and awkward, neither were fully prepared for the reaction, but they quickly relax and pull away.
In this scenario, Craig’s hesitation to end things with Ashley in favor of a new partner comes off as less manipulative of both love interests. He knows he wants Sean, but how could he possibly tell Ashley that without her feeling inadequate? Experience with her dad aside, the early 2000s were unforgiving, she’d probably feel like she did something wrong. Also! The Ashley of it all aside, they all saw what happened to Marco. He’d be terrified of being caught and outed. Ashley provides cover. She’s safe. It’s selfish and he knows it. The guilt is eating at him, and yet his fear over powers that guilt. Fear always had to come first, and it’s a hard habit to unlearn. “I’m going to tell her, I just need to figure out how.” Sean knows the score, there’s no “ofc you’re the only one! I already dumped her” and eventually Ashley finds out in a similar fashion and the fall out is similar.
I’ve said this before, but the boyfriendism Craig and Sean would have exuded if they were allowed to stay friends would’ve been so powerful the writers had to nerf them in s3.
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It’s all for his sake - Endeavor and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
My hero academia 301 is a pretty interesting chapter, but for me, the most notable piece of it was how Endeavour reacted to the realization that Touya couldnt surpass All Might.
upon realizing that his son might not be able to do it because of inborn physical limitations, he immediatly stopped his training, which frankly was the responsible and adult thing to do.
This stint of real parenthood did not last long however.
After taking the matter to a doctor, he is flat out told that not only cant Touya achive what endeavor wants, but it is a direct result of his incredibly selfish and irresponsible attempt to play god, by trying to breed the “perfect” hero into being.
It is how you react when you lose however, that shows who you really are, and endeavor illustrates that very, very well.
Upon being told in no uncertain terms that his attempts at Breeding an heir failed magnificently, producing a child that was not capable of resisting his own immense power, but also admonished by his doctor for even attempting it, and adviced not to try again, Endeavor instead doubled down, while focusing on the child he screwed over from the start with his attempt at genetic manipulation.
It was all for him you see. Endeavor doesnt use those words, but that is how he spins it here. it was all for Touya, all for his sake. if i stop now, then Touya was all for nothing, a mistake, im doing this for my son.
if im doing this for my son, then im not responsible for any of this.
his wife however, calls him out on it, as she understands Touya much, much more than endeavor does. or rather, she sees him fully as a human being, instead of as a thing, a weapon, a failed attempt at an heir.
Unlike Endeavor, Rei is able to see the way this all is affecting her son. She is able to see, and understand that Touya has fully accepted what Endeavor wanted him to be. a stronger, and better version of himself. however, unlike Endeavor, she only cares about him as a person.
Endeavour by comparison isnt completely uncaring about Touya. like most abusive parents, he does possess love for his offspring, but it is forever tainted by the fact that however much he might care, or not care about Touya, any familial love he has for his son is tainted by the fact that to Endeavor, he is a failed experiment, a failed heir, not his child.
He is the golden child that Endeavor was building up as his true and only heir, who he breed, trained, and molded to for that single purpose, and now that he’s reached a point where he cant continue that legacy.
so, its time to abandon him, and start over new, despite literarily having just learned how stupid this plan was, and that it can, in fact, go completely wrong, with a quirk that will fuck over the person he brings into the world.
Of course, Endeavor doesnt use those words to frame it. there is no way to pretend to be a hero, if you phrase it like that after all. Intead, this is the words he uses.
this is a very important series of panels for a great number of reasons, some that can be debated, argued, and we will probably never know the full truth to the questions because this is a series published in 2020′s shonen jump, and there are things that probably wasnt gonna fly with Hori’s editors, if it was the case.
but lets start with what can not be debated. Endeavor’s words here.
“If we want him to give it up, then we have no choice... Touya... Cant surpass him.”
These are very telling words, and however you believe The third and fourth children of the Todoroki family was concieved, there is not denying the meaning of what he’s saying here.
The only way that my son will stop being an idiot and fall into line, is if we have another baby. that is the only Right way to move forward. it is morally right, because if we dont do this, then he’s going to destroy himself.
there are two ways to interpret this scene.
The charitable way is to read it as the fact that he used Rei’s oldest son’s mental state as a justification of guilting his wife to have a third child, to give this attempt at a superpowered breeding project another shot, despite the fact that they now know that this can lead to a child who is essentially born crippled from his own powers, and despite the fact that Rei obviously understands the effect of them continuing this insanity will have on their oldest son.
the uncharitable way to look at it, is that he used this as justification for flat out raping her, and forcing a third, and then later a fourth child on her.
I personally believe the last one, given a number of factors shown in this chapter(the way this page is framed, the fact Rei obviously didnt want a third child, given she predicted exactly how touya would react, the way her eyes would latet turn when she looks at who is presumably touya which really brings to mind how she would later react to her youngest son’s face after her mental breakdown, etc.), but i’ll frankly admitt that withouth a direct quote from Hori, its impossible to know for sure one way or another.
either way however, this is a very good example of Endeavor both being influenced by, and using Sunk Cost Fallacy to justify bringing another potentially crippled child into the world for his own, selfish goals.
sunk cost Fallacy, is a mental reaction to when you invest more time and resources into a project, that you becomes so emotionally invested into said project that you will continue to invest into it, even if it reaches a point that it becomes clear that the resources you put into it, far, far outweighs the potential gains you can achieve.
because if you give up after having invested years, and years of effort to breed, raise, and train a kid, and then all that effort was absolutely wasted. hence he choose to keep going, despite having learned what a terrible idea this is.
He doesnt care about the fact that his next child might be even more crippled than his firstborn, he doesnt care about his son’s actual wellbeing. he cares about the fact that if he doesnt continue this insanity, then not only will he not achieve his dreams, but everything he did to get to this point was for absolutely nothing.
and endeavor cannot accept that. and so long as he can justify breeding more children into the world, and there being any chance they might inherit both quirks perfectly, he doesnt care about anything else.
and the moment he realised that this kid wasnt gonna cut it either, he did it again. it is not a coincidence, that the age gap between Endeavor’s second, third, and fourth children were all 3-4 years apart. because thats the age where you can usually tell when a quirk will manifest or not, as established earlier in the series.
While she isnt brought up directly by Endeavor as a justification, it is very telling that Endeavor decided on having a third child, only after his second child was old enough that he could tell that that there was no chance she could take the place as his heir instead.
So, he had his third child, and as time passed and it became obvious that he wasn’t gonna be able to fulfill Endeavor’s goals either, he dumped him, and instead breed a fourth child into existence.
and finally, he struck gold. he did it. he produced Shoto.
everything was finally worth it, and now, everything would be absolutely fine. the cost fallacy had reached its end, and it was now all full sails ahead.
except of course it wasnt.
His oldest son, now in middle school, had been raised from birth to believe he would surpass his father, only to be thrown away, and getting to see his father try to replace him, not once, but twice.
frankly, this scene is probably my favorite in the chapter, because it goes to show Endeavor’s mindset. Natsuo made a point that their father completely ignored his older children. and he did... from Natsuo’s perspective. however, having a more thourough picture of things, we can clearly see that this wasnt the case with Touya.
Endeavor genuinly cared for Touya, enough that once he got that child he tried to breed into existence 4 times, he genuinly wanted him to just abandon trying to be a hero. he genuinly thinks of himself as a good dad here, wanting his son to abandon the mission he set out for him before he was born. of course, with context, this heartwarming scene is incredibly sad and insidious, because we understand why Endeavor got so attached to his oldest child. because he WAS the golden child. he was the child Endeavor genuinly cared about, and invested in, and trained personally with great warmth and enthusiasm.
And not only did he abandon him as a failed project the moment he realized he wasnt gonna live up to his ridiculous standards, but he literarily created 2 more kids to try and replace him, just as his oldest son was old enough to understand what exactly his dad was doing. over the course of this chapter, we get to see Touya’s start as a 5-8 year old, his deteriorating mental state over the years, until he finally seemed to reach the breaking point with Shoto’s birth sometime in his middle school years 12-15.
Endeavor is in this scene, just not capable of understanding why Touya so desperately wants to become a hero, when obviously he isnt physically able to do so. he isnt able to understand that he is 100% to blame for the fact that his son is having a full emotional breakdown after literaly being replaced by his siblings.
In other words, Endeavor genuinly think’s he’s a good person. a person who has made a few mistakes along the way sure, but a person who was always justified in the end, and now that he’s having to face the fact that as dabi would later say “The past never dies” and has to face the aftermath of his inane attempt to play god for the pettiest of reasons, things simply arent going to work out.
He isnt going to have a happy family, who can now put the awful early years behind them, he put way too much effort, caused too much suffering and sacrificed too many years of his life for this not to work out as he wants.
after all, if he walks away from this project now, and lets Shoto have a normal childhood, and decide for himself, with no pressure from him, wheter or not to become a hero, then the sunk cost fallacy will have reached a negative end. it will all have been for nothing.
and we know he did eventually double down on this mentality, literarily beating into Shoto that he WAS going to become a hero, and there was not but’s or no’s about it.
there was no way that Endeavor was EVER going to let things be for nothing. His treatment of his older children could not be for nothing. His treatment of his wife could not be for nothing. His treatment of Shoto, and the way he beat him black and blue to train him, could not be for nothing.
Because if it all was for nothing, if everything he feels guilty about was for absolutely nothing, then he was in fact, a bad, bad person, who had no justification for anything he ever did.
#my hero academia#touya todoroki#dabi#endeavor#endeavour#enji todoroki#rei todoroki#character study#301#meta
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Remus is the uptight, swotty Prefect who's always getting the popular and beloved troublemakers Black and Potter in detention. Remus doesn't care what people say of him, and he absolutely doesn't care about Black's blinding smile.
A Book By Its Cover
Remus pulls his jumper closer around himself against the draught in the large, empty halls. The corridor is dimly lit and he hears nothing but the sound of his own footsteps. Everything is quiet. Too quite.
A loud clang suddenly sounds from behind one of the tapestries. Remus almost smiles to himself. Bingo. In a swift motion, he pulls away the tapestry.
Startled, Black whirls around. He’s surrounded by what appear to be paint cans and rope. His shock only last a moment, though.
“Lupin!” He exclaims, a beaming smile appearing on his face. “What a pleasant surprise!”
Remus crosses his arms over his chest. He makes an effort to keep a firm expression on his face, to show he’s not affected by Black’s notorious, blinding smile, like everyone else is. “Only pleasant if you like detention. And as for a surprise, I am a Prefect. I am supposed to be here making my rounds. So what are you doing here?”
“Preparing a prank,” Black says simply.
Remus doesn’t know whether he should be insulted Black doesn’t seem to take his authority very seriously, or glad that he doesn’t insult his intelligence by coming up with an excuse.
“Right,” Remus says, before taking out his notebook and pen. “Out of bed after curfew and engaging in illegal activity,” he scribbles down. “And where’s Potter?”
“Aw, am I not enough for you, Lupin?” Black pouts.
“I figured you could use some company in detention,” Remus replies smoothly.
Black clicks his tongue. “So thoughtful.”
“If you’re here setting up some prank, then it’s a given Potter is setting up that prank somewhere else in the school as well. So, where is he?”
Black shakes his head. “For you’re own good, Lupin, you don’t wanna put James in detention right now. People won’t be too pleased with you if the school’s football star misses the upcoming match against Slytherin thanks to you.”
“So thoughtful,” Remus repeats Black’s words, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “But please, don’t concern yourself over me. I’ve never cared what others think of me, and I don’t plan on starting now. And you basically just admitted Potter is currently doing something that would warrant me giving him detention, so you might as well tell me where he is.”
Black sighs. “This is why people call you uptight.”
Remus’ expression hardens. “If people care so much, they should be mad at Potter for risking the football match in the first place by playing some stupid prank.”
Black gasps dramatically and clutches his chest. “Stupid? Our pranks are not stupid! They’re works of art! Jumping out of a cake on miss McGonagall’s birthday? Hilarious! Making a zip line to go from one floor to the other? Brilliant! Filling the gym with stray cats, many of whom were eventually adopted? Genius! People love our pranks. They make people laugh and bring some excitement in their lives. Much needed excitement, because let’s face it, school is boring. Sitting there, listening to old people tell you things you already know.”
“For you maybe,” Remus mutters.
Black scoffs. “Don’t pretend you’re not one of the smartest people in our class, Lupin.”
Remus just glares harder at Black, to show that no, he doesn’t care that Sirius Black, whom people are always falling over themselves for to get even a bit of his attention, has apparently noticed Remus’ academic achievements. No, he doesn’t care at all.
“Even the teachers love our pranks,” Black continues. “They put some life into this place!”
“We’ll see what miss McGonagall has to say about it when I report you tomorrow,” Remus says calmly. “I’ll go finish my rounds, and when I get back, you better have cleaned up this mess.”
As he turns around to leave, Black suddenly grabs his wrist. “Join us!”
“Wha...” Remus turns back, and his traitorous stomach flutters at how close Black is suddenly standing.
“Join us for one prank,” Black says.
Remus blinks at him. “Why in earth would I do that?”
“Because it’s fun! And honestly, Lupin, to me you always look like you can use a bit of fun.”
That catches Remus off guard. It’s true. Between struggling to get top marks, doing everything he can for extra credit, making sure he has a spotless record, excelling at his Prefect duties, and worrying about his sick mother, lately he often feels like just throwing his hands in the air and say ‘screw it all!’, and just do something crazy, something dumb or irresponsible. But he definitely never wanted for Black to notice that.
“Come on, Lupin,” Black says, as Remus stays silent. “Be part of the fun for once, instead of putting a damper on it.”
“Your childish pranks aren’t my idea of fun,” Remus bites back, feeling himself getting defensive.
Black just grins. “You won’t know that unless you join us for just one prank!”
“Why would you even want me to join you?” Many people would be lining up to be a part of one of Black and Potter’s infamous pranks. It’s beyond Remus why Black would ask that one stuffy guy who puts them in detention almost every week.
“Because I like you,” Black shrugs. “I like how hard you work for everything and how you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. And I think you secretly have a talent for it,” he adds with a wink, that absolutely does not make Remus’ knees go weak. “I bet you have a wicked side to you underneath all that swotty stuff.”
“But I’m a Prefect!” Remus argues. “I’m supposed to discipline rule-breakers, not break them myself!”
Black rolls his eyes. “You shouldn’t take that job so serious.”
This rubs Remus the wrong way. “Not everyone can afford to treat everything in life as a joke,” he says coolly.
Black folds his arms over his chest and stares. “A fancy title and a badge and suddenly you’re better than us?”
“It’s nothing like that!”
Black huffs. “Then why is that bogus job so important to you?”
“Because some of us can’t afford to have even one note on their record if they ever want to get anywhere in life!” Remus snaps. “Because some of us need perfect scores and every bit of extra credit they can get if they want universities not to immediately bin their applications! Because some of us don’t have a last name they can flaunt, a daddy who can make a phone call, a mommy who can throw some money around, and suddenly you’re top of the list! Because some of us can’t just look at their rich parents and rely on them to always give them everything they want!”
The change in Black is instant. He takes a step back, and instead of his usual easy smile and bright eyes sparkling with mischief, his face becomes an ice-cold mask. “Fuck you, Lupin,” he hisses. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
He pushes past Remus as he storms off, leaving him behind feeling very confused. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Yes, the system is unfair and Black is privileged, but Remus supposes that isn’t really Black’s fault. He knows Black isn’t actually a bad person. His heart is in the right place, and he’s usually kind, only ever mean to people who, quite frankly, deserve it.
Remus just wishes Black would stop with those bloody pranks.
Remus just wishes Black would continue with those bloody pranks.
Or do anything really that makes him seem more like his old self. Remus never thought he’d miss that loud, barking laugh, that infuriating smirk, those lame puns so much.
Ever since everyone returned from Christmas break, Black has completely withdrawn. He hardly talks to anyone, he just sits silently, his eyes staring off in the distance and his expression blank. Potter is always by his side, softly talking to him or just throwing him worried glances.
Since then, it has been the talk of the school, and even in the papers and on the news: Sirius Black has been removed from his parents’ custody. It was a messy affair, the police has even been involved. Black’s father was arrested on grounds of child abuse. Apparently, Orion Black, the noble and well-respected patriarch of the prestigious Black family, has a habit of beating his son. It must’ve been going on for a while, but over the break it escalated. People just can’t get over how Sirius Black’s life wasn’t as perfect as it always seemed to be.
Remus feels bad for Black, and especially feels like an idiot, having said the things he said. He knows he owes Black an apology. It has been a couple of weeks since the break ended, and the apology is beginning to be long overdue. Though he also knows that Black has probably not been waiting for an apology from the uptight twat that always gets him detention.
Maybe it’s more to ease his own consciousness that he hesitantly approaches the table where Black is sitting. Potter glares at him the moment he sees him, and half gets out of his seat, probably to tell him to piss off, and rightfully so. However, after a quick glance at Black’s face, who’s looking up at Remus, he sits back down, as if he sees something on his friend’s face that makes him chance his mind.
“Bla- Sirius,” Remus says, realising a tad late that Sirius might nor want to be reminded of his family name right now. “I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “I said some shitty things to you, and I shouldn’t have. You were right, I didn’t know anything about you.”
“It’s okay,” Sirius says softly. “You had good reason to be angry, it’s a rather fucked up system. And you didn’t know. Didn’t know that I would’ve gladly given up all that privilege to just have parents who... who love me...”
Sirius’ voice falters and he trails off. Potter is staring at him wide-eyed, and also Remus is surprised. He knows Sirius hasn’t talked about it to anyone, and he feels almost guilty he’s saying it to him of all people. He’s also surprised at the overwhelming urge he has to pull Sirius into a hug, hold him and tell him they never deserved him anyway. He has to leave before he does anything stupid.
“I should go,” Remus says quickly. “If there’s ever anything I can do...”
As he turns around to leave, Black suddenly grabs his wrist. “Join us!”
Remus turns back to look at him.
“Join us for one prank.”
“Why would you want me to join you?” Remus asks, much like the first time.
“Because I like you,” Sirius replies, much like the first time, only where he had then sounded nonchalant and slightly amused, he now sounds pleading and vulnerable.
“Yeah,” Remus says hoarsely, because his Prefect duties suddenly don’t seem so important compared to helping Sirius come back to his old self. “Yeah, I’ll join you for one prank.”
And then the most amazing thing happens: for the first time in weeks, Sirius Black smiles. It’s only a small smile, but the room already seems a bit brighter. In a moment of vivid clarity, Remus knows that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to make that boy smile.
#my tumblr writing#wolfstar#wolfstar fanfiction#wolfstar fic#marauders#marauders fanfiction#marauders fic#sirius black#remus lupin#remus x sirius#james potter#boarding school au#prefect remus lupin
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I was sent this screenshot by someone telling me that the author of this post was using it as “evidence” that Zuko is selfish and disloyal to the Fire Nation, while Azula is selfless because of her loyalty to the FN, and was asked to answer the question: is Zuko selfish?
And I just have to say that this post is written in phenomenally bad faith, especially if it’s supposed to be proof of Zuko’s supposed selfishness.
So let’s get into it.
Zuko’s quest to capture the Avatar is certainly selfish, because his motives are based around what he thinks it will gain him (his father’s acceptance), but hardly for the reason this person seems to think it is.
As Katara says to him in Ba Sing Se, the fact that Zuko is willing to destroy the world’s last hope for peace if it means he achieves his goal is selfish, but pitting him against the Fire Nation “cause” hardly proves Zuko selfish, since destroying the world for its own gain is literally the Fire Nation’s goal.
That’s the first point that needs to be made. Loyalty to a regime that is built on selfishness and hate cannot be said to be selfless in any sense of the word. So the idea that Zuko is selfish for being disloyal and Azula is selfless for being loyal to a fascist regime where she exists in the top %1 is completely backwards.
Second, although Zuko’s motivation for trying to capture Aang before Zhao is selfish from a worldly perspective, it’s also pretty backwards to label him as self-interested and disloyal to the Fire Nation because the reason he wants to capture Aang before Zhao is because this is literally the mission he was given by his father, the Fire Lord. Ozai gave Zuko this mission as a punishment for what he saw as disloyalty, and convinced Zuko that it was the only way to redeem his honor.
Zuko is motivated entirely by proving his loyalty to the Fire Lord. And since the Fire Lord has total authority over his nation, loyalty to the Fire Lord is loyalty to the Fire Nation. Moreover, Zuko is convinced that this is the only way that he can be loyal to his nation, because in all other ways, he is considered by his father to be a failure.
Zuko isn’t motivated by personal glory here, he’s motivated by a desperate need to prove that he’s not a failure to his country and his father, and he believes this because this is what Ozai’s abuse conditioned him to believe.
Zhao accuses Zuko of disloyalty but he isn’t calling Zuko out on anything. Zhao believes Zuko is disloyal because that’s what Ozai said Zuko was, and he also knows that this is a trigger point for Zuko and he wants to push his buttons. Zhao himself is being pretty hypocritical here because he dismissed Zuko’s quest for the Avatar as foolishness until he realized that Zuko had actually found something.
And this is where we get to the cognitive dissonance that is characteristic of both abusive people and fascist regimes. “Disloyalty” as defined by Ozai is not obeying and being a failure, so Zuko has to bring back the Avatar. “Disloyalty” as defined by Zhao is Zuko holding back information so he can achieve the mission Ozai sent for him. Ozai most likely sent Zuko on this mission in the first place on the assumption that it would not be achievable, and Zhao also thinks this until he realizes that Zuko has actually discovered something.
I’m sure that if Ozai found out that Zuko tried to impede Zhao from capturing Aang he would brand it as disloyalty, but I think Ozai also purposefully sent Zuko on an unwinnable mission AND was prepared to punish him for “disloyalty” for not succeeding even though that was exactly what he expected him to do. It was only luck that Zuko ended up finding Aang in the first place, and that’s one of the reasons why Ozai restoring Zuko’s honor feels empty in book three.
And here’s the thing, which I’ve said before in response to these bizarre Ozai/Fire Nation apologist takes. You don’t owe any loyalty to anyone who doesn’t have any loyalty or respect for you.
That’s what Zuko eventually realizes, and it’s what he’s beginning to realize as early as here, in the third episode, as seen in his outburst at Zhao calling his father a fool if he thinks the world will follow him willingly. If he thinks people will fall in line by being subjugated by terror and violence.
Zuko knows on some level that he’s stuck in an unwinnable situation and that his father and the FN are wrong, even if he can’t really articulate it yet. Kids are smart, and they know when adults are putting them in unwinnable situations. They also know right from wrong. Kids become frustrated when they can’t do the right thing, and when they can’t please an unpleasable adult that has authority over them, and this is very much what Zuko is doing here. The harder he tries to beat Zhao, the more “disloyal” he is to the Fire Nation; the more Zhao is able to best him, the farther he is from proving his loyalty to his father.
This is actually one of the ways the show sets the groundwork early on for Zuko’s redemption by
1) showing us that the Fire Nation is not worthy of Zuko’s loyalty
2) Showing Zuko being put into increasingly impossible and contradictory situations due to his attempts to remain loyal to the Fire Nation; eventually “screw this I’m out” starts to look more and more like a better idea.
Zuko already knew this, of course, even before the series began, but he buries it deep because of the need for his father’s love. It’s why he stood up in a war room full of adults and demanded to know how the leader of his country could knowingly send loyal soldiers to their deaths. What happened to those soldiers is entirely a parallel to what Ozai did to Zuko.
It’s amazing but also terribly ironic that so many Azula “fans” don’t seem to understand this, either, and try to prop up Azula by showing how loyal she is to a cause that, in the end, destroyed her, as it would have done to Zuko if he hadn’t gotten out.
Zuko is loyal to Iroh because he knows on some level even at the start of the series that Iroh is the one person who isn’t going to gaslight him or manipulate him or hurt him while telling him it’s for his own good. The one person who doesn’t feed him the fascist lie of personal glory and destructive nationalism and instead offers him truth, love and acceptance.
Azula I guess is “selfless” if you consider that her entire sense of self is tied up with pleasing her father, as Zuko’s was at the beginning, but that’s not an admirable trait, that’s just being abused.
As far as being selfless in her loyalty to the Fire Nation, again, she’s in the top %1 and considers herself as having the right to rule and the right to conquer other nations in the name of the Fire Nation. So loyalty to the Fire Nation is about what she gains and what she believes is her right. From a personal standpoint she is entirely self-centered, as she is cruel and manipulative towards others and sees them in terms of how she can use them. That’s the main difference between her and Zuko, that Zuko actually cares about others, although he tries to shove this impulse down at the beginning of the series, whereas Azula’s cruelty and disregard for those around her that she exhibited in childhood grew as Ozai fostered it.
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my thonks on the new game I played this weekend, under the cut for length and spoilers
I softly clicked the Sable icon when first booting it up yesterday, expecting a visually pleasing indie game about nothing with Mechanics LiteTM loosely screwed on; and I am sitting here now on a platinum trophy, with messed up hair and wide open eyes, wondering what the fuck has just happened.
It completely blindsided me with the Entire Rest Of The Experience after I was done oohing and aahing at the cel shaded packaging. I was expecting a Journey-esque barebones rumination on esoteric concepts at the very best, but here I was seeing a charming story that was one hundred percent steeped in metaphors but decidedly about something. or maybe two things in my mind, identity and purpose, and it goes about articulating them through character writing which is. So good?? Sable is an actual character. with interiority and desires, and her world is peppered with NPCs that are eager to chat back and reveal that they very much possess their own, too. The story is fury-road-simple, yet her growth is palpable and almost entirely gameplay-driven through player lens and agency. You get to literally decide what your purpose is and what purpose even means by the end. And the more you engage with and give to the world, the more it gives back to inform and enrich the context around that decision. It is such a deliciously simple parable that it is impossible not to click with it on some level.
And yeah, the game design is fucking rock-solid, another surprise. Not that I short-change indies because of their scope necessarily, but they do generally tend to be on the single-idea-test-drive side of the industry equation, rarely excelling at all internal pillars at once. Not the case here. There are smart choices made in borrowing mechanics from other titles and throwing them in an elegant mix that works in the internal math of this specific world; and it is all from-the-top efficiency. Sable looks for purpose through exploration and wears her currently preferred identity on her sleeve, so the entire macro loop is dialed in on those two elements. exploration and expression, with all extra fat trimmed off. your stamina meter feeds the first, various cosmetics feed the second. deft RPG-like quest structure and varied mission chains award you with boosts to both.
It is difficult to articulate, but the symbiosis between story and gameplay is really-really tight here, the very opposite of ludonarrative dissonance, to an almost indistinguishable degree. And it is never best exemplified than during the ending of the game, wherein the ending is a choice you make, you choose to end the game when you decide that Sable has found her purpose (it is all a neat dance of mask metaphors and communal occupations); and if you decide that she hasn't, or that her purpose is the search, the text automatically supports and encourages it. You can end it with 75% of the content untouched, or glide endlessly on, wearing any mask you start liking at any point. It is the ultimate celebration of autonomy in destiny and identity, and its fluidity, and its ownership. The game makes that distinction with a gentle firmness; the gliding rituals are solitary, personal. You make that final choice for yourself, you acknowledge the consequences but it is yours to make or not make.
The game is the search, and it ends if you decide that Sable has found herself.
The word "gentle" is so evergreen when thinking about this game, too. It is incredibly chill and introspective, yet manages to achieve triple-A level forward momentum without using a lick of combat gameplay, competitive beatdowns, fail states even, just entirely disregarding violence as a form of interaction between the player and the world, both lanes. And I know I'm biased to home in on and love this sort of thing because empathy-building gameplay is something I preach about like an annoying doomsday prophet but really, it really works here, despite me and despite itself. There is genuine good game design underneath the naivete of the idea, driving engagement and keeping your attention glued to the process without using combat mechanics. In an open-world RPG-like arena. It can be done.
And it looks and sounds fucking great and there's pretty decent customization of Sable and even of your weird kinda-alive bike that has terrible pathfinding when summoned. The selective absence of depth tones can be disorienting at first, but the aesthetic sorta makes its case with time, and the charming animations (is Sable animated on twos when she runs?) lock in the spell. The game is definitely finicky in some technical areas; I encountered one fairly major bug that randomly sorted itself out after minutes of me doing nothing (the button activating the watch sundial wouldn't trigger), and fairly common pains of open-world streaming would sometimes fire off like random audio cues and NPCs spawning on top of one another and real bad frame drops in geometry-heavy areas. But I definitely heard much worse than I experienced with my run. I managed to 100% the whole thing without a hitch and even wore my princess chum dress to the final gliding ceremony.
Anyway. I want to talk about a thousand different things Sable does well but this post was mainly about how good it is with telling a story about purpose that you get to both literally and metaphorically search for before deciding to end or not end it. It is just very very good at being story-first. Please buy it! Instead of fighting giant beetles you kinda try and make them poop for science, it's amazing.
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Render Your Heart | J.Jaehyun
(Jaehyun’s Tattoo Edit - @rrregan) Summary: Growing up beside your brother’s best friend forces you to keep your crush a secret. But who knew, the way you’d expose yourself was when you asked for help from a dropout high school student. When your lie of an excuse gets caught and your long time dream becomes a reality. Careful though, don’t get caught.
Genre: smuT Pairing: bad boy!Jaehyun x reader (ft Taeyong big bro) Word count: 5.8k
Warning: Jaehyun has tattoos (sleeves, chest), hard dom!Jaehyun, fingering, rough, orgasm denial, dirty talk, explicit content, wet and messy sex, begging, orgasm control, spanking, humiliation, praise, punishment, teasing, nipple play, cum licking/swallowing, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, marking, cock worship, blowjob, throat fucking, hair pulling, gagging (on cock), cum swallowing i think i said that, rough sex, cockwarming, belly bulge, thrill sex? risk of getting caught, safe systems because that is very important to have, also safe sex please this isn't something you should follow
a/n: Yeet. I drank 2L of water writing this. Also thank you @hyuckiesgf for helping me read thru this <3. _____
“Y/N?”
He slowly slides the paperwork off your lap, exposing your legs in the short skirt you’re wearing, the almost non-existent breeze from the fan now hitting your skin, leaving you feeling very naked. His arm swings across your shoulder, closing the gap between the two of you sitting side by side against the couch.
“Y-yes?” You stutter out, your head turning to see his hand resting so close to your face.
“So why don't you tell me what you really want?"
You gulp down the saliva forming in your throat as you watch his hand fall to your legs, the veins from his wrist bulging out as he gently squeezes your thigh for a response. “Hmm? What are you talking about?"
His left hand creeps up your skin, sliding up the inside of your thigh as he tip toes up your skin, tracing his fingers very softly, gliding closer to the hem of your skirt, “You want me to believe you called a high school drop out for help, on a university assignment?”
His hand climbs closer to the inside of your thigh, and the background noise coming from the TV is no longer audible to you. Your figure frozen suddenly, feeling all the tiny details of his touch, the texture of his fingertips, trailing along the inside of your thigh, going up and then back down, moving around in an eight pattern.
“Why’d you call me over?” He murmurs, his eyes focused on your parted lips, watching as they fall open slightly.
“I-I wait – hold on.” Your mind runs in a mess as you stutter out a random string of words in an attempt to think.
The hand on your thigh suddenly halts, no longer gently squeezing and fluttering along your skin. “I’m waiting?”
You realise the nerves from your stomach, from the touch in your thighs, from the dim lighting in the midnight timing, were all connected directly to your pussy. His touch, causing your pussy to self-lubricate and swell at its own volition, in strict disobedience to your control.
“It’s not what you think.” You mumble.
“Is it not?” He whispers, flipping himself to face you. His free arm flies to the back of the couch, using it to support his weight as he leans forward, keeping you encircled by his body. Your eyes glance over to the side, following the abstract shapes tracing up his forearm. The simple black tee rising higher up his arm, exposing his pale skin – mostly obscured by the smooth paintings in ink that wind up his biceps. “What are you staring at baby?”
Abruptly, your breath hitches, your pussy simultaneously releasing a gush of wetness at the nickname, the darkness of his eyes staring down at you. His fingers press against the damp spot in your panties as his breath goes to the crook of your neck. Your cry of alarm being quickly muffled as you bite down on your tongue in resistance. His breath tickles your neck and your hands clench onto the sheet of paper you’re holding, scrunching it up unknowingly.
“Should I stop?” Jaehyun removes his face away from your side, moving to face you, letting his gaze fall on your lips.
Your mind spins around in circles as the inner conflict begins. The two of you had always flirted but took nothing seriously, not wanting to mess up the relationship he had with your brother. Taeyong would also never approve of it, his own wish was for you to find a more responsible guy who didn't have so many bad influences. Which was also hypocritical considering his own nature.
Jaehyun watches as your eyes flutter shut, your body involuntarily moving up for a stronger presence of his touch. He follows along smirking, deciding to press a little harder as he finds your sensitive clit.
“Fu-ckkk” You draw out, your body sinking deeper into the couch.
He towers over you, his shoulders squared and blocking your view from anything behind him. His dark eyes sweep over you, his gaze trailing from where his finger presses, up to your naturally pink lips before he lets out a low, deep, exhale of desire.
“Can I continue?” He whispers, leaving a soft kiss at the corner of your jaw.
Your hand still holding onto the paperwork is now crushed, the sheet mushed into a ball as you dig your fingers into it. Your other hand leaves the couch, reaching out to his chest, flattening weakly against his muscles. “Jae- th-this, fuck, we ca-cant do this.”
“Why not?” He pauses for a few seconds, waiting for an answer, but nothing forms out of your mouth, only the lifting of your hips to meet his touch yet again.
His drawn back to your clit when you can’t respond, gently pinching at it through the fabric as you let out a stifled moan. Your palm weakens against his chest as your strength drains from your body, achieving nothing. You may as well try pushing a whole truck instead. Jaehyun wasn’t budging, his muscle and strength, his chest and shoulders, alarmingly hard. And truth be told, you weren’t trying to get him off.
You knew you were slipping, losing your grip on your rationality as you moan out again feeling his fingers tease your clit through the thin material of your underwear. As your body relaxes into the couch, your skirt slides up, revealing the little amount of skin left unseen, all the way to your panties. His weight is still barely on you but his leg wedges between your knees as he kisses closer to your parted mouth.
“What about my brother?” You stutter out, your eyes squeezed shut at the sudden contact.
Jaehyun’s lips brushes against yours, forming a smirk after hearing your words, “Taeyong? He won’t know,” he places a soft peck, “unless you tell him.”
It sounded safe right? Jaehyun wouldn't tell him and there’s no way you ever would. You nod along to your thoughts, but within the next second, Jaehyun is devouring your lips. His hand which previously laid against the couch, now cupping your cheek as his other hand continues to rub you through your panties.
Your arousal grows as you realise how screwed you were if Taeyong saw this, how you probably looked so helpless pinned underneath his best friend’s figure. Jaehyun continues, both stimulating you and checking the level of your arousal. The ripples of lewd, mind numbing pleasure racing through your body making you panic, as you constantly try to detect the sound of the shower in the background. Waiting for it to stop and for Taeyong to come trampling through the scene. Your pussy was oozing and throbbing, obeying his fingers and his crushing desire as you panicked for your life.
You had yearned for his touch and sensation and savagery, and he was giving it to you, just like you had imagined it, and you felt herself melting under his assault. Your cries diminishing and becoming more like beseeching moans as he slips his fingers under your panties, parting it to find your slit.
“Fuck your so wet for me.” He groans, pausing in between your frenzied kiss. There’s only the sound of your soft gasps for breaths against the wet kisses before you realise there’s no other noise.
“Jae the showers stopped.” You mumble against his lips, bringing both your hands to his chest, pushing him back only slightly.
“Then we should hurry, shouldn't we?” The frantic moan that escapes your lips are left to mean anything: fear, urgency, or imploring lust, desperate to relieve the tension in your lower stomach.
You begin to whine and whimper into his mouth, begging him to hurry before you’d be forced to stop in order to spare your life and what little dignity left you had in front of your brother, but Jaehyun continues to take his time.
“Jae-” Your rational mind tries to tell you that if he was going to keep this up, you might come, that you may lose all your self-respect to the combination of his touch, your helplessness and the thrilling shame of being so close to danger. What is he going to think of me? If he knew this rough treatment, this anxious feeling of being caught, can make me climax? What would he say?
However, the low groans coming from Jaehyun as he plays with you, teasing your entrance, was begging you to forget everything. The humiliation that was increasing seeming to connect directly to the spot between your legs as you felt your pussy spasm desperately, sucking on empty air, aching for something as he slides across the moisture.
As you move your body up, desperately for his finger to enter, Jaehyun stops moving, pulling back his face so you see his eyes clearly. “Stop grinding your hips at me,” he growls, “you’re going to make me cum.”
Your pussy clenches involuntarily at his words, releasing another gush of wetness. “Isn’t that the point?” you stutter, your body deflating a little against the couch, dropping your hips which were previously moving in line with his hand.
“Not right now.”
Before your able to ask what he means, his weight is off you, immediately leaving the couch in search for something. You stay seated, dazed in confusion as he picks up the scattered paperwork on the floor placing it neatly on the coffee table.
“Grab your jacket.” He tells you.
“Why?” you ask, your mind still in a muddled mess.
“We’re going out.”
As you hear the knob of the bathroom door handle fumble, you quickly bring down your skirt, hurriedly standing up and pretending to be busy. Taeyong walks out with a towel in his hand, his eyes glancing between the two of you as he ruffles his wet hair.
“Where are you guys going?” He asks, having heard the last spoken sentence.
Jaehyun throws on his beaten leather jacket, letting it hang loosely over his frame, “You never taught her how to change a flat tire?”
“U-uh no? Was I meant to?” Taeyong asks, confused at the sudden topic.
“Well now I have to.” Your eyes dart over to Jaehyun, meeting his gaze as he signals you to follow along.
“It’s cold and dark outside” Taeyong shrugs, clearly unbothered by whatever was going through his best friend’s mind, “but whatever, suit yourself.”
Jaehyun grabs you by your wrist as you trail along. The sudden change in temperature instantly hits you as you step out the front door. He doesn't say anything but you peek around his body which leads you, waiting for him to glance back at you and say something. But he doesn't.
“Where are we going?” you ask, having to jog slightly to keep up with his strides.
“To finish what we started,” he simply replies.
***
There’s no hesitation left as he unlocks the front door to his apartment - so conveniently located in the apartment building next to yours. His jacket is shrugged off before you’ve even had a chance to slip off your shoes, the front door slamming shut automatically by its weight. Your core flutters as you notice the sound of just your heavy breathing, trying to remain calm.
“Why are you acting so shy suddenly?”
You look over at him, removing your gaze from your feet to look over, gulping as you see he had also removed his shirt within the little time you had just entered, “I’m not.”
He chuckles at your confident reply, gesturing you to come over, “It’s not like this is your first time over.”
“Well it’s my first time coming over for something like this.”
“Like what?” He asks amusingly.
“You know what I mean.” You mutter, your feet dragging you closer to him so your standing just inches apart. He holds a smug expression on his face as you’re forced to look up at him to match his gaze.
“Mmmm I don't think I do,” he murmurs, bringing your hands around his neck, making you stand on your toes to reach comfortably around his height.
“Asshole,” you mumble, breaking his gaze. You stumble back a little as your hands leave his neck, realising how close you’re standing.
Jaehyun wraps an arm around your waist, keeping you steady, “Be careful.”
The pull closer towards him brings you face to face with his inked skin and your attention goes to the patterns in front of your eyes. Your eyes follow the delicate shapes and lines along his shoulder which start from around his collarbone, down to the centre of his chest where the tattoo meets to form a flower. You can’t help but imagine how he’d look if he was entirely covered, the gap between the inks being marked by you. What you’d do to suck on his skin and mark it yourself.
“You can touch them Y/N, they don’t hurt” he chuckles, watching your eyes waver.
You shut him up when the contact of your lips brush against his skin, softly sucking at the vines on his collar, then trailing your tongue towards the ink down the middle of his chest. You bring your attention back to the clear patches of skin around his collar, deciding it’d look better with some of your artistic touches.
“Fuck,” Jaehyun hisses as you teasingly graze along his flesh before biting at it softly. The hand around your waist tightens and you can feel his nails digging into your skin. His free hand slides up underneath your shirt, between your closed bodies. You nip and suck at the uninked patch, moving your head back every so often to see the dark colour forming a mark.
His hands leave their spots, deciding to remove your shirt and you help him, guiding the fabric over your head, exposing your bra, and then your naked midriff as you feel the pulse in your throat beating in a growing excitement.
"Mmm... Beautiful. Just fucking beautiful" he hums. You feel yourself blush, heat rising at his approval. It was insane to you, and without reason, but you desperately wanted to please him. "Baby, I could fuck you all night long and not get tired," He grabs at your breasts, going at them hungrily as he begins to kiss and pluck at your nipple with his lips through the sheer fabric of your bra.
“Please,” you mewl, weak from pleasure. His hands cup your breasts as he gently pushes you backwards, until your back hits a wall and he stands looming over you.
"Mmm..." he grabs your bra, pulling it up over your breasts, then attacks them with a vengeance, sucking, licking, squeezing one while he devours the other. His need and passion so intense, so overwhelming you can hardly breathe.
He lets go of your breast and his right hand goes back under your skirt, finding your soaked panties and pushing the crotch aside. He pushes his finger into you and you cry out, arching up against the wall as you try and support your weight. Your legs spreading eagerly as the sloppy sound of his fingers filled the room.
"Please," you whisper, "Please..." He fingers you till you feel yourself start to bear down the looming orgasm and then he stops suddenly.
You watch as his hand flies to his zipper, your breath hitching as you gaze at the bulge straining against the thin material of his jeans. He catches your gaze and decides to move slower. He moves with excruciating ministrations, his fingers gliding over the waistband as he undoes the first button before sliding the zipper down. Through lust hazed eyes you watch as Jaehyun strokes his cock, covered by the thin material of his boxers, the fabric stretched for release. Eventually, he kicks of his jeans, the more apparent tent now restrained only by a single layer.
“Eyes up princess,” He smirks, watching your eyes flicker back up to him. You reach down desperately, wanting to touch him. Jaehyun grabs your arm, pulling you back as he finally removes the last layer, letting his cock spring free, hard and angry, arching up in its full arousal, erect and proud. The moment you see his entire length you let out a low moan.
“I just want to touch it,” you whine, freeing yourself from his grasp.
“You can,” he pushes your shoulders down gently and you immediately sink to the floor in eager when you realise what he’s implying. “Show me what a hot little cock-sucker you are and get me good and hard, baby. Good and hard.” He takes a handful of your hair and pulls you closer, his other hand holding his dick up like a weapon, aimed directly at your mouth.
The sticky velvet head of his dick presses against your lips and you can smell him, the scent of soap and denim and male sexual musk. You lean forward at the sight just as his heavy cock slaps against your lips and you obediently open your mouth, taking him inside.
He exhales a grunt of excitement and you feel his hands in your hair, pushing your head down impatiently as he lifts his hips and thrusts himself into you. His cock slides into your mouth and fills you: hot, thick, and pulsing with life, and you hear him groan in animal pleasure as you sink down on his thick hardness.
Your lips suddenly turning wildly sensitive as he tugs at the strands in your hair, grabbing your head and fucking his cock into your mouth, pushing the fallen strands of hair out of your face so he can see you getting fucked.
"Fuck!" he moans. "Oh fuck!"
You continue sucking, slobbering, pushing your head onto him and pumping, pausing only to slurp up the streams of saliva that poured from your mouth and down his shaft. You can hear your own guttural moans and sounds of obsequious sucking, and when your neck starts to ache and your lips grow tired, you just hold your head and mouth still, letting him use you, letting him thrust his angry cock into your throat and making you choke and gag.
"You're going to make me cum, baby!" he moans.
As the words leave his lips, you suck harder, jaw no longer slack, wanting him to cum in your mouth. But he wasn't ready to give it to you yet. He digs both his hands into your hair, prying you off as his cock pops out your mouth, slimed with spit and twitching with pre-orgasmic spasms. Jaehyun quickly grabs his cock, squeezing his length to stop his immanent ejaculation as you cry out in frustration.
“What are you doing?” you whine as Jaehyun leans down, wiping the substance off your lips. You were desperate for his cum in your mouth, and he was denying you.
“Not yet.” As his head rolls back, you continue to stare, watching him squeeze and clench his dick and the watery pre-cum roll down the angry purple head. You pounce on it, reaching forward to scoop it up in desperate need with a single swipe of your tongue, savouring its flavour before swallowing thickly.
“Fuck Y/N!” He yells, painfully sensitive and reacting instinctively by shielding his cock and pushing you away gently.
You barely move, your hands quickly falling to your side to keep your balance. If he wasn't going to let you have his cock, you were going to satisfy your oral need another way. You watch as his breaths become heavy, his own attempt of calming himself down. Your eyes are still glued to his cock, wrapped tightly around his hand as your gaze travels up his length, noticing his balls hanging in attetion.
Immediately, you crawl forward, ducking your head to come up from below as you lick and kiss at the hanging bottom, your wet lips running over them.
“Shit!” he moans, his hand squeezing tighter against himself as he watches you in shock. You were shocked yourself but you were more concerned about your eager need growing in the pit of your stomach. You slurp and suck gently at his cum filled balls, grabbing his cock from his hand as he lets go. “You’re such a bad girl.”
But as you begin to pump up his shaft, Jaehyun pulls you up by your upper arms, lifting you off the floor and picking you up into his chest. For a moment your mind goes blank, suddenly forgetting where you are.
It’s not until you feel the soft fabric of the bed sheets under your skin that you realise you’re in a different room. The dim light shining through his open bedroom curtains on your left and the reflection of your body in the mirror on your right.
Your arms climb to your chest, covering yourself in instinct as you notice him staring. “What is it?” you whisper.
“Why are you hiding them?” he asks, crawling up to your face, his hands at the side of your head.
“Because.”
“because what?” he asks, his breath reaching your lips.
“Because I want to,” you sass back. You can feel his body leaning against your crossed arms and you fight the urge to move.
“So much attitude,” he chuckles, attacking you with kisses. His tongue glides through your lips, meeting yours and his hands find your shoulder, pushing down lightly to keep you still beneath him. Your palms go to his back as his chest meets yours, bringing his body down closer to you in the midst of your kiss.
Jaehyun’s tongue is questing and inquisitive; learning the corners of your mouth with practiced flair, drawing sensual noises from you. Sounds you didn't know were capable of leaving you. Tentatively, you reach your arm up around the solid anchor of his arm and your rewarded with a deep growl of pleasure from your partner.
All you had now was need, this basic elemental need, and you wanted him to take you and do things to you. You wanted him to take everything you had to give, because nothing seemed of any value unless he wanted it. Jaehyun notices your change quickly as you fight back for power, your hands gliding to his chest, pushing him. You flip him over, rising onto your knees so you’re now straddling his lap. He makes no effort to stop your strength but continues to pull you close with his lips, waiting for whatever you wanted to do next.
But you pull away from him, the constant thought that plagued your mind being asked, “What happens after this?”
“What do you mean?” he asks, confused.
You sit up properly, his hands resting at your hips to keep you steady. You hesitate before responding, deciding between your words, “Is this just for fun?”
There’s a moment of silence, his eyes showing the gentler side of his emotions, “Do you want it to be?”
You pause for a second, weighing your options. Of course you wanted it to be more, you had fallen for Jaehyun the moment you saw him, but you were sure he only saw you as his best friend’s younger sister, “No.”
Jaehyun smiles at you, bringing your fallen strands of hair behind your ear, “Then let’s work something out.”
You feel his body shift and your suddenly thrown to your side, landing softly on the bed with a thud. In the dark room, you can hear him shuffling before his hand reaches for your skirt, tugging them down in a swift movement along with your underwear. You let out a squeal in surprise but he ignores it.
He walks over to the side of his bed, patting his lap as you crawl over to his side. He guides you over, placing you over his knee, your bottom naked under his hand as you shiver in anticipation.
“I think you know what’s about to happen baby,” he murmurs, stroking the back of your thighs. You let out a choked mumble, your ass clenching as you wait for the sound. “Didn't I tell you no before? I told you not to keep throat fucking my cock but you continued,” he hums, “and do you know what happens to those who don't listen?”
“What?” you squeak
“They get punished.” He squeezes your ass gently, watching it fill his palm, “Here’s how this works, red for stop, yellow for slow down and green for I’m okay.” He pauses, waiting for your response, “did you hear me princess?”
“Y-yes,” you stutter out, heart beating rapidly as you laid vulnerably over his knee.
His gaze darkens, as you respond, his voice coming out almost two octaves lower, “Repeat it Y/N.”
“Red stop, yellow for slow and green for okay,” you automatically reply.
“If anything’s uncomfortable tell me okay?” Jaehyun coaxes with a gentle whisper.
He draws his hand back and you close your eyes for what’s coming. The slap of his hand on your ass amazingly loud in the room, the sharp sting and burn immediately felt. You yelp at the contact, clenching your ass for the next slap to come.
“Count them for me baby.” He purrs, pausing for you to answer.
You let out a shaky breath, “One.”
Another slap comes. You draw in a breath, mumbling out the tally “Two.”
“Count them properly or we start again baby,” he warns.
And another, “Three.”
“Four.” The heat starts to sink into your pussy, radiating through your body.
“F-ive.”
“Maybe you should have listened to me?” he hums in response – another harsh spank following his words.
“Six.” you whine out, crying in pain. As each slap continues, the arrogance you had from earlier drifts further away, the sting of his slaps sinking into your pussy and causing your muscles to clench and clit to throb.
“Your ass fits so perfectly around my hand.” He praises, rubbing the skin delicately after the seventh spank. He shuffles back against the bed, sliding you over with him.
He grabs you by the arms again, lifting you up easily over him and lowering you down between his parted legs. You stare at his stiff cock so close to your entrance and your eyes widen as you watch him move.
“Time to do some work princess,” he orders, hands tightening around your waist.
“You want me to ride you?” You ask, unable to hide the hint of power you could feel rising in your chest.
“Don’t take that fucking attitude with me,” he warns, his hands digging in the side of your skin, “Or we’ll continue our counting.”
You didn't fight him, desperate for something to fill you below. Jaehyun had handled you so easily, like a doll, lifting you up and holding you by the arms, kissing you, nuzzling his face into your breasts as you arranged yourself around him. At the slight contact your pussy makes with the velvety head of his cock, you moan, wiggling your hips back and forth to work the head of his cock between your folds.
He holds you up, not letting you sink down any closer until you groan in frustration.
“Jae just let me!” you scream, frustrated as you claw at his hands holding your body up.
He chuckles in response, beginning to lower you and you feel yourself stretch and spread around his invading length. Then, he lets go of your arms, gripping onto your ass instead as you whimper out in pain from the soreness of before. But that was the least on your mind, finally feeling in charge of fucking him and taking him inside. Every movement of your hips has you taking his cock deep into your pussy and Jaehyun grunts in delight, his hands pulling your body deeper around him.
“Fuck such a tight little princess.” He groans. His cock is huge, and hard, and it split you painfully, but the pain was just what you wanted, the perfect price for the pleasure you desired. He pulls your body towards him, his hands bringing you to his lips around your neck. Jaehyun took advantage of your busy mind, slowing the kiss down, drawing the moment out until you were leaning heavily against him, dizzy.
Your pussy was melting, your juices running down his shaft in an obscene display of need but you were loving it, the wicked sense of control you now had, doling out his pleasure as he moans and gasps simultaneously as you sink down on his cock.
However, when you���re only still half-ready, he begins to thrust up impatiently into you, burying his cock into your hilt and you break your kiss to sob. He was filling you, packing you with his length as you gasp, leaning your forehead against his, feeling so totally fucked and consumed by him.
"Sit up” he growls, " I want to see my cock going into you."
You groan at the dirtiness of his words but obey, pulling yourself up as you watch his eyes flick down to where you see yourself stretch in a tight ring around him.
“So perfectly made for me,” he grunts as you slide down. Jaehyun brings your breasts in his hands, finding your nipples and rolling them between his fingers slowly, pinching and increasing the pressure till you gasp, your pussy spasming around him involuntarily. Your vaginal muscles clench from the immense size, making its long journey in and out of his now conquered territory. “Keep going princess, show me how much you want me,” he growls.
You rise up again, feeling the sweet suck of his cock leaving you, then push back down against him, filling yourself up, grinding to rub your clit against his shaft. Jaehyun moans, sighs, and grunts with pleasure as you continue in a working rhythm, starving to feel his hot release into your pussy. His fingers still tugging at your nipples, bounced in his hands as he bounced on him. But your body grows exhausted soon after your first climax, unable to keep up the same pace as before.
“Fuck I c-cant,” your voice trails off, your thighs weakening as your legs were giving out in support.
Jaehyun doesn't miss his cue, his hand reaching for your ass and the other for your neck as he flips you over, you’re back hitting the sheets with a soft thud in the midst of everything.
“I got you baby.” He whispers, his cock still buried in your pussy as he nudges between your legs. He doesn't move, waiting for you to regain your breath as he gently holds your legs against the sheets, helping you calm down the tremoring of your muscles. “What colour?” he murmurs, pressing a gentle kiss on your forehead.
“Greenish-yellow,” you mumble, “just give me a second.” Jaehyun hums in response, waiting patiently for your response as he holds still inside of you. He nuzzles against your hair. You take a few more moments, breathing deeply before you’re ready, “green.”
He takes no time in returning back to his movements. He pushes your knees up to your shoulders, fucking you hard, deep and with brutal passion. You grip onto the surrounding bed sheets, his full length of his cock sliding in and out of you faster and harder than you could’ve achieved by riding him.
Jaehyun buries his face into the arch of your throat, peppering kisses into your flesh as you gasp out for air with every thrust. His lips trail along the side of your collar before wrapping around the skin, lightly suckling at it. He tugs at the thin skin between his teeth and you feel the slight pang of pain as he bites down softly. Nevertheless, he continues – sucking and biting as many hickeys he can into your skin, gripping onto your opposite shoulder and tilting your head for further access to your neck.
“Your mine now, all mine,” he murmurs against your skin, “whose are you princess?”
“Yours,” you squeak, voice coming out at a higher pitch than usual.
You can feel the building tension, feeling his cock knocking against your hilt as you move, your stomach bulging with his length. You grasp at him, trying to reach for his bicep which holds your knees up, wanting to tell him you were close, but you couldn't move, couldn't say anything. You can only lie there with your mouth agape, eyes shut as he continues to dive in.
“Fuck I’m going to cum.” He groans. But you were already drowning in your own torrent of orgasm, crushed by the relentless fucking and his deep grunts. You feel his cock throb intensely inside you before it begins to spit hot waves of cum into you.
He continues to fuck you as you come, your pussy milking his cock as he shoots into you again and again, his face now buried against your breasts. He was still thrusting as you come down from your high, his member deflating but still insisting in sliding in and out on the slippery bed of your mixed juices. Slowly, you float back into reality, your body still uncontrollably spasms as the thick cloud of ecstasy still clouds your mind.
“Jae n-no more,” you whimper, feeling him retreat from your sensitive walls as the overstimulated pain and displeasure kick in. Jaehyun listens immediately, moving his weight from you so his hovering over your sweaty figure, your hair sticking to your forehead.
“No more baby,” he tells you, his hand skimming over your waist and then to your belly. He pushes down lightly and you feel a rush of cum leak out and trail down to your ass. He climbs off, panting still as he rolls over beside you, bringing in your exhausted figure to his chest. Your clammy skin and his comforting presence washes over you as he runs his large hands over your back soothingly, whispering loving words.
The ringtone of a phone from the bedroom floor snaps Jaehyun out of his trance, and when he tries to move you cling onto his arm. “Don’t go,” you whine.
“I’m just going to answer the phone,” he coos, “I’m not leaving.” He places a soft kiss on your forehead before climbing off the bed to search for the source of noise in the pile of your thrown off clothes.
The ringing finally stops and you watch as you make out the outline of Jaehyun’s shadow placing the phone against his ear.
“Hello?” Jaehyun doesn't say anything else for a while, just listening to the person on the other side of the call while he runs a hand through his hair. You throw your head back against the pillow and sink further into the scented bed sheets when you realise who the caller is, letting out a muffled groan. “We’re coming back now.” _____
Feedback always welcome!
#nct smut#nct imagines#jaehyun smut#nct jaehyun#NCT-WRITERS#nct127 jaehyun#jaehyun x reader#nct#kpop smut#smut#nct scenarios#nct fanfics#jung jaehyun#nct127#jaehyun imagines#nct x reader
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Hello! For the Alphabet Request, could I get the angst Alphabet with Sanji or the fluff alphabet with Zoro, thank you so much! :)
Angst Alphabet - Sanji
a/n: thank you for requesting! I chose the angst alphabet but I kinda regret it now because omg ANGST IS SO HARD IT HURTS TO THINK ABOUT!!! but anywaysssss I hope you enjoy <3
A-Accident (would they blame themselves if you died in an accident?)
Easiest answer ever. Yes. Sanji would take all the blame upon himself regardless of it really was his fault or not. Even if he wasn’t present at the time of the accident, he’d still blame himself and say it was his fault for not being there for you or being prepared for anything. He’d never forgive himself.
B-Break up (How would they break up with you?)
It’s impossible to even imagine this man breaking up with you, ever. Seriously. He’s so passionate, and once he’s in love, he’s in love. There is no going back. BUT, I suppose, on the outrageously slim chance that he did break up with you, he would do it in the kindest way. You wouldn’t even realize you’ve been broken up with.
C-Crying (how would they make you cry?)
If he were to make you cry, it would be entirely accidental. In fact, even then I can only picture Sanji making you cry tears of happiness. If he were to be the cause of your tears (one’s that aren’t tears of joy) he would beat himself up. He can’t stand seeing those he loves cry or upset in any manner.
D-Death (how would they react to your death?)
Denial would be the first emotion he expresses. It’s not possible, right? You can’t be dead. You’re not dead… because if you really were dead, it means he’s lost the light of his life. He’d be practically inconsolable for a very long time. Nothing would be able to bring back his usual liveliness. Cooking loses its appeal – I mean there’s no point if you won’t be the one enjoying his food. The Straw Hats are unable to do anything to bring back some of that fire. They get so desperate that Zoro even intentionally tries to cause a ruckus, but Sanji doesn’t react at all.
E-Emotion (what is one emotion they would try to hide the most and how would they do it?)
His insecurities are the one thing he would never dear show to others. Not only would it result in endless remarks from Zoro, but, he doesn’t want to have to deal with the pitiful comments – ‘you’re not useless’, ‘you are wanted and needed here’, ‘we all love you’. Sure, he understands people are just trying to help and be reassuring but it just makes him feel worse. So, instead Sanji deals with this the only way he knows how: bottling it all up and putting on a façade.
F-Fight (do you two ever fight? How big are the fights? What do you fight about? Etc.)
Fighting with you is something he hates doing. He never allows anything to get to that point. Sanji can’t risk losing you over a fight (no matter how big or small). Instead, he will apologize immediately, completely agreeing with everything you are saying. However, if it’s something he feels really strongly about (i.e your safety) he will sit you down and communicate calmly.
G-Guilt (what is the biggest thing they feel guilty about?)
The events of Whole Cake Island continue to eat him up. He knows he did it for the sake of the crew and the safety of the Baratie, but Sanji can’t seem to forget the way he disrespected his captain and hurt the people he loved the most (and the one’s that loved him too). The part that really makes him messes with him is that fact that Luffy forgave him instantly. To be honest, he wasn’t expecting Luffy to stay mad or hold a grudge, because well… that’s just not what he does. Even so, Sanji’s conscience is constantly telling him that he doesn’t deserve to be on the future pirate kings crew despite apologizing and being forgiven.
H-Heartbreak (what would cause them pain in the relationship? How would they deal during a break-up?)
Being away from you for long periods of time is one of the biggest causes of pain in the relationship for Sanji. He misses you like crazy and often finds himself distracted while thinking of you.
During the early stages of a break-up Sanji is likely to be a bit more reserved, choosing to keep to himself a little more. His usual enthusiasm lacks a little bit of oomph. Sometimes, late at night, when everyone else is asleep, he makes his way to the kitchen where he sits in the dark, cigarette in hand and quietly cries to himself.
I-Injured (how would they react if you are badly injured?)
He would be FURIOUS. Not at you of course. At whoever the hell thought it was okay to hurt the love of his life. He would be in god mode and rampage to find the son of a bitch that would ever dear to lay a hand on his partner.
J-Jealousy (what do they do if they are jealous?)
Death glares are a staple in the Sanji jealousy inventory. He’ll glare at anyone who seems to be taking too much of your attention. He also becomes a lot more clingy, using any and every excuse possible to be near you at all times. It can become a bit much at times, so if you tell him to reign it in a little, he’ll try his best.
There is one person that he refuses to let you spend any time with. Unsurprisingly, that is Zoro. He gets extremely jealous if you pay even the most minimal amount of attention to Zoro mumbling lots of “Stupid mosshead, why the hell are you spending time with him anyway?”
K-Kill (would they kill for revenge?)
Something deep inside me wants to say yes. But, he is far too kind-hearted to take away someone’s life. It is a possibility though, if the other person was to kill his s/o, or anyone else on the crew. However, for the most part, Sanji would just beat the person/people black and blue until they can’t walk, talk, or eat anymore. Basically, he won’t kill them, but they would wish they were dead after he’s finished with them.
L-Loss (what is their greatest loss?)
When he was a child, he lost his mother. She was the only person in his family that truly loved and cared for him (okay his sister did too, to an extent). His mother believed in his dreams and passions. She treated Sanji like a true human being. Losing her was devasting and made him feel more alone than he had ever felt before.
M-Mistake (what is the worst mistake they ever made with you?)
It’s very rare for Sanji to ever make any kind of mistake with you. He remembers every date, anniversary, achievement and milestone regardless of its importance. He doesn’t speak rudely to you, lash out at you or direct any sort of violence towards you.
So, the worst thing he’s probably done is accuse you of liking Zoro more than you liked him, because you would train and workout with him. It wasn’t that it was a serious or harsh accusation, it was just that this was a conversation the two of you have had time and time again.
N-Nightmares (how often do they have them? What are they about? How do they deal with it?
Sanji occasionally finds himself waking up in a sweat, breathing heavily. He doesn’t have nightmares too often, but when he does, they are horrifyingly vivid. It’s as if he is a starving boy again fighting for his life. OR it’s as if he’s that lonely good-for-nothing screw up of a child, locked away in a cell. It’s frightening just how realistic these nightmares feel and to bring himself back to reality all he does is find you. He needs to hold you, look at you, smell your scent, hear your quiet snores… anything. You are his safe place, a sign that everything is alright.
O-Outrage (how and why would they get mad at you?)
He wouldn’t get mad at you. It’s extremely unlikely (though not impossible). The only possible instances that could happen is if you were to disrespect his passion and talent for food. But lets be real… why on earth would you even do that in the first place.
P-Past (what has happened in your relationship that changed the way you saw each other?)
Whole Cake Island was a real game changer. So much was revealed about Sanji that he never wanted anyone to know. He was terrified you would think differently of him knowing that he was a ‘failure’ (note: you didn’t think of him differently at all). However, the part that really put a strain on your relationship was how you thought he had betrayed not only yourself, but the crew too. It really was a whole rollercoaster of emotions, but in the end the two of you were able to work through it, coming out stronger.
Q-Quality (what is their most dangerous/toxic quality?)
This man is quick to anger. Even though his reactions are usually harmless, what’s to stop him from one day completely just blowing up and doing, or saying, something to hurt those he cares about.
R-Rejection (how would they react to you rejecting their confession (or the other way around))
Of course, he would be upset if you rejected his confession, because a beautiful individual has just turned him down, but honestly, he’d just continue treating you as he always. has
S-Scars (battle or self-inflicted)
There are definitely no scars - battle-related or self-inflicted - on his body (that we know of). However, mental scars are a different story. He has plenty of those from his childhood, as do a large proportion of one piece characters.
T-Trust (have they ever broken your trust?)
Never in his life would Sanji do something to break your trust. The closest it came was the incident on Zou and Whole Cake Island, it certainly looked as if he had betrayed you and broken your trust entirely, only for you to find out it was the complete opposite.
Many people think Sanji is the type of individual to cheat in a relationship. While I can see where they are coming from with this opinion, I strongly disagree. This may be an unpopular opinion, I’m not too sure, but, Sanji would never be disloyal in a relationship. Treating women properly is such a big part of his personality to the point where it is practically embedded into his muscle memory – he acts on instinct. So of course there will be times where he’s paying a little extra attention to some lady but there is no ulterior meaning to his actions – its simply his firm belief that all women deserve to be treated and doted on as the queens they are. Additionally, during the Dressrosa arc Sanji truly believed he was in a ‘relationship’ with Viola and as soon as he knew that he was trying his absolute hardest to pay attention to Viola and only Viola. His mind did wonder off to Nami and Robin but he would scold himself for that (and feel free to correct me on this if im remembering incorrectly – it’s honestly quite possible that I’ve made this up entirely LMAO it’s been a while since I’ve read and watched the dressrosa arc).
So, let me sum up again: No. Sanji has never done anything that has broken your trust.
(my apologies I really went off for a second there I’m SO sorry).
U-Urge (how badly do they want to see you after you guys separated?)
Oh boy, he’s practically incapable of going five minutes without seeing you. He misses you so much it’s crazy. Your presence is so soothing for him, so he gets really antsy and anxious in your absence.
V-Vicious (what do they do when they lash out on you?)
I seriously can’t see him lashing out at you at all. He would never physically lash out at you but, there may possibly be potential for him to say something harsh in the heat of the moment. It literally wouldn’t even be because of anything you’d done in particular. It’d just be a build-up of things and then you happen to be the closest person and the next person to say something, and it tips him over the edge, so he snaps. He apologizes as soon as the words leave his mouth.
W-Weak (what makes them feel weak how do they try to avoid it?)
Sanji hates, and I mean hates being unable to help those that he cares about. It’s one of the few things that makes him feel weak. He has a kind heart and is always wanting to protect those he loves, so he does everything in his power to be ready to move in an instant. He remains aware of his surroundings, and is always on guard so that he can defend and strike when the situation calls for it.
X-X-ray (what do they hate and show it most obviously?)
The most obvious object of Sanji’s hatred is Zoro, however, I wouldn’t say it’s hatred. It’s a classic rivalry that is thankfully not rooted in any true ill will.
One other thing Sanji has absolutely no tolerance for is the inappropriate or rude treatment towards women, and food. On many occasions Sanji has actually physically and verbally fought others over their treatment of women and food.
Y-Yearn (what is one thing that they want but can’t have?)
I know this is meant to be serious and super angsty but, my mind automatically went to the clear-clear devil fruit LMAO. Its canon that the clear-clear fruit is something Sanji wants but can’t have because it’s currently in use by another person. (to make up for this not angsty idea I’ll do another one).
Growing up all Sanji ever wanted was a family that loves him and treats him kindly. Sure, he had his mother (before she passed away), and to an extent he had his sister, but he never truly experienced a loving family growing up. However, the moment he met Zeff & the Baratie gang and then the Straw Hat Pirates he learnt something important: Family isn’t always blood.
Z-Zero (what do they do/say in your dying moments?)
He tears up. A lot. He’s so conflicted between wanting to spend your final moments with you but also not being able to handle that pain. Ultimately, he decides to endure, holding your hand tightly and whispering everything he’s ever wanted to say - all his dreams about your future together and how he saw that playing out etc.
#one piece#one piece x reader#one piece headcanons#vinsmoke sanji#one piece imagines#black leg sanji#one piece angst#angst alphabet
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regrets | chapter fourteen
prev. chapter | next chapter
pairing: levi ackerman x reader
themes: enemies to lovers, slowburn, angst, fluff, smut
tw: violence / explicit sexual content
word count: 2075
For the days to come, Levi remained calm and cold. It was difficult to hide your protests and questions behind your tongue, but when he arrived one night with one teacup instead of two, you grew exhausted of fighting. In fact, the two of you rarely shared anything more than smalltalk, which was the most disheartening product of the newfound awkwardness between you and Levi. Really, disheartening was the least of emotions you could assign to this new mode of interaction -- it was miserable.
It was nearly impossible to accept that the relationship may never return to its previous tranquility; however, this was the hard truth. As your leg grew closer to normal than injured, it was undeniable that you would soon be returning to life among your peers -- the dining hall, training exercises, expeditions outside the walls. Though daunting, it was the inevitable -- likely coming as early as this morning, as terrifying, exciting, anxious and wonderful as that may sound. Although one part of you was as excited as ever to get back in the field with your comrades, the simple comfort you achieved within the walls of the infirmary had become your personal normal. You shuttered at the thought of sharing a room with fifty other girls, without room for moonlight visitors and warm, comforting company. Without room for Jean.
Without room for Levi.
Your mind, though wandering, seemed as if it always led in a meandering circle back to him. It was a stark change in thought -- a chat in the Captain's office was once your definition of a nightmare. Now you wished for just one more shared grin over a lukewarm teapot. It was almost embarrassing.
Maybe, you considered often, his feelings did not change as yours did. Perhaps you did look too far into it. In fact, he likely still saw you as the same nuisance he did a month ago, and nothing you ever saw in him and his softened grey eyes was any more than a delusion. You were another young girl with wild feelings for her superior. He was used to that. Then you remembered his hand on yours, how he poured your tea, how he drew circles along your body as you "slept," and remembered again that it was impossible to imagine how he cared for you. The key word, of course, was the past-tense "cared."
At times, your restless mind brought forward the offhanded thought that Eren did care for you. You would remember how you cast him aside without a chance, and then only a week later were you pining after Levi like a schoolgirl with a crush. Maybe that was proof that you didn't deserve that kind of relationship; maybe you were stupid to shoo Eren away like a dog that got a bit too playful. But, however fortunate or unfortunate it may be, the past is unchanging. Not that that made the present any less of a confusing, painful mess. Sometimes it felt like it made it even worse.
---
The smell of the dining hall rushed over you before realization settled. You walked next to Jean -- not holding onto him, or using him to support you every few steps, actually walking. It felt nice. Though you made friendly and funny conversation, you knew he could sense your clear apprehension. Before you entered, he squeezed your shoulder in one hand and shot you a comforting grin.
You noticed a few eyes trailing over at you as you walked to pick up your tray; it didn't bother you. You expected some of those outside your circle to wonder about how you had been -- the news of you saving Jean's life would've been talked about at least a few times. What bothered you was that a certain pair of grey eyes never bothered to look away from Erwin, even when you passed straight by where he sat. Was the disinterest real?
You took your tray from the line and peered down at it: soup, bread, and a potato. Same as always. You wondered how Sasha always made it seem so appetizing. Jean led you over to the table you spent two long weeks without -- everyone greeting you with a smile and Sasha with a hug. You sat amongst your friends with an unpreventable grin, their excited "hello"s giving you the bit of joy you needed to keep going that day. You fielded their questions about your time at the infirmary with boring half-truths, trying your best to avoid the secret you entrusted only with Jean. You began to realize how difficult it was to separate your time in the infirmary from talks of your time spent with Levi.
Every so often, you found your eyes trailing over to where he sat, your line of sight grazing his raven-colored hair. You remembered how messy it was that morning after he spent the night. It brought the beginnings of a frown to your face. Against your better judgement, you allowed yourself to ponder on why he hadn't so much as glanced in your direction; was he not concerned for you as everyone else was? You had even met eyes once with Mike and Reiner, and yet Levi was not the slightest bit curious about you?
It pulled your spirits down rather quickly, the joy brought on by your friends dwindling down each time you allowed yourself to gaze at the puzzling and infuriating man across the room. Jean followed your eyes once or twice, seeing your face fall a bit lower each time. He tossed his arm around you, pulling you close; he tried to make it as casual as possible, while still giving you as much comfort as he could.
You leaned into him and closed your eyes, trying your hardest to rid Levi from even the furthest parts of your mind. This was a happy day -- you shouldn't let your infatuation with him ruin that. Jean rubbed your shoulder with his thumb inconspicuously, as if to tell you everything would be alright.
Unbeknownst to you, he saw Levi's head turn to gaze at you for a few seconds -- not an offhanded or accidental glance. The look in his eyes could most closely be described as wistful. When his eyes met Jean's, he looked away briskly, returning to his conversation with Erwin as if he had never even noticed you.
---
Sparring with Christa was nowhere near challenging, but you understood why you were paired with her. Your superiors still worried about your injury and likely would in the coming weeks; still, you had hoped for at least a little bit of a challenge. Hange was leading the activity, scanning across the scouts to make corrections or shout words of encouragement. To your dismay, however, Levi hung idly by, eyes focusing dead on one soldier at a time, presumably determining each individual weakness and scolding them in the confines of his mind.
You had begun to goof off, laughing at a joke Christa told and hardly trying to land any hits. If anything, it was entertaining. You worried you would grow tired too quickly during training, anyway; maybe easing into it was best.
You dodged another weak punch, laughing as her eyes grew jokingly narrower. It seemed as if no one else around was having as much fun as you were -- focused in on their partner and trying their hardest to look like they were the best. You watched Mikasa's unwavering stare at Sasha, who evaded her as best she could. Then you turned your eyes to Jean and Eren, their hits getting a bit too real and anger replacing focus. It made you laugh again.
You and Christa elected to take a small break, sipping from your canteens and chatting about your walking lessons with Hange. You froze mid-smile as you heard a certain voice call out your name from several yards away -- Levi.
You stood, screwing the lid back onto your water and laying it down on the ground. "Yes?" you replied, your eyes meeting his for the first time in days. They didn't look happy.
He approached you with a glare until he stood only a foot from you, his voice lowering with the distance. "What are you doing?" he asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
"Um --" you started, unsure of exactly what he was asking, "I'm taking a break?"
"I've seen much more talking than training. You don't seem tired in the slightest. Why are you taking a break?" he demanded, his arms folding over his chest.
His words puzzled you -- why does he care if you take a break? You were recently injured. None of your other superiors would object to a bit of rest on your first day back. Nonetheless, the fire of his anger had never once failed to light the match within you. "Who are you to tell me if I'm tired? Fuck, Levi, I just got out of the infirmary. Give me a break."
He shook his head, exhaling loudly to make his annoyance clear. "Captain. We should test it to see what you look like when you're actually tired enough for a break. Do you think ten laps would do it?"
"You can't be serious. That's bullshit and you know it," you grumbled, hands balling into fists at your side.
"What's bullshit is the way you're treating this training exercise as a game. Ten laps. Now."
Maybe things really were returning to normal. It almost made you want to laugh.
---
As you laid in your bed that night -- finally your bed -- you replayed the events of the day like a movie. The girls inhabiting the beds around you were long asleep, the moon peering through the window and reminding you that you would be awake and staring up at it for hours to come.
It was your first night without him. Even when your relationship had crumbled into nothing, he still came to sit at your side. And you still found an easy journey to your dreams each and every night. Of course, you knew there would be a time when he wasn't there and the nights grew long yet again -- you just didn't expect these negative emotions overtaking your mind to assist in depriving you of much-needed sleep.
Your anger with Levi had yet to subside, your legs aching from all the running he had you do. You considered for a moment marching over to his suite and giving him a piece of your mind; you thought of reminding him of the moments the two of you had shared just so he had to make the contrast in how he was acting now. You wanted to yell at him, and you wanted him to yell back, and you wanted to be angry. You didn't understand why he had all the freedom in the world to be a dick to you and all you could do was stand there and take it.
Maybe when you were done yelling at each other, you could curl up in his bed and get a good night's rest. You could kill two birds with one stone and avoid the seven or eight nightmares that were guaranteed to keep you awake and alert until morning. What a rock and a hard place situation -- for the man that made you more angry than you had ever been to simultaneously be your only solace from insomnia. It infuriated you even further.
As you had already done three times before, you decided against it. Arguing with him wasn't worth it. Again, the past was unchanging. Your anger was quickly replaced with the sadness the night frequently brought along, your thoughts traveling yet again to your feelings for Levi and your longing for him to share them.
You were wary, at best, for the long night ahead of you; you were sick and tired of long nights. Part of you hoped to break your right leg tomorrow, so you could have a little bit more time to solve it all and get some sleep while you were at it. You were even warier for the weeks to come, knowing that you would be forced to come to terms with the situation as it was.
Levi, Levi, Levi. If everything else was going back to how it was before, why couldn't you take your mind off of him?
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