#like maybe instead of a type writer

[xpastelsweetsx]

Okay so fun fact for IB theatre (a class I’m in) you write a 12 page proposal on how you would produce, design, block, and essentially execute an entire show and I was og gonna do cabaret but honestly… after everything that’s happened as of late with AI and SAG-aftra and such how would we feel abt a 12 page paper on a production of newsies set in modern times?? Like everything’s the same it’s just… now

[hanzajesthanza]

"the michael kandel translation of "the witcher" short story can't hurt you!!"

the michael kandel translation of "the witcher" short story:

[randomnameless]

FE 25 :

Uwu:(...) I question the way in which our society is designed. No matter what strength a person has, it is the station he is born into that controls his destiny. And you cannot control where you will be born. Do you believe that a person of low birth should simply endure the curse of his station? I think not. If you are stronger than those around you, you should benefit from your strength. This is why I will use my strength to remake this world. Class and rank will not matter. Human and sub-human will not matter. The strong will possess everything. The weak will submit to their will. Is this not the meaning of peace? A subhuman: Are you saying that the lives of those without strength have no value?

Uwu : If after all of this you believe the weak will still be weak, that is only because they are too used to relying on others instead of on themselves. A barbarian and potential subhuman lover : There are those who cannot live without their faith... and those who cannot go on once they have lost their reason for living. Your path will not be able to save them. It is the path of the strong, and so, it could only benefit the strong.

Uwu: That is the natural order. The only way for the weak to survive is to cling to the strong. Our discussion is over. Tell me, frail little bird who cannot fight; which do you choose? Submission? Or death? A subhuman: …Life proffered to me by your hand is something I would never accept! A barbarian and potential subhuman lover : (...) I finally understand…what you believe is right.

The context is different, Dimi has a special background with Supreme Leader and is her step-brother, so it makes sense trying to reach for her and at least try to understand what is going on in her mind, than Reyson, a frail and weak laguz by birth, trying to understand and reach out for Ashnard.

But are we really supposed to think Dimi's reply here is pretty different because he personally knew his Ashnard? Or because he isn't a weak and frail thing by birth, like Reyson, so he isn't as angry or as passionate in his replies?

I know this scene plays a role in Dimitri's arc - he tries to reach out for her (hand) when he earlier only wanted to end her life, because he isn't driven by revenge or vengeance anymore and wants to save people, even Supreme Leader.

So this convo is less about Supreme Leader and more about him.

And yet, imo, this always felt sort of wrong, because while Dimitri cannot do a thing for the people who are already dead (killing Supreme Leader won't bring them back, he has to think about the living now and not to avenge the dead) - Dimitri is still talking to someone who gave means and opportunities (and fodder!) to Izuka to create Feral Ones thus most likely knows there is a Gritnea Tower around, started a war and killed thousands, was involved (as far as he knows?) in the brutal killing of his family and has pretty biased views on Laguz.

Of course in the following scenes and maps, he resolves to put an end to the war thus defeat her, and we know Supreme Leader refuses his mercy and prefers to die - but the way this development is frailed is not a straight up rejection of her POV or her so called "IdEaLs", but it's framed as a tragedy because Dimitri couldn't "save" her.

No, kill that, it's even worse :

We have no choice but to destroy each other… Such is the destiny we were born to.

Now this fight - aka Dimitri wanting to put an end to Ashnard's war - is the result of fate, and not the will/choices both parties made to reach that point (which is, in a way, hilarious, because he mentions just after his line her "iron will", so pick your horse Dimitri, is this war the result of fate/destiny, or is it due to Ashnard's "iron will"?).

Ultimately, the themes and arcs of both games are different, so it's no wonder that the solution each Lord(s) offer is different - Elincia wants to avenge her parents and justice for her dead countrymen, Reyson wants to have the right to exist even if he is a weak thing by birth, Ike is out of the loop / Dimitri wants to accept Supreme Leader and "save" her because vengeance and justice drove him to a wall and got his close father figure killed, Dimitri now wants to protect the living, even Supreme Leader herself (or at least he tries).

So even if Ashnard and Supreme Leader share the same dubious ideals, keep a lizard in cage/captivity, used feral ones and started wars - the reaction to them is different, because the Lords have different character arcs and development.

That being said, even with all his character development, would a post-Rodrigue death Dimitri who, idk, is warped in FE9's Tellius, after befriending Laguz, witnessing racism, seeing Gritnea and the "wildlife experiments", witnessing Daein's army ruining civilians, learning about Lillia, Rajaion, etc etc, would that Dimitri still have reached his hand out to Ashnard upon his defeat?

If we want to stay in Fodlan, a Dimitri who befriends Nabateans (who reveals themselves to be Nabateans!), learns about the Relics, learns about Supreme Leader's goal to free the world from their existence because their race isn't allowed to have power over humans, seeing Gritnea or at least still giving fucks about the humans who were painfully transformed in Demonic Beasts (and maybe solving the question about who are they made from, random Adrestian civilians or war prisoners?), reacting to Ferdie's paralogue, learning about Rhea's zumba lessons in her 5 stars resort, etc etc, would this Dimitri still have reached his hand out to a Supreme Leader whose core belief (or least one of them) is Nabateans shouldn't be allowed to live in Fodlan, and Faerghus and Leicester should never have existed and should return to her?

Of course the game makes it so that we will never learn the answer to that second situation, because Hresvelg Tea and whatnot, but if we want to stay true to his character arc, then AM!Dimitri would still have reached out for her hand.

A Dimitri who becomes the kind of ruler Elincia is after her arc in FE10... wouldn't have at all.

[supahstarrr]

as a dr fan we need to acknowledge that some of the danganronpa characters suffer through chronic liners for bad humor by out-of-touch old guy writers syndrome

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

The I feel like she sees me line being said to Eddie who is the person that truly sees Buck for all that he is. Are we supposed to take this line at face value which would indicate piss poor writing because they needed to rush to a horrible ending or do we take it as Buck being an unreliable narrator? What was the audience supposed to interpret from Buck saying that, were we truly supposed to believe him or we supposed to be pissed at Buck for saying this to the one person that truly sees Buck?

Good morning to me, I guess.

I'm assuming you haven't really seen people's reactions in the fandom on tumblr because I feel like I saw this said in quite a few posts going around, but you are absolutely not supposed to take this line at face value. I'm surprised that people think you should. 9-1-1 has from the beginning had a habit of turning friendships into romantic relationships (Bathena and Madney) and taking their time with these things rather than having an instalove situation. Even Karen and Hen, who meet when they're set up on a date together, don't instantly fall in love. I do not think they would set Eddie or Buck up for an endgame relationship with a woman by having them date that woman immediately, even if they didn't plan to make Buddie canon.

Buck is clearly struggling post-death. He's lost and once again looking for the answer from a romantic partner. He did a lot of growth in regards to his family relationships this season but not his romantic ones. Remember, his couch ended up destroyed and he asked his latest girlfriend to pick the new one out for him. Again. He's still not picking his own damn couch. After being unable to sleep on the one his mom gave him but passed out instantly on Eddie's where he ran to feel safe.

If people think this is all, somehow, an accident or the writers are doing this without knowing what they're doing, then I can't help you. Do you also think the symbolism I put into my fanfics are a total accident? Do you guys think I picked the name of the poem "Fuchsia Emerald Alizarin Rose" just because the colors are fun and they accidentally spell out F.E.A.R. or do you think maybe I did that absolutely 100% on purpose and was waiting for someone to realize?

Buck saying that to Eddie is 100% supposed to make the audience raise their eyebrows. Especially when we see Eddie's reaction. He's confused and he's hurt and he's annoyed. Eddie then spends his next few lines showing Buck (and us) that he sees Buck. Buck misses it, it goes right over his head, but the audience is shown that Buck is wrong and Eddie sees him.

I think there was a lot of internal stuff going on behind the scenes way high up the ladder that meant Buddie didn't happen this season. No, I don't mean that in a tinhatting way, I just mean that they knew Fox wouldn't renew them, they didn't know if they'd get picked up somewhere else, Fox hasn't promoted or cared about this show the way it has its other shows in a while, and I think it's pretty clear there was shuffling and changes going on with 6B. So I think things had to be put off. Similar to the pandemic, where I genuinely wonder what kind of season four we would've gotten if we'd had the full 18 episodes and hadn't had to work around Covid. I think that when we know there was a big shift going on behind the scenes, we need to have some grace and patience in how that will effect the story that's told on screen.

But I think that this default to "everything good we see on our screens is an accident and the writers are making shitty choices" is a horrible bad faith argument, and it's exhausting. Aren't you exhausted? I'm exhausted. Fandom shouldn't treat the writing and production team like their enemies any more than the writing and production team should treat the fans like their enemies in some kind of war they have to win (looking at you, GoT showrunners).

We are supposed to be annoyed that Buck is missing the point. We are supposed to see Buck's yearning to be a husband and a father, and how he's missing what's right in front of him. We are supposed to put two and two together and see that Eddie was hurt by Buck's words, that Eddie sees Buck, that Eddie is Buck's safe place, and that Eddie in that moment decided he might not have a chance with Buck and needs to move on, because previously we saw Eddie admit he wants romance again but he doesn't want to go out on dates, we saw his aunt say she met her husband through work, we saw him say 'we have time' and then we saw him immediately after Buck tells him about this new girl who "sees him" flee to visit his mother and then immediately actually try dating. On a meta level this is also because Eddie needs confidence in himself as a romantic partner and needs some more experience under his belt before he's ready to take the plunge with Buck, but in Eddie's mind, I think it's pretty clear he feels Buck will never want him back and he's trying to find the love he wants somewhere else, even if his heart is still Buck's.

So that's what I think. I think it's not explicitly spelled out for a few reasons, but frankly if one of them was a woman we wouldn't need it explicitly spelled out and personally I kinda like that it's not. Something that annoys me with M/F pairings is the constant "we all know you two like each other" talks from third parties that half the time aren't about the characters but are about the audience, to either tell the audience SEE THEY LIKE EACH OTHER THAT'S WHAT THIS IS ABOUT or to give the audience some fanservice while the characters aren't ready to get together. I don't need to be pandered to that way, thank you, so I'm a fan of the slightly more subtle approach that I, personally, see going on with Buddie.

If you or anyone else disagrees with me and feels it was just "piss poor writing" then that's entirely your right. I'd just appreciate it if people who feel that way would stop watching the show, and stop putting their complaints into the inboxes of people who clearly do enjoy the show.

TL;DR - You answered your own question, Buck is an unreliable narrator (and always has been) and we are supposed to be frustrated he said this to Eddie who has proven time and again (and does so in that very scene) that he sees Buck.

[spocksbedsidemanner]

.

[paganinpurple]

AO3 Etiquette -UPDATED

Based on both decent and not so decent replies, I have made some changes to my original post below.

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

As well as likes, kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished it, you liked it - so kudos.

If you really liked it, you should try to comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it (so use your notes to say if you want some constructive feedback). Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. No, posting it online is not an open invitation for that. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity and just want to share. Don't ruin that for them. I've seen so many authors just stop writing coz they can't handle the negative emotions the critism brings, and it's only meant to be a fun thing shared for free (pointing out tagging errors is not included in this).

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

The tag exception is if you don't want to tag a million things or spoil your story, you can rate it as "chose not to use warnings," and maybe tag the bare minimum.

Don't censor tags. How can someone exclude a tag if the word isn't typed out correctly? There are no content bans for terms so don't censor them.

If the tags are mostly content/trigger warnings, especially if they are things considered very fucked up or graphic, you might want to use "dead dove - do not eat" to ensure people know that you're not messing around with tags and what they get is exactly what you've warned them about.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLATONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite or an exchange youve written for going public). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Instead of deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - consider making it anonymous or orphaning it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to your name anymore. If you still want to delete it, fair enough.

It's come to my attention that metaworks ARE allowed on AO3, which is something I wasn't aware of. So if you do post an essay or theory, please tag it as such so others can choose to search for it or exclude it. Art is also allowed.

The only reason this archive works is because NON ONE PROFITS. Do not link to your ko-fi or patreon or mention monetary gain in any way or you violate the terms and risk having your account removed. If anyone does link, it leaves the archive open to people claiming it's for profit and having the whole thing removed.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[byoldervine]

Types Of Writer’s Block (And How To Fix Them)

1. High inspiration, low motivation. You have so many ideas to write, but you just don’t have the motivation to actually get them down, and even if you can make yourself start writing it you’ll often find yourself getting distracted or disengaged in favour of imagining everything playing out

Try just bullet pointing the ideas you have instead of writing them properly, especially if you won’t remember it afterwards if you don’t. At least you’ll have the ideas ready to use when you have the motivation later on

2. Low inspiration, high motivation. You’re all prepared, you’re so pumped to write, you open your document aaaaand… three hours later, that cursor is still blinking at the top of a blank page

RIP pantsers but this is where plotting wins out; refer back to your plans and figure out where to go from here. You can also use your bullet points from the last point if this is applicable

3. No inspiration, no motivation. You don’t have any ideas, you don’t feel like writing, all in all everything is just sucky when you think about it

Make a deal with yourself; usually when I’m feeling this way I can tell myself “Okay, just write anyway for ten minutes and after that, if you really want to stop, you can stop” and then once my ten minutes is up I’ve often found my flow. Just remember that, if you still don’t want to keep writing after your ten minutes is up, don’t keep writing anyway and break your deal - it’ll be harder to make deals with yourself in future if your brain knows you don’t honour them

4. Can’t bridge the gap. When you’re stuck on this one sentence/paragraph that you just don’t know how to progress through. Until you figure it out, productivity has slowed to a halt

Mark it up, bullet point what you want to happen here, then move on. A lot of people don’t know how to keep writing after skipping a part because they don’t know exactly what happened to lead up to this moment - but you have a general idea just like you do for everything else you’re writing, and that’s enough. Just keep it generic and know you can go back to edit later, at the same time as when you’re filling in the blank. It’ll give editing you a clear purpose, if nothing else

5. Perfectionism and self-doubt. You don’t think your writing is perfect first time, so you struggle to accept that it’s anything better than a total failure. Whether or not you’re aware of the fact that this is an unrealistic standard makes no difference

Perfection is stagnant. If you write the perfect story, which would require you to turn a good story into something objective rather than subjective, then after that you’d never write again, because nothing will ever meet that standard again. That or you would only ever write the same kind of stories over and over, never growing or developing as a writer. If you’re looking back on your writing and saying “This is so bad, I hate it”, that’s generally a good thing; it means you’ve grown and improved. Maybe your current writing isn’t bad, if just matched your skill level at the time, and since then you’re able to maintain a higher standard since you’ve learned more about your craft as time went on

[dontbelasagnax]

I find as fandom has assimilated towards a capitalist mindset of consumption, there has been a larger focus on fanart and fanfiction- both in spaces that view creatives as "content creators" and spaces where creatives are seen as writers and authors but lauded similarly to celebrities or deities for gracing the common people with their creations.

This has produced a side effect wherein fanart and, primarily, fanfiction are seen as the Best Forms Of Transformative Works... which means that any other type of transformative work is thrown by the wayside.

There should be no hierarchy of fanworks - every single work is a labor of love (or spite... I see y'all throwing middle fingers to canon 😉) and should be recognized as such. Fandom is a community. It's not a transactional relationship. Everyone contributes and interacts out of shared passions and interests.

If you make podfics, gifs, photo edits, fanvids, fan binding, metas, fiber arts, jewelry, fanmixes, translate fics to another language, run/contribute to a fan wikia or compile lore and resources in other ways: I see, appreciate, and cherish all the hard, love fueled work you put into your creations.

Not to say that fanfic and digital art are over-appreciated (Since I do see that many people are allergic to pressing reblog. It's a community. We're supposed to share and communicate. Lurkers are valid but for the most part, interaction with like-minded people is what fandom is intended for.) but the pedestal they are placed on needs to be lowered. Your favorite artists and authors are real people with real lives. They piss and shit just like you. They work in retail and healthcare and are unemployed due to disability. There is nothing extraordinary about them and they are wonderful human beings all the same. No one is better than anyone else. We're all equals here on this playground.

That said, I think we need to uplift the underappreciated fanworks and creators and give them more attention so they are on equal footing with fanfic writers and fanartists. Reblog the gifsets and tell the creator you're in love with how they colored the gifs, keyboard smash in the tags when reblogging a plush doll someone crocheted of your blorbo, try listening to a podfic on your commute home instead of an audiobook and remember to leave a comment when you get home.

As a final note, I want to give a warm hug to anyone who has sat refreshing tumblr or ao3 hoping that maybe someone will tell them they did a good job. To anyone who has considered quitting their fandom endeavors because their posts or works never get as much attention and love as the rest of the artworks or fics in the fandom tags, your creations are worth making and sharing. Numbers do not equate to quality, nor can they convey how loved your creations are by a given person. Only you can bring your unique sparkle to fandom and your presence is absolutely welcome no matter how big or small, grandiose or inconsequential, important or worthless you think it is.

[maniculum]

Medieval Scorpions Effortpost

So yesterday I reblogged this post featuring an 11th-century depiction of the Apocalypse Locusts from Revelations, noting the following incongruity as another medieval scorpion issue:

The artist, as you can see, has interpreted "tails like scorpions" as meaning "glue cheerful-looking snakes to their butts".

Anyway, it occurred to me that the medieval scorpion thing might not be as widely known as I think it is, and that Tumblr would probably enjoy knowing about it if it isn't known already. So, finding myself unable to focus on the research I'm supposed to be doing, I decided to write about this instead. I'll just go ahead and put a cut here.

As we can see in the image above, at least one artist out there thought a "scorpion" was a type of snake. Which makes it difficult to draw "tails like scorpions", because a snake's tail is not that distinctive or menacing (maybe rattlesnakes, but they don't have those outside the Americas). So they interpreted "tails like scorpions" as "the tail looks like a whole snake complete with head".

Let me tell you. This is not a problem unique to this illustration.

See, people throughout medieval Europe were aware of scorpions. As just alluded to, they are mentioned in the Bible, and if the people producing manuscripts in medieval Europe knew one thing, it was Stuff In Bible. They're also in the Zodiac, which medieval Europe had inherited through classical sources. However, let's take a look at this map:

That's Wikipedia's map of the native range of the Scorpiones order, i.e., all scorpion species. You may notice something -- the range just stops at a certain northern latitude. Pretty much all of northern Europe is scorpion-free. If you lived in the north half of Europe, odds were good you had never seen a scorpion in your life. But if you were literate or educated at all, or you knew they were a thing, because you'd almost certainly run across them being mentioned in texts from farther south. And those texts wouldn't bother to explain what a scorpion was, of course -- everyone knows scorpions, right? When was the last time you stopped to explain What Is Spiders?

So medieval writers and artists in northern Europe were kind of stuck. There was all this scorpion imagery and metaphor in the texts they liked to work from, but they didn't really know what a scorpion was. Writers could kind of work around it (there's a lot of "oh, it's a venomous creature, moving on"), but sometimes they felt the need to break it down better. For this, of course, they'd have to refer to a bestiary -- but due to Bestiary Telephone and the persistent need of bestiary authors to turn animals into allegories, one of the only visual details you got on scorpions was that they... had a beautiful face, which they used to distract people in order to sting them.

And look. I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, but I would say that a scorpion's face has significant aesthetic appeal only for a fairly small segment of the population. I'm sure you could get an entomologist to rhapsodize about it a bit, but your average person on the street will not be entranced by the face of a scorpion. So this did not help the medieval Europeans in figuring out how to depict scorpions. There was also some semantic confusion -- see, in some languages (such as Old and Middle English), "worm" could be a general term for very small animals of any kind. But it also could mean "serpent".* So there were some, like our artist at the top of the post, who were pretty sure a scorpion was a snake. This was probably helped along by the fact that "venomous" was one of the only things everyone knew about them, and hey, snakes are venomous. Also, Pliny the Elder had floated the idea that there were scorpions in Africa that could fly, and at least one author (13th-century monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus) therefore suggested that they had feathers. I don't see that last one coming up much, I just share it because it's funny to me.

*English eventually resolved this by borrowing the Latin vermin for very small animals, using the specialized spelling wyrm for big impressive mythical-type serpents, and sticking with the more specific snake for normal serpents.

Some authors, like the anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse, therefore suggested that a scorpion was a snake with a woman's face and a stinging tail. (Everyone seemed to be on the same page with regards to the fact that the sting was in the tail, which is in fact probably the most recognizable aspect of scorpions, so good job there.) However, while authors could avoid this problem, visual artists could not. And if you were illustrating a bestiary or a calendar, including a scorpion was not optional. So they had to take a shot at what this thing looked like.

And so, after this way-too-long explanation, the thing you're probably here for: inaccurate medieval drawings of scorpions. (There are of course accurate medieval drawings of scorpions, from artists who lived in the southern part of Europe and/or visited places where scorpions lived; I'm just not showing you those.) And if you find yourself wondering, "how sure are you that that's meant to be a scorpion?" -- all of these are either from bestiaries or from calendars that include zodiac illustrations.

11th-century England, MS Arundel 60. (Be honest, without the rest of this post, if I had asked you to guess what animal this was supposed to be, would you have ever guessed “scorpion”?)

12th-century Germany, "Psalter of Henry the Lion". (Looks a bit undercooked. Kind of fetal.)

12th-century France, Peter Lombard's Sententiae. (Very colorful, itsy bitsy claws, what is happening with that tail?)

12th-century England, "The Shaftesbury Psalter". (So a scorpion is some sort of wyvern with a face like a duck, correct?)

13th-century France, Thomas de Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum. (I’d give them credit for the silhouette not being that far off, but there’s a certain bestiary style where all the animals kind of look like that. Also note how few of these have claws.)

13th-century England, "The Bodley Bestiary". (Mischievous flying squirrel impales local man’s hand, local man fails to notice.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (A scorpion is definitely either a mouse or a fish. Either way it has six legs.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Wait, no, it’s a baby theropod, and it has two legs. (Yes, this is the same manuscript, that’s not an error, this artist did four scorpions and no two are the same.))

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Actually it’s a lizard with tiny ears and it has four legs.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Now that we’re at the big fancy illustration, I think I’ve got it — it’s like that last one, but two legs, longer ears, and a less goofy face. Also I’ve decided it’s not pink anymore, I think that was the main problem.)

13th-century England, MS Kk.4.25. (A scorpion is a flat crocodile with a bear’s head.)

13th-century England, "The Huth Psalter". (Wyvern but baby! Does not seem to be enjoying biting its own tail.)

13th-century England, MS Royal 1 D X. (This triangular-headed gentlecreature gets the award for “closest guess at correct limb configuration”. If two of those were claws, I might actually believe this artist had seen a scorpion before, or at least a picture of one.)

13th-century England, "The Westminster Psalter". (A scorpion is the offspring of a wyvern and a fawn.)

13th-century England, "The Rutland Psalter". (Too many legs! Pull back! Pull back!)

13th or 14th-century France, Bestiaire d'amour rimé. (This is very similar to the fawn-wyvern, but putting it in an actual Scene makes it even more obvious that you’re just guessing.)

14th-century Netherlands, Jacob van Maerlant's Der Naturen Bloeme. (More top-down six-legged guys that look too furry to be arthropods.)

14th-century Germany, MS Additional 22413. (That is clearly a turtle.)

14th-century France, Matfres Eymengau de Beziers's Breviari d'amor. (Who came up with that head shape and what was their deal?)

15th-century England, "Bestiary of Ann Walsh". (Screw it, a scorpion is a big lizard that glares at you for trying to make me draw things I don’t know about.)

I've spent way too much time on this now. End of post, thank you to anyone who got all the way down here.

[its-avalon-08]

Hello, my favourite Lando Norris writer. Can I request something with Lando where Reader has a son from a previous toxic relationship and Lando thinks she's like hiding something from, like cheating but she confess everything and Lando becomes the dad that stepped up. 🫶

miracle family (ln4)

✦ pairing - lando norris x female!reader

✦ genre - neglected child, tears, comfort

Lando sat at his dining table, staring at his phone. It had been a few days since he last saw Y/N, and though they’d spoken, something felt… off. She’d been distant, always rushing through their calls, making excuses to cut their time short. He told himself he was imagining it, that she was just busy, but a nagging voice in the back of his mind wouldn't let it go.

He thought back to their last date. They had planned to spend the entire evening together, but halfway through dinner, Y/N had gotten a call. She stepped outside to take it, her expression unreadable, but when she returned, her mood had shifted. Her usual brightness had dulled, and she seemed distracted for the rest of the night.

"Sorry, Lando, just some work stuff," she had said with a quick smile when he asked about the call. He didn’t press further, not wanting to seem pushy, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

Then there were the texts. Every time they were together, Y/N seemed to be checking her phone, typing quickly before locking the screen and setting it aside. She never let him see who she was messaging, and when he casually asked if everything was okay, she’d brush it off.

"Yeah, all good. Just a friend going through something," she had said once, her eyes darting away as if she couldn’t meet his gaze.

But the real moment that had started gnawing at him happened the previous weekend. Lando had invited Y/N to one of his races, excited to have her there with him. She’d always been supportive, her energy infectious, but this time, she’d been oddly quiet. When he asked if everything was alright, she just smiled tightly and said she was tired. But after the race, instead of joining him for drinks with the team, she had left abruptly.

"I’ve got to go, Lando. Something’s come up. I’ll explain later, okay?" Her voice had been apologetic, but her eyes… something about them seemed conflicted, like there was something she wasn’t telling him.

He didn’t know why, but in that moment, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was someone else. Was she hiding something from him? Maybe she was seeing someone behind his back, someone she wasn’t ready to tell him about. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her directly.

Instead, Lando had chosen to observe, watching her carefully over the next few weeks. The phone calls, the quick glances at her screen, the random moments of detachment—it all added up. But every time he was about to say something, the words got stuck in his throat. What if he was wrong? What if she wasn’t cheating, and he was just overthinking everything?

Yet the doubts remained. He found himself scrolling through their old texts late at night, trying to pinpoint when the change had started. He remembered how things used to be—how open and carefree Y/N had been with him. But lately, it felt like there was a wall between them, one she wasn’t letting him break through.

And then, there was that one time she came over to his apartment, looking tired and worn out. She had barely spoken, her eyes heavy with something she wouldn’t share. He had asked her if she wanted to talk, but she had only shaken her head.

"I’m fine, Lando. Just a lot going on."

"Is it work?" he had asked, gently pushing, hoping to understand what was weighing her down.

"It’s… complicated," she had murmured, avoiding his gaze.

Lando hadn’t said anything more that night, but the silence between them had been louder than any words could have been. He had held her close, but even then, she had felt far away.

Now, as he sat alone in his apartment, his mind spinning with unanswered questions, Lando couldn’t help but wonder: was Y/N hiding something from him? Or was it something bigger—something she was afraid to tell him?

Either way, he knew he couldn’t keep pretending everything was normal. Not when it felt like he was losing her, piece by piece.

time skip

Lando strolled through the supermarket aisles, humming softly to himself as he checked items off his shopping list. It was a rare day off, and he decided to take care of some errands. He rounded the corner into the cereal aisle when a small, energetic blur collided with his legs.

"Oh, sorry!" Lando exclaimed, looking down to see a young boy, probably around five years old, grinning up at him.

"It's okay, mister!" the boy chirped. "I was just trying to find the cereal with the marshmallows. Do you know where it is?"

Lando chuckled, kneeling down to the boy's level. "I think it’s a couple of shelves down. What's your name, buddy?"

"I'm Ethan!" the boy said proudly. "What's yours?"

"Lando. Nice to meet you, Ethan," Lando replied, ruffling the boy's hair.

Ethan's eyes widened with excitement. "Like the race car driver?"

Lando laughed. "Exactly like the race car driver."

Ethan's eyes sparkled with wonder. "Wow! My mummy loves race cars! She watches them all the time."

Lando smiled, charmed by the boy's enthusiasm. "Your mum has good taste. Speaking of which, where is she? Shouldn't she be keeping an eye on you?"

Ethan pointed towards the end of the aisle. "She's over there! Mummy! Mummy!"

Lando turned his head in the direction Ethan was pointing, his heart skipping a beat as he saw Y/N standing at the end of the aisle, a look of shock and surprise on her face. She quickly made her way over, her eyes wide with a mixture of emotions.

"Lan?" she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Y/N, uh baby," Lando replied, equally stunned. "I didn't know… I mean, Ethan is your…?"

Y/N nodded, kneeling down to scoop Ethan into her arms. "Yeah, ummm this is my son, Ethan."

Ethan beamed, oblivious to the tension in the air. "Mummy, this is Lando! He's the race car driver!"

Y/N managed a weak smile. "I know, sweetheart. Why don't you go pick out the cereal you wanted?"

Ethan nodded eagerly and ran off, leaving Lando and Y/N standing there, an awkward silence hanging between them.

"Why didn't you tell me, Y/N?" Lando asked softly, his eyes searching hers.

Lando stood frozen, Y/N’s words echoing in his mind.

“I have a son.”

The bustling supermarket seemed to fade into the background, the soft hum of conversations and the clinking of shopping carts drowned out by the weight of her confession. Y/N stood before him, her hands trembling slightly as she held onto the shopping basket, her eyes wide and filled with fear, as though she was bracing herself for his reaction.

Lando blinked, trying to process the information. “You… you have a son?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, filled with disbelief.

Y/N nodded, biting her lip, and that was when her composure began to crack. Her eyes welled up, her breath hitching in her chest as the emotions she had tried so hard to suppress finally surfaced. "Lando, I didn’t know how to tell you. I was so scared you’d leave if you knew. I’ve been hiding it, and I’m so sorry. I—"

Her words choked off as tears streamed down her face. She dropped the basket, her hands covering her face as she sobbed, right there in the middle of the cereal aisle.

“I didn’t want you to think I was hiding it because I don’t trust you, it’s just… Ethan is my whole life. His father was—he was awful, and I didn’t know how to protect us. I’m so sorry, Lando, I should’ve told you sooner—”

But before she could finish, Lando was there, dropping everything as he closed the space between them. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, pulling her into his chest as her body shook with sobs.

“Hey, hey,” Lando whispered, his voice soft and soothing. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Y/N.”

Y/N clung to him, burying her face in his chest, her tears soaking through his shirt. "I'm so sorry," she cried, her words muffled against him. "I didn’t want to lose you. I was so scared."

Lando tightened his embrace, his hand gently stroking the back of her head. "You’re not losing me. You could never lose me."

He pulled back slightly, just enough to look down at her tear-streaked face. He cupped her cheeks in his hands, his thumbs wiping away the tears that continued to fall. “I wish you’d told me earlier, but I get it. I get why you were scared. But I’m not going anywhere, Y/N. You and Ethan—you’re part of my life now. I want to be here for both of you.”

Y/N looked up at him, her eyes wide with disbelief and hope. "You really mean that?"

Lando nodded, his voice steady and full of conviction. "I do. I love you, and if Ethan’s a part of your life, then he’s a part of mine too."

Fresh tears filled her eyes, but this time they weren’t from fear or sadness. They were from relief, from the overwhelming realization that she wasn’t alone anymore. "Lando… I don’t even know what to say."

“You don’t have to say anything. Just… trust me, okay? We’ll figure this out together.” He pulled her back into his arms, holding her tightly as her breathing slowly steadied, her sobs turning into soft sniffles.

In that moment, surrounded by the quiet chaos of the supermarket, Lando knew that nothing else mattered. Not the people passing by, not the curious glances from other shoppers. All that mattered was Y/N and the promise he had made—to be there for her, to be there for Ethan, no matter what.

And as he held her, he realized that this was what love was about. Not just the good moments, but the hard ones too—the moments where you drop everything to be there for the person you love, no questions asked.

At that moment, Ethan came running back with a box of cereal, his face glowing with excitement. "I found it, Mummy! Look!"

Y/N and Lando both laughed, the tension dissipating as they turned their attention to the enthusiastic boy.

"Great choice, Ethan," Lando said, giving him a high-five. "How about we go check out and then grab some ice cream?"

Ethan's eyes lit up. "Yes, please!"

As they made their way to the checkout, Lando glanced at Y/N, his heart swelling with love and commitment. He knew that their journey together wouldn't always be easy, but he was ready to face whatever challenges lay ahead. For Y/N, for Ethan, and for the family they were about to become.

--- extra scene p.s.a - abusive partner ----

As the sun began to set, casting a warm, golden glow over the park, Ethan ran ahead to the playground, his laughter filling the air. Lando and Y/N watched him for a moment, their hands intertwined as they sat on a nearby bench.

"He's really something," Lando said softly, a smile playing on his lips.

Y/N nodded, her eyes fixed on Ethan. "He is. He's my whole world."

Lando glanced at her, squeezing her hand gently. "Y/N, can we take a walk? There's something I want to talk to you about."

Y/N looked at him, a hint of worry in her eyes, but she nodded. "Sure, Lando."

They stood up and began to walk along the path that circled the playground, the sounds of children playing fading into the background.

"Y/N," Lando began hesitantly, "I want to understand more about Ethan's father. About what you went through. But only if you're ready to talk about it."

Y/N took a deep breath, her fingers tightening around Lando's. "It's… it's not easy to talk about. But you deserve to know."

She paused, collecting her thoughts as they walked. "Ethan's father, Mark, was… he was charming at first. But it didn't take long for his true colors to show. He was controlling, manipulative, and it only got worse over time."

Lando's grip on her hand tightened in silent support as she continued. "He would get angry over the smallest things, and his anger… it was terrifying. He hurt me, Lando. Physically, emotionally. I stayed because I thought I could change him, that things would get better. But they never did."

Y/N's voice broke, and she wiped away a tear that had escaped. "When I found out I was pregnant with Ethan, I knew I had to leave. I couldn't let him grow up in that environment. I was scared, but I knew it was the right thing to do."

Lando stopped walking, turning to face her. "Y/N, I can't even begin to imagine how hard that must have been for you. You're so strong."

She shook her head, tears streaming down her face now. "I don't feel strong, Lando. I felt broken and alone. But I had to protect Ethan. I had to give him a chance at a better life."

Lando pulled her into a tight embrace, his own eyes glistening with tears. "You did the right thing. And you're not alone anymore. You have me, and I'll be here for both of you. Always."

Y/N sobbed against his chest, the weight of her past finally lifting as she felt the warmth of his love and support. "Thank you, Lando. Thank you for being here, for understanding."

He kissed the top of her head, his voice thick with emotion. "I love you, Y/N. And I love Ethan. We'll make this work, I promise."

They stood there for a long moment, wrapped in each other's arms, the world around them fading away. When they finally pulled back, Lando gently wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"Let's go back to Ethan," he said softly. "He's probably wondering where we went."

Y/N nodded, a small but genuine smile forming on her lips. "Yeah, let's go."

As they walked back to the playground, hand in hand, Y/N felt a sense of hope and peace that she hadn't felt in a long time. She knew that the road ahead wouldn't be easy, but with Lando by her side, she was ready to face whatever challenges came their way.

[nmakii]

the look of love, the rush of blood

— what it means to date nagi seishiro, but not actually date him

yes this all happened sue me writers are thieves. omfg this id os humiliating to acc write down why is my life like this guys. btw can u guys like… gen tell me what u think ab this dynamic in comments i have to know im so bad at relationships

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means staying up until 2 AM together. it’s finals week, and you’re supposed to be studying. but nagi wanted to play dress to impress with you, and promised he’d help you study after 5 or so rounds.

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means everyone at school thinking you’re dating. even reo asked if you have feelings for him, and when you insistently said no, he replied, “alright, alright..! just trying to make sure nagi doesn’t end up hurt.” so that nagi doesn’t end up hurt? what does that even mean?

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means starting volleyball together. you always meant to pick up a sport sooner or later, but you were too old. it’ll be embarrassing to pick one up this late! you told nagi about this, and he said, “i mean… it’s a lot less running than in football, so maybe i’ll try it out with you?”

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means him watching your favorite anime for you. nagi always said that it wasn’t his type of show, you never really expected him to actually watch it. but one day you get a message— “finished s1, but i cant find s2… not on netflix? :x” from then on, he practically enabled you to keep ranting about the show, and he even got a little shocked when you had told him a fake spoiler.

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means him insisting to pay him back, but not actually doing anything about it. occasionally, when nagi isn’t too tired, the two of you meet up for breakfast in the morning. he lives closer to school, so he usually always gets there earlier. you always ask him to buy your order and he agrees, only on the condition you pay him back. you always pay him back with baked goods, and he always eats them up. and, he still insists he wants his cash back! you’ve given him cookies and brownies worth more than 3 orders of pancakes, you’re starting to wonder if he just likes your baking.

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means hanging out after school. nagi trains a lot. he has to, apparently, in order to become the best striker in the world. but, it doesn’t mean he likes it. if he had it his way, he’d walk to the mall with you and share a cup noodle everyday after school. he’d love to just sit around the convenience store with you for forever— or at least until he wanted to go home. but unfortunately, that time is only limited to an hour before club training starts.

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means telling him about all the people you don’t like. nagi’s a pacifist. he likes to think that he’s a very peaceful and chill guy. there isn’t many people he actually hates. but apparently, you do. you tell him almost every week about at least one person who did you wrong, or a guy who keeps harassing you— it almost makes nagi think, ‘is it actually possible for one person to get harassed this much?’. nonetheless, he still listens and internally rolls his eyes when he sees one of the people you’ve mentioned.

dating nagi seishiro, but not actually dating him means him ditching his hang out to go with you. blue lock just won against the japan U20 team. no one thought they could make it. and as a reward, anri decided that they deserve some free time to themselves in the outside world. isagi had invited nagi, chigiri, bachira, and some others to hang out with him. but because he overslept, he just decided not to go… instead he went to your house. “hey, let’s go to an arcade today?” he asked. the two of you headed into your favorite arcade somewhere in shibuya and since he was so near the café he was gonna originally meet isagi at, he did intend to say hi… but that plan sort of went out the window.

“nagi… let me win for once, would ya?” you grumbled. “but, i’ve already got 15 wins, i don’t wanna lose…” he hums in return. and when he finally K.O.’s your character, you hear a loud gruff voice.

“hey, you pain-in-the-ass gamer prince!” it calls out. and by the disgruntled look on his face, it seems nagi already knows who it is. “yer gonna lose yer friends, ya jerk!” the voice suddenly runs in behind nagi and grabs him by the neck. you recognize that face, it was the #6 of last night’s game! “caught him red-handed!” reo laughs.

you’re suddenly a bit shy surrounded by all these new people, not to mention the fact that they’re basically mini-celebrities. “oh? who’s this one you’re hanging out with?” the boy in the beanie asks, walking up to you. you’re suddenly intimidated by the aura that surrounds him. “…wanna see some ninja arts?” he asks.

you’re tempted to say yes, you’ve never seen a ninja before. the choice is taken though when that aforementioned #6 and a boy with pink hair in an updo bun (he looks like a girl, but you’re sure he’s a guy since he was in last night’s game…) yell at him. “don’t go doin’ yer stupid seducing tricks, moron!”

ignoring all of that, nagi finally answered, “…this is s/o, my friend.” isagi nods, and reo almost looks like he wants to scoff at the title, ‘friend’. “so you ditched isagi to hang out with s/o? way to choose your priorities, nagi..!” reo laughs. “well, i haven’t seen s/o in weeks… and i’ve been seeing all of you too much…” he mumbles.

most of them look rightfully offended, most especially isagi, the boy with pink hair, and another boy with a brown and yellow bob cut. the three of them drag nagi over to the dart board as the boy with the bob hums, “let’s party! nya haaa! ♪”

reo grins and encourages you to follow the group, “c’mon, let’s hang! i know nagi especially will be really glad to have you along!” nagi would be glad? …pushing those thoughts aside, you agree to join them. “yeah… sure, i’ll join.”

[ambrosia-vinca]

There's a kind of defensive attitude towards criticism re:Lucanis' romance in many corners of the fandom that I partially understand because Veilguard gets a lot of shit thrown at it, and if you enjoy something you naturally want to defend it. But this type of attitude also rubs me the wrong way when people who loved the way his romance played out say that anyone criticizing it must just not understand slow burns/not like slow burn as a genre/not understand Lucanis' character and his trauma properly/must have been expecting explicit sex scenes and a Zevran 2.0.

Maybe some people criticizing his romance don't like slow burns, or were wrongly expecting him to be a sex god, or ignore his trauma. I've seen a few. But that's not all the criticism there is.

Personally, I love slow burns, it's my favorite genre both to read and write (I'm the type of fic writer to think up 200k words enemies to lovers longfics where they've barely kissed after 100k words). I'm also the type of ace person who's not into extremely explicit sex scenes or super kinky romances (especially with male dom stuff, which I personally dislike). And lastly, I'm the type who picks the angstiest possible romance choice.

All this to say that Lucanis and his romance were theoretically made in a lab for me. Slow burn because the character doesn't trust easily and is traumatized by his past experiences and has many things he must resolve, excruciatingly slow to open up? Unexpectedly very sweet, wet, sad man with puppy eyes? Romance scenes that are caring and romantic instead of outright steamy? Perfect, right up my alley! I keep romancing Fenris in DA2 exactly for that reason because I love him dearly, and he breaks up with Hawke for 3 whole years! Still my favorite!

But the whole point of a slow burn are the steps. It's a slow burn, which means little step by little step, the relationship slowly builds to a conclusion, from tentative acquaintances who don't trust each other, to slooowly evolve into something more, and it's precisely these crumbs that make the trope enjoyable.

To me, Lucanis' romance doesn't feel like it does little steps, it feels like it skips steps. I can see the main story beats of a good slow burn, but not the crumbs that make a slow burn. I don't want him and Rook to jump each other after 2 scenes, I want to see more of the fumbling, the hesitation, the dancing around each other. No, dragon age isn't a romance game, I'm aware, but if romance is an option, and it is written to fit a specific trope, I would like it done properly. They've done slowburns and angsty before, and they were good (even Solas', and his romance is super short). I want the evolution of the relationship shown to me, not told in broad strokes and big steps, and I don't want to have to write half the romance in my head or rely on ao3.

We get nothing between the coffee date and the almost kiss, absolutely no reaction of any kind to the flirting, not even a blink. If Lucanis and Rook were capable of having an entire conversation about coffee and kisses metaphors when they barely knew each other, then I think they can flirt a bit more in the following conversations when you pick the romantic option, dance around each other, have Lucanis fumble a little more like he does with Neve when he actually registers Rook is sincerely into him. Even just a sign that he heard Rook when they pick the romantic option in the following conversations, because as it is he immediately resumes whatever he was saying. And if his lack of reaction is because he's suddenly afraid and thinks it's a bad idea, I would like it shown on his face, or as an actual noticeable pause/hesitation. It didn't look like he thought it was a bad idea at Café Pietra, unless he just thought Rook was flirting just to flirt and wasn't serious, but again, none of that is hinted at in any way.

Then there's the almost kiss that follows and is the first actually romantic moment we get after the coffee date, and suddenly Lucanis is all smooth and confident about flirting again. With nothing in between ever since *Illario voice* he got all romantic about roasts. Was he reluctant before and that's why he didn't react to Rook's flirting/caring concern? We have no idea, because while he warns Rook it's a bad idea to be attracted to him, he doesn't seem scared, more amused at their daredevil tendencies. The first time in his entire romance we get a clear indication he's afraid and won't open up for a long time is at the end of this specific scene, when he pulls away, and the way it happens is like Lucanis himself wasn't expecting his fear to overcome him. He wants, he lets himself be pulled forward, and then he suddenly gets drowned by overwhelming terror, and he pulls away.

The beginning of the romance (the date + almost kiss) reads to me as if Lucanis was trying to forget the Ossuary, letting himself flirt and feel attraction and just simply live again as if nothing happened, believing if he didn't think about his trauma and forcefully moved forward then it would stay buried, and then the Ossuary unexpectedly caught up to him, because you don't just bury things like that, it always comes back up at some point if you make no effort to actually process what happened.

And then there's nothing again for a long while. I can imagine Rook leaving space for Lucanis because they're considerate of his feelings and they can see something is deeply wrong, but still, something big and awkward happened between them! Not even one conversation where they try to gently broach the subject and Lucanis immediately clams up? What about some mentions of how awkward things suddenly are between the two? Even through party banter? We got plenty about Hawke and Fenris' situationship in DA2 after Fenris pulls away. The other companions comment on their breakup and how it's painfully obvious they're in love still, no matter what happened, and there are a few banters between Hawke and Fenris themselves. Surely things are a little tense and awkward between Rook and Lucanis as well at that point, and their friends would notice? They don't spend as much time together as they used to, Lucanis doesn't talk directly to Rook much anymore unless he has to, can't quite look them in the eye, doesn't want to stay alone in a room with them. He is still protective of them because he obviously cares very much, but can't bring himself to have an honest talk about his feelings and fears because he's still completely locked in his mind prison and would rather deal with his problems by stabbing his enemies.

Rook being lost because they haven't been inside his head yet and they're not sure if it's because of what Lucanis has been through, or if they did something wrong to get them rejected, and they're stuck because Lucanis completely refuses to open up. There are so many little things that could have been implemented to actually serve as the little steps for the slow burn. You're telling me even Emmrich or Neve, perceptive as they are, wouldn't have noticed their two friends suddenly being awkward and sad and not try to talk to Rook about it at the very least?

And then there's the mind prison where Rook gets all Lucanis' fears and insecurities explicitly told to them. Immediately followed by the scene where you lock in the relationship as he makes them dessert.

Were they in a relationship?? When did they get together? Do they get together right there in the kitchen by the sheer power of cake (ok, relatable)? You don't know! They almost kiss, things are theoretically painfully awkward between them for a while, Rook discovers the substance of his trauma, and poof. They're a couple. Yes, I know that Lucanis' love language is acts of service, but did they communicate at all at any point about what's going on between them? Surely even if Rook helping him out of his head puts him on the road to eventual recovery, it didn't suddenly erase all of Lucanis' trauma and fears and doubts.

I liked Rook calling out the subtext of what Lucanis says in that scene (“it's nothing, or not enough”/”it is, and you are”), I did think it was sweet and perceptive of them. But still, we go from attraction to pulling away to suddenly committing to a relationship with never actually discussing exactly what goes on between them. Never outright deciding they want to try something serious. There wouldn't have been much actual flirting or sincere conversations between them after the almost-kiss, for obvious reasons, so how does Lucanis know Rook hasn't moved on/isn't angry at him after all this time, considering how they didn't communicate at all afterwards and he's not exactly the best at feelings and self-confidence? He just talks as if it's a given they're attracted to him still, and only worries about not being good enough for them. I wanted crumbs of reassurance from Rook, more than what we got, because Lucanis' probable guilt is never actually tackled in any way – he had perfectly valid reasons to pull away, of course, but considering how much he blames himself for anything and everything, I'm pretty sure he would also blame himself for hurting Rook's feelings, even if they're understanding and not actually angry with him at all.

Idk. I have a lot of thoughts, especially about the middle of his romance. The last big scene we get is one of my favorites through all dragon age games, it was so sweet, but I still felt like the entire middle part of the romance lacked a lot of slow burn crumbs, and I was still hungry when I got to the end.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Hobie Brown, Emotional Preparation, and the Art of Great Dialogue

Nearly all of Hobie's dialogue is written with his goal - protecting and preparing Miles for Miguel's abuse - in mind, even if it may not be obvious at first watch.

Here's an unhinged breakdown where I over-analyze literally every one of Hobie’s lines and explain how every sentence was written to contribute directly to Miles’ radicalization.

Hollywood. Pay your writers. (:

___________________________________________________

Hobie has around 10 minutes screentime total, but for the sake of introductions and this analysis, let's start at the end of the battle, and the beginning of the quantum hole.

Starting with his first line in the scene:

"I don't follow orders. Neither does he."

All morals considered, Hobie doesn't seem like the type to speak for someone who can speak for themselves - he's a punk after all. But here, he speaks for Miles. This line serves to tell Miles 'I don't respect them, why should you?', but funnily enough, it can also be a point to Jess, as if to say 'Miles isn't interested.' - even if he is.

"Bit much, innit?"

While, Hobie and Mile's next interaction is their exchange in the elevator, the scene leads to Mile's introduction to the Society. Miles gawks at the lobby, obviously impressed. Gwen affirms this awe, telling him 'this is just the lobby.' However, Hobie feels the need to chime in. His next dialogue 'Bit much, innit?' is a subtle nudge to Miles that the society is not a place to be in awe off. It's a spectacle, one that's a bit overdone. Knowing Miles now sees Hobie as cool, Hobie makes it known - he sees the Society as uncool.

"Gwendy, How much have you told him? About his place in all this? Maybe not enough."

'So what happened about that small elite strike-team?' - 'Most of these are part time.' This is by far one of Hobie's more interesting lines, and I wrote about it here. But in short, this is Hobie's soft but direct confrontation of Gwen. After Gwen lies to Miles in front of him, Hobie immediately asks how much Gwen has revealed to him. And when she tries to play it off, he openly says 'Maybe that's not enough.' He's not angry with Gwen, but he is disappointed, which in turn motivates him to have his discussion with Miles.

"Super humane, and not creepy."

One of my favorites, because it's hard to catch and to the point. After talking about Hobie and Gwen's mission history, they're taken to Margo and the control room. As Miles marvels at Margo and the Go-Home-Machine, and Gwen says she voted against it. However, Hobie says blatantly: 'Holy shit, Miles isn't this inhumane and weird???', validating that the Society is willing to do inhumane, hurtful stuff to those it deems 'misplaced'.

Next comes Hobie's confrontation with Miles.

Because Hobie knows this is his last movements with Miles before he meets Miguel, and this is where if final push of emotional support kicks in, before he goes quiet in front of Miguel.

And because this conversation is so well layered, I think it's best to go line by line. ______________________________

H: "Bet this doesn't even do anything." M: "Maybe it did before you ripped it out of a wall!"

Hobie has now confirmed that he'll be making an exit soon. And he begins his finally sweep of parts he needs for his watch, stocking up his pockets. He's not stealing to steal. He knows he's leaving and this is his last chance to get what he needs before he's out the door.

"Propaganda, bro! It's to distract you from the truth!"

HOLY SHIT I missed this one. Notice how in this shot, Gwen is not visible at all. Hobie notices they're out of hershot of her for the first time. And his first line is - 'Propaganda.' Their watches can take them anywhere. When Gwen needed to, she was taken to exactly where she needed in Mumbattan. But when they're heading towards HQ, Jessica makes them walk through the lobby. They could have been sent directly to Miguel's station, but instead she makes them do the whole tour, which serves as a flex of muscle. In order, Miles was shown the massive number of members in the Society, then their prisoners, then the go-home-machine. Only THEN can they see Miguel. All of which was intent to intimidate Miles on purpose. Hobie tells him directly: 'Everything you just saw was propaganda.'

M: And what's that?

"I ain't got a Scooby Doo, mate. Cause that's what they want."

One of the most iconic and notable of his quotes. Cockney aside, this line ties back in with his discussion with Gwen just a couple minutes before. They've done their tour and walk. Both Jess and Gwen have been given a chance to prime or explain to Miles anything, and both have chosen not to. So Hobie simply tells him, 'They want you in the dark. And they're sending you into a fight.'

The next line is:

H: Why do you want to be part of this lot? M: To get a watch. H: Make your own watch.

Miles sucks his teeth at Hobie.

Because of this - Hobie begins to change methods. Which I cannot stress is incredibly perceptive of him.

Miles is exasperated with him. So instead of dissuasion and making the society out to be uncool, he tries to turn Miles' attention towards his family.

"Bet you got a nice setup, huh? Nice parents?"

This line is a very well done one, with two things of notice. First, I find it interesting that the screenplay phrases this line as a question, not a sentence. Hobie is asking. He's taking a shot in the dark here. And this is backed up by his delivery; Hobie hesitates while saying this. The only line in which he does so. He may not know about Miles' mom and dad, because Gwen hadn't met them when she met Hobie. But still, Hobie asks, hoping the reminder of Miles' parents will dissuade him from continuing.

M: They're fine. H: [After this line, Hobie turns black and white momentarily. Potentially a nod to the fact that this conversation is the only 'black and white' one Miles has had so far.] M: But we got into a fight. They just want what's best for me, so...

[Hobie frowns. The scene and dialogue REALLY starts to pick-up from here.]

"That's a bloody shame. Because you're not ready for everyone else."

As the scene progresses Hobie goes from behind Miles, to beside him like an ally. Then, when Gwen finally comes back into frame, Hobie crosses in front of him. When Miles mentions his parents wanting what's best for him, Hobie warns that everyone else does not want what's best for him. At the same time, visually Gwen has her back to Miles, and Hobie puts himself between Miles and Gwen, trying to block his path. The scene is set up to show that in Hobie's eyes, Gwen is turning her back on Miles. She does not have his best interest in mind. Hobie is telling Miles 'They're using propaganda on you, they're keeping you in the dark, and they do not have your best interest at mind. You're not ready for this." And he physically tries to block Miles from continuing, one last time.

Miles goes through Hobie, and now within earshot of Gwen again, this is Hobie's final chance and push to get as much information into Miles as he can - without freaking Miles out. Above all else, he needs Miles to be prepared, confident, and willing to fight back.

His voice becomes more serious, and he starts speaking more straight-forward and a lot less cryptically.

"Listen to me, bruv. The whole point of being Spider-man is your independence. Being your own boss, you don't need all this!"

I think Hobie saying this reveals a lot about his character, especially understanding the context where he's from. While many Spider-men would agree that being Spider-man is about responsibility and power - to Hobie, it is about independence, and freedom. Hobie is a freedom fighter, and one of the only Spider-men besides Noir that knows how to fight systemic threats as well as physical ones. To him, being Spiderman is about being able to free yourself and others. It's about independence and freedom, and he's trying to nail that in Miles' head one last time.

M: Then why are you here?

"Looking out for my drummer, is all."

As the scene is coming to a close, the writers chose this time to reveal some of Hobie's motivations, starting with the independence comment, and now this. Despite knowing about Gwen's deception towards Miles, he is still looking out for her - and Miles. This is the writers' and Hobie's last push to solidify himself as an ally to Miles and the viewer.

M: I want to be in a band. I want to see my friends, and I need a watch to do that. G: Guys, come on.

"Alright, Squashed. Just don't enlist until you know about who you're fighting."

I genuinely had to sit and ask myself why the writers would choose to leave Hobie's collective effort - a LOT of effort - with this line. And honestly, I think it's a perfect segway. Hobie chooses his words very clearly; He doesn't say 'what', he says 'who'. The next scene leads into Miguel's intro, and up until this point, Miles doesn't know who he is. He only knows about the Society, but never who is at the top. We know about Miguel, but all Miles knows is his name. That's why Hobie says 'who you're fighting'. Because the Society isn't really a Society, and this isn't really between Miles and the Society at all. It's a dictatorship - and the person he's enlisting to fight is Miguel. The perfect introduction and warning to the person he's about to meet. He's telling Miles, 'Don't rush into it. Wait until you meet Miguel first'. And when Miles does meet Miguel, he finally sees that this isn't the place he thought it was, just like Hobie said. ALSO EVEN MORE INTERESTINGLY - THIS is one of the lines that is changed between the two versions of spiderverse (there are two theatrical versions on release.) In the alternative he says 'Don't enlist unless you know what war you're fighting.' And I think that the fact the writers chose to publish two different versions of this line goes to show how powerful they knew this line would be in Miles' characterization. There is so much Hobie has left to say to him, but only one line - and so we get two versions. How fun!

With the scene now over, we see a change in Hobie's demeanor, and I love the writers' choice to have the shot linger on Hobie.

We see him give Miles a look that isn't exactly full of confidence, but from this point forward, Hobie chooses to hang back, no longer having any motivation to instigate. He knows his work here is done, and now all he can really do is wait for Miguel to reveal his true colors, and hope that he got through enough to Miles that he will react, and fight back.

And closing out the scene - I noticed that when Peter B. arrives Hobie pointedly says

"Oh boy, Humbling Reality Spider-man has arrived."

All I'll say about this is Hobie has to be Jamaican cause that was so mfing rude shgjfkghjgjkdfjk

Hobie has about three lines between this point and then end of his screentime - Two of which were his lines to Mayday, and his comment during the canon events.

But there is one shot of him before it all happens. And after this shot the movie begins staging Hobie in specific a very different way than anyone else.

The moment begins with Miles' line 'My Dad is about to be captain.'

The camera pans to each character. Gwen, Peter, and Jess all avert their eyes. Miguel looks at Miles. And Hobie is the only one who looks at all of them. Instead of looking down, he looks to the others, in anticipation of whats going to happen. It's also important to note that this was probably news to Hobie. He probably didn't know Miles' dad was a cop - or at the very least going to be captain. So the understanding of just how much trouble Miles is in kinda multiplies in this moment.

Then, this happens

From this point forward, every time Hobie is portrayed, he is shown as separate from the other characters, always being divided from the group - with Miles as the divider. Even as the camera moves, Hobie visually remains - quite literally - as the only person in Miles' corner. And as the scene goes on, he moves farther and farther into that corner.

Until finally the scene comes to a climax, and Hobie gets two shots to himself - delivering his final lines.

"Here we go." - "Hobie, You're not helping." - "Good."

GUYS IM GONNA CRY OKAY IM GONNA CRY

This is Hobie seeing his work pay off. This is him knowing that he got through to Miles and that it was worth it. He's proud of him.

Hobie knew what he came to do, and he used literally every line he said to Miles to the FULLEST extent. He doesn't give a fuck if he's not helping the Society. He's helping Miles. And now he knows his work is done.

Being a punk is not about being a hero, it's about empowering those who feel powerless. HE UNDERSTOOD THE MOTHERFUCKING ASSIGNMENT.

IN SHORT - HOLLYWOOD PAY YOUR FUCKING WRITERS I SWEAR TO GOD.

if you read this far let me know :) thanks bye

[radsoldier]

You're a bad idea.

Pairing: Cairo Sweet x Dom!Fem!Reader

Summary: Cairo is mesmerized by the new, mysterious student sharing a class with her.

Words: 1.3k

Warnings: cursing, steamy scene (no smut however) I think that's all?

a/n: i'm sorry if it feels a little rushed? i changed the ending almost four times. hope you enjoy!

You hated how everything was changing but still, you felt numb.

You moved to another state, you decided to focus on your writting and suddenly you became a mystery.

Or at least that's how Cairo saw you. And she loved a good mystery more than anything.

More so if the mystery was the new and gorgeous student sharing a class with her.

Yeah, maybe she was getting a little obsessed over someone she had only exchanged a few words with.

She knew very little about you. Your name. The amazing writer you were. The body she only saw once, when you crossed paths in the locker room, you having finished your training with the soccer team, she getting ready for her swimming lessons.

The way you seemed to try to blend in so no one would be able to notice you. But she did. How could she not?

So she found herself, once again, writting about you. The possibilities were endless.

Who were you? Why did you get here halfway through the course?

God, she needed some sleep.

_________

You were late to your first class but you couldn't care less. The creative writting lecturer was really annoying.

You didn't bother knocking on the door and just walked in, getting a few stares from other students AND, obviously, your professor.

"So you decided to finally show up? What an honor" he said.

You chose to ignore him, it was really early in the morning and you didn't have time for coffee before you left home so yes, you felt like shit.

You scanned the room looking for an empty seat somewhere you could just lay low until your eyes landed on Cairo Sweet.

Well, on the spot near her. You walked there and without another word you sat next to her and opened your laptop on your desk, ready to start writting while blocking out your teacher's voice.

You opened your most recent work, knowing full well you didn't have the energy nor the time to finish it right then but you thought you might as well give it a try.

You could feel the burning stare on the side of your head but you decided to ignore it and started typing instead, focusing on your work.

The minutes passed excruciatingly slow and you could feel yourself getting more and more annoyed at the fact that you were unable to focus on the poem you were writing.

"Trouble in paradise?" Cairo asked with a smirk, leaning closer so only you could hear.

You stared at her with no sign of emotion on your face and she felt like you could see clearly every thought she ever had.

"Mind your own bussiness" you retorted.

You saw dissapointment flash across her features before she returned her attention to the stupid lecture and for some reason all you could think about was her smirk, the small dimples on her cheeks and all those freckles.

Fuck, her face was like a sky full of stars.

You tried to focus on your work with little success when Cairo's face haunted your mind.

_________

Class ended and you were the first one to leave, almost as if you were in a rush so when Cairo saw you smoking against a wall near the parking lot she was pleasantly surprised and without thinking it twice, she approached you and snatched the cigarrete from your hand, allowing herself a long drag before looking up at you with that same smirk from before.

You looked at her. Really looked at her. She was gorgeous. Her tiny frame held herself with shameless wonder. You felt like some force was pulling you to her.

"What do you want from me?" you asked.

She laughed and you swear your heart skipped a few beats in that moment.

"That's a great question" she said mischievously "I'm still figuring that out"

Then she stepped closer to you and she placed the cigarrete back in your lips.

"Then find me when you do, Cairo" you said smirking back before turning around and leaving.

She felt confused, she thought she was getting somewhere but she felt like you were always running.

Cairo watched as you started your bike and drove away from the building.

You really needed that coffee now if you wanted to make it to practice later that day.

_________

You were distracted, which earned you a talk from the coach. You scoffed and left the field to sit on the bleachers, as he instructed you.

"Sit back there and cool down, don't want that temper on my team, kid" were his exact words.

You couldn't help it. You either felt numb or mad, there was no in-between.

You watched as the rest of the team finished some drifts and exercises and you joined them, the only answer to your move being a slightly nod from the coach.

Practice finished without further inconvinience but you always decided to run around the field while everybody went home.

You liked the solitude of it.

So you found yourself entering the locker room really late that day. You took off your shirt first thing and then looked around to find no other than Cairo Sweet, her wet hair falling around her shoulders. And she was definitely checking you out.

"Enjoying the view?" you asked raising one eyebrow at her.

"Mhmm" she muttered not looking away from your abs.

You stepped closer to her and that seemed to put her out of her trance and look straight to your face. She was blushing and biting her lower lip.

"I will ask again, Cairo. What do you want?" you took another step closer.

Her eyes darted back and forth between your eyes and you lips as she licked hers.

"I want you, Y/N" she said breathless.

And she sounded so sure of it.

Your eyes darkened as she leaned closer to you so she could trace her hand against your jaw.

"So pretty…" she said.

Something inside of you switched and in a swift movement you grabbed her hand above her head and guided her backwards until her back made contact with the locker behind her.

"Fuck" she whimpered.

You leaned so close that she could feel your breath against her mouth.

"That's what you want, Cairo? You want me to fuck you?" you demanded.

"Y-yes" she was breathing hard and you were enjoying every bit.

You released her hand and she placed it on your shoulder, tugging for you to get even closer, while your hand made its way to her collarbone, you traced it slowly and then you placed it on her throat, with just enough force to keep her head in place as you finally closed the gap and smashed your lips agains hers, kissing her hard.

You shivered when you felt her hand tracing down your torso, taking her time around your top to finally rest on your abs.

She moaned when your tongue traced her lower lip, asking for permission which she happily complied.

The sound of a door closing took you both out of your steamy make out session and you felt your body tense when you pulled apart.

"I have to go" you said "Didn't mean to start a fire" you added smirking at her.

And with that you grabbed your things and left her there, speechless and aching for you.