#like that is the sort of thing i would entirely make up if i needed everyone at the table to fuckin hate an npc

[clockwayswrites]

Birds birbs birbritch - Part 29

masterpost this is a first draft, please no editing or concrit <3

“Well, there’s the my horde of children,” Bruce said, glanced to Steph, and added, “and otherwise.”

“Hi B,” Steph said with a large smile that was just a little too much tooth, “and hi Danny!”

“Hello Stephanie,” Danny said. His wings were pulled tight against his back, as if he could hide them from view.

He couldn’t.

“Sorry B,” Dick chirped with his most innocent smile, “we were in the middle of a Mario Kart battle and you know how those can get!”

“At least tell me nothing is broken,” Bruce said, sounding entirely resigned about it all.

“Nothing is broken. Yet.”

“Well… good enough, I suppose.” Bruce said. “Though everyone had better sit though before Alfred comes in and fusses.”

“Too late, Master Bruce,” Alfred drawled as he came into the room with serving tray in hand.

They all appropriately scrambled for seats.

What with Danny being there, the normal seating (not that it always stayed exactly the same) was thrown into complete disarray. Mostly this was because Damian insisted on sitting next to Danny while Cass took the seat across from him and Tim next to her. Dick tried to stuff back him smile, but Jason caught it and rolled his eyes at his brother.

Still, it was sort of nice, in a weird way like when big cats have a service dog, to see Damian having someone out of the family that he felt the need to look over and protect. The suddenness of it all was what bothered Jason. Cass meets the guy and he’s invited to the ballet. Tim sleeps in his office. Damian wants to protect him. Even Bruce was at ease earlier with Danny sleeping on his lap. It was just like Danny belong there in with the rest of their family.

Jason didn’t trust it.

He especially didn’t trust it because it seemed to be having an effect on him too. He hadn’t snooped nearly as much as he could have in Danny’s apartment. Hell, the revelations down in the Cave that they had just had didn’t bother him as much as they should have.

Jason looked across the table to Duke, who was squinting a little at Danny. Jason kicked Duke lightly under the table and tilted his head in question.

Duke rolled his eyes, but pulled out his phone and sent: He’s got, like, an aura about him.

Jason frowned, typing back quickly: Did he at the ballet?

Duke gave a little shrug, but shook his head.

Well, that was very interesting. Jason wished that Duke had seen Danny when he was in full bird form so that they could have had a full comparison, but this was something at least. Danny had admitted that he was a Meta, but was he a meta like Wally was or more like Duke or even Kori? The odd language certainly pointed more towards Duke or Kori.

Dick nudged Jason with his pointy elbow. When Jason glared at him, Dick just looked pointedly down at Jason’s plate and back up.

‘Eat,’ he mouthed.

Jason rolled his eyes, but dug into the meal. It was a vegetarian pasta of some sort. Salad and garlic bread were also on the table. Basically a nice, carb heavy meal to have after a long, hard day. Jason had to wonder if Alfred would even let any of them out tonight. None of the ‘kids’ for sure. Tim, Damian, and Steph were all certain to be grounded. Dick, Jason, and Cass could probably make a good argument to go out and get started on this Mad Hater thing, but Cass might prefer to stay close. Jason couldn’t really blame her for that if she did. She deserved to get to be close to her family.

Jason caught Dick’s gaze again, raising a curious brow with a little head motion down towards the Cave. Approximately.

Dick nodded, a seriousness in his eyes.

Okay, guess they had a plan.

-

Bruce found them as they were suiting up. He leaned against the Batcomputer and watched as Dick and Jason bickered and hindered each other actually being able to get dressed for patrol. It was good to see them able to be brothers like that again. Therapy with Harley had really been helping Jason and Bruce knew that Dick was seeing someone, even if he hadn’t pried into who. Bruce didn’t think it was fair too when it had taken him as long to start seeing help.

It was something he wish he had done far earlier.

Had pushed for all of them to do earlier.

“What are you brooding about over there, old man?” Jason called out. He’d finally wrestled his gloves back from Dick and was pulling them on.

“I can just be somewhere without brooding,” Bruce said.

Bruce sighed. “I was thinking how proud I am of both of you for making good of the therapy that you’ve been doing.”

There was a long silence before Jason mumbled ‘sap’ and ducked his head. Dick just grinned back, a faint blush on his cheeks. As old as they two were, they were still his kids.

“If I stay in tonight, will you two be fine out there?”

“Doubting us?” Jason asked. His voice changed part way through as he put on his mask and the modulation kicked in.

“Never,” Bruce said, which seemed to make Jason freeze again. “Just asking you want me out there as back up.”

“Stay in with the others,” Dick said with a little shake of his head. “I know they’ve brushed it off, but Dami and Tim have still been through a rough day. And Danny too. You should be around if anyone has issues in the night.”

“Let us go out and start investigating,” Hood added. Even with the mask, here was a softness to his voice. “We’ve got this.”

Bruce nodded. He knew they did. “I’ll keep a comm if you need me.”

“Sure. Just make sure to get some rest, old man,” Jason said and headed towards the bikes. Nightwing followed with a little wave.

Bruce stayed in the Cave until they were gone and then grabbed a communicator to slide into his ear, just in case.

[valley-o]

yeah, seconding the accessibility issue, having to handwrite things makes me fall behind and able to write way less than if i typed because My Hands Are Just Wrong.

also, a number of other things:

-what kind of uni essays are you folks doing where you don't need to do a lot of research and have sources open to cite them

-online sources are more accessible both financially and by not having to Travel and Carry them, so people will still need internet for those

-anyone who has an early class and functions better at night would have their grade tanked by this

-missing class would actually become hell instead of mildly inconvenient

-remote learning??? some people just Cannot travel to a physical class space, whether for travel or disability reasons, and this would fuck them over too

this may sound like a good solution on the Surface, and it could be for second level where everyone has to be in person anyway, but for third level it's just the most impractical thing. the internet and digital resources are an amazing thing that makes education so much more accessible and fucking up the entire thing instead of, say, figuring out some sort of anti-ai plugin on student laptops, is like fixing your computer by setting it on fire and hitting it with a hammer.

also i can guarantee most students would avoid picking a class altogether if they saw it was analogue only.

An ex-colleague of mine was complaining to me the other day about the ai problem in her students' papers, and I told her, "Just make your students hand-write them in class. Easy." She looked at me like I was insane and tried to explain how that would never work, but I just said,"That's how we did it for a thousand years. The invention of word processors doesn't erase all that."

To me it seems obvious. Readings are done out of class, handwritten essays are done within it. No more ai papers.

[punkrockmlchael]

Congrats on 100 followers! I love you you deserve it!!!!

NSFW request for Eddie - Dress + Dream + Pictures

Masterlist for 100 Follower Celebration!

18+ mdni, Smut: Masturbation (Male), Mentions of PinV, Hand Job and Oral (Male Receiving) (but those are not super descriptive) (Both Eddie and Reader are 18+)

Thank you so so much for reading my work and for requesting! I love you too so much omg; I went a little different with this request so I hope you like it hehe... basically reader is a popstar, Eddie is a fan and you know is pleasing himself to reader's pictures... (Word Count: 780)

Prompts: Dress, Dream and Pictures ; Fan!Eddie Munson x Popstar Fem!Reader

Eddie didn't mean to think about you like this, it just sort of... happened. 

He didn't even really like pop music, honestly. But, when Gareth had to take his little sister to your concert, he was not about to go alone. So, he dragged Eddie along with him. And Eddie huffed and puffed, he bitched and moaned the entire time. 

At least, until you waltzed out on stage in that shimmery outfit of yours, sparkling like an angel that had just come down from Heaven above. And your voice? Fuck, how did you look and sound like an angel? 

From that night on, Eddie was a devout fan of yours. He listened to your music, he went to your concerts anytime you were around the Hawkins area, he purchased every single album you released. And, not to mention, he talked about you constantly. No, seriously, the Hellfire boys were so sick of hearing your name come up at their lunch table. 

So when you released your newest album, you better believe that man was purchasing it as fast as he could. In fact, he even splurged a little to get the deluxe Vinyl that included some posters and pictures of you from the album photoshoot. 

Now, your new album was playing on his record player as he looked through the posters and pictures of you.

God. 

What a dream.

He flipped through the pictures, stopping at one of you in a short, tight dress. 

Fuck. 

The way the tight, black shimmering dress hugged your body perfectly showing off all of your curves. The way your chest looked against the fabric making your cleavage look a little too good. The way you were pouting at the camera, god, that fucking pout. Seriously, all you had to do was bat your eyelashes and he would do anything for you. And, you didn't even know him. 

With all of those thoughts, his hand was now reaching into his pants, palming himself through his boxers. He groaned, throwing his head back as your voice rang through his ears from the record player in the corner of his room. 

He shouldn’t be doing this; it was weird, it was perverted, but somehow he didn’t care.

All he cared about was you.

The next thing he knew his hand was sneaking into his boxers, wrapping around the base of his rock hard cock. He pumped himself a few times, groaning your name as he closed his eyes.

He pictured you in front of him, on your knees as you pumped his cock a few times, tongue licking the tip as you looked up at him. Your beautiful doe eyes sparkling up at him as you wrapped your lips around the tip of his cock, sucking on the tip gently. Your makeup was slightly smudged from the show you just finished but you just couldn't help yourself, you needed him so bad you were taking him in your mouth in the dressing room backstage. 

You winked at him as you took more and more of him in your mouth, groaning as you gagged around him slightly. A moan escaped Eddie’s lips as he moved his hands to your hair, tugging on your soft locks gently.

He groaned again, pumping himself faster with his hand. He rubbed his thumb over the sensitive tip and whined, thinking of you again. 

Only, this time he pictured you in his bed. Face down on the pillows as he thrusted into you deeply from behind. Small moans and groans left your mouth as your fists tightened on the bed sheets as you took him as deep and hard as he could go. His hands gripped your ass as he thrusted harder and harder, your moans becoming so loud the whole trailer park could hear. 

You whined, you moaned, you moved your hips back against his in perfect time making Eddie moan loudly. He thrusted one last time and you were both cumming together; he was filling you up with his load while you were clenching around him, releasing all over his cock. He had to hold you up and support you, otherwise you would be falling on your face in his bed.

Eddie grunted and cursed under his breath as he was cumming in his hand, making a mess in his pants to all the dirty, filthy thoughts of you. He panted, catching his breath as he came down from his high, his surroundings coming back into his sight.

Your soft voice was the first thing he heard as you finished the song that was playing on the record player.

Fuck.

He really wished Gareth had never dragged him to your concert.

eddie tag list: wanna be added? comment + let me know! @keeryhours ; @the-witty-pen-name ; @swiftieintheupsidedown ; @hawkinsmafia

[tj-dragonblade]

[FIC] Baby Got Back

Fandom: The Sandman Pairing: Dreamling Rated: T Word Count: 3933 Tags: Human AU, gym meet-cute, lust at first sight, call that a meat-cute, supporting appearance by Death, Dream of the Endless is a horny little weasel, Hob puts the 'ass' in 'exercise class', Dream of the Endless (Sturridge Edition) has no cake to serve, embarrassment, exercise, Death is the worst (best) wingman

Notes: This happened bc @dragonnan shared this video in the Mr Sadman server and the scene Would Not Leave my brain. The meat-cute tag is also courtesy of Dragonnan. ❤️ Title is of course borrowed from Sir Mix-a-Lot's song of the same name. I physically could not call this anything else.

Summary: Dream's sister drags him to the gym. Will the instructor and his assets be enough to convince Dream it's worth his time?

On AO3 Dream is pleased to see, as he begrudgingly follows his sister into the exercise class she'd signed them up for, that at least the instructor isn't the bodybuilding jock type that has historically put him off going to the gym entirely. Dream gets only a glance at the back of him as they enter the space, but he is slim and athletically built���neither thick-necked nor thickly-muscled, nor is any part of him built like a tree trunk.

That is a relief.

Dream still does not want to be here.

But he loves his sister, and is ultimately not immune to her dogged persistence.

"Come on, Dream, just one time, please? I'm sure you'll find something you like about it!"

Months, she has been cajoling him; it is his hope that she will drop the subject now that he has finally given in.

"Hello, welcome everyone!" Mr. Not-a-Musclebound-Jock speaks up, drawing attention to start the class. "My name is Robert, but you can call me Hob, and I'll be your instructor for this undertaking! Good to see some of you back, and nice to see all these new faces too! Now, today we're going to start off slow; I'll demonstrate some techniques and we can all try them out one at a time before we really get going, alright?" He claps his hands, rubs them together. "Those of you who've been here before, please feel free to help out the newcomers if they need it. Especially if you brought them." He glances at Dream and Death with a tiny nod, as Death is one of those returning students, and Dream.

Well.

He is hearing the words—"quick stretches", now, and "warmup"—he is paying attention, truly, but he is also.

Staring.

Which is not so terrible; all eight of them in the class are watching the instructor and following along with the warmup, as they should. But Dream does not think his thoughts are in line with anyone else's.

Because the instructor, Hob—he is gorgeous. Arrestingly so. Beautiful in a very ordinary way; average height, the previously noted slim build, brown hair greying slightly at the temples and pulled into a messy bun, dark eyes, strong nose, friendly smile. Nothing individually remarkable, but together? Oh. That smile lances straight through Dream in a way that makes his stomach curl up giddily. Hob is wearing a white t-shirt that is tight and thin enough it can't quite hide what looks to be a lush thicket of chest hair, and the amount of hair on his arms and legs further supports that hypothesis. He's wearing mallard green spandex shorts that show off, well, everything, and it's all very nice.

Perhaps this class will be tolerable, after all.

"Okay, the first thing I want to tackle is a modified squat form," Hob says once they've finished the warmup stretches, and Dream is immediately reassessing his optimism. He hates squats; hates most sorts of physical exercise, to be honest, which is why Death had had to wheedle so hard to get him to join her. But squats, of course, were particularly loathsome. And Hob sounds far too cheerful about them.

"This modification is pretty simple; you'll just need to find a pole, here, and do like this." Hob turns so his back is mostly to the class, grabs an upright bar on the nearest weight machine—Dream has no idea what any of this equipment is properly called—then plants his feet far apart and leans back, bending his knees into a beautifully right-angled squat and Dream?

Dream nearly swallows his tongue.

Hob's green spandex shorts and everything they contain have gone from 'nice' to 'scandalously on display' and Dream is absolutely mesmerized. The way Hob's body drops, the wide stance of his legs, the way his cheeks spread as he sinks low—Dream is having capital-T Thoughts, none of which are in the bible, as Desire is fond of saying. Hob's thighs, while built slim, are well-muscled and incredibly toned and every contour of quads and hamstrings is straining into beautiful prominence beneath those shorts. His arse is likewise presented, every curve and dimple beautifully highlighted by shiny green fabric, and Dream is very sure he can see the imprint of individual hairs beneath the stretched spandex. The material is rendered slightly-sheer by the position and, unmistakably, there is a distinctive 'whale-tail' flaring above Hob's shapely cheeks.

Dream's mouth goes dry. Is he—?

There is a telling lack of lines under the spandex.

He is. Hob is wearing a thong.

Dream is ridiculously grateful for the Extreme Support jock strap he'd put on before coming here; he is having a most unfortunate reaction to every aspect of Hob's demonstration, but his shorts are far more forgiving than Hob's and the underwear beneath them is keeping things decent enough for the public environment.

He hopes.

"See the problem so many people have with squats is the knee strain," Hob is saying, as he straightens up again. He lets go of the pole. "Most of the time when we do squats, we're leaning forward a bit for balance, right?" He bends into position, demonstrating; his arse and thighs are on display again and it is no less arresting than the previous example. "And that's where that knee pressure comes from, trying to keep that balance."

Dream can think of several ways to help Hob keep his balance in such a position, all of which involve their bodies in intimate proximity and none of which would be particularly easy on anyone's knees.

"But like this"—Hob takes hold of the equipment again and leans back, drops slowly into his squat—"it's easy to keep your chest straight, get all that nice core support and this ninety-degree angle here"—his free hand strokes the curve of his own arse from hip to thigh and Dream inhales sharply—"and your anchoring pressure is all in your heels. No knee strain!" He sinks deep, presumably in demonstration and Dream is so full of lewd thoughts he genuinely fears he might burst. He watches the flex of Hob's thighs and arse as the man raises himself and lowers back into another squat; he bites his tongue to still the whimper rising in his throat, watches Hob perform another slow controlled bounce, is painfully aware of all his blood rushing south.

"This keeps all the working power in your glutes, which of course helps you build a nice tight round arse—and that's what we're all here for right?" Hob grins over his shoulder as he sinks down again.

A smattering of laughter answers him, including a chuckle from Death, but Dream cannot stop staring at Hob's arse. Which is indeed. Round. And tight. Chiseled. Contoured into sharp relief beneath the stretch of spandex shorts. And the texture of his body hair on top of all that? The thong? The way his cheeks flex and spread as he sinks low, clench beautifully as he rises up again?

Dream is utterly lost.

His sister bumps him with her shoulder. "Alright there, Dream?"

He makes a tiny, strangled noise that he hopes she will take for assent. He can only imagine what color his face is at the moment.

"You can do this at home, too, by the way, if you happen to have a pole—or a sturdy door jamb to hang onto." Hob demonstrates one more deep squat and straightens up, turning to face the class again. "Alright. Everyone find a support and try it out!"

Dream cannot. He cannot fathom duplicating the exercise with the vision of Hob's arse in his head, performing those same motions—supportive underwear or not, he is going to embarrass himself.

"Here we go!" Death singsongs next to him, indicating the nearest weight machine—which does in fact have two upright supports that will serve their purposes. She steps over and takes hold of one, leans herself back with feet planted wide and performs a squat.

Which does wonders to clear Dream's head; it's not titillating when his sister does it and he finds he can refocus appropriately.

"This feels ridiculous," he mumbles, joining her and reluctantly taking up position. "This looks ridiculous."

"Didn't look ridiculous when Hob did it, right?" Death's tone is entirely nonchalant, not even teasing, but Dream seizes up all the same. He knows she's sharp, that she can't have missed the way he was staring nor what, precisely, he'd been staring at. But her words are entirely innocent. "Just need a bit of practice and you'll make it look that good too, little brother."

He is about to reply as he lowers himself, something scathing and devastatingly witty, surely, but another voice cuts in first.

"Ah, so this is your little brother, DeeDee?"

Hob.

Dream, having just reached the lowest point in his first squat, finds quite abruptly that his body has decided to forget how to move.

His sister is answering. "Hey Hob! Yeah, this is Dream. I finally convinced him to come in with me."

"Wonderful! Always glad to have new friends join the fun!" Hob holds out a hand.

As if Dream is in any position to shake it.

His eyes are nearly level with Hob's chest and it takes every fiber of willpower he possesses to keep them up on Hob's face; in his distraction, he lets go of the pole to shake hands anyway.

Inevitibly, he falls flat on his arse.

"Oh god I'm so sorry!" Hob reaches to help him up, looking alarmed.

His sister is stifling her laughter.

"Thank you," Dream manages, pride bruised, face aflame, but he takes Hob's hand and pulls himself quickly to his feet. He does not dare look around to see who else in the class has borne witness to his bumbling ignominy. Besides which. Hob is no less attractive in close proximity and Dream's brain is replaying all those squats in quick flashes while also gibbering about the chest hair showing through that thin white t-shirt, none of which is at all conducive to keeping his composure. Desperately, he tries to pick up the thread of the conversation. "Yes. I am Dream. DeeDee's brother."

He never calls Death DeeDee. And she had just introduced him, by name, as her brother.

He needs to stop talking before he embarrasses himself any further.

But Hob only grins brightly, shakes his hand firmly. "I'm Hob, Hob Gadling. Teach the class, obviously." He drops Dream's hand, clears his throat. "Didn't mean to interrupt your practice—or drop you on your arse, apologies! Let's try that form again?"

"What? Yes." Dream tears his gaze from Hob's mouth and the dimple in his chin, and then again from Hob's chest, turns to blindly grab at the pole he'd been using. "Like this?" He moves on instinct, dropping into a squat, trying his hardest to remember what Hob had demonstrated without fixating on how his arse looked doing it.

He is not successful.

And he still hates squats.

"That's a good start," Hob says, encouragingly, and Dream is mortified by the way something in him warms to it. "Now let's try straightening up a bit more—may I?"

Dream is nodding assent before he realizes that Hob's hand is hovering over his back, that Hob is asking permission to touch.

He barely stifles the sound in his throat as Hob's fingers skate down his spine, offer firm pressure just below his waist while his other hand guides Dream's shoulders back. "There we go, see? Let the pole hold your balance so you can get this ninety-degree angle, right here"—his hand moves from Dream's back to his hip, a professional touch that nevertheless sends Dream's brain up in smoke—" and takes the strain off your knees. See?"

"Yes," Dream manages, barely aware of what he's agreeing with.

"Now, when you push yourself up, you've got to make sure you're using your legs," Hob cautions, as Dream rises. "Don't pull yourself up using the pole; you want the work happening in your thighs and your glutes." Thankfully (regrettably), his demonstrative touching seems to be done, and Dream does not have to cope with Hob's hands on his arse. He does not know how much more of this he can handle—the proximity, the images still burned in his brain. The touching. That voice.

That smile.

He just needs. One moment. A chance to compose himself, to remember how to behave like a normal human being.

He lowers himself into another squat, muscles already beginning to protest, making sure to keep his form as Hob had instructed.

"Good!" Hob says, sounding genuinely pleased, and Dream's insides turn to goo. "Use those glutes, excellent!"

"Because that's how you build a nice round arse, right?" Death says—how did Dream manage to forget that she is literally standing right beside him through all of this—and Hob chuckles, pats Dream briefly on the shoulder.

"That's right! And it looks like you could definitely use a little help in that area!"

Dream face is aflame. He is aware of the aesthetic deficiencies of his own backside. He does not need them commented upon by a man unfairly blessed in that regard, in front of his sister, particularly not while he is struggling through a horny crisis over this same man. He seizes desperately for the thread of escape glimmering in the comment.

"You dare offer such insult to one who has come to your class for its benefits?" He stands upright as he says it, letting go the stupid pole and drawing haughty arrogance around him like a cloak to hide the tatters of his pride and composure. "How disappointingly unprofessional. Excuse me."

And he flees.

Technically, he strides from the gym area at a reasonable pace. But inside, he is running. He ignores Hob calling after him, ignores the voice in his own head screaming about how rudely he just treated the pretty man with the beautiful arse, ignores the other voice in his head that sounds like his sister scolding him and ducks into the nearest restroom.

He just needs. A moment.

He braces both hands on the sink, grateful there is no one here to see, hangs his head and lets regret wash over him.

He has ruined his chances, he is sure of it. Chances at what, he can't quite say; it's not as though he was planning to proposition Hob nor ask him out. Just. Quietly suffer through classes with his sister and silently ogle Hob for an hour three times a week, perhaps. If he is honest with himself. But Hob is certain not to want him in his class again, nor will his sister likely bring him back after how he has behaved today.

That's one problem solved, he thinks, bitterly.

He should apologize for his rudeness. But he will not interrupt Hob's class to do it. He must wait for Death regardless, and the fact that she has not stormed into the men's room after him means she thinks he needs time to nurse his wounds and pull himself together. So he will do so.

He turns on the tap, splashes water on his face, dries it with the length of paper towel the motion-sensitive dispenser offers him. He stares at himself in the mirror for a moment, his pale face splotchy and gaunt and sour, mouth pulled into an easy frown, and sighs.

No, he had no chances to ruin in the first place.

With a sigh, he turns away and leaves the washroom, retrieves his phone and wallet and Death's as well from their locker, then finds a seat at one of the little round tables in the juice bar area to wait. He checks his watch; the class is scheduled to run for another forty minutes.

It is a long time to sit alone with his thoughts; he opens the sudoku app on his phone, mindlessly working through puzzle after puzzle while he waits.

It has been just under thirty-five minutes when his brooding peace is disturbed.

"Dream, oh good." Incongruously it is Hob's voice, not his sister's. "DeeDee said you'd probably be here. I wanted to apologize."

None of these words are the ones Dream might have expected; he opens his mouth to reply but instead of something normal what comes out is, "But your class is not over?"

Hob blinks, looking as nonplussed as Dream feels. "Er. Not quite, no, but your sister offered to run everyone through cool-down so I could come find you."

"Why?" Why can he not stop his mouth running ahead of his thoughts, that is the true question.

"Like I said. I wanted to apologize." Hob shifts his weight awkwardly, drawing Dream's attention unhelpfully to the way his thin white shirt has gained additional transparency thanks to the half hour spent sweating in front of his class. "My comment was entirely unprofessional, you're right. And I'm sorry."

"It is not untrue." Dream's backside does indeed leave much to be desired in comparison to others. "But. I appreciate the apology." He appreciates the view of Hob's chest as well, but mercifully manages to hold his tongue on that count.

He does not quite manage to keep his eyes from flicking down to Hob's shorts, to the smoothness of the bulge artfully contained by the spandex.

Thong, he remembers, and his mouth again goes a little dry at the thought.

"May I sit?"

"Please." The rote answer is out before Dream can puzzle over why Hob wishes to join him.

Hob pulls out the other chair and drops into it, leans forward just a little. "Really, I'm sorry. I picked up the vibe of your sister's teasing and ran with it but I haven't known you long enough for that to be welcomed or appreciated. I was very much out of line. And I apologize."

"I. Apologize, as well. For speaking so harshly in front of others and making a scene." Dream is trying very hard to ignore the way his insides are wibbling at Hob's words, Hob's voice.

"What? Oh. No, no, it's forgotten, don't worry about it." Hob waves a hand dismissively. "My fault in the first place."

Dream lets the matter lie.

There is a moment of awkward silence.

"So. First time to class, huh?" Hob flashes a bright smile at him, quick and awkward and terribly endearing. "What did you think?"

"It was. Brief," Dream says, before he can think better of it, and Hob laughs.

Dream's stomach swoops helplessly, flutters in consternated delight. Oh. Oh, but he is utterly gone on the sunshine this man exudes.

"Sorry, sorry. Of course. You'd definitely need a full session before you could answer that; stupid question." Hob shakes his head, grin fading, hesitation creeping into his demeanor. "Do you think you'd want to come back again?"

"I am. Undecided," Dream admits, honesty seeing him through as he stumbles over the possibility—does Hob want him to come back? Is Hob hoping to see him again?

Is he willing to suffer a regular gym appointment for the possibility?

"Ah. Well." Hob sounds downright nervous now. "It would probably be…good if you didn't?"

"I beg your pardon?" Dream is so affronted at hearing it stated so plainly he forgets that he has earned the rejection.

Hob startles. "Crap, no, sorry! That didn't come out right." He laughs, a nervous awkward laugh, but his smile is still bright. "Let me try again—sorry. Sorry." He takes a deep breath. "I'd like—I'd like to ask you out. But if you're in a class that I'm teaching then ethically I probably shouldn't do that."

Dream is, metaphorically, knocked in his aesthetically-deficient arse yet again. "You wish to ask me out? On a date?"

"Yeah. Yes." Hob reaches to toy with his earlobe, head tilting into the unconscious motion adorably. "Your sister has told me a lot about you, been talking you up for months and you're very pretty and I would love to get to know you under more comfortable circumstances? If you're interested, of course. No hard feelings if you're not I know we've barely met and I've already put my foot in it many times over but. Could I possibly convince you to let me try again?"

Dream is impressed by the flood of words just tumbling freely forth, and a bit gobsmacked yet unsurprised at 'your sister's talked you up' even as the pieces begin to click into place—but most of all he's delighted that Hob seems interested in him, and charmed by the earnestness with which Hob's asking for a second chance.

As if Dream's little tizzy in the class had been anything more valid than a cover for his own embarrassment. As if Hob has anything to apologize for.

He will have words with his sister later, though.

"My sister. Is setting us up."

"I do believe that was her intention, yes." Hob looks hopeful. "I'm far from opposed, if you're alright with it?"

"Then. All things considered. I will not be returning to your class, Hob." He offers a smile that he hopes is friendly with an undercurrent of coyness, and not off-putting. He glances up from beneath his lashes to catch the way Hob is blinking, his grin broadening in delight.

"Really? Okay! Are you—are you free for dinner tomorrow night?"

"I am. Where would you like to meet?"

"Merv's is a lovely quiet little pub not far from here—do you know it?"

"I do not."

"I'll text you the details then; it's relaxed and low-key but very nice, nothing terribly fancy but amazing food. And they accommodate allergies and dietary restrictions if those're a concern. Can I give you my number?"

"Of course." Dream opens a new contact and presents his phone; Hob types in his info with impressive speed and hands it back.

"Send me a text so I've got yours? My phone's still in the other room."

"Of course," Dream repeats, already composing the message as Hob stands from the small table. This is Dream—I look forward to our date tomorrow. Simple and to the point. Truthful and sincere. Nothing embarrassingly forward like the thoughts running rampant in his head. I want to rub my cheek in your sweaty chest hair like a cat. Or I would like to peel your shorts from your magnificent arse with my teeth. Surely that is too much for a first text preceding a first date. He will refrain.

"I've got another class to teach so I've got to run," Hob is saying as he pushes his chair back in. "But I'm delighted to have met you and I'm glad I won't be seeing you in class again, heh." He winks, an actual genuine wink that charms Dream all over again.

"As am I." He leaves it at that, never mind how badly he wants to say something smoky and lascivious about Hob giving him private instruction in whatever techniques he cares to demonstrate; he thinks that one of them might combust if he could deliver the line correctly, and possibly it would not be him. But he will save it for tomorrow evening, should the date go well. "I will see you tomorrow."

"Looking forward to it." Hob flashes his sunny smile again and turns, striding quickly back to the gym proper.

Dream watches him go, tight round arse and toned hairy thighs on perfect display, and shifts a little in his seat.

He has a feeling the date will go very well indeed.

= Started: 1/10/25 Drafted: 1/15/25 Posted: 1/20/25

It should be noted that I cannot vouch for whether or not the squat modification used herein is legit or safe. The validity of the exercise was obviously not the point of this fic, but, y'know. Just in case.

[violet-eng]

🔞 See you on the other side | Thanos (Choi Subong x fem!reader)

I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING IN A LONG TIME, VERY ASHAMED OF HOW BADLY WRITTEN OR BASIC THIS MAY BE.

Anyway, I don't know where this came from, I've had this desire for Choi Seunghyun stuck for like 10 years now, somehow I had to get rid of it. I'm still embarrassed…

Awkward plot, as always, I must add drama because if my life is full of drama then the fanfic just the same.

Summary: Fem reader has cancer, her ex is Subong, who asked her for drugs when she was working at the hospital, she gave them to him because they were for his jet lag and dizziness, but things escalate and she ends up fired and he with some sort of dependency. Anyway, they meet again in the squid game and he tries to fix everything with her because he obviously didn't forget her. And OBVIOUSLY for this first fic we have the typical and respectable BATHROOM SCENE.

Warnings 🔞🔥: mentions of cancer, SEX, SMUT, oral fem receiving, fingering. That…

In this fic, Thanos would be behaving somewhat bottom/sub? Is real life T.O.P a bottom? ask jiyong, enjoyyyyyy but not too much

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Three people down, or perhaps it was four? In situations where one's personal safety is compromised, the finer details can appear insignificant. Your hands and legs trembled, and your entire body was a nervous system susceptible to error and misstep. You felt the acceleration of your heartbeat in your throat and ears, echoing in your head, and perspiration running down your cheekbones, the salty sensation in your mouth.

Your eyes turned to the spot where a figure was jumping carefree, holding the surprise in your chest when you saw Subong in the crowd, your Subong. He looked like a hallucination, hovering among the players, jumping over the corpses with a maniacal grin… drugs… your drugs.

The daily game had reached its end. It was shocking that people had died in such a strange way, and there were many questions to be answered. However, the pain was even more overwhelming because cancer was like that: painful, unbearable without medicine, especially in the current circumstances.

'Señorita' the voice was behind you; you felt his presence, the shadow of his figure enveloping you completely, and the scent of his skin and the dye of his hair brought back precious but bitter memories. How much pain love can endure.

'Su-bong', you whispered, though you thought your voice was firm, the nuance was faint and the volume low.

'My baby! What are you doing here?"His arms abruptly embraced you, drawing you into his body, and your cheek bumped against his chest.You felt that familiar, heady feeling of being protected by him — loved.

Away from the crowd, Subong inspects your face, noticing spots of blood that are not yours and a couple of dark circles under your eyes… nothing else.

'You don't look well,' he says with a grimace.

'I need some,' you say, your breathing heavy, your eyes watering, your gaze beseeching, 'You owe me. I got them for you.'

He does not take you up on your request, nor does he attempt to argue with you, because he knows that is one of the reasons you lost your medical licence.

'Say "Aaah"'.

He brings one of his hands in front of you, a colourful pill between his fingers, and slowly touches your lower lip to make you open your mouth.His fingers enter, and your tongue takes the pill, but habit, treacherous habit, appears and your tongue tastes his fingers. A touch of what you had been.

Your eyes meet his as you both reminisce about the good times you shared during your relationship. When you two were an item, he would gently slide his fingers into your mouth, and within moments, you would be caught up in a passionate embrace, him on top of you, making love from behind while whispering a range of compliments in your ear.

'Better?' he inquires, his fingers gently tracing the lips around your mouth. You nod as the memory fades. You feel as if you've tasted a taste of normality, something you haven't enjoyed in years.

The night after games and food, you feel heavy and lethargic. You sweat and shiver, and you realise that it is a reaction of your body. You had treated several patients like this for years, and the helplessness of becoming one had made you fall into a very dark place, almost abandoning yourself.

"Bathroom" you request one of the guards, but your voice is not as steady as your gaze. The guard declines, and you consider that if you had a pen with you, you would have moved him out of your way, as you did with the insurance agent who had refused to cover your chemotherapy.

"It's urgent. I just want to freshen up" you insist, aware that in your position you can't make demands like that.

‘Hey bro, she has cancer, if it was your sister or your mother would you treat her like this?’ Subong appears at the right moment, after having watched you for a long time, “look at her, she can't even stand up”.

He places his arm around you and shakes you vigorously, as if manipulating a rag doll. His methods are deceptively straightforward, yet his success is unparalleled.Even if you had been in optimal health, he would have still prevailed.

You wash your face and pour water on the back of your neck, observing the reflection in the mirror. Your bruised features bear little resemblance to the respectable oncologist you used to be.

Subong's drugs have effectively mitigated your feelings of rejection, causing all sentiments towards the person in the mirror to dissipate within moments. Although you don't recognize yourself, you feel a sense of rejuvenation, as if returning to a state of strength and painlessness.

Subong approaches you, resting his chin on your shoulder, leaning his hands against the sink. You feel his breath in your ear and the soft brush of his lips on your neck, his kisses below your ear, at the precise spot that makes your skin bristle, reminiscent of their days together.

Subong's voice, husky and subtle, with sweet undertones, asks, "Feeling better?" The enigma that is Subong: he seems impenetrable and stoic when he raps, yet under the stage he is a sensitive and playful creature, always with a striking look and a touch of madness.

"Better," you reply, looking in the mirror and observing the closeness between the two of you, as if time hasn't passed, as if you were never done with him, as if your souls weren't on a tightrope drifting off to who knows where. You experience a sense of longing for him, the intimacy, the warmth of his embrace, the soft rhythm of his breathing, the way his lips cling to your skin without kissing you, as if it causes him discomfort to touch you, as if you were made of porcelain.

"When we make that money, I'll pay for your chemotherapy," he says. His voice is masculine and deep, rough, and his eyes are like fogged glass, intrinsically wounded by your illness as if it were his own.

"What about your debts?" you inquire, turning to him, cradling his face in your hands, him still leaning on the sink behind you.

He bends down to look at you blearily, and with a smirk, almost cartoonishly, he says, "Fuck the debt. I only care about your well-being. I'll see who I'll take his share from."

This provokes laughter from you, which you hadn't experienced in nearly a year. The corners of your lips ache, and the sensation of your cheeks expanding sends shivers down your skin.

Subong remarks, "There it is," as he touches the tip of your nose. "My girl's cute laugh." His fingers trace the contours of your lips, evoking memories on your skin with his touch, and reviving sensations you thought were lost.

He knows how to make you feel good, how to tease you, and how to be gentle because he knows your body wouldn't be able to handle it if he used all his strength.It's like when you went to the bars -the body remembers, so you move naturally from soft kisses and panting to one of the cubicles.

Your pants are on the floor, your underwear is around one of your ankles, and you are sitting on the toilet seat.Subong is skilled at rapping, which allows his tongue to glide with delight. He breathes softly as he holds his face between your legs.His fingers glide up your thighs, tracing ancient marks with his thumbs, while his tongue paints your velvety walls with his devotion.

You intertwine your fingers in his hair, your head thrown back, your eyes rolling back as the combination of drugs and his adept tongue takes hold. You hear him emit a low, throaty sound as you discreetly disengage from his grasp and press his face against yours, his nose brushing against your sensitive area.

You inhale his scent, the rhythm of your heart accelerating, and you feel the warmth of his fingers between your legs. His fingers begin to brush against your folds, and you recognize the familiarity of this touch.

"I don't think I can bear it," you whisper, pulling him away from you. Your hands are in his hair, your eyes fixed on his, which are black and smiling as his tongue wipes his chin. His tanned skin is glistening with the crystals of your juices.

"I promise to be gentle. I will make you feel good, baby." The dichotomy of sweetness of his face and the naughtiness of his fingers exploring your womanhood plunges you into an unknown territory somewhere between amusement and discretion.He enjoys seeing the way you squirm at his touch, at his fingers delving inside you and roaming over formerly dominated territory.

He swiftly locates your sensitive areas, his fingers pressing firmly into your body. His fingers disappear into your ecstasy, and you begin to rhythmically shake your hips, in harmony with the intruders testing your last reserves of sanity.

"So… ohhh-"

Subong looks at you satisfied as you begin to chant incoherently. He has always loved to please you, and that's why he has been so devoted to your body, learning every nook and cranny and experimenting with his movements to achieve the perfect reaction of your being, which is now destroyed under his fingers.

"More," you moan, gripping his shoulders with your nails, and he, your devoted instrument of pleasure, takes you to the edge of losing yourself in your own pleasure, of feeling every electric fiber of your body.

"Don't hold back."The rough voice and soft tongue are in full effect, and you can feel your body responding with heightened sensation. Your voice is almost a scream, your teeth holding back your lips, and your shoulders tensing as it reaches its peak, and then it explodes inside you. You exhale hard, your legs wrapping around his head, your hands in his hair, almost tearing out his locks.

"Shit," he laughs, as you shudder and catch your breath. "When you heal, I'll do you better. I promise." He rises to kiss you, his tongue touching the roof of your mouth, and your own taste bathes your tongue.

"How did you know I had cancer?" you know this is not the time to ask, and yet you do.He smiles over your lips as he kisses you.

"When I went to see you at the hospital, they told me you had been arrested by the police for stabbing an insurance agent during your chemotherapy," he says over you, proud as he wipes traces of saliva from your chin.

"You knew my medical license had been taken away. Why did you look for me at the hospital?"

"I wanted to beg your forgiveness. I would ask one of your old friends for her phone to call you, you would have answered them," he said, kneeling down to pull your panties up.

"I am sorry I blocked your number."

"It's all in the past," he says, smiling up from the floor and wiping his lip with his thumb. "It was good," he continues, "when we get out of here, you can unblock me."

"Do you believe we'll survive this?" you pull up your pants and escort him out of the cubicle.

"I'm not certain of anything, but if anything happens, I'll see you on the other side," he says, taking your hand in his and stroking the back of your skin.

"See you on the other side…"

[meanbossart]

Hellow

I was catching up with the latest chapters of ANE before reading The Spice™️ and I was reminded of how well you build and describe the environment surrounding your characters. Which prompts me to ask:

1 Do you have any drawings/sketches of landscapes and places from ANE that you can/would like to share?

2 Any advice for someone (me) that isn’t really good at putting their characters in places? I always end up with either a ‘too crowded’ or a ‘too barren’ of a setting.

Thank you for reading and hopefully answering my questions byee:3

Hello!!

Thank you! I have no idea what I'm doing so I'm glad I'm able to paint a good enough picture 😅

I do have two VERY simple sketches of the house of blood/the compound that I made to compare against my boyfriend's mental picture of it, basically to see how well I had been able to describe it since it's by far the most challenging area to put down into text.

(everything is very boxy and not exactly the ideal proportion, but again, this was a very simple sketch I made to "aid" the descriptions rather than for it to stand on its own at all) Here you see the "apple core" of the hive with the drow settlement and all the precarious platforms that interconnect and spring out of it. The cabins you see are sometimes two stories high so the area us actually quite big! Which is how Do'zynge is able to walk across the support-beams on the underside of said platforms even though he's rather large for a drider. The catwalk pictured can be moved up and down to connect people to different floors a little faster.

Here's a similar sketch based off of an specific scene, this one focuses more on the walkways built into the walls. I'm not sure why I huddled the doors together so much, they should definitely be more spaced out.

Also, while I used the same shorthand for everything, the spawn living spaces are all wood and stone - from the doors to the floor and railings. While the drow settlement (where Dalyria is too) is mostly metal and well structured tents.

For your second question, that's rough because I am also never quite satisfied with my descriptions 😂but I think that's a part of it; you need to make peace with the fact that you will NOT be able to paint a perfect picture, and think of the whole process as less of a job that you must do alone, but rather a collaboration between you and the reader's own creativity! You have to be willing to put some of the onus on them to imagine what it is you're trying to transcribe, instead feeling under the obligation of giving them exact descriptions for every little thing.

I try to use words that evoke a specific style and mood - say that the room is ornamental, warm, say that it's all golden and red and six sentences from now mention that the couch your character sat in is velvety. Reveal things as they come into relevance instead of interrupting the pace for two entire paragraphs to describe the room your characters just walked into - when appropriate, consider what they would even pay attention to at all and maybe limit yourself to it. Set a rough base for your environment at the start of a scene and then sprinkle descriptors in throughout the prose, and always consider if you truly NEED to get into the specifics of something or if the reader can be left to their own imaginative devices.

Also, unless necessary or some sort of plot device, I find that trying to establish where things are in a room (doors, furniture, stairs) in a map-like manner is a waste of time. Just say "behind him", "to her left", "right ahead", I don't think being overly specific benefits anybody - your reader picturing this set of stairs facing the west rather than the east is unlikely to be consequential to your narrative.

That being said, don't shy away from pointing "unnecessary" things out when they help set a mood, or help in characterization. Way early in ANE there's a scene where DU drow walks into the room where him, Astarion, and Shadowheart have been staying and are now about to leave, he takes note of the fact that one of them made the bed - he doesn't say who, besides that it wasn't himself, but I put that there to hopefully establish from early on that one character's priorities had started to change. In the compound, Dalyria is described as collecting useless things she found in the underground and displaying them around the office - this, on top of her new look, outfit, and company should paint a picture. Irennor's living situation should say all there is to know about him, and the way DU drow dismantles his belongings after only what is immediately valuable instead of considering the historical significance of anything says something about him, too. That's my favorite way of setting scenes, by finding out how to say something about the people in it.

[cripplecharacters]

I’m working on a robot character, and I wanted to know if it’s at all inappropriate to have the character (named Blip, uses he/it pronouns) have the “robot equivalent” of a traumatic brain injury and acquired facial differences, if that makes sense?

As it’s planned right now, he has one broken “eye” (kind of a camera lens) that no longer processes visual input, a damaged antenna and internal processor that sometimes misreads incoming signals leading to confusion, and a staticky slur to his speech (its voice would otherwise sound like a generic Siri-type thing, but it occasionally breaks into static). It also has visible damage to the side of its face with the broken eye. (Not a dented-in head, though, because I have a feeling that would conjure up ableist caricatures of brain injuries and I want to avoid that).

I just want to check if any of that sounds offensive, or if you have input on how to represent these features better. Thank you!

Hey! I'll answer for the part related to the facial difference and leave the brain injury to other mods.

Honestly this sounds fine to me. Just on the basis of this being a robot character named Blip, which seems quite silly (positive) and I enjoy seeing characters with FDs who aren't dead-serious and joyless all the time. The fact that he's not human (or even too humanoid, from the description) also helps since a lot of the negative tropes specifically affect how real humans are seen, if you're portraying an anthropomorphized computer then that's just very different. I don't think anyone would see a real person without an eye and think of a robot which avoids the entire "ableds think it's normal to compare a burn survivor they saw in the grocery store to Freddy Krueger" problem, even if you do end up falling into a trope with this character.

Definitely a good call in avoiding the indented skull* since the way it's generally used is a caricature and a borderline dogwhistle at this point. If you want to show that there was some sort of injury on the side of Blip's head, you could give him a different colored-metal plate there (or whatever else it's made out of), or give it a shiny texture to contrast with the rest of him being matte, make the damaged part thicker, etc. If his eye was damaged and is camera-like, you could have the shutter not close, or not move, or otherwise work differently from the other one (that's how my own ptosis would translate into a robot character... I think).

*Craniotomy, craniectomy, congenital cranial conditions, these are all real things that real people have and live with, so this isn't to say that this is always a no-go, because it's not. However, one needs to be very careful and sensitive to represent it respectfully due to what I originally mentioned. I'd strongly advise going with a sensitivity reader if that's something anyone reading this would want to include in their writing or art, and this aspect should be taken under consideration from the starting concept of the character.

For last advice, I'd try to not describe him "broken" as a whole if you're trying to represent him as disabled, since the whole "disabled people are broken". Not that it's wrong to refer to a body part like a leg or an eye as broken if one wants to do that; I mean referring like that to the entire person (or robot). I mention it since it's a common thing when it comes to robot fiction etc. but might come off weird in the context of an obviously disabled one.

I hope this helps,

mod Sasza

Hello,

As the human brain is basically a computer and our brain injuries are basically damage to that computer that changes how to computer functions, having a robot character with a TBI is a fairly easy thing to do. Damage to a human's sensory cortex (part of the cerebrum, one of three main parts of the brain) can cause sensory symptoms like the ones you're describing. This damage would be in his equivalent of the parietal lobe, which uses the information provided by external senses to navigate and have spacial sense, the temporal lobe, which has the auditory cortex and also helps with processing visual input and doing things like speech and reading, or the optical lobe, which is responsible for visual processing. If you'd like your character to have a more human brain in structure, you can look into other abilities that might be affected. But you can also just design his brain however you want it to be designed and that works, too, since he has a reason for his brain not being accurate to a human's brain.

Slurred speech is definitely a symptom that can come of a traumatic brain injury, especially a brain injury to the temporal lobe, and what he has also kind of sounds like a stutter or maybe him trailing off, which can also be issues we get.

And yes, I agree with Sasza about the dented head, definitely a good thing to avoid. If you want, you could incorporate a metal plate implanted on his "skull," which is a medical treatment for certain types of skull injuries to prevent complications and also to give the skull a more normal shape, which is called a cranioplasty.

Everything sounds good on the traumatic brain injury front

Mod Aaron

[eclipseberrycake]

Funhouse (Looey x Reader)

AN: Hey guys guess who's a new Sprout main? Me. A Rodger kept taking tapes right in front of me, literally calling me over only to take them the second i was close enough. His friend was playing as Bobette. You took something I loved Rodger main, I'm taking something you love. Since I can't draw her pregnant, she's the new villain until someone else pisses me off. Not yet though. I will bide my time.

Anyway.

☁ Looey. Looey. He's such a guy. A goofy lil' goober.

☁ If you don't think he's with another circus based toon, you're crazy. He's a little too...crazy for lack of a better term. Looey I think really needs someone to match his energy, so another circus toon would be perfect!

☁ Stay with me- A Healer! Toon, who's special ability is kind of like a tightrope. It attaches them to the nearest wall and let's them cross an area without being spotted for like 5 seconds.

☁ I think it's neat especially with Looey.

☁ He's a distractor, evidently, and if you haven't picked it up I love the Distractor X Healer Trope.

☁ Imagine he's running and for some reason nearly gets snapped by Twisted Scraps only for a thing of cotton candy to fall in front of him? I've only ever seen Goobs and Scraps really catch Looey mains tbh.

☁ ANYWAY

☁ They probably use circus foods instead of cupcakes or cookies. And you KNOW Looey loves his circus foods. My personal hc is that he wasn't always part of Gardenview and was part of a circus at some point, so he gets a little homesick :(

☁ Maybe you two both came from the circus in fact and found refuge in Gardenview and joined their cause! That would be cute! Just two sweethearts looking for a safe haven for themselves.

☁ Speaking of which! Looey is so sweet! And cheeky too!

☁ He's constantly giving you little flowers with a cheeky little grin, pecking your cheek and running off before you could even reciprocate, or tapping one shoulder is to make you look only to round around the other side.

☁ He also loves rubbing against you to make your fur/hair all puffy from the static electricity.

☁ He also has so many cool little skills. Like, he can juggle on a unicycle kind of things. He can make balloon animals and is scary good at those scammy carnival games. If you ever get the chance to go to a carnival with Looey, you should know he's pinpointing the largest teddy bear there and you're walking out with it.

☁ On runs, since he's distracting, he doesn't stress too much about you. He trusts you can handle yourself! He only struggles when he knows he's teetering the edge of becoming a twisted and you come to heal him. Your ability makes it easier on him though!

☁ He's always eternally grateful when he hears to deployment of your line, and sees the treat, but never sees you! Not that he doesn't love you and seeing you! But not seeing you while he's distracting is truly best.

☁ He takes the healing well honestly. He's sits with a cheeky, "Alright alright." Gazing at you lovingly the entire time, even if you're scolding him.

☁ The kind of dude to play pranks on his lover for sure. But not mean, tiktok incel pranks, but the confuse don't abuse pranks. :) Like that one husband with his blind husband! He's adding shampoo while you're in the shower and trying to wash it out. He's adding more fries to your plate every time you look away so you think it's an endless plate. He's such a menace.

☁ And he's quick too! So you can't even get him back! Like that one video where the girlfriends dumps cold water on her bf in the shower and he grabs her before she can escape and pulls her in? That's y'all.

☁ You guys probably have a whole lotta activities you do together. Small little hobbies he sees somewhere and wants to try at least once.

☁ Baking turned into some sort of adventure! You've seen Sprout and Cosmo do it with their sweethearts and they always end the time laughing, covered in flour and icing and feeding each other desserts.

☁ Funnel cakes was the treat he was craving when he walked up to you one lazy afternoon. There were no runs going on, supplies were stocked and everyone was taking the well needed break to catch up on some housekeeping, little chores they had been putting off or even just simply napping. It was a day of rest and relaxation!

☁ But Looey wouldn't let that slide. He's had a craving for the sweet treat for so long and now, he has the time to drag you to help him make it! The normal bakers were scattered, out of the kitchen, one of them napping with one of their partners while the other was folding laundry with the other next to them. So that meant it was open!

☁ You yourself were on a device, scrolling through some app that started with a T, reading silently while curled in a blanket. You looked so content there, he almost hesitated to ruin it.

☁ That did not stop him from running full speed only to jump onto you, nuzzling into your neck as you squealed at the intrusion. "Gumdrop!" He cheered while your squeals turned into laughter, pecking soft pecks to your cheeks and lips. "Let's do something!"

☁ "I was doing something." You giggled, brushing back his ears before they popped right back up. He shook his head to make them wave back and forth and tap against your hands, making you laugh again as you moved to hold his head. "But I guess I can share my attention."

☁ "Great!" His tail gave a wag. "I was hoping you and I could go on another baking adventure. I'm thinking funnel cakes!" He cheered, making you roll your eyes fondly.

☁ "Is that what you want now?" You tease, closing your device and setting it to the side.

☁ "At this very second? No. I want a kiss." He beams, making you laugh once more. You give him a sweet little peck, hearing his tail wave side to side rapidly.

☁ Once he was satisfied, he stood with a sweet bow, extending a hand to you. Once you took it, he helped you up before hooking your elbows together, rehashing the time he spent earlier while you had some alone time back to you.

☁ You listened with an attentive ear, smiling the entire time. By the time you made it to the kitchen, he was going on about the game of Crib he and Finn had been playing earlier, and how he had won- even if you knew he had been using the tricks he used in the circus to flub the cards.

☁ You pointed out as much, moving around the kitchen a little clumsily. You found what you needed well enough however, setting it out along with the utensils needed. Looey knew himself well enough to know where his limits lie, so he put a pot of oil on the stove, turning the burner on before stepping back, watching you whip up a quick batter.

☁ "You look glorious, you know that?" He teased, watching your cheeks flush as you tried hiding your smile. He loved seeing that look on your face, especially knowing it was because of him.

☁ There was something about you that just had him acting like a whole new toon! It was kind of uncanny really. He wouldn't admit, except to maybe you, but at the beginning of his time with the circus, he feared he was too different. Too much. And he hated being alone.

☁ Then you showed up and life hasn't been the same. He will forever be eternally grateful to have you in his life and fully plans to cherish you for as long as you will allow him too.

☁ It was why he insisted on having moments like these so often. He never wanted to say he wished he could've done it with you and would've rather had the memories to look back on. Especially with the twisteds. He had only been a twisted once, and could only remember running and running and running hoping to find you or any trace of you.

☁ Waking up, back to himself, and seeing you was one of the best-worst moments of his life.

☁ He knew seeing him like that must've been scary for you and tried desperately to erase that memory with only good ones.

☁ And if sifting powdered sugar onto freshly fried dough and drizzling it with your favorite sweet sauce helped erase some of those bad memories too?

☁ Well, he found he didn't mind a single bit, laughing at the powder dusting you nose as you fed him the first bite of the first treat, laughing when he got sauce all over his face.

[babyzzai]

I was so unaware you didn’t get requests yet :0 Which is so rude! You deserve all the requests! So here I am >:3

Could I request some little Dazai caregiver Chuuya headcanons/fanfic? I’m not sure if you want requests for headcanons or fanfics- I’ll probably submit a second request in case this is too confusing-

caregiver chuuya + little dazai headcanons ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆

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note: i do write fanfics! usually i dont take requests since i dont have the motivation to write a fanfiction if im not really into the idea, but i write my own fanfictions and post them on my ao3 (soukokutruther) :3 i have two regression themed ones up, and one non regression one but still sfw and soft <3 im also working on a third agere one! :D

─── ⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

headcanons below the cut!! ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ dazai is a sleepy regressor! when regressed he usually is just in his pajamas and takes a lot of naps. hell always insist hes not tired, and hes too old for a nap (pretending to regress to an older age such as 8-9ish, when in reality hes an itty bitty baby, probably 1-2ish), but once chuuya pulls out his bottle and wraps him a soft blanket hes through, out like a light and drooling onto chuuyas shoulder haha

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ as i stated before, dazai regresses to around 1-2ish, but he has trust issues and issues with being vulnerable, so even after he accepts his regression, he still tries to be a big kid and be more independent, when in reality hes really dependent on chuuya, and is even nervous and starts to cry if hes not with him at all times while regressed.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ however, because hes a baby, chuuya of course will treat him like a baby! he has all sorts of toys like rattles, and soft plushies, and particularly those stuffed animals that have a little blanket for a body, like these. dazai doesnt really use any teethers when regressed but hes a big pacifier user, chuuya has a bunch of them laying around. if dazai doesnt have his pacifier, hell start sucking his fingers, which chuuya is adamantly against because he doesnt want dazai who already has a fragile immune system to get sick + he doesnt want him to chew up his fingers.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ despite dazais personality when not regressed, i think hes honestly a very gentle and sweet little baby. for one, hes afraid to be vulnerable when hes regressed, so acting out is out of the question because he doesnt want to misbehave and have chuuya yell at him (chuuya would never, but dazai lives in his head and makes up anxieties). secondly, dazais entire nonchalant laugh it off demeanour is just a show when hes big, and that all comes crumbling down when hes regressed, showing his true colors, and his wants and needs. all he really wants is love and snuggles and to be held. he just needs reassurance and the kind of gentle love hes never received anywhere else :(

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ dazai loves peekaboo. hell lay in chuuyas lap watching him hide behind his hands for hours. and its all worth it to chuuya to hear his adorable babys sweet little happy giggles.

chuuya hiding behind his hands "oh no... where did mackeral go?" dazai giggling hysterically, because chuuya is right behind his hands, how could he not know where dazai is? and chuuya dramatically peeking out from behind his hands. "there he is!! theres my baby!!" and dazai laughing happy, saying "gain! gain!" (again, again!)

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ dazai, because he is so young, is not very verbal when little. hell occasionally say small, slightly mispronounced words such as "nuh" (no), "mmhm", "chuu", "chibi" or "chichi" (hes trying to say chibi, but hes just a little guy, you cant blame him!)

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ they have a game before they go to sleep for the night where chuuya will kiss all of dazais freckles on his nose before they go to sleep, and dazai will kiss chuuyas freckles back! chuuya thinks dazais little baby kisses are the most adorable thing in the world, and his heart flutters with every tiny little kiss the baby gives him!

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ dazai cant stand not to be around chuuya when hes little... but at the same time, his baby brain doesnt have the same criticl thinking skills as he does when hes an adult. so sometimes while chuuya is asleep, hell wander away out of curiosity (he sees its raining outside, he wants his stuffie, hes hungry, etc.) but once hes gone, it hits him that hes alone, and chuuyas not there, and he doesnt know what to do, and he doesnt know how to find him again, so he kinda just shuts down and starts to cry. chuuya, being woken up by his poor babys lonely, anxious crying, of course finds him immediately, and picks him up into his arms and hushes him and reminds him that if dazai ever needs anything he needs to tell his caregiver first! (hide and seek is definately not a game they play lol)

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ i feel like dazai would really like moomin valley, the 90s version. i think the voices would be so calming to him, and hed enjoy all the magical elements and the aesthetic of it. however, i think he calls moomin a hippo, and chuuya tries to correct him and be like "sweetheart, moomin is a troll, not a hippo", but dazai associates trolls with being scary and moomin is not scary, so he cant be a troll, he has to be a hippo!! the two episodes though, with the groke, scared him.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅chuuya is very protective, probably overprotective of dazai. its because he personally sees how capable and independent dazai is when not regressed, and a lot of that independence is taken away when dazai regresses. hes very sensitive and emotional and doesnt always know how to take care of himself, and that combined with chuuyas natural protective instincts over those he loves makes him extremely protective of his baby. he doesnt like dazai regressing without him, but only will accept it if its kunikida caring for him, because i feel like they have a mutual respect for each other and understand that both of them care a lot about dazai and would take good care of him. dazai also puts so much trust into chuuya when he regresses and chuuya is his default caregiver, that chuuya feels almost territorial with the baby lol.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ dazai is autistic, and masks his symptoms a lot, and when he regresses that ability to mask vanishes. his sucking on objects or his fingers is a self soothing stim, and when hes excited hell or flail his hands around. he also hums to himself as a stim (he does this when not regressed too), and is a lot more sensitive to light and sound. he cant stand uncomfortable clothing either and almost always wears pajamas when regressed.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ i think chuuya has a caregiver headspace, hes not just a caregiver because he loves dazai (though thats definately a reason too- i mean some people dont have caregiver headspaces but they still caregive because they want to be accomdating to their loved ones). so not only is regressing theraputic for dazai, it is for chuuya too, because it calms that need in him to take care of someone, and to protect them. when dazai is asleep with his pacifier and his stuffie all cozy in chuuyas arms in a warm fluffy blankie, he cant help but just feel such a strong sense of rightness, and content in his chest, because this is exactly what he needs. a happy baby in his arms.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ i headcanon dazai as a cane user post mersault, not all the time, just to help him balance and lean his weight on if his leg is feeling off. and i headcanon him to have chronic pain in that knee that he broke. when his knee is hurting, i think he falls down into his baby headspace, and chuuya will give him an icepack and/or warm heating pad depending on the type of pain, rub his leg and his knee for him, carry him anywhere he needs to go, reassure the baby that hes no less beautiful or perfect or human because he has a physical disability now, and that hes still loved and will always be loved. on flare up days/periods, chuuya and dazai usually just cuddle in bed and watch shows or movies, and order takeout and drink hot cocoa.

‧₊˚ ☽ ⋅ chuuya loves to do fun activities with dazai! dazai is not fond of regressing in public, so things like cat cafes and parks and public events are off limits, but hell stargaze with the baby on the balcony, telling him stories of all the different constellations and pointing out different planets. hell bake fun treats with dazai (usually dazai doesnt do much baking since hes a disaster in the kitchen even when not regressed-). dazai usually just pours ingredients into bowls and cups with chuuyas help and licks the spoons. he likes to pick flowers with dazai and make little flower crowns, and will color with him. they make tents from blankets and cushions and pillows in the living room to go on a fake camping trip, and chuuya will pretend to be a scary grizzly bear, and then will fight the bear off to protect dazai! he gets dazai to do crafts and fingerpaintings. he absolutely keeps his baby entertained, even if dazai doesnt like to leave the safety of their home when regressed!

i have sew many headcanons but this was getting super long lol. can you tell theyre my favs? lol!! i hope you like my hcs!! :3

[yanphighting]

Omgomgomg yandere phighting blog!!!

Is it possible for me to request Yandere Dom or Valk headcanons? Or both? If not then Yandere Medkit headcanons if you don't mind?

Sorry if im coming off strong I'm just really excited to see a yandere phighting blog!!

(Is it possible for me to be 🥞 Anon? ^^)

╰┈❥ YANDERE VALK AND DOM

AN: I LOVED DOING THIS REQ,,, Hope you enjoy this! Had a lotta fun writing this!

♡ Valk always takes photos of you whenever you two hang out, cute photos of you two hugging, sharing a coffee together, you wearing the brand-new outfit he had bought you for your spawnday. He never lets you see the photos though for some reason always being so secretive about them, saying he's just keeping them on his phone. Later on, he'll post them to every platform he can get his claws on, captioning the photos about how he was so glad to be with his spouse.

♡ Valk as a draconic like demon definitely has the traits of one. He's can't help that he has the need to grab everything and anything you own and have it all to himself. Your clothes are definitely things he'll take most often, sweaters, shirts and scarves that still smell exactly like you. He keeps everything he had hoarded from you in a drawer in his room, cuddling with the items whenever he thinks it misses you.

♡ Even if Firebrand is gone currently I'd think Valk would still have a lot of status as he is the grandson of the deity. He would find demons from all around the Crossroads to find your favorite thing, limited edition doesn't matter to him he'll find everything you would ever wish for, that'll definitely get you to like him! If you ask questions about how he found whatever you wanted he'd just chuckle saying that he has his ways.

♡ Valk would message you an alarming amount of times. It doesn't matter if you're busy, you will come back to see five or more missed messages with even more coming in about how he misses you, how he wishes you could hang out like right now or just him spamming you with stupid messages. Even if you'd block his number or change yours, he'd find a way to text you again.

♡ Valk absolutely swears to himself that he has to end up with you! You're the perfect demon for him, you two just NEED to be together. He'll vaguely talk about you as ' this cute demon he's been fawning over' everyone in the general vicinity WILL hear about you. Valk thinks and dreams about you every second he can. It's gotten to the point where he's most likely messed up announcements or some sort of choreography due to daydreaming about you.

♡ Dom, similar to his brother, definitely has the draconic hoarding habit however he's more discreet about it. Instead of taking clothing items he's more likely to take smaller trinkets and items from you, hair ties, small plushies that once littered your bed and even a bottle of your favorite perfume! He keeps smaller items with him so it's like he's carrying around a small piece of you whoever he's going.

♡ Instead of gushing about you online like a certain someone he keeps his thoughts to himself. Dom writes about you as he thinks about you, he'll write about how happy the two of you'll be once you start dating or even marry! He'll also just aimlessly jot down the things he noticed about you throughout the week,how you smiled at his joke, how you seemed much more at ease with him! It just makes his wing flutter with excitement as he swoons over you like a teenage girl.

♡ On a similar note he'd write songs about you! Songs about how much he loves you and how every bit of you is so CUTE! He'd wouldn't show you the songs if you saw him writing them out going with the excuse that it was 'unreleased' material that you weren't allowed to see. Maybe one day he'd show you them.

♡ Dom would have a stalking habit, he doesn't entirely mean for it to happen, he just wants to make sure you're safe! You may not see him but he's seeing you whenever you end up going. You start feeling a bit uneasy after a trip to a mall in Crossroads, swearing that you'd seen Dom watching you from the corner of your eye yet when you turn to look ... he's gone. You're not even safe when you're home. Maybe it's just late-night paranoia getting to you, but you swear there's someone at your window watching you sleep.

[canmom]

assorted TTRPG things

nugget from the tab bonfire: at some point I was reading about RPGs. some things that are old, some are new(ish). here are some links, since I think they are interesting, and some additional comments.

first-up: my own RPG posts are now archived here. that section of my site is looking a whole lot more fleshed out now.

1. ritual

in 2021, Meguey Baker wrote this one about 'ritual in game design', fitting TTRPGs into her frame of faciliating rituals for essentially therapeutic purposes, aimed at parents. since I like talking in a vaguely (vaguely) anthropological way about the analogies between TTRPGs and other activities (improv comedy, kink, wrestling), this is very relevant.

by Meguey's definition, a ritual is defined through this series of words: intentional contained conscious creative action. of course, she gives these words fairly specialised definitions. she's mostly interested in addressing TTRPGs that go into tough, bleedy places, described in books like Alice Is Missing, BFF, and Bluebeard’s Bride - of these I'm only familiar with the third but I'm kind of aware of the genre of game she's talking about. she suggests that these principles don't really apply if you're just playing to hang out and have a good time, but to my mind, just because you're less formal about it doesn't mean that's not an aspect of ritual, and the analysis is similarly applicable there, just lower-stakes.

in fact I think a whole lot of human activities are rituals (classic bryn move to grab a conceptual hammer and start seeing nails everywhere). the analogy goes the other way too, rituals are kind of like games.

I'm not entirely convinced the breakdown into jargon words really does a lot for me, but the crucial thing here is the sort of entering and exiting into a constrained social space which has its special set of rules. meguey writes these cool little coloured lists which depict the various stages of getting you into a game/ritual headspace and exiting it afterwards...

...and specialises it to the case of roleplaying games as you see. it's pretty BDSM-like isn't it? sure, that's something I'm currently interested in, I recently read The New [Topping/Bottoming] Books, but it certainly does suggest that analogy strongly for me; I think a general recognition that RPGs should have aftercare would do a lot more for the scene than a lot of the other 'safety tools' like X-cards and so on. (a weaker analogy is the principles of animation: anticipation, action, follow-through.)

this idea of ritual also strongly parallels the definition of 'play' of roger callilois:

1. it is free, or not obligatory 2. it is separate from the routine of life, occupying its own time and space 3. it is uncertain, so that the results of play cannot be pre-determined and the player's initiative is involved 4. it is unproductive in that it creates no wealth, and ends as it begins economically speaking 5. it is governed by rules that suspend ordinary laws and behaviours and that must be followed by players 6. it involves make-believe that may be set against 'real life'.[6]: 100–101 

as a set of traits which describe a somewhat fuzzy sphere of activity. meguey's account of 'ritual' focuses more on the set of steps you follow to enter and leave the ritual space, but it is describing, I think, a heavily overlapping 'thing'.

why so explicitly break down a process that most people seem to come by naturally? well, probably for the same reason that kink people do it: the more you play with [emotional] fire, the more care you must exercise to keep it contained. but it is also pretty important, I think, to pursue some degree of ritual for the middle part to actually work. you need to switch mental gears first to get yourself operating in 'game space'. same goes for a number of other 'spaces' for that matter. in RPGs we already have plenty of rituals: getting set up around the table (for offline games), general chitchat beforehand to get us feeling social with the other players, the brief summary of the previous session to mark the transition into RPG mode...

one non-obvious extension that Meguey makes, in the third excerpt above is to the actual text of RPG books, in terms of how they are presented to the reader. I think this is genuinely quite an insight - when you read a book you get into RPG space a bit and imagine playing the game, building up the fantasy of what playing it will entail (c.f. what's the book for, part 3).

though, that said - it is tricky to pursue a strict ritual structure in presentation, I think, because I think RPG books tend to be read very non-linearly. only quite short games tend to get read cover-to-cover in one sitting. otherwise you tend to skip to the part that you need. still: the manner of presentation is very important to an RPG book serving its purposes. and this is a fascinating frame for it.

I'm not sure this essay necessarily gives a new direction (as a designer or a player), but it does give an interesting angle to understand things I was already doing previously, and do them a little more deliberately.

for example, when I make a point of mentioning moments that I enjoyed in the time after an RPG session before we all part ways, that is the 'return/celebration' part of the ritual, and crucially it reassures everyone that even if they were playing an unpleasant character or there was inter-character conflict in the session, it was something I was looking for and appreciated. I do this because there have been times when I've felt a bad kind of bleed, fearing that my character was 'too much' and was detracting from the session, or that a conflict in-character reflected an OOC conflict. having an explicit affirmation helps drive away those fears.

2. rule zero in D&D

this history of 'rule zero' in D&D editions dates all the way back to 2012 (although it seems to have been updated since), but it's still very relevant to my current efforts to understand RPGs, books, and all the weird practices around them, the role of 'rulings' in OSR, etc etc.

right off the bat, I appreciate the nuances that this early paragraph expresses:

The attitude towards rulings vs. rules in the game shows up  - directly and explicitly in the rules text - implicitly in the text and detectable via textual analysis  - in the surrounding publications considered semi-canonical (Dragon magazine, nowadays forums and designer blogs), and  - the culture of gamers surrounding it.

while the rest of the post is still focused on what books say rather than what people did with those books, it's a relief when people note that there is a difference.

so, the essay traces a general evolution of ideas about what role the rules in the book are supposed to follow as D&D moved away from wargaming and passed through the hands of different publishers. how much interpolation and discretion the DM is supposed to apply to the text, how authoritative they're supposed to be at their own table compared to the non-DM players...

it's fascinating to observe how the culture of the game evolved. it's also tricky to distil the different currents down into a brief summary - I tried and realised I was just recapping the article in less detail. luckily the author wrote a summary so I can just quote that:

0e – the referee is an aribiter and fills in the gaps 1e – the DM is large and in charge, the rules are pretty good, your players are at both’s behest B/X and 2e – the DM and players are both important, the rules are super mutable 3e/early 3.5e – the rules and players and DM are leveled out in importance, meaning rulings are minimized and a negotiation with players BECMI/late 3.5e/4e – the rules are pretty fixed and players and DM are equal and subject to the rules as law; RAW is an option OSR and Pathfinder – splitting off in their own directions in reaction to 4e, OSR back to a mix of 0e and B/X flavored attitudes and Pathfinder to a hybrid of 1e/2e/3e attitudes 5e – The DM is clearly in charge and can ignore/change rules and rolls as they deem wise, with the goal of everyone having fun (as opposed to the sometimes-stated 1e goal of “keeping the players in their place”.) It reincorporated a lot of the 1e and 2e thinking into the game to an even greater degree than Pathfinder. PF2e – Effectively back to 3e positioning fairly exactly. It stepped back away from where PF1e and 5e were going and got a little less enthusiastic about GM authority, carefully scoping it to interpretation and, sometimes, changes to make things fun. Maybe a *little* more towards 5e than 3e was, but only by a hair.

anyway, there are a couple of interesting points I want to pull out of the discussion. first is this insightful comment on the broader implications of rules that grant abilities - something to discuss further in a later post...

The problem with [D&D 3.5e's claim that you can try anything and the rules only govern chances of success] from a textual interpretation standpoint is that it’s hard to not interpret the raft of “possibility” options in the 3e branch of D&D as being restriction of options. I can try to throw my opponent in a grapple – until a feat comes out that says “In a grapple, you can now throw your opponent.” Thus despite mitigating statements by the designers, their design itself passively promulgates an approach to the rules as written.

there's also an interesting line about how 'old school' the OSR actually is, answer being that it's complicated.

Some, however, consider this to be a bit of a retcon of how old school gaming actually worked. As you can see from this research, it is and it isn’t – the “rulings vs. rules” concept was very strong especially in B/X and 2e, somewhat less so in 0e/1e, and actively militated against in BECMI. Hackmaster and the Knights of the Dinner Table comic prominently parody the not uncommon rules-adherence mode of play in AD&D. As all nostalgia does, the Quick Primer picks certain elements out of the past to bring back and leaves aside some other elements.

finally, we have this comment about the (then very new) 5th edition approach to framing its rules:

It also appears to take a hint from the OSR’s formulation of “rulings, not rules” as well as the prominent fiction-first modern indie games like Apocalypse World when it describes the basic pattern of play – 1. The DM describes the environment 2. The players describe what they want to do (and the DM decides how to resolve those actions – importantly, the PCs don’t decide what rules they use) 3. The DM narrates the results

...which is somewhat true to my experience of 5e, although I think there is still a fairly significant component of 'I use this ability on my character sheet' in the game (I use this weapon, I cast this spell, I use this special ability). So the players do often decide what rules they want to invoke. Although, that is also true of Apocalypse World - something to go into another day.

mostly I think it's really helpful to have a proper sense of the space of practices represented by D&D, since popular discourse (including the game's rulebooks) way too often seems to assume there is only one way that D&D is played. this is a good stab at exploring some of the dimensions, and will definitely inform whatever is the next investigation I make into the structure of RPGs.

for another angle on D&D history, I came across this old (2016) ENWorld post tracing how Gygax got increasingly proprietary and litigious with D&D, and hostile to people putting their own spins on it.

it seems like for more on this topic of early RPG history I should be taking a look at The Elusive Shift by John Peterson, so posssibly more to come on this subject when I get round to reading that one.

3. blorb

I came across Sandra Snan's website, idiomdrottning.org, which is another one of those classic static-site treasure troves of someone's thoughts on everything for like the last decade.

like me, she came back to playing trad games like D&D after spending a while exploring the storygames milieu. She landed on a set of practices relating to the concreteness of the setting, in explicit opposition to 'no myth'-style games where anything not stated out loud is fair game to be modified for the sake of narrative.

she calls this 'blorb', and as these things tend to, it gets something like a manifesto. many other articles on this site talk about various facets of roleplaying games are written about on the site in relation to this.

'blorb' focuses on the relationship between preparation and improvisation: making a big show of referring to things on paper, and making decisions in the open, to reinforce the sort of metanarrative that there is an underlying reality even if it hasn't fully been discovered yet. it emphasises more granular simulation over abstraction.

since it's a little hard to navigate Sandra's archives, I've gathered the posts that are relevant to the subject here:

the chasm width problem (motivating, raising the issue that few games explicitly address the how of DMing)

blorb principles

realism and blorb (which discusses the other name 'klokkverk' used elsewhere in the milieu, and compares it to 'no myth') + the fictioneers talk about blorb again

radically transparent DM-ing

say the DC

antiblorb

GM-less roleplaying games

a blorb thought

the quest queue

there's probably others but these are the main ones I read

for contrast, no myth, a somewhat overlapping and somewhat very different paradigm of games that broadly sums up the norms of the Forge/'story games' tradition.

to sandra, 'blorb' is a statement of the type of roleplaying she finds vastly more satisfying to operate, and the crucial elements to make that happen.

what I find interesting about blorb is that, since its main interlocutor is the Forge/story-games tradition, it puts a fair bit of discussion into how this affects the fiction in practice. e.g. what you should prepare and what you can still improvise, and how the existence of the 'gloracle' (the combination of prepped materials and dice/rules, and rigour in consulting them) shapes our notion of 'the fiction'.

via this post, vincent baker back in 2012 defined RPGs thus:

To me, the crucial feature that makes a game an RPG is that it works by the (so-called) lumpley primple: in order to play, we have to create fictional stuff and agree that, for gameplay purposes, it's true. This is a pretty technical and inclusive definition. It includes Once Upon a Time and that game where you sit in a circle and pretend that some of you are werewolves, for instance.

something I find very interesting RPGs is the process of 'synchronisation' of the shared fiction. the idea of 'shared fiction' is something of an elaborate illusion. every player has a different version of it, with different emphases, different things that are fresh in memory, different interpretations of the images...

consider verbal descriptions of locations. my sense of what is in a scene will constantly be adjusted based on the stream of description I'm receiving from other players - the 'shared fiction' is at best something we approach asymptotically.

in an extreme example, a DM could lead with an elaborate description of the architecture, decorations, and layout of the room, before wrapping up with 'and curled around the central pillar is a mighty red dragon'. dun dun dun! suddenly, I have to recontextualise everything in the scene I was building in my head to accomodate the presence of the dragon.

the unreliability of this communications channel was a source for a vein of classic D&D humour, such as the Dread Gazebo of yore, where the communication channel breaks down leading to an inconsistency in the 'shared' fiction.

'no myth' and similar ideas come from the recognition that, until something is said out loud and enters part of the shared fiction, it can be changed freely between any possibility consistent with the 'established' facts. sort of like the wave function collapse algorithm. they take the attitude that you should do this deliberately to maximise drama and add complications, taking on more of a writer/director role. this character enters a bar, what should they encounter there? it would be fucked up if they encountered their ex, right? ergo their ex is there.

there is a degree of this in every RPG, not just your high-improv post-Forge story games. in order for some sort of consensus to be reached, parts of it must be black-boxed and unpredictable. for example, if I am inhabiting a character, I have my idea of how they will act and what they're feeling and thinking about, and that's authoritative. but that means for everyone else's characters, I have my impressions and predictions, but they're subject to being updated as soon as that player speaks.

for Sandra, this recognition that everything is getting moved around for drama undermines the substance of the world - an inescapable awareness even if the players take pains to make the established, spoken-out-loud fiction consistent.

so, additional 'authority' is central to the 'blorb' playstyle. that is, in addition to each player's authority to make up stuff within their domain (e.g. what their character does), you make a big point of deferring to some additional authorities such as pre-prepped material and dice (which Sandra calls the 'gloracle'), and making it explicit to the players that you're doing so. for example, you might talk about the random encounter tables you're using and what would change their contents, or declare the DC before every roll.

it's kind of a defensive style of DMing, in that it's entirely designed to forestall any suspicion of 'fudging' behind the scenes. the tradeoff is: more explicit discussion of game mechanics which might detract from the sort of 'atmosphere', but equally a stronger sense of inhabiting an external world where things are 'really' happening 'offscreen'.

to me, the idea of 'fudging' doesn't bother me nearly as much as it seems to bother Sandra, but I think there is some truth to the thought that if everything is subject to random tables or pure off-the-dome improv, the game can start to feel a very homogeneous. as Sandra puts it in one of her articles:

I don’t want to expand randomly as we go either, because if everything is randomly rolled as you go along, where’s the agency? South becomes the same as north becomes the same as west because wherever you go, the dice are furnishing for you, so the choice about where to go matters less.

it's probably got something to do with information theory, right? once you become familiar with the table, and you know when the table will be invoked, you've broadly found out what there is to know about that thing. there are only so many bits of information.

I was saying the other day, games are interesting because they are something to explore through interacting with them to discover all their weird nuances. players are pretty good at sniffing out how complex and varied the underlying system is. a wide set of interesting, spicy locations - and logical relations between them - has more nuances to discover than a random table with, say, 10 entries.

the problem is of course that such a prep-focused playstyle can lead to huge amounts of 'wasted' effort fleshing out elements of the gloracle which may never be activated, especially if players don't spend their time rubbing against your creation in various ways to discover its nuances. Sandra's approach is to work out what's easy to improvise on the fly (the 'wallpaper') and what is crucial to pin down in advance, and largely prepare the latter - the difference, I guess, coming down to experience. we can think of it in programming terms: a small authoritative state and things that can be derived from that.

in my experience, at least some players have become a lot more considerate of the workload of GMing. far from trying to resist 'railroading', they will often generally deliberately try to steer themselves towards whatever location a DM has prepared as a courtesy; meanwhile the GM will be able to get a sense of where the players are planning to go so they can prep between sessions. however, that is contrary to the more 'sandboxy' approach where the core appeal is 'you can do pretty much anything', which is what Sandra is trying to generate I think.

I'm too much of an improv-focused GM to really become a partisan of 'blorb' - for me, discovering improv-oriented story games after D&D was as revelatory as discovering D&D after storygames was for Sandra lol. I trust somewhat in my ability to come up with weird interesting stuff on the fly and flesh it out later, and I tend to find the moment of being in the hotseat of an RPG gets the creative juices flowing like nothing else, so it's actually quite difficult to come up with anything good during prep.

however, I think there is a lot to be said for the value of making at least certain things concrete, and communicating that to the players, and Sandra makes a good case for showing your hand. it's a way to make the shared fantasy take on certain qualities it won't have if it remains purely arbitrary improv, even if the only real functional difference is when you make something up. both because it's hard to keep track of everything in your head without some kind of aid, and because the first idea you come up with will rarely be the richest, most interesting.

so next time i run a game, I'm not going to take such a zero-prep, all-improv approach, but try and work a bit harder on 'overall consistency'.

definitely a provocative blog to encounter...

[farthest-harbor]

What’s your favorite and most off the wall Nick theories?

Okay, I shall give you some of the most unhinged things I have thought about Nick Valentine, and you will see how weird it is in this head of mine. Most will be NSFW, so if that ain't your jam, don't read 'em!

Nick has a network of teeny tiny wires embedded in his skin that function as nerves. I think that when he gets injured and a section of his skin is torn away, the nerve wires are left exposed. When the injury is new, anything that touches these exposed nerve endings is painfully overstimulating. As the injury gets older, it gets less sensitive and eventually can be touched in a pleasurable way. Try stroking, licking, sucking... See what happens.

Also, I think Nick's skin isn't totally hard plastic. I think it's somewhere in between hard plastic and silicone in texture, and is a bit pliable, more flexible around his face, hands, and joints where more range of motion is necessary. Therefore, when you kiss Nick, I think his lips aren't as squishy as human lips, but still kissably soft.

I think Nick overheats like a computer. When he's flustered, stressed out, or ~stimulated~, I think a bunch of internal fans kick on in his chest, the way they do on a hot laptop. I imagine his main processors are in his chest, so his chest probably gets the hottest. So during sex, his chest is almost scorchingly hot. Instead of an orgasm, he overheats till he crashes and shuts off for a few seconds, then slowly reboots. Be patient with him when it happens, if he hasn't taken care of you already, he will when he's back online.

Also I totally buy into wireplay. I bet that shit sends him to the moon.

I think synth Nick hasn't had any sort of romantic relationship, or else he wouldn't still be hung up on Jenny. I think after Sole helps him avenge her, he's more able to move on, but never entirely let go. It helps that Sole lost a spouse too and understands the pain of losing them, and that a part of Sole's soul will always be with their spouse.

Nick also never put himself out there because he's always deep down felt that his body is inadequate, especially since he once had a human body to compare it to. He's deeply self-conscious about not having a dick, and if Sole shows an interest in a physical relationship with him, he will feel the need to have a talk with Sole about it first. The way he sees it, it's better to tell Sole before they get him undressed than to watch Sole be judgemental/disappointed when they find out. That's an indignity he just couldn't bear. He struggles with vulnerability, particularly about his body, so treat him with care and be patient with him. Let him open up at his own pace.

I think body worship would be a very good way to begin intimacy with Nick. To slowly make your way down his body, kissing and gently touching all the way, letting him know that each inch of him is beautiful and worthy of affection and attention. He gets accustomed to intimacy one tiny bit of himself at a time, with the constant affirmation that he is worthy and he is enough.

I think Nick is a very different person with Sole than he is in public. He walks around wearing wit and sarcasm as armor against the volleys of prejudiced remarks thrown at him. When he's alone with someone he knows loves and accepts him, he doesn't need to make his usual witty comebacks and snarky remarks. He can take off the armor and show how badly he needs to be loved and cared for. He will thrive off tenderness and care.

In a similar vein, I think Nick is kinda submissive in bed, at least for the first few times. He likes having Sole take the lead, as he's not terribly experienced. He would probably do well with a soft dom partner. As he gains in confidence, he might start taking the lead more, and getting more creative. At an advanced stage in the relationship, you might use a few props, especially his tie, hat, and a set of handcuffs. But at any stage, I think he doesn't want violent/aggressive sex, but rather passionate, affectionate, and explorative.

And finally: I don't think he needs to wear underwear, since he doesn't have any genitals, but he wears underwear anyways because it feels proper to do so. It's just such an ingrained rule from his prewar life that he feels weird not wearing underwear. He wears plain white boxers and an undershirt. They are horribly ragged and stained, but he will not leave home without them on.

There you go, enjoy my utterly unhinged thoughts. I'm sure I can muster up more if someone asks very nicely :)

[cator99]

aww I called my district manager to warn her that I used her as a reference on my resume and she was very excited for me... wanted to know everything about it so she could provide the best recommendation possible :') I've kept this whole thing very much on the DL so i wasnt sure how she would respond..... also was totally honest and upfront about putting "senior merchandiser" on my resume even though I was just a regular merchandiser and she was like Tyler you were literally training new hires and taking on senior merchandiser and TL work of your own volition– you can put senior merchandiser on your resume. Yay ✅️✅️✅️ okay the real issue though is that I need to get my drivers license like TODAY and that makes me want to put a gun to my head... these guys were first of all shocked to find out that I am 28 (no I am not going to clarify that I'm a 28 year old female because I want them to hire me BEFORE they have a chance to let the sexism cloud their judgement LOL... people will hand you the world on a fucking platter if they think you're Just Some Guy its not my fault that people are retarded like this but if they're going to assume that anyway then I will let them... you play the cards you're dealt) but finding out I didn't have my license was like saying I had no legs– even so they told me that wasn't going to disqualify me entirely but that I would need to get that sorted out goddamn TODAY and then call them back so they can figure out if they can move forward in hiring me........ and if all else fails, well I can just give up on life and become a crackhead.... and I hate drugs so that's really gonna suck for me personally.......

[takiishichika]

What do you like about Endo character when his entire personality is being brainless dog for chika? Outside chika he has no real character or development at all .

i know you sent this in bad faith and i should ignore this, but you've given me a good excuse to talk about endo, so thank you! before i begin, let me say :

why are you on the Endo Liker blog hating? that's, like, my brand. being the Endo Liker. i won't agree with you.

in case you are genuinely curious, strap in!

i love "loyal dog to a master" trope in general so yes, part OF the appeal for me is that he's takiishi's loyal dog.

as many characters in Wind Breaker, Endo follows a trope: "brainless loyal dog to evil master". that is his trope, however, when he's introduced, this is NOT how he's introduced, is he? Endo is first shown as someone who pretended to be part of KEEL to see a fun fight play out, and we learn that he orchestrated this. then, we learn he orchestrated the Gravel incident too. two things that matter here: none of those were for, or because of, Takiishi. we learn about him later. so, importantly, Endo is already displaying that he does things outside of his time with Takiishi, and does things that have nothing to do with him at all. he clearly has connections in the criminal underworld and uses them well for goals beyond, or unconnected to, Takiishi. either for his own amusement or because he needs to build some sort of rapport for something else, etc. we didn't even know Takiishi's name at that point. he also has his own sense of style, humor, scents he likes.

the point of his character is that he largely (not entirely, as i wrote above) has no personality outside of Takiishi's likes/dislikes/etc and that THIS IS A PROBLEM. Endo isn't happy, in fact it makes him quite miserable because you cannot base your life around just one person and then be okay. you can see this through the entire fight between Ume and Takiishi, yes, Endo is jealous, but you see that even before - when he fights Sakura. if he really was just a brainless dog with no personality, he wouldn't care if Takiishi ever acknowledged him, yes? of course, Endo SAYS he doesn't care and he was going to continue following him regardless, but he wasn't going to be happy with it - how long until he finally broke down? Endo as a person is first of all a liar and second of all unable to understand how his own brain works, which makes him prone to tantrums and hissy fits. Endo's jealousy wasn't just based on "oh no the person i like likes someone else!". it was based on the fact that he believed, truly, that Takiishi doesn't know he exists. if he was a brainless dog with no personality, he wouldn't care. but he does, and it injures him. it makes him miserable, but not only that, he understood what IS exhilarating - fighting (being heard by) someone who acknowledges (looks at) him. that is a part of who he is, as a person, and it's something Takiishi did not give him. he realized this. that's part of his development.

to understand though why Endo would follow Takiishi to this degree, though, you have to have some critical thinking and understand Endo's past/childhood. Endo claims it was okay, but let me reiterate, Endo is unable to understand how his own brain works so you have to read between the lines there. he was born with Alexithymia. his childhood was lonely, so lonely he claimed he preferred to DIE than go back. do you understand this? do you understand what it means when a child is happy getting beat up by their friend every day, ignored and discarded, and they say they'd rather DIE than stop experiencing this? do you understand the level of loneliness and trauma that being unable to participate in society brings? this is a recurring theme in Wind Breaker, really: how someone can become an outcast, why they may turn to delinquency, and it does it with grace and understanding. neither of the cast really WANTED this life, but because of the fact they were born outside the norm, this is how things ended up. it is the same with Endo, too. for the first time in his life he was able to feel happy and excited. for the FIRST TIME he wasn't faking it. nothing, NOTHING else had made him feel this way until Takiishi, and then until Sakura. so yes, if only one thing in the whole wide world made me feel excited or scared or anxious for the first time ever, i too would cling to it, i think.

Wind Breaker does a good job, imo, of showing complex personalities and mistakes people make in a way where "everyone is wrong and with a good conversation it will be okay". Ume made Takiishi and Endo come to have a proper talk, and we haven't seen this yet - so we don't know how Endo and Takiishi's relationship has changed now. we'll have to wait and see.

if you didn't understand any of this about him, then you didn't understand Wind Breaker in general and you didn't understand Choji either. not all development is overt, spelled out, or linear.

[just-an-elf-with-the-socks]

So sorry to all of my followers who aren’t interested in this content, but I had to make this list after @admirably-abhorrent and I were talking about the utter angst of Mórul’s birth. It felt only right to make a true list

Mairon was in so much pain the last few months of his pregnancy. Maia pregnancies are nothing to scoff at; they’ve always been difficult and borderline dangerous. Mairon especially has it rough considering he’s having the child of a Valar and said child decided to arrive late

Melkor was scared for him. They had both enjoyed the excitement of bringing their child into the world and the sexual adventures that came with Mairon’s pregnancy, but the closer they got to the due date, the harder things got. At one point Melkor worried Mairon would be too weak to deliver their baby

Melkor had made a complete disappearance from the front line of his army, political ramifications be damned, and spent every waking moment with Mairon in their room. Hell, he might as well not have slept at all

Mairon was borderline feverish at this point and was having trouble breathing with the way the baby was putting pressure on his lungs. In a normal situation, Mairon could change his Fana to make things more comfortable. But he wasn’t about to risk harming their child

They knew that they would have to make special preparations for the birth. Mairon needed to be in the exact right position in order to make sure that the baby came out safely while Mairon could maintain the strength he needed to keep pushing. Normally Melkor wouldn’t be fond of a midwife and a physician witnessing something he considered so sacred, but he was really scared

When Mairon’s water broke, the process of calling everyone needed into the room and preparing for his first contractions went smoothly and calmly. Nothing that happened after was anything of the sort

It had been twelve hours and far too many contractions to count before Mairon could actually start pushing. He had been gripping Melkor’s hand and cursing him the entire time, but now he could finally do something. That was when they found out the baby was going to be born feet first (if you don’t know this is not ideal whatsoever)

Mairon just nodded, ready to do whatever he could to bring their child into the world safely, even if there was a new complication. Melkor, meanwhile, felt like he was going to pass out

He didn’t doubt the strength of his little flame, absolutely not, but the idea of anything going horribly wrong terrified him

Forty hours in and there’s so much blood. The blankets had needed changing five times, there was so much of it. Mairon was growing weaker, and Melkor couldn’t even give Mairon some of his own strength in case it made the situation even worse. All he could do was sit there and talk about nothing while he was trying his best not to hyperventilate

Gothmog was there as the godfather and at the physicians suggestion he asked Melkor if he wanted a sedative. Melkor snapped at him but didn’t look his way, anxiously focusing on Mairon

All Melkor saw for the next few hours was blood, Mairon’s tears, and horrible images in his mind of one of them being dead or both. He was almost on a different plane of existence when there was a loud, high pitched cry

When he looked up, Mairon was holding a small, little boy with a shock of reddish-black hair on his head and small pointed ears. Melkor could barely handle the fact that not only did he have a son, a beautiful, precious son, he still had Mairon with him

Mairon let Melkor hold him, although Melkor could see how anxious he was to have the baby close to his chest again. He was so small, Melkor felt overwhelmed holding him in such large hands. He kissed his forehead once before handing him back to Mairon, who gently guided him over to his chest to nurse. He latched on so quickly that Mairon joked he already had Melkor’s insatiable appetite

Melkor felt proud of that, moving as close to his family as he possibly could without directly climbing into the bed. He stroked Mairon’s hair and gave him thousands of tiny kisses all over, telling his little flame that he was unfathomably proud of him

The child’s name was Mórul, Prince of Darkness, and they couldn’t wait to see just what type of chaos their son would bring

I just have angsty feelings about wanting Angbang to be happy and have a family like everyone else and this is how it manifests itself, okay

[prodixal]

"Oh you revoke your kindness, do you?" he leans in, a playful smile passing his lips over a shrug of his shoulders. "Will you be cruel to me now, do you think? Or, indifferent?" his eyes shift away slowly in thought, brows furrowing as her gaze is caught once more. "I should prefer cruelty, I think. To indifference." And yet, he could not truly imagine her ever being cruel, and she was too passionate, too alive to ever be indifferent. "Suppose riots could break out over it." he replies smoothly, their hands hanging tied at the pinky, and he'll look upon them with gladness and sense of sweet victory. "It would be entirely too bad -- for them, that is, I've every intention of staying your favourite." Rickon knew, with every part of his being, there was no replacing what had existed in the small spaces between them. In gentle touches, and stolen glances. He was pretty certain no one had ever felt such a thing before. He had wanted her closer, he had wanted her under his skin. He had wanted never to part again. Perhaps they would need not part. Perhaps there was hope yet. "Still growing? Which way? Downwards?" retort is offered through a laugh and his free hand will rush to lay gently upon her cheek so that she remains leaning instead of looking up at him in feigned offence. "I jest, I jest." he pets her cheek then, hand falling atop the other which had laid entangled with hers. "I could not forbid such a thing." he says, "-- I am much too aware of the effort it would take for you to keep your hands to yourself." his words are serious, and while he tries to keep a smile from cracking through, he cannot quite manage. "I am not so rude." or so selfless. He had wanted her hands. He had wanted a great many things, it seemed. At her words he nods instantly with a smile of reassurance. Rickon did not forget, truly, only he did not quite connect the two either, in the moment. "I remember." he adds. "I do." his own hand squeezes hers now, and his head will tilt just slightly to the side as he considers. "A house near Gulltown then." he nods, decidedly. "For us." It felt less like a dream, rather, something to hope for. Something he could yet achieve. Something he could give. Something of their own.

-

With her hand clutching to his shirt, his heart will pound faster and his breath will catch in his lungs as he tries to read whatever unravelled behind her eyes. He was certain he had ruined things -- and yet it seemed he did not. Her words come in quick succession, and he is too dizzy and warm and nervous to process them entirely. With knitted brows, and parted lips, he tries to speak. But nothing comes out. What could he truly say? How could he even begin sorting his feelings into thoughts, thoughts into words? It would surely take an infinity. Rickon did not have infinity. Then she shoves him, and he reaches for her instantly, instinctively. Hands are greedy, almost pleading -- 'do not push me away' -- they say, it shows in his eyes, it shows as he struggles for words only to speak them with utmost resolve. "I do wish for it." his admittance is sharp, certain. "I do wish for you t'...-- to play with my hair." It was not about the hair, it was not about touch at all. It never had been. "I wish for nothing more." He knew how confusing it all must have seemed, how utterly disconnected. He too was struggling to make any sense of what has come to pass. He knew only two, very simple, very contrasting things: He knew had wanted her, And that it could never be. It could never be him. And yet... "Only...what happens now..." his throat clears, thumbs brushing softly over her cheeks as his eyes fix upon hers in utter sincerity. "Now I spend the rest of my life...wishing..." And that was alright, he decided. He would rather wish for her, than have anybody else. "Tell me you will wish for me too." it is soft, and quiet in its longing. He had wanted to hear it, he wanted to know. "Tell me, and it will be enough." "Tell me." he says, and perhaps it sounds an awful lot like 'love me'.

DAENYA MAKES AN AFFRONTED NOISE AS SHE SHOVES AT HIS SHOULDER . " i hardly believe that !" she huffs lightly , giving him a playful glare that truly has no heat . her chin raises as she adds , " your soul is soft and sweet . we both know this ." she tilts her head before giving him a second shove to say , " but if we are speaking of rough and calloused perhaps your feet would apply there !" she puts her hands on her hips to arch a brow and primly say , " you are taking advantage of my kindness now . i am revoking it ." daenya can't help but brighten at the offer of his pinkie , at the broadness of his grin . she beams as she wraps her pinkie around his own , as she leans in . she swings gently the link between them , their joint hands swaying with it . " i'm gladdened to hear it ." daeny's eyes twinkle with fondness . she allows her brows to arch to to say , " whatever would i do if this got out ?" daenya knows now that she would do nothing . that perhaps even if the world knew of this bond between them it would not break . that rickon perhaps won't be swayed by one of her more mature , more charismatic siblings . that he perhaps won't even be stolen by ladies like her cousin , or whomever else might come after . she wanted to tuck what they had close to protect it . to keep it . but perhaps it does not need to be protected anymore . perhaps it'll be hers no matter who knows of it . " oi !" daenya makes a sound of offense at the jest , eyes twinkling even as she huffs , " i am still growing !" she is not , in all likelihood . still it is nice to imagine . " soon i will be taller than jaehaerys ! then you will see ." the words are accompanied by a pout that is only skin deep , and it falls away as she shrugs to say , " and if you enjoy to roam that is no matter as i cling in my sleep , so perhaps i will chain you down ." a decisive nod before she is blinking at his question . her brows arch before she lifts their joint hands pointedly , turning to tilt her head where her cheek rests on his shoulder . " am i not to touch you ? you can say ." she blinks at his surprise , moving to pull back enough to meet his eyes to say , " like we agreed ! at my mother's banquet !" it feels like so long ago now . it was before she had even known that xaerys had died . before any of it . " we said we'd choose a meeting spot just for us ." daeny gives his hand a squeeze . " do you remember ?"

-

the step he takes forward is a surprise . the hands on her cheeks is the next one . daeny has to blink with it all , startled despite being the one who asked , caught off guard despite being the provoker . must I say it ? daeny finds her lips parting in surprise . they are quickly taken . daeny has one moment to expect it . a moment to see how his eyes flick down south to her mouth . to feel the warmth of his hands on her cheeks . to notice the closing proximity . to stop it . and yet she doesn't . and yet she allows his lips to brush against hers with a hitch of surprised breath . and yet she allows herself to be pulled closer and closer still , malleable and flushed warm as she allows rickon to kiss her . rickon is kissing her . his lips warm where they're against her own . his hands drawing her closer . it is somehow dizzying , somehow unexpected , and yet —  just as daeny finds herself easing into it , as she finds her lips parting under his , he is gone . she finds herself blinking hard in the absence . the shock in her own eyes is mirrored by the panic in his . daeny finds him spitting out words faster than she can strictly process them . her head shakes between one stuttered sentence and the next . " i — " another shake of her head as she watches him step away , as she moves instinctually to fist a hand in his shirt and keep him there . she looks at him with quickly furrowing brows , her mouth opening and closing before it can fully form words . " you are apologizing ?" daenya's cheeks are dizzyingly hot . her lips are too , from when his own were against hers . her head shakes again . " there is nothing to forgive you for , i was — " she cheeks seem to only get hotter . " i was going to offer anyways ." and yet daeny is quite sure the offer would not have played out quite like that . her ears are warm . " it is not as if you have done something i would not have permitted otherwise ." her gaze shifts away from his for a moment , cheeks still burning as she honestly adds , " i simply thought you did not wish to ." a beat before her eyes are moving to meet his again , her brows pulled down as she gives him a shove that is light even as she firmly says , " because you did not even wish for me to play with your hair !" her bewilderment only grows . " and yet to kiss me is quite fine ?"