#lol lets start here

[soranker]

98 lovemail doodles >_<

[stuckinapril]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[izuizzy]

“First Word” 💙💙

made a comic to express the relief and joy sonic felt when talia finally spoke for the first time once she became more comfortable. [read from left to right]

[luxaofhesperides]

Can I please have meet cute/weird with mistaken villain! Danny (but really just a engineer and or chem student) and the one being put on investigation cause Danny is a day villain(not really)! Duke

Technically, Danny Fenton is innocent. Technically. 

Duke wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he’s having so much trouble finding solid evidence that Danny is stealing from a wide variety of people, but he’s been burned before by trying to see people as better than they were. It doesn’t change the fact that Oracle’s cameras keep spotting Danny right before a building on the street is broken into and something stolen. He’s always just walking down the sidewalk; no one has spotted him entering or exiting a building, but he’s around far too often to be unconnected to these burglaries. 

It doesn’t help that strange, petty crimes have been on the rise since Danny first arrived in Gotham. 

So.

Danny Fenton is technically innocent.

Duke is trying to prove that he’s not. 

Maybe I’m looking too closely, he thinks, going over Danny’s sparse file in the Hatch. Maybe Danny’s only one person in a bigger operation.

He could just be the lookout, the runner, the information gatherer who marks which buildings to hit. He may even be the scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb; Danny has no support in Gotham, no family, no job. There would be no one to help him if he got arrested or injured in a fight. He’s a freshman college student from Illinois who should be unprepared for life in Gotham but is somehow managing to survive like a native. 

There’s a lot about Danny that doesn’t add up. 

Duke has seen plenty of different people since he first went out as the Signal. He’s tried to be kind and give people the benefit of the doubt, but it leads to his loved ones being put in danger. Some people are truly evil, some working on a malicious agenda, some are misguided in their beliefs, and some are desperate people who see no other way to move forward.

He’s not sure yet which on Danny is, but he’s hoping Danny is just desperate and needs a little help to get out of a life of crime.

Which leads to the next problem: Duke has no idea what Danny is steal, or why. He hits both rich and poor folks, civilians and members of the mob, and once, notably, stole something right out of Cobblepot’s office. Allegedly, at least, since no one saw him enter or exit the office, not even the security cameras. 

But added to the whispers going around about a new group in Gotham snatching people up from the streets, and some strange green substances found in warehouses often raided by police for the frequent drug labs that pop up in them… 

It doesn’t look good for Danny. Especially when a few of the items he stole were found where people either vanished or where that green substance has been found.

A week of analysis in the Batcave and they still don’t know what it is. 

Both Damian and Jason suspected Lazarus water, but the composition was completely different. By the look of the molecular structure, it shouldn’t have been in a liquid form at all. 

All these findings lead back to one person who may have answers: Danny Fenton.

According to Tim, who’s already broken into Danny’s dorm room and checked over all the labs he has classes in, Danny has some concerning items in his possession. Various inventions and little metal knick-knacks put together by a practiced hand. He was also the one to find all the information that went into Danny’s file when it was first being made: social media posts, school report cards, news articles about his parents… everything. 

And then he had an emergency mission to take with the Titans that swept him out of Gotham leaving Duke to tackle this investigation on his own. 

He doesn’t have Tim’s natural skill in stalking and invading privacy. He hates breaking into people’s spaces and following them around, but needs must and he has to force himself to work through the discomfort. 

It’s a good thing he did, too. Danny’s leaving his dorm after his last afternoon class, hood up to hide his face and something held in the front pocket of his hoodie. He ducks around people on the sidewalk easily, almost as if he’s gliding through the crowd instead of walking. 

Duke follows from above, bending the light around him to hide him from sight. 

He walks for some time, weaving through alleys and streets as if he’s been in Gotham his whole life, leaving behind the university campus to head towards Otisberg. There’s something strange about the way Danny walks, as if he’s moving around people who aren’t there, guided by something Duke can’t hear. Even using his meta abilities doesn’t do much beyond show him where Danny’s going to be in the next few seconds. 

He continues to follow Danny on the rooftops, walking along the edge to keep him in sight. 

Then Danny stops behind an apartment building and tilts his head back to look up at it. He tilts his head to the side, then nods and looks around the empty alley. Duke crouches down, keeping his eyes on Danny in the hopes of catching him in the act—

Danny disappears.

Duke curses under his breath and jumps down from the roof, putting more strength into his abilities as soon as his feet touch the ground. 

The space where Danny was has a faint outline, oddly enough. He’s never seen that before. From it is a semi-transparent trail, smoke-like and a pale green leading into the building. It goes straight into a wall, as if Danny walked through it.

He can’t go in and search the entire apartment, but he can grapple up and take a look into the hallways to see where Danny’s heading. If he was looking up, then that’s where he should be heading. 

It doesn’t take any effort to scale the building. There are ledges and windowsills and plenty of handholds for him to propel himself off of, and paired with his powers, Duke is able to find the correct floor in just under two minutes. 

The green smoke slowly dances through the air of the ninth floor, on the east side of the building. If he’s been counting the rooms correctly, then the target of tonight’s burglary has to be apartment 924. 

The curtains are drawn on the window he makes his way over to, and his abilities don’t show him anything helpful for the immediate future. He hates going in blind, especially to a civilian’s home, but capturing Danny takes priority. Duke picks the lock and slides the window up slowly, making sure it stays quiet, then slips into an empty bedroom. 

He makes his way out into the hallway on silent feet, keeping a wary eye on the thin smoke strands of green, curling along the walls. The rest of the apartment is empty as well, pale sunlight slanting across the floor through the blinds. 

Everything is still and silent. Danny’s nowhere to be found. 

Did he miss Danny leaving, somehow? Was this a misdirect to get him out of the way while Danny stole from another location? Did he know Duke was following him?

But no, his ears pick up on the faint sound of clothes rustling. 

Cautiously, Duke turns towards the front door, where the door to the coat closet is open. He focuses on what’s going to happen in the next twenty seconds and sees Danny panic, then disappear from sight again, but a transparent outline of his body is visible just enough to show him where he runs to. Best not to spook him; Duke pulls at the light around him and bends it to hide him from sight.

Then he moves along the wall, getting around the open door without bumping into anyone or anything. 

A figure in front of the coats, shoving them to the side roughly, flickers in and out of view, almost like a reflection in water, distorted by ripples on the surface. 

Danny pops back into visibility suddenly, scowling at the coats. “Are you sure it’s in here?” he asks the empty air. 

There is no answer, but Danny acts like there is. He rolls his eyes and says, “It’s a favor. That I’m doing for you. I can literally stop right now and you wouldn’t be able to stop me.” He shoves aside another heavy winter coat, then sighs. “Why don’t you look for it, and then tell me where it is.”

He steps back and bumps into Duke.

Danny whirls around, eyes wide, and blast of green light has Duke crashing back into the wall, trying to blink spots out of his eyes. 

“Wait!” he yells, grabbing for Danny before he can run off. “I just wanna talk!”

“Standing right behind me like a serial killer does not make you look like someone who wants to talk!” Danny yells back, slipping through his hands like mist. 

“I just have a few questions!”

“Well, I have a question: why?!”

“Will you hold still, we’re being too loud!”

Danny escapes to the other side of the apartment, next to a window looking fully prepared to fling himself out of it. But he does stop yelling, so Duke is counting it as a success.

“Why is the Signal coming after me?” Danny asks, glaring at him suspiciously.

“Dude,” Duke says, “You’ve been seen outside of every single building that’s had a burglary since you first arrived in Gotham. All the Bats are after you, they just sent me because I’m the only one active during the day.”

“All the Bats?” Danny repeats, losing what little color he had in his face.

He looks legitimately scared, pale enough to be concerning, and Duke drops his guard and tries to relax the tension in the apartment. “I’m not gonna turn you into the cops or anything. I just had questions and you seem like the most likely person to have answers. That’s it.”

Danny still looks wary, ready to run at a moment’s notice, but he doesn’t leave when Duke approached casually, leaning his weight against the couch. 

“So,” he begins, “What’s the deal with all the thievery? It’s rarely something super rare or expensive.”

There’s a long few minutes where Danny doesn’t answer, looking anywhere but at Duke. Then he twitches a bit and glares off to the side, and says, “I taking items that are contaminated with ectoplasm to help ghosts move through the veil and leave Gotham.”

That tells him nothing! That just gives Duke more questions! But at least it’s an answer, the first one any of them have got.

“I think you’re gonna have to explain a little more.”

“Ghosts are real, alright?”

“Yes.”

Danny stops. Squints at him. “What do you mean, ‘yes’?”

“Ghosts are real,” Duke repeats, “There are a few who help heroes or are heroes themselves, but that’s more on the magic side of things so I’m not super familiar with it.”

“Magic,” Danny says slowly. “Sure, alright. Um. Yes, ghosts are real. And there are a ton in Gotham who need help moving on, but they’re too weak to get past the veil. Something about Gotham has made the veil super strong, so they need a little boost to get through. Additional ectoplasm bonded helps with that.”

“And that’s why you’re stealing random things?”

“The ghosts I help can kind of sense ectoplasm-infused things, but they need me to grab them since they can’t hold anything without a physical body.”

Duke nods slowly. “Okay, that’s starting to answer some things. We have found those objects in the last places missing people were seen. Any idea what’s going on with that?”

“Yeah, those people were already dead.”

The way Danny says the most concerning answers as if they’re nothing is really throwing Duke off his game. He was expecting to be calm and serious to keep Danny from freaking out too much and look like a legitimate hero. But as soon as Danny started talking, all his nerves fell away and Duke is left grasping for composure. 

“They were…”

“They were ghosts, yeah. And they needed to get through the veil. But they were also able to possess their own bodies and didn’t realize they were dead until I had to break the news to them, which is why it looks like living people just up and disappeared.”

“Okay… What about the green stuff we’ve been finding?”

“Ectoplasm.” Danny holds up a hand and a neon green light surrounds it. Except it looks more solid than light, as if it can be touched, and it moves on its own like fire around Danny’s fingers. “It’s what ghosts are made of.”

Oh. If Danny has ectoplasm, does that mean…

“Are you dead?” Duke asks, heart dropping. 

Instead of looking upset about the question, or even disturbed by it, Danny just shrugs and waves his hand back and forth. “A little.”

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Duke says, trying to resist the urge to rub his temples. It’s a habit he didn’t mean to pick up from Batman, and it would just look silly with his helmet in the way. “You’re just doing all this to help ghosts?”

“Yeah. Basically. They asked for help man, of course I was going to help them.”

Danny’s a good person. He’s just a good person to ghosts. But this is good news either way, and he can let the others know that Danny isn’t the next Catwoman and is entirely unconnected from any drug production. Everything that made him look like a criminal is just the fault of ghosts. 

“Speaking of,” Danny continues, “Looks like they found what they need, so I’m going to grab that real quick.” He pushes off of the wall and heads for the closet again, moving past Duke without any fear. Duke follows, keeping a few feet of distance between them so Danny doesn’t feel trapped, and watches as he shoves aside the coats again and pulls a shoebox out of the depths of the closet. From it, he takes a single intricate lace headband and holds it up.

It looks normal, if a little old, but when Danny sends ectoplasm through it, the lace lights up and holds the glow. 

He pulls some strange contraption out of his pocket and holds it up to the headband. It makes a few beeps, then Danny mutters, “7.4 millisieverts. That’s enough to get you through the veil.”

Another concern Duke can let go of: Danny’s not creating weapons like his parents have, he’s just measuring ectoplasm through his own inventions. 

Maybe he could talk to Bruce or Tim about getting Danny an internship at the R&D lab in Wayne Enterprises? That way they could keep a closer eye on him while seeing what he can create in some of the best laboratories in the country.

Well, it might take having them meet Danny before they trust him enough for that, but Duke is sure he can make it happen. 

“I better go see this through, then,” Danny says, shoving the contraption back into his hoodie pocket. He gives Duke a small awkward wave, then pops out of visibility. “I’ll see you around, I guess?” he disembodied voice hedges, and Duke smiles.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to find you again.”

“Cool. I gonna go now!” 

He doesn’t see any sign that Danny’s left, but he gets a feeling that he’s alone now, the apartment suddenly emptier than it was before. 

As strange and concerning as Danny and all his bizarre actions were, Duke is glad he was able to finally talk to him and get some answers. Knowing how Gotham pulls people him in, it’s only a matter of time before the other Bats are exposed to Danny’s kind of strange. He’s already looking forward to it. 

For now, though, he has a file to update in the Hatch; POTENTIAL THREAT will be removed and replaced with GHOST HELPER. 

If anyone goes snooping into his files and gets confused, then that’s their problem. Duke’s explained enough. And Danny can take care of the rest, once they go through the effort of tracking him down. Duke's done his part, he's ready for the rest of them to step up to his level.

He can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble Danny can get it into.

[seiwas]

bakugo scoffs, a slight ‘tsk’ as he rolls his eyes at the guy trying to hit on you at the bar. his gaze is dead-set on you across the room, watching in case the guy attempts anything funny. kirishima knows what’s going on, eyeing him from the side.

it’s that weird in-between of trying to find what you are to each other again—stuck in the middle of being friends and ex-lovers.

acting on it would be wrong.

he doesn’t have that right anymore.

he stews in his feelings, swallowing them with each sip of his drink. then he gets another glass, grumbling when kirishima elbows him to join in their conversation.

bakugo frowns all the way through.

he watches you smile at the guy (only politely, he hopes), the side of your cheek barely lifting and the corner of your eye untouched. it’s not the way you used to smile at him.

the conversation at his table goes on simultaneously with yours across the room, and he’s neither here nor there—part of both conversations, but not. it’s only when you shake your head, moving your hand in a gesture of ‘no, thanks’ that he abruptly looks away.

he focuses elsewhere: mina’s animated storytelling, the ice melting in his drink, your perfume the moment you’re slipping in the booth next to him. it’s unintentional, he knows—your thigh brushing against his, fingertips slightly touching as you set down your drink.

then you smile at him, a bit shy and apologetic, but friendly still. the corners of your eyes crease.

he downs his drink.

you’re better at this than he is—compartmentalizing feelings and seeing past his faults. always have been.

if he had only been more—

if he was only open to—

if he could only take it—

no. it wouldn’t be fair; he chose this for the both of you.

so why, why does he still look for the parts of you only he’d been privy to?

[cryobabyy]

Consummation Cooper Adams x Reader

Synopsis: Isolation and survival make you act in strange ways, but all is fair in love and violence.

OR

Cooper is keeping you in a remote and isolated location where he likes to play house with you and you cope by playing along.

Tags: NSFW 18+, drabble/short fic, breeding kink, dub-con, brief mentions of violence, Stockholm syndrome, shower sex, dark themes, by request, barely proofread, p-in-v intercourse, cr3Vm pie.

AN: Howdy! Breeding Kink isn't my thing, so I hope this satisfies all my freaks out there. Please note that this is considerably dark and not fluff. Tbh it will probably make you feel kinda icky (and slightly turned on?). I can't help it y'all I'm Ottessa Moshfegh pilled lol. Also important to note that Cooper is dead ass trying to knock you up in this. Like straight up. If you are looking for something more subtle this is not it I fear 😀. Enjoy!

con·sum·ma·tion (noun) 1: the action of making a marriage or relationship complete by having sexual intercourse." the eager consummation that follows a long and passionate seduction" 2: the point at which something is complete or finalized." the consummation of a sale"

Cooper’s hands always found their way into your hair. When you crawled your way into his morning shower, he sighed as he wrapped his fingers around your wet braid, big arms snaking around your naked waist and pulling you against him. His cheek rested perfectly on top of your head.

“Missed me?” He murmurs against your scalp.

“I was scared you weren’t coming back.” You confess, his chest fluttering against your cheek as he huffs a laugh. The very real possibility of Cooper leaving you here to rot makes you feel cold.

“Don’t be stupid. I’ll always come back to you.”

His hands always ended up in your hair, exactly like how your back always ended up pressed against cold shower tiles; Cooper’s body between your legs, his hand spreading and holding your knees open. You were both delighted and horrified that he could pin you against a wall so easily. The stretch of him pushing in and out of you dampens the horror until all you feel is the warmth of the delight; hazy, muted, heavy, and all over you.

You loved when he fucked you numb.

So numb, you no longer paid mind to the dried blood washing away from his body, thick ribbons of pink water swirling at his feet. There was no ankle monitor strapped against your flesh if he was rolling your clit in his mouth. His hands had taken an orgasm from you before they had held a knife to your throat.

When you held his face between your hands and begged him to cum inside you, it was a thinly veiled plea for your life—for him to put something in you that would keep him coming back. Something that would keep you alive.

With a string of expletives, he obliged. He held you like that for sometime after, lazily pulsing inside you, using the obscene, white leakage to rub his thumb over your swollen clit.

“It’ll take better if you finish, baby.” His labored breath flutters against your mouth as he presses his forehead against yours.

Without a gun to your head, you nodded with a greedy whimper. Your mind hummed with the thought of newlyweds eager to become first-time parents, Cooper rubbing lotion over the taught skin of your growing belly, ultrasound appointments, and baby showers. A tiny, vulnerable thing swaddled in a blanket, pink and screaming—with Cooper’s hazel eyes, chocolate brown hair, and your nose and dimples. A baby with a monster for a father and a coward for a mother. A bastard.

You feel relieved when your orgasm finally rips through you. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of your asinine mind, you felt disgusted too. Cooper’s grip on your thighs began to hurt and the water droplets against your skin began to sting, but it all turned back to spineless fantasy as he lulled you through it with gentle praises

Almost there, sweetheart.

Just like that.

There we go.

Perfect.

Would it be so horrible if you were in love with him? Because you think you are.

Later on, when you’re making him coffee, he comes behind you and rests his hands on your lower belly. Repugnance and tenderness turn in your stomach. Cooper presses a kiss to the top of your head, keeping his mouth there.

“Do you think we could be happy?” He murmurs softly into your hair, thumbs tracing soft circles against your skin.

The monitor around your ankle feels heavy. You remember the sedatives he put in your drink, his wife and children at home, and this plush and comfortable prison he kept you in.

Your eyes flit toward the kitchen knives and you remember you could face the consequences of lodging one in his neck—if you wanted to.

You want to tell him he could never be happy. That his version of it could only be satisfied through violence. But brute force could be soft and safe if you surrendered to it. If you could bend something jagged and serrated into the shape of lovers, would you be spared from the rage inside of him?

“Maybe.” You say flatly, pouring Cooper his cup of coffee.

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[softcenteregg]

// blood in my eyes //

[saphushia]

|| part 1 || part 2 || part 3 || part 4 coming soon... ||

man sabo really thought he'd get away from ace that easy, huh? well tough shit buddy you just got the attention of one of the most stubborn men on the seas. i do wonder how this'll play out now that sabo's cornered... hehe >;3

textless versions below the cut for those who want to look at. pictures <3

(skipped page 5 due to. y'know. it not having any dialogue)

[koinotea]

pajamas gay boooiissssssssss SOCKS-

[szaryherbatnik]

Uhhh bling bling bitch

More purple version if u care because i truly cant decide which one i like more idk szare nation this was the main version earlier but i decided i prefer the less purple one

[ossiethegreat]

I uhmmm listened to baby bugs and I got hit with an overwhelming urge to draw this so yeah .. sighs pathetically I’m going to bed

[housecow]

Girl please stop romanticizing obesity, it will literally kill you eventually (and I know it’s not the first time someone says it to you). Like are you even ok? Romanticizing being immobile & being humiliated on the street? Why would you even aspire to this? For some attention of questionable men on this app? Girl they don’t deserve you. This message comes from a place of concern, it is not intended as an insult. You said you want a career in the future, maybe focus on that, I’m not sure how possible it is do all that while being immobile or having whatever condition.

omfg 😭 i apologize for writing little stories to get myself off, i guess?? lmfao. i have a fetish. i state clearly in my bio that this is what to expect. sorry im horny posting anonymously on tumblr.com ???? stop being weird when u don’t even belong in these spaces

[perenial]

continually haunted by the deleted scene from the terror scripts where a modern day archeologist finds jopson's skeleton. it would have interrupted the flow of the episode if it was kept in but god. what a fucking concept

[macbethz]

hes just like me fr

[slow-reader-reads-books]

Lesbingyuan au where it’s the normal set up of post extras Bingge dimension traveling into another universe to find his own Shen Yuan. Except the world he arrives in (and is stuck in, can’t opt out of this gender journey) is a slightly genderbent one.

(hidden under a read more bc this turned basically into a wonkily grammatically tensed mini-fic)

Our darling Peerless Cucumber is a 20 something self-proclaimed straight girl with untapped soft butch potential, and is currently recovering from the harrowing trauma of the sunk cost fallacy. She’s spent a lot of time spending money on, reading, and participating in the online fandom of Proud Immortal Demon Way, and she’s currently also dealing with the fact that all her hard work in making herself heard to Great Master Airplane was seemingly for nothing. You see, Shen Yuan had the brilliant idea to create an account that appeared to be a perfectly demographically targeted straight male fan of YY novels who could critique Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky as his fellow but also his better and be listened to and receive great accolades from all frequenters of Zhongdian Literature and be validated for her hate of his writing.

“Airplane’s stupid pen name is a dick joke, I guess I gotta make mine one too… Just to, you know, seem legit and like we have common ground.”

What this charade accomplished was very little, but Peerless Cucumber did become very infamous for three things. One, his nitpicking (“It’s hardly nitpicking if it harms the integrity of the whole story1!!”). Two: his Luo Binghe fanboying (“As a protagonist he’s clearly just a cut above the rest when it comes to soul and wit, the story just rarely ever shows it off”). And three: his skipping of the steamy scenes (“I highly doubt this near identical scenario that also happened twenty chapters back but with a different wife of the week with this exact same cliffside flower giving off the same aphrodisiac mist to Bingge and new wife below will now suddenly be of any plot consequence for the next arc. It didn’t last time either, SKIP!”).

His fervent online activity garnered him the reputation of being an Airplane anti-fan, but also the assumed personality of a submissive simp who hates the easily dominated women that populate Luo Bingge’s harem. 

“lol thats why he must like mingyan so much. she never let bingge push her down. cucumber-bro must want a girlfriend who’ll chain him up and whip him! hes a pervert just like the rest of us, just a worse type kek.” 

Shen Yuan, when looking at such reply comments, gets shiver-inducing flashbacks to when her meimei left her BL comics out for everyone and the Buddha to see. She accidentally witnessed frightening scenes of thin, long-limbed men pushing each other down, tying each other to beds and cracking whips on skin until they shed blood, tears and semen, the shou begging for the gong to stop and the gong never listening. 

Shen Yuan tries to put such things out of her mind if only to preserve in amber the precious, innocent image of her meimei she knows to be true, but also secondarily to focus on the insulted male pride she’s supposed to be feeling after being accused of being a wussy submissive deviant in bed. That sort of accusation requires an in-depth 10,000 character response in order to remain in character as a straight male YY novel connoisseur.

Shen Yuan, as Peerless Cucumber but also as her true self, was undoubtedly straight. Staying in character, Peerless Cucumber made sure to extol the beauty of characters like Liu Mingyan— “She’s an intelligent and cold beauty and is written with a clear and vivid personality! A true equal for our Bingge on the battlefield and in matters of the heart!” As well as occasionally Ning Yingying— “She’s not the boring choice, you all just don’t know the special value a loyal shijie character brings, even if she does lose 99% of her personality to that one singular trait…”

But don’t get it twisted! This is a part of her performance! In real life, logged off and touching grass and breathing fresh outdoor air, she’s your run-of-the-mill average girl who is just a part of the pack. 

Her goals in life are simply not ambitious, is all. If there was a competition with ten available spots to win, she’d have no qualms placing tenth and simply feel honored to have participated. If there are ten girls and nine of them bag a good boyfriend, Shen Yuan doesn’t mind being the tenth who gets unlucky. She’s just kind to her meimeis and jiejies like that! As if she’d take that away from them! They'd probably been wanted those boyfriends for a long time! 

Shen Yuan is hardly a sore loser, and she knows the great importance of girl code and female friendship.

So, Shen Yuan being the normal average and totally straight and cisgender girl that she is decides to wallow in her Airplane-induced misery by going to a con, donning her homemade Mobei-jun cosplay. She worked hours of her life learning how to sew just for this project to the point her family thought she was finally thinking about settling down and learning wifely skills. 

Unfortunately for her ignorant family she’s actually just investing in a really elaborate excuse to cross dress. Well, it’s not really crossdressing, it’s just cosplay! Cosplay is totally different and not about taking on the gender of a character, but their larger identity! She didn’t want to explain this to them, and internally felt afraid and hesitant about it, as if they’d view her as weird for wanting to do this, so she didn’t bother to try at all.

So, Shen Yuan in her 160 centimeter/5 foot 3 inch glory decked out in dark blues and blacks, fur lining the shoulders of her outfit for style points, and wearing a long white wig styled mostly loose but with a few thin braids, chances upon a particularly striking Luo Binghe cosplayer. Not just any Luo Binghe cosplayer, but the best one! He’s tall, must be over 180cm/6 foot but also svelte and willowy in surprising ways. His hair is long and flows down his back from a ponytail ornamented at the base with a thin metal guan. Parts of his cosplay seem very benign, but others seem meticulously crafted and exquisite in quality, especially that sword at his hip! Just looking at it intimidated her, yikes! Job well done, cosplayer!

This Luo Binghe also had the most beautiful and delicately boned face she’d ever seen, eyes dark and deep and highly reflective like that of a lake on a dark and starry night. The cosplayer’s voice was also deeply melodic and enchanting.

This cosplayer… is also a woman! Shen Yuan nodded to herself internally, yes that must be it! No man looks like this in reality, this is a fellow female sufferer of Proud Immortal Demon Way impersonating a fictional man for similar psychological reasons as her. A surge of female loyalty spawns in Shen Yuan’s chest, and she doesn't even bother resisting the urge to walk over and strike up a conversation with this Luo Binghe.

She spat out her name in quick order and immediately started on the topic of female character writing in the novel. The Luo Binghe cosplayer was looking at her quietly and with a heavy amount of gravity, ink-brush eyebrows sitting elegantly low above her eyes in attentive focus. What a good listener this lady is, Shen Yuan thought. She can’t remember when someone last listened to her this closely. She hypocritically chooses to not pay attention to that train of thought any further. “In a world like Proud Immortal Demon Way,” Shen Yuan began with slight smarm, “who would choose to be a woman? I certainly wouldn’t if I wanted to see the interesting parts of the world that drew me into the story in the first place. A male protagonist can explore it freely, but the female characters are all locked away in either the marriage bedroom or the highly isolated harem palaces. Great Master Airplane clearly didn’t eat enough walnuts as a child, he must have some sort of brain deficiency when it comes to writing proper characters— ” 

The tall Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly spoke up. “Choose?” “Hm? Yeah, I mean, in a world like that, there’s basically no choice, yeah? Gotta serve the narrative and readers and all. But the real world doesn’t have a narrative, we only have ourselves and each other to guide us. So we just do what we want, figure it out as we go. Like us two! We wanted to dress up as these male characters from this asinine story and attend this con and we figured out how to do it! We’re kindred spirits, you and I, we’re zhiyin!” “So when you leave this con, you will also choose to take this manner of dress off and wear something else?” “Obviously. Though, my go-to outfit is just a big t-shirt and sweatpants, or athletic shorts. This kind of thing is the extent of me dressing up.” Shen Yuan didn’t notice, but the Luo Binghe cosplayer’s eyes mildly glazed over in irritated confusion at the unfamiliar terms. Nor did she notice the slight expression of planning that developed in that gaze, as if they were imagining a future shopping expedition to find an outfit Shen Yuan would want to dress up in that wasn’t a facsimile of Luo Binghe’s right hand man.

“I… also want to leave this con and wear something else.” “The busyness getting to you, huh jiejie? You must have gotten here a lot earlier than I did, you poor thing. I guess this is it, it was nice talking to you—” “I don’t have any other clothes with me, and am unable to go back home. Can you help this poor one, jiejie?” “Jiejie—” Shen Yuan coughed. “Am I… wait you can’t go back home? Did your ride ditch you or something, aiyah what a scummy thing to do! I do have extra clothes on me, though I don’t think they’ll fit you. But let’s go find out. I guess if I have to take care of you like this, it does make me feel like a jiejie. Your height made me assume you were older than me, haha.”

Shen Yuan laughed, and the Luo Binghe cosplayer rapidly relaxed and took on an easy smile. “An innocent mistake. Jiejie must often be assumed to be younger than her actual age.” Shen Yuan hummed absent-mindedly. “Eh, not really. I’m only 22, and I think I look it. It’s you who looks like a jade immortal, uh, meimei.” She stuttered when she realized she hadn’t yet caught the other cosplayer’s name, and for some reason it felt weird to just call her Luo Binghe without her also LARPing along as Mobei-jun. Shen Yuan by this point had taken the tall meimei’s hand, it pale and slender much like the rest of her, and had been pulling her along towards the public bathroom to make use of her backpack’s change of clothes, walking along the wall to avoid foot traffic. However, the moment she had finished her sentence and called the other one meimei, the Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly slammed her free hand on the wall and yanked hard on the one Shen Yuan was holding, pulling her in close to herself, caging her in from behind. Shen Yuan squeaked and found herself crowded against the wall. Her back was encased in a warm and dark heat and she could see above her that jade-white hand curled tightly in on itself, heel practically grinding against the wall. It looked like it was trembling slightly. An earth-shatteringly tight grip squeezed the fingers of her still held hand to the point of hurting slightly. Shen Yuan winced at the sensation.

Shen Yuan heard sharp, heavy breathing above her. Not knowing what to do nor quite what was going on, she squeezed back the hand that was keeping hers hostage and leaned back slightly. Comfort is what she’s doing this for, right? Feels like the reason she’s doing it. 

Shen Yuan felt the other cosplayer jolt behind her. After a tense beat, a forehead slowly dropped onto her shoulder. Shen Yuan was wearing fur along the top half of her outfit as a part of her Mobei-jun cosplay, but nonetheless she could feel the vague contour of the other’s nose through it, burrowing deeper into its warmth. Shen Yuan now felt awkward for only bothering with faux-fur for her cosplay. But with that face resting upon her shoulder and an odd sense of vulnerability wafting off of her, a sharp sense of broad awareness filled Shen Yuan's mind mysteriously. Her mind filled up with sensory information on the one behind her, naturally taking note of every detail with ease.

“Meimei…” the Luo Binghe cosplayer trailed off, muffled slightly by Shen Yuan’s cosplay, but also seemingly by her own emotions being stuck in her throat. “Can I really be jiejie’s meimei?” Shen Yuan didn’t really know what to do or how to respond, so she simply continued to lean her weight back onto the other. She then pulled on the elbow that led to the hand positioned above her until it was brought down far enough for her to grab properly. Shen Yuan took both hands in hers and placed them in front of her in a comfortable position. They were slightly cold, so she rubbed at them with her thumbs.

The Luo Binghe cosplayer picked her head up and looked down at the sight with watery eyes and a warbling lip. Both of her hands were cradled in that grip, gently held in front of the shorter’s stomach in a tender and intimate fashion. Their arms were bent parallel and their front and back slotted together in a way that, to the taller one, felt predestined.

“Can you, what kind of question is that, of course you can. But, I’d like to have your name too, if you don’t mind? Only calling you meimei sounds like I’m calling out to my real little sister.” Shen Yuan laughed and looked up over her shoulder nonchalantly. 

Somewhere in the distance, she can hear people giggling and snapping pictures of the two. She felt a twinge of embarrassment. Of course this moment looks compromising from the outside, they’re cosplaying Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun!

Shen Yuan was suddenly working very hard to maintain a cool poker face in front of her very tall and newly minted meimei.

Bringing up her real little sister and then suddenly being thrust into this type of self-aware of cringe violently and nonconsensually summoned forth invented images of a dog blooded BL scenario that wouldn’t be out of place in her real meimei’s leisure literature.

Fellow con goers, please have mercy on us two women and don't be thinking of what I'm thinking! We’re merely having a pure hearted, early friendship bonding moment! Skinship is very much common and normal between people like us, disregard the kabedon! Totally normal female friendship is blossoming here, get your homoerotic dog blood tropes out of our personal lives!

“This one is called… Qiu Bingbing.” Her voice hitched and quavered with some sort of ineffable, delicate emotion. “Bingbing, ah? Written with the same character as Binghe, meaning ice? And Qiu, is that with the character meaning the autumn season or the character meaning a grave mound?”

Qiu Bingbing hummed and nodded lethargically to the first question and spoke up for the second, hesitating slightly. “Qiu as in autumn.” “What a pretty name, “autumn ice”. You fit the bill of Luo Binghe perfectly, but with a name like that it’s nearly a pity to go by something else. You’re a miraculous find in a place like this, Bing-mei.” Shen Yuan complimented with abandon, eager to make her new friend feel good, and turned around. Still holding one hand, she impulsively took the chance Qiu Bingbing’s still bowed head offered and patted it softly.

She did that for a while, not paying attention to anything else. A euphoric smile opened on Qiu Bingbing’s lips. She was lost in the moment too. 

The rest of the world fell away. As long as Luo Binghe, no, as long as Qiu Bingbing can worm her way into every crevice of Shen Yuan, she’ll be fine. He before was always grasping at any semblance of peace and security only for it to slip through his grasp like sand, but she’s found it. She’ll nestle in and hibernate inside Shen Yuan’s veins and she’ll never let go. She will never.

“Let’s go get you those clothes. Good thing I like them oversized, they should be mildly presentable on you, even if they aren’t anything girly.”

“I can live without anything girly, anything of yours will do.”

“That’s good to hear, let’s go then.”