#most hilarious part of this exercise

[demarogue]

Gettin' Through the Holidays Mental Health Tricks

If y'all are anything like me, this time of year is triggering AF. Here are some small, very easy grounding exercises that I was taught by my therapist, basically in order of how much I like them for this rage-inducing season. You make like them in a different order, depending on your rage-to-despair ratio.

Push a wall: literally go up to a wall and try to push it over. Really try. I promise you won't push it over, but give it your best shot. Try to hold it as long as you can, and then take a breather and assess whether you need to repeat. Why it works: This is a quick, physical expulsion of the fight-or-flight feeling. It's a bit like punching a wall, but without the potential to hurt yourself/look scary/damage things. You can even do it in front of people and say you're stretching, they'll never know (unless the wall actually falls down, but this will not happen, I assure you).

Shake like a dog: Animals shake to release stress, and you are also an animal. Setting aside time to just shake it out, as vigorously as you can, arms and legs, face, stick your tongue out, pretend you're shaking like a wet dog. You can dance instead, if that feels better, and you can do this to music, but basically the more unhinged you can be, the better. If you are in a place you can scream, scream too! Why it works: like the above, this is a release of pent-up stress and anxiety. Especially if your rage-to-woe ratio is high, some kind of physical exertion is often the best way to burn through the cortisol and adrenaline you're building up.

Bilateral Tapping: Cross your arms over your chest so that your fingertips are at your shoulders, and slowly tap, one hand at a time, back and forth, for about a minute. Breathe slowly. Why it works: This is weird as hell, but because this engages both sides of your brain, it helps override the activity of the amygdala, which is the part of your brain that Makes The Fear. If you're being literally triggered in a situation, i.e. you're having a trauma response, or reliving some family trauma, this is a good one.

Box Breathing: From a comfortable position (can really be seated, laying down or standing), inhale slowly for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, then repeat. You can do it for shorter counts or longer counts, but if you vary the counts make sure the exhale is longer than the inhale. You can close your eyes or leave them open. Why it works: This exercise helps you move from a sympathetic (activated) nervous system response to a parasympathetic (balanced) response. I do this one every day, and it's a good gateway to meditation. Especially helpful in anxious or tense situations, but I find if I'm very triggered I need one of the other ones first, or it can make anxiety worse. Breathwork is amazing but not usually as a first exercise if you're very activated, or have been activated a long time.

Ice: Lots of ways to do this one – hands in cold water for 30 seconds, ice pack on the back of your neck, dip your entire face into a bowl of ice water (this one's the most effective). Why it works: I kinda think this is hilarious, but this activates your mammalian dive reflex. It immediately slows your heart-rate, so if you are feeling your blood pressure and heart rate rising, this one is very good. The only reason this one's at the bottom of my list is because I hate being cold.

I wish you all a very get-through-the-holidays-without-hurting-yourself. Take time alone if you need it.

[iasmelaion]

I have been afflicted with a terrible curse: tearing through a book series, and upon finishing, seeking out the fandom only to find that most of that fandom appears to be reading an entirely different series than I am, lol. I brought this on myself, to be clear. I think a big part of the mismatch is that it's a genre I'm not that familiar with and that I don't care about/for in and of itself, so I'm coming at it from a different perspective. Also, maybe I'm reading into things too much! But what can I say, a girl needs enrichment in her enclosure, and there's enough meat on this bone that I will be occupied for a while.

All of which is to say, I read through all seven books of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series that are out to date (thanks, free Kindle Unlimited subscription!), and now I have a lot of thoughts and no one who cares about them ;____; I played myself ;_______;

This series is such a hard sell in general, because on the surface it looks like male power fantasy garbage, it's litRPG, and there's a decent amount of mildly obnoxious dude humor at first. But a) it's only slightly male power fantasy garbage, b) it's not tedious litRPG and in fact the genre evolves and shifts into more straightforward SFF the further in you get, which is clever on a meta level and also a relief, c) to the extent it is litRPG, it mostly isn't boring and annoying about it (no stat nonsense for the sake of stat nonsense), d) the mildly obnoxious dude humor is often genuinely funny and to the extent it is obnoxious, there's some in-universe reasoning for that.

Anyway, the premise is as follows: Earth is suddenly and devastatingly mined for its natural resources by aliens. This results in the death of billions: everyone who was indoors is instantly killed. Anyone who was outside gets a chance to enter the "dungeon", which offers a chance for the remaining humans to compete for an alleged chance at freedom and sovereignty if they reach the bottom floor, but it's basically The Hunger Games: a propaganda exercise that's meant to earn money for the aliens running it as a game show, only this is a dungeon crawling RPG rather than a Hunger Games/Battle Royale situation. No one has ever reached the bottom floor. The best result most achieve is to reach the tenth floor, where they can take a deal for some variety of indentured servitude.

Enter Carl, our hero, a former (late 20s? early 30s? don't recall his age, but somewhere around there) Coast Guard technician who is outside when it all happens because he chased after his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, a best in show tortie Persian cat. Carl and Donut enter the dungeon, Donut eats a magic treat and becomes a sapient talking cat, and the books follow their struggle to survive and fight back against the cruel and inhuman system they've found themselves in.

Tonally, the series is interesting in that it manages to balance a very bleak, dystopian premise with genuine hilarity and moments of legitimately heart-wrenching emotion. Also, this is not a "lone heroic super cool guy saves and fixes everything" kind of story. This series is interested in teamwork and community in dire circumstances, and the found family of it all is genuinely moving. As a whole, it's just bonkers entertaining. I love when I can tell the author is having a blast, and you can absolutely tell that Matt Dinniman is having an absolute blast.

Anyway, a list of things I enjoy about this series and/or a list of general thoughts, some of which include mild spoilers:

PRINCESS DONUT. i love her. this cat is amazing and hilarious. She's exactly like you'd imagine a prize-winning Persian cat named Princess Donut to be. also, to my delight, she gets to be a fully rounded character. like yes, she's hilarious and often comic relief, but she's also taken seriously, and Carl is absolutely Insane about this cat. He fuckin' loves this cat, and the cat loves him. Also, hilariously, she has higher stats than Carl at the beginning. (In fact, she mostly has higher stats than him throughout, so she's technically the party leader. Which is why their party is called the Royal Court of Princess Donut.)

Donut has A+++++ insulting skills. On multiple occasions, I have lol'd in horror and delight at her savagery. A favorite:

Rezan: Why does that cat always type in all caps?

Donut: WHY DIDN’T YOUR MOTHER DRIBBLE YOU BACK OUT ONTO THE TRUCK STOP BATHROOM FLOOR, REZAN?

lest this give you the wrong impression, Donut is a classy lady. She is a princess, after all. but also she is savage.

Carl! The books are mostly in first person POV, so we're in Carl's head for most of them, and he is a great example of an unreliable narrator. He'll seem fairly generic at first, but stick it out through, like, the first third of the first book and onward for the slow and steady reveal of his Tragic Backstory and also such exciting psychological and emotional issues as: Insane about Donut; claims he "doesn't like drama" while in actuality he is clearly Repressing Everything; secretly an idealist who wants to believe the best of people; deeply committed to protecting people; full of revolutionary, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian rage; holy abandonment issues batman; simply Does Not See It when various ladies basically throw themselves at him; generally Barely Holding It Together at all times.

people on reddit, mostly: Carl's stats!! blah blah blah power stuff. me: okay, but why is Carl Like This. let's deep discuss that. Also let Carl have a little breakdown. As a treat.

these books are so wildly, delightfully anti-capitalist, lol. I poked around Reddit and tumblr a bit, but didn't see anyone discussing this series' politics, but that aspect is super interesting to me. The series is very, very concerned with revolution and resistance and the form those things take when very few options are available to the oppressed, plus the ethics of revolutionary violence.

The dungeon AI! This thing is Way Too Online in a gross dudebro way, but frankly, it's still funny with it, and the evolution of the AI's character is fascinating. Also, I regret to inform you that I do find it extremely fucking funny that the AI has a thing for Carl and his feet. This is wholly hypocritical of me: if Carl was Carla, and the AI made the same comments, I'd have bounced. But what can I say, comedy is about subversion, I guess.

PREPOTENTE. MY PRECIOUS WEIRDO GOATMAN CHILD. Prepotente was a goat; upon entry into the dungeon and eating a magic pet treat, he becomes a goat man type thing, and he spends much of the series as one of the most dangerous and skilled dungeon crawlers, along with his "mother", the shepherdess Miriam Dom. he's a total fuckin weirdo who screams a lot for no reason and i love him. he better fucking survive the series, i swear to god.

one running theme of the series that I love so much is that Carl does not give up on people, and he does not write them off. He often runs into fellow crawlers who, if he was being bloodlessly practical about things, he should have bailed on. They're people who aren't prepared, who haven't leveled up enough, who aren't likely to survive much longer. But he doesn't abandon them, and he doesn't assume they can't get better. He sticks with them and helps them, and they help him. It's about found family ;____; they all love each other so much ;______;

MORDECAI!!! he's a changeling skyfowl and the team's game guide and later manager, and is a former crawler who took a deal. This is supposed to be his last season in the crawl, before he's free of his indentured servitude. he is Dad Shaped. automatic dad. there is in fact something quietly devastating about his Dad Shapedness.

There's a whole super interesting thing going on with the dungeon NPCs, and how we start out assuming most of them aren't "real". unsurprising spoiler alert: they may have been created by/for the dungeon, but many of them are very much real, and once they realize the position they've been put into, they're pissed.

i truly have no real idea where the series is going with its running theme about parents and children, and the protection or lack thereof of children. Our most heroic characters are consistently shown protecting and caring for the NPC children, even when it's at great cost to themselves.

everything to do with the Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, the secret book with writing from prior crawlers that Carl is given, makes me Emotional. I'm honestly shocked the whole Cookbook was never planned, and that it was a result of Patreon votes. It's hugely important in the seventh book, not so much on a plot level--I can see how Dinniman could have gotten to some of these same plot beats without it--but on an emotional and thematic one. There's something so affecting here about the continuity of resistance, of finding hope and strength in the people who came before you, of planting seeds you water with blood and that you may never get to harvest, and the sheer, furious love of the whole thing.

so apparently Dinniman is a pantser when it comes to writing. Clearly, he's having fun, and it's more or less working out so far, but it does make me concerned about his ability to stick the dismount. I saw in an AMA that he likened it to building a spaceship with legos versus building it with a plan, and that he has fun writing himself out of corners. That's all well and good, but some of the things I'm most interested in this series are the overarching themes, and it makes me wary of those themes not getting a proper payoff. I guess I should just enjoy the ride, and accept that there will almost certainly be many loose ends.

On a meta level, I find it very funny and ironic that when I took a look at the reviews for the seventh book, I saw some people complaining about the absence of the more "entertainment" and "game" aspects of the series: no interviews with the outside, no "character sheets" for Carl, fewer big fights for Carl himself to take on, the AI taking on a more active 'deus-ex AI' role. Because in-universe, the dungeon crawl is no longer entertainment. At this point, the crawl has become an actual war, and the game genre it takes on--4x strategy--reflects that. Carl and the crawlers' choices have increasing ramifications outside the crawl, where actual war is breaking out at least in part as a result of their actions. The AI intervening more and more often to put its finger on the scale is part of the conflict; it's fighting this war as much as the other characters are, if with still inscrutable motivations.

This is in fact one of the central conflicts of the series: to what extent is this still a game? Has it ever only been a game? The crawlers and NPCs are in fact fighting for it to not be a game: they're saying "my life is real, my suffering is real, and if you won't acknowledge that, then you're coming in here with us to fight and die too. Not just a game anymore, is it?" And on another side of the conflict, you have the AI insisting that this stay a game, something with rules and a narrative and at least an attempt at fairness, however much the AI manipulates those things.

It seems like there's something of a genre shift going on with this series. As a reader who's not particularly interested in or invested in litRPG in and of itself, I'm fine with it shifting to being more straightforwardly SFF, and in fact, I think that's an interesting and fun choice on a meta level: the more the crawlers and the AI break and change the game, the more the genre of the series itself shifts.

[shun-ie]

₍⁠₍⁠ ⁠◝ the past, the present, and the future (rhys larsen)

content : longest fanfic yet, rhys larsen, differentpath!au, amab!reader, slowburn, sexual awakening?, strangers to acquaintances to friends to lovers, mentions of trauma/ptsd, healing the inner child, ooc-ish rhys, unprotected sex, slight mention of fingering, bttm!malereader, ceo!reader, mentions of kinks, lmk if i missed anything :))

shun-note : rhys larsen is not my oc. he belongs to ana huang, the author of twisted games. i also noticed that there weren't a lot of twisted series fics (or there's none at all), so i made one. missing some details, but i wanted to post this already so it doesn't rot in my drafts lol

[not proofread]

m.list !

cold hearted. that's what rhys larsen first thought of y/n l/n, the ceo of l/n conglomerate. after being the bodyguard for bridget von ascheberg, the crown princess of eldorra, he took up another commission to drown away the ache that was left when he parted from the woman he spent his two years protecting.

y/n l/n was vastly different from any of those rhys had guarded in the past.

y/n put his work first. sleep? he'd sign and read through papers until he collapsed and died. eat? he'd starve just to entertain the board of his company. he did however, keep a strict hygiene and exercise routine. in those two months with y/n, he never once saw the frown leave his lips. it was like it was permanently scarred on his face. the total opposite of bridget.

rhys was offered the job just after he freshly resigned from his post. he was reluctant to accept the commission, but accepted once he found out it was a man he would be guarding this time. he did all the background checks, read y/n's information, did security protocols, just like any other clients he had previously.

and as he trailed behind the ceo, who parted the crowd of paparazzi and 'fans' like the red sea, he was brought back to the moment when he first met the indifferent man in front of him.

"this is sir y/n l/n. lately, he's being harassed by paparazzi. he has been followed home seven times in the past month . . . ambush interviews . . . and he can't eat in restaurants anymore," the secretary listed as she spoke to rhys via request of y/n's father who took care of affairs in china. "he normally does things alone without bodyguards, but this time people have gone too far," she further explains, pushing an open folder with photos taken by the paparazzi.

they consisted of y/n sitting in a booth at a restaurant, entering sister company buildings, walking through the park, and even leaving his car as he approached his house. it was never this bad with bridget.

as he examined the photos, alongside the blueprints of y/n's house and the company headquarters he requested beforehand, the secretary says something that catches his attention.

"sir l/n doesn't talk much. so don't feel hurt if he gives you the cold shoulder when you guys meet," hurt? hilarious. i don't even know him well enough to be hurt. "-he most likely will ignore you." arrogant? stuck up?

it was then when he met y/n l/n that there was something else. from the way the ceo's eyebrows furrowed, stress shadowing his tense but elegant form, as he scanned the papers in his hand, a cup of something in his other.

"miss clarke, i have another meeting with missus barett on wednesday at seven pm. add that to my schedule. and move my call with mister harris around nine pm after the meeting." he then stopped in his tracks, taking notice of the other presence in the room. he blinks, eyeing the large man sitting in front of his secretary. long hair, broad muscular frame, gunmetal eyes, and a scar slashing through his left eyebrow. he wore all black. "you must be the bodyguard my father hired. rhys larsen, correct me if i am wrong."

y/n's voice was full on business, leaving no trace of any other emotions other than serious and commanding. words rolled out of his mouth like smooth silk and his earlier strides could rival fairies that pranced around gracefully as they took flight.

"yes and if i may, i'll be looking around the building for any security measures," rhys got straight to the point. there was no point dancing around the issue. no point in introductions, they knew each other well enough. it was obvious. his indifference masked the slight curiosity that sparked as he watched y/n disappear into his office, where he caught a glimpse of neatly stacked paperwork and the large window that overlooked the city from above.

even as he drove away from the airport, he knew nothing about the man he's protecting. unlike bridget who he had arguments and decent conversations with, y/n only gave him one or two word responses before silence loomed over them like a cloud everyday for the two months they were together. the basic information about the ceo was nothing compared to the behavior, habits, likes, and dislikes of the crown princess.

he took casual glances from his rear view mirror, observing as y/n scrolled through his hundreds of emails, noting down important information on his pocket journal.

rhys has never seen y/n stop working.

"you're ruining yourself." it was just a thought, he never intended for it to slip. he curses in his mind.

y/n hums, never looking up from what he was doing. "why is that?" he knew exactly why, but he chose to ignore it. he wore himself down most of the time, all the time. he never intended to stop, but the words rang clearly in his mind. you're ruining yourself.

"it just looks like you're burning both ends of a candle, trying to manage yourself and work," rhys focused on the road, "but you can't."

y/n has never disobeyed his instructions which he was thankful for as it made everything easier. he never really did go out as much as bridget did. even then, scheduled events and meetings were always smooth as rhys had planned it to be.

y/n wasn't as hard headed, outgoing, and filled with fire. not like bridget. rhys didn't even know why he was comparing two polar opposites. but being with him, he thought of the crown princess in eldorra who offered him extension of his contract, which he refused. and now he's here.

"i work . . . because it distracts me from my reality."

y/n has never talked about why he does what he does. it felt right in the moment. rhys has never pried answers out of him, partially because he didn't converse with him, however his eyes told him so. those stormy grey eyes that showed nothing but genuine curiosity even though he tried to hide it.

rhys didn't know what to think as they reached the end of the highway. two months and y/n finally spoke a full sentence. rapport was a card he had set to the side because of their circumstances, now he might as well consider putting it back on the table. he saw y/n put his work down, temporarily ceasing his work which were probably with a month or two deadline, and relax against the seat.

"i hate thinking of other things, other people," y/n lets out an empty chuckle, finding rhys' eyes through the rear view mirror, "isn't that why you took the commission to bodyguard me? to forget about the previous client you protected? we're a bit alike, you and i. we do things that would take our minds off things."

it felt like a bucket of ice cold water washed over rhys as he heard those words. we do things that would take our minds off things. his grip tightened on the steering wheel, gazing away from those sad e/c eyes that ingrained themselves in his memory. he never thought his longest interaction with his client would be so depressing, yet eye opening. he knew of three things.

one. he is trying to take his mind off of someone.

two. y/n works to take his mind off of something or someone.

and three. y/n wasn't cold hearted. only seemed like it.

rhys stood at the sidelines, alert and ready. his eyes wandered around the event, as if looking for any threats that would suddenly appear out of nowhere. he then dragged his gaze towards his client, who was in the middle of a group of other businessmen and women. he shared a tight and practiced smile, trying to act polite and respectful as the night dragged on.

y/n wore a tailored suit, it was simple yet elegant. his hair was slicked back, lips full and glossy from constantly licking it as he swirled the wine in his glass. he was total perfection. a face that would leave anyone in ruins. but rhys caught the slight tremble of his hand and his eyes flashing to different places, as he squeezed out of the group that huddled around him. it looked as if he was panicking, though he regained himself when he knocked back the wine. rhys almost left his spot if it weren't for the pointed and reassuring look y/n shot his direction.

it was four months after that conversation. their relationship was less tense and less quiet. y/n now regularly held conversation with rhys, getting his opinions on philosophical and theoretical things. sometimes they spoke about the geographical locations where the company could build a new branch of resort. it never trespassed the gates of personal life.

when rhys asked about something he did for himself, y/n blanked him and changed the topic.

"since you're working because of something or someone, what do you do for yourself?" it was a question that he came up with as they got deeper into the conversation about places that could potentially become a tourist spot. rhys didn't always like talking because it included emotions, but with y/n it felt natural. it was during these one on ones that he caught glimpses and pieces of the person behind the cold ceo exterior.

y/n blinked, turning away and opening another topic about attractions. "what about a butterfly house . . ." rhys sighed through his nose quietly. during the first day he said that he doesn't become included in his clients' lives and that he wasn't there to be a friend, confidant, or anything else. but looking at how y/n tensed when he even hears the words family and yourself . . .

rhys knew y/n at least needed a someone. we're a bit alike, you and i.

it didn't take long for him to notice the signs of ptsd. the way y/n only spoke about his father, excluding his mother in conversations. avoiding places that had closets that contained cleaning supplies or were used for storage of documents. there were also times rhys heard shuffling in the kitchen way past midnight even when they got home around ten or eleven in the evening.

as much as rhys tried to ignore the sense of care, not wanting things to repeat, he couldn't help but feel a bit of fear that y/n wouldn't come out of hi bedroom. would he fail to protect him because of how he lived outside and inside work? terror flashed through him as he thought about it. he's working too much, he'll kill himself before he could even reach forty.

and as of that moment, his heart thrummed against his rib cage. he screamed profanities in his mind as he lost sight of the client he was supposed to protect. he bulldozed through the people, ignoring their glares and mumbles as his eyes darted around for y/n.

there was another thing he feared. repetition of the past.

being with bridget for over two years changed a lot of things for him. never has he breached the contract rules until her. he's hasn't felt anything like it until her. he prayed to the gods that she would be the last. hopefully.

as he rounded a corner, he caught sight of a silhouette through a slightly ajar door. he pushed it open and found y/n sitting on the middle of the floor of the empty ballroom. intricate designs decorated the walls and ceiling, pieces of furniture finishing off the classic look.

"i know that you think of your previous client when you guard me."

it made rhys tense at the door. in all the years of his life, he was the one to read the other, not the other way around. something about y/n challenged him. they were simply a mystery to each other. unlike bridget who knew about his past and him knowing hers, y/n and him knew nothing about each other aside from the basics.

"when i look at you . . . it looks like it pains you to be guarding me. you think you're good at hiding it, but you're really not," y/n droned out, looking at the night sky through the windows. "during the first two weeks, i noticed some habits you retained from your commission before this one. it seems to me there was more to this certain client, that's why you took on the job of protecting me. something must have happened."

rhys stiffened ever so slightly, feeling a spike of both irritation and astonishment. he didn't like this. but at the same time, he also felt a bit of relief that someone knew. he couldn't lie about anything. something did happen with bridget, but he had hardened his heart, ignoring the twisting ache when he left. he left her when he was claiming her in his mind.

"you should think of resigning as my bodyguard," y/n gets up from the floor, patting down his suit and fixing his collar and cuffs, "i think you should go back to your previous client. i can find another bodyguard."

rhys immediately closed their distance in five strides. he's six inches taller and towers over y/n easily with his broad and muscular figure. his eyes doesn't shy away from the heated connection of misunderstandings and mystery that brewed between them in a steady pace for the past six months and threatened to explode like a nuke. "i wanted to be your bodyguard. a client from before doesn't change anything. it shouldn't. protecting you is number one priority." his words were like knives slicing into the tense atmosphere. he didn't want his client doubting him.

silence hung heavy over them, both of them not once backing away from the fiery eye contact. rhys was right, despite his relationship with bridget, that doesn't deter him from doing his job. his job is solely focused on his current client. to protect y/n l/n.

"mister rhys, you truly do surprise me." y/n turns away from his bodyguard and brushes past him, feeling a tug at his heart. he places a hand on his chest, he clenches it and lets it drop back to his side. "i'm exhausted. let me just bid my farewells, then we can leave this godforsaken event."

rhys stared at the back of y/n as they headed back to the garden. the faux personality that he reserved for the attendees returned, treating the man he just spoke to in the ballroom as nothing but another him. no, he didn't have a personality disorder, that's for sure. he just likes hiding behind masks. he definitely fits the role of a ceo.

a year passed. rhys continued his job as the ceo's bodyguard. he really fit the role. during the first week, he memorized y/n's schedule, plans, and the blueprints of the headquarters and estate. the following months, less paparazzi flocked y/n and there were occasional attempted assaults (which was new). he was completely amazing.

y/n watched the man he had been with for one year and a half. since that night during the garden event, a lot of things have shifted. their once debatable and business talks transformed a bit more personal varying from favorites and elaborated opinions on preferences. there were times they strayed away from one topic to another as he signed papers and went over some of them. it took away the ache of loneliness he felt over the years he took his place as ceo.

where his company would be the words he read and the calls he took and the coffee curbed his exhaustion he can never get rid off, he felt lighter than he did before rhys became his bodyguard.

rhys sat on the couch flushed against the trimmed walls of the office, furnished with bookshelves, a glass coffee table, and small trinkets here and there. he could feel y/n's eye drilling holes into the side of his head. he gave him a glance only to see the man turn to his papers, pretending to digest the words printed on them.

y/n had him sit on the couch, getting a slight headache from seeing and hearing him standing at the door and occasionally walking around. rhys found it amusing how the cold hearted ceo felt emotions such as frustration and glints of sadness when the world saw him as someone who used people for his gain and didn't feel a drop of guilt.

throughout the year, he got to know a lot of things about y/n. he loved reading, not his paperwork but novels. he spotted some books laying around but didn't question them and instead, skimmed through the pages. he specifically liked crime and fantasy. he also liked jazz. there was a shelf of cassettes and vinyl records near the fireplace.

"what happened between you and your previous client?" the question brought rhys' attention to y/n again. this one was very personal. were they close enough to even talk about it? he did say that what happened in costa rica stayed in costa rica.

rhys sat back, pondering before concluding. "if i were to answer that, you have to give me something of equal value," the idea of exchanged caught y/n by surprise. interest flickers through his eyes as amusement showed on his face.

"are you bargaining?"

rhys laughs lightly, the sound squeezing at the ceo's heart. "it's business."

y/n reached for his chest as he gulped. he brushed the feeling off and nods, "i like that. let's talk business then." a devilish and heart stopping smirk lifted the corners of rhys' mouth.

"i noticed on the blueprints that you don't have any room that's as small as a pantry. even your walk in closet is as big as your bedroom. why is that?" rhys had an inkling, an assumption, but he wanted it to come out of y/n's lips. he saw his client huff a breath, a thought crossing his mind, before slumping, regal self gone.

"i have ptsd. it was from my mother. when i was younger, she had this twisted sense of duty. she packed my schedule with a lot of lessons. mostly languages and subjects related to business. if i have a low score, she'd lock me in my room for a few hours. if i failed, she'd lock me in a closet. to distract myself, i indulged in hobbies and other things. she found out and locked me in for i don't know long. all i know is i was hungry and thirsty. it didn't take long for my father to find me, he had just come home from a business trip. the house was a mess after that," his voice wavered slightly, but regained its steadiness as he thought about his father. no amount of therapy sessions cured his fear of enclosed spaces.

when he tried to overcome it once, his lungs constricted, he felt nausea and sweaty, he couldn't think at all. he felt so helpless.

y/n was silent for a while before shaking his head, trying to rid of himself of the resurfaced memories. one he tried to forget but couldn't. not when they lingered in the back of his mind. if he couldn't get over his fears, then he couldn't get over his past. so he'd ignore it as long as possible.

"we're alike, you and i." rhys reused the words y/n had told him a year ago, this time removing the words a bit. and true to the bargain, he told him all about bridget von ascheberg. as soon as he mentioned her name, recognition flooded through y/n's eyes. he listened attentively, nodding and humming here and there. (read twisted games for better understanding) understanding settled in the air. comfortable silence followed soon after, both returning to what they were doing before their heart to heart.

rhys gazed at the man sitting at the desk. in a timespan shorter than his time with bridget, he and y/n knew each other in a deeper level. maybe it's because they were both men? or was it because the silence and waiting for the starting few months pushed everything into place? maybe it's because y/n took his time being comfortable first before conversing? he didn't know, there were a lot of possibilities.

he was certain of one thing. there was more to y/n's story.

three months passed. aside from the company parties, meetings, and alumni event, everything was smooth sailing for y/n. he did receive death threats once or twice, but it was all sorted out by rhys who stuck to him like glue. he either trailed behind him like a scary dog or stood beside him when having idle chats with other people.

they started eating at the table together, as y/n's father demanded one day during one of his visits and berated his son for not asking rhys any sooner. the latter has become less alert when they were in a room alone together, not like before where he would pace at times. now he sat reading or sketching, occasionally focusing as if listening or looking for something.

it was the first time rhys saw y/n in casual wear. jeans, shirt, and a jacket. his father had told him to go have fun for one day, then he could go back to working until the day he dies. so there they were, at an amusement park.

a sparkle of childish curiosity passed through y/n's mind as his eyes went from one ride to another. its been a decade since the last time he had fun. the thought twisted at his heart. where everyone enjoyed normality, he couldn't. fun time was a luxury for him when he was around ten to fifteen. he had to work hard for it, but it was only brief. how he wished to experience it all.

"is it your first time in an amusement park?" rhys stood beside him, still in all black, though his outfit was a bit more laidback. he stood tall, oozing with a sense of responsibility. he received a mute nod.

the longer y/n looked around, the more he felt overwhelmed. his lips quivered as he swallowed hard. sadness embraced him. the heaviness of the situation weighed on him. all those stolen childhood days could've been spent being reckless and facing the consequences later, having fun, making friends, and exploring life. "i never thought i'd see a rollercoaster in real life."

rhys followed y/n around. those books that laid around the house held utmost significance. they were worlds that he could imagine himself in, leaving the reality that was set in stone by his mother. universes where he could be the main character of the story, even if it's just for a little while. he felt the sliver of happiness his mother depraved him of.

they walked around the park buying souvenirs and trying out food. they went on the dropper and dropper. y/n looked at the cars of the ferris wheel and refused to get on even when rhys mentioned that the view was nice at the very top. for their last stop, they decided on the haunted mansion. it was the main attraction.

as they entered the mansion, they were covered in darkness. there were dim lights that led the way. there were many twists and at one of the turns, rhys and y/n got separated. the latter looked around in wonder, a burst of excitement guiding him through the maze of halls. the cold hearted man was hidden away in the suit of the ceo, in casual clothes he was just y/n.

just as he was about to run off somewhere, he was shoved against the wall and locked in someplace dark. he furrowed his eyebrows and took a step only to realize there was limited space. his eyes widened as he tried to move, feeling around only to find to familiar structure of two closet doors trapping him.

"hello!?" he tried to open the door only to find out it's been wedged closed by an overturned chair. he slams his palms against the wood, sweat rolling down his forehead, suddenly feeling hot. "let me out!"

his hands slid against the frame, pressing himself against the wall of the closet as if trying to make more space. he hears his pulse in his ears, eyes darting around frantically trying to find some sort of light in the blinding darkness. he feels oxygen leave his lips in pants, he's light headed. "please . . ."

he slides down the wall as the tears of the past come rushing to the present. tears slide down his cheeks as he becomes the helpless child he once was. "please . . . i'm sorry" he wheezes out, his mind flashing back to the old closet in their old estate.

cool air brushed against his sweaty forehead and he's pulled out of the closet and into a set of arms. "l/n? l/n, stay with me." rhys pats y/n's cheek, trying to wake him up from his episode. tears kept pouring as he muttered nonsense. his heart was racing too fast. "why the fuck did you lock him in a closet!?" he barked at the actors, who flinched back from the scalding tone.

"it's part of the experience. it was supposed to be for two minutes," the manager calmly de-escalated the situation.

rhys scowled, supporting y/n who was out of it. "take it out of the fucking experience." he hears the disoriented man mumble something before taking him someplace else where they could have a bit of privacy.

"thank you . . ." y/n stared blankly at the people walking by. he was sitting on a bench. he didn't know what to say. the last time he had an episode was when he tried to overcome his ptsd six years back. it didn't work, instead he had a similar experience but a tad worse.

rhys stood before him, blocking him from the nosy people who tried to peer. his arms were crossed, flexing as the irritation from earlier slowly faded. they were separated by two actors. he was forced into a pit of fake bones and when he was out he was faced with a serious situation. y/n's ptsd episode.

"it's my job."

y/n sighed, shoulders slumping. even on the one day where everything should be normal, it still turned out to be another traumatic day. the child that hid in the mansion of his mind always found his way out, replacing his current with the past. he hated how he couldn't even overcome being in a closet for five fucking minutes.

"no it's not. your job is to protect me from physical harm. but as of this moment, you eased my emotional harm. for that, i thank you," he raised his head and gave him a small smile. it felt foreign, but it felt right in the moment.

rhys' breath hitched. that damned smile that y/n gave. it was unexpected from someone who was frowning everyday. he felt that familiar tug on his heart. one he didn't want to feel, but couldn't kill. y/n looked gorgeous being showered in the golden sunset.

that smile . . . it looked good on him.

another year had gone by. a lot had changed since that day at the amusement park. almost three years, a lot of things changed.

y/n was a bit more expressive with emotions, only with rhys and his father however. he slowly started easing off his work and had rest days. despite having said days, he still could only get in, two at maximum, hours of sleep. he was eating more. rhys was there through everything. another constant in his life.

"i was thinking of a beach resort in areas where resorts aren't that popular," the chief marketing officer proposed, standing confidently in front of the board officers. y/n sat at the head of the long table reading through the hard copy of the presentation. rhys stood to his side like a hawk. since that day in the amusement park, he didn't want another shove incident, even though there weren't any closets nearby.

y/n flipped through the papers once again and sighed, "our company shouldn't only be resorts. i need a proposition that steers away from the word resort. we can't market that forever." he moved his head from side to side and sighed as he felt that satisfying pop. he's been sitting listening to propositions for an hour and a half. his ass felt numb. "everyone, let's take ten."

as people filed out the room, y/n flipped through the rest of the propositions with a groan. it was so deep and stressed, it was attractive. rhys felt his cock stir with interest as he eyed the serious ceo.

he's been having urges. that tousled hair of y/n, he just wants to run his fingers through them and tug them back. those tense shoulders, he could fuck the stress out of him by bending him over the table.

rhys shook his head and cleared his mind. during the past year, he has been curious about sexuality. normally he didn't care, however now that he's feeling something for the same sex, he's been doing some research. it started off small, from bits of information and opinions of other people in the community until he got too deep and even discovered pornographic videos.

it would be a lie if he denied watching some videos, but it was for research purposes. all his life, he had always been interested in women, but since he met y/n, he has been questioning a lot of things in life. he wants it to stop. he had to remind himself that things from the past should never repeat.

as rhys had an inner conflict, y/n had his own as well. he tried to distract himself from the masculine presence behind him, acting as if he was going through the papers. it was half true, he was trying to ignore the glimpses of moments that flashed through his mind of these past two months where he relieved himself at the thought of his own bodyguard. he felt a bit shameful, but it felt so wrong and right at the same time. rhys had been uncovering a past he tried to keep buried. however, it resurfaced every time he saw him.

"you know . . . the reason my . . . mother locked me in the closet . . ." it was a random blurt out, but it was on his mind. rhys showed a sign he was listening. "i danced as a hobby. she didn't like it. she claims its girly. i'm also . . ." y/n trailed off with a thoughtful hum. "i've never really said this to anyone but my mother. i'm also into men." no matter how long its been.

rhys felt his stomach flip. he stared ahead of him, feeling a bit of relief. "good to know."

those three words made y/n's heart flutter. he hid the heat appearing on his cheeks, thankful that his back is turned to the bodyguard that tested and pushed him. but he had to ask, even though deep down he knew the answer, "what does that mean?"

"you have work to do."

three months passed, which makes three years. in those months, y/n came out to his father, who responded with an i suspected that. being the ceo, he was expected to negotiate. he did, though during those meetings, he couldn't avoid proposals like arranged marriage or marriage to merge companies. before he could answer, rhys was already there making his presence known, a frown on his face, scaring away other ceos. it got to the point where y/n only made phone calls for such meet-ups.

to rhys, its been hectic. to resist y/n's bold advances such as sliding a hand against his bicep, sometimes his chest. looking up at him through those lashes with big innocent eyes, even though they're far from it. that cute smile from the amusement park that seemed to be only reserved for him alone. and those sounds he lets out when he's stressed or working.

y/n was driving him insane. forget the contract, they can make a new one where he'd fuck the ceo into submission anytime and anywhere he wanted as long as he stayed his.

rhys knew y/n wanted him. he could tell from his actions and his words with underlying meanings. it was killing him to keep his hands to himself. if he could only reach out, wrap a hand around y/n's neck and kiss him like there's no tomorrow . . .

it was one in the morning, they had just gotten home. in the car, y/n proposed to play a game. two truths and one dare, in which they took turns. as they stepped into the warmth of the mansion, y/n came up with a question for rhys' chosen truth. in all honestly, he just wanted to entertain his client (hopefully to tire him out) so he could turn in for the night before he took him right there on the front door.

"what are your kinks?"

as the game progressed in the car, the questions got more inappropriate, definitely borderline breaching their contract.

"hair pulling . . . bondage you could say . . ." he listed off other kinks, fixing his shoes beside y/n's before entering after him. he could feel himself harden the more the other spoke to him about something sexual, as if interviewing him before having him fuck him senseless.

until that question made his heart stop. "would you kiss me?"

rhys slowly turns to y/n, who was looking at him with mild interest with a mix of arousal. he could feel it from the three feet distance between them. the way y/n's eyes traced his lips, dipping below his chin, and stopping at the bulge straining against the black pants.

y/n was sporting the same in his pants. after he admitted to liking men, it was never the same since then. it would never be the same. not when his heart tugs and flutters because of the man standing in front of him. not when his heart fell hard when he found him in the closet in that haunted house. not when they'd had all these one on one talks. through all he stayed.

"yes. would you like me to kiss you?" rhys returned the question as they neared each other, one foot apart. maybe his feelings started growing the moment the silence turned into small and slow conversations. or that time y/n acknowledged what he truly felt when he left bridget. maybe because they shared some similarities. or is it because y/n relied on him to take away the pain of loneliness of only thinking of the future, not allowing himself to heal from the past and appreciate the present.

"yes."

(⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧ rhys' pov

with that, i dove down and molded my lips against his. i guided his head, tilting my heard, pushing against him. his pants echoed in my ears, trapping him against the nearest wall, taking his breath away. when he tried to pull away, i chased his lips, claiming them once more.

when i pulled away, he looked awestruck. i kiss him hard. i press our clothes cocks together and i feel him hump against me, my hands caress down his body and kneads on his cheeks. grunts pour into my mouth as our tongues fight for dominance.

his legs hook around my hips and i carry him upstairs into the bedroom i claimed. i drop him onto the bed. "clothes off." i turn to grab lube and condoms in the drawers. when i turn around, my breath is almost caught in my throat.

the curves and groves of his body, the fullness of his skin, and the way it's begging for attention, makes me want to drop everything and just fuck him raw. i am well aware this is my second breach of contract. i had no reason to do this. this would be another hook-up and-

"breach of contract or not. resigning or not. once you fuck me and i like you, i'm yours and you're mine. i swear to fucking god, we're not arguing about it. we'll fuck it out too."

that was enough for me to push him against the mattress. i'm not asking him how he knew what i was thinking because most of the time it's like he could read my mind. but he did say, i wear my thoughts on my face. maybe it was something only he could do.

my thoughts never once wavered even as i scissored my fingers into y/n's hold, my eyes watching every contort of his face, every redness of his skin. the noise that fell like waterfalls from his swollen lips as i pressed against the bundle of nerves while he desperately pushes against my hand. i groan under my breath. it took a lot of self control to not just fuck him stupid and take away his walking ability.

everything in my mind felt silent as i admired the man under me, taking me inch by inch after throwing the condom on the other side of the room claiming to want to feel me fully and be filled with cum. that almost made me lose grip.

as i bottomed out, i almost immediately rutted my hips. it was so hot and i'm being squeezed tight but just right. i almost exploded right then and there. i felt him tighten his legs around my hips, uttering for me to go.

slowly i pulled out and pushed back in with a low groan. it felt good. so good. i started to pick up pace, slamming balls deep eliciting beautiful moans and whimpers that tickled my ears like a melody.

my hand found its place around his neck, pushing him back into the soft cushions. i apply light pressure and he cries out in pleasure.

"you're ge- hah~ getting b-bigger~ hng!~"

i felt his hands rub up and down against the scars on my back before they wounded around my neck, pulling me close. my nose traced his carotid as i planted kisses and nipped at his skin, my thrusts growing harsher and erratic.

i bit hard on his shoulder with a grunt as i felt him clamp around me, making me cum, shooting thick ropes of cum inside him. i felt spurts of warmth between us as y/n flinches and convulses from his high. he breathes heavily, a dopey smile on his face. i press a brief kiss on his lips and pull out. he groans and drapes an arm over his eyes.

"i mean what i said, whether you're my bodyguard or not. i like you and you're mine and i'm yours."

hearing that made my heart feel good. if there was a god out there, thank you lord for giving me a second chance. i laid beside him on my back. we both stare at the ceiling. under all that cold hard shell, he was very different. he warm warm and mellow. i was cold and barren. yet he thawed all that.

"can you i be your boyfriend?" y/n asked, interlacing our fingers together. it's been a long while since i've last been in a relationship. people say it's too late to try at my age. but it doesn't hurt to want and need. i crack a rare smile.

"whatever you want buttercup."

[moistvonlipwig]

🔥

kara danvers :)

ok well you and i have discussed this at length so this will not be new to you but imco (in my correct opinion) kara danvers [as portrayed by the cw's supergirl, not necessarily in other versions] is actually pretty lazy, and i would argue this is one of her most central and consistent character traits. and i don't just mean physically lazy, although i should note that per 3.17 "trinity" she canonically Hates Walking and doesn't understand why humans exercise. i mostly mean on an intellectual & moral level.

kara wants to be a reporter, but when she figures this out (because......a pretty lady told her she should do it? ig?), she does not apply to journalism school, or take online classes. instead she is handed a reporter job by her boss (who scrawled 'reporter' on her hilariously terrible resume when they met for reasons known only to her) and from then on proceeds to basically just do whatever she wants and get offended when more seasoned reporters who have gone to journalism school ask her to do basic functions of the job like Acquire Sources and Report On The Facts And Not Just Your Personal Opinions. at no point do we really see her ask her colleagues, even friendly ones like james, for advice or help; instead, advice is something that's imposed upon her by the wicked snapper, who dares to be unimpressed by her uneducated slay. throughout the show, on multiple occasions, the idea of actually Doing Her Job seems to offend her -- lena even calls her out for this explicitly in 3.02 "triggers," but she continues to display this behavior with andrea in s5 & s6. in the finale, when she is promoted to editor-in-chief in an act of blatant cronyism that truthfully should prompt the entire catco staff to quit in protest, it is not on her initiative, nor due to her efforts, nor is it because anything about the position has piqued her interest; it is, again, simply handed to her, and she just accepts.

additionally, we rarely see her express meaningful curiosity about, well, any subject, really -- we know she learned calculus young, but her interest in math and science seems nil; she is deeply naive about the u.s. justice system in s6 in a way that suggests she has never looked into it, though her own mother was a judge on krypton; and a lot of her interests seem very Basic (pizza, potstickers [? why girl.], nsync, the wizard of oz, harry potter), which to be clear is not inherently a sign of intellectual laziness or incuriosity, but it also does nothing to suggest that she is someone with a wide knowledge of food, literature, music, or film.

she also demonstrates what i would argue is a kind of moral laziness, though you could call it an offshoot of her intellectual laziness, in her general lack of real self-reflection about, like, any of her actions. although some of the other characters sometimes bring up how messed-up the DEO is (e.g. james in s1 with the gitmo comparison -- which, CRAZY line to put in your show and then never address, btw), kara herself does not question it (until the Wrong People take over, of course). her rhetoric in early s2 about daxamites suggests that she is quite comfortable believing sweeping generalizations she was taught as a child and has never really sat down to interrogate them, but while mon-el being.....pretty bad but i guess not as bad as his mom? yay? inspires her to stop being bigoted against daxamites specifically, we will later still hear her say that certain species tend to be peaceful or aggressive, etc., with no self-reflection. in 3.05 "damage," when morgan edge tries to make it seem like lena's lead dispersal device that kara activated poisoned children, kara does not take the opportunity to self-reflect on the choice she made and whether it was worth it; instead, her arc for the episode is reacting emotionally to her best buddy feeling guilty (about the thing kara also did. i cannot emphasize that part enough).

i would argue the conclusion she draws in 5.13, too, smacks of this moral laziness; she spends the episode looking for a magic shortcut to not having to feel bad anymore, and when she can't find one, she decides that actually, meh, there was never a perfect way for things to go down, so all that lying wasn't such a big deal and lena should just get over it. kara is dripping with a lot of guilt in 5A, but throughout both 5A and 5B there's very little actual, thoughtful self-reflection on what she did wrong and why, and that carries over into S6 when, after like ten episodes of lena (and also william ig) repeatedly trying to tell her not to play god, she decides in the very penultimate episode to solve her problems by eating the sun, and then when she decides against it partway through doing it, there's again very little self-reflection on her part of why the hell she thought that was a good thing to do. kara's morality, on the whole, seems largely based on (a) alex and (b) vibes, and not so much on any actual thought she's dedicated to the moral questions at hand.

and similarly to when kara is asked to Do Her Damn Job at her place of work -- when kara is challenged on her morality (like when lena challenges her on the kryptonite in s3, or on myriad in 5.17), she acts annoyed at the very idea of having to do the hard work of thinking about the morals she espouses as a superhero. and it doesn't read as someone who has thought very hard about her moral choices and is offended because she believes so strongly that she's right, because we never actually see her thinking hard about these moral choices she makes at all. it reads as someone who hasn't thought about it beyond a very cursory level and is frustrated that she's being asked to. because, again, she's just fundamentally kind of lazy.

and the thing is this might sound like i am dunking on her but actually i think this is a trait that is incredibly funny. my favorite portrayal of supergirl/kara danvers is the one from the children's cartoon dc super hero girls 2019, whose version of kara is ALSO lazy, on top of being an aggressive, quick-to-anger, rude, irresponsible, selfish brat. and she's hilarious in that show, she's one of my favorite characters. another favorite character of mine, also a children's cartoon character, is anne boonchuy from amphibia, whose entire character journey is about learning not to be physically, intellectually, or morally lazy and learning to [school principal voice] Apply Herself instead. it can be incredibly fun to watch characters be lazy and incurious and self-centered, whether they change for the better or not. but it is a bit strange that some people act like kara is this super disciplined person who loves working out and loves learning and reads widely and is curious about everything and self-reflects on her own decisions and how she affects others to the point of obsession. i wonder if part of it is 'femslash same-character syndrome,' where people slap other characters' traits from other popular femslash ships onto each other. because the character i just described is adora from she-ra. who a lot of people think is similar to kara. except no. she's not at all. as evidenced by this whole write-up ☝️ lol. they're just both blonde and for some reason (#blondephobia?) femslash fandoms wanna act like all blonde girlies are the same. but they are not. #wakeupamerica.....

[fatcathappycat]

10 Ace Attorney fics that made me >LOL<

(part 1)

Reading AA fanfics on Ao3 has been my 'go to' choice for self-care this past year. The following are works that literally made me either snort, giggle, cackle or laugh out loud. As usual, these are in no particular order, because creating a sense of order in life is an illusion, and fics are to be enjoyed and celebrated, not ranked ;p

1. Vocal Exercises by SapphireWine

Rating: G Words: 4,756 Read time: 20 mins

Phoenix has a secret talent!! I laughed out loud so hard at this story's climax, I think I hurt myself (the best kind of hurt ;) ). And like so many of SapphireWine's fics, the story is so sweet (new love getting to know each other) and crisp (that snappy dialogue!) and savory (mmmmm tasty Narumitsu). I wrote in my bookmark that this fic is a sweet little ol’ onion if onions were like apples maybe, and covered in feelings.

~≧◡≦~

2. Eureka Moment by Kantayra

Rating: T Words: 673 Read time: 5 mins

"Miles discovers that, to his embarrassment, he is just as much of a total dork in bed as he is in everything else." Ahem, ngl, this is now firmly established in my head canon. Kantayra is one of my 'go to' Narumitsu Master authors. They specialize in short, sharp and hilarious ficlets, and I highly recommend all their work. This author will show up again in my fic recs, guaranteed.

~≧◡≦~

3. A Collective Groan by Kantayra

Rating: E Words: 6,321 Read time: 30 min

"Miles prided himself on his self-control, or at least he would if only Phoenix would stop being so incurably Phoenix." OOP! See! I was (w)right, here is another one by Kantayra. In addition to being a Narumitsu Master, they are a freaking Pun Master! OMG the PUNS!!!! And the fact these are Mile’s weakness! I am so dang happy I found this author and this fic in particular. I'm laughing even as I'm typing this, remembering some of them.

~≧◡≦~

4. The Crushing Weight of Inevitability by Kantayra

Rating: E Words: 6,321 Read time: 30 min

And sorry, I can't help but slip in yet another gem by Kantayra! (Honestly, I might have to do a dedicated post on them in the future). "How Edgeworth applies for a job: smugly, confidently, remorselessly, and with plenty of snark." In the form of a heavily cited resume, this is another absolutely fantastic ‘pun fic’ from this fabulous creator.

~≧◡≦~

5. Worse than we could have imagined (2 part series) by hi_its_ellis

Rating: T Words: 5,813 Read time: 25 min

Our favourite idiots being, well, idiots. By yes, another one of the authors I consider a 'Narumitsu Master.' In the author's notes, they say "I intended this to be Really Soft and it turned out Really Stupid" I happen to love soft and stupid so there we go... but it also has heart, so there we go twice.

~≧◡≦~

6. Texts & Turnabouts by YanagiKana

Rating: T Words: 40K? Read time: 3 hours (?)

I love chat fics. They are such a fun character vehicle. This one is missing a few graphics but still really, really enjoyable and I hope this talented author comes back and gives us more. :)

~≧◡≦~

7. It Would Feel So Good To Make You Mine by hi_its_ellis, lowbatteryhealth

Rating: T Words: 54,615 Read time: 4 hours

I am the 590th bookmark for this epic tale from two of the most diabolically minded pair of Narumitsu Masters in the fandom, celebrating the most epic game of Gay Chicken ™️ ❤️🐔💙 Read and enjoy, you won’t be disappointed! I would also file this one under 'required reading for Narumitsu fanon'

~≧◡≦~

8. A Beginner's Guide on How Not to Write Steel Samurai Fanfiction by chameleonwrites

Rating: T Words: 16,058 Read time: 65 mins

"Verity Baytum, a court stenographer, has a secret passion for writing Steel Samurai fanfiction based around the pairing Magisteel. When she finds an unlikely source of inspiration during her job, she can't help but watch court proceedings in search of further lines that fit her fics."

"Yaaay!!!! Sooo much fun, just like the description implies! Very Ao3 and discord community vibes. Verity is a really likeable and charismatic Original Character and I would love to read more about her! - If you are craving more, I suggest a chaser of Kantayra's 'Court(ing) Record' ;)

~≧◡≦~

9. Twelfth night by zombiekittiez for Gheyn

Rating: T Words: 5,156 Read time: 20 mins

“Phoenix hand feeds him a berry, sweet and sun-warmed. Also, slightly crunchy from the sandy soil. Resigned, Miles chews and swallows. Three days in and he is already eating dirt.” Time-loop au comedy hijinks by another one of my 'go to' authors.

~≧◡≦~

10. Certifiably Yours (2 part series) by Gheyn

Rating: T Words: 5,156 Read time: 20 mins

If you like fics that reference the language of flowers, or how meticulous Miles is, this fic is for you. And I'm finishing strong here, folks. This 2-part series is LOL perfect! Tears! TEARS!! In my eyes from laughing so hard. So sweet! So romantic! So silly! So good. Hiiiiighly recommended. ❤️💙

~≧◡≦~

And that's it for another week! I hope you enjoy these as much as I have. Look forward to a part 2 in the near future {;)

Do you have a favourite AA LOL fic? Please share in the comments! And THANK YOU!!!!! to all the incredibly wonderful punny, funny awesome authors cited here. I luuuuurve you!

❤️ ♥‿♥ ❤️

[sapphireluna96]

Hazbin Hotel Headcanons

I thought I'd do a couple of my own Hazbin Hotel headcanons that have been stirring in my brain for the last few months. Some of these may have made an appearance in some of my previous fanfictions.

Charlie and Angel Dust both have the biggest stuffed animal collections at the hotel. They like to get into friendly, sibling-like competitions to see who has the bigger stuffed animal collection.

Building onto that, KeeKee and Fat Nuggets love to bury themselves in their respective owner's stuffed animal pile to see if they notice.

Alastor's favorite part of the nighttime routine is telling the everyone else stories about his childhood and when he was alive. Everyone else love his stories.

THIS ONE'S A BIT ON THE DARK SIDE, FAIR WARNING: Vaggie was a victim of the 27 Club

Angel's biggest turn-on is someone who is super passionate. The first time Husk kissed his neck, Angel got an instant nut.

Speaking of, the only reason Angel was acting so sexual around Husk during the first half of the season was because he didn't know how to flirt (or even talk to his crushes) properly. Since he's been working for Valentino for a while, all he knew was over-the-top sexual innuendos.

Angel is the only one that's allowed to pet Husk, but he's only allowed to do it when they're alone. Also, petting Husk behind his left ear knocks him out after a while.

Charlie and Vaggie love to spend time alone in the lobby when everyone else is asleep watching some of Vaggie's favorite telenovelas that she used to watch with her abuela when she was a kid. Vaggie would translate for Charlie so she would understand what was going on.

This version of Heaven and Hell have all the same stores, restaurants, business, etc. that we do here on Earth, however, it can differ quite a bit. For example, there's not a single Chick-Fil-A in Hell, but Heaven has a Chick-Fil-A on every other block.

Lilith, Rosie, and Carmilla all have the stereotypical "mom cackle." They're already super loud apart, but if they were ever together, it would be OVER for Charlie and Vaggie and they would want to hide in a hole forever.

Lilith is just as silly as Lucifer and Charlie, she just doesn't show that side of her in public

Charlie, Lucifer, Niffty, and Sir Pentious are all autistic, however, in the case of Niffty and Sir Pentious, they were never diagnosed when they were alive given the time periods they lived in

The girls and Angel love to do sleepover nights in the lobby every month. Their sleepovers are filled with the most unhinged stuff you can imagine

The sleepover nights were Angel and Cherri Bomb's idea and Charlie loved it so much she followed through

Speaking of bonding, the crew's favorite bonding exercise? Improv nights! Everyone loves to play improv games, and it gets the energy up and everyone is super hilarious!

Although Vaggie is the one that volunteers to host because she's the only one that's not super big on being funny on the spot

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Who are Camille's siblings? Do we know their names or anything about them?

In total, Camille’s parents Jean Benoît Nicolas Desmoulins and Marie Madeleine Godard had nine children, four of which died during childhood:

Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît (March 2 1760 — April 5 1794)

Henriette Aimery Angélique (21 February 1761 — 17 June 1770)

Marie Élisabeth Émilie Toussaint (November 1 1762 — December 20 1839)

Stillborn girl, buried at the day of her birth (January 15 1764)

Armand ”Dubocquoi” Jean Louis Domitille (May 5 1765 — 1793)

Anne Clotilde Pélagie Marie (June 20 1767 — ?)

Lazare ”Sémery” Nicolas Norbert Félicité (June 6 1769 — January 1811)

Clement Louis Nicolas (November 23 1770 — April 16 1778)

Charles Maximilien Yves Nicolas Reignier (June 17 1772, probably didn’t reach adult age)

We know Camille was the only one of the siblings that was given a higher education in Paris. Something we might find an explanation for in a letter to him dated January 23 1791 (cited in Hervé Leuwers’ Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république (2018)), where the father places his oldest son on a higher level than the rest of his children:

Your brother Dubocquoi has always had a rather limited peak, he has just acknowledged it to you; but it is not his fault. In the portion of nature and in the lot of the spirit, why have you exercised your birthright so copiously and taken such a great precipitate, to leave your siblings’ afferent share so small?

Camille expressed himself in similar terms in a letter to his father dated October 8 1789. I’m just gonna let this part of this hilarious comic by @theorahsart illustrate the passage:

Camille spending the majority of his time away from his family seems to have ended up in him not knowing his siblings all that well, as we in 1792 find a letter where his father has to tell him the name of his brothers as well as their occupations (cited in Camille Desmoulins, a biography (1909) by Violet Methley):

You ask me, my son, for the name of your brother, Du Bucquoy, as well as for that of Semery. The former is called Armand Jean Louis Domitille, who was born on May 5th, 1765. For the past seven years he has served in the late Royal Roussillon cavalry regiment, or the 11th Regiment of the Army of the Midi, and which I believe is either in the interior at Saumur or at Saint-Jean-d'Angely, for I have had no news of him for the last twelve months. The latter is named Lazare Nicolas Norbert Félicité, born on June 6th, 1769, and for the past two years in the loth Battalion of Chasseurs, late Gevaudan, with the Army of the North, in which he shows much zeal. He tells me in his last letter that he is a forlorn sentinel in a wood, and congratulates you on the birth of a son. As for me, I also am married. My wife is a musket, and I take greater care of her than of myself.

On February 8 1793 Lucile has written in her diary: ”C(amille’s) brother came. We had dinner at Madame Brune’s.” In a letter dated July 9 1793 Camille shares more details on his brothers, who by now are both serving in the revolutionary army. These parts got censored when the letter was published for the first time in 1836, and restored in Hervé Leuwers’ biography:

I have received unfortunate news of my brother, who has been lost to drunkenness and expelled from his regiment. I don't know if he wrote to you about his mishap. He has not dared to write to me about it, and he is right in not to. It is most unworthy that I should take an interest in him, and I am really angry that he has taken my name, which he has sullied in the army. Nevertheless, I had advised him to pour water into his wine. I don't know what has become of him since he was forced to resign as an officer. His conduct might have caused you grief under the old regime, but it is a duty that a family of republicans and good men consists of nothing but those who are republicans and good men. […] I am very sorry that Sémery was killed. I would have had no reason to be ashamed of him, and I would have procured for him a speedy promotion of which he proved himself worthy, for things are going well and will be better.

Soon thereafter, Camille does however find out the information regarding his youngest brother’s death is false, whereupon he writes a new letter to his father:

I am very sorry to have written to you that my brother Sémery would have died fighting for his homeland. I had no other certainty of a loss so grievous to you than the indication of his long silence, and I eagerly laid hold of your doubts of his death to fix my hopes upon them. May he be returned to you by the enemies into whose hands he may have fallen captive. I feel even more now, when I see my son, how sensitive this blow must have been to your heart.

Sémery had indeed not died in battle, but been captured at the siege of Maestricht. According to La jeunesse de Camille Desmoulins (1908) he was released after three years. In 1802 he was admitted to the 27th legion of gendarmerie on foot, and was serving in Piémont à la Chiesa as gendarme of the Stura company when he died by an accident in January 1811. The other brother, Dubucquoi, did however die in Vendée in 1793, I’ve not discovered on which date.

As for the two surviving sisters, we seemingly only know that they got married. According to geneanet, the eldest sister Marie Élisabeth Émilie Toussaint married one Théodore Morey in Guise, December 25 1793, while Anne Clotilde Pélagie Marie married Simon Isidore Lemoine in the same town on June 5 1794. Leuwers cites a document showing the two couples were still together by March 4 1797. He adds that both husbands were gendarmes and their wives left Guise to be with them at their posts. Somewhere after 1797 Marie Élisabeth Émilie Toussaint got remarried to one Théodore Lagrange before dying in Paris on December 20 1839, with one Antoine Nicolas Desmoulins as witness. When and where Anne Clotilde Pélagie Marie died I’ve not been able to discover.

[cyb-by-lang]

Cascade (part 14)

Wherein friends talk.

Kei is the only one convinced that they're not friends.

“But why does your Quirk backlash look like that?” Midoriya pressed, still too curious.

Ugh. “Midoriya-kun, do you know what percentage of the human body is made of water? I’m doing well if the backlash only hits me.” A lie, at least in the implications. The two facts had nothing to do with each other. The only true bloodbender among shinobi—that Kei knew of—was the Third Mizukage, and that was firmly not her problem.  

Midoriya blinked. His eyes went a little distant as he thought through the implications, muttering quietly to himself. Then there was a grimace as he didn’t like what he found. 

Hopefully that would be enough to throw him off. 

“But about the glow?” 

Or not. “Why do you?” 

“It makes more sense if you realize she’s related to Aizawa-sensei,” said Todoroki. The utter bastard. 

Kei stared directly at her two-toned classmate. Then mimed strangling him with both hands as he stared placidly back.

Worst of all, Midoriya actually looked like he believed it. 

Since the Sports Festival, Todoroki seemed to be spending less time as an ice statue and more time with Midoriya’s friends, inflicting his newly-revealed personality on other people with a surgeon’s precision. While he stayed stone-faced most of the time, there were hints here and there. The other students didn’t always notice. 

Kei did, because Todoroki’s quietly stated conspiracy theory was practically the first thing he’d ever said to her. Besides something totally inane, like “Can you pass me the worksheet?” 

Strictly speaking, Todoroki and Midoriya were being kept “for observation,” seeing as neither of them had injuries worse than some scrapes. They’d already been allowed to get dressed in street clothes again, with only Midoriya sporting so much as a new bandage. 

Kei, on the other hand? Hospital gown, at least until Manual caved and brought her backpack from his agency to her. Then she changed immediately. Only one padded bandage bulged awkwardly from under the smooth lines of her exercise shirt. All of her other injuries were superficial. Miraculously. 

And they would stay that way. Kei’s smothering embarrassment was her problem. 

Four witnesses. That was all it took to take the anticipated fight between Kei and the Hero Killer from hilariously lopsided in her favor to a complete shitshow. Native was already a problem, but he didn’t know what her “Quirk” was supposed to be and started the battle too helpless to do anything other than occasionally tell his rescuers to run away. If a half-trained killed overcompensated for fear by half-killing the actual threat, he’d be able to write it off as adrenaline and eke out some gratitude for a last-minute save from certain death. 

But Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki—each one of them was too close. Too clever to trick if they could all corroborate their observations, both of Kei’s fighting style and the places where she skated the edges of her paperwork for the sake of efficiency. And when fighting someone like Stain, who could guarantee a kill if he so much as drew blood, that indecision cost her. 

Then there was the Nōmu, dropping out of the sky like mail-ordered sabotage. Shigaraki might’ve kept to the rooftops and let his three super-soldiers get wrecked—in two cases lethally—but the electrification Quirk on a flier indicated planning. Somebody with more foresight than Hand-Man had noticed Kei enough to target her. 

That was actually the least-disturbing part. The enemy already needed a beatdown. Adding incidents like this to the list was no more taxing than everything else already happening in Kei’s life. And with Isobu wiping away the electrical burns, it was like it never happened. 

She could nearly see the shape of Sensei’s concern outlined in bullet-pointed thin air.

And then Iida spoke up, knocking Kei’s thoughts off their current track. 

“Gekkō-san, you said I couldn’t apologize until we were in the hospital. Can I speak now?” 

It was the first time he’d said anything to her since Manual and Gran Torino left. The ambulance ride sucked all the life out of him, as did careful application of healing Quirks by hospital staff. He sounded like his voice was stuffed with cotton instead of leaving it wrapped around his injured arms. 

Kei nodded, turning her body to face him, face resting on upturned knuckles. She’d already destroyed the distribution of pillows to make herself a lounge, and now it was time to listen. 

“Then…” Iida stared down at the scratchy hospital blanket. “Then I don’t think I can express just how sorry I am to have dragged you into this. All of you. If it hadn’t been for—for my inability to control my emotions, none of us would’ve been in danger in the first place. Everything I did tonight” 

“And Native would be dead,” Todoroki pointed out. He’d been listening to Iida’s earlier, halting account of the opening minute of the fight, before Kei and Midoriya showed up to throw yet more bodies into the brawl. 

Iida shook his head. “I barely knew he was there. All I cared about was fighting the Hero Killer to avenge my brother. Even Stain realized that I was rushing into battle for entirely selfish reasons.”

“I’m not judging you for that,” Kei replied, shrugging her free shoulder. When Todoroki looked her way, one eyebrow raised, she added, “You were about fifteen seconds out. Iida-kun asked what I would’ve done if Stain went after my brother, and the honest answer is that I would’ve killed him. Hypothetically.” 

Todoroki didn’t even blink. Just nodded, slowly, like he was taking the late-night version of Kei and her rougher mannerisms and slotting these data points into a new paradigm. It was also possible that Todoroki genuinely did not give a damn and was already thinking of something else. 

“But you weren’t the one put in that position. I was. And I lost control of myself entirely and nearly died for my mistakes,” Iida insisted. His eyes were still reddened and he looked even more upset. “And you offered to let him go, if he would just leave us alone.” 

“And he didn’t take that chance, even outnumbered five-to-one. With a Quirk on a timer.” Kei waved a dismissive hand. “His fault.” 

“Gekkō-san,” Iida said, a little helplessly. A tear plopped down to the blanket. “Please.” 

It wasn’t as though Iida could ever find out Kei was always going to find some excuse to walk up to an armed serial killer and try knocking out half his teeth. She was paid for shit like this. The most important concern left went basically: “You’re forgiven. Just don’t do it again.”

They sat in silence for a while, though Midoriya moved off his cot to gently rest his hand on Iida’s arm. Iida couldn’t really lean on him, but his breathing steadied after a little while. Midoriya’s mumbling was probably more a comfort than she’d ever manage.

[luna-rainbow]

idk if you've seen that post, it's from years ago at this point, where someone is surprised to hear that Bucky has a disability. i think it's in an ask with a response like HE'S MISSING AN ARM. remembering that left me thinking,,, what are your thoughts on Bucky's own comprehension of his disability? like, i'm sure he experiences chronic pain, and he's aware of his disability *especially once he has a metal arm that can be detatched as we see in tfatws* but i also feel like he might feel guilty taking the title of disabled because he has the serum and is "super" plus he doesn't feel like he deserves the support/help that can and should be given to disabled people when they need it. ALSO he hasn't had all that much time to process as a human rather than a controlled weapon that he is missing an arm. his prosthetic has been welded into him,, with probably less sensation,, but it functions like an arm,, idk i just feel like it probably hits him out of the blue, too 🥲

Oooh thanks for the interesting ask nonnie! And yes I do remember that hilarious post.

Here's my usual disclaimer that this is just throwing out ideas and that canon lends itself to many different interpretations.

I think the first thing to consider is Bucky's relationship with disability as a concept. He was good friends with Steve, a chronically ill person, but sometimes people have a different bias when it comes to invisible illness versus visible body difference. I have seen people, including disabled people, who are more accepting of one type than the other. He had grown up during a time when disability was considered a "defect" and there was talk of eliminating them from the gene pool, so there might be some inherent fear of being seen as "disabled". At the same time, he had also fought through one of the bloodiest wars of human history but also post the antibiotic era, which means a lot of major injuries became survivable compared to WW1. He likely saw many people around him become physically marked in one way or another. I have a feeling that that experience would have reconciled him with the fact that the value of life is greater than physical wholeness. So overall, I think Bucky probably had a fairly accepting view on disability and illness back when he was able-bodied, and while he needs time to process the loss, that acceptance is probably somewhat protective against self-hatred.

The second thing is the curious subject of Bucky's bionic arm. I have met (lower limb) amputees who reject the "disabled" label, because to them once they put on a prosthesis they could walk and run and work and exercise. I think worrying about being "deserving" might be a small part of it, there's a bigger part of worrying about social perceptions of disability -- they didn't want the "handicap" label to be used to hold them back. I suspect you are right, in that Bucky probably sees himself as very capable, even super-humanly so, with the (very high-tech) prosthesis. He most likely feels that being a soldier is a big part of his identity and sense of worth. I suspect also...going back to what Bucky's relationship with the word "disability" means, his interpretation of that (given he came from the 1940s) might mean something that has a profound impact on function, and he may feel that he doesn't fit that mark.

The third thing is Bucky's relationship with body image, which has varied from movie to movie. The Winter Soldier had no qualms flaunting that arm, but then the Winter Soldier had no mind of its own, and its handlers knew the metal arm was intimidating. In both Civil War and TFATWS, we see Bucky wear gloves and long sleeves to hide his arm, which he removes when he starts a mission. It could be that he doesn't want to scare people or draw attention to it day to day, or it could be that he associates the arm with the soldier part of himself and he doesn't want to see it when he's trying to return to a normal life. Interestingly, in Wakanda, Bucky had been quite content to walk around without any sort of prosthesis at all. This might suggest that he's less bothered by the missing arm than he is by the need to wear a weaponised prosthesis.

But you know, people are fickle creatures, and I am sure when he's hit by PTSD or a bout of anxiety or depression, his views on body image and his physical limitations would take a very nasty turn and he would have to work through all the stages of grief again.

[sometinysludge]

Me, speed running a character sheet? More likely than you think. More rambling beneath the cut heem heem. (Carnival AU by none other than @sm-baby).

TRIVIA 

Zest was, hilariously, horrible at chess. Frequently loosing to Kinger in most of the games involving any level of traditional chess strategy. Suffering especially during jousting, but, he always came back. Being a very competitive player who didn’t know when to give up, and as a result he prevailed in most of the levels overtime. Although, secretly, his recurring appearances in Kinger’s boss level were not always out of competition alone — he liked talking to Kinger when he was in a pleasant mood, even if he sometimes forgot him. His frequent visits earned him the title “fruit fly”. 

Zest was convinced by a few other players to try out Jax’s levels, since he was exercising a bit of favoritism. Ironically, he quickly became interested in Jax, enjoying the lessons and playful jests, even if he suffered a few pranks here and there. Zest was a better artist than a chess player, but he didn’t use the skill as often. Once things within the game began to become a bit strange—especially with Jax—he stopped visiting his level. Of course, this wasn’t enough at all,and he quickly became paranoid and frightened, frequently seeking refuge with his favorite character. His biggest, and last mistake. 

The same above occurred with Gangle, revisiting their level on account of suggestions from other players. There were often large intervals of time where he simply went to either watch ongoing plays between the other AIs (often being pulled in as part of the general design), or participating himself willingly. He always thought Gangle was sweet and extremely creative, and constantly tried to do his best in pleasing them and fulfilling their creative vision.

Zest smelled very strongly of oranges, or at least, he was told this by the other AIs.

Despite his classy appearance, Zest was something of a brawler. Even if he continuously loosed most of the time, his effort at least, granted him a bit of strength. It didn’t matter in the end though, of course.

[sutherkins]

what dating peter sutherland is like part two 💌

• be prepared to have everything done for you whether you ask him to do it or not

• did you offhandedly mention the list of chores you need to do? dont worry about it, peters got it covered

• he likes to cook for you

• before he started dating you, he actually had no clue how to cook anything that wasnt super simple like boxed pasta

• in the early stages of the relationship he took cooking classes to get better and while hes not a professional, he can make you some pretty good homemade meals

• in return, you like to exercise your hobby for baking and make him a lot of sweet treats

• he loves watching competitive baking/cooking shows and no one can tell me otherwise

• you both love to watch them together and will wait until both of you are free to catch up on any episodes you missed

• he’s extremely supportive

• going to a pride parade? he’s there to support you (and everyone there) and have fun!

• a protest perhaps? he’ll stand right next to you with his own sign

• he loves dogs

• he loves being in nature

• any time he gets hurt he recites the names of his favorite basketball players to distract himself from the pain

• his favorite place to be is with you at his cabin

• he loves to give you gifts every once in a while especially if he notices that you’ve been eyeing something specific but havent gotten it for yourself yet

• staying in with you is his preferred way to have a date, hes not fond of being around people too much

• he’ll 100% take you to a restaurant, fancy or otherwise, if you want him to

• most of the time theyre diners or small businesses

• peter knows what having a panic attack is like so he for sure will help you out and have techniques and methods for you to try when you’re having one yourself

• this is inspired by @underoospeterparker wonderful period comfort fic that i requested and its that he will literally take care of Everything

• he’ll put a pad in your underwear for you so it’s all ready to go when you need it

• he’ll warm up a heating pad as soon as you ask

• buys you your favorite snacks and some extra pads or tampons (or whatever you use) when you start your period

• peter is like a human furnace so you like to lay on top of him like he’s a living heating pad for your tummy — he enjoys it very much

• he drives you to your therapy appointments and waits in the car until youre done

• he never asks what you talk about in therapy but you usually tell him anyway

• there arent really any secrets between the two of you

• there might have been some things neither of you wanted to talk about at first but eventually you both share them with one another

• peter is actually really funny and always tries to make you laugh

• playing against you is the only time he feels like he’s good at basketball 😭

• “you’re the one who didnt get into the nba!”

• “at least im tall enough to qualify!”

• he pokes fun at your short stature whenever he can

• peter is 6ft tall so he towers over you

• as hot as he thinks you look when you’re wearing his clothes he also finds it hilarious because theyre so long on you

• shirts? they reach your knees

• pants? always have to be rolled up at your hip otherwise you’ll step on the fabric at the bottom and trip yourself (you did this once and peter was very concerned but also couldnt stop laughing)

• he doesnt look after himself the way you think he should, so you’re always paying attention and making sure he’s eating/hydrating when he needs to and getting enough sleep

• i feel like one year for halloween you make him dress like spiderman because they have the same name and you dress as mary jane and do the iconic upside down spiderman kiss

• you’ve basically christened every single room in his apartment

• he might not like every single hobby you have or everything you have an interest in but he’ll always participate if you ask and you do the same for him

• you own skin safe markers and sometimes when you get bored you like to color in his tattoos. he actually really enjoys it and finds it relaxing

• speaking of tattoos

• when he realizes that you’re the one for him and that he wants to be with you for the rest of his life, he gets a tattoo of your initials on his arm

• when you find out about the tattoo you immediately book an appointment for yourself so you can get his initials tattooed on your hip or maybe your wrist

• when he sees it for the first time he thinks its so sexy that you have his initials permanently on your skin that he makes you orgasm like 5 times

• he knows you love homemade personal care products (soap, bath bombs, things like that) and will buy them for you all the time

• you always call him on your way home from work or whatever it is your doing that day and if you’re stressed he’ll set up a relaxing bath for you for when you get home

• and he goes all out

• he goes through your stash of products and even has new ones ready to add to your collection, a nice lavender bath bomb, some rose petals, ect

• he sets up a speaker to play relaxing music and even puts a small table next to the tub thats got some of your favorite snacks on it along with a bottle of water

• he loves to cuddle

• he is literally so needy when it comes to you and just wants any kind of affection he can get from you

[yearnstarved]

intentionally choosing these photos is such a fun exercise of asking how does the muse use a camera? is it to capture a memory? are they trying to express certain emotions or artistic creativity? how does the way they compose a shot translate how they feel about the subject matter?

bones shoots photos like a boomer. he aligns the person in the middle of the shot bc he thinks that's all a good photo is. simple. smiling. he's more into experiencing the moment then saving it.

sunny is the friend you want to take photos that make you look like an insta baddie. she takes her time composing the shot, considers the horizon line, the background, and crease a "poised candid" feeling.

clara takes videos because she wants to record every memory and relive them. she'll take screenshots from the videos to get candid shots, mid-big laughs and all.

sif sticks her phone right in her friends' faces and snaps because she thinks it's HILARIOUS. and the expressions are the most important part to her. her entire camera roll looks like a collection of reaction memes.

[flowersandskeletons526]

"Put Your Gloves Up" - Warriors Concept Album fanfic (part 2/?)

Second part, let's go! This is gonna be a fun one to write, I think. Part three is already in the works. Enjoy! Part 1

TW for graphic violence

---------

Rembrandt did decide to pick up Cochise’s lessons in the end. She would go to school during the day, trudging through classes with only Fox’s excited endless rambling to get her through it, and after, she was at the gym with Swan, Cochise, and Cowgirl. To Fox’s annoyance, she wasn’t allowed to tag along. She was still too young. Rembrandt just made it clear she had to be gone by seven to make it home with a wide buffer before eight o’clock. She knew Swan hadn’t explained her reasoning for this to the others - she never would unless Rembrandt said to - but part of her thought Cochise at least partially figured it out. She didn’t miss the way the woman’s eyes followed her every time she left.

All Rembrandt did for the first week was watch Cowgirl and Swan spar with Cochise. The soldier would pause periodically to explain in depth to Rembrandt what exactly she was doing. A lot of “proper form” this and “safe movement” that. Rembrandt wouldn’t deny that most of it went completely over her head. In her defense, this was quite literally the last class she’d ever thought she’d take. 

When Cochise finally gave her a set of the weird fingerless MMA gloves to use, all she did was copy the older woman’s movements for hours. Cochise would reach over, correct her foot stance, explain how the alignment of her back and shoulders let her hit that much harder. She never put her hands on Rembrandt, not really; a light, one-fingered tap on her arm or shoulder or a nudge with her foot, if anything. She appreciated that. 

At almost every lesson, Rembrandt spotted Ajax making her rounds through the gym. The woman seemed to stop fights before they started. One quick glare or harsh word shut down disputes over accidental shoulder checks and whose turn it was for a machine and whatever else roided up gym rats fought about. When people spoke to her, it was with a deferential incline of their head and a relaxed posture. She had a smile that wasn’t quite bright. More… electric. Fiery, almost.

Rembrandt wanted to draw her. It wasn’t every day an artist came across a muse who was an honest-to-god walking wildfire. But every time that idea cropped up, she shoved it to the back of her mind. She wasn’t going to keep staring at a person who seemed to terrify everyone she came across. 

Cochise and Cowgirl aside, the only person she apparently didn’t intimidate was Swan. Instead, she had an innate talent for pissing Swan off. 

Rembrandt heard “wassup, songbird” and “nice hit, Swanie” shouted across the gym on a daily basis. Swan would make a face every time, fists clenched, eye twitching as she exercised all her restraint in not going after Ajax. Cowgirl thought it was fucking hilarious. Cochise offered Swan a sympathetic smile but couldn’t always hide her laughter when Ajax came over to really irritate her. It never came to blows, at least. A shove or shoulder check here and there, maybe, but never a fight. Swan had mostly grown out of that habit since working for Cleon, and Rembrandt was proud of her for that.

Ajax never spoke to Rembrandt. At most, she got a sideways glance while Ajax was talking to Cochise. A nod when she came in for the day. Once, she caught Ajax watching her with a quiet, indecipherable expression from across the room. She looked away. Ajax didn’t. 

After a few weeks, Swan had business to handle with Cleon and left Rembrandt to go to the gym by herself. She’d gotten comfortable enough with Cochise and Cowgirl that Swan was only a little scared of leaving her on her own. It was the same as the other lessons - studying sparring matches and copying moves - until Cochise put on mitts and told her they would finally test how hard she could punch today. 

The answer, to no one’s surprise: not hard at all.

“Aw, c’mon!” Cochise laughed as Rembrandt aimed blow after blow at the mitts. “I know you can do better than this. Get angry!”

Rembrandt stepped back, sweaty and panting. “Let me get angry and I’ll end up making someone cry.”

“Yeah, Swan said you had a penchant for insults.” She clapped the mitts together. “No talkin’ now, kid. You came to learn differently and now you gotta show me you’ve been listening.” 

This went on for a little while longer until Rembrandt’s frustration began to beat out her focus. Cochise called for a break, letting her get a drink and rest, while she went to talk to Cowgirl during her cardio workout. Rembrandt sat on the bench in the corner and wiped the sweat off her face as she held a cold water bottle to her temple. 

She sported new bruises on the side of her face, creeping from her ear to her cheekbone. She could mostly hide it with her hair this time. If Cochise noticed, she didn’t comment. 

A shadow fell over her. She glanced up, expecting Cochise or Cowgirl. Instead, she found Ajax looking down at her. 

“Swan’s friend, right?” the brawler asked. 

“Yeah,” the artist replied as she stood. “Call me Rembrandt.”

“Cool name.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Ajax.”

“I heard.” 

“You’ve got good form, y’know.”

“You’ve been watching me?”

“A little,” Ajax said with a nonchalant shrug. “I’m supposed to watch everyone. That’s my job.”

“I thought your job was to break up fights. Isn’t that what security does?”

“If you’re good, you stop them before they start.” Crossing her arms, Ajax looked her up and down. “You’re scared of hitting.”

That threw Rembrandt for a loop. She frowned, narrowing her eyes, turning to follow Ajax as she stepped in a slow circle around her. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t follow through with it. You just fucking tap the shit. The second you connect, you back off. Don’t back off.”

“Huh?”

Ajax moved into the center of the mat and raised her hands, palms out. “Show me what you got.”

“You’re not wearing mitts.”

“You won’t hurt me. Trust. Now do it before Cochise comes back and yells at me for butting in on her lesson. Hit me just like you were doing it before.”

Rembrandt threw a punch. Even through her gloves, hitting Ajax’s bare hand felt like punching a brick wall. Rembrandt jumped back, caught off guard, but Ajax’s only reaction was a little smirk. She didn’t even move. That hurt Rembrandt’s pride more than it should have. 

“Alright,” the brawler said, “now follow it all the way through. Act like you're trying to knock me over and stop freaking out about hurting your hands. I can see in your eyes that you are.”

“I paint. I need my hands.”

“You are not hitting hard enough to do any damage. Now go!”

Rembrandt hit like Ajax told her. It still didn’t do much, but Ajax had to brace her back leg now, shifting just a bit with the force of it. She flashed a grin. Rembrandt found herself smiling back. 

And then Cochise was there, shouldering Ajax with a lighthearted laugh. “Ajax, quit distracting my student! If you want to teach then go talk to the boss and get your own slot.”

“I was just chatting with her!” Ajax protested with a sly grin. “I’m leaving, chill out.”

Cochise gave her one last playful shove before she returned to her patrols. Rembrandt watched her leave. She wasn’t sure how long she was staring before Cochise smacked her on the arm with a mitt to get her attention. When they got back to it, the soldier was impressed at the change in her power.

“What did Ajax tell you? She piss you off or something?” she joked.

“Just gave me some tips,” Rembrandt replied. Cochise raised her eyebrows, nodded slowly, and they went back to it. 

Ajax only came by to talk to Rembrandt when Swan wasn’t around, which Rembrandt thought was a good thing. Swan was already so protective of Rembrandt and loathed Ajax so vehemently that she was sure it would start a fight if Swan knew Ajax was talking to her. Still, Ajax’s pointers made her advance that much faster, to the point where Cochise let her move up to going after a punching bag and practicing dodging against Cowgirl. Cowgirl was not entirely happy about this because they discovered Rembrandt was faster than anyone expected and Cowgirl thought it made her look bad. 

She hadn’t gotten to the point of taking any hits yet. Swan might have had a part in that, but she wasn’t certain. Cochise had yet to comment on the bruises Rembrandt often sported when she came in for lessons, but it wasn’t lost on Rembrandt that she went easier on her when the bruises were at their worst. 

If there was anything she hated about the lessons, it was that they sapped all the energy she usually reserved for sneaking out to go do her art. Hard to cover every surface with intricate murals if you could barely lift your arms. But graffiti could wait, she supposed, if it meant she was less likely to end up dead while doing it. 

She still had to deal with the same bullshit at school. Walking to the gym with Fox and Swan one afternoon, Fox commented on it.

“I can’t believe that weirdo asked you out again,” she said, scrolling through a comic on her phone.

“He what?” Swan asked darkly. Rembrandt shot the younger girl a dirty look. She hadn’t told Swan about that yet.

“He didn’t ask me out,” Rembrandt corrected. “He wanted my number.”

“Which might as well be asking you out,” said Fox. 

“He’s really still giving you trouble?” asked Swan.

“He makes comments. It’s not really trouble.”

“What kind of comments?”

“Okay, before you think of showing up to his apartment with a baseball bat, they’re not bad. He just… gets in my space a little. Ms. Hill let me move seats and said she’s gonna try to stop him from getting out of his spot so often.”

“If he keeps being out of pocket-”

“I will tell you if I want you to handle it. Okay?”

Swan made a face and put an arm around Rembrandt, grumbling, “Alright.” 

Ajax didn’t talk to her that day. Not with Swan around. But Rembrandt did catch her watching their lesson maybe a little more closely than she watched anyone else. Rembrandt kept her eyes off the brawler. She didn’t want any questions from Swan later on. 

That night, she made it home early enough to avoid her father’s wrath. Cochise had gone easy on her that day, mostly just dodging drills, so when she finally heard heavy snoring coming from the living room, she grabbed her black hoodie and her backpack full of spray paint cans and snuck down the fire escape. She had a spot for a new mural already picked out: a wide expanse of wall on the side of a warehouse, freshly painted to remove all the old tags that had once covered it. A perfect canvas. 

She worked free-handed with no real design in mind. As she put down her brightest colors, the painting morphed into monsters, swirling across the bricks in a style similar to new school tattoos with her own traditional graffiti flair she imbued into everything. Painting was the only time she was truly at peace. Surrounded by a cloud of paint, listening to the ever-present hum of the city, she could forget everything. She could forget home, forget school, forget the creeps that gravitated to her and the bullies that caught her whenever Swan wasn’t around and the persistent threat of pissing off anyone bigger than her. 

She’d gone through too much to ever fully relax, but this was as close as she ever got. 

She almost missed the sound of heavy footsteps behind her.

“Hey, freak!” 

Rembrandt grabbed her backpack and bolted. 

She barely heard the shouting over her own pulse pounding in her ears. She didn’t even know where she was running to, just that she had to keep running before her pursuers caught up with her. She was fast, always had been, and if she just kept going, darting through every obstacle and alley, she’d be home free. 

She turned down an unfamiliar alley and ran full speed face first into a chain link fence. She bounced off right into the chokehold of one of the girls that had chased her. 

The leader stood over her as she struggled, crossing her arms and snarling at the smaller girl. “I thought I told you to stay away from Hector,” she spat. 

“He won’t stay away from me!” Rembrandt protested. 

The girl holding her threw her to the ground. Her nose was bleeding and the world tilted just a bit as she got on her feet, turning to find herself trapped between the three of them. They shoved her back and forth, almost knocking her down a few times, until the leader grabbed her by her collar.

“I said if you talked to my man again, I was gonna break both your hands. See what an artist you are then.”

“Oh my god, bitch, I don’t want him!” Rembrandt snapped, her temper loosening her tongue. “I’m fucking gay, first off, and even if I wasn’t, the motherfucker smells like microwaved ketchup! How stupid are you to think I’m going after him?”

The girl reared back, her face twisting. “What did you call me?”

Ah, shit.

Rembrandt dodged the first punch but not the sucker that slammed into the back of her head. She hit the ground hard, vision tunneling, and any chance at getting out of this dissolved as all three of them started kicking her. Rembrandt curled into a ball, trying to protect her head and stomach, gritting her teeth against the pain. Her backpack gave her some bit of protection and she knew they’d tire out eventually. She just had to stay alive until they got bored. She could do that. She could. 

Until one managed to kick her square in the face. Her vision went white, then black, and then she was being dragged to her feet by two of them while the leader punched her over and over everywhere she could. 

She was fucking done for.

Someone screamed. It wasn’t her. There was a flurry of shouts as she was dropped to the ground, groaning as she struggled to get up on all fours, her face pouring blood. More screaming. The sound of fists hitting flesh. An impressive litany of curses. And someone grabbed her by the arm and shouted, “Fucking run!”

She could barely see where she was going through the blood and screaming pain in her head. Whoever ran with her kept a tight grip on her hand, dragging her through the streets with them. They ran and ran until the shouts and footsteps behind them faded, and then her rescuer pushed her into an alley and cornered her in the space between two dumpsters. She slumped to the ground, unable to stand, but as the person crouched in front of her, she found the strength to boot them as hard as possible in the chest.

The stranger collapsed back on the asphalt. Rembrandt got ready to run, not that she really could, until the person before her raised their hands and finally spoke.

“Rembrandt, dammit, it’s me!” 

Rembrandt froze, eyes going wide. “Ajax?”

Ajax sat up, winded and holding her chest where Rembrandt kicked her. She kept one hand in the air as she caught her breath. “Motherfucker!” she wheezed. “Did Cochise teach you that?” 

“What are you doing here?”

“Uh, saving you from getting your ass beat?”

“Kinda late for that.”

“My apologies for not stalking you.” She got up onto her knees and grimaced as she finally got a good look at Rembrandt’s face. “Fuck, man, they really did a number on you. Here.” Reaching into an inside pocket on her leather jacket, Ajax passed Rembrandt a little pack of tissues. Rembrandt gave her an odd look, and she shrugged. “Cops get suspicious when they see a nineteen year old covered in blood. Learned that the hard way when I was younger.”

Rembrandt nodded. She held a tissue under her nose and had to switch it out twice within five minutes before it stopped bleeding. Ajax got up and paced the alley, watching the entrance but never leaving Rembrandt’s sight. Once she was sure they hadn’t been followed, she came to crouch beside Rembrandt again. She took a tissue from the pack and reached out. Rembrandt flinched, cringing away from her, and Ajax backed off a little.

“Easy,” she said gently. “You’ve got a cut on your head. Just trying to see how bad it is.”

Rembrandt stayed pressed against the wall but allowed Ajax to carefully wipe away the blood. She hissed in pain, and Ajax mumbled a sorry and went back to it even more tenderly than she’d been before.

It was almost unsettling, this juxtaposition between the brawler with whom Rembrandt had shared a handful of curt conversations and the woman who just saved her from ending up in the morgue. All she’d seen of Ajax so far was breaking up fights and relentlessly pissing off Swan, and now here she was, tending to the wounds of a girl she didn’t even know. 

Ajax sat back on her heels. “It’s not awful. Definitely needs to be bandaged, though. Does Swan know where you are?”

“She thinks I’m at home. I didn’t tell her I would be out tonight.”

“What were you even doing?”

“Painting.”

“Oh, yeah. All those big graffiti pieces are yours, aren’t they?”

“The good ones are.”

Ajax laughed, a harsh yet oddly bright sound. “Where are you going now?”

Rembrandt hesitated. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I can’t really finish my piece like this.”

“I can walk you home if you-”

“No!”

She mentally kicked herself for that. She hated how desperate her voice sounded, the panic ringing clear in a single syllable. Ajax’s brow furrowed; she’d noticed, as much as Rembrandt wished she didn’t. To Rembrandt’s great relief, she didn’t comment.

“Swan’s living with Cleon now, right?” she asked. “Have you met Cleon?”

“A couple times. You know her?”

“Through Cochise. I’ve talked to her a little bit. Run some… errands. I can bring you there, if you want. It’s probably your best option right now. Can you stand?”

“Give me a hand.”

Holding onto Ajax’s arm, Rembrandt climbed to her feet. The moment she tried to stand up straight, her knees buckled, and she fell with a yelp of pain. Ajax caught her, whispering “easy, easy” until she was able to stand on her own. Her head spun and everything ached and even the tiniest breath sent jolts of pain spiking through her ribcage. She felt like she’d been hit by a train. Ajax offered to carry her backpack for her, but she refused. Paints were expensive and hard to get and even though Ajax just saved her ass, she didn’t trust anyone touching her stuff. 

She did, however, trust her enough to hold onto her arm as they made their way to Cleon’s.

[unaskedformagnustheories]

Recap Notes: MAGP 12 "Getting Off"

Spoiler Warning: this is a purely selfish exercise in remembering what the hell happened last season (from someone caught up thru MAGP32, 3/6/2025 & all of The Magnus Archives). No promises I'll keep up with it.

Summary: Bonzo! Bonzo! Bonzo! Oh, and Sam is done with Magnus stuff, apparently. Pfft.

Casement: CAT1RB4728-09032024-13032024

Alice being the MOST ok with Sam & Celia is oof. As for Celia, It's a stretch, because we know she's busy with the whole sleepwalking to Oxford thing going on, but just pointing out that she pivots pretty quickly from hesitancy to agreeing to meet Sam under the clock at Leicester Square for their first date. A 10 minute from Soho Jack's (where Bonzo goes for a bro buffet). Most likely London is London and things are bound to be close every now and again, but if Celia wanted to do a little freelance investigation, I'm just saying it'd be a convenient trip to hop over and check it out. That's all.

Otherwise, great showing from Bonzo. His chant "he wants to play, he wants to stay" does make me wonder if his whole monching deal is what keeps him able to manifest / stay in this world to do it. A trade, like the one Celia's gearing up to make. And still no closer to defining CAT1 but at least worth mentioning most of our classic monsters do seem to filter into there. Mowbray, Bonzo, Ink5oul, Needles, Rupert the demon child, etc. Don't think it's as easy as "inhuman", but something to watch.

“I dream about it most nights. In the dream it digs through all those men to get to me, grabbing fistfuls of them and throwing them to smash against the wall. The strobe fires as its hands plunge into the pile of us and each flash shows a little less flesh between me and it, between me and all those teeth… Finally everyone else is gone. I raise my arm to protect myself and it gently but inexorably lifts it into its mouth, smiles and bites.”

Haven't been paying too much attention to dreams in TMP, but I might retroactively look to see if there's anything there. Doubt it'd be the same mechanism as Jon's dream hopping after he feeds from TMA, but suppose I shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. In general, I hope the more this mystery unfolds the more it's it own thing. I like the homages, and of course adore the source material, but I think it's a much more compelling game to take what we think we know and twist. Part of the reason I never tried too hard to fit any of the early casements into Smirke's 14. We don't know the rules here. That's the joy of playing. I will also be keeping a lazy eye out for mention of a Barry, Basil or Sebastian. With Gwen's upper class contacts, and the way she keeps her cards close to her chest, I wouldn't put it past her having known Baz before he was on the menu. Feels like a real Lena move to test Gwen's mettle by having her be responsible for the death of someone she rubbed elbows with.

GWEN You never wonder what the point is? Who benefits from all this awfulness?

ALICE I don’t wonder. I know.

GWEN What? (sitting up) Really?

ALICE Oh yeah. (portentous) I’ve known for a while, what we’re doing here. It’s all part of a grand plan to satisfy one of the most unspeakable evils known to mankind…

[Gwen’s on the edge of her seat.]

ALICE (almost a whisper) …the UK government.

[GWEN sighs, sitting back]

GWEN Thanks, Alice. Utterly useless as always.

Hilarious, but Alice's probably not wrong. Again.

[androgynousblackbox]

What A Punny Life. 2 [Appleradio, Radioapple]

A03 link

Prompts for the second day: Jealousy/Possessiveness.

Part of now living on the hotel was, of course, the receiving the new residents. Or at least curious souls that wanted to come see what was "the big deal" and then they realized they were expected to play along with Charlie's ideas of bonding exercises. They usually didn't last longer than a week or two, only to never be heard from ever again once they were out. In any case, they were all supposed to be treated with the same warmth and welcoming spirit as they would give to any other permanent resident. If they managed to get pass that one week and they still stuck around, they even received their own little party to celebrate the occasion. Some still left after their parties, though.

If he had to be honest, Lucifer was finding the whole thing really draining. To put on a friendly face for a complete stranger, only for that same stranger decide that none of what they were doing was worth it, it made him wonder what was the point of putting any effort at all. He had no idea from where Charlie gained the energy to just keep doing it, over and over again, with the same energy and passion every time, as if every resident was just destined to become her best friend. That also irritated him as soon they were gone. They never truly appreciated how lucky they were to count with someone like the princess on their corner.

To make it worse, he was terrible at trying to gauge who was going to stay or not. Everytime that he thought a particular sinner had hope, or that at least they would try to stick around, he was wrong. Granted, it had only been in a couple of occasions that even happened at all because there was only so mucb social interaction that he could take so frequently. But as he drank and chatted with the new comers, entertaining them with some music at the bar because why not, he really thought that it could work. Those didn't last not even a couple of days after that and they both pretended they didn't know him at all as they ran away. Strangers or no, that did felt a little hurtful. They didn't even bothered to say goodbye.

He had a good feeling about this latest one, though. A sinner that had no issue telling everyone that she died after her boyfriend caught her fucking his sister. Not because he killed her, but rather because during the argument she slipped and broke her head against an awful coffee table she never liked anyway, but came with the building. To her, the whole incident was hilarious and made no excuses for herself. She knew it was fucked the entire time and now, all that was left was to laugh about it. At least she didn't have to be on the next family meetings between those two!

She was loud, energetic and a little too flirtatious for Lucifer's taste, up there on the level of Angel Dust, but he find it easy to talk to her once she picked on he wasn't really interested. The type of girl that could make friends with practically anyone she wanted to. When hearing about the whole redemption to Heaven thing, she wanted in first like everybody else, out of pure curiosity, and then stayed when she heard there was no rent to paid. Have you seen the prices of apartments right now? This was so much more convenient.

It wasn't the ideal resident that Charlie would like to have, but she was a good sport on the days she was there. By the time her one week party came around, it seemed nothing ever could dim her enthusiasm.

"Fuck, that is a my song!" she yelled when Angel showed her the playlist they were putting on the speakers. She jumped from the bar she was sitting on and immediately went to offer her hand to Lucifer. "Please, please, please, come with me, man! You are the only one who is not freakishly tall like everyone else here!"

Lucifer was going to say no, thank you, but that comment alone made him reconsider. Honestly, why not? They did were the only people with the most approximate height. Niffty was too short, Vaggie was already dancing with Charlie and Husk likewise had already refused the offer of Angel Dust, prefering to watch on the sidelines.

It wasn't like he was doing anything else either. Just sitting there on the couch with the radio host of the hotel on the other extreme. Legs crossed, glass hanging from his hand on the armest, he seemed perfectly content by himself, as if the king didn't existed. For one on his afterlife, the man was almost completely silent, taking sip after sip of his own drink. The only thing he had said was about how there was "too much of a ruffle" and then stayed there, without adding another. Lucifer had remained out of stubbornes, then confusion and finally a confused resignation to this sudden cease of fire.

As much as this unexpected peace was nice, it was still boring. If Alastor just didn't have the energy to be his usual prick self, good for him, but Lucifer for once felt great. At that point he had only interacted with her the day of her arrival, to greet her just the same as he did for everyone else, where she praised the cupcakes he had made, and that party that Charlie insisted everyone had to be in. However, the decision to still go with her was rather easy in comparison to the alternative.

"I don't know the song" pointed out Lucifer, letting himself be dragged by her hand.

"I do! Don't worry, it's nothing sinful" she chuckled, directing a glance to Charlie, as if getting away with joking behind the teacher's back. "My dad used to hear this one all the time! He taught my mom the steps. Here!"

She put his hands where they needed to be: one on her waist, the other clasped on hers. Once she taught her the way they had to sway from side to side, pulling him away and closer again, he instantly understood the idea and followed along. Adding some hoof stomping to accompany the music that had her encouraging him further. Lucifer ignored a shiver that ran down his spine, like someone had slipped a piece of ice under his collar, and told himself it was just the proximity with someone that wasn't family in so long. Not that they were particularly close to each other while dancing. In that sense she was right, this wasn't what people would call "sinful" in that sense. But it was still another body that he was holding and was holding him in return.

It felt nice to do something so normal. Like he wasn't the most hated creature on all of creation and an embarrasment for his crown. Like he was just a man dancing with a beautiful woman, and not someone that got stuck in an empty palace wishing for days that were never coming back now. More importantly than that, it was easy, so light. She only wanted to move, nothing else.

When the end of the song reached the end, her laugh filled the entire lobby and applauded for his skills. In reponse, Lucifer couldn't do less than bow humbly before doing the same for her. Without really thinking much about it, he added a courteous kiss on her hand. Her blush was notorious even under her red skin, but she still smiled so big and asked if he would have another song with her.

"Sure!" he said with another smile.

That is when the power got shut down. The music stopped alongside all the lights above their heads and around them. The only thing keeping them from being in the total dark were the red glow of the hellish night crawling through the open windows. Lucifer thought he heard a some kind of static noise at his back, but couldn't be sure.

"Oh, man, it looks like another blackout!" announced Charlie, looking through the windows. "Nobody has lights outside!"

"Well, isn't that unfortunate!" The voice of Alastor elevated from the right side of Lucifer, alongside his freakishly tall persona. In what moment did he even stand up! "There is not really a lot of point to continue celebrating in the dark like this. I think it a perfect time to call it out for the night. They will probably fix the problem by tomorrow morning."

"What? Oh, come on" protested Lucifer. Just when he was starting to have any kind of fun.

"Ah, I hate to say it, but Smiley is right," groaned Angel Dust, his pink eyes standing out even in the dark. "This is just depressing. I need to work in the morning anyway."

If their resident lover of parties wasn't going to continue the party, there was nothing else to do. Lucifer looked at the point where he knew the new resident was and she shrugged.

"It's okay, we can always do it again for my next party" she said and send a kiss in the air to the whole lobby, moving to the air that the red light illuminated so perfectly. "Thanks everyone for this! Have a good night!"

"Night!" said Lucifer, thinking she was right.

They could always have another.

They never had another. Not with her at least.

Before her second week at the hotel finished, one morning Lucifer came down to the kitchen where everyone was taking their breakfast. Even the radio demon, funny enough. But not her. When he asked Charlie about it, her smile dimmed a little at explaining that the sinner had decided to get out the hotel in the end. Apparently she couldn't "stand it anymore" and it was "driving her crazy" to stay there. Charlie wanted to know what was wrong, see if they could fix it together, but the sinner had quickly gathered her stuff and run off to the exit.

All of that had happened late at night.

"It's okay, dad," Charlie squeezed his shoulder gently. "We can't force people to stay here. I am sure the next one is going to be better."

Lucifer didn't believe that. What was the point even? But he would never want to bring his princess down when she was trying to be optimistic. At least someone had to be.

"Of course, honey," said, patting her hand back while offering another smile back. "On my name, I am starving now. Someone down for pancakes?"

Most of the residents were. Not the radio prick, because ew, something delicious and sweet that almost everyone enjoyed. What an offense for his taste. Lucifer made them then humming to himself. After serving everyone, he grabbed a plate for himself and fill his mug with his usual tea.

"FUCK!" Almost everyone looked up in shock when Husk, the one yelling dissapear. From the floor, the winged cat rised up rubbing his back.

"What happened?!" rised up Charlie instantly, concerned.

"This stupid chair broke" grumbled the man, giving a slight kick to the pieces underneath. "We shouldn't have get them in a discount."

"We have another ones in the basement, if I don't remember badly" said Alastor, calmly taking a sip of his coffee. "Go be a good lamb and fetch them out, Husk, if you don't mind" finished with a wide grin, which made Husk to hiss, but walk quickly towards the basement door the next moment.

"It's okay, I can repair them," said Lucifer, coming closer.

"Can you? How convenient" said Alastor and by his tone Lucifer wasn't entirely sure if he was being sarcastic or making a show of being not impressed. Probably both?

"Yeah, I can" said, irritated anyway, as he simply snapped his finger and the chair was back in position, good as new.

Alastor looked at it and then at the king.

"Well, there were no other seat available, your Majesty. You may as well take it, I suppose," said with a light shrug.

It was only then that Lucifer realized that Husk had been sitting next to the radio demon, that was also next to Angel Dust. But he was right that there were no other chair at the table and Husk was bringing more anyway. Directing at the sinner a more than justified suspicious look, Lucifer settled down.

Another complete lack of annoying comments followed. If anything, the radio demon seemed in a particularly good mood. Now he was the one who was humming to himself while reading his newspaper. His smile even looked more sincere than usual.

Lucifer could just imagine he was planning his next disaster or massacre to carry on. Nothing good came out when a man like that was that happy.

The breakfast was peaceful, at least, while everyone else carry on.

[spywhitney]

Thoughts on ships in The Bear

Sydcarmy (Sydney x Carmy)

I filtered out the tag weeks ago and I haven't undone it yet 💀.

98% of posts on my page in the last 6 months or so is to do with this ship- I've had a lot of thoughts about it.

S3 soured my opinion on it, and I've seen some eyebrow raising opinions emerge after s3 that are kind of wild, but sobering I guess?

But unfortunately I've hyperfixated on this ship now so I won't let go until it's over. So yikes for me I guess.

Like I've invested so much attention to it and the odds are looking terrible, but I hope it works out anyway?!?!

Sydrichie (Sydney x Richie)

It's the older man/younger woman trope. That's all it takes for me lol.

I read these fics when I'm tired of the above ship lowkey.

Their dynamic is so interesting to me.

If there weren't so many ****** **** ball sucking/suit licking on Richie while simultaneously trashing on Syd I'd like it a lot more (probably).

I was going to say how Richie treated Syd in s1 is what turns me off too, but I ship Syd with Carmen so, welp.

If they got together it would piss so many people off. Like the hater in me is cry-laughing thinking about how upset certain people would be lmao.

Wish we saw more of them in s3, it would've made so much sense too.

Sydmarcus (Sydney x Marcus)

Um, are the sydmarcus shippers even alive?

Y'all were done dirty. Y'all didn't deserve that man.

I never got the impression Syd liked Marcus however, but still.

If she did, they would've been so cute, like omg.

Marcus has had Syd's back the most and is arguably the only friend she has.

He treats her like a friend/overtly asked her out as more than a friend too etc etc.

The fact Syd didn't even acknowledge the fact Marcus made a dessert and named it after her is wild though.

Their dynamic has a healthy balance of reciprocation, exercised respect and care.

Obviously there are some that insist they should('ve) got together because they don't want sydcarmy which is ridiculous.

Then there's the "Syd deserves better" crowd which while I understand and somewhat agree, I also believe people choose what they deserve, so that's her business lowkey.

Saying all that I'd be all over Marcus. He's passionate, fine as hell and he's super chill?! Already climbing that man personally.

Claircarmy (Claire x Carmy)

I don't care about Claire, so it's hard to care about the relationship.

As much as the Claire hate is entertaining to me (and very valid points have been made about her), I'm pretty neutral on her for the most part.

I will say, the fact that their relationship has been shown to be perfect up until the s2 finale and Carmy calling her a waste of time was all it took for her to walk away is hilarious.

Like, if you can't deal with Carmy saying one mean thing about you, you're not ready to be with him girl lol (especially when compared with--)

The show pushes this a lot so if they're endgame fine, I just want that plot point to be done my goodness.

Carmrich (Carmy x Richie)

I've read a couple of fics and woah?

I like this quite a bit.

Their dynamic is so engaging in the fics I've read.

I almost feel like I don't appreciate their relationship enough in the show.

Sydluca (Sydney x Luca)

Kind of yummy if it was endgame, eh if otherwise.

I'm being dramatic, see my post here for more context.

The actor is british so maybe my bias is showing with this ship ngl.

He's one of the few actors I recognised also.

They look kind of cute, or whatever.

Fak x Richie

They have moments for sure.

I get it.

Marcus x Luca

I never saw this honestly.

To me, it was feel-good to just see a black man eagerly learning in a healthy environment.

I want Marcus for me though, like I said so lol.

Nat x Pete

They're canon.

They go well together, though I will say I don't have a strong opinion on them.

I guess since we don't see any significant conflict with them/they're very stable there's not a lot of emotional weight?

Nat x Richie

I felt some vibes here and there, you know?

They're sweet.

Richie x Jess

It would make sense as a part of Richie's arc.

Funny how some people that ship them based on a couple of looks hate sydcarmy with 3 seasons worth of interactions though.

Michael x Richie

I feel like I'd like this like camrich, but also it might break my heart, so idk if I want to see what's up.

Marcus x Chester

Chester was chill, shame he only got two seconds in s3.

Knowing Marcus had someone outside the restaurant who's supportive was comforting.

Tina x David

They were adorable in "napkins".

Makes sense they're married irl.

Tina x Michael

Felt a vibe for a split second when she talked about him in s1 ngl.

If she didn't have a husband atp--

Sydney x Claire

I think I saw a fic with this on ao3. Don't care about Claire, so you know.

Richie x Tiff

Clearly there's still love there, shame with what happened to them.

Carmy x Luca

I don't see why not.

Carmy x Chef David

😳 I mean, I get the appeal but in the context of the show, yikes. (Not that I haven't shipping something "worse").